Mr. Lemmon

The air was crisp. The wind rustled the sparse leaves overhead as Johnathan Lemmon dug his chin deeper into the scarf he had wrapped around his neck as he left the house that morning. By now his morning routine had fallen into the background of his consciousness, a blur of repetition that had been slowly and carefully crafted throughout the autumn months only to become entirely unnoticeable. Jelly on toast. Keys in pocket. Jacket on. Scarf around neck. Front door locked. Walk to work.

His routine had never failed him, and with no reason to inspect it closer, Mr. Lemmon let his instincts guide him out into the crisp autumn air each morning, forgetting each step almost as it happened. He had developed a comfortable inattention, and ultimately, it would be this very same inattention that would place his foot in the unusually large crack that had appeared in the sidewalk the previous night, this same inattention that would keep his hands in his jacket pockets until it was too late to break his fall. He had almost begun to notice something amiss when his head met the pavement, after which he lost consciousness and stopped paying attention to much of anything.

Johnathan Lemmon began to pay attention. And what he noticed surprised him. Upon waking from his unexpected collapse, Johnathan Lemmon had become, quite remarkably, a collection of rough lemon sketches.

His morning routine would have to wait.

Antiscian Exile

Obambulating through refugium,
here rusticated by zabernism.
Myriarchy of tirocinium,
rules over martinets with nomism.
Cursorial thoughts of athanasic void.
The dacnomania in me forms anew,
as xanthocarpous spinnies make matoid,
as xanthochroic fruits are wont to do.
Anhedonia and analgia,
biune in never diastrophic land.
Ubication seen as dyslogia,
clinamen assigned solely to shend.
Postliminy sublated by bêtise,
A gement puts antiscians at ease.

A Fall from Grace

A fall from grace, a bitter song that mocks.
This wretched form is lost and left behind.
I wander through the bramble and the rocks,
and long for times bygone when I was blind.
Grace taught my heart to fear this dead valley,
how precious did that grace seem to me then.
The hour I first believed, it came to be:
and here I've wandered through and through again.
Succumbed have I to dangers, toils, and snares
at what such price is it to be restored?
The lord forsaketh me no more, nor cares
for it is I who doth forsake the lord.
When I've been here ten thousand years, this Hell
I'll have no fewer days than when I fell.

Interrogation of the Optimist

"Just tell me lest you die upon the shore,
your body pulled into arid expanse."
"A lovely day to die upon the shore,
the sound of crashing waves an ambiance."
"Then tell me lest you die up in the sky,
from splattered guts will jut your shattered bone."
"A lovely day to die up in the sky,
an everlasting free fall mine alone."
"Well tell me lest you die engulfed in flame,
fire licking at your ever-charring corpse."
"A lovely day to die engulfed in flame,
to feel an ember as it slowly warps."
"You bend not to threats of death. Tell me why."
"I fear it's just a lovely day to die."

Temporary Death - Part 3

Continued from Part 2

Part 3

An excruciating sense of heaviness met Mortimer when he felt his thick blood begin to work its way back through his veins. His eyelids weighted down on his face, too weary to lift themselves. Hadn’t he just been sprinting?

He lie still for several minutes, gathering up his strength ounce by ounce to open his eyes. Once he had summoned the pure force of will, he shot his eyes open. The blinding brightness from an overhead surgical lamp burned his retinas and caused his recently underused pupils to dilate at an unhealthy speed, forcing his eyes closed and causing a fair amount of ironic humor. Behind the ambient sounds of heart monitors and life support systems beeping he thought he heard his wife.

He chanced opening an eye again, this time cautiously. A thousand dangling tube fibers hung from the ceiling, each one embedded in his skin. Doctors swarmed above him, gently removing the needles. His body had been unable to process the anesthetic while he had been dead, so his limbs still bore a lingering numbness.

“Welcome back to the realm of the living, Mortimer,” said an intern in an unnecessarily dramatic tone. “You’ll be happy to know that you are now one hundred percent cancer free! We’ll get you a copy of your death certificate as a memento and get you into physical therapy as soon as you rest up, alright?

“Muuhhh” replied Mortimer as eloquently as he could. A supervising doctor took note of this response on a notepad she had been scribbling on, documenting the procedure so that the results could be sent back to the University of Central Michigan. Initial difficulty communicating orally. Potentially permanent side-effect of deadness.

“How are you feeling, Mortimer?” asked the chronicler after she finished her memo. Mortimer turned his head to face her. “Nnnn… Not all that bad, I guess… Am I still dead? Initial difficulty communicating orally. Potentially permanent side-effect of deadness. Effects subside rapidly, scribbled the chronicler without responding.

“There is one thing you should know, sir,” said a different doctor. Mortimer was finding it difficult to keep track of who was talking. He turned his sore neck towards the new voice. “Sometime before you were killed, a tube fiber was misplaced on your left arm. It was a minor artery, but the dead tissue spread too far before we were able to detect it twelve days later. It was necessary to amputate your arm. I’m sorry, sir, but there was nothing we could do.”

The doctor was perplexed at Mortimer’s calm as he thanked the doctor for the news and asked to see his wife. Once he was sure that a reasonable number of the tube fibers had been removed and properly set up for cleaning, he went out into the hall and informed Mortimer’s wife that she was allowed to see her husband. He stood outside the operating room window and watched as Mortimer and his wife were reunited.

Another doctor came up beside him and watched the emotional scene within. “Amazing technology, isn’t it? We just gave that guy his life back.” The calm the doctor had witnessed didn’t bother him so much anymore, as the pure happiness of the situation washed over him. “Yeah,” he replied. “I guess we did.”

In a vast and empty plain, a robed skeletal figure relinquished his search for Mortimer. He had initially found it odd that he had arrived early to that realm, but now found sense in it.

“Sixty three more days, then.”



Temporary Death - Part 2

Continued from Part 1

Part 2

The article would not have helped Mortimer’s disposition towards his situation had he read it. He had listened to various doctors and surgeons explain to him how his version of the still experimental procedure would go: He would be administered a general anesthesia, under which a series of several hundred tube fibers would be attached to every artery in his body, supplying his body with the oxygen his dead heart would be unable to deliver. After that, a cardioplegia would be injected directly into his heart, stopping it cold, and he would die and remain dead until surgeons could remove his tumor.

