White Pickups, Episode 2

Contents

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Tina stopped at the QuickFill near the freeway exit for gas and doughnuts on the way in. A couple years ago, she had started bringing doughnuts for her department on Thursdays and it turned into a habit. The others took turns bringing bagels on Friday. Since this particular station was closest to her house, and Kelly worked here two days a week, this is where she usually got gas and doughnuts.

Merging onto the freeway, she noticed the white pickups right away. If anything, there were even more of them on the road than yesterday. To Tina, it seemed like they represented every fourth or fifth vehicle on the freeway. Even so, she might have missed them if she hadn’t been looking — they all seemed to be ideal drivers, giving plenty of room, signaling lane changes, and generally being polite. It was always the tailgaters, the rocket sleds, and the weaver-birds that stood out (and caused most of the problems when things got away from them). Then she thought about the QuickFill stop, and couldn’t remember seeing a single white pickup at the pumps. Had any gone by on the street? She couldn’t remember. Hell, there might have been three or four of them, but she’d been preoccupied.

Chirping from her Blackberry interrupted her train of thought. Traffic again was moving well, and she had enough room in front of her to risk stealing a glance. Email from a client; not marked urgent, so it could wait until she got in. By this time, she would usually be stuck in traffic and checking her phone risked only the ire from people behind her wanting to get moving again, but —

Some moron in a grey Prius cut right in front of her and across three lanes to make the off-ramp; Tina cursed and laid on the horn as she saw the guy yapping at his cellphone all the way across. Two white pickups were between him and the ramp, but one sped up and the other slowed down, giving the idiot room to make the exit and another day to live. “Now that’s more like Atlanta traffic,” she grumbled as the adrenaline rush subsided, “except for the trucks with manners.”

The other oddity was pulling into the Maxcom parking deck 20 minutes early. On a whim, she cruised the deck, looking for white pickup trucks. There was only one to be found: it was grimy, identified itself as a Ranger, and sported Braves and Thrashers stickers at either end of the rear bumper. She entered the building, dropped her doughnuts on the table outside her office and got to work.


After a couple of hours of answering emails, Tina noticed that things were unusually quiet: Jaya, the contractor, hadn’t been by to get her time sheet signed, and there had been only two interruptions (Frank needed a priority check and Adam was having trouble with the Client from Hell). She checked the table; she saw doughnuts and stood to count the survivors. They were usually long gone by 9:30, but just past 10 there were still four. Walking through the cubes, Chi, Jaya, Sara, and Thakor appeared to be no-shows; their computers were off or showed a login screen, and no jackets warmed the chairs. None of them had called in or emailed, and they were among her most reliable workers.

She noted the apparent absentees, double-checked her email and voicemail to confirm none of them had called in, then called HR to ask if they knew of a flu bug. “No,” the admin told her, “but it’s got us all worried. We have several people out here too, no call — and none of them ever stay out without calling in. If it’s like this tomorrow, we’ll probably send everyone home early.”

“Thanks. What about job fairs in town? Have you heard anything like that?”

“No, I don’t think anyone is staffing up yet. There’s talk about it starting mid-Spring, though.”

“OK, thanks. Is there a problem with me calling their cell numbers? I have them here with me.”

“No, just pitch it as concern rather than anything else.”

“I understand. Actually, that’s all it is — it’s been pretty quiet today anyway. But if you’re having the same problems… well, thanks again.” Tina thought a moment, then dialed another extension.

“Morning, Tina,” said Connor. “What’s up?”

“Hey Connor. Does Tech Support have a lot of no-shows today?”

“Oh, hell yes. I’m guessing about a third of the crew went AWOL on me. Even Kumar’s out, and he never stays out without calling at least twice and emailing once, and offering to help anyway. You think it’s a virus going around?”

“I don’t know. But your call volumes — how are they looking?”

“Hell, if anything they’re down even farther than my staffing. That’s the only reason I hadn’t called you begging for mercenaries already.”

Tina laughed. “I’m missing a bunch of my own staff, and the most reliable ones at that. You don’t think they’ve all bolted for a start-up or something, do you?”

“If there was a startup looking for that many bodies in Atlanta, we’d have both heard about it. Hey, it’s almost 11. Wanna grab an early lunch downstairs?”

“I’m not that hungry, and I want to call my own AWOLs first, but I could go for a cup of tea. See you at the elevator in about 20 minutes.”


“Did you get anyone?” Connor asked as Tina sat down. Café Eclipse was in the basement, so the owners decided to work with the lack of light and decorated the place in an astronomy motif. A total eclipse replica burned from the corner.

“No. They all went to voicemail.”

“Same with my guys. So… how are things at home?”

“Pretty good. Kelly’s getting good grades, works at the QuickFill on Tuesdays and Saturdays. The usual freak-out artists on the HOA are flipping out over the two walk-off houses, but we’ve got a plan to keep them maintained and trimmed until they sell.”

“Oh, sure. I meant… you know.”

“Charles? We don’t talk much. He keeps in touch with Kelly, and she spends a weekend with him every month. If he’s available. Charles and his — boyfriend — have been having problems lately, so Kelly skipped the last visit. How about you? Still married?”

“Yup. Kids are doing well, and Jayne and I have managed to work out our differences for now. The counselor hooked us up with a financial advisor, so we can make an honest assessment of our responsibilities. It’s really up to her, now — she still has to go to her meetings, and probably will for life. I go with her for moral support, but I mostly zone out. Those guys have got the fever or something, but I guess it’s better than the addictions they had before.”

“Yeah. Charles can put the booze away, but I don’t think he lets it control him. Maybe he’s gotten a little better about it since the divorce.”

“Could be. What about you? You seeing anyone yet?”

Tina sighed. “I’m kind of demoralized about the whole dating thing. I can’t stop thinking that maybe I made Charles… what he is. I’d be devastated if it happened again.”

“Don’t think like that, Tina. Charles was always gay, he just denied it until he couldn’t deny it any longer. If you want to cast blame, blame Charles for not facing up to himself sooner. Or blame society for making him think he had to hide it. You’re not to blame.”

“I suppose.”


After lunch, Tina checked some news sites; she found a couple of “breaking” articles about mass absenteeism but no explanations. By three, she sent the rest of the staff home, logged out, and left. There were even more white pickups this afternoon, but she barely noticed. Arriving just behind the bus, she watched Kelly jog up the driveway in front of her.

“Hey, hon,” Tina greeted her daughter. “Feeling OK?”

“Fine, Mom. But almost half the kids were out today, and we had lots of subs. They’ll probably close school tomorrow if the teachers don’t come back.” She paused a moment. “Mom… have you noticed anything — weird — on the road?”

“The white trucks?”

“Yeah! You see it too? They’re like, everywhere.” One rolled down the street. “Are they electric? I don’t hear a motor.”

Tina sighed. “I don’t know. I’m not even sure whether to be relieved that I’m not going crazy, or terrified that the world is.”

“It’s spooky, Mom. I don’t think I’m relieved.”

continued…

In the Drink, Literally

With Mrs. Fetched sidelined due to her knee injury, there are two guys she and her mom have helping out at with the chickens — one who has been around a while, and another more recent inmate at the free-range insane asylum. Call him Panda, given his general shape… Mrs. Fetched has known him all his life, he enjoys farm work, and doesn’t have a regular job to keep him otherwise occupied, so he’s around a lot. His only drawback is that he seems to get himself into potentially dangerous situations that turn out to be funny — like getting hold of wires that everyone thought were supposed to be cut off at the breaker box. As Daughter Dearest said, “I laugh at him when he gets electrocuted. He laughs at me when I fall on my butt. That’s how we roll!”

So this morning, the two guys are already walking the chicken houses, and Mrs. Fetched asked me to run down there to turn up feed spouts. These spouts dump feed into trays in between the hoppers, and they make feed more accessible to the chicks during the first week or so. After a point, the chicks get big enough to jump in the hoppers and end up scattering feed out of the trays and into the dirt, so cutting off the supply to the trays is important around this time. What with the heavy rain in the last couple of weeks, things are a little more chaotic than usual… rainwater found its way into the #2 house and all sorts of interesting cobble-jobs have been deployed to cope with that. The pump house, which supplies our rental place and (until recently) the chicken houses, had about a foot of muddy water standing in it and the overflow pipe was not letting the water out very quickly.

