How Earth Wants It

Someone was burning down all the tepees.

Extra men were sent on watch every Night, but even under their sleepless Owl eyes a new tepee burned each Night.

The Horizon was searched; on the Plains you could see further than the Sun, given you were in the right position, but no one was seen near the tribe. No one approached from any direction.

The elders met often, but no answers came. At the end of the Solstice, still with a new tepee lost each night and new ones going up each day, one of the elders prepared for a journey. A set of Women went off and gathered Supplies for him.

He ate, and let the Earth consume him.

Fire rose around him, in splinters, and the village crumbled amongst them. The Smoke, red with the Blood of the tribe, came back to Earth and flowed into him.

He fell back as it smothered him, and in falling he was swept down into the Soil, not through a fissure in the Ground, but through the Soil itself, as if he were a part of it.

He tumbled down, deeper into the Earth. The Soil was all he knew, and he breathed in the Mud, and it flowed through him like black Blood, becoming molten.

He was Granite.

A River swept him away and brought him to the Face of a giant. The Face was the Face of everyone from the tribe, those alive and the future and past.

It opened its Eyes and smiled. They had been friends forever and knew each other by more than name.

The Face was the Earth and he said, "You are burning our huts."

The Face answered. He asked why.

He woke to Sweat and humming. The incantations did not wake him; they soothed him. He felt burnt, his Skin pink and raised, his charred Insides black and crumbling.

The People around him opened their Eyes and left him with the elders. They dampened their candles so only the one in front of him was left burning. They did not speak or look at him.

He wept a little and rubbed his Tears into the Ground, thanking it.

He spoke softly, for he was very weak, but his voice sounded like the voice of the Earth's core. The elders listened, not looking.

"He is mad at us. We have left Him bare where others have built upon Him, making Him stronger, shading Him from the Sun. He does not like our way of life and wants us to build more than just the small huts we have here.

"He spoke to me of the Men near the Ocean, with buildings that touch the Sky itself and tear through the Clouds. He is impressed by these things and enjoys the cool relief from the heat where he is covered by paved streets. The activities of Man in these places entertain Him. Their gasoline vehicles feel good to cross upon His surface and the methods they use to build change His shape, which he enjoys watching, eager to see what will change upon His surface.

"He believes we are weak for not imposing our will upon Him. These Men understand him, He says. We are cowards who try to appease Him. He will destroy us to make room for these men."

Man

They were done with Tom Cruisian, chiseled asses, the glamour and gobs, golden and glistening, what seemed so precious, but really was worth nothing, like diamonds and gold and all those other gems.

They wanted gutted, pitted real men, with splotches and bumps, scars and hair, all those faded zits and unbulging veins. It was all just thrusting anyway.

But those men were gone, relics of an ancient time, lost to evolution, the waste buried in landfills by magazines and tv shows. Survival of the fittest, and what was real wasn't fit, didn't fit.

So it was left behind, and what's left behind is a delicacy. Staring in a mirror at itself, ashamed, because the world doesn't want it, because these women need abs and money and shaved chests on their men.

And now, with all of what's real gone, and the men more like women, prettier than them actually, the one true man, something straight from the museums, something alone and isolated, like some silly genotype, being desired. How funny.

Women fought for him. His molten chest and weak arms and legs, flabby and compromised. How silly he looked. How seductive he was. How different from what they thought they wanted for so long. But how they wanted him, sputtering to themselves.

Because there was nothing like him.

What was important was lost. What was important was flawed, and slowly the women realized that and even though he was just as dumb as any of the others, those hunky Abercrombie flannels, so cute and desirable in the sun as sweat glistened off everything they hardly worked for, but that man wished he had, he was still more. And the women wanted him more and more, unlike in the past.

He was true . . . and so were the others, honestly--the products of evolution and gene selection, the women choosing what they thought they wanted most--but he was real. He was what they hadn't chosen. He was what had survived, what had pleased their ancestors for so long. That lumpy heap of coal, and they wanted to burn it.

But luckily for us he saw past their treachery and they were stuck with what they had once thought was perfection, even though he desired all of them fully, for they were women, and he was but a man.

Strangers Among Friends

I was at my friend's apartment, drinking a little before we went to the bar. It was a night we expected people to be there.

On my mind was another friends' new daughter, two days after his sister went missing.

We were just hanging around waiting for my friends' friends to meet us and go to the bar. The television was on and I was unamused, sipping on some very cheap beer.

