Revelations III

“Existence has its own order, and that no man’s mind can compass, the mind itself being but a fact against others.”

Holy shitdick, you fucking got one. Perfect.

Yeah dude. Fuckin Mesta. Came through.

Lu was feeling around to get the thing opened, with a dizzy grin below wide eyes. God watched him get frustrated in three seconds and borderline enraged in six.

What the fuck it’s…How do you fucking…??

A door slipped open before he could finish the thought. He crouched. The door was about four by four, and had revealed itself silently. Lu was humbled. He whistled in an amazed way. God said:

You like that? I thought that shit open.

Lu’s voice, muted from inside the craft:

Get in and think it shut fucker!

God looked down and his friend’s head beaming back at him from the darkness in the spaceship. Lu held up two plastic bags, one of brown powder, one of white, and let them dangle around his ears. He said:

Where can I plug my ipod?

***

The inside of the ship was absolutely black. There were no screens or levers. There were no buttons, lights, or read-outs. Rather, the inside of the craft looked just like the outside: Weird, seamless metal with no sharp angles.

Lu held up his two bags and God’s eyes sparkled. Lu:

Where can…

Before he could finish, a round, glass table sprung up from the floor hull of the ship. It stopped rising the moment it touched the bottom of Lu’s bags. God smirked:

‘oughtta do the trick?

Lu didn’t reply, instantly deep in a preparation ritual. Taking a credit card from one pocket, he fashioned a small mountain of the brown powder on the glass before him. He did the same with the white powder, chopping down on it for a few extra minutes. He took half the mounds and made a smaller third mound from the yield. He used the credit card to mix the two powders to a sparkling beige, then handed a crystal tube to his friend, saying:

Take this, and let’s blow this place the fuck up.

***

I became aware long after I’d given up on the concept of awareness. For eons, it seemed I’d been falling in that black space. The fall ended just as it had begun: instantly, and without warning. I was sitting, again, with only my senses, inside a circular grey metallic chamber about twenty feet across. I saw no light source, but the air itself seemed to glow white. There were two men sitting there, one had blonde hair, long, like a woman’s. The other had no hair. Between the men, I saw what looked like a glass table. On the table were piles of powders, white, brown, and beige, each one sparking in the weird white light. I watched one man scoop some of the powder together and duck his head toward the table. There was a breathing sound, a sucking. I looked again and some of the powder piles were gone. The two men took turns for a while, ducking and making those noises. They were speaking very loudly, much too loudly – it seemed to me – for the tiny space. I heard one of them say something like “Well, let’s put the top down”, and suddenly we were floating in space. Below us: the world, vast and glowing the deepest blue and brightest white. Unfortunately, we didn’t stay perched there for long.

This part I feel I must get exactly right, so please forgive me if I seem to be over describing this. I’m in a hospital bed. The girl I came in with is dead. My name is (was) Chris Lomba.

One of the men said “You go first”. The other raised his hand like to throw a rock. He said “Abracadabra” and began waving the still-raised hand. Far below us, on the earth, there was an instant result. I heard a sharp crack, like a home-run of a wooden bat. Following that there was a low rumble. It wasn’t coming from the earth, but from behind us. The rumble grew in volume. I could feel the low-register vibrating. If I’d had my body, my flesh would have shaken on my bones. The two men started laughing as if one of them had told a hilarious joke. I looked down at the earth and watched in disbelief as an enormous chasm opened up in the bright blue globe. It began to grow immediately, and the sound was shooting back up at them, colliding with the low vibrations. The air around us in the invisible ship began to roil and wave. On the globe I could see the dark spot growing. It was spanning from the center of what looked like Africa, and still growing. The men weren’t laughing anymore, but I couldn’t look away from the terror on earth.

I saw clouds and ocean begin to collapse through the blackness. Huge sections of firmament fell away, along with billions of gallons of ocean. The crack was now a gash, carving a ragged bisection of the globe. The noise was like live wood splitting under lightning. A great cloud of dense steam burst from deep within the crack and began to enwrap the globe. I watched it billow and rage. The outside leading edge of the awful fog looked like a solid wall of concrete. Within seconds the great cloud had enveloped the entire Earth. I could see nothing but grey. Then, everything was burning. At first I thought there was a fire from the crippled earth, but then I realized that fire, like the rumble before it, was coming down on the poor planet from behind our vantage. The two men started laughing and screaming like maniacs as the flames avalanched past us and consumed the fog. It hit the world and deflected in all directions. There was a hiss that reverberated through the heavens and pressed in on the conflagration. Then everything was all burning and melting and disappearing. I saw the men a last time and they were on fire. Their laughter had turned to a final screaming, and we were all falling and burning as we went.

***

Storyteller in The Glass Palace

Prolog:

“…All our times have come…”

The man called Lu walked with a spring in his step, partly because Tompkins square was, by far, his favorite place in the entire universe. There were other reasons, and they were flocking through Lu’s head like mad sparrows as he skipped toward the center of the park. Then he saw his friend, and what his friend was standing next to and began to run.

Storyteller in the Glass Palace

The Storyteller had come a long way, but he wasn’t nearly so tired as he wanted the wetmaid to believe. He found that affecting a limp, a deeper voice than his own, perhaps an occasional puzzled stutter, would inspire trust when he came knocking. The story teller, old as he was, prized trust over all other things.

But at the Glass Palace, trust was no issue. The storyteller had been coming here since before the God-King had built his incredible underground fortress, and those who would receive him knew they had nothing to fear. Just the opposite in fact, by the time he entered the amphi-chamber, there wasn’t a seat to be had. The entire court had come out it seemed, for this event. Even with the kingdom under siege and rumors of the God King’s imminent demise, the public still demanded their stories.

The old story man looked out only a few seconds before beginning. There was no fanfare, no introductions or showmanship of any kind. Instead he stood still, waiting, like a tree that grown out of massive glass pulpit, until the entire crowd had gone pin-drop silent. Once he started speaking he would not stop until his story was finished.

***

The Slave they called Nesso knew how old he was on the last day of his life. He’d woken up the same way he’d woken up virtually every day: Screaming, or – more correctly – yelling. Yelling for all he was worth, yelling so his brother slaves, stacked around him like the perishable product they’d been reduced to by the God King, could wake up quickly, and begin yelling themselves. It was in this way, that the three guards who watched his Tet could rouse the entire scaffold – 500 slaves – with but one bucket of shit and piss.

Nesso was – of course – not this boy’s true name. He’d been taken as an infant, fodder for the Pharaoh’s ever-expanding war, before learning even so much as his people’s words for “War” and “infant”. Instead, the child would learn the only things the empire wanted him to know. His Name: (Nesso, meaning “Good Dog”), His Purpose (To clear the glass on the way toward the Blade and let the God King’s light), His king (The God King, Pharaoh Ramses, sixth of his name), and how many days he had left in his miserable life (None, as of his waking this morning). His Tet had provided the rest of his brief, but very important, education. They’d made odd teachers. Married, as they were, to the will of the King, they had no time to explain they why and how of things. Nesso would have to learn as all his people had learned: through vital facts, hurled in urgent nighttime whispers by fellow slaves stacked around him.

His job: “Clean the glass to deliver the God King’s light. Every morning ye rise, wake what needs waking, and then ask the guards to release you from the scaffold. They will send you into the desert towards the Blade. As you walk out onto the desert, an archer will sight you from the top of the Tet, and if you veer so much as a step, he will put a heavy bolt through your eye from behind. You will walk until you see the light hailing from top of the peak they call Blade, and you will fall to your knees and dig sand and clean glass, clearing the space around you as if to fit six of your size, lying side by side. You will do this. You will return, and ask the guards to permit you entrance back into the scaffold. Then you’ll thank the God King for your breath and your eyes.”

