Digital Underground - uXu - Underground eXperts United #uxu-534

### ### ### ### ### #### ### ### ### #### ### ### ##### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ##### ### ### ########## ### ### ########## ### ### ### ### Underground eXperts United Presents... ####### ## ## ####### # # ####### ####### ## ## ## ## ## ## ##### ## # ## ## ## #### ## ## #### # # ####### #### ####### ## ## ## ## ##### ## # ## ## ## ## ####### ####### # # ####### ####### ## [ Viv's House ] [ By Eric Chaet ] ____________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________ VIV'S HOUSE by Eric Chaet BEAN POLE - Viv's name for the tall young man with dirty, long, brown hair and black-framed glasses, whom she had noticed quarreling with the staff - was doing a little sideways dance, just to attract her attention - in the dining hall - checking out of the corners of his eyes, to see if she was noticing, lifting his eye-brows comically, when their eyes met. That's sweet, she thought, and realized she was feeling pleasure. She could not remember the last time she had felt anything. He was pretending to be secretive and cunning. But there he was, right in front of her - and of anyone else who cared to look - dancing his silly little sideways shuffle - his face a mask that gave away nothing - except for those mischievous eyes giving it all away. Viv laughed. Her own laughter felt so good in the belly - which, she realized, had been cut off - as tho lines were down after a storm.... He approached and Viv willingly listened, while he told her that he did not think he was crazy. In fact, he was sure he was sane, and just as sure that everyone ELSE was crazy. A common view-point here. It was easy to see why others might think Spike - "Bean Pole" no longer - belonged in Old Stayquo, Viv's name for the Steuben-Kraft Mental Health Facility on the pine-forested shore of Lake Lakota. Viv's husband, Joe, painter of realistic landscapes a century after realism had gone out of fashion in art circles, and in a part of the country where only sentimental pictures of ducks, deer, barns, and cows were in demand - unwilling - or unable? - to struggle to do what those who could have helped him get them displayed required - whose suicide had triggered Viv's depression and voluntary entry into Steuben-Kraft - used to say of people with regular jobs, homes, and respectability, that they had "found their niche in Old Stayquo." Joe had exhausted Viv - and himself. Tho she had to agree with most of what he said - over and over, unfortunately - until she had begun to number the most frequent sayings. Viv knew why Joe kept saying them: it was because they were true, and no one else was saying them, or would acknowledge their truth when he said them. No one would say "Amen". In fact, everyone else made it a point to say and do things that made it seem that what Joe said - and what was so - was not so. They acted calm and confident. The basis of their getting along together was agreement that what was so was not so. That was the gist of the seventh of Joe's speeches. SPIKE TOLD VIV THAT HE HAD BEEN VISITED by beings from another world, from a vessel far out in space. The Principals - or maybe it was the Principles? - were called P, Q, and R. There were others too, that Spike had not heard from, also called by letters of the alphabet. Our alphabet was left from someone's previous encounter with them, long ago, Spike said gushing with delighted certainty. When Spike would hear from them, their voices were very small, he said, excited, using his hands to help her see and hear what he was imagining, again, as he told her. Very small - and running toward him, from very far away. It would have been such a charming parable, Viv thought - if Spike had not insisted that it was fact. His visitors' means of communication were imperfect, and they were communicating to him from very far away. Tho seen from such a distance that they looked tiny, they were gigantic, relative to humans, they told him. They said that the people of our world were destroying it. Who could argue with that? Spike said he was to lead a small group to a temporary sanctuary, then build a kind of Noah's Ark space vessel. Viv thought Spike's story was crazy. But no crazier than the story almost every man and most women - including those in charge here, of tending to the crazy people - distributing meds, deciding who was cured and who required further attention and incarceration - told themselves about themselves. Spike said he was to use each of the metallic elements - some very rare. Juxtaposed, they would chemically generate an electrical charge that would repel the planet's gravity and the Sun's - so that Spike and those with him could travel thru the Solar System, and beyond it. Space was not empty, cold, and inhospitable - as people, in their upside down and backwards way, had been brain-washed to 'think'. Space was not dark - it was all light. The 'stars' were merely light seen thru pin-pricks in a shell built around this planet we were on - or IN - which was actually Mars, not Earth. The Martians, who had captured and ruled humanity, had purposely filled us with false ideas. That it was Martians, Viv doubted. That people were filled with false ideas, and ruled by those who did the filling, rang true. Spike, of course, had no