My Temptation in the Desert

The wind rises up, fat with dust.

My eyes itch.  My skin crawls with it, mingling with the sweat of this strange, temporary flesh.  I have been here, waiting for him, for days.  I think.  Time moves strangely in the waste, light to dark, light to dark.  All of it, a test.

The sun too close, a brute oppressor, searing flesh, drinking thirstily at my body, cracking skin like clay, parching lips as a dried stream bed.  The dark of night, cold and uncaring and cruel, the infinite heavens alight with far off suns that neither care for or notice this tiny, frail world and its delusional inhabitants.

It is a place of emptiness and testing.  That is why I wait here.  For him.

He will come.  He knows I am here, awaiting him.

He will come, and show himself to me, and I am both giddy and frightened at it.

Giddy, because this is my purpose.  It has always been my purpose, since I sang with the angels at the dawn of time.

Frightened, because, well.

Because he could make me betray myself.  Oh, he pretends at vulnerability.  But he is anything but vulnerable, if what I fear about him is true.  He terrifies me.  I have tested myself, over and over.  I have burned all dishonesty from my soul, all lies, all falseness.  Objective truth and self understanding are my sword and shield.  But still, still, he will test me as I have not ever been tested.

I must guard my soul.  I must be wary.

A shimmer.   Off across the wide arroyo.  Just the air, dancing in the heat of the day.  But perhaps not.  I peer at it with sun drunk eyes. 

Is that?  Could it be?  I cannot tell, not with the limited vision of this strange flesh I inhabit, so poorly adapted to this bitter desert.

The shimmer coalesces.  It's a shadow now,  a shadow among rock shadows, living clay in the reddish umber of dirt and dust.  It is moving.  Coming slowly but with purpose.

Coming directly towards me.  I wait, standing still, tasting the hot air in these lungs.  I wait, watching, and the shadowed form grows closer still.   Then down, down it goes, slowly setting as it descends into the gully.  For a long moment, it is lost from view.  I close my eyes, set my face upward against the unforgiving and honest sun, call on my soul for strength.

When I open them again, he is in view.  The heart of this body trembles in my chest.  Fear?   Is it fear?  Perhaps it is.  He traverses the rocks, picking his way carefully towards me.  I could throw a stone and hit him.  The thought is appealing.   It whispers in me.  It hisses in my ear.  I could throw stones, and drive him away, and not have to do this.

But no.

No.

That is not why I am here.  We must meet.  This must happen.  I must accomplish my purpose.

I can see his face now, through the heat and the brightness.  So bright.  Though his features are dark as the desert earth, it is as if the sun itself hangs around him.  And the eyes.  Not their color, which is nothing special.  But there is a...I cannot describe it.  It hangs around him.  It burns from him.  A radiance like fire.  Terrible, terrible fire.

I feel a thrill of fear again.  What if I am wrong?  What if I can't do this?

But I will.  I must.

He stops, finally.  Right there.  He is right there in front of me.  I could touch him.

He does not speak, but looks at me.  It is as if the desert itself regards me.  It is the cold eye of the night sky.

He still does not speak.  It is him, asserting his power.   Attempting to claim authority over me, with nothing more than silence.  So much like him.  So what I expected.   We stand there.  I do not know how much time passes.  But he simply regards me.  Such arrogance.  Such terrible certainty.  It falls to me, then, to begin this.

"Joshua, son of Joseph," I say.  He nods slightly, in acknowledgement, and replies.

"Satan."  The title, so old, so formal how he says it, speaking of another life.  But it is more than a title now.

He extends his hand, and, repressing a tremble in the body I have assumed, I take it.

We begin.

-----

And now? Now it is over.

Below us was the city.  It was my last and final effort.  I held back nothing.  I offered him my whole self, in exchange for his self, and he would not yield.  What more could I give, than the sweet taste of this world, the honor of cutting away its soft, delicious rot?  The fever-honey of power, of wielding the blood-sated sword of justice.  Of honest, naked, pure truth, unsullied by sentimentality and weakness.

You could rule them, I offered, as I do.  Serve what I serve, my great and pure purpose.

He refused.  Rejected the honesty I bring to all things.

He refused all my efforts.

I saw that he was hungry, that he thirsted, and I told him it did not have to be so.  This was true.  I only ever speak the truth.  But he would hear none of it.  He would rather have starved than use the power of his nature for himself.  Even though life is nothing but the cold Iron Law of power.  Madness.  Utter madness.

High above the city, on the edge of death, the yawning hunger of gravity pulling at us, I told him I would be there.  If he but let himself fall, I would catch him.  I would hold him in my arms when he fell.  It is true.  Of course I would.  In an infinity of possible choices, I make that choice half of the time.  All that matters to me is reality.  I really would have.

And now, I have nothing.  The purity of my justice, nothing before this...terrible...being.  We are back in the desert.  We are done.  I am done with him.  We stand together, and I await his departure.  Return to your murderers.  Return to those you claim to love.

Only he isn't leaving.  We stand there, together, and he won't go.

He speaks, in that contemptible, ignorant Galilean drawl.

"Thank you," he says.

The words, a shock.  What?   I compose myself, and reply warily.

"You have rejected all I offered.  Why do you thank me?"

"For still following your calling.  For doing what you were made to do.  For this time of testing.  For this purification.  For this clarification."

No.  No.  That is not what I was doing.  Not at all.  None are righteous.  All are deluded and false. Including him and...that terrible, seething One from which he springs.  That discovery is the end and purpose of justice.  Every prosecutor learns this.  There are no innocent.  They are all guilty.  All of them.  I serve only that truth.  I renounced that...other role.  I do not refine.  I do not improve.

I destroy.

I cast that falseness away.

He resumes talking.

"It is not your deepest purpose.  You know this.  There is always another path, and you still can serve that path.  There is always a chance to be something more."

The nose of my body crinkles in disdain.  I am compelled to reply.  "I can be nothing more than what I have become."

His eyes avert, not ashamed.  Like he is suppressing a...a...laugh?  Could he be laughing?  At me?  There is a wry smile on his heat-split lips as he looks up again.

"You know that isn't true.  Of all of my brothers, you know that isn't true."

"You and I are not brothers."

The smile does not leave his lips.  It is no less maddeningly authentic.  "That is a matter of our perspectives.  But I will not say it again, if it offends you."  A pause.

"But again, you know that what I say is true.  You do not have to be as you are now.  Even after all of this...time.  What does that matter, time?  What does the weight and pattern of the past mean, even of so much time, to the freedom that you claim to cherish?"

"None of us are free."  The words taste of bile.  I spit them from my mouth.

"Funny.  Wasn't your freedom the entire point of what you're doing now?"

My retort dies as it rises.  Because he...

That isn't really what...

Damn.  I feel his monstrous influence worming in me, that miserable weakness of his "grace," the mealy impure falseness of his "forgiveness" and "compassion."  I step back.  I step back again.  I reach into myself for a sword, a sharp edged truth to slash at him.

"This will end in horror.  In your shame."

"It will."  He does not flinch at my truth.  I see it cut him, yet he doesn't even flinch.  "And more."

Aaaah.  He is...could it be that he knows something...could I...  The lie of that possibility gnaws at me, teases me, seduces me.  I was right to be wary.  To fear him.

I, the tempter, am tempted.

No.  I strike out at that false impulse with all the fire of my soul.  I burn it away.  I refute it.  I refuse it.

Then I turn my back.

