M**p M**p

Alberta: A Prophecy

 

Once I dug deep holes for oil,

Holes for oil, holes for oil,

Once I dug deep holes for oil,

In Alberta-land.

 

Digging narrow, digging deep,

Digging deep, digging deep,

Digging narrow, digging deep,

In Alberta's land.

 

Then the price of oil did drop

Oil did drop, oil did drop,

Then the price of oil did drop.

In Alberta-land.

 

And then we changed the government,

Government, government,

Then we changed the government,

In Alberta-land.

 

Thought we'd try the NDP,

NDP, NDP,

Thought we'd try the NDP,

In Alberta-land.

 

Free elections came no more,

Came no more, came no more,

Free elections came no more,

To Alberta-land.

 

Prices rose  but not the Rose,

Not the Rose, not the Rose,

Prices rose but not the Rose,

In Alberta-land.

 

Free marketing came to an end,

To an end, To an end,

Free marketing came to an end,

In Alberta-land.

 

Education camps were built,

Camps were built, camps were built,

Education camps were built,

In Alberta-land.

 

Now I'm digging wide mass graves,

Wide mass graves, wide mass graves,

Now I'm digging wide mass graves,

In Alberta-land.

 

Digging shallow, digging wide,

Digging wide, digging wide,

Digging shallow, digging wide,

In Alberta's land.

 

*

 

What do I have to say about Reality?

I guess I've had a passing acquaintance with him all my life.

People would mention him, and I'd nod. (I guess that means I had a 'nodding' acquaintance with him, doesn't it?)

People would mention him--Reality--and I'd say, "Yeah, I know him. I know him well."

I never got into specifics, of course.

He was like some famous guy I knew from tv. A politician or something.

I'd seen him in person, of course, every once in a while. Every couple years I'd find myself running into him. Or like seeing him from across a room at a funeral parlour.

We never spoke but I didn't think that mattered much. Hey, there's some things, some relationships, that seem to take care of themselves.

He's like a low-maintenance boyfriend.

So I was up late last night drinking and playing Civilization V when there's a knock at the door. Standing there there's this guy all in black and he has this big blade thing he's carrying. He says, in a dry and ashen voice, "Dost thou know me? I am ... Reality."

I said, "Wow. You look very very different close up!"

 

*

 

Downtown Alley, Season Five Episode Five

 

After the robbery and shootout the Earl of Grantham awakens in a puddle of vomit and vows revenge against his neighbour Lord Gillingham and extended family. Lady Edith tries some new drugs with the Dowager Countess of Grantham and Isobel Crawley, resulting in a quick visit to A&E due to a nervous collapse on the part of Isobel. Whilst there, the Dowager Countess manages to steal many scripts and script-papers. Ivy Stuart and Beryl Patmore do their taxes to discover they must work harder, much harder. Lady Mary gives birth to her ninth child, paternity unknown, and registers the child with social services. The Countess of Grantham drinks too much and falls asleep in front of the telly, starting a fire which is quickly subdued. The welfare checks arrive. The Earl of Grantham and Lady Mary rush to the bottle shop whilst the Countess of Grantham and the Dowager Countess seek out more of the new drug. Elsie Hughes is robbed at gunpoint. Lord Gillingham acquires a semi-automatic pistol only to fall asleep and have it stolen by his youngest son. Lady Edith speed-dials an abortionist. Tom Branson stands for Labour in the district.

 

*

 

"Of all the governmental systems in all the world, she walks into mine. My governmental system, I mean."

The memorandial briefing paper slipped from his hands and hit the floor with a thud.

He had spoken aloud, unconsciously, as a gaffe. He read the glowing neon wired over her head. Official Opposition.

Why here? Why not Australia, or India, or England, or New Zealand, or Russia, or South Africa? He answered his own question quickly: "She'd not a citizen of those places."

Remember the eighties? Running through manmade parks happy as the day was long. Taverns with seas of pilsner. Inappropriate boners.

Had she seen him? Did she know he was going to be there? Has she forgotten me?

