Day 4

He was waiting for me when I got home, standing in the doorway with the biggest grin I’d ever seen him wear. I couldn’t help it; I had to laugh. The two six packs of beer (MGD for me, PBR for him) clinked together in the bag I cradled, giving away my surprise.

”Here,” I said, putting the bag down and pulling the Blue Ribbon out, “To celebrate.”

The grin quickly soured.

”Steven, you shouldn’t talk about celebrating. It’s bad luck to do it beforehand.” He didn’t, however, take his eyes off the beer.

”Suit yourself,” I said, “Not like you really have to thank me, that stuff is cheaper than water.” Owen looked around, as if suddenly unaware of what he was doing. He recovered, and the grin showed up again.

”Steven. She’s ready.”

”Yeah? Let’s go fire her up.” I’d already popped the cap off of one of my beers and taken a pull. Steven didn’t notice - he was bounding down the stairs like a little kid.

”Come on! Look, she’s all set. All we have to do is hit this button.”

“Mmm...” I grabbed another beer and started down the stairs. “Congratulations, Sally. Tonight is the night.”

It wasn’t. Three hours later, my beer was gone and Sally was still humming her low, scratchy tune. Owen was sitting next to me, head in his hands.

”So...how do we know it’s working?”

He sighed, as if I hadn’t already asked the same question multiple times.

“We know, Steven, because she’s awake. She’s not idling, and she’s not errored. If that had happened, she would have printed an error message.”

“What if the error message was really the title? How would you know?” I tried not to laugh, but it was hard. I was far from sober, and felt like funning with the guy a little. He always assumed I was serious, even if my questions were, in actuality, ridiculous. That’s one of the things I enjoyed about Owen, and I took advantage of it often.

”Really, Steven! Would the greatest title in the world really be “Error Message”? Besides, I’ve already thought of that. If there’s an error, the error message will print the three safe words I’ve chosen beforehand. So I’ll always know what the output means.”

“What are the safe words?”

”What? Oh....Sandwich and jelly and something else. I don’t remember. I’ll know if I see it.”

”Peanut butter?”

“No, Steven, that’s not it! How is that even one word?!” Frustrated, Owen stood up and puffed his chest out, taking a deep breath. “She’ll be fine. It’ll be fine. I’m going to bed.”

With that, he pounded back up the stairs.

”Night, O.”

Day 3

Her body was a string of processors snaked together within a giant heat sink, each whirring and clicking in unison to create what Owen described to me as a sort of semi-consciousness. She wasn’t aware of anything but herself, and the series of specific and limited tasks he’d programmed into her. Owen told me she was a marvel of modern computing. Maybe I believed it. Maybe I still thought it was just a bunch of metal and plastic sitting in a bin in the basement.

Sally was built for the idea - which was, ultimately, to write the greatest novel anyone had ever read. To do it in a way that wouldn’t leave anything up to chance. Wouldn’t leave me, for example, writing something that may or may not have been anything good (or anything at all). She had two tasks in this regard, two main functions. First, as Owen had explained to me several times, she’d compile, from a database, the titles of every book ever written - so long as those titles could be translated into English. And from those, she’d spit out a single title. That, my friends, was to be the title of the greatest book ever written. I could cope with that. That seemed feasible, forgetting for a moment all the millions of books that had been written with titles, and their varying qualities (we kept them all in the mix so as not to disqualify bad titles for great books and the opposite...Owen said this would give us a much more empirical answer than if we’d culled any). We had just, he told me, to hook Sally to the internet and wait maybe a day for her answer.

The second task was the one I wasn’t sure could be done. What Owen proposed was that he could, based on various rating systems and user reviews around the world, program Sally to collect full texts for a hundred thousand of the best books in the world - more, even, or less. We controlled the limit. Of course, she’d then be asked to compile, from all those, a novel that would have all the best attributes of each and none of the filler. It would, essentially, be the best book ever written. By anyone. By me.

