Wednesday, August 24, 2005

:::Timmy, Jimmy, and the Beast of Tagmart:::

“I think we should break their skulls open.”

“Quiet, Jimmy.” He crouched and picked up a rumpled lady’s shirt that was lying on the floor. His eyes jerked from point to point until they found a shirtless hanger on the clothing rack beside him. His right eye narrowed and his left opened wider.

“Evil,” he said.

“Break their skulls,” said Jimmy.

“Shhhhh…”

Carefully, he draped the shirt over the hanger, smoothed out the wrinkles, and placed it back on the rack. From somewhere ahead came a high pitched laugh. He followed the sound, his scrawny stick-like body moving quietly through the bright colored summer collection.

He almost caught up with them in the blue jeans section, but he had to stop when he saw the stone washed pair of Lees that had been tossed haphazardly on top of the Half Off display.

“Evil…”

“Make them pay,” said Jimmy.

The trail got cold when he reached the aisle at the edge of Lady’s Clothing. He stood there for a long minute, listening. Then from across the aisle, in the shoe section, he heard that hideous laugh again. He hurried across the open space and turned down one of the narrow rows between the seven-foot-tall, double-sided shelves that held the shoes.

“Girl, look at these. My mom wears these!”

“Yuck! How can you stand it?”

“Right! I mean, doesn’t she see she’s embarrassing me?”

“Parents are so selfish!”

He could hear them just on the other side of the shelves. He pulled a box of athletic shoes down and placed it carefully on the floor beside him. Then he peered at them through the gap, but the shoes on their side made it hard to see exactly what they were doing.

“Oh my God! Look at how huge these are?”

“They’re like clown shoes!”

“I bet you could stuff an entire shoe that’s my size inside this one.”

“Try it!”

She reached over and removed a box of shoes from the shelves. Staring at her through the gap was a pale, frowning face with one eye opened wider than the other.

“Evil,” it said in a quiet voice, and then in an entirely different one it yelled “Smash your skulls!”

“Aaaghhhh!” The girl screamed, dropped the box of shoes on the floor, grabbed her friend’s arm and raced for the exit.

He frowned at them as they raced away. Then he replaced the box of shoes on the shelves on his side and walked around to do the same thing on the other side.

“You should have broken their heads, Timmy.”

“Shut up, Jimmy.”


*****

At 10:00pm, Timmy swiped his ID card through the Tagmart computer in the break room and logged himself out from work. As he walked back through the store, he struggled with the concept.

“Off the clock…off the clock…off the clock…”

As he passed electronics, he spotted a DVD that was in the wrong section. He started to turn towards it, but then he stopped.

“Off the clock…off the clock…”

“Find’em and kill’em!”

“No, Jimmy – Off the clock!”

Ignoring the grumblings of Jimmy’s voice in his head, Timmy turned back toward the front and started walking again.

When he was about twenty feet from the front door, a very large man – over seven feet tall and with a waistline like a hula-hoop – came trudging past, bumping Timmy on the shoulder. The man was so massive that the force of this minor impact spun Timmy completely around in a circle.

“Timothy! I need to speak with you, Sir!”

Mr. Burnett, the store manager came running up, just as Timmy was recovering his balance.

“Did you scare two teenage girls today?”

Timothy cocked his head to one side. “Maybe… What did they look like?”

“The ones that ran screaming from the shoe department…”

“Yes.”

“Timothy, we’ve talked about this. If you scare away the customers, the store will lose money, and I will have to fire you. Understand?”

“I didn’t mean to scare them, Mr. Burnett, but they were throwing merchandise on the floor!”

“It doesn’t matter. Look, Timothy, just don’t do it again, or I’m going to have to fire you, okay?”

“Yes, Mr. Burnett.”

“Thank you, Timothy.” He hurried off towards the office.

Timmy headed for the curb outside where the “New Hope for Life” van was waiting to take him back to the institution where he lived. Jimmy must have decided to take a nap, because Timmy could hear snoring noises in his head now.

Jimmy was like that. He did whatever he wanted to – right then if you let him. That was why he couldn’t come out and why Timmy had to keep control. Jimmy stayed on the inside so that no one got hurt, and Timmy worked the outside, keeping them functional enough that they didn’t have to stay at the institution one hundred percent of the time. The arrangement was a good one. Even though there were lots of evil people who threw stuff on the floor, working at Tagmart was better than playing checkers at the institute all day.

“Huh? Whazat?”

“Shh…go back to sleep Jimmy,” he whispered.

“Hrmm…smash’em…hmm…”


*****

The next morning, Timmy woke up at exactly 8:00am, just as he did every morning. Because it was Saturday, he watched the clock carefully until it read 8:30. It was important to Ms. Watson that he try to sleep in on Saturdays, especially since he only worked half a day. They had wanted him to take the whole day off, but Timmy had begged and pleaded until Ms. Watson had finally gotten the manager to compromise and allow him to work half of it.

After breakfast he went to the Rec Room. It was kind of like a big living room, with some sofas, chairs, card tables, and a TV. Sitting on the floor with a large book in her lap and a spread of multicolored polyhedral dice on the carpet in front of her, was Lori. She looked up from the dice when she saw him enter.

“Timmy! Come over here!”

He walked over and sat down on the floor next to her.

“Hi Lori.”

“Hi Timmy.”

“Crunch their bones like cereal!”

“Hi Jimmy.”

“What are you looking at?” Timmy asked.

She looked around, making sure that no one else was listening. “A mystic tome…”

Timmy nodded and looked at the pages. There was a lot of text, a table of numbers, and a color drawing of a man with a shotgun facing down a dragon. At the top of each page the words “Modern Magic Role Playing Game” were written in stylized letters.

“Someone left it on the shelf at the bookstore in the game section. They must have wanted me to find it. I think maybe it was the Order of Hermes – like, maybe my father sent it. He’s not allowed to contact me directly because of the rules of the Order, but maybe he left this for me to find so that I could start training to become a secret guardian of magic and truth, like him!”

“So what does it say?”

“It’s a handbook for discovering the hidden history of the world. If you learn the secret formulas and master the dice you can determine the outcome of events!”

Timmy’s eyebrows rose high up on his forehead. “Like what kind of events?”

“That’s why I called you over here. I was practicing. First, I had to describe you on this piece of paper.” She pointed at a photocopied page that said “Character Sheet” at the top in big letters. “Then I made a roll to determine what you are going to encounter in your future.”

“What was it?”

“A twelve!”

“Whoa…so what does that mean?”

“According to the mystic tables…it’s some kind of monster!”

“Smash its skull! Kill it!” A crazed, wide-eyed look flashed across Timmy’s face.

“Quiet, Jimmy!” said Timmy’s voice.

“Monster!”

“Shh…” said Lori. “Listen to him, Jimmy. You can’t let them know that you’re on to them.”

“Who?” Timmy asked.

“The Dark Pact… They’re the archenemies of the Order of Hermes. They set monsters loose in the world to aid their plans.”

This time Timmy and Lori both glanced nervously around the room.

“So what happens to me?” Timmy asked.

“I’m not sure.” She flipped through the pages until she got to a page with the word “Combat” written across it in letters that were meant to look like blood. “I haven’t made it through that part of the secret teachings yet.”

“What should I do?”

“Be careful. Something is coming…”


*****

“Timothy, please come to Mr. Burnett’s office. Timothy, come to Mr. Burnett’s office, please.” The PA system in the store always repeated things. Timmy used to wonder if there were two people that had to give each message.

“We’re probably in trouble,” said Timmy.

Jimmy made an indistinct grumbling noise.

