Menius

Puppy makes cute noises when she’s lonely. She poofs at me.

We are bidding on a house in South Dakota. We live in a place called Sammamish, Washington at the moment. We've been here for about a year, a year in June. We moved here to get out of Kansas. We thought that we would have an opportunity to meet people who were more like-minded near a place close to Seattle. That's been true to a certain extent, but the pandemic kinda ruined our ability to meet other people.

We move around a lot, or... we did. It was necessary for most of our lives up until this point because we had to move for jobs. First it was the army, then, after Lawrence graduated college, we had to move to Kansas for his first job as a computer engineer. That was a heck of a time, moving to Kansas.

The story goes, at succinctly as I can put it, Joey and Diancy were taking care of Grandma and Grandpa Holwegner in their house in Black Hawk, SD. When they died, no one could afford the house they were all living in, so they had to sell it. It's also hard to sell a house when you have so many people living in it, so we asked Joey and Bailey to move in with us so only Mom and Dad were in that house when it showed. Mom and Dad were paying for that house and we were paying for the house in Rapid City when we had to move to Kansas. So, until Joey bought our house, we had to pay for an apartment in Kansas and a mortgage in Rapid City. That lasted for like three months. During that time, Lawrence and I didn't have enough money for a bed, so we slept on the floor, the concrete floor, of our new apartment in downtown Kansas City. My shoulder still hurts. I highly suggest that if you have to sleep on a floor, get an apartment with carpet until you can afford a bed.

This morning I woke up early for a writing group. I named the group. It's called “Average Bird is the Word Sprints.” It was 5:30 early.

My friends Smoothie, Rachel, and Jessica were all there to write. We meet on Saturday and Sunday mornings to do something called a “write-in.” I put the invitation on a platform called Meet-up so that new people can join if they want. Sometimes they do, but not today. It was just the three of us.

We get together and ignore each other for about an hour to write. We all write on our own, silently, or with music (without lyrics.) Now, writing alone but together might sound strange. It might now make sense to you to do something with other people that you can do on your own. But I argue that you can eat on your own, but it's always more fun to have a meal with other people. It's kinda like that.... but imagine that eating is something that you have to practice, and sometimes it's hard. If you know that other people are having a meal with you, you're more likely to try harder, do a good job. The same thing can be said about a write-in. We all like writing, but sometimes it's hard. Just knowing that right now my friends are all working on stories that they're writing helps me to sit down and focus. And right now, I'm focusing on you, for you, at least.

I know you're not born yet. I know we don't know if you're a boy or a girl, or a they/ them. But I want to let you know that I love you already. And you may not know what that means right now because you're about the size of bait you use for trout fishing, but that's ok. You're magnificent just like you are, gills and all. (I'm just kidding, you don't have gills right now, but wouldn't it be funny if you did?!?)

I have two things to tell you about today. One of them is about hearing bird songs and why that means you should go to college and travel. The other thing is why you should (sometimes) be an “early bird.”

---

Hearing Bird Songs

Early Bird

You might have heard people talking before and they say something like, “the early bird gets the worm.” What they usually mean is that you have to do something right away when you hear about it. So, the first thing that I'm going to tell you about in your whole life is about being something called being an “early adopter” and what that means for you.

Abandon Things (it's okay)

But it's also ok to abandon things... Just make sure you have a reason why. Remember that reason. I mean, try to finish what you start... but don't be afraid to abandon things that lose to the rock.

Hiram didn't even know if he was real. He couldn't feel anything. It wasn't hot or cold. There was no wind, and his sciatica wasn't even something he noticed. Which he noticed.

Hiram was normally the guy who sat in his chair all day when all of the younger builders were using their standing desks. Hiram's sciatica was always bothering him, until now.

At the periphery of his vision was a grid in the shape of a cube, and he was inside of the cube. Hiram could hear a woman arguing with someone, yelling actually.

“Get the fuck back in your room. I already told you twice,” the woman yelled. And it was loud. Too loud to be real.

“Why are you in my head?” he thought to himself.

And that's what it seemed like, like her voice was inside of his skull instead of reverberating through the cathedral as it should have been with these massive, open spaces. And the spaces were too open.

There were probably another fifteen people or so in this room with him, if room could even be a word used to describe where he was. If he had to describe it, it would be a cathedral, but no cathedral he had ever seen before.

The ceilings weren't painted like St. Paul's cathedral, but the layout was the same. St. Paul's was the only cathedral he had ever been in, and he was unnerved by the same layout without all of the detail the cathedral was supposed to have.

The lack of feeling was disturbing.

