End the War on Freedom

by George Potter
[from here]

1.

Mary Ellen sets the table with her usual care and eye for detail: the crystal sugar jar, filled fresh with Domino dots. The two piece creamer set her daughter gave her for Christmas, sterling silver, one for half and half, the other for skim milk. A similar, smaller silver decanter, this one filled with just melted dark Bavarian baking chocolate, in case her guest has a taste for mocha.

Her guest, she says to herself, and smiles.

The tablecloth is her best, of course; the durable white linen inherited from her mother and lovingly cared for. It's not something she whips out for any old company. The fact that the last few years have seen sparse company is beside the point. The white linen whispers special from every thread, every carefully maintained fiber. She wants her guest to know how much she appreciates his visits.

"My guest," she says out loud. She giggles, surprising herself, then blushes. As usual, she feels like a schoolgirl.

She glances at the clock over the stove. Ten minutes till noon. He always arrives at noon sharp. Time to see to the coffee.

Mary Ellen is, to put it mildly, a coffee snob. Automatic drip technology is banned from her home, as she is a partisan of percolation. The pot she uses is another heirloom, this one from her grandmother. It's an all-in-one set from the early 1900's, kept beautiful and shining, cleaned after every use. It is designed to be placed on direct heat, and she's always careful not to set the gas flame too high. Fire smudges on her pot would be ghastly.

She buys her beans from a little store downtown, pricey but worth it. Her favored brew is a blend of Arabica and Jamaican Blue Mountain: it's mellow but with a surprising strength and a deeply earthy bouquet.

She grinds a portion, fills and caps the inner chamber, and carefully pours in the proper amount of ice cold spring water. She lights the stove, adjusts the flame and sits the pot on the heat to work its magic.

She takes her place at the table and waits. In some ways, this is the best part of these visits: the lovely anticipation. The delicious knowledge of company coming, of considering pleasant topics of conversation, of waiting to hear the laughter and see the smile of her very welcome guest. And all the while the cheery rattling gurgle of coffee being brewed, filling the air with that wonderful aroma.

A blessed moment.

As the minutes sweep by she thinks of her husband Mike, who passed on a decade ago, taken too young from stress and bad genetics. Only fifty six when he died. She thinks he would have liked her young guest, that they would have gotten along famously. Mike had been such a curious man, and such a lover of conversation. He could talk about far way lands and times for hours and hours.

And her guest could tell such stories!

The second hand finishes its sweep and the noon hour arrives.

With it comes her guest, fading into reality from nothingness. It takes less than three seconds, to go from an empty chair to her friend and coffee date Eric.

Eric is a young man, and handsome. He is about twenty, with large dark eyes and short blonde hair. He is tall and thin, but muscular. His face is somewhat delicate, but not feminine. His smile is lovely.

He wears a strange outfit. It looks something like a jumpsuit uniform, though the material is like nothing she has ever seen.

He is from, he says, a little over a million years in her future.

He is, he says, the last man on earth.

And he is here to save the human race.

"Good afternoon!" she says, as she always says.

2.

The first time Eric visited, it scared Mary Ellen half to death. She turned around and was faced with a strange young man in her kitchen.

She'd actually yelled. The poor boy was more frightened than her after that. It was a testament to his charm and persuasiveness that, in less than ten minutes, she'd been so relieved and calmed that she could do her duty as a host with an invited guest and offer him coffee.

Eric took to her brew like an addict born. He praised it. Such things were only myths and legends where he came from, she learned.

That first day was so surreal, and -- even now -- she was amused at how quickly she had accepted his story. Perhaps it was simple loneliness that caused her to be so accepting, but she was of the mind that it didn't matter.

As the last man on Earth, the last human being, Eric too lived a life of loneliness. He had only the massive and indescribably powerful computer network for conversation. It was this computer that cracked the secret of time travel, and was -- even now -- running the vast simulations that would pinpoint the exact moment in the past where intervention would save the species. Save them from the catastrophe known as 'The Big Crash'

"It's somewhere close to the here and now," he assured her, enjoying his third cup. "We've established that. That's why I never leave your house. Until we know the exact moment, and what exactly to do, there's no point in me endangering the mission and perhaps mucking up the timeline further." He helped himself to a warm-up. "That and your wonderful company and excellent coffee, of course," he assured her with a grin.

So they talked, became friends. He told her stories of the far future and she told him stories of the near past. But mostly they talked about themselves. She spoke of her daughter's workaholic ways. How she was married to her job and the idea of grandchildren seemed less likely every day. She shared with him the bittersweet memories of her husband. He opened up about what it felt like to be engineered for a purpose, and how he'd never understood loneliness until he met her.

Secretly, Mary Ellen dreaded the day when the computer finished its work and Eric's goal was in reach. If he managed to alter the past and re-arrange the future, if he was given an entire society to interact with, why would he waste his time with her?

But she pushed such thoughts aside. She had never been a person to allow the end of a thing to spoil her enjoyment of it while it was happening. That, she knew, was a recipe for misery.

So, like a good cup of fine coffee, she savored it while she could, sip by delicious sip.

3.

As soon as he doesn't respond to her greeting, Mary Ellen knows that something is wrong. Something horrible.

A glance at his eyes seals the deal. He looks despondent. He has been weeping. She goes immediately into damage control mode.

"My dear, what on Earth is wrong?"

He stares at her for a moment, tears threatening. Finally he speaks, his voice wavering.

"It's over," he says. The words have a funereal sound. "It's all over."

For a moment her heart goes cold, and she thinks he means their visits. But that's obviously not it, since here he is. A deeper concern strikes her.

"The computer?"

He nods, controlling himself with visible effort. "It finished the simulation this morning. There's nothing we can do. Nothing I can do."

"I don't understand," she says, mainly to keep him talking. She pours him a cup and adds his usual two lumps of sugar and dash of half-and-half.

"Neither do I, really," he admits. "The nature of time is still a mystery. But the computer is certain. There is no specific change that will alter my present in any way. The human species is dead, and will remain so." His voice comes close to breaking. "The Big Crash cannot be undone."

"Oh, my dear," she says, compassion flooding her. "How awful."

He takes a single sip of coffee, almost from habit. "The work of a lifetime. Made pointless in an instant."

"Not pointless," Mary Ellen says. "You had to try."

"Try and fail," he mutters. "What am I supposed to do now?" He stares at her with pleading eyes. "Why should I even bother any more?"

Mary Ellen realizes something, with the sudden flash that accompanied all her true insights: despite the eons between her and this young man he was exactly that, a young man. Why, he could be a grandson to her! What did technology or knowledge matter when faced with troubles that only experience could guide you through?

Half a million years of forward time meant less than forty three years of moment-by-moment experience. Despite his loneliness and drive, despite his vast intelligence and the information at his command, he had never experienced loss. He'd never felt it. He didn't know how to live through the pain.

Well, she did. She'd lost her parents and her only sister. She'd lost her husband. She'd lost friends and neighbors over the years. She wasn't used to it, of course -- you never became used to it. But she knew how to deal with it. How to keep on while the heart was hurting. How to let it ache without breaking.

And she could help him. She could help her friend.

"Eric, my dear," she begins, quietly. "You simply cannot let this haunt you."

He looks at her sharply. His expression wonders if she has gone mad.

"It will get you nowhere," she continues, pressing on. Her voice is steady and firm. "It will only lead to misery."

He is too taken aback for words at first. After a moment of struggle, he finds them. "Haunt me? Do you understand what I'm talking about? The last chance for the human race is gone. I have failed. Our species is extinct and shall remain extinct."

She nods. "Oh, I understand perfectly. I simply see no reason for you to beat yourself up over that fact. Nature is nature. What cannot be undone is done. Common sense." She smiles at him, a wise but cheerful smile.

His mouth is hanging open. He stutters, trying to argue.

Mary Ellen pushes ahead, unwilling to lose her momentum, her higher ground as she sees it.

"Everything dies, my dear. Everything. That's a fact of life and -- as you yourself and your wonderful computer have proven -- it cannot be changed."

Disbelief edges toward actual anger in his eyes. "A tragedy of this nature cannot be simply accepted as if..."

She cuts him off, knowing it's bad manners, knowing it may well increase his anger. She has to finish. "The only tragedy in death is if the life before the end was wasted. Was the human race cut short in its prime? Was the time it spend marvelling at the world and the universe in vain?"

Eric is stunned to silence. He slumps back in the chair.

"A million years from now you told me. A million years." She sips her coffee. "Seems like a nice long run."

"My purpose," he says, weakly.

She sniffs. "Your purpose is something only you can decide. It cannot be dictated or engineered into you." She sits her cup down, leans forward, and makes her final point.

"So. Will you waste your own life, wallowing in self pity and depression? You have so many years ahead of you. Will you cry them away? That would be a tragedy."

Eric closes his eyes, defeated. He sighs. Then he disappears, with a quiet sound and no fanfare. Without a farewell.

"Oh dear," Mary Ellen says. She didn't want that to happen. She decides not to worry on it. Her advice was solid, she should take it herself.

With nothing else to do, she clears the table and waits for tomorrow.

4.

The next day dawns the same as any other, and Mary Ellen treats it as such. There is a bit of nervousness, an anxiety, as she goes through the routine of preparing coffee and setting the table, but she shoves such feelings deep into the back of her mind, remembering her own words from the day before. What is done is done.

The coffee is brewing, the kitchen filling with that blessed aroma, when Eric appears, right on time.

He smiles at her, not exactly cheerful, but without the heartbreak.

"Good afternoon, dear!" she says, as she always says.

His smile widens. He looks a little sheepish. "I thought about what you said," he tells her.

She nods, busy pouring. He thanks her and takes a long drink, as deep as the heat will allow. He makes a quiet sound of pleasure.

"You're right," he admits.

There will be no I-told-you-so. Mary Ellen simply smiles happily and nods again.

"And I made a decision," he continues, after another drink that nearly empties his cup. "A rather drastic one, in fact. I decided..."

He is interrupted by a sudden flash and a flat crack. Mary Ellen jumps a little, but manages to keep from spilling her coffee on the white linen.

On the table between them, two slim cases have appeared. Eric deftly unlocks and opens one. He spins it around to show her.

She goes wide eyed. Even to her amateur eye it's quite obviously a fortune in perfectly shaped gold bars.

"You've mentioned a spare room," he says, actually blushing. "Could you use a somewhat chatty tenant and some extra cash?"

There is nothing to say. She laughs, overjoyed. She holds out her hand and he grips it. They smile foolishly at each other.

A weight has lifted from her heart, a deep and abiding loneliness. And something else, something only now dawning in her mind: the idea of this handsome young man and her workaholic daughter, meeting. Eric could be so charming, so persuasive. Perhaps the dream of grandchildren was not so far fetched any longer?

She would see.

He is pondering too. An even deeper loneliness has left him, and something exciting has taken its place. No longer is he tied to a mandated course of action. No longer is fate a certainty to him. That's a terrifying prospect in many ways. But in others.....it speaks of nothing but adventure. Of hope.

One bright spark of civilization, of warmth and friendship is better than nothing in the face of eternal blackness. This he has decided. It will be a mere moment, an infinitesimal point in a cold eternity.

But could he really claim it is pointless? That it does not matter?

He smiles and straightens up. Mary Ellen is cheered to see it. She breathes a sigh of relief and goes for the pot again.

"Another cup, dear?"

The coffee smells so wonderful. He pushes his cup and saucer forward.

"Oh, yes. Please."

She pours. He thanks her. And in this simple ritual they refute nihilism. They refuse despair. He adds cream and blackness is lightened. Sugar melts in the heat and banishes bitterness.

He lifts the cup with calm hands and sips, tasting a model of the closed loop that was human history: finite, best enjoyed while fresh, and eventually finished.

It is delicious.

by George Potter
[from here]

He found his first goddess on his fourteenth birthday. She was a slight and lovely creature with huge eyes, wild black hair and a smile that combined innocence and ignorance. She was standing on the corner, right outside his house, naked in the moonlight, shivering with cold.

He brought a blanket down with him, and wrapped her in a gentle cocoon. She sighed and leaned against him, grateful for the warmth and attention. He tried to lead her inside but she did not understand. He finally just picked her up and carried her.

Carefully, he laid her on the couch and propped her head with his favorite pillow. He made her tea with extra sugar and real cream. Those huge eyes glittered with unreadable emotion. She had no voice but a high and chiming laugh. She seemed to like the cartoons he played for her, smiling and gasping and laughing right on cue.

His father was disturbed, but said nothing. He simply left early for and stayed late at work. His mother worried but made the goddess breakfast. They had eggs and bacon and toast for the three days that she lived.

Then she withered quickly and died, gone in a few hours, leaving nothing but a vague scent of jasmine and the memory of a sweet laugh.

He folded the blanket and put it away, sure he would need it again soon. He cried a little and prayed to her every night, wishing for her back as he had wished her into existence.

His next goddess appeared a little over a month later, this time tall and slender, with hair of brilliant gold. She spoke, this one, a few simple words at least. She liked to wander around the apartment, examining everything closely, naked save for glory.

His father, utterly mortified, went to stay with his brother upstate, and his mother took to haunting the library and grocery stores, inventing errands, to avoid the divinity that had invaded their home.

He was happy, though, watching his goddess in her insatiable curiosity, her coltish motions and slender limbs almost a parody of grace. She was fascinated by everything, and was overjoyed to learn the names of common things.

A week that one lasted. A lovely week in a miserable winter.

"This can't keep happening," his mother told him as he wept in his room, hands clasped before him, knees sore and bruised from kneeling. "This is not the way the world is supposed to work, love."

"It's my fault, isn't it?" his father said. "I read you all those stupid myths when you were a baby. All those foolish stories of gods and men and them gettin' on together." His voice broke on the last word. "My bloody fault."

He ignored them both, and prayed harder, begging the universe to send him another goddess. To send a vision of beauty and love that would last.

But the universe chose to ignore him. He was almost twenty years old before he found another goddess, well away from frightening his parents and perhaps better suited to the care and feeding of the divine.

And divine she was, far more fully formed and complete than his earlier lost loves. She showed very little fear of anything, and came to him, finding his dorm on campus with no problem. She spoke in an eloquent tone, with a vocabulary larger than his own.

Tall, again, with a mane of red curls like spun copper. Green eyed, fair skinned, features so perfect that every artist on campus threw themselves at her feet, begging to paint or sketch her. She refused them sweetly, though. She had interest in him only, unwilling to share the loveliness that she offered as a gift.

Beyond her beauty she was kind hearted, and funny. She made his days complete and happy, from first light until he wrapped his arms around her in the dark, and breathed deeply of her lovely scent.

He allowed himself to hope; allowed himself to think that this time, she would stay.

He was wrong. One morning her smile was simply gone. Then the sweet gleam in her eyes. Then the words and music of her voice began to diminish. All that was bright and alive in her gradually drifting away.

He refused to give up so easily this time, spurred on by the sadness in the voice that called his name over and over. He bundled her against the cold and carried her, adrenaline and fear making him strong, across campus towards the infirmary, hoping feverishly that the medicine of man might slow or stop the maladies of heaven.

They never made it. Halfway there she simply began to fade away, growing lighter and less substantial in his arms. He fell to his knees, weeping, begging. There was just enough time for her to whisper his name once more, to gift him with a smile, and for the briefest of goodbye kisses.

Then she was gone, dissipated in the moonlight like night mist struck by the sun.

He howled his rage and loss at that uncaring moon. He had to be sedated, restrained.

They kept him for a week. In the end, he lied. He said his girlfriend had left him and he'd taken it badly. Said he'd over-reacted and was over it now.

He took a pistol into the woods and found a peaceful spot, and even a few more tears to shed. He placed the cold metal to his temple and closed his eyes, thinking of her divine face and how it had shone in the reflected light of the moon.

"Don't be a fool, lad," the voice said.

He whirled on it, startled. Several feet away stood an old man. He looked to be in his 80's, tired but not done yet with the world.

"You should ask yourself," he added gently, "what exactly you have done to deserve a goddess?"

"Who are you?"

His visitor merely laughed. "An old fool with scars on his knees from praying, and light in his soul from attempts to be worthy." The smile he wore was quite satisfied, as he turned to leave. "And there are some who say the two things are very much the same."

He dropped the pistol and simply stared, frozen in confusion, for several moments. The old man had nearly vanished by the time he recovered his wits, called out, and gave chase.

It was an impossible task. No matter how he hurried or what crafty trails he took, the old man stayed relentlessly ahead of him.

At last he found himself in a bind, cornered near the edge of the wood by brush and briar, somehow lost on a path he'd walked a thousand times. He saw his savior make his way to an expensive black car. He cried out once more, almost desperate.

The old man turned to look. He smiled and waved. "Be worthy!" he called, and opened the door.

There was the single brief flash of a face, smiling in greeting as his savior settled in. A face of divine beauty and luminous spirit, of huge dark eyes meant only for one lucky worshipper. A face that split his heart and mended it in an awful, transcendent split second.

The car pulled away and left him stunned. He struggled from the wood and made his way to his dorm, placating his worried room mate with kind lies. He was both empty of feeling and filled with an almost painful purpose.

He would prove himself worthy, he vowed.

He threw himself into his studies with renewed vigor, becoming a model student. He joined every philanthropic organization that the school boasted, often rising to a lead position in weeks. He helped to rebuild churches and flood destroyed homes. He donated money and raised even more with a ferocious intensity and depth of feeling that often frightened those who heard him speak.

After graduation he chose a career that paid barely a living wage sent him to the most abject places in the world, and he wore himself ragged trying to make those places a little better. He argued for the sick and the lame and the poorest of world, facing down councils and committees of the richest and most powerful.

Bridges and damns were built on his initiative, rivers were held back and farmland seeded under his lead. He carried antibiotics and clean water to plauge ravaged villages, and served the starving with his own hands. He cradled and comforted dying infants that no one wanted and taught camps filled with war orphans to read and write and count. He was thanked in the prayers of a dozen religions and twice that many languages.

Many marveled at his depth of commitment and compassion, and the word saint danced often near his name.

When praise came his way, he deflected. He gently refused awards and fellowships and suggested that those who wished to honor him could do so by helping others.

In truth, he often felt the possibility of his goddess close by, some deep resonating note pulsing through his soul. Fear and desire warred, but he always turned from it. He was not worthy yet, he whispered to himself. He would not survive the gaining and losing of another goddess. He must be absolutely sure that he had earned her favor this time. Absolutely sure.

Decades passed, as decades will. He never married and had no children, instead using his name and what money he gathered to help hundreds of children across the world, children who honored him as a father though they'd never met him. Who took his name as their own out of respect and with pride.

Finally, the day came that so many who loved and respected him dreaded. He was an old, tired man. He shouldn't live alone in his simple house, with only memories and the worth of his works to keep him company.

They sent a strapping male nurse with a signed paper, all legal and well intentioned. He was to be brought to a very fine nursing home, one of the best in the country. His stay there would be paid for by the donations of hundreds who were awed and inspired by his selflessness.

"No," the old man told his visitor. "I cannot leave."

The nurse was confused. "But why not, sir?"

The old man smiled with great joy. "Because she will be here soon, lad. She is finally coming, to stay this time." He could feel her approaching presence, that deep resonance in his very center, now so powerful that the entire world wavered in harmony with it.

"I see," said the nurse, secretly taking a needle filled with dreams from his bag. He'd do his best to slip the injection quickly and well, so as not to startle the poor thing.

He was moments away from doing so when the door opened. He turned to look, expecting his driver wondering at the delay. The old man broke into a delighted smile, and stood.

The nurse would later admit, to himself, that what he saw walk through the door was a woman. But to say that was almost painfully simple, like saying that the Sahara is dry or that the Atlantic is deep. What he saw was more than a woman. What he saw was the personification of beauty and truth and the ephemeral virtue of grace made visible.

Her hair was not like the sun, it was the Sun, billowing waves of some heat beyond flame. Her skin was not like the moon, it was the Moon, cold and beautiful and shining with mystery and promise. Her smile was the glory of Heaven, her eyes were the portals to a thousand versions of paradise.

She was Athena on the battlefield, the sword of the righteous. She was Diana in her chariot, crossing the star tumbled sky. She was Venus risen, creature of storm tossed sea and foam sculpted form. She was Love, she was Life, she was a Goddess.

The nurse fell to his knees, weeping and terrified. But mostly he felt despair -- that this vision was not for the likes of him. That he was not worthy and perhaps would never be.

The old man reached out with shaking arms. She flowed to him like sunlight across a meadow. The embrace was less like two people joining than a single soul discovering itself complete.

The room, the very house, was unworthy. It began to smolder from such heat and light.

"Will you stay?" the old man whispered, eyes burnt to blindness, voice almost gone.

No, the goddess whispered. You shall come with me. You have proven yourself worthy of more than this life.

And together they became something beyond light and heat and the nurse, maddened, fled their union.

He came to on the street, clothes stinking of smoke, hair charred and eyelashes burned away, skin red with the radiance he'd witnessed. The fire department and police had arrived, as well as an ambulance. A paramedic was asking him simple questions in a slow voice.

In front of him, the old man's house burned. They'd later blame it on faulty wiring and call it a tragedy. A great philanthropist dead because of the greed of others, news reports and reforming politicians would cry.

But the nurse, who'd never speak of what he'd seen and felt, knew better. He knew the old man was not dead. That the house burned for the same reason he had fled -- because it was unworthy of the sight of such divine love.

He looked on the great red and yellow flames and saw not a funeral pyre but a sacrificial alter, one final bright prayer.

And he felt himself changed by it.

He found himself praying, more and more often. He prayed not to the faith of his upbringing, nor to the God of his father. His prayers were neither promises nor pleas.

Instead, he prayed like a whispered love poem, an unabashed ode to a heaven with a mane of the sun, and eyes within which beauty and truth and worth became a single unquenchable flame.

by George Potter
[from here]

Q: What is the nature of God?

A: When the universe came to be, it was without form and void. That means it had no shape and consisted entirely of nothing. This was, obviously, an untenable situation. The shape lacking, imaginary particles that made up the universe were ashamed to be part of such a loser universe. They had to do something.

Lacking Craigslist, they settled on screaming piteously into the uncaring nothingness like whiny little bitches. Over the non-ages this created an atmosphere of existential annoyance. From this atmosphere a Being arose.

This Being was God.

God was, by nature, profoundly pissed off. It had been created by the sheer aggravation of countless shrieking, unsubstantial bits of loser. What else could It be?

It lit into the universe like a buzzsaw (though it may be more logical to say a buzzsaw functions like a just formed God). It pounded those noisy fucks into a shape, cursed them into temporal existence, and swore up and down that it would spend the rest of Eternity making them pay, pay, pay, pay.

And it came to be.

And God said it was good.

Q: What is the nature of Man?

A: The first Man was created when God got bored with abusing imaginary particles. It was all well and good, true, but It wanted something to hit that would have a bit more reaction. Would provide a little more tangible amusement. Would, at least, scream in a more interesting way.

So It invented some shit called dirt and formed a Man out of it. Being curious, it made another version, slightly different. As a joke, it kept both.

It placed the Man and Woman into a Paradise, made them a bunch of promises, gave them some rather arbitrary and stupid rules. Then It waited. You could almost see It bounce in impatient glee.

Sure enough, the brand-new foolish creatures broke the arbitrary and stupid rule and God did what God does.

It spent the rest of eternity making those pitiful creatures pay, pay, pay, pay.

And this, too, was good.

Q: Does Heaven exist?

A: What are you, retarded?

Q: Does Hell exist?

A: Look around, dumbass.

Q: What is the Meaning Of Life?

A: Don't you get it yet, moron? There is no meaning to any of this nonsense, other than what God decides to impose on it. The universe is shrieking nothingness. Your God is an angry psychopath who can't get over being created in a less than ideal way. Your life is an accidental confluence of ridiculous improbabilities focused on a single point in chaotic, traveling time-space.

Your purpose is to suffer. Your only goal is to return to oblivion once God has tired of toying with you. You can't even off yourself to hurry the process along, since that will just piss God off even more. It doesn't like It's creations trying to escape. It'll get bored with you when It feels like it, and not a moment sooner.

Hmm.

There is... well...

I probably shouldn't tell you this, since it will no doubt just give you pointless, tragic hope, but...

There are some scholars, certain thinkers, who posit, based on a rigorous study of the ephemeral rules they find themselves mired in, that God might eventually get over It's divine Issues.

I mean, it's possible. Almost anything's possible in such a pointless universe. Think about it. God's own whining might wake up an even bigger God who will put It's boot up God's ass and tell It to shut the fuck up and leave those stupid dirtthings alone, for itssake. That, listened to properly, those screaming particles are kind of nice. Make a sort of music.

Maybe.

And that's the saddest thing of all, really. That possibility of hope. That tiny, statistical if of compassion. That in all this impossibility of heaven and certainty of hell there might just be the opportunity for change.

Wouldn't that be good?

George Potter has posted two chapters, a teaser, for a story from his new book. "Bad Patterns — featuring the full version of this story and nine more – will be available this Spring." Good writing, as usual from Mr. Potter, but leaves you wanting the rest. "This spring" means by June 20. Hope it comes earlier than that. I'm eager.

by George Potter

(for East End, with love.)

My name is Tyler McCammon and I am fourteen years old. I was born and raised right here in this county made out of mountains and the spaces between them. Polk County, Kentucky -- a small, hidden world of creeks and hollows, forests and the shadows they cast. "A great place to be from," my cousin David told me once "but a shitty place to be."

by George Potter

• Part 1
• Part 2. Adopted Daughters

*WARNING: PROFANE LANGUAGE*

Part 1

IKDR always sat alone at the bar, last seat before the wall, when he came to Fluid Aether which was on Wednesday and Saturday night. He got the seat, and the one next to it no matter what. If someone was there they would politely stand up and casually become interested in some other location in the club. IKDR was well known.

On Saturday nights he would generally drink draft beer and buy drinks for the pretty girls dancing. He didn't give a damn if they were there with someone or not, he tried to get them shitfaced. He wasn't trying to score a piece, he just wanted them to get wild and dance. While he watched. And recorded. IKDR was a pretty anti-social guy, but that didn't mean he didn't care about pussy. Far from it, he just wasn't much interested in dealing with some of the bitches it was attached to.

Wednesdays were business, and he didn't even drink much beer. The Fluid was a private club, Faraday caged to hell and back. What happened in The Fluid stayed in The Fluid. That was just perfect for his business.

Ike was from Vegas, after all.

His customers arrived quietly and spoke softly. They rarely had a drink. They generally left within five minutes, satisfied with their merchandise.

Saturday nights and Wednesday nights were separate. Business and pleasure. It was an unknown thing for IKDR to mix the two.

Until last Saturday rolled around.

Aleesa was bartending. She was fucking beautiful. Natural redhead, pale skinned and delicately freckled. A hair under six feet and built for the duration. Of the Universe, IKDR often thought. That bitch will survive heat death.

She looked into the black orbs of his eyes and smiled. She wore no makeup, and the color of her lips were as delicate as those freckles.

"You're late." she said, shaking her head slightly. "You getting old, Ike?"

He smiled back, his usual narrow grin.

"Jus' tired. Ain't sleep for shit, lately."

She already had a draft in front of him. He took a gulp.

"Guilty conscience?"

"Work." he said, and turned his blank eyes to the dancefloor.

IKDR saw differently than other people. His eyes had been destroyed as a child. They'd been replaced with and antiquated artifcial model that had been discontinued less than a month after its release. They allowed direct interpretation of the entire spectrum, not just visible light.

It tended to drive some people crazy.

To IKDR, it was a portrait of all creation.

There was a choice selection on the on the floor tonight, all colors shapes and sizes. IKDR saw more than their bodies and faces -- he saw the heat pulse of their respiration and the flickering gamma traces of their auras. He saw the glittering reflections of the microwave pulses that connected them all in this private little technocave. He saw them bathed in the chaos of energy that made up the universe.

And he liked what he saw.

'The redhead in green is drinking synthamesca, in merlot." Aleesa informed him, all professional now, and already pouring the drinks. "The skinny blonde with the big tits and the feather looking getup is old school: Ceuervo straight, no salt, no lime." She knew his preferences. "She's a weird bitch, though. If she comes over to talk you're best bet is to pretend to be mute or retarded or something."

"Gotcha." he said, as he admired the weird bitches beauty and grace. She was unmodified, type zero, and a perfect example of girlnextdoor. She almost caught his eye but he wouldn't allow it. Most women were disturbed by his eyes, and it tended to ruin their dancing. If she came over to thank him for the drink later, she'd have ample time to get over it. Her dancing would be unaffected.

IKDR was the pragmatic type.

Aleesa was queing up the drinks in a shelf behind the bar. She called this 'The Hole', as in 'You got one in The Hole, sister." IKDR was sure that Aleesa took home the choicest of the women he got drunk on Saturday. He kind of relished that thought.

He checked out the redhead. She was a smaller woman than the blonde, and quicker. Her eyes were closed, totally into the music and her own motion. Slight mods, type 2 at most. Her closed eyes were too large for her face to be natural, and she had the still ridiculously popular elfin ears. Those ears were studded from tip to top with emeralds, the exact same shade as the skinsight mini dress she barely wore.

He killed the draft, set his glass down. Aleesa had it refilled before he could swallow.

It didn't help much. He was so caught up in her dancing that she surprised him by opening her eyes and looking straight at him. He couldn’t turn.

She didn’t flinch. In fact, she smiled. Then she closed her eyes and continued dancing, happy for an audience. IKDR grinned. She was getting wild, eyes shining with the synthetic mescaline. The color of those eyes surprised him as well – he was expecting the same emerald gleam and instead stared into grey storms.

Tonight, he decided, was going to be interesting.

“I like the redhead.” Aleesa said. Just to be helpful he was sure.

“Doncha gotta girlfriend?” IKDR asked, just to be an ass.

Aleesa shrugged. “Bobbie will like the redhead too.” She gave him her megawatt smile. “She likes redheads.”

She busied herself with new customers. IKDR flipped a ridiculously large tip into her public account, just because she rocked. Then he turned back to the redhead.

She was gone. He cursed, quietly.

Someone sat down beside him. The blonde. He smiled at her. She did flinch a little, but barely and got over it.