His people: “A village toward the coast, long gone. Your father was called Mix.”

His Age: “23 years, six months, two weeks, three days…”

The Rest: “Every day, when it is time to do the God-Kings work, last night’s guard will dump the piss bucket onto your head. You’ll yell. Just loud enough, and just long enough to wake enough of your brothers around you, so that they may yell, and so on, until this scaffold is awake, and ready to serve. When the Empire conquers new worlds, the healthy slaves will be placed in scaffold before you, to wake with the guards piss, and yell loud enough to wake you. The Scaffold holds five hundred, packed into small cages stacked ten by ten. It’s on wheels, and constantly roams the desert that separates the vast reaches of the God King’s domain. There are others, some with women, they say”

“Your job is important. The slaves who’ve been longest in this Tet tell of a vast glass palace, hundreds of leagues below the sands, built around a giant jewel called the Semix. A place where only the God King and those he favors can be at peace, and safe to rule their earth. The glass you clean will let the God King’s light into this Glass Palace and keep it aglow for the God King’s blessed affairs.”

“This is a sacred job, and only recently entrusted to slaves. For that reason, those his majesty selects for this duty are only made to serve for twenty years. On the last day of your service, you’ll speak up, saying to the last guard you see before you walk out toward the Blade:

Tonight is the last night of my service.

Thank him, in advance, for his assistance, so that he will find favor with you, and sneak up behind you when you are not looking, and slice your head from your neck in one quick chop, so there is but one moment of horrifying pain before you move on to serve the God-King in the next world.”

But Nesso never ended up reminding the guard. In the end, after everything had been decided, he never knew whether or not it had made any difference. He liked to think that it had.

***

It was cold, out on the sands. He’d cleaned the God King’s glass thousands of times, but Nesso never got used to the cold. It was always worst in these last minutes before the baking sun came up to roast everything under it. The slave could see it, gathering itself behind the Blade, making the gigantic spar glow like a sword in a forge. Even with all that roiling red light so close, the brittle desert cold riding him through the shadows made Nesso ache. He felt the cold fingers of the night invading him beneath his tunic, as he unsheathed his two silken brushes and took to his knees. He was over a spot in the sand known only to himself and very few others – friends and associates of the God king. A driver named Jint had told him where the glass was and how to find it, and over the years the job – as jobs will – became like a second nature to him. Jint had been gone a long time, and nobody after him had ever asked about how to find the glass.

Kneeling in the cold sands, Nesso stroking the desert back and forth in long arcs, until the crystal below began to glint and sparkle in the new light. He cleaned the surface delicately, so as not to scratch its finish. Jint had taught him how the glass was pure, ad that any blemish would darken vast reaches of the God King’s domain. Before long he finished. As he stood there, surveying his work for what he knew would be the last time, he looked across the sands at the Blade and thought – for the very first time – about running away.

He was supposed to ease his way back to the Tet, taking care to give his headsman guard plenty of time to come lop off his faithful head, and twenty four hours ago the idea made nothing but sense to young Nesso. Now, with the frozen desert turning welcoming-warm in the bright dawn, and the immense Blade glowing before him, another idea started to take shape, an idea of a life beyond the Tet and perhaps beyond the God King himself. They said the empire stopped at the Blade in the west, only because the very earth ended a few miles beyond it. Nesso knew better. He’d seen better every night of his life, gazing out at the Blade, and the craggy mountains stretching miles beyond. Then he saw the headsman, approaching in the dark, bearing death as a gift.

***

The God King…Is that what I am?

You could be…

Really? Where? When? I’m going to die here, soon, you too, and everyone in this palace, everyone in my kingdom. What kind of God is it, who can be brought so low, so quickly.

Zette was one wife, but she was important. She was the most beautiful woman in the empire, the smartest and most revered of the God King’s thousand wives. She was also the wife who’d plucked Moses from the river on that day so long ago. Her council would be heard weather her King asked or not:

There’s none that’s been brought low husband. Not yet. Whoever speaks for this man Am’Ram speaks loudly, and they mean to be heard. Even so, my dearest husband, this voice offers both the doom, and the deliverance.

You’d council me to release the boy? To just let him do as he pleases? Against my wishes? I see only doom in that…

Just weeks ago he was your son, and you’d have let him leave and return as he would by his own heart for the rest of your days. Now is the world so different?

She knew the true answer, but what else was to be said? Events precluded any but this argument. They kingdom had been visited by otherworldly catastrophe since the one called Lu had fled the kingdom. Frogs had fallen from the sky like raindrops, thousands of children had been slaughtered like cattle, and the citizenry were dying by the hundreds from a horrible wasting disease the locals were calling “the Rot”. Her God, Her King, Her husband…Each face of this man before her knew full well the only thing there was to be done. Yet here they were. She watched the stars flicker to life above them and hoped against hope.

***

Turn around boy.

Nesso did as he was told, although it puzzled him that his headsman would force him to look upon his face. The turning, however, solved his puzzlement.

You know who I am?

I do sir.

Go then. You will be fine.

As you wish, sir, Am’Ram…I mean…

Shhh. Be calm. Do as I say and you’ll be safe.

Things were moving a bit too fast for the slave called Nesso. He started back towards his Tet with his head swimming. A massive hand grabbed his side gently as he did, turning him again, pointing him at the Blade.

If you please, my brother. I have some friends there. They have use for a man who knows duty, will you make for them? Follow your path to the Blade and they’ll take you in before the sun is high.

More confusion, but Nesso agreed. He didn’t know if he should bow his head, or take a knee, and got caught somewhere between. The legend spoke again:

Go my friend. Save your bows for those who deserve them…Go!

This time Nesso went.

***

Revelations II

Prolog:

…God way up in heaven, for whatever it was worth

Thought he’d have a big ole party,

Thought he’d call it planet Earth…

The night was dark, and this far away from the lots, you could see every star. The girl was cuddled in a huge picnic blanket with the word “Thistle” printed in bold black across it. Her head rested on her hands, crossed under it. She spoke:

The kid... Lomba?

The man lying next to her took a long time getting back:

OK…

OK?

She sounded angrier than either of them would’ve liked.

Yeah. Ok. What else?

They found them. Hart told me. In the desert, two days wrapped in duct tape and stoned to forever. What the fuck?

The man said nothing. Eventually the girl went again:

I’m leaving. Back to New York.

The man laughed back:

Lemme guess: You “do believe you had enough”?

The girl said nothing. At some point, they both fell asleep. The next day, the man drove the girl to an airport, and hugged her tightly before putting her on a plane. She turned in the jet way for one last glance, but he’d already turned to join the throngs of family leaving the gate.

Revelations II

First, there is this place where we are, where I am. The girl is dead. She’d come in with me, but her brain had stopped working hours before that. An ER doctor said some stoic sounding words over her body, and then ducked out, off to inform the girl’s family. That was fine. That was the way it was supposed to go.

Now I am here, in the hospital, and the girl I came in with his dead. A guy tried to kill us both with poison. He succeeded, is still succeeding. I can feel the poison, sitting like a coating of slime over the structures of my body. It’s an awful sensation, but also amazing, because the poison – even as it’s killing me – is teaching me.

