Midnight in Breezewood

They appeared with a puff of displaced air by the dumpster behind the Starbucks. The man took a few steps and staggered. The woman tried to catch him and they both almost tumbled before she helped him to a sitting position on the curb. When it was obvious he wasn't going to pass out she went inside to fetch them lattes. There they sat, watching the cars come and go through the drive-through until he had caught his breath again. When he grunted that he was ready, she pulled out a cell phone. She wielded it like a strange power tool, like she was afraid it could cut off her finger if she used it wrong. With one finger, she punched in a series of numbers.

"Shalom," said a voice, like two stones slowly grinding together.

"We're here," she answered.

"Lovely."

"Where do you wish to meet?"

"Right there," he rumbled then the connection went dead. She looked at the phone, her pretty features pinched.

Just then, a mountain of blue steel pulled out of the line of cars at the drive-through and stopped right in front of them. It shook and growled with pent up power. Blue neon lights glowed in the undercarriage and the wheels, making it look like it hovered on an ethereal cyan cloud. The suspension settled with a hiss. The girl saw her reflection, distorted and dark in the polished metal. With a sigh the rear passenger door opened of it's own. She stared into the dark interior with large eyes, wringing her walking stick in her hands. The voice of the Sphinx echoed from within, "Won't you come in?"

She bent to help the man but he shook her off. "Nyet," he whispered. He got to his feet alone and climbed in to the waiting truck. She continued to hesitate, then, with a deep breath and an admirable show of grace, she followed. The door closed and locked with a great deal of deliberation, as if the owner wanted to ensure a sense of luxurious entrapment.

Despite its lavish appointments, the power of the metallic beast was inescapable. The very air thrummed. The girl gripped the plush door handle as they went into motion. "You seem uncomfortable," the voice came from the speakers, a string bass playing melody.

"I am not fond of auto cars."

"The foreigner uncomfortable with the foreign seems an odd emissary."

"Men worship the works of their hands, I do not. I fail to see..."

"Peace, sister. It was merely an observation. It is what I do. It's why you are here. You're qualifications are your own look out," he rumbled.

"And what have you observed?"

She could follow their progress through the window. Though only the brightest lights seemed to force their way through the dark glass. The busy road they were on was joining a faster conduit and the lights of the merchants were falling behind. "I have seen a ghost."

"You need to be sure it's him."

"I was sure before I sent the letter."

"How?"

"My qualifications are my lookout, sister. But be still and know that I am never wrong." The truck exited the major road and was soon alone on a winding track into the mountains. The moon flickered through the shadow of trees.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"There." Gravel crunched and the track went from winding to imaginary. All at once the truck stopped and the door opened. "Here."

The man and woman exited. The dark silhouettes of the forest formed an angry circle around them. She stuck her head back in before the door shut. "How do we find him?"

"With... patience." With that, the door hissed shut and the truck rumbled away. She saw it's ethereal glow pass through the trees and into a mist that hung low all around. She listened until it's engine became so faint that it was drowned out by the drone of a hundred thousand night insects.

A living wage

Officer 2708, Christian, dropped out of the Umber into a night two weeks prior to the interrogation when he knew his wife and daughters would be home but he had been working.  Meeting his past selves was always freaky and he didn't need to be any more freaked out than he already was.  The freak-o-meter was way past eleven.  He ran through his own backyard, up the porch and crashed through the backdoor.

And skidded to a halt as the freak-0-meter popped the peg and started spinning like a fan.

"Well, here he is now!  Evening, Officer Vanderhoyt," Bad Cop greeted him.  "Pull up a chair, your wife makes a snarkin' cup of coffee!  You should be proud."

Christian looked at Bad Cop and Good Cop sitting there at his counter all smiles, blasphemous and greasy respectively and cursed as potently as he knew how.  "You bastards are hounds!"

