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              Volume 2, Number 1 - January-February 1992
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                          INSIDE THIS ISSUE     

                       FirstText / JASON SNELL

                   Star Quality / MELANIE MILLER

              Half-Moons and Sunfish / JOHN REOLI, JR.

                To Comprehend the Nectar / LOUIE CREW

          Multiplication and the Devil / DANIEL K. APPELQUIST

               A Handful of Dust / DANIEL K. APPELQUIST

                         Gravity / JASON SNELL

            The Unified Murder Theorem (1 of 4) / JEFF ZIAS
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            Editor: Jason Snell (intertxt@network.ucsd.edu)
   Assistant Editor: Geoff Duncan (sgd4589@ocvaxa.cc.oberlin.edu)
         Assistant Editor: Phil Nolte (NOLTE@IDUI1.BITNET)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
                       FirstText / JASON SNELL

     Another year has dawned, and I'm back here again.
     Welcome to 1992, and to the first InterText of this year. I hope 
I'll still be bringing you InterText into 1993 and beyond, but that's 
now in the hands of various Journalism School admissions officers 
around the country.
     At this time last year, in addition to covering protests against 
the impending Gulf War for my school newspaper, I was involved in 
designing my new net magazine, tentatively titled InterText (I never 
did come up with a better title), and searching far and wide for 
stories that I could put in issue number one.
     A year later, I think we've produced our best issue to date. The 
stories in this issue are all first-rate. First up is The Unified 
Murder Theorem by Jeff Zias -- a first for us, because it's a four-
part serial. Rest assured, the whole thing is written and in my hot 
little hands right now. It's hard to describe what Unified Murder 
Theorem is about, but I can say that it's gripping stuff, and well 
worth reading.
     Another first in this issue is our first story (or so I think) by 
a professionally published author. Louie Crew, who has published 
hundreds of works, is a professor at Rutgers University. His 
contribution this issue is the story To Comprehend The Nectar.
     In addition, we've got a good cyberpunk-style SF story from new 
writer Melanie Miller, and a somewhat pastoral piece by new writer 
John Reoli, Jr.
     And to complete my ever-so-exciting synopsis of this issue's 
stories, I'll mention what is not an example of nepotism -- our final 
two stories are by the editors of Quanta and InterText: Daniel K. 
Appelquist's "Multiplication and the Devil" and "A Handful of Dust" 
and my own "Gravity."
     Just a note to readers and writers -- the appearance of stories 
by Dan and myself in these pages by no means proves any sort of 
conspiracy (Oliver Stone take note) or old boy network. All 
submissions we receive are judged solely on merit, not on the identity 
of the writer. I'd never dump another story just because I had a story 
by Dan or myself.
     So please continue to submit your stories. I've already got a 
couple lined up for next time -- which is the first time that's 
happened in the year I've been doing this -- but we need as many 
stories as we can get.
     Since I began this column by discussing one year ago, perhaps I 
should continue the anniversary spirit by mentioning that our next 
issue will be a special first anniversary issue. I'm hoping to have a 
special cover for the PostScript version and more goodies. Be sure to 
submit stories or articles soon if you'd like to be in the anniversary 
issue.
     One other thing I'd like to mention is how amazed I've been at 
the international flavor of my subscription list. InterText is now 
sent to, among other places, Russia, Germany, Great Britain, Sweden, 
Switzerland, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, China, Australia, and New 
Zealand. Our circulation is slowly climbing, as well -- at last count, 
exactly 1100 people were on some distribution list. And that doesn't 
count the people who FTP InterText from some site without asking to be 
put on the distribution list.
     Be sure to let us know what you think of InterText. The great 
thing about computer communication is that one can receive almost 
instantaneous feedback. You rarely if ever get chances to receive 
replies from the editors and writers of mainstream magazines -- but 
InterText lists the addresses and names of its editors and writers. If 
you have questions or comments of any kind, please feel free to mail 
us.
     Enjoy the issue. Take good care of yourselves. We'll see you back 
here in two months.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

                      Star Quality / MELANIE MILLER

     I remember. . .
     Benjamin Grayson opened his eyes, struggling out of the dream. He 
had been with Alicia Wilcox, his co-star, in a scene from their latest 
movie -- smooth, blond Alicia, and the dreamscene had moved beyond an 
acceptable  rating into censored territory. His fingers slipping 
underneath the velvet strap of her monogown, exploring the feel of 
silky skin. And then, that thought  -- 
     I remember. . .
     An image, textbooks on an old wood desk. Grassy lawn, with blue 
sky above it. It had a flavor to it, a texture of dread and 
anticipation, pushing him away from Alicia, out of sleep. An old, 
treasured fear.
     Of what?
     Slowly, he focused on the bedside clock. 7:30 p.m. projected in 
ruby holograms, hanging in the darkness. Time to get up, get ready for 
the party. It wouldn't do to keep the head of a major Hollywood studio 
waiting.
     And he would never do something as rude as that, although he 
could if he felt like it. Benjamin Grayson was one of the elite of the 
'20s. Stars. And he was under contract with Maximillian Hiller, the 
agent of the decade. Everyone wanted to belong to the Hiller Group, 
and only the best, the hungriest, would be admitted. Maximillian 
(never Max -- he hated diminutives) didn't handle anything else.
     All of Maximillian's clients were stand-outs in some way. 
Professional, other agents said with envy. Maximillian never had to 
cover up embarrassing pasts, arrange special hospital stays, pay off 
local law enforcement. The Hiller Group were actors first and 
foremost, dedicated to their craft. Not to providing filler for the 
tabloids.
     And part of their craft was to project an image. As Maximillian 
suggested, Grayson arrived at the party just late enough to make an 
entrance. The eyes of the crowd -- all people involved with the 
Business -- crawled over his skin agreeably, feather-light massage on 
the ego. Something clicked inside his head and he went into automatic 
pilot: Benjamin Grayson, The Actor. Watch him walk and talk, folks, 
like a real human being. Gossip about him, wonder who he's sleeping 
with this week, what his next 3-D will be. And, in a softer tone, how 
long can he last?
     To hell with it. I'm a star.
     Grayson kept the grin up, easing into the crowd. Nod here, kiss a 
cheek there, get into the groove of things. Project.. He saw 
Maximillian with Alicia, and waved. And when a director intercepted 
him, launching into a not-so-subtle film offer, Grayson managed to 
catch Maximillian's eye.
     "Benjamin, my boy, good to see you," the agent said, cutting into 
the conversation. Maximillian looked like the ideal parent -- six feet 
tall, a strong, kindly face, dark hair edged with gray at the temples. 
The only thing that spoiled the image was his eyes, a curious shade of 
light, oddly flat blue. "Enjoying yourself?"	
     "Naturally," Benjamin replied, giving the agent an wide smile. He 
glanced at Alicia (I remember) and faltered. "Jorge and I were 
discussing his next picture," he said, as if to explain the break.
     "Which Benjamin would be perfect for," Jorge added, delighted to 
have Maximillian's attention. "The part was practically written for 
him, but he keeps dodging me  -- "
     "Which he is supposed to do," Maximillian said smoothly. There 
was a new undertone to his words, an ice that casting agents and 
directors had come to recognize as a warning shot over the bow. Keep 
Off, Private Property. "All business deals are done through me, as I'm 
sure you know."
     Jorge immediately became apologetic. "I'm aware of that," he said 
quickly. "I simply wanted to run the idea past Benjamin  -- "
     "Which you've done. Benjamin, why don't you escort Alicia around, 
while Jorge and I discuss his idea." Maximillian handed the actress to 
Grayson, then guided the director off to a corner.
     Alicia glanced after them, the demure expression melting into a 
smile. "This is the third time he's handed me off while he sets up a 
deal," she said, half-laughing. "I'm starting to wonder if I should 
ask for a cut."
     "I don't think you'll get it," Grayson said, grinning. "He's the 
top hustler in town."
     "I like it that way. It makes me feel more secure." She had a 
voice that had been described variously as soft, lilting, honeyed. 
Tonight, Grayson thought, it was elegantly sweet; champagne and 
strawberries. "By the way, he has some work for us afterwards."
     Grayson nodded, understanding. The host, and probably the 
hostess. It was part of the job when you worked with the Hiller Group. 
The dream floated into consciousness again, overlaying the party. I 
remember. . .
     "What's the matter?" Alicia asked. She looked up into his face, 
smile turning down at the corners. "You faded out for a minute."
     "Nothing." He shrugged the dream off, back into his subconscious. 
"You want that drink?"
     "Of course. Then we'll entertain the peons."
     Two hours later, he took a break from the mingling. Drift from 
one group to another, be witty, amusing -- even if you were used to 
it, it could get tiring after a while. Alicia was still downstairs 
chatting with people in the vast ballroom, and Benjamin wanted a 
chance to be alone with the night sky, polluted as it was. He leaned 
out on a second-floor balcony, tracking faint traces of starlight that 
made it through the smog. Memories started bleeding through again, 
subconscious fragments:

     I remember. . .
     Another time, another place. Further east, where people only 
watched the stars on holovision, never thinking to become one of them. 
Maximillian had come to the campus right after graduation, where he 
met Tim McCarthy for the first time. Benjamin felt like a ghost, 
watching Maximillian and the boy walking on the campus's quadrangle. 
The sky had been blue, very clear, and the sun had been warm on their 
shoulders as Maximillian explained how the boy could make a great deal 
of money in the entertainment industry. 
     Tim insisted that he wasn't an actor -- the commercial had been 
his girlfriend's idea. He wanted to be an agricultural researcher. 
Maximillian demurred -- acting talent wasn't necessary, not with the 
technological options at his command.

     "You look lonely."
     Not moving, Benjamin tried on a small grin that didn't seem to 
fit. "Not really."
     He glanced sideways. Alicia's profile was framed, outlined by the 
lights of downtown L.A. Classically beautiful. He tried to come up 
with the right answer, something that would describe the dreams he'd 
been having lately, but nothing seemed right set against a background 
of the city's light. Especially I'm afraid of my memories.
     They stood there in companionable silence, the cool night breeze 
ruffling through their hair, before he said, "Do you ever remember 
what it was like? Before?"
     Alicia sighed. "I don't think about it," she said. "You 
shouldn't, either. It only confuses you."
     "I know. But sometimes I can't help it," Benjamin said, the words 
moving sluggishly now. "It's like I'm being invaded by memories. I 
don't know what to do."
     Alicia shook her head, moving away from him. She didn't want to 
talk about it, he knew. Alicia was the ideal actress -- calm, 
competent, perfectly adjusted to the change in her life. She had a 
magic that critics kept comparing to the screen greats -- Gish, 
Hepburn, Streep. Great implants. Alicia was never confused. "Maybe you 
should go see Dr. Berringer," she suggested, brusque. "Have him take a 
look at you. You might need an adjustment."
     Unconsciously, Benjamin reached up and touched the skin 
underneath his right ear, massaging it with two fingers. That was 
where they'd gone in, with the surgical probes. "Maybe," he agreed.

     A small surgical procedure, the newest form of wetware, and Tim 
would have the skills of the greatest thespians at his fingertips, 
Maximillian said. The silicarbon circuits would interface directly 
with his brain, a biocompatible network riding the limbic ring. All he 
would have to do is think about the network, and it would generate 
controlled emotional states in response to incoming stimuli.
     You mean it's an artificial persona, Tim said, quiet. He'd heard 
about the procedure from friends, horrified at first, then fascinated. 
It wouldn't be me, just some software riding around in my head.
     You make it sound so nefarious, Maximillian answered, smiling. 
Like it's a form of mind control.
     Well, isn't it?
     And this time, Maximillian did laugh, the father figure amused by 
a fearful child. Of course not, he said. You would have control over 
your every thought, your every mood. Your implant would simply allow 
you access to a greater range of emotions, the skills you would need 
to be a great actor. Think of it as a built-in acting coach.

     "Anyway, I came out here to find you," she continued, her voice 
growing warm again. "Maximillian's waiting for us upstairs."
     "All right." Benjamin turned, willing the vagueness to be gone. 
He took control again, the smooth persona clicking into reality. Turn 
up the charm, boy. It's showtime.

     Grayson dug his toes into the satin, thrusting harder. The woman 
beneath him moaned, winding slippery legs around his hips, whispering 
obscenities under her breath to urge him on. Across the hall, he 
thought, Alicia was probably doing the same thing with the studio 
head, unless the man got into something kinky. Not impossible, but 
Alicia knew how to handle that.
     He jerked again, and again, until it was finished. Naturally, he 
made sure the woman came first -- sometimes, he could even hold back 
until she had two orgasms, once even three. After love (because with 
him, it was love of a sort -- wasn't that programmed into the 
implants?), he slid off to the side, holding her. The after-sex 
comedown that women needed, he told himself. If you were going to do a 
job, do it right.
     In the quiet of the room, he felt the other memories sliding up 
to him, demanding notice. He tried to ignore it, to be the perfect 
actor. Maximillian had said this would happen. Sensory bleedover, he 
called it -- sometimes the implants didn't filter correctly. But 
tonight, Benjamin was too tired to fight. He let them come, shivering 
under their weight:

     Why me, Tim asked.
     Because you're the American ideal, Maximillian had said. They 
want your type, your voice -- they'll love you. Maximillian smiled, 
the cool charm turned up a notch. And because it would make us both a 
great deal of money, he added gently. Tim flushed, he mention of money 
tying a hard knot in his gut. There weren't many scholarships for 
aggie scientists anymore, and he had been living on loans and side 
jobs. And with graduation, the loans would start coming due.
     Five years with the Hiller Group and you would have the money for 
your bills, for a graduate degree, whatever you want, Maximillian 
said. Five years with us, and you will have financial freedom for the 
rest of your life.
     In exchange for five years of slavery, Tim said, horribly 
surprised at a sudden, tiny desire to believe Maximillian. An 
artificial persona was interesting when you were sitting around with 
friends in a safe dorm room, your mind still your own. The thought of 
actually carrying something like that in your head -- 
     I wouldn't call it slavery, Maximillian replied. It's simply 
acting, taken to the ultimate degree.
     The woman eased into sleep. Only then did he slip out of bed, 
gathering his clothes and looking for a bathroom where he could 
shower. Luckily, the bedrooms were connected with a palatial bath. 
Soundproof door, he noted, closing it behind him. Good.
     Alicia was already there, washing herself at the bidet. She 
turned, looking over her shoulder, and gave him a cheerful smile. "How 
was it?"
     "Not bad." Grayson went through his clothes, hanging them on a 
towel rack. "Better than last time. At least she was in pretty good 
shape. Yours?"
     Alicia shrugged. "About the same. He likes to be on bottom."
     Grayson grunted understanding, stepped into the shower to wash 
off the woman's sweat. After a minute, Alicia slipped in. "You mind?"
     "No." He handed her the soap, and received a sudsy washcloth as a 
prize. Like cats on good terms, they washed each other. Asexual, 
friendly.
     He was incapable of feeling any real attraction for Alicia, wet 
and slick as she was. He was sure she felt the same way -- Maximillian 
had suggested that a romance between them wouldn't be in their best 
interest. He reached down to turn off the water, when a showed 
appeared through the steam, watching them.
     "Lovely," the studio head whispered above the water's hiss. 
"Lovely, children."
     Grayson felt Alicia freeze, next to him. Waiting for the next 
suggestion, he thought disjointedly. Sure, we do requests, an insane 
voice sang in his mind.
     "I'd like to see a love scene." The man leaned up against the 
sink, his eyes slipping over them through the moisture. "Now."
     Compliantly, Grayson straightened up. His indifference melted, 
changed to desire. His need was reflected in her eyes, blue and eager, 
as she rubbed up against him, the water from the shower no longer her 
only wet. He grabbed her roughly, the way the studio head wanted him 
to hold her, the water beading on their skin.

     It had been the money that finally convinced him. A guaranteed 
$100,000 the first year; after that, the sky was the limit. Whatever 
his talent could pull in -- a million and up wasn't impossible, they 
had said.
     What if nobody wanted to hire me, he had asked. The 
administrative section of the Hiller Group just laughed. Maximillian 
hasn't picked a loser yet, they told him. Don't worry. You'll be fine.
     And he had. After the surgery, renamed Benjamin Grayson, he had 
co-starred in a fluff sitcom. Neilsens went through the roof -- the 
public loved him. After that, it was a string of steadily bigger 
movies, until he was signed as the star for his current 3-D, American 
Players. Women walked up to him everywhere, offering him their bodies, 
anything he desired. Men wanted to be like him. He was successful, a 
star, just as Maximillian planned.
     And his memories of life as Tim McCarthy were dimming.

     The sun was a faint shimmer over the Hills when he finally got 
home. Good party, he thought, throwing his jacket over the couch. 
Another one for the record books. 
     The events of the night, after the party -- well, they didn't 
involve him, not directly. The sex had started after his first movie, 
with the producer and his wife. Grayson remembered it in a clinical 
way -- the quiet summons from Maximillian, being delivered to the 
hotel by limo. Wrapped up like a birthday present, he thought. It had 
been his first experience with a threesome, the feel of male skin next 
to his own. Maybe that was when the dreams began to bleed over into 
his conscious mind; the ghost of Tim McCarthy screaming in agony, he 
thought morbidly.
     He had asked Maximillian about the sex once, and the agent had 
explained it. These people were important in the Business, and wanted 
intercourse with the godhead of entertainment. Contact with beautiful 
bodies, nothing more. And it was part of their job to supply that 
contact to the right people, he'd added. Every member of the Hiller 
Group did it. Nothing new -- actors and actresses had been doing it 
for years. The implants was an improvement on the situation, a way to 
protect themselves emotionally. Let the implants carry you through, 
Maximillian had suggested before taking him up to that first hotel 
room. They'll know what to do.
     Still musing, he poured himself a glass of orange juice. Standard 
morning ritual -- orange juice, vitamin. More suggestions from 
Maximillian. Thank God we're not shooting until noon, he thought, 
shrugging off the rest of his clothes, standing in his briefs in the 
middle of the living room. At least I can get some sleep.

     He had wanted to talk to Alicia afterwards, but she had gone 
straight home. Instead, Maximillian had been waiting downstairs for 
him. Alicia told me you've been having some problems, he'd said, 
slipping into the father confessor role. Like to talk about it?
     And for the first time since Benjamin had started acting, he 
didn't. He didn't want to talk to Maximillian Hiller, father 
surrogate, chaperone, super agent. He wanted to work the memories out 
on his own. But Maximillian wouldn't hear of it.
     I told you that might happen, he'd said easily, on the way home. 
Your body's immunological system is reacting to the implant. We'll 
have Dr. Berringer look at it tomorrow.
     I don't want him to, Benjamin had said. But Maximillian insisted. 
It'll only confuse you if you allow this to continue, Benjamin, he 
said.
     My name is Tim, he said irrationally.
     Maximillian was silent for a moment. He finally said, in this 
place and time, your name is Benjamin. In two years, when your 
contract is up, you may decide to go back to that name. The agent 
smiled, and Benjamin felt chilled by that smile. Or you may prefer the 
one you have now.
     No, I don't think so. But the words brought a strange, deep 
confusion. His life seemed to be a series of facets, beads strung on a 
chain. Somewhere, those facets had changed, become something new that 
was called Benjamin Grayson. Did that make him real? And what did that 
make Tim McCarthy? Unreal?
     He could imagine the resurrection. The chain would snap, oh yes.
     I can make the appointment for you this afternoon, Maximillian 
said. Just a suggestion, of course.
     Dully, he nodded. Make the appointment.

     The implants were such a little thing, they had said, right after 
the operation. Just to carry you along. And they'd led him into a new 
life, something that Tim McCarthy had never imagined.
     And the strangers? Midnight blending of flesh. It was another 
part of the life. Nothing personal, he could hear Maximillian say -- 
it was only the body.
     Changing his mind, Grayson carried his orange juice out to the 
terrace, cool morning air marbling his skin. He looked over the 
sleeping city and imagined them out there -- the audience that wanted 
him to be what he was now, not the repository of someone they didn't 
know.
     And didn't care about. 
     Suddenly, he felt lonely, wishing for the memory of blue sky 
again. Wanting a past he knew was his own. Knowing that it would never 
be there.

     Oh, I remember. . .
--
MELANIE MILLER (kmrc@midway.uchicago.edu) was raised by wolves on the 
south side of Chicago (you'd be surprised how well canines adapt to 
urban life), and currently performs double duty as an English major at 
Purdue University-Calumet and an administrative assistant at the 
University of Chicago. She is now editing her first novel, "Deus Ex."
--------------------------------------------------------------------

                Half-Moons and Sunfish / JOHN REOLI, JR.