Yes, I’ll admit it. The only reason I even listened to Owen for a second after he started telling me his idea was because I was the sole beneficiary if his plan worked.

"This book, Steven,” he said, “can only be written once. And it has to look like it was written by a regular guy. The world wouldn’t tolerate the news that a machine wrote it. You’d get it all - the advance, the royalties, the fame that follows. All you have to do is let me live with you, so we can work on it together. So you know just what’s at stake.”

I was sucked in. I couldn’t think of a reason to say no - if it didn’t work out, I’d still be in the same place I’d always been. Working at the bookstore, planning to be a novelist. So that’s what brings us here - a year later. To the day of the title test.

Day 2

I was going to be a novelist. That’s what I told myself then. That’s how I justified working at a university bookstore a full two years after I’d graduated from the same university. I told myself that when the time was right, when it was meant to be, I’d write my novel. And then, I’d sell it. I’d live off the royalties for the rest of my life, doing whatever I felt like. Heck, maybe I’d even write another one if I got bored of that.

I was a stupid kid. I spent all this money on writing books, magazines, and every piece of software that came out promising to help me write the thing, or to effectively write it without my having to do any real work. I told myself I was going to be a novelist. And I believed it. That’s why, the summer before Owen Sinclair and I got an apartment together, I told him my plan.

It was a party he didn’t belong at. Heck, I don’t know if I belonged there, but I was closer to the type who did. It was a forty-hands night, the type of thing that had everyone in attendance floundering up and down stairs and through hallways, giant brown bottles duct-taped to each hand. The rule was you couldn’t pee or free your hands until you finished both, and you couldn’t do that too fast unless you wanted to puke. The purpose of the party, apropo of nothing, was to drink.

I was halfway through my second forty, sitting in the basement near a girl I was trying to impress - she wasn’t interested, but I didn’t care. “I write books. I’m going to be famous.” The truth was apparent - I was drunk and would do no writing, and would do no being famous either. She knew it, and I think when she got up to leave I knew it too. Plans don’t matter to anyone until they’re no longer plans.

I stared at the ends of my arms for a few minutes, at the two glass apertures that had replaced my hands. I took a long drink of the second bottle, and belched. When I looked up again there was a boy sitting where the girl had been.

“I’m Owen Sinclair.” I stared. His bottles were, from where I sat, full.

”I was sitting over there listening to you talk to that girl. Are you really writing a novel?”

My mouth was dry, my tongue was numb. I squeezed my bottles with every bit of strength in my fingers.

”I’m writing the best novel anyone will have ever read.”

He clicked his bottle tops together and leaned forward, interested.

”Really?”

“Sure, why not? Why the hell do you care?”

“Let’s say I help you do it.”

”You? What can you do? Babysit me? Tell me everything I’m writing needs to be rewritten? Jesus, man. No one can write it but me.”

The alcohol was beginning to take hold. His shoes were extremely large. Velcro shoes - I hadn’t seen those since middle school.

“Listen, man. It’s all real simple. You see, a hundred million books have been written so far by humanity, maybe ten or twenty thousand of those were any good. Now, what if I could...”

That was the first night I heard it. Owen’s idea. And it might not have made much sense then, seeing how I was. But after hearing it again, and again (the idea was always the topic of our conversations after that, after I remembered I’d seen Owen Sinclair in the newspaper for doing some really groundbreaking work with computers) it began to make a majestic sort of sense. Whatever he’d done before, whatever computer thing he’d done had apparently been big; big enough for the university to award him a five-hundred-thousand dollar grant to work on his next project.

And his next project was Sally.

Sally lived in the basement.

Day 1

The important thing was that I knew him - a lanky boy with greasy hair and bad acne. I put his books (calculus, general computing, and advanced programming) into a bag and cleared my throat.

”One-sixty-four eighty-five.”

He sighed. “You know, Steven, I don’t even need these books.”

I nodded. “Of course not.”

He pulled a card from the satchel strapped to his waist - a tassled black leather fanny pack that hung all the way past the crotch of his jeans.

