Rodney

A New Career In A New Town

This steep freeway that dives into downtown boasts a beautiful view - not just of the surrounding bay, or of the dense forest of skyscrapers jutting out along the northeast corner, but of the massive rupture which an old earthquake opened in the ground, long since filled with sea water and converted into a tourist attraction. The upper floors of a few sunken skyscrapers can still be seen poking out through the water, these have been reinforced and converted into restaurants and resorts, and are considered by many to be one of the finest, tackiest vacation locations in the world.

Parking hastily, I rush across the city's busy streets, late to meet my friends. I find all three and shake their hands in a hurry, making the necessary introductions between the husband and wife on one side and the female friend on the other. But the greetings are rushed, as the movie starts now and is still ten blocks away. We must make haste.

We pass by a narrow and rickety wooden pier, which snakes around to the other side of a massive Spruce Goose-like biplane, converted into an antique ferry from one side of the sinkhole to the other. The wife in our party stumbles upon an oversized stuffed duck left near the pier - looking out, we see a family boarding, their infant passenger dropping his toys over his mother's shoulder, while his family moves forward, oblivious. 

"Wait!" we cry as we run down the plank after them, scooping up a small purple cat and an enormous teddy bear floating in the water as we go. We run up the stairs to the vessel, and are finally able to catch the couple's attention in the craft's entryway. They thank us, their faces overripe with sweet smiles, and move on to the central seating area.

We turn to leave, but are shocked to see that the ship has already left the pier, next stop the city center's south end. We cry for the craft to stop but the pilot's chambers are too far off, and our requests go unheeded.

"Tickets?" says the receptionist at the entryway, whose checkered uniform confirms a "Flo the diner waitress" look already suggested by her homely face.

"What, tickets?" I respond angrily. "We don't want to be on this thing! We were just giving that kid his toys back!"

"I'm sorry, sir..." she rolls her eyes rudely, "but you can't board the vessel without paying the fare."

"We know that," adds the husband in our party. "So turn around and let us off!"

The waitress sighs. "We can't turn the boat around, sir. Please take a seat, I suppose we can have you pay when we reach the terminal at the other end."

"PAY!?!?!" I shout irately. "We're not paying you one cent! We don't owe you anything!"

Another passenger, apparently unaware of the situation's details, scoffs and rolls his eyes. "Jesus, relax guy. The fare is just two dollars."

"Two dollars we shouldn't have to pay!" the husband shouts at him.

"The price isn't the point!" I turn back to the receptionist. "We're going to miss our movie, and be stranded at the opposite end of the city, all because you started the ship too soon!"

Trying to treat us passively, she has moved on to a job more in line with her appearance, picking up used dishes left by the customers, covered in some unidentifiable brown pastelike fast food remnants. "Sir, this ship has specified departure and arrival times. If you had only read the..."

Enough of this. With a lunge I push the plates piled atop her hands onto her dress, the unnatural food staining it a less natural color. Immediately, I am struck with regret - not only have I escalated the situation irreversibly, but potentially embarrassed myself in front of my movie partners.

Turning around, I see that I have nothing to worry about, on the second point at least. My company has acted on my cue and is currently creating a chaotic ruckus - the wife has climbed atop a table and is kicking food left and right, while the girl hurls plates around the room like frisbees. The husband is engaged in another room diagonal to this one, presumably in an attempt to storm the cockpit. I consider trying to stop them, but realize such a move would go against my instincts. Grabbing a plate of my own, I join in the assault.

Suddenly a loud sound is heard - not quite an alarm, more electrical and sharp - and all on the ship fall to the ground, clutching their ears. A second later, I black out.

------

When I come to I am sitting in one of the plane's many booths, the other seats all empty except the one opposite me, where the baby from before sits on his mother's knees. He is speaking to me, his diction perfect despite his lack of teeth, the conversation a continuation on some unremembered topic.

"...and print media is declining right alongside the music industry, probably to a greater degree. Both are quicky being replaced by digital media - but the idea of an artist making a living solely off of his website is a little unrealistic. Movies and games are bound to go in a similar direction as digital exchanges take over - I'm sure you've heard the theory before, that the artists of the future will probably be working on their projects only in between their full-time, paying jobs."

"Well... what should I do then?" I ask in a daze.

"Oh, settle down on something more realistic, I think. I could easily set you up with a job here on this ship, you know - or one of our other vessels. Your friends have already agreed - accepted jobs under me to work off the cost of the damage they caused. But it shouldn't be looked at as a punishment, it's actually quite a nice gig. These vessels are large, not a bad place to start a family. You get to travel quite a bit - and keep in mind we're just a few weeks away from getting these things airborn again."

The baby makes a tempting offer, and he's so damned adorable that it's hard to ignore his suggestions. But somewhere inside me, my ghost is whispering that this ship is just a prison, one I've been lured onto to distract me from the things I need to do.