"And you're a dumbass," Bad Cop said without any trace of rancor, disappointment or surprise.  "Did you think we hadn't done this before?  Did you think we were on our first collar?  All you strays run like the tresspassin' dogs you are when we out you.  Well, the cowards do, anyway.  The rabids attack.  Which you gonna be now?"  Christian wasn't armed but there were plenty of weapons in the house that he could reach instantly.  If the two hounds were the professionals they claimed to be, they would know that though.  They didn't even make an attempt to look ready, they just kept sipping from their mugs and looking at him.

Also looking at him was Sandy.  Her face said she hadn't figured out what was going on yet but she expected it to be bad when she did.  No, it was not time to kill.  It was time to play dead.  "Guess I'm gonna be the mutt chained to the tree."  He got himself a cup of coffee as much to be able to turn his back on his unwanted guests as for desire for the black juice.  Looking at them made it difficult not to leap across the counter with a butcher's blade and a banzai scream.  Maybe Sandy's new Santoku.  He liked the balance of it.

"Well, now, Mr. Vanderhoyt," Good Cop, what had Bad Cop called him?  Sid?  Sid was talking now, "while I'm sure a leash is going to be necessary for a while, I can assure you that we have greater designs for you than just running in circles in the yard.  It's a bit unorthodox, sure, but you could actually look at this as a job interview.  We're giving you a chance to do what you do best, be a cop, only with a slightly wider jurisdiction.  You'd like that wouldn't you?"

"I dunno," Christian said, turning around, slowly, so as not to have any misunderstandings with his wife in harm's way.  "What's it pay?"

"Right now," he still didn't have a name for Bad Cop, Bad Cop probably liked it that way, "I'd have to say it offers a.. a 'living wage.'"  The two hounds smiled at their joke.  Christian smiled too but only because he was still imagining the Santoku buried in Bad Cop's left ear.

"How can I refuse so kind an offer?  When do we start?"

"As soon as I'm done this fine cup of joe," Bad Cop said.  He drank it with irritating slowness, savoring every sip until it was gone.  Then he stood, "Mrs. Vanderhoyt, thank you for your hospitality.  I'm sure we'll be seeing a lot more of you in the future."  The two hounds got up and walked to the front door.  "Coming Christian?"  Christian sucked at his lower lip and set his mug down.  Sandy put a hand on his.  "Babe, what's going on?"  He tried to muster a reassuring smile and failed.

"Tell you in a couple of weeks."

Pancho

Shawn watched the house for almost a week straight before he decided it was safe to approach.  It was nerve wracking.  They used Rottweilers.  Shawn hated Rottweilers.  They had them in caged runs, thank God, at the cardinal points of the compound.  The nearest ones scented him early but apparently the handlers were used to the barking and weren't even curious as to what was upsetting their biological alarms.  An exasperated man or woman would just come to the door and yell at the dogs to shut up.  If Pancho was running this show, he'd have to mention that to him.

He wasn't able to tell if that was the case however.  He never saw Pancho.  For all he could tell, this place was a hippie commune in the woods with a bit of a paranoiac streak.  Heaven only knew what the locals thought of the place.

It was a bit of a euphemism to say that he "decided" to approach.  He did really want to make sure that it wasn't a Regulator trap.  They had used those in the old days.  Set up "safe houses" that they manned themselves and lured in rogue bits.  Those rogues had a tendency to disappear.  Or worse, reappear working with the Regs.  He didn't really have any proof yet that this wasn't one of those but he had run out of food a day ago and while he sometimes fasted to clear his mind and reorient his priorities, too much and he wouldn't have the strength to run if the time to run came.  And the problem with the time to run was that it very rarely called ahead.  Stumbling before a pack of slathering Rottweilers became a major theme of his dreams.

So he found himself just walking right down into the compound, weapons sheathed but near to hand and as visible as he could make them.  They weren't there to frighten now, they weren't there for defense.  They were badges, they were heralds; they announced what he was and what he was about.  He came to the nearest fence, leaping jaws snapping on hoarse barks of mindless ferocity on the other side, and passed right through.  In reality he was phasing partially into the Umber, one foot in both worlds, so to speak.  The dogs could still sense him in their instinct guided minds but he was no more physically there than a dream.  That always freaked the animals out, they continued to bark but while backing away from his spectral self.