But I digress. While I was dealing with the spouts, and raising water lines to compensate for chick growth, Panda got tagged to get a roll of hay for the cattle (who were watching us across the fence, complaining about life in general). He had to go by the pump house to get to the hay barn, and decided to have a look at the pump house. A concrete slab, which usually goes over one of the cistern chambers, was standing against the wall — and as it turns out, partially blocking the overflow pipe. Panda went over to move the slab… not realizing that a big open pit full of water was between himself and the slab (the water was muddy and hid such minor details). One step too many, and he was suddenly up to his chin in cold spring water. He leaped right out, jumped back on the tractor, and brought the hay.

When he told us what had happened, Mrs. Fetched’s mom started laughing so hard she couldn’t stand up. I texted Daughter Dearest (on a baby-sitting gig) with the gist of things, which also cheered her up quite a bit. If he’d not been able to get out, though, it might have been a while before we found him. Fortunately, it was just another one of those incidents that are funny only because they aren’t tragic.

Now it’s Mrs. Fetched’s Turn

OK, that’s it: Tonya Harding is now our official mascot at FAR Manor.

The heavy rain may not have brought it on, but chicken houses prefer to screw things up at the worst possible moment, so of course that’s when the water line (or water main, if you will) broke and created the usual havoc. So for the last few days, Mrs. Fetched (and everyone she could recruit) have been up to their knees in mud and so forth — there’s also a foot of water standing in the pump house, since some debris has clogged the overflow pipe.

I was working at home today, when the phone rang about 11. Mrs. Fetched’s mom: "She hurt her knee, I think she has to go to the doctor. Bring the crutches."

"Fine, I’ll take her.” I had accomplished the two primary tasks of the day, and it was almost lunchtime anyway. As it turned out, she didn’t need the crutches; Mrs. Fetched’s mom has a walker and loaned it to her. I packed her in the car and took her to the chiro-cracker, which is whom she wanted to see first. He took x-rays, saw that her knee joint was a little uneven, and did what he could to straighten it out. He seemed to think it was otherwise OK, just stressed a lot from the mud work.

"Stay off it for a few days," he told her, "ice it, and wear a knee brace. Put a little weight on it when you can." She took a fairly long nap this afternoon, after which she sounded a lot more like her usual self, and I got her settled in the chair where I mostly lived a month or so ago while nursing my own knee issues.

So Mrs. Fetched finally gets to rest a little while. and no cheating. That means I’ll probably be the one sitting in a boat tomorrow night, running a plumber’s snake up the overflow pipe into the pump house. In the rain. With any luck, the boat will be off to one side.

After the Deluge

Of all the disasters FAR Manor is heir to, natural and not (cough chicken house cough), flooding doesn’t make the list. We’re on top of a hill, a good 40 feet or so above (and half a mile away from) the nearest creek. If we ever had to worry about flooding, I’d board the ark as it floated by.

If I had to guess, I’d say we probably got close to 12 inches of rain in the last week, half of that over the weekend. I took this pic yesterday evening on the way home from work; it’s somewhat down from its crest earlier in the afternoon. Mrs. Fetched, with her penchant for overstatement, told me a different creek was about to come over the road earlier in the afternoon — which would have put it roughly 8 feet over its banks — but by the time I crossed, it was just a few inches over its banks, no big deal.

But still, that’s not to say that we’re completely unaffected by heavy rain. Indeed, we had a couple of occasions where heavy rains gave us more trouble than usual getting in and out of FAR Manor (that occasion was brought on by 6 inches of rain in one hour). The county re-did the culverts that got washed out and they seem to have all held up this time.

In short, what you might have seen on TV the last couple nights wasn’t anywhere near the manor. The sun actually came out this afternoon, and things are getting quickly back to (what passes for) normal around here. Down in the 'burbs and in the city proper, it sounds like they might still have some drainage or repair issues to get past.

White Pickups, Episode 1

Contents
In a few short days, at the end of one particular summer, our world ended…

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

The commercial babble on the radio gave way to the traffic jingle, and Tina Ball turned the volume back up. “Atlanta traffic’s lookin’ good on all major routes out there,” the traffic reporter chirped. “No accidents or slowdowns. The clouds have come in, and that’s certainly helping out you westbound commuters, but no matter which way you’re heading home, you’re in great shape. Just a little slowdown through Spaghetti Junction, but nothing serious. For Sky-Eye Traffic, I’m Jeanie Scott.” They cut to commercials again and Tina switched the radio off.

“And now the weather: cloudy with a chance of white pickup trucks,” Tina tried to imitate the chirpy traffic woman. “Brought to you by Generic Motors.” She merged onto I-85, which was moving better than usual. “At least I don’t have a car that looks like everyone else’s.” She gassed her bronze Impreza, new as of April 8th, and slipped into a gap between a white pickup and a worn-looking Tahoe.

“Who ta-ho’?” she chanted, glancing in her rearview mirror at the behemoth behind her. “You ta-ho’!” She turned her attention to the truck in front of her; it had sped up a little to give her some room. It was small, clean, and devoid of all markings, badges, or stickers. The lines were all rounded; Tina could usually guess the make of a vehicle by looking at it, but this truck defied her. The windows were tinted — the laws about how dark they could be were often ignored, and Tina had no idea how the cops enforced it or whether they even bothered — but then another white pickup slid past her on the left. Even the front windows were dark, and that was certainly illegal; she glanced over but could only see the outline of the driver. It was a twin to — or even a clone of — the one in front of her, no markings and immaculately clean. It continued on, passing the truck in front of her and moving over.

Tina checked her mirror; her brown hair (page-boy cut for convenience, highlighted to match her hazel eyes) was still in place, but the Tahoe had crept up and was getting pretty close. “Jeez, idiot, the passing lane’s open! Why not go around me and get it over with?” Double-checking confirmed it; Tina slid over and sped up. To her left was the HOV lane, the only one that didn’t have a white truck in it. Maybe they finally have enough lanes on I-85, she thought, at least for now. The digits on her speedometer crept toward 75, and she eased off the throttle to maintain her speed. The Tahoe zoomed by on her right, trailing a little blue smoke; it swerved around one of the white pickups and cut back across two lanes, disappearing behind a moving van.

With no sudden slowdowns or stops to contend with, she watched the rest of the traffic as the miles slid by. There seemed to be a lot of the white pickups around: passing, being passed, and another one just ahead of her on the off-ramp. The things you notice on a Wednesday afternoon, she thought.

Tina’s house was in Laurel Hills, a development between Duluth and Lawrenceville. After the divorce, back in 2006, she bought the house for its arm’s length from the freeway, the quality of the high school for Kelly, and its appreciation potential — the financial fiasco a couple years ago had set her back on that front, but that had bottomed out and things were starting to pick up again. Kelly would be in college in a few years, and Tina’s plan was to sell the house for a tidy profit and get a small condo close to work. But even at the worst, Tina’s mortgage had never gone upside-down, and there was plenty of time to make up lost ground before she had to even start thinking about listing the place. She thumbed the garage door remote, sighed when she saw Kelly’s Civic in its usual spot, then wondered why she was relieved.

Kelly pushed away from the dining room table as Tina came in. “Hi Mom,” she said. “Just trying to finish up this homework. Supper’s ready whenever you are.” Kelly was mostly a younger version of her mom: hair darker and shoulder length, trim figure that didn’t need nearly as much attention as Tina’s to stay that way (yet), dressed more casually in pre-faded jeans with a strategic rip above one knee and a Falcons t-shirt. Her blue eyes and long nose came from her dad.

“Go ahead and finish it. I have my usual first stop to make,” Tina grinned and ducked into the guest bathroom. “Was school OK today?” she called through the door, open a couple inches.

“Yeah. Mr. Spencer didn’t come in, though. And there were quite a few kids out, too. Is something going around?”

Tina flushed, washed up, and stepped out. “I hadn’t heard of anything, honey. But now that you mention it, we had some no-shows at the office too. Maybe you should take the bus to school tomorrow? If you feel bad in the afternoon, you won’t have to drive home sick.”

Kelly sighed. “I guess. I just hate getting up so early. But I’m not working until Saturday anyway, so I can do that.”

“Good. Anything in the mail?”

“Mostly junk. Some bullsh— crap flyer from the HOA about the walk-off houses. Bills. The usual.”

