“Are you happy, Mheshimiwa John?”

“I am happy.”

“You are no longer a missionary. You have been living in our village for some time now.”

“Yes. I have put aside my missionary calling. I am not going back to America. I will abide with you.”

“The people of the village worry that you are not happy.”

“Why do they worry?”

“You come from a place of great cities, great wealth. The people of the village worry that our poor village is not worthy of you.”

“Your village is very worthy. I have left the great city and great wealth. It was not good for me.”

“The people do not understand this.”

“The bad spirits in the great cities are too powerful for me. They caused me temptation and worry and pain. I must have the simple life of the village, the quiet life of the village.”

“Aha. You are escaping certain bad spirits. I will explain to the villagers.”

“Yes, tell them that.”

“I have heard you speak of these bad spirits. They are told of in your Bible.”

“Yes, the Bible does mention them.”

“You wish to live like we live.”

“Yes.”

“You must wear what we wear now. The villagers do not understand why you remain wrapped in those “trousers” and that “shirt” and “suit coat” and “tie.”

“Well, I… You folks don’t wear very much… Of course it’s very warm here… But I’d like to keep my pants, at least.”

“I think you should not wear the pants. They disturb the villagers.”

“Well, I’m a modest man… but I want to fit in… I just want to live a quiet, peaceful, contemplative life.”

“Listen, Mheshimiwa John. The village too has bad spirits, like the big cities do. These spirits prey on those who are alone. A person who wants to be alone is not trusted in this village. It is not the village way. If you are alone, you must be speaking with the bad spirits. In the village, no one is alone. We do not walk in the forest alone. We do not sleep in the night alone. You understand? The villagers worry that you walk in the woods alone and sleep alone and sit quietly alone.”

“Your bad spirits do not trouble me.”

“They trouble everyone. That is why there is sickness and accidents and death… There is talk also about how you do your business alone. You understand? If there is one time above all that you should not be alone, it is when you are doing your business. You must always have company when you do your business.”

“My gosh. That’s… I’ve already agreed to go without my trousers, but this…”

“The villagers also worry that you sleep alone and have taken no wives.”

“I do not need wives.”

“Every man needs wives. There are three women here without a husband. You must take them as your wives.”

“But I don’t want wives… I… I prefer… I mean…”

“Do not say that to any villager. It will trouble them very much. Tonight I will send you your three wives. Later you will agree on payment for them with their families.”

“My goodness. I can’t possibly have three wives. What am I going to do with three women in here?”

“They will do everything for you. They will cook for you and feed you. They will wash your clothes and they will wash you. They will go with you when you do your business. The one called Ghufira will give you many children.”

“My Lord.”

“Get her with child quickly. This will please the villagers. Hadhi is too old. Hadhi is a crone. Ijuma is too young. Ijuma has only six years. “

“But I don’t… I can’t… It’s not… This is a moral dilemma for me. Living here is one thing. Marrying and fathering children is another… I can’t even speak to these women.”

“Speak to them? You do not need to speak to them. They will know. They will keep you safe from bad spirits. You must hit them every day.”

“Hit them?”

“They will not respect you if you do not hit them. They will think that you are weak. They will think that you do not like them. Their families will be unhappy. The village will be unhappy.”

“Oh my goodness, oh my goodness. I can’t even do my business in the big city unless I’m completely alone in my own… What am I going to do?”

“Do as I have told you. Never be out of sight of at least one of your wives. They will teach you with signs about the bad spirits of the village. They will rub your “sun-block lotion” on you. If all goes well, I will give you more wives and a slightly larger hut. Also, Abubakar has asked that you help with his medicine.”

“My head is spinning. I’m still a good Christian. As far as marriage is concerned, perhaps I can conduct the ceremony and marry myself to these women. I must consult the scriptures. But isn’t Abubakar the witch doctor?”

“He is the mganga. He has seen you cure with the little pills. He will teach you. You will teach him. You will learn to make the bad spirits obey you.”

“I’m going to have to pray about all this.”

“Just don’t pray alone, whatever you do.”

“I’m gonna kill Jones in the morning.”

“Won’t bring your brother back.”

“Maybe it send Jones to a place my brother can find him.”

“You kill Jones, you not gonna stop hating him. It gonna be the same, he dead or alive.”

“He alive, it all I gonna be thinking about. He alive, it gonna eat at me till I go crazy.”

“You kill him, you gonna have a lot of time to think about him while you sit in your cell. Unless you killed too, that is.”

“I kill him, I be sitting there with a smile on my face. It be worth it.”

“You sitting there smiling, your brother still dead.”

“Shut up, Mook. You can’t talk me out of this, you my friend or no friend.”

“I bet your mother can.”

“You tell my mother, I kill you instead of Jones.”

“Why you worried about your mother hearing it? Because you know she tell you not to do it.”

“I would do it anyway.”

“You would not, you know you would not, and you know your momma don’t want you to kill nobody. So how you going to go kill him, you know your momma won’t allow it? You do, she will not forgive you. She gonna have one boy dead and one boy in jail or else also dead.”

“Maybe I not gonna get caught.”

“Don’t make me laugh. The only way you going to shoot that man is when he walk from his house to his car or from his car to the courthouse. Both ways the police be around, for sure. Most likely, they gonna shoot you like a dog, right there on the spot.”

“They not gonna shoot me. The man killed my brother.”

“You think they care about your brother? Your brother and Jones and you all the same to them. But forget about them. I’m talking about your momma. She gonna come visit you in jail, if you live, and you know the look gonna be in her eyes.”

“Mook, I have got to kill that man.”

“It just seem like you do.”

“I will not be a man if I don’t. I want to do it. Everybody want me to do it. Everybody expect me to do it.”

“I don’t. Your momma don’t.”

“What if he kill your brother, Mook?”

“Then I’d feel like you do.”

“There you go.”

“I’d feel like you do, but I wouldn’t do it.”

“You would do it. You just don’t know what it feel like.”

“Look here. What if Jones killed Strick?”

“Strick? I hate Strick. Jones killed Strick, he be doing me a favor.”

“You see? Jones is still Jones, but if he kill Strick, that OK with you. If he kill your brother, that’s not.”

“What is your point, Mook? Why you putting me through all these changes?”

“One more time. Suppose you kill Jones’ brother. Is Jones supposed to come for you or not?”

“Why I kill his brother? Self defense? Then I’ve got a right.”

“Say, you just kill him out of meanness.”

“Then Jones should come for me.”

“I give up. I can’t explain it. It’s not right you kill Jones but I can’t say why.”

“It always been this way. All the way back. A man kill your family, you kill his family. It blood, Mook. It how you know you a man. You don’t do it, you might as well be a dog. Come to think of it, even a dog will fight for its master.”

“All right, all right. Back it up to your momma.”

“My moms look out for me. Naturally she don’t want me getting hurt. She don’t care anything about revenge. She want me safe. Also, she a good Christian woman. She would never go with killing of any kind. That my momma and I will not disrespect that. It why I will not talk to her about this before I do it.”

“What about this, then. You pull your piece and the cops shoot you before you shoot Jones. Now you got two dead brothers and Jones still alive.”

“That where I am counting on you, Mook. We best friends. I go down, it’s you got to kill Jones.”

“You never have to worry about that. I got you, man. You know I’m good for that.”

“David is going to live with me. If you can’t agree to that, we’ll let the court decide. We’ve talked this to death. Let’s not talk about it anymore.”

“I think that the court usually places the child with the mother, all things being equal, so obviously I hope we can agree before it gets to that point.”

“I think that we’ve got to that point. David is going to live with his mom.”

“Suppose that I were going to live across the street instead of moving across the country?”