He rose and called out, "House, I want to table a bill right now. I want it to be a bill to ... get the phone numbers of all the members present and put them into a directory."

Someone threw a Parliamentary Directory at him.

"Oh, yes, of course." He sat blushing down again.

He kicked his desk and wanted to cry.

Faulkner said the past isn't dead. It's not even past. Of course he also said, "As I Lay Dying."

 

*

 

I'm not one for speeches. But this is my daughter I'm talking about, so.... Waiter, cut that guy off! Too much ... noise here, yeah. Where was I? My daughter, my daughter.... So let's see.... Of course she was different, she was my daughter after all. Always moody, always morose, not a joiner, like, out of touch with the world, you know? We thought it was just adolescence, didn't we, hon? And then it dawned on us, or rather there was a dawn that illuminated us as we were standing.... Lost my train of thought. Yes, the doctor. He was all serious when he told us what was what. But we were: at last! It couldn't have made us happier. An affliction in the family! My wife and me, we're real healthy, see? Nothing wrong with us at all. Don't cry! But still, no good conditions in our so-called happy home. So when the good doctor said, "It's coeliac disease," we said--and I quote--"Then it's time for a party!" And so, here we are. It's a kind of a maturity party, isn't it? I wonder if other cultures do this kind of thing. Anyway, drink up, and celebrate!

 

*

 

The Man Who Couldn't Not Stop Thinking About Sex

 

"I went to doctors," he told me. "There was something wrong with me."

He told me he went to see some doctors about his condition. Three specialists were called in. What was his problem?

He told them, "It's tearing me apart. I can't seem to not stop thinking about sex."

"That's perfectly normal," said the first specialist. "More people can't stop thinking about sex."

"That's not it," said my friend. "I can't keep myself from not thinking about sex."

"O!" said the specialist. "You wish you could-"

The third specialist said, "Let me get this straight. You're not thinking about sex all the time, and you want to keep yourself from not thinking about sex."

The first specialist said, "That's a very serious problem!"

The second said, "Is it something from you childhood? From playing doctor with girls?"

"I have no idea. I can't think about it at all."

The third said, "This is one for the medical books."

And the first said, "I can't deal with freaks."

Three days later, my friend was hit my a car. I suspect it was because he was too busy not thinking about sex.

 

*

 

On the 7th of August, the King and his Lady attended a show of variety acts at the Old Bedford. Much was made by the royal couple of the performances of Liszt and Handel; after the intermission, a most curious magic act performed, and the King and his Lady were invited up on stage to participate in what those "in the know" call "close magic." On a raised dais there appeared to be five supine forms beneath a clean linen sheet. The magician drew away this cloth to reveal five lovely ladies in the altogether. The royal couple were invited to examine carefully the ladies, leaving no crevice unprobed. After this examination was performed to everyone's satisfaction, the magician took the hands of the first lady and raised her to her feet. Where she lay there was now a snow-white dove. In a similar fashion the magician raised up the other four ladies, revealing, in turn, a bag of golden coins, three rabbits, a watercolour landscape painting, and a necklace (which was thereupon presented to the King's Lady). All agreed it was an astonishing bit of trickery, and the magician was promised a Baronhood and a Command Performance in future.

 

*

 

Everybody wants to excel, don't they? But Jones, newspaperman Jones, went farther than anyone.

We couldn't figure out how he could write so much so presciently. He knew the victims of earthquakes before anyone else did, he conned out election results first, he was on the scene at fenderbenders and bicycle collisions before anyone else even knew. Then there was the writing: everything was always perfect. And yet there were a couple tolls to be paid. He appeared to age quickly, and after six months of this we, as a group, had to murder him.

That was when we found out what he was doing. He was ahead of everyone chronologically. He'd built himself a fast plane capable of going around the world in twelve hours. Every day he'd travel east to west. Across the International Date Line, he'd wind up one day later. He'd find the news and send it to us by Internet. Of course he'd look older by the time he landed to check in at meetings and stuff. Plus he had more time to write and edit. It was a pretty ingenious plan, always one day ahead. You have to kill someone who cheats like that.

