Black Below Black

Chapter 3: There's no Place Like Home for the Holidays

---

Although no energy can be directly extracted from the vacuum ground state, the quantum fluctuations it contains can still affect macroscopic structures crafted to take advantage of its subtle and indirect effects.

Quantum Field Theory for Engineers and Technicians – Li and Posner (2018)

---

A university during inter-semester/holiday break is a pretty lonely place. Woods or some other kind of wilderness is a tolerable loneliness – it's natural that other people are not there and isolation in such places has the right kind of feel. But a place built by people and intended to provide an arena for their lives and affairs...well, such a place can get just a little spooky when mostly empty. My advice, unless you can keep yourself occupied, avoid such places at such times.

I had plenty to keep me occupied. I'd already established part of a routine. Up with the crows – who seemed to love sleeping in the trees outside Baxter – at zero six hundred. Coffee, internet, hour of gym, breakfast at Northgate (I was forcing myself to get used to those crufty eggs.) Beyond that, I played it by ear. That Sunday's main events were church and dinner with my Aunt. The spaces in between I figured would get filled up quite nicely with study. Quite nicely indeed.

---

Nothing like continuity to make you feel at home. The university chapel hadn't changed one iota in four years. Built in the sixties and showing it, the colored (not stained) glass frontage set in modernistic patterns was aging quite gracefully. And, just as during my undergrad days, there was the stereotyped cycling of congregations – the black robed Neo-Thelemists filing out and giving us stagily evil glowers as we - unmoved and unrattled – paid them no notice as we filed in.

That scene had been going on every Sunday since the courts in the early teens had ruled that being a state institution, they had as much right to 'worship' in the chapel as we did (the ruling also stated that they had to keep their clothes on while doing so.) Arrogant in their victory, they promptly chose to have their service right before ours hoping to keep us hacked off at our inability to keep them out. Fat chance! Ain't nothing in this world more unflappable than a congregation of solid-stolid old Yankees. The whole thing had become a kind of ritual in itself and church just wouldn't have felt the same without having those heathen/us prudes around for us/them to feel superior to.

Inside the chapel the lay servers were getting ready for the service, distributing hymnals, putting out flowers, clearing away the little thingies left behind by the previous tenants (prissily wearing rubber gloves while doing so) and setting the censers alight with incense. And right on the dot of eleven, the Very Reverend Throckmorton, as he'd been doing for decades, ascended the altar, motioned for us to rise and launched us into Old Hundred.

The familiarity of it all was as relaxing as a warm bath. As was the good reverend's smoothly delivered sermon. Our God is a loving God...a God of forgiveness...bearing bountiful gifts beyond all measure...not a sparrow falls from the sky but that your Father in heaven...a God of mercy... For that hour, I just eased back in my pew and let the reverend's honey-toned words flow over the jagged places in my spirit.

Now this is what church is supposed to be. Yeah!

---

"Well, why don't you divorce that crusted up crab trap then?"

And the blowsy salt 'n pepper haired deliverer of that penetrating question leaned back in her seat and smugly viewed the fruit of her delivery – me choking on a piece of roast beef.

I never had gotten used to my Aunt Maureen's artful vulgarity of speech – honed to an exact science by her decade of theater followed by her two decades of marriage to my Uncle Martin, an old reprobate if there ever had been one. I barely managed to clear my throat and get out a scandalized 'Auntie!' before she got in the two-punch. "You think I'm just mouthing off? You'd better tell me you deloused your crotch before I let you sit on my satin chairs!"

I managed to choke almost as well on air as I had on meat. 'Auntie!' Then once I'd cleared my breathing tubes, fell back into the straight man role. "Look, I had a physical before the ceremony and so did Popuri." I tried to look dignified. "Besides, I'd have noticed such a thing."

"I guess you would have." She shook her head. "Those Anderses! I never knew any of those people on your father's side but they must be your very models of inbred yokels."

I rose to the defense. "I'm not going to contradict you on the matter of my beloved wife. But her mother was all right. So was her father - from what I heard, I never met him."

She wasn't buying it. "Yeah, he's a real solid family man running off to the desert leaving his sick wife to fetch a cactus..."

"Flower, " I corrected.

"Whatever! Why didn't he just order it from an online herbalist or something?"

"They don't have internet access in Mineral Village."

"By mail then!"

