Dark and Stormy Night

The old reservoirs were deep
so there is no sleep
and no time to conspire in the temple

So much depends
upon
a shovel in the hand
of a child
glazed with rain
water
culture
and
dragon boats with no life jackets aboard
just buoyant ideas

Keep the line taut and the fuel tank topped off
You shouldn’t wear glasses because they make you
unworthy to your sister’s
eye
and foreign words are discouraged
because the rice doesn’t know them
and won’t grow
at their whispering

It’s our water culture
and his great leap forward
from a ramp built on the skulls of your brothers
lower your eyes so that he sees you don’t weep
For that old reservoir is deep
And no time to sleep
And no time to make plans in the temple

“What do you do down in that hole?” I would ask my mother.

“I catch up a lot on my reading,” she said.

“What do you do down in the hole other than reading?” I asked my mother a few days later.

“We have a ping pong table,” she said. “When I’m not reading I play ping pong with Lisa.”

“What do you do down in the hole when you aren’t reading or playing ping-pong?” I asked my mother a few days after that.

“We practice doing our job. We call them drills, like you should practice your multiplication drills,” my mother answered.

At this time of frequent Q & A, I was eight years old, my brother five, and my mother was part of a grand experiment in how to better protect the United States from nuclear annihilation. Captain Hudson was a missile woman who swooshed effortlessly between the surface world of mediocre report cards and Cub Scout den meetings, and the subterranean realm of launch and command duty of a Minuteman Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) silo.

“What do you practice down in the silo?” I asked after one of our den meetings. I slid off my itchy, bright yellow scout kerchief.

“Lisa and I practice turning keys and checking codes against other codes,” My mother looked annoyed with my question. Tomorrow she was going back on alert and down into the hole for a three-day shift.

My mom’s back-and-forth duty lasted for six years and was part of an Air Force program called Project Hera. The idea of putting mothers down into ballistic missile silos was born from a fear among the high brass that men were not fully dependable when given the duty of turning the keys to launch their Minutemen and Titan II rockets. Launch would be requested via an EWO or Emergency War Order on the occasion that all-out thermonuclear war were to break out. One four-star suggested that perhaps mothers, threatened with the potential vaporization of their own children on the surface, would more likely launch the missiles in a timely fashion, perhaps early enough to catch their counterparts in the Soviet Union still mulling over whether to launch their own missiles from their holes in Siberia. Thus Project Hera was born.

During alerts, my school teacher father did his best to raise us with help from nannies supplied by the U.S. government. I was well cared for and the Air Force saw that I didn’t fall through any cracks or down any holes.

Mom was still a very present and engaged parent. After she slid out of her uniform, she would effortlessly take on the uniforms of wife and den mother. Both mom and dad would help me on school projects such as dioramas and adding to our growing fleet of model rockets - our family hobby and the most common activity of our cub scout den.

I recall being so proud of a two-stage rocket my mother and I built. It took us over two months to build and perfect the design, and we were hosting the debut launch for the whole pack out on the air base’s soccer field. Dad set up the launch pad while mom hooked up the wires of the ignition system to the battery in our Volvo wagon. The rest of my friends had taken up their positions behind large pieces of plywood, anticipating a large and fiery debacle. Mom had the arming and ignition switch in her hand while we crouched behind the open door of the Volvo.

10 . . . 9 . . . 8 . . . 7 . . . 6 . . . 5 . . .

Capt. Hudson handed the switch to me, saying, “This is your launch, not mine.”

I turned the arming key and pressed the launch button even before the rest of the den reached “2.” The rocket shot into the blue, and we never found it again even though the pack searched the neighboring forest until the darkness came and young guts began growling.

So it was with great amusement that thirty years later, while walking with my mother back to her Volvo station wagon after attending our democratic party precinct caucus, that I again asked her that same old question.

“So what were you really doing down in that hole?”