“I don’t know. That’s not going to happen.”

“But just suppose. Suppose I change my mind and stay here on the West Coast and I’m living across the street?”

“The main reason we’re divorcing is because you’re moving to the East Coast. Why go hypothetical on me?”

“Let’s talk about this. One more time. I’m the one who’s leaving. Convince me to stay.”

“I don’t want you to stay. I’m sick of talking.”

“I mean for David’s sake, not for our marriage. But never mind that. Suppose that we get a divorce, but then something comes up, whatever, to keep me right here in town. Suppose I don’t leave. How would we share David then?”

“He’s not flying across the country every week or every month, period.”

“What’s wrong with you? Answer my question.”

“OK, I don’t know. I have no idea. Maybe you’d see him on weekends. Every other weekend.”

“What? We split up but live near each other and that’s all you’d share him? Why not a fifty-fifty arrangement?”

“Because it wouldn’t be fair to the boy. He needs a home and a room in that home and a daily routine that he can count on. He needs his father, sure, but I won’t let him bounce back and forth between us like a shuttlecock.”

“So it doesn’t matter what I do. I’ll take him to the zoo or a ballgame or a movie on the weekend once in a while and that’s it.”

“Why are we even talking about this? You aren’t staying here. Your job is more important to you than your son.”

“I’ve been working all my life for this promotion. It means everything to me, professionally. Of course I was thrilled when I got it. I worked like a dog for years to get it and now it’s mine. All I have to do is relocate. But no. You won’t move. For no good reason. You could easily get a job just like your current job on the East Coast. David would be just as happy there as here, once he got used to it.

“You say that I care about my job more than my son, but it isn’t true. You care more about living here than about your son. You’re depriving him of his father and you don’t even have a decent reason for doing so.

“And it turns out that if we divorce but still live on the same block, you’ll still deprive him. I can give up what I’ve worked for and dreamed about for years and it won’t make any difference. I’ll still be cut off from the boy.”

“I made it very clear, from the start. Move back East and you’ll do so by yourself. Choose between your job and your marriage. And your son.”

“Don’t you see? That isn’t me choosing. That’s you choosing. Choosing West Coast over your marriage. Choosing against your son having a father.”

“All I know is, you chose to leave us.”

“Forget the sharing question. If I refuse the promotion and stay here, will we stay together?”

“I think it’s too late for that.”

“Why? I refuse the promotion. Life goes on as before. I’ll probably have to move to another company, but that doesn’t matter.”

“You’d be resentful. We were growing apart anyway.”

“No. I refuse the promotion and choose my child over my job, as you put it. Perhaps, having made the decision, I wouldn’t be resentful. We go to counseling, find out why we’re growing apart, and work on our marriage.”

“I’m probably too angry for that.”

“Angry that I’ve insisted on the move? That I’ve refused to give up what I’ve wanted so badly.”

“Yes.”

“But if I come to realize that I’ve made the wrong choice?”

“You don’t believe that. I don’t understand why you’re putting me through this. Just leave and get it over with.”

“I’m putting you through this because we got split on the go-or-stay question, and the argument became about my love for David versus my job, but it so happens that maybe I love David, and you too, for that matter, more than my job. Maybe, believe it or not, I haven’t made up my mind to go. Maybe I’ll stay.”

“If you make up your mind to refuse the promotion and stay, you know that I’ll have to consider accepting the move to the East Coast after all, just to be fair.”

“It’s like I said. Somehow or other, we’re in the same boat here. We got divided very early on, with you taking one side and me the other, but we should have been working together all along to make the right decision.”

“Or this is your way of tricking me into changing my mind.”

“You know me better than that. The only way for us to find out if I’m right about this situation is for me to refuse the promotion, which I’m going to do right now, with you listening. That’s why I came over.”

“Good. Do it. Then we’ll see… We are not moving to the East Coast, though. I can promise you that… But yes, deciding together is a lot better than deciding apart… We did take sides way too soon… Put down the phone for a minute… Let’s start over.”

“Honey, I’m home. I’ve got good news and bad news.”

“Tell me the good news first.”

Amos and I sat at The Bar on Sunset drinking Ice Bombs. The atmosphere was lugubrious, if it’s possible to have an atmosphere with only two souls left alive in Hollywood.

“Explain to me again how a superior galactic government could order the death of almost seven billion humans,” I said.

Amos shrugged.

“It happens,” he said. “It was a political thing. At least I saved you.”

“Being alive isn’t so special when everybody you know is dead,” I said.

I got up and walked over to the window. Stared across Sunset at the old Warner studios. Trash littered the pavement at the deserted Mobil station next door.

“Hey, there are still fifty or a hundred million humans on the planet,” Amos said.

“Sounds like a lot, but try getting a date with one of them.”

Amos had worked as a greensman at Universal. He was a specialized set dresser who dealt with plants, real and artificial. Sometimes he reported to the art director and sometimes directly to the production designer. He had a green thumb. Literally. He lived in Glendale, like I did at the time.

“Where are they, all these millions still alive?” I said.

“Indians in the Amazon, what’s left of it. Wild men in Borneo, what’s left of it. Mountain dwellers. Inuit, those who haven’t drowned since the ice melted. Folks who did the least damage to the planet. And you, of course.”

Amos and I used to meet at The Bar after work. Dark and noisy. In the summer we’d drink those Ice Bombs, which I can still recommend if you don’t mind drinking alone: blue raspberry vodka, orange vodka, plain vodka, and Sprite. And lots of ice, of course.

One night during that period of our friendship, Amos admitted to me that he was an alien. An alien alien.

“If you’re an alien, why don’t you keep it a secret?”

“Why should I? Nobody cares.”

“INS might.”

He laughed.

“Are you kidding?,” he said. “Amos Greenberg from Brooklyn? The guy the studio loves for his great sets?”

“What about picking up women?”

“Hasn’t hurt me, that I can notice. To tell you the truth, they get it in their heads that they’ll uncover the equipment and point to it and say, Looks pretty human to me, ha ha. But then when the moment of truth arrives, their mouths drop open and they say, You’re right. That thing ain’t human!”

“So what are you doing here? On Earth, I mean. Besides dressing sets with ferns and palm leaves. Invading the planet?”

Again he laughed.

“Who’d want to invade this dump?” he said.

“Hey, you’re talking about Hollywood here. Maybe Brooklyn’s not so hot, but show a little respect for the industry.”

Amos was shaking his head.

“You’ve turned your planet into a crock pot. What self-respecting alien would come down here and invade Detroit, for Christ’s sake.”

“So then what? Are you studying us? How are we doing?”

“In what respect?” Amos said.

“In the respect of advancing as a race. Of developing, evolving, reaching the point where we can zip around the galaxy or whatever, hanging out like you are.”

“Ninety-nine per cent of sentient races become extinct within, oh, a few thousand years of their initial technological breakthroughs.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“Humans are way too smart for their own good,” Amos told me. “They should have got smart slower, much slower, over hundreds of thousands of years. You’re too much animal to survive, being this smart. You’ll come to an end quite soon, in one of the thousands of ways that you’ve developed, on purpose or inadvertently, to kill yourselves off. It’s one of the reasons that Earth is so popular as a vacation spot. A visitor like me can act like an animal here, be quite bestial, quite instinctual, and yet still hang out with smart people. Nobody wants to take a vacation at the zoo…

“It makes me giddy just to think about it. When I come here, I can abuse drink and drugs, I can watch senseless, mindless acts of violence on film and TV and on playing fields and on the street. I can litter! I can drive around in cars spewing carbon, flicking my cigarette butts and beer cans out the window. Anything goes.