“Howareya?” she said.

“Good ‘nuff.” He said. “You?”

She lit up. “IamdoinggreatandgreathowaboutyouohIjustaskedthatI’msorry.”

Dumbass, Aleesa whispered from the other side of the bar.

I can still pretend to be retarded, he replied.

But he was saved. From nowhere the redhead sidled up. She appeared pissed.

“Excuse me,” she told the blonde, “you’re in my seat.”

And she flicked IKDR the most convincing fake dirty look he’d ever seen. He tried not to fall in love. The blonde got the hint and jumped up, giggled and found other amusement. The redhead sat down.

“I’m gonna make a prediction.” she stated, slow smile starting.

“I be ears.” IKDR said.

“I’m not predicting the future, mind you.” she said. “I’m predicting the past.”

“Izzat fair?”

“Well, hell – yeah. It’s an unknown past to me.” She looked him dead in the eye. “Your past.”

“I be ears.” IKDR said, once again.

She turned away from him. “Aleesa!” she said. “Bring me my drink.”

IKDR laughed. He laughed and regretted that his eyes closed and left those grey storms and that slow smile for a single moment. When he finished she was still smiling, and Aleesa was slipping a wine glass between them. He kicked her a tip. She told him not to fuck it up.

“’Pressive.” He told her, and tipped his draft. She was quick enough to get the wineglass up to complete the toast. Type 2 my ass, he realized.

“What your name?” He slamsearched and found nothing but public gateways. She was the reserved type.

She considered. “I’m Pandora.”

“Real name or just tonight name?”

“Does it matter?”

His turn to consider. “No.” he decided. “Why the name?”

She took a sip of her drink. She shivered slightly at the bitterness of the synthamesca. “Because inside I’m mostly bad, but there’s hope.”

He laughed again. It actually startled Aleesa, who did not hear him laugh often.

“’K Mizz Dora, let’s talk.”

She moved faster than he could and, in a blur, she put her arms around him and kissed him lightly on the cheek and was still, smiling at him, by the time he realized it.

He tried, once again, not to fall in love. He’d succeeded before. He failed this time. He opened a private channel and pinged her public, crypted to God and back the way only he could do it.

“Your name is I Know Damn Right.” She told him. Her smile was wicked, now. “You’re a fucking freak like me.”

Type 10, he decided. Or higher. That was fucking fast.

“’Krect.”

I need you to break a crypt for me. She told him on the private channel.

I don’t work on Saturday. He told her, instantly, turning back to his drink.

Sadness flooded him. It’s a matter of life or death. My life and my death.

IKDR sighed. He took another drink. He damned the world.

IKDR lived by a Code. It was a code he learned in childhood from the only brothers he’d ever had. They were not brothers by blood but brothers by circumstance. They’d found him in a dumpster when he was two years old and raised him in the Coventry of Old Vegas. They’d been little more than children when they found him but they were wise in the ways of the street and the gunhand. And they were honorable. The older brother had shown him the stories of King Arthur and his knights. Those stories had taught him lessons – that women and children must be protected and that any honorable man will stand up and protect them no matter the cost.

He sometimes cursed his own decency.

I am at your sevice, my lady, he transed.

“Whatta prob, sis?” he said aloud.

2. Adopted Daughters

Aely Fisher was drunk.

She knew she was drunk. She was bobbing and weaving a little as she made her way down Drummond. Not enough to get stared at, but enough to get attention flicker from the few people out this late. Or early. Perspective.

She also knew she was drunk because she had the most godawful goofy smile plastered on her face and she couldn't seem to make it go away. She was trying. Hard. But that sucker was resolute.

Gotta pass out. some wiser part of her soul finally told her.

Good idea. the remnant of concious navigating her body managed to agree.

Lil' alcove over there. The alley. Dropmap says little space. Cozy. the wiser part of her soul was fading fast.

She found it. Dropmap rocked. It was just big enough to crawl under. She popped a nest and relaxed in comfort.

Today -- yesterday!-- was her 19th birthday.

Hap' Burday, Alleycat.

Happy Happy, momma! she enthused drunkenly and was gone, snoring gently.

She woke up cursing seven hours later. She dropped the nest, cyked it and stood up groggily. Her head was pounding. The medsys was cranked up and running, but this was a hangover for the ages. She was going to suffer a bit.

She found a flat spot and sat down. She moaned. She visioned her keys and begged for coffee. Insufficient material, she was informed.

Another moan. I can fake it with a few subs. Rhea remarked.

"Please do." Aely said. "And good morning. I'm dying."

30 seconds. And no you aren't. Don't exaggerate. I'll slip some trin in your coffee and you'll be hydrated in ten minutes.

"I have to work today."

You called me momma again last night.

"I was drunk!"

I think you should visit your mother.

"I was freakin' drunk."

Visit your mother, let her fuss over you, feed you, beg you to stay, cry, then make up, kiss and leave.

"I'm so sick of that shit."

You missed her dinner party.

"You know how busy I was."

And I know how hard she takes things like that.

"She sent me an invitation, for freaksake. 'Dear Crys -- Hope you can make it! Phyllis will be there.' Who the hell is Phyllis and who the hell sends their daughter an invitation like that?"

Aely sipped coffee from the dispense. Not bad for subrigged. Rhea was talented. She began to feel better as soon as she'd had a few swallows.

She stood up. Yawned. Looked around. She was about a halfmile east of her current crashpad. She didn't use it much, generally staying so busy that she just caught a few hours in nest here and there.

She had a job at five this evening. Plenty of time. She considered seeing her mother, but wasn't up for that.

She was hungry, though.

"Let's get breakfast." she decided.

Rhea got to work.

Aely's daddy died when she was 6. He wasn't much of a daddy -- didn't really care for kids or have much time for them. He was a serious intellectual, sought after by the brightest and most exclusive groups in Connection. Aely -- Crystal then -- was at best a tolerated distraction.

He was killed in a freak accident, in Belgium. Crystal's mother never got over it. She tried to turn Crystal into a clone of her father, a holographic serious intellectual. Crystal rebelled, changed her name, and left home at age 10.

I struggle, world.

They decided on Slap Eatery, off Cicero just a few blocks up Drummond. Close, good food, and owed hella obs. Aely was already fantasizing about ribeye and cherry cheesecake. Rhea longed for a nice close node and plenty of width. Aely's pub crawl had taken her into a grey zone -- no local pop and noisemakers planted by shadies who did closework in the blank spaces. Rhea wanted to synchronize. Until she did she'd feel wobbly.

Slap Eatery was packed but Manfred saw Aely through the door and ushered her in through some really nasty looks from those left waiting. A corner window table was found for her, at first with the company of a grey haired gentleman who had introduced himself, complimented her on her beauty, and excused himself, buying her breakfast as he left. Aely thought him the cutest.

Manfred arrived. "Ribeye, medium rare, salt, pepper and cheesecake to follow?"

"Cherry." she said, decisively.

"No other in the world for you, ma'am. I know."

"And make the steak just rare. I need iron."

He went to make it so.

The packed restaurant buzzed around her, trying desperately not to notice her, failing for the most part. Who the hell was she, they wanted to know -- running frantic scans on the rep banks and recog servers.

I'm the witch who kept the building from commiting suicide, she thought, smugly.

She spoke to it finally. She could feel the little cluster of subminds plucking for her attention.

Simple chatter,
greetings!
recognition shared
something
like
laughter.

The souls of buildings are simple but they are real.

Rhea synchronized, shushing at the clamor like a nursemaid. She reminded the subminds of their duties, told them they were good, and sent them off. She downloaded against all possible lag times, resynched for deepsky and spent a blissful twenty seconds catching up. When she emerged from meditation she tracked the world at something just lagging realtime.

A pretty world, today. No bad news yelping.

"A veritable golden age." Aely said, deadpan. She was tapping the table with her fork. Hungry.

Manfred arrived with salad, and a glass of chianti compliments of himself. Aely munched and sipped and began to smile.

Rhea was nosing the crowd. Snotnoses, mostly, she discovered. Not her type. Rhea liked crooks and dope addicts. They were honest and usually a hell of a lot more fun to hang out with. Aely could do with fewer crooks and dope addicts, but she had no use for snots. She liked weird artistic types and techfreaks.

All of them, they both conceded, had their place.

Aely relished the fact that Slap used real shredded radish in their house dressing while Rhea pinged the room blatantly and furiously. The snots had the usual paranoid armours on but their own sudden curiosity about this fawned over urchin left them vulnerable to a sneak as good as Rhea. She was snagging, assimillating, analyzing and interpreting every stray whisp she could access. Soon an obvious and spreading consensus could be observed: they had heard about her. She was the girl who talked to buildings.

Aely just smiled. Rhea teased her about her fame.

The steak arrived a few minutes later, perfect.

She thanked the subminds profusely, knowing they had crafted her meal from basmat, start to finish. They assured her of her welcome.

She was just finishing the cheesecake -- one cherry painfully saved for that very last bite -- when she noticed the woman standing in front of her. She started.

"Hello." the woman said.

"Did you teleport there, lady?"

"That's an interesting breakfast."

"I like it hearty."

"What about eggs and bacon and such?"

"More of a lunch thing with me. I like a big bacon-sausage omelette sandwich for lunch a lotta times. Look, are you a food critic?"

The woman, a trim and presentable (neo-dowdy) secratary type, looked confused. She closed her eyes and concentrated.

"I'm getting distracted by irrelevancies, aren't I?" she said after a moment.

"Join the human race, lady." Aely told her.

"No. I'm here on business." Fierce concentration. "Emergency business."

That's when she wavered, classic comp visual shiver, and Aely perked up. Virched folk were common, but the kind that could fool Aely even momentarily were exceedingly rare.

Plus, there was something familiar about this one.

The secretary wavered again then flushed vibrant. Her eyes opened, she looked ten years younger. She was very serious.

"Aely Fisher The Former Crystal Lin Fisher, you are begged a boon from an old friend."

Aely went rigid. The familiarity focused into recognition. She stood, preparing to go instantly.

"What's the matter with Sebastian?" she demanded. "Is he in trouble? Hurt?" Rhea was slamsearching for any news and the current grapevine.

"I/we/he is not sure." the virched envoy explained. "Lockdown has remained too long and now violence ensues inside."

Aely nodded a curt farewell at Manfred, and made her way out, firm stride belying her very real fear and worry. The Secratary ghosted along beside her as she knew it would.

Sebastian wasn't far. She hailed a cab and bartered a kiss for the ride. The very kissable young driver seemed happy with his fare and was quite solicitous and made excellent time. She tipped him with a shorter but no less sweet kiss. Contact information passed with a smile.

"Odd time to be on the hunt." the Sec observed.

Aely shrugged. "I'm worried. When i worry I try my best to enjoy life even more. Because worry is a stupid thing you shouldn't deal with. It accomplishes nothing. I pin my hopes on optimism instead. And kissing people. I like to kiss people."

Rhea chided her: Don't pay any attention to this one, hon. She's barely an interface. Can't link through her to Bastian and she's locked into basic observational mode. She knows less than we do.

It was two blocks and an annoyingly long set of stairs to get the roof that overlooked Sebastian.

Aely grew disgusted when she saw the overall problem.

They'd turned Sebastian into a freakin' night club.

Fluid Aether, the tranparent biolum sign smugly announced. Idiotic.

And they've Faraday caged him, Rhea informed her.

Bastards.

Something happened a half hour ago that knocked a hole in it -- enough to get out the weak signal.

Aely sighed. With the mess the comped cage made of width, she'd have to go inside in order to contact sebastian. And there was possible danger inside. The indi suit she wore was, though not in pretty condition, top of the line. She was fairly well armored and self sufficient. She popped her holster and checked her weapon. The blocky ceramic form was reassuring, the weight and heft. The charge glowed happily full.

A cluster of static with bits of Sebastians voice hit her, reminding her of her duty. She rehoulstered the gun and attempted contact. He knew they were there, at least. That reassured her. He could help them get in, no matter the situation inside.

She got a bad but usable link to interior info. 126 people inside, most grouped together on private feeds. She scowled. That must be torture to poor Sebastian.

He had been designed as a heuristic learning expert system with a broad focus but charged with running a large household and raising a family. A cybernetic gaurdian for children who would be raised with him.

Now they've got him regulating a vice den.

Rhea laughed. You little hypocrite. You're still hungover, doofus.

I don't burden experimental personality systems with my decadence, though. I party in dumb buildings or buildings designed for the task. I'll bet these people don't even know Sebastian exists. They just want the master to run the fucking toilets and power and climate.

The hole is in the northwest corner. If we get closer we'll have a better grip on the garble.

Think the hole is big enough for me to climb in?

Not sure it's an actual hole in the wall, hon -- might just a nested series of cage lines spot burnt.

Dammit.

But they moved out, down another flight of stairs and across the deserted street to the bar. There were a few vehicles in the modest lot, but it looked like most of their bizz was foot traffic.

They found the hole with little problem, and Rhea's prediction proved true. Aely swore but got over it. She started pinging Sebastion, his private link.

She got connection on the 2356th try, a low quality but usable connect.

Sebastian! Are you...

Don't worry about me, he told her in his calm and serious voice. Worry about my family.

Your family?

Yes, he said proudly. I have a family. He sobered. They are in danger, inside.

When did you...?

Will you help me? Please.

Aely sighed. Of course, Sebastian. Get me in there.

Thank you, Aely. He beamed his gratitude at her and even through the grain and distortion of the low q, she could feel it.

And something below it. This threat to his family had introduced him to a new feeling. Sebastian was angry.

This is what I want you to do....

George Potter is back home and posting stories once again. Yay! "Broke Circle" is a prequel to Tesselation. I'm collecting the parts here.

by George Potter

• Part I

Part I

1.

Dawn found him on the north side of the mountain, sheltered against the wind. His small fire from the night before still lived, and took only a handful of gathered twigs and a few moments of stirring to set to dancing again. He unpacked the aging enamel coffeepot from his pack and filled it with icy water from the nearby stream, sitting it precariously on the cross made by the two largest pieces of mostly burned wood in the fire. When it approached boiling, he threw in a handful of ground coffee and waited.

There he sat, as the world faded into view with the rising son and took notice of him; a tall-for-his age fifteen year old, thin and lanky, with close cropped black hair and the first smudges of a beard. Gray green eyes reflected the new light calmly, lacking the usual teenaged surliness. They simply observed and—more often than not—enjoyed what they saw.

The state of his campsite reflected something of his character as well. Other than himself, his fire, a backpack and a sleeping bag, the area looked undisturbed. No tracks led to this place and none would be found leaving it. No litter defaced the ground. He considered these hills and this forest to be his home, and he had been taught by his mother from an early age to keep his home in order.

As he sipped the bitter first cup he thought of his mother and smiled. She would not approved of his style of coffee making—considering it wasteful and messy. The strength and sheer number of his mother’s opinions was one of the reasons that he often spent nights on the side of this and other hills.

The main reason, however, rested a half mile downhill and a mile uproad, dreams still singing behind her closed eyes.

It took only two cups of the brutally strong coffee to get him in a walking mood. He made quick work of cleaning the pot and re-packing his meager gear. Before he left he paused by the trickle of a steam. In the flow of the water he lightly sketched a double hex, a composite blessing and ward against ill. Etched in the surface tension, the magic quickly spread. From this humble beginning, gravity would create the many forks and branches of Grassy Creek, and—with one skillful shape—he blessed all who lived on her banks.

Smiling, he wished them a silent good day, and began his journey down.

The trails he followed were known by few and fewer every year. One of the reasons he was accepted and liked by the old timers in the area was his curiosity and willingness to use such knowledge. Unlike the majority of his generation, he found the past to be a vast and fascinating treasure trove, as important to existence as present and future.

He moved along the trails with a sure step and surprising speed. He followed them from instinct rather than memory, a map drawn on his soul rather than his mind. He made it down the hill in less than ten minutes, emerging in a natural field by the two lane blacktop that everyone called Farmer’s Road. The narrow field was separated from the passing traffic by the Cow Fork of Grassy Creek, and shielded from sight by a copse of elm and oak.

He followed the foot trail a slightly uphill quarter of a mile east until he came to a natural crossing of the creek. He stepped nimbly over the flat stones and emerged on Farmer’s road in time to return the amiable wave tossed to him by a passing coal truck.

If he continued east, a twenty minute walk would bring him to the highway that led north to his home. But he turned west, intent on his morning business.

As usual, his stomach clenched with worry and anxiety rose in him. He called himself a fool. He knew that she was all right. The connection they shared was the most powerful he’d ever experienced: he knew when she had a cold or stubbed her toe. Even as he worried he could feel her calm heartbeat and knew she would wake up no worse for wear, though probably hungover.

He fretted anyway, and would until he saw her face and watched her chest rise and fall as she breathed.

Just over a half mile up the road he caught sight of the car. The dirty white Cavalier was it’s usual battered self, no sign of accident or injury.

He smiled as he drew closer. Cat was waiting for him, patiently cleaning herself on the roof of the car, knowing his habits as well as he did.

“Keeping an eye on her for me, girl?” he whispered when he arrived, running a hand down her sleek spine. She favored him with a sidewise glance and resumed her routine.

Cat had been with him for almost five years now. She’d been living with a town couple and had simply decided to follow him home one afternoon when he’d passed her on his way. The people she had lived with called her—for unknown, probably horrific reasons—Bootsie. She’d shed that awful tag with her former life, and had been just Cat ever since. She was his friend, companion and—in most things—his co-conspirator.

He looked in through the window and the tension left him. He grinned with real pleasure. Laine was curled up in the backseat, her face a serene and innocent mask of slumber.

It was a face that inspired a thousand conflicting emotions on the deepest levels of his self. A face that haunted his thoughts and dreams. A face he cherished and adored.

The face of the woman he loved.

Laine Wallace was a short dark haired girl who tended towards chubby. She had the most lovely gray eyes—like looking into an oncoming storm. He thought she was incredibly beautiful. Some guys considered her plain or even ugly, but he dismissed them as fools too blinded by spoon fed ideas about beauty to recognize the glory of such a unique face.

As he stared, her eyes opened. She gazed at him blearily for a moment, then smiled and yawned.

“Good morning, Kevin.” she said, stretching from her uncomfortable position. “If you have a cigarette I promise I’ll love you forever.”

Even though he knew she wasn’t serious, you’ve never seen a pack produced quicker.

2.

Kevin made himself comfortable in the passenger seat while Laine smoked and woke up. She told him the story of the previous night and he listened as if he hadn’t observed it all—laughing and gasping and expressing shock in all the right places.

In truth, though, he had quietly followed her through the entire night. From the moment she left her parent’s house until the instant she parked her car and passed out in the backseat. He’d watched her dance and laugh and joke with her friends. Watched her drink Absolut and apple juice past the point of stupidity. Suffered through her long makeout session with some guy he did not know but now hated like fire. He’d watched—hidden by a short distance, simple shadows, and an elaborate glamour. Watched and waited, ready to step into the situation and do what needed doing if anyone or anything threatened her with harm.

This is what he did every weekend.

Laine was sixteen—one year and three days older than Kevin. She viewed that as an almost uncrossable gulf. They had known each other since birth, had gone through every grade of school together, and been friends since infancy. Kevin knew that Laine loved him, but that her love was brotherly.

It tore his heart out.

But he did not allow it to show—the heartbreak or the love—just as he did not let her know that he watched over her while she partied. Kevin’s kin—and those like them—were old hands at hiding reality behind an illusion of the commonplace.

“I’m getting old.” she complained as she crawled from the backseat and climbed behind the wheel. To do this she steadied herself on Kevin’s shoulder, and he held his breath, memorizing that touch, savoring it.

“You just drink too much.” he replied, keeping any judgment out of his voice. She smiled, and refrained from disagreeing.

She started the car and the sound of the engine made Kevin wince. The damn thing sounded like a herd of dying buffalo. Shifting into drive and pulling out only increased the hideousness of the noise. Laine drove as if the car was a brand new dragster—gaining too much speed far too quickly. Under his breath, Kevin muttered a hex of protection, empowering it with his very real fear.

“You should really bring this car to the house, girl.” he told her when the hex was complete. “Let Dad look at it. It sounds…”

“I know.” she sighed, casually passing a loaded truck around a curb marked no passing. “I hate to bother him, though. I’m broke.”

Kevin rolled his eyes. “You know he wouldn’t charge you. He likes you.” He paused until they rounded a particularly bad double curb without dying. “And everybody else seems to live with asking him to work for free.”

Laine’s face took on a surprisingly prim set. “Just because everybody else is doing something doesn’t make it right for me to do something.” Kevin stifled a laugh, and wondered if she knew how much she sounded like her mother.

“I’m not a bum.” she informed him. “Hey…gimme another smoke.”

He shook his head and laughed. Laine didn’t seem to catch on. He smoked on occasion, but mostly kept the cigarettes for her. He lit one and passed it to her.

They reached the end of Farmer’s Road and Laine turned to him. “You want a ride home?”

“Nah.” he told her. “I’m heading to Edge Hills. If you’re not doing anything you should take me. They want a twenty sack. I got some of that kill shit like I got last year.”

Laine’s eyes widened. “Aww, hell! It is harvest time, ain’t it!” Her face broke into an expression of delight and surprise. She pointed the car towards Edge Hills and sped off without another thought.

“If you forgot about that you really are drinking too much.” he told her.

She just grinned at him.

Halfway to their destination, the muffler fell off. They ended up announcing their arrival at Edge Hills with great fanfare and much annoyance.

George Potter - another serialized story. I'll be adding links to the parts as he posts them, and adding the contents to my mirror. This post will stick at the top until the story is over. Look below for new posts.

Parts: 1, 2

by George Potter

• Part 1
  
• Part 2

(Part 1)

Old Spider is having trouble. The car just died on him, with neither complaint nor shout of warning, and sits refusing to start on the shoulder of this great wide highway that runs from Somewhere to Somewhere, right through the middle of Nowhere.

Old Spider is not a patient being. He is not willing to wait for help as the universe spins its mad dance around him. He gathers his rucksack and its bounty, and prepares to head west on the path he was taking. It was a stolen car. He can steal another, even in this age that makes a damn hard thing of stealing. He wont mind a little footwork until then. The night is beautiful and the stars hang above him in their web. He smiles at them.

Before he leaves, Old Spider shoots the car twice with the blunt and powerful pistol he carries on his left hip. It’s not clear if he is murdering the beast or putting it out of its misery. Knowing Old Spider, he could just be shooting to hear the report or to see the fake glass windshield turn into an oddly beautiful web of clinging sharpness, or just to savor the sound rushing away from him there on the flat expanse of desert.

Old Spider is a few miles up the road when a coyote finds him, and growls a respectful hello. Old Spider invites it to walk with him a stretch. He and the coyote swap stories for a while. Before they part, the coyote whispers that his kind can feel the Mother approaching. His kind are happy. They tire of the old stories and long to feel her gleaming presence, if only briefly. She is moving with great speed, they know, in a flat out run, and will only pass them by. Still, it is a moment much anticipated.

Old Spider smiles at this news, for his own reasons.

The coyote has never heard of Los Angeles, though.

Sometimes when Meline got the headaches she did stupid crazy shit.

This, it appears, is one of those times.

Vegas is boring, she thinks lying in bed and holding her head in both hands. It’s too freakin’ gaudy. And she wants suddenly — unexpectedly — to see her mother.

She packs the quick way, tried and true by grifters and little rich girls in a snit since Babylon. Open suitcase, dump contents of hotel room drawers into suitcase, add whatever you might like from the mini-bar and top it with a soap as a souvenir. Crumple and batter said mess until suitcase encloses it.

Then she’s off, out the door that refuses to slam, toting a grossly distorted bioplastic imitative suitcase trying diligently to conform its contents into something a bit more seemly as she strides. She’s a slight blond girl, with absolute zero cozsurgery. Pretty but plain, guys who didn’t know how much she was worth usually judged her. All her mods are on the inside. She has no taste for the currently extreme faddish body alterations.

They always remind her of people trying to be someone else.

Her brain and nervous system are a different story. A few million dollars worth of state of the art was spread out through the thinkfeel. But that was business.

Meline emerges from the maze of drop and lift tubes in the old fashioned lobby, all natty oak framing and mollydeep replicas of antiques. On the trip from her room to lobby, she has taken care of the details — paid the bills and left a note for her father. She bypasses the clerk with a wave and holds her breath until she makes it through the looking glass iris that opens and closes for her in the hotels diamond facade.

She gulps the hot dry air, and it seems to make her head pound a little less. She wakes up Amelia and sets her to work getting out of the city, into her car, and down the road through nowhere.

An airbus drops down into a public slot and she makes her way to it, prodded by her familiar. From here on out she can let Amelia handle the details, and try not to remember that her head feels like a rotted tooth.

The airbus is only half full, and its turbines hum happily as they fling their cargo over the City Of Shows.

Meline Kennaly stares out the window at the strip flowing along below her. Her head hurts.

She is sixteen, worth seven billion standard dollars, and is considered a full Sovereign entity by the World Court. Technically, she could start a freaking war. Not that she knows how.

It would be pretty easy to start one between Zimbabwe and Charleston. Amelia tells her in the deadly serious tone that means she is joking. The High Redeemer is still holding three Rothbardite missionaries and threatening to hang them. You have a lot of pull in Charleston.

Meline mimes disgust in her sensorium. You mean my scarily mutating and engorging trust fund has a lot of pull in Charleston, she corrects.

Honey, I’ve told you a million times. Don’t think of it as a big black cloud that hovers over you. Think of it as a big black viciously sharp axe that hovers over you, ready for anyone who wants to fuck with you.

Meline smiles at the old joke despite the pain.

She can do anything she wants to do, and what she wants to do right now is talk to her mommy.

The bus trip is short. Ten minutes later she is deposited in a drop spot in Beulahland, one of the vast parking spaces that now surround Las Vegas like a fortress. Private vehicle use is forbidden in the city. The not-really-private airbus and autocab services rule the streets and skies of the city proper.

Like most American cities east of the Mississippi and north of the Mas-Dix, Vegas has a strong state apparatus running it, and the only capitalism they believe in is the crony kind. None of that laissez-faire shit here. Vegas is actually more of a committee based aristocracy, with some of the most bewildering and jungle like estate laws in the world, making sure the economic power the Showbiz city generates stays in a carefully maintained pool of families. It is said that the Vegas Independence Constitution is one of the thickest and most rigidly adhered to documents in history.

Her father always says that constitutions are far better devices to encourage states rather than limit them. Vegas proved that he was right. The bastard usually is.

Like its fellow suburbs, Beulahland resembles a small town devoted to the business of parking vehicles. The same people who work here live here, deep below the flat stacked pancake rises of car and flyer ports. She wonders idly if, in a few generations, the families that remained would start giving themselves names like Valet and Gatekeep.

Meline follows Amelias gentle prompting down rows and ‘vators and finally to her car. Each step she takes makes her head scream at her.

Get in, slap the safeties, turn over control to me and close your eyes, baby doll. Amelia tells her. I’m going to dope you up. You need to sleep. Soon as we hit LA you are hiring a good medlab, sweetie. These headaches are getting ridiculous.

Meline’s car of the month is a Ferrari McQueen. All the Italians do now is build ridiculously fast cars. It’s a niche market, sure, but a niche market with vast pockets. They only make groudcars. ‘No Fly’ is the unofficial motto of the weak AI that functions as the Italian state. Of course, the AI says it in Italian, and it is orders of magnitudes prettier than the English statement.

It’s an anomaly that annoys her father, Meline knows. That the Italian people happily converted to a society where only 16% of the population work for a living creating a fine product beloved the world over. The rest are given the barely missed largesse of that 16% and live fine lives. Such a thing seemed unnatural to a raving plutarchist like James Kennaly.

It is a wide, sleek, muscular machine. Meline herself views it only as transport. Amelia, on the other hand, is something of a car nut. She likes power and luxury. The Ferrari has both in spades. The induction drive is axle-less and friction free. The Firestones are guaranteed puncture free for a half-million miles. It can do 0 to 120 km in under 3 seconds. Its cruising speed is 260 km per hour.

It is, of course, black.

Meline is barely in the car before the safeties engage. Amelia floods her with opiate analogs from the pharmacopeia implant. The pain muttered into silence. Meline smiles, and is asleep in moments.

Amelia takes control. She pumps the engine, enjoying the sensory link to the crackling power plant. She slams out of the carport, makes the slows and turns necessary, and exits Beulahland in a near silent thrum of speed. The gate clocks her at 300 km, and tickets her accordingly.

The landscape a blur, Amelia orients and heads for Los Angeles, giving into the rush of the speed and the roar of the road passing below.

Sleeping, Meline dreams of a gleaming coyote, running down the center of a black highway, sparks screaming from her feet as she lopes, the howl of the hunt all around her.

(Part 2)

Eric Lancaster came up from unconsciousness in layers; gently managed stages designed to reduce shock and disorientation. Godiva, the familiar he had carefully designed and built since the age of six, was an old hand at this. She’d certainly gotten enough practice. A youth spent on the rougher streets of Houston and a long decade as a Charleston soldier for hire had given her the experience to manage something as simple as unconsciousness.

The final stage before full waking was a pleasantly dim space filled with soothing music and warm memories. He called it The Lobby.

Eric, love, I may as well be blunt. Godiva told him. You’re a prisoner.

“Shit.” he muttered.

Calm down. Deseret Union is well known for humane prisoner policies. They’re more interested in ransoms than honor killings. Godiva chuckled. Some claim that’s the main reason they bother with fighting. But I suspect that’s mainly anti-Mormon prejudice.

Eric smiled, but shook his head. “May not be a ransom this time.” he reminded her. “I’ve let my dues to MidAmerican slip in the past month. And Charleston hasn’t bothered insuring grunts since the fuckin’ union insisted on combat bonuses in lieu.”

I said calm down, laddie!

Eric sighed. He hadn’t programmed the stern motherly tone Godiva often adopted, but that was the price for high functioning individual cognitive software: random variations in the personality were a given. Things could be worse, he knew. He had a friend who’s familiar often went off into hour long rants about the Masons. And he knew a gal who’s proxy often did impressions in moments of stress. A little mothering, he figured, was a small price to pay.