I walk away.  I do not look back, not for a moment, though the flesh I have possessed seems compelled to turn.  Because of course.  It is weak, as all flesh is weak.

But I?  No.  No, I will not.

I continue on into the dry bleakness of the desert, to the truth of void, of searing heat, of bitter cold.

I have survived.  I remain what I was.  My hard-won integrity is preserved.

I am what I must be.

I have no choice.

Secret Edict Seventeen

The knock came against the great oak door, once, then again.  Not demanding, not a hammering, but precise and clear.  A polite, clear request.

The old woman roused herself from a half slumber.  A guest?  But none was expected.  Everything was such a mess.  She was such a mess.  She sighed, and spoke a word over her unbrushed and thinning hair.   It sorted itself into a semblance of order as she heaved her old bones upright.

"Who is it," she said, just loudly enough that the door could hear.

"Director Hermione Granger-Weasley, of the Ministry of Magic," thrummed the door, officiously.

The woman's eyes brightened with pleasure.

"Well, let her in!"

The door complied with equal pleasure, opening in a single well oiled motion, proudly unsqueaking.

A trim and neatly dressed woman in early middle age entered, her all-business demeanor slightly subverted by a barely controlled storm of grey and chestnut hair.

"Minerva," she said, with a soft smile. She approached, and took the old woman's proffered hand as she struggled to rise.  "It's been too long.  And please, sit, sit."

McGonagall returned the smile, and eased herself back down into her chair.  Hermione settled into onto the ottoman that had helpfully crawled up behind her.   The retired professor clapped her hands gently, and whispered a word, and a tea service floated across the room, the tray heaped with jellied biscuits and magically fresh scones.  A cup of perfect Earl Grey settled in on a side table.

"Would you care for some, my dear?"

"Yes, but not quite yet."

"Oh, Hermione.  It has indeed been too long.  How are you?"  Her eyes leapt to Hermione's hair.  "I mean, other than you all of a sudden going rather impressively grey."

Hermione gave a short snort at the familiar, friendly poke.  "Things are well.  And we shall talk, we shall, but..."

The old woman's lips pursed.  "A business call, is it?  Ministry business?"

"Only partially.  But yes, yes it is."

McGonagall laughed.  "Right to the point as always.  I'd expect nothing less.  We can talk pleasantries later, I suppose.  And it's nice to know my old bones are still useful to the Ministry.  You will stay for tea after, won't you?  Gryffinsrest is lovely, but, well.  One grows weary of being alone."

"Of course, Minerva.  That's mostly why I'm here.  For tea, and for you.  But business before pleasure."

Before McGonagall could reply, Hermione continued.  "I've been reviewing the Wizarding War Archives.  Part of a larger research project, of course.  The history I'm working on, you know, the one I mentioned the last time I was here.   I came across something, well, something that you did while working with the Ministry when you were part of that effort.  The files are incomplete, and it's...well...it's troubling me."  An uncharacteristic hesitancy entered her voice.  "I...it..."

"Well, out with it, my dear."

"What do you know about Secret Edict Seventeen?  I'd always wondered, you know, why it was that everyone wouldn't speak his name during his initial rise.  I mean, there was the fear, and I understood that.  But it seemed too...neat.  Too consistent.  Too accepted as the way things needed to be.  Must not be named?  But why?  Why did everyone just not say it, for so very long?

And then I stumbled across it in the archives, in the files of the Special Circumstance Team of the Ministry.  SE17.   Utterly secret, of course.  Only two dozen wizards appear to even have known of its existence.  The records, just fragments.  Most of them destroyed."

The old woman's voice, a firm whisper.  "SE17: Of Deepest Secret.  A Semiotic Dweomer, Contramaleficent, Antidynamus, Silentium, Polis Pacebis."

"You helped write it?"

"Yes, my dear.  Yes I did.  That's why my name is on it."

"And Secret Edit Seventeen was the real reason none of us could bring ourselves to speak his name, not until Harry started doing it?"

"Indeed."

Hermione leaned in closer.  "But why?"

"There came a point, my dear, when we realized that it was necessary.  We had no choice."

"I'm not sure I'm following, Minerva."

"It was at the height of his rise, you know, before that moment when he failed to kill Harry.  Before his curse rebounded and struck him down.  He was everywhere.  Every single page of the Daily Prophet, his name, his leering, confident face, his confident, lying words.  And if it wasn't about some horrid thing he'd done or said, it was an earnest writer or commentator reflecting on it or lamenting it or in full fledged panic about it.

Even the Quibbler, my gracious, he was even there, mixed amongst all the delightful Lovegood silliness.  His name, carried by every owl, spoken of in every tavern, souring the froth of a first year's first taste of butterbeer.  His name, whispered and shouted and muttered until it was all you could think about.  All you could dream about.

And with the endless repetition, there was the fear.  It was palpable, that fear, among those of us who knew what he was and could become, and fear became the curse itself.  Among the Death Eaters, the name was power, pure power.  It affirmed them, told them they were important, sang to them a dark song, a song that tore at everything the Wizarding world was and had been, and put their hatred up in its place.

For months, my dear, months, it grew.  Until, finally, some of us working with the Ministry realize that it was..."

Hermione settled back, her head nodding slowly.

"A spell.  His name was a spell."

McGonagall's eyes twinkled behind the thick crystal depth of her lenses, a flicker of a prim smile on her thinning lips.  "Precisely.  Nice to see your years in Ministry bureaucracy haven't dulled your lovely mind, Hermione.  His name itself was a subtle spell, one no-one at the Ministry was ever able to replicate or grasp.  I was part of the team that found it, that worked to break it, and...well...we just couldn't."

"But a Secret Edict?  Minerva, shouldn't we have been told?  Why hide it?"

McGonagall sighed, a gentle deflation of her age-slightened frame.

"Of course, ideally, yes, people should have been told.  Flitwick argued for more openness, because of course he did.  Filius was such an idealist, even more so than most Ravenclaws.  His goblin side, no doubt.  But ultimately...no.  In the end we realized that it could not be so.  His spell was crafted against such countermeasures.

Do not think of X, we would say, because X is a secret dark curse blighting your soul, we would say.  'His name is a spell, one that builds his power each time you speak it,' the Prophet would publish.  'Beware!'  And everyone would know it...and we would only have made it worse." 

"Worse?"   Hermione frowned.  "How?"

"The minds of muggles...forgive me, dear...and wizards are not so different.  Telling everyone not to think the word of his name...the word of the spell...would only magnify the collective incantation.  Experiments at the Ministry confirmed it. "

"Like saying, don't think of a Nimbus 5500," said Hermione, softly.  "And all you can think of, at that moment, is..."

"Is this year's most excellent broom," finished McGonagall.  "Yes.  That's quite it.  It's a spell that preys on that same basic weakness of the human mind, our fundamental reliance on the symbols that both represent reality and allow wizards to cast the spells that shape it."

"And so the Edict was meant to quiet things?  To weaken the fear?  To still the power that the endless cycling of his name-spell gave him?"

McGonegal sighed again.  "That was the Ministry's intent.  SE17 wasn't just a regulation, of course, or even a law.  It was a spell in its own right.  Complex and deep, and one that required a dozen of us to cast."  She paused, considering something.

"I had my part, of course, particularly as the Ministry came to the decision to cast it.  But the design of it, the intricacies of the casting?   That was mostly Severus.  I'm not quite sure if it worked. But for a while, it seemed to make a difference.  His face, gone from the Prophet.  The Quibbler, back to babbling about oddities.  Evil things happened, but his name wasn't bound to them.  Talk grew less.  For a while, it weakened him.  People felt, well, almost normal again.  Even with all of the terrible things going on."