“Sure. Well, let’s get supper on the table.”

continued…

White Pickups: Table of Contents

I’ve moved this to the White Pickups page, but decided to keep this post in place so anyone who has bookmarked it can find the new place.

If you have bookmarked it, please update!

Weekend Roundup

Yet another pic of Mason, just because I can. We haven’t seen him all week, which is probably a good sign because it means The Boy and Snippet haven’t needed our help.

And happy birthday to the great-grandparents, Mom (tomorrow) and Dad (on Monday)!

FAR Manor being FAR Manor, there’s still plenty of stuff going on even without a grandson in the house. Even when it has rained pretty much every day since we got back from vacation, and rained here a few times while we were gone. You know all that rain we didn’t get in May, June, and July? We’re getting it now. But we get a break most mornings, which means this morning I took care of most of the “go outdoors” stuff before breakfast: replace the kitty litter, empty the compost bucket (a coffee can) into the composter, pick a few tomatoes. Today ’s rain, as seen on radar, is moving in a little slower than I expected — but it finally got here.

After taking care of those little chores, then scarfing some breakfast, DoubleRed shocked the living daylights out of me: she asked me to follow her to the bank and (almost) caught up on all her rent… since May! I now have something in my pocket that Mrs. Fetched might like to get her hands on for a change.

I’ve mentioned problems with the manor windows before — not only do they have aluminum frames, which aren’t exactly wonderful for keeping out the winter chill, the funky mechanisms that are supposed to hold them in place when you raise them are pretty much all wrecked. Mrs. Fetched got curious recently when someone at Home Despot was trying to interest anyone in their window installation services, and considerably brightened the day of a rather discouraged worker. She made an appointment for their window guy to pay us a visit, and he did so late Thursday afternoon just as I was wrapping up my work at home day. With 18 windows that need to be replaced, fortunately all standard sizes, the total bill came to $12K. Um… thanks for your time, dude. I still want to replace at least the two windows in the bathroom, but with standard sizes and a friend who’s done that kind of work giving us advice, I might be able to get to that before winter. Meanwhile, I have a roll of window film that has been waiting for me to put it on the bay window in the kitchen, and I’ll be getting to that shortly. It helps that I figured out (on Thursday, while Window Dude was measuring) how to go about it with the least amount of waste.

Mrs. Fetched had been asking me to cash in some stock for some time, just to cover Daughter Dearest’s college for the rest of the term, and (during vacation) it got to where I thought it was worthwhile. The “problem” was, I thought I was cashing in stock options when I was actually cashing in restricted stock… so I ended up with a check for four times as much as I was expecting (but not enough to cover the window replacement). That caused a moment of panic, thinking the guy cleaned out my account, but when I pulled it up again I realized what happened. We’re going to kill off a couple of nagging bills and cover most of Daughter Dearest’s second term. Mrs. Fetched suggested I go ahead and accessorize my camera — so I ordered a smart flash and a 100-300mm lens last night — that should pretty well cover everything now: I have the 50mm f1.8 and the flash for indoor venues, the 28-135mm zoom for some indoor and short- to mid-range outdoor work, and the new lens will cover long-range work. What DoubleRed handed me this morning more than covered it.

Finally, if you haven’t seen it yet: this is NSFW, but very funny. Check out the woman’s expression about 6 seconds in. Besides, it’s good advice: I learned long ago, what you don’t do to the chicken, the chicken will do to you.

New story starts Monday… it’s coming along well, so I’m pretty comfortable with the head start I have.

Obligatory Grandson pic, and Update

OK, I was going for arty: dump the color, bump up the contrast. I like it anyway.

The Boy and Snippet (and Mason) spent a couple days at the manor, giving the new grandparents a little bonding time with the new guy and giving the parental units a little distance from their current housing situation. It seems that their roomie, who was working at the same place as The Boy, managed to get himself fired back in July. He supposedly has been looking for work ever since, but hasn’t managed to actually find any. The Boy, imbued with a new (perhaps pregnancy-induced) sense of responsibility, gamely tried to hold up both ends of the situation. He even tried to continue paying us what he owed for the move-in, and actually managed to keep it going until the end of August. He had to let his cellphone bill slide, but managed — just barely — to keep the rent caught up and chow in the pantry. Then he got swine flu and had to stay out of work for about a week and a half. He’s been there long enough to get medical benefits, fortunately, but not long enough to get sick leave. That pretty much stuck a skewer in their finances.

For a little while, it looked like they’d be moving back to the manor. I wasn’t thrilled about it, nor was he, and Daughter Dearest even less so, but: a) it wasn’t The Boy’s fault his roomie wasn’t holding up his end; b) none of us were about to let a newborn live in a car if it could be avoided. Fortunately, it looks like they hooked up with someone who has work and will be able to manage half the rent; the apartment management will help to remove the non-performing guy if necessary. So the whole boarder-friction thing has been averted for now. As it is, we’ll be seeing a lot of them for a while. At least I hope so.

Now to go print off some pix and send them to the newly-minted great-grandparents…

FAR Future: Table of Contents

I had some requests for this from time to time. As promised, now that the story is done I’m delivering.

Part I
2012
Shortages Everywhere

Episode 1: Blackouts or Whiteins?
Episode 2: Ir-ration-al Behavior?
Episode 3: The Happenin’ Library
Episode 4: Smart Move
Episode 5: Card Sharps
Episode 6: Down on the Farm
Episode 7: Headin' Out
Episode 8: Crossin' the Line
Episode 9: Time Off, and the Barter Economy
Episode 10: Great Timing
Episode 11: October Surprises

Part II
2012–2013
Rise of the Militias

Episode 12: Election Rejection, What’s Your Secession
Episode 13: Nothing Secedes Like Success
Episode 14: Marching Through Georgia
Episode 15: Wow
Episode 16: Holidaze, Shortage Style
Episode 17: Froze in the Middle
Episode 18: Political Theater
Episode 19: Up Against the Wal
Episode 20: Spreading the Wealth
Episode 21: Awakening
Episode 22: Why Are We Still Here?

Part III
2013–2014
Water Wars

Episode 23: The Prophet
Episode 24: Interlude
Episode 25: So Far So Good
Episode 26: Let the Water Wars Begin!
Episode 27: Here We Go Again!
Episode 28: On the March
Episode 29: Battle Lines
Episode 30: War is Hell
Episode 31: Quiet
Episode 32: Thanksgiving in the Midst of Disaster
Episode 33: Starting Over. Sort Of.
Episode 34: Is This Thing On?
Episode 35: Spring is Sprung
Episode 36: Political Storm

Part IV
2014–2016
The Junta Years

Episode 37: Dubbayou. Tee. Eff?
Episode 38: Coup Coup Land
Episode 39: Our Glorious Nation
Episode 40: What Comes Out of a Rump Congress?
Episode 41: Maximum Disruption
Episode 42: Holidays and Happiness
Episode 43: Wallyworld Rising
Episode 44: High-Stakes Hide & Seek (part 1)
Episode 45: High-Stakes Hide & Seek (part 2)
Episode 46: Reporting In
Episode 47: Young Love in the Time of the Junta
Episode 48: The Talk(s)
Episode 49: La Imagen se Escapa del Marco
Episode 50: Tightening Up
Episode 51: In the Blink of an Eye

Part V
2019–2022
The Last Oil War

Episode 52: It’s the Big One, Elizabeth
Episode 53: Sunrise, Sunset
Episode 54: Iraq and Ruin
Episode 55: Caught in the Draft
Episode 56: A Letter from Boot Camp
Episode 57: Marching Orders
Episode 58: A Dispatch from the Rear
Episode 59: Tanks a Lot
Episode 60: In the Tank
Episode 61: It’s All Over, Rover

Part V
2022–2023
Restoration

Episode 62: Slip-Sliding Away
Episode 63: The Peasants are Revolting
Episode 64: Summertime, and the Junta is Sleazy
Episode 65: Run, Run, Run, Run Away
Episode 66: Farewell, Sammy
Episode 67: Letters on the Eve of War
Episode 68: Starts Off With a Bang
Episode 69: Besieged
Episode 70: Not a Bang, but a Whimper
Episode 71: When Johnny (and Kim, Serena, and Rene) Come Marching Home
Episode 72: Adventures at the Chautauqua
Episode 73: Serena’s Chautauqua Story
Episode 74: The Opt-Outs

