John Swinburn

From time to time, I scroll through old posts on this and other blogs I’ve written. That experience can be like igniting memories from cold embers that couldn’t sustain the heat of recollection without help from an accelerant.

This morning, I read a short “ruminations” post, from earlier this year, that spoke of carrying broken branches to the edge of a cliff to throw them off, but finding myself unable to do it because they looked like frightened children who had been separated from their parents. Instead, I wrote, I left them at the edge of the cliff, “hoping the wind would do what I could not.”

I remember my emotions when I wrote that—what I saw in my mind’s eye. I can still recall, quite vividly, what was going through my mind when I wrote it. The post was a metaphor for an emotion saturated with rage had I written it without that device. It was cold, dark anger I could hide only through metaphor. No one who reads the piece could know what prompted those words, but when I read them this morning, it was like reliving what I felt that day. That happens quite a lot with me. Words I write may (or may not) seem simple and straightforward to someone else reading them; they may adequately describe a scene or a person’s face or hands or stance, but they say much more to me than to another person reading them.

One day, I suspect the memories from whence certain of my writings spring will dim and ultimately may be extinguished entirely. For that reason, I plan to write my own author’s notes from time to time to explain the triggers for pieces that are, to me, highly emotional but, for others, probably are not (or which are simply confusing). I’ve created a folder in my “Writing” directory as a start. Today, I’ll write about the trigger for that post.

[I think this will be my last “normal” post for awhile. I will keep my daily Ruminations going, as failing to do that would ruin the sequence. Beyond that, I’ll keep to myself for a bit. I appreciate you regular visitors, especially those who comment, either here or via email. I truly value your comments and encouragement; you define goodness. ]

The view through the windows of the speeding train mesmerized Jacob Klezmer. A massive wind farm rose on the right side of the train from thousands of acres of mottled green pasture land. Hundreds of black and white cows grazed beneath the huge grey towers, their propellers seeming to move in slow motion. Only a few cows raised their heads to glance at the train; the remainder seemed oblivious to the red and silver snake slithering along the rails at one hundred-twenty kilometers per hour.

Klezmer had spent quadruple the cost of a guaranteed seat to give himself a rare treat: a private, sound-proof viewing pod near the front of the train. He had almost the entire car to himself. Even guaranteed seating passes were expensive, so most people simply paid the base fare and fought for a standing-room-only spot near a window, hoping for an occasional breeze.

The remainder of the train was at capacity, but Jacob was among a half-dozen passengers in the first-class viewing car, only two of whom sat together in a viewing pod. Other passengers in premium seating, like him, sat in self-imposed isolation, pearls inside oysters, sliding safely through the guts of a reptile.

The passenger communication panel, complimentary in first-class accommodations, buzzed, signaling that it was operational and ready for passenger use. Klezmer punched in numbers and listened for the device to connect. Almost immediately, he heard a recording. “We’re sorry, but the person you are trying to reach is either dead or dying. If you believe you have received this recording in error, disengage and establish a new connection.”

He sat staring at the communication panel display, stunned at what he had just heard. Three more tries; three more times, the same message replayed.

Erika Clossmun couldn’t possibly have been targeted for culling, he thought. She was healthy, intelligent, and absolutely obedient to Central.

Central’s recent practice of culling, as far as Klezmer knew,  had focused on less productive members. Old people, people with resource-depleting illness, and skeptics who questioned the authority, or legitimacy, of Central’s actions commonly disappeared with only a sterile announcement in the daily Central Communique: “We announce the culling of Margaret Lamb, 89, of Elder Block 88 in New Boston. Her departure enables a new delegate to be released from the Tissue Bank and, for that, we are eternally grateful to Margaret Lamb for her donation to Central Management.”

But while it might be appropriate for eighty-nine-year-old Margaret Lamb, whose body was failing, to be culled, Klezmer thought, culling a thirty-one-year-old woman was different. Erika ran marathons, toed the Central line, and had publicly expressed hopes for the future.  Klezmer’s eyes brimmed with tears. Erika had been his friend, his lover, and his teacher. Central frowned on emotions, especially tears, but at that moment he did not care.  Anger welled inside him in a way that at once gave him confidence that he could challenge Central and paralyzed him with fear that Central might know of his allegiance to Erika.

The surveillance cameras in viewing pods, outfitted with retinal scanners, were infallible in their ability to detect and categorize passenger emotions. The one in Klezmer’s pod had already identified his anger; the moment Klezmer had dialed Erika’s number, the camera zoomed in on his eyes, feeding data to Central’s massive Langley data center, triggering a monitoring alarm at Bianca Carmello’s workstation.

Carmello clicked on the image of Klezmer sitting in his viewing pod; a pop-up window with Klezmer’s details appeared on her monitor. Thirty-eight years old; skepticism coefficient: 7.9 (subject to reclassification); productivity coefficient: 8.34; personal relationship status: four failed relationships, one potential positive relationship terminated by Central; assigned analyst: Bianca Carmello; decision-point: cull or attempt recovery.

