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benchiladaOkay, kids, here's "Receiver" to date.
I think it'll be in the style of Barthelme's Q/A stories when it's done.
Or a two person play. Whatever. In any event,
I DEMAND COMMENTS!
This is what I'm willing to make public right now.
The last part is later on in the story, but so be it.
Like my writings, rants, etc?
Please tell a friend. :D
They can get the same content as my LJ at my Composite Molecules listserv.
Now, READ READ READ-->
---
“That woman’s boyfriend is cheating on her.”
“What?”
“See that woman over there? Red sweater, natty
hair?”
“Yeah.”
“She was just on her cel phone with her
boyfriend. She thinks he’s at home. He’s just
outside on the sidewalk. He peeked in to see if she
was really here drinking coffee. I wonder if he
thought she was cheating on him. Anyway, he just made
another call. It started with the words, ‘Hey, honey,
are you busy? I’ve got an hour or two on my hands,
and I was wondering if I could have you on my hands
for an hour or two.’”
“Jesus, people really say things like that?”
“Apparently so.”
“So now what’s he talking about?”
“Dunno, I spaced out for a second and started
listening to public radio. It’s that goddamned grain
futures and hog bellies show. I wonder if it bores
the shit of farmers, too.”
“So, let’s go back a bit.”
“I’ve lost him by now.”
“No, no, back to how something like this
happens.”
“Luck. Good or bad, depends on the day. Or
maybe the minute. Anyway, it started with braces.”
“Braces? Now I know you’re messing with me. Is
this going to be like when Lucille Ball claimed she
picked up Morse code from Japanese spies during World
War II through her fillings?”
“Yes, it is, and I have fillings, too. Old metal
ones. My family has an enamel deficiency, so we have
terrible teeth.”
“Urban legend bullshit.”
“Somebody once told me that it’s like those old
‘Build-Your-Own Crystal Radio’ sets. They had wire
wrapped around ceramic that worked as a receiver, and
if you were lucky you could pick up AM signals, from
close stations at least.”
“Huh. Learn something new every day.”
“Anyway, the braces weren’t too bad. It was
getting hit by a car that really fucked with me.”
“You were hit by a car?”
“In the head.”
“Fuck.”
“Beautiful car, too. Red Sunbeam Alpine, like
the one in To Catch a Thief. I was looking at his
car; he was looking at some woman. I tripped, he
swerved, POW.”
“In the head.”
“Yup. Got a steel plate in there now.”
“You’re the first person I’ve ever met with a
real steel plate in their head.”
“I feel blessed.”
“Go on.”
“I’ll skim the rest. Worked in a restaurant in
the mid-nineties. The dishwasher exploded – the
machine, not the little Mexican guy – and shot pieces
of cutlery all over. I’ve got about five ounces of
stainless steel in various places. You can even feel
one of the fork tines here by my elbow. It’s stuck in
the bone.”
“That’s kinda creepy.”
“Two years later, broke my arm trying to leap
over a fence in England. Well, I made it over, I
guess, but I noticed my right arm was a little too
floppy. Snapped my forearm bones in half. One piece
of steel for each. All because I was in too much of a
hurry for some warm beer.”
“There’s something to be said for warm beer.”
“And it’s not very nice. Then we’ve got the nail
in my foot, the pin in my hip, the pacemaker…”
“Pacemaker?”
“Just kidding. But I do have a tattoo needle
stuck in one of my shoulder blades. Guy had a seizure
while tattooing that Chinese “Double Happiness” symbol
into me.”
“Irony.”
“Irony tastes like metal to me.”
“I like that.”
“Thanks.”
“I assume you have papers for all this when you
fly?”
“Yeah. They used to list it all, but after a
security guard hits about the sixth line he thinks
it’s fake and I get strip-searched. They eventually
shortened it.”
“To what?”
“’Extensive rebuilding has left a lot of metal in
this man.’”
“Kinda brusque.”
“But you get the point.”
“So, after all this shit, you just started
picking up signals? Like some kinda stupid 80’s
sitcom plot?”
“Nah, it didn’t work like that. I had to play
golf first.”
“You don’t strike me as the golfing type.”
“Miniature. I was lining up for the giant
hippo’s mouth when I got hit by lightning.”
“Ouch.”