Timmy picked up his broom and started toward the office.

When he got there, Mr. Burnett was waiting with the security guard – definitely not a good sign. Timmy started sweating. His eyes jerked back and forth between the big guy in grey and the annoyed looking manager. Inside his head, Jimmy had gone dangerously quiet.

“Yes, Mr. Burnett?”

“Timmy, what did we talk about yesterday?”

“I’m not supposed to scare the customers, even when they’re evil.”

“That’s right.” He leaned forward over his desk. “So why, Timothy, are scared customers leaving the store without buying anything?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Burnett.”

“How many times have I…” He stopped in mid sentence. “What?”

“I said, I don’t know, Mr. Burnett.”

“Okay, let me put this in a different way. Have you scared any customers today?”

“No, Mr. Burnett.”

“Really?” he frowned and turned to the monitor on his left hand side. “Alright. You’ve always told me the truth before, so let’s take a look on the security cameras and see what we can find out.”

Timmy watched the screen as it jumped to different views of the store. Everything looked normal to him. It was a Saturday, so there were lots of people aimlessly pushing carts around, picking up things and putting them down again.

“There! Over by electronics… Who is that guy?” Mr. Burnett waved the security guard over for a closer look and pointed at the screen. “That really big guy there just said something to that couple and they walked away without their cart. Go down there and have a talk with that guy.”

“What should I say?” asked the guard.

“Just ask him if everything is okay. Be helpful. Stick with him until he leaves the store, and make sure he doesn’t scare any of the other customers, but don’t let him start an argument with you. Can you do that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Thanks, Dale.”

Once the guard had moved, Timmy got a good look at the monitor. The guy that Mr. Burnett was worried about was the same huge man that had bumped into him yesterday. Watching him, Timmy felt his head began to throb. He rubbed at his temples, trying to make it go away.

“Here we go,” said Mr. Burnett.

On the screen, Dale the security guard had just walked up. Dale was a big guy but he looked like somebody’s kid brother next to this customer. The two men faced each other. They could tell Dale was saying something, but there was no audio. The customer didn’t seem to say anything back. Dale said something else. Then he turned and walked off.

“Hey,” said Burnett. “Where is he going? I told him to stay with that guy!” He clicked the mouse a few times and the image jumped to an overhead shot from the front of the store. They watched Dale, much smaller from this perspective, as he headed straight for the exit and outside into the parking lot.

“Great!” said Burnett. “That’s just great!” He slumped back into his chair and frowned at the screen.

“Should I go back to work now?” Timmy asked.

“Huh? Uh, yeah Timmy. Go back to work.”

“Do you want me to talk to that man?”

“No. Absolutely not. I’m going to talk to him myself.” He stood up, straightened his shirt, forced his face into an even sterner look, and walked out of the office.

Timmy looked around the now empty room, and then he lifted his broom and turned for the door.

“…grrr…tear his nose off!”

“It’s okay, Jimmy. We’re not in trouble.”

Outside the office, a short hallway led past a conference and training room and back out to the store proper. There was a bench for customers to sit on just to the left of the hallway that he came out of, and he stopped to clean off the trash that someone had left there.

“Evil…”

“…Grrr…”

A minute later, as he was finishing, Mr. Burnett walked up, heading past Timmy for the office and mumbling something under his breath.

“Did you tell him it’s not okay?” Timmy asked.

“It doesn’t matter. I’ve got to order more stock…got to order it right now…” He didn’t even turn his head to look at Timmy as he marched past at a brisk pace.


*****

“Please, Mommy, can we get it? PLEASE?”

“Alright. Show me which one.”

Timmy pushed his broom to the side as the little girl and her mother moved past him and into the toy aisle he had just finished sweeping. He turned the corner and headed down the next aisle.

“Here it is, Mommy!”

“You want the one with the tiny leopard print purse?”

“Yeah. Her name is Esmeralda. She’s a Chica. Everyone at school is getting them, Mommy. Can I, please?”

“Well, I guess if –”

The voice stopped in mid sentence. Timmy looked up in time to see the girl and her mother walk past his aisle, moving quickly toward the front of the store and not saying a word. He moved cautiously to the end of the shelves and peered around the corner into the aisle they had just left. His left eye opened wide and his right narrowed. In his head, Jimmy let out a warning growl.

Standing near the far end was the huge man from the security tape. He held a pink toy package in his hand, and he was leaning down to examine the shelf where the toy had come from.

Timmy’s head began to hurt again.

“…grrr…” Jimmy growled before Timmy could stop him.

The big man stiffened and Timmy jerked his head back around the corner. He waited a few seconds, listening, but there was no sound from the other aisle. Carefully, he peaked again. The big man was still there. He placed the package on the shelf and grinned in a way that showed his teeth. Then he turned away from Timmy, walked to the end of the aisle, and turned right.

Broom in hand, Timmy walked to the shelf with the Chica dolls and stopped. The package was back where it was supposed to be, undamaged. Everything seemed okay – except those people had wanted to buy it and they hadn’t.

“Smash’em?” Jimmy asked, uncertain.

“Hmm…I don’t know Jimmy. I don’t know…”

Timmy spent the last two hours of his shift watching the huge man from a distance. The man walked all over the store, stopping anyone he encountered. Each time, he said nothing, only staring at them, and each time, they would put down whatever they had been carrying, often leaving whole shopping carts unattended. These the man left where they were, so that by the time Timmy was supposed to leave, there were half full shopping carts all over the store.

“This isn’t right, Jimmy,” he said.

“…hate’em!”

“It’s like everyone is going crazy.”

Reluctantly he made his way to the curb outside where the New Hope for Life van was waiting. After he got in the van, he turned and looked out the window. As the van pulled away, he saw the open sign switch off. The doors were being locked by one of the stockers, but the big man was still somewhere inside.


*****

Three days went by, each one worse than the last. Fewer people were coming to Tagmart, and those that did weren’t buying anything. At the same time, the stockers were cramming everything that they could onto the shelves, so the store seemed bloated with consumer goods. Timmy noticed something else as well – the merchandise was beginning to look used. The clothes were wrinkled – only a little, but he noticed. There were hundreds of little scratches and scuff marks on things. He spent hours trying to rub them all out with a rag.

Through all of this, the huge man walked, running his gaze over every shelf and display. No one challenged him. The employees seemed not to notice him unless they were in his way. Then they moved aside without a word.

Once, Timmy tried asking Mr. Burnett about him.

“A big man? Well I don’t know about that, but tell me this, Timmy – how are we going to get more items on the shelves? I’ve covered every inch of display space, but it’s not enough. We need more products! It’s the key to everything!”

Timmy had barely had time to say “I don’t know,” before Mr. Burnett had hurried off again.

To make matters worse, Lori had gone into her room on Saturday afternoon and not come out again. She was the only one that he could talk to about what was going on, and Timmy had hoped that there might even be something in her mystic tome that would be able to explain why everyone at Tagmart was acting strange. He waited anxiously for three evenings but saw no sign of her.

Finally, on the fourth evening, he couldn’t stand it any longer, so he went to see her.

“Lori…are you awake?” Timmy leaned against her door, glancing nervously up and down the hallway. It wasn’t after curfew, or he never would have gotten past the nurse that watched over this area, but he wasn’t used to being in the girls’ wing. It made him nervous.

“Timmy?” said a voice from the other side of the door.

“Yeah.”

The door opened a crack, and Lori eyed him and the hallway around him.

“Are you alone?” she asked.

“Jimmy’s with me.”

“Okay, come in,” she said, opening the door the rest of the way. He stepped in, and she shut the door behind him.

