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The Game Changer

August 10, 2068

9:15pm

The American Dream. Countless people came to these shores to have a chance at it. They came since before United States was even a nation. Some found it easily, and others failed to obtain it beyond the very end. Some found it within their lifetimes, and others only paved the way so that a future generation might have an opportunity to seize it. John MacArthur didn’t do too badly for himself. He escaped poverty by crossing the Atlantic and venturing into a new world. He ran into an opening, then he found a better opening, and he made the most of both to live comfortably until his death. Peter picked up the torch and carried things into the teeth of the Great Depression before the family store finally unraveled. And even then, he was able pack his things and move across the country to begin anew. Jason went through his ups and downs, and ultimately it worked out for him as he found his niche during the rising tide of America’s prime. Damon worked alongside his father until the family business was his alone, and he lived a decent life as well. These men were excellent examples of what the old country could do for those willing to work hard and forge a place in it. But their story blends in with millions of others across this land. Their marks were like footsteps on a beach, vulnerable to the ocean of history. They would have been forgotten through time, pandemic or not, and their narrative would have been reduced to vapor scattered in the winds. This still might be the case for them, when it is all said and done, but now, at least now, it isn’t a guarantee. They blazed the trail for three generations, three generations that reached the upper levels of affluence and power on this side of the continent. And whenever a family made such a tremendous leap, it could be traced back to one game changer, sort of like a random mutation in genetics. Our game changer was none other than Zachery McArthur.

I am a forty-five year old man, but whenever I think of my grandfather, the little kid inside me comes alive. Now, no doubt, some would have called him a red-blooded bastard. The man was full of vices. He smoked, he gambled and he drank. He did pot, he sniffed coke and he philandered. He had a quick temper, he lied with ease to anyone, including his own mother, and occasionally, he broke the law in more serious ways than casual drugs. But in spite of it all, the man was simply my idol. In my eyes, he could do no wrong. It was a joy to be around him every single time—he is the only person in the world for whom I could say that. And he adored me as much as I adored him. If there was anything I wanted, it was mine. If there was anywhere I wanted to go, we went there. If there was anything I wanted to say, I had no inhibition to say it. With my parents, I always had to behave, to carry myself a certain way, to meet some model standard of what a young boy had to be. But with my grandfather, I could simply be me. There was no pretending with him. He was my best friend above my best friend, my playmate above my playmates, and my storyteller above anything the best book in this universe could tell. He was more than a man to me, more than blood. For the first twelve years of my life, he was larger than life.

Zachery McArthur was born November 9, 1970, at Hillside Hospital in Montclair, New Jersey; and his childhood was more laid back than any of his predecessors by far. He didn’t have to work in any family store, he didn’t have to fight any little asshole bullies, and he didn’t have any desire whatsoever to accompany his father to worksites. Instead, Zach watched hours upon hours of television and hung out with other kids from his neighborhood. When he was in the house, his favorite cartoons were Scooby Doo, Tom and Jerry, and Looney Toons. His sitcoms of choice were Mork and Mindy, Happy Days, and Diff’rent Strokes. When he was outside, he used to play tag football in Watsessing Park and ride his bike, a bright red Schwinn BMX, all over town. He was a forgettable suburban kid in a forgettable suburban setting, but life was very comfortable, very American. No one, including himself, had a clue of what he was to become.

He had a sister, Sarah, who was born four years after him, and the two were only so close. They were completely different personalities. Sarah was much like their mother: into books and education, disciplined, and always looking to please her parents and teachers. Zach, on the other hand, was a procrastinator and a rebel. He didn’t take school, or his parents’ displays of disappointment, very seriously at all. He was a classic C student who did just enough to pass every class by the end of the semester. He gave no more and he gave no less.

He transitioned from TV-head and bike rider to weed head and beer drinker by the time he entered junior high school. Occasionally, he and his best friend, a boy named Gilly, would skip class, go to the store on Bay Avenue that sold beer and cigarettes to anyone, and play video games at either boy’s house. A high school dropout named Earl would come by and sell the boys weed, and sometimes the boys used the prospect of this weed to convince a couple of girls to join them. The two were a terrible influence on each other, but they were kindred spirits. If Gilly hadn’t died in the first Gulf War in 1991, the two would have been great friends for many decades. My grandfather could never talk about him without the story ending with a twinge of sadness.

Zach did manage to graduate from Bloomfield High in 1989 with a GPA of 2.25. And once he passed that milestone, his prospects weren’t too bright. He didn’t have any discernable talent at all. He didn’t make any friends of influence, or have any connections with adults who could help him land a decent job. He couldn’t use a hammer to drive a straight nail, so he was useless to his father’s business. And he didn’t even consider college an option.

But he had to do something.

Leslie McArthur, an eighth grade school teacher, was not going to tolerate her son sitting on his ass wasting his days. How was she going to encourage kids to stay in school, seek a higher education and do the right things if she couldn’t motivate her own, in her own house? What type of example was this going to set for Sarah as she entered her crucial high school years? Leslie wasn’t having any of it. So she gave her son an ultimatum. She told him that if he wasn’t going to go to college, he had to find a job of some sort, any sort, or he could go and live on the streets.

With it put to him like that, Zach went out and searched for employment. He walked to the business district and he applied to places left and right. The convenience stores were not hiring. The grocery stores were not hiring. The department store was not hiring. And the car wash was hiring, but they were only paying the minimum wage, $3.35 an hour. For a brief moment, Zach considered joining Gilly in enlisting, but eventually decided against it. He remembered watching a movie called Full Metal Jacket, and for some reason that movie “frightened the shit out of him.”   

 After a month of fruitless searching, Zach was readying himself to hit the road as a vagabond, then he happened to walk into Izzola’s Pizza and Pasta to buy a Sprite soda. He struck up a conversation with the owner, a guy named Lewis, and this chance encounter turned into a timely rescue. It just so happened that Lewis was looking for someone to work the evening shift. He and Zach talked for a couple of hours in between the regular business of the day, and they talked about women, growing up in the neighborhood and life in general. In that time, he grew to sympathize with the young stranger. He could tell that this poor slacker didn’t have a damn thing going for himself. Someone needed to throw him a life line. So Lewis figured why the hell not. He hired Zach on the spot and started him at a rate of $4.00 an hour.

To Zach, this wasn’t an ideal gig, but it was a job, and it was enough to keep his parents at bay. He worked from 4pm until closing five nights a week, taking orders over the phone and counter, and serving as a waiter to the customers who actually cared enough to dine in. The restaurant was a stuffy place on Bloomfield Avenue with cheap wood furniture and dull, green painted walls, and it only had a capacity of thirty people; but the customers were pretty loyal and business was fairly brisk. Zach got along well with the regulars, he proved to be very reliable, and he learned to speak rudimentary Spanish while working with the Mexican cooks. As time went by, Zach received raise after raise, and this dulled his sensitivities to the long hours and lack of having weekends off. In other words, he got comfortable. After three years, he was practically running the place. Lewis had bought a new house and a bar over in Kearny, and he only showed up in Bloomfield to cover the evenings his young manager was off. This meant that Zach had just enough space, responsibility, and income to not fume over the fact he was in a dead-end career.  

Other than his best friend’s untimely death, nothing truly eventful happened in Zach’s life until September 1993. It was a rainy night, and one customer had ordered a pepperoni pizza. She paid the delivery man and tipped him a five dollar bill, then she called her parents and sister to the dinner table. After they had gathered, everyone was ready to dig in. It took an hour for the pizza to finally arrive and they all were starved. But when they finally opened the lid of that box, there wasn’t a single pepperoni on the pie. It had anchovies and pineapples instead.

This customer and her family were absolutely furious. The customer was so mad she got in her car and drove to the restaurant in her pajamas and slippers, with only a flail green windbreaker to protect her from the elements. When she arrived, she double-parked, bee-lined for the restaurant, and barged through the front door. She walked right behind the counter and in front of a flabbergasted Zach, and she demanded that he cook her family a new pizza.

Now, at first Zach didn’t know what to make of this hell raiser.  She was attractive with a cute face, intense gray eyes, dark brunette hair, and a skinny and inviting frame; but she was intense, impulsive, and obviously a little insane when mad.  Wanting to keep the peace, Zach went ahead and complied. And as he was cooking the pizza, he figured why not take a shot at this chick. After all, he had nothing to lose but a customer. He offered her and her family dinner on the house if they were willing to dine in. He said that they would be treated like royalty, and that they could have any type of pizza they wanted with bread sticks and a complementary three liter soda thrown in. He said that the owner would ‘totally kick his ass” if he found out about this, but he was willing to take that risk to make things right. Then he said if she wasn’t willing to step inside the restaurant again, he would love to take her out to restaurant of her choice, hopefully to a place with a competent staff that wouldn’t put anchovies and pineapples together.

To Zach’s surprise, it worked. Rebecca White eventually calmed down, and after doing so, she found the pizza guy kind of cute, and charming, and decent enough to acknowledge a mistake and fix it. As fate would have it, this masterful diplomacy sparked the beginning of an improbable romance.

Rebecca, a senior graphic design student, went on to order pizza once a week from the restaurant after her family’s successful free meal. She came to the restaurant herself under the guise of making sure her order was correct, but in reality it was to see Zach. The more they talked, the more they looked forward to seeing one another the next time. The Mexican cooks teased Zach mercilessly about it, but he took in stride. Soon, Rebecca just showed up to order something as simple as a Diet Coke just so she could hang out. And best of all for Zach, she was oblivious to the inconvenient hours he worked. They went from hanging out in the restaurant to hanging out when Zach had some time off. They became intimate before long as young adults often do. And this intimacy resulted in an unplanned pregnancy.

The news was quite a shock to Zach, but after it sunk in, he saw his golden ticket. He knew he wasn’t likely to find a woman this attractive, or compatible with his work schedule, ever, so he went out on a limb and proposed. He never imagined himself getting married so young, but if Rebecca was actually going to go through with having his baby, he figured that this was meant to be the time and place to settle down. Might as well take the plunge.

And Rebecca…well, she liked Zach, but this was way more than she had bargained for. Life was throwing one hell of a curve with this one. Then she looked at her situation. She didn’t believe in abortions, that wasn’t even an option; and she didn’t want to become a single mother, especially with her degree within so short a reach. She couldn’t let all her hard work become undone simply because she got planted. Nothing about this was ideal, but she figured if Zach was going to strive to be a good father and husband, she might as well accept her fate and see how things turn out. So she went ahead and said yes.

Rebecca moved in with Zach and his parents, and she continued going to Berkley College without interruption. But the Whites were still highly upset by it all. They had already invested tens of thousands of dollars into their daughter’s education for her to live a good prosperous life, and marry a man on the same level, and now she was being whisked away by some “underachieving pizza guy.” Their attitude towards Zach was icy at best. But eventually, they realized it was better to have a son-in-law of some sort than to have an estranged baby daddy. So grudgingly, they went along. They joined Zach’s parents in raising enough money for a down payment on a house. The young couple moved into a three bedroom home on Hoover Avenue a week after their wedding on 4-4-94. Rebecca went on the graduate from college later that summer, and the couple gave birth to a healthy baby boy of seven pounds. My father, Andrew Ronald McArthur, was born on July 3, 1994.

Four years later, Zach was still employed at Izzo’s Pizza and Pasta. Rebecca was now a professional graphic designer, and she commuted to New York City to work at a firm in Soho on Varick Street. Both parents had to work long hours, they barely had any time to spend with each other or their son, and they could hardly keep their heads above the financial waters. The young family was swamped with credit card debt, student loan debt, and backed up bills and property taxes.  The only saving grace was Rebecca’s parents picked up young Andrew, or as he was called during his childhood, Ronnie, from day school to fill in the time gap in the evenings.

That was the everyday cycle. Not poor, but certainly not getting ahead. It was very frustrating for Zach, it was frustrating for his wife, it was frustrating for their parents, and it was certainly frustrating for the bill collectors. I remember my grandfather telling me about this period in his life, and I remember hearing the emotion in his voice as he relived the stress. He used to say that it wasn’t always this hard for his predecessors. And even when it was, they found a way out more easily. Something had changed from his father’s generation to his, and this change was as clear as day. To him, this new status quo was unsustainable. He was desperate to alter this course.

His opportunity came when his favorite auntie died of a heart attack.

Marilyn Heath, baby sister of Leslie McArthur, was the black sheep of her family. She was vulgar, she was a drunk, she chain-smoked, and she always wore perfume that one could smell from a hundred feet away. She had ghastly tattoos covering most of her body, she was a big believer in plastic surgery, and she used to be a porn star, then a stripper. After her looks and career in the adult industry petered out, she opened a sex-themed shop over in Cliffside Park. She ran the shop with a skinny mixed lesbian named Evelyn Ne. It was rumored that Marilyn and Evelyn were lovers, but this was never confirmed.

