The Chase.

We rounded the top of the mountain and started down. The road dropped a thousand feet in the next mile. It passed at lightning speed. The road was like standing waves at the bottom of a big set of rapids. We kept flying over the top of the hills but I was in a company car so I didn’t care.

One more big hill and we were in the city. His car was on my left, big and rectangular, edging out in front as I kept the throttle down.

When we came over the top of the first big hill in town, his car, then mine lifted, hitting after a short hop with a bang.

On the next hill, and the next, we flew up and crashed down again, neither willing to give an inch. Traffic was light, which helped. He cut across my bow and dove to the right onto a ramp leading to surface streets.

Swerving sharply, I followed him down.

The green Ford pulled into the curb. He got out and started running on an angle, sort of towards me somewhat. I stopped a hundred feet away, looking to see if he had a weapon.

The son of a bitch jumped down an open manhole cover. My reaction was to look around and see another manhole. It was right there.

Running over and sticking a finger down the hole, I lifted the heavy thing enough to get my other hand underneath and lift the cover. Dragging it aside, exposing most of the hole, I clambered down a narrow metal ladder into the sewer.

He must be off to the right, and in that direction I heard splashing and other noises. As I ran in ankle-deep water, a pillar of brilliant sunlight appeared. This was the way, I was sure of it. I kept on, seeing in the distance a flickering and then another pillar of light coming down from above in the foetid smog of the tunnel.

I splashed to a stop.

There was a ladder and I climbed it without hesitation. Bracing my legs and feet on the slippery painted steel rungs, I shoved the cover up and aside even as the wheels of a bus rumbled past my head. I ducked for a second and then climbed out, thinking that now people in cars would at least be able to see me.

His head stuck out in a crowd of pedestrians and his eyes locked on mine, even as his face and shoulders dropped furtively. He ran through traffic, dodging oncoming cars, and then running through cursing pedestrians until confronted by a subway entrance. He plunged down the stairs as I followed at full tilt.

He disappeared into the crowded station and I paused, looking around at the train about to depart.

Someone thrust something into my hand and then strode away.

It was a telegram, I’d only seen pictures in old books.

The thing was in Swahili, as far as I could see.

Crumpling it in frustration, I tossed it in the general vicinity of a nearby trash receptacle and strode into the echoing space, looking all about for my quarry.

I had a funny feeling I knew what the paper said, I had a funny feeling I knew who sent it, and I had a funny feeling that since I couldn’t read Swahili, the bastard was tormenting me and I meant to have a word with him about it.

***

I lay on the couch, phone beside me on the coffee table, a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, an ashtray and a pack of smokes and a lighter.

I waited for two return calls, one from the Ministry of Love. I was hoping Melanie would call so I could relate how I had the quarry in my sights and was hot on his trail—although really I was laying on the couch waiting for phone calls.

The other call was my intellectual property lawyer. I had written a sushi cookbook, with a fairly high heat rating which might sound nonsensical but the romance hacks know what it means, and of course some knucklehead publisher wanted it; which was just what I didn’t need right now as moonlighting from the Ministry is frowned upon, and contract negotiations take more time than I have these days.

Also my impression of our subject was twofold: one, he wasn’t really well-suited to marriage, never mind that he had ignored our summons and had failed to appear in court. What was the point? That was my question there. I had a second point, didn’t I? Sorry.

The phone rang, as I suspected it would sooner or later.

“Hey.”

“You son of a bitch!”

“What? Who is this?” The computer started talking but I waved it off.

“Fuck, Mister. Why are you chasing me?”

“You are under advisement. Anything you say can and will be taken down and used against you in Social Court…”

“Stuff it—and lay off. I got a girlfriend—a real one.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then you should have shown up and told the judge. You should have filed the documents. Anyway, you can’t prove it by me. You’re always driving around real fast and popping in and out of manholes. I don’t see no girlfriend. Where do you live? I’ll come around and have a look.”

There was a long silence.

Finally he spoke.

“Fine. Be that way.”

It was all I was going to get out of him, but was it enough?

Yes.

***

See, when a man says he has a girlfriend, it means one of two things. Either he is lying, or he must show up at the mall from time to time.

Oh, you know what I’m talking about: standing there with his hands in his pockets as she holds up dress after dress in front of herself, and asking him what he thinks, right?

Trying real hard to look interested and not gay if you know what I mean. It’s not like we haven’t all done it, right?

I sat in a coffee shop that had the advantage of covering two major avenues in our local mall, with the bonus of an actual good cup of coffee, which, quite frankly, I can’t get at home. Never mind the price. I’m on an expense account.

