ISLAND - Part 3

"Damn stick."

As Jerry worked his way deeper into the interior of the island, the jungle closed in. The damp air seemed to grow warmer and more stifling with each step he took away from the beach. As he walked, thorny vines tore at his tattered clothing and scraped past his exposed skin.

In his opinion, the thorns were one of the island's most ridiculous features. Which was saying a lot - since Jerry viewed the whole place as more or less completely ridiculous.

The snakes he could understand, having seen enough such jungles in movies and in TV programs to understand that they were lovely places for snakes to be. Without being particularly science-minded Jerry was still savvy enough to gather that oppressive heat, the high humidity, and the presence of a preponderance of hanging vines available for impersonation were all things that classy snakes looking for new digs would find attractive.

The island's interior had these in spades - marking it, as far as Jerry could tell, as an environment ideal for snakes looking to live their snake lives in style, have loads of snake babies with one another, and generally get along in various other snake ways together.

From personal experience Jerry could tell that impersonating vines was an activity that gave snakes particular joy - especially the large ones who, Jerry had discovered, were especially fond of hanging near steep or slippery spots on the trail where they might be accidentally grabbed by passers-by. Most notably those wearing loafers not particularly suited for off-road travel - who happened, for this reason, to often need help regaining their balance.

The results were usually hilarious, if you happened to be a snake.

So, while Jerry could accept that the snakes had a definite and particular place within the jungle's overall motif - he thought the thorns clearly exceeded the boundaries of good taste. They were emblematic, he felt, of a larger flaw in the overall design of the jungle itself - which he had found to be an almost gaudy celebration of themes of annoyance and physical discomfort in all their various shades.

A flaw he was going to be sure to bring to someone's attention - as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

He hoped that it might once things calmed down for him a bit.
He had been finding most of his free time lately spent wrestling with the issue of Not Being Dead, and had found little time for anything else.

COWBOY

The cowboy poked at the dying embers of his fire.
Mesquite scented smoke rose in wisps from the glowing coals.
The fire's light had dimmed, and the desert beyond the tiny campsite was bathed in the silvery-blue glow of night.

That was the thing about the desert, the thing about it at night. Darkness could never take it over.

During the hours that the dark of night held dominion in the streets of the towns, and under the boughs of the forest - The desert pushed back at it with a phosphorescence all of its own. The reflection of moonlight and starlight was enough to ensure that night would never rule completely over the desert's sand and rocks and scrubby brush.

From where he sat at the dying fringes of the campfire, the cowboy watched the desert's light creep in as the fire's light receded. The remnants of his dinner snapped and popped within the now empty can in the heart of the coals.

FREEDOM BALLOON (Yee Haw!)

"It's a freedom balloon," Bigby said and gazed proudly at the oval shape in the sky.

"A freedom balloon? I've never heard of such a thing before," I said back, squinting against the glare.

Above us the white shape hung motionless, high in the sky enough to be slipping in and out of view behind the clouds. from this distance it looked so very small but somehow the way it hung completely motionless above us as the clouds crawled by was eerily menacing. In truth, it looked like a giant white blimp - one that was in no particular hurry to be anywhere but directly above us. It didn't take me long to figure out what I thought about it.

"I don't like it," I said, still not quite understanding why.

"What do you mean you don't like it?" Bigby gaped. My response didn't sit well with him. He didn't often have to deal with ideas that were different from his.

It was because he was a real patriot, and he truly loved our country.

"I just don't," I said gazing down at my shoes now, "It makes me feel funny. Someone should take it down."

It made me feel silly to tell Bigby I didn't like it. Bigby always meant Business, and he felt things with Conviction.

He got a real kick out of my reply and slapped his knees,

"Funny? Ha! What would be funny would be someone actually taking it down. It's important. It watches over us. You know it has more than 10000 cameras on it don't you? Think about it, most casinos in Las Vegas have less than that. 10000 eyes looking down on you every day and night to keep us safe. - That's 5 thousand security guards - airborne security guards, isn't that something?"

I still didn't think so, but I wasn't about to press the point further.

NEW WORDS

These are some new words.
They are provided here for your enjoyment.
We thoroughly apologize for the recent lack of new words.

Our supplies had dwindled to a scary level - and we didn' t have many to spare.

BRANT

As he lay at the bottom of the airshaft Brant came to the realization that human beings are incapable of imagining hell while they're alive.

Having been raised Catholic, he had spent a fair amount of time trying in the past.

In Sunday school when the teacher was trying to tell them why it was so important to live a virtous life. as a young man trying futily to stop himself as he fell deeper and deeper a life of drugs and crime. As a man, bellied up to some bar, envisioning the fate he was sure waited for him just beyond the horizon - at the bottom of the next bottle or in the magazine of some other slimeball's gun.