What this has to do with Zach was he and his mother were the only two family members who had any type of decent relationship with this woman. Leslie couldn’t cut her baby sister off like everyone else. To her, their bond ran deeper than a perceived wrong turn in adulthood. Now that didn’t mean she’d let Marilyn anywhere near her precious Sarah, but Leslie did tolerate Zach hanging around when they got together. Eventually, as Zach got older, he elected to hang out with his auntie on his own, especially after she moved back to New Jersey in 1990 to live in a condo in Fort Lee. It wasn’t too often, but it was often enough, that he would visit her when their schedules allowed it.

Sadly, Marilyn had really let herself go in her later years. Towards the end, she had ballooned up to 230lbs, and all of her vices had caught up with her. She died alone in her favorite Lazy-Z Boy recliner while watching television. She was discovered the next day by Evelyn. There was a bowl of hot sauce stained Lay’s Potato chips spilled on the floor.

Zach and his mother, the sole ambassadors of Marilyn’s kin, attended the funeral, and they were surrounded by all kinds of characters, people who were “veterans of the industry.” It was an experience Zach would never forget. Everyone had a story to tell about his auntie. Stories like the time she was a mistress of a California Senator in the seventies, or the time she dated a drug dealer in Detroit in 1984, or the time she tried hooking in Iowa before deciding she didn’t like it. That Marilyn lived a very colorful life.

A couple of weeks after the funeral, it paid off for Zach to be a part of this very colorful life. He received a check by hand from Evelyn for $25,000 from his auntie’s will.

So now, Zach was finally blessed with a little extra money, and he had a crucial decision to make. His mother, who received a check of the same amount, urged him to take the money and go to college. She told her son that this was a second opportunity for him to get an education and finally build a decent future. Sarah, the jewel of the family, had not too long ago graduated from Essex County College, and landed a job teaching English in Morristown. The proud mother wanted her other child to finally get on the same path to a respectable career. She felt that a college degree was the only way to do this.  

Zach’s wife, however, wanted him to use the money to pay off some debt and give the household some breathing room. To her, it was a matter of common sense, a practical way for a family man to use a sudden windfall for a direct benefit. She knew her husband wasn’t cut out to go to college, and she didn’t see any reason for him to pretend. She had already made a list of bills they could eliminate or at least diminish.

But Zach didn’t like either option.

The money, even if every single cent was used, would only serve as a down payment towards the ultimate cost of a bachelor’s degree. It would require a whole lot more debt when it was all said and done, and there was no guarantee it would land a decent career. He knew a few friends from high school who had degrees, and it didn’t really help them worth a damn. They were working as bartenders and taxi drivers. And on top of that, Zach knew he’d still have to work at the pizza shop fulltime to pay the bills. The realist inside him wasn’t buying it. He concluded that college, at his age, was simply unfeasible for someone who wasn’t a natural student in the first place.

On the surface, spending the money to alleviate his family’s debt problems seemed like the noble thing to do, but then Zach looked at the big picture. The money would have provided some relief without doing anything to solve the fundamental problems. He knew that in time, new debt would simply replace old debt, and he and his wife would still have to work long hours in order to maintain their feeble standard of living. Basically, it would have been fighting a house fire with a pitcher of water. To Zach, there had to be a better way.

Searching for that better way, he was home watching television one morning. There were these two talking heads on one of the financial news channels, and they were debating the pros and cons of discount brokerages. One man claimed that it was the wave of the future. The other man claimed that it would lead millions to ruins. Both men made a good argument, but Zach was inspired by the debater in favor.

The man said, “No doubt, there will be winners and there will be losers, just as there are with anything in life. But at the end of the day, who would you rather have to blame? Yourself, or some guy making a six-figure salary, who’s going to party at his Tribecca loft when his workday is over? The man in the mirror will always have your best interest at heart. Put your money in his hands. If he wins, you win. And if he loses? Well, at least you’ll know he won’t be attending any parties.”

After hearing this, Zach was sold. He decided to open a trading account.

Sadly, he didn’t have the courage to tell everyone the truth about this decision. His mother called him later on that day to make yet another push for him to go to college. She worked up a head of steam to convince her son that he should at least enroll in a local college to take some brush-up courses, at least give it a try. And for reasons Zach could never explain, he went ahead and agreed. He said that he would do it. He would finally give in to what she had been lobbying for for so long. He listened to his mother squeal with joy, knowing damn well he had no intention of keeping his word.

Zach lied to his mother, but he couldn’t do the same to his wife. Later that night, he explained his true intentions to her. And of course, Rebecca was furious! She said he was being selfish and a damn fool. She asked how he could forsake his family by squandering such a precious gift in a time of need. This intense disappointment was a devastating blow to both. It was a turning point. A line crossed. From this mark, their relationship was poised for decline.

But Zach was undeterred. Using his dial-up internet, he stumbled across a website. It was called MrTeadorTrades.com. To open an account, he had to send a check or money order of at least $5,000 to the company’s main office in Union Square of New York City. $100 had to remain in reserve cash at all times, and each trade was $24 to execute. Zach sent a check for $16,000, and he was ready to trade after five business days.

When he finally started trading on June 22, 1998, things went wrong from the very beginning. Zach woke up that first morning and he went right to it. He didn’t even change out of his pajamas. With the excitement of a child on Christmas, he bought 225 shares of a company called MIVO for $600. He did no research of any kind. He never even heard of the company before that day. It was simply the first stock that he liked off of a random list. The name was cool and the price was low. It was listed at $2.25 and its 52-week high was $6.85. That was good enough for him.

Well, as soon as he bought his shares and the purchase was confirmed, the price of MIVO began to tumble. It dipped to $2.00, then $1.50, and by the end of the day, it was trading at $1.20. Zach received a $326 dollar shaving from his account by closing.

And that was just the beginning. Zach invested in random company after random company, usually before leaving for work in the afternoon. He made each purchase with the passion and optimism of a consummate gambler. Every dip in the account balance was simply a minor setback. When he finally deemed one of his picks a lost cause, he sold out and moved on to the next great hope. As his losses deepened, he stopped making conventional picks and focused exclusively on penny stocks. He was trying to hit a home run, trying to get back to even in one true shot, but this only accelerated his losses. Incredibly, this spiral was happening during the bull run of the 1990’s. Fortunes were being made left and right, but the market was leaving Zach behind, taking him for his shirt. By the middle of August, this rut had carried him to his lowest point. His balance fell all the way to $485!

By then, things were pretty toxic at home. Rebecca was growing more resentful by the day. And to make matters worse, she found out her husband was lying to his own mother. She had overheard a conversation he was having over the phone one night. Zach had the nerve to tell his mother that he was taking remedial classes at Union County Community College early Saturday mornings. He claimed that it was so difficult to wake up and drive over there, that things were slowly progressing, and that he was looking forward to enrolling in the fall. He said he hoped to make her proud one day. Rebecca was just out of sight behind the kitchen doorway, listening to these fraudulent claims.

When Zach hung up and his wife emerged with that look on her face, he knew he had lost all remaining respect with her. He told me many years later that that was one of the hardest moments of his life.  From that point on, Rebecca could hardly stand to look at the man she married. They started sleeping in separate bedrooms most nights. They were becoming strangers, little more than uneasy roommates who happened to share a child.

Zach reflected on all of this, and he knew he had fucked up. He was a liar to his own mother, and the truth was going to come to the light one way or another, and with devastating consequences. He was an irredeemable loser inside his own home, and he was still stuck with a dead-end job, still on that treadmill, still paying never-ending bills and falling further behind. He couldn’t let it end like this. He just couldn’t. So he decided to double down.

During one of his off days, Zach went to visit his old weed dealer, Earl, who lived across from Pulaski Park. He asked Earl if he could borrow $10,000, and Earl told him that he could only lend $500. However, there was a guy in Newark.

Later that same day, Earl took Zach to the infamous Brick Tower Houses. There they met Patrick Smith. He was Earl’s supply man and he also did some loan sharking on the side.

My grandfather told me he was scared nearly to death, and that he was very close to being shot to death, the first time he met this Patrick. Patrick was suspicious of Zach from the moment he saw him; he suspected that he was some kind of undercover cop. He pulled out a Glock and threatened to shoot the stranger in the head and demanded that he lift his shirt. It was a very tense minute and a half, and Zach did everything he could not to pee himself. Earl finally stepped in to intervene and assure Patrick that Zach was cool. He vouched that Zach had been a good customer for years, and he swore on his very own life that this was not a set up. Thankfully, Patrick calmed down and he let his target go. Then they got down to business like the whole thing never happened.

They worked out a pretty good deal. Zach would get the $10,000 immediately and have to pay back $16,000 by the end of the year. For collateral, he had to put up the title of his 1997 Toyota Camry, the one thing in the household that was paid for, thanks to a little money he had received from his grandmother’s will in Georgia.

This was a very ballsy move. Zach knew that if he lost that car, his marriage was over. But the way he saw it, Rebecca was probably going to leave him any damn way. What difference would one more lost make? Hell. Losing the car would pretty much equal shooting a dying horse in the head. So he said screw it. He took the money and deposited it in the bank. And the funds were available for trading after three business days.

With someone else’s money on the line, Zach wisely decided to do some research this time. He went to the Bloomfield Library on his day off, and while browsing through the Williams Street Chronicle, he ran across an article. The article featured a company called Translation Now in Motion, or TNIM; they were a software developer that was creating a program to translate speech into different languages. The initial public offering for the company started off well. The stock went from an opening price of $10 to $18.98. But the good times were very short-lived. A couple of patent deals fell through, and this caused a chain reaction with the financiers. This chain reaction caused a savaging of the price. The stock dropped from $18.98 to $8.74 in one day. The next day, more stockholders abandoned ship, and the stock dropped to $2.47. From there, it went lower and lower. By the time Zach read the article, the TNIM was buried in penny status. It was trading at only .08 a share.

The founders of the company, Larry Penny and Blake Cano, swore up and down that everyone who abandoned their company was going to be sorry. They claimed that it was a matter of time before they worked out a new patent deal, and that they were negotiating with a secret backer for the project, a backer with very deep pockets. They said that things were in place for the stock to come roaring back, because, at the end of the day, they had a revolutionary product.

After taking all of this in, Zach agreed.

He went home and logged onto his AOL account. He felt excitement in his blood as the dial-up music finally gave way to the internet. He quickly logged on to his account, found the stock, and he bought all the shares that his balance could afford: 130,750. Before, his account had died by a thousand cuts. This time, he was planning to either win big or face a quick and decisive end. He was ready to accept his fate one way or the other.

Zach reloaded the page every two minutes to see if there was any change. This was the greatest show on earth, as far as he was concerned. And after about twenty minutes, someone else had made a trade, and this trade dropped the price two cents. That drop equaled a lost 25%, or $2,615, in one devastating move. And that was where the price remained for the rest of that day.

Zach couldn’t believe it. He finally confessed in his heart that he was cursed, truly cursed, and this brought on a deep cloud of depression. He called his parents-in-law and asked them to pick up Ronnie from day school. Next, he went to the nearest liquor store on Broughton Avenue and he bought a 750ml bottle of E&J Brandy, and swiftly he returned home with it. In his house, he sat alone at the kitchen table. And in less than ten minutes, he downed that entire bottle of brandy shot after shot. He chain-smoked cigarettes as he took his shots, and listened to whatever was playing on the FM radio. He didn’t remember if it was music or the news or commericals, he was just that lost. He also smoked a blunt for good measure as he basked in his misery.  

But Zach wasn’t built to handle all of that at one time.

Suddenly, he threw up on himself where he sat, and when he realized what he had done, he laughed. Without realizing his consciousness was slipping away, he fell out on the kitchen floor. He was done for after that. He was practically in a coma.

Rebecca came home with Ronnie in tow later that night, and when she walked into the kitchen, she found her husband on the floor still passed out. The empty brandy bottle and countless butts of cigarettes were splattered all over. And Rebecca was disgusted. She wasn’t shocked, she wasn’t angry, just flat-out disgusted. She turned around and walked out of the house with tight grip on her son. She was in such a hurry, she forgot to pack any clothes; they had to go to the mall over in Clifton to buy something to wear for the next day. She and little Ronnie went back to the Whites to spend the night.