Mom just looked at me. We were both fatigued from the confusing caucus process and our discussions with our precinct neighbors of who would be best to take that 3 a.m. phone call, whether the most qualified would be Barack or Hillary.

“Lisa and I would mostly talk about you and your brother. We wondered which one of you two would marry her daughter first.”

I have a faint memory of Capt. Lisa Bonasera’s daughter, though I can’t remember her name. We moved from that Midwest air base many years ago.

“Would you have done it mom?”

“Done what?”

“Turned the keys and sent the missile on its way.”

“Of course not.”

I was shocked by the abrupt answer, her admission of insubordination.

“Why not?”

The newly assigned legislative delegate for Hillary Clinton looked at me again, this time with a bemused scorn.

“Did you forget I am a mother?”

Project Hera is therefore an unqualified success.

I’m driving down a steep road in San Francisco. The road ahead of me appears to descend precipitously to the edge of the bay. Parking is packed and the road is narrow. I slow to a stop at a stop sign right in front of a dive shop. I’ve got nowhere to go so I look inside. In static stances are mannequins in wet suits and buoyancy control vests. The mannequins are all wearing huge afros atop their fake heads.

Driving forward will only serve to put me in the bay now. I’m at the end of the road. What I need to do is a three point turn, but there are cars on each side of the road and space is very tight. There are so many cars but not a soul to be seen walking around. I look out upon the bay to see several dive flags and bubbles floating to the surface of the darkened water. Throwing it in reverse does not seem an option to me.

Interpretation:

Common anxiety dream brought on by the climax of the electoral primary season.

Action agenda:

Relax. Take up surfing.

Recorded 7:55 am, April 18, 2008

On the surface, H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds is about a Martian invasion of Earth. Well actually Southern England seems to be the target of our rivals from the war god planet. As to be expected, the Martians wreak havoc over the countryside, using in a very literal sense scorched earth tactics and, in scenes eerily prophetic of the first world war, chemical weapons. Presenting a narrative of the lives of two brothers witnessing the penultimate breath of human civilization, this is apocalyptic prose at its highest apex - at the point at which there appears no hope, only resignation.

As a suspenseful tale of Martian vs. Earthling conflict, the story is satisfying. The action is persistent and the tension builds as the Tripods approach London. However, again this is the story as it appears to the reader on the surface. Further examination forces this reader to conclude that Wells aspires to explore the same lines of metaphysical conjecture as both Gottfried Leibniz and his satiric critic Voltaire. The telling clue is on the very first page of Chapter 13.

Wells mentions the destruction of the city of Lisbon from earthquake, compounded by tsunami, compounded by fire. Perhaps in a comical sleight, the narrator believes the destruction to have occurred a century ago, but as we all know the date of the catastrophe was 1755, nearly 150 years preceding the setting of the novel.

The sudden destruction of Lisbon and the great suffering in its aftermath are important and vital scenes in Voltaire’s great satire Candide, a cutting criticism of the metaphysical optimism put forth by Gottfried Leibniz, the mathematician, philosopher and general polymath in his 1710 treatise Theodicy. It is title character Candide’s and his tutor Pangloss’ visit to Lisbon just after the earthquake (so soon after that their ship is nearly swallowed up by the ensuing tsunami and their traveling commrade the Anabaptist is lost to the rising waters of the bay) that begins sewing the seeds of doubt in Candide’s belief that this world is indeed “the best of all possible worlds.”

According to Leibniz, our reality, our world, is the best off all possible worlds - the very optimal that God, in his omnipotent concern and care for us, could create. Since God is good and omnipotent, and since He chose this world out of all possibilities, this world must be good–in fact, this world is the best. Even suffering and evil has its place in this best of worlds, because if there could possibly be one better, with a little less suffering and not as much evil, then God would have created that. Voltaire thought this idea to be ludicrous, and he sends his naive yet thoughtful protagonist Candide on adventures throughout Europe and the New World to reveal the very weaknesses of Leibniz’s argument. We witness the great suffering and evil that Candide witnesses, and consequently our own belief, if we had any, in the optimism of Leibniz is all but crushed like a monk under a huge stone hurled from the roof of a cathedral in Lisbon in 1755.