“I could have written these books, Steven. Heck, I could have written books that would have taught the writers of these books to write them better than they’re written.”

I nodded and scanned the card. It beeped, and began the authorization process.

”Debit or credit?”

”Sheesh, you know I have like zero funds - credit.”

The credit card slip printed. I pushed it across to him, along with a pen. I knew he wouldn’t have a pen.

”Thanks. You know, I think I’m almost there, Steven. I’m almost ready for the title.”

He pushed the slip back - there, on the signature line, was what looked like a drop of ink that had been smeared across with a fingertip. I watched him put my pen in his fanny pack. He licked his lips. I decided to humor him.

”The title, huh? What do you think it’s going to be?”

I threw his receipt in the bag and pushed the whole thing across the counter. He scooped it up and gave me a look before he began to walk away.

“I’ve explained this to you before, Stephen. There’s no point in wondering what it’s going to be - she’ll tell us when she knows. And I think she’s going to be ready for her title performance very soon...I can almost feel it.”

At that point he was around the counter and throwing open the door, sucking the flakes of snow that had been swirling just outside into the store and sending them into kamikaze dives toward the muddy carpet, melting as they went.

”I’ll see you at home, Stephen. When do you get off work?”
”Seven. Later Owen.”

And he was gone. I turned to the next girl in line. She gave me a peculiar smile.

”You live with Owen Sinclair? Wow. Is he really a genius like they say? My sister had a class with him and she said he basically ended up teaching it, and the TA just sat there with his mouth open the whole time. Why did he get those books if he didn’t need them?”

”He’s...really big on adhering to the required course material. And yeah, he’s smart. Did you want all of those?”

She ignored me, and stared out into the blustery cold beyond the plate glass windows.

”I wonder if he has a girlfriend.”

I pulled the books from her arms and started scanning. I tried not to clench my teeth.

”Of course he does. And besides, you wouldn’t be a good match for him.”

“No?”

“Not enough circuitry.”

NEWS

I gave my GF a new whatchamacallit. Template. It's nice, kinda. I'm still trying to figure out if I like it - what do you say?

The new tagline is going to be "All Warts - Every Day"

Basically I'm going to post my writing for the day - all rough. It's meant to be read, obviously. It's meant to be internalized and meditated on, and eventually it's meant to be criticized. The rewrites, the final stuff, won't go here.

This is just for the crap. Don't misunderstand it.

"Don't send out anything until it's sat in a drawer for a month. Then take it out and read it through again." - Michelle Gagnon in How I Got Published

Welcome to the drawer.

Unwritten

The Olivettes.

Not exactly a peice of writing....

Untitled (poke!)

A body liberated from context
Arouses the heavy truth: Often, our bodies are not our own
And it’s not just about violence.
Every time I encounter my reflection, I look at the concave space above my knees.
Every mirror and dark window every day for years.
Say one word over and over that many times, and it ceases to refer to anything.
The sound that’s left is free and open and polymorphous
Suddenly, anything could happen.

As such,
In all the dark windows
My body reduces in units
Propagates, organizes, forms a union, a cabaret, a front line.
And advances.

Field Day

The last day of training is actually the hardest. Most people would expect it would be the first day, with all the new information and procedures to absorb, not to mention the graphic pictures. I still remember my first day, when Forani rushed out of the room when the slide of the necrotic gangrene came up on the view screen -- I saw her run for the sanctuaria because I was thinking of doing that myself. Even after three years of teaching, the pictures make me cringe inside -- all those mortal sufferings captured on a static image, far removed from the mortal itself, with no relief to be provided. The child lying in the rain with the flies forever walking on her eyelids, the asthma patient always in midgasp, the woman in labor pushing pushing pushing with no baby to come of her efforts...

But the last day is the hardest -- field day when you put everything you learned into practice. It's not just diagrams and theories and rules in the classroom where your errors are insulated, but real people in the real world where your actions and decisions change their lives. It's frighteningly like playing God -- because you don't have the omniscience or the surety to back you up.