Damn, Carmello thought, this looks so straightforward; I wonder if I’m being assessed. She hesitated for just a moment longer than acceptable performance standards called for before clicking on ‘attempt recovery.’  A monitoring alarm buzzed at the Park City, Utah workstation assigned to Shalifondra Gomez. Gomez clicked on an image of Bianca Carmello staring at her monitor in a cubicle two thousand miles away.

Vignette One

One square yard of dark tinted screen. Three feet by three feet. Was it aluminum fabric? Some sort of cloth? I couldn’t tell. It was screen affixed to a square steel frame, forming a horizontal platform perpendicular to the vertical exterior of a window. I was standing on that square yard, perched on the side of a building, nothing beneath my feet but a thin screen and one hundred and six stories of air.

The harness around my waist and chest, attached to a twenty-foot length of rope, would protect me in the unlikely event the screen broke under my weight or the platform separated from the building. But, still, I’d fall twenty feet and would, no doubt, smash into the windows on the one hundred fourth and one hundred fifth floors. And I was only being paid $800 to do this, to demonstrate the magic of this new super-strength screen.

Vignette Two

“Please, Kim, don’t put the tape over the stitches.” Sam watched as she covered the wound, and the eight stitches that closed it, with a double-folded gauze pad.

“Kim! You’re getting too close to the stitches with that tape!”

His paramour, almost twenty years his junior, stopped for a moment, and then stepped away from him.

“Okay, maybe you should do it yourself. Obviously you want an adult to look after you.” She emphasized “adult” and cast a withering stare in his direction.

“Lover, I’m sorry. Your geezer boyfriend is just a wimp!” His lips curved up at the ends, exposing his perfect white teeth.

She couldn’t resist his smile. She grinned broadly.

“You are a piece of work, grandpa! I don’t know how I got tangled up with an old cry-baby!”

Kim leaned in toward Sam and took his face between her two palms, pulling his lips to hers, and kissing him deeply for a full thirty seconds.

A tiny drop of blood seeped from the edge of the half-dressed bandage. Then another one, larger than the first. And another. And more. Just a few more seconds and the blood soaked the bandage. Kim felt something on her stomach. She looked down to see a large red spot on her light blue t-shirt, then noticed the stream of blood spiraling the leg of the stool on which Sam was sitting.

Vignette Three

When Connie awoke, she knew instantly that something was different, but she didn’t know what. The air felt odd, she thought, like it was tinged with cold steel, though that thought, itself, seemed oddly misplaced and implausible.

Duarf, normally aloof and distant until Connie pierced a can of cat food with the manual opener, clung to her shoulders beneath the covers.

“Duarf, sorry to disturb you, but I’ve gotta get up.”

Connie swung her legs over the side of the bed and slid her feet into a pair of leopard-print slippers, pulling Duarf away from her neck with a gentle tug. The cat  refused to leave quietly; his claws clung a little tighter.

“Okay, you little beast, I don’t know why you’re suddenly so cuddly, but I’ll take a little extra loving whenever I can get it.”

The cat’s unusual affection complicated, but did not derail, the process of Connie pulling on her robe. Still feeling that something, aside from the cat, was different, she shuffled to the bedroom door.

The moment she opened the door into the living room, she saw it. Outside the bank of windows on the east side of the house, the color of the cloudless sky was unlike anything she had never seen before; it was a shrill green, the color of a ripe lime.

Overcome by a mix of confusion and fear, the startling ring of the telephone amplified Connie’s shock.

“Hello?”

“Connie, have you looked outside?” Glenda Cove’s voice conveyed urgency.

“I just got up.  It’s bizarre. What is it?”

“They’re not sure. Turn on the TV. It’s like this everywhere. Nobody can explain it. It started in Europe about six hours ago. All the sudden, right in the middle of the day, it changed, like somebody flipped a switch. And, here, it was like this when the sun came up.”

As Glenda spoke, Connie clicked on the remote. The news anchor, looking earnest and official, said, “Here’s the President’s announcement, just moments ago on the White House lawn.” The scene switched to President Echo Ward, standing behind a lectern, speaking to a mob of reporters.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I am just as surprised, just as curious as anyone. As of this very moment, I have no idea what is causing this odd and troubling shift in the spectrum of colors we see in the sky. But know this: as far as we know, it is simply a change of color. Nothing suggests we need to be concerned about anything. I hope you will, like me, go about your regular activities today without speculating or spreading rumors. I will rely on atmospheric scientists to determine what is causing this and what, if anything, it means.”

Duarf, who had been circling around and between Connie’s feet, stiffened.  A low, guttural growl escaped his half-opened mouth.  The green sky seemed to dissolve into purple. Connie heard Glenda breathe in deeply, then “oh my god” before the phone went dead.