I was allowed a half hour of full access, in order to make bond arrangements. she explained. I contacted Meline.

Eric groaned. “You mean you contacted Amelia.”

Godiva’s voice could barely conceal her smirk. Of course. Meline was sleeping. Amelia promised she’d arrange your release as soon as she got the go ahead from her girly.

“Are you two ever going to stop scheming to get us back together?” Eric asked her,knowing the answer.

Certainly not. Godiva said, rather insulted at the suggestion. Are you two ever going to admit that your familiars know what’s good for you and let what’s been obvious since you were both toddlers happen?

“I’m currently at the mercy of Mormons.” he reminded her, darkly. “Can we talk about this later?”

If you please. But her voice had that infuriating Mother-knows-best shading. You ready for reality?

He sighed. “As I’ll ever be. Am I alone?”

Godiva laughed. No. These are Mormons, baby. First they’ll try to convert you. Then they’ll simply make sure your ransom will be paid — all the while making sure you’re comfortable, cheerful and aware of how disgustingly nice they are.

“Better than hot rods and bamboo skewers I guess.”

Marginally. Here we go…

The Lobby faded. Light intensified. Ambient sound intruded. Around Eric Lancaster, the world came out of hiding.

Godiva wasn’t kidding. His warden’s smiling face was looming over him as soon as his vision focused.

“Well welcome to Deseret, Mr. Lancaster!” the voice was annoyingly chipper and scarily sincere. This guy was honestly welcoming a prisoner of war to his happy little community. “I’m Brother Thaddeus. I’ll be your host and liaison.”

Eric attempted an experimental move and discovered that he was completely paralyzed.

“My captor, you mean. Or do you paralyze every guest as a matter of course?”

Thaddeus chuckled, appreciating the joke. “A security precaution, I’m afraid. We’ve had more than a few guests come up from the bed swinging. As soon as you prove you’re civil and cooperative, the stasis will be released and you’ll have full run of the guest dorm.” Thaddeus beamed in such a way that suggested he could not imagine a more enjoyable thing to have full run of.

His captor glanced at a wristcom. Mormon doctrine proscribed implants and familiars. Wearable tech was as state-of-the-art as they got. “Your ransom has actually been paid, so you have little to worry about.” Another glance. “A Miss Meline Kennaly, I see. Girlfriend?” His eyebrow raised to suggest this was a just-us-guys thing.

He took Eric’s silence as a rebuke, actually blushing a little. “None of my business I suppose.”

Eric shrugged. It wasn’t that, really. It was that he himself wasn’t sure what his relationship to Meline Kennaly actually amounted to. Friends, most certainly — they’d practically been raised together in early childhood while Eric’s father served as head of James Kennaly’s security detail. When his father was killed in an attack on headquarters, Eric had run away rather than deal with his grief and confusion. He spent five years on the streets. In that time, the only person he made contact with was Meline, who could always be counted on to lend him cash or a sympathetic ear. After his last stint in City Jail, she’d even helped him get the soldiering job in Charleston.

And, he admitted, he loved the girl. A deep down love and affection he felt for no other living thing. And no non-living thing with the possible exception of Godiva. But girlfriend? Not exactly.

Sometime during this little brood the stasis was lifted. He sat up, joints a bit cramped and skin tingling.

“Care for a bite to eat?” Thaddeus asked. “The cook here does an excellent lunch.”

Eric realized suddenly that he was starving. He thanked his captor, who muttered into the wrist com to order. While they waited, Eric asked the only real question he dreaded.

“So. How did the battle turn out?”

Thaddeus sighed. “Inconclusive, the way these ridiculous border flare ups usually go.” He cocked his head at Eric and, smile drifting a little, asked a question of his own.

“Why on earth would Charleston side with thugs like United Secular Utah? Deseret has never had anything but amiable relations with Charleston or any of the Southern Citystates.”

Lunch arrived — fried chicken and ample sides — and Eric dug in. He shook his head at Thaddeus’ question.

“I’m a grunt, my friend. We don’t get the lowdown on why or what.” He paused to use a napkin. “If I had to guess, I’d say some convoluted treaty bullshit.”

Thaddeus opened his mouth to speak, when the alarm screamed from his wrist.

At the exact moment, Godiva screamed in his head: Incoming! Down Eric!

The world exploded. Eric grabbed Thaddeus and yanked him towards him, rolling off and under the bed, his half finished lunch disintegrating in the blast that took out the facing wall.

“What the hell?” shouted Eric.

Godiva was powering up combat system, enhancing senses and searching feeds desperately for answers.

Don’t know yet, but stay down!

Eric glanced at Thaddeus. He was unconscious and bleeding from a wound on the side of his head, but seemed in decent shape. His vitals were solid and regular.

He chanced a look at the destroyed wall. Smoke and flashes kept him from seeing anything. Vague raised voices, screams, and the sound of gunfire poured in from various directions.

Frying pans and fire, he thought. The life a soldier, eh?

While Godiva swam the infostreams, Eric prepared himself for a fight. He wondered if the guest house had a weapons cache anywhere.

He gently picked his captor up in settled him over his shoulder. For psychological reasons, he grabbed a large chunk of wood. Not much of a weapon, but swingable.

Once more into the breach, he thought. Holding his breath, and cranking his eye implants to max, he stepped through the shattered wall and into bedlam.

by George Potter

Chapters:

1. Leavingsong
2. Cat Trap
3. Bonegift
4. The Quiet Place
5. The Smoke Man
6. Showdown
7. Firefight
8. Longwalk
9. Rituals
10. Trapshoot

1. Leavingsong

Rides happen.

She didn’t know where she was going or what she was looking for, and was only certain of that basic fact of forward motion. That, for the moment, seemed good enough.

She was a thin, slight woman with terrified eyes, and she looked so out of place walking down the side of the road with her thumb out that most drivers avoided her unconsciously. Her dark hair was drawn up in a tight bun, and she wore a knit cap. She was swaddled in an oversize Army jacket in faded camo and baggy jeans over three pairs of sweat pants. She wore two pairs of socks beneath hiking boots that remained a full size too large, so she had stuffed them carefully with newspaper. Her sex and size were therefore disguised with this armor from the Salvation Army. In her right front pocket rode her only weapon, a six inch folding case knife that she had stolen from the place she once called home and a man that she had once loved and called her husband.

Almost twenty hours since her last ride, and a solid thirty miles farther west, a car finally responded to the signaling thumb and pulled over. It was an old car, a boat, and the big block engine that powered it pulsed reassuringly as it puffed thick white clouds of carbon monoxide from the tailpipe.

As she moved toward it, the fear rose up. Fear of rapists and crazy men. Fear of the compromised position that riding in the passenger seat across from a stranger placed her in. But the tingling pain of frozen hands and face fought with the fear and beat it into submission. She put her hand in her pocket, squeezed the knife for reassurance, opened the door and sat down.

Involuntarily, she sighed as the warm air closed around her. The heater was on high and the car smelled pleasantly of pine with a vauge hint of upholstery shampoo. She turned and faced her benefactor, trying to keep the wariness from her eyes and failing.

The older woman smiled, nodded, and got them back onto the road. A few moments of silence passed, then:

"What’s your name, my dear?"

"Faith." she lied.

The older woman raised an eyebrow and smiled again. "Well," she said "that’s not an important truth."

The woman who was not named Faith swallowed past a dry throat. But that smile was genuine enough, and both the eyes and tone were kind. And, more importantly, she was warm for the moment and moving at a fast clip towards her unknown goal.

"Where are you headed?" was the next question, as if that last thought had been spoken aloud.

"West." Faith replied, truthfully enough. "Just west."

The driver accepted this as if it made perfect sense, as if she picked up strangers wandering towards general compass points every day.

"I can’t take you far." the driver told her. "But every mile helps, does it not?"

Faith nodded. Suddenly she felt the urge to explain herself, to tell this stranger everything. Why she was running, who she was running from, the cloudy mystery of where she was going.

The driver laughed. "No need, my dear. That is another unimportant truth. At least for the moment. What is important is that you understand the why of things. Why you are leaving. Do you understand that, at least?"

Faith paused. Then nodded. She did.

The driver nodded back, amiably enough. "Perhaps a man beat you. Perhaps he did other horrible things. Perhaps that was not even the worst of it. Perhaps the worst of it was those long stretches where he did nothing. Those long stretches of peace that turned to dread and…"

Faith stared at the driver, her eyes threatening tears. A bizarre sensation swept through her, a feeling of vibration. The world outside the car, moving past them, seemed to haze over and cloud. The vibration reached into her body and set up a sympathetic trembling.

"I apologize." the driver said, quietly. "I overstepped my bounds."

The sensation was subsiding, but Faith remained uneasy. "I feel…"

"You feel the leaving song, my dear. More accurately, you sing the leaving song. You are not running from something, child. You are not leaving anyone. You are running from everything, and leaving everything."

Faith stared. Crazy, she thought. Just a crazy old lady.

"But…enough." the crazy stranger said. "Ten miles ahead is a restaurant that serves a fine soup and delicious sandwiches. You are hungry, aren’t you?"

Faith’s stomach growled in agreement.

The driver chuckled. "Until then, enjoy the warmth. There will be other rides, but you must remain wary, child. Promise me."

Unsure of what else to do, and seeing no harm in it, Faith did so.

The driver seemed satisfied. Guiding the car expertly with one hand, she reached into a compartment between them and brought out a bill. She reached it to Faith, without making eye contact. "Please take it." she said. "You will need it."

Faith began to demur, when the driver turned her gaze back. There was something in those eyes. Something that caused the vibration to return. Something that made refusal impossible. She took the bill, with a hand that surprised her by remaining steady.

A few minutes later they arrived at a lonely wooden building by the side of the road. Lights blazed out into dusk from two windows and the smell of soup hung thick in the air.

As Faith left the car the driver spoke a final time.

"When you began to hear the song, child — was it in a dream?"

Faith hesitated. Then nodded.

"And what was the dream about?"

Faith sighed, feeling silly but compelled nonetheless. "I dreamt of my father’s gun." she said.

"A good portent indeed." Those eyes flashed, and she sounded amused. "Make me a final promise, please.

Faith touched the money now curled around the knife in her pocket. What harm could there be?

"Listen for the cat." the driver told her. "He’s looking for you, and he’s a wily creature, but synchronicity is far from certain. Promise."

Faith did so, trying rather weakly to convince herself that this was simply a harmless madwoman asking for meaningless promises. But those eyes wouldn’t let her, nor would that vibrating sensation that had now sank deep into her, barely discernable but defiantly there.

Before she closed the door, Faith asked a question of her own.

"What’s your name?"

The older woman cocked her head. She gazed at Faith for a long moment.

"My friends call me Char." she said, simply. "And I must go. I have appointments to keep."

Faith thanked her and let the heavy door swing shut. The big car rumbled from the gravel parking lot and roared away down the road. East, back the way they came.

Faith pulled the bill from her pocket and started. It claimed to be a 40 dollar bill, and boasted a portrait of a strange man with blank eyes and a disturbing smile. In all other respects, however, it appeared real.

Just a crazy old lady after all.

But, having no other options — and less than two dollars in change — she entered the warm restaurant and ordered the soup of the day and a roast beef sandwich. To avoid a possible bad scene, she offered to pay in advance with the strange bill. It was accepted by the bored looking cashier without a blink and she was given thirty-four dollars in change in equally odd smaller bills.

She was too tired and hungry to worry for the moment. She sat down and ate, and enjoyed the warm atmosphere of the otherwise empty restaurant.

The soup and sandwich were as delicious as promised.

2. Cat Trap

Fatigue insists.

She slept that night in a drainage ditch a mile or so up the road from the restaurant, belly full and with a pocket of strange currency. She had in mind breakfast the next morning before resuming her westward trek.

She found a worn and suspiciously dirty wool blanket in the trash outside the restaurant. An odd and lucky coincidence to be sure, but it had been and odd and lucky day.

The mile she walked did her in. She wrapped herself in the blanket, snuggled up under a rough overhang, and tried to relax.

She was exhausted, but her mind was keyed up and seemed to cycle over the strange happenings of the day. One part of her wanted to drift into the past and re-examine old horrors, the way a tongue wants to probe the grisly edges of a shattered back tooth. With an act of will, she refused to let that happen.

Instead, she dug into her pocket and removed the knife. With it came one of the strange bills. In the bright moonlight, she examined it.

At least it was a normal denomination — a five. But the similarity ended with the number. Rather than a smug and classic presidential portrait, there was a stylized dog. Quite a handsome one, in a pose of intent watchfulness. She smiled at it, because it appeared to be a mutt. She recognized the sleek head of a Doberman and the muscular chest and shoulders of a Rottweiler. Something about the haunches spoke of the grace of greyhounds, and the tail was a docked stub pointing in the unmistakable attentiveness of a spaniel.

She yawned and the bill grew indistinct before her eyes. She replaced it. Then she snapped open the knife and held it carefully, pointing away from her body.

So armed, exhausted, and in the silent light of the creeping moon, she slept.

In the dream she was being swallowed by the past, and it was a painful process.

She was bound again to the bed and she could tell by the raucous voices in the living room that this was a night her husband had decided to share with his friends. The fear and hate and disgust welled up and threatened to overwhelm her.

The suddenly she was a child again, opening the closet door. There, where it had always hung, was her father’s gun. The big gleaming cannon in the worn leather holster. She had only seen him use the gun once, when three raving drunks broke their door down. Her father had stood placidly in the center of the room until they smashed the door from its hinges and staggered in. Then he carefully and quickly shot them down. She remembered them falling like pins in a trick shot, how sudden and effective it was. They died with laughter on their tongues.

"It’s all right now, sweetheart." he had told her then. "There are bad men in the world, but daddy will protect you from them." Then he’d put on his hat and coat and took the bodies away.

She had believed that promise, in the way only small children can believe. She believed it so well that when she was feeling scared or nervous for some reason all it took was a glance at the gun in the closet to calm her.

She must never touch it.

But it came to her that she was not a child anymore, and that her father had been dead for ten years, and that she was bound and roped and raped just a blink away, and..

…and this wasn’t her father’s gun after all. It looked different now. Similar, but smaller. Meaner looking.

My gun, she realized.

She took it, unsurprised by the way it fit her hand, and stepped back across the blink. She walked quickly past her own bound and degraded form to the door. She kicked it open in a fluid motion and — aiming by instinct and rage — shot the four men she found there. She saved her husband for last, and smiled at him.

They fell like trick pins. She let out a howling laugh that…

…seemed to follow her up from sleep and meld into a yowl of pain.

Reality startled her and she reacted, stabbing out with the knife. Her jabs failed to wound the dark and empty air.

She looked at the knife in her hand. Stupid, she told herself. One night you’re going to stab yourself in the leg.

The yowl came again, and froze her. Not a part of the dream then. It came again and she shivered. It was unmistakable; an animal in pain and distress. A few moments of that pitiful sound was enough to vanquish fear of the dark and the warm inertia of her bundled self. She got up and moved as quietly as possible towards the noise.

She found the source a few minutes later, thirty or so yards away from the ditch. There stood a solitary post that bristled angrily with strands of rusting barbed wire, just where the thin shrubbery along the roadside gave way to a flat expanse of field.

Tangled miserably in the strands was a large, grey, strikingly ugly cat. When it saw her it broke from the song of misery, as if being caught in such a way was mostly a matter of embarrassment. Both legs were caught, in a way that had them snagged and re-snagged by several strands of the wire.

Two liquid green eyes stared at her. Wasn’t me yelling lady, they seemed to say. Must have been some other cat.

A fierce knowledge glittered in those eyes. Knowledge of what she did not know, but the fact of its presence was certain.

She sighed, knowing what she had to do. The cat let her approach amiably enough, but that peace was quickly shattered.

It was a horrible few minutes, that seemed to last weeks. She had no recourse but to slice cat flesh from wire, and the cat had no recourse but to fight the crazy bitch attempting to free him. Three minutes, perhaps; a whirlwind of blood and mutual pain and mutual screaming. For every barb she freed it seemed the cat’s thrashing sank another deeper, and it retaliated fiercely with claws and — once, very memorably — teeth that somehow managed to pierce all four layers of pants and take a sizable chunk out of her left buttock.

Then, suddenly, the cat was free and bounding away, and her knife broke as she slipped and drove it against the post.

She stared at the broken blade, furious. "You stupid goddamn animal!" she screamed. She grabbed a stick and chased the offending beast, taking huge clumsy swings that the cat dodged easily. A few swings were all she could manage, and exhaustion left her out of breath, panting on her knees.

The cat was gone.

She laughed then, at the insanity of the world and herself. About scars earned for good intentions. How a little cat in a huge field could find such danger. How the simple decision to walk away could make the world so weird.

She laughed until it turned to sobbing, then sobbed until she felt better.

When she made her way back to her bed, she was unsurprised to find the cat there. He was placidly cleaning his wounds. He looked up at her. Some temper you got there lady. What took you so long getting back?

"Ok." she told it. "Fine. At least you’ll be a heat source. Goddamn animal."

But she was pleased, deep down. The road was a lonely place, and silent companionship beat out no companionship. Her bed heated up quicker with two, and the cat’s rumbling purr against her chest was an oddly comforting sensation.

The broken knife vexed her still. It had been her only weapon. Now she was reduced to hands and feet and teeth. An image of the gun from her dreams came to her, and she thought an idle thought:

Tomorrow I’ll look for my gun.

It calmed her. She slept like a rock, and the dreams that tried to come were chased away by a pair of green eyes that glittered knowingly in the dark.

3. Bonegift

Structure lingers.

Two days later found her walking, still looking, with more than a few changes made.

The most obvious concerned her clothes. As she headed west it seemed the days became hotter. The terrain she moved across became more arid and desolate, if no less beautiful. Field and forest gave way to long stretches of dry prairie grass and the first hints of cacti. She took to stripping down in the morning, bundling the jeans and excess sweat pants in the jacket, rolling that into a tight wad she could strap to her backpack. She kept the knit cap, as protection from the direct sun that grew intense as the day wore on. It also served to keep the sweat from her eyes. After the sun set and dark began to rise, she’d slowly re-acquire the clothes. The nights were still cold, and she was still grateful for every layer when she finally lay down to sleep.

The cat paced her as she travelled, keeping a solid hundred yards in front of her. His wounds healed with impossible speed, almost invisible by the second day, though a slight limp remained and always would. He rarely made use of the road, preferring the more challenging trail of the ditches and culverts. The plentiful wildlife also distracted him, and — both days so far — he had presented her with kills. Rabbits, prairie dogs, an unknown little beast that looked like a gopher. He’d drop them at her feet and dash back to his pacing lead, as if he were the navigator on this journey he’d joined.

She was grateful. There were no towns in sight and she’d seen only two cars since her dreamlike ride with Char. Neither of them had stopped, though the rust eaten and filthy Cadillac had slowed, creeping past her as the thin and hungry occupants stared out with less than friendly eyes. The cat had hissed viciously and fluffed into an image of malice. Whoever had been driving took that for what it was worth and moved along.

The two days of mostly silent walking honed her ritual. When night fell, she’d make camp. She looked for particularly clear and dry ditches for this, reluctantly moving onto the prairie farther from the road when her choice spots were damp or overgrown. She’d build a fire and clean whatever prey the cat had brought her, complaining to him all the while about her broken knife. She’d spit cook it and — while she waited — would try to set her thoughts in order. The cat would sit in the draft of the roasting meat and knead the dry ground with his paws, growling low in his throat in anticipation. Her stomach generally echoed him. This would be the background music of her jumbled contemplations.

While she had clear and detailed memories of her childhood and the early years of her marriage, there appeared something like a wall the closer to the present she attempted to remember. The days — weeks? months? — before setting off on her trek were the haziest and least clear. What had set her on the road? She knew that it was something that frightened her, something that had forever altered her life, yet the specifics of the event remained mired in haze.

The meat always interrupted. She’d learned to tell the moment it was done by the sound of the sizzle and the clarity of the juices dripping into the fire. She and the cat would eat in silence. She supplemented the meat with the hoarded trail mix and dried fruit from her pack.

After that, the cat would excuse himself for his late night business and she would give in to the sleepiness that a full stomach instilled in her. She’d bank the fire as best she could and lie back, staring at the stars or the clouds as the case might be. She was averaging 20 miles a day, so sleep found her quickly those two nights, and the cat never stayed gone for long. With him next to her, the dreams seemed afraid to bother her.

On the morning of the third day of travelling with the cat, she found her gun.

The sun was about halfway to noon, and the road was beginning to shimmer with heat when a gleam off to her right caught her eye. She slowed, staring. It bloomed again — about a half mile off the road, she estimated.

She considered a moment. There was no sign of a car in either direction, and she wasn’t expecting one soon. She needed to explore the area a bit anyway, since her canteen was near empty and she couldn’t be certain of finding water after dark.

But two things made up her mind for her.

The first was the return of that bone deep vibration, the feeling Char had called the Leaving Song. It had faded in the days after that ride, but was back with a vengeance, buzzing through her like a fever.

And the second was the fact that the cat sprinted towards the gleam like a creature possessed.

She sighed, shouldered the weight of her pack into a comfortable position, and set off after him.

The ground away from the road was hard packed but far from barren. In addition to the scrub bushes and prairie grass, there was an assortment of cacti and all manner of insect life.

Ten minutes of walking brought her within discernable sight of her goal. She actually smiled at it when she figured out what it was.

The ancient camper topped pickup truck had seen better days. Where wheels had once lifted it proudly from the ground, only concrete blocks stood now. She slowed her pace and took in details.

It was a Chevy, a 50’s model some voice inside told her. The round, almost sensual angles of the hood were a dead giveaway. Rust spread across the metal in a slow, inexorable tide. Rust had washed from the body through uncounted rainy seasons, digging deep red rivulet canyons in a spiderweb pattern around the truck.

The cat sat staring at the driver side door. It glanced at her, gave a rumbly meow, and returned its gaze to the window.

Faith sauntered up to it, annoyed by the odd behavior.

"You probably think it’s funny," she was saying "making me chase you through brush and bushes, but.."

The words faded as she glanced at the window.

At the wheel, grinning towards the horizon, sat a human skeleton.

"Oh my." Faith muttered, at a loss for anything else.

She wasn’t afraid though. Not until the head swiveled toward her, that permanent grin now leveled at her. The chill that coursed her spine caused her to hold her breath after a sharp intake.

It was the click of the door opening that caused her to whimper, however.

The boneman emerged slowly, carefully, as if worried his essential structure was unsound. The driver’s door creaked open and a small shower of rust flakes sifted to the ground.

Faith stepped back. The cat didn’t budge, just sat there swishing his tail in mild interest.

The door was left open as the boneman moved two steps towards her. It cocked its head, staring at her with empty sockets. The sun gleamed dully from the cracked round shape of its skull.

Faith met its eyes. Utterly non-plussed, she said, simply:

"Hello."

The gleam shifted as the head cocked the other way. A hand crept to the right hip. Faith followed with her eyes. They widened, partially in fear, but mainly because the sight that met her caused the vibration in her center to rev up beyond mere sensation. She moved another step backwards, and felt as if the world itself was vibrating, and she was the only still point.

Around his waist, the boneman wore an elaborate holster of deep black leather. It hung partly slack from the stripped bones.

Riding in that holster was a weapon at once both strange and familiar. The blue-gray handle that emerged, that a bone hand now hovered above, locked her gaze like a fetish. Her mouth went dry and she felt her teeth grit.

Still, the cat did not move.

"Are you going to shoot me?" Faith asked the revenant. "Why?"

The boneman stared. His hand remained an inch or so above the handle of the gun.

"No." he finally said. His voice was diaphanous and low, a distant sub-bass note throbbing in the earth. "I have waited."

"You were waiting for me?"

"Yes." There was a note of effort in that deep voice, a tone of pain. "For many years. The seasons passed and the body withered. The rains came and washed away the surface. But structure lingered, as structure will. Intent persisted, desire challenged the world."

Faith held her breath. The vibration within was almost painful.

"Now the moment arrives." The voice of the boneman drifted further toward the dissolute, becoming a sigh. "My watch is ending, the message delivered."

"What message?" The words were choked out of her. She felt as if she were climbing a wall, nearing the top.

The boneman drew the gun from its rest. He held it by the handle, and lifted it to her in offering, barrel pointing away, aimed at the red web of earth.

"Message and gift, in honest steel. Take this, and challenge the world."

Hesitantly, Faith reached for the weapon. As she took it, her fingers brushed the cool bones of the sentinel.

In that instant of contact, the vibration left her, and entered the boneman.

A memory slammed her, of herself and the gun and the stunned faces of four men. Of four explosions and how blood and brains had leapt and danced in the stark glow of kitchen fluorescent. Of vengeful angry triumph, a righteous howl…

…that passed through her like electricity, surprising tears from her.

Before her, the boneman shuddered apart, falling into a lifeless pile. Quickly, the pile itself shuddered into dust. The truck followed suit, sympathetic magic demanding its death along with its master.

A breeze picked up, out of the north, and the dust of bones and rust began their long journey across the world.

Inside her, the vibration was gone, the leaving song finished.

I have arrived, I suppose. she thought, and some deep part of herself knew that was true.

She examined the gun in her hand, enjoying the weight of it. It was a blunt, brutal and confident structure of grey steel and blue gleam. It belonged to her and she knew it.

She retrieved the belt and holster from the rapidly diminishing pile of dust. She strapped it clumsily on, figuring out how to tighten it to her waist with experimentation. The length of the belt held cartridges. They reminded her of shark teeth.

She slid the gun back to its rest and addressed the cat.

"What do you think."

The cat was cleaning himself, unimpressed by her or the spectacle just passed. In answer, he turned and trotted back toward the road.

Faith sighed, and followed. She spared a single glance back to the disappearing shrine of her sentinel. The she cast eyes ahead, following the cat.

The weight of the gun on her hip reassured her with every step. Emboldened, she set out to find a world to challenge.

4. The Quiet Place

Peace surprises.

Before the sun set on that same day, Faith would find use for her gun, and — as a result — change her name.

It was, in her opinion, the hottest day since she’d begun her journey. A few hours after the confrontation with the boneman, she had stumbled across the trickle of a creek merging with the ditch.

Relieved, she had dug a shallow little pond with just enough drainage to allow it to clear. After drinking her fill, and refreshing her canteen, she had cleaned herself as well as she was able — even washing her hair. The lack of soap was unfortunate, but she couldn’t deny the improvement in mood her quick bath brought.

Refreshed and in better spirits, she and the cat (who had drank upstream as she bathed) had set off again, grateful that the dropping sun heralded a cool breeze.

A few miles up the road, just as the sun was touching the horizon, trouble found them.

It was the same dilapidated Cadillac that had passed them two days before. It came at them from the opposite direction, first dashing Faith’s hopes, then filling her with uneasiness. Rather than pass them by at a crawl, it stopped.

Two men and a woman emerged. All were skinny to the point of emaciation, all were filthy, and all were armed. The woman had an axe. The two men toted baseball bats.

"Get inna damn car." the lead and largest of the men, said.

"Get inna car or we’ll break ya damn legs and drag ya in!" screeched the woman. The smaller man just laughed, keeping a wary eye on the cat, who once again hissed and stood his ground — placing himself in front of Faith in a show of courage and loyalty.

Faith’s reaction surprised her. Instead of freezing or stiffening up, she felt suddenly loose and easy. The center of her mind now seemed to be riding on her hip. The weight of the gun became the most important facet of existence, the absolute zero point of the universe.

The Cadillac crew moved toward her, but in lazy slow motion. Even the woman’s threat emerged as a slow and dragging mumble.

They were a foot closer to her when she marked them as range points. They had ceased being people in her calm new state, they were nothing but vectors of mass and motion. She could see the x marks on each, denoting her best targets of opportunity.

She found herself in a warm and quiet place. A peaceful bubble between decision and action, where she could take her time and do things right.

At last.

The smile that flicked across her face was noticed by none but the woman. But the sight chilled her so suddenly and completely that she tried to halt in mid-step.

Too late.

Faith’s hand dropped, drawing the gun and leveling it with such speed that the motion was a blur.

Faith’s last thought before hell broke loose, aimed by her, was:

I wonder if it’s even loaded?

Finger squeezed. Pressure acted. Hammer fell.

The gun roared. The larger man’s head exploded, a flower of gore blooming on his shoulders in the dimming sunlight.

Arm shifted. Eyes tracked.

Another roar, and the woman toppled, her heart blasted into shreds and soup. From her mouth spewed dead air and bile.

Fractional shift, a step backward to reclaim balance.

Third roar, and the smaller man’s neck ceased connecting head to body. He died with the same idiots laugh on his tongue, decapitated by the tooth of a shark moving at the speed of sound.

All three bodies hit the road within the same microsecond.

Faith dropped her arm, the gun finding its holster with new-born instinct, just as it had taken her to the quiet place and guided her hand and eye.

Of course it’s loaded. her mind answered. The sentinel was a responsible sort.

The cat turned and looked at her. The gunfire had not scared him. The look on his face could be read as approval.

Faith smiled at him. "You got balls, cat."

The cat yawned. Good shootin’, lady.

After a moments consideration, Faith dragged the bodies from the road and stretched them on the hardpack. The idea of burying them was ridiculous. Let the animals of the land have them, since they had chosen to be animals of their own will.

The car presented another problem. A search of it turned up nothing of value, and it stank horribly. The idea of driving it made her nauseous.

Still — the fact that the crew had went west and returned was evidence that a town existed somewhere past the horizon. That she was nearing whatever might be considered civilization in this place.

The car could be a worthwhile trade good.

So, before setting off, Faith recovered enough blood from her attackers to scrawl a message on the windshield:

"Notice! This vehicle is claimed as salvage by the killer of its former owners – would be kidnappers who picked the wrong victim. Do not touch it unless you wish to share their fate. Thank you."She took the keys from the ignition and locked the car. She chuckled at her cold message in dripping blood.

Night found her before she found the town. Faith and Cat camped and enjoyed a dinner of rabbit. When full dark came on, she noticed the glow on the horizon.

Tomorrow, she was sure.

And so it was.

Faith arrived in Summertime City in midmorning, as the town was starting to stir.