     Mark smoothly whipped the pole backward. The tip bent, wiggled, 
and jerked. He focused on the line out in the water. The struggling 
creature played it, making small S-shapes and the almost-circles of a 
stretched spring. 	 
     "I bet it's a bluegill. Feels like it," he said.
     "It's a sunfish," said Deavon. "I can see it from up here. Guess 
you're lucky today," he said, pulling in his line. 
     Mark reeled the fish up to the clay bank and dragged it out of 
the water. A long, thick strand of green moss had gathered where the 
leader was attached to the line. He could see the orange belly of the 
sunfish blazing through the moss.
     "Watch out for his spines," said Deavon. "It'll hurt like hell if 
he sticks you with one of 'em."
     "I know." 
     He raised the fish by the line, slowly pulled away the moss, and 
tossed it aside. The sunfish arched its fan of spines and curled its 
body in defense. Cautiously, he inspected it to see where it had been 
hooked. The bright afternoon sun reflected off of the sunfish and 
struck Mark in the eyes. He swung the fish away and turned from the 
glare. The fish flopped hotly from the motion. 
     "It's pretty big. Looks about seven or eight inches long." said 
Deavon.
     Mark put the fish on the ground. Expertly, he slid his fingers 
down the line to the fish's mouth and then gave the hook a quick 
twist. There was a slight tearing sound as the barb came out of the 
cold stiff flesh. He stood to kick the muddy sunfish back into the 
water.
     "What are you doin'?" exclaimed Deavon.
     "I'm putting it back in. I just don't want to get one of those 
spines in my hand," said Mark.
     "Are you crazy? Sunfish is good. I'll take it home if you don't 
want to."
     "Ok. You can have it," said Mark.
     He put the fish on one of the metal clips of his chain stringer 
and dropped it into the water beside his pole. It puffed and flapped. 
He could see the red gills swell with each of its breaths. Like a 
runner after a marathon, he thought; then baited his hook and cast 
again. 
     The line hummed like the high voltage wires overhead, and the 
sinker made a muffled pluiff when it hit the water. Mark reeled the 
loose ringlets of slack, rested the fiberglass pole into the Y of a 
stick, and hung a small fluorescent bobbin between the second and 
third eyes of the pole. 
     Not far from shore, the late June heat rose in waves from a 
rusted, metal plate laid across two parallel stone walls. Standing on 
its edge, Deavon whipped a bamboo pole over his head. A red and white 
plastic bobbin, round as a billiard ball, jerked; then plopped onto 
the smooth green water. He put the pole on the plate. The bamboo was 
sandy brown like the cattails on the other side of the reservoir; its 
shadow curved across the ripples of water. Small bluegills cautiously 
approached, then nipped at Deavon's floating line.
     "That's an awfully big bobbin, Deavon. What do you think's gunna 
pull it under, Shamu?" 
     "Catfish. I saw a couple sittin' off of this plate when we was up 
on the road," he said in mild defense.
     "Those fish looked about three feet long. There aren't any 
catfish in here that big. You probably saw carp. Besides, you know 
catfish eat off the bottom. Your bait's hangin' four feet below that 
bobbin and probably fifteen feet off the bottom. No catfish is gunna 
come up there. Some baby bluegill's gunna eat your nightcrawler and 
you won't even know it because that bobbin's too big for him to pull 
under," said Mark.
     "You just worry about your own line. I saw your hook baited with 
velveeta cheese. What are you gunna use next, a ham sandwich?" 
     "Deavon, I'm fishing for trout, not some sewage sucker." 
     "Trout. There ain't no trout in here. Shiiiiit, you're lucky you 
caught that sunfish. What do you know about fishin' anyways? All you 
got up here in Star Junction is this reservoir and the one above it. 
Both of em' full of bluegills. What you need is to come down to 
Whittsett and fish in the river. You wanna catch some fish, that's 
where they are," he boasted.
     Mark knew Deavon was right. There really wasn't any "good 
fishin'" in the reservoirs like before. On days like today, when the 
water was clear, carp could be seen sitting on the bottom off the "tin 
plate," but mostly, the two reservoirs, one overflowing into the 
other, were populated with bluegills and sunfish. Occasionally, a 
catfish or perch would swim through to break the monotony.
     Local fishermen spoke of a bass population returning; every year 
around bass season, "They're comin' back." This kind of talk and 
stubborn locals returned to the small, rain and spring fed lakes; but 
outsiders wouldn't fish there. Not for bass. They would go to the 
Yough river or up to Virgin Run lake: both stocked by the state or a 
local fish and game club.			
     "Why don't you come down to Whittsett and fish in the river? We 
can go tomorrow," said Deavon. 
     "You gotta be crazy. My dad would kill me if he knew I went all 
the way to Whittsett," said Mark.
     "Shiiiiit, he don't have to know. You can leave in the morning, 
fish all day, and be back by six o'clock. He'll think you was up here 
all day." 
     "How would I get there?" asked Mark.
     "Walk. How'd you think?"
     "I couldn't walk there," said Mark.
     "Why not?"
     "You know how this town is. If people see me walking towards 
Whittsett they'll call my mom and tell her."
     "So what," said Deavon.
     "If my mom finds out I went fishing in the river she'll get 
pissed at me and say I could fall in and drown. Then she'd tell my dad 
and I'd have to hear it from him too," said Mark.
     "Man, your folks don't let you do nothin'," said Deavon.
     "Does your mom know you fish up here?"
     "Hell no, you gotta be crazy. I tell her I go way down the river 
past the island to get catfish. The island's too far away for her to 
check," said Deavon.
     "Doesn't anybody call your mom and tell her they saw you coming 
up to Junction?" asked Mark.
     "They can try. We don't got a phone," he said, and turned to Mark 
and smiled. 
     The boys laughed out loud then Mark plainly said, "Look Deavon, I 
just can't go." 
     "Ok," said Deavon. 
     Deavon sure is lucky to live in Whittsett, thought Mark. The 
river's down there, and all those different kinds of fish. Muskie, 
bass, pike, and trout. And things always wash up on its banks. Rusty 
tricycles, cables, and plastic parts of things that look like they 
come from appliances or factory machinery. And he always has something 
from the river. Hunks of blue glass or rusty railroad spikes. 
Sometimes his pockets are full of iron ore pellets that fall out of 
railroad cars. 
     Mrs. Adams almost went crazy the day he rolled a handful of them 
to the front of the room while she was reading to the class.
     "Who's balls are these?" she shouted holding them in her hand. "I 
want to know right now."
     Deavon puffed as he tried to restrain his laughter. Tears 
streaked his face. Beside him, Mark buried his hysteria in a social 
studies book. Under the desk, Deavon handed him some pellets. 
     "I know they're from the river. My son brought these home when he 
was your age," she added.
     "Then maybe they're your son's balls," shouted Scott Stanko from 
the other side of the room. The class roared. Tammy Smith lowered her 
flushed face. 
     With a crooked finger Mrs. Adams pointed toward Scott, but the 
tip of the finger actually pointed right at Timmy Veletti.
     "Listen, young man. I'm warning you. You're already in trouble 
with me for your outburst this morning. I was a WAC in World War II, 
you know," she said to Scott, pronouncing WAC as "wack."
     "What are you pointing at me for? I didn't do anything this 
morning," shouted Timmy. The class laughed even louder than before.
     "No, but you did just now," she said and furiously rushed to him 
in the middle of the room. The students moved their desks in big jerky 
motions to exaggerate the width of her hips as she waddled past. In 
the rush, she seemed to burst from her tight black skirt. 
     She grabbed the back of Timmy's shirt, put her face right up to 
his and said, "I knew someone in the army like you." 
     Just then three more of the rust red pellets bounced off the 
blackboard. The class roared and she stormed out shouting for the 
principal and her old commanding officer. Mark brushed the rusty dust 
from his hands. 
     Around the reservoirs, styrofoam bait cups are all you could 
find, thought Mark. Fishermen from Virgin Run, who stop at the 
reservoir to use up old bait, leave them lying around without even a 
worm or two. Inside the cups, there's only perfect dirt; the kind that 
comes with bought worms: no roots or coal or clay or bits of coke ash, 
just perfect little moist chunks like black cottage cheese.	
     Mark looked at Deavon standing on the plate. He wore cut-off 
shorts and his slight body bent backwards. His stomach stuck out a 
little and appeared to have an inflated stretch, like a round balloon 
pulled from both ends. His rich black skin seemed to absorb the sun, 
soaking it into his body, never to release it. 
     He stands just like those African bushmen, the ones on TV 
specials about Kenya or Botswana, out there on the Serengeti or 
Kalahari. They always look so curious, so concentrated, he thought; 
still, but in motion with small pieces of hide around their waists and 
a stick at their side. What are they looking at? Maybe a lion or 
rhino. No. It had to be something else. Something harder to discern. A 
small deer maybe. Dad always said how hard it was to see deer when he 
went hunting. Maybe it wasn't that different in the Serengeti than it 
was here.	
     "So what are you gunna do?" asked Deavon.
     "Huh?"
     "What are you gunna do about tomorrow?"
     "I don't know."
     "Come on, Mark. You always think of something," said Deavon.
     "Yeah, I... Shit! Here it goes!" Mark leaned on his haunches 
toward the pole. The bobbin wiggled back and forth, raised half an 
inch, then stopped.
     "Gettin' a bite?" Deavon asked.
     "Yeah." 
     "So what are you gunna do?" 
     "Wait for him to hit again, he's just playin' with it now," said 
Mark.
     "No. Not about that, about tomorrow. What are you gunna do?"
     Mark waited silently for the bobbin to move. It remained still. 
Satisfied that the fish wasn't going to strike he turned to Deavon.
     "I can't walk down to Whittsett," said Mark.
     "Why not? You got legs."
     Mark looked sternly at him and tried to explain.
     "Deavon, you know how these people are around here. Some of them 
just like to make trouble. Maybe I'll ride my bike, I don't know. I 
just can't walk down," he said with finality. 
     KEIRHH!
     The bobbin smacked against the pole. Mark grabbed the pole and 
pulled violently.
     "Shit! I missed him," he shouted and began to rapidly reel in the 
line.
     Deavon walked to an edge of the plate and jumped. His leap was a 
little short and his left foot landed in thick mud at the shoreline. 
     "Son-of-a-bitch!" he yelled, and pulled his foot from the mud.
     Mark laughed as Deavon turned his foot to examine the dripping 
sneaker. When he pulled off the shoe, it made the same sucking sound 
coming off his foot as it had coming out of the mud. Deavon removed 
his other shoe and tossed it on the ground. Barefoot, he stepped in 
the water near the stringer and crouched to rinse the mud from his 
shoe. The yellow paleness of his feet and palms was highlighted in the 
water. They're not white or faded like people said, it's as if more of 
the blackness is trying to come through, but can't, thought Mark.
     "You should put it on the plate to let it dry when you're done," 
said Mark. "It's so hot it'll be dry by the time we go home."
     "Yeah, I know. Hey look! There's a mussel out there." said 
Deavon, pointing to a submerged rock.
     "Yeah, I see it. Right by that rock. And there's another one 
behind it." Mark finished reeling and laid the pole on the bank. 
"Let's go out and get them." 
     "We can use them for bait," Deavon added.
     At the rock, the water reached their chests. Deavon went under 
for the first mussel then splashed to the surface with it. Stars of 
water glistened on his tight jet hair. Mark went under and retrieved 
the second. He pushed back his straight wet hair and took Deavon's 
mussel. With one in each hand, he tapped them together. Deavon watched 
closely, but the mussels remained sealed from them.
     A loud engine rumbled on the other side of the reservoir. Wooden 
planks bounced in tandem as a pick-up truck crossed the small, flat 
bridge over by the swamp. The driver gunned the engine and raced up 
the road along the reservoir. The boys turned and saw patches of red 
streaking through the tree line. Past the trees and out in the open 
the driver yelled, "Hey, you motherfuckers!!!" The truck, patched with 
gray primer, continued up the road. Its engine strained as it reached 
the top of the hill. Mark put his head down.
     "Asshole," he muttered.
     Deavon laughed and said, "He don't mean nothin' by it. He's just 
playin' around." 
     "Maybe he is, but he doesn't have to play around with us. 
Besides, who'd want to play around with anybody who has a piece of 
shit truck like that?" said Mark walking to the shore.
     "Yeah, I know what you mean," said Deavon. "But, I'll tell ya' 
something. His truck might be a piece of shit, but he got a good 
lookin' sister."
     "You know that fuckhead?" asked Mark.
     "No, but I know his sister. I see his truck at her house when I 
walk to school. Sometimes I see him working on it. He's too young to 
be her dad, so I figure he must be her brother."
     "How do you know his sister?"
     "From school. You know her," said Deavon.
     "I do?" asked Mark.
     "Yeah, she's a year ahead of us, sixth grader, got black hair, 
kinda' tall. 
     "Whose class is she in?" 
     "Mr. Deiter's." Mark searched his mind as he waited in the knee 
deep water. Impatiently Deavon said, "You know who I'm talkin' about. 
Black haired girl with those big titties that are always bouncing up 
and down the hall."
     "That's Tricia Stueben's brother?" exclaimed Mark, pointing to 
the road with one of the mussels.
     "Yeah. That was Boobin' Stueben's older brother, Steve," said 
Deavon.
     "He looks kind of old to have a sister in sixth grade. Is he a 
senior?" 
     "No. He's out. Just works on his truck and drives around 
bothering people," said Deavon. In the distance, the engine rumbled 
and became louder as it approached. The two boys looked at each other 
and faced the road. Rumbling down, right on top of them, the truck 
appeared from around a turn. A long haired, bearded man in the 
passenger side leaned out of the window and shouted, "Fuckin' nigger!! 
Go back to Whittsett where you fuckin' belong!"
     Mark threw one of the mussels. It missed the truck and spun 
across the road.
     Stueben gunned the engine. The truck raced red and gray back 
through the trees. The planks bounced in tandem. Loudly, Ba Boom!
     Deavon got out of the water and found an old coffee can. He 
filled it and spilled water on the plate two or three times. The water 
dried quickly over the hot metal, but cooled it enough so he could 
walk across. He stepped up onto the plate and sat in a puddle where 
the water had collected near the edge. The metal banged against the 
stone.
     The boys fished silently for the rest of the day. Using the other 
mussel as bait, Deavon caught two or three bluegill and a very small 
perch. Mark caught another sunfish, but lost a catfish caught with one 
of Deavon's nightcrawlers. In the warm water, their fish lay curled 
and stiff. Only the tiny perch, the most recent catch, lived on the 
stringer. Snapping violently, it made a gentle splash.
     Mark leaned back on his elbows and looked up. Deavon sat stiff 
armed; tilted back on his hands. His legs hung flaccidly over the edge 
of the plate. He's still looking out, ahead; thought Mark.
     "So Deavon, you wanna get out of here?" he said through a loud 
yawn. 
     "Yeah. Let's go home." he said and silently stretched. 
     They brought in their lines and gathered up their gear. Mark 
surveyed the ground for any hooks and bobbins that might have fallen 
from his vest; then, he put it on. Its rough canvas stung his 
sunburned shoulders. 
     Deavon wrapped his line around the base of the bamboo pole and 
put the red and white bobbin in his pocket. The large ball bulged 
tightly against the denim. Looks like old man Sweeney's goiter, 
thought Mark. He jumped off the plate onto the cracked clay bank and 
walked over to Mark.
     "How are you gunna take your fish home?" asked Mark, holding the 
stringer.
     "With this." Deavon reached in his pocket and pulled out a length 
of blue nylon cord. 
     "I'll run this through their mouth, out their gills, and carry 
em' like this." Holding the ends of the rope, he showed Mark how they 
would hang. 
     "That'll work; but you're not gunna keep that perch, are you?" 
asked Mark.
     "Hell yeah, I'm gunna keep it."
     "Deavon, you can't be serious. It isn't more than three inches 
long," exclaimed Mark.
     "So." 
     "So, how are you gunna eat it? You'll cut most of it away when 
you clean it."
     "No I won't. I'll give it to my grandmother. She grinds them up 
and makes fried fish cakes."
     "All of it? Won't she cut off the head and the tail?"
     "I don't know. All I know is she tells me to bring home all the 
fish I catch and them cakes is gooood," Deavon said smiling.
     Up on the road, like cut-outs of half-moons made in grade school, 
one black, one white, they moved in a common sky. One passed behind 
the other, grabbed at the sagging limbs of a choke-cherry tree; the 
other crossed over and tormented a garden spider webbed in a barbed 
wire fence. At the plank bridge by the swamp Deavon turned to Mark and 
asked, "So, what are you gunna do about tomorrow?" 
     "Go down to Whittsett," answered Mark.
     "Are you gunna ride your bike?" 
     "No. I'll walk down in the morning." 
     As they crossed the bridge, the planks wobbled under their feet. 
Softly, Ba Boom.

--
JOHN REOLI, JR. (jr48+@andrew.cmu.edu) is a senior English major at 
Carnegie Mellon University.
--------------------------------------------------------------------

               To Comprehend the Nectar / LOUIE CREW

                                   1

     I did not expect Robert Martin to die. I fled The Witherspoon 
School soon thereafter. That's not the gamble I thought I took when it 
began. 
     Dr. Geoffrey Smitherman sat straight in a chair embossed "W & N". 
I sank in leather. The cotton of my new suit brushed a panel of the 
empire secretary which separated us. I had to tilt my head slightly to 
look him in the eye. We did not yet have air-conditioning. Early 
August. Not even a breeze. 
     "Mr. Smith, can you also teach Senior Bible?" he asked. 
     "Well, sir, I suppose I could, but I would prefer to teach only 
literature. I have finished my thesis on Shakes..." 
     "We will give you plenty of that, but we need someone to take the 
Bible class. Mr. Foxworthy retired in May. I see that you double-
minored in religion and New Testament Greek at Evangel University. 
Foxworthy lacked rapport. He talked about missionaries and heathens. 
Quite candidly, our boys take the course mainly to impress the 
colleges. Bible on their transcript distinguishes us as a 'private' 
school. It also alerts admissions people that our graduates understand 
allusions." 
     "I could do it. It won't be a crip course though. I'll teach it 
as literature, not as Sunday School fare." 
     "Fine, Lee. I think you'll get along nicely here, especially 
since you attended The O'Gorman School." 
     "But O'Gorman is Witherspoon's biggest rival."
     "You know a fine Southern boarding school first-hand. New faculty 
who went to public school often don't understand us. Our reverence. 
Not the fanatic kind, but you know what I mean. I believe Dr. O'Gorman 
wrote me that you won the Bonner Award 'For Unselfish Service' at 
O'Gorman. Did you not?" 
     "Yes, sir." 
     "Good, can you attend faculty orientation the last week of 
August?" 
     "You mean I get the job?!" 
     "The boys won't arrive until Tuesday after Labor Day, except for 
the football team." 
     My new trousers peeled from the chair as I tried to rise. 
     "Thank you, sir. I am much obliged." 
     "But you haven't asked what salary we will give you," he smiled. 
     "Oh." I blushed. "That's not important. I'm sure you will treat 
me justly. It's the teaching that interests me, not the money." 
     "Excellent attitude!" he said. "Welcome to the Witherspoon 
family." 

                                   2 

     Later I learned how much Dr. Geoffrey Smitherman valued the word 
family. Because I had not pushed, he began me at the rate he gave to 
those without a master's. 
     But I had not exactly leveled with Dr. Smitherman either. I 
doubted that he would hire me if he knew that I no longer believed in 
God, or knew that at least I thought I didn't. Four years at Evangel, 
the world's largest bigotry institution, unconvinced me. I dropped my 
intention to preach and took up literature as a better venue for "a 
living sacrifice." 
     O'Gorman, had delivered me from a bad public school into a 
community of others who enjoyed homework. But teaching as a graduate 
student at a large state university taught me that too few others 
value their brains. I had found such people at O'Gorman; I might find 
others at Witherspoon. 
     I tease fiercely, and teach best by what I call "creative 
intimidation." Boys liked my classes. Since I began school early, at 
age 5, I was only four years older than some of them. Many got close, 
especially the brighter ones. 
     But my best student, Robert Martin, rarely said a word, except in 
class, where he shined. At O'Gorman, I had groveled too often. 
     Robert's football teammates teased him about his early lead in my 
class, and would importune me to tell how soon I would post the grades 
for the latest Bible test. Robert himself never asked. Was it 
arrogance? Robert seemed to presume that he would best his closest 
rival, Edgar Bell; and on every test he did, by at least three points. 
     Robert was prefect to second-formers in the Field House, but he 
came to see his classmates on Senior Hall often and could have dropped 
by with them to my apartment, had he chosen to. His friend Philip 
Smethurst, heir to a textile fortune, visited often enough, and even 
brought others, especially when I bought one of the first stereo sets. 
Sometimes second-formers, not even in my classes, came with him. But 
Robert never once did. Even at the refectory, he seemed not to notice. 
He didn't avoid me, just didn't notice and passed right by the faculty 
tables without a nod. 
     The perpetual shadow of his black beard made Robert seem older 
than the others, but not sensual. Even now, over twenty-five years 
later, and on much maturer terms with myself, I cannot imagine myself 
in darkness peeking out blinds to look at him, as night after night I 
waited to see either of his classmates, the two prefects in the next 
building, shirtless, scratch balls. 
     Robert triggered fantasies less sensual. They had something to do 
with power, not his modest skills as a tackle, but his ability to stay 
with a commitment until he won.
     At O'Gorman, I had escaped playing sports by becoming the 
athletic trainer. At games I was a glorified water boy, but after 
hours, with tongue depressors I swabbed many a hero's jock itch with 
slabs of what looked like peanut butter and smelled like axle grease. 
I aimed deep heat at others' sore buns; ground analgesics into others' 
shoulders. 
     Four years of bowl fanaticism at "Bigotry U." made me an apostate 
to sports religion. I worried that The Witherspoon School might revive 
that. Since new teachers often have to coach j-v teams, I made a point 
during orientation to visit the varsity workouts, hoping to influence 
my luck. 
     It paid off. At a break in football practice, I asked a coach, 
"What inning is it?" I got to advise the staff of the student 
newspaper. 
     But Rubbings no longer threatened me. By then I had learned to 
live with my secrets, to channel most energy into books and music as 
easily as tackles thrust it into another's gut. Besides, The Sound and 
the Fury and enough other works I admired had committed me to suicide 
before I would ever act on the passions that surged in the dark as I 
peeked out the blinds. 
     Instead, I feared the way that sports sucked me into their 
definition of courage as essentially physical, an endurance of pain 
and risk according to clear rules. That's why I never liked Hemingway. 
But so pervasive is the point of view, I knew I could easily fall back 
into thinking that only good athletes can win courage, like a team 
trophy at the annual steak banquet. In that world, waterboys like me 
live, if at all, off-sides, out-of-bounds. 
     I preferred to read "A Certain Slant of Light" and blast Mahler's 
Ninth down Senior Hall. 