doubt. Had he not been told it, by creatures who had recognized him as humanity's leader? There were 26 Martians, he said, one for each letter of the alphabet, one to match each of the Principals or Principles, three of whom were Spike's allies. The Martians controlled the great fortunes of our world. They were not the famous people you read or heard about. They were so powerful, that they were able to keep people from knowing their names. In the few cases that they WERE famous - members of royal families - people did not realize that they were among the most powerful beings on the planet. They appeared in self-deprecating roles. If they were queens, they were queens in democracies. They had cover stories. Viv could see sense in all this - also that Spike had no respect for the truth - that he was unscrupulous in creating an alternative reality for himself. But she doubted he could get her into WORSE trouble - and SOME use of mind - just about ANY kind of use of mind - was so refreshing, after - absent Joe - such complete lack of original thinking - and a consensus of white-coated hopelessness. Viv's own notion - that there were some few thoroughly ruthless people - and a larger group of lucky people willing not to challenge, eagerly serving those ruthless people and one another - protected by the law and by superior force - and the rest telling one another and themselves the lie that what they were doing, struggling for what was left, was what they CHOSE to do - left her without energy. And she could not disbelieve it, or find a notion that she could believe, that would energize her. SPIKE WANTED TO BE OUT of Old Stayquo, but was not allowed. He owned some land not far away - bought with money from his dry-cleaning business in Chicago, which he sold when his wife divorced him - how much of THAT was true? Viv wondered - with an old house on it, an old car, furniture, many tools, books, canned goods - assuming THIS part of what he said was true - which assumption Viv decided - sensing an opportunity - to risk. Maybe she had become sufficiently used to the drug she was given daily, so that it no longer overwhelmed her... And maybe - maybe, maybe, maybe! - she did not even have confidence that she understood how WHAT SHE WAS worked - maybe there was enough in her experience in its entirety - which now had managed to get around Joe's death, as an amoeba encompasses a particle, nutritious or otherwise - enough in her experience and how she had so far processed it, that had forward momentum, that was more encouraging than discouraging - like a baby, learning to walk, getting up after a fall... Maybe! Since she had voluntarily entered Old Stayquo, she could leave when she wanted, notwithstanding a doctor's recommendation - which she learned about when she inquired of a white-jacketed aide shortly after arriving and finding that no one was going to help her become more capable of coping - that she be held indefinitely. But Spike had had words with police, and had responded to roughness with roughness - he had used his hands and pathetic muscles, resisting - he could not leave without someone deciding that he was rehabilitated. Viv began to use the tiny hospital library - barely more than a closet, with shelves of books around a small table with one folding chair. For hours at a time - while neither fellow patients nor staff paid any attention to her - she studied the psychological literature upon which the staff were basing their 'understanding' of the patients. Then she worked with Spike on his story, until he was able to talk in such a way that he would seem harmless, to the staff. He had a real talent for saying what he did not believe was so - for acting, for the time, as tho he believed it. Viv mentioned this to him. He smiled - lifting his chin to a noble angle - pleased with himself. Viv coached him to say nothing that conflicted with the views of the staff, and to use the buzzwords of their theories, in such a way that they would 'realize' that he had transformed under their 'care' for the better. After a month of their working together, Spike was released, with a useful disability subsidy - more than $300 a month - from the State of Minnesota. At the same time, Viv left Old Stayquo. THE LITTLE FAR SPIKE OWNED was half-way between the Twin Cities and Frozen Fish - where Viv had been raised, and where she had been visiting when Joe had slit his wrists at a relative's cabin in the woods near the Canadian line. Viv never knew whether the details that came out of Spike were true, or just utterly apt bits of the dark, wonderful parable that he was always elaborating. Now Spike, Viv, and Elaine went to Spike's land, Spike - chain-smoking cigarettes - driving them in a ridiculously long old car, telling about his father, who, Spike said, kept books for Mafia-owned restaurants - fronts - in Chicago, and who always put down Spike's ideas - Spike had wanted to be a concert pianist - and insisted that he get a conventional man's job and life and wife, 'succeed'. Little Elaine - tho it seemed to Viv that she had grown an inch or two, and her blond hair was darkening - all eyes, looking thru the car windows at the country thru which they were passing, and ears for what Spike was saying - was Viv's and Joe's child. Viv felt terrible about deserting Elaine - after