Rick Wayne's Blog, page 13
October 9, 2020
(Art) The Paper Miracles of Xi Zhang
Xi Zhang is a concept artist and illustrator from Beijing. Find more on her ArtStation page.
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October 7, 2020
(Fiction) Trouble
The bus pulled onto the shoulder to report the bleeder on the side of the highway. A car had clipped the man’s leg, which bent awkwardly to one side. His hands were frozen into fists and his feet had gone completely limp. The tips of his loafers wobbled over the asphalt like a record needle as he dragged himself forward on his elbows, one after the other, as if fleeing for his life in slow motion. He felt neither cold nor pain, and his frosted eyes remained fixed on some distant salvation even as a gargantuan bus rolled to a stop behind him.
“I dunno why we gotta wait for this,” a white-bearded man declared loudly from the back.
“It’s the law,” someone whispered.
Nio heard the bus conductor, who tended the self-driving vehicle from a console, speak softly into his radio as passengers leaned into the aisle to peer out the high windshield. In the distance, the overcast sky was beginning to retreat, leaving waves of cotton-ball clouds. A pair of teenagers, too young to remember the outbreak, snapped pictures of the awkward, broken man now illuminated in the alternating flashes of the bus’s hazard lights. The tires of a passing car sprayed icy slush across the shoulder, which struck the undercarriage in heavy clumps and doused the disheveled bleeder, who simply lurched forward again, dragging himself limply along.
“That poor man,” a woman near the front told her companion.
“He shoulda lined up like everyone else,” the grisly bearded man declared. He removed his red NRA cap and waved it like a banner. “Hey, let’s get goin’ already. I gotta take a piss.”
There was a click of static as the conductor announced over the speakers they would be waiting approximately ten minutes for the highway patrol to arrive. The grisly man threw up his arms in frustration.
A second passing car honked its horn at the partial blockage of the road and the baby in the seat across from Nio, one aisle ahead, began to cry—softly at first, then much louder.
“Great . . .” the bearded man sighed.
The infant’s mother rocked her child gently and tried to quiet him, but he was hungry or cold or had simply had enough of the bus and was letting the whole world know. Several passengers shuffled in annoyance.
“Shhh . . .” the young mother intoned. Her round, smooth face was darkly complected and bore equal measures of patience and fear.
Nio leaned forward across the aisle with one hand extended. “He’s beautiful. May I?”
The young woman nodded, happy to have an ally. She froze awkwardly a moment later when Nio pressed her hand to the child’s forehead, as if feeling for a fever, instead of caressing it tenderly. Almost instantly, the crying baby stuttered. After another moment, his eyes brightened and he began sucking an invisible pacifier. Nio heard quiet exhales of relief. As she leaned back into her seat, more than one person turned from the front to peer at her through the gaps between the seats. She certainly stood out, with a shaved head and heavy loops in her ears. She grabbed the collar of her puffy winter coat and turned it up nose-high.
Colored lights flashed across the ceiling as a patrol car pulled around the bus and parked at an angle, shielding the bleeder from oncoming traffic. The trooper got out and walked around to the door of the bus, which opened with a hiss. Cold air whipped up the aisle and around Nio’s ankles. After trading a few words with the conductor, the trooper touched her hat in thanks and waved him on.
“Finally . . .” the grisly man said. “My teeth are frickin’ floatin’ back here.”
The bus tires carved valleys in the slush as the big vehicle pulled onto the highway and began accelerating smoothly. Several passengers clapped. Nio watched from the half-frosted window as the broken man on the shoulder receded from view. In his stead was the bleak landscape of the North American high plains. Tufts of brown grass poked up through a fondant of white. Low hills were cut into even barbed-wire squares. She had traveled nearly 300 miles. Somewhere ahead, a woman she had never met was dying, perhaps inexorably. Nio took out the unopened letter from her coat pocket and stared at it.
Pasture and fields gradually gave way to repair shops, fast food chains, and half-derelict shopping centers, but it wasn’t until the bus passed a boarded Dollar-Savr that Nio noticed all the damage. It looked like a tornado had hopped across the town on a pogo stick. A leafless tree had left a three-meter hole in the earth after it was uprooted and dropped onto a snow-topped house. A plump Buddha had fallen from its perch over a Chinese buffet and now golden-mooned passersby from the top of a parked car. Ice-covered vehicles were scattered about the ditches and fields like a giant child’s abandoned toys. No one noticed the huge donut hanging in the sky until the bus passed the cluster of old buildings along main street, five blocks away. A teenage girl saw it first and half-screamed in surprise. She pointed.
“What the hell . . .” The grisly man said, getting up from his seat and leaning over Nio to get a look out her window.
It was made of colored fiberglass. The words Wonder and Land curved around the top and bottom in colorful sprinkles. It seemed likely that somewhere nearby, a donut shop was missing its sign.
“How’s it staying up there?” a woman asked.
The donut hung motionless, 50 feet in the air. Everyone on the bus immediately raised their phones or tapped their lenses, triggering AR tags to appear on-screen. Nio glanced around the bus. No two devices seemed to use the same information source, meaning each gave a different cause or description. Everyone was seeing the same thing, and yet no one was.
The donut disappeared as the bus turned a corner and stopped in a parking rectangle near a 24-hour diner. Its engine rumbled gently as the conductor announced a thirty-minute break for those continuing to Jamestown. Nio lifted the strap of her rolled bag over her head and stepped down to a sidewalk pockmarked in frozen footprints, like the fossil of a prehistoric riverbed. Her breath billowed over her puffy coat’s high collar, and she huddled into it for warmth. It was the fourth day of record-setting April cold. It was supposed to last another four. The few townspeople that had ventured out looked like they were preparing for an inland hurricane. Storefront windows were being taped in large Xs. The sidewalk display in front of a nail salon was being chipped from the ice so it could be brought inside. A handwritten note on the door of a 100-year-old pharmacy announced that it was closing early for Moving Day. A similar announcement was posted to the door of the diner, next to the one that declared it was for “Patriots Only.”
Nio pulled out her phone as the old man in the red cap and overalls hurried past her on his way to the bathroom. The last message she received had simply said Please. She scrolled through the thread to confirm the address. She tapped it, which brought up her map application, but it could only display the blue track of the 300-mile bus ride. The signal icon at the top of the screen was gray—there was no encrypted coverage in the town. Her state-of-the-art untraceable phone had no service.
“Shit . . .” Her breath erupted in a cloud, and she shivered.
A tall, dark-skinned man had parked his vintage 2000s truck in front of the hardware store next to the diner, where he was loading large bags of fertilizer into the back. He was smart enough to wear gloves and an insulated mechanic’s body suit. He noticed her looking.
“You lost?”
“What makes you think I’m not local?” she joked, very aware of her appearance.
He smiled as he slid a bag over the ice to the curb, where he could get his hands under it. “That haircut would be enough.” He grunted as he lifted. “But the jacket clinches it.”
Nio looked down at herself. The exterior of her knee-length puffy coat was a plain gunmetal gray, but the interior, visible only at the cuffs and inside the high collar that circled her face, was bright orange.
“Out here,” he explained, “we wear the hunter’s orange on the outside.” He nodded to a round-bellied man in a light hunter’s vest over a camo-print collared shirt.
“Well, it’s reversible,” Nio said. “So, I’ll keep that in mind.”
“You do that.” He tossed another bag with a grunt.
“I don’t suppose you could tell me how to get to The Cedars.”
He stopped. “The apartments?” The name seemed to catch his attention. “Why would you wanna go there?” He stepped around to retrieve another bag.
“Something wrong with it?”
“It’s kind of a dump,” he said in a way that implied there was more.
“I’ll have to risk it.”
“Suit yourself.” He pointed. “That way. Turn left on Marshall.”
“Thanks.”
“You gonna walk the whole way?” he asked, watching her depart.
“Is it far?”
A utility worker in the cradle of an articulated crane appeared over a distant roof to take measurements from the donut, which was just visible to one side.