By the time he had crossed their run to the courtyard of the compound, the residents had taken notice and he was met by a handful of serious customers, weapons and attitudes bristling.  One separated himself from the others and drew up close to Shawn.  He wasn't much bigger, which was surprising, Shawn was shorter than average, but he had little man syndrome.  A malady that for the most part Shawn had managed to avoid in his life.  Little man matched Shawn's phase; he partially entered the Umber with him.  This would be necessary for them to exchange anything more tangible than pleasantries.  He put out one hand with a ridiculous number of rings on it and placed it firmly against Shawn's chest.

"What can we do you for, Mister?"

Shawn smiled his most innocent smile.  "Take me to your leader, earthling."

"You the guy he's been waiting to see?"

"I've got an invitation," Shawn held up the note with Pancho's signature.

"Yo Axl," a sneering asian girl to his left answered, "yeah?"  "Go get Chief Killowatt.  Tell 'em, there's a guy here to see him."

Axl asked, "what if this guy's a Trick-or-Treater?"

Little man didn't like being questioned, "What if he's a singing candygram, fer chrissake!  I don' care if he's Jehovah's Wet Willy Witness!  If the boss says, he's the guy then he's cool!  If the boss says, who the ever-lovin'-fat-on-fatimah is that?  Then we gut 'im!  Now scat!"  Axl tried to save a little face with a petulant, "whatever," but just sounded like a scolded school girl.  Shawn tried to suppress a laugh.  He was becoming ever more confidant that these were not Regulatory Operators.  Not unless they were really good ones.  This level of goofiness wasn't really encouraged in the corp.

Little man turned his attention back to Shawn, "kids!  It'll only be a minute, Mr. Smileyface.  Perhaps you'd like to wait in the Lobby," he indicated the dog pen with a wave.  "Our receptionists seem to have taken a shine to you."

"Naw, I'm good."  Shawn continued to smile, now just to see if he could infuriate the punk.

"If yer the guy, you were supposed to show up days ago in an appointed greeting area.  We had balloons and girl in a cake.  What's a matter?  You get lost?"

"I embarrass easy and my wife gets jealous about girls who pop out of cakes."

"Yeah, well, we're not too keen on folks dropping in for tea without calling first.  The stove's old, takes forever to bake a crumpet," Little man said, "makes us look like bad hosts."

"I have a feeling he'll prefer the coffee," said a voice behind little man.  Shawn looked up, coming down the front porch of the house was a scarecrow looking fellow with a mop of scraggly black hair tied back in a loose tail and a handlebar mustache curling over a wicked smile.

Shawn shoved Little man out of the way, "Pancho!"

The Ghost goes South

A ghost story was traveling down the Appalachian trail.  Not an unusual occurrence for the Trail.  Ghost stories went well with s'mores and campfires.  This one was different in two ways.  It just sprang up, fully formed in New Hampshire and altered very little as it migrated southward.  For many it was just a sound: slow, plodding hoofbeats in the night, maybe a horse's whinny.  Others got a glimpse, a horse and rider, hunched in the saddle, weary with the weight of the underworld.  Descriptions varied with the perceptions of the perceivers and the circumstances, some called him a cowboy, some the midnight rider still others the Highwayman but two details remained the same.  They were only seen at night and always headed south.

Most thought it a hoax but there were a few that knew different.

A New Hampshire ranger reported an incident in which he attempted to arrest a rider for firearms violations one night, only to lose both horse and rider in the darkness.  His excuse was that they moved "unusually fast."

A bunch of local thugs, small town punks with nothing to do on a friday night but get drunk and scare campers came running out of the woods one night anxious to change their ways.  They would never fully explain what happened but Girlscout troop 205 from Oklahoma, on a week long trip through New York, came back and had a patch made with a cowboy and his paint mare for their totem in honor of their guardian angels.  

