Dreams are composed of many things, my son. (Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door)

Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve seen butterflies made of light. I know they’re not real, they’re a medical condition caused by some terrorist attack that happened when I was four or five. Most Martians of my generation have it. We don’t talk about it that much. Hard to talk about it to people who don’t quite see it, if you get my meaning. And it’s not like I see them all the time. Usually, they pop up at odd moments. Sometimes they’re symbolic of something, like when my first boyfriend broke up with me or when my mom died. But, more often than not, they’re at times like when I went to the bathroom to take a dump. It wasn’t that important of a dump or even that meaningful a bathroom. But the butterfly showed up nonetheless.

I’m thinking about the butterflies because I saw one recently. Some background before I begin. The mobs had been dying out, or at least publicly dying. Maybe they were going into hibernation or they’ve been consumed by the system and have become one and the same with it, I don’t know. Not my business. But what is my business is lock picking. I’m small time, I know that much. I have a record with the ISSP, sure. And maybe there’s a bounty on my head for, like, 2,000 woolongs. And I do a good job at picking those locks. But I don’t have a history of being hired for, say, breaking into banks or stealing from the houses of billionaires. But with the end of the mob, some friends of mine got to thinking: why don’t we steal from the big guys? It’s not like they would call the cops on us or anything. To defend myself in retrospect, we were a bit drunk and too stupid to realize the blatantly obvious.

I don’t know if it was John or Bob who suggested the idea. John Jacobson was a lean guy from Venus who had one of his eyes cut out. Sometimes, he’d claim that he had a cybernetic eye underneath, but I knew damn well that it was just a gaping hole. (Don’t ask how I know that, though I will assure you the lady who saw it with me is doing fine at the convent.) John mostly did enforcement, which usually meant breaking a working Joe’s legs when he decided to form a union. (I often ask myself why I was friends with the guy, and the cane he held in his left hand for no reason other than aesthetics usually gave me my answer.) Bob Blake was often the quieter of the five of us. The only one of us from Earth, he would come up with a clever scheme that ended poorly for everyone other than him. Sometimes, the dominos would hit him as well, though he found a way to bounce back. He would call me shorty for some reason. I mean, I was shorter than him, but only by like an inch. Bob was in surveillance. Mostly spying on suspected rats like Steve.

Steve was initially hesitant to steal the stuff. He was Mars born like me, but he was a few years younger and had his left ear slightly cut near the bottom. Aside from being a rat, Steve Michaels the Fourth had a nervous disposition about himself. He walked everywhere like it was covered in nails. I wanted to ask him if he was nervous because he was a rat in a room full of cats or if he was always nervous. Despite being a rat, he was a good guy. I’ll admit that much. Didn’t deserve what happened to him. Deserved some other things, maybe a beating or two. But not that. I can’t think of anyone who deserves that. If I knew what was going to happen, I’d be nervous too. Regardless, Gina was able to calm him down. Gina Lubitsch was a waitress at the bar we were drinking at. Which meant she could probably kick all of our asses, even if we were sober. She had been listening to the conversation and thought the plan, though blatantly concocted by drunks, had some merit. Not much, but it could be cultivated into something more. She told us to come see her when we sobered up.

The next day, we all showed up at her apartment. It was barely big enough to house one person, let alone five. (Grant ended up dying that night for, frankly, banal reasons I don’t want to get into here.) But we could all see her board. It was clear to me that she had been planning this out for longer than a night. The two remaining mobs had three mansions each. We didn’t plan on hitting all six, we weren’t greedy or nothing. One would be enough. Gina had scouted out the one we would go to: Don Jacobs’ mansion. Now, Don Jacobs was many things. Reclusive to the point where we didn’t know what he looked like. Rich. Probably going to Hell. But nice fellow was not one of them. Out of the two mobs, his gang was probably the more repulsive. Sure, we were a part of it, but that doesn’t mean we have to like it. John would tell blatantly false stories about how he was friends with Don (again, we were all small fry), but he’d make them out of news reports we all knew were talking about Don.

One of his tall tales involved going to a bowling alley at five am, cause you don’t say no to Don Jacobs. You just don’t. The owner of the alley tried to explain to Don that the place was closed. But Don had 35,000 reasons to explain why it was open. The owner sees the logic in this, and opens the place. Don walks in with John, heads towards the bowling balls, picks out the heaviest one he can find, and bashes the owner’s head in. I mean, there was barely any head left when Don was done. He then proceeds to bowl a perfect game. All Xs all the way. It’s true, the computer in the news report said so.

So naturally, it’s John who asks rather smugly, “Are we seriously going to steal from Don Jacobs? The man’s a fucking psychopath.”

Gina then retorts, “Yeah, but your “friend” is in the hospital, probably not long for this world.” Indeed, she was right. Don Jacobs died the night we broke into his mansion. What we all knew at the time was he’d been running things from the hospital. But the people who were around at the compound were hired goons and maybe his younger brother James. But that bastard was crap at everything and barely paid the goons to guard him. They only worked for James Jacobs because his brother scared the crap out of them. The second he died, they’d turn on him like cancer turns on the human body. He’d deserve it too. Plus, the mansion was in the middle of nowhere, so the cops Don Jacobs owned would be too far away to do a damn thing. “Should be easy to steal from the place with him gone.”

The plan was simple. Steve and Gina would act as a distraction to lure out the guards while Bob and John stole his keycard. I would then use the card to get us all into the mansion, use my skills to break into the locked rooms and safes, and we’d take whatever we could carry. I’m cutting a lot out of the plan because there were a lot of details that I don’t fully remember. It was twelve years ago that it happened. I remember most, but not all of it. I can still picture Gina’s blood drenched face, still hear Steve scream as he was dying, still remember how I felt when…

I’m getting ahead of myself. We break in all to plan. John, fucker that he was, decides that the distraction isn’t working (despite it clearly working), so he up and kills the guard. So now we have to hide the body. He was an asshole, big fucking asshole. I assumed, if he decided to be an asshole on us, he’d just break someone’s legs or try to take a bigger cut. Killing didn’t fit within what I knew his MO to be. But then, I didn’t really know the guy. Hindsight’s a bitch.

It took us an entire hour just to hide the body. Gina’s furious and about to turn back. We all were. But John, John convinces us to keep going. I mean, he gave it his all. I think Steve was crying at the end. Or maybe I was. Again, memory’s a bit shot. I wasn’t much of a crier back then, but it could have been me. Anyways, we break in to find no one there. It was as if that one guard was the only person there. The house is completely empty. The lights were off and it felt haunted. The floorboards creaked loudly, such that even on our toes, we would be caught. But no one came. There was an open window that allowed bone chilling wind to sway its way in with the ease of a ghost through walls. It was almost supernaturally silent.

We tried to turn the lights on, but the only source of light we had was the full moon. We kept going into the bowels of the mansion. It was old, designed to look like a theme park’s imagining of what an old mansion looked like. The styles of architecture and design clashed in a gothic, miserable perfection. John was leading us deep into this place, this horrible, beautiful place. Gina was with Bob. He held her tighter than he realized. She didn’t mind. She was too preoccupied with fury. I could see it all from how she moved. This wasn’t her plan. This wasn’t where we were meant to be heading. What was John doing? Steve was behind me. I could hear the chatter of the doomed man’s teeth. I felt like crying. I wanted to go home and away from this awful place. I kept it in, as all men did back then.

Eventually, we came across noise. It was an old record player, the kind you only see in horror movies. The music was distorted and confused. The track, already an atonal instrumental designed to break the ears of its listeners, was warped into something far more unlistenable. John could see that we wanted to turn back. So he put his hand in his jacket pocket and made it clear that we were staying to the end of this tragic affair. He motioned with his pocketed hand for me to unlock the door where the music was coming from. He had a face only a mother could hate, yet I was growing to hate that face as well. We all were. It took me five minutes to get into the room. I’m good at what I do, and what I do takes time. I had hoped it would be enough time for one of the others to tackle John. I was wrong.

