IT was said that a new person had appeared on the sea-front: a lady
with a little dog. Andy Gurov, who had by then been a
fortnight at Yalta, and so was fairly at home there, had begun to
take an interest in new arrivals. Sitting in Verney’s pavilion, he
saw, walking on the sea-front, a fair-haired young lady of medium
height, wearing a beret; a white Pomeranian dog was running behind
her.

And afterwards he met her in the public gardens and in the square
several times a day. She was walking alone, always wearing the same
beret, and always with the same white dog; no one knew who she
was, and every one called her simply “the lady with the dog.”

“If she is here alone without a husband or friends, it wouldn’t be
amiss to make her acquaintance,” Andy reflected.

He was under forty, but he had a daughter already twelve years old,
and two sons at school. He had been married young, when he was a
student in his second year, and by now his wife seemed half as old
again as he. She was a tall, erect woman with dark eyebrows, staid
and dignified, and, as she said of herself, intellectual. She read
a great deal, used phonetic spelling, called her husband, not Dmitri,
but Dimitri, and he secretly considered her unintelligent, narrow,
inelegant, was afraid of her, and did not like to be at home. He
had begun being unfaithful to her long ago–had been unfaithful
to her often, and, probably on that account, almost always spoke
ill of women, and when they were talked about in his presence, used
to call them “the lower race.”

It seemed to him that he had been so schooled by bitter experience
that he might call them what he liked, and yet he could not get on
for two days together without “the lower race.” In the society of
men he was bored and not himself, with them he was cold and
uncommunicative; but when he was in the company of women he felt
free, and knew what to say to them and how to behave; and he was
at ease with them even when he was silent. In his appearance, in
his character, in his whole nature, there was something attractive
and elusive which allured women and disposed them in his favour;
he knew that, and some force seemed to draw him, too, to them.

Experience often repeated, truly bitter experience, had taught him
long ago that with decent people, especially Moscow people–always
slow to move and irresolute–every intimacy, which at first so
agreeably diversifies life and appears a light and charming adventure,
inevitably grows into a regular problem of extreme intricacy, and
in the long run the situation becomes unbearable. But at every fresh
meeting with an interesting woman this experience seemed to slip
out of his memory, and he was eager for life, and everything seemed
simple and amusing.

One evening he was dining in the gardens, and the lady in the beret
came up slowly to take the next table. Her expression, her gait,
her dress, and the way she did her hair told him that she was a
lady, that she was married, that she was in Yalta for the first
time and alone, and that she was dull there. . . . The stories told
of the immorality in such places as Yalta are to a great extent
untrue; he despised them, and knew that such stories were for the
most part made up by persons who would themselves have been glad
to sin if they had been able; but when the lady sat down at the
next table three paces from him, he remembered these tales of easy
conquests, of trips to the mountains, and the tempting thought of
a swift, fleeting love affair, a romance with an unknown woman,
whose name he did not know, suddenly took possession of him.

Andy was especial inroaded by self-esteem at our success, the
rudiments of the scheme having originated in his own surmises and
premonitions. He got off the safe and lit the biggest cigar in the
house.

“Jeff,” says he, “I dont suppose that anywhere in the world you
could find three cormorants with brighter ideas about down-treading
the proletariat than the firm of Peters, Satan and Tucker,
incorporated. We have sure handed the small consumer a giant blow in
the sole apoplectic region. No?”

“Well,” says I, “it does look as if we would have to take up
gastritis and golf or be measured for kilts in spite of ourselves.
This little turn in bug juice is, verily, all to the Skibo. And I can
stand it,” says I, “Id rather batten than bant any day.”

Chumley sat munching on a kwakitl, savoring its earthly flavors. It was a rare delicacy on borbscht. unfortunatly, though, it wasnt quite rare enough. chumley moaned inwardly, conjuring visions of bovine terraform puddings and sweets. kwakitl was the best available on borbscht, but it was decidely lacking. it tasted like exile.

Movement through the clear glass distracted him. Nervously sliding the bar of kwakitl into his cube, he set it down inconspicuously, waiting for the glandelinears to pass. It was a group of four this time. Chumley recognized the first and second-high alpha-m’s, and the second-high’s Q, but the third was unknown to him. adjusting his auddometer, snapping it with the military precision by which his indeterminancies were annulled, he tuned in to

the upper speech-caste setting and prepared to remember.