The man in the mechanic’s suit saw her looking and turned. “Don’t see that every day. Guys at the Harley dealership are taking bets on when it’ll fall.”
“What happened?”
He pointed the opposite way. Nio turned and wondered how she could’ve missed it. Far away, on a bluff near the horizon, a banded deep core mining platform straddled a hill like a four-legged god. Its massive pillars and broad, sail-like protrusions caught the red of the setting sun.
“Deep crust miner,” he said. “Pulls up rare metals. Stuff with funny names.” He bent to lift another bag. “Bitterbase or something.” He tossed it, exhaling loudly.
“Bitterbase?” She almost laughed. “You mean Ytterbium? Or Ferropericlase?”
The man looked to be in his 30s and was in good shape. His narrow eyes were constantly smiling. The cold, dry air pulled tendrils of steam from his forehead, and he wiped it with the back of his glove. He stood straight and caught his breath.
“You don’t look like a mining engineer,” he said, panting.
“What do they usually look like?”
“More facial hair, for one. You work up there?” he asked skeptically.
“Nope.” She glanced again. “Never seen one before.”
Unlike oil platforms, which rose no more than a couple hundred feet in the air, the deep core miner was a skyscraper. But since it had similar proportions to its oceangoing cousins, the winds at altitude were a serious problem. Where an oil rig could be boxy and exposed, a deep-crust driller was louvered and aerodynamic, including two large adjustable metal sails that rose in parallel from its center mass, which looked like a shell that had been cut and separated into halves. Red lights spaced evenly along the sails’ central masts blinked in alternating intervals. Nio could just make out the white of a massive corporate logo.
“So, you just happen to know about funny metals?”
“I know about lots of things.” She started backing away. “Nice to meet you, Del.”
He looked down at his padded work suit. The name Del was stitched in fancy blue letters inside a white oval on his chest.
“Sharp,” he said, reaching for the last bag. “More proof you’re not from here. Come for the big show?”
“Show?” she asked, taking tiny steps to extricate herself from conversation.
“Moving day.” He nodded again to the platform. It looked like a mountain.
“They move that thing?”
“All 800,000 tons.”
“How?”
“Same way we got the amazing floating donut.”
Nio scowled. “I thought anti-grav emitters were outlawed.”
“They are. For people like you and me.” He hefted the last bag. The bed of the truck rattled as it landed on top of the others. “But international mining conglomerates get special exemptions.”
Nio looked up and down the frozen street. Hardly anything traveled. “Is that why everyone’s packing up?”
“Couple arcs of radiation cut through town the other night. You shoulda been here. Like a circus,” he said dryly. Then he shook his head. “Can’t even be sure of the ground under our feet anymore.”
He glanced to scalp again but quickly pointed north in a clear effort to avoid staring at the six oval scars just visible under the flat stubble of her hair.
“There’s three,” he explained. “One just across the border in North Dakota, one out west in the badlands, and that one, about fifty miles out.”
Nio ran a hand across her head involuntarily.
“Ever since they started drilling, there’ve been tremors. Couple weeks ago, we had the big one. Couple folks died, so they’re moving it west while they figure out what to do.” He squinted skeptically. “You sure you’re not here for the big show? Protest, maybe?”
She smiled broadly. “You think I’m a protester?”
“We get them. You should be careful, though,” he said turning grave. “Environmental types aren’t real popular here.”
“Good to know.”
“Sometimes we get the odd tourist or two. Supposedly you can see the legs light up. Gotta stay up late, though.” He looked up at the clear blue sky. The light was fading. “When they planned it, it wasn’t supposed to be this cold.”
“Sound riveting. But I’ll have to pass.” She started backing away again.
“Good, then you’re free. How ’bout letting me buy you dinner?”
Nio smiled again reflexively as her cheeks flushed. “That was pretty slick.”
“Come on,” he said, slamming the truck’s tail shut. “Otherwise I’m stuck with reruns of The Lowdown.”
“I’m glad I rate higher than reality TV.”
“Not counting anything with a drive-thru, you have your choice of two not entirely terrible restaurants.”
“A whole two?”
He shrugged. “Everybody else is closing.”
“It’s very flattering,” she said to the space between her boots.
“So say yes.”
“I mean it. I’ve not actually been asked out in a very long time.”
“But?”
“I can’t.” Nio started backing across the street again. “Maybe next time, cowboy.”
“At least lemme give you a ride,” he called to her. He opened the truck door with a creak. “It’s 12 below, in case you haven’t noticed, and getting colder as the sun goes down.” He blew fog to underscore the point.
“A ride?” she asked, her legs shivering slightly. “After shooting you down? Isn’t that like taking advantage?”
“How? In this town, we’re five minutes from everywhere you could want to go. Besides, I get the better deal.”
“How’s that?”
He took off his dirt-tipped work gloves. “You’re the one who’s gotta ride with a guy who smells like fertilizer.”
Nio closed her eyes and felt his bioelectrics. The hum was weak at that distance, but the pattern was precise. Organized. He didn’t have the high-pitched urgency of a man on a violent or sexual prowl. He was calm. Curious. She could feel him modulating up and down evenly in a pattern common with athletes and soldiers—anyone in the habit of reacting quickly.
As usual, the modulation reminded her of a song.
“Turn to Stone,” she breathed. Electric Light Orchestra.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Okay, cowboy. It’s a deal.”
He got behind the wheel and leaned over to open the passenger’s side door. Except for a folded letter on the seat, resting on its torn envelope, the inside of the old car was immaculate. Nio picked up the paper to move it.
“We all get one,” he said.
The embossed seal of the State of South Dakota sat proudly at the top. Nio unfolded it and read aloud.
“This letter is to remind you that from 11:00 p.m. on April 23rd until 3:00 a.m. on the 24th, Central Daylight Time, the gravity in the vicinity of Long Lake will be reduced between sixty and eighty-five percent. Water and power services across Brown, Campbell, Corson, Dewey, Edmunds, Faulk, McPherson, Potter, and Walworth Counties will be suspended from 10:00 p.m. in the evening until such time as the region is deemed safe. No evacuations are ordered. However, the Long Lake area remains closed and you are urged to secure any loose belongings weighing under 30 lbs. and to remain indoors. Persons wishing to apply for relocation—” She stopped reading and folded the paper again.
“The Cedars, right?”
She nodded. “Thank you.” She set the letter on the dash
The engine started with a rumble and he backed into the road. He was right. The interior of the truck smelled vaguely of earth and manure. Nio rolled her bare fingers in front of the vent, and they tingled in the coming heat.
“Just promise you’re not lookin’ to score,” he said.
“I thought this was the land of the brave and the pure,” she joked.
Del snorted once. “First time outside the city, I take it.”
“No . . .” she said hesitantly, adjusting her rolled bag on her lap. “Not exactly.”
The traffic light turned yellow and he rolled through it. Almost no one was out.
“I just keep hearing how it’s all God and country out here,” she explained.
They passed a small boutique bakery on the right with the NRA seal on the door. A pair of young women were chatting at a table near the window. A handwritten sign in the window said LIBTARDS NOT WELCOME.
Del saw her looking. “Don’t worry. The Starbucks near the interstate goes the other way, if you’re so inclined.”
Nio didn’t answer.
“You got a name?” he asked.
“Nio.”
“Ny-oh,” he repeated. “Interesting.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“Is it rude to ask what nationality that is?”
“I dunno. I can’t keep up with the rules.”
Del studied her appearance. The long, two-tone jacket with the high collar, the shaved head, the metal loops, the wide, sad eyes with lingering bags underneath.
“New York?” he guessed.
She made a face. “New York?”
“Chicago.”
She shook her head in disbelief.
“Detroit.”
Nothing.
“You can’t tell me you’re from the West Coast. Not with that jacket.”
“What is it with you and my jacket?”
“Gimme a hint,” he said.
She raised her nose. “That takes all the fun out of it.”