I stand up. "You make a tempting offer, Baby. But I'm afraid I'm going to have to turn it down."

The baby giggles, a trail of spit running down his chin. "Turn it down? I'm sorry, but that's not exactly possible."

"What do you mean?"

"The moment you set foot on this ship, you entered into my world. If you work here you work for me, and you don't leave here until I decide your work is done."

"Or what? What if I refuse?"

The giggles continue, as the baby and his silent mother slowly fade into invisibility. "Then you're on this ship alone. If you don't think that sounds bad, I'll give you a little taste of what it feels like. Someday I'll return - I'm certain that by that time, you will have made the correct decision."

As their espers finish fading I rise, and run through the halls of the empty structure, the geometry of its rooms seeming to change as my gait becomes more frantic. Looking out the window, I can see that the cityscape outside has faded as well, leaving me and this small maze of rooms isolated in the center of an endless, featureless sea.

Alliteration of the Ghetto

As the light changes, my car climbs forward, past the run-down inner city school and on to the site of my friend Neil's recently opened public art installation. I can see the cold concrete letters jutting out over the temporary trailers in the school's parking lot, but still in the shadow of the freeway hastily assembled over this sad, shady neighborhood.

Slowly the sculpture comes into full view and Neil's joke becomes clear. The project, intended to give the participating artists a chance to represent their favorite musical acts, is easily the most prestigious offer he's had yet. But in a rare use of irony, Neil has opted to neglect his artistic skills and instead simply craft giant lifeless word sculptures - and stranger still, he has chosen even to ignore his personal taste and only represent singers with alliterative double M's. Mandy Moore, Marilyn Manson, Mindy McCready... I guess I can understand the joke, but this seems particularly abstract, even for him. 

His earlier claims that he had found the perfect location are bewildering as well - the piece is square in the center of St. Francesco's most crime riddled neighborhood, on a hill overlooking downtown, but on the opposite side of the freeway from the exit, and invisible from all major roads. I wonder if, as an Englishman, his instinctive sense of the streets is backwards - and if, when looking on a map, he had erroneously marked this road as the site of the offramp.

Whatever his mistake, poor Neil's artistic practical joke is now paying the price. Already, several of the letters have been marked with graffiti - and while the code of their neon red language is alien to me, I can't help but recognize one particular pattern. Each of the words begins with the same character - presumably an "M" in reference to the piece. But as I circle again, and look closer, it becomes clear that these aren't simply "M" words chosen at random - they flow with a surprising structure, and seem to be divided into verse-like blocks. As I focus more closely, the overwhelming mathematics connecting the work become clear, and I realize that I am looking at one of the great literary works of the century, written in a tongue that most of us will never be able to understand.

The Shell

The crowd moves down the stairs, following the line as it weaves in and out between the brightly pointed coral formations of the sea and the smooth dark rocks of the steep cliffside. Behind and above us, headlights can be seen pulling into the few open parking spots which line the highway, and beyond that, the stony incline becomes steeper, the foot of a mountain enormous enough to block out the rising sun. To the south, a river's mouth separates us from the plateau of a high class coastal town I found only recently, its chaotic streets a labyrinth of luxury. To the north, a bed of fog hides the highway that I know snakes through the cliffside for many miles, and the ever-growing range of mountains that protects the inland valleys from the wild sea.

And straight ahead, the path leads down to a flat walkway carved out of the reef itself, its multitude of branches all centering on the mammoth clamshell amphitheatre, half-submerged in the sea. When watching it, the waves seem to flyby in slow motion, crashing against the coral spires which shield the structure from a seemingly destined flood. The shell's giant lips part, with the bottom half forming the floor of the entryway and the top half a ridged awning. As our line slowly shuffles past the unmanned box office window and into the halls of the structure, we pass ornate organic pearl frames, posters of upcoming acts inside. And of tonight's headliner: Laurie Anderson.

The walls of the main chamber seem to pulse with life, though we of the audience all know this creature died a century ago, its soft innards petrified by the unique properties of the surrounding sea. We find our places among the perfectly chiseled, mirrorlike seats, waiting for the lights to finally dim. I wonder aloud if the night will feature material from Anderson's legendary "Moby Dick" project - a neighbor nods and confirms that the show's aquatic setting is more than coincidence. We are suddenly silenced by the parting of the red curtains, and as we stand to better see the show unfolding ahead of us, we find the scene around us has already started to fade, pushing us back towards waking life in an infuriating anticlimax.

Shores of the Oily Sea

All About The Coins

Drawing my sword, I step into the building - the long hallways which mark this as a former college campus painfully familiar, the ruined walls and flickering lighting no different than the last time. Immediately, almost instinctively, I leap into the air to reach the three coins floating there, the large golden discs disappearing with a chime as my hands cross through them.