In the room, there were two things of note. The first was a flayed man I recognized to be James Jacobs from the tattoo on the skin that was lying before him. It was positioned and stuffed on the ground like a bearskin rug. His face was shaped into a smile from clay that was once screaming. Instead of eyeballs, the rug was stapled closed. One couldn’t mistake the rug for being a sleeping man. Especially as the flayed man, clearly dead, was displayed beside it with his legs twisted into a knot and his hands nailed to the wall. The second thing of note was a set of marbles. They weren’t actually marbles, but I didn’t know that at the time.

“Why are you doing this Don,” Bob asked. He was always three steps ahead of everyone else. That’s what made him a good spy, I suppose. Gina and I were shocked. Steve, however, stopped being nervous. His eyes widened in understanding. Guess he was two steps of me. “I was always a good soldier. Loyal to Lucifer. But why now? Hell, why us? Sure, Steve’s a rat, but Gina and Ryan are good people. Why us? Why do you want us dead?”

Don smiled the way a tiger smiles at a lamb. He then told us a story. It wasn’t that good of a story or even a true one. It was just a series of digressions that looked like a story, if you squinted hard enough. I don’t think I got the point of what he was talking about. I was too distracted by a butterfly that wasn’t there. It was hovering over the marbles. It made me see them. I looked back at Don and noticed he was looking at the marbles too. He was focused on them the way a thief is on his loot. Steve started to laugh. Our gaze all turned towards him. He was standing straight and stiff, like he was born with a metal rod for a spine. But he was also content, as if the world finally made some horrifying sense to him.

“I’m sorry John,” he said with a laugh, “but you’re always so goddamn longwinded with your stories. I mean, you just go on and on and on about how deadly and terrifying you are and how much you hate us for not being you and how you love to infiltrate people and blah, blah, blah! But come on. At this point, I think it’s an act. Sure, you kill people, but in such a camp way as to make it sound like you’re some monster when, in fact, you’re just a sad little man.” He went on like this for about an hour. We didn’t know what he was doing. In retrospect, I should have realized he wanted us to go at Don while he was too busy fuming at Steve’s words. I’m surprised he let the guy go for as long as he did. I suppose he respected the showmanship.

But when Steve was done, Don smacked him with his cane so hard it broke. The he grabbed Steve by the neck, practically lifting him off the ground, and shoved one of the marbles into his mangled throat. He then made us watch as Steve died. It was not a painless death. Every time, I try to go into detail, my mouth clogs up with bile and sickness. Even thinking about what Steve did to himself makes me want to die. I can think of what I saw next with ease. Gina’s bloodstained face. Bob’s tearful eyes. The toothy grin on Don’s face. The way my hands shook as it was happening. And then, what happened next.

When Steven was dead, Don approached me. A marble was in his hands. I tried to run, but my legs were too terrified to move. I was like a deer in the headlights. I was going to die and it was going to be painful. He pinched my mouth open, blood oozing onto his hand. The marble went into my mouth. He was laughing as it tumbled down into my stomach. I was quivering with terror. I turned towards my two remaining friends, both terrified and unable to move. I waited for my death to come.

But it didn’t. Don was confused. So was I. So were my friends. Confusion allowed us to move with a level of ease we didn’t have before. I leaped at Don and punched three of his teeth out of his smug mouth. I kept punching and punching. He tried to aim his gun at me, but Gina broke his hand clean off with a single punch, a puddle of blood spurting out of the stump where it once lay. Bob was content with breaking legs. When I was done, his face didn’t look like a face anymore. It looked like a cacophony of butterflies was bursting out of the stump of a neck. We were shaking. We were crying. We held each other close for five whole minutes.

It was still dark and the plan could still go ahead. But first, we took Steve out of the room. He was dead and a rat, but we wouldn’t leave him there. He deserved better than that. We left him near the entrance. There was no one in the area for miles, probably by Don’s design. I smoked a cigarette as we loaded the first load of loot into the car. Gina was standing next to me, looking at the full moon with a quiet melancholy. She was humming to herself a song I had never heard before or since. She placed her hand in mine without really thinking. Bob approached us without saying a word. He then sang to the hums. I don’t remember the words precisely, but they were sweet words. Made the whole night seem more barrable.

When we got all the loot out of the mansion, we burned the place down. We paid a small fortune for Steve’s grave. And then, we didn’t speak to one another for a couple years.

---

Three weeks ago, Bob called. He said he wanted to meet up with me and Gina at Steve’s. We weren’t available to meet up until yesterday, which was fine for him. I was the first to arrive. The sun was starting to set on that cool winter afternoon. Snow was falling gracefully upon the graves around me. I saw a family of three stand before the grave in ritualistic sadness. I’d seen them before somewhere, but where I do not know. That’s life, I suppose. You see so many strangers that their stories all blend together into the tapestry of the world. You can’t hold everyone else’s stories in your head. I can barely hold to my own.

Gina arrived next. She was wearing a black winter coat with white fur around the top. The years had done little to change how she looked. She still had those angry, loving eyes. That bushy brown hair, now done up in an afro. And she could probably kick my ass if she wanted to. Instead, she gave me a hug and we started talking. She spent the past couple of years traveling. She has a house on Mars, on the opposite side of the city from where the bar where this all started was. I told her the place got torn down due to structural weaknesses. Now it’s just a lot. She was surprisingly sadden about that. She asks what I did for the past couple of years.

Before I can answer Bob shows up. I was taller than him now, so he introduced himself by saying “So I guess I’m Shorty? heh.” Though, again, the height difference is still not by much. Maybe half an inch. I guess it just meant a lot to him for someone to be Shorty. I can see a gigantic smile through his newly bushy beard. The rest of his hair has started to fall out. Not gracefully though. More patchy and haphazard like a kid whose gotten his hands on an electric clipper. Bob hugs me the way a brother would hug the prodigal son. He says he settled down since we last saw him. Got married to a nice pair of people, one lady, one enby (is that how it’s spelt? I’ve not seen it spelt anywhere). They have a daughter who’s about to enter elementary school. He doesn’t say any of their names quite yet. He waits until we’re done to talk about them further and asked me not to say their names here.

Bob looks to me and asks with a wry smile, “So what’ve you been up to, Ryan?”

“He was just about to tell me before you showed up,” Gina adds, now more curious than before. Her hands rub the back of her neck with excitement. I don’t tell them the full story. I don’t bring up my love affair that ended poorly or the time I had to run out of a burning building or even the dog I accidentally adopted.

Instead, I say, “Well, I’ve gotten out of the business. Almost too late, actually. The day after I left Mars, a war broke out between Lucifer and the Angels. Lucifer lost in the end, which I suppose is fitting. I moved to Venus for a couple of years. Met some people, did some jobs, fell in love. That sort of thing. Eventually, I became homesick. I missed Mars. The way the streets of the city twisted into nooks and crannies that had stores you would never see again. I missed the taste of the air, how it danced on my tongue and made love to my nostrils. I missed the people. Sure, I didn’t always have many interactions with them, but the feel of strangers on Mars is far less alienating than on Venus. So I moved back. The dust had long settled and the people were living their lives to the best of their abilities. No new syndicate had arisen from the ashes. The government was in shambles. The ISSP had deemed the world a lost cause. But there were still people there. Living their lives, helping each other out. It was a strange world. And I wanted to keep it that way. So I spent the rest of the years helping out wherever I could. Got paid for it, though I still had the money from…” We all know what I was about to say, but I don’t say it. “I bought a house in the City, three blocks from the old bar.”

