When it comes down to it, I’m just another empty vessel, trying to find the source.
Imaginary Physics
“What do you have?” he said.
“Chi-particle. Can you break it?”
“Can I break it. We can break anything here. I’ll give you a tachyon and a baryon.”
“That’s not enough.”
“I think that’s fair.”
“It’s not enough. Throw in a meson.”
“No way. A chi-particle isn’t worth a tachyon, baryon, and meson.”
“I disagree.”
“Take it somewhere else, then. Know how hard it is to get rid of a chi-particle?”
“Know how hard it is to capture an extra one?”
“If it’s so hard, and they’re so special, why are you trying to get rid of it?”
“These are special circumstances.”
“I’ve heard that before.”
“I need to change a chi-particle.”
“Look, I feel you, buddy, but I’m pretty limited. It’ll be hard as hell for me to get rid of that. People don’t want them. And Chi-particles have imaginary mass. Know what that does to real mass?”
“Yes, but they’re faster than light. They’re faster than tachyons. They have the longest half-life of anything out there. Hell, they’re the fundamental energy-particle of life.”
“That’s why people don’t want them. They already have them. Everyone has one. They worry about what another chi-particle will do to the relativity of simultaneity.”
“Yes, but Blink drives won’t work without them.”
“Blink drives are in the future. I have to deal with the present.”
“There is no future or past, there’s just now.”
“Oh, no, don’t start trying quantum bullshit on me. I’m an eternalist. I’ll not have presentism in my shop. You want to talk presentism, take it somewhere else.”
“Okay, okay, forget about time.”
“Forget about time?”
“Just give me a pentaquark and a tachyon, instead.”
“Where do you think you’re at? Look around you. You think I have anything as exotic as a pentaquark here?” He laughed. “Next, you’ll be asking for a heptaquark.”
“Well, what can you give me, then? Make an offer.”
“What about some leptons? I got every flavor you want.”
“I’m already lousy with leptons. Try again.”
He thought. “What flavor of chi-particle is it?”
“Human, of course.”
“Human huh?”
“I wouldn’t be dealing with you, if it wasn’t a Human chi-particle.”
“Okay. I’ll give you a tachyon, baryon, and boson.”
“A boson?”
“Yeah, that’s a good deal.”
“You kidding me?”
“You won’t get that anywhere else.”
“A Higgs boson?”
“Now you’re trying to take advantage of me.”
Both accepted the swap after sniping at one another for a few minutes. Neither was satisfied, but then, nobody ever was, dealing with imaginary physics.
The Accumulation
Words and emotions.
Pain and disease.
Actions and memories.
They build up, and tear you down.
Coming Out
Yeah, I’m coming out, confessing some sins. Nothing major.
I like spying on people. I haven’t done any peeping tom sort of thing, no. I like sitting back at the cafe and observing exchanges, body language and expression. I eavesdrop when I can. I like looking at the books they carry to see what they’re reading.
In check-out lines at grocery stores and supermarkets, I eyeball their shopping cart contents to see if they bought the same things as me, and what they bought that I considered, or should be considering. Sometimes the stuff I see in their cart make me wonder, “What the hell are you thinking?” I hope, from quantities being purchased, and the items, that they’re having a party, and inviting others to eat all that junk they’re buying. One curiosity that I’ve noticed is that stores are now full of ice cream novelties, but I rarely see them in shopping carts. I think those are an item that we eschew buying when we’re shopping, and run out to get late at night, when fewer people are around, so we can hurry in, furtively purchase them, and then rush home and devour them.
Purses intrigue. They’re usually pretty big. When someone has a small purse, I think, “Does that work?” When women open their purses, I peer in, slightly hoping that I’ll see them carrying a gun or something else that seems interesting or unusual. Most purses I’ve looked into are dark, cluttered messes, though. I usually don’t see much beyond keys, wallets, check books, money, notes and receipts. Oh yeah, tissues, gum, and cough drop. Sometimes they’ll have a cookie, cracker, or piece of fruit.