I shrugged. "OK, maybe Michael isn't the most sophisticated guy around. But I'm sure he meant well. Really, I think Popuri is just bad seed." Those days, I also tended to easily fall back into my 'on the other hand' mode. "Even Rick I suppose isn't all that bad. After all if he hated my guts it's because he thinks I screwed up his sister, then stole Karen from him..."

She looked annoyed at me. "Jack, you're still a pussy – still making excuses for people who piss all over you."

I smirked. "I almost punched him out once."

She leaned back from the teak dining table and counter-smirked while precariously balancing on two chair legs. "And found a hundred reasons not to do it, right? I know you all too well." Then she executed one of her lightning-quick changes in her angle of attack. "And what was that all about, getting mixed up with a frog girl?"

Worked every time. "Auntie!" I gathered myself. "That's beneath you. The Broussards have been in the village for over two centuries..."

"Which means they've overstayed their welcome. The Canuks have their own country now, why don't they just go back there?"

"You know, I wouldn't be surprised if Karen did move to Quebec soon. Goodness knows her name is mud at home."

She got kind of serious. "You feel responsible for that?"

I considered the question and concluded, "Not much. She was co-complicit. Hell, she made the first move. I would have left it at the 'we had a drunken one-night stand, now let's just be friends' level but she was wanting to keep it up."

She shook her head. "That's not the way you told it. You were the one who really got the ball rolling." She talked over my protests. "Real fine bunch of moves there..." she ticked off on her fingers "...first you make the both of you over into trailer trash, then you propose to her, then you cheat on her."

I almost shouted over her. "She cheated first!"

I was met with pure scorn. "Kindergarten talk. That's an example of how you were thinking there? No wonder they were about ready to lynch you." She shook her head. "You were such a quiet well-behaved kid – repressed really, if you ask me – that I was wondering how you'd finally cut loose. Now I know. I sort of feel guilty now not watching out for you more. I feel like I let my sister down. But you seemed to be handling life on your own just fine – hell, you had been from college right down to losing that job. Is that what messed you up?"

"It didn't help," I allowed. "But why feel guilty? You were supposed to come out to the village and hold my hand?"

"I suppose you're right. But you never answered my question. Why haven't you divorced that little..." she must have seen extremity in my face as she finally backed off a little "... that Popuri?"

I tried on a cynical pose hoping to get her off my back. "You want the truth? She hasn't asked me for a single thing since she left. If I divorce her, I might have to pay alimony. This way, she only gets what...” I tapped my chest with my finger “...I want to give."

Aunt Maureen repaid my attitude with cynical laughter. "By God, now that's a true Williams talking."

I got up from my seat. "And on that note, I think we're done with this fine lunch." I helped her with clearing the table. "Thanks for that by the way, that's the first roast beef I've had in over a year. Damned good, too."

She winked. "You don't think I'd actually put in the time to make something like that, do you? The only complement you're paying me is on my knowing where to shop. Iverson's Deli never fails to deliver the goods. So, what are your plans for Christmas?"

"None."

"Then would you like to join me for dinner?"

"Thanks, I'd love it. I'll bring the wine."

"OK. Some of that Martha's Vineyard Cranberry/Apple if you can still find any. Bert and Bess will be here also with their girls."

"Oh damn!" I fearfully recalled the last time I got stuck at a table with those goofy video/pop-star obsessed gigglers. "They aren't going to try and fix me up with one of those fluffballs again, are they?"

"They might. They're still single, the both of them."

I finally scored a point off her. "Another excellent reason for me to stay married."

---

Springfield was not a very big town, nor was there very much to distinguish it. A bedroom community at the end of the Metro line, built with the intention of giving middle class folk the ability to earn in the city and raise a family in a quiet peaceful house of their own.

I'd walked six blocks from Aunt Maureen's place to end up standing in front of such a house. Twelve Apple Lane. Nothing to go out of your way to look at, a six room single level Cape Cod style painted white (I remembered it as bird's egg blue.) A tiny little front yard, but a not too shabby back with several tall sugar maples that – bare as they were at the time – were most gloriously colored in Fall. A typical modest, comfortable house for the area. But I was remembering the sixteen years I'd spent there with the best darned parents and sister in the whole world.

