July 2019 of The Atlantic

Jerks, stats, the Moon, baseball, and truth vs. fiction

1.     “Mailer on the Moon” is about Norman Mailer and Of a Fire on the Moon and the book is labelled as being essential to understand Apollo 11’s journey.  Highly doubtful. Also it is marked as being essential for understanding its legacy. Certainly not. Personally, it is reported, Mailer was in anticlimax. His effort was for the self. Lots of needed money was offered to write about Apollo 11. A gig. His ego less prominent but stamped on the account he wrote as a lesser advertisement for himself, not as others did for the provision of style but for a huge staging of personality, the dominant theme. Not events, history, but himself as more important than all else. Numbing importance and being bloated and tasteless – so the 60’s editors and readers expected and “enjoyed.” He was paid well for his act – Believe It or Not.

Odor is reputed to be a feature little desired by the WASPs of the NASA technocracy. But the most publicly known members of various missions filled crew cabins repeatedly with odorous offal.  Deodorant might have helped to prevent Of an Odor on the Moon. Norman linked odor and Time and Death. Undeniably NASA’s leaders intended to conquer the Moon, odor or not, and so reduce it by removing it from the unknown,  that had our possibilities assigned to it, so it would become less and smaller. The WASPS triumphant. But given the time and place, the who and the what could not be otherwise. Fiction lacked acceptance but Norman needed a fictional self he wrote of as everywhere and everytime such that there could not be an alternative. He was It. No margin, no protection from banality, and Truth took a holiday. The Moon had offered an unlimited adventure. This fire on the moon ruined that. The lunar events were taken by him for an effect on himself and his interaction with others.

Nevertheless, Norman was granted  status as a brilliant writer in tune with what was underneath a surface of the obvious achievement of the actions of Apollo 11’s supporters and participants but only by spewing that conception of himself over what was underneath. A hopeless attempt to cover up the encounter of reality, the one that was to come to be, with what might have been. If it, the landing on the Moon, was to happen, there was only one way it could happen and all those other ways, however entrancing, enthralling, exciting, enlightening, exhilarating, enchanting , ebullient, ecstatic, elated, electrifying, eximious, euphoric, enriching, eclectic, effluent, embellished, extramundane, enthusiastic, exalting, eudemonic, enhancing, elevating, empyreal, enabling, or emphatic they could be, they were gone.

Mailer had a sense of this as we all could. Therefore, he was not unique in his realization but rather in who he was, his personal elitist cult of me, myself, and I uber all made him a jerk. And there would be more and more like him. Why read what a jerk has written? He wanted to be read. They accommodated him.

2.     Or if not read, then to be watched as a baseball spectator who cannot know what makes one player better than another. Those better players are an elite, as was Mailer and some are jerks or so it is reported in “Building the Next Babe Ruth” wherein one can see what they do physically for the assigned physical tasks of baseball, but not how they mentally do it. Only they can realize how it is being accomplished while they catch, hit, slide, throw, and run. That’s baseball. And that’s not baseball. Baseball has long been statistically-ridden and managers have changed the course of a game based on “stats.” But, of late, stats aren’t characterizing what they will do but what they have done. So then a player’s worth, value is brought under analysis. Some do well after the numbers come out, and they become arrogant, or it intensifies whatever latent arrogance they had. So then they are jerks. Certainly arrogance is one distinguishing characteristic of a jerk, and Mailer qualifies. So why watch a jerk?

If you could statistically train a Mailer such as in a writers workshop, what with stats on sentence length, use of vocabulary, position of adjective and adverbs and frequency of their use, plus topics and meaning – and you get a Mailer? Could he always be a statistical outlier? His value, worth lies in his elitism and his cult of the One? Then can you produce more than one baseball star? Yes, you can, they are named in the article. They have differing names but having the same outcome of a superiority in performance of tasks that are part of baseball. This superiority is derived from stats. If more players could be statistically altered, their value, worth would increase less. If more were like Mailer, and could be produced to be like Mailer, his and their value, worth lessens.

3.     With jerks as writers and jerks as baseball players, can we feel comfortable in that we are in neither category? If “George Orwell’s Unheeded Warning” is not accepted by us, it is implied we are all jerks. We have willingly, statistically speaking, since there are so many of us, become enslaved to versions of truth. We have sought to escape from boredom by accepting fictions instead of truths since the truth isn’t diverse and diverting enough. But twist it and turn it and you get many differences that are more entertaining. Mailer couldn’t do it straight, there had to be fiction for entertainment. You can’t play ball as if you had a calculator strapped to your head or so the fiction of it has been proclaimed. Baseball remains less entertaining without stats. Winston of 1984 is quoted – “Sanity is not statistical.” Oh but it is if our stat analysis of literature, stat analysis of baseball and the stats that are synonymous with social media can be accepted as extensions of the feverish desire for entertainment.

To be consistently entertained by arrogant jerks or other elitists requires that statistically fiction predominates over truth. Once fiction most often prevails, it is true.

Without Yips What Could We Do?

The eleventh episode of season seven for “Murdoch Mysteries” is “A Case of the Yips” and involves playing golf in 1903 Canada, near Toronto. A golf champion suddenly cannot drive the ball as he would like – his swing is off. He is said to have the yips. In this episode, Murdoch invented the Swing Arc Perfection Device. The golf champion tried it out, then at the golf course he finds he can’t send the ball as he would like and blames the sample swings he took using Murdoch’s device.


Dr. Julia Ogden (rarely called Mrs. Murdoch) is at the tee (a pile of dirt) and tries out golf by sending the ball well downrange and well placed. She does it more than once, and Murdoch and the champion are annoyed by her skill. She says there is nothing to it – empty your mind. The champion tries it and it works. Murdoch finds it doesn’t work for him and small wonder, since he is logical, deductive, and rational – or take your pick. His mind is ever at work.


This is a not bad episode though I had never heard of  the “yips” before. From the episode I gathered it was a muscular lapse corrected by mental activity or the lack of same. Perhaps its ill effects were confined to golf. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition, has as a definition – “a state of nervous tension affecting an athlete (as a golfer) in the performance of a crucial action < had a bad case of the _˜ on short putts >”. The dictionary entry relates it is of unknown origin from 1962.


Nice and neat. Then it gets messy since Internet sources say it is a loss of fine motor skills. Comes on suddenly, no cure. Usually it strikes those with years of experience. A correction in technique may help or they are lost to the sport. It, via Internet sources, has sudden movements when muscular control is most needed. The sources list those engaging in golf, snooker, cricket, bowling, and for baseball pitchers as having had the yips.


Wikipedia credits the term, “yips,” to Tommy Armour (1896-1968) who won some big tournaments in 1927, 1930, and 1931. He was a Scot and served in the Black Watch as a machine-gunner in WWI. He was in the Tank Corps when he was gassed – mustard – and the docs put metal plates in his head and left arm. He regained sight in his right eye. He did well as an amateur in France and then in the US. He went pro in 1924. He also won the Canadian Open three times. In 1927 he had the misfortune to win an Archaeopteryx, meaning he went 15 or more over par on one hole. He got a 23 on a par 5 hole. I don’t play golf, but I realize how much that must have hurt. Hard to be light-hearted about it. This regrettable feat came one week after the US Open win in 1927. He retired from full-time pro golf in 1935. He stopped participation in pro golf tournaments because of the yips. Had his plates anything to do with it? For a long time his coauthored book (1953) on playing the best golf all the time was the biggest seller about golf. In any event he is the one credited by Wikipedia with popularizing the term “yips”.


As for yips as it is now defined, it is a biochemical approach in regard to playing a sport with an aging brain. Neurological difficulties could lead to or be the yips. I have heard of golfers Ben Hogan and Sam Snead, and they are said to have been affected by the yips. In 2015 it was suggested that the yips had got to Tiger Woods. I have also heard of him. Also, in 2014, it was said Woods had the putting yips and the driver yips. Others cited were having great success, then their game , of cricket, came apart. So maybe “yips” gets mentioned in cricket. I have never seen nor heard a cricket match.


In baseball yips is demonstrated by suddenly not being able to place the ball accurately, such as in pitching (Steve Blass gave his name to Steve Blass Syndrome/Disease) though second basemen can develop it and Mackey Sasser, a catcher, could not throw back to the pitcher unless he tapped his glove first. I saw him unable to throw to the pitcher, and he had to start a relay to the third baseman first. A few called it “Sasseritis”. No one said anything about “yips”. There was mention of mental difficulties.


Others have been affected in basketball, tennis, and football (placekickers). In my decades of listening to coverage of baseball and football and to a much lesser extent for tennis, basketball, and anything else sportive, I have never heard “yips” in the present or from the past.


Outside sports, can novelists or journalists get the yips? In both cases is this writer’s block? So it is the same across many genres, only with a different name? Do philosophers get the yips and can it go on for years as for athletes? Thus we read “yiptic” chapters and wonder how the author became so obtuse or suddenly has such clarity (maybe it is for the good in some instances?). Let’s not forget chess champions who at times make inexplicable moves in tournament after tournament.


Too many pursuits and if each to its own yips? Would that serve us well? Rather not, one needs to clarify what is doing a sport badly and what is having the yips. One examination of yips occurring in bowlers found it was like a severe form of choking (assuming the “choke” is not the common sports term when one can do “it” but lapses into not being able to do it when the game or career is on the line. Usually this implies no physical impairment but “a lack of concentration “or, more specifically, a lack of conviction that it can be done, it is a response to “everyone” expecting success. So much is “riding on it” and a mental pressure on the performer is relieved by not doing it. Some players "psych themselves out".


