Chapter Forty-Eight: Adrift V Swimming

Chapter Forty-Eight 

Adrift V Swimming

There are times in your life that you are swimming towards goals and dreams, and there are times when you are caught in the riptide of life and you flounder adrift and go whither or thither at the universe’s whim.  Consider Edmond Dantes, the titular here of The Count of Monte Cristo.  Edmond makes his plans: a captaincy, a wedding, a happy family life.  The riptide comes along, and Edmond is swept away to prison though innocent, held in some tide pool for a decade or more, until he dares swim again.  This time, however, his dreams are darker, and his goal is revenge.

Both Jill and I, ended up in Albany, at the universe’s whim.  She, after her dreams of New Themyscira came crashing down, as sandcastles in the waves.  She didn’t decide to move to Albany, it’s just that there wasn’t anywhere else to go.  No one else would take her in, except Jackie.  She took the first job that would take her, so she ended up at the auto parts store.  She waited on the governor a couple of times, which was neat, I guess.  All that was the work of the tide.  Just like me.  I got my ass kicked by the Golden Speedster at Washington Park, and was taken in by Jill and Jackie.  The tide.  Sometimes, though, the tide isn’t as random as it seems.  Sometimes the tide has plans of its own.  Life is a battle between you and tide.  Sometimes, you swim.  Sometimes, you’re adrift.

Jill had decided it was about time to start swimming again.  I was coming around that that idea as well.  But what did the tide think of our plans?

(c)Copyright 2020 Diana Hignutt

Chapter Forty-Seven: Apocalypse Incorporated

Chapter Forty-Seven

Apocalypse Incorporated

All single goal algorithms will lead to destruction.  It is, very simply, the nature of things.  Just like Mickey’s water-carrying brooms from the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” portion of Fantasia.  Or Nick Bostrom’s Paperclip Machine (or Universal Paperclips, the computer game that seems to be based on Bostrom’s thought experiment).  Now imagine an ever-increasing number of economic engines designed to convert scarce resources and labor into profit.  Short term profit, because investors like that best.  So, you release a million economic Frankenstein’s Monsters on the world.  What did you think was going to happen?  Stupid fucks.

Our company was different than everybody else’s.  We got rich destroying capitalism.  And destroying the world.  You’d be surprised how much money there is in destroying the world.  And capitalism.  I know, it seems, counterintuitive. 

(c) Copyright 2020 Diana Hignutt

Chapter Forty-Six: Close to the Edge

Chapter Forty-Six

Close to the Edge

I hadn’t even bothered to take my super suit off.  I was on the folding chair, Jill and Jackie on the couch.  I had the bong, having just blown out my hit.  Peanut Butter Cookie strain tasted just like goddamn peanut butter.  How?  We had the Pandora running on the tv, and Yes’ 1972 epic, “Close to the Edge” was playing.  It was just starting.  The nature sounds built up and then the chaotic, jumble of notes and percussion exploded manically into the song proper.

“What’s wrong, Alex?” asked Jackie.  She knew me.

Jill grabbed the bong out of my hands, as I was about to explain my mood.  “It’s not a microphone,” she said.

“The shit I saw tonight,” I said.

“Like what?” Jackie inquired.  Jill took a hit off the bong.

“Nemo tricked Zorro into figuring out Platinum Man’s weakness for Mirsk.  Then fucking Russian murdered him.”  I spoke evenly and plainly.

“I thought he was invulnerable, or something.” Jill said, blowing out her hit.

Steve Howe’s lead introduced the theme in a clean, light tone.

“Fuck, dude!” Jackie exclaimed.  “No, killing!  Remember?”

“I didn’t have anything to do with it.  I just watched that shit go down.” I turned to Jill.  “Yeah, so did I. Apparently not”

“You couldn’t have run him out of there?” Jill wondered.

I was speechless for a moment.  Why would I even consider something like that?  And have the Secret Society of Supervillains on my ass?  The Faster-Than-Light Assassin was making things hard enough for me as it was.  I didn’t need that kind of heat.

“Why would I?” I demanded.  “What has that pompous fucker ever done for me?”

“He’s saved the planet from invasion twice.  Stopped a world-ending nuclear war.  I’m pretty sure, he’s saved you personally once or twice, if I recall correctly.” Jill listed matter-of-factly.

“That’s his goddamned job.”  That’s all I had.

Look, I felt terrible about it, obviously.  The guy was a righteous douche, but he didn’t deserve to be beaten to death.  I noticed even the Prankster looked away at the end.

There was a feeling I was feeling.  I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.  I was close to something.  Something inside me.  An understanding or something.

I took another hit of peanut butter cookies from the bong.

I was close to something.

Close to the edge.

(c) Copyright 2020 Diana Hignutt

Chapter Forty-Five: Zorro V Platinum Man

Chapter Forty-Five

Zorro V Platinum Man

It happened about a year after Prankster had killed Wonder Boy.  Zorro lost his shit.  He started killing his villains, sometimes torturing them first.  At first the Hero’s Guild tried to ignore the news out of Chicago, but even the world’s mightiest heroes couldn’t overlook their own member’s ever-growing death count.  Will told me that he was ashamed to be a part of that organization after the meeting where they debated what was to be done with their rogue colleague.  Too many members wanted to keep ignoring that numbers.  They pointed out that these were very bad people Zorro was killing.  That, he was, essentially saving lives proactively by killing them.  That Zorro was just too valuable, as far as his tactical knowledge, his detective skills, and, frankly, his considerable financial resources and donations made in his name.  Fucking money-grubbing fascists.  Will quit.  Good for him.  It was the right thing to do, I later assured him.