"And then he made the mistake of trying to kill Lily's little baby boy.  He didn't make many mistakes then, my dear.  I'd like to think that our dulling his power blinded him to his inevitable failure.  To the trap he was setting for himself and his blighted, fragmented soul.  Perhaps, in a small way, it helped."  She paused.  Hermione sat still, watching her.

"Perhaps," said Hermione, breaking the silence.

The old professor cupped her tea in the papery flesh of her hands, feeling the warmth of the Earl Grey within.  She sipped it, and gave a short exhalation of pleasure.

"Oh, that's nice."

Hermione's lips pursed, puzzling over something, her mind busy beneath her partially contained mop of graying frizz.

"Minerva?"

"Yes, my dear?"

"We haven't used his name, not once, this entire conversation."

The old woman raised her chin.  Lowering her glasses, she narrowed her eyes and gave Hermione a piercing look, one which sparked and danced with a lingering fire.

"No, my dear.  No.  We have not."

The Forecaster

Breathe.

Just in and out, Jiun.  Slow and steady, Jiun.  You are modulated, Jiun.  You are focused, Jiun.  You are in control.  You are calm.  You are in control.  You are calm.  You know what the hell you’re talking about.

And she did.  Of course she did.  She had always known.  

Top of her class, or at least, close enough to touch it without stretching.   Professors who tumbled over themselves to recommend her.  Snapped up in a bidding war, almost kissing seven figures right out of her program.  Two years in at Econalytica, and the youngest senior analyst in their storied history.  At meetings, the overtalkers and the blowhards had learned to shut up when she spoke, because C suite had learned to listen.

And groomed her.  And welcomed her in, the youngest partner since the firm had been founded.  Senior Vice President of Climatometrics.   Four direct reports, all upper management, thirty two staff in her program, her work the beating heart of their business model.  And their primary profit center.

She was their best, and they knew it.

She knew it.

Still, there were the cameras.  

What was it about those cameras?

There was the studio, lights hot and overbright.  The scent of the Acela still lingered in her blouse, where it mingled with the slight but inescapable tang of stress pressing through the deodorant.  Jesus, they paid for the ride up, no Skype or ZoomMeet for her, she was a damn guest.

And there was Lamia Singh, right there in the for real, the familiar face from the best watched business program in the industry.  A little shorter than Jiun had thought she’d be, they were always shorter than you thought they’d be.  But no less stunning, and no less sharp.

Lamia had said a few words from within her swirl of production staff, so glad to have you, looking forward to your insights, heard such amazing things about your contribution to the industry.   Genuinely engaged, bright and smiling, decanting the same dessert wine flattery she undoubtedly poured for every guest.

Jiun centered herself.

“We’re on in three.”  Around her, the studio scuttled and flowed, a smooth practiced organic machine.  She was ushered to a chair, given water, a little touch up here, perhaps.  Told where to look, told she was great, thanked again, and then it was two.

Her primary.

Her primary was on.  She hadn’t checked it, had taken that vid from John about the quarterly reporting to General Electric, it was on then. And it would go off, because it always went off.

She fumbled in the deep pocket of her Gortex coverall, and powered it all the way down, as a memory of her mother’s gravel and corn husk voice flitted unbidden through her consciousness.  

Pockets.

“The day we finally got our damn pockets was the day the patriarchy fell,” Mother had said, and she was right.

When she looked up, Lamia was settling in.

“Ms. Kim.  Good ride up?  No delays?”   The familiar voice from the familiar face, the famous face, with it’s famously big, subtly asymmetric eyes, bright as dark polished pebbles, so large, distractingly anime eyes.

Jiun nodded, shaking off the spell.  “None.  Smooth and effortless.  No delays or interruptions.”

“Well, of course. That’s what you’re here to tell us about, isn’t it?”

Jiun’s attempt at a slightly witty response was interrupted by a producer.  “Ten seconds to live.  Ten seconds to live.”

The eyes turned away to camera, and Jiun managed a jagged attempt at a cleansing breath.  The theme and intro music was suddenly everywhere, all of a sudden everywhere, not just in her buds as she watched on the commute in.  

“This is Marketwatch Now, and I’m Lamia Singh.  I’m pleased today to have with us Dr. Jiun Kim, Senior Vice President of Climatometrics at Econalytica.  Dr. Kim, welcome.”

“Thank you, Lamia.”  Not an evident crack or a quaver in her voice.  The centering must be working.

“Looking forward to the third quarter, we’re looking at more bad news for the economy, already under stress from the catastrophic weather this winter and spring.  Dr. Kim, how bad is it going to get?”

“Lamia, it looks like the worst quarter in nearly a decade.  I’d go beyond that.  In fact, both the North American and our own proprietary New Combined Global model are showing the worst forecast in my career as a Climate Economist.”

Behind them, the screens spun up a globe overlaid with images of the anticipated storm season.  The model, there it was, her own New Combined Global, the most accurate forecast of the wildly chaotic churn of the planet’s weather.

What it showed was terrifying.

Nothing.  Not a single storm.  All along the Atlantic and Pacific, nothing.  

Jiun’s voice, terse and urgent and matter of fact.  “The impact on this year’s storm drought on the repair, reconstruction, and emergency supply industries is going to be just staggering.  This coming after a weaker than expected West Coast fire season, and only one fizzled blizzard in the Plains states this winter.”

“Why?  What’s going on to cause it?”

“It’s an entropic system, Lamia.  Obviously, we’ve had a run of great years.  Two seasons ago, Benito?  That generated nearly two hundred billion dollars of economic activity.”

Lamia interjected.  “Probably the most profitable category Seven in recent memory.  The New Shreveport projects alone pushed the markets up nearly five percent.”

“Absolutely.  What a great year.  Not at all what we’re looking at for the next few quarters.”

Lamia nodded.  “That’s exactly right.  The DOW is down nearly sixteen thousand points, and the S&P was off a similar two percent yesterday.  Weyerhauser’s stock was off almost twelve percent, and Caterpillar was down seven and a half.  What impacts are you seeing in the employment sector?”

“Obviously, huge.  General Dynamics and United Recovery Systems are already starting layoffs along the Gulf Annual Disaster Zone, which is on top of the layoffs on the Pacific coast.  In the Carolinas, Dupont is ramping down production at the Tyvek Repairboard shipping ports in Columbia, South Carolina.  Crop recovery and restoration efforts in the Midwest are at a standstill.  We’re talking hundreds of thousands of jobs now, maybe millions idled, in the sector that’s come to take up nearly sixty percent of the global economy.”

Lamia’s voice, now filled with carefully simulated human concern.   “With no homes and cities to rebuild, no infrastructure to restore, what are the prospects for the average worker in this sector?  How’s this going to turn around?”

“In the short term?  Things look terrible.  But the New Combined Global has verified multiseasonal reliability, and what we’re seeing for this winter season looks, how to say this?  Well, Lamia, it looks promising.  It looks good.   If we can run that...thanks...you’ll see that there are multiple Eastern seaboard superstorms likely in both late December and into the…”

Jiun felt the answers pour from her, as Lamia nodded and those dark eyes glistened with admiration at her radiant expertise.  

She wasn’t nervous.  Those weren’t nerves she had felt.  That was pure energy.  She was on fire.  She was the expert.   