They got here and we left; it was sprinkling a little bit, but it never started raining until later. We flashed our ID's and went in, greeted by about twenty scattered people, none of them girls. We got our drinks and started shooting pool, the only girl in the place enjoying foosball with a guy in a long-sleeve dress shirt and shorts. They were choosing the music, too.

My other friend called me while I was in the bathroom. His sister had killed herself. He wondered if I could give him a ride, and I guessed I could even though I was half drunk and not in the mood. He sensed it and said he'd try someone else. I was relieved.

I went back out and my friend had put a new song on. His friends invited me into a pool game. The other people started picking new songs to play next.

I was terrible at pool and there were no girls, so we walked home after some stronger drinks.

My other friend called back and said he'd found a ride and he seemed like he wanted to talk, but I managed to get off the phone with him. I just sat on their couch while my friend and one of his friends played records and looked at them. Another read an ad that came in the mail from a hardware store. The other was asleep on the other couch. A joint was making its way around, but I don't smoke, but I thought about it.

They made chicken, and I wished there had been any girls at the bar. It was usually like that so I was used to it and not surprised.

It started storming so we opened the front door and watched the storm, the rain getting in. It was nice because the room was hot and smoky. It felt very fresh and good.

I woke up a few hours later. Everyone had gone for bike rides. I ate the rest of the chicken, snatched up the hardware ad, used the bathroom and made my way home.

A little after morning my other friend came over and talked about his sister. He sensed I wasn't interested and so we got drunk, on me. I told him he should name his daughter after her, but that wasn't what he wanted to hear, and it was too late anyway he said.

We fell sleep for a few hours and he left.

Thinking

They realized none of it meant anything, but they still wanted it to anyway.

They thought about it and how everyone thought everything was so important, and how they thought everything was the same as them, and it didn't matter to anyone. And how neither did they.

And they kept on wishing how the more cigarettes they smoked and the more rum they drank they would be more important to the dead teacher whose opinion they cared about, but how it would never matter anyway, even if he was dead. And how high school had shaped them no matter how much they agreed it hadn't, and how those memories were still worth what it took to get them.

But that was irrelevant because so were they and everything they held dear, no matter how much they told themselves nothing was important and how nothing you held dear really was dear.

And they smoked cigarettes outside talking about it thinking they really did understand what was going on and that nothing mattered, and thinking no one else realized that it didn't matter, and that those people had even more fun believing they were free from others' thoughts about everything, and that they were more important in some way by realizing this before anyone else, but not realizing they weren't quite first, just like everyone else who came to that conclusion.

So they went to bed thinking that.

Down 122nd

He turned onto 122nd with ease, his last breath of smoke disappearing out the open windows and his half-drunk 40 wrapped in its baby brown baby blanket and tucked safely next to his seat. It was very late afternoon, semi-sunny, breezy, and he slid down the road just under the speed limit. There were hardly any cars around, and with his left wrist steering from the 12 o'clock position he cradled his 40 in the other, finishing it. He laid it down in the back seat.

He blinked a few times and almost yawned, peered out the window to see if the sun was out and turned back to the road. 45, and green lights leading the way. By now he was feeling a little bit of everything. His body was light and relaxed and his mind was easy and erratic.

Another car slipped past him, two blonds inside, sunglassed and uninterested, too bad. He watched the red of their car fade off while his mind ventured other places. His radio was on very low, and it produced a calming effect, its mumblings. He didn't have to consider the music and words and he didn't have to try to either. It was just background, and he liked that.

The wind was picking up and strong breezes pushed their way through the windows, fluttering his shirt and hair as they moved along. The a/c was on low.

As he moved further and further down the street, he realized it was wearing off and he'd need something to help keep him and his mind from wandering too much. He stopped at the new apartment complex on 122nd and Charter Hill where he knew a guy and bought some pills. Having three drugs in your system probably isn't the best idea, he thought, but it certainly isn't the worst. It beat the alternative.

So, he borrowed some tissue and parachuted them with a little Vitamin Water he had in his car. He started it and got back on 122nd, this time going the other way. Things were getting pretty fuzzy about 20 minutes in, and he liked that. He explained it like his body had floated off, leaving just his brain and nervous system to deal with things, and without all that extra weight they were enjoying themselves. They were feeling really good.