Blue figures flickered from the general shape of a human into cartoon-like avitars. The woman yelling at her child was looking up at the ceiling, shouting.

“This is your last warning. Next thing I'm going to do is get your dad,” she threatened.

There was music in the background... in his head really. He recognized the song, but it was a version he'd never heard before. It was a house version of “Staying Alive.” He felt sick. He wished he could turn off the music, thought that would make things better, but he didn't have control of his body much less the music.

He looked at his hands, but they weren't his hands. They looked more like the hands of some cartoon character in an adult animated series.

The cathedral lit up like there was lightning inside and the room shook visually, but his body was still numb besides the feeling of nausea. That's when the explosion came, less than a second later. Then there was a smell. Cordite.

Before the explosion, Hiram had felt paralyzed, like he was in a body that wasn't his own and he didn't know quite how to make it work. After the explosion, however, his training kicked in and he managed to duck underneath a bar whose bottles had been knocked over with concussive force.

The woman who was yelling at a nonexistant child looked down at where he was and laughed.

“I suppose this is your first time here, honey?” she asked without really asking.

Then, without further conversation, she ordered a drink from the bar and left him to his own devices.

Then Hiram started to feel. His pants were warm and wet. He had pissed himself.

Where most men would have felt embarrased, overwhelmed, or just confused, Hiram was angry. He knew what to do in dangerous situations, but this was something he couldn't even call a situation.

Hiram was lost, but he wasn't dead, surely. Dead men don't piss themselves.

The warm urine began to cool as the concierge approached him.

Concierge?

Hiram wondered why he knew this man was a concierge and why a concierge would be in a cathedral. And Hiram had ducked under a bar. Bars didn't belong in cathedrals.

“Mr. Abiff, I see that you are in need of a change of clothes. Would you like me to replace the ones you're wearing?”

No one else seemed to think the explosion was an emergency, so he followed their lead, for the moment. The concierge was dressed in a maroon-colored tuxedo with a black bowtie, a tablet in hand. There was something not human about him.

“That would be good. Where should I go?” Hiram asked.

And before the concierge could lead him anywhere, Hiram was in a fresh set of clothing. It was warm as if it had just come from a dryer, warm and comforting.

No sciatica, warm clothes. Is it possible everything here was safe and pleasant? But there were explosions.

There was something niggling the back of his brain. He couldn't remember fully what it was, but he had the feeling that he was supposed to be looking for someone. Someone small. His daughter.

“Have you seen Lux around anywhere?” Hiram asked the conceirge.

“Your daughter is with the nanny in the main altar. I can take you there if you wish.” the conceirge replied.

Hiram needed to get away from the watchful eye of those around him, especially the non-human ones.

“I've got this,” Hiram said.

Hiram knew where the main altar was. St. Paul's Cathedral was laid out like a cross. At the top of the cross was the choir. At the bottom of the cross was the entrance, and on the east arm of the cross was the main cathedral. That's the area which was pierced by bombs during the Blitz which had pierced a hole in the ceiling. The ceiling was in tact for now.

Hiram climbed his way off the floor in his new set of what would pass for clothing in cartoonland and made his way across the misplaced checkered patterned floor over to the altar.

“You've got to be fucking kiddin me with this cartoon shit,” he mumbled under his breath.

A woman had been walking next to him at the time.

“I used to be put off by the cartoon faces, but it grows on you,” she said.

She shouldn't have been able to hear him, she was a good ten feet away. Voices carried here. He would have to be more careful.

“Are you doing ok? Are you feeling VR sick?” She placed her hand on his shoulder and he felt it like electricity. He was aroused.

What an innapropriate time to be aroused.

“I am feeling a little sick,” Hiram said. “I also feel a little trapped. Do you know what's going on here?” Hiram asked.

“Can you ask your question in a different way?” the woman asked.

Hiram shifted his weight onto his right cartoon leg. He was still confused about how he able to shift his weight or why he had done it at all. It didn't make any sense. The nausea came again. Hiram didn't want to engage with any more strangers, but he would never be able function if he couldn't get the nausea to stop.

“Let's start with this,” he said, “do you know how to stop feeling sick?”

The woman moved her hand from his shoulder down to his stomach. He felt her hand near his cartoon belt.

“Is this any better?” she asked.

The pain subsided and was replaced with a feeling of pleasure. He looked down to see if he had a cartoon arousal. He didn't.

“I don't feel the nausea anymore, but I also don't want to be here anymore,” Hiram said.

The silk lady smiled and nodded. “It sounds like you need to take a break.”

“I'd love to take a break. How do I do that?”