Certainly there is a psychology for baseball and some baseball players are well aware of the yips but it isn’t talked about –such is an unwritten rule – and they put it in the mental domain. A domain it is that includes “head cases” such as a pitcher with super speed to the plate and delivered with marvelous control. But he could not get the ball over to first base (a la Jon Lester). Some do it in practice without what is going on all the time in a real game. Get them away from being judged, but some docs think knowing the cause of yips would do no good. You know what causes your yips, then what? Knowing about it is not lending a cure. You must deal with anxiety.


If it is not yips, it is “a slump” or “choking” or “a lull” and so on. Often it involves, as noted, doing OK in practice, but not actual play. Now this is expanding on and on. Not all this expansion in explanation is by specific physical components of the body, rather it is a multiple mental element, very diverse. There may be a trauma that is physical or mental. Nevertheless, they find a mental component in relation to the physical trauma. The body “remembers” and a similar experience triggers an involuntary reenactment.


The aforementioned Sasser threw fine in the bull pen and to second base but he had to pump his arm three to four times before his release to the pitcher. Fans and writers belittled him. Fans would chant “One, Two, Three” as he pumped before release. The night before a game he would go into a panic. Amidst all this he was involved in a collision at home plate. After that, his hitting, which had been OK even during his throwing difficulties, went bad.


Some say the difficulty (not called yips) is a culmination of years of trauma and relaxation, concentration, imagery, positive thinking and thought stopping do not help. Sasser had a long history of injuries from high school, college, and on to the pros. Also, he had profound non-sport upsets. All contributed to his throwing “yips”. So now this is a third definition of yips -  not the physical, not the mental but the physical trauma to mental to physical. 


Sasser had a rheumatoid father who had to flip the baseball underhand to Sasser. The father medicated himself with alcohol. At seven years old, he saw his five year old brother race past him and his sister into a crosswalk and get slammed by a car that threw his brother one hundred feet. The brother lived but was never the same physically or mentally and Sasser blamed himself for not preventing it. Also his father’s friend and business partner was murdered, and the killer had been waiting for Sasser to leave the store and then the shooter entered. His father was lost in life thereafter. At ten years of age Sasser fell from a tree and required stitches. At twelve he had a cyst surgically removed from a knee and at seventeen tore ligaments in that knee. In high school, at quarterback, he took many hits, and it was the same in semi-pro football. In 1984 he hurt his knee again by sliding into base. In 1985 he was run over at the plate and got hit in the head and was dazed and out of it. In 1987 in the cold of Calgary he got a foul tip under this protection he wore as catcher but he stayed in the game and found he could not pull his right arm back and away from his body to cock before throwing. So he tucked his arm close to his side and flipped the ball from his fingers. Then he could not readily return the ball to the pitcher. A coach berated him in public and said Sasser would be fined when he hesitated. In 1990, when he had his best year statistically, there was another hard collision at the plate. Sometimes, in baseball, what happened to Sasser is baseball. What is happening in baseball cannot be predicated on antecedents. To force it to be so leads to problems. One woman, who hates baseball, knows of him because she likes his name. Others appreciate him because he contributed to victories on the diamond. Such activity still goes on since he has coached college ball for many years.


For a causative account of yips from the physical side, there are BBC Sport and the Mayo Clinic. The BBC calls yips as usually associated with golf and is a freezing or involuntary movement of the hands when attempting shots. The condition was originally thought to be psychological, but now it may have a physical basis. The Mayo clinic thinks it involuntary wrist spasms most commonly in golf putting. Once it was thought to be always linked with anxiety. Trying harder led to choking, to performance anxiety equaling failure. It is also said the yips suddenly start to interfere with a task once done mindlessly for decades. It could be of the psychological, of the neurological, or fallout from injuries and trauma. In all cases, anxiety for it can keep it alive.


Too many yips for me, rather it is too much pressure, not enough grace. Loading on thought after thought whereas getting on with it is to be preferred or the possibility exists for psychological self-interference. Without this psychological component, it isn’t yips. Pure yips, the preferred form, does not involve physicality. I had a case of the yips when I was ten years old. I remember the room and the lighting. I was reading something, probably a book. Then I could no longer read. There I was at ten trying to account for what had happened to me. I did recognize that at around five years old I was looking at a printed page and knew that I would be able to read it after suitable schooling. I was seeing marks on the page and did not know they would become letters and these letters would be words. The words spoken could also be written. But there I was at ten and I lost the ability, not the knowledge, of reading.  What to do? Knowing it was the yips as I have so defined it decades later, would hardly have done me any good then. I did not panic. I had no authentic reaction since no other like reaction could be known for what had never before occurred. It was what had happened, that was that, I would live as I had been at five years old. Minutes ticked. Something less than an hour went by.  I stayed where I was with the book unseen nearby. I picked up the book again, I took a look, and I could read. 


I have been successful at it ever since. Though from time to time, writing a word a great deal or, in reading excessively, a word comes to appear strange. Is that how it is pronounced? Is that how it is spelled? Seems strange to me. I then need conformation that it is indeed a word I have known for many years but I needed assurance in order to keep it as part of my knowledge. Such an occurrence has beset me at all ages, times, and places. The recognition returns. There was no pain of trauma or anxiety or muscular disorder. I was questioning, as myself, why I had I accepted what I was told to be true. Push it enough and I would be illiterate. I would be out of the “sport” as it had eventuated for some. If you doubt reality enough, taking it suddenly to a  different plane entirely, you have got not the not-reality but nothing. Overindulgence in drugs, sex, religion, politics, food and drink, and “the good life”  will lose from you what you received, and you go into an area of no return. Knowing reality isn’t effortless, try too hard, as perhaps in a case of the yips, and you may lose it for good. Being relentless with yourself is stupid.

Sherlock in Cheyenne: The Adventure of the Four Houses

No.

I had said that before but, naturally, Mr. Holmes wanted to be sure.

No, I’ve never seen this person before. I realize it is on our page in the newspaper, but it must have some significance for you, not me. I can’t make out the person very well at all. Looks like a photo of a drawing.

Very alert you are my dear boy. Clearcut photographs of Houlihan are few. I can only relate her appearance on our page to the reports of sightings of her in our area. She had been away quite some time. She returns with a colleague, a Mr. Bielseley. She has a justifiable reputation of being a firestarter. She rarely lends herself to an effort to put flames all through a structure. Many times past she has only mentioned the possibility of fire and, after a “contribution” to her general fund, shall we say, no fire eventuated. Mr. Bielseley apparently is new to the game. He may act as the go-between and negotiates deals on her behalf. She has never communicated directly with any “customers.” He may initially pocket the “fee,” take a commission, and Houlihan has the remainder.

I see beside her photo on our page is a shot of the Four Houses.

Yes, apparently They have an interest in them. The obvious indication is that Houlihan and the Four Houses and fire are as one thought.

I have been by the Four Houses a few times. Not distinguished in any way. But they look alike, except for trim and different colors. Big, wide, actually squat, houses of two stories. Each has a full basement. The North House, as it is called, faces North, and there is an alley on its south side. Across the alley, further south, is a half-hearted courtyard. The remaining three of the four houses share that courtyard. The West House faces West into an adjacent lot containing a ranch style house. South House faces a major diagonal of Cheyenne running from downtown and out past Pioneer School. East House is on a major N-S street that ends at the Frontier Days venue. W and E are for rent. N and S are for sale. None are occupied, no furnishings. At least there is a reduced chance of injury should any or all come to a fiery end. (In my imagination I find all ablaze simultaneously. Such big houses on fire but with no wind, so straight up goes the flames and heat and castoff debris.)

Mr. Holmes -  Fire may happen, though even that seems a smallish proposition for Them. Perhaps it is a distraction, though Houlihan’s abilities could be put to broader use through surrogates. Nevertheless, the actual doing of a fire has always been hers alone and no one has ever been burnt.

Me – What a way to evaluate one of Their projects, only is it likely to be favored by Them if people will be hurt.

Ah yes, true enough.

Naturally you are going to the area of the Four Houses rather soon.

I shall repair soon enough.

(I, meanwhile, would be opening yet heavier, bigger, more costly textbooks to acquire knowledge I need not have except for my being here. I was then, before my return, a slightly above average student. I now remain so.)

Mr. Holmes returned from his foray to the Four Houses with nothing amiss to report. He was hailed more than once by the people across the street. They called him “Sherlock.” Next time, surely there will be a next time, he will be in disguise.
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The next issue of the newspaper had a photo on our page of a beheaded Mr. Holmes! He was lying in the street that South House borders on. It was twilight. Rather a shock to be sitting in your armchair, by yourself, as was Mr. Holmes, when you come across a photo of yourself, headless. So someone took the trouble to clothe a dummy approximately as Mr. Holmes and knock off the head. This being the era it is, the “body” was photographed from the shoes looking along toward the head where there was an indication of something missing beyond the neck. No gore, no blood. The caption for the photo – Is this the end of Sherlock?

I made no comment on the photo, nor did Mr. Holmes. Next issue, our page, had an account of Mr. Holmes seen in the area “lurking” about the Four Houses. This was reported by “people across the street.” Nothing more than that. No connection being made to how he recovered his head and has soldiered on.