Meanwhile, Zach slept all through that night and he only woke up in short spurts next day, unable to move from the floor. He finally woke up with some function around 3:50pm, almost twenty-two hours after he had passed out. As he gathered his senses, it crossed his mind that he was supposed to be at work 10am that morning. Quickly, he checked the caller ID, and he saw nine missed calls from Lewis Izzola. Shit!

Zach zombie walked to the bathroom and took a quick shower and brushed his teeth. Then he returned to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. As he sat at the kitchen table to await the brew, he lit a smoke and tried to imagine what life was going to be like as a single man again. He was convinced this was where he was headed. Was he going to have to move out of town? Was staying with his parents even an option now? How the hell was he going to pay the child support? The defeat was pressing down on him.

After three cups of coffee, he was ready to face the world. Before calling the restaurant and dealing with the issues there, he decided to log onto his trading account to see what he had missed. Might as well take a look at the tragedy, he thought. It took him two minutes to connect, find the site, and log on to his account. And when Zach finally laid eyes on that stock price, he dropped his cup of coffee and the cup shattered in a fantastic explosion of ceramic and dark liquid.

The price of TNIM was .34. His new balance was $44,455! 

Still in shock, Zach finally called Lewis ten minutes later, and Lewis promptly informed him that he was fired. But Zach wasn’t about to let that ruin his moment. He laughed in Lewis’s face and hung up. This was one of the happiest days of his life. Fuck the job. Fuck the job! His moment of salvation was finally here.

It turned out that TNIM had found some new backers, alright. News hit that the company had finally cleared their patent issues, and as a result, a contingent deal with the Argentinean government was green-lighted. Argentina had agreed to pour over two billion dollars into the company for exclusive rights to the software. Once Wall Street got wind of this, the scramble was on. Zach’s timing was absolutely perfect. He truly did hit a home run.

Powered by the heyday of the internet boom, the stock rallied big time. Zach collected unemployment checks with a smile as his account balance exploded with each arriving week. He did some token, half-ass searching for a new job, but he knew full well he had no intention of working so soon, if ever, again.

After three months, he had finally had enough of the magic. He sold every single share of TNIM at a price of $28.75. His cash balance stood at $3,759,062. It was the beginning of a brand new life.



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The Last Statesman
by
Christopher Hunter
Copyright © 2013 Christopher Hunter

Origins

August 10, 2068

4:13pm

 

Hello. I’m back inside the house now, and I’m feeling better, if only a little, since I’ve had a shower and eaten some food. Fortunately, this home has its own well water system, so tap water isn’t a concern. Thank God for that. Out of all the horrible things I’ve had to deal with over these past few weeks, it’s great to know lack of clean running water won’t be added to the list. However, I do wish that the food selection was better. The kitchen has four huge cabinets, and when my wife and I first arrived, they were filled with dozens of cans of soup, and bags of rice and pasta. The refrigerator had a few containers of fruit punch, a block of substitute butter, and a carton of spoiled milk that had to be thrown out immediately. The freezer had a couple of 750ml bottles of vodka and a gallon container of vanilla ice-cream half consumed. And that was it. We finished the fruit punch, ice cream and vodka in three days. There are five kinds of soup, and I’ve been rotating them with each meal. Beef stew, rabbit stew, Cajun chicken, New England clam chowder, and mixed vegetables—that’s the only variety in here. But the good news is the supply should easily last the week or two I have left to live.

I also took a shot of Hydro-caffeine, a very powerful stimulant. Nelly Winters, my late, great Chief of Staff and the former owner of this house, had a stash in his bedroom, right inside the left drawer of his desk. I always wondered how he had such boundless energy without ever drinking a cup of coffee. Now his secret is out.

This is my first time trying the “jolt juice” as they called it. It’s doing very strange things to my body. It’s like I’m high on coke. Everything is amplified. Everything! My hearing, my sense of smell, my thoughts…they’ve all been multiplied by at least three. And my blood feels hot. I can feel the heat radiating off my skin. I’m a living furnace right now. I’d still prefer a cup of coffee over any type of drug, but it’s undeniable that this is an excellent alternative. I’m likely to write my fingers into a jam tonight. 

Damn. It just hit me. I’ll never drink another cup of coffee again. How fucked up is that? I’ve been a coffee drinker since I was nineteen years old, and it never occurred to me that one day it would be something I’d miss. Even a month ago from this writing, it never would’ve crossed my mind in a million years to say, ‘Umm…let me savor this welcoming heat, this rich aroma and this milk-mixed goodness in my cup, because one day I just might get caught up in the goddamn apocalypse.’ Coffee is just one of the countless things we took for granted as members of civilization. We had no idea how good things were. And I can’t help but wonder what will take the place of the world we knew. What type of hell will people go through to get back to some sort of order? How many years, how many wars, and how many lives will it take? Perhaps you know the answer, you on the other side of this. What have you been through? What stories could you tell me? It’s a damn shame this is only a one-way conversation. Your life is bound to be just as interesting, if not more interesting, than mine.

Where are my manners? Let me give you a tour. I come to you from inside a lovely final home, here in Fenwick, Connecticut.  This is the house of my before mentioned Chief of Staff. Nelly came from a very rich family. His parents owned a shipping fleet that transported goods across the world from the ports of the Mediterranean. For his fortieth birthday, they gifted their only son this beautiful, green-painted Victorian in a private community. The interior has a nice country feel to it. The hardwood floors and hardwood walls are primed over to a dark, pristine shine. The walls are lined with huge pictures, all in antique silver frames. The pictures are of family members from both sides, and a few date back to the 1950’s. You can tell most of the pictures were taken in Egypt. In the background of one there are some pyramids, and in the background of another there’s the UN building in Alexandria.

The couch and loveseat in the living room are surfaced with smooth horsehide, and they are very comfortable, like falling into a dream. The tables and chairs throughout the house are made from hardened glass, and the seats are lined with Durasilk cushions, better known in my time as ass huggers. And immortal flowers have been placed in most of the rooms. They give the place a sweet smell, like honey sickles and roses in springtime. But the best feature by far is the central air-conditioning.  

The house is within walking distance of the beach I was just on. The neighborhood is intertwined with a golf course, even though no one is playing recreational games these days. Also, tall, stately oak trees provide plenty of shade and tranquility. It’s very beautiful and low-key here. And best of all for Nelly’s career, it was within a day’s drive of the capitol. I’m sure Nelly found this to be a nice retreat from the hustle and bustle when he could get away for a day or two.

My friend, Nelly. He was a good man. A very good man. I saw the life go out in his eyes as he gave me the keys to this place. He looked out for me to the very end.   

Okay, enough about the present. Let’s get down to business. I have so many things to cover and not a lot of time, so I’ll be breaking this down into segments, or rather, chapters. I have a list of the most crucial topics I can think of to discuss right next to me on this desk. I’ll be working hard to provide as accurate a story as possible. Remember, there will be no aides or editors or fact-checkers for this. So if you run across something a little off, I hope you understand. And if you don’t understand, well, what the hell can we do? I’ll be dead by the time you read this.

I have read plenty of autobiographies in my time, and they usually start with the birth. ‘I was born on a rainy day at such and such hospital to mom Lucy and dad Pete at ABC hospital in XYZ, ZZ. Well, I’m not about to start this off that way. To do so would be a little too…cliché for my taste. Also, I’m standing at the edge of my family’s history. This is the end of the line. I have to acknowledge this line in my own way. If I don’t, it would be an affront to every generation before me. This is a personal thing. However, I understand that some of you will not have the patience for such a tribute. Perhaps you only want to read about my life and the politics. Perhaps you only want to find out what the hell happened to the world that came before the one you’re currently living in. If this is you, then by all means, go on and skip ahead. I haven’t written that part yet, but eventually I’ll get to it, fate willing. See you then.

The following is for the ones who see things as I do. The following is for the ones who understand a man’s story is so much more than his actual lifespan. The lifespan, when you think about it, is like the surface of an island. It receives much fanfare. It’s the part that sticks out from the surrounding waters; the part people actually see and walk around on. But that island wouldn’t exist without a broad mass of earth underneath. In other words, that island isn’t a result upon itself. It’s a culmination. So if you understand this concept, let’s go on this trip through time.

Fortunately, I have some knowledge of my family’s history dating to the middle of the 19th century. One of the benefits of being a president was there was no shortage of people interested in digging up my background. Thanks to the Historical Society of East American Heritage, a fine collection of scholars and researchers based out of Cambridge, MA, I was presented with a lovely book, filled with diary entries, public records, old pictures, personal letters, and a detailed timeline chronicling my family’s journey from Scotland to America and throughout. That book is locked in a drawer somewhere in my house in New Jersey, never to be seen by me again. But I do remember some details.

For simplicity’s sake, we’ll focus on my paternal side of the family for now. And a good starting point would be in 1862 with my 4x great-grandfather, John MacArthur, of Glasgow. He was twenty-one years old at the time, and he was the primary breadwinner for his widowed mother, four younger brothers, and three younger sisters. He inherited this position due to a tragedy. His father, William MacArthur, was killed during a bar brawl when John was seventeen. William had gotten into an argument over a bet, and the argument escalated, and ultimately ended with a knife in his gut. The family didn’t have life insurance in those days. There was no lump sum payment to keep the dependents afloat. It was either find someone else to pick up the slack, or starve.

 So John worked at the Ebenezer Smith Cotton Company, a gritty little factory in a gritty part of the old town, right on Robertson Street. He operated a spinning mule, and he worked six days a week for twelve hours each day. This was back when labor was dirt cheap and workers were practically fodder. I can imagine that it was a hellish but noble life. There he was, a young man in his prime, caught in a vicious cycle, working a tedious job, providing for so many mouths to feed and backs to clothe. It’s incredible to imagine a time when an individual like him could be so selfless.

Anyways, he took care of his family. And you know what? He probably didn’t have any intention of coming to America. Most likely his primary ambition was to become a manager, get a little bump in pay, maybe find some lassie to marry and start his own family in his native land. He was very well on his way to doing other things with his life, and I was very well on my way to never being born. But fate intervened. There was a conflict on the other side of the Atlantic that altered his course.

The American Civil War was hitting its stride by that point, and the flow of cotton from overseas came to a halt. Ebenezer Smith had exclusive contracts with exporters who received supply directly from the fields of South Carolina. Suddenly, the South needed their own cotton, and the Union was standing in the way of any lingering trading routes. Ebenezer didn’t have a backup plan, and the company paid dearly. Once the supply dried up, they went out of business, and poor John was out of a job by August.

The family struggled for the next few years. The vicious cycle of a young man with a steady job was replaced with the vicious cycle of a young man scrapping by however he could. John was able to find a few odd jobs here and there: paving a road, digging a sewer, bricklaying a building or two, serving as an overnight watchman; but for the most part, it was very difficult for him to provide. The family suffered plenty of hungry nights.

Finally, in 1865, John had had enough. He decided that it was time for a change. He decided that it would be best to move to America. The Civil War was over by that point, and the country was on the mend. So John worked extra hard over the course of a year and a half. He took jobs that he wouldn’t have dreamed of before. He buried the dead. He cleaned out cesspools. He cleaned fish and clams until his hands were raw. He did all these jobs and more for six to seven days a week and sometimes up to eighteen hours a day, all to save some surplus money. And when John finally had a sufficient amount, he used most of that money to tide his family over, and he used almost all of the rest to purchase a couple of tickets to a young nation thousands of miles away.

With his brother, Jimmy, who was seventeen, John arrived in New York on November 18, 1866, aboard the steamship, The Fat Treader. Shortly after arriving in New York, the brothers settled across the Hudson River in Hoboken, NJ. And it didn’t take long for the brothers to find work. A fellow Scotsman named Mr. Black took the two under his wings. Mr. Black was the owner of a factory that manufactured brooms and mops, but he wasn’t looking for workers there. Instead, he hired the brothers as coachmen/stable hands.

As you can imagine, it wasn’t very pleasant work. But it was an honest living. With this humble job, the two were able to survive and send money back to Glasgow.

It went on like this for a year and a half; then the other siblings back home came of age and the family grew less dependent. This was the beginning of the divide. The brothers were free to set out on their own paths, and Jimmy took advantage immediately. New Jersey, and a life of dealing with horseshit day in and day out, didn’t quite agree with him. So he parted ways with John and moved to Columbus, Ohio. He met an Irish woman named Betty, he married her within a year, and he started a separate branch of our family. Meanwhile, John continued working for Mr. Black on his own.

John carried on by himself for a couple of more years. Then on one fateful Sunday, he happened to have the day off. And on this Sunday off, he decided to try something new. He went to a church.