Of course, we’re all spies at restaurants, peering over at other people’s tables to see what they’re eating. Oh, is that what I ordered? is often asked. But sometimes, I lament, oh, I should’ve ordered that. Sometimes I think, geez, I’m glad I didn’t order that.
Thanks to my wife, I now also check out shoes. Shopping with her has made me more aware of shoes. It’s not a foot fetish, but a curiosity. I’m conservative when it comes to footwear. I have a rule that I don’t wear tennis or running shoes with jeans or long pants, and I don’t don Saddle Oxfords or penny loafers with my shorts. Some people’s choices startle me, but I’m also envious that they’ll put things like that on their feet. What courage…or insanity.
I draw the line at tall, stiletto heels. They look insanely uncomfortable. I’m constantly irked by television shows and movies that feature a female detective doing a foot chase in very high heels, whether they’re boots, sandals, or fancy dress shoes. I just haven’t seen many women run fast in those in, quote, real life. My wife always says, “If women need to run and they’re in shoes like that, they’ll take them off.”
So, yeah, coming out. Pretty boring, and pretty average. That’s me. Coming out average. You should see my shopping cart.
The Book On The Next Table
I confess: I spy on people. Especially when they have books. I want to see what they’re reading.
The woman next to me in the coffee shop has the book, “Men Explaining Things to Me,” on her table. I want to ask her, “Do you want me to explain that book?” I thought it would be funny, right? She – and other women with this book – probably have never heard that joke before.
I decided not to say it to her, mostly because I like living. I think a joke like that one could be hazardous to my longevity.
Unanswered
She’s a Luddite, no doubt. Never had a computer or a personal email account. She’d had the one when she’d worked, in email’s early days. Didn’t have a cellphone and was only vaguely aware of selfies, and she didn’t have a television.
But she did have a P.O.T. – a plain old telephone – and an answering machine. When they called, though, it ringed without switching over. One day. Two. Twice on that second day, once each in the morning and afternoon, and then again twice on the morning of the third day. Official worry had launched by then. That. Was not. Like her.
Nerves coiling into a rat’s nest, they went to her house. Her car was there. The house looked normal. Sunning cats watched their investigation with narrow eyes, their ears pricked forward to hear their soft voices. Soft voices were needed in a moment like this, when you don’t know what you’ll find.
No one answered their knock.
They walked around the house. She wasn’t in the yard working, or in the shed. They checked the shed…in case.
The cats looked okay. They discussed it. How the cats looked meant nothing. A window was open for the cats to come and go. They could see a feeder half-filled with kibble inside, and a water bowl.
She kept her doors unlocked. That’s how she was. He remembered her answer to his amazement about how she lived. She said, scoffing, “I don’t think I remember where the house keys are.” They thought she was joking, but she said she wasn’t. Remembering that she didn’t lock her doors didn’t make them feel any better about the lack of connections to her.
Knocking again, they opened the door and called her name.
No reply.
Entering, they crept around, invaders of a friendly territory. It reminded him of entering a church when nothing was scheduled. It was a clean house, but not organized. That wasn’t a concern. They had other concerns, like bodies.
No bodies were on the floor. No blood. No signs of fights or struggles, as they’d seen in movies and television shows. They called her again, in bolder voices. The kitchen was clean. There was food on the refrigerator. The dishes were done. Nothing was in the sink.
They looked in all the rooms. No one was found. He went to her rotary Trimline phone and picked it up. He heard a dial tone. The answering machine was beside the phone. A red light showed it had power. Blinking showed it had messages. Maybe it was full.
Further walking around did nothing but reinforce the fact that they’d walked into another’s house without an invitation. “Let’s leave her a note,” he said. “Tell her we called and came by, and that her answering machine doesn’t seem to be working.”
They wrote the note, and left after two more minutes. They’d allowed that time in case she was out somewhere. She could return at any moment.