As I said, it wasn't the kind of place to attract tourists. So my standing there in the snow in front of it lost to the present attracted some attention. A vaguely familiar voice coming from behind shook me out of my reverie.

“Excuse me sir, could I see your id?”

And I turned around to see the patrol car that had sneaked up on me, and the very familiar face of one of Springfield's thin blue line.

I put a little twinkle in my voice and eyes. “Now Officer O'Malley, do you really need to see my id? Do you know who I am?”

His aging face formed the typical 'cop scoping out something' expression. “Mm...I do know you, don't I?”

I smirked. “You should; you damn near dragged me up to that door my junior homecoming when I was too beered up to walk straight.”

With that, he made me. “Jack Williams. Long time no see.”

“In person.” And I went over to the squad car, shook hands and spent a couple of minutes catching up on things.

“...so, here I am at the university again. Just had dinner with my aunt, and thought I'd take a little trip down memory lane before heading back downtown. So, I take it few of my old crew are still in town?”

“All scattered to the winds.” He laughed. “I kind of miss you kids. You were always up to enough to keep me busy, but not enough to make me waste any time in court. The bunch these days are boring as dishwater. I hardly have to get out the car during a shift. I miss the exercise.” He patted his ample belly.

“There's always the gym, you know.”

“Too expensive.”

---

There was one other matter I took care of while I was out in the 'burbs. After the holiday season, I took 25,000G of my farm gold and opened an account at the university credit union. I figured that'd be plenty enough to cover incidental expenses – and that 10,000G football bet that I got queasy over whenever I thought of it. I've kept that account over the years – as an alumnus I have that privilege. It's a state institution after all, and would only go bust if the whole state government did (which almost did happen several times in the early twenties.) I'm not atypical of my generation, you see. A whole bunch of us who lived through the depression got stung by financial institution failures – I'd lost my whole freakin' life savings to a bankster – and never really trusted them since.

So I keep the regular account for paying bills, walking around money and the like. But the bulk of my liquid assets (and since that wretched experience of '20 I've always kept some liquidity) I have in hard money. Yep, the yellow metal. The real thing. Starting with that 225,000G of farm gold I'd damn near broken my back to pile up. And I know how to keep it really quiet and safe and secure. I'm not going to tell you the details – I've never told anyone about how and where I keep my gold hoard secure. When I'm gone, my daughter will get it, but right now even she doesn't know about it (my lawyer will hand her the sealed envelope stating the details at that time.) Nobody does. And that's just the way I like it.

---

All the way back to campus, I was feeling queasy and blah. I was telling myself that it was just all the meat I'd been eating catching up with me after a year of a vegetable and egg diet. And the rapidly greying skies confirming that morning's forecast of yet another snowstorm on the way. And the depressing view of the abandoned plants and office buildings on the outskirts of town. Camping out in the dorm room for a night and a day with math books, internet and dehydrated meals from Campus Consumables while the weather did its worst was looking like a plan.

But when I got back to my room, I was greeted by an early Christmas present of sorts propped up on my desk. It was a plain brown envelope sent from one of those anonymous remailing services in the mid-West to Erehwon Farms, the forwarding address written in Harris's hand (it didn't appear to have been opened.) I opened it to find merely a photograph of an infant – a baby girl, judging from the pink swaddling – sporting a shock of pink hair while gazing into the camera from a pair of deep blue eyes. I turned it over to read, written in Popuri's childishly over-careful printing,

Josephene. Born Winter 10, 2020, 8:16am. Weight 4.41 kg.

And that was it. No letter telling me what she was doing and asking how I was. Not even a personal salutation. Just the dry basic facts about our new child.

Josephene my daughter, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. God bless and have mercy on you. And even you too Popuri -you damned blackhearted bitch!

If I'd still been in Mineral Village, I'd have 'celebrated' by getting stinking drunk. But that was my old life. There in my new one, I marked the occasion of my fatherhood by trying to concentrate on the heat diffusion equation.

But I guess my attention wandered from the textbook a little bit from time to time because Takakura walked in on me a little after midnight as I was staring at the picture with tears rolling down my cheeks.

"Jack, what's the matter?"

I held the photo up for him to see. "Congratulate me Taka, I'm a father."

---

He commiserated with me for several minutes then I guess was relieved when I pleaded weariness and went to bed – just as the storm outside was starting up real good. I wasn't kidding Taka when I said was out of it. I was feeling completely wretched when I pulled the covers over my head. It started shortly after that.