The place was odd. Wood shacks and long cinder block bunkhouses mixed self-consciously with jury-rig repaired office buildings. Every building seemed to have its own generator. Solar cells decorated the roofs of many. Along the less than impressive river, water wheels had been constructed.

There were cars, but they mingled with horses and mules pulling wagons and dredges. She even stood and, amused, watched a steam vehicle motor by, it’s fat driver decked out in ragged top-hat and a monocle.

The pedestrians she passed minded their own business, despite the fact that there was a palpable curiosity directed at her. Most of it centered on the gun. The rest on the cat, who strode through the town with the air of a king on parade.

Faith was the opposite, studying the townies openly. Their clothing and manners were as mixed as the rest of Summertime City. Homespun and crochet mingled with Levi’s and Ralph Lauren. Hand sewn moccasin material mended ancient Converse sneakers. She saw men bow to women and women flipping the bird to people who laughed when they passed.

The children smiled and stared at her. They seemed to have the run of the town, traffic dutifully stopping for them as they played and ran along the streets on secret errands. The cat even paused and allowed a few to pet him briefly.

A half mile down the main street, Faith came to what she was looking for: a well constructed wood building with a nice tin roof and a hand painted sign:

Fowler’s General GoodsRetailSalvageBarterWe Buy, Sell & Trade

Everybody Welcome!Inside the store was bright and cool, the air circulated by a row of ceiling fans. The space was used to maximum effect, shelves stocked with goods of every imaginable type.

Along the back wall, behind a tidy oak counter, stood a tall thin man with a shining bald head and a high wattage smile.

"Morning, ma’am!" he said as she stepped up. "Always good to see new faces walk through that door. I’m Thomas Fowler, proprietor!" He thrust out his hand for a shake. Faith complied.

She dropped the keys on the counter. "Would the car attached to these be something you’re interested in?"

When Fowler brought his eyes up from the keys, his smile had faded somewhat. He glanced at the gun before meeting her eyes again.

"I know the car." he said. "Hell…I made this set of keys."

"Friends of yours?" Faith asked, raising an eyebrow.

Fowler snorted. "Hell, no!" He appraised her carefully. "They don’t have friends around here."

"They’re dead." Faith informed him. "They picked the wrong person to be unfriendly to."

Fowler just nodded. "Bound to happen, sooner or later." He scratched his chin. "You got the Caddy with you?"

Faith shook her head. "It’ll have to be picked up. What could you offer?"

"It’s worth 500 for parts. I’d go 600 as a friendly measure…seeing as you did the town a favor." His high watt smile was back in place.

Faith asked for quotes on a few items, to give her an idea of the economy. Finally, she nodded. "A deal."

Money and keys changed hands, the deal sealed with a nod and a shake. She examined the currency. It was coins rather than paper, but the noble looking dog was the same.

Faith inquired about a room to rent.

"Mizz Castleberry up the street runs a clean place and sets the best table in town." He glanced at the cat, who had curled up in the sun by the door as Faith dickered. "And she likes cats." He hesitated, then said: "That gun…I assume you can use it?"

Faith smiled. "I manage. Why?"

"Sheriff is looking for some steady hands and eyes for some tricky work. Pay is good, and he’s a dependable fella."

Faith shrugged. "Something to think on, I guess." she admitted. "If I decide to stay a while."

Fowler laughed. "Won’t find a better place for a long stretch. Summertime City is a good town. A quiet place, and the people are decent."

"Seems that way." Faith patted the pocket with the coins. "I’ll be back later for supplies, once I settle in and see what I need." She turned to go.

"Open till dark!" Fowler called after her. As she pulled the door open, he asked something else.

"Ma’am! I didn’t catch your name."

Faith paused. She turned slowly. The words that came surprised her. The most surprising thing about them was the truth she felt in them.

"Hope." she told him, knowing her faith had paid off and left a finer thing in its healing, quiet place.

"My name is Hope."

And, with a final smile, she was gone.

5. The Smoke Man

Mysteries disperse.

She wore the name Hope with more confidence than she’d ever worn Faith. She figured that maybe faith was always a thing to be lightly held and wondered over. That maybe it was the very uncertainty of the thing that gave it a worth.

She grew to love Summertime City in the idyll she spent there, and fell into the towns odd and paradoxical rythyms. What looked slow and sleepy on the surface was a sharp and practical thing beneath; she discovered that she did not need to introduce herself. Her walk through town and meeting with Fowler had been introduction enough, and on some invisible all hearing grapevine her arrival had been heralded. Even on the walk from the General Store to the boarding house she’d received smiles and bows and hat-tips, along with more than a few repetitions of ‘Mornin’ Mizz Hope.’

Carina Castleberry did indeed love cats. What’s more, cats loved her. The reaction of the scarred gray tom to the plump, shining little woman was almost embarrassing. He purred and rolled and lost himself in an orgy of petting and clumsy affection. All the while, the hidden eyes of other cats glinted jealously from one nook or another — none quite bold enough to challenge the newcomer for the attention of their missus.

"My husband, God rest him, always called me Catnip Carrie’, Mizz Castleberry said, by way of explanation, as she retrieved a dish of milk for her trail worn guest, and a cup of sweet coffee for his human friend.

Hope dealt with the pragmatics of her situation after the cat had swaggered off to deal with his. She assumed hers was far less violent and much more amiable, however. She rented a second floor room with meals for 25 coins a week. One week paid in advance with the provision for first choice to renew the deal. Once again, the deal was sealed with a handshake. Mizz Castleberry introduced her own tradition, and broke out a bottle of brandy to toast their transaction with proper good cheer.

Five of those coins had gone to secure one of the few rooms with private plumbing, and that night Hope luxuriated in a hot bath. The simple delight of hot water and brisk lye soap made her grin foolishly for an hour.

The cat lay near the door, cleaning some new wounds. These were the products of his negotiations with the resident felines. There was a certain smugness about his eyes and the indolent way he stretched that informed Hope that said negotiations had ended in his favor.

"I like it here, cat." she told him, for no reason, soaping herself up for the third time, just because.

He purred, slit his eyes, and kneaded the wooden floor in answer.

Dinner was an informal affair, held right in the kitchen at a big table that could seat twenty by the look of it. Only three were in attendance that night. In addition to Hope and the Missus, there was a resident named Albert Combers, a charming elderly man who dressed with style and spoke like a Harvard scholar.

Mizz Castleberry made plates right from the stove, where her concoctions bubbled and simmered in the alchemy known only to good cooks. The menu was salisbury steak, baby peas, early corn buttered and peppered to perfection and thick wedges of cornbread that tasted like heaven dipped in the steak gravy.

Hope ignored all manners and had thirds.

When everyone was done and sighing, Mizz Castleberry produced a bag of tobacco and rolled herself and Albert a trim smoke. Hope demurred.

The conversation became interesting after that. Mizz Castleberry had never even heard of The United States. Albert thought he might have come across it sometime in his study of ancient civilizations.

"Where are we right now?" Hope, asked, expecting laughter or questions.

She got neither. "The Borderlands, dear."

"What do they border?" was the only question she could think of.

"Something and nothing." Albert explained, butting out his smoke.

Hope excused herself then, and went up to bed. The cat was already crashed out, twitching with dreams.

She slept like a rock.

A week later, running an errand for the Missus, Hope met Ugly Jim Harris, the Sheriff of Summertime City.

They met at Fowlers. Fowler himself introduced them.

They called him Ugly Jim because, as a child, he’d been nearly burned to death in a house fire. His face was a mass of scar tissue. He looked like a skull partially covered with wax. But his eyes were blue and honest, and he radiated a sincere kindness.

"I don’t know if I’m cut out for law work." Hope admitted.

"Not asking you to take up a career, ma’am." Ugly Jim reassured her. "But I could use a hand right soon."

"Things seem peaceful enough."

"Riders will be here in a few days. Bad every year. Gonna be a doozy this year though." He looked away. "Something tells me, at least."

They spoke of payment. Beyond coinage, Hope insisted that she needed answers to questions.

Ugly Jim’s eyes narrowed. The misshapen lids gave his look an odd weight.

"You need to see the Smoke Man." he told her.

"Who?"

"He sets up camp outside town this weekend. He runs his business. He answers questions."

The journey to the Smoke Man was short, but Hope found herself with more company than she desired. He seemed a popular destination. She constantly had to turn folks away. They saw the gun and hoped for protection. Even after she turned them down she noticed that they stuck close.

The Smoke Man made camp in a clearing about ten miles north of Summertime City. As Faith approached she heard the boom of his trade. She understood as she drew closer.

The Smoke Man and a supplicant stood in a clearing. The machine behind them sent up disk after disk. They shot in turn. The supplicant didn’t do a bad job, but he couldn’t match the perfect record of the Smoke Man.

By the time Hope arrived she met the losing fellow as he made his way home. Despite that loss he seemed well pleased. Perhaps he was already planning a rematch.

The Smoke Man was reloading his thrower when she walked up. The thrower was a home-made affair, a challenging assortment of cogs and gears, tension and mismatched parts. I took up the entire bed of the Man’s pickup. The truck itself was the dull gray of primer, though there was a diffuse and misty look to it.

Hope studied the shooter before her. He was tall, gaunt, hair cropped short on a perfectly round head. She couldn’t judge his age, though she knew he was older than her. She saw instantly why he was called The Smoke Man. His skin was an even gray pallor, matching the truck. When he finished reloading and looked at her, she saw that his eyes were gray as well. And they held the mark of great age. He smiled at her.

"Care to sport a while?" he asked. "10 coins to enter, and I’ll back a side bet to whatever you care to lose." His grin widened, became mockingly predatory. "You win if you tie me. I’m fair that way."

Hope stood her ground and smiled right back. She wished for a moment that the cat were with her, rather than lording it over the boarding house. She missed the steel his small solid form set in her spine.

"The ammo for this is quite precious." she explained, touching the gun on her hip. "But I’ll go 20 coins if you’ll answer a few questions."

The Smoke Man began turning a stout, ratcheting crank. His thrower was obviously a clockwork device. He never took his eyes off of her, and never lost his smile.

"I got fools a’coming to lose their coin to me. But it may well be high time for a coffee break." he admitted. "20 coins get you five questions. I only answer if I like."

The Smoke Man’s coffee was strong and just shy of bitter. Hope added extra sugar and made the best of it.

"Where am I?" was her first question.

The Smoke Man sipped his brew. "The eternal question." He paused, thinking. "You stand between hell and heaven, in the great gray expanse of unknown. Call it The Undecided. Folks here call it The Borderlands and be done with it."

"How did I get here?"

"That’s one I can’t answer. Only you can answer that. It’ll come to you eventually. It comes to everyone in time."

Hope accepted that. "I have the urge to go West. What lies West of here?"

The Smoke Man chuckled. "Far enough West and you find The Ends. The place where structure dissolves. Nobody knows what lies beyond that, since no one ever comes back to describe it."

"Who are you?" That one just popped in her head.

"I’m touched." he claimed. But the smile drifted away for a moment. "I’m not sure what I am. I travel. I take folks coin. I shoot. I know some things. That’s all I’m sure of."

Hope asked her final question. "Will I ever go back home?"

The Smoke Man stood. "And that’s one I won’t answer. Not my place to go telling you what Home is or means."

Hope looked over her shoulder. By the truck, a small crowd of challengers had gathered.

"Back to work, ma’am." The Smoke Man said. "A pleasure to meet you."

Hope just nodded.

As she made her way past the truck, on her way back to Summertime City — both secure and puzzled by the vague answers she’d received — the thrower thumped and sent two disks into the air. Two guns boomed. The challenger missed. The Smoke Man’s target puffed into a quickly dispersing cloud of dust and fragment.

"You made smoke out of that one." Hope called to him.

The Smoke Man laughed, tossing her that predatory smile again.

"In the end, darlin’," he told her, as she moved away "I make smoke out of ‘em all.

6. Showdown

Idyll’s end.

The cat woke her up on that last peaceful morning. Hope attempted to ignore him, and that resulted in the first and only time that he laid the claws to her. Despite her cursing and empty threats, it really wasn’t all that bad. No blood drawn at least.

After she’d wiped the sleep from her eyes and splashed cold water on her face to aid the wake-up, she was thinking of coffee when she saw the cat staring out the window, tail swishing in agitation.

And she heard that laugh.

That goddamn familiar, awful laugh.

She looked out the window and there stood Ugly Jim in the center of town, facing down three bulky men on horseback.

Riders.

She moved quickly, tossing on her clothes and the gunbelt, then racing down the stairs to the porch of the rooming house. Despite her non-committal tone when Jim had pressed her on signing up for temporary deputy duty, she had no intention of allowing assholes to harass and harry her friends and neighbors. In fact, the main force behind her refusal was a gut feeling that getting paid to stand up to such assholes was on the less than honorable side of the ledger. And Hope had no desire to live on that side of the ledger anymore.

Later, she’d wish she’d stayed at the window. Had taken advantage of the height and the surprise to shoot those bastards down where they stood. Spilt milk being what it was; she may have had the instincts of a gunfighter, but the hard lessons of experience only get learned the one way.

She was coming off the stairs when she stopped. Carina Castleberry stood at the ready by the door, grimly holding a huge and ancient shotgun. The sight struck Hope as both comical and moving. The idea of this sweet and indulgent woman instantly ready to defend herself and her own caused tears and a laugh to war inside her heart. And steeled her resolution to end this situation in the town’s favor.

Mizz Castleberry saw her and moved away from the door in a manner that functioned as a vote of confidence.

Hope stepped into the sun of the morning, heart racing but will steady and strong.

Ugly Jim didn’t take his eyes from the Riders, but all three of them turned to look at the new arrival.

Hope’s heart sank when she saw those faces. Rage and fear and an old and secret shame she’d hoped to never feel again welled up inside her.

All three of the riders wore the faces of her husbands friends. His particularly close friends. The ones he’d shared with.

Rapists. Scum. What they’d done to her was horrible enough — but that was the past and a world away. What truly angered her — what caused the rage to drown out the fear and shame — was that they dared to follow her into this world.

The middle rider laughed that hateful laugh again."Looks like Ugly Jim done found him a purty Deputy."

Her skin crawled. She felt her stomach knot in revulsion.

Then she felt the soft brush at her leg. Felt the rumbling purr vibrate through denim and skin and bone and into her soul.

The cat was with her. No matter what she faced she did not face it alone. That purr settled her stomach and calmed her nerves.

She smiled. It was a vicious smile. And she was rewarded with the smile leaving the face of the rider. And a gleam of fear in his eyes.

"Mizz Hope" Jim said, quietly, eyes not leaving his enemy, hand hovering at the ready above his holster.

"Jim." she replied. "We got trouble? Seems a shame to bloody up such a pretty morning."

As she spoke she moved to stand beside him. Casually, as if she were just ambling to the General store. The cat followed in his usual way, weaving around and about her feet in a feline dance.

The riders — those hated, familiar faces — stared at her in contempt and dislike, but there was no recognition that she could see. Unlike her, it seemed that they had not made it into the Borderlands with memory intact.

Or, another part of her opined, perhaps she no longer resembled the timid and frightened woman she had been.

"Well, I guess that depends on the boys here." Jim drawled. He was as casual as her, but Hope could sense the fierce appreciation radiating from him. "How about it boys? You on a mission to ruin a perfectly good morning?"

The middle rider sneered. Then he shook his head. "Just bringing in the word, Ugly. The boss is coming. He’ll be here in three days. He wants the usual. You see that he gets it."

"Or what?" Hope said. She almost spat the words.

All three riders laughed, as if she’d said the dumbest thing in the world.

"Pretty but stupid, I see. Listen well girly: the boss gets what he wants or Summertime City burns. To the ground. And we piss on the ashes."

For a moment the rage threatened to boil over. An image of the gun in her hand and falling trick pins bloomed in her mind’s eye, and it was an image of almost impossibly seductive beauty.

"Is that the way of it?" she asked.

"That’s the way it’s always been."

"Things change."

The rider raised an eyebrow. "That so? You think you got the steel to change the way of the world?"

The words of the boneman came to her, clear as a bell and as sweetly chiming. Find a world to challenge.

"And then some, boy." She emphasized that last.

The look on the rider’s face was deadly. He spat on the ground before looking away, addressing Jim.

"You see we got the usual waiting, Ugly. You know what’s good for you. Best not let addle headed girls with big ideas go turning your head from sense."

And he spurred his horse, wheeled and rode out. His companions followed suit.

As the dust cloud they stirred up drifted and settled, people began to emerge. They tossed looks at Jim and Hope as they did. Quick looks for the most part, with a mix of emotions. Mostly fear. But there was a measure of respect there, as well. And more than a hint of some dark amusement.

Jim chuckled. When she looked at him, he was shaking his head. Those blue eyes in that ruined face gleamed with the same mix of emotions as the townsfolk — but the respect dominated with him.

"Mizz Hope, I must say — you don’t do nothing by half." The chuckle became a full laugh and he put a hand on her shoulder with real affection. "I’d say those riders haven’t heard a challenge like that in all their days with the Boss."

Hope considered telling him of her personal connection with these particular riders, but thought better of it. Instead, she gestured to the shade of the porch. As they made their way to a more comfortable spot, she asked some questions.

"Who is this Boss?"

Jim just shrugged. "Bandit. Old and smart and mean. Plays about three towns for this yearly tribute business. Lives well on it I suppose."

"And what is this usual they mentioned."

Jim sighed. "Coin and lots of it. Food and plenty. Dope. ‘Botics, painkillers, that sorta. And sometimes…" He paused.

Hopes chest tightened. "Sometimes what?"

"Sometimes they want a couple women. Girls. You know." Hope hadn’t known that the scarred flesh of Jim’s face could blush until then.

The tightness in her chest turned to ice. "And you think this year is one of those sometimes?"

He just nodded.

"So. What do we do?"

Jim was silent for a moment, eyes closed. Then he took a deep breath and looked her right in the eye.

"I been Sheriff for three years, Mizz Hope. All three of those years I knuckled under when the riders came. I figured that coin and food and drugs — no matter how precious — were a better price than a load of dead townsfolk, than fighting off dozens of hardasses. And they’ll come in dozens, ma’am — count on it. The Boss has an army at his disposal."

His face grew still but his eyes danced with passion and conviction.

"But I swore that when they asked for my folk…when they went beyond things into demanding I co-operate with slavery….I swore I’d be buried first."

Hope smiled at him, relieved.

"And I didn’t swear that lightly." His hand went to the gun on his hip, an instinct. "And I swear it still."

"You’re a damn fine man, Jim."

He just nodded. Then his eyes met hers again.

"And what about you? You with me? You gonna back that challenge up?"

Faith stood. She thought about who and what those men had been in the old world. She thought about the words of the boneman. She thought about the welcome the people of Summertime City had given a peaceful stranger. About Carina Castleberry at the door with a shotgun. She looked down at the cat. He was staring right back, inscrutable face radiating the only answer she could make.

She gave Jim the same scary smile she’d offered the riders. Her hand dropped to the cold and ready steel of her gun.

"You’re damned right I’ll back it up, Jim."

She looked around the street. Saw that all eyes were on her and the Sheriff. So she raised her voice to take in all who watched.

"We fight."

7. Firefight

Hopes burn.

On the morning of the day The Boss and his boys were due to collect, a message arrived. The rider who brought it slid it beneath the door of the Sheriff’s office and slipped out before the sun showed his face.

The message was simple and direct: in addition to 2000 coins, 500 pounds of flour, 20 bushels of potatoes, a ridiculous amount of ammo, drugs and even small luxuries like candy and shampoo, The Boss demanded three girls. All under the age of 20. A redhead and two blondes. "Purty & Clean" the note insisted.

Jim let Hope read it and scowled along with her. "Figured they’d wait till the last minute. Let folk get used to the idea of giving in and have the loot all gathered before they hit ‘em where it really hurt."

Hope crumpled the note and flicked it toward the trash can. She brooded for a moment. "Before you came along, Jim, did folk really send what amounted to their children out to serve these scum?"

Jim whistled, a low note. She understood this to be a habit when he was collecting his thoughts. "They did, I’m sad to say."

Hope’s voice rose despite her best effort. "How in the hell could they…"

"Settle down, Mizz." Jim insisted, holding his hands out in a peace making gesture. "It wasn’t exactly as simple as all that. Hell, sometimes they had volunteers. Girls itching to get out of town and into what they figured was a more exciting life." He paused. "And not every Sheriff looked at his duty the way I do, hurts to say. More than a few were tinpot dictators just as bad as The Boss."

Hope gave him the look that meant she wasn’t in the mood for excuses.

"True as Tuesday, Mizz. And Summertime City was small and truly weak for a long time."

"Did they ever resist?"

Jim nodded, thoughtful. "Yes ma’am. This town has burned twice in the past two decades. The first time damn near wiped her off the map and she had to be resettled. The second time was near as bad but most folks lived. Just had to rebuild." He sighed. "But they haven’t resisted since then."

A sick look passed her face.

Jim smiled, a ghastly thing she had grown used to and now admired for its sincerity. "But the Riders took their losses as well. It’s also true they haven’t asked for girlfolk near as often since that last Burn. Summertime City killed half those that came for ‘em, and put ‘em to route eventually."

Hope smiled. "We gonna have any trouble with those that might prefer to appease?"

Jim shook his head, dismissive. "Naw. They know my mind is set. Those sort cleared out the minute you agreed to fight."

"Good enough. And the rest can be counted on?"

Jim stared at her for a moment. "My folk are decent and somewhat simple, Mizz. They don’t itch for trouble. But they ain’t cowards and they know the way the world works. Never doubt that."

Hope just nodded. Instead of an apology, she said "Then I think you need to drop that Mizz shit."

Jim was truly puzzled. "Ma’am?"

She laughed. "And that ma’am shit while you’re at it." She stood up and put a hand on his shoulder. "If we’re going to fight this scum back to back I think you should call me Hope."

Once again, Ugly Jim Harris proved he could blush.

"Now." she said, turning to the door. "Let’s go get us some volunteers."

Hope and the cat and Ugly Jim sat staring at the citizens of Summertime City arrayed before them. Hope was near tears, causing the smile she couldn’t repress to wobble slightly.

Three hundred and six men, women and children had shown up, from the ages of 6 years to 86. They were armed with everything from pitchforks and hay scythes to the one old codger who’d lugged a dusty but functioning hand cranked Gatling from some ancient shed. They stood there, scared but with spines straight, and gave their word to fight to defend their homes and families and neighbors.

It may have been the finest moment of her life so far, and she caught the Sheriff wiping a tear himself here and there.

It took most of the afternoon to sort the best prospects into some sort of fighting force. They had nothing spectacular planned — just a direct ambush when the Riders got close enough to take fire. The real trick was letting them get close enough with trust intact. Hope and Jim agreed that half The Boss’s boys wasn’t good enough this time. They had in mind a complete victory — and maybe an end to the whole damn cycle.

The girls were the key to that little trick. Hope ended up with 16 volunteers under the age of 20, willing to play reverse Trojan Horse. They ended up being more trouble than the young men and boys when it came to their desire to serve - to the point of several brawls breaking out.

But eventually she had her three. Two pretty, clean blondes and a pretty clean redhead. The two blondes were twins — Gina and Georgia Montrose. They won their place because they’d inherited beautifully made and highly concealable little derringers. Hope would no more have these girls play bait unarmed than she’d send them swimming with anchors attached.

The third had to borrow a gun but won her place because she was the only redhead in town. She looked familiar to Hope. The resemblance lingered until she caught a glimpse of her from the corner of her eye and realization crashed down.

"Are you…?"

The redhead grinned pure sunshine and her blush was hard to catch under all those freckles. "I’m Betty Castleberry, Mizz Hope. Carina’s grandgirl." She stuck out her hand all formal like. Hope hugged her instead.

"I been meaning to come by Gran’s and meet you. She talks a mile a minute on you. All good o’ course. But Mam’s been sick for a while and I got six brothers and two sisters to look after, and…"

She was interrupted by the Gran herself, shotgun at the ready. Pride and fear warred in her expressive face with no clear victor.

"You be careful." was all she finally said. "Gran’ll be up on the bank roof."

"Now you follow directions, Gran." Betty warned her. "Don’t you be lookin’ after me. We all got our parts to play."

Hope was torn from the tragic little scene by Jim’s voice.

"Places folks! We got dust sighted and on the way! Half an’ hour tops."

Faith felt the cat at her feet, responding to her own fear and pride. She took deep breaths and counted heartbeats. She forced her mind to relax. She willed the cold heart of the gun to invade hers.

It was time.

The fight was on them.

It would be years later and small details of that fight would still come to her, often in dreams, surprising her with their ability to move and effect her. Little glimpses, small sounds, stabs of remembered fear and vicious joy.

The Last Firefight Of Summertime City, as it would come to be called, was not the worst piece of action she’d see in her life. In many ways, it was the most successful and clean. But it happened at the very beginning of her transformation from one thing to another. It was the fire that burned the last of her old self away so that the newer, stronger, harder self could grow in its place.

And, like all fires — no matter the need for their renewal — it hurt as it burned.

It was not a battle of individual heroes. It was not a set piece of heroic stands. It was, like most serious warfare, a brutal and pragmatic thing.

They set their blonde and amber bait amongst the loot of food and coin and luxury. There on the main street, alone and lonely. One force of gunmen(led by Jim) occupied the roof of the bank. Hope’s gang laid low on the roof of the saloon.

Like a ritual, the riders came. They gathered indolently in a wide arc flanking the face of the town. There were close to a hundred all told, all armed with rifle and pistol and plenty of ammo. All on horseback save The Boss, who travelled in a caravan wagon pulled by a mule team. The Boss hung back several hundred yards, waiting for his treasure.

A dozen men entered the town to escort that treasure out. They were less than a hundred feet from their goal when Hope gave the order.

Rifle fire rained down on the would be kidnappers from the saloon. Of the twenty under her command, she had set ten to concentrate on death from above. She led the other ten down the back of the saloon and around for another angle of fire.

At the edge of town, from the stonewalled safety of the bank roof, Jim’s fifty volunteers opened up on the rest of the riders, gathered so thoughtfully in such a nice group.

Hope screamed at the three girls to take cover. They ignored her, preferring to instead add to the lead headed towards their kidnappers.

That was the moment when the world, and time, and sense broke apart. What followed was a shattered twenty minutes that would only come to her over the course of the rest of her life. A bit here, a piece there.

Of the gory sprawl of a dozen dead men and horses. Of the escort not a single creature made it out alive.

Of a pretty blonde girl weeping, with a once blonde head in her lap now stained red with blood.

Of the roar of men and women fighting for their lives, and the roar of men dying for their mistakes.

Of those who fell before her own gun, so like trick pins as the sharks teeth caught them again and again.

Of the deep red calm of reloading, as if she’d performed these motions a million times.

And of the cat, moving through out it all, between bullets and blood and bodies, seemingly indifferent. Graceful. Leading her.

And that moment when the broken army outside their town turned to flee, and the folk who only had pitchfork and scythe set on their trail like hounds, the bedeviled turned to devils. She was in front, urging them on. To the caravan of The Boss, frightened mules swinging it dangerously around in flight.

And the image that stopped her in shock, that caused her to drop to her knees in horror. The angry, scared and hateful face in the window of that caravan.

The face of The Boss.

The face of her husband.

A face filled with recognition.

Moments, broken and shattered. Some moments never last long enough.

Some moments take the rest of a life to deal with.

"…and to thy care and mercy we commend them O Lord, these our beloved."

"Amen."

Hope stared at the face of Ugly Jim Harris in his casket, a ruined face that had gained something approaching beauty in a proud death. A slug had caught him in the leg just before the Riders broke, and he’d tumbled off the bank and broke his neck. Went painlessly the doctor said.

Went proud, Hope knew. With principles and duty intact.

She lingered a moment by the casket of Gina Montrose, and spoke silly comforting words to poor Georgia. The abandoned twin cycled from fierce pride in her sister to crushing despair, but seemed basically all right to Hope.

The rest of the dead, 11 in all, she knew only fleetingly or not at all. Still, she paid her respects and spoke to the families. They had all died for the same cause, had all died facing one of life’s bad days. They deserved what she could give them.

And, outside town, 64 unmarked graves marked their triumph.

She made her way back to the rooming house with a heavy heart, the cat trailing beside her as usual. He had escaped the battle without a scratch despite being in the thick of it. Much like herself.

The respectful nods and greetings added to the heaviness she felt. She was treated as a hero in town. Perhaps she was being given the reverence that Ugly Jim could not accept. No matter — it just made her decision harder.

She cried as she packed, knowing that she was going to miss this place. It was an awful moment. She had come this long way, walked this hard path, and found the closest thing to a home since the death of her father. And now she had to leave.

How awful that love for a place can push you away as surely as hate.

Carina and Betty and Albert were waiting for her when she came downstairs, back from the services. Carina in the wheelchair, healing from the slug that had grazed her spine. She began to weep when she saw the packed bag and the travelling clothes Hope wore.

"Please, Mizz Hope…" Betty spoke for her. "We need you. This town. Gran. Me."

Oh, she was tempted. But it wouldn’t be right. Instead she just hugged them and said goodbye.

The tears dried as she moved away from Summertime City, onwards into the West once again. The direction the caravan wagon had fled.

The old feeling returned, the bone deep song of the road. And in place of sadness came anger and the steady pulse of desire.

A desire for answers.

A desire for revenge.

And the immense desire to see them come to the same point on the horizon, even if she had to travel to The Ends to do so.

The cat resumed his travel pattern as if they’d never paused. He scouted and wandered and circled her.

Behind her, unknown as yet, other cats followed, shyly for now. Some from Carina’s house, some from the streets of the town. Cats suddenly possessed of a desire to follow this strange woman and the brutal grey tom who shared her aura and her fate.

From the center of this tangle of woman and cats and their mingled desire, Hope extended her arm, and waved a thumb at the random.

They walked until a ride came.

8. Longwalk

Secrets flee.

The walk was dreary and unrelieved by a single ride for the first fifty or so miles. Then she reached the Highway.

The terrain had changed to slightly hilly scrub forest, somewhat harder going but cooler in climate. Both game and water were more plentiful, and shelter from sun and night’s damp were easier to find.