That random decision changed the course of his life in more ways than he could’ve imagined. I cannot tell you what happened during that service, but before he left, John had met a young lady. Her name was April Brees. April was a beautiful, thin Dutch woman with soft brown hair and sparkling gray eyes. She had a thick accent and she carried a Bible on her person at all times. She attended service every Sunday, Wednesday and Friday without fail. Worshiping the Lord was her life, everything else was secondary. 

Now John was never a particularly religious man before this encounter. He always thought of church as simply a theater for “pastor blather.” But after his encounter with Miss. Brees, he saw things in a different light. He found salvation in April’s eyes, and he wanted to become a good Christian. It took him little effort to gain consent to private Bible lessons. They met two nights a week in the lobby of the River Street Hotel, and John attended service at the church whenever his job allowed it. After a few months of this, a full romance blossomed. Then April formally introduced John to her father.

Aaron Brees, or Mr. Aaron, as he was called, took an instant liking to the “handsome young Scot.” He insisted that April bring him over as often as possible for dinner. He even offered John a job as a manager at his new department store on Washington Street. John, knowing a good opportunity when he saw one, eagerly accepted. So that was the end of the horse business for my family.

John and April married on December 24, 1872, at their church, Second Reformed through Christ on Monroe Street. And the two wasted no time in starting a family. Within a year, their first daughter, Dorothy, was born. Dorothy was followed by three brothers. The first was my 3x great-grandfather, Peter, on November 1, 1874.

That was how my paternal family’s journey began in America, according to the writings of April Brees. She took it upon herself to record her husband’s story along with her own, and it served as a hard-to-read capsule that ended up in the hands of the HSEAH nearly two hundred years later, thanks to the donation of a long lost cousin in Spokane, Washington. So now that we have the headwaters, let’s continue our ride down the River McArthur.

 

Peter, John’s oldest son, grew up working at the department store, Brees Department Co., alongside his parents and siblings. His education was very rudimentary. He learned some basic reading, writing and arithmetic, but most of his youth was spent stocking shelves and sweeping floors.  Child labor was in vogue back then, and as a kid, Peter dutifully did what he was told. But the older he got, the more confined he felt with the same routine. Through this confinement he developed a desire to see the world, to experience life beyond Washington Street. He was thirsting for adventure. And to quench this thirst, he joined the US Army as soon as he turned 18.

For most of his army career he was stationed throughout the country at different posts. First, he was sent to Fort Lesley J. McNair in Washington D.C. for a year. Next, he was sent all the way to Fort Baker in California for eighteen months. Then he spent a year helping with the construction of Fort Columbia up in Washington State. But Peter wasn’t content with peaceful stateside service. He wanted to see some action.

Eventually he got his wish. He was sent across the Pacific, and he fought in the Philippine-American War for thirteen months. It wasn’t the glorious adventure he had sought. In fact, it was hell on earth. The war was bloody and brutal. There was no clear good or bad. There was no black and white. Everything was simply monochrome and blood red. Everyday was a fight to survive. Peter witnessed death left and right. He breathed it, he stepped over it, he waddled through waters infested with it.  He dodged countless bullets, avoided countless traps, and he almost died of dysentery twice. Humanity was devalued in wholesale as natives were slaughtered without impunity. One time, Peter was ordered to shoot a teenage boy at point-blank range, and he didn’t know whether he was killing the enemy or simply ending the misery of a victim. It was the type of war that could make the most patriotic soldier question the honor of his flag. The longer he fought, the more he asked himself what was wrong with mankind. Why do men throw away their lives so easily for such abstract causes? For thirteen months, Peter had to endure this nightmare. And it came to an end when he lost his left foot in an ambush by guerrilla fighters.

Peter was honorably discharged and he returned to Hoboken in September of 1900.  By this time John MacArthur had inherited the store from Mr. Brees, and he had grown the business from a simple family-run operation to a behemoth that took up half a block. He welcomed his son back with open arms and offered him a job.

Peter was heartbroken. He had successfully escaped the trap that was department store living, but the world had chewed him up and spat him back out where he had started. Humbled, and not seeing any other options for a mangled war veteran, he went ahead and accepted.

 At first it was just a token job, something to give a melancholy man a purpose. Peter spent most of those early days back at the store hobbling around on his wooden stump of a foot, ordering workers around in a nasty tone. He was very unapproachable, he drank whiskey from a canteen in front of everyone, and he smoked horrible smelling tobacco from a pipe almost non-stop. The workers despised him. But it didn’t matter because he was the boss’s son.

Then John MacArthur died in January of 1904. He had caught pneumonia, he didn’t take it seriously, and it cost him his life at only sixty-two years old. That meant Peter had to take over. And he faced a new reality once the store was his. The competition was stifling. A multitude of similar department stores had sprung up along the same street. His workers, fearing the worse now that the son was in charge, were on the verge of mutiny. They were threatening to walk out and shut the place down. This would’ve been catastrophic. Customers could walk forty feet to a neighboring store selling the same merchandise. That meant the new boss had to straighten up his act, and quickly.

He gave his workers raises across the board. He rotated the off days of the ones who requested it. He gave them an hour lunch. He hired a charismatic fellow from Michigan named Mr. Timber. Mr. Timber served as manager, and he bridged the communication gap between owner and workers. Peter did all of this within a couple of weeks. And they turned out to be very savvy moves. The transition went smooth, and the store continued doing sound business.  

So Peter did what he had to in order for the store to survive. Now, let’s talk about his personal life. He was a content single man until his mother passed away in June of 1909—she had succumbed to kidney disease. Peter never was that much of a pursuer of ladies, even during his days of service in the army. When he returned to New Jersey, he used his mother as an excuse to avoid courtship all together. His sister, Dorothy, and two brothers, Charles and Dick, had families of their own, and they had already scattered across the country to different states. That meant Peter and his parents were isolated, and whatever energy he could have channeled into finding a wife, he channeled into visiting April and taking her to church on Sundays, especially after she became a widow. If I had to guess, the missing foot damaged his confidence.

However, after April’s death, the pressure of being alone finally got to Peter. He had his personal hang-ups, but he didn’t want to remain a bachelor for the rest of his days. So after a few months of grieving, he resolved to change. He started to flirt more with the women inside the store. He cut down on his drinking. He cut down on smoking from his beloved tobacco pipe. He started wearing better quality clothes. And eventually, the modifications paid off. In the fall of that year, he met a German immigrant named Resi Peters.

Resi was a pretty woman with curly blonde hair, rich eyebrows and a great smile. I remember looking at a black and white photo of her. That smile was simply one of the best I had ever seen. But she was huge. She weighed well north of two hundred pounds her entire adult life. All the same, Peter grew fond of her. She was twelve years younger and charming. She could tell a joke as well as she could take one, and she could drink Peter under the table if she wanted. In fact, she was famous in her neighborhood for her home-brewed beer. Her father was a brew master back in Germany, and he passed this skill down to his only child. And Resi adored Peter. She had no problem with Peter’s missing foot or occasional bouts of withdrawal. She was a very sturdy woman, not fair-weather at all, and whenever Peter went through his bitter moments she guided him through. Simply put, they were a great fit. The two married after nine months, then they moved into a small house on Madison Street. They had four children together. Their first born was my great great grandfather, Jason, in 1910.

 

Now, on to Jason. He didn’t get along with Hoboken at all. He was a half German kid during the decade of World War I, and that wasn’t an ideal scenario. Anti-German sentiment was on the rise like water temperature in a boiling pot. It was fueled by a steady barrage of provocative books and films illustrating American invasions from foreign forces, namely European forces. Unrestricted submarine warfare terrorized US citizens and interests across the seas in real life. The nation’s great strength of immigration was increasingly viewed as vulnerability, and a suspicious and hostile light was cast on all perceived enemies.   

From as early as six years old, Jason had to fight little assholes on a regular basis. Other kids would attack his younger brothers and sisters, and he had to come to their defense. Other kids would call his mother a “fat stinking spy”, and no one likes to have his mother called names. Other kids would call his father a traitor for marrying that “fat stinking spy”, and no one likes to have his father labeled something he was not. Jason wasn’t a very good fighter. He won some battles and he lost plenty more. But he wasn’t going to take it from anybody when it came to disrespect.

Turmoil among other kids was only part of a larger problem. Business at the department store slowed as rumors and paranoia swirled around Washington Street. Plenty of Jason’s relatives from his maternal side were rounded up and sent to Ellis Island. Others had to flee to the West Coast or wherever they could to escape the persecution. To a kid this left a lasting and negative impression. His hometown was anything but home. Jason didn’t know who he could trust, and he didn’t make many friends because he feared his family would have to move away at any moment. He evolved into a very introverted young man, and he stayed inside his house as much as possible. It was a very turbulent time.

Mercifully, the war ended in 1918, and the hostilities slowly evaporated. But for Hoboken the damage was done. German immigrants and descendents continued fleeing town, and they took a lot of capital and businesses with them. Peter’s department store survived the war hysteria intact, mostly by outlasting German owned rivals, but the glory days of 15 to 20 years ago were not coming back. The city became more Italian and more Irish by the day, and the economy and spending habits of the populace shifted with the change.

In contrast to much of the nation, The Roaring Twenties were just one long struggle for Jason’s family to stay afloat. Gradually, Peter had to parcel off space in the department store to other retailers and lay off workers. By the middle of 1922, Brees Department Co. had returned to its original size. And it affected everyone in the house. Peter was irritated and depressed most of the time, and he continued drinking right through prohibition. Resi was anything but cheerful. She told no jokes, dark circles had formed under her eyes, and her weight fluctuated with the stress of holding the family together. Jason’s brother, Eric, was very bright academically, and he was perpetually bitter because he couldn’t get into the school he had wanted since his parents couldn’t afford the fee. Peter Jr. was sickly from childhood with chronic bronchitis. He was depressed most of the time just like his father, and he was very insufferable to be around because he always talked of dying. And Ines, the youngest child…well, she was crazy. She had behavioral issues that discipline and reasoning couldn’t remedy. She was only eleven when she almost killed a neighborhood friend. The unlucky girl had spilled some soda on her favorite blouse, and she attacked the girl with a random brick she had found on a curb. As a result, the wild child was sent to a state house for troubled girls in Ocean County.  

Jason endured this dysfunctional household until his seventeenth birthday. Then he finally resolved to leave. He escaped the Mile Square City in the middle of a July night on foot, and he didn’t tell his folks a thing.

But he didn’t go very far. Not very far at all. He only moved roughly ten miles to Newark.

Sweet 1920’s Newark, New Jersey. It was just like New York across the Hudson River, but without the flaw of being New York. When Jason arrived and walked along Market Street for the very first time, he knew he had found his new home. Droves of people were moving in every direction, going about their business like ants in a colony. Countless businesses populated the streets selling everything short of a soul. The smells of cooked food, tobacco smoke, and vehicle exhaust filled the air. The road crawled with broad cars of assorted color, big delivery trucks, small delivery vans, and trolleys. Painted signs hung off of buildings like giant framed paintings. The noise of it all was crackling, electric. Jason walked among all of this and he felt connected. He felt like a blood cell coursing through the veins of a great organism.

He arrived with only thirty dollars to his name. He used half of that money to rent a room for a month at the Franklin Street boarding house, and he budgeted the rest for food until he could find a job.

It didn’t take that long. Within three days he landed a gig as a short-order cook at the Eight O’clock Diner on Broad Street.  

From the beginning, Jason was a very hard worker. There was hardly a day he didn’t put in a twelve hour shift on the job. He was also flexible, and he displayed a freakish level of maturity and intelligence for his age. Within two weeks as a cook he figured out a system to speed up serving time twice as fast by pre-preparing food with a priority on popular items. He successfully lobbied to have unpopular items eliminated from the menu to prevent waste, thus saving the diner money. When he wasn’t cooking, he covered for waitresses, covered for the cashier, covered for the busboy, and covered for the host. He befriended regular customers and brought in new ones with the zeal of a Christian disciple. He was a natural born leader, a young man on fire, and all the mistrust and conflict and struggle of Hoboken faded away like a stain attacked by bleach.

After only one year, the owner of the establishment, Charles Dewey, couldn’t help himself. He offered Jason the manager position at the diner. Charles had opened a new, larger restaurant on the other side of town, and he was confident Jason could handle things at the original business. It was extremely unprecedented to give a teenager such responsibility, but Charles banked on the talent and drive of the young phenom.

So by the end of the decade, Jason was living the good life. He had found a new city and a new dream job. He rented a large two bedroom apartment on Washington Street and furnished it to his liking with secondhand Art Nouveau. He hosted dinner parties at his place whenever he had the free time, usually once or twice a month, and he invited customers, co-workers, and people from his neighborhood without discretion. He was extremely popular, an important member of his community. For a young man not yet twenty-one, he had come a long way. And all within a day’s walk from where he was raised.