Our page was getting a workout in that every day brought more “news.” Except, for it seemed at first glance, the next issue. But Mr. Holmes was running his fingers along the outside edge of the page and then its gutter. “Perforation.” He frowned. Then he brought out his magnifying glass and carefully surveyed where his fingers had been.

Ah, my boy, we have a coverup here.

What?

He went over to the card table and placed the paper flat on it and opened to our page.

Please hold this magnifier for my sight at the edges as I move along with the knife and so saying he brought out from his coat a very small jackknife. He then began to cut along the perforated line at the outer edge of the paper. I moved the magnifier as he moved the knife. Then the operation was repeated on the gutter. Underneath was a gigantic black headline: THE ALIENS HAVE LANDED. So black was the ink that it smelled faintly. I was cautious enough not to touch it for fear it would smear.

Mr. Holmes – What idiotic poppycock!

Me- I, I…

The “aliens” are occupying the Four Houses, said Mr. Holmes, as he read the caption. “They wish us no harm and will be leaving soon.”

Mr. Holmes – Whatever are They up to?

Me – I, I…

It seems They are focusing on the Four Houses as a locus for something yet to come. I now must give more fodder for “the people across the street” as I visit the area. Care to accompany me?

I, I…have parsing to do on some fifty sentences.

Ah well, the student’s life.

Yeah, well watch out for ray guns and worse-than-death Empire games.

Certainly. I’m off, and as myself. My disguise kit is getting vacant.

I did have sentence diagramming to get done. The darn sentences were ones we would never read, much less write. If done at the blackboard during class, I tried to position myself at the far right so the spillover as I edged down and to the right ran up against the end of the board. I couldn’t very well write on the wall, now could I? I gave generous space to my left so that my pal there had to trail down to the right into the abyss as modifiers modified modifiers unto almost infinity.

Mr. Holmes, on his return, said “the people across the street” included Houlihan and Bielseley.

Houlihan?

Yes, she may be reconnoitering and about to issue a threat for fire.

Aliens? Four Houses? Fire? I think They have gone weird.

Certainly if there is rationality herein, it escapes me.

Could it have been someone else? Not Houlihan?

She stood at the curb. She is under five feet and has steel frames, small lenses. Her hair, going gray, is always in very tight ringlets all about her head. Never a dress, always clad as if a workman. Called jeans? Plaid shirt, long sleeves. Brown. The jeans or whatever are brown also. Thin mouth. Never any animation of the face. Yellow bright eyes of a predator. It was Houlihan.

Bielseley?

Average height and build. Also in brown. He wears a soft hat, folded down in front to partially cover his face. Broad face, pallid. Grey eyes. Gloves at all times which are leather and brown of course. Large boots, as if he can never find the right size and fit. Oh yes, he and she were there.

They saw you?

Of course.
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So came the next issue of the newspaper and on our page was a photo of Mr. Holmes “lurking” in the Four Houses area. (Someone in costume as Mr. Holmes. Though the real Holmes was there.) The “people across the street” (pats) smelled something flammable in the air. (Mr. Holmes did not.) Also mentioned was a dismissal of someone having floated the possibility that aliens had come to occupy the Four Houses. Not being of the pats (so it was implied) it was branded as what-will-they-think -of-next stupidity.

Next, in this cavalcade of Four Houses goings-on, Mr. Holmes was seen to have emerged from the bushes on one side of South House’s veranda and then charged across that very wide veranda and dove into the bushes on the other side. Light of various colors were flashing upstairs in South House. Also this “Mr. Holmes,” as seen by some of the pats, had a beard. A Zeegler?

The “our page” output was at a constant flow of Four Houses and Mr. Holmes locked in a common conception. If you had one, you had the other. By then, all sightings of Mr. Holmes were of imposters. Although Mr. Holmes was there, in disguise. He mingled freely with the pats. As the days rolled on, he saw Houlihan, not Bielseley, only once more on the night a fire began upstairs in the East House. Response was swift and only burn marks on the wall and floor resulted. Mr. Holmes and the authorities knew of this concentration on the Four Houses. So it was not if, but when. And what it all could portend for Them vs us, we didn’t know. Nevertheless, fire was coming. It got to the West House one night. The pats crowd saw “Sherlock” there before and during the fire that was of more than a burn but less than structural damage.

Then the unexpected happened. They jailed Mr. Holmes! For “observation” and his “protection.” Houlihan was also in jail. So they could be trying to stop a burn-down but they couldn’t continue such indefinitely. I visited Mr. Holmes in jail. He seemed OK. As probably was Houlihan. He counseled patience. A few days went by. On another visit, Mr. Holmes said he had secured an attorney for Houlihan and that the attorney, upon Houlihan’s release, was to present her with enough money so she could retire to Mexico. She was released.

One night later, the North House was on fire. No doubt about it this time. A great ball of fire, like a smaller Sun, was in the house. Something more than the house itself was burning. The heat was monumental for blocks. Houlihan had disappeared. Of course. And then I met with Mr. Holmes a third time.

Mr. Holmes – I have a revolver in the laboratory in your basement.

OK.

Arm yourself and frequent Woolworths in the town center.

To what purpose?

Bring in Bielseley.
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I went to Woolworths. It was a Thursday. I knew the guy behind the counter was wondering what I was doing not in school. In those days, it was school or a certain elsewhere. I much preferred school. My Mom, I said, would be in shortly. I was to see a doc about a sore back. So I said. He shrugged. I ordered a banana spilt which Bielseley was reputed to favor. Honestly I had no problem with a revolver and encountering Bielseley. I wasn’t certain I would see Bielseley. Mr. Holmes thought he would come in to contact others, some of the pats could be about. With Mr. Holmes in jail, who was to carry on? I was here for a purpose allied to what Mr. Holmes was doing here in Cheyenne. I had shot lots of Zeeglers. So bring on Bielseley. But why should he show? Besides, a banana spilt I hadn’t had in ages. Woolworths put it in a glass schooner like for ocean going if it had not been glass and, anyway I could never finish it. But there it sat, on the long counter that curved off to the left far down the store. Mirrors on the wall lined the entire counter opposite the seats. A lunch counter really but it was mid-afternoon. Just me and the guy behind the counter who busied himself at the far end and a guy sitting at a table to my right, reading the paper.

And Bielseley. He had come in the side door, as I had done that puts you immediately at the lunch counter. The front door led to the merchandise area where noise could be heard as women (all women by the way) were perhaps appraising and ready to purchase goods. It was Woolworths – the Five and Dime.  Bielseley was beside me on my right. Hi, kid, how’s Sherlock?

No need to express surprise. So he knew me. Don’t know how. He sat down two chairs from me at the counter. Hey barkeep, he turned and said to the counter guy. A spoon. I pulled the revolver from a jacket pocket as he was turned. I held it under the counter pointing mostly at his kneecaps. Yes sir, I could and would fire it. Bielseley got his spoon, the counter guy moved back to where he had come from. Bielseley leaned in toward the spilt. He noticed the revolver. He dug into the end of the spilt that was toward him. He took a big portion. He downed it extravagantly, like a much appreciated luxury, his mouth moving every which way. Then he slowly stood up. The guy at my right reading the newspaper dropped it on the table. He had  a gun leveled at Bielseley. A cop.

That had been easy. Bielseley in jail. And Mr. Holmes had got out. Why I asked. Gratitude he said. From whom? Houlihan. North House.

We were home, in the basement. Mr. Holmes had delayed his exit from jail, but I wanted home and school and Mom and siblings and friends and books and TV and …. Not jail.

I do thank you for apprehending Bielseley.

Nothing to it.

Oh, by the way, Bielseley is out.

What? How?

A bribe. He bribed a guard.

And so what was all this about putting you in the cooler?

Our opposition wanted to associate me with what was occurring at the Four Houses.

Enough repetition and it would become fact – you as an arsonist.

Correct.

Oh, wait a minute. This may have been the best plan They have ever come up with. You out of circulation, and They could do whatever they wanted.

Except for you, of course.

Yeah, right, I flunk out while opposing them at every turn. Really, the setup was to establish the bizarre linked to you and then move it down to more commonplace arson.

Yes, in some ways this was truly the better plan. A guilt by association from false witnesses and my reputation used to put me where They wanted me – at the scene They selected with Houlihan as a “smoke screen.” How clever, me behind bars and They had far more freedom in which to operate.

But it didn’t come off eventually as they had wanted.

They did not choose wisely. Houlihan had too much gray.

How’s that?

Retirement, shall we say, loomed large for her. I soon enough suspected as much, so she was offered freedom and funds and she honored the implicit agreement.

The North House. But what of Bielseley?

As I said, I know he is gone.

But he had just got there! So he had money for a bribe that he should have paid to Houlihan.

Why?

Well, wasn’t he the paymaster, the go-between for Them and Houlihan?

Have we ever known Them to employ go-betweens? I could never with certainty conclude he was such.

But, but who was Bielseley?

Mr. Holmes was watching me intently, hopefully, with a now-drop-the-other-shoe expectation.

Indeed, said he. Must you guess? Recall that in Woolworths he knew who you were and They have always been hands on for whatever was going on except, of course, for the Zeeglers. Recall the grey eyes.

You mean he was not a substitute, a shave of the beard, not a Zeegler? Not an arsonist and not truly in league with Houlihan? One who hires and pays but he wasn’t.

Yes and no, then…

That means now I don’t know if I could have pulled the trigger in Woolsworths.

Tut, tut, Wilson was there, but only to make it official.

Yes, a backup or a takeover.

