American Captive

12

 Tonight a couple makes a visit to their unfinished condo. They enter the dark dwelling. The woman falls down an empty shaft that does not have stairs, yet.
 So her boyfriend calls an ambulance.
 I suddenly see my job under a new light.
 Insurance coverage.
 I finally gain insight about why only one security guard works here. 
 Waiting for the ambulance, as I’m telling the worried man the construction site is a work in progress, with tons of things to trip over, he starts yelling about a lawsuit. 
 So it hits me again. Insurance coverage.
 The ambulance leaves. 
 I fire up my monster truck and I make for the exit, onto the highway, driving downtown to the public library before it closes at eight.
 Once there, I do a quick scan of the computer database for any books about insurance policies. I find a whole list of matches, to be located on the top floor. I practically borrow every book on those shelves, before going back to work. 
 During my drive back to the construction site, a heavy fog hangs low on the highway. I almost drift into the guardrail. 
 I get back to the trailer office. 
 Inside, I read from the insurance books.
 I take a short break outside, near a newly built condo foundation, nothing overhead, just four concrete walls. There, below ground level, I smoke crack to better aid my detective skills. My mind begins to race and flutter with a bunch of what-if-scenarios.
 I go back to the trailer, refresh my cup from the water cooler, dive straight into those books. One small law book grabs my attention. It explains in one section about permits, what makes a builder liable in case of an injury. It tells how adding a security guard will lower the rate on the insurance policy. 
 In effect, I learn that my boss, Frank Benzino, created the security post as a way to cut corners money-wise. Just having me on the payroll, protects him legally. 
 Bingo. Bulls-eye score. Jackpot.
 I’m not here to prevent eco-terrorists from another arson spree.
 I’m just another coupon in a rich man’s wallet.
 Suddenly I get a dark vibe, then a spike of suspicion. 
 I look all around the trailer for any trace of the crooked underhand.  
 So I peer into the industrial lights which hang above. 
 I go through the files in the desk draws, finding only the bill of sales for shipments supplied and delivered. 
 I measure every inch of the trailer with scrutiny, pacing back and forth, probing the place.  
 Cameras could be in the lights. 
 Cameras could be in the computer speakers. 
 Tiny cameras, the size of pin, could be planted anywhere. 
 Are the drugs making me paranoid? Is my imagination at work?
 I think to myself, I need to calm down. 
 I step outside and the fog is the thickest I’ve ever seen fog. The main road is one heavy wet cloud. I can’t see my outstretched hand before me. 
 I walk to the side of the trailer where the utility box connects the phone line. I unscrew the bolts on the box, peeking inside with my flashlight. There are two open lines in the trailer, one for the phone and one for the fax. But when I open the utility box I see a third port that blinks. My first immediate thought, the phones are tapped.  
 At this very moment, just when I’ve uncovered something sinister, the headlights of a squad car emerge from the haze. The window unrolls and Officer Swain dips his head into the mist.
 “Officer Swain, what a surprise to see you,” I say.
 My heart drops and skips a beat. I’ve never been so nervous to talk to anyone in my life. His timing catches me off guard. His sudden appearance has a startling effect that ripples through my body.
 “Surprise,” the retired cop says. “I thought I might surprise you.”
 I say, “A bad night to be driving. Where are you coming from in this fog?”
 “Where am I coming from?” he repeats, like the question is meddlesome, like I’m prying into his business. There’s a tense, awkward silence that’s hard to ignore. I swallow a guilty gulp. 
 The cop says, “I was at the race track. Losing all my money.”
 “Oh,” I say, try to console him. “You win some, you lose some.”
 “You lose some is damn right,” Swain says. “I’m out five grand.”
 I say nothing in return, put a restriction on my tongue, because I don’t believe him about being at the race track.
 Then Officer Swain says, “So how are things holding up around here? Good?”
 “Yes,” I say. “Good.”
 “Goody good,” he says. “That’s what I like to hear.”
 Then, to fill the silence between us, I say, “Working every night, I’ve come to find out something about myself.”
 “Oh, yeah? What’s that?”
 “That I’m very good at observing and recording.”
 The cop forces a short laugh, saying, “I knew you would be, that’s why I hired you.”
 Then he turns on me, saying, “What have you observed lately? What have you observed tonight?”
 Frightfully, I wonder if he refers to the tapped phones in the trailer. 
 I say, “As you can see, this fog, it limits my full range of vision.”
 “Fog,” he says. “So then, how are you staying busy, in meantime.”
 “A book. I brought a book. I hope you don’t mind. Slow night.”
 “You know, there are certain organizations that monitor the books you take from the library.”
 “Oh, really?” I say, petrified. “I wasn’t aware of that.”
 Nervous, I try to lighten the mood with a joke: “Well, it looks like I’ll have to return all my books on bomb making materials, you know, before they track me down.”
 The cop doesn’t laugh, tells me he doesn’t enjoy comedy.
 Then he says, “Mike, let me tell you something else. What you see at this site is to be shared by only us. No need to publicize anything.”
 “Completely,” I say, nodding. “I understand.”
 “Just keep doing what you’re doing with the security sheets and you’ll be fine. Those security sheets are very detail oriented. That’s what I like.”
 “Okay, sir. I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing with the security sheets. Eyes open at all times.”
 “As this place livens up, so should the details.”
 “True. That is very true.”
 “And you saw nothing out of the ordinary tonight?”
 “Nope, just the fog.”
 “Goody good,” says Swain. “You’ll do fine with us.”
 “Yeah, because I’m always wondering if I’m doing a good job here, providing enough detail—”
 But the cop makes a motion, as if he were zipping his lips, sealing his mouth. Then he rolls up the car window. Without saying goodbye, he disappears into the gray. 
 I actually forgot to tell Officer Swain about the old woman who fell into the basement. I was too nervous to remember. Also, I still refuse to snitch on Vickers. 
 What remains tonight are the foggy notions of my employer that continue to spring my active mind.
 For the rest of the night, I sit under those industrial lights, sitting at the computer workstation, using the internet.
 I seek to break down the catchphrase that Carl Busby uses so often. It was something the eccentric old man said to me when I first met him. 
 “From monks and bells to the nanosecond. Now rise up, boy, rise!”  
 So I enter those specific words into a search engine: monks, bells, nanoseconds.
 On a website about religion, I learn how the Romans were the first ones to develop the concept of the hour as a measurement of time. The Benedictine monks were the first ones to actually utilize it. Like clockwork, they would ring bells every hour to represent a new task, whether it be eating, sleeping, praying, or sweeping the steps. The townspeople who lived in the area surrounding the monastery were quick to adopt the clock device, finding it to be a more effective way of meeting people, traveling, scheduling work times and wages. Thus, a clock tower was built in the center of town for folks to base their lives around every tick. Culture was born. 
 On a website about computer programming, I discover that a nanosecond is a billionth of a second, faster than a finger snap or the blink of an eye. A nanosecond is the segment of time used in programming a computer. An electric pulse is the amount of time a computer takes to make a decision. A nanosecond is so fast it falls under the level of human perception, so decisions based on this time frame cannot be detected. Human senses can’t even conceive of how quick this is, nevermind weigh those decisions.   
 I now understand the catch phrase a little more. It’s about the progression from clocks (those monks and their bells) to computers (those decisions made in nanoseconds). From the industrial age to the information age.
 The night becomes so quiet. The fog starts to lift. 
 I feel I hold something against my boss. 
 I wonder if it’s because he’s rich, and I’m not.
 I wonder if it’s because his lie reflects my lie. How his criminal empire makes me examine my own crimes.
 I can stand on my head for eight hours a night, just to save my already rich boss more money at tax season.
 Right now, I think I hear what might be footsteps on the trailer roof. 
 I go out to investigate. 
 I see nobody up there, unless they are sprawled flat.
 I wonder if it’s Vickers, fiddling with the tapped telephone wires, up there monkey wrenching.  
 In a faint ghost whisper, one that whooshes into my ear, I can almost hear Call Busby telling me, “From monks and bells to the nanosecond, now rise up, boy, rise!”