The events in Lisbon caused seismic tremors all throughout the intellectual strata of Europe. The earthquake struck in the morning, killing many Catholic celebrants at mass on All Saints Day. Who would blame any citizen of Lisbon for resigning himself to the revelation that this was the end of time? The horrific events of these few days would force many to ask again those ageless questions:

Why does God allow suffering?

If God is all-seeing and all-powerful, why is there evil?

These are the very questions at the root of Theodicy. This is what Leibniz attempted to answer through reason, and it is toward Leibniz’s answer that Voltaire, by way of his fictional ego Candide, thumbed his nose at.

It can be argued that Voltaire, like most deists of his era, believed that God simply did not care about the plight of man - that he had set the clockwork of creation in motion but then had left it at home by his bedside to enjoy some rest and recreation down at the beach. Many came around to adopt similar paradigms of reason and enlightenment. Events like the great earthquake in Lisbon had shaken the very foundation of faith in 18th century Europe, but what does this have to do with Mars?

In War of the Worlds, London is the new Lisbon. Instead of a comprehensive faith in the almighty, there is now faith in industry, in technology, in the projection of power, all things that have made the British Empire king. The sun does not set on the empire. Religious conviction has been subjugated to commerce, the smokestack and the exploitation of colonial possessions. Little do the imperial subjects realize that they are being watched by an intelligence far more advanced than their own, an intelligence that has plans upon their blue-green world.

What once was the best of all possible worlds for a Martian, is no longer suitable at all. Due to entropic decay, it has become a cold world depleted of the necessary resources to keep Martians free of suffering. Naturally the dark, black eyes of the Martian looked upon the warm Earth with jealousy. Plans were put into play.

Who would blame any citizen of the empire, his stiff upper lip quivering in fear, for believing that what he was witnessing with the death throes of human progress, eventually of all humanity? It must have felt something like a quaking in the earth to see the artillery batteries melt under the Martians’ mysteries heat rays. One would wonder what Candide would have thought surveying the ravaged towns and the mass of humanity fleeing, tearing at each other for advantage . . . Oh screw it, I liked War of the World best for all the ‘spolosions. I give H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds five tentacles up.

The psychopaths watch as Ferris Bueller hands his son a map of the New York subway system

Ferris says it’s all there kid

There’s a day game Ferris adds

The son looks up at the balding father and asks

What am I supposed to do Dad

You do freedom son, freedom says Ferris

Why couldn’t we do this on a school day the kid says

And then the subway doors slide closed between them
and one of the commuting psychopaths straightens up in his seat
remembering that his workout videos say to always keep his
core tight

There are preemptive wars,
glorious wars,
fruitless wars,
asymmetric wars,
cold wars,
world wars,
tribal wars,
culture wars,

R.O. Shipman

It is a shocking thing to realize you know a killer. His name is Joseph Njonge, but until only a few days ago when his name was uttered by a chorus of news anchors, I had known him as just “Joseph.”

I took to Joseph as a friend almost instantly. He was one of two nursing assistants most often assigned to my 93-year-old grandfather’s wing at Garden Terrace Care Center. My grandfather was being rehabilitated after some serious health problems last year, and Joseph could always be relied upon to help with dressing him, cleaning him up, assisting him in the bathroom and other services indispensable to the helpless and infirm. I was thankful to have Rose, the other nursing assistant, and Joseph around. They always came promptly when I pushed the help button.

The quality of care was heads above the chronically understaffed care center we had had my grandfather in before Garden Terrace. After that first experience, we were naturally wary of what would happen to my grandfather once we left the facility for the night, so several nights we would stay at the center well into the evening making sure grandpa wasn’t sitting in his own waste or had rolled off his bed and onto the cold linoleum below. After a couple of weeks of seeing Joseph and Rose in action, and getting some feel for their approach and attitude toward care, we felt a more at ease leaving grandpa in their care.

