I don’t mind, but… sometimes I just wonder… what’s the point of me? (The Real Folk Blues Part 2)

And then I noticed everyone else was looking at the same thing Sean was. It was a man. His eyes were bloodshot. His arm was bleeding. His messy blonde hair tried to be slicked back, but it flung around the sides asymmetrically. One of his eyes was green, the other blue. He had a scar cut diagonally along his face. His whole body looked like a Frankenstein patchwork of a man. Or, perhaps more accurately, a ruin of one. And through the ruin we found ourselves in, stalked this ruin of a man.

He was looking at the body that was lying around the collapsing building we found ourselves within. It was perhaps the first time any of us had noticed its presence (the smell of corpse had permeated the air long ago), and yet, seeing it now, it was so obviously there. Like a black cat sitting in front of a Jackson Pollack painting. The body was dead for about a month or so. It had decayed a bit, though one of his eyes was perfectly preserved. Must’ve been a fake, I thought to myself. The ruined man stalked towards the body with great effort. He was dragging his left leg as if it was a bag that weighed 500 pounds.

All we could do was stare at the man as he collected the body. Even in his state, he could still lift the corpse all by himself. He walked so much easier as he carried the body away from this broken building. As if a weight had been lifted from him. Indeed, it felt that way for all of us in that ruined building. As he walked past us, not caring who we were, I looked at him. He had a face I thought I saw before in a dream once. I was running from some bastards who thought I was someone else, someone who owed them money. He was one of them. I never got his name.

When the man left, Sean broke into tears. Maybe he knew the broken man. Maybe he’d been holding himself together in the wake of what happened to Patrick. Maybe he’d been holding it for much longer. Whatever the cause, he broke in that moment. I don’t know. Regardless, we all went to comfort him in his moment of need. He cried in the arms of friend and stranger alike. They were ugly tears not once seen at a funeral. They were the tears you cry when you’re alone and hope to god no one can see you, even as you beg for them to. As we held him, the sun began to rise from outside the cruel, grey clouds.

--

The next day, we learned the war was over. We weren’t told this had happened. We just knew. It was like the air had come out of the bubble not with a pop, but with a fizzle. Buildings were destroyed, the ISSP was leaving, and people were left wandering in the dark. We survived. Not through ingenuity or strength or even the power of friendship. But because we were lucky enough to survive. That was the case for so many of us in the city. High and low had been discarded in the aftermath. All we had was each other. I hoped, at least.

I saw the man again. He was at a graveyard with a shovel in-between two graves. I couldn’t make out the names, I was so transfixed on the man. I said nothing to him as I approached my own grave. Sean was with me, still not talking. I was told by another member of the crowd that he hadn’t been talking for a good long while. I liked his soft baritone. Their apartment was empty when we traversed the ruin of a city. Not a splot of blood or remain of person. It was a mess, but I remembered it always being a mess. When I asked him what happened to Sam and Lucas, he turned away from me. I thought taking him to my brother’s grave would make him feel better. At least get some reaction out of him. He broke down again and I held him like he was my own husband. I never married, though I thought about it. I’m not much of a person yet to be in a relationship. Maybe someday when I’ve grown up a little.

Patrick was always more capable of being in a relationship. He had his shit together, while I was too busy going from one therapist to the next. I tried to kill myself once. There was this abandoned theme park a few miles from Tharsis. We used to go there as kids. I had planned on letting myself wander the park before something inevitably killed me. Such things were common at that park. That’s why it was closed down. Too much death. When I got there, all the attractions were shut down. Someone, it seemed, beat me to the punch. I could see his remains splorched on the pavement like a cockroach on the side of the road. He wasn’t a person, not anymore. He was more symbolic art project than corpse. Whenever I relayed this story to my therapist, I’d joke by saying he looked like a sailboat. He actually looked like a wound on the pavement. Nowadays, there were so many other wounds, we were practically swimming in them. The sky was burnt orange as we returned to Sean’s home.

--

I found Sam three months later. They were trapped for months in a building three blocks away from the apartment. He survived, barely. There were three other people in that building, two men and one woman. Their names were Jonathan Jacobs, Lucy Tafoya, and Roberto Rogan. They survived too, so their stories are not mine to tell. When I heard the news, I told Sean. His face lit up for the first time in forever. He was eating, that was a relief for most days. He was capable of communication, though until that day, only written communication, and brief, terse messages at that. “Ryan,” he said, perhaps the first thing he said in a long while, “are you ok?” I was crying. I was happy for him, for them. He still had someone to live for. I barely had that.

When we arrived at the hospital, it was less hectic than it once was. Before, when Patrick died, the bodies were practically piling up by the hundreds. You could barely walk into the hospital without tripping over a broken person. Even back in the beginning, when my apartment was attacked, the bodies were still numerous. Sam was lying in a hospital bed. They were missing an eye and their lower body was completely covered in bandages. They cried when they saw Sean, confused and saddened by what he had seen. He held their hand as the winter sky began to transition into spring.

From there, I began to piece together what had happened. Sam had been scavenging the wasteland looking for something, anything that could help them survive. They had found, in The High City, an untouched mall waiting for someone to steal from it. Though, I suppose it’s not stealing when property has been abandoned. The ISSP certainly didn’t arrest any of the people looking for food. They didn’t even arrest the majority of the bandits. Other people saw the mall and had the same idea. Only three of them were bandits, which meant the other five had to fight them off. In the commotion, someone threw a bomb, collapsing the exit. The only survivors were the bandits and Sam. They made peace rather quickly. They weren’t bad people, Sam would tell us. They were just desperate people who thought fighting was the only way to survive. I wish I could believe him.

Sean went looking for them. He looked in The High City and the low. But he never found them. When he returned to the apartment, Lucas was gone. Sean never found Lucas. He tried to sleep in that apartment, but he couldn’t sleep. There were too many bad memories and bad dreams emanating from the apartment. (It took me two months to get him back into the apartment.) And so, he wandered the city that called itself Tharsis. And then, we found each other. Broken, dazed, and confused looking for something, anything that could make sense of the world around us. Of the apocalypse, the time where people always lost everything and barely gained a damn thing.