The light inside Lori’s room was dim and tinted red. There were arcane symbols drawn on construction paper and posted all over the walls. A green tapestry with a Celtic knot work design covered the twin bed that was pushed against the left wall, and Timmy could just make out the glow of star shaped stickers on the ceiling.

“Jimmy and I looked for you in the Rec Room,” he said.

“I’ve been laying low.”

“What for?”

“I kept getting this feeling like I was being watched. The doctor said I should up my medication.”

“Let’s smash open his skull!”

“No, Jimmy, the doctors aren’t evil,” Timmy said.

“He thinks it’s my paranoia, but I think it’s different this time. I think the Dark Pact may have found out that I got a mystic tome. So I told the doctor that maybe I just needed to rest for a few days. That’s why I haven’t left my room.”

“Oh.”

“Something happened, didn’t it?” she asked, her forehead creased in a frown.

“Yeah.”

“Tell me about it.”

He did – starting with the security tapes in Mr. Burnett’s office and ending with the way the huge man at the store didn’t seem to ever leave.

“Hmm…” She walked over to her bed, reached inside one of the pillowcases, and pulled out the book and a clear plastic bag that held the dice. She sat down on the bed and started flipping through the book’s pages.

“You never saw him say anything to the people that left?”

“Nope.”

“It sounds like he’s using some kind of mind control.”

“How can he do that?”

“It says in the Creatures section that a lot of monsters can use mind control – at least a little. That’s how most of them survive without being noticed. A long time ago, when humans started banding together and using tools to hunt down the bigger predators, they drove some monsters to near extinction. The ones that survived were the ones that could hide themselves somehow. The ability to hide your true appearance from a human mind was an advantageous evolutionary trait because it kept the human tribes from hunting you down in mass, so the ones that survived were closer to human size and more able to pass themselves off as something else. According to the mystic tome, some of the more powerful monsters can do more than just hide their appearance now.”

“Can they make you do evil things?” Timmy asked, picturing the abandoned shopping carts full of merchandise.

“They can try. Whether or not they succeed depends on how powerful their mind control is and on how strong your mind is. I can predict the results with the dice, but I have to know the mental power scores of everyone involved.”

“How do we get those?”

“Pull out his brain?” suggested Jimmy.

“I think,” she began, the sides of her mouth dimpling as she tapped a finger against her lips, “that all we have to do is find out what type of monster this guy is. Then I can look him up in the mystic tome.”

“How do we do that?” Timmy asked.

She turned and surveyed the room. Then she walked over to a dresser drawer, opened it, and pulled out a blue plastic diving mask with a snorkel attached to it. The clear plastic that the swimmer was supposed to look through was crisscrossed with cracks.

“We’ll need these.”


*****

On a dark residential street, a young girl waited impatiently on the sidewalk across from a quiet one story house. Eventually, another young girl came silently around from the back of the house and crossed the street to meet her.

“It took you long enough!” said Stacey.

“I’m sorry, okay? My mom was watching me like a hawk!” said Tanya.

“Whatever,” said Stacey. She turned and started walking down the street.

Tanya hurried to catch up. “Look, I said I was sorry. Gah!”

“Come off it, Tanya. You’ve been putting me off all week about sneaking out ever since that weird guy at Tagmart scared you.”

As they neared the end of the block, the light from a street lamp illuminated the red in Tanya’s cheeks.

“I can’t help it, Stacey. If you had seen that creepy guy’s face, you would have gotten scared too!”

“Yeah, right.”

“I’m telling you –”

She stopped to listen. A strange whirring noise was getting louder by the second.

“Do you hear that?”

“Yeah, I think…”

They stepped around the corner and stared in terror. Barreling down on them from a few yards away was Timmy, seated atop the handle bars of a speeding bicycle and wearing a cracked scuba mask with a snorkel.

“Crash! Squish! Crush your bones!” yelled Jimmy in warning.

“Aaaghhhh!” the two girls screamed. They scrambled to get out of the way and fell to the ground in a tangle of limbs. The bicycle swerved a little to the left and just barely missed them.

“Watch it!” yelled Lori belatedly as she peddled the bike past them.


Sneaking out of the institution had been easier than Timmy had thought it would be. All they had to do was slip twenty dollars to the security guard at the end of the hall.

“Don’t forget to wear protection,” he had said to Timmy with a wink.

“That’s why I’ve got this,” Timmy had replied, holding up the mask and snorkel. The guard had raised an eyebrow then shaken his head from side to side.

Now, as they flew down a hill heading toward the back of Tagmart, Timmy wondered if it would be enough. Lori had said that since the man had looked the same on the video as he did in person, he was probably strong enough to cover the whole store with a mental command. This command would make your mind think you were seeing a huge man anytime your eyes told it you were seeing…whatever he really was. She thought that if Timmy looked at him through the cracked image of the mask, then maybe the distorted image of whatever he really was would make it past the blanket mind control he was covering the store with.

Lori brought the bike right up to the back service entrance, and Timmy hoped off. The security lights were bright in this part of the lot, but the whole area was very quiet.

“Okay, remember: get a good look at it, and then come back right away so I can figure out what its stats are.”

“Okay,” said Timmy. He pulled his ID card from his pocket and swiped it through the door’s electronic lock. It beeped and the little light on the lock turned green. Timmy pulled it open and started to step through.

“Be careful!” said Lori. Timmy turned back and nodded, the snorkel bumping against his head as he did so. Then he took another step into the building and let the door close behind him.


It was just as quiet inside the store as it had been in the parking lot. Timmy walked down the hallway, past the break room, and out into the store where he stopped, his mouth hanging open.

There was nothing there. He was in the back of the store, standing next to what should have been the house wares section, but there was no merchandise in sight. All he could see was the broken image of empty white shelves. He pushed the mask up to the top of his forehead, but the image only became clearer.

He rushed forward to the end of the row. Across the aisle, in the kids clothing section there was nothing but empty clothing racks. He stepped into the aisle and turned left, walking along the path that made a loop around the store. Everywhere he looked there were only more empty shelves.

When he came to the spot where the aisle that looped around the store intersected with the walkway that crossed through the store’s center, he stopped. His face pinched into a frown, and his eyes began to water.

“Evil…” he said in a chocked whisper.

Every single item that was missing from the shelves and the racks was there, in one massive, disordered pile. Basketballs, lawn chairs, toys, clothing – it had all been thrown together with no regard for the damage any of it was receiving. This was why the clothes looked wrinkled, and this was the source of the hundreds of tiny scuffs and scratches.

In the center of the pile, lying on his side atop the entire Tagmart inventory was the huge man.

Timmy ducked down and prepared to run for it, but the man didn’t move. In fact, he lay completely still except for the steady rise and fall of his massive belly. Timmy stood up again slowly. He wanted to scream in agony at what was being done to the store’s merchandise. His head began to hurt, and inside him, Jimmy had gone very, very still.

Remembering his mission, he reached up and slowly pulled the mask down over his face. Through the cracked plastic lenses the image was scattered, broken into sections that were shifted left, right, up, or down from where they ought to be. He could see the pile, which looked even more like the product of an earthquake, and in distorted, separate pieces he could see the dragon that lay on top of it.

It was only about seven or eight feel long, with scales that were grey, brown, and black in an almost random pattern that reminded Timmy of camouflage. Two short horns protruded from the top of its large head, and a pair of wings stretched part way out over the pile beneath it.

Timmy drew in a long, slow breath and let it out. There was a dragon living in his store.

“Tell Lori,” he whispered to himself. She would know what to do.

He turned to go, but stopped when he noticed a ladies shirt crumpled by his feet.