“What happened to it,” asks Bob.

“It closed,” replied Gina curtly. “Structural issues.”

“Shame,” Bob looked at his feet when he said this. We were silent for a minute or two. Then I opened my big mouth.

“So why’d you want to see us after all this time?” Bob looked at me with a quiet resignation.

“They found Don Jacobs’ body.” All the air had been sucked out of us. Gina turned white. I began to sweat. Bob looked sad. “I don’t think they can tie us to him,” Bob says in a futile attempt to relieve us of our anxieties, “it’s too burnt up, too old. I don’t think they’d arrest us either. Too much time has passed for them to care. But…”

“But there’s a chance they do care,” Gina says softly.

“Yeah.” The wind blows silently. Its chill hits my clean shaven face like a thousand tiny daggers. I’m the one who suggests we go back. Back to where the body was left behind. It was nighttime by the time we arrived. There was no moon to light our way. What remains of the investigators have long disappeared. Three weeks does that, I suppose. There’s some tape billowing on a tree, but that’s it. The body’s gone, no doubt taken to some morgue or lab to be analyzed. Don’s family’s dead, so there’s no one who’s gonna pay for the funeral. All that remains of his legacy are statistics in history books. Maybe not even that. All that remains of the mansion after the fire are ruins. The vague outline that, once upon a time, a mansion stood tall. And for twelve years, no one cared that it was gone.

Even without walls, we remember the way to where Steve died. He was a good kid whose sole flaw was being a rat. I never did know who he ratted us out to at the time. Who he was aligned with. Bob would later say he worked for the Angels, which I suppose is better than the ISSP. In retrospect, I probably should have aligned with the Angels as well. But my home was in Lucifer territory and I was too proud to move. Gina wasn’t on either side of that debacle and Bob burnt his bridges shortly after Don turned on him.

We found the room, no longer locked, not even a door. The stain of James’ skin was still etched onto the ground like a tattoo for Mars. Nothing else remained. The marbles had been long lost to the seas of some distant shore out in the stars. Gina saw to that. Pluto, she says. That’s where she left them. No goes to Pluto. It’s a dead world with no prospects. I hope she’s right. We stand in there like idiots thinking that our presence will bring about some ghost, some lost thing that will make us whole. All it brings back are bad memories.

Though something does catch my eye. Right next to me, right where Steve died, lies a butterfly that doesn’t exist. It rests on that spot like a raven on a mantlepiece. I think about that night, the night of the cacophony of butterflies, and it reminds me of a dream I had once. I was walking down a corridor looking for my sister. Never had a sister or any siblings for that matter. She says, “Come on Joe, the circus is about to start.” I follow her with a smile. But when I reach the end of the corridor, she’s gone and there’s no circus to be seen. Just a room full of bodies nailed to walls like butterflies in a glass box. I see myself among the bodies, though I don’t recognize myself in the dream. I wake up before I find out what I do next.

“He deserved better than this,” I said with a sigh.

“No one deserves anything,” quotes Gina wistfully.

“But he should have had better,” replies Bob mournfully. We nod in agreement.

The stars above us dance their incomprehensible dance as we leave that broken place behind and return to the city.

Take care of yourself.

You've earned some rest.

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In pain, which each of us must suffer alone, in hunger, in poverty, in hope, we know our brotherhood. (Cowboy Funk)

Nobody cares about what the horse wanted.

Hi ho, Silver…

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What, snow that can remember? (Waltz for Venus)

