Long Night's Journey into Day

Happy Thanksgiving!

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This again…

“Perhaps Tolstoy was right,” said Jacques Dubois. He had recently just visited his friends from high school. During this reunion, the primary event in his family, which had been occurring for the past few years, and culminating in the day before the reunion, had clouded his mind, made him unhappy, and therefore he felt like he was unable to connect with his friends, to revel in the same passions and fancies as he did with his friends the years prior. In fact, thoughts of this event were still in his head as he was driving back down to California. These thoughts ranged from despondent to suicidal in nature, and for some reason, these thoughts always seemed to string themselves in such a way that always ended in some sort of death. “How macabre!” he would exclaim after each string of thoughts had passed, and then would feel a rumbling in the car, signifying that he had a lapse of concentration on his driving, and had swerved out of the lane over to the side of the road.

Jacques’ family was, in his father’s words, French expatriates living in America. The family was small; of four people. Jacques had a younger sister of six years old. The father and mother, Marcel Dubois and Marie Le, had been married for over twenty years before the culmination of the event happened. Marie and Marcel were both ardent politicians. Marie often travelled to France and Quebec to partake in the politics during the election season, Marcel was a leading member of the Socialist Party. And so, Marie happened to meet Marcel during the election season that would eventually end in Mitterrand being elected for a second term. Marcel, in Marie’s words, “swept me off the ground so quickly and with such strength and elegance that I remained floating on air.” Before the election results had been announced, they resolved to marry.

The newly-wed couple decided to settle down in Marie’s family home in Eugene, Oregon, seeing as they still lacked the financial means to buy their own home. They had their first child, a boy, Jacques, two years after their marriage. They resolved to love him with all their heart. For those next two years, more than ever, Marie and Marcel loved each other through the common bond of their childhood, perhaps more passionately than during their engagement. Marcel, during those fragile infant years of the child, decided to take a leave from French politics and participated in the much more local Quebec political circuit, in which he could go to Quebec and back within a day, if needed. As a result from his political dabbling, Marcel, and later Marie, ended up being citizens of France, the United States, and Canada.

However, as Jacques became the age in which children normally start attending school, Marcel once again found the allure of French politics irresistible, and once again joined the Socialist Party circuit. He urged Marie to stay with Jacques in the United States, as he ardently held the belief that the American educational system was superior to the French or Canadian educational systems. The family was still happy, nonetheless. Marcel, owning to the lenient nature of the French work calendar, was still at home for slightly less than half of the year. Marie took joy in watching Jacques grow, marking each bit of progress she saw in him a diary.

Marie came from a family of independent-minded individuals. By the time Jacques was in his last year of elementary school, she felt this urge to once again return to the political scene. She had been dabbling in political discussions and meetings all during Jacques’ childhood, but those paltry meetings did not satiate her desire for political involvement. She resolved, by the time Jacques reached adolescence, to once again go abroad for part of the year. Thus, when Jacques entered middle school, Marie began teaching him responsible housekeeping in addition to his supplemental lessons.

In the same time period, a change came over Marcel. He saw that his political career was stagnating. While he eventually rose to become a prominent figure in the Socialist Party, he felt as if his familial responsibilities prevented him from rising further. He resolved to make sure that Jacques entered the business field, ensuring that Jacques would not fall down the same path as he did. He began to formulate a plan for Jacques. He would enter Stanford, do his undergraduate studies in some technical field, and then go on to business school at Stanford. Marcel was particularly enamored with Stanford because it was the best American university in a warm climate. Marcel hated cold climates; he always avoided visiting Jacques and Marie in Eugene during the cold, wet, autumn and winter.

Marcel began to see the change in Marie before she was even consciously aware of it. To prevent Marie from dabbling too much abroad (he believed and fully supported her desire to reenter the politics, but feared that she would become carried away, and therefore compromise Jacques’ education), the family had another child, a girl, whom they named Jasmine. The family did not feel such a strong bond from the birth of the second child. She seemed to foreign to them, as if the perfect mingling of Asian and Caucasian traits that happened in Jacques went awry, and instead created a being so unlike the two ethnicities. They could never seem to love Jasmine as much as Jacques. In fact, merely two months after her birth, Marcel returned back to the French political scene. His party mates just presumed that he had taken an extended vacation in Mexico, or the Bahamas, or some other exotic destination.

So, instead of making a grand return to the political scene, Marie was forced to take care of yet another child. Jacques was no help in taking care of the child; perhaps he also shared the same view that she was almost foreign to the family. Marie quickly became dissatisfied with her life. She felt as if chains were binding her to matrimonial duties. During these years of Jasmine’s early childhood, she started to think of a terrible, forbidden thing. This thing she thought of was such a terrible thing, that it made her reel back in disgust every time she thought of it. Yet this thing was also so alluring, that like a sinner who commits the same sin over and over again, in ever increasing intensity, simply because of the forbidden enjoyment her derives from the sin, Marie kept thinking of said thing more and more. Eventually, during Marcel’s visits back home, she began quarrelling with him over the thing. Marcel realized the change for the worse in Marie’s disposition, yet he knew that he had to keep the thing from happening, at least until Jacques could enter Stanford. Jasmine, he did not care about so much.

And such, the summer after Jacques found out he was not admitted to Stanford, and only to UCLA, the house that the family lived in started to divide in two. The thing was mentioned more and more often, and eventually, both parties agreed, and to the lovely surprise of Jacques, who had just driven for eleven hours to reach home from Los Angeles to celebrate Thanksgiving with his family, the first thing his parents made clear to him was that…

-

“Of course I’m all to blame. It’s my fault that I ended up not where I wanted to be. Of course, my parents say that UCLA is a great school also. Of course, I have this delusion that everything will be okay. But both my parents are politicians, and they have brought me up so that I also have the thought process of a politician. Politicians are masters at concealing what they truly feel. In telling me that it’s okay, both my parents are implying that I’m the chief reason that the event happened.”

Jacques noticed it was already nearly dark, and he had barely made it to Redding. He would still have to drive eight more hours to return back to Los Angeles, and he had to attend class tomorrow. His whole mind was still in convulsions, trying to piece his family’s history with his own failures and trying to create a whole justification as to why the event happened. But to no avail.