Part VI
2035–2036
Deluge

Episode 75: Interlude (Pattern Shift)
Episode 76: Before the Deluge
Episode 77: Don’t Have to Live Like a Refugee
Episode 78: School’s In
Episode 79: Letters From the Sand
Episode 80: White Valentine’s
Episode 81: Spring of Discontent
Episode 82: Search and Research
Episode 83: The Boy on Tour
Episode 84: Office Revisited
Episode 85: An Old Friend
Episode 86: Generation 3
Episode 87: Virginia Slam
Episode 88: Heat Wave
Episode 89: Making the Call
Episode 90: Dropbox
Episode 91: The Boy Saves the Day
Episode 92: The Boy Goes to Washington (and Beyond)
Episode 93: Homecoming

Part VII
2044–2045
Visions

Episode 94: Interlude (To Sleep, Perchance to Dream)
Episode 95: Dreams
Episode 96: I’m History
Episode 97: Traffic Jam
Episode 98: The Rat Race, Continued
Episode 99: Funeral for Our Friends
Episode 100: The Final Vision
Episode 101: Summertime Blues
Episode 102: Conference Call
Episode 103: Too Much Fun

Episode 104: Epilogue (The Music of the Spheres)

FAR Future, Episode 104: Epilogue

Given the title of the story, I thought it would be fitting to set at least one part of it (albeit the end) truly in the far future.

It’s a melancholy feeling, reaching the end after over two years. I appreciate everyone who has read it all the way through, especially my friends who got Orson Wells’ed back at the beginning. A complete list of episodes (with links) will be going up shortly. I’ll also post diversions and an alternate episode from time to time.

A completely new story starts September 21.

Fall, year unknown
The Music of the Spheres

The universe, and all that is in it, dances to the cosmic vibration. Life, cultures, nations, civilizations — all follow the rhythm of birth, growth, reproduction, senescence, and death. Across the Earth, weather systems twirl to their own beat. Ice caps dance a two-step, forward and back, following yet-undiscovered astronomical pulsations.

Humans continue to be humans — seeking, loving, grasping, warring — until after a particularly brutal war, when the survivors agree to become something new. So begins a breeding program that lasts for millennia: they select for intelligence, disease-resistance, and non-aggression. The results are not perfect — nothing ever is — but good enough. War is yet studied, but only to explain the terrestrial scars that thousands of years have only softened. The neo-humans experiment with various civilizations — primitive, ecotechnic, industrial — even attempting spacefaring anew at one point. Fortunately, they discover an impending asteroid strike during this time, and the great rock is broken into hundreds of smaller rocks before impact. The dust in the air brings on a Little Ice Age, but the neo-humans know to keep their population below the earth’s carrying capacity. A generation of colorful sunrises and sunsets inspires new schools of art and poetry.

And the beat goes on.

FAR Manor is long gone and long forgotten. The minor figures who lived there as the end of an age drew near are also long forgotten, but their descendants yet roam the Earth. Kim’s art, Christina’s raw intelligence, the strength and compassion of Daughter Dearest, Rene’s and Serena’s storytelling, the music of The Boy and Pat, Ray’s rapport with animals… all express themselves across the new ages that come and go in their turns. Where FAR Manor once stood — an indeterminate point in a world where the Greenwich Observatory no longer marks longitude — has been forest, city, desert, a lakeshore, and grassland.

After ten thousand years pass, we come to a particular sunrise. The land is once again a mixed forest, familiar to all of us except in the details… for example, the people now grow their houses from living trees — they would be aghast at the waste of cutting trees into pieces and building a large wooden box from the pieces. Their roads wind through the trees, following the land — they would call it madness to lay roads in straight lines and alter the land to support them. You or I might think their life primitive in comparison to ours, but we would be wrong. A technology called bioinstrumentation — which had its beginnings in near-prehistoric times, using canaries to detect methane in coal mines and dogs to find illicit drugs — has been refined through the millennia until communication devices and lighting, among other things, really do grow on trees.

The morning is cool, and a youth emerges from one of the houses that make up this loose community. He climbs up the trunk — for a moment he resembles a spider, or perhaps a spider monkey, but his long limbs and fingers are normal for his people — and eats a quiet breakfast on a sturdy limb. Nobody else stirs as he drops to the ground. He looks at the house where he has spent much of his life, and spends a few minutes on the morning necessities: making sure the glow lamps are hung where they can recharge in the afternoon sun, checking the water in the catch basin, fertilizing the roots. He then goes back in, emerges with a cloth sack and a cape for the chill to come, and jogs to the road. This is the custom of the people: after seventeen years, they begin a time of wandering. Some find a mate and return. Some find a mate and stay. Others make a life of wandering, with or without a mate.

At the edge of the community, an old woman stops him. “Who are you?” she asks.

“I go to learn that,” he says.

“And where do you go?”

“East. I will walk toward the rising sun until I come to the sea.”

“And what will you do there?”

“I will learn who I am.”

“Will you return?”

“If Father God and Mother Earth will it.”

The old woman smiles. “Then go, child, with our blessings,” she says, and embraces her grandson for the final time.

“Thank you, grandmother.” He takes her wandering gifts: a walking stick, food, and a water flask; then he blinks at the bright morning sun and sets off. When he looks back, he is alone. He smiles, hears music from beyond, and begins his journey with a dance.

THE END

I Can Haz Grandson!

Everyone say hi to Mason, born today at 2:18 p.m.:



6 lb 13 oz, 21 inches, everyone’s tired but doing fine.

Yup, we all got a promotion. Mason has a great-great-grandmother, and I will definitely have to get everyone together for a 5-generation shot ASAP.

Now I’m going to go be stunned for a while…

Vacation Pix: Iconic Allegan

When you grow up in a picturesque town, you have to leave for a few years before you can really appreciate it. Allegan might be small enough to photowalk in a day — I’m just hitting the highlights here — but you might want to bring extra memory cards and make a weekend of it.



Canon EOS 40D, 28-135mm IS/USM lens
various exposures

Top left: The 2nd Street bridge, one of very few 19th century iron bridges still in use. Built in 1886, it’s one lane plus a walkway. It spans the Kalamazoo River, and connects M-89 to the industrial east side of town. The bridge was renovated after nearly a century of use, and is now the anchor of an annual “BridgeFest” in town. Not too many Historic Register places that are used for their original purpose, but this is one of them.

Top right: The Regent Theatre has been showing movies for… well, I think my mom went there when she was a kid. It looks pretty much the same as it did when I was a kid, standing in line outside to buy a ticket for the latest show. Here’s another Historic Register site that’s still used for its original purpose.

Bottom left: The Griswold Auditorium. I’ve seen plays and travelogues here, and was on stage and backstage a number of times myself. Whoever built the place had a sense of humor: “ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE” is emblazoned above the stage itself. It was years after I first saw it that I learned it was a line from Shakespeare.

Bottom right: The Allegan Public Library was one of the Carnegie libraries. It has been expanded since I moved away, and I have no idea whether the beautiful wooden floors and shelves are still intact upstairs. The kids’ section was downstairs, and I plowed through it pretty thoroughly in my younger years.

I didn’t get nearly as much time as I would have liked to explore, especially to see what has changed — I know the old free parking down by the river has been partially turned into a riverwalk, with a concert gazebo, and it really looks nice. Not to mention the storefronts…

Joe Klein and the Beltway Insider Problem

So… it appears that once again, Joe Klein (a Very Serious Person who writes for Time on behalf of the rich and powerful) and Glenn Greenwald (a constitutional lawyer turned blogger at Salon) have tangled once again. And once again, Klein gets his ass handed to him, then whines about it at his blog on Swampland. In his hissy-fit, Joe demonstrates a lack of understanding, exceptionally woeful for a supposedly super-journalist, about what constitutes a “private communication.” To wit:

1. At one of the cocktail parties (actually a beach party in this case) so favored by the Beltway Insider clique, Klein rather loudly rants to a young woman about how “Greenwald is EVIL! EVIL!” and many other things. He took particular umbrage when she pointed that Greenwald was recently given the I.F. Stone award, telling her “[she] shouldn't talk about things [she doesn't] understand.” (The woman in question is I.F. Stone’s granddaughter, which is quite funny when you think about it.)