He chuckled once. “Alright, then how about telling me what ferroperiscope is or whatever?”
“Interested in geochemistry or making conversation?”
“I just wanna know what’s so important two people had to die.”
“It’s a kind of iron oxide.”
“Rust?”
Nio nodded. “Same as on your truck,” she joked.
“I’ll have you know this is a Chevy and it’s a classic.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So, wait, people died so they could mine rust?”
“Not exactly. Iron oxide crystallizes at very high temperatures and pressures, like hundreds of thousands of atmospheres.”
“Sounds like a lot.”
“The human body can handle maybe five. Deep in the earth’s crust though, rust forms crystals similar to table salt, which conduct electricity in one orientation only. Otherwise, it’s actually a good insulator. That’s really important in certain applications of solid state physics.”
Del waited for more.
“If you bind ytterbium ions to an electrosensitive enzyme that—”
“An enzyme? Like something organic?”
“Yeah. Similar to how hemoglobin binds iron. The enzyme changes configuration to either inhibit or encourage quantum tunneling. That creates a quantum logic gate. Put ion-enzyme complexes inside tiny cavities of ferropericlase and you can construct a molecular circuit where you control when electrons move via tunneling and when they move classically. Changing the source and destination cells is analogous to neurons making or trimming connections. If you stack a bunch of biomechanical wafers like that, you get a 3D quantum matrix similar to what they use for the Shri-class intelligences.”
“I thought we agreed not to make anymore of those.”
“Well, no one really knows what the Chinese or Russians are doing, but whatever it is, I doubt they’re doing it with rare earths from North America.”
“Then what’s the big deal?”
“Research. Everyone wants to be the first to design the next class. That’s all Shri Brahma does actually: contemplate consciousness. But ferropericlase has other applications as well—large-scale data-transfer systems, for example.”
After a moment of silence, she turned to see the smirk on his face.
“You sure you’re not an engineer?” he asked.
“Ha. Would I be taking the bus? But what about you, cowboy?” she asked quickly. “Been here your whole life?”
“Naw. Mom moved us here from Minneapolis when I was in junior high. Had a chance at double-A ball.”
It was his turn to notice the look on her face. “You don’t know what that is,” he said.
She shook her head.
“Wow.” Del stopped at a red light. He leaned back to examine her again in mock study. “You’re really, really not from around here. Who doesn’t know about football?”
She shrugged.
“Come on, you gotta tell me.”
“I grew up in Taiwan,” she explained.
“Taiwan?” He paused as if there was some punchline coming. “You don’t look even a little Chinese,” he said.
“I’m not.”
“And you don’t have an accent.”
“It was an international private school. All English.”
“Do you also speak . . . whatever they speak in Taiwan?”
“Taiwanese.” She smiled again. “Yes. I do.”
Del drove in silence for a moment. “I blew it, didn’t I?”
“Blew what?”
“You’re smart and know about geochemistry and shit and I don’t even know what folks speak in Taiwan.”
“I know very little about geochemistry. But you were right.” She pointed ahead. “Looks like we were five minutes from everywhere.”
Del slowed and pulled to a stop in front of three blocks of aging, cheaply built 2020s apartments. A pile of planks and downed branches in the corner of the parking lot was topped in mounds of snow. Hanging inside a second-floor window, back-lit so it was clearly visible even at night, was the red, green, and yellow TruBoi flag.
“I see what you mean,” she said.
“Yeah. You got friends here or something?”
“Not exactly.” Nio opened the door and stepped down carefully. Her unlaced boots nearly disappeared in the slush.
“You sure I can’t interest you in a not-entirely-terrible dinner? This town’s gonna get really dead in a couple hours.”
“Worried about me?”
He glanced to the flag. “How do you know I’m not just trying to get in your pants?”
“You’re not.”
“So, you’re psychic, too, is that it?”
She waited for an explanation, but Del only shrugged.
“Come on,” Nio urged. “I told you where I was from.”
He exhaled slowly. He looked down the road. “I saw you get off the bus. People like you come out here, they’re one of two things: lost . . . or trouble.”
“Which one am I?”
“I was hopin’ lost. Why you think I offered the ride?”
Nio smiled. “See ya around, cowboy.”
The opening to my latest novel, a near-future mystery available free from my website while it goes through the query process.
Trouble
The bus pulled onto the shoulder to report the bleeder on the side of the highway. A car had clipped the man’s leg, which bent awkwardly to one side. His hands were frozen into fists and his feet had gone completely limp. The tips of his loafers wobbled over the asphalt like a record needle as he dragged himself forward on his elbows, one after the other, as if fleeing for his life in slow motion. He felt neither cold nor pain, and his frosted eyes remained fixed on some distant salvation even as a gargantuan bus rolled to a stop behind him.
“I dunno why we gotta wait for this,” a white-bearded man declared loudly from the back.
“It’s the law,” someone whispered.
Nio heard the bus conductor, who tended the self-driving vehicle from a console, speak softly into his radio as passengers leaned into the aisle to peer out the high windshield. In the distance, the overcast sky was beginning to retreat, leaving waves of cotton-ball clouds. A pair of teenagers, too young to remember the outbreak, snapped pictures of the awkward, broken man now illuminated in the alternating flashes of the bus’s hazard lights. The tires of a passing car sprayed icy slush across the shoulder, which struck the undercarriage in heavy clumps and doused the disheveled bleeder, who simply lurched forward again, dragging himself limply along.
“That poor man,” a woman near the front told her companion.
“He shoulda lined up like everyone else,” the grisly bearded man declared. He removed his red NRA cap and waved it like a banner. “Hey, let’s get goin’ already. I gotta take a piss.”
There was a click of static as the conductor announced over the speakers they would be waiting approximately ten minutes for the highway patrol to arrive. The grisly man threw up his arms in frustration.
A second passing car honked its horn at the partial blockage of the road and the baby in the seat across from Nio, one aisle ahead, began to cry—softly at first, then much louder.
“Great . . .” the bearded man sighed.
The infant’s mother rocked her child gently and tried to quiet him, but he was hungry or cold or had simply had enough of the bus and was letting the whole world know. Several passengers shuffled in annoyance.
“Shhh . . .” the young mother intoned. Her round, smooth face was darkly complected and bore equal measures of patience and fear.
Nio leaned forward across the aisle with one hand extended. “He’s beautiful. May I?”
The young woman nodded, happy to have an ally. She froze awkwardly a moment later when Nio pressed her hand to the child’s forehead, as if feeling for a fever, instead of caressing it tenderly. Almost instantly, the crying baby stuttered. After another moment, his eyes brightened and he began sucking an invisible pacifier. Nio heard quiet exhales of relief. As she leaned back into her seat, more than one person turned from the front to peer at her through the gaps between the seats. She certainly stood out, with a shaved head and heavy loops in her ears. She grabbed the collar of her puffy winter coat and turned it up nose-high.
Colored lights flashed across the ceiling as a patrol car pulled around the bus and parked at an angle, shielding the bleeder from oncoming traffic. The trooper got out and walked around to the door of the bus, which opened with a hiss. Cold air whipped up the aisle and around Nio’s ankles. After trading a few words with the conductor, the trooper touched her hat in thanks and waved him on.
“Finally . . .” the grisly man said. “My teeth are frickin’ floatin’ back here.”
The bus tires carved valleys in the slush as the big vehicle pulled onto the highway and began accelerating smoothly. Several passengers clapped. Nio watched from the half-frosted window as the broken man on the shoulder receded from view. In his stead was the bleak landscape of the North American high plains. Tufts of brown grass poked up through a fondant of white. Low hills were cut into even barbed-wire squares. She had traveled nearly 300 miles. Somewhere ahead, a woman she had never met was dying, perhaps inexorably. Nio took out the unopened letter from her coat pocket and stared at it.
