a pattern in static

Unofficial End of Summer

Suddenly being in a classroom feels strange, like a stiff dress shirt and there is an obnoxious ghost here.

A story about time travel I have been meaning to finish.

The Casus Belli

Frank stretched his neck, looked toward the ceiling and swallowed hard. The alcohol shot back into his mouth from his throat and he swallowed again. Everyone else slammed their glasses to the table, they growled, spat and coughed as they pounded both fists against the tabletop while others slapped their knees in a drum roll before the next drink. This is how the crew killed time since they left Earth. It was a routine rinse and repeat cycle of drinking themselves to incapacity until someone hunched over and fell asleep. Frank’s eyes watered and he coughed. They never knew when to sleep. Maybe these hours were night, but nobody on the ship knew if there was a night out in space. The hours never mattered. They didn’t know which way was up either and so most of their assumptions were arbitrary and based on educated guesses from the captain. Frank took deep breaths to keep the liquor in the pit of his burning belly; he paused and felt the stare from across the table. Laurie’s eyes were glazed and fixed. She had watched him.

“Hold it down Frankie, we’re going to be taking a few extra shots this time around.” Laurie said to him. Frank nodded his head and wiped his mouth, he could smell the alcohol that his moustache had absorbed. “What’s the occasion?” Frank asked.

            “Joseph—The guy who used to babysit my sister and I, stupid son of a bitch made the jump… another chronicide. Bill got the transmission from my mom this morning, only took three weeks to get here.” Laurie took a deep breath and poured everyone at the table a shot. “Do they know what the destination was?” Frank asked.

            She closed her eyes to recall everything her mother wrote to her. Transmissions were always cold and concise, losing all sentiment to the bleak emptiness of space on their way to the ship.

“April 28, 2801”, she said.

Frank pulled a small black planner from his back pocket; the front cover read ‘1997-98’. He flipped through it. Black squares filled the pages of the calendar and he stopped at April. He took out a pen from his pocket and colored in the 28^th. They all put their hands around the small glasses and waited for her to say something. Without another word she pulled the glass to her mouth and slurped, they shadowed. Frank shot up from his seat, he would not be able to hold this one in. He ran from the table to the lavatory, he reached to open the door and it was locked, he pounded as vomit began to pour from his mouth. Aaron, the youngest of the crew, kept silent inside the restroom. He sat on the toilet facing a video camera set on the sink, he was startled by the pounding but ignored it and breathed deep. He stared at the center of the camera lens and began to speak.

“I want to tell you what the world is like now.

Depending on what side of the shift you were on you may or may not know what I’m talking about. And maybe you don’t even know what the shift is. The only thing that anyone knows about time anymore is that eventually theirs is going to end. Nobody lives forever, even in the omni-present. If this doesn’t make sense, not to worry, it probably never will.”

II

Dr. Vicente Fox sat, the sole occupant, at a long white table that spanned nearly the whole width of the frosty white conference room. He rubbed his scruffy, pointed chin, his lab coat tinged brown. Behind him stood two long white boards at his left and right; haphazardly drawn on them were numerous equations and small doodles, long red and blue arrows pointed equations to others on the opposite side of his drawing board.  He avoided the stare of eight sets of eyes from the opposing side of the room. His board of trustees, sitting upright and taut in lab coats ironed stiff at an identical white table, waited for a punch line.

“Dr. Fox, I assure you, you would have no trouble receiving this grant from us if-“, Dr. Smallhouse paused, cleared his throat and looked at the other seven scientists and seemingly transferred his expression to their faces, each man now had a furrowed brow of concern, “…if we knew what it was you were saying to us.” He continued.

Fox took his glasses off and rubbed the scratched lenses with his coat. He replaced them over his eyes on the bridge of his pointed narrow nose and addressed Smallhouse directly, “It’s nothing scientific sir, it’s memory. Simply the Quantum teleportation of consciousness. I think to state it in simpler terms would be insulting to brilliant men as yourselves.”

“Dr. Fox, we understand the concept, but what you’re proposing doesn’t exist, it couldn’t exist. Even if it did exist, you’re talking about playing God, don’t you think that’s a little more power than we’re entitled to?”

Dr. Vicente Fox began to perspire; the long fluorescent bulbs above his head made his brown skin look sallow. The muscles of his slender jaw bulged as he began to grind his teeth. He spoke through tight lips. “But you men are scientists! You don’t even believe in God!”