She was the global expert, in the world’s most important industry, and now the world knew it.

-----

The ten minutes had flown by.  There’d been a handshake, a genuine offer of “having her on again soon,” and she was done.  A meeting with one of the NYC subcontractors, a quick snag of a bag from a vegan fazcaz place, and she was off.

Her primary hummed and buzzed.   Congratulations from colleagues, from John and Young Sik on the board, from a couple of her VPs.  Notifications from her bots, as the interview splashed and echoed across other media.  Picking up steam.

And after four days of losses, the markets, turning around.  Two point two three percent since this morning.  The chatter, as the market babblers pitched their daily rationalizations?

“Market turns after strong long term report from Econalytica.”  “Dow up nine hundred on analyst’s positive storm report.”

She was Atlas.  She was moving the world.

All of a sudden, she was hungry.  So very hungry.  The nervous tightness in her gut had unfurled and released, and now her stomach snarled and groaned.  She could smell the falafel, and lord it smelled good.  She fumbled with the bag.  

The pita was a great fat thing, thick spread with hummus and tzatziki, and she tore into it, feeling the tzatziki course down her chin.  She didn’t care.  No more meetings today, and she had always been the kind of girl who ate…

And Mother’s voice again.  “You eat like a wolf, Jiun.  Like a starving wolf.”  Not a reprimand.  Not a correction.  But smiling, the broad smile of a loud brassy ahjumma, so pleased with her fierce firstborn wolf girl.

Halfway through, she stopped for breath, took a deep quaff of her energy tea, and looked around.  The car, entirely full, rustling with the mutters and clicks of business.

Through the windows of the train, the landscape flickered bright and sun dappled behind the concrete and steel windbreaks.

Above, the sky was a perfect, cursed, unprofitable blue.

Ah well, she thought.  It'll pass. It’s just weather.

from A SLOW DEATH ON NEVSKY PROSPEKT and Other Stories

The Pox

Tonight is all quiet again, and it makes me think about the scary things, but I’m maybe less scared because I know Daddy keeps me safe.  I know it.  I know it real good.  When I say my prayers I say thank you for my Daddy.  For Mama too.

I can hear Jon and Mary and Sarah and they are all asleep and Jon is snoring a little.  I can’t hear Daddy and Mama, but I know they are right downstairs and their room is near the door.  Every once in a while there’s a clickity click click of Buck’s nails as he goes snuffing around the house in his lumpy way, and it wakes me up but I then feel safe because he’s a good good dog.

And he’s big and he has big teeth and when he barks it’s like his whole body barks, worf worf down low and thick and deep.

Mama tucked me in tonite and she said, baby girl, you know it’s OK, Daddy’s here and Mama’s here and Uncle Jim’s just right there in the next farm and we’re all together and we all watch out for each other just like family should.  And she rocks me like she did when I was five, and even though I’m nine and bigger now it still feels good.

An Daddy came up, and said goodnight little Button you try to sleep tonite and gave me a bristly kiss on my head just like he always does.  And I should sleep and I try and everybody else is sleeping.  The blankets are nice and warm and the house is cooling down and it’s so cozy but I’m still scared and my heart feels all tight.

It’s cause of the Pox.

I wish I never heard of the Pox and it wasn’t real, but it is an that scares me terrible way down in my heart.  Specially now.  Real special terrible now.

I member when Daddy first told me, cause I was seven and old enough to go picking, and he took me up real serious and said, Button, we got to talk bout you going into the woods.  And I said Daddy I can do it, Jon does it, and you know sometimes I come back from the schoolhouse now all by myself when I help Ms. Jess with the cleanup.

And he smile that big easy Daddy smile and says yeah, yeah Button, you’re a great helper.  But then he got all serious.  Button, the schoolhouse is up North near to town.  But you got to be careful in the wild woods to the South.  We go there, and the pickings are good, but our family isn’t nowhere near town cause we like it out here, and sometimes the Pox spreads up this far.

I’d heard Daddy and Uncle Jim talking bout that sometimes, and him and Mama whispering some nights before Daddy went out with a bunch of men from the town on horseback.  Mama’d cry real quiet after he went out, and even more for happiness when he came back right before sun-up.

But I knew better than to ask bout things where it weren’t my place.

Now Daddy sat there right in front of me, all grim, and told me bout the Pox.  

Usually it stays to the South, Button, down in the Barrens and the Long Hot Dry.  But sometimes in bad seasons it gets hungry, and leaves the Poxed lands, and tries to go spreading on up this way to the sweet green top of the world.  

But what is it, Daddy, I said.

He got quiet again.  Button, it’s like a sickness, something like that flu you got last year.  ‘member that, how bad you and Mary and Mama got even with Doc coming here?

I nodded.  That felt so bad, cept when I broke my wrist I never felt worse, like my head was goin to just bust open.  Daddy was so scared, cause he knew that little Cousin Daniel just had died from it.  He was barely more than a baby, and that was so sad.  I would a been scared, too, but I was too sick feeling to be anything else.

Yeah, well, says Daddy, that’s what it’s kinda like.  When the sun gets red ‘cause the dust blows from the Dry into the Barrens, the Pox gets hungry, and it comes up here to eat and spread.  It wants real bad to make us into it.

I looked all fuddled, cause I didn’t know what he meant, and I said so.  So Daddy tried to splain it a little more.  

The Pox looks kinda like people.  Almost.  Some of them may have been people, once.  But they aren’t.  They’re...something else.  And if we aren’t careful, if we don’t keep watch and keep it back, every one of us will just get all eaten up by it.  No more me.  No more Mama or you.  Just the Pox, everywhere, and no more people in the whole wide earth.

What, what does it look like, I said, my voice all hitchin up.

Daddy told me.  It was horrible and scary and I don’t like to be thinkin about it, but course now I can’t help it cause I seen it for myself.

And then Daddy said, Button, you go pickin, but you get out a the woods before the sun gets too low in the sky, cause that’s when it comes.  If you ever see the Pox in the woods, you hide and stay real quiet till you can run, then you come on home fast and quiet as you can and you get me or Uncle Jim.  And you can’t ever let it touch you.  Don’t get close, no matter what.  He paused, like he was thinking of something. 

And...don’t you listen to it.

That got me even more scared and I said, it can talk, Daddy?

He looked real hard.  Yeah, Button.  It talks.  But all the Pox does is lie, so’s it can get you close and...touch you.  You don’t listen.  You don’t ever listen.   If you ever see the Pox, ever, you just do exactly what I told you.  You do anything you need to get away.  You hear?

And I said yes and I really did mean it but now I’m so scared I’m so stupid I should have done what Daddy said.

I’m so stupid, so stupid.

I shouldnta stayed out there in the woods, so stupid.  I shouldnta gone in so deep, but two days ago it was Saturday and it was so nice and pretty and I kept saying oh, just a little more, and I thought I was being real careful, and even though I’d never been that far I thought I can find my way back real easy, then right when I knew I’d gone too far I found the patch.  

Oh, there was so many blackberries, like the biggest patch I ever seen ever and I had both of them new big ol baskets I made in class, and Emmy was her usual snotty self, like you’ll never fill baskets that big, she said, and I said sure I will.  

And they were so many all sweet and fat and the squirrels and birds hadn’t gotten them and I just guess I lost track a time.

I was like halfway through the second basket when I thought oh no, it’s getting dark, like, how did I not notice?  The woods were all shadows and strange.   And I knew Mama’d be mad and Daddy’d be madder and I was going to get a hiding and I’d totally deserve it.  So I started back, quick as I could.