2. Having been schooled in public, both by mere bloggers and a young woman whom he dismisses as “a rather pathetic woman acolyte of Greenwald's,” Joe Klein (often referred to as Joke Line in the blogosphere as of late) resorted to the 8th-grade tactic of saying nasty things about Greenwald behind his back. It’s probably likely that he was already well under way by the time he got pwned at the beach party, but he began trashing Greenwald on Journolist, a “members-only” mailing list for the Beltway Insiders and some of their favored friends. One of the other members forwarded some of the emails to Glenn Greenwald, and much hilarity ensued (again, at Klein’s expense).

Joe Klein is perhaps part of the problem in what passes for journalism these days, but he is best seen as a symbol for what I call the Beltway Insider Problem. Journalists, who are supposed to be about afflicting the comfortable, have grown uncomfortably chummy with the inner circles of power lately — whether in DC, on Wall Street, or City Hall of most locales. The problem begins, but does not end, with:

The Access Fetish

At some point, I’m guessing the early 1980s, “access” became more important than truth to journalism. Perhaps it started with the Reagan regime, more likely with early budget cuts in newsrooms, I don’t know for sure (and admitting I don’t know proves I myself am no Beltway Insider). But reporters who asked tough questions of those in power began to be shunted aside in favor of the sycophants and stenographers that seem to make up the entire Beltway Insider clique these days. Joe Klein sucked up to the Bush Administration for quite a few years, indeed was one of their primary cheerleaders for the Iraq war, all to maintain that all-important “access.” He and his fellows seem to have forgotten that when you’re doing some real journalism, that you’ll get access anyway. After all, short of outright admitting to bad behavior, “XYZ refused to comment on this story” is pretty close to self-indictment.

One of the more unfortunate effects, of the Access Fetish, besides the outright toadying-up to the powerful, has been:

Replacing Fact-Checking with “Balance”

The most glaring example of this problem with the Beltway Insider clique has been their “coverage” of climate change issues. It doesn’t matter how much evidence of the 150-year warming trend piles up, how many scientists think it’s actually worse than the consensus position, the insiders will find an ignorant blowhard like Sen. Inhofe or a paid shill for Exxon who will counter claims with nothing but their opinion, and then present both sides as equally credible. Truth is truth… unless you’re an Insider, then it’s just a matter of he-said-she-said. And they think that’s doing their jobs.

Which brings us to the third problem:

The Insider Echo Chamber

Tools like Journolist and the cocktail/beach party circuit allow the Beltway Insiders to collaborate. That in itself is not a bad thing — an investigative journalist might hear a crucial piece of information from a fellow, for example — but the problem is that the Insiders use those tools to develop a “narrative” rather than just get to the heart of the matter. Media narratives are convenient for lazy pseudo-journalists, as they provide a framework to hang a story on. We see this dreck all the time: Hillary was inevitable, health care reform is dead (and the screamers were concerned citizens rather than bussed-in provocateurs), financial bailouts are necessary to preserve… something important, probably the Insiders’ access to bankers.

This is exactly why more and more people are getting their news from the Internet these days — sure, you get biased sources, but you have a pretty good idea what the bias is and everyone gets to chime in and correct facts or point out the bias. Me, I haven’t subscribed to a newspaper or newsmagazine in 15 years or so, and people like Joe Klein are perfect examples of why.

FAR Future, Episode 103: Too Much Fun

Friday, September 29, 2045
Too Much Fun

OK, I’ll be the first to admit, I overdid it this afternoon.

Daughter Dearest let school out at noon today — most everyone has had a pretty good year, garden-wise, and we all needed to get a start on harvesting. There’s been a lot of harvesting already, but that’s been mostly eaten on the spot. Now the “market” crops (mostly grapes and apples) are ready, and we’ll be at it for the next few days. So… adults, kids, we all grabbed kudzu baskets and got to it as soon as we were done with lunch. Bobby and Martina are both up at the college, starting their sophomore year, so the crew was DD, Dean, Serena, Rene, the adult Smiths and Joneses, Pat, Ray, and me. Ray, being the youngest, gets to hike full baskets up to the top end of the garden where we have the dehydrators and so on… while picking his share of the garden. I suggested he train one of the dogs to pull a cart for him back in the spring, but he must have thought I was joking. It would have been a lot easier on him; he can get a dog to do just about anything for him.

I was picking cherry tomatoes as Ray was carrying a couple of baskets. “Yo, Ray!” I yelled, “you forgot one!” and I chucked a squishy cherry tomato at him. I really wasn’t trying to hit him, but I did anyway.

“You’ll pay for that!” he yelled back with a grin. For being 16, he’s got a pretty good sense of humor.

I must have been in a mood… Daughter Dearest was working the cukes, in the next row over, and I lobbed a firmer fruit at her own “fruits.” I also must have been in an accuracy mode, because I landed it.

“Scooooooooore!” I pumped a fist.

“You want one of these across your head?” DD shot back, brandishing a rather large cucumber.

Ray came back, and launched a squishy (larger) tomato at me. It missed by the margin he intended — about 10cm — and splattered behind me. One thing led to another, and we had a genuine food fight going… of course, it was all overripe or rotten produce that filled the air; we’re not crazy enough to waste edible chow on entertainment. We ran back and forth, dodging between the rows and lobbing missiles whenever we got an opening. I had a good thing going with the tomatoes; that (and the grapes) was where most of the ammo could be found. It all came to an abrupt halt, though, when I got dizzy and started seeing sparklies. I sat down, and DD and Serena ran to me (with everyone else close behind).

I waved everyone back, using the good old “let me have some air” excuse, and finally let DD and Serena help me up and walk me up to the manor.

“Shouldn’t we get you to the medassist?” Serena asked. Daughter Dearest nodded.

“Why?” I said. “It’s the same ol’ thing: take my vitals, wait 20 minutes, take them again, then they tell me to go take a nap. Why don’t I just go take a nap and cut out the middleman?”

DD objected, I insisted, they finally gave in. Sheesh. DD was smart enough to insist I get some water, though. I chugged down the first glass and drained the second a little more slowly. She put a third glass on my desk here in the bedroom, and she and Serena went back down to help finish the picking. Like I said, it’s been a good year — I’m guessing we’ll get through the winter in fine shape. They’ll probably still be working when I get back up, although by then they’ll be filling up the dehydrator racks.

Or maybe not… I really feel tired. I don’t remember rain in the forecast, but it’s getting dark all of a sudden. The wind’s getting up too… it almost sounds like waves on the beach. Well, I’ll sleep for a little while and see how it goes.

continued…

Vacation pix: Argh!

A seagull had perched itself on one of those “swim area” markers featured earlier. I go to take the shot, and…



Someone has to walk right into the field of view. That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it.

Canon EOS 40D, 28-135mm IS/USM lens
135mm, f11, 1/320 sec

(BTW, that’s my nephew with the boogie board, back turned to us.)

FAR Future, Episode 102: Conference Call

Sorry about not having this up Monday morning… it just slipped my mind. Future FARf must be starting have memory slips.

Sunday, August 13, 2045
Conference Call

I just got back from a week in Atlanta. I’ve been active in the same church since Mrs. Fetched brought me to this place, before we were even married, and I’m still active now that “churchies” are pariahs in many places. I’m proud to say that we were an early affiliate of the Penitent Movement — a lot of people think that Penitent is its own denomination, but it’s really an affiliation that transcends denominations. The church that I’m a part of is Methodist; some Baptist, a lot of other mainline Protestant churches, some Catholic and even a few pentecostal and other “non-demoninational” congregations identify as Penitent.

Whatever the denomination, those of us affiliated with the Penitent Movement have an annual nationwide conference. Representatives from each church gather in various cities and have a nationwide teleconference, and it was my turn to represent our church this year. It worked out well for me; Kim and Christina made room for me at their place and I could walk outside and catch the shuttle to the conference, then spend a couple hours over at The Boy’s place each evening. In Atlanta, ironically, we rent out what used to be a megachurch building. The current owners have talked about starting a small wallyworld in it, but it hasn’t happened yet (and we’ve used the same place three years in a row now). We get a local market to deliver lunch, and people bring in various “filler” foods to round out a pretty decent spread. Most of us eat breakfast before and supper after the day’s agenda.

