I’ll update more thoroughly in the near future, so check back again soon.

Or else I will work on literary endeavors and THEN go over to their place. Decisions, decisions. Well, whatever feels right at the time. Then I will have to be at work at 6 PM, which is unfortunate, but necessary for the next couple of weeks.

Also, next Monday is the first day of school. I’m registered now for three classes which include Pre-Calculus (I tested into Calculus a year or two ago on the math assessment test but I am not willing to go back there without being properly practically prepped for it), Philosophy of Religion, and Digital Film Editing, which may be a career I would be interested in pursuing. We shall see. I also need to find a new job for the next few months. I forget if I’ve gone over this yet but I finished the BYU application for both Provo and Idaho, and will probably not make it into Provo and probably will make it into Idaho, which is probably where I’m going to go. Probably. Again, we shall see what happens.

-Bird

—-

Gregor Townsend awoke out of his dream and into an existential nightmare, breathing heavily and feeling panicked, as if he had just emerged from the sea after almost drowning. By all means he should have been dead for how long he had been underneath the foamy green water — or at least, these were his first mental images and thoughts upon finding himself in a strange place, as foreign to him as the sky is to a deep sea creature…or perhaps it was the opposite.

“Where am I…?” he said softly to himself, completely aware that he was alone. He looked around: he was in a small, dark but slightly-illuminated room with simple furnishings, lit a dark blue as if it were either dawn or dusk. The light was coming from a window behind him.

That explained where, or at least the immediacies implied by the question, but the overall quandary was left unanswered.

Looking down at himself, he realized he was sitting up in a bed; his upper half was naked, his lower half also, but covered by a blanket with a very basic, unnoticeable pattern. He felt saliva on his face around his mouth and wiped it off with the back of his hand. He had been drooling in his sleep.

A strange-looking contraption in the corner of the room farthest from him, which he had not noticed at first, suddenly started emitting a ringing sound. The noise it made was loud and high-pitched; it grated on his ears and made his heart beat faster. Gregor, despite the irritation, looked around the room again and tried to make sense of where he was and what he was doing here.

He came up with nothing. What was fresh in his mind and what populated his thoughts, what had once felt entirely like reality was the apparent dream he had just awoken from. The idea came to him that perhaps he was also in a sort of dream right now….

But no. The vibrancy of the touch of the blanket and the vividness of his own breath going rapidly in and out of his lungs and the fact that he was feeling genuinely annoyed at that persistently ear-piercing shriek all made known to him the truth: he was now living in the “real world,” whatever that reality might end up being.

The memories of his “dream life” began to fade away, and swiftly. A sudden desperation to write something of them arose. He looked around: next to the ringing object stood a small wooden table with a pad of paper, and next to it a kind of writing instrument. He blundered out of the bed to get to the desk. The urge to record his thoughts and memories of the dream had overcome his need for noiseless mental clarity; as such, he ignored the contraption’s cry, sat down on a stool right next to the table, picked up the pen, and wrote the first three words that came to his mind:

soar
sky
light

And then his mind went blank. His memory simply ended.

How could these be the only words…? How could they possibly come close to describing the dream world? How could he have forgotten that world in which he felt as if he had lived his entire life? How could it all be slipping away so fast, like water in a careless hand? Or perhaps an even better comparison: his mind conjured up an image of himself with his arms outstretched, trying to hold back a torrent of previously-dammed-up water with only his body. Waking up into this world had been the destruction of the dam, and now the deluge was soaking him. His mind was shivering with the shock of a complete shift in paradigm with no way to go back. Now that he thought of it, he couldn’t even remember how long he had spent there. It could have been an eternity or it could have only been a few minutes of randomly-fired synapses.

But if it was only a dream, if it was only the result of his overactive subconsciousness, why couldn’t he remember anything from before that? If it was only a dream, he must have fallen asleep at some point. He couldn’t recall anything. Right now his mind was almost completely blank — but not quite, he noticed. He knew his name. He still had a proficient grasp of language and a competent understanding of the laws of physics. He knew what would happen if he threw the pen across the room, for instance, and he was also obviously able to write words with that same pen. His mind still retained a regular grammar of both abstract and practical existence. If a few moments before he had been trying to hold back the massive flow of memory draining from his mental reservoir, he had surely failed; the water was all gone, the land where it once had been devoid of all dampness. But he himself was not dry; at least part of him was still covered in the unmeasurable moisture of inherent and instinctual knowledge gained from that dream world, that fountain of experience, which apparently held the same — or at least similar — physical and otherwise-natural laws as this one. Gregor Townsend was, figuratively speaking, soaked.

The combination of the ringing and his already-agitated state was giving him a pounding stress that he did not like. Something inside him was compelling him to try and figure out his existential dilemma before attending to the noise, but just then both pressures collided in his brain and he let out a cry of frustration.

He hurriedly wrote down three one-word questions for him to come back to and went over to examine the noisemaker.

Looking at it closely, it very much resembled a communications device from his dream. The word _____ came to him, and, reaching over, he grabbed the pen and wrote it down on the paper. As he finished writing the last letters, he pushed what he thought was the button to answer.

“H-hello?” he managed to say, although looking at the _____, he couldn’t determine where he was supposed to speak into.

“Gregor! Where the deuce you been, man? I was about to hang up!”

“Who is this?”

“You’re still sleeping, got it. It’s Ziss, man, Zissner. Calling from work. They need you over here, man.”

“Why?”

“Short-staffed, too many kids coming through, you know how it is.”

“ ‘Kids’? Where do I work again? Where am I going?”