“Off the clock,” he said in a small voice. Then why are we here, asked another voice inside his head.

He reached down and gently lifted the shirt from the base of the pile. It was still on the hanger. He smoothed the wrinkles as best as he could and hung it on the rack next to him.

Pain erupted at his temples. He cried out. A powerful, deep voice spoke directly to his mind.

“Who the hell gave you permission to touch my hoard?” said the voice.

Timmy looked up. The dragon was awake and staring down at him from the top of the pile.

“Come up here,” it said. The voice was like a rope that grabbed him and pulled. Timmy felt himself moving.

“No!” he cried, as his feet stepped on top of the pile and his legs pushed him forwards. Half walking, half climbing, he made his way toward the dragon. The pain in his head grew worse. He struggled against it, and for a moment, his body stopped moving.

“Not bad, slim, but you’re not strong enough,” it said. The pressure on his mind doubled, and his resistance was washed away. Quickly, he climbed to the top until he stood face to monstrous face with the dragon.

It peered at the cracked mask he wore.

“You’re just all kinds of clever. Take it off and add it to the hoard.”

He did so.

“What’s your name, slim?”

“Timmy,” he said aloud.

“Timmy, I want you to do something,” said the booming voice inside his head.

“I want you to go home, and forget that you ever saw any of this.” Then it did something to his mind. It felt to Timmy like he was being strangled, like his consciousness was being put in a choke hold. He fought against, struggling to stay in control, but the dragon’s mind was just too strong for him. A moment later, everything in his mind seemed to just empty. Timmy had no thoughts. He just stood there, waiting.

“Now, do like I said, and go home,” the dragon commanded.

Timmy turned and took a step away. Then he stopped. Slowly he turned back around to face the dragon.

“Timmy, I told you to go home,” said the dragon.

“Timmy’s gone,” said a gravely voice. Jimmy reached down and pulled a heavy iron golf club from the hoard.

“Who are y–”

“Smash your skull!” Jimmy yelled and swung the club.


*****

In the parking lot behind Tagmart, Lori waited anxiously for Timmy to come back. She wondered if she should have gone in with him. Maybe whatever monster was in there had captured him. Maybe –

WAM!

The back door flew open, slamming into the wall. A huge, scaly beast came rushing out. A blue colored fluid dripped from a gash on the side of its head. One of its two horns was broken off in a jagged stump, and one of its wings seemed to be dragging on the ground as it ran. It screamed and ran past her at an incredible speed.

Lori swiveled on the bicycle seat and watched as it disappeared down a dark street.

A moment later, Timmy appeared. He was limping and there was blood dripping from his nose. Blue fluid stained the shirt he wore and dripped from the golf club he leaned on.

“Are you okay, Timmy?”

“Come back and I’ll smash your skull again!” he shouted in the direction the dragon had gone.

“Oh. Hi Jimmy,” she said.

Jimmy looked at her, and then he shook his head like he was clearing it. His expression softened.

“Hi Lori,” said Timmy’s voice. “It was a dragon.”

“I know,” she said. “It’s gone now.”

He nodded. Then he turned to head back into the store.

“We should go back to the institution now,” she said.

“I can’t. I’ve got to put all of this stuff up.”

“Timmy, if we don’t get back there before the guard goes home, we’ll get in major trouble.”

He looked up at her. “I know.” His eyes were on the verge of tears.

She sighed. “What the hell.” She swung down off the bike and walked over to him.

“Thank you, Lori.”

“Don’t mention it.” She put his arm around her shoulder for support on the side where he was limping. “Is there a lot of stuff that needs to be put back?”

“Maybe…what do you consider a lot?”

They shuffled back inside, and the door closed quietly behind them.

posted by D @ 5:28 PM |

Saturday, August 13, 2005

:::The Great Puzzle Part III:::

“Señor, you’ve got one chance to tell me what’s going on, and if I don’t like it, I’m going to throw you in that jail cell for the next week before I ask again.”

I looked up at the police officer. He stared back at me with narrowed eyes, a wooden matchstick clenched between his teeth. He kept it moving from one side of his mouth to the other while he waited for me to confess.

Panic was flooding my blood stream with adrenalin. I wanted to knock over the table in front of me, push past him, and run out the door of this little room and out of the station. I had to stop myself from yelling “I didn’t do anything!” at the top of my lungs.

Almost an hour ago, I had arrived at the post office in San Sebastian (Donostia, it was called in Basque) just in time to Xabier walk out and get into a car. I had rushed to a taxi, pointed at the car, and told the driver in Basque to follow it. Xabier had headed west out of the city with us behind him. But sitting in the back of the cab, I was overcome with exhaustion from the plane ride, and I had drifted off to sleep.

This must have all seemed suspicious to the driver. He followed Xabier’s car all the way to a small town about 15 kilometers down the coast, but when he realized that I was asleep, he turned into the local police station.

Focus, I told myself. Concentrate on what you need to say. Don’t speak in English or in Basque – he works for the government of Spain.

“I was following a man,” I said in Spanish.

“Why?”

For the second time, I found myself trying to think of an excuse for why I was after this man. The police officer watched me closely. His matchstick had stopped moving.

“He’s…engaged to my sister. He seems like a good man, but there have been some rumors that he might be already married. I was following him, because I needed to make sure that he is an honest man.”

The police officer slumped back in his chair with the matchstick once again shifting from side to side. He looked at me and shook his head slowly. Then he stood up and walked to the doorway.

“Is there anything in his bag?” he yelled to someone.

“Nothing of interest,” a voice answered.

“Have they found that car yet?”

“Yeah…”

“Where is it?”

“It’s parked in the street next to Naroa’s Pub.”

The police officer nodded, and then turned back to face me.

“Sneaking around like this is not the way for a man to act. You should go into this pub, buy a couple of pints, and ask him straight up if he is already married. If he says yes, then you hit him once in the jaw and your sister never speaks to him again.” He pulled the matchstick from his mouth and pointed at me with it. “Understand?”

“Yes sir. You are right. I will ask him to his face.” I nodded my head and tried to look determined.

“Come on. I’ll drop you off.”



*****

The street where the police officer dropped me off was little more than an alley. Through the opening at the opposite end I could see the masts of fishing boats. The smell of the ocean was everywhere. I could almost taste the salt in the air. Xabier's car was still parked on the right side, but there was no one in it. Across from it was the entrance to the Naroa’s Pub. The door was made of old thick wooden planks, but it swung easily open.

Inside, thin beams of light cut the edges of the shuttered windows. It was just enough illumination to see the curling tobacco haze which filled the room. A handful of patrons sat near the bar where an older man with a grey mustache was polishing glasses. There was no sign of Xabier.

Everyone turned as I entered. No one smiled. Tiny frown lines appeared at the corner of the barman’s eyes and mouth.

“What do you want?” he said in English. “…to drink,” he added at last.

“Nik kafesne bat.” I’ll have a coffee. The little lines around his eyes and mouth seemed to soften. The patron nearest the bar slouched back against his seat, easing a tension I had felt but not seen.

“Sorry,” he said in Basque. “I thought from your clothes you were a foreigner.”

“I just visited America.”

The bartender nodded and poured me a coffee with milk. The smell of it mixed with the smoke and the faint sweetness of the cider and tickled my nose. I sipped the drink and turned to survey the rest of the room, looking for anything that might tell me where my quarry had gone. The bartender noticed my gaze.

“Are you looking for someone?”

“Xabier.”

Again, he nodded as if it made perfect sense to him.

“His boat is the third one down from here, but you should hurry. I think they are putting out soon.” He motioned with his head over his left shoulder. I nodded back, dropped some bills on the bar, and walked out.

