A terrorist (think Irish Republican Army and not Al-Qaeda) has holed up in the hospital. The weapon he uses is some kind of sub-space brane that seems to fold matter into itself. As a hostage, I witness him calling on the brane — which looks like a misty pink cloud — to unfurl itself from sub-space and dissolve other hostages. The hospital administration refuses his demands and the pink cloud seeps out of flat surfaces. But something goes wrong and the pink cloud dissolves all of the hostages except one (me) and the man takes me by the arm and furtively guides me through the halls, out into the parking lot.
Post-apocalyptic. Landscape is overrun with forests; thick, chocking forests. What left of us all fit on a train. We live on this train. We must keep it moving or else perish. No one knows what lives out there in those woods. We rarely stop; we cannot afford to stop. When we do stop it is for quick repairs: stumbling across another car to add to the train; locating food or fuel; fixing a wheel or a tie or the brakes. Each stop requires all hands.
There is unrest on the train though. Not quite disorder or revolt but serious grumbling. Rumors of a purge. It doesn’t make sense. We hunker down in one of the cars, myself and a friend and his pregnant wife. We hide there. We wait for this whole thing to blow over. While we hide on this car, we root around for supplies, trying to dig in. There is no way to know how long we will be here. This particular train car is self-powered; right now it’s being dragged along by the main engine but if we needed to, we could move ourselves. It has a diesel generator for power. And a nuclear reactor. After a while though, it seems to have gotten too quiet. We rush out of the car just in time to see the rest of the train pulling off into the distance, abandoning us.
From out of the woods comes a peculiar sound. There is a bridge not far off and we can make it there if only we can figure out how to engage the throttle.
I’m sitting in an IT office surrounded by computers and monitors and peripherals &c. when she comes in. She looks like an extra The Maltese Falcon, all skirtsuit, scarf, and sweater. The only thing that she is missing is the hat. She starts rifling through the items in the office, building a computer more/less right in front of me. When I ask what it’s for, she says that she needed a new one at home and she thought that no one would notice. I ask if she’s joking and she laughs. Like how could I conclude that she isn’t serious about this? After another minute or so of telling her to cut it out, I duck out of the office, flag down her supervisor and explain. She is fired on the spot. With much incredulity, she looks at me, heart-broken and in utter disbelief. I suspect that she might fly into a rage and start trashing the place but she is escorted out of the building before anything unsavory can happen.
I go back to work.
Minutes later, another woman comes into my off (the IT office), struggling to fight back tears. She is tall and thick-boned, casually dressed and very pretty aside from the tears. The woman pulls herself together just enough to explain that she heard about the other woman (that was just fired) and how could I do such a thing. It is flabbergasting to me that this would be someone’s first response. I explain what happened, terse as I can. She was stealing from the company, after all. And stealing in a big way. How did that make me at fault? I try calming her down but she seems only to get more worked up by the minute. And I start to wonder if it wouldn’t have been cheaper for us to just let the first woman take the computer in the first place.
A. and I return to our car, going home from a dinner party. We get into the car. I’m driving. The car is parallel parked and the street is slick and a light rain is coming down. I maneuver the car out of its space but the car gets stuck in reverse. I try to hit the brakes but they fail and we careens down the hill. I try to pull the emergency brake but that has no effect. I try pulling the car out of gear and forcing it into first again. At this point the steering wheel is even becoming less and less responsive to my tugging and pulling. The back window fogs up and I tell A. to brace herself.
I’m golfing with D.J., D.P., and my brother J. The country club is crowded. But it’s also indoors. The terrain is varied as one would expect: little hills, sand traps, scrubby woods, water hazards. But this whole course is under the kind of ceiling that you’d find at a grocery store or a warehouse. We rent clubs but between us we only have enough cash for one ball each. After waiting in line and joking about how long we’ve been waiting, we tee off at the first hole and our game is under way. I’m better at this game than I expect; certainly better than I should be for someone that’s never played before.
We keep the game casual and we joke around to keep it interesting for ourselves. We get a lot of funny looks from the regular players and country club members. But fuck those people. We paid our money to be here and we’re not breaking any rules. This one guy behind us though is taking it really personally. He’s playing a shitty game and he’s decided to take it out on us. After making some joke to D.J. (”Choke! Don’t choke!”), the man comes over and asks if I could keep it down because I’m distracting him. I fire back that he needs to be a grown-up about this and if he doesn’t mind his own business then we’re going to have a serious problem. He withdraws a bit but you can tell that we haven’t seen the last of him and it’s only a matter of time before he comes back. Even now he is plotting against us.