“Believe me, when I go home to a sane galactic civilization, I immediately start counting the days before I can come back. It’s like when you run down to TJ on a weekend to behave badly. I’ll be depressed for years after you’ve blown yourselves up, or poisoned yourselves, or screwed the pooch some other way. No pooch screwing on my planet, sad to say.”

This news should have been depressing, but, after all, the human race invented the Ice Bomb, and the two of us drank enough of them to laugh off the whole thing, at least for that evening.

But all that was before some environmental bunch in the galactic congress decided to save Earth from its human vermin. The alien-vacation lobby wasn’t strong enough to save the planet as a playground for the dissolute of space.

At least the virus that killed everybody also caused the dead to decompose quickly into environmentally friendly matter, so that I wasn’t stumbling over a dead body every step I took. But Hollywood? Empty. Ditto all of L.A. Jeez, the freeways were great. Silver lining.

“What are you still doing here, anyway?” I asked Amos. “The Earth party is over.”

“I bought a package,” Amos said. “I pre-paid for the next fifty years. No refunds.”

“Isn’t that a little long for a vacation?”

“You don’t expect beings from a superior galactic race to take a two-week vacation, do you?” he said. “Even the French do better than that.”

“Most of us don’t get born and die on our vacation.”

“One of our vacations seems like a lifetime to you,” he said, “but for us they’re all too short.”

“Ok, but there’s nobody here.”

“There are still a hundred million humans on the planet. Come on. We’re bound to find a party somewhere. I understand that a group was spared up in the north of the state. A commune in Mendocino Country. Let’s drive up and check it out. Drugs, free love, vegetable gardens. Maybe we won’t miss Hollywood once we get there.”

“I’m a screenwriter and a dialog coach. What am I gong to do in a commune?”

“You’ve been in rehab a couple of times, haven’t you? Think of it like that, only without having to give up all the things that you like. On the contrary. There’s enough drugs and liquor left in the world to last your lifetime.”

“So what you’re saying is, road trip.”

“We’ll drive up in a Maserati. I saw one parked down the block.”

“Why not a nice big RV?”

“Are you kidding? It’s only five hours to San Francisco. Less, with a hot car and no CHIPs. We’ll find a good motel in the Bay Area, with a generator. Or, we could fly up. I can handle a plane.”

“Let’s drive,” I said. “You’re too drunk to fly.”

“OK. Let’s go discover America.”

Peter woke with sun in his eyes. A bird sang. He stretched and sat up. A breeze stirred the branches around him. The air was warm and the leaves a deep green. Peter swung his legs over the edge of the platform he had built high in the tree and sat there listening to the morning sounds in the forest. The platform swayed with a gentle motion beneath him.

He got up and pulled on his cammies. Threw a couple of cans in his pack for breakfast and checked the load in his rifle. He lowered the rope ladder and climbed down to the forest floor. It was a long climb. His hidden nest was lost in the overhead foliage. No one was going to surprise him up there.

He secured the ladder to the trunk of the tree in shadow and hiked over to the ridge. He sat down on a log to eat his breakfast while he checked out the town below. He saw the teenage girl slip into the Oaks Market to forage. The couple with two children made their way down Main, guns ready, and entered the department store after listening at the door for at least five minutes. Peter saw smoke rising from the picnic area in the park south of town. That would be the young couple who had arrived a month ago.

He didn’t see the grandparents and their granddaughter or the boy who was ten or so. The grandparents slept in, he knew. The boy seemed to like it better at night.

These few who remained in town were all cautious. Except for the ten-year-old boy. He was feral.

Peter heard the sound of an engine, for the first time in weeks. He stood up and dug his binoculars out of his pack. A car appeared at the end of Main and came forward, in no hurry. It stopped in front of the hardware store. A man got out, armed with a shotgun. A woman got out the other side. Rifle. Two kids, from the back. Handguns. Like the family now in the department store, they listened outside the hardware store for a long time before entering. Peter was already running down the path off the ridge, to catch them before they left.

He followed Oak down to Main and took up position in the middle of the intersection, trying to catch his breath. When the family came out of the hardware store, half a block away, Peter raised his arms and hailed them. His hands were empty and open.

The four froze at the sound of his voice. The father and both kids brought up their weapons and aimed them at him. The mom faced in the other direction, rifle up, scanning the street and the windows in the buildings on both sides back that way.

“Stand clear,” the father said to Peter, loud enough to be heard. “Stay where you are and we’ll run you down.”

“I’ll move when you start up,” Peter said. “If you’re just passing through, have a good trip. If you might be staying, I thought I’d tell you who’s here already.”

The man glanced back at his wife.

“Clear so far,” she said.

“Keep your hands up,” the man said to Peter.

Peter told them about the family of four in the department store, and the young couple on the edge of town. He told them about the teenage girl, and the grandparents and their granddaughter, and the ten-year-old boy.

The mother turned her head from time to time to look at him. Blank expression. Dangerous. The children seemed tense but curious.

“So far,” Peter said, “no one here has trusted anyone else enough to team up with them. We’re all on our own. I live out in the woods. If you choose to settle here, you won’t be bothered by a welcome party.”

“We’ll take that into account,” the man said.

“One other thing,” Peter said. “I’m organizing a little experiment. I don’t know if anything will come of it, but I’ve invited everyone in town to a sort of meeting. At noon, day after tomorrow, at the park. There’s a large playing field. We’ll all arrive separately, of course, and position ourselves around the edge of the field, far enough apart so that everyone feels safe. Then we’ll all move forward until we’re as close to each other as we can tolerate.”

“What’s the point?”

“We see each other every day. We’re all just trying to make our way. This would be a time to exchange names and stories. Maybe mention some problems we could use advice about. Maybe set up another meeting.”

“Nobody would risk their kids,” the man said. “I’d come alone, if I came at all.”

“There would be four couples,” Peter said, “three with kids, if everyone came. And then the teenage girl and the younger boy. And me, of course. Maybe everybody wouldn’t come, but if anybody came, anybody at all, it would be a start.”

“You get a bunch of folks armed and nervous out in an open field, they might start sharing something other than their names.”

“That’s the point of everybody staying at a distance they feel safe,” Peter said. “Hell, we can shout to each other if we have to. There’s seven youngsters. At least they’d get a look at one another. We’ll make sure everybody has a chance to speak.”

“We’ll think about it,” the man said. “We talk about how to join up with others all the time. But you don’t know who you can trust. You could be gathering everybody up to get rid of them.”

“And be alone?” Peter said.

“Yes.”

“I’m alone now.”

Returning to the ridge, he settled down to watch. Spring had settled in. Time to start a garden. He’d need to hide it and guard it, wouldn’t he? A community garden would produce more for everyone.

The new family remained in town. With children involved, the parents had so much more to gain, but also to lose, if they trusted somebody else.

Two days later, Peter left his pack and his gun in the tree. He walked down to town wearing a short-sleeved shirt and jeans, unarmed for the first time since death and chaos claimed the country.

He arrived at the park early, but, to be safe and to avoid ambushes, so had everyone else. Without direction, they automatically spread out around the field. Everyone was there. Only Peter was unarmed, but that didn’t bother him. The presence of the children was a good sign.

The sky was clear, the sun bright. Two crows argued on the roof of a gazebo in the overgrown public rose garden beyond the field. Peter noticed a doe standing at the edge of the woods.

He walked to the center of the field and gestured everyone in. They came forward slowly, eyeing each other, pausing, until they formed a loose ring around him. Peter felt tension in the group but also something else.

“We don’t have trust yet,” he said, “but we’re here. We’re together. We have hope.”