They closed the door behind them, and looked around again, to see what they’d missed. The sunning cats watched, and wondered who they were.
A Crazy Little Thing
He’d originally hacked into her accounts. No, he’d originally seen her at Starbucks. He didn’t frequent Starbucks on the principle that those fucking corporations were sapping the originality and creativity out of America, and changing its citizens into zombies. (Zombizens, he called them, but it didn’t catch on.) One rainy day, he rushed into Starbucks and used their restroom to drop a load. That’s when he saw her.
She was stone gorgeous in his eyes. His eyes were all that mattered. Learning her name, he cyber-stalked her, and then hacked her accounts. With access to her bank accounts, he saw, man, was she busted. Knowing her routines, he figured out when and where he could spy on her, and did, thinking about how he was gonna meet her. Wanted something fresh as an approach, something that would stand out.
She drove a shit-brown and rusted Camry manufactured back when they were compact cars. The mirrors were duct-taped to her car. Colored tape held the back lights on. The front bumper was missing, and her windshield was cracked. Through study, he saw the car blowing blue smoke when it ran, and noticed the windows were hard to roll up and down.
He would replace the Camry for her. After she’d parked one night after evening classes, he covered the P.O.S. with toilet paper, stole the radio, cut up the upholstery with his knife, slit the tires, put sugar in her tank, and broke her headlights and everything else he could. He thought about pissing in her car but did not – DNA. He was present the next morning, when she came out to see the destruction.
Hurrying to her, he commiserated as she stared, cried, took photos, and called people on her cell (a cheap little flip thing). “You need a new car,” he said, a comment that caused her to light into him about what else she needed, while he was at it. “You think I drive this for its fucking style?” she said with wild, menacing eyes.
Man, he liked her style. “I’m going to get you a new car.”
She gave him a dismissive look. “How are you going to do that?”
“I’m gonna start a crowdfund for you. Know what that is?”
“Who the fuck are you?” she asked. “What are you doing here?”
“Ceon,” he said. “I was just walking by, and I saw you, and your car, and I wanted to help.” He’d put on his best jeans and shoes, and washed and groomed, trimming his beard, trying to look good. He didn’t have much, because consumerism was destroying the world, but he had the latest iPhone. He whipped it out as she said, “Ceon?”
“I’m setting it up right now,” he said. He posted photos of her beside the wrecked vehicle, and asked her questions as if he was ignorant, crafting a pity story guaranteed to stir others, linking it to his social media accounts. “Just want to raise enough to help this hard-working poor young woman and get her a new car,” he wrote, establishing a goal of five thousand dollars. “She needs it to go to class. She’s studying to be a teacher.” He knew people. He knew they’d answer up to this beautiful woman and her wrecked car.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked. She was wary. He liked that.
“Just trying to help,” he said. “Can I buy you a coffee? There’s a great little cafe around the corner.”
She gave him a look that he couldn’t read. He figured, it must be love.
His Dark Secret
His dark secret wasn’t that he disliked coffee. Nor was his dark secret the revelation about how broke he was, or how he collected cans and bottles from the streets and did odd jobs to have the money to buy a four-shot mocha at the coffee shop every day.
His dark secret wasn’t that how he worked for the money and spent it on coffee every day because he liked flirting with the young women who worked behind the counter. Neither was his dark secret his admission that his coffee shop visit was his day’s only highlight, and he looked forward to it each morning. No, his dark secret, that he didn’t share even with himself, was that they were the only friends he had.
Time Surge
It was a major trip, a major moment in his young life, a BIG DECISION. He was going off to start his flight training, and then, if it worked out, begin living his dream life as a commercial aircraft pilot. An unexpected bonus was that he had a girlfriend. He was a good guy, but had never defined his life through love and relationships, except those he had with his family. He knew, from talking with others, and posts and articles read on the web, he had a good family. All loved one another. Sure, there were problems, and they argued, but none of them were killers, addicts, or criminals. All of them were pretty smart. He felt like he was the dumbest. They mostly argued over politics. He and his father were more conservative than his mother and sisters. A liberal like his sisters, but not as liberal, his girlfriend easily plugged into this familial unit. They’d exchanged vows of love, and when he’d been accepted into the flight training school in Texas, she worked it into her plans so she could go with him, and continue her college education.