Never you mind, you are a crack shot.

So, so…  and I then said exasperatingly, finally, at long last – he was one of Them!

Yes.

The end

Sherlock in Cheyenne : The Adventure of the Cure-All in the Bunkhouse

Mr. Holmes has disappeared. That is, my Sherlock Holmes has been gone for more than three weeks. He has been absent before on numerous occasions due to requirements of whatever a case might require of his time. But he kept in touch. Not like this, which is gone, gone, gone.

One morning he was in his chair angled toward the lab and away from me and my card table and bed, it had got so he was there every morning as I got up. He might be reading the newspaper, our page first, of course, or studying various textbooks, or staring thoughtfully at the lab over by the wall.

Then he was almost always there in the armchair at the close of the day when I would be about to fall asleep. The wind could be howling or the rain pasting the east window, and the space heater roaring away on max and he was there. Calm and quiet he was and ready to reply if ever I said Good Morning or Good Night – but I never did. I now regret that. I should have told him how his being there was an aid to me in my continuing attempt to accept my transfer to this era, under these conditions, and what having his ongoing never-fail triumphs over Them did help to sustain me.

He had got here before I did. I may help him in an inconsequential way but no doubt he is the Main Man. It seems I provide a base for him, a place to be as my “tutor”. He really could be my tutor, though anyone who knows of such a cover such as it is doesn’t buy it. So what? He does a lot of good. Sometimes the community knows it, and sometimes it’s Native Americans, and sometimes it is the Air Force, and sometimes just the two of us. So what?

But is he gone for good? It is impossible They could have hurt him. He is of course, not “dead” – such doesn’t apply to him. But maybe he is off on a new assignment? OK for him but I don’t want someone else nor do I want to stay here by myself – what purpose would it serve? I have already speculated about my cycling through junior high over and over. Though maybe I would go onto high school, college?

Truth be known it is the empty chair in the morning and night. What a concern! He battles for all of us and I want him in his chair!  OK. OK, I am trying to get the homework done, be a good brother and son and accept the foibles of my friends. I am doing that. So where is he?

I have been spending more time upstairs – actually not more family interaction but more being there and “there” is usually in front of the TV. Recently it was Barney Fife giving a “hairy” rendition of the Preamble to the Constitution to prove once you’ve got it (memorized) it’s always with you. Friendship and close associations can be modified so that, if you accept the premise of irrevocable change, then no shock occurs if they aren’t going to be always with you. Remembered they can be, but not in a living format.

Neither of us is dead. I’m doing my part. Again and again I ask – where is he. I mean is he “here” and not on assignment elsewhere? Has his tour of duty ended here, has he ETS’d ? In the way of a few unearthly things having an imitation of a living format came to me one school night as I sweated over pre-calculus (we are all patriotically, with ample funds, going to find an answer to the Russkies) I heard a sigh for achievement, a woman’s luxuriant sound, rich and mild, surely with a glowing countenance and velvet dress, demure with the whole scene in coloration almost like caramel. A very beautiful woman. And I did hear it. Mom and the others were in bed. No wind. Furnace not yakking. No space heater. I had heard her. It came from the lab. The lab was against the east wall after the door swung open to it farthest and the lab then went to the west wall and South to near the furnace. Then the lab filled in the space diagonally back toward the door. Two rows of benches and equipment and experiments were along that dimension.

I went to the entrance to the lab but really if Mr. Holmes put more equipment there you would have to vault the benches to get inside the lab. I stood expectantly at the entrance. Something was up. I smelled off to the right an electrical short with cinnamon sprinkled on it – so it registered. I went toward the smell, and behind an inner row of benches, was a blue fluid flow experiment. Mr. Holmes had set it up. It had started. There were three presentations of it. In one the blue fluid remained pooled at the bottom of a tank. An amorphous mass was inert above the pool. In a second adjacent part of the experiment the fluid had made it half way into the mass. The last section, the third one, had blue lines piercing the mass. The blue pencil-thin fluid was in lines in the hundreds and multiplying in number then and there. The mass was defeated, the pool was ascending. The fluid shot out and up and over the container and blue splatters sounded loudly on the concrete floor.

It was a sign. Mr. Holmes was fine and still here.

Confident that Mr. Holmes would soon show, I gave more undivided attention to playing my bit part in the great Cold War struggle, for as much as my homework could contribute. My hard concentration on my math was broken when I had to look around for my slide rule to get on with it. I then could hear my Mom upstairs calling out about a phone call. About a tutor. Tutor! I was out of the room in two giant steps and bounded up the stairs. I paused for composure before I entered the dining area (also containing a washing machine shrouded in fine linen in a corner). I walked in to take the receiver from Mom. “Sorry,” I said to her. She had no problem with it, having other fish to fry elsewhere in the ruckus-filled house.

Sherlock! Holmes! (Pausing, calm and composed? Well try for it.) Mr. Holmes, good to hear from you again.

Ah, yes indeed, and I am very sorry my dear boy, for having taken such a very long time to contact you, I was trying to infiltrate Them and one thing led to another and I did not do as I had hoped. I shall stop by in a few hours with a guest. Is that acceptable?

A guest downstairs?

Of course, of course, I should have made that clear. Another “student”.

Sure thing.

The phone went dead. I returned to my study and after a few hours I heard two set of shoes navigating down the stairs. The door opened wide and in stepped a Zeegler! For a split second I thought it could be Mr. Holmes in disguise, but Mr. Holmes was close behind the Zeegler.

The Zeegler stopped a few steps inside the room so the door could close. Mr. Holmes moved ahead of the Zeegler and indicated the Zeegler should sit in my chair at the card table, I was on the bed. Mr. Holmes remained standing very near to the Zeegler. One of Mr. Holmes arms was inside his coat.

Mr. Holmes – I thought you would care to speak with a Zeegler. This is a rare opportunity for us to get to know a Zeegler. Of course he can ask about us.

So I was to cross-examine the Zeegler. I assumed Mr. Holmes had already conversed with the Zeegler, to no avail. Therefore, I was to query on a lower plane of interaction. High road vs. low.

So: How are you trained? No response, no sound, no movement. How old are you? Where were you born?

Mr. Holmes interjected – I believe they “come about.” They persist unless pierced in combat as we well know.

Me- So they are clones?

Mr. Holmes shrugged. And I then couldn’t remember if we had gotten to “cloning” in our conversations.

Me- Well, then, do you prefer guns or spears or knives?

Now that got a rise. He looked at me and he said they had never used spears.

Oh but you did, Mr. Holmes and I were once attacked by hundreds of Zeeglers carrying spears.

He shouted, No spears! And he rose from the chair and twisted toward me and lunged for me. He was about half way to me when Mr. Holmes brought a revolver butt from his coat down on the back of the Zeegler’s neck. He fell into a nondescript heap at that half way mark between the chair and the bed. Mr. Holmes effortlessly picked up the Zeegler and seated him in my chair. Then Mr. Holmes stepped quickly into the lab and returned with a rope. The rope went around the Zeegler’s neck, then around his wrists and then around his ankles. Mr. Holmes held the end of the rope as he stood over the Zeegler.

The Zeegler’s head was against his wrists and his wrists were on his knees. Uncomfortable it looked to me.

Mr. Holmes – Please be so kind as to be more courteous toward by colleague.

The Zeegler actually smiled or at least showed his teeth to me and seemed to regret his action, beg for forgiveness, and silently plead for an alteration in how he was situated. Uncomfortable no doubt.

The Zeegler said – I have no spear.

Me – Well certainly some may and some may not have a use for a spear. I meant not to insult you by forcing a spear on you.

I smiled. I guess the Zeegler did too. I looked at Mr. Holmes for guidance.

Me - Well then let’s chat about nothing in particular (when I had every intention of mining something useful from whatever I got out of him).

I said “let’s chat” again. I then also looked at Mr. Holmes.

My colleague, said Mr. Holmes, is desirous of being friendly toward you. For your next infraction I shall shoot you.

The Zeegler blankly looked up at Mr. Holmes. Mr. Holmes extracted a huge knife, like a Bowie knife, from his coat. He swiftly made three motions to cut the knots at the Zeegler’s knees, then wrists, and then the neck.

The Zeegler stiffened, gulped, and then relaxed in the chair.

I asked questions about the weather, uniforms, food (3 squares a day?), bunks in barracks, cars, trucks, school buses, freight trains, snowflakes, high winds, and so on.  I was asking about his favorite day of the week, assuring the Zeegler that mine was on the weekend and I named each day. On “Saturday” I perceived a twitch, I’ll call it that, anyway his countenance flickered. On the streets of Cheyenne, favorites of, he had a tiny “reply” to Lincolnway and for what was his favorite kind of building I meant such as wood, brick, concrete, and adobe with an aside on use, form and function, he had an unspoken preference for adobe.

We “chatted” without a word from him for another half hour. Finally I looked at Mr. Holmes and back at the Zeegler and back to Mr. Holmes.

Mr. Holmes to the Zeegler – I suppose this has been a waste of time. I had hoped we could have had a congenial expression of companionship – on some level. Well and good if such does not become you. As things are, we will meet again. Be gone.

The Zeegler got up, went to the door, and left. As simple as that.

Mr. Holmes – So then, an adobe structure on Lincolnway to be visited by us this Saturday.

Mr. Holmes did briefly relate to me his infiltration. He had himself captured. That status did not prove useful so he disappeared in their midst and became a Zeegler. Then he captured a Zeegler – the one that I chatted with.

