King of the Californias Pt X

by Monk Eastman, New York City, NY, USA

The corner of Broadway and Embarcadero smells like fresh earth and mother ocean. The sea breeze is signature California: rolls across me like Nirvana. My shoulders unbunch. The tension in the middle of my forehead loosens. Suddenly I'm grinning like some kind of drugged idiot. Back in the 20s, a professor at UC-SB theorized the local flora stimulated human production of endorphins––California as pheromonal Feelgood Factory. Only the Department of Tourism was sold on the theory, but fresh-faced tourists from every corner of the globe still walk, bicycle, and skate past, that same subtle grin on their mugs. It's got mythical qualities, California, and when you've got it good, the place is Eden.

Across the street, construction on the Memorial Promenade continues. They wanted antique, sun-bleached cobblestone walk, and have actual workmen digging up Embarcadero all the way to East Street: picks and shovels, grunting and sweating. What they used to call 'honest work' before that kind of labor became pointless. Some would argue when I say 'pointless'. After all, could an engineering firm wave a magic wand and generate the same rustic artisanship? Would there be the quaint imperfections of hand-quarried stone? Any good fabrication engineer would agree with me and tell you that science has square-rooted the subtlety of natural-looking limestone down to the final decimal. That as a civilization, we're so far removed from even knowing what natural quarried stone looks like; the fabricated stuff is indistinguishable. Antiquarians swear we'd know the difference, though. Normally, I'd ridicule, except I can taste the difference between locally-farmed coffee and the fabricated stuff, which isn't supposed to happen. Score one for the antiquarians, I suppose. They get their hand-crafted promenade.

I'm just glad the men are working by the waterfront and not sitting idly in the East End, waiting for the rain of decompiler bombs.

The Promenade falls in the shadow of what locals call the Embarcadero Curtain: a brand new skyline that blocks the sun. The Palma de Baía is one of twenty luxury hotels on the strip, and one of the few with rigid construction: solid frame for the hotel, but a liquid interior, meaning its iconic, candied shell is constant, but the interior layout and decor is customizable and programmable. Al-Ansur/Menschowicz+Yiu (realspace Saõ Paolo, Caracas, Buenos Aires, Boston, and Kingston) maintain the interior fabrication based on designs by the Hubert Vokker Firm of Soho. Its immediate neighbor, The Bacon-Yeates, is a growth culture, shaped like a giant green jellied dome. Yesterday it was a beautiful blue 35-story porcupine quill. Beside that, the Auld American looks like the Washington Monument. The owners are Japanese, and keep a rigid, highly-publicized schedule. This time next month, the hotel will look like Mt. Rushmore. My mother's wife has an alarming desire to spend their anniversary in Theodore Roosevelt's nose, and who am I to deny her? There's a world of frenzied tourists looking to cash in before the Republic of Northern California falls apart, crashes the economy, or both.

I turn up Broadway, towards one of a dozen markets, marked by bright pastel tents and kiosks made of stray bits of wood, plastic, and corrugated steel. Sounds of farmlife bleating and the somber capitalist mewling of people with nothing useful to sell. A bent crone offers recycled cotton from the back of a mule marked 'property of NGen'. The company leases clones all over NoCal. 'Telefauna', they call them. 'The ultimate renewable resource.' NGen has been banned in Europe and South America for usury. There's even a bill waiting in Congress to penalize the company, but it's pretty toothless, by all accounts. New England, the Greenbelt and Florida have banned clone leasing, but otherwise, there's not a lot regulating NGen in the States--or here in California. If the old lady sells every scrap of cotton, she'll probably still owe money on the transportation she used bringing it downtown. Rough market, Oakland.

I purchase an orange from a toothless Okie no older than fifteen, swastika and crossbones in the middle of his forehead, little black lightning bolts dancing across his knuckles. I wonder if he even knows what they mean. The orange is bitter, probably grown at one of those terrible organic farms up in Mar Verde. Buy coconut water from a Jamaican woman shrouded in full hijab, smile visible even through her veil.