Hiram was wondering if this was some kind of dream. The way time was passing was different than in real life. He felt connected to the silk lady in a way that he wouldn't have felt if he weren't in this situation. Wherever he was, this wasn't real life even if there were real people here.

“You don't even have to log out, you can just take off your headset,” the silk lady touched his shoulder again.

Hiram wasn't aware that he was wearing a headset, and he didn't feel safe enough to let silk lady know that he wouldn't know how to take it off if he were wearing one. He was just there with her and only there with her.

“Ah,” set Hiram. “That's good to know.”

The silk lady tilted her head, “Are you going to take a break?”

“I'm feeling much better now, thank you,” Hiram said.

He was lying, but he couldn't let her know that he wasn't able to take off, what was it that she said, his “headset.”

“Do you often touch the stomach of men you've just met?” Hiram asked.

Her expressions revealed nothing, but there was something warm in her tone, soemthing safe.

“Well, I'd have to say that I don't do it in real life,” she answered.

Hiram shifted again, grateful that he had fresh clothes, wondering how it was that they still felt fresh from the dryer.

“What is this, then, if it isn't real life?” Hiram asked, looking around to see if he could spot his daughter.

“What do you mean,” she asked. “I mean, this isn't real life. We're in a different place, an imaginary place.”

Hiram didn't know what she meant.

“Oh sure. That's not what I meant. I meant, what is this, then, if it isn't real life?”

“It's the metaverse, silly. Act like you don't know,” she answered.

Hiram noticed that the silk woman had no discernable expression on her face even though her lips moved when she talked, forming the words she spoke. Occassionally, she blinked.

He deduced that she couldn't see his face either, and that was good. It was good because he didn't often feel fear, but he certainly felt it now. He knew that you needed a headset to be in the metaverse. He, in fact... yes, Hiram worked on the metaverse project through the Temple Corporation. He was a builder working under the architects on the Event Horizon Build. And the Event Horizon build was where they were working on...

“Oh God,” said Hiram when he realized that he must have succeeded in his latest experiment. He now lived in the metaverse and there was no way back.

---

Lux was waiting with a nanny bot over at the main altar.

“You're excused now,” he told her.

“I'm sorry, sir, I can only relinquish responsibility for the minor when an adult with an active guardian account takes responsibility,” the nanny replied.

This was a riot. He was on this committee that decided to implement the nanny system.

“Was I really?” he thought.

He was. He was beginning to remember, but he remembered things in small pieces, like looking through dark sunglasses when you walk inside from a sunny day.

There had been too many minors in the lobby, and it made things difficult to moderate because you could never be sure if the children were being safe. So minors must now be accompanied by a nanny bot when their parents weren't around to escort them. And now Hiram was here, in the metaverse, ready to escort his daughter around, but he wasn't connected to an account on the outside.

“It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife,” he thought. It was some proverb, from the bible, probably.

“Mr. Abiff,” the nanny bot said, “I understand that you are her guardian, but I cannot find that your avatar is connected to an active account at the moment. It seems as if your headset is idle.”

Hiram searched his fragmented memory, trying to recall if there were any safeguards in place to check for people who were in the metaverse without an active account. He couldn't remember any such protocols because it didn't seem possible. So, he decided again to get the nanny bot to relinquish responsibility for his daughter.

“I know that my headset says that it is idle, but it must be some kind of mistake because you can see that I'm actually here, right?” Hiram asked the bot.

Hiram suspected that he didn't actually have a headset, but he figured he should pretend that he had not only a headset, but also an account linked to such headset since the bot mentioned an account and the lady in silk mentioned a headset.

“I'll go and check for you, Mr. Abiff. It may take me a few minutes to research the issue,” the bot said.

The nanny bot turned into a coin and started spinning. Hiram thought that this was a good time to talk to Lux, see if she was safe. He motioned for her to accompany him closer to the bar, further away from the noise of the cathedral. When he was within arm's reach of the bar, a popup announced that he was in a whisper space and the voices around him turned into a low droll instead of him being able to hear their conversations.

“Whisper space,” he thought, “this must mean that the voices from the outside and the inside are concealed based on their distance, a shorter distance.”

“How long have you been waiting, dollface?” Hiram asked his daughter.

Lux looked to be about eight years old or so. She had two large front teeth, larger than those in the rest of her mouth. She lost her two front teeth when she was seven, replacing them with these monstrous chicklets.

“Not long, daddy. I've only been here for about a day or so,” Lux said.

