Probability Angels: Part 3
Probability Angels: Part 3
November 1, 2007 by josephdevon · 4 Comments
Probability Angels
Part 3: Sunrise Over the Dakota
by
Joseph Devon
(Please note:This story is the third part of a series of stores beginning with, “Probability Angels: Part 1,” and while it is designed to stand alone it does draw heavily on the foundation of characters and events that were created in “Probability Angels: Part 1,” and continued in, “Probability Angels: Part 2.” Basically, I have to highly recommend that if you haven’t read “Probability Angels: Part 1,” and “Probability Angels: Part 2,” you go do so now.
Or you can go here and buy the book
Matthew looked out over the darkness blanketing Central Park. The patina green copper eave underneath his feet was barely lit from below by the street lamps lining Central Park West. He held a nub of a cigar between the fingers of his right hand. It was well chewed and, if someone did manage to get it lit again, could barely have been expected to provide one more puff before the embers at the end began to burn the smoker’s lips. As it was, though, it was unlit and Matthew only toyed with it between his fingers.
He turned to Epp, who was standing a few feet away where the roof sloped down. Even in the darkness barely pierced by halogen lamps the cut of Epp’s suit stood out as perfection in charcoal threads. His right hand held a fashionable cane, the dark exotic hardwood complimenting Epp’s skin as he tapped it idly against the rooftop, his face peering out over the trees of the park.
“I just don’t get it,” Matthew said.
“What’s not to get?”
“You’re friends with him?”
“Absolutely.”
“But he wants to destroy you.”
Epp laughed, softly, conceding Matthew’s point. “Yes. If you put it like that it does sound rather confusing.”
“I just…I just don’t get it.”
“It’s complicated, although not nearly as confusing as you’re making it.”
—–
Matthew tried to walk quietly into the large hall, but as he was the only person making any noise this was impossible. He settled for walking as quickly as he could and trying to minimize the disturbance he made.
The rear of the room was filled with benches, which were split down the middle by the aisle leading away from the doors in the back. The ceiling was low and the windows were high up on the walls, a clear indication that it was a basement space. Matthew walked along, trying desperately to keep the sound of his tuxedo shoes on the tile from making any noise when he spotted a familiar face waving him to an empty seat.
He sat down next to an attractive girl, small with a pert nose. Her dark blond hair bobbed in curls as she turned to chastise Matthew.
“You’re late,” she said.
“Thank you, Mary,” Matthew said, “I’m well aware of that.” Matthew took a cigar out of his pocket. The tip was bit off and the end was dark black but it looked like there had only been one or two puffs taken out of it before it had been put out, apparently by being submerged in water. Matthew rolled the wet cigar between his fingers. Then he wriggled his toes and felt that his sock was soaking wet. Then he looked between the two people seated on the bench in front of him so he could see the front of the room.
Despite the surreal aspect of where he was and who was in the audience, the scene in front of him was recognizable as a trial. There were currently three principal players. A pale, gaunt man presiding over everything, seated high up and looking out over the room, was clearly the judge. A man in a dingy suit standing before the room who was pontificating loudly was clearly arguing for punishment. And, seated off to the right hand side of the judge, was Epp, the man being charged with a crime.
“This man, Epictetus,” the man in the ratty suit was saying, “has been charged with endangering at least three of his fellow testers. We have gone over and over testimony from witnesses and heard a confession from the defendant himself that he had gone out of his way to make sure other witnesses weren’t available.”
Mary leaned over and whispered to Matthew. “Where were you?”
“I didn’t know,” Matthew said. “I don’t know anything about what’s going on.”
“And it is my belief,” the man with the ratty suit continued, and as Matthew stared at him he got a sense of Asian heritage from his face, possibly Japanese if the cheekbones were to be trusted, “that Epictetus has been proven before this court to be a danger to our people, our way of life, and our future. And I move that he be given the harshest punishment the Council is able to give out for the crime that he is on trial for here today, the murder of Bartleby Kneller.”
Matthew’s mind began racing at the sound of these words. There was minimal reaction in the crowd and Matthew knew that this was old news to everyone there but himself. He leaned over to whisper something to Mary but just as he did so Mary, who was a soft-spoken girl and, despite the sexuality of the clothes she wore, was rather timid, suddenly shouted, “Holy shit!”
—–
“He wanted you dead,” Matthew said, looking out across the darkness at Central Park.
Epp sighed. “It’s complicated. Besides, the Council’s powers are somewhat dubious. Even if they had found me guilty they’d have a hell of a hard time punishing me. The courts they hold are mock-ups, they just want to feel like there’s order in our world.”
“You seem to be the only one who doesn’t take them seriously.”
“What can they do?”
Matthew was silent. He rolled the burnt out nub of cigar between his fingers. He had asked this very question to a number of people and, while he had received a number of answers, he had only heard one that made much sense to him. “They can turn people against you.”
Epp tapped his cane on the gutter, then turned and began to walk slowly across the rooftop, heading for the northeast tower. He moved slowly, the angles of the eaves and the slipperiness of the roof forcing him to pick his way while using a cane he did not seem to be getting used to. Matthew walked with him. “They can do that, yes,” Epp said, “but so can anyone. My point is that they have no special power granted to them simply because they can get an audience together for a trial.”
The cane and the darkness made it easy to see him as an old man walking along, but when he reached the corner he turned back and Matthew saw he was smiling. This had the effect of replacing the image of an old man with that of a man who was young and strong in every way except for one leg that hurt when he walked. “You should have seen your face when you walked into the bar to see Kyo sitting with us.”
—–
Matthew walked up Broadway, thoughtful as he moved. The night was fresh but cold as the winter was making its first inroads into the island of Manhattan. As he walked he puffed on a half smoked cigar, alternating between holding it between two fingers and clenching it between his teeth.