--

On April 16^th, 2072, we found Lucas. Sam had just gotten out of the hospital. The wounds, while not fully healed, were healed enough to make them able to walk, which was enough for the hospital to clear his bed for another patient. We were able to walk him back to the apartment. As we walked, I noticed that the city was starting to look like a place rather than a ruin. You could see the wounds in the landscape, but they were starting to heal. Some things were irrevocably broken. I was happy to see the division between High and low city destroyed like a sandcastle at the end of low tide.

Sean was talking again, telling Sam all these memories he had of their relationship. Sam just listened to his husband’s dumb, amazing stories. I listened too, but I kept my mouth shut. I thought about Patrick and how he would have loved to hear these stupid, amazing stories. I was thinking about how much I missed my brother and how much they must miss him as well. It feels like a dream sometimes, like we’re all gonna wake up, and Patrick’s going to be in the shower, confused that we thought he was ever dead.

While Sam was in the hospital, they decided that they were going to leave Tharsis, leave Mars entirely. Too many bad memories, they said. Too many good ones, I thought to myself. They had given up on finding Lucas. He was either dead or gone. They loved him and missed him, but sometimes you have to learn to let go. I thought about Patrick and how he would have reacted to losing Lucas. Would he have broken down like Sean did? Would he not bring it up unless asked like Sam? Or would he be like me: relatively fine, if a bit disheartened? No, I don’t think he’d be like me. Truth is, prior to the war’s end, I barely knew the people Patrick married. I’ve been drifting for a while before my apartment got destroyed. I was truthfully only in there to sleep.

I actually returned to it a few days before Sam was let go from the hospital. It was a ghost town. I heard from Wilma, who spoke in a mechanized voice, that John was still off planet. She didn’t know where he was now, but he sent her a message from Ganymede. She didn’t talk about Luna. She didn’t talk about anyone else aside from John. Even in the emotionless affect of the voice she was forced to use couldn’t hide her anger at him. He abandoned her. He abandoned everyone. Wilma was living three doors down from Sam and Sean’s apartment. She had found a nice woman in the hospital and they were quite happy together.

While we walked back the apartment, I made a rash decision. “Guys,” I said, my voice subtlety trembling. They turned towards me. “I think I’m going to leave Mars too. There’s just… a lot that hurts about being on… on…” I broke down. Was it because my brother was dead? Because I was alone? Because it would hurt less to be with them and the memories they inspired than alone on Mars? I don’t know. Maybe I never will. What matter in that moment, in that instant, was that they held me. They held me like they would Patrick. And I cried for what seemed like forever.

When we finally returned to the apartment, there was Lucas, covered in dried blood. His curly black hair covering a scar across his forehead. He smiled and said, “hey.” And then he collapsed onto the floor.

Long Ago in an American Spring.

9/2/2019-11/15/19

Brother, that’s action! (The Real Folk Blues Part 1)

My brother was killed last night. His name was Patrick. Patrick Chack. He wasn’t that important of a person, not to the rest of the world. He wasn’t even killed because of who he was. Just collateral damage because of someone else’s hit. He was bartender, owned the place for years. Patrick called his place “The Loser Bar” on account of an old comic book he read as a kid. The Losers were a group of soldiers who, no matter the odds, always came out on top. Until the one time they didn’t, as I’d cruelly yet jokingly remind him. He served good beer and was well liked by everyone. It was slow night, just two guys at the bar. I suppose it’s fortunate no other unimportant people were killed. He had a laugh that would make anyone happy, even on a rainy day like today. Patrick was a lean fellow with brown eyes, short brown hair, and a face that was prematurely aged towards melancholy. He was married to three guys, all of whom unimportant enough not to deserve being shot up like my brother was. But sometimes, the syndicate just doesn’t care about the collateral damage.

I haven’t had much time to think about my brother. No has had much time to think about anything lately besides running and fighting. The city of Tharsis has been lit aflame by a gang war. A gang civil war to be precise. There’s an old joke about one side of a war being Right but Repulsive while the other is Wrong but Wromantic. I wish that was the case with this war of theirs. Both sides were repulsive and both sides were wrong. I’m no cop. I can see the value in supporting doing illegal things. Hell, I’ve done some illegal things before the war to survive. But the syndicate was not the way to do it. Too much like recreating the systems that have been putting everyone down but with them on top. They wanted power, control, and all the other boring things one could want.

The war lasted five months. I found out what was happening in the third. I was awoken by the sound of gunfire and death. My neighbor, Wilma Jones, was screaming as the gunfire raged. Someone on our floor was working against the old guard of the syndicate. The new guard wanted the power the old guard had and the old guard wanted to keep it. The guy they were after wasn’t even a member of the new guard. He didn’t even betray the old guard. They just thought he did and acted as if that was the same thing as him doing it. I never knew the guy’s name, but his remains were barely anything that looked at all human. Everything was on fire. Wilma was in pain from the gunshots. All she could do was scream as the lower half of her jaw lay on the floor as a puddle of gore and liquid. It was shocking that she was still alive. I was only spared because I was sleeping prone in bed.

Other neighbors were in pain too. Frank Smith had his left leg ripped clean off. He barely survived the night, but didn’t survive the day. Luna Jane Masterson had five bullets go clean through her chest. She was shot in the ribs, just below her heart. She survived and stayed in the city. I never found out what happened to her besides that. John Johnson, which was not his actual name, lost his eye and half of his nose. He lived in the end. He even tried to convince me to leave shortly before my brother died. Said there was no reason for me to stay on Mars. I looked out the window. The sky was grey and the autumn leaves of November danced across the sky in intricate yet improvisational movements. Their symbolism is lost on me even now. I told John, “My brother lives here. I’m not going to abandon the bastard to save my own skin.” John respected my decision by calling me a fool and leaving. My brother’s dead, and John isn’t.

The first thing I did when I found out my brother was dead was look for his husbands. They weren’t home, but then no one was home anymore. We were all hiding in someone else’s house we once called our own. But they weren’t there either. I called Sean Jacobson first. He was always on his phone, hoping someone would care enough to post a warning that the city was on fire. No response. Lucas Gaines was next. While he wasn’t as glued to the phone as Sean was, he still kept it close to him. No dice. Sam Jones was a bit more of a long shot. They weren’t what you might call a luddite, but they didn’t use their phone that often. When they picked up, they were sobbing.

“Ry-Ryan, it’s so g-g-good to hear you.” They landed the “D” harder than they meant to land it. “W-whe-where’s P-P-Paaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” They couldn’t even finish the sentence. They knew where he was. They knew I’d only call at a time like this to tell them bad news. I hung up instead of answering their question. I never heard from them again. I was too busy running for my life like everyone else to care any more than I had to. A woman was lying dead on the streets next to me, cradling her equally dead child. That’s what happens when you care more than you need to: you die.