                                   3 

     Robert Martin appeared to respect my terms. He never volunteered 
to give a talk at chapel, though faculty often recommended such 
speakers for the Ivy League. He never joined the glee club to sip 
sherry in the director's bachelor apartment and sit in the bachelor's 
chair monogrammed "V." Robert kept to himself his athleticism and any 
other religion he might have had; studied rigorously; and never made 
less than a 96 on any of my tests. He worked less hard for other 
teachers. 
     The more I learned about The Witherspoon School, the more I 
admired Robert Martin. Witherspoon's trustees had given Geoffrey 
Smitherman his "Dr." easily, since they also served as trustees of a 
nearby Baptist women's college. Dr. Smitherman's "publications" turned 
out to be several editions of a workbook on sentence-diagramming, 
taught in no other school and only in our own Form One. At his autumn 
tea, I examined a dozen of the impressive leather classics in Dr. 
Smitherman's living room and found not one with the pages cut. 
     Claiborne was easier to like, if not respect. Dr. Smitherman held 
the title "President," but Mr. Claiborne, as "Headmaster" actually ran 
The Witherspoon School. Claiborne did not even try to mask his 
pretensions. 
     "What did you buy that buggy for, Smith? Do you drive it with a 
rubber band?" he teased me publicly when he first spotted my new 
Falcon, parked so all could see it, by the new Demster Dumpster. 
     I had gone $2,100 into hock to buy it -- $2,800 after interest -- 
and I earned only $3,600 for the 9 months, plus my room and board. 
     "Seriously, Lee," he added when he invited me to join him and 
Mrs. Claiborne at their table in the refectory, "you will never know 
that you have arrived until you sit behind the wheel of a big car, 
smoking a cigar, knowing that it belongs to you." 
     I added Babbitt to the reading list for Senior Bible. Students 
could earn up to 10 extra points for their annual grade (at half a 
point per book) for each work that they tested well on, in an oral 
examination. 
     "God makes 100. I make 99. The highest you can make, 98," I 
explained. 
     Robert put all 10 of his points into storage by the end of the 
first semester, though he never needed them. 
     Amazingly, no boy ever let out that I had put Dr. King's Strides 
Toward Freedom on the list; some even read it, and those who did not, 
still seemed pleased to have a teacher that had heard of the outside 
world. 
     On Saturdays when anyone went to town, he had to pass a 
Hospitality Tent which the KKK had set up in a mill village. 
Management had closed the mill and moved the work to Hong Kong and 
Taiwan when local labor organized. News about sit-ins in the Carolinas 
gave the white unemployed something different to get worked up about. 
     Dr. Smitherman addressed the new unrest the same way that he had 
addressed the "Race Problem" every year for over thirty years. He 
talked at chapel about "Old Joe," the barber to boys when a young 
"Mr." Smitherman first came to The Witherspoon School. 
     "Joe is one of the finest human beings I ever met." Dr. 
Smitherman modulated a slight tremolo. "Mayors and governors would do 
well to imitate his honesty and his good humor. He loves Witherspoon 
boys. He helps us turn them into Witherspoon men. You should respect 
good Negroes. Don't stir up a fuss like unfortunate rednecks. If you 
treat the Negro kindly, the Negro will serve you well. 
     "Of course Old Joe would be the first to say that God does not 
intend for the races to mix socially. Right, Joe?" 
     Venerable Joe Thompson, now in his eighties, hauled out of 
retirement for this paid annual production, smiled generously and 
said, "Yes, sir. You are a good man, Dr. Smitherman!" He would smile 
to the audience and say, "Dr. Smitherman is a good man, boys, a good, 
good man." 
     "Boys," Dr. Smitherman would close, "Joe confirms what you learn 
when you study 'Mending Wall,' the great poem by Robert Frost: 'Good 
fences make good neighbors.' " 

                                   4 

     "He can't go behind his father's saying? What's 'behind' it?" I 
would ask my fifth-formers in the next period, given Dr. Smitherman's 
own prompt to teach the poem. 
     As far as I know, they never reported to Dr. Smitherman how I 
used Frost's own words to mince his interpretation. Claiborne probably 
would have enjoyed it if he could have understood it. I felt that he 
didn't like Dr. Smitherman and impatiently waited for Dr. Smitherman 
to retire so that he could replace him in the President's Mansion. 
Perhaps I misjudged him. 
     I learned later that few boys or faculty approached Claiborne for 
anything, except to listen. Isolated in my books and music, I did not 
notice their reticence and had to learn the collective wisdom on my 
own. 
     I had no discipline problems in class. Students respected my work 
ethic. If a boy ever did sass, I would squelch him with invincible 
sarcasm: "John, you are very perceptive and therefore will understand 
how important it is that you meet me here for two hours after class to 
analyze your perception." 
     But in the dark, after lights-out, I could not defend myself with 
words. As the newest faculty member of three on Senior Hall, I had a 
hard time when the boys tested me. 
     They usually started off playful enough. Birdcalls. Frog croaks. 
But I too soon took bait and shouted, "Who made that noise!?" or 
guessed wildly, "Poindexter, the next time you do that you'll sit in 
study hall for a week!" 
     This licensed the circus as clearly as if I had walked to the 
center ring. By three o'clock in the morning I might have nabbed three 
culprits, but the hall would remain littered with water bombs and 
other trash. Everyone, highly entertained, would wait for my next turn 
on duty. 
     Next I decided to ignore them, not to take even the first bait. 
Let the menagerie built to whatever crescendo their ears could bear, I 
would wait fortressed in my room. They gave up after about an hour, 
but resented me. My ploy might have worked if I used it when they 
first played, but now I was a spoil-sport. They turned mean, to jew-
baiting. 
     Rabinowitz played right into their trap. The moment someone made 
the wailing sounds used in the movie version of "The Diary of Anne 
Frank," Rabinowitz would run out of his room and bang on my door. They 
loved it better than water bombs. 
     I would stand in the dark hall for hours, but no one ever made 
the noises from a range close enough for me to catch him. 
     During Thanksgiving, I searched for evidence. With a master key, 
I crept through all 45 rooms on the hall. Lawrence's Lady Chatterly 
and Miller's Tropics had only recently broken the censors' backs, but 
the porn these rich boys sported would not be marketed publicly for 
another decade. 
     I stared for a long time, especially when I discovered in the 
drawer of a weightlifter the pictures of men having sex with men. If I 
had known such pictures existed outside my mind, I might have 
predicted Poindexter would have a stash. He often jerked off at the 
late bed-check; sometimes he waved! Yet he hoarded only dirty letters 
from his girl friend, no pictures at all. 
     Partly on instinct, partly because a box of my books had pushed 
the back out of my own laundry bin, I decided to check the backs of 
bins in several boys' rooms. I hit the jackpot on my first try. It 
opened to a casino. 
     Yes, as in mine, the back of the laundry bin opened into a low, 
narrow place under the roof, large enough to squeeze maybe two people. 
But behind the boys' bin, unlike mine, the narrow space opened into a 
much larger one that ran the full length of the shower room midway 
down the hall. In this secret space boys had placed a rug, several 
cases of whiskey, three slot machines, and enough other paraphernalia 
to keep up to fifteen gambling at any one time. 
     Even though I routinely eavesdropped, I had not expected anything 
like this. Once I had overheard a prefect on the hall say that the 
governor's son, a Form Two boy who lived in the Field House, had lost 
$1,000 in one card game, but I presumed that the prefect exaggerated, 
or referred to something that had happened during the previous summer. 
     Knowing that this evidence could blow the top off Witherspoon's 
reputation as one of the finest prep schools in the South, I went 
cautiously to Claiborne's Office. Closed for the holiday. I spotted 
his Ninety-Eight parked in front of the gym and trekked through the 
rain to his apartment at the back. Mrs. Claiborne, sensing my urgency, 
asked about my family, pointed to some fruitcake, and quickly left me 
alone with her husband. 
     Claiborne did not interrupt once during the whole time I told him 
what I had discovered. I omitted the parts about water bombs and jew-
baiting, even the part about my plot to check the boys' rooms. I 
fibbed a bit; I said that a stranger had telephoned to tell me to look 
under the eaves. 
     Claiborne didn't question me. He didn't take notes. He just 
listened. For half an hour he listened. 
     After I had stopped, Claiborne said, "Now, Lee, have you told 
anyone else?" 
     "No, sir." 
     "Don't." 
     "Yes, sir." 
     "You've done a good job. Now let me take care of it completely. 
Do you understand?" 
     He already stood at the door. 
     "Well, yes, sir," I lied. 
     "Good." 
     He never mentioned it again. 

                                   5

     I've told this story out loud at least a dozen times over the 
past quarter of a century, usually to close friends, but sometimes 
even to my classes. Since I don't know you, I'm pleased and a little 
surprised you've gotten this far. I never thought that in print I 
would risk sounding like Edith Bunker when she loses her main point to 
give you ten interesting minor ones instead. 
     But I never have come to terms myself with the main point. I know 
the minor ones add up to something big. Maybe you can tell. 
     I can easily conclude the part about the jew-baiting. By the time 
the boys returned from Thanksgiving, for the two weeks of term 
examinations, they had too much work even to think of late-night play. 
Then after Christmas, that seemed like another dispensation. 
     Until April. Mistakenly I left my copy of Emily Dickinson in my 
apartment. Only honor students could study in their rooms during the 
day, and no one expected a teacher about. Philip Smethurst ambled past 
the showers, his back to me, and as he passed Rabinowitz's room, he 
let out the moan from "The Diary of Anne Frank." As much to my 
surprise as his, I pounced on Smethurst before he ever saw me, lifted 
him off the floor by his jacket, and held him against the wall, my 
fist pressed into his stomach. 
     I don't remember any words. I just raged. I saw him only once 
after that, when he gave the Valedictory. 
     I learned by the grapevine that after the summer break began, The 
Witherspoon School notified the parents of several of underclassmen 
that their sons could not return. Claiborne placed in The O'Gorman 
School the one senior who flunked, and the governor's son. 
     Viewed from a quarter of a century, Claiborne's seems a much 
cleverer way to handle the gambling than to panic as I had done with 
the water bombs, even though I still do not respect him. 
     When Claiborne succeeded Dr. Smitherman, he too metamorphosed 
into "Dr." and built a garage beside the President's Mansion for his 
new Lincoln. I heard he inherited even the leather, uncut books. 
     I understand that it took a few more complete turnovers to rid 
the place of all hints of scandal when marijuana hit in the early 
seventies; but The Witherspoon School survives, its good reputation 
intact. It has initiated even a few black students into reverence, not 
just football. 
     "Old Joe" Thompson and Dr. Geoffrey Smitherman eventually died, 
confirming my theologian friend's emendation, "So long as there's 
death, there's hope." 
     When I fled, I taught first at an Episcopal school outside the 
South. From there to London to teach poorer boys, in the slums. From 
there to my Ph.D. and teaching adults in college. 
     Each year at its Commencement, The Witherspoon School bestows 
several coveted awards, including the Bible Prize, given in perpetuity 
by the family of an early alumnus who died of a cold his first month 
as a missionary to Nigeria, to "that boy who in the view of the Senior 
Bible Teacher best demonstrates a rigorous understanding of Holy 
Scripture." I surprised no one when I posted the grades for the final 
examination outside the classroom: everyone had guessed that Robert 
Martin would win it. 
     Then Claiborne called me to the President's tiny office for my 
second and final visit. Dr. Smitherman sat high in the "W & N" chair. 
Claiborne leaned against the wall, stoking a cigar. I sank in leather. 
     "Mr. Smith, you have taught well for your first year," Dr. 
Smitherman said. 
     "Thank you. Next year I expect to revise..." 
     "We hope that you will cooperate with us so that you can teach 
here next year," Dr. Smitherman said. 
     "Cooperate?" 
     "It's about the Bible Prize, Lee," Claiborne blurted, ever 
impatient with Dr. Smitherman's delicacy. 
     "That's easy," I said. "Everyone knows that Robert Martin has won 
it. He has led all year, and I posted his final grade, a 99, which 
normally I reserve...." 
     "Not easy," Dr. Smitherman said, softly. 
     "Sir?" 
     "We cannot tell you any details. You must trust us. But Robert 
Martin has done something we prefer not to mention, ever. He cannot 
win the Bible Prize or any other." 
     "But he already has. I have posted the grades...." 
     "Lee," Mr. Claiborne said as paternally as when he advised me 
what kind of automobile to aspire to, "no one has ever said that the 
Bible Prize has to go to the boy with the highest score. You may 
freely consider other factors, like character. I believe that Edgar 
Bell scored second highest. He plans to preach. Robert Martin will 
study business at Shackville State." 
     "Mr. Smith, you have taught a good course. We hope that you will 
cooperate." Dr. Smitherman urged, not looking me in the eye. 

                                   6

     Every other time that I have told this story, I have used it as a 
model for endurance not orchestrated, for risk without clear rules. 
     I have explained to all earlier audiences, as I told you at the 
beginning, that I left The Witherspoon School soon thereafter. 
Everyone charitably assumes that I walked away from Witherspoon with 
this courage of a different kind. 
     But I didn't. Actually I stayed on for two more short years. 
Edgar Bell won the prize and went to Evangel. Robert Martin never got 
to Shackville. He drowned in a sailing accident two months later. 
     I remember driving my black Falcon to the muddy lot behind the 
Field House. Boys and their families sloshed everywhere. I saw him 
several cars away, loading his gear. 
     My face said: "They pressured me; they made me; I'm sorry." 
     Robert seemed to see. I can't be sure. He waved from the gate of 
his family's station wagon, shrugged his shoulders, and winked.

--
LOUIE CREW (lcrew@andromeda.rutgers.edu) is an associate professor in 
the Academic Foundations Department of Rutgers University. He is the 
author of Lutibelle's Pew (Dragon Disks, 1990), Sunspots (Lotus Press, 
1976), Midnight Lessons (Samisdat, 1987) and more than 865 other 
publications. His work appears in several recent anthologies, 
including Gay Nineties: Contemporary Gay Fiction (Crossing Press, 
1991) and New Men, New Minds: Free Parking (The Spirit That Moves Us, 
1990).
--------------------------------------------------------------------

          Multiplication and the Devil / DANIEL K. APPELQUIST

     The rain poured steadily down on top of the one-room schoolhouse. 
To David, it sounded like the world was crashing down around him, and 
the normal routine of morning multiplication tables proved to be 
little comfort. David was smallish for his age, with sandy hair that 
didn't quite cover his gray eyes, eyes that were now closed tightly 
shut.
     "David?"
     The eyes sprang suddenly open in an expression that was a mixture 
of fear and surprise. "Yes, Mrs. Wadlemire?" The words came almost 
unconsciously, as his head swiveled to survey his surroundings. He saw 
only faces, turned towards him in amusement. There were only fifteen 
other children in the morning session, but to David it seemed like the 
entire population of some child-inhabited planet was staring him down, 
taunting him, making fun of his stupidity, his ignorance.
     "I asked you: Would you care to recite the second row from the 
table?" She pointed a stiff, bony finger to the chart which hung on 
the wall. Conical hat and flowing black robes only materialized 
afterward in a brief flash.
     "Uh..." Hat and robes were suddenly gone, as were the millions 
upon millions of rapt watchers. All was replaced with the suddenly 
confining space of the small classroom, rain still descending in a 
cacophony above his head. Mrs. Wadlemire, now clothed in her 
traditional blue dress, stared at him expectantly.
     "Two times one is two," he began.
     One by one, his classmates started to look back towards the front 
of the room.
     "Two times two is four," he continued in his well-practiced 
monotone. The beating of the rain on the roof seemed to intensify. 
Mrs. Wadlemire may have said something. Something to do with fish, 
perhaps. Whatever it was, it was droned out by the incessant downpour.
     "Two times three is six." At this point, the lights went out, 
shrouding the room in a sort of gray darkness, the color of rainy 
skies. Through the skylight, David could see a dark shape moving 
above. David squinted to see what it might be through the continually 
renewed layer of water, but its form remained indefinable.
     "Two times four is eight." A face! For an instant, he could 
definitely make out a face, staring down at him from the otherwise 
featureless gray rectangle of the skylight. The face was full of 
strange, mixed-up features, and yet had been strangely familiar to 
him, as if it was one he was supposed to recognize.
     "Two times five is ten." He looked around to see if anyone else 
had seen it, but the other children were all gone, replaced with 
cardboard cutouts, decorated with crayons. Only Mrs. Wadlemire seemed 
untouched by this strange transformation, as if whoever had affected 
it had let her be, out of disgust. Her face, now framed in harsh 
shadows, seemed like an amalgamation of the worst traits of mankind. 
In it he could see hatred, cruelty, as well as a host of other, 
equally undesirable traits.
     "Two times six is twelve," still he recited on, as if any 
deviation from the norm might alert them to his presence; the monsters 
that stole children and replaced them with cutouts. A chill started to 
work its way up his spine. He could feel the presence of something 
behind him. A dank, musty odor assaulted his nose, almost eliciting a 
sneeze. He did not turn, for he knew that to do so would mean certain 
death. The whatever-it-was that he had seen on the roof had definitely 
made its way down here, somehow switching the other children in the 
class while he wasn't looking.
     "Two times seven is..." he faltered. The answer was on the tip of 
his tongue. He had recited the same phrase over fifty times, but today 
it stuck in his throat like chunky peanut butter. He felt the presence 
behind him closing, closing on its target like some great snake, now 
ready for the kill. If only he could remember!
     "David..." The voice of Mrs. Wadlemire cut through his 
concentration. Why didn't she do something? Was she blind? Didn't she 
realize that her class now consisted of a host of badly drawn 
replicas, one child and an unmentionable beast? Perhaps she had been 
in on it from the beginning!
     "Fourteen," the momentary distraction of these thoughts was 
enough to dislodge the word from his throat and cough it up. In the 
presence of the word, the creature behind him seemed to shrink back, 
as if it couldn't bear to hear it. Mrs. Wadlemire, now blindfolded, 
holding a calculator in one hand and a chalkboard eraser in the other, 
smiled a faint smile and shifted inside the folds of her white robe.
     "Two times eight is sixteen," he went on, causing the thing to 
shrink back even further (had it emitted a gasp of terror, just then?) 
One by one, the cardboard children were replaced with their flesh-and-
blood equivalents.
     "Two times nine is eighteen." He definitely heard a stifled cry 
from the creature (he dared not look back yet, lest he be turned into 
cardboard and become unable to recite the last verse of the deadly 
spell). Under the fluorescent lights, even Mrs. Wadlemire seemed to 
radiate a goodness, a quality which David found to be quite at odds 
with her Nazi armband and smart officer's cap.
     "Two times ten is twenty."
     With this last incantation, the beast shrieked in agony. In its 
death-throes, it managed to overturn a table, and set a globe 
careening down the aisle towards the blackboard with its immense 
claws, now waving randomly in the air. When David finally looked back 
at it, it had almost shrunk out of site, seeking to hide, in its 
disgrace, behind the plastic jack o'lantern.
     David sat back down behind his desk, his job completed, the 
monster vanquished. Even Mrs. Wadlemire, now clothed in her 
traditional blue dress, would have to thank him. He had, after all, 
saved her class from a fate most probably worse than death. But she 
only looked at him, with her not-disgusted expression and said, "Very 
good, David."
     Hmm. Some thanks that was.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

                 A Handful of Dust / DANIEL K. APPELQUIST

     Rembrandt looked out of his tenth floor window and crooned softly 
to the parrot perched on his wrist. The city lay outside, a strange 
mix of traditional, postmodern and futurist styles, now bathed in the 
light of the noonday suns, but Rembrandt's thoughts were elsewhere. 
His thoughts, specifically, were of Picasso. It had been ten days now 
since Picasso had ventured out into that cityscape and they had heard 
nothing. Not a peep.
     Monet looked up from the table and spoke. "Anything?"
     It took a few seconds for Rembrandt to respond, but his answer 
was quick enough not to provoke a second asking. "No. Just the same." 
He turned, and the parrot left his arm, flying off towards some 
unknown perch. "Do you really care?"
     Monet sat back in his sparkling chair and gave Rembrandt an icy 
stare, but remained silent.
     "What if he never comes back?" Rembrandt continued.
     "He will."
     "But what if he doesn't. You certainly wouldn't shed a tear."
     Monet rolled his eyes. "Picasso and I have had our differences, 
but that's no reason for me to want him out of the picture."
     Rembrandt sat down, and as he did so, a chair came into existence 
under him. His eyes were still locked on Monet's. Increasingly of 
late, he was beginning to believe that Monet was a bit off-color. At 
first, he had seemed simply withdrawn, but his arrogant attitude now 
betrayed something Rembrandt detested, something that was only now 
becoming apparent. "If he doesn't come back, what are you going to 
do?"
     Monet's collar, normally green, suddenly glowed bright red, 
betraying his emotions to Rembrandt even if he would not openly 
display them. "I will remain here. I'm perfectly content to stay 
here."
     "You're not curious about what lies outside the door?"
     "I've seen it. You've seen it. You were just looking at it!"
     "And that doesn't interest you?"
     "Frankly, no."
     Rembrandt looked away, disgusted. After a second or two, he 
looked back, his eyes gleaming with purpose. "Well it interests me. If 
Picasso doesn't come back by tomorrow, I'm going out after him."
     "Very well."
     "I'm tired of being cooped up in here like some sort of animal," 
Rembrandt continued, ignoring the other's response, still feeling the 
need to justify his decision.
     "Fine."
     "Has it occurred to you that that's all we are: Animals, 
performing for someone else's pleasure?"
     Monet's tone grew brusque. "As a matter of fact, it has. I've 
spent a great deal of time thinking about who we are and how we got in 
this unlikely situation and, as I told Picasso, my conclusion is that 
it is best not to think about it." With this he looked back at 
Rembrandt, challenging him for some sort of rebuttal. Rembrandt 
snorted defiantly, got up, and left.
     The sparkling remains of the chair slowly disintegrated as Monet 
looked back towards the table and his book.
     A person reading a story might expect certain elements. For one, 
they might expect a setting which they could relate to. Certainly they 
would not want to be thrust into a cold, surreal universe where the 
characters are named after famous painters and chairs appear and 
disappear, seemingly at will. Any reader expecting this sort of 
textual trickery would be brutally disappointed by most modern 
fiction. In fact, it was just such disappointment which caused Monet 
to look away from his book after a short while and seek some other 
form of entertainment. He stood and walked slowly over to the window. 
As he turned his back, table, chair and book melted into nothingness.
     The window presented him with the same shifting scene. Much of 
the cityscape lay below him now but a few of the buildings jutted up 
towards the sky. Many of the buildings lumbered along at a slow to 
moderate pace, some stopping momentarily in their journey to allow 
others to pass. As he watched, a massive stone cathedral slowly ground 
to a halt to make way for a squat, round building which looked like it 
might also serve some religious purpose. There were never any people 
to be seen in the city.
     Monet leaned out towards the window and looked down. Below, the 
river was reasonably quiet. On some days, massive amounts of debris 
could be seen floating down it. Today, it merely streamed past, brown 
and silty, making oval patches of bubbly froth around the 
streetlights. For the first time, Monet thought it bizarre that there 
should be streetlights on a river, but this thought was dismissed from 
his mind by a sharp noise.
     "Let me in!"
     It was Picasso. It was definitely the muffled voice of Picasso.
     Rembrandt sat up in bed, his eyes springing open.
     "Let me in!"
     There was no mistaking the voice. He sprang up and walked to the 
edge of the room, the wall parting as he passed through it. A story 
which switches back and forth between two or more characters' points 
of view can be very confusing indeed. The Parrot, being deaf, heard 
nothing.
     The main door was the only object in the building which actually 
required some effort to affect. When Rembrandt arrived, Monet was 
already there, eying the circular stone carefully.
     "Why haven't you started?" Rembrandt asked accusingly.
     "You know very well that I couldn't even make a start by myself. 
It takes two."
     Rembrandt knew this, but he needed some excuse to abuse Monet 
nonetheless. He hated himself for this need but he made no outward 
apologies. He moved towards the massive stone that covered the main 
entry way and began to push. "Come on!"
     Monet followed suit, muttering something under his breath. Soon 
the slab of stone was rolling under their combined pressure. A small 
crack of the doorway was uncovered. This crack slowly grew in size 
until a small man stepped through, a canvas bag slung over one 
shoulder. Outside, they could see his makeshift canoe tethered to the 
railing of the stair. None talked until the stone was set securely 
back into place. When the task was accomplished, Monet and Rembrandt 
looked their colleague over in frank interest.
     "Well, don't you have any questions?" Picasso's zealous voice 
broke the silence.
     "You're quite a sight," Monet commented with more than a hint of 
cynicism in his voice.
     "You two are quite a sight yourselves! A sight for sore eyes."
     "Didn't you find anyone else?" Rembrandt asked cautiously.
     "No one."
     "No one?"
     "Not a soul."
     Rembrandt paled. "Then we are truly alone."
     Picasso walked over to him, trailing mud and silt from his feet. 
"Don't lose hope yet! I didn't cover even a fraction of the city. The 
city is even more immense than it looks from the window. It will take 
years to explore it all," but as soon as the words escaped Picasso's 
lips he knew that they had been a mistake. Rembrandt was like a small 
child. His urge for instant gratification overpowered his reason and 
his logic. The thought that exploring the city might take years or 
even weeks filled him only with grief.
     "That long?" he sighed and hung his head.
     "But now we are armed with a weapon." Picasso reached into his 
back and pulled forth a paper scroll. Spreading it out on the floor of 
the entryway, he declared "this, as far as I can tell, is a map. A map 
of the city."
     Monet scoffed. "But that's plainly ridiculous, Picasso. As we 
have observed, the city is a moving landscape, it never remains 
constant. How can one make a map of such a place?"
     Picasso waved his hands in the air as Monet spoke, obviously 
quite excited. "That's what I first thought, but I found this map 
infinitely more useful than I first expected it to be."
     "Do you mean that it changes with the city?" Rembrandt queried, 
wide eyes turning to stare at the unfurled scroll.
     "I've never actually seen it change, but it always seems to show 
basically the correct configuration. While travelling back from here," 
he indicated a position on the map "I made it a point to stare at the 
map continuously for a good while. I never caught it changing, but 
somehow, the positions of the buildings, even though they were moving, 
were always correct."
     Rembrandt looked to Picasso in wonder and then stared back at the 
map. Monet simply started on the long trek up the winding stairs to 
their tenth floor apartment. Picasso rolled up the map, much to the 
dismay of Rembrandt, and also started up.