He stopped below 76th street and looked around, confused if he had the right address. There was a bar in front of him with a big wooden bear standing out front like he had been told, and there was a neon sign above the door that said “BAR.”
He walked past the bouncer unseen and into a narrow space crowded with people. The lighting was bright, that was the first thing he noticed. Most bars he had been in seemed steeped in dark but this one was lit all the way up to the ceiling high overhead. Matthew walked along the bar, passing through people, running his hand over the warped, unfinished surface.
The bar stools on his left were all full, and on his right there were people up against the wall. There was barely enough room for someone to make their way through the space between and Matthew smiled as he walked along, drifting through people like fog.
The bar ended on his left and there was space for a few tables. A song he recognized as one of Johnny Cash’s began to play on the jukebox. There were two steps up on his right leading to a second space where there were booths and dart boards. He climbed the steps and saw Epp and before he could say hi he saw the man in the ratty suit sitting next to him. Up close Matthew decided he was definitely Japanese and his suit, especially when viewed right next to Epp’s, was beyond cheap looking. The jacket barely fit over the man’s rather large body, and there were stains and rips in it. The man’s face had a small mustache and beard, coarse black hair that didn’t seem to grow so much as sprout.
“The fuck is he doing here?” Matthew asked before anyone even saw him.
“Matthew,” Epp said, “this is Kyokutei. But we just call him Kyo.”
Kyo was holding a beer can in his hand, his palm curled all the way around it, and he was laughing a smug laugh as he took a sip.
—–
“You might have warned me,” Matthew said.
Epp took another step towards the edge of the roof and then stopped walking. “Well I tried to introduce you, but you spoke up before I could do anything.”
“Yeah. That and everyone there was completely drunk.”
“I don’t know about completely drunk.”
—–
“Wow,” Epp said, leaning back from the booth and looking at the collection of empty beer cans scattered on the table in front of him. ”I’m completely drunk.”
“Me too,” Mary said, perched on a high stool at the end of the table, and she gave a little giggle into her glass of wine.
—–
“It was a celebration,” Epp said. “I was freed from all charges.”
“So the man said.”
—–
Matthew watched as the gaunt man presiding over the trial rapped his gavel again and again to regain order.
He eventually calmed everyone down, but it took quite a bit of work. He waved the man in the ratty suit forward and the two exchanged words, the gaunt man clearly not happy with the man in the ratty suit. After trying to plead some argument or another the man in the ratty suit finally gave in and the gaunt man gave a few more raps of the gavel to command complete silence. “The charges,” he said with little fanfare, “are dropped.” He turned to Epp. “You’re free to go.”
—–
Matthew watched as the street lights on Central Park West below him changed from green to red. “There’s just a lot I don’t understand.”
“So ask,” Epp said.
“I did. You answered me with riddles.”
“Really?” Epp asked, smiling. “That doesn’t sound like me.”
—–
“How can you sit and have a drink with that guy?” Matthew asked as Kyo walked off to go to the bathroom.
“Ah,” Epp said a little slurred. “You’ve got to understand,” and he reached a hand up to place it on Matthew’s shoulder only to find that his hand fell through Matthew’s body.
“Wait a minute,” Matthew said, looking around the table, “you guys are visible?”
“Of course,” Epp said. “How else are we going to get served here?”
“But,” Matthew was astonished, his face working itself up for any number of reasons. “We’re practically immortals. We don’t need to come to this shit hole of a dive bar on the Upper West Side to drink cheap beer. Hell, if you all want I can buy a round of something really nice. I can definitely handle some champagne,” and he started to move his hands without thinking, willing a bottle to appear when Epp’s hand slammed down on his own.
“No.” Epp said forcefully. “We don’t do that. Not tonight. Tonight we drink as they do,” and he looked down towards the main bar where it was more crowded.
“You can touch me,” Matthew said. “Did you just go invisible? And do you all realize that you’ve been basically talking to empty air this entire time?”
At the bar a pitcher of beer was toppled over by a woman in a halter top dancing across it.
“No one here cares,” Epp said.
“Fair enough. But why am I drinking PBR?”
“Cause it’s cheap,” Epp said.
“I meant-”
“I know what you meant. And I answered. When we drink with Kyo, we drink what is cheap. He’s a warrior. It’s a riddle for you. When is a samurai not a samurai?”
—–
“Okay, so that probably sounded like a riddle to you.”
“Yes. Especially the part where you told me it was a riddle.”
Epp smiled, and Matthew realized that the sky was growing lighter towards the east and that the night was fading.
“To be fair,” Epp said, “it is a pretty simple riddle. When is a samurai not a samurai?”
“Haven’t a clue,” Matthew held his hands out in front of him. ”I know nothing about samurai.”
“Oh. Then it’s not so simple. The answer is, when he doesn’t have a master. Which actually makes him a ronin, not a samurai. So when is a samurai not a samurai? When he serves nobody.”
“And that’s what this guy, this Kyo, does?”
“On a much deeper level than you understand.”
“What’s that mean?”
“We travel through this world taking energy from it by pushing it farther along. And it is, like most existences, deeply flawed. There are a few flaws we could go into here, but the biggest is what happens to a tester when they push. They disappear from the world. You’ve seen small pushes up till now, where the pusher will doze for a week or so, but you have to imagine spending a lifetime putting someone to the test, and then collapsing from pain and exhaustion for a century or two. You wake up after pushing a centurion and the entire Roman Empire has crumbled.
“So that is where Kyo comes in. Through no prodding from anyone, because of no calling from any higher authority, simply because he came to know our ways and decided that the pushers needed someone to retain continuity for us, to keep track of what happened when we were gone, to make sure there was always some sort of solid ground waiting for us, he became what he is. Kyo has never, since he became a rookie, actually pushed. Since he has never pushed, he has never gained energy. He has remained poor for our sakes. And it has become tradition that when one drinks with Kyo, one drinks cheap.”
