Anna's Book
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2012 Liam Sweeny
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Dedication
This Book is dedicated to
Amanda Jo Newer
11/16/84 - 6/29/04
Forever and always…
Chapter One
My name is Barney Sheehan. I am currently in my formative years. So I'm eighteen right now. But don't let my youth fool ya'... I'm wise beyond my years. Maybe, well, sometimes.
I live in Anno Luce, which is about thirty miles southeast of San Diego. It's a trendy little city, but a bit pretentious for my taste. I'm hoping to move out someday. Maybe to Silverton, that's a cool place.
I work in telecommunications and marketing. Which of course means that I'm a telemarketer. Yup'. I make the calls, all day, the ones you lovely citizens like to terminate with the speed of the dialing system we use. I don't get mad, really. I'd do the same thing. But just do me a favor; if you get me on the line, and you're not interested in a "free rate quote!" Just tell me. Right away, I'm serious. I hate the script, and the fewer times I have to go through it the better. So go tell me to fuck off; that's cool. Just do it quickly.
Yeah, I know it's funny to screw with me, frustrate me and keep me on the line as long as possible. But every weekend I'm looking for new homes to leave flaming doggie-gifts in front of. And if I'm rattling off your address over the phone to confirm your “home’s value”, that means I have it. Word to the wise.
I'm just kidding though. I'm a professional. I save all my dog crap for my buddy Jonesy. But I don't call it that in reference to him. I rather refer to it as automotive air freshener. Oh yeah, Jonesy… I gotcha right here, buddy. Puke on my hoopdee again; see what happens.
I'm not just a telemarketer, you see. That's just my moonlighting. During the day I go to Anno Luce Community College, a.k.a. ALCohol College.
Everybody drinks. Not just us kids. I mean everybody. From the beers to the wines, straight up into the spirits-world. Everybody's got half a face on at least one night out of the week.
I'm what you call a sporadic alcoholic. Sporadically I drink myself into toxicity and deposit a full coating of the offending liquid on the dance-floor.
So I try not to drink...
I'm a philosophy major. Yeah, I know, right? A philosophy major.
Now I know what you're thinking, Barney, why oh why would you waste your time on philosophy, when you can waste your time on getting so rich you'll never spend all the cash?
Or maybe it's me who's thinkin' it, but anyways...
Money can't buy me love. And neither can philosophy. But philosophy is more interesting than money. Money's paper; It just sits there. And no, I won't make as much money as a lawyer, but I will make as much as the law student who flunked his bar when he's working next to me at Masterburger.
So I'm goin' for the ideals, baby. The hidden knowledges. I'll be the smartest guy at Masterburger, that's for sure.
I don't know… I guess I'm just trying to see the heart of the problems we face. I probably won't ever be a philosopher, unless it's the philosophy of burger-burning. I'll probably never leave Anno Luce.
But to tell you the truth, I don't care. I got friends, wack-jobs that we are. And Anno Luce's a fun place. It's rarely unseasonable. That's amazing, considering there's desert past the city limits. There's a stretch along Jefferson Highway that's green too, and it ends a few miles past Silverton. It's a tech-city, so there's an incredible amount of ched' floating through at all times. There's a lot going on, and I think we've covered that Anno Luce knows how to party.
It's got its rough spots, too, like any city. I wouldn't go driving around San Miguel ridge, ever. For the size, and the wealth of it, Anno Luce has an abnormally high murder rate, mostly in that area. San Miguel is bad news.
~@---@~
I have a cold today. A nasty one. Now you may be asking how a fictional character can be sick when his creator isn't. Well, that's the power of the creator. My creator. Liam. Who I happened to piss off the other day. So now I have a cold. Thanks bud'..
Oh well. It's not all bad. At least it's never cold in Cali. And unlike Liam, I can drink cough syrup with alcohol in it. And so that's just what I'm doing.
On a good tip, I met the most amazing woman I have ever met. Her name's Anna. She's works with Cherise, who’s Jonesy's girl. Jonesy said she's way out of my league. But I have consistently dated girls who were out of my league. When they realize this, they usually dump me. I'm sure Anna will be no exception.
She's beautiful, amazing, with a warped sense of sense of humor and a southern drawl. Love that. Blue eyes; I think they're blue. They might be green, it was hard to tell because I was in love and I don't remember all the details. The fog of love.
So I'm gonna play it cool, get my poker-face up, try and avoid shuffling my cards in my hands, and go hang at Jonesy's next week. Despite him bein' such a prick, Cherise is rootin' for me.
I live in a dorm right now. I know, weird for a community college, but like I said, Anno Luce's got cheese. So we get dorms.
The following story is disturbing. Mostly to me, 'cause I had to witness this. The other day I walked into the loo to administer to the morning drop-off, and I went to the last stall near the window. I pick that stall because, number one, it's the least used, and number two (no pun intended), it's near the window, and I like to be close to the source of fresh air.
So I pop open the door, and there it is. The biggest turd I've ever seen. I don't blame whoever it was for not flushing; it would have been a scientific impossibility.
I do, however, blame the guilty person for even taking that kind of dump. I mean, just because you pay your college food bill in one shot, that doesn't mean you have to expel it that way.
Man, I've never seen one come over the rim like that.
Environmental services had to come in and remove it. I'm not kidding. And when they saw it, they were laughing just as hard as I was when I told them.
True story. So now I'm looking around the dorm for someone who's ten foot-six inches tall. Or a guy who used to be fat. Something. I don't know what I'm gonna say to him if I find him. I might just shake his hand...