His planned departure was just nine days away, which was impossibly long. He felt like a kid again, waiting for Christmas morning, so he could open his presents. That was a minimalist impression, because he had all those other activities to take care of to move down there, possessions to cull and purge, good-byes to be said, an apartment to clean, a truck to pack up, and then the long drive. Two thousand plus miles, the drive would take twenty-nine hours. They were diverting to New Mexico for a two-day visit with her father, a Santa Fe artist, and then go on to Austin, Texas.
Then, then, it was suddenly just two days away, and, Jesus, he was frantic with everything that had to be done in that short period. It seemed like every little fucking thing was going wrong. His girlfriend thought she might be pregnant. He couldn’t sleep over that possibility. She’d told him without getting a kit first. Why she’d done it like that was beyond him. She said that she wanted them to do it together because she was scared, and it wasn’t something she should go through by herself. First thing when they could, they went to the stores for an EPT. It was a relief when she came up as not pregnant, but now, there was the worry about why her period was late. He loved her, and he worried about her, but he had plans and dreams, and he worried about them.
Her period began. It was late, and heavier than usual, so there wasn’t a lot of relief. She cramped with pain, and didn’t sleep with worry. Then it was the day to move, to begin the drive. Everything was miraculously done. After saying good-byes to friends, professors, neighbors and co-workers, he looked around his adopted town and said emotional farewells in his mind to the streets, trees, and buildings, as he thought about everything that had happened here. He’d met his girlfriend here. He wondered if he would ever return.
Funny, in the days leading up to his departure, it had first been impossibly slow. Every minute felt like an hour, and every day seemed like a month. Then, time had surged, accelerating like a beam of light. Every minute seemed like a nano, every hour was a second. Days? Forget it; days no longer existed.
But he’d survived the time surge. He’d survived it all. Now it was time to go. Looking down the road, he thought he could see his future, like the Emerald City from the “Wizard of Oz,” out there awaiting his arrival.
He just had to get there.
Masquerade
The day was supposed to be a Thursday. That was the word from the calendar, and sources like computers, phones, and Fitbits. Other people asked, agreed, “Yes, today is Thursday.”
He remained unconvinced. The day didn’t feel like a Thursday. It didn’t feel like any proper day. His senses and thinking couldn’t penetrate the mask the day wore to see what day was under it. It definitely wasn’t Thursday. It didn’t seem like Friday or Monday. Distinctive in their feel, he thought he would have known them. Nor did it seem like a holiday behind the mask. Each holiday had its own uniquely cultivated taste and sound. He was certain that a holiday couldn’t be completely and successfully masked against his awareness.
Could it be Sunday behind the mask? It seemed out of character for Sunday. In fact, of all the days, he would expect Thursday to be the one that would pull a prank like this and masquerade as another day. Certainly it wasn’t something Saturday would do; Saturday was too full of itself to pretend to be another day.
An odd idea came to him. He had nothing to tell him it wasn’t Thursday behind the mask. If it was, Thursday was masquerading as itself, but doing a poor job of it.
He considered why that would be, why Thursday would want to pretend it was another day masquerading as itself. Doing a poor job of it would make him distrust everything about the day.
That was it. One of the days was up to something, and the way they were going about it was inculcating distrust in all of them. He looked around the day with sharpening suspicion, wondering which day could be, and what was going to happen. Whichever day it was, it was a cruel, cruel thing the day had done. If a day couldn’t be trusted, what would be next? Gravity? Sunshine? Time? That was all that he needed now.
Looking to the future with dread, he looked to the past with doubt, and stayed wary about the present, certain something else was about to happen, and completely unprepared for what it was going to be.
Michael Seidel, writer 