“They never could understand how much pressure was on me to succeed. I had to succeed. All of my extended family viewed me as the prodigy, the sure shot into Stanford. Yet in the last year, all the realities, all the scaffolding of this false glorification that was built around me, crashed upon me as if it were a glass house breaking. The cuts have healed up by now; they healed back in April, but the scars are still there and will always remind me of my failures.”

Jacques had, in the last two, crucial years of high school, had developed a pseudo-addiction to marijuana. He was nonchalantly introduced to it by a friend in high school, back when they were spending spring break in California. Since this innocent introduction, he had developed cravings for the substance, yet he always had enough composure to avoid intoxicating himself in the presence of his parents, or his sister. He always kept some in the car, in the sunglass pouch. He never wore sunglasses anyways, so he felt that the space would be at least put to some use this way.

He smoked whenever the pressures his father and his mother placed on him were surmounting. It had varied effects on him. Sometimes it would make him happy, so happy, as if he were on a cloud. Sometimes it would just throw him into a pensive depression in which, strangely, he could concentrate on his academics better, but also could not bear the presence of others.

Jacques, again, in his current agitated state of mind over the event, touched upon the subject of suicide. He wondered what suicide would feel like. It would be quick and painless, but he was scared to death of the preparations, what his mind would be going through during the actual thing, and in the seconds leading up to it, those seconds when a man has made up his mind, but yet has failed to put any part of the plan into action. To him, suicide seemed like an attractive way to rid him of all his troubles. Perhaps he would float on a cloud into the afterlife.

But to counteract these malicious thoughts, Jacques then wondered at what the aftereffects of the suicide would be. He feared for his father, having already cast off his love of twenty-plus years. He might be driven into suicide. His mother might become unapproachable, fueled by an eternal hate over what will have transpired. And his sister, the greatest tragedy of them all, would be forced to live under her hateful presence. Jacques never really made it known to his parents, but during these past few years of intensifying quarrelling, he found his sister his greatest joy in life, the one respite from life he could always look towards. Seeing his sister again was one of his primary reasons in taking the drive back to Eugene in one day, where should reasonably be done in two.

“Perhaps I shall just try it, just try it to see what it’s like. Just a little try. Then I’ll never do it again.”

Jacques’ hand reached for the sunglasses compartment…

- 

The road began to blur. The white reflective strips in the middle of the lane, and the yellow reflective strips at either ends of the highway began to mingle with the red taillights of the truck in front of him, forming combinations of purple, orange, and green. He, all of a sudden, under the strain from having driving for the whole day, and having this terrible event on his mind, felt incomprehensibly tired. He took his foot off the gas pedal and his head dropped on the steering wheel.

- 

“Oh my gosh you’re still conscious!”

When Jacques awoke he was staring into the brown eyes of a woman. She had long dark brown hair, and was of quite a tan complexion. He guessed that she was Hispanic.

“You’re lucky that your foot wasn’t on the gas when you dozed off. What were you thinking?”

“Huh?”

“You almost caused a crash between two trucks when you lost consciousness. You were in the left lane, and a truck was right behind you, trying to overtake the truck on the right, when I saw that you suddenly began to decelerate. I had to pass the truck in the shoulder, and knock you over into the grassy median. I think I dented your car a little, but it should still work.”

“Oh.”

“And why were you smoking weed? My gosh, your eyes are so red. Why would you do that to yourself. Do you have a death wish?”

“Mmm… I just wanted to try it.”

“Try what? Smoking or suicide?”

“Maybe a bit of both…? Not sure…”

“First of all, smoking is a sure addiction thing. ‘Trying’ it means that you are consigning yourself to become addicted to it. Second of all, you can’t ‘try’ suicide. You either fail and are scarred for life, or as is the case with most men, you die.”

“How do you know so much?”

“I used to be a CHP officer.” (California Highway Patrol) “You’d be surprised. The kind of thing you do happens quite often. ‘Cept people don’t lose consciousness like you did.”

“Listen, you don’t understand what I’m going through, still. My family and everything just kind of br-”

“I see. Same thing with me. And you wanna know the reason why I quit the CHP? It was the night that that happened to me and my family, and I had to work. My guard down, during a routine pull-over of a speeder, a man jumped out of the car, and hugged me, and began to kiss me. In my state of mind, I just wanted to be as terrible as possible, and I was tired of thinking. I just wanted to think of the present, and the present only, so I let him have me. Kind of like a bribe, if you wish to think of it that way.”

“Well that’s terrible. But I’m glad that somebody knows. My family is so in-”

“Indifferent? I know.”

“So what do I do from now?”

“Listen, your radio is still playing. I turned it on while waiting for you to regain consciousness. Why don’t you do what that song is saying?”

Cause I’m free as a bird now,
And this bird you’ll never change.
And this bird you cannot change.

“Think of it as an opportunity to now do whatever you please in life.” The woman went back into her pickup truck and drove away. Even before the lyrics of the song ended, all Jacques could see was her truck’s taillights in the distance, as small as the stars in the cloudless sky.

- 

By the time Jacques entered the Sepulveda pass, it was almost sunrise, and the morning rush hour had already begun. As he waited in the traffic jam, he felt quite a new man, not tired at all despite having essentially not slept last night. He resolved to study finance, and perhaps go to law school someday.

Reflections Under a Silent Selene

Last night I was more depressed than I had been in many months. The last time I remember being so depressed was March 30th (of this year).

I went to a formal dance thinking that my ideal would uphold. Instead, it was crushed. I went after the dance to find inspiration in other forms (so that I could finish my story), I got mocked and turned back.

This is the product of a night, and the depressing day after.

Enjoy.

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This is a story set against the beautiful backdrop of a place which I have only recently started to appreciate…

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“The whole concept of love is flawed.”

“What did you say?”

“Look, you’re happy now, but love is the most ephemeral and fleeting of all the emotions. What happiness you feel now will be, soon, nothing more than a distant memory. Perhaps it might haunt you, the thought that such happiness only exists in the past. However, I can tell that I am boring you two. So go, and enjoy the rest of your night.”

The man in the blue bolwer hat walked away from the couple, who had evidently dismissed everything he had told them as complete nonsense, and so in his absence, rose from the table around which they had been sitting, walked, hand in hand, back to the putrid maelstrom that was the dance floor.