 

*

 

We were on the ninth floor of the big mall at the corner of Yonge and Dundas, over-looking Yonge Dundas Square below. I was drinking beer and she was drinking wine. We were watching the people so far below, crossing the Square willy-nilly. All of them were going about their lives completely unaware there was anyone looking down on them at all. This was summer, and they were all dressed summery. I said, "Look at them, un-co-ordinated, moving by chance. Just pure chance. Pure chance that brought us together."

She said, "All just chance."

Then I gasped as I gazed. "Did you just see that?"

She asked, "What?"

I gasped again. "For just the briefest moment, everyone down there spelled out a name. Just for a second, they all arranged themselves, almost like pixels on a computer screen, spelling out a name."

"What name?"

I looked at her. "Your name. First, last. They all spelled out your name."

She blushed. "You're lying."

"No, I'm not."

This happened twenty years ago. It was enough to get her to marry me.

I'd lied about it a little. I hadn't dared to tell her that they'd spelled out her name in cursive italic.

 

*

 

M**p M**p

 

Wile E. Coyote looks into his cupboard and sees an open can of imitation roadrunner meat. He sighs.

"Wile E. Coyote has been unsuccessfully hunting roadrunner for fifty years now. It's not the work he's bothered by. It's something else."

"I just think it's hate speech, pure and simple."

FROM YOUTUBE: "M**p m**p" (bleeped).

"It's a taunt. And it's so obviously racist."

Coyote with lawyer, at computer, screen shows lawsuit COYOTE VS ROADRUNNER.

"Mr. Coyote is filing a federal suit aimed at stopping this abuse. And he can point to recent events."

"We've seen, from Garland, from outside the BMO Field, that words do just as much damage--if not more--as physical injury. I feel the pain I feel is worse than I feel when an anvil drives my head into pavement or when I run full-speed into a wall painted like it's a tunnel."

"Law's on his side, says this credentialed man."

CREDENTIALED MAN: "In this day and age, why do we let such bigotry continue? Words have power. Structural privilege. Triggering. Homophobia. Poisoned atmospheres. Work stress. Speciesism. List. Etc."

"I'm filing this for my children's children."

"No roadrunners could be caught up with for comment."

 

*

 

We tied his arms down. I neatly cut down a couple centimetres from exposed wrist to exposed shoulders and I cut the radius of the wrists and shoulders. My nurse took the shoulder edges in both hands--he's a brawny one--and peeled the arm like an unripe banana. I cut a radius around his thigh and ankles and from each to each five centimetres. My nurse pulled off the skin of his legs. The screaming didn't bother us. It was time for some internal surgery. I picked up my rib-cutter.

So long as you don't disturb the circulation of the blood you can take anything out of a person. I started by cutting out his kidneys. "Not like you're gonna use 'em anymore, eh Dzhokhar? I'm gonna feed 'em to my swine."

I cut out one of his lungs while taping up the holes so he wouldn't pass out.

"I'm cutting out his tongue," I said. My nurse prepped. I cut out his tongue.

I was attracted to his hands, so I madly slashed at them both, cutting them to loose chunks of meat.

We didn't record the time of death. We tossed him our into the pig trough.

 

*

 

 (I'll have to put this on radio somehow.) Yoo-hoo, aliens. We all know you're out there and that you're hearing me, probably in the distant future, after I'm dead. I read today that people all over the world are hearing weird noises in the sky. Is that you? Have you sent some ships already? Well, we know you haven't developed radio communications yet--for we'd have known about you long ago. So you can't hear us talking to you--yet. But one day you will. (Maybe we'll have to introduce you to the technology.) But of course it has to be said--this is well known--you're incredibly hostile to us, and we should be incredibly hostile to you.

We'll have our troubles. (Who doesn't?) The zoöcryptology will be difficult on both sides. Then we'll have the battle of who'll eat whom. Hopefully we'll find each other indigestible. (Why should we think you'll be carbon-based?) We'll trade our technologies, we'll introduce you to Shakespeare and Beethoven and you'll introduce us to whatever gawdawful crap you read and listen to. Sure we'll have some major compatibility issues. But we'll all be Christians I guess so it'll be cool in the end.