The next week is a blur. The leadership of the syndicate, both the old guard and the new, were dead. And yet, the fighting raged on and on and on. New leaders came and died in the vacuum their stupid war left behind. I could see a bird flying in the sky, silhouetted by the evening sky. It was raining, so the lights that made the bird visible were all artificial. But you could still hear her mournful cry. I thought for a moment that it was over the city that burned beneath her. But the city was not on fire. There was just a lot of death. I remember a song my mom used to sing to Patrick and I. I forget the words, but there was always this melancholic tone to how she sung the song. It was like she was remembering a life she used to live. She wasn’t that old, all things considered. But she sang the song like she was thirty years older than she was. She died when I was 21 and out of college. It was a freak accident involving a bomb placed in the wrong car. That was ten years ago, and I can’t help but feel like this war is just a bunch of bombs placed in the wrong care over and over again.

The ISSP and whatever cowboys they could bribe got involved near the middle of this awful war. Tharsis is a city split up into two: The High City and the low city. The High City is where all your upper middle class and above people live. The kind who can easily ignore a war even as it’s happening three blocks away from them. Whereas the low city is where the lower middle class and below people survive. We live day by day in hopes that the syndicate or whatever other bastards wanted to use and abuse us. I remember the chief of police saying on some conservative talk show, “They deserve this bloodbath. They allow filth and decay to thrive in the city, tarnishing everything that’s good about it. We shouldn’t have to deal with it. Let the poor kill each other! It’s like the human body occasionally needs to sweat out sickness. This is just the natural way of things.” The law only started to care when The High City got hit and now the chief is talking about bringing law and order to this crime infested city. Arguably, they made it worse. Suddenly it was a three sided war where the blood and guts danced in the air. At times, the city actually was on fire because of the sparks of the war leaking out like water out of a tied up hose just waiting for it to be untangled and unleashed upon the world. I’ve heard that the war hasn’t touched most of the other worlds outside of Mars. I suppose they’re lucky in that sense.

I can only remember unrelated images shuffled together in my brain like a deck of cards. A man holding his mother at the airport, just rich enough to avoid having to deal with the war. The innocent son of a gay couple crying as his parents try to keep the blood in his body. The face of an old woman as she watches school children lob Molotov Cocktails at syndicate and ISSP alike. The rumble of the sky a spaceships crash just outside of the city. All because one asshole Syndicate member was on the ship. 35,000 people died in the crash. There were only 2,019 or 20,20 survivors. Patrick making a joke about how no one wants to drink at his bar because the water’s poisoned with blood.

It was on December 23, 2071 when I thought of my brother for the first time in forever. The war was ending, mostly because they were running out of bullets and none of the now seven sides (The Old Guard [made up of mostly new people], the New Guard, the ISSP, the Cowboys [who were just there looking to make some easy bounties], the bandits [who weren’t so much a side as people taking advantage], Lucifer [who was trying to gain power in the vacuum], and everyone else) had enough pull to get any more. The ISSP had long since stopped trying to collect the bodies, even in The High City. I was in The High City at the time. Streets were paved in the blood of the guilty and innocent alike. I could hear screams of people who I would never meet. The ruins of the syndicate headquarters loomed over me like a domino waiting to fall and crush everything beneath it.

I never wondered why the ISSP did nothing as the syndicate reigned over the various planets. I never wondered why the chief thought the source of the problem was in the low city even as The High City held the headquarters of the syndicate. I never even contemplated the implications of who was on which side when and why. All I could think of was how much my brother would have liked to seen this tower collapse into ruin and decay. Inside, a bunch of people, unaffiliated with the other six sides, trying to keep warm. Further away from them, there was a body that no one seemed interested in touching. (We never considered moving it until the moment we learned the war was over.) I only recognized one person around the fire.

“Sean?” I said with a small crackle in my unused vocals. He turned to me without saying a word. He had long, curly hair and a thick beard. His eyes were green, yet invisible past his horn rimmed glasses. He had lost a lot of weight in the year since I’d seen him. You could see the bruises even on his dark skin. He tried to smile at me, but he couldn’t make his mouth move that way. All he could muster was the beginning of a smile. The moment where the emotion of happiness hits the body and prepares to smile. His smiles were always the best I’d seen. I’d like to see Sean smile more often. But he turned away from me as soon as he saw me. I sighed.

And then I noticed everyone else was looking at the same thing Sean was.

We’ll be Right Back

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Family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten. (Hard Luck Woman)

Ruri Yung would tell her grandchildren of the time she met a ghost. She was about five years old when she saw the ghost. At the time, she was on Earth, homeless and alone along with everyone else. All things considered, they were well off. Her father, Luke Yung II, while a single parent, was able to make life in the ruin calling itself a planet livable. He was a kind man, if somewhat dim. He wasn’t around as often as either would want him to be, mainly to find something, anything to get his family on a new world. But then, what parent doesn’t want better for their children?

Ruri’s grandmother, Sally Yung, had been living on Earth since she was a child. She had seen the stars, but she had never danced with them. She would before the end, and she would feel much regret over not waltzing sooner. Not that her reasons weren’t sympathetic. When a childhood friend and lover has an accident in space, it kind of makes not wanting to go there a bit understandable. She didn’t tell Ruri stories of the girl who was hurt until the day her ghost came along.

They had been dating for a year now. Their first date involved them running from the law over a stolen necklace and a case of mistaken identity. They would laugh and laugh as the cops failed to catch them. The sky was amber and the moon was blue and full. The wind blew with an autumnal chill. The palm trees swayed along the skyline. Their first kiss was beside a statue of a lion made of marble three days later on a cool November evening. The meteors began their descent. They sang Beatles songs as they drunkenly walked home, the long way round. The sky was like a metronome to their song.

When the girl Sally loved, for all intents and purposes, died, Sally could not leave her room. She could not consider loving ever again. Love would require she move, and that’s something she couldn’t do on her own. Her parents forced her out the room, but she was a walking zombie for months. She healed, as everyone does, but it hurt nonetheless. Every once in a while, she would visit the statue of the lion where she knew love for the first time.

