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Heartslices: feel something stories

Waves in Heaven

“Daddy?” “Yes, little one.” “Where do waves go?” Sadie asked, looking out at the waves crashing on the beach. “Well, they just finish on the beach I guess?” I replied. Sadie turned and looked my way. “Well, I think they go to heaven,” she said. Mommy always told me to look for the good in everything. (Cruel irony) So waves are good, and they go to heaven.”

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“What about the bad one that knocked us over yesterday?”
Sadie thought for a second. “No, it made us laugh. It goes to heaven too.”“Won’t heaven fill up with waves pretty quick?” I asked, enjoying the moment.

“Yes, but then it rains, and the waves start over.” She jumped up and started playing in the sand with Rufus, her trusty companion.

Sadie is nine and blind. She has been so for a year. Twelve months ago, to this day, her mother, my beautiful pregnant wife, and our two young sons perished.

Helen had called me from the doctor’s office. She confirmed that the baby was healthy and a girl. She couldn’t wait to tell Sadie, who had been pleading for a sister to help stop her brothers from ganging up on her.

Helen picked up the boys from school and would normally walk the mile home, but she was feeling a little tired and caught a cab. The driver swerved to miss a bicyclist, who had run a red light and crashed into a car. The cab then exploded in a ball of flame. Everyone inside was incinerated.

Someone had videoed the explosion, and Sadie watched it on the computer over and over again. I turned it off. The next morning she woke up blind. Yes, many doctors saw her. Physically, her eyes are normal. It is mental. A form of protection against ever seeing that again and feeling the pain. She could wake up one day and see, or not, and just get used to having its protection. For a time, each day, I’d look to see if she could see again, but after a while I just accepted it, I guess.

Helen’s brother, a lawyer, went after a long list of defendants, from the cab company, who were experimenting with cooking oil in their cabs, to the city, the bicycle rider and so on. The settlements will keep Sadie protected her entire life. And Rufus her trained blind dog companion is always by her side.

“I think I want to be a Sea Captain when I grow up. I like the water. It is always moving.” She said.

“I see it now Captain Sadie and First Mate Rufus sailing the high seas.” “Don’t laugh,” she says, “you might be surprised.” She comes over cuddles me. “Mommy says that a cuddle always brings a smile.” I was smiling. A perfect moment. Sadie, Rufus and me listening to the waves go to heaven.

1:29a

1:29. 1:29. I hate this time. The clock hand just doesn’t move. They won’t let us have a digital clock, but I can still see my old battery clock and it just doesn’t move. Oh, I had a few hours restless sleep but now I am mostly awake and stuck.

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I know somewhere, someone just like me is awake, wandering downstairs to their kitchen, brewing a nice warm cup of something to soothe them while looking out at the night stars, then ambling back to blissful sleep.

I cannot go anywhere. I must just lie here until 6, when they give us ten minutes to clean up and get to the ‘slop line’ for a plate of egg-like food and such.

Oh good, now 1:30. Small victory. You take what you can in prison. Ten done and ten to go. Triple manslaughter. Johnny and I were probably the worst Bonnie & Clyde’s in history. We tried to rob the gas station. No one was supposed to be there. Johnny was tampering with the cash drawer. He gave me the shotgun to hold. It was his grandpa’s squirrel gun, held together with a camo design, duct tape, and cut down barrels. I never fired it. Not sure Johnny had either. We were badass, anyway. The owner’s wife appeared behind Johnny with a hammer, raised about to strike him. I pulled the trigger. It exploded a huge mass of buckshot. It blew away the woman, Johnny, and her unborn child.

1:31 still? I guess some part of you can get used to almost anything. Jail sucks big. At first, it is all fear. You’re scared of everything. What will happen to you? Will they forget you? About someone hurting you and, they will, and raping you, which they do. You show it, reek of it, but then you take it inside, and there it sits just below your skin. It never leaves you. You manage it there for a while, and then all that fear turns into dire anger.

1:31. 1:32. Everyone has a limit, and ‘fear’ anger kills. I warned Bruno, the guard, not to fuck with me. He had caught me in the storage closet, brutally raped and hurt me. Not the first one. In fact, I hate to admit it, but fat Gerry, who got me first after I had been in a year, was in a tiny way OK. Hey, I was just 19, and the only other sex I had had was with Johnny. He looked a bit like Johnny. But this jerk Bruno was just outright evil. He cornered me. I moved sideways, snapped a broom handle, and shoved the jagged end as hard as I could in his belly. It went in deep. He fell. Blood everywhere. I got away. Thought I was going down for life, but nothing was said. Everyone knew. Jail justice, I guess.

1:33. Sure, I have plans. I love carpentry. Something about wood calms me. My dad was a cabinet maker. When I was little, he used to make me feel different woods with my eyes closed. I liked that. It all changed when my mom died. He started drinking. Well, you know the rest. No work. Trailer park. Drugs. My sister and I were on the streets. Johnny and I are making big plans. Boom.

1:34. Snoring and coughing are bad tonight. Someone turned the heat way up again. The newbie two bunks over is sobbing, and I need to go potty…but I won’t. That’s when they get you. Another endless night in the day of my hell.