But then why were we concerned about Saturday on Lincolnway with adobe?

Mr. Holmes – Rather amusing to be off to thwart Them but not knowing how or why.

Me – Sorry, I just realized I haven’t been reading the newspaper of late. They are there. I pointed at a pile of papers beside his armchair.

Mr. Holmes – Ah well then, let us have a go at acquiring news of Them.

He picked up a paper and then turned to “our page”. I did the same with another issue and others. The more recent issues had a small, and on our page, ad of a Cure-All as a tonic, elixir, modern super medicine, fit of the fittest and so on across many small ads on our page.

Mr. Holmes – No doubt the “cure” will in and of itself become an illness second to none. What?

Me – Oh undoubtedly. Saturday?

Mr. Holmes – Delivery? Shipment? Manufacture? Our presence will resolve it. But what building?

Me – I know of only one adobe directly on Lincolnway. I mean an adobe “house” and an adobe “bunkhouse”.

At this site there has been a cooperative effort involving my school and a trucking company called DBN, meaning Drive by Night, from the film “They Drive by Night” with Raft, Bogart, Ann Sheridan, and Ida Lupino. The DBN is located at a “house,” really only a bedroom for Miguel’s father, and what is called the “bunkhouse”. Both are on a large paved lot. The house seems to sit in a parking lot. The lot is large and slopes from the bunkhouse at the top of the slope and from the north then down to the house and further on down to Lincolnway. On the east is Beacon Street and along it the company trucks park before beginning a night run. The drivers sleep in the bunkhouse during the day if they so choose.

Miguel’s father manages the operations. I went there to return Miguel’s visits to our house (we then rented a house not far from the adobe structures.) I would wake up Miguel’s father. He was a baseball nut. Ok guy, usually asleep during the day, mostly spoke Spanish and had a bat, ball, and mitt in bed with him.

Along the west side of the lot, which drops off down to the alley, are grates cut into the rock wall. Coals can be place in the grates and hot dogs and Pepsi are available some Friday evenings, courtesy of the school and DBN. Boys and girls attend. Whichever sex predominates in numbers has dibs on the bunkhouse for that night, if they want. We then lived close enough that I preferred to go home since I had seen the object of my then desires, Betty Carlson, and usually my conversation with her was in opposition to a restful bunkhouse night.

Across from the lot, across the alley, was a used car lot that Mr. Holmes and I would make use of post our visit to the bunkhouse. That visit occurred Saturday night, late. Mr. Holmes was in disguise as a Zeegler. I was his prisoner and we went downstairs, after entry, to a football-sized expanse of manufacturing apparatus that looked like the second football-sized area under the first one. At the first sublevel, Mr. Holmes extracted huge bags of sand from within his Zeegler duds. We began to run along the corridors flinging the sand into the works. Then Mr. Holmes grabbed two crowbars from a wall cabinet, and we sprinted along smashing left and right, up and down the aisles. Down to the second sublevel we went using the crowbars to brace shut a large door behind us. Mr. Holmes pulled out two revolvers from his coat (he had changed back to himself) and tossed me a third one. He was shooting out three manufacturing sifters or pumps or sorters – whathaveyou- with one shot. He walked eyes closed and pointed left and right with one revolver in each direction. I more modestly might get two with one shot. And I kept my eyes open.

The Zeeglers were coming, the Zeeglers were coming. We were in a narrow corridor beyond the production area and the Zeeglers were four abreast coming at us. Mr. Holmes got three from right to left and I got the leftmost one as they, of course, advanced inches on us everytime a line of them disappeared. Not to accept the inevitable, M. Holmes shot out the electrical boxes. Even in the dark he and I kept firing since the barrel flashes gave tiny, but enough, illumination, and it was a straight corridor so I kept the weapon pointed on the same line.

Mr. Holmes said “go left” and I smacked into a door, which on opening, led further west, I gathered. The door was slammed shut by Mr. Holmes as the Zeeglers pounded on it. Cracks from somewhere showed light. We went there and opened a chute to the outside. The “outside” was the west edge of the truckers’ lot and the light was from across the alley in the used car lot, closed to customers.

Not closed to escapees from the wrath of the Zeeglers. We low-crawled among the vehicles looking for keys in the ignition. Found one. We got in. We pushed it off the lot and down the slope to Lincolnway which also sloped down. We coasted to the intersection of the Sinclair station and the motel. Then right until near 15^th Street. We tried it and it started. With me steering and Mr. Holmes working the pedals, we made it to less than a mile from home.

The transition from Saturday to Sunday was very short for me. Mom was calling down about breakfast and I had only started to sleep. Couldn’t stay in bed. If I did she would come down and Mr. Holmes and I would have had to have a “lesson’ underway. Therefore, I went up to pancakes prepared on a flat grill that were thin, crispy at the edges, with maple syrup streaming down the sides and ice-cold milk in a huge glass. We all had a delicious time.

Only an hour later after my return to Mr. Holmes did sleep overpower me. Mr. Holmes kept watch and could run interference with any interaction with the upstairs element. I couldn’t sleep long. I had a couple of big tests on Monday. To get the official results of our intervention at the bunkhouse, we would need Monday’s paper.

I could study since we weren’t trying a church. Mom took us to a different church for a trial period on some Sundays. Not Catholic, since Mom felt they would compromise you somehow and then convert you. Once converted, you owed them, they owned you. As a Church member you remained one, no amount of nays got you off… so Mom said. But this Sunday we had a break. Usually we attended Bible study while the grownups were at services. We wore Sunday best, and for me, that was like singing at the VA when I met Grady.

I had to come awake for lunch, or dinner as it was called on Sundays. Mr. Holmes said he was going downtown, or nearly there, to the bunkhouse. Upon his return in the evening about suppertime, he said it seemed as before on the lot at Beacon and Lincolnway.

Monday’s paper had no ads for Cure-All and instead there was a short article about a local maker of medicinals had gone out of business. End of story. So then I wanted to say something to Mr. Holmes about his presence being pleasantly felt day and night if he was in the armchair as I began and ended my day. But how to say it? Could I prevail upon you to be in your chair at certain times? No, wouldn’t do.

Ok – Mr. Holmes, it is good to see you there (pointing) AM and PM. At such times I know nothing is amiss.

He had a pipe in his left hand. He stopped bringing it to his teeth. The pipe went in his coat. He stood up, went behind the chair, grabbed each armrest, and lifted and rotated the chair some degrees toward my direction. Then he sat down.

Ah, he said, the pleasure is all mine, and he smiled.

I tipped my invisible hat to him.

An Insertion of the Mind - Millions and Millions

We all have our preferences. Certainly. Loren Eiseley preferred a past of millions and millions of years. Actually better was a “sunlit and timeless prairie” – gone beyond time. Even millions could not be enough. Or at least from “ I look up across the moon and Venus – outward, outward into that blue-white glitter beyond the galaxy… Have we come from elsewhere? … Has not the great 200-inch reflector upon Mount Palomar already spied out the prospect?” It was common enough to place too much hope on what Palomar could do for us. At least it could be used, as here, to again get beyond time, to be from simply out-there somewhere, and time need not be mentioned.

Of course he isn’t there, as he wasn’t, of course, “in” the time of which he wrote. And so he speculated – “Perhaps there is no meaning at all, … save the journey itself…” There was denied to humankind “the dimension of time.” Reasoning thus could take him up “against the confining walls of scientific method” and push him over the wall to “the intangible substance of hope which at the last proves unanalyzable by science, yet out of which the human dream is made.” It’s easy. Put yourself where you can’t go.

With Darwin’s evolution and its variants, you got trapped in the physical, structural variables and lose a perspective on how humankind came about, from where, not when, did humankind get intellectualization in excess. To separate itself from animals, it has been noted humankind had its knowledge of mathematics while other said it was the conscience of humankind that did the trick. A greater thinker than Darwin was Alfred Russell Wallace who knew natural selection couldn’t put into humankind capabilities far beyond its needs. If it could have, why so far back in time, to what use to have it and not use it since its possession has been synonymous with its use? Or, as Wallace, thought, said Eiseley, that which was “us” came later.

Once you have those millions and millions of years at your disposal, it would seem all of evolution could surely take place. No limit to fashioning sequences of changes via natural selection. But saying it and proving it is the flip side of millions and millions – it is too general, the specificity can’t be located. It became an article of faith that what was assumed to have occurred to carry along pre-humankind, humankind, and post-humankind was not an assumption but really the truth. Assumptions, begging reality, become a dogma. A solid foundation for organic change was derived from geology. Geology supplies the crush of millions and millions of years. Once started, as Wallace observed (and noted by Eiseley), evolution became subject to “indefinite departure” no return, ever onward.

So onward and it is assumed the past is “there” and onward has been traversed and we are “here” at present, and onward again we will arrive at the “future”. As for now, we are said to be very aware of “our” time and how it has disintegrated into, said Eiseley, “a meaningless mosaic of fragments” and cannot be packaged, made whole into a past where we were. Someone was there, just not us. We are persisting because of our specialization, that is, our intelligence, our “smarts” and so we avoid what 90% of Earth’s creatures had experienced – extinction. Or are we ready to give it up, the intelligence, and realize the “smarts’ were wasted on us? The ape-like survived well enough for a very long time. Then somehow the nascent “we” came along. There too was an increase in “smarts” for no good reason, then it was “us.”