Hope became aware of her shy following congregation slowly, in stages. First was the actions and attitude of the grey tom. He growled often, looking into the distance, especially when camped and continuously while food was cooking. She at first feared that darker visitors hid amongst the shadows. But every morning she’d find gifts of game and the tell-tale prints of cats. They seemed to ring her campsites at night in a rough circle, just out of sight but close enough to keep an eye on her.

She was amused at first, then curious. Why were they following her? What did they expect to gain from this trek? She supposed that it didn’t matter in the end - as soon as she caught her first ride they’d be left miles behind. A twinge of guilt accompanied that thought. She hoped they’d be able to find their way back to whatever home they’d had before she’d passed through. She’d never meant to be a pied piper, and didn’t appear to have the callous heart to do such work.

This was, of course, before she discovered that cats — in the Borderlands at least — had their own secret paths of travel.

It was late on the third day after leaving Summertime City when she crested that last small hill and caught sight of the Highway. She’d been hearing it for hours before; at first puzzled at the odd sound, then disbelieving when it became familiar enough to recognize. Seeing it washed away the last of the disbelief, but did nothing for the disorientation that the sight brought.

In the old world, she knew, the Highway would have been common. In fact, it would have been less than impressive. It was merely a four lane paved blacktop that ran a true East/West rather than the smaller, barely two lane cracked asphalt trail that had led her northwest from Summertime City. It would have been a road to roll her eyes at in her old life, a stretch where she’d have to drop the Buick down a notch in speed or risk a ticket.

But here, in the Borderlands, it trumped every unusual and weird event since she’d arrived. Not so much for the size of the thing, but for the traffic.

The past fifty miles had seen not a single car or truck or bicycle pass her, either way. The Highway was busy. Not rush hour busy, but a steady stream of vehicles made their hurried way both east and westwards, rushing along to unknown destinations on errands mysterious. The vehicles were — much like the gaudy collection that motored about Summertime City — an eclectic mixture of eras and technologies.

The sight of the Highway, its sudden vitality and speed, both excited her and made her uneasy.

Nevertheless, she made her way onto it, glad to find a wide shoulder suitable for walking. She headed west, thumb out, a single cat by her side and perhaps a dozen more in the overgrown field that flanked the Highway, pretending secrecy.

She caught her first ride less than a half hour later.

"Glad to have the company ma’am, being honest." Glynn Felbeck told her with a smile and only the slightest glance at the gun on her hip. He also smiled at the cat, who regarded him coldly from the dash where he’d stretched in lazy splendor. "It gets lonelier’n hell on the road to Golden."

Hope nodded, mind still on the never seen flock of cats she was rapidly leaving behind. She still felt a little guilty, despite the fact that she hadn’t exactly lured them after her.

Glynn — a bearlike young man with flaming hair, beard and boyish eyes — took care of his truck, that much was certain. Despite its obvious age, the Chevy gleamed with the sparkle only loving maintenance can impart. The bed of the truck was loaded down and tarped snugly. Whatever Glynn was hauling was secure enough. Despite healthy curiosity, Hope didn’t ask and her driver didn’t offer. She figured it was none of her business.

"You headed for Golden?" he asked, voice trying for amiable but his tone giving away that he hoped for company all the way. And his eyes betrayed the fact that he certainly wouldn’t mind getting to know his passenger quite a bit better.

"I’m headed as far West as I can get." she told him, rather charmed by his attention.

He nodded wisely. "West is the way to go. The whole Middle Reach is falling into the shit, you ask me. Damn CRA bastards are getting ridiculous." He spat out the window in disgust. Then looked a bit ashamed. "Pardon the gesture, ma’am."

She laughed. "No worry. And my name is Hope, not ma’am." she reminded him.

His smile grew in size and scope. "That’s a pretty…" he stopped and stiffened as he caught sight of something in the rearview.

"Aww fuck." he muttered, going pale.

"What is it?" Hope asked, craning her head around to look.

On the distant horizon, faint but growing brighter, was a set of flashing lights.

"Fuckitallllltohell!" Glynn whispered fiercely. He instantly slowed his truck to a point, took a deep breath and concentrated on driving as solid and unassuming as possible.

"What’s the problem?" Hope asked again, beginning to get nervous. The cat was eyeing the approaching lights in a way that she didn’t care for.

Glynn glanced at her nervously, but turned his attention back to the road. "CRA Troopers. Smuggler Patrol by the look of ‘em."

"What the hell is this CRA?" she asked, confused.

He goggled at her for a second, then managed a weak smile. "That’s right — you’re fresh outta the East. East of Sum City is all Free Territory, ma’am..uh, Hope." He swallowed hard, trying to force himself calm. "Same as the West from Golden on." He kept glancing in the rearview, almost hypnotized by the approaching lights. Hope could also hear the beginnings of a familiar siren wail.

"But we’re smack in the middle of the Middle Reach, and that’s under the control of the Central Reach Authority. They’ve been around forever, based out of Port Louie on the Big River."

"They’re…what? The government?"

Despite his fear, Glynn spat again. "Claim to be. Claim all sorts of shit. Claim everybody gets together ever so often and votes on who runs the Reach. Nevermind that I got no clue how that gives them any right to do anything to those of us don’t bother to indulge in their ritual. Never mind I ain’t never actually met anyone who claims to have done so. They claim it, they levy taxes, and they got the guns to back it up."

Hope sighed. "Yeah. Government." She remembered something. "You said Smuggler Patrol."

Glynn was silent, but nodded.

"And you’re awful nervous." She grinned. "What are we smuggling, Glynn?"

His silence stretched on a bit. Then he shrugged. "Worst thing you can get caught smugglin’."

"Drugs?" she guessed.

He looked surprised. "Naw. Food."

Hope nearly choked. "Food?!"

"Food." he repeated. "Soybeans mostly, and some choice beef in coldboxes. Grown in the Free East, needed in the Free West. Untaxed by the Unfree Central Authority that claims it has the damn right. Food. One of the few things even scared folks won’t suffer without."

Her head swam. But she held onto the practical. "And what’s the penalty? Massive fines? Jail time?"

Glynn’s smile had little humor. "The penalty is on the spot execution."

Hope heard a growl. She glanced at the cat, but discovered that the growl was coming from herself.

Glynn seemed to shrink. "I…I…apologize for getting you mixed up with this…"

She waved him off, pushing the rage that threatened to rise down at the same time.

"Don’t apologize for being a decent man, Glynn." She could hear the siren wailing like a demon now, and make out the bulky armored car that was rushing towards them, red and blue lights strobing in angry flashes. "Can you outrun them?"

He shook his head. "No way in hell."

She sighed. "Any chance at all that they’ll just pass on by? After someone on up the road, maybe?"

"I think they might have been tipped. Last town I was in, I got the feeling that one fella..well…" He looked guilty again. "Like I said, ma’am. I’m sorry I…"

"My name is Hope, dammit!" she snapped at him. "And I told you not to apologize for decency! Don’t apologize for giving a woman on the side of the road a lift. Don’t apologize for trying to make a living hauling food to folks who need it! Don’t apologize for shit brought on because arrogant fuckers think they got the right."

She began to load her gun. The process soothed and steadied her.

"They think they got the damn right. The right to interfere with other people who ain’t doing them a damn bit of harm. The right to harass peaceful people for their own gain. They claim they took a vote or made a vow or got the word from God himself. All bullshit." She slapped the gun closed and laid it in her lap. She stroked the cat, who was as relaxed as warm butter.

"All they got is their own arrogance. Their own greed and lust and desire for power. And guns." The cat purred, a rough rumble against her hand.

"But I got a damn gun, too." She looked him in the eye. "Do you?"

He was looking at her with something like awe. "Yes m…Hope. I got a shotgun under the seat."

She nodded. "Then, before they get any closer, how ’bout you swerve us over into that field? Give us a bit of time to prepare them a proper reception."

Glynn, despite fear and awe and what looked a damn sight like his own approaching death, laughed loud and long. "You sure about this?"

She smiled at him. "Glynn, all they got is arrogance and guns. But we have guns too. If everybody with a gun decided they’d had their fill of arrogance and stood up, they’d be outnumbered. They’d find out quick what their right amounted to."

He smiled back at her. His eyes gleamed with something new.

"Brace yourself." he said.

She grabbed the cat and did so.

The squeal of the brakes on the Highway sounded like a battlecry.

That was where it started she figured later. The legend of The Woman Who Hitch Hiked With Cats. That was where it started, in that moment in a field in the middle of no where, when a CRA Smuggler Patrol with a hot tip got more than it bargained for.

They were expecting a single man and a shotgun and an easy bust.

They weren’t expecting a berserk Viking with flaming hair and beard, laughing joy as he blasted them with a wild assortment of everything from three inch magnums to bird shot.

They weren’t expecting the thin, black eyed wraith with the hell dealing pistol who never seemed to miss. Who walked into their own fire with no fear and sighted with the cold precision of the Devil herself.

And they certainly weren’t expecting the goddamned army of cats that swarmed them from the field, attacking with rabid ferocity, seeming to come from nowhere and everywhere. Cats that circled the devil woman like protective demons. Cats that seemed to replace every fallen animal with two. Cats that blinded and tore jugulars and the thick veins in wrists and seemed to know exactly where to go to bleed a man to death.

And they didn’t expect to end their day dead and strapped naked to the Patrol cruiser, a gruesome frame for a message on the windshield in huge letters of their own blood:

FUCK YOUR RIGHT.

A message that was soon on the lips of every smuggler and rebel and anti-authoritarian rabblerouser in the Middle Reach. A message they’d hear again and again, tied to the rambling but seemingly unstoppable path of The Woman as she made her way west through CRA territory.

As the legend grew, and resistance rallied behind her.

As the power of the CRA crumbled and fell to a writhing death:

FUCK YOUR RIGHT.

It was a long walk later, and many rides, and a thousand fights, and weeks and months, but she passed out of the Middle Reach and into the Free West.

The border was marked with a sign that had once read "You are now leaving the Central Reach Authority." It was now defaced by the slogan she’d first left on a windshield a thousand miles east.

She chuckled at it, and kept walking.

The cats were all around her, a secret silent army that formed and reformed like waves against the rock of her self. The tom, far from his growling original attitude, now proudly stood as their king. Only he was allowed the place of honor by her feet, after all. Only he was allowed food from her hand and the touch of affection. His subjects were allies and accepted, but he’d fight any and all that tried to intrude upon those privileges.

Hope left such things to him.

She’d stayed on the trail of The Boss. He fled ever west and she’d followed. He was leaving his own path as he went, it seemed: dark stories told to her after dark by ride after ride, in town after town.

She was philosophical. She’d find him eventually. Then she’d have her answers, and her revenge.

She laid camp her first night in the Free West about a dozen miles from the defaced sign. As she was settling in, sleepy, she was thinking of the approaching fact of The Ends, and wondering if her confrontation with her past would happen before she reached it. She hoped so.

She was getting ready to turn in, when she saw the headlights approach. She waited for them to pass on, but they moved towards her with determination.

She reached for the gun and stood. The cats surrounded her, fearless and loyal. They were ready for a fight.

But something about the headlights and the sound of the engine was familiar. Something about the shape of the truck as it pulled up.

She was still and ready as the motor went silent and a door opened and closed.

The tall, grey man was smiling as he stepped into the light of her fire. His rifle was strung across his back and his hands were out in a gesture of peace.

"Why, Mizz Hope." The Smoke Man said. "Fancy meeting you out here."

9. Rituals

Truth hurts.

In every sense that matters, there is quite a bit of magic to a simple campfire. On the deepest level of elemental truth, the basic act of forcing dead, cold matter to give forth light and heat is the very heart of what magic is and will forever be. Life from death, action from the void.

Between human beings there is magic in the campfire as well. The flickering light scaring away the shadows can act as a portal for wisdom. Can allow truths to be told that would sound false in the light of the sun.

The Smoke Man obeyed the ritual as he sat at Hope’s fire. He nodded a greeting to The Cat and his army. They accepted his presence with silent politeness. He brought forth a pouch and a pack of rolling papers. To an offered fire, one brings their own offering: be that a drink, a bite, a smoke or a story.

"Care for a smoke?" he asked.

"I don’t use tobacco." Hope informed him.

"This isn’t tobacco." he admitted with a smile.

"I don’t smoke pot either."

"Nor is it cannabis." His fingers rolled with simple deft motions.

Hope smiled. "What is it?"

"Called dreambreak. Only grows in the Borderlands. Some say it opens the mind and the memory when they’d rather stay closed." His eyes were unreadable when he finished the smoke and put it to his lips. He lit it and took a long, crackling drag. Hope smelled the herb then, faintly. It hinted at spice and something deeper. A musky scent, like the den of a burrowing animal.

"You still don’t know how you came to be here, do you?"

She shook her head no.

"This could help." He offered her the smoke.

She considered a moment, before finally taking it. She had little to fear from the Smoke Man, who was the only person in the Borderlands who had ever answered any of her questions.

She didn’t choke. The dreambreak was surprisingly smooth. Spice and musk, yes — and the surprise of a peppermint aftertaste, that turned sweet as it lingered on the tongue.

She took another drag. She held the smoke until it expanded to the point of pain in her lungs. She let it go, and watched the ghostly whorls emerge from her mouth, dancing through shifting focus, bright and somehow…significant.

It’s already affecting me, she understood.

Across the fire, the Smoke Man’s grin seemed to grow. "Just let it come. Don’t fight it. Relax and let it come."

"Why are you helping me?" she asked, while she still could. Around her, the night grew distinct.

"Maybe you’re helping me." he said.

And then she was gone.

In the first vision she and the cat are in a very familiar hospital room. She recognizes the room, having spent two horrible weeks there. She doesn’t know why the cat is with her, but she appreciates his company.

They stand in a corner and watch. In the bed, invaded by tubes and dying, lies her father. Sitting before him, all weeped out, holding a shoe box, is herself.

How small and thin and weak she looks, Hope thinks. How feeble.

"You brought it." her Father says. It isn’t a question.

The old Hope simply nods.

"You’re a good girl." her Father tells her. He always told her that. His voice is thin and weak and raspy. The cancer has taken all of his strength, all of his energy and vigor. It hasn’t taken his will, yet. That much she knows. If it had, he couldn’t have requested this final favor from her.

She sits the box on the nightstand. She kisses her Father goodbye. She hugs him for a long moment and even finds a few more tears to shed into his chest. Finally, she stands. She hesitates. She leaves, unable to say anything more.

From the corner, Hope and the cat watch what follows. Hope knows what is coming, and — in her old life — often wished she’d been strong enough to stay by her father’s side as he did what he had to do. That she’d had the will and strength to hold his hand as he’d taken his life. He’d ended the pain as a sane man, with his mind and memory intact. She’d been too weak to do so. Too weak and too scared and too childish.

But she isn’t that person any more. She’s not weak, or scared, or childish now. She’s a woman of iron and cordite, a dealer of death and justice. She’s grown and ancient in the way of the hard path.

She and the cat step up to her father as he struggles with the box containing his old gun. The tubes that get in his way are torn unceremoniously out, and he ignores the increase in pain. All that will be over in a moment.

As he places the gun to his temple, hand shaking but sure, something focuses in his eyes. She steps as close as she can. She wills him to see her.

Her ghost hand takes his free hand. That big strong hand that protected her for so long.

A smile flickers at the corner of his mouth. Perhaps he sees her. A little. Enough.

"I love you Daddy." she whispers, and he pulls the trigger.

It is messy and awful and sad, but she doesn’t look away. She owes him that much.

As the flurry of the aftermath happens, she is surprised when the ghost stands up from her father’s dead body, the ghost of his gun still clenched in his hand. He looks insubstantial but somehow stronger in death than in those last moments of life.

He sits there on the bed, as nurses and doctors rush and sigh and shake their heads in sadness and pity. He seems to listen to a faraway voice. Finally he nods, and smiles.

He stands up and, carrying the gun, walks out of the room.

She follows him, with the cat. They follow him as he leaves the hospital, and the manicured grounds, as he finds a road and heads west. His stride is determined, his manner happy and purposeful. As she follows him he seems to grow ever more substantial. More solid.

After a long time, he comes across the old truck. She begins to understand when he takes the gun belt and holster from the front seat, and straps them on. As he drops the now familiar gun into place.

She climbs into the passenger seat as he takes the wheel. As they drive into the desert. He navigates by that unheard voice for a while, until it apparently tells him to stop. He does so. He settles back, to wait.

He will wait here for a long time, she knows.

She gets out of the truck, opening and closing the door unnoticed by the ghost of her father. A ghost that is no longer a ghost here in the Borderlands. A flesh and blood man who will wait past a second death, and turn to bone, and finally dust, waiting for her. To deliver that gun to her hand.

She smiles at him there. He looks patient, content even. A little smile lingers on his face. His head is cocked as he listens to that unheard voice, and his eyes are closed as if hearing a lovely melody. Perhaps the voice is singing to him. She hopes so.

"I love you Daddy." She says again, and starts to leave.

Reality warps and folds in upon itself.

She is sitting at the campfire again. The tears on her cheeks surprise her.

The Smoke Man reaches the still smoldering dreambreak to her again. She is not finished.

She takes it. The taste this time is one of citrus, and a slight burn like cayenne as the flavor fades. The smoke from her mouth eddies in a great whorl, shifting color from white to blue, to join the black of night as she fades and travels again.

The courtroom is as silent as the grave.

"Guilty." the foreman of the jury announces.

The silence ends and the great circus erupts. The judge bangs for order with no success. It is over, at last — after months of testimony and tears and accusations. It is over and the husband killing bitch has been found guilty, just as she was judged by the media and the public before she ever set foot in this courtroom.

Her tales of rape and abuse were not believed. Her stories of why she killed her husband and his three friends. To make matters even more horrible, all four of her victims were decorated police officers. Paragons of virtue and pillars of their community. Their records were spotless and their names respected. The idea that they had gathered every weekend to rape and humiliate the small and quite plain woman before them was ridiculous. It was obviously part of the murderous psychopathic fantasy that her deranged mind had created. She was jealous of her husbands success and reputation. The suicide of her dying father had been the final push over the edge of madness. Three noted psychiatrists testified to this.

She and the cat sit in the back, lost amidst the circus of the guilty verdict. Hope keeps her eyes on the timid and washed out woman being led, handcuffed, from the courtroom. The woman who shows not a single emotion. Who rarely even blinks those puffy, sleep starved eyes.

She and the cat stand and follow as the bailiffs lead her towards her cell. The sentencing will take place the very next day, the judge has decreed. The most predicted outcome is the electric chair. There is a certain grim satisfaction to the reporters as they make note of this, as they prepare the news for a slew of special editions.

Hope follows the woman. She knows what is coming.

She sees the wife of one of her victims before anyone else. Watches as the red haired, scarecrow thin woman steps up, face a mask of hate and pain, and shoots the murderess three times.

"Die you murdering whore!" the red haired scarecrow screams, before the bailiffs tackle her, releasing the bleeding, silent murderess, who crumples to the floor.

She is not surprised this time, when the ghost stands up from the dead body. She simply follows as her past self discovers that the handcuffs are gone. She remembers thinking how lucky she was that all three bullets missed her. How she had a chance to escape. How she took it and ran.

Hope and the cat follow, easily, knowing every step now, but curious. Drawn to watch.

They follow, as she flees through the streets of the city. As she steals an outfit from a clothesline. She grows substantial as she does so, already in the Borderlands, the city but a copied memory.

As she makes her way to a Salvation Army, where she outfits herself for a trip.

As she hitch hikes west, forgetting as she goes, remembering only the terror and the reckless desire to flee.

Miles from the city she encounters Char — old Charon — who picks her up and ferries her across a Styx of solid black flow, a river of asphalt.

Into the Borderlands proper. Into the great Inbetween. She runs, seeking revenge and retribution against the bastard who continued to hurt her even after she’d killed him.

Chasing the ghost of her husband into the land of the unquiet dead.

Reality demanded attention.

She gasped. The still burning stub of the dreambreak singed her fingers.

Her body tingled with an almost electric charge as she emerged from the throes of the vision.

It was near dawn. Mellow grey light seeped up over the horizon. The rising mountains of the Free West were etched in shadow in the distance.

The Smoke Man regarded her. She tossed the stub of the dreambreak into the guttering remains of the fire.

"So. Now you know." he said. His voice was gentle.

"Yes." she told him. "Thank you."

He shrugged and stood up. She followed suit.

"Now what?" he asked.

She considered. After a moment she smiled. "Nothing has changed." she told him. "I just know why I’m doing what I’m doing. I still have to hunt the bastard down and put him away. Not just for myself, anymore. Whatever evil he carried in his heart he brought here to the Borderlands. He harried the people as The Boss for however long it was before I crossed over on his tail."

"That’s not a very Hope-ful attitude to take." The Smoke Man reminded her.

She nodded. "That’s the truth. But maybe the time for Hope is gone. Maybe I’m yet another person now."

He chuckled, shaking his head. "Names as a tool and a purpose."

That struck her as proper. "It’s not just for me, now. It’s for those he abused after I sent him here."

"Charity."

"Charity." she agreed. "From now on I am Charity."

The sun broke over the horizon and the day dawned clear and bright, the beckoning mountains beneath a cold blue sky. She gathered her supplies as the cats prepared for travel.

She turned the offer of a ride down. "I give Charity. I don’t accept it."

"As you like." The Smoke Man said. She watched him head back east. She knew she was not done with him yet.

West they moved, Charity and her army. The day brightened, the clarity of her purpose pushed her on.

West, towards the Ends. Towards revenge. Towards conclusion.

To spread the Charity of a cold, hard heart.

10. Trapshoot

Ends await.

She knew who she was and where she was going, but the fact of the matter remained that: the ends await. This is a truth all human kind must eventually admit, a blunt admission of pragmatics no matter how optimistic or mystical minded.

The basic template of existence is the mystery.

Thousands of days and that many or more miles away she’d find herself in a dark and noisy saloon.

She was wearing a much older body; a thing of dense muscles and leathery skin. A face filled with wrinkles and a long crown of iron grey hair pulled back and plaited into a practical mane. Her eyes, if anything, had grown sharper as her body grew more brittle. There was nothing of weakness about her, no hint of softness, no flash or glimpse of mercy.

She was pure Charity now, charity of the blackest and most honest sort. She’d made a vow to rid the world — a second world even — of a monster who walked like a man. Her own pleasure and enjoyment had been set aside to accomplish this end. Her own life curtailed to chase this duty.

The saloon was dark in more ways than simple lack of light. They were very near The Ends here, very close to the blank grey wall of roiling mist that marked the border of the Borderlands. The grey chasm that ate the bleak desert terrain. The grey from which no traveller returned.

Stories abounded about that mist. A cult of rejects made a religion of it — camping near it in tattered tent cities, sending prayers into its unresponsive face. They claimed to hear voices from the blank wall of grey, hear songs of eternal sadness and the weeping of old gods. The muttered confessions of ghosts.

Occasionally, she’d heard, the mist shifted by some cosmic whim and entire tent cities were lost. Vanished. Gone when morning light touched their scoured grounds again.

Such was the price of so flippant a religion, she figured.

Kerosene lamps burned in the saloon, since electricity refused to flow here near The Ends. Motors wouldn’t crank. Watches stopped ticking and even levers failed to shift as much.

Physical laws broke down, it was said. And mortal laws? Justice and fairness?

She laughed aloud, just thinking of them. Such human laws were chancy in even the most stable of times and places. Near the Ends, to hope for them was a fool’s errand.

She touched the bulky talisman that hung from her neck, gently. She felt the smooth cool touch of bone and let it relax her. She laughed again, a bit louder, thinking of Justice and fool’s errands.

Across the room three men sat at a table, speaking pretty lies to a pretty young girl. Charity had been watching them for the past half hour. She wondered what the child was doing here. She was out of place here near The Ends. This was a place for the worn and near broken, the aging and the dull. She was a jolly thing, lively and sweet. She moved with quick liquid grace and the fiery red of her hair seemed to scar the dark of this rotting saloon.

What was she doing here? Charity guzzled the last of her piss warm beer and pondered that. Lost or a runaway, she figured. A fugitive from an ugly past, hoping for a brighter future in a dark place she was too young and stupid to hate and fear on sight. Another pilgrim in search of justice and fairness in a world scant of either.

And she laughed a third time. The third time proved the charm. The three men and the pretty out of place girl looked at her. The men looked wary. The girl smiled an innocent smile.

"What’s so damn funny, old lady?" one of the men asked.

"No need to be rude…" began the young girl, but she was shushed by the other two.

The speaker raised his voice. "I said what’s so damn all fired funny?"

Charity took a deep breath. She wondered if the fool had realized they were all alone in the saloon. That they had been all alone from the moment she’d stepped through the door. Those with good sense and not intent on tonight’s rough pleasure had exited quickly as she sat. Even the owner of the joint had hauled ass as soon as he set the complimentary beer in front of this woman who radiated power and purpose. You got to know such things when you spent time near The Ends. They reacted with the atmosphere, created something like a halo.

They warned those with sense.

"You mute, old woman?" the speaker went on. "Just an idiot laugh left in that empty old head?"

Charity smiled at him. The weight of the talisman around her neck soothed and grounded her.

"You ever hear of the legends they got a bit east of here?" she began. Her voice was strong and loud. It surprised the men. They seemed to shrink a little. "The legends of the Woman Who Hitch Hiked With Cats?"

The wariness in the eyes of the men grew bright and painful. They tensed. "I ain’t in no mood to hear fairy stories, lady." said the speaker, but his voice broke on the last words. And that was the moment the girl chose to speak up.

"Why, I’ve heard them!" she said, excited and please. "Been hearin’ ‘em my whole life seems like." She closed her eyes and recited, with the air of one telling a favorite story:

"The Woman Who Hitch Hiked With Cats moves through the world on a path all her own. She came from someplace beyond and her destination is not for common folk to understand. The cats who follow her speak to her in a secret language, and those folk who help her on her path are rewarded in a thousand different ways."

"Shut up that nonsense!" one of the men hissed. But Charity over rode him.

"You go on, honey."

"On her hip is a gun as old as the world and almost as big. With her travels an army of wild cats who know secret paths across the land."

The three men heard enough. They were up and guns were drawn.

But they found that a gun was already waiting for them. They hadn’t even seen her move.

"You go on over by the door, honey." she told the red haired girl. "Stay there. Listen. But get ready to run."

The girl backed away from the standoff. But she had the fire, well and true. She stayed. Stared. Her eyes were intent and curious.

Charity smiled at her, then turned the smile on her targets. "Girl tells a story well, don’t she?"

Silence. Electricity coursed the room.

"Well, I know a story of that Woman. One ain’t nobody heard. Want to hear it?"

The men just stood frozen. She looked at the girl. Warming her heart, she got a little smile and an even tinier nod.

Oh, there was fire in this one.

"One night the woman had a dream." Charity began. Her voice became quieter, but her eyes never wavered. "In the dream that first cat — the one who had been with her on the whole hard road — had came up to her and found a voice to speak. This struck the woman as odd until she realized — the way you do sometimes — that the cat had been speaking to her in dreams since the day she’d met him."

"’Mizz’, the cat said ‘I’m getting old and this here game were playing is getting tired and lonesome.’"

"The woman was taken aback. ‘What game are you referring to, Cat?’ she asked."

"’The game where you pretend I’m a cat and I pretend I’m a cat and such.’ he told her. ‘It’s just tiresome.’"

The youngest of the men whimpered and his hand twitched. Charity shot him three times, carefully paralyzing him, and had her gun back at its exact point before anyone else could even breathe different. The thud of the body to the floor was ignored. So was the whimpering. Sweating increased. Blood pressure rose.

The girl, to her credit, didn’t flinch.

After a moment, Charity continued.

"The woman got all insulted and acted like that cat was crazy. The cat was an old hand at his and just told the story again, patiently."

"’I ain’t no Cat, Mizz. I’m just a part of you that you got separated from a long time ago. Your spirit, some might call it. Your will. That fire that makes a person a person.’"

"’You shut up!’ that stupid ignorant woman said. She didn’t want to hear it."

"The cat ignored her, and went on. ‘I’m old and tired of this form, Mizz. Time for you to do what you need to do.’"

The oldest of the men, the one who’d spoke first, broke. He screamed and fired. He missed by a mile.

Very carefully, almost regretfully, Charity blew his head off.

Centimeter twitch, bone and muscle and skin and tendon like steel. She blew the second man’s head off even as he tried to apply pressure to the trigger.

In the sudden silence came a laugh. From the floor. The paralyzed man laughed like he expected nothing less.

The red haired girl helped her pull him outside, where there was a little more light. The girl eyed her like a vision gone bad.

"You need to head on back home now." Charity told her.

"No home to go to." the girl said.

"Well. Away from here will be an improvement."

The child smiled. "You’re right." She turned to walk away, then stopped. She looked Charity in the eyes when she spoke.

"I’m glad I got to meet you." she said, simply. "I’ve been hearing about you all my life. When I was a kid I believed in you utterly. When I got older, not so much." She laughed. "It’s a nice thing to know that the faiths of your childhood are not in vain."

Charity nodded. "What’s you name?"

"Annie." the girl told her.

"A good name." Charity said, with the hint of irony.

"Good enough." the girl agreed. Then she turned and walked away.

Charity focused on the dying man in front of her.

"Where did he go?" she demanded. "Your Boss?"

The dying man smiled at her. "I’ll tell you if you finish the story." he said, voice slurring.

Charity was startled. "What?"

"The story about the cat." he reminded her. "I figured where it was going. I…I know how tales go." he said. There was a pause. "You ate him, right?"

Charity actually laughed. She produced the talisman. It was the gleaming skull of a cat. The empty eyes were as black as space.

"Yeah." she admitted. "When I woke up he was dying at my feet. Old and tired. I petted him a little and he was gone. But his voice was strong in my head. I skinned him and ate him. Shared bits of him with the braver of his army. Then I set his skull on a fire ant pile and let them fashion me this here talisman."

"He was always you, and with you he stays." the man said, blood bubbling on his lips. "I won’t say I’m sorry or anything like that. But I’ll ask you to make it quick."