Reena's field day was going to be a rough one. She drew the blue chit -- ER duty. I saw her face blanch and her lips tighten when she realized what color she had. Lots of pain and suffering, lots of anxiety, lots of distractions, lots of decisions to make.

"Listen," I said. "The good thing about ER duty is that you start out in the triage area and if you muck up anything too bad for me to fix, the medical staff is there to intervene."

Then her chin went up and I saw that kick-ass glint in her eye -- good girl -- she wasn't going to be defeated before she started. Still, it's a scary start for a novice angel of death.

She grabbed her bag of tricks, I opened a hole in the ether, and we stepped through to the hospital waiting room.

The Life And Death Of Keyes

I was never sure if Stephen chose the life he lived, or if it was the only one he could have had. I still don’t know, but I’ve decided it hardly matters. He loved his life, and he died happy. Happier than most.

When I met Stephen, he was already dying. Those final stages of life were ripping through him like a knife-point, and no one knew it. In the back of our minds, perhaps we understood that living like he was, one couldn’t really last very long. Flat on his back on the bed he claimed his mother had left him before she died, connected to tubes and monitors that would regulate his blood sugar and, for the most part, keep his brain from going into shock.

I’m sure if any of us had been asked, we would have told you we didn’t see him living another five years, and we might have had the same answer if the question had even been about a single year, but the truth was none of us really thought about it. We had a phenomenon, our own little oddity to study in whichever way we wanted, to show to the world in whichever light we chose. And when he was gone, it left us all wondering just what we’d had.

We were the ones who sat in his room with pen and paper, waiting patiently sometimes and impatiently sometimes, for him to wake up. For him to look into our eyes and answer our questions. So we could write down a few choice sentences that fit our needs, nodding while he spoke but never really listening to what he said. We were the reporters, the journalists, the newsmen. We saw, we judged, we wrote. And I stopped being a part of the “we” when the rest of them left Stephen alone, and I still came to visit. They left him to die alone, and I didn’t.

I wrote a story about him. I wrote it for the kind of newspaper tabloid you see in every checkout line, the kind bought by people desperately hoping that this life offers something more than can be explained in a classroom. The story was called “Dreaming Man from Jersey Lives In Other World,” and it was the first story I ever regretted writing. Because for the first time in my career, I had a legitimate story. A real phenomenon. An experience beyond those that generally happen in the real world.

But I hammed up the story. I altered events, characters, places. I turned it into something any intelligent person would immediately see was fabricated. I turned the unbelievable reality of what I had witnessed into something completely ridiculous. I told the wrong story, when the right one could have done so much good. I told myself that that’s what the readers wanted, a story so out there it took them far away from any reality they might be trying to escape. And even though I had justified it, I still knew it was wrong. Stephen taught me something incredible, and I wasted it because I was too afraid to share who Stephen really was. Or who I really was.

I’m changing that now though.

I really hope I’m changing that now.

My First Lip Kiss

All love begins with a pursuit. Meditate a moment on pursuing a potential lover. The apple of your eye. Some courting might be involved; a period of wooing. Moving later, to gentle and well-phrased coersion. Walking hand-in-hand under the moon. A steadily, sensuous advance. Upon closer inspection, I have found Pursuit to be more forward. Pushy. Pictorally, he would resemble the Greek god Priapus: fully erect and chasing his female desirable until she must rescued by wood nymphs. I offer another image: The fore fathers penning the infamous Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness. One hand is rapidly composing the manifesto, while the other impatiently holds an eager gun. Ready to hunt happiness down and get a piece. It's no accident I compare these images: an erection and a rifle. For I want it to be clear, Love's Pursuit is not the dreamy, romantic striving, but a more aggressive chase. It follows, that in my picture of Pursuit, running could be expected.