Stella Bonnaro lived a good life. Not the best life she could have imagined for herself, but a good one nonetheless. She helped those who were in pain, those who suffered, those who told themselves they could not be saved. Some say her devotion to helping people was because of the death of her brother, Roco Bonnaro. He was a minor criminal who hit it big with the theft of a plant known colloquially as the Grey Ash. The properties of which have been used in countless lifesaving drugs, most notably Venus Sickness. Venus Sickness causes those suffering from it to go blind and decreases their life expectancy. It is caused by a spores in the atmosphere of Venus that are said to look like snow. Stella Bonnaro had it since she was a baby. Those who knew her back then, before her sickness was cured and her brother’s death, that she was a kindhearted, if lonely woman. More often than not, she would isolate herself in an abandoned wreck of a ship she called home. Allegedly, she was to have had some minor ESP when she was blind (which is to say she was quite good at reading people, even when blind, to a supernatural degree). Some have speculated that it was because of this ESP ability that she isolated herself from the world. She didn’t want to see all the horrible people within it. Of course, that’s hogwash, as her work later in life had her in the midst of some truly terrible people and organizations, including the infamous Lucifer gang. From the ashes of a gang war that went horribly, horribly wrong, arose a new gang. One that was, to be quite blunt, rather mean spirited and cruel. They were known to have had schemed to go above and beyond the acceptable boundaries of typical criminal empires. They assassinated political enemies on a more than frequent basis, torched countless cities to the ground, and had a body count that would have made any government acquiesce to their demands. Some people who died have noted that they were more akin to a terrorist organization than a mob. And yet, Stella Bonnaro found herself in the middle of their operation. Speculation abounds as to how she got in with them. Some wonder if people who knew Roco tried to pressure her to join them while others believe her ESP drove her to them with an almost clairvoyant clarity. A few conspiracy theorists believe her to have been kidnapped and radicalized by their agenda to bring about a feminist “utopia” and other such things Lucifer was very much not into. The most common theory in this respect is that she simply fell in line with a bad crowd after having numerous bad experiences. Regardless of origin, Stella was not, for lack of a better term, corrupted by her time with Lucifer. Photographs of her at the time she was in their organization highlight a degree of discomfort and misery. But her work within the organization helped countless on the precipice of their ideology escape unharmed. Some even escaped from deeper within the circle, such as noted criminal lawyer Johnson Philips. Stella spent three years in their circles before people who were invested in Lucifer’s aims (a vague sense of white nationalism that believed people born outside of Mars should be exterminated to bring about the master race, among other rather dimwitted things) noticed what she was doing. By that time, she was tipped off of their awareness. She was barely able to escape with a girl she had just coaxed out of the organization who only joined in the first place because her abusive ex-boyfriend practically forced her to. Her name was Joanna Jones. Jojo, for short. When out from the other side, Stella and Jojo opened up a bar on Mars they called the Lovely Angel on account of a dream Jojo had as a child of an angel swooping down from the heavens and pushing the storm clouds away. It was quietly closed a few months later when Lucifer caught up with them. They were on the run from Lucifer for several years before the organization was finally shut down. In that time, Jojo and Stella grew feelings for one another. They tried a relationship in their time on the run, but it ultimately didn’t lead anywhere beyond friendship. These things happen from time to time and there’s no shame in admitting that romantic feelings don’t always lead to romantic endings. Sometimes, they simply lead to “And they lived happily ever after as friends.” That’s still a happy ending. Jojo ended up meeting a person by the name of Jonathan Stark. They were a lean fellow with blue eyes and prematurely greying hair. Jojo’s relationship with Jonathan was a rather loving one, all things considered. Stella was her maid of honor at the wedding, which was attended by a number of people greater than 20, most notably Claire Smith, who knew Jonathan from a coffee shop she worked at three years prior and never expected more than to be a trustworthy stranger to him, the kind of person one meets and has a good rapport with, but doesn’t know. Claire was a rather unassuming woman with a nine to five job and no relationship with the criminal underworld. Claire was never on the run from a terrorist cell, never went blind, and never stepped foot off of Mars. And yet, she and Stella hit it off instantly. It was as if there was an inherent rapport to the pair like reincarnated lovers dancing the stars and centuries looking for one another again and again and again. They dated for thirteen months before Stella popped the question, to which Claire asked a question of her own. They both laughed. Returning the favor, Jojo was Stella’s maid of honor. Her life since marrying Jonathan had been a delightfully daft one full of adventures some would call absurd, or silly. One might even say Jojo went on some bizarre adventures (though one would have to ask them about their taste in obscure and ancient anime as most art of the 20^th and early 21^st centuries was lost). Stella and Claire lived a less adventurous life than their friends. Though, to be fair, their friends had adventures involving exploding ancient castles and AI who believe themselves to be Gods. Stella and Claire remained in the mundane world of crime. It was Claire who noticed the systemic issues that allowed such things as Lucifer to arise. For all her empathic abilities, Stella was shockingly blind to the way the world contorts itself towards cruelty like a man whose wrist is being snapped by the people he owes money to, but with the ease of a snake chasing a mouse in a cage. They didn’t fight about it, all things considered. Stella, more than anything, was disappointed in herself for not noticing the obvious staring her right in the face and felt some shame, to which Claire comforted her the way many a lover comforts. They reopened the Lovely Angel so that Claire could pay for law school. Even in those brief months open, the Lovely Angel made a large profit, most notably because the pair could make a fantastic drink in a good amount of time. Their specialties included Martian margheritas, Tharsis, and Woolong Deluxe, which was said to leave the mouth tasting like cherries and the feeling of a first kiss. Claire went to Mars University and graduated with high honors. Stella cried at the graduation ceremony. She still worked with her contacts in the criminal underworld to get people out. Though no longer from within. Her bar would act as a base of operations working to systemically fight the syndicates infesting the universe. Along the way, she discovered time and time again a name crop up. Usually, it was tucked away in a list of subsidiaries and dummy companies. And yet, the Bohemia Corporation kept showing up. At first, she thought it was a wild goose chase, an attempt to get her to focus her energies on some phantom organization. And then, they tried to buy the Lovely Angel. What followed from there was a legal battle that lasted close to a decade that ended up altering the shape of the universe, killed 37 people, revealed a coverup that killed 345,091,923 people, and effectively spelled the doom of capitalism in the same way most financial crises did. Which is to say, the government bailed out the banks caught up in the scandal (which ever ones weren’t openly part of it at least) and laid the blame at foreigners, which was certainly a flex considering this was an interplanetary crisis. And while many a nationalist tried to use the claim for their own ends, it was typically agreed upon that the government was full of crap. The ISSP tried to keep the peace as they did with the various gang wars, but the scale of outrage was too high for even them. The riots that ensued could be best compared to the French Revolution in terms of carnage and the Civil Rights movement in terms of not being taken over by cruel, vicious brutes who wish to replace those in power with themselves. The fallout ended with the collapse of society much in the same way as the collapse of the divine right of kings. Entropy, so they say, is an inevitable process that consumes us all in the end. Stella, Claire, Jojo, and Jonathan survived the war along with several other people they fostered in their own little community in a small town called Jackston, which was about 27 miles from Tharisis. The Lovely Angel that they fought for had burned to the ground as a symbolic opening salvo to the war that would follow. They made a home for themselves in Jackston, They loved and cared for one another. They would spend the rest of their lives in Jackston, Claire even becoming the defacto leader for a short period of time before it was someone else’s turn. Rebuilding this brave new world took close to 25 years, but people were able to communicate with one another in time. Stella was quite pleased with herself near the end of her life. She saw things she never would have dreamed of. Loved people so dearly. She was good with seeing people’s character and she was happy that those she met had grown to be better. There were some mysteries in her life that alluded her. She never again met Roco’s last friend. She never even saw him. He had an air of lightness to him, like he was perpetually dreaming himself anew each night. She wondered what happened to him, even his name, which she long forgot if she ever knew it in the first place. The sun was setting on Stella Bonnaro. Fitting, she supposed. The first thing she ever saw with her eyes was a sunrise. The last would be a different story. Three people, all of whom she loved, walking towards her as the sun began to set. Claire with her blonde hair cut in a style Stella thought to be rather rubbish (who only cuts the sides of their hair), Jojo with her big eyes telling stories of love and happiness, and Jonathan, their beard trimmed haphazardly, but nonetheless wonderfully. Their forms silhouetted by the waning sun but illuminated by the fireflies that dance on the Martian fields like snow on a Venus. Her first memory was the feeling of something akin to snow hitting her on the face. She cried and cried to her parents when it happened. She didn’t feel like crying now. She felt tired. Ready for bed. All things considered, Stella Bonnaro lived a good life. It wasn’t the best life she could have imagined for herself. No one gets that. But she would have liked to have seen Roco’s face, even if it was just the once.

And when she opened her eyes…

Ramble on…

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Where’s Your Passport? (Half-Life Vr But The AI Is Self-Aware)

I… I have no idea how to write about this. Usually when confronted by such a task, I end up going mad and writing poetry or doing some art project that’s only tangentially related to the subject at hand. But here, I’m left flabbergasted by how I’m supposed to react to this. I don’t even know if I can say it’s good or bad. It is. It’s in the world and there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s very much something you experience as you’re trapped inside for weeks with no sign of escape. I think I might be experiencing burn out. I don’t have much in creativity at the moment and I used it up yesterday on a Batman talks to the Devil story that’s going to happen at some point on someone else’s podcast. I am aware of myself, but I lack the ability to do a thing about it. I need to get out of the house more often.

This post was commissioned by Aleph Null through Patreon. I'm sorry it wasn't that good.

Are you “My Dad?” (Sympathy for the Devil)

All that remains from the day of the Astral Gate Incident are snippets— fragments of conversations with contexts long forgotten, lost to time, to entropy, to death. A story could be made from these snippets, but it would be incoherent, lacking protagonists, antagonists, and even setting. Attempts have been made in the past to create a narrative of that day, though they rather erroneously try to shape it in terms of the moment of the incident. To define humanity as a series of suffering after suffering after suffering is foolish and benefits only those who gain from human suffering. People too rich to be effected by the fall out of incidents such as the Astral Gate. Suffering builds character, but what kind of character is being built. A servant to the masters we call capitalism. This is not the place for such musings. Here is the story of people caught in a tragedy they were never prepared for. But then, what other kind of tragedy is there…

“So,” says the man with three scars on the back of his neck, “so I say t-to the guy, what do you think I am, a monster? And he look- looks! Looks at me, and he says, well, Yar. Youse covered in blood.” He is drinking at a bar five hours before the incident occurs. The group of friends he is drinking with laughs at his story, believing it to be a long form joke. They’ll all say they get his joke, but in truth they do not. For that would require him to be joking. He will not survive.

“Mama,” says a little girl with blue eyes, red hair, and black skin, “what happened to Dada?” She is four years old, today is her birthday. These are her first coherent sentences. Her mother was a woman with prematurely grey hair and scars hidden beneath the clothing she wears. Her daughter will never see these scars. She will never know what happened to “Dada.” They will not survive.

A billionaire at the age of 25, Johnathan Smith has it all. He earned his fair and square. Sure, his father gave him a little push, a donation or two from the family vault. But then, is that not the job of fathers? To help their sons out when the time comes? Meanwhile, these leaches are asking for a handout. Asking for what he earned fair and square. Why should he help them? They aren’t his. Johnathan returns to the office he owns where he decides to increase prices on a lifesaving pill. It’s his pill after all, he bought it fair and square. He will not survive.

A blind woman sleeps on the street corner. She will not be awake for the incident. She will not survive.

