I sat down and wrote
the best words I could
Well it may be the devil or it may be the lord,
But you’re going to have to serve somebody
They’re selling postcards of the hanging
1.
This is either true or false, depending on your perspective.
2.
Once upon a time, there lived a man. He was a black man in a land ruled by white men. He lived during a time that was not very good for black men. White men thought that the color of their skin made them superior to back men.
3.
I sat down and wrote
the best words I could
Well it may be the devil or it may be the lord,
But you’re going to have to serve somebody
They’re selling postcards of the hanging
1.
This is either true or false, depending on your perspective.
2.
Once upon a time, there lived a man. He was a black man in a land ruled by white men. He lived during a time that was not very good for black men. White men thought that the color of their skin made them superior to back men.
3.
The blues are a music created by black men and women. It is a music that gives sound to their frustration of being treated as less than human. This man made this music.
4.
His name was Robert Johnson.
5.
Later the times changed and while white men and black men did not actually become equal, they liked to pretend that things were better and that everyone was now happy. But sometimes it was hard to pretend. One day four police officers beat a black man because his skin was black. This was not an unusual occurrence, but what made this event stand out was that another man, a white man at that, happened to record the beating on a video camera. So, the whole world saw what happened. Later a jury of their peers found the police officers innocent. There were five seconds of film that the rest of the public did not see that was supposed to make the difference. Five more seconds of them beating the black man. The rest of the world, especially the city where this took place, decided that things weren't much better than back when Robert Johnson lived and the black men in the city rioted. Sometimes it was hard to pretend.
6.
Still later things got better. Or at least that's what everyone said.
7.
Robert Johnson was not born with the ability to play the blues. Even as a child, Robert found himself with almost no talent as far as music went. All he had was a burning desire to play the blues. He watched the older men play in the town square and afterwards he asked to sit in and play. They laughed at him and told him to come back when he could really play and not bother them. He left downhearted.
8.
Robert knew that there was more in heaven and earth than Mr. Jones realized, so he traveled to the crossroads outside the small town he lived in. He sat beneath a tree by the crossroads for two days, eating out of a small paper sack he had filled with apples before leaving home. He lived on apples for those two days. Finally, on the eve of the second day, a man came walking up the dirt road. Robert watched the man approach the crossroads without saying a word. When the man reached where the roads crossed each other Robert stepped out from behind the tree where he had been hiding.
"What do you want, boy?" The old man's voice was rough, it sounded like sandpaper over broken glass.
Robert did not let the man's voice or appearance scare him into silence. "I want to play the blues."
The old man was dressed in an expensive suit and tie. He even had a nice hat and walking cane. Robert had never seen a black man dressed so well.
The old man looked at Robert and then turned his back on the youth. Robert felt fear for the first time since he had seen the old man. "Wait!"
The old man turned back towards Robert. He was not smiling. His mouth turned into a sneer. His right hand pointed towards Robert. He held his cane in that hand.
"The blues are learned, boy. The blues are the black man's life, boy. The blues are hard living and even harder dying."
9.
Over the years Robert was to learn what the old man meant. The blues were hard dying for sure.
10.
Robert had been in that city the day the riots started. He was living in a small one-room apartment within the area where the riots started. When he looked out his window, he saw drug deals going down and drive-by shootings. The only time he saw white men in this area of the city was either to buy drugs or to bust those selling the drugs. He saw a lot more of the former than the latter.
11.
In the sixties, a lot of white people thought that the black people should be given all the same rights that they had. They especially thought that the black people should be able to vote. They told the black people that if they could vote then they could change the laws and then things would be better for them. Robert listened to a white man, really not much more than a boy, lecture a roomful of black men and even a few black women about this. The white boy probably did not mean to, but he talked to the black people as if they were children. He spoke slowly and he made sure to use small words so they could understand him. His teacher had told him not to use big words or speak in any way to confuse the black people before he left his home up north to come down south to help the poor colored men and women. Later when the black people had to live with the changes in their lives the white boy went back home and finished college married his sweetheart and got a job with an advertising agency that did not hire blacks. At first, the boy, now a man, thought this was bad and questioned it. He was told that they had no official policy about hiring blacks, but that so far there just had not been any blacks with the required skills and schooling. If such a black should apply for a job at this advertising agency, they would be glad to hire him. Then with a wink and a smile they told this white boy now a man that such a day was still in the future so there was really nothing to worry about.
12.
Robert was tired of living. He had lived more than his share of years. Long ago he had traded his guitar in. He no longer made music. He traveled road after road.
13.
The old man that Robert had first met on that crossroads years ago was standing in front of the crack house. Last night the police had raided the house, and six people had been killed. One of them had been a five-year-old boy who had been living in the crack house with his mother who was addicted to the drug. She served as a runner and a sexual partner to any of the others in the crack house and thus earned her allotment of the drug. She had not been one of the people killed in the raid. A fire had broken out on the second floor of the crack house and before the fire department arrived and put it out most of the house was gutted.