At one of these parties, on a cool May evening in 1928, he met a young lady by the name of Nancy Down. Nancy was a classic flapper—a feisty redhead with deep blue eyes, a passion for fashion, and abnormally large breasts. She had moved to town not too long ago, and she worked at a clothing store on Broad Street. Her male cousin, Edwin, who was a friend and neighbor of Jason, introduced the two, and an epic conversation followed. The party faded to background and the other guest left unnoticed as the two talked into the hours of morning. At first Jason was mesmerized by Nancy’s generous endowment, but as time went on, her unique personality won him over. She was cynical but not off-putting. She was insulting but entertaining. She was ignorant but far from dumb. Jason was curious. He was drawn, addicted, and determined to enjoy her ride for all that it was worth.

They met a few days after the party and went to a vaudeville show at the Palace Theatre. And things moved quickly from there. Nancy became a regular at the diner, showing up after work almost every night with her cousin. After three months Nancy moved into Jason’s apartment. After seven months Jason proposed. And in March of 1929, the two married at a small church in North Ironbound.

Things were going so well that Jason invited his estranged family. His parents and all of his siblings came to the wedding. And instead of harboring ill feelings, they were happy for the young man who had finally done so well.

But prosperity didn’t last. The Stock Market Crash of 1929 ushered in the beginning of the Great Depression, and within a few months Newark’s economy fell under hard times. In January of 1930, Charles Dewey had to close one of his restaurants, and Eight O’clock Diner didn’t make the cut. That meant Jason, and all his talent and drive, was out of a job. The rising star crashed to earth. And the timing was terrible.

Nancy had just given birth to their daughter, Jackie, and the new mother was panicky and bothersome. She was no longer the free spirit Jason had fallen for. In fact, she was a complete pain in the ass. She was always mad over something. She yelled at him as he left out the door. She yelled at him when he came home. She yelled at him when they were at the dinner table. She yelled at him through the closed bathroom door when he was taking a dump. If Jason brought in seven dollars for the day, she’d ask why the fuck couldn’t it have been ten. If he came in at nine in the night, she’d ask what took him so damn long. If he came in during daylight, she’d scream why the hell wasn’t he out trying to make more money. There was absolutely no satisfying that red headed, hot tempered woman. And Jason lost his cool, too. He called her worthless, he called her a psycho, and he said that if it wasn’t for Jackie, he would curse the day he ever met her. Every single day in that apartment was a battle. Hard times were bringing families together during this tough period in history, but this family was falling apart.  

Throughout this hell storm, Jason provided as best he could. He had a brief job delivering illegal alcohol to speakeasies throughout central New Jersey until he lost his nerve for fear of going to jail. Then he sold scrap metal from dilapidated buildings along the Passaic River. After that he sold sodas to construction workers as they were building Penn Station. Then he switched from selling sodas to selling fruit on Ferry Street. But in the end, his efforts were simply not enough to save his first marriage. He and Nancy divorced in September of 1936, and Nancy took Jackie to Lowell, Massachusetts, her hometown. Jason had to abandon the apartment and rent a room. That part of his life was over. Jason only saw his daughter two times after this split. And that was many years later when she was an adult.

After the divorce, Jason finally found steady employment again. This was thanks to a friend named Maury. The two met when Jason was selling sodas outside of Penn Station during its construction. They talked everyday during Maury’s lunch break and the two stayed in touch long after the station was complete. This friendship paid off when Maury helped Jason land a job building Roosevelt Stadium over in Jersey City. The metro area received lots of funds for public projects through the Works Progress Administration, a Federal program designed to spur employment throughout the country. Jason used this opportunity to build a new life. He learned a new trade to center his passion and intelligence around. From the stadium he went on to other projects helping to build houses throughout the area. He never looked back.

And while Jason finally found his way again, his family in Hoboken, every single member, moved out to California. The Great Depression had wiped out the department store in 1930, and Peter quickly opened a thrift store specializing in selling dirt cheap goods. Miraculously, that store lasted seven years, but it folded as well. After that it was over. They all decided to escape the East Coast for a brand new start in Napa Valley. And get this. They only informed Jason by letter after arriving on the West Coast. They left the son that ran away from home completely out of the loop. A kind of poetic justice. However, Jason didn’t take it that well. Despite the fact that he had abandoned first, he felt abandoned to a deeper degree. This inspired him to change his last name from MacArthur to McArthur in 1939.

In 1942, Jason finally met a new love interest. Her name was Jessica Taylor. Jessica was a skinny brunette with rosy cheeks, big doe eyes and a cute button nose. She always wore her hair in bangs, whether it was in style or not, and she was a kind but mostly quiet woman to everyone who knew her. She was from St. Simons, Georgia, and she had moved to New Jersey on her own, an exile from her previous life.  Her fiancé, a man named Tom, was killed during the early stages of World War II, and the heartbroken young woman left everything behind for a change of scenery and a chance at sanity. She was from a well-to-do family, so she had some money to spend. She had bought a new three bedroom house along Valsburg Park and Jason was hired to renovate the place.

Jason always tried to keep things professional with his clients, but when it came to this vulnerable young beauty, he couldn’t help himself. He fell hard. He took special care to fix that house, working over thirteen hours every day except for Sunday. His costs were overrun, but he didn’t dare pass the expense along. When he wasn’t deep into his work, he spent hours talking to Jessica, trying to make a connection, trying to help her heal. He made progress week after week. When the renovations were complete, he asked her out. They went for country drives to the Poconos in Pennsylvania. They visited the boardwalks of the Jersey coast. They made excursions into New York City to watch Broadway plays. And slowly but surely, Jason won her over. He moved in within a year and the two married January 1, 1944. By July, my great grandfather, Damon was born. 

 

Now, on to the last subject of this chapter: Damon. He was the only child in his household, and he was practically his father’s partner from seven years old. He opted to go with his dad to work sites on Saturdays over playing with neighborhood kids almost without fail. He started out only passing a hammer from the toolkit or fetching a glass of water from the client’s kitchen, but the older he got the more helpful he became. Like most of the men in his family before him, Damon didn’t have much interest in school; but he was very adept at practical learning. He went from passing hammers to using hammers. He learned to cut wood with precision, to lay brick like a natural born mason, to build entire rooms from skeletons frames, and to install a hardwood floor by himself in one a day. By the time he was seventeen, he was essentially a veteran contractor—and he had a lot more money than the average teenager. To him, school was simply in the way. He dropped out in the middle of the 11th grade and he didn’t look back. 

From my knowledge, he was the only McArthur to know his calling from childhood. Well, that is, if you could call it a childhood. But really, he was one of those rare kids who didn’t need one. Being around his father and working with a true purpose, that was his key to happiness. Despite being a dropout, he was a gift of a son and a symbol of stability. However, things around him were anything but stable.

Damon’s hometown was changing, and it was changing drastically. The Newark his father had moved to a generation ago was dying. All over town people were leaving, and they were being replaced by waves of black migrants from the South. They came to Newark for industrial jobs and a better standard of living like countless immigrants and migrants before them, but they were late to the party. They simply inherited used neighborhoods and a used way of life. The jobs that had lured them were in their death throws—they were being strangled by a changing economy.

It’s easy to see how it happened. The U.S.A. finished fighting World War II in 1945. The victorious soldiers came home, the war machine was turned off, and all of that sweet wartime spending, spending that had propped up the economy, came to an end. So, if you are a government, what do you do? How do you create jobs for millions of able-bodied men looking for work? The answer is common sense. You find a new stimulant; invent a new stimulant. You initiate programs that will motivate investors to invest and hire people. You give banks a reason to loan, and give them the tools to administer this capital effectively. You give consumers money to spend and a reason to spend it. You build things.

Put yourself in the place of a typical soldier returning home to the slums of Newark. Imagine someone having a candid conversation with you. Imagine them asking you some tough questions. Questions like: Aren’t you tired of living in that cramped tenement? Do you really want to continue dealing with that landlord? Do you really want to continue living in that small house that’s falling apart? How do you stand breathing that city air? Are you really okay with all the smells and all the noise? Doesn’t it drive you crazy? Wouldn’t you like to have a car someday? You do? Well, where the hell are you going to park the thing? And are you absolutely sure you want to work in some cramped riverside factory like your father and grandfather? Is that how you want to raise your children? Where's your ambition?

Tell you what. I have a plan for you. And I believe you are going to love it. We’re going to get you out of that filthy city. How would you like to own your own home? Yes! That’s right. It’ll be yours. Look, you fought the war. You defended our freedom. You deserve it. So here’s how we’ll help you out. We’ll give you a loan. It’ll be cheap. Super cheap. Your payment will be about the same as what you fork over to that lousy slumlord who can’t even provide you with proper heat in the winter. You can say so long to funding that bastard’s dream, and say hello to funding your own. And don’t you worry about those pesky Negros moving into your new neighborhood, destroying your property value. We’ll make sure they remain in the city, or at least away from you. And don’t you worry about getting around. We’re going to build highways, interstate highways that will get you wherever you need to go. We’ll move heaven and earth, and certainly old neighborhoods, so that you can ride through the city from one end to the other, without stopping anywhere except for where you want. And if you’d like to get away for a while, you can ride from coast to coast, and enjoy all the beauty that this land has to offer. It’ll be just like riding a train—your own personal train.  And don’t you worry about a job. We’ll help to pay for your education through the G.I. Bill so that you can enter the white-collar work force and leave those shitty urban gigs of the old days behind. Or if you wish to remain blue collar, you can opt for a good union job. And don’t you worry about the necessities. There will be gas stations, and shopping malls and big box grocery stores. And don’t you worry about leisure. There will be bowling alleys, and movie theaters and spacious restaurants. This is the great land of opportunity and your opportunity is right now. On this I will guarantee. The grass will be greener on the other side.

And the grass was certainly greener on the other side for contractors. Damon and his father had more work than they could dream of. They bounced from project to project all across the state. They worked on houses in Essex County, houses in Bergen County, houses in Hudson County, houses in Passaic County, in Union County, in Middlesex and Somerset and Hunterdon and Monmouth and Ocean. The two, and a rotating cast of random workers, would travel in a Black 1959 Ford Styleside, and they would stay gone for days at a time. The sixties were very good years.

Eventually, Jason reasoned that it made no sense to stay in Newark at all, especially since he was locked into making his living outside the declining city. So the family moved into a four bedroom house on Linden Avenue in Bloomfield, NJ, in July of 1964. The new home was twice the size of their old one, and it had tan panel siding, a tall, red brick chimney, and a two-door garage. The property was two solid acres, and the backyard featured an oval, above-ground pool. Damon loved that house and neighborhood so much that he opted to live with his parents. He was a regular at cookouts and block parties throughout the summers. This lifestyle was an incredible contrast to the misery that was taking place a mere five miles to his south, which culminated in the Newark Riots of July 1967.

In 1970, Jason had finally had enough and earned enough, so he and Jennifer moved to St. Simons to live out the rest of their years in blissful Southern retirement. And with his father gone, Damon took over the business, he inherited the house, and he finally focused on finding a wife.

It took him three months to run into someone special. Damon was shopping one Sunday for some much needed clothes at Garden State Plaza, a mall in Paramus, NJ. He was walking down an aisle of a department store, minding his own business, when a young lady approached him. This young lady was a cute brunette in Tessa eyeglasses, and she was short and thick in all the right places. Leslie Maynard was determined to ask the first male she ran across if she was making a good selection in shoes. They were red pumps, and she was buying them for a date. Well, I don’t have the details of that conversation, but obviously Damon played his cards right. Leslie ended up not buying the shoes. She also canceled the date and went out with my GGF instead. It’s amazing how a life-altering moment can happen when you least expect it. A relationship, and ultimately a child, and ultimately a future president sparked from a simple question asked to a random stranger.

The two were polar opposites in a lot of ways. Leslie was a bookish school teacher in Nutley, and Damon didn’t care for reading at all. Leslie liked to stay inside the house, and Damon always looked for an excuse to go out. Leslie never touched a cigarette or  sipped a swallow of alcohol in her life, and Damon smoked and drank on a regular basis. But the two couldn’t stand being apart. Both found the other exotic, a puzzle that couldn’t be figured out or let go. By Christmas of 1970 they were living together, and they married in 1972 at the Essex County Courthouse.

And there you have it. A piece of my family history to within a hundred years of this writing. Nothing that signals the arising of a future Statesman, I’m sure. But things are just getting warmed up. The McArthur story reaches a pivot with the next generation.