Once outside again, I ran down the narrow street and onto the wooden dock. My pulse quickened as I tried to imagine what I would do now. There was no time to stay back and watch from a distance. The ship was going to leave, and I would have no way to follow.

I strained my eyes searching for the right one. There! I stopped running. I could see several men carrying wooden crates and duffel bags down into the ship. Standing at the prow and poring over a map with a second man was Xabier. He pointed at the map and said something to the man next to him. He –

I stopped. My legs felt weak. The feeling in my gut grew frantic like a thousand butterflies trying to escape a net. I squeezed my eyes shut for a second and then opened them again. The scene had not changed. There, standing next to Xabier, holding one side of the map, was Charles.



*****

The moment I saw Professor Zamin all thought about what I was doing fled. I stood still for a long moment trying to understand what I was seeing. Deep in the back of my mind the wheels started to turn. I flashed on the image of Xabier following Charles down the street across from the café.

I took a step toward the boat.

I saw again the picture of Xabier from the back taken by the security camera as he carried the large bag into the lab. The same camera had not seen him leave. He had left another way – with the Professor.

I took another step.

There were too many bones in the lab. If it wasn’t for the witnesses, they might never have known that the Professor had been in there when the bomb went off.

Someone on the ship must have noticed me, because the men on board had stopped loading boxes. Charles looked up, and recognition flashed across his face. He pushed the map into Xabier's hands and began slowly walking toward me. Xabier shouted a question to him, but he did not answer.

I remembered what else I had read in a newspaper. What makes this despicable act of terror so tragic is the way it simultaneously destroyed not only the courageous man who discovered the Great Puzzle, but whatever evidence he had found to prove its authenticity as well...And since the Professor told no one the details of his discovery, we can only wonder what the exact nature of that proof was going to be…

"There was no proof," I said aloud and took another step.

Questions zipped through my head like debris in a whirlwind. Professor Zamin announced that he had the answer, and then he faked his own death. Now anyone that was open to the possibility that the inscriptions might be real is assuming that they are real. Searching for the Professor’s lost proof will probably become the most popular research project in the whole college of archaeology. But why was there a need for any of it? Professor Zamin was a scholar and a scientist. Even if he couldn't prove the authenticity of the inscriptions yet, why give up and resort to a lie? It didn’t make sense. There were lots of things that science hadn’t been able to prove right away, but eventually enough evidence was accumulated. Why not just keep working until you really could prove their authenticity?

I looked up. My feet had stopped moving. Charles was standing a meter away. His amber eyes looked into mine with a somber intensity, as if he was holding an avalanche back with the sheer force of his will.

"You couldn't wait for real proof because you knew there would be none. The inscriptions are fakes." I waited, but he did not move or say anything.

"ZL didn't evolve. Its structure is too perfect. It was created," I continued. "There is no evidence of ZL anywhere else in history. It has only been found on four inscriptions…four fake inscriptions…four fake inscriptions all found by you…" The last piece of the puzzle hit my brain like a brick dropped from an airplane.

"You designed ZL. You faked the inscriptions. You made up the Great Puzzle."

A sad smile spread slowly across Professor Zamin's face.



*****

"Why?" I asked. Charles blinked at me, then held up his pointer finger like he was about to make a point.

“Do you remember what I said to you that morning at the café? Language is not enough – a new myth is needed for our time. Over the past century there has been a rise in destructive violence and warfare unlike anything we would have imagined. Since my birth alone, the world has seen slaughter and genocide take place on three continents. Did you know, Philip, that before the mid twentieth century, the word genocide did not even exist? We did not yet know the horrible things we would be capable of.”

“Violence is nothing new for humanity,” I said.

“Yes, but always before the fighting had some limit - some point beyond which fighting was no longer necessary. We want your land, so we will fight you until we have it… We want your oil, so we will fight you until we have it… But with the birth of genocide, we entered a whole new realm of fear and hatred. You are not like us; therefore you do not deserve our compassion… There is only one way and it is our way; all else is evil and must be destroyed!”

“Not only have we discovered genocide, but each new one now happens sooner than the one before that. The Armenians in Turkey, the Jews in Germany, the Cambodians, the Rwandans, the Bosnians and the Serbs, the Kurds in Iraq, and the Darfur region of Sudan… Who do you think gets called by the UN to excavate the mass graves? Year after year, I found myself spending ever more time piecing together the final moments of the executed. It was there amongst the bones of the fallen masses that I began to see the pattern - the trend in human events”

“What trend?”

“Communication, the digital revolution, faster and cheaper travel, cell phones, the internet… All of these things were supposed to unite us. We predicted that they would usher in the beginnings of a new era of understanding amongst all peoples. And we have indeed seen a trend of growing connection between us. We have seen unity as scholars, artists, and others reached out across cultural and geographical boundaries to learn from one another. But what we did not predict, is that a second trend would emerge as well - a backlash from those that look upon their neighbors on this planet with horror and fear. These peoples – those that believe that their way is the only way, that all must accept it or be cleansed from the earth – are rising up and falling upon their neighbors with machine guns, with machetes, with nerve gas, or (like in America) with plane old hate. This is the pattern that I became aware of while digging up the remains of the slaughtered masses. These two trends, these two movements, are fighting for dominance.”

His gaze seemed to sharpen. “I chose to become a champion for the cause of unity.”

“And you thought that this ruse would be enough? Don’t you think others will figure it out eventually?”

“What makes you think that there are not already others who know?”

“You mean your accomplices?” I asked, looking beyond him at the men on the boat.

“Not exactly… I never intended that the origin of the Great Puzzle remain a secret forever. In countries all over the world, there are initiates of the Great Puzzle that will act as guides for those ready to make this discovery.”

“And when do people become ready?” I asked, frowning.

“…when they do not base the validity of an idea on its origins,” he said. A breeze came up suddenly from offshore, cooling the exposed skin on my hands and neck. Behind Charles, the men were loading boxes again with Xabier urging them to hurry.

I thought about what the Professor was saying. Wasn’t that something that I believed – that the value of a mythology came from its usefulness to a society, not its authenticity? Wasn’t that the reason that I had begun looking for Charles’s lost proof in the first place – because I valued the ideas they would reinforce? How was I different from Charles except in degree? I had never tried to con the Mexican authorities into believing that God wanted them to respect the indigenous peoples living with them, but was that only because I didn’t think that I could?

“Whatever I think of your philosophy, you can’t force enlightenment on the world.”

“I know that. I do not expect the world to suddenly wake up with no malice in its heart. But there are good people out there who are just waiting for a reason to start believing in each other – in the value of all of humanity. They just need an idea to come along that’s strong enough to stand up to the bigoted zealotry that gets shouted at them every day. When was the last time that the tolerant and the wise had a louder microphone than the angry, the fearful, and the hateful?”

From the boat, Xabier called to the Professor to hurry. The Professor gave him a curt nod, and then turned back to me.

“No, I do not expect the world to change overnight, but I am also not going to sit back and let the side of division and xenophobia grow stronger while I sift through the endless graves of its victims.

He glanced backward at the boat for a moment. Then he rubbed one hand across the faint stubble that had appeared on his scalp since I had seen him in London.

“Have you given any thought to what you will do now that you know?” he asked.

“Do you mean, am I planning on telling the world that it’s all fake?”

“Actually, no – even if you tell the world what you have learned, you will have no proof of any of it. What I meant was have you given any thought to what you will do with your life?”

“What?”