Mill past stalls offering scavenged junk from the ruins of San Francisco, stalls selling hand-carved wooden toys, stalls selling home-made housecleaning robots, stalls selling 'salvaged gourmet' from luxury hotel garbage...block after block of stalls, voices risen in English, Gonja, Ewe, Portuguese, Spanish, Farsi, Cantonese, French, Gujarati, Hindi, Arabic, Russian...every exile in the world, here. Say what you will about Prime Minister Pivens, but his open door policy for refugees has probably saved more lives than his domestic agenda could ever ruin.
Stop at a tent selling military surplus, supposedly from Sacramento. Cracked pieces of ceramic armor, optic fragments from siting equipment, scraps of camouflage. Hunks of metal, twisted by unimaginable fury. I linger over the military patches. Mostly Golden Bear stuff. A few animated paramilitary patches. Then I spot the sword with three lightning bolts. U.S. Special Forces' patch. 

America in California.

It doesn't even sound natural. I'm about to ask the price of the patch, when I spot a great terrible smile beaming at me from across the market, made of alligator's teeth grafted into a human mouth.

Cecilio Goncz raises an espresso cup in my direction, seated delicately at a small folding table by a steaming coffee cart pushed by a crusty-looking Okie with flat eyes and a bent nose. The subject of my project's smile is ghoulish in dusk light--in daylight, it's positively frightening. He waves me over, pointing to his drinking partner, a creature I recognize on sight.

Montoya Dred.

The Devil of Laguna Beach.

Sitting for a cup of afternoon coffee with my father.

King of the Californias Pt IX

by Monk Eastman, New York City, NY, USA

I am pleased to wake up without my throat slit. No warnings painted on the wall in my own blood, no severed horse's head laid artfully at my feet. Just the warm, familiar smells of roasted coffee and steaming plantains. For a moment, I am almost fooled into thinking I conjured Cecilio Goncz from the bottom of a shot glass, and that I am actually hungover in my bed back on Pitt Street, Mississippi lapping a lazy tattoo at my door, Althea in the kitchen, preparing chickory and mofongo. Smile faintly, thoughts of sunning in my garden, watching the river roll by, maybe going to the French Quarter for some afternoon shopping.

Then I see the amber bedposts, the crennelated diamondine doors, great blue emptiness where Althea should be beside me, and the smile fades.

This is not Pitt Street and I am not in New Orleans.

This is Oakland. It is not my home.

The room knows my favorite smells, music, and foods; the room knows my news habits. So, before I'm even out of bed, I've seen Northern California's armies continue their police action on the East Side, because Sgt Enrique Pernil of the Golden Bear Republic Guard is broadcasting, with attendant maps and footage dancing across my skin. I listen to Khaled Bhargouti snark New York City's mayor for his latest public cocaine-and-ladyboy binge, bug-eyed mug-shots spinning three-sixty in the space behind my eyes. I chuckle as Eiko Orizumi's scathing assessment of Alaskan President McMenniman's foreign policy trickles through my left cochlear. That chuckle dims when my other ear echoes with news of sabotage on the Minneapolis SonicRail en route to Chicago (still counting the dead, aerial view of the disaster splayed beneath the skin of my right thigh). Above the chorus of morning news, word from the east, where The Voice of Free Sacramento declares his insurgents' victory over Prime Minister Pivens, images of the gutted city rolling across the palms of my hands.

Having met the Benny Pivens, I have a very clear vision of the tantrum he must be throwing right now. He had planned on parachuting into the wartorn city from California One, make a media event of it, sound the horn of the Golden Bear. After all, he made reclaiming Sacramento a keystone of his domestic policy; the whole 'Project: Normal' phase of his Golden Bear Initiative, ending in a single, functional government. Given the resources he's thrown at it, Sacramento's continued disobedience has become this terrible hemorrhaging gut wound in public perception. A Padanian commenter whispers seductively of regime change as the quick fix. His counterpart in Bogota cackles that regime change implies swapping heads, leaving some kind of system intact. As all his opponents have been dispatched with russian efficiency, Benny Pivens is the only system left. Somewhere in the chorus, I hear an economist moan of the next global contraction. Guandong's investment in the NoCal peseta, she says, hangs around the economy like a lead weight. Others hope at reconciliation with America to offset the creeping chaos. Or some kind of deal with Canada. Or Alaska. Or even Federal Mexico. A thousand geniuses light the dark with their brilliant analyses. It is, after all, the age of the prodigal amateur, and we are only too eager to engage.