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The Last Statesman
by
Christopher Hunter
Copyright © 2013 Christopher Hunter

First Entry

August 10, 2068

3:17pm

 Out of all the responsibilities I have ever had, out of all the duties ever imposed of me, self-imposed or not, in my life, this has to be the hardest and the easiest at the same time. The very words you are reading are a crossroad unlike any other. On one hand, it would be so simple for me to say forget it. It would be so simple to go back into the house and lie on that horsehide couch and do nothing. To simply wait for this damned cancer to take hold and send me into the next existence, like it will do to so many others, like it did to the love of my life whom I just buried not even fifteen minutes ago by my bare hands. It would be so simple for me to let go of everything since everything is already lost. It would be so simple for me to say fuck the world because the world has said fuck me. But on the other hand, it would be a horrible waste for me to not attempt to tell my story. There is just something deep within my heart that tells me it would be a sin, an act of ultimate selfishness, to let all of this inside me perish without a fight. I owe it to the countless faces, the countless places that have meant so much, not just to me, but to everyone who was around me. Though there is no guarantee that these words will reach a single soul other than myself, this is still the most righteous of quests I could ever take up.

So how do we start? Well, first off, let me start by thanking you. If this is indeed being read right now, then it means I am not alone. It means I am in your company. And let me tell you, your company means everything to me right now. For you see, I am facing a darkness men are not designed to face. This writing is the last testimony of a refugee. A refugee who has lost his job, his home, his worldly possessions, his nation and his very family. Without your witness, I have nothing left at all, I am nothing at all. So let me pay homage to you, dear reader, for you are the Northern Star, guiding me through this one last journey. And since you are giving me this most precious and noble gift, your audience, let me make this vow to you. I am going to tell you the truth, the absolute truth. You will see as I see, you will know as I know. For the following words we will become one. We will enter a sacred covenant that stretches across the time and space between us.

And now that we have this connection, my new friend, allow me to introduce myself. Depending on when you read this, you may be very familiar with who I am. My name is Joseph Andrew McArthur. I am the third and the final president of the Republic of East America.

It may be hard to believe, but it is true. Even as I write this with my own fingers, the absurdity of this turnaround, of living in this harsh but temporary reality, is amazing to digest. Only one week ago—less than one hundred and seventy five hours ago—I was in the presidential residence in Hartford, Connecticut, right at the corner of Park Street and Main Street. It was a fortress under attack by that time, but even with everything crumbling around that building, I still had hope. The people inside with me still had hope. Our nation still existed, with a fledgling pulse, a struggling beat of the heart. We were like victims of a biblical flood, huddled at the top of an attic with relentless doom climbing the length of our legs; but even in those trying moments, we believed that the danger would recede, that there would be a miracle. But fate doesn’t give a damn about miracles except when it is supposed to. I am the lone survivor from that attic, but still, I am a drowned man. This is the tale of a ghost.

Speaking of, it is such a surreal experience to be the last leader of a country. To live with the fact, even if only briefly, that it all expired under my watch. From the northernmost villages of Maine to the far reaches of southern North Carolina, this glorious land had a population of over two hundred and nineteen million souls; most of them will be lost by the end of this month. That’s millions of children, mothers, fathers, grandparents, brothers and sisters, uncles and aunties, the rich and the poor, the good and the not so good—and they all had one thing in common. They trusted that their government would protect them. They trusted that their nation would not topple over and dissipate like dew retreating from the new day; that it would not leave them defenseless, leave so many of them to perish. And in this government they turned to one man above all others to have the answers. They turned to one man above all others to prevent the unthinkable. And it must have been so disappointing for them to realize that that one man could not help them. Couldn’t even come close. Couldn’t even help himself or the ones he loved.

That is the burden that I carry with me into the abyss. It will not be easy to share this, however, share this I must. But do not worry, my friend. I am not going to inundate you with only the horrors I have seen or the torture that I have felt and continue to feel. As with all things that are of the real world—that are of humanity—there is beauty along with the ugly, there is righteousness along with the evil. My life was a ride with as many ups as there were downs. There were smiles that countered the tears, there were victories that countered the defeats, and there was life that countered the death. Even though there will be no happy ending for me, let us look at this as a celebration. Even though I march into death’s valley, let me rejoice for my words live through you. Thank you. Thank you for accompanying me on this final task. The final task of the Last Statesman.

The next episode is coming soon. Thank you for reading, and don't forget to like and share with others if you enjoyed. See you next time.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this story.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.




THE BOOK OF LUMIS
by Christopher Hunter

CHAPTER NINE

THE NAMING OF THE PLANET AND CONTINENTS

 

Uno did not wake up until the middle of the next day. He opened his eyes and the ceiling light was no longer spinning. His head was feeling better, but his body was sore and he was very hungry and thirsty. He also needed to clean himself; he had relieved himself repeatedly while he was in slumber.

Uno went directly to his living space. There, he stripped off his clothes and he threw them into a pit where they burned to ashes, then he went to take a shower. As he was in the shower, he drank some of the water as it streamed down from the showerhead. The water was hot, but Uno was very pleased with it; his body was desperate for hydration. After he was clean, he dressed in new garments and he made his way to the food lab and the closet of freezing cold air.

Uno cut up and cooked one of the preserved creatures over the box of fire. It was the one that looked like fowl with the very small wings and a head like a pin. It took Uno a long time to cook the thick white meat all the way through, but this time he did not burn any of it. His cooking skills were improving.

Uno said a quick prayer to God before beginning his meal. He said, “Dear God, thank you for the nourishment that I am about to receive, and thank you for giving me the timing to cook this meal without burning any of it. Thank you for allowing me to receive the gift of knowledge. I pray that you guide me to use it wisely. I pray that it is used to do great things for the sake of the Selected People. So be your will.” And then Uno began to eat.

During his meal he reflected on all of his newly acquired knowledge; all after just one session under that helmet. He was now familiar with the Great Metal Bird in ways he could not have imagined just days before. He no longer needed to go from room to room. Everything was already inside his head in vivid detail.

Uno now understood how important it was to build a system of order before waking the Selected People. Without a system in place, there would be chaos and death for untold numbers, for that was the natural fate of man if he had no direction.

Uno knew what he had to do to finish the Garden of Razor. He could see how it would be very unwise to wake all of the Selected People without a stockpile of preserved produce in waiting. The words of Muhna rang true like never before.

And with Muhna in mind, Uno pondered a serious question. Why did his servant delay bringing him to the Helmet of Knowledge? Ira taught Uno more in half a day than he would have learned in a thousand days of personal guidance. Muhna was a very wise machine. How could he have overlooked such a logical step? Was it to build camaraderie? Was it to gain real world experience?

Also, Uno knew that he had to return to the Helmet of Knowledge. His education clearly revealed that he needed even more education. He had gained a lot during his first session, most likely things he had already learned in his previous life, but now he needed information about his current world. Ira was the computer system of the Great Metal Bird. The Great Metal Bird had terraformed the planet. So surely Ira should have some answers.

After the meal Uno returned to the Chamber of Knowledge. But before going under the helmet, he cleaned up his bodily mess from the hallway and the chamber using equipment from a nearby custodial closet. It was unpleasant for Uno to see and smell the aftermath of taking the potion of absorbance, especially after it had settled in the floor, but the benefit of gained knowledge outweighed the burden of the rank odors.

Once everything was clean, Uno sat in the same chair as before. He put the helmet on and Ira appeared immediately. She said, “Greetings Uno, Leader of the Selected.”

“Greetings Ira,” responded Uno. “I need your help. What can you tell me about this planet?”

A rotating planet appeared on the screen. Uno looked at this world, and instantly he recognized it as the one he was standing on. The two moons, Shatter and Calm, were circling in orbit. The planet had a huge blue ocean dominating an entire hemisphere. The other hemisphere featured five masses of green and brown land. The top and the bottom of the world were dominated by large caps of ice. Marble clouds of white and gray shrouded across the surface in random patterns. And a bright red dot appeared on one of these clumps of land in the southern hemisphere. Uno assumed that the dot represented their location.

“What would you like to name this world?” asked Ira. “If you do not have a name in mind, one will be randomly selected for you.”

Uno tried to think of a name for the planet. He had seen so little of this world that nothing could come to mind. But then he thought of the stars. He remembered what had happened after his first prayer to God. The distant star had exploded and it formed a golden halo around the bright light at the center. It was such a beautiful image, such a powerful sign. The golden halo looked like a ring. Aring!

“I will name this planet Aring” said Uno. “May the fate of this world forever be linked to an answered prayer.”

“Very well,” said Ira. “Now what would you like to name the continents?”

“I leave that to you,” said Uno.

Ira replied, “Okay:” There was a short pause. “I have selected names for each of the continents on the planet Aring. I will start with the continent you are located on.”

The screen zoomed in on the continent with the red dot. This continent was wide, and it had five blunt peninsulas sticking out from the main body. The shape loosely resembled the stretched out hide of a large beast. The continent had brown mountain ranges and deserts to the north, a vast band of grassland in the middle, and deep green forest to the south.

“This is Zoogna, the official homeland of the Selected. The total area of this continent is 29,034,522 square kilometers. The climate is very mild in the middle section, the most suitable area for colonization. The land has plenty of fresh water and fertile soil for cultivation. The forests in the south and certain regions of the mountains and deserts in the north are habitable as well. With time, future branches of your population should easily adapt to live in many of these places.”

Then the screen focused on to the neighboring mass. It was very small in comparison to the others, and it was rich with green vegetation. This land was triangular in shape, and its longest coast, the western side, was facing Zoogna.

“This is Mahlaya Island,” said Ira. “The total area of this land is 231,456 square kilometers, and it is predominantly jungle. Due to its small size, this island receives more rain by percentage than any other landmass on the planet. 44% of the planet’s oxygen is derived from Mahlaya Island’s rain forests. Habitation of this island is not recommended. There is a high probability that there is a concentration of contagious disease and poisonous species in such an environment.”

Then the screen focused to the north of Mahlaya Island to a continent that was long and slender in comparison to Zoogna. The shape resembled a huge sock. The southern part of this continent had thick green vegetation and swampland. Grassland and desert dominated the middle. And the north was covered with dark green forest and ice capped mountain ranges.

“This is Tanshia,” said Ira. “The total area of this land is 17,481,044 square kilometers. The middle grassland is the most suitable area for colonization. The southern jungle of this land is dangerous just like Mahlaya Island; the neighboring swamplands are even more dangerous. The northern part of this land is very cold, for it is near the top of the world. Only the very determined will be able to live there.”

Then the screen focused on the continent east of Tanshia. This land had a very odd shape. It had a long and curvy northern coast that extended out from the main body. The west coast of the land resembled a huge hook, and this coast was rich with beaches. The interior of this land was green with forest. 

“This is Mariyana,” said Ira. “The total area of this land is 9,163,956 square kilometers, and it is predominately forest. There are plenty of rivers and lakes in this land. The weather is moderate and the coasts are stable. Mariyana is a good place for future generations to settle. People will prosper in this land.

Then the screen focused on the continent that was south of Mariyana and east of Mahlaya Island and Zoogna. This land was a land of contrasts. The northern coast of this land curved across wide and smooth like the top of a dome; and the southern coast of this land was jagged and hectic as if a huge mouth had taken a vicious bite out of it. The northern part of this land was a mixture of mountain and forest that was high above the sea level and the southern part was flat grassland and forest.

“This is Sylvana,” said Ira. “The total area of this land is 10,097,423 square kilometers. This continent is divided into vast highlands in the north and low-lying forest in the south. Sylvana is habitable, but only for the very determined. The weather of the highlands is very unpredictable, and the eastern part of this land is subject to frequent tectonic activity.”

After this, Uno sat up and he said, “Thank you Ira. That is all for now.” Then he lifted the helmet off of his head.

Uno was no longer content to listen to the computer system. He was burning with curiosity, and the Helmet of Knowledge was not enough to quench the flames. He wanted to see the world with his own eyes now. And he knew just the vehicle to use for the task.

To be continued?

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this story.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.




THE BOOK OF LUMIS
by Christopher Hunter

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE HELMET OF KNOWLEDGE

In the ninth room Uno found thirty six chairs arranged in four rows. They were heavily padded and surfaced with dark brown leather, and oddly, each chair had a golden colored helmet hanging in the front. The helmets were attached via a winding tube to a long box on the floor behind each row.

Now Uno was very curious to find out the purpose of this room. All the previous rooms were easy to figure out, but this one was quite different. So he sat down in one of the chairs and fit the helmet over his head to see what would happen.