After you’ve been to a few of these conferences, you get a pretty good idea of what’s going to happen through the week: Monday is a get-acquainted fest, lots of welcome speeches and agenda-setting on the big screen, followed by working group sign-ups. On Tuesday morning, we (locally) evaluate how well service goals from year before were met, then present reports with other regions in the national teleconference through the afternoon. Wednesday is devoted to setting the new goals and theme for the upcoming year, then thrashing out how we’re actually going to implement them. On Thursday, we discuss whatever difficulties churches might be having in different regions — in some parts of the country, they have to deal with outright persecution, although lower-level hostility and plain indifference are much more common. Here, it used to be that non-Pentitent churches had it better than we did, but we’re all pretty much tolerated throughout the Old South now. Friday, we tie up loose ends (usually what’s left from the Wednesday implementation business) — and if we need to, carry that into Saturday. Fortunately, we wrapped up pretty well on Friday this year and I was able to spend Saturday with Kim and his family (and The Boy came over, too) before riding home today.

In Atlanta this year, we talked a lot about being a third of the way through the 70 years spoken of by The Prophet at the end of the junta, the collective judgement on all the churches for so many of them being obsessed with the “law” and paying only lip service to grace (and incidentally aiding and abetting the junta). As Atlanta was his “Jerusalem,” we were asked to share our thoughts with the rest of the national conference, about where we are in regard to that particular prophecy. We all like to think, anyway, that the Penitent churches are the one servant who “was serving the people and not abusing his authority,” as the Prophet put it. Indeed, the Penitent movement was built around that description.

We’ve even managed to “find favor with the people,” at least a little. The refugee issue, that came to a head in 2036, was the primary focus for our service for a couple of years… both with and without governmental cooperation. Even though the 29th Amendment made explicit the separation between church and state, the Supreme Court ruled that the intent was to “merely prevent one party from exercising undue influence over the other” and that coordination to prevent duplication of effort was not forbidden. Once the coastal refugees were resettled, we moved on to other things (some, like the 2040 focus on carbon re-sequestration, didn’t go so well). Lately, though, we’ve gone back to exploring the thorny issue of ministering to opt-outs. I talked The Boy into coming in on Wednesday afternoon to share his experience with the opt-outs, following the chautauqua mission of taking culture (of a sort) to where the people were. Next thing I knew, people started asking him tons of questions, and someone cut it into the national feed. He’s still well-known in the Retro Rage music scene, but I was surprised at how many people remembered his role in defusing the refugee situation, back when.

People both local and remote thought it was a great session. There’s still a lot of opt-outs — some estimates put their numbers over a million — and it’s clear that any effective outreach will have to truly be outreach… just like missionaries in Africa, we’ll have to go to them, live with (and like) them, and earn their trust. The Boy talked about how many opt-outs would opt back in if they could figure out how… I guess it’s up to the churches to help them find their way back.

continued…

Not-so Empty Nest

Current music: BassDrive

Today was Moving Day for Daughter Dearest… back to Reinhardt with her. This year, she got one of the campus apartments — four girls, each with their own room plus two full baths, a kitchen & living room. The “official” moving-in day is tomorrow, but they asked the choir members to come a day early — they got their own cookout, followed by a rehearsal and a planned performance tomorrow. No rest for the music majors.

We had two Civics loaded up with stuff, although we packed pretty casually (i.e. we could have got lots more in if we had to). The early move-in was a big help with parking; we had no trouble finding parking spaces. The only hang-up was that DD, being the first one there, got to do the walk-through with the RA. That meant we stood around for about half an hour, wondering what was taking so long for DD to get her keys, until Mrs. Fetched finally called and found out what was going on. Eventually, she came down and we started hauling boxes. I don’t know how many kids brought a couple cases of chow they helped can earlier in the week, but I doubt there were very many.

Meanwhile, one of the girls across the way had porters bringing enough stuff to pack a circus tent. “That’s Brooke,” Daughter Dearest explained. “She’s really high-maintenance.” No kidding: there were no less than four sizeable vehicles (minivans, SUVs) packed with her stuff — they were hauling it in with a grocery cart. Then they went to Mal*Wart to get more stuff. I can’t say too much about that, since we also went there for a few ancillary items: a mattress cover, USB A/B cable (I wish she’d said something, we have several here at the manor), dishes and cups (the apartment is furnished, but doesn’t include dishes or cookware, oops). Two of her roomies “love to cook” so we hope they’ll bring cookware. If not… well, they’ll either buy some new stuff or we can bring some over.

So the nest is empty for a few months, right? DoubleRed is supposed to be heading to Toccoa Falls College soon, but she needs a job in Toccoa to support herself… and she needs to be in Toccoa to get the job. Catch-22. So… now she’s planning to stay here and take online classes.

AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

Not that she’s been around much lately, anyway. Maybe it will work out.

Knee update: it behaved quite well during the move-in. It complained a bit when going down the stairs for the last time, but was happy enough with some rest. It gave no trouble at all when I mowed the lawn after we got home. (Then I took a nap, we were up way too early for a Saturday.) Up and down a ladder this evening, once again fixing the garage door opener, still no trouble. I might need to move the “down limit cam” another link down the chain, to drop the door another quarter inch, but that’s it for now. I might have another look tomorrow — after I change the motorcycle oil.

Vacation pix: Driftwood

After shooting a bird sitting on one of the “swim area” posts, Dad suggested I get the driftwood in the foreground for scale. Then I got interested in the driftwood itself.



Canon EOS 40D, 28-135mm IS/USM zoom lens
135mm, f7.1, 1/500s
Lake Michigan (Hoffmaster State Park), 7/28

FAR Future, Episode 101: Summertime Blues

Whoops, after I finished the story I inserted a new episode right here towards the end. I suppose blog fiction is never done.

I’m going to start a new story shortly after the last FAR Future episode goes up. More horror than peak-oil, but that’s what my Muse got me working on. Those episodes will also go up on Monday mornings, so don’t get out of the habit!

Saturday, July 15, 2045
Summertime Blues

Hi, it’s Bobby. I was doing some research online for summer study, clicked this link by accident, and it was still logged in. I don’t think Granddad will mind if I catch up, he hasn’t been writing much in it lately. He’s been having some weird dreams from the looks of it, though. I had to look up “The Prophet,” and it’s interesting that Granddad actually met him twice when the guy was alive. I wonder if Pat told his friend about Granddad knowing The Prophet, but I guess Darrell would have been back down here if he had.

I finished up my first year of college. It was weird being away from the house for that long, but then again it’s only an hour by bicycle to get here. If there was an emergency, I could have borrowed someone’s scooter, I guess. Martina went there too, which was good. I’m taking metallurgy and she’s on a general track until she figures out what she wants to do. We kind of become an “item,” as Granddad says, during the fall quarter. It was kind of an accident, really: this other freshman was shading her panels and she asked me to pretend we were dating to get him to back off. That meant we had to go out, and so we were seeing a lot more of each other than we planned. Neither one of us are sure when it changed over to being real. I told Dad about it, and he said something like “At least you didn’t wait as long as we did,” like he and Mom saw it even when we didn’t. Is that possible?

So we’re all together for the summer again, but it’s a little strange without Granpapa Mo and Granmama Maria. They died in May, and I took a couple days off school for the funeral. Martina too, because they told us “extended family” means something a little different than it used to. I guess that’s really true — I never thought much about all the people who live together at FAR Manor like we do, but maybe half the students at the college lived in a house with just their parents and sibs, and Dad says that’s how just about everyone used to live. I guess they live in cities or old subdivisions, where if they have problems there are other people right there to help out. There’s lots of us to help with the gardens, gather firewood, and all the other stuff that needs to be done.

Oh, I’m really glad Aunt Christina got here when she did. The methane digester clogged up and she told us what we had to do to fix it. Gas, talk about stinky! She turned it into a mini-lecture. I guess I never thought about it, but this is the kind of thing she works with all the time so maybe the smell doesn’t bother her anymore. This mat of stuff the digester can’t break down builds up on top of the poo and it blocks the methane from going out the valve on top if it gets thick enough, and you have to open up the digester and rake it off. Pat couldn’t handle it, but Martina and Ray did OK. The dogs started barking and Ray started laughing at them, but Martina, Aunt Christina, and I got the mat raked out and buried in the compost without getting much of it on ourselves. Ray said the dogs were jealous because something stank more than they do. I figured they’d want to go roll in it, but they only bother the compost when there’s a rat or something in there. But we couldn’t use the gas for a couple of days, Aunt Christina said we had to vent off some of it to get the oxygen out, otherwise it might blow up on us. So afterwards, we got out of our clothes and went inside to get clean ones. Martina’s mom yelled at her about being naked in front of her boyfriend — I guess she’d rather Martina wore those stinky clothes into their place? I’ve heard about stuff like that in the old days, but nobody else under age 50 or so thinks much of it now. I mean, I like looking at Martina when she’s naked, but I like looking at her just as much with clothes on — and it’s not like you have to be naked to screw. My roommate told me there’s a porn site that’s all pictures of people screwing with most of their clothes on. Aunt Christina shucked her clothes too, but she didn’t come back outside for a while. Martina said she was probably upstairs with Uncle Kim, and she might be right. Those two — I guess you would have to know them.