...well maybe not. :)
So Anno Luce's been pretty boring today. It's the Tuesday Quiet. You know, like you have the Weekend Drunk, the Monday Bitch, and now we're at the Tuesday Quiet. Though I can't say it's been too quiet, with all the construction going on. It's to be called the Paradigm building.
Synermedia is heading up the project. Beyond that I don't know shit about it. Hopefully they put in a TV station. I can get my mug on the tele, as a passer-by, probably, or as a contestant in some funky game-show. I'll gladly take my fifteen. Everyone else is just pissed that the noise is going to interrupt their studies.
Not me. I don't study. Ever. So it won't be much of a problem. Besides, I got a boomin' system. So I'll just play classical louder than the jack-hammers, and watch my popularity soar around exam time.
Or I'll wind up with the Super-Turd© sequel on my door-step.
Only time will tell.
So I'm out like a cheap bottle of NyQuil©
~@---@~
This is Barney Sheehan of the Federation of Fictional Characters Union #1. (Because we're the First!)
On behalf of the United Federation of Fictional Characters Union, I move the ban to the use of bacterial or viral infection to be bestowed by writers to their fictional characters, for any transgression or minor slips of the tongue.
So ordered.
And with that business disposed of, I move on to the secret buzz-word of the day; relationships. Not mine, per se; I'm a perennial bachelor. But other people's relationships; the ones that get tossed at my doorstep by my loving friends.
Jeannie Dillon. She's my friend. And every third day I see this girl, she's crying to me about how lousy this guy is who she's with. How she does all this stuff for him, how she stays at home while he goes out, how he never does anything for her unless he wants something, blah, blah blah...
Ok, Jeannie, first, you're discussing this with me, a guy who obviously can’t get a girl. Great counsel.
Second, you treat these guys better than you treat yourself. So they take that to mean that they're more important to the relationship than you are, and you find yourself frequently employed as their doormat. Gee, how'd that happen?
I think I'm gonna change my major to psychology. I'd make a fortune off this campus alone.
I don't mean to dish on Jeannie; she's a friend. I'd date her, but she's cool, and I can't bring myself to treat her the way I'd have to to get her wantin' me.
Jonesy's, this weekend, baby! That's where the magic happens. I'm psyched, I hope Anna's still gonna show up. I'm crashin' there, so who knows???
I'm kiddin'. Even in my unrealistic dream-world I wouldn't think anything like that would happen. So I'm purely exaggerating there..
I'm gonna miss the Anno Luce festival; Jonesy lives in Silverton. I don't care, really. I don't get into it like I did when I was a kid.
Anno Luce, in Latin, means light-year, or conversely, year-of-light. That's how it's used here.
Anno Luce is an old city, though it's not until recently even been a city. It sprang from a small town, which sprang from a settlement that sprang from a Spanish settlement, which itself sprang from a Native American village. The name of the tribe is lost, and it's the dirty little secret that when the Spanish settled, they killed all of them and struck their names from history, wiped out every artifact. Yeah, nobody really talks about it.
Oddly enough, a festival that the Native Americans performed was adopted by the Spanish, who gave it the Latin name Anno Luce. Why Latin? Beats me.
Basically the Anno Luce festival is about marking the number of light-years since the beginning of creation. The Spanish festival onwards has been aligned to Christianity, so it refers to the number of years since God Said, "Let There Be Light". Currently it's marked as four thousand years plus today's date.
But the festival, at least to the festival-goers, is all about walking around with a band around their bicep that has the Anno Luce date on it.
It's always a big party at the end, with no rhyme or reason, and drunk girls put their phone numbers on their bands (well, the nasty ones do), or people put "420" or "69", whatever...
I've seen it enough, and it's gotten lame lately. Guess I’m just growing up.
I'm lookin' forward to getting out of here for the weekend. And so in the spirit of relationships, I'll leave you with this:
Don't try to change the one you love. It is merely an unconscious wish. You are really just trying to prove you have the power to do it. If that wasn't the case, their short-comings would have turned you off in the first place.
~@---@~
After a long day of class, and a long evening of work, I have to admit that I'm pretty pooped. So I'll be brief tonight.
By the power invested in me by Castle Grayskull, I hereby ban the use of:
LOL
OMG
LMAO
and WTF
..in any blog. Furthermore I ban blogs altogether.
I've contacted the blogosphere about this, and they've yet to respond, but give them time...
And so until a better name for this word-space can be developed, I will be calling this an anti-blog.
As far as class today, I was unusually uplifted by my new friend Gabby. She has always been someone I admired in a totally platonic sense. She talks back to our professor, Prof' Nielsen. That's not why I admire her. I admire her because she always happens to be right.
Prof' Nielsen is what we in the pseudo-academic profession call a stuck-up pompous asshole. He must have a built in response to independent-thinking students, because as soon as someone questions his default authority, the level of his vocabulary increases in direct proportion to the perceived threat.
I can't say much. My vocabulary is rather poor. That's why I borrow Liam's. So when Liam's not around, I try to stay out of the cross-fire.
Not Gabby. She matches the guy, and it's the only time I ever see him flustered. What joy that produces in the class. Palpable.
So I had a chance to talk to her, and she invited me to an editorial meeting this weekend for the college newspaper, the Anno Luce Chronograph. I had to refuse, of course, 'cause I'm going to Jonesy's this weekend, but I assured her that I would attend next weekend.
I like the Chron'… There's a story to that paper, recent news I'd say. The paper is home to the illustrious Stephen Baker. Stephen, for those of you who don't know, used to be the student-president of Anno Luce Community College. But last year he was pissed about a decision the Board of Trustees made to shut down the student-run dorm. He knew it was a bullshit move, largely inspired by the refusal of the students running it to allow one of the board members' daughters to move in. She's a real bitch; I know her. And that's why they refused. So the Board was having a meeting to have it shut down.
