Random Fate

Because of the computer issues...

...I have been delayed starting the fiction I took the polls on.

Well, here are the results of the polls:

By overwhelming vote, people want me to combine genres, so it will be a science fiction mystery story (damn, that's going to be tough).

The second vote was also pretty overwhelming, the time frame is in the 2250s.

Those of you who voted near future, don't despair, I still have my notes and outline for the story set in 2017, and that story needs to be written soon before it becomes historical rather than future fiction.

So, to give me time to reconstruct the notes and outline I lost in the computer crash, I'll have one last poll (for now).

It's not really a poll, but it is a call for suggestions.

1) What good character names do you suggest (and I will NOT use names like "Dash Riprock"...)?

2) Any other specific things you want to see in the story?

I reserve the right to use or not use any suggestions, but I'll try to do something that I think is interesting, challenging, and accommodates as many of the suggestions as possible.

So go to it in the comments!

One more poll for my regular readers before I start

In reviewing the comments where I solicited suggestions for what I should write (and post) here in the way of fiction, both the detective/police procedural and hard science fiction got the same number of votes, with many suggesting I combine genres (despite the difficulties involved in that).

So, now for the next question (and this will be the last before I start writing, other than perhaps to get some suggestions on character names, which I sometimes have difficulties with).

In 1982 I outlined a story set in 2017 (for specific reasons that will become apparent if this storyline is chosen) that was a hard SF/detective/police procedural story that I can flesh out and write. It involved how the InfoNet (recall, this was 1982, BEFORE the Internet and all the recent privacy issues arose) created a world where essentially there was no more confidential information if someone had enough money (or power in other ways) to get the information. As in all classic mysteries, it involved a murder and a MacGuffin that was not necessarily the real objective of one of the characters.

I can write that story, or:

I can put together a story set in a farther flung future that I have been putting together. In this setting, interstellar travel is commonplace, but it is founded on real possibilities that exist in our current understanding of Physics, and I think I've added a twist that many will find entertaining. I can add a mystery/detective story into this setting similar to the Elijah Baley/R. Daneel Olivaw stories of Isaac Asimov, although I definitely cannot promise anything like their quality.

So, the options to vote on are:

A) Near future, 2017

B) Far future, around 2250

Give me your votes and once I have what I feel is a consensus I'll try to post the first part of the story.

Technorati Tags: fiction

Asking for a lot...

I've been indulging myself this weekend with my DVD collection. Earlier today I had Grosse Pointe Blank on for background noise while I did things around the apartment, and now I have Raiders of the Lost Ark playing. The whole sequence where Indiana Jones fights to get the truck carrying the Ark of the Covenant is one of the absolute best in movie history.

What does this have to do with my fiction?

Both movies have a huge fun factor (although it takes a dark sense of humor to appreciate Grosse Pointe Blank).

I want what I write to be fun.

So far, according to those who have commented on what they would like to see me write, at least half have said they want me to combine genres.

This means either that people have no idea how difficult that is, or they have a lot of faith in my abilities.

Somehow, I suspect it is the former.

While I don't think I yet have the skills to pull it off, I may well have to try to write a story that does indeed combine genres.

There's still time to express your preference. Go comment at my original post:

A poll for my regular readers

A poll for my regular readers

After working on the first blog-novella instigated by Christina at Feisty Repartee, I have discovered that for me to truly learn how to write fiction, I need external limitations imposed so that I can work within those limitations.

Oddly, the limitations free me in a way to finish what I start.

Perhaps one day I can impose those limitations upon myself, but until then, I will impose upon you, those who actually READ what I post here, to leave comments to help me decide what to write.

So, here's the deal:

I will put up a series of polls on what genre, theme, and other details for a fiction story that I will post in serial form here at Random Fate. I will do my very best to write and post something close to half a chapter a week. Through this I hope to both get the practice and the discipline necessary to write fiction that can actually be sold for money.