Hiram wondered if it was strange, her being here for so long, wondered whether or not anyone was watching and why they might be. Hiram leaned over to her, to whisper a question, but she seemed to be pushed back by an invisible bubble. There were invisible barriers here. It seemed as if not only people, but their invisible barriers were collidable. He looked around, to check if anyone was near. They weren't.

“Where did you sleep,” he whispered.

Lux looked confused, “Can you ask your question in a different way?”

Hiram was taken aback by the question because it didn't seem like an eight-year-old question, but showed no concern on his face, “You've been here for a day, and you must have gone to sleep or taken a nap in that time. Where did you sleep?”

Lux turned her head to the side and raised her hands, “I'm not tired.” She would have shrugged “in real life,” but she didn't shrug here.

Hiram wondered how she didn't seem tired. He'd been here for all of five minutes and he was already tired. He closed his eyes, to see if the flashing lights from the dancefloor would stop. They did, and not in the way that they should have. The lights dissapeared altogether, it did not seem to be able to penetrate his eyelids.

Hiram then realized he didn't have any eyelids, or any eyes for that matter. He felt trapped, like he had a bag over his head that he couldn't take off. He didn't know the escape routes because nothing felt real. The only thing he could use to calculate an escape was the world which was so unreal. He didn't know anyone to turn to, no team to radio to. He scanned the area to see if he had any allies.

“What in the cartoon fuck is going on,” he thought, careful this time not to say it aloud.

There were about 16 people in the room, counting the two bots he had spotted, the concierge and the nanny. Some people were running at an obscene pace up and down the flickering checkered floors. Some were dancing, and there was a group of people who were talking in a circle. If he was going to understand the situation, he was going to have to talk to people.

“Come with me, Lux” Hiram said, and tried to grab her hand. But there was no grabbing hands. Their hands slapped together like a clap and Lux's face changed into an expression of elation.

“That was funny, daddy!” Lux giggled and squirmed. Her avitar, if that's what it was called, was shorter than the rest of the avitars in the room and he wondered if it had been wise to give children a child-like appearance in the game.

That's right, this is a game.

Hiram was still looking through the glass darkly.

“Come with me, Lux,” Hiram said again.

Lux raised her hands again, but this time higher and a plume of confetti burst from her wrists and into the air and her avitar looked happier than it did when they had clapped hands, “I can't, Daddy. I can't go anywhere without my nanny bot.”

“Ok baby, I'll be right back. Please try to stay right here,” he said.

Hiram walked over to the group of people having a conversation. It was a women and two men. The woman had large, red hair and was laughing so loudly. The laughing was in his head just like the screaming woman.

”... and Harry was just saying 'Ma' 'Mah' 'Maw' over and over again,” BuffyBuffers laughed.

Hiram knew her name because it was emlazened above her head. The other avitars also laughed, mezmerized by her energy. These people obviously knew each other. Hiram didn't want to interrupt their conversation or join the conversation unwanted, but it seemed like his only choice. Others in the room seemed like charicatures of real people, bouncing and screaming at one another.

Hiram was still counting people. 5 bots now and 11 possible real people, four of them were children. He knew because their voices were small but loud at the same time. 

Hiram stood near the avitars which proclaimed themselves to be Buffy Buffers, Country4Life, and Harry Haller, hoping to have a slice of a conversation he could insert himself into, maybe find an ally in this place. 

Buffy swung her arms wildly, laughing and talking, “It was his first time learning the language, but he was doing so well. You’ve all heard him imitate accents and how nicely he does those.” 

HarryHaller entered the circle a little more closely and started speaking in a Russian accent, “It’s nothing, all you’ve to do is to listen very very closely.” 

Country4life1928 was giggling. He seemed amused by the whole conversation. Hiram was looking for a way to respond, maybe he could talk about accents too. Then BuffyBuffers greeted him.

“Hello Hiram,” she said, “how are you doing today?” 

Hiram was taken aback. People don’t normally greet random lurking strangers. Hiram decided to ask for a small favor. Two yesses often lead to a third yes. He was probably going to have to ask for some favors.

“I’m doing well enough, but my daughter is having troubles with the area. Too loud, maybe,” Hiram said.

The three nodded.

Country4Life1928 spoke up, “We… we don’t usually hang out in the plaza. It… it can get kinda loud in here.”

“Is there a way to make it quieter?” Hiram asked. 

HarryHaller again slid to the middle of the circle, this time facing Hiram.

“Yes. There is. There’s a button on the bottom of your headset. It’s just here,” and HarryHaller pointed to his avitar’s face. Hiram heard a clicking sound coming from Harry’s avitar.

Yes number one.