                                 # # #

     "So what are we to do?"
     "It's clear that if more than one of us leaves this place, they 
won't be able to get back in. There's no way to move the door from the 
outside."
     Rembrandt rolled his eyes at what he considered to be Monet's 
defeatist attitude. "But there's every possibility that we can find 
just as good if not better accommodations elsewhere within the city."
     "There's no proof of that."
     Picasso, who had remained largely silent throughout the 
conversation, saw fit to interrupt now. "I didn't find a way into any 
of the buildings, you know. I did tell you that, didn't I?"
     "There's no other way."
     "There is."
     "No."
     "I will stay," Monet stated in an infuriatingly final manner.
     "If we go, you have to go with us!" Rembrandt was furious. His 
collar was bright green, and even seemed to grow brighter with each 
pulse of aggression. Involuntarily, he reached out into the air and a 
glass of ice-water appeared in his hand. He downed the water and his 
collar began to grow dimmer.
     Picasso detested the way the other two always fought, but somehow 
he felt connected to both of them, if only by the fact that they had 
lived together for so long (how long, he could not remember, but he 
knew, or sensed that it had been a great deal of time.) He tentatively 
spoke out. "It may help if we arm ourselves with a goal." He unfurled 
the map, and Rembrandt could see that already there were some changes 
from when he had looked on it last. The forms on the map remained 
static, though. Picasso spread the map out on a table which came into 
existence underneath it and indicated a position with an index finger. 
"We are here." Rembrandt could see their building, marked by a red #.
     "If we travel down the river this way," Picasso continued, 
tracing a line with his finger, following the blue streak of the 
river, until he reached a white +. Next to the + were the words 'the 
edge.' "This can be our goal."
     "The edge of what?" Monet spoke up.
     "I don't know. On my journey, I travelled this way." He indicated 
the opposite direction from the +. "It was here I found the map." He 
indicated a V sitting on the side of the river. "It was lying on what 
looked like an altar, outside a huge stone cathedral.
     "I think I've seen that building," Rembrandt piped up.
     "This," he again indicated the +, "is the only representation on 
the map to be labeled. That must hold some significance."
     "But we have no idea what," Monet cut in. "Your addition of the 
'goal' to our journey is as meaningless as the journey would have been 
in the first place!"
     "Nonsense!" Rembrandt almost shouted. "Don't you see what this 
means? 'The Edge' obviously indicates an escape route -- a passage to 
somewhere else."
     "But it occurs nowhere near the physical edge of the city," Monet 
argued, gesturing violently towards the map.
     Rembrandt's collar began to grow brighter again. "The city moves! 
Picasso has confirmed this."
     Monet nearly pounced on Rembrandt. "You're just worried you won't 
find anything and then you won't be able to come back. If you go, it's 
final. You can't stand the thought of being trapped out there with me 
in here. Look at yourself!"
     Rembrandt sighed as if the tension and energy of the day and of 
the moment were released in that one moment. As his collar cooled back 
to its normal azure shade, he plunked down into a form-fitting couch 
which had not existed a moment before and looked away, toward the now-
darkened window. "Perhaps you're right."
     Monet simply looked pleased with himself.
     "But did it occur to you that you too would be trapped within 
this apartment?" Rembrandt started again, this time more with a 
pleading tone than with anger. 
     "He's got a point. I intend to go back out and to not return. 
Rembrandt certainly intends to do the same."
     "Picasso, I always figured you for such a level-headed fellow," 
Monet replied, more to himself than to any other speaker.
     "That I am, Monet."

                                 + + +

     They left two mornings after.
     The huge portal rolled back into its frame with a chilling 
finality. When it was done, and the three were left outside of the 
door, looking back at their former abode, there was only silence. 
Rembrandt felt a shudder down his spine and felt for a second that he 
had left something very important in the house, but he knew that there 
was nothing. The parrot could not be coaxed out and that had disturbed 
him greatly, but other than that he was content to start his new life. 
After the decision, Monet's attitude had changed from sullen apathy to 
sullen acceptance. He kept up with the others as they walked down 
towards the rushing river, but his expression was colored with jaded 
overtones.
     Picasso led the others down to the dock and pulled his makeshift 
canoe by the tether he had so carefully fashioned. He, too was scared, 
although he felt compelled to exude an air of detached superiority. He 
was, after all, supposed to be the experienced one. It had been his 
idea to brave the exterior city. But now he was committed. He knew 
that he had let himself be prodded into it by Rembrandt's urgings, but 
now there was no going back. One leg at a time, he stepped into the 
canoe, and looked back at the other two expectantly.
     After much fumbling, they were clear of the dock and paddling 
swiftly down the river: Picasso steering with one oar, Monet providing 
the grim motive power with the other and Rembrandt sitting in the prow 
looking forward. As the city sped past them on all sides, Rembrandt 
began to sing softly to himself.
     Looking back on the building they had come from, they now saw how 
much it towered over this section of the city. It was a giant, 
standing amongst midgets; a massive stone monolith which tapered at 
its top to a sharp point. As Rembrandt looked back, he counted up 
floors until he reached the tenth, in some vain hope of finding a 
toehold of familiarity, but his effort was fruitless. Every story was 
the same. They had never been able to enter any of the other 
apartments.
     The terrain they were now passing through was fairly familiar to 
Rembrandt already, but it took on a completely different aspect when 
viewed from the ground. From ten stories up, all had seemed orderly 
and neat but now the true nature of the city was becoming apparent to 
him. Many of the buildings were only empty shells where residences and 
markets may once have existed but were no more. It seemed to Rembrandt 
that the material used in these shells must have somehow outlived the 
interiors of the structures. Pieces of what he took to be building 
material hung tattered from gaping holes. Some of these were so close 
to the ground that the river had spilled into them. They had become 
part of the river, and the river had carried away their contents, but 
the shells remained, indestructible.
     Once in a while, sitting among these rotting shells, there 
appeared a larger, more grandiose structure. These were typically 
haggard but seemed like they at least had some life left in them. They 
varied in shape but all of them seemed like meeting halls of some 
sort. Some, perhaps were large stores? Some were simply strange. About 
half a mile from where they started, there loomed across their path a 
huge sphere with no visible entrance or window.
     "We're going to hit that," Rembrandt stated nervously.
     Picasso did not seemed distressed. "It doesn't look like it now, 
but there's space underneath it."
     Still, it loomed up in front of them. Rembrandt strained to look 
for Picasso's opening but he couldn't find it. What if the space 
underneath had shrunk? What if the huge sphere were slowly sinking 
into the river, eventually to cut it off and form a dam? "You're 
sure."
     Monet spoke: "Shut up."
     "Well, I'd prefer not to be crushed to death today, ok?" 
Rembrandt spat back, but by that time they were close enough that he 
could see there was indeed a space underneath the huge structure. 
Still, he was nervous until they had reached open air. When they 
emerged from underneath, an entirely new scene awaited them.
     For a moment, they all sat, mesmerized. There had been no 
warning, no sign that such a violent change would take place. In 
contrast to the drab, decimated landscape behind them, spires made 
seemingly of cut glass or even diamond towered over the them. 
Inexplicably, the river which was silty and muddy before had turned 
crystal-clear. Rembrandt wasn't sure when the transition had taken 
place but his mind didn't stay on this long for he immediately noticed 
that the sky had changed color.
     "It's a dome," someone said. Rembrandt was so awe-struck that it 
took a few seconds for Rembrandt to register that it had been Monet 
speaking. He could see now that Monet was right. Running across the 
sky, intersecting in a triangular pattern were white lines which must 
have been support beams. It was impossible for Rembrandt to judge how 
far away those beams were.
     Monet looked at Picasso accusingly. "You didn't tell us..."
     "I didn't know," Picasso cut him off sharply, unrolling his map 
and studying it. "The city constantly moves and changes. From studying 
the map, I've found that individual buildings move but large sections 
of the city also can move." He indicated a portion of his map, a 
circular region marked in the center by a *. "This area must be what 
we've entered now. The river we're on clearly intersects it now, where 
it didn't before." At this point the reader might be getting slightly 
annoyed by the ubiquitous presence of this map. The map is only 
vaguely described, and seems to pop up only when convenient. Perhaps a 
full description of the map would help to ground it a bit....
     Picasso put away his map and began to steer again.
     "This wasn't here when you...?"
     "Absolutely not."
     "It's beautiful," Rembrandt said dreamily.
     Monet looked up. "Yes."
     A change in the wind brought with it a strange howling sound 
which sent a chill through the minds of the three travelers. If there 
was any doubt now that they would never return then it was the product 
of insanity, a derangement so grotesque as to be unthinkable. The 
sound was like a voice and yet was discernibly inhuman. Soon a second 
tone, higher and shriller than the first, started up as the lower and 
more sombre one began to die down. Rembrandt stopped rowing and stood 
transfixed as the tones rolled over him. As the first tone died away 
completely, he began to regain some composure and turned to stare back 
at the other two. Their eyes were glazed over, the whole of their 
brains devoted to their ears. Rembrandt had heard great symphonies 
during his time in the flat. His ears had been massaged by Beethoven, 
Bach, Mozart all in turn. No sound could compare in beauty to the 
simple tones he heard now.
     "It's got to be some atmospheric phenomenon; a by-product of the 
dome structure, perhaps..." Monet's words cut across Rembrandt's 
dreamy mood like a hot knife. He looked back at the other to see a 
face still transfixed. Monet's mind was more analytical, or at least a 
portion of it was. Looking more closely, Rembrandt could see that his 
expression was not that of a man overcome by beauty but of a man in 
the throes of deep thought. Picasso, as always maintained his 
composure. Even now, Rembrandt could see that the sound was beginning 
to lose its effect on him. Picasso's eyes fell by the degree until 
they again rested on the horizon. Rembrandt looked back there as well, 
as another mesmerizing tone began to dominate their surroundings. 

                                 * * *

     "Look!" The voice was Monet's. Their journey through the domed 
country had lasted more than a day now. So far, the scenery had been 
somewhat uniform, but as Picasso followed the line traced by Monet's 
pointed finger he began to feel that their fortunes were about to 
change. Just on the edge of the horizon in front of them there stood 
an island. There, barely visible, there was a huge building, itself 
the size of a small city, judging from the distance. Picasso tried a 
quick mental calculation and dismissed his figures as outrageous.
     It took an hour before he could begin to make out the details of 
the structure, and even then, there seemed no sense to it. It was a 
huge mass of twisted angles. It was in the rough shape of a mushroom, 
but with no curves. It was entirely composed of rectangular, 
triangular and rhomboid slabs, which jutted out unevenly around its 
mass. Crowning the top was a spire which reached fully twice as high 
as the building itself, and what appeared to be a cross.
     In three more hours, it was looming up above them like a 
surrealist's nightmare. Furthermore, what they had taken to be an 
island had in fact been a peninsula. As they rounded the right hand 
side of the base, they saw that the river ended there. The rushing 
water fell into gratings some three miles from where the river had 
forked.
     Confused by this, Picasso again pulled his map out and began to 
scrutinize it. "That's odd," he intoned. "If we're where I think we 
are, roughly in the center of the circular region, here, the map shows 
the river continuing beyond this point."
     Rembrandt turned to him, just as they were coming up on the end 
of the river. "Well either your map is wrong, or you're interpreting 
it wrong. Here, let me have it." He reached past Monet and snatched it 
out of Picasso's hands, just as their canoe grounded itself in the 
shadow of the huge structure.
     The instant they hit ground, Rembrandt and map were gone. A 
shadowy image replaced the space he had inhabited only a moment 
before, then nothing. Picasso and Monet could only stare. Monet, being 
within hand's reach of Rembrandt's former volume, reached out 
cautiously, as if still expecting to find something there. When he did 
not, he waved his hand around tentatively, then furiously, anxious to 
find some indication that Rembrandt was (or had ever been) there.
     Picasso simply stared, open-eyed, silent, their collars glowing a 
deep azure.
     Rembrandt turned to Monet, who was not there. Frustrated at 
Monet's absence, he turned inquisitively to Picasso to find him also 
absent. It was only at this point that he began to re-evaluate his 
situation. The surroundings had changed but there had been no jump, no 
discontinuity. The grey walls that now surrounded him seemed always to 
have been there. There was no other explanation. And yet, he 
remembered the shoreline; the canoe; the map! He looked about him, and 
found it also missing. He shook his head in an attempt to rid himself 
of this confusion, but the confusion remained, undaunted.
     He began to sit, but fell, instead. Suddenly annoyed at the non-
appearance of a chair, he scrambled to his feet, determined to do 
something. But there was nothing to do. It was at this point that he 
noticed the golden sphere. There was no way to know if the sphere had 
been there when he had 'appeared,' for lack of a better word. It was 
there now, however. It shimmered, suspended halfway between floor and 
ceiling, awaiting instructions. Where had that thought come from, 
Rembrandt wondered. Indeed, he had the distinct feeling that the 
sphere was somehow awaiting direction, or instruction.
     Shrugging his shoulders, he said "come here."
     Dutifully, it approached, bobbing slowly through the air until it 
hovered not a foot away from him. Well, at least something obeys me 
around here, he thought.
     Monet sat on the sandy bank of the river, staring out into the 
darkness, while Picasso paced back and forth behind him, a gold globe 
floating dutifully above his head.
      "These idiotic globes don't seem to be any use," Monet remarked 
sourly, belting the one which hovered next to him in an offhand 
manner. "I mean -- what's the point of a metal globe that follows you 
around -- can it do anything? Can it produce food?" He looked 
pointedly at it. "Produce food." It remained silent. "Nothing." He 
looked away, disgusted.
     Picasso stopped and regarded his globe, which he had almost 
forgotten about; he was contemplating the dimensions of the structure 
towering over him. Even though the darkness hid its form, it still 
seemed to loom over them, a tangible presence bearing down, making the 
very air heavier with its unimaginable countenance. "They could be 
monitors -- They could serve no purpose at all, other than to report 
back to their masters what our doings are."
     "Why, then, do they seem to obey our simple commands?"
     "A ruse? Trickery?"
     Monet's lips cracked into a wry smile. "You're beginning to think 
like me, Picasso." His expression soured again as his thoughts 
returned to Rembrandt. Monet was accustomed to thinking of Rembrandt 
as a fool, and it did him no good at all to be worried for him, even, 
perhaps, guilty that he did not.
     "You know," Picasso interrupted. "The globes may simply seem 
unable to obey commands about food and such because they are unable; 
assuming they themselves can't transport us."
     "A broad assumption, considering Rembrandt's case," Monet 
retorted.
     "Nevertheless, assuming that: Perhaps there is no food to be 
found here. And no way into the structure above?" He turned to regard 
the globe coldly. "Perhaps these globes once served some purpose, as 
rudimentary guiding machines, but there is no longer anything to be 
guided to."
     "A cold thought, Picasso. A cold thought."
     "Come morning, we have to move on. There is no other choice."
     "Without your Map?" Monet raised his eyebrows.
     "Indeed. Our goal is still the same. We must reach the region 
marked as 'the edge'."
     Monet cut in "Without a Map, how can we?"
     "Dead reckoning."
     Monet, silent to this, continued to stare out into the clear 
water.
     Rembrandt, accompanied by the small gold ball, climbed a metal 
staircase with metal walls.
     "Considering Rembrandt's case." Rembrandt spun around at the 
sudden voice of Monet, but saw no-one.
     "Come morning, we must move on." Now Picasso's voice hung in the 
air.
     "A cold thought, Picasso. A cold thought."
     Rembrandt's eyes widened as he ascertained the source of the 
conversation -- the metal sphere. And, within the sphere, the ghost of 
an image -- Monet and Picasso, sitting on the sandy river-bed.
     "There is no other choice," the image Picasso said, a smile 
flickering across his face.
     "You're beginning to think like me, Picasso," Monet replied, now 
grinning. Then image, and sound abruptly faded.
     Rembrandt tried to grab hold of the railing, but it did not 
steady him, and he fell down across the heavy, metal stairs. He looked 
around wildly, for the walls now seemed to contain menacing shapes. A 
coldness gripped him and he shivered. "No," he mouthed. 
     The globe sat impassively over him, silent.

                                 * * *

     Dawn broke softly over the steeples of the fortress (Picasso had 
begun to think of it as a fortress sometime during his fitful sleep 
under its oppressive shadow.) Picasso's eyes sprang open to behold 
Monet sitting dutifully on the bank, legs collapsed between his arms, 
muttering to himself. 
     "You hate me, don't you?" Picasso said.
     Monet looked up, surprised by the other's sudden utterance. "Why 
do you say that? I don't, by the way."
     "You hate me because I forced this situation on you," Picasso 
responded deliberately, his arms extending above him in an expressive 
yawn. "I understand perfectly."
     "Don't be an idiot. It was the only way." 
     Picasso sat up, then stood. "It wasn't though. Everything's gone 
terribly wrong. We should have stayed in the apartment -- safe."
     "Perhaps..."
     Monet remained silent, morosely contemplating the shoreline and 
the clear blue water of the river. 
     "One thing is clear," Picasso stated. "We must either devise a 
plan to find Rembrandt, or move on. One of the two. Sitting here, 
morosely contemplating the shoreline isn't getting us anywhere."
     Monet turned and stared pointedly at Picasso. "I don't think 
you're seeing the big picture..."
     Picasso was taken aback. "How do you mean?"
     "I mean that we have to take careful stock of our situation, 
Picasso. It is my opinion that we are being deliberately manipulated."
     Rembrandt broke from his slumber fitfully, grasping out for a 
lightswitch which did not exist, and steadfastly refused to become 
existent. The thick black air coalesced around him, encasing him in a 
veil of darkness.
     "Consider our situation," continued Monet. "We have been placed 
here, by some unknown force. We don't remember how we got here, don't 
really remember any of our backgrounds at all. And now we find 
ourselves in this unlikely situation; run aground beneath a huge 
tower, in the middle of some forgotten land."
     Picasso stared dumbly at him. "I don't see what you're getting 
at, Monet."
     "If this were a piece of fiction, it would be grossly 
unsatisfying. There's nothing for the reader to latch on to, no hook, 
no familiarity..." He turned and stared again out across the calm 
water. "...no meaning."
     Picasso frowned as he regarded his comrade. "You seem depressed."
     "We must find him. We cannot continue, in tacit acceptance of the 
events that enfold around us." So saying, Monet straightened up and 
began to walk calmly toward the base of the fortress. The metal globe 
hovering above his shoulder. After a moment, Picasso followed, drawn 
by the other's strength of purpose.
     "Let us assume," Monet continued, "that we are pawns, playing for 
some unknown being's (or beings') pleasure. The question then becomes, 
'Can we affect our own destinies?' "
     "But how could we know if we were pawns? What if every action we 
took were pre-determined?" Picasso chimed in. He was beginning to 
catch up to Monet's thought process.
     Monet continued, "Unfortunately, we can't know."
     "You seem to be painting yourself into a corner..." Picasso 
remarked under his breath.
     By the time they reached the base of the fortress, they were both 
panting from lack of breath. The base of the fortress was smooth, a 
huge obsidian wall that rose up before them beyond all reason. Monet 
moved his hand closest to the wall.
     Rembrandt continued to crawl through darkness, following brief 
and faint flashes of color which played over his retinas. Perhaps they 
were products of his imagination, but the overwhelming darkness forced 
him to make a goal, any goal, and follow that goal ruthlessly. As he 
crawled, too scared to walk, lest he fall off some ledge or walk into 
a wall, he began to mutter furtively to himself.
     "Damn Picasso for leading me out here. Damn Monet -- the smug 
bastard. A plot, that's what this has been. 'Let's get rid of that 
annoying Rembrandt fellow, Picasso.' 'Ok, Monet old boy, how do you 
suggest we do it?' 'Well...' "
     There was a hollow knocking sound. Rembrandt strained his eyes to 
look towards the source of the sound, but it deliberately refused to 
come into view, hiding guiltily in the pitch-blackness of this place. 
He was on the verge of beginning his crawl again, when another loud, 
reverberating knock was issued from above.
     "Who's there?" he yelled out, half in panic.
     Several smaller knocks followed, modulating into a creaking, as 
of an ancient hinge, only now being opened after years of neglect. And 
with the noise came light, blinding tempests of light, pouring down 
from above. Rembrandt, temporarily blinded, could only desperately 
cover his eyes, waiting for the pain to subside.
     As Monet was about to touch the wall, a tremendous thunderclap 
sounded, sending both Picasso and him to the ground, clasping their 
hands over their ears in agony. Another thunderclap sounded, followed 
by a series of smaller ones which seemed to quicken until they were a 
shrill whine, eating up the air, blotting out the natural, beautiful 
noises of this place, which they had begun to take for granted.
     Picasso was the first to notice that the sky was falling. He 
pointed wildly in the direction of the river, his eyes becoming 
insanely dilated with fear. Monet turned to see the huge dome of the 
sky apparently collapsing into the horizon. Looking up, they beheld 
the entire sky moving, and looking away from the river, they beheld an 
arc of darkness, opening slowly over their heads.
     When Rembrandt could finally see, he beheld a miniature landscape 
in front of him, revealed by a slowly opening domed lid. Above, two 
harsh globes hovered in the darkness, radiating a fierce light down on 
the landscape. The landscape itself consisted of a network of 
miniature glass spires, interconnected by a series of streams. In the 
center of the landscape, stood an enormous black tower, dwarfing the 
crystal spires. At the base of that tower, two figures were clasping 
their hands over their ears, trying to shut out the sound of the 
enormous dome, looking off, away from Rembrandt, at their horizon, 
where even now the final edge of the dome was disappearing into the 
ground.
     For a moment, Rembrandt stood in awe, amazed by the beauty of 
what lay before him. Then he began to understand what he must do. They 
had given him a chance for revenge now, and he intended to make use of 
it. He reached a tentative hand out towards the cowering duo.
     Out of the corner of his eye, Picasso caught movement. He turned, 
his eyes registered the image, but his mind refused to grasp its 
import. Slowly, he stood, watching the enormous hand, fingers 
outstretched, come closer and closer to a similarly transfixed Monet. 
As they touched, Rembrandt and Monet, a surge of light, stronger than 
any he had ever seen, overpowered him, followed by a surge of 
darkness.

                                   O

     When Picasso awoke, he was lying face down on a beach, the heat 
of the suns beating down on his body. When he stood, he could see the 
familiar landscape of the city surrounding him, although he appeared 
to be on a small island, separated from the city on all sides by a 
vast expanse of water.
     For hours, he walked up and down the beach, trying to find some 
inkling of what had brought him here, what had happened after, or 
before, or during. His memory of the event was spotty, but he vaguely 
remembered the giant hand, the blinding light. He found no trace, no 
indication that any of what he remembered had actually happened. No 
tower, no domed sky, no metal globe hanging dutifully above his 
shoulder.
     He sat on the sandy shoreline and watched the waves wash up and 
down the beach. For a brief moment, they were one with the City, 
endlessly rippling through variation after variation. He was sitting 
at the window. He was hanging high from a tree-branch. He was flying 
alongside the parrot, hearing what it could never hear. A tremor came 
up through the desert island, shaking a few of the rocks loose further 
up the beach where the sand turned into a desolate moonscape. In the 
sky, the suns raged furiously. Picasso often wondered what they talked 
about, the suns. He imagined debates on philosophical issues and moral 
principles which he, as a mere human, could not possibly comprehend. 
He was one of them. Even as he was the earth, the stars and the sky.
     He wondered, only for a moment, where the others were. Not 
Rembrandt and Monet, but the others. The background characters that 
make any story complete. There were none. What was he doing? What was 
he thinking of when he had signed up for this meaningless existence? 
Had he even signed? How could one sign away one's soul, one's future, 
to a fool world with multiple suns that didn't even make sense most of 
the time. He slowly bent forward until his head lay in front of him in 
the wet sand. After a while, the tide came in and he ceased to 
breathe, but death did not come for him.
     Like the buildings, shifting endlessly through their circular 
journeys, washing up and down on the shoreline of the forgotten 
island, his story was not, could never be, over. 
     This one, however, is.