“That would explain the suit,” Matthew said. “So he has no power?”
“No energy of his own,” Epp said, “does not mean that he can’t control the energy of others.”
“Well then you should be scared of him. I keep telling you, he wanted to destroy you.”
“Don’t worry about Kyo and me. We’re old friends. He was only doing what I asked of him.”
“You asked him to come after you like that?”
“Yes, a few hundred years ago. Somebody has to keep me in shape. Believe me, if anyone is going to be testing the testers, my vote would be for Kyo.”
“And not the Council.”
“No. Not the council. It has no power.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m the one that broke it.”
“How?”
“Well, I was the one that created it. It was easy enough to break it. Keeping it broken is tougher. That’s why I stand trial every now and then. It helps to publicly prove them wrong.”
“So you really don’t think that, what’s his name, Gregor, has any power over you?”
“I think he barely has power over himself anymore.”
“I still don’t understand why everyone laughed at me.”
—–
“I got it,” Matthew said. The table was littered with empty beer cans and Epp was wobbling in the booth, both hands on the table, staring down Kyo across the way. The two seemed locked in some titanic struggle, then Kyo’s hands moved and the quarter he was holding bounced across the table and into a shot glass sitting in front of Epp. “Ha!” Kyo yelled. Epp glowered at him, then picked up his mug of beer and finished it off.
“Okay,” Epp said, and he plucked the quarter up and started aiming.
“Dracula,” Matthew said. “That guy, Gregor. I’ve been trying to figure out why he looks familiar. It’s Dracula. The guy looks just like Dracula. Not the movies. Well. Sort of the movies. But if you ever read the book. He reminds me completely of that.”
Epp turned, drunkenly, the top button of his shirt was undone, a tiny detail that, on Epp, made him seem like he was the king of all hobos. Then the table burst out laughing as a whole.
“Why that’s absolutely adorable,” Kyo said. ”Where did you find him?” he asked Epp.
Mary just giggled and teetered on her stool, her nose buried in a glass of cheap wine. Then she looked at the far corner of the booth. “Oh my,” she said, “the man on fire seems rather drunk.”
—–
“I still don’t know what they were laughing about,” Matthew sulked, staring down at the rooftop.
“If it’s any consolation, we were laughing because you were so close, not because you were so far off.”
“That doesn’t help me.”
“Well, your analysis was sound, but your initial assumptions were a little backwards.”
“That also doesn’t help me.”
“What if it’s not that Gregor looks like Dracula, what if it’s that Dracula looks like Gregor?”
“Oh,” Matthew said, slowly getting it. “But how…oh!” he said, really getting it. “He pushed Bram Stoker?”
“No, Matthew. He didn’t technically push anyone, or maybe he pushed an entire village at once. It is, quite frankly, one of the largest ongoing debates we have. It’s at the root of why I let the Council put me on trial every now and then.
“Six centuries ago, Gregor decided to act like what we now would recognize as a vampire. He terrified an entire village. Taking forms, disappearing, even the occasional little push would look like him taking a victim. It was his first great act as a tester. At the time I couldn’t decide, but I was leaning toward thinking it was genius.
“I mean, the things he was doing aren’t easy. You disappear directly in front of a meat bag, their mind is going to opt to believe that they saw you get up and leave the room for no reason. But he got them to actually see him as he really was.
“The man’s legend is still reverberating to this day. The Council, however, thought it was an outrage. And taking down Gregor became the Council’s first great act. Which was when I resigned. Pity, too, we had only started up a decade before.”
“But how did they go after him? You said they had no power.”
“They were curious, which carries great power with it. All of these great testers in one room wondering what they could do combined. I really began to think that they wanted to punish Gregor only because they could, not because they felt they should. They were like a child with a new toy.”
“So, what did they do?”
“They starved him. Any push he tried to do would be taken in advance. Any time he was about to engage he found that his target was already occupied. Slowly he began to dwindle and wane. They drove him, essentially, into the graveyards. And when they stopped, Gregor was beaten. He’s completely different. No interest, no spark, no ingenuity. This was a pusher who created one of the greatest iconic symbols known without even engaging. People still feed off his creation. And now he’s nothing. His spirit is completely broken. Things eventually came full circle and he now rides a desk as one of the Council heads. Everything else slowly faded into the past.”
Epp’s voice was distant and he stared out at the night with a thoughtful look on his face. Then he turned and nodded at Matthew. “I’m sorry. You’re right. It would have been best if we could have walked you through some of these answers earlier tonight.”
“Well,” Matthew accepted the apology, “you were celebrating.”
“Yes, and you did eventually catch up to us if I remember correctly.”
—–
“What am I buying?” Matthew slurred unevenly at the bar.
“Cans,” Kyo answered. “Lots of ‘em.”
Matthew watched as the bartender walked past. “Mary, did you do something to her breasts?”
“I knew they’d be open very late tonight,” Mary said unapologetically. “I wanted them to get good tips.”
Matthew laughed and looked back at Mary. Her little body was wobbly and she was rocking back on her heels. For a moment he thought she was actually going to fall over before she righted herself.
“You,” Matthew said, “are going to have a wonderful time tomorrow morning. Be hungover as anything.” He thought about this. “Hey, Epp!” he yelled at Epp standing three people over. “Am I going to be hungover tomorrow?”
“You? Yes.”
“But I don’t have a body.”
“Is your sock still wet?”
Matthew wriggled his toes and, to his discouragement, felt that the toes of his sock were indeed still damp. “Yeah,” Matthew said, the disappointment barely edging its way through his drunkenness. He turned to Mary again. “Epp says we’ll have hangovers.”
Mary shook her head blearily. “Not me.”