Joe's suicide, when Elaine most needed support. (Their life together had not been easy anyway - just getting enough food.) But Viv had left Elaine with HER mother, Fran - feeling incapable of even taking care of herself - and Viv's younger brothers, whom Viv had seen Elaine shy from, when Viv had come for Elaine in Frozen Fish. Elaine had always continuously chirped delighted observations, Viv thought - noticing that, now, Elaine was careful, uncomplaining, but serious, wary - keeping her own counsel. SPIKE UNROLLED HUNDREDS OF YARDS of copper wire, cut it into two inch long pieces, bent the pieces into spirals, and glued them to walls, to utensils, and under each cup and dish - none of which were part of a set. He was converting a small trailer (lined with copper) - attached to his old car - into the space vehicle. Car batteries powered strings of little red, green, blue, and yellow Christmas-tree lights, inside. On the ceiling was a large map of the constellations - with spirals of copper wire glued to it here and there, apparently randomly. And Spike attached copper spirals to every shirt and pair of pants he owned, to the soles of his shoes, and Viv's and Elaine's, and underneath the drawers of dressers, and to the tops of cabinets... Copper would disrupt electronic surveillance by the government or by the Catholic Church. The steeple of every church was a receiving and broadcasting station, he said. And surveillance by extra-terrestrials other than his aliens - by the 26 Martians and those, so many aggressively normal people, in their employ. While Viv was sewing, and repairing shelves and cabinets and tables and chairs, and washing surfaces long abandoned to mice and the remnants of occasional human gatherings - and attempting to calm Elaine and to re-establish a relationship of trust and hope - Spike was scouting for talent, extraordinary young people, mainly students at the community college where Viv had now begun to take classes - a "busy little student," as Spike put it, sneering. "You're not going to learn anything that will do any good", he would say. "You have the qualities I need, to be one of the 12 whose energies, juxtaposed, will make our escape from the planet possible. You're Viv, V, the Valve." Most people Spike approached quickly backed away. But some found him educational or amusing, if dangerous, and visited the farm once or twice - using it as a getaway from the mundane routines of family, school, town, jobs - and completely unsatisfactory expectations - in the years in which the war in Indochina went on and on despite continual losses by U.S. and South Vietnamese troops, and bigger and bigger student protests in the U.S., then the shooting of student protesters at Kent State by state army reservists, and the immediate, and unending, totally sober silence that followed. Some were so desperate that, like Viv, they spent time learning Spike's ideas, half-investing themselves in his plans - but leaving themselves an out - so that Spike came to think of them as spies and enemies. But, at first, when he seemed to have landed a live one, he would say, "You're an Ion, not an Ian." "What does that mean?" asked quiet James Pollard, a serious student - dark, spectacled son of the president of the Frozen Fish National Bank, always roaming around town on his bicycle, briefly visiting each of the brightest young people, then, uncommitted, restlessly pedaling on - today a highly respected, if eccentric, surgeon and chain smoker, at Dade County Presbyterian in Miami. "Look at all the words that end in i-o-n or i-a-n", Spike said. "Those endings MEAN something. There are no accidents. Ians are controlled. Ions INITIATE." SPIKE GREW MORE AND MORE DESPERATE, as others would not drop what they were doing with their lives, to join him and Viv and Elaine on the farm - tho they would drive in, share a meal, walk in the woods, smoke a joint. Spike knew what they were doing, tho they tried to hide it from him. He hated all drugs, especially the lithium he had been dosed with at Old Stayquo - he had joyfully adopted Viv's nickname for the place - which had shut down the voices, and numbed him. Spike had planted rows of saplings and built a tower from old windmill parts - he wanted to power the place using static electricity from the atmosphere, as Tesla had suggested, but the power barons had thwarted him, there being no profit in it for them, he told Viv - who listened with dread to his recitation - an epic with episodes apparently without limit - of the defeat of the initiatives of promethean reason. He erected a well-coppered sign at the gate, which said 'THE I'LL OF MAN' and painted a series of wonderful drawings of spiral galaxies, which he insisted were NOT art, in three big hard-bound sketch-books, and on the walls of the basement of the main building, where he spent a great deal of time performing chemical experiments, using commonly available cleansers, dyes, inks, foods. Teens from neighboring farms drove by honking their horns and yelling, "Hey, Spaceman!" in the middle of the night. Viv had schoolwork to do, and Elaine - who oscillated between bright, joyful serenity and sobbing panics - to care for. Viv struggled to extract herself from Spike's ravings - he drank coffee and smoked cigarettes and talked most nights. Viv wanted time to