"I've been dying hard." Robert knew that such an event would bring the old man forward. He looked the same as he had the day Robert saw him at that crossroads.
"Boy, you ain't seen nothing yet." This time the old man did not sneer. A smile played across his lips. Robert saw that his teeth were yellow and stained from tobacco.
"How much more do I have to see? It's been more than a person should have to put with!"
"You the boy that wanted to learn how to play the blues. I'm just showing you how."
The old man walked away from Robert. He knew it would be useless to follow and try and get the old man to change his mind. Years previous when Robert had come across the old man in front of a building that had housed a black militant group that the police had raided and killed half their number the night before Robert had tried to plead. When the old man had walked away from him Robert had knelt in the front of the old man and wept. The old man merely turned away. Robert had grabbed a hold of his leg and let the old man drag him along the sidewalk as he wept and begged. So, Robert knew it was pointless to plead.
14.
Another time, which time is unimportant, Robert locked himself in his apartment and decided that he would not leave. The world was too much for him. He ventured forth only to purchase enough food and drink to survive. He knew better than to try and starve himself, Robert could not die. His emaciated body would grow weaker, but his mind would still live. The deal Robert had made with the old man at the crossroads would not let him die until the old man allowed him.
He sat in the dark of the four walls and refused to move and tried not to think. It had been years since he had pawned his guitar but as he sat in an old wooden chair he found his hands moving on their own as if they were strumming the strings of a guitar. He still remembered the words to his old songs and almost found himself singing them.
15.
Robert stood in the ashes of what had once been two mighty towers. Once he might have wept at the sight but over the years, he had seen too much to shed any tears. How was he drawn to such events? It was a cruel trick of the Old Man Robert knew.
It had only been days since the planes crashed into the metal and glass buildings and sent them tumbling down. So many died in such a quick moment. Robert might believe in the Devil, but he had a hard time believing in a God that would allow such death and destruction.
He stepped over the broken debris as a group of men dug at a pile to his left, hoping to find some life trapped beneath the rubble. How could any survive such a catastrophe Robert wondered.
16.
He gave up his guitar in Memphis. He was walking down Mulberry Street in the early evening. His guitar was slung over his back. Robert never went anywhere without his instrument. Earlier he had listened to a black man talk about the plight of the black men and women. He preached peace but more and more it was getting harder for black men and women who believed in him to share such a belief in a peaceful solution. As he passed the Lorraine Hotel, he heard a shot ring out and turned to see the Preacher on the second-floor walkway. As the shot echoed in his ears the Preacher fell to the concrete.
Robert watched in the growing dark as men ran around in confusion and fear and tried to help their fallen friend. He heard the sound of sirens in the distance but knew they would be too late. He turned his back on the scene and continued his walk towards Beale Street. At the first pawn shop he passed he went inside and sold his guitar for twenty dollars.
17.
Robert stood outside the music store and looked at the poster of himself on the window. A new two-record set of all the music he had ever put to vinyl was being released. Robert looked at the picture and marveled at how young he looked. He had forgotten that he had ever had his picture taken. People walked past him on the sidewalk and not one looked from the poster to the man standing in front of it.
Somehow over the years, his music has taken on some sort of meaning. Robert would not have thought his recordings would have lasted more than a few years. When he traveled to the juke joints and small towns playing, he liked to be able to say that he had set a record. It was a way he could ask for more money when he played, he was a professional. But after his supposed death he had thought his music would disappear and no one would listen to him anymore.
He thought about going inside and looking at one of the records. But he could not afford it, he had ten dollars in his pockets from doing some yard work for a black man who lived in a house Robert would have never thought a black man could have afforded. Even if he could afford the record, he had no place to listen to it. His plans for the night were to sleep at the local Y and then move on in the morning.
Robert was not a dumb man, but his schooling barely went beyond the fifth grade so he would not recognize that what he was feeling had a name and that was the irony of the whole thing.
18.
Robert stood outside of the crowd. He was wearing an old Navy Pea Coat he had picked up at a Salvation Army store. A baseball cap with the logo of the New Orleans Saints rested on his head. The crowd in front of him was huge. Robert could not remember ever seeing so many people gathered in one place before. And all to listen to a black man make history.
The wind made the day colder. Robert put his hands in his pockets and moved along the sides of the crowd. The crowd was made up of whites and blacks and every other hue of color a person could be. He saw men who might have been born back in his younger days, he saw Mothers pushing their heavily wrapped infants in strollers, and he saw teenagers trying to peer over the heads of those taller in front of them.
On the big television screens stationed alongside the crowd, he saw the thin black man walk up to the edge of the balcony and stand before a white man. The black man placed one hand on a Bible and raised his other and from the speakers Robert listened as a black man took the oath of office to become the President of the United States.
Robert stood transfixed.