I’m in a bed. The bed is made of different kinds of steel and aluminum. Its mattress is made from cotton, and synthetic poly-fibers that resemble cotton. My name is (was) Chris Lomba. The sheets – colored white and smelling clean – are cool and comfortable. I’ve got a pillow under my head and smaller one under my back. The nurse changes them every 40 minutes to avoid something called “bedsore”. I have a tube connected to my arm by a permanent intravenous needle. The tube brings salty water, and vitamins. Because I am asleep, I cannot eat, and so this arrangement “eats” for me. Two contacts are taped to my chest, and another two too my lower stomach. If I move wrong, I can feel the tiny strands of hair, stretching and breaking at the contact’s sticky borders. There is noise. There is the constant chatter of people who I cannot see, shot through with medical terms, pronunciations and pronunciation corrections. Sometimes I hear crying. Sometimes I hear laughter. The girl I came here with is dead, because a man who was mad at me tried to poison her. He tried to poison me as well, and he may yet succeed. So far, however, his poison is working against him, because the poison – as deadly as it may be – is also showing me things, and checking to make sure I understand them.

The poison allows me to fly. Not all of me, only my senses. My body stays behind, in the room with the vitamin tubes and constant chatter. The first time I did it, I thought I was dreaming, or maybe, finally, all the way dead. I was looking at somebody, and I realized it was me, and I realized that I wasn’t “in” myself, or even in the room. Instead, I was floating just outside my room, looking in. I could see my eyes. I could hear the beeps and coughs of the expensive medical cocoon around me. I could see all that, and I ran from it. My name is (was) Chris Lomba.

I flew up. I didn’t know where to go, but “up” felt right at the time. Before I knew it, I was breaking for the sky, shedding the last atmospheres of the planet. It was huge very cold up there. My breath was blasting out in thick, misty clouds, but as I rose I felt only warmth and comfort. I saw earth receding under me, and the universe ranging all around me. There was color and light and sound bursting in every section. I saw stars falling and spiraling. I saw suns forming into rotations and alliances with other suns.

There was music. It was all around me, loud as life, but silent – I knew - to all but me. I began to perceive a borderland, or a place where some type of boundary was marked. I was confused, because it seemed to me the very edge of time and space itself, and it was burning. The outer reaches of the universe were on fire, and the flames driven by wind so fierce, that no earthly force or structure could have made a stand against it.

I became alarmed. Now, Instead of running from captivity, I felt myself being drawn to an infinite darkness where consciousness is futile, and has no place. I felt my existence against all that I’d beheld, and it came up useless, and of no consequence whatsoever. I became paralyzed, and terrified, and then I saw it: the final void before me. It grew, in seconds, from a pin-prick of blackness amongst all that universe and light, to a giant, yawning crevice that blotted out every other thing from my vision. I spun and tumbled for what seemed like thousands of years. When I woke up, I was somebody else:

***

His name is (was) Scott Xino   

What eventually woke him was a starter’s pistol. There was a team-building event going off in the parking lot, and the starter pistol kicked it off forcefully, leaving no doubt as to its having begun. The pistol said “We are GO!! We are actually doing shit. Now! Right fucking now!” The result of the exuberance would, doubtless, strengthen the team-ly aspects of the participants in the exercise. Also, it woke up S.A. Scott Xino, for this, the last day of his life.

For three minutes and forty two seconds he staid still, took stock of his position. The room was light, and he heard birds. It smelled, to Xino, like about 11:00am. The girls from last night were still there, even though he felt certain he’d warned them not to be. One was next to him, curled up facing away from him on the brutal hotel foldout, naked, uncovered, probably chilled, definitely unconscious. He saw the other one’s foot sticking out from the entryway to what Motel Six calls : the living area. Suddenly, he remembered exactly what had happened before they all passed out, and he became amazed. He remembered his brother. What if Stephen was still there? Scott noticed that he was wearing jeans.

He took stock. The pills: in his pocket. The weapon: In the small of his back, In a Velcro clutch fastened to a custom made belt made of Kevlar webbing. The ocean: he listened for a minute, heard waves, seagulls. The ocean was apparently still in business. Scott Xino smiled to himself, said a small prayer about his brother. Then he leaned over the bed, grabbing a pillow, pawing the girls shoulder, and smothering her with the pillow all in one fluid attack.

The girl was very fast. It would occur to him later, after all the drama, that the first girl must have been awake, possibly expecting something. Had he mouthed off about the plan before passing out? Whatever she was, she was not having this murder. She kicked, she tried to scream, she clawed his face. He couldn’t get the pillow on her face cause she was trying to bite his fucking fingers. She was getting loud. She was cursing him up and down as she struggled. To Xino it sounded exhausting. By the time she’d arched her back into a yoga-rainbow and started screaming at the top of her voice. Xino blew the .38 Colt Anaconda through her teeth when she went to scream again. There was an explosion of blood and teeth that sounded like shucking oysters. Her eyes got giant in the last instant.

His brother Stephen was not in the room.  For one thing, the shot in the miniscule bungalow was the loudest thing Scott had ever imagined times ten. His brother - no matter how hard he'd been sleeping - would have been awake and moving fast nano-seconds after the report. That left the other girl. The foot wasn’t sticking out any longer, because the girl it was attached to was at the door. She was wearing cowboy boots, and nothing. Unlike the first girl, this one wasn’t wasting energy screaming, instead she was trying to calmly negotiate the dead-bolt, and swing-bolt locks of the Motel Six door. She was gasping and panting, but despite all the terror, she was being quiet. A random emotion, something like respect, flashed in Xino’s mind. He covered the distance between himself and the girl and fired into her neck from behind.

***

The air in South Florida smells like flowers. Not all the time, but enough. That’s what the air smelled like today, as Scott Xino waded into it from the AC’d motel lobby. He smelled it immediately, exploding like a roman candle in the boiling of the Florida mid-day. It made him smile. He was shirtless, and wearing jeans and no socks. He was covered in blood. He wasn’t wearing shoes.

Heading beach-ward out the Motel Six rear entrance, Xino was taking his time. He eased over the wide metal causeway separating the hotel and the dunes. Soon, Xino could see umbrellas arrayed like a pilgrimage all the way down the beach. He was 100 yards from the water. He’d been right about the time, it was 11:37.

***

He almost went ahead with it, just busted into a run and crashed the surf. He’d swim – he swore he would – until his heart exploded in his chest and he sank to the bottom of the sea like a bundle of garbage. He felt the water around his ankles though, and the open ocean this far south was cold enough to keep a man awake just long enough to come to his senses. He stopped there, in the waves, soaked in the blood of strippers, and took the script bottle out of his pocket. He read it again. For some reason, he liked reading it:

Diazapam…10 mgs…

Take as directed, three times daily.

Qty: 90

Refill: Three times before November.

He shook it. He heard ninety little blue pills knocking around in the orange plastic jar.

***

Just a water

Sir?

Can I ah… Do you have water?

The tiki-bar bartender looked shocked and angry at the same time. Xino looked a wreck and he knew it, smelled awful, there was the blood. He pressed on:

Yah. If I could? I don’t have any money.

There were two other guys at the bar, but at this they packed up their statuesque bloody marys and headed for calmer waters. The barkeep spoke with new confidence:

Sir, I’m going to ask you to step away from the bar sir, there’s a dress..

Oh wait. No I have money. I have…Here. A hundred’s ok?

Code. Yessir a hundred’s just fine.

Xino wasted no time at the tiki bar, thumbing off the childproof cap and sucking down all ninety blue Valiums at once with a gullet-full of hundred dollar water.

***

You can’t. You know that right? I can’t let you.

His brother. Late and stupid, as usual.

I killed those girls. We killed those people. You promised.

I take my promise back.

It would appear so.

Turn and face me…

Go away.

Look at me

Go

Look at me.