Such change, for Eiseley, was within “limitless change in limitless time.” Thomas H. Huxley was read by Eiseley in a way so that Eiseley could convey that uncontrolled conviction, and thematically he entered into it in isolation, touting lonely, cold death. Nevertheless, his style borrowed from Paul Sears who had a classical-humanist tinge for science and literature. In Eiseley’s Scientific American articles around 1942, he got mystery, pathos, and wonder mixed in. He could not wholly accept materialism or the scientific method; he couldn’t detail what he sensed. It was a vast and single entity.

If its sense could be found as a derivative of humankind’s insatiable curiosity, Eiseley foresaw in The Firmament of Time we would find that secret to be boring. Without a tinge of conscience, the conscience which he thought, as previously mentioned, separated humankind from the animals (never mind that much earlier was the presumption that our use of mathematics involving the calculation of the date for Easter was the distinguishing feature). He resurrected the “Christian order” for small amounts of contemporary stability and good graces with no amount of morals in sight. And he left it at that, not liking the age, the era – but then he wasn’t above changing the truth for poetic expression, so why bother?

Then, too, the future need not concern us. There we could discover our past. We could know what we don’t know now. We could be fossils for them, those of the future. They could come from the stars, as we may have gone there. The paths may not cross. Millions and millions of years might not be necessary for the missed opportunity. Though, of course, those millions and millions of years are always available, such flexible entities they are. They aren’t going to encounter morals like Eiseley did along the way since science (evolution) was formulated without them and the scientific method, if mastered, cannot be improved upon or so it is said. Those millions and millions of years, confidently enunciated, have at the disposal of those who used them for the negation of all morality and for which then morals are a joke and God along with them.

All joking aside, those millions and millions of years are accepted as real. Within them A is A and B is B. Certainly in the brain there is B and A or their representatives. But you say A then B. Where is the “then” in the brain? Nowhere to be found, certainly one must admit. No evidentiary material can be provided. What produced it? An extensive hunt is not necessary – the mind, is the answer. It supplies the “then,” it makes an insertion for A and B.

All joking aside, which came first – the motion or the mind? And now quickly before it melts, how did motion become time? If no change of position, no dynamics, it is stasis. Nothing but A, B, C, … But mind makes an insertion so A and B and so on were already on the field of play, so to speak. The brain had to have A and B prior to the insertion.

Most certainly A and B were real. The brain couldn’t properly relate to the imaginary. But no “then” in the brain. That is the province of mind. A lack of reality allowed it to place, to make an insertion such that it allowed for motion, relation and millions and millions of years. All false. Time and its minions are no more real than the mechanism lacking in evolution to account for the mind.

A baby playing peek-a-boo better exemplifies the emergence of mind. You are at A, baby is at A. You at B. Baby at B. You at A and B in succession. Then you are at A and stay but baby is at B. Lastly, a baby’s eyes can follow an object as it moves. The mind is already there. It wasn’t there at birth, as was the brain. The truth of space, from the brain, is there. The falsity of time comes later.

Eiseley never had those millions and millions of years, not really.

Sherlock in Cheyenne : The Adventure of the Perfectly Potential Puzzle

I honestly don’t remember the class we were in. It was an afternoon one, for sure. That afternoon doze denied us, as always. We were not at the top of our form - especially Duane who would get no awards for pen rolling. In this instance “we” were myself and Duane.

We had been discussing the plus and minuses of a girl. She was not, of course, in any of our classes. The classroom we were about to enter was the only one Duane and I shared. It seemed imperative that we continue our discussion immediately. With the classroom etiquette in our way, we resorted to notes. Duane was five up and on my left. As always, a big classroom, which was fortunate since they were many desks in it, providing cover. Student-to-teacher ratio was never one of my concerns. It also never seemed to affect the quality of instruction. We were the best judge of that but, of course, it was never asked of us.

Three notes had come to me and those three returned to Duane. Then I got one in code. Letters had been rearranged. I thought I got the code. I needed to write something down for assistance. I motioned to Duane by scrawling on the desktop with my finger. He leaned down and rolled a fountain pen (of all things!) in my direction. As it rolled, it leaked. It hit a few joints in the floor tiles so that it jumped and spewed deep dark blue splashes of ink that were added to the trail.

I reached out and over and down for the pen. Two fingers became blue. No one except us two had seen it. Then Tipton across the aisle found it. I am sorry to say I thought of a bathroom break, or maybe trade places with Tipton? But he was looking at me as if I hadn’t gone to the bathroom and should have. Also, we were arranged in assigned seats. Then finally the teacher ended my agony when she saw it. Duane brought it off beautifully - slipped from his grasp and started on an independent journey in my general direction, Duane needed a new pen. My need to decipher the message became mute.

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Whereas Janusz Koslowski had a need for cryptography, surreptitious cryptography and with no women involved. No ink trails, but nevertheless he was in trouble, big trouble, since They were interested in him. It was because They knew his recent entrepreneurial venture into translation and editing had a third and hidden component.

It was all in a smooth black (naturally) metal box. Actually the third component wasn’t in the box. It was said to be “associated” with it. It is not at all clear how Janusz developed this connection. He was actively seeking it but how it explicitly came about was unexpected. What he got became known (to very few) as the Quantum Entity. I called it the QE.

Naturally Mr. Holmes, when referring to it, gave the full two words. Mr. Holmes learned of the box and two of its components via “our page” in the local newspaper. A tiny ad was there proclaiming how Janusz (J) had for sale, and now for demonstration, his box. We had no idea there was the third component. It could decode or decipher the meaning of any communication, and it could respond like an oracle to questions of fate or perplexity.

It was unwittingly started along to completion by a cousin of J who had heard of Rejewski’s exploits in mostly pre-WWII Poland. Rejewski had figured out how the German Enigma worked. The Engima began in 1918 by Scherbius of Scherbius and Ritter. Later it had three then five rotors to scramble letters for messages to be sent by business enterprises and the military. The German military got 30,000 of the Engimas. They were much used in WWII. You know, Bletchley and all that.

What Rejewski did was to detail the 105,456 rotor settings. That took a year. Then machines were set up to check on rotor arrangements, they were replicas of Enigmas. These machines were called bombes, and they could get the settings in two hours.

J didn’t build a bombe. He actually started out with translating. You would feed in a paper page on which was typed what needed to be translated. Out came the translation. Nifty, but common. J added an editing component to the box. In went a document through a second slot to be edited and back came an edited (more or less) version of that document. But these two functions of the box and their two slots for insertion were fronts for J’s real interest - cypto and answers without limits. The translator and editor represented some money but the crypto function guaranteed power and a great deal of it. That was what J wanted.

He also wanted recognition. He made it known through back channels that his box could do more than translate and edit. The cypto position came into play through a third hidden slot in that box. Also, anything could be asked of it. It could solve any cryto puzzle put to it. And I do say “asked.”  J would talk to the machine then he typed what he had asked or proposed. Later he spoke as he typed. He didn’t always get a reply. If he did, it could be garbled (and not in code). Once a reply took a week. Whatever it took, if J could understand the reply, it was awesome.

Such a huge potential led J to incautiously place another tiny ad on our page. J was touting the box as an enterprise of his Hobby and Invention shop. His shop had been owned by Sam before Sam turned to bribery (see the Adventure of The Babel Plants, Part Three). The ad mentioned crypto and something like “no job too big.”

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Mr. Holmes had snapped the paper open. As always he went to our page first. He found the second ad.

Really, now I will need my magnifying glass if these little adverts become any smaller. What is this? I do believe the proprietor of Hobby and Invention is going into a dangerous area. It could be he has made himself a subject of interest to Them. Sam of course is in confinement but the new owner will be lucky to be so situated. I must repair to Hobby and Invention forthwith.

I decided to also head that way. We parted at the shop entrance. J was down the street at a snack shop, so Mr. Holmes went to get him and I decided I would hang out with John Rockenjer, J’s assistant, who was minding the store. I had hardly got into the shop and began to survey projects, parts, electronics of all kinds, and scientific support books and games when I discovered a Zeegler behind me and another and another... I ended up bound and gagged in a chair sitting where I could not be seen unless someone opened the door wide. John was on the floor behind the counter - gagged and tied.

I heard Mr. Holmes and J talking as they approached the door to the shop. They entered and took a few steps when approximately nine Zeeglers emerged from behind various parts of the shop. Each had a knife in hand. Mr. Holmes struck J senseless so that he slumped into a pile against the wall and floor. Mr. Holmes crouched over J. The Zeeglers came at Mr. Holmes in pairs or threes lunging at J but Mr. Holmes fended them off. After four or five attacks, the Zeeglers regrouped and as one they held their knives aloft and then launched them at J. Mr. Holmes was like a hockey goalie in thrusting out his legs to block some of the knives. Others he caught in his hands, but one got J in the shoulder and two more ended up in a leg. The blades were not long and the wounds, thus, were superficial. Then the Zeeglers disappeared.

Mr. Holmes had knocked out J to make him easier to defend. Mr. Holmes had him in a compact place and knew the immovable borders to defend. Mr. Holmes undid me. John had worked himself free. J needed little attention, more of a bloody mess than anything else.

Me - Why knives?

Mr. Holmes - Why indeed and with short blades. They had no intention of greatly harming Janusz.

A scare tactic?

Perhaps. In the event, Janusz must go into hiding, separately from the box. Obviously They are presenting evidence to Janusz that They will affect whatever they regard as necessary vis-à-vis the box and Janusz. The effort on Their part will take place soon and be the apprehension of Janusz and the box. Once Janusz shows Them how it works, then Janusz will be no more.