Looking at the crowd he saw all these faces staring towards the huge Dome and there was a look on their face that Robert could not ever remember seeing before. Some of the men and women were crying. Others were shouting as if they were in a church service, and they were giving thanks. Others stood silently; their heads bowed.
Robert turned from the crowd and started to make his way away.
As he entered the downtown area most of the stores and places of business were closed. The majority of the city was gathered around that reflecting pool. But Robert knew that not everyone would be closed. Some places never close.
He entered the pawn shop and walked up to the counter. The man behind the counter was an old black man who wore a button bearing a picture of the man who had just been sworn in. He beamed at Robert and asked if he could help him on this wonderful day.
Robert stood in front of the counter and didn't say anything at first. He looked around the pawn shop, his eyes searching for what he wanted. Finding it off to the side behind the man Robert pointed at the guitar and said he would be pleased to buy that musical instrument.
The blues might be a hard dying but sometimes they made a hard living just a bit, Robert searched for the word, he didn't think better, but maybe just a little more bearable.
Q&A
1. Who is Robert Johnson?
2. Is this a piece of fiction or non-fiction?
3. Why does Robert Johnson sell his soul?
4. Why does Robert Johnson not die?
5. Is the ending naïve in knowing what we know about the after-effects of Obama’s presidency and the rise of the Right?
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Well, John the Baptist after torturing a thief
Looks up at his hero the Commander-in-Chief
Q&A
1. Who likes dogs?
2. Is the writer trying for your emotions with a story about dogs?
3. Is the story told linear?
4. What does the last panel mean?
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Now the fifth daughter on the twelfth night
Told the first father that things weren’t right
How can they say that God cares for strangers if he will let his own son hang on a cross? How can they say that people will care for their own if the Supreme Being of Love does not care for his own?
God help me! No, I promised myself that I would not seek aid from any unearthly sources. But when there is no help coming from the earth where else can I turn? I do not want to cry again, but what else can I do? If only there was someone else.
The buzzer sounds. The nurse asks if I am all right. Do I need anything? I reply as politely as I can. "No, I'm fine." Why is my door locked? Can't I have a little privacy? "I just wanted to be alone for a while." The rules say that no doors can be locked without special permission. Worried that some old fucker will die without a roomful of spectators? "If I unlock the door, can I be left alone?" Of course, of course, the parrot squawks. I click the lock open; the nurse gives the knob a try to check my honesty. I wait until I cannot hear the sound of footsteps and then count to ten because my hearing is not as good as it used to be before I re-lock my door. I am in no mood for Old Lady Austen to come wheeling into my room tonight.
Damn them! What right do they have to tell me if I can have my door locked or not? Damn them, because I know the answer. The Law of Evolution. The strong must rule over the weak. The survival of the fittest. The young lording it over the old. The old, weak, sickly ones must step aside for the coming of the young, strong, healthy ones. But what if you are not ready to step aside? It does not matter. They, that mysterious they who make the rules and break our will to them, do it for your own good. "Ask not what your country can do for you but ask what you can do for your country."
Whatever happened to the wizened, old grandfather who gives his valuable wisdom to his descendants? He is living in the Sunnyville Recreation Home.
The buzzer sounds again. I ignore it. I am in no condition to answer. If they find me crying, they will assign me to therapy class. An hour and a half of explaining to some twenty-year-old child how it feels to be antiquated.
The buzzer resounds. Please go away. I curl up in my bed and cower beneath the sheets. I'm afraid that I will hear the sound of keys turning in the lock. If they find me like this, they will tell my daughter.
"Mr. Martin." I stop shaking. That is not the voice of the nurse. It is that stupid bitch, Mrs. Austin. I still decide to keep quiet. I do not want to talk to her.
"Mr. Martin! Are you all right?" I can hear the squeaking noises her wheelchair makes when it moves. She is wheeling back and forth in front of my door. "Oh dear, perhaps I should call a nurse. Poor Mr. Martin. He might need help." Stupid old lady, not everyone needs help to take a shit.
"Mrs. Austen." Her wheelchair comes to a halt.
"I hear him. Thank God!" I hate her habit of talking to herself. Especially in the middle of a conversation with someone else. "Mr. Martin! I thought you might be in trouble."
"No."
She waits for more. After all, everyone else around here runs off at the mouth without the slightest excuse. "Do you know your door is locked?"
I am not that senile. Yet. "Yes."
"Why do you have your door locked, Mr. Martin? My goodness, you would think that the dear old man did not want to see anyone. I came by to show you some pictures of my grandchildren. Bobbie and Jill are so cute."
"I locked my door because I felt like being alone for a little while. I thought I might get a little sleep."
I hear her wheelchair move, and then something bumps against my door. She speaks in a whisper now. "Mr. Martin, don't you know it is against the rules to lock your door? We're all supposed to be a big happy family here. Ouch!" She exclaims. "Stupid chair. Move back a little, Thelma. There, bumped your hand, didn't you? Silly old fool."