 

*

 

This is another day of a life that's being wasted away by me.

I have nothing to look forward to. I have no kids (and I never will), I have no car (and I never will), and I have no house (and I never will).

I have thinning hair, an occasional pain in my side, scabby feet, too much shit, and my eyes are going downhill.

In fifty years, no-one will even know I ever existed; in fifty years, no-one will know how often I wished myself dead.

Apparently I'm supposed to realized we're all in the same boat that's going nowhere even though it's following a chart we can all easily see everywhere we look.

But you know that's other people. It's not me. So it doesn't count.

I'll go to sleep in a couple hours and wake up again and again and again, with the problem of death getting graver and graver every day.

Oh and I haven't mentioned my blood pressure is high.

So what is this beast I'm pointlessly clinging to? How do I manage to get out of bed? Why do I go in to work every day? Why am I writing this fourth-wall break?

 

*

 

"This war is going badly, men," said Major Jack Dodds to his boys. "We're incapable of discerning what the enemy is likely to do. Really, we have no idea. He's said something about exterminating us all, but that can't be the case. They'd have to be ... I don't know ... barbarians or something. (Apologies to those of you who self-identify as barbarians, BTW.) In any case, we know that we are the problem, not them. So: the enemy is out there, looking at us, hating us ... reasonably. But what can we do about it? We're broadcasting our self-loathing day and night, we're practically giving them out nuclear codes so we can be blown up in our sleep, and yet.... So, the enemy is up to something--apologies for the binarism--and we want to help him do his thing, but we have such bad intelligence we don't know how to help him. This is the dilemma of modern war. We're studying the methodology of mass suicide, I'll let you well know. We're trying to make it somehow 'sporting.' Until that time, my door is always open. Come on in and have a good cry whenever you want to."

 

*

 

I have heard a touching though unverifiable story about this Melephenes of Rhodes. It seems he had an unsanctioned appetite for a lovely by the name of Helenios. At a banquet they managed to slip away undetected and make it to the beach of a lake where many swam unclothed. Melephenes and Helenios were unable to disrobe, however, for naked bathers were (and are) sacred to Helios, and they didn't need that kind of pressure. So they swam in their underthings, petting one another subaqueously. Abandoning the beach, they sought a grotto for their pleasures but could not find a spot isolated enough for naught but pomegranate and plantain polishing and probing: interesting enough, but not completely satisfying. The day was getting on. They were expected back by their respective spouses. Helenios decided to change out of her soggy drawers at a handy change-room for women. Melephenes, outside, decided to surprise her. He entered the change-room and drew back the curtain of the stall: there was Helenios, entirely naked. She didn't move to cover herself. Melephenes let the curtain drop, and waited outside. For the rest of his life he regretted his caution. It would have been a wonderful fuck.

 

*

 

It all came to pass. Nuclear winter. Most of the plants and animals died. We reverted to barbarism. My name is Max so they call me Mad Max. Seems there was a movie called Mad Max way back when. I've heard the story a thousand times, the stories of that movie and the 'sequels.' They were all driving around like crazy, just like we're doing today. All we have are the oil refineries. We're living in tribes and stuff: apparently that was all in the movies too. We barrelhouse all over the place, there's only oil and gas, no electricity. The movie-makers were pretty prescient. Water's a commodity, and women are a commodity too. We fight like hell over them. I'm pretty sure that some Troy-like battle is going to erupt over some babe any day now. We plan our battles at night by kerosene. We're an ugly and nasty lot. We've got good cooks, though. They can make even the most gristly lad palatable. That's it: meat, meat, meat. I understand the movies were wrong about this. They didn't eat people! Can you believe it? It was one of our first adaptations to this environment. Would have died otherwise....

 

*

 

I have been asked to elucidate rumours, for the elucidation of rumours is the name of my game, concerning the Menippean custom of toenail sacrifice. Though I shall not reveal the sacred origins of the custom, I can describe the ritual, allowing the braver amongst you to risk the anathema that may result from defying the everlasting Gods.

