Get it?
No, you don't you get it, do you?
It's gonna rain soon, so I'll show you. I'll explain things to you on the way, then when we get to the right spot, I'll show you.
Come on, you don't want to stay here. Even if it don't rain, it's too damned cold. That wind that howls up Mission is straight out of hell. You've already been to hell once, you don't want to go back.
Twice? You've been to hell twice? Well, third time's a charm, but don't do it here. This place is hell enough. It don't need you to tie it up with a yellow ribbon.
Come on, it's Thanksgiving. You can't stay here all cramped up like a pile of stinking dung. You gotta move. Keep up your circulation or your legs will rot off.
They will. Sam the Sham's did. It was a spinal thing. And his rock candy. His kidneys and his capillaries were in a race to see which could die first. See? Capillaries. Ca-PILL-aries. You get it? He knew, he just wouldn't face it.
Doesn't matter. My shoes are shit, too.
That's right. Hut-one, hut-two. Shuffle and shamble. Walk like a man, my son. Rock down to Electric Avenue. Do the monkey.
Yeah, I got a million of them. Like flies on flypaper. Stuck all over me. Tidbit fragment snatches. Instead of stock prices or weather reports. I turned left at Greenland.
Just wait till it rains. I'll show you.
No, I'm not in cahoots with that shrink. That's braindead thinking. We don't want to go down that road.
Besides, she was all right. Don't you remember her joking, asking if I had song birds in my beard?
Sure, I said, four calling birds, three French hens, two turtledoves...
And a partridge—she thought she had me.
No, a turkey vulture, I gurgled at her, and I got her, 'cause she looked! Just for a sec, but she looked! Poor thing looking to see if there was a turkey vulture in my beard.
Nancy. Nancy Flanagan. That was her name. Get it? Flanagan. You see? James Joyce. Flanagan's Wake. That's why it's so hard for her. Everything she needs to know is right there, but it's complicated, and hidden, and it's a long book, so she has to go to school for years and years, and they still don't tell you everything.
You don't know that book? Neither do I. It's on her shelf, so I asked her about it. She said it was full of puns. I told her it was full of punts. That's what you do when you can't score. You punt. When you have unts in your punts and you can't score. I shouldn't have said that to her. She turned red, but said she understood.
Sure, she's a big girl, but I shouldn't have said it to her.
She's got a nice smile. It don't mean nothing, except she's trying real hard. That's why she said to you, Will you come again next Tuesday?
I had to tell her no. That's why I told her, Billie Jean is not my lover.
Who's Billie Jean?—she didn't get it, and I told her, Everyone knew her as Nancy.
Poor kid turned red. It's a medical condition. Like yours.
No, they only think yours is treatable—with botulism. They want to put these bots in you. In your bloodstream so they can go wherever they want in your body and take care of things for you. Nanny bots. They're like miniature robots, microscopic robots. Nanoscopic.
Yeah, they're real robots. They're metal, some alloy of titamanium and utonium. They got arms and legs and positromanic brains that have to be encased in metal 'cause if they were in flesh and blood and bone, their radiation would make your scalp bleed.
I know, I know, you got metal in your head.
I know it hurts. They don't know. They think it's physical pain. Mental pain. They don't know it's something that should be outside of you that's inside you. I know it hurts.
I know, I know, she didn't understand. I know you're angry. That's a sad anger, the worst kind, 'cause the sadder you get, the angrier you get, and there's no bottom to how sad you can get, 'cause you can always think of her, and how she was before it all went down, and how bad it gets when you finally stop dreaming of going home.
Just let her be.
That's right.
It's good you're not there.
I know, I know, nothing helps. Bottles don't help. The pills don't help. Nancy Flanagans don't help. I'll show you what helps me. Wait till it rains, and I'll show you.
Just don't let 'em get your goat. That's what they do. Tell you it's your fault for not being able to not feel sad and angry. They get your goat 'cause they know they can.
'Cause they can read your name. Bill Gruff. See? Bill Gruff. Billy GOAT Gruff. That's how they know.