I rise, shower, let the sonics flow over me, through me, shaking the filth off like a shaggy dog. It's not the same as a water shower, where there is at least a loose sense of baptism, renewal. The soundbath just insures no one gets me by spiking the pipes. Paranoid? Not after Ottawa, where the subject of my story tried to very politely shake me off his track with a tailored H-621 virus in the plumbing. I reason that if you're running among wolves, why tempt them with an exposed throat?

I throw on a simple white kaftan and orbiter boots, grab my gobag and let my luxury quarters go about cleaning and sealing itself from prying eyes. Once I'm out of range, the newsfeeds slough off like dead skin.

This morning, the lobby is a vaulted cathedral of white Italian marble, its streetside entrance a psychedelic animation embedded in diamond doors. Tomorrow it could be an angular ice palace made of sharp crystal and topaz. Or a replica of Napoleon's Court. Or a kitschy remix of Katz's Delicatessen on New York's Lower East Side. The whimsy of the Palma de Baía is legendary.

Onward to Oakland and a day without the specter of Cecilio Goncz and his pall of rape camps and genocide.

I hope.

In Search Of...Pt VI

by Chris Beckett, Hampden, ME, USA

“Don’t you fuckin’ toss off an email when you’ve got information, Archer!” Elijah Kaczmerak spit the words out, his breath catching in his throat with the effort. “You get on the damn phone –” (breathe) “– and you talk to me like a man.” (breathe) “Do you understand me?”

Kaczmerak’s chest rose and fell with each labored gasp. The old man closed his eyes, listening to the private detective on the other end. He worked to remain calm, regulating his breathing as withered muscles uncoiled.

“I don’t’ care what you think–” (breathe) “– You consult with me, and do the job for which I am paying you –” (breathe) “– Find my daughter–” (b-r-e-a-t-h-e) “– Bring her back.”

(breathe)

“Now, have you anything worthwhile to share?” His voice little more than a whisper, Kaczmerak slumped back, his body collapsing in on itself.

The old man was unsure how long the phone had been silent. He opened his eyes and rasped into the still room, the chair’s receiver funneling his voice back to Keenan Archer. “So you don’t really know a fucking thing, do you? –” (breathe) “– Please remind me why I am paying you such an exorbitant sum.”

The old man held a rag up to his mouth coughing into it, the searing pain given voice by the grating sound in his throat.

“WHERE ARE MY RESULTS!”

A long silence enveloped the room as Kaczmerak listened to the detective’s excuses.

“I deal in certainties, Mr. Archer–” (breathe) “– Not fucking hypotheses.” Kaczmerak could barely free this final word, his body rebelling against the strain.

Wheezing loudly, the old man’s eyebrows arched as a response came from the detective. “Do not fucking patronize me, Mr. Archer.”

(breathe)

Kaczmerak paused, dropped back into his chair once more, listening with more interest. A smile curled at the edges of his mouth as his fingers began to tap on the arm of the chair – slowly at first, the pace quickening as the detective’s monologue continued. Finally, the old man slapped his hand down on the chair arm, the sharp impact skittering across the room.

“She’s gone to New York?”

(breathe)

“Would it not be prudent to ascertain the veracity of your hunch?”

“I expect a report tomorrow evening–” (b-r-e-a-t-h-e) “– And do not make me call you this time.” Kaczmerak tapped the console on the chair’s left arm cutting off any more discussion from the detective. The old man closed his eyes and heaved a long sigh.

•••

“Mr. Kaczmerak.

“Sir.

“Are you awake, sir?” Gregory was standing above Elijah as the room came into focus. Kaczmerak couldn’t remember falling asleep and had no idea how much time he’d lost. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand he looked up at his butler.