The man in the blue bowler hat sat, alone, at a table, which was fairly sequestered from where everyone else was. “Why did I even decide to go to this dance,” he thought. “Why did the organizers, whoever it was that organized this dance, have such an odd idea for a theme? Why do I feel so out of place here?”

True enough, it appeared that every other man at the dance was either wearing a red or green bowler hat. What was more shocking to the man was that at some point during the dance, the men would hand an apple, whose color matched the color of the bowler hat the person was wearing, to his partner. It all seemed at once a grotesque yet familiar ritual to the man. “Of course I would wear a hat that is incompatible with this ritual!” he exclaimed. “What choice did I have; it was the only bowler hat I had. Why does fate always seem to be against me? Always!”

“I’m sorry, what did you say is always against you?” said a man wearing a red bowler hat with a thin green trim along the brim.

“Fate. And why should you care? Don’t you have a partner already? Where did you suddenly appear from anyways?”

“I have been sitting at the table across from you. I guess you can’t really have seen me because the lighting is so abysmal in this place. On second thought, I’m sure you must have seen me stride over to your table. Do you normally wear glasses?”

“Alas, I do, for without them I would be near-blind at night. I lost them though on the way to this dance…”

“Ah, a true misfortune indeed! To answer your other question, no, I haven’t found a partner yet. Whenever I offer a red apple to a girl, she replies, ‘I like your green trim. It’s so distinctive. It’s a terrible shame that you don’t have a green apple, though,’ and then walks away. When I try to offer a girl a green apple, she laughs a little and says, ‘You really should have offered a red apple. I barely see any green on your hat!” and them proceeds to walk away.”

“So, we are both alone, and we can be partners in our common state of solitude.”

“I know, but isn’t loneliness such a terrible emotion? It’s always paired together with hopelessness.”

“Not necessarily. It’s true I feel very lonely, being the only person wearing a blue bowler hat at this event. But hopelessness, depression, I do not feel at all. In fact, I feel perfectly content and at peace. I hate dancing so but I happen to enjoy the concept of a themed dance. To me, sitting here and watching others is just as fulfilling as dancing.”

“That’s a very interesting viewpoint, but I’ll tell you, have you ever had your heart broken, you know, thrown on the ground, and forced to watch it shatter into tens and thousands of shards?”

“No. I haven’t taken too many chances in my life with respect to that topic. At this stage anyways, love is nothing but a dead end leading to a cliff. Why should I bother?”

“Ah, you ask that, but look at all these couples here on the dance floor! They seem all perfectly content to give their heart to their partners, even if it is for only one night.”

“See, though. If for some of these unlucky souls, it ends after this very dance, you know, ‘How can one love again/ After a love so cruel,’ or something like that.”

“Well, to you, the idea of a one night stand sounds cruel, but maybe these people happen to fancy it.”

“We could never tell, unless, of course, we happened to be able to peer into their souls.”

“We can practically do that now. You do know that privacy means close to nothing these days, no more so than the fallen ideal of Communism, something born out of the purest intentions, but mutilated until it was shunned by the masses. That’s what privacy is now; people who seem too reclusive are shunned by society; they are always the ones suspicion is cast on.”

“I know what you mean.”

“I’m glad you agree! Social networks are really a wonderful thing, but I wonder if staying too interconnected with one and another may have negative repercussions.”

Suddenly the man in the blue bowler hat rose from his seat, almost in a state of euphoric craze, as if he had the compulsion to do something, and would have knocked down a man, cold, if he were in his way. The man with the red bowler hat with the green trim realized his sudden change in composure and said, “Ah, so it looks like you have to go somewhere. Well I will stay right here, if you need me. Adieu.”

The man in the blue bowler hat felt strange, as if he had to escape this scene at an instant. He shoved his way through the dance floor, which by now, and grown past the limits defined by the psychedelic tiles, and had clogged the room effectively enough, that one was forced to push through the throngs of sweating masses just to reach the exit.

The dancing crowd did not seem to care that the man in the blue bowler hat was at time, showing quite rudely his way through the crowd. At last, he could see the door to exit the venue. He rushed at the door with both hands outstretched, and the door did not budge one bit.

“Sir, you must pull the door open,” said the bartender, who was watching the man’s comical little debacle, as he had nothing better to do, since everyone was dancing, and evidently the crowd had not yet become thirsty.

Ignoring the bartender’s words, and rather relying on simple logic, pulled open the door, and muttered a few curse words at his own ineptitude, for having his grand exit turned into a comical vignette. Outside, he was at once struck with a sense of melancholic inner peace, as he could see the lake, which on it had tiny waves undulating back and forth, and one solitary boat off in the distance, its green light the only thing, apart from the glazed reflection of the moon, lighting the lake. “You know, they weren’t lying when they said that these lakes were like oceans,” the man said to himself.

“Leaving so soon?” said a voice.

The man in the blue bowler hat turned around to see a man who was wearing a green bowler hat with a red trim near the top.

“I could say the same about you,” replied the man.

“Me? Oh, I just went outside to take a quick drag. My partner’s waiting for me back inside. I’m almost done, however.”

“Wait. Could I talk with you a bit?”

“Sure, but keep it quick.”

“I’m leaving because I’ve seen enough. I’ve seen these couples dancing in ways which make me worry about the future of humanity. Is this all worth it, you know, this kind of dancing I’ve seen tonight. Even if it is just to fit in with the masses, is it worth it? Tonight I asked myself the question, ‘Is this what I want to become?’ Well, I’ve answered with a resolute no, and now I am leaving.”

The man wearing the green bowler hat put his hands on the man’s shoulders, and rotated him a quarter turn anticlockwise.

“Look,” said the man wearing the green bowler hat, “Look at where you are. You’re in one of the greatest cities in the world. Get some of that big city mentality, be a little bolder, take some chances, let loose, and above all, enjoy the night while it lasts.”

“While those are some very inspirational words, you know how hard it is to change the mind of a person who has steadfastly made up his mind. But, I must ask you, what is it like? You know, this ecstatic state of mind these people on the dance floor have.”