If I was stuck in the office I’d have to drink the coffee there. They say it’s free. Half of them are bald and sweaty. Their opinion means nothing to me.

Sitting and listening to Yes, Starship Trooper on my ear-plants, I had a disposable plastic celebrity e-magazine on the table in front of me and good cover from a series of Boston ferns in planters along the railing that set the place off from the mall proper.

Sure enough, Buddy showed up. It was perfect, I’d only been there fifteen or twenty minutes, but I am well trained after all.

Somehow he made me. It was uncanny. I saw him, and kind of looked away when his head swung around to speak to the lady at his side. When I looked back involuntarily, hoping to see him engaged with her, his eyes were locked right on mine and he was already grabbing her arm.

His mouth opened.

I shoved my chair back, and taking three powerful strides, I threw myself at the barricade and flew over right in front of a fellow in a powered chair who threw himself to the ground in sheer fright, but them’s the breaks and the chase was on again.

Right up until I ran past the girl, intent on Buddy, who was fifty metres away, running as fast as he could and probably faster than I could…she swung her big purse in a roundhouse that caught me right in the mouth. My feet flew up, the last thing I remember for a second or two anyway, and then I hit the floor, a loud crack coming from the immediate vicinity of the back of my head.

She stared down, yelling at me and I had no idea what she was saying. It was all gibberish at that point.

***

When I regained my equilibrium, I got to my feet, wobbled, then set off in pursuit as his beau hurled foul epithets, retreating in the direction of Provincial Food Court.

He was just ahead of me, running back and forth in a panic. A door opened and he leapt in.
Buddy was in a semi-cylindrical transparent elevator just heading up beside mossy waterfalls and curving balconies on the boutique level. There was one standing empty, so I grabbed it. Hitting the button, I stared up through the curving plastic sides as he stared down at me.

The Mall of the Two Canadas, which is in Cobourg, the nation’s half-capital on the edge of the Blow-Up Lands, was relatively familiar, as I had pursued suspects before and…we passed the first level and kept going. I knew the place a bit, and I had a hunch he couldn’t get out of the elevator and go left.

My elevator was on the right of his. I was a good ten or twelve seconds behind him. Interesting prospect.

We went past the next level. He looked wildly around, and I took a quick glance at the line of numbers above the elevator door. There were twelve more floors, but then I had a com-unit and he had to get back down again…

Speaking of com-units, maybe it was time I used mine. He stared, mouth working as I held it up and spoke into it briefly.

The elevator stopped and he slapped the button as my heart rate ramped up in anticipation and the one I was in came to the fourth floor. I stabbed the button. The wall separating us was formed and textured concrete. His elevator was empty.

Taking a deep breath, I stepped to the door just as running footsteps came belting along just beside me. He must have thought I couldn’t do it, and that all he had to do was keep running at top speed and he would be safe. I let him have it right on the jaw as he went by.

Out cold, it took him a long time to crash, as he bounced and spun along the opposite wall, rubbery legs carrying him along as he sank lower and lower to the pavement, coming to rest about ten yards from where I stood. The light at the end of the hallway darkened and a familiar form beamed at me in silent approval.

“Bert.”

“Sir.”

“Can you stand between me and the elevators? His alleged girlfriend is still out there.” I wiped blood off my mouth with the back of my hand.

“Yes, sir.”

I think Bert was originally enhanced with a view to circus strong-arm acts or piano-juggling or something, but with his metre-wide shoulders in the way, she would hopefully think twice about interfering with our duties. It was our only recourse, as women of child-bearing age are exempt from most criminal statutes.

I knelt beside the suspect to put the radio-tracking plasti-cuffs on. His eyes were moving and his left cheek was all scuffed and bloody from the wall. He offered no further resistance.

“Buddy 0997-334-B, you are under arrest for evasion of matrimony and failure to report to the court as specified.”

“But I told you…bastards…”

“Yeah, yeah, you got a girlfriend. I think I might have just met her. Look, Buddy, I ain’t judging you.”

I finished reading the spiel. It’s the law.

There was a commotion behind me as an elevator door opened up and then the lady was clinging to Bert’s back and trying to beat him into submission, clinging to his hair with her left hand and swinging the purse like there was rocks in it.

He gave me a look.

“She’ll give up in a minute.”

He shrugged.

