Kiddington Oh!

The Ironic Storm -- A Novel

2010-12-28T10:50:00.001-08:00

Chapter One

The Perfect Winter
 
 


    Gregor Strasser is a crab. He moves forward and he moves back but he scampers sideways. He lives and feeds on the boundaries. He consumes whatever the waves turn up. And when “folks” come down to the shore to sweep back the tides about to wash away the sand castles of their dreams he, Gregor Strasser, eats their brooms. This he cannot help doing. For he is a crab: a crab that sidled sideways out of landlocked Central Europe, but a crab nonetheless.   
    In a few hours one fall morning, back when Greg was still a British Billionaire and shortly before he moved to the US to become an American one, he made additional billions betting against a well meaning European politician who was fighting – in the very best sense of the word – for a new world free of avarice and, perhaps, crabs.    Here's the irony: Greg himself famously fights for the same world and supported this same politician in his idealistic endeavors. Read Greg's speeches and his many pronouncements to the press (on the occasions when he comes out of his shell) and you'll find them saturated with the most pleasing idealism – all the more pleasing for coming from such a realist.    Look at the think tanks, academics, charities and, yes, politicians he supports and you will find that they are not only well meaning but also mean well. Still, when their idealism beached a “dead as a door nail” beluga whale outside Greg's beach front villa, well, he fed. For he is a crab.
    It's all called “currency speculation.” Greg wasn't speculating when he projected the outcome of a bunch of political pugs (most of whom he knew personally) borrowing heavily to maintain their position in an international currency “peg” – which rhymes with beg. And so he fed.              
    After he became an American he facilitated a speculative spike in the dollar price of oil (tripling the price in six months) followed by a run on the dollar and the world banking system, all of which got a little wildly out of control and all but collapsed the global economy (but, hey, it needed a little collapsing) – good thing Greg brought what he set in motion to heel before the entire world went to hell.
    With its carpets the color of sand, both wet and dry, his office is a suitable habitat for just such a crab as he. Greg's desk is a large teak table. Perhaps it once formed the center of a pirate's mess. Weathered, it may have carried some pirate prince off a sinking ship and through the turbulent seas until he washed up on the Long Island shore (then built a beach front villa). The large computer monitor/TV sits to one side (he seldom uses it) and has a “coral reef” screen saver complete with the subtle sound of underwater waves and colorful fish swimming through the plasma.   Occasionally a predator hidden in the sand would pop-up and eat a passing fish – but only virtually, of course.
    It should be noted, lest anyone underestimate the man inside the crab, that Greg is quite charming in person and has a clever sense of humor. His humor is fun but it cuts and clips and consumes.  
    Of all this, and more, she reminded herself.  

    She would remain on guard. Greg could see she was on guard, though she did not want appear on guard.  Lunch was offered and refused.
    She looked away from Greg, and took a  few steps away as well.  The vertical green blinds across the wide picture window – turned partially open now – were made of harvested kelp, judging from the color, texture and appearance.  She looked through this kelp forest and out the window and down to the turbulent ocean. On that day the Atlantic was not at all pacific, sending huge waves crashing beyond the beach.  She watched gray clouds roil the dark sky over the cold, thick waters – dark gray meeting darker gray right where the horizon is lost. Bursts of icy rain splattered on the glass right in front of her nose but the sting and the wet of it did not penetrate. The wind howls like a billion damned souls and makes the entire building sway with a kind of thumb sucking rhythm -- while the waves outside almost seem to crash against the glass.
    It's the sort of weather to send even a crab scampering for shelter. It results from the unusually early “election day blizzard” reaching the Atlantic and strengthening into a Northeaster (“North Eater” was how Greg pronounced it, perhaps jokingly). The bundles of moisture it picks up over the ocean, it backhands onto the Northeast – as if the dump truck that hit 'em on the New Jersey Turnpike backed up and dumped all over them again -- adding another foot to the previous foot and a half.   But as bad as the weather was locally, it was events far to the Southwest, where Hurricane Crystal spread havoc along the coast of East Texas, that brought her to the meeting. 
    She turned toward Greg and watched him exam the paper she brought him.  She decided he even looked the crab. He leaned forward with his elbows splayed on the desk, and his husky frame appeared much wider than tall.   His hair is mussed and knotted on the sides but flat on the top – the result of constantly running his hand through his gray locks with each thought and patting down on the thin top as he decides (almost as one stroke: think, decide). As a result, his head looks almost as wide as his wide neck and even wider shoulders. 
    His Stylish glasses have a lot of goggle in them, so his eyes appear panoramic -- as if they could look forward and back and right and left all at the same time. But now they focus on the page in front of him – the color of blubber, it's held in both hands as if by claws. He uses his instincts as he devours – or rather reads – it. She's seen him devour before, but not quite like this day. It's that crack of a smile: as if he'd like an after-devouring mint and a bit of conversation.   She moves a few steps from the window to take her place in the deeply comfortable chair facing his desk.   Greg wore that crack of a smile as he sat back and removed his glasses – the better to focus on her. “So what's this Chattanooga choo-choo?” His stare encouraged the thought that he knew what she was thinking.  Of course he didn't, and on that assumption she preceded.
    “The sort of cute language that got him in trouble,” said Sandy, swaddled in her chair. 

    Sandy went well with the carpet. In fact, they had ended up on it a few times, but only after rolling off the couch (this subject was permanently off topic). Greg was an old guy but in one respect he was quite youthful: he was the world's richest and most powerful man, a fact no one mentioned but everyone acknowledged. Oh, there were those that said the President of the United States was the world's most powerful personage, but there were many checks on his power -- his own inhibitions perhaps the biggest one. Which is why Greg worked so hard getting a President in power whose only inhibitions were Greg's.
    Sandy got her name from her hair, which was the color of dry, sun baked sand. Her skin was the color of damp sand at sunset but unnaturally smooth – as if the epidermis had been applied with an air brush and buffed to a nice sheen. You could not see yourself in the finish but darn it, you just might want to. Her eyes were the green of warm, tropical seas.   Her thick lashes seemed a heavy weight on her lids, like those leather straps she sometimes wears on her wrist with pouches for little metal bars. She would do “the latte lift” when she wore those bracelets: one sip of coffee with her right hand, the next sip with her left. So let it be said: The thick mascara did not make her lids heavier, it made them stronger. 
    In short, Sandy was tall, agile, athletic, ambitious, attentive, attractive and an accountant.   Greg had many uses for accountants.   It occurred to Greg that he was surrounded by many peculiar people, most of them accountants, the rest lawyers and some, the really peculiar ones, both. In fact, come to think of it, Sandy was both.
    Greg opened his claws and allowed the paper to settle on the table top. “The Him you refer to, he is your cousin.” he said. Sandy had come out from Manhattan to see Greg. He often made people travel to see him. That way the difference in hierarchy became a geographic reality (he claimed he was being more “hands off” in his management). But today the Helicopter was not in operation. All the snow and rain made Manhattan much more snarly than usual, so the fact she made it out to see him was a testament to the importance she attached to this particular email. North of the City the snow was constant. Boston was buried under three feet and acquiring another layer of white shellacking. The northern part of flyover country – the Midwest and such – you could pretty much ski over. But where Greg was, near the shore, the storm was now -- almost -- a spent bullet: just a rush of rain amidst a constant drizzle turning to ice. Everything was coated in ice. Even the ice acquired coats of ice. 
    “Jimmy is my cousin-in-law, that's what he is. Or was. Ex-cousin in law. My cousin divorced him so he's not even that,” she said, as if he had sunk below the insects in her estimation. “Now he's just plain old Dr. Savannah,” she added, deciding to give him a promotion and perhaps a little extra credibility. Her lips puckered as if she sucked on something sour.
   Jimmy Savannah sounded like a name out of a romance novel – not that Greg read romance novels (at least not often). The email from Dr. Jimmy to Miss Sandy  had a familiar, teasing tone. The subject line said, The Perfect Winter. “Did you have an affair with him?”
    “Hardly. Jimmy's not my type.” 
    Greg smiled. He knew her type – and her type's type. He admired how she kept things in perspective.   Civilization's foundations may crumple but you still only want to be associated with a certain kind of lover. “I'm just trying to determine why he emailed you.”
    “Too gloat. With absolutely no reason to gloat, or so I thought when I first read it back in August.”
    “Obviously, you are much in his thoughts.”
    And why wouldn't she be? “Many years ago – well, not that many – I made him watch a movie about global warming--”
    “Him being your former lover.” He knew of only one reason Jim Savannah would watch that movie with her. The fact that Greg had bankrolled the film (and even made money on it, much to his amazement) didn't change his opinion. The movie in question featured Hal Bore, a Senator Greg had briefly wanted to make President.
    “Ex Cousin-in-law, is what he was. Is. Not lover, mine?” she corrected.
    “Was your cousin/his-wife present for the – presentation?”
    “She was! Out-ta town...”
    “So that night you seduced him, just out of curiosity.”
    She wondered whose curiosity he referenced, his own right now or hers back then? “Can I get on with the story? After watching the movie he looked into it – global warming – and came back saying that movie was 'an incredibly large and festering pile of hooey,' if I may use those words,  full of what he called 'lies' fronted by 'a carnie barker grifter and political hack.'  He called it an appeal to Con-Science -- using science as a front for a 45 trillion dollar con. He kept saying: Extreme Solutions Demand Extreme Problems. He thought he was making a point. So you see the type of person he is? Beyond reason. Cannot be reached by the most carefully prepared presentation."  Sandy and Jim talked about it over pizza.  He drank beer and she drank cola because, in theory, she wasn't old enough for beer. Jimmy was quite funny, and intentionally so, when he spoke of it, both the movie and the science.  And no, they had not had sex. She did not bother correcting Greg because he would only take it as confirmation and anyways, he wasn't off by that much. Still, she had a good time, even if  Jimmy stayed upright -- stayed staid, as it were.  Later, she'd decide that while Jimmy was too good a catch for her cousin, he wasn't quite good enough for her. "He said we are in an on-going ice age, one that's been around for twenty million years lah-dee-dah. The fourth, or fifth or 23rd, I forget, interglacial period with, on the numbers, glaciers due to start romping around the Northern US any day now. He told of cosmic rays causing sun reflecting high-cloud formation. Twelve of Fourteen triggers for a new ice age being present when you only need 11.8! He said, like, for 90 percent of the last gazillion years Cleveland Ohio has been under a mile or two of ice. He said: imagine being in Cleveland or Detroit with 8,000 feet of solid ice over your head?   I said I couldn't imagine being in Cleveland under those circumstances or any other.”
    “Or what you might wear.”
    One end of her mouth bent down. “Thing is, he's quite smart: math wiz, computer wiz, that sort of thing. No half measures. He goes all in. A genius, I think, but not at all geeky or nerdy when you can get him off topic. Rather cute, in fact.”
    Greg smiled. She did have an affair with him. She was a genius herself, but that still left considerable room for stupidity. “So to forget you – finally get you out of his mind after you'd destroyed his life and tossed him onto the dung heap – he began obsessing about climate change. He wanted to control the data streams in a way he could never control the woman of his dreams.”
    “Never looked at it that way.” But she had. Why else would he run away? He would find some place with a lot of peace and quite where he could obsess about her. It was the logical explanation. “Jimmy got a job at a small Catholic college northwest of Montreal. He used the computer in the Economics Department--”
    “Economics Department? I thought he was some sort of Climatologist.”
    She was silent for a moment. “Actually, he coaches Lacrosse.”
    Greg swirled round in his chair and looked out the window, through the gaps in the kelp colored blinds and out over the Ocean and into the swirling gray. He smiled. “I bet it keeps Jimbo's butt tight.” He couldn't help it. He laughed as he twirled back around.
    “I wouldn't know.” She kept it matter of fact. “I haven't seen him in many years. Well, not that many. One. Besides, he has other duties as well. Teaches a course in statistics and keeps the boiler running, too.” Of course Greg laughed some more.    But she may as well give it to him straight. If he was at all interested in what she had to say, and she figured he would be, he'd check it out thoroughly so she better not conceal any inconvenient truths. One truth: Jimmy has been quite a disappointment to her – until about eight hours ago, when she got a peak at the quickly suppressed “seven day forecast,” and compared it to an email she got a dozen  weeks before.
    “See, Jim figured when the glaciers come, they won't come slowly from the north, and grow toward the south, like most people assume. He figured they'd appear quite suddenly – geologically speaking but also in terms of a human lifetime. They would appear first north of the Ohio River and in the Great Lakes Region. The water's going to come from the South, carried north by storms, while the north provides the cold air.”
    “The Chattanooga choo-choo.” 
    “Well, to hear him explain it, it should be named after Memphis. I mean, if you have to name it after a city. I called it The Memphis Moon-bat express.” 

    If there was a snob in the office, intellectual or otherwise, it was Sandy, not Greg.   He took people as he found them and sized them up accordingly, focusing on what use they might be. But he was a man of several parts, and if you were not in his sights you likely encountered the pleasing ones. He was also a shrewd judge of people.   Sandy had a former lover who turned into a crackpot with unfashionable ideas – a guy subject to ridicule who threw his future down the drain – and found it a bit embarrassing.   Still, the fact she could assign herself as the cause for his downward spiral was, for her, a point scored. If she suddenly resurrected him, it would be another point scored. She's the score keeper. 
    Of course none of that mattered to Greg (though how Sandy came about her information did). Greg just wasn't that impressed by academic credentials. And this wasn't reverse snobbery. Every few years he took the time to teach a course at the London School of Economics – so that he could better fool the next generation of Central Bankers, on the evidence. But he saw, over the years, how Academia had morphed into a self-perpetuating bureaucracy that put its own interests first. Of course not everything they do is dog doo-doo, you just had to watch where you stepped.         
    A decade earlier a couple of Ivy league mathematicians had figured out a fool proof way to make money playing the markets. They had mathematical formulas to show how various prices moved in tandem: some went up when others went down. Big money men gave them a king's ransom – in fact, enough to ransom many kings – to play with. These fellows wore sweaters and carpet slippers to work and puffed on pipes with unlit tobacco in the bowls. And for a while they all had a serene, pleasing, and quite profitable time. It was as if Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood had launched a hostile takeover of Wall Street. 
    Then they showed up in his office one day asking him to lend them several billion dollars. Greg politely turned down this “investment” opportunity. Within a matter of days the news emerged that these guys had lost 80 billion buckaroos. Funny, it seemed like a lot at the time.
    Now, you would think their example would put an end to such arrangements but it did not. There were plenty of brilliant folks – hedge fund operators, they're called – who thought they were smarter then these previous brilliant folks. To Greg, that made them the greater fools in the greater fool theory -- but not quiet as foolish as the folks who gave them the funds and followed their lead.
    As for the latest fashion in Smart: It is true that Greg supported climate modeling with his own money, but he never put his faith in “models."   He “donates” money where his self-interests lie. He did not believe for a moment that anyone could model the climate a hundred years in advance. The Soviet Union could not model its own rundown economy and get enough sausage and bread into the one store allowed in each neighborhood, and those were the smartest guys that a well educated population of 300 million could produce. But the same guys were good at creating a demand for rockets and tanks, where too much was apparently never enough. They were good, in other words, at fudging until everything was totally fudged up. Having come of age in that sort of environment,   Greg was an expert at modeling the behavior of bureaucracies. He thrived in the space between the bureaucracies and the societies they mastered.   Global Warming Theory would greatly expand his ecosystem, so promoting it was his idea of altruism.
    He also knew that a million Pseudo Intellectuals sitting at keyboards would produce scenarios that will fit every conceivable occurrence.   But Sandy was smart as a whip and nobody's fool, not even his.   Jimmy's predictions from a few months before fit the last seven days and that impressed her. The fact that they also fit the current “seven day” forecast impressed them both. A train of storms, headed north, just like he said. The natural question: If he's not just one of millions of monkeys pounding a keyboard, how'd he do it?
    Greg picked up the email. “Your man is a prodigious prognosticator.”
    “Jimmy admits that it's tough to predict an event that happens four or five times every million years, but if you approach the task with sufficient humility--” Sandy almost smiled, then thought that might not be a good idea. She cleared her throat a bit. “The thing is, after I saw him last year he left me an encrypted manuscript that explains it all. The encryption is so fiendishly complex that not even the Federal Government with all it's resources could decipher it without the key. Or so he said. I figured it's a load of BS, of course, but took it just to keep him quiet.”
    “You made love to Jimmy last year.”
    “Is that a question?”     
    “You threw out this manuscript, this enciphered load of--”
    “I still got it, somewhere.”
    “There is a treasure map hidden in a sunken ship, to help us find this key, to decipher--”
    “No map. He wants me to come see him. And ask nice. I feel it in my bones.”   She had her own reasons to see Jimmy, some of which Greg could guess and others she hoped he didn't. “I am not the map. I am the legend.”
    “You are the key to the whole she-bang.” Greg smiled. He wasn't interested in a decade long lovers' spat. But if the World was about to take a turn toward a new destination, Greg wanted to be there when it arrived. Would deciphering this manuscript help? Would pretending it would help, help? Could giving Sandy what she wants ever be the right thing (for him) to do? Think, decide. “You do have plenty of stylish winter gear, don't you? According to this weather report,” Greg held up the email, “You will be needing it.” 
    Sandy knew not to put much stock in Greg's hints – he laid so many false crumb trails you'd think he shed croûtons wherever he went. But with the life of the nation about to turn into one long natural disaster – one compounded by the nature of her fellow creatures – she knew that in this hour of her nation's need she should take care of her needs. Of course she always felt that way, but her needs had suddenly changed. 
    Jimmy Savannah once told her that Irony slouches through human history, continuously born and never noticed. “It's like the dialectic of Marx and Hegel,” he told her, “except it runs in reverse.” At some point, he said, Irony might become a mere literary construct again but by that time we would no longer have literature: we will have dialed back past that.   She liked to conclude he was off his rocker but she never could so conclude, or rather did – often and in cycles: conclude, rethink, deconclude. 
    Now she had an example of Irony at work: her presenting Jimmy's memo on the Natural End of the Current Interglacial Period -- what Jimmy called "the Perfect Winter" -- to one of the great proponents of Man Made Global Warming. 
    But as Greg himself might put it: you're unlikely to lose money betting on his insincerity. Of course he would never say it himself or be pleased with the person who did.


    Nature shrugs.   Homo sapiens complain.
    It was the consensus of unscientific opinion that the Northern hemisphere had no summer that year. The planet experienced a cooling trend. Since it was caused by the Sun emitting less radiation (part of a normal solar cycle, but more normal than any on record), the reemergence of “cool” was treated as mere atmospherics – wearing jackets in July a new fashion trend that will soon pass.   The Usual Experts said it was a mere slowing of an over all warming trend caused by modern, Promethean man (especially the Promethean building, selling, and driving the SUV). So it would be Ironic, of course, if after spending trillions of dollars and turning the economy upside-down to prevent global warming, it all got iced over.
    But the winds and the currents often change, finding new ways to move heat and moisture around the planet or even rediscover old patterns. In the Southern U.S. the summer was cooler and wetter than normal, but hurricane season was almost nonexistent. Hurricanes get their energy from warm surface water and in the process of feeding draw up cooler water from the depths. The Gulf Stream, which moves warm surface waters from the tropics to the North Atlantic, had weakened considerably in the Northern Branch, petering out before reaching the British isles. In fact, the warm current now made a hard right off the coast of Spain and flowed back to the tropics along the West Coast of Africa, so the waters north of the equator became even warmer, enabling the surface heat to build up later in the year. So hurricane season wasn't called off, it was back loaded.
    Ice in the arctic – both on land and sea – had returned with a vengeance. Less fresh water ran into the seas adjacent Greenland and Canada, changing the balance of fresh water and salt water.   The waters that feed The Labrador Current (the Gulf Stream's Cool Cousin) became a little colder, a little more salty and a little more dense. They submerged before reaching New England, so ironically as the current became colder the surface waters off Cape Cod became a bit warmer. But just like baseball is a game of inches, nature is often a game of degrees. 
    That Spring in The Great Lakes Region the trees had kept their buds for an unusually long time – as if the alarm clock had gone off after a hard winters night and the foliage was trying sleep in, despite all the racket and the bright light. Eventually, the plants pushed out some leaves and then acted like it was a bad idea.   The lake ice on the “North Coast” hung around well past Easter. April lasted through the Fourth of July and October arrived before Labor Day. It was as if the top of the globe wore “a helmet of cold, dense air” (as one lesser commentator put it) which slowed the normal circulation of warm air up from the tropics. Soon people just called the weather phenom “the Helmet,” and soon, “Helmut” – as if it were a mischievous red faced drunk escaped from an Oktoberfest in Budapest.   So the weatherman said, “Helmut has brought us clear skies and chilly temperatures for the fourth of July” or “Helmut has only brought a pause in the warming of the globe.” Others would add the expletives. Farmers demanded help, even more than usual. But they were not sure of getting it, not by a long shot. 
    Because problems a lot more severe than canceling the Fourth of July picnic due to the cold developed. As a result of a prolonged drought and fuel build up in the forest of the Pacific Northwest, unstoppable forest fires (set off by dry thunderstorms) began to rage from northern California to British Columbia. Dry winds fanned the fires to a high heat and not just homes, but towns and cities, went up in whirlpools of   flame. The amount of energy released was compared to a series of nuclear blasts – a long series. It was suggested that the Air Force could drop fuel-air explosives as a way of snuffing the fires.    The current occupant of the White House had run against the use of fuel air explosives and for not tampering with nature. So using fuel air explosives to tamper with nature, regardless of the practical effects, required further study.   
    The fires were termed a “Once in one thousand year” event: Cold comfort to the hundreds of thousands made homeless. In the Midwest a haze from the fires spread across the sky, so Helmut now wore sunscreen.
    It was a hard fire season in Southern California as well, but with a twist. Instead of fires they suffered constant rain, with hillsides turning to mud and flowing towards the Pacific Ocean.   A 6.8 earthquake turned the rain soaked soil into pudding and spread structural collapse into areas not affected by the slides – with widespread loss of life and limb added to the toll on property and business.   
    The Federal Government, which lately spent feverishly to save everything from banks to baby boutiques in the face of a severe economic downturn, now faced demands that it finance the rebuilding of the West coast to the tune of two trillion dollars. A trillion was the new billion, so two of them didn't sound like all that much.   The Politicians, anxious to keep their jobs in a tough economic environment, told the Treasury to reach down into its deep pockets – so deep they apparently reach to China – and come up with the money. By September promises were made, and checks that could not be allowed to bounce were written. New taxes – called anything but – were muted and quickly took effect. These joined a recent dizzying array of progressive taxes increased, loopholes closed, deductions canceled, fees increased, and expensive “licenses to pollute” required – all previously enacted by the same congress.. 
    Given what was happening out in the Far West, folks having to cancel their swim dates because it was too cold hardly had reason to complain. And if they did, someone would tell them “Homeowners are being burned alive in Oregon trying to stand up to the flames.” Others might say they are witnessing “the fire next time” since God promised Noah he would not again use water to destroy the world. Then someone would point to the mudslides in Southern California, where water was in the mix. 
    But what about the combination of fire, mud and ice? Before the fall had passed the people of the Northern Great plains and the Great Lakes – and most who live further south – would have reason to wonder. 

    Pitch Sanders ran a business called Great American Deconstruction, Salvage and Restoration. Usually called American Salvage -- or more informally Ass-save --  the "yard" is  located in Brood Eskers, a lake front working class town near Cleveland. It took its name from several eskers in the area – ridges of gravel and sand left by streams that flowed under and out of the glaciers that brooded above them for thousands of years. They would erode the ice above and lay down sediment below like an upside down stream. When the glaciers left, the geological features looked like embankments from a failed railroad speculation. Pitch's “yard” occupied a small abandon gravel pit that had gnawed at the confluence of two of these ancient streams.
    Looking at Great American, many would say “What's so great?” There were even a few who might ask, “what's so American?” Pitch was an Arab American but he'd pitched the Arab part long ago. True, it's tough to escape your past but sometimes you can out run it. In any case, he left the tribal hatreds of his parents homeland behind him when he joined the American Tribe (he was still trying to sort out the clannish animosities he found around Cleveland but really, who had that much time?). Pitch got his name because he was a natural born hurler who came to the game baseball too late in life to make it to the majors. 
    In Cleveland it was the start of what Jimmy Savannah (weather gadfly? prophet? Gifted climatologist?) called, in his eponymous e-mail,  “The Perfect Winter.”   On September 15 they had their first Lake Effect snowfall, which melted the next day. Similar snow falls, mixed with heavy rain, followed. They were having November in September, no surprise after October came in August. 
    October brought December, which would stick around for awhile. Weather events in the west would again impact their lives. Humid air off the Pacific brought the rain that quenched the fires of the Northwest. Then the warm moist air crossed the Rockies and traveled down the east side of the range where it mixed with cold air over the prairies of Canada. An “Alberta Clipper” developed that moved at great speed across the Northern US. This brought 6-8 inches of snow to the Great Lakes on Halloween and the first subzero wind chills on All Saints Day. So far, so not-so-good.
    But that, apparently, was the appetizer for the coming snow banquet.   Clippers, it seems, develop a pulse, and another returned in a few days that lured a low pressure system out of the Panhandle area of Texas.   The two systems rendezvoused where the Mississippi meets the Ohio and brought what was called the “Election Day Blizzard” to the upper Midwest and Great Lakes region. The additional 18 inches of snow it dumped north of the Ohio River gave everyone a bad feeling about the coming winter – technically not due for another 8 weeks. Then the stormed backhanded them with another foot-- more in New England. Three feet in about a week. They dug out -- helped by a partial thaw that turned both the ground and the snow soggy. 
    Pitch's business tended to be feast or famine. He liked to feast frequently and fast fast. Right now the weather was preventing any feasting so he wanted to clear away the snow fast. Another blizzard – Spawned by Hurricane Crystal – was heading their way so he had to find new places to put the snow, even if he had to create his own glacier.
    He had two of his workers, Pirate and Paul, with him. Paul was a Lebanese Christian who had trained as a civil engineer but only briefly became one. Bearded and bedraggled, he had an aura of a person that some unknown tragedy befell. 
    Pirate was lanky and strong. His tragedies were known but largely forgotten – at least by him. His mother was a drug addict with a series of live-in boyfriends. He wore a patch over one eye, the result of some fight or beating he took.    At one point Pirate took to living, quite uninvited, in the wrecking yard. One day he stole a bit of salvage and took it around front and tried to sell it back to Pitch. To Pitch the choice was clear: he could either kill the kid or take him in. He took him in -- in part because his own kids were on the way out. That was a dozen years before.   
    Pirate was quite outgoing and would talk incessantly to the silent Paul – who mostly listened – and to Pitch, who mostly didn't. 
    Now Pirate was telling Paul about a dream he had. “It was a god awful dream. It took place in Chinatown. I don't know where this Chinatown was, may have been in China. This dream was crazy-confusing. This tall, lanky bearded Guy – who ain't Chinese at all – shows up and starts organizing stuff. And he's making this really awful dream really boring."  He meditated a moment on the problem.  " I woke up and I thought, who was that guy?”
    “Well?” asked Paul, like he was impatient for the answer.
    “You know him. It was Carter Richard-son-son-son. I think he was The Third Son of The Third Son.” 
    “The big guy with the six pack?” asked Paul.
    “Six pack? You mean of beer. It was never the same six pack, Paul, and it wasn't a six pack for long.”
    “Well, he used to drink them,” he said, by way of explanation.
    “So I'm laying in bed thinking: what the hell is Carter doing in my awful dream making it really boring?” 
    “Organizing it?” Paul suggested.              
    “Right, but even more on topic the guy ain't been around for like a decade.”
    “He moved to Syracuse.”
    “So what's he doing in my dream?”
    “Organizing it.”
    “No! Yes. I mean, what brought him to my mind in such a way that he could shoe-horn himself into my dream in that weaselly way of his?”              
    As Paul considered this he looked like he was doing a calculus problem in his head. In fact, he probably was doing a calculus problem in his head. He found it calming. “If yesterday you heard a song you both liked--”
    “Get out of here! But not yet. No. It was you telling me about that lady.”
    “Oh.” Some how he knew it was his fault.
    “The one with the seven dogs that she got all at the same time. That they're all ten years old now and getting sickly.”     
    “Right. I did say that.” May as well 'fess-up.
    “Well, Carter lived in her basement! Don't you see? Carter trades living in her basement for Syracuse, and she goes out and gets ten dogs!”
    “Seven.”
    “Point is: how'd she arrive at that number?”
    “Well, they was puppies when she got 'em.” Paul was never afraid to point out the obvious. “And suppose, just supposing, she got the puppies and then Carter said 'I ain't living with seven dogs' and then moved to Syracuse.”
    "Ah! A different cosmetology.   You rearrange the time line into a spit curl and invert the cause and effect relationship. But you forget one thing. Carter liked dogs. He'd have never gone to Syracuse if she got those dogs first. On cold winter nights they would've all slept together on a shag carpet, as happy as fleas. You're leaving out the human factor, Paul.” 
    Pitch thought this was a good time to interrupt.   He didn't want Paul considering the human factor, at least with Pirate as his guide. But Paul had something else to say and went on and said it. “When you first said a lanky bearded guy showed up to straighten things out, I thought you would say it was Jesus Christ.” Pitch and Pirate both regarded Paul with a momentary look of wonder. Because neither Paul nor Pirate was religious. 
    “Come to mention it,” said Pirate, “he wasn't. Because Jesus is identified with wine, not beer. Of course, wine weren't his defining characteristic. But beer sure was Carter's. Wouldn't you say so, Boss?”
    But Pitch didn't say. Instead he told Pirate to stack up wrecks to make a space where they could park all that snow they were expecting. Pirate had an uncanny ability to stack wrecks so they didn't tumble over like dominoes but could still be easily disentangled when needed. Paul was genius good at taking things apart and putting things back together again – even when Pirate stupidly mixed the parts up, he could put them together (Pirate had only done that once, but it was enough to earn him a rep).   So Pitch had Paul take stuff apart. And later maybe even put some things back together.
    Then Pitch left the men to their work. And he climbed to the top of the old Victorian mansion adjacent the wrecking yard where he lived. From the dormers he could see the choppy waters of Lake Erie. It was an eerie sight for this time of the year.  Iced that formed on the surface -- flotsam from the recent storm -- broke apart and was pushed to the Northeast by the wind while it melted like cubes in a cold drink.  Pitch walked to another dormer, one looking to the south, and he saw the brooding clouds stacked up over the horizon, the color of ancient ice below and the feathery white of the freshest snow above. In the cloud he saw a flash of lightening. Strange days indeed. Below he could see his “back yard” – the former gravel pit embraced by the arms of the two glacier hollowing streams that met there in a previous epoch.. It contained the metal bones and wire pickings -- far less than in previous years -- of the plant and equipment Pitch “recycled.” There were also junk trucks and cars, some stacked awaiting the crusher.   The “side yard” contained outbuildings where much of the valued “finds” were kept. Pitched figured ten percent of most things contained 90 percent of the value.   He did not include humans in these calculations for the true value of a human is in their spirit and only God could measure that. Pitch, however, felt free to guestimate.
    He turned his attention to the room and to the beds sealed in plastic. In the hay days of his business, when Great American engaged in the deconstruction of entire factories, Pitch would surge skilled workers in and out town, according to the needs of the project. His home became a boarding house where they would stay for days or weeks while Pitch kept them fed and sober and hard at work. Sometimes these men would disappear for months and then return for another stint. Some of these “working class guys” acquired small fortunes but their real status among their peers came from being good men to have around in tough situations. 
    Pitch decided to talk to his wife, Kim. With the approaching storm, they might be putting the beds back in use.  In the past, tough times had been good to him.  But this time these times were just going to be tough.



Chapter Two: When Crystal Met Helmut

Pillars of Fire

2010-12-26T08:39:00.000-08:00

Note: This is back-story for a new character (and sub-plot) I'm inserting into The Ironic Storm. I'm also trying out a new "indented paragraph" format.

Kelly lived most of his life in a ranch house in suburbia. His wife, Brenda, worked as a nurse and was proud of the contributions she made to the family budget. He mostly stayed home with the kids. In fact, it was the need for high quality daycare that made him accept the mind-bogglingly huge amount that was offered for his “package,” which enabled communication satellites to increase their data loads exponentially. It is perhaps ironic that after accepting the offer he never bought the daycare. He just handled it himself with some help from a elderly lady in the neighborhood whose lawn he mowed.

On their first date he’d explained to Brenda what he was working on. She only agreed to go out with him a second time if he would not do that again. “Don’t mention what’s going on at your office,” she said, “unless some disgruntled employee comes in and shots twelve people or something.”