The beginning was innocuous enough – odd dream territory. I was back at Erewhon worrying about how I'd get the chickens back into the coop before they froze, the problem being that I couldn't tell the foreground (white hens) from the background (snowy fields.) Then from out of the swirling flakes Karen appeared in front of me dressed in a pure white bridal gown. She took my hand and with her characteristic crooked smile more ironic than life pulled me along as she said, 'Come, it's harvest time.'

We stopped in front of the apple tree, her saying, 'See, the fruit is ripe.' The 'fruit' being Mary hanging by her neck from one of the branches, her face as blue as her school suit, her still open eyes balefully regarding the two of us. Karen fumbled in my backpack for a moment, then backed away a step holding my sickle high in the air.

Her eyes glowed green madly, so brightly they reflected on the polished blade, as she shrieked.

'The fruit of our labor, Jack! The fruit of our love! Harvest Time!'

And she mightily swung that blade, cleanly severing Mary's body from her head – the body vanishing in the snow, her head remaining suspended in air by the noose. Blood flowed from her neck into the Inn style tin wine cup Karen was holding below as she continued to stare at us from those deep black eyes. Once brimming full, Karen held out the cup to me.

'Drink with me Jack. Let us pledge each other with what we share in common, and shall for all our tomorrows. Drink.'

'Yes. Drink with her.' Popuri was standing at her side, cradling Josephene in her arms. 'After all lover, you can't have what you really want. You never will. And you're so thrifty. Why let her go to waste? Go ahead and drink. You'll love it.'

'Drink with me Jack.'

'Drink with her Jack.'

Blessed darkness came over me as I reached out for the cup Karen was offering. Then the dream started again from the beginning – like a video on repeat play. All night long it played – the night a hundred thousand years long.

'Drink with me what we share Jack. Let us pledge each other our undying love. Drink.'

---

What it was of course was that I was getting sick. The whole year in Mineral Village I'd been disgustingly healthy (apart from self-inflicted things like hangovers.) But wouldn't you know that not even a week at home would leave me knocked flat on my back.

Taka told me about it later. When he gotten up at nine and found me still in bed he didn't think too much of it. It was when I kept thrashing around raving about having to get up and feed the chickens that he got alarmed. That I was wild-eyed and sweating like I'd run ten kilometers probably contributed to his concern also. I sorta kinda came back to awareness to see the white-smocked medic who Taka's call had summoned standing over me studying the readout on a blood scanner. His bedside manner was that of a lab technician – which in effect he was – caring for a experimental rat that wasn't quite ready yet for the dissection table.

He looked up to see me vaguely aware of him and observed, “Ah, Mr. Williams, so you are with us still.”

I – perhaps stupidly – asked, “Are you a doctor?”

He was apparently used to clueless remarks from sick people and kept a straight face. “RN. Your roommate called me in.”

“Yeah? So what's wrong with me?”

“Influenza. H4U7-2020. An especially nasty customer.”

The effort of putting my hand to my forehead was too much for me. “Tell me about it.”

He was still all business. “Any idea where you might have gotten it?”

I thought. “Bus ride maybe. Took the red-eye four days ago.”

That satisfied him. “That's the right incubation period. A closed in vehicle is a perfect place to spread this little devil. One person had it, now everyone who was on that bus does too.” He went on as he took a syringe out of his case. “Homeland security and the health service are going to have fun over the holidays tracking 'em all down for their shots. You're getting yours now. You ever had antigen-bot viral treatment?”

“Yeah, Fall of '18 when I was exposed to hep F.”

He brought the needle to my arm and I looked away as he went on, “Well, it hasn't changed much since then.” Small pinch – at least the guy knew what he was doing. “You're still going to be sick today as the bots ramp up their population, then do a search and destroy on the virii. Then you'll feel down for a couple days more while your system flushes out all the debris.” Needle withdraws. “OK, you're set. It'd be best if you don't take any aspirin or other fever suppressants today. Let the bots do their job unhindered. Try to sleep as much as you can.”

“No problem there.”

“OK, I'm done with you. Your roomie gets it next. Any problems, just call the clinic. Ah – weather like it is, you're not going to be in any shape to go out for meals today. Want me to arrange a delivery?”