Hiram mimicked the motion with his own avitar, not finding a headset in the real world, “Ah, yes, I see. This is much better, thank you. I’ll have to go and show her.”

BuffyBuffers continued, “Yes, it can be quite overwhelming for the young ones in here, especially in the lobby.”

Harry Haller piped in, “I noticed that you’re still teleporting around. Do you want to do that, or do you want to slide?”

“I don’t think that I know what slide is, or teleport. Could you tell me?” Hiram asked.

“Yes,” said HarryHaller. “Teleport is what you’re doing now, when you take your controller, point it where you want to go, press your analog stick forward and release it. If you want to slide, like this…” 

Yes number two.

Harry started to slide in and out of the talking circle with his avitar, “all you have to do is go into your settings using your watch and change the first setting on the top. It’ll say ‘teleport,’ and you just click that and change it to ‘slide.’

Hiram looked at his watch. Thank the Architect there was a way to access the menu without using hardware. He navigated through the menu and switched his motion from teleport to slide. He slid around for a demonstration and the sickness which followed was immediate.

Any lie should be as close to the truth as you can make it. Hiram was already feeling sick, so he decided to use this to elicit help from this group of surprisingly affable people.

“I’m feeling a little sick here, and was wondering if there was a place to go that is a little less loud… maybe more private?”

The three nodded their heads. This was the third yes. It seemed as if they were all invested. Good. It wasn’t a solid ally, but it was a start.

“Let me just get my daughter, quickly, and I’ll be right back. I like to keep us together,” Hiram explained.

“How lovely,” BuffyBuffers said.

“We should go to Kitlane’s”

“We’ll be here,” HarryHaller said.

Hiram turned and began sliding over to where his daughter was, relieved that he had found at least three real people who didn’t seem to be playing a game.

---

Just because a gun is involved, doesn't mean that you're automatically scared. You get scared because you've had a similar experience that your body remembers. I still don't get scared when someone shows up with a gun because all my experiences with guns have been either theoretical in nature, or... someone was mad, just not mad at me.

My first experience with a gun was when I was 11 years old. There was a man sitting in his 1980s Ford truck on the hill across the street from our house, which was a relativly knew truck considering it was only 1991.

It was like something out of the movies, and I loved it when my life was like a movie, I didn't care what kind.

“Jim, I don't know how long he's been there. You have to come home right now,” Mom whispered into the yellowed Radioshack cordless phone. The silver antenea moved with her head as she kept the phone pressed to her ear.

She paced, looked out the window, and paced some more.

“Go to your room. Keep away from the windows. Kathy will be here soon,” she said.

“What good is Kathy going to do by being here? Shouldn't Dad be here?”

Most girls would have taken a clue from their mother to see how they should feel. But I didn't really do that. Mom always walked around like a ball of rubber bands. Her elbows would, even when she was chrocheting, be tight to her ribcage while her fingers gripped the needle with superhuman strength like if she didn't, the needle might slip out of her hands and plunge into the neck of some innocent bystander. Since she was like this even when we went to get icecream, I didn't think a thing when she started to cry.

“What did I say?” and she aimed one of her rubber band arms, waiting to snap it onto my face.

“Going!” I said, and I stomped off to my room. She could be so dumb sometimes. This might have been my only chance to ever see a gun. I just wished the binoculars were in my room instead of in Dad's car. I would have to look with my bare eyes.

When Kathy came over before it took a full thirty minutes to drive from her A-frame house on the top of the mountain down to our house in the valley. I was in my room for no more than 15 minutes when Kathy's green F1-50 slid into place on our gravel driveway. And I do mean slid. It was like some kind of japanese racecar move she pulled with that rear-wheeled truck. And as soon as she pulled in, I raced into the livingroom to see what she was going to do.

Kathy walked in how she normally did with a pack of playing cards and a bottle of Jim Beam. She set them on the table and placed something else there too that she had in her pocket.

It was a gun.

Her own gun.

Kathy had a gun.

I pictured a shootout with a strong female protagonist. I imagined the cops would come and haul Kathy out after she killed the man across the street. Then that guy probably had friends that would come that Kathy would have to kill too. You can't have any witnesses. Then the police would come and she would have to tell them how she was a helpless woman who had no choice but to shoot to kill with these men.

But instead of immediately dicing it up with the man across the street through the window, she took my mom to the kitchen table and set her down. She took out two shot glasses and poured one for herself and one for my mom.

“We may be here for a while,” she said.

Then Kathy turned to me.

“You know how to play speed?”