And then there was Lloyd.  Lloyd, shaken and pale, had stumbled into the truckstop just before dawn one morning badly in need of a drink.  The cook produced a bottle of Wild Turkey from somewhere for which he got an evil glare from the waitress and Lloyd got a stern warning, "provided you ain't driving today!"  "Lady," Lloyd mumbled, "I may never drive again."  Then the waitress, frycook and Ed the paper delivery driver were treated to a firsthand account of the supernatural.

"I was just coming over the ridge there, startin' to pick up speed on the downhill side.  Road was making its first switchback and I guess the Trail comes across the road there."  Ed nodded that it did.  "He was just standing there.  Right smack in the middle of the road!"  A suicide, Ed asked.  "You'd have thought so!  Just looked at me, just this blank look like he saw me but couldn't quite figure out what I was."  Drugs the frycook offered.  "Ya'll don't get it," Lloyd swore, "this weren't no man!  It was a ghost!"  The three listeners shared an embarrassed look.  "You think I'm nuts, well, think whatever you want!  I know what I saw!  I ran straight through them and they didn't budge.  I saw his face go through the cab!  He turned his head!  He kept looking at me as I passed straight through 'em!"  He tried to pour another shot but could barely hit the glass.  The waitress took the bottle and poured for him.  Ed took the moment to ask what he meant by 'them?'  "They, plural, him and his freakin' horse!  He turned his head!"  Ed and the frycook eventually had to help poor Lloyd into his sleeper.  Later that day, he pulled out and they never saw him again.

But the ghost stories continued to rove southward, always following the sparsely populated mountainous regions.  Until they came to the crossroads community of Breezewood.

A little editing.

Inside the Room just got revised.  Just thought i'd let the two or three of you who may have read it know that you might want to read it again.

Inside the Room

The Good Cop was talking again.  He hated the Good Cop.  The Bad Cop was nothing.  The Bad Cop made him laugh.  He had broken the Bad Cop's wrists, nose and kidney punched him a few times for good measure in his mind.  The Bad Cop got all up in his face where if Officer 2708 had been so inclined he could have made it so Bad Cop was eating through a straw for a few months.  Bad Cop was all bluster and macho manure but he was dangerous because he was also a ruse.  

He was sleight of hand, watch what I'm doing over here!  Look, look!  I'm waving this hand!  Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.  That was the Good Cop: the man behind the curtain of sincere concern.  He sat across the broad table.   Never giving anything away, never coming within reach.  Trying to lull him into his confidence while maintaining a safe distance.  His lap top open in front of him, Good Cop was tapped into the Room.  The Room was the real interrogator.  The officers directed the questioning but the Room determined the truth of the answers.  It scanned Officer 2708's body and mind, it literally saw into him, measuring all that could be measured, it may not be able to find the truth, but it would know a lie when it heard it.  It was possible to fool the room, but it took a very special person, those people were called psychotics.

Officer 2708 had no illusions of fooling the room.  Nor did he have any intentions of letting the questioning delve into certain areas.  He had to be careful, but what he was afraid of was that the Room would be able to tell he was being careful and that Good Cop would see he was being careful and want to know why and then he would have to kill them both.

"Surely you must see," Good Cop's voice was as smooth as ointment, let's be reasonable, it soothed by it's very inflection and pace, "we can't have our officers being attacked in broad daylight with impunity.  It's anarchy.  It's sedition.  You guys are the front lines.  Where the rule of law meets the citizen.  If they don't respect you, they don't respect what you represent.  These people are terrorists, Officer 2708, and we need your help to understand how they got the drop on you.  What went wrong?"

"Are you people familiar with the term, 'concussion?'"  Cast doubt on their results.  The Room couldn't be fooled, but it could be mistaken.

"Smartass!"  Bad Cop snorted.

"Yes, " ointment oozed, "we're not unfamiliar with your condition..."