Two officers are beating a black man on the streets. There are five witness, all white. On a normal day, they will file a report that says the black man was caught trespassing on the premises of one of the white people’s house. Evidence for this will be a splotch of blood with the black man’s DNA found three inches away from where he was beaten. The black man will be found guilty and sentenced to an extrubiant amount of time where the police hope to teach him the lesson: be more white. But today was not a normal day. They will not survive.

A queer woman enters a church. The priest, a man of faith for 37 years and of cloth for 40, holds her as she cries about the cruelties done to her. By her parents, by those who claim to be of faith, by those who seek to cure her. The priest holds her as she cries. He introduces her to a woman of faith with different queerness. A smile comes across the faces of the queer women. They talk for what seems like days. The priest cleans the plates of the homeless who sleep in his church. They will not survive.

A man searches the city of Los Angeles for his dog. The dog will not be found. He will not survive.

A bar mitzvah is held three miles outside of London. The boy is being held up in a chair. His sister, a girl with pink hair, violet eyes, and a birthmark on her neck, talks to her girlfriend about moving into their boyfriend’s apartment. The girlfriend is unsure, perhaps not wishing to make such things real. She says none of this to the girl she loves. She looks at her soon to be brother in law, smiling at becoming a man. They will not survive.

In Greenwich, CT, a family of five is moving into a house. The father has a scar on the back of his hand. The mother has the bottom potion of her left ear completely missing. The youngest son broke his arm. The oldest son wears glasses. The daughter wears braces. The family dog is digging in the garden. The house is blue with a red door and lion’s head for a knocker. The flowers are starting to bloom. They will not survive.

A cat wanders the streets of a suburb. She has black fur, green eyes, and blood on her claws. She will not survive.

A baby is born premature. They live for only an hour. In another, an incident occurs.

In a field, a little boy plays fetch with his dog. The dog runs faster than the boy. He is a kind dog, beloved by the boy. Records found on the boy (a note written in crayon, three trading cards with Pocket Monsters on them, and a copy of The Monster at the End of this Book with three nonconsecutive pages missing) show he lived in an abusive household, but ran away three years prior to playing fetch with the dog. The sun shone on the boy’s face as he petted the dog. They did not survive.

In Canada, a polar bear swims to shore, finding hir cubs sleeping against hir’s flake. Hir’s flake awakens to see hir with five salmon in hir’s mouth. Ze smiles a toothy smile and awakens the cubs. They will not survive.

A short story writer prepares to work on a science fiction narrative about an alien dystopian empire that wishes to enslave humanity, but is constantly foiled by the hands of Clark Jones, Two-Fisted Space Adventurer. An idea strikes him to give the aliens nontraditional pronouns to highlight their alien nature. He considers using the pronoun “Ze” for the alien commander who tries to bed Clark Jones. He will not survive.

A lean man stalks the streets of a city. A slimy sneer oozes onto his face with the ease of a snake in the garden. A block away walks a woman, alone at night. The man has known the woman for many years, and time and time again she has refused his advances. “I can’t be with you. I’m with someone else,” she’ll say. “I don’t love you!” “Stop following me!!” And all those other lies. He’ll make her learn one way or the other. At least, that was the plan. But then, plans tend to fail when clashed with reality, especially when the woman has mace in her purse. He will not survive.

A nonbinary person wanders the streets with a golf club. Hir eyes are covered in purple contacts. Hir long black hair is covered by elvish ears and a blonde wig knotted into a long ponytail. In hir pocket is a card that says “SPELL.” Hir is dressed in a long, somewhat impractical robe. Beneath the robe is a tee-shirt riffing on the movie Akira with a character from the comic book series The Simpsons. Hir will not survive.

Jane Marks finishes shooting her latest motion picture. What footage remains tells the story of a bisexual man (Patrick Mann) having his life torn apart by discovering his sexuality. His girlfriend (Jane Marks) leaves him because she finds the people he’s with to be toxic. The man he falls in love with (Sean Smith III) refuses to be with him unless he rejects his attraction to women. His parents disown him for being gay and his father nearly beats him to death. The scene being filmed involves Jane’s character getting a phone call from Patrick’s informing her that he’s dying of AIDS and probably won’t see the week. She tries to get him to go back to the way things were when he was straight, but he hangs up on her. The movie was expected to receive a bunch of awards for its straight director (Max Landis). They will not survive.

A nonbinary kid was reading a book. She didn’t like the book and threw it against the wall, which caused five pages to be flung out. She will not survive.

“We have to hurry or we’ll miss the train,” said the man with one leg to the woman with short blonde hair. She smiles as he drags her along. The sun shines across her face, almost blinding her to the world around. But the indent the light makes inside her eyes has an abstract beauty to it. They miss the train and the man makes a performative shout of frustration before quickly calming down and discussing their plans with the woman. They will not survive.

It’s noted mobster Vinnie St. John’s 45^th birthday. The family is planning a celebration in his honor. Among their plans, two plot to have him wacked, one schemes to take over a rival family’s territory, and one opts to announce his decision to leave the business. Vinnie St. John, for his part, simply sits on the porch while his three daughters run around in the garden. A slight pain hits his left arm, and he collapses. He will not survive.

Ida and Carmine DeVita have been retired for many decades. Their children have had children and some are expecting grandchildren. Carmine is a stout man, nearing the sunset of his life. His short white hair is shaped to a point. Ida has more years within her than Carmine, though her frail body would say otherwise. She dyes her greying hair brown. They are walking in the woods, looking for mushrooms for a recipe they’ll serve their family for Thanksgiving. They hold each other as the sun begins to set. They will not survive.

The sun beats down on the world as a man with a grungy beard (thicker around the lips where a goatee once rested than the rest of the face) walks to the spaceport. He dreams of leaving the Earth he once called home. To him, having tasted the world outside, it is more like a small town than a planet. And small towns, to him, feel more like cages than anything else. To escape, then, would be his greatest desire. He has spent the past five years saving money for his escape. He put all of his resources, all his energy in leaving. He alienated his family, his friends, even burnt some bridges with work opportunities. But, in the end, he got his wish. He was heading for Mars that very day. All he’d have to do was breach the Astral Gate, and he’d be free at last, free at last. He thought of his brother, still on Earth. Still content with the cage. But not for long. He will not survive.

On a misty day on a field in Scotland, where the cows graze lazily, a young boy is given a harmonica by his father. The wind silently bustles the grass with ease and calm, like breath on the back of your neck from someone standing right behind you. He plays the harmonica atop a rock to his family. The boy is wearing white sneakers, khakis, and a light blue polo shirt. He has short brown hair that slightly covers the tops of his closed green eyes. His mother’s hair blows in the wind like grass. The sky turns green as light shaped like life giving sperm rains down the heavens like water in an ocean. The world turns sepia. He will survive.

Who Can Be Saved…

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I'm Not Going to Compete With a Ghost (The Black Archive #42: The Rings of Akhaten)

Sun, Sun, Mr. Golden Sun, kill my enemies!

Will Shaw is an interesting critic. He's not as structurally daring as, say, Elizabeth Sandifer or Sam Keeper, but he, much like Richard Jones or Sam Maleski, has a knack for keeping a reader engaged with the criticism he is writing, even if the reader has no familiarity with the subject and the length is in the six digits in terms of word count. No where is this more apparent than in his recently released entry into The Black Archive: The Rings of Akhaten.

For those unaware, The Black Archive is a series of book length analysis centered around the television series Doctor Who. They are quite good, ranging from deep dives into the history that the episode is exploring to examinations of the racial politics inherent to a story riffing Hammer Horror films, to an overview of all the clever, interesting things an episode is doing. While Shaw's book is very much of the third variety, it's a damn good one for the simple fact that there are a lot of clever, interesting things about the marmite episode.