"Where did he go?" Charity demanded, but her voice was soft.

"He ran into The Ends." the man admitted. "He’s gone. Please. End it quick."

She did so.

Then she headed for The Ends.

She didn’t truly believe it until she neared that ugly grey curtain and saw the abandoned caravan wagon. She caught sight of one of the mules — skinny, near starved, almost wild from abuse — grazing nearby.

She followed a set of tracks until she came right up against that grey border.

Charity stood there, staring into that blank grey wall, and the footprints that staggered so recklessly past it. She stood there feeling the cold emptiness inside, as it echoed the cold emptiness of that grey expanse.

After these miles and these years. After these struggles. Could this be all there was to find? Another set of footsteps leading into the unknown?

Go on, a secret little voice inside whispered. Go on. Keep following. Keep on his trail. Don’t let him escape. She trembled, listening to it, torn.

"Don’t listen." said another voice, familiar and not secret at all.

She turned, gun coming out and up in reflex.

The Smoke Man stopped, hands out in peace.

"He’s gone." he told her, plain and simple. "Gone and past chasing."

"I failed." she interpreted.

He laughed. The laughter held no mockery, no bitterness. It was a laugh of true friendly humor. "Oh, Lord woman. You are too hard on yourself. Ugly Jim was right about you. Nothing by half. Nothing."

"He escaped me." she said. Tears threatened. For the first time in years past God’s counting, her vision wavered and tears threatened. Rage and frustration clashed inside her.

The Smoke Man shook his head, still chuckling. "You terrified the man." he told her. "You hounded him. Even death didn’t give him escape, you followed him even there. You followed no matter the space or the obstacle he threw up. Every mile he got brought him stories of you growing ever closer."

The talisman grew warm. She felt it invading her body.

"You hounded him." he continued, obviously enjoying his words. "All these years, all these miles, and every one brought him tales of you on his trail." His smile grew fit to split his face. "Tales that tore him apart. Tales that made you a queen and a goddess and a goddamn hero. Made you what he’d pretended to be for so long in that other world. What he’d lied himself to be. And the thing that ate him the most, the thing that harried him past all reason was….why, he knew the stories about you were true." That smile no longer looked even the slightest bit pleasant. It was a portrait of revenge, well and true.

"You hounded him, lady. You hounded him right off the edge of the fucking world and into the certainty of extinction. Hounded him with fear and shame and the plain old ugly facts of the matter."

The tears were falling now, but they were a different sort. The gun in her hand sank away, but The Smoke Man didn’t move. Through the prism of those tears she was stunned to see the trails on his own face.

"You hounded him." his voice was quiet, almost a prayer. "Mostly you hounded him with the fact that what your Daddy said was true — no matter what he took away, no matter how hard he hurt you, what your Daddy said was true. You were a good girl."

The Smoke Man turned and spat, into the grey Ends. As near to the clumsy footsteps as he could reach.

"You did him in." said the quiet voice that did not waver despite the tears. "Good riddance. Good girl. Thank you."

And she saw that the shape of the Smoke Man was becoming vague. Dissipating.

The gun was at her side now. "What are you?" she asked. There was no demand, only a desire to know.

His voice was already growing indistinct. But he answered.

"No man is born evil." he said. "In fact, to become evil a man has to kill what is good in him and send it away, into the Borderlands, to trouble his whims no more."

She tried to step up and hold the Smoke Man’s hand as he faded, but he was beyond that now.

He glanced at the implacable grey curtain. "That creature killed me long ago. Sent me here long ago. I’ve been walking this ground for a long time. I did what I could. Life is a trapshoot, and we take our shot. We grab on every chance hit to stay in the game. If we manage to get the chances to stay in long enough, we might get good enough to hang on till something right happens."

Charity fell to her knees and tried to cling to him. She failed, he was truly smoke now, almost gone.

"I was killed long before he set eyes on you. But somehow I knew about you. I waited for you. I hung on till I got to meet you. I felt him come and knew you’d be on his trail."

She wept without shame. He faded.

"Go back east." came the whisper. "Time don’t matter much here. Go to the east and look for your home."

She barely heard his last words over her own grief.

"I’m glad I got to meet you, Annie. I love you. You’re a good girl."

And then the wind took the last of him.

She sobbed for a good long time, and the universe was kind and let her have the peace to do it.

When she finished, she stood up. She dusted herself off. She looked around.

The world abided. From every hiding spot curious eyes peered out. They waited, wondering what came next.

She sighed. She stretched. She hoisted the backpack up and secured the straps. She turned away from the grey nothing of the ends of the world and started walking.

"Let’s go, dammit." she told the cats.

And so she headed back east, in search of a place she’d once known. She wasn’t certain of finding it, of course, but certainties were not the point.

The point was the journey, and that blazing need, that desire. The seeking of a thing was the worthwhile part of living, not the finding.

As she travelled the cats came to her. Ferals from the wilderness, barn kittens who got the itch and urge to travel when she passed. They followed her as birds follow the seasons, as leaves turn to follow the rain. The came to her and fought for her, and loved her up close and from a distance. They responded to something in her that was like themselves, some strength and independence. Some instinct to move together but to never be herded.

To an instinct to forever hunt.

As she travelled the legends whirled and grew around her, shimmering and splitting and becoming great sagas and simple cautionary tales. They became boogie stories and bedtime treats. They became sermons and drunken jokes. They became stories great and simple and none of them were any more or less true than the others. That is the nature of legends. The beating heart of myth.

Legends. Myth. Explorations of that eternal basic mystery, and the simple truth that the investigation of it is what matters.

Legends.

Of the grim, quiet wanderer with the kind heart and a soul full of justice.

Of the army of cats that travelled on secret paths and could not be left behind.

Of the huge steel gun that sounded like thunder.

Of the fall of governments and the rise of new nations.

Of the slaying of dragons herded off the end of the world.

Of the jet black talisman with the space dark eyes.

Of poor Faith, brave Hope and grim Charity.

Of the woman who hitch hiked with cats.

When I was a child, I spake as a child,
I understood as a child, I thought as a child:
but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

For now we see through a glass, darkly;
but then face to face: now I know in part;
but then shall I know even as also I am known.

And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three;
but the greatest of these is charity.
(1Corinthians 13:11-13)

(For Claire and Sharon, and all the other daughters of Columbia. I love you, sisters.)

by George Potter
[from here]

(for Sean, Paul, Carl & Mr. Brunner — out riding the shockwave.)

i.

They are rebuilding me. Wonder if they think I’ll thank ‘em?

Rebuild. Feel the layers fall in. Pieces of body. Pieces of mind. Feel. No touch taste or sight. Black world. Feel. In a tube, invaded by tubes.

No name. No idea. No past. But not all blank. Something left. Some things I know.

My brothers are dead. The circle is broken. The code is shattered. That is left.

Wonder if they think I’ll fuckin’ thank ‘em?

by George Potter
(parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

=== Part 1 ===

What, exactly, is society?

The answer to that question depends -- of course -- on who you ask.

Ask a liberal democrat and you'll more than likely get a bizarre fairy tale concerning some overarching godthing that matters ever so much more than the disposable, puling individuals that just so happen to make up their imaginary hoodoo fetish.

Ask a conservative republican and the answer will differ only in rhetoric. They'll spin it a different way -- adding high flown words about 'values' and traditions' and, more likely than not, whatever religious variant they happen to claim faith in.

Ask a libertarian or an anarchist and you'll at least get some heat. A measure of cynicism concerning the concept, perhaps even outright anger. It won't be positive, at least. Unfortunatly, it will still involve the overarching hoodoo -- as a devil rather than a god, but hoodoo nonetheless.

Big, invisible, inescapable thing that subsumes and commands individuals.

Nonsense, if you ask me.

This 'society as whole organism' concept is what Rose Wilder Lane blew big smoking holes through when she penned these beautiful, utterly true words in 1943:

To think of human society as an organism, developing, progressing, or retrograding, is to think like a bee -- if a bee thinks. It is to think as a pagan thinks. It is to imagine a fantasy.

In the human world there is no entity but the individual person. There is no force but individual energy. In actual human life the only real Society is every living person's contact with everyone he meets.

So far as Society has any real existence, it exists when boy meets girl, when Mrs. Jones telephones Mrs. Smith, when Robinson buys a cigar, when the motorist stops for gasoline, when a lobbyist tips a bellboy and when he meets a Congressman, and when the Congressman votes on a bill; when the postman delivers the mail and the labor bosses discuss a strike and the milliner brings another hat and the dentist says, "Wider, please." Human relationships are so infinitely numerous and varying every moment, that no human mind can begin to grasp them.

To call all these relationships Society, and then discuss the progress or welfare of Society, as if it existed as a bee-swarm does, is simply to escape from reality to fairyland.

-- What Was Wrong With The Old World?, Rose Wilder Lane

This concept is what Ludwig Von Mises devestated again and again in [i]Human Action[/i]:

Individual man is born into a socially organized environment. In this sense alone we may accept the saying that society is--logically or historically--antecedent to the individual. In every other sense this dictum is either empty or nonsensical. The individual lives and acts within society. But society is nothing but the combination of individuals for cooperative effort. It exists nowhere else than in the actions of individual men. It is a delusion to search for it outside the actions of individuals. To speak of a society's autonomous and independent existence, of its life, its soul, and its actions is a metaphor which can easily lead to crass errors.

-- Human Action Chapter VIII

It's odd that even the most diehard liberal or conservative will agree with Von Mises that society is, at base, the process of individuals interacting. They have to. As RWL astutely observed, to disagree is to 'retreat into fantasy.' If said diehards did indeed disagree, one would merely have to ask them to point to their society. To draw a picture of it. To describe its shape and form and function, to explain its mechanics, in simple descriptive terms.

They can't, of course. Mired as it is in dogmatic political nonsense, society becomes a non-concept -- a mystical concept as blind faith based as Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. Unlike those harmless conceits, however, the political definition of society is dangerous. It has, in fact, been used for centuries as the big club, the truncheon, in the ongoing devaluation of the individual. When you hear 'for the good of society', beware. It almost always means your individuality -- and your wealth, health, and dignity -- is in danger.

But, if society is the process of individuals interacting, how can it be somehow 'more important' than those same individuals? How can something created by the actions of individuals be used to belittle and harm them?

Because society as defined by the collectivists and powermongers and control freaks is an outright lie. Amusingly (if the bleakest of black humor amuses you), it's not even a well told lie. It is a ridiculous, inept, un-clever, clumsy lie. Loki himself would speak truth before he used such pathetic trickery. Satan would bow before heaven rather than resort to such childish fibbing.

Society, as posited, praised and worshipped by the beehivers and leash-holders, simply does not exist.

Society as it is, however, does exist. It is as real as math and music and logic and language. Far from devaluing individuals, it glorifies them. Rather than being 'more important' than our flickering firefly selves, it is our servent and greatest tool. Instead of beating us down, it raises us up to great heights and allows wondrous achievement.

Because I can point to society. I can draw you a picture of it. I can describe its shape and form and function and explain its mechanics, in simple descriptive terms.

Society is a map.

A map of mankind.

=== Part 2 ===

In any process of interaction, there must -- by definition -- be a common basis for that interaction. How, exactly, do we as individuals interact with each other?

This is an absurdly simple answer: We communicate. Every single peaceful interaction -- from the prosaic to the profound -- requires communication to happen. In fact, the only interaction possible without communication of some sort is brute violence, the thing that society exists to avoid.

Communication, eternal non-interaction, or violence -- those are the three choices.

Society is communication when all mystical notions are stripped away. Lines of communication.

Think on your daily life. Imagine yourself unable to communicate. No conversation, no information gathered or passed along, no trading or sharing of anything.

Daily life becomes literally impossible in such a nightmarish hypothetical.

Eons ago, for some unknown, wonderful reason, two groups of primitive folk met and decided not to fight. Instead, they attempted to figure each other out. They sat down and communicated. How they did this is unknown and probably unknowable. It also doesn't matter -- body language, grunting and pointing, symbols drawn in the dirt. All of those or none. No matter. What matters is that it worked. The two groups not only refrained from conflict, they probably traded. That first message was no doubt something of this nature:

"We need meat. We got lots of berries. You come from rocky place. No bushes there. You give meat, we give berries."

In that transformative, world changing unrecorded moment, civilization was born. The market came to pass. The division of labor reared its head. No longer did all needs and wants have to be provided via direct individual labor. No longer did a shortage in one area mean the hard cold fact of doing without. No longer did desire and need mean the dangerous and tragic necessity of violence.

The map of mankind that is society began to be sketched. Lightly and crudely at first, with a tentative hand. The cartographers of the proto-map had no idea if this map would prove trustworthy in the future. The trade partner of today might be the raider of tomorrow. That they tried nevertheless is something we modern humans owe them thanks for. It was an insightful and prescient risk that makes modern venture capitalists look like scared kids with Topps cards in the schoolyard. To those first map makers, taking a chance on this society racket was risking literally everything: the safety and security of their tribe. To them, those small family clusters were the entire world.

The risk paid off, though -- paid off so spectacularly that it's no exaggeration to say that all of modern civilization is just a dividend. For the first cartographers, the main payoff was the effect that communication had on their small insular little worlds. They found those worlds expanding and growing in complexity. With communication came a host of new relationships, new ways of existing with others who had -- up until then -- been scary strangers. No longer was it a choice between avoiding and fighting. Now there was the possibility of peaceful interaction and -- even better -- possible gain.

I'm simplifying this to make a point, of course. There was probably no single moment where two groups sat down and initiated society. The more realistic idea is that such things happened repeatedly, again and again, until suddenly some critical mass was reached and humanity found itself with a surprisingly large amount of chattering neighbors.

Things really got interesting when spoken language began to be codified and used over wide areas. Though mutable, spoken language holds its shape far better than body language and symbolic gesturing. Written language came along much later, and decreased the mutation even more.

The big problem -- and it's a problem that exists to this day -- was that language was a geographic/territorial phenomenon. Beyond a certain area the map changed, became written in unknown symbols. This fact slowed the progress of a Greater Society considerably. The logical and near universal ordering of society -- family, community, tribe, etc. -- broke down along geographical boundaries because of this. Instead of an accepted and universal map, the human race was stuck with a collection of regional maps. Only the happy fact that a great many people enjoyed learning and using those other languages made this merely a setback rather than a disaster.

When talk turns to the most influential of human inventions, only rarely is language -- written or spoken -- mentioned along with such things as fire, the wheel, agriculture, etc. I personally think this is because language -- though no less an invented tool than the aforementioned -- is such a basic function that it seems a biological effect. Speech is indeed a biological effect, but language itself (and it's beautiful daughter writing) is a technological artifact through and through.

Using those first proto-maps the human race took the idea of society and ran with it. Society increased quickly and well, the complexity of the communication tools increasing along with the numbers of human minds manipulating them.

The map expanded, became lush with detail. Technology sang and shifted paradigms: radio and cinema and television and telephones. Geographies shrank as the map found new symbols to denote electron warped time space.

And then, one day, the kids found the map and decided to hack it.

=== Part 3 ===

Mercy Please is 4, and today is a school day.

Playtime is over and the world collapses into Naptime.

A blink.

Refreshed, Mercy allows the annoying but mandatory fact of reality to intrude.

Her room is so bland in The Real. Four walls, a ceiling and a floor. Clumps of dour grey smartmatter that serve as chairs and beds and a million imaginary toys when enlivened by the commands of the signals she outputs.

Mr. Teach, entirely imaginary, clambers from a sudden hole in the floor, grinning at her from a monkey form. Mercy knows that Mr. Teach always chooses a shape that will enhance and illustrate the lesson. Despite this boring, pragmatic function, Mercy can't help but grin at the compact little simian shape. He grins back as the magic hole fills itself.

"Good afternoon, Mercy." He gives a solemn little monkey bow. "did you have a pleasant morning?"

Mercy nods, but pretends annoyance. "Until you came along to spoil it." She glances at him from the corner of her eye. "Can't we do the lesson in Connection today?"

Mr. Teach shakes his head firmly. "No, dear. Stats show that you are spending far too much time in the Flow. You aren't getting enough exercise." He climbs up onto a clump of the smartmatter and gestures broadly. "I thought we might take a walk and see the city."

She sighs. Knowing there is little use in arguing -- Mr. Teach has override rights to her sensorium, after all -- she codes her unisuit to proper hiking attire. She fusses with the color scheme, as little girls are wont to do, but decides quickly enough. The sooner this is over the sooner she can return to play.

They take the lift to street level and walk pleasantly along the broad pedestrian dominated avenue. Above them air traffic hums and flashes noiselessly by.

"Now!" Mr. Teach says, taking a rather un-monkey like interest in the sights and sounds of the human city. His eyes seem happily alive to the people they pass. "Where were we?"

Another sigh, twice as petulant. "The first stage of the Com Revolution was ending." Mercy admitted, grudgingly. "The Overnet..."

"...was becoming established among humanity. The idea of society-as-communication was over and the fact of society-as-communication was becoming increasingly plain." Mr. Teach had his bearings now. "An exciting time, my dear! Dangerous as well."

"Dangerous?" Mercy asked. Despite herself she was becoming interested. Danger was always interesting.

"What was dangerous about it? People just had to adjust the way they thought about things." No matter how hard she tried, Mercy simply couldn't grasp the idea that learning about something new could be dangerous. It seemed that sometimes she learned a million new things a minute.

Mr. Teach went on. "The old conception of society was that it controlled individuals, Mercy."

She laughed. "That's silly!"

"Not to your ancestors. They had very little control of their own communication."

"I don't understand." This was puzzling. "Why didn't they?"

"Mainly because back then there were people who gained enormous power by keeping people from communicating properly."

"But.."

"By keeping people confused and misinformed and suspicious of each other. By playing on peoples fear of strangers and society itself!"

Mercy considered. "How could you be afraid of society? Society is just....people talking, and sharing, and trading, and..."

"They didn't realize that then. They didn't have the things you take for granted. Not even the simplest and most basic things."

"Like what?" Mercy barely realized that she had forgotten about playtime and was entirely wrapped up in her lesson. Mr Teach performed his duties well.

He considered. "Let's pretend you were lost. What would you do?"

"I'd call Mum. Or my friend Chee."

Mr. Teach shook his head. "Pretend you couldn't. Pretend there was a sudden outage on output. What would you do?"

Mercy rolled her eyes. "Obviously I'd center."

"Do so."

"But I'm not lost!" Mercy reminded him.

"Humor me."

She sighed. Invisible switches flashed, codes pulsed, systems engaged. Mercy's mouth spoke the basic keycode of social engagement:

"You are here."

All systems overrode. Her sensorium lit up like a Christmas birthday. The plain walls of the world became spiraling data structures: every door and detail labelled with sighttouch info triggers.

The web of connection became illustrated. Mercy was suddenly aware that she was the center of a vast spiderweb of people, and from each person she was connected to more people. The familiar program in her head pulled public data into a spell of familiarity, and alerted the entire map of mankind that one small girl in New Chicago was unsure of where she was.

A million eyes and minds turned and asked, helpfully:

"Are you allright, hon?"

"Do you need a hand, luv?"

Mercy apologized, and explained about school. There were indulgent smiles and winks as the map faded into non-necessity.

"Your ancestors did not have that, Mercy." Mr. Teach said quietly. "they thought they were on their own, all the time.

Mercy was quiet, sobered. "How did they survive?" she finally wondered.

"They learned better." Mr. Teach said.

The walk continued, and Mercy -- now all ears -- learned how her great grandparents had insured that she'd never have to be alone...

=== Part 4 ===

In the opening days of the 21st century, the scattered individuals of the human race find themselves at war.

This is not a war of guns and bombs, but of concepts old and new. Of ideas sacred and sacrilegious. Of the right to hold the keys to the kingdom.

Since the beginnings of the State and its unquestioned reign, the power of information has belonged to it and it alone. Uncounted are the tales of the State -- in forms ranging from kings to popes to revolutionary councils -- deciding the truth and worth of information. Religious dogma, scientific theories, the facts of the matter concerning knives in backs and hands washing each other.

In a world where knowledge can save lives or slit throats, those who control the information control everything. The key to keeping a society -- a group of individuals united through communication lines -- in check and under control is to control the information that they receive. It is no coincidence that the most intense era of state solidarity in history coincided with the same era that saw mass communication bottlenecked and heavily regulated by state agencies. When 'media' was a handful of newspapers and three national networks, building a consensus was a simple matter of releasing the proper information. With tight control of the media, governments could wage incredible wars of attempted genocide, burning cities and killing millions, all while presented their actions as a noble struggle of liberation and anti-conquest.

The 'greatest generation' was a generation fed lies and rose colored propaganda in newsreels and big budgeted Hollywood drama.

This facade began to crack during the Cold War, as news gathering technology allowed reporters to operate directly in the field and see things not meant for public consumption. Despite the fact that the eventual broadcast was still sanitized and controlled, the people gathering the news began to talk and tell stories. The proliferation of more and more news outlets -- television, radio and newsprint -- meant that those opposed to the governmental line (even if simply in preference to another governmental faction) had places to sneak their version of the truth into the mix.

From such hairline cracks do great fractures grow. Many are the tales of internal ideological struggle during the 60's and 70's as news outlets debated over covering the rapidly growing protest movement.

In the end, those debates mattered little. On the horizon were coming technologies that would make the elitist question of 'what should we show the public?' moot.

Cable and satellite increased the number of info sources vastly. Ironically, one of the boons of this was that the citizens of one language society now had access to the often conflicting reports of another language society. The geographical limitation that had caused the expansion of the social world to flounder was a facet in breaking the statist hold on information.

But those static and linear advances paled in comparison to the explosion of the modem and the Internet. When unleashed on the world, the new interactive media was nothing less than a popular revolution. In a few short years the entire world changed. The map of mankind became a truly global phenomenon.

But more than mere numbers was the simple fact that online communication was both individual and non-linear. A dozen conversations could be held at the same time, each participant being anywhere in the world. Connection was instant and ongoing. New contacts were made with chaotic, exponential speed.

No longer would individuals rely on the chosen and groomed purveyors of The Truth to tell them how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. Instead, they'd go directly to the angels and query them as to the numbers of their last dance recital.

The dominance of static, official media was broken. Individuals could now range the map themselves, asking eyewitnesses to whatever event took their fancy.

The statist response to this was slow -- and still ongoing. It does not like it but -- due to the speed and decentralized nature of the phenomenon, and it's own glacial pace and hidebound mindset -- there was very little it could do about it.

But the original generation of online cartographers was not the true worry to Those Who Once Controlled The Truth:

Their children were.

=== Part 5 ===

Mercy Please is 104, and today she receives news of a great tragedy.

It's an ordinary day for her. Aboard her craft, drifting along in the Main Belt, hard at work searching for resources to sell to a hungry Earth.

The report arrives at full override, screaming past all polite wait & see and filtersets.

The United Council For Integrated Absolutism has nuked New Chicago. The Free Symbolists refusal to bow to regulated data procedure has led to dire action. The news is reported as tragic but necessary by the UCIA biased medianets.

Her family, and every childhood friend left on Terra. Dead. Burned away in an instant for refusing to comply with what they saw as slavery. Refusing to step backwards into an age of controlled information.

The rage that Mercy feels is indescribable. For long moments she ponders the power at her disposal. The sleek but vital fusion engines that power her craft. The detailed maps of already near proper orbit NEOs. She considers what would be the work of a few spare months: nudging those waiting hammers into proper position. She imagines the havens of the UCIA -- New Washington, Denver, San Francisco and Boston -- destroyed by screaming mass from above.

But she shakes that off, and weeps instead. Such rage induced action would avenge no one, would bring no one back. All it would do, in the end, is place the blood of innocents on her own hands.

Instead, she feels a long put off decision being made.

For the past twenty years Mercy has been separated from the Terran symbolflow by sheer distance and the limitations of light speed. She has become a part of a different grouping. They call themselves the Transreach -- the integrated human presence between Mars and Jupiter. They are the new pioneers, the prospectors of the great solar Reach. They have traded the simple and safe lives of Near Earth connection for the sparse glory of tiny ships with massive engines. They pan the dark troves of the Reach not for riches but for adventure.

And, among them, is a sizable subculture dedicated to moving even further. To crossing the greatest Reach of all: the gap between stars.

"We've seceded, sure." her friend and occasional lover Quire Denis says often. "But it reminds me of kids in a tent in the back yard, pretending that they're camping. We have a minor lag in the symbol flow, but -- as annoying as that is -- it's merely inconvenience. If Terra wants us, it knows where to find us."

Not for long, Mercy thinks. Not any more. She has a great deal of influence among the Transreach.

An hour and a half later she is in connection with over two hundred of her closest compatriots. Her sudden swing towards the Starbound is a shock to many, until they see the vids of devastated New Chicago and realize that everything has changed. That the second Com revolution has begun and the very survival of the Symbolflow might be dependant on their making themselves scarce.

Several important things are agreed to in this initial meeting. A physical conference is called for, and Ceres is chosen as the rendezvous point. A total and complete boycott of Earth is instigated amongst the connected Transreachers. An information embargo is also agreed upon. A mutual defense pact is sworn to. No Transreacher will attack the motherworld, but any ship or fleet sent against the Reach will be destroyed with no lack of prejudice. The Terrans are likely to underestimate the skill and raw power of the Transreach, seeing themselves as the peak of civilization and their far flung cousins as provincial miners and common folk. They had no clue that the Transreachers jolly community had completely overturned the art and science of the fusion engine from sheer necessity. The slowest and simplest Reach boat could out maneuver and outgun the best Terran military vessel by an order of magnitude.

After connection is broken and new courses plotted, Mercy spends the rest of this awful wakeperiod in solitary mourning for her dead friends and family. It seems the entire planet has died in her heart.

We are here, she reflect, and they are there. The dead. The living. The great trunk of connection and the heart of the Symbolflow. How shameful that we must abandon that connection in order to safeguard it for future generations.

Yes. How shameful, and the tears do not stop for quite a while.

But they do eventually, and a smile replaces them. A smile and the first stirrings of a universal excitement, a deep primitive need for the new and the distant.

How shameful, yes.

But oh, how exciting as well!

=== Part 6 ===

The connection and integration of the human species will not bring about utopia. It will not solve the problems of scarcity or violence. It will not turn human beings into angels. It will, in fact, reveal once and for all that human beings are not, never have been and never will be angels. That human beings are human: fallible, sometimes petty, often irrational, and always surprising.

And, quite often, entirely marvelous.

What connection and integration will do is to allow those marvelous qualities to manifest quicker and with greater regularity than ever before. It will allow those failures and petty actions and surprises to become apparent almost instantly and be dealt with more efficiently. It will allow us to never be separated or alone. It will allow our economy to grow and flourish.

Most importantly, it will make sure that those who demand power can never again separate us and force their will upon us in tiny groups that are easy to control. It will make lying an almost impossible art form. It will make education a simple organic process, available to all for time expended.

The tools to accomplish this exist, though they are currently bulky and rather expensive. The overall framework also exists: in a primitive and ridiculously complex form. Personal computers and the Internet are the beta versions of the integrated connection to come. Eventually we will stop sitting at our computers and communicating over bulky wires. We will no longer rely on centralized servers and third party routing. We will wear those computers and our communication will dance on the melody of invisible waves. Every user will function as their own server, and the routing will be chaotic, ever changing and on the fly.

The true net will be built from the bottom up on an encrypted basis. It will be individual-centric and a beautiful conflicting mass of standards and jury-rigged systems. The eventual protocols will not be administered from on high but will emerge from the vicious natural selection of Darwinian standards: the smallest, cheapest, sleekest and cleanest aps and tech will win.

The open source movement, the crypto-libertarian front, the shadowy fringes of file sharers and cyber bootleggers: these are the people who will build the overnet. They will be the people who first use it to disappear from the radar of the state. These will be the ghosts and phantoms of the coming digital revolution.

These will be the people who integrate human action and bootstrap the overnet. These are the people who will place a copy of the map of mankind into the hands of every soul who wishes for one.

The state is currently allowing this to happen, though they are retarding and slowing it as much as they possibly can. The reason they aren't stopping it directly is that they suffer from the same lack of communication that bedevils the peons: they don't communicate well enough to realize the vast danger it represents to them. By the time they possess the ability to do so, it will be too late. The peons will have it as well.

And the peons outnumber them. And can outthink them.

Once they have it, they will look upon the 'system' with new eyes. They will wonder why they've trusted these foolish control freaks for so long. they'll wonder how they could have ever considered something as nebulous and simple as 'society' as their lord and master. How the excuse of 'bettering' society could ever be achieved through pain and theft and imposed misery. How those rancid objectives helped humans to communicate with each other. How those wars and divisions did anything to build the world.

When that happens, the State will be finished. It may go out with a spasm of violence, but it will indeed go out. The revolution will more than likely be fairly bloodless. What blood is spilled will be those control-freaks who simply refuse to relinquish power. When secession and non-compliance is met with violence, the revolutionaries will be forced to use violence themselves.

Thus freed, human society will become truly global and truly voluntary. The map of mankind will fill every nook and cranny of this planet. Eyes will be cast beyond, towards the other worlds around this sun and out to the stars. The connected human race, like a great choir, will need new arenas to fill with the song of human struggle. With the joy of structure. With the clean new lines of explored places, and adventures worth telling children in hushed voices.

We are the human race. We are the makers of maps. We will not be satisfied with an explored globe. It will be the vast uncharted edges that call to us in siren song. And we shall rush to them, as fools rush. We will die and fail and create legends.

Eventually, we will conquer the vacuum and spread the map of mankind across this galaxy and beyond.

This is our destiny.

It is a good destiny.

=== Part 7 ===

Mercy Please is almost 1200 years old. Today she is a long way from home.

The star is known to humans as CD-75 967. It is part of the constellation of Apus, and is 91 light years from the Sun.

As the first human being to gaze on it with naked eyes, she has the right to give it a more poetic name. She ponders and chooses Helios in a burst of optimism. Helios was the Greek twin of the Roman Sol, and this is the closest to Sol type star that any of the Reach Diaspora have targeted, and is the second leg of her grand mystery walk. The first was a gorgeous blue giant, a way station only. The plentiful resources of that system gave her the means to reach this one, however — and the simple success of continuation had been a thrilling victory.