--
DANIEL K. APPELQUIST (da1n+@andrew.cmu.edu) will, by the time you read 
this, have graduated with a degree in Cognitive Science from Carnegie 
Mellon University. In his spare time, he raises killer cats, 
accumulates huge debts and enjoys crash-testing rental cars without 
insurance. Currently he's either engaged in a desperate search for 
employment or hitchhiking his way to Peru.
(Editor's note: After the writing of this bio blurb, Dan -- who also 
serves as editor of QUANTA -- managed to locate a job as a computing 
consultant at Carnegie Mellon University. We assume this means the 
Peru trip is on hold.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------

                        Gravity / JASON SNELL

     It started when Frank's CD player tried to kill me on my way to 
work.
     I had just come down the stairs from my second-floor apartment, 
and was already sweating. I could tell that the day would be hot and 
humid. There wasn't a cloud in the sky.
     There was, however, a large compact disc player eclipsing the 
sun. For a second, my half-open eyes marveled at the sight of its 
descent. Then I jumped.
     It landed about a foot behind me, and skidded across the 
sidewalk. Plastic shards were scattered everywhere.
     "Frank!" I yelled up at the open third-floor window. "You 
could've killed me with your goddamned CD player!"
     A shape slowly inched out his window.
     "Fucking digital clarity!" he screamed from inside.
     Frank's window was giving birth to a large stereo speaker.
     "Too clear! Too loud!" he shouted. The speaker picked up speed, 
slid all the way out the window, and began to fall end-over-end toward 
the CD player that had almost done me in.
     "Too fucking loud!" Frank shouted as it smashed into the 
sidewalk.
     As I rounded the corner on my way to work, I heard another crash 
come from behind me. Frank's second speaker had joined its brethren in 
death, the third victim of some bizarre stereo component suicide pact.
     My dear upstairs neighbor seems to be on some sort of quest. He's 
searching for the ultimate home entertainment device, and he's very 
temperamental.
     When I moved into the apartment in March, everything seemed 
wonderful. Living on my own was great, especially after twenty years 
with my parents  -- now I could have people over at all hours of the 
night, could listen to my music any time I wanted to, and I didn't 
have to worry about my parents walking in on me while a female guest 
and I were buck-naked on the couch.
     Then I met Frank.
     About three weeks after I had moved in, there was a knock at the 
door. It was Frank Cole, a 30-year-old man with an Electronics 
Emporium name-tag pinned to his plaid shirt.
     "Hi," he said to me. "My name's Frank."
     "I noticed," I said. "It's nice to meet you, Frank. My name's 
Jim."
     "Hi, Jim. I live upstairs." Frank gave me a wide smile.
     "I see."
     "I'm going to throw out my TV," he told me.
     "Really."
     "Would you like to come and see?"
     I was going to turn him down, but didn't really want to alienate 
the person who was living above me. If I made him angry, he could 
retaliate by jumping up and down on my ceiling any time he felt like 
it.
     "Sure," I told him. "Why not?"
     Frank led me upstairs to his apartment, stopped outside the door, 
and pointed into the dark room.
     "You first," he said.
     At first, I thought that I couldn't see any of Frank's furniture 
because it was so dark. Then I realized that Frank didn't really have 
much in the way of furniture. In the center of the room was an 
overstuffed chair. The chair faced a home entertainment system, 
including a wide-screen TV, that stood in the far corner. There was 
nothing else in the room except for me. And Frank.
     "Nice TV," I told him. "Where'd you get it?"
     "I got it at Electronics Emporium. And it's not a nice TV."
     "It sure looks nice. Mine's a ten-inch black-and-white. This has 
got to be three times that size."
     "Four times. It's a 41-inch diagonal rear projection TV with 
Digital Stereo Hi-Fi Surround Sound."
     "Nice TV."
     "It's not a nice TV. I'm going to throw it out."
     "What's wrong with it, Frank?"
     He pointed at the big chair. "Sit, and you'll see."
     I have no idea where Frank got the thing, but it even had feet, 
like those old-fashioned claw-foot bathtubs. As I sank into it, Frank 
ran over and turned on the TV.
     "You'll see. You'll see."
     The TV warmed up. One of those awful game shows that tries to 
match up couples and send them on dream dates was on. I had auditioned 
for two of them, but they said I wasn't their type. I guess I wasn't 
dreamy enough.
     "Stupid show," I said.
     "Yes. Television is a waste of time  -- the shows are terrible, 
the sound  -- even if you've got a Wide-Screen Rear Projection TV 
with Digital Stereo Hi-Fi Surround Sound -- is incomprehensible, 
and..."
     "And?"
     He raised his finger to his mouth. "Shh."
     "I'm telling you, Chuck, I didn't want to spill the salad 
dressing all over Marcie's new dress..."
     "Listen to that," Frank said. "Terrible. The sound's terrible. 
Even with Digital Stereo Hi-Fi Surround Sound. Even then."
     "Is that all?"
     "Of course not! You're in the chair. You can see. It's too 
bright!"
     "Why not just use the brightness knob?"
     Frank looked angry, as if I was insulting his intelligence  -- 
which I was.
     "Because then it would be too dark."
     Ah.
     "Well, if you'll excuse me, Frank... I've got to get back to what 
I was doing before." I pulled myself out of the chair and walked 
toward the door.
     The muscles at the corners of his mouth tightened. "Oh, sure," he 
said. "See you again sometime. Nice meeting you."
     "Nice meeting you, too. Thanks for inviting me up."
     Frank began to close the door, paused, and stared at me. His dark 
brown eyes were shining. 
     "I'm going to throw it out," he said again.
     "Well, good luck," I said, and turned away.
     I went downstairs, turned my stereo back on, sat down on my 
couch, and idly stared out the window. I was enjoying my freedom -- 
even if I did have do deal with quirky neighbors.
     There was a scraping noise from upstairs. I could hear it over 
the sound of my stereo. Then there were two loud thumps, and silence 
for several minutes.
     I sat staring out the window, entranced by the music. The wind 
blew. The trees moved. A Zenith dropped past my window.
     I blinked. It must've been a dream, a fantasy, perhaps even a 
really big bat or bird or something.
     Then I heard a loud crash echo up from the sidewalk.
     During my dash to the window to see what had happened, two other 
objects dropped past. Later I'd discover that they were Frank's VCR 
and Hi-Fi Stereo Surround Sound Decoder.
     As I opened the window, I heard Frank laughing and screaming.
     "I threw it out!" he howled. "No more fucking static! No more 
fucking test patterns!"
     I made a mental note to buy a deadbolt for my door and called it 
a night.

     A week after Frank had tossed his CD player and speakers out his 
window, he knocked on my door.
     "What is it, Frank?" I asked.
     "I've got a new Living Room Thing," he told me. "You've got to 
see it!"
     "It's better than the TV?"
     "A lot better. No flicker, no reception problems."
     "Better than the stereo?"
     "Not as loud."
     I opened the door, stepped out quickly, and shut it behind me.
     "Okay, Frank," I told him. "Let's go see."
     The big chair was still there, but now it faced a large, well-lit 
fish tank that sat in the corner. There were about 20 fish swimming in 
it, chasing each other and annoying the tiny lobsters, or crayfish, or 
whatever they're called, that were crawling along the bottom.
     "Is this it?" I asked, pointing toward the tank.
     "Yeah. No reception problems, no static. Quiet. Soothing. Fish."
     "Where'd you get them? They don't sell fish at Electronics 
Emporium, do they?"
     "Nope. But there's a pet store next door."
     "What made you want to buy fish?"
     "I have dreams," he said. "Fish are in them."
     "What kind of dreams?"
     "Fish dreams," he said. "In my dreams, the fish are always 
swimming. People are dying, but the fish keep swimming."
     "What's killing the people?"
     "It depends on the dream. Sometimes they're being tortured to 
death, other times they just get shot in the head. But no matter what 
the dream is, the fish keep swimming. That, and..."
     Something caught in his throat.
     "And?"
     "'Copacabana.'"
     "Excuse me?"
     "I can't hear any real sound in the dreams. People are dying, but 
I can't hear their screams. All I can hear is the muzak version of 
'Copacabana'."
     "You mean Barry Manilow's 'Copacabana'?"
     "That's the one."
     I had to admit, Frank had stumped me on this one. I had 
absolutely no idea what to say.
     "Could I take a look at the fish?"
     "Sure," he said, and led me to the side of his tank. Frank began 
pointing at fish, though they moved so fast that I couldn't tell which 
ones he actually meant to single out.
     "That one's Barry," he said. "And there's Rico, and Lola, and 
that one in the back is Mandy -- "
     I stepped away from Frank and took a look around the room. It was 
almost completely barren, except for a couple posters, the chair, and 
the tank.
     "You know, this place would be nicer if you moved the tank out of 
the corner," I told him.
     "Yeah?"
     "Yeah. Why not put it closer to the center of the room? Maybe by 
the -- "
     He squinted at me when I stopped in the middle of my sentence.
     "What?"
     Maybe by the window.
     Frank's window looked exactly like mine. But I couldn't help but 
think of everything he had tossed out that window. Putting the fish 
near the window wouldn't help matters any -- especially if, on the day 
that Frank gets tired of hearing "Copacabana," you're one of the fish 
in the tank or you're taking a walk on the sidewalk under his window.
     "Don't worry about it," I told him. "Look, Frank, thanks for the 
tour. I've got to go."
     "Sure," he said. "Come back sometime, and say 'Hi' to the fish."
     "Sure."
     I turned and left as quickly as politeness would allow. I never 
wanted to come back to Frank's apartment, especially not to make 
friends with his fish. The poor devils would be meeting Mr. Concrete 
pretty soon anyway.

     I was sitting on my window ledge, looking out at the sky and 
peeling an orange -- my breakfast -- when I heard the argument. It was 
a couple of days after I had met Frank's fish.
     At first, all I heard was thumping -- it seemed like Frank was 
stomping through his apartment. Then I realized that I was hearing two 
separate sets of footsteps. There were two people up there, running 
around.
     Then, as I sat there stripping the skin from my orange, I started 
to hear the voices.
     "What do you mean mrrm don't like mfff," was what I heard a deep 
voice, presumably Frank's, shout at the top of his lungs. I tore a 
round piece of peel from the orange and rubbed it between my fingers.
     "I don't mrmff them there at all. They're weird. I ummmf mumm 
move them, Frank." It was a woman's voice. Frank had a woman in his 
apartment. And they were arguing.
     "It's my Living Room Thing!" he screamed. I held my hand out the 
window and let go of the round piece of peel. It landed right on the 
edge of the sidewalk.
     "I don't cmf. Either umffo um I go." Then I heard a door slam. I 
could hear the woman stomping down the stairs. A few seconds later, 
she stepped onto the sidewalk below and looked up at me. Her hair 
looked like it had been cut with a bowl, and she squinted behind what 
seemed to be extremely thick glasses. 
     "You hear me, Frank?" she said. "Them or me!"
     "Don't do this to me, Emily!" Frank must've been standing at his 
window, right above mine.
     "Do what to you?" I pulled off a strip of orange peel, and held 
it against my nose. It smelled more like orange than the actual fruit 
tasted like it.
     "Make me get rid of my fish. My Copacabana."
     "Them or me," she said. "Barry Manilow or me. Think about it, 
Frank."
     She started walking away, down the street. I threw my orange peel 
at her, but it missed and landed in the gutter instead.
     Frank slammed his window shut. When I went to work an hour later, 
I still hadn't heard anything else from upstairs.
     When I returned from work, Frank was screaming. 
     "Fuck you, Barry Manilow!"
     Maybe I should've been more wary about approaching my apartment 
building after the CD player tried to kill me. But I was concentrating 
on licking the ice cream cone I had bought along the way home, and so 
I didn't get to see the fish tank's championship-caliber dive.
     But Frank's scream certainly got my attention. I looked up and 
saw the tank impact with the concrete sidewalk as fish and water 
rained down. Glass shattered and flew everywhere. I was lucky not to 
be lacerated by a flying glass shard.
     "No more fucking air pumps! No more food flakes! No more Barry 
Manilow!"
     The smell of fish mixed with the taste of Buttered Apple Pecan 
ice cream in my mouth as I leaped over large chunks of glass and two 
very annoyed mini-lobsters on my way to the safety of the stairwell.

     Two weeks after he dropped the fish tank out the window, I went 
upstairs to say goodbye to Frank. My summer job was over and it was 
time to go off to college.
     Frank smiled when he saw me at the door. In fact, I had never 
seen him seem so downright cheery.
     "Come in, Jim! Come in!"
     The big chair was gone from the center of his room. In its place 
was a large mat with polka-dotted sheets and pillows on it.
     "Where's the chair?"
     "Emily didn't like it. So she took it away. Now we sleep on the 
futon together."
     "I see. Congratulations, Frank."
     "Thanks."
     "But I don't see a Living Room Thing anywhere, Frank."
     His eyes twitched for a second, as if he were scanning the room 
for a Living Room Thing that he couldn't find.
     "No more of those things. Emily didn't like me spending time 
watching anything but her."
     "She didn't like the fish?"
     "No. She said I thought about them too much. And she said I 
dreamed about Barry Manilow too much. She wants to be the only person 
in my dreams."
     "Well, that's good, isn't it?"
     He hesitated for a second.
     "Yeah, I guess."
     Frank walked over to his open window, the one he had used to send 
thousands of dollars worth of electronic equipment -- not to mention 
several fish -- to their deaths. 
     "Emily's my Living Room Thing now," he said.
     I could deal with Frank's own special brand of insanity to a 
point, idly watching the precipitation of electronic equipment (and 
marine life) that fell from his third-floor window. But the prospect 
that a human being might become the next object for Frank to drop 
filled me with fear.

     "Emily? I need to talk to you about Frank."
     I had caught her in the stairwell, on her way up to Frank's 
apartment.
     "What do you mean?"
     "Frank's not what you think he is," I told her.
     "Of course he's not. Frank scares me sometimes, you know?"
     "You know about him?"
     "Sure I do. I'm surprised you know how scary Frank is. I mean, 
I'm his girlfriend. It scares me a lot more than you, I can tell you."
     "I'm sure it does."
     "He's always so distant," she said. "He never came over when I 
wanted him to. He said he was always too busy... you know."
     "Too busy?"
     "Too busy watching the new big-screen TV, too busy listening to 
the stereo, too fucking busy with his little fish! God, I hated those 
fish! He should've been spending time with me. I'm his fucking 
girlfriend."
     "You were jealous of his fish?"
     "No, silly! But I was afraid that he'd lose himself in them, like 
he did with the TV and the stereo. It isn't right for a man to spend 
so much time away from his girlfriend, sitting alone in that terrible 
chair. I should be his only diversion!"
     My voice grew louder as I tried to make her understand what Frank 
undoubtedly had in store for her.
     "Now he doesn't have any of those things, Emily! You're the 
center of his living room now."
     "Center of his life, that's what I should be. It's my rightful 
place."
     "You don't understand, do you? Remember what Frank did to all 
those other things when he got tired of them? He threw them out the 
window! And you're next!"
     She paused for a second, as if she had finally understood what 
I'd been trying to explain to her.
     Then she began to laugh.
     "Oh, don't worry," she told me, and began rummaging around in her 
purse. "Frank would never think of doing anything to hurt me. And even 
if he thought of it, I'd never let him try anything."
     Her hand emerged from the purse holding a small handgun.
     "So don't be afraid for my sake. Frank and I will be fine, as 
long as he makes sure I'm the only one he thinks about." She slipped 
the gun back into her purse, and began walking up the stairs.
     "Thanks for your help," she said.
     I swallowed hard and silently watched her ascend, until even her 
ugly wooden clogs disappeared from sight.
     "Don't mention it," I whispered to myself.

     The next day was supposed to be my last day in the apartment. But 
instead of packing, I spent most of the morning staring out my window 
at the sidewalk, waiting for Emily and finishing my supply of oranges. 
I wasn't sure if I'd be seeing her as she walked down the street after 
leaving Frank's by way of the stairs, or seeing her fall to her death 
after leaving by way of the window.
     After a few hours -- and long after the last piece of orange peel 
had fallen onto that sidewalk, Emily appeared down below. Because I 
knew she had a gun, I was careful not to move until she was around the 
corner, out of sight. Then I bolted for the door and ran upstairs.
     "Frank!" I yelled as I pounded on his door. "Let me in, Frank!"
     Frank opened the door after a few seconds, and smiled at me in a 
good-natured sort of way. Several clumps of his hair were standing on 
end, and he was wearing a plain white T-shirt and boxer shorts.
     "Hi, Jim," he said. "What's wrong?"
     "It's Emily."
     He opened his eyes all the way, as if he were finally waking up.
     "What? Did something happen to her?"
     "No, nothing like that. But Frank, I talked with her yesterday, 
and I've got to tell you, something's really wrong."
     He turned around and began walking toward the window. 
     "I knew it!" he said. "I knew this would happen. I've screwed up 
again, haven't I?"
     "No, nothing like that, Frank. But I've got to tell you, she's 
not the woman you think she is. She's no good for you, Frank. She's 
crazy."
     "What do you mean? She's just as sane as I am."
     "Not quite. Look, Emily wants you to be her slave. She can't 
stand to think that there's any point to your life except to please 
her and think about her."
     "She's my girlfriend. I'm supposed to think about her all the 
time."
     "Frank, being someone's boyfriend isn't supposed to mean that 
you're her slave."
     "She took away my chair."
     I blinked.
     "I loved that chair," he said. "She wanted me to throw it out the 
window, like I did with everything else. I told her that I only throw 
things I didn't like out the window."
     "And you liked the chair."
     "It was a good chair. It wasn't too hard or too small or 
anything. It was perfect."
     "What happened when you told her you liked the chair?"
     "She told me that I should only like her, and nothing else. And 
then she took it away."
     His voice was raised. Here was more emotion in it than I'd ever 
heard before. I idly noticed that only one of his eyes was brown, and 
the other one was hazel.
     "Frank, she's got a gun."
     "A gun?"
     "A gun. I think she's afraid you're going to throw her out the 
window."
     He opened his mouth, sputtered a few times, and shut his mouth 
again. I'd never really seen anyone totally dumbfounded before. Frank 
turned and stared out the window for a while, and finally managed to 
say something.
     "Why would I throw her out the window?"
     Gosh, Frank, could it be because you've thrown every damned thing 
you've ever owned out that fucking window? Might it be possible that 
all the little fragments of glass that glitter when I walk along the 
sidewalk are there because of your penchant for demolishing CD 
players? At least Newton gave it up after the apple -- if you had been 
there, Isaac would've probably been killed by a rogue soup kettle.
     "Well, it's not like you've never tossed things out before," was 
all I said.
     "But I wouldn't throw her out. I love her!" He hit the wall with 
his open palm. "She doesn't trust me. I can't believe it. She doesn't 
trust me. She doesn't trust me."
     He whirled around and glared at me. Both his eyes were open wide, 
but the eyelid over the hazel eye was twitching a little.
     "Thanks, Jim," he told me. "I appreciate your help. I'd like to 
be alone now."
     "Are you sure?"
     "Yes."

     I closed my apartment door for the final time and began to 
descend the steps with my last box of stuff. I figured I wasn't going 
to do any more about my upstairs neighbor's personal life -- if I made 
him angry, he might toss me out a window, and if I made his girlfriend 
angry, she could just shoot me on the spot. Or they could act in 
tandem, with her shooting me and then him disposing of my body out the 
window.
     But I wouldn't have to deal with them ever again. I was going to 
be out of the building for good. Whatever happened, I would have 
nothing to do with it.
     When I was halfway down the steps, Emily passed me, heading up. 
She smiled as she went past. I managed to swallow and blink.
     I concentrated on keeping my feet moving as a slowly paced out to 
my car. I opened the trunk and dropped the box in. As I slammed the 
trunk door closed, I began to hear the shouting coming from upstairs.
     I fingered my key, thinking that I should just get in the car and 
drive away. It wasn't my problem. I didn't know these people very 
well. If they ended up killing each other, it would have no effect.
     But instead of driving away, I stood there and tried to make out 
the yelling. My car was parked a few spaces down from the Frank Cole 
target zone, so I figured I was safe from any falling bodies that 
might be heading down.
     The yelling intensified for a second, and then cut off. I 
swallowed again, and began moving toward my car as soon as I saw a 
shadow in Frank's window. The window slowly slid open, as I hid behind 
my car and watched. If Frank had managed to open the window, I figured 
that Emily'd probably be taking part in Frank's first human-powered 
flight experiment.
     But what came out of the window was far too small to be Emily. It 
was smaller than anything else I'd seen come out of that window.
     I dropped to the pavement when I realized that it was Emily's 
gun.
     On impact, the gun fired off a shot. Great. I just knew I was 
going to be hit by a random bullet, like in the movies.
     I realized I was fine when I heard the sound of shattering glass. 
I peeked my head past the edge of my car in time to see the last 
pieces of my old second-floor window raining onto the pavement, where 
so many objects had landed before. Somebody should paint a bull's eye 
there.
     "Frank! Emily!" I yelled. "You could have killed me with that 
fucking gun! And you broke my goddamned window! Jesus, I just moved 
out! I'm not paying for this!"
     "Sorry," came a soft reply from above.
     They paid for the window.

--
JASON SNELL (intertxt@network.ucsd.edu) is a senior at the University 
of California, San Diego, where he serves as the Editor in Chief of 
the UCSD Guardian newspaper, in addition to editing InterText. He will 
graduate from UCSD in March of 1992 with a degree in communication and 
a minor in Literature Writing, and hopes to enter a graduate 
journalism program in the fall.
--------------------------------------------------------------------

        The Unified Murder Theorem (part 1 of 4) / JEFF ZIAS

                                Prologue

     They killed him that night and somehow he felt it coming. In all 
other respects it was a typical Thursday night gig. Getting killed was 
something he was prepared for, so it was no big deal.	
     The dark bar he was killed in was filled with noisy patrons 
drinking beer, hard liquor, wine, or expensive mineral waters in clear 
glass bottles. In the center of the smoky hovel was an elevated stage. 
Merely four feet by six feet, the stage gave him plenty of room for 
his Thursday night solo guitar gig, but fitting a whole band up there 
was like putting a dolphin in your goldfish bowl.
     The guitarist was medium height, brown haired, slightly slovenly, 
and unremarkable in remarkably many ways. He could, however, play the 
hell out of his instrument. The Thursday regulars attentively listened 
to his cascades of chords and flurries of arpeggios. Not only did his 
playing hold their attention: the guitarist's instrument itself was a 
special custom job, a focal point.
     Yes, all guitars have a fretboard, strings, and body; but this 
guitar always projected a strangely luminous blue light which emanated 
from its hollow body; it was simply a modified instrument, some people 
in the audience thought. Most people didn't pay much attention to the 
light, preferring to assume it was nothing special, or assume that 
they really knew what the light was, when they really did not.  Like 
so many other mysteries in life, the audiences usually chose to ignore 
the phenomenon rather than explore it. Only a few people -- maybe one 
out of every dozen -- would ask about the blue light. How could he get 
that light to pour out of the hole -- in synchronization with his 
notes? The guitarist would never fully answer such questions. It is 
just a light, he would say, a very ordinary light.
     That Thursday night two guys who had been standing in the back, 
against the wall, made their way up to the stage as the guitarist was 
finishing his first set. He didn't get a good look at them because as 
he lifted his head up from staring down at the fretboard the taller of 
the two guys pulled out his thirty-eight and fired two shots through 
the guitarists head while mumbling, inaudibly, the words "goodbye from 
Nattasi."