Dr. Smallhouse, a bearded pale man resembling a sad Santa Claus lifted his sweaty glass of water and took a small sip. “Unfortunately for you doctor, we don’t believe in Vicente Fox either.”

            The night was foggy and Fox could feel the static of excitement on his skin, he would continue his endeavors without the support of his colleagues. He rented a dank room in the basement of Sweet Chang’s Chinese restaurant and built his machine in two months short of five years. He sat on a small wooden chair, the only piece of furniture in the small, secluded room; he slipped on a Kevlar vest that was wired to a machine that looked oddly similar to a Smith-Corona typewriter. He grabbed a notepad from his pants pocket and wrote a small note.

            December 24^th, 2011.

First Trial at consciousness teleportation- the shift- I guess I only get one shot at this…no pun intended.

            He picked up a revolver that lay between his feet on the floor, he winced and held it to his temple. Tears slid from the corner of his eyes in a line across his cheek and off his chin. He did not see a light or his life behind his eyelids; he knew this wouldn’t be the end. He began to hum a melody to a song he didn’t know, Fox smiled and tensed every muscle in his tired, small body and squeezed the trigger. Every moment shifted to one moment, that moment expanded perpetually as the bullet cracked his skull open and buried itself deep inside of his brain.

III 

            Aaron sat in the cockpit of the U.S.S. Casus Belli observing the esoteric panels of knobs, dials and meters all signifying the smallest function of the regal ship. Frank Lapidus sat at the controls, it was a strange panel of lighted pegs inserted into a switchboard, inserting these pegs into different slots commanded the ship to perform a whole array of maneuvers and actions. Frank didn’t replace or remove any of the pegs; the Casus Belli had a set destination since it’s departure. The ship and its crew would ultimately arrive at Titan, the gaseous behemoth moon of Saturn.

            “Hey Frank” Aaron was always anxious to ruin the perfect silence that plagued the ship. “You ever notice that the Belli is shaped like a dick?”

            Frank’s irritation with Aaron was manifested in the ways he messed up his face whenever Aaron spoke at all. “There are so many things, that ruin my day all the time kid, and I don’t even know what a day looks like, so I’m pretty much pissed off all the time. To imagine I’ve been directing a giant penis through the cosmos for most of my golden years isn’t something I want to think about.”

            “Oh.” Aaron paused to reflect on the morbidity of the idea of getting old. Aaron began to bite his nails and looked at Frank in his peripherals. “Hey Frank” Aaron said with vague caution, “What’s the black book for?” Frank held his position still for an extra second. He reached into his back pocket and felt around, grabbing his small planner. He tapped it against his knuckles; it seemed heavier than he remembered.

              “Every time I hear about some dickhead that decides to off himself by jumping into nothingness, I’m just a little bit inclined to write down the date.”

Frank tossed the book onto Aaron’s lap and he began to turn the pages, some pages like checkerboards, others without a black square, each scribbled out perimeter equaled to a martyr of curiosity.

            “Why isn’t there any future Frank, what do people see?”

            “From what I hear everything just decided to undo itself, there’s nothing there. If someone knew why or when I wouldn’t need a little black book.”

            “Is it Heaven?” said Aaron.            

            “Don’t ask stupid questions, kid. We’ve been pretty far out into this universe and it only gets darker out there. Have you seen a heaven anywhere we’ve been?”

July.

It was the first weekend of the month and I skipped out on jury duty to sleep in. It may have been the last weekend but I know for certain it was July. The air was always sharp with gunpowder and the June bugs stuck to the screen door, never leaving even when I did. I spent the entire summer with a single woman and she laid next to me on a twin bed. Bare assed with the triangle patch of hair below her belly against the sticky skin of my thigh. I hate this fucking bed she’d say. I want to imagine us together I whispered to her. When I think of us in the future our bed never has a frame and the curtains are always cold and there’s sad music playing constantly. If we had kids we would make them listen to the Smiths. They wouldn’t understand until they were older. Maybe never. I hope to god they never understand that music. The future would remain as it was until we were certain that we were ready and everything was right.

This frameless bed better at least be a full she said and there better be cigarettes. You don’t smoke I said. I would pick up the habit from you she said. All the best writers smoked. And in the evening when those sad songs are playing their loudest through the dark little house of ours and embedding themselves in the mattress and reverberating through the floor I would cry into my pillow hoping every night that you didn’t kill yourself the next day. All the best writers do she says.

from last semester.