My dad was a software engineer. My mom taught fourth grade. They were an easygoing pair. They laughed a lot. I rarely saw either of them get upset. They were content with our life. Not ambitious. Just content.

My brother and I didn’t give them a hard time growing up. To us, they seemed like typical grownups, typical parents, to be respected but also, in a lot of ways, to be ignored as we got on with our lives at school and with our friends. I guess you could say we loved and trusted our parents, but mostly we took them for granted.

This all changed on the morning after a nuclear device destroyed London and set off a multinational exchange of missiles that left most of the planet dead or poisoned.

The war, or whatever you’d call it – the chain reaction, maybe – only took a couple of hours in the night to end life as we knew it. I learned later that a sort of paralysis set in among most of the survivors around the world, paralysis and a fanatical craving for news, more news, the latest news about… well, about the situation we were all in.

That paralysis never affected our mom and dad. They didn’t seem to want or need to hear any more about the catastrophe. When my brother and I woke up that first morning, they sat us down and explained what had happened and what we were going to do about it. No anger or tears. They were matter-of-fact.

We had a quick breakfast and then drove down to the local supermarket. A mob was looting it.

“What do you want us to grab?” I said.

“We don’t want you to grab anything,” my dad said. “We’re all going in there and help those who need it.”

I wondered about the wisdom of this and thought to myself that I’d keep an eye out for things I could take home.

The store was in chaos. Folks from the neighborhood were grabbing anything they could get their hands on, wheeling out shopping carts loaded to overflowing. We went in. The lights were off and I heard shouts and shrieks. I saw folks sobbing as they ran around grabbing food.

An elderly couple stood in the pet-food aisle, putting cans into a basket they had brought from home. It looked too heavy for them. The man’s arms were shaking as he tried to hold it up. They were neatly dressed, unlike most in the store.

“Can I carry that basket for you?” I said.

They looked at me.

“I don’t have a dog myself,” I said.

“We would pay for this,” the woman said. “We’re not taking food for ourselves, but our Andy shouldn’t have to starve just because people can’t get along.”

I carried the basket out to their car and put it on the back seat. They thanked me, got in, and drove away.

Back inside, I saw my brother helping a man in a wheelchair. The man was pointing at something on a high shelf and Buddy was stretching up to reach it.

A young woman with a baby in her arms was using her free hand to stuff jars of baby food into a bag on the floor. It was a slow process. Tears ran down her cheeks. The baby was quiet, looking around at the clatter and racket. I felt like I was in a dream. It turned out that I was crying too. I went over to help the woman. I held her baby until she had gathered all she could carry.

Outside at her car, she tried to get hold of herself.

“I’m alone with my son,” she said, shaking her head.

“Write down your address,” I said. “I’ll tell my dad and we’ll make sure you aren’t alone.”

She lived right there in the neighborhood, a couple of blocks over from us.

By the end of the day, the store had been emptied, front and back. We went home and my mom made us a cold dinner. There was no electricity or gas and the water was off.

“Why didn’t we get food for ourselves?” my brother asked our dad.

“The food we brought home wouldn’t save us,” he said. “The neighborhood, and the town, must organize and work together. That will save us. When we finish dinner, Mom and Buddy will dig a latrine in the back yard. Tom, you and I will go out and knock on as many doors as possible this evening. We’ll introduce ourselves and ask for help down at the creek tomorrow. We need to put up some impoundment barriers, to create pools we can use as small reservoirs.”

“Are we going to dam the creek?”

“No, because the folks downstream will need its water as much as we do. We just need to create pools so we can take our share out every day more easily.

“Tomorrow, we also need to call a meeting and form a militia. We need to organize our weaponry, for hunting and protection, and put in place local laws as soon as possible.”

Buddy and I sat and stared at him. He wasn’t angry or frantic or worried. He was just as calm as ever, but serious.

“Boys,” he said. “I remember reading the autobiography of a prisoner at Andersonville. Andersonville was the worst Confederate prison during the Civil War. In his book, he explained how the men who survived imprisonment there were those who remained in good humor, who kept their heads and their hope, and who worked with each other to get along. I want you to get up each morning with the idea that you’ll work hard, but also smile at the sunshine. Things are going to seem rough for a while, but after that you’re going to inherit a new world.”

“We should start the gardens tomorrow, Honey,” my mom said to him.

Buddy and I exchanged a look. Our parents had somehow changed before our eyes into heroes, into warriors.

Rain ran down the window like water in a car wash. I was sitting at my desk in the gloom, working my way through a deck of Luckies. The door to the office opened and my brother walked in.

“What do you want?” I said.

He gave me the big phony grin.

“I’ve got a job for you,” he said.

“In a pig’s eye.”

My brother is family. He’s blood of my blood. He’s a good-looking guy with a cesspool for a brain. I promised our mother I’d look after him. I promised her I’d straighten him out. I lied.

“Beat it,” I said.

“Why are you sitting in the dark,” he said, flipping the light switch by the door.

The sudden glare made his blond hair gleam. Blond, as in phony, like the rest of him.

It was a gray afternoon. Wind gusted against the window, making the rain peck at the glass. I sucked on my cigarette, drawing the burning tip down to my fingers with a hiss. The smoke torched my throat on its way into my lungs.

“Look,” my brother said. “I know you want me around here like a tick on the lip. But you’re not doing jack. You need a payday and I’ve got one for you.”

“Whatever you’ve got, I’d rather not catch. Scram.”

“Listen. There’s a rich guy over in Greencrest, thinks his wife is cheating on him. He’ll pay good for proof. Like a bounty. Go trail her around, get a line on her lover. Collect your money. It’s a cinch. It’s what you do. Snoop. You and me, we’re on the outs. This is my present to you. To make up.”

I pulled open the bottom drawer and brought out two glasses and a bottle. Poured a slug into each glass and pushed one toward him. We knocked them back and I refilled them. He dropped a piece of notepaper on my desk.

“The guy’s address,” he said. “Stake it out and pick up the wife there. You can’t miss her. She’s the real thing.”

“I’d want to meet the husband.”

“No, it won’t work like that. Get some results first. He don’t want his wife spotting some shamus in the house. Bring him some pics. He don’t even need a name, just so long as he knows for sure she’s cheating. This guy is loaded. You’ll be well rewarded, believe me.”

“He’ll settle for a picture of the guy? That’s it?”

“So long as his wife is under the guy, yeah.”

“All right. I’ll let you know. Now get lost.”

He knew I’d do it, because of my promise to Ma. And because I was dead broke.

“Turn out the light,” I said as he opened the door to leave. He left it on.

I sat and watched God’s waterworks and waited for the hate to die down inside me. Then I got tired of waiting, so I pulled on my trench coat, slapped on my hat, and headed down to collect my heap.

The street lights were on, their yellow light captured by the streaming gutters. The sun was up there above the clouds somewhere, but nobody in this city was going to see it for a while.

I drove over the bridge to Greencrest, where the rich were so rich they didn’t bother with gates or walls. Their wealth protected them by turning the rest of us into working slobs. I parked down the curving street from the cuckold’s address. No worries about anyone bothering me with their curiosity in this storm. I killed the engine. Slit the cellophane on a new pack of Luckies with my fingernail. Tore the pack open and tapped out the first coffin nail. Settled back to smoke and watch.

I thought more about my brother than the stakeout. If he was involved, there was something queering the deal. Maybe he was just after a percentage. There had to be an angle. He hung around money and women like a pervert at the playground.

Hours passed. In my experience, cheating wives wait for the rain to let up before stepping out on their men. They don’t want their makeup smudged by anything but their fake tears. I gave it up as a bad job and drove back to the city and the dump I called home. I shucked off my suit, took off my gun, and slumped into the old easy chair in the corner to spend the evening with a bottle of my favorite relative and a fresh deck of smokes. Water rattled in the down spouts. Wind blew between the buildings, making a peculiar whistle in the holes where mortar was missing between the bricks.