***

Then he was swimming, and he was a long way out. He’d swam fast, and dove deep. He felt himself coursing through the water like a torpedo. He was silent and awesome. He’d brook no argument.

He looked below him, and started swimming in that direction.

They'll Never Take Our "Pee"dom

I go into the bathroom to urinate. It's me and the boy. Middle of the day, fuckin' Tuesday. The boy is four years old. Old enough to roam freely while I take a piss. Me peeing takes about a minute. Now, that's a stressful minute, because the boy is not trustworthy. He's a backstabber, and he lies. Well. It's the Sicillian in him that makes him this way.

As is my custom, I made the boy aware that I'd be going to the bathroom as I walked there, and I encouraged him to join me. He said he would, but didn't show up. There was extra time. I went slow, because the boy said he would come but hadn't, and the possibilities that open up in that situation are...Considerable.

But it was too late to go after him. At some point, the body commits fully to micturation and it's full-go. To stop suddenly after commiting, you take your life in your hands. I was at that point, pissing smoothly...A Strong, proud stream. Honorable. But then the boy still hadn't come, and he'd been silent for a bit. As a parent who spends a great deal of time with a mistrustful, deceptive child, you learn, as a mother Lion probably learns, the sounds of the jungle. Certain combinations of sounds mean certain things. This particular combination: the sound of only urine hitting toilet water, and nothing else - in my jungle that's the drums stopping for a few seconds before the savages spring from the treeline. I cursed my still draining bladder, and cursed the gods for this silly untimely pee, and continued to curse them until the boy spoke up. He was directly behind me, and he said:

Daddy I have to go to the bathroom and pee too!

and as he said the words "pee too", he started peeing on my shoes, into my socks. A strong stream. Honorable. And we stood there voiding together like two links in a daisy chain of pee, I into the toilet, and he onto my fucking feet. He finished just when I did, zipped up and left. As I took off my shoes, my socks, laundry, shower, whatever, I heard another noise from his room across the hall. I was soaked in urine, though, so I had to clean up to avoid diaper-rash. After that whole thing I heard the weird noise again and went to investigate. The boy was standing there, still holding the red sharpie he'd just used to graffiti a giant stick figure onto his wall. He told me that his sister did it, but - like I said: kid's a liar

The Ignorant Applause

Events in North Carolina regarding gay marriage have galvanized the bigoted fringe. I’d imagine Jackson’s was not the only “letter to the editor” on the subject, as I’m sure the ProJo isn’t the only publication fielding such correspondence. I am, however, more a little surprised to see the name signed on the bottom. Don’t get me wrong, the fact that Jackson is publically disdainful of homosexuality – while horrifying and outrageous – is hardly a shock. Over the years, the church has been as guilty of bigotry and sexual prejudice as it’s been of more well-publicized crimes like systemic molestation, and the global, top-down cover up it uses to quiet reports of same. Jackson, however, is the President of a HIGH SCHOOL, and as such, his penning of this disgusting, irrational-sounding, passive/aggressive hate tract, carries weight beyond what he himself will have to bear as its author.

The letter was sent to the region’s newspaper of record in the Journal, and disseminated using social media. That in mind, Its reasonable to assume that alumni, faculty, and – most importantly – student body at Bishop Hendriken will get a chance to give it a look, and see for themselves, just what kind of pompous scripture-fucker they’ve got speaking for them, and about them.

I’m not going on a point-by-point, graph-to-graph interpretation of this pathetic screed, but I will make one point, and only that one, because it’s the most important point and it seems to have escaped the dot-connecting capabilities of President Jackson:

This man John Jackson, as President of Bishop Hendriken School, is uniquely positioned to mold and influence the minds of young people. As regards Mr. Jackson’s continued service in that capacity, this letter is poison. Gay students will read it and think less of themselves. Gay students will read it, and they will hate their school, its administration, its president, and whatever God they themselves pray too for making them the way they are, only to then castigate, and philosophically abandon them. Gay students will read this and they will see the words “immoral” and “disordered” used with regards to the worldview they’ve shaped - most likely under a fair measure of duress, even without the interference of this doddering old crank Jackson – and they will hate. And their hatred will be entirely valid.

The Obama position which Jackson attacks, was stated in a speech. President Obama went on to say, in that very same speech, that although events in North Carolina had not pleased him, that Gay Marriage as policy, was entirely a state’s rights issue, and as such, there wasn’t much more to be done. John Jackson is a smart man. He knew that the sentiments expressed in his letter would find traction in certain Hendriken alumni. Alumni who – at BH – account for a good percentage of parents of current student body. He knew some would call him a “hero”, and “brave” and whatever else, and he knew that the school’s profile would get a bump because of it, sending droves of new potential applications to the ad office at BH. After all, how awesome for a parent’s piece of mind to knowing their children are attending a school that thinks anybody who isn’t into the opposite sex is “disordered”.

Straight students will begin to hate as well, after reading Jackson’s dreck. They’ll hate their parents for teaching them open minded-ness, or maybe their school President for embarrassing them. They’ll definitely not feel so great about any gay kids they attend school with, closeted or otherwise. The letter gives every pliable mind that reads it, the idea that choices of sexuality are condemnable if they don’t line-up with the School President’s degrading fundamentalist ramblings. There is NO defendable part of that. Yes, Jackson is allowed, by right of policy to think, write, and send his stinking, intelligence-assaulting “Letter to the Editor”. So to, am I allowed to comment, on the letter, and the school, and President Jackson. I have done that, and will do it again now:

John A. Jackson you are a disgrace and a liar. You’re gutless and mean-hearted, you embarrass me just being in the same atmosphere as you, and all the cronies who carry your water at BHC. You’re a blight on your school and your faith and your family. You need to resign. You need to apologize. You need to spend the rest of your days trying to make this thing right. You won’t do any of it, I know, because ignorance as complete as yours is always lazy, and can only ever truly go one way. Once a person’s soul is so rotten and compromised, it’s just too easy to continue churning out the blackness and calling it Piety.

So there it is. I’ll talk about all of it at length with whoever needs to, and after this I’ve got a lot of messages to sort through and post and send around. Just know, you who would argue this thing with us, send a fucking name. Already we’re fielding notes from “Facebook user”. If you have a point to make, try and subvert the natural tendency to make your ignorance a secret, and send a name as well. If you don’t, we’ll find out who you are and publish your chickenshit name anyway, this time with an amusing note about how you’re craven AND stupid.

 

 

John A. Jackson: Obama's immoral position on gay marriage

John A. Jackson: Obama's immoral position on gay marriage

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May 11, 2012 8:24 am

President Obama's announcement that he now favors same-sex marriages is just another sign of the moral collapse of a once proud nation.

His position has "evolved"?

Perhaps a better explanation is that in an election year he has made a decision that flip-flopping on this monumental issue will help his re-election bid. Rhode Island's entire congressional delegation is now partner to this disordered, immoral attempt to redefine the sacred institution of marriage.
Men and women were created by God to complement one another, and to procreate. I have heard the argument time and time again that God does not hate, and of course that is true. We are all God's children, but homosexual activity is immoral and disordered, and cannot be accepted and celebrated. Of course, we can love people of our own sex, but to engage in sexual activity with a person of the same sex is wrong on so many levels.

Count me in on the side of those who say enough is enough. If we do not turn this immoral tide around, this nation will follow all of the other great civilizations of the past that collapsed, not through outside invasion, but from internal moral decay. It's happening right in front of our eyes, and it is up to us to stop it.

As the song goes, "God is watching us," and I can assure you he is not happy.

John A. Jackson
Warwick
The writer is president of Bishop Hendricken High School.