“My office is more my business address. You see, I do my real work--”

“Stop it!” she said.

She only agreed to the second date because she hoped to make another boy jealous, although when she thought about it later she realized that going out with a guy who thought you became a success by dropping out of college was not likely to achieve the result. On the second date Kelly did not talk much -- mostly listened to her -- and what he did say was complementary and she had a rather good time.

It is true: When he stopped to pick her up, he complimented her on her shoes. Around this time the story broke that Imelda Marcos, wife of the Philippine dictator of the day -- had thousands of pairs of shoes (Kelly heard some peasant mob had broken into her closet warehouse). From the stories that surrounded this discovery, he surmised that females in general had a fixation on shoes because they had gone barefoot for a million years while having to stitch up genuine leather moccasins for the men to wear -- and stylish ones, to boot. In any case, he decided to complement her shoes and when they met for the date said, “Nice shoes!” Then he realized that he had not actually looked at her shoes and when he did he was relieved to see that they were, in fact, nice -- if somewhat small considering the size of her feet.

So he never much discussed his work with his wife. From the start his little “start-up” brought in enough that, together with his wife’s income, they could buy a nice ranch house in the suburbs. By that time they had two children. When his “start-up” sold his “package” for “quite a bundle,” he did try to tell his wife of their good -- in fact gigantic -- fortune. He said, “You know, I finished up that project and if you like, we can pay off the house, or get that in-ground swimming pool, or even --”

But then the phone rang and his wife went to answer it so he never got to finish what he was saying, which was “or even a twenty room mansion or a 50,000 acre ranch!” He was trying to be effusive -- effervescent! -- which admittedly did not come naturally to him. He had given it some thought beforehand and decided now was the time to try effervescent on like a Hawaiian shirt and one of those little cone hats with a tassel coming out the top (if such thing actually exists). But having tried on the metaphorical Hawaiian shirt it felt like wearing a bear skin coat on a hot July day. So while she was on the phone he reconsidered mentioning the 50,000 acre ranch. He did not mean it as a serious suggestion but still, what if his wife liked the idea? They would end up getting a 50,000 acre ranch and then what would happen? He would like living there and she wouldn’t (the ten minute drive to the front gate would account for both reactions). So he decided not to mention the fifty thousand acre ranch or, for that matter, the twenty room mansion. He even wanted to take back the part about the in-ground swimming pool (lucky for him she wasn’t listening when he mentioned it). It was on account of that fortuitous phone call that Kelly got what he wanted -- which was basically nothing.

So, not much changed around the Kelly household after he scored it big. He was, to outside appearances, now unemployed. His wife was working and he was watching the kids, and, apparently, keeping house. He was doing house work (it helped him think) but in addition he tied up more loose ends than he anticipated from the sale of his “package.” He also invested in the stock market at a time when it was tough to go wrong -- and in fact he went very right, investing heavily in high-tech start ups. It was probably the most fun and excitement someone could have working from a home office and still wrap things up in time to pick up the kids from school.

Then the ladies at the small hospital where his wife worked -- the ladies who ran the place -- thought he was getting a little too comfortable in his role as “house-husband.” He was the guy who stopped over and hooked up their VCR’s to their TV’s and showed them how to “program” it. Brenda led them to believe that the little contributions he made to the family budget came from the work he did helping people with their computer problems. So the ladies hired him to help them with their computers at the hospital. At first he just stopped by and organized the wire jungle -- to make it easier to tell what led where in the ad-hoc arrangements that was installed by different vendors. Then he helped them with the choice of Hardware and software.

He studied a company that was developing management information systems for hospitals. He thought what the founders were trying to do was a bit too ambitious and got them to dial it back a bit and add some features that the people using the system might like. In return he invested heavily in their enterprise and installed the system in the hospital run by the ladies to give it a real world test. While hanging around the hospital he had some ideas in the area of medical imaging technology and micro-surgery that would later yield some good results, and he provided what was called “seed money” to help bring them to market.

About that time his son got interested in football and he volunteered as an assistant coach and so the whole “revolution in the practice of medicine” thing got less of his attention.

Basically, Kelly lived a peaceful, uneventful life and liked it that way.

Then his wife died because maybe he didn’t work harder to speed the application of those technologies he invested in, so the advances were not available when she needed it but it’s no use kicking oneself over stuff like that. By the time his wife died their kids had gone off to college and a very strange silence settled over the house and on his life and sort of crept into his soul and he entered the period he called the doldrums. It was his copping mechanisms which would lead him out of his personal doldrums and into the Doldrums of the torrid zone in that place of climate calm (for the most part).

Turns out his personal doldrums came in the middle of that period of life -- spanning several decades -- when it is said males are naturally depressed. He thought the knowledge that it was all a conspiracy of nature would help to see him through but it didn’t. He took up smoking cigarettes and drinking beer and fixing stuff in his garage until he got in trouble with the zoning board because of the old cars in the drive and in the back yard. He wanted to find an old building and open a business where he fixed stuff but found it easier to sell his house and move to another state (which offered income tax advantages in any case). So he bought an old building in small town near the gulf coast and turned it into a kind of work shop where he could fix cars and stuff. His new surroundings and his new business did help his mood a bit by channeling his thoughts in a different direction.

After working in his shop he would stop off in a bar where he would have a few drinks with recently unemployed oil field workers. Apparently, it was decided that America didn’t do that sort of thing anymore. There were also machinist, mechanics and millwrights from closed factories. Apparently, it was decided America didn’t do that sort of thing anymore, either. And there were a couple of engineers whose style of engineering was no longer in style.

Now it so happens that one afternoon they began arguing about the colonization of outer space -- which seemed to appeal to everyone sitting at the bar because they didn’t have much to do on planet earth. This naturally led them to talking about ways of launching rockets -- plasma rockets and nuclear rockets and whatnot. Kelly suggested shooting it out of the barrel of a gun, the way Jules Verne did in From the Earth to the Moon. Now, he was joking when he put the idea forth but then had to defend it from the ridicule of the others. He said people won’t accept plasma powered rockets launched from earth because the engine would be characterized as a city killing ray gun. And of course nuke rockets would be a non-starter, PR wise.

“And a really, really big cannon ain’t.” retorted one of his friendly antagonist.

“It will be pointed up,” said Kelly. “It will be moonkind, not mankind, that will fear this gun. We’ll just have to shoo away the birds before launch.” This was greeted with laughter, as was intended.

Someone used a laptop computer to bring up an image of the original moon rocket -- the Saturn V. Kelly pointed at the picture. “That rocket is about as tall as a forty story building. Do it make sense to launch a sky-crapper into orbit?” Kelly meant to say “skyscraper” but he’d had an extra beer (or two or three) and it came out crapper and everyone laughed.

This got him thinking over a period of days about colonizing space and the nature of the “super heavy lift” rocket such an effort would require if it was to ever get off the ground -- literally as well as figuratively -- and up to LEO (low earth orbit). Following the habit of a lifetime, after investing a certain amount of thought, he was inclined to invest a certain amount of money.

When he went home that night he looked at the original moon rocket on his own computer. It was tall and skinny to help minimize resistance from the air during the initial launch. Kelly decided not to do that. He decided to make the air his friend instead of his enemy. So he figured if the Saturn V was 365 feet tall, his rocket would be 36.5 feet tall. If it were 33 feet in diameter, his would be 330 feet. Increasing the diameter hugely increased the area of “the disk.” The disk at the base of the Saturn V contained about 123,000 square inches. The rocket weighed 6.7 million pounds -- about 55 pounds per square inch. At 330 feet his disk would contain 12,310,000 square inches and weigh about 5.5 pounds per square inch -- about 67 million pounds. In his drunkenness he thought the idea simple. He’d use something like a canon to accelerate the vehicle to supersonic speeds, then, when it entered the atmosphere, scoop in the air in front, compress it, mix it with fuel, and turn it into thrust behind. He thought the wider and flatter the better -- more air to scoop in to mix with more fuel to produce more upward thrust. Even drunk he thought this would be something like launching a football stadium into orbit -- although in the end “the spider” looked nothing like a football stadium. And his Friends from the bar who saw the models he produced some months later thought it looked like a medieval castle with turrets or perhaps a Cathedral with flying buttresses and gargoyles -- depending on the angle viewed and the imagination of the viewer.

But that night the thought of launching football stadium -- even a small one -- into orbit made him laugh. Because he knew he was about to spend his entire fortune -- scores of billions of dollars -- trying to prove out perhaps the most foolish notion a man has ever had. But then, what were the alternatives? Leave the money to charity? Create a foundation that will be taken over by people who despise guys like him? He would sooner go to the moon.

The Ironic Storm

2009-11-26T13:28:00.000-08:00

I'm working on a Novel called The Ironic Storm but lately I have been working more at work and less on the book. However, with the arrival of cold weather I hope to get back to it.

The Ironic Storm deals with the onset of a new ice age. I am posting the first draft here at "Kiddington, Oh!" If you'd like to read it and leave suggestions, feel free.

Chapter One is here.

Chapter Two is here.

Chapter Three is here.

Chapter Four is here.

Chapter Five (part one) is here

Chapter Five (part two) is here

The Rest of Chapter Six

2009-08-30T11:49:00.000-07:00

The first part of Chapter Six dealt with the back-story of Al Insky and Bill Haley (the President and his Machiavelli in "The Harbinger of Change") and Greg Strasser's minion, Sandy (in Flexi). Sandy may be making plans of her own, and could make the leap from minion -- but to what?

With this installment I begin to toggle back and forth between the town in Ohio where people fight for survival and a series of meetings in Washington, DC, where they fight for advantage. The first meeting is used to provide some context in the greater world for the events described.

The Mighty

2009-08-30T09:13:00.000-07:00

Pirate would have heard the warning sounds if he kept the windows down as Rod instructed. But a few minutes after leaving the buried tractor trailer and the body of its forlorn driver, Pirate raised the windows on the snogo to sneak a little heat, and punched a CD into the music player. Distracted, he only saw the ice monster, the soul robber of snow fields, as it pounced. The Wide Winged Beast, this crusher of mortals, bounded from among the drifts, blasting through the tops of the the buried trees -- clanking and snarling as it pounced, wide tracked, on the slow snogo Pirate drove. Pirate shifted the converted SUV into second gear as he accelerated, spinning the steering wheel right through the steering inhibitors of recent design. The vehicle spun out of its makeshift tracks and into a shallow chasm in the snow -- a snogo no mo' but out of the clutches of the beast.

The windows were up and buried in the snow. But Pirate could, if he took his coat off, skinny through the sun roof or try the rear hatch with his coat on. He climbed over the two cases of frozen Pizza and the tool box and shovel toward the rear hatch.

But he stopped. He heard foot steps in the snow outside. And then a voice, tentative and inquiring, "You OK."

"I'm suffering Post Traumatic Stress Disorder-ly, ah, conduct! And it was your conduct that was disorderly." Pirate liked the world to know when it caused him stress. "And if OK is being buried alive in a glacier, I'm OK."

"You exaggerate," said Rod.

"What the hell you doing here anyway."

"I came looking for you."

"Well, I ain't found until I'm out of here."

"I'll dig out the back a bit and you can come out that away."

Pirate heard steps go and come back. He wanted to harangue Rod but Rod was a stoic and wouldn't harangue back. He would just absorb the harangue like a black hole sucking in matter. It would make him heavier, too, adding weight and gravity to his moroseness. Rod took things personal, and would act wounded and then Pirate would have to apologize but that wouldn't be enough. And then Rod would be there, Obese in his moroseness, which he would wear like a fat suit. Besides, a harangue would make Rod dig slower and cause Pirate to be stuck inside longer. On the other hand, a good harangue would pass the time nicely. Finally, Pirate compromised by crawling up front and putting the music on. Whatever this music was it was lousy music, some screechy, angry girl, not at all like lady Rose, who he now kind of missed and who bellowed like a woman, not some ditsy girl angrily screeching out lyrics that should have been done like a polka -- the My Guy's a Bug polka. So Pirate turned it back off. About that same time the back hatched popped open.

Pirate was set to climb out but Rod began climbing in. "I hope you don't want to cuddle," said Pirate.

"Ah-huh!" said Rod. "You broke the steering limiters."

"Inhibitors," corrected Pirate. "I broke the steering inhibitors. I'm an uninhibited guy. Besides, it was either that or death. What the hell is that thing you're driving? You were driving it, right?"

"Oh, that?" said Rod. "That's the Cold Rod. It's like a hot rod--"

"Only, Cold! Ain't it kind of vain, naming it after yourself?"

"It ain't named after me," Rod said, modestly. "Why don't you straighten out the steering wheel and turn the snogo off. It's going to melt its way down to China."

Pirate realized the snogo's engine still ran. He straightened out the steering wheel and turned off the ignition before climbing out.

The cold rod was a white four-wheel drive pick-up truck perched on top of four pairs of tracks -- one pair for each wheel. The tracks stuck out beyond the front and back end of the truck above, and stuck out on each side as well. The truck wheels didn't have tires, but instead gears that linked into other gears that reached down between the tracks to drive them. The truck was grimy, but the same light gray as the snow. But the tracks and metal below were brown, black, and dark gray, while the driver's cab windshield was the navy blue of a cyclops' eye. "The cold rod has articulated steering," said Rod. "As it moves, hydraulics can nudge the front tracks to the right or left. It's got a high steering radius. So you got to think in terms of curves, rather than angles. So it's not real articulate."

"Inarticulate," Pirate corrected. He thought Rod might be trying to make a joke and, being a nice guy, Pirate thought he'd help. "Us articulate people call it 'inarticulate.' That's not meant as a criticism, by the way, leveled by an articulate guy against the other sort. However, in this case inarticulate steering may not be the right term. I'd call it, let's see, stutter steering."

"Stutter steering," said Rod, with a precisely measured packet of mirth. "Stutter steering, that's good."

Rod tried to pull something he identified as "the sled" off the back of his truck -- or Cold Rod, as he called it. It was a predominately flat piece of wood and plastic. Pirate thought it only proper he help, and grabbed one side. Once they had it positioned, Rod took a cable and hooked it up to the SUV and quickly had it out of the shallow snow chasm, and took a look at it. "The tracks held up OK. They didn't slip off until you broke the steering limiters."

"Inhibitors," Pirate corrected.

"Point is, it was driver error."

"What you mean by driver error?"

Rod paused, while his mind retrieved the mechanics definition of the term. Pirate didn't want to hear it. "Ain't it Ironic," he said, as he allowed Rod to return to work. "There are two vehicles on the road in all north Ohio and they get in a wreck in the middle of a farmer's field. Explain that one to the insurance agent."

"When you alter the vehicle enough," said Rod, as the power winch pulled the snogo/SUV onto the sled, "You are no longer covered under your old policy."

"They are still licensed vehicles," said Pirate.

"Licensed for what?"

"You mean," Pirate mused, "We are operating outside the law? Floating above the regulations? But without permission?"

Rod worked rather than mused. As he lashed the Snogo to the sled he said. "Go on. Get in the cab of the Cold Rod and get warm. I'll be done in minute."

"It's Monster Ice, not Cold Rod," Pirate corrected. "The Monster Ice Tracked...The Monster Ice Tracked Incisor, we'll call it Mighty!"

"Incisor? Isn't that like a tooth?"

"Tracked...tracked engine. Monster Ice Tracked what I said. Mighty."

"Wouldn't that be MITE? As in tiny insect--or maybe an expression of probability? Might be this. Might be that."

"Mighty! We are going to pronounce it Mighty. It don't matter what the acronym is, see? No more acrimony about acronyms! We can always stick in something to give it the sound of 'why?' at the end. Or is it e?" Pirate was about to give up on naming things. It seemed like mind stretching work, at least with Rod around. "Well, one thing I learned: you can work and be picky at the same time. You driving?"

"Damn straight I'm driving."

Pirate found getting into Mighty mighty difficult. That is because the cab of mighty was mighty high -- the High and Mighty Command Cab, as it were. He first got onto the front passenger side pair of tracks, but found he could not open the door and stay on the tracks. Then he got on the back pair and found he couldn't open the door. So he got off the tracks to open the door and found he was sinking into the snow, which began to give way under him and soon got in his boots. So he got back on the front pair to open the door and on the back pair to climb in. Only it was more of a stretch and a crawl to get off the rear track and into the cab and as he did it he realized how tired he was. It took Pirate so long to get in that Rod got in at almost the same time.

Rod put his seat belt on, so Pirate did the same. "The wide tracks make it stable," said Rod, "as long as the snow crust don't give way under it." He put it into gear. "The gear ratio is altered a bit. Normally, you start this baby out in second. But since we're pulling a load, I'll start in first." Rod directed mighty along Pirates old track for a bit and then veered off, following the track that Mighty had put down earlier. They crossed Brood Creek, which emptied into the lagoon on the lake, using a bridge which had snow piled on top between the bridge supports. The Mighty had busted through before, and just barely passed under the central support beam. On the other side of the bridge there was a deep dip in the landscape of snow and the track led under some utility wires and then came out near the bank of the creek. Pirate briefly feared that the sled with the snogo attached mighty slide down the bank and into the creek. But Rod seemed unconcerned. He was near his garage and handy to equipment that could handle most challenges he would encountered. For him any screw up would just provide more enjoyment. He was the sort that could finish one crossword puzzle and immediately start another. Pirate felt one should savor one's accomplishments for a while, or for a long while -- depending on the accomplishment.

They dropped off the snogo on a snow platform by Rod's garage and then Rod told Pirate they had an errand to run. Pirate wanted to get back and take a nap but he was trapped into going along.

Rod took the Mighty down a trail someone had marked for him. Fairly soon they came to the farm field with the cattle grazing on the hay the farmer had dug out. It was, in fact, the same field Pirate and Fred had commented on earlier. Rod and Pirate used the power winch to drag hay bundles out from under snow and position them so they could be accessed after the next series of storms. Then they loaded a hay bundle onto the sled, apparently by way a payment (though Pirate did not know what use Rod would have for the hay) to drag it back to Brood.

Just before they left, Pirate spotted Paul's Party returning from the Industrial Park. They were on the other side of the valley, across both Brood creek and the smaller Indian Run that had done in the truck and driver. So Pirate tried to yodel like an alpine goat herder, to get their attention. And he yodeled again, but not very well, all and all. Still, they looked his way. And someone called back. "Is that Pirate?" And Pirate heard it and called back, "sure is. It's Pirate!" And it felt good, in that moment, to be alive and tired.

2.
The first meeting was about to get underway in Washington and Sandy still had much to do to produce her presentation for the next day. Greg had only given her the most general idea of what he wanted and it was a sure thing he'd come back and throw whatever she produced into the shredder. Then again, he might not since he might use it even though he told here he wouldn't. One thing was sure, he certainly was not above keeping her guessing.

It wasn't until she got on the plane that she got a good idea of his plans. Apparently the government was set to write off what was formerly known as "The Great Lakes Region" as well as much of the Northeast. Greg saw no reason to let everything contained in those regions go to waste. So he had gone back to the ancient maritime notion of "Salvage." Basically, if you find it and can put it to use, it's yours.

Sandy was writing provisions to stick in the bill that had just past the Interim Congress the day before. It was growing at the rate of 2,000 pages of thick legal language a day, so no one had time to read it. It was estimated that by the end of the next week it would reach 36,000 pages -- which seemed quite enough for the time being. In fact it never would take final form, with additional pages added on a whim. But not just any whim: Al Insky's whim. He controlled the official word processor of the Interim Congress. It was an ancient model that would be hard to hack. To Al it was an updated version of Clay Tablets, where "The Living Laws" of the Interim Congress were kept and could only be tampered with by a select few. These laws may be prepubescent now, but promised a robust and romping adolescence leading, in turn, to a deep voiced and well hung adulthood. Insky saw it all quite clearly.

Al sat at the head of the round table, around which the Principles -- or at least the principle Principles -- were gathered. The principle staff of the principle Principles were aligned behind like a pyramid -- with the main guy at the top. And Sandy noticed they were all guy guys and none of them girl guys. Apparently, the Secretary of State was somewhere in Africa, the Secretary of Education was touring a school, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development was stuck in New Orleans and the Secretary of Health was in the hospital -- perhaps sick, perhaps visiting, perhaps touring -- after a botched abortion or perhaps many -- whose botched abortion and how many and who done the botching, Sandy did not know. In any case, she was glad these women were not there since other woman invariably ganged up on her and she didn't need that.

Sandy sat immediately behind Greg and was one of the few women of any rank in the room. Even the menials providing the extra chairs and filling glasses with water were male. Apparently, this is what results from feminists supporting chauvinist for high office: a lady sandwich. The wet and soggy bottom bun was mostly men -- most of whom seemed reconciled to their new, step-n-fetch lot in life. Then women dominated the middle ranks with a layer of men -- ivy league macho types, for the most part -- at the top. Whatever coup d'etat the ladies had planned obviously wasn't happening today. How they could allow themselves to be outmaneuvered this way was beyond Sandy.

Of course even the men present regarded her with suspicion -- even the men she had previously charmed and seduced and who hoped to once again be victimized. No one here trusted her, even though she had the highest national security clearance imaginable. But her political clearance was suspect. Most that would occur in the following days -- at least in the important later sessions -- would be political. For those who had not met her, the very fact that she sat in the first rank behind Greg meant she was a highly skilled (and highly paid) hired gun. Her reputation for turbo charged, ruthless efficiency (with Greg providing the turbo-charging) had preceded her. In fact there were only three men in the room who did not fear her: Gregor Strasser, because he thought he knew how to control her; Al Insky, because he no longer knew fear; and Hal Bore, because he no longer knew.

Her job now was to listen, learn, and calculate.

3.
From Al's point of view, the initial meeting went rather well. Of course the hard bargaining would come later. But he expected everyone would get pretty much what they wanted, since he invested a lot of time making sure that everyone involved knew the stakes and the situation. If their was a pie to be divided up, it was now a mud pie that, after slicing, might slide off the spatula while serving.

Al knew Greg thought it more like baked Alaska, and wanted a huge serving for himself. But that was OK. Al needed Greg now, and would continue to need him for months to come. Al would see that Greg got much of what he wanted, and Al knew Sandy -- an act of nature in her own right -- would be the implementing force in Greg's plan. If Al looked at her with an admiring eye that day -- and he did -- it was as much for that reason as her beauty.

While preparing for these meetings, he wrote a speech on the very topic of Greg and Sandy and the others in the room, one that would never be delivered and one that no one else would ever read. It was a speech that he put in his top secret speech bank -- a speech that was frank and devastating in its analysis and identified conspiracies and acts of criminal incompetence and treason, most of which had not yet happened. This speech would help him formulate his strategy going forward. One that was sobering, yes, but in its own way inspiring, too -- but only after certain purification rituals the speech called for were performed, scheduled for a later date. There were three people in that room who faced the future with confidence and excitement: Al and Greg, because they knew what they were doing, and Sen. Hal Bore because he didn't.

The meeting took place in Washington, while the government was stuck in snow. It started with an ice storm that made the streets and walkways unnavigable. Then came three feet of snow in a city where six inches was enough to spread panic. A quasi melt briefly followed, then another foot and a half. Then some melting and freezing and more ice storms and snow. It sapped the spirit of all around. The administration brought in the military to clear the streets since the local authorities proved helpless. The government workers still thought it best for the nation that they stay home and collect sick leave. Considering the overall situation, they had a point. How does one pursue one's normal duties in such an abnormal situation? And that is what this group hoped to do over the next few days: establish the New Normal, and implement it over the next 100 days. In fact, it would be called "The Program for the New Normal," which everyone thought a reassuring name for. The program was intended to provide much for government workers, at all levels, to do.

The first meeting aimed to bringing everyone up to speed on the big picture -- not just in the US but around the world. First, in the middle east US forces were finding themselves in the middle of a multi sided war over Iraq and Kuwait which included the Iraqi's -- who started out wanting Kuwait (that old bugaboo of theirs) and given what the Iranians were up to, the Kuwaitis may well have wanted the Iraqi's to want them (reports were confused on this point). In any case the conflict soon included Turkey, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and various "out of theater actors" such as Russia, China and India, who all wanted a chunk of Iraq for themselves or their clients, with no one quite sure which client was theirs. Because of poor communications, the administration had given permission to the local US commanders to take force protection measures. The local commander responded to the first "terror attack" on US forces by taking out much of the Iranian "Revolutionary guards," much to the dismay of the Iranian Regime, who thought it unfair that the US fought back so hard. They threatened the use of Atomic Weapons they supposedly did not have, in a quantity that everyone hopes was an exaggeration. The US units were hold-up in the Western deserts of Iraq, consolidating around two Air Bases near the Jordan border. Jordan was quietly resupplying them, but did not want to play host to the US forces nor did Jordan want them to leave.

Still, attacks on Americans had stopped almost everywhere. Of course, they all knew knew the massive retaliation by that commander was a reckless gamble but it did seem to have paid off, at least for the time being. Still, much of the US military was stuck out in 'Injun country" -- as the racists use to say. In fact, even Europe was fast becoming Injun country. So Insky wanted them back. But the world did not want to give them back. They were viewed either as a stabilizing force or hostages, depending on who was doing the viewing. At some point, they would start viewing them as dead meat.

Though the events were more than likely unrelated, after the commanders retaliation against the Iranians, domestic terror attacks seemed to have stopped. But the ones that occurred were damaging enough. There'd been a couple of successful terror attacks and some damaging sabotage.

The latest news on the surface to air missile that took out an Airbus full of "contingency evacuees" from northern Europe was the same as the previous: it was fired by "they knew not who" for reasons "they knew not what." Northern Europe was cold, but not yet snowbound, and still governed by the global warming orthodox. Still, many of the powerful were getting their families out, to beat the rush, as it were. It was a shame that those who searched for safety were the victims. But were they the target, or just at the right altitude at the wrong time?

On it's way down, the Airbus took out a commuter plane that was, ironically enough, full of climatologists heading for a meeting that had been moved from Washington to Atlanta on account of inclement weather in DC. Fortunately, there did not seem to be a shortage of climatologists. In any case, they put out the story it all resulted from a mid-air collision.

Then there was the paramilitary group that attacked an evacuation center in Tennessee with automatic weapons, grenades and suicide vests. Though they were highly trained paint ballers, they were ill-prepared when the women and children started shooting back. As a result the terrorists were quickly dispatched after they took out the security guards and well before taking over the refugee school, which seemed to be their objective. The story was put out that it was the actions of a disgruntled Red Cross employee and gun nut that resulted in several deaths.

It was not known if these attacks were the result of rogue actors taking advantage of an opportunity to disrupt the hated nation when it was most vulnerable, or an enemy intelligence agency activating sleeper cells for that same purpose. So far, the feared terror offensive had not yet materialized.

As for the Refugee Camps, the bad news was that they were severely over crowded already. The good news was, with the arrival of Hurricane Demetrius and the spawn storms to the south, transportation had broken down to the point that people could not travel to the camps.

The bad news: getting supplies to the camps was proving difficult. Apparently, the new smart communication system was sabotage, which was Kind of OK with Insky -- there was simply too much communicating going on. But to add to the mess, the new, partially installed Smart Grid -- designed to cleverly move electricity about the country -- had a stroke, what with so many power surges and cut offs, and short circuits occurring. The result was that power throughout much of the US had simply gone out.

But all this was beneath the pay grade of those assembled. They were there to plot the way forward. And in this case, the plans really were plots.

The last part of Chapter Six, "The Mighty," is here.

Notes on "Flexi"

2009-08-24T09:23:00.000-07:00

Flexi continues Sandy's backstory and is part of Chapter Six, "The Harbinger of Change," and will follow the backstory of Al Insky and Bill Haley. After this I hope to leave the backstory for a bit and get back to the front story.

Sandy is leaving for the meeting where the "wish list" (a "ball" Gregor Strasser set rolling) is hammered out and divided up -- all while the next series of storms batters the heartland. I might toggle back and forth between Ohio and DC as the storms and the meetings progress. I do not know what will ultimately happen to Sandy. Her end is really in her hands. But I see possibilities in "flexi" that, no matter how tragic her end, it may yet be a good one.

I want to push on, so the following posts may not be so highly polished and brilliant as the previous! But not to worry, I will brilliant them later. Promise. By this I mean I must speed things up or never finish. I might use the "comment section" to note, and track, changes.

Flexi

2009-08-24T08:56:00.000-07:00

Sandy could fold herself up to fit in a suitcase. She thought of this as she packed for her flight down to Washington (Greg could fly even though the skies were closed). She was no more than ten at the time but a promising gymnast and ballerina angry that, despite her obvious talent, she would soon grow too big and clumsy to be a world class star in either role. To have showed such promise and worked so hard and dreamed so much (and be encouraged in those dreams), only to have the promise broken by her own body was a jolting experience. Perhaps she gave up on such childish notions altogether. Still, she often thought it a good thing that she retained much of the flexibility she acquired at an early age.

In the summer of here fifteenth year, about the time Sandy first met Jimmy at the door of her parents' home, Sandy decided she was bisexual and a psychopath. She was young and lacked a certain amount of experience (which, if it was a problem, was a problem she intended to quickly rectify) and also maturity (which she thought the same thing as experience). Her understanding of these matters derived from movies and the discussions she had with friends and the instructions she received at school. So naturally she thought it would all fit together nicely -- being a bisexual psychopath, or bi-conscience, as she later thought of it.

She first decided on psychopathy because it allowed her to act without the burden of conscience, which seemed to her an evolutionary artifact left over from the time before laws, regulations and the rules of evidence. These days proper behavior was pretty thoroughly hashed over and decided, so why limit your actions on the basis of "it just don't seem right?" You can look it up on the Internet and find a precedent and obviously that which is not forbidden is allowed -- while much that is forbidden is allowed if you just argue the case. A conscience, it seemed on mature reflection (she thought it a mature sort of reflection), was like the appendix: if you have a conscience attack then get rid of it (your conscience, not your appendix). Or perhaps, she decided on another occasion, the conscience is like the spleen: it is there; science is not quite sure what it is good for; you better keep it just in case.

So she did not want to totally lose her conscience, just loosen it. She wanted to have a loose, slatternly conscience that slept around with some dicey conceptions but she did not want to be a Sociopath -- which she associated with males and a certain testosterone induced excess that outraged her sense of style, much as hoop earrings and beehive hairdos do. It is Sociopaths, she felt, that gave a lack of conscience a bad name. Besides, she most certainly wanted to have a conscience as regards wars and famines and other big events that don't really involve her, because she was moved when her feeling of outrage drained into the sea of outrage of those around her.

While she had no problem with excess in general, in the particular case of conscience she thought moderation -- combined with an ability to be easily seduced and manipulated by her intellect -- was best. Later, she refined the idea into the "biconsceince." It could be applied strictly (and quite strictly) outside her circle of behavior and hardly at all within it. This would protect her from accusations of hypocrisy (which seemed to her the greatest sin) since she never pretended to be judgmental as regards her own action. All this she decided on mature reflection in the summer of her fifteenth year.

Of course she was more than flexible girl. Pretty much everything came easy to Sandy. She was the smartest kid in her small school and got the best grades without expending a whole lot of effort (though the fact that she rather liked studying helped). She saw no reason to go to a bigger school or a "gifted" school where she might have to study harder to achieve the same result. She liked horses and was the best rider in her limited circle of friends. Ditto swimming. But, once again, did not wish to seek a more competitive environment. Nor did she want to be "self surpassing" -- in a race with herself, as it were. Passing everyone around her was quite good enough. She liked being smarter, prettier, and victorious -- all the while seemingly expending little effort, though she had, in fact, thought it through and picked her venues accordingly. She started college a year early, though she could have started a year before that, if she had wanted.

It is not the case that she decide to seduce Jimmy Savannah upon first seeing him. Rather, she made up her mind before seeing him, when she heard her cousin Bea and her mother discussing him in the kitchen of their home. Seducing her cousin's "man" started as a thought problem for her emerging biconscience, a stretch exercise meant to limber it up. She decided she'd wait until her cousin Bea and Jimmy Savannah were married, because she was not sure seducing him before the event would be all that wrong, at least according to the new social conventions. Besides, Jimmy sounded like the sort that might take his vows seriously -- which would add both challenge and spice. Mostly, she wanted to participate in a little "all in the family" adultery just to see what it was like. So waiting until he was part of the family made sense.

In the meantime, she wanted to seduce her high school gym teacher who was, in this case, a female and a lesbian. It would be a fling and end with broken heart. She wanted the broken heart to be the gym teacher's, but, having observed her, Sandy thought the last bit both highly challenging and quite unlikely. So, should the instructors heart not break in a timely manner, Sandy would pretend to have her own heart broken instead. It was a kind of exit strategy and it all came to her upon mature reflection.