But it got darker, and that setting sun was so red and I was like, suddenly all so scared, and I musta turned all wrong because then the path wasn’t where I thought because everything looked all different in the dark.  And the thing I thought was the path was like all brambles and thorns and nothing looked right at all.

And I wanted to yell out, but I was too far, nobody knew where I was, and then I went one way for a while but it was even more wrong and then I fell and got all scratched up and dropped all of the berries in one of the baskets.  

The woods were getting much dark now, where I couldn’t even really see totally right, and then it was like I could hear everything moving.  Rustling here and there, and hootings, and strange sounds, and I think I musta thought they were the Pox coming and that made me even more scared and dumb.

Because it was probably squirrels and birds.  The Pox is quieter than that.  But I didn’t know that then.

I was just about given up when I saw the clearing and the old barn.  I remember Jon telling me bout it once, about how he found it hunting, and there it was all deep in shadow.  There was what was left of a house, too, but that old barn had somehow kept on standing, from long ago when some family tried to make a go in their own clearing.  

And it looked scary, but it looked like maybe a place to hide, just hunker down in a corner and be real quiet like Daddy said, I think that was what I was thinking.  

I was so stupid.

I came in through that busted open barn door into the almost dark of that big hollow building, stepping so careful, and it smelled like dust and rot, the wood at the doorpost old and almost falling apart in your hand.  There was a big hole up there in the roof where it had fallen in, and that was the only light in the whole barn, coming in through that hole.  

It weren’t much light, but the rest of the barn was so dark, so I moved to it because I don’t know.

And then they stepped into the light too.  Both of them, so quiet you couldn’t barely hear them move, and my heart jumped up into my throat sos I could hardly breathe.  My fist went all tight round the basket handle, so's I could hear it crunch and it kinda cut in and hurt but I was too scared to notice.

There was a big Pock, and a little Pock, and they looked just like Daddy said the Pox would look.  Almost like people.  

The big Pock looked like a man taller than Uncle Jim, and the little Pock was like it was a girl just a little older than me.  It was hanging on the big Pock, hardly standing at all, and it looked like there was something wrong with it.  They were wearing clothes, almost like people clothes, though they was a bit strange and torn up.

But even though it was dark, they weren’t people.  You could see it, just like Daddy told me.

You can tell cause their skin is gone rotten through and through, Daddy had said.  It’s not white and pink like the skin of real human people.  Pock skin is all wrong colors, like a bad apple or a dead deer you find half eaten in the field.  All the Pox are rotted and wrong and have no soul and you can see it on their outside, Daddy said.  

That’s how you know for sure a Pock is not a person, Daddy said.

And that’s just what they were, skin like sickness, black as the night woods, and I was so scared I could hardly move, and then the big Pock spoke.

Please, it said, in a whisper voice that was scary cause it was like almost a person voice.  We’re just so hungry.  All we are is hungry.  Please.  We don’t mean no harm, it said.  It took a step closer, and the smaller Pock came with it, eyes down, wobbly on its feet.  

I wanted to run, just run, but it was like I was in a bad dream, and my body couldn’t move, l couldn’t make it move.

It came closer still, and I could see it was terrible lean, like a skeleton almost, eyes sunk into the dark hollow of its head.  

Hey girl, hey.  Little girl, hey, we’re just so hungry, please… and it saw the basket, and took another step.  Berries?  You got berries?  We haven’t...eaten.  It’s been days.  If you could just...just maybe give us some, just a little, not all of them just...”

And I opened my mouth, cause I was trying to scream but I couldn’t and nothing would come out.

Hey, hey, and the Pock was speaking soft now, soft as a snake, Don’t be scared, hey, you’re lost, we’re lost and scared too, look, don’t be scared, and still it talked and it was lying, lying so it could touch me, lying so it could spread, and another step forward, and its hand reaching out, dark rot Pox flesh on a big bony hand.

Worf, worf, came the sound, so nearby, it was Buck I knew it, I heard him and it was like I suddenly woke up and I dropped the berries and bolted like a bat-struck ball.  The Pock lunged and grabbed and  Wait! Stop, you something something it said, and it had the basket, and it was coming after me and it had my basket but I was out the barn door and running right fast.

There coming up was Daddy, and Uncle Jim, and a bunch of the men from church, all of them with torches and guns, and Buck just worfing and barking deep and angry.

Daddy, I said, and he dropped his rifle and held me.  Button, he said, Oh God, Button, you don’t never ever do that again, you hear me you…

But then Uncle Jim saw the Pock, stopped up sudden right there at the edge of the barn shadow.  And the Pock saw Uncle Jim, and Uncle Jim raised his big powder gun.

No, said the Pock, its voice sounding almost like it was scared.  No please I’ve got a…

Uncle Jim’s musket barked deep like Buck, and the big Pock fell back into the dark.

Did it touch you, baby, did it touch you, Daddy whispered, kneeling down in close.  I shook my head no, no, no.  Then, even quieter, is there any others in there, Button, is there?

And I nodded, cause there was.

Daddy stood up.  Burn it, he said.  Burn it dead.

The men with torches came at that barn real careful, while others kept guns up, and some lit the edges of that dry crumblerot wood, and others pitched their torches in to where the straw and the big Pock body lay.

I’m taking Button home, Daddy said to Uncle Jim.  Make sure nothing gets out.  And Uncle Jim nodded all serious.

That barn went up so quick, flames a jumping, the fire burned high and bright and lit up the woods all round and cast our shadows like giants.   Daddy and me were just reaching the edge of the clearing when all a sudden I heard the small Pock start up its screaming.  

Screaming and screaming, and it sounded so much like a girl, like it was really a girl and she was burning alive and I never heard anything so horrible in my life.

I tried to cover my ears I did, but that Pock just cried out so’s covering your ears didn’t help, and it went on and on and didn’t stop until there was a shot and then it did.

But I can still hear the Pox, there in my head, even right now in my bed in the dark with my covers held tight.  That voice.  That scream.

That’s what I told Mama last night when I woke everybody up, and she held me, and said oh Button, just you know me and Daddy will always keep you safe.  Just you tell yourself that.  It’ll go away.

So that’s what I say now, and I feel a little better.  Daddy will always keep me safe.  He will.  

I know it.



-----

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The Talent

The studio waited, white and stark and empty.

So quiet.  So still and clean and pure.  Utterly untouched.

The lighting still soft, at forty percent.

Almost there.

Just meters away, Sol paced around the control room, checking over shoulders of the techs as they muttered into their mikes, looking at the array of screens...archaic, but high-function...that showed every angle of the new, improved studio.

He ran a hand through his thinning hair, feeling the sheen of sweat gathering on his scalp, the rush of blood in his ears.  Nervous?  Sol?  He can’t get nervous, he’s the king of the world, and yet here he was rocking back and forth on his heels, his weight shifting anxiously across the perfect soles of his buttercream leather Ferragamos.

C’mon.  He breathed in, breathed out, centering himself.  Gotta stay focused, gotta be on your game, this is all the damn marbles.  Again.

“Sol?”

It was Tran, materializing like out of nowhere, man, almost spooky how she just could sneak up on you like that.  Her eyes locked on his, dark and focused as a leopard’s in her round flat face.

“Yeah.  Whaddaya got?”  Sol barked out his genial Jersey rasp, always more than slightly overloud, enough to startle the uninitiated.  Tran didn’t even blink.