"Be a shame for you to accidentally take another shot to the soft spot," Bad Cop mused, eyeing the bandage from mere inches away.

"You think it's tough for me to remember now, what do you think I'm going to recall after I'm a vegetable, dumbass?"  If the lug could be lured into physical assault, the legal eagles would swoop in and end this interview post haste.  It was probably the best option he had.  

"You think that would stop us?  That would make it easier," Bad Cop smiled, it was an unholy expression on him, like a leer from a crucifix, "then we'd just cut you open and see what we want to see, poke around and move stuff out of the way till there was nothing but a cooling, squishy puddle of truth for us to examine.  We can do that you know?  Surgically get information vital to National Security from terrorists or anyone who aids and abets them.  They're never quite the same when put back together but, hey, the nation is safer for their noble sacrifice.  Whatd'ya say, meat head?  Should we turn you over to the good doctor Mengele and his bone saw?"

2708 thought that was a bit of a stretch.  Yes, they'd discovered ways of reading memories and, yes, it was a messy process where people had been irrevocably damaged and it was precisely because of that damage that it was so hard to get a warrant for it.  You needed a federal judge first and then had to prove that there was a clear threat to National Security.  Neither, in his opinion, was going to be easy in this case.

Unless, they had an Open Writ.  Officer 2708 suppressed a shudder just the idea of an Open Writ gave him.  Good Cop didn't give anything away but he was sure that physical reaction just registered on the Room's monitors.

"We don't want to do that, obviously.  We don't think you're abetting anyone.  A decorated patrolman, a pillar of the corp," ointment again, "but we have some very bad people out there running around and you represent the only contact we have with them.  We need to know what happened."

"What do the drives show?"

"Not enough.  Or, more than was intended.  It seems that there's a hole in them.  Someone edited them and we need to know who and why."

"You mean 'how?'  Editing the drives would be damn near impossible," they knew this but he stated it anyway.

"Why don't you start with filling in the blanks and let us worry about what's possible or not!"  Bad Cop spit in his ear.

Officer 2708 went monotone, "I approached the vehicle in protocol three.  The vehicle was established as unoccupied by exterior examination and RFID scan.  Prior to interior examination, two suspects descended the hill approximately one hundred meters to the North approaching the vehicle.  There was a crunching sound and a white light in my head.  End of report."

Bad Cop suddenly kicked out his chair and grabbed him by his shirt.  Here we go, thought Officer 2708.

"How!?  How did he sneak up on you?" Bad Cop roared.

"There must have been a third guy under the truck, Jack Ass!  Figure it out!  The two on the hill distract me while their buddy rolls out and thumps me.  It's not rocket science, Captain Caveman.  Give me your baton and I'll show you how it works."  Or I could headbutt you, knee your groin, take the baton and show you that way, which I'm going to do anyway if a lawyer doesn't stop this in five..four..three..two...

"You idiot!  There weren't three guys!  There were just the two that came out of the woods.  The guy who cracked your head open was the same one you saw coming out of the woods."

Officer 2708, still hanging in the air by his shirt, said, "um, what?"

Bad Cop put him down, dusted him off and said to Good Cop, "put a nickel in the nickelodeon for him."  Good Cop did something at this lap top and the room went dark and a projection appeared on the table.  There before him, in scaled miniature was the scene.  A chevy pickup, a grassy bank rising to the opposite side, little virtual traffic blurring by right in front of him.  Officer 2708 left his chair on the floor and stayed standing to get a better look.  It gave him a three dimensional, bird's eye view of that very confused moment in his life.  He could now see over the trees to the windfarm beyond.  There stood his man and woman, looking around, taking notes and pictures.  All of a sudden a patrol cruiser whipped out of traffic and screeched to a halt behind the pick-up.  "Nice maneuver," Bad Cop smirked.  "Two hundred klicks an hour to zero, crossing three lanes without a computer assist.  Some reflexes you got there."  He ignored the man, watching the event unfold before him.  He knew how it was done, composite imaging from all of the available cameras in the area, lightpoles, the windfarm's security systems, his own cruiser's, even satellite.  He ducked down and yep, there were sewer cams giving him an idea of what lay underneath the street he had stood on that day.  Where ever he looked though, there were only three people, the two in the windfarm and himself, now approaching the car, riot shield and NLI at the ready.  The action paused.