“That’s just the way I talk, man, don’t make fun. Hey, be over here in twenty minutes, okay? I’d say to get some sleep, ‘cause you sound tired, but that would be opposite of the whole point now, wouldn’t it? See you soon, man.”

“Okay, uh…bye.” And as Gregor looked for the button to end the communication, a glint of light flashed on the side of the machine. It was reflected light, and, standing up, Gregor noticed the room had grown considerably brighter in those few minutes of talking and thinking and fumbling about. He looked behind him, toward the source of the light.

As he had originally assumed, it was a window, but curiously, and yet, Gregor felt, almost predictably, almost naturally, the window was not the plain, ordinary sheet of glass he had assumed it was with his back turned. Instead, it seemed to be made out of water, or some sort of transparent fluid, the colors from the outside world looking almost like a painting. Gregor walked forward and reached out to touch it, entranced.

It felt and reacted as liquid might. Gregor’s fingers felt wet and the image rippled. Not shocked but still cautiously curious, he took his hand out and examined it, looking for any potentially negative effects. He found his hand dry and unaffected, and reached back in with a slight, awed thrill. This time he looked more carefully at the effect on the outside world he was evidently touching. The image, that of a field populated with various heights of green grass, sparse patches of bare ground, and a single tree all warmed by yellow sunlight, gave him a sense of satisfied peace, as if some of the sunlight emanating throughout the scene had spread onto himself.

Looking even closer at the window, or painting, or whatever it was, he noticed a very strange thing, beyond what he could have possibly expected: the image around where he had put in his fingers had muddied slightly; a pinkish color was swirling and mixing into the green field he was looking at. Drawing out his hand, the alien color twirled back in to the point where Gregor had touched, and disappeared into his finger completely upon total withdrawal.

What was this thing? It could have been a painting, or some other art piece, created with elements Gregor knew not. He held up his hand. The palm-side was illuminated and the back was in shadow. Light was definitely coming through.

He put that same hand all the way back in, up to the middle of his forearm, and began to move it throughout the image in a stirring motion. A puddle of pink had gathered around where his arm was, and followed it slowly and lazily wherever he dragged it. The colors of the grass and the tree and the sky and the clouds were being affected as well; everything was being distorted and muddied. It was like a painting that wasn’t quite dry, except this painting had depth in addition to height and width. He didn’t have much control over where exactly the colors went; it seemed that his arm was merely interrupting their place in the world and adding a bit of his own skin color to the mix. When he moved to take out his arm again, that pink color seemed to be sucked out of the image in conjunction with how far in or out his arm was, and when he was finally out all the way, the colors of the world that were displaced by Gregor’s arm began to move back to their appropriate locations.

Gregor had been slowly realizing that he would not have as much control over the image with the singularity of his unwieldy forearm as he would with the plurality of his dextrous fingers. He touched his fingers to the liquid again, this time a bit more gingerly; he did not totally penetrate the liquid, his fingers merely grazed the surface. He pulled his fingers from the dark rocks of a small brook he had just noticed in the corner, up through the grass and the many leaves of the tree, up into the blue sky, across the clouds, and, with slight trepidation for a reason he could not understand and did not think about, into the very center of the sun.

But it never got that far. The darker colors faded as they went higher through the different shades of color, disappearing as the sun’s rays grew closer. This puzzled Gregor, and did not compute with his brain’s understanding of pigment. But what did he know?

Then he heard a noise, a sound, musical and melodious in a simplistic way, quite different from the contraption earlier: the song of a bird. Gregor instantly withdrew his hand once again, and looked for the winged creature that he thought must be the source. His eyes scanned the window, following where he thought the chirping of the invisible bird was coming from. After several seconds of this he realized the bird must be overhead, or at least somewhere above the parameters of his vision. His first impulse was to stick his head in, to get a better look at the upper part of the sky and thus (he thought) the bird itself.

But that would be crazy. He didn’t know if any of this was even real, had no idea what it was — this strange, beautiful, interactive painting of reality.

He accepted the fact of the unseen bird, and turned from the morning light to more closely examine the room he had woken up in. For the first time he noticed clothes at the end of his bed and instinctively put them on. They were plain and ordinary, but they suited him fine. The room really was empty besides the bed, the chair and table, the _____, and the odd window. The color of the room had changed with the rising sun, from the cold, dark, early morning blue to an almost fiery red and yellow, the colors of dawn. His eyes rested on the pad of paper he had scribbled on. The questions “Who?”, “What?”, and “Where?” were written below the previous three words. He began to ponder them, and all of it, the entire situation he was in…but without anything to formulate an answer with, his mind very soon became blank and empty.

He was staring dreamily at one wall of the room. No words or precise images were going through his mind, so he didn’t notice for a few minutes that something was appearing on the very wall he was staring at, directly across from the window. Suddenly he snapped out of it, and gazed curiously at that wall, this time with purpose. What was becoming more and more sharp with the rising sun was a kind of pattern, with symbols and curious drawings placed here and there. It almost looked like a map, in a way, or at the very least a kind of diagram, of what Gregor couldn’t fathom. He arose and walked a few steps over, to more closely examine it. To his surprise it began to disappear as he grew closer — but, he noticed, it was only the section right in front of him, where his person blocked the sunlight and created shadow. He took a few steps back, taking his shadow with him, and the lines and images reappeared.

“A painting of shadow,” were the words that Gregor’s mind produced.

It had appeared with the rising sun, after all. Lines of darkness, of pure shadow, ablaze in the midst of light, impossible to be seen otherwise. Something mystical that Gregor did not fully understand.