“I mentioned earlier that there are others out there who know the truth - a network of believers that act as teachers or guides. They are the guardians of this last secret. They have a sacred trust to make sure both that those who are ready can learn it and that those who are not ready are sheltered from it.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“The cause of unity needs champions, Phillip. It needs people who believe that there is something important to learn from every culture - from every form and aspect of life. If you are really worried about what might happen if the world found out what you know, then why not help us to guard that secret? Become a guardian of the Great Puzzle. Help to bring greater illumination to the world. So much can-“

The Professor was interrupted by a loud blast from a horn. Xabier's ship was pulling away from the dock. On the deck, Xabier was frantically motioning to the Professor to hurry.

“I must go,” said Charles. “But we will speak again, Phillip.” With that he turned, rushed to the edge of the dock, and leaped across the water onto the deck of the ship where he was caught by Xabier.

I stood where I was, watching the ship (the Sophia, the name on the side proclaimed) slowly push out into the Mediterranean. The afternoon sun turned the tops of the crests golden. Just as the figures on the deck were becoming indistinct I thought I saw one turn and wave once back toward the shore.




*****

A few days later there was a report in the news that a ship, The Sophia, had been lost in a storm at sea. Rescuers found pieces of the vessel, but no survivors. Was this just another mysterious escape by the Professor, or had he really died at sea? I didn't know.

After San Sebastian, I took a couple of train rides and found myself in Turkey near the border with Iraq. The government of Turkey and the Kurdish people living in that area haven’t had the best relationship. I started talking to people about language classes. I even offered to teach Kurdish to some of the Turkish police officers. They asked me why I was so determined that the people there would learn each others’ languages.

I told them this:

Life is a great puzzling question to which each of us has but a tiny piece of the answer. Where do we keep these answers? They are wrapped up in our heads and our hearts. It is only through language that we are able to let them out.

posted by D @ 7:33 PM |

Sunday, August 07, 2005

:::The Great Puzzle Part II:::

There were too many bones in the room where Professor Zamin had died. That was what the newspapers were all saying. The bomb had gone off in a forensic anthropology lab where several dozen skeletons were being examined as part of a university class. Ball bearings had been packed around the explosives, so now the basement room was a mass of burnt and broken bone fragments. According to the police, if it wasn’t for the witnesses that saw him entering the lab, they might not even have known for sure that Professor Zamin was in there.

In my cramped seat on the airplane, I reread the account of his death over and over again in half a dozen newspapers. I was in the air somewhere over the US on my way to the university in northern California where Professor Zamin had been studying the inscriptions. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to do once I got there, but I knew that I had to go there, to see the tablets, to try to find…

“Find what?” I asked myself. I wasn’t sure. I flipped through the last paper in my stack.

According to the head of the anthropology department, Mr. Price, Professor Zamin had phoned him the day before and asked permission to use the lab as a place to prepare privately for his presentation. Mr. Price and two of his colleagues had personally escorted Professor Zamin to the lab a half an hour before the explosion.

The death of Professor Zamin was being praised as a punishment from God on fanatical Christian and Muslim websites, but so far no one had actually claimed responsibility for the bombing. The police reported that they had several leads but had refused to divulge any specifics.

In the back of the front section I read part of an editorial piece about the Professor’s death.


What makes this despicable act of terror so tragic is the way it simultaneously destroyed not only the courageous man who discovered the Great Puzzle, but whatever evidence he had found to prove its authenticity as well. With the loss of that proof goes an extraordinary opportunity to unite people from different backgrounds in a way that would honor their differences. And since the Professor told no one the details of his discovery, we can only wonder what the exact nature of that proof was going to be.

That’s it. That’s what I wanted to find – the proof that I had been promised. I felt cheated out of it. Maybe if I could study firsthand the writings that Charles had found, I could rediscover it. The idea of a new myth that would unite instead of divide had taken hold inside me, and I was unwilling to loose the possibility so quickly.

Of course that assumed that the proof was in the content of the inscriptions and not some piece of evidence that Charles had brought with him. For a moment I pictured Charles as he had stood ready to leave with a bag clutched firmly in his hand. Could he have been carrying it with him that morning? Had I sat within grabbing distance of some ancient archaeological relic that had gotten Charles killed?

I closed my eyes and tried to relax, while in my head the memory sounds of sirens chased me into a restless sleep.




*****

Back on the ground, I paused beside an airport TV that was tuned to a cable news channel.

“Once again, the police have reported that while all of the campus security cameras in the building’s immediate area were disabled, they have been able to obtain this image from a security camera a good distance away. The image, which has been enhanced to allow a zoomed in view, appears to show a man with a suspiciously large bag entering the building approximately one hour before Professor Zamin arrived. Unfortunately, the man’s face is not visible from this angle. Since there is no shot of this man leaving the building by the same route, police believe he may have left from another direction. Police in London are asking anyone who may have information about this man to contact them at the following number...”

I looked hard at the picture. Something about it seemed familiar. I walked over to the airport bookstore and bought a copy of a newspaper with the same picture on the front cover.

A few minutes later, I sat in the back of a taxi cab on my way to the university and studied the picture again. I couldn’t be sure, but… I closed my eyes and tried to picture the scene. I was sitting in the café in London, watching Charles walk alone down the street, his back to me. He reached the intersection and turned right. Another man walked into the intersection from the left and stopped. He was of medium height with a wiry build and a dark complexion. He wore denim jeans and a navy blue sweater and his hair was dark and a little wavy. He stared in the direction that Charles had gone, and then he tossed his cigarette to the ground, hoisted a bag over his shoulder, and hurried off in the same direction.

I opened my eyes and looked again at the picture. Whoever it was, he had roughly the same build and was wearing denim jeans and a navy blue sweater just like the man I had seen that morning.

Were the police on the wrong track, searching for the friend that was supposed to meet Charles at the café? Or was the man that followed Charles down the street not a friend after all? If the former, then wouldn’t that man come forward and identify himself so that the police could move on to other leads? Would I come forward if they were seeking information about me? It made me nervous just imagining myself as a suspect in something like this. This was not like Mexico, I reminded myself. The police in charge of this type of investigation had to be professionals.

I realized suddenly that I was frowning at nothing. I put my face in my hands and tried to rub out the tightness, but an underlying tension remained.



*****

“This room has been turned over entirely to documents and reference materials discussing the Great Puzzle. Everything the Professor accumulated on the subject as well as recent publications by other scholars have been placed here. The only things you won’t find are the inscriptions themselves.”

I was standing in a small room lined with shelves and file cabinets just off the main section of the anthropology and archaeology library. The center of the room was dominated by a long table with wooden chairs and numerous lamps and a large copy machine at the opposite end. My tour guide was a graduate student named Alicia who had only just started working with Professor Zamin a few weeks ago and still seemed a little upset. Not that I could blame her.

“Are the inscriptions themselves available for viewing anywhere?”

“Before he…left, the Professor had them placed in the library’s archive for security reasons. Given what happened in London, I’d say your chances of seeing the tablets in person any time soon are about as good as my chances of meeting the people who wrote them.”

“I understand,” I said, unable to keep the disappointment from my voice.

“I’m sorry. Things are just a little crazy right now. But you know we do have the best enlarged photographs of each of them here in this room. They’re almost as good as looking at the originals.”

“Thanks.”

“Let me know if you have any questions. Oh, and you know that none of the materials can leave this room, right?”

“No problem. Thanks again for your help.”

“Sure.” She opened the door to leave, and an idea occurred to me.

“Actually, I do have one more question if you don’t mind?”

She nodded.

“I’m looking for a man that I think might have worked with the Professor.” I described as best as I could the man I had seen on the street after speaking with Charles.