                             Chapter One

     The advancement of science is not comparable to the
     changes of a city, where old edifices are pitilessly
     torn down to give place to new, but to the continuous
     evolution of zoologic types which develop ceaselessly...
                                    --  Jules Henri Poincare

     The sun was too hot, the shady grass too cool; the breeze was too 
brisk and the baked sidewalks too dormant; but, taken as a whole, the 
day was perfect.
     At three o'clock in the afternoon of a sunny, mid-November 
California day, an accordion instructor named Jack Cruger looked 
through the windows of his stuffy first-floor practice room into the 
parking lot of Del's Music World. High School kids floated through the 
parking lot like twigs down a river. Some moved fast, some slow, and 
some clumped in a living, breathing circle of conversation that 
resembled a whirlpool.
     Jack Cruger sat in the practice room waiting for his next 
accordion student, a new kid. He hoped the kid had some ability; any 
amount of ability would be greatly appreciated. Most of the kids he 
got were forcibly sent by their parents in order to satisfy some 
twisted ethnic family tradition. He could hear the parents now: "we 
want Johnny to be able to play polkas at the family reunion," or 
"teach him to play the Beer Barrel Polka for Oktoberfest."
     That's why these miserable little students Cruger got were so 
pathetic: almost none of them were acting of their own volition. 
Forced to play the accordion, nature's most hated instrument. What 
could be worse?
     Up in San Francisco, forty miles away, a law was on the San 
Francisco ballet, proposition P for Polka, known as the "use an 
accordion and go to jail" proposition. Times were tough for 
accordionists.
     This accordion law (even though it was a joke) surprised Cruger -
- San Franciscans should know better, and some of them did. 
Concurrently San Francisco, the city supervisors were ready to appoint 
the piano accordion as the official instrument of the city, since the 
piano accordion was invented in San Francisco, in 1907 by Colombo 
Piatenesi and Pietro Dieiro. 
     In fact one of San Francisco's leading literary icons, Mark 
Twain, had been an accordionist. Not for long, though. Jack Cruger -- 
being a fan of Mark Twain's -- recalled Twain's acerbic notes on the 
subject of playing the accordion. Cruger's nearly photographic memory 
(which he called his "pornographic memory") for enjoyable quotes and 
images pulled in the choice memorable quotes like a fisherman hauling 
in his nets. Twain had said "After a long immunity from the dreadful 
insanity that moves a man to become a musician in defiance of the will 
of God that he should confine himself to sawing wood, I finally fell 
victim to the instrument they call the accordion." Even Twain maligned 
the instrument; the accordion, always good for a laugh. And what else 
had Twain said: "At this day, I hate that contrivance as fervently as 
any man can, but at the time I speak of I suddenly acquired a 
disgusting and idolatrous affection for it. I got one of powerful 
capacity and learned to play 'Auld Lang Syne' on it."
     As the story went, after being thrown out of various residences, 
Twain was eventually pressured to give up the instrument. He even 
wrote a rude statement of defection. "When the fever was upon me, I 
was a living, breathing calamity... desolation and despair followed in 
my wake. I bred discord in families, I crushed the spirit of the 
lighthearted, I drove the melancholy to despair, I hurried the 
invalids to dissolution and I fear me that I disturbed the very dead 
in their graves... with my execrable music."
     Cruel was the capricious twist of public sentiment. Back when 
Cruger was a teenager, playing the damn thing was almost hip. Of 
course, these misguided people, much as Mark Twain obviously had 
become, were forced into a reactionary hatred of the instrument that 
only spoke of some underlying passion, some real human emotion, that 
surrounded their feelings for the instrument. Cruger could see this -- 
seen through the facade of ridicule, hatred, and name-calling. Deep 
down, he knew they must actually like the accordion.
     The real problem was half of Cruger's students didn't have any 
talent. Little Billy Weymuts, the student that had just left, was an 
exceedingly bad student who hated the accordion. Billy either never 
practiced or had an almost disconcertingly powerful lack of talent.
     This day, after three minutes, it had become clear that Billy 
couldn't play his lesson assignment, a C major scale.
     "OK, try again Billy, starting on the low C."
     "The one here, this key?" Billy asked, as if he were searching 
for the optimum spot to split a 80-carat diamond.
     "No, two keys to the left, there."
     "Oh yeah." 
     Billy plodded through a few notes, then hit a clinker.
     "You know," Billy said, "This isn't so important. I want to get 
into sports. Chicks dig a jock."
     Cruger scratched his head. There was something about an eleven-
year-old saying chicks dig a jock.
     "Who told you that?"
     "Told me what?"
     "About chicks digging a jock."
     "My brother, Ronnie. Told me I should just be a jock, or at least 
play guitar, ya know, like Beejee King."
     "That's B.B. King. Do you even know what a jock is?"
     Billy Weymuts brought his shoulders to his little elfin ears and 
dropped his eyes. "I guess not."
     They got back to the C major scale but didn't get far before time 
was up; so much for Billy's lesson.
     But it was a living. With twenty-one, no, make that twenty-two 
students, plus gigs, plus a workaholic nurse for a wife, his was a 
workable career.
     That's what was holding him back, Cruger thought. This was all 
too easy, much too easy. His students, clients, and wife were all very 
willing to shell out enough money to make Cruger's life very 
comfortable. No, he didn't drive a Porsche with personalized plates 
saying "MONEYBAGS" -- these yuppie pursuits were of no interest to 
Cruger. But still, he wanted more, just because it was all too easy.
     Challenge, discord, friction. Friction; that's it. You couldn't 
climb a mountain if it weren't for friction. In a world lacking 
friction, you would slide back down into the saddle of your 
equilibrium -- be it for better or for worse. Where is the friction in 
my life? What are my battles, my defeats, my failures? If it weren't 
for friction, no heroes would ever live.
     Cruger glanced at the practice room wall clock -- the new 
student's time slot was about to start. Cruger began to recall the 
initial phone conversation with the boy. The student had said I would 
like to hear about playing the accordion. A strange thing to say. Not 
a simple I want to learn how to play or I would like lessons in . . . 
not the usual.
     Three minutes after the hour a young blond teenage boy knocked 
softly on the studio door and then entered.
     "Hi, I'm Tony Steffen, I talked to you the other day." The 
youth's voice was low, slow, and punctuated.
     Cruger reached over and shook Tony's hand. "Good to meet you, 
Tony," he said, "have a seat."
     Cruger was impressed with Tony's maturity. What is it about this 
kid, he thought? Tony stood about six foot one, more than a few inches 
taller than Cruger, and had a wiry, muscular build. But, Cruger 
thought, it is more than his height - the kid has presence. The surfer 
blond hair, long arms and legs, erect posture and resounding voice 
combined to create a seamless package; the kid reeked of self-
confidence. What the hell is he doing here? Most of Cruger's students 
were from Nerd Squad. Tony didn't fit the bill.
     Cruger looked at the dusty brown case that Tony held by the 
handle. "I see you already have an instrument." 
     "Yes," Tony said. "In fact, that's what I really wanted to talk 
to you about most." Tony swung the case out in front of him. Quickly 
popping the two aluminum latches on the front of case, he reached in 
and pulled out a small and ornate accordion. Polished cherry wood. 
Corrugated side panels and engraved trim gave the old instrument a 
stately look.
     "It's beautiful," Cruger said.
     "Yeah. It's been, um, passed down to me. A really special 
instrument, I've been told."
     "I'm not knowledgeable as a collector, Tony, but I can tell you 
that they don't make them like that any more."
     Tony smiled a wide smile that radiated light and warmth. "I 
wonder if you would play it a little for me?"
     Cruger had been anxious to do just that; now he needed no excuse 
to grasp the accordion and give it a try. 
     "I'll play it a little Tony, but, it's you who we need to get 
playing it."
     Tony nodded unconvincingly and watched as Cruger gently moved his 
arms and pressed his fingers across the keys of the fine instrument. 
The "Too Fat Polka" reverberated throughout the small practice room. 
The instrument had a smaller, darker tone than Cruger was accustomed 
to. He was into the second eight bars of the tune when he jolted 
slightly at the sight of a strange luminescence rising from the belly 
of the instrument. Blue streaks of light, entwined like yarn across a 
cat tree, flickered their surprising veneer within the accordion's 
belly. Cruger could see down into the cavity through a three-quarter 
inch opening directly above the keyboard. Shock notwithstanding, 
Cruger had continued to play down the solid Polka. When he stopped, 
the strange light did likewise.
     "What's that light?" asked Cruger in a coarse voice ringing with 
disbelief.
     "That light," Tony said, "is the reason that I had you play that 
box." Tony seemed satisfied with that answer, but, Cruger clearly was 
not.
     "What do you mean?"
     "The box will only do that, what we just saw, for you," Tony 
said. 
     "Are you trying to con me or something -- you calling this 
magic?" Cruger didn't know whether to laugh or let out his true 
feelings. He gave Tony a hard, defensive stare.
     "I know that this is all confusing for you, ah, Cruger. Is it all 
right to call you Cruger?"
     "Yeah."
     "Anyway, I need to get this into your head, and I know it won't 
be easy. All I want to do for now is tell you to please play this 
instrument every night, for at least a little while."
     "I still want to know what this is all about."
     "Can you please just take it home and play it a little at night? 
I will come back and explain everything to you in a day or two," Tony 
said.
     Cruger looked up at the ceiling of the small practice room. Small 
styrofoam polygons covered the ceiling; Del, of Del's Music World, 
certainly wasn't using the high-quality foam soundproofing material. 
With accordions being played, you'd think he wouldn't skimp on it.
     But what should he do? Cruger was scared of his inaction. What 
should he tell the kid? What the hell would friggin' Clint Eastwood do 
in this situation? This is just plain bizarre. Is the kid a nut case, 
on drugs? Thoughts sprayed through his mind like machine gun fire.
     ""Oh, by the way," Tony said, "Don't tell anyone about this, 
please. "I know you won't," he said as if to assure himself.
     "But..."
     "Later," Tony said as he swung out of the cheap folding chair, 
opened the door, and walked briskly down the musty, narrow hall. 
     Cruger had no response. He slumped forward and stared at the 
strange small instrument that rested on his forearms. Shaking his head 
from side to side he smiled as he rehearsed, in his head, telling his 
wife for the very first time, "had a tough day at the office, dear."

                           Chapter Two

     Cruger's wife, Corrina, was prone to the scientific approach. 
Since Jack and she had decided to try to make a baby, their sex lives 
had undergone a change. 
     For one thing, they now made love three times a day. Three times 
a day had previously loomed as a mythical figure to Cruger. Not since 
their brief and carnal Honeymoon had the prospect of such frequent 
intercourse seemed plausible. Yet, now, it was three times a day 
whether or not Jack liked it, just like the self-help fertility manual 
said on page twenty-four.
     They had been trying for four months. No periods had been missed 
yet. Even so, Corrina continued to support the home pregnancy test-kit 
industry with frequent testings. Rabbits dying were yesteryear's 
method of test; vials of water needed to turn a rich blue color or 
little tablets needed to spell plus or minus. Four months of pale 
water and minuses -- the equivalent of live rabbits -- was not 
considered a long time by most people.
     Cruger thought it was a long time. His lower back thought it was 
a long time.
     When Cruger walked in his front door that evening, his own 
accordion case in one hand and Tony Steffen's in the other, Corrina 
was anxious to talk with him.
     "I'm going to start monitoring my ovulation cycle," she said. She 
was excited, her bright eyes on fire, lighting the room.
     "Just as long as you don't make me count all my sperm every day."
     "Listen silly. What I do is take my temperature every morning and 
I can then chart when I start ovulating. Then we can make sure to make 
love a lot just before and during my ovulation."
     "Sounds wonderfully romantic. Out of curiosity, along with 
Bolero, did Ravel ever write any music entitled Symphony to Ovulate 
to, in G minor?"
     "Did anyone ever not tell you that you're a smart ass?" she said.
     "People who have never met me generally don't."
     Corrina sighed. "Ah, the lucky ones." 
     "Listen, let me get this straight. When you're not ovulating I 
take cold showers, keep to a low testosterone diet, and occupy my mind 
with Baseball scores. Then for a week each month I eat oysters, beat 
my chest like a gorilla, and jump your bones every time the wind 
shifts?"
     "You've got it, partner -- but you don't always have to wait till 
I'm ovulating," she said. "We can just practice the rest of the 
month."
     "What, you think I'm a machine, a love-making machine; switch me 
off, switch me on," Cruger said, "like clockwork?"
     "You've done well in the past. And, if your batteries need 
recharging, I've got a few tricks up my garter belt."
     Cruger believed what she said. In her late twenties and athletic, 
Corrina was still a head-turner, even a 'real fox' as one of his 
buddies annoyingly called her. Trim, tan, with mid-length auburn hair, 
she was extremely attractive. No tofu thighs or belly rolls like 
Cruger saw on so many women at the beach and around the neighborhood. 
Corrina didn't need help to get his libido into high gear.
     "All I have to do is think of you in your string bikini. My 
circulatory system does the rest," he said.
     Corrina walked over to Jack and gave him a soft kiss on the lips.
     She said, "All I have to do is think of you getting into my 
string bikini."
     Then they began to try to make a baby. No oysters necessary.

     Later that evening Cruger accepted the inevitable: he would have 
to play Tony's accordion. From good sex to accordions, isn't live full 
of dichotomies, he mused. And why play the thing? First of all, the 
kid asked him to. Second, the thing was exciting and strange and 
unexplained. Lastly, it had a nice sound and a good feel. Why not?
     He closed the study door so Corrina would not easily walk in on 
the strange sight. The warm, softly illuminated study was lined on one 
wall with bookshelves full of Cruger's favorite reading as well as a 
few shelves dedicated to Corrina's anatomy, physiology, and nursing 
textbooks. Cruger allowed his eyes to scan the shelves that were like 
friends to him, holding up parts of his mind, parts of his past, books 
that had become a part of his world view -- part of his most private 
self. On the top shelf, a little Hemingway, some Fitzgerald, 
everything by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The shelf below, invoking a more 
philosophical mood, housed some Kafka: The Castle and The 
Metamorphosis, Huxley, Plato, Koestler. The next shelf had the high-
speed fantasies of Heinlein, Bradbury, Asimov, Sturgeon, Clarke. Then 
Cruger's eyes stuck to the next lowest shelf, full of the reading of 
the college years: Joyce, Proust, Mann, Elliot, Beckett, Conrad; even 
some sixties classics jumped out at him -- Mailer, Malamud, Pynchon, 
Barth. Catch 22 was there, and others equally important.
     Cruger wanted to reach around and pat himself on the back for his 
literary achievements, at the same time saying: Yes, ladies and 
gentlemen, I read all of these and more. But, please hold the 
applause, save the awards, because I've done nothing with them but 
file them away in my mind, my selfish head; they are now stashed deep 
into the brains of an accordion instructor who is merely a consumer of 
knowledge, not a provider, a processor, a manufacturer or a designer.
     Unlatching the old case, he pulled out Tony's exotic instrument. 
Caressingly, carefully, and tentatively, he began to play a few warm-
up scales.
     Inexplicable blue light notwithstanding, the strangest thing was 
this: Cruger began to play things he never played before. After a few 
requisite Polkas, he launched into a snappy rendition of Malaguena, a 
song he had heard but never played before. The instrument's 
mysterious, resounding overtones echoed in Cruger's mind as its blue 
sparks and beautiful notes rang out into the energized, tranquil air.

                              Chapter Three

     As promised, Tony called Cruger at home the next evening. Tony 
thanked Cruger for practicing the instrument as he had requested.
     "How do you know that I actually played it?" Cruger asked.
     "Oh, I know, it's obvious."
     Cruger was only slightly disturbed by the fact that Tony seemed 
to know this for certain, somehow. Other more disturbing questions 
were still unanswered. As if a witness to Cruger's silent thoughts, 
Tony said "I'd like to come over to fill you in on some facts."
     "I think I would enjoy that."
     "How about I come over after I'm out of school tomorrow, like 
around four thirty?" Tony said.
     "That's fine, I'll be back here by quarter after four. And you 
better have some good explanations; this whole thing is really weird," 
Cruger said.
     "Oh yeah, must be totally weird for you. Don't worry, see you 
then."
     Cruger hung up and thought about this High School "dude" who was 
"totally" messing his mind. This kid was the strangest thing to ever 
happened to Cruger. Being a true skeptic at heart, he still felt that 
this was some kind of hoax, some strange setup. He expected the hidden 
camera to pop out from behind the wall at any minute: "Surprise, it 
was a joke, you're an idiot." 
     Cruger realized that, according to the apparent behavior of most 
people, he should have been jumping out of his skin with curiosity. 
Most people would have been more affected, Cruger thought. But he 
evidently had a high tolerance for ambiguity.
     He wondered if anyone really knew anything anyway, so why should 
he worry about his silly predicament. He meant really knowing what was 
going on, as in having positive, scientific proof of existence. 
Besides, a little excitement was what he thought he wanted. A small 
little challenge had presented itself, and he now accepted the 
challenge, on its (or Tony's) terms.
     So like people, he thought, to accept challenges that find them 
while never choosing a challenge on their own. Playing the game is so 
much easier for people than inventing it.
     Cruger now waited for Tony to play his next move. What had 
Kierkegaard said? Life can only be understood backwards; but it must 
be lived forwards. Cruger now waited to live his soon-to-be-explicable 
future.

                              Chapter Four

     Cruger tried to put Tony out of his mind and found Corrina in the 
living room doing aerobics. He asked his wife for a dinner date and 
she kindly accepted. Corrina had the day off after working a week of 
day shift, so she was rested and ready to go out to dinner. The new 
Cajun place on El Camino Real, Louisiana Pot, was their choice.
     The restaurant was located in a mini-mall that also had a dry 
cleaner, record store, sandwich shop, crafts store, and Pizza place. 
You could have your clothes cleaned, buy some overpriced CDs, stock up 
on yarn, and eat anything from pizza to a tofu burger all without 
reparking your car. Great.
     The Louisiana Pot was New Orleans moved 2,000 miles west. 
Dixieland music played, people drank like fish, and the Gumbo was 
excellent. Corrina waited for her blackened prime rib and Cruger 
waited for his blackened catfish.
     Corrina told Jack about her patients, in particular a young girl 
with MS who was a sweet kid with serious problems. In a way, the 
toughest of patients. 
     A tape of a Dixie band played "Here Come the Saints." Cruger felt 
himself floating in and back out of the conversation with his wife. He 
wondered if the whole function of entertainment, evenings out for 
tasty dinners and movies, where nothing more than a way of escaping 
from the harsh reality we all see when we're alone. At the restaurant, 
Cruger could see his pretty wife and well-dressed waiters and pretty 
waitresses and laughing couples with nice clothes. He could hear 
Dixieland music and the intoxicated laughs of young men and young 
ladies who had just downed their "authentic" New Orleans Hurricanes.
     If this were more real than playing his instrument or reading or 
sitting around the house, then it only seemed more real because 
restaurant scenes are what you see in the movies and on TV and what 
you read about in the newspaper. Everyone, without exception, was at 
least moderately young and moderately well-dressed. Bright colors and 
patterns that seemed to say: I'm centered, I have money, do you too? 
These people are all sheep, Cruger thought. They could be trained to 
accept nearly anything as reality.
     The waiter arrived with the prime rib and the catfish. Both the 
fish and beef were spiced and burnt black in an iron pan. For all he 
knew, the meal was highly carcinogenic. Cruger looked around as people 
eagerly awaited their burnt-to-a-crisp twenty dollar entrees. Like 
sheep.
     "You think this blackened stuff causes cancer?" Corrina said.
     Cruger was surprised. Either his thoughts were printed on his 
sleeve or she was as cynical as he. She's a worrier like me, he 
thought, that's why we're married.
     "Un huh," he said. "But don't worry, what we did this afternoon 
was an anti-carcinogen."
     "And good exercise too," she said.
     They ate their dangerous meal and Cruger tried to pay attention 
to her discussion of patients and hospital politics. 
     "You really help these people -- I'm proud of you. At least one 
of us is making a contribution for the better," Cruger said.
     "Oh come on, you're making a contribution -- you're a teacher," 
Corrina said. She had her nose screwed up that way it got whenever she 
became mildly annoyed.
     Cruger realized that he was preoccupied and in a self-pitying 
mood. At this rate, he would not be a very good date. 
     What she just said was true. Yes, he was a teacher and that was 
generally considered a noble profession. Unless you teach accordion, 
in which case, he thought, people thought of you like they thought of 
the neighborhood crack dealer: forcing horrible habits on young, 
impressionable kids.
     Self-pity aside, honesty was sometimes the surprisingly best 
policy: "It's just that I'm afraid I'm not doing enough with my life," 
he said. " I've been worried about not making a contribution, not 
giving enough."
     Corrina looking him straight in the eye, her pretty and open face 
telling him as much as her words. "You're worrying too much. Just face 
it, you're a good person, a great guy -- why else would I have married 
you? Just accept that and quit punishing yourself."
     And maybe he should let well enough alone. Did every action that 
every person did on every day necessarily contribute to the course of 
the future? Cruger thought that might be so; but, playing that weird 
accordion with the blue light must be something important, a 
substantial contribution, because there was something about it that 
felt magical. He was somebody now, playing that weird accordion.
     Whatever the flashy little thing really was.