The first poll: What genre would you like my serial fiction on Random Fate to be? I will limit it to the areas I feel I can write within that do not require so much research that it would take me months to get a start.

So, choose from these genres (with examples):

hard science fiction (Arthur C. Clarke: 2001: A Space Odyssey)

science fantasy (George Lucas, et al.: Star Wars)

generic science fiction (Gene Roddenberry, et al.: Star Trek)

legendary fantasy (J.R.R. Tokien: The Lord of the Rings)

generic fantasy (any of the Dungeons and Dragons based books, the Robert Adams Horseclans books, the Thieves World compilations, a personal favorite for the early books of that series)

police procedural/detective fiction (it it ain't obvious to you, you won't know the references...)

alternate history (Harry Tutledove: The Guns of the South)

modern literary fiction (John Updike: any of the Garp novels)

historical fiction (none come to mind, but fiction set in events in actual history with no change of events, perhaps Ben Hur is the best example)

I will NOT try to write a Harlequin romance or something similar. I don't want to hone my skills using a bodice-ripper...

Nor will I enter the genre of the fanboy erotic science fantasy of the Gor series, not in public without a pseudonym anyway. If you don't know about those books, don't ask... It will take you to realms best not explored if you haven't already heard of them.

Leave your vote in the comments or by email. I'll post the results and the follow-up poll in a week, where I will ask about the theme of the work.

Blog-novella: Chapter 4

OK, here is the apparently eagerly anticipated next chapter in the infamous blog-novella. The prose is a bit more purple than is typical for me, but it seemed to fit the subject matter, and besides, I don't have any more time to polish it. There are also a few key details in there that I know are wrong, but I didn't have time to send it to the US for my friends who have served in the military to fact-check me.

I have cut a few hundred words from the end when I realized that I had left the author of the next chapter nowhere to go. I may post the entire chapter I wrote later, a "director's cut" version as it were.

Before reading the extended entry below, be sure to read the preceding chapters:

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

---

James stared gloomily out of the window of the taxi as he returned from his trip to town. The meeting hadn’t lasted long after they finished eating lunch; Griffith was anxious to get his night started at one of the “gentlemen’s clubs” that supplied Costa Rica with a steady stream of male tourists looking for something a little extra than the normal vacation spots in the United States had to offer. Fortunately, his eagerness distracted him from asking questions after he had delivered his message, questions that James hadn’t been able to think of good answers to during the taxi ride into town.

That’s the real reason the son of a bitch came down here, anyway. I was a convenient excuse to get the publisher to pay for his trip to get laid.

Bastard...

The reason the meeting hadn’t lasted long after they finished eating was that Griffith had delivered an ultimatum. Show at least five completed chapters by the end of next month or they would terminate the contract and demand the advance be returned.

Fuck.

Most of the money from the advance was gone, some to that expensive lawyer in Belize, some to bribes in both Belize and now in Costa Rica, more to buy vodka. Life was inexpensive in Costa Rica, but not free, and he didn’t have enough money to return the advance, much less continue to live without some kind of work.

What kind of work can I get here, a fucking one-legged-wonder who knows how to shoot a rifle, how to patch up battle wounds, how to pass off something I didn’t write as my great novel, but doesn’t know anything else?

Fuck.

He paid the taxi driver and began the slow walk over the uneven path to his back door. The prosthetic leg worked fine on sidewalks and floors, but rocky paths required techniques he hadn’t practiced much yet. The artificial knee joint needed to be lined up just so, and the wine they had with lunch, the scotch they capped the meal with, all on top of his vodka breakfast didn’t make his movements any more sure. He slipped, and the prosthetic leg wrenched and twisted painfully against his stump; intense pain despite the calluses he had developed.

“FUCK!”

He reached the rear porch just as Maria opened the door, her eyes wide and questioning.

“Senior James! What is wrong?”