Hauling my prisoner to his feet, I led him back to my elevator of choice, where the lady decided she didn’t feel like riding down with us after all, and hence down to the main floor for transport to the Ministry of Love holding facility on Holbourn Avenue, where our subject was booked and would be held for the statutory bail hearing and arraignment in Social Court.

It's all in a day's work, and it takes all kinds to make a world, I suppose.

***

Photo: Inspired by the film 'Bullitt,' Wikipedia, fair use/parody.

For more on the world of 2030 A.D. and the Ministry of Love, go here.

Don't give up that day job. Chris Hadfield fanfic.

Holding an E-minor chord with fingertips already sore, Chris carefully dragged the plectrum across bronze and steel strings, gratified by the nearly-in-tune response. He fiddled with the tuning head. For him, trying to get the tuning on the second string was the worst. It had a habit of breaking. He tightened it way beyond its limits time and time again.

Striking again, the chord sounded better. He moved to the A-minor, and fooled around by moving the exact finger configuration by one fret or one string and one beat at a time. By pulling hard and squeezing hard, he could get a little reverb, a little tremolo out of it. The trouble was that he had to think about it. Real guitar players made it look easy because for them, it was easy. It had become easy, while he despaired of ever learning it. There wasn’t much enjoyment in it. It was like he just couldn’t let go and break away and be alone with himself.

There would always be an imaginary someone looking over his shoulder. He knew he was bad, and yet he couldn’t just get over it. It was his own self-consciousness, always ready to beat him up for some minor personal flaw. Wasn’t he being introspective tonight. Hmn. His body rotated and he drifted towards the bulkhead and the doorframe not far behind. He had a moment or two yet at his present velocity. He stuck out his left foot at the exact moment and stabilized; now drifting slowly back in the opposite spin and direction.

There were no words for what he was feeling right now. Somewhere in the world, a man or a woman had those words, but Chris was no poet. He had worked extremely hard to be here, sacrificed much to be where he was today. The guitar brought home just what that meant over the course of a man’s life. His job gave him fulfillment. That fulfillment wasn’t the whole picture, not by a long shot. He almost wished he hadn’t brought the thing, it seemed like every time he turned the corner, it reminded him of its own futility. What at first seemed like a glib PR stunt was backfiring deep in the guts. Okay, there were plenty of frustrated folk-singers and wannabe rock stars out there, all hung up on the day job and the mortgage payments. But this was just something he’d always wanted to do.

He tried a D-7, then back to the E-minor. It was about all he had ever learned of the guitar. His hands, marvelous at other jobs, were too stiff, too wooden. He didn’t think in those terms, those expressive, emotive terms where art made sense and science seemed so irrelevant. Yet he had been so sure at one time that there was science behind music and that essentially anyone could learn it. But Chris, try as he might, hadn’t learned it.

Those hands flew an aircraft just fine. He flew fully-prepared for each flight, yet once in the air, the machine took a marvelous physical intuition and turned it into a kind of joy…but the guitar took something he didn’t have. Confronted by his reflection against the dark side of the Earth out there, his nose tickled. One whisker was poking up and out. He’d have to trim the thing soon or it would drive him nuts. At one time he thought that the fighter-pilot mustache spelled rebellion. It said ‘I am an individual.’ He had to subsume so much in order to succeed. It was his one little indulgence. It was still there, always in the back of his head. That little voice.

There were times when he wished he could sit on the floor, back to the wall. He’d thought once or twice of doing something about it. A little contact cement, some Velcro strapping, it wouldn’t be that hard. He could strap himself down. Microgravity made guitar practice difficult. He had been kidding himself if he thought he would finally find enough time to really learn how to play the thing. It was a lifelong ambition, one of many that would not be realized. He missed the kids, he missed Helene.

What was unexpected was the raw poignancy of his emotions. All those people down there, all of those warring nations, all of that sublime suffering, all of the joy and wonder and simple longing that lay three hundred kilometres below. They were just on the other side of that window. When he tried to say what was in his heart it just sounded so hokey.

More than anything, he would have liked to be able to sing all of those down below, a song, a song of love, or something like that. It was a beautifully sad thought, maybe even the thought of a poet. He had much more practical concerns.

There were voices nearby, engaged in some cheerful dispute. It sounded like Pavel and Tom. His moment of solitude was over. With a small grin and a shake of his head, he put the instrument away, and then went through the hatch and along through the next compartment to see what was up.

END

Editor’s Note: Don’t give up that day job. Here’s a song for you. ‘What I got.’ – Sublime

Chris Hadfield is on Twitter. 

Chris Hadfield's photos from space, (Daily Mail.)

***

Anna.