13

 In my Rockaway apartment, I sleep until crows start to fight and caw over dumpster scraps. A car alarm blares a relentless horn. The reggeaton music someone blasts out a building window begins to skip. These are the sounds of my everyday reality at home, noise I escape while at work. 
 I hear the Rockaway gang knocking on my door, then banging. They keep banging, but I can’t face that world—too real. They keep knocking, calling my name, but I don’t answer. 
 In the bathroom of my apartment, I shave my face smooth. My cheeks are tight pads. Dunking my head in the sink water, submerged, I think about the condos, the polish given to the hardwood floors, then I come up for air. 
 I think about the outer shell, how appearance really does matter, and to keep all surfaces clean.
 I want to vomit in eager anticipation of another work shift.
 Two hours early, I go to work, just to cure the seasick lag of my vision. 
 I’m at the construction site, sitting inside the trailer office, with the blueprints before me. I admire the precise angles of those details.
 The sun now sets, as I get drunk on a case of beer. The horizon is an orange haze with a patch of purple. Then it turns neon green and hot pink.
 I look out the trailer window when I hear a car streak by, too fast for me to record the license plate. So I grab my trusty flashlight, stepping out. 
 I’m sure I saw a couple in the car that coasted by, but I have to get closer to be sure about the true number in that ride.  
 They roll further down the road to the opposite end of the site.
 They park with their headlights off, brake lights still blazing. 
 I walk over to the car, without putting my flashlight on, because I’m curious about what the couple intend. 
 I sneak up. 
 I get within a short distance, enough to peer inside. The moon reflects off the lake, which allows me to see movement in the back seat. This couple has come here to have sex. 
 This has become more of the case lately, as young people use the off-road area to do drugs. 
 I wonder if this is another opportunity to present myself as a real cop, take their drugs into my possession, maybe steal a look at their naked bodies. 
 I stand beside the car, like a shadowy figure. I watch as the car rocks up and down on the axle shocks. I can see the girl get into a riding position, her ass cheeks clenching. Totally aroused, I almost want to rap the window to ask if I can join in. Instead, I just lurch there, adjusting my crotch. The guy switches positions, gets on top, and the whole car squeaks. I get annoyed with my lack of participation, so I shine my flashlight on them. 
 The couple, they both scramble to put their clothes back on, saying, “We thought it was safe to come here, sorry, officer, sorry.”
 So I say, “Tell me, I fought the law and the law won. Then I might let you off easy.”
 “I fought the law and the law won.”
 “Again. Louder.”
 “I fought the law and the law won.” 
 “Good. Now get the hell out, go.”
 The guy climbs into the front seat, driving the half naked girl out of the construction site. I think I might have embarrassed them, or, better yet, ruined the sexual mood.
 Before I can even get back to the trailer, I see a different car enter the far end of the estate. Again, I must investigate. My sacred sitting process cannot withstand this interruption. 
 What I spy when I walk upon the scene, I see a young man on the ready path to destruction. He sticks a green rubber hose into the tail pipe of his car. Then he runs the opposite end of the hose into the car window, driver side. This young man gets back into the car, making a hasty retreat. 
 On guard, I approach with a fair amount of stealth. I knock on the car window, but the young man doesn’t hear me. Techno music plays at ear hurting decibels. I knock again, harder. This time I startle the guy with my overbearing presence. The young man, however, refuses to unroll the window right away. He just sits back, dazed, defeated.
 I make an aggressive gesture, shining the flashlight in his face, and the guy finally rolls down the window, saying, “Fuck it. I knew it. A cop.”
 “No,” I state. “Just a security guard,” which forces the guy to lower the music.
 “A what?” the guy inquires. “A retard?”
 “A security guard. Just a security guard.”
 “A security guard,” the young guy is slow to repeat, “Well, then, fuck off. Leave me alone. Can’t you see I’m trying to die here.”
 “I can see that now. But you can’t do it here.”
 The guy puts the window back up, allowing only the hose in with gas, the carbon monoxide. He turns the music on again, even louder.
 I walk around the car hood, open the unlocked door, passenger side, then jump into his shotgun seat.
 The young man says, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
 “Gonna die right along with ya,” I say. “That is, if you don’t mind.”
 “I do mind. My final moments. I want to be left alone. Damn it, why is it so hard to find a place to die. Alone. Do you hear me? I want to be alone.”
 The car fills with gas.
 I say, “I have a wide range of reasons for wanting to die, what are yours?”
 “Just get the fuck outta here,” the guy says, pushing on my shoulder.
 “No,” I say, refusing to budge. “I won’t. We should get to know each other before we both die. Establish a quick connection before we land in hell. Never been there before, but the flames on the brochure look nice.”
 I work the guy into some kind of sick chuckle, which he then concludes with a cough.
 “Look,” I say. “You can’t be doing this. Young guy, like you. Come on, already. Turn the car off. Remove that hose.”
 The young guy sits back, thinks for a moment. Then, to my relief, he shoves the hose out the window, onto the ground.
 “There,” he says. “You satisfied? Not gonna kill us both. Just gonna go somewhere else, to kill myself in private. Without all the cameras. Is that o-fucking-kay with you and your phony badge?”
 “Cameras?” I ask him. 
 He says. “Like you don’t work for Benzino, too.”
 “You work for Benzino?” I rush to ask.
 “Over at Wellington Place, the other building project, yeah, I work for him. ”
 The Clear Lake here makes everything, even suicidal tendencies, appear serene.
 I start to ask him about our boss, but he says, “Once you work for Kingman Corporation, you’re in it for life. There’s no escape. There’s no running away. He’ll hire someone to find you.”
 The song on the stereo sends vibrations through the car speakers, playing again, on repeat. It’s the electronica band, TekHead. It’s the Clear Lake movie soundtrack.
 The young guy says. “There’s no escape, no way out. Benzino has us by the balls.”
 I allow some silence to show agreement. I delay for a careful moment, then I ask, “How long have you had the job, over at the Wellington project?
 “My girlfriend, Kate, used to babysit for Kingman. She got me the job. Kate went missing over a year ago.” 
 I gasp in mock surprise, saying, “Missing? Like gone, for good?”
 “One week she’s telling me that Kingman leaves money lying around the house, saying maybe he might not notice if she stole a stack. The next week her family is filing a missing person’s report.”
 “Missing,” I say. “Her whereabouts, how weird.”
 “Yeah,” the young guy says in a sulking sad tone.   
 Then he says, “I feel like I’ve lost control of my work situation. Sometimes I dig into my face with sharp objects, because it feels like my boss is commanding me to do that. Like those cockroach videos on the internet, the ones that show a cockroach with a motor strapped on its back. Scientists make those bugs walk a wavy line. A total loss of self-control.” 
 I find myself repeating: “Control.”
 And the young guys says, “Yeah, my face cutting. My boss. It’s all about control.” 
 I recline back and sigh, trying to think of any personal problems I might have, to better share his viewpoint.
 “I have some control issues myself,” I start to tell him. “I live next to an airport that doesn’t have a control tower. I got all these planes flying around my apartment, all day long. I have this fear that one of them is gonna nose dive right into me, chop me up in the propeller blades and—”
 “You call that a problem?” he says, on hostile edge. “I have a serious problem, something that affects my social life, and you’re telling me you’re afraid of some stupid airplanes?”
 “Ah, yeah,” I say, aware of how ridiculous I must sound.
 “Those aren’t realistic problems,” the young guy says, now counseling me. “All in your head, man.”
 He closes his eyes. 
 So I close mine too. All I can see in my mind are planes taking off and landing at the same time. All I can picture are planes colliding on the runway. 
 Clenching his fists around the steering wheel, the guys says, “I just wish I could stop tearing at my face.” 
 Then the guy vomits once in his own lap, twice out the car window, each one a violent uprising.
 “Overdose on sleeping pills,” he explains with his first full breath, wiping the drool from his chin.
 “No big deal,” I say. “I thought we were getting too sentimental, anyway.”
 We sit in the car for what seems like an eternity, five hours, without saying much, listening to the TekHead album. 
 I want him to promise me that he’ll go home, sleep off this idea of suicide. But it doesn’t happen that way, not tonight. Before I’m about to doze off, he grabs a gun from the glove compartment box. I snap fully awake with him pointing it at me.
 He says, “This is my great escape. You tell Frank Benzino, you tell that control freak I’m going where his eyes can’t see. You tell him to suck steel.”
 Then, wrapping his mouth around the long barrel, the guy pulls the trigger. Blood pours out his nose like a fire hose. Blood hits the front and back windshield, spraying the car with chunky brain matter. Blood, however, misses my uniform, save for a few specks. 
 I leap out from the car, about to have a major reaction, but consider myself only rattled, slightly unsettled.  
 More importantly, I realize I can’t be associated with this type of incident. 
 Shifting the handbrake off, I give the car a push and I let it roll down the hill, over the embankment, into the lake. 
 I watch the evidence sink.   
 The Clear Lake, once a perfect body of water, is now forever tainted with bloody muck.     
 Back at the trailer, I continue a heavy regiment of beer drinking, to settle my nerves. 
 In this condition, the beer hits a sad spot on my brain. My eyes try to form tears, but can’t. Working alone has made me numb. I care less than I know I should. 
 Two hours later, Kerry Bettencourt pays me a visit, but I have trouble responding to her with anything more than cold distant eyes. My mouth stays closed, set in stone, except for a quivering chin that corresponds to nothing. 
 I don’t tell her about what happened tonight, how I witnessed a fatal gunshot wound to the head. 
 There’s nothing romantic about her visit, not even when she surprises me with plate of turkey and potatoes. I forgot I was working on a holiday. She gives the food to me, kisses me on the cheek, just to lift my spirits. 
 Before she leaves the trailer, she says, “I feel so bad for you. Working every night like this. I’m moving here next week. If I cook us dinner, will you come over while I unpack?” 
 I say I will. 
 I hear my answer echo, long after she’s gone.  
 My security shift is over, but I still hang around, neglecting my scheduled time to punch out. 
 What a night of confession, of useless talking, of letting the tongue go loose, of feeling burned out, drained, sapped to the core, weak and weary, of stinking regret for every last word me and that dead man uttered. Especially the word control.
 I’m still affected by the suicide a week later when the Bettencourt girl moves in. I’m also still grappling with a series of plane crashes that have just taken place near Rockaway. 
 Kerry Bettencourt invites me over for soup at eight.
 I remain parked in my monster truck at the opposite end of construction site, smoking crack. 
 I never show up for soup.
 Her porch light goes dark.

14

 Rockaway.
 The Air Show is definitely underway, in progress, going on at this very moment. 
 I wake up to it, when a fighter jet starts the show with a sonic boom. 
 As danger continues to swirl with turbulence above my building, I jump out of bed. I dress fast, without thinking, without matching my socks.
 This morning I catch my mother’s boyfriend, John Penrose, looking at the newspaper. Strange thing is, John can’t read. So he’s probably just looking at the comics.
 I’m eating cereal at the breakfast table, across from John, when I notice the headline on the front page: Plane Crash Kills Six. There’s a full color photo of the plane standing upside down, tail end in the air, crushed against a small white house. The plane hit the house on the opposite side of the airport, near Rockaway. Neighbors gave their eye witness accounts to the report. They said they watched a plane struggle to stay in flight, heard the engine choke out, saw it come spiral spinning down. The newspaper article ends with irony. A family member of the dead pilot is quoted as saying, “… the pilot was very down to earth”. 
 The phone rings.
 It’s Carl Busby.
 He says, “Come quick!”
 “Where?” I ask.
 “The sand dunes. Come now!”
 “It happened again,” I say. 
 “Hurry!”
 I say, “All this time, I’ve been telling everyone in Rockaway planes keep crashing, that another plane will crash. Our neighbors just ignore it.” 
 “I know all about it,” Carl says. “But there’s more. So come now. Run, boy, run. Now speed, boy, speed. Now gun it. Now rush. Now go and get swift. Make a bolt for it. Dash on. Dart out. Keep chase. Sprint. Fling yourself into a gallop. Flash forward. Push the tempo. Just whisk yourself here and —”
 I cut him off, saying, “Whoa, whoa, fucking, whoa. I’m coming. I’m coming. Be right there.”
 “Right,” Carl says. “And bring eggs.”
 “Eggs?”
 But the old man hangs up. 
 Running into the living room, I stop just short of my mother. She sits legs crossed in the rocking chair, smoking a cigarette with a long dangled ash. Everything about her looks shot of nerves. Even her hair is frazzled to a split end. 
 John Penrose, her boyfriend, lay stretched on the couch, watching cartoons, eating ice cream from the box.
 My mother, Janice Miller, says this is the loudest day she’s ever known to experience. She tells me she’d prefer the steady sound of a vacuum cleaner or a blender, anything to cancel out the sound of those airplane engines. She has cotton balls wedged inside her ear canals. This disturbs me, so I run straight for the door. I fumble with the locks and chains.
 My mother stands up to pester me, traying her cigarette ash. “Where are you going?” she wants to know. “What are you doing with my eggs?”
 I run out the door with my mother yelling after me that I forgot to take out the trash.
 The Air Show is in full swing. 
 All along the sidewalks there are clusters of people who keep their heads cocked to the sky, shading their eyes, looking up at the remnants of engine exhaust that makes whites stripes and patterns against the blue. 
 One plane takes off from the airport, while another comes in for a landing, almost colliding.
 As I pass a black elderly couple, I stop to quiz them.
 I say, “Excuse me. Did you know planes have been crashing around this airport at an alarming rate?”
 Constantly smiling, still looking up, the old woman says, “I just like the planes.”
 The old husband says, “How about those old war planes, huh? Aren’t they something?
 So I say, “Crashing planes, crashing all the time. Nobody holds the airport accountable. Pilots are dying.”
 The old woman, still smiling and sky watching, says, “The planes just look nice.”
 I remembered right then that I must still meet with Busby, so I run, carrying two dozen eggs.   
 The river next to the apartment complex is called Meadow Brook, but local cab drivers call it Ghetto-Brook. I cross a shallow part of the river without taking my shoes and socks off. I come to a fence that states no trespassing, threatens a fine, signed by a judge.
 Jumping over the fence into the sand dunes, I’m quick to spot Carl Busby. He’s waving frantically at the planes, luring them in, then throwing eggs at them when they dip in close. He calls the pilot a “scum-sucker”. 
 I join the old man at the bottom of the pit. 
 The carnival music, plus the planes, plus the crowd, force us to shout back and forth.
 Busby says, “This mission calls for timing, and you, young sir, are late.”
 “Sorry,” I say, “I tried to sleep through this whole horrible thing. The noise of all the planes at once, it shocks the nerves.”
 Busby says, “Hear those sounds? Those are the rumbling sounds of the belly of the beast.”  
 I say, “Another plane crashed. Hit a house this time.”
 Busby says, “I know. That’s why I took refuge in the sand dunes this weekend. Less of a target.”
 I say, “But why the eggs?”
 I point at the carton dozen he requested I bring.
 Busby says, “Oh, I suppose you’d rather throw rocks, instead, is that it?”
 “No, no, nevermind. I just want the unpleasant event to end. Another plane crashes and this is how they celebrate.”
 “I know, and let me tell you, it really boggles the mind,” says Busby. 
 Then he says, “I think now is the time for you to quit your job. Get out while you can. While you’re still intact.”
  I say, “Quit? What? Why? I need to pay rent, medical bills for my mother.” 
 Busby says, “I used to work for Edison. So I know the danger he poses to you.”
 I say, “Edison?”
 Carl Busby, the eccentric old man answers with, “Edison. Full name, Edison Bard Kingman. Your boss. E.B. Kingman. Kingman Corporation. Ring a bell? He’s your other boss.” 
 Kids on four-wheelers and motor bikes race around the sandpit, fishtailing dust. 
 Planes do tricks, flips, spins, dropping with gravity. Thousands in airport attendance can be heard as an uproar, clapping. It sounds of disorder, confusion, commotion, an upheaval of sorts, mayhem all around, madness at every corner. My mind’s in a frenzy. The times are turbulent. 
 I say, “You know my boss? God, everyone knows my boss.”
 And Carl Busby says, “Correction. He happens to know everyone. And all this random plane crashing, it isn’t so random. Kingman knows a little something about that, too.”
 He takes an egg from one of my cartons, ready to chuck it.
 He says, “The plane crashes have all been planned, intended, the entire sequence of them.”
 “You mean to say, on purpose?
 “Yes, in a carefully orchestrated attempt to kill off certain rival businessmen, who fly in for meetings, negotiations.”
 “Killed? By who?”
 “By the man who has 51 percent part ownership in airport operations. By the only local man capable of such a thing. Kingman.”
 “How come nobody ever notices these businessmen are being murdered?”
 “Because the airport remains open to the public. Sometimes the planes flown by your regular citizen are sabotaged, too. This way, with so many plane crashes, it appears like an unlucky fluke. The National Transportation Safety Board is usually paid off by Kingman, so the investigations are poorly handled.”
 “Wow,” I say, stunned.
 Carl Busby continues, “Only the tip of the dirty iceberg, my friend. There’s more.”
 “More?”
 “Kingman has contracts with the government to build spy planes that circle Painesville and Central Heights. These planes are loaded with such high-tech equipment, they can see through houses and listen to conversations at ground level. There are several of these contracts throughout the United States. More than you might imagine.”
 Carl Busby goes on explaining all the various ways our privacy gets invaded, how our actions are caught on cameras, how our most intimate discussions get logged onto digital recorders that sort, analyze, and locate key words.   
 I listen to him, wondering whether any of this is true or not. Upon closer inspection, I look the old man over to see that he wears a weightlifting belt around his waist. Busby also has what looks like a pigeon feather tucked into his fishing cap. When I ask about his belt, he says he carries the weight of the universe on his shoulders. When I mention the pigeon feather, Busby tells me it’s meant to be a symbol of personal freedom. The string necklace around his neck displays several shark teeth. Eccentric as he is, the spy tech stuff he rambles on about sounds logical.
 I ask about his days working with Frank Benzino.
 “Experiment gone haywire,” says Busby. “I was his chief scientist. Inventor, if you will. Cutting edge mathematics and such. We had a falling out. Curious business, I tell you. Curious indeed. If I told you how curious, it would boggle your mind. Now I’m a janitor and part-time beekeeper. Which reminds me, we should go ice-fishing some time.”
 Planes fill the sky. Some planes loop back to barrel in, while other planes air duel, dodging each other at the final second. Planes of all types perform upside down antics. The noise is incredible.
 Busby says, “But we must not let them see us talking.” 
 “Who?” I say. 
 Busby: “The ones conducting this air raid, of course. The ones who watch the watchmen.”
 I say, “I don’t see what you mean by that.”
 Busby says, “It doesn’t matter what you see. Only what he sees.”
 Again I ask, “Who are you talking about? Kingman?”
 Busby says, “Yes! Who else? The voyeur himself. Kingman.”
 I say, “Prove it.”
 Busby says, “You want proof? Here, take this. Go see for yourself.”
 He hands me a business card that prints the address of the Kingman Mansion, where my boss lives.  
 “We better split up. From monks and bells to the nanosecond, now, rise up, boy, rise!”
 He turns a shoulder to me, headed for the shade of his tarp bunker, muttering under his breath for me to “pick a side.”    
 So I jog away, up the massive side of that sand dune hill. 
 Out of breath, I look back when I get to the top. 
 The old man waves from his campsite, then he starts to stir what looks like a campfire pot of screwball stew.