Un-Knowable

My daughter is manipulative and cunning, so I have to remain vigilant. Tonight she’s deep in one of her favorite vignettes: The “sudden” realization - post bedtime - that she’s neglected to perform a task of monumental importance (tonight, it's that she must "check something"), and must leave her bedchamber - immediately - to remedy her mistake. This tactic must be met with confidence and charisma. Too much muscle and she’s bound to get upset, fuck up her sleep, and then stay in bedy until three minutes of the school bus. That would mean fucking up my day, and then I might over-censure those that cross me, creating a flood-tide of bad will that could spell the end of the human race, the end of earth, the end of all of it.


So rather than face a fiery apocalypse of hate, a use my creepy stern dad voice and tell her:


“I need you to stop. You know what needs to be done, so. Do. It. NOW.”


By the time I reach the “ow” of “now” she’s in a high enough register to break all windows and summon all dogs for miles around us. She’s not arguing back, she’s just screaming a scream of dissatisfaction, and haphazardly-placed blame. Before I can even think a thought, I’ve yelled back, she’s yelled some more, aaaaaaaaand: scene.


Why? Why - knowing the rules of house, knowing the rules of not being a brat, of causing trouble, of screaming…Even so, she stretches her tantruming, exploring it’s parameters, writhing in feigned (and not-so-feigned) mental anguish and kicking sneaker - stains on our couch. She stomps and cries and screams and actively hates me. When I can get a word in edgewise I point out character flaws:


“You can never just let ONE night by without blowing up like this, it’s INSANE!”


“You can’t deal with the word “no”! You’re like a baby.”


I know: I’m an incredibly good parent. But that’s not (entirely) my point. Even knowing the rules, not to mention the fact that screaming, yelling and writhing are frowned upon by the adults in her life. The kid still argues for all those things vociferously, as if they were privileges that had been stripped by my dictatorial regime. She knows that all this bullshit is displeasing to us (and, I would think) taxing to her, and yet she does the whole dance, every time. Why ? Is her judgment so extremely impaired that ALL her choices are doomed to be - well - doomed?


For my part, the entirety of my interactions with my children resembles a highlight reel of bad decisions. I yell when I shouldn’t yell, and attempt soft coercion when it’s plain to see that only force will suffice. The only messages I send are mixed, and I never follow through with anything. I use profanity well within earshot of my children. I act disappointed in their inability to perform simple tasks, or control their body’s various emissions. I know it makes them sad, and I’m betting it’s not psyche-enhancing, and yet, I do it. A lot. Why? Isn’t a kind of insanity, participating in events and actions that I know will probably have negative effects on me and/or the ones I love?


In a word: Yes. Maybe not full-blown, climb-a-tower-with-a-.30.06 insanity, but insanity all the same, and frustrating: Understanding this thought process, and seeing it for what it is and does, means accepting - to a degree - that our minds and bodies are not entirely helmed by us. Or - at the very least - that there’s an aspect of ourselves that we’re not fully aware of, and that we can never fully control. To most people, that’s as good a representation of madness as any. Evidence from the world at large - however - would seem to indicate that this lack of control is probably more common than it’s description would make it seem. How many people have you known, over the course of your entire life up to this very sentence, have gained weight because they over-ate recklessly, or gotten a dui because they decided to drive even thought they knew - beyond any and all argument to the contrary - they were too fucked up to drive? We do it all the time, all of us. So who the fuck is in charge, and why do they hate us?


***


Since the first men crawled forth from the ooze to claim the firmament that seemed to be his birthright, mankind has been seeking better, faster, more complete ways of doing away with itself. The timeline of societal development and advance is almost entirely populated by things that - in the long run - are of little use to the race, and often the very fuel the feeds the various engines of our destruction. The invention of currency, specifically of promissory notes, the invention of the concept of time, and the invention and profligacy of global organized religions: Each one is an developmental tent-pole, discussed at length in text books the world over, and recognized by most as cultural milestones of the human race. Each one is a grave, un-resolvable misstep that may likely spell the end of us as a species or the end of the planet as a place that can support life in any sort of comfortable, sustainable form.


Money is worthless in all ways save one: It is a convenient and effective tool to separate and label vast populations of people. In all other ways, in all it’s myriad forms, the use of currency has no benefit or noteworthy result. Arbitrary and insubstantial, we might just as well seal the exchange of goods and services with clumps of mud, or a song-and-dance number. Gold is heavy and soft. It doesn’t taste good, and you can’t build a house out of it. If the world ended tomorrow, leaving only me, a neighbor with lots of gold, and a neighbor with lots of food, I know which neighbor I’d sack first. Our entire society is based on this ridiculous bauble. Entire kingdoms and societies have risen and fallen at the behest of the forces which control the most gold, and yet the actual metal has had little or no effect on anybody or anything just by itself. It’s been said that some ancient civilizations favored salt as a universal currency, and I wonder why - assuming this is actually true - we ever moved on from that. Salt does things. It makes things taste better and it melts inconvenient ice. Gold can make no such claims. Gold just sits there, glowing vaguely, and making lazy people seem worthless. I would’ve stuck with salt.


Unfortunately, there’s no analog to salt in discussions about time. Human beings are conceited, and so it makes perfect sense that we have chosen to label the constant change we see around us with one over-arching conceptual term, and then worry after that concept uselessly in the name of efficiency. There is no time. Time is just the things around us, being. These things degrade, some faster than others. There are great mysteries in this mechanism. The changes we perceive are often difficult to grasp. Some of them may well be unknowable to us as a species. I’m cool with that. I’m not cool with our lives being run according to other peoples perception of this constant reform and evolution. There are not 24 hours in a day. There are not 30 days in a month. There is only the moment you exist in now and possibly a few more moments like it. We should fill them as best we can, but fearing of them, and the sense of some great ticking as our fortunes (and potential fortunes) dwindle, seems wasteful.


Every week I go to church. I drag my kids along with me like my parents dragged me and just like I did then, my kids hate it. I know: It seems strange and possibly a tad redundant, to subject my children to things that I found - in my own childhood - to be detestable.


I have my reasons. that I persist. I want my kids to be active locally. On a practical level, I want the people in the town where we live to know my kids, and vice versa. I want my children to know what it means to express faith with others. In short, I want them to share in something. This way, I’ll be able to show them that faith and intolerance do not go hand in hand, and that a group of people who believe as one, are not automatically correct in that belief. I want them to know that there is no “us” and there is no “them”, that there is room for everybody to become just exactly what they need to be. I know: seems a long way to go just to school a child in social responsibility. I’m not so sure. We live in a world that teaches the opposite, every second of every day. We believe that education is right, so we all take part, we believe that our children are important, and so we all prioritize their needs, we feel that Islamic fundamentalism is wrong, and so we send armies to murder those who follow it. Us and them. It’s a disease, but it’s a disease that many people seem to want.


***


It sounds like drivel. It sounds worse than drivel. I can live with that. Most of the texts we hold dear today started out as drivel. They continue to sound like that, until - one day - they don‘t. Here on earth, truth is elusive. It’s context that determines all. Sometimes context just shifts, all by itself. Most times, however, context needs a push. A context that doesn’t involve money, a calendar, or organized religion will probably end up as the latter. Don’t mistake me though: it will come. Humans can correct mistakes they make as a species, and often do, when day-to-day reality of the establishment becomes untenable for enough of the right people.


　


Until then we just stagnate I guess. Yelling at our kids and eating too much, wondering who’s in charge and why they hate us.