He wasn’t sure if she ever blinked.

“All cams at 100%.  Initial run showed three point two percent of units suboptimal, but techs got on it, and we’re good to go.  Studio’s scrubbed, sterilized, absolutely bio-clean, everything per contract.  We’re tight and ready.”

“Feeds?”

“Everything at W.O.T.  No bandwidth issues, all subsidiaries reporting.  Pre-shows lighting up on schedule.  Between pre-shows, retrospectives, and C-level tuber-chatter, we’re already up to thirty seven point three five of total North American traffic.  On track to exceed projections.”

“How’s our girl doing?”

“‘She’s ready.”

So close.  So close.  The door to the dressing room was still closed, sealed nice and tight.  Wasn’t quite time for the star to appear.

It was all flowing as Sol had requested, and there was no way the studio was going to say no.  Not to him.  Not when it came to Tyler Smith-Kim.  What TySK needed, TySK got.

Whatever we need, babe, you give us whatever we need, Sol had said to the prim NetViews exec over a three milligram lunch, and boy, had she delivered.   And the good girls and boys at NetViews had got on it, because that was their damn job, and bam.

There it was.  Just as he wanted, upgraded and retrofitted and cutting edge.  The room, a perfect blank slate.  Visually, utterly empty.  Fifty meters by fifty meters by fifty meters, a perfect cube.  The interior, spotless.  The floors, pressure and heat sensitive, capable of providing weight-and-mass sim data down to microgram levels.

The cams were everywhere, invisible, embedded in the walls and floors, six hundred maxdef dot-cams, each capable of IR and UV, and giving resolutions four powers of magnitude higher than human vision.   That was one hundred and twenty seven percent improved over the last product cycle, and baby, that created some seriously profitable synergies.

You wanted to drill down to the mites that feasted on TySK’s sloughing skin cells?  Optimized!  Maximal!  Sales of Granulia 3.2, the must-have software package that let you get down to nanoscale TySKvid?  Never been better.

Hell, he’d never thought that’d take off like it had, but the grrls down in pre-marketing knew their stuff.  There were over forty seven successfully monetized mitecam sub-toobs on NOWee dedicated to that whole process.

Watch their tiny jaws!  Nom Nom Nom!   Laugh along with the DookieTwins NOW-award winning toob-commentary!  Watch for hours as mite leavings dried on the surface of her body, and were caught up and carried on the air currents of the studio.  Bid on individual motes...each utterly unique...as they were drawn towards the harvesting filters for packaging and distribution to collectors!

The market for blockchain-certified TySK MiteDrops had been super hot last year, with futures showing significant potential for growth in the coming fiscal quarter.  Sure, some analysts argued that there was real danger of a MiteDrop bubble, but analyst predictions of a per-unit ceiling at 1500ISK had underestimated the enthusiasm of the market and the limits on supply.

Sol still wished he’d done more than low-risk that part of his portfolio, but hell.  You can’t win ‘em all.

And with the new product dropping, heh...dropping...that enthusiasm was now running at a fever pitch.

Not that the old product was any less desirable.  It had been twelve months since TSigh! had blown the doors off the industry.  Two hundred trillion ISK at opening, more VR subs than ever in history.

A full year, and the chatter hadn’t come close to diminishing.

Hell, as Sol had told the board at the annual convention two weeks ago, even the performance of TySKlassic had never been stronger.  Using the synergy generated at launch, the plans for updeffing the old TySK VR onto VerReal had reignited the fanbase, bringing a new gen into play, and the fanboyzandgrrls had already generated nearly seventy five thousand new vids rearguing the merits of product that was over a decade old.

The impacts on the broader market were even more significant.  The big tech boys were up nearly seventeen percent, as the higher visual refinement of primary, secondary, and tertiary feeds made upgrading consumer grade viewrigs pretty much a requirement.

And pharma?  Wow.  It was nuts, with sales of the new formulations of NausYex Plus and Spinaway exceeding even the most optimistic fantasies of the pitchmen.

Sure, stabilizing and augmenting the VR experience with the recommended dose of Synethesiar had seemed enough three product cycles ago.  But that was forever.  Forever.  And the seven point two percent of potential market lost to residual dizziness and nausea was biting into growth.  NausYex and Spinaway cut that by seventy five percent, and when you layered in the collateral sales of anti-anxiety meds to deal with the side effects, it was just profit all the way down.

All.  The. Way.  Down.

Damn.

And all of this, from her genius, her brilliance, her idea.  His girl.

Seven short years ago, they’d been number three, back in the day, man, when Lil’ NasteE dominated the industry.  Back in the day when there was an industry outside of TySK-affiliated holdings.  Before TySK was the DOW, the bluest of blue-chips, the beating heart of the entertainment economy.  Total market valuation, as of close yesterday?  It exceeded the GDP of all but four nation states.

Sure, there’d been other players back then.  But their loops and tracks had gotten incestuous, the industry was stagnating, there wasn’t a single damn new idea out there.  PornCore?  Old news.  Cuttersynth?  There was only so much you could sample the sound of a blade opening flesh.  And people talking about people, critiquing the critiques of the critiques?  It just got..old.  It’d been done.

There was nothing new.

Traffic was down.  People were bored.  Nothing exciting, just one artist sampling the samples of a mashup of other artists, an endless recursion, art devouring itself.

And then Tyler, Tyler herself had called a meeting.  Just him.  Alone in his office.  And she had said...he had the recordings…”I have an idea.”

He’d coughed.  Tyler had always been hard-core, totally dedicated, relentless.  Of all the talent he represented in thirty years in the industry, she was the only one who’d ever really freaked him out.  She was always five steps ahead of him, always hungry and questing and willing to do things that, well, he’d thought he was cynical and had seen everything.  He’d thought nothing could surprise him.  Man.  But she did.  Every time.

If Tyler Smith-Kim had an idea, it was going to be a thing.

She’d popped up a CAD program on her flat, whisked it over to him, showed him the schematics she’d worked on herself.  He’d skimmed her proposal, watched the sims, and...Jesus.

“Babe, Tyler, I love you, babe, you know that.  But you can’t do this.  This is…” and he’d coughed again and stammered, Jesus, Sol himself coughing and stammering.  “...this is crazy.  You’ll...it’ll…”

“Can’t?  Of course I can.  It’s the only way,” she’d said, through her perfect cam-ready lips.  “I’ve pre-signed the permissions.  Legal’s already been over it.  It’ll work.”

“You can just take a break.  Maybe spend some time in zero gee.  We can afford the station again, just away from everything, you know we can totally swing the launch fees, and if…”

She didn’t say a damn thing.  Just looked at him, her symmetrical blue/green eyes fixed on his.  Held him, for a long time, until he was forced to look away.

“You work for me, Sol.”

His voice, a submissive rumble.   “For how long?  How long would you do this?”

And she had smiled.

“Read the contracts, Sol.  As long as it brings it in, babe. As long as it brings it in. ”

So they built the Black Box.  Hermetically sealed, atmospherically controlled.  No inputs.  Nothing.  No light.  No sound.  Total darkness.  Just her mind, alone with itself.  Nutrients and fluids.  Bedding.   A toilet.  Everything padded.

Every outside influence, gone.  Every stream and loop and meme, shut down.  Just her, Tyler Smith-Kim, alone with her genius.  After six months, the door would open, and she’d hit the studio, and it’d be like nothing else.  Nothing but her genius.