“What is it?”

“The doctor is here, sir. She’s been waiting in the vestibule.”

“Set her up in the –”

“Already done, sir. The doctor unpacked and organized her belongings before having me call on you. I told her that might be best.”

“Well send her in for Christ’s sake.” Kaczmerak ran fingers through his thinning hair as he worked to sit up in his chair.

A minute later, Dr. Sylindra Ziantara strode into the library, concern crossing her features. Kaczmerak didn’t like that. “What the hell is wrong, doctor?”

Dr. Z, as she was commonly addressed, always found Elijah Kaczmerak’s hostile demeanor off-putting. “The tests came back negative.”

“What the fuck do you mean negative?” Kaczmerak turned away and rolled over to the window. Outside slate clouds crowded out the sun’s warmth, dropping a monochrome haze over everything.

The doctor reached Kaczmerak’s side, setting her hand on the back of his chair. “We can’t produce any more stem cells. Your body’s too full of cancer. They metastasize rather than grow healthy cells.

“We tried difference cocktails, but the results are always the same.”

“Why don’t you go back and try again, doctor!” The final word dripped off Kaczmerak’s tongue like a virus as he turned and stared up into her eyes. He held her gaze for a moment but had to turn away when he was overcome with a hacking cough once more, the heavy phlegm burning deep within his throat, refusing to move.

“Elijah.” The name landed solidly between patient and physician. “You know you don’t get to push me around. Try it again, and I’m out that door.”

Elijah Kaczmerak looked out at the heavy clouds sitting on the horizon, his final sputtering coughs subsiding. It was nearly two minutes before he replied, the doctor waiting him out as she wandered the room admiring his book collection.

Finally, his voice barely audible – “So what do I do now?”

Dr. Z walked over and knelt beside him. Taking his hand, she lifted Kaczmerak’s head so that she could look him in the eye. “We keep fighting. Maybe another cocktail will work, but I’m not holding out hope.”

“Best case scenario,” she continued, “is that you find a donor that shares your DNA.

“Otherwise, there’s not much else except bio-modification.”

“Fuck that,” he spat as he pulled his hand away.

To Be Continued . . .

East Harlem, Fifty Years From Now, Pt I

by Improvian, Bronx, NYC, NY, USA

The crave came again.

It's to the point where I can't seem to function without lighting a hitter every few hours. It's interesting how the company increases your wages based on the fact that you smoke CM-45 grade marijuana. That caused many a problem with false claims popping up like moles, HR steadily whacking at them. So now when forms came in from those claiming to smoke, you have to take a same day drug test. Poor saps think toking before the test would help, but that only cause the test to come back negative, thanks to modern government sponsored science.

But the craving was getting stronger. No time to worry about Sherman & Shin and definitely no time to go for CMs. Heh. Look at me. I looked rough, in need of a shave and a shapeup. My left fingers and lips a purplish black, no longer pink and healthy. Must have gained at least twenty pounds since all I do is sit on my ass and eat. I should stop, but…

I looked in the phone's call log and saw a name that would help with this craving: Bekka. Bekka was this twenty year old from the Taino Towers I used to tutor at Hunter. Intelligent girl; would be a knockout if it wasn't for the scar from the bottom of her left ear to her lower lip. Guess that comes with the territory if you happen to be the sister of a known hood dealer and slanging on the side, which is why I smiled. I pressed the send button and placed the earpiece in.

"Who the fuck is this?" the slightly husky voice questioned.

Interesting greeting.

"Ain't it? So…who the fuck is this?"

Brian

"Mr. Nichols?"

Yeah

"Holy shit, I mean, hey Mr. Nichols! What's up?"

Everything and nothing, but I told you, call me Brian

"Eh…Can I call you Brain?"

Only if you don't mind Becky

"Eww no. Anyway I know you didn't call for small talk. What's the deal?"

L's secure?

"Hold tight...yeah. Two?"

Three

"Oh my. We're got a lil check in the mail, huh?"

Nah, been saving up

"I like a man who plans for the future. Ok the usual?"