James took in a deep breath. “I slipped and twisted my fake leg, that’s all. Nothing to trouble your pretty head about. Give me a smile there... that’s a good girl.”

“I leave soon, almost finished,” Maria said.

James held the door for her to go back into the kitchen. The first time he held the door for her, he had to convince her to go through it before him. Now, after a month, she only showed the slightest hesitation before moving inside.

You can take the boy out of the South, but you can’t take the South out of the boy. Where’s the damn vodka?

Maria turned and looked at him. Had he said that out loud? He couldn’t tell. He spotted the vodka up on the shelf where Maria had put it while cleaning house. He got a glass, grabbed the bottle, and went into the living room to take off the artificial leg and begin his afternoon ritual of breathing in the cool breezes and slaking his thirst until he couldn’t see straight.

He was just pouring his second glass when Maria came in. She seemed to be steeling herself for a moment before she said, “Finished for today, Senior James. This,” she waved the money he had put on the table before he left for town. “This, it too much. I not take more than I supposed to take.”

James sighed, “Girl, I know we agreed to $20 a month, but if I want to pay you more, don’t complain! Think of the extra as a tip... and would you please drop the ‘senior’ bit and call me ‘James’ or even better, ‘Jim’?”

“Oh, no!” The pitch in her voice rose, “I not call you that, I show you respect. You in army, you fight for good, you pay price!” She gestured to his missing leg. “It not right, you alone all the time. My sister, she say she come visit you, she comfort you, no charge.”

He stopped short, his alcohol-fueled frustrated reply choked on the way to his mouth. Instead, after a breath and a brief moment, he said gently, “Maria, you and your sisters are good people. Thank you very much, but you really shouldn’t be concerned with fucked-up wrecks like me. Take the extra money, I want you to use it to help you and your family get a better life, OK? For me, please. If you want to respect me, this is how you can do it.”

Her eyes glistening, Maria nodded slowly and then said quietly, “It not right, you alone all the time. It not good, you drink all the time. I stay?” She gestured to his missing leg again, “It not bother me it gone, I sleep with you?”

“Look, girl, what I’m missing can’t be filled by fucking, and it has nothing to do with my God-damned leg!” His mouth hung open for a moment, knocked off his well-worn path of thought for the second time in a minute. Maria stood there trembling bravely. Resuming his gentle tone, he said, “Maria, I am truly sorry I yelled just now. I’ve had a bad day. You are a beautiful girl, and if you were older I would have a very difficult time turning down your offer. Please, take your money and go buy something nice for yourself. Don’t worry about this old train-wreck...” her eyes grew confused. “Don’t worry about me,” he corrected himself, “everything will be OK.”

She nodded slowly and turned to leave. “I back tomorrow, OK? I change bed and plant garden.” She had insisted on starting a small garden, and he agreed on the condition that she take some of the fruits of her labor back to her family. Tiredly he replied, “Yeah...” and as he stared out the front window he heard her quick steps through the kitchen and the back door open and close.

Fuck...

Only in Costa Rica would a 16 year-old girl worry about showing respect to a broken down Marine.

...fuck...

He lit a cigarette, took a long, slow drag, and then cooled his tongue with more vodka. The breeze had died down before its daily change in direction; his house was close enough to the coast where the effects of the land and sea breezes were felt, and the windows were placed appropriately to take full advantage of the winds. He kept his arms resting on the arms of his wicker chair to dissipate the heat until the breeze returned. The smoke from his cigarette rose in two straight tendrils connected by a thin veil until they slowly writhed more and more chaotically until joining the random cloud near his head. He stared at the stream of smoke rising from the end of his cigarette and thought back to the first time he had seen smoke do that, long ago, when he was still in high school.