Perhaps the crown jewel of the book is its opening chapter, wherein Shaw deftly juggles the interrelated deconstructed concepts of New Atheism and Orientalism within the episode. While the latter aspect is certainly without critique (and Shaw is willing to provide it), his analysis highlights the ways in which the episode often subverts and critiques these aspects as well as their history within Doctor Who. And what they show is a tendency for the Doctor to assume he know what the world is, even as it repeatedly surprises him in how wrong he is. It highlights, though not necessarily leads, a path forward. The Rings of Akhaten, much like the companion who stars in it, for all the criticism laid upon it, might just be one of the most important things to happen to Doctor Who, its implications still being explored.

That's not to say that the remaining chapters and appendixes aren't without merit. The follow-up chapter, focusing on the role of Clara in the episode and the concluding chapter about the episode's role within the 50th anniversary year are both delightful. And while the chapter focusing on the flaws within the episode is probably the weakest of the four, it is nonetheless a fascinating read. And, of course, the behind the scenes material provided both by the interview with Farren Blackburn as well as his Director's Statement are quite interesting.

There are certainly flaws within the book. In the ebook edition I read from, some of the footnotes were seemingly not included (one notable one being an entire quote from Neil Cross' adaptation of MR James' Whistle and I'll Come to You without a citation). There are points that are tantalizingly brought up (such as Akhaten being a patriarchal figure or a more in-depth look at the line "I walked in universes where the laws of physics were devised by the mind of a mad man") only not to be explored with much depth. Equally, the book assumes a reader more familiar with the New Series than the classic one and as such leaves out several interesting threads such as the history of the Doctor interacting with God like figures, the similarly deconstructive implications of Carnival of Monsters, or Lalla Ward.

But perhaps most galling of all is the lack of discussion of the final confrontation between Clara and the Doctor. While the conclusion of that scene is discussed at length, what led up to it is surprisingly absent. In it, Clara confronts the Doctor with his, shall we say, less than ethical actions. When he tries to justify his actions as being because she reminds him of someone he knew (who died), she rebukes him, saying she's her own person and won't be treated as secondary to someone else. It both establishes Clara as a figure with agency in a story that assumes she's an object and acts as meta commentary given the previous time a beloved companion left (without a gap year full of specials), her successor was coldly received by the fandom and treated somewhat poorly by the show. It feels like a noticeable gap that the implications of this brief conversation (for good and ill [note the focus on Clara not being her echoes and not the Doctor being at her mother's grave]) are absent from Shaw's analysis.

Still, the book (as well as the series it's a part of) is a must read for anyone interested in Doctor Who, quality criticism, and arguments you can make against that guy you know from the internet who won't shut up about how all religions are inherently barbaric. I look forward to whatever Will Shaw has planned for the future. I'm sure it will be something awesome.

🍁

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Symbols have meaning and power, but it won’t always be the same for every person in every context. (Mish-Mash Blues)

The greatest respect a writer can give their readers is to not write anything that they expect.

-Goethe

Part 1 A hearty breakfast

If it cannot break its egg’s shell, a chick will die without being born. We are the chick. The world is our egg. If we don’t crack the world’s shell, we will die without being born. Smash the world’s shell! For the revolution of the world!

Part 2 East vs West

Followers of Shinto, unlike Judeo-Christian monotheists and the Greeks before them, do not believe that humans are particularly “special.” Instead, there are spirits in everything, rather like the Force in Star Wars. Nature doesn’t belong to us, we belong to Nature, and spirits live in everything, including rocks, tools, homes, and even empty spaces.

The West, the professor contended, has a problem with the idea of things having spirits and feels that anthropomorphism, the attribution of human-like attributes to things or animals, is childish, primitive, or even bad. He argued that the Luddites who smashed the automated looms that were eliminating their jobs in the 19th century were an example of that, and for contrast he showed an image of a Japanese robot in a factory wearing a cap, having a name and being treated like a colleague rather than a creepy enemy.

The general idea that Japanese accept robots far more easily than Westerners is fairly common these days. 

Part 3 Sex, but there’s a winner

I cut Mr. Leeds’s throat as he lay asleep beside his wife. I shoot Mrs. Leeds. The bullet enters to the right of her navel and lodges in her lumbar spine. But she will die of strangulation. Mr. Leeds rises, with his throat cut, and tries to protect the children. I shoot one of the two boys in bed. The other boy I drag out from under his bed and shoot him on the floor. All of them are dead, except possibly Mrs. Leeds. The smashing of mirrors begins.

I moved the family after they were dead and then put them back the way they were when I killed them. I wanted them to watch. Talcum powder on the body… but there was none in the house… I have to touch her.

This is my design.

Part 4 World enough and time

The word psychogeography, suggested by an illiterate Kabyle as a general term for the phenomena a few of us were investigating around the summer of 1953, is not too inappropriate. It does not contradict the materialist perspective of the conditioning of life and thought by objective nature. Geography, for example, deals with the determinant action of general natural forces, such as soil composition or climatic conditions, on the economic structures of a society, and thus on the corresponding conception that such a society can have of the world. Psychogeography could set for itself the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals. The adjective psychogeographical, retaining a rather pleasing vagueness, can thus be applied to the findings arrived at by this type of investigation, to their influence on human feelings, and even more generally to any situation or conduct that seems to reflect the same spirit of discovery.

Part 5 Parker’s life was so much darker than the book I read.

Ever since I've ever heard music, I thought it should be very clean, very precise - as clean as possible, anyway, and more or less tuned to people. Something they could understand, something that was beautiful, you know?

I became bitter, hard, cold. I was always on a panic - couldn't buy clothes or a good place to live.

They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.

Music is basically melody, harmony, and rhythm. But people can do much more with music than that. It can be very descriptive in all kinds of ways, all walks of life.

I could hear it sometimes, but I couldn't play it. I'd been getting bored with the stereotyped changes that were being used. I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with related changes, I could play the thing I'd been hearing.

Part 6 How much is that doggy in the window?

Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark!

Part 7 And miracles happen.

The dream I had yesterday and today.

The happy and mundane world will vent their anger.

The dreams will grow and grow. Let's grow the tree that blooms money.

It's most valuable while it's still a bud.

That's right, so we shall preserve the memory forever.

If there is no flower, there will be no fruit. 

If there's nothing, then I won't do anything.

If you're unhappy, please put a vote in this eyeball.

Who would give up this throne?

I am the emperor, chosen by the lord himself!

I didn't choose you! I didn't choose you!

God and Buddha will change religions.

The happy and mundane world will vent their anger.

Part 8 Gliding all over

Now, now! Let's keep it together! Our memories of Rose can't be tainted by some overgrown brambles! *chuckles* Look at them. They're a mess without her guidance. Directionless, pathetic, clinging things. It's going to be okay, Garnet!

Part 9 My name is Earl

This is exactly what my luck is like! No choice—no traction—no control! When I really try my best—I win! If I don’t try at all, I still win! I’m carefree? Haha! Sure! Nothing I do matters—so why should I care?! Hahaha! I never have my feet on the ground? What else do you expect… when I’m in free fall!

I love my luck! I don’t have to work, it keeps me safe and rested and well fed… It’s just that, in the long run—people don’t see me, they only see my luck. I’m not a person, I’m a resource. You were right… Uncle Scrooge sent you and Fethry here ‘cause he trusts you. He sent me ‘cause he trusts my luck. But- I don’t tell it what to do: it just happens all the same… an’ I don’t mind that. I don’t mind, but… sometimes I just wonder… what’s the point of me? Everybody wants my luck… but nobody want-

Part 10 The fun will never end.