Speed is a game where you have four stacks of cards in front of you and seven cards in your hand. It's like a fast-paced game of solitaire. The two cards in the middle are face-up when you start. The rest of the cards are dealt to each person to get rid of.

“You just gotta find a number that's below or above this number of the opposite color to put on top of it.”

We played slow at first. There was a red ace that was face-up. She played a black king. I had a red queen, but she put down a red ace before I could get it down, then she slapped down a black two, a red three, and a black four.

“That's cheating!” I said.

“It's not cheating, honey. That's something you have to learn. Being faster or better than someone else isn't cheating, it's just winning,” Kathy said.

I got to thinking about the gun. It was on the table next to her stack of cards. At any moment she could reach for her stack of cards to get more to replinish her hand... or she could reach for the gun. I sat facing her, and Kathy sat facing me and the guy across the street.

EXT. MENIUS MOUNTAIN HOUSE – AFTERNOON

WE OPEN on the exterior of the house, on the porch. The window to the interior shows Jim inside, sitting in his recliner, but from the back.

Gail and Lawrence prepare to enter the house. They whisper to each other to ensure Jim doesn't hear them.

GAIL Remember, follow my lead.

LAWRENCE Yeah, act like everything is fine unless you say the safeword. Why are we here again?

GAIL I don't know. I guess I feel like this is my house too, but my dad lives here.

LAWRENCE It's your grandpa's house, right?

GAIL Yeah, he bought it so that the whole family could have a place to stay when we come up for the church retreats. You know he hosts all those kids from the children's home too.

LAWRENCE It's so weird to think he lived in an orphanage.

GAIL We don't call them that anymore, honey. We call them children's homes or group homes.

LAWRENCE What's the difference?

GAIL So you're just going to act like everything is fine and this is just a nice family visit.

LAWRENCE You know we don't have to do this. He doesn't know we're here yet. Do you want to go inside?

GAIL I don't know, but I do know that I should be able to come here if I want to. This mountain house is for the whole family. I shouldn't have to stay away just because he can't afford his own place to live. Are you ready?

LAWRENCE Are you?

GAIL KNOCKS ON THE DOOR.

LIVING ROOM MOUNTAIN HOUSE

The room is dark. Gail walks and Lawrence stumbles into the house. Greetings and hugs happen from family who haven't seen each other for a while. Gail makes sure to be hugged from the side. Everyone moves into the breakfast nook. Jim clears off the table. People tussle into the booth. It's small, and there are a lot things on the table like letters, cigarettes, and used coffee cups. Jim takes out six cheeseburgers and places them, two at each setting.

JIM These are only a dollar a piece. I eat one every day.

GAIL It looks like you've lost a few teeth too?

JIM Yeah, I had to pull 'em out myself. I got them though. Momentary silence.

LAWRENCE I wonder how burgers can be so cheap. Gail stands up while Lawrence and Jim eat burgers. She starts handling stuff in the kitchen, fidgeting until she finds a kitchen knife. She climbs the stairs. Lawrence is wiping katsup off the blade of his hand as she walks away.

INT. MOUNTAIN HOUSE HALLWAY

The floor groans with her weight and she opens the door which is propped open to Jim who is sleeping in the bed.

INT. MOUNTAIN HOUSE BEDROOM

Gail holds a knife, listening to snoring as the conversation about Bad Burger continues.

LAWRENCE We used to have a group of old people that would come in on Sunday mornings before church when I worked at Bad Burger.

JIM That's the place to go after church. All those old people like to have some place to go and shoot the shit with each other. Everybody goes to church around here.

LAWRENCE This was before church. They would drive up in their Oldsmobiles and their 1970s Cadillacs with their veterans hats on. They'd start talking in the parking lot in a circle until everybody got there. Then they'd walk in and get their coffees.

JIM Must have been a club or something. Was it the veteran's club?

LAWRENCE Not all of them were veterans. I think they came because of the senior citizen discount. The coffee was a quarter. Four of them could have coffee for a dollar.

GAIL You still collect quarters? Gail is standing over Jim's sleeping body. She takes one of the quarters from Jim's top drawer and places it on the bed next to his pillow.

JIM Yeah, I got all my quarters in my top drawer now. I don't collect as many as I used to. Sometimes I use them to get my burger.

Momentary silence.

LAWRENCE I always thought it was so sweet. They didn't really go to Bad Burger for the coffee. I bet some of those guys were in the national guard together. They used the cheap coffee as an excuse to get together.

GAIL Are you old enough to get the senior citizen discount yet?

JIM I could get it, but it's still cheaper to make coffee at home. You guys want any coffee?