Toenail clippings are never discarded. Each citizen of Menippia, male and female, free and slave, is taught to preserve his clippings as records no less vital than ties of kinship and caste are to those of us in the civilized world. Each individual collects his clippings in a hinged box suitable to his station--some are of plain sandalwood, some are ebony with lacquered inlay mosaic--which is kept not near the household shrine but rather near his bedding place. The box need not be taken on brief journeys if one believes he will return home before his toenails need clipping--but woe betide any who clip their toenails not within sight of their boxes!

The boxes are eventually buried, box and all, with the ashes of the cremated individual. The cemeteries allow each individual a plot equal to thrice box size.

The Rug

Because Mrs. Tina Smith wanted nothing so much as to be alone after the sham event that stood as placeholder for a proper funeral for her younger son, she wanted to be dropped off by Deacon Jim right directly in front of her rowhouse. The number of police cars and forensic vans along the street had lessened considerably overnight so Deacon Jim stopped the car such that she could not have been closer to her front door. She got out of the car without a word of a thank-you and got to her front door before any members of the reporter-camp pitched two hundred yards up the block knew what was what, but then as she was putting the key into the lock she heard a shout from up the block--There she is!--. Quickly she got into her house and closed the door and locked it. Slowly she took off her coat and put it on a coathanger and hung the coathanger and coat on a coathook. At an easy pace she went into the livingroom and sat down on the couch and looked at the rug under her feet. For no good reason she thought about the stain on the rug. It was right under her, that rusty stain they'd purposefully hidden the couch. It was as if she felt the aura of the rugstain, which was directly under her butt, directly under the couch, reach up into her mind and cause her to see things in the grandest scale possible; she saw her self when she had been five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, and now thirty; she saw her husband and she saw her older son and she saw her daughter too. Yet she still had the feeling that all of that--what she considered to be the centre of her universe--wasn't the centre of her universe at all. She felt like some moon of Jupiter--assuming there are moons of Jupiter. The rug was a ghastly thing. Darren had brought it home some time months ago, maybe a year ago. He'd bought it for fifty bucks. A dead woman's possessions, all her possessions, had been sold at one go by her son and daughter to the shop. He'd said it was an Asian rug. He'd said that the rest of the stuff was exotic too, like the old woman's father, grandfather?, had been some big time world traveller. Darren had claimed the rug because the livingroom needed one and why spend five hundred dollars when the only problem was a brownish stain in one corner that could easily hide under the couch?

Meanwhile, in another part of the cosmos (go up seven levels of reality and down three and you'll be there), in a part I can't exactly describe except to say that souls existed there, a different woman employing an elaborate media system was watching the woman who was sitting on the couch. The colours of that part of the couch were all awry, like a fanciful fog of djinn dust in a Disney film, all purple and green and yellow and pink flowing around and about in eddies almost like fingers though of course they weren't fingers really, no. The woman who was watching couldn't stop herself from remembering what had happened to her just five days earlier. It had turned from an overcast day to a sunny day, from nineteen degrees to twenty-six degrees, on that Saturday morning. At one-thirty that afternoon, she was chopping up onions and carrots in the kitchen. A car backfired somewhere and she remembered a car her father had had back in the seventies, an old car it was, with frequent backfire. She thought, Isn't it odd that the problem of automobile backfires have been more or less solved? Not completely, of course. Someone's antique auto I suppose. She was making an elaborate chicken pot pie, for no-one but herself. A few minutes later she heard someone knocking at the front door. She wiped her hands on a towel and went out into the hallway. Yes, someone big was at the door. It turned out to be--Michael--from down the street. She said, "Hello, Michael. Is everything okay?" He didn't look at all okay. He looked like he was in shock or maybe even in a trance or on drugs. He smiled--his eyes looked like they were seeing right through her, or past her--and said, "Everything's fine, Mrs. Anne. Well, not completely. Is your husband home? What about your daughter?" She said her husband was out on a fishing trip, and her baby daughter was sleeping upstairs. Michael laughed a little and said, "Two out of three." He shoved her into the house. The screen door closed behind him. He shoved her again, into the livingroom. "What are you doing?" she cried. "Just ... something," he said. He shoved her onto the couch and from behind him from somewhere he suddenly had a gun. "Okay now," he said, and shot her in the face.