15

 It’s my shocking return to work, on another night at the Clear Lake Condo Estate. The batteries in my flashlight are running low, but my uniform is ironed and pressed, with my badge and my boots, gleaming and glossy.   
 I punch in promptly. On my first official round, I walk down New Farm Road, past two well dressed women, both from England, who happen to meet at the mailbox.
 One neighbor says to the other, “We love our new home, don’t you?”
 The second neighbor concurs, saying, “Yes, yes. This place has what my husband likes to call, real storybook charm.”
 In a fly by greeting, I say hello to both women.
 The second lady makes the remark: “What a beautiful day we’re having.”
 “Oh, yes,” says the other. “We won’t get too many more of these.”
 I give them both a wide plastic grin, saying, “We’ll just have to enjoy every last warm weather moment.”
 The women look at me at the same time, with a quick neck snap. Their eyes have a full red glow, like they‘re overheating robots. Then those eyes cool. Eyes retaining their natural color.
 The neighbors endorse my warm weather idea with smiles of their own. They take their mail, make plans to swap cooking recipes, then walk in different directions.
 I do my job by marching from condo to condo, locking those windows and those doors that are open for unknown reasons. I tell all the lights and appliances to shut off. 
 The dark of the night has been coming much sooner with the changing season, much to my delight. 
 I call Norman to see if he wants to get high. Charlie Moon is in New York, promoting his new band called, The Nightly Report. So Norman shows up to the construction site, alone.
 The first day I ever met Norman Long, I had expressed my knowledge of a family living in Maine with the same last name. I then told Norman his resemblance to them was striking. I finished by saying that, if I remembered correctly, the family made for a terrific bowling squad, one in which the members each shared identical form and delivery.
 In a cool way, Norman Long had stated he was of no relation to the family, and that he had a poor habit of rolling the ball into the gutter. 
 His last name is however, an indication of his size. He is tall, with long arms and legs, and a noticeably thin waist. He towers over those near him. His lengthy appearance not only suggests that his ancestors passed the name through entire generations, but that they passed it through their reproductive genes, as well.
 Now Norman rolls the blunt. I wait for it in fiendish anticipation. We get lifted, laughing at certain things, but forgetting soon after what was funny. 
 Then, just at that moment, a car with tinted windows pulls up on my driver-side door. It idles there for a second, then gives a horn toot. I tell Norman to duck, hide. The other car slides its window down, so I follow their lead by unrolling mine, too.   
 And I’m asking, “Can I help you?” with weed smoke fogging my front windshield, billowing in the back seat.
 An English lady sits in the car, passenger side, and she says, “Me and my husband are going away on vacation. We thought you should be advised.”
 “Oh, you are?” I feign friendly interest.
 “Yes,” she says. “Aspen for two weeks. We made reservations at a ski lodge. We should’ve been there by now, drinking hot chocolate, but a storm caused some delays, airline delays.”
 “Well, have a great time,” I say, flustered with some paranoid subplot.
 “Nothing could be more absolute,” she says.
 Then her American husband leans over from the steering wheel to say, “We just thought you could keep an extra lookout, you know, while we take to the slopes.”
 “Sure thing,” I say. “No problem. You can count on me.”
 “Super,” the wealthy man says, as he drives away, bound for the airport. 
 I press the control panel for my power windows.
 Norman Long wants to know, “Do you still have the keys to their condo?”
 And I say, “You can stop ducking, they’re gone.”
 “Can you get inside their condo?” my friend asks again.
 “Let me guess, a party?”
 Norman says, “We can tell people it’s you birthday.”
 “Well, . . . ” I say, mulling over the proposition. “The condo walls are soundproof.” 
 Norman goes on saying, “We can tell everyone you own a condo.”
 So I say, “My birthday. My condo. And if anyone asks, I work as a Technical Expert. I have a job as an expert in all things technical. Overseas.”
 And Norman Long says, “No doubt.”
 “They can’t fire me,” I whisper to myself. “I know enough, maybe too much. They know I’m a criminal, because they’re criminals themselves. My lie reflects their bigger lie. Their power grab connects to my cover up.”
 And Norman says, “Settle down with that shit. Let’s party!”
 We open our cell phones and dial the appropriate numbers, giving people directions through the next town, Central Heights. 
 Then we drive over to Norman’s apartment, change clothes and switch gear. I tell him about the suitcase of drugs I have in the trunk, how I plan to distribute the entire thing to anyone willing to dabble. We make one last stop to buy a keg of beer before heading back to the Clear Lake.
 The party tonight is comprised mainly of hot shot, high school heroes, just graduated from college. The men are born into a tradition of family affluence. The girls are so pretty they’re pristine, allowing them to be very selective about who pays for the dinner date.
 In Rockaway, I’m a street-wise thug. At The Academy On The Hill, I was part of the book smart elite. I could never fully commit to one side. Living with the dirtball derelicts, schooling with the asshole rich, I balanced both roles like a tightrope walker who dares to perform without a safety net. To fall to one side, was to drop to a sure popularity death.
 From the upper-class, I received a cold shoulder and the snobbish lift of the chin. For the lower-class, I got a black eye and the stomping of a boot. 
 The party tonight starts at ten. 
 As always, Nick Showalter, the baseball pitching ace, comes with Matt Fraggatoni, the star quarterback. Conrad Tyler, the poet, walks through the door with a pen gripped in his teeth and a contemplative thumb on his chin. Chadwick Merriweather III, chess champion, comes with Oliver Wendell Pean, the math wizard. Mark Rubenstein shows up with his older brother, Paul Rubenstein, founders of the yacht club. Dominic Manzini, the foreign exchange student from Italy, now living in America permanently, comes alone and stands in the corner all night long. Rick Disnicky, the card shark, brings some Las Vegas poker chips for some high stakes gambling. Next to turn up is a tall black kid named Sylvan Watts, who played basketball on scholarship. Under no invitation comes Kevin Paradise and Johnny Kinklater, notorious for their party crashing, house trashing. I still sell them a cup. Next to show is a popular fat guy named, Peabody, who everyone calls Pudge. Jeff Webber, the soccer standout, is the designated driver for three drunken wastrels: Warren Castle, fencing team, Leonard Drisdale, his sparring partner, and Alan Bloomquist, the tennis title holder. Chase Livingston, the cox on the crew team, is also present, but disappears soon after without a word. Tom Goodwin, the inventor, comes to the party late with some kind of motor-powered contraption on wheels that has no specific use. At one point, members of the rugby team storm the party and try to steal the keg.
 For the females, the first to arrive is Jen Coakley, the captain of the cheerleading squad. Next comes Lena Lovelace, the prom queen who was once voted Miss Massachusetts. Sara Flannigan, the drama major, arrives with Kelly Decosta, the president of student council, who, aside from English, speaks three different languages: French, Spanish, and Latin. Then comes Brooke Burns, the chorus girl, with her close friend, Dawn LaFosse, who has an ear for scandal and a mouth for gossip. Erica Everdale is here with her lipstick lesbian lover, Angelina Scott; both girls escaping to a second floor bedroom, I catch onto their secret. McKenzie McCormack, the Olympic swimmer, comes from practice wearing a bathing suit and some eye goggles, her hair still wet. And, finally, Cat Washington, the young field hockey coach, comes with Mary Ann Carbone, the blow job vixen.
 The whole condo is minimalist in design. I keep telling everyone not to touch the porcelain elephant collection. Brooke Burns gets on the piano, bangs away at the keys. Jen Coakley and Lena Lovelace insist that Matt Fraggatoni and Nick Showalter join them in the Jacuzzi. I tell everyone they can be as loud as they want, just not to spill anything on the needlepoint pillows. Again and again, I tell Warren Castle not to use the tapestry as a cape or the silk lampshade as a crown. I let everyone know it’s my birthday, that I’m a Technical Expert, making money in the multiple figures. I shout that I play the stock market every day, using insider trader tips. The painting above the fireplace, I say I brought it back from Prague. The leather couches, I got them from Italy. The pottery, I picked them up in Paris. The plants, I say, are imported from Singapore. These old friends are royally impressed. Someone keeps pinching my ass. People keep pouring me shots, to celebrate my birth. Kevin Paradise and Johnny Kinklater organize the “Hot Ass” contest, in which every girl finds a partner to walk seductively up the stairs with, in front of male judges. Angelina Scott and Erica Everdale win the contest by locking lips and kissing on the top step. Rick Disnicky lights up a cigar at the card table, bluffing almost every pot into his possession. Alan Bloomquist pukes off the back porch. In the basement, I keep telling Leonard Drisdale not to play swords with the pool sticks. Every time I pass Conrad Tyler he’s reciting his poetry to a new girl. Chadwick Merriweather is having a deep discussion with Oliver Wendell Pean about string theory, talking about how the wings of a butterfly in Asia can affect the wind patterns of North America. Sylvan Watts tells me more than once that he’s about to order a stripper for my birthday, but that I should pay for it. I get stuck in the breakfast nook with Dawn LaFosse and she will not stop blabbing about some pre-law student she met in Chicago, telling me his preference for having red ants shoved into his penis hole during sex. 
 Thinking it’s time to open the suitcase full of drugs, I do, telling everybody to have at it. They scramble for the substance of their choice like the suitcase is a broken open piñata. 
 Over the entire din of the party, I vent a primal scream, “I told you not to touch my porcelain elephant collection. Condo lights. Off.”
 The place goes dark and my former classmates are frantic to find themselves. Nobody moves. This is how to tame a crowd. I knock someone over as I barge my way to the front door. This is how to throw the world into chaos, stand back and watch people beg for a more predictable pattern. I leave them all lights out, like a computer hacker who attacks the electricity grid of city block substation.
 In a small fraction of time, I run to the trailer office and write down false, bogus information on the security sheets. 
 I suddenly notice the computer at the workstation desk turn on, automatically. Video, live streaming footage of the condo party I just left, plays in slow motion. There must be cameras installed in the eyeball light fixtures. The condo party is still dark, but my old classmates huddle around the burning fireplace, while Nick Showalter strums his acoustic guitar. 
 Just then I see my Rockaway friends show up at the door. Ely Noble. The Rodrigo brothers, Pablo and Agusto. And Max, the gang leader. I forgot I invited them too. They don’t know my former classmates. It’s clear on the video, since I’m not still attending party, my Rockaway friends are being refused at the door. Max pulls a gun.
 I can’t watch the rest.
 I finger my breast pocket. I pull out the business card that Carl Busby gave me, the one with the Kingman mansion address. 
 The urge to go visit Kingman now is strong. It’s only thing that will help me ignore the racial clash at the condo, which looks like it’s about to escalate with guns and knives.