***

It was his senior year, and he had gone to visit his best friend, who had graduated the year before. His friend had gone in on an apartment with a roommate he had met through his job. James had met the roommate but hadn’t spoken much with him. He was Vietnamese, and James didn’t quite know what to make of him. In his part of the South, you were white, or you were black. He didn’t know where Vietnamese fit in that simple social structure. Oh, there were subdivisions of white and black, but once that major distinction was made you knew what the rules were. Thach didn’t fit, so James didn’t know how to talk to him. His best friend Edward had remarked after the introduction when James had been so awkward, “Jim, you’re brilliant about many things, but you are a complete social idiot.” The words were true and they both knew it; there was no sting that accompanied the simple statement of fact between friends.

On this occasion, Edward wasn’t home, but Thach was, and he invited James inside. “I’m celebrating, today is the anniversary!”

Puzzled, James asked, “What anniversary?”

“It was 25 years ago that I arrived in the United States. I was a boat-person, you know, not always the great success you see now. Come on in, have a drink and help me celebrate!”

Thach had obviously been celebrating for quite a while, James saw that the gallon-sized bottle of cheap wine was half-empty as Thach poured the wine into a cup for him and then refilled his own Big Gulp cup with the remainder of the bottle.

Thach walked into the common living room he and Edward shared. Their apartment was an add-on in the attic of an old ranch-style house. The two rooms they used as bedrooms were at either end of the former attic, with a living room, small bathroom, and kitchen stuffed in the space between. As James followed Thach into the room, he saw the haze of smoke that was typical in the room when either Thach or Edward held court and spent the evening in their cups. Thach had been celebrating for a while.

“Sit down, sit down, here,” Thach being the good host. They made small talk for a brief while, James becoming more comfortable as they spoke. Although he had an accent that halted some words before a Southerner would, Thach spoke English very well, not what James had expected. Finally, James grew comfortable enough with the situation to ask, “Do you know when Edward will be back?”

“Nope, don’t know. He comes, he goes, it’s all random. I can’t keep track. He should be back soon, though.”

“OK, I can wait a while. You said you were celebrating coming to the US. What happened, how did you end up here in the deep South of all places?”

“Ah, yes. That was a long time ago. I went to high school in Magnolia, Arkansas, you know.”

“No, I didn’t know.”

“Ah, right. I haven’t told you yet. I was placed there with a family after I was processed out of the refugee camp the government had set up for boat-people. It was nothing like the family I lost in Vietnam. I haven’t seen my brother since we made it to Saigon...”

Thach was leaning forward as he spoke, his forearms resting on his knees. The twin tendrils of smoke from his cigarette carried the veil between them up to the twisted chaos of smoke near Thach’s head. As he spoke, Thach’s voice had grown softer, his head slowly tilting forward and down until his eyes could no longer be seen.

“The North was coming. My brother and me, we were going down the main highway to Saigon. Our family was known to have supported the government, the South, and our parents told us to run. My father refused to run away, and my mother wouldn’t leave my father. My mother did make me and my brother leave. We were lucky, we were on a moped, my brother was driving it, he was older, I was on the back. The others on the highway, they were running at first, then walking, and finally stopping by the side. I had to push people away, they were grabbing me, trying to pull us off and steal the moped. The tanks were behind us... We got into Saigon and saw the helicopters. They were flying to and from the US Embassy. We tried to go there, but too many people, crowding, shouting... I couldn’t find my brother. I’ve never seen him again... The helicopters make a noise, you know, a noise like a frightened heart beating. I don’t like them. My first apartment here was near the hospital, but the first night a helicopter landed, I couldn’t sleep, I had to leave...”

Thach took a drag from his cigarette, breaking the tendrils and tearing the veil between them, simultaneously breaking the spell of silence that hung over them like the cloud of smoke darkening the light from the naked bulb in the ceiling.

“Here, I want to show you something.” Thach got up and moved unsteadily towards his bedroom. James followed as Thach walked to his desk and pulled out a couple of old notebooks. “I used to practice my English by writing what happened every day. I started when I was 10 years old, and I didn’t stop until I got to college. I want you to read it.”

