Have some cookies Ed.
I don't want any cookies.
But I made a new batch. Fuzzy macaroons &
& snowballs dipped in white chocolate.
Blue, these are blue! How can food be blue?
Huh? Food dye ... Oh Roy, yr so funny!
Roy? Roy! I'm Ed! Your husband Ed!
Ed? Who did I? Of course yr Ed ... Ed.
Roy was Edna's first husband, deceased. As was Ed's first. They remarried.
Convenience. Five years ago. Edna still gets confused but Ed doesn't mind.
Really. Keeps the conversation going. Sometimes.
Not now. Ed tunes her out, puts on headphones, twiddles the dials. His
massive short-wave. Tall antenna outside disguised as a palm tree. He
looks at his predictions, twiddles dials. 2 meter band 10 Ghz range, there,
right on the money. Two, three seconds of what? Singing? Gargled gobbling
whistling throat talk. Fades in then out, gone for at least 18 hours.
He's tried to get an azimuth reading but ... seems to be coming from everywhere.
He uploads a captured digital sample, records GMT, atmospheric conditions,
another node to run through a data mine, cluster analysis, prediction
software. Perhaps one day piece together a whole song or a scrap of language
or a lock, that's his holy grail, a lock. A chance to listen in ...
Ed's obsession. Or Ed's Folly as Claude would call it.
It's just noise Ed. Random meaningless noise.
Give it up! Stop wasting yr time.
Claude is Ed's last living friend, can say things like this, can say
things Edna wouldn't dare.
When I get it all down. A whole song. I'm gonna
take it to the U. To a professor there. Some expert. They'll know what
it is.
Sure Ed, sure you are.
Here Ed. I made some more cookies. Don't they
look like fallen angels?
Nothing recognizable. Shapeless lumps of browning dough covered with
bright yellow sparkles. Fallen angels? More like crushed beetles. Ed shudders.
No thanks Edna. I'm going over to Carl's Club
for a bit.
OK dear. Please be home by supper I'm baking
a special dessert.
He steps outside their small trailer onto a wide car port. The heat ...
shade everywhere. Mesquite, palms high & low, ash, cottonwood, yucca
shade but no cool they all conspire to contain the heat, a dark heat ...
smell of baked anodized aluminum.
His car is up on blocks, covered with a tarp. He hasn't driven in years,
walks everywhere. Back & forth to Carl's Club which has everything
he ever needs. Rest he orders over the Web.
Tasty Village of the Catalinas was once outside of town on the tree lined
banks of an intermittent river across from a deep mesquite bosque. Now
the city had grown around it. Other side a huge mall. River now a dry
quarter mile wide chasm lined by steep soil cemented walls. A thin linear
park. Trees, asphalt walkway, exercise equipment, joggers. A razor wire
fence separates it from the Tasty Village. Running smack through the grounds
a wash, now a U-shaped concrete canyon leading up into the mountains.
Drainage, concrete all broken at the mouth where it spills into the river.
Spill no longer an operative word here, been a long time since anything
spilled. River & washes the surface of another world, a world cut
off from normal human contact. Things travel these alternate pathways.
Not good things.
Ed's trailer faces the wash, separated by a tiny brown yard. To the side
a road crosses a metal bridge. Other side the trailer of his neighbor
Jonathan. Ed hates his neighbor Jonathan. One of those guys ... has had
it so easy ... everything good drops in his lap ... easy money ... kids
to brag about ... looks like a trim fit Santa Claus ... Christ he even
jogs ... drives everywhere ... works as a senior greeter at The Big Outlet
Store ... Carl's Clubs' rival convenience center ... not part of Ed's
circle at all. Circle of Hell. Ed hates Jonathan his neighbor, hates him
with a cold irrational hate that he basks in. Normal. A normal part of
living at the Tasty Village.
Ed steps into bright sunlight. A roar overhead as four Blackhawk gunships
fly formation upstream. Then down below a weird articulated vehicle full
of soldiers. Thirty, forty balloon tires. Some sort of rotor mounted up
front. Flaying the ground before it with chains. Minesweeper. Dust settles
on the dry dead twigs of a lantana bush by the electric fence.
Ed turns away walks a narrow road barely a path to where a high wall
marks the end of Tasty Village. He steps through a hole busted in the
slump block - wide expanse of cracked empty parking lot. A huge white
windowless box. Carl's Club. THE place for a convenient shop. There inside,
at a cool Formica table, Ed will while away the day with his friend Claude.
Talking cleaning fluids, price of groceries, aches & pains & of
course, Ed's obsession.
At the entrance a group of people, teens & young adults. Rainmakers.
They are drinking a potent cactus wine. Drinking till they puke. Gagging,
spitting up a foul smelling foamy white spill. "Tossing the clouds"
it is called. Supposed to bring rain but it isn't working ...
Ed skirts this activity. Goes inside. Blessed cool! Small counter, tables
overlooking the consumer distance. Divided by a low wooden rail. He sits
down. His favorite worker, Dee Dee, is serving. He likes her chubby face.
Her tired smile. Her husky voice. Her trim tight Carl's Club uniform.
If he was just twenty, no thirty years younger. Damn!
Hi Dee Dee!
Hi Ed hon. Hot one out today?
You bet! I'll have the usual, bear claw &
a cuppa coffee.
Her smile fades.
No bear claws today Ed. Very little coffee.
What! Why?
Store can't pay it's bills. No one is shipping.
No!
Store's closing down Ed. Convenience wars. Big
Outlet has won.
Closing? Why those bastards!
Whatever ... they bought out my servitude. Moving
me up north tomorrow. Big Outlet City. Gonna work a side venue. Gonna
cut hair!
That's ... uh ... good Dee Dee. That's very good.
Dee Dee lifts a mass of dark curls revealing a bar code tattooed on her
neck, small scar of an implant. A trash slave! White folk who went into
corporate servitude. Ed is shocked. He didn't know.
Still want that coffee?
No. I guess not. I'll jus wait here till Claude
arrives.
She frowns. Looks concerned.
Ed think!
Think about what?
About Claude.
What about Claude?
She shakes her head. Softly.
Ed don't you remember? Claude died two months
ago.
Died? Claude oh ... died ... I guess I do ...
died.
He looks bleakly about. Store mostly empty of people. Shelves bare. Stuff
scattered in the aisles. Dust. Debris. Like he's never been here before.
Where is he?
Well. I guess I'll go then.
You take care of yourself Ed.
You too Dee Dee. See you tomorrow.
She sighs. Smiles her sweetest smile.
See you tomorrow Ed.
He stumbles outside. Heat like a fist. Dazzled. Bright.
Blaaahhhhh!
Someone is puking on his shoes.
Hey look man! nimbo cumulus ... cumulo nimbo
cumulus ... nimbo cumulo nimbo gigantus cumulus ... limbus ... freakin
pukin gigantus ... Blaaaaahhhh! Ulp!
A deep low rumble. Thunder? Rain! Has it finally happen? No, a cave buster.
Bomb burrowing like a tick a chigger a hard clawed digging dog. Burrows
down deep then explodes. 25 megatons.
The Earth cracks. Splits open like a rotten melon hit by a chisel. &
there below. Underneath. Another world. Our ground their sky. Now exposed.
A land. Vast cities. An ocean. In untold millions they are streaming upward.
Upward into sunlight. Into a new sky. Singing. Singing Ed's Obsession.
With a cry of joy Ed runs to greet them. But joy turns to horror as he
sees them, sees what they really are.
Edna at home has burnt her latest batch of cookies.
Roy's gonna be pissed.
She thinks.
Roy really hates burned cookies.