“No?”
“You think I’m going to be awake tomorrow morning?”
“I’m not sure what else you’ll be.”
She smiled and stepped forward from the back wall. Everyone else from their group was a little ways down the bar chatting with strangers while Matthew, trying to put in his order, was edged in next to a solitary man on a bar stool. The man was dressed nicely, his button down shirt juxtaposing with the overall dinginess of the bar, although there were so many different types of drinkers present his juxtaposing fell short of making him stand out.
Mary sidled forward and stood right up against him. Matthew thought she was coming to help get the bartender’s attention. He turned to thank her but stopped before saying anything and simply watched.
She was crying, the pert skin on her face shining with wet tears, and as she gave a shuddering sob Matthew felt some part of his insides plummet while he watched one of the most beautiful women he had ever met exhibit signs of pain. Her face was resting on the nicely dressed man’s shoulder, her hand ran up the back of his head, her fingernails disappeared under his hair. She tilted her head and, as she wept, delivered a kiss with soft lips on his neck just under his ear.
A bartender finally came over and asked Matthew what he wanted. He only stared for a few seconds, and as the bartender waited, and as the nicely dressed man gave him a glance then returned to his glass of whiskey, Matthew knew that neither of them could see Mary.
He managed to put in an order and the waitress smiled at him as she popped open can after can of Pabst Blue Ribbon on the bar, and Matthew smiled back, and tipped nicely. Then Mary was leaning up against him, wiping the tears from her eyes. “Didn’t think he had it in him,” she said sleepily. “Night,” and she stood up on tiptoe and kissed Matthew on the cheek.
Matthew watched as the nicely dressed man looked at his watch, then his drink, then around the room, then at his watch again, then finally reached into his pocket and placed his wedding ring on the warped wooden surface of the bar. He rapped it a few times, then slipped it back onto his finger before turning around on his stool and hopping to the floor. “Thought for sure he was going to cheat,” Mary said, rubbing her eyes. The man left.
Then Mary yawned and tried to shout towards the others at the bar. It came out weakly and Matthew got their attention for her. “Mary’s off to Everest for a day or so,” he yelled.
Epp shook his head, “She never could handle the hangovers.”
Kyo nodded and lifted a can of beer as a farewell toast.
Mary nodded at both of them, then glanced past them and laughed. “He’s like some strange variation of Popeye.”
—–
“You might have gotten answers earlier if you had been there with us from the start,” Epp said. ”It’s never easy to walk in on the middle of a party.”
Matthew sighed and looked out over the pink of dawn just beginning to glow behind the buildings across the park. “I thought it’d be nice to see some old friends.”
“Thought?”
“Turns out I was wrong.”
—–
Matthew rolled his cigar in his fingers, concentrating on it. It was still soaking wet but he was making progress in getting it dried out.
“Whaddya say there, Matty?” Benjamin called out. They were in the Port Authority bowling alley, the usual group of customers scattered about. Matthew hadn’t seen Benjamin since making his second choice and he managed a smile as he looked at him, perpetually rumpled in his trench coat. “Another round?” Benjamin shouted.
There were a few of them gathered at the alley, the newbies that Matthew had spent over twenty years banging around New York City with. Matthew was about to stand another round but he stopped. With the hand not holding his cigar he reached into his jacket pocket, puzzled. It had been awhile since he had used cash to purchase anything. He remembered throwing twenties down on this very bar plenty of nights, but now that seemed a strange thing to do. It had started to seem like cash was an unnecessary middleman for most transactions. Why convert energy into cash, then that cash into what you were trying for when you could just convert energy into what you wanted? Matthew reached inside of his tuxedo coat pocket and felt a packet of money appear there. He wasn’t sure exactly how much it was, and he was about to pull it out to buy the next round, but he stopped himself.
He wasn’t having much fun. He felt disjointed from these people, and as he watched an old friend of his spark a bar fight in the far corner he forced himself to smile, converted the packet of money in his pocket into what he knew was only a few twenties, then pulled that out instead. “Here you go,” he said, forced smile still on his face, “another round on me.”
The twenties shimmered then disappeared as drinks appeared in the hands of people all around the bar. Matthew went back to drying out his cigar. A few minutes later he felt he had it and he popped it into his mouth and gave a few hard drags. It took more than the usual three or four but after awhile he managed to get the end to burst into a perfect red ember and he, truly smiling for the first time since he had come into this bar, finally resumed smoking his cigar. His sock, on the other hand, was still sopping wet.
—–
“They seemed so,” Matthew stepped out onto the rooftop ledge and leaned back against a high gable, “cruel somehow. There was no point to anything they did. It was just pranks at best. At worst they were tearing into people’s lives.”
“They were newbies,” Epp said, simply.
“Was I like that?”
“All newbies are. Although it seems like a lot more fun until you hit your second choice. Once you become a rookie you gain some perspective. You can only see how clear the line is while looking back.”
“So when will they hit their second choices? Some of them I used to enjoy hanging out with. Benjamin in particular.”
Epp smiled and closed his eyes as a bit of winter wind rustled across the trees of the park before sweeping up onto the roof. “Benjamin already made his second choice.”
“But then…oh.”
“He chose the life, not the work. Once his wife dies he’ll pass out of this world along with her. He doesn’t even remember who his first choice was anymore. You shouldn’t fault him. His probabilities were very low for going the other way.”
“It just seemed,” Matthew pushed off of the gable so he was standing straight up again, “it seemed so cruel. Without purpose. Nothing like what we do.”
“You’re forgetting,” Epp said, “that they came first. That they came out of the meat bags, but we came out of them.” Now it was Epp’s turn to lean and with a tired sigh he propped his cane up against the opposite gable and then settled down against it as well. “At least, that’s the current theory. Makes sense to me. You have to look at it this way, Matthew. If they didn’t exist, we couldn’t either.”