Lost in thought over this, Gregor had ignored the chirping of the songbird outside. He was brought to awareness of the joyous song once again when he noticed movement in the window, and went over to it again. The bird was soaring straight towards him! How did this window-thing work from the outside? He had no time to think, and ducked down just in time not to be hit by the oncoming bird. After coming through — the window reacted as if nothing was there — it flew twice around the room before landing on Gregor’s finger, which he had offered on some mysterious impulse.

With the song of the bird and then its landing on his finger Gregor’s spirits lifted. When staring at the lines of shadow he had felt his mood darken a fair bit; he had not realized this was the case until he was distracted by the pleasantness of the bird and its cheerful chirping. It was small and mostly blue, and seemed to have no qualms about perching on Gregor’s finger, where it seemed contented. Gregor in turn did not mind, but was still greatly perplexed by the strangeness of his situation. He could not imagine any sort of explanation being enough for him at this point. So he did the most logical thing he could have done: picked up his writing materials and walked out the door, therefore beginning his journey.

]]> http://reasonablealternative.wordpress.com/2008/08/10/chapter-1-of-book-1-in-the-metagopolis-tetralogy/feed/ 0 Neal http://reasonablealternative.wordpress.com/2008/08/07/scuba-cat-and-other-updates/ http://reasonablealternative.wordpress.com/2008/08/07/scuba-cat-and-other-updates/#comments Thu, 07 Aug 2008 21:50:55 +0000 Neal http://reasonablealternative.wordpress.com/?p=26 ]]> I don’t know if Dad has sent this to everybody already, so I’ll post it here just in case:

http://videos.howstuffworks.com/howstuffworks/7605-howstuffworks-scuba-cat-commercial-video.htm

Also, I’m quitting my job very soon, and I will be very happy to do so. I put in my 2-weeks notice on Saturday. I’ll be going back to DVC to take a few classes, and I’ve also registered with the LDS Employment Resource Center to try to get some sort of part-time temp job to continue my money-making ways, just not at Home Depot. I am very much sick of that place. I’ve finished the applications to BYU and BYU Idaho for this coming Winter semester. We’ll see what happens from there.

I got contact lenses and my eyes are sore but happily so. I’ve also been going on twice-daily bike rides up to the park and back down to halfway down Mitchell Canyon Road, then back up to the house. I am beginning to be a little more comfortable with my appearance as a result of these two things.

Lastly, if anyone saw The Dark Knight I’d be interested in opinions. It may have been too dark and violent for the more tender souls, but I’m inclined to agree with Brother Card on the matter. It’s a long essay but very readable and very true.

I’m out.

I’m not sure what to say after that. When I get the typed-up copy I shall report back.

In other news, though, I saw The Dark Knight at the midnight show last week, and guys, it is wonderful. I’m thinking of going back tomorrow to watch it again, to catch all the plot points I missed (the 152-minute movie moves REALLY fast and you don’t really have time to think) and bask in Heath Ledger’s masterful performance as The Joker. It made $155 million this weekend, which is now the all-time record, and remarkably it is #1 on the IMDb top 250 films of all time (based on users’ ratings). I really think and hope that it gets nominated for some major Academy Awards besides Supporting Actor for Heath Ledger, which is almost a given at this point. I’m thinking it may/should be nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture, and all the other technical awards. It’s getting praise after praise from cynical critics and the general public alike, and it’s made more money on its first weekend than any other film. And heck, The Sixth Sense was nominated for Best Picture (and Director and Screenplay), and so was Raiders of the Lost Ark and Titanic and many other films that weren’t the arty-drama type the Academy usually nominates. This movie had a HUGE amount of hype and it has more than lived up to it.

—–

Our tale begins with a small boy, about seven or eight years old, in the early morning, just before sunup. We watch him as he gambols about the streets, braving the frosty winds, looking for food as dawn begins to break. We take note that he is only wearing ripped pants and a rag for a shirt, a rag that seemed to be woven more from air than from thread. There are no shoes over his cold feet, no gloves on his freezing fingers, but there is a cap upon his head – this might be called the prevailing fashion of Oceania’s youth.

This particular orphan, our urchin, wandered down one residential Sunset Street, checking trash cans for anything edible. His subconscious had developed an acute sense of the potential nutritional value of a given trash can, and he skipped a few before settling on one. He rifled through it, and quickly found two old, threadbare socks, mysteriously thrown out as a pair. A few minutes later he found, at the bottom, and nestled between an near-empty milk carton and a couple of near-empty beer cans, an apple core, with a bit of the apple still left on it. He took all of these things for his own.

He sat down next to the pile of garbage that had spilled out and put on the socks, which were far too big for him, but also far better than nothing. He upended the milk carton into his mouth without thinking about it, and immediately spat the sour stuff back out as best he could. He reached for the beer bottles in attempt to do away with the spoiled taste now stuck on his tongue and drank down what few drops there were of that. He finished off the bounty of that trash can with the whole of the apple core.

But before he actually did finish, the door to the tiny shack behind him opened up, and a middle-aged, homely-looking, slightly emaciated woman came out. She screamed at him to get away from her property, or she would call her man on him.

The boy tipped his cap to her and went right on digging through the trash. The woman, bizarrely livid to near the point of derangement, stormed back into the shack, calling out to someone inside. Seconds later a man came out, unshaven, half-dressed, and hung-over. The gun swinging loosely in his hand seemed a foregone conclusion at that point, and the boy began to analyze his situation a bit more seriously.

Ducking down behind the garbage can, he heard two shots fired, and then a brief silence. He poked the top of his head up and immediately started scrambling away as best he could: the man was within 20 feet of reaching him, and lumbering unstably but at a steady pace with his gun arm outstretched.