16

 I get dressed in a full ninja costume that I wore two Halloweens ago. I look like I’m on a mission, that an important operation calls my name.
 I fire up the monster truck, driving out of the estate, speeding down the highway, taking the exit ramp, up the winding hillside. My eyes start to slowly shut on themselves, as I try to read the address of the Kingman Mansion. The only thing that keeps me from a drug-induced coma is the powerfully bright spotlight atop the mansion hill. This intense light reminds me of the lighthouse at the airport, how the blue and white strobes hit the back wall of my bedroom, flashing my full body shadow. 
 The road climbs the hill for a long stretch, so long I think I might be lost, but when the road levels out, that spotlight once again becomes my beacon, guiding post. 

The gates at his mansion property are wide open, so I don’t get to ram my monster truck through them, like I’d planned. I blow past the entrance, much too fast for the surveillance system to catch my plate number.
The driveway is equally as long. The drugs I took at the party are making me see strands of red-and-blue molecules, the double helix, floating above the dashboard. My front windshield looks to be breathing, in and out. I wonder right then if this trip to see my big boss is a true and valid experience. The only thing that grants me the belief that I’m actually on his land is the pheasant in the driveway that waddles to the roadside. I let the brightly colored bird stray off into the woods, then I give the truck gas.
Once I have the mansion in sight, I park my truck, approaching on foot. The structure is mammoth in scale, almost like a medium-sized sky scraper the way it’s made of all glass. The credibility of this trip is secured once again by the fact that there are four baby deer on his front lawn, lead by their mother.
By way of a pond stocked with fish, on acres of land loaded with game, E.B. Kingman must have gone fishing and hunting in his own backyard.
I have always felt like I was being spied on by my boss, and this was my attempt to return the favor.
In my ninja suit, I mount the porch stairs, level after level, deck after deck, until I find a good window for peering. To no surprise of my own, the second room I look in is something of a control room, with about two dozen camera screens, all of them running with various images of people and places.
Next to all the animal heads (elephant, tiger, bear, and boar) that stick out of the wall, a giant projector screen hangs from the ceiling. It shows chefs standing behind the cooking line in a fancy restaurant. There are numbers in the corner of the screen, statistics that rapidly change.
When I turn my attention to the oversized padded armchair which takes its position in front of the wide screens, I see someone extend their arm, pointing a remote control box. It must be Kingman. I’m familiar with the ring on his beefy knuckle.
The giant screen cycles through the various hallway camera angles of some hotel, then to a casino, then to a car dealership. The giant screen switches back to a restaurant cooking line, zooming in on the only man not wearing a chef hat. By no mistake whatsoever, the cook drops the duck he’s carving onto the kitchen floor, steps on it, then puts it back on the plate. He sprinkles the dirty meat with seasoning, pressing the order-up bell. A waitress soon has it on her serving tray.
Kingman obviously sees this as a gross violation of the food industry, because he shoots his arm out, pointing the remote control box at the screen, which then flashes the red letters: TERMINATE. The screen stays on long enough for me to see about ten black suits storm into the kitchen and physically remove the health hazard cook. Kingman raises the remote control box again. The giant screen goes black.
I then hear the security intercom inside, using a computer voice, relaying the following information: “Mr. Kingman. There is an un-announced guest on the grounds. Heat sensors have located the presence of a person in the back of the Villa.”
E.B. Kingman uses the remote control box to send out a blaring signal, one which pierces my eardrums. All the screens on the wall say, INTRUDER ALERT.
I’m unsure of what to do, so instead of running down the stairs, confused, I run up them, until I can go no higher. I find a door on the top level and test the knob for a lock. It opens. Slowly, and with some amount of caution, I enter the mansion.
The only thing in this very small room is a fireman’s pole that goes down through a hole in the floor. There’s not a single door in this tiny room. So either I retrace my steps, or I slide down the brass pole, letting it lead me anywhere it wants to, inside the mansion. I take to the pole like the true ninja that I am. The ear-splitting alarm outside is still high pitched.
Sure enough I come to rest in the control room, the pole screeching a little before I land with a thump. E.B. Kingman turns around to see me in my ninja costume, my face covered by a hood and a black mask. We stare at each other for a prolonged moment. He picks up the phone, calling for security.
I run across the room, grabbing the remote control box from the armchair. Hurrying out the door, through a music studio, through a two-lane bowling alley, through a movie theater, down some wide stairs, through an empty basketball court. I can’t find my way out.
Finally I see a doggy-door type flap that I dive under, and I glide down a running water tunnel. The big boss man chases me. I can still hear his voice echo down the tunnel. He’s saying, “Security. He’s headed for the pool. Release the dogs from the—”
Before I can hear any more I slide through a waterfall, which dumps me into the deep end of his swimming pool. I pump my arm and legs as fast as I can to get to the surface, then I swim frantically to the ledge to pull myself out. My ninja suit is soaked and my shoes squeak as I bolt for the stucco Villa wall, which I must climb, jump over.
I’m running full speed to my truck, my heart racing, the siren wailing, the dogs barking not too far behind. I get to my truck, boost up the step ladder. A Doberman Pincher comes very close to nipping my heel. I turn the truck around, with dogs circling at my tires. Then I speed off. The gates of the mansion estate begin to shut, so I press the gas pedal to the floor. I narrowly make it through.
And I’m driving down the hillside so fast I almost clip the posted sign that warns, Danger: Falling Rock. In a reckless turn of the corner I’m suddenly on two wheels, careening off the cliff, launching the truck sky born, landing at the bottom of the rock quarry, in a fiery ball of wreckage.
Game over?
As I roll out of bed the next day, I try to piece together my dream, but everything seems like jet lag, and I have to be at work within the hour. Last night had to be real. I was so drugged up I must’ve blacked-out.
When I stumble from my bedroom I see the remote control box lying on my kitchen table. I’m astonished by the object itself. The remote control box has a silver nameplate bolted to the top. It’s called: The Eden Absolute 925.
Game over?
Or did I get another playable man on a new video game quest?