Two weeks before that happened, down the street, at around four in the afternoon, Tom and Liz were in Liz's bedroom, at the computer, editing together a supercut of blowjobs and facials set to the intermezzo of Cavalleria Rusticana. Tom had come home from university for the weekend; Liz was trying to find herself really. In any case, they were browsing through all sorts of websites, avoiding paywalls and popups and phishers and phonies, looking for as much as they could download for free (which wasn't that hard to do). Tom, a bit sweaty, a bit hungry, decided to get something from the kitchen so he went down the stairs into the livingroom where he found his younger brother Mike sitting on the couch staring at nothing and of a little bitter pale shade. "Hey Mike." Tom shrugged and went into the kitchen. A second after he opened the refrigerator there came a terrific crack from the livingroom. Tom ignored that too. He put jam on a piece of bread, folded the bread, and ate it. He went back into the livingroom. Mike was still sitting there. At that moment Tom remember the cracking sound. Maybe it had come from outside, but there was nothing strange outside. Just trees and so on, waving their branches like they were waving to whoever was in the livingroom. It looked like Mike was looking out the window, but there was nothing there except for the trees. Was this something to worry about? Tom sat down beside Mike and said, "Hey, Mike." Mike blinked and turned his head. "You okay?" Mike said, "I'm fine. Don't worry, you. I've just got some stuff on my mind, some stuff in my mind going on. Just looking at the trees." "I can see that." "They're alive, you know." "Yes, trees are alive." Mike almost shouted, "I mean, really alive! They're not at all what we think they are. We think they're people. But they're not people." "Okay, Mike, whatever you say." And Tom dropped it at that, rolled his eyes around, and went back up to Liz's room. She was making an edit point just behind the beat, just where you're supposed to. Tom said, "Has Mike been acting weird?" "A little, I suppose. Doesn't talk much, if that's what you mean. But he never talked much. Say, d'you think we should supercut beats where the stuff gets into her eyes?"

Don woke up on the Sunday morning two weeks later not not knowing where he was. The air was full of evergreen and the sounds of lakewaves and canvas juniper light. He sat up with a bedroll rustle and put his hands on his cold knees. He had a headache--hangover--but it didn't matter in the least. There was fishing to do. He crawled out of the tent and looked over for another morning the rocks, the trees, the water, the moss. The campfire, the beercans, the empty flask. He kicked at the tent and called, "Hey, Andy, c'mon, eat some bread, let's get in the boat." They were out on the water by seven-thirty, rather late really. They had something like five hours to go. Andy said, "They're probably all in bed still." Both thought about their houses back in the city, in their rowhouse back in the city, barbecues in the back, calling from yard to yard. A couple fishermen brought together, off for some camping, away from it all, alone on a little sea. They scored three fish to take home, packed 'em in the cooler--the ice they'd pick up on the way back--then they scooped up the tent and all the other stuff and poured it into the canoe and said goodbye quietly to the cape. They got to the portage that connected Burnt Island Lake and Baby Joe Lake where there was something of a traffic jam with a whole bunch of people heading back to the city so to make things easier--and harder at the same time--Don hefted up the canoe solo while Andy struggled under the load of every godforsaken thing they'd brought with them, so they could do it all in one trip. They went on down, hardly needing the map because everyone was heading in the same direction, but Don kept checking it all the same. You don't want to get lost in this world. A map is a kind of a prediction of what's to come. Of course you have to read it right. Not every tree that's ever lived could be on it. There was a buzz in Don's pocket. He said, "I think we're back in range." He took out his phone and looked at it. There were seven messages. "Jeez, I got seven messages." Andy thus prompted took out his phone and checked it out. "I got nine. Now what the."