Pasture and fields gradually gave way to repair shops, fast food chains, and half-derelict shopping centers, but it wasn’t until the bus passed a boarded Dollar-Savr that Nio noticed all the damage. It looked like a tornado had hopped across the town on a pogo stick. A leafless tree had left a three-meter hole in the earth after it was uprooted and dropped onto a snow-topped house. A plump Buddha had fallen from its perch over a Chinese buffet and now golden-mooned passersby from the top of a parked car. Ice-covered vehicles were scattered about the ditches and fields like a giant child’s abandoned toys. No one noticed the huge donut hanging in the sky until the bus passed the cluster of old buildings along main street, five blocks away. A teenage girl saw it first and half-screamed in surprise. She pointed.
“What the hell . . .” The grisly man said, getting up from his seat and leaning over Nio to get a look out her window.
It was made of colored fiberglass. The words Wonder and Land curved around the top and bottom in colorful sprinkles. It seemed likely that somewhere nearby, a donut shop was missing its sign.
“How’s it staying up there?” a woman asked.
The donut hung motionless, 50 feet in the air. Everyone on the bus immediately raised their phones or tapped their lenses, triggering AR tags to appear on-screen. Nio glanced around the bus. No two devices seemed to use the same information source, meaning each gave a different cause or description. Everyone was seeing the same thing, and yet no one was.
The donut disappeared as the bus turned a corner and stopped in a parking rectangle near a 24-hour diner. Its engine rumbled gently as the conductor announced a thirty-minute break for those continuing to Jamestown. Nio lifted the strap of her rolled bag over her head and stepped down to a sidewalk pockmarked in frozen footprints, like the fossil of a prehistoric riverbed. Her breath billowed over her puffy coat’s high collar, and she huddled into it for warmth. It was the fourth day of record-setting April cold. It was supposed to last another four. The few townspeople that had ventured out looked like they were preparing for an inland hurricane. Storefront windows were being taped in large Xs. The sidewalk display in front of a nail salon was being chipped from the ice so it could be brought inside. A handwritten note on the door of a 100-year-old pharmacy announced that it was closing early for Moving Day. A similar announcement was posted to the door of the diner, next to the one that declared it was for “Patriots Only.”
Nio pulled out her phone as the old man in the red cap and overalls hurried past her on his way to the bathroom. The last message she received had simply said Please. She scrolled through the thread to confirm the address. She tapped it, which brought up her map application, but it could only display the blue track of the 300-mile bus ride. The signal icon at the top of the screen was gray—there was no encrypted coverage in the town. Her state-of-the-art untraceable phone had no service.
“Shit . . .” Her breath erupted in a cloud, and she shivered.
A tall, dark-skinned man had parked his vintage 2000s truck in front of the hardware store next to the diner, where he was loading large bags of fertilizer into the back. He was smart enough to wear gloves and an insulated mechanic’s body suit. He noticed her looking.
“You lost?”
“What makes you think I’m not local?” she joked, very aware of her appearance.
He smiled as he slid a bag over the ice to the curb, where he could get his hands under it. “That haircut would be enough.” He grunted as he lifted. “But the jacket clinches it.”
Nio looked down at herself. The exterior of her knee-length puffy coat was a plain gunmetal gray, but the interior, visible only at the cuffs and inside the high collar that circled her face, was bright orange.
“Out here,” he explained, “we wear the hunter’s orange on the outside.” He nodded to a round-bellied man in a light hunter’s vest over a camo-print collared shirt.
“Well, it’s reversible,” Nio said. “So, I’ll keep that in mind.”
“You do that.” He tossed another bag with a grunt.
“I don’t suppose you could tell me how to get to The Cedars.”
He stopped. “The apartments?” The name seemed to catch his attention. “Why would you wanna go there?” He stepped around to retrieve another bag.
“Something wrong with it?”
“It’s kind of a dump,” he said in a way that implied there was more.
“I’ll have to risk it.”
“Suit yourself.” He pointed. “That way. Turn left on Marshall.”
“Thanks.”
“You gonna walk the whole way?” he asked, watching her depart.
“Is it far?”
A utility worker in the cradle of an articulated crane appeared over a distant roof to take measurements from the donut, which was just visible to one side.
The man in the mechanic’s suit saw her looking and turned. “Don’t see that every day. Guys at the Harley dealership are taking bets on when it’ll fall.”
“What happened?”
He pointed the opposite way. Nio turned and wondered how she could’ve missed it. Far away, on a bluff near the horizon, a banded deep core mining platform straddled a hill like a four-legged god. Its massive pillars and broad, sail-like protrusions caught the red of the setting sun.
“Deep crust miner,” he said. “Pulls up rare metals. Stuff with funny names.” He bent to lift another bag. “Bitterbase or something.” He tossed it, exhaling loudly.
“Bitterbase?” She almost laughed. “You mean Ytterbium? Or Ferropericlase?”
The man looked to be in his 30s and was in good shape. His narrow eyes were constantly smiling. The cold, dry air pulled tendrils of steam from his forehead, and he wiped it with the back of his glove. He stood straight and caught his breath.
“You don’t look like a mining engineer,” he said, panting.
“What do they usually look like?”
“More facial hair, for one. You work up there?” he asked skeptically.
“Nope.” She glanced again. “Never seen one before.”
Unlike oil platforms, which rose no more than a couple hundred feet in the air, the deep core miner was a skyscraper. But since it had similar proportions to its oceangoing cousins, the winds at altitude were a serious problem. Where an oil rig could be boxy and exposed, a deep-crust driller was louvered and aerodynamic, including two large adjustable metal sails that rose in parallel from its center mass, which looked like a shell that had been cut and separated into halves. Red lights spaced evenly along the sails’ central masts blinked in alternating intervals. Nio could just make out the white of a massive corporate logo.
“So, you just happen to know about funny metals?”
“I know about lots of things.” She started backing away. “Nice to meet you, Del.”
He looked down at his padded work suit. The name Del was stitched in fancy blue letters inside a white oval on his chest.
“Sharp,” he said, reaching for the last bag. “More proof you’re not from here. Come for the big show?”
“Show?” she asked, taking tiny steps to extricate herself from conversation.
“Moving day.” He nodded again to the platform. It looked like a mountain.
“They move that thing?”
“All 800,000 tons.”
“How?”
“Same way we got the amazing floating donut.”
Nio scowled. “I thought anti-grav emitters were outlawed.”
“They are. For people like you and me.” He hefted the last bag. The bed of the truck rattled as it landed on top of the others. “But international mining conglomerates get special exemptions.”
Nio looked up and down the frozen street. Hardly anything traveled. “Is that why everyone’s packing up?”
“Couple arcs of radiation cut through town the other night. You shoulda been here. Like a circus,” he said dryly. Then he shook his head. “Can’t even be sure of the ground under our feet anymore.”
He glanced to scalp again but quickly pointed north in a clear effort to avoid staring at the six oval scars just visible under the flat stubble of her hair.
“There’s three,” he explained. “One just across the border in North Dakota, one out west in the badlands, and that one, about fifty miles out.”
Nio ran a hand across her head involuntarily.
“Ever since they started drilling, there’ve been tremors. Couple weeks ago, we had the big one. Couple folks died, so they’re moving it west while they figure out what to do.” He squinted skeptically. “You sure you’re not here for the big show? Protest, maybe?”
She smiled broadly. “You think I’m a protester?”
“We get them. You should be careful, though,” he said turning grave. “Environmental types aren’t real popular here.”
“Good to know.”
“Sometimes we get the odd tourist or two. Supposedly you can see the legs light up. Gotta stay up late, though.” He looked up at the clear blue sky. The light was fading. “When they planned it, it wasn’t supposed to be this cold.”
“Sound riveting. But I’ll have to pass.” She started backing away again.
“Good, then you’re free. How ’bout letting me buy you dinner?”
Nio smiled again reflexively as her cheeks flushed. “That was pretty slick.”
“Come on,” he said, slamming the truck’s tail shut. “Otherwise I’m stuck with reruns of The Lowdown.”