The board meets behind closed doors, and minutes are seldom taken. The only student allowed to attend is the president of the student council. Stephen. And so Stephen did what any self-respecting student president would do; he wore a wire. And boy did he get an earful. Which of course went on the college radio station the next day (a slightly censored version).
The student-run dorm stayed open. Stephen couldn't get in trouble, because it wasn't illegal to wear a wire to a Board of Trustees meeting. But he's not president of the student council this year. Go fig'...
Now he's the Senior Editor of the Chronograph. He's a great writer, and from what I hear, he's much more popular now.
Still looking forward to Jonesy's. I talked to him today. He said he's working on some kind of laser thing. He wants to use it. He wants to use it to disable radio towers.
Why? No clue.
Miraculously, Jonesy has a clean record. And he did say Anna will be there. Aces.
So I'm gonna pack it in. Work was a bitch tonight, and I have an aspirin commercial in the making behind my left temporal lobe. Sayonara peeps'...
~@---@~
Today was beautiful, even for Anno Luce. Sunny but cool, crisp, and we actually had a breeze. Amazing. I would've gone to class naked, seriously.
Tonight I leave for Silverton. Paradise is driving me. My hoopdee is currently busted. I've tried to pin down the problem, but I'm mechanically illiterate. So I have no clue. It smokes, and not in a good way.
Paradise lives down the hall from me. And her name is actually Paradise. Hilarious, right? I know, but I'd never bust her chops about it. She's tough; I'm sure she'd kick my ass.
She works at the Anarchy Collage, a store down in Morea Circle. That's the "trendy" spot in Anno Luce, below Sangria Ridge. It's kind of weird; the best and worst areas of Anno Luce are ridges. San Miguel and Sangria occupy the two areas of high ground in the city, and they are as different as night and day.
But anyways, she works there. It's the "cool store" in Anno Luce. You know that store; every city has one. They sell the marajawana bowls (I'm sorry, smoking pipes), obscene t-shirts, funky games involving sex and twenty-sided dice, gag gifts, etc. I love that store, and no, Paradise won't give me discounts.
That's okay, though. She's a business major. She says she's going to open a strip-club in LA. Which makes it even harder for me to keep from getting punched in the eye. So I always just tell her that my jokes can be left unsaid.
I am PSYCHED! Anna's already at Jonesy's. So now I get to go through my "preparations." You know, the fine art of blending cheap cologne and body spray, making sure nothing interacts in any unexpected fashion, making sure there aren't any holes in the duds, no hidden boogies in the visible nostrils, and of course, who could forget the obligatory "pimple patrol."
I have my finest garments laid out upon the chair. I'm a college student, so the absence of holes is a big part of the whole "finest" thing.
I got Mahavishnu playin', catchin' my groove. Mahavishnu was a superband in the seventies, fronted by the legendary John McLaughlin. What a team. It was as if the best musicians in the world at that time got together in one band to set the bar for all future superbands. And that's why I love 'em.
The jackhammers are still a'poundin’ over at the nascent Paradigm building. At the ALCC commons, they have a model of the building to be constructed on a table. Very unimpressive. It just looks like any other building. If I was them, I would've just drawn a picture and put it on the wall. The model takes up space for no reason. But that's just my opinion.
There was a speaker the other night. He talked about this "transformation" that Paradigm was going to bring to the world, how it would "revolutionize the way we perceive." Gabby was there, and she asked the big question, what the fuck are you talking about? (she said it a bit more professionally than that, but...) She didn't get an answer that could be classified as anything but shitty philosophy. And I should know about shitty philosophy.
So we're gettin' jackhammers for the chance to "expand our conscious minds..." Great. I'm aiming my speakers out the window. Maybe I can give the workers some good tunes. Maybe, in gratitude, they'll tell me what the fuck the Paradigm building is supposed to do to my mind-frame. So I'm gettin' in on the ground floor. Or rather, I’m getting in with the people building the ground floor.
And that's about it. I gotta go get ready for the evening's festivities before everyone else in the dorm kills my hot water. So peace, peeps...
~@---@~
I have many pointless details to share with you about my weekend trip to Jonesy's, and my newly-invigorated love life, but first things first. I have to go to another class soon, so I won't have time right now to pay the proper attention to an issue as important as my love life.
So today, in a radical new turn from previous anti-blog creations, today will have two anti-blogs, as opposed to one anti-blog. So stay tuned tonight for the real deal.
Earlier in philosophy class, we were given our final project; to write a twenty page report on a philosophical subject of our choosing. So I'm choosing relationships, since I'm such an expert. At least I can give it to Jeannie the next time she's crying on my shoulder, and she can STFU about it. (STFU was not added to my list of banned acronyms for a reason.)
The only problem is, I've already made my case on paper, and it's only a paragraph. It needs be explained no further. So I need about nineteen-and-a-half pages of filler. Oh boy. With an inexhaustible supply of bullshit, I shouldn't have a problem with it.
There was an incident on campus today; a shooting. I'm not kidding. Police had the main grounds blocked off, but I heard that one of our students was killed. I heard he was a freshman; I didn't know him. No-one knows why he was killed. I'm sure the rumors will be floating around Sunrise Cafe', ALCC's hang-out. I haven't ventured there yet today, but I'll be sure to. And of course I'll let you know.
And one final note: Liam is a prick. Now he wants me to share the spotlight. He says he wants dialogue. So I have to split my fifteen minutes of fame with some of the supporting characters. Again, and I'll stress this, Liam is a prick. I had to share that one more time.