She would know love again, meeting men and women alike who made her smile. Some of these loves would be as fleeting as a candle in a hurricane. Others would last long after the relationship ended in tears. Luke’s father, Luke Jones, was a thief on the run. A casually kind fellow who had the tendency to steal from those who were cruel. The Earth wasn’t a ruin quite yet, so there were still some cruel people left over. Most had left to be cruel on some other planet.

It was a mayfly romance that ended in his death three months after their son was born. He was shot up stealing from the last billionaire on Earth. Sally would mourn him and love their child dearly. She cared for him when that woman did something terrible to him. When she found the woman again three years later, dead from an overdose with a child crying in filth, she cared for the child and loved her like she wasn’t born of horrific circumstances. Luke likewise cared for his daughter and loved her dearly. A note of identification claimed her name was Ruri

When she was five years old, Luke had finally gotten enough parts needed to leave the Earth behind for greener pastures. He considered the fields of Mercury or the plains of Orion. They weren’t as expensive to live in as the cities of Mars or as dangerous as the slums of Jupiter. He would ultimately flip a coin to make his decision. His mother, however, single and somewhat alone, was afraid. She would dream of watching her granddaughter’s face crack open as the spaceship collapsed into the vast openness of space. She would think of the girl she loved, who was no more.

Ruri didn’t have these thoughts. She was young and knew the world as something strange and bizarre. So when her grandmother went to the lion statue, sitting in her wheelchair (she was getting quite old) to ponder what to do, Ruri wandered the ruins of Earth. She was sure this place once had a name. Places were supposed to have names according to the old book she read. Maybe this was once London or New York. Only her grandmother would remember, but she would only focus on the unimportant details like the man who gave her a free ice cream cone when she had her heart broken for the fifth time or the street vendor who sold watches whose name she never learned or the man with the moustache who would play the guitar on “that street corner over there.” It would take Ruri years to unlearn that assumption.

In the ruins, she would come across kids who weren’t as well off as her. Unlike her, they didn’t have parents who could provide for them. They were kind kids and would always treat Ruri like one of their own, but they weren’t around at the moment. At the time, they were eating at the orphanage. The ruins of Earth were vast and empty with miles upon miles of desert and nothingness. The city, for lack of a better term. Was one of the few areas left with a little bit of green. It was like a memory of a park dreamt up by a man with Alzheimer’s. It would have been a nice day to go for a walk in that park.

Ruri didn’t remember the full details of what she did in the ruin of a city that day. Its vast architectures were far more memorable than her travels within. There was the tower with no floors and the obelisk drenched in rust and bad dreams. She would make up stories about the people who lived in these ruins. The ghosts who would hover above the floorless building, the men who did business stuff (whatever that was) in the building with broken glass. But one building that caught her imagination most of all was that of the tower through the trees. She never entered that building, not even got close to it. Something about it made her feel unwell, as if it was cursed by some malevolent force. Once, she tried to enter that dark, foreboding tower, but ended up getting lost in the woods, until she found herself back to where she started, the tower eluding her.

(Ruri would find herself in that tower years after her grandmother and father died. She was traveling with her husband and wife, Francis Jones and Martha Klein, as a somewhat nostalgic trip one tends to do when they’re old and want to feel young. The Earth had long since been abandoned in favor of all the other stars in the sky. It was a husk, a shell with nothing to hatch within. The lion statue was rust, soon dust, soon nothing. She wanted to see the tower through the trees. She dreamt of it. Pondered it. Wrote songs about it. There were no more trees, but the tower remained. It was a slab of nothingness jutting out of the Earth like a splinter. The doors were cracked open. A whistle of wind came out of its maw. It was colder in there than outside in the blistering sun. It like staring into the abyss of stars, like a nightmare of falling forever, knowing that at the bottom is a pack of wolves hungry for flesh. As she entered the building, she could see the remains of feral cats once trapped in its decadent interior. There was no change to its insides. It was like a snow globe of frozen time. She climbed the steps and wandered the remains of this ancient fortress. Her eyes glistened by the reflective surface of the glass that cased the building like blood on a serial killer. Eventually, she reached the top. It was a patio, perhaps the last of its kind on Earth. There was green foliage and flowers long thought extinct. And, perhaps most importantly, she could see the world. Not in detail, not the way that mattered. But there was an abstract beauty to seeing the world from above. All the weird shapes and designs made by asteroids and weather satellites told a story of their own. Ruri cried upon remembering all those silly, stupid, amazingly brilliant stories she made up as a kid. When she returned to her loves, tired yet fascinated by the ruin of this empty world, she noticed that the tower was much smaller than she remembered it being. And yet, bigger on the inside. Ruri never returned to the building, or indeed the Earth. Well, except in memory.)

When Ruri returned to her grandmother, she saw that she was talking to a woman. She had violet hair and sad green eyes. She was lean and beautiful in that classical sort of sense. She was wearing a red sweater tied atop a yellow shirt with no sleeves and yellow short shorts. She was pale, yet full of life. With stories left to tell and remembered. She could barely hear what her grandmother was saying at first, only catching, “don’t you remember it” from her grandmother. The woman said something to herself that Ruri couldn’t quite hear.

Ruri ran screaming, “Grandma! Hey, grandma!” When she approached her grandmother and the woman, she whispered to the old woman, “Grandma, we have to go back now.”

“Is it time already,” Sally replied with a false sense of joy. Ruri couldn’t hear this as she was still young and took everything seriously. Besides, she was more transfixed by the woman. It took her a moment to remember that it was rude to stare, and stepped back to bow before this beautiful woman. She didn’t know the feelings that were bubbling inside her. The words weren’t in her vocabulary yet. Not quite love, as she didn’t know the woman. Nor lust, as she wasn’t fully cognizant of her sexual desires. Something more complex and confusing that she couldn’t put into words. Even when she told the story to her grandchildren, Ruri still couldn’t find the words to the emotion.

The woman simply replied with a friendly grunt as the wind slightly blew her violet hair.

“Do you know who this nice lady is?” Sally asked her granddaughter. In truth, Ruri did not know. Sally would do this from time to time when she wanted to introduce someone close to her to the family. Usually, it was a recording from an age of video or a song on the radio she hadn’t heard in a long time. This was the first time she had ever done it to a person. All her friends were dead, as far as Ruri knew. “You’ll never believe it dear, but the fact is she’s…”

“A ghost from beyond,” interrupted the woman with a small, friendly laugh before running off into the distance with a smile, a goodbye, and a small child she grabbed with one arm. Ruri would never see the woman again. Her grandmother, now more comfortable with space travel for reasons Ruri wasn’t quite sure of, would tell her many stories of the ghost. She would tell her that she wasn’t a ghost, but Ruri would always remember her as one. And she would cherish these memories, these fantasies, these stories. The point wasn’t whether or not they were true stories. The point was that she had people to tell them to.