After only a few missed shots the boy heard the click of an empty chamber, and turned around. The man – enraged, but recognizing defeat by the team of our urchin and the previous night’s whiskey – lobbed the firearm at him in frustration. The force of the throw caused him to lose his balance and fall over.

The boy moved swiftly to the empty, fallen gun, picked it up, and took one last look behind him – the woman’s face looked at once about to scream and about to cry, and the man was making no effort to get up. He tipped his cap to the both of them, and then hurriedly strolled away.

He continued in his never-ending search for nihilistic survival, this time with the threat of weaponry at his disposal – but only the threat. As he treaded carefully, watchfully down the sidewalk, on the alert for any possible enemy, he heard sounds coming out of an alleyway. Curiosity compelled him to peek around the corner, and the sight of two men beating a third with a crowbar and a baseball bat riveted his morbid attention. The two were cursing and taunting the man as they cruelly, savagely destroyed him. Instinctually aware that they might be on an indiscriminate rampage (which was not an uncommon occurrence), the boy did not breathe or make a move, except to back himself fully against the wall around the corner of the alley.

The sounds of the beating eventually stopped with one last THUNK.. Heavy breathing through the noses of the men replaced it in a strangely satisfying, bizarrely peaceful way. Our urchin added nothing to the empty cacophony. He had been trained well by the streets.

Voices killed the nasal calm that was the epilogue of a man’s life:

“He dead?”

“Yeah, he dead.”

“Le’s go then.”

The boy’s heart was racing; the men were coming out now, and what was he to do? Take off running? They would catch him. Act like he hadn’t seen anything? They wouldn’t believe him. Say nothing but the truth? Right. There’s a winner.

They came out of the alleyway before he could think any further. He saw the two pairs of boots, one black and one brown, and the blood on both. But as luck would have it they were turning left outside the alley – away from him! A few seconds later he dared move his leg – and once again luck intervened, this time the bad sort. His foot had been right next to some kind of broken piece of metal piping that he had not originally noticed, and the scraping sound produced when he moved was just out of the range of normal ambience. The two men turned around with a start.

“Hey, who that is?” said one.

“It be a kid, man,” said the other.

“So he shouldn’t be hard to – “

“Le’s just leave him, man.”

“Suppose he squeals on us, man. This ain’t exactly Johnny No-Name we just took out.”

“Fine.”

The boy, reacting impulsively to the first steps the men took in his direction, brought out and brandished his silver gun. He had almost forgotten about it.

“Whoa, man, he gots a gun.”

“Yeah…he does.”

After standing there stupidly for a moment, the two men departed in a hurry.

Our urchin decided to hide his gun, to take it out when he obtained some usable ammunition. No point in flaunting an empty threat and getting his bluff called. He continued on his way a few minutes later, after hiding it in that very alleyway and trying to ignore the bloody mass upon the ground.

The dawn had just fully broken; yellow sunlight was now shining through the gray storm clouds. A drizzle of rain began, making for a pleasant feeling of being both cleansed and enlightened. One resilient ray of light reflected off of something and hit the urchin square in the eye, causing him first of all to blink, and second of all to see what it was. “It” was another trash can, with a tall, broken mirror, composed entirely of still-in-place shards, inside. A quick glance revealed a happy find: a candy bar wrapper with some crumbs remaining. He poured what was left of it into his mouth and received the pleasant mixed sensation of chocolate and peanut butter, but when he lowered his head, he discovered, via one shard of the mirror, that behind him was another child, older-looking, standing there watching…just watching. This boy was frightening to the younger one, for he was a Tyrant.

Tyrants on the streets of Oceania were the unofficial community of older children, perhaps ten, eleven, or even twelve years old. This is not to say, however, that all ten-to-twelve-year-olds and teenagers were Tyrants. Au contraire, the story has been told of an eleven-year-old who took in two younger children, hardly older than infants, and helped them find food, gave them shelter, and worked for a living so he could support them.

But this eleven-year-old, if he was that age, was no philanthropist. He was a mean child, made mean by the streets of Oceania, turned a monster by the harsh avenues of survival, and thus was standing there, watching, waiting. He knew his presence alone would instill anxiety. The younger boy, reacting as planned according to the Tyrant, froze upon the sight of the older, but his actions did not give away that which was underneath: he was forming a plan, one that did not require the use of his unloaded weapon. He would walk away, see if the older boy was in fact going to follow him, and decide the rest later.

He put his plan into action, appearing calm and collected, and the Tyrant fulfilled his expectations. As he walked a slight rage built up inside him; the injustice of physical prowess conquering all burned his subconscious. He began walking faster, and the Tyrant matched his speed. He turned into another alleyway but did not run; the Tyrant would hear and it would become an unwinnable chase.

At the end of the alley he saw another boy – who looked his own age – sitting against the wall, tracing patterns in the dust with his finger. He looked up and saw our urchin walking swiftly towards him, and whispering loudly:

“Hey, kid!”

“Yeah? Whatchu want?”

“There’s a Tyrant back there. Help me take him down!”

Said Tyrant just then entered the alleyway, but stayed back a bit, looking like he was sizing up the situation.

The second boy looked past the first, down the alley. “N-no, I don’t think I can. No, we can’t beat him up. He’s probably thirteen at least!”

“Hmph. Looks more like eleven. Maybe even ten. How old are you?”

A shrug was the response.

“Whatever. We’ll get what he has on him for ourselves. Come on, we can take him!” the first boy whispered enthusiastically, his fists clenched.

Hesitantly, but feeling a spark of courage ignited in his small soul, the second boy agreed: “Okay.”

“Just go around this building and close in on him from behind. I’ll take his front side.”