Photo: BlueJeff





Anna came into my life about fifteen years ago. What a lonely old bachelor I was, for one so young at the time. My future was bleak, empty and useless.

When she walked into my life, what was a pretty barren existence suddenly blossomed with new meaning. At my age, it wasn’t about having babies and starting a family. In most ways it wasn’t even about sex. It certainly wasn’t about lust. It was about friendship, and going places, and doing things together.

It was about not having to be alone anymore. It was about embarking together on a journey of discovery. At least that’s how it worked out. Hindsight is twenty-twenty. I must have been ready. I must have needed her.

I have such wonderful memories, like cruising down a side-road in autumn, with the top down, the roar of the motor in our ears, with warm sunlight and golden leaves falling from above, listening to classical symphonies and just laughing at the world in general.

It was a whole new life. My one true love, or so I thought, left when we were about twenty-five. Somehow I never got over it, and then I did the little stretch in the penitentiary, nothing special, just a little fraud charge. You don’t get a chance for much female companionship in a jail. After twelve years inside, a certain little nest egg that I had put aside years earlier in a Swiss account, had burgeoned into a nice retirement fund. It’s easy enough to memorize an account number.

After all those years inside, I was ruined for human relationships of any kind, or so I thought.

I was an emotional cripple, for many years. There was a kind of acceptance. It’s like I didn’t even feel sorry for myself. I didn’t even day-dream about love and romance, or relationships with women anymore. My bank manager, or the people who worked at the liquor store, or the girl who sold me milk and bread, the tattooed young man behind the counter where I bought my cigars—these were the only human contacts that I needed. After I got out, my lawyer was my best friend. A lawyer will keep your secrets, and take them to the grave when he goes, too.
Time stands still in a jail.

Inside of a jail you have to shut down inside, and go into a state of numbness. It’s the only hing that can get you through a long stretch with any hope of sanity when you get out. Thank God I had a little money. It gave me hope when I was inside, and I never could have coped on the outside without money.

I remember this one time, an old friend, long since departed, gave me some very good advice.

“Papillon had a plan, and you should too.”

Papillon had a roll of money inside a piece of metal pipe with a screw-on cap, inserted up the nethermost regions of the alimentary canal, when they sent him to Devil’s Island. I had mine inserted in a Swiss account. It was basically the same idea. Back in the eighties, when I set up that little pension-investment scheme, the one based on all the junk bonds going around back then, the one that caused me so much trouble in the end, I always knew that if I got caught before I got out of the country, I was going to do hard time.

“Pay yourself first.”

That’s what the financial planners and the motivational speakers all say.

So that’s what I did. The feds never found any of the money I put away. I took a little time and set up a half a dozen new identities. That’s really all you need for most purposes. For Christ’s sakes, how dumb do you think I am? Looking back, I was a pretty sharp young guy, and I’m glad I made those sacrifices, now that I’m in my old age.

Too much success early on, then I got careless. The guys I was hanging out with were pretty dumb, and they all started off nice and respectable. They had no guts. When we got raided, all they had to do was to keep their mouths shut. Sit back, and let the lawyers fight their delaying action, and the likelihood is none of us would have done a day in jail. Once you’re out on bail, and the lawyers get going, anything can happen.

When you’re sitting there, ‘Just trying to explain things,’ to the cops, then real bad stuff starts to happen real fast. When you’re out on bail, you have the option of just disappearing one day.
They watch you, but it can be done. Some guys just don’t listen.

Amateurs tend to try and avoid detection. Amateurs like to have a plausible explanation of ir involvement and thus their real innocence. A professional, and I thought I was one, just tries to avoid being convicted of anything. The totally professional thief really doesn’t care what the neighbours think. By the time they find out, he should be long gone. My mistake was to have partners. You’re only as good as the help.

Mentioning no names here, when the first one cracked, and began signing statements about the rest of us, and then a couple more guys tried to save themselves or get reduced sentences, we were all sunk. We were all sunk, and only one person, mentioning no names, got off easy in any sense, and he still did four years. He kept telling the cops, and the jury, how we made him do it.

Even those dummies didn’t buy it. It’s safe to say that none of my partners ever knew anything about my own personal finances; or any other sort of arrangements. I’ll tell you this much. Even if I had worked for twelve years, and miraculously saved every penny, I never would have had a tenth of what I ended up with. I guess you could say I earned it, and that I deserve to enjoy what is left of my life. I’m a reformed character now. I have no wants, no warrants, no paper on me anywhere. No unpaid fines, or taxes in arrears. I’m an honest man, now. I’m a respected member of the community.