“Because we came out of them. I get it.”
“Because of that, but more because we’d have nothing to grab a hold of. Think about little Sophie, your first push. Did you ever wonder why she was having such a bad day? You ever think about what set up those circumstances, how the pain entered into her life for you to push against in the first place?”
“No, I just thought. I mean. It’s just life I figured.”
“Yes, and there are other forces that bring it out, but the newbies are a large one and an important one. Every little trick they pull echoes and reverberates and sets off more and more ripples. Like tossing a stone into a pond. Their energy travels as it dissipates.” To make his point Epp picked up his cane and thumped it down on the roof. Matthew jumped back as a small circular wave rippled its way out from where his cane had landed, the circle expanding as the wave shrank in height until it fizzled out a few feet from Epp. “They cause a breakup that causes a fight that causes someone to think about revenge that causes someone to think about cheating and so on and so on, always getting a little less as it spreads until eventually it fades out entirely, but without all of those nicks and cuts on the surface of life it’d be hard if not impossible for us to find anywhere to grab a hold. Could you imagine if you had had to work every single person involved in little Sophie’s breakup? If you had to bring about every little nuance in her boyfriend, had to work every person that influenced him, work every person that influenced them? It would be endless.”
Matthew didn’t say anything for awhile. Only watched the deep pink sky start to lighten its shade.
“Would you be able to do that?”
“Do what?”
“Work everyone like that.”
Epp didn’t say anything.
“Did you know?”
Again, Epp didn’t answer.
“My sock just finished drying off. Did you know it would take exactly this long?”
Epp turned and looked at Matthew.
—–
Matthew kicked his legs and tried to swim upwards. His tuxedo jacket was billowing up into his face and his mouth and throat burned from too much salt. His clothes were heavy with water and all he could manage was to get to within a few feet of the surface of the ocean before he lagged and drifted deeper again. He could see Epp’s shoes, or the soles of them anyway, standing atop the water.
When he looked down things only became worse. The water was too deep to fathom and light itself seemed to be sucked away as everything faded in the distance into blackness. There was the awful feeling of vertigo as the sea floor, hidden miles below his feet, seemed to want to rush up at him and with a frantic push Matthew managed to burst his head above the surface, take a half breath before swallowing more salty water, catch a glimpse of the impeccable break in Epp’s pants just above his shoe line, then flounder and sink under again.
He was panicking and his kicking feet drifted through bands of colder and colder water as he sank lower and deeper into the hungry darkness. He felt something swimming near him and heard, somehow perfectly clear, Epp’s voice. “Oh my goodness, Matthew! What is that?!”
Matthew opened his eyes and screamed an underwater scream of bubbles and strangled gurgling noises that resounded inside his head as he stared eye to eye with a huge eel. Its mouth opened, glasslike teeth sharp and pointy sticking out at all angles, and then it spoke. “Matthew,” the eel said in a strange falsetto. “You must learn to stop panicking,” it said in a voice that Matthew was on the verge of recognizing. “You must learn,” the eel said, and now Matthew placed it as Epp’s voice, only higher pitched, “to-”
“You know you have a very strange sense of humor,” Matthew said, looking up at Epp.
Epp peered down at him. With a casual wave of his hand Epp made the eel disappear. He shifted his cane so it was planted on the surface of the ocean right between his shoes and leaned on it gently with both hands. “And you,” Epp said, “have ceased struggling.”
Matthew looked at his hands, then around, then back up and realized that Epp was right. He was completely dry and felt no signs of being four feet beneath the surface of the water in the middle of the ocean. He smiled and then really began to look around, enjoying the change. He took a fresh cigar out of his jacket pocket and put it into his mouth. With a few long tugs on it he caused it to burst into flames and light up under the ocean. Then he laughed, the cigar off to the side of his mouth, as he floated himself up until he, like Epp, was standing on the surface of the water.
“This is fantastic,” he said, the cigar now held between two fingers as he looked around at the infinite view.
“Mm.” Epp said, noncommittally. “Although, I think your shoe is leaking. Does it feel like your sock is getting wet?”
And as Epp said that Matthew looked down and suddenly it did sort of feel like his sock was getting wet. Getting soaked, actually, and then his feet broke the surface of the water and he plunged back down again, the cigar extinguishing in a hiss as he tried to flounder to the surface.
Epp leaned over, both hands planted in front of him on his cane. “Well, Matthew,” he shouted down. “This is getting a little boring for me. And,” Epp lifted one arm up and shook it until his wristwatch was visible, “I’ve got to go stand trial. So, when you figure all this out,” and he twirled the tip of his cane over the surface of the water, “maybe you come see me, no? It’s in the basement of the Council building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.” Epp’s body began to ripple and then it vanished.
Matthew saw the soles of Epp’s shoes disappear as he struggled to get his head above water.
—–
“I feel like you’re slowly zeroing in on the one real question you’re dying to ask,” Epp said.
“Did you know?” Matthew turned and with energy tossed his cigar stub across his body, over the rooftop, out over the air above Central Park West. “Could you have known that he’d come back right then?”
—–
“And I move,” the man in the ratty suit was saying, standing in front of the hall, “that he be given the harshest punishment our people are able to give out for the crime that he is on trial for here today, the murder of Bartleby Kneller.”
Matthew’s mind began racing at the sound of these words. There was minimal reaction in the crowd and Matthew knew that this was old news to everyone there but himself. He leaned over to whisper something to Mary but just as he did so Mary, who was a soft-spoken girl and, despite the sexuality of the clothes she wore, was rather timid, suddenly shouted, “Holy shit!”
People turned, people shouted, then more people turned, then more people shouted. Standing at the rear of the room, dressed in a black on white suit, pin straight black hair slicked back on his head, a black trench coat folded neatly across his arm, was Bartleby.