“It’s revolting at first, but as you get drawn into it more, you begin to crave it more and more, like as if it were the most addicting thing in this world, until reach a breaking point, after which all you feel is pure euphoria.”

“I see. Well that won’t make me change my opinion of this subject. I’m going away from this terrible place now. Enjoy your night.”

“Wait…!” cried the man wearing the green bowler hat. “Are you positively sure? You know… you could go back with, and I’d even help you find a partner!”

But the man in the blue bowler hat walked away. He knew that the man might have had honest intentions in his offer, but he also knew that once he reentered the venue, all his thoughts would vaporize into the smoky air. The man wearing the green bowler hat scoffed, and opened the door to the dance floor. For a few last seconds, the man in the blue bowler hat could hear the pounding music coming from the dance floor. He swore he could also make out groans coming from that terrible coagulation of flesh, but he just dismissed those sound as perturbations of the bass.

The man continued to walk along a path near the lake’s edge; nobody else was there, and the man continued to walk alongside the yellow haze of the half-lit lampposts that were scattered on the side of the path. It was a nice night: although it was a little chilly for this time of year, there was a fresh breeze coming off of the lake, and the sky had only a few patches of cloud in it, grey streaks spread out along a sky which had a slight orange tint from the lights of the city.

The man reached a beach, and he took off his shoes and socks, laid them neatly along the path on which he had been walking, and strode over to the water’s edge. He was about to step further in when he heard a voice.

“Wait!” it yelled.

The man turned around, and to his surprise saw the man wearing a green bowler had with a red trim running towards him.

“You were right!” he cried. “I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Take me with you! I want to go with you; anywhere is better than the dance floor after what I had just seen take place!”

The man put his hands on the shoulders of the man wearing the green bowler hat with red trim, turned him around a half-turn, or slightly more, anticlockwise so that he was facing the downtown skyline and said, “Look. You belong here. This is your city. I don’t, which is why I must leave.”

“All alone? Don’t you want support, a partner?”

“I began my journey tonight alone, and now I will end it, alone.”

The man in the blue bowler hat walked into the lake. After twenty seconds or so, the only thing that was visible of him was the very tip of that blue bowler hat, juxtaposed against the reflected of the moon, which seemed to hang like a silent selene in the sky.

They say the water of the lake has been a more pure, azure shade of blue ever since that day.

Some Dream I Remembered

Maybe it was because I was still a bit hazy from my sickness, but this dream was so beautiful that I remembered most of the finer details of it. Of course I might have remembered it since it was short, with not a lot of dialogue or actions in it.

-----

I had one of the most beautiful dreams today. It was about 9 am, after having woken up the first time, but since it was the weekend I still went back to bed. When I went to sleep again, this is what I dreamed:

So the scene was around this time of year, late September. I was in some park, or some less developed area of Vancouver. Someone was with me, I presume my brother, except he was a lot older; I would say about ten or eleven years old (he is around five years old right now). Though it technically was five years into the future, I still felt young, as if adulthood had not engrained itself in me yet, as if I still could experience the blissful ignorance of youth, as if I could still just take in the world around with without a care as to everything else.

The sky was blue, a crystal blue I had so long been deprived of during my month-long stay in China during the summer. Not a single cloud in sight. The blueness of the sky blended so perfectly with the deep greens of the evergreen trees which dotted the park.

My brother ran down an asphalt path, a path cracked near the edges due to the regular cycles of freezing and thawing during the coldest winter days. What struck me about the path was the fact that it was crumbling; it was now too narrow for a bike to ride of comfortably. The wider path about ten meters away, which ran parallel, I presumed once was an outlet road for park maintenance vehicles, but now was barely wide enough for two people to walk abreast.

I walked up to a tree, a regular pine tree which homogenously covers the taiga forests. I picked up a strand of fallen pine needles, and tried to loop it over a branch on the tree. Beneath said branch was a bee’s hive, but it had large holes in, so I presumed it was not used anymore. Maybe I should have been more careful, because as I threw for my first attempt, I noticed a few bees moving in and out of the hive, but I did not care. I was mesmerized by the beauty of this late summer (early autumn) sky and though as if the sea of blue above had washed away all my capacity to care or worry about the less jovial aspects of life, my brother told me that the autumn would be cold and rainy, more so than average, but I didn’t care, and I continued to try to throw the pine needle strand onto the branch without really aiming, since I was still staring at the sky which I felt would perhaps stay there for a few more weeks.

Something New

I'd like to give you a preview of something new. The below post, the story idea, kind of fizzled out by itself. That's the problem with story ideas: they are as ephemeral as the mist is created after I forget to turn on the fan while I'm in the shower (most of my most inspirational ideas have come while showering...)

Anyways, the story is about a fictional city, in a fictional country, in a fictional time (in the future). It's pretty easy to tell I drew my inspiration from. This city, called Clostan, is itself a giant caste system, with barriers physically separating the different classes. One single company controls the city. Of course, the story picks up exactly when a revolution is about to happen.

The following is two excerpts. The first excerpt is the first, around eight pages (on Word, anyways) of the story. The second is an excerpt of the last three pages of the first part. Interestingly enough, it's the first time I use curse words in something I released. Guess it's a sign of growing up. The story isn't really that bright, reading it could really bring someone down... (at least reading only the first part of it)

p.s. ignore all the Alex references... it was seriously the first and most generic name which came up into my head

---

Someone once told me to stop questioning the world around myself, a world bereft with the scent of corruption, a world with a backbone and heart as rigid as steel. He told me that all the shortcomings of the world were the result of our own failures, that if we did not rightfully devote ourselves to the system, we would only exacerbate our own deprived situation. I could never bring myself to believe him.

-

“Daddy, what’s the book?”

“You see Alex, the Book is everything.”

-

The road was an impressive sea of concrete slapped across a mountain. It was ten lanes wide, and one could tell that at one point it was very heavily used as a vital lifeline connecting the city to the rest of the country through the dark tire markings which stained the pavement.

The pavement was cracked on both sides of the road, a result of decades of neglect by man, and decades of nature’s tendency to slowly crumble every last man-made monument. However, Mr. Galileo failed to notice the last detail because of the dilapidated conditions of the road. He was too preoccupied avoid the cracks in the road, which by now were large enough to trap a tire, and he failed to realize that the road was empty except for his car. He questioned the last time he had seen a car pass by on the other side, or had passed one. Eventually he reasoned to have not seen a car in ten minutes.