On 12 April 1967 Darren Antony began his life and on 9 January 1968 he was born. On 24 December 1970 Tina Patrick began her life and on 26 September 1971 she was born. For twenty-five years of Darren's life Tina did not exist; for twenty-two years of Tina's life Darren didn't exist. Then they met, they married, and they were mostly happy. On 5 September 1993 Thomas began his life and on 2 June 1994 he was born. He would grow to like mathematics. Tina was an administrator for a university and Darren sold old furniture in a down-scale boutique. On 4 October 1995 Elizabeth began her life and on 8 July 1996 she was born. She would grow to like biology. They only had one car they had bought second-hand. On 20 February 1997 Michael began his life and on 22 November 1998 he was born. He would grow to like music. They lived in a row house, with six homes to the north and three homes to the south. Then on 17 June 2014 their place in the cosmic order of things changed forever.

I am the only one who knows that 17 June 2014 was the day their place in the cosmic order of things changed forever. It was a Tuesday, and it happened in the evening. Darren came home, kissed Tina, and said, "I got us something great from the store." He went back out to his car and brought in a huge rug all rolled up. He dropped it down and cleared away the coffee table and two chairs and unrolled it. It fit the livingroom perfectly. Tina looked on, then she said, "What's that stain in the corner?" pointing to a corner which was dark brown, almost a perfect right-angled isosceles triangle as if the corner had been neatly dipped into something or that the corner had hung over a ledge of some sort. Darren said, "I got it for fifty bucks. I'm sure that'll come out." They got a bucket and soap and scrubbed away but the stain wouldn't come out at all. Their scrubbrushes didn't change colour in the least. "It's like it's a part of the rug. Like it was made that way." "Where's it from?" "Dunno. Not really. It belonged to this woman's grandfather--apparently he was quite the traveller. It looks Afghani to me. She said it was tied up in his attic." Tina said, "Why don't we shove this end under the couch. Maybe it would even improve the proportions." With Tina at one end and Darren at the other they folded up the end of the rug, lifted the couch, and rolled the rug under. But, as a result, the couch was leaning a little back. So they wholly lifted the couch, back legs and front legs, onto that end of the rug. Then they slid the couch back to where it belonged and straightened out the rest of the rug. It looked pretty good. They sat down on the couch and looked over it majestically. Darren said, "It looks pretty good. All the colours match, don't you think?" Tina said, "The colours of the thing are a bit ... weird. But somehow it fits." Then Mike came home. He looked at his parents on the couch and at the rug. He said, "That carpet. Are we keeping it?" "I think so." Mike rubbed his nose. "I don't think that's a good idea."

(Outside of time, a conversation took place. This is part of it, translated into your language for you.) You cannot comprehend the distances and the durations we are speaking about. Your mind is too small, your life is too tiny, for you to possibly even come close to understanding anything important. There is vastly more to things than you can see. So it's like a pyramid? With knowledge at the top? Somewhat. But there are many pyramids. They are all right-angled isosceles triangles, if you can possibly understand what is meant by that. I know what a right-angled isosceles triangle is. But tell me: where are we now? Where am I now? You haven't even taken the first step up. We are vastly superior to you--we've been learning for a span too incredible for you to understand--and yet we have in relation to ourselves beings as advanced as we are over you. We obey them, as you should obey us. How do I join? What do I gain by it? Aren't I better off not knowing any of this? O blissful ignorance! We are offering you something beyond anything any of your friends, neighbours, leaders have ever had to offer you or anyone. You can be, relatively speaking, the wisest of your race. But what would be the point of that? What could I have to offer you? You can offer to us ... that which we cannot get in any other way. There is a wisdom to you. A tiny bit of wisdom. Every little bit helps. In any case, you have much more to gain than we have. You will advance a thousand-fold, while we will advance one-thousandth-fold. (Some time later, or some time earlier, or at the same time, this exchange took place.) How will you know? How can I get beyond myself? You must show you understand what we have been telling you. Something to signify that you understand your place in the universe. Maybe you could actuate your knowledge on others of your kind. Do you know what we mean? I don't. Listen. Your idea of morality is no good. What is it based upon? You are very much closer to the bacteria you casually destroy with antibiotics than you are to us. Very much more closer to pond scum really. Once you understand what we are telling you now, you will know what to do to show you belong with us.