~@---@~
Well I got to Jonesy's and it was me, Anna, Jonesy, Cherise, and their upstairs neighbors, a guy named Alejandro and his girl Selena. They were all playing cards when I got there.
Anna wasn't particularly dressed up, but she was beautiful nonetheless. She doesn't have to dress up to be captivating; that’s what I like about her. And her eyes were green, by the way.
She had green streaks in her hair too. I was diggin' that. She had metal bracelets on her wrists, and I'm sure they each had a story. She had necklaces, but they weren't fancy. Not ordinary, peculiar, each one reflecting an aspect of her character. A being so complex wrapped in such quirky simplicity.
So I sat there, No-one but me and her for a while; Jonesy doin' this, Cherise doin' that. I love 'em, I do, but they weren't at the forefront of my mind right then. Just me and her in a quiet bubble, surroundings oblivious; fog of love…
That night she stayed over too. We talked for hours, about things complex and simple, profound and ordinary. And we listened. And as we went to bed, her on the couch and me on cushions on the floor (I'm such a gentleman), she kissed me. Out of nowhere. And I kissed her back, though I can't say out of nowhere. And then she went to sleep.
And I tried. Wasn't happenin'… Insomnia. Couldn't sleep a wink. When I say I tried, I mean everything. I had enough sheep counted to cover Antarctica with a wool sweater. Nothin', nada, no enchilada for me. I was gettin' bored even. And I couldn't get up and play videogames at four a.m. with Anna sleeping there, how's that gonna look? So I went nuts with boredom until 6 a.m., when Jonesy got up and we slammed down a pot of coffee and bullshitted for a while.
It sucks when you don't get any sleep and you have to spend the day driving. And that's just what I had to do. Apparently I was deemed the most capable of the three to drive up to the Precipice, which is a 300 foot cliff-like thing about fifty miles east of Anno Luce.
And rather than tell Jonesy and Alejandro (Cherise couldn't go, and Anna stayed with her.) that I was up all night, I said. "Sure, fellas, let's cruise!"
Yup', I had to drive. Now I have had my share of insomnia in the past, so no, I didn't veer off the road or anything. But I was not prepared for what happened when we got there.
When we got to the Precipice, Jonesy pulls out his "laser device" to shoot at the radio towers. At least that's what I thought he was talking about. But that's not what it was.
It was a device, if such a description could apply. It really looked like a big hairy mass of wires, with some circuit board pieces and I think I saw a tube sticking out somewhere. But attached to it were three headbands, like tennis headbands. And these he expected me and Alejandro to put on our heads as he cranked up that mini-Frankenstein he'd built.
"You gotta be fucking kidding me!" I said.
"I'm with Barney on that, dog," Ale' said.
"C'mon you pussies," Jonesy said, putting one of the headbands on.
"What the hell's it do?" asked Ale'. And then Jonesy went on to describe, in unnecessary detail, how using the power of laser refraction and ambient radio frequencies and a miracle, we could all get the biggest buzzes any human beings on Earth have ever gotten.
"HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!" I couldn't help it. "You dragged us all the way out to here, spent all that time building a techno-jalopy, just to catch a big buzz?"
Alejandro was dyin'.
"Yo, how much did you spend buildin' that?" Ale' asked Jonesy.
"Not much, it was like fifty bucks," replied Jonesy, "But that's not the.."
"...three cases of Killians we coulda' bought to catch a real buzz." Ale' finished. And then I was dyin'.
So we put the things on. Jonesy was gettin' frustrated, and we felt bad for him. We were brave. We had faith in Jonesy not being competent enough to build a device that could kill all three of us.
He turned it on, and it actually came on. Surprising. But we didn't feel squat. Just our sweat in the bands. And then it hit.
I don't remember anything of detail until last night. I'm not even joking with you. We were awakened, rather found by the California Highway Patrol. Cherise called them when Jonesy didn't get back on time. He was supposed to come back Monday morning. We got there at noon on Saturday.
I remember bits and pieces, but nothing that even makes sense. I remember seeing an explosion, and just all kinds of images and sounds, but they were never aligned, so nothing coherent emerged. Sometimes it seemed like newscasts, sometimes people's faces, bright lights flashing. I can't really describe it in a way that would make sense to you.
I wouldn't call it a buzz, but I'd say it was the biggest bad trip any human being has ever had. But I'm not mad at Jonesy. If the thing was a flop, I would've been mad.
That was my weekend, and with a weekend like that, today's news pales.
~@-@~
Chapter Two
Vic chased his sandwich with vodka as he looked out the window of the '77 Monte Carlo he'd "borrowed" for the evening. He was pissed. He had a check for ten thousand dollars searing the flesh beneath his pants pocket. And he couldn't get it cashed. He got to the Spanish check-cashing place in Anno Luce a few minutes late. He would have to wait 'til after the hit to blow some dough.
Fisher gave him ten-K up front in the form the check sittin' in his pocket. The other ten-K will be wired into his bank account in LA when the hit was done. Vic didn't think he got a check by accident. Fisher didn't want Vic to blow the cash on getting too fucked up to do the hit.
Vic could've killed two men whilst sleeping. No chemical could affect his inner killer. It was instinct. He was a natural predator, a feral beast marking the concrete jungle with blood. Victor would torture a man for insulting him so, except anyone paying twenty grand a head.
So Vic sat there, waiting patiently. He was in the faculty parking lot of the science building. He had "acquired" a sticker for the window, and the car was identical to the one of Professor Martin, who was right now screwing a student-intern at the Red Phoenix Motel while his wife was home cooking lasagna for the kids. Vic knew all of this.