Mercy had made her journey at 12 percent of light speed, relying on nanotech based suspension techniques to keep her alive and healthy across the great black reaches. They seemed to have functioned fine: both herself and Hansel, her ship, required only minor repairs directly after WakeUp.

She is excited and a little nervous. This will no doubt be the last leg of her journey. She has been phenomenally lucky. The odds of her surviving another long passage are astronomical.

There is, though, chance of sending home some good news: this system is thought to be a near certainty for an Earth analog.

She has a million tasks, both mission based and the requirements of simple survival. As soon as the medcom gives the go ahead, she throws herself into labor.

Weeks pass, and she is nearing the middle of the system, her eye on a particular gas giant for refueling purposes, when the navicomp picks up the signal.

The signal manifests as a series of impossibly regular static interference. The com notes them and informs her of the discrepancy in a weekly maintenance summary.

Excitement strikes her as soon as she investigates. The repeating static bursts are a long message in an archaic form of naval code.

She translates and celebrates. The first line of the cycling news that went seeking her and her fellow loners in the dark is this:

You are no longer alone. We fools have figured out how to talk faster than light.

The rest of the message is a detailed explanation of how to generate tachyonic pulses by modulating the field of any sufficiently powerful fusion core: Hansel’s heart will work well.

She is preparing to do just that when all hell breaks loose — the navicomp demanding her attention.

What it informs her of makes her forget the possibility of conversing with the Earth for several days. Makes even the relief of knowing she wont have to die completely alone mild in comparison.

When she finally does follow the instructions and send out the bursts of static coded in Morse, the first line is triumphant:

Well and good, but this fool has found you all a new home.

She wonders at the celebration that will happen when it is received, and how long that will take.

She is preparing to enter a permanent orbit around the world she has named Gretel, in honor of her steadfast little ship, when the answer comes: two months and two days since she sent it out. And it arrives in a steady stream, since she has been sending every bit of the amazing data she has gathered on her approach to her world. How similar but different from their Home it is, how the atmosphere is probably breathable, the chemical basics of the wild and lusty life that spreads across it perfectly similar to the life they know. How beautiful and promising and patient it waits there in the rapidly filling viewscreen.

And maps of course, maps and maps. And more maps to come now that she is orbiting and charting every square inch with camera and line imager.

Back and forth the conversation flows, on dots and bashes of tachyons bled off the skin of dying hydrogen. News of life and death and love and celebration. News of her fellow Diasporans, tragic and triumphant. Other worlds have been found, some closer some further. None similar, but none impossible to tame. The challenge of life, of expanding into new environments, will not be boring and predictable.

A dozen years pass in her deep study, when the message arrives — the one she had been waiting for.

We are coming. We are coming to see your world and walk it’s face.

And at much closer to the speed of light. The first explorers will arrive in just under a century.

Mercy Please considers, she takes careful inventory and plots careful simulations.

Yes, it’s possible. Quite possible. With the nanotech therapy and her current supplies she may well be able to greet those who walk her Gretel.

Oh, hope, she may be able to walk it herself!

A great satisfaction fills her then, and an even more intense drive to discover every detail about this new home for humanity before its first children arrive.

Her folk are coming, for good or ill or all or nothing. The map has grown vastly and cast its borders out towards infinity. For there will be worlds beyond this, and new galaxies beyond those. And her folk will find them. Long after she is gone, they will be expanding the map of mankind in every direction until the end of time.

But for now she sums it up in the simple words she repeats in tachyonic rythym for her approaching kin. Three words that speak of true facts and destiny fulfilled. Three words that explain the basic truth of every map no matter the size and complexity. The three most important words:

You are here.
You are here.
You are here!

by George Potter
[from here]

Many, many years ago -- in the days before Emperors and Empires, the days when Dragons still strode the land and rode the air above it -- there existed a rich province by the Silk River. This province was a large and populous place, home to a strong and prodigious folk, healthy of body and sharp of mind. The fields grew food as rain falls in summer, and the forests were thick with game. The Silk River itself was a treasure: the fish so plentiful that a single cast of the net would feed a family for a week. For time out of mind, life was good.

Then, as happens, the province fell under the rule of a greedy and contemptuous Lord.

by George Potter
[from here]

I am individual.

By some incredible quirk of fate or ineffable plan of higher powers I find myself in this world -- alive, sapient, dreaming. I find myself in possession of mind and hands to reach out and alter the universe. To create. To play with the toolset of godhood.

This I have chosen to do, for the betterment of myself and those I love. For, being individual, I have chosen the connections that fill my life with joy on a strictly voluntary basis. I refuse to be forced into false duties.

To all those not in my circle I humbly request to simply be left alone, and my circle spared. The price I will pay is to extend you the same regard.

Those who violate this freely given compact will meet an individual in full knowledge of his godhood. They will meet the destroyer.

For I am creator and engineer. I am peacemaker and pilot. I am dreamer and singer and poet. I am lover and loved.

I am god.

I am individual.

by George Potter
[from here]

I build the pyre slowly and carefully, hands calm. A classic shape of logs and sticks, tinder where she should be, densities and dryness judged and placed just so. I build the pyre to burn slow and fierce, with more heat than light, for nights like this it's best to keep a low profile.

I am 14 years down the road you were denied. 14 years older and more exhausted and every day more disgusted and afraid. It has gotten worse. It will grow worse yet.

14 years ago, children. I watched you die. Millions watched you die and were lied to about it. The difference between myself and them are simple and dual:

I did not believe them.

I have not forgotten you.

I light the pyre and smile when a single match suffices. A well built fire will not disappoint. Nations and noble experiments may crumble, but the dry bones of trees will burn if positioned right. Every time. A reassuring pattern in an unsure world.

The flames grow and dance and I let the sight of your burning home dance there in the light and heat. I feel the old revulsion -- faded but still there -- coil inside my guts.

As flame takes its fuel, I play with possibilities in my head. Alternate worlds where you did not die, worlds you walk even now.

A dark haired beauty, 18 years old, hitching her way through the Southwest, towards golden California. She tells stories sometimes, of the weird family she finally tired of and left behind. She has a tattoo of a butterfly on her shoulder and she has broken seven hearts already. She means no harm, but she is far from through.

A wiry young man in a baseball training camp in Houston. A wonderboy they found in the middle of nowhere. He's shy and polite, quiet in the face of the city boys and gruff pros he now mingles with. They call him 'Tex' with a mixture of humor and jealousy. When he swings the world thunders. When he throws, lightning is born.

A chubby blonde trembles at her interview for the big library in Albuquerque. Six years of school she suffered through, for the honor of a low salary and a world of books. Her nervousness belies the peace she feels at the walls and canyons of paper and that glorious smell. She fits here. She can feel it. "Waco." she says, in response to the question. "I guess you could say I had a non-traditional childhood." She laughs.

Painful, these might have beens.

The fire is at peak, and whole sagas dance in that orange red heart. Whole dramas and comedies blur there through wet eyes.

I look up and you sit with me, frightened, confused children still. There is no anger. That is for me to feel. There is no justice, that was denied. Your killers faced no consequences.

I look back into the fire, away from your eyes. I watch until the flames shrink and flicker out. I stare at the white ashes that pulse with dark heat. I let the ashes become a patch of ruin in Texas. I let them become the ancient blood soaked sands of Iraq, the stony fields of Afghanistan. A stoop in New Jersey where a man died convulsing, begging 'not in front of the kids.'

I hope in this world of ghosts you are not lonely.

I can only stay a moment more. The pyre is burned, the heat has fled. The cold and damp creep up again, as they always will. But I will make this promise, the same promise I make every year:

I will speak the truth of how you died, in the face of lies.

And I will never forget you.

Goodnight, children.

George Potter - another great short story from the author of Micropiece. [clairefiles]

by George Potter
[from here]

To hell with you, spirit.

I did not return to this place to do battle with spirits. I returned to this place for my own selfish and important reasons. It was you, spirit, who initiated this conflict. It was you, spirit, who laid down the gauntlet.
So be it.

"Are you OK?" she asks.

I swim up out of almost sleep, the night and the situation at hand shimmer into existence around me.

I am in a sleeping bag. I am naked. I am not alone.

Stars burn above me, spread and scattered like gems on jewel cloth. The air is warm but not hot. The breeze is gentle but insistent. Such nights and such situations are the material of wonderful memories for the young. I am not young. I'm not old, but I'm not young.

Sometimes it feels like I was never young.

"OK it was good." she says, and I can feel her smile in the dark. "But it shouldn't have stolen your voice." She kisses me quickly. "It wasn't that good."

"Sorry." I tell her. "I think I dozed off." And dreamed. And was warned.

She snuggles up to me and sighs. "I gotta go home in a minute. Sorry."

I squeeze her back, for politeness sake. I'm not comfortable here. Something is watching.

"Where are we, anyway?" I whisper.

She laughs. "You must have been higher than I thought. We're up near the head of Pond Creek, 'bout three miles from my house." A yawn. "This is where everybody goes."

Everybody is a fool then, I think. This is not a good place. It's not an evil place either, but it's far from good.

Something is watching.

Something that lives here.

Everybody says that my Mother is a witch. I've never agreed with or denied that claim. I simply shrug and let them make up their own mind.

My mother is a straightforward, often severe woman of 65 who prides herself on her civility, her cooking, and the pack of children she managed to raise despite poverty and hell's own aggravation. In daily life, through daily stress, there is nothing whatsoever mystical or magical about my mother. Those are facts.

But my Mother knows things, that is also a fact. Many strange and unusual things. She knows the herbs to pick to brew the tea to kill the fever after the doctors have given up. She knows the place to go to find the perfect stone to sit in the garden to frighten crows. I have seen her reason with cats and command strange dogs to lie down and be quiet.

Many things.

Before I left her home, before I made the return to the place where I was born, she told me this:

"If you go into the mountains -- and knowing you boy, that's where you'll stay -- you will see and hear things. Don't be afraid. If you don't turn and look at them, they can't hurt you."

I nodded, serious. I'd have laughed at anyone else, and dismissed them as silly. But this was Mother.

She knows things.

Her name is Shelly and I watch her dress with eyes now adjusted to starlight.

She is not a particularly pretty girl, but I would not call her plain. She has her own face -- unique and beautiful, not pretty. I approve. Pretty is for flowers and little girls in gingham dresses and black suede shoes. Pretty is for the sentimental. I prefer beauty.

"Stop staring at me because I'm fat." she says, tone battling to sound playful but failing. Too much self consciousness coils behind the words, shattering the glib surface. Real pain lies between them.

She's not fat, but I don't tell her that. It's the stock response, it's expected, and -- like all stock responses -- will burden her with a load of assumptions.

"Skinny women bore me." I say instead.

She laughs.

I'm sitting up now, still naked, sleeping bag puddled around my lap. I watch her pull on a pair of pants with two deft motions and button them. She wears men's clothes. A Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt and Lee jeans, topped with a Harley cap. She manages to look sexy as hell in them, too.

She turns and looks at me. "Get dressed." she commands.

"Why?"

She sighs. "Because I don't have time to pull my clothes back off and attack you. I gotta get home. My nephew will be awake at 7 am sharp, and he'll be jumping on top of my head three minutes later. It's almost 2 am."

I comply, and she walks to her car. I dress quickly, and look around at this apparently popular little hangout. This place that screams danger at me on some low frequency deep in my head.

It's just a big wide spot beside a gravel road, more or less flat. Hemmed in by shrubs and bushes, trees a few hundred feet to the east and west, the road running a winding crooked north/south up the side of the hill.

I hear the car crank but refuse to start. I hear Shelly mutter curses.

Yes. I can feel it. Like a vibration in the air, like a finger pointing at me from the dark.

Something is watching.

Something that lives here.

The starter catches and the car roars into life, load and blaring without a muffler.

"Come on!"

As soon as I turn, facing the car and the headlights that spring into the black, the chill hits me. Imaginary sand skitters down my spine. The hair on the back of my neck stands at painful full attention.

I know, way down on that low frequency, that the watcher just let its face show.

I do not turn and look. I can feel some awful hot breath chuffing from that face, but I do not turn and look. Rigid, electrified, I walk slowly to the car and get in.

We pull out and move down the hill. The watcher stares.

I do not turn and look.

"You're kind of quiet." Shelly says, as soon as we're on our way toward the mouth of the hollow.

"Sorry." I say.

Long seconds drift by, empty save the vibration of the car and the roar of the unmuffled engine.

"Are you embarrassed?"

I'm surprised. "Excuse me?"

"Embarrassed. For fucking a fat chick who stripped down and got into bed with you an hour after she met you."

Sometimes people say things to you that leave you at this mental crux-point. If you're smart enough, it manifests as a sort of scattered graph. You can choose how you want to respond by following the graph.

I do not baby her. I do not reassure her. I do not apologize.

"That's the only kind of women I've ever fucked." I tell her, and it's the truth.

She knows it's the truth, and she laughs. Really laughs. So hard she has to pull over for a minute to recover. The laughter giggles back up again several times in the nice warm silence that it created.

When she drops me off, she's suddenly troubled.

"We're not, like, boyfriend or girlfriend or anything, right? You don't think that..."

"I'm a boy. You're a girl. We're friends. Haven't you ever watched movies? Anything could happen."

I close the door, and place my hand on the window for a moment. She reaches across and touches it goodbye. I can feel a warm spark jump across the barrier of the fake glass.

She pulls out and drives off, toward a still sleeping nephew and responsibilities she didn't create.

I decide I like her a lot.

I go inside and shower. I consider going to bed. But I can still feel the hair on the back of my neck, restless with the remnants of that electric charge. Something dances uneasily along my spine and I know sleep will be delayed, perhaps for a day or two.

I sit down, still naked, at my computer desk. I position the wheeled swivel chair perfectly in the center of the pentagram that no one but myself and Cat (who has not chosen to make an appearance yet) can see.

I close my eyes and hold my breath, until the silky flow of the circles protection crawls up my skin and encases me.

Everyone laughs at my computer, since it has no case and much of it is tacked to the wall. It's the only way it will run, since it builds up far more heat than even the four heavy duty fans placed at strategic points can handle. On cold nights the things it processes can heat my bedroom.

I never turn it off. Power outages have no effect on it, since it operates under its own power. To turn it off, intentionally, would destroy it.

I log on.

The hunt begins.

My father is the greatest mechanic this world has ever seen, and only six people know this fact. Three of them are dead and the other three deserve the sort of trust epic poems are written about.

I once watched my father repair and use an engine my younger brother and myself dug out of the ground: a big block Chevy engine that had waited there patiently for twenty three years. Waited for two children to find and rescue it. Waited for the only hands on the planet capable of giving it life again.

He did this in two days.

Years later, he traded that car for our first computer -- a Commodore Vic 20. On that day, my father found his purpose in life.

When I found out what I could do with the computers my father rigged, I discovered my own.

The night before I left his home, he presented me with this rig.

The hunt is still afoot when Cat -- his hunt at an end -- returns. He enters through one of his secret doors, ignoring the flap I built for him as he does unless we have a guest.

He saunters over to me, to the invisible pentagrams edge, and drops me the morning gift. A large gray jack rabbit, nearly his size. It has been decapitated, but there is no blood.

I don't know what he does with the blood. That's his business.

"Thanks, Cat. Good morning."

He mews, deep and rumbly, like a rusted manhole cover being pried from some burned city street. Milk, he says.

I glance at the clock. It's nearly 10 am. I have learned a lot, in my meandering way, but not enough.

Shift and CTRL down, I tap in: Exodus Tempus 60. The search locks and holds, the protective circle pauses. One hour.

I snag the rabbit and move to the kitchen, Cat dancing right on the edge of tripping me.

I pour him a milk in his favorite saucer and he sets to it with a will. I do the same to the rabbit, skinning and cleaning it, realizing that I'm starving. I slice a nice portion from it and start it frying with some butter and paprika. I scramble some eggs in a sseparatepan.

Cat deigns to share breakfast with me, perhaps to show that he does not hunt for sport. That he is a pragmatic killer. Or, maybe, he just likes eggs and paprika.

I don't try to figure cats out. They come to me, of their own will. I have never chosen a cat in my life. Nor have I ever insulted one by naming it. They have their own names. They are not pets to me. They are combination friends and associates. We complement each other and like each other. That is enough.

The only odd thing about Cat is that he is a tom. I've never lived with a tom before. A tom never chose me before now. Always females, usually tiger striped or white. Toms, I've discovered, are very different from the female of their species -- in many ways more sociable, if less affectionate. Not as quick a hunter, but just as skilled and able to take larger game.

It has been almost 10 years since I've bought meat. Why waste money on what a cat will provide willingly and (I suspect) with great joy?

I'm headed back to the computer when someone knocks on the door.

Shelly is smiling at me when I open up, having pulled on a pair of boxer shorts and a t-shirt.

She looks a little embarrassed After a second, I realize why.

She has ditched the guy clothes and... well... dressed up. A nice low cut blouse that shows decent cleavage. A skirt. Hose. Pumps.

Not embarrassed actually. Uncomfortable. And somewhat annoyed.

"Hi." she says. "You don't mind me stopping by, do you?"

"Of course not." I say, despite the fact that I do. I have work to complete, and my one hour holding pattern only has twenty minutes left to run. Missing the mark will result in seven hours work lost, a vicious headache, and a torrential nose bleed.

But I smile as I say it, regardless. I surprise myself by meaning it. I'm happy to see her. She looks cute as a button in her uncomfortable get-up, partially because of her blushing self-awareness.

I realize something as she steps inside and glances around my not exactly impressive home. My morning research is not simply the product of my usual curiosity or due to any danger I sensed formyself.

The danger focuses on her.

"Nice place." she finally judges. "Clean."

"I wasn't raised by wolves. Do you eat rabbit?"

She makes a face. "Ugh, no. That's horrible."

"Deliciously horrible."

She rolls her eyes and sits, obviously reminding herself that she's wearing a skirt.

Cat swaggers up and eyes her.

"Hi kitty." she says.

He narrows his eyes to slits and cocks his head. Then he starts cleaning himself.

Judgment acceptable with provisional reservations.

"Not very friendly."

I laugh. "If he didn't like you he'd raise massive hell." Literally, I don't say.

"You're not one of those weird cat people are you?" she asks, more flirty than inquisitive.

"You have no idea." Something about my eyes catches her. Damn. I'm letting the guard slip a little far, and Cat is staring at me like I'm a fool. The holding pattern is cycling down ttowardfifteen minutes remaining, and I can feel the 'puter pulsing out waves of warning in the bedroom. In a few minutes even Shelly will sense it.

"Not to be rude, but I haven't been to bed yet." I tell her. Best to stick to true statements. "Even ugly guys like me need beauty sleep. Did you need something?"

She stands up. Smiles. "Not really. I was... going to the store. Just... wanted to see you. I guess." Really, really clumsy lies. Except the last bit. "And you're not ugly." She blushes and forges head. "Want to get together tonight?"

Relief. "Sure. Come by around five."

"OK" She stares at me for a few seconds. Then kisses me, on impulse. A sweet little kiss.

As she leaves she walks with a bounce to her step, unable to hide a happy heart.

I see it for the first time, crackling around her like a storm cloud. The black aura of incoming danger. It ccoalescesaround her, a tightening fist, and sends smoky tendrils out, reaching for me.

Whatever lives at the head of Pond Creek wants me, all right -- but knows better than to try a frontal assault. It's a sneaky bitch. It will try to sneak in through a weak emotional backdoor.

Coward.

When I was eleven years old, I figured out how to log onto the internet -- which was an achievement because we didn't have a modem or a phone, and the internet was a bare few servers stitching together a hhandfulof Universities. I figured this out in a half trance, while aattemptingto write a Basic program that would function as an alarm clock.

Unnerved, I asked my father to look at it. He passed out. My mother looked at the code and paled.

After that, they let me be at the computer. I met many interesting people. And creatures.

And I figured out many more things.

I slip back into the chair with nine minutes remaining. The room temperature has grown uncomfortable and a steady ache has crept behind my eyes.

Shift and CTRL down: Resumptis. Cat gives me a final, withering glance and wanders off to sleep.

The hunt continues.

I'm in the Howling, the non-place some call Hell.

It's not. What it really is is the seedbed of reality, the thin layer of existence where nothing becomes something.

"Probably because the universe got bored." my dad opines. My mom always says something about God.

On this side physics begin -- time, space, heat and light. On the other -- nothing.

To me, it's just a big data web.

But I have to be careful. Because on the other side the enemy lives. It has many names.

Nothing, as I said. Scientists call it entropy and 'the heat death of the universe'. Politicians, the human beings most in its thrall, call it Order.

My family, and those like us, call it The Crumbler.

"The first thing you have to understand, son, is that most people are ignorant about the universe. Take the concepts of chaos and order. Chaos is supposed to be bad, Order is supposed to be good. Right?"

I nod. That's what they tell us in school.

"That's a bag of bull." Dad is enjoying this. He likes destroying illusions as much as fiddling with tools. "Think about it: what is the ultimate order?"

I mull it over, but he's being rhetorical.

"Being dead. Being rotted away and gone. Nothing more orderly and quiet and peaceful than that, is there?"

I agree.

"And that's what the Crumbler wants. Not just for us. For everything. For the whole blasted universe."

I'm spiraling in, now pulling data from the minds of the dead. Their souls do not rest here, but their memories are often locked, here -- flash frozen in The Howling by their final frenzied fight to live.

I concentrate on the geographic area of Pond Creek. Its history and settlement.

It comes to me, as a revelation, what I'm dealing with.

I didn't think any nature spirits still haunted this world. I now realized why my mother warned me. Because nature spirits, despite the romanticists and neo-pagans, are all in the service of the enemy. As my family and folk like us -- witchfolk, they call us -- exist to combat him.

I know what to do.

"You can't hide from it." my mother tells me as I pack.

"I'm not trying to hide from anything." I tell her, lying. "I just want to go back and see the damn place."

"You can't help what you are."

"And I can't help what I want, either!" I yell. "Maybe I just want a wife and some kids, Mom! Maybe I just want to be left alone and not worry about some fucking ancient war I never asked to fight!"

She laughs at me, pissing me off even more.

"Lord, boy... you think we chose this?"

I continue to pack, angry.

"Nobody gets to choose. We were born as we were and the enemy tries to kill us because it fears us. We no more choose it than water chooses to freeze in the winter."

I come out of trance. The complexity of what I have to do next demands I be fully functional. That means it's going to hurt.

I once tried to explain to my dad how I built hexes and ttessellationswith the computer.

"A normal computer only knows two things. On and off. But the way you rig 'em makes 'em different."

"Explain it to me." Dad maintained that he had no idea how he did what he did. He worked by instinct and intuition.

"Well... they got on and off. But they also got over and under and toward and away."

"Huh?"

"Six positions. Not two."

He smiled. "A hex."

"Yep."

Lots of things live in The Howling. Imps and daemons and furies and rrievings All of them are dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. And all of them are useful if you do.

I need a rieving

My mom taught me about rievings.

"Nicer than imps or daemons." she said. "And nowhere near as annoying as furies."

She drew a hex on the ground and snatched one from the substrate. It glowed like fire and fluttered in her finger. "Kind of pretty too, don't you think?"

"What are they useful for?"

"Not a lot these days." she said, and flicked it back into the Howling. As long as I live I doubt I'll ever be able to match her skill. "They used to be indispensable when our folk had to deal with spirits. Swallow a rieving, and you can take on its sight. They also sing, a song of protection."

"Think I'll ever have to use one?"

She smiled. "I hope not. But I'll teach you. Just in case."

It takes me almost an hour to pull the tenacious little fucker from the substrate, using almost 1500 lines of code.

Once I realize it, though, I don't have to figure out how to swallow it. Damn thing charges me, smacks me right between the eyes. Pain and light explode in my head, and it takes me a few minutes to get used to the high pitched noise and the bizarre way the world looks.

I realize with a chill that I can now see the Crumbler's effects on the world. The awful fingers of dissolution transforming spacetime into simple dead atoms.

Cat hisses at me.

"Oh shut up." I tell him.

Shelly arrives at 4:45, and I've come up with a plan to get back to the head of Pond Creek.

While in the Howling I dipped into her head. I know she has a weed dealer past the wide place. I know this weed dealer won't let her bring me with her, since he doesn't know me. I also know that she's out and wants some and is broke and bummed about it.

I meet her at the door. She hears my plan and hugs me. The reiving passes a thought to me from her: This guy just flat out rocks.. I tell it firmly to stop doing that.

On the ride she tries clumsily to get to know me.

"So you were born here?"

"Yeah. Left twenty years ago."

"Why did you come back?"

"Why not?"

"Where do you work?"

"I don't.

Short silence.

"How do you get money then?"

"Male prostitution."

She laughs. Then stops.

"Not... like... for real, right?"

I just look at her.

"You're weird." she informs me. But she's almost bouncing in her seat.

As we cross Pond creek bridge I tell her to stop, judging it so that we halt exactly in the center of the bridge. The rieving in my cortex whines its number song: the world apappearso me as perfect geometric edges, the steadily tightening hand of the Crumbler in their hateful symmetry.

"What for?" Shelly asks. Rather than make up a lie I speak with the rievings voice, exactly what she needs to hear. She blushes. "You goof." But she's pleased.

I'm out of the car and make my way to the river's edge. A few seconds travelling on the bank leads me to the marshy edge of where Pond Creek flows into the Big Sandy. I can feel the spirit's baleful influence even here, at its furthest reach. The rieving amps up its chaoswhine, screaming the protective spell around its bound holder.

I scoop the vial full of the mingling waters. I glance at it in the moonlight. Brackish, gleaming dully.

On my way back I catch sight of color. An incongruous flower grows a few feet up the mossy, overgrown bank, lonely pretty in a field of faded green. I pluck it, smiling. Seems my rieving's a bit of a romantic.

Shelly is pleased down to the bone. She nearly wrecks us trying to give me a spontaneous hug. I look at her dourly but she just sticks her tongue out at me and places the flower in her hair.

I must admit -- it looks nice.

We stop by her house for a minute, to check on her nephew. He's busy at his Playstation, wandering an imaginary land and battling imaginary evil. He spares me a smile and a 'Nicetameetcha.' before his attention pulls back to the game.

Shelly grabs three pops and a pack of French Lights, tells her Mom not to wait up, and whisks me out of there.

"Onward to buzzland!" she cries as we leave the driveway. Her eyes shine in the reflected dashlight and I am glad she has no clue how much danger we are walking in to.

"Are you sure this is OK?" she asks me as she drops me off at the wide place, as if it weren't my idea. "I wish dumbass weren't so paranoid."

"It's part of his business to be paranoid, hon." I tell her.

"Still annoying." She sighs. "I'll be right back. Well, not right back. Robbie is the kind of dealer that forces you to gossip before pulling out product. You know the type. Gimme a kiss."

I do. She's greedy.

She finally leaves, thankfully not asking me if I need a picnic lunch and a blanket.

As soon as her headlights disappear I bring out the vial. I can feel the watcher gathering strength, perhaps enraged -- or afraid -- at my returning presence. I have a bare few minutes.

With the assistance of the rieving I draw the not-pentagram, the interior winding hexagon, in water on earth, with a skill Euclid would admire. The air gusts around me, and -- in my head -- the rieving pours out elemental fire into the other three elements.

Components mesh, processes begin, deep on the secret levels of the reality fabric numbers dance and crunch together.

I sit in the circle.

Two seconds, a hair over maybe, and I hear it approach. Feel its breath and smell its angry stink.

"Hello spirit."

Get the fuck off Pond Creek.

"Not very welcoming to one of the few who know of your existence, spirit."

Get the fuck off Pond Creek.

"I come to parley."

NO PARLEY! it screams. I DO NOT PARLEY!

I sigh, dramatically. "Fine. We'll do this by the boring old routine." I take in a breath and hold it. I command the rieving to cycle up to full.

In a voice not my own I speak:

What are you?

A pause. An electric stiffness evades the air. The hex has it. It cannot lie. It cannot refuse to speak.

I am the spirit of what the firefly things call Pond Creek.

How old are you?

As old as the mountains and the forest and the world. Older than your kin, ugly fetus.

What is your purpose?

I pour. I pour. I pour.

What is your intent?

It fights, screaming in pain as the hex forces it to compliance.

I POUR!

I repeat my question, slowly. Enunciating each word, making them huge and horrible. Driving them into the spirit like blades.

What. Is. Your. Intent?

Something like a choked sob. A moan. Then:

KILL YOU! KILL YOU WITCH THING! KILL YOU STINKING WITCH CHILD FROM STINKING WITCH BITCH AND WITCH SIRE!

Oh. Of course. For a moment disgust and anger fills me. Images, connections. Of witches and mechanics and the hexes they weave, from discarded parts and bones and blood. Of hexes riding spirals of DNA into the future. A never ending war I never asked to fight, was drafted into from conception.

Of a sweet girl with a wild flower in her hair, who knew nothing of war on the secret planes. Who just wanted a nice guy who would be sweet to her.

What of the girl? I ask. She has done nothing to you. She is not a combatant. She was born and raised here by your demesnes. The compact...

Was broken when she whored for you!

Ah, yes. The blind morality of the Crumbler and its creatures. My mother's voice in my head: "It hates us for what we are at base, baby. How messy and unpredictable we are. How chaotic and instinctual."

You can't run from the past. Events are hexes, building tessellations as they propgate through time and space. Destiny waits around every crook and corner. Into the future we must march, into the mouth of the Crumbler.

From the boiling chaos of the now, my only medium, I act.

I stand. I focus the rieving into a compacted point. The moonlight warps around me.

I will leave this place, spirit. Do not harm the girl. I will leave and never return. Tell your master.

I pour.

Harm the girl and I will stop that pour. I will end your flow. Harm one hair on her head and you. will. cease.

Get the fuck off Pond Creek.

Not until my ride gets here, bitch.

In the distance I hear the approaching throb of a mufflerless car. A moment later, headlights stab through the trees.

Tell your master. Now... go.

There is a pause. Then the sound of something large turning and walking away. Four feet. It has four feet, whatever body it has chosen.