I nodded at the food packages on my desk. “I'm set, thanks.”

He looked and grimaced. “Grad student diet. It's a wonder you guys live to get your degrees.” He got up and headed around the room's partition. “All right Mr. Takakura, you're not going to have it near as bad as your roommate...”

I pulled the covers over my head and sunk back into fever dream land.

“Wowser! Gopher! Sic em!...”

The gopher's eyes shot red flames as he bared meter-long fangs at my hapless pooch. Wowser wanted no part of that action.

“Come back here! It's just a little rodent! Wuss!”

---

What's to tell about the next several days? I woke up the following morning to find the fever broken and me feeling 'merely' peaked and shaky. I didn't venture out of my room, just fiddled around reading stuff on the internet, munching those bland reconstituted noodle dishes and shaking my head at the bad musical taste of the people remaining in the building. Nothing but antique rock – like a sixties revival society or something.

Aunt Maureen called me late Christmas eve saying she understood if I didn't show up for dinner, 'thanks, I really don't feel up to taking the train,' and scolding me for bringing the damn bug to her.

“That call yesterday telling me to come to town hall and get my shot was all I needed!”

“Yesterday? Heh. Guess the security folks are as efficient as ever.”

Christmas Day I was still blah, but I was wanting some real food something fierce by that time. So I bundled up, trudged through the sludge (we'd gotten over a meter of new snow since I'd crashed) to the Northgate where I joined a few of my fellow sad-sacks in a solitary holiday dinner of turkey and stuffing – no sweet potato, thanks - while the monitors over my head droned out the voices of the new chief executive's transition team promising that “...we were going to hit the ground running and fix the national emergency with our plan to...”

Well, wing it actually. It sounded like the reactionaries hadn't gotten any new ideas in their twelve years out in the cold. And the old recycled ones sounded pretty putrid to me.

“...rigorous control on wasteful spending. For instance, it's insane to spend billions on interplanetary space flight while so many of our people are jobless and homeless...”

It was unsurprising, if disappointing, that the party I favored got nuked to a crisp at the last election. “Throw the bums out” is a pretty effective slogan to use during a depression! I sort of regretted not having voted – even if our guys had carried the state (by the slimmest of margins.) Mineral Village voted in the chapel and I'd have rather had my appendix removed with my own farm tools than have gone in there and rubbed shoulders with the people who heartily hated me.

I looked around again at the handful of depressed misfits joylessly putting away their holiday dinners. They looked about as eager to talk to me as I was to them. I joined them in blocking out the world and concentrating on my chow.

“No place like home for the holidays.”

---

The day after Christmas was when I started feeling human again. I was also feeling the pressure to play catch-up after my three day 'vacation.' At the gym, hanging on to the treadmill bars gasping for breath after just three kilometers, I discovered I was not back to full strength yet. So I just had an extra large breakfast – a super serving of bacon helped make the crufty eggs tolerable – and headed back to Baxter to hit the math books.

But opening the mailbox (assigned per room – shared with Taka) and retrieving the contents therein had me running upstairs, chucking my gym clothes in a corner and throwing myself onto the bed as I opened the letter addressed (in flawlessly rendered Florentine style handwriting) to 'Jack (Farmer Boy) Williams' from 'Mlle. Karen Broussard' and read:

Which led as a matter of inexorable logic to:

Looking back with the distance and dispassion the passing decades give, it's kind of interesting how a couple of people try to piece back together a relationship broken by betrayal. The metaphor has been grossly overused, but we really were doing a kind of Kabuki dance. Or better, the cautious kind of mating dance – full of tentative steps and watchful pauses – that venomous creatures engage in.

Tentative and watchful is just how you want to play it with a classic Scorpio on the other end of the mail line. And even that wasn't enough.

I don't mind getting old one little bit when I look back on how the least little circumstance can throw a young man's life off on a wild and unplanned tangent. Had I come to school just a little later so I didn't have to stew in isolation for a crucial two weeks – had I not come down with that flu which weakened my will just at that time – had I not had the news of my new daughter and not having the slightest clue of if or when I'd ever see her – I don't think Karen and I would ever have gotten together again. I'd have relied hard on those three hundred clicks of distance, let the interval between letters grow steadily longer, and eventually the whole thing would have run out on dry sand.

The breaks man. The breaks. They can be bitches from hell. As of course can lovers be.