The usual

"Sweet. See you at five"

Can't make it earlier?

"Umm…nope. See ya" *clicks*

The usual was a Cuban restaurant on 2^nd Avenue between 116^th and 117^th. That was the spot because it was usually low lit and 75% of the customers have sold illegal drugs. However the public and on some occasion the cops, turn a blind eye to the activities. I sat there reading the news on the PAD, which I took out of my messenger bag. I heard a voice from behind me, "I don't know why you read that shit." Turned around and there she was, the Afro-Cuban from Nuevo Purple City, sister of Big Key, my savior.

What it do, Bekka?

"Nothing much, Mr. Nichols," she said as she placed two mini-envelopes next to the french vanilla ice coffee I was drinking. Took one of them, moved it under the table, and placed the cash card inside. Once I was finished, I placed it back next to my drink.

She leaned over to take it and said seductively, "You know, I could see myself on top of you….hahaha just fucking with ya. Eww you're like 50 or something?"

35

Eyes opened wide. "35?!? Wow."

Wow?

"I mean when I was just a thought, you were probably stroking a couple out."

I almost forgot how wonderfully vulgar you were.

"Sorry, Mr. Nichols, this," she stood up and spun,"is Bekka. Anyway listen to this," she took off her earpiece and placed it near my ear. It's playing a hip hop track from 1988 and the only reason why I knew is because…

"Can you believe that's what your grandparents listened to? It quakes, but anytime I had to Swikki lyrics, it's so not worth it" She started to sip the cola she had ordered. As she was doing that she looked up and plainly said, "So…Constipated Monkeys not working for ya?"

Keep it down

"Umm…you know where we're at, right? Almost everyone here slang plus they know who I am. We safe."

I think CM-54 has something in it that takes away people's memory, but since that's a "natural" side effect of marijuana, no one notices. I notice and everyday I have to keep a journal just to remember if I took a shower or not.

"Why not just…you know…stop? I mean you know we appreciate your loyalty, but dude, it's so not worth it."

It's…it's not that easy

"You're shitting me…"

Nay, that's something else I'm trying to determine. Is it another effect of CM-54 or have I become addicted?

Continued...

In Search of...Pt. V

by Christ Beckett, Hampden, ME, USA

Weeks to get a proper tracking code for the outdated chip Kaczmerak gave me. Nothing like starting down a trail already colder than your dead mother’s tit. You’d think someone like Kaczmerak would be able to keep up with this stuff. Old fuck thinks he has it all figured out.

With the way things fractured after the Arab-American war, life’s an even bigger pain in the ass than it ever was. Government’s in the shitter, different factions pop up every hour on the net; it’s a minor miracle we haven’t been wiped clean by some raghead army yet. ‘Course, the more difficult the job, the more I can charge. And at least the old fart pays on time.

Crossing a narrow bridge, I enter the small town as the sun drops behind a row of bare hills off on my right. A tinge of salt carries on the moist air as bells ring methodically somewhere in the harbor. Footfalls slop through the mud behind me; men in overalls, stained and torn, discuss their day on the ocean. They pause a moment to give me a challenging glance, passing without a greeting. I raise my hand and nod sarcastically as I continue to scan the feeble surroundings.

If she wanted to get away from Daddy, she might have gone a bit farther.

•••

I wait an hour in the dark for Suffolk to return. He tries his key but doesn’t seem bothered that the door slips open without it. Walking through the main room, he doesn’t switch on a light. Idiot.

Booted feet clomp down the hall for the bedroom and soon a dim light trails back up toward me. Suffolk gasps. It brings a smile to my face as I hear him curse under his breath. Apparently, he’s never had his room tossed. Good.

Running back down the hallway, he makes straight for his landline computer across from where I stand in the shadows. Springing the overhead light on, Suffolk is momentarily blinded, giving me the seconds I need to knock him on his ass.

“AAhhh, shit!”

I punch him in the nose once for good measure and then lift him onto the ratty couch nearby. He’s still gingerly cupping his nose when the tears subside. The fear in his eyes is gratifying. This should be easy.