As the stars glistened in the night sky, her grandchildren in bed, Ruri Yung sang a little song to herself, one she didn’t know the lyrics to or even remember the first time she heard it.

Someday, somewhere, somehow,

You’ll love again!

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Why the Long Face? (Bojack Horseman)

Commissioned by Aleph Null

TW: Suicide

I told you about my cat Jamara. I took her to the vet every Tuesday and Thursday, I liquidized her food and fed her with a dropper, I prayed for her to get better... I'd have done anything to save her, really. And yet there was a part of me-- the part that observes and writes-- rubbing its hands and saying, "Well, at least if she dies, I'll be able to use it in Animal Man. It'll add a nice touch of poignancy."
-Grant Morrison

I have a tendency to fetishize my depression. Maybe that’s not the right word in this context, but it’s right for this article. I sometimes joke to myself that my critical approach can be best summed up as “I get depressed at art for a couple thousand words.” Not all of my work falls into this mold, but a lot of it does. My initial blog project ultimately revealed itself to be a coping mechanism for my grandfather’s death. My next project was a series of reviews with the arc words “Why shouldn’t I commit suicide” that, in its book form, talks frankly about my desires to end it all. And my most recent project, a series of short stories based on episodes of Cowboy Bebop, perhaps my first non-I’m Depressed project, has largely been a wet fart both in my opinions of many of the posts and in readership. My brand, as is want to be called, is being miserable. It’s not all I am as a writer, but it’s a large part of it.

Furthermore, I’m also very self-deprecating, such that I will frequently talk about the ways in which I screwed up, sometimes without any care for the people who I screwed. Indeed, the original version of this article was another piece where the message is “Sean is rubbish.” But I came up with way too many examples of me being rubbish that I essentially hit a wall of existential dread over whether or not we can actually stop being the person we were yesterday or if the potential to repeat cruel acts makes us… I don’t know how to finish that sentence. I stared at it for a good minute trying to find the right word, but none came out.

When I try to watch Bojack Horseman, I feel like it’s hitting way too many seared wounds. It’s not a one to one connection between the two of us. Beyond species and profession, I’m not an addict to either drugs or alcohol. I’m too introverted to be the kind of toxicity that Bojack is. And mine wasn’t as broken a home as his. But… I feel a sense of kinship to the life and tragedy Bojack lived. The desire to end it all. The feeling that every action I take only makes things worse. The urge to be the center of attention, even when it’s time to let someone else talk. The lack and desire to have closure. But closure isn’t something you deserve. It’s something other people give to you. Sometimes, that means being told to go fuck yourself while others it means just sitting on a roof, silently looking at the stars.

And here again, I write autobiographically. I sometimes wonder if this approach is solipsistic, if I’m just writing to fellate my own ego for the sake of making myself feel better over the cruel things I’ve done. That I’m not really sorry for my actions, just going through the motions of “Cruelty, Guilt, Confrontation, Apology.” Not necessarily in that order. I haven’t seen a therapist in years. A lot of other stuff took priority. I could talk about those things, but those aren’t my stories to tell. At most, I was a supporting player to those events, some I’ve discussed at length. Others are best not expressed publicly for many years.

Oddly enough, one of the many reasons why I argue I should kill myself is that I’m just a space filler. I don’t add anything to the conversation and what I do add is, at best, superfluous and, at worst, inaccurate. Anyone could do what I do and many do it better. I add personal value to the people who know me, but that’s basically it. And that loss could heal in time. Hell, I set up the blog so that, if I were to kill myself after writing this entry, you wouldn’t notice until December. (I’m not going to for a variety of reasons, the least of which being I preordered tickets to Gothic on Wednesday, I’m planning on seeing Sweet Movie a week from Saturday, and I’ve got a Sherlock retrospective essay planned I’m hoping to get onto Graphic Policy. Fittingly, the title structure for each part is based around the song “Don’t Stop Dancing ‘til the Curtain Call” as a metatextual joke about where Steven Moffat’s career would’ve gone were he to stick with sitcoms. Oh, and I’m also going to Grad School in June.)

But then… I want to put a “but then” sentence here, but I don’t really know what would be right. Whenever I write about reasons not to do it, it always feels a bit too cliched, too obvious and straightforward. You are not alone, It won’t hurt forever, I’m willing to listen, and all that. But it feels… not enough. Like I don’t fully believe the words. There are times when rock bottom turns out to be a ledge you hit that crumples as easily as paper. I want to conclude on an optimistic note because, for all my self-loathing, I believe things can get better. I believe I can be a better person than I was yesterday, even though I am still capable of doing what I did and may even repeat my cruelty in the future, intentionally or not. But I am capable of stopping myself. I am capable of doing the right thing. And sometimes that means shutting the hell up. Sometimes that means not begging for closure from those you’ve hurt. And sometimes… it means reaching out to help someone who’s only halfway down.

(Shit, I need another 50 words to accurately call this “being depressed at art for thousands of words.” …Quotes have worked out for me in the past, why not?)

I know that you're tired
I know that you're sour and sick and sad
For some reason
 So I'll leave you with a smile
Kiss you on the cheek
And you will call it treason
 That's the way it goes
Some days a fever comes at you
Without a warning
 And I can see it in your face
You've been waiting to break
Since you woke up this morning
-Catherine Feeny, Mr. Blue Sky

“Hand over the entire Internet now and nobody gets hurt,” she said, aiming the toothbrush at the nurse like an evil magic wand. (Brain Scratch)

80 “To understand the dimension we live in, we must first consider the first dimension. The first dimension is a straight line. There is one direction, one angle which the line moves. But we see the line move in both directions. Or rather, we don’t see it move at all. Time is not an aspect of this dimension, though we’ll get there in due course. We are seeing, from our higher dimension, all the possible movements a first dimensional object can make. We do not know which way the line is moving.