“I’m glad I rate higher than reality TV.”
“Not counting anything with a drive-thru, you have your choice of two not entirely terrible restaurants.”
“A whole two?”
He shrugged. “Everybody else is closing.”
“It’s very flattering,” she said to the space between her boots.
“So say yes.”
“I mean it. I’ve not actually been asked out in a very long time.”
“But?”
“I can’t.” Nio started backing across the street again. “Maybe next time, cowboy.”
“At least lemme give you a ride,” he called to her. He opened the truck door with a creak. “It’s 12 below, in case you haven’t noticed, and getting colder as the sun goes down.” He blew fog to underscore the point.
“A ride?” she asked, her legs shivering slightly. “After shooting you down? Isn’t that like taking advantage?”
“How? In this town, we’re five minutes from everywhere you could want to go. Besides, I get the better deal.”
“How’s that?”
He took off his dirt-tipped work gloves. “You’re the one who’s gotta ride with a guy who smells like fertilizer.”
Nio closed her eyes and felt his bioelectrics. The hum was weak at that distance, but the pattern was precise. Organized. He didn’t have the high-pitched urgency of a man on a violent or sexual prowl. He was calm. Curious. She could feel him modulating up and down evenly in a pattern common with athletes and soldiers—anyone in the habit of reacting quickly.
As usual, the modulation reminded her of a song.
“Turn to Stone,” she breathed. Electric Light Orchestra.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Okay, cowboy. It’s a deal.”
He got behind the wheel and leaned over to open the passenger’s side door. Except for a folded letter on the seat, resting on its torn envelope, the inside of the old car was immaculate. Nio picked up the paper to move it.
“We all get one,” he said.
The embossed seal of the State of South Dakota sat proudly at the top. Nio unfolded it and read aloud.
“This letter is to remind you that from 11:00 p.m. on April 23rd until 3:00 a.m. on the 24th, Central Daylight Time, the gravity in the vicinity of Long Lake will be reduced between sixty and eighty-five percent. Water and power services across Brown, Campbell, Corson, Dewey, Edmunds, Faulk, McPherson, Potter, and Walworth Counties will be suspended from 10:00 p.m. in the evening until such time as the region is deemed safe. No evacuations are ordered. However, the Long Lake area remains closed and you are urged to secure any loose belongings weighing under 30 lbs. and to remain indoors. Persons wishing to apply for relocation—” She stopped reading and folded the paper again.
“The Cedars, right?”
She nodded. “Thank you.” She set the letter on the dash
The engine started with a rumble and he backed into the road. He was right. The interior of the truck smelled vaguely of earth and manure. Nio rolled her bare fingers in front of the vent, and they tingled in the coming heat.
“Just promise you’re not lookin’ to score,” he said.
“I thought this was the land of the brave and the pure,” she joked.
Del snorted once. “First time outside the city, I take it.”
“No . . .” she said hesitantly, adjusting her rolled bag on her lap. “Not exactly.”
The traffic light turned yellow and he rolled through it. Almost no one was out.
“I just keep hearing how it’s all God and country out here,” she explained.
They passed a small boutique bakery on the right with the NRA seal on the door. A pair of young women were chatting at a table near the window. A handwritten sign in the window said LIBTARDS NOT WELCOME.
Del saw her looking. “Don’t worry. The Starbucks near the interstate goes the other way, if you’re so inclined.”
Nio didn’t answer.
“You got a name?” he asked.
“Nio.”
“Ny-oh,” he repeated. “Interesting.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“Is it rude to ask what nationality that is?”
“I dunno. I can’t keep up with the rules.”
Del studied her appearance. The long, two-tone jacket with the high collar, the shaved head, the metal loops, the wide, sad eyes with lingering bags underneath.
“New York?” he guessed.
She made a face. “New York?”
“Chicago.”
She shook her head in disbelief.
“Detroit.”
Nothing.
“You can’t tell me you’re from the West Coast. Not with that jacket.”
“What is it with you and my jacket?”
“Gimme a hint,” he said.
She raised her nose. “That takes all the fun out of it.”
He chuckled once. “Alright, then how about telling me what ferroperiscope is or whatever?”
“Interested in geochemistry or making conversation?”
“I just wanna know what’s so important two people had to die.”
“It’s a kind of iron oxide.”
“Rust?”
Nio nodded. “Same as on your truck,” she joked.
“I’ll have you know this is a Chevy and it’s a classic.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So, wait, people died so they could mine rust?”
“Not exactly. Iron oxide crystallizes at very high temperatures and pressures, like hundreds of thousands of atmospheres.”
“Sounds like a lot.”
“The human body can handle maybe five. Deep in the earth’s crust though, rust forms crystals similar to table salt, which conduct electricity in one orientation only. Otherwise, it’s actually a good insulator. That’s really important in certain applications of solid state physics.”
Del waited for more.
“If you bind ytterbium ions to an electrosensitive enzyme that—”
“An enzyme? Like something organic?”
“Yeah. Similar to how hemoglobin binds iron. The enzyme changes configuration to either inhibit or encourage quantum tunneling. That creates a quantum logic gate. Put ion-enzyme complexes inside tiny cavities of ferropericlase and you can construct a molecular circuit where you control when electrons move via tunneling and when they move classically. Changing the source and destination cells is analogous to neurons making or trimming connections. If you stack a bunch of biomechanical wafers like that, you get a 3D quantum matrix similar to what they use for the Shri-class intelligences.”
“I thought we agreed not to make anymore of those.”
“Well, no one really knows what the Chinese or Russians are doing, but whatever it is, I doubt they’re doing it with rare earths from North America.”
“Then what’s the big deal?”
“Research. Everyone wants to be the first to design the next class. That’s all Shri Brahma does actually: contemplate consciousness. But ferropericlase has other applications as well—large-scale data-transfer systems, for example.”
After a moment of silence, she turned to see the smirk on his face.
“You sure you’re not an engineer?” he asked.
“Ha. Would I be taking the bus? But what about you, cowboy?” she asked quickly. “Been here your whole life?”
“Naw. Mom moved us here from Minneapolis when I was in junior high. Had a chance at double-A ball.”
It was his turn to notice the look on her face. “You don’t know what that is,” he said.
She shook her head.
“Wow.” Del stopped at a red light. He leaned back to examine her again in mock study. “You’re really, really not from around here. Who doesn’t know about football?”
She shrugged.
“Come on, you gotta tell me.”
“I grew up in Taiwan,” she explained.
“Taiwan?” He paused as if there was some punchline coming. “You don’t look even a little Chinese,” he said.
“I’m not.”
“And you don’t have an accent.”
“It was an international private school. All English.”
“Do you also speak . . . whatever they speak in Taiwan?”
“Taiwanese.” She smiled again. “Yes. I do.”
Del drove in silence for a moment. “I blew it, didn’t I?”
“Blew what?”
“You’re smart and know about geochemistry and shit and I don’t even know what folks speak in Taiwan.”
“I know very little about geochemistry. But you were right.” She pointed ahead. “Looks like we were five minutes from everywhere.”
Del slowed and pulled to a stop in front of three blocks of aging, cheaply built 2020s apartments. A pile of planks and downed branches in the corner of the parking lot was topped in mounds of snow. Hanging inside a second-floor window, back-lit so it was clearly visible even at night, was the red, green, and yellow TruBoi flag.
“I see what you mean,” she said.
“Yeah. You got friends here or something?”
“Not exactly.” Nio opened the door and stepped down carefully. Her unlaced boots nearly disappeared in the slush.
“You sure I can’t interest you in a not-entirely-terrible dinner? This town’s gonna get really dead in a couple hours.”
“Worried about me?”
He glanced to the flag. “How do you know I’m not just trying to get in your pants?”
“You’re not.”
“So, you’re psychic, too, is that it?”
She waited for an explanation, but Del only shrugged.
“Come on,” Nio urged. “I told you where I was from.”