Sandy closed up her suitcase. Her laptop was still on the dresser, open and impatient. She had kept it open in case she thought of something she wanted to add to the presentation she would give at the meeting. She wasn't quite satisfied with it. She had prepared her presentation while making other plans. But now she closed up her laptop, and picked up the suitcase she could once fit in, and exited the apartment. Her and Greg were going for a three day meeting, but given the storm heading toward New York it was likely an evacuation -- and for Sandy, given her newly emergent plans, likely a permanent one. As she turned out the lights she took a look round, and briefly thought of all the nice stuff she left behind and it actuaoly felt pleasant.

The Begin of Chapter Six

2009-08-16T05:43:00.000-07:00

I am thinking of coming up with a website to compete with Twitter called Verboser. Instead of fourteen word "tweets" this site will handle fourteen hundred word -- or even fourteen thousand word -- "Verboes," which you can download onto your cellphone. This would not be a simple app, of course, but a full blown "Application" with many and diffuse "elaborations." I'll give this more thought before selling stock. On second thought, I'll just sell stock.

The Verbo below is the start of chapter six of the first draft of my novel Glaciation. I'm thinking of changing the title to The Ironic Storm because irony is becoming the controlling conceit. Besides, a returning Ice Age only allows Warmists -- who have now relabeled themselves Climate Change-ists -- to say, "See! Told ya!"

I'll probably keep posting my efforts here because I then seem to think it "done" and go on to the next bit. In the "Begin of Chapter Six" I provide the "back story" for Al Insky and Bill Haley who, thus far, have only been mentioned by name (I think). Bill Haley is President and Al Insky his chief of staff. There will be more to add as the plot thickens. Right now I do not know what those thickening agents might be. Of course, some parts could be removed but I'm not sure Verboser allows deletions.

So, it's on to the next bit.

Chapter One is here.

Chapter Two is here.

Chapter Three is here.

Chapter Four is here.

Chapter Five (part one) is here

Chapter Five (part two) is here

The Harbinger of Change

2009-08-16T05:07:00.000-07:00

Al Insky was in sixth grade in Chicago when his parents took him to a speech by "Old King Saul," where Saul told of daring deeds done decades before.

Saul King was considered the King of Community Organizers and if some thought the old fart a rascal, he was often a pleasant and entertaining one. Al's parents had a connection with Saul King, so after the speech they brought young Al to a reception in Saul's honor and introduced their boy to the mythic man of the Radical Left. He impressed Al as being much shorter, balder, plumper and more shabbily dressed then Al remembered him from on stage. So on one level, the loss of distance was not kind to Saul. Still, Saul regaled Al with a story about the Chicago White Sox (Al collected baseball cards at the time) and quickly won the boy's heart.

In ninth grade Al came across a recording his parents made of the event. On the tape Al heard a passage that he had quickly noticed, and then quickly forgot, at the time of the speech. Saul told of putting pressure on bank managers to make the sort of loans that Saul thought they should make. He described how he sent picketers to the managers homes and these picketers were the blackest African Americans that he could find. In fact, he put a color chart on the wall for the protesters to match their skin color to, in order to determine who was black enough to participate. When young Al heard this the first time, a thought flashed into his mind: "who is this old white guy to do that?" But Old King Saul seem to anticipate this objection, telling how potential protesters joked with each other while lining up by the color chart to see who qualified to stand outside a banker's house in an exclusive suburb. You see, Saul said with a sort of verbal wink, the plan was to use the prejudices of the middle class against the middle class -- embarrass the bankers in front of their neighbors and wives and in-laws until the pressure was to much to bear. Saul's audience saw the humor and Al remembered, when listening to the tape, how his own flash of "queasy" was so quickly and easily neutralized. During the second listening he realized Saul had theory, practice, smarts and determination on his side, and that's why he was the man to determine who was black enough.

Al also read a series of science fiction novels in ninth grade. In it a group of clever social scientists and academics anticipate the fall of the local interstellar civilization and work to shorten the length of the subsequent dark ages from, like, 30,000 years to, like, 200 years. This reminded Al of how the clever people around FDR shortened and ended the great depression. Of course the clever persons around FDR did no such thing (and may have actually prolonged it) but how was a fourteen year old boy suppose to know that? Point was, Al saw how you could steer the course of human events from behind the scenes. You could tamper with the charts or grab the rudder or get the galley slaves to revolt. Or, preferably, all three.

Al thought much about the arts of persuasion throughout high school: about what to reveal and what to hide. About how, if the numbers are not with you, then make the numbers you have count for more. Al also wanted to convince, by using both reason and, perhaps more important, subtle intimidation (nothing crude, you understand). Intimidation was, for the most part, concealed and reason and logic were present to give his opponents cover to see things his way. Al focused on winning arguments, rather than actually solving problems.

Or rather, all his arguments were not about any particular problem but about one over arching problem -- the Keystone problem that held up the great dome of problems that blotted out the sun and the blue sky. And what was that keystone problem? Him, and people like him, not getting the galley slaves to revolt, not having their hands on the rudder, not steering the ship called civilization. Because of the "Keystone" problem, everything else (pretty much) was schiesse. Solve that central, keystone problem, and all the other problems will just tumble down as a result of their own substantial weight. So when his political opponents would later point out that when discussing this or that problem, Al (or his political frontman) misstated the facts, they missed the point. Al never argued about solving a "problem." All his arguments were aimed at solving "the problem." Al, and millions of like minded individuals, understood. They had a deeper knowledge that allowed dissimulation when confronting the ignorant multitude.

At first he did quite well for himself employing his arts in the service of private industry, often with the objective of undermining free enterprise (put simply, he did not trust a game he couldn't fix). But of course his real goals were political. He began working on political campaigns while still in high school.

2.
When President Bill Haley was in high school a group of friends were in a discussion and decided that a person could do anything he wanted in life if he were willing to accept the consequences of his actions. If you want to kill someone, go ahead. But accept that you will be executed in turn. Bill did not totally agree but said nothing. In truth, doing whatever you wanted to do and accepting the consequences -- when those consequences were favorable -- made a great deal of sense. But it all broke down when the consequences were bad. Then, it seemed to Bill, the goal would be to let someone else take the blame. This is not to say that Bill thought that when you murder someone you should frame an innocent person for the deed: that just would not be nice. You should only let someone else take fall if that is the way it turns out. And, one might ask, what if an innocent person ends up on death row? Well, that's why Bill opposed capital punishment. Quite simply, if Bill ever killed someone he would not want an innocent person put to death for the crime. Bill thought of this as common sense ethics.

President Bill Haley's first car was a Mercury Comet. Ironically, the purchase occurred during the one period in his life when his name and the association with "comets," of one form or another, had slipped from his consciousness. This changed when he purchased his temporary tags. The clerk said to all the other clerks, "Hey, this here is Bill Haley and Bill Haley rides a Comet!" He was there with several friends and could tell, even before leaving the license bureau, that this would become an ongoing refrain. It was not something he held against the clerks of the world -- for first saying it -- or against himself for having made the purchase, but, in a strange sort of misallocation of blame, the Ford Motor Company and American cars in general. Regardless of the reputation of Mercury Comets (the car), the particular vehicle Bill bought proved quite affordable and reliable -- which, ironically, forced him to keep it and go on hearing "Bill Haley rides a comet." So he drove the dang thing -- which he called "the damned thing" -- all through college. The girls he dated, without exception, had nicer cars and normally drove when they went on dates. While he was in college he learned -- or was taught -- that there was much in the state of the world to resent. He never resented his girl friends having nicer cars than he, which speaks to his inner nicety. He kept the car for several years after graduating from college.

Bill Haley took his Comet to the crusher on Februry 9, 1986 -- the day he discovered he could stop being a Community Organizer and start going to Law School. He would never have to hear "Bill Haley rides a Comet!" again and his relief was complete. He then bought a late model used Volvo, instantly going deep enough into debt that there would be no turning back. But -- oh, The Irony! -- a dozen years later, when he entered politics and once again drove an American made car, he would tell and retell the story of "Bill Haley rides a Comet" (and how comets herald change) until, shortly after he became President, it was the rest of the world that was sick and tired of hearing it.

And it was Al Insky who encouraged him to use the refrain about comets and change.

It was in Chicago that Insky met Haley and their careers took off together -- Haley and his comet as the candidate and Insky as The Insky. They both knew deep in their souls (they actually don't believe in souls and therefore did not know this in theirs) what The United States of America could and should be as a nation-state, and that it has fallen far short of the markers they put in place. But explaining their vision to the American people, who often had other ideas or were busy doing other things, was difficult. Obviously, everyone of their fellow citizens could not duplicate the years of thought and study, the sacrifice and intellectual toil, required to gain these insights. Additionally, the common folk were often (let's face it) blinded by silly superstitions or blinkered by narrow prejudices. As Al would say -- but not often and only to a few selected -- insights for the masses of people often follow incitement by the "insightful" few. Al called it the "insightment of the masses." They would use words that their fellow citizens would understand, but with subtle alterations in meanings. In fact they, together with like minded folks in the News Media, Entertainment, Academia, and the Arts, achieved so many redefinitions of words that neither they, nor anyone else, were quite sure what they were saying. Of course no one wanted to "get down into the weeds" of policy details. By and large their supporters did such a good job of keeping out of the weeds they floated around in the ozone.

For Bilinsky -- as the team of Bill and Al were known in political circles -- the "Political Speech" and the clever campaign slogans that flowed from them, were not used to explain policy but to actually formulate it. Craft an excellent speech and policy requirements will flow from that achievement. Develop hard hitting slogans (The Change We Need but Need Not Fear) to bring the supporting networks along -- including, in the case of Bill Haley, most of the news networks. The techniques Al Insky used in crafting these policy formulating speeches were not those of the logician, but rather of the showman and carnival barker. When building a set for the highschool play, you kept the audience back from the tackier parts, so the crude brush strokes won't stand out. Then you put the play on before a sympathetic audience that will willingly accept the illusion. The carny barker and the special effects man keeps the words and the tricks rolling so the audience does not have time to analyze either.

A motion picture released about the time Al perfected his art described the trick of the magician as "The Pledge, The Turn, and The Prestige." In an Al Insky speech, "The Pledge" was of future Plenty (with a "sustainability" catch in the contract), "The Turn" was a savage attack on the flawed present, and "The Prestige" flowed from pulling it all off. On their way to grabbing the nomination and winning the election they got plenty of help acquiring Prestige from sullen and misanthropic journalists who wanted to save the world, not for Humans, but from humans -- especially those humans found in the USA. They also wanted the pay raises they weren't getting.

The revolutionaries who conjured the USSR into existence said they found power laying in the streets and then picked it up. Bill and Al found power lying on air and then changing the subject.

3.
Bill delivered his nomination acceptance speech on a balmy summer's eve in front of a huge crowd gathered in a natural amphitheater in the foothills of the rockies. The last rays of the departing sun greeted his arrival on stage. Arriving with him was a Styrofoam reproduction of the monument at "Stonehedge", which rose out of the hillside behind him.

Insky wrote the speech which, in its construction and thematic presentation, was an homage to the Sermon on the Mount. Al cleverly weaved the faux sermon together with the story of Mark Twain, who came into the world with Halley's Comet -- Bill used the popular mispronunciation "Haley" for purposes of the speech -- and departed the World with its reappearance. Bill told the assembled that Comets were considered the heralds of change and their appearance would cause fear in the hearts of those who were comfortable with the status quo. But for other's -- those that would embrace change -- it brought hope. It was a subdued, almost religious, portion of the speech and turned the enormous crowd contemplative.

He ended with a litany of the changes (what critics called "platitudes with attitude") the Bill Haley administration would bring -- once again structured as an homage to the Sermon on the Mount. The words built to a crescendo which excited and energized the crowd. Then the lights went low as the twilight disappeared and was replaced by projection of a comet on the side of the mountain, together with the words "Bill Haley -- The Harbinger of Change." It was then that they unveiled his campaign song Wonk Around the Clock (for the American People) and thus, with a loud and effusive glee, they smothered one of the more effective attacks of his opponents (that his ideas were wonkish and impractical). While the crowd sang "One O'clock, Two O'clock, Three O'clock Wonk!" Bill strode alone and ant-like on the stage while he metamorphized into a giant on the world's biggest "jumbotron" behind him. Meanwhile, one of history's great fireworks and laser light shows took place, combined with history's first 3D holographic balloon drop -- an homage to real balloon drops (real balloons proved impractical in this setting). The reappearance of young Billy's "stinking comet" taught Haley something: through the use of political alchemy, much that was previously thought crap can be turned into gold, or vice reverse.

Later, he was joined by his wife and family on the stage though not on the Jumbotron.

Chapter six continues at "Flexi," right here.

SNOGO -- A bit about Chapter Five

2009-08-03T09:28:00.000-07:00

I wrote most of Chapter Five (of Glaciation, a novel in progress) using Google Docs. It's nice because I'll have a copy of what I produce "off-site" just in case the house burns down. Now I have to figure out how to keep a copy in my house, just in case Google burns down. By the way, Google informed me that if you are the average sixth grader you should easily understand this chapter. I think that assumes the story is coherent to begin with. I assume seventh graders will have little difficulty, as well.

The action in Chapter Five takes place during a break in the storms that opens the new glacial age. Pirate is leading a party back to "Home base." Others are figuring out how to survive -- how to keep themselves and others alive. The first segment of the chapter, "Glaciation: Sen. Hal Bore," gives a summary of the weather events which have occurred, are occurring and predicted to come.

Chapter One is here.

Chapter Two is here.

Chapter Three is here.

Chapter Four is here.

Chapter Five: Slow Go and SNOGO

2009-08-03T09:16:00.000-07:00

By dawn Pirate had led his contingent down the buried bike path (and former railroad right-of-way) to the Corridor for the High Power Lines that passes through the woods. The way along the bike path was often rough, since there were many downed trees and barriers of soft snow. But not just the parents helped with the children. Other adults from the settlement came along for the first few miles, until Pirate's group reached a largely barrier free path. Their presence was much appreciated when they encountered a major snow dune that had to be crossed. The Trail blazers had left ropes in place but the sleds and, in many cases the children, had to be hauled up to the top – and their way picked between the high branches of trees -- before they made it onto the corridor choked with ice and snow. Then that group split off to head for the Walmart store to pick up some of the supplies that Paul and Pirate had put to the side. They would wait out the next set of storms in Kim's office tower.

Power no longer crackled down the lines of this corridor -- a good thing, perhaps, since in some locations the cables were down. The towers and the trees gave an indication of the undulations of the landscape below. In the pre-dawn moonlight the towers they passed looked like frosty robots trapped in sand, sometimes buried up to the waist, sometimes up to the arms, but occasionally no higher than the knees. It seemed like a long trek between each of the sentinels. Sometimes the trees that lined the corridor, and acted like a drift fence, were completely buried or completely absent and they might come across the sort of snow dune that bedeviled Paul and Pirate the morning before. For the most part the way was barrier free with the brush and gullies beneath them well and truly buried, and the way before them relatively flat. A few inches of fresh snow sat atop a rather formidable crust. The marked trail avoided the soft spots. They were able to move swiftly -- comparatively. In three hours they covered five miles.

The air was crisp, the dawn bright but red, with blotches of effervescent clouds soaking up the light. The Cold was so constant that Pirate stopped noticing it for minutes at a time and even the children stopped their complaining. In fact the children picked up on the seriousness of the situation from their parents and became more stoic as the journey went on. A bit after first light they came across one of the men involved in the trail blazing. The Blazers had found a deer trapped in the snow, and the man stayed behind to slaughter and butcher it. He had, in fact, come equipped for just such a happy accident and sliced the animal into various cuts of venison (sealed in freezer bags and flash frozen in the snow) and was smoking strips of meat into jerky when Pirate's party came upon him. More to the point, they got venison, low cholesterol egg scramble from a carton, biscuits with sausage gravy (someone had a bottle of the stuff) and coffee for breakfast. All of it, Pirate complained, was a bit chewy -- especially the coffee. It was quickly consumed and they were back on their way.

They met Paul a mile on. He was probing the snow with a pole and taking notes on his little laptop. Pirate realized the entire trek had as much to do with exploration -- a mini "Lewis and Clark" expedition -- as checking on Paul's Parents or rescuing the neighbor's children. Ahead the snow fell off until it met glacier Creek, where water flowed among islands of snow and ice. The creek flowed through the village of Glacier Bay, not much evidence this morning and not the direction they would be heading.

Paul led them away from the corridor, down a trail which followed a line of metal utility poles that led from a buried substation. They crossed a buried fence at a point where the razor wire on top was cut and removed. They entered an area dominated by a number of long, tall, steel buildings from an earlier era of industrialization. Pirate had been by there (and even in there) often, but in the transformed landscape they could have been in a different world. If there was any security personnel to accompany the razor wire, they had either fled or were buried in their shanties.

The trail ran between two of the long buildings. It was there they encountered Billy, who just returned from blazing a trail to Brood and brought other men -- and equipment -- back with him. "The buildings are still standing," Paul explained to Pirate. "But they won't be for long without some basic maintenance. A lot of the snow blew off the roofs but you can see melting, too. So the heat must be functioning. We're going inside for a look-see. If we can, will turn up the heat a bit so it will melt the snow as it falls. Make sure the drains are clear to carry away the water. Try to save what's worth saving. We're using your digital camera, if you don't mind." Paul must have told Billy where to get it.

"I don't mind." Pirate said. "In fact, I'll go in and take the pictures."

"No," said Paul. "You'll take the folks back to Brood. Just follow the trail Billy marked."

Pirate got upset. "What? You don't trust me to take pictures with my own camera?" Lately, Paul tended to treat him like a child. And now he was leaving him with the Children.

Paul was genuinely shocked by the outburst, but before he spoke, he looked about to see if anyone might overhear. As he spoke he seemed to suck the words back in so that even though he spoke with intensity the words hardly passed beyond Pirate's ears. "I'm trusting you with the lives of these people," said Paul. "That's more important than the photographs. You'd better get a clue, or at least act like you got one. Or better, don't get a clue. Because your basic stupidity and ignorance passes for confidence. And what people need to see is confidence."

Pirate felt himself deflate. Whatever warm air remained in him drained out and was replaced by the cold in Paul's tone. Paul had never spoke this way to him.

Paul must have sensed the effect he had. He put his hand on Pirates shoulder and spoke slowly. "Look. You had rough childhood. But you grew up in a peaceful, civilized place. But that's gone. All that is left is the habit of people's behavior, one that we will have to work to preserve. This is a situation where the psychopaths take over, if you ain't prepared to stop them. The sort that turn mean, nasty, with no conscience. The reason I got you that shotgun is not for duck hunting. I don't expect you to encounter trouble on the way back to Brood. But you need to get your head straight, and prepare, because soon enough, we will." Paul tried a smile. "Besides, there's that gold to consider, too." Pirate carried ten pounds of gold. There was ten pounds concealed in one of the sleds. Paul carried some, and had sent some ahead with Billy. They had over $600,000 in gold, by the old way of reckoning. Paul's parents -- and Paul himself -- had escaped from history of revolution and civil war and were always intense savers, figuring the hard times might catch up.

"Right. OK." said Pirate, remembering Paul's early years amongst terrorists, mass murders and competing War Lords, and realizing it affected him more than Pirate imagined.

"When Kim, Pitch, or I ask you to do something, just assume it's important and we give you the task because we trust you. Now get them moving."

Pirate led the group on, and he did not look back even though he was far more interested in staying with Paul's crew than being a leader. The trail they followed went through the razor wire on the far side of the complex and up a township road. It followed along beside the tops of trees and utility poles. Wires from the Utility poles crossed their path, but these traps were marked by Billy and, in some cases, the way round was marked. Of course the utility lines lead to houses that were buried in the snow. At first they didn't look like houses, though, since they were no more than mounds in the snow or an extension of the drifts. But further on they came upon an old farmhouse with an attic sticking up out of the snow. By then the Children realized they were walking past houses and wanted to know if there were still people living in them. "Oh," said Pirate, "I think they've moved on by now." He did not want to stop to investigate -- even though he wondered where the inhabitants were himself. Still hold up in the houses under the snow? He almost wished it was still dark, so they would see less.

On the other side of the attic of the largely submerged farm house he saw a body laying in the snow. He told the group to keep moving while he went over to have a look. There were tracks in the snow in they looked pretty fresh, but Pirate was no expert tracker. What he was about to see made him want to become one. The tracks had not been snowed on so they were not older than last evening. Billy blazed the trail the night before, but he had not come back this way -- he probably ran an errand for Paul or Pitch that brought him back the long way, perhaps picking up the other members of the crew. So Billy could have easily missed the body in the dark and, as for the tracks, well, Billy was in a hurry and since there were houses around he would not have found them surprising that's assuming the tracks were even there when he passed.

This all ran through Pirates mind before he made it to the body. He knew the man would be dead and he quickly saw he was shot, execution style. The body was sunk a bit in the snow. Pirate rolled him over a bit and saw pink on the ice. The man was stiff, but weather from rigor or freezing, he could not tell. He let the body fall back to it's place. "Is he dead?" It was one of the men in the party. He looked exhausted. He wasn't exactly an outdoorsman. But neither was Pirate, exactly. Everyone was exhausted.

"Yeah. Heart attack. Let's go." The man was looking at the tracks in the snow. "Obviously, his friends couldn't do anything for him. Let's go."

Now Pirate really wanted to get back to Brood. As he walked along the group he kept repeating. "They'll be no more breaks. We will be in Brood soon if we just keep pushing."

He was actually relieved when the trail Billy blazed veered off the township road and headed across the fields. He was less likely to find another body in the fields, at least a human one. In this he was quickly proved wrong. They saw a couple of men traveling parallel to them about 500 yards away. The men waved. "Keep moving." said Pirate. "They got nothing for us and we got nothing for them." Pirate thanked God for Billy's marked trail. The crust was hard and even with the children they made better time than the men, who encountered soft snow and drifts. They were soon out of sight.

But ten minutes later Pirate was worried again. The man who saw the body came over to him. "You worried about our friends, the guys following us?" he said.

"I'm worried they ain't our friends," said Pirate.

"Right," he said.

"I'm worried if they cut over to our trail, they could come up behinds us. Or they could cut the corner and be waiting ahead." Pirate didn't want to sound paranoid, but what the hell, that little conversation with Paul plus that little killing seemed to have changed his mental state. "I'm going to scout ahead. Make sure everyone keeps moving."

Pirate move quickly. As soon as he was out of sight of the party he took the shotgun out of its soft case. He had not done much shooting in his life, and he hoped he would not have to do any that day. But if he saw anyone armed on the trail ahead they had better be someone he knew because he wouldn't be asking many questions. He quickly spotted some good ambush sights but hoped the two killers -- because he now assumed that is who he dealt with -- had not had time to get ahead. But if they found hard crust and hustled they could be there waiting.

He found some high ground, and was relieved when he could put his binoculars on the men. And they were not headed his way. They were heading toward another farm house in the distance. In his relief he thought it possible that they were not the killers at all.

And he could see his own group coming down the trail. With no one following them.

It was the nature of Gregor Strasser's business that he owned much about which he knew little. There were long strings of paper -- sometimes twined into ropes and braided into webs -- and at the end of these strings were houses and retail outlets and factories and payrolls -- which means people and places. He often said that he never let this fact slip his mind, though he often did and would not act differently if he did not. This morning he discovered that he owned -- or rather one of the entities he controlled owned -- a manufacturing facility "near one of the great lakes in Ohio," as the memo said. Of course, as he suspected before looking at the map, there is only one Great Lake in Ohio, forming the Greater part of the Northern border (the waters extending to border the state of New York) and only one Great River, forming the total part of the southern.

What caused this brief spike in interest was the offer he received to buy equipment contained in the plant. The price offered was a pittance -- pennies on the dollar would be an over generous term for the offer. If they offered to buy it for a song, the song was badly out of tune. But what most interested about the offer was that he got an offer at all. After all, anyone who knew what was coming, and therefore that such an offer might be considered, would also know the equipment would probably be destroyed before it could be removed. Shipping it out will be difficult for months to come -- if not (according to some) years or millennium. Therefore who ever made the offer must have significant resources on hand -- and an ability to bring whatever else he needed into an area that would soon be next impossible to get out of. Which means they saw a way to solve those problems.

Greg made some quick inquiries about the firm involved -- Great American -- and found they were bonded agents already contracting to remove the contents of bank vaults, safety deposit boxes and important legal documents. It was all light, portable, and highly valuable stuff and the nimble folks doing it would likely become quite rich -- if they could beat the storms and fulfill the contracts. And there was another line of business they were entering: power transformers. They wanted to pluck them off utility poles and ship them out. Since the rest of the nation needed to replace thousands of these transformers, that in itself could be a highly lucrative business (but if it were to be done, it most be done quickly).

He returned to the offer to buy the machinery. He suspected they did not know exactly what the equipment was they wanted to buy (they asked for a list of what the buildings contained). Greg also knew it was a near impossibility that any manager getting such an offer would accept it. Simply put, they would ignore the offer rather than deal with future lawsuits and congressional hearings accusing them of selling the property of stockholders for less than a pittance or for an out-of-tune song. So the typical corporate manager would not take it beyond the opening offer since there was no chance of an agreement that would make him look good later. This did not bothered Greg (he felt, with some justification, that they'd never try the legal lynching routine on him). This is what bothered Greg: he had found the riches of King Solomons mines or a buried city of gold onlu under, or soon to be buried by -- snow and ice. And he even found the miners to go after the riches.

Unfortunately, the nation was now so organized that those in charge would let it all turn into twisted metal and shredded cable rather than do what was necessary to save it -- at the risk of later embarrassment for having acted. The fact that this equipement would all be greatly needed later was also a factor in Greg's thinking. That's what made it potentially so valuable -- potentially worth tens of billions, even hundreds of billions, of old dollars.

So quite simply he would have to take the decision power out of the hands of CEO's hands -- who were now almost indistinguishable from the career civil servants who told them what to do. That list Al Insky was formulating came to mind. He now knew what he wanted to include.

Greg gave Sandy a call. Being a lawyer, an accountant, and a person of slight conscience, she was the best choice to come up with the exact wording for what he wanted included on the list.

Also, he knew she wanted to take a trip north (and he now even knew why). He began to formulate the route she might take.

"So," said Pitch. "Is that all you saw?" He seemed quite busy and didn't have much time to talk to Pirate. They spoke in Pitch's little office and didn't even sit down. In fact Pirate did not want to sit down, because he knew how hard it would be to stand back up.

The trail Billy blazed had brought the group into Great American Salvage the back way -- across a makeshift bridge hastily thrown over a stream that cut a 12 foot deep chasm through the snow, forming a miniature and gray version of the Grand Canyon complete with stratified layers. The trail then led through a gap in the drifts, along the top of an ancient esker, and into one of the storage barns through a kind of hayloft door. It all seemed quite peaceful until he got inside, where he found a beehive of activity. In fact Pirate had never seen it that active. He had come on board -- perhaps stowed away was a better term -- after the peak of the business way back in the 1980's.

But Pitch was never busier than now and Pirate knew to stick to the facts, since even news of this killing wouldn't extend the interview. At the end of Pirate's brief rendition -- the body found, the two men shadowing, and then the two men heading for that farmhouse -- Pitch didn't seem interested in pursuing the matter. Pirate thought maybe they should take it more seriously. So he volunteered. "I'm pretty tired. But I could hike out to that farm and see what's what."

"I got something else for you to do," said Pitch, apparently not hearing the part about Pirate being tired. "If killers are hold up in a house, you ain't the person I'd send in after them. Because if they ain't killers, you might kill them. And if they are killers they would probably kill you." He said it like there was someone he'd send in after killers. Like they are listed in the Yellow pages. Maybe he was going to tell the sheriff's deputy, if there was one about to listen. But instead of explaining his thinking, Pitch changed the subject. He told Pirate there was a makeshift "experimental" vehicle he wanted him to test drive.

He sent Pirate into the garage to meet Rod, a major motorhead. A few days before, while Pirate was starting his business trading corned beef for pennies, Rod took his monster truck out to play in the snow. The huge tires did purchase some traction. When he took it out onto the lake ice he ended up craking the ice and ditching it. Everyone warned him that the ice was weak in spots, but he was having too much fun skidding around to take heed. This was near Pirate's Penny Market, as it was soon called, on the afternoon of the first day of operation. Rod was probably trying to impress the girls. Fortunately, it was shallow water where so hauling it back out was not difficult.

For over a week Paul and Pitch had Rod working on some sort of makeshift vehicle to get through the snow -- working on a design since before the first blizzards of Crystal, in fact.

Rod took Pirate outback to see what he had concocted. Basically it was an SUV with tracks -- actually a belt that wrapped around the front and rear tires, that fed through a gizmo that sat under the frame. "This what you been working on all this time?"

"This? No, this? We just threw this together," he said. It did have that "thrown together" look.

Rod tended to mumble. He was lean. A few inches taller and he'd be lanky. Still, he hunched like an over-tall person, though in his case he was compressed from too much time spent in too tight places. He wore coveralls with who-knew how-many layers of flannel and thermal underwear underneath, all of which bulked him up. He waited for Pirate to look over his creation while Pirate waited for him to tell him what the hell it was. "It's adjustable!" He said, like that explained all. So Pirate gave Rod his best vacant look. "OK." Rod said, perhaps deciding it wasn't self evident. "You can clamp it on the underside of different vehicles. Use it on one, then use it on another."

"After you smash the first," said Pirate, "You go ahead and smash up another."

"I'm not the one who'll be doing the smashing," Rod pointed out.

"Right!" said Pirate, with a certain pride. "That's my job."

"It's all constructed from readily available materials. Of course, we have to see what works, then draw up some specs." The belt that went round the tires looked like it was made from nylon rope, shrink wrap and cheap rubber bungee chords. It was wider than the tires, so the wheels had Day-Glo orange protrusions that Pirate realized were made from the cut up base of traffic cones. These kept the belt splayed out and made the tracks wide. "The idea is to get the vehicles across firm crusted snow and up to a trail of hard packed snow, which the four wheel drives can handle on their own. So the belts don't have to be good for more than a few miles. They can be disposable," he said. Rod tended to mumble, and he would keep on mumbling when he turned his head away. So Pirate dodged from one side of him to the other to hear what he was saying.

The belts threaded through a system of rollers, traveling below the car's frame and up and around the tires, which ran at a lower air pressure. From what Pirate could gather, as the vehicle moved the belts would hug the tires and traffic cone protrusions going around and then splay out to run between the snow and the "weight bearing rollers" and then around the rear wheels. But there were potential problems, Rod said, "Ice... jam... rollers... belt... stretch... slip... tires," he explained. Steering was a bit tricky, so he turned to face Pirate, and annunciatedn slowly. "There are no right angles in nature." he said.

"How do you know that?" asked Pirate. His tone was challenging, because he finally found something he could argue about.

"Naturally occurring right angles are not common," Rod said, discreetly. "So think in terms of loops and curves, not hard right or left turns. If the front wheels are turned more than a bit -- the belts will come off. Anticipate your turns!" Rod shoved his hand out, like he was pushing the turns far out into the distance. Then he explained that under the SUV there was combination scrape plate and sled, which helped hold the system of rollers and belts together. "You might feel and hear the sled scraping," said Rod. "This is natural."

"Natural as a heart attack," said Pirate.

"Right," said Rod, with a controlled chuckle. "At times the sled could act a bit like a rudder."

"It's a rudder?"

"I said like a rudder. The snow hits the sled plate and pushes the vehicle this way or that. Like a rudder." He opened the drivers side door. "The passenger side works on the same principle as what all I've just explained," he said, as if going back over it could in no way improve Pirate understanding (which was likely the case). Pirate got in and started it up. He immediately tried the steering wheel and it quickly hit a bumper. "You must anticipate the turns," said Rod. He shoved his hands away from his face and spread them out like he was looking into the horizon. "Loopy-loops, curves!"

"Loopy steering." said Pirate. He turned the wheel the otherway until it hit the bumper.

"Don't break the steering limiters," said Rod.

"Limiters? I thought they were inhibitors."

"Don't over-steer and don't take it out of first gear!"

"Is that like, under penalty of death?"

"Maybe. I picked a car with a sunroof, so if you sink to far in the snow, you might get out the top. But it won't work if you flip it over."

Pirate laughed but Rod didn't realize he had made a joke. "Good thinking," said Pirate.

"Now we got to get it across that bridge." Rod pointed at the temporary structure that Pirate's group had crossed less than half an hour before.

"I thought that was a footbridge!" said Pirate.

"Ideally it is," said Rod. "So driving this across will be like a test. We need a way to cross minor water barriers. A temporary bridge like. So it's like a test."