 

Charlie's Story

"I wanna be more like the ocean: no talkin’, all action”

Prolog: Autumn 2012

Somewhere in the Arctic Sea…

Wreck divers refer to it as “hovering”, but really it’s just floating and watching. Hovering is a boring, ponderous task that makes each passing second crawl like a worm. Sitting there, bored because you can’t see, freezing because you hardly move. It’s critical to stay in one position so the divers you’re spotting for can find you if need be. This entails checking a compass every thirty seconds, constantly adjusting for the current. Even just below the surface of a warm sea, in tropical sunshine and high visibility, Hovering is - at best – boring, at worst strange, and sometimes dangerous. Take that same activity, add 3 Miles of depth below, take away the sunlight, and throw in roiling, near freezing water, and it’s guaranteed: Whoever’s doing the hovering will not be able to hover for long.

Charlie Montrose knew this well from many years of floating and watching. Beginning to feel a slight chill, underwater for almost two hours, Charlie knew he’d be relieved soon. His brother Jimmy was many things, but unprofessional wasn’t one. Charlie and Jimmy had been wreck divers almost as long as they’d been alive, and under the sea, “unprofessional” eventually meant the same thing as “dead”. So Jimmy would be here soon, no question.

Of course, for this particular dive, prompt watch relief was pretty much the only thing Sea Bee Underwater Explorations was responsible for. The mysterious, and largely silent, clients were a private bunch. They wanted passage to the Frozen Keep region of the Arctic Sea, bunks, food, a competent hovering watch, and nothing more. Jimmy and Charlie were skeptical. February was no time to be pushing north, and Sea Bee was nothing if not a hands-on shop. After all, wreck diving was glory. A client who needed so little was probably a client who wouldn’t share anything when the newspapers and dive mags came sniffing around. The client’s proposed a fee, however, changed the dynamic a bit.

What the fuck, Chuck!?

He remembered Jimmy shouting the words with a big goony smile. Jimmy began most sentences with the words “What the fuck?”

2.5 million buys a lot of things in Key West…

And he was right about that. The Providence Montrose’s liked only one thing better than diving, and that was fishing, an occupation that didn’t pay near so well. Thinking about Key West, and his half of the cash, was keeping Charlie warmer than his heated dive suit. He was just halfway to falling asleep on his watch when Jimmy’s voice crackled through the ship’s circuit and into Charlie's ear:

I’m at ninety feet faggot. Shove off. And don’t smoke all the tree on deck. Gotta ration for the extra days…Over.

Jim was right about that as well, but there wasn’t any use in the sentiment. Number three on the Montrose priority totem was weed. Good, strong, awesome-smelling weed, and lots of it. Charlie once did the math: roughly a quarter of the Wendigo provision budget was spent on green. He didn’t wait for a visual on Jimmy, the water was too dark to see anything at all. He started going hard toward the surface, shot back at Jimmy on the way up:

You’re the fuckin’ refer monkey, asshole. The rest is mine by rights. I’m smoking all of it as soon as it hit the deck. Over and Out. Dick.

Nothing after “Hit the deck” got through to Jim. The ships circuit was closed, hard-wired into only his brother’s dive cap and his own. These, plus a password-protected feed aboard the Wendigo were the only listening posts, and secure to all but Jim and Charlie. Their client’s system, however, was satellite – based, and that always fucked with the ancient Wendigo coms. That in mind, Charlie wasn’t too freaked out when a voice that was not Jimmy’s came back at him thru digital feedback squelching:

I’m at the gate again, three of us, on go. I’m clicking off…

A static blast interrupted, then more squelches, and the voice, once again:

…one at a time, until all three of us are in. After that, kill the lights

Charlie knew the voice. It was the tall guy. The one they called “Lu”. He was the leader, and the scariest person either Montrose bro had ever met. All of seven feet tall if he was an inch, sullen and silent for most of the voyage so far, Lu’s weird, sullen presence had been a daily bum-out for the good natured pirates of Sea Bee. Lu’s crew was the same. All nine of them seemed – To Charlie – to be constantly dire and resigned, as if they’d come here to confirm something they already knew. What that thing might be was a protected secret, and the main reason – Ice guessed – for the hefty fee. They’d been staging at a shelf almost 100 meters down, but the decompression protocols they followed were for a depth almost three times as deep. Whatever the charter’s main objective was, Charlie felt certain, it was not on the first shelf.

Charlie broke the surface and was reaching to shut off his mic, when another missive came growling out of static over the Wendigo circuit. Again, the voice was not his brother’s:

Copy. Ok Ok. We are here. Stepping in…Over.

There was a long pause, more noise, then another, different voice. This was the thoughtful one, the one the charter guys had been calling “G”. He was out of breath, panting between the words:

Copy…Copy. Well... Speak! Over.

Another long pause and then this:

Copy Ten. We’re all in, all three. All Clear .Over.

The answer came back with no delay this time, and it made Charlie Montrose forget all about the amazing weed in the Wendigo stateroom:

Copy. Well done. Ok Ok. Now shut off your air, and take off the suits…Copy? Message repeats: Turn off your air, take off your dry suits…Copy? Over.

Charlie's Story

The Arctic Sea was different – Jimmy always told people – than any other body of water on earth. “And I should know cause I’ve been awn all of ‘em, and fahgin IN everyfahgginwanahvum”, he’d say, generating a misty look. Overstated perhaps, but I don’t recall anybody ever having corrected him. For one thing, the fucker was right. He had been on, and in “everyfahgginwanahvum”. For another, the Arctic is fucked up. I’ve heard it said the entire thing would’ve frozen, solid and permanent, a long time ago but for the fucking wind. Constant, aggressive, tireless, seemingly predatory, the winds of the far north make a vicious foe. They drive billions of gallons of once-warm ocean to an arctic longitude, and then blow them into a maelstrom, frozen solid along the coasts, and violently unpredictable in the open waters. The ocean floor there, almost six miles down at its deepest, expresses itself at the surface.  Miles-long waves, that break miles from any shore, freak swells hundreds of feet high, and roiling white-capped chop are every day - common. The Wendigo does not spend a lot of time diving in the Arctic Sea.

But every so often somebody gets a hair across their ass to make a run up north. Mostly research teams composed of geeky, tree-hugging something-ologists-to-be, and their snobby professors. The Wendigo was the only wreck-diving ship fitted for duty in the frozen North. A decommissioned mine-sweeper, there wasn’t a sea she couldn’t handle. Uncle Sam had built her strong, and easy to handle with a full compliment of only ten hands. At a centerline length of just 110 ft. and mid-ship beam of 35 feet, the Wendigo was a third as wide as she was long. She could stay afloat, with minimal power, in 70 foot seas.

Jim and myself both possessed a professional familiarity of the place, as we were part of a very small group of captains who’d been diving there more than once. I suppose there was competition amongst wreck-divers for more normal duty, but if you wanted to dive in the frozen North, the Montrose brothers and Wendigo were the only game in town. Lu had confirmed this for me over lunch: “you’ve got a sterling reputation Mr. Montrose. We look forward to working with you, and we count on your continued privacy and discretion.”  

Dude was always looking for a way to mention “privacy and discretion”. In hindsight, that should have put us off right from the beginning. If not that, then surely the 40 ( ! ) heavy foot lockers worth of gear, and half – ton of weird-looking hardware and equipment they brought aboard. Unfortunately, my brother and I were – at the time – uninterested in science, and more concerned with mathematics: 2.5 million dollars + Key West divided by the rest of our lives.

***

I woke up in the water. Of the storm itself I remember only dreaming, and then coughing and gasping for air. I’d rolled out of the rack and into a three foot flood in my stateroom. Staggering and coughing what seemed like gallons of ice cold Atlantic, I found my feet, but instead of the floor they were standing on a dresser. My stateroom was forward, and above the ships hold, and so right awayI knew...Water that high in a hull listing so extremely could only mean one result: We were going in. The Wendigo was sinking.