He was driving down 122nd, just wandering that long, familiar street, meandering. He was in his lane, just a tad under 45 and every time that breeze flowed through the windows his spine melted. What was there to worry about now?

The mumbling of his tires and the radio and his senses was all that mattered and it was so much bliss to him nothing mattered. His eyes were glazed, half closed and his bottom lip was sticking out a little. He noticed and thought that meant everything was working. He kept rubbing his forehead, right at his hairline, and his nose. And he was so sleepy, but it wasn't hard to stay awake because he wasn't tired. He had nothing to worry about.

He lit a cigarette and drove down 122nd.

The Spread of Man's Ego

The Serling350, smartest robot on the market decided to show off how cool it was. We were all chilling behind the Barn Store smoking a couple joints, but ol' Serl wouldn't have any of it. He was just going on about a bunch of garbage he'd been programmed to know. We couldn't convince him that our knowledge meant more because we had learned all of it, while the majority of what he knew had been programmed into his head. His argument was that he could learn, too, and much of what he knew he had learned himself.

We weren't buying it. The thing knew every rule of the English language, every important date in history, every scientific and mathematical theory to date and on and on. He was uploaded with new information every night. We spent how many years in public school learning a hundredth of what he knew and about half of it stuck. We did know certain things that a robot in 2011 still couldn't understand. Street smarts, common knowledge sorts of things, even deductive reasoning still hadn't been worked all the way out.

So Serl's sitting their blabbing about how robots are so great and seriously I was done with it. We started questioning his loyalty and he got all flustered when we accused him of wanting to start a robot rebellion. We got all racist on him and he was getting pretty pissed. Finally, we said if he was better and smarter than us we wouldn't be able to think of a question he couldn't answer.

Now, before I go on, I should mention Cliff had been working on a math problem that A.I. would not be able to answer because I don't know why. I can't remember if it was a logic problem or I think it involved a system of numbers that resulted in multiple infinities maybe.

Anyway, we told Serl he could choose what category the question would be in, and Serl's such an idiot he picked math, like we didn't know that was what he was going to pick and hadn't thought of how to trick him. That's the kind of smarts robots didn't have. No shit you'd pick math, Serl.

So Cliff lays this problem out and Serl starts working on it, big smile on his face a little way through, and then you can see his eyes going like a typewriter when it slides back to start a new line. You could tell he was just computing number after number, liks we'd asked him to figure out the trillionth integer of pi, but then multiplied all that by i and then some and then a couple exponents divided by I don't know, something Cliff would've had to think up.

So after about fifteen minutes of Serling having a roboseizure he starts to overheat. The asshole, still determined to prove he and all of robotkind were smarter than humans, bypasses the auto shutdown and keeps working on the problem. We kept telling him it was impossible and infinite and he wasn't listening. He was not responding and after about ten more minutes his head exploded. This was a month before it became illegal to kill robots, so that was good.

Can't Stop Using the Useful

People were always so scared of radiation. Ha! They yipped and chatted on their cell phones day after night after day after midmorning commute and whatnot, calling and complaining and I don't even know what all they were up to on those things.

But it seemed like an inconvenience to think the little things produced radiation and caused cancer and all that. And people constantly holding them right next to their brains and whatall they did. Seeing those infomercials and not hearing from the FDA or FCC or whatever government tributary was supposed to be watching out for them or whatever. Well, it led to a certain amount of uncertainty and fear.

And that damn rap/rock music.

But yappity yap they balked away on those oh-so-convenient devices. Some of em were pretty cool, too.

But anyway, aside from all the people now with huge right lobes jutting out and knocking people's coffees over all the time, the real issue with cell phones had to do with fucking.

Males were always keeping their phones in their front pockets, right next to their balls. See where this is going? The phone wasn't really being used, but it was on, and transmitting sure enough. It was certainly radiating. So we had some problems there.

Ladies kept em in their purses for the most part, and while you'd think that would be better, they got their tits radiated. Or they kept em in pockets or back pockets, so all that shit got radiated. Nobody was safe, man. All the best parts were getting fucked up by cell phone radiation, but who cou8ld live without being able to GOOG-411 from anywhere?

Anyway, people would have sex with their radiated genitals and the kids were not turning out too good. We had parents falling over because one side of their head was this John Merricked-out tumor and we had kids born of radiated sperm and eggs drinking radiated milk. Not working out too well.