simplify and organize her own thoughts and emotions that occasionally broke thru with a force that would have thrown her into panics like Elaine's, but which she could not - because of Elaine - allow herself. She was beginning to dream, FORWARD, of a little house she could control - she had have to own it, she supposed - she knew nothing of the mechanics of loans and mortgages, yet - for herself and Elaine - and maybe, eventually, for other serious people who wanted a brief refuge, to think thru THEIR own serious purposes, without anyone insisting they compete, or act up-beat, or subordinate themselves to crazy dead norms, or to something with manic energy equally crazy. She wanted to get some sleep before morning - when she had to coordinate her activities with others, to attend classes, earn credits, earn money. She had taken a part-time job selling men's clothing from behind a glass counter at The Crystal Store, on Main Street, in Frozen Fish. None of which meant anything to Spike. There was a lot to be accomplished and not much time; besides, it was such a RELIEF, articulating his story. "P, Q, and R show them to me," he said of the pictures of the spiral galaxies. "I'm just the camera. They're the galaxies we'll pass. See how each has three legs curling out like nines from the center of the spiral? This is the beginning of our road map. It's coming in - in bits and pieces. The communication process is so imperfect." Spike bought a shot gun, and in the middle of one night when the neighbor kids were driving around in the driveway hooting "spaceman!" and honking, he fired - over their heads, he told Viv, after they had sped away. VIV TOOK ELAINE TO FROZEN FISH, and rented an apartment above an old house near the community college. She was determined now to study to become a nurse, to earn her living - and some control over her life - helping people in the world the way it was. Viv's mother, Fran, still raising the youngest of her ten children, was willing to care for Elaine, too, while Viv was in classes, or working at The Crystal. Viv had only recently been in rebellion against Fran - always in the home cleaning and cooking and picking up after the children - but now saw that her mother's kindness was not accidental, not mere docility - but a manifestation of decision and will. At the Crystal, Viv's boss, Al Zatori, had put Viv in charge of selling men's clothing. He invited her to come with the others who were in charge of departments, on a buying trip. Al at the wheel, Viv the only woman, the other buyers in back - all young men, either awkward or bold, flirting with her - they went in Al's van, to Chicago. Red-haired, middle-aged, chubby, and relaxed - Al - who was dating Viv's co-worker, Annie - sang songs from the musical "Oklahoma!" as he drove them thru the dark, which was punctuated by the lights of other cars and of windows of houses in the small towns thru which they passed, then into the dawn: snow flurries blew across fields with hay bales, silos, and small herds of black and white Holstein cows keeping close together. Just north of downtown Chicago, Al put them up in an elegant little hotel not far from Lake Michigan. After a walking tour of the Near North district, and a fancy meal - on Al - Viv admired the elegant furnishings in her room - and the lobby, people in sharply-creased suits, the sparkling city at night, lit-up windows of tall buildings, vibrant signs demanding attention for all kinds of competing merchandise and entertainment, and the sky-line. Viv and Al admired it all from where the Lake slapped a cement pier, and hundreds of small, anchored sail-boats bobbed - sails down, masts bare. At the fine restaurant where they met for several meals, Al paid for everything. He insisted that Viv not be shy about getting exactly what she wanted from the waiter, who was inclined to be cavalier with her. She had begun to blush, when Al broke in with a loud "Whoa!" - directing the waiter to slow down, behave politely, and wait - and Viv to gather herself, and remember that she was the customer and in charge, and that Al would not let her get away with anything but doing it right. In the morning, they crossed the Chicago River - tall buildings on either side. Viv saw a dozen bridges - half to her left, half to her right - opening from the middle, allowing deep-honking boats to go thru. An elevated train roared past, and around the corner of a big brick building. They went into the enormous Merchandise Mart, where eager men and women in elegant showrooms showed her the clothing they hoped she would choose to take back to Frozen Fish. It was up to her! Choices! But they made most of their purchases, finally, in the shabbiest of the showrooms - even if it had windows thru which the river flashed in sunlight - with a weasely fellow Al seemed to know from way back, who was selling clothes that were made in Asia, with labels less well known than the far more expensive things, mostly British, they'd seen til then - but which were made just as well, of the same sort and quality of material - Viv handled it with pleasure - and from patterns that might have been the same. VIV HEARD THAT SPIKE WAS BACK in Old Stayquo, then that he was out. He showed up at The Crystal, to tell her that he had rented an apartment in town, that he had agreed to