"Like a test? Or a test? I ain't risking my life for -- like a test."

"It's a test," Rod conceded. "Strap yourself in. Would you feel better if I explain to you how the bridge works? We can actually take it down and put it up fairly quickly. It is made from readily available materials"

"I'll take your word for it." Pirate wasn't sure he could stand more explanation. He put the SUV into gear and moved forward. As soon as he got on the bridge it sank a bit to one side. He stopped and waited to be tossed into the creek along with the car.

"Keep going," Rod called, waving him forward. "A bit of that is to be expected. It's natural. Besides, the snow go don't back up well."

"Snow go?" Pirate called back. "That what you call this? So far it ain't showed much go." Since he weren't allowed to retreat, Pirate moved forward and was a bit surprised to make it across. He stopped the vehicle and got out. "The test Pilot did alright, huh?"

"Sure did," said Rod, crossing the Bridge himself, and inspecting it as he did. He was actually proud of the bridge.

Then he looked at the belts and pullies on the snogo, and as he did Pirate noticed another trail across the top of the snow, heading a different direction from the one that his group followed in. It led from a little village outside of Brood and across the footbridge. There was a small group in the distance coming down the trail.

One of Rod's workers showed up (apparently Rod now had workers). He told Pirate that Pitch wanted to see him. Rod immediately told his newly acquired minion how hard it was to keep people from over-steering -- how certain types refuse to live within the design parameters. "Hey, I can hear you," said Pirate, as he turned and headed for Pitch's office. Actually, he didn't appreciate being spoken of in that way by a guy who dunked a truck in the lake. Besides, he had not yet oversteered.

"This here is Fred," said Pitch. Fred looked like a retired linebacker -- but one that stayed in shape. "He's just passing through, on the way somewhere's," he said, like Somewhere was real place. Fred maybe had a mustache and maybe a goatee -- it was hard to tell because of the five day growth of beard. It was cold in the office and he wore a thick, dark-gray wool sweater with blood red streaks in the pattern -- the way gray streaked his dark red beard. Pitch had a map spread out on a small table. He put his finger on the paper. "This is where Paul and his crew are working. They should be heading back soon, but if there are bushwhack killers out there I want them to know about it. We got to do something about local communications. But then, I didn't think I'd need to communicate. Pirate, you found the body -- well, you point out where." In fact Pirate knew the precise location, and pointed to it on the map. And where he had seen the two men who shadowed his party and the location of the farmhouse he saw them heading towards after they shook them. Fred put a couple of marks on the map and took it with him when he left. As soon as he opened the door someone else tried to slip in. "Give us a minute," said Pitch. And the door was closed.

"You got Rod's contraption across that bridge of his?" Pitch walked toward the map on the wall -- since the other map walked out the door with Fred..

"Sure did."

"OK" He indicated a point on the wall map. "When Billy was marking the trail he came across a tractor trailer rig -- wrecked apparently, blocking the water crossing he was going to use. That's why you got routed the way you were, because this small bridge is out. The trailer has a refrigeration unit on it. Probably full of flowers or something, but it might be food. I'm thinking if you take a ride down there it will be a good test for Rod's contraption."

"The snogo," said Pirate.

"What's that?"

"The contraption."

"Really? If it can make it there and back, we might have something useful. If you find the driver alive bring him back with you, if you can. But don't spend much time down there. If you can get hold of the paper work, fine. Or DOT number. Kim can probably find out what it was hauling. It's going to get buried under more snow soon, so make a mental note how to find it again. But like I say, get back. If you have trouble with Rod's contraption, just leave it and get back here. We don't want to have to go looking for you. And good work so far."

Pirate was a little surprised by the bit of complement at the end, and sort floated out of the office. On the way back to Rod's car he encountered Fred. He noticed he wore moccasin boots and carried skis and a back pack. "I'll ride with you a bit," he said.

Rod was still by the car and footbridge, inspecting his creation. Pirate did the introductions. "This here is Rod. Rod, this is Fred," said Pirate.

"Names Harry," said Fred, as he shook Rod's hand. He opened the hatch and threw his stuff in the back.

"Harry is going to ride along," Pirate was bad at names, but he was surprised to have screwed that up.

"That's more weight," said Rod. Fred gave Rod a sharp look, like he better have an excellent reason to interrupt his plans. "Which is a good thing," Rod quickly added. "It will make for a better test."

Pirate noticed the folks out on the snow were still grimly moving ahead. Fred walked over to the passenger side and Rod kind of followed him. He wanted to explain. "I can tell you how it works." But Fred didn't seem interested and Rod remembered something else that needed explaining. "Keep your windows down so you can hear if the belts come off. Then stop immediately and come get me. In fact, I was going to walk along behind for a bit--"

"Don't follow," said Fred, with a raspy voice.

"I won't," said Rod.

Pirate was in the driver's seat. And Rod called out again, "Keep your window's down." But he started raising the window, because he had been cold for several days running and this was a chance to warm up a bit. But Fred said, "Keep your window down." And so he kept it down. He started off and said to Fred, "Rod wants me to keep it in first gear." In fact, he barely got started when he wanted to shift into second. Fred said, "Then keep it in first."

The snow crust crackled under the belts and the snow surface at times scraped "the sled" underneath, sounding like nature's angry growl, contrasting with the peaceful scene around them. And yes, the vehicle wanted to bob this way and that, as Rod predicted. Pirate would have indeed over-steered if it wasn't for the inhibitors. He felt like he was moving ahead at a dizzying rate of speed but then realized he was going less than fifteen miles an hour. Still, he had to drive every second. He could nudge the vehicle this way or that, but not really steer. He had a passenger and wanted it to seem effortless. "So, Harry, this should give you a little boost on your trip," said Pirate.

"Name's Fred," said Fred "And that's not why I came along." He didn't seem inclined to explain what the actual reason might be.

Pirate asked, "Where you off to, anyway?" Fred seemed to consider the question, but then didn't answer. "They'll be more storms coming soon," Pirate continued. Again, no reaction. So then Pirate said, "Sorry, I got to drive. So can't talk much, "

For the most part he followed the trail he'd walked down an hour before and so knew the terrain was friendly -- only now he made much better time, though it might be slow for a car. At the top of the hill he split off the trail and crossed over a fence buried so deep it was nowhere in evidence, and over a buried country lane and across some farm fields. Going across the open fields required a bit less concentration. So he glanced over at Fred who was looking out the open passenger side window. Fred seemed to sense his look. "Drive," he said.

Coming over the ridge Pirate saw the tuck rig in the distance. Only the rig was like love: it was not the rig he saw, just evidence of the rig -- shadows and dark bulges in the snow near where the stream cut a dark scar in the gray-white. In fact, he only saw it because he was looking for it. He took a long, widening curve to get there. And when he finally stopped, it was a good thirty yards from the Rig, on a part of the hill that was less steep. When he stopped moving he was afraid the vehicle might sink below the surface, since it settled into the snow. They were obviously on a deep stand. But the snow was only a tad above door level, so he could still force it open. But he didn't step out of the vehicle. Instead, he hooked his finger onto the edge of the roof and squirmed out and sat on the snow surface, which more or less held him up. Fred tossed him out a shovel. "You'll have to dig out the front," he said. "Make a ramp that will get it back on top of the crust." It sounded like good advice, so Pirate set about doing it. It required more than to the two or three shovel fulls he had imagined.

It was Fred that got him to stop digging and shaping the "ramp-up" and handed him a sheet of folded paper. "Give this to Pitch," Fred said. "It describes what I saw. You don't have to read. I'll explain it."

But Pirate had already opened it up and glanced at the bottom of the page. "Hands?" he said.

"Hans," said Fred. "That's the guy who wrote the report."

"Right." Pirate wondered if Fred suffered from multiple personality disorder.

Fred smiled. "I'll explain what Hans wrote." He lead Pirate to the far side of the car. "I took a few pictures with a camera Pitch supplied. I'll send it back later." He handed Pirate an exquisite pair of binoculars and pointed toward the hillside leading toward the truck. "You can see tracks parallel the creek. Those belong to the guy marking the trail. He goes by Billy, right?" but Fred didn't wait for an answer. "When he saw the bridge was out, he didn't hang around. Not that there was anything he could do. As for the rig, the driver got lost and made a wrong turn, probably following car tracks in the snow. He tried to cross a bridge that couldn't handle the weight. The momentum carried the rig across the failing bridge and off the road. Of course the water could have been high, too, and took out the weakened bridge.

"The driver must have waited out the storms in the cab. Yesterday he dug himself out, crawled across the snow -- got a bit confused as he did -- and took a tumble into the creek, causing a bit of an avalanche as he went in. If he wasn't in a panic before, he was then." Pirate could follow the crawl marks in the snow. "He managed to climb out but by that time he was soaked and needed to get back to the truck. Unfortunately, he climbed out the wrong side of the creek and crawled the wrong way. He encountered the creek again on the far side, and cut back. He died there." He pointed to dark lump up a shallow snow dune among the mid branches of the trees.

"So he is dead."

Fred took the binoculars back. "As dead as freezer meat. They'll be a lot of that going around. It don't look like foul-play, as they say."

Fred opened the back hatch of the tracked SUV. Pirate got the shovel and headed toward the back of the tractor trailer. It stuck a bit out of the snow. As Pirate walked by, Fred said, "Don't bother about the body." Pirate agreed. Getting across the creek and retrieving the body didn't offer much prospect of success easy success. And he was tired. He began digging out the back of the trailer.

When Fred appeared next to him he wore snow colored camouflage -- shades of gray, without the vibrant orange that would allow hunters to see him. He carried a small satchel and did not speak. Pirate said, "I wanted to take a look inside the trailer." Fred dove into the snow near the base of the door. He dug some, and then produced a hammer chisel. Pirate couldn't quite see but he heard a sharp whack. Then Fred produced a broken padlock. "Cheap lock," said Pirate.

"I sprayed it with liquid hydrogen. Makes the metal bridle."

"You carry liquid hydrogen?"

"No." Fred actually smiled. "I should, as often as it would come in handy."

"I feel the same way about WD-40," said Pirate.

"One time I had a little squirt can of WD-40. A friend thought it was breath spray. Attracts a certain sort of lady, I'd say." By then he had the Trailer door open. The trailer was close to full up, with pallets coming clear to the back. "I figured the truck was running full," said Fred, "from what it did to the bridge." He cut open the shrink wrap on one of the pallets. "Meatball Marinara Pizza."

"I bought this once. It's generic," said Pirate, like that was his favorite brand. "It's good, actually."

Fred handed him a case, and took one himself. "This should be enough for a Pizza party," he said, indicating they should return to the snogo. He closed the trailer up. "The rest should keep until you can get back. Might be buried under another ten feet of snow, though."

Once at the SUV they tossed the pizza cases in the back and Fred put the hammer and chisel in the tool box closed it up. "I think the mechanic hoped to make some fine adjustments on the road," he said. "I spared you that." He made his final preparations to leave, putting his skis and pack on. "Head straight back. I'll have Paul's group keep a look out for you, so don't stray too far. Pitch wants everyone home."

While Fred got prepared Pirate looked down the valley and saw some cattle standing in the snow eating hay. A farmer had dug a hole and pulled the hay out of a bale like a miner in the ice. Then Fred stood next to him. And Pirate pointed toward the framer, "He's got twelve giant bales under the snow. I seen them lined up before."

"The farmer will fight to keep his herd alive," said Fred, "and in the end they will just come and take it." He did not say who they were. "Enjoy the Pizza," he said, and pushed off. He headed down the slope toward the tracks that Billy had left in the snow.

"See you later," Pirate called after him. And then realized that he wouldn't.

The start of Chapter Six: "The Harbinger of Change," is here.

Trying to Post Is Sometimes Awfully Trying

2009-07-19T08:10:00.000-07:00

I've about given up on posting the draft of "Glaciation" on blogger, because it either looks like a term paper or free verse. My attempts to clean it up had the advantage of sucking up a lot of time (which I would otherwise spend trying to write the novel -- or right it, as the case may be).

The "Glaciation" in the title is meant as a metaphor for the "freezing up" of the economy and society in general. A lot of the metaphor is political, so the "Killer Storms" start on election day. At the same time, I try to create a realistic scenario for what transpires: Powerful late season hurricanes coming off the Gulf turn into "Cold Core" storms that spawn blizzards in the North. The Glaciers start around the Great Lakes (this happens during the first book -- if I actually finish the first I might write a second and a third). Some parts of the nation get so "frozen" that an underground economy springs up, outside the reach of government. These are some of the ideas I'm playing with.

I'll probably end up posting PDF version somewhere.

The bit on Sen. Hal Bore (below) may open Chapter Five (Then again, might not).

Glaciation: Sen. Hal Bore

2009-07-19T07:40:00.000-07:00

Sen. Hal Bore could not sleep because all night long his mind drag raced logic and reason, and his mind was continually winning, way out in the lead. In fact logic and reason blew a couple gaskets at the start of the very first heat, and came to a smoking, sputtering halt. So the mind of Hal easily swept the field.

Hal decided to get some fresh air. He put his silk mauve robe over his silk puce pajamas and slipped on his burgundy bunny slippers (made from real bunnies) which clashed nicely with the deeply piled Bull Shit Brown carpet. As a young candidate decades before, Hal had seen a manure holding pen on a tour of a dairy farm. It held the excreta of the entire herd and had a crust on top hard enough that, according to the farmer, "the cat could walk on it but the dog couldn't." The carpet had the same muddle of dry and damp brown. Sometimes he liked to walk on it barefoot, just like the proverbial cat on the pond. The pile felt a bit like squishing grapes between his toes.

His current mistress likes Bullshit brown while his former mistress likes people eater purple (she was community organizer turned federal judge).

Getting some fresh air should have required him to leave the house, since no air is allowed to enter or depart without his permission. But his mistresses found a simple way around this hermetically sealed law: leave the windows open. He explained about the complicated heat exchange system but they could never understand why you would want to return heat to where you got it in exchange for cold -- unless it was maybe summer, which it weren't -- and who was keeping track of the receipts? He admitted they had a point and, in any case, found he enjoyed the guilty pleasure of a chill breeze through an open window.

In the Kitchen he poured himself some ice green tea mixed with a spot of gin mixed with spot of ginseng (gin-ginseng "Sonic Tonic" Tea, it's called). He kept an open mind as he sat by the open window. He looked out at the snow which now fell heavily, drifting in and out of the light from his house. The ice from the freezing rain of the previous week had downed power lines and plunged this area into darkness -- but not Hal's House (he thanked goodness -- his own goodness -- for that). Southwest of Washington, where Hal lived, they got spanked by Crystal but avoided the full drumming. When the storms of Demetrius arrived they would dump a few feet of the fluffy stuff on top of the ice -- not near as much as the North would get but enough to grind Washington to a halt.

From Hal's point of view, Demetrius was 4 parts "Cat Five" Hurricane and six parts blithe winter spirit or snow sprite. It knocked out much of the natural gas production in the Gulf and went on to spread ruination among the oil refineries of Houston (causing a panicked evacuation of the City – and much destruction to boot). Natural gas and oil were two big sources of CO2, the most readily demonized culprit in Global Warming. As the lumbering slow-pitch softball of a storm -- with a fast spin and wicked curve -- rolls up what is now called "Blizzard Alley," it's going to hit a 7-10 split, or, better yet, a strike knocking over, well, a lot. In the process it will bury the "really tough to bankrupt" coal industry while destroying much of the rationale for its existence. Why, it was as if that slow, lumbering, fast spinning softball or sometime bowling ball – now ballooning into something more like a basketball – had hit a bank shot off the backboard, fence, or billiard table thingy (Yes, these are mixed-up metaphors but Hal used them to keep his thinking straight) and...what? Point is, it would do more in a few days to shut down CO2 production than Hal managed in a few decades of taking on the difficult task of ruining the US economy.

But of course progress does not come cheap and progress is not shabby, even if its consequences often are. It is "True," as Presidential Chief of Staff Al Insky says, that every catastrophe brings with it opportunity. But, Hal reminded himself, Catastrophe also brings with it catastrophe, and one should keep that in mind. As soon as he resolved to hold that thought close, that weaselly thought escaped his mind-grip and made a run for it, bolting into the swamps with the blood hounds he sent in pursuit either eaten by croco-gators or drownded (although both are possible, of course).

It was said the areas that got buried by blizzards when Crystal hit the previous week would again get buried by the Ice Cold Blizzard Spawns of Demetrius. The areas that got ice storms would also get blizzards -- in fact were getting blizzards at that moment. The areas that experienced flooding rains were getting ice storms (and floods, too). The coastal areas that got deluged and devastated again got deluged and devastated -- only different areas, this time.

Hal was one of a few dozen people privy to the top secret – now over the top secret – weather forecast. He had the executive summary somewhere. He was getting so many executive summaries that they got confused in his mind. He could no longer tell the ones that predicted the bad (10 days ago) from the ones that predicted worse (a few days later) to the ones that predicted whatever is worse than worse, quickly followed by predictions of the worse that is worse than that. He remembered a snippet from some poem, "I thank whatever...oh, god, maybe." And maybe they should thank the great god whatever that as worse as worse gets, they have not got to the worst -- may yet have a considerable way to go, when viewed from that perspective. As for the worst, as a boy he often confused it with wurst, the taste of which he likes but does not allow himself partake.

To keep track of the summaries, he had his staff produce a summary of executive summaries -- a kind of "really important, busy guy" summary -- which his staff, practiced at reinforcing his prejudices, quickly delivered. Then Hal misplaced it, and when he asked his Mistress, whose brown-blond hair melded nicely with her blond-brown dress, she pretended not to know (she pretends to be a community organizer but actually spies for four different nations -- five, if you count the CIA as a nation). When he asked his wife, who occupies a separate wing of the house, Happy got all snappy and yappy. Happy was her Political "Family Nickname." His nickname was Pappy. Behind her back he called her "Yappy," and she had heard about that. Behind his back she called him Crappy (and much else) but that hadn't reached him yet.

Happy gave up a promising career as -- no one was quite sure what -- for political-wifery. She had a PhD in New Social Scientific Studies from The New School for Social Scientific Studies in Chicago. Dr. Happy Bore had once worked as a something or other in the Community Organizing sector of the economy, administering a staff that advised people on how to become sane or at least malcontent (the sane response to their plight). They were all quite harried and could not keep up with demand. Her own position encompassed so much responsibility that it was like a sphere without a center, and therefore hard to describe (though she did go to the office).

In any case, Hal did not blame Happy for being snappy. She was concerned about their safety, even though they would be perfectly fine where they were (he had taken the precaution of "leaving the grid" before he started playing with it). But now the entire nation was concerned and concern is contagious. Or she may have worried that a tornado would hit her wing and miss his. Point is: if she had nothing to worry about she could always think something up.

The two wings of their house were separated by a movie theater and banquet hall (neither especially huge) where Senator and Dr. Bore could meet with plenty of witnesses. This space served another important purpose. In the past Senator Bore was harshly criticized for flying in his jet to address gatherings about the importance of not flying in jets. To avoid this criticism (a mere distraction from his important message) he stopped flying to the gatherings and began flying the gatherings to him. Hence the need for his own "Convocation Center."

The separate wings of the house featured separate kitchens, dens, living room and master and guest bedrooms. It had separate bathrooms, pluming and sewage systems. There were separate gyms, swimming pools, tennis courts, garages and driveways. But only Hal had a putting green -- so far.

Though they may live separate lives in separate wings, they were obviously in the same family -- architecturally.

As for the summary of summaries: He did not need it because he had a summary memory -- one that sent inconvenient information to summary execution. Here is the story so far, near as he could make out. The election day blizzard caused the cancellation of the elections in much of the nation and the nullification of the results for Federal Offices everywhere. Hurricane Crystal, and the series of blizzards that storm spawned, made a complete redesign of the electoral system a necessity. The Destruction spawned by Hurricane Demetrius will demand the take over of the entire economy to mobilize for national recovery, and so on. That brought him pretty much up to date.

But now nature was mobilizing a third or a fourth killer storm, a hurricane with the androgynous sounding name of "Eloi." Hurricane Eloi was on track toward the soft underbelly of America and predicted to pack at least as big a wallop as the other two or three, depending on if you count the election day events as "a killer storm." He was already having a hard time keeping track of the killer storms, so he did not want to count the election day blizzard. Besides, the election day blizzard had saved a lot of political lives and wasn't, despite its considerable wallop, that deadly so it did not qualify as a "killer storm." The election day storm was more the "the softening up" or the "keep them pinned down" storm.

The destructive capacity of these storms were geometric. Once they pass, the "new consensus" said, the entire Great Lakes region and New England will be covered in a sheet of ice whose heaving and movement will destroy whatever the storms left standing on the ground. And the floods, when it all melts (especially if the melting comes with the spring or summer rains) will carry away much of the ruins, flushing much of the national infrastructure down the Mississippi and into the Gulf. Of course, tens of millions of people who had "Stayed indoors," as advised, would more than likely die (but that was the conventional advice and what other advice were they to give?). The government faced hundreds of billions in public/private property losses. Tens of millions dead. And that is a lot even by Hal's measure. The ruin in the less hard hit areas to the south will require the effort of the entire nation to rebuild. One looming problem in all this: most of the dead voted for Hal Bore's Party. So it was important to reform the electoral system, so their votes will still count -- now, and in the future. It was what the dead would want and perhaps the best way to honor them. And, Hal reminded himself, if those people had listened to him they would have left their homes years ago for someplace safe. In fact everyone, everywhere, would have left their homes and, just to be safe, the planet -- if they had listened to Hal.

That was the catastrophe contained in the catastrophe contained in Hal's mind. What about the opportunity contained in that catastrophe? He thought of his "Green Cities" project, which took the former industrial gems of the Midwest, such as Detroit, and downsized them -- moving people from underpopulated neighborhoods and bulldozing those areas to turn them into "green space." Thus the gems would be divided into a string of jewels, placed into a unique natural setting. There were lessons to be learned from this success.

Those cities could be the model for the entire United States, which will become a smaller, better and more sustainable place. No more would they foolishly build huge cities where glaciers should be. They could build a nation of small, yeoman farmers -- just like the founders intended, but with a Department of Agriculture to make sure there was no over production and prices were good. There would also be small, light manufacturing, home spun spinning and, of course, Washington D.C., which, he was confident, could be kept ice free without resorting to nuclear power.

Those future “ice mountains” he's heard rumors of would themselves hold much potential. It was said the lost "Savannah Papers" -- now taken as the new testament though its existence and contents were little more than rumor -- predicts the Great Lakes will become the High Glaciers. Windmills could harvests the constant chilled Breeze that would blow off the face of the ice Alps to generate a boundless amount of power. Summer melt water would flow into vast glacial lakes that could be used for generating hydro power and providing clear, crisp water for boutique breweries and agriculture. There would be vast, ice free, summer pastures stretching into Western Canada (or so it was said that it was written) where nomadic herdsman could move their flocks -- perhaps herds of Bison, which his countrymen mistakenly called buffaloes. Or perhaps the bison could be cross bred with the hearty Yak, to produce Biyaks. Or, if his countrymen preferred, Yakalos. They could have a naming contest. All this, and more, the future would hold, once the U.S. became a smaller, better nation. But first they would have to create an "ice zone" which would be limited to only certain types of tightly controlled activities. A place where nature could romp and play with only a small amount of adult supervision. And about those Ice Alps -- could they be made high enough sot the ice canals could transport melt water to the arid west?

The list they were compiling: perhaps the concept of an "Ice Zone" might be in the mix.

At that point a cooling breeze reached through the window and caressed Hal. It gave him a pleasant shiver. He closed the window a bit, turned up the thermostat and returned to bed to sleep and to think, which fortunately for the world he could do at the same time.

Chapter Five: "Slow Go and SNOGO" is here.

A Bit About Chapter Four

2009-06-30T13:33:00.000-07:00

The Novel is Glaciation.

Chapter Four is still in a bit of a rough state. For some reason blogger would not indent my paragraphs. I actually wrote it using the old Netscape HTML editor (The SeaMonkey version).

I'm going to try posting it again later, when I have more energy, and try for better results.

As for Chapter Five, I still don't know what that will contain. But I got the Fourth of July Weekend to think about it (when I'm not drinking beer and stuff.)

Chapter One is here.

Chapter Two is here.

Chapter Three is here.

Chapter Four is here.

Chapter Four: Noah's Snot

2009-06-30T13:02:00.000-07:00

The sun shone bright on the snowfield that slopped gently away from them toward the abandoned temples of the abandoned civilization. The distant high-rise buildings along the suburban strip, standing solemnly above snow level, reminded Pirate of a scene in a movie. The drifts and the blowing snow made these temples look like ancient ruins in a desert. The movie hero, that's him, had found the hidden valley with the hidden temples and that valley still had its sacred power intact. And that power was the power of memory. He raced nemesis. And he, Pirate, was tired because the day before was quite busy and this morning was quite busy, too, and Nemesis apparently was never tired no matter how busy nemesis was. "What hell is nemesis?" he asked himself, and maybe Paul. Nemesis. Tired. Paul didn't stir.

It would be an easy hike for the next mile or so and he was glad of it. Paul had taken his backpack off and had yet to put his snow shoes on. He knelt on the ridge gazing across the field, so contemplative Pirate thought he might be praying -- until he took his map and compass out of his jacket pocket and began to fix their position.

Pirate shivered as the breeze picked up. He glanced around. The tippy top of the surrounding trees stuck up above snow level. They looked like il-pruned and poorly landscaped bushes, what with the withered and weathered leaves still clinging to these upper branches. But Pirate thanked the trees, which enabled their steep climb out of the Ice Colosseum behind. The "pipe" in the ice wall that got them off the lake surface was itself formed by a downed tree. And when they faced the Ice Wall nearer the top, the branches of the trees trapped within the snow aided their climb to the summit. The combination of sun and wind had turned the snow face to ice, but dangerously unstable ice. The tree branches held it all in place, like reinforcing rods in concrete. Thus they had climbed out of the gorge and onto the top of a thirty foot high snow drift.

Pirate looked down from where they came -- to the surface of the small lake. The folks who lived in the Ice Colosseum walked in single file down a narrow path through the snow -- like a raiding party of munchkins trying to conceal their numbers. They returned to their little settlement of shanties -- for the portions of their houses that stuck out of the snow appeared like squatter huts from where Pirate stood. They had not come down to their little lake to greet Paul and Pirate or to argue amongst themselves amid the scenery. Rather, they'd intended to put a message on the ice -- an attempt at a four letter word with one letter on each of four bed sheets. The sheets were twin sized, probably taken from their children's beds. It read "HLEP." Paul now stood beside him. Pirate pointed down to the lake surface. "They should check their spelling." The breeze had dropped off a bit and the sun felt warm. He was thinking this might be a good spot for a picnic. A bit cold, true, but they were in the sun instead of shade. They could eat some and have a bit of a nap.

"That sign of theirs will be under a foot of snow soon," said Paul, who nodded not down, but up. "I figured a mini-blizzard would hit around noon, but I also figured we'd make it by then. The storms early or we're late." He glanced his watch. "Both."

Pirate looked at the western sky and saw an ominous cloud bank rolling in. The higher, whiter, clouds imparted a sense of swiftness to the darker, lower bank. Or perhaps the higher clouds headed in a different direction. In fact, the cloud traffic looked confused. Another accident of nature was bound to occur. He listened to Paul. "Someone came up with a new name for that sort of formation. I forget what it was." Paul reached his hands out, as if to take hold of the approaching cloud bank. "Striated, deep to light gray. Swirling. The bottom of the clouds looking like the surface of a storm tossed sea. Darkly sinister. It's good word." He seemed to think the accurate naming of the thing important. "A good word. Use such a word and know what you are talking about. Latin for..."

"Noah's snot," said Pirate. "Snot good at all. Not if it brings another mess of snow. Those folks should've waited to put out their sign."

"Wait? For what? In 48 hours or so, another series of blizzards will hit. It will fill that bowl to the brim. The ice field spread out in front of us will just go flat across the undulations behind and below us. I'm not for waiting." With that Paul turned and left. He'd already put on his snow shoes and backpack.

"Wait up," said Pirate, as he slipped on his snow shoes. He briefly considered going back to warn the folks in the ice Colosseum of their likely fate, even though they'd likely not listen. But Paul's moving on decided the matter for him. Besides, he was near spent. As he strained to catch up, he thought of asking Paul if there were houses around them, or rather under them, but he didn't need to know the answer and it would take energy to ask.

"There will be a white-out in twenty minutes," said Paul, as Pirate caught up. "We should find shelter and wait it out." The snow field may have been thirty to forty feet deep in this section but it had been packed firm by the wind (which would also blow more snow onto the giant drift). Crusty ice had formed on top, which gave each step a crisp crunch. They made good time, even while taking care for hidden dangers. Ten minutes on and they past a short metal wall, the trailer of an eighteen wheeler. It was the only sign, other than the elevated signs, that they crossed the divided highway -- and that the ground below rose to meet the surface of the snow above. The high-rise buildings -- about ten to twelve stories -- were a mile away. One held Kim's office. She was Vice President of a small bank, which, thanks largely to her good sense, had stayed both solvent and independent through the turmoil of recent years. Their branches were buried under snow, but not buried in bad debt. In fact the plan, depending on the circumstance, was for Paul and Pirate to move his parents to Kim's office, so they could wait out the next set of storms together. And perhaps return some items of value to Kim.

The first flakes landed. Paul pushed on. In a few minutes it would be impossible to see more than a few yards through the white shroud of falling snow.

Paul navigated well and brought them onto the roof of a Walmart store. The managers had closed the shop up and locked it down before the blizzards of Crystal hit. A lot of stores had closed well before the storm, or failed to open after the election blizzard. They're patrons wanted to sock up, but they would be unable to resupply for days or weeks. But the real problem was the expected jump in prices during the interval -- which, given a string of actions by Washington Politicians, might be considerable. No one could guess what the replacement cost of the goods they sold might be -- but no one wanted to take the hit for the "price gouging" the added risk called for. Of course, the managers were not told the true severity of the storms about to hit. The new forecast: the stores would not reopen at all.

Paul thought they might have to dig down and break a window to get in (they had some "burglary tools" but steel shudders might complicate the project). But they assumed some entrepreneurial soul would have already handled the preliminaries to do a bit of looting -- and hopefully would not feel overly territorial about the accomplishment. But as they approached they didn't see much indication that shoppers had flocked to a sale with a "five finger discount." They only saw a few animal tracks in the snow, and none of them belonged to higher primates. They saw a dark spot in the snow where part of the roof had caved in. As visibility fell, they found a ventilation stack to attach a rope to, and carefully worked their way into the store. There was twisted metal and shards.

Pirate thought they might catch a few hours rest while the blizzard past. But Paul had other plans. He had Pirate clear out a large walk in cooler, putting racks of dairy products into the storage area. Paul said that, come the next blizzard, the roof may collapse over the rest of the store and bury and crush much that might prove useful in the future. The walk in cooler might be safe from that fate. While Pirate worked Paul scouted the store.

"There's a pack of stray dogs in here." He said when he came back. "They are acting mighty territorial and testy. I opened a bag of dog food for them."

"Where are the people?" Pirate wondered.

"Hold up somewhere, I suspect. They haven't run out of food yet but have no idea what is headed their way."

They found a tow motor that was charged up and Pirate began moving pallets that Paul singled out into the the cooler. Other pallets he stacked in a corner where Paul calculated the roof would remain standing. As he worked, Pirate disturbed a raccoon who seemed mighty displeased by his presence. When Paul came back he mentioned it to him. "Where's the beast?" asked Paul. Pirate took him over to the raccoon. It stared at them, nedgey and hostile. Paul took out his 9mm Glock and shot him. Pirate was shocked. "He's got rabies," Paul said. "I cured him. Don't try to pet those stray dogs, either. Who knows what they've been snacking on. They might be infected and you don't want to catch it."

"Not if that's the cure," said Pirate. "You brought your gun?" In fact, Pirate was surprised Paul had brought a gun since he did not normally walk around the city armed. But in truth it seemed a perfectly sensible accoutrement, given the circumstances.

"Of course I brought it," said Paul. "I broke into the gun rack here. You want anything?"

"Maybe something in shotgun," said Pirate. Losing an eye had not much improved his mediocre marksmanship.

Pirate thought they got a lot done in the next two hours, but that's not to say Paul was satisfied. But the storm was passing and Paul had other priorities. So they climbed up the ropes onto the roof and left the ropes in place. Once they moved Paul's Parents to Kim's office, they could come back and finish up. Of course Paul never seemed to finish anything to his satisfaction: it was matter of Pitch telling him to do something else. As they hiked off the roof, Pirate could see the storm clouds racing off and patch of blue appear in the sky -- though of course worse, much worse, was to come. They had no more than a mile to go, as the crow flies. With luck, they would make it to Paul's parents with an hour, maybe more, of daylight left. And then Pirate could rest.