I went home and at least I had no headache or chest pain this time unlike some of my other encounters with the Zeeglers. The Zeeglers hadn’t tied us tightly. I hadn’t tried to force my bonds as John did. Surely they could have done better than that. When Mr. Holmes arrived he appeared quite concerned, very perturbed.

My dear boy, this has become a matter of the utmost urgency.

His box is that good?

His Quantum Entity, as he calls it, if in the hands of Them, will secure world domination for Them and, in due time, world destruction - except for Their enclaves, of course.

No secrets safe from Them?

Yes, I am sorry to say. It is quite irritating that Janusz insists his box has no superordinary capabilities, he says the Zeeglers came to seize the box, and that there was one in the shop but it was only a prototype. Furthermore, the prototype has only translating and editing activities. What nonsense! In his shop I asked him to show me the design of the box. Janusz began to get out some blueprints and notes he had drawn up. These were incomplete, deliberately so. Meanwhile in an adjacent room, wadded newspapers in a waste bin that I had lit a few moments previously were in flaming contact with window drapes. I took a few steps to the doorway to that other room and paused. Janusz, succumbing to the old trick, rushed to another file cabinet and drew out other drawings and notes. I contrived to bump into Janusz when he was exiting to the storefront and he dropped all on the floor. He begged me not to help him. But I saw enough to know what Janusz had been attempting and had now succeeded in building. The box had a third component. For it, there was an off and on toggle switch. A blue light was lit if it was operating.

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Fortunately, I could get free of this ominous business by the simple expedient of attending school, which I did with obliterating gusto. Some guys from Detroit came in for a talk about car design and with a snazzy big model of the look of a car of the future. So? It was all over our heads (and we were all boys, except in one instance) - the math, the drafting skill, the interest in such a mass of metal. To drive it would have been cool but then what? As a job? We all had vague notions about what was a “job.” No thanks. Later, one of the speakers put up on the board the usual math symbol for infinity. A girl did the ID of it without having got her hand up. I had gotten my hand up first. Anyway, for them to sully the deep glorious dense mystery of a fascinating concept with a connection to car design was repellent to me.

Duane and I walked home across the fields close to our homes. In the days in decades to come we would have been on peoples’ lawns. If it was open, it was built upon, such is “progress” at all times and in all places. He spilt off a few blocks from my place, and I entered my room to find Mr. Holmes and J in conversational low tones. J had my chair so I went to the bed. J was looking at the floor, musing, as I came in, and Mr. H had put a finger to his mouth to signify recognition that I had arrived and to be quiet. I sat on the bed.

Mr. Holmes - Surely Janusz you do not believe They (of course J didn’t hear a “They,” it was “they” to him) will now ignore you? You are in much danger. Though I fail to see what translation and editing can be as so important to them.

J - Industrial competition. I have a very good machine, an excellent product.

H - The puzzles it can solve, no task too difficult?

J - Of course, all translation and editing done well.

H - (impatient and raising his voice) Mr. Koslowski, your box is not all about translation and editing. Is not that correct?

J had been with eyes on the floor until now. He looked at Mr. Holmes with tears in his eyes. And why not? I know more than others. Why should I not be unlike the others?

H - (pressing) You will soon be in a state like so many others that have gone before you like we all must, but as always the how and the when occupy some with paramount anxiety. No such anxiety need now plague you. Your time and place are awaiting you in a matter of days, perhaps in less time.

J put his head in his hands. No sobbing, but exasperatingly loud breathing, as if mounting an attempt at a great physical exertion - that old “gird the loins.”

J (in a soft wail) Oh can’t something so beautiful and forceful be without pain and capture?

H - The key is “force.” There is always push back, please be sensible. Let me help you. There is no crime here, yet, and no problem in crime to be solved, I do this to prevent much other damage to a great many other people. Do consider them. Let me take you to a safe place, and the box can be hidden until further complications can be sorted out.

It was obvious J was frozen into a lack of action. Mr. Holmes looked at me and then the door. Yeah, little I could do here. I went upstairs to check out the Tube. It would be Three Stooges most likely. I could tell Mom that Mr. Holmes had another student needing a one-on-one. Maybe I could find some untethered high-in-sugar edible. As it turned out, it was one of the better shorts, Curly was a military honcho and Larry was a diplomat while Moe was a startlingly accurate Hitler. Really it was fearfully good - like a horror show with calm prelude of what would soon be an impossible to believe presentation of slaughter. Though, of course, WWII wasn’t an entertainment.

Upon my return, I discovered J and Mr. Holmes had left. Upon Mr. Holmes return he told me that J was in hiding. The box was stowed safely somewhere. He was not going to tell me where J was hiding. Mr. Holmes can’t be hurt by Them. Whereas I can be hurt for short periods, but They could string together a series of hurts, so I cannot know J’s whereabouts. Certainly if They knew of the Quantum Entity and it’s being impossible to always control, they would rid the world of J. So, then, how to dispose of or what to do with the box? I rather liked the idea of it being Their problem. Soon enough They would find out the QE isn’t in the box, it is “associated” with it. As noted, J doesn’t know exactly how he got the box and the QE associated. Easiest would be to prove it has become dissociated but how? Failing that, where is the box going to be?

Woe to me for not inquiring where the box had got to. It turned out to be rather uncomfortingly close. And, as far as I was concerned, it had personality. This “thing” had begun to bother me and to usurp my time and thoughts. I wanted to not think of the QE so I asked what is so hot about J’s crypto machine? And, anyway, decode or decipher anything? Isn’t that a bit much? And to be better than Delphi?

Mr. Holmes - One would have hoped it were not so. But now Janusz has gone where he should not have. To withdraw now without addressing the Quantum Entity’s capabilities is unconscionable. Those capabilities must cease, therefore, the Quantum Entity must cease. As for Janusz, I hope he need not be dispensed with. Our opponents must lose interest in him.

Me - You are an expert in crypto. At least you have been reputed to be an author of a “trifling” monograph with analysis of 160 ciphers. There was a case involving stick men.

Do tell.

Well, not of this era, I guess. Anyway, what’s the big deal? Can’t they keep secret their secrets whoever they are?

Mr. H - Mostly governments and their military have wanted secure communication for the sake of dominance of others.

Me - Do tell.

Yes, though one cannot be sure just where difficulties in code breaking, used loosely, now lie. There is secrecy about the secrets of the British GCHQ and your National Security Agency. Since they are secretive, we have no idea how good they may be.

So how do they get on with it? I have (had) heard a smidgen or two about quantum computers, and public and private keys and so on.

I know very little of those. Historically it has been a race between encryption and decryption. They have come up with some unbreakable messaging and then it gets broken. Mary, Queen of Scots, had a code. She was beheaded. Microdots much later were an aid in 1941, though there the message itself was hidden, whereas more emphasis is placed on knowing there is a message and the dare to know its meaning.

Caesar had a cipher. Monoalphabetic substitution has been done. Frequency analysis was the major avenue to counter the encryption. Along came the Vigenère cipher, and it seemed it had been done, no breakage could be possible. Prior to and after the then latest efforts, long ago governments employed Black Chambers to crack secrets. Best was Geheime Kabinets-Kanzlei in Vienna.

No group broke the Vigenère cipher. Babbage did it and by cunning. He found repetition because the English to be rendered was repetitive. And there were factors of length in regard to the keyword. But he got no credit for this discovery. Kept it to himself. Kusiski was credited. Both realized the cipher could be broken, because the key had to have meaning.

Janusz is after meaning too. The utilitarian kind that facilitates power. To have enough of it, power, there is our capacity to interpret and respond that becomes overwhelmed if the power be immense and that response and interpretation in the service of meaning is taken over by machines. Then meaning becomes what the machines indicate it may be. They then define “power.”

The Quantum Entity may be omitting what is obvious to its kind, like Champollion realizing scribes were omitting vowels on the cartouches of Ptolemy and Cleopatra, while Ventri, building on the work of Kober, found that in Linear B, the “s” ending was deliberately being suppressed since it was well enough known then that it should be there. Most probably the Quantum Entity is a list with no exclusions. It encompasses all items, if scientific in Newton-Hamilton-Fermi-Einstein fashion. If not scientific, all is sorted into assigned functions to become “knowledge” which is of little use to it. It is not alive, nor can it die. It provides “history” as a fiction. It connects the dots, lines become lines of lines and matrices spring forth in differing dimensions. It can deal in thought but not Mind, which is where Janusz comes in.

Me - So to be rid of the QE, we must be rid of J?

H- Not necessarily.

Me - So the QE knows no past, no future, “now” simply “is,” not sandwiched between past and future. Metaphorically in quantum terms one could bend the past into the future and live out one’s past in the future.

H - Odd expression.

Me - There, for QE, all is done very fast, there are no speed limits. The power J hungers so abjectly for, is frightful, gigantic, monumental and decisive. There is no progress or achievement since these depend on the slowness of process. Earth gone in a blink, no realization of what had been done. There is no experience to be realized. So it has no development, no start, no end. No birth, no death. All of it “is.” Right?

H - Hm, you are grappling with a great unknown.

Me - Anywho, we assemble and disassemble, for it, no such thing, all “is.” It doesn’t affect us unless we provoke it. Our research, by J and others, is reaching to it. We, in a sense, create it by discovering it. The QE may not be representative, it could be much worse.