In the third grade I was diligently pursued by an obese boy who could pick his nose with his tongue. You think it's an exaggeration, and I wish I could tell you it was. The fact is, he could be counted on to have a free-flowing river of snot cascading down his upper lip at any given moment. Every so often he’d lash his tongue out to clear the way for more mucosa. An upper lip can only accomadate so much, you know.

Recess. A time to run free and hard. In the playground, Love's Pursuit drove throngs of eight-year-olds divided in gendered groups, to chase each other. Obsessively. And with the kind of exuberant joy that is born of teetering on the edge of eminent danger. For forty-five minutes all you could hear were high-pitched squeals. Masses of little girls would sprint after the boys, suceeding in taking a few hostages. The hostages would be locked up beneath the monkey bars. In response, the males would band together in the name of freedom, and turn the tables; sending the front lines out to run after the girls. On one such chasing mission, I was hunted down by the bugger-eating fatty. I squealed like I never had before, and haven't since. The thought of his faucet protuberant terrified me. So, as hard as my little legs would let me, I ran. I ran and ran. But, alas, I could not hold my lead and was caught! The horror! As per the terms of my imprisonment, I promptly received a wet and sticky kiss on the lips. The very first kiss of my life.

There were more annoying, and equally gross boys that pursued me throughout elementary school. There were more wet, ill-placed, and predatory kisses. I thanked each show of affection with a swift kick to the groin. Of course, I had no idea the potential damage I could do by assaulting a developing scrotom with my sneaker. I reveled in the dread on boys faces when I threatened them with the possibility. Kicks to the Balls got me the best reaction. And were most likely to thwart an unwanted smooch, and send Pursuit in search of other prey.

Child, the Peace-Killer

I was twelve when I started the war.

It was 1996. The year Dolly was cloned, the year Centennial Olympic Park was bombed during the Atlanta games. It was the year the Yankees won their last World Series, the year a football star named O.J. Simpson killed his ex-wife and her friend.

I remember that summer, not because it stuck out for any monumental reason, but because it didn't. I remember it because it was my life, our life, before the great war. The only war.

More history. It was the year NASA became aware of microscopic life forms on a rock hailing from the planet Mars. It was the year my father was made SETI Institute Principal Investigator, and it was the year the Galthians chose to extend their four-fingered hands to the human race.

It was the year I killed the first alien ambassador the Galthians sent, the only one they'd end up sending. Nathrang was the only chance we'd been given, and after I killed him there was nothing more of peace. I know I'm supposed to say I didn't mean to, that it had been an accident or some kind of giant misunderstanding. I know that's the only thing anyone wants to hear, but it isn't true. It was no accident, not then. It was no misunderstanding. I wanted him dead, and though it seems unfortunate now, I cannot deny that I killed the little alien in cold blood.

If only someone had been there to stop me, if only. The thought's gone through my head so many times, only recently I've started wondering. If someone had been there, would they have stopped me? Or would they have taken my place, pulling a knife from the cupboard (as I did) to carve their guilty name (instead of mine) into the Galthian's childlike body?

I have to think so, now, in light of what has happened. That not only did the aliens choose the wrong house to send their ambassador, they also chose the wrong species, the wrong planet. War might not have been inevitable, but it was probable. Likely, even. I can't hold myself responsible for all of it. I can't do that.

Neither can I live as anyone else. This life is mine, but the death I'll experience will be the death of billions.