The concept was still troubling him when doctors carted his bed into a specially equipped operating room, one with hundreds of thousands of plastic tube fibers dangling from the ceiling, each with sharp needle accenting its tip. This did little to comfort him, and certainly did not comfort him as well as the numbing anesthesia which was soon injected into his arm, knocking him into a comfortable unconsciousness.

            Mortimer awoke lying down in a vast, empty plain. At least he thought that he awoke lying down in a vast, empty plain. In the true waking world, his heart had been stopped artificially by a medical intern who was hoping his voluntary involvement with the experimental procedure would earn him respect among his peers. It wouldn’t.

            Mortimer attempted to stand, but lost his balance and fell onto the firm and unforgiving ground. A shot of pain flew through his chest, causing him to curl himself into a fetal position. In the process of this he struck his knee against a rock that he had not previously seen, and let out a howl of agony. Upon this howl, he discovered that his throat was unusually dry. The stimulation caused by his howling had caused severe pain in his throat, which he attempted to clasp with both hands. It was during this attempt that he realized that he was missing his left arm, which turned out to be the cause of his lost balance upon standing. He lied on the ground, shocked and in pain.

            “You might want to try to avoid doing that sort of thing.”

            Mortimer turned his head to see a skeleton in a black hooded robe standing over him. After he had finished a solid two minutes of screaming and subsequently rubbing his sore throat with his one remaining hand, Mortimer managed to stand and face his skeletal visitor. It was a stereotypical Grim Reaper figure, complete with a scythe and low drawn black hood. Mortimer wanted to take a few steps back, but didn’t trust himself to attempt walking with his new balance.

            “A-are you… are you the Grim Reaper?” He asked in an understandably rasped voice. The robed figure shook it’s head, then thought better of it and gave a non-committal half shrug. “I suppose you could call me that. It’s been awhile since I’ve looked like this, though. Humans these days rarely personify me, and it’s good to have a solid body again. Thanks for that.”

            Mortimer nodded in a bewildered fashion. The apparently-not-Grim-Reaper began to twirl its scythe. “So, Mortimer, tell me: what did you die of? The cancer wasn’t supposed to get you for another sixty three days. Trouble in the OR?”

            “I guess it could be… I’m not entirely sure. The last thing I recall was being knocked out by an anesthetic in the room where I was meant to get my Temporary Death treatment.” Mortimer was feeling a bit calmer. He began to come to terms with the fact that he was dead. Then he remembered his missing left arm. “By the way, you wouldn’t happen to know what happened to my arm, would you?”

            But the Reaper-thing seemed troubled. Facial expressions on a face with no skin or muscles are hard to explain, but Mortimer could easily imagine a creased brow and thin lips, despite the lack of a brow or lips. “‘Temporary Death’, you say? How exactly would one go about doing that?”

            Mortimer shook his head. “I’m not sure of the specifics, but I was assured on several occasions that it was the only way that the doctors could cure my cancer. Now returning to the arm issue, you haven’t seen it around here, have you?”

            The skeleton looked towards Mortimer’s stump, then back to Mortimer. “Souls are brought here in the condition in which their bodies died. If you lost your arm somewhere along the line, there’s not much I can do about that. But you say death is temporary now?” Mortimer looked around at the featureless plain that stretched around him in all directions. “If this is death, then I guess not. I’m not sure how I’d get out of here.”

            “You know that this isn’t death,” said the skeleton. “If you did, then I wouldn’t be standing in front of you right now. You would probably be standing on me, and I for one wouldn’t have appreciated you hitting me with your knee earlier. This is more of a foyer, so to speak. And what you think of as death…” said Death, “…is here to usher you inside.”

            Mortimer soon found that his running was not noticeably affected by his loss of limb. Dodging the rocks of various sizes which appeared before him as he ran away from Death was a bit more difficult, but was still practical enough to lead him away at what he judged to be a reasonable speed. A few moments ago, Mortimer had been telling himself that he was ready to die. But of course, that was when he thought that he had already experienced death.

            Several hundred yards back, an exasperated Death heaved its shoulders. “A game of chess would have been easier to handle.” With that, Death took flight.

Concluded in Part 3



Temporary Death - Part 1

Part 1

            “…And you’re sure this is safe?”

            The doctor looked over the top of the clipboard she was reading. She finished the line she was on before she answered Mortimer’s question. “You have to understand that there are some risks involved. Temporary Death is an experimental treatment option, so we don’t have any statistics to go by. From what I’ve read, though, you should be just fine. Your vitals look well enough to handle the shock, and your insurance covers the hospital time you’ll be spending here.”

            “Alright, but what exactly were the other options again?”

            The doctor rolls her eyes. She looks back down at Mortimer’s chart. “Judging by your current state, I’d say that there’s really nothing much else we can do. Your cancer is otherwise inoperable, and your body responded horribly to the chemotherapy. I understand that Temporary Death is an unusual treatment, but at this point it’s either that or permanent death. Besides, your operation is scheduled in an hour. There’s really not much we could do to change it now.” She simply didn’t understand. The pre-op medicine had been administered at least two hours ago, why was he still apprehensive?

            Despite the mildly hallucinogenic drugs working their way through his veins, Mortimer couldn’t help but feel anxious. He had been ironing out the creases in his will a few days previously with the hospital lawyer and had been planning his funeral out with his wife should worse come to worst. The idea of dying, no matter how short the duration, didn’t settle well with him. A copy of SciNow, a scientific journal, sat on the bedside tray beside him. It had been delivered to him by his wife on her last visit. On its cover were the words, “DYING: A Gateway to Life?” The article regarding the advertisement was printed on pages seventeen through twenty, and went roughly as follows:

            We tend to think of death as the end. Once you lose to a disease, get too old, or happen to be casually stabbed several times in the liver, death is the total and final destination. Dr. Stephen Walhick, DHA of the University of Central Michigan is taking great strides to forever change the way we look at death.

            “A body is officially declared dead when the heart is no longer able to supply vital organ systems with the oxygen they require,” Dr. Walhick explained to one of our field interviewers as the Doctor of Health Administration was fiddling with what appeared to be a corpse. “In the course of natural death, often times the brain will die off long before the other organs, causing massive irreversible damage while the rest of the body goes about ticking happily – though frantically – along.” The doctor gestures towards the seemingly endless arrays of tiny tube fibers hooked up to every imaginable point on the corpse’s body.