---

I got the phone call the late afternoon of New Year's Eve while sitting at Auntie's dinner table unsuccessfully fending off unwanted attention while going into a very slow, very quiet burn.

“Jack, you haven't touched your sweet potato. Is something wrong with it?” Funny how a table full of guests turned Maureen's dining room hostess demeanor from 'here it is, take it or leave it, I don't care' to 'oversolicitous momma hen.'

I nudged the unpalatable tuber with a fork. “Just don't have an appetite for 'em any more.”

“Since when? You used to get down two or three at a sitting.”

“Since last fall when I grew, harvested and crated up thirty eight point seven three two tonnes of the suckers in a single season.” Emphatic stab of the fork to the spud's heart. “By hand.”

Which triggered Barb – blondie and eighteen on my left and Becky – blondie and seventeen on my right into yet another ear piercing spasm of teenie squealing that I had long ago concluded was their substitute for human laughter.

Barb being the oldest dropped into an emulation of speech first. “Jack, you're soooo scarmin' tonight!” Becky followed her big sis's lead. “Clocked out total, boy!” I 'responded' by taking another big swig of the mediocre table red to wash – well, all kinds of things out of my mouth. Bert, Bess, Barbara and Becky – the killer B's as I had them pegged in my mind. And Maureen had the gall to snark at my father's side of the family!

Bert interpreted my grimace as a commentary on the libations. “Yeah, the Minnesota wine is still pretty raw. But mark my words, give 'em a decade or two and they'll be as good as the California used to be.”

Maureen interjected. “And the California vineyards might make a comeback yet. I read where they're working on a strain of grapes that can stand those forty five degree summers.”

I grumped, “And when it gets in the fifties in a couple more decades...” and got down another gulp of winelike agricultural chemicals. At least it was getting me buzzed. Thank goodness for minimum functionality.

Something in my expression inspired the girls to new heights of girlishness – Barb mock pouted, “Aw, Jackie doesn't like his wine” and before I could react, the both of them were cheek to cheek with me, singing kinda in unison, “Are you thinkin' of meeeee as you drink your wine all aloooooone...”

Which got the other adults at the table going, “That's so cute!” while getting the cameras out. “Hold it like that kids!”

And as I reflexively put on that traditional Libran winning smile, I sneaked another glance at my watch for the nth time since dinner started. It was still advancing at the rate of one second per second.

---

The topic had shifted to 'would I be a good cousin and escort the girls to the show at the Muni Auditorium?' and I was hashing over escape strategies – have to wash my hair? flu relapse? temporary homicidal insanity? - when I was saved by the bell, or rather the ringtone on my pocket computer. One look at the caller id on the display – 'oh man, I owe you bigtime' – and I was out of my seat and on my way to the kitchen with a not very apologetic, ''scuse me, I really have to take this.'

“Josh-man! You're back!”

“In poison. I've done my family duty and now it's back to real life.”

“I'm still doing mine. Or rather they're doing it on my head.”

“You sound like someone who could use some New Year's company.”

“You're so perceptive, it's what I like about you. I'm out in the 'burbs now, can be back in the city in...oh...hour and a half.”

“About right. I have to unpack and shower. Say, what's there to do in this town on New Year's Eve? What gross degeneracy do you locals indulge in?”

“Apart from getting smashed in the bars? There's always the thingie on the Plaza Mall.”

“I've heard of it. They suspend the public drinking laws and everything, right? I'll bring the bottle then.”

“It's a date.”

“Mind if I bring along someone else also? Another second-year guy, he's your type, you'll like him.”

“The more the merrier.”

And so the trio that was to define the professional portion of my adult life – which is to say, the greatest portion of my adult life – was to form up for its first outing. Appropriately enough, a nominally festive one making for kind of a sweetener.

---

“5...4...3...2...1...

...It's twenty-twenty-one!”

And the three of us cheered along with crowd of several tens of thousands as the speakers strung around the Plaza swung into pumping out the familiar strains of Auld Lang Syne in sync (more or less) with the festive scenes and graphics displaying on the video banners flapping a little in the breeze along the Plaza's perimeter (in the mid teens they had replaced the old fashioned flat screen monitors of my childhood, and as respectful of tradition as I am, I had to admit the continuous stretch of bright cheery video was a definite improvement.)