These buildings make me nervous by  Caesar Gonzalez.

This is a fuck you LA for

Laughing when I came too quickly

both my feet unstick from the adhesive of piss, pop and bubble                                             

gum that coat the cement. Two men fight for prime spots under

the shit-shielding awning of a jewelry shop. I’ve been fighting for

these sidewalks.

And your stories are written in black gum and broken bottles but I’ve read them all.

I am not a clown LA, but

have been your fool since birth.

Tried a 300 word story for a contest…Failed. 356.

“You think you can tell me where I am on this thing?” The black man, bearded gray with a sordid, formerly crimson, skull cap leaned against the reflective covering of a bus route map.

“I actually don’t know anything about this” Lem walked over to the leaning man and once he was close enough smelled the foreboding urine scent of homelessness on him, “I actually don’t know anything about this; I think I came from this way.” He pushed one finger against the thick plastic and dragged it across the blue dotted line on the map. “I think this is the only way to get to this place so you probably did the same thing.” Lem said.

“The things we do are very different you little shit. I am obviously much more drunk than you are.”

“I’m not drunk at all.”

“That’s exactly why you can’t tell me shit.”

“YOU asked ME for help!”

“I didn’t ask for help at all. I asked you if you know where we stand”

“You’re barely standing at all”

“Looking at you—looking at your face—your mouth—listening to you…I’d say I’ve been standing about forty years longer than you have. It was for a laugh. You almost look like you know where you’re going.”

“I’m going home, but you wouldn’t know much of that would you…”

“I built a home from the inside out, I’ve raised three sons who would know where to tell a man where to go, I loved a woman and another and another. I lived a dozen lives and when it was tired I threw it out and I never thought of it again. I have nestled at the bottom of a bottle because that’s where truth lies. It lies and lies and lies and with these lies it keeps me warm and keeps the smile on my fucking face.”

The man kept his eyes still on the map.

“This is Union Station, old man. You’re standing on the heart of Los Angeles.” Said Lem

“Agh.”, said the man “Do you have a fucking quarter so I can go the other way?”

A Quick Note About the Sacrifices of Bad Taste

“You know why so many people gave a shit about Nirvana?” It was a discussion about tone in a writing class. “It had nothing to do with what he was saying, can anyone honestly tell me they knew what all those songs were about?” My professor was eloquent, bald and homosexual and with all restraint I kept from writing him love letters. “It was the way he sang those songs. Most of these kids didn’t have the capacity to understand the things he was singing about, and I bet most of it was bullshit anyway. But tone, the way he sang those songs, that pain, the raspy, intimate tone of Kurt Cobain’s voice… well, that’s something a whole generation could relate to.” He began to sing ‘Dumb’ in a fairly accurate emulation of Cobain’s voice. “These lyrics are stupid” he said, “but they make us want to cry.”

I laughed a little when he explained exactly what I couldn’t in decade or so of music listening. Most of the time I couldn’t tell you why I liked a song, or a band. “Shit, this is just good music.” I now I understand why things were so embarrassing when it came to my musical preferences. 

It used to be that I could only listen to punk music;up the BPM, kill the harmonies, simplify the chord progressions and testify. It could have been ADD but those tunes, with drums relentlessly banging at the same rhythm as a lawn sprinkler, are the only thing that could ever keep attention. That was relatable, I didn’t give a fuck with they were singing about and they were singing about not giving a fuck. From this obnoxious little seed my musical infatuation grew. Everyone has one of these stories.

They also have other stories. Like when I gave up punk for something that struck even deeper, the tone that spoke to me.

“Man, that line gets me every time! ‘I’d apologize for bleeding on your shirt’! Who says that!”

I don’t remember his name but he handed me some headphones and a CD player and made me listen to a song that I pretended to hate. No, I didn’t understand why that line meant so much, but I liked it, the guy singing for this band was belting out lines that came straight from my own head, things that you think but never say. It was his tone, like he was on the verge of tears. I felt embarrassment, “I can relate to this?” I thought.”How fucking pathetic.” Taking Back Sunday’s Tell All Your Friends came out in 2002 and I swear I still listen to that damn album. I spent my life in the closet in the ensuing years, abashed about liking TBS, answering “Yeah, they’re whatever.” whenever I was asked about listening to them. TBS led to Brand New, Brand New led to The Early November which led to something more emotional, more shamelessly sentimental. I still get that chill of embarrassment now that I mention it… these were dark days.

It’s a relief to listen with freedom.