There is a word in the Lakotah language, which is the speech of the Teton Sioux Indians, that means "the cry of a dying man." The word is Haun-nn. Sometimes I feel that the last decade of my life has been a great Haun-nn.
"Nurse Able said I could lock my door, Mrs. Austen. I haven't been feeling well lately, so the Nurse advised me to get some sleep. She said I should lock my door so no one would disturb me."
"Oh, no! And I woke you up! I'm so sorry!" I assure her that it is no problem and that I will not tell Nurse Abel. "Let's go, girl. We can go see Mr. Hill. But if his door is locked, we won't ring the bell, will we?" The sound of her squeaking wheels disappears from hearing far too soon.
Suddenly I realize how futile the locks on our doors really are. They cannot keep the nurses and doctors out, the people we really want to keep out. A key could open them in an instant. Such a big thing is made about not locking your door only because it gave us an easy rule to break. We could break the rule, but not really be breaking it at the same time. But the locks kept out the old fools. Except for the old fool behind the locked door.
Why do I not want to see my fellow inmates? Is it because I am afraid that I will be looking into a mirror?
I lower the sheets from my head and look about my room. Confined to life with 12 x 15 feet of breathing space. My single-size bed is stuck up against the wall in the corner. A dresser next to it holds my clothes, the ones that I have to hang up are in a closet next to the dresser. Across from the dresser is a bookcase that holds the few remaining books that I have been able to keep. Ellison's Deathbird Stories, some Travis McGee novels, an assortment of other paperbacks, and a couple of books by Mark Twain.
"If one truly believes that there is an all-powerful Deity, and one looks around at the condition of the universe, one is led inescapably to the conclusion that God is a malign thug." Mark Twain wrote that. It is a quote that I have come to associate with my religious beliefs. I have seen too much to believe in a God that is love, I have been through too much to believe in a God that cares. I believe it when Ellison says that God is "the mad one who capitalized his name."
That is how bad it is for me. I am seventy-two years old with no friends or family that care, and I cannot even turn to my God. A God that I have come to hate as strongly as I once loved Him. Because if anyone is to blame, I blame God for this world in which I am confined.
I sit up on the edge of my bed. I know senility is eroding my mind away. I know that my mind tends to wander from subject to subject without a definite plan, and my mind has been known to play a few tricks on me. But still - I am a human being; I can still live for myself if I was only given half a chance. My mind still retains more information than the minds of younger people. My experience, my learning, my life has to stand for something, or what was the use in living it? There must be more to life than living trapped with a bunch of old fools whose greatest thrill in life is a visit from their children.
I could leave. I have thought about leaving ever since I first came here. But would I survive? I am too old to get a job, and I am not naive enough to believe I could live without some sort of income. Also, the Home would never let me go. They would have declared me mentally unfit to live on my own. I must face the unpleasant truth, I am trapped.
Sometimes I feel like the character in the Disch story "Descending." Trapped forever on a series of escalators, going downward for all eternity. My life resembles the life of the character very much, forever going down with no chance to make it back to the top. The top, as far I am concerned, would be a respectable life with a friend or two of my own age who could talk sense, who lived for the future only glorified the past.
Friend? My last friend was Hermes, the wheelchair trapped explorer. Old Hermes, who had not really been that old - only sixty-eight, who had two crushed legs from a fall he acquired when mountain climbing. Hermes, who was one of the most alive men I have ever known. Even confined to that metal chair.
During his life Hermes had done just about everything imaginable. He had lived for a year on a jungle island with some native tribes. He lived as they did, and when he left, he had risen to the rank of Chief-in-waiting. He had found himself as a mercenary in one of the countless wars that plagued South America. Once he told me he had been skin diving when a great white attacked him, and all he had was a knife. There was nothing Hermes was afraid of trying, and into his life he packed a hundred ordinary lives.
Then one day his luck ran out. He took a fall while mountain climbing and both his legs were crushed. He was turned over to a son he had not seen in over thirty years. "So, what could I expect him to do with me? He didn't want me any more than I wanted him," he used to tell me. His son stuck him into the Home. "Once," Hermes would say, "I could have bought this home twice over. But I was never one to hold onto money. For me, money was only a means for me to accomplish my goals. I was rich and broke so many times I can't count." With a whisper, he would end. "But I wish that I had ended up a cripple with a little money."
For a year I thought of the Home as a little more than just a jail cell. If Hermes could take his imprisonment, which he seemed to be able to, with a laugh and a wink, then so could I. We found each other like a moth finding a flame. We were the only two who did not think our lives were over. We used to talk about leaving the Home and beginning a new life. One day in early December I found him in his room swinging from the ceiling, the noose cutting into his neck.
There was a note. It was addressed to me, and was from the final paragraph of Plato's "Apology of Socrates." No one ever read the note, but me. It read:
Dear Martin:
What can I say that has not been said before and is better? Thus, I bid you adieu. "The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways - I to die, and you to live. Which is better, only God knows."