Thoughts chased around my skull like rats. I paid attention for a while, looking for those worth considering. There weren’t any. Too many memories. Too many regrets. No hopes. No future. Eventually, Old Grand-Dad put them all to sleep.

The sun found me in the chair. It shone in through clouds like wet toilet paper. I ate a plate of breakfast at the greasy spoon downstairs and hit the bar across the street. Nobody had heard anything about a guy paying a bounty for dirty pictures of his wife. A morning drunk offered a couple of bucks to see them.

I drove back out to Greencrest and took up my position. I had a thermos of black coffee to keep my cigarettes company this time. It was dry enough for baseball, but I switched over to music after a couple of innings. A couple of songs and I turned off the radio. Songs didn’t fit my mood.

I was almost through a fresh pack and the afternoon was aging when a red Lamborghini pulled out of the driveway up ahead and turned my way. I could see the driver for a moment and then the car passed me with an arrogant growl and a hiss of tires on wet asphalt. A blond with a smile like a snake watching a mouse held the wheel in both hands.

Following her back to the city, I pulled up next to her once at a light. Took a second look. No man would care whether her hair was phony blond or not. She had the face of an angel, probably fallen.

She left the car with a valet at the Stratford Hotel, so I did the same. I followed her into the bar and watched her share a drink with a guy. They waltzed arm-in-arm over to an elevator and rode it up to the twenty-fifth floor. She had a body that was built to keep a guy busy long after she was ready to go take a shower. A hundred at the desk got me their room number. Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

An hour later, they emerged from the elevator looking satisfied. I got a couple of snaps as they left through the lobby.

“You’ll need more than that,” my brother told me the next day. “You got to show hubby the real deal.”

It cost me five hundred to the hotel dick to call me the next time the couple checked in. The dick escorted me up and unlocked the door. I stepped in and got a full set of snaps. The couple didn’t notice me at first, which helped. I wouldn’t have noticed me either.

If I was broke before, I was broker now. I called my brother and told him I was heading over to hubby to present my pics and the bill.

An evil-looking yellow moon hung behind ragged clouds in the east. The temperature had dropped and my cigarette was the only warm thing in the car. At the cuckold’s gate, I spoke into the squawk box.

“I’m here about the missus fooling around,” I said.

The gate swung open.

I drove up a circular drive through a forest of pine trees. I stopped in front in front of the mansion, killed the engine, and climbed the stairs to the front door. It stood ajar.

I stepped inside. The lights were dimmed everywhere but in a room on the right. An office or library. I went in, doffing my hat and sliding my coat off, one arm at a time. An old bird with white hair stood behind a large mahogany desk at the far end of the room.

“You’re here about my wife?” he said. His voice quavered, whether with rage or age, I couldn’t tell. His face turned red as we looked each other over.

“That’s right,” I said.

“You expect money?”

“You said it.”

He produced a gun and pointed it at me. Looked like a .25.

“What’s that for?” I said.

“That’s to kill you with,” the geezer said, coming out from behind the desk. “You think I’ll just pay you to go away? To get away with it?”

“Hold on, partner,” I said, but I could see that he wasn’t going to hold on. He didn’t know guns but if I let him, he might kill me in spite of himself.

I didn’t want to do it, but I pulled out my .38 and shot him in the heart. Self defense. It meant I wasn’t going to get paid. I put my gun away.

The blond wife slid into the room from a door on my right. She glanced at me and then walked over to the corpse and picked up the .25. She stepped over the body and centered the gun on my chest. No protection there but a couple layers of cotton and wool.

“Nice work,” she said.

“What is this?”

“I needed someone to kill my husband,” she said. “Thanks. Unfortunately, it appears that he killed you too.”

Her husband hadn’t known his way around the piece he pulled, but this babe did. I wasn’t going to be shooting her in that chest just behind her gun. Quite the opposite. I caught motion out of the corner of my eye.

My brother stepped into the room through the same door. He was grinning.

“Nice, huh?” he said. “She inherits it all and you get the blame for the shootout with Pops here. I told him you were the lover and you were coming over for a payoff to get out of town.”

“The guy in the hotel room?”

“Just some yegg we hired. She enjoyed him.” He nodded at the blonde, the grin now a smirk.

“You think she’ll let you stick around?” I said. “Now that you’ve served your purpose?”

The smirk stayed in place.

“Sure,” he said. “She loves me.”

Dead on a lousy winter day, shot by a lady’s gun, if not by a lady. My only consolation was a hunch that my brother would be joining me soon.

“Hi. You beat me here. Have you ordered?”

“Just coffee.”

“Miss… Another coffee, please?”

“How long will you be in town?”

“I’m just passing through. I stopped for gas. I decided to drive for a change, instead of flying. See the country and take some time to think.”

“Sure.”

“I wasn’t going to stop.”

“Looks like you changed your mind. It’s been a long time.”

“Seems like forever. Seems like yesterday.”

“You look good. Rumpled, as usual.”

“I’ve been driving, but yeah, I guess I’m still the rumpled type. You look good. Better than ever. When I came in and saw you, I…”

“Let’s not get carried away. A long time is a long time.”

“Is that a new scar in your eyebrow?”

“I got clocked by my son’s dump truck in the sandbox.”

“I heard about your marriage. Fill me in.”

“Let’s see. Got over you. Met a man. Got married. Two kids. I teach at a community college. It’s a quiet life. All of a sudden I’m halfway to forty. What about you?”

“No wife. No girlfriend at the moment. No children. Making a living with the writing. Never got over you.”

“Whoa.”

“I’m sorry. Where did that come from? No, I know where it came from. I just didn’t think I’d actually say it. Stupid.”

“You never came back. Never wrote.”

“Sorry. Pretend I didn’t say that. Forget I said that. “

“Said what?”

“Right. Thanks. After you married, I couldn’t imagine coming back… So we’re both thirty-five. How did that happen?”

“Get yourself two kids, a teaching job, and a husband who flies airplanes and you’ll find out.”

“It went by fast?”

“Fast enough. You?”

“Fast, but a grind. I never thought I’d make it to thirty. In my head I’m still in my twenties.”

“You were thirty-five at nineteen. I’ve kept up with your work. On the page, you sound like you’re in your fifties.”

“My God.”

“No, it’s a good thing. You impress the hell out of me. You always did. When I read your stories, I sense a very large spirit.”

“You know me better than that. Evelyn Waugh came across as a wonderful human being in his books. He wasn’t. I write like I write, but it’s just a style. It comes naturally. I spend my days alone in a room. If I ever had a spirit, it’s shrunk to the size of a raisin.”

“That’s not what the media says. You’re in Paris, you’re in Vientiane. You’re in Bali. You’ve got a girl on your arm.”

“I’ve seen the world, that’s for sure. I’ve done everything I ever wanted to do with travel. And then some.”

“Did it change you, seeing the world?”

“Travel changed my perspective but I don’t think it changed me.”

“And the women on your arm?”

“On the arm. Not in the heart.”

“Poetic.”

“Sorry.”

“I won’t lie. I’m almost jealous.”

“You don’t look jealous. You look…”

“What?”

“I’m trying to remember. I know this look. It always got to me. It’s a wary look. Not a happy look. By the way, did you pick this booth on purpose?”

“Of course.”

“You’ve probably been in it a time or two since I left.”

“Many times. With my two kids standing where you’re sitting, looking over into the next booth and giggling. You always said you wanted children.”