Paul's parents lived in what might pass as a small settlement, a cluster of houses in a wooded area. The snow dunes at the tree line created a nearly impenetrable barrier. Paul knew of an abandoned railroad right of way that had been turned into a bike path. And sure enough, it provided a slight gap in the wall.

When they got his parents house they entered through a second story window. They found Paul's Parents were dead. They were in their bed, and appeared to be sleeping peacefully.
It wasn't suicide. The vent on the furnace was blocked by ice and the CO2 and the CO build up killed them in their sleep. At least that is what Paul said and Pirate didn't argue. He felt bad about Paul's parents but he wanted to rest. Paul said there might still be gas in the house and opened a few upstairs windows. Pirate sat vigil by the bodies, trying to stay awake while listening to Paul knock about his boyhood home. He felt a cold breeze on his face. Soon, Pirate nodded off.

2.
He was awoken by voices. There was little light entering the room but he couldn't tell if it was twilight or dawn. He was covered by a comforter, and felt quite comfortable, warm, and dreamy. Then he remembered where he was and stood up. Paul most have thrown the comforter over him. He followed the voices and went outside. Paul was talking to some of his neighbors.

"There's sleeping beauty now," he said.

"How long was I out," asked Pirate.

"About an hour and a half." He turned to his neighbors. "Pirate had a busy day yesterday. He started a business in the morning. Went public in the afternoon. Then sold it that evening." Apparently, Paul already told the neighbors of how Pirate tried to sell off his excess -- and soon to expire -- canned corned beef from Argentina, and of the various complications that had resulted from the effort.

"He's an entrepreneur," said old guy with a White mustache and a wink and a smile.

"Here," said Paul, handing Pirate a shovel. "You're rested. Dig." They were digging out a large hole in the snow. Pirate was still groggy from his nap. He wondered if Paul was going to bury his parents in the snow. Or if he would have to dig all the way down to ground level -- and then six feet into the frozen ground. But he thought it better not to ask and just dug. But soon other neighbors showed up carrying fire wood. The older folks told Pirate of Paul's mischievous childhood. From what Pirate could gather, Paul wasn't all that mischievous.
They patted down the sides of the hole to turn it into bowl made of ice. They put a tarp on the bottom and logs across the top and created channels for air. Dry brush was used for kindling, with the fire wood stacked on top. They brought out Paul's parents and placed them on the Pyre. Then they placed another man with them, a kind of bizarre menage a'trois. Pirate was a little taken aback that this guy would worm his way into the funeral, but it was all quickly arranged while Pirate slept. He got the feeling much had been decided while he slept. In any case, they all knew each other so a joint burial, or rather cremation, made sense. Besides, it was the other guy's wood.

They had dug out a kitchen window and some of the neighborhood woman were in there cooking. It wasn't know if they should eat before or after lighting the fire. A process that normally took several days was being compressed into several hours. So it all happened more or less simultaneously.
Decision were being made more or less on the fly, sometimes within ear shot of Pirate. They would not go to Kim's office now. Paul talked to Kim using a neighbor's HAM set. Most of his old neighbors were retired but they were several families with young children. It was determined that Paul and Pirate would lead them back to Brood, while the old folks would look after the old neighborhood.

So the funeral became a kind of Bon Voyage party, too.
Now Paul's parents had left him a letter, just in case something happened. And after reading it, Paul led Pirate over to a large box of mints sitting in the China Cabinet in the dinning room. "They told us to have a mint," he said. He took off the lid. "Try one," he said. The mints were wrapped in green foil. Pirate picked one up. "They are frozen," he said.
"Well," said Paul, as he lifted off the top layer of mints, "Try cutting your teeth on one of these. Go ahead!"
Well, if the top mint was frozen, the one below would be, too. But Pirate picked out a mint, though he had now intention of breaking a tooth on a frozen one. But he found the mint mighty tough to pick up. Paul laughed a bit, actually for the first time that day. "It is gold," he said, in a low voice, because some of the neighbor kids were playing in the next room. He trusted his neighbors, by and large, but why let the word out? "I'd say it is a quarter of a million dollars worth, by last years reckoning. Who knows what it is worth now."
Apparently Paul and the neighbors had sent out scouts while Pirate was asleep. They returned a bit after dark. Paul took out his map and explained it to Pirate. "We need a better way back, especially taking the kids." He ran his finger along the map. "We'll follow the old railroad, bike path, down to the High Power lines. The corridor is, for the most part, free of obstructions and, I was hoping from what I saw on the map, largely free of those annoying snow dunes. Well, at least as far as Bill here got by nightfall, and as far ahead as he could see climbing up a tower, it is. The distance is a little further but, in the end, shorter. We should make good time, God willing."

Other neighbors had a work shops, and constructed several sleds that the children could ride in. Meanwhile, Paul accepted envelopes full of the more portable valuables -- jewelry and the like -- for deposit in the bank. Pirate didn't like the idea of taking responsibility for other people's stuff. Besides, what were they going to do, stop at a half dozen banks on the way back? And they likely wouldn't be open. So Pirate waited until he was on his fourth beer, and asked one of the neighbors, just out of curiosity, which bank he was doing business with. The man looked baffled by the question. "Why, The Pirate's Bank."

Paul looked at Pirate and said, "Pirate, all of it is going into The Pirate's Bank." Pirate near fainted hearing that. Because Pirate's Bank was one of the businesses he had started the morning before, and then sold later on that evening. Pirate abit stunned, Pirate reached for a fifth beer. "We are going to start early," said Paul. " I think we can bring the beer back with us." So Pirate put the beer back and instead went to bed.

3.
It is true that Pirate, in a fit of absent mindedness, started The Pirate's Bank the day before their trip to this settlement, and that he soon grew to regret it and, in Paul's telling, went public and sold it. As he went to bed, he thought back on it, a whole business career which took place in a single day, that being the day before yesterday. And as he waited for sleep, his dreams of the days before kind a blended nicely with the dreams of days to come. Because while he'd been briefly discouraged, thinking he had managed poorly, others seemed to think he had done well.

The day before the day before yesterday seemed like a mighty long time ago. But that was the Day Pirate had finally refined the use of his "snow boat" and began bringing all his "stuff" from his "compound" to Pitch's Trash Estate, and also the day they removed the body of his elderly neighbor (and took it by sled to the temporary morgue set up at the "URGI CARE" facility). After Paul had refined Pirate's new mode of transport, and maybe because he had refined it, Pitch replaced Paul with one of the College kids who worked for Pitch part-time. So naturally Dennis, for that was the college kid's name, asked him why he just didn't leave the stuff at his place and take it out as he needed it -- assuming he didn't want to live there anymore. And that was Pirate's intent at the start, keeping his private warehouse intact, but once he started moving stuff he didn't know when to stop. Plus, there was the whole problem of the about to expire canned corn beef (CCB) from Argentina. Now, if it had another year to run out, he would just let it sit until starvation made the stuff palatable. But as things stood that prospect was not just unappetizing, but impractical as well. So he began to think of other uses for it. For instance, he could throw it at people he don't like.

Or maybe he could sell some of it. So that's why he wanted it at Pitch's place. Pitch would get plenty of visitors, in Pirate's way of thinking -- not even ten, going on twenty, feet of snow would keep people away from sniffing out what Pitch had planned for dealing with it -- and he'd see if he could interest them in CCB as they passed through. He could say, psst, want some C-C-B, and make it sound like a drug.
But he couldn't stop removing, even it he wanted to. Problem was, once his neighbors came around, and got it in their heads he was abandoning the place, he knew one of them would break in, and that person would be followed by the others, and it would be picked clean quick. So just like a shark has to keep swimming, and the guy crossing a frozen wilderness has to keep moving, he would have to keep removing.

Then Pitch mentioned he should bring over his new computer. This was while Pirate was staring into the refrigerator during one of the breaks forced by one of the pocket blizzards that past through. A few weeks before, with the coming winter looking hard (though he would have never guessed how hard) and business looking down, he had bought a new wiz-bang computer and loaded it up with science, engineering and design software -- way beyond what he could use (he thought he might go back to college, and maybe use it), but he figured Paul might find those features interesting. So he took Pitch's suggestion and packed up the computer and brought it over.

With Paul, Pitch and Kim otherwise engaged, it fell upon Pirate to keep Dennis occupied. Pirate was taking his supervisory duties seriously, when Dennis asked him what the others were up to -- as if there might be more important things going on than what he was involved in at the moment. "They are talking," Pirate told him, "but I prefer walking to talking." At the time he was sitting in the snow boat, supervising Dennis while he loaded canned corn beef into the bottom. Pirate decided to rephrase it. "I prefer do to not do," he said. Then after he rolled it over in his mind, he said, "I prefer do, to drabble." Dennis looked at him a bit squint eyed. So Pirate asked him, "Is drabble a word?"

"You're thinking dabble," said Dennis.

"No," said Pirate, remembering he was the supervisor. "I'm thinking drabble." But by that time Dennis had gone back inside to get more CCB. Pirate looked at one of the cases in the bottom of the boat and thought of all the cans they had taken to Pitch's, all the cans in the snow boat, and all the cans yet to go, and realized he was going to have to promote the stuff somehow, if he wanted to get rid of it.

Now it is true that Pirate did not like having time to think, unless his thoughts were pushing forward, constantly forward. And pushing forward in his way, he to open a market somewhere (in his mind it was already open) and began thinking what to charge for the corn beef, and hit upon the idea of selling it for pennies. Selling it literally for pennies. "One hundred pennies will get you one can of corned beef," is what he told Dennis. "Not dollars, not dimes, but pennies."

"You're crazy," said Dennis.

"You're crazy," said Pirate.

"Am not," said Dennis.

"Am so!" said Pirate. "Wait. Am not. You be Crazy." Pirate was giving the matter of price more thought. "I'll charge 99 cents. By which I mean pennies."

"You're crazy," said Dennis.

"Crazy like a fox," said Pirate.

"Crazy like Pirate," said Dennis.

"What is it they ain't making more of?" asked Pirate. "That's a rhetorical question, by the way."

"Land," said Dennis.

"Right. In fact God seems to be making less of it even as we speak. But besides land, what they ain't making more of?"

"Corned Beef?"

"No! Someone somewhere is making corned beef, take it on faith. Pennies! They ain't making more Pennies." In fact, the government had stopped making pennies months before and people were suppose to turn them in over the next year or so. Pirate had not thought much of it at the time -- pennies were kind of a nuisance, after all, devalued to a point they was more trouble than they was worth. But Pirate had a kind of mental tunning fork, so when he heard Kim and Pitch talking about the money supply -- the printing of dollars, is how they put it -- and then, sitting in the boat, the random thought about the national penny situation caused, well, a kind of harmonic vibration and he just naturally added the two together and made it equal an idea.

"Damn. You're right." said Dennis, "They stopped making Pennies because they are worth too little."

"No," said Pirate. "They stopped making pennies because the penny is worth too much!" In fact instead of buying canned corned beef off that Trucker (no matter how good the deal), he wished he had used his winnings that night to buy gold. Over the years he constantly heard people on the radio offering to sell gold, and thereby forgo the predicted huge earnings for themselves in order to turn them over to Pirate, if Pirate would only cooperate. But Pirate didn't know much about gold, in fact he did not even know how to tell if it was gold. Oh, he'd heard if you dropped gold into a bucket of water, and then weighted the water that came out of the bucket, and then divided it by a certain number and then multiplied that number by a certain other number, why, you'd have the value of that water in terms of gold. Except water always had a different value, didn't it? If you was in the desert, dying of thirst, you might trade a nice hunk of gold for a jug of water. But if you was standing next to a drinking fountain, you'd have to be clubbed over your head to give up your gold. So determining the value of gold was, well, complicated by the value of the water by which you measured it.

But now he remembered his history, and how they used to have twenty dollar gold pieces, which meant gold was worth however many pennies that was -- he didn't pause to figure it out. He just figured unsuspecting people would give up pennies for his CCB -- even about to expire CCB -- where in this situation they would never give up gold. So Pirate decided to Hoover-up every stray penny from under every sofa cushion in North East Ohio. All from an unsuspecting public.

Problem was, where would he set up his CCB-to-Pennies market? Because Pitch's place was a bit removed from most of the suckers, er, customers.

By the time he went inside with Dennis, and saw they had barely removed two pallets of the stuff. he had hit upon his solution, which had came to him like a flash, a vision, a well thought out plan. "We'll leave the rest for later," he said, with a kind of breathless enthusiasm. Because his vast master plan was hatching. In fact he told Dennis some of it, but then told him not to blab. "It's a Proprietary Secret, and I'm the proprietary. There are laws," he said.

The next morning, just before dawn, he loaded a card table and a few other items in the snow boat, stopped by his place and picked up a few cases of CCB and a twelve pack beer, and then set the tiller of the snow boat to the front of the house instead of the rear. He had scouted a new route for the snow boat the night before, and even set up some of the cable hitches, so the power winch could drag it along the route. So by first light they had carved a channel to the wide boulevard that ran down the hill and practically into lake Erie, now a vast expanse of white that stretched out to the Horizon. By the time they got to the top of the hill, they were attracting a crowd. Most people had not left their "dug outs" once they got it a bit dug out. But they'd poke there heads up over the snow like gofers when they heard Dennis and Pirate working. One of them crawled over the snow to the wake of Pirate's snowboat, and found he could stand up and walk in the wake without sinking deep into the snow. Still, Pirate thought he seemed bewildered as he staggered toward the snowboat -- like a goose whacked in the head, as the old saying had it. Still, this individual called out to others, "I can walk," as if he had experienced a miracle cure. And soon others swam their way through the snow to the path -- for such it almost required -- and where following along in the wake. As Dennis and Pirate worked hooking up the cables and moving the snowboat forward, they marveled at the bizarre utility of the vehicle. They'd ask Pirate where he was going but Pirate wouldn't say. Then they'd ask Dennis and Dennis would tell them to ask Pirate, because he was pledged not to say. So they'd ask Pirate again and he would say, "I have got a rendezvous with destiny." And the folks who asked were pretty glum when they asked. But when he said that stuff about destiny and the rendezvous, they seemed to cheer up. "Listen to that," they'd say to each other with a chuckle, "Pirate got a rendezvous with destiny."

"And I got to keep moving," Pirate would say, "because destiny won't wait."

So by the time he got to the top of the boulevard, and stopped to contemplate his next move for an hour or so, the people just grabbed the boat and the cable and began pushing and pulling it down the slope, with Pirate riding in it. And it turns out that the wind off the lake had packed the snow down, and the bit o'sun they had occasionally had melt and froze it into layers, so they had more success with the moving than any of them expected. They experienced a joy at the prospect of accomplishment, even if they were not sure what they were accomplishing. The'd say to Pirate, what you got in the bottom of the boat, Pirate? And Pirate would say, CCB. And they'd ask, what's CCB? And Pirate would say, if you got 100 pennies, you can find out -- because in the rush of enthusiasm, he had raised the price from 99 cents to one hundred pennies.
And there was another round of speculation about Pirate being crazy and how he was going ice water skiing or ice whale hunting. Until someone pulled aside the tarp in the bottom of the boat and called out, "CB is Canned Beer!"

Now when this was announced, Pirate was standing up in the snowboat, doing his best George Washington, so as to better supervise the hauling of same by the surrounding multitude. But on the word that they were hauling canned beer, which would presumably be dispensed at the end of the journey, the snowboat surged forward and Pirate tumbled into the bottom of the boat. He crawled up and saw he was making really good time. But if everyone expected a couple of beers at the end, the fuel costs would be prohibitive. So he jumped to his feet again and shouted out, "It ain't about beer!" And just as sudden as it had surged ahead, the snowboat stopped and Pirate tumbled back the other way. He crawled to his feet and pulled back the tarp. "It's Canned Corned Beef from Argentina." He picked up a can to show them. The people looked at him like they was being gypped. "It's too early in the morning for beer, any-who," he said, as cutely as he could. "I might be able to get you some coffee off the volunteer firemen, though." The fire station was at the terminus and a few volunteers were already down there puttering around, clearing snow off the roof and kind of digging, well, a well in the snow. There wasn't much sign of movement among the boat haulers, however, so Pirate got out of the boat and walked around to the front, each footfall being consumed in the snow, requiring him to haul it back out. "You people need a new way of thinking," he said, stopping before he got very far. "CCB is better than beer," he said.

"Better than beer?" There was an astonishment contained in the statement.

He held up a CCB. "Our can, the can, this can!" he said, while wondering where his soapbox was (snowed under, no doubt). "The can is life. Mix this with a few potatoes and, I don't know, whatever else you got laying around! And! You CAN keep your family ALIVE another day." In truth, Pirate wasn't quite sure of his claims so hedged a bit. "This can, which can be your can, With! The addition a few potatoes, and a little of that other stuff, will, upon being fed to your family! Feed said family for a day. Small family? Yes. But it's your family and don't let anyone tell you different." Again, Pirate sort of hedged in what he said, because he wasn't' sure how many it would feed, or what kind of family all present might have in mind, and did not want to be sued later for making false claims. Still, he thought it a ringing haranguing.

Pirate turned and picked up the rope and began to pull. The snow boat didn't budge. And Dennis began to push and the snowboat barely moved. Then the others joined in and in a matter of minutes they were down at the Volunteer Fire Department.

The Beer was for the Volunteer fireman, who Pirate wanted to volunteer for a special assignment. When Pirate brought it inside -- descending the well they had been digging to get inside -- one said, "Isn't it a little early for beer?" And another quickly corrected, "No it ain't."

"Beer," said Pirate, "Goes better with a spot of work. I should say after--"

"OK, Pirate," said one of the volunteers, "What do you want?" Ironically, this guy was involved in moving the twelve pallets of corned beef the first time. "What's the scheme?" he asked.

The town of Brood had a small tractor they used in Landscaping and light construction and Pirate wanted to use it. Of course it was snowed in so Pirate got the volunteers to use the fire hose to melt the snow (at the time, water was still readily available from the hydrants). This was a small part of his conception, his vast interlocking plan to entice pennies his way. But not just melting the snow was required: special skill was needed to create an ice ramp for the tractor to move out of its shed, and to build a causeway through the snow to move it to the the nearby Great Lake, which seemed a lot nearer last July. The snow was cold enough to freeze water, so by controlling the volume you could melt it and freeze it. "You're not putting out a fire here!" Pirate lectured. "You're being artists. Control the volume of water!" Now, when puddles of water formed, they could push snow onto it to soak it up, and more snow on top of that to mash down and that way form ice under the packed snow.

"Pirate, this is what we do," one volunteer told him.

"This is not what you do. This is what you do now."

"Go make your stairway," they told him. Because over by the snowboat trail, he needed a path through the ice wall that formed along the edge of the lake. He planned to use their steam cleaner to cut a whole in the Ice Wall and cut some steps down to the surface of the lake. He had some help from the town maintenance guy, who tossed wood chips and sawdust(the result of cutting firewood) onto the water Pirate left behind, which both soaked it up and was so cold it helped it freeze. Of course the maintenance guy wanted to know what Pirate was up to, and was hardly satisfied with what Pirate offered. "Keep asking," said Pirate. And that was the advice the Maintenance man followed as they worked. He kept asking.

He also had all sorts of suggestions about the run of the stairs. "We ain't looking for perfection," said Pirate. The man was a well known drunk and perfectionist -- which is no doubt why he spent so much time being a drunk, because being a perfectionist around people like Pirate was a lonely estate. Still, left to his quibbling, the job would never get done.
"We'll need handicapped access, too" he said, because there was some law or other he had to follow.

"How the handicapped going to get here through fifteen feet of snow?" asked Pirate. A couple of the maintainence guys buddies appeared -- fellows Pirate seen with Pitch in previous years -- and they were soon working on a combination ramp and steps, taking it on as if for the pleasure of solving a practical challenge. They put a snow blower on a kind of sled and used it to hack at the snow. It was a regular coup d'estat on all their parts, and they soon forced Pirate out.

The Great Lake consumed the snow from the original set of a blizzards into the great maw of its icy, churning waters (including snow that might have landed on Brood, but for the Wind caring it over the lake). It was the splash and spittle and back wash that had helped form the Ice wall. Toward the end of the assualt, the lake froze but much of the snow got packed down and sandpapered over by the arctic winds that rushed in behind. Still, it had acquired a good foot of crusty snow on its surface, but with no telling how thick and strong the ice might be underneath. No matter how cold it might be on the surface, it was still early in the season and the waters below might be warm enough to melt the ice from beneath. The wind had turned the snow into a kind of crystal foam, which might keep the cold from penetrating to the ice surface. Stepping on it was almost like stepping on crushed glass.

While the maintenance guy crafted the steps, Pirate poked at the snow with a pole to see what might lurk beneath. It seemed solid enough. And he got down on his haunches, and stared across the lake. From snow level the ice pack off shore looked like distant snow covered mountains looming above the Horizon. It made him think of the tales of Jack London. His mind did some planning, and some dreaming and he had already opened twelve corned beef stands all along the lake front for miles in every direction -- all sucking in pennies -- when the maintenance man interrupted his thinking.

He told the maintenance man the next step in his multistep program. "I figure we flood the snow with water and make an ice platform. Then we can bring over the all-weather carpet the fire guys put down so they can cook out in the summer. We'll put the all weather carpet down on the ice. And that's where I'll set up the card table and sell my CCB."

"You really think you're going to corner the penny market?" asked the maintenance guy. "Pennies for canned corned beef." He seemed to be giving the move some consideration, in that perfectionist way of his. Which meant he'd have a carp. But instead of a dozen quibbles, he gave his tentative approval. "Well, they ain't making more of them."

"Who told you my plan?" asked Pirate, figuring Dennis had blabbed his Proprietary Secret, which could hardly help him catch the consumers unawares. He'd lambast Dennis for it later.
"You did," said the maintenance guy. "What are they up too?" He pointed toward the fireman.

The firemen had the tractor out on the ice and had connected a roller to the back, one which was used to pack down soil. "They are going to make a path of packed snow along the lake, so folks can get to the market." Most of Brood was spread along the lake front -- the part that weren't along the broad boulevard that ran up the hill -- with another group of houses across a little inlet that weren't too far a walk if the future patrons had a way to across.

"Dragging that all-weather carpet through the snow would be a headache," said the maintenance guy. "Then it would just get buried in the next snow fall, which will be soon." He gave it a tad more consideration, in that perfectionist way of his. "It is so cold I don't think the ice will be that slick. It becomes hard as brick at minus five degrees centigrade."

"Five degrees, you say." In truth, Pirate wasn't paying attention.

"Minus Five. Celsius. 0.01 degree being the triple point of water: the intersection of ice, liquid, vapor It's colder than five degrees below that today. Did you know you need impurities in water to make it freeze?"

"Don't say," said Pirate.

The Maintenance man explained a bit about ice physics, how it is actually the film of water that forms under your shoe that makes it so slick. Sliding is a function of temperature and pressure at the interface of the foot and the ice. And there's the matter of direct sunlight, since sunlight can melt the ice just below the ice surface but with clouds rolling in--
Pirate looked up and saw that clouds were indeed forming and would soon block the sun. "And you want to bring handicapped people down here," Pirate reminded him, even if the handicapped won't get through the snow to get to the ice.

"I got some old door mats and runners to spread around," he said.

A fireman came over to take the steam cleaner which the Maintenance guy and his buddies used as a sculpting tool. The tractor was on the ice crushing the snow into a path. The steam cleaner could melt a hole in the barrier, and they would use the tractor with the plow blade to build a ramp up, to give access to the path. People were already gathering along the shore to watch. And Pirate told him, "Don't crack the ice with the tractor and fall in the lake." He knew he'd get the blame if they did, since he was the reason they were on the ice.
"Thanks for the advice," said the Fireman.

Dennis was supposed to be using the snowboat to brings customers -- at three pennies a ride (one way) -- down to the market. Instead he was standing at the top of the newly carved stairway. The friends of the maintenance guy had cut a wide ramp in the snow down to the steps, so Dennis stood in a slit in the snow pile that reached over his head. There was a yellow ribbon at the top of the stairway, and that ribbon held back the citizenry, a few lined up behind Dennis, while the steps froze solid. Pirate called up to Dennis, "Where is my snowboat?"

"The City engineer borrowed it."

"What the hell."

"We was thinking. It might make more sense to run a cable car up Broadway, rather than the snowboat." Dennis had stacked the cases of CCB they had brought down with them at the top of the Ice stairway.

"Sure, build a cable car," said Pirate, wondering what they were doing with his snowboat. Towns people we're already picking through the CCB. Already, it was spinning out of control. That wasn't supposes to happen until 10 am. "Tell them I'm not open for business yet! Tell them to go home and collect their pennies."

"You tell them," said Dennis. "They'll think I'm crazy. They know you are."

Pirate tested out the ice steps. In fact, they were already frozen. The Maintenance guy was something of an artist after all. Pirate climbed the steps and shooed the people away. "We don't open for another hour-and-half, at least. Go home and gather up your pennies. Ninety-nine pennies will get you a can of corned beef. Pennies only!"

"Your crazy," they told him, but they went home to collect their pennies. But one citizen hung back. "You going to have enough of that CCB?" she asked.

"You don't worry about that," he told her. "Just get your pennies." Then he thought about customer relations and added, "Ma'am."

The Maintenance man got him to help drag boards over from the town garage -- which his friends had dug an entrance too before disappearing. He also tied a couple rubber mats to the boards. It was a pain dragging them through the snow, but it weren't far. Once on at the bottom of the steps Pirate helped him lay the boards edgewise in the snow, like forms for pouring concrete. Then he began taking temperature readings of the snow at different levels. Then he began recording the readings in his notebook computer. "What the hell," said Pirate, "do you have to take so many readings?"

"Sure do, if you want premium ice."

"Well, I don't need premium ice. I'll take plain old generic ice. Just get her done." The friends showed up with a small fire hose -- one that might be used on boutique fires. They began arguing snow temperature, air temperature, water temperature and speed and volume of water discharge. "Why don't you just do one?" said Pirate.

He saw a man at the top of the steps where the cases of CCB were still sitting. So he went up to see what he wanted. He had a twenty dollar bill and wanted twenty cans of CCB. Put Pirate told him he was only accepting pennies. The man pushed the twenty into Piratates Pocket, and said the twenty dollar bill was legal tender and he was taking twenty cans, and his words carried a threatening edge.

"Keep it up," said Pirate, "And you will be rendered tender." His words must have sounded threatening, because the man sotpped. Of course, Pirate was known to be Pitch's man, and might be speaking for Pitch.

"How many cans will you give me for the twenty?" he asked. Pirate told him one can, and regretted saying it. He wanted to stay away from paper, it would only confuse things. The man complained and played the victim and tried to weasel a few more cans but Pirate was a rock. Finally, the man relented -- but then took three cans. Before Pirate could jump him, the man took out two rolls of Pennies worth a dollar each for the additional two cans of corned beef, citing the price of 99 pennies that Pirate had lapsed into on earlier occasions. Pirate offered him two pennies back but expected the man to say, "keep the change," on account of his being such a pain and since they were only pennies but the man took them.

"Don't tell anyone I accepted paper" said Pirate.

"The government will take paper money in payment for taxes," the man said helpfully. Pirate thought that might be true, at least until they demanded pennies. Still, keeping some twenties around for dealing with government might make sense.

He began moving his stock down to the bottom of the stairs, lest it sprout wings and fly away. He also had a card table and signs to move down. And by the time he finished, they had finished the first block of ice, which was about ten feet square. And it had frozen solid almost as soon as they had poured the water in. "It requires as many calories to turn ice into water as it does to raise the temperature of that water to 80 degrees," said one of the friends, by way of explanation.
Pirate wondered for a moment, who are these guys? "Your not making warm water," said Pirate, "You are making ice." He wanted them to keep it straight.

"The water chills in the hose," said the man. He was using a digital thermometer.

"Pirate's paving," said a voice. It was Gillis, a young guy who worked at the scrap yard for a couple weeks last summer. "As soon as the sun's out you'll cry: it's melting, it's melting. My wonderful driveway is melting."

"Help me spread out the mats," Pirate told him. If Gillis was going to make fun of him, then he'd put him to work. They put the runner from the bottom of the ice stairs out onto the first slab of ice. They set up the sign, which said "Pirate's Hash Market." He got a little confused about corned beef and "corned beef hash" while making the sign.

"You selling dope?" asked Gillis, "Hash?"

"No," said Pirate. "Corned Beef for Hash."

"You know where I can get some?"

"What?"

"Dope. Hash."

"No," said Pirate. He took out his magic marker and crossed out "hash" because he did not want to be answering those inquireies all day. Then he wrote, "I have no hash, please do not ask" below it.

More people were threatening to come down the stairs so Pirate sent Gillis up top to keep them back. "Tell them we don't open for twenty minutes, at least."

The men had put down two more blocks of ice and Pirate was of the opinion that he would now have enough room to set up his small market but they went on making a fourth ice block and planned fifth, six, seventh and eighth and had even acquired some help to do it, apprentice ice makers, as it were. The friends talked, in a theoretical manner, about closing off the shallow inlet and freezing it solid. "How much weight could that support, I wonder." Pirate saw folks walking down the path the fireman had crushed in the ice surface of the lake, so they must have finnished the first ramp. Meanwhile, Gillis let a few customers, who were complaining about waiting in the cold, down the steps. This upset Pirate, because he was about to tell him to let people down, but now had to tell him to hold them back as a matter of boss principle. The two who got through had enough pennies to buy twenty cans of corned beef. He didn't think anyone had that many pennies, and this improved his spirits, which began to sag as soon as he found himself anchored in one spot. Then he realized they ran a store. In fact, they had a card table of their own and planned to set up shop. "But this is my market," said Pirate.

"Is it your lake?" They asked. "Don't worry. Were selling some frozen vegetables and stuff. We cannot keep the freezer going without power and if there is a couple warm days..."
Well, from what Pirate had heard there wouldn't be warm days for a while but he didn't tell them that. They laid one of the rubber runners in front of their table. That iritated Pirate.

"Hey, is that your mat?"

"What? Is it yours?"

"Didn't say it was." He noticed some of the people crossing the ice were carrying stuff they no doubt intended to sell. And he muttered to himself, "this is my market."

A couple of fireman appeared next to Pirate. "Who are those guys?" they asked, indicating the men making the ice. Two of them seemed to be taking core samples from an ice slab they had recently completed.

"They're arctic explorers," said Pirate.

"They are here for the meeting," said the other Fireman.

"What meeting?" asked Pirate.

"The important meeting you obviously were not invited to." The firemen went over to talk to the ice makers of "Pirate's Paving."

"What's going on?" asked another voice. And Pirate was about to cut Gillis a new one for letting people down the stairs before time. But he turned and saw Pitch standing there. And Pitch was angry. "You got Dennis building some cable car and he's using my stuff to do it!"

"Ah," said Pirate.

"I'm paying Dennis. And you got him working for you."

"Ah," said Pirate.

"In fact, I'm paying you, and you got you working for you."

"Ah," said Pirate.

"Is Gillis working for me again?"

"Ah," said Pirate.

"You know, you got dozens of people lined up back there, all carting their coin collections. You're selling canned corned beef, is that it?" He picked up a can.

"Ah, it's from Argentina."

"It says Brazil on the can."

"Really?" said Pirate. For how many years had he thought it was from Argentina?

"You got enough to sell to all those poeple? It don't look like it."

"I got more in the warehouse. Over by where I kept the boat for, you know, all that time. And more at my place, too."
Pitch got on the walkie talkie he was carrying and ordered someone to bring down six more cases of CCB, which would arrive in an hour or so. Pirate asked if they could bring down three cases of tomato paste, since he wanted to vary the offering -- and if they'd take some pennies back, since he was starting to realize how heavy they were.

"They are going to the meeting. They are not running errands for you," said Pitch. Pirate must have looked wounded, because he relented a bit. "They can bring the pennies to the meeting."
"Right! I got to go to that meeting, too."