I’d no sooner come to the realization when the lights went out. Looking back I’m actually surprised they lasted as long as they did – the ship’s circuits all broke in a “splash-proof” cabinet, in the by-then submerged forward hold. I felt out around me, driving my hands out all around me trying to gain any sense of spatial awareness. By now the noise of the rushing water was deafening, blasting like a jet-turbine in the pitch dark cabin. I could hear nothing over this awesome, awful note, and I envisioned the sea gathering, marshaling forces for a final decisive assault.

Panic began to seep and flow like the enemy ocean. I found myself tossed around the cabin, bouncing painfully off the heavy steel fittings. The water was working me over with loud, frozen blows to the head and body. I could feel the water rising, I remember thinking how easy it would be to just let go. At that moment there didn’t seem to be a fight available for winning. I remember feeling a great heave upwards, as if all 110 feet of minesweeper had been somehow yanked upwards by a gigantic hand. We climbed so long that, for an instant, I thought we’d been sucked up into a waterspout, beyond saving in a gigantic cyclone of spinning wind and water.

There was an instant of pure weightlessness, and I felt myself floating, along with all the millions and billions of gallons of sea water, gear, and rent steel. I heard screams all around me, but the darkness was still total. Then we hit the water. There was a sharp jolt, another moment of falling, and a sound like heavy metal being forcibly ripped to shreds followed by a tremendous concussion from below-decks. After that, there was only void for me, and it seemed like forever.

***

I woke again with a familiar voice over me, screaming into my face from very close. Imploring:

Dude! What the fuck! Fuckin’ get up. Wake up wake up wake up. FUCK! Charlie…Charlie!!!

My brother Jim had found me. I opened my eyes and immediately felt a sharp burning in my side. My hand flew to the spot, and felt an odd warmth in the icy Atlantic. I found my feet, and then my brother and I were in frenetic transit, running, walking, finally swimming away from my stateroom in the stern, toward the conning tower amidships. I had a hand wrapped around a bundle of Jim’s shirt. My side was raging and throbbing, and the pain slowed my progress. The ship was writhing all around us, subtle movements punctuated with terrible metallic groaning from the stricken craft. Jimmy was shouting over his shoulder as we went, his voice reedy and weak in the din of the Wendigo’s undoing, as if he’d been shouting to me over hundreds of yards instead of 12 inches. Finally he turned on me, leaned in, shouted into my ear:

Ok. What the fuck!? You hear me? Nod “yes”.                            

I nodded. He shouted again:

The Con! Can you climb?

The Wendigo’s conning tower was a plexi-glass enclosure at the top of a protected ladder. It was 20 feet higher than anything else on the entire craft and contained a stripped down version of the helm: throttles, LORAN, a radio and stowed life preservers. The con could be accessed only by a long steel ladder, surrounded by bulletproof plexi, with an entry portal at every deck. Jim and I were swimming by the time we got there, tossed and shaken like ice chips in the world’s biggest blender. The water had risen to our necks, with the ship heeling hard starboard. The Con portal was submerged, so we’d have to dive under and up. I could see nothing. I could hear only the soaking white noise of rushing water, and feel only the freezing North Sea, commanding me to stop fighting, relax, submit. My brother was by my side encouraging the exact opposite. I shouted back at him:

Go Go Go! I’ll climb Go! Go!

We dove – he first, then me - toward the portal at the base of the conn ladder. Moments later, Jim and I were in the dry conning tower with no great amount of time to make lots of very important decisions.

***

We gained the Con, as yet un-watered, and hanging over open sea thanks to the Wendigo’s position, and collapsed to the floor. The space was essentially a 20”x10” bubble, encased in steel reinforced glass and plexi-glass. There was lightning every few seconds, and the illumination made me long for the darkness below decks. Every flash showed me angry, shifting mountains of water surrounding us on all sides. It was as if we’d sailed into another dimension. Jim spoke between gasps:

The ship’s going in. You have a bad cut on your side. I’m going to leave you here while I go. I’m going to get the air…Stay. You getting me fucker? Stay here…

“a bad cut” he’d said. I felt the pain, searing, but blunted some by the adrenaline. I looked down at it, and promised myself not to do so again. I tried to reply with words, and Jim saw that. He gave me a pat on the chest, and disappeared back down the chute.

The ship was dying. I had questions. The crew? The clients? What had become of the project? Any sea in which a hundred foot destroyer class can founder under power is a sea that will kill. What had the radio said about the squall? Every crewman and charter must have realized as soon as the Wendigo heeled, that the stakes were now at their very highest. My brother had run for the gear and that was also telling. The lifeboats on the Wendigo were better outfitted than most small craft. Jimmy so urgent to skip all that and dive, it occurred to me, could only mean that lifeboats – for whatever reason - were no longer an option.

Waves - like most things - come in waves. My brother had gone after the air in a lull, but during the wait the pounding began again and were swamped, just so, by three amazing swells right in a row, each one longer in duration than the last. The lightning – pretty much constant by this point, made everything glow ozone-white. I watched it through the glass like a horror movie. The first wave never closed out, so we’d gone rocketing up, then crashing down in a matter of seconds. Our momentum carried us far into the trough of the next wave. This one did close out, and since we were heeling against the sea, my glass bubble got a front row seat. One second we were in free-fall , with my glass bubble still about 30 feet off the water. Almost immediately after, the bubble was partially submerged in the trough of the next wave, and launched like a slingshot-marble directly to it’s high, tilting crest. Now the bubble was at 90 degrees to the water, rocketing skyward for an impossibly long time before a momentarily-righted Wendigo. For a split second, just at the peak , everything stopped. The lightning snapped a picture, like to preserve the moment for some higher posterity, and for an instant, I saw the whole North Sea snapping and clawing 100’s of feet below, and in perfect relief.

Then gravity took over and we dropped like an anvil.

In one vast, terrible motion, the wave closed and foamed, snapping the conning tower through a full 180 degrees above the surface, then power bombing it through another 180 below. Centrifugal force pinned me against the transparent wall of the con, under three feet of water. I’d taken in huge lungfuls of the stuff before I realized what was happening and by then, the bubble was arcing under the ship. I looked up the ladder and saw all 110 feet of my old, beloved minesweeper, upside-down and backlit by lightning above me. We rose again a moment later, and popped from the waves like a buoy, leading the Wendigo, once again, into the jaws of the Arctic Sea.

Just then my brother Jim poked his head up through the Conning tower hatch. He said nothing, but he sent something arcing across the room towards me. I wasn’t ready. It hit me in the head, and splashed down into the water now hip deep in the bubble. I saw what it was a thanked whatever unfortunate God that would hear me.

***

The Dobson mini-rescue tank, or “oh shit!” tank, in the strange vernacular of the wreck diver, is essential Equipment. Each contains about 20 minutes of air when full, and is attached to an integrated, flexible plastic helmet and mask designed to fit easily over our dry dive caps. Each diver was responsible for maintaining his own.

Before this I’d only used mine once, and Jim the same, and it was this that I began to think about as I felt the ship jerk and buckle underneath me. Two days before, we’d used them to follow our secretive clients and find out what the fuck. It’d been two weeks in the North, and all that’d been required of us was to pilot the ship, and watch over the charter from hundreds of feet above them. As far as I could tell, we were there basically to bear witness. Now I understand, two million dollars was a nice price for a little witness-bearing. Even so, the Wendigo had been at risk for two weeks and neither of its captains understood why. Jimmy was seething:

What the fuck! I don’t gotta’ know everything,

He’d said, fixing me in his “serious” face.