Mr. Galileo had been driving for the last ten hours towards the city. In those ten hours, the sky had been full of the same haze, a haze which lightly illuminated the clouds which seemed to have no beginning and no end. He was wrong; Mr. Galileo had been suffering from the time-dilation effects of an unchanging scene. He thought only an hour had passed. In fact, he had just driven through the night, and he passed the last town over five hours ago.

At the crest of the mountain lay a toll plaza, except none of the booths are open. In fact, none of the booths must have been open for a long time, for each the windows of each booth were covered with markings, and the road abruptly ended into a iron wall about fifty meters after the toll booths.

Inside the main office which adjoined the toll plaza, two guards lay, half-dozing, each reading the same red-bound book, until one noticed Mr. Galileo.

“Look. There’s someone here.”

“Where? I don’t see anybody.”

“It’s the car. Look. There’s a Prius.”

“Really? This is not good!” His hands and face began turning pale. He started to have light convulsions which shook the chair he was sitting in.

“What do we do??” he yelled.

“Consult the b-b-book. Always c-c-c-consult the book,” the other replied, much in the same mental state as his watch partner.

“W-w-w-what do we do??”

“Which p-p-page…”

Mr. Galileo had just finished parking his car in an surprising well maintained parking spot right next to the office, when two men approached him.

“Hello, sir. What brings you here?” said a man, which appeared to Mr. Galileo to be some kind of police officer, or guard.

“I was just looking to pass, but I just realized that the road is blocked. How long has it been like this?”

“Oh, for quite some time. Why must you pass?”

“Well you see, I’ve recently retired from the company that I founded. The company focuses on researching the origins and functioning of phenomena that incite mass action, such as the workings of one song that incites an entire revolution, which happened just a few years ago in Tunisia.”

“I’m sorry, but I must interrupt. What is a Tunisia?”

“Tunisia is a country, a country in the northern part of Africa.”

“Africa…” The guard still looked slightly perplexed, as if he had no idea what Africa even was.

“Anyways, after retiring I decided to visit some relatives that I haven’t seen in a while. See I’ve been driving for a few days to see one of my cousins. Actually, the last time that I remember seeing him was when I asked him to run a business errand for me, you know, back when my company was just starting, about twenty or so years ago. I asked him to fly to a city called Clostan, which for some reason, is a very large city yet all I could research about it, at that time, was information that was published in 2010 or sooner. I’m pretty sure that this highway leads to Clostan, correct?”

“You want to enter? Enter our city?”

“Yes, I would like to find out how I can bypass this iron wall.”

“Well then, I would like you to come with me. Paul, go check his car.” The second guard, Paul, strode over to Mr. Galileo’s car and began to inspect the inside.

“I have some forms for you to fill out. What is your name?”

“Saul Galileo.”

“Come right this way, Mr. Galileo. Don’t worry. This won’t take too long.”

-

You eventually come to realize that no society can ever be perfect. Perfection is simply an ideal which everyone desires, but none ever achieve. Societies that head towards perfection, who devote every last resource towards said noble pursuit only end up driving themselves into the wrong direction. The society begins to crumble apart, the crumbling accelerated by the vigorousness of the push towards perfection. The truth becomes masked more and more; the mask serves no other purpose than to hide the multitude of corruption which lurks underneath a once stable society, ruined by an insatiable drive to perfection.

-

The horn sounded, a loud horn which shook the very foundations of the buildings and the pillars which supported the buildings and the roads. Alex started walking. If he had started walking too soon he would have been early. Being early was the second-to-worst crime, as outlined in the book, in terms of punctuality, only second to being very early. Being late was slightly less severe, but still quite severe. Alex believed that the varying degrees of severity were all actually a delusion to create some kind of order in society, and that all these crimes were equally as severe.

He reached the bus stop, at which stood large panel, a digital screen, which first showed the time, accurate to the millisecond, then the arrival time for each of the next buses, also accurate to the nearest millisecond, and a small map of the surrounding area showing the approximate positions of each bus in proximity, which was also accurate to the nearest millimeter.

He stood in line, surrounded by students, as this was a students-only bus stop, all wearing the same uniform: a collared grey shirt, grey slacks, grey shoes, and a darker grey overcoat. He had to take the 35-J bus route every day at 8:31:54 A.M., and today, the bus arrived at 8:31:54 A.M., as per usual. Though he had been waiting for the bus for no longer than fifty-eight seconds, he was glad to get out of the line. He somehow disliked lines; whenever he waited in a line, the eyes of the others in the queue would slowly gravitate towards him, towards his brain, and cause him to feel a weird chill in his head.

Alex was now on the bus, which itself was nearly a history museum exhibit; its grey interior made the areas where the grey paint was peeling off, mostly the support bars and the handles, to reveal the raw steel underneath more like a paltry attempt at modern art than an example of the dilapidation of the structure. The windows were covered with undecipherable markings, and the seats had large rips in places, revealing a grey filling. The bus was filled to the point where every seat was taken, nothing more, as it was unlawful and unsafe for anyone to be standing in a vehicle, and having a seat empty, or having one person stand would only be an example of the failure of perfection.

Today Alex was lucky enough to be sitting in a seat near the front of the bus, so that he could have a clear view of the road ahead. The bus moved along the second layer of a massive fifteen lane highway. Alex could only tell it was raining because some water was leaking from the upper layer of the highway. All he could see ahead were a few random shops, and cars which all seemed to be travelling at the same speed, and a black ahead which was probably just more road.

About ten minutes into the bus ride, the bus reached the intersection of the 15 and 590 highways, an intersection which gave Alex a rare look at the sky, and at the layer cake which defined all of the city’s roads. Beneath the towering pillars which supported the four lane interchange ramps which ran in every combination of direction between the two highways, and the twenty-five combined lanes of the two highways, were four tiny green patches, no larger than the bus itself, in each a tree, and an equally small piece of the sky. Still, Alex could see the clouds in the sky, which always seemed to be full of them; when it was warmer, the sky would be full of hazy clouds, in the winter, it would be full of foggy clouds, and in the transition seasons they would be full of puffy clouds. They would sometimes drop drops of water, he had heard stories of the clouds dropping snowflakes from his father, yet he had never seen them. No matter what the weather appeared to be, the sky would always be painted a hue of gray, mixing so perfectly with the greyness of the highways, and making the trees, the only green in sight, seem even more out of place.