As soon as the helmet was in place, the visor came to life as a screen. Uno was startled to see this. After a few moments a human face appeared. The face was female and pitch-black in color with green lines running across in a grid. This image stood out against a gray background. Uno stared at this face and the face stared back at Uno.

The female image broke the silence by saying, “Greetings, Leader of the Selected. Welcome to the Chamber of Knowledge. Before we begin, you should drink the potion of absorbance so that you may retain all that is heard here today. Please place the helmet back on when you are done.”

The screen went blank and the helmet lifted itself off of Uno’s head.

Now this was such a surprise to Uno. He stared into the blank visor and he said, “What type of nonsense is this? Where am I supposed to find this potion?”

He was about to get out of his seat when a panel opened on the left armrest. A small vial containing a green glowing liquid rose out like a single finger pointing to the ceiling. The room was very dark, and the glow of this liquid was brilliant.

Uno took this vial in his hand and removed the top, but he hesitated to drink. He was very unsure of consuming something that glowed so brightly. However, this moment of doubt did not last long. Uno reasoned that the female image did call this the Chamber of Knowledge, after all, and surely he needed all the knowledge he could get. So he took a deep breath and he drank the potion in one quick gulp.

Uno put the vial back in the holder and sat back in his chair. He put the helmet back on and he waited. At first nothing happened. He felt no effect from the potion and the screen did not reappear. There was only expectation and darkness. Then more expectation and darkness. Then even more expectation and darkness. After a while Uno finally lost his patience. He shouted to the visor, “I drank your potion, now where is the knowledge ge ge ge ge ge ge ge?”

Uno was surprised by his own words. His voice was very strange. It was deep and the echo was powerful as it rang in his ears. He wanted to remove the helmet but his arms would not comply. His whole body went limp against the seat, the bottom of the chair elevated, and the backrest reclined halfway to flat on its own. Uno was comfortable, but he was helpless.

The screen came to life and the female face reappeared. But the image was different from before. It was more defined, more realistic. Uno looked at this face and he said, “What did you do to me me me me me?!”

The female image replied, “This is a brief side effect of the potion on on on. The knowledge of this session will be fused to your memory for all of your days ays ays ays.  My name is Ira ra ra ra. I am the computer system of the Great Metal Bird ird ird ird. The following lesson has been designed to help you lead the people ple ple ple.

“Stop op op op,” said Uno. “When will this damn echo go away ay ay ay?”

Ira replied, “It should subside right about out out out out out out out out…now.”

And sure enough, the word ‘now’ was loud and clear, and without echo. The potion had stabilized and Uno was primed to absorb the words of Ira. Uno was very relieved.

It began immediately. The screen filled with random images that flashed by in rapid succession as Ira’s voice guided the way. Uno fell into a comatose trance as a tidal wave of information crammed his brain. His mind was like a sponge dropped in a tub of water. Units of measurement, Mathematics, Chemistry, Astronomy, Biology, Geography, Botany, Psychology, Sociology, Architectural Technique, the schematics of the Great Metal Bird, a rundown of supplies, a rundown of all the vehicles in the hangar and how to use them…it was a lifetime of education, and it was all packed into one session.

This session lasted for half of one day, and then the screen went blank. Uno slowly stirred out of his comatose state back to consciousness. When he was self-aware, he realized that he had a great headache. Through his cloudy mind he knew that he was hungry and thirsty. He removed his helmet, and slowly he got out of his chair. His feet did not have strength to stand, so he fell to the floor on his knees. The room was spinning. It was spinning fast. Then Uno threw up on the floor.

After he was done emptying his stomach, Uno crawled around avoiding his own mess. The room was spinning a little less now, and he was determined to find something to clean up what he had just done. He made it to the door and it automatically slid open. He crawled out into the hallway, and once he was through he tried to stand. It did not work. So he tried again. It did not work the second time.

Resigned to his setback, Uno leaned against the wall of the hallway. He stared at ceiling light. It was florescent and oval shaped. The light gently twirled around in a circle from Uno’s warped perspective. And he found comfort in this twirling light as he fell into a deep slumber.

To be continued...


 

I am dedicating this presentation to a very dear friend of mine who has left us too soon. Rusty Swain was my first Facebook pal when I joined Indie Author Group almost two years ago. We became allies and helped each other as we were finding our way in this exciting world of Indie Publishing. She was gracious enough to read my first book when very few people were willing to do so, and her encouraging words helped to pull me through as I was rewriting my trilogy. We used to talk on the phone for hours, and I carry her kindness and wisdom with me to this very day and will carry it every day going forward. Thank you Rusty, I am so grateful to have known you, if only for an all too brief moment in time.

If you would like to discover the books by this incredible woman, you can click the link below. Thank you.

http://www.amazon.com/Linda-Swain/e/B005S53PJU/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this story.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.




THE BOOK OF LUMIS
by Christopher Hunter



CHAPTER SEVEN

RETURNING TO THE GREAT METAL BIRD ALONE

At the first light of morning Uno entered the Mow-vem, and he was determined to drive it to the Great Metal Bird on his own. After working all the previous day and dwelling all the previous night in the Garden of Razor, he was both hungry and thirsty. He also needed to wash his body. He did not smell good at all. It would be wise, he thought, to address this before dealing with Muhna.

In the driver’s seat Uno examined his surroundings with a spirit for learning, for he had paid very little attention when Muhna was operating the vehicle before. In this first sitting he saw a steering wheel, a stick for shifting forward and backward, a smooth glass dashboard full of outlined buttons, and two pedals on the floor.

First, he searched for a way to start the vehicle. On the dashboard most of the buttons were square, and they had names that Uno did not recognize. He pressed button after button to no result. After several unsuccessful attempts, he noticed one button that was in the middle of the steering wheel. It was in the shape of an oval. He pressed this button and then the Mow-vem roared to life.

Next, Uno decided to shift the stick, for that was one of the things he had actually paid attention to as Muhna was driving. Nothing happened after he shifted the stick forward. Then he shifted the stick backward, and still nothing happened. This frustrated Uno. He thought to himself, what is wrong with this thing?

By mistake Uno’s foot had landed on the right pedal as he was deciding what to do next, and the vehicle began moving backward. Now Uno was very surprised, for he had no idea what he had just done. Instead of taking his foot off the pedal, he pressed down even harder, and as a result the vehicle went faster. Uno yelled, “Stop you machine, stop!” But the Mow-vem did not stop.

The vehicle was approaching one of the walls of Razor. The invisible force of the barrier turned blue in warning as it felt an approaching presence. Uno lifted his foot off the pedal and he was preparing to jump out; then noticed that the vehicle was slowing down on its own. Quickly, he put his foot down on the left pedal. And right before the crash the vehicle came to a stop. Uno exhaled in relief. He said, “Thank you, God.”

From this experience Uno figured out how to drive the Mow-vem. He shifted the stick forward and pressed the right pedal to move the vehicle away from the wall. He turned the steering wheel in the direction he wanted the vehicle to go. He used the left pedal to stop the vehicle when he wanted it to stop. He shifted the stick to the middle when he wanted the vehicle to remain still.

Once Uno was safely away from the edge of Razor, he stopped the vehicle and shifted to still, and he pressed buttons on the dashboard to discover their purpose. One button lifted the roof of the vehicle. Another button turned on the lights. Another button wiped rubber blades across the front window. Another button lowered the blades to cut grass. Then another button shot out a stick with fire at the end, and it crashed into one of the bordering walls and exploded!

Blue light rippled across the border wall at great speed, but eventually the light disappeared and the boundary of Razor was invisible again. After this Uno was done pressing buttons. He began to drive back to the hangar.

Now the entrance of the hangar had a huge door with sides that curved up slightly until they met at the top. The entrance was open and a ramp of metal was already extended to the ground, for this was how Muhna had left it. Uno drove up the ramp and through the huge entrance with ease. Inside, the hanger was like a big metallic cave with ridges and vents and lights all over. There were all kinds of vehicles to either side, lined up in rows. Some were small enough to fit only one man on top. Some were big enough to fit a dozen people or more inside. Some had wings that folded at the top like the Great Metal Bird. Uno was very curious about these vehicles. He reasoned in time he will get to try them all.

Uno parked the Mow-vem in its designated spot near the back of the hangar. Then he got out and took the lift, a tube with white rubber pads and tall windows, to the corridor level at the top. From there he entered into the rest of the vessel.

In the bathroom of his living space, he took a shower, brushed his teeth, shaved the fuzz off his head, put odor blocker under his arms, and he changed his clothes to cleaner garment. He also put moisturizer on his skin because it was ashen. These were the things Muhna had guided him to do in the previous days. And once Uno had done all of these things, he felt like a new man.

Next, Uno went to the room with the preserved food. He selected the flesh of the serpent and he took it to the box of fire. He cooked it just as Muhna had done the days before, but in this case he left the meat on the flames a little too long. It was slightly burned and extra crispy. Uno also made a pitcher of ice cold water mixed with crushed berries from the Forest of Canes.

Once the meal was prepared, Uno sat down to eat at a small metal table. But this time he decided to do something different before consuming his food. He decided to pray first.

“Dear God, thank you for this meal and the knowledge given to me to prepare it. I pray that you will give me the strength and the direction to do productive things today. I do not have Muhna to guide me, so I ask that you guide me. So be your will.”

After the prayer Uno ate the first meal prepared by his own hands, and he was very satisfied.

 

UNO EXPLORES THE GREAT METAL BIRD

Uno’s spirit was lifted after he ate his meal, and he was ready to explore the Great Metal Bird in further detail. In his initial tour alongside Muhna, he was only introduced to basic locations. He was familiar with his living space, the lab to analyze food, the hangar and the engine room; but the rest of the vessel was largely unknown. He did not get to go inside any of the closed doors.  Wisely, he realized that this had to change. So he went from room to room to see what was inside.

In the first room Uno found thousands upon thousands of suits. They were of many different kinds. Some were made of diamond weave like the one he wore outside for protection. Some were made of thick fur like the hide of a beast. Some were smooth on the outside and had scales like a fish. And some were made of a very thick fiber with huge bubble helmets at the head. The room also had racks lined with all kinds of metal gadgets, belts with pouches, and heavy looking shoes. Uno was very satisfied after seeing all of this, for he realized that the Selected had come well prepared to explore the world. He decided to name this room the Legion Closet. And that is what we call it today.

In the second room Uno found a multitude of weapons. They were lined up against the walls on hooks and they were arranged on top of tables in a slant. Some of the weapons were bows with arrows just like the one Muhna had used when he was hunting. Some of the weapons were long and round like a tube and had a scope fixed at the top. Some of the weapons were small enough to fit in a man’s hand. There were also stacks of ammunition ranging from the size of a man’s fingertip to the size of a man’s head.

Uno was very satisfied after seeing all of this, for he realized that he and the Selected People were well equipped to hunt for game, and they could also defend themselves against powerful creatures if the threat should ever arise. Uno grabbed one of the hand-sized weapons for himself. There was no perceived threat on the vessel, but he was eager to have something on his person anyway. After all, Muhna was no longer at his side. Uno decided to name this room the Armory of the Selected. And that is what we call it today.

In the third room Uno found several long tables arranged in rows with padded benches placed underneath. Two of the walls were dark purple and they were lined with blank screens. The third wall had thick layered windows looking out onto Razor and the plains. The fourth wall was a serving area with screens and rectangular slots. Uno looked at all of this and thought, this is where the Selected will come to break bread and talk among each other. So he decided to name this room the Bread Hall. And that is what we call it today.

In the fourth room Uno found rows upon rows of black plastic seats that sloped down the length of the vessel’s inner hull. The ceiling of this room sloped down along with the seats, and at the bottom there was a small wooden stage with a blank screen fixed twelve paces above the floor. By estimation Uno counted over a thousand seats inside this room. To him this was a very surprising feature. He decided to name this room the Amazing Theater. And that is what we call it today.

In the fifth room Uno found equipment for exercise. There were bolted bicycles and platforms with revolving strips of leather so that people could ride or run in one place. There were weights and bars that people could lift or pull at different levels of difficulty. There was a section against one wall where a big screen faced a multitude of blue mats so that people could receive video instruction in their activity. Uno saw all of this and he was very satisfied, for he understood that the people could use this room to maintain their heartiness. He decided to name this room the Fitness Hall. And that is what we call it today.

The sixth room and the seventh room were divided into various sections. Together they served as a place of maintenance for the people. There were two waiting areas, a service desk, and a multitude of cubicles with flat padded beds inside. There were closets filled with equipment and tools for monitoring and extracting, and this equipment came in all shapes and sizes. There were cabinets filled with bottles of liquid and capsules of powder, and all were labeled and neatly wrapped in clear plastic. Uno saw all of this and he was very satisfied, for the people will certainly need a place to come to if they were to get injured or sick. He decided to name the two rooms the Healing Section. And that is what we call it today.