“That sounds like Xabier.” There was something weird about her body language as she said this as if she was trying to be still. “Why are you looking for him?”

“Uh…” Damn. I couldn’t think of a good reason.

“Are you with Interpol?”

“What?”

“Look, it’s not Xabier’s fault who his parents are,” she said, her voice getting louder. “And if that’s all you’re here for, you can just leave right now. This is a serious academic facility, and we have more important things to do than to waste time giving you a tour.”

“Alicia – ”

“Christ! I mean, I’m Turkish on my father’s side, but that doesn’t make me responsible for killing all of those Armenians! It’s bad enough the Professor is dead, but you people – ”

“Alicia, I’m not with Interpol!”

“You’re not?”

“No.”

“Then why are you looking for Xabier?”

“I met Charles…on the morning of the bombing.”

“Oh!”

“But I didn’t know who he was then. I’m a linguist. I used to teach languages, but things haven’t been going so well lately. Charles told me about the Great Puzzle. He said that it might be what I was looking for.”

The tension left her, and she gave me a sad smile.

“Anyway, he told me I should talk to this guy, but with everything that happened I couldn’t remember the name.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have just jumped to conclusions like that.”

“That’s okay. It’s been a crazy couple of days.”

“Xabier has been working in the field. I think he’s supposed to be back here on Thursday. Can you wait a few days?”

“I think so. In the mean time, I really would like to study the inscriptions – or at least their photographs.”

“Well, if you need anything, just let me know.”

“Thank you.”

She gave me another sad smile as she pushed through the door and walked back into the main library.



*****

I spent that night sorting through everything that the library had accumulated on the Great Puzzle. Most of the information was in the form of academic papers written about the Great Puzzle or about ZL. ZL was short for Zamin’s Language, which was what they were calling the unidentified writing system on the inscriptions.

Besides the papers, there was a whole series of photographs of each of the inscriptions from almost every angle. These were kept in plastic folders inside a cabinet with numerous shallow map-size drawers.

Lastly, there was a shelf full of historical reference books from the main library. I guessed that these had been brought in to help anyone searching for the civilization that might have birthed the Great Puzzle or written with ZL. But from the titles of the papers I had scanned over, I didn’t think that anyone had found a connection yet.

The main library stayed open twenty four hours a day for the students, but by 3:00am I had to go get some sleep. I came back about mid morning with caffeine and trail mix to sustain me and dove into it again starting with the most current of the papers.

It quickly became apparent that whatever proof Charles had found had not been duplicated by anyone else. None of the other scholars had even come close to finding something definitive. There were just not any known references to the civilization that had created these artifacts, much less any good ideas as to how they might have wound up on three separate continents.

I put down the paper I was reading and stretched. If I was going to have a chance of finding proof of the Great Puzzle’s authenticity, I was going to have to try and retrace the Professor’s steps. I couldn’t physically go to each site, but I could study the pictures of the inscriptions in the order that he had found them. I would start from scratch with the first one, assume nothing, and translate it myself.



*****

Two days later, I was making notes on a scratch piece of paper, when Alicia came in to check on me.

“How is your work going?”

I shoved my pencil behind my ear and leaned back in my chair. “Not that great...”

“Oh? What are you working on?” she asked, taking the seat next to me.

“Well, I wanted to start by deciphering the inscriptions –”

“And now you’re stuck with part of the translation?”

“Uh, no, actually – I finished that yesterday.”

Her eyebrows rose up and she leaned forward slightly. “You translated all four inscriptions yesterday?”

“Uh, yeah…”

“You mean you looked up each word in the vocabulary lists that the Professor published, right?”

“Nope,” I realized that she was frowning at me, “…but I did have to use the Sanskrit dictionary a lot for the first one.”

“Sure, I mean who wouldn’t?” she said sarcastically.

“Alicia,” I looked at her, “it was easy. I mean weirdly easy. I’m not bragging, or anything.” I pulled a photocopy of one of the pictures over. “Take a look at this. On the right side you’ve got the inscription in ZL, and on the left you’ve got the same thing in Sanskrit, right?”

“Yes. I’ve seen it many times.”

“Well, look at how they’re spaced. Each phrase in Sanskrit is on its own line parallel to the phrase in ZL that corresponds to it. And each word in ZL is clearly separated from the next by a thin clear space. All that you have to do is correlate words that appear on more than one line with their possible translations from the lines of Sanskrit and then make a few deductions about parts of speech and word order. This first inscription alone is enough. The other three merely confirm the validity of any guesses from the first inscription and add a few more words to the known vocabulary.”

“Wow,” she said. “I mean I understood the basic ideas, but I hadn’t ever tried to do the translating for myself from scratch like this. The Professor had already done it, so there wasn’t any point.” She crossed her arms in front of her. “You know, with most dead languages it takes months or even years to decipher the writing system.”

“I know, but I don’t think that most of them have a key this good to go off of. And it’s not just that – it’s also the language itself. The structure of ZL is so straight forward, so simple and logical, that it seems almost inorganic. For example, it takes only a change of one mark to transform a noun into an adjective or adverb. All of the rules of grammar are simple and there are no exceptions to them anywhere in the inscriptions. It’s as if the entire language was planned at once instead of evolving on its own.”

I rubbed at my eyes. They were worn out from too much peering at the inscriptions. “What time is it, anyway?”

“It’s just past 5:00. I’m on my way to grab a quick bite. Do you want to come?”



*****

Twenty minutes later, we sat on a little hill looking down at a fountain on campus. Our food had come from a little stand on wheels run by a Vietnamese husband and wife who sold large bread rolls baked with spicy meats and cheeses in the center. To wash it down they had a lemonade that was sweet enough to give me a sugar rush but still made my lips pucker. It was cheap and tasty college student food, and I found myself heartily enjoying it.

“Phillip, I’ve been thinking about what you said about ZL,” she said through a mouthful of food. “That it seems like it was created all at once instead of evolving with use…”

“Uh-huh.”

“I think I know what you mean. If you look at English, it’s a mess of complex rules and exceptions that all got added to the language at one time or another because they made sense to the people that were speaking English at that time or in that place.”

“That’s right. And so far ZL just doesn’t show any of that chaos.”

She turned towards me and set down her food. “Do you think it could be divinely inspired?”

I swallowed and set my own food down. “What do you mean?”

“Well, there’s no evidence of a civilization that used ZL, right?”

“Except for the inscriptions….”

“Yeah, but those were found hidden away at sites that belonged to entirely different groups of people that already had their own languages and writing systems.”

“And since its structure is so clean and ordered, you think God might have created it?” There was an edge of sarcasm in my voice that I instantly regretted.

Alicia looked away for a moment before responding. “Phillip, I joined this project because when I read the translation of the Great Puzzle, I believed it. Yes, I’m a student of the scientific method, and I think that truth has to be discovered through evidence, but at the same time the message of the Great Puzzle makes a lot of sense to me. I really do think we have something to learn from every system of beliefs. And I’m not saying that I think God created it, because I’m not sure I know what God means. But it does seem possible to me that if the inscriptions themselves contain knowledge from something outside of our existence, then maybe ZL was created by that same something to communicate these ideas to us. Is that something God? Well, that’s what we are supposed to figure out. That’s the biggest piece of the Great Puzzle.”

“But why create a new language?” I asked. “If you are going to divinely inspire something, why not just do it in whatever languages the people already speak?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it was to keep the Great Puzzle separate from any one of those cultures – to keep us from fighting over ownership of it.”