“I’m not dead,” Bartleby said, and although Matthew had only barely met him, had actually only caught a glimpse of him in Sophie Laughton’s bedroom, he had the distinct feeling that a lot of the boyishness had dropped from Bartleby’s demeanor, and when he walked down the aisle towards the man in the ratty suit, the pale gaunt man and Epp, he carried himself with an enviable assurance.
—–
“Did you know he wouldn’t be angry?” Matthew asked.
—–
Matthew watched with confusion as everyone laughed loudly just because he had thought Gregor looked a little like Dracula. Everyone was laughing loudly except Mary, who just giggled and teetered on her stool, then buried her nose in her glass of cheap wine. Then she looked at the far corner of the booth. “Oh my,” she said. “The man on fire appears to be drunk.”
Bartleby was laughing so hard that when he reached a hand out to steady himself he knocked his beer onto Kyo’s lap.
—–
“Did you know he’d be,” Matthew wrapped an arm across himself and rubbed his shoulder, as if unsure of his words. “Did you know he’d be changed like that?”
—–
Epp shook his head with mock disgust, “She never could handle the hangovers.”
Kyo nodded and lifted a can of beer as a farewell toast.
Mary nodded at both of them, then glanced past them and laughed. “He’s like some strange variation of Popeye.”
Matthew turned to where she was looking and saw Bartleby, his long black trench coat brushing against the floor as he stood with his whole body tilted back, his arms over his head, a can of Red Bull in each hand. He was steaming, actual water vapor was billowing up out of his body and he squeezed first one can, then the other, their tops bursting and the cold liquid shooting into his open mouth, the sound of the aluminum crackling in his hands as loud as the sound of his mouth filling up with splashing liquid.
Matthew laughed. “He really does look like Popeye.”
Bartleby finished and stood upright, tossing the crushed and empty cans onto the bar. His steaming seemed to be under control. The people around were looking on with interest, although clearly they had only seen a man drinking too much Red Bull, not a man about to light on fire.
—–
“Well,” Epp said. “I knew it was very hot on Mercury.”
“The man bursts into flames constantly.”
“Yes,” Epp said. “It’s bizarre isn’t it? Did you notice how it didn’t seem to affect anyone else? I wonder if he can learn to control that.”
“Did you know!” Matthew yelled suddenly. “Did you know that,” Matthew waved his hands in the air as if swatting at the numerous things he wanted to ask, “that my sock would dry at exactly this instant? That Bartleby would show up right as you were about to be judged? That he would actually appreciate what you did for him? Did you know?”
“The boy inside of him begged for a challenge. The man inside of him accepted,” Epp said, barely moving.
“Did you know!” Matthew shouted.
“I know enough to know that opening my mouth now could only serve to make me seem less impressive. Besides, these all sound like variations on the same question.”
“You’ve got your best friend trying to destroy you. You’ve got your students in mortal danger. You cause grave injury to your own body. You feel sorry for a head of the Council, the only symbol of power our society seems to have, because you think he’s powerless. You are running an unholy amount of risks with your life.”
“Why don’t you just ask your question?”
“Epp,” Matthew said, the volume of his voice dying, leaving only edge and wonder, “just how powerful are you?”
Epp was holding his cane loosely in his hands, which were clasped at his waist. He smiled, but it was sad, and he stared out at the dawn slowly seeping over the buildings across the trees. “How can you measure something that you are unable to test?”
“Are you doing all this to challenge yourself?”
“No,” Epp answered immediately, dispelling any possible doubt as to the answer. “I’m doing all this because I think I have more to teach than most. I have a duty to this world to impart as much of what I’ve learned as possible.”
“But you…” Matthew trailed off, exhausted. “How can you throw so many things up in the air? Aren’t you worried that you’ll drop one? You’ve already got so much power under your belt, aren’t you afraid that you’ll lose instead of gain?”
Epp only tapped the tip of his cane a few times against the gutter and continued to stare out over the park. “Power is like life. You’ll learn that if you cherish it too tightly you strangle out of it everything you’re trying to protect.” Another gust of wind kicked over the roof and Epp jacket flapped behind him. “It’s only life.”
Matthew turned to follow Epp’s stare. He watched as the red disc of the sun finally arced over the top of one of the distant buildings. He heard Epp breath in happily. “It’s a new day, Matthew. What would you like to do with it?”
Matthew stared at the sunrise along with Epp and he felt something lingering in the back of his mind. Some sense of power, some sense of wonder at the spinning earth beneath his feet, and a thousand ideas raced through his head of adventures and tasks and lessons he might want to undertake. But none would solidify and he tried to lock at least one image down, to pin down the feelings into one distinct thought, but they only drifted away and he began to get worked up, to chase harder, to want more, until Epp’s words, spoken only a few moments ago, sounded again in his head. And even though it was only seconds ago Matthew knew that those words would be in his head with the same clarity a thousand years from now, the way that only the words of the best of teachers can stay with you. “It’s only life,” Epp had said, and Matthew deflated, and ceased trying to pin down the dreams and wonders and grandiose plans and he simply let them be. And for the moment he was at peace.
He reached up and scratched the back of his head. “You think there’s a diner around here that serves scrapple?”
“A noble pursuit; I think we might be able to dig one up,” Epp said. “Follow.” Epp turned and stepped off the edge of the roof, his body hovering, wavering, in mid air before disappearing.
Matthew took one last look at the sun, a whole disc in the sky now, already having cleared the edge of the building. He heard the traffic light beneath his feet clunking as it changed from red to green. Then he turned and walked after Epp, his body disappearing as well.
—–
Click here to buy Probability Angels now!
Or click here to read Part 4.
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Zzzzzzzzzzzz.