The eighth room was smaller, and it was just like the lab where Uno and Muhna had analyzed the food. The room had three long metal tables with raised edges and drains that ran into the floor. There were mobile trays with equipment alongside each table. Against one wall there was a lab table and a closet with sheets and jugs of fluid, and against another wall there were a dozen vaults. The vaults were made of metal and they were ice cold inside. Uno realized that this room must be for the dead bodies of man. It saddened him to think that people will end up in such a place, but such is the nature of life. What begins will come to an end. Uno named this room the Lab of the Dead. And that is what we call it today.

To be continued...

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this story.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.




THE BOOK OF LUMIS
by Christopher Hunter


CHAPTER SIX

THE FIRST PRAYER
Uno woke up in the middle of the night, and when he opened his eyes he realized that the temperature was cool. After a brief panic, he remembered where he was and why he was still there. Immediately he looked behind him, and through dim light he could see Muhna. The servant was just as dead as before. Such a calamity was the sight of him.

Uno turned his attention toward the sky, for surely there was nothing he could do about Muhna at the moment. And for the first time in his new life he witnessed the full might of the heavens. The first thing he noticed was two moons racing across the sky to his right. One was larger than the other and they both were pale blue. The larger moon had thin cracks of glowing lava across its surface. The face of the smaller moon, by comparison, was smooth like a ball of chalk. The shadow of the larger moon was passing across the smaller moon’s surface. Uno decided to name the larger moon Shatter and the smaller moon Calm, thus the two moons of our world are called Shatter and Calm today.

Beyond the two moons, the sky was dotted with countless stars. They were a multitude of colors, from white to yellow to red and to blue. Some shined bright and twinkled like a beacon; others glowed dim and were hardly seen at all. There was also a cluster of stars so close together that it looked like a one giant red cloud with a few bright stars trapped inside. Uno was truly in awe.

This brilliant display sent Uno into deep reflection. He realized that he was standing on one world; one world that circled around only one star. And in the sky, with his very own eyes, he could see so many other stars. Surely, plenty of these stars have planets with the potential to support life, just like the one currently supporting his. Muhna and even his former self had said that this world was designed for the Selected People, and that they had come from another world in order to design it. Surely they cannot be the only ones to have done this. Perhaps this is not even the only time man has done this. The universe must be full of worlds, worlds teeming with life. What a magnificent heaven this must be!

To Uno this raised a major question. What could have created all of this? There has to be a primary source for everything. The Great Metal Bird fashioned the life on this planet to suit man, so man must have created the Great Metal Bird. However, something had to have created man. To take it back further, something had to have created life itself. Even further, something had to have created the heavens with all the planets and stars to host life. Where does it all begin? And even at the beginning, who or what had set such a beginning in motion? It is a mystery that stretches into infinity.

Then Uno thought, there is one thing that breaks this never-ending stretch into infinity. Existence itself. He could not deny that he, the Selected People, the Great Metal Bird, and all of the heavens and life within do in fact exist. So if there is no single creator to lay a finger upon, perhaps everything, including the creator, is one body, one vastly complex body of existence. So then, if everything is one vastly complex body of existence, then there must be something within or among this body that governs. Something that is connected to all and determines the fate of all, because in a sense, it is all. Could that something be God?

Yes. Uno decided that this must be the answer. There was no way to confirm his conviction with the limited information he had, but it felt like the truth. And he was content to go with that truth until it was proven false.

And once Uno had made this decision he was overcome with a wave of familiarity. His old world and his old life were still erased beyond salvage, but one small piece stood out from the void. He had a vision of himself looking up to the stars in his previous life, just as he was doing now. The stars in the sky were very different then, but in this vision he was talking to them, pleading with them. What was the word for this pleading? What was the word? What was the word? Then it came to him. Prayer!

Uno realized he was having a flashback of himself praying to the stars. To him, the stars represented face of God.

Then Uno thought to himself, if prayer worked for me all those ages ago, on a different planet and in a different life, to bring me and all of the Selected People to where we are tonight, then surely prayer will work for us now . So Uno fell to his knees in the soil and he began to pray:

 

“Dear Master of the Heavens, Energy of all Life, Substance of all Things, Fabric of all Laws, and Controller of all Fates, please hear my humble prayer. Thank you for guiding us, the Selected People, through this long and improbable journey. Thank you for allowing us to reach this place unharmed. Thank you for The Great Metal Bird and the ones who built her. Thank you for giving her the wisdom and the tools to build this magnificant planet for us. Thank you for Muhna and the short time we had together. I do not know why he was taken away so suddenly, but I do not question it since this was your will.

I do not know what is so special about me that I would end up leading these people, but it is clear that this choice was a part of your plan. I pray that you will give me the strength and the wisdom to live up to your plan. Not for my sake, but for the sake of these people, and the hopes of all who were left behind. I pray that you will continue to keep us safe as we explore this new world. I pray that we will build a civilization worthy of your favor. I pray that we should never forget that we are not only a family on this planet, but a family of something much greater and mightier than we will ever live to see. So be your will.”

And that was the first prayer of man.

Uno rose to his feet, and just as he was about to dust the soil off his pants, a flash of yellow light erupted in the sky! It was an exploded star from far off into the heavens. A perfect halo instantly formed around the very bright center. This was a sign that Uno’s prayer was heard. This is why we celebrate the eight day of man as the Day of Worship. The Halo and Flash became the symbol of our people. And that is why it is on our flag to this day and forever more.

To be continued...

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this story.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.




THE BOOK OF LUMIS
by Christopher Hunter

CHAPTER FIVE

THE GARDEN OF RAZOR

The next day Uno and Muhna rode the Mow-vem out the hangar of the Great Metal Bird, and the vehicle was dragging a long bundle of ropes. They drove to the corner of Razor, the corner that was directly behind the great vessel. After they had parked, Muhna disconnected the ropes and he buried one end of the longest piece into the ground about a pace in front of the pole. Then he and Uno stretched the long rope from one corner of Razor all the way across to the opposite corner, making sure to curve around the Great Metal Bird.

After they had stretched the long rope across Razor, they connected two hundred and twenty smaller pieces of rope at equal intervals. They then stretched the smaller pieces all the way from the long rope to the bordering walls of the clearing. After this almost half of Razor was covered. Muhna then connected one last piece to the Great Metal Bird. And now all of the ropes were linked.

Uno was very curious to see what would happen next. He then said, “What wonders will you show me now?”

Muhna replied, “There is no wonder for you to see today. This type of wonder takes time. We must plant seeds and see what grows from the soil. This will be our garden. And if it is successful, it will be the true salvation of the Selected. Hunting and gathering is great for the individual or the clan, but a nation requires cultivation.”

So all the rest of that day Uno and Muhna planted seeds among the ropes, and Uno did not know any of the species he was sowing. He was unfamiliar with the names on the packages. His memory had retained the ability to read, but he could not even recall the name of his own language. Uno was hurt to his heart when he realized this. He had kept his worries to himself all of these days since his awakening, but he could not remain silent any longer.

“Muhna,” he said.

“Yes?” replied his servant.

“You say that the blind cannot lead the blind, yet you are leaving me in the dark. You tell me that I am the leader of a people, yet I have no idea where we come from. This is not right. I am just one man, and not having the answers is burning me inside. So just imagine what will happen when we wake up the many thousands. How will we contain the flood of curiosity? How will we suppress the natural urge to know our origins? This is not going to work out how you planned, or as you claim, how I planned. Do you not see the foolishness in this? Do you not see the error of this primary rule?”

“I had doubts of my own when you first gave me the order,” began Muhna. “Everything that you just said to me was the same thing I tried to explain to you all those ages ago. Yes, I know that you may look at me and you see a machine, an emotionless contraption, something without a soul; but I do have an understanding of man’s psychology. I knew that there would come a day when you would rebuke me for not telling you the whole truth. I knew that the nature of man would not let the mystery rest. But you were adamant with your conviction. You left a message for me to give to you. Listen to your very own words.”

“Hello Uno, or would it be better to say hello me.”

Now Uno was amazed, because this was indeed his own voice.

“If you are listening to this, you should be a very happy man. Your voyage throughout the heavens was a great success, fate has smiled upon you and the Selected People, and you are now standing at the beginning of a new civilization. You cannot fully appreciate the odds that you have fought, or fully comprehend the hopes and dreams that you now fulfill, but I do trust in time you will find an equal or greater satisfaction in your future accomplishments.

“Now, I know you probably have plenty of questions. Questions like, where did you come from? Who built this ship? Why would you want to erase your memory and the memory of over two hundred and sixty-five thousand people? What good could that possibly do? They are very good questions; things any rational man would want to know. Well, here is the truth. Lack of knowledge is the lesser evil than the gaining of knowledge in this case.

“Where you are now is all that should matter and all that does matter. Your past has been cleansed from your mind as it has been cleansed from the heavens, and you must understand that this is for your own good. You cannot come back to this world even if you desired. Between the space, and the time, and the reason we are leaving in the first place, you wouldn’t know where to find this world or recognize it even if you did. Looking behind you would be a waste of your time, a waste of your energy, a waste of your passion. And you will need them all if you are to successfully lead your people.

Bear in mind. Each and every one of you signed up for the voyage on that ship, each and every one of you. You all signed up knowing full well that you were leaving behind everything. And you did it with no regrets. You did it with hearts drawn toward a new life, not hearts kindled to the old one. It might be a hard concept to grasp at first, but I urge you to see the beauty, the purity of this decision.

Embrace this gift. Understand how precious it is. You are not just out there to build a tribe, or a town, or a nation, but an entire world! You get to write your own book of life without any of the struggle or strife that held back your ancestors. You have no burdens but the ones you create. You have no sins but the ones you commit. You have no limits but the ones you set. You are like the new born baby carrying the life and hopes of deceased parents. You are like the newly formed star shining bright from the ruins of a supernova. You are like the seed from an old withered tree, rising from the soil as its descendent, growing tall and mighty, and poised to bear new fruit for countless new generations. Be courageous, be strong, be wise, and be grateful. Not only for yourself, but for everyone who will look to you as an example, and for everyone who will perish knowing that their only physical connection to eternity was placed in your hands. May God continue to dwell with you, and may God continue to dwell with the Selected People.

Then the message was over.

Now Uno was very conflicted after hearing this. A part of him wanted to reject these words outright. But how could he deny that the words and the thoughts were his very own? A part of him felt like the victim of a vile assault. But how could he deny that he was the very assailant? And it was all so irreversible. A man cannot take back what he did a few moments ago. It is even further away from him to take back what he did in a previous life!

But through the chaos that was now unleashed in Uno’s mind, a single word stood out as a great mystery. He then turned to Muhna and asked, “Who is God?”

The face of Muhna disappeared after this question. The servant slumped where he stood and he became as still and as silent as a rock.

Uno was perplexed. “What is wrong with you?” he asked. “Why would you slumber at a time like this? Wake up!”

But Muhna did not answer. Not a single light blinked anywhere on his body, and there was no sound coming from him internal or external. Then after a while Uno began to panic. He knocked on the chest and head of his servant. He shook the silver colored man by the shoulders again and again. He walked around the metallic body several times, trying to find something, anything that would revitalize his companion. But nothing changed the state of Muhna at all.

Finally Uno cried out, “Oh, what have I done?! Please come back to me my servant! I am lost without you. You are my only link to knowledge. If you do not come back then surely I will die!”

But the desperate words of Uno did not move his servant. He was as dead as the creatures he had slain during the hunting.

So Uno slumped to the ground, weighed down by his heavy heart. He knew not what he was going to do next. He was not ready to even think about it. He felt helpless, just like those very first moments in the pod when he could not move his own body. He lay flat on his back and stared up at the sky. The blue sky was turning dark on one side and the star was turning red as it was retreating below the horizon on the other. Night was closing in.

Uno did not move. He only looked to the changing sky. He had never been outside in the night of this world because he and Muhna had always returned to the Great Metal Bird before it was completely dark, so this was going to be a first. And as Uno lay, he tried to make sense of what happened. He only asked Muhna a simple question, and for some reason his servant died. Was it the mention of this person or thing called God? Was that the reason? How could a simple word do such a thing? And even if it did do such a thing, why was it recorded in the message? If a single word, if a single question about a name was so dangerous, then certainly he would not have mentioned it all those ages ago to be heard by his present self. Or was this just a coincidence? Uno pondered all of these questions over and over. Then he drifted into a slumber.

To be continued...