17

 Within the hour, the construction workers are gone. 
 The new neighbors stay huddled inside their condos. 
 Night falls.
 I stand under the street light that hovers over the trailer office. Then I call the apartment that both Norman and Charlie share. I tell them about the cameras at the Condo Estate.
 “Look it up,” I say. “The web address is how-to-make-your-dream-home-a-reality . . . dot com.”
 I can hear Charlie typing in the background, then I hear them both laughing.
 Norman says, “We can see you, dude.”
 I flip them the middle finger. I unbuckle my pants to bare my ass for the camera.
 I invite them to come smoke some weed with me at the lake. Twenty minutes later they roll into the construction site. They flash their headlights for a spy signal.  
 Norman Long and Charlie Moon climb up into the front seat of my monster truck. We waste no time, we go right to it, the weed smoking.
 Charlie’s in a hyper mood because his electronica band has just signed to a major distribution label. Even after this success, I still think he has the face of a baby or an infantile angel. He puts his demo in the CD player without even asking. He’s the lead singer of a band called, The Nightly Report. His music has overtaken TekHead as the movie soundtrack to my time spent at the Clear Lake Condo Estate.  
 Norman starts laughing.
 I ask, “What, man?”
 “Every time I see you wearing that uniform, you look like a narc. I detect the presence of a strong marijuana odor.”
 And Charlie laughs, too. 
 So I say, “Yeah, but your car looks like a shitbox. What now? What next?”
 Pause. Inhale. Pause. Exhale. 
 “By the way,” Norman wants to know, “when are you gonna take a night off from this place? I mean, we barely hang out anymore.”
 I say, “You don’t understand. I’m addicted to this place.”
 “Don’t you get bored? I mean, how can you just sit here, every single night? Is this really the story of your life? You’re like a non-functioning part of society. Don’t you want something to happen? Doesn’t something need to happen?”
 I say. “I have a stockpile of patience. Trust me, things happen. Unexplainable things happen.”
 I want to admit the serial killer, Gary Lee Vickers, is here too. That he spices the place up. But I keep that secret to myself.
 And Charlie says, “Working here every fucking night cannot be healthy, dude.”
 I turn to my friends to ask the next question: “You guys ever hear of a man named Kingman?”
 Charlie says, “Nah, dude. Smoke that.”
 “Norm, what about you?”
 And Norman Long says, “I can’t hear you. The speakers, too loud.”
 “Dude, you’re just letting it burn. Smoke that.”
 I lower the music volume, asking again about Kingman. 
 Norman is hesitant, saying, “I know an E.B. Kingman.” 
 I test him, saying, “Big English guy? Has a lot of money?”
 “Tons of money, yeah, that’s him,” Norman says. “I never actually met him, but I guess I painted for him last summer. All my boss told me about Kingman was that he built over half of Painesville and Central Heights put together. That, and when my boss put a dent in his trunk, this guy, Kingman, bought him a brand new truck. That’s all I was told. That’s all I know.”
 E.B. Kingman is a generous man, that’s the only clue to his character. I tell Norman and Charlie about the construction workers. Fuckers, I call them. Beer swilling bastards, I call them. I tell my friends how all the lights and appliances are computerized, voice activated, to which they marvel. Then we talk some more about the newly installed cameras. 
 I pass the blunt. 
 “You guys,” I start suddenly. “I need to tell you something, quick. This place is safe to talk unless they hid a microphone in my truck. But I think I’m being watched. I’ve become something I never wanted to be, something I despise. Entertainment for some shifty eyes. Being watched all the time. I feel like someone is trying to figure me out, study my behavior, identify with my character, while waiting for that all important mental breakdown. Watching, there might be a cheering section, a cult-like following. Watching, there might be a league of women who want to watch me burn. And, well, fellas, I don’t deserve that kind of attention.”
 A number of times, Norman gives me a leery corner-of-the-eye-look. 
 I know the manner in which those eyes question me, so I say, “Had a feeling you would doubt what I’m claiming. But you haven’t been here each night like I have. You haven’t discovered the politics of this lakeside estate. Fact, eyes are on me. Fact.”
 Charlie says, “Usually, I would just say you smoke way too much crack but—”
 I make wild speculations, saying, “Maybe a bunch of rich guys got tired of watching scripted actors, so now I’ve become some kind of amusement to them. Maybe I’m being watched by scientists in white lab coats, I don’t know.”
 Both Norman and Charlie say they have to go play video games, getting out of the truck, still skeptical of my story. 
 Before they can shut the truck door, I say, “Don’t forget the fact that most people who live here come from England for some reason, but work for the American government. Department of Defense, NSA, you name it, the FBI, the CIA. They all ride around with these official license plates, which indicates to me, the secret is out.”
 They start walking to their getaway car. I follow them on foot. 
 Hollering behind them, I say, “You need to understand this in a temporal context. Temporal, meaning time.”
 I start calling out the chapter titles that I wrote with blue marker on my forearm.
 I yell out to them as they gain distance from me, “The new nanosecond culture. You hear me? Fellas? You hear me? This is it! The new nanosecond culture.”
 They both turn their heads over their shoulders once, but keep walking. 
 I can’t resist the tech agenda that spills from my mouthpiece.
 So I shout the rest of my forearm list. “Clocks that make us run. Time Zones. Dividing our time pie. Calendars and clout. Schedules and clocks. More clocks. Time schedules. Factory discipline. Programs and computers. The efficient society. Will you two just stop running away for nanosecond?”
 They don’t stop, getting closer to their getaway car.
 I use all my voice to scream out: “The politics of paradise, goddamn you both. Some timeless state that never shows up. The image of progress. The medical savior model. Trans-humanism. Big joke that is. Good luck forever replacing rusted parts. Oh, and then, our big vision of simulated worlds. All you’ll get is a deeper division between the upper class and lower class. Time pyramids and time ghettos. Hey, Charlie, which side are you on, the time ghetto? Hey, Norman, will you tell computers what to do, or will you get told what to do by the computers? It was all clockwork, but now it’s all information, but you don’t care. All you care for is industrial money when information has taken its place in value. You know how I know? You know how I know?”
 By now Norman has unlocked his car door. Charlie waits to get in. I finally catch up, stand next the car window. Norman keys the ignition.
 And I’m asking through the car glass, “You know how I know? I read a book about it. All this time here alone, I read a book. But the book went out of print. Because nobody cares. So I stole it from the library. If you can quit video games for day, I’ll let you borrow it. If you can quit leveling up your rank . . . ”    
 Abruptly, right then, Norman floors the gas pedal. My friends drive away.
 I walk over to the trailer office. Inside, I stare at the blank lines on security sheet, stoned, wondering what to write, until finally I scribble, “I saw what you saw.” Then, on second thought, I cross it out with almost all my pen ink. I decide I don’t want to use the tone of an accuser, so I rip the paper into small pieces. Then I begin a fresh sheet.
 I punch out at midnight. Once again, the heavy duty machines go without a guard. Once more, the building supplies are left for the taking. Another night. Another shift. Sense, it doesn’t make any. Purpose, there is none. I feel empty, drained.
 My voice is now hoarse with a ranting ache. 
 I suspect this to be the last time I see Charlie Moon or Norman Long, friends since childhood, gone.
 They abandoned me for becoming too weird with future fears.
 Every time I call them now, they answer but they don’t talk. I just hear video game sounds in the background, the ping and the pong, the tally of digital coins, their fingers mashing controller buttons, before they hang up.

18

 The carpet-layer.
 His name is Randy. Tall and lanky. He has shoulder length hair. His trucker cap brims down low over his eyes. His nose is long and big, crooked, maybe broken before. 
 Whether he’s from Alabama or Tennessee, I only half-listen, but he says he drove up to the Northeast to make a higher wage. Once he gets some money saved he’s going back to his wife and kids, down in the lower-earning South.
 He works a few nights a week, after daylight, once it’s dark, so no other workers get in his way. 
 I stand in the corner while he crawls around on his knee pads. I watch him slam his knee into a carpet knee-kicker, used for wedging the carpet in tight, where the wall meets the floor. 
 The condo is visibly wavy with 100 degree heat, since there are portable industrial heaters in the basement, speeding up the drywall process, melting my face.
 Many of his verbal expressions contain a reference to farm animals, starting most sentences with, “Faster than a hen on a hot tin roof . . . ”
 A boombox in the kitchen plays radio, low volume, a classic hard rock station, which fills the void of our sometimes long, quiet pauses.    
 “You got a girl of your own?” he wants to know, without looking at me.
 I tell him about my true desire for Jordan Shamshack, how she still rejects me. 
 In the shifty waves of rising heat, to the sound of his constant knee slams, I tell him I’ve been trying to get arrested for a girl.
 “Trying?” he says, disbelieving. “To get arrested? Trying?”  
 Jordan still has a boyfriend from years ago, I say, Brock Tisdale. But he’s currently doing prison time. I tell the carpet layer that Jordan lets a jealous me read the prison letters, detailing how when Brock gets released, he’ll dig up the bank robbery loot he buried somewhere, travel the world with her. In each letter, written with spelling errors, Brock signs off with the promise to be her partner in crime for life. 
 All along, I tell Randy, I’ve been trying to get arrested for a beautiful girl. Over the past few years, I been trying to break the law, get arrested, in the slim hope Jordan will see my worthy wild side, and I will somehow become her new bad boy interest. I add one more thing. The judges always let me off easy because I wear a tie to court, look clean cut, presentable.
 “Well, that’s not the smartest thing I’ve ever heard someone do,” Randy says, still not looking at me. “No girl is worth getting in that much trouble for. Let me guess, she has you wanting to get a tattoo and ride a Harley?”
 I think about my monster truck. Then I change the subject. I tell him some of my radical views on technology, the extreme threats now posed to our world society.
 “It’s just a phase you’re going through,” he says, ramming his knee. “Your rebel twenties. That time in life when all your friends start getting political. It will pass. You might lose some of those friends. But It’ll pass.”
 “What will?” 
 “That whole rant and rail and rave against the system phase. It will pass. You can’t get off the grid. Nobody can. We’re all connected. And that’s not a bad thing.”
 “I don’t know if it will pass,” I say. “I protest pretty strongly.”
 “Trust me,” he says, knee pounding. “It’ll pass. You’ll calm down with age. Me, I was a hell raiser back in my day. Whooping and a’hollerin. Now I’m a family man.”
 I wonder what Randy will think of Carl Busby, so I say, “I know this guy. Carl Busby. He’s like this guy who was a millionaire, but he gave away all his money. Just gave it away. Then he got into a car wreck. The airbag didn’t deploy. Now he’s got some brain damage. And the nerve endings in his face got destroyed, so all he does is smile, even when he’s talking deadly serious. His knee got messed up, too. Real bad. So he stopped driving forever. Slowed his life right down to a hobble. You might see him downtown sometime, walking with a limp. That eccentric downtown limp. He’ll play dumb and tell you about his pet rock or his clay horses or the sunshine on his precious little neck, but really—”
 “Why are you telling me any of this?” Randy asks.
 I can hear the frustration in his question, that Randy isn’t catching my drift, feeling my buzz, so I don’t continue on that track.
 Instead, like a turning point in my fine young rebel thoughts, I say, “Short story even shorter, I’m a neo-luddite.”
 Randy says, “I don’t know what that is. But you’re wasting your time.”
 I change the subject again. I tell him I think Frank Benzino is a English mobster with dark ties to the Italian Mafia.
 Randy finally looks at me, lifting his cap brim. His forehead is plastered with sweat. 
 Looking at me stern, with bloodshot eyes, he tells me, “Don’t say that.”
 “Why not?”
 “Do you tell other people you think that?”
 “No. Just you.”
 “Good,” he says, clicking his box-cutter. He climbs over a carpet roll, mounting it, bucking a little, like he’s riding a horse. Once more, he turns away from me.
 Without any eye contact, he says, “Play your cards right, Kingman will send you to college. Anywhere you want to go in the state. That includes Harvard. Heck, he bought me super bowl tickets.”
 I change the subject yet again. I tell him about Rockaway, where I live. I tell him I grew up there during the whole Rodney King trial. The LA riots. How racial tensions were high where I lived, not just on the West Coast. How I had to deal with racism for being the one cracker-ass, honky, gringo, whiteboy.
 Making tape-measurements, Randy says, “Everybody thinks they have a unique background. One time I had this guy complaining to me that his parents got divorced. I told him my father killed my mother while I lay in my baby crib, with a shotgun. That was the first sound I remember in life. A shotgun blast. And this guy responds to that by repeating how the divorce really affected him, how he had to move out from his childhood home and leave a dog behind.”
 If Randy had been looking at me, he would see my eyes go wide with horror. 
 I want to tell him about Gary Lee Vickers. How I alone know where the psycho sleeps. Right here. But I worry Randy won’t be able to keep that secret. After all, reward money for convict capture has just been announced by federal law enforcement at a press conference. So my mouth starts to open, but then it screws shut.
 Randy makes light of every issue I have, and I hate him for it, but I also admire his straight talk.
 He tells me he has some weed in his jacket pocket. If I break up the weed, he says he’ll roll us a joint. I’ve been sober for three full days. That’s the funny thing about drug addiction. When I want drugs, everything about it is a terrible hassle. But when I want to quit drugs, people offer it to me for free. 
 I crumble the weed up, small, green, and pungent. Randy takes a work break to smoke with me. 
 We go outside, away from the heavy dry wall heat.
 I suppose because I catch him looking at the stars, I ask him if he believes in God.
 “Yes and no,” he says. “Not the Bible version anyway. I don’t really talk about it. Talking about it is a breach of my actual faith. I’m more interested in aliens. Sometimes I wonder if aliens a long time ago had sex with monkeys.”
 I had never considered that type of evolution before, so it enters my mind like a whirlwind. The idea cools my blood. I can hear the rip roaring furnaces in the basement, once toasty, drop a degree, then return with a whoosh to its original octave.  
 Randy’s the first person I’ve had a real conversation with for over a month.
 He cracks open a beer bottle, then he grabs the neck of the bottle with just two fingers, tipping it back, sipping. He says, “Ah! Now that’s called a Tennessee side-swig.”    
 We go back inside. He reminds me to wipe my muddy boots before I step on his freshly installed carpet. Then he asks me if I want to try the knee kicker.
 I do. 
 I bend down on all four of my rubbery limbs. Thinking of Busby and his bum leg, I make my knee jam hard, hammer-pound the cushion of the kicker tool. 
 It’s the first real work I’ve done in a year.
 I start to sweat, dizzy with heat, breathing in a fresh pocket of floor level air.
 It feels great. Like I just became his fourth-level apprentice.