“Mind if I sit down?”

“No. Go ahead.” His speech is halting. He’s confused.

“I’m trying to find a girl – Karen Kaczmerak. You know her.”

“I don’t recognize the name.”

“That wasn’t a question.” I slap him hard on the side of his face and continue, “I tracked her here, but the place was empty. I think you’d remember, she’s the type’d stand out in this shithole.”

I slip out my palmcard and pull up a holo of her. He responds. “Okay. She said her name was Kay.”

He makes to get up from the couch. “Uhn-uh.” I set my gun on the table between us.

Suffolk raises his hands above his head, sweat spotting his brow. “Whoah. I just want to get something for you.”

I glare at him a few seconds before nodding. “Slowly.”

Suffolk steps into the kitchen and pulls down a cookie jar from on top of the refrigerator. Returning to his seat, he hands me a small microchip. “She told me to give this to you when you arrived. She knew you’d be coming, but didn’t say much else.

“You know that father of hers touched her, did things to her?” He’s pleading, begging me to give a damn.

“Not my business. Taking her home is.

“How long ago was she here?” I look up from the tiny chip, catching his eyes before they drop to his lap.

“I don’t know,” he mutters.

“Don’t get brave now.” I pick up my pistol and set it in my lap. His eyes follow the movement.

“Four days,” he says. “She didn’t tell me where she was going, but I expect it was as far from here as possible.”

“Why’s that? She finally get tired of you?”

His fists clench, but he’s not that dumb. He keeps his mouth shut and just stares through the frayed carpet on the floor.

“Do you really expect me to believe that you have no idea how to find her? If she knew I was coming, she wanted you to contact her, let her know how much of a head start she has. Come on.”

“No, no. She didn’t give me anything. Just left without saying a word. I came home last week and she was gone. I swear.” Waving his hands frantically is supposed to add some credence to his statement. Whatever.

I stand up. “Listen. I don’t want to kill you. Despite some prevailing sentiments, that would be bad for business.”

I walk into the kitchen, searching for the biggest knife I can find. “That doesn’t mean I can’t leave you in a shitload of pain though.”

I come back into the front room with a huge fucking blade, probably used to gut fish. It’s good to have the right tools for a job.

“Now, are we going to do this hard or easy? Your choice, but don’t take too long deciding because I’m an impatient man.” The smile on my face doesn’t seem to reassure Suffolk.

•••

I pull out my palmcard and shoot off an email to Kaczmerak. Relatively speaking, Suffolk chose an easier path than most – he only lost one finger in the process. Seems little Karen wanted to see the big city. I should be able to hop a transport once I make it back to civilization, and then we’ll see what we see.

To be continued . . .

King of the Californias, Pt. VIII

by Monk Eastman, New York City, NY, USA

The walls of my room pulse with Turkish ouds, soft bassline from a Tijuana garage, and Gregorian wails. Latest from Ç1Q, my favorite band. Of course my room knows it, and at the Palma de Baís, it even has access to the pirate tracks from the legendary Gastown Sessions. 'Rare' is not the word. 8 Feather and Rafiq Angeles took Ç1Q's first release (arguably the most listened-to album of the past fifteen years) and battled each other with it, remix for remix, in front of a live audience in Gastown, Vancouver. Ç1Q's stuff is normally like scented oil poured over silk. Kind of music that starts baby booms. At Gastown, they inverted it, turned it into godclash: what was in the Lord's ears when He razed Sodom. I thought data sieves at the venue meant no recordings made it out alive. Somehow, though, my room plays it, at a volume that accents my foul mood without exacerbating it. My elevated blood pressure, eye movement, personal kinetics, and listening history give the room just enough information to strike such a vital balance.

I'm reminded, very acutely, how little I like this sort of thing. Being under a microscope. Dissected without a single cut.

And I find myself desperately missing Chicago.

