found_drama

Post-apocalyptic? Under a subterranean sky? Civilizations crumble; infrastructures crumble. You band together with whomever is left, with whomever you are close to when it all went down. Folks from work; the odds were in favor of it being them. Holed up somewhere, we all load up—stuff backpacks full of provisions: food, rope, matches, green metal bottles full of whatever water will still run out of the sputtering taps. I go back for a sword—a gleaming katana. My travel-mates poke fun at me (“What good will that do us?”) but I don’t see any of them going back for weapons. And why shouldn’t we carry at least one of these, at least something like this? There are bound to be more folks out there—some of them may even be marauding. Didn’t any of you read The Road?  So they press on ahead.  ”I’ll catch up.”  And it takes a while but I figure out a way to get the katana attached.  But it’s difficult to move with both the blade and the backpack over-stuffed with gear and food.  I run a rope out the window and rappel down the side, looking up at the stone sky, hoping that everyone is already safe at the bottom when I get there.

I’m at… work?  No, not work.  The floors are concrete but this is an Eastern Shore-style crab house.  Concrete floors and rows upon rows of long red picnic tables covered in newspaper.  But I may as well be at work.  I’m surrounded by co-workers, all of us toting our laptops.  We take our seats around the tables.  There is work to be done among the software engineers.  Except that before we can really get started, the project managers descend from out of nowhere, each one carrying huge trays laden with sashimi and rice and other treats.  Everyone dives in.

I am at a rock gym in … Maine?  It has an unusual layout and setup.  Rather than a series of routes set up along walls, you rotate between routes that are setup in “alleys” or “lanes”.  The traditional wall is replaced with what is (in essence) a tunnel, and each route quickly ascends up the sidewall to progress (sloping upward) along the ceiling to the end of the alley/lane. There are a few more traditional upward routes but even these are basically sequestered from the others, tucked away in silos.

When we arrive, the gym is basically deserted — only one or two other people in the whole place.  But there are no ropes.  We hop from route to route, looking for one that has ropes in place already.  It makes sense that they wouldn’t be “up” already — these are almost all lead routes.  But after going to fetch a rope from the counter, we return to find the interior of the gym thronging with people.  There are lines 6-8 people deep at every lane.

After a long and humiliating training, my “brother” Jedi and myself are ready for our first assignments.  Our mission?  To pilot and defend a re-purposed, Corellian-equivalent of a school bus, taking it and its Rebel contents from one secret encampment to another.  The Rebellion is young and the Empire still spreading its tentacles — Order 66 is a very recent memory.  My “brother” and I fear for our lives and for the lives of our Rebel brethren.  Danger is everywhere but to sit idle is foolishness as well.

We set out from the encampment and head along the main road for a while before turning off.  We keep driving, following this bumpy side road when suddenly, we spot a marching phalanx of clone soldiers at the top of a hill.  My “brother” turns to me with fright in his eyes.  ”Floor it,” is all I can think to say.  From inside the bus, the scene that unfolds looks like some kind of Looney Tunes moment:  clone soldiers go flying every which way or get stuck to the windshield.  Our Rebel crew is ducking down low as we are fired upon from all angles.  The soldiers get thicker outside and before we know it, more and heavier equipment gathers.  My “brothers” swerves violently to avoid being crushed by an AT-AT and our bus over-turns.

When we come to, we are bound in bracelets and being held at gunpoint in the bay of some Imperial ship.  We are surveyed by their commander.  ”Rebel scum,” and all of that.  The command is mid-tirade when someone else interrupts him — a Sith apprentice?  I manage to work my lightsabre loose and posture myself in defense of my captive brethren.  The Sith unleashes his as well and spar briefly.  He is good and it is doubtful that I could defeat him with so many clone soldiers at his back.  We tussle some more and I create enough of a diversion to flee into a network of hallways, tunnels, and ductwork to escape into an unknown darkness.

The whole “Extended Family” (plus “the new favorites”) is here for the occasion. The whole old school SMCM crew. It’s a pot luck and everyone has pulled put all the stops. There’s a little bit of everything: spicy beef tips, a herbed crusty bread, an Indian dish with lots of curry… I’ve dropped off my dish (a savory cream of bacon soup) on the buffet table and work on setting up the decks here at “the old” Sonar. Granted, they already have the house gear set up but we want to go nuts with four turntables and four CD decks. We’re having trouble finding room for everything but we’re making progress. But people are starting to sit down so I turn to start spinning but my brother has stepped in to take the first turn. Part of me is a little jealous but then I smell all that food again….