Just as Shelly arrives, it fades, as does the rieving and the protective circle. I shudder in the sudden cold. I am drenched with sweat. My nose is bleeding.

She sticks her head out the window. "Come on! He had some good shit! Let's roll one."

I climb into the vehicle, make an excuse for the nosebleed, and accept the sack of herb.

Shelly fusses over me, cleaning the blood off, but mollified that it has indeed stopped.

"Forget it." I tell her. I kiss her, greedy myself this time, knowing that this second night together will be our last. I am determined to make it an enjoyable one.

I should have known better.

We are a quarter mile away, I'm rolling and Shelly is gabbing about her perpetually stoned dealer, driving too fast, when she shrieks and slams on the brakes.

I get a single glance.

They'll say it was a deer, but it's the size of an elk. It is solid white and glows.

It has the face of a man and huge human eyes that boil hate even as the car slams into it and careens sideways.

The last thing I remember is moving in slow motion ttowardthe windshield. Moving toward that hateful face.

And a voice, screaming in my head.

I Pour!

I wake up, a few minutes later, unscratched. Thrown through a windshield, thrown clear, but unscratched.

Of course. The hexes my mother placed on from the moment of conception and renews daily will not be defied by such crude measures.

Shelly is not so lucky.

The car is on fire as I stagger toward it, crushed against a huge tree it has damn near knocked down.

She's alive. A mess, but alive.

I manage to get her out. I manage to carry her broken body three miles to her frantic mother and terrified nephew. I manage it, but barely.

I'm not a superhuman. I'm just a guy who can make a machine count past two.

I ride in the ambulance with her to the hospital, numb with anger. Sick with rage. She wakes up twice, screaming in pain. After the second time they up the morphine. Both arms are shattered. Spine dislocated. A hip is broken. Her skull is damaged. The EMTs don't know how badly.

"What the hell did she say?" the driver asks.

His assistant pauses. Then says, in a low voice:

"She said 'It had a fucking face.'"

I stay with her in ICU until dawn, when her mother finally shows.

"Sorry." she says, refusing to look at me. "Had to wait till my son got home. The baby, you know."

I nod, and give up my seat.

I look at Shelly for a moment. I lay the red wild flower by her hand. I found it sticking to my jacket in the ambulance.

"Just go." her mother says. "I don't know who you are, but I think you're fucking dangerous." She swallows past a dry throat. "Please. Go."

I nod. What can I say? She's right.

And I have work to do.

On my way out of the hospital I hear a mew. I look up and am not surprised to see Cat sitting lazily on the stonework sill of Shelly's room. He stares down at me in patient contempt.

I wave. This is as it should be. What we wreck and leave behind may not be forgiven, but a gesture can be made.

"Bye, Cat." I whisper. He does not respond. Goodbye is a human concept, too silly for catkind.

Maybe they are on to something.

I am coming for you, spirit.

Across Pond Creek bridge and down the Big Sandy, up the bank. I run. Your entire length -- every twist and turn, every spot deep and shallow -- I note. I give you this respect, this honor, though you do not deserve it. I keep the compact and custom of our ancient war despite your filthy deal breaking.

I bring no rieving, no lower plane hex. I bring only a backpack stuffed with the cruder magic of my people. A different tessellation, honeycombed cylinders of gglycerinand volatile nitrates.

I am coming for you, spirit. You will cease. Your flow will end. Today.

Almost there, spirit.

-- from The Polk County Gazette:

Good news from Polk County General! Shelly Certes -- injured in a car accident last week -- is up and recovering. Keep her in your prayers, folks. She has a long period of therapy left to go, and the poor thing still can't remember much from the past few months.

In other local news, there's still no word on the mysterious explosion that shook Pond Creek the day after Shelly's accident. No suspects have been named, and the Sheriffs Office figures there won't be any.

"Damn fools probably blew themselves up messing around." says Sherrif Harry Casey. "We suspect it was dope heads playin' with dynamite. It's a shame that the folks on Pond are hard up for water, though. Be the end of the year before the rock fall can be cleared enough to let the creek run again. Morons sheared half the top of the mountain off."

I'm two hundred miles west, thumb to the random, when I hear a pitiful little mew from the treeline. It's hot and I need an excuse to rest, anyway. I make my way over into the shade and slip the backpack off. Not much but clothes and a shitload of granola and trail mix. Deep at the bottom is the only important thing: a modified gigstick USB drive that I have wrapped in dry ice and a dozen layers of thermal cloth. I sit the pack down easy. Some of the things on that drive do not take kindly to bumps and jars.

I pull out a granola bar and munch. I dig out half a pint of milk that's on the edge of going bad anyway -- it's been riding at the top of the pack since eight this AM.

A few minutes pass when I hear the mew again. Much closer this time. I turn, slowly, and see what has come calling.

About five feet away sits the scrawniest, most ragged excuse for a kitten I've ever seen. Skin and bones, fur that might be gray beyond the coatings of dirt. A female; I can tell from the way her eyes gleam.

She has a mole in her mouth. Decapitated. Not a single drop of blood flows to the ground.

I sigh. I've never had to eat a mole before, but the deal is the deal. Can't be that bad.

I hold up the milk and shake it back and forth.

"Hello, Cat." I say.

Half an hour later we are on the road, Cat snug and sleeping the sleep of the content at the very top of the back pack.

I stare down the horizon as I move toward it, watching the sun fall down toward the other side of the world, pulled along the march of the Crumbler.

I hope Shelly is well. I hope my folks don't worry so much.

But mostly I wonder what another day will bring. Hiding from the past is stupid. Thinking you can just walk away from a war and settle down is even dumber.

Who needs a wife and stuff when you have a Cat?

Who needs a place to settle when you have a war to fight?

I walk toward the horizon, into the mouth of entropy, into the halls of order, smashing windows and seeding chaos. I ride the ttessellationup from the quantum boil, harbinger and champion, bringer of change.

Tomorrow is coming, my enemies whisper. And I know this to be true.

But no quicker.

No quicker, by God.

Death to the Crumbler.

by George Potter
[from here]

Rights: Not granted or protected by any state, God or magical hoodoo monster. What we call rights are reciprocal agreements negotiated on the fly between individuals. They are not granted, but claimed and defended. Otherwise they do not exist.

Constitution: quaint late 18th century idea that never worked.

Minarchy: A little bit pregnant.

Anarchy: the actual state of the world. The non-system we all live in.

Government: criminal syndicate extorting protection money from and interfering with the anarchic process of individuals claiming and defending their rights.

Law: a once noble idea of codifying the most basic of rights', now perverted into a system of social control.

Outlaw: the only path left open to moral human beings with a backbone and a desire to be left alone.

by George Potter

May 03, 2005,

"Arrogance frowns, pride smiles."
-Mason Cooley

(for CJ)

She walked into the café not as if she owned it, but as if she had no need to own it, or anything -- being content in the ownership of herself.

As, in fact, she was.

She was a big woman, in the finest sense of that often abused word. Tall, broad shouldered, thick hipped, firmly packed into her tight denim jeans. Large breasted, and proudly so -- the not quite silk fabric of her short sleeved blouse hugged and accentuated a chest neither flaunted nor shown apologetically.

She was big in her simplest presence. The eyes of the few customer and single counter person were immediately drawn to her, and met with a smile that seemed electrically lit from deep within -- a smile that woke a slumbering beauty in a pretty face and transformed it into something almost breath-taking.

It is impossible for something so large and beautiful to move through the world without leaving a wake, and she did so as she walked purposefully through the café's small dining room to the counter. In the wake of her passage, stirred like the movement of a perfume molecules through an antiseptic room, little things happened.

* * *

She sat down easily at the counter, and the older gentlemen working there put aside his magazine and ambled up to her.

"Good morning pretty lady" he told her with the innocent flirtatiousness that only very old or very young males can pull off successfully. "What can I do for you today?"

"Good morning!" she replied, letting loose with that electric charge of a smile again. "It's the strangest thing. I woke up and the first thing I thought was -- 'I want steak. And a baked potato.' Isn't that odd? I find that odd!"

The old man chuckled. "No ma'am, not really. I always say that the first thought of the morning is a little snapshot of what the day will bring." He took out a ticket book and a ballpoint pen. "A steak? Sounds like a delicious day in the making!" He tossed her a wink. "Gimme the details."

She laughed, winked back, and complied. "T-bone, honey! Medium rare, grilled mushrooms, a bottle of A-1... hmmm... that baked potato... can you make the skin extra crispy? I love that. Oooo... and a little salad on the side. With ranch dressing. And a cup of coffee with half and half, if you have it!"

* * *

There were only four other patrons in the café that morning, two couples.

Julia and Richard were sitting at a table a few feet behind and two the left of of the counter. Richard, after pulling his eyes away from watching the new arrivals passage, had returned to the monotonous task of shoveling the breakfast he hadn't wanted into his mouth and chewing.

Julia had seen his stare, and had instantly gone from her usual bad morning mood into a black cloud of equal parts anger and jealousy.

"Dear God, is the rodeo in town?" she giggled -- an expression that fell from her tongue with the opposite of mirth. "I think one of their bulls has escaped!" Another spiteful, bitter giggle, as she picked over her breakfast of a green salad coated in a thin layer of vinegar and vegetable oil. It was very nearly the only thing she ever ate. Richard sometimes had to avoid looking at it. It made him slightly queasy.

"Jesus, Julia. Stop being so nasty."

Julia gaped. "Me? Nasty? She looks like a runaway bull moose and I'm..." she paused, suddenly nosy as the woman at the counter ordered. Upon hearing the meal particulars her face went oddly white, her eyes bulging in their black mascara cages, an utterly comical look of horror settling over her.

"Steak?! She orders a t-bone with all the trimmings for BREAKFAST?! No wonder she's a circus freak! Dear god, just hearing that order makes me want to vomit! To puke my.."

"Damn, Julia -- I'm trying to eat!"

"Steak!" she muttered again, as if she could barely comprehend the idea.

"And? So? Some people eat steak, Julia. Why is it any of your business what she eats?"

"Utterly disgusting." she continued, ignoring him when it suited her as she always did. "If I ate like that, I'd probably be as big as she is, I'd..."

Richard tuned her out. He'd only been awake an hour or so and was a slow to rouse type. A day dreamer by nature, he settled into a little free-form fantasy. He remembered the days when he and Julia had first met, both sophomores in college. Julia had been more alive back then it seemed to him -- years before she had become obsessed with her weight and her obsession with him had faded to a barely disguised boredom. He imagined her body then, in a curious reversal of most married men's fantasies, longing for the curvy blonde and happy girl she had been -- not the thin and sharply dressed figure before him, toying angrily with the wilted green mess she forced on herself.

The clink of the fork against the plate, the sudden stress lines on her forehead as she took a bite. He watched the grim lack of satisfaction in her eyes as she chewed and swallowed.

She's always angry because she's always hungry.

The thought struck him with a surprising force, the painful clarity of the vastly obvious made suddenly plain. What a shower and coffee could not accomplish was performed in an instant by that single realization: he was utterly awake, last vestiges of sleepiness blown to the wind.

She's always angry because she's always hungry.

Richard stared for a moment, somewhat dumbfounded, at the utter simplicity of the thought. It explained so much. Why meal times were emotional mine fields. Why fast food commercials brought mood swings and worse. Why Julia often resented the bowl of ice-cream he indulged himself in during a movie.

My poor sweetie. You are hungry.

But what could he say? She'd deny the fact if he were to mention it. She'd most likely explode -- or ridicule him for his obvious stupidity.

Perhaps he was thinking too simply. He was no psychologist. The real clue to his no longer happy marriage couldn't be that tiny and... silly. Could it.

Richard was on the verge of dismissing the thought. His head was in the process of what his father had once referred to as 'shaking a dumb idea off', when he heard a sound.

The woman at the counter laughed. A free and flowing sound. Full of clean happiness and innocent satisfaction. It sounded exactly like his wife's old laugh -- before the diet days. Before the hungry years.

And Richard acted. He stopped thinking and let instinct guide him, surprising himself almost as much as he surprised Julia -- who actually jumped in shock.

With one smooth, almost graceful motion, Richard swapped plates with his wife, setting the mound of scrambled eggs and cheese and crumbled sage sausage before her, and taking the sour green mess she forced on herself as his own.

He grinned at his speechless wife, struck pale at the pure surprise of his action. He fought back a shudder as he shoved a forkful of the awful drenched leaves into his mouth and chewed.

"You look pale. I think you need protein." he explained, breezily. "And I need some roughage, I think." He swallowed hard and dropped his eyes, concentrating on packing away the so-called salad with as much enthusiasm as he could summon.

"Richard! What on..." Julia started. But she stopped. Her eyes drifted to the beautiful pile of high caloric food on the plate before her, perhaps drawn by the scent -- like a character in an old cartoon.

Eat, dammit. C'mon baby. Eat it. People eat. It's a goodness. It's a happy thing. It's what life's about -- want and need. Eat. C'mon!

For a moment, it almost looked as if Julia were going to cry. Her lips trembled slightly, and Richard's heart skipped a beat. The last thing he wanted was to hurt her feelings. The last thing he wanted was to embarrass her in public...

But the tremble turned, miraculously, prettily, into a sudden smile. In an instant, the old Julia was back -- that cheerful face he'd missed without knowing it. That sly grin.

"You are so silly, mister." she almost giggled."But... you may be right. I have been feeling... a little weak... lately." She sighed.

Richard, still forcing the horrible vinegar soaked salad down, suppressed a cheer.

Julia picked up her fork.

* * *

"How's that steak, missy?" asked the old man, peering over the top of his magazine.

"Utterly perfect, hon! Just right. Thank you! And I'm picky!"

The old man, nodded. "My boy does the cooking. He's picky too."

"The sign of a good cook. You teach him?"

"No. His mother, rest her. She handled the cooking chores here from the day we opened till the day before she passed."

She nodded, polite enough to refrain from offering condolences for a wound long healed.

"You... remind me of her. Somehow." The old man said, sounding a little embarrassed at the admission.

"Oh?" she said, delighted by what she instantly took as a deep compliment.

"Not in looks, really." he explained. "She was a blonde. But... well, she was a big gal too, y'know." He actually blushed.

She just laughed, and waved his imminent apology away. "Hon, I know I'm big. I was a big baby, a big child, a big teenager and now I'm a big woman. That's the facts. To deny that would..." she tapped her fork against the side of the plate, searching for the right words. "... be denying reality. It would be the worst sort of lie. A lie told to myself." She took a bite, chewed, savored it. "And if you can't trust your own self to tell you the truth, you are asking for a life filled with lies. An artificial life. Does that make sense?"

The old man nodded. "Best sort of sense. But... I was saying, not in looks really. Not even size. It's, well, like what you just said. She was the same. Blunt. Honest. And most of all... she was confident. I see that same honesty, that same confidence, in you."

"I wasn't always confident. Far from it."

"What was it that changed your mind?"

She paused then. The old man once again considered an apology, but held back on his own. The look on her face was not one of reticence. Her eyes went a little far away, as if she were looking into another world.

"Life changed my mind." She said finally. She carefully carved and took another bite of the steak. She chewed carefully, savoring it. "Good old fashioned sneak up on you when you least expect it reality changed my mind."

Before the old man had completely absorbed those words, she spoke again. She spoke in a voice neither loud nor soft, neither arrogant nor submissive. The old man simply watched her, and listened as she spoke. He felt as if he were frozen in place as the words flowed over him and into him, as if an oracle were speaking:

"I was married once myself, for five years. I got married right out of high school to a man who said he loved me and proved every day that he hated me. It started off with insults and the simple cruelty of never ever telling me that anything I did was good. I tried to deal with that with submissiveness and increased effort. I really truly wanted to please this man who hated me but claimed to love me. It was my life's ambition almost. This only seemed to increase his hatred. His... disgust with me."

Another bite. Another moment savored fully.

"All that got me was a beating. The first time he beat me was such a shocking experience that I do not remember anything about it. I don't remember why it happened or how much it hurt. If I hadn't seen the bruises and the cuts and limped for a week afterward I think I would have dismissed it as a dream. After that first time, it was if a dam had broken in him. He beat me for any reason. He beat me once because the Raiders lost. He simply walked into the bedroom, pulled me from a sound sleep, and used me as a punching bag. I remember him grunting out the names of those he blamed for the loss. Names that meant nothing to me."

The old man gritted his teeth together. He felt frozen in place, stomach churning with a mixture of rage and sorrow.

She simply enjoyed another bite. Another moment that would never come again exactly the same way.

"And I took it. For a long time -- too long -- I took it. I finally started wondering why I took it. The reason was very simple. I took it because I was a fat girl. I was a pathetic fat girl who had found a man and was afraid she'd never find another. A pathetic fat girl who would put up with fear and pain and hate in order to not be alone."

From the dining room came a happy laugh, as Julia reacted to a fairly lewd suggestion from her husband.

"Then one night I had a dream." she continued. "I was swimming in the middle of the Caribbean. I think it was the Caribbean -- some warm and blue sea, anyway. I felt wonderful, like some sort of mermaid. Then I realized I was being chased. That my husband was swimming after me, in a horrible rage. He wanted to hurt me. The dream went all dark then, and I was swimming as fast as I could, crying, trying desperately to out-pace him."

"Just as I knew that he was right up to me, about to grab me, pull me under the surface, drown me... I felt something. Something rising up from below. Something big. Something... wonderfully big..."

The smile reappeared on her face then, and it was such a welcome smile that the old man felt tears start. But he returned the smile, all the same.

"From the depths of the sea it rose up and broke the surface of the water, between my husband and I, one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. Do you know what it was?"

The old man didn't, but wanted to. Afraid that if he spoke, his voice would tremble, he merely shook his head.

She laughed. "It was a turtle. A huge turtle. As big as a house, like something out of a fairy tale. It's shell was... oh, turquoise and crimson and deep, deep blue. A beautiful, multifaceted thing, like a living jewel. It broke the surface of the water and soared into the air, in a long graceful arc."

She paused to sip her coffee, eyes gleaming with the dream memory.

"I don't remember seeing it hit the water or go back below, but I guess that's not important. Because the force of it's appearance had shoved myself and my husband in opposite directions at great speed. I could see him, moving away from me, cursing, eyes filled with rage but so... impotent."

"And I felt joy. This huge surge of pure electric joy. For the first time in five years. When I woke up, the joy was still singing there in my heart. The image of that turtle, and how it's passage had saved me. How I rode to freedom on it's wake, and how very good that felt."

"So, I got up. I took a shower. I ate some breakfast. Then I started to pack. My husband woke up halfway through, I think I was on my third suitcase. He was surprised, then angry, then... well, ready to beat the living hell out of me, to be blunt. For one moment, I almost gave in. I almost cried. I almost started shaking. I almost gave in and submitted. Almost."

"But I didn't, because I remembered that turtle. I felt that turtle, deep inside of me, rushing up to the surface, so huge and beautiful and powerful. I picked up a pewter candlestick holder from the dresser. I started talking. I spoke in the same voice I'm speaking in now. I told him quite calmly that to keep me from leaving he would have to kill me. That I would not let him hurt me without fighting back ever again. I reminded that I'd never called the police, but that those days were over. I reminded him that I'd never informed my brothers -- two of whom were due home for holiday leave from the Marines -- of how he had treated their baby sister. I let him know that I was leaving, and no power on Earth would stop that."

"I walked out the door 15 minutes later. He even helped me load my suitcases into the car. And I've been living my life on my own terms since then. Since the moment I woke up from that dream. I'm still riding on the wake of that turtle -- and I will be until the day I sink back below the surface."

"And I'll be smiling then, too." she said, with a wink. She patted his hand and went back to her steak.

The old man turned, ostensibly to grab the coffee pot and refill her cup. But he actually wanted a moment to wipe away the tears he couldn't hold back. Not just from her story, but because all through it he had seen the face of his own beloved, and how she had fixed the Doctor who told her she had a heart that was ready to go at any minute with a firm stare and the same wicked grin he'd fallen in love with at eighteen and said. "That may be, but I got folks to cook for and this old man could burn water, Doc."

And he remembered that when her heart had finally given out, she too had slipped below the surface with a smile on her face. That she too had rode through life on the wake of something big and wonderful.

And he figured that she, too, knew a little something about that turtle.

* * *

Lisa wished Dean would for the love of God stop humming.

He hummed all the time, and poorly. It usually took her an inordinate amount of time to recognize whatever tune he had chosen to mangle. It wouldn't be so bad, she often supposed, if he would do it quietly. But no, like everything else Dean attempted, he went about the task with gusto, volume and an arrogant conceit.

Seventeen, by Winger, she realized with sudden surprise. Dear Jesus tap-dancing Christ, is that how he thinks the melody goes?

Dean was working on his fifth sausage, with little stabs into the stack of maple syrup and butter coated pancakes that dominated his platter. The sound of his enthusiastic chewing and the broken melody of 80's hair-band pop merged with grunts of pleasure to form a teeth grindingly annoying cacophony.

Or so it seemed to her.

Lisa stared down at her own plate. One pancake. No butter, no syrup. A single scrambled egg white nestled up to it like a forlorn child seeking comfort from a mother. She would eat it, without enjoyment, and be hungry until an equally bland and unsatisfying lunch. Then more hours waiting for a plain and skimpy supper, then two hours to fall asleep and start the whole pathetic routine over again.

And all the while she'd watch Dean dine on most of her favorite foods. And say, without fail "Sorry, babe. Metabolism is metabolism. Can't fight nature! Pass the butter, ok?"

And hum.

What the hell am I doing with this guy again?, she asked herself. They had met at a gym in January, where he worked as a personal trainer. Lisa was there for a new year's resolution to lose 40 pounds.

Dean was, by any one's reckoning, a damn good looking guy. He was nicely built, handsome, had always perfectly groomed and styled hair. He had a gleaming smile and a year round tan. Washboard abs.

Dean was also, by any one's reckoning, a complete and utter jerk. He was so narcissistic that he often, when wearing shorts, stopped on the street to admire the way his calf muscles flexed in store windows. On her last birthday he had gone out clubbing with his friends and refused to even answer his cell phone. He sometimes let himself into her apartment while she was at work and made himself lunch and left the mess for her to clean. He would take her out and spend the entire date talking to his friend on the phone. He would 'forget' his wallet and stick her with the check more often than not.

But most of all, Dean was the diet Hitler.

It wasn't just that he made her up a diet. Nor was it just that he rode her constantly about sticking to it. He seemed obsessed with her diet. He made large poster sized schedules and charts and graphs with detailed accounting of caloric intake, carbs, proteins, sugar grams, vitamin distribution and a dozen other painstaking details and thumbtacked them to her wall. He quizzed her on the damn thing. He did the same with menus -- poster sized, elaborate, fucking color-coded! And he never seemed to be done with the damn things. He kept tinkering with them. They seemed to fascinate him.

He also demanded her daily weight figure. As poor as he was at keeping other appointments and promises, he never forgot that phone call. Six AM sharp, every morning. And if the figure wasn't in line with his calculations she could be sure of a lecture on the importance of discipline and sticking with the program and other tiresome rah-rah bullshit.

She was sick of it. Hungry, and utterly sick of it.

So... what the hell am I doing with this guy again? she asked herself, as she asked herself a dozen times every day. As usual, the companion thought followed right behind it: And what the hell is this guy doing with me?.

She shied away from both thoughts, as she always did. She sighed and started to take a bite of the plain and now fairly cold pancake, when she heard a laugh from the counter, and the beautiful red-haired woman there say a phrase that meant nothing to her: ""It was a turtle."

And, as if sympathetic to that bit of nonsense, her own nonsense rose up in her mind, having nothing whatsoever to do with turtles: I want a piece of sausage.

And she did, suddenly and with surprising desire. She wanted a piece of sagey, salty, greasy slightly overcooked sausage. Her mouth actually watered at the thought. Exactly like the sausage on her boyfriends plate. Without hesitation, she spoke the words:

"Dean. I want one of those sausage patties."

He glanced at her, a bit dumbfounded. The humming stopped. His mouth was still full of food as he grunted out a muffled "Huh?"

"I want one of those sausage patties. They look good."

Dean swallowed heavily, and, oddly, went for something in his back pocket. It was a folded square of paper that he deftly opened up and examined.

"Well, lemme check. There might be just the tiniest bit of room, if I can remember the calories and fat grams... one sec, babe..." he said, as he pulled out a pen and began figuring in the margin of what Lisa realized, with actual horror was a miniaturized version of her god-damned diet. The sonuvabitch was actually carrying it around with him.

So... what the hell am I doing with this guy again?

This time she did not shy away from the question. And the answer was right there, where it had always been, where she had worked so hard to ignore it.

I'm with this gorgeous jerk because, for the first time in my life, it's my boyfriend that girls are glancing covertly at and gossiping about behind my back. I'm with him because, for the first time in my life, I don't have to date the guys that all my friends turned down. For the first time in my life, other women are jealous of me.

And there it was, in all it's ugly truth. Jesus Christ, Lisa. she told herself. That's pretty damn pathetic.

Oh, but it didn't end there. And what the hell is this guy doing with me?

She knew the answer to that one too, as she watched him sit and figure meticulously on the damned diet. I'm his project. I'm something he does in his spare time. Saving a poor girl from her fat. He's a hero. He's the boss. He can have total control and I just nod and do what I'm told is best. I'm ego food.

She was suddenly angry. Not just at Dean, but at herself. Before she had fully realized what she intended to do, she reached out and yanked the diet from his hand, crumpling it up into a tight little wad as she did so.

"Give me that damn thing!" she said. Another instinct, another action. "And give that damn sausage too!" and with her other hand she snagged it off his plate. She popped it into her mouth and chewed. The flavor was intense and exquisite.

Dean stared at her, goggle eyed for a moment. Then the moron just shook his head. "I can't believe you just ruined your diet like that Lisa. After all the hard work I..."

Last straws are funny things. The fact that he wasn't mad or hurt or embarrassed by her outburst was that last straw. The fact that he was only concerned that the holy diet had been compromised.

"Oh fuck your stupid diet, Dean! I don't really care about the damn diet! And I don't really care about you either..."

"Hey! Now wait a minute..."

She didn't even let him get started. "Nope. I'm not waiting anymore. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going right up the street to the Dairy Queen. I'm going to ask them: 'What's the most fattening, horribly caloric ice cream concoction you sell? Oh, and make sure it's just stuffed with fat! The more fat the better!'Give me two of those."

Dean looked stricken. "I can't believe you'd..."

"... and then, I'm going home. And I'm going to rip those stupid posters off my wall and fling them out the window! Ha!"

The man almost pouted. "I worked hard on those!"

Lisa just laughed. "Goodbye, Dean. Find another 'project'. You are a self obsessed asshole. Enjoy your life."

With that, she turned away, picked up her purse, and started to leave. Dean, finally angry, reached out and grabbed her arm.

She moved faster than she ever thought she could. She grabbed a handful of the syrup and butter soaked pancakes and liberally smeared his face with the resultant sticky mush. He let go of her to wipe his eyes and she was gone -- out the door and out of his life.

Dean sputtered as he groped for a napkin, face burning with embarrassment. He could feel every eye in the café on him.

And then the woman at the counter started to laugh.

Then someone else started to applaud. It quickly spread. Four people, laughing and applauding his humiliation, he thought. His blush deepened below the sticky layer of pancake. If he had not been the self-obsessed asshole Lisa had pegged him as, he might have realized that the applause was for her stand, not his loss of pride.

But he was what he was. He blindly dug into his pocket and dropped a 20 on the table, and -- on the wake of emotion he misunderstood -- exited the café in abject shame.

He didn't even stop to flex his calf muscles.

Things settled down quickly. Julia and Richard fell back into their own little world, talking deeper and more happily than they had in years, looking at each other in the old way. It would be a lovely day for them both.

At the counter, the old man was again wiping away tears, but this time from laughing so hard at the confused and bumbling way the young man had exited with a face full of pancake.

"Whoo!" he said. "That just made my day.".

At the counter, the woman was sighing happily -- both from the entertainment and a good meal, well enjoyed.

"And on that note," she said. "I think it's time for the check, good sir."

The old man shook his head, without hesitation. "This one is on me, pretty lady."

She raised her eyebrows, but did not argue, knowing that to do so would be rude. Instead she nodded, and smiled. "Any particular reason why?" she asked.

"Because this is my place and I say so." he told her. "And because I enjoyed your company and your conversation greatly." And because you brought back memories of the only woman I've ever loved. he left unsaid.

She stood up, and put a ten on the counter. "At least allow me to tip the cook who got my steak perfect on the first try."

The old man nodded, knowing that politeness demanded he let that slide.

On a whim, she leaned over and kissed his cheek, then grinned at his sudden blush.

"I'll be back. I'll see you soon." she assured him.

"Sooner the better!" he laughed, trying to stop the blush with force of will and failing.

One last electric flash of smile, and she turned, and moved away.

As she passed Richard and Julia, they both looked up and smiled at her; Julia rather sheepishly, remembering her initial cruel comments. They were holding hands across the table like teenagers, and that made her already wonderful mood rise even higher.

It's always the little things, she reminded herself as she opened the door, that make or break this life.

And then she was gone.

* * *

She stepped from the café, into the cool air and warm sunlight, full and happy.

It was a beautiful day. She'd had a beautiful breakfast. The blonde woman's outburst had been as sweet as a side of pie. She'd often felt like telling a date exactly that, no bones about it. She now sort of regretted holding back. The look on the lug's face had been utterly priceless.

Such a beautiful morning deserved an equally lovely afternoon, she figured.

What to do, what to do, she wondered. A movie? The bookstore? To hell with it and hit the bar for a drink, flirt with the regulars?

The street rolled out before her like a welcome sign. No need to decide now, the street whispered. Just take a walk and see what comes along.

She decided she liked the sound of that.

Before she started off, she caught a glimpse of herself in one of the café's wide, dark tinted windows. Her tall, wide, solid, real self. She studied the reflection, critically.

Hmm. She thought. I think I've lost a couple pounds.

Then she was off, moving down the inviting street's wide clean sidewalk at a comfortable pace, riding a wave that was now ten years old and still going strong, smiling at the possibilities that such a day might bring.

And all around her the world took notice.

Heads turned.

Eyes fixed.

And little things changed in her wake.