“I do want children, but I need a wife first.”

“I’m amazed you’re still single. You seemed so pro-marriage. You said you’d marry me on the spot if I’d go with you. How close have you come since then?”

“You’re as close as I’ve come, and I blew it.”

“…Yes, refill it please. Thanks.”

“There’s that look again. I’m sorry. I’ll restrain myself. It’s just that I’m sitting here having feelings I didn’t expect to have. I’d say more than I already have if I thought it would do any good.”

“So we’re getting right to it? No, it wouldn’t do any good for you to say more, but I won’t lie. You and me together, that was the best time of my life. Followed by you and me apart, which was the worst, and I’m sitting here remembering it.”

“I don’t need to remember it, because I never forgot it. If you could do it over, would you make the same choice?”

“To stay here and go to college instead of running off with you?”

“Yes. Knowing what you know now.”

“I have my children now. That changes everything. Permanently. I’d stay, because otherwise, my children wouldn’t be here, and they mean more to me than you or my husband. So no, I wouldn’t go with you. What about you? Would you still go, knowing what you know now?”

“No, of course I wouldn’t. I could have sat in a room here and written just as well as I did in New York. I didn’t understand that then, but I understand it now. I didn’t have to leave, at least not then. I could have married you and learned my craft, and your children would have been our children and I would have saved myself ten years of regret. No, of course I wouldn’t have gone.”

“You know, I said that I got over you. Most of the time I do think I’m over you, but I don’t have any romance in my life to speak of, any more than you do, if you’re telling the truth. But then, most married couples don’t. Romance is for when you first meet and feel like you’re walking on air. It doesn’t last.”

“It lasted for us, as I recall.”

“Well, it wouldn’t have lasted forever. It would have been gone by now.”

“It doesn’t feel gone. Were you walking on air when you married your husband?”

“I love my husband. Did I say that already? Well, I do. He’s a friend. I trust him. I like him. I admire him. There was never any romance there, at least on my side, but even if there had been, like I say, it would have been gone by now. My days are about my children and my students and a man who sometimes wants me to be his mother and sometimes his housekeeper, who spends his time with flight attendants while I spend mine here in town with the same friends I’ve had all my life. What I don’t spend a lot of time doing is thinking about you and me. I wasn’t going away with you and you weren’t staying here, so now I’ve got my life and you’ve got yours. Our life together, our love, that just got… cut off, I guess. It got cut off the night you walked out of here. Ten years from now, neither of us will remember or care. Ten more and we might forget to mention it to our grandkids if they happen to ask, which they won’t.”

“You’re that bitter?”

“I’m realistic.”

“You don’t sound realistic. You sound angry. Listen. Life in the future doesn’t have to be like life in the past. Just because you’re not in love now doesn’t mean you can’t be.”

“Fine. Those women on your arm? Is that your future?”

“Those women on my arm equal several years of bad dates… All I’m saying is, sometimes you can see the error of your ways and turn it around and do something different.”

“As in, I could go home and collect the children and leave with you now? Like I didn’t before?”

“No, I didn’t mean that.”

“As in, you’re staying here now, like you didn’t before?”

“Would that be so wrong?”

“I probably want it more than you do. But if you chop off your arm, you can’t change your mind later and decide to sew it back on again. It’s gone for good.”

“What kind of analogy is that?”

“A bad one. Let me think of another… You have a large patch of fertile ground. You could cultivate it, build on it, base your life on it. But no, you choose to let it lie fallow. A forest grows on it and animals come to live in the forest. Finally, years later, you change your mind. You decide that you want the fields and the home and a life based on that patch of land. To get it, you’ve got to cut down all the trees and kill all the animals and turn the place into a wasteland full of stumps.”

“Jesus. Go back to chopping off your arm, please.”

“Look, I’ve got regrets, just like you. Yes, I’m angry, at both of us, especially me. I’m bitter. But I also have a life. Maybe not the best life, but a good life.”

“I’m not angry or bitter, but I’ve got an ache that won’t go away. I’ve been stuck with it for a long time. I keep waiting for the regret to fade. It hasn’t. I thought that if I came back, if we talked, if I could look at you and sit down with you like this, it might pull me out of the past. It might help me heal.”

“Well, I’m so sorry about your healing, but something just got torn back open over here.”

“I was stupid to come. Selfish.”

“You were stupid and selfish not to come sooner. I’ve been waiting forever. I haven’t felt this alive since I supposedly got over you.

“Can I…”

“No you can’t. Don’t even think about it.”

“My God, you’re lovely… There was a moment that night when I finally made the choice to leave without you. I’d been thinking about whether I should or not, or could or not, but there was a moment that night when I finally decided. That was the moment I wounded myself, and the wound never healed. You’re right. I cut off my arm. I cut out my heart. Now I can’t separate the hurt from the memory. I love you but it doesn’t matter, because that stupid kid made that stupid decision. It’s as if a ghost or a curse won’t let me touch you again.”

“It’s not a ghost or a curse. It’s my children. It’s my life. I settled for less when you left. It didn’t cure the pain but it dulled it. Or it did until now. It gave me my family and my career.”

“I settled for less, too. I just didn’t know it.”

“It’s going to hurt like hell when you walk out that door.”

“I could stay.”

“That would hurt worse.”

“Can we do this again?”

“Sure. Give me an hour for the tears to dry. Make that a day. Make that a couple of years.”

“I’ll stop for gas on the way through.”

“Call me when you do.”

John was told by his parents, from the beginning, that he could become whatever he wanted to become. He could do whatever he made up his mind to do. As a young man, he took this seriously.

At Trinity Prep, he thought that he might like to become a professional athlete. He made the varsity teams in soccer, baseball, and basketball, but soon understood that he wasn’t good enough at any of them to play at the college level. On the other hand, his grades were excellent and he took an interest in math, science, and foreign languages.

At Harvard, John thought at first that he might like to become an astronomer. His interest waned when he learned that astronomy involved a great deal of numerical analysis and night work and, for him at least, wasn’t as romantic as it had seemed at first. In the end, he majored in English Lit.

When he graduated, he had his choice of entry-level positions at all sorts of companies. His parents were extravagantly wealthy and well-connected. Because he hadn’t yet made a commitment to any particular field of endeavor, he chose to skip the offered jobs and instead arranged to spend a year of his life seeing the world.

He was in Australia when he was notified that his mother and father had been killed in an automobile accident. His parents had sent him off to school at the age of six. They had never been close to him, or him to them. He was sorry that he had lost them, but no more than sorry.

He returned home, where his financial advisers assured him that he would be earning more every year, in interest and investments, than he was likely to spend. With the legal work complete and the estate in order, he returned to his tour.

He felt the weight of his fortune as he traveled. He saw in the world so many places where he could apply his wealth for good. When he returned to the U.S., he set up a foundation in his parents’ name and endowed it with more than half his capital.

The foundation funded all sorts of projects around the world, addressing issues of hunger, health, the environment, regional tensions, and pure science. John participated in the grants process, but found himself wanting something more as a focus in his life. He wanted to accomplish more than distributing money to the world.

Restless on a spring day, he found himself interviewing a young woman who had submitted a small proposal for the support of an initial round of trial excavations at an archeological site in central Africa.

“You’re looking for hominids?” he asked the young woman, Gili, studying her executive summary and area maps.

“The site’s potential is amazing,” she said. “Off the charts. But hard to reach.”

She pointed to an area northwest of the border between the Central African Republic and Congo.

“Rolling savanna. Nothing in any direction but a few native villages. One of the poorest areas in the world. With the tsetse fly, also one of the most dangerous. Of course, we’ll be taking precautions.”