We hoisted aloft our glasses brimming with the mediocre brandy Josh had brought (but it was sure warming!) and exclaimed in unison, “To a better year!” before getting down to the serious business of getting it down. My power drinking training of the last year gave me the edge in finishing first and clearing my airpipes to exclaim, “It has to be better than the last one!”

Josh deadpaned, “Huh? I thought you just loved life on the farm.” then reacted with mock horror at my explicative ridden response. “Whoa! You sure turned foulmouthed out there in the country.”

Staying with the mock seriousness seemed to be the way to go. “It's part of the whole bumpkin experience.” I held out my empty glass. “Hey neighbor, lend me some o' that applejack 'till the crops come in?”

I won. Josh shook with laughter as he poured out the hooch. Then we both looked upwards as our lanky companion finally and typically had carefully considered the subject at hand and had crafted his response.

“I'm sorry for the people having hard luck, but really, I didn't think it was so bad.”

Josh careened a dig at me off of him. “Well Harvey, that's because you had the good sense to go right into grad school without haring off to the family farm for a year.”

Then as now, he was the ultimate straight man. He got off, “My family doesn't own a farm.” before taking another hit of brandy.

I tested the waters. “Or haring off to the planets either.”

And as Josh had assured me, he wasn't one of those guys who scorned us Venture alumni either. He shrugged, “That was before my time. I'm sure I'll get my opportunity for something worthwhile soon enough.”

And I was cool with that attitude and relaxed (and drank) a little more as we shot the breeze together while listening to the program (as usual, a mix of pop and light classics) and watched the videos of holiday graphics and other celebrations around the globe – and the nice auroral curtain overhead which Mother Nature provided as her own contribution to the festivities.

Harvey commented, “Look at that. It's getting a touch angular. Think we're going to get a red flare storm?”

I considered the possibility without mentioning the fact that I had been dabbling a little in astrometerology during the break and thought the day's charts looked good for just such a thing. “Looks like it. Sure be a nice way to ring in the new year.”

A half-hour into the celebrations and I was glancing at my watch and observing “maybe we'd better start thinking about our next stop” just as the speakers went into the announcement I was expecting.

“Citizens. The Capitol Plaza Park will close in thirty minutes. Security will clear any unauthorized persons from the area at that time. Citizens...”

Harvey grumped, “That's cold.”

I shrugged, “While we're standing out here, we aren't spending money. They want us to go pack the bars and clubs now.”

As we joined in file with people walking to the nearest exit, Josh asked, “OK, you guys want to go somewhere and rub shoulders with drunks while getting smashed?”

Harvey didn't look interested in the idea and neither was I. We dodged around pools of slush produced by the rapidly melting snow mounds as I responded, “Not really. Waking up with a bad head day before classes start doesn't appeal to me.”

Josh's foot sunk deep into a pool. “Damn! This crap melts off earlier every year. Well, how about the Arcadia then?”

Harvey went, “Sure” as I asked, “What's that?”

“Ha! We get to show the homeboy something about his hometown he didn't know. I remember you used to be a champion coffee drinker. You still like it?”

“Oh hell yeah.”

“Then you want to know the Arcadia. Best cuppa java in town. We hang out there a lot.”

I've never had to be hard-sold on good coffee. “I'm game. Where is it.”

“Couple of blocks.”

I looked at the crowds moving along with us. “The line's gonna be intense.”

“It's worth the wait, I assure you.”

---

It was indeed. We fell into line alongside the empty and barred up storefronts of “Capitol Plaza Shopper's Ecstasy” - what was supposed to have been the newest and gaudiest city mall in the region. But – miserable luck for the investors – the thing had been due to open in mid '20 just when ecstatic shoppers with money to burn had gotten real scarce on the ground. Forty minutes of shuffling along waiting our turn finally brought us to the portals of what turned out to be the only life in the mall – the gaudy yellow and red lumino display overhead proclaiming we were at the threshold of “The Arcadia. Coffee. Pastries.”

We were lucky. Just as we made our purchases, a family group cleared out of a booth next to the streetfront windows, and Josh made good use of his bulk in rushing over, plopping down on the bench and claiming said space for his less heads up compadres. We spread out coffees, donuts and samosas over the formica topped table and got down to work.

One sip off my super-tall and I was in luuuuv. “Damn! That's the best coffee I've ever had.”