We still spent many hours at Garden Terrace wheeling Grandpa to and from the rehab room, around the rhododendron gardens outside, and between his room and the communal dining room. As I am the “free son,” working as a freelance writer and a part-time fitness instructor, I became my grandfather’s care advocate and often helped with many of the functions normally done by the nursing assistants. Joseph and I became something of a team.

During lulls of activity, we talked of his life back in Kenya, cars (he was proud of his BMW), sports and music. He was always friendly with me, had a fantastic smile and seemed to move through the day with a swagger and ease that to me meant his mind was still moving to the rhythm of the savanna - a welcoming embrace off all events and people around him. Our conversations did much to inspire the writing of Three Frames of Africa.

I remember one time when we were both sitting in the dining room at dinner time. The residents of our wing all were wearing their bibs. Some were capable of shoveling food into their mouths. Others needed help guiding spoons full of mixed veggies over lips in tremor, to clean up occasional spills of fruit punch, or to wipe threads of drool from slumbering mouths. If the Mariners game wasn’t on, we would turn it to the Discovery Channel and watch Cash Cab, the game show that takes place in a New York taxi cab. Joseph and I were a team, an invincible duo of Manhattanites trying to get to a swank watering hole in Soho from some corner uptown. Where I lacked an answer to a question, Joseph would provide. When Joseph didn’t know the answer, I always did. Talents combined, we never missed any of host Ben Bailey’s questions nor a video bonus.

Just at those points when we were most pleased with ourselves for keeping our streak of success alive, Gladdis at the near table, who was a Broadway dancer in the 40s (she’s shown me the pictures as proof), would wake up and say she knows such and such building that was passing outside of the cab’s window, or that a man by the name of Harold Perriford kissed her on the exact corner on which a team of cab-conveyed contestant was being delivered either victorious or defeated. At such moments, Joseph would turn and smile at the thought of this angel who can remember a romantic rendevous from 1947 as if it happened yesterday but can’t remember what she just had for dessert.

So what transpired that mid-March evening that has put Joseph, wearing an orange jumpsuit and whispering to his counsel, up there on my TV? Someone strangled a 75-year-old grandmother named Jane Carol Britt and shoved her body into the trunk of her Mercedes. The authorities say they have a positive DNA match between tissues found underneath Jane’s fingernails, probably the result of struggle, and my friend Joseph. I did not know the victim though I imagine we might have passed each other some time in the halls of Garden Terrace during my grandfather’s two-month stay. Another report I read indicated that they had found Jane’s Costco membership card in Joseph’s wallet.

I cannot imagine what would drive Joseph to kill Jane Carol Britt. What does it take for one man to kill? I still try to work out such machinations in my mind. Did Jane utter something carelessly and in so doing, flipped a switch in Joseph and turned him into something other, something capable of strangling the breath out of the?

By going through all the possible scenarios that would come closest to making sense, I, in fact, put myself in Joseph’s place. I become for a moment the kind killer. The real question I am asking is what would drive me to kill. I don’t know the answer to this one, so this is my street shout-out.

KOMO News Coverage of Jane’s murder and Joseph’s arrest

Oh, and if you are not familiar with Cash Cab . . .

Hollowness is the last day of the quarter, sitting at my desk, studying for the last final, my eyes bleary from reading paragraphs barely more substantial than a corpse’s whisper. I feel the sun coming down upon me through the blinds, a pattern of dark and light, dark and light projected against institutional carpeting. The light feels good and the dark doesn’t so I draw the blinds up to the ceiling and crack the window.

Summer slides in through the mesh screen and over the sill accompanied by the sound of numb evenings spent on a southern shore. Bob Marley’s “Jamming” is rising from a room on what I guess is the second floor. I’m standing in my cell on the third. I think I hear some Beastie Boys from another open window across Oxford Circle, an awkward cacophony of sounds meeting over the cars of the last few frustrated souls who can’t yet make a clean break from academia.