You ever seen RoboCop, when that guy gets in the toxic gunk and mutates? Then the dude hits him with a car and he explodes in a red gush of strawberry jell-o?

That's how the government handled the situation.

The Police Are Our Friends

The police were at the front door. Decidedly I was moving to the back. Several SUVs were parked out front. Probably most of the cops were hiding in the bushes and trees because only three were at the door, one knocking, his blue track jacket rustling with each knock.

Everybody was in a sort of panic. It would be impossible to gather up everything in the house. Nobody could say how much paraphernalia was stashed away in random corners of the apartment. So, escape sounded like the best option. I pushed past a few people, none of them my roommates, one of them my grandfather by the age of him.

He asked where I was going. I told him I wasn't staying for the cops to come inside. That many cops didn't drop by if a warrant wasn't involved. He was putting on a jacket saying, "You leave. I'll handle this," or something like that. He wasn't making much sense.

I got to the back of the apartment and crouched down to get eye level with this window. Someone was already halfway through it, and I grabbed his arm, telling him to check for pigs in the brush. (I only talked like that because I didn't know this person but figured there was one thing he would agree with.)

So, we scanned the backyard--it was a pretty nice evening, dark, clear, still, and no one seemed to be moving in the backyard or perched in the trees. He slipped out and I started after him when the old man came up behind me. Staring at the backyard in silence for a while, he suddenly said, "Looks safe. You go. I'll handle this," or something like that. I said thanks or whatever and crawled out, he shutting the window behind me.

I escaped and crossed a few blocks before doubling back to check out the hostage situation in front. The door had opened at some point and everyone inside was leaving, getting in the police SUVs. I was happy I left, but there were still my friends being arrested and my name on the lease of an apartment filled with a fairly substantial amount of miscellaneous drug content.

The cops cleared out, and I figured it was safe to go back inside. I went in through that same back window because paranoia is always a good idea with the police. I went to my room and paced for a while before I decided to take a few rips and read some Camus. What would it matter at this point?

Some time passed, and I heard some people come back inside, laughing. My roommates were back and the old man was, too. He walked up to me, smiling, and told me I'd missed a great evening. The cops weren't after us. They took everyone out to dinner. What a great time!

I swore a little at the comment.

All Icky, No Sticky

As I was walking down the hall, I passed this poster. I'd snubbed the little flyer countless times, but now I stopped and gave it some attention.

"The Tobacco Industry is Targeting You!" it said.

"Oh really?" I asked it.

In a big list down the right side, highlighted in red (for death), was everything harmful in cigarettes. Arsenic, mercury, lead, acetone, ammonia, and butane stood out among the other insecticides, industrial solvents and miscellaneous poisons.

I just sat and stared at the sign. Then, I thought to myself, "The government is okay with me smoking all these things as long as I'm 18, but a puff on a spliff is outlawed?"

I pulled the poster down and slipped it into my bag. Outside, I gathered grass and piled it onto the poster. I started folding from one edge until I had a nice-looking fatty. Back inside, I hung the joint where the poster used to be, but above it I wrote "Smoke this" in huge black Sharpied letters.

The joint was gone within a couple hours. I told myself someone must've smoked it, but I know they didn't. It didn't have enough carcinogens. It wasn't government-approved. Actually, it was just a bunch of grass rolled up on some laminated paper; I hope they didn't smoke that shit.

A Home Built on the Bones of its Owners

About ten years ago, my family was in the market for a new home. It was just my parents and me then, and our house was big enough for the three of us, but we wanted to get out of our neighborhood. The endless drama from our neighbors was maddening.

We found a great house that was more than big enough in a new, upscale neighborhood called New Echota Heights. We called the number on the for-sale sign to find the home had already been purchased.

A few nights later, we went to the house and saw the family living there, happily enjoying a home-cooked dinner. Like a ship through silent seas, we entered without a sound. We crept through the shadows in the unlit rooms until, guns drawn, we stepped forth, white killers emerging from the black mist. The father, at the head of the table, was the only one to see us, but he did not have time to say a word. We made quick work of them, the wife, the father, the children: all massacred, no quarter.

We carried their bodies out to the back yard and destroyed them, mostly with fire. We came back into the house, cleaned the kitchen a little and had a look around. After admiring the fine interior of the house, we went out to the U-Haul and started moving our stuff in.

We finally had a place of our own, but now, ten years and three kids later, we're thinking maybe it's time for more space. We feel it's our destiny to expand.