            “That is the unfortunate case of Mr. Benjamin Hobbes here, who was admitted to Living Mercy Hospital following a car accident with massive head trauma and a snapped spinal cord. This unfortunate accident allowed him to slip into a comfortable coma from which there is no return. Already the damage in his brain has rendered him a vegetable, leaving his body behind to slowly die. Or so one might think…

            “With the consent of Living Mercy and Mr. Hobbes’ family, I began a new treatment which I prefer to call Temporary Death. Several of my pre-med students and I hooked up what was left of his body to this nifty little device, which supplies every last vessel with pure, rich oxygen mixed with a conveniently electric-soluble blood thickener. After a few days, his heart stopped working, and I had one of my students fill out the death certificate.”

            We later interviewed the aforementioned student, who had no recollection of the event, despite recognition of his signature on the official document. Since the completion of this article, the student was arrested on fourteen counts of illegal drug trafficking and possession. The editors of SciNow Magazine would like to wish Richard Herring luck as he continues to endure the degrading torment of imprisonment.

            “That’s when things really get started,” continues Dr. Walhick. “Once the heart has stopped and blood lies stagnant but oxygen-rich in the cockles of Benjamin’s cold, lifeless corpse, we are able to perform horribly invasive surgery that would kill a living man. The first order of business was to repair the damage to his spine. Normally trauma of this sort would render a man paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his natural-born life. We decided to perform an impossible surgery to restore Benjamin with functional legs, which involved sectioning off his torso into four pieces and growing nerve cell cultures on his exposed spinal cord.”

            With this new context, the pictures of smiling pre-med students holding what we thought to be an unusually bloody football and an improperly cleaned prime rib steak began to make more sense. “Next, we attempted to reverse the damage caused to Mr. Hobbes’ brain by removing it and manipulating it with electric current. But, alas, the brain had spent too long in a suffocating skull before oxygen finally arrived too late. It looks as though when he comes back a zombie, Benjamin here will truly be looking for brains.

            “And that brings us here, standing in front of the late Benjamin Hobbes. But, with the resuscitation of his heart via electrical charge, we should be able to put all his vital organs back on-line and free up his blood to start flowing again. We didn’t bother putting the defective brain back in, so to prevent excessive bleeding, you may want to note the clay lining the cavity of his head there. We decided to make it a tasteful light blue, but needless to say he is not likely to have an open casket funeral.”

            Striding proudly towards a defibrillator cart next to Benjamin’s bloody bed, Dr. Walhick shouted ‘clear’ long before he had begun to charge the paddles, most likely for dramatic effect. This action made the field interviewer rather uncomfortable and embarrassed to be seen with a character of such unnecessary bravado. As merely a cautionary note, try and avoid attending fancy dinner parties with Dr. Stephen Walhick, DHA.

            Once the paddles were indeed charged and it was necessary to clear the immediate area, the paddles were applied to Benjamin Hobbes’ chest. After a few moments of relative silence, a heart monitor began to beep slightly and the heaving motion of breathing could be seen taking place on Benjamin’s chest. Behind the various monitors which all indicated life could clearly be seen a death certificate, signed three weeks prior by a coked up hand. Benjamin Hobbes had effectively become the world’s first zombie, and not in the previous medical sense where the subject is dead for a few minutes. Apparently, that doesn’t count anymore.

            To demonstrate that Benjamin was once again alive on his own body’s accord, Dr. Walhick swept his arms out before him, ripping delicate tube fibers out of the living corpse’s flesh with unusual force, causing what would have been read by a brain as excruciating pain. The light blue putty was more forgiving on this point. It also looked as though around five thousand dollars worth of damage was done to the tube fibers, which further indicates that if you are set on arriving with Dr. Stephen Walhick, DHA at a fancy dinner party, be sure it is not one that you are hosting.

            “While this subject was devoid of a functional brain when we got him, I see no reason why the same process would not bring a perfectly healthy dead man back to life. So long as conditions could be set ahead of time, doctors could use this process to hook up some tube fibers, kill a patient, perform otherwise impossible operations, and then flip the switch back on. In that sense, this could very well cure cancer. Called it!” The editors of SciNow Magazine would like to acknowledge that Dr. Stephen Walhick DHA has officially called dibs on a cure for cancer. You all saw it.

            As of yet, this new method has not been tested on patients with functional brains or those with whom full recovery is expected. Dr. Walhich is offering free experimental treatment to patients with conditions previously deemed inoperable, claiming that the money awarded from a Nobel Prize and royalties on his patent should be more than enough to cover any arising expenses.

So, can dying really be good for your health? Probably not, judging by the look of Benjamin’s quartered abdomen and putty lined head cavity. But for fear of Dr. Walhick and his misshapen zombie army, we must applaud him and his efforts to cure every non-viral disease known to man, and wish him luck in his future endeavors.

Continued in Part 2

Ambrosia

Ambrosia, or “nectar of the gods,” is a dish of Greek origin. It has a distinct sweet taste and some medicinal benefits, namely immortality. While difficult to prepare, ambrosia can be served as a food or a drink and enjoyed any time of the year, especially during those hot summer days when you need to cool down a bit or avoid the consequences of mortality.

Difficulty: Lethal

Prep Time: 20 Eons

Cooking Time: 5 Eons

Servings: 1

 

Ingredients:

15 Large Olives, chopped
½ Lb. Lentils, cooked
2 cups Whole Wheat Flour
3 cups Human Heart, chopped
3 Tbs. Honey
1½ tsp. Olive Oil (extra virgin)
Pomegranate Juice to taste
Salt
Pepper

Directions:

I.      Preheat an oven to 350° C

II.      Preheat a different oven to 500° F

III.      In a large, non-metal bowl, combine the olives and lentils. Mix with a wooden spoon until smooth.

IV.      Sift half of the flour into the lentil paste. Mix with a copper spoon only until combined. Place dough in an ungreased wooden bowl and set uncovered in a freezing place until doubled in volume.

V.      With half of remaining flour and the honey, dredge the chopped heart.

VI.      Heat a small skillet over the setting immediately below Low. Add olive oil once heated.

VII.      Place the dredged heart strips into a food processor and blend until a paste is formed. Add additional olive oil if desired.