You don't get it?
You will. You'll learn to explode the code. Otherwise, the world will always be one big mysteriosity to you.
No, I don't know that.
No, I don't. I ask myself that question at least once every thirteen point seven five nanoseconds. I don't know how I would know, do you? That's why we've got to decode things. To find out. I look back, to when we were there, and I know that even then, when we were in the thick of it, I didn't know who was who, or who was what. Some of us were, and some of us weren't. But there was no way to tell. The material they use now, and the emulation software... We had pools, at least once a week, on every new guy or gal.
You couldn't tell. You could tell who'd listened in science class and who hadn't. Poughkeepie Pete, remember? Throw them in the shower, he said, see if they short-circuit. Electrocute 'em, then you'll know. Dim bulb! And Marcie Mercy punching him, Stupid, they're waterproof! Then cut'em open and spill their guts. Nobody went for that. Nobody wanted to. Too scared. You remember? It wasn't just Them, it was Us. Everyone thinking, what if I'm one and don't know it.
Yeah, you could do it, slice yourself open and pull out yesterday's dinner. But if you're wrong, then you're dead meat. But what if you're right? What'd'you do then?
You don't want to find out that way. We need more information first. We have to know what we can do about it. You have to stay in control, not them.
That's why you don't want them inside you. You can't let them medicate you. You see, your brain has pores, just like your skin, and their medications clog the pores and your brain suffocates, like when you get dirt in your pores.
Sure, sure, I've got dirt in my pores, but that's different. Totally different things. You have to keep your skin pores closed or water gets in and floods your body and drowns your brain. It has to do with the endocrine system. Endocrine. You get it? END-ocrine? End?
See? The end. The end of everyone and everything. Don't you know it's the end of the world—get it? End of the world.
But there's no point grumbling about it. You volunteered, didn't you? We all volunteered. That's what they mean by the two-tiered economy. You get it? E-CON-omy? Con? It's a con.
Look, I'll make it easy for you. Let's walk up to St. Anthony's and get one of those Thanksgiving dinners.
No, they don't have fried potatoes. Just turkey and mashed potatoes with gravy and cranberry sauce. You see? Cran-BERRY. Bury. Get it?
And stop saying FRIED potatoes. That gives too much away.
Hey, watch it when you cross the street. All these DUI's. Depleted uranium. That one's easy.
No, the I doesn't stand for anything. That's the message. You have to stand for what you want. We have to stand for something or we're nothing.
Come on. Lou will probably be there. He's always there, every year. He doesn't come for the food. He's there for the information.
That's the point, you see. Everywhere you go, they're giving you information. It began back in the Information Age. Now it's hemorrhaging. Can't be stopped. You got to flow with it and take it in and understand it.
Look. Turkey dinner. Turkey. Tur-KEY. See, the accent's on the tur, but the information is the key. Unaccented. So it's secret. A secret key. A key to solving the problem. And what do you solve problems with? A solution. So-LU-tion. See, the lu is accented. That's Lou. He's out in the open, out of the closet.
That's not the skeleton in the closet. He's just sick, that's all. That's why he looks that way. He was a volunteer, too.
We were all volunteers.
Farm Boy. Remember him? What'd he always say? Dumb cluck chickenshit, don't bullshit me with your hogwash. Had to give that dog his bone. Used to sing, too. Don't know where he got that stuff. Made it up. Curled up in his body armor, rocket in his pocket, helmet pulled down over his eyes, and you could just barely see his mouth slink around the words. Something like:
A girl before her mirror,
Combing out her hair,
Seems she doesn't care
Anymore
Why'd that kind of soppy shit get to you? Then Horse Head would crank up Buttfuck Boogie and Farm Boy would just lean his head back and snooze.
Until it was time to take out the town. And that we did. We surely did. We gave 'em the wedding bell blues and left them dust in the wind. But there were always more of them, 'cause God made so many of them. That should have told us.