#

After my previous life, Anna was a revelation. She was a real lady, and I quickly resolved to learn how to be a gentleman. It seemed to please her, and I wanted to please her. I remember our first anniversary, when she made us a beautiful dinner, at home in our apartment overlooking the bay. Never mind what town we were in. Her long black tresses, combed out to a glossy shine, hung over her alabaster shoulders, drawing the eye to her slim and elegant neck, like that carved wooden bust of Queen Nefertiti. Her black, almond-shaped eyes, glistening in the candlelight, as we talked about sweet nonsense. We had our share of romance, over the years.

Anna was a good wife. When she walked into my life I was actually a little bit shy, and nervous, but of course at first it’s not really serious. It’s just that I didn’t know what to expect. The cab pulled up in the driveway, and she paid off the driver. I could see her, barely, through the glare and reflections on the windshield. And then she got out, clutching her white leather purse, and wearing her smart blue skirt and jacket, with the tiny round pill-box cap perched on a jaunty angle on her head. To see her squinting up at the numbers on the front of the building caused my heart to beat a little faster. As her heels tapped their way up the walkway, my heart seemed to keep in time with her feet. I stared through the slit in the curtains with my heart pounding. I can admit that now.

But it was all right, and we got on like a house on fire right from the start. For an uncultured gentleman such as myself, choosing a companion from another culture opened my eyes to a whole new world of taste, in art and literature, music, and theatre. It was always a treat to take her to the Kabuki theatre, where she would sit enthralled by the action, the costumes, the mime-type stuff, the gestures of the characters. I spent much of the time watching her reactions, more than anything.

She was so gentle when I came home from hang-gliding. I crashed a lot at first. I couldn’t seem to get the thing to stay in the air. She would draw me a bath, and then after dropping her electric-blue silk kimono on the wet bathroom floor, and then climbing into the sudsy waters herself, she would soap and scrub all my abrasions and contusions squeaky clean.

Tenderly, in a motherly way, helping my tired, sore and aching body up out of the tub, she would carefully dry me off, then make me lay down again just as promptly and then give me a thorough massage. She had surprisingly strong hands, and wasn’t afraid to take her time and do a good job of it.

Anna would wrap me in a ratty green terry-cloth bathrobe I kept kicking around, and then she would curl up in my lap, as I sat leaning back in the big overstuffed lazy chair, and ask about my day. Anna was a good listener, more fearful for my safety than I was myself, more shocked at my misadventures, more proud of my successes. She claimed to be too scared to watch my attempts to fly the hang glider, and her shrieks and screams the first couple of times out, convinced me to leave her home. It was too much of a distraction, when trying to gauge the wind gusts, and altitude, and not break my damn fool neck.

She taught me to dance. To dance with Anna, her scent close in my nostrils, hand in the small of her back, was to know what intimacy really meant. What patience she had. She never lost her temper when I stepped on her feet, or backed her into another couple, lost in my own world of focus and attention, timing everything so carefully and trying to keep track of where the music was…step-step-step—oops! I smile still to think upon it. She was such a good sport, always cheerful, even when I got into one of my moods.

She was a good little housekeeper. She always knew where the band-aids were, or the sewing kit. We never ran out of milk or sugar, that’s for sure. She kind of represented us as a family around the neighbourhood. I used to send her out to bingo, way back when we lived in Canada for a while.

She won a good ten or twelve percent of the time. I showed her how to invest her money, and pretty soon, Anna had her own income, which she used to buy the odd little accessories, jewelry, scarves, things like that. She liked to surprise me once in a while with a new hairdo, stuff like that. I didn’t mind, whatever made her happy was good enough for me.

We had a few spats, misunderstandings, really, but surprisingly few over the years.

Anna was such a good girl. She had her own friends, and people she used to see. Anna loved shopping. She would endlessly scour the town, wherever we were living at the time, if I needed a pair of pants or a shirt or something. She was tireless, and had a mind like a steel trap for prices. All across town, the girl always knew the prices. Some of the older women on our street would get her to go shopping with them. She was a good driver, and she could read the tags, and she would let them know diplomatically if an outfit was all wrong, or something. I didn’t care, she was entitled to a day out once in a while. I used to go off by myself, out in the woods and just do some shooting—you know, just plinking at bottles and cans, sitting up on a
fence post.

Sometimes I miss that old forty-five, but I had to ditch it one day just as a precaution. I don’t know why, it was just some crazy instinct, but nothing came of it. I suppose it had served its purpose. It was a little paranoid, maybe. Loving Anna forced me to confront a few things about myself.