VIII.      Scoop paste into skillet with a leaden tablespoon. It may be required to cook the scoops in batches. Grill for three years on each side.

IX.      Once dough has doubled, transmute into a sauce and reduce by half. Add salt and pepper to the taste preferred by someone else.

X.      With half of remaining flour, sacrifice a goat to the Greek god of your choice. Burn the flour as incense.

XI.      Set aside the amount of pomegranate juice you intend to use in a custard cup made of solid gold.

XII.      Discard grilled heart patties.

XIII.      Spread goat carcass with the reduced lentil sauce. Broil in a third oven for six seconds on each side – no more, no less.

XIV.      Retrieve grilled heart patties.

XV.      Once preheated, place the 500° F oven inside the 350° C oven. Smash the timer display with a rolling pin.

XVI.      Place two of the heart patties within the goat’s mouth for good luck. Then, with half the remaining flour, garnish goat carcass.

XVII.      Dissolve goat carcass in a hotel bathtub full of lye. Retain one cup of this mixture. Leave the remainder for the next guest.

XVIII.      Add one half of the remaining flour to lye mixture. Reduce by five eighths.

XIX.      Extol the virtues of high-fructose corn syrup. Coat one remaining grilled heart patty in high-fructose corn syrup.

XX.      Discard high-fructose corn syrup coated grilled heart patty, as it would likely cause Type II Diabetes.

XXI.      Place lye sauce into a microwave preheated to 6° C. Microwave on 44% for eight hours or until a powder.

XXII.      Once the lye powder is complete, add half of the remaining flour.

XXIII.      Consider adding the pomegranate juice, and then don’t.

XXIV.      Once preheated, place the 350° C oven inside the 500° F oven. Smash the remaining timer display with a clay rolling pin.

XXV.      Discard solid gold custard cup, reserving pomegranate juice.

XXVI.      Place leaden tablespoon into lye powder. Add salt and pepper to taste.

XXVII.      Place half of remaining flour next to pomegranate juice.

XXVIII.      Refrigerate leaden spoon mixture overnight, or until natural gelatin forms.

XXIX.      Toss half of remaining flour over a preheated Bunsen burner. Collect the flour that burns and add it to half of the remaining raw flour.

XXX.      Once gelatinized, pour leaden spoon mixture into a tall wine glass. Top with flour mixture.

XXXI.      Hold wine glass over inactive charcoal grill. With wineglass in hand, activate the grill with your mind.

XXXII.      Once grill is heated, place self-recurring oven directly on the coals and grill until it collapses into a gravitational singularity.

XXXIII.      Ensure that you are tethered to an immovable object before proceeding.

XXXIV.      Invert wineglass over gravitational singularity, pouring the gelatinous leaden spoon mixture into the center of the void.

XXXV.      The contents of the wineglass will be replaced with equal part ambrosia. The wineglass will invert its direction, so take care not to spill.

XXXVI.      Turn off the grill and diffuse the gravitational singularity.

XXXVII.      Replace the pomegranate juice into the pomegranate seeds, otherwise all will be lost.

XXXVIII.      Optional: Discard half of remaining flour, reserving half of remaining half for garnish.

XXXIX.      Revision: In step III, the olives should not have been added with the lentils, but instead stuffed into the chest cavity of the goat in step XIII.

XL.      Serve warm or chilled with feta cheese. Enjoy!

-92

            The machine beeped again. The beeping was entirely random, happening at some point during an interval of four minutes. It was difficult to keep track of the four-minute cycles, as the beeping could take place at any point during the duration, not necessarily at the beginning or end. Sometimes a beep came almost immediately following another beep, and Keiger knew then that the cycle had just begun anew. He tried not to keep track of the cycles, though. Keiger thought that that would be hurtful to the machine should it ever learn that he was wary of it.

            He needn’t have worried, but since worrying seemed to be inevitable for him, he should have worried about more important matters. The machine was a simple random number generator, assessing a myriad of vibrating particles in tiny, two-sided tubes to determine whether each was at one end or the other in a binary function which gave it two values to work from. The first was the millisecond value that would be assessed to determine at what point during the four-minute interval the beep would sound. For instance, should the value be 15000, the beep would occur a minute and a half into the cycle, and if it was a negative of the same number, the beeping would occur two and a half minutes into the cycle. The second was a far more specific function. Every time the beep sounded, the machine would add together all the values of the particles, positive and negative. If, at the instant of the beep, the value were to equal exactly negative ninety-two, the machine would expel from itself a volley of knives in an array specifically designed to kill Keiger almost instantly with no chance of escape. There was no danger of the machine beginning to distrust Keiger, but certainly, there was danger present.

             “Ah, I see you’ve beeped again. That’s wonderful, isn’t it?” asked Keiger of the machine. “It lets me know that you’re still doing well, still fit and fine.” Keiger shifted awkwardly in his seat. At his feet lay a knife, which he had thrown on the ground as a sign of his trust in the machine. You see, the machine received its power through a large wire which lay about on the ground in front of it. One determined swipe from Keiger’s own knife would have saved him from a multitude of knifes moving in the opposite direction.

            Keiger eyed the knife with what he thought would be perceived as a demeanor of distaste. “An odd situation we’re in, wouldn’t you say?” said Keiger, still eyeing the knife in a manner that he thought the machine would appreciate. “I know you could kill me whenever you wanted, but the fact that you could have all this time and chose not to is really appreciated. I just want you to know, I have no intent of killing you. Let’s just continue to enjoy each other’s company, alright?”

            The machine did not respond, but silently began its cycle anew and decided that the next beep would occur in three minutes and twenty-eight seconds. The apparent silence unsettled Keiger. “I know you must be nervous, but it’s okay. I’m a very non-violent person, and I would never kill someone. Besides, I barely know you. I’m sure that you’re really very interesting.” Both Keiger and the machine sat in silence for a moment. A beep sounded, and the machine quickly counted a number of vibrating particles. The number it arrived at was three hundred and four. The number not being negative ninety two, the machine erased it from its memory. Keiger breathed a silent sigh of relief when he saw that no knives were flying from the machine.

            “They want us to kill each other, you know. I have no idea why, but they’re under the impression that one of us needs to die soon. Well, we’ll show them, eh? We could just as easily sit here peacefully like any two normal, rational people.”