Wandering aimlessly along the green belts of Englewood. The great glass ziggurat of Kennedy King University, where I spent my latter days cultivating this (almost) useless mobile journalism degree. Countless midnights at the Tibetan food kiosks of Archer Avenue, served warm pockets of momo with volcanic, greasy red sauce on my way home from the artists' lounges of Bridgeport. Whisper of the Orange's Line's maglev trains sweeping past, kiss of ghostwind as it twisted into the night, snakelike and graceful.

But mostly, the Appleville Quiet Zone. Lone concrete tower, sanctuary from the continuous avalanche of a world where a song listened to on your way to work is logged in the depths of the nebulous Network, alongside your love of lung-scorching Central Asian cuisine and snarky Lebanese newsfeeds, odd collection of vintage '40s footwear, and baffling predilection for 20th century rap music. All there, always updating. Only private in the sense that you don't know who else is looking at it. Your tiny vein of personal data, mined endlessly by faceless, nameless things, scattered across the globe, feeding on the minutiae of daily life. Masticating the delicate ephemera of your life with great insectoid jaws and expelling it out over vast, intersecting planes of data, picked through by shit-merchants, sold to the highest bidder.

All so the Palma de Baía can play back the music I lost my virginity to, in the witching hours of that sweatless, fog-breathed Gastown night.

Now, as then, Appleville was the only place that felt real. Substantial. Single telephone per floor. Voice-only, hardwired into Chicagoland with copper-and-spit. Newsfeeds replaced with passive content. An actual hard library, where I read Upton Sinclair for the first time in print. Analog music, on antique standalone machines. An oasis of silence in a world of endless, low-intensity chatter. All right there, on W. 24th Place, just under the Dan Ryan. In retrospect, my nineteen months there was a gift. To live in such blessed antiquity...

And all because Chicago is the holy land: unique as a city that cherishes cloistral peace almost as much as the wild howl of its own progress. A place where tranquility is sown with the practiced hand of a Zen gardener, in Quiet Zones just like Appleville. Or Dalton. Markham. Bronzeville. The Low End. Modern day ashrams in the financial capital of North America. Such peace I'd never known...nor have I since.

And I compare it now to Oakland, where the night screams with attack drones, and the hills crash with artillery thunder. From Chicago to Toronto is a two hour trip by SonicRail. Here, it takes just as long to travel from Jack London Square to San Antonio Park, because the old 880 Freeway has been bombed to its component molecules by so many overlapping armies. Federal Unionists. The 321st Nevada Counter-Insurgent Insurgents (U.S. Volunteer Irregulars). The Alameda Independence Army. The Northern Aztlan Front. The New-New Wobblies. White Power Militias (Orthodox and Reform). The Golden Bear Unity Party. The Party For the Dignity of Angeleno Refugees. All of them mixing in the flats of East Oakland, trading shots with Prime Minister Pivens's choice assortment of heartless eye-gougers and ear-pullers. A fellow mobile journalist made note the other day that the Republic of Northern California proudly advertises itself as a nation without POW camps.

That is because the NoCal army is no longer taking prisoners.

In order for Prime Minister Pivens to give Los Angeles' expatriate war criminals respite without embargo or censure, he must provide the Hague at least an illusion of respectability. He is crafting that illusion with ashes of the dead and the blood of dissidents.

And my mind keeps wandering back to Chicago. To Appleville. Where I slept at night wrapped in the sweet impenetrable cold of anonymity. Ignorance. Perfect disconnectedness. Back in it now, tangled at the center of a burning web, (perhaps not surprisingly) threaded of all the weird, bad moments I'd sought to escape in Chicago; tied together to create this poor, weary author, eking out his literary pittance to a mixed soundtrack of Californian massacre and Ç1Q's remixed ouds. And I sadly recall this web has always been, and I always at its center.

And I wonder for the first time if I will ever enjoy the blessed silence of Chicago again.

Or if that silence ends here.

In Oakland.

In Search Of... Pt IV

By Chris Beckett, Hampden, ME, USA

“Soup again?” Tim slouched in his chair as he tossed his stained cap onto the sideboard. He’d just come in off the fishing boat and the smell of the sea was strong on him.