He went to go around, and the first boy made it look like he was shoving him that way, winking in the process. (This was a skill our urchin had been practicing for a long time, and was proud to finally be able to utilize it in an appropriate context.) A few contemplative moments later, he turned and stared directly at the Tyrant. He began stalking toward him, which soon turned into more of a glide, increasing in speed. The last few steps were taken with a yell and a dive at the bewildered bully, who was shocked into a silence of action. He almost succeeded in fully felling the bully, but the position they were in allowed the latter to push him back with his hands and then feet. He stumbled backwards and both regained their footage simultaneously. The Tyrant drew his fist back, but before he could land a blow, the second boy tackled him from behind. Our urchin quickly helped him up, and he seemed surprised at his own strength. They let their enemy get partway up before pushing him out into the street with their combined forces.

The Tyrant’s confusion was paralyzing him just as much as the two boys’ physical efforts. Such things just didn’t happen. He, nor his peers, had ever had problems with rebellion before. That he had heard or seen of, anyway. Retreat was his only option now, as doubts had sprung up in his mind about his own combative capabilities. He left without ever saying one word to either of the two boys.

“Aren’t you afraid he’ll go and get friends?” asked the second boy after a while.

“And admit he’s afraid of two little kids? Yeah, right.”

A moment of satisfied heavy breathing passed, and our urchin was prompted by the sounds to think about what he had witnessed earlier, the two men beating up on the other.

“But I suppose just in case we should get a crew together. What’s your name, anyway?”

The second boy shrugged. “Dunno. Never had a name. What’s yours?”

“I’m Roc,” he said proudly. “Named after the comics hero, of course. We’ll have to get a name for you. Hmm….”

The boy shrugged again and looked somewhat nonplused.

“You’ll be my second in our little gang,” said Roc, looking thoughtful, “so you’ll just be called Second. How’s that?”

For the third time, the boy shrugged. “Okay,” he said.

The two went about recruiting under Roc’s direction. Second, normally a timid and submissive boy, was made alive through Roc’s charisma and boundless energy, and both received great boosts of confidence from their victorious first conflict. The two ended up gathering an even dozen for their main council (a number he had stolen in attempt to imitate one of the older gangs), and made connections with other children all over the city. They named themselves after their founder: The Roc had been born, it had survived, and now it went about the business of flourishing in its newfound fraternity.

Individual council members were sent out by Roc himself to complete tasks necessary for survival, whether it was scavenging food from the streets or collecting money from jobs. Roc also had the boys steal food or money from any passerby who happened to get caught in their trap. Rarely did they forcibly steal anything; their plans usually were to take advantage of people’s best instincts by lying and bamboozling, trying to appeal to any remaining pockets of charity left in their soul. But perhaps it wasn’t lying so much as calculated – but still very true – emotion.

As well as taking over the main food supplies for children of Oceania, the Roc seized certain streets, so no other gangs could walk down them (sans permission) without getting a few choice words and perhaps a wallop. They did not fool around with or reveal their existence to any older gangs, at risk of being quashed by their physical dominance, and they were careful in their public meetings and dealings to not rouse suspicion. They soon became the prevalent force among the children of the city, with a vast network that would rival the real gangs when they grew older.

Roc did not know it, but he had formed – artificially, it’s true – one of the last vestiges of civilization in Oceania, for such family is.

——–

A few months later Roc was looking for one last kid to fill a spot that had been vacated very recently; one of the boys on the original council had simply disappeared. Such things happened in Oceania, and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. He now had eleven and wanted exactly twelve, plus himself. He decided after delegating responsibilities and tasks to other children he would just walk the city and see what came up.

As he was wandering about, with his hands in the pockets of his coat (for he had one now, as well as real socks and little boots with a sheathed knife attached), he noticed two of his fellows – Nathaniel and Rocco (who refused to change his name and was brought on for his stubborn pride) – squabbling over something. He walked closer and realized they were arguing over who would get credit for having found a wallet full of cash. The money would, of course, go to all the gang, but the prestige of being the finder was still at stake.

“Boys, boys!” he said as he ran over to calm the situation. “Don’t you see the point of this little family? It doesn’t matter who gets what, ‘cause everybody’s gonna get some in the end! Stop fighting, and be brothers!” He put his hands on each of their shoulders as they looked up, Nathaniel with a slightly guilty face and Rocco with an angry pout. “Okay?” He looked each of them in the eye. “Okay. Now, I’ll take that and I’ll give you both credit for finding it, yeah? Now, go on and take a break. I’ll take that now.” He took the wallet gently from Rocco’s hands and watched them as they went off. He pursed his lips and shook his head as they went off.

“They just don’t get it,” he said to himself as he walked down the street. “They don’t get that we’re a family, a gang, brothers. They still gotta learn, I guess.” And then he thought, “Maybe I should walk back with them. They might need some protection….Nah, they should be fine. There’s two of them, and they have spunk. Nathaniel in particular….” He smiled to himself as he remembered the times he recruited them. Remembering certain things often causes one to remember other certain things, and a chain of memories soon flooded his young brain as he walked.

He did not think much about how his person had been cultivated by the feelings of responsibility. He didn’t have the mental capacity to contemplate those changes, nor did he have the vocabulary. Not yet.

Blue Orchard Lane was the street Roc was now on. He wasn’t quite sure what an orchard was, but there wasn’t anything blue on the street to begin with, and he wondered at that fact. Just then, however, he spotted an older boy, perhaps thirteen, bullying a younger boy, who looked a couple years younger than himself, and very much malnourished, although that was to be expected. He couldn’t hear them, but saw the younger boy clutching something in his arms while the Tyrant shoved him back until he hit a wall, where he then slapped his face twice. The little one curled up against the wall, his back to the Tyrant, his body a shield for the item he was continuing to cradle in his stick-like arms.