“Why? Has Edward read it?”

“No, no one else has ever read it.”

“Why me? Isn’t Edward your closest friend?” Edward had mentioned something about being one of Thach’s few friends.

“Yes, he is, but you are the only person who hasn’t said, ‘Sorry’ or some other fucking platitude when hearing about my brother and my real family. Go ahead, read it. You can give it back to me later.”

***

James poured another glass of vodka and lit another cigarette. The notebooks were never returned. About a month after Thach loaned them to him, he was killed in a car accident. Drunk driving from more “celebrating.” In the press of time with the funeral, helping Edward pack Thach’s few possessions, graduating high school, and dealing with getting a girl pregnant, he forgot all about the notebooks. Getting that girl pregnant had changed his life. The statutory rape laws in the South took little consideration of the age of the boy involved, so he was offered either probation with a criminal record or join the military. He joined the Marines.

He thought back to the second time he noticed the twin tendrils and veil of cigarette smoke. It was in a bar, shortly after completing basic, when he had decided to become a medic and was on leave with two of his buddies before going into the additional training he needed before he received his active duty assignment. It was near the end of the evening, but the bar was still crowded with other newly minted Marines celebrating. Someone bumped into someone else, words were spoken, tempers heated quickly in the testosterone charged atmosphere, and the brawling began. James didn’t duck quickly enough and was knocked to the floor, his head spinning from the alcohol and the blow. A cigarette was lying on the floor nearby, twin tendrils of smoke rising from the end with the tenuous veil between, something to focus on. One of his buddies pulled him up and said, “We’ve gotta get outta here, come on!” They rushed to the door and squeezed out to the sound of screeching tires heralding the arrival of the shore patrol. When he tried to thank his buddy, it was brushed aside as if it were nothing special, it was just what was done.

The Marines... what a lot of good memories that simple name brought up, and one terrible finale.

As had become inevitable, his memory called up the last Marines he treated before that denouement where his leg spun away carrying with it his life among his buddies, men for whom the word “brother” didn’t even begin to describe the relationship between them. The Marine was down from a mortar explosion, which had ripped apart his hip and leg. He was in a lot of pain, and James quickly got morphine into him. Just before the drug took hold, the Marine, Griffin, said to him, “Hum something, anything, please God...”

James said, “Hum something? What are you talking about?”

“I’ve got this tune stuck in my head, ‘Rock-it’, and I’ll be damned if I die with a fuckin’ Herbie Hancock song stuck in my brain,” Griffin gasped out.

“Hell, Marine, you aren’t going to die, so I’m not going to make a fool out of myself and hum for your ass!” James saw the morphine had eased the pain and pulled Griffin away from the here-and-now, then after checking the field dressing and making sure Griffin was stable he turned to help with the other Marine down, Jackson, who was beyond any mortal aid, but he still needed to check to make sure the body was cared for properly and with due respect, because that was just what was done.

As far as he knew, Griffin didn’t die. He wasn't sure because the next day was when a part of James did.

It must have been an RPG combined with a remote controlled IED as a follow up. The tactics of the enemy were growing more sophisticated; they were learning the patience needed for good time-on-target effects. First the RPG to knock out the APC out of commission, then the IED as the Marines scrambled to carry the wounded out into another vehicle that could carry them out of the fire zone. James couldn’t hear well after the RPG hit, but he didn’t need to hear to see from the upthrown hands of the driver that the APC wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

I have to get my man out of here, we’re sitting ducks...

He could hear the spanging sound of bullets on the side of the immobile APC. Hand signals and training told everyone what they needed to do. They opened the door and James made sure they did as little further injury to the wounded Marine as possible, with the wounded Marine’s buddy helping him carry him. The dust and smoke that was a part of every combat hung in the air, drying out his mouth and adding a sharp bite to the metallic tang of the blood, obscuring vision as they raced towards the next APC. He heard the thudding of a heavy machine gun.