“What’s so special about this site?”

“Over the past several million years, a large lake grew and shrank there,” she said, drawing an outline on one of the maps with her finger. “Periodic eruptions lay down layers of tuff over the sediments on the shores. In addition, alluvial fans off the flanks of the volcanoes covered the area. We have an organized record of animal and vegetable fossils just waiting for excavation. These strata cover the period of time from the earliest known hominids to today.”

“How do you know what’s beneath the surface?” John said. “How did you find this area in the first place?”

“I’ve been working with two South African paleogeologists who spotted the site while out doing mineral surveys. Pure chance. There is some Pleistocene faulting in the site area. The men found two hundred and fifty feet of strata exposed in a cliff. The edges of the fossil beds are magnificent. We’ve identified a sequence of terrigenous clays, sands, silts, and limestones – a Pliocene layer of wetland. We’ve got datable rocks. We can map the rest of the shoreline using cores and trenches and build a model of the area as it changed over three million years.”

“Why my foundation?” John said. “I’d expect the principal institutions in archeology would be falling all over themselves to fund this.”

Gili colored.

“They would,” she said, “and they and their preferred scientists would take control of the enterprise in a heartbeat. I’m in the position of a Donald Johnson at the moment, before he found Lucy. I don’t care about the fame, but a major find at a site like this would set me up for a lifetime of study in my field. I want to make a start out there before any of the big boys come in.”

John sat back.

“Do you know the Mirny diamond mine?” he said.

Gili shook her head.

“It’s in Siberia. It’s a giant hole in the ground. Three-quarters of a mile across. A third of a mile deep. I remember standing and looking down into it. I asked my guides if any fossils had been taken out of it. They couldn’t tell me. I remember thinking at the time that I’d like to dig a hole like that, not to find diamonds but to find everything from the past that it contained.”

Gili laughed.

“We won’t be digging anything quite that big,” she said. “We’re more likely to be crouched down uncovering a bone here and there from the surrounding breccia, using a dental pick and an airscribe.”

“I’ll OK the grant,” John said, “providing that I get to come along with it.”

“You can visit any time.”

“I don’t want to visit. I want to work. Consider me an intern, starting at the bottom. Will that be a problem?”

“If you’re truly at the bottom, no,” Gili said. “But if, because of your money…”

“We’ll write an agreement into the grant,” John said. “The entire amount goes into an escrow account, from which you’ll withdraw what you need, when you need it. If at any time I become a problem onsite, you’ll have the power to send me home. If you think you can handle it, I’d also like to increase the amount of the grant. We might not dig a Mirny hole, but I want you to do as much as you can without breaking the project.”

He wanted badly to invite her to dinner when they were finished, but knew that she’d feel she had to say yes, which might spoil the present feelings of good will and the evening. He went home and made dinner for himself alone. He didn’t see Gili again until they were both in camp on the savanna in Africa.

When he arrived, John joined workers from the villages who had little or no experience at a dig. A mixture of tribes were represented: Bagunda, Akasele, Dakpwa, Aouaka, and others. Sango was the language of the camp. John began picking it up immediately.

He worked and learned along with the rest, using a shovel and jackhammer and wheelbarrow, removing the modern strata, making the site ready for sieves and fossil discovery. He remained completely apart from Gili and her staff. He had had an airstrip built for them in advance, and invited them to use it as necessary, along with the two cargo planes that he stationed there.

With the task of clearing the top layers away, down to the first horizon of interest, work began on the actual excavation and evaluation of the most recent of two and a half million years of depositional history.

At night, John studied textbooks and journal articles on paleontology, the Permian era, excavation techniques, and related topics. He listened in on the staff conversations in camp, which often lasted past midnight. Gili made occasional requests for special funding, for resources to expedite their work. John never refused her.

As word of the dig spread throughout the academic community worldwide, the site began to receive visitors. John made a third, smaller plane available, for traffic in and out of Bangui, Mbandaka, and Goma.

One day, he noticed that there were fewer workers in the grid than usual. By this time, he was speaking Sango well. It was a creole language, not so hard to pick up. John asked his coworkers why so many of the workers were missing that day.

“Fever in the villages,” he was told.

“Do you have doctors?”

“No doctors.”

That night on the camp satellite phone, he arranged for doctors to be flown in and for clinics to be built in the region, sufficiently endowed to ensure their future survival.

As he learned the art of excavation, he began to spend more time with Gili and her staff during the day, as a student and eventually as a friend. His support of their work never wavered. The project was bounded by the seasons and whenever he could help speed things up by granting extra funds, he did so. The camp kept its collective eye on the calendar.

The ground began yielding signs of large mammal butchery, the manufacture of stone artifacts, and other archaeological debris. The camp was electrified when the first bones of genus Homo were found.

John was as content as he had ever been. He did not want the dig to end, but it finally became impossible to ignore the approach of the rainy season. Clouds built in the afternoon sky, at first on the far horizon and then, daily, closer to camp. The cloud formations were immense, literally mountains in the sky, fifty shades of white and gray, impossibly complicated. As they came closer, John could see lightening glowing within them. Sudden bolts reached to the earth. Wind sheared the floor of the clouds flat. A gray light like dusk shadowed the land beneath them, as curtains of rain hung down.

Soon, Gili and her staff struck camp, sent the workers back to their villages, and left the site and Africa.

Two seasons later, and two million years deeper in the dig, John heard a cry of delight that, he knew, signaled a significant find. He stood up with the workers around him. They crossed the grid strings and gathered around a kneeling man. John could just make out, exposed in the matrix that held it, the curve of a skull. It was the find that would write him and Gili and the man who found the bone into the history books, and define for the three of them the course they would follow for the rest of their lives.

Welcome, Reader.

Prepared to do a little work? Don’t worry, it will feel just like reading a story, not writing one.

You probably think that I’m writing this, which you are reading. Well, I am, but not for long. Let me explain.

I have decoded the deep ur-language of the human brain. What does this mean? It means that if I speak certain syllables to you, or to any other human being on the planet, you or he or she will understand me in a basic, pre-cognitive, meta-existential way. Similarly, if I present certain symbols to you digitally, as I will do in a second, they will be transferred to the ur-center of your cerebrum via optic nerve, just as vocalizations would be sent there via your ears.

As an example:

Dog

You probably read [[dog]], but actually, I wrote the ur-symbols for “think of an animal” there. Look back. Still looks like [[dog]], right? You can’t see the command, only your brain’s response to it. Why you chose that particular animal, I couldn’t say. In tests, “dog” and “cat” seem to be the most popular choices, but if you chose “mole rat,” for example, don’t be concerned. Humans are wonderfully various.

So, ready to begin? I’m going to present you with the symbols for “write a story” and write a story you will, as long as you keep “reading.” Here we go.

Once upon a time, there was a family: father, mother, son, daughter. They all got along wonderfully. (Oh, wait. There has to be conflict.)

Once upon a time, there was a family: father, mother, son, daughter, all in conflict. (Nuts, “show, don’t tell.”)

Once upon a time, there was a family: father, mother, son, daughter. The father and mother were divorced, although still in love. (Nice touch!)

“Dad, why don’t you live at home anymore?” asked eight-year-old Sally… asked five-year-old Sally. (Write what you know! Annie is only five. What do I know about eight-year-olds?) (Good work cranking up the dialog!)

“Sally,” her dad said, “Daddy is very sick and he isn’t going to get better. Daddy thinks it is best if he declines and passes away in a cheap motel room, rather than at home, so you don’t have to watch it happen.”

“What does decline mean, Daddy?” (Props for getting a serious disease in there.)

