Winter 1959
1
The Memory Merchant cursed his fate: A mixture of ice and snowpack covered the road. What should have been a 12-hour drive took almost 24 hours with tires that had seen better days. The old truck’s brakes weren’t better, screeching with every skidding stop. The pickup also needed new spark plugs and a timing belt. He suspected the ball joints were hanging by a thread or whatever ball joints hung by.
We didn’t expect her to be much fun and we were right – she wasn’t. Not that any of us blamed her: she had been through a lot and was destined to go through a lot more over the following year. All this while she herself was getting … well, getting less and less. It was right, though, that our hosts, Ann and Bradley, invited her to our annual Christmas get-together, along with the usual crew: me, of course, then Dana and Emory, and Ann’s oldest friend, going all the way back to secondary school, George, the homeopath, therefore the only one among us who did anything ‘interesting’, that is, out of the ordinary run of professional occupations that people like us normally follow: an accountant, an advertising art director, a doctor, and a sports and talent agent, that sort of thing.
I spent weeks visiting a therapist;Trying to process what was happening to me –what was happening to Kathy –It all seemed so impossible.Take your time, the Therapist said, as I stared at the giant,smudge-like painting on […]
This Morning
Harold Fribble was sitting dutifully behind his desk at the corporate headquarters of Occidental Peripherals in Snedekerville, Pennsylvania. He had just finished reviewing some irregularities involving a shipment of mobile devices to a prominent California university when he was interrupted by a man who burst suddenly into his office.
The man was breathing hard.
They can only be found at low tide on a full moon. Don’t cross the tide line, as their nesting holes are large and sparse feeding periods make encounters with this scavenger dangerous, if not […]
Richard cursed softly at the state of the parking lot. Piles of rubble and broken bottles covered the asphalt. Shards of glass glittered menacingly, concealing the lot striping. In no mood for punctured tires, he inched his beaten gray SUV around the edge of the lot. By some miracle, a bare spot remained near the curb. He stepped out, massaging his cramped legs, and didn’t bother to glance at the object that loomed overhead.
The dollar store’s windows had been smashed, leaving holes big enough to step through. Richard, eyeing the jagged edges, went for the door. His shoulders slumped with relief as he looked upon racks of laundry detergent, party hats, and off-brand mustard. Perhaps the vandals hadn’t found much worth taking. In any case, it was best not to linger. He hurried down the aisles.
As the Secretary-General of the United Nations, an organization of 147 member States who represent almost all of the human inhabitants of the planet Earth, I send greetings on behalf of the people of our planet.
Kurt Waldheim, as transcribed in the Voyager’s Golden Record
VOYAGER 1 REDUX
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory is in holiday mode. Christmas is around the corner and I’m the evening monitor of the Voyager’s transmissions. Fifteen billion miles and 44 years from Earth, the Voyager 1 is past the heliosphere and magically able to sing to the JPL despite digital power that is 20 billion times weaker than my cell phone.
the wings of a plane overhead
intersect perfectly with the back
of an eagle perched
on a gravestone.
Chloe mentions that she got her new track pants in the metaverse when she went shopping with Alessa and you hate to think that they’re hanging out without you in some virtual Ivy Park and getting matching tattoos while you’re sitting at home eating salmon salad with your parents. She told you she’d get a matching tattoo with you, a real one when you both graduate – two halves of a butterfly – but you’ve heard that in the verse when you have tattoos like that and you line up the ink, the blue outline will shiver and crawl right out of your skin, hover above you as you hold onto each other on a roller coaster at Cedar Point even though you’ve never left Florida.
Shit is so much cooler in there. Tattoos mean something in there. People go places in there.