Roc ran swiftly up to the both of them. “Hey!” he yelled. “Hey, you there!”

The Tyrant looked over and saw Roc. “Get outta here. You don’t know nothin’ ‘bout this situation. Beat it.”

While the Tyrant’s attention was momentarily distracted on Roc, the younger boy took off down the street, still holding onto what now appeared to be a loaf of french bread. The Tyrant immediately gave chase, but his prey was surprisingly fast and agile.

Roc chased after them as well, and as he ran he yelled, “Roc! Roc!” as loud as he could. Because he was better fed than both of them, he could also catch up, and all three of them reached their destination at the same time: the Tyrant reached the boy and was just about to pull him down backwards by his shirt when Roc purposefully stuck his literal leg into the bully’s proverbial wheel, causing both to trip and fall. And with the threat of the Tyrant lessened greatly at this point, the running boy had reached his destination: safety, temporary or otherwise, and he stopped a few yards away, still ready to bolt at the first sign of more danger, but curious to see how it all played out.

While Roc and the Tyrant arose from the dust, several children – perhaps six or seven – started to come out of the surrounding alleyways, answering the call of the Roc. The bully stared around at the urchins surrounding him and then glared at Roc, his mouth and brow contorted in ugliness. Saying nothing, he turned and walked through the crowd, shoving two out of his way as he walked by.

Now Roc was not going to stand for this! A Tyrant, having the nerve to shove around his family members, his brothers! He ran up and tackled him from behind, leaving him on the ground once again. He straddled him and started punching him, beating him, acting on the cruel savage instincts of human beings when their family is in danger. The rest of the boys who were there started joining in, grabbing stones or bricks or whatever was handy. The bully’s face became bloodied, his body bruised and his ego broken. He began to cry, that ancient call of the infant in distress for its mother.

After a while Roc ordered his gang to stop.

“That’s what happens when you push around the Roc!” shouted Roc as he slapped the Tyrant twice in the face in final vengeance for the other boy, who was still standing off behind the group, afraid to stay and afraid to leave. He got up and walked away nonchalantly towards the boy whose bread had been the cause of contention.

The Tyrant, looking around with red eyes (from both blood and crying), noticed that he was able to go. Hesitantly and carefully he stood up, and then limped away to regain his pride and nurse his wounds.

“So,” Roc said, looking slightly downward on the boy with arms crossed. “So.”

The boy, frightened half to death at the thought of receiving the same treatment as the Tyrant, didn’t say anything.

Roc discerned the source of the bread: “Why’d you steal it?”

The boy nodded, eyeing Roc tentatively. “Bread’s my favorite food,” he said unexpectedly.

Roc eyed the boy right back with a strict face. He had noticed something strange about this boy: his eyes. They were blue eyes, some of the most piercing he had ever seen. Right now they looked taut and afraid, but Roc could tell that they were used to being defiant and frightening to others his own age. Roc could also tell that if raised improperly, this boy could, if he lived long enough, end up a Tyrant, just like the one he had been bullied by, and so he decided to take him up in his own family.

“Would you like to join our crew?” he asked.

The boy looked curiously at Roc with that piercing gaze, and nodded again.

“I have to warn you though – stealing from each other isn’t allowed. You steal and you get kicked out. Deal?”

“Deal.” They shook hands.

“So you’re one of us now. My twelfth. What’s your name?”

“Oliver,” said the boy quite simply. “My name’s Oliver.”

“How is it you came by that name?”

He shrugged. “I’ve always known it. I think my grandmother gave it to me.”

“Where’s your grandmother now?” asked Roc.

“Dead. They’re all dead. My family, I mean,” said Oliver.

“And you’re not sad about it?” said Roc incredulously.

“Not really,” said Oliver. “I don’t remember them very well.”

“Well, you’ll remember this family. And you’ll be sad if they die, I guarantee it.”

“What does ‘guarantee’ mean?” asked Oliver, his curious eyes penetrating.

Roc smiled. This boy thirsted after knowledge. “It means you promise something. And I promise you you’ll belong in our family. If you want to.”

“Oh, I want to!” Oliver said enthusiastically. He looked in silence at the gang behind Roc, scanning the faces of his new friends…his new family. At the same time they all came up and greeted him, shaking his hand and patting him on the back in welcome. Normally they might not be so cheerful, but they trusted Roc as a father. Soon they began walking down the street as one, and gradually diverged into their separate ways.

“What’s your name?” Oliver asked at one point.

“I’m Roc,” Roc said.

———

One day something occurred that significantly altered the dynamics of the gang.

Time had passed (how much is not certain), and the Roc had achieved a certain notoriety among the older children. He was herding a few of his flock about when his attention was caught on two Tyrants, seemingly in counsel with each other. Roc narrowed his eyes and marched his little gang right up to the two. He was silent; they looked at him coolly.

“What are you doing on our street corner?” said one in a somewhat bored voice.

“You mean our street corner!”

“Is that a challenge?” replied the other, sarcastically incredulous.

Roc folded his arms and looked smug, arrogant, confident. “Sure. Now or later?”

“Now.”

This reciprocating confidence put Roc off guard, and further so when one of the older boys whistled and a dozen older boys came out, seemingly from the shadows. The two gangs gathered into their respective groups and faced off. Roc had a frightened but brave look about him, almost an indignant look, one of martyrdom. He knew this was the end of his gang, perhaps even of his life depending on how angry the older gang was. And it was then that he remembered his gun back in the alleyway. He had completely forgotten about it over these many months! He decided to stall. If I survive this, he thought, I’m going to go back and get that gun, and never let anybody threaten my family again.