Ditching it represented a kind of closure, I guess. It was a funny feeling though. Somehow I felt naked, and all alone now, except for Anna. That was a tough time for me. I think that was the first time that I really allowed myself to grieve, for my lost life, my lost childhood. In a lot of ways, Anna helped me to learn how to feel again.

We must have made an odd-looking couple, anonymous enough in the working-class and middle-class resort towns where we generally preferred to live. She, barely five-foot three, with her creamy Asian skin, long, straight black hair, not looking a day over twenty-two. I made sure she was always dressed up as cute as a button; and myself, a tall, aging, balding figure, with a bit of a paunch, and my walking stick, easily old enough to be her daddy, yet clearly in love to any interested spectator. I favoured slightly stodgy and eminently boring wool suits in every shade of grey. The slightly-long sideburns, and the mustache, almost standard-issue amongst retired cops, army officers and bankers, was a stroke of brilliance. No one from my previous existence ever would have known me.

#

Anna and I were going to go on a tour of a half a dozen countries in Africa, on behalf of the Aids Awareness Foundation in Nimes, which was where we were living at the time. Nimes is a nice town, and we stayed there in winters, going back six or eight years. We had friends and neighbours, something that took me a while to actually get used to. All the conversations seemed so trivial, except for when someone was getting born, getting married, getting divorced, or dying.
That was about the only time anyone seemed to take anything seriously, or have a serious thought in their heads. They were completely self-absorbed. Well educated, they took no interest in the greater world around them. It simply didn’t matter to them, as long as their own interests were served. They had no enlightenment. The outside world barely existed or registered on their minds. They thought they were cultured, when they went into their ‘been there and done that’ spiel. I never had to worry about any trouble from that sort of people. They accepted us at face value. All of them sent cards and letters when Anna became ill and flowers to her funeral. Don’t get me wrong, they were nice enough people, and perfect cover.

Anna had a long and serious illness. She’s buried in the plot where my mother and father would have been buried. It’s a long story, but they were interred somewhere else. I was in jail at the time, so I didn’t get to go to the funeral. It was a car accident.

Anna’s illness lasted about four months, and in the end nothing could save her except possibly a total rebuild of all major components, and even with my independent means, money doesn’t buy miracles. First of all, the servomechanisms in her left hip burned out, and the cryogenics cooling her superconducting brain-box were leaking like a sieve. Her heuristic algorithms were a bit old-fashioned, which affected her personality. While her emotional responses and reactions to a given situation were randomized by something analogous to fractal geometry, she was incapable of the sort of real growth that a human being might be capable of.

She was old, tired, worn out and needed replacing.

I am grateful that we had chance to say goodbye to each other. She told me that she had enjoyed her time with me. I told her that she would last forever in my memory. She knew there was nothing we could do. We had plenty of time to laugh and to cry, and to work it all out. It was all so inevitable, really.

We thanked each other for our love.

And that was it. I stood there beside the bench holding her hand.

#

My Anna had picked up a real bad virus, and it ate into her brain and caused her to have a series of micro-strokes, which had the effect of severely affecting her personality. She would never be the same again.

The technician switched her off, and then began disassembling her, as there are certain components that must be properly disposed of for environmental reasons, and others meant to be rebuilt or recycled. After all these years, the manufacturer no longer lists or stocks parts for this model, ‘Anna;’ #1987760-As-F-B-B.’

He boxed up her chassis, now stripped, and helped me to load her in the back of my Audi estate wagon.

Rather than pay the disposal fee, and since the plot in Shore View Cemetery belongs to me now, that’s where she’s buried. In a couple of weeks, Katerina arrives. I’m picking her up at the airport. She’s modeled after a Swedish nurse or something. If I don’t like her, I can always send her back. They’ve got a ninety-day guarantee. At my age, this is probably my last companion, and I guess that’s a good thing. Actually, I hope she outlasts me by quite a few years, and goes on to another good home when I’m dead and buried.

Switching off a loved one is hard.

Long ago, some acquaintance, in some town somewhere or another once asked, “Where can I find myself a girl like that?”

At the time I just laughed.

But if you have to ask, you can’t afford one.


End

Story originally appeared in 'Algernon,' (Estonia,) and Ennea, '9' (Greece.)

The Prophet of Atheism.

NGC 604, 'Nursery of Stars,' Triangulum Galaxy.

If the universe is infinite in terms of space, time, matter and energy, (which I think or believe but cannot prove,) then by definition, there is no starting point.