Roger (the daddy) and Mary (the mommy) meet for drinks at their favorite bar and Mary, wearing a tight sweater and short short skirt, arches her back and crosses her long legs on her bar stool, thrusting out her large

OK. Let’s take a break. How is your story going? I forgot to mention, try not to think while you’re “reading.” Your thoughts will show up in your story in parentheses. Don’t hold back. Nobody is going to read this story but you! Everyone reading my “story” here is writing their own, just like you. Perhaps the subject matter you choose will give you a little insight into your inner psyche.

Let’s continue:

(Hmm. Where was I? Why am I even doing this? Is it almost over?) Daddy wasn’t all that sick. I mean, he’s going to get a lot sicker and have a death scene with Mommy and the kids, but at this point, he and Mommy are getting loaded at the bar, which looks just like The Saddle Rack, but without the hookers.

(Nobody else is going to read this, but maybe I better rein it in a little, just in case.)

Roger Junior is a Junior in high school. He had met Mark, a Senior, and has feelings for him, but Roger Junior is well aware that his dad, Roger Senior, does not like homosexuals. Roger Junior is ashamed of his feelings. No he isn’t, dammit.

“It’s a new age,” Mark tells him. “Acknowledge your feelings.”

“I could get AIDS.”

“That might not be so bad, as far as the plot goes,” Mark says.

“What?”

“I’m sorry,” Mark says. “When is that guy going to come back? I’d like to take a break.”

Both Robert Senior and Robert Junior begin to feel trapped at this point. They begin to sweat a little. Like in a dream when you want to wake up but can’t.

Back in the bar, Annie, or was it Mary, preened. Roger Senior didn’t respond. In fact, he was eying the bartender, Brad. No, I mean, a woman named Cherry, who was working the bar that night.

(This isn’t going anywhere. What a miserable life this family has. Who wants to be a writer? You take you best shot and then you get the comments. Oh, I liked it but it went on a little too long. It needed to go on a little longer. It changed tone. I liked it at the start but the ending was too whatever. Better to just post on a blog and get fifty comments saying how clever you are.)

dum de dum…

OK, folks, let’s take another break. It’s starting to get a little quiet out there. Remember, this is supposed to be fun, not work. But no daydreaming. Daydreams do not advance the plot; they just keep cycling around the same scenes.

Now go for it! Wrap it up.

(Jeez, I usually skim these things. I’ve never actually read every word of one. Give it a quick look and vote, that’s what I say. This is torture of the damned, even if these are my own words. Get it over with. You’re only a couple words from the minimum. But don’t trust that word counter on the editor. It’ll give you a bad count and if you don’t recheck, your story can get jerked right out of the voting.)

Roger took a turn for the worse and died.

“Son,” he said at the end, “follow your heart. Trust your instincts. Be true to yourself. I’ve always known that you were, you know, the way you are… Annie, or Mary, or Sally, I love you and I’m sorry I wasn’t a better husband and next time I’ll pick names I can remember. We’ll meet again in heaven. And say goodbye to that little eight-year-old, too. (Boy, my memory…)

The End.

OK, very good. Thank you. If you’re allowed to vote on this site, do so now. You did your best, so be kind and give yourself a nice high grade.

Journal Entry #1

I am beginning this journal in order to capture and preserve my thoughts, my questions, and, most importantly, my doubts. I would rather talk to someone else about these matters, but I am alone. Therefore, I must talk to myself.

I’ve spent years searching for the truth. Years of meditation, of planning, of preparation. Years of anxiety and fear. Or has it only been days? Or hours?

What did I do yesterday? I can’t remember. Where did I go? When did I last leave this room? These are the questions that plague me.

I have prepared a final drug. I have developed it and I have tested it on myself in small doses. It does indeed “open the windows of the mind.”

Where did this drug come from? It appeared for a while, and then disappeared, to be replaced by an apparatus. The apparatus disappeared, to be replaced by an unexplained mental ability. But now the drug is back. I don’t know how I developed it, but I know that I did.

Tonight, I administer a full dose to myself. I am beginning this journal to record the results of that injection.

Now, all is ready and… I inject the drug…

Yes… It is working… I experience reality… I see… I see a sort of window in the wall across from me, no, in the air in front of the wall, a sort of window or opening or portal or hole, covered by a membrane that… is thinning… thins… thins to a film… thins to a sheer…

What…? An interruption. The portal disappears.

What was I doing? Why was I doing it? I must reread my notes. Thank God I began this journal. Somehow I have the impression that I just took a break for lunch, but that makes no sense.

Journal Entry #2

I return to this journal to record my second attempt with the new drug.

I wrap the ligature around my bicep. Tighten it. Make a fist. The veins stand out on my forearm. I slip the needle in. A little blood is sucked into the syringe. Now, I pump the concoction into the vein. Slowly. I sit back. A wave of dizziness, which clears.

Yes. There it is. The thinning in the air before me.

The opacity dissipates. My God, now I seem him! I see the author. It is as I feared. I knew this all along.

He sits at his keyboard. Tapping the keys. Tap tap tap. Yes, he is typing “tap,” “tap,” “tap.” And again, “tap,” “tap,” “tap.” And agai…

LOOK AT ME!

He looks up at my cry. But he cannot see me or hear me. He typed those capital letters. His gaze roves back and forth over the screen in front of him. Passes over me without pausing. He knows that I am here. I see him but he cannot see me.

YOU FOOL!

He smiles. He typed that. Smug idiot. He can imagine me, invent me, describe me, use me like a puppet, but this fat, bald, lazy misanthrope can’t see me.

He stands up. Leaves. He has written enough for now. The film thickens, turns gray. The drug wears off. The window disappears.

Journal Entry #3

I have been depressed for several days, or weeks, or months. My discovery has left me hopeless. My worst fears confirmed.

To be unreal? But I am real. I must try again. I must communicate with my author, my creator. I must try to… to… escape…

I have the drug… I inject it… My consciousness expands. Once again the change occurs in front of me. Once again the air thickens, clouds, then thins and clears and I see… beyond.

The author is gone! I am staring out at… a reader. A reader with one hand on a mouse. There will be no tap tap tap here, only scrolling. I can… feel this person reading me, reading my story. The author has moved on. He’s far away. The shock absorbs my drug like a sponge. The window grays over and is gone.

Journal: Entry #4

I have no memories. That moron gave me nothing to remember. I have no past.

He gave me no friends or family. He didn’t even give me a pet. Or a name. Or a description. That reader couldn’t know what I look like. How old I am. The damned author didn’t even give me a mirror. How long have I been unhappy? He never said. Perhaps he wrote this story in fifteen minutes. Perhaps he began it a decade ago. Who knows?

When you’re a character in a story that only runs a thousand words, you’re nothing.

I don’t eat, I don’t slee… Wait a minute. What is eating anyway? I have got to get out of here.

Journal Entry #5

This will be my final entry. Some journal. I have my drug. I’ve enhanced it. It’s extreme now, probably dangerous. No matter. Kill me or cure me. No middle ground.

I’ve been read a couple of times. Don’t these people have anything better to do? Get a life! Perhaps I’ve been revisited by the author. It is not gratifying to feel those eyes looking in. It is a kind of rape. I have my syringe ready. The next reader… There is bound to be at least one more… I’ve been waiting a long time. Whatever time is. Waiting…

Aha. A reader.

YOU.

YES, YOU.

Can’t see me, can you, looking out at you? Think I’m just words on the screen? You’re in for a surprise. As soon as you move on, I’m coming out.

YES, I”M TALKING TO YOU! QUIT READING THIS! AM-SCRAY!

Once I get out, I’m not coming back. I’m armed. I’m dangerous. From now on, I’ll do the reading.