19

 There, on the highway, with the sun in my eyes, going from Rockaway to the Clear Lake, between worlds, looking at the drivers of the other vehicles, I feel a huge disconnect.  
 Strangers, bound by speed, separated by steel and glass, sharing the same road. 
 I knew I was on time. I knew the exact minute I would punch in, because, between worlds, the sun is always in my eyes.
 I take the exit, the bridge ramp that shoulders the lake. 
 Sensing my days are numbered at work, I wonder if I’ll quit, or be fired, or get killed. 
 I walk inside the trailer office and Bob, the site manager, is standing there with a stack of printed emails in his hand. Fan mail. He says people have been watching me on the construction site cameras. The email is from all around the world. 
 Some people are sending in requests for me to act out on the live video feed, many of them wanting to see me dance alone again. Other people want to show their appreciation for what they are hailing as a new form of entertainment, calling it augmented reality, the interlacing of the virtual with the real. I get through half of the emails when I come across a naked photo of a girl flashing her breasts. At that point, I’m honored by the attention. I quit reading the rest of the email. 
 The construction site is just bustling with heavy duty machines, all digging and lifting and removing and dumping. Then it’s dead. The workers are gone and the place is dead.   
 Saturday night turns into Sunday afternoon, turns into Monday evening, turns into Friday morning and another weekend, which then turns into a total of a year without a break from the Clear Lake. 
 So here I am, sitting on site, motionless in my monster truck, monitoring the main road, under a night sky that is predictably dark, but filled with bats. I look to the sky for a long time. I can’t find the moon tonight, but I examine the stars and for one very foolish moment I guess they are government run satellite cameras with high tech zoom.
 It’s late, so I call Norman Long on his voice mail and I leave this message: “This is a recording for the government to intercept. Kill, kill. kill the president. Take a bazooka to the capital, and shoot, shoot, shoot the White House.”
 Watching the headlights of cars that come to enter, I judge the pace of the car. If they use their blinkers or drive at a slow crawling pace, then I know they’re intruders. I pursue those people. If they drive fast and wildly around the bend, still in highway mode, then I know it’s the neighbors, accustomed to the area. Rarely does the security guard ever come in contact with the neighbors. The neighbors push the button on their garage door openers, pull inside, then the door slides down behind them, like the condo’s a snug little beehive.
 So I sit here in the dark. I adjust the truck seat to recline. 
 I look over at the empty condo, at the side wall covering, what the workers call a sheath. The sheath is meant to protect the wood from the rain and snow, before the vinyl siding goes up. Advertising is on the sheath. But I notice tonight where it usually says, “Place Your Business Logo Here,” it now says, “Enter The Virtuplex Here.” 
 A violent chill runs the full course of my body.
 Everything feels strange. Like I’m trapped inside an arcade. And that arcade is on fire. Or maybe trapped inside a casino, with ringing slot machines, but nobody around to play them. There are no clocks in this empty casino, so I feel lost to time, feeling the sensation of an eternal burn.
 I look at the newly completed condos, instead. I see that the lights are on but the shades are drawn. No visible movement. I pull out my binoculars to magnify my search of the second floor. I see the steady glow of computer screens, with bodies sitting slouched before them, motionless. 
 By now, I have memorized what time each neighbor comes home. Every vehicle, I know the owner. Every mailbox has a name and I know when it will be checked. I watch neighbors take out the trash, and I note the precise minute. When it comes to detail, observing and recording, my peripheral vision is on point. Damn, my eyeballs are good. 
 Being here night after monthly night, I notice any disturbance in detail, with minimal effort, it’s so obvious to the trained eye. So familiar am I with the area, objects take on the most fragile feature, when moved or rearranged. I know the placement of every pipe, ladder, paint bucket, power drill, rope pulley, drywall stack, carpet roll, wooden saw horse, while practically keeping count of every nail and every shingle. 
 Quite possibly, someone else has been given a set of keys with permission to pass through, but I reject any suspicion. By now, my attachment to the job is so internalized, to think someone would violate, use and abuse, something I’m paid to protect, that would classify me a disgrace. I fight against the idea that my job is void of significance. I have to deny what my own senses are relaying back to my brain. I determine that anything I overlook, the cameras will certainly catch and record, leaving me less than liable. 
 The phone rings, which jostles me into an upright position. I’m not prepared to hear another human voice. I think I might reject the call. It keeps on ringing. I practice saying the word hello. The word sounds like a sad drone. My voice cracks and sounds foreign to my ears. Even though the ringing won’t  stop, I refuse to answer.  
 I hear a weird buzzing in my ear, then some crackling static, like an internal radio broadcast between FBI agents about to make a raid. A voice charges up to say, “We have movement! We have movement!”     
 Then some more buzzing comes, but this time as the swarming sound of mechanical insects, tiny nano-scale dragonflies, rubbing thin metal legs, looking upon me with their compound-eye cameras. I can’t allow these nano-bugs to enter my bloodstream because they’ll clip my heart strings.   
 The all-purpose security guard, I sit still and I wait. The cameras want action, but the star of this show stays in the dressing room, sleeping.   
 I think of singing along to my movie soundtrack, then decide against it when I realize that no film would ever include moments like this. The silence. The solitude. The loneliness. And especially the boredom. It would never entertain anyone. The cameras around the construction site have gone straight to my head, skewed my perspective, tweaked my antenna. 
 I have to endure how very boring the boredom is. I have to sustain how very silent the silence is. I’m in no mood to entertain the cameras. Instead I go into monster truck seclusion, hiding from the visual pressures of supply and demand, a version of eye candy.
 Carl Busby, my mentor, made the claim that technology and society were advancing too fast, beyond human control, and I want so badly to prove him wrong, sitting here on a slow night, not daring to move. But I get hungry and I think of fast food. I get horny, think of fast women. At the end of the road, through some low hedges, I can see the trail of car lights, red and white, zipping by on highway that was built long before I was born. 
 When I finally take a walk down New Farm Road, to the paved section, I turn my flashlight on for no other reason but to feel important. I get the distinct feeling that the camera on the street lamp is rotating in my direction. Stepping up and around the lake front, I make an exhibition of myself. I march proudly past the street lamps, like I’m part of a unique parade or special procession. I picture people on the flanks, cheering me on one side, booing me on the other, and I wave, raising my hand like a dictator, to them both. At the end of the road, I imagine a robot army has assembled for my podium speech. I announce my earthly arrival, command them to, “Rise! Rise up!”
 Then, standing at the front entrance, I perform sign language for the entire alphabet, letter by letter. I kick a soda can several times and pretended to enjoy it thoroughly. I do jumping jacks. I start hugging trees. For one half hour, I whip rocks at the portable toilets, until my arm feels ready to fall from the socket. Prancing around, I throw uppercuts and stick jabs, shadow-boxing, round after round. I lay down in a big pile of leaves and begin to quiver like a fish. Then I run out of ideas, so, climbing back into my monster truck, I sit still. 
 Sitting still for a very long time, I continue to sit. My legs fell asleep, then my buttocks begin to tingle. There happens to be an itch on my back, but I don’t scratch it. I decide to go over to the surface of the lake, to watch for my reflection, but I fear that it won’t be there.
 The stillness and the silence, that’s all I have to contend with. I can feel the eyes on me, like I’m under some kind of invisible pressure to perform. This stilted behavior goes on for two weeks straight during which time I receive false hellos and uneasy smiles from the people working in Building Base One. I only go there to drop off the security sheets, pick up my check, but all the managers, even the secretaries, can tell I consider them suspect. On every downtown visit I look up at those two white satellite dishes on top of Building Base One, wondering what images they might obtain.  
 I pull the remote control box out from under my seat, the one I stole from my boss.  
 The Eden Absolute 925  
 It’s a black box, with hundreds of small buttons, very super sleek. I open the side panel to see if it’s battery operated. Instead, I see two glass tubes that contain a glowing neon liquid.  
 I don’t know how to turn it on, so, with my palm flat, I press my hand across the entire face of the gadget. The screen lights up.
 At first I think it’s just an all-in-one electronic device, good for watching movies, hearing music, maybe even making phone calls. But I learn just by scrolling the options, this is a far more advanced machine. I’m able to retrieve information in such a way, it seems to tap into an almost all-knowing database. I can give The Eden Absolute my lifelong questions, so I ask if there is a God in existence. A voice comes back to me, saying, “There is no God, when God is all things.” So I ask where I am, and it tells me: "You are in the Virtuplex, a computer generated community, created by Pixel Perfect 3000.” Another option is, I can locate any person anywhere on the globe, so I choose the body chemistry for Charlie Moon and his walking gait, providing his name and birth date, allowing for the satellites to track his heat sign, his brain wave frequency. He’s in Brooklyn, having a slice of pizza that he paid for with his credit card, talking about touring his new album. The satellites actually let me listen to his heart beat. 
 But somehow I make a mistake. I press the wrong button, because the world around me becomes increasingly insane. I’m not in my truck anymore. I’m soon confronted by a huge mechanical monster. The backhoe digger has transformed itself into life. My disbelieving eyes see it now as a huge dinosaur. Maybe I’m having visual hallucinations. Maybe this giant beast is nothing more than one of the machines the workers left behind for me to combat. When I see the futuristic megabeast, I think of running in the opposite direction to save my life. But then again, the flashlight in my right hand has just gained significant weight. My flashlight changes into a battle sword, long and silver, pulsating with an electrically charged tip. 
 The enormous legs of the T-Rex Machine are stomping towards me, shaking the ground. For one dramatic moment, the megabeast sways its long neck from side to side, letting out a terrific roar. I remember feeling a shift in my courage. Something tugs comically at my heart. I’m about to slay this epic creature and nobody will know about it for miles—nobody will know how brave I’ve been for standing under those monster bucket teeth. 
 As it lowers its head to jaw snatch me, I plunge the sword into its breast plate. Only I see it totter on two legs. Only I hear the collapse of thunderous metal.
 I kill it. I claim the victory, however heroic.
 But I suddenly realize this is no time to celebrate. 
 There’s something rising out of the Clear Lake. 
 I look over to see it glowing, under the water. It glows, under the surface, until it finally it starts to emerge. Gradually, three oblong spacecrafts lift up. They reach a point in the sky, then slowly hover above the condos. 
 The lights that ring around the spaceship windows remind me of the same neon liquid that powers The Eden Absolute. I press another button on the remote control box, and when I do, the three hovering spacecraft shoot down fireballs onto the condos, releasing flaming projectiles, torching the new homes. None of the neighbors, I fear, will escape alive.    
 I’m frightened out of my wits. Enough of this place, I think. I decide that I’m done. No longer will I work here. I’ll quit. I wait until the rusty morning light, then I quit. So, grabbing my sword, I run. I run for the exit. I run for the highway. 
 Some of the cars and trucks pull over to the side. Many remain traffic jam stuck. The young man in uniform, I bolt up the middle lane, running right up the yellow divider strip. I stop, only to plunge the sword into the front tire of a school bus. Then I climb the hood of a car to mount the roof. Raising the sword to the sky, I welcome the news helicopter. When I hear the police sirens approaching from all angles, I jump down and run for the toll booth. I slice off random car antennas as I go.  
 Officer Boykins, the first to arrive to the scene, is soon faced with my unruly behavior. I wave the sword around my head, point it at him, like a scorpion tail. The cop draws his gun. Our eyes meet, lock on. There is some negotiation over the value of my life, which ends with me dropping my weapon. I’m instructed to place my hands on my head, then to walk backwards into the awaiting handcuffs. I’m identified as Mike Miller. But when pressed for further information, I won’t speak. Officer Boykins spares no force when throwing me into the back of the cruiser.  
 I just sit there trying hard to listen through the closed window glass. I hear them call for an ambulance once the police chief decides a psych evaluation should determine my mental status. Another cop says he can smell a gas leak further down the highway. By the time they all spot the smoke and the forty foot flames that rise above the distant tree-line, an explosion shutters the area. It comes from the new condo development by the lake. I sit forward, mouth agape. 
 A collection of small white porcelain elephants from one condo now rains down from the sky. They pelt the cruiser.