            The machine beeped, and for the first time since his imprisonment Keiger felt a sense of communication between himself and the machine. “That’s right! Who do they think they are, handing us knives and expecting us to fight like animals?” Keiger picked his knife up off the ground and waved it about in a mocking manner. “We really don’t need these, anyway. What purpose do they serve? To anyone else they might be tools, but between us they are weapons of murder! I’ll gladly cast mine aside. I just sort of wish you would do the same.”
            Keiger shuttered when he realized what he had said. “No, no, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to say that! It’s not that I don’t trust you with your knifes; I know you don’t want to hurt me. I just…” Keiger struggled to find the right words, fearing with each passing second of the four-minute cycle that the machine would become offended and decide to kill him. “I guess I’d just feel better about everything if we were both unarmed, you know?”

Keiger shifted uncomfortably in his seat, the knife still dangling in his limp wrist. After an unusually long silence, the machine beeped. Keiger looked up hopefully. “You agree? I knew you would. You’re so understanding. I mean, if either one of us has a knife, it’s just going to end with one of us stabbing the other.”

            Keiger scanned the machine and found the covered ports where the knives were meant to be fired from. He looked down at his own knife. Slowly, while keeping his eyes on the machine, he began to rise to his feet. He took a tentative step forward, grasping the knife with uncertain resolve.

The machine beeped. Keiger stiffened instantly, “No, it’s alright! I’m not going to kill you!” The covered knife ports remained covered. Keiger relaxed. “It’s okay. I’m just trying to disarm you. Don’t worry about it.” He took a few more uneasy steps forward, and found himself standing mere inches away from the multiple points from which death could fly swiftly towards him at any moment. The panels themselves were sunken into the face of the machine, about four inches square, covered by a metal plate which extended an inch beyond the external frame of the port.

Keiger took all this into account. Prying the cover plate off would be impossible, that much was clear. He looked into what he perceived to be the face of the machine, though no such thing existed. “I think I’d need to puncture these doors. I don’t know if it will hurt you, but you have to understand, it’s the only way I know to disarm you. Is that okay?”

The machine gave no response. Keiger stared down at the knife in his hand for what seemed like an eternity, and finally brought it level with the knife port closest to him. He placed the tip gingerly against the corner of the frame, so that it was perpendicular with the metal covers surface. Pausing once more to listen for the voice of the machine, Keiger forced his eyes shut and thrust the knife as hard as he could against the knife port.

A metallic click was heard. Keiger opened one eye. The sheet of metal guarding one of many unfired knife projectiles showed no sign of having been touched. The knife in Keiger’s hand had slid across the surface of the port and slammed against the side of the frame, not having even scratched the surface. On the floor by Keiger’s feet lay the tip of his own knife, broken free by the impact.

Shaken, Keiger made his way back to his seat, his knife hanging broken and limp against his side. The machine beeped. Keiger nodded. “I guess that didn’t work out too well, now did it?” The machine arrived at the number seven and counted off the rest of its four minute cycle in silence, leaving Keiger to run some silent calculations of his own. He knew that the machine was a random number generator with no personality, with no free-will of its own. He knew that it could not hear his friendly banter, nor did it feel the knife sliding across its port. But he also knew that no number was truly random. There were always outside factors to consider, and without knowing what those factors were, Keiger could only act in the manner which he believed would be most favorable to whatever unseen forces were holding the projectile knives in their place.

“You… you can’t hear me, can you?”

The machine said nothing in response, having decided one minute prior that its next beep would sound in two minutes and twenty seven seconds. Keiger noted the silence, “I mean, all you do is come up with numbers and shoot knives at people. Do you like either of those things?”

The machine, of course, had no strong opinions one way or the other. Keiger sorted his thoughts, trying to find the words to what he hoped was the solution. “You don’t like those much, do you? I know you must not like killing, as we’ve been here for quite some time and you have yet to kill me. And it must get so tedious, having to deal with all those numbers all the time.”

“What if…” Keiger began, trying for all the world to sound as though the idea was just occurring to him, “what if… you didn’t have to do either of those things anymore? What if you just stopped?”

The machine had thirty one seconds remaining before it would beep. In the interior of the machine, hundreds of tiny tubes vibrated in their place, sending the particles within bouncing from one end to the next, back and forth, positive and negative. Near the surface, several dozen knives were loaded just under their respective knife ports, poised like bullets in a gun, awaiting the count. Keiger pretended to notice none of these things, and continued to state his position. “Well, you know, both of those things would stop if I were to just cut your power intake. That’s all it would do. You wouldn’t need to die, just rest for awhile. Would that be alright with you?”

There was no signal, nothing that could be interpreted by anyone as an affirmative or a negative. Keiger held his broken knife in his right hand as he stooped to the ground and picked up the thick input wire in his left. He held the wire against the blade of the knife, the soft rubber coating marked already by the meager pressure Keiger exerted from his shaking hand. He looked up at the machine. “I’m sorry.”

The machine beeped. Keiger froze where he kneeled, his arm becoming too tense to move. He dropped his knife beside his trembling legs, which had begun to spasm. Blood seeped from his mouth, and he found himself unable to cough or breath. The blood had begun to pool just under his tongue when he fell forward, his elbows no longer able to support his weight. The uncut wire pressed against his blood-soaked side, and a knife with a broken tip was engulfed by a puddle of blood, slowly advancing from Keiger’s body.

            The machine closed its empty knife ports and cleared the number negative ninety-two from its memory. It then began to wait out the remaining one minute and twenty three seconds before deciding the time when if would next beep.

The Tanzanian Sun

Composition homework time! We were asked to write about a life experience in the form of a news article. So I did that. Here's that thing I was just talking about. It's right here, under these words you're reading. It's also words, so don't get confused now. They're the words that aren't all slanty. Yeah, you see them. You should read them now. Go on, I believe in you.

The plane begins descent. The captain makes two announcements, one in English and one in Swahili. The view out my window is that of a desert spotted with lush tropical trees as the plane makes a few more rounds and finally touches down at the Kilimanjaro International Airport in Tanzania. I exit the cabin and take my first few steps on African soil. It’s been a difficult journey just getting here, months of preparation, vaccinations, language courses, and fundraising. But the most difficult task is ahead of me. I’ve come here with a group of volunteers from my local church, thirty-five in total, to construct a building dedicated to saving lives. It is an eye clinic, and nowhere on the planet is there a more desperate need for an eye clinic than Mwanza, Tanzania.