Well, that’s about it. I hope Martina’s mom gets calmed down soon, or it’s going to be a long summer.

continued…

Puppies, age 6 weeks

Happy, hungry, and (mostly) looking for new digs:



The following are temporary names, I just tag 'em with something until we come up with something better.

Target (top left)

Walkabout (top right) — so named because she was trying to get out of the pen & explore even before she got her eyes open. This is the one I had to unsnag from the fencing a couple of times before Mrs. Fetched put a strip of hardware cloth around the bottom of the pen (that’s what she has her front paws up on — she’ll be hopping right over it before long). The guy who helps Mrs. Fetched with the farm stuff is getting her, and calling her Sassy.

Snoozer (bottom left) — obviously. He sleeps for himself and Walkabout.

Batty (bottom right) — so called because she’s blind. Mrs. Fetched & Daughter Dearest are having none of that name, but they haven’t come up with anything better. She’s the biggest one of the litter & this shot catches her disposition pretty well. We'll probably end up keeping her & training her as best as we can unless someone just has to have a “special needs” dog.

Vacation Photos: Slipping into Fall?

What goes up, must come down.



Canon EOS 40D, 28-135mm IS/USM zoom lens
135mm f5.6 1/1600
Straightened and cropped

Kneecapped Again, The Final Chapter

The Great Unwrapping was yesterday. The doc was pleased with his handiwork, and told me I could pretty much do whatever I wanted as long as I could stand the pain. He suggested some lifts and bends, and ice when needed, but other than that he seemed to be “just do it” and it would be 100% in the next two or three weeks. (You can still see the nurse’s initials on my kneecap, that’s how they made sure they poked the right one.)

He did say I might have some chronic pain with it, which could be taken care of with a “partial knee replacement” (very partial, as it would once again be an outpatient thing) — but he said they also wear out over 15–20 years, so if I can wait until I’m 75 it will probably outlast me. ;-) But with the two bone chips removed, and it behaving most of the time even before, I hope it will just go on as normal. The chips came off the left side of the right knee; the doc showed me pix of what was going on in there… I forgot to ask for copies, but I really couldn’t make heads or tails of it anyway. It’s just meat. MY meat, but what else can I say?

Well… if it hurts, I now have some pain-killer:



While we were on vacation, someone came by and dropped off what appears to be 18 cases of Planet Georgia’s Finest — there’s 12 quart jars in each case, so that adds up to Lush Paradise. Mrs. Fetched was obviously in on it, as she told me about it and that it’s like 15 years old… and wonders if it’s any good to drink. Her idea, not a bad one entirely for the whiskey, was to treat it as ethanol and mix it with gasoline as an extender of sorts. But at least some of that is apple brandy, which would clog up fuel filters. I opened one of the brandy jars this evening; it smells pretty good and a sip confirmed it. She’s all “I don’t know how you’ll feel in an hour,” and I would like to know how it was made (if there was a radiator in the still, forget it) before enjoying it too much.

Guess I just need to heal up.

FAR Future, Episode 100: The Final Vision

One. Hundred. Kind of amazing, isn’t it? And we’re not (quite) finished…

Friday, June 23, 2045
The Final Vision

That much closer, I guess. I’m glad this is the last one; they kept getting worse.

In my dream, I stood in a long-abandoned city. The sky was this burnt brown color, and the sun barely made its way through. Nevertheless, it was hot. I was surrounded by mounds of what looked like lumpy dirt at first; when I looked closer I saw that it was the trash of ages, slowly returning to the earth from whence it came. The quiet nearly hurt my ears… no wind whispered, no bugs buzzed around. I didn’t even see a roach.

I started walking. I quickly realized that I wasn’t going to be able to walk around the trash heaps, so I tried walking over them. They were soft, and I sank sometimes halfway to my knees, but I somehow made progress. Each step stirred up the trash, releasing odors of decay, but somehow old and weak. Down the street, between the crumbling skyscrapers, the sea turned city blocks into an archipelago of square islands. The water called to me, as always, so I waded through the garbage toward the filthy new shoreline.

The Prophet was waiting for me near the water, perched on the remnants of a crumbling pedestal. Things bobbed in the murky water, things I didn’t want to look at too closely. An oily film covered the water, and it was on everything that the water had touched. “Here we are, at the end of all things,” he said.

“This was the worse fate you warned me about,” I said, pretty sure I was right. “So we nuked each other over the oil? Or some other resource?”

He shook his head. “No. A nuclear war would have been a lesser harm to the earth. After the first few bombs, the command and network structures would have failed and they could not have launched more. The world would have cooled, then healed.”

“So what happened?”

“This is the endpoint of humanity’s deepest wish: that the party would never end. This is what would have happened had we been given unlimited energy resources: we would have choked and drowned in our own waste. And we would have destroyed nearly everything else.”

“But maybe some of the people got into space?”

He nodded. “Of course. With boundless energy, launching a space colony would have been a small matter. The difficult part, at which they failed, was to make it self-sustaining. Each year, their population grows a little smaller. Each year, the dwindling food supply is barely enough to feed even the lessened numbers. Each year, more of their machinery stops. The spares are gone, and none of them know how to craft replacements. In a few years, the colony will fail and the last human will go to her final reward.”

I wiped a tear away. “But we were saved from this fate — by the very limits we strained against?”

“Truly. In a body, an unlimited growth is called a cancer. Even cancer is not unlimited though: when the host dies, the cancer dies as well.”

“So why do you show me this vision? If we could not come this far, what’s the point?”

He stepped down, dipped a clear glass into the gunk, and handed it to me. “The Living Water.”

“You’re kidding,” I said. “Drink this?”

He gave me the “get with it” look. “What was Peter told in his vision?”

I laughed. “What God has called clean, you shall not call unclean.” And as I spoke, the murk sank to the bottom of the glass and disappeared, leaving the water looking and smelling (and tasting) pure and sweet.

The Prophet smiled. “But you asked about the point of this: even now, there are those who believe we can return to what they might call the ‘glory days,’ without the understanding of what they wish for. Tell them of this vision, that they might put aside their folly and work within the world that The Lord has given them.

“But come, I show you a mystery.” He held out his hand. I took it, and we were… elsewhere. A mountaintop, where the brown sky was closer and darker. There was no trash here, only rocks streaked with soot and whatever else the rain carried out of the sky. A few gnarled trees dotted the summit. “What do you see?”

“Rocks. Stunted trees.”

He crouched next to one of the rocks. “Look closer.”

I did, and saw it: a tiny patch of green, with a few bright yellow specks, sheltered under the rock. The rock itself was split above the plant, and I saw that much of the rain that fell on that side of the rock would be carried down that split to the plants. A tiny insect, maybe a gnat, lit on one yellow spot or another, making the thin stalks nod and bob.

“And there.” He pointed toward another rock, where a small thin creature, maybe a mouse or vole, nibbled at something.

“So there’s still life.”

“Yes. The Lord does not throw away His creation lightly. There are other islands of life, in other parts of the wide world. In time, as the earth heals, they will expand and evolution will bring forth diversity and perhaps intelligence.”

“But… this world is imaginary, I thought?”

Again, the Prophet gave me the “get with it” look. “What The Lord has imagined is no less real than the world in which you live. But you will understand this, and will know the answers to all things, soon enough. Go now. Go in peace and in joy. I will greet you when you find your way to Heaven.”

Again the jumble, but I think I finally understood what it was. I had been right: it was both chaos, and beyond my comprehension. What I saw was a parade of possible worlds, too quick to catch and hold any single one — and about as useful as ignoring the beach to study a single grain of sand.