Fortune favors the assholes though and before we’ve played two more holes, we’ve managed to lose all of our balls to water hazards and other obstacles. We leave the indoor country club peacefully and are in good spirits until I realize that I’ve lost my phone and it’s probably still lying on the greens of that par four fifth hole.
They’re throwing a birthday party for me at… RiRa? It’s a big party. The staff has shoved together a bunch of tables to make a huge square table that probably seats at least twenty. And we’re still overflowing into side tables. I work my way around the table, saying hello to everyone, shaking hands. There are no surprise faces, these are all friends: M.L., M.G., D.P., D.J., my parents, brothers, A. & H…. Everyone is having a good time. A couple pints are enjoyed before anyone even considers ordering food. I can’t think of what to get. Nothing on the menu is jumping out at me. The wait staff starts taking orders from people one by one until I’m the only one left that hasn’t ordered. After a few more minutes, Mom guides me over to a side table and tells me to think some more on it, that maybe I just need to be cut off from the distraction of the crowd. I’m all alone at this side table but she tells me that she’ll be back in just a second. I wait by myself for a while, checking out the decorations on the wall. All around are the typical “Irish” decor we expected to find. But I am seated next to a waist-high dividing wall that is covered with pictures of different drinks that they offer. The drinks look like 19th century woodcut illustrations: a pint of Guinness, Boddington’s, various whiskey and Scotch varieties that they offer. Finally a waitress comes over to take my order. I convince her that I don’t want dinner and that what she should bring me instead are two chocolate chip cookies and a scoop of ice cream (since they don’t have an ice cream sandwich on the menu). And, I point to the woodcut illustration, a Dalmore. She tells me that they’re out of the Dalmore. So I ask for a Macallan instead.
While I was in the living room, A. rearranges all of the furniture in the house. She swaps H.’s bedroom with ours, puts everything into new and impossible configurations, and then when my back is turned, she does the same thing in the living room. I ask what motivated this and she explains that it was just time for a change. The closets overflow with clothing that I don’t recognize. It’s like a thrift store exploded, oddly colored (and discolored) clothes that have been out of fashion for years — nothing I’ve ever seen A. wear. I mention that if it’s time for a change, perhaps we should purge the closets as well. So out come the trash bags.
It’s some kind of All Wrangler Congress or Extended Family Reunion. Everyone is there, plus some “new recruits” or “applicants” or whatever you might want to call new friends. We’re all in some kind beach house. You can hear the ocean in the far background. I’ve woken up and stumbled into the kitchen to find that most everyone else is already awake and has crowded in there. There is a lot of discussion, a lot of chatter. Some folks are reading a short story that I’ve written and published. Others are reading the newspaper. Spirits are high. John has a miniature hip flask that he shares with me; it contains a rather sweet whiskey. Sarah (who is making the biggest batch of scrambled eggs anyone has ever seen) comes over, takes the flask, and pours a little of it out onto the sleeve of my bathrobe. She does the same to John. She rubs the whiskey in and explains that if we’re going to be published, our bathrobes need to smell like whiskey.
We’re headed out into the country on a drive; the idea is to find this obscure camping site. We have directions but they are vague and the roads do not match up with them and many of the landmarks are missing and many of the street signs are covered with mud. David Sedaris is at the wheel, I ride shotgun; in the back is a couple, the woman is hugely pregnant. The roads are bumpy and muddy and they wind around and up and down rolling hills. Sometimes we pass a farm. The woman complains of pains; D.S. drives on, certain that we are nearing the turn-off. We pass what might be the road but drive past it, afraid to turn down. The road is extremely narrow — scarcely wide enough for our one car — and very muddy. As it pulls away from the main road, it appears the the narrow ride rises up, meaning a fall not only puts us in the ditch but could plummet us down twenty feet or more. In the back seat, the woman gives birth. The child is still in the caul and D.S. says he knows what to do as he backs the car up and turns down the muddy road ascending into the forest.
We spend far too long at the store. Between the research and the trying out different items and then finally filling in all the paperwork for the service agreements and all of that. Since when did A. become obsessed with HDMI? And why? She has even gone so far as to say that this whole purchase is to improve the music at the house. I suppose that could be the case… But then why the large flat-panel television? She mentions the musical news like in Lethem’s Gun, With Occasional Music but I’m not buying it. Someone has gotten to her. And as soon as we leave the store with this cart full of electronic apparatuses, the curb gives way to a waterfall. The water seems to start just under the box store and runs down, falling at least a hundred feet. Something suspicious down there. The cart is gone and A. and I are strapping ourselves into climbing harnesses handed over from unseen hands. We need to climb down and inspect the caves behind the falls. It will be a delicate and difficult climb down. Flashes of memory, of some crime committed; a series of ambiguous and increasingly bizarre crimes. We slip over the side and begin down.