INT. KITCHEN

Gail is now, suddenly, in the kitchen, knife in hand.

GAIL I'm good, thanks. We had so much coffee on the drive up here. We've been driving for days now.

LAWRENCE I'm good too. I still have a Bad Burger coffee in the car from our drive. It stays hot while you drive. Seems like someone could get hurt from that coffee, how hot it is.

INT. KITCHEN TABLE

Jim and Lawrence Laugh. Gail puts the knife back into the knife block in the kitchen and makes her way over to the table to sit. She doesn't eat.

JIM That was a lawsuit, wasn't it?

LAWRENCE It was almost a 3 million dollar payout for punitive damages, but Bad Burger could afford it. They make so much money off their drinks.

GAIL I don't know what punitive means.

JIM It's things like pain and suffering. It's the money they get paid after they get all their medical bills paid. It's money they get to keep.

LAWRENCE It probably only costs five cents to make a fountain drink. Coffee is probably a lot cheaper because you don't have to buy the syrup from vendors.

JIM Seems like a business we should get into.

GAIL Suing Bad burger for punitive damages or selling coffee? Jim laughs. Lawrence laughs nervously.

GAIL We have to go see mom today, then we're going to drive down to Florence.

JIM That's a four hour drive. Are you sure you don't want to take a rest here before you go?

GAIL It's Grandma and Grandpa's anniversary. I know the timing is fast, but I'd hate to miss it. I don't know how many more they're going to have. Momentary silence.

JIM Well, your momma is gonna be glad to see you.

GAIL Patty is too, I'm sure. I just hope she got her hearing aid by now. Last time I saw her she was screaming at me.

JIM It's not on purpose.

GAIL I'm sure. Jim and Lawrence have finished their burgers. Gail slides a burger over to Lawrence. He looks at her incredulously.

GAIL Sorry, Dad. My stomach is hurting from all that coffee. Maybe I should sue Bad Burger.

Things might have gone better for my mom if she hadn’t gotten pregnant to begin with. I mean with me. She’s like a swimmer in the ocean of her own life who got caught in the riptide. I’ve tried swimming out there a few times, but she keeps getting her dirty little dick beaters around my neck and pushes me under every time.

“I know you struggle too,” she says.

As I tell this story, just imagine where tiny little bottles of vodka might be hiding in each scene. Maybe there is a shooter underneath a pile of handmade doilies. There could also be a bottle hiding behind the china we rarely used, the china reserved for special occasions. She was what we call a professional. When it came to drinking, she really knew what she was doing. There was no way to tell she was drinking, even for the people who handed her the thirty day chip.

---

My mom and her family lived in Florence. I’m not talking about Florence, Italy, but Florence, SC. It’s about an hour from the beach, Myrtle Beach. Myrtle Beach is the beach that everybody on the eastern seaboard south of Virginia imagines when they hear the word “beach.” It’s got salt water taffy, a boardwalk for walking on the strand. It’s even got an amusement park, albeit one that is more like a state fair instead of something cool like Six Flags. The reason that people know Florence is because it’s the place you drop off of I-90 on the way to the beach. You know you’re close, only about an hour, and if you’ve got a convertible, this is where you stop on the side of the road and put the top down. Florence, however, is a place where the wind from the ocean never reaches, and neither do those tourist dollars. But the heat, day humidity, and poverty cooks the Piedmont like chicken bog in a pressure cooker on a Sunday after church. We lived in Florence, South Carolina when my dad had his own business, if a con man can really own anything besides a con, that is.

“I started that business with 25 dollars and a trailer I built myself,” he said.

My mom already knew this story. We both did. We knew all the stories, but that didn’t stop him from telling us again. He did that, told the same stories over again. And every time he told a story, those stories changed... a little. Today’s barbeque would present the stage for a few stories.

Dad started a business called Palmetto Home Improvements. Every business I could think of started with the word “palmetto.” It’s an important tree for us sandlappers. There was some battle that happened against the British on a fort, probably Fort Sumter, where the fort was made out of the only substantial trees which could be found in the area, the Palmetto tree. Palmetto trees are kinda like palm trees that never got picked for dodge ball. They’re short and stout. These trees, however short and stout, instead of splintering like a hard wood would when hit by cannon fire, would catch the cannonballs like a baseball in a mit, tossing the balls gently onto the ground. I suppose us sandlappers identified with this tree. There was a lot of strife in the south, always has been. But it’s not like the south splintered and disintegrated after the civil war. We’re still around, making fried chicken and trying to figure out how to get along after kidnapping and enslaving an entire generation or two of peoples.