Had he not been born directly into hell, Vic could have been a doctor. He was meticulous in his reconnaissance, surgical in his executions and obsessive in details. He was an expert in the murder that was about to take place that night.
His target was studying in the library, which was soon to close. He would exit the doors, turn left and walk seventy-five feet before turning left again and walking fifteen feet before being pierced with the lead from Victor's rifle. Would it be quick? Would it painless? Vic' didn't care. As long as the kid stopped breathin', he got paid.
Joey Nebbord. That was his name. Vic' asked Fisher what the kid had done to cross him, but he didn't get an answer. For twenty grand he didn't have to. Vic just wanted the information so he could get off on the killing.
Vic looked on the back seat at his weapon of choice; a .303 British sniper rifle. He was well acquainted with it. His step-dad used to keep one around the house before Victor sent him to hell. He had a special silencer, meticulously hand-made, that would not put the bullet off-course enough to matter, not at that distance anyway. He would fall in a spot that wasn't very visible. Vic' would have an easy get-away.
His attention came back to the library as the door swung open and Joey walked out, his arms full of books. He had his hair swept to one side. He was wearing a grey wool sweater with a button-up underneath it, brown corduroy slacks and worn-out, ratty shoes. Vic felt good knowin' he'd be taking the poor fool out of his misery.
Vic silently grabbed the rifle and set it in the position he'd worked out last night. Not a centimeter of the barrel or silencer would be jutting out of the window. It was an odd shot, but Vic' was a true marksman. If the shot was possible, Vic' could make it. He turned on the ignition, and it purred to life. He'd tested engine noise too last night; he wouldn't want to startle the young chap.
He was parked so that he could pull out without having to back up. He slumped in the drivers' seat, peering into the sight and getting quickly acclimated to the crosshairs. Then he opened his right eye to get a rough fix on Joey. When he got it he trained the sight on it, and as Joey came into view he closed the eye. From there he was in the zone.
Vic's adrenaline surged as his resolve hardened, the muscles in his face becoming steel as he squinted his field of vision to clear it. So powerful he felt; so magnificent, this vile malice infecting him as he spreads its contagion to one more victim. One more Vic'.
Joey turned the corner and Vic's ecstacy was at hand. The kid twitched, clutching his books just a little bit tighter. If the adrenaline wasn't making his senses so sharp, Vic might not have noticed. He must feel it comin', Vic thought as his finger brought its weight upon the trigger and he embraced the cracking of gun-power with pure psychotic glee.
~@~@~
Stephen flew down the New York State Thruway with his forearm pressed against the wheel and his other hanging out of the driver's side window, catching blasts of the November chill like buck-shot. Tipped ever just so before the air stream, a cigarette. Marlboro, Red. Instinctively he dipped his wrist to clear the column of ash that would occasionally gather. He was miles away from Anno Luce, and light-years away from reality.
Stephen was going to see his grandmother. It was thanksgiving, and she was in a rehabilitation center. She had just fractured her thigh. He loved her; that's why he was going. But he wasn't looking forward to it.
Nothing to do with her, rather, where she was; A rehabilitation center, or convalescent home. A fancy term for a nursing home. Stephen knew them all by one name; a suffering home.
He wasn't afraid of his grandmother dying. He knew she wouldn't. She was strong, in the spiritual sense. Stephen was good at knowing whether or not someone was near to death. He had a Gift.
Or madness, or something as yet undefined. Stephen felt things he could rarely describe to those around him. What he referred to as the waters of the spirit. Not energies of light but energies of life. He could detect things that people only understood in abstract, like love and hope, injustice and malice, good and evil. He could sense the strong, the weak and the dying.
Beneath the carpets, cushioned chairs and mauve bumper rails was suffering. There was death, sure. But death left no imprint. Suffering did. He knew the whole time there he'd be fidgeting to get out. He hoped he could control it. He would be happy to see her nonetheless. Family was important to Stephen, and he needed a break from his studies, He wasn't as energetic as he'd been in times past.
Before Stephen decided to go to school in Anno Luce he lived in Hoboken. He was far older than everyone at the college; he was thirty-two. He'd already been to school once to be a journalist. That was in the mid-to-late nineties. He went to NYU, and graduated Magna Cum Laude. After five years of brush-offs by just about everybody he came across, he landed a job with a national publication called the Spectrum. He was a field reporter for international stories. So he got paid to put himself in places that the polished spokespeople on the evening news wouldn't dare step foot.
Stephen was smart; he knew Arabic and twelve other languages. His mother was Russian, and his father was born and raised in France, near the German border. Stephen started with four languages. And he began studying others when he was ten.
He did well in tense situations; he wasn't afraid to tell people he was a scared journalist. He just made a joke out of it usually, and he could get in with people. He found that he was able to match the mood of a situation, to never seem out of place. He got more stories than they'd ever let him print.
But being around so much violence and pain and suffering, upon walking into a blackened, smoke-charred shell of a village, looking down at the road and seeing some little vestige of a normal life that would just cry out to him amidst the carnage all around, gave Stephen an abundant amount of fodder for nightmares. In Somalia he saw an entire village wiped out, and he saw a Barbie doll. The doll was in better shape then its owner, a little girl whose body was lying just feet from it, burned beyond recognition.
Stephen had been considering retirement by the time Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. In fact Stephen had been eager to cover it because he knew it would be time off from horrifying shit. Boy was he wrong.
Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast just east of Louisiana with the force of God's Own power and decimated everything before it, carving a new coastline as it came aground. But it was looking to miss New Orleans, where Stephen was. He was in the Superdome, where many of the people who hadn't evacuated were waiting the storm out. It had a fair amount of people, and when the storm hit everything was more or less calm. When the storm passed, people had started to leave when, over the course of a day, water had engulfed the city streets. And they were stuck there.