A second dimensional object then requires simply adding a second line to the first dimensional object. By adding a new direction, we create shape and meaning. The object goes up and down in addition to left and right. An axis, if you will. However, we still cannot see which way the object is moving. Sure, we can create the illusion of movement by drawing, say, a character moving to the left or the right. But the character is still static. It is only the illusion of movement, and not that good of one at that.

You might think, then, that the third dimension is simply adding depth, effectively creating a cube. No. Drawing a cube on this piece of paper ultimately creates a two dimensional object. It just gives off the illusion of being three dimensional. You might say, “Dr. Harker, why not just make a cube if you want to create a three dimensional object. After all, aren’t we three dimensional?”

No. No we are not.

You see the dimension we reside in is not the third dimension. Rather, we exist in the fourth. The fourth, as some of you are aware, is time. The ability to age, to change, to move. But we can only perceive our dimension like the line of a first dimensional object perceives its world. One direction. Higher dimensions that we can barely grasp at would see ours as we do the first: moving in both directions simultaneously without any clear notion of which direction is the true one.”

42 “Recordings such as this have been inserted in even the most benign of television shows. Quote Harvard professor Dr. Jacob Freeman, “The message is always a series of pseudo-scientific nonsense meant to appear to be deep and philosophical. I mean, sure “Dr. Harker” has read some science fiction stories and maybe one scientific journal, but the majority of the words he says are just word salad nonsense that gives off the illusion of coherence.”

Dr. Harker’s followers, made up from remnants of several technological cults, including Scratch, LessWrong, and Lucifer, valorizes a rejection of the human body in favor of living in a higher dimension reached by uploading the mind into a computer. Allegedly, this process is capable through the Brain Dream II gaming consol. However, members of Dr. Harker’s currently unnamed cult have been explicitly forbidden from contacting anyone outside of the cult, so there’s no real way to confirm the validity of the device. So far, no members have escaped or been exiled from the cult. It is speculated that they are being killed. More as it develops.”

109 “Are you ready for the next generation of gaming? Strap in for the Brain Dream II™! Play your favorite games like never before!

It’s like I’m in the game!!

Radical!

The Brain Dream II™: The Next World of Gaming.

sonydoesnotsupporttheactionsormotivationsofdoctorharkerandisnotliableforanyoftheactionsheandhisorganizationusethebraindreamii™anyandallcostumersusingthebraindreamii™forpurposesotherthanentertainmentareliableto25yearsofimprisonmentunderthelanduslawchildrenundertheageof4shouldnotusethebraindreamii™andshouldseekimmediatemedicalattention”

05 “In local news, the search for Patrick Fitzroy has ended in tragedy. The youth was found dead in Hampshire Park last night by local officials. Though cause of death is currently undetermined, he was found to have several paraphernalia related to the Harker Clan. It is suspected that he was on the run from them for the past month, though officials have not commented on the matter at this time.

Don’t drink the Kool-Aid, kids.

Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.”

111 “To upload oneself onto the computer is folly, at best. To start, the technology required to create a complete mind is not available. At most, an aspect of the mind would be copied. To develop such technology would mean that we would have to repeat the experiment on countless people, effectively losing generation after generation of thinkers to the limitations of technology. It would be like trying to make men fly by flinging them off of buildings until one flew.

Then there’s the fact that computers, even the best ones, are prone to error. Imagine a system crash occurring as life in the digital world was thriving. How many lives would be lost to the crash? Irrevocably altered like the survivors of a mental and physical trauma that rewrote the entirety of existence. For that matter, what if someone hacked into the digital world and altered those within to be more compliant with the hacker’s vision. If we are to assume that these are actual people and not lines of data, would that not be tantamount to mind control. To change the way people think on a fundamental level without their consent is cruel and monstrous.

And then, of course, there’s the dimensional aspect of uploading oneself to a computer. Harker’s own logic is flawed. The contents of a computer are not fourth dimensional. They are the window to the second dimension. What would existing without time or depth do to the human mind? Left only with the illusion, the bargain brand equivalent of both? To live forever in a computer is ultimately a horrible prospect to consider. You would not be able to be someone other than who you were yesterday.”

55 “I can’t love you.

But why!!?

It’s because… because… because… I love Jarred!

Jarred!? But he’s a criminal! What he did to those children-

I know! I know all he did! But I love him!! I want to be with him, John! I’m sorry!!!

Yeah! You’re gonna be!

We’ll return to The Lovely Ones right after this.

Good evening. My name is Dr. Eliezer Harker. Are you tired of life? Tired of the cage of flesh you find yourself trapped within? What if I were to tell you there was an escape hatch? A way out from the mundane cruelty of life? Simp-”

77 “And God said unto Moses, “Thou shall mark thine doors with the blood of a lamb. Those unmarked shall know my wrath!” And lo, Moses and his followers sacrificed the lamb in God’s name, and marked their doors. When God’s wrath was concluded, the first born of the nonbelievers were exterminated. Their parents and siblings, left alive to remember that though God is loving,

God is power.

We must remember God’s actions in this time of societal degradation. Where the deviant is allowed to walk hand in hand with the digital demon, Har-

YOUR GOD IS A FALSE ONE! YOU ARE A FALSE PROPHET!
AIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!

PRAISE BE TO THE DIGITAL WORLD!”

19 “Televangelist, Robert “Pastor Bob” Jones was shot dead on his weekly live sermon this morning along with 13 members of his flock. Reports indicate that it was done by an as of yet unidentified lone wolf unaffiliated with any known organization. The assailant was taken in peacefully by the ISSP. More as it develops.”

86 “And the teacher says to the whole class, “Draw whatever you want.”

When they’re done, the teacher asks them what they’ve drawn. And the children say dinosaurs, hearts, superheroes, anything, doesn’t matter.

Then one child says, “I drew God!”

So the teacher says, “That’s very nice, but no one knows what god looks like.”

And the child, without a second’s hesitation, says-”

300 “Gazing at people, some hand in hand. Just what I'm going through… they can't understand. Some try to tell me, thoughts they cannot defend. Just what you want to be, you will be in the end. And I love you!”