I’ve been kidnapped by a bunch of 80s-style coke dealers.  They seem nice enough at first (mostly because I don’t realize that they’re drug dealers) as we drive around in their white Bronco.  We talk about things.  Skiing and snow-plowing.  The drive is a long one.  One of the guys starts talking about his meat fetish and how he makes big mats of meat scraps and makes his girlfriend walk barefoot across them.  When we get back to the parking garage, one of the guys shoots the others.  He pulls some replacement cronies out of the trunk and we get back in the Bronco.  The main dealer rolls down the window and has me pay from the back seat.  We take a right out of the garage and head up the strip, watching out for cop bot drones.

I’m in New York state as part of a secret government agency that has sent me to retrieve (extradite?) Omar Little (from The Wire).  His van has been stolen and he needs some help getting out of the town but he’s also suspected of a series of crimes here.  Naturally he maintains his non-involvement and stresses to local authorities that he is in fact working with us.

While in the town, I stop to get my hair cut.  Outside of the barber shop, I see two women that look familiar (J.W.? from Flickr?) though I am positive that I have never met them.  As I get closer, it appears that they are either doppelgängers of each other or else identical twins — they have the same face, hair, and body; only their clothes are different.  The woman closer to the door smiles and asks me to come on inside, that she isn’t waiting on any clients.  We go inside the barber shop and there is only one other stylist (an Italian woman that barely speaks any English).

Once seated in the chair, I decide to play dumb — that it would be creepy and weird if I gave any indication of recognition.  On the other hand, she launches right into, giving no pretenses that she “thinks” or “believes” that she knows me from online — she just comes right out and says it and asks me to pick up a story wherever I’d left off.  I start to talk about the writing projects I have in the works, she explains that the woman outside isn’t her twin but a sort of clone.  She determines that I don’t actually need a haircut and offers me a close shave instead.

We’re at a bookstore, A. and I.  It’s a used bookstore but it looks like a good haul.  They have several copies of Snow Crash (for example) though they’re all in varying states of decay.  I go through each one meticulously; I want to leave with one of them.

I get an alert on my phone.  My bank has been sending balance update by text message.  Convenient, but sometimes it’s troublesome to discover randomly, in the middle of the day that the $10 insurance co-pay you charged to your card turned into a $10,000 hospital bill instead.  In a panic, we give up our search for the perfect used hardcover of Snow Crash and leave the store.

Hungry and hundreds of miles from home, we wander into a deli across the street.  It looks like I recognize the proprietor (S.W.?).  I ask for a ham sandwich; he gives me pastrami on rye.  I hand it back.  ”Ham it is.”  And I get back pastrami on pumpernickel.  He smiles and insists that the pastrami is the way to go.

I go in for a haircut but the salon has become a tattoo parlor instead.  My usual stylist is there with the tattoo machine, preparing the needles and the inks.  We make some chit-chat, catching up about The Boy and that time my refrigerator exploded.  She asks me what I want and where I want it.  I produce a sketch of a knife superimposed over a stylized Celtic knot of a circle; the tip of the knife is shaped like a scorpion’s stinger and the hilt has a distinct shape as well, suggesting the legs of the scorpion.  She explains to me that she has to work from certain templates or else she needs to charge me a significant amount more.  Plus (she goes on) she would really prefer to apply the tattoo to my arm and not my chest.  I relent and she preps the skin on my upper left arm.  Before she can make the first prick though, I pull back.  We need to renegotiate.

I get her to agree to do the tattoo on my chest like I’d originally asked — not giving a damn if she alleges that it will hurt more.  She has a template for similar tattoo but it’s not quite the similar enough for me.  We try to work out a compromise where she executes the tattoo as it appears in her template (viz., a standard straight dagger piercing a black circle) but sneaks in the barbed tip and the correct curve of the hilt.  She fusses over it all though, hemming and hawing about what might happen to her if she got caught and how she wasn’t really confident enough in her free-hand tattooing anyway.

I put my shirt on and walk out even as she tries to convince me otherwise.

The kitchen isn’t a wreck but one of the chairs is pulled out and there is a basket of laundry left on the floor.  I’m too exhausted to do anything about these errant items quite yet so I leave them where they are.  I make some coffee and retire to the living room to drink it and down a bowl of cereal, to unwind a little before proceeding with the chores.  But when I go back into the kitchen, all of the burners on the stove are going full-blast and fire is spewing from the oven.  I manage to get close enough to twist the knobs and turn the gas off.  Though the burners have gone out, fire is still leaping from around the edges of the oven door.  I rummage around the room for the fire extinguisher.  When I finally find it and turn around, one of the burners has come back to life.  I try to spray the stove but my aim is off and the carbon foam goes all over the floor, covering the laundry and the over-turned chairs and everything else that’s been thrown from the cabinets in my mad scramble.  I blast the stove again and manage to hit it this time.  It takes a few blasts but eventually the fire goes out.  A. comes home just then, sees the mess, sees that everything is covered in foam.  I’m at a loss for how to explain it.