“Afraid of a gang of little kids, huh?” he said, frustrated and frightened. “Need a big bunch of your fellow buddy boys to come and back you up, eh?”

The first bully stared at Roc, his eyes cold and black. “We’re tired,” he began, “tired of you stealing our food. The food that rightfully belongs to us. We’ve been here longer; we’ve earned it. We’re tired of you winning every fight because you find one of us alone, because when you’re alone, you little kids are worthless, not worthy to live. You’re weaker than us, because we didn’t need a gang to grow up, but you do, and so you’re not worthy to live. You need a crutch. That’s why,” he said as he cracked his knuckles, “we’re going to take care of you. All of you.”

Roc felt a little nauseous from the overwhelming reality of what was about to happen. But he would fight to the end, and do battle for his cause, for his little family, and for justice. He clenched his fists and glanced behind him at his fellow soldiers, his brothers.

But he did a double take, for he and they heard the sound of a motorcycle, and within two seconds he could see it zooming towards them. A few more seconds and the man atop it was slowing to a stop, right next to the two gangs. The man descended from his motorcycle and Roc got a good look at him.

He wore an eyepatch over his right eye and a black leather jacket on his shoulders with a white shirt underneath. He was slender and intimidating, and his face, amidst the various scars and thin beard, seemed ageless and somehow familiar. He said nothing as he took a few steps towards the two gangs.

Roc shamelessly took immediate advantage of his presence.

“Mister! Mister, they’re trying to beat us up and steal our food that we found by ourselves! Help us, please, mister!” Roc yelled desperately, pointing at the gang of Tyrants.

The enigmatic man stood still for a few moments, looking straight in the eye of each opposing gang member with his remaining one. His eye moved more slowly as it passed over Roc’s gang.

“How old are you?” were his first words, said to the littler children.

“I don’t know,” said Roc. “Eight or nine. But – “

The motorcyclist strode over to the older boys before Roc could continue. Taking out a very fat wallet, he began handing out bills to each and every one of the Tyrants. While doing so he said, “Go home! Go feed yourselves and your friends with your new money. Leave these kids alone.” The older boys did nothing but stand very still, until one of the last to get his money took off running. The others soon followed suit, and Roc was left with his crew and this mysterious man on a motorcycle.

“Hello,” he said, coming towards them with his hand outstretched in greeting. “My name is Salvane.”

———-

All these boys, these puppets of unbridled impulse both good and bad, were the same as rest of Oceania: living day to day on what scraps of food they could come up with, just barely getting by, trying desperately to survive and, if possible, thrive, to use whatever was at their disposal to accomplish the necessity of nature, the intent of evolution: live as long as they were able, in whatever form.

There were, however, those who overcame the obstacles of the life of les miserables, and these were the gangsters, the crime lords, the anarchists, men of deep ambition and determination, men who would do anything to keep their place in the world, men who had worked their way up from a life of nothingness into a life of power and prestige, who controlled the flow of resources into the city and thus controlled it, but who, in the end, were just the same as everybody else, just acting on instincts, just happening to be a little smarter than the rest. Terrian Alfred Guthrie was one of those men. But we will get to him later.

Winston Churchill

Neal A. Maxwell

And yes, the Prologue is Chapter 1 on purpose. I wanted to keep a sort of pattern going with the structure of the book…every Act/Part/Major Segment has an odd number of chapters within, and with the Prologue it all adds up to 42, which is the answer to the question of the meaning of life, but I fear that structure may be shaken up a bit with this augmentation and revision process going on.

Ah well. Compare below to the original prologue here, and let me know of any confusions or  details I may have messed up on.

EDIT: Okay, now I have a finished product, at least from my perspective. Only about 8 hours total per 1000 words. That’s…only about 992 more hours to go. Not bad!

Chapter 1, “Prologue”

In the city of Oceania, chaos reigned: individualized moral code clashed with individualized moral code, the instincts of animals outweighed the instincts of humanity, man’s need for immortality pressed harder on the soul than man’s need for eternal life, and so on and so forth, for Oceania was a city of gangs and prostitution, of deviants and degeneracy, of urchins and anarchy, with a purchasable police force, corrupt and conniving officials, and a mayor who was both violent and venal. It had no law save what one decided for one’s self, but also no crime, for if there is no legality, how can there be illegality?

It was an international city built on the sea, an experiment designed for a curious reason which we will not get into in this book. Its construction was the antithesis of natural beauty, but the epitome of artificial beauty; a glowering hunk of steel and metal, yet a glorious conclusion of man’s ingenious ability to adapt and create. None born inside had ever known another life, and the world outside was seen only as a mystery. The elite knew of the lands beyond their city, but this was still an abstract understanding, imperfect and theoretical.

The city was designed as a perfect circle, built in part on a crescent island somewhere in the Mediterranean and the rest atop the sea via prodigious technologies. It was connected to the Mainland through a bridge that the citizens of Oceania dubbed “Heaven’s Bridge,” for anywhere unknown was Heaven compared to Oceania. That is, Oceania was Hell.

The city was ringed by a train track, upon which once rode the famous Bullet Train, named so by a particular newspaper editor in the early days of Oceania for the gunfights that were becoming alarmingly frequent on it. The train ran longer than the newspaper business did, however, and when the former finally ceased after no less than a bombing (an act which triggered many pointing fingers and even more acts of revenging violence), the old editor (who had apparently survived the raids) was heard to wryly remark that “the magazine was now empty.” It is unknown whether the double meaning was intentional, although it is assumed that it was.