Help

This isn’t working. We need help. Well, Ms. Janis, what is troubling you? It’s my son. We must help him. Ms. Janis, we have talked every two weeks for 15 years. I believe that you do not have a son or any children, for that matter.

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That’s what you think, but that’s not the point. We are at a time in history when the younger generations are facing unprecedented peril. Our life is under attack. Nature is disappearing. Our globe is overheating. Crazy, scary people want to kill as many of us as they can. Economies all over the world are failing. It’s not about us. It’s about the young and helping them build their lives for their children.

OK, so you’re referring to ‘your son’ euphemistically.

Dr. Jha, time is running out. We must do something. The young cannot perish.

Ms. Janis, what do you suggest we do?

I have no idea that is why I am asking you.

What if we do absolutely nothing? Let life take its natural course, so to speak. There are many who believe that all the cycles of nature and wars just repeat themselves … just come and go, as they will, and, in reality, there is not a whole lot we can do about it. We’ve survived it all before.

No! No! No! Dr. don’t throw that ‘things-will-be-ok’ gunk at me. We have almost seven billion people on earth today with half barely making $2 a day salary. We will have nine billion, in the next decade or so, with most of the new ones, born into poverty and illiteracy. These are different times Dr.

Ms. Janis, what will you do if you cannot help your son?

That’s not acceptable. I have way too much anxiety. I will blow up.

Anxiety is a big word. Might I suggest, Ms. Janis that you have ‘anguish’? An acute anguish built on fear of the news and the unknown. A fear that is driving you to act. To act out of the collision of desperation and worthlessness. All of which can be managed.

You mean controlled, don’t you, Doc? You’d like me to drop this rifle. Just give in, go quietly, and eat a handful of your fancy mood-killing drugs. I know the swat team is barreling up the stairs and taking count of all the bodies left in my wake.

You won’t help, Doc. You must go too. No, I must keep shooting people until we find someone that can save us. Boom.

Headsnacks: think something stories

Time

“What defines time?” another silly question from Professor Gupta. The small group of budding engineers sat mum, uncomfortable, under the huge oak tree that demarks the corner of Bachman College’s esteemed quadrangle. “Units of time like minutes or seconds,” answered Willy, eager to enter the fray. “No,” confirms Gupta. “That measures time but does not define it.”

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Drone Wars

For the record, I am General Ray, the chair of this status briefing to the Joint Chiefs on Project Sky Eye. Let me remind every one of the top-secret classification of this project. Nothing, and I mean nothing leaves this room.

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Jim Boog, project lead, will update us. Before he starts, I’d like to publicly acknowledge Mr. Boog. He and his people have brought us into this new age of drones and kept us a step ahead of the technology and our enemies. I should also say that Mr. Boog is a true patriot. He lost his son to an enemy drone in Ramadi last year. Again, our condolences. Please proceed, Mr. Boog.

Thank you. Generals please look up at the screen and wave. You are right now being videoed by a drone. As I move my hand in your direction you’ll see yourself on the screen. Wave. Yes? Crystal clear and live. How do you ask?

I have deployed a drone in the room about the size of a quarter coin. Using new mirror technologies we have been able to render it almost invisible to the human eye. The best you’ll see is a tiny smudge. We call it Caspar, as in the Ghost.

Now, if you watch the screen, I will switch to a video. We launched Caspar in the drone control rooms in Reno. As you well know, almost all the US drones in the world are controlled from Reno via satellite. You see on video Caspar freely moving about the consoles completely undetected. Here it is hovering over a controller’s keyboard and recording his login protocol. Our new software then logs us into the computer. Now, we can control all the drones at will. We didn’t do it, obviously, but with this info, it would take us maybe three minutes to locate and position an armed drone at the entrance to the White House or Pentagon.

It’s easy to move Caspar anywhere in the world. For example, in a matter of days, an operator sitting in a car outside the Iranian Nuclear facilities could fly the drone through any level of hard security right into their control rooms. In fact, you all now have the perfect spy. There is not a room in the world that you cannot have a live viewership of and totally undetected. And if one Caspar should fail well, we have his brother along for the ride. As you can see on the screen, I am operating a second drone with my left hand. Caspar can be remotely controlled or by hand as I am doing via tiny chips in my palms.

Well, Mr. Boog, this can change the war fair forever. I am sure we all have many questions, but before we get all excited, let me ask you the money question. The President has set aside a trillion dollars for tech defense. What is this costing?

Not a penny. Actually, Caspar does not exist. We just dummied all this up. War is invisible today. You don’t see terrorists or drones until it is too late. And we are willing to believe just about anything is possible. So imagine for a second if everyone outside this room did believe that we had a Caspar and that, at any time we could see and hear whatever we wanted to. In an invisible world, the mind is The weapon. As long as our enemies believed that we had this then we may never have to fight another war. Or lose another son. All it takes is some well-placed miss-information, absolute confidentiality and the invisible world is ours.

Borders

“Digger?” “Yes, Gazza.”
“How long have we been doing this? Fifteen years? Every year after the wet season we trek out here on the Nullabor and spend three months mending this barbed wire fence. I know we only work a three hundred mile section but have you ever wanted to just once travel along the entire fence?

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