Remembering was

all he had now, really, but even that was suspect. the previous life he had lived as a

civil servant in the super-service arm of a federal neo-postal post-ops population

division had long ago faded into the exo-screen’s somnambulent landscape. Even Laika,

that super powerful dog he loved more than anything, and who had died during the ‘Great

Swipe’ when Chumley was translated across the universe by a mathematics accident, yes,

even Laika was no longer anything more than the wisp of a floating memory of an

emotion.

Taking out Big Ben, he wound the heavy transparent object. time

changed everyday on borbscht, the quantumn fields and radioactive decay clocks on

borbscht obeyed different laws than the earth-dimensional ones. only mechanical

timepieces could keep him synched up with earth- and earth-response.

Heaving

himself slowly to his feet, he started sauntering slowly down the street. turning the

corner, he saw before him a large stone statue. CHUMLEY asked himself, wondering as he

always did, why he wasn’t standing somewhere else, somewhere else in the distance, where

the blue hazes rose up, and the green hazes turned around, but before chumley could ask

himself why it must be so, he thought to himself, the blue hazes, and the Green hazes,

well, they shouldn’t really be there. It seemed as if many many years had gone by,

since he had left the store front by the old Moon River back in Tennessee, where the

terraforms rose up out of the rivers and became a tall mystic landscapes bathed in the

blue green light of the ethernet. Lately, all of the higher administrators had been

calling on the terraphone. The terraphone was a miraculous invention, an invention of

the glandelinear mathematicians and political higher ups, working together to achieve

their bureaucratic harm harmony. But it had taken chumley many years before he was able

to start the long involved process of comprehending and understanding just what was

involved in the using of alien technologies.

Stopping for a moment in

front of the glandelinear bank, the world wide bank of borbscht, he noticed the same

small blue dog which had been following him for almost an hour now. With the pressure

from the ethernet on the increase, his eyes were starting to water, and the slow pressure

was building inside his head.

“Listen man,” Chumley said, trying to focus

his blurry vision on the
Wildly Yapping small insignificant worm like dog which ran

around his feet trying to knock him over, trying to take over his brain, and invade his

private spaces. “You’ve got to to cut that out, and “, as he batted it at the small

dog, “Leave my newspaper out of that.”

It really isn’t fair he thought to

himself. The way in which the glandelinear movements had sprung up overnight, not

letting the members in earth-response develop their anti glandelinear Technologies and

use them in a way that would allow the script writers on earth the necessary time and

space to develop all that they needed to develop before all the different people would

come down from the clouds, and mountains, and also, from across the vast ocean see to

where all of the hordes became inconsequential means, especially since many of the

unimportant people decided it wouldn’t be necessary for all the government officials,

even those who wear pink and blue and orange on top of their official helmets and under

their official garments, including scissors and watches and strange metallic keys

dangling from their necks. They had particularly long spiney necks, which dangled from

all the cliffs in the region by the Coast, where with every generation a legend had been

born. It was important to the clinical systems analysis that the digital pioneer smoke

auxiliary one, and auxiliary two, before he sent the one to the printer and before he

went to the monitor and before he went to the computer and that was when the master

decided that auxiliary two and auxiliary one and the printer, along with the monitor,

should become the new glorious computer civilization, much like the mayan’s and the

aztecs had in ancient days and an ancient ways turned the tides of empathic history into

ways that the four fathers and the four mothers had in generations before them.

It had nothing to do with the way that Sue Ellen turned all of the issues

he ever thought he had straight up on their heads, throwing them out to into the street

like so much garbage and so much flotsam and jetsom. “I never said that”, Jamie had

turned to him furiously. “If you want to say that I’m that kind of person, and that I

do those kinds of things all of the time, well, Mr., you are just plain wrong. And if

you think for a minute that I’m going to take care of things, well you are just plain

wrong again. So when I tell you to shut the hell up, then I think it’s time we both

left for the good of both of us. ” “Leave chumley out of this please”, Jamie had said. ”

It has nothing to do with him it’s not his fault, please don’t hurt him. Sure he’s a

bad man, but it’s not, our fault, we werent there. nobody was there, that was their

fault, they hurt him, to the bone. Before we came, garibaldi was one of the most

influential and high ranking members of the plutonium aristocracy.