"No you don't. You got to stay here and sell corned beef." And with that he walked over to the other men on the ice, and Pirate never felt so welded to one place in his life. And the people showing up to buy his stuff didn't much help. In fact, there was that motley collection of patrons heading down the trail packed onto the lake ice -- even before the volunteers had finished the ramp. And some of them were dragging sleds. And for a moment Pirate was hopeful, because he thought the sleds might be for all the pennies they had -- until he saw the sleds were piled high with stuff. And Pirate felt apprehensive, because they were not suppose to be hauling stuff towards him, they were suppose to haul stuff away. But it was the conversation he had with his competitors across the way that would mark the semi-official start of The Pirate's Market. And while he conversed with them, Pirate Construction would work on the ramp access to the lake trails; Pirate Paving poured ice to expand the platform for the Market; The Snowboat II -- based on Pirate's orginal snowboat and destined, in its various manifestaions, to become the workhorse of Pirate Hauling and Storage -- was carving a path down Broadway for use by the Pirate Cable Car Company. All of these enterprises Pirate, in a sense, started and all would be out of his control by sundown.
As would the Pirate Bank, which had its gestation in the operation of the Market, and which he founded unintentionally, in a fit of absent mindedness, and would happily give away in the evening, not realizing what he had created during the day.

4.
It was pitch dark out when Paul woke Pirate up, with Pirate hardly having the time for fresh dreams.. "Is it time to leave?" asked Pirate.

"Soon," said Paul. "There is something I want you to see."

Whatever it was, Pirate didn't want to see it. Pirate wanted to go back to sleep. But Paul prodded him up and then led him up onto the roof. "This might be a once in a lifetime type thing." It was pitch dark inside but outside the entire galaxy was lit up. To Pirate, The Milky Way never looked so rich. He saw some a shooting star. And then another. "Wow. Is that what you wanted me to see."

"Not just that." Paul had set up his telescope on the roof. It was pointed to the southeast, toward the horizon. "Have a look through it." So Pirate looked through it but didn't see much of anything, except lots of stars that looked a bit out of focus. "Don't fiddle with it and keep looking," said Paul. He started telling Pirate a bit about the telescope, which he had as a boy. "It's not so much the magnification as the light gathering. Bringing more photons to the eye."

Pirate kept looking. He didn't know what he was looking for. "All I see is like clouds, only silhouetted like, against the stars. They look like cloud tops."

"Right," said Paul.

Pirate kept looking. He didn't have the patience to be astronomer, that's for sure. Paul was still talking about his telescope so Pirate, to get him off the topic and so he might get off the eye hole, said, "What about that job you lost?" He didn't mean to come out with it like that. He meant to say, Speaking of your childhood, how'd you lose that job you got out of college? The loss that caused you to move back home?
"Which job was that?" asked Paul. But of course Pirate didn't have to specify. "After I became a Civil engineer, I went to work for a County in Southern California -- during the construction of their new Administration Building. It was a monument to government. An upside down Pyramid."

Pirate laughed, and removed his eye from the telescope. "Egyptian or Aztec?"

"I don't know. More like Guggenheim. Keep looking. Of course, the building posed some structural challenges right from the get-go. Anyways, a few months after it opened up a got a call from the head of the cleaning crew telling me of cracks in the concrete, in a stairwell by the parking garage. I told him cracks were natural in concrete. He said, 'But I can see light through these.' That ain't so natural. The short of it is the building required extensive renovations and, since I inspected the placement of the the reinforcing rods and OKed the pouring of the concrete and what not, I took the fall. Keep looking."

"But it wasn't the rebar and it wasn't the concrete."

"It was shitty design. I pointed out as much when I was first hired. But I was pretty junior, it was almost set in concrete, and I didn't put it in writing. So. I got a divorce and moved back home. Keep looking."

"I bet they hired you to take the fall."

"I don't want to talk about it," said Paul. "It took a long time to get over. Nobody wants to hire a Civil Engineer with a monumental collapse on his record -- even if the collapse never quite happened. I was happy to get a job with Pitch where, ironically, collapsing the structures is kind of the objective."

"Woo." said Pirate. "Saw a flash."

"Right."

"Wow. Another. It looks like an eggplant."

"Eggplant?"

"A flash. But like Portuguese's man o'war."

"A jellyfish."

"You know. A flash -- with tentacles. It left like a brief little eerie imprint on the back of my eye."

"You don't have to keep looking. You saw one. A sprite. High altitude lightening. It goes from the clouds up. Like 60 miles up."

"You think Hurricane Demitrious caused it? The storm what's heading towards us."

"I hope not. Maybe thunderstorms on the leading edge. What you saw is over a hundred miles away, I'd say. The eye is maybe South of St. Louis. It's suppose to slow down as it bumps against the cold air, and then strengthen, break on through and hit us." Paul began to take down the telescope. Pirate reminded himself it was hardly the middle of November. The winter seemed so old, but it was still over a month away. But Paul didn't need reminding. "I'm not for waiting." he said. "Not even until dawn. Billy is getting the others ready. I got a couple night vision goggles off one of the neighbors. Me and Billy are going to blaze a trail."

"Your neighbors could equip a battalion," said Pirate. "I'll come with you."

"No you won't. And they couldn't equip much more than a platoon." Paul seemed to enjoy correcting him. "You'll wear the goggles and follow the trail we mark. The others will hold tight to you. The moon will be up soon, not much more the a Crescent but it will give us a little more useful light. Most of it will reflect back off the snow. We should be halfway back by sunrise."

Paul had the telescope folded back up. "Guess I'll put this back in my old room. Though no one will ever see it again." Pirate knew what Paul meant. He was convinced this area was about to get buried in so much snow that it wouldn't see the light of day for another 250,000 years. But that was just the way he thought, looking for the dark side.

Pirate heard an electric generator come on. And a partially dug out house across the way partially lit up. And as if on cue a partial lit moon rose over the bushes along the top of the white hill over the other way -- which Pirate remembered were not bushes but the partial tops of trees buried, not in a hill, but in a dune.

The first part of Chapter Five, "Sen. Hal Bore," is here

Chapter three is up

2009-06-02T06:52:00.000-07:00

I am working (mostly not) on a Novel, Glaciation. I wasn't satisfied with Chapter three but it didn't seem to improve with age. I'm trying to start a, what's that called again? Love story. Mostly it turned into a political harangue (but an interesting one! Honest).

In any case, it is time to start chapter four before I forget what the book is about.

Chapter One is here.

Chapter Two is here.

Chapter Three is here.

Chapter 3: Creating a New Debase Line

2009-06-02T05:08:00.000-07:00

As Cold Core Crystal moved off shore and caught her third wind over the Atlantic, Hurricane Demetrius disrupted oil and gas production in the Gulf, tore through refineries near the coast and spawned property devouring tornadoes all over the south – thus serving notice that it would rampage along the same path as Crystal.

Greg sat in his office staring through his kelp colored blinds at the surface of the ever angry Atlantic. Near the coast the temperatures remained warm enough that the blizzards turned to freezing rain, coating absolutely everything in additional layers of ice. Familiar objects turned into macabre gargoyles. Tree limbs sagged, bent, collapsed. He wondered what to make of it all. Normally, when faced with a string of unusual events, he wondered what he could make off it all. But the weather was what it was, is what it is, and will be what it will be: there was nothing he could do about it. But it would determine the outcome of everything he does, even if he does nothing – which was not in his nature anymore than it was in nature's nature.

His concern now was about people and institutions. The situation was so changed both people and institutions had become unpredictable – especially the current crop of politicians. He needed them predictable.

Greg never wanted to own the Democratic Party, he just wanted rent it for awhile. He certainly did not want to get involved in its day-to-day operations. The party was run by a bunch of folks whose actions he could predict but never quite understand. He liked their predictability because it made them easier to manipulate. Understanding their reasoning, or lack of it, was much less important to his purposes.

Greg remembered what the iconoclast Oswald Spengler thought of the National Socialist movement before it came to power in Germany. Spengler said the Nazis' torch lit parades consisted of “men who could find no work being led by men who would do no work.” Greg had actually known Nazis – after they had become “the Nazis” – since his father had to, regrettably, deal with them. He had also known, and dealt with, Stalinists. So he had associated with men (out of regrettable necessity) that dealt out violence on a scale that would make the mafia blush. Even the most ruthless political operative in the Democratic machine was playing patty cake in the sandbox as far Greg was concerned. In fact they often required stiffening. Being Americans they were brought up soft – just not made of the same unbending stuff, in his estimation. But Greg, as an outsider with a Universe of political experience behind him, was nonetheless reminded of Spengler's formulation: he concluded the Democratic Party consists of those in search of the American dream being led, often in mass demonstrations, by those who disdain it.

Greg disdains nothing. He analyzes and manipulates. To Greg it seemed many, if not most, American's wanted to work for themselves: Dance instructors, drug dealers, Dermatologists, Ditch Diggers you name it. Even those Ivy League professors who brought the world financial system to brink of collapse were just trying to work for themselves.

But those college professors had something in common with another type of American: those with the grand (if not grandiose) sweeping vision. They could be found in most walks of life and sometimes they produced much that was good – railroads, the IT industry and such. But their natural home these days seemed to be in Politics and The Media, the better to drag the entire nation along – and through and over and under every barrier, regardless the risk. And when foul-ups happen, pin the blame on someone else. He could see it coming several decades before, when the Ivy League elite, having nothing to do with building the great nation they were inheriting, decided that everything must change. Their petulance took over and became the new normal. Once they gained power, Greg knew he could count on them forging ahead, no matter how jaw dropping dumb their proposals might be.

However, the radical change in the weather changed radically his ability to predict their actions. To say those in the White House now have their backs against the wall is only true if they are face down in either the mud or snow (depending on region) with the wall collapsed on top of them – the wall in this case being much of the rest of the world, which seems to have imploded in on them (or exploded, if you live in the rest of the world).

Mixed metaphors aside, when Greg got their calls he took them.

2.
Sen. Hal Bore III was a man of sweeping vision and unlimited intellect. But here was the basic problem: while his intellect was unlimited, he just wasn't that smart. Nor was his vision blinkered by a sense of the possible, which is kind of ironic in a practitioner of “the art of the possible.” He had come from a prominent political family. Both his father and grandfather had spent many years in the US Senate. Everyone thought that Hal, an attractive and engaging man, would some day be President. But Hal suffered from low self esteem, and never saw himself as amounting to more than a US Senator. Still, there was an entire political machine – which had morphed into a movement – attached to his legacy and it manged to grab the nomination. Campaigning for the Presidency of the US transformed him. Perhaps because of his low self esteem, Hal did not believe that he had the right to lie to people. Nor did he believe he had the right to tell his handlers what to do. He split the difference by eliminating it: he actually believed everything his speech writers wrote, and every word his handlers had him utter. The result was best described as sincere bombast. The sincerity almost got him elected. The bombast, put on full display during a two month long recount ordeal, no doubt accounted for the loss (and the relief most of the nation felt when that loss was finally achieved).

In any case, Hal Bore was the politician most associated with the issue of Global Warming, which seemed rather problematic given the weather forecast and certain weather related events. For instance, the total submersion of many population centers under – well, don't think blankets of snow and ice, think stacked mattresses. With much more to come. And winter was still a month away. Oh, well.

Of course Greg had given Hal his full support, though in a thoroughly discrete manner. So naturally Greg took his call.

Hal told Greg that this disaster was precisely what he warned the nation about. OK. Right. What else is on your mind? Politics.

Given the recent series of disasters that he had so clearly warned about (how an excess of heat can result in a excess of cold or some such) it might be necessary to further delay the Elections that were canceled in so much of the country as a result of the now almost forgotten election day blizzard (the first futon of snow). Perhaps the results of all national elections held that day could be annulled. They could just schedule a redo. It was important for stability. Given the potential for mass migrations of people (and the precipitous decline in the number of living, breathing voters) perhaps a different method of election should be tried – perhaps lists of candidates chosen by party elders with the voters choosing a party rather than a candidate, with four or five representatives for much larger congressional districts. Another possibility: estimated voting. They would compare the Demographics of the electorate with the Demographics of those who make it to the polls. Using statistical measures pioneered by the census department, the results could be based on which party would have won if everyone could have gotten to the polls. The election/selection process would be for an interim congress. Nothing permanent. It was important for stability. The political scientists and the statisticians were working on it. Could they count on Greg's support for this idea? Greg took from this discussion that Hal feared huge losses for his party, which made it the ideal time to reform the electoral system in a way that would prevent that particular disaster.

Greg pointed out that, in addition to stability, the country needed a long list of things – with that list growing by the hour. So perhaps with the use of analysis and planning, and in consultation with the experts, such a list could be compiled and presented to the people and, while allowing time for comment, put into action. Such a list would have something for everyone. Hal liked the idea. Greg liked it too. He intended to compile the list (the important parts, anyway).

Next he heard from the Secretary of the Treasury. Apparently revenues were plunging toward zero and outlays will due to double, or redouble if your include the recent doubling. Point is, government workers need to be paid and whatnot. And people – retirees and whatnot – need to be paid. All those dependent on government need to be paid. What was a responsible Secretary of the Treasurer to do in this situation?

Well, the answer was simple: print money. In fact, print a lot of money, very quickly. Now was not the time for half measures! And don't tell people what you are doing. They'll find out as they go along.

This action will result in a rapidly increasing supply of money chasing a rapidly plummeting supply of goods – and services, too, once prostitution is factored out. This should (no, make that would) result in hyperinflation. At the end of the process a roll of twenty dollar bills will be used to buy a loaf of bread. But it wouldn't be done simply to make bakers feel richer. It would be done to effectively repudiate the national debt and allow the political system to deal with the unfunded commitments of the Social Welfare State. You will still get your five hundred dollar check from the government but it will only buy 5 dollars worth of stuff (Sorry about that). But really, Greg saw no way around it. No longer could the treasury service the debt or, given the realities, sell new debt or even pay for ongoing activities. So, were it to be done, then it best be done quickly.

Of course Greg was short selling the dollar so some might say that his advice was not totally disinterested. But he also owned US debt (which he had, by an large, unloaded but he kept enough to say he had some) and so stood to lose money. But the US, indeed the entire world economy, was now in free fall and the sooner it found bottom the better.

And when it found bottom Greg was going to be there waiting for it.

Next, he got call from Abraham Lincoln Insky, President Bill Haley's Chief of Staff. He was called Al, a name derived from his initials. Al Insky came up through the Chicago Democratic Machine – indeed, he led the group that had taken it over – and was quite an astute, and dangerous, operative. He told Greg he had talked to Hal Bore, and wanted to discuss Greg's idea of a “wish list.”

Greg and Al sparred for a few minutes. Though he did not put it this way, basically Al wanted Greg's help in achieving perpetual power (a catastrophe is a terrible opportunity to waste, from Al's point of view). So he needed to know what Greg would want in return for supporting these efforts. But, as of yet, Greg was not sure what he wanted. It was a unique feeling. But he needed a plan, so he remained noncommittal while suggesting that Al and President Haley go ahead and build support for the “list.”

Funny, as Greg talked to Al his eyes landed on that Manuscript he got from Sandy. Beneath its fiendishly complicated encryption, it allegedly describes the frozen world that was now in the throes of birth. It was rumored – for rumors about this manuscript had now surfaced all over the “informed” part of the Internet – the book even described how to prevent this new reality from coming into being. For a moment, Greg was tempted to brag to Al about having the “Savannah manuscript” that folks down in Washington only whispered about. But though Greg was often tempted to brag, he almost never did so, and certainly would not brag to sly Al Insky.

3.
Jimmy Savannah was twenty eight when he declared that Irony was dead – taken out by the same bullet that got god. Yes, it may have mortally wounded god (God, of course, will recover) but it struck Irony right between the I and the Y and that's how Irony died – ironically.

Or perhaps Irony was crucified: the I tacked to the Y causing miserable death by suffocation.

His “declaration” came not long after Sandy forced Jimmy to watch the movie “An Incontrovertible Truth,” Sen. Hal Bore's oration blaming the activities of Western (that is to say American) man for so warming the planet that human civilization faced certain destruction unless “something” was done immediately.

That “something” which “must be done” would cost $100,000,000,000,000 in pre-hyperinflation dollars and give Hal Bore and his political pals complete control over the world economy. In addition, one should consider the cost overruns: the costs of letting these imbeciles overrun the world economy!

At this point Jimmy would calm himself. First, they weren't imbeciles. In fact they were intelligent and – in the arrangement of their personal lives and careers, often showed a great deal of competence (more than Jimmy himself, as Jimmy himself would ruefully admit). They pursued their ends with much determination and displayed a great deal analytical ability and critical thinking in terms of strategies and tactics. They believed all they said and did and were, the best of them, quite sincere (the worst of them took advantage of the best of them). They suffered from Sensitive at Fourteen Syndrome (SAFES).

Although it often manifests itself at fourteen, it can strike an individual at any age (Fourteen was the age that SAFES struck Jimmy Savannah, the patient Zero in his own anecdotal study). It afflicts the victim with selective reasoning and can turn a genius into a useful idiot in a matter of days.

4.
At Fourteen Jimmy's passion was sports but beyond that he could only be termed an aspiring nincompoop. In eighth grade he was, to all appearance, a functional illiterate. He had showed an interest in twentieth century history while watching a TV series about those times. His grandfather, a retired engineer who'd been drafted to tutor Jimmy in math, made him a gift of a series of Novels by Upton Sinclair that dealt with the history of the two World Wars.

Now, Upton Sinclair was perhaps history's most well meaning socialist – and since all socialist are well meaning, this was no mean feat. Jimmy's grandfather was a conservative who, after casting his first vote for FDR in 1932, voted for his opponent in '36. The irony of this New Deal turncoat enabling Jimmy to immerse himself in the writings of a prolific Socialist was lost on the boy. First, all he knew about conservatives is that they were rather hard and selfish, while socialist were generous and caring. Second, while his grandfather helped Jimmy some with his reading, any criticism of Socialism was so muted that years later Jimmy could not imagine what that criticism might have been.

After reading the first book (World's End) and beginning the Second (Between Two Worlds) he dutifully announced to his grandfather (and everyone else who cared to listen) that he was now a Socialist. He's grandfather was pleased that he was enjoying the books.

If his grandfather had a deeper stratagem it didn't occur to Jimmy until after the man had died. In those books a popular socialist pamphleteer by the name of Benito Mussolini became the father of fascism, the dictator of Italy and the partner of Adolf Hitler in the Rome-Berlin Axis; in those books many committed Germans, hoping for a better future, joined the National Socialists – the Nazis – and bundled their Socialist beliefs with their resentments and nursed grudges; in those books a boyhood friend of the protagonist, a loyal and idealistic youth (a concert pianist and composer, no less), would grow into a commanding officer in the SS, dealing ruthlessly (and idealistically) with all enemies; in those books revolutionaries of every sort flocked to the Soviet Union and were ultimately devoured; and in those books members of the most peaceful, productive, and law abiding elements of a society could be labeled enemies of the people and shipped off to concentration camps.

Still, it is admittedly easy to become a Socialist, but how does one stop?

He dismissed Fascism and Nazism as fake forms of Socialism used by Capitalists to divide and rule the people. This dismissal was like the blade of a guillotine that came down and cut off that line of thought. Instead of thinking about fascism's socialist supporters, he'd think of the Hitler's Capitalist enablers.

But what was one to make of the Soviet Union? The Bolshevik revolution was apparently viewed as authentic by most Socialist well into its Stalinist totalitarian phase...but the guillotine was already out and whack, down came the blade, cutting off that train of thought. He reminded himself the left needed to form a “United Front” to deny power to conservatives.

At one point it occurred to him that the collectivization of agriculture in the Soviet Union was a return to feudalism, tying the peasant to the land and the workers to their jobs. Interesting that the wave of the future turned into a flush from the past – whack! He reminded himself their society was unprepared for the new order when the revolution took hold.

Fascism was considerably easier to consider, since he had never identified himself as a Fascist and fascism is a bad thing, not a good one. The Nazis tied farm laborers to the land and workers to their jobs just like the Soviet – whack. Fascism treated people as members of groups, as if they were a cell of a larger organism. Socialism, too – whack. Fascism was run by a self perpetuating elite that used force to stay in power. Socialism – whack. But hold on, he argued with himself, Socialism needs an elite! No “whack” required by that thought. Somebody has to decide. And surely no true Socialist would stay in power beyond his time unfairly – whack! But wait: what if the true socialist were all shot by the untrue ones...Whack! Firing squads happen – whack! Whack!

By this time Jimmy's mind was so full of loose threads of thought it was turned into a knot. And the knot tied up a rucksack full on unacknowledged conclusions. So one day he paused, picked up a sword, cut the knot and out dropped the moldering body of Socialism, a not-so-good thing.

By this time he had stopped self identifying as a Socialist. Still, one day he was with a group of friends who were discussing politics. Suddenly one friend said to another, “You should talk to Jimmy. Jimmy is a Socialist.”

And Jimmy said, “No, I'm not.” His friend could not have looked more shocked if he had said, “I am no longer human. I am a werewolf,” and proceeded to change into a werewolf on the spot. Jimmy said, by way of explanation, “I became a Socialist because of the strengths of the arguments. I stopped on account of the weaknesses.” It sounded as if he had thought it through. And he realized, with a shock, that he had.

Those few months he spent with his grandfather at the dinning room table had paid off far beyond his mothers expectations (he was, of course, still capable of disappointing her, though she died while he was still on his upward trend). His grades improved to the point that he went to one of the better state schools with a academic, rather than athletic, scholarship (he played Lacrosse).

When he was at college he encountered what was previously called “Politically Correct Modes of thought” which, by that time, were the mode of “thought.” He figured it was simply a case of otherwise intelligent people terminating their own doubts – hauling all doubt before their mind's firing squad where their inner Che Guevara carried out the execution. Naturally, they thought it best to terminate everyone else's, too. And this led to the death of Irony.

Oh, irony was still allowed to operate poetically as a kind of mischievous pixie – it's the free ride when you've already paid, as a popular song would say – the survival of academic prose required its demise in larger affairs. So that future "free ride" for which you pay and pay and pay, but in the end ain't free and ain't even a ride? Where the trip to the community barn raising turns into a long hike to a labor camp? That's an unintended consequence.

Jimmy saw an Irony at the center of the Free Enterprise system: that people peacefully seeking a better life for themselves help produce a better life for everyone in society. There is an Irony at the center of Socialism: That smart, talented people who acquire power to use for the betterment of Society end up spreading misery. Both these outcomes should be commonplace observations – like the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. But Academics have to forget the last bad outcome to allow the “Social Welfare State” to expand. So instead of being a literary construct, Irony, seemingly safely entombed in its mausoleum, had resurrected as a world historical force. Irony had become ironic.

5.
Beatrice Sander met Jim Savannah in college. It involved Pizza and beer and friends of hers joining friends of Jim at a large table in a crowded restaurant. To Jim she and her friends seemed committed feminists, or at least persons who often committed feminism. After their first meeting Jim tended to avoid the topic himself, so in twelve years he never quite figured out which.

Bea and her friends were budding lawyers and they began discussing “Affirmative Action” and comparative worth. Comparative worth was the theory that truck drivers (traditionally male) should not make more than clerk typists (traditionally female). Jim accused them of wanting to cut the wages of truck drivers – he was playing with the idea of irony as economic pixie – but he was told that definitely was not the case. They wanted to raise the wages of typists. On affirmative action Jim expressed the opinion that it was sold as a program that would help poor African American males but poor African American males never seemed to get helped. Bea and her friends had apparently already thought this through.

Bea said that African American males were oppressing woman in Africa. Jim said that African American males were in the United States, not Africa, but he understood her point (and in a way, he did). One of her friends refined what Bea had said by explaining that slavery lasted 300 years while man's oppression of woman has lasted 300,000. Obviously, they had dispensed with that “the sins of the father shall not be visited on the son” bullshit morality. They replaced it with the “snow ball rolling down the hill acquiring demerits through the generations until it becomes an avalanche of you owe me” political Karma theory. Conveniently, they happened to be keeping the ledger books and had determined that the sin of being a male smothered the grace of being descended from slaves.

It amazed Jim that the same folks who demanded gun control went around recklessly shooting off senseless Marxist dialectics, the sorts of intellectual idiocies which have claimed so many innocent lives. This was just his opinion of course, so he chose not to ridicule the ideas to the extent he thought they deserved. Besides, he may want to have sex some day and that was not the way to go about getting laid – at least in college.

He did say that the central problem through most of human existence was staying alive long enough to raise the next generation. That men often died violently and woman in child birth. That the parents often died before their surviving children became adults, back when children became adults at thirteen, not thirty-one. “Now, if you dropped any of us, naked, into the primal wilderness we'd likely be cat food within three days. So we should not casually dismiss what previous generations have accomplished.”

For Bea this was the first time she had heard these beliefs challenged. Jim did it with a smile, and came across as intelligent, cute and manly. That's why Beatrice chose him. That night. It was perhaps a mistake.

Jimmy graduated with a degree in Math and some courses in accounting and computer programming. He had good grades but there was nothing in the transcript that said “this guy is clearly focused on what he wants to do.” He got a job as a web developer with a “start-up” firm selling sporting goods over the Internet. He helped develop management information systems.

At the time he knew little about management information, but neither did management. On his third day they showed him a proposal that was about to go out the door. The fellow who nodded towards it, and told him to have a glance at it, wore a blue pin stripped dress shirt with red suspenders. He had taken his coat and tie off while he ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Jimmy no longer ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which he associated with childhood. Almost immediately his eyes fell on a chart, a long column of numbers, and what looked like the sum of the above at the bottom of the page. “Is this,” he said, pointing to the number at the bottom of the page, “the total of this?” he asked, running his finger down the column of numbers.

“Yeah,” said the Guy. He was still trying to eat his peanut butter and Jelly sandwich and a bit of jelly dropped onto the page.

“Well, it don't add up,” said Jimmy.

“Oh shit,” said the guy. He looked at the jelly stain. He was a bit out of joint. He threw his sandwich down and reached for a calculator. Then thought better of it and started wiping off the jelly. “It's all...more like an estimate.” It was off by a factor of dozens.

“Well, it is not like we are building bridges,” said Jimmy. Good thing, he thought, because those bridges would collapse. That an entire business model might collapse didn't occur to him because he was wondering if he should apologize for the jelly that landed on the page. But it was not his Jelly nor was it his page, though perhaps he had a hand in the jam. So he muttered “Sorry about the jelly,” just to cover his bases.

Perhaps this was the source of his reputation for being brilliant and arrogant and the sort of guy who does not suffer fools gladly. But Jimmy did suffer fools gladly, and tried to do so at least once a day. In fact, he would be the first to admit that he could be quite foolish himself. In later years, he would wonder if he was making a life of it.

In Jimmy Savannah's little subset of the operation – matching hardware to software and developing nifty little applications – everything always added up and the bridges built were always robust. As for what everyone else was doing, he always believed what he was told. It was much easier that way.

It turned out his bosses, who were only a few years older than he was, were better at selling stock then they were sporting goods – including selling stock to Jim in lieu of salary (Jimmy also bought some sporting goods off them). Those who did the start up did well selling off shares. Of course Jim was still there for the crash. Later Jim's work became the basis for their next enterprise: selling software applications.

By then Jim had a job delivering flower bouquets to homes while acquiring an MBA and much additional debt. He then went to work for a Wall Street financial firm where he warned against going heavy into mortgage backed securities. It was a spontaneous offering, and instead of bolstering his arguments with facts and figures he told a story from his flower delivering days.

The old guy who showed him the ropes made a humorous remark. He told of his childhood, when families had five children and a two bedroom house. “But now,” he said, “they have a five bedroom house and one child, probably at boarding school since both parents work twelve hours a day to pay for it all.” The old guy thought there might be a business in renting out children for family portraits.

Over the following year, Jim's studies and work experience (trying to deliver flowers to large houses where no one ever seemed to be home) gave him ample time to think about what would later be called “the real estate bubble.” At bottom, the old guy had it right: houses were suppose to be homes, not an investment. With Americans forming fewer homes, who would buy all these houses?

Unfortunately, because of the way he expressed his ideas at the firm he became known as “the flower delivery guy” and not at all brilliant or arrogant. This was two years after the 9/11 terror attacks and easy money and massive capital flows made the sort of self restraint “the flower delivery guy” suggested sound a bit quaint. Obviously, you go with the money flow, not against it. Besides, helping people buy houses just seemed nice. And making money being nice was even nicer. Even his wife told Jim that the government down in Washington wanted people to buy houses. But Jim wasn't the type to shut up, so he got tagged with being annoying and boring and not long for the business.

And his own home life was not something to brag about. Bea was a newly minted lawyer and was working very hard learning the art of the deal. They communicated through txt message.

6.
It was during his engagement to Bea that Jimmy met her cousin Sandy. Sandy was fifteen year old beauty on her way to college two years early. It was love at first sight, maybe. He stopped by her parents home on a modest estate in Virginia's horse country. Perhaps “estate” is too large a word. It was more of a vest pocket horse farm with about 12 acres and a four stall barn, a three board fenced paddock and a four bedroom house. The house was a two story box connected to a one story box by a breezeway. The one story box was a combination garage and workshop. The Breezeway was actually the den rec room. Inside it had a pool, table. Outside it had a pool, swimming. Bea's uncle was contractor. Bea's aunt was a horse doctor. Bea's cousin was the apple of their collective “I.”

It was their daughter Sandy who opened the door. It was a reveal. First he saw her symmetrical face with high cheek bones framed by sun streaked blond hair. Her intense green eyes flashed amid an even tan. And nice teeth. She had nice teeth.

He identified himself. She looked him over and smiled. She brushed a wisp of hair back. She was a flirt. Her body was young and athletic (the result of competitive swimming, dance, and horseback riding) but also womanly. As she led him toward the kitchen he watched the bare muscles between her shoulders and thought of withers – perhaps because he was on a vest pocket horse farm – “whither the withers,” is what he thought. And he thought of her haunches. He entertained hunches about her haunches.

Then occurring occurred. For instance, it occurred to him that this was Bea's cousin. It also occurred to him that she, despite appearances to the contrary, was fifteen years old. It occurred that something in her look when she met him at the door – frank and knowing – had caused him to think she was a woman rather than a girl. It occurred boys would find her quite attractive, and this gave her a certain power over them. It occurred she enjoyed exercising this power. What did not occur was the worry that he might be vamped by a fifteen year old seductress.

All this did and did not occur as he watched her firm and swaying haunches lead him into the roomy kitchen with the maple “butcher's block” counters, where Bea sat in the breakfast nook drinking her afternoon tea.

Of course he was there to pick up Bea and take her out to dinner. So he exchanged pleasantries with her family and coaxed her toward the car. But it was early yet so she coaxed him to go swimming. The entire time he tried to not look at Sandy, while trying to not look like he was not looking at her.

That night, as he made love to Bea, he found himself thinking of Sandy. He thought this not quite proper and so thought about his new job as a software developer. This seemed counterproductive. And so he thought of Bea, and only occasionally of her cousin, and that worked out well for both of them, at least as far as he could tell.

Chapter Four: "Noah's Snot" is here.

Working Hard (or hardly working) on Another Novel

2009-05-03T10:18:00.000-07:00

My latest novel is Glaciation, which I hope to take beyond first draft stage. Or is it first Daft? We will have to wait and see!

Of course the first chapter follows the second in blogland. But you can find it here, if you like. Comments are welcome (it's a long read for the Internet).

Chapter Two is here.

Chapter Two: When Crystal Met Helmut

2009-05-03T07:42:00.000-07:00

Hurricane Crystal was the most destructive storm, by any measure, on record – and it would hold that record for a bit more than a week. As it came through the Gulf of Mexico and made landfall it shut down off-shore oil and gas production but largely missed the important energy producing infrastructure. It did hit a newly built refinery, but the opening was halted by assorted law suits (interminable delays, their called). By and large the energy markets were not much affected by that storm. Still, the price of Crude swung wildly because the World was now full of Conjecture – including conjecture about what the world should be conjecturing about (more on that later).

The Damage was more extensive inland. Crystal spawned numerous, rampaging tornadoes in the South, one spawn hitting a "windfarm," ripping the wings off the turbines and scattering the huge blades over the landscape like scythes. The continuous rain caused extensive flooding. In any normal year these, all by themselves, would have made a name for her. But there was little that was normal about this particular year.

Because of the steering effects of the Election Day Blizzard, reluctantly rolling over in the Atlantic, Crystal settled in over the lower Mississippi valley, pumping up humid gulf air into the North until it met the arctic “Helmut” of cold air. So flooding rain in the south became freezing rain/snow near the Ohio river and snow – lots of it – to the north. During this period Crystal weakened as a “warm core” hurricane and transformed into a cold core storm. It became a kind of “night of the living dead” cyclone: instead of feeding on the warmth of a body of water it drew energy from the warm system becoming cold and even colder. As it got on the move again, tracking to the Northeast, the Blizzards it gave birth to came in stages: the cool romping and playful youth cruising down the Interstate (with flakes, as Pirate said, the size of frying pans); this cool kid becoming the wind driven, blinding blizzard; finally the cynically cold, and ever so old, retiring storm which quickly turned any standing water into complex crystalline forms. Freeze. Freezing. Frozen sold.