And then I see her down below, the girl whose name I can’t now remember, walking toward the parking lot. Under one arm she carries an ironing board and under the other an abused six-string guitar. I recall that guitar and playing a few sloppy power chords, and then sleeping with her until the morning after a night of too much beer and too many happenings no longer remembered. As she opens the door to her VW bug, she slides the bucket seats forward, resting the guitar on top a hamper of folded winter clothes, and I feel damned by my lack of remembering anything between us. I can see she has gained the freshman ten over the past year and maybe a few more.

Though she is that girl - the one I would awkwardly smile at from across the Dining Commons, but never found a good enough reason to talk to.

I open the window as far as it will go and feel the heat of the sun on my face. All that has come before burns in a majestic auto de fe, all the sleepless nights, and the books uncracked, all the second-hand smoke inhaled in rooms sealed tight from the February cold. It all burns this summer day. Emerson Hall is empty now of its life. We few are the last and cursed holdouts.

From somewhere down below comes the wail, “No Woman, No Cry.”

On my birthday, I decided to treat myself to a glass of the best Cabernet Sauvignon from Bordeaux. I know it to be the a wine that ages well. This is important to me as I have collected a wide variety of wines, many well over a century old, and it seems fitting that I should drink a wine on my birthday that accepts the burden of years with grace. After several glasses, my mind has a tendency to both rest and wander. The wine has an added benefit in that it deadens the ache in my ankle.

I sprained the ankle this afternoon when I fell from a ladder I had climbed to clean out my gutters of leaves. I live on the edge of a forest and autumn is beautiful here. The trees try to pick a color and stay with it, but they obviously fail. The leaves on one branch turn red, another yellow, and still another improbable purple. It is a rebellion of color here in the forest before the winter arrives. I’m forever raking up leaves and digging them out from the gutters that line my roof. I’m lucky not to have a broken leg, but the enduring ache has me concerned. I wonder if I should go see a doctor about it.

I do not welcome guests to celebrate my birthday. I haven’t for many years. Almost every single person I’ve know is gone now, buried, most all forgotten except a special few. Parties are such a bore and this isn’t a modern development. I have no nostalgia for soirees of the past. Those were equally a bore. For example, Madame Geoffrin was a loathsome host as was Arnobius of Sicca. I just refuse to party now. It all seems hopelessly redundant.

Caligula’s parties of course were renowned for their expense and the spectacle, but I missed out on those, being in Ethiopia at the time. Moreover, I heard they were considerably overrated. Gossip has a way of amplifying spectacle into something completely opposite of what it is in fact, and I think of Caligula’s parties in such light. There was as much quality celebration in those marble halls as there is now in my glass of red wine, and the effect on my bank accounts is considerably more muted, even counting for inflation, in the fermented grape.

The ankle has me worried though. The wound is six hours old now and the swelling remains. At first it turned red, but is now a sickly bluish. I imagine tomorrow all might become black. The ankle rests, elevated, on two pillows stacked on my ottoman. May I add that’s a completely ridiculous name for a piece of furniture? In all my travels through that empire, I have never seen any prince make use of such a piece of furniture.

I had thought to use ice to bring down the swelling, but ever since my beloved Christine died of freezing in the little ice age, I recoil from the touch of ice. I do not even use it in my drinks like moderns are accustomed. So it will have to be alcohol tonight to take off the edge.

The wine numbs me but I feel I cannot yet sleep. My mind is still too restless. Out of a complete lack of necessity, I’ve never had to visit a doctor in all my life. I’m not familiar about how to go about it. Well, there was that case of that physician attempting to dress my wounds at the Battle of Trafalgar. I amazed him when I rose from the deck, bleeding out from a nasty piece of cannon shrapnel in my gut, and dove into the sea, swimming from my ship, Leviathan, to Admiral Nelson’s ship, the HMS Victory. I was assumed drowned by the crew of my old ship, and something of a half-fish-half-man to those aboard the Victory. I suppose you had to be there.