If there is no starting point, then there is no beginning and no end, no creation, no apocalyptic ending.

Therefore, with no beginning to account for, there is no need for a first cause, a principle if you will, nor even a Creator.

I still find it hard to wrap my brain around the concept of infinity. Everything that I see around me comes and goes, lives or dies. It has a beginning and an end. Infinity is the one thing that doesn’t exist in my immediate environment, which is still a world of extension and motion, probability and causality.

Yet having been brought up in the Catholic faith, which Richard Dawkins, the noted Atheist writer, equated or compared with ‘child abuse’ in this interview, I wonder if it did me so much harm. The remark made me think, which is good in itself. It forced me to confront the issue of the limitations of my own thinking.

For in a cosmos without a beginning and an end, there is simply no need for God to create anything. It has been there and will persist through infinity—time without end and without a beginning.

Yet any thinker in theology is already raising objections. Surely God could have co-existed ‘for time without end,’ i.e. pretty much stated somewhere in the Bible or subsequently by the Doctors of the Church.

So as a former Catholic, I find it hard to dispense with at least the possibility of some arguably ‘supernatural’ entity or power, as it exists outside of the bounds of science and knowledge as we have come to accept it.

It is hard not to think in those terms. It’s hard to think in terms of perfect objectivity, as philosophers, attempting at least to define our terms with ever-greater precision.

But it is also true that we must be humble in our relations with our brothers and sisters of other beliefs. For if it should be found or even postulated that the universe did in fact ‘begin’ at some point, in the scientific sense of forming a theory and then testing it, and if that theory should stand up over the course of some small time, then it would knock out the most basic prop of our beliefs, i.e. infinity itself. It opens up all the beginning and ending debates again.

One argument in favour of religion, and faith, is the sheer propensity and diversity of beliefs. Surely all of those people were reaching for the same thing, knowledge of the unknowable, to recognize and experience the presence of God. To take that away from them is to misunderstand tolerance. Could they all be wrong? Who am I to say, for surely I have no way of knowing. The fact that I have never had a mystical experience doesn't prove that they do not exist.

And when we talk about the universe we must remember that we are also searching for some fundamental truth that holds equally valid for all of eternity—something that we look for in such earnest and which may in itself turn out to be irrational, possibly even irrelevant.

For surely the laws of space, time, matter and energy must be infinite in duration. It is possible that moral laws are infinite in duration, without beginning or end, presumably.

One of the things that strikes me is that ants go about their daily business without speculation.

It’s a uniquely human attribute. It could be considered both a blessing and a curse—and as an atheist I find it hard to exclude theological terms and themes from much of what I do, I guess we could call them moral themes. Virtually every book or story has some kind of moral component.

That’s what sets fiction off from a catalogue or a technical manual.

As far as learning about moral themes or extrapolating great moral truths from the physical world around us, much work remains to be done.

As far as my position, while I might appear a cynic, I prefer the term 'skeptic.'

My counsel would be one of mutual tolerance and not letting the rhetoric get too heated.



Dawkins:  "Religion betrayal of the intellect."

Photo: Wiki, NASA. Public Domain.

How I miss that car.

I was eighteen, bagging fiberglass at a local plant when I talked my old man into co-signing a loan. I wanted a sports car. It was a matter of watching the ads and waiting for the right opportunity. One fine summer day I called a guy and arranged to go see one.

We came around the corner and there she was, nicely arranged on an angle on the front lawn, with blue sky, sun and clouds overhead, a 1971 MGB Roadster. It was a soft, faded, sunshiny yellow colour.

I had to have it, as you may well imagine. At $1500 the payments were $75 a month for two years. With the benefit of hindsight, it was quite a bargain. I loved that car, and still miss it today. I’ve gone looking for MG’s once or twice when I had a little money, and backed out at the last minute. The world has changed, when you consider the size of vehicles people drive nowadays, and the speeds that some people go. Nothing’s worse than being tailgated at night in an itty-bitty little car; with some guy in a pickup with high beams on, right in the rearview mirror. Or maybe I changed…

To be young, with your whole life ahead of you, that first really good-paying job, to begin to know what manhood is, to realize you’re an adult and all that sort of stuff, I don’t know. There was just a kind of feeling about it. A time of innocence. In the 1970’s people still complained about young people and the music, the negative images.

Looking back, it all seems pretty tame.