"Anything look out of place to you, Officer?"  He took a close look but he had to admit that it didn't.  "How about, out of date?"  He looked up, but Bad Cop was serious.  When he looked down, it occurred to him that everything about the Chevy and the two people was out of date. 

"Out of date is kind of the reason I stopped at all.  Internal combustion engine is a big no-no.  Not to mention being unchipped."

"You don't find their clothes odd?"

"Not given the context, no.  Who else but hippies are gonna have an unregistered antique car and be stoned enough to take it out for a spin?"

"Hippies, huh?"  Bad Cop and Good Cop shared a look.

"Yeah, that's what my dad called them," Officer 2708 was starting to get a bad feeling that he couldn't quite put his finger on.

"What do you think they're doing there?" Bad Cop asked.

The answer rolled off his tongue before he could frame it better, "taking notes, taking pictures."  He shrugged even as the bottom dropped out of his stomach.  The man was taking notes alright, writing on plain, lined paper with a real pen, looked like a bic and the girl was taking pictures with a 35mm SLR body, not a digital but a real, film camera!  "With museum pieces, weird, huh?"

The sinking feeling worsened.  Bad Cop and Good Cop were both looking at him the way he had been looking at the holo.  Like they were trying to see what was out of place or out of date about him!

"Roll it from there, Sid," Bad Cop said without taking his eyes from Officer 2708.  Despite his growing fears, 2708 tore his attention from the two interrogators and back to the holo.  The two hippies in the windfarm were done whatever they had come to do and were returning to the pick-up, only to be surprised by little digitally rendered Officer 2708.  Everyone froze but not for long.  The man vanished, just disappeared.  Then reappeared directly behind miniature Officer 2708, swinging a tire iron.  "Should have been wearing your helmet," Bad Cop chuckled.  He had Good Cop rewind and play that part a few more times.  What a sadist.

"You try wearing one all day."

"Bet that's what they said about body armor too back in the stone ages, huh?"  Mini Officer 2708 crumpled on the ground again and again.  "What was your word?  Weird?  Like this guy just popping out here and then, POP!  There he is!  Right behind you!  Wanna see something really 'weird?'  Sid, play it in one quarter speed," the images all slowed to a snail's pace.  "Kinda fun, huh, like we can manipulate time, isn't it?"  Something in the questions sounded baiting but Officer 2708 was too interested in the holo to pay much attention.  The little hippie was starting to look familiar.  

He was a knobby, scarecrow of a man with scraggly black hair and a handle bar mustache.  Slowed down, he noticed the scabbard of a japanese sword stuck through the man's sash.  He'd seen that man before, maybe only once, long ago but where?

They came to the part where the man disappeared.  "Now check this," Bad Cop was like a school kid.  Nearly giggling.  The hippie didn't disappear this time.  Instead it was as if someone sped the images back up.  But no.  Officer 2708 and the girl stayed at their snails pace, traffic moved by at the same rate, only the hippie leaped to a new speed.  He shot down to the truck, a black and brown blur, around it and then poor little 2708 went lights out again.  He was really getting tired of watching himself get knocked unconscious.

Bad Cop wasn't.  "You look funny when your brain is no longer in control of your body.  It's even more amusing at quarter speed, eh?  Wanna see it at one one-hundredth?"  He nodded at Sid.  Now the holo looked like a freeze frame.  The only thing moving was the traffic.  And snails would have been passing the cars had they been on the table.  This time when hippie man went into overdrive Officer 2708 could see even more detail.  "He jogs!"  Bad Cop laughed, "he jogs down to the truck, opens the door, takes out the tire iron, walks around the truck and ooch! that's gotta hurt!  Can I feel the spot or is it still mushy?"  He reached out and Officer 2708 batted his hand.  They faced off for a long second.  "Put it back into real time, Sid.  Emphasis on the 'real.'"