I just need to know something.

So we followed them, or, more correctly, Jimmy followed them and I followed him. Our depth indicators saw a massive shelf below at around three hundred feet, but there was an odd interference past that, washing out into a colorless blob on the instrument panel. The depth numbers began jumping and falling, occasionally lapsing in double and triple zero’s before another set of seemingly random information.

10 Meters

100 meters                                                                                                                                                                      

43 Meters

00 Meters

Jimmy had tried to confirm the shelf with Lu, but every time he’d asked the freak had just giggled softly and looked at the floor. I’d asked him myself a few times, same thing. So instead of one man, two hour watches, we’d both went in the water using nothing but the rescues. Each dry suit had the others hard wired into its operating system so everybody on a dive would be able to see everybody else. The wet suits, however, had no such marker, electronic or otherwise. They were full black suits with boots and integrated cap. We’d have twenty minutes, and could at least see what lay beyond the shelf.

Instead, my body started to rebel as soon as I slid into the water. I was wearing a full wet suit. The North Sea felt like swords of ice cutting into the spaces between the suit and skin. Flesh sunk away in from the cold blades. My eyes fogged. My heart started beating faster than I was comfortable with. My muscles began to cramp and lock. Jimmy dove and began charging for the bottom, and eventually I did too, only to be thrown back yet again, this time by the pressure in the surging black water. It was crushing my head like a vice with every inch of descent, and I felt as if I might die right there. Instead, I swam like hell for my boat, and Oxygen. Jim was up ten minutes later, and the charter started their surface procedures a little while after.

My brother and I never got a chance to discuss the things he saw down there, or – for that matter - if he’d seen anything at all. The important part is we both used our rescue tanks, and Jim was underneath twice as long as I was. all

***

All this came blasting through my mind as my ship boiled in clouds of freezing white water. I wasn’t just thinking about our spy dive, I was actually went there. I was there, and – for a few moments – no longer in the shipwreck. A second later, the reverie cut off, replaced by only one word, wrought in neon, sun-bright, blinking. WAKE UP!

A low rumble vibrated from somewhere underneath, and a sound like Gatling cannon erupted from inside the ship. I watched, stunned, as the lightning backlit the Wendigo’s final insult. The gatling cannon became a banshee-scream that rose and rose in pitch, as the super-structure separated from the hull and leaked the innards of the Wendigo across the black waves. Water flooded the hull and the conning tower snapped from the ship like a dead branch in a hurricane. For a moment, we bobbed at the surface. The last thing I saw before the sea swallowed the con, was the ruined hulk that had been the proud Wendigo not 40 minutes ago, rolling over and giving up, in the final throws of a mighty death. Then the waves closed over us, and we fell.

My brother’s rescue tank was empty, mine was half empty, and we’d drop a mile deep before anything stopped us.

***

Except, we didn’t. Luck, for the first time in days, was with us. We didn’t go all the way down. The Wendigo reached bottom just 40 seconds after she left the surface, dragging our glass bubble behind as part of a massive, spiraling debris trail. We crashed into the ocean floor like a meteor hitting a rice paddy. I couldn’t see an inch in front of me, and I was thrown forward, bashed against a fitting. The wreck settled for a moment, creaking and adjusting in the muck, and then things were finally still and quiet. I wondered how much air I had in my rescue, and how far down we’d come, when I remembered about Jimmy and his empty fucking tank.

I forced myself to illuminate the area with my watch, and immediately realized the worst.

Jimmy was looking up at me, but he couldn’t see shit. He must have just run out of air, because his head and shoulders were jumping as if he were being tazed. He opened his mouth, still staring at me. For one split second, I saw something flash through his eyes. Fear? Pain? I couldn’t say. After that his eyes went wide, and the twitching ebbed. Within seconds, I was stranded in a dark place, with my dead brother. I started hyperventilating, gulping down my remaining air until I saw stars, all shapes and sizes, flashing and streaking through my field of vision.

***

I couldn’t say how we made it out of the wreck. I couldn’t say how I dragged Jimmy out. All that’s certain is that we got out. My head was swimming, flipping, warp speed, through an info-deluge and trying to separate signal from noise. I was remembering a conversation I’d heard earlier through the circuit feed aboard the Wendigo. We’d sunk to the place where the charter had staged, I felt certain. That meant that whatever big secret they’d been studying…

Take off your suits…

I made one last gulp from the just emptied Oh Shit! tank. My head felt as if a fire hose was gushing, point blank, into my open mouth. My lungs felt blowtorched. I used the compass on my watch to take a heading, and made for where I thought the clients had been working, feeling my way along the bottom of the sea, one-arming Jim’s body in – what else – a dead man’s float. I could feel my own rescue tank getting low with every stroke. By the time we got to the shelf, I was dizzy, and breathing only empty space where oxygen had been. I took no time for consideration. I felt the void opening under me, took a deep breath, and started pumping straight down. Jimmy remained motionless, still in tow, his stiffened form moving through the water with an easy grace.

They weren’t down as far as I’d assumed and thank God for that. After a few seconds of descent, I began to see lights. With another few strokes, we were standing on a second shelf. I had no time left. My limbs felt like they’d been smothered in molten iron and my head was twitching and shaking. I registered – dimly – the underwater still life coming into focus below us. I saw floodlights, three of them, surrounding what looked like a half a giant soap bubble, maybe 20 feet across, parked on the sea floor. The bubble looked transparent as I approached, but pulling close I realized it’s surface was reflective. It shimmered in the dull white glow. I saw myself in reflection just as my mind snapped. I pulled Jimmy close. As we both fell toward the undulating mirror-dome, my body heaved up in one desperate attempt at bloody mutiny. I opened my mouth, and took in what felt like 1000 gallons of the cold Arctic sea.

All divers know the stories about drowning, mostly because we’re the ones who tell them. We all know how most doctors will tell you that it’s by far the worst way to go. That it’s like inhaling Sterno and swallowing a lit match. That it’s like having you lungs yanked out of your mouth. I once knew a man who claimed to have been dead for over three hours, drowning on a deserted Block Island beach in July, waking up in a Providence hospital in September. He said:

“The reason it’s so bad is the powerlessness. You don’t want to take that breath, but eventually you do, and that ocean comes flooding, and your entire being feels melted by acid from the inside out. After that, the last thing you want to do is take another breath, but you do, and this one if worse. On and on it goes, and you can see nothing, and hear nothing, and feel nothing but burning, and it’s getting worse and worse. ”

And he was right. In the .5 seconds between my horrible inhale and falling through the bubble, I felt pure blue fire streaking across my nervous system, seizing ground, occupying Charlie Montrose.

***

Take off your suits, over…

The first thing I noticed was the light. It was everywhere around us, and bright enough to burn retina. Bright enough, that is, if I’d taken any time to look. Instead I simply registered its existence as I chocked and coughed. The salt water had burned everything inside me, and I could do nothing but flop and writhe on the ground. So sharp and total was my agony, that I didn’t realize I’d been BREATHING since we entered the bubble. We were no longer in the North Sea. We were no longer in any sea. As the pain and coughing quieted, amazement took their place. I looked all around at that white light and my mind just shut down. All I could do was be shocked. As I sat there, I must have said something out loud, because a reply came back instantly:

Jesus Christ on fucking amphetamines, what have you done this time…

I turned to look down at my brother Jimmy, speaking up at me from the floor and grinning wide. He’d been dead, but was apparently not dead anymore. I needed time to think, and so I passed out before either of us could speak another word.