As Crystal weakened it seemed to have mercy on New York and New England. But when she headed out into the Atlantic, following the track of the election day blizzard, she once again strengthened. As it transformed into a Northeaster it seemed to stop – and even back up – to give the areas it had recently passed over another pasting. So the two half measures applied to the Northeast made a full, heaping helping. By the end, the digging out would more closely resemble tunneling.

2.
Pitch liked his house over engineered. A large Victorian, it stood adjacent the gravel pit and wrecking yard (Pitch located there several decades before so he could keep an eye on things). Pitch had rebuilt it using steel I-beams as key supports and put on additions. In his younger days he often hired contract workers for short durations. They would get room and board and work, work, work (while making a minor fortune – if they knew how to keep it). Those days were past but there was plenty of room at the “trash estate” for Pirate, his girl friend and her daughter – and a horde of others if he weren't prepared to beat them off.

Pirate's girlfriend, Rosie, had a bad habit of screaming at him and Pirate had a bad habit of ignoring it. Pitch said she was physically attractive but mentally demented. Which perhaps explained why her daughter, Sarah, quickly attached herself to everyone else – even Pitch, who never talked to strange children. Pirate said Rosie was simply hard of hearing, so her screaming at you were like another persons hollering at you, once you made allowances. She did try to keep it under control when Pitch and Kim were around, since they both had a stare that could melt lead.

Paul lived at the scrap yard already, in an apartment with its own entrance.

So as the storm raged they could drink beer, eat pizza, shot pool, watch movies and wait it out. Which was pretty much what they did, but the forced inactivity made them more antsy by the hour.

Paul was worried about his parents, who lived about seven miles away, as the crow flies. Originally it was said Crystal would bring much snow melting rain, so his father insisted on staying at the house (and his mother on staying with him) to make sure the sump pump kept working and all the hatches stayed buttoned down. But Crystal brought much snow, and much more snow, and much, much, more snow. When the phones lines went down and the cellphones went out, Paul began to worry, and then, when the power went out and Pitch's back up generator went on, to worry much.

By the time the storm ended it added an additional six feet to Brood Eskers previous accumulation – some said more – a pretty much unheard of amount in those parts, especially spread over such a huge area. The storm lasted over three days. The morning it passed the sun rose bright on a landscape transformed. A stiff arctic wind blew the frozen snow off the tops of huge drifts.

Pitch saw it when he went up to the third floor to look out the dormers. A white Oz had come to Ohio. To the south, a line of trees along the ridge had caught much of the snow in a large drift, a tall white wall that brought down limbs and pushed a few of the trees into and unnatural slant. His back yard (the old gravel pit on the far side of the natural embankment now full of “recyclables”) was over full with snow.

The side yard looked clear – wind and the drifts took down the front “decorative” fence, so much of the snow had been carried over the hillside and out over the town and into the lake by the high winds. But a closer look showed the snow was deep, but flatter. Still, being on the lee side of the hill had offered the little town of Brood some protection.

The blocks of churning lake ice from several days before were pushed offshore to the northeast and piled up in shallow water off a spit of land. They looked a bit like mashed sailboats (and, who knows, there might be one or two of those in the mix, along with a smattering of poorly moored yachts). Meanwhile the departing storm had frozen the lake surface, and a brisk breeze, now coming from the Arctic, was moving the snow from the lake surface back toward land while polishing the ice into a rough hewed turquoise tile. The loose snow and the froth of the freezing lake had combined with the rocky ledge along shore to build a kind of ice and rock wall. The lake seemed the logical place for the town to put the excess snow, but just crossing this ice barrier (not to mention the various barriers man had constructed through the years) might be a project in itself.

Below him he could see Pirate shoveling a path to the front end loader. Pirate paused for a moment. The air puffed from his mouth like the breath from a stallion after a hard winters run. The snow was only about waist deep where he shoveled but a drift of snow far taller than he stood just a few paces away. The drift cast a shadow in the sunrise. Pitch's eye was caught by a slow movement. Paul stood, brooding, in the crescent shadow of the drift.

The cab roof of the front end loader stuck up out of the snow. Soon Pirate had pulled back the tarp and started the engine. What he would do with the machine was hard to tell. Already they had run out of places to put the snow. Perhaps they could put it on pallets and stack it towards the sky. But Pitch, somewhat uncharacteristically, was in no hurry to act. He simply wasn't sure what to do so he would make haste slowly.

In fact within the hour Pirate started doing something like creating a palletized snow stack. He he had confided to Paul that he was determined to dig a path to his own “compound” a few blocks away so he could either: a) move noisy Rosie back home or b) bring back some items of value (he was rather coy about what those items were – his slippers, a pipe, tobacco, bathrobe and other sundries). The scoop on the little front end loader couldn't reach above the snow – especially when it came to the drift that blocked the entrance to the trash estate. So after clearing a work space with the loader, Pirate concocted a shovel attached to the tongs of a fork lift. The fork lift could raise the shovel full of snow above the surrounding layers and dump it off – sort of. Pirate got Paul involved – figuring it would take Paul's mind off his parents – and coaxed Paul to work on a variation: a box where the forks would raise the bottom and squeeze the snow against the top to form a block. Then the block could be dumped on top of the adjacent snow. Paul agreed but was not optimistic it would work. This didn't bother Pirate because Paul was not optimistic, period.

Meanwhile Pirates “shovel” struck the tire of a parked car buried in the drift and set off the car alarm. It was a bizarre and utterly out of place sound in the transformed landscape. And when Pirate turned off the forklift it seemed, in fact, the only sound for miles. While he looked for damage on the car a man stuck his head out of the second floor window of the house across the street – it now seemed ground level since the first floor was submerged beneath the snow – and called over to him. Pirate looked up a steep, white hill while he talked to the guy. He surmised that he talked to the latest boyfriend of the lady who lived there. Pirate shouted, “No damage. It's cool.” He expected the man to jump out the window and into the snow bank and come over to have a look. But apparently the man judged the depth of the snow and compared it to the value of the car and decided not to. Fortunately, he could remotely turn off the alarm. They chatted amiably for the moment, then the man turned cold and closed the window. It was the only time Pirate saw him.

When Pirate turned around Pitch stood behind him, with that “my equipment is not your toy” look on his face. So Pirate put the forklift into reverse and headed it back to the stable.

While Paul worked on the ice block maker, Pirate was on to something else. He had a small boat that he had never taken fishing but had always stored at Pitch's place (with the apparent purpose of annoying Pitch). By the time Paul showed up with his “ice block maker,” Pirate had got the snow off the boat and somehow dragged it into the garage. His idea: equip it with a power winch, hook cables to utility poles and drag it through the snow. So Paul set the “ice block maker” to the side and went back to the drawing board to turn “the snow boat” into something that might actually work. Meanwhile, a “band of moisture” passed through, a remnant of Crystal, which added another foot, some said more, to the accumulation. And they were still working on it when the second band moisture marched through.

3.
Apparently there was too much weather for the weathermen to keep up with. The bands of moisture that followed Crystal's first large installment dumped amounts of snow that would have qualified as a blizzard in any other year. When they said “some additional accumulation” it used to mean an inch, but, as Pirate was quick to point out, you could now substitute feet – so an “Inch and a half” became “a foot and a half.” When they said flurries, think baby blizzard, with enough snow falling to turn the air white for an hour or so. The officially approved advice was “to stay in doors.” And Pirate said, “Soon the roof is going to cave in on them indoors. And then the walls are going to fall in on them indoors. Why, even the doors will be indoors. So the indoors will be out of windows, walls, ceilings and, need I say it, Out-of-doors.” In fact it was a very scary idea that Pirate pattered on about as if it were his usual nonsense.

Pirate liked to keep his thoughts swimming quickly forward, without looking back, like they was being chased by sharks – or, considering their current situation, polar bears. As a result he was perhaps the only person in the region who was not utterly stunned by what was happening. He barely comprehended the effect of what he said would have on Paul – whose parents might very well be in the situation he described.

Even Pitch, though he by no means showed it, was all but flattened. That the “news sites” on the web had less reliable news than ever was hardly surprising. Incompetence might account for poor weather forecasting. And sure, the weather could be blamed for the electricity and telephone and even the work-a-day Internet going down. But Pitch had access to secure lines hardened against disasters greater than the current one and those, too, had gone dark, which was certainly an additional reason to worry. The GPS navigation system was now out, and that relied on Satellites way above the storms that afflict the earth – but not all worldly storms. Pitch assumed the signals were now encrypted. But why, when that information – which could locate a stranded person within feet of their position – was needed to save lives? He heard of the disaster in Atlanta, where two airliners collided over the city – it came to him as a rumor, but from several good sources. This was a true tragedy to add to all of the other unfolding tragedies. But was it a reason to shut down all civil aviation everywhere when it's needed to save lives?

Then his wife told him that their Internet connection was back up. “We operate under new emergency protocols,” Kim said. “The government has our encryption codes. So be careful what you say and write.” Kim's face wore an expression of granite. She came from a people who had faced many disasters and a disaster, of some sort, was always regarded as just around the corner. Well, that corner was a long time coming but now she faced what was coming with such a steely determination that it gave Pitch, no push over himself, added courage.

The news on the Internet was rather skimpy, and seemed rather contrived, mostly stories of rescues showing the same victims of flooding being picked up by the same rescue helicopters – this in a stricken area that contained half the land mass of the U. S. and much of the populated part of Canada. So the “information” he took seriously he found on discussion sites and bulletin boards and conformed to Pitch's prejudices (he trusted his prejudices). Pitch was more inclined to believe strangers then those with an officially recognized reputation for reliability – which pretty much guaranteed they weren't as far as Pitch was concerned.

To the North, the most populated areas in Canada were smothered, which made the Canadians even less conspicuous than usual. From what Pitch could decipher, the US was now facing so many problems that it had basically turned to the rest of the world and said, “knock yourselves out.” The rest of the world was apparently doing just that. In Mexico civil war had broken out between the drug lords and the government. Apparently the syndicates, looking at collapsing demand North of the border, had decided to take control South of the border. It seemed a many sided affair, with warlords, army generals and police colonels fighting the government and each other. The US was holding itself together just fine, but more out of a sense of habit than purpose.

Europe was in a state of Panic. So far the weather had only been colder than usual, with no sign of the devastating blizzard's and Hurricane strength storms that had hit the US. Officially, Europeans still feared global warming and were loudly committed to fighting it. Many regarded the United States as the World's great offender and some voiced the opinion that this was the planet's chastisement. But they acted as if they believed none of it: every global warming enthusiast north of the Alps wanted to move South of the Alps, just in case nature pulled a fast one. Southern Europeans began to recount what happened all the other times the northerners had invaded. Of course this time it would be more neighborly, brotherly, sisterly, congenial and even more difficult to stop.

Apparently, the Sahara desert was getting its first regular rainfalls in decades, if not thousands of years, and thoughts that the Europeans might move into that blossoming landscape were quickly shot down before they were voiced – basically by telling them they would be shot if they tried. Even the voluntary return of North African immigrants to their homelands was only reluctantly agreed to. The possible “voluntary” return of their descendants might be discussed in the usual decades long process of engagement.

Still, all was relatively peaceful in the Mediterranean basin. The Middle East was being the Middle East on Steroids. Pitch's family came from Mesopotamia, from near the birthplace of Abraham and the Code of Hammurabi. His relatives there, quite distant to him, had suffered through much turmoil and were looking forward to years of Peace. But a shake and bake war seemed on its way (America may have invented prepackaged food but that region had the prepackaged war).

The incredible Hulk of the Planet, though, was on the Indian subcontinent, where India and Pakistan were both mobilizing and on the brink of all out war – perhaps nuclear in nature. China might grab Taiwan, it was said, but they feared what Russia might do elsewhere. Pitch's wife Kim worried about what all those Kims in North Korea and South Korea might do. Equatorial Africa and South America had too many conflicts to count but fortunately none of them seemed to count – at least not yet.

But most worrying for Pitch was a “secret” news site that told of another hurricane (Demetrius) which was following a similar track to Crystal and would soon make landfall, devastating an additional swath of the the South and spawning inundating blizzards for the North.

Then there more. It was suspected that the dislocations of the storms provided cover for cyber warfare – attacks on the “smart” infrastructure that threw the economy into deeper turmoil. Over the previous years the government had launched an “infrastructure renewal project” where political connections trumped basic competence, so maybe there were “foreign bugs” planted throughout the system that were acting up on command or maybe the new stuff was just crap and the problems were now put down to the machinations of foreigners by bureaucrats anxious to CYA. But rumors also said the airline disaster was a terror attack. Perhaps this was now the operative principle: if you are told one thing by a round up of the usual “reliable sources,” believe the unrealiable ones.

Of course it was all pretty much out of their control and enough to make Pitch and Kim engage in entertaining banter with Pirate. Of course the fact that their Children lived in relative safety and comfort far from Ohio helped them to conceal their anxious thoughts. It was Paul who displayed the most anxiety. He was determined to go visit his parents – in conditions were a walk of a few blocks was almost a days labor. With the regular blizzards suddenly appearing like an ambush attack by a predator, a man could get lost in a white out and, in the transformed landscape, stay lost for quite some time (or forever). Pitch told him of an expected break in the storms – before the next series of major blizzards arrived – and convinced him to wait a bit.

4.
Once Pirate decided to go on top of the snow he realized his place was only about 100 yards away “as the crow flies.” Paul had designed and built some snow shoes, so Pirate tried them out scouting a route for the snow boat. He wanted to avoid some of the obvious obstructions beneath the snow – garage roofs and utility lines, in the main. He stopped by to check on an elderly neighbor, climbing a snow drift to break in an attic window.

He found her dead on the couch. He couldn't tell what she'd died from, but she looked peaceful. There was a letter addressed to her children, so apparently she'd anticipated her passing. He left everything as it was, in case someone stopped by to check up on her (he didn't expect that to happen, given the conditions, but it was easier than deciding what to do.).

The power cable winch system for powering the snowboat worked tolerably well. After several round trips they had an icy slot in the snow that allowed easy passage – until it widened enough to allow the craft to tip on its side if not evenly loaded.

Pirates place was a disaster “treasure trove.” He had three hundred and sixty cans of corned beef. “I was going to rotate the stock but then discovered I hate corned beef. Now it's all near its expiration date. So from one perspective, the timing of this disaster is fortuitous”). He had numerous cans of Sauerkraut (“Does Sauerkraut even have an expiration date?”) and about a 90 day supply of beer (“I wanted a year's worth but that would take a warehouse”). He had frozen Pizzas and claimed a stock of freeze dried Kerosene (“OK, that hasn't been invented yet”). He had beans, molasses, jams and biscuits. Disaster preparedness was kind of a hobby for him. “Where are the flashlights?” asked Paul. “Over there,” said Pirate. And special thermal blankets, too.

Pirate owned a couple snowmobiles and he and Paul discussed using these to go see his parents and hopefully bring them back. But it wasn't that simple.

The snow accumulation at that time was twelve to twenty feet (depending on who was speculating but Paul made it closer to twelve). The drifts, though, could be forty feet high and would be hard for even an experienced snowmobiler to navigate. Add the tangle of tree branches that often accompanied the drifts and you faced formidable barriers to navigation. But that was the least of it. The urban landscape had turned into a maze of bobby traps. Downed Power lines might carry no juice but they still had the power to “clothesline” you. Concealed in the snow, they could foul up the machinery. And there were voids under the surface that could swallow you and your machine whole.

So they decided to hike the seven miles wearing the makeshift snow shoes of Paul's design and carrying light backpacks. They would carry walking sticks to poke at suspect bits of snow and to aid in balance. They would tie a rope, one to the other, so if either fell into a hole the other could pull him out.

They started in the predawn light. They soon came upon a utility pole with the lines striped off and the top snapped off. The cross beams were scorched and the three canisters below were burnt. “The snow and ice shorted out the transformers,” said Paul. “That's when we lost power.” They moved on.

A stiff arctic wind seem to depopulate the landscape. At this point most houses still had heat but, in one of the last official communications, thermostats were ordered set at no more than 50 degrees as a conservation measure (many thermostats were controlled by the government via the utilities), with harsh financial penalties promised for any who “over used.” Fifty Fahrenheit was still much warmer than outside, and most complied and stayed indoors.

The parts of houses that stuck out of the snow often looked like shanties. This shocked Pirate, especially as they walked through a new housing estate filled with villas – McMansions, they are sometimes called. They noticed the problem of the indoors becoming outdoors. The only people they saw were doing makeshift repairs to roofs or reinforcing walls. And Pirate said, “The in-habitants don't want to be out-habitants.” But Paul just walked on.

They encountered a fence on top of the snow that ran for miles, it seemed, in both directions. It had five dark rails running between thick wood posts. Three thinner cables ran above, with a small gap between. Pirate wanted to climb over but Paul gave it a bit of thought. “The bottom five are communications cables,” he said, “but the three above are power lines that lead to substations. Brush them, and you could get quite a shock. These are not the conditions to take chances in. We'll go under.” They found a depression in the snow and dug their way under “the fence,” trying – but not really succeeding – to keep the snow from getting under their clothes. It gave Pirate the Chills.

Pirate wondered aloud about the inner life of those communications the cables, carrying orders for blankets, shoes and food from Hackensack to Hong Kong or vidoe images for the night news, if such a thing still exists. But Paul said, “You think of it as an aid to communication. But now it is more a barrier, and if people are climbing over the barrier, it might not be aiding communication at all.”

They crossed a wide barren space where the snow was scrubbed flat by the wind. Near the other side they encountered a middle aged woman standing under a restaurant portico, occupying a weird void in the snow. It was the first bare concrete they saw on the trip and they looked down on it from what seemed a great height. The lady wasn't looking for breakfast but newspapers – and not for the news but for insulation from the cold. She had wandered what seemed a considerable distance – a few blocks – and wanted to stay in the relative shelter that she found. From the looks of her tracks she must have crawled to stay on top of the snow. Apparently she came from an area of single story houses and her roof caved in. “There are ice dunes and death where you're headed.” She said, “What's it like from where you come?” They didn't quite answer. Pirate tossed down a little food and some water. Paul didn't want to give her his spare snow shoes, but her want seemed greater than his. So he decided he could always come up with something in a pinch and gave them to her. They tied a bit a rope to a pole and tossed one end down to her, so she could pull herself up the side when, and if, she wanted to leave. She said something about going to her sister's place, who lived in a high rise that she hoped was still not far from where she was – a few minutes drive, is all.

After that they avoided contact with the few people they saw and continued walking. Or rather climbing. Because it was a long process of climbing up one side of a snow drift and, at times, tumbling down the other. Without frequent references to their compass these drifts could have pushed them off coarse and caused them to get lost. Indeed, they nearly felt lost in any case, these dunes – as they soon thought of them – had so altered the landscape. And Pirate said, “Damn, Paul. With all this up, down and sideways we're doing, we are walking three miles for every mile we cover.”

Occasionally they'd come across holes in the snow that might be ten feet across and near as deep and so round and smooth they look like they were designed and put there on purpose. And they could look to the bottom of these snow pits and see some object of everyday life – the better part of a car or a barbecue grill. It was like some archaeologist had made a find and was carefully digging it out. They decided these holes resulted from a wind effect, like a mini tornado had sucked out the snow. But seeing everyday items reminded Pirate that people were living below them too. And he wondered aloud if they might dig out tunnels between the homes to move around like arctic voles. But Paul was even less responsive than usual. So unresponsive, in fact, that Pirate shut up.

One of the natural barriers they came across was quite formidable. It was a creek and valley with trees on both sides. The dunes had forced them a considerable distance from the main road, which would at least offer a tree free path through the barrier. But they decided to forge straight ahead and forgo the detour.

At first pushing their way through the tree branches was more annoying then difficult. Keeping their snow shoes from getting tangled was the main problem. Pirate took his off and just made his way from tree limb to tree limb as they picked their way to the valley floor. But the stream itself was still flowing, causing great gap in the snow cover that made the prospect for crossing without a life threatening dunking unlikely. At the top of the ridge opposite was large dune of snow staked to the top of the trees. It formed an ice wall that ran the length of the ridge, and had kept much of the snow out of the valley.

So they moved down the white canyon and encountered a clearing that was actually the surface of a small, skinny lake. They stepped a bit gingerly onto the frozen surface, which the wind had largely cleared of the snow the water had not melted before itself freezing. They walked on the lake near the shore, testing the surface as they went. They spotted an object sticking out of the ice. It was a human head. The rest of the body was under the ice. The face was white and blue and looked distorted by anger. The mouth was open in a frozen and eternal irritable shout.

“That's Mr. Pickle,” said a man on the shore, as he walked towards them. He wore a brown Parka and hood and looked like he might be taking the kids ice skating. In fact the wife and kids stood not far behind him. There was no sign of ice skates. “I always thought that an unfortunate name. You the rescuers?” he asked.

“I'm going to visit my parents,” said Paul.

“Oh. I was hoping you were here with the helicopters. Mr. Pickle thought he heard one the other night and came out looking. I guess he found a weak spot in the ice.”

Both Paul and Pirate began poking at the ice with their walking sticks. “Oh, it's frozen solid now,” said the man. “You'd have to remove Mr. Pickle with a blow torch. I mean if he were alive. I don't know what we'll do with him now that he's dead.” Paul looked beyond the pond and saw where the snow had gathered. Several houses built against the hill were almost completely buried. There was a private drive out, heading back the general direction Paul and Pirate had come. There was an ice dune 50 feet high blocking the drive. In fact the entire location seemed like a deep Colosseum made of ice, with empty ice galleries waiting for the crowds up above.

“You folks with the helicopters?” asked the man's wife, who now approached them.

“They're going to visit their parents,” said the man, as if it were a stroll down the walk. And then he asked Paul, “You seen any helicopters?”

“No. We've been out since before dawn and – no helicopters”

“I saw the government's using helicopters to get stranded people,” said the lady.

“I believe that's down south,” said Paul. “But the news is off now so I don't know what they're doing.”

“We got helicopters here, too,” said the lady.

“Not if they sent them down south. To help with the hurricane,” said Paul, as if he were delivering good news.

The man got angry and cussed a great deal. He told a neighbor man who'd just walked over that the damn government had sent the helicopters South.

The lady stepped on the ice and walked up to Pirate. “Would the government really do that? Send our helicopters away?” she asked, as if the South were a foreign land.

Pirate glanced around and saw that Paul had walked out onto the center of skinny lake. He'd left Pirate there to clean up his mess. “Oh, my friend don't know what he's talking about. You gotta figure, helicopters? They go up. They go down. They go sideways pretty good. But South? I don't think helicopters even go south.”

The lady looked much relieved to hear this. But her voice sounded indignant as she announced to the others. “Now they say the helicopters did not go south.”

“I didn't think so,” said her husband.

“They're searching by section,” said the neighborly man. “That's why he didn't see any helicopters. They are searching by section. That's the way I'd do it. When they reach this section it will go quick.”

Pirate walked up to Paul, leaving the people to their discussions. Paul said, “We're going to have to climb that hill.” He pointed to an ice face a hundred feet high. But there was a kind of tube that went up into it, though it might be a dead end, with an emphasis on dead.

“That's a mighty steep hill,” said Pirate. “Some might call it a cliff. You sure? You said now was not the time to take chances”

“I've encountered new information.” Paul turned to the people and called over. “What's on the other side of this hill? On the other side of the Hill – what landmarks? Over there? What's on the far side of this hill?”

The people were still in an animated discussion. One of the men was sick of arguing or discussing what must be a very old argument or discussion. He sat down in a snow bank, like it was an easy chair. The other man called back, “Over there? About a mile, maybe, there's a Walmart Store.”

“Thank you,” Paul called back. He turned to Pirate. “I know where we are.” He got out a rope and a small pick. “Those people are going to die. I just realized. There'll be a lot of that going around.”

A man called to them, “When you see a helicopter--”

Pirate waved to him. “We'll send him on over.” Pirate got his pick out of his pack. He realized the truth of what Paul said. “Paul, they may as well be extras on Star Trek.”

Paul was already starting up the hill. “We got no time.” He moved quickly, so quickly that Pirate, who prided himself on his abilities in the wilds, had difficulty keeping up.

Chapter Three: "Creating a New Debase Line" is here

Chapter One: The Perfect Winter

2009-04-25T07:26:00.000-07:00

Gregor Strasser is a crab. He moves forward and he moves back but he scampers sideways. He lives and feeds on the boundaries. He consumes whatever the waves and tides turn up. And when “folks” come down to the shore to sweep back the tides about to wash away the sand castles of their dreams he, Gregor Strasser, eats their brooms and feeds on their flesh (figuratively, it should be said). This he cannot help doing. For he is a crab: a crab that sidled sideways out of landlocked Central Europe, but a crab nonetheless.

In a few hours one fall morning, back when Greg was still a British Billionaire and shortly before he moved to the US to become an American one, he made additional billions betting against a well meaning European politician who was fighting – in the very best sense of the word – for a new world free of avarice and, perhaps, crabs. Here's the irony: Greg himself famously fights for the same world and supported this same politician in his idealistic endeavors. Read Greg's speeches and his many pronouncements to the press (on the occasions when he comes out of his shell) and you'll find them saturated with the most pleasing idealism – all the more pleasing for coming from such a realist. Look at the think tanks, academics, charities and, yes, politicians he supports and you will find that they are not only well meaning but also mean well. Still, when their idealism beached a “dead as a door nail” beluga whale outside Greg's beach front villa, well, he fed. For he is a crab.

It's called “currency speculation.” Gregor wasn't speculating when he projected the outcome of a bunch of political pugs (most of whom he knew personally) borrowing heavily to maintain their position in an international currency “peg” – which rhymes with beg. And so he fed.

It was after he became an American that he facilitated a speculative spike in the dollar price of oil (tripling the price in six months) followed by a run on the dollar and the world banking system, all of which got a little wildly out of control and all but collapsed the global economy (but, hey, it needed a little collapsing) – good thing Greg brought what he set in motion to heel before the entire world went to hell.

It should be mentioned, lest anyone underestimate the man inside the crab, that Greg is quite charming in person and known to have a sense of humor. His humor is fun but it cuts and clips and consumes – like knives and hatchets, when not used properly.

With its carpets the color of sand, both wet and dry, his office is a suitable habitat for just such a crab as he. Greg's desk is a large teak table. Perhaps it once formed the center of a pirate's mess. Weathered, it may have carried some pirate prince off a sinking ship and through the turbulent seas until he washed up on the Long Island shore (then built a beach front villa). The large computer monitor/TV sits to one side (he seldom uses it) and has a “coral reef” screen saver complete with the subtle sound of underwater waves and colorful fish swimming through the plasma. Occasionally a predator hidden in the sand pops up and eats a passing fish – but only virtually, of course.

She looks away from Greg and steps away as well. The vertical green blinds across the wide picture window – turned partially open now – could be made of harvested kelp, judging from the color and texture. She gazes through this Kelp blind forest and down to the Ocean surface. The Atlantic this day is not at all pacific, sending huge waves crashing onto the beach. The late morning sun is nowhere apparent as gray clouds roil a dark sky over the cold, thick waters – gray meeting gray right where the horizon is lost. Bursts of icy rain splatter on the glass right in front of her nose but the sting and the wet of it doesn't penetrate. The wind seems to make the entire building bow.

It's the sort of weather to send even a crab scampering for shelter. It results from the unusually early “election day blizzard” reaching the Atlantic and strengthening into a Northeaster (or “North Eater” as Greg pronounced it). The bundles of moisture it picks up over the ocean, it backhands onto the Northeast – as if the dump truck that hit 'em on the New Jersey Turnpike backed over them and dumped its load.

At the same time, far to the Southwest, hurricane Crystal – it would be called “the mutant storm” in a few days – made landfall in East Texas, spreading havoc along the coast and well inland. But who cares about that now? Greg cares. What he now reads makes him care. The six week old email she provided helps him look into Crystal and glimpse what will come.

She turns towards him. There are moments – and this moment is one of them – when Greg appears the crab. He is on his crab throne and leans forward with his elbows splayed on the desk, so he looks much wider than he is tall. His hair is mussed and knotted on the sides but flat on the top – the result of constantly running his hand through his gray locks with each thought and patting down on the thin top as he decides (almost as one stroke: think, decide). As a result, his head looks almost as wide as his wide neck.

His Stylish glasses have a lot of goggle in them and make his eyes appear panoramic, as if they could look forward and back and right and left all at the same time. But now they focus on the page in front of him – the color of blubber, it's held in both hands as if by claws. He uses his instincts as he devours – or rather reads – it. She's seen him devour before, but not quite like this day. It's that crack of a smile: as if he'd like an after-devouring mint and a bit of conversation. She moves a few steps from the window to take her place in the deeply comfortable chair facing his desk.

“So what's this Chattanooga choo-choo?” Greg wore that crack of a smile as he sat back and removed his glasses – the better to focus on the person before him.

“The sort of cute language that got him in trouble,” said Sandy, swaddled in her chair. Sandy went well with the carpet. In fact, they had ended up on it a few times, but only after rolling off the couch (this subject was permanently off topic). Greg was an old guy but in one respect he was quite youthful: he was the world's richest and most powerful man, a fact no one knew but everyone acknowledged.

Sandy got her name from her hair, which was the color of dry sand. Her skin was the color of damp sand but unnaturally smooth – as if the epidermis had been applied with an air brush and buffed to a nice sheen. You couldn't see yourself in the finish but darn it, you just might want to. Her eyes were the green of warm, tropical seas. Her thick lashes seemed a heavy weight on her lids, like those leather straps she sometimes wears on her wrist with pouches for little metal bars. She would do “the latte lift” when she wore those bracelets: one sip of coffee with her right hand, the next sip with her left. So let it be said: The thick mascara did not make her lids heavier, it made them stronger.

In short, Sandy was tall, agile, athletic, ambitious, attentive, attractive and an accountant. Greg had many uses for accountants. It occurred to Greg that he was surrounded by many peculiar people, most of them accountants, the rest lawyers and some, the really peculiar ones, both. In fact, come to think of it, Sandy was both.

Greg opened his claws and allowed the paper to settle on the table top. “The Him you refer to, he is your cousin.” he said. Sandy had come out from Manhattan to see Greg. He often made people travel to see him. That way the difference in hierarchy became a geographic reality (he claimed he was being more “hands off” and only hoped to "enjoy" his "retirement"). But this day the Helicopter was not in operation. All the snow and rain made Manhattan much more snarly than usual, so the fact she made it out to see him was a testament to the importance she attached to this particular email. North of the City the snow was constant. Boston was buried under three feet and acquiring another layer of white shellacking. The northern part of flyover country – the Midwest and such – you could pretty much ski over. But where Greg was, near the shore, the storm was now a spent bullet: just rain and drizzle turning to ice. Everything was coated in ice. Even the ice acquired coats of ice.

“Jimmy is my cousin-in-law, that's what he is. Or was. Ex-cousin in law. My cousin divorced him so he's not even that,” she said, as if he had sunk below the insects in her estimation. “Now he's just plain old Dr. Savannah,” she added, deciding to give him a promotion. Her lips puckered as if she sucked on something sour.

Jimmy Savannah sounded like a name out of a romance novel – not that Greg read romance novels (at least not often). The email from Dr. Jimmy to Miss Sandy (Doctor of Juris-juicy, or whatever her formal title was) had a familiar, teasing tone. The subject line said, The Perfect Winter. “Did you have an affair with him?”

“Hardly. Jimmy's not my type.”

Greg smiled. He knew her type – and her type's type. He admired how she kept things in perspective. Civilization's foundations may crumble but you still only want to be associated with a certain kind of lover. “I'm just trying to determine why he emailed you.”

“Too gloat. With absolutely no reason to gloat, or so I thought when I first read it back in August.”

“Obviously, you are much in his thoughts.”

And why wouldn't she be? “Many years ago – well, not that many – I made him watch a movie about global warming--”

“Him being your former lover.” He knew of only one reason Jim Savannah would watch that movie with her. The fact that Greg had bankrolled the film (and even made money on it, much to his amazement!) didn't change his opinion. The movie in question featured Hal Bore, a former Senator Greg had briefly wanted to make President.

“Ex Cousin-in-law, is what he was. Is. Not lover, mine?” she corrected.

“Was your cousin/his-wife present for the – presentation?”

“She was! Out-ta town...”

“So that night you seduced him, just out of curiosity.”