He exhaled slowly. He looked down the road. “I saw you get off the bus. People like you come out here, they’re one of two things: lost . . . or trouble.”
“Which one am I?”
“I was hopin’ lost. Why you think I offered the ride?”
Nio smiled. “See ya around, cowboy.”
The opening to my latest novel, a near-future mystery available free from my website while it goes through the query process.
October 5, 2020
October 4, 2020
(Update) The Eyedes of October
The seventh update to my ongoing collection The Eyes Have It. Earlier entries include Eye Spy, Eye Always Feel Like, Eye Drank What?, Eye Wonder., and Eye’m Wishing.
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September 30, 2020
The Curious Tragedy of the Batavia
The Batavia was a merchant ship which set sail on its maiden voyage in 1628 from the Netherlands to Java under the command of Dutch East Asia Company official, Francisco Pelsaert. The ship, for its time, was massive—it carried 330 people and was double hulled for the 15,000 mile journey. (It was, in fact, so tall that a replica could only clear Sydney Harbor Bridge at low tide.) Such a long and dangerous voyage in the largely unexplored Southern Ocean attracted only the most desperate crew, who were unable to find employment in the Dutch Navy or the Army. Pelsaert was a merchant, not a sailor. The actual skipper, a drunk named Ariaen Jacobsz, was therefore technically not in charge of the ship and the two men hated one another. Also aboard was Jeronimus Cornelisz, a failed apothecary who now worked for the Dutch East India Company. Cornelisz was a known associate of the painter Torrentius, who had recently been arrested for heresy and satanism, and the authorities were searching for any accomplices.
The atmosphere on the ship was stifling. “These ill-assorted individuals,” Leys wrote, “were bundled up in the heavy black suits that the Dutch sense of proprietary dictated they wear, even in the tropics.” Ten men succumbed to scurvy, the cause of which was not yet known. During the voyage, Cornelisz began sharing some of the ideas he had learned from Torrentius with Jacobsz such as, “Are crimes by God’s elect crimes at all?” and tried to persuade the skipper to join him in a mutiny to seize control of the ship from Pelsaert. The ship was carrying 12 treasure chests to buy spices, and Cornelisz wanted to divert to an English colony.
The mutiny didn’t take place as planned but the situation onboard the ship was tense and restive. Then, on June 3rd, 1629, the ship’s lookout saw what he thought were waves breaking over shallows. He alerted Jacobsz who told him this was impossible because he thought the ship was 600 miles to the north in open seas. But at that time there was no easy way to measure longitude. In reality, the Batavia was wildly off course, close to the West Coast of Australia, and sailing amidst an archipelago of tiny coral islands called the Houtman Abrolhos. It was there that the Batavia struck a reef.
This seemed to spell certain death for the passengers. The sea would break the ship apart and drown them all. Lifeboats had not yet been invented and few people could swim. Authority and discipline dissolved. “Mercenaries and sailors broke into stores of wine and spirits and engaged in a wild orgy,” Leys wrote. “Every taboo was swept away.” However, as the tide receded, it became possible to wade to a nearby island, and most onboard made it to safety. But 70 were too fearful to leave the wreck, and chose to stay on the ship until the very end. When it broke apart nine days later most of them drowned. But even for those who had made it to the island, chances for long-term survival were bleak.
The Batavia carried a small open boat, and under cover of darkness, the skipper and captain set off from the island to Java over 1,800 miles away to seek help (or simply to save themselves). The survivors of the Batavia awakened to find that they had been abandoned. Cornelisz was the most senior remaining Dutch East Asia Company employee and was therefore the natural leader of the survivors. Unfortunately, he turned out to be a psychopath. Under Company rule, all decisions had to be made by committee. Cornelisz had made certain that all committee members were his fellow plotters in the planned mutiny. Now, they controlled all of the weapons from the Batavia, as well as a few rafts constructed out of its wreckage. The committee almost immediately ordered the execution of a soldier accused of stealing wine. This was the first of many murders.
Next, Cornelisz culled the population, particularly the strongest men, by shipping them to remote atolls where he believed there was no water and where he left them without a boat. One group, led by a soldier named Wiebbe Hayes sent a smoke signal indicating that they had found water, which is not something Cornelisz anticipated. And there were abundant wallabies to eat! When other survivors took to rafts to join Hayes, Cornelisz’s men dragged the rafts back to shore and beat the men, women, and children to death on the beach.
Cornelisz established a terror state and ordered arbitrary executions. He retitled himself “Captain General” and made everyone swear loyalty to him. He and the committee wore beribboned officers’ uniforms salvaged from the Batavia and drank the wine. Women were held as slaves and raped. A Dutch aristocrat named Lucretia van der Mijlen, who had been travelling as a passenger along with her maid, was spared and told to become Cornelisz’s concubine. She refused until a deputy explained that either she accede to the Captain General’s request or she would be killed or raped or both. Upon receiving this news, she complied.
Although Cornelisz’s personal psychology explains some of this violence, Leys stresses that his actions were informed by the heretical and libertine theories of Torrentius, who claimed the Devil helped him to paint. Torrentius was jailed and tortured in 1628 and his paintings were burnt. Only one of his works has survived—“Still Life with Flagon, Glass, Jug and Bridle” was rediscovered in 1913 being used to cover a barrel of raisins and now hangs in the Rijksmuseum. It remains mysterious—with no visible brushstrokes it resembles a photograph, and Torrentius may have used an unknown chemical process in its creation.
But Cornelisz held his own heretical beliefs which were independent of the provocations of Torrentius. Cornelisz was an Anabaptist, an often violent millenarian sect that favored adult baptism—a profoundly shocking and subversive heresy at the time—and foresaw an apocalyptic struggle for salvation as described in the Book of Revelation. (In 1553, the Anabaptists established a millenarian proto-communist city state in Münster, characterized by common property, polygamy, and terror.)
A handful of escapees managed to flee Cornelisz’s island on rafts and warned Wiebbe Hayes and his fellow soldiers about Cornelisz’s reign of terror. Anticipating an attack, Hayes’s group built a makeshift fort out of coral, the first European structure in Australia. Two months after the original wreck, Cornelisz’s men attacked Hayes and his largely defenseless companions with muskets. Amid the final battle, a ship was spotted on the horizon. The commander Pelsaert had made it to Java and had returned to rescue the company’s treasure chests and the survivors. Hayes got to the rescue ship first.
Pelsaert could hardly believe what had occurred in his absence. Cornelisz was arrested, tortured, and tried “on the spot,” and his hands were cut off. He was sentenced to death, along with six accomplices. He remained faithful to his heresy and declined to be baptized before he was hanged. Two of his junior henchmen were spared the rope and left on the Australian mainland to fend for themselves with toys to establish friendly relations with the natives. They were never heard from again.
The previous account is taken from a description of totalitarianism and the work of Simon Leys in the magazine Quillette.
Here is the enigmatic sole surviving painting by Torrentius.
Emblematic Still Life with Flagon, Glass, Jug and Bridle, Johannes Torrentius, 1614
A pewter flagon, a wine glass, an earthenware jug, a bridle or rein, and a piece of paper with two staves and inscribed ‘what is out of measure, perishes in immeasurable evil.’ These are exhortations to moderation. You must cut wine with water, curb your appetites. This strict message contrasts sharply with the reputation of the painter, who was repeatedly accused of whoremongery and heresy. [Rijksmuseum, Netherlands]
[image error]
To me, this is a good example of stiob, which is the Soviet name for the practice of adopting a view so strongly that it’s not clear if you’re being ironic or not. Torrentius is punking the staid moderation of the Dutch Christians of his era but in a way that maintains plausible deniability. A particularly dour clergyman might display this dark painting, which seems to celebrate the doing of nothing unto death, in his parlor.
There is definitely something grim about it. There is more void than anything, for example, including inside the clear goblet, which reflects no viewer. Right there at the center of the circle, we find not a full cup of life but a sort of sterile emptiness surrounded in black.