Then more and more showed people showed up; coming in with their kids, people with medical conditions, people who’d been told it was safe haven. The situation worsened by that night, and Stephen was getting nervous as his senses were becoming overwhelmed.
The Superdome wasn't designed or equipped to handle the thousands that were there, and thousands more showing up. Anyone was coming in, saints and sinners, with only a small contingent of the National Guard in charge. Unrest was forming; Stephen needed no Gift to feel that. He'd seen it enough.
He was there to cover the story, and he could clearly tell that no one important was at the wheel at the ship. He’d heard that the Mayor was barricaded in the Hyatt Regency, with little or no communication of what was happening in the Superdome. He also knew that supplies would only last that day, assuming no one else came in. That was unlikely, because new people were continuously streaming in. The Superdome went from a fair amount to an unfair amount pretty quickly.
He'd managed to get outside occasionally and he'd see helicoptors flying overhead, news choppers and rescue choppers. But none with food and water. He was puzzled but he didn't have time to think about it. His job wasn't to scratch his chin and ponder. He went inside and got back to work.
There were so many people in distress, and when he saw someone who needed immediate help, he helped. He saw some of the journalists avoiding that aspect of journalism, ethics. They just ran around "lookin' busy". Gotta story to get! was the wall they'd throw up if they were brought face-to-face with the reality of the emergency. Stephen loathed them.
But when things were under control, he knew who to talk to. He'd find the people locally in this area or that who were in charge. Not in any way official, but they were the rallying points. He met an older man named Henry, a black man with grey dreadlocks. Henry was a strong, spirited man, he could tell. And Henry sounded like he'd been a political organizer before. Just the way he talked; words he'd used. Stephen could pick 'em out. Later Stephen would find out that Henry had been a grassroots organizer before.
People needed help. No one seemed to care where it came from. People wanted to know where the Red Cross was, where the government was, where the mayor was, anybody who could bring in the food, water and medicine that could sustain them. And they wanted a way to get out of there. People with medical conditions were under high stress, and some of them were starting to die. And at the fringes of the Superdome, crimes were being committed of all manners by those who may never be punished. Food was running out, and if not for the bond that New Orleanians had with their communities, food would already have run out.
Stephen didn't sleep Monday night. He went on into Tuesday without feeling any tiredness. He was continually reacting to one crisis after another. By Tuesday night he was recognized as a "good" journalist, i.e. one who actually helped out instead of being a pussy, and he knew all the leaders of the groups inside.
Early Wednesday morning he slept for seven hours and woke up to a different scene than he went to sleep to. The intensity and the desperation in the structure were as thick as the stench, which met his nostrils with the shriek that woke him up.
It was a woman with epilepsy. Young, though. She was having seizures, and when she calmed down, well, that's just it, she couldn't calm down because of what was going on and she'd have another seizure. There was a girl kneeling next to her, shrieking for help, which by now was drowned out by the noise. Stephen went over to try to help, if he could. He found a little bit of water, after having to explain the situation, and he got it to her. She was freaking out, but it was passing at times. So Stephen just sat there with her, trying to calm her down. Then he remembered something.
Stephen was taking medication for bipolar disorder. He knew that they prescribed his pills for epilepsy too. He'd brought four days supply, and he had them on him. In the confusion he’d forgotten to take his last dose. So he gave her two of them with the water.
He would never have done it. But in such dire circumstances, he had to just hope it helped, and pray it didn't wind up killing her. She was quiet for a few minutes. She was shaking, but she had been the whole time. She was calmed down after a few minutes; apparently it worked. She looked at Stephen eventually and smiled. He found out her name was Thelma.
Stephen left Thelma with Stephanie (the girl who was with her) and he went out to assess the situation. He made his way to mid-field and he realized there were far too many people for him to get an accurate assessment. He made his way slowly; he just had to get away from all of it. He wanted to help, but he had barely eaten, drank and slept for three days himself. He just needed some space, so he ventured into the upper balconies of the arena. He didn't care who was there lurking.
He looked out at the scene, and suddenly he didn't feel very good. He was looking into the field. From where he was standing he could see plainly a woman crying or two people shouting at each other, as if his field of vision were moving forward from his eyes into the heart of the Superdome, putting him there.
He could see social situations; intentions, motivations, as if they were superimposed on his visual sight of the people who were causing them. He saw living light in the form of sparks, made from an energy he could not name. And he saw pits of dark energy traveling between the sparks, scurrying about the room like roaches. Occasionally the dark energy would pool as a fight broke out, but soon the light sparks would appear when the fight was broken up.
Something; rather, someone caught Stephen's gaze from out of nowhere. A man down around the home end-zone was kneeling beside an elderly woman in bad shape. He seemed to be a lightning-rod for the sparks of white light, and as he moved, many smaller sparks flowed about him in near perfect symmetry.
He had on a brown generic baseball cap that said "Gone Fishin', dressed in a worn flannel shirt and a pair of jeans, also worn. He looked to be in his late-thirties, and Stephen couldn't tell his ethnicity. But as Stephen was trying to guess, he suddenly saw the woman die.
She had just died. Stephen could feel it from the balcony. The man was visibly shaken. And Stephen suddenly felt the whole Superdome shake with him. The swarm of sparks about the man grew hot with intensity, burning Stephen’s eyes as he looked at them.
He looked away, down at his hands gripping the railing. Sparks were coming from between his clenched fingers. He looked at his palms and he saw energies. They seemed to possess an intelligence not normally associated with energy. Complex arrangements, as fascinating as they were shocking, performing as they floated just millimeters above his palm.