Your friend
That was the first time I ever cursed God.
With an angry gesture, I unlock my door. I take my cane from the floor where I threw it in the night before, and hobble from my room. I need some fresh air. I meet no one in the hallway, and I emerge from the building alone. I walk until I reach the shade of a tree.
Standing in the shade I watch a shuffleboard match taking place. The participants play as if their lives depend on the outcome of the game, and in a way they do. For what are their lives without shuffleboard? Watching them I begin to understand my hate. They have adjusted. They have accepted the fact that their lives are over. Save for the visit from the children, and the daily shuffleboard game there is no meaning left in their lives. But they have accepted it. They can live with the remaining years with a smile on their lips. They smile, and say "What else can we do? It is either the home or death. And who wants to die?"
Something flies in my eye, and I rub it free. I also understand something else. I have two choices. One is to become a smiling zombie and live the rest of my life playing shuffleboard. Or do as Hermes did, who understood. There are only two ways out. But can I become a mindless fool? Can I pretend the future does not exist? Still who wants to die? Not I. Do I?
I could continue as I am now. Damning them, but doing nothing. But my patience is at an end. I cannont continue my life as I am now. I either join the others, or I join Hermes.
Watching them a phrase drifts in my mind to describe the condition of my fellow inmates. Comfortably numb, from a poem by Roger Waters.
The child is grown
The dream is gone
And I have become
Comfortably numb.
Ah, I seem to always have the quote or word to describe my situation. But never the answer.
Tonight I must find the answer. My life, the way I am living it now is slowly driving me insane. To continue will lead to madness.
I turn back towards the building undecided. Come morning they will either find a corpse, or I will join Mrs. Austen for breakfast. As for this night, I know only that I will get little sleep.
Q&A
1. What does Haun-nn mean?
2. Do you feel sorry for the main character?
3. Are the side characters treated as real or just to work off of the main character?
4. Does he kill himself at the end?
A Final word from our sponsor
Now the senator came down here
Showing ev’ryone his gun
RAM (11/23/29)
first sound – the whine of a Mark IV delta missile.
first sight – the face of the drill sergeant looming before me.
first impression – a new day was beginning, and the sergeant was reactivating us. We were under attack again, with a missile package dumped right in our laps.
first action – move!
Sarge did not even have time for a quick curse. As soon as my indicator light read GO! I moved. A quick scan to either side of me revealed the other bucketfaces doing the same. I retracted my mobile limbs and extended my rollers and moved at triple time. Just as I wheeled to a halt outside the tent the missile hit. Praise to the mechanic that installed my audio boosters; that was all that let me know a missile was coming in time.
Outside I did a quick about face and scanned for Sarge. No sign of him registered on any of my scanners. It was only when I turned my Heat Receivers towards what was left of the tent that I realized no one had thought to warn Sarge of the incoming missile. Sudden danger following quick activation will make us RAMs forget human soldiers do not have the same abilities we do. A RAM takes it for granted that it can hear a missile a mile away bearing down on him, and sometimes forgets a dogface cannot.
The commlink with the rest of the squat asserted that they had come to the same conclusion as I had. The wheels disappeared, and my legs and arms became appendages again. I retrieved a LaserRifle from a fallen dogface who would not be needing it any longer.
Again, the shine that is peculiar to a Mark IV missile. I flipped my radar on to pinpoint its POW!down. The schematics flickered through my computer and came out in flashing red letters: MESS TENT! The mess tent was about a hundred yards from where I was, and the missile had less than a minute before it dumped itself. I made a beeline towards the tent, this time of the morning it would be jammed with dogfaces, but knew it was useless. I turned my volume control up as loud as possible and bellowed: MISSILE! CLEAR THE MESS TENT! MISSILE!
The dogfaces came running out of the tent at the same time the missile appeared over the horizon. I aboutfaced and made for cover. A few of the dogfaces managed to throw themselves to safety. But the majority of them were still in the tent when the missile went KAPOWEEE!
The blue team was sure heaping it on us. I ran an estimate of the dead amount in the mess tent and came up with figures that indicated we had lost close to half our regiment of dogfaces and one fourth the bucketfaces within the last week. I ran around a tent and sent out a call to the rest of my squad to father at what had been the command tent until last night. With Sarge out of commission I was next in line for command, and I was tired of waiting for the blues to come to us. At the rate they were going they could sit back and continue lobbing missiles in at us and come pick up the pieces later.
I was going to bring the fighting to them.
0800
Clown (11/23/29)
ain, oh god! The pain. Please let it stop. No more!
another dream. God, when will the dreams stop. This time I dreamed that my arms were falling off, and I kept picking them up and putting them back on only to have them fall off as quick as I put them back on.
And I kept trying to put my arms on, and the pain was awful.
I rolled over to a sitting position and discovered that the pain was still with me. But then it never left me. It would seem that after all this time I would be growing accustomed to it. But it still hurts. This time the pain was in my wrist, where the pincer was sown on my left arm. I massaged it and could barely feel the seam.