The Wreck of the Batavia
The Batavia was a merchant ship which set sail on its maiden voyage in 1628 from the Netherlands to Java under the command of Dutch East Asia Company official, Francisco Pelsaert. The ship, for its time, was massive—it carried 330 people and was double hulled for the 15,000 mile journey. (It was, in fact, so tall that a replica could only clear Sydney Harbor Bridge at low tide.) Such a long and dangerous voyage in the largely unexplored Southern Ocean attracted only the most desperate crew, who were unable to find employment in the Dutch Navy or the Army. Pelsaert was a merchant, not a sailor. The actual skipper, a drunk named Ariaen Jacobsz, was therefore technically not in charge of the ship and the two men hated one another. Also aboard was Jeronimus Cornelisz, a failed apothecary who now worked for the Dutch East India Company. Cornelisz was a known associate of the painter Torrentius, who had recently been arrested for heresy and satanism, and the authorities were searching for any accomplices.
The atmosphere on the ship was stifling. “These ill-assorted individuals,” Leys wrote, “were bundled up in the heavy black suits that the Dutch sense of proprietary dictated they wear, even in the tropics.” Ten men succumbed to scurvy, the cause of which was not yet known. During the voyage, Cornelisz began sharing some of the ideas he had learned from Torrentius with Jacobsz such as, “Are crimes by God’s elect crimes at all?” and tried to persuade the skipper to join him in a mutiny to seize control of the ship from Pelsaert. The ship was carrying 12 treasure chests to buy spices, and Cornelisz wanted to divert to an English colony.
The mutiny didn’t take place as planned but the situation onboard the ship was tense and restive. Then, on June 3rd, 1629, the ship’s lookout saw what he thought were waves breaking over shallows. He alerted Jacobsz who told him this was impossible because he thought the ship was 600 miles to the north in open seas. But at that time there was no easy way to measure longitude. In reality, the Batavia was wildly off course, close to the West Coast of Australia, and sailing amidst an archipelago of tiny coral islands called the Houtman Abrolhos. It was there that the Batavia struck a reef.
This seemed to spell certain death for the passengers. The sea would break the ship apart and drown them all. Lifeboats had not yet been invented and few people could swim. Authority and discipline dissolved. “Mercenaries and sailors broke into stores of wine and spirits and engaged in a wild orgy,” Leys wrote. “Every taboo was swept away.” However, as the tide receded, it became possible to wade to a nearby island, and most onboard made it to safety. But 70 were too fearful to leave the wreck, and chose to stay on the ship until the very end. When it broke apart nine days later most of them drowned. But even for those who had made it to the island, chances for long-term survival were bleak.
The Batavia carried a small open boat, and under cover of darkness, the skipper and captain set off from the island to Java over 1,800 miles away to seek help (or simply to save themselves). The survivors of the Batavia awakened to find that they had been abandoned. Cornelisz was the most senior remaining Dutch East Asia Company employee and was therefore the natural leader of the survivors. Unfortunately, he turned out to be a psychopath. Under Company rule, all decisions had to be made by committee. Cornelisz had made certain that all committee members were his fellow plotters in the planned mutiny. Now, they controlled all of the weapons from the Batavia, as well as a few rafts constructed out of its wreckage. The committee almost immediately ordered the execution of a soldier accused of stealing wine. This was the first of many murders.
Next, Cornelisz culled the population, particularly the strongest men, by shipping them to remote atolls where he believed there was no water and where he left them without a boat. One group, led by a soldier named Wiebbe Hayes sent a smoke signal indicating that they had found water, which is not something Cornelisz anticipated. And there were abundant wallabies to eat! When other survivors took to rafts to join Hayes, Cornelisz’s men dragged the rafts back to shore and beat the men, women, and children to death on the beach.
Cornelisz established a terror state and ordered arbitrary executions. He retitled himself “Captain General” and made everyone swear loyalty to him. He and the committee wore beribboned officers’ uniforms salvaged from the Batavia and drank the wine. Women were held as slaves and raped. A Dutch aristocrat named Lucretia van der Mijlen, who had been travelling as a passenger along with her maid, was spared and told to become Cornelisz’s concubine. She refused until a deputy explained that either she accede to the Captain General’s request or she would be killed or raped or both. Upon receiving this news, she complied.
Although Cornelisz’s personal psychology explains some of this violence, Leys stresses that his actions were informed by the heretical and libertine theories of Torrentius, who claimed the Devil helped him to paint. Torrentius was jailed and tortured in 1628 and his paintings were burnt. Only one of his works has survived—“Still Life with Flagon, Glass, Jug and Bridle” was rediscovered in 1913 being used to cover a barrel of raisins and now hangs in the Rijksmuseum. It remains mysterious—with no visible brushstrokes it resembles a photograph, and Torrentius may have used an unknown chemical process in its creation.
But Cornelisz held his own heretical beliefs which were independent of the provocations of Torrentius. Cornelisz was an Anabaptist, an often violent millenarian sect that favored adult baptism—a profoundly shocking and subversive heresy at the time—and foresaw an apocalyptic struggle for salvation as described in the Book of Revelation. (In 1553, the Anabaptists established a millenarian proto-communist city state in Münster, characterized by common property, polygamy, and terror.)
A handful of escapees managed to flee Cornelisz’s island on rafts and warned Wiebbe Hayes and his fellow soldiers about Cornelisz’s reign of terror. Anticipating an attack, Hayes’s group built a makeshift fort out of coral, the first European structure in Australia. Two months after the original wreck, Cornelisz’s men attacked Hayes and his largely defenseless companions with muskets. Amid the final battle, a ship was spotted on the horizon. The commander Pelsaert had made it to Java and had returned to rescue the company’s treasure chests and the survivors. Hayes got to the rescue ship first.
Pelsaert could hardly believe what had occurred in his absence. Cornelisz was arrested, tortured, and tried “on the spot,” and his hands were cut off. He was sentenced to death, along with six accomplices. He remained faithful to his heresy and declined to be baptized before he was hanged. Two of his junior henchmen were spared the rope and left on the Australian mainland to fend for themselves with toys to establish friendly relations with the natives. They were never heard from again.
The previous account is taken from a description of totalitarianism and the work of Simon Leys in the magazine Quillette.
Here is the enigmatic sole surviving painting by Torrentius.
Emblematic Still Life with Flagon, Glass, Jug and Bridle, Johannes Torrentius, 1614
A pewter flagon, a wine glass, an earthenware jug, a bridle or rein, and a piece of paper with two staves and inscribed ‘what is out of measure, perishes in immeasurable evil.’ These are exhortations to moderation. You must cut wine with water, curb your appetites. This strict message contrasts sharply with the reputation of the painter, who was repeatedly accused of whoremongery and heresy. [Rijksmuseum, Netherlands]
[image error]
To me, this is a good example of stiob, which is the Soviet name for the practice of adopting a view so strongly that it’s not clear if you’re being ironic or not. Torrentius is punking the staid moderation of the Dutch Christians of his era but in a way that maintains plausible deniability. A particularly dour clergyman might display this dark painting, which seems to celebrate the doing of nothing unto death, in his parlor.
There is definitely something grim about it. There is more void than anything, for example, including inside the clear goblet, which reflects no viewer. Right there at the center of the circle, we find not a full cup of life but a sort of sterile emptiness surrounded in black.
September 27, 2020
(Art) The Celestial Visions of Julie Dillon
Julie Dillon (born in 1982) is an American artist specializing in science fiction and fantasy art. A freelance illustrator, Dillon has created images for games, book and magazine covers, and covers for musical albums. Dillon’s work has been nominated for the Chesley Award three times; she won the 2010 Chesley Award for Best Unpublished Color for “Planetary Alignment” (subsequently published as a cover for Clarkesworld Magazine), as well as the 2011 Chesley Award for “The Dala Horse” in Best Interior Illustration. She was nominated for the World Fantasy Award for Best Artist in 2012 and received the Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist in 2014, 2015, and 2017. (Wikipedia)
Click for larger image, and be sure to check out the artist’s website.