Eva went nuts in officer-down mode, even growling forward in order to cover her fallen master's prone body with her own.  This freaked out the man and woman apparently as he produced an archaic shotgun from somewhere and took a few potshots at Eva while yelling for the woman, which was exactly what officer-down mode was designed to do.  Eva could take a shelling that her patrolman could not.  The hippie chick beat feet down to the truck and as soon as she was in the man put one hand on the truck and truck, man and woman all winked out of existence.  It almost looked fake except for the slight crack and puff of dust as the air collapsed into the void they left.  The holo continued to roll, Eva uncovered her stricken handler as the meat wagon arrived and traffic continued to blur by but Officer 2708 had seen what he needed to see.

"The drives weren't edited, were they Officer 2708?" Bad Cop asked.  "What we just saw, a man and a woman and a two ton truck blinking out of existence is exactly what happened, isn't it?  Isn't it!"

"What do you want from me?  To tell you, you're right?"

 Bad Cop got real close to Christian again, leaned right into his personal space and well within range, but time had changed things.  It was no longer a time to kill.  That time had passed.  Now was the time to survive until that time came again.  Bad Cop must have known some of this, for he unleashed his blasphemous smile again, "Oh, I expect you to do a lot more for me than that, Officer Christian Vanderhoyt, formerly of the Freedom City Police Corp, if that even is who you are, which I highly doubt.  I expect you to show me how."

Flight of the cuttlefish

Shawn drove his trusty green Saturn down to the city.  Shawn loathed the city.  Filth, corruption, violence flourished like virus in a festering host.  A bloated, bleeding host that kept infecting the world around it every time it spat out it's putrid bile in the form of suburbs.  It sat like a fat tick in a fertile valley where two rivers came together and it sucked and sucked and sucked.  It consumed the best of everything the rest of the world could produce and gave nothing back.  It just demanded more.  The best that could be said of cities in Shawn's opinion was something the author C.J. Cherryh had pointed out, that if it weren't for cities, then all those people would be out loose in the countryside like locusts and then how long would the natural world last?  Shawn would have pointed out to Ms. Cherryh however that living like rats on top of each other just encouraged the population boom in the first place and that in the second, all those people still destroyed the countryside, they just did it by proxy.  Not to mention they had the irritating habit of arrogance.  They seemed to think that their cosmopolitan views were somehow more mature than their provincial cousins' and therefore they needed to manage the rest of the world.  As if living physically higher up than the rest of the world had somehow become their social viewpoint as well.

Right now though, Shawn was glad for their hive.  He needed to travel and that meant he needed to cover his tracks.  So it was into the dumpster to hide among the rats.  He burrowed deep into the tumor and parked Trusty in a commercial district where it wasn't likely to stand out.  Not so ritzy it got towed but not seedy enough to worry about his hubcaps.  He actually didn't really need to worry about thieves or vandals, nor did he feed the meter.  Unless the worst happened, it wasn't going to be parked long and if it did happen, then he wouldn't be around to pay the fine.  He eased the seat back and stared at the loose fabric hanging from the overhead for a moment to clear his head.  There was the nagging part of him that said he wouldn't be able to do it anymore, that it had been too long.  He didn't give the voice much credence, he could still feel the Umber even when he wasn't in it, feel the storm that constantly raged as if through a wall.  The nagging voice was still annoying though and he looked forward to making his inner critic eat its words.