The city was composed of several different subsections with certain designations, such as the Upper and Lower Savantros, the Fumaroles, the East and West Arcs, and various other suburban districts based on inherited nationality. The innermost circle of the city, in essence comprising the core of Oceania, was a flawless model of a fallen metropolis, abandoned skyscrapers and battle-weary office buildings looming above all the rest. They had not been used for their original purpose in decades.

The police force and governmental officials were not subsidized by fines and taxes, but rather by the principal gangs of the city. In return they wrote and enforced legislation at the whim of the head mobsters and ignored their business practices. Thus the name of government, handed down from the early days of Oceania, was nothing but a mask of authenticity for mercenary work.

Currently the work of war was being done in Europe, and Germanic forces had taken control of the city. Germany, once a strong and proud nation, always in the thick of things when it came to European wars, was now weak, but still proud, and so tried to conquer everything they possibly could. And because none of the dominant forces in the war neither wanted nor needed Oceania, Germany had seized control of it and made profits with its inside organization, more of which we shall see later.

Those seeking freedom were prevented from leaving by the lighthouses, which spotted rogue rowboats and unlicensed voyagers and sent out the Germanic ships to destroy them without mercy. The lighthouses, then, were not lighthouses to the citizens of Oceania, but searchlights, finding out seeds of rebellion and keeping them prisoner rather than providing the illumination they were meant to. There were also real searchlights perched on top of buildings throughout the city, gradually spinning at all hours of darkness. To add to this, gun turrets were erected at the city gates and manned twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, on call to destruct any soul seeking salvation.

What communications technology there was in the city was not enough to contact or learn about the lands unknown. The understanding of the outside world was limited to ethnic diversity, and correlated directly with the level of curiosity and common sense a particular person had: there must have been many different places outside Oceania if such divergences in facial structure, skin color, and spoken language could exist. The city’s ethnic makeup was primarily a hodgepodge of European blood, with pockets of Asians and Russians to balance out. African sailors were the only ones allowed by the Germanic forces to leave Oceania, their nationality being easily distinguishable. Except for the captains themselves, the sailors knew very little English, the common tongue of Oceania (although most knew a second language, generally their native one), and no tales of the others’ contrasting worlds were ever exchanged.

It was a very strange situation: at all times chaotic and ravaging of soul, at all times perfectly stagnant and frozen in development. Time itself was arrested, and man’s world shifted casually and unnoticed into beast’s. Cigarette butts, broken beer bottles, hollow crusts of stale bread, and all sorts of other trash intermingled with the bodies of both living and dead strewn about the city. Walls and sidewalks were branded with graffiti, with pictures, with strange characters and words, all declaring allegiance or estate ownership. Crumbling and felled structures made certain parts of the city look like a war zone, even though that damage had been done many years previous. The “homeless” were not labeled as such; there was no need to distinguish them from anybody else. In turn the labels of “criminal” and “lawman” meant nothing. Nothing, actually, meant anything, for the simple reason that they all decided those abstract, peculiarly-human definitions for themselves. The only commonality they had was their own perpetual state of suffering, going about their business of survival in whatever way possible, whether it be stealing, working, or begging. Fathers who didn’t know or care that they were fathers lived as the seagulls of the sky, trying to find whatever scrap of food they could in attempt to live as long as possible. Mothers huddled their younglings about, trying to find shelter for the night or food for the day. Urchins and orphans roamed the streets en masse. Murder and rape were extremely common. Tragedy and misery permeated the city like a scent. It was a city of anarchy, a sea of chaos.

1. Once Upon a Time in the West
2. Schindler’s List
3. The Fountain
4. Lawrence of Arabia
5. Star Wars (original trilogy counts for me as one movie, and a sentimental honorable mention to Ep. III)
6. Jean de Florette / Manon of the Spring
7. Casablanca
8. The Royal Tenenbaums
9. Dr. Strangelove
10. Amadeus

Somewhere in the Top 11 – 21:

Batman Begins

Atonement

It’s a Wonderful Life

Cinema Paradiso

Adaptation

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

Indiana Jones trilogy (not including #4)

The Mission

Life is Beautiful

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The Matrix

Okay. I guess I’m sorry for being mad at you guys before. And I appreciate that you bought it, Jonbear. I won’t let the parents read it though. I still feel like a little kid at home sometimes and I don’t want them to read it as if they were reading a story that a child wrote.

BUT — this past Sunday I determined that I need to go through and edit the whole thing, revising some parts and rewriting others. A lot of the writing is from three years ago, when I was first starting it, and I can see now, after that story has been out of my head for a good six months or so, that it really needed a run-through by an honest, objective editor. I would never have let anyone else touch it, and I still won’t (I’m a sensitive guy; yes I got it from my mother, hi Mom if you’re reading this), but I can look at it right now as it really is, and I’m going to act on that. I think I realized after and even during the self-publication process that it needed more work, but I didn’t want to have to go back and redo the whole thing that I payed $400 for, when I thought it was complete. But it has been long enough that I think I can re-publish it and not mind paying again. I have already created it; now it must needs be perfected.

And this time I’ll send everyone who has now purchased it a complimentary copy of,

Sea of Chaos: Author’s Cut

Metagopolis is being set aside right now in favor of this project.

-Neal Silvester

PS. Garfield Minus Garfield is probably the funniest thing I have ever seen. It takes a few to really get into, but it is so worth it. I think we’ve all felt like Jon Arbuckle from time to time. There are a lot of strips, but not overwhelmingly so, and you can safely go through all of them in one sitting without feeling like you wasted a lot of time. I was howling and almost crying with laughter for many of them.