September 26, 2020
The Social Dilemma
We watched The Social Dilemma on Netflix last night, which is totally worth the time. At one point, Tristan Harris plays off a quote from Steve Jobs, who famously remarked that computers should be “a bicycle for our minds.”
Harris draws a distinction between a bike as a passive tool, responsive to us and inert when not in use, and social media, which we respond to and which remains active even when not in use — not just gathering data but computing better ways of hijacking our attention.
In other words, given that we are the product being sold (or rather our thoughts and behavior), it is actually social media that uses us while giving us the subjective experience of the opposite. That isn’t true of a bike.
Harris then quips that, as the model “passive tool,” no one was afraid of the bicycle, which is actually not true.
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To be fair, there is a sense in which he’s right: the reactions to the safety bicycle were not as pervasive or extreme as our reaction to social media. And I agree with his point and don’t want to undermine it.
But as a history buff, I would point out that many people were in fact afraid of the safety bicycle and the effect it was perceived to have on society. In the years after it was invented, newspapers blamed it for all kinds of social ills. It was reported to be dangerous, causing numerous injuries and fatalities. It was reported to incite violence through rigorous pedaling. It was reported to cause mania, especially in women, and to loosen their morals. (No matter where we are, we are always a short slide from depravity, it seems.)
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I only bring it up because there are a few important lessons in there. As I am wont to repeat, we like to compare the news media of today to the recent past, the post-war era, which was a rather extreme anomaly. We like to think that the quality of the news has declined and that it was more noble and objective in the past. And yet, the Gray Lady (and others) regularly took potshots at the bicycle for the better part of a decade.
There is also a lesson about experts. If doctors and scientists could, with a straight face, blame the bicycle for inciting violence and causing mania, then they can blame anything, and we have good reason to be skeptical — of similar claims about comic books in the 1950s, for example, or video games today. Same for the pastors and moralists who claimed the bicycle (!) contributed to the decline of civic society.
Finally there is the lesson about ourselves and how we immediately think we’re more enlightened than those anti-bicycle hand-wringers. (I’ll let you ponder that on your own.)
And yet, Harris is probably right about social media and for the reasons he describes. We are not its users, not any more than a remote control uses humans to get its buttons pressed. We are the thing being used — not so much by the machines as by their owners.
Social media’s effects on society — not some amorphous “moral character” but real, measurable impacts like rates of teen suicide and political polarization — appear highly corrosive. In that way, they are rather like the industrial machines that used to pull limbs from children.
If we are more enlightened, funny then that we sit here letting it happen.
Some reasonable regulations are probably in order: personally, in the home, and for the nation as a whole. The Social Dilemma makes a few wonderful recommendations at the end, during the credits, and I encourage you to watch.
September 25, 2020
(Fiction) The City of the Dead
Six hours along the coast from Incomium, where the Comi River makes its spectacular leap to the sea, rests an inlet at the far edge of the Western Expanse. There, nestled amid the cypress trees atop an urn-shaped hill, the City of the Dead lies in permanent repose.
Neither peninsula nor island, the hill is surrounded on all sides by an immense intertidal flat. Once a day—thrice in the high season, when the calcareous asteroid joins the moon in the sky—the muddy flat fills silently with seawater. Never more than half a lagat deep, the dark water, laden with volcanic basalt, gathers slowly, as if marching in solemn procession. At high tide, the locals call it the Black Lake, and its dark expanse is never crossed. For several centuries, until the time of the Tarquins, the water was only ever touched by the Incomium dye-makers, who sifted it, squatting on the shore, at the noontide. Tiny granules of “black salt” were separated from the mud and roasted in a furnace before being ground into a fine powder to make the infamous dye of St. George, which is said to absorb all light. So deep and ominous were the garments made from the dye that the Tarquins banned its sale, taking the monopoly for themselves. Over generations of rule, the Tarquin kings and their heirs filled immense wardrobes with fine silks and linens. They draped their beds and windows with it and dressed themselves from head to foot. To this day, the charcoal-fingered tingers at Incomium are still required to make their annual trek to the city, there to deliver three hundred and thirteen leks of dry powder, packed into single-lek spheres wrapped in oil cloth. Although hard to the touch, the spheres dissolve instantly in liquid which thence permanently stains whatever it touches.
The crossing of the flat costs seven silver guiya and always takes place at low tide, when penitent pilgrims, their mouths covered in bulging leather muzzles, ascend long-legged Kadlian mounts, the only beasts capable of traversing the deep mud (all machines being banned). The lanky animals walk disinterestedly, chewing the cud, in single file along an ancient stone-post path to the sole scalable ingress: a steep, staircase-like crack in the cliffs marked by a simple white arch. (The stone posts being no taller than the high tide, the arrival of the Black Lake erases all evidence of the path.) No seabirds nest on the hill. No squirrels scamper among the cypress. There is only the silently growing grass, the rare blooming flower, and the city.
Simple stone cairns dot the lower reaches of the hill. Built before the Septuacaust, no one knows why they were erected—or even if they are tombs. Cut from the local rock, they are little more than low caves chiseled in a faded and forgotten script. Centuries later, after a pale and lustrous marble was quarried from under the nearby Comi River, cubic mausolea of either two or three lagats a side began to appear amid the cypress. Cobblestone pathways, large enough for a carriage, were added after the Second Restoration and gradually expanded until they rose and fell, joining stairways or escaping from them, in a network that stretched completely around the false island. Rich merchants from Gasfa and realms across The Strand, dissatisfied with such simple memorials, were allowed to construct grander structures, provided they were available for all. The Rothwiecz of Honenfeld built the first open-air market, still the largest, atop the north cliff. The Roscovians erected a town square—or rather circle—with an obelisk at its center, whose gradually turning shadow marked both the time of the day and the season as it moved across swooping grooves in the floor. At the very crest of the hill was an open-air temple, built by the Tarquin king Holuphred I. Its four-square struts held no roof but the sky. Its columns surrounded a deep, round hole in the floor that descended at depth into the earth: The Well of Night. According to tradition, those dead who tired of eternity could ascend to the temple, there to be judged by Othos himself and either raised to heaven or cast into the Well.
It was Holuphred who allowed poorer folk, unable to afford the cost of construction, to leave their honored dead in the newly erected common places, provided all the same rituals were observed. No body could be left exposed. If not cremated and encased in an urn, remains had to be cast inside a statue of stone or quarter-pure metal. The oldest had heavy, inhuman faces and stood rigid under archways or were built into walls. Later patricians, seeking a more distinguished patronage, began commissioning graceful statues in lifelike pose, and gradually the whole of the silent city became populated with the living dead. They walked down thoroughfares, bought flowers in the market, and sat on benches contemplating the sea. They hugged their children or bent in prayer. They danced silently under the obelisk or played the lexican flute or chatted genially with each other inside the simple square rooms of the family mausolea. Whenever a broken statue was found, the soul was said to have “gone to the Well,” and whatever remained of it was thrown inside by the eldest male child, or else a priest of the Sibelline Order.
And so was built an entire vibrant city where not a soul stirred and not a single word was uttered. For all of the living who visited the City of the Dead had their mouths muzzled and their pinky fingers bound and swore upon pain of death not to disturb any of the eternal citizens upon whose domain they trespassed. Special tortures were reserved for he who took from the still and silent island any part of it. No pebble, no twig, no stray seed was removed. Each visitor, no matter how wealthy, was thoroughly searched—or was supposed to be—before once again mounting their three-kneed Kadlian and trekking home across the mud.
By simple irony, only the greatest transgression required no punishment. Not one of the seventeen legal scrolls that governed visits to the city in the time of the Tarquins ever mentioned the missing of the tide. It is said only three were ever trapped on the hill past the procession of the Black Lake, and that none were heard from again. But as to the truth, only the dead can know.