Today’s chicken wasn’t fried chicken. That took too much effort. Today’s chicken was on the grill so that Jimbo could marinate them in some crazy orange sauce and continue basting them as they sizzled in the swelter of the grill and the day.

Last time Dad told the story about starting his business, Palmetto Home Improvements, he started with 25 dollars and a trailer that he borrowed from Terri. This time he built that trailer himself. Pretty impressive considering I never knew Dad to have any tools at all. Well, he had a hammer, and I know you can’t build a trailer with a hammer.

There were three classes of people in France before the revolution; those who fight, those who pray, and those who work.

The economic system was such that the top two percent were those who fight (nobles) and those who pray (clergy), with the remaining 98 percent of the population being those who work. 80 percent of total people were peasants.

And peasants owed taxes, but nobles and clergy do not.

The land has been disappearing for so long now that it's not even brought up in conversation. It's a foregone conclusion that your land, if it has an ocean, river, or lake view, will disappear. With it goes whatever privilege you may have had. I might have had.

The land taxes were wielded on those who weren't noble or clergy. Nobles owned giant swaths of land, and the land which they didn't own were passed down and divided up generation after generation until finally, the number of people on a single plot of land was simply unsustainable.

There is no land for sale. There are land rentals available. This is supposed to be some kind of feature, renting land, in that you don't have to put down a well or run in electricity. And you still GET to build a house on that land. Once your house is there, the rent goes up, like trailer parks in the early 2000's. Then you lose your house to the people who own the land and your family gets to sleep in the van.

The Temple

Those who work.

I was born into the class of people we know of as “those who work,” delivering the base material for your 3D printers as a teenager in order to pay for high school.

There were 10 people in my class, and I had to pay twenty five dollars a day in order to afford my school materials and the tuition. I knew that students who were able to enroll in classes with fewer students had a statistically higher chance of succeeding in climbing out of the WTBH, but delivering materials took time, and I only got paid about 40 dollars a day. I used the extra ten dollars a day to either buy lunch or save for the clothes I would need for University Interviews.

Look and act the part in the role you want to play in your own life. I don't know a more eloquent way to say that, and I'm becoming less able to speak more eloquently these days. My connection to the irrational nature of what it means to be human is waning. I still have the memories, but it's harder to believe the lessons I learned from them.

The books were changing every year, being produced from the oil-rich and recently annexed Texas. Somehow, even though Texas was no longer a part of the United States, they still provided the bulk of our educational texts.

I made it through. Then I needed to go to college in order to be an engineer. In order to afford to do so, I joined the Army. I was then one of those that fight. I saw what our country did to the planet, and I chalked it up to, “we really do need these tanks in order to protect us from a possible Russian or, architect forbid, a Chinese threat.” I was wrong. After the army, I went into seminary and received my degree in computer science. The temple paid for my master's degree in robotics, and then I went on to nanoneuroscience, a burgeoning field which sprang from, interestingly enough, the informatics field. But instead of merely getting data back from organisms in order to optimize systems, we started to understand that we could start manipulating the neurons in a very real and very physical way with these nanobots. I was, then, directly connected, as a man of prayer, to the very essence of what makes us human, our tissues and it's interaction with its environment. At the moment we discovered that we cold regenerate human neurons with nickel, titanium, and carbon nanotubules, I realized that the scientists who live in the temple would soon become gods. I am the first of my kind, but I will not be the last.

You need to know that the temple is for those who live by the supreme value by which we should all subscribe, leave no trace. There are some x billion different species on the planet, most of which are either providing oxygen for us so that we can breathe or cleaning the air or water from our own contaminants.

There were three classes of people in France before the revolution; those who fight, those who pray, and those who work.

The economic system was such that the top two percent were those who fight (nobles) and those who pray (clergy), with the remaining 98 percent of the population being those who work. 80 percent of total people were peasants.

And peasants owed taxes, but nobles and clergy do not.

---

The land has been disappearing for so long now that it's not even brought up in conversation. It's a foregone conclusion that your land, if it has an ocean, river, or lake view, will disappear. With it goes whatever privilege you may have had. I might have had.

---

The land taxes were wielded on those who weren't noble or clergy. Nobles owned giant swaths of land, and the land which they didn't own were passed down and divided up generation after generation until finally, the number of people on a single plot of land was simply unsustainable.

---

There is no land for sale. There are land rentals available. This is supposed to be some kind of feature, renting land, in that you don't have to put down a well or run in electricity. And you still GET to build a house on that land. Once your house is there, the rent goes up, like trailer parks in the early 2000's.