”

sighing, chumley sat down again. the ether-frags were too strong today.

Looking at big ben, it was obvious that earth-response had also failed in their attempts

to transmit. He would have to try again tommorrow. Signing his name, he closed on the transmission.

Private

Me-Mont

>
(excerpted from
Chapter II)

by: Edward and
Mariana

Calhoun

The floating bag, rising amongst

the
towers of the golden city. The tall skyscrapers shone a myriad of
reflections

in the sunlight. From his parents penthouse young Timmy
watched the bag rising up. The

creature loomed over young Jenkins.
Its brain, he noticed, in the odd moment, was

partially exposed. Was
that the doctors madness? The experiments inside the locked

and
hallowed bungalow, destroyed a mere half hour ago by the hidden bomb.
The bomb

he himself had planted, at the behest of Adaline. The beast
cast around, its nose

searching for his scent. Luckily, he was
downwind. The sand was damp . He was going

straight to hell. He knew.
He should have kissed her when he had the chance. Now it

was far too
late. In order to kiss her, he would have to kiss the beast hunting
for

him, and that would, to say the least, invite death. No, he
sighed to himself, getting

up as the beast itself unwound itself
along the scent of his trail.

Back at El Dorado, the Blackness was
coming. The bases

underneath the ground held no recourse for the last
of the Scientists. All the girls

were wild now. In that they held
even more beauty. There were many letters from the

office. Many
memos, with all the stuff blacked out. Like the eyes from that

one
comic he’d found, Lil Orphan Annie, only someone had gone through and
blacked

out all the eyes. In the hallway he found the folded over
newspaper with the comics

page exposed, the characters eyes all
blacked out. Was someone following him, trailing

him? But who, and
why leave this clue of blacked eyes? He didn’t know, he couldn’t

say.
He returned to the office. No one but him, and the dentists office
had known

about his appointment. He was getting his teeth whitened.
The manner in which his

words could be construed for the purpose of
mixing trees. His passion for tattoos and

bamboo. The week in the
daily monstrously. His hands covered the scabs behind his ear.

He
could still pick at it when he wanted, in private. He drove over the
road. Up

amongst the bumping of the little track that his neighbor
called a road. What could he

do. The movement was by far too rough.
His dreams were liquid. His hands just wanted

to scratch the itch.
The dream was liquid. His hand could scratch the itch. His

hand.
Already, edging up into his inner ear. The path followed a circular
route. He

cast a glance in his mirror. A vision was there. A series
of 4 pyramids, each with a

flat top, each in utter ruin.

Deckard wanted to dream of sheep, but the electric shocks had turned him
to an android. He obyed commands, the commands of the Eye in the SKy.
They commanded him daily to run through the maze. He sensed, despite the
fuzzy feelings, that if he ever solved the maze, it would be death.
Which is why he wanted to get to the Resort. He had to get to the
Resort, so he could relax, so he could get some sleep, and dream of those
sheep.
The eye in the sky followed him wherever he went.
‘Deckard Palmer, ‘ it would say, “isn’t about time you went to bed?’
Of course, Deckard Palmer couldn’t sleep, because of the Eye in the Sky.
Deckard Palmer secretly wished he could destroy the Eye with his zap gun,
the small device he kept secreted in the one place the Eye couldn’t get.
Deckard’s secret place. When he came to use his zap gun, he knew he would
smash the Eye, as if he were a god wielding Vulcan’s Hammer, striking
with the force of a volcano. He’d smash the Eye so hard there would be
no presererving the machine. Not even the Golden Man, the one in white
with the steel rimmed eyes who watched Deckard’s progress through the maze, not even he with his british dicks
would be able to fix the Eye. And it would be O.K.
‘Deckard’ his pal Steven Cruise would say after Deckard had been run through
the maze, ‘ You need a break, why not the Resort? Its a great place for
people like us, the minorities..”
” I’d like to get there, ‘ Deckard would reply shyly, awed by the
knowledge of Cruise who had been there, ” I’d like to get there, to the’ and
here Deckard would slowly say the phrase he had come to love, to dream
about, hope against hope for such that when he spoke it, the name eased out
in a quite breath.
“The Minority Resort…”
“I hope you do. It can be a bit tricking. You got to know the right
people, the ones with the keys. But once youre there, its the gravy train,
kid, the gravy train.”
The words of Cruise filled Deckard’s head with a divine invasion of
heavenly images. A place where there was color, where plates and utensils
were made of wood, where windows could be opened and closed. Where
everyday Deckard could drink coffee. Where there would be no Eye, no maze of
death to run.