Landing, I recognize a block of ceiling tile above me - a brighter, browner gray than those around it, a familiar signal that it is about to fall. I jump out of its way, as I have hundreds of times before, careful to avoid the bottomless pit which has taken me by surprise on at least two occasions.

From a door on my left, a lizardman emerges, flanked by three slimes. Same combination as always, no new challenges, no surprises. With a single movement I leap over the creatures, turning to slice through two of the slimes and knock the barely wounded lizardman down into the pit, out of my way. I spin around to dispatch the third slime, weakly wobbling towards me like an aimless mound of gelatin, and come out with no less notches on the bright red belt buckle which represents my remaining life.

Around a corner comes Gediman, brandishing a sword of his own, his familiar face fixed on his vow to uncover every last corner of every last building. Seeing me, he waves me over, and gestures down his hallway to a large hole in the floor, where a moving platform slides over a bed of flowing lava.

"Pssst! Yo, man you should check out that platform pronto... there's a hidden room next to it with twenty, twenty-five coins..."

I start, but then stop, and turn. "I would... but really, what's the point?"

He stares back, eyebrows cocked. "The point? Point of what?"

"Exactly. I mean, we run around these buildings day in and day out, risking our lives to collect every last coin, and for what?"

Sheathing his sword, he pats me on the back, sitting me down against a crumbling wall. "Man, you must have hit your head or something. You sure you're all right?"

"Fine! I just don't see what good another twenty or so coins is going to do me."

Gediman sighs. "Twenty coins! In case you've forgotten - you get a hundred, you get an extra life. Twenty is like a fifth of the way there..."

I stand up vehemently, kicking a broken and rusted chair down the hall and into the pit. "An extra life! An extra life for WHAT? To collect more coins?"

"Hey, maybe you don't remember Reynolds..." he sighs, his hand on his temples, "...I mean, he had a pretty weak approach to coin collection. He'd just rush on through each building, from the start to the end, and not even bother with coins or free lives. And do you know what happened to him? He made it all the way to the Giant Mantis, which took all five lives away in just a few minutes. And then? Game over, man. Game over!"

I tremble with anger, ready to leave this nearsighted fool. "And so, he started over once again, from the beginning. And he fought his way through again, making the same mistake but losing his lives a little further in. And even now he's going for it once again. But how is that really any different from us? We run through these same buildings we've passed through hundreds of times before, just to collect the same coins? Or hoping to find a few hidden away? It's still the same thing, over and over, no deviation or variation or..."

"But hey, what about the secret zone? If we can get through every building, find every coin, and not get hit once, then they say we can unlock it..."

I shake my head, disappointed. "The secret zone is a rumor, made up to keep us searching. But even if it were real - and since there's not one witness to it, I'd say it's not - even if it were, it would just be one more place to explore. When you're done with it, then what? Back to here?"

He stares off into space, repeating his knowledge of the zone like a mantra. "They say that the secret zone is so beautiful, so perfect, that you'd never want to come back. They say that's why we never meet anyone who's been there - they've passed the challenge of the coins, and gone on to a better place, a perfect place."

"Man, you are warped," I shake my head at him. "You're so sold on this concept that you can't even ask why. Why would... whatever thing made this world want us to collect coins? Why would it reward us for that? We have minds, why shouldn't we use them for something... something productive? Why should we waste our lives hunting down coins - something that even a computer could do?"

Gediman trembles angrily, and stands, turning his back on me. "Look. If you want to spend your time on something 'productive,' well then go ahead, man. But don't judge me for my choices, or my beliefs. Whatever the reasons, we're meant to collect coins. Ask 'why' all you want, but you're not getting an answer - so, might as well accept it. Sorry, man, but I'm just being realistic."

"So am I," I reply after a pause. "I mean, there's no reason for me to keep going on these quests, if my heart's not in it."

As he walks away, Gediman looks back, with a cruel grin. "So do whatever you like, man. You don't have a choice, really - this is the world, these are the rules - but hell, go ahead and try if you want. But, if you pass me in the hall again, do me a favor - don't talk to me."

I nod, hurt but hiding it until he turns the corner. 

After a moment, I spin in a circle, weighing all of the paths ahead of me, and finally settling on the wall. Drawing my sword, I make a high horizontal slash, a gash appearing a few inches below the ceiling. Spinning the sword thrice, I make several more marks across it, a vague shape beginning to appear. I stare for a minute or so, weighing the potential impact of my next marks, then lift my sword up to carefully chisel bits of wallpaper around the edges of the shape, allowing it shades and textures. My lines become more curved and confident, as the undefined marks slowly change size to eventually reveal the shape of a strange quadrapedal animal - while it's not one I've ever seen in this world, it may be quite real in another.

After a half hour, I step back, and admire my work, fulfilled for the first time. "I have just invented art," I whisper to myself, boastfully.

Cathedral