Alex’s school was also grey, an old but sturdy concrete flat of four floors and about fifteen large windows wide, nestled in between two layers of road. As he walked amongst the shadows of the hundreds of other students, all dressed exactly like he was, he struggled to find a reason as to why today seemed special.

“Good morning, Alex L.” said a student.

“Oh! I understand now; I remember why today is special. If a random stranger comes up and talks to me, it means that I must ask him the first question that comes up in my head. Of course, that’s what the book says,” said Alex aloud, though he thought he was merely talking to himself in his head.

“Would you care to inquire about your question as to why today is so special?”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s what I was gonna do next.”

“Very well. The reason why today is so special, and why I, a perfectly random stranger, would happen to strike conversation with you, is because, Alex L., today is the first day of the new school year, and even more exceptional, the first day of vocational school.”

“It makes so much sense now! Say, you’re in my grade aren’t you? What’s your name again? I forgot. I think it started with a C…”

“Mark, Mark Tom Four.”

“Why the four? Are you descended from three other people named Mark Tom?”

“No, it’s simply to distinguish from the three other Mark Toms I interact with on a regular basis. Now, Alex L., if we continue this conversation any longer, a conversation which has long since deviated from its original purpose, we will be late for class. I suggest we enter the building.”

“Yes, it was nice meeting you again Mark”

“The same to you, Alex L. And please call me Mark Tom Four from now on. May you always have faith in the Book.”

“The same to you; may you always have faith in that book.”

It all made sense to Alex now; he even remembered receiving a letter in the mail a week ago. It told him to go to room 178-9 on the first day of vocational school. Room 178-9 was at the end of a corridor, which on both sides had grey lockers, though no students were using them. To his surprise, there were two room 178-9s, each on the opposite side of the end of the hallway. One door was locked, and the window in the door was covered with a red piece of construction paper. Alex could hear faint chattering through that door. The other door was open, and the room had sixteen desks arranged in a nearly perfect square. Alex counted fourteen other students. Each student was silent.

“Ahh! The last student arrives! Now we can close the door and begin…” said a short and stocky man, who had reasonably long curly grey hair, and a bushy grey moustache, who happened to be Alex’s teacher.

-

CH 2.

Perfection always will be imperfection. It is this imperfection, which can sometimes manifest itself in holes as small as the holes in foil, in the face of superficial flawlessness, that allows change to seep through the system. This trickle of change, this poison, is what allows revolution to happen. You see, revolution always starts from the inside.

“and another important fact about revolutions is that they are minority movements. So a group of even, say, one percent of the population can rise above the masses and incite change, then I would say that we have a revolution in the works…

Now, before I continue any further, let me do roll. You know, seating charts are such a nice way for us lazies to take roll. But I don’t trust all of you. Can’t trust anyone you know? So, raise your hand if your first name is Alex. Everyone? Good. I’m amongst my own people. What you are about to hear may surprise you. It may go against everything that you have learned up to now, it may go against everything that you have seen others around you do. But keep listening, because what I’m going to tell you are the tools you need to rise above the rest.

You see, the purpose of this class, my purpose as a teacher, is to teach you the basics of dockwatching. That’s right, all of you have been assigned to become dockwatchers. I’m going to tell you straight up that if you can stand up, and if you can press a button when necessary, you can dockwatch. The purpose of a dockwatcher is to watch the coast of the city for any foreign vessels. There, a whole year’s worth of dockwatching education in one minute. No, if that were my sole purpose as a teacher I would have committed suicide by now.

My real purpose is to start a revolution.

You see, you are all special, you are all not normal. True, you may look normal, but you are not. Tell me, raise your hand, if you have ever, even once, felt like you were being watched by everyone else around you, that you felt like you had a huge tag on the top of your head in the shape of a dunce hat, or simply a very large dunce hat on your head which emitted discoball colors. Everyone? Good. You realize that these two things, your first names all being the same and the fact that you can sometimes feel like complete strangers amongst a crowd of people despite looking normal enough are testament to the fact that you are all not normal.

 Every single one of you, myself included, is a foreigner. We aren’t original Clostaners; I wasn’t born in Clostan, and at least one of your parents was born outside of Clostan. We foreigners are much different from the regular citizens of Clostan, but I feel like you should know about – the bell! Perfect timing! – I feel like you all should understand more about the history of this terrible city before I tell you.

Now before you all leave to your other classes, classes which you will sit in with all types of the other students, none of which are foreigners, I would like you to remember this and creed to what I’m about to say; your lives and mine depend on your following it. What I talk about in this class must not ever be discussed outside of the class.  The revolution is at your fingertips. Mayyoualwayshavefaithinthestupidbook blah blah blah…”

-

“The history of Clostan in a nutshell: it’s what we are covering in today’s class. I’m very glad, words can’t really express my relief, at how you all have kept your word and kept the details of my class locked inside those heads of yours!”

“But, how do you know?”

“I just know. Anyways, the history of Clostan begins in a city about seventy or so kilometers from Clostan called Port Tyrathemat, which I’ll be referring to as Port T throughout this lesson as I’ve heard at least ten different pronunciations of Tyrathemat in my lifetime.

Port T was a city controlled by a single corporation, the Tryathemat Port Authority Board, but all the locals called it PorTy for short. Before PorTy decided to start business in the Port T, it was simply a small fishing town. The initial purpose of PorTy was to offer lower prices to shippers than the Port of Clostan; essentially it was a corporation created in malicious intent to draw away business from the Clostan shipping industry, which in fact was very competitive, with about fifteen different shipping companies controlling the inflow of goods from the sea into the rest of the country.

Because it had virtually no competition and local laws and regulations to deal with, PorTy easily offered lower prices than all of the Clostan shipping companies, and soon gained a majority share in the shipping industry in and around Clostan.