You see? The memories are still there. You just need to pluck them out of the air. To do that, you need the key. But it's not one key. There's a different key for each memory. You see, your brain's got an organ called the hippocampus and it's like a keyboard, and you have to know how to play it to remember anything. You have to know the songs. We have to learn to read the music. But you were never very musical. You couldn't carry a tune in a humvee if you had one.
Feel that? Here comes the rain. Let's hold off on food, and let me show you. It's not far. It's in lots of places, but some are better than others. We'll find the right spot, and you'll see.
God, it's pouring. Come on, it won't be long now.
Sure we get soaked, but we don't want to miss it. It's information. Messages. The clearest ones. The most important ones.
No, we're receivers, not senders. But I know, you want to be a sender. You want to send her a message. What would you say? Rain, please tell her that I love her so?
She won't hear. We're no good at sending.
She already knows. Don't you remember, I talked with her. I told her, Bill needs a new pair of footprints.
That's the way it ends up, whether she wants to help or not. She only knows how to talk with them, and they give you pills and take away your footprints till you've only got one pair left. I was never good at sharing, not as good as I should be. I don't know if I could share my footprints. Not that you'd ask me to. I know you wouldn't. That's why we do so good, you and me.
We're looking for a puddle. Where the storm drains get clogged and the water backs up and spreads out over the sidewalk. Where there's a big flat surface, and the raindrops are dancing on it.
There! Look!
Come over here. You can see.
Just stand still and watch. Watch carefully. Watch the raindrops. Watch the splashes. See how they kind of sink in, then spit themselves out again? Watch the ripples spreading out, and crossing each other.
See how it's always different? Look over there, to your left. See how the ripples are kind of like lines, and the splashes come on the lines sometimes, and sometimes between them?
No, no, no! Don't count the splashes. That's not it. It's messaging. It's language. The rain's writing on the water. You've got to learn to read it. Look, sometimes the splashes are big, sometimes small. In some places they're evenly spaced. Sometimes they're close together. It's that kind of math. A pattern for creating letters. Its own kind of alphabet.
You figure out the pattern, you can put together the alphabet. Then the words. Then the message.
No shit, it takes time. I didn't get it all at once. You don't figure this shit out in one hour, or a day, or a week. You've got to get through a couple rainy seasons. You've got to be patient, and study. You've got to watch, and listen.
Yeah, listen. The sounds are the vowels. The splashes the consonants. The ripples the punctuation.
This isn't about them. They'd stop it if they could, but they can't. That's why you've got to hold on. And learn. Then you'll know.
No, I don't know who's talking. I only know it's not them. It's someone or something that was here long before they came into being. It's something that remembers what they make us forget.
You see what it's saying? No? No, you don't know yet. I'll tell you.
It's saying, Don't kill.
Don't kill anyone! Anyone else! Don't kill anyone else. Don't kill yourself.
You already know that. But you forget, so it's just reminding you, that's all. Your memory's all fragged, so you need reminders, that's all. You've got to remember that the world is all messaging. Everybody's part of it. Everybody's messaging now, but it's been going on since the dawn of time. Just some of us are better at receiving than others. Real good at receiving. Think of it as one of your veteran benefits. You have ears now. You just have to learn to understand what you're hearing.
See, it just says it over and over again. It wants to be sure you understand. You do understand that much of it, don't you?
Sure you do.
Come on then, let's go to the shelter-skelter and dry out and get some food.
Turkey. It's Thanksgiving.
No, no fried potatoes. And don't say that. They already think we're fried. You don't want to give them that. Let 'em think we don't know.
You get it?
It's all right. Someday you'll get it. Just stick with me. You'll get lots of chances.
Jerry says, "I live in San Jose, CA with my wife and daughter. I write science-fiction that explores our assumptions about technology and human nature. I'm drawn to characters who are ambivalent about the lives we lead, the loss of the natural world, and the transformations of the future."
Comments (closed)
Charlotte Allen
2010-04-08 10:52:32
I usually don't like stories based on voice but I loved this one, maybe because the voice isn't pretentious or literary or faux-naive, but real and touching.