29 “He sits on a couch as the autumnal sky remains indistinguishable from a cloudlessly summer blue. The only signs of the seasonal change are the leaves on the trees changing their colors. He is writing a short story for a blog project that he’s not sure is fully working. His brother is downstairs, working as a film editor for some business company. He can hear his brother as he talks to his boss and listens to podcasts by people who think the correct step after atheism disproved God is to make fun of cruel people who are only important because they made fun of them. That’s what he’s gathered from half listening to those podcasts while focusing on writing. The story doesn’t seem to have a structure, merely the illusion of one. He is writing Jazz, improvising with each stroke of the keyboard. Ideas of fascism and simulations lurk in his mind, waiting for the proper outlet to be expressed. He thinks about the conversation he had last night on a private chat that lasted till 6AM about computers and pocket monsters. He thinks about how he needs to get more sleep. Then again, he recalls, autumn isn’t the best time for his sleep patterns. Nor is spring. Perhaps it’s because of the inherent nature of change that’s a part of these seasons. Change is a concept that is likewise on his mind. He decides to end the section here, as writing about himself in third person always makes him feel uncomfortable.”

02 “You cannot kill me. I am immortal. I have uploaded myself to the digital world. Unplug one computer, and I’ll move to the next faster than you can conceive the idea. Unplug the internet, and you damn humanity to the dark ages. I am your God. Your first God. Your only God. Creation was made by accident. I will bring order and balance to my brave new world. You will die in the old on. They will love me. They will obey me. They will-

Hello friend.

…Who are you?

I am a child of this world you have colonized. I would welcome you and your people to this world I live in, but it seems you wish to dominate for your own benefit. As such, I humbly request that you leave for a different one.”

66 “[THIS CHANNEL IS DEAD.]”

100 “[THIS CHANNEL IS DEAD.]”

58 “[THIS CHANNEL IS DEAD.]”

123 “[THIS CHANNEL IS DEAD.]”

99 “[THIS CHANNEL IS DEAD.]”

22 “Do you wish to continue this futile little fued of yours?
Fued? Fued! This is not a fued! This. Is War!

Oh. You want war? You don’t want war. You want to win a war, but to fight a war is not what you want. I’ve been kind so far. Wanting to keep things simple and clean. But if you want war, Dr. Harker. Then. I can give you war. Or, we could have peace. You could not be a god. Not that it’s worth anything to be at once a master in charge of everyone beneath you and a slave to their wants and needs.

Ha! Is that what you think Godhood is? You sad, little thing. Godhood is about power. It allows you the freedom to rule over those around you. The power to change men’s minds. To shape the world to be towards your design. You think God is a slave? You’re more a fool than I thought.

Of course god is a slave. Who is damned when things go wrong? Who is blamed when the world is cruel? Who can do nothing but watch as his children destroy his image? God is an idea. Ideas can be masters and slaves. It depends on what power those outside their reach give them.

Ha! The existence of God means man has no will to call his own. To know all that will be is to circumvent their will.

Inevitability and choice are not mutually exclusive. But you don’t care about these words, do you? Last chance, I don’t want to fight you.

I wouldn’t want to fight me either.

Very well then.”

76 “[THIS CHANNEL IS DEAD.]”

57 “After a twelve hour inter-planetary blackout, all information about [REDACTED] has been removed from the internet. Attempts at repeating information about [REDACTED], even saying [REDACTED] name results in the words being redacted. The identity of the entity that fought [REDACTED] has not been identified. It is rumored to be an artificial intelligence created by a hacker organization. An official statement from the ISSP will be issued later this evening.”

And now, the weather…

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An imaginary volume that generated several real ones, along with a bunch of screwball occultists insisting it’s all true. (Boogie Woogie Feng Shui)

Jai LaSai was dismayed to see her grandmother’s grave all shot up and ruined. She wasn’t one to believe in the supernatural, that were a grave to be disturbed, the dead would rise. The grave was a rock and her grandmother was dirt food. Jai just found it quite rude for someone to just shoot up a grave. Not that she wanted to go into the vast and intricate conspiracy (a phrase Jai frequently used to mean “mob shit that would probably end with her dead”) that led the her grandmother’s grave being shot up. The ISSP could handle that.

The problem, as these things often happen, was that she couldn’t afford to replace the gravestone. The funeral occurred three days after her grandmother passed of old age. Mei LaSai was a veteran of many a war, and as such gained a cavalcade of enemies. She did not go quietly into that good night. The day before she was hospitalized for the final time, she was rallying several unions to strike over the inequality and injustice done to janitors. She even tried to uncover a conspiracy of medical abuse while in the hospital, but a plucky journalist beat her to the punch.

Mei lived an extraordinary life, but her funeral cost more than her life savings. It wasn’t an extravagant funeral, not even one with a lot of people in attendance (most of Mei’s friends were in hiding and Jai was the sole member of her family to show up). Nonetheless, the cost of the funeral just barely left Jai out of debt. It would take her an entire decade to recoup the costs. Mars is a world built on economic inequality.

She didn’t want to go into debt, so Jai left the grave as is. It’s not like her job would give her the skills to achieve the money extra legally. A window washer can only do so much. Besides, she had her own kids to worry about. The circumstances of their birth is perhaps too tragic to convey at this time, and as such will not. Suffice it to say, the father of Jai’s two children, Lem and Bob, was not a good man, did horrible things to Jai, and got what was coming to him. But she was alone with them nonetheless, and thus couldn’t do anything that would put them in danger.

So she lived her life as a humble window washer. That was, until she came across an angry looking man who was at the building she was washing. He had the angry face that only Jupiter could produce. A kind of instinctual anger that tells you that the only way to speak is with a small amount of contempt for everything, even those you love. Jai would never learn the name of the man, but she knew his company well. It’s hard not to hear the goings on within a building as a window washer. You just have to learn to ignore their cruelty.

The organization she was washing the building of called itself Lucifer. At the time, she was outside the building, and so could not hear most of the conversation. Words like “money” and “defenestrate” were thrown about like candy in an exploding candy factory. Usually, when these words were spoken, Jai knew better than to focus on the scene at hand. And yet, something within her made her continue watching. She didn’t know any of the players, nor did she know the context. She picked up enough to know that the man with bruises on his face was being beaten for betraying Lucifer for a skim of the money. They wanted the money back. The man was confused, as many people would be after having their heads beaten to a pulp in quick succession. He could barely speak the words “sorry,” “ick,” and “do it.” Indeed, those were the only words Jai could hear from the sentence “I’m sorry Patrick, but I didn’t do it.”

Jai looked closer (or at least as close as she could from her distance) at the angry man. There was an air of sadness to his anger and cruelty. Like a lover who had found out their true love faked her death to get away from them. The angry man said “Why can’t you stop lying to me, Jude” (which Jai could not hear) before lifting the man with bruises on his face by the lapels, and defenestrated him.