There are several traditional African tribes living in the shadow of Lake Victoria, where Mwanza is located. These are groups of people who to this day are led by witch doctors and superstition. In these tribes, it is the woman’s duty to collect firewood for cooking and heating in unventilated mud huts. When they get too old to go out and chop down trees, they will often resort to burning cow dung. Toxins released in burning coupled with the old age of the women will very often cause cataracts. To the witch doctors of certain tribes, cataracts are seen as a sign of demonic possession. It is not uncommon to hear of women being trapped in their homes for years out of fear of being seen and targeted by members of her own tribe. When such an observation is made by these spiritual leaders of the tribe, the woman will be led out of her home in the middle of the night, taken far away from the village, and hacked to death with machetes.

In America cataracts are hardly a serious issue. The surgery is a simple one, and has a 90% perfect recovery rate. But here in Mwanza even this simple procedure is a luxury that remains unobtainable even when facing death. There are optometrists and ophthalmologists from all around the world willing to volunteer their time and talents to benefiting the needy in Africa. Our mission is to give them an eye clinic to work out of.

I am just a boy of sixteen at the time. I have been outside my country, but never my continent. A strange mix of fear and excitement is brewing inside me, probably the same feeling any traveler has when they find themselves suddenly immersed in a strange new culture. But underlying all this is a conviction stronger than any I’ve ever felt in my life. I have a goal to achieve, the noblest task I’ve ever undertaken. I’m still young, and I don’t understand exactly what it means for me to be here. What I do know is that it’s good that I’m here, having this experience and making the most of my efforts.

The roads are rough and dusty as we make our way to the Nyakato Health Clinic. It doesn’t have the proper qualifications to call itself a hospital yet. They lack the staff and the facilities to request a subsidiary from the government. It is nearing sun-down, and around us as we exit the bus are half-finished buildings and astounding exotic brush that must look as common to the locals as petunias look to our suburban church group. Many have come before us, any many will come after us. It is an ongoing project funded and built by volunteers from all over the Americas and Europe, and this week it’s our turn.

I will be staying in one of the completed buildings that have yet to see medical use. The Patricia Ward was named for an elderly benefactor, one so dedicated to the hospital that it would one day become that she had requested her ashes be mixed with the concrete foundation. It will someday be an isolation ward for infectious patients who cannot be kept in the main building. But for now, it is a sleeping quarters for incoming volunteers.

The room is plain. Not much has been done with the interior, as construction remains the primary focus. There is a gurney to the side draped with an overhead mosquito net. Malaria is a very common disease here, carried by nocturnal insects, and the daily precautionary pills can only do so much.

The day begins, and with it construction. Building on the equator is sweltering, and by the end of the first day we have the frame for a single wall completed. Day two sees the completion of two more walls and signs that our acclimation is nearing completion. By day four we have all the external walls in place, and begin work on the rooms and halls. The support beams for the room are up on day six, and on day seven – our final day of construction – the frame of the building is complete. It’s far from habitable at this point. Three months would pass before I would receive word that the eye clinic was completed by another church group, one in a line of three that had worked on it since our contributions. But at the time, we were all filled with such an immense sense of pride at having done all we could do. Markers were passed around and blessings and scripture verses were written on the wooden frame, messages that would eventually be covered with concrete and dry wall. The next team would see it, though. And perhaps they would pass on the blessings to the next team. And even when the messages we wrote on those rough wooden planks have been hidden for decades, maybe someone, somewhere, will remember the effort and good will we poured into those blessings with every bit of conviction that we poured into the construction of the building itself. I know that I will never forget the time I spent in Africa, doing everything within my power to let the lost see the light.

Two Paths

If I were to have stayed in culinary school, I would have graduated this week. It wasn't an easy decision leaving the culinary field to pursue a career in graphic design. For years being a chef has been my only driving force, the thing I wanted to be when I grew up. But when I started to learn how harsh and demanding kitchens in the industry were, I had to do some serious evaluation of what my life would be like if I decided to devote my life to cooking. This is what I came up with:

What follows is a long, kinda depressing series of events. So here's a jump break to keep it from pushing all the pretty pictures off the page. Click to continue.

the innocuous

And here we have a recent composition assignment from school. The prompt was to write about how literacy has affected our lives. Here's that.

 

At the high school I attended, there was an illegal newspaper. the innocuous. It would appear in stacks in the halls at the start of every Tuesday, and before lunch the stacks would be gone. Some were picked up by students to be read and then passed along. Whatever was left was confiscated by teachers to be read and then disposed of. It was a humor publication, satire focused on school events. It was published without names and distributed in direct violation of several school policies. It was a double-sided sheet of 8.5x11” paper, easily hidden among assignments and essays. If you looked carefully, you could spot copies of it slipped into textbooks during classes or being quickly consulted in broken glances in the busy halls. Every now and then you’d hear about some student or other being caught with a copy. I don’t think anyone was clear on what the exact punishment was, and depending on who was telling the story it could be confiscation or detention or suspension. Maybe no one got caught. Maybe the teachers didn’t mind. But it was that sense of danger, that taboo aspect that made that brief weekly report so alluring. Readers got a sense of camaraderie knowing that they were part of a big underground conspiracy. There wasn’t a soul on campus who hadn’t heard of the innocuous, and to my knowledge not a soul who knew the author. At least, if anyone thought they knew, they never confronted me about it. It was senior year, and I didn’t reveal my role in the underground workings of the paper until I had graduated and was clear of any punishment the school could administrate. But whatever effect that paper had on the school, I would be lying if I didn’t admit the significant impact the innocuous had on my life.

I would arrive at 6:45am every day, just after the doors had opened and a solid half hour before the security camera operators would arrive. I carried with me a thick binder filled with school work and two hundred copies of the most recent edition. There were tables scattered around the school, in front of libraries and classrooms. Four of these tables at extreme corners of the school would receive fifty copies each.

The original plan was to have a number of contributors. Set up an anonymous email account, publish it on the bottom of the last page, and let students write in with their stories. In the one-year run of the innocuous, three people volunteered to write and not a single article was submitted. I don’t know what they were expecting to contribute to the newspaper if not news. Maybe they saw themselves as undercover reporters, sneaking around and gathering intelligence to be written up by the journalist types back at the office. As it became more apparent how unrealistic the expectations were of authorship, the contact information at the bottom of the page became  unrealistic as well. It became a parody within a parody, instructing would-be journalists to leave their name and contact info with the hidden microphones around the lockers or with our representatives on the innocuous moon base. By the end of it all every word in the innocuous was mine.