20

 At my Rockaway apartment, I spend time slumped on a chair, in catatonic shock. 
 I can’t respond to anything. 
 It feels like I’m in a coma, but still awake. 
 It feels like I’m dreaming with eyes wide open. 
 I’m can’t move at all. My neck is rigid, stiff. But I sense my head is going from place to place, traveling without moving. Around the world without leaving.
 From scene to scene. 
 First, a mental hospital and a padded room. Where I’m assessed by a panel of doctors who judge me mentally fit to stand trial for arson. 
 Then I shuffle in my mind to a court scene with red and gold volumes of law books on shelves behind a judge. I can smell the mint in my lawyers mouth as he whispers a plea deal into my ear. Here my attorney argues that a foreign substance started the condo blaze. The fire’s point of origin was caused by an unknown alien chemical that continues to baffle investigators. So the case never goes to trial. I’m released. An innocent young man. 
 In my catatonic dream, which seems to be so vivid and true, I’m then abducted outside the courthouse by aliens, body-snatched, taken aboard a spaceship. One of those aliens is Carl Busby who unzips from his body to reveal his jelly-like insides. I always counted him as odd, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Jordan Shamshack is flying with us, too. She is still very human in her beauty. She’s to be my space queen. But I’m told, as we ascend, as we leave the atmosphere of Earth, that her first order of business on a new planet will be to eat me alive. I already see the gleam of hunger in her eyes. So before we reach escape velocity, about to hit our exit speed, I get desperate to go home. As Jordan gives her final backward glance at the land and sea below, I sneak away to a launch pod. It ejects me from the spaceship. This month long dream ends with me parachuting back down to Earth.   
 Back in my apartment, my mother places the phone next to my ear, while she spoons some clam chowder into my mouth. 
 On the phone line, I hear the gruff voice of Frank Benzino saying, “After you’ve had enough time off work, after you get some rest, we at Calgon Tech would love to have you back.”
 His English accent is missing. He sounds more Australian. 
 This phone call snaps me out of my frozen catatonic state. 
 I rush for the security guard uniform that hangs neatly pressed in my closet. 
 I button the shirt, strap the belt, pin the badge, lace the boots.
  My speeding to work is done in anticipation over whether I will see the condos burned to the ground, nothing but ash. As I exit the highway, however, I look upon the same condos still standing, like I never witnessed the spaceship fireballs that destroyed them. 
 The only difference now is the sign at the front entrance. Where it used to say, The Clear Lake Condo Estate, it now says, Calgon Tech: The Virtuplex.
 I’m alone in the trailer for hours without knowing what did or did not happen here. It was a dangerous memory that would not fade from my experience. And yet, I have to move on. I must move on. Something fantastic did happen here. But the aftermath of that fantasy didn’t hold up. Nobody wants to hear about something that was just a dream. We all dream. Get over it.
 How long was I gone? Was I gaslighted? Have I been discredited? I don’t know. I now wade in confusion. 
 I’ve been wondering if anyone actually looks at my security sheets. On  slow nights I’ve been toying the idea of using my clipboard as a journal instead. Just to see if anyone notices. 
 Finally, yes, I jot it down with a pen. This is what I write:

LOG 1: Feeling Lost

 “I’ve worked a total of one year without a break from the Clear Lake Condos.
 Monday is missing. 
 Monday is more than missing, it was never there.
 The clock speeds ahead. 
 Tuesday comes and goes. 
 My mind gets warped by time. 
 Wednesday has all the feeling of a Friday. 
 A minute becomes more like a month. 
 Thursday is a blur. 
 Two weeks turn almost eternal. 
 Tuesday comes again. 
 My mind is dizzy and swimming. 
 There is snow in the summer season. 
 Seconds seem to slip by. 
 On yet another Tuesday.”

I note the clock time as whenever. Then I sign off on it, to make it official.

LOG 2: Feeling Mute

 Again I use my security sheets as a journal, since nobody raised alarm about my last entry, yesterday. 

 “Outside this trailer is all dark. Surrounding the trailer is a deep, deep silence. I let my mind do some thinking, but I only hear faint wind chimes that suddenly stop. The silence is all around me. The lake is still. Time passes by in slow increments. Time stretches out, expands, goes further. Time goes beyond time. The end has no end.
 The forest behind me is a fortress of quiet wood. Thinking ahead, I try to picture my life ten years from now, in anticipation. I can’t. My past is gone, since my memory has been set adrift. Or maybe I’m just absent. 
 From a factory mill, a smokestack in the distance emits smoke without a noise. 
 The silence is heavy and the darkness almost has a dense weight to it. I wonder how long I can withstand this way too quiet place.
 Right now, it feels like time has stopped, like a digital camera is constantly capturing the same moment.
 My eyes are starting to see things in frames. 
 Since nothing has changed in hours, I don’t know whether I’m coming or going.
 Working this job for one year straight, without a single night off duty, the nights hardly mean anything to me, because I’m sleeping and eating and returning to work.
 The drudgery of the routine is embedded in my brain. The routine is a danger to my psyche.”

 I just realize that I’ve been scribbling with such a fast scrawl, my words aren’t legible. My words start on my clipboard but cross over to the blueprint drawings that span the workstation desk. So I end my journal entry there, with a little stick man figure of me on the blueprints.

LOG 3: Feeling Numb

 Using the security sheets on my clipboard for another journal entry, I write:

 “Tonight, I try to fight off the loneliness. I try to fend off that lonesome feeling. This type of effort depletes my will power. I yearn for conversation, any conversation at all. I try to remember the difference between being alone and feeling lonely. I know there must be a difference.
 I think of myself as trapped. I can place the dimension of a prison cell, mentally, from the lake to the highway to the condos high on the hill. 
 Waiting is the worst part.
 Every moment is counted for.
 Once again, the night is silent.
 The trees, they don’t move. The lake, it doesn’t move. The heavy duty machines, still. 
 As long as I keep still, all segments of time can be lumped together as one marathon night in history.
 If I look at myself the right way, I can see the invisible chains, the shackles on my body. With the right pair of eyes I can see the invisible bars that surround the Clear Lake construction site.
 This is catatonic despair. 
 And it feels so frozen because there is no real tool to chisel the ice off my skeleton.
 I feel like a nobody from nowhere with nothing to do. 
 Working here makes me empty out, lose feeling, become numb. The numbness is the result of being here too long, working a solo routine, night after night, drug after smokable drug. 
 In the zombie zone, I care for nothing right now. 
 An hour ago, in my truck, I turned on the interior light to look at myself in the visor mirror. I had no expression on my face, just a blank sagging effect, no visible emotion. 
 My hand lifted up from my lap to my throat, checking for a pulse. I had trouble to locate a throbbing neck vein, which caused me to think I’m dead. Then, opening the dashboard compartment, I found a safety pin to prick my finger with. I stuck myself hard, but no blood came to the surface. That worried me, so I stuck myself again, harder. Blood trickled out.
 The blood was blue.”

 I end the journal entry there because my tear ducts start to sting from dryness.

LOG 4: Feeling Dead

 Looking at my security clipboard, the fresh white sheet, those empty lines, I struggle for words. I eventually manage to write my final entry: 

 “I sit here in the center of this silence, and the silence has a white-knuckle stranglehold over this entire neighborhood. 
 Even when astronauts come back to Earth after a long space trip, they need therapy to walk among the human race. This job is like that. I am out there.
 Now is the best time for me to confront the serial killer who squats in the condos, Gary Lee Vickers.”