She wondered whose curiosity he referenced, his own right now or hers back then? “Can I get on with the story? After watching the movie he looked into it – global warming – and came back saying that movie was 'an incredibly large and festering pile of hooey,' if I may use those words, full of what he called 'lies' fronted by 'a carnie barker grifter and political hack.' He called it an appeal to Con-Science -- using science as a front for a 45 trillion dollar con. He kept saying: Extreme Solutions Demand Extreme Problems. He thought he was making a point. So you see the type of person he is? Beyond reason. Cannot be reached by the most carefully prepared presentation." Sandy and Jim had talked about it over pizza. He drank beer and she drank cola because, in theory, she wasn't old enough for beer. He was quite funny, and intentionally so, when he spoke of it -- impending doom. And no, they had not had sex. She did not bother correcting Greg because he would only take it as confirmation and anyways, he wasn't off by that much. Still, she had a good time that night, even if Jimmy stayed upright -- stayed staid, as it were. "He said we are in an on-going ice age, one that's been around for twenty million years lah-dee-dah. The fourth, or fifth or 23^rd, I forget, interglacial period with, on the numbers, glaciers due to start romping around the Northern US any day now. He told of cosmic rays causing sun reflecting low-cloud formation. Twelve of Fourteen triggers for a new ice age being present when you only need 11.8! He said, like, for 90 percent of the last gazillion years Cleveland Ohio has been under a mile or two of ice. He said: imagine being in Cleveland or Detroit with 8,000 feet of solid ice over your head? I said I couldn't imagine being in Cleveland under those circumstances or any other.”

“Or what you might wear.”

One end of her mouth bent down. “Thing is, he's quite smart: math wiz, computer wiz, that sort of thing. No half measures. He goes all in. A genius, I think, but not at all geeky or nerdy when you can get him off topic. Rather cute, in fact.”

Greg smiled. She did have an affair with him. She was a genius herself, but that still left considerable room for stupidity. “So to forget you – finally get you out of his mind after you'd destroyed his life and tossed him onto the dung heap – he began obsessing about climate change. He wanted to control the data streams in a way he could never control the woman of his dreams.”

“Never looked at it that way.” But she had. Why else would he run away? He would find some place with a lot of peace and quite where he could obsess about her. It was the logical explanation. “Jimmy got a job at a small Catholic college northwest of Montreal. He used the computer in the Economics Department--”

“Economics Department? I thought he was some sort of Climatologist.”

She was silent for a moment. “Actually, he coaches Lacrosse.”

Greg swirled round in his chair and looked out the window, through the gaps in the kelp colored blinds and out over the Ocean, toward whatever indistinct horizon might be out there, concealed in all the swirling gray. He smiled. “I bet it keeps Jimbo's butt tight.” He couldn't help it. He laughed as he twirled back around.

“I wouldn't know.” She kept it matter of fact. “I haven't seen him in many years. Well, not that many. One. Besides, he has other duties as well. Teaches a course in statistics and keeps the boiler running, too.” Of course Greg laughed some more. But she may as well give it to him straight. If he was at all interested in what she had to say, and she figured he would be, he'd check it out thoroughly so she better not conceal any inconvenient truths. One truth: Jimmy has been quite a disappointment to her – until about eight hours ago, when she got a peak at the quickly suppressed “seven day forecast,” and compared it to an email she got six weeks before.

“See, Jim figured when the glaciers come, they won't come slowly from the north, and grow toward the south, like most people assume. He figured they'd appear quite suddenly – geologically speaking but also in terms of a human lifetime. They would appear first north of the Ohio River and in the Great Lakes Region. The water's going to come from the South, carried north by storms, while the north provides the cold air.”

“The Chattanooga choo-choo.”

“Well, to hear him explain it, it should be named after Memphis. I mean, if you have to name it after a city. I called it The Memphis Moon-bat express.”

If there was a snob in the office, intellectual or otherwise, it was Sandy, not Greg. He took people as he found them and sized them up accordingly, focusing on what use they might be. But he was a man of several parts, and if you were not in his sights you likely encountered the pleasing ones. He was also a shrewd judge of people. Sandy had a former lover who turned into a crackpot with unfashionable ideas – a guy subject to ridicule who threw his future down the drain – and found it a bit embarrassing. Still, the fact she could assign herself as the cause for his downward spiral was, for her, a point scored. If she suddenly resurrected him, it would be another point scored. She's the score keeper.

Of course none of that mattered to Greg (though how Sandy came about her information did). Greg just wasn't that impressed by academic credentials. And this wasn't reverse snobbery. Every few years he took the time to teach a course at the London School of Economics – so that he could better fool the next generation of Central Bankers, on the evidence. But he saw, over the years, how Academia had morphed into a self-perpetuating bureaucracy that put its own interests first. Of course not everything they do is dog doo-doo, you just had to watch where you stepped.

A decade earlier a couple of Ivy league mathematicians had figured out a fool proof way to make money playing the markets. They had mathematical formulas to show how various prices moved in tandem: some went up when others went down. Big money men gave them a king's ransom – in fact, enough to ransom many kings – to play with. These fellows wore sweaters and carpet slippers to work and puffed on pipes with unlit tobacco in the bowls. And for a while they all had a serene, pleasing, and quite profitable time. It was as if Mr. Roger's Neighborhood had launched a hostile takeover of Wall Street.

Then they showed up in his office one day asking him to lend them several billion dollars. Greg politely turned down this “investment” opportunity. Within a matter of days the news emerged that these guys had lost 80 billion buckaroos. Funny, it seemed like a lot at the time.

Now, you would think their example would put an end to such arrangements but it did not. Their were plenty of brilliant folks – hedge fund operators, they're called – who thought they were smarter then these previous brilliant folks. To Greg, that made them the greater fools in the greater fool theory – but not quite as foolish as the folks who gave them the funds and followed their lead.

As for the latest fashion in Smart: It is true that Greg supported climate modeling with his own money, but he never put his faith in “models.” He “donates” money where his self-interests are. He did not believe for a moment that anyone could model the climate a hundred years in advance. The Soviet Union could not model its own rundown economy and get enough sausage and bread into the one store allowed in each neighborhood, and those were the smartest guys that a well educated population of 300 million could produce. But the same guys were good at creating a demand for rockets and tanks, where too much was apparently never enough. They were good, in other words, at fudging until everything was totally fudged up. Having come of age in that sort of environment, Greg was an expert at modeling the behavior of bureaucracies. He thrived in the space between the bureaucracies and the societies they mastered. Global Warming Theory would greatly expand his ecosystem, so promoting it was his idea of altruism.

He also knew that a million Pseudo Intellectuals sitting at keyboards would produce scenarios that will fit every conceivable occurrence. But Sandy was smart as a whip and nobody's fool, not even his. Jimmy's predictions from six weeks before fit the last seven days and that impressed her. The fact that they also fit the current “seven day” forecast impressed them both. A train of storms, headed north, just like he said. The natural question: If he's not just one of millions of monkeys pounding a keyboard, how'd he do it?

Greg picked up the email. “Your man is a prodigious prognosticator.”

“Jimmy admits that it's tough to predict an event that happens four or five times every million years, but if you approach the task with sufficient humility--” Sandy almost smiles, then thought that might not be a good idea. She cleared her throat a bit. “The thing is, after I saw him last year he left me an encrypted manuscript that explains it all. The encryption is so fiendishly complex that not even the Federal Government with all its resources could decipher it without the key. Or so he said. I figured it's a load of BS, of course, but took it just to keep him quiet.”

“You made love to Jimmy last year.”

“Is that a question?”

“You threw out this manuscript, this enciphered load of--”

“I still got it, somewhere.”

“There is a treasure map hidden in a sunken ship, to help us find this key, to decipher--”

“No map. He wants me to come see him. And ask nice. I feel it in my bones.” She had her own reasons to see Jimmy, some of which Greg could guess and others she hoped he didn't. “I am not the map. I am the legend. ”

“You are the key to the whole she-bang.” Greg smiled. He wasn't interested in a decade long lovers' spat. But if the World was about to take a turn toward a new destination, Greg wanted to be there when it arrived. Would deciphering this manuscript help? Would pretending it would help, help? Could giving Sandy what she wants ever be the right thing (for him) to do? Think, decide. “You do have plenty of stylish winter gear, don't you? According to this weather report,” Greg held up the email, “You will be needing it.”

Sandy knew not to put much stock in Greg's hints – he laid so many false crumb trails you'd think he shed croûtons wherever he went. But with the life of the nation turning into one long natural disaster – one compounded by the nature of her fellow creatures – she knew that in this hour of her nation's need she should take care of her needs. Of course she always felt that way, but her needs had suddenly changed.

Jimmy Savannah once told her that Irony slouches through human history, continuously born and never noticed. “It's like the dialectic of Marx and Hegel,” he told her, “except it runs in reverse.” At some point, he said, Irony might become a mere literary construct again but by that time we would no longer have literature: we will have dialed back past that. She liked to conclude he was off his rocker but she never could so conclude, or rather did – often and in cycles: conclude, deconclude.

She was on the brink of a great deconclusion. She had an example of Irony at work: her presenting Jimmy's memo on the end of the current interglacial period to one of the great proponents of Man Made Global Warming.

But as Greg himself would put it: you're unlikely to lose money betting on his insincerity. Of course he would never say it himself or be pleased with the person who did.

Nature shrugs. Homo sapiens complain.

It was the consensus of unscientific opinion that the Northern hemisphere had no summer that year. The planet experienced a cooling trend. Since it was caused by the Sun emitting less radiation (part of a normal solar cycle, but more normal than any on record), the reemergence of “cool” was treated as mere atmospherics – wearing jackets in July a new fashion trend that will soon pass. The Usual Experts said it was a mere slowing of an over all warming trend caused by modern, Promethean man (especially the Promethean building, selling, and driving the SUV). So it would be Ironic, of course, if after spending trillions of dollars and turning the economy upside-down to prevent global warming, it all got iced over.

But the winds and the currents often change, finding new ways to move heat and moisture around the planet or even rediscover old patterns. In the Southern U.S. the summer was cooler and wetter than normal, but hurricane season was almost nonexistent. Hurricanes get their energy from warm surface water and in the process of feeding draw up cooler water from the depths. The Gulf Stream, which moves warm surface waters from the tropics to the North Atlantic, had weakened considerably in the Northern Branch, petering out before reaching the British isles. In fact, the current now made a hard right off the coast of Spain and flowed back to the tropics along the West Coast of Africa, so the waters became even warmer, enabling the surface heat to build up later in the year. So hurricane season wasn't called off, it was back loaded.

Ice in the arctic – both on land and sea – had returned with a vengeance. Less fresh water ran into the seas adjacent Greenland and Canada, changing the balance of fresh water and salt water. The waters that feed The Labrador Current (the Gulf Stream's Cool Cousin) became a little colder, a little more salty and a little more dense. They submerged before reaching New England, so ironically as the current became colder the surface waters off Cape Cod became a bit warmer. But just like baseball is always a game of inches, nature is often a game of degrees.

That Spring in The Great Lakes Region the trees had kept their buds for an unusually long time – as if the alarm clock had gone off after a hard winters night and they were trying sleep in, despite all the racket and the bright light. Eventually, they pushed out some leaves and then acted like it was a bad idea. The lake ice on the “North Coast” hung around well past Easter. April lasted through the Fourth of July and October arrived before Labor Day. It was as if the top of the globe wore “a helmet of cold, dense air” (as one lesser commentator put it) which slowed the normal circulation of warm air up from the tropics. Soon people just called the weather phenom “the Helmet,” and soon, “Helmut” – as if it were a mischievous red faced drunk escaped from an Oktoberfest in Budapest. So the weatherman said, “Helmut has brought us clear skies and chilly temperatures for the fourth of July” or “Helmut has only brought a pause in the warming of the globe.” Others would add the expletives. Farmers demanded help, even more than usual. But they were not sure of getting it, not by a long shot.

Because problems a lot more severe than canceling the Fourth of July picnic developed. As a result of a prolonged drought and fuel build up in the forest of the Pacific Northwest, unstoppable forest fires (set off by dry thunderstorms) began to rage from northern California to British Columbia. Dry winds fanned the fires to a high heat and not just homes, but towns and cities, went up in whirlpools of flame. The amount of energy released was compared to a series of nuclear blasts – a long series. It was suggested that the Air Force could drop fuel-air explosives as a way of snuffing the fires. The current occupant of the White House had run against the use of fuel air explosives and for not tampering with nature. So using fuel air explosives to tamper with nature, regardless of it practical effects, required further study.

The fires were termed a “Once in one thousand year” event: Cold comfort to the hundreds of thousands made homeless. In the Midwest a haze from the fires spread across the sky, so Helmut now wore sunscreen.

It was a hard fire season in Southern California as well, but with a twist. Instead of fires they suffered constant rain, with hillsides turning to mud and flowing towards the Pacific Ocean. A 6.8 earthquake turned the rain soaked soil into pudding and spread structural collapse into areas not affected by the slides – with widespread loss of life and limb added to the toll on property and business.

The Federal Government, which lately spent feverishly to save everything from banks to baby boutiques in the face of a severe economic downturn, now faced demands that it finance the rebuilding of the West coast to the tune of two trillion dollars. A trillion was the new billion, so two of them didn't sound like all that much. The Politicians, anxious to keep their jobs in a tough economic environment, told the Treasury to reach down into its deep pockets – so deep they apparently reach to China – and come up with the money. By September promises were made, and checks that could not be allowed to bounce were written. New taxes – called anything but – were muted and quickly took effect. These joined a recent dizzying array of progressive taxes increased, loopholes closed, deductions canceled, fees increased, and expensive “licenses to pollute” required – all previously enacted by the same congress..

Given what was happening out in the Far West, folks having to cancel their swim dates because it was too cold hardly had reason to complain. And if they did, someone would tell them “Homeowners are being burned alive in Oregon trying to stand up to the flames.” Others might say that it is “the fire next time” since God promised Noah he would not again use water. Then someone would point to the mudslides in Southern California, where water was in the mix.

But what about the combination of fire, mud and ice? Before the fall had passed the people of the Northern Great plains and the Great Lakes – and most who live further south – would have reason to wonder.

Pitch ran a business called Great American Wreckage, Salvage and Restoration, located in Brood Eskers, a lake front working class town near Cleveland. It took its name from several eskers in the area – ridges of gravel and sand left by streams that flowed under, and out of, a stagnant glacier that brooded above them for thousands of years. They would erode the ice above and put down sediment below like an upside down stream. The geological features looked like embankments from a failed railroad speculation. Pitch's “yard” occupied a small abandon gravel pit that had gnawed at the confluence of two of these ancient streams.

It was the start of what Jimmy Savannah called “The Perfect Winter” in his email. On September 15 they had their first Lake Effect snowfall, which melted the next day. Similar snow falls, mixed with heavy rain, followed. They were having November in September, no surprise after October came in August.

October brought December, which would stick around for awhile. Weather events in the west would again impact their lives. Humid air off the Pacific brought the rain that quenched the fires of the Northwest. Then the warm moist air crossed the Rockies and traveled down the east side of the range where it mixed with cold air over the prairies of Canada. An “Alberta Clipper” developed that moved at great speed across the Northern US. This brought 6-8 inches of snow to the Great Lakes on Halloween and the first subzero wind chills on All Saints Day. So far, so not-so-good.

But that, apparently, was the appetizer for the coming snow banquet. Clippers, it seems, develop a pulse, and another returned in a few days that lured a low pressure system out of the Panhandle area of Texas. The two systems rendezvoused where the Mississippi meets the Ohio and brought what was called the “Election Day Blizzard” to the upper Midwest and Great Lakes region. The additional 18 inches of snow it dumped north of the Ohio River gave everyone a bad feeling about the coming winter – technically not due for another 8 weeks. Then the stormed backhanded them with another foot, more in New England. Three feet in about a week. They dug out.

Pitch's business tended to be feast or fast. He liked to feast frequently and fast fast. Right now the weather was preventing any feasting so he wanted to clear away the snow fast. Another blizzard – Spawned by Hurricane Crystal – was heading their way so he had to find new places to put the snow, even if he had to create his own glacier.

He had two of his workers, Pirate and Paul, with him. Paul was a third generation Lebanese Christian who had trained as a civil engineer but only briefly became one. Bearded and bedraggled, he had an aura of a person that some unknown tragedy befell.

Pirate was lanky and strong. His tragedies were known but largely forgotten – at least by him. His mother was a drug addict with a series of live-in boyfriends. He wore a patch over one eye, the result of some fight or beating he took. As a youth Pirate took to living, quite uninvited, in the wrecking yard. One day he stole a bit of salvage and took it around front and tried to sell it back to Pitch. To Pitch the choice was clear: he could either kill the kid or take him in. He took him in. That was a dozen years before.

Pirate was quite outgoing and would talk incessantly to the silent Paul – who mostly listened – and to Pitch, who mostly didn't.

Now Pirate was telling Paul about a dream he had. “It was a god awful dream. It took place in Chinatown. I don't know where this Chinatown was, may have been in China. This dream was crazy-confusing. This tall, lanky bearded Guy – who ain't Chinese at all – shows up and starts organizing stuff. And he's making this really awful dream really boring. I woke up and I thought, who was that guy?”

“Well?” asked Paul, like he was impatient for the answer.

“You know him. It was Carter Richard-son-son-son. I think he was The Third Son of The Third Son.”

“The guy with the six pack?” asked Paul.

“Six pack? You mean of beer. It was never the same six pack, Paul, and it wasn't a six pack for long.”

“Well, he used to drink them,” he said, by way of explanation.

“So I'm laying in bed thinking: what the hell is Carter doing in my awful dream making it really boring?”

“Organizing it?” Paul suggested.

“Right, but even more on topic the guy ain't been around for like a decade.”

“He moved to Syracuse.”

“So what's he doing in my dream?”

“Organizing it.”

“No! Yes. I mean, what brought him to my mind in such a way that he could shoe-horn himself into my dream in that weaselly way of his?”

As Paul considered this he looked like he was doing a calculus problem in his head. In fact, he probably was doing a calculus problem in his head. He found it calming. “If yesterday you heard a song you both liked--”

“Get out of here! But not yet. No. It was you telling me about that lady.”

“Oh.” Some how he knew it was his fault.

“The one with the seven dogs that she got all at the same time. That they're all ten years old now and getting sickly.”

“Right. I did say that.” May as well 'fess-up.

“Well, Carter lived in her basement! Don't you see? Carter trades living in her basement for Syracuse, and she goes out and gets ten dogs!”

“Seven.”

“Point is: how'd she arrive at that number?”

“Well, they was puppies when she got 'em.” Paul was never afraid to point out the obvious. “And suppose, just supposing, she got the puppies and then Carter said 'I ain't living with seven dogs' and then moved to Syracuse.”

“Ah! A different cosmetology. You rearrange the time line into a spit curl and invert the cause and effect relationship. But you forget one thing. Carter liked dogs. He'd have never gone to Syracuse if she got those dogs first. On cold winter nights they would've all slept together on a shag carpet, as happy as fleas. You're leaving out the human factor, Paul.”

Pitch thought this was a good time to interrupt. He didn't want Paul considering the human factor, at least with Pirate as his guide. But Paul had something else to say and went on and said it. “When you first said a lanky bearded guy showed up to straighten things out, I thought you would say it was Jesus Christ.” Pitch and Pirate both regarded Paul with a momentary look of wonder. Because neither Paul nor Pirate was religious.

“Come to mention it,” said Pirate, “he wasn't. Because Jesus is identified with wine, not beer. Of course, wine weren't his defining characteristic. But beer sure was Carter's. Wouldn't you say so, Boss?”

But Pitch didn't say. Instead he told Pirate to stack up wrecks to make a space where they could park all that snow they were expecting. Pirate had an uncanny ability to stack wrecks so they didn't tumble over like dominoes but could still be easily disentangled when needed. Paul was genius good at taking things apart and putting things back together again – even when Pirate stupidly mixed the parts up, he could put them together (Pirate had only done that once, but it was enough to earn him a rep). So Pitch had Paul take stuff apart. And later maybe even put some things back together.

And then Pitch left the men to their work. And he climbed to the top of the old Victorian mansion adjacent the wrecking yard where he lived. From the dormers he could look in one direction and see the choppy waters of Lake Erie. Iced that formed on the surface broke apart and was pushed to the Northeast by the wind. Then he walked to anther dormer, one looking to the south, and he saw the brooding clouds stacked up over the horizon, the color of ancient ice below but with the feathery white of the freshest snow above. In the cloud he saw a flash of lightening. Strange days indeed. Below he could see his “back yard” – the former gravel pit embraced by the arms of the two eskers that met there. It contained the metal bones and wire pickings, far less than in previous years, of the plant and equipment Pitch “recycled.” There was also junk trucks and cars, some stacked awaiting the crusher. The “side yard” contained outbuildings where much of the valued “finds” were kept. Pitched figured ten percent of most things contained 90 percent of the value. He did not include humans in these calculations for the true value of a human is in their spirit and only God could measure that. Pitch, however, felt free to make a quick estimate.

He turned his attention to the beds sealed in plastic. In the hay days of his business, when Great American engaged in the deconstruction of entire factories, Pitch would surge skilled workers in and out town, according to the needs of the project. His home became a boarding house where they would stay for days or weeks while Pitch kept them fed and sober and hard at work. Sometimes these men would disappear for months and then return for another stint. Some of these “working class guys” acquired small fortunes but their real status among their peers came from being good men to have around in tough situations.

Pitch decided to talk to his wife, Kim. With the approaching storm, they might be putting the beds back in use

Looking at Great American, most folks would say “What's so great about it?” There were a few who might ask, “what's so American?” Pitch was an Arab American but he'd pitched the Arab part long ago. True, it's tough to escape your past but sometimes you can out run it. In any case, he left the tribal hatreds of his parents homeland behind him when he joined the American Tribe (he was still trying to sort out the clannish animosities he found in Cleveland but really, who had that much time?). Pitch got his name because he was a natural born hurler who came to the game baseball too late in life to make it to the majors.

He has a Korean wife that he met 35 years before while serving in the US Army. At the time South Korea was undergoing a dicey transformation from military to civilian rule. She was proudly anti-American, and claimed that the US military was occupying her country. She assumed all Arabs hated the US and was quite upset to find one serving in the US Military. In fact much of his unit consisted of people who, in her conception, should be fighting against the US, rather than defending it. At first she thought they were going to grab a nuke or get assigned to Fort Knox to steal the gold horde. She had recently watched “Gold Finger” at a small Restaurant that showed videos. She would practice her English there, and meet Americans like Pitch. But after many attempts at communication she could detect no secret scheme. Pitch said he wanted learn Korean but she discourage him. She considered Korean a secret code for her people and who wanted the barbarians listening in, even if they are Arab barbarians calling themselves American barbarians? The GI's called her “Kim,” using her family name as her first name which, ironically enough, it was in Korean. Pitch married her and they moved to “Greater Cleveland” where they've lived for 30 years.

Despite being as stoic as any Korean and a great deal of native determination, she eventually tired of a life of continual and grating irritation that hating the nation you live in requires, and settled in to become one of the Great American's in “Great American.”

For Pitch, America was like Spumoni. If you're a guy who don't know much about Spumoni, you might think it a type of spaghetti. Then when you first encounter it, you might be disappointed, surprised, angered, delighted, confused, and embarrassed by what you find – all at once. How could you order up something that is a type ice cream and expect a bowl of spaghetti with special spu sauce (spu being the secret ingredient of spumoni)? This could cause you to just leave the meal in disgust. Or you might taste it and find it so delicious that you eat too much, get a sour stomach and ever after think “yuck,” whenever you hear about Spumoni. To appreciate Spumoni, you need to encounter it in the proper context and not consume too much at any one time. This might seem a surprisingly logical way to look at things, especially for an Arab, since (for most Americans, at least) the words “Arab” and “dispassionate logical analysis” don't immediately conjoin. But Pitch would point out that there are different flavors of Arabs. Arabs are like Spumoni, too, but in a different way than Americans. In fact, Pitch's “Law of Spumoni” has pretty near universal application, at least for Pitch.

The “Salvage” in Great American Salvage, Wreckage, and Restoration referred to the equipment in industries gone belly-up in the rust belt. When Pitch got out of the military the de-industrialization process was getting underway and Pitch's company would buy, remove and sell old plant and equipment. If it is true, as is sometimes said, that every disaster brings with it an opportunity, than Pitch's career could be offered as evidence: at a time when plants were closing – and many comforted themselves that the times were too bad to last – Pitch thought they were too good to keep going. Looking back on it, both outlooks were, perhaps, correct (but for different reasons, of course).

Wreckage? If you were willing create, he was willing to dispose. Restoration? Well, what's it worth? There was a time, in the hectic early 1980's, when it seemed Pitch's business might grow to match its grandiose name. But after a half dozen years he realized he didn't want to own a business he couldn't himself run, and he began to dial back on his ambitions. Still, he was what most people would call wealthy, though he didn't look it.

His wife went into banking and was quite adept at using the abacus and could add a column of numbers faster than someone using an adding machine. Instead of moving the beads for each calculation, she visualized their movement and only moved them when creating a new starting point. She used an abacus until computers became so embedded in the operation that it was no longer convenient. Soon she would have reason to take it out of storage.

They had two Children: a son who was Lawyer in LA and a Daughter who was a MD in Georgia.

Pitch had a similar ability. He could look at a job and ask himself the questions: Who's got what I need and who needs what I got? And see how the project would unfold. This too was a talent that would soon be put to use in surprising ways.

The above is chapter one of the Novel Glaciation by H. D. Greene (which happens to be me). I have since changed the name to The Ironic Storm. I think.

Chapter Two: When Crystal Met Helmut

Plot Quest

2009-04-20T12:06:00.000-07:00

I'm far enough along in The Prodigals of Penance (A comic Opera-lite satire of a Parody) that I'm thinking it could use a Plot. Originally the model for the work was Gilbert and Sullivan but now I'm thinking Wagner, too. So length is no object. What about quality? Well, quality is a different matter.

I'm open to all suggestions. Even the title -- which I sweated over long and hard, with much passion and desire -- is subject to change. Yes, I hope to come up with a better one.

Here's what I have so far:

Scene: The estate of the Artful Shortseller. Art is sponsoring "The World Conference to Solve All Problems in One Fell Swoop."

The Players (so far):

"Former" President Jack Black -- The first U.S. President to be a Black (there have been other Jacks).
Edwina Hillary Black -- former first Lady and the first Mrs. Black to be Secretary of State.
President Audacious "Otto" Hope -- His Election Brought Hope to the Presidency. It may turn out that Hope is not that important to the story but we'll see.
Rhododendron "Rod" Axle -- The first Phrase Maker. Despite all the rumors, there is no carnal Knowledge between her and Otto. In fact, there is no Knowledge at all -- just hype. A description of Rod and Otto's early partnership is here. Since that was written, Rod has had a sex change operation.
Various EU Leaders (in tux and top hats)
BBC Journalists (Pants Suits)
500 Administration Foreign Policy Advisers (Tie dyed)
2000 U.S. Journalists (They wear Otto's Campaign colors, carry pom-poms and file the same story)
Artful Shortseller -- Worlds Richest Man.

The Plot so far (all subject to change!).

The Americans arrive at the conference.
At the opening banquet, Edwina Hillary Black was in charge of place settings. To stop constantly resetting the table while the food got cold, the American delegation agreed to change the name of their country (to reduce conflict with Latin America). The name of the country is now The United States of A-merry-puss and the inhabitants are know as Amerry-pussycans. Thus the first Crisis was properly disposed of.
Art Shortseller introduced himself as "The Very Model of the Modern Money Manager."

As always at these conferences, this much progress requires much song and dance.

WHAT IS NEEDED

I'm thinking it needs a love story. Either that or a lot of gore (sorry, Al, not you). Or maybe both?

This is why I need help, because the love story I came up with is Jack Black and Edwina Black falling in love for the very first time in the forty years they've been closely related. In fact they have lived as brother and sister (always quarreling) for so long that incest could be a sub-theme. Or maybe they could both fall in love with a BBC reporter? Or maybe Jack could just pretend to fall in love?

In fact I've yet to introduce Jack. I'm thinking three or four BBC Broadcast Babes could sing about him while a fourth (a lesbian?) expresses dismay. In this way give him a big build up before he enters. Something like:

BROADCAST BABE
Oh, when Jack Jacks me around.
I start making--the most peculiar sounds.
He Jacks me up, he Jacks me down, lord.
Have you seen little Jackie,
From on the ground?

If anyone knows how to make the above sound more Wagnerian, let me know. Perhaps the addition of this will help:

LESBIAN BBC'ER
To him your just a broadcast Broad.
Why do you let him get his way?

BROADCAST BABE
He's one source
I don't want to get away.

Maybe the last bit needs a better rhyme.

Or maybe we need something more Presidential. I'm open to suggestions. But to show Jack growing beyond merely transient relations to the Transcendental might be a fit theme for "comic lite opera parody of a satire meets Wagner."

So here's the question: Should Jack and Edwina discover love? Or should we go for a highly complex and heavily nuanced relationship between them and a gaggle of BBC broadcasters?

Remember: at some point we may need the BBC Broadcasters to ride in on winged serpents to save them.

Where does the story head from here? Good Question!

Prodigous Parody III

2009-04-18T05:19:00.000-07:00

I now continue with the comic lite-opera parody of a satire The Prodigals of Penance (loosely based on the President Obama's Traveling Apology Show). Not much has happened so far but there have been a lot of words and, theoretically at least, song and dance. The Americans (now called Amerry-pussycans -- see Parody II) have arrived at the estate of Artful Shortseller. Art is hosting The Conference to Solve all the World's Problems in One Fell Swoop. He addresses a Banquet of all the representatives of every nation and many that aren't (the section marked "Badlands" makes up three quarters of the whole). He is accompanied by a Chorus of Central Bankers.

I AM THE VERY MODEL OF THE MODERN MONEY MANAGER

I am the very model of the Modern Money Manager
I deal with sums, large and small, put into precise integers.
I do well when we race along and when the world is out of gear.
And when you want to leave the market I'm already out of there.

With theorems econometric and with carefully plotted longitude
You'll find I never give a calculated loss much latitude.
A careful study of my ways will show that that's my attitude.
And while I'll never take your money I could do it for you, too.

While he'd never take our money he could do it for us, too!
You will learn this from a careful study of his attitude!

If you find bad apples, some would say, just throw that fruit away!
But to make those apples palatable is a much less wasteful way.
You simply take the bad ones and you mix them with the good.
In this way rotten apples will taste better than they should!

He takes the rotten apples and he puts them with the good
This make the rotten apples taste much better than they should.

I move vast sums from sun to sun from over half a world away.
I can buy and sell and do a deal at any time during the day.
In matters econometrical I've created hedge fund spectacles.
Future earnings theoretical sound like profits piratical.

In matters econometrical, he's created hedge fund spectacles.
His profits theoretical sound like bounties piratical.

Before the Banks went in the Tank I speculated in the currencies,
I took advantage of Pound flights and Ministerial in-coherencies.
I made a billion than another then I flew across the sea.
When I landed on the tarmac there were bankers on their knees.

I shelter money from tax loads that might seem quite preposterous
You'd think I'd make a payment that is humongously -- monster-us!
But with what the politicians show and loopholes my tax dodgers know,
After all I bought and sold and taxes that I owe: I pile up wealth untold!

He shelters money from great--tax loads.
He Loans to Politicians--that he knows.
After all he's bought and sold,
And even taxes that he's owed:
He's piled up great wealth untold!

I dabble now in politics like an artist or gourmet
The use of sweets; the use of sticks as a means to prise my way.
I fund foundations--academic mutations: A Scientific Tidal Wave!
To leave behind the old "new world" -- long before I'm in the grave.

I find that voters who agree with me are the most perceptive
Especially those who agree with me when I am at my most deceptive.
And should you disagree with me, others will employ invective.
I find in discussions political, invective can be most effective.

He dabbles now in politics and funds many foundations
He wants to tie-up a single bundle that contains all nations
He promotes new Scientific Waves and academic mutations,
To help remake the world anew in all its permutations.

I am the very Model of the Modern Money Manager.
I deal with sums, large and small, put into precise integers.
I do well when we race along and when the world is out of gear.
And when you want to leave the market I'm already out! of! here!

AFTER A BIT MORE Dance, they all settle down. An NGO social-lite happens to be standing next to Art.

SOCIAL-LITE: So tell me, Mr Shortseller. Did you make your fortune in undergarments?

NEXT: I try to come up with a plot.

The Model for the above is here

Phlegmatic Endtimer is...

2009-04-17T05:00:00.001-07:00

Spengler! And who is Spengler? Spengler is not Uwe Parpart. Who is Uwe Parpart? Forget Uwe Parpart.

Asia Times Online :: Asian News, Business and Economy.

And Spengler is...