It was having an audience to the project that kept me going. There were thirty five editions of the innocuous published. Two pages a week in ten-point font. It was the longest and most involved written project I had ever attempted. The pace was reasonable on its own, but with the additional strain of a regular school schedule on top it became - at times - overwhelming. Writing a newspaper made me realize the importance of integrity under pressure. It would have been easy to have filled an empty column with lies. At the time no one knew my name, and I had no one to report to but my overworked self. It was as pure an ethical dilemma as I could imagine, and one I’m glad I had to face. I learned that the integrity of a written work matters regardless of any name attached to it. I cared about what people thought of my publication even if I could never publically call it my publication.

I’ve worked on other newspapers since high school. Legitimate ones, ones I can put on a résumé. I’ve served as a reporter, a journalist, a layout designer, and a graphic consultant for work I’ve had my name attached to. It’s a different feeling, being known by your name as well as your work. Writing the innocuous has had a significant impact on my life and my attitude towards writing. I learned that a written work should be able to stand on its own integrity, and not rely on the name attached to it.

Why Design?

In class a few days ago, I was assigned to explain in 800 words why I was interested in graphic design as a career. As I've mentioned before, graphic design wasn't my first choice, and I'm hoping that this essay will explain the process that lead me to where I am today.

I’ve tried very hard to not be a graphic designer. It’s been a career I’ve struggled with for as long as I can remember. Some of my earliest memories of trying to choose a career include the vivid repulsion I had to being any sort of artist. I’ve been sketching and doodling and arranging and designing since childhood, and I’ve always had a deep appreciation for aesthetic beauty. But for some reason that I’ve never been able to fully comprehend I have always had the peculiar belief that a real job is one that couldn’t be done sitting down.

I had lofty goals as a child, as any child does. Science was a constant source of new information and ideas to my younger self, and so I vowed my life and its infinite potential to scientific pursuits. I had grand images in my head of to adventures of field researchers and the construction of fantastic devices. I learned the value of societal contribution in experimentation and the exploration of new ideas. The convictions I formed in my young head were made all the stronger by my childlike wonder for the world around me.

Then I got older. I discovered that other contributions could be made to society outside those of concrete knowledge. The realization of that fact is what would lead to the slow degradation into creativity. I was producing creations at a rate unfit for a realm of evidence. But my peculiar beliefs were as strong as ever. I would not resign myself to design. It was at that time I discovered, quite by accident, cooking. Here was everything I loved about science without the burden of experimentation. I could run about a lab all day performing exact tasks and procedures and not be worried about discovering anything new. All the results I would ever hope to achieve were written in recipes, established little instructions that would guide me to my desired result if only I could provide the skill to achieve them. It was a noble field, and eventually I came to that stage of mid-adolescence when children are told to pick a career path that will guide them the rest of their lives. I began my enrollment at a culinary college.

It was a hell I thrived in, for a time. The instructors were brash and unforgiving. The schedules were as strict as could be allowed. Should a student miss one class period, hours and hours of effort would be cast aside and the student’s grade would drop by one letter mark. A second absence would warrant another dropped letter mark, and a third would signify a failure of the class. There was no allowance made for sick days. It was considered unusual for a class period to pass where the chef instructor would not yell at the students. Speaking during class was restricted to the phrase “yes chef.” If a concern, question, or idea could not be expressed with this phrase, it had no place in the classroom. Students were graded on individual performance and grades were made public to foster competition. The administration allowed for all of this, noting that all of their practices were meant to simulate the working conditions of a true professional kitchen environment.

During my time at that college, I continued to create. Not in the kitchen, for to deviate from the syllabus on any way would have been dealt with harshly. In a way that stifling environment worked to my advantage, because when I went to apply for a graphic design position on the volunteer school newspaper I was the only applicant and was hired on the spot. I assembled graphics, designed layout, helped revise the final editions and – on occasion – wrote articles. Despite my creative outlets, the everyday torment from my teachers and mentors eventually became too much for me. It took me almost two years of constant confusion and anger and helplessness before I decided not to pursue cooking as a career.

I was purposeless for a while after that. My identity had been taken from me; I was no longer a cook. It took three months for me to begin my formal education in my only remaining skill, graphic design. It had always been a hobby for me, never a pursuable career. I’ve never had a job in the graphic design field. Every cent I’ve made from my drawings was made from personal projects that I’d try to sell in pieces. In some ways I still have a difficult time accepting that I will one day be able to perform my life-long hobby in a professional setting. It seems like an arrangement beyond the possibilities allowed by my peculiar beliefs. It seems, in a sense, too perfect.

Right as Rain

Click here for context.

The ring meant to support all the upper parts of the ribs was just a twisted and mangled piece of wire when I found it. I've replaced it with some string for now, and I plan to get a proper ring in place as soon as I can find a sturdy but flexible length of metal wire that'll work. But for the time being, this ol' guy is back in action.

My Undead Umbrella

Five years ago I was in a Boy Scout summer camp for my annual visit. Summer camp is one of those things that I remember fondly now, but at the time I couldn't stand it. In fact, it wouldn't be until two years later that I would step into a car to leave camp for the last time and declare, "someday I'll probably want to come back to this place. But right now, all I want is to leave." It always took place at the height of July when temperatures were extreme and insects were everywhere. There wasn't much to do if you didn't make a hobby for yourself. Mine involved weaving hammocks and walls from ropes, most days. It was slow and temporary work, in that by the end of it all the ropes would be untangled and stored back in the plastic tub the troop had designated for ropes. But it kept me busy and provided some comfort and novelty at the time.

There was a dumpster not far from the staff lodging. On my way back from the mess hall one day, I noticed a shapeless mass of black canvas leaning against the dumpster's side. I went to investigate and found an old golf umbrella. It had a number of loose stretchers, and the velcro closing strap was worn to uselessness. But I had never seen anything like it. It was tall, almost as tall as me. Until that moment I had never seen an umbrella made before the rise of collapsable, foldable, fit-in-your-purse-and-pocket umbrellas. This umbrella had a firm wooden handle and a solid metal end. What I had in my hands was a weather-proof walking stick. I took it back to camp and located a needle and some string.