I imagine doctors these days don’t accept payment in gold, so I’ll have to exchange my last Confederate gold ingot. They’ve so far kept me afloat in the world, helped pay off the adjustable rate mortgage and keep the lights on. I’ve used the stuff judiciously, making sure not to appear with so much of it in hand as to attract suspicion. I wonder, now that I’m fresh out, if I must find employment and whether such a search will require me to update my resume.

I read my obituary in the newspaper. At first I’m not sure it is me, but a closer investigation of the photo shows that the man who is dead is truly me. I am mooning the camera in the photo, and my distinct violin-shaped birthmark is visible for all to see.

The waitress who is pouring coffee into my mug shrieks in horror as she peeks over my shoulder at the page. She begins to scream, “Donald, Donald, you’re dead!” whereupon the short order cook, who is wearing an eye-patch, clutches his chest and falls halfway into the pie display case, his head buried in a strawberry shortcake heaping with whipped cream. Indeed, Donald Slutsky, owner of the St. Ignatius Café is also dead, his smiling mug, both eyes twinkling, beside my gleaming moon of a bare ass.

According to Donald’s wishes he is cremated, his remains released to his ex-wife Gladis who keeps the box-like urn near the back of her bedroom closet for two months, the appropriate mourning period she believes. After the sixty day black time, she empties the ashes into her refuse bin and uses the box to hide Ziploc bags of illicit pharmaceuticals such as Percocet and Vicodin she has started to pilfer from the hospital in which she works as a registered nurse.

It is under the influence of fifty milligrams of Vicodin that had been stashed safely away in her ex-husband’s urn that Gladis injects air through an IV tube into the vein of insurance salesman Reginald Swan. The air is an adequate amount to stop his already weakened heart. The family man had taken a nasty descent down the stairs into his basement and broke his femur and collarbone, thus explaining his presence in Gladis’ emergency room the night of his demise.

Luckily, two weeks before, Reginald’s wife Margaret had taken out a million dollar life insurance policy on her husband. With the sudden windfall delivered in a single check from her husband’s employer and insurer, she and her two children, Allison, 15, and Ruben, 12, hop on a flight to St. Lucia in the crystal blue Carribean. It is on this flight that Allison in seat 19C meets Michael in 19D. Michael is eager to be Allison’s lover whenever her mother and younger brother are down on the beach just below their timeshare condo.

Within two months, it becomes obvious that Allison is with child, having missed her monthly flow, but having instead that “motherly glow” that Margaret laments she sees emanating from her daughter. Tests confirm Margaret’s intuition. Abortion is considered, but Allison protests, wanting to keep the coming bundle of joy and responsibility. A compromise is struck when Ruben confides to his mother and sister that his best friend in sixth grade is adopted and he isn’t weird at all.

Eight months later Allison gives birth to a seven pound, ten ounce hermaphrodite. The doctors are quite perplexed, having failed to notice the unusual development during standard ultrasounds. These same doctors write a research paper theorizing that certain chemicals in the drinking water on the island of St. Lucia may have something to do with the hermaphroditic development in fertilized human embryos. Their research goes far in explaining what had so far been a great mystery - a cluster of intersex births occurring in paradise.

Thus Dr. Manuel Molina, the preeminent expert in abnormal prenatal development in Latin America reads the abstract of the study between a break in his classes at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He books a flight from Mexico City to Hewanorra International in St. Lucia. Unbeknownst to him, he caries a stowaway Mexican cucaracha in his briefcase among his important papers and collection of macabre sonograms. While in transit from the airport to his suite at the Jalousie Hilton Resort and Spa, the roach escapes and plants several egg cases inside a dried out apple core discarded under the drivers seat by the tropical taxi driver.