PorTy soon became a massive corporation, employing pretty much most of the citizens of Port T. The corporation created a master plan for the city, a grid-like layout, with no real center, except for the three fifty story towers that were the headquarters of the corporation. Except for a very small upper-middle class, which consisted of the executives of PorTy, the rest of the citizens lived in apartment blocks. When PorTy was unable to find enough manpower to continue its unparalleled growth, it relied on illegal immigration, bringing in thousands of people by the shiploads into the city, a journey with conditions like the “middle passage” in the slave-trade triangle so long ago.

By the mid 70s, when Clostan was at the brink of a long road of desecration to today’s conditions, Port T was a city of around 600 000, over ninety percent of whom worked for PorTy. While Clostan was connected by a ten-lane highway to the rest of the country, Port T was connected to the rest of the mainland by a two-lane mountain road that stretched for over a thousand kilometers before any major city. Essentially, Port T became somewhat of its own enclave, as the corporation tightly regulated, and in most cases, forbade the emigration of its citizens, and even vacations for its citizens, for fear that the secret, the secret of the illegal immigration that fueled the corporation’s rapid growth, would be revealed.

And thus begins the start of the parasitic corruption which was brought forth by PorTy unto this city. However, exactly how the corruption worked is a tale for the next class. Mayyoualwayshavefaithinthebookthatidontreallybelievein.”

“It’s raining. Good, because the topic of today’s lecture is very dark, a macabre tale of how an entire city was brainwashed by one corporation, headed by one man.

PorTy expanded its zone of influence into Clostan, in an attempt to completely monopolize the shipping industry of the southern coast. The executives of PorTy carried out a three-pronged plan in order to achieve this.

The first part of the plan was offering competitive wages and benefits. PorTy, from all their successes in effectively ensuring that all profits went back to the central organization instead of the people, had a surplus of which the extent nobody knew of. By turning the city of Port T into a third world,  politically oppressed place in a developed nation, Port T was able to use its excess profits to offer unheard of wages to its employees in Clostan, at least at first.

The second part of the plan was to swallow up the smaller shipping companies. Ever since its inception, PorTy consistently pulled strong gains, while most other shipping companies in the region were stagnant or recording losses. Small shipping companies made about a thirty percent share of the shipping industry in Clostan. Within five years of entering the Clostan shipping business, PorTy bought out every single last one of the small shipping companies.

The final part of the plan was vertical integration, a process in which a corporation controls all of the production chain. In the case of shipping, it means controlling the ships, the docks, the freight trains and trucks, and the warehouses in which the goods are sold to. By branding the non-shipping elements of PorTy under the name “Mickie,” PorTy was able to create this illusion that the corporation was actually smaller, less far reaching, than it actually was.

We fast forward five years to find the complete stagnation of the shipping industry in Clostan. Despite the effective monopolization of the shipping industry by PorTy, the shipping industry in the area suffers greatly from the opening of the Batara-Flansco bridge, across the Nanhai inlet and bay in the north, and the introduction of high speed freight trains throughout the heart of the country. PorTy decides the only way to continue its growth is to control the entire city of Clostan.

By now, the late 1980s, Clostan is too small to contain the masses of immigrants from the hinterlands of the country, seeking work in the high-pay shipping industry. Clostan itself is a landlocked city, not in the sense that it has no outlet to the sea, but in the sense that it is surrounded. Unlike other large cities in the country, Clostan is surrounded on two sides by the sea, and by the other two sides by mountains, creating a limited amount of space for living. Since Clostan could no longer grow outwards, it had to grow upwards.

PorTy eagerly took up this idea, and decided to use this opportunity to build up as a way to create its own caste system, the caste system which exists today. They decided to replicate the city roads in three levels; the first level, the undesirables, the second level, the working class, the third level, the upper class. Notice the absence of any middle class. That’s how state run socialist systems work; they kill off the middle class, leaving the masses forced to depend on the government for their sustenance.

This project, which was pretty much an entire overhaul of an entire city, was unheard of; the only comparable event was the overhaul of Paris which happened around 150 years earlier. Only when this project initiated did the middle class finally notice the extent of PorTy’s wealth. In the next five years that followed, an exodus of the middle classes started, while the road out of the city, called the “Clostan Artery” by locals, was still unblocked, and work was just starting on the second level of roads. With an exodus of the middle class came the exodus of many other things: varied political ideals, innovation, knowledge, independent business.

After most of the middle class left, the power only existed with the executives of PorTy, whom were all perfectly content with keeping the status quo. These executives were just as educated as the former middle class, but were polar opposites in every other way; they were elitists.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is somewhere near the end of the first part; Alex has just finished a harrowing series of game shows in a dream in order to unlock his father’s collective unconscious.

Alex could vaguely sense it in the dream, as the windows of the hotel room began to crack at the very center, the walls began to contort, and the monotonous drone of the question reader gradually became higher in pitch. Then all of a sudden, just as the walls were able to collapse on him, just as he was preparing to die buried under the debris of mankind, he felt water.

Alex opened his eyes. He was in the park, the sun still shone, however it had the glow of dusk.

“Do you realize how long you have been sleeping here?”

“No,” Alex replied, still in a state of shock, to what in his mind was no more than a black shadow.

“Well let’s see; you started to nap on this park bench about at 12:14:42 P.M., and now it’s exactly somewhere around sunset. Had a nice nap?”

“Where am I? How did I end up getting here?”

“Don’t play dumb. I know very well what you were trying to do. Did you get it? You know, the code.”

“No.”

“Who am I?”

“You’re Mayor Mihikailov.”

“Yes, yes, you’re smart aren’t you Alex Lucio. The bringer of the light who ventures into the dark into order to find answers. You should be playing to your specialties, you know.”

“What are you gonna do to me now? You’ve caught me after all.”

“Another perverted tactic of yours! You know that acting innocent and weak won’t help you! I’ve already suffered too much at the hands of that guy beside you, your father. By the way, Cornelius, wake him up, and where are my guards?”

Alex’s father woke up, still in shock, as Alex watched ten other black-suited men come out from the trees behind the park bench, and restrain his half-awake father. Soon, he felt vicer-like grips on his arms and legs.

“Well, Alex, let me tell you something. When we lobotomized your father, we also took the key from him. The key to his subconscious, which you have been searching for for – quick, Cornelius, tell me how long six hours is in dream time.”