take medication which he had no intention of taking, that he had been given a bigger allowance from the State of Minnesota. "You can't visit me here!" Viv said. "I'll lose my job. Don't you have any sense of what's appropriate?" "Appropriate..." he scoffed. "I have a daughter to provide for. I have to earn a living." "They've got you." "No one's got me. I have to make a living. That's the way it is. You're doing us harm. Leave us alone. Leave me alone!" Spike left. But he kept calling on the phone. He would wake Viv out of a precious dream - in which Viv was building a house, nailing planks to the frame, under a starry sky, while Elaine slept on the floor of a 'room' whose walls were still bare frame - to rant about the Catholic Church and the Martians and how she needed copper wire between her and the rays coming out of the gold cross atop Saint Rita's steeple... Viv kept hanging up on him. ELAINE - SWEET, SINGING, and PLAYING ELAINE - had begun to hang around, smoking cigarettes, with a bunch of girls whose self-destructive rebelliousness disturbed Viv. At school, Elaine complained, kids called her Hoser. "Hoosier?" Viv asked. "Hoser! Aren't you listening?" Viv gathered that boys Elaine was trying to please led her on, then discarded her, when she would not go 'all the way'. Elaine had begun to crawl thru the window, and disappear, sometimes all night. Viv did not think that Elaine was going to school. Viv remembered her mother, Fran, when Viv had snuck out of the house to hang around with her 'friends' - boys and girls her own age, looking for action - when Viv was a young teen (but Elaine was not even a teen yet!) telling her: "Some day you'll have a daughter, and you'll know what what you're doing feels like to me. You'll see." "Time's on your side, Elaine", Viv told her now. "Don't make what could be nice dirty. Don't do anything until you're sure you want to." "I can't do ANYTHING", Elaine said. "Get a life yourself. I'm sick of trying. The teachers don't care. The boys are all junk. You're screwed up, and don't care..." "Elaine - if you fail, will that hurt the boys, or you? Will it hurt the teachers, or will it hurt you? I care - but you're right, I DO have a lot on my mind." "Oh, a lot on your MI-I-I-IND!" "You think I don't know how bad it is? I do know. It's even worse than you think it is. But that's why you have to struggle to DO something. What's happening automatically is going to waste you. You have to go AGAINST what's happening. You have to DO SOMETHING - on purpose." "You mean, stuff myself with ice-cream, and fall asleep in front of the television?" said Elaine and stormed out. A POLICEMAN CAME TO THE DOOR of the apartment. Viv's hair was in curlers; she was half-asleep. 'Oh, Elaine!' Viv thought, her heart racing. 'What have I done?' Viv had fallen asleep. The television was humming, the screen a gray and staticky storm. 'What time is it?' ('What year is it?' asked a mocking voice.) She'd been waiting for Elaine to come home. Elaine had not come h ome. I'm fat, Viv thought - whose looks had so recently been so exciting to so many boys, then young men - suddenly, imagining herself thru the eyes of the policeman, who was waiting for her to understand that he was asking her if she knew Spike - and I'M A FOOL. I'M NOT YOUNG. I'M NOWHERE - and NOBODY CAN HELP ME GET ANYWHERE. "Yes", she said carefully. "I know him." (Did this have anything to do with Elaine, or not?) "He keeps bothering me." "Well, he won't be bothering you any more, Ma'am. He drove in front of a truck. He's dead." "You're kidding," Viv said, recognizing as she said it, a phrase from her childhood. "ANOTHER DAMN DODGE!" she accused herself, indignantly. "We don't kid, Ma'am. We found your name and address on a piece of paper in his pocket." He showed it to her: 'Viv, V, Valve, 1406 Elm, 946-8881' it said among some spirals. "He didn't have a wallet. Are you a relative? Or do you know who we should contact to identify the body?" WE DON'T KID, MA'AM. WE DON'T KID, MA'AM. WE DON'T KID, MA'AM. Viv remembered these words, as you occasionally remember the words to a pop song, when... When it seemed that Elaine was determined to throw herself away, yelling at Viv, mutilating herself - she cut her wrists with a razor blade, only not fatally, as Joe had done - allowing worthless boys to use her, in fury at the dead-ends presented to her to adjust to, so blandly and universally. When Viv did not think she could go on - upbeat for customers - hurrying to and from evening classes - shopping, cleaning, trying to keep track of Elaine, eating the cheapest foods, studying half the night. When Frank came into Viv's life - she helped him, when he came into The Crystal, saying he needed "a goddamn jacket and tie for a job interview" - and it felt like Viv would live happily ever after - until she began to understand HIS torment. Should not life be like a straight line, or smooth curve? Viv wondered - a development? - the making of a fortune, the invention of an engine, the creation of a statue or a nation - or a complete coming-apart, a revolution, wiping-out what is wrong, a fresh start? How did it keep being a series of complications, unsatisfactory, without resolution, and apparently without SENSE? When Viv managed to get thru college. She was living with Frank, and Frank was working