Anyway, after the Golden Speedster left in his righteous huff, the remaining Guild members decided that Platinum Man would be dispatched to have a word with their founding member’s difficult PR situation.  And this set up that famous conflict that took over the media all over the world.  The ancillary philosophical debate raged on in the newspaper editorials, and blogs.  Zorro had to be stopped.  Maybe, Zorro was right after all, maybe, some villains needed killing? Maybe the ends did justify the means?  In the end, a lot of people outed themselves as authoritarian assholes, but that’s fucking history for you.  But, in the end, a crazy dude, who had been on an obsessive quest for sublimated revenge, discarded the pretense of his heroic code of conduct, and his always thin grasp on reality, and started going nuts on people.  It was always just a matter of time with that guy, right?

We’re all seen that Time Magazine cover, right?  You know the one.  There’s Zorro standing his ground defiantly in his battle armor in front of the ruins of a bombed-out nightclub.  There’s Platinum Man levitating just above him, his cape fluttering majestically.  Where exactly was the photographer standing to get that picture?  Dude had balls.  Looking at that picture, you could tell that shit was about to explode.  He had to feel that through the lens.

That was the fight that changed everything.  It changed the world in ways few people could sense.  And it was all part of Admiral Nemo’s plan.  The plan.  I knew as much of the plan as anyone, and even I was still surprised to see it work out perfectly in every detail, like a complex maze of dominos falling in amazing precision.  In the end, one hero was dead, and the other side-lined, the Guild in tatters, and the last impediment removed.  Just thinking about it, I’m moved to give a standing ovation.  Encore!

(c) Copyright 2020 Diana Hignutt

Chapter Forty-Four: Proust

Chapter Forty-Four

Proust

There’s this old French book, by this guy Proust.  Remembrances of Things Past, I think it’s called.  In it, Proust, paints vivid pictures of his every memory, from childhood on, in painstaking, lavish detail.  He would recall the hour he spent as a child playing in a sunbeam streaming through a window.  How the dust hung there, or rose up, in that magic light.  How the hands of the clock crawled across its face to mark the passage of time, somehow both imperceptibly and obviously.  Something, like that.  I’ve never read it.  My book is the opposite of that one.

But memories were starting to flow.  I was sitting on the sofa in the apartment in Albany (Jill was at work and Jackie was doing transcriptions at her desk in their bedroom).  I was scrolling through Netflix trying to figure out what to watch.  And for some reason I remembered a moment:  I was on the couch at my father’s house in South Jersey, alone, watching Hogan’s Heroes on the big, old television set.  I was eating Doritos and a fried Spam sandwich.  Schultz, as always knew nothing.  Klink was vaguely suspicious.  Hogan’s eyes twinkled.  A crunch and a zesty splash of Nacho cheese flavor exploded on my tongue.  I smelled the familiar smells of my dad’s house. I was safe and comfortable.  A blue jay flew by the window with a call.  The sun glistened on its wings.  The telephone in the kitchen rang with alarm.  Not the new kind of phone ring, this phone was seriously old school…rotary.  I remember being pulled out of my comfortable meal by the phone’s urgency.  And that detail of memory pulled me out of my reverie.  And I was back in Albany, on the couch.






(c)Copyright 2020 Diana Hignutt

Chapter Forty-Three: Epitaph

Chapter Forty-Three

Epitaph

Lyrics to King Crimson’s song Epitaph, by Peter Sinfield.  You should listen to this song now.  Greg Lake’s voice is the perfect delivery method for these lyrics.

The wall on which the prophets wrote

Is cracking at the seams

Upon the instruments of death

The sunlight brightly gleams

When every man is torn apart

With nightmares and with dreams

Will no one lay the laurel wreath

When silence drowns the screams

Confusion will be my epitaph

As I crawl a cracked and broken path

If we make it, we can all sit back and laugh

But I fear, tomorrow, I'll be crying

Yes, I fear, tomorrow, I'll be crying

Yes, I fear, tomorrow, I'll be crying

Between the iron gates of fate

The seeds of time were sown

And watered by the deeds of those

Who know and who are known

Knowledge is a deadly friend

If no one sets the rules

The fate of all mankind, I see

Is in the hands of fools

The wall on which the prophets wrote

Is cracking at the seams

Upon the instruments of death

The sunlight brightly gleams

When every man is torn apart

With nightmares and with dreams

Will no one lay the laurel wreath

When silence drowns the screams

Confusion will be my epitaph

As I crawl, a cracked and broken path

If we make it, we can all sit back and laugh

But I fear, tomorrow, I'll be crying

Yes, I fear, tomorrow, I'll be crying

Yes, I fear, tomorrow, I'll be crying

Crying, crying

Yes, I fear, tomorrow, I'll be crying

Yes, I fear, tomorrow, I'll be crying

Yes, I fear, tomorrow, I'll be crying

Crying

Chapter Forty-One: Morphic Resonance

Chapter Forty-One

Morphic Resonance

I do apologize for the fact that some of these chapters in my story are merely short essays on various, seemingly unrelated, topics.  Everything is connected.  And to really understand what happens, you have to have some basic conception of a lot of different obscure things and ideas.  Morphic Resonance is another of these ideas.  After all, you need all the pieces to put the puzzle that is my story together.

Morphic Resonance is a neat idea.  It suggests that the laws of nature are more like habits.  That that similar forms and activities affect subsequent forms and activities through a mechanism of fields that transcend locality.  That’s why test scores tend to trend higher over time.  Why once chemists first crystalize a substance, it is then easier to crystalize in other labs around the world, and why a doomed man would have certain similarities across various universes.

The idea is considered pseudoscience, at best, but I know someone who took over the world using the idea, so…

(c) Copyright 2020 Diana Hignutt