October 30, 2007 by josephdevon · Leave a Comment
One of the stranger aspects of this blog is that when I’ve got tons to comment on about a story, that basically means that I’ve got zero time to post on here because I’ve got to write. I could regale you with such tales right now about how I’m completely freaking out, how I’ve dumped the storyline I originally had and substituted a free flowing time frame for reasons that are somewhat beyond me at this point. How as late as this afternoon I was still deciding on my plot. I could talk about how I’m currently debating between slogging through another few thousand words or getting some sleep and getting up early to try to leave myself a manageable amount left to write tomorrow night. I could go on and on about these things but I can’t. I’ve got to go write. Or go sleep. Wish me luck.
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Panic and a pleasant Sunday.
October 29, 2007 by josephdevon · 1 Comment
I really don’t have a ton to say nor a ton of time to say it in. To be honest I’m not completely recovered from New Orleans and all conscious thought is being dumped into assembling this week’s story which is going…well let’s not talk about this week’s story.
Instead I’ll just drop on here to mention that over at Inspiration Bit, Vivien has been kind enough to feature my story “Private Showing” in her weekly series “A Bit of Literature.” Basically, every Sunday Vivien has been posting a different short story, varying her authors to include a nice broad sampling of the short story craft as well as pursuing her own interests in philosophy and art. She’s ranged from Hemingway to Thomas Wolfe to Capek. It’s always interesting to see what she’ll pick each week and for a bit of Sunday night reading you could certainly do worse. Having grown to enjoy her column I inquired if she was interested in maybe featuring a current author and, well, there I am.
Seeing my name on her page was a nice bit of peacefulness in what is quickly becomming a week filled with nothing but panic over my deadline.
And, that being said, I really need to get back to writing.
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Feeling quesy from the Big Easy.
October 28, 2007 by josephdevon · Leave a Comment
New Orleans…is insane. I should never be allowed to spend three days in a city where you can gamble, drink in the street and eat deep fried sausage. This post is going to be very short because my hangover is so bad it’s basically a separate entity that’s living inside me.
I did not come up with anything stunning and new to structure this week’s story around. And I’m very much out of time. So this week’s story, which is another entry into the world of Matthew and Epp, might come across as out of place or sort of pointless. There’s no central melody, it’s just a bunch of noise. Don’t get me wrong, I think it might be very pretty noise, most likely entertaining noise…but there’s no…how do I explain this?
You know when you’re listening to an album and there are some songs that are clearly hits? They stand on their own perfectly fine? And then there are songs that are less self contained, they’re nice and all but listening to them out of the context of the album seems odd. They really only work best when the whole album is taken into account. I think this story will be like one of those songs.
Of course, I have no idea what might happen once I get into the thick of things so I should probably just shut up and go write.
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Talking from beyond the grave.
October 25, 2007 by josephdevon · Leave a Comment
Okay. So I’m not dead. But I am nowhere near a computer right now as this posts. It’s a work of writing pre-packaged and set to go off Thurday night. Whooooooo….spooky!
I didn’t want to miss a day. Not that I have anything stunning to say. Just to explain why, wherever in New Orleans I am right now, I probably have a stomach ache.
I feel like this story is getting very wobbly. Actually, that’s not true. It’s okay as far as it goes. It’s just that since these Matthew and Epp stories are all starting to fall into one larger story, it’s getting difficult to make each one of them stand out. Things need to be introduced and actions need to be taken that will come around to fruition later on. But that means there might be some…intermediary stories that aren’t exactly gangbusters on their own. Which I don’t like. Each story should be gangbusters. Or should at least contain a story in and of itself. Which is where I’m getting into trouble.
I’ll put it this way. I’m finding it hard to write a sequence of stories and not chapters. Which means I need to flesh out more of an arc for the current work. Which means I need to let the hamster run and run and run on the wheel in the back of my head. Which means I’ll always be a little nervous that he isn’t going to run far enough and come up with something before the deadline. Which means my stomach hurts. While I’m on vacation.
The things I do for you people.
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In my mind, I’m already gone.
October 24, 2007 by josephdevon · Leave a Comment
Okay. So I’ve got nothing. I really have no ability at the moment to sit here and write pithy things in this blog. I could stretch and come up with some lame metaphor about e-books and how they remind me of dolphins or something but I don’t think that’s going to cut it. My brain is pretty much switched off. I’m going to New Orleans tomorrow for a bachelor party and I think my mind decided that it’s vacation time already. Which means a not very interesting blog post for today, which isn’t so bad. What might be a problem is if I haven’t written enough of this week’s story yet, because the odds of me getting much done tomorrow morning are sort of slim and I don’t get back till Sunday and this could cause all sorts of problems. This is, I’m realizing now, the longest I’ll be away from a computer since I’ve started this project. Oh well. We’ll see what happens.
I did do one cool thing tonight. I watched about eight million hours of House, M.D.
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I can’t believe I need a cheat sheet.
October 23, 2007 by josephdevon · Leave a Comment
The feeling that I’m repeating myself is back. This, I hope, is only natural considering I’m diving into the same set of characters for the third time in a row. It is, however, raising all sorts of questions that I’ve never really thought about. Like how to describe these characters. I already did that once. And I think I got it pretty well. Am I supposed to come up with all new ways to describe them? I mean, on the face of it that isn’t so hard to do. But to describe them in a completely new way with any sort of poetry is a little ridiculous. I got it as close as I could to perfect the first time around, I need to try and do that again? Can I just cut and paste the old descriptions?
I mean, I guess some of the characters are going to slowly change through the progression of these stories, so I can focus on that more. But the basic underlying “This is what this guy looks like” description that I usually dash off when I first have a moment in the story to breath, those aren’t coming along so well. Right now my plan is this: go ahead and make something up on the fly, but if it happens to sound an awful lot like the first descriptions I gave of these people, I’m not going to lose sleep over it.