But he knew now that all that time spent musing on what hell might be like was wasted. Every human has a mental failsafe that keeps them from even imagining true discomfort.

He now knew that the amount pain that was possible on earth, much less in the underworld, was so much more than any person could imagine without experiencing it for themselves.

The pain was insufferable.
Excruciating.
Like a being pricked by million flaming needles all at once -
vor being caught without your skin in a sandstorm of broken glass.

And he hadn't died...

He had fallen thirteen stories through a stainless steel tube. A set of ducts that met each other every 50 feet or so in a diagonal junction, polished to a featurless, gleaming, surgical finish. After the first wrong step there had been nothing for him to do but slip-thump, slip-thump, slip-thump, through a descending infinity of steep, slippery z shaped junctions - feet first, flailing for purchase while he still could.

Now Brant's body was bent and broken, crumpled in on itself, limbs curled and folded like a pretzel at the bottom, suspended on a grate over a fan that threw flashing shadows in the dim light of the chamber where he now lay.

And he hadn't died...
Why hadn't he died?

The lower half of his body must have cushioned the upper just enough to keep him alive, and protect his important parts enough to keep him from dying - but that was it. He couldn't move, he couldn't scream, but he could still breathe.

The light flickered through the fan, and all was quiet except for the wet sound of his own breathing. Brant waited for his time to finally come, he prayed for it...
The minutes like hours slowly ticked away.

THINGS

Things always change -

Mostly for no reason at all.

Except for the times that they stay the same.

Unfortunately, you don't usually get to choose.

ROBOT BABY - Part 3

So, finally, one or both of you figures out how to get the android out the door, and you go take a shower. You brush your teeth and take an ibuprofen 'cause you can already feel the hangover creeping up -

And everything is fine for a few weeks....

Then you start getting nauseous, and feeling bloated, and hearing servo whirring gear-grinding sounds through your stomach when you're trying to sleep.

You get nervous. You see a doctor -- who tells you to change into one of those ridiculous backless gowns before he pokes and prods you, whispers 'um hum' frequenly under his breath, and makes you pee in a cup - you're sure mostly for his own amusment.
After checking you out he announces, "I've seen this before...Can you give me the make and model of the, um, partner you've been seeing?"

Your reaction to the news will be boiler-plate, if hysterical... most likely including you bursting into tears and charging out of the office building in that backless gown while screaming, "That fucking overgrown blender, my life is ruined!"

You'll call up the android and, of course, he's no help.
Once he finds out who you are and why you're calling he flips out.

First he pretends that he doesn't remember you and then he acts like it's a wrong number. Finally, he starts pretending like he only speaks binary and hangs up the phone.

"0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1".... yeah, right buddy.
That's just so typical.

SOMETHING

"Ouch! Damn it."
He had been bumping around in the dark for what felt like forever.
In reality, it hadn't been that long.

He was looking for the Something he used to have
And while he knew he had his Something not long ago,
he didn't know where it had gotten off to now.
He wasn't even sure if he was looking in the right place anymore.

He could remember where he had Something last.
He was sure because the last time he had Something it was the most Something had ever been.

Then something happened to Something and now he had Nothing

Hence, the looking.

It didn't help that almost no one else had seen Something when he had it, and it really didn't help that everybody that had seen Something had thought it was Nothing already.
He wasn't really sure about it himself, anymore.

But he was pretty sure that if Something had been Nothing he wouldn't feel so bad about Something being gone.

He thought, 'Maybe I should call for help.'
'I could describe Something to the police - tell them that Something had gotten off to Somewhere and left we with Nothing. They'd help, I think.'

'But probably,' he thought 'Someone would say it really isn't up to me whether or not I get to have Something anymore. My time for Something might be over, and now it might be time for Nothing.'

'I still want Something back.'

He went back to scratching around in the dark.
The dark went back to creeping in on him.

ROBOT BABY - Part 2

Anyway, so you'd have sex with the android:

There would be that awkward moment at the end of the thing where you're both lying in bed and you want the android to just get out of there 'cause you're not looking for anything serious, and you just got out of a long-ass exhausting relationship and you don't want him to feel used, but you're not getting back into something messy like that again already - especially not with a toaster, even one that's anatomically correct.

Meanwhile, the android is lying there and he's freaking out because the last human chick he had a fling with was really clingy and kept calling him at work at the nuclear disposal facility or the car assembly line or whatever - 'cause that was the only number she had for him, thank god - and he really just wants to get out of there before you get the wrong idea. But of course, you have your bed all pushed up against the wall and he's on the inside - so he'll be trying as hard as he can to figure out when would be the earliest possible polite opportunity to vault over you and make a sequence of cute beeping noises before he gracefully says his goodbyes and his i'll-call-you's.

'Cause his robot wife might be an older model and kind of dim, but it's getting really late and she's definitely gonna start asking some tough questions if it gets much later.