I looked towards the camp and saw the grunts parading around. Funny that word, grunts. Nobody but me used it anymore. Grunts are dogfaces today; I remember the day when they were grunts. Grunts, and a few RAMs too.
I deliberated going into the camp, but I had little choice really. I could either stay here and starve or turn around and see if the mine field was really off like some said. I knew I wasn’t going to sit her the rest of the day, and I was not up to playing guinea pig for some grunt’s wild hypothesis about the mine field. So, I had only one choice.
I struggled to my feet with a sigh. My stand was slightly uneven since one foot was a roller, and it stood higher than my other foot, which was still flesh and blood. I half walked; half skated over to the mess tent. I went out of my way to miss the drunks wallowing around what was last night’s campfire. I did not need their biting remarks now. I was almost at the mess tent when my sonar ear picked up a missile whine, and I looked up to see us launch another one at the reds. So far, our missiles had kept the reds in their camp, which had no missiles, but it could not last forever. Sooner or later, and it would probably be a lot sooner than later, the reds would mount an attack force against us. The missiles were just a disorganizing device, they did not have the first power to level the red’s camp and that was all.
As I pushed back the flaps and entered the mess tent I almost collided with a Regular Army Man. He muttered an apology and wheeled away. The artificial temperature they keep the inside of the tents made the plastic in my shoulder ache. I clamped a tray in my pincer and made my way towards a table in the back.
Dogface (11/23/29)
! (no)
! (you got be kidding me)
! (he can’t do it)
? (can he)
Rumors were flying high today. The runsheet had it that the Commander was going to send a squad outside to see what was going on. The Com must be zinked out if he was planning to send out a squad. So far, we’ve been pretty isolated in camp. We sit here and throw missiles at the reds, and they do nothing. So far.
I was leaving the mess tent, behind a RAM, just as Clown passed in. I started to make some crack about him, but for some reason decided not to. Poor patchwork, he looked worse than usual this morning. I slung my GrenadeRifle over my shoulder and made for my tent. Another missile whizzed overhead as I walked. I turned to look at the red’s camp, but all I could see in that direction was smoke. If this keeps up this campaign may be over soon. And then we can start a new war.
By the time I got to my tent I was in a pretty good mood. I was going to catch a few blink-outs, but I felt too good to lay down. I decided to take a hike round the camp. I grabbed my I-R goggles, never knowing when we might get a shut down, and I did not want to be on the other side of camp if we got one with no way back in the dark to my tent.
I crossed the cleared area that was still smoldering from last night’s fire and continued to the edge of the camp. I stopped at the beginning of the mine field. The mines were supposed to be off, why turn them on when the enemy is too busy dodging missiles to attack? But if Com is worried enough to send a recon squad out he’ll probably turn the mines back on.
I was just standing there thinking when I heard a blood curling scream. I did a quick scan of the camp and located the trouble almost at once. Some reject had detonated a time bomb in the midst of the camp. A tyrannosaur rex was screaming towards the gods. The reject that started all this had no more worries; the rex had just finished eating him.
As I ran towards the giant lizard my mind idly wondered why it was that over 80% of the time a time bomb would explode a t-rex. Ah well, that was a thought best left to better minds than mine. When I reached the scene with my GrenadeRifle at the ready I would myself too late. Two RAMs had blasted the rex to death with their body missiles. I turned away just as the bullhorn sounded through camp.
HU45994955433, HU345950345, HU009430664, RA9898444, RA840552, RA844345 REPORT TO COM TENT IMMEDIATELY.
HU345950345 was me
1030
Flashback (9/17/28)
fzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzKaPOW!
The reds were staging their biggest advance yet. So, this was our biggest defense yet. The sound of their LaserRifles and RAM body missiles merged into one long noise.
fzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzKaPOW!
I was in the front line, supposed to hold the rushing horde back. I was firing my GrenadeRifle as fast as it would recycle and arm itself. The dogface on my right was decapitated, but a grenade made sure the red lasered no one else. Another grenade blew a red RAM to pieces.
The trees dripped blood, and ground was made of guts. A grenade from a fellow blue lodged itself in a red before it exploded. Bits of red rained down on me, and I wiped the blood off my I-R goggles with one hand and kept a steady grip on my piece with the other. To lose it would be to lose my life.
I have always had a flair for composing, and it seemed to bloom during a fight. And this one was no different. I composed a quick poem and recited it to myself.
The rain was red/And the sun blue,/As the Com said/”Don’t even leave a few.”
I guess I should have paid more attention to what was happening and left the poems to when I was back in camp. I saw the red a second after he saw me. I swung my rifle towards him, but it was too late. He hurled a LaserBomb at my feet. I remember seeing him explode as my grenade hit him, but then his bomb went off. Last blasts sprayed the air, cutting into me, slicing away, killing me, hurting me, destroying
*
Blackness
*
Slowly I made my way up from the bottomless pit my head had fallen into. First though was why am I still alive? Second thought was why do I hurt so much? The pain was what let me know that I was still alive. Death could not be this painful.