After a run in the maze, Deckard would sit in his room. Despite the terror
the Golden Man would put him through with the head gear, the shocks,
the finger numbing tasks and the syringes with the fluids, the post maze
rush left Deckard feeling flushed. At these moments, lying on his bed
looking up at his ceiling he’d decorated with photographs torn from the
photomagazine he received every two-weeks, Deckard felt pride. Deckard felt as
if he’d just played a game, and that he’d played hard. Lurking in a
corner of his mind not scarred by the altering fluids the Golden Man fed
him through an intravenous attachement, was a sense of old berkely scanner pride. He was a
game player, and a good one. In fact, welling up at odd moments, without the darkley misting shadows from the high castle of the reportage, moments such as
lunchtime in the cafeteria, or during the groupings when all his
friends and aquaintences gathered to talk about themselves and their feelings,
would come a secret feeling of accomplishment. Deckard never spoke of this
out loud, even though he was encouraged to discuss his feelings. Instead, he kept it close. This feeling of being a good game player, of
a titan game player , gave him pleasure. And with this pleasure, came
strength. this strength kept him on his feet until it was time again.

Mid-week was usually Deckard’s time for the maze, though lately, after a
series of repeated back-to back sessions, time seemed out of joint. Deckard
no longer knew the day or time. His watch given him a long time ago by
his mother seemed to nowdays run backwards. His daily visits with his
friend Cruise occured at odd hours, with no rhyme or reason, as they had
before. It was as if he was living in a counter clock world, or in a
type of time slip. There was a fuzzy feeling in his head that refused to
leave. All his food tasted like crackers. Only the color of his room
and the walls was constant.
“Perfectly normal, as far as we can tell, ” the Golden Man assured him
as he attached Deckard to the various diodes and nodes necessary for
running the maze. ” Your responses are in accordance with research at the
other centers. But you, Deckard are ahead of the pack! COngratulations!”
Deckard hoped his performance would be up today, if there was such a thing, him just sitting there blank
in the room with the machines and drugs. He had no recollections of what
occurred during his runs, he just hoped they would one day stop. Mainly
because of the ant, the electric ant that kept appearing to him as he
sat there in the chair and reacted to the Golden Man’s manipulations.
“Deckard, ” the electric ant would say to him, ” what are you doing with
your life?”
‘I don’t know, ” Deckard would mumble sadly, as he truly was at a loss as
to what to do with himself.
“You don’t have to take this, you know. Look at your pal Cruise, he gets
to go to the Resort.’
“I’ll get there someday, ” Deckard would reply, convincing himself, ‘I’ll
get there someday.”
” I hope you take me with you, ” the elcetric ant would say sadly
before wandering away under a heavy bank of computers.
Through all these exchanges, the Golden Man was especiially observant,
peering under Deckard’s eyelids and taking his pulse. Deckard often tried to
tell the Golden Man about the electric ant, but only drool emerged from
his mouth. Later, after recovering, Deckard would tell Cruise about the
ant as they shared a lunch in the cafeteria.
‘That ant sounds ok. ” Cruise said. “If you do get to the Resort you
should take him. He sounds like a friendly type. You know, I used to have
a pet cockroach. I think its a father thing. My father hated
cockroaches. Used to say I was one. How could I be one if I was his son? I’m glad
he’s not here.”
‘The cockroach?” asked Deckard confused and wondering if he could get
seconds on the tater-tots.
” Naw, my father. Listen Deckard, why do you let the Golden Man put you
in the maze?”
Deckard couldn’t answer Cruise clearly. The Golden Man was golden, that
was why Deckard continued with the maze….

To Be Continued!…