“No shit. But by then I was used to that kind of
thing. The place left the burn-prints from my feet on
the Astroturf as some sort of weird memento.
Essentially, I got the Frankenstein start. IT’S
ALIVE! and all that. My friends were surprised that
*I* was. I’ve still got scars on my hands from where
the club’s plastic handle melted onto my skin.”
“So then you picked up radio signals?”
“Not immediately, no. Or maybe I did, but I was
too busy being in excruciating pain to notice. The
first thing I noticed wasn’t voices in my head, it was
that the Doctor thought I was having a heart attack
when he plugged me in at the hospital. EKG goes
crazy, Doctor screams for all these drugs, and one of
the nurses just grabs my wrist and tells him my pulse
is fine, the machine must be broken. I think he
looked a little disappointed. He came down off his
E.R. high and told me I’d be fine. I didn’t hear him,
of course. All I got was “Papa, can you hear me?”
really damn loud.”
“Yentl?”
“The hospital had a satellite dish.”
---
“I can hear cel phones, shortwave,
walkie-talkies, all of it. My brain is constantly
humming with the voices and noises, people whispering
love to each other, secret military transmissions,
music from Pakistan, it’s all in the air around us.
Which means it’s all through my body and all in my
head. It would be enough to drive a normal man mad.”
“So how do you handle it?”
“I’m not a normal man. And I’m already mad.
It’s just a matter of training yourself to filter the
noise and listen to the sound you want, you know?
Like how people can listen in on a single conversation
across a crowded restaurant.”
“So, you can do this with ambient signals, right?
What about things like the internet? Can you get on,
through wi-fi?”
“Wi-fi is cake. But I also have over 15,000
dial-up numbers for around the world in my head at any
given moment. All I have to do is stick my finger in
the jack and think one really hard.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“Nope. My body, as a result of my…unfortunate
condition which we spoke of earlier…carries a vaguely
controllable electric charge at any given moment.”
“How do you log on?”
“How do you breathe?”
“What about DSL?”
“Still need a modem for it, I’m afraid. But I
gotta be careful with that…T1, cable, all of it. That
shit’s like a drug to me. I get too much and it’s
hard to get out. And hitting 56k after that is like
begging for heroin and being given a menthol light.”
---
“I had a dream last night.”
“Good for you.”
“No, I don’t think you understand. Sleep is
usually eight hours of static for me.”
“Turn off, tune out, drop…something.”
“Sure. Anyway, you were in my dream.”
“Did I touch you in a bad way?”
“We were in Puerto Rico. The Arecibo Radio
Observatory.”
“The big satellite dish in the forest?”
“Yeah. You had flown me down there and were
trying to convince me to climb out onto the
scaffolding in the middle.”
“I flew you down there?”
“Yeah, on Eastern Airlines.”
“Why didn’t we take People Express, or Ozark?”
“They were all booked.”
“Figures.”
“Anyway, I eventually did climb out onto the
scaffolding with you right behind me.”
“I’m afraid of heights.”
“So you said. In any event, when we got to the
center, I went into some sort of trance. I could hear
cosmic rays, and neutrinos, and all of them being
projected up to collector array.”
“And did you get a message.”
“Yes. I did. But first my eyes started to
bleed. And then my ears. You told me you could hear
my skull grating along its seams. It felt like a
thousand points of light, all in my fucking frontal
cortex. Just when I knew my head was going to break,
I heard the voice.”
“The voice?”
“Yeah. It sounded kind of sad. It said, ‘Thanks
for sending Voyager 2. The gold record was nice. We
really liked the “sounds of nature” part. You know,
we’d really like to come visit…and help out…but…’
“But?”
“’We’re just as fucked as you are,’ he said.
‘Sorry. We’ll put the thing back in space for you…’”
“Damn that’s cold.”
“I know. Did they really have to tell us?
Couldn’t they have just let it be?”
“Maybe they just wanted us to know we’re not
alone.”
“Or maybe misery loves company.”
“Yeah. That was pretty rude.”
“We don’t need them, anyway. They sound like a
bunch of asshats.”
“Asshats, indeed. I need another coffee.”
---
benjamin sTone
---
benjamin writes to compositemolecules@yahoogroups.com
Everybody else comments at dead-horse@yahoogroups.com
Also archived online at
www.livejournal.com/users/benchilada
I think it'll be in the style of Barthelme's Q/A stories when it's done.