There’s also the fun notion that I don’t remember what I wrote. I actually have both “Second Choice” and “Three Lessons” printed out and sitting on my desk for reference. Which is just weird. I didn’t write these stories too long ago and usually I’m pretty good with stuff like this, you sort of need to keep a lot of things in your head while writing an entire book, but I think slipping two completely new stories in between outings in Matthew and Epp’s world has the effect of wiping the slate clean, or at the very least running a damp towel across some parts of the slate. Especially with some of the (for now) more secondary characters.
Anyway. Things are creeping along. I’m curious now to know how this is all going to turn out.
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Flexing my no frills texting skills
October 22, 2007 by josephdevon · Leave a Comment
I use my phone to text. A lot. I’ve mentioned this before but it’s sort of sad how far I’ve strayed from using my cell phone as anything but an elaborate texting device. I discovered a few weeks ago that if I look straight ahead and sort of refuse to concentrate on anything that I can text while walking with rather astounding accuracy in both tasks. And I use an old-school phone. Just nine numbers, a star and a pound sign. I contest that this is a good thing for me. I’m not real sure how to back that up. But I swear it’s true.
We’ll gloss over the whole “over the past five thousand years humanity has moved from an oral tradition to a written one so clearly there’s a large advantage to this” thing. We’ll just move onto Google texts. If you don’t know, you can text questions to Google and they’ll answer them. You just send a text to G-O-O-G-L (466-45). It’s a little crude but you can get some decent information out of them. If you type “Define” at the start of your text it usually works best. Or, if you’re savvy like me, you can just type “D” and then whatever it is you want information on.
Granted, it’s nice to be able to tell instantly who wrote songs from the eighties (text “D Sunglasses at Night” to 466-45) but that’s not what I’m driving at. What I really use it for is improving my vocabulary. Or at least that’s the selling point I use when people tell me that texting is rotting my brain. When I used to come across I word I didn’t know while I was reading I used to think about getting up and finding a dictionary, look across the room at my bookshelf, sigh, and then go back to reading and hope that the word wasn’t too important. Now I grab my phone out of my pocket, text Google for a definition, then go back to reading. A few seconds later my phone beeps and I have my definition. Google is making me smarter. I swear it is.
Although not smart enough to understand the thinking behind the T9 programmers. Sorry for another brief texting tutorial, but if you don’t know what this is it’s a texting program that sort of guesses what word you are trying to type. You just push each key once per letter, rather than pressing each key to cycle through letters, and your phone spits out the words that can be formed. So if you press 2-6-3 the word “And” automatically pops up. And if you cycle through the word “Cod” appears, also, apparently, able to be formed by those numbers. Fair enough. What baffles me is why, when I try to type, “Freaking,” as in, “This post is freaking weird,” my phone spits out one and only one word: Freakhog. Granted, I can go back and manually enter the word I need, but, what the hell? What dictionary did they download into my phone? And then there’s, “Blowout.” When I type that in my phone obviously thinks I’m trying to type in “Clowntv.”
Like I said, I type fast. And it’s improving my vocabulary. Problem is, when those two functions collide I sometimes found I’ve pressed send on a text without thinking about what I actually wrote and I wind up trying to say things like, “That party last night was a freaking blowout.” (okay, never in my life have I ever even thought a string of words anywhere close to that but you understand what’s coming) Only what comes out is, “That party last night was a freakhog clowntv.”
Maybe texting isn’t so good.
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They’re back…again
October 21, 2007 by josephdevon · Leave a Comment
Because my life isn’t complicated enough I think it’s about to become official that the stories of Matthew and Epp will grow over the course of this project into their own book. I don’t want to officially make it official, not yet. I’m not sure why. Fear mainly. But a larger story for them is starting to fall into place in my head and if they pop up every third story or so I think it’ll work out just fine. Assuming all the gaps I have get filled in. I’m sure they will.
At any rate, I’ve got this week’s story. I’m not too too worried about that (yet), but this new aspect of the project has all sorts of other permutations. Like how to organize these stories so they’re together. I think I can just change the category titles so that “Second Choice” becomes “Part One: Second Choice.” And then “Three Lessons” becomes “Part Two: Three Lessons.” Which actually has me laughing out loud right now. I sort of dug myself into a bit of a hole by starting to name the stories in sequence. I’ve decided not to continue that tradition. It was cute while it lasted but I was never in love with “Second Choice” as a title and to force myself to come up with numbers for titles for the next…nine or so stories that take place in this world is just silly. For starters, it’s all sorts of confusing as it is because the first story is the “Second” story. Plus, I mean two and three were sort of easy, but six? Seven? Nine? Forget it. I’d be locking myself in some pretty stupid titles and I think that there will be far far far better titles to be had for these tales.
Although who knows. Maybe I’m completely wrong and things will just sort of fall into place. I’ve been wrong once or twice before.
My point here, though, is that they’re back. Matthew and Epp are once again the centerpiece of this week’s story. Lord help me.
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Eight Short Stories Down
October 18, 2007 by josephdevon · Leave a Comment
So eight are gone. Out of twenty-six. That leaves…drum roll…eighteen left. Damn. That doesn’t seem like a lot, does it. Although eight doesn’t seem like a lot and I’ve run myself all sorts of ragged doing that many. So maybe I should shut my mouth.
Still. I don’t know why but for some reason reaching story number nine seems like a big landmark in my head. Is twenty-six divisible by nine or something? That…really seems like the type of thing I should be able to work out in my head.
Okay, I’m back, turns out it isn’t. Anyway. Something about this number makes me think this is going to be a good one. Nine. It just has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?
Of course, if everything over the next two weeks is as pointless as this post then maybe we won’t be breaking any records. Whatever. Eight stories down. I get to just sit back and enjoy tonight.
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