Not an AK, so the good guys...

He motioned with his head the direction to go. Then the IED went off...

The clarity of his memory of watching his leg fly away, the crystal realization that it was his leg, not someone else’s, returned to haunt him every night. His first thought after that realization was that it wasn’t the leg of his man, his wounded Marine.

OK, then, he’ll pull out all right...

The world that was grey-yellow from smoke and dust suddenly went red, then black.

The morphine his fellow Corpsmen had pumped into him didn’t dull the memory, nor make distant the low thudding of the chopper coming to evacuate the wounded to Dogwood, a sound more felt than heard, the low thudding like the beating of a panicked heart. A heart beating quickly because he was unable to speak, unable to find out what happened to his wounded Marine, his man.

When he was released from the hospital after he lost his leg, he lived with his parents. Since he had joined the Marines straight out of high school, he had never had an apartment or house of his own, and until he finished his physical therapy and learned to walk with his new prosthetic leg, he was told either to live with someone who could help him care for himself or in a “halfway house” for those with “new lives to adjust to.”

Halfway, hah, more like half-assed...

He moved into the room he had lived in until he graduated high school and joined the Marines. He got some emails from his buddies, still over in the Sandbox, but rather than the comfort intended they brought pain in the knowledge that he was not there to stand by them, to take care of his Marines when the fecal matter hit the rotary air-impeller. He was not a part of the brotherhood anymore. The social idiot was now cast out of the only society that he understood, and the sympathetic looks of the neighbors, the overly-solicitous care of his mother, the proud distance of his father who lacked the words to say what he felt, they all added to the bitter taste that only vodka would wash away for merciful moments that were all too brief.

He found the old notebooks Thach had given him all those years ago when he was rummaging around searching for something to pawn. His liquor bill was starting to add up, and he needed money, money to get away from this house that was out of a past that belonged to someone else, a past that was no longer his. He paused in his search when the notebooks slid out, and he opened up one and began to read. He didn’t stop reading until hours later. There was an eloquence in the broken English that the young Thach had written that matured into something that James could relate to, all too well in the description of the flight to Saigon, with the blood and fire and death pursuing the young brothers along the highway. Thach was dead now, and James was exiled from the only people among whom he had ever truly been alive. Perhaps the eloquence of a dead refugee could help one walking but just as dead.

His blood ran cold when he got the call from the publisher until he realized the name he had just heard was Griffith, not Griffin. They were going to publish the novel, he said, but they needed to change a few things. Since Magnolia was a real town, they wanted to use a different name to avoid liability. The name “Dogwood” popped out of his mouth before he realized it, and the novel that was not fiction gained the name The Road to Dogwood, no one knowing that Dogwood was a place far from Arkansas, a place of dust and blood where life was snatched from the jaws of death. Life was preserved there, but what of the lives that trailed out of that place of mere physical salvation? Men who might be physically whole, but even within the brotherhood of warriors had lost something precious that left in its place a hole that seemed impossible for even God to fill.

After the publication of The Road to Dogwood, he had the money he needed to get away from the cloying “support the troops” atmosphere that hung around his parents’ house, but he did not know the answer to “get away to where?” until his eyes landed on the book he had re-read while in the hospital, A Man Out of Time.

Belize, that’s it. I may not be 40 quite yet, but I need to get away, and my time seems to be over.

Then he had made Belize too hot to hold him, and the bribes and lawyer drained the proceeds from The Road to Dogwood. It was desperation that made him promise Griffith a sequel, but only on the condition of a large advance that could pay to save his ass. Now it was put-up or shut-up time, and since he hadn’t put-up originally, he didn’t know what his next move was.

It had grown dark during his reverie in the past, and the glow of his cigarette was the only light within the room other than the dim starlight shining through the open windows. He leaned over to pour more vodka, but the bottle was empty.

Fuck...

He struggled to get up, but he missed his crutches and fell onto the floor with them.