Some time later--anywhere from five hours to two months later--a videographer by the name of CU Murphy was driving around town, listening to the police band. "Shots fired," more "shots fired," even more "shots fired." CU turned her car around and sped to the scene. Dozens of cops were there already, standing in front of a bunch of row houses all attached. They were putting up the yellow police tape around trees and stuff already. CU went up to the closest cop and said, "I'm with news station NEWS." She showed her ID. "What happened here?" The cop said, "Looks like serial homicide, maybe mass homicide." CU wrote this down, looking for useful facts. Not just raw facts she wanted; she wanted useful facts. "In one of these houses?" "In all of these houses." "Geez, every one? Who did it?" "A neighbour says she saw one of the kids going from the third house to the eighth house, then from the tenth house to the fifth house. I guess he was using back doors and front doors, never from one place to an adjacent place." CU didn't quite know the meaning of the word adjacent so she wrote the perp had gone from house to house methodically. "Alright, but that's crazy all this, was it just one guy?" The cop said, "Doesn't look like it, but there could have been more." CU wrote down 'one or more.' CU continued, to the cop, starting to get excited, starting to see $$$, "My paper, we're pushing this 'rape culture' narrative. Can you tell me, was there any raping involved?" The cop looked at her with some amusement. Then he got a hold of himself and said, "It's much too early to tell." CU wrote 'possible rape culture.' "A lot killed, huh? This is newsworthy. Some in each house, huh?" The cop said, "We're up to twenty-five so far. Looks like the guy killed his father and his sister and his brother too. Then himself." "Wow," said CU. "Mass slaughter. Was everyone white?" The cop said, "Seems so." CU asked, "Any Hegelian angle I can put on this?" The cop asked, "What?" "I mean were there any oppressed people, y'know, homosexuals women natives Moslems?" The cop shrugged. "I think down at the end there was an indian family." CU scribbled it down quickly, great, great, maybe some murdered and missing women! Twenty minutes later the scoop appeared on the NEWS website, white slaughter of natives, raped beforehand, thirty dead, nothing like it, more social services needed. At the bottom of the webpage the people--God love 'em--were invited to report typographical errors.

A week later, and there was Tina, still sitting on the couch, after the funerals and memorials both public and private. She'd lost her husband, her daughter, her sons, and it was getting pretty late. Next day her sister came over with food but not much else. What could anyone do? Next next night she went to sleep at nine, feeling that the house was somewhat unseasonably warm. No matter, no matter; she fell asleep drowsily Lethe-likely; carbon monoxide does that to people. Down in the basement, the floor temperature was around six hundred degrees. A wooden partition fell over as its base fractured. From somewhere, assumedly from an open window, oxygen entered, and the partition reached the flash point and the partition burst into a general flame. In five minutes the entire basement was burning and the temperatures in the basements on either side were climbing too. It was only a matter of time. Tina slept upstairs as she died. The folks across the street who'd mentioned around a week before that some kid had been going from house-to-house with a gun reported to the fire people that the place seemed to be going up in flames. The fire trucks got there and yes indeed the place was all going up in flames. Six domiciles all-in-all were rendered uninhabitable. The fire forensicals got in there once the burn had died down--five people had died, including Don--and sought the source. Turned out it was geothermal. A little flame of volcano had crept up from the crust of the earth and busted through right there below the Smith place. Who knew why? It was all just a coïncidence, as The New Yorker would say. The clean-up crew dug up all the ashes of the burned building--the Smith place--where they found only one bit of anything that appeared to have been unaffected by the confabulation. It was a right-angled isosceles triangle of what was it a carpet? Well, who cared. This piece of carpeting was thrown out with everything else, not even noted in any way, with not even so much as a late-nite post-coitus mentioniad by a firefighter. Nothing at all. It was just thrown into the garbage. And into a garbage dump. A land-fill more specifically. And there it festered, of the larger cosmos, for four hundred thirty three years and one hundred and eighteen days whereupon it ... became left for someone else to tell of.