                          Chapter Five

     Our daughters and sons have burst
     from the marionette show
     leaving the tangle of strings
     and gone into the unlit audience
                     --  Maxine Kumin

     Tony showed up at Cruger's doorstep the next day, as planned. 
Cruger was relieved and excited to see Tony, although he wanted to 
appear nonchalant about the situation.
     "Can I get you anything to drink? Cruger asked.
     "A Coke or Pepsi, if you got it, thanks."
     Cruger popped a can and poured two glasses full, on the rocks. He 
motioned for Tony to sit at the kitchen table.
     "So, you think the accordion I gave you is cool or what?"
     "You only lent it to me, and, yes it's cool." Cruger's use of the 
word cool came out as a mockery of Tony, and Cruger regretted it 
immediately.
     Tony said, "I have a lot of things that need to be said, and I'm 
afraid you will need a really open mind to hear them."
     "My friends tell me I'm open-minded," said Cruger. "And my 
enemies tell me that my mind is so open that everything has leaked 
out."
     "Great, you'll need room in there for the stuff that I'm going to 
lay on you." Tony flicked a wisp of his long blond hair out of his 
eyes, as if the motion were a precursor to any serious discussion.
     "Starting with an explanation of the blue light, I hope," Cruger 
said.
     "Yep. Did you look down into the belly of that box when you were 
playing?"
     "Uh-huh."
     "And you saw those blue strands of light sort-of moving around, 
creating different patterns and stuff."
     Cruger nodded, wondering if they were going to play a guessing 
game or if Tony would just tell him what was what.
     "Well, what was happening in there was significant. Each one of 
those blue lights -- or strings, I would call them -- each represents 
a path, a possible outcome. As you saw, there are millions of those 
things wiggling around when you play.
     "I contacted you because you were chosen as someone who will do a 
very good job of making, or, as I like to call it, spinning these 
strings."
     "What is the point of spinning these strings, and why are you 
involved?" Cruger said, the questioning leaping out automatically 
before he fully comprehended what Tony had just said.
     Tony began to explain everything, or, at least, quite a bit. 
Cruger was being offered a job. Tony belonged to an organization that 
looked for people who had special talents and abilities: abilities 
that were a match for the special needs of the company that Tony 
worked for.
     Cruger, mainly because of his musicianship, was one of the dozen 
or so people in the world chosen for this job of "spinning" the 
strange blue strings.
     "So your company is an international company then?" Cruger asked.
     "Oh yeah. In fact the company is a lot broader based than that."
     Cruger frowned and Tony explained more.
     "The Company, as we like to call it, has a bunch of 
responsibilities. The primary responsibility is to create and support 
all worlds, galaxies, and universes."
     Cruger gave Tony a blank stare.
     "It's a service industry, really," said Tony.
      Tony laughed. Cruger pretended to laugh along with him. They 
both continued to laugh -- Cruger felt like a cartoon character, 
laughing, slapping his his knee; he would have even guffawed if he 
knew what a guffaw was.
     "You're joking," Cruger said.
     "No, I'm totally serious. I can understand that you don't believe 
me -- I didn't believe it at first either; but you'll believe it 
soon."
     Tony explained more. The spinners completed a necessary function 
of determining the probable outcomes of all events on earth. Each 
string could be thought of as a possible plane of reality across time. 
The many parallel strings that intersected each other represented the 
large number of possible outcomes for any given instant.
     "Couldn't God just toss some dice? I had always thought that's 
how it might work anyway."
     "No," said Tony, "and we call him the Chairman, or the Big Guy, 
by the way. Just Him rolling the dice would be a poor way of spinning 
because it would be cold, mechanical, and lack the variation and 
natural beauty that people like you provide."
     "Well, how could it be that I do a better job than, um, the Big 
Guy?"
     "Originally everything was done by Him, like you say. But, then 
it became clear that a more personal way would incorporate the proper 
aspects of the human condition. I don't fully understand it, but maybe 
you can think of it this way: it's like the difference between 
computer-generated art and human-devised art -- an expert can tell the 
difference."
     Cruger was either satisfied with that explanation or so immersed 
in thought that he failed to respond.
     Tony continued to explain that the job of spinner would entitle 
Cruger to a family health plan, enriched musical talent, and a sense 
of accomplishment. Cruger just needed to play the special accordion 
every evening for at least thirty minutes. Playing more would do 
neither any good nor any harm. The job did not come without risks, 
however. Not everyone was a friend of the company. In fact, the 
company was in direct competition with what they referred to as the 
"Other Company." Tony reminded Cruger that he was most likely at least 
conceptually familiar with the "Other Company."
     "If not for them, everything here would be perfect. Can you 
imagine, no hunger, no disease, no murder or greed?"
     "So the 'Other Company' is responsible for everything bad?" asked 
Cruger.
     "More or less. Death would always be with us along with the 
natural occurrences that some people think are bad, but, the Other 
Company pretty much has what we think of as the Devil's work as their 
charter."
     "Somehow this translates to a risk for me?" Cruger moved the 
conversation back to what stuck in his mind.
     "Yes. The Other Company has employees here just like we do. They 
can get involved in messing us up -- they have in the past. But, we 
keep a low profile. I am your only contact in the company. Just like 
you, I have only one original contact, my boss, and now I guess you, 
as an employee."
     "Hah," said Cruger. "You come in here and tell me I can have a 
job with the rulers of the universe and my boss will be a high school 
kid who looks like a surf bum?"
     "Yeah, that's pretty much what I'm telling you. I also know that 
you are going to accept the job," Tony said.
     Cruger rose his eyebrows and felt his chin jerk involuntarily, 
demonstrating a small surprise reflex that he never knew he had. "How 
the hell do you know that?"
     "It came down to me in a memo. It's determined already by other 
spinners. You're it."
     "Then why did you even ask me?" Cruger said.
     "Oh, we try to be polite in this business."
     "And what about that family health plan you mentioned," Cruger 
smiled at the incongruous use of such prosaic corporate terminology.
     Tony nodded and answered. "That means that you and your family 
will experience no illness or harm, except for what is beyond our 
control, like intervention from the Other Company." 
     "Now that sounds like a pretty good benefit."
     "Yeah, well, we're a very competitive employer. We don't even ask 
for your immortal soul in return."

                          Chapter Six

     Cold, cold, cold. The frost was fall's thickest yet; the dried 
old leaves of Maples and Eucalyptus lined the streets. Most of all, it 
was cold. 
     Leon Harris had just started his morning jog. His blood had yet 
to flow to his extremities, which were as numbed from sleepiness as 
they were aggravated by the chilling morning breeze.
     Harris glanced quickly at his black plastic, multi-function 
jogging watch, $3.95 from Service Merchandise. He had only been 
running for three minutes, two seconds, and fifty-seven hundredths. 
Usually the endorphin rush didn't kick in until fifteen minutes, at 
least. Harris imagined the feeling he would have when the sweat poured 
off his brow and the blood pulsed through his trunk and thighs. 
Running, it feels so good when you stop, he told himself in a 
clenched-teeth mantra. Morning runs are a lot nicer in the summer, 
but, think of the poor suckers who live were it really gets cold, he 
thought. The radio weather report that morning said currently forty-
three degrees, warming to a high of sixty. Not too bad.
     Harris usually got his run done by 7:05, into the shower, 
breakfasted, dressed and out the door by 8:00. He could be to work by 
8:15, hit the weight room or Karate practice at lunch, leave work by 
6:00 and get home around 6:30. Not that he lived by the clock.
     At home, Harris would throw together microwaved leftovers or cook 
a quick stir-fry type dish: lean meat, vegetables, and rice or 
potatoes. He only drank alcohol when out with friends, keeping it to 
one or two drinks, which didn't have too much of an effect on his lean 
6-3, 210-pound body.
     Once at work, he would make out a list that described his goals 
for the day. A typical list looked like this:

     8:30     Glass of Water, write list
     8:45     Investigate File System bug
     10:00    Staff Meeting
     11:30    Lunch workout
     12:30    Debug, design next lib interface
     6:00     home
	
     Then he would break the list down into sublists. Often the 
sublists generated sublists of their own, but Harris knew where to 
draw the line.
     His performance reviews at work usually commended him on his 
organizational, attention to detail, and ability to persevere on a 
problem until closure.
     The man had no vices. Well, almost none. When given the 
opportunity, Harris could be an extremely inquisitive person, far past 
the point of simply being nosy.
     When Harris' next door neighbor, Jack Cruger, began playing his 
accordion every single evening, Harris noticed. 
     Harris, a black man who grew up in the sixties and seventies, 
liked to listen to Stevie Wonder, James Brown, John Coltrane, Miles 
Davis, Hendrix, Muddy Waters, and some Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, but 
not accordion music.
     He would have been merely disgusted with Cruger and his 
instrument, if not for the flickering pale blue light that shone 
through the curtains when Cruger played every night. 

                         Chapter Seven

     Cruger was cooking dinner when he heard Corrina coming through 
the garage door.
     "Back here," he said. "Your chef is at work creating another 
masterpiece."
     He stirred the mushrooms sauteing in the butter sauce and 
sprinkled the minced green onions from the cutting block.
     Corrina walked into the kitchen and put her purse down on the 
counter. She sniffed the air. She smelled Tarragon.
     "Mmm, smells good."
     "But of course," he said, mocking the accents of the French chefs 
that worked at restaurants more expensive than any he had been to. He 
sounded exactly like one of those temperamental little Cordon Bleu 
jocks.
     "Was that supposed to be a French accent?" she said. "Sounded 
more like an Australian with lock jaw."
     "You've got no ear, no ear. My accent is magnifique," he said, 
again sounding like an Aussie with lockjaw.
     "Whatever." And then she put her arms around him and pushed her 
face into his neck. She whispered into his ear "we're pregnant."
     Cruger forgot about his culinary masterpiece and bad accent. They 
kissed and hugged and she cried. He did too, a little, but worked hard 
to keep her from seeing it and himself from admitting it. 
      Cruger believed that whatever would happen, they were strong 
enough for it. The journey would begin again, a journey that, as 
opposed to some others, was not in itself the reward. 
     A baby, a baby, goddamn, I don't believe it. He hugged Corrina 
tight and close, eyes shut hard, leaking only slightly.
     He and Corrina knew the fragility of life. Corrina had been 
pregnant a year ago. The baby -- not yet known as a 'he' or 'she' but 
most certainly not an 'it' -- was of course destined for greatness. 
Possibly a doctor, an astronaut, or maybe even President of the United 
States, the baby would most certainly be a special person.
     The winter months of December and January passed. Then, for 
Corrina, she said it felt like a heavy period. Realization of the 
dreaded fact was more horrid than anything they had ever faced before. 
The robbery of a promised life was a malicious obscenity.
     The Doctors gave Corrina a set of explanations. These thing can 
happen for many reasons: failure of the fetus to attach properly to 
the uterine wall, scar tissue, or hormonal imbalances. She had still 
been in the danger period -- just barely. The first trimester had 
nearly elapsed without incident. The integrity of the umbilical cord 
had been questioned; the doctors thought that the cord became twisted 
and then failed.
     He and Corrina vowed to be brave and try again. Only a success 
could erase the miserable failure of their first attempt.
     Cruger wondered if he would ever believe that a real life had not 
been lost. Sure, the first baby actually born to them would be the 
first child, but, hadn't their been a different life, a thoroughly 
different zygote based on different genetic material that had existed 
and then suddenly not existed? In practical terms, it didn't matter to 
him. In terms of the meaning of a life that has been thoroughly 
erased, the meaning was very special. The poor damned little umbilical 
cord.
     He kissed Corrina again. Yes, we are brave enough for another 
shot at it.
     And what type of world would they be bringing their baby into. 
Would they bring the baby into a world that he felt he had to 
apologize for? No, his child, all the children deserved better.
     He vowed to try hard to make it better. For his baby.

     Later that night, Cruger retreated to the den to play Tony's 
accordion. Cruger, admittedly, had never been an exceptionally good 
accordionist. His repertoire consisted of a dozen Polkas, some folk 
music, a few old swing standards, and "Lady of Spain." Anything else 
and he had to read the music; and he was not one of those expert 
sight-readers who could play anything perfectly the first time. Since 
he had been spinning alone in this room for a few nights, he noticed a 
change in his playing. The notes seemed to flow out more smoothly. The 
instrument produced a rounder, more musical tone. Cruger could play 
almost any tune he had ever heard before, his ear and instincts 
accurately leading him across the keyboard.
     This night was no exception. His paying felt strong and full of 
life. He played Thad Jones's ballad, "A Child is Born." He had only 
heard the song once before on one of Corrina's old Thad Jones & Mel 
Lewis big band albums. But he knew the song now; he deeply felt the 
song and every one of its nuances and alternate chord changes. Life 
could be so good.

                          Chapter Eight

     Leon Harris' beautifully landscaped front yard stood out as the 
neighborhood's best. The lush green carpet of his front lawn was 
thicker and greener than a billionaire's wallet. To the other side of 
Harris' driveway was an elevated Japanese Rock garden. The Scotch 
moss, red-tinged boulders, gravel, as well as the spherically-shaped 
Pyrocantha and Juniper bushes formed a visual retreat from the 
concrete and asphalt monotony of the maze of streets, sidewalks, and 
driveways that entangled the tightly-housed neighborhood.
     As Harris had improved his yard, his impression of the neighbors' 
yards had diminished. At first his neighbors, both the Crugers and the 
Youngs on the other side, had what appeared to be perfectly adequate 
yards. By the time Harris had added the final fieldstone to his rock 
garden, the neighbors' small intermittent weeds seemed bigger, the 
rusted brownish grass more horrid. 
     The neighbor's yards had clearly become the landscapes from hell.
     Harris didn't know any of his neighbors well. He said hello to 
the ones he passed when he was out for a run, and had only spoken 
briefly to the Crugers a couple of times. The Cruger guy was a pretty 
lazy dude, Harris thought. A musician. Somehow he had a babe of a 
wife. The guy must be twenty pounds overweight, a scarcely employed 
accordionist (calling him a musician was probably a stretch), and he's 
got a hot-looking wife who pretty much supports him.
     He must not be as stupid as he looks, Harris realized.
     But who knows what the hell this Cruger guy is up to now? Harris 
poured some boiling water over an herbal, caffeine-free tea bag. 
Ginseng root, good for sustained energy as well as sparking the immune 
system.
     Harris didn't have any plans for the evening. He sat at the 
terminal in his home office and played with a few matrix solutions he 
didn't get a chance to try at work.
     Later he went into the family room, were there was room to move, 
and practiced a few dozen low and high kicks, on left and right sides. 
He finished the quick workout with sixty-five knuckle and fingertip 
push-ups. Even this quick workout gave him a good healthy sheen of 
sweat. He peeled his shirt off as he entered the bathroom and, 
grabbing his toothbrush, began his fourth tooth brushing of the day. 
He concentrated on his gums -- the plethora of television ads 
concerning gingivitis had him worried.
     From the bathroom, through the obscured view of the semi-opaque 
privacy glass, he could see the Crugers' house. A soft blue light 
radiated a sense of peace and contentedness from one of their bedroom 
windows. When Harris stopped brushing, he could hear the sound of the 
accordion. It was a faint sound; Harris thought it sounded like the 
old standard tune "Autumn Leaves," but he couldn't tell for sure. It 
definitely wasn't a polka, and Harris considered that much a great 
improvement.