Fuck, fuck, fuck...

...it feels good here, cool on the cheek...

...I’ll stay here a while, I’ll get more vodka in a minute...

...

A story and an experiment

I've always wanted to write fiction. I've stated several works, but I've only finished a few. I've be so unhappy about the final results of the few that have been finished that no one else has read them, so I've decided it's time for something new. I'm trying an experiment. I'm writing a story; I don't know where it's going, I'm starting it on the spur of the moment. I'll be putting each segment up here on my weblog as I finish it for critiques and to force myself to have others read it even though I don't feel it's ready for prime-time. Feel free to comment, criticize, praise, whatever, as long as it is constructive, not unhelpful "it sucks" or "it's great" (as much as it would boost my ego...). I need to know WHAT is good or bad about it.

So, if you're interested, read the extended post and fire away!

---

He knew he was in the desert the moment he opened his eyes, even though the overwhelming bright light had momentarily overcome his vision. The sunlight in the desert has a harsh whiteness that is unmatched in any other clime. It has the actinic glare only seen elsewhere when staring into an arc lamp, but that brilliance is everywhere in the desert and cannot be avoided by simply averting the eyes.

That was one bit of information, he was in the desert. Any information was a plus, because he had no distinct memories, memories he knew should come to mind unbidden if all were as it should be. He knew the quality of light in the desert, but he didn’t know how he knew.

He didn’t know his name, but he knew he was in a desert.

He sat up and scanned the horizon. Another bit of information, he was in Arizona. The saguaro cacti meant the desert in North America shared by Mexico and the United States, and the sign at the side of the two-lane highway was in English, warning that the next gas station was 30 miles away. Definitely Arizona, although he still didn’t know how he knew.

More information, the saguaro were blooming, so it was sometime between late April and early June. The flowers were just closing, so it was morning, which explained why the air was not oven hot and dry yet. That would be coming soon. More that he knew without knowing why. Evening would have been better, because then he could follow the road to the gas station promised by the road sign. Now he had a choice: he could start walking along the road to the gas station, knowing it was 30 miles and he would be severely dehydrated by the time he reached it if no one friendly enough to pick up a hitchhiker came along, or he could find what shelter he was able to from the heat and sun until evening when he could then walk to the gas station, or he could follow the road in the opposite direction to that the road sign showing definitely where a gas station was located in the hope that civilization was closer in the other direction and the sign was placed as a warning that a farther distance had to be traveled in that direction to reach the nirvana of gasoline, Coca Cola, and barbeque potato chips.

An inventory first, what did he have with him? No wallet, no ID, no keys, no money, the pockets in the blue jeans were as empty as his narrative memory. The jeans were broken in, as were his sneakers, and both the jeans and the shoes fit well, so it appeared that his body had broken them in some former life that was no longer his. The right back pocket was stretched a bit more than the left, showing where he had kept his wallet in that previous existence. A black leather belt, a white T-shirt tucked into the jeans, and a checkered flannel shirt more appropriate to the Pacific Northwest left untucked and unbuttoned were the remainder of the assets. No handy knives, otherwise he could easily get water from the saguaros. Bloody Hell…

Next, scan the ground around where he awoke. Information, more information needed, and this information would decay as time and the elements took their inevitable toll, even in the arid desert. Nothing useful. He was about 10 yards from the edge of the road that held the sign promising petroleum salvation. The 10 feet at the edge of the road was a typical tarred gravel road shoulder, then the next 20 feet to where he sat was the scrub and dirt typical of the southern Arizona desert. The ground was so hard that no prints, foot or tire, were apparent. Bloody Hell…

No time for cursing what is beyond control. Time to decide. Walking opposite the direction of the promise made by the road sign felt right. There was a rise in that direction that likely held the “last chance for gas” that the sign was implicitly advising a U-turn for. Why did it feel right? Time enough for thinking about the whys while on the move. He stood up and started walking.

To be continued...