When I awoke this time, I was again hot and thirsty. But perhaps I understand better: my spirit, which is the actual me for which my old body is only a container, had actually gone to that other place — that impossible world of unlimited energy and unlimited destruction. Even in my youth, my physical body may not have been able to withstand the toxic soup our desires would have made of the air in that world, but the spirit is less concerned with physical matters. Now I was simply warmer than usual on the sleeping porch.

So that’s that. I don’t expect to keel over today or this week, but I hoofed it over to the center and sent my vitals in. They told me I’m doing fine for being 86… I’ll bet they say that to all the geezers, though. I suppose the only thing to do, and I’m sure The Prophet would agree, is to enjoy whatever time I’ve got left.

continued…

Flowery (and Grassy) Friday (Vacation Edition)

Andi’s grass pic this morning reminded me I wanted to post this…



The flowers were growing in clumps in various places, mostly in neglected yards or garden plots. Seems to be a really good year for them.

Top: Lake Michigan (Hoffmaster State Park) [38mm, f13, 1/400s]
Bottom: from Dad’s deck, Duck Lake [135mm, f5.6, 1/160s]
Canon EOS 40D, 28-135mm zoom lens

Vacation pix: Waterfowl

Actually, Dad thinks the geese are rather foul, because that’s what they’ll do to the grass if he doesn’t chase them off. ;-)

Seagulls: Lake Michigan (Hoffmaster State Park)
Geese & Swans: Duck Lake
Canon EOS 40D, 28-135mm zoom lens, various exposures

And Then There Were Four

The Cosmic Rule of Everything Governing Vacations Away From FAR Manor is: there’s going to be a crisis. Mrs. Fetched’s mom was kind enough to not let us know about it until we were on the way home.

When the World’s Most Obnoxious Dog reproduced, it was a deliberate plot by Mrs. Fetched… don’t ask me why, I’m sure she has her reasons. But she picked out one of her mom’s dogs to do the honors. In spite of what I said in that particular post, he must have just preferred to do the deed in private. Then he popped the latch and ran home. Mrs. Fetched was pretty sure that he was a couple notches removed from Crissy on the family tree, but Daughter Dearest said later that they both have the same mom. Hey, it’s Planet Georgia, a little inbreeding is to be expected, right?

Maybe we should have done it in Tennessee or Alabama, where they’re experts on that sort of thing. Four of the pups — including a female I named Walkabout because she was exploring and trying to escape the pen (I had to unsnag her from the chainlink more than once) before she had her eyes open — rapidly outgrew the other three. This wasn’t a big problem at first, but as they developed to where they could start eating food, the smaller three started having problems. By the time we were on our way home, Mrs. Fetched’s mom had taken two of them to the vet, who recommended they be put down because they were in a lot of pain. The third started having serious trouble Sunday afternoon. After Daughter Dearest said he had a seizure, Mrs. Fetched asked me to look up anything I could find online — one thing I found was that some puppies could be hypersensitive to flea powders and the like; Crissy had a flea collar and we’d been doing that stuff that comes out of the little squeeze tube, so Mrs. Fetched removed the collar and brought all the puppies in for a bath (with Crissy bringing up the rear). They did the little guy first, and had me hold him and keep an eye on him while they did the others. He had a seizure while I was holding him… we got through it, and then I noticed that his belly was hard. I started stroking it, which he protested, but he blew a little dog fart and it softened up quite a bit, which led me to wonder whether he was just having a gas attack. In a fit of optimism, I dubbed him Augustus Seizure (because it was August; I later learned that Julius actually did have epilepsy) and tried to make him as comfortable as possible.

Mrs. Fetched stayed up with him all Sunday night, and they both had a rough night. I was little better off, getting woke up by the yelping several times. She took him to the vet Monday morning, he guessed his intestines had a birth defect that would maybe let him live a few more days, and Mrs. Fetched decided to have him put down too.

The other four, fortunately, seem to be healthy and robust. The guy who’s been helping Mrs. Fetched with the chickens and other farm stuff is getting Walkabout (who is often up & moving when the other three are dozing, always looking for attention) when she’s old enough, but the other three are available. I kind of hope we’ll keep one and get rid of Crissy… they simply can’t be more obnoxious than their mom.

FAR Future, Episode 99

Friday, May 19, 2045
Funeral for Our Friends

Rene woke me up yesterday morning shouting “¡Mama! Papa!” and something in Spanish I didn’t catch. By the time I threw on a robe and came down the hall, he was on the phone. He was obviously stressed, switching back and forth between English and Spanish, and I caught a word of the latter: muerté — that explained why. Guillermo and Maria had “checked out” overnight.

“The ambulance will be here in half an hour,” he told me. “I have to call Christina.” Serena joined us, then went to get Daughter Dearest after embracing Rene as he made the call. He went back upstairs as they came back in.

“I let Dean know,” Daughter Dearest said. “The Smiths and Joneses, too.”

“I’ll call the priest,” I told them. “They would want last rites.” Serena nodded, and I told my gadget to find and call the local Catholic mission. Guillermo and Maria had never wavered from their old faith, even attending Mass online most Sundays and holding confessions over the phone. Father Alvarado, their confessor and pastor, agreed to come immediately and arrived on a Commuter Scooter shortly behind the ambulance. In the meantime, Rene had come back downstairs and told us Christina (and the rest of their family) would be here early tomorrow.

The doctor stepped out and nodded to us. “Natural causes,” he said, “and within an hour of each other. I’ve heard of things like that, but never saw it for myself. You’ll want a couple of minutes with the deceased, I assume?”

We nodded, Rene went in, then stopped; I had just enough time to duck around him, then saw and stopped too. Father Alvarado bumped into us from behind, and Serena ran into him. “What is it?” she asked.

We stepped aside to let them see. The doctor had pulled the covers back, and Guillermo and Maria had died holding hands. Maria had the quiet smile she often had when the day had gone well. Guillermo’s free hand rested on his stilled corazón; he, too, looked quite content.

Father Alvarado nodded, lifted his crucifix, and performed the last rites. “They were good people, faithful,” he said afterward. “They deserved to be taken to Heaven together like this. I appreciate you calling me.” He opened a box he’d kept in an inner pocket; it contained wafers, a small bottle of wine, and another of holy water. “Now, if you are willing, kneel and receive the Body of Christ.”

“Um, Father,” I said as Rene knelt and crossed himself, “I’m not Catholic.”

“Have you received Christ and His baptism?” I nodded, as did Serena and Daughter Dearest. “Then you are invited to His table.”

I knelt with the girlies and smiled. “That’s different.”

“This century has brought many changes — and not even the Church is immune to change,” he chuckled as he prepared the Host. “These matters are now left to the conscience of His servants. There are many places now where there would be no congregations if we insisted on some of the old certainties — and we would be poor servants indeed if we shut the door of grace to all.” He served Rene first, so the rest of us could take our cue from him. Dean slipped in as he served us, and he joined us in the ritual.

Finally, we filed out of the bedroom and let the doctor and EMT carry our friends out to the ambulance (a Heehaw with what looked like a fat aero-cap). I know they still have a few diesel ones around; they probably use those when it’s not too late. They drove away, and left us with a huge void.

The funeral was this afternoon at the mission, with all of us in attendance. I found an old photo I’d taken of Guillermo and Maria — with their kids — shortly after they came to FAR Manor to live with us, found a frame, and sat it on an easel they had for the purpose. When the priest asked if anyone had anything to say, Rene and Christina nudged me forward. I gave them the they were your parents look, with a smile, and stepped forward trying to collect my thoughts.

“Guillermo and Maria came to us so many years ago,” I began, “I can’t think of how long. Sometimes, it seems like they — and their children, now my children-in-law — were always a part of our lives. They never asked for much, not even taking a few days off when I offered them. Some people considered them our servants, or even slaves, but to me they were equals, a brother- and sister-in-law. They sat at our dinner table and helped to run the farm. They always gave their all to any task. And I fear that I’ll be serving them in Heaven.” That got a chuckle or two, as I had hoped.

Last night, I imagined them in their own resting place: a Mexico that never was, where campesinos sing as they bring in the harvest and join the eternal fiesta. Or perhaps it’s a Dia de Los Muertes that never ends?

continued…

Home Sweet Money Pit

Back from a lovely week in Michigan, visiting relatives and not thinking much about the chicken houses. I’ll have some posts up later, today if opportunity permits.