                          Chapter Nine

     The doorbell rang at 4:15, right on time. Cruger opened the door. 
Tony was wearing day-glow pink beach shorts, a black Megadeth tank 
top, and unlaced high-tops. He stood with one arm holding his 
skateboard and the other around the shoulder of a young lady friend 
who held her own skateboard. Her skin was tanned to a smooth medium-
brown. A perfect match for Tony, Cruger thought. Her flaxen blond hair 
hung down to her shoulders and across her eyebrows. Baby blue skin-
tight lycra pants, peach halter top and sandals completed the perfect 
young-California ensemble. She was beautiful.
     "Cruger, this is my friend Sky," Tony said. 
     "Sky? Nice to meet you."
     "Hi, shall I call you Cruger?" Sky asked between bubble gum 
snaps.
     "Please. Are you and Tony in school together?" Cruger said.
     "Yeah, Tony and I have three classes together." Sky smiled wide 
and lifted her big blue eyes towards her namesake as if having three 
classes with Tony was better than winning the lottery.
     "I'll meet you later tonight, Sky. Cruger and I have some 
business." At the word business, Tony's tone of voice dropped to a 
deep growl.
     "OK, later." Sky waved and slapped her board on the ground in a 
single fluid motion.
     Cruger watched her closely as she sailed, on the small plastic 
board, down the driveway, swerving back and forth and then cutting a 
turn onto the sidewalk. A second later he caught himself staring and 
stopped.
     "Very attractive young friend you have, Tony."
     "I wouldn't have thought you of all people to be such a lech," 
Tony said.
     "Lecher is too strong a word. Dirty old man will do just fine" 
Cruger said. He rolled his eyes and smiled.
     "OK," Tony said. "Let's get to business here. Last thing I need 
is you giving me a hard time about Sky."
     "Why is that? Is anyone else giving you a hard time about Sky?" 
Cruger asked automatically, unable to imagine what conflicts Tony 
would be having over a girl like Sky.
     At that moment Tony instantly looked like a teenager again. 
Tony's shoulders slumped forward almost imperceptibly, yet, the slight 
lapse in posture illustrated a vulnerability that Cruger hadn't 
noticed before.
     Tony dropped his eyes to the floor and said "Sky is in what you 
would have to call a 'sick' relationship. She's been going with this 
guy for a year, and she's tired of him, but she can't get out of it."
     "Why can't she get out of it? Has she tried to break up with 
him?"
     "Oh yeah. In fact she's told him that she wants out and she wants 
to date me. That just makes him grab on tighter and follow her around 
-- I think he's obsessive."
     Cruger pondered Tony's situation, nearly breaking out into an 
inappropriate grin, thinking of the fact that Tony was such an 
extraordinary kid, plagued by ordinary problems.
     "The thing is," Tony said, "she and I have a lot in common, and 
he -- his name is Rick -- doesn't have anything in common with her. 
The guy is a delinquent. Really, I'm not exaggerating."
     Cruger wandered over to the family room couch and motioned Tony 
to follow. The plush carpet and late afternoon sun blended to create a 
calm atmosphere that clashed with Tony's mood.
     Cruger said, "there must be something about this guy that's not 
allowing her to get away. Is she afraid of him?"
     "Well, she might be afraid of him. He's sort of wacko acting 
sometimes, and that scares her." 
     Tony was truly a teenager; Cruger could see that now. Not only 
that, but, he was a sensitive young man who must feel like an outsider 
among his peers. Tony lived a secret life that he couldn't share with 
his friends. In the status-hungry phase of late high school, that must 
be a serious social burden.
     "Well, enough of that," said Tony. "We need to get down to some 
business.
     "OK. But if you want to talk about this or anything else like it 
again, feel free."
     "Thanks, Cruger. I don't care what the Big Guy says, you're all 
right."
     Cruger almost jumped off the couch: "Don't scare me like that -- 
I went to Catholic School, you know."
     "Sorry," Tony said. "Now that we're being serious, I need to 
continue your orientation lecture. How's the spinning going so far?"
     "Great, considering I don't know what I'm doing." 
     Tony paused for second, a look of concentration on his furrowed 
brow. "If you've got time, I like to shoot over the hill to the beach 
to think sometimes. We could talk there if you don't have to be back," 
Tony said.
     "Actually, that would be fine. I don't have any plans this 
afternoon -- my wife won't be home until seven-thirty." One of the 
luxuries of being a musician who works few hours, Cruger thought. 
Makes up for the magnitude of pay, or the lack thereof.
     "Cool. Let's go." Tony was heading for the door like a rocket, 
his surfer's body being pulled toward the beach by a nearly visible 
magnetic attraction.
     They got into Cruger's car. Tony rifled off instructions before 
they had even left the driveway.
     "Seventeen shouldn't have any traffic going towards Santa Cruz 
this time of day. Take Route One North when we hit it, and then we can 
go to Natural Bridges -- I like that beach a lot."
     Cruger nodded and exhaled deeply, preparing himself for the fifty 
minute drive. Shooting over to Santa Cruz was a young man's move, but 
it felt good to be mobile, to live life to the fullest and get the 
most out of every minute. His back was starting to hurt from the drive 
already. He wondered where his bottle of aspirin was and hoped Tony 
didn't want him to buy some beers -- probably some wispy thin domestic 
beer that tasted like slightly used water but left you with a thick 
headache the next day.
     They started to ascend, having passed quaint Los Gatos nestled in 
the foothills of the coastal mountains. The dense pine and Douglas fir 
forests jutted skyward on each side of the two-lane road, resting atop 
the smallish shoulders of the vertical clay-rock walls that encased 
the highway.
     "I'm going to be a Physics major next year in College, man, I'm 
really into it," Tony said.
     "I think I can understand your fascination with it," said Cruger, 
"In fact, I guess you have access to, what would you call it, inside 
information."
     "Yeah. I mean, the way things work, the scientific method, that's 
everything. The only hope we have is to fully document and describe 
the physics of our environment and our lives, only then are we in 
charge -- you know, the masters of our destiny. Hell, I can't talk to 
people about this at school. If they knew that I skate home after 
school to review Schroedinger's equations, they'd peg me a nerd."
     "So, is that where the 'Tony the GQ surfer dude' act comes from?"
     "Totally dude; like totally," Tony said as he blew his hair out 
of his face.
     "But what else is at stake here? How about this stuff with humans 
being more in control because of the Unified Theorem?" Cruger said.
     "That's the key. And when we get more control because of our 
particular technological approach, I want to be one of those in the 
know. The driver's seat will be for those of us who understand the 
theory. The theory of operation."
     "And where does that leave a dumb old spinner, accordionist, good 
for nothin' like me?" said Cruger. "I hope not as corporate dead 
wood."
     "Oh no," Tony said. "Think job retraining, the wave of the 
future."
     The twisted smile on Tony's face was the kind of smile that 
reflects a sarcasm that is entirely too representative of the truth. 
Cruger tried to take no offense.
     They arrived and Tony led them to the edge of the sand. Cruger 
could only see one person, a quarter mile away, on the deserted beach.
     Waves mercilessly pounded against the shore, slowly grinding the 
fine sand particles into smaller and smoother pieces of sand. Natural 
bridges was a limestone structure that formed a bridge across a small 
ocean inlet. Through the center of the stone structure was large 
circular hole that people would walk through when traveling from one 
section of beach to another.
     Cruger took off his shoes and socks and stepped into the cooling 
sand. The smooth particles massaged the bottoms of his feet, rolling 
across the top of his feet when he took larger steps. Cruger had 
always liked the beach, the winds, the sand, even the fog that 
accompanied most mornings on the shoreline. Now the cool afternoon 
breeze moved through his hair like an invisible rake though grass, the 
salty air massaging health and the robustness of the ocean into his 
scalp.	
     Why don't I come here more often, he thought. The same thought he 
had whenever he came, except for the times where he first had to 
struggle through hours of traffic. If you knew when to leave and when 
not to, that wouldn't happen.
     Tony sprinted down to the shoreline, dipped his feet in the foamy 
water, and ran back to Cruger, covering the thirty yards in what seems 
like a couple of seconds.
     "Need to get some exercise -- spent the whole day sitting on my 
rear in class," he said.
     "Right," Cruger said, "a little exercise like that for me and you 
can call 911."
     A gust of wind passed over them, kicking up sand, chips of water-
logged wood washed in by the tide, and scraps of leaves and seaweed.
     "You need to know some more things about the Company," Tony said. 
"The Company has a large, complex organization, but, I'll tell you 
what you really need to know. As you probably already guessed, a good 
percentage of the Company is composed of people right here from earth.
     "Many of the executive positions are still held by Managers from 
elsewhere. The vast majority of these -- well, I'll call them 
foreigners, sounds better than 'aliens' -- most of them are from the 
same planet: Tvonen. You won't find this planet on any of your 
astronomy charts; I assure you, it's far away. Oh, by the way, the 
Chairman himself is a Tvonen."
     Cruger raised his eyebrows. Now he knew the top dog was an alien, 
did that matter?
     "These foreigners went through a process of evolution quite 
similar to what the humans have endured. However, there are a few 
major differences, and they're important differences."
     Cruger noticed that Tony's ability to talk so matter-of-factly 
about these matters was surprising and frightening -- it even grated 
on him a little. How could God and the secrets of life that had 
previously seemed magical and immortal now be so prosaic?
     "First of all, the Tvonens have creationist mythology that rivals 
the book of Genesis for entertainment value. The only irony is, their 
mythology is not allegorical like ours but entirely factual.
     "It seems that the Tvonens were originally created as a tribe of 
androgynous beings; there were exactly twelve of them and they lived 
in a setting that we would have called Eden. It seems that their 
creator, and exactly who that was is something I will get to later, 
had quite a sense of humor. They were twelve Tvonens living in a 
perfect environment; all the food they needed grew in the ground and 
on trees, the atmosphere and temperature was very mild, although too 
high on the nitrogen side for humans, and there was no disease, 
poverty, pestilence, or taxes to pay.
     "Well what's the catch, you'd probably ask? Like I said, they 
were androgynous; they had no way of reproducing. This did not turn 
out to be such a disaster, though. The original twelve didn't age. 
Their skins remained free of wrinkles and blemishes; their bodies 
stayed young, flexible, and healthy. Before they knew it, centuries of 
our equivalent time had passed and they were all still young and 
healthy.
     "But, now I get to the part about the maker's sense of humor. It 
turns out that one day, one of the twelve who was called Remad, went a 
bit loony. He pulled limbs off tankas, or trees, and ran around in a 
wild circle of self-flagellation. When the others, who were entirely 
horrified, tried to stop Remad, he hit them and then continued on 
himself. The next morning, when Remad awoke, what do you think they 
found?
     Cruger just shrugged.
     "He had grown a sexual organ between his legs -- a penis." Tony 
laughed and shook his head. 
     Cruger scratched his head thinking that this, possibly the 
strangest story he had ever heard, was maybe the most important story 
he ever heard.
     "This is a documented fact, dude. To this day a Tvonen can be 
observed to undergo 'the change.'
     "Maybe you can guess the rest. Two days later, another tribe 
member misbehaved badly. The next day this Tvonen had become a she. 
Only four days of groping and rubbing and kissing and general boot-
strapped sex education before she was pregnant by Remad. Actually it 
wasn't that easy to figure out: the female Tvonen has almost a half 
dozen sexual orifices. Only one is good for reproduction, and it 
varies from individual to individual. Trial and error.
     This conjured up some wild mental images for Cruger. Sounds like 
a couple of sixteen-year-olds trying to do it in the back seat of a 
Volkswagen have it easy compared to the Tvonens, he thought.
     "For the longest time the rest of the original tribe remained as 
they were -- looking younger and healthier every day, actually. Remad 
and his wife, Tvena, had twelve children in as many years. Strange 
thing is, Remad and Tvena were old, wrinkled and dead within sixty 
years.
     "Three centuries later they knew that a special enzyme in their 
blood stream control the secretion of the hormone for sexuality. The 
sex enzyme was activated by exposure to environmental or emotional 
impurities. Centuries later a Tvonen could either have immortality, or 
a life of booze, drugs, sex, and procreation. Isn't that cruel?
     "An interesting footnote to the story of the Tvonens is that 
their early history was characterized as something that roughly 
translates to: "The Fouled Fountain of Youth." Their culture does 
provide the sort of Fountain of Youth that humans have searched for in 
vain. When the Tvonens live in harmony with their environment and 
avoid violence, destruction, and pollutants, they live from that 
fountain. Once converted sexually and environmentally, they can never 
go back. What you see there currently, after millions of years of 
civilization, is a healthy mix of reproductive and immortal Tvonens. 
Of course they have preserved their environment, unlike earthlings, in 
order to give their people a choice between immortality and 
reproductivity."
     Cruger had trouble believing what he just heard. The idea of 
androgynous and immortal sentient beings was hard to swallow. But, 
then again, the idea of technological and "logical" humans destroying 
their own planet was also a tough cookie to crunch.
     "What is their civilization like now?" Cruger asked. 
     "Now they are what we would call a very advanced society. They 
have technology that seems amazing. But, keep in mind, they are a lot 
different than humans. For example, they never devised any digital 
electronics. Their entire technology is based on analog computing and 
mineral crystals. What they also have is terrific projective holograms 
that they can transmit with pinpoint accuracy. For clothing, they wear 
trained microorganisms that are self-cleaning and form-fitting."
     Cruger sat there, the salt air blowing across his cool face, 
thinking about the Tvonens. Whereas the sand was beginning to stick to 
every square inch of Cruger's body, those small, coarse annoyances 
seemed to slide off Tony's tanned surfer skin, as if he were coated 
with teflon. Maybe the sand knew who its friends were.
     "Normally science progress with one smallish advancement after 
the other. Each scientist stands on the shoulders of all his worthy 
predecessors. One thing that was never done before is to stand on the 
shoulders of alien scientists -- that is how we've skipped a few steps 
here and advanced so quickly," Tony said.
     "You mean the Tvonens, they've helped us?" Cruger asked.
     "Yes, the ones that are running the company. They've pitched in a 
few key ideas that have allowed us to tie together string theory with 
the singularities -- black holes and the Big Bang phenomenon. Without 
the little tidbits they provided, we would probably still be stuck for 
a decade or even a century or two."
     The wind blew Cruger's thin, curly hair down across his eyes. He 
absently swept the hair away with his forearm. 
     Tony explained that the theoretical physicists had made some 
breakthroughs that even the company's R&D department didn't 
immediately understand. Einstein had proposed a theorem that the 
company engineers, the planet builders, had to check on to see if it 
was actually the equivalent of their method. The theoretical 
physicists of the '70s through now had come incredibly close to 
defining the time/space continuum, at least in human terms, in their 
"string theory" as it relates to the formation of planets, galaxies, 
and the universe. The work of Hawking and Penrose had brought the 
theory closer to full proof.
     "I don't know what happened to the original universe builders 
because they are working on new projects. You know, the ones who 
originally built the earth and all the galaxies. They're 
entrepreneurial types. The maintenance engineers must check the 
relativity and string theory to see if we really have done the 
incredible: this planet itself has evolved a species to the point that 
it has defined or even surpassed the knowledge of its creator." Tony 
smiled proudly, his already bright eyes putting out a higher amperage 
gleam. "An incredible notion. Think about it, we're the student 
actually surpassing the teacher -- doesn't happen often."
     "Yes, but if it's cliches you're looking for, 'those who can do, 
and those who cannot teach'," Cruger said.
     "Mmm. That would be saying the creator can't create? I think, as 
a species, humans are self-taught. In a nutshell, that's what 
evolution of an intelligent species is: the slow education of a 
species over time. We could call it Intellivolution."
     Tony grabbed a quick breath and then continued in a deep, 
confident voice. "A better analogy is the notion that someone like you 
could buy a fish tank, put in some fish, plants and food. You then 
come back to check on the tank a 'while' later -- remember the 
fragility of the notion of time -- and then the tank is full of smooth 
skinned little "fish" with arms that are telling you how the pump and 
filter work and what they want to be fed. That's the human condition," 
Tony said.
     Cruger expected Tony to follow with the words 'Q.E.D' -- Tony had 
sounded formal and overly confident in his statements. Cruger grimaced 
during Tony's comparison of humans to fish but vowed not to take it 
personally.
     Tony noticed Cruger's displeasure. "Hey, I am as human as you 
are, bud. I know it hurts. But admit it, we humans aren't God's gift, 
so to speak."
     Cruger chuckled. He thought about what Tony had said, wishing 
that he had any kind of a background in science at all that would help 
understand the concepts that Tony wrestled with.
     "Can there really be a complete Unified Theory?" Cruger asked. "I 
mean, everything seems so infinite, how can it all be explained or 
managed?"
     Tony nodded his head. "Right, it's all mind-boggling. Another 
possibility that had been investigated was that there is actually no 
theory of the universe that describes all of the actions and behaviors 
in a scientific sense. It could be that an infinite series of 
different explanations exist that apply to each situation. Just like 
you wondered, it has been thought possible that there is really no 
theory of life and the universe. Events cannot be predicted beyond a 
certain extent; they occur in an random and arbitrary manner.
     "Even if we were able to fully quantize the Unified Theory, for 
example in a series of algorithms on a computer, the theory would 
still remain undeniably separate from implementation. As an example, 
even if we completely understood every detail of the functioning of 
the human body, it would still take a long time to learn to actually 
create or 'build' that body. 
     "In the same way, understanding the entire universe and creation 
of universes would leave a lot of work to be done in implementing 
tools that implement the theory."
     "But, they have the tools -- they've provided that step?" Cruger 
asked.
     "Yes, I have converted their system into a human implementation 
that actually uses computers. Digital electronics is our big addition 
or contribution to this model," Tony said.
     "That's hard to believe. What they originally used must work, 
right? Why would they want to convert to our technology?" Cruger could 
not imagine a computer running the show. Images of '50s science 
fiction films and the overused term 'computer error' popped into his 
mind.
     "I can think of a few possible reasons. For one, in order for 
earth to maintain itself, it may need to have a system developed in 
its frame of reference, a human frame of reference. Another 
possibility is that since we were getting so close ourselves to 
cracking the code -- remember what I said about string theory -- that 
they may have just expedited our own destiny."
     "Great. It also sounds like this 'promoting from within' was a 
factor. If you want humans to do the job, give them endemic, human-
oriented tools," Cruger said.
     "Tools that are user-friendly," Tony said, following his 
marketing jargon with a sardonic grin.
     As the orange sun started to hide itself behind the lighthouse, 
beach cliffs, and twisted Monterey Cyprus trees on the horizon, they 
packed up, brushed off sand, and began the drive home.
     "What about spinning?" Cruger asked while guiding the car over 
the twisted road across the Santa Cruz mountains. "Is there anything 
more that I should know or concentrate on when I do it?"
     "No. I can't tell you exactly how to do your job, that would be 
prejudicing the future's outcome. You must simply do it the way you 
would naturally do it, without direction," Tony said.
     A while later Cruger pulled car into his driveway. He and Tony 
said goodbye and Tony grabbed his skateboard. Hips swerving and knees 
rolling, he sped down Cruger's driveway, all the while whistling a 
small, nearly silent song that played hauntingly in Cruger's mind as 
his tired legs walked the front steps of his beckoning home.
     Crouched along the fence, watering can in hand, was Cruger's 
neighbor, Leon Harris. 
     Harris had been curious about the young visitor that Cruger had 
entertained twice before. Explaining that he planned to work on 
documentation at home that afternoon, Harris sat by his bay window 
looking for anything out of the ordinary at Cruger's house. Luckily, 
he found it. What's with the blond kid, Harris wondered. And the 
accordion and the blue light at night?
     Harris was cursed with the curiosity of a cat. He would not rest 
until he understood what was going on.

                          Chapter Ten

     Cruger sat crouched over his accordion as he played. The notes he 
struck had a special warmth that night, a deep dark sound that 
reminded Cruger of the pounding Pacific ocean surf. The room was 
fairly dark, brightened only by a single lamp covered by its dark 
brown shade. Earth-tone light reflected off the warm, egg-shell-
painted walls. He looked at his trusted, dusty old books in the large 
teak bookshelf as he carelessly flipped his fingers across the piano 
accordion's keyboard.
     As he played, unbeknownst to him, babies were born, elderly and 
sick people died, and innumerable twists of fate and fortune ensued. 
Not all events were strings that were spun. Not all events that were 
spun were done by Cruger. The complex interplay of strings was ever 
changing, always evolving. Cruger would never know the exact results 
of his actions.
     Within the next three weeks, a 7.2 magnitude earthquake hit the 
San Francisco Bay Area. Part of the Oakland/San Francisco Bay Bridge 
collapsed. The Highway 880 Cypress structure collapsed. New lives 
began. Medical breakthroughs were made.
     A spinner in Iowa used his flour mill to do the special deed. One 
evening, he got into a fight with his wife over the subject of 
children. She wanted a large family of eight or ten children, he 
wanted to stop with three boys. Enough children, enough children, he 
thought.
     He went in to the barn and began spinning. Blue threads of light 
ricocheted off the millstone and across the pale, straw covered barn 
floor.
     That night, 700 miles away, a future President of the United 
States was conceived. A big night, even for a spinner.

     A solitary spinner in Moscow sat in front of the his large wooden 
chessboard. Each exquisitely crafted onyx piece was an individual, 
telling a sordid tale of battle and emotions through their small scars 
resembling nicks and scratches found across their exteriors. The 
spinner, a Grandmaster -- only playing against himself, with this 
chess set, in the warm, dark room -- used the Karamoff defense; as he 
moved the Knight blue streaks splattered the dull plaster walls. 
"Checkmate," he told himself.

     A man in California attached thirty-five large helium balloons to 
his deck chair; he wanted to see what would happen. What happened was: 
he floated into the sky. The air pistol that he brought along to pop 
the balloons, one by one, in order to smoothly descend, fell down 
between the chairs slats. He drifted up to 17,000 feet, waving to 
passing birds and airplanes indiscriminately.
     Spinners could not be held accountable for everything every idiot 
did.

                         Chapter Eleven

     "It's close to school actually, only take a minute to get there" 
Tony said.
     Tony wanted to show Cruger where he hung out when he was doing 
"company work." They got into Cruger's Honda Accord, started it up. 
The small engine purred like an overfed kitten.
     The building was, as promised, a five minute drive from Cruger's 
house. Tony's office was rented space in a small office building 
shared by a Title Company, some Law offices, and Tony's facade 
business. The placard outside his office entrance read "Universal 
Properties, Inc."
     Tony's office had a small desk sitting in the middle of the room. 
On the small desk was a thick blue cable weaving a circuitous path to 
a two-inch hole in the wall.
     They sat at Tony's small, plain desk.
     "We need to continue your training," Tony said. "You only got a 
small dose of it so far."
     Tony leaned back in his office chair and kicked his legs up on 
the desk. "The other source of intelligent life that we know about is 
the Chysa planet. They are actually a totally different story than the 
Tvonens." 
     Cruger felt like a child listening to his father tell bedtime 
stories. But, he was no child; Tony was no parent; these were no 
bedtime stories.
     Tony continued. "The Chysans are evidently really low-tech. If it 
weren't for the Tvonens, they would not have any representation on 
Earth or in the Company at all. No one has seen them in their real 
form -- "
     "But you said they were on Earth," Cruger said. He had been 
trying to form a mental image of these people and their ways. If no 
one knew what they looked like, how could he imagine them?
     "Yes, but what I hadn't mentioned yet is that they evidently can 
disguise themselves very well. I don't know for sure, but they seem to 
easily take on new forms or at least wear very good disguises."
     "Are we talking about adding something like makeup to their 
faces, or are we talking about completely changing shape?"
     "I don't know," Tony said. 
     Cruger wished he faced more absolutes, more certainties; all he 
could get so far were maybes.
     "Then how do we know that they exist and are here?" said Cruger.
     "You just have to take it on faith, my man. We have intelligence 
reports that say so."
     Cruger wondered if these "low-tech" intergalactic hitchhikers 
were really so low-tech. Seemed like they had kept a pretty low 
profile so far. That takes a little intelligence, at least.
     "Is there any sure-fire way to know which ones they are?"
     "No," said Tony. "I consider that an important area for future 
research. Especially since many of them may be involved with the Other 
Company."
     The words fell on Cruger like a sack of rocks. He had begun to 
imagine these people, or whatevers, as playful, somewhat backwards 
magicians. He had wanted to think of them like cute sea otters at the 
zoo: swimming on their backs, doing flips, and generally mimicking 
human behavior in a delightfully anthropomorphic way. It now seemed 
that the Chysa were not so innocent and playful.
     "Why the Other Company?"
     "That may be how they were recruited by delinquent Tvonens. The 
Chysa have a tendency towards deceit and magic. This, in a way, 
parallels the philosophy of the Other Company. You know, they are 
totally into deceit and trickery. In the Chysa culture, this is 
considered to be exemplary behavior."
     "The question is, do they really know what they are doing, or are 
they pawns?" Cruger said.
     The luminance of the color computer monitor reflected a bright 
and diffused image off Tony's face. "We don't really know, but, it 
would probably be a mistake to think that they are mindless and don't 
really know what they're up to. Just because they are not more 
technologically advanced than us doesn't mean that they are stupider 
than us," Tony said. "In some ways, we are really stupid. We may be 
destroying our planet beyond help. We have, throughout history, 
committed genocide. We may be the most homicidal intelligent life form 
that ever lived. Maybe the Chysa aren't so stupid." 
     Cruger couldn't disagree. In one breath, humans were aspiring to 
godliness. In the next, humans were possibly the stupidest of the 
"intelligent" life forms. Contemplating the possibilities of combining 
stupidity and power frightened Cruger. Absolute power corrupts 
absolutely. How could he, of all people -- Jack Cruger, the laid-back 
musician -- be involved in what was starting to sound, 
disappointingly, a hell of a lot like politics.
     Tony gave him a computer overview; Tony had accomplished a great 
deal on the computer so far. When Cruger's attention and energy level 
began to fall off quickly, they agreed to get together again Saturday.

     The next day Cruger gave his accordion lessons as usual, except 
an extra sense of pride and meaning filled what must have been a void 
in his life. He was proud of himself, proud of Corrina, happy with 
what life had recently dealt him. Now he was giving something 
important back, possibly making the world a better place. Heck, maybe 
making the universe a better place.
     The quote, we are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never 
to be undone popped into his head. How true -- who had said that? 
James, or maybe Emerson. Little did they know just how right they 
were.

                         Chapter Twelve

     The engaging back-beat of the legato bass-line anchored the 
solid, driving blues that Cruger coaxed from his accordion. He had 
developed yet another new technique: he played the bass line with his 
left hand while reaching over and playing the melody, higher on the 
keyboard, with his right hand. The bellows were pumped with his elbows 
while both hands worked out the dirty blues in synchronicity.
     Next, he picked up the tempo and banged out a respectable 
arrangement of Charlie Parker's "Donna Lee." Corrina would like this -
- too bad she isn't home yet. The other night she heard him playing 
"Dolphin Dance" and "On Green Dolphin Street." Was he in a dolphin 
mood that night, whatever the hell a dolphin mood may be? She was as 
surprised as she had yet been in their three-year marriage -- wasn't 
she the one with the stack of Miles, Bird, and Coltrane albums, while 
he had the most unhip of old records ("The Schmucker brothers play the 
Catskills") piled in their wall unit?
     "Hey, you're playing some good stuff, I can't believe it," she 
had said.
     "Well, I'm just getting into some more jazz and classical to 
broaden myself. Your bebop albums are pretty good after all, now that 
I actually listen to them. I have to admit."
     She continued listening from the kitchen, not yet seeing and 
questioning his instrument's secret blue sparks. Next he played Bach's 
Toccata in D minor. Very dramatic. He finished up with a rousing 
version of Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze." Cruger clacked the keys for 
percussive effect and even nursed a hypnotic distortion from the box, 
blue streaks flying. Hendrix on accordion? Maybe this is pushing it a 
little, he thought.

                        Chapter Thirteen

     Bright and blue beyond belief, the Saturday morning sky hung like 
a warm protective blanket across the wide sky. Tony walked to the 
front door of Jack Cruger's house. Just as he heard the slightest 
rustle of a sound, he turned to see something large, colorful, and 
horrible. It was on him in an instant. Tony was thrown hard to the 
concrete steps. As his clothes were ripped and torn, he felt immobile, 
suffocated, entirely constrained and helpless.
     He was punched, kicked, crushed, pinched and groped. Every square 
inch of his body was touched, attacked, in some way. His clothes were 
torn away from his body, leaving him naked, exposed, humiliated. 
     Tony's sense of time bogged-down to the slow-motion rate of 
tragedy and disaster; the entire encounter really lasted only seconds.
     He lay near death, only shock and the hallucinogenic aftertaste 
of violence spared him from terrible pain.
     He swallowed the salty and fast-flowing blood that filled his 
mouth. A slow calm kept him from panic. He knew to conserve energy, to 
hug himself tight and construct a spiritual cocoon around his 
destroyed body.
     Faint in the distance he heard the doorbell ring inside Cruger's 
home. He felt himself slipping closer to that dark, cold cave that 
filled his mind with images of pure fear. As if a brutal joke were 
being played, Tony heard the thin beep-beep-beep of his digital watch 
alarm -- telling him his time was up? Then, as if hitting an ice 
slick, he slid quickly into the cold and gloomy abyss of his 
nightmares. He was gone.

                        Chapter Fourteen

     Friday had been a lousy looking day. The foggy and smoggy sky 
pasted a dull gray tint across everything below it. Clouds, trees, 
houses, birds, and cars absorbed the depressing dull radiation and 
emitted a picture of impassive apathy. 
     A rotten day.
     Saturday was different. In a climactic zone that rarely had 
quickly-changing weather -- Cruger's friends on the East coast saw 
wild weather swings like this all the time -- Saturday was a big 
switch. The wind blew just strong enough to clear the skies to a 
bright blue. The smog count was low, the conifer pollen count high. 
Bright sunlight tunneled through Cruger's silky curtains, illuminating 
small dust particles, the kind usually never seen unless the light 
shines through them at a certain angle. 
     Cruger was home washing the dishes, Corrina just having left to 
work. Cruger never taught lessons Saturday. Some Saturdays he would 
play a birthday party, Bar Mitzvah, or wedding reception. Not today. 
He wanted to sit and think. Pulling himself away from the regular 
monotonous list of duties he usually attended to, he would figure out 
what was happening in his life. Too much -- he knew that at least.
     The doorbell rang. Cruger dried his hands and walked to the front 
door.
     Cruger's stomach compressed into a tight knot. The horrid 
wake of catastrophe flooded Cruger from his toes to his fingertips. 
Tony lay face down on the doorstep, a puddle of crimson liquid forming 
around his limp blond hair.
Tony's innocent exuberance for life was gone, wasted, spilt like a 
child's first glass of wine; spilled like Tony's blood across Cruger's 
doorstep. 
Cruger reached down to feel for a pulse, but, he knew the answer 
before he even began to bend over. The realization of Tony's death hit 
him; the emotional collision with an overly harsh reality demanded 
some necessarily inadequate dissipation of unwanted energy. 
Cruger exhaled loudly "No . . .my God," and then sunk to his knees, 
not knowing what to do.
     And that sound, what was that sound? Cruger then saw the black 
digital sports watch on Tony's wrist, chirping its annoying 
repetitious chirp over and over.
     Leon Harris stuck his head out of his front door. He saw Cruger 
doubled over in front of his young friend, who lay in an entirely 
unnatural position, limp armed and limp legged. Harris ran across his 
lawn to Cruger's front step.
     "What happened?" Harris said.
     Cruger's heart fluttered like a bird's; his skin was flushed from 
the neck up.
     "I don't know," Cruger said, "I think he's dead." 
     Harris bent down and checked both Tony's carotid and radials 
arteries for a pulse. 
     "Yeah ... I'm afraid you're right."
     Cruger reached down and unstrapped the noisy watch from Tony's 
lifeless wrist. Using the heel of his shoe, Cruger stomped down on the 
fancy blue plastic watch a few times before it was silenced. He wanted 
to see a spray of springs and clamps and smoke pouting out like in the 
cartoons, but the watch only lay there, in the stark sunlight, like 
Tony: beaten, broken, and wasted.

To be continued...
   
--
JEFF ZIAS (ZIAS1@AppleLink.Apple.com) has written and managed software 
at Apple Computer for ten years, and will soon begin a stint with a 
new software company. He enjoys spending time with his wife and two 
small children, playing jazz with Bay Area groups, writing software 
and prose, and building toys for his children to trash. The Unified 
Murder Theorem will continue next issue.
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Thanks for swingin' past the farm. Ma loves it when you bring the 
young folk to see us.
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