To pull out the choke and fire up the boiler on an autumn morning, and listen to the burbling of Hooker headers and a free-flow exhaust system, was sheer heaven to a young guy. I modified my car, ported and polished the head myself, milled her down a few thousands of an inch. It had an aluminum hood from a 1968. I got rid of the two six-volt batteries and put in one twelve-volt, installed in the trunk for better balance. I cut the fittings where the oil cooler hooked up and put new hoses on with double clamps so I could take the engine in and out more easily. I had a fiberglass spoiler, and took as much unnecessary equipment out of it that I could—back then I would rather listen to the engine than the radio. I removed the air pump, and even the bumpers. I got so I could take that car apart and put it back together again on a long weekend.

It could beat any other MG in town, that’s for sure. We scared the TR-6 guys so they wouldn’t race us anymore. Too aggressive, they felt, but then they were mostly candy-bums, more interested in image than real street racing. You remember them guys, the ones with the briar pipes and leather patches on the elbows of their tweed jackets...

It’s funny, but I reckon I spent $10,000 on that thing over the seven years I owned it.

You may laugh, but I doubt if I ever would have gotten a girlfriend if I hadn’t bought that car! But that little car drew the eye. Back then sports car guys acknowledged each other on the road with a wave or a honk. We’d get together in an informal little club, turning up en masse at a local park, then cruise out Lakeshore Road. Hopefully we weren’t too dangerous, but there may have been a little friendly dicing in the tighter turns.

One time my buddy John and I just started chasing these three girls in an Austin Mini, and while they lost us by hiding in a British car lot—just like in the original version of the film The Italian Job, we eventually caught up with ‘em.

It’s really something to be eighteen years old, driving at a relatively high speed, on some darkened road, high beams illuminating the fences and the trees, grass and signs speeding past, and suddenly realize that you are a hundred miles from home and finally free.

To hear the rumble and roar of the exhaust, the beat of the wind on the back of your neck, to feel the hair lift at eighty miles an hour, touch the brakes and downshift, slide through a turn, the pale yellow glow of the tachometer reminding you she’s an old car…real seat of the pants driving back then. I suppose I thought I was Fangio or Tazio Nuvolari or something. I had a lot of hair back then, too.

I have such great memories of that car. In about 1980, the 402 highway was being built. When the road was paved, but not open yet, we’d drive around the barricades and drive on nice smooth blacktop—no signs, no lines, no cops. I remember going ninety miles an hour, with the top down. My girlfriend popped the cork on a bottle of champagne, it flew up into the sky and was sucked away. We got a little drunk, not so much the wine as just being young and high on life itself. She was a good girl, but some things are just not meant to be.

But God. I miss that car.

Yes, she was sitting right there beside me when I raced the Corvette. In the mirror, I saw the guy do a burnout at a stoplight, and then he came up beside us at the next stoplight. I looked over and revved my engine. The light turned green, and he dumped the clutch, and drove off at a high rate of speed and we just laughed. The light at the next intersection was red again, and we pulled up alongside of him. I revved her up again, but when the light changed, I hit her just perfectly. An MGB will do about thirty-one miles an hour in first gear. I did a twenty-foot burnout, and then a nice little squawk when I snapped it into second gear. I could see him still at the intersection, sitting there in a cloud of blue tire smoke, and I could hear the roar of his engine over the sound of mine. I got a little chirp out of the tires when I shifted into third gear, and just about then he passed us going like eighty or ninety miles an hour.

We were laughing like crazy as I backed off and slowed her down to something less than ludicrous speed. Right about then a cop car zoomed out of a side-street and started chasing the Corvette. Victory is sweet!

***

A general rule of thumb with MGB’s is that they will go about 106 miles per hour, and then you throw a rod, and then you have to walk home.

I hope to own another 1971 MGB Roadster, but I’m not sure if it’s the car that I’m after, or maybe it’s just an attempt to recapture a sort of feeling.

You know what’s fun? Take the top down on a snowy winter’s day, bundle up with hoods, parkas, snowmobile gloves, and go for a little toot through the park. Everyone thinks you’re crazy, but they smile and wave just the same.

All those old British cars had a certain smell inside, a smell of oil, and burnt antifreeze, and wet rugs and gasoline. The heaters and electrical systems were bad, sometimes the roof didn’t fit too well. Most of them leaked, although mine was pretty dry inside. Some were designed around tractor engines and transmissions. A multi-coloured stain on the driveway was a registered trademark.

But they inspired a kind of love that is missing in modern cars.

End

Photo: Wiki Commons, released into Public Domain by the original author. This car is Harvest Gold, mine was a kind of sunshine colour.