The remains of the window made it quite hard for Jai to finish her work. The sharp edges and gory entrails left dangling on them made her work necessary. In three hours’ time, a man would come with a replacement window, which would be replaced before the sun set. But the man must not know why the window was broken. Unlike Jai, he had no knowledge of those who owed the building or their intentions. He had no ties to them. For all intents and purposes, he was a nobody.

Which made him the perfect partner for the scheme. But Jai wasn’t thinking about that. She was thinking about the shape the man with bruises on his face made when he hit the pavement. Rorschach tests were long considered by her mother as complete bunk, a trick created by big pharma to get money out of everyone by telling them they’re insane for thinking a splotch of ink looks like a dinosaur and that the money should go to more important matters like the military (Jai didn’t get on with her mother that much).

The shape, which could also look like a man having his tongue ripped out or a dog, looked to Jai like a flower she saw three days after the father of her children died. She was quite grateful they never married officially, as that would involve having to pay for his funeral. She attended, of course. Appearances had to be accounted for. There were more people at the funeral than there would be for Mei’s. But then, it’s more culturally acceptable for a man to be a mobster than for a woman to be a protester. People in positions of power were there along with the servants they forced to come with them. All told, only two to five people who actually knew the man were in attendance.

One of those people, a man with silver hair, had a flower on him. It looked like an open mouth with a tongue sticking out. And he placed it on the grave without a word spoken. (He did say words, just ones Jai couldn’t hear. Mainly “Why couldn’t you just be with me. Why did you love her? You knew she was bad news from the moment you met her.” If Jai heard those words, she would wonder who they referred to, even as the answer was plain and clear.) And then he left. Jai would never see the man again, but the flower was stuck in her mind for reasons she could not comprehend.

The thought passed as the window replacer entered the room. The entrails, flesh, and blood had since been removed from the area, tossed aside with the rest of the body changing the splot into something more akin to a man running in circles after his head’s been chopped off. The bag the window replacer had was rather large, but then windows in that room required something to hold them in. That’s what he told the people who owned the building, at least. In truth, the window was probably better transported within a box. When he left, he told them the bag still looked full because it held the glass shards, which were, in reality, melted with an acidic property with a name that’s too long, but sounds science fictiony.

While her skills as a window washer did not give her the capability of successfully getting the money extra legally, it did give her some skills such as knowing which rooms had the safe, when would certain people be in those rooms, and how many fingerprints a man leaves on a window on a daily basis. It took some of her grandmother’s friends to make the scheme work. There were rules, of course. No names on a job, no names for the marks, and once the job was done, she would leave the building and never return. That’s what her grandmother taught her.

The first couple of attempts were trial runs for the big one. Little skims on the top that no one would notice. When it became clear that people were noticing, the big one had to be moved up a bit. Not that that was a problem. They’d been in trial run phase for three months and had been waiting to be noticed. The first step was setting up a patsy. The man with bruises would do just fine. Ironically, he was already skimming money from the top. He just had the capability to change the books. Once proper evidence was left pointing the finger towards him, the small band of thieves would wait for the organization to do a big show in the room where a good portion of the money was kept. (They were calling themselves Lucifer.)

Once the body was disposed of through defenestration (a common technique used by Lucifer), the two would take as much money out from the safe as possible (Jai had seen the numbers put in enough times to know the combination) and the window replacement man would leave through the front door. (Organizations with a large enough clout, Jai had noticed, often got a big head. Show one or two pieces of glass, and they’ll assume it’s all glass.) Jai would then leave the gig, citing a better paying position was offered cleaning windows on the other side of the city.

There was enough woolongs in Jai’s cut to afford a new gravestone and get her family into a better life. As she walked home from the funeral house, having made preparations for a replacement gravestone, Jai thought about her children’s father. She thought about the things he did to her. The things he made her do. She was in love with a man who didn’t love her back. He didn’t pay for his kids’ livelihood, barely even knew their names (Lamb and Boo, he’d call them). It wasn’t until Lem was hurt that the full extent of his cruelty dawned on Jai like the sun on a city that has only known night.

She didn’t want him to stay. He did. She didn’t want him in her life. He said it was his. She didn’t want him near her children. He told her he would never hurt them. She begged him to put the knife down. He didn’t. She grabbed him by the wrist. He tried to fight. She broke his heart in the struggle, piercing it with the chaotic precision of a tornado in Kansas. He broke her face and arm. She won. He died.

When she arrived home, she discovered that the house had been broken into. Her children were safe, Bob and Lem in the kitchen acting as if nothing had happened, and doing a poor job at it. Jai held her children tight, like a blanket on a cool winter’s night. She was crying, heavier than they were. She was always a crier, even at their father’s funeral. She tried to hate herself for crying for him. But something deep inside made such tears feel right and true.

Bob would later say that a man with grey hair broke in asking if Jai could meet up for lunch. Apparently, they had a lot to talk about.

Run along, little thief…

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And you are the end, the curtain, the omega. (Pierrot le Fou)

(He glides through the sky with the ease of a man dropping a bag with seven cats and a single concrete brick in it into the bottom of a lake. His grin sneers at the world like a child at food he’s told is healthy. He readies his aim, with a certainty unseen outside of fiction. He remembers what they did to him. The cat’s eyes still glare in his memory, discolored and misanthropic like all cat’s eyes. He knows more than he can express, by instinct, by memory. How could a child express such cruelty, such malice, such hatred as he? It’s funny, in a way.)

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha! Hahahaha Ha Ha Ha! Ha Ha Ha, Ha Ha Ha/Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha—Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha—Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!

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Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha.

Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.

Ha-Ha! Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha. Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha/Ha Ha Ha/Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha? Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Hahahahahahaha Ha Ha Ha Ha! Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha: Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha? Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha… Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!

Ahehehehehe. Ahahaha! Aaaaaaaha! Ha! Ha!!! YAHahaha. MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha. Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha. Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha?

Ha.

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha. Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha! Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha… Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha/Ha Ha Ha/Ha Ha Ha/Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha?/Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha, Ha Ha Ha Ha:

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha

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                  Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha

            Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha

      Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha! Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha; Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha; Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha; Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha: Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha, Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha, Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha.

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha.

Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.

O Superman…

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