Man, don’t you know? Laws ain’t made to help earthy cats like us. Listen, here on our planet, back in the old days, back in the real old days, it was just every man for his self. Screwnlin and scratch-scrobling for the good stuff, the greenest valleys and scrat scroblin. And the strongest, meanest men got the best stuff. They got the greenest valleys and they were like “The rest of you, y’all scrats gets sand.” And that’s when they made the laws, you see. Once the strong guys got it how they liked, they said “This is fair now, this is the law.” Once they were winnin’, they changed the rules up.

Part 11 I pity the fool

Know naught!

All ways are lawful to innocence.

Pure folly is the key to initiation.

Silence breaks into rapture.

Be neither man nor woman, but both in one.

Be silent, babe in the egg of blue, that thou

Mayest grow to bear lance and graal!

Wander alone, and sing! In the king’s palace

His daughter awaits thee.

Part 12 This is a true story

At the time of this writing, I am owed $200 by 2Leaf Press for editorial work I did. While the majority of work done for 2Leaf Press was done on the understanding that I would not be paid due to it being an internship, the book “Substance of Fire” received an uncredited edit by me in exchange for the payment of $200. I signed no NDA in regards to this work, not even a verbal one. By the time you have read this, it will have been roughly two years since I’ve been owed that money and it remains unpaid. Should the money be paid in between now (11/1/19) and when I presume this will be posted, I will update this section to indicate that the money has been paid for.

Part 13 Heartbreaker

“Comics will break your heart.”

Does anyone here know who said that? It was Jack Kirby. Does anyone know who Jack Kirby was?

Ah, good. I see some hands. That’s good. Heartwarming, almost. Why did Jack Kirby say such a thing? Why would the man who believed that his chosen art form was a perfect way to both entertain and bring worthy journalism to the masses, the man who fought in the second world war and came back, the man whose creative ethic still stands unrivaled…Denounce the very art form he worshiped for decades?

Business. That’s why.

When art and business intersect in an accelerated—and still accelerating—world, the victims are many and the attention to their suffering is brief, because, as the key lie of the past century goes, “Time is money.” We built whole centuries, whole civilizations… on a tired premise posited by Benjamin Franklin proclaiming that time can be measured, that human activity can be measured…imposes an overwhelming sense of false order on all that is human. Of course, we don’t stop there. We also try to impose order on nature, and look—it is not yielding to us! Chaos does not bow to anyone! Be it our own, or the nature’s Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow! Crack nature’s moulds, an Germens spill at once, that make ingrateful man!

The business grows and as it grows it needs factories. Cities are factories now. For example—New York attracts the young energy that the cities require by maintaining the illusion of its still existing (but really dead) dream of the 1960s and 1970s. In reality it’s a dead, fuckless city! The future is fuckless. Like Steve Jobs.

The future doesn’t pay attention and doesn’t give time to its victims, because time and attention are money. Like Steve Jobs. And, by extension, like Apple, and most, if not all, other corporations, the future is fatal. At least the future they want for us, because they can only be sustained by our own time and energy. Art—be it comics, film, video games, painting, sports, anything—won’t break your heart. Instead, the corporations, the business of it all, the parasitical thing handing on to the thing you love… will do their worst to enslave your spirit. Kill you’re atemporal self. Bind you to a way of life that fears change. All to benefit… One fuckless minute at a time.

Part 14 Empathy for the Devil

Prosecutor: Good morning, Worm your honor. The crown will plainly show the prisoner who now stands before you was caught red-handed showing feelings! Showing feelings of an almost human nature! This will not do! Call the schoolmaster!!

Schoolmaster: I always said he'd come to no good in the end your honor. If they'd let me have my way, I could have flayed him into shape! But my hands were tied! The bleeding hearts and artists let him get away with murder! Let me hammer him today?

Defendant: Crazy! Toys in the attic, I am crazy! Truly gone fishing. They must have taken my marbles away!

Jury: Crazy, toys in the attic he is crazy.

Wife: You little shit you're in it now! I hope they throw away the key! You should have talked to me more often than you did, but no! You had to go your own way, have you broken any homes up lately? Just five minutes, Worm your honor! Him and me, alone!

Mother: Babe! Come to mother baby, let me hold you in my arms. M'lud, I never wanted him to get in any trouble. Why'd he ever have to leave me? Worm, your honor, let me take him home.

Defendant: Crazy, over the rainbow, I am crazy. Bars in the window. There must have been a door there in the wall when I came in—

Jury: Crazy, over the rainbow, he is crazy.

Judge: The evidence before the court is incontrovertible, there's no need for the jury to retire. In all my years of judging, I have never heard before of someone more deserving of the full penalty of law! The way you made them suffer, your exquisite wife and mother, fills me with the urge to defecate! Since, my friend, you have revealed your deepest fear, I sentence you to be exposed before your peers. Tear down the wall!

Part 15 Ode to Joy

If you take that into consideration, then perhaps this world isn't that bad.

Still, the reality itself might not be bad, but I could still hate myself.

But it's your mind which takes reality and separates it into what's bad and hateful. It's only the mind which separates reality from truth. Any new position from which you view your reality will change your perception of its nature. It's all literally a matter of perspective. There are as many truths as there are people. But there is only one truth that is your truth. That's the one that's formed by whatever point of view that you chose to view it from. It's a revised perception that protects you. That's true. And one can have a perspective that's far too small. However, a person can only see things from the perspective that they chose to see them from. One must learn to judge things via the perceived truths that one receives from others. For example, sunny days make you feel good. Rainy days make you feel gloomy. If you are told this is so, then that is what you believe is so. But you can have fun on a rainy day as well! Your truth can be changed simply by the way you accept it. That's how fragile the truth for a human is. A person's truth is so simple, that most ignore it to concentrate on what they think are deeper truths. You, for example, are simply unused to what it is to be liked by others. You've never learned how to deal with fearing what others feel about you and so you avoid it.

But, don't the others hate me?

What are you, stupid? Haven't you realized it's all in your imagination, you megadork!

But, I hate myself.

One who truly hates himself cannot love, he cannot place his trust in another.

I'm a coward. I'm cowardly, sneaky and weak.

No, only if you think you are, but if you know yourself, you can take care of yourself.

I hate myself. But, maybe, maybe I could love myself. Maybe, my life can have a greater value. That's right!. I am no more or less than myself. I am me! I want to be myself! I want to continue existing in this world! My life is worth living here!

Part 16 The Last Waltz

When they were changing the army paybooks I was the only person who had “Duration of the War” on my paybook. I had to step forward, and when I stepped forward the whole bloody company was standing behind me. I was the only one with “Duration of the War” – meaning I was a volunteer. All my mates are standing behind me and everyone’s going “You bloody mug you!” That was the kind of thing that showed me nobody wanted to volunteer. It’s as blunt as that. Why did the saying “You, you and you!” come up? Because Britain’s the greatest propaganda merchants in the world. I still think they are. They attack themselves and laugh at themselves, but it’s done in a way as a cover up, to cover our faults. The reason they went “You, you and you!” was because they knew there were no volunteers around.

If this country was a nation of sacrificers it was because they were forced to do something that they obviously didnae want to do, and they done it with a great deal of reluctance, and I would say, without going any further, that’s the myth chopped. I don’t think there’s any answer to that. The answer could be, and I’ve heard it said, that people could have kicked against it, despite the fact they were forced – that it was open for them to object. But they didn’t do it.  They were too old in the head! It just doesnae work.