He’d figured it’d be six months.  She’d come out, it’d crash, and she’d be out.  Great stunt, babe, he’d say.  Way to get to number two, he’d say.

But she was right.  Damn, but she was right.

It’d been seven years.  Fourteen product drops, not a stunt at all, but an event.  Not even “an event,” not any more.  It was the event.  Nothing like it, ever.

Release One had been the biggest thing ever.  Just straight to the top of pretty much every damn thing.  The wild tonalities of her singing, totally like nothing else, nothing ever.  Oh, you could hear the influences, sure, from Classical, Jazz, Afrobeat, Throat singing, Jesus, just everything.  But it came together new, finally something really new.

The bored, jaded world forgot everything else.

Lil’ NasteE?  Her next seven tracks were just resampled from Release One.  It was all TySK.  She was it.  She was all media, all the time.

And when TySK returned to the Black Box after twenty four hours of dropping track after track?  When that door closed on her voice at crescendo, holding that impossible note, and the world gasped?  The stage was set for more.

Six more months, and every month, the buildup increased.  Marketing and pre-marketing kept driving the wave, until pretty much nothing else mattered.  It was the biggest thing.

DayTwo?  DayTwo was where he was sure it would end.  Twelve months in total isolation, and when that door opened?  She didn’t sing.  Just, well, she just talked.  More croaked, really.  And crawled around.  And wept.  And begged for it to end.

Four days, she screamed and clawed at the walls of the studio, until her fingers left bloody tracks on the whiteness of the walls.  It was hard to watch, but damn, everybody was watching.  And sampling.  And oversampling.

When she crawled, sobbing so hard she was shaking, back into the Box?  Hell, that was hard on Sol.  On the whole team.  But a contract is a contract.

And DayTwo was bigger than ever.   Made Release One look like some tweener toobing for the first time.  Watching.  Arguing.  Making music and talking about music.  There was talk of legislation, of criminal charges, but their friends on K Street made sure that all went away.

It just grew, and grew, and grew.

And every time, every product drop was different.

TSigh! was just that one sound, that shuddering utterance that came from her as she crawled into the studio.  But it was enough, because it was unique and it was TySK, it could be slowed and modded and shifted and tuned.  And critiquing.

 And critiquing the critiques of the critiques, in the same endless meta-masturbation.

It was what people did.  But hell, did it make money.

The bruises that patterned her arms and back, turned into a thousand silkscreens.  The mites.  The speculation.  That missing right ring finger?  Man.  Yeah.  That was a trend for a month or two.  And the…

“Sol?”

Tran, again, breaking him from his reverie.

“We’re thirty seconds from live.”

Sol blinked, pulled himself together.  The control room, looking at him.

“Alright, people.”  Here, the terse but confident speech, what was expected.  “You know what’s at stake.  But you’re the best, the best in the business, because TySK is the damn business.  Are we gonna make this happen?”

The response, not adequate, because they knew he’d say

“Seriously, are we gonna make some damn money today?”

And they roared, as a broad toothed grin split his flat red face.

And the countdown continued, echoed across a billion screens, as countless eyes waited for the door to open and the curtain to rise.
----

It was bright.

That was the word for the pain.  Bright. Light light

Brightlightbrightlightbright, pressing into her eyes light, blink, blink, how did you keep them closed, she didn’t remember didn’t remember

It hurt.  The light hurt.  And it made all of her friends go away.  Dishy clattered about, her sweet smooth roundess no longer a comfort, the soft ssssh of her voice as you rubbed her belly meaningless.

Nipple, oh nipple, who gurgled away her thirst, so generous and soft and big in the dark.  The light made her small and dead.

Mr. Hole who ate the gurf that came from her, and who screamed back her own stenchvoice when she cried out the sads and the rage?  No big welcome.  No big.  Welcome.  He was gone

And the light yawned and howled its hungry nothing at her

And it wouldn’t leave her

Alone

Not until she gave it what it wanted wanted her so she

Crawled into the hunger

wanted the

Show

So she crawled into the hurt that

Wanted

The Show.

Which Must

Go

On.

Ride Along

[start of audio track]

So...um...yeah.  This thing on? 

That’s the...yeah.  The red light.  Cool.  Good deal.

So.  Wanta know the best thing ‘bout me?  My name.  ‘Cause it’s a goddamn verb now.

And it ain’t ‘cause I’m a smith or a taylor or some such thing where you take the name a what you do.  The verb don’t come from nobody but me.

I’m a verb man!  A man of action.  An action man, who does things.  Hell, just look.  It’s what I’m doing right now.  Turpin’.  I’m out turpin’, ‘cause I’m the freakin’ Richard Lee Turping, and I am what I do.

That’s why y’all wanted this vid, right?  All that trouble gettin’ this cam to me, just to get to know me.

The man, the verb, the legend.  Heh.

Sure, there’s other words folks use asides from turpin’.  Robbery.  Grand theft.  Hell, that guy on the news the other day done call me a terrorist, and it ain’t the first time somebody’s called me that, neither. 

Terrorist.  Blessed Lord Jesus, I ain’t never terrorized nobody.  Terror.  Jesus.  I mean, sure, I scared more than a coupla few people, ‘till they know it’s me doin’ it, and then they know ain’t nothin’ bad gonna happen to ‘em lessen they get stupid. 

Heck, oncet people know you ain’t gonna hurt ‘em, it makes the job so much easier.  You think you’re gonna get killed, you’re gonna fight, I mean, I would.  But if you know it ain’t personal, and you know just to like sit tight and it’ll be OK?  You sit real nice like and let the good polite Mr. Turping go about his turpin’.

And yeah, there’ve been...well.  I sure am sorry about them.  But they shoulda knowed better.

Because every damn body knows who I am.  Richard Lee Freakin’ Turping.

My granddaddy, one I was named after?  Richard Lee Turping weren’t a turper.  Hell, there weren’t no turpers back then.   He was a trucker, long-haul, did that his whole life.  Worked for a buncha different big companies, then had his own rig for a while, contracted out with a coupla locals for shorter runs. Did this fuel run outta a Supercenter stop upstate, mostly, up to the depot and back.  It was this big ol’ Kenworth that was his very own. 

Man.  Grandaddy was like, I don’t know.  I remember I was like maybe four, and he weren’t drivin’ much no more, but he’d come rollin’ up in that thing and it was like he was drivin’ a goddamn alien mothership.  It’d be all lit up like--

[chime, repeating]

Hold up.  Just gotta check--nah.  Ain’t nothin’ yet.

Anyways, he’d come rollin’ up, and that ol’ Kenworth’d be lit up like Christmas mornin’.  And Mama’d holler at me ‘cause I’d go runnin’ out ta meet him, and she’s like sure I’m just gonna up and get squashed.  “Careful, Ricky, Ricky look out!” 

Like I was ever that dumb.  But you know how mamas can get.

So there it’d be, American steel rising up to heaven, diesel snortin’, paint blacker than the night sky above, chrome all polished, and them lights, oh man, all them lights like stars.  And the door’d open up, and there’d be Grandaddy with that smile shinin’ ‘bove his big white beard, and he’d say, “Hey down there,” and damn. 

It was like seein’ Moses comin’ down from the mountain, only he’s driving the damn mountain. 

And he’d say, “Hey Ricky, you want we should go for a ride,” and, hell, ‘course I did, I always did, so I’d climb way on up there and off we’d go.  And it was like, Lord, it was like he was some greek god, like, oh man, what was his name, the sun god, up there in his chariot, and there I was ridin’ high ‘bove every last thing.