When I raised my hand and saw the pincer at the end I screamed. They told me later I screamed for two days straight.
(time unimportant)
RAM (11/23/29)
…one…two…three…four….
Four. That was all the RAMs I could pick up on the comlink.
SOUND OFF!
RA9485533, sir!
RA8450355, sir!
RA4553543, sir!
RA1349044, sir!
RA9445534 was missing. I had sent him out on the right flank for a forward scan, but now I could not raise him on the commlink. Did he run into a squad of blues? If he had he should have had time to signal for help.
ALL UNITS CONVERGE TOWARD THE RIGHT FLANK IN SEARCH OF RA9445534. PROCEED WITH CAUTION. LACK OF IDENTIFICATION MAY BE DUE TO ENEY SABOTAGE.
I moved towards the right, wondering what happened. My arms and legs were still extended, this tryp of ground made it close to impossible to use wheels, and I still carried my LaserRifle.
I did a scan with my ground radar and spotted what seemed to be the arm of the RAM we were looking for. I approached cautiously and stopped about ten feet from the arm.
RA9445534 FOUND. PROCEED WITH REGULAR PLAN AND FORMATION.
RA9445534 had not been paying attention to his surroundings and had wandered into a bed of quicksand. His large bulk sunk him so fast that he did not even have time to signal his dilemma. At the last minute he had extended his arm to absolute length in the hope of securing himself to the surface. But the arm had not proven adequate to the task and snapped off.
I did a left face and resumed the march. Now there were only five of us. I estimated our time before we reached the blue camp at three hours maximum.
This jungle was not the best option for a RAM to fight in, but we would have to do. We cannot always pick the terrain we war in and must make do with what we get stuck with.
1300
Clown (11/23/29)
*
*
*
?
*
*
*
* my mind was fading on me again. Ever since that day when I became know as Clown my mind would have periods of shutting down. I would be doing something, and then ping! Nothing, and the next thing I knew it was two hours later. For all the changes in me this was by far the most frustrating. The other things I could get used to, I knew what I could expect from them, but this? This shut down of my mind struck anytime and whenever it felt like it. There was no rhyme nor reason for it. And it scared me.
(Perhaps one day my mind would fade away and forget to come back.)
The first thing I heard when I came to was 562 REPORT TO COM TENT IMMEDIATELY. I looked down on my uneaten breakfast and out to the sky through the tent window. I saw a grunt I knew vaguely heading for the Com tent. What was going on? I rose and left my breakfast behind, to follow the grunt. When I reached the Com tent, I waited outside opposite it and watched. Three more grunts arrived and four RAMs. I tried to think back to any rumors I might have heard that would indicate what was going on and was struck by my own stupidity. They were going to send a squad outside. Was my mind falling apart?
I turned and raced away. Which is not saying much, running with a roller and foot is not easy and twice I fell. I ignored the laughter and requests for more and continued toward my tent. They couldn’t leave before I got back. This might be my last chance to have the mine filed turned off.
I fell into my tent and burrowed under my bunk. Where was it? There, I had it, a small black box that I jammed into a pack and then put the pack on. I hurried back toward the Com tent and made it just as they were about to turn the mine field off.
It wasn’t hard to convince them to take me with them. They might need a few good laughs along the way, they figured.
1245
Dogface (11/23/29)
I was born in the year of the Twenty Second Century Lord 2108 to my parents. Since I was born to them, they had to be my parents and nobody else’s. I had two, one mother and one father. The city of my birth was New York Philadelphia in the country of Amrexico.
Enough of the vital statistics. What of the personnel side? My Pop was one of the well-to-do. He was the third chief for the computer of the East Coast. A very good position to have, it entitled him to wealth beyond measure and power comparable to only a few. My Pop was a pretty good Pop, not that I had much chance to compare since he was the only Pop I had. When I was a wee lad, he would come into my room after the robomaid had tucked me in and tell me stories. I still remember some of the stories today. Lance the hero and his trusty computer companion Mark 1 always had to clean up the mess Frank and his renegade robot made. But good, and better mechanics, always triumphed in the end.
My seventh birthday I’ll always remember as something special. That was the day Pop brought me to work with him and showed me Mark. Mark was the computer that ran the East Coast. It was awesome, a sight I will never forget as long as I live.
When I got older Pop would bring me with him when he went to the Arena. It was at the Arena that I got my first sight of fighting, and death. Looking back on it now I would have to say I kinda liked my Pop and miss him now.
Mom was as much the opposite of Pop as one could be. While Pop was a fun, outgoing type Mom was the shy wait-at-home-for-the-husband type. She was my anchor though and without her I would never have gotten through some pretty tough times. She provided the moral support Pop and I both needed, and I miss her as much as I do Pop right now.