H - Perhaps you are glossing over extraordinary complexity rather roughly.

M – It is idle speculation, no referent. It is worrisome and bothersome. I don’t want to stick with it.  Hm, well then how about a game of chess? I can’t sleep just yet.

H - Certainly.

M - May I be Black? I have been persistently playing as White.

H - In these circumstances? But of course.

Actually Black is red (almost pink) since it is a plastic set, the cheapest, and White is cream. We went into a Queen’s Gambit. I had tempi but his piece activity was compromising my desire for a quiet positional game. He gave up a piece for the attack and to clear the center. I recognized his advantage but he had to do more, he had to win. Of tremendous power was his Queen, though she was at the edge of the board, she raked along the center towards my King who sheepishly had to stumble along and get behind two Pawns and call on a Knight that needed to be much closer. Mr. Holmes had potential galore and could make it a short game. His potential was paralyzing my formulation of variations. My move calculations were into a not favorable endgame, I had to prevent a move making my stance worse. What to do? How to negate or neutralize such potential? But then Mr. Holmes offered to adjourn the game. What a good guy! I accepted with alacrity. And then to bed.

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I dreamed : I was being splashed with blue ink, it came spurting out of a model Detroit car as it rolled toward me. It was going to crush me! But a Queen approached, I was dry and no car. She raised a knife with a short blade above her head and threw it at me - I got it in the forehead. It spilt my head open, not in half. One side was a winner, the other was a bigger portion, the loser. Doubt was invited in and I got a dollar a page. I was eating dog food out of a can like Victor Jory. No career for me. The test I knew but not the answers. I was looking for the answers on a tic tac toe board. I was X and the O’s were blue lights with toggle switches - off and on, blinking and winking, thinking and mocking, devious and insincere and malevolent. Moe wanted to hug me and I said no mustache but he screamed he would lose his personality. Mr. Holmes was down at the far left with all the other space in the Universe taken up by a huge wad of paper trash of almost google-plex size. It was data. It was swelling despite already having all room to itself except for Mr. Holmes. Tiny Mr. Holmes had a machete with a long blade. He was ready to swing and cut into the wad which could not move and so it could not be the Prime Mover or the Leviathan. Such vastness could not be uncorked. It must include the stupid. Of what use is a Stupid Universe? If it has immense intelligence from superb also supernatural knowledge then it must include the stupid. It was without innovation, lacking a twist. All things in their places are the best (Aristotle). Take care of your tools and they will take care of you. Too bad, so sad, we got fire, fission, wheels, flight, chemicals, orange blades of grass, civilization, culture, bipeds and trees, single cells, Big Bang vs Big Boil and poof! atoms and less, more fragments, it was gone and defragged? Mr. Holmes wasn’t swinging, he was shaking, me. I was awake. Awake? Well not dreaming.

Mr. Holmes - Up now. Breakfast. And he was shaking me by the shoulders. Awake? Breakfast, I daresay it would be just the thing.

Me -  If only you had a longer machete.

Mr. Holmes - What?

Me - OK, OK I’m going. Up I go and maybe awake.

I stepped through the open door and started the slight left turn and one step up to the lower landing and saw something. It was there on the floor at the back of the recessed darkness under the flight of stairs (a quick right and up from the landing). It maybe was where others before us had put gardening tools. There were no outside sheds. What I saw was blue. A little bigger than a quarter. It was hazy, like clouds in front of it. It was watching me. Was I awake? I saw a dim gleam of metal beside the light. It was the toggle switch and it was up! Meaning it was on!

I felt like I could die any second. Too sudden for me. Why now? I wasn’t prepared. This was unfair. I backed away to the door. Not looking at anything except the blue light, the indicator. I pushed the door open by reaching behind me. Mr. Holmes made an indistinct sound. I was nearly in the room still backing away going toward the bed. Mr. Holmes came over. The door had shut, he opened it - Good heavens!

He came over to me. I would not look at him. Why did he bring that damn thing here? I said nothing.

Do understand my dear boy. Go upstairs, call this number (on a paper he gave me). Call Janusz and tell him to bring his typewriter and paper. Tell him it is an extremely urgent emergency! The thing has exerted itself!

I would not go through the door. I put my chair under the East window and grunted my way outside. I returned the same way.

Mr. Holmes - The box could not be far away. It was placed in a neglected area. Janusz did not know it was here. I beseech you my old friend, I felt it was for the best.

I croaked - Really?

In a very short time, J arrived. He knew it was there, that is, he saw it on his way in. He got it and put it on my card table. He had my chair and the typewriter was in front of the box. Mr. Holmes stood by his chair. He was looking at the door. With regret? He continued watching the door. Until I yelped. I stared at the box, at the eye, from a far corner of the bed, I really really wanted to be anywhere but here.

Mr. Holmes, in a commanding voice began to speculate about the Etruscans, or so I thought it was speculation. What the heck?

Mr. Holmes - They had become identifiable by 700 BC. Mystery about them was tainted by later corrosive contact with the Romans. But the language remains a mystery. Could be a connection with shreds from Lemnos in the North Aegean Sea. Then there is Raetic from an Alpine region north of Verona. I wonder if it is hearing this? All the better if it does.

continued Mr. Holmes - Janusz (who had only been staring at the typewriter, no looks at the box) please insert your paper and recite after me: “How and why was the Etruscan language not Indo-European?”

J did as he was told. Thereafter, he then went back to staring at the typewriter. Mr. Holmes resumed watching the door. My vision was glued to the blue sinister and silent light. Nietzsche would have liked what could be beyond... beyond whatever you cared to name like the box with the light. Maybe I was going to vomit. Something was going to happen. Maybe ten minutes went by. I wished for some release, I was too young to die, so what else was there to do?

I let out a yelp. Good word, if a cross between a yell and a cry (Victorian usage) for help. I gulped and it hurt an awful lot.

It moved! J and Mr. Holmes snapped a look at me, then at the box. The blue light was out. But the sound of the toggle switch, looking like a small baseball bat, going down, shutting off, frightened me and startled me. Holy cow, it was loud! Rather unnecessarily I pointed at the box. Now I felt fine. I smiled. I suppressed a laugh. I thought it would hurt J’s feelings. But then he was the jerk that could have ruined us all. Now I felt like slugging him.

Calmly, Mr. Holmes said to J - You have a fine machine. What remains is worth much and will be a powerful influence in its field.

J didn’t say a word. He carefully put the typewriter in its case. He left the paper. I kept it as a memento, an exhibit. J picked up the box and left.

No breakfast.

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I sleepwalked through normalizing the next few days. Mr. Holmes put a tiny ad on our page proclaiming the superiority of the Holmes Factor over any other crypto technique - should it come to primes. He was like the Queen in our chess game - in a position of enormous potential. A bluff? Sherlock Holmes? Consider the track record.

He also visited the Hobby and Invention shop where J and John were getting on with it. Mr. Holmes was there for a short time and then left by the back way. John by then was tending to affairs behind the front counter. Then a Zeegler entered the shop. John alertly watched the smiling Zeegler. Then another Zeegler entered the shop. John reached under the counter for the revolver kept there for certain situations. Next to the revolver was the police button. The first Zeegler held up his hand, smiled, and said “No need.” The second Zeegler turned around and faced John and also smiled and held up his hands and said “No need.” John did not touch the revolver nor press the button. Then more Zeeglers entered. One came from the back room. In all there were ten Zeeglers in the shop so the shop was packed with Zeeglers. All were animatedly asking questions about merchandise. All seemed well informed as the questions were to the point, no fluff. In all they bought a ton of equipment and supplies. All paid cash. They exited as a group except for one who had a radio in each hand that we put down as he began to remove his disguise.

I actually have no need for these radios, I get the news I need from the weather report, and as he said that, he glanced at the newspaper open on the counter to the weather page. Nevertheless, please accept this purchase price and may I donate it to a raffle on behalf of Janusz so that he might start up his translation and editing company? The last of the disguise had been removed.

Mr. Holmes!

I tarried a bit out back before setting off. I saw the visitation unfold. Tell Janusz I will match whatever is raised in the raffle that will benefit his company.

Most generous of you, sir.

Ah, but I am not of the peerage, though your appreciation is acknowledged.

Later I asked how Mr. Holmes was prepared to don a Zeegler disguise.

After the Moonlight and the Arrow of Time adventure, as you term it, I placed certain items in my coat’s vast inner pockets in order to be prepared for such an eventuality, however slight I regarded the prospect.

No arm bands or headbands?

Certainly not.

Much later, with the dust more settled and the motes long gone, I craved a chess game, a truly absorbing one.

Me - How about a nice game of chess? Sure beats Global Thermonuclear War. Or tic tac toe?

Eh?

Chess it is. May I have White?

Let us endorse the time honored approach.

He picked up a cream pawn and a red pawn. Now he put them behind his back and then extended his fists fingers down. I did not want to touch him, so I pointed.

I lost. As always, Mr. Holmes pulled no punches. In compensation I wanted breakfast. That other breakfast had been missed and served without me. I went upstairs. I asked Mom for breakfast. Ordinarily such a request was instantly dismissed as foolishness. There were rigid times for the three meals per day. Not there? Didn’t like it and said so? Then in either case no ill feelings, but you didn’t eat. Maybe the stress of events in the QE vein had been showing. She knew something had been up. I needed to get down and stay there. I got breakfast. All the trimmings. Nothing was said except I thanked Mom. Breakfast as the emblem of Normality. I could resume.

The End