Josh got out, “So, you still wanna keep bitching about the crowds?” before cramming in the last of his cheese samosa.

“Hey, is that thing kosher?”

He mock snarled at me, “Who gives a fuck? You ain't my mom” as he reached for another.

So we drank and ate and bantered as the revelers shuffled along outside and the oldies station the place always had on pumped out tunes from my kiddie days and before.

And quite unbidden, a fantasy came into my mind of Karen at the festivities presumably underway in Rose Square – three hundred kilometers and a whole world away – leading Grey on into asking her for a dance, then cutting off his balls with a mocking look and a nasty remark. I laughed a little. She'd often called herself that – maybe she'd heard the song when young also – and sometimes it was even true.

Harvey snapped me out of it. “What's the joke?”

“Huh? Oh, I was just daydreaming.” I took another sip off my second coffee. “Daydreaming of a lovely long-haired girl dancing the night away.”

“Sounds good. Anyone in particular?”

“Yeah.” I was talking to myself as much as my friends. “But she's three hundred clicks away and that's where she's gonna stay. A steely eyed missile-man's got no time for broads.” I came all the way back to the present, raised my cup to Josh and he raised his as we both shouted the slogan from the good old days, “Married to the program!”

That's right Karen. We can write each other all we want, but I'm here at home, you're there at your home and I'm sure as hell never coming back there. So what are the chances we'll ever be together again?

---

All the while we were refreshing ourselves and chatting, I was halfway paying attention to my friends and halfway paying attention to the people on the street passing in front of our window. And after awhile, I could sort them into two groups. There were the everyday run-of-the-mill folks, happy, absent-minded or harassed as the case may be, but living the ordinary urban life we were all used to. And then there were the others.

People of my generation know from long experience that the youngsters don't want to hear us old timers talk about the twenties. But I can hardly avoid doing so here – these memoirs are about my young adult days and the events and spirit of those times are an integral part of them. An integral part of how I ended up where and how I am today.

Our attitude to the twenties is curious. Oh, there are plenty of written and video histories, studies and personal stories of those times all right. But in our collective public being, they are a void. Lopped right out like a piece of surgically removed brain. Today it's easy to point to phrases, styles, attitudes and say right off with an instant flash of recognition, “Oh, that so thirties,” or “teens,” or even “nineties.” But the twenties – it's like they didn't happen at all. But they did. I know they did, I was there and I remember it all.

And a part of it, ever present during that decade were those faces of those others. Isolated in Mineral Village during '20, I'd not seen the development but trading notes with people who had lived there through that year and filled me in on the progression. That progression from 'bad break but I'll get up again soon' to 'ohmygosh what if nothing shows up' to 'got nothing, no hopes, nothing to lose.' It was the latter faces that I was seeing – pausing at the picture window and peering in briefly at us then furtively shuffling off before some cop type noticed them and took action. That look of 'I had that now you do and I can't get it...legitimately' – that posture and expression scream 'the twenties' to me and my contemporaries.

I was getting a good first look at those faces. And having reached 'the age of reason' in the teens as a typical for those times 'we're all in it together' social democrat, I was profoundly disturbed. 'Is this what we're coming to?'

It was the characteristic crackling and zizzing as the sky came alive with glowing red blooms to the cheers of the patrons within and the crowds without that shook me out of that reverie.

Harvey's usual calm prevailed at our table. “Yep, just as I suspected. Looks like it's going to be a good long one.”

I asked my friends, “Wanna go out and get a better look?”

Josh swallowed and remarked, “Why bother? We'd lose this table and we've got a front row seat facing north right here.”

Fine with me. “OK. Sure'd be good if they could predict these things well enough to punch some sounding rockets through one and see what's going on up there.” Though then as now it's generally believed that the storms are some interaction between the solar wind and the upper northern atmosphere of our changed climate, still nobody has an air-tight theory of them.

I couldn't tell you if the music I thought I heard start up just then was coincidence, inspiration on the part of the oldie station's DJ or just a trick of my mind.

And that was New Year's Day '21, safely encapsulated with a couple of friends in the privileged world of subsidized higher education, started on a long strange trajectory that no chart reader or visionary could possibly have predicted.

Do I? Will I?

Happy New Year's Karen. And Josephine. And...Mary.