A Statement**

_______________________________

Life is played on a series of stages. Some are sought after, pined for in early morning hours as the sun stretches up over a fresh sheet of ice. Some host hours of painting, sculpting, writing, or stitching, and are toasted by flutes of Champaigne. Other stages, forced, like the harsh rapping of a subpoenaed fist at your front door. The stage you are shoved onto, when your boyfriend yells at you in the dining room, and people pretend to keep eating. Stages you walk briskly from; the hard glares from strange men on the street. Gliding along as such, star of your life, pursued by uninvited audiences, might you wonder where the stages end? These stages may prove relentless. Everyone expects that toothy grin to remain on your face long after the curtain closes. No use crying about it. You’re not even famous yet. Where do you want the stage to end? Your mom just read that one really big secret that you posted on your blog. Do you think some live their lives desperate to have their insides seen? Validated? The lithe dancer shows us her ligaments, the memoirist tells readers her story, the lovers give each other full access to the insides of their bodies. Where do our own insides end? We are constantly being undressed in other people’s minds. Perhaps nothing truly protects us. Where are the boundaries? Is it at the skin, where our insides end? With the peel, the undergarments, the casings? Do they end where we say they do? Do they encompass other people? Do they end when we fail to recognize ourselves? Ask these questions of yourself. Ask them again and again. In perfect circles or broken patterns. Over the course of hours, days, weeks. Years. Ask them in your bedroom, on a street corner, on the biggest stage you can find. Shout them at strangers. Write these questions on your face. Pour a giant bowl of them and make your friends stick their hands in and squish around. Watch their reactions. Look at the expressions on their faces. See? Those expressions!
_________________________________________________

** I am building a website for myself as an artist who makes work to be seen in non-traditional art-viewing spaces. If you don't know me, it might help to know my work can be at times intensely personal, humourous, dark, and strange. I liked this as a statement for it's provokation. I found this more engaging than a more explanitory statement, and less invasive than a deliberately personal statement. Comments are welcome. Thank You.

Novel Introduction

This is a true story.

All of it.

My name is Adam Holwerda and I’m about to be killed. The pages that follow this one are three years full work, by five different men. Four of them are already dead and I am the fifth. The story of our project has been leaked, to those who would rather see us die than to see our work come to fruit. I do not know how this has happened. I can no longer trust the publisher I’ve been in contact with, and so I’m sending this letter and the following attached pages to every major and minor publishing house I have in my address book. If indeed my previous publisher has been faithful, then I am sorry, but very soon it won’t matter much anyway. What is important is that the story gets out, so that I and my brothers may not die in vain.

If you are reading this, then there is still hope in the world. Hope that truth still stands up against power, that minds remain open while all other venues are closed. If you are reading this, then you will finally know the truth about Ivan Gildrick, whether or not you feel you must believe it. My instructions to the publishing houses insist that they must market this book as fiction, and to keep my identity anonymous. But know, now, that this work is not fiction, and that I am a real man – no imagination created me but my own. Soon I will bleed, and it will be my own blood. My first name is Adam, and that is important. That is real. I have included in my instructions a surname, the one I wish them to use. It is the one on the front of this book, and I’ve chosen it because I never had a surname, and this one is rare enough that I won’t be mistaken for anyone I didn’t intend to be. I am not Adam Holwerda, but I claim to be. That is the only lie, the only fiction.

I’m about to die, and you’re about to read the truth. And if I can believe that there is a chance this will all work out, I can die with a stamp of satisfaction on my soul.

Let them come.

First Line Monday!

Welcome to a fresh start! Here are some quick first lines -- an easy and fun way for some quick writing and brainstorming. Sometimes a story comes from them, and sometimes it's just cerebral pushups. Either way, enjoy, and I'd love to see yours.


Grandma Flora loved to read the family's tea leaves at breakfast on New Year's; she'd not only gotten two spinsters married, broken three bad engagements, encouraged Homer to buy a watchdog, she was making a bit of cash on the rare occasions her darjeeling told her which pony at Bay Meadows to put her money on.

George sucked in a breath and looked doubtfully at the bag, which seemed awfully light for $3000.

"It's not fair! Last year Stevie got to see guillotine, the cockfight, and the ambulance chasers. Why can't I go see the mudwrestlers today too?"

Howard hunkered down beneath the table, trying to be as still and small as possible, but his tail wagged in spite of itself -- soon someone would drop something, and Howard was sure it would be one of the triplets (just learning to eat with a spoon), or Uncle Joey (who had been drinking spiked eggnog without the nog in it).

I actually met my soon to-be-ex-husband in court, but everyone thinks we met on that wine-tasting tour of Napa.