Or a two person play. Whatever. In any event,
I DEMAND COMMENTS!
This is what I'm willing to make public right now.
The last part is later on in the story, but so be it.
Like my writings, rants, etc?
Please tell a friend. :D
They can get the same content as my LJ at my Composite Molecules listserv.
Now, READ READ READ-->
---
“That woman’s boyfriend is cheating on her.”
“What?”
“See that woman over there? Red sweater, natty
hair?”
“Yeah.”
“She was just on her cel phone with her
boyfriend. She thinks he’s at home. He’s just
outside on the sidewalk. He peeked in to see if she
was really here drinking coffee. I wonder if he
thought she was cheating on him. Anyway, he just made
another call. It started with the words, ‘Hey, honey,
are you busy? I’ve got an hour or two on my hands,
and I was wondering if I could have you on my hands
for an hour or two.’”
“Jesus, people really say things like that?”
“Apparently so.”
“So now what’s he talking about?”
“Dunno, I spaced out for a second and started
listening to public radio. It’s that goddamned grain
futures and hog bellies show. I wonder if it bores
the shit of farmers, too.”
“So, let’s go back a bit.”
“I’ve lost him by now.”
“No, no, back to how something like this
happens.”
“Luck. Good or bad, depends on the day. Or
maybe the minute. Anyway, it started with braces.”
“Braces? Now I know you’re messing with me. Is
this going to be like when Lucille Ball claimed she
picked up Morse code from Japanese spies during World
War II through her fillings?”
“Yes, it is, and I have fillings, too. Old metal
ones. My family has an enamel deficiency, so we have
terrible teeth.”
“Urban legend bullshit.”
“Somebody once told me that it’s like those old
‘Build-Your-Own Crystal Radio’ sets. They had wire
wrapped around ceramic that worked as a receiver, and
if you were lucky you could pick up AM signals, from
close stations at least.”
“Huh. Learn something new every day.”
“Anyway, the braces weren’t too bad. It was
getting hit by a car that really fucked with me.”
“You were hit by a car?”
“In the head.”
“Fuck.”
“Beautiful car, too. Red Sunbeam Alpine, like
the one in To Catch a Thief. I was looking at his
car; he was looking at some woman. I tripped, he
swerved, POW.”
“In the head.”
“Yup. Got a steel plate in there now.”
“You’re the first person I’ve ever met with a
real steel plate in their head.”
“I feel blessed.”
“Go on.”
“I’ll skim the rest. Worked in a restaurant in
the mid-nineties. The dishwasher exploded – the
machine, not the little Mexican guy – and shot pieces
of cutlery all over. I’ve got about five ounces of
stainless steel in various places. You can even feel
one of the fork tines here by my elbow. It’s stuck in
the bone.”
“That’s kinda creepy.”
“Two years later, broke my arm trying to leap
over a fence in England. Well, I made it over, I
guess, but I noticed my right arm was a little too
floppy. Snapped my forearm bones in half. One piece
of steel for each. All because I was in too much of a
hurry for some warm beer.”
“There’s something to be said for warm beer.”
“And it’s not very nice. Then we’ve got the nail
in my foot, the pin in my hip, the pacemaker…”
“Pacemaker?”
“Just kidding. But I do have a tattoo needle
stuck in one of my shoulder blades. Guy had a seizure
while tattooing that Chinese “Double Happiness” symbol
into me.”
“Irony.”
“Irony tastes like metal to me.”
“I like that.”
“Thanks.”
“I assume you have papers for all this when you
fly?”
“Yeah. They used to list it all, but after a
security guard hits about the sixth line he thinks
it’s fake and I get strip-searched. They eventually
shortened it.”
“To what?”
“’Extensive rebuilding has left a lot of metal in
this man.’”
“Kinda brusque.”
“But you get the point.”
“So, after all this shit, you just started
picking up signals? Like some kinda stupid 80’s
sitcom plot?”
“Nah, it didn’t work like that. I had to play
golf first.”
“You don’t strike me as the golfing type.”
“Miniature. I was lining up for the giant
hippo’s mouth when I got hit by lightning.”
“Ouch.”