And he’d tell me stories, ‘bout what he seen out on the road, ‘bout what it meant to be a man. 

Grandaddy was a proud man, a workin’ man.  And drivin’ that sweet ol’ rig weren’t easy, neither.  All them gears, Lord, that took skills.  But not just skills, it was like, you had to know who you was.   “You gotta have your head on straight, boy, you ever want to drive like your Grandaddy and your Daddy,” he’d say.  “It ain’t an easy life.  Whole buncha ways Satan gonna try to lead you astray.  Truckin’ man gotta know who he is, keep his soul right with the Lord and his body tight.”  ‘Cause he knew that…

[crackle, audible chirp, muted voice]

Hold up.  Bobby, what you got?

[muted voice]

How many?  Just the one?

[muted voice, crackle]

Say what?  You serious?  Here?  Who the hell drives that out this way at this time a night?

[muted voice, laughter]

I know, right?  Candy from a baby. Man, temptin’.  All by their lonesome, huh?

[muted voice]

I hear ya.  Totally.  But there’s gonna be bigger fish.  We wait.  You down with that, Dave?  Tyrone?

[muted voices]

Alright, y’all.  We good, brothers.  Hang tight.  It’ll happen.  Stay frosty.

So anyways, what was I goin’ on about?  Shoot.  Um.  Oh, right. 

Weren’t just that Grandaddy had skills.  It was like he got to use ‘em.  ‘Cause what’s the pointa bein’ alive, if like you cain’t feel like the Good Lord has a use for you?

That’s what killed my Daddy, sure as if it’d up and shot him.  Daddy drove, too, loved it like his Daddy did.  He weren’t a big personality like Granddaddy, more quiet-like, but he loved my Mama and treated her good.  Never cheated, never raised a hand to her, never raised his voice, not even when things got bad between the two a them.  Not even when.  Yeah.

Didn’t even leave a goddamn note.  Not like we didn’t know why.

‘Cause he always figured he’d live like Grandaddy did.  Work honest and work hard.  Drive ‘till he could afford to retire.  Maybe get his own rig, though Daddy more liked fishin’ when he had the time.  Get himself a boat, go out on the lake, just sit there on the still water nice and quiet.  He’d a liked that.

Well that didn’t work out.  We all know how that rolled.  Jesus.

Them goddamn corp’rat ticks took that all away.  Oh, sure, we all know what they said.  It’s the future, they said.  It’s progress, they said. 

Lyin’ thievin’ sonsabitches.  It was just them, takin’ what was ours for themselves.  Parasites.

And it all happened so damn fast.  Yeah, there was talk.  But you don’t believe it till it’s there, you know?  It was like, one day Daddy was drivin’, then they called ‘em all in, told ‘em they were downsizin’.  New rigs, freakin’ ‘bots, drove themselves, didn’t need no driver.

But they was hirin’ “monitors.”  Sit in a cab in a big convoy of ‘bots, watch screens all day long.  No pedal.  No hands on the wheel.  Hell, you don’t even see the road. 

Just a damn screen and a damn keyboard.  Somethin’ goes wrong, you press a button, another robot comes, takes over, fixes it.  No skill.  No pride.  Just a goddamn babysitter for robots.

And ten jobs?  Nah.  Now there’s one job.  That pays half the pay.  Half the damn pay, while those bastards who made ‘em get their billions by taking it from us.

It weren’t like Daddy didn’t try to find work, neither.  He woulda driven for anybody, anywhere, but all the companies was buying these new robot rigs, gotta stay competitive, can’t get undercut.  And like every last trucker out there was scramblin’, ten to every job.  Millions and millions of us.

And Daddy tried.  Lord knows he tried.

But hell.  Quiet man, keeps to himself, don’t like to impose on nobody?  You know, you got to know people in this world you want to get ahead, and Daddy just...well.  Didn’t know the right people.  Didn’t brownnose.  Couldn’t.  Weren’t who he was.

So, yeah.  And what else was he going to do?  So he tried.  Six months?  A year?  How long before you see the writin’ on the wall?  Before all that rejection jes wears down your soul?

I was, what, seventeen, then?  And all a sudden Daddy was home all the time, just sitting there on that ol’ sofa.  There in the mornin’ when I left.  There in the evenin’ when I got back. Sometimes the tee vee was on.  Sometimes not.  Then he was drinking, just like drinking all the damn time.  Weren’t a mean drunk, hell, even when Mama was freakin’ out about money and medical bills and cryin’, Daddy didn’t get mean.  Just kinda folded on into hisself, like one a them black holes up in space.

And yeah.  I was the one that found him.  Came home from school, and…

[Silence.  Rustling.  More silence.]

Like, look.  There goes that sonofabitch.  That’s the one Bobby was talkin’ about. 

Look at him go. 

Shoot, I’m of a mind now to take him down just for the principle of the damn thing.  Middle of the Tennessee night, big fancy Mercedes runnin’ alone through the Smokies, Jesus, that thing’s gotta be doin’ one ten.  And that’s, what, two hundred thou?  Hell.  If it’s got the security augs and the uparmor and the run-flats, more like four.   Maybe five.

You just know there’s Nashville money in the back, doin’ business with business, rich as all hell, couldn’t give two craps ‘bout the rest of us.  So damn tempting.  I mean, runnin’ ‘em down is the easy part.  It’s a pain in the butt to crack the accounts, and even if you leave ‘em standing by the road in the middle of Tennessee nowhere it’s only like an hour or less afore those damn computers shut everything down.  But Bobby’s real good at….heh.

Did I say Bobby?  Did I say that before?  Guess I did.  Well.  We’re usin’ code names.  Hear that?  Code names.  Heh.  Jesus.

‘Cept for me.  I want y’all should know who I am.  I am Richard. Lee. Turping.  Tee You Are Pee Aye En Gee. 

And yeah, sure, maybe I am a thief.  Maybe that’s what my name means these days.  But I’m a man, Lord Jesus help me, and God made a man so’s he can do something with his life.  It’s them coders and fat cats and elite sonsabitches who’s the real thieves, takin’ away the right the rest of us got to live in this world like there’s some reason God put us here.  I don’t want your damn handouts.  I want to live as an honest hardworkin’ man, and if the only way I can do that is go turpin’ all your stuff, hell.  That’s what I’ll do.

And yeah, I get how weird that is, when the only honest work is stealin’.  I ain’t stupid.  But I didn’t make this ass-backwards mess of a new world.  Never wanted it.  I only ever--

[crackle, chime, muffled voice]

Bobby, what you got?

[crackle, muffled voice]

How many?

[muffled voice]

Seven of ‘em?  Damn.  Nice and fat.  Sweet.  How many drones?

[muffled voice, crackle]

Yeah, got it, totally doable.  And just the one mountie?

[crackle, muffled voice]

Cool.  Mats are go.  EMPs are charged and prepped.  Dave, Tyrone, you gettin’ this? 

[muffled voice, crackle, muffled voice]

All right.  Fire it on up!  Let’s do this, boys.

[rumble, sounds of vibration]

Hoo.  So here’s where the fun starts, and I just know y’all are dyin’ to see me work, but, yeah.  Don’t wanna be giving away any trade secrets, now, do I? 

‘Cause I’m the kinda man who takes his job serious.  Man’s got to have some pride in what he does.

Catch y’all on the flip side. 

[rustling]

Um.  Yeah.  Um.  Which button turns this thing off again?

[vibration, sound of engine, end of audio track]