A Miss Eve Pascal, nascent swimwear model, gets into the same taxi two weeks later after the van her agency has hired experiences two simultaneous flat tires. Four baby cockroaches scamper up her long legs causing her to shriek in surprise and disgust. The driver, already unnerved by the delicate movement of Miss Pascal’s slender gams and the beads of perspiration bejeweling the ridge of her slightly upturned nose like a fleshy crown, jerks the steering wheel to the right and guides the taxi into a poorly placed cinnamon tree.

As Miss Pascal lies in the back of the crumpled taxi, she discovers that neither her legs will move nor can she feel the cockroach looking up at her in ignorance from the vantage point of a bloodied knee. She realizes this is what paralysis feels like and begins, in her mind, to make a wager. In this wager she surmises that she believes in God because she may very well be dying. She does not want to deal with the consequences of not believing in God if she does indeed go all the way. A passing small boy, the son of the a vendor of trinkets on the beach, holds her hand through the crushed door frame.

A minute after making this wager, she asks the taxi driver if he also believes in God. He does not respond because he has been cheated out of his chance to shimmy up to the card table for one final hand before his casino closed for good.

Miss Pascal returns to New York after two weeks of care in Tapion Hospital. Luckily, her paralysis is temporary and she is fortunate to meet her future husband, a spinal surgeon by the name of Dog (I can’t explain this). The going in the marriage is tough at first, she is away on photo shoots so often, and he puts in hellish hours at the hospital. Still, Miss Pascal and Dog make it to the two year mark. Unfortunately, Miss Pascal has an assignment to do a swimwear shoot on the Serengeti on their second anniversary. She is bitten when her photographer asks her to wade out into a stream during the rainy season. A crocodile mistakes her for a migratory wildebeest.

The truth is both Miss Pascal and her entourage are miles from quality care. The bush guides throw the fading model into their swiftest Range Rover, but she dies several hours into the race to the nearest doctor, her blood staining the backseat. Eve has bad luck in backseats.

Dog receives a phone call bearing bad news from the other side of the world. He takes the call while he is attending a conference on emergency trauma medicine in San Diego. A friend sees the man shaking in the lobby of the convention center and asks him to sit down. Dog explains to him what had happened to his wife in Africa and declares that he would not be attending the next presentation on the subject of shock management.

Dog screams out to a janitor in a fit of agony, “God is in a lover’s quarrel with the world!”

The janitor simply says, “I know man!”

This friend returns to his home of Seattle and discusses an old and smelly idea with another professional acquaintance. They have discovered that they can make mice hibernate, essentially have the rodents turn cold-blooded, by forcing them to breath hydrogen sulfide. They believe they can duplicate an identical effect in humans. By forcing humans to go into a state of suspended animation, they can save thousands of severely injured people who would otherwise die because they cannot receive satisfactory trauma care within what the doctors call the “golden hour.”

After years of testing animal subjects with the gas that smells of rotten eggs (actually smells worse), these scientists begin to test the science on human subjects. Two test subjects walk into their lab for the first round of experiments. One is named J_____ and the other is Rube. J______ agrees to be put into suspended animation as long as he has exclusive rights to write about his experience. Rube, who believes he is dying from a third relapse of lymphoma and is completely bald from several rounds of chemo, wishes to give the end of his life some meaning by allowing the researchers to learn from their investigation. The two lie opposite from one another as the nurses insert the anesthesia drips.

J______ asks Rube if he believes he will dream while he is in suspended animation for three days. Before Rube can answer, the doctor, the very same man who sat Dog down in San Diego and listened to him talk about supermodels and crocodiles and shock, replies that neither of them will dream. The brain will remain in what he calls a “basal state.”

Rube disagrees. He tells J______ that he believes that they will indeed dream but it will be their souls that are dreaming, not their minds. The scientist smiles a bit mockingly and asks J_____ to count from ten . . . backwards.

10 . . .

9 . . .

8 . . .

A page begins to come into focus.