“Not anymore!” Karen Kaczmerak stood up from the table, knocking her chair to the floor, and seized both her bowl and Tim’s. Walking to the back door, she kicked it open – squeaking on its old hinges – and dumped their supper into the refuse bin.

“Jesus, don’t be like that. I was hungry.”

“Could’ve surprised me. You cook tomorrow.” Karen dropped the bowls into the sink as she passed through the kitchen marching for the bedroom at the far end of the trailer. Wiping his sleeve across his face, Tim got up from the table and went after Karen, his long strides closing the gap down the narrow hall.

“Will you come back here? What the hell’s wrong?” Tim caught his girlfriend just as she stepped into the bedroom.

Karen didn’t even look back. “Fuck off.”

“No!” Tim grabbed Karen by her right shoulder.

“Ow!” Karen pulled her arm away.

Tim’s eyes widened. “What happened to your arm?”

“It hurts, dipshit.”

Tim, stuck between anger and confusion, kicked the wall. “Fucking aye! What the Hell’d I do?”

“If you don’t know, I can’t help,” said Karen as she backed into their bedroom sliding the door out from its recess in the wall.

“What can I do so you aren’t so fuckin’ mad?”

“You could start by listening, but I’m not sure that’s even possible.” Karen slammed the door shut and turned the lock. Tim paced in a tiny circle for half a minute before pounding his fist against the bedroom door. Waiting for a response, he stomped back up the hallway when none was forthcoming.

•••

Tim Suffolk first laid eyes on Karen in the local diner. She arrived in South Harbor in the early evening, slim and young; the way her blond hair fell around her shoulders sent a shudder through Tim’s midsection. The fact that she had reciprocated his furtive looks that night was a surprise. Though by no means an ugly man, Tim knew his receding hairline and weary face were not generally appealing to the fairer sex. They’d ended up getting dessert together, and when Tim discovered Karen was alone with nowhere to stay, he was more than willing to put her up for the night.

That night stretched into weeks, and for the most part, Tim had been nothing but happy. But recently Karen had changed. She didn’t smile like she had at first, and she seemed restless. Tim had tried to infiltrate her stern façade, but no explanations had been shared. So, Tim just went about his normal business hoping it would work itself out.

•••

The digital clock read 1:43 am. Outside, the chime of the buoy helped bring Tim out of his slumber. He rubbed at his neck, stiff from falling asleep in the recliner. Slivers of moonlight slit the blinds, giving form to the shadows. There were soft footsteps in the kitchen. Turning, he watched Karen go to the fridge and pull out the pitcher of water. Lifting it to her lips, she took a long swallow and then returned it to its shelf. Closing the door, she walked back down the hall without giving him a look.

Tim strained to hear the lock click in the door as Karen shut it, but the only sound that came was that of the mattress springs yielding as she lay back down. With little deliberation, Tim got up from the chair and walked down the hallway himself, trying not to make a sound as he entered the bedroom.

His eyes adjusted to the darkness, and he could see Karen lying on her side turned away from where he stood in the doorway. She gave no indication she knew he was there. He pulled the covers back and slid in next to her.

Adjusting the sheets so that they fell over his back, Tim lay there waiting for Karen to say something.

But she remained silent.

Tim watched as two minutes passed on the clock, and then deemed it safe to move closer. Nudging up against Karen, he draped one arm over her shoulder and she jumped, biting back the pain before taking Tim’s hand and moving his arm down to her waist.

“Shit. Sorry,” whispered Tim, afraid of breaking the silence encompassing them.

“It’s okay,” said Karen. “I’m sorry for earlier.

“I’ve just been uneasy.”

“What’s the matter?” asked Tim as he propped himself up on his other arm.

“Thinking about home . . . Dad . . . what he did . . . to me . . . to Cedric.” Karen started to cry into her pillow. Tim tried to roll her over, but Karen refused, pushing his hand away.

For a long minute Tim stared down at Karen wondering what she’d gone through and what he could do to get her to stop crying. Finally, he laid his head on Karen’s pillow and whispered into her ear, “Tell me about it.

“I’ll listen.”

To be continued . . .