as a designer at a box factory - his consulting business, environmentally sustainable production, having failed - and was kind to her, and concerned about Elaine. He tried, several times, to talk to Elaine about her future - but Elaine took every opportunity to disrespect him, and was missing, more than accounted for. Then Viv began to work as a nurse, and discovered how competent she was, and how she was able to cheer up suffering people with her caring inquiries, and by applying a few principles and procedures - and that she could help the less well organized nurses also help patients; Viv became a leader. When Frank cut the cord of Elaine's stereo - Elaine had reduced Viv to tears with insults, when Viv and Frank showed up at the house unexpectedly - and told Elaine - in front of her astounded, insolent girl friends, who had filled the house the cigarette smoke, and who had not meant to be discovered - their game was always to be where parents were not - that she was no better than the people she and her friends were so clever at putting down, and would certainly amount to LESS than Viv had already made of herself - and to SHAPE UP - and Viv nearly threw him out - so intense was her instinct to defend Elaine - but did not. When a good job (or so it seemed to Viv) that Frank had applied for - assistant to the president of a competing box factory - finally came thru - and their finances were picking up, so that Viv bought an old, house, idiosyncratically-built by the previous owner - tho, for some reason, Frank was against it, maintaining, stoutly, that the income was temporary, that he intended, soon, to start doing something - equivalent to her schooling - more likely to be a drain than a contribution. When Elaine graduated from high school, got married, got a job she liked, selling electronics at the mall, and seemed to become a cheerful conventional young wife - her negativity gone as suddenly as it had appeared - and began taking college courses at night, then full-time, working at the electronics store only part-time. When Frank quit his job - over Viv's fearful and tearful objections - and started a business installing computers in people's homes - saying that this, too, was only temporary. When Elaine's marriage turned rocky, then her husband left her, and Elaine, now fat, in her mid-twenties, moved back in with Viv and Frank - she had only a semester left to go of college... but now she thought that everything she had done so far had come to nothing, and Frank re-assured her, and Viv re-assured her. When Elaine lost forty pounds, became girlish and happy again, was dating a polite young man, Sal, who had a house-moving business. When Viv's mother, Fran, was rushed to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester for quadruple heart surgery - and Viv drove all night thru a blizzard to be with her - and stayed a week, til Fran was out of danger. It wasn't the life Viv had hoped for or imagined - or as bad as what she had feared. It was beyond her control. WE DON'T KID, MA'AM. Viv tore up floors and walls, and re-did them - Elaine's Sal was a big help. There was wiring and plumbing and painting to do. As Viv watched, thru the living room picture window, an eagle coasting above the beautful, but PCB-polluted river that ran by, right in front of the house - she and Frank had taken out a quarter of a million dollar mortgage ($86,000 the bank, and everyone except Frank, called it - the principle, that is, without the interest) for the privilege of living in and fixing up - she wondered if this could be the house she had dreamed of, and if her life, and Frank's, and Elaine's could somehow become... satisfactory. Frank turned fifty, sold his business, and started learning everything he could about solar energy. "Great!" Viv said. He muttered that others would make things a lot worse than he could improve them. "We'll miss you," Frank said, when Elaine moved out, to get her own apartment. "Sal is a good person", Viv told Elaine. "So is Frank", Elaine told Sal. "We're a couple of saps", Frank told Viv. "You patch people up who are going to do what they have been doing, and I'll help them do it more efficiently. And the people who thrive at everyone else's expense make out like bandits, and just when everybody is about to be bad enough off to see it and learn to do what it takes to change it, about ten million more people suddenly find a new technology to get rich off, out of a billion people competing for the riches, and everything goes merrily along." Viv cried. Then they hugged and kissed, watching sun go down over river. Viv dreamed about the house to which people with serious purposes would come to re-group and re-dedicate themselves. Frank could not sleep, and could not concentrate on solar energy, or on how to organize his new business. The damn taxes, accounting for everything, to pay the damn taxes, he was thinking. The destroyers so well organized - the others... the innocent deluded, the righteous isolated... He paced - trying to keep quiet, so Viv could sleep. How? he was wondering. How? --------------------------------------------------------------------------- uXu #534 Underground eXperts United 2000 uXu #534 http://www.uXu.org/ - info@uxu.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

← Svenska e-zines (1990-2008)