Stephen looked out again, and he saw the man heading in his direction. The man wasn't looking at him, but the sparks were ferocious. As he walked through the crowd of people, Stephen could see bright sparks appearing on the ones that were suffering. One appeared on the leg of a screaming man and he stopped screaming. The sparks became more intense, until it seemed they would overtake the arena. And at that moment Stephen lost consciousness.
He came to an hour later. He still felt strange, but at least the sparks had calmed. He didn't want to venture down into the field, but he needed to know who that man was. He didn't know what he'd say to him, but he knew there'd be no story he could tell even if he did find the man.
He searched the Superdome with his eyes as he went down the stairway. By the time he got to the field he had seen the man, tending to a sick baby. He saw sparks, but they weren't the ferocious ones that the man had produced earlier. He must've calmed down, Stephen thought as he made his way to the man.
The man's back was turned to him, but as Stephen came within speaking distance the man turned around, as if expecting him. He smiled at Stephen.
The man told him his name. It was Yashua.
~@~@~
Barney here, yet again. Liam decided to gives some other characters the floor, and I noticed that he gave them much more floor than he usually gives me. Well allow me to impart the Bird of Fiction to my creator.
He thinks he can treat me like crap, but I'm cool. I know my role. Ya' see, every time Liam likes some girl, and he finally draws up the courage to say something to her; something so smooth, so romantic to just captivate her attention or sweep her ever so gently off her feet...
I always put his foot in his mouth. That's my role. It's a love-hate relationship we have. So there're two dog houses I can be in at any one time these days.
But that's OK. He can't do Anna's perspective, and he has to build her character through my perspective until he grows a set and gets over himself. Which I'm sure won't be any time soon.
So speaking of Anna, we had a lovely thanksgiving at ma' and pa's. My parents loved her. They're cool; I knew they would. My mom loved her outfit and asked her about all her bracelets. She and Anna talked for a while as me and pops talked politics. I'd be sure to find out much from ma; we’re close. I'll find some heart-winning opportunities ahead of time. Thanks ma.
We've already had a fight. I wish I could say it was record time, but it didn't beat forty minutes, a record held by a girl named Jen. Anyways we were arguing, and I said something, and she went off on me. And now I'm in the dog-house.
Anna's sensitive about some things. She didn't have an easy life, and she moved around a lot. I had a cake life, and I've lived in Anno Luce for all of it.
So I'm a little stressed until I find out what I did wrong. I gotta call her later. But thanksgiving was great. What a feast. Turkey and gravy, butter-nut squash and yams, clouds of mashed potatoes, butter steamin' up off 'em, it was unforgettable.
We got in a food fight, me and Anna. Just a skirmish, a couple shots across the border. Ma and pa laughed. I'm really falling for her. She always has a way of seeing through the bullshit that I try to throw at her, and she doesn't hate me for it. She's cool with it. And I can tell she cares about me, and she listens to my wild-and-crazy blatherings. So,...
However I'm at fault, I will say I'm sorry and mean it.
So ordered.
I'm back in the dorm right now. It's cool. Everyone's got a good Tryptophan buzz from the turkey, the "Black Friday Ass-Drag." I'm chillin' in Trainwreck's room. He's got a slammin' ass computer. Aaaaand... Photoshop™, hence the Bird of Fiction..
"Trainwreck", a.k.a Rick Carras, is so titled because, when he goes to parties, shit gets broke. Always somethin', and always something cool. An alcohol-powered demolition artist. But he's hilarious, and he gets invited to all the parties. When he’s not The Hammered Hammer, Richard is a programming major, and a smart motherfuker. One who just told me I gotta get off his shit.
So G'night all, and until next time,
Apologize. Cause it can't hurt. Pride can hurt, and is the number one cause of blueballs in the state of California. I can't mention the other cause.
So just say you're sorry, and try to learn something in preparation for the next time you get yourself in trouble over the same damn thing.
~@~@~
Gabby sat in the library on the third floor, in a little alcove by the window. They had their own room, The Chronograph, that is, but they seldom met there for editorial meetings. It was small and cramped, and the library offered the added advantage of enforcing the quiet rule, so keeping order was a little easier.
She'd been on the Chronograph staff for three years now, and she could remember the meetings that used to be held in the Sunrise Cafe. As much fun as they all had, they never got anything done. The library was a much better choice. Stephen would be there soon. He got back from New York early that morning.
They were only expecting a few others. They had four reporters currently, only two of which would be there that day, Mary Jones and Jimmy Barton. Barney Sheehan said he'd come, but she didn't count on that. Barney was a great guy, but she didn't sense him as being too reliable a person. Plus he worked a night job. But he said he would, so Gabby'd just have to see.
She looked out the window at the clear blue sky that formed a canopy over the well-placed palm trees lining the Main Quad. She darted her gaze downward, to where Joey Nebbord's body was found two stories below. Nothing remained, of course; it had happened a week ago. But she knew him, and she was still in shock.
Joey worked for the Chronograph. He wasn't listed in the Staff section, but he was doing a contributing segment on the Paradigm project. His first piece was going to appear in the December issue. Gabby was looking forward to it until Monday.
She didn't tell Stephen right away. He was in New York, visiting family on Thanksgiving, and he was on a flight back when it happened. But Stephen would've found out immediately. Stephen was used to knowing what happened when it happened. She just hoped he knew by the time he got to the library. She wouldn't know what to say to him.
He was the reporter extraordinaire. She was the photographer. Not to say that she wasn't an extraordinaire herself. She had been taking pictures ever since she was six, when her parents bought her a 35 mm camera for her birthday. Nothing fancy, but it could take pictures. She used it as the talisman for her daydreams when she was a kid, pretending she was always in the middle of some big "scoop", snapping pictures of the neighborhood dog, or local landmarks, or people just going about their daily business.