He just 'peeked' at first.  Let the Umber wash over the Real and see what glowed.  Like dipping below the water on a blistering hot day.  Instant relief.  Shiver of thrill.  A roaring silence.  Shifting shades.  It was still there and he was still able to enter it!  Despite the danger, he didn't even open his eyes at first.  Just let it wash away the Real, you can have it, I don't want it.  She's too fat for me.  Just let me stay here, a jellyfish glowing in the darkness of the deep, gently swished to and fro in the rock-a-bye cradle of currents.  But he wasn't a jellyfish, he was a cuttlefish and there were things in the dark that had teeth and crushed cuttlefish between them and then hunted down the cuttlefish's family and friends if the cuttlefish wasn't cunning enough.  He sighed, just once it would be nice to enjoy a real moment that didn't have a downside, an ugly truth that ruined the ideal.

He opened his eyes.  The world was still there but it had joined to the Umber.  An ethereal miasma that Shawn perceived as being brown.  As he expected with this many people around, there were trails and even one distinct aura further down the sidewalk.  None seemed aware of him however nor were the trails circling as they might if a hound had been sniffing around looking for his jump-point.  They were incidental traffic, he decided.  It was safe to go all-in.  He took a deep breath and released his hold on the verisimilis.  The Real, a term he hated since the Umber felt more real to him than the world most folk experienced, translated itself into threads of Time and threads of Space, warp and woof.  The Tapestry at this range was like looking under a microscope.  There was no telling what you were looking at, it wasn't a tree blocking your view of the forest.  It was a single cell blocking your view of the tree.  That was most folk's problem, they saw the cell and assumed that was all there was.  They couldn't imagine how that cell interacted with the cell next door much less how they both were part of something so much more lavish.

Then again, some had said that Shawn's problem was that he couldn't let go of the bigger picture.  How do you enjoy the moment when you know what the next one will bring?  But right now, Shawn's concern was not the next moment but a moment long before.  He didn't have Everitt's knack for finding the right thread but he did have Pancho's directions.  He pulled back a bit to get his bearings, his body not governed by it's mundane skeleton any longer.  He had dissolved into something that belonged.  Here he had appendages that governed movement that wasn't bound by man's so-called 'laws of physics.'  Here he sprang, he swam, he flew, he didn't know how to describe the action as anything other than exhilarating.  More of the Tapestry came into focus, still just a blob of ink in the big picture but enough to figure out the front from the back, so to speak.  He coiled, pushed off, a glowing thread of his own anchored from where he entered, trailing out behind him.

Threads whipped by, time and space and all the Real they represented undulating and snapping around him.  As usual, the storm died down some as he moved closer to the 'center.'  He mused on how there was no language that fit this place or words that could sum up the experience.  There was no way to describe what traveling was like.  It was swimming.  It was flying and it was neither.  Some said it was like standing still while everything came to you but Shawn disagreed.  It made him feel small and no amount of arrogance would allow he, the gnat, to think that he stood still as the universe turned underneath his wings.  It was as close to infinity as he could imagine and yet he knew it had ends, two actually. 

He hadn't done this in a long while and it showed.  Like muscles taken out of a cast, he was weak and barely made it the whole way on one jump.  As it was, he fell short of his planned landing pad, tumbling out of the Umber into a field of tall grass and blessedly soft mud when his strength gave out.  Oh well, any port in a storm.  But was it the right port?

He lay there, face pressed against the cool earth and waited for the swaying in his head to stop.  Man!  He was out of shape!  A short hop like this back in the day wouldn't have even given him the hiccups.  Now he lay there with the world spinning and a thrumming ache, violin tight and it was all he could do to keep his lunch down.  If a hound spat out of the Umber after him now he would be skewered.  He crawled to a shallow ditch, a dry run off.  It was all the defense he could manage for a while.

"Lord, you got me here.  Here's hoping it wasn't just to get gutted," he prayed through chattering teeth to the impossibly clear sky overhead.  Twentieth century kids always forgot what a clean sky looked like.  Maybe that would improve heaven's reception.  Just in case it didn't, he took one of the 'presents' of the lead box out of its sheath and laid it on his chest.  Sun and sword made him almost comfortable enough to sleep.  Almost, but for the fear.