“About four days, Mayor.”

“Four days! Six hours! In both ways, lots of wasted time! Plus you made this suicidal trespass into the upper level! You enjoyed it though, right? Got to see the sun for once for real. Bet you looked at it too, and hurt your eyes! Well, Alex…”

“Yeah?”

“Have you ever wanted to know what the undesirable level of our society is like? Your curiosity, it seems, has no bounds! Yes, you don’t need to act dumb again, I know that you always had this burning desire to know. Well, Alex, something is at least going to come out of your failed attempt to tap into your father’s collective unconscious. Your time hasn’t been wasted!”

Just as the Mayor uttered those words, Alex’s father snapped out of his post-dream shock, and Alex could tell that he was fully aware of the his surroundings, of the improper actions that the Mayor’s bodyguards took to restrain him.

“Alex! Alex! Where are we? I think that I am late for my work. My watch say it’s around 6 P.M.; I am late! Quick! I have to get breakfast ready and send you to school!”

“Dad, we’re not – ”

“Alex, it’s all useless!” the Mayor said. “Don’t worry, we’re going to go to a special place soon!”

Alex could tell that the Mayor was getting excited, then felt a sharp pain in right leg.

-

“Sedative 12, one hour of sedation; Sedative 23, fourteen hours of sedation. Are you sure it was enough, Cornelius? The father, I know, is fine, he’ll wake up the next morning, find a government-issued letter in his mailbox, and continue life as normal. It’s the boy I’m worried about. He’s going to miss out on the show!”

“Mayor, he’s starting to show signs of life.”

“Perfect! Alex, our special guest!”

“Where am I?”

“Don’t act so much like a robot! You’re not one, you’re a foreigner’s child after all, an Alex! Open your eyes more!”

Alex woke up in a van, in the middle seat. Two of the Mayor’s bodyguards were sleeping on hammocks near the roof of the van, while four were in the row behind him. He was sitting in the middle row, in the middle seat. Alex put on his seatbelt, looked outside to see the familiar second layer again, the land where the sun never shone and the sky a permanent sea of concrete. The van was driving down Highway 15, traffic was much lighter than it normally was, as Alex could only see a few buses in the outer lanes.

“Highway 15, the Clostan Artery. Open your eyes more, Alex! Despite all the crap that makes up the second layer, I want you to see this! You’ve never been to Clostan’s downtown, right?”

“Only once, I think, a long time ago. Don’t remember.”

“Look! It’s amazing! Clostan’s downtown is one thing to be proud of at all levels! No other city in the world has such an amazing downtown!”

Alex looked forward, and downtown perfectly from the cliff before the descent to the ocean. Clusters of high rises packed in such close formation, layers upon layers of roads, all staggered in such a perfect way as to create the illusion of a latticework of roads, in the center of the roads, high rises, all branded with the distinctive sun logo of PorTy, created the illusion that they were descending into a land of a million suns.

“See, Alex? The downtown is still beautiful, despite being on the second layer. You know at the end of highway 15, there originally was a huge spiral, as the highway ended and descended back to ground level. The spiral is a special place, a place where most normal citizens, even us privileged kind on the upper level, never get the chance to enter.”

“What’s at the end of the spiral?”

“Why would I want to spoil the surprise! Guards, wake up, and help secure Alex so he doesn’t escape. You know, Alex, I’ve learned a lot from your father, and one thing I’ve learned, is that the only way to control radical revolutionaries such as you, and your father, is to bury them alive.”

Alex felt sharp pain on his left leg.

-

“Mayor, he’s waking up!”

“Cornelius, what did you use?”

“Sedative 9, Mayor.”

“Sedative 9? No, that’s wrong, all wrong! I wanted you to use Sedative 10, damn it; now he’s going to see it all! But it’s okay; he’s locked in by my guards. Use, uh, Sedative 5. You have to get the head this time, the legs have already been used.”

“Yes, Mayor. I apologize for my earlier mishap.”

Alex slowly opened his eyes, and saw a road sign, painted in white text on a green background, a strange occurrence, since all signs in Clostan were printed in white text on a red background. It said something about the destination of whatever highway they were on. He could make out one word: Undesirable Level. Alex then saw a syringe, and could make out the words “SEDATIVE SIX” between the volume measurement markings, then felt a horrible pain, as if someone was sticking a needle into the middle of his forehead.

“Have fun, Lucio, with the undesirables…”

The mayor, supposedly the epitome of the upper class denizens of the upper level, actually, through his language, shows that class barriers are simply superficial and materialistic [like the concrete barriers overhead between the second and third levels of the city], rather than abstract. [just some analysis…]

New Idea

I realize that I've had trouble writing extended stories simply because I don't plan that well. After writing maybe a few pages, most of my stories (including the "chapter one" I had to write for my English class) just sort of phase out.

Well I thought of a good idea in a dream of mine.

-----

for my own reference

BASIC PLOT

Some guy is playing a sim game, what happens in the sim game actually happens in a parallel plane somewhere else in the world. The story develops because in this sim game the player opens up new area as the game progresses; the same happens in the parallel world.

The story itself opens in a plague, which would explain the sequestering of the people in the parallel world into a tiny section of what is probably a city. The people have little basic resources, including money.

The guy who's playing the sim game isn't that good. Either it is part of his own sadistic nature or inexperience, but things don't turn out very well.

1. a major character of the parallel world, his mother, decides to go back into prostituion to earn enough money to buy whatever's left. Very early on, with her son still in view, she meets one of her old clients, gets into this huge arguement, fails to shoot him a couple of times (why does she have a gun... idk) then the client contemplates his own suicide as the mother gives a psychological tirade, which includes rather unsavory parts of the past, before the client gets fed up and just knocks the mother down a set of stairs into a parking garage, where (you know what happens next)

2. new area opens up! a basketball court is created, simply for the leisure of the trapped citizens. By random generation, a list of teams and tournament brackets is created. Of course, the random generation is not really random, but perhaps a cruel figment of fate for all the characters. "stacking" of teams is prevalent; in the finals, the whole game breaks into an argument, then a brawl, then another argument, with no clear winner decided.

I had one more scene in mind but I forgot; will update later.