She would have her parents take her to the Pharmacy in Peoria, where she came from, to get them developed. Then she would sit there in her room, surrounded by the sea of her pictures, imagining this or that, telling stories frame by frame. She would win a Pulitzer one day, she was sure of it. Well, she was back then.
Now a Pulitzer was far from her mind. Someone she knew, someone she had talked to less than a week ago, was assassinated, just feet from where she sat. She didn't know why, though she couldn't help but think it had something to do with Paradigm. And she feared that she may also be on that list.
Joey Nebbord was a hacker, pure and simple. He was good, too. He didn't hack to put money in his bank account, though he certainly could have. He'd probably be alive today if that's what he limited himself to. But he called himself an ethical hacker. So Joey would track the news, find some corporate misdeeds floating about, and he would hack their system to deliver some poetic justice.
Gabby had heard stories from him of things he'd done that were legendary, like transferring the cash from illegal slush-funds to charitable organizations that the companies donated to (for PR's sake, of course), and issuing press releases, perfect copies of the ones the companies used, announcing the donations. Gabby didn't know whether or not they were true, but she'd seen enough of his handiwork first person to assume it.
Joey had found a glitch in Synermedia's computer system, and he was able to get into the root directory. He basically had access to all of their internal data. And so Joey approached The Chronograph with the offer of an exclusive. Some editors would've passed him up, but not Stephen. Stephen had been a real journalist for years before attending ALCC, and he knew better.
Now there'd be no exclusive, and Joey Nebbord was two days in the ground. Gabby sketched in her notebook as the dead quiet of the library, the sound of turning pages drowned in plush. She looked up at the clock. 2:25 p.m. Stephen should be there in five minutes. But surprisingly, she saw Barney enter the door below the clock.
Barney was dressed in a Hawaiian shirt, and if anyone could pull it off, it was him. His messy, curly hair peeked out from below his Dodgers cap, but Brooklyn Dodgers, not L.A. She asked Barney about it, and he said it was his "sign of defiance". Yup', that's Barney, she thought.
He saw Gabby and put up the peace sign as he walked over.
"See, I told you I'd show," Barney said, "And here I am!"
"I see that," replied Gabby, "and thanks."
"And they say it only happens in the movies." Barney said as he grabbed the seat next to her. Gabby laughed.
"Stephen should be here any minute." Gabby said. "I told him about you."
"I love his writing." Barney said, "He's on point."
"He read that sample you gave me." Gabby said, "He said he'd be happy to have you write for us."
"Cool." replied Barney. He looked out the window and said, "It's a shame what happened to that kid Joey, Nebbord, was it?" Gabby looked away.
"I'm sorry, did you know him?" Barney asked, noticing that he may have touched a nerve.
"Yeah," Gabby said, "We all did. He was contributing. Stephen will have more to say about it. And don't worry, it's just tough,"
Barney reached out and put his hand over hers. "I understand." he said.
At about that time, Stephen walked in the door. He looked like hell. Gabby knew he wasn't looking forward to seeing his grandmother. Something about a suffering house, he didn't explain beyond that. But she knew the real stress was generated from Joey's murder. Stephen would take something like this personally. She knew him well enough to know this.
She dated Stephen for a little while, shortly after she met him. He was new to the school, and they met at the Sunrise'. It didn't work out. He was older, but that wasn't the problem. She was used to dating older guys. But Stephen was haunted, and Gabby felt a wall there that at times seemed impenetrable, and at other times only paper thin. If she didn't have the pressures of college to contend with, she knew in her heart that she would've tried to make it work. But she couldn't, and Stephen understood. So they broke up amicably and went to being best friends.
"Stephen," Gabby said as she got up to give him a hug.
"Gabby," Stephen said, and Gabby could swear the hug was just a little tighter than his normal hug. She could feel the hurt in him.
Barney got up, and introduced himself. Stephen shook his hand, and commented on his writing sample. Barney beamed.
"I assume you've heard," Gabby said, "I would've told you, but,"
"I know." Stephen said, putting his hand on Gabby's shoulder. His other hand reached out to wipe the beginnings of a tear that collected on Gabby's cheek. "We'll talk more about it later," Stephen said, and then he looked at Barney.
"Joey was working for us," Stephen told Barney, "I'll clue you in as much as I can, Barney, but there are some parts I'd rather not get you involved in just yet."
"I understand," Barney said, "Need to know."
"That, and the fact that they've yet to catch the guy who did it." Stephen said.
He sat down, getting out the papers to start the editorial meeting, a quiet infected all three of them. Mary and Jimmy walked in five minutes late. Normally Stephen would have something to say about it, but today he hardly noticed. They spent the next hour trying to cob together a December issue. Joey's story was meant to be the main piece, and now with Joey dead, they had nothing. After some deliberation, Gabby convinced Stephen to put one of his unpublished Katrina stories as a main piece. He had about five Katrina stories that his old magazine refused to publish. Stephen was reluctant to use them in the Chronograph, but he was too worn down to fly into a last-minute deadline from scratch. He gave in. Mary went over layouts, and Jimmy went on to discuss the finer points of increasing circulation.
As they were talking later, the Paradigm project came up. Barney said that his dorm room had a clear line-of-sight to the construction site of the building. And he had a friend who could build him a rifle-mike that could pick up the conversations of the people building it. Stephen seemed pretty interested in the idea of recording them, and he arranged to meet Barney at his room to see if they could set something up. They ended the meeting at 3:30 without much fanfare. Stephen walked Gabby home.