People are afraid when  a guy says to you “Mr Morrison, we’ve got a war here, and you’re a person we want to fight for us – will you please come and fight for us? If you don’t come, you’ll get a fine, or you’ll be put in prison. You’ll maybe get ten years. We might even shoot you.” I think it’s easier without the Emergency Powers, like they had during the war, to protest, but in this country, despite all the talk, we don’t protest easy. We allow a £10 fine to deter us. But with a ten years prison sentence, or a prison sentence that’s indefinite, like some of the COs got – a year in prison, ready to come out, give them another year – that kind of thing, and pile it on, I would suggest that’s more of a deterrent than the fear of possibly dying. It was the threat that they knew, rather than the one they didn’t. Take it from me, if Churchill instead of his Blood, Sweat and Tears thing had said “Any man or woman in the forces who would like to give it all up and go home, can” – he wouldnae have got the microphone out his mouth before he’d been trampled to death in the rush. That’s a fact.

I was listening to the Armistice Service on the television, particularly the big ceremony in the Albert Hall – the Queen there and all the rest of them, marching about with their medals on.

I appreciate the feelings in some of their hearts. Maybe a longing to relive their lives. Maybe a lot of them in the parade, particularly the old-timers, would be half-wishing the war never finished, for the comradeship. When ever I watch the dropping of the poppies on the young soldiers below I often imagine myself and my mates in that position. I think the bloody last thing you’d be thinking about would be all they poor buggers killed in the war. Wouldn’t be thinking about them. Probably be singing different words to the songs they were singing.

But I couldn’t help feeling a wee bit sad about a lot of mates and people that had been killed. It seemed like a sort of a bloodbath with the poppies floating down on top of them, with the poppies in their hair, and all over their clothes, like blood dripping from them. The real ironic ending is – they’re going to all get up and go out, brushing it all off themselves, and all the Churchies and Dukes, on their way out, march the poppies under their feet, into the ground.

Part 17 New Gods

All right, everyone knows that Descartes doubted everything. The world’s existence, truth, everything. Until he finally figured out, the only thing he couldn’t doubt was doubting. Because you can’t doubt you’re doubting, because you’re doubting. So that’s “I think therefore I am” and all that. What people forget is that there’s a second part. He’s still stuck. I mean, just because you are doesn’t mean anything else is. He could be a brain in a jar, or in a dream or controlled by a demon. Whatever. 

So he has to get out of that, so he uses this other argument. About God. He says, some things are better than other things. And God is the… what you’d call the thing that is all the better things. So good is better than bad, God is good. Strong is better than weak, God is strong. Kind is better than cruel, God is kind.

If there are two choices, God is the better choice. He has the better quality. And then he said, to exist is better than not exist. So God exists. To be is better than not to be. So then God is.

And then if God exists, and he’s good, he wouldn’t put his in a jar. Or in a dream or with a demon. And that’s how he crawls out of the doubt. I think therefore I am. God exists. The world is… whatever the world is. Later, people like Kant and stuff, came on and attacked the God thing. Saying basically the argument didn’t work because… Basically, the setup presumed the conclusion

Once you say “God,” if your definition of “God” is that God exists… then saying “God exists because I said ‘God.’” That’s just a stupid tautology. Word play. Not a proof. But what bothers me is that if that’s true, the word play thing. Then it’s true of all of it, of the first thing. “I think therefore I am.” I mean you’re presuming an “I.” And you’re saying that “I” contains the existence, the thinking. It’s just another tautology. I am therefore I am.

So if you throw out God, then you throw out you. You’re back to doubting, all of the doubting. Without God, I don’t exist. And if I exist, God exists. We look to find ourselves, to see our own face. And we find the face of God. 

Part 18 The case for Mary Jane Watson

The story of Spider-Man is one of performativity. It’s, among other things, a story that focuses on the different ways in which we act in different circles. When he’s in school, Peter’s a quiet, if snarky fellow who can often be a jerk. As Spider-Man, Peter’s boisterous and, dare I say it, camp. Around Aunt May, he’s nervous and loving. At the Bugle, he’s put upon, but also suave. These are all aspects of Peter Parker, but they are not the whole of Peter Parker. When he’s alone, we see a guy who’s not completely sure who he is or what he wants. He just has a memory of trauma that won’t let him go.

The same could be said of Mary Jane Watson. On the surface, she’s a party girl who’s always up for a good time. And yet, she always deflects attempts at getting beneath the surface of her character. She’s fun to be around, but she doesn’t seem to have anything going on underneath. This is by design. In truth, Mary Jane has a history of trauma and running away from any and all complications in life. She performs as a party girl. And when that layer of performance is shattered, she can either lash out at those who try to pierce it or run away and curl up into a ball rather than deal with it.

Her arc, over various runs with a sliding scale of writers who can actually write women, is about coming to grips with herself as a person, beneath all the artifice and fictions she tells herself and those around her. In turn, Mary Jane becomes her truest self: a performance artist whose act is living a life as Mary Jane Watson. In other words, Mary Jane Watson is very much like Peter Parker. Where he copes with his childhood trauma through acting as a superhero, Mary Jane copes with hers through acting. To understand one, then, is to understand the other.

Part 19 The secret song of Spike Spiegel

It would be easy to say Cowboy Bebop is a show that works like Jazz. And yet, that is perhaps the best way to describe its approach. Each episode feels like it’s being made on the fly based on a mood rather than an actual design. For some episodes (like Mushroom Samba, Jupiter Jazz, and Brain Scratch), this can work wonders, highlighting a bizarre, misshapen universe that doesn’t fully coalesce, yet fits together perfectly. Whereas with other stories (like Boogie Woogie Feng Shui, Wild Horses, and Bohemian Rhapsody), the tales end up langued and dull like someone who thinks all it takes to make good jazz is randomness and incoherence. Then again, those songs tend to also be quite dull. At times, I feel the same way about this project of mine. Some of the stories told are, shall we say, not that good. Rush jobs that could have been done better if I gave myself more than a day to write them.

Part 20 Tears of a clown

The first time I watched Cowboy Bebop was in high school. I had seen a top 10 list done by a YouTuber by the name of JesuOtaku (before he transitioned) going in-depth into the best episodes of the series. One episode that caught my eye for its standalone nature was Perrot Le Fou, a story about a clown who kills people. It was Halloween and I was in for a good spooky story about a killer clown. But when the titular Perrot breaks down in tears, my stomach leapt the way it does when I feel miserable. I had a tendency to align myself with the positionality of monsters because I felt like one due to my autism. I would see myself as a sociopath who thought a lot of the things sociopaths apparently do. Even when talked about with people who knew more than I did that my horror at the implications of my thoughts indicated their falseness, I still had a part of me that thought I was one of them. So when I saw Perrot break down and cry for his mother because of a minor injury, my stomach flipped in the sickness of empathy. I tried to watch the rest of the series from the beginning, but it got taken off of YouTube shortly after watching episode 5. I wouldn’t get into the whole of the series until 2018, a whole seven years later. I decided to do a blog project about it to justify the expense of buying the series.

Part 21 Dance Magic

I know something is very wrong. The pulse returns for prodigal songs with blackout hearts, with flowered news, with skull designs upon my shoes. I can't give everything… I can't give everything away! I can't give everything… away! Seeing more and feeling less; saying no but meaning yes. This is all I ever meant. That's the message that I sent:

Part 22 What is it good for?

Oh, Yupa! I don’t want to go to war! There’s a terrible hatred hiding inside of me. I won’t be able to control it anymore… I can understand now how Ohmu feels… the hate takes over and makes him kill, and then he cries. The… the sky’s getting light… I have to go.

Part 23 I am Gotham

Am I blue?

Am I blue?

Ain’t these tears in my eyes

Telling you?

Am I blue?
You’d be to

If each plan that you had

Done fell through.

There was a time

I was your only one.

But now I’m

The sad and lonely one.

I’m a fool.

I’m the only one.

Come what may,

I should say…

Part 24 Goodbyeee

THIS IS NOT THE END.

YOU WILL SEE THE REAL

“COWBOY BEBOP”

SOMEDAY!

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