When I got notification of my draft Pop came to me and asked if I wanted him to fix it for me. Being third in charge of the East Coast Computer he could do it without much trouble too. But I said no, it was my public duty to serve. And anyway, it might be fun. Mom and Pop were so proud of me. They called up all the relations and friends and told them that I had decided to serve my country.
I still remember that day.
(multiple times)
RAM (11/23/29)
POW!down!
My scanners read it as coming 15 degrees from my right. The enemy has engaged us, do not fire until you see the whites of their eyes. Or if they be RAMs the red of their scanner grills.
ATTACK! WE ARE UNDER ATTACK BY THE BLUES! DEFEND YOURSELF AND DO THE REDS PROUD!
The blues had sent an advance scout out and now we would make up for all the damage the blues had missiled on us. My Heat Receivers picked up what could only be a dogface behind the bushes. I let go with a burst from my LaserRifle and watched as both bush and soldier burned.
My scanners indicated trouble and I swiveled to the right just in time to see RA4553543 get blown apart by a body missile from a blue RAM. I turned my LaserRifle on the RAM and the metal body melted down to a slab. The glare from the laser attack was blinding and I scanned the dogfaces putting their I-R goggles on.
1430
Clown (11/23/29)
LIGHT! (Light like laser/laser like bomb/bomb like explode/pain) hurt, pain, light means hurt, laser=pain, light means laser means hurt means pain.
The light was so bright and painful.
I screamed once and hurled myself over the bushes toward the reds and the light/pain. My I-R goggles rested on top of my head and when I looked towards what had once been a blue RAM my eyes died.
I went blind and the darkness threatened to invade my mind as well as my eyes.
The memory of the light stayed with me and the remembrance of light being pain and pain hurting and hurting bringing nightmares and nightmares bringing the memory of the laser bomb and the laser bomb bringing light and, and, and (forever)
I fumbled for the pack on my backpack and withdrew the little black box from it. I fumbled with the catch in the dark and withdrew my prize from it.
1421
Dogface (11/23/29)
Oh god, oh god, oh god oh god, oh god
Clown had gone crazy when that red RAM melted down our RAM, screaming and yelling. Even the enemy was taken aback by it and both sides ceased fighting for a moment. And a moment was all Clown needed. He reached into his pack and took out a laser bomb. An enemy weapon, where did he pick it up? What type of deranged fool would pick up a weapon from the enemies? And a laser bomb. That was one of the worst weapons, on either side. I would rather face a dozen time bombs than one laser bomb. The other side retreated a few steps back too. They knew if Clown threw that thing it would kill indiscriminately. Clown waved it around over his head and one of our dogfaces raised his GrenadeRifle to shoot him. He never got the chance. One of the reds used a body missile on him. I’m glad too, a Grenade going off that close would set the laser bomb off too.
The RAM that had the LaserRifle finally fired, slicing Clown in half. But not before he tossed the bomb in our midst.
Lasers erupted from the bomb, spraying all, slicing all. My arm, then my leg, then
1433
Computer RUN (11/23/29)
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Subj. blue/red war
Days summary, as follows:
Blue team loses seven hundred yards and pulls back accordingly.
Red team gains seven hundred yards and sets up outpost camp.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Red team intercepts blue team’s food shipment for coming week.
Blue team destroys weapon supply that was coming for Red team.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Blue team suffers casualties as follows:
Human soldiers: 154 dead, 43 wounded.
Androids: 34 destroyed, we incapacitated.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
This report filed for the date of 11/24/29
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
2400
Q&A
1. This story is told in a style that was popular among certain writers in the science fiction genre back in the sixties, can you name the style?
2. How different POV’s is the story told in?
3. What happens at the end?
It’s alright, Ma (I’m only bleeding)
She has to drive herself even though he said he would be there for her, and they would go together so she didn’t have to go through this by herself. She waited as long as she could but couldn’t wait any longer because her appointment was for one. Really, she’s not that surprised he didn’t show. He hasn’t shown himself much around her since she told him. She could call him, but all her messages have been going straight to voice mail. It would have been nice to have someone go with her. She’s scared.
She tries not to cry on the ride to the clinic, but she can’t help it. She’s thought about this decision long and hard and to her it’s the only choice she can make. It’s not fair, but then what’s happened isn’t fair either. She keeps wiping at her eyes as she drives. Her hands shake as she takes them off the steering wheel to wipe at her eyes.
As she pulls up towards the street, she sees a crowd in the street and the parking lot. This is just too much for her. She pulls the car to the side of the road and just sits behind her steering wheel and cries. She is close enough to see the signs and the pictures they have on the signs. She feels sick. She wants to have the strength to continue and do what she knows she must, but she doesn’t know if she can go through that crowd. She can feel their hate inside her car.
She’s never felt more alone than at that moment.
She puts her foot back on the gas and slowly moves forward, careful not to hit any of the people trying to block her path.