It didn't rain that summer. It was an odd disappointment, one that came from a place of pride. I had finished what repairs I could within the first day of its rescue, and was more than pleased with my inelegant but sturdy sewing. It astounded me that anyone would throw away such a noble tool for such a minor defect.

I took it home with me and got the velcro replaced with a small snap. I took it out on every overcast occation. In my mind it commanded respect, having that vast shield overhead in the rain and that sturdy rod under my arm after the storm. Even when closed it had a certain air of dignity to it: it didn't conveniently fold itself out of the way. Its handle hooked it in place on the edge of chairs and tables, always close at hand. It came with me and kept me dry in New York when I was in culinary college and in Florida when I was an intern.

Of course, with as much use as it got, further repairs were needed on occation. I have no idea how old it was before it found its way to the dumpster where we met, but every so often the canvas would pull away from the tips or a stretcher would bend out of place. I've redone that original summer camp stitching several times, each time sure that it would hold. I've had an occation or two where the whole thing would turn inside out in a strong wind and be reduced to a damp sack of loose metal rods until I could get it home to a sewing kit. Given the five years I've had this umbrella, it's been the longest-running maintenece project I've ever undertaken. That's the sort of involvement that instills ownership. I wove into place the string that binds the canvas. I've bent the stretchers into place. It's my umbrella, every piece of it.

It rained all day today. I took my old friend out for a walk each time I needed to find a new building for a new class. It stood vigil over my backpack, raindrops dripping occationally onto the carpet. The day went by as normal. It was late. I was stepping out of my last class of the day, the rain had died down to a sprinkle. I stepped outside and pressed the bottom spring in. The runner rised up the tube, spreading the cloth taut as it went. It clicked onto the top spring and locked into place. Then it kept going. Before I knew what had happened, I was holding in my hands the umbrella pictured at the top of the page. To my knowledge this is the worst condition it's ever been in. Ribs and stretchers are falling everywhere. The canvas is hanging by a borrowed thread.

It could be said that this umbrella has served me well beyond its capacity, and that all it wants now is a peaceful death. I say that it wanted a peaceful death five years ago when I pulled it out of a dumpster. I didn't indulge it then, and I certainly won't indulge it now.

Repairs are once again underway.

Maple Syrup is Delicious

There was once a time on the internet when animated gifs were used for very long animation sequences telling stories that you might end up watching from the middle because gifs are actually terrible mediums for story-telling.

 

Here's a story about a place I used to work at in gif form.

 

It was my first attempt at giffing, and I was so proud with the results I ended up posting it to Reddit. It made it to the front page of /r/all, which was another first for me, and I ended up having lots of fun talking to folks about this image and what went into it.

Here's the post on Reddit. Lots of clever folks telling clever jokes in that thread. It's worth a read.

Anachronism

When I was in culinary school, I make every effort to live beneath my means. It took a few months for me to find work after I got there, and I developed an aversion to spending money. I made frequent visits to the dumpsters out behind the dorm buildings, and made a comfortable living on what the college was willing to refuse.

 

I found a rolling desk chair with a broken handle easily repaired with masking tape.

 

I found an old wooden bench similar to the ones in the common showers with no visible issues except for some scratches and graffiti. The bench would go on to act as a sort of end-table for the dorm, catching keys and papers that were dropped off at the door.

 

I found a flat-screen computer monitor with a stubborn power button.
 

I found an empty metal first-aid kit that would go on to house my pens and pencils.

 

Some of the items needed repair, and I found some to be beyond my help. I approached all my finds with a chapter-like mindset: if I started the day without a bookshelf, I wouldn't get upset if the bookshelf I found needed to be returned to the trash. I tried not to let my corner of the room get too cluttered, but it wasn't uncommon for my roommates to return and find my floor littered with screws and shattered plastic bits from a television mid-reassembly.

 

On my way back from class, I saw a flyer for an art auction to benefit the Susan G. Komen Foundation. Students could donate something they'd made, with all the proceeds from the bids going to the organization. I wanted to contribute something large and impressive, something that would fetch a good price. I was a few months away from running out of money and dropping out. The auction was to be that night. I didn't own any paints or supplies and I was in no position to go out and buy some.
 

I once again consulted the dumpster, and amassed a bundle of discarded particle board to serve as candidates for canvases. I was returning to my dorm when I found it: Giant, round, caked in dust and grime. It was sitting out behind the dorm building, yards away from the dumpster, in a pile of bent and broken metal. I made the short trip to the dumpster to deposit my salvaged wooden sheets and focused all my attention on getting this large glass tabletop up to my room on the fourth floor.

 

The first challenge was cleaning it. The restrooms on my floor were equipped with hot-air hand dryers. I had to stop a passing janitor to borrow a length of paper towels. I had the vague idea of making it into a clock face, and for a moment I played with the idea of finding a hobby store and buying a proper quartz movement for it. But first it would need a design. Rubbing the last of the dirt off, I rummaged through my first aid kit and pulled out a thick black sharpie.

 

I don't know how long I lay there on the floor with that tabletop, slowly painting it like a clock. Everything was done in reverse, so the ink could be protected by the thick glass in the front. As I drew I tried to imagine when else in history someone would feel compelled to take a discarded table and a permanent marker and make the face of a timepiece. I imagined a civilization rebuilding after some tragedy, some post-apocalyptic world. A town composed of wreckage, built by craftsmen whose only resources were the rubble of a by-gone era. They might have a clock tower, and that clock tower might need a face. I must have been on that floor for hours, sketching patterns and dials and picturing a time during which this clock face would exist. It didn't belong here. It was an anachronism.

 

When it was finished, I leaned it up against the wall and snapped a picture. I rolled it down to the elevator and brought it to the commons room that was that night serving as an auction house. The organizers seemed impressed, if not with the design than with the sheer size of the piece. A multitude of canvases and sculptures were arranged on the table on stage. I brought the clock face up and leaned it against the table. Before the night was over, it sold for $100.

 

Sorry for the long post, I just really enjoyed making this thing, and I feel like the situations that made it possible might be interesting for some. I can't explain why, but this clock face and the events leading up to it are some of the fondest memories I have of that college.

 

Here's the picture.