“And the appearance of ZL on different continents does add some credibility to it all.” I took a sip of my lemonade. “Hell, now that I think about it, if the inscriptions had each been written in the local language, we might not have even realized that they were talking about the same thing. It’s like ‘pork with garlic sauce’ in Chinese food.”

“It’s like what?”

“On the English menus at Chinese restaurants, there’s usually a dish called ‘pork with garlic sauce,’ but the Chinese name for it is ‘fish smell pork shreds.’ If we read those two things on separate continents we might not think to connect them, and even if we did eventually realize that ‘fish smell’ meant that it was cooked in a garlic sauce, we would probably think it was just a big coincidence that they had come up with the same recipe.”

It got quiet for a minute as we both finished off our food, deep in thought.

It had never really occurred to me to believe in the Great Puzzle the way Alicia did. I didn’t tend to believe in any mythology; it was all just ideas to me. That’s what I had been looking for – an idea, something that could help unite people. I had not been looking for Charles’ lost proof because I wanted to believe in it but because I wanted something to make others believe in it.

All I really wanted was for everyone to stop trying to exploit each other and start trying to help each other. To do that, people had to understand one another, which meant speaking their language. That’s what I was trying to do in Mexico. But it wasn’t enough. Charles had told me that in the café.

Language is not enough – a new myth is needed for our time.

We were just getting ready to walk back to the library, when a man waved from across the street and trotted over to talk to Alicia.

“Hey, Alicia!”

“Hey, Carlos, this is Phillip. He’s doing some research on ZL.”

We shook hands.

“What have you been up to?” Alicia asked.

“I was just running an errand for Xabier.”

“Is he here?” I asked.

“I thought he wasn’t getting here until tomorrow,” Alicia added.

“No. He called me today, and said that he wouldn’t be back for awhile.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well, I guess you missed him this time, Phillip. Maybe you could send him an email, or something.”

“Yeah, I guess,” I said, trying not to show my disappointment and failing.

“So what kind of errand did he have you running for him?” Alicia asked.

“There was a package that had arrived in the mail for him from London. He had me ship it to him.”

A lightning bolt went off in my head.

“When did that package from London get here?” I asked.

“The day before yesterday.”

He had probably mailed it on the day that Charles was killed. The package could be Charles’ proof.

“Where did he have you send it?”

“To a post office box in Spain.”

“Do you still have the address?”

“Sure.” He pulled out a scratch of paper.

“Would you mind if I copied that down?”

“You can have it if you need it.” He handed it to me.

“Thanks.”

Alicia crumpled her trash into a little ball. “I still think email would work better than trying to send him a letter.”

“I’ve got to run. I’ve got a date with Simone, that French anthropology student,” said Carlos, grinning from ear to ear. “It was nice meeting you, Phillip.”

“Likewise.”

Carlos left, and we started back for the library.

“Alicia, I’m curious,” I said, trying not to sound too anxious. “Why did you think that I was from Interpol the other day?”

“Oh, well, it’s because they’ve given him a hard time before. His parents were part of the Basque separatist movement.”

“ETA, the terrorist group?”

“Yeah. They’re dead now, but his parents helped blow up something in Spain in the 70s. Xabier was just a baby then. He spent most of his childhood living with his extended family while his parents were on the run. He never had anything to do with ETA himself, but the police still hassle him about it. He has a lot of trouble every time he needs to get his visa renewed. It’s so unfair. Anytime something is stolen or vandalized they come to him like he is some kind of criminal. That’s why I was upset when I thought you were from Interpol.”

“I see,” I said, and I did. I knew what it was like to be on the wrong side of the cops for no just reason. But I also knew that if I told her my own suspicions, she would probably think I was just like those cops who convicted on suspicion instead of proof.

“So what are you going to do now – write a letter to Xabier or something?”

I looked down at the scrap of paper that Carlos had given me. “Not exactly…”



*****

The next morning, I was back at the airport. I had one small bag that I would carry with me onto the plane. Inside it I had packed one change of clothes, a portable CD player, and a plastic shopping bag full of purchases from the bookstore. The flight to San Sebastian left California at 7:00am and arrived at 12:45pm the next day. The package was guaranteed to arrive at the Post Office by 3:00pm. I figured that once I got through customs, I would have less than two hours to find my way there in time to catch Xabier.

In most other Western European cities, this would have been easy, but Xabier was in a part of Spain that I knew barely anything about: Basque Country. A region on the northern coast of Spain that was never conquered by the Romans, Basque Country was known as much for its guerilla separatist movement as for its language – which was unrelated to any other in Europe.

Despite what Alicia thought, I figured it was highly possible that Xabier had at least some contacts in ETA. With the aid of such men, he could easily hide himself away. After picking up his package in San Sebastian it seemed almost assured that he would disappear into some small Basque village on the coast - the kind of place where no one speaks anything but Basque and everyone is suspicious of outsiders.

My plan was to find Xabier and follow him until an opportunity presented itself to search his belongings for the Charles's lost proof. It wasn’t a great plan. Just because I thought Xabier was the man in the picture entering the lab before the bomb went off, didn’t mean that he had planted the explosives. All I could do was watch him and see. If it turned out that he was innocent, then perhaps he knew something about what the Professor had planned to reveal.

To achieve this plan, I would have to follow Xabier through his home country without being fingered as an outsider or a foreigner. This would take something I did not currently have: a usable knowledge of the Basque language. What I did have, however, were two books on Basque for the individual learner, an English/Basque dictionary, a set of audio language CDs, and twenty hours and forty five minutes of uninterrupted flight time.

As my plane took off, I set to work. I started with the books for an hour. Once I had a feel for the basics, I listened to the CDs for half an hour to check my pronunciation. Then I started working through the rest of the first book, one chapter at a time. At the end of each chapter I would listen once to the corresponding section of the CDs, then move on to the next section of the book.

I have never tried so hard to concentrate for so long in all of my life. Time had become precious to me. I could not afford to let a single moment slip away idly. When I was not listening to the language CDs, I listened to classical music to keep from being distracted by the sounds of the other passengers. Periodically I would give myself a five minute break of absolute and total mental silence. I would slow my breathing, relax each of my muscles, one at a time, and let my mind float free of all thought and concerns. I kept up a steady stream of coffee, but I tried not to overindulge since I had such a long haul ahead. As the day turned to night, and the flight attendants as well as the passengers went to sleep, I resorted to making my own coffee as quietly as I could.

At the end of fifteen hours, I had made it through all of the chapters in both books. From there I began a combination of reviewing the vocabulary from each book (there was a lot of overlap there) and making my own word lists from the dictionary. Little by little, I had been filling in words in my thoughts with the Basque equivalents, and at some point I realized that I was no longer thinking in English.

By this point, my hand was in pain from all of the practice writing I had done, so I switched to the CDs. I began to have imaginary conversations in my head with the characters in the language dialogs, asking them questions then imagining how they might respond. If I thought they would use a word that I didn't know, I looked it up. From this, I moved on to thinking about what I would say to Xabier when I found him. Each of these sentences I carefully translated as well.

There was one flight attendant who spoke Basque. When morning rolled around, I put away my books for a while, and struck up a conversation with her. She was amazed.

"I didn't know you speak Basque?"

"I do now," I replied.

posted by D @ 10:16 PM |

I love stories - especially speculative fiction, and I named this blog Brief Glimpses of Somewhere Else because I think of each story as a window into another world.

If this is your first time here, I recommend "Legacies" and "The Great Puzzle", both of which were nominated for a 2006 Parsec Award. You can also find "Timmy, Jimmy, and the Beast of Tagmart" as well as "Late Shift at the Souleater" in the podcast anthology Voices: New Media Fiction available at podiobooks.com.

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