“No shit. But by then I was used to that kind of
thing. The place left the burn-prints from my feet on
the Astroturf as some sort of weird memento.
Essentially, I got the Frankenstein start. IT’S
ALIVE! and all that. My friends were surprised that
*I* was. I’ve still got scars on my hands from where
the club’s plastic handle melted onto my skin.”
“So then you picked up radio signals?”
“Not immediately, no. Or maybe I did, but I was
too busy being in excruciating pain to notice. The
first thing I noticed wasn’t voices in my head, it was
that the Doctor thought I was having a heart attack
when he plugged me in at the hospital. EKG goes
crazy, Doctor screams for all these drugs, and one of
the nurses just grabs my wrist and tells him my pulse
is fine, the machine must be broken. I think he
looked a little disappointed. He came down off his
E.R. high and told me I’d be fine. I didn’t hear him,
of course. All I got was “Papa, can you hear me?”
really damn loud.”
“Yentl?”
“The hospital had a satellite dish.”
---
“I can hear cel phones, shortwave,
walkie-talkies, all of it. My brain is constantly
humming with the voices and noises, people whispering
love to each other, secret military transmissions,
music from Pakistan, it’s all in the air around us.
Which means it’s all through my body and all in my
head. It would be enough to drive a normal man mad.”
“So how do you handle it?”
“I’m not a normal man. And I’m already mad.
It’s just a matter of training yourself to filter the
noise and listen to the sound you want, you know?
Like how people can listen in on a single conversation
across a crowded restaurant.”
“So, you can do this with ambient signals, right?
What about things like the internet? Can you get on,
through wi-fi?”
“Wi-fi is cake. But I also have over 15,000
dial-up numbers for around the world in my head at any
given moment. All I have to do is stick my finger in
the jack and think one really hard.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“Nope. My body, as a result of my…unfortunate
condition which we spoke of earlier…carries a vaguely
controllable electric charge at any given moment.”
“How do you log on?”
“How do you breathe?”
“What about DSL?”
“Still need a modem for it, I’m afraid. But I
gotta be careful with that…T1, cable, all of it. That
shit’s like a drug to me. I get too much and it’s
hard to get out. And hitting 56k after that is like
begging for heroin and being given a menthol light.”
---
“I had a dream last night.”
“Good for you.”
“No, I don’t think you understand. Sleep is
usually eight hours of static for me.”
“Turn off, tune out, drop…something.”
“Sure. Anyway, you were in my dream.”
“Did I touch you in a bad way?”
“We were in Puerto Rico. The Arecibo Radio
Observatory.”
“The big satellite dish in the forest?”
“Yeah. You had flown me down there and were
trying to convince me to climb out onto the
scaffolding in the middle.”
“I flew you down there?”
“Yeah, on Eastern Airlines.”
“Why didn’t we take People Express, or Ozark?”
“They were all booked.”
“Figures.”
“Anyway, I eventually did climb out onto the
scaffolding with you right behind me.”
“I’m afraid of heights.”
“So you said. In any event, when we got to the
center, I went into some sort of trance. I could hear
cosmic rays, and neutrinos, and all of them being
projected up to collector array.”
“And did you get a message.”
“Yes. I did. But first my eyes started to
bleed. And then my ears. You told me you could hear
my skull grating along its seams. It felt like a
thousand points of light, all in my fucking frontal
cortex. Just when I knew my head was going to break,
I heard the voice.”
“The voice?”
“Yeah. It sounded kind of sad. It said, ‘Thanks
for sending Voyager 2. The gold record was nice. We
really liked the “sounds of nature” part. You know,
we’d really like to come visit…and help out…but…’
“But?”
“’We’re just as fucked as you are,’ he said.
‘Sorry. We’ll put the thing back in space for you…’”
“Damn that’s cold.”
“I know. Did they really have to tell us?
Couldn’t they have just let it be?”
“Maybe they just wanted us to know we’re not
alone.”
“Or maybe misery loves company.”
“Yeah. That was pretty rude.”
“We don’t need them, anyway. They sound like a
bunch of asshats.”
“Asshats, indeed. I need another coffee.”
---
benjamin sTone
---
benjamin writes to compositemolecules@yahoogroups.com
Everybody else comments at dead-horse@yahoogroups.com
Also archived online at
www.livejournal.com/users/benchilada