21

 Gary Lee Vickers has run out of space to hide. All the condos have been sold. Every condo has been moved into, except for one last unit. 
 Unit 96.
 If he’s still here, and I suspect he is, I know where to find him.
 I slot the key into Unit 96 very slowly.
 I don’t close the door behind me, leave it wide open, in case Vickers has a weapon. 
 I make my way around the completed condo, through furniture-empty rooms. 
 In the upstairs hallway, I pull the cord that unlatches the attic staircase from the ceiling.
 “Vickers?” I call out. “Gary Lee Vickers?”
 No answer from the dark attic.
 “I’m the security guard here. I know you sleep here. You know that I know you sleep here. And I never reported you, so you know it’s safe to come out now.”
 “Mike Miller,” I hear Vickers say from that darkness. “The guard for the evening.”
 I hear him laugh a little.
 I’m startled that he has my name, so I fight my better instinct to retreat fast.   
 I’m not sure I want to actually meet him or see his disfigured face up close, so I say, “All the condos are sold. You’re gonna need to find a new place to squat. Just a warning.”
 I hear the attic floorboard start to creak. 
 It’s that sound that lets me know that of all the things I’ve been disillusioned about here, the presence of Gary Lee Vickers is real. 
 As he takes backward steps down the attic staircase, I brace myself for his murderous threat.
 We face each other. He’s beyond ugly, botched by cheap surgery.
 He says, “So you never reported me. Why is that?”
 “You were here before me,” I say. “By the time I realized you were here, I had already fallen in love with this place. I could sit on my ass without complaint. You left me undisturbed.”
 “It is time for me to move along,” he says. “You’re right about that. I’m sure I’ll find another construction site to squat in. But finding a guard who doesn’t squeal, I won’t be a fool to expect that much. I was lucky to have you.”
 “You did nothing wrong here, I far as I can see.”
 “No, I didn’t. And that’s the point. Well, maybe a few bad things. I made a copy of your keys to get into some condos, to take showers and, you know, raid refrigerators for food.”
 “Nobody ever said anything to me about stolen food.”
 “Only took enough to survive.”
 “Wait, made copies of my keys, how?”
 “You were blackout drunk a few times. I snatched it off your hip. But I returned them before you got back to your senses.”
 “Anything else I should know of? Anything else bad?”
 “Well. Maybe some other things.”
 “What happened?”
 “Some nights I’d get a little worn down with nothing to do, so I’d peep into condos. I’d watch the people watching news coverage of my prison escape. It’s a strange thing to watch other people watching.”
 Inwardly, I’m remembering how I did the same thing once, watching some of the neighbors watch a talent show on TV. Remembering that sad blue glow on their faces.
 “Hey, buddy,” he jolts me back from the memory. “Who watches the watchman?”
 “You do, apparently.”
 Gary Lee Vickers, with his missing nose and his sagging eye and twisted lips, says to me, “You’re a good guy, Mike Miller. You’re a bit crazy at times, but you always keep some normal logic going in that crazy brain of yours. Hey, thanks for keeping a lookout. Hey, I should get going. Hey, do me a favor. One day they’ll catch me, send me back to death row. I thought for some time I might shoot it out with the cops if it ever came to that. But being here for a while, in a nice neighborhood, not killing anyone, I’ve kinda lost a little of my grisly aggression. When they catch me, do me a favor. Tell people I’m not as bad as they think, huh? Might spare me the electric chair.”
 I have no other option but to agree. Anyway, it doesn’t seem like a stretch to hype the other side of his harmless ying-yang personality. 
 In truth, right now, I have other concerns, more stress. Since the construction is done, where will I work next? 
 Gary Lee Vickers gathers his pillow from the attic, along with a pair of oversized sneakers. I wait for him while he laces them up. 
 Then he says, “Climbed up a deck here one time, looked into a bedroom window, looked in on a man with some kind of helmet strapped across his face, like a helmet for the future. Whatchu call it, virtual? So I got jealous. It’s the kinda thing I’ll miss out on when I go back to prison. So I snuck in, undid his shoelaces, stole the sneakers right off his feet.”   
 I have to ask, “He never felt you pull them off?”
 “Oh, man. He was lost in some kind of la-la land. Never felt but a tickle. You see, it’s just that type of fun experience I won’t get in lock-up. Magical worlds. Hey, man, it’s been fun, but I can tell by the look in your eyes you’re disgusted with my hacked up face, so I’ll save you any more sight of it. Hey, you know what I’m gonna miss the most here, besides those hotdogs from the food cart?”
 “What?”
 “That porcelain elephant collection in one of them condos. Such a sweet collection. Made my ass feel right at home.”
 I drift off for a moment. I recall how those white elephants rained down from the sky, how they shattered on the highway the day this whole neighborhood exploded.  
 When I come back from that vision in mind, Gary Lee Vickers is gone. 
 I suppose it’s good he had to sneak away so quickly.
 And I figure it best we go different ways. His guilt-by-association was beginning to creep up on me.
 Although, I must say, there is a part of our conversation that almost gets lost, that remains unspoken. 
 I go outside, down by the lake to retrieve that lost conversation. It is something that went unspoken between us. It is something I registered only in my subconscious, as a dark vibe. His dark vibe. That strange missing part of our conversation, I find it at the lapping edge of lake water. 
 What Gary Lee Vickers, mass murderer, had only suggested, was this:
 “All these nice people here, there isn’t one of them I couldn’t kill with a flick of my wrist. The toughest one here, I wasn’t but fifteen moves to his mind. And when I got there, I’d give him fifteen blows to the back of his skull with an ice pick. But I didn’t. And that’s the point. So remember this, it’s always better on the outside.”     
 The words of this non-verbal part of our conversation carry over the lake like a thin vapor. 
 I keep staring out from this dark waterfront, into that mist. 
 I feel chills on my flesh, rippling cold. 
 Not much longer after, I see a shadowy object approaching in the distance. It skims over the lake surface. I rub the dark night out of my eyes.
 It’s a man. In a canoe. 
 He paddles slowly. The canoe glides toward me.
 The canoe scuffs the sand of the shoreline. 
 I recognize the man but not his name. I can’t believe I remember him. He’s the mailman who got fired from his job a year ago because the internet stole it from him. If I remember right, he had a noose that I can still picture as knotted. I’m sure that day he meant to kill himself by hanging from it. 
 He reminds me again, his name is Gerald Jerome. 
 He tells me he did plan to commit suicide that day, but while he dangled from a tree branch, about to die, a group of half-naked people ran through the forest to lift him up, re-deliver oxygen to his brain. He says now he camps in the woods with those same half-naked people. A commune, he calls it. But he hints there is more to this group, a purpose they all live for, possibly bent on some anti-tech mindset. He invites me to join their environment friendly movement. To come . . .  live with them.
 Neo-luddite.   
 Eco-terrorism.
 S.A.N.E
 Stand Against Networked Environments 
 Gerald Jerome tells me I’ll have to quit drugs, since our motivation will be to stay grounded in reality, to be true to ourselves. He asks me to accept that personal challenge. To stop all my escapism.
 I ask this jobless guy for a few minutes to decide. I walk back up the paved incline to the condo unit where I last saw Vickers. The last empty unsold condo. This is a place I never wanted to leave. Now, this is a place I will return to only in my mind, as a memory.
 I tell the lights by voice command to switch on. I imagine there’s a table in the kitchen. I imagine it with such force of thought until it lay ready with dinner plates. 
 There I sit. Waiting for my guests.
 Their delay, I attribute to a 3D printer getting jammed up with carbon nanotubes. Their lateness, I blame on the toughest material known to exist in nature. Worse than that old excuse, stuck in traffic, this type of elevator-to-space material causes my guests to miss dinner at six.
 The automatic oven has been cooking the spiced-up lamb for three hours already. I can smell it, almost taste it.   
 My dinner guests, the six of them, are supposed to be as follows: a friend, a lover, a former-lover, a business partner, a family member, and a charity accepting stranger. But none of them show. The invitations must’ve got lost in the mail. So the dinner party never starts. 
 Instead, the automatic oven starts to smoke. The lamb starts to burn. Then, I think, it starts to rain inside the condo. But really it’s just the sprinkler system.
 The sprinkler system, I now realize, is just some tears I’d have one day when I fully miss this place. No more face-to-face with the Clear Lake Condo Estate.
 I find myself running out, away from that condo, leaving the lights behind me on. A war begins. A third world war, everyone in the digital trenches. 
 When an American soldier finds a prisoner of war, he’ll test that POW with American movie trivia, just to see if he’s really American, not a terrorist. He’ll say, “Who was at the dinner party in that movie, Six at Six? And with a smile of gratitude at being rescued, the POW will say, “It’s a trick question. Nobody. Just the host. Divide and conquer. Leaving just one. Lights on, but nobody home. A split between the real world and the virtual. Such a legendary divorce. Cult-classic. So good to see you, bro, you don’t even know.”
 The burnt lamb back there gives me an idea. I’m done eating meat, now a fruit and vegetable man. But it also gives me another idea. Burn things. Using toilet paper from the portable toilet, I create something of a short wick, to be stuffed into the gas tank of my monster truck. Then I light the thing, that atmosphere killing gas hog.    
 Before anything explodes, I meet the shadow of a figure, Gerald Jerome, down by the lake, under the moon. I bring my decision. 
 I catch myself watching myself, detached from the action, as I step inside the canoe. 
 It’s always better on the outside.
 As Gerald Jerome pushes off the land with his paddle, we sail across, a boat through the digital mist. Tiny squares of floating gray, shifting layers of lighter and darker squares of gray.
 I can feel myself breath the misty air in, gaining a second life wind.  
 These are my episodes. Episodes in digital conquest.  
 These are my dispatches, sent from the cold front.

Ok. I really liked parts where the security guard loneliness cones out. The serial killer went too fast, and I would have liked to know him better.
I was security myself and have anecdotal empathica, bored and alone, no backup, armed, and reading Celine. I guess Celine is very much a reminiscence of Your style, it does really capture the pathos within. One real interesting facet is with him, is the absurd and brazen attempt to write , ‘America’ without being never there.

But just like how Kerouac envisions America, as a place that isn’t there, a Saturday night where everyone cruises to, but never get there, it is true to form.

I think his Long Day’s Journey Into the Night was remarkable, and kept me from the bug house during those long lonely nights.

Later I was totally disillusioned by learning of his rabid anti semitism, which even the Germans found irritable and way over hyperbolic.

Firstly, thank you for giving my story a shot. You’ve been a thorough reader, which makes you a companion, since this story is semi-autobiographical. In a way you’ve got to know a person intimately, in a way people in my real life only graze the surface. You’ve also allowed me to move on from this story since it was my first attempt at a short novel. I’ve had a hard time letting it go, and I could probably tweak it and write different endings to it for the rest of my life.

Above everything, this story was my attempt to show what it will be like when people start to go to work in the virtual world and life becomes similar to a video game. I’m not sure I captured that. After all, I started writing it 20 years ago, BEFORE the first Iphone came out. It was hard to portray virtual reality two decades before it actually hit the marketplace.

This story is different for many people. I’ve had one reader say this was the funniest book they’ve read, probably because they know me. For them, I don’t think the fantastic scenes held much that was believable. Maybe you got a laugh, but then again, maybe you saw it as a serious work.

I’m really happy that you could identify and even enjoy the passages of loneliness. I was wary that might bore most readers, but it sounds like you recognized something in them because of you security work. Understanding the loneliness was crucial to understanding the atmosphere, which you did.

It’s funny that you mentioned Kerouac. It was his few paragraphs in On The Road about a security guard, and the park ranger in Dharma Bums that let me know that I could share my version of the Night Watchman.

Celine however, I’m unfamiliar with. A Journey to the End of Night is a fine title and would have summarized my story completely. Thanks for recommending that author. I am sure to check him out!

I agree that I treated the serial killer perhaps too fast. The serial killer represented a conventional plot and kept things moving, but I still had the video game life in mind. In my view, playing video games is super fun, but when you shut the system down, there is something empty, something that lacks achievement. It doesn’t matter how many points I rack up, how many levels I complete, what dragons I slayed, there was the big fat nothing waiting for me at the end. The pathos you mentioned is that cold feeling. Of doing much that amounts to little. Of interacting but never fully participating. So the serial killer subject has the reader wanting more, which sometimes stays out of reach.

Lastly, I can tell that style is important you. Whatever the story has or doesn’t have, I hope you at least got a good ride on the language. Thanks for your honest and clear assessment.

My goal is to create stories that readers like to go back to, maybe find more. 2x for you!!!

See ya, brave poet.

Secret underground bump

C’mon everyone make me happy and read my tale. April 1st will be a great day for craft members.

And it never really comes to light. Despair of it overcomes any doubt: and for me it is consistent with a yoga .
The power of the kundalini is profound, and it fires the many shades of grey that it connects. It overcomes 'Its self toward a fearless - potential all inclusive possibility of being it’self, in the constantly reoccurring higher order.

All inconsistent modalities either fall by the wayside, but again re integrated through feedback of the invisible eye.

The bump here is the huddling through the anachronism of desire to define Samadhi, as a possession. It huddling through of this stage is inherent in total surrender.

Your tale, is the tale of many, who can not realize its potential, as the dog’s motive , waging the war of tales.

The existence of abstract relations within appears almost fool proof’d, the illusion works best whom it seems to benefit.

It is the final leap of the evolutionary form into the hungry ghost of desire.

Once this point is instilled, ALL golden edicts erase any pre functional selves

“This subversive text was inspired by the UnaBomber’s manifesto, but more importantly, by Time Wars by Jeremy Rifkin, the most interesting book I have ever read and for some very strange reason out of print.”

“The kind of thing a prisoner would read with all that jail time.”

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Sqq9SHrfvQ[/youtube]

…

I’m calling the agenda police on you

They would for close themselves into untimely dearth, were they even respond.

They would blind themselves with fear when media would look at them, they could not imprison that, …