A Prisoner of Triskelion. Chapter 2: What Did The Prisoner Not Know, And When Did He Not Know It?

                                           A Prisoner of Triskelion

Chapter 2.

What Did The Prisoner Not Know, And When Did He Not Know It?

Carry On, Jeeves.  Well, the meaning was clear – to Triskelion, O’Cannan was a drone who should accept the situation.  Or sitch, as Bertie would say.

When The Empress of Blandings flies, O’Cannan thought to himself.

The odd thing was, he realized, that the situation really was a mistake.  O’Cannan was not a spy of any kind, national, international, industrial, super, or even I-spy-with-my-little-eye.  He worked as a courier for a couple of old Navy buddies who had formed a shipping company after they were all de-mobbed.  For two years Hannan had wasted the time of several perfectly good if somewhat tiresome instructors at Memorial University before dropping out.  Actually, he had dropped out only minutes before a weary dean of something or other would have accomplished the dropping himself. 

One day shortly after recycling a biology book in a green fashion by tossing it into a dumpster he was moistening his ennui at the Golden Flagon in George Street and met Tim and Honkers – Honkers’ real name was Lorenz; no one seemed to recall the doubtless alcoholic origins of the nickname – lifting a Quidi Vidi or three or four themselves, celebrating their new partnership.  The next day O’Cannan was driving around St. John’s and Pearl in his babe-repellent old Honda, delivering large envelopes and small packages.

Several weeks later, after a few night courses and exams, he bore a commercial driving license and was bonded, whatever that meant in addition to stuffing more official bits of paper into his wallet.  Although he still made deliveries on The Rock, he sometimes carried other large envelopes and other small packages on flights to St. Pierre, to various cities in Darkest Canada, and along the Arctic Rim to Europe – Iceland, Greenland, Denmark, Scotland, Poland, the Baltics, Scotland, and perfectly-clear London town.

There could be nothing untoward in his deliveries, for more often than not everything was opened and searched, especially his one time in Finland, where an ice-mannered customs officer with ice-blue eyes and ice-blonde hair questioned him for a full hour as if his proposed entry into Helsinki was an attempt to steal the Sampo and then solicit little Suomi children to be cooked and eaten by Laplanders.

One exception to his northern flights was a recent trip to Cuba.

Cuba.

Oh.

Oh, oh, oh.

Cuba. 

Before O’Cannan’s St. John’s / Toronto / Barbados / Havana seat-ache-a-thon departed, Honkers had given him a nifty little Canon camera with a somewhat pink-ish case, a spare battery, and a spare memory card.

“Take me some pictures in Havana, eh.  Take lots of pictures – here in St. John’s, getting on the planes, on the planes, from the planes, getting off the planes, here, there, while in Havana.  Here’s some extra cash; do some tourist stuff and take lots of pictures, old cars, Spanish forts, hot chicks on the beach.  But in the middle of this, take some pictures from the plane – just some snapshots, y’know – when the plane makes its turn off the runway and onto the taxi way.  No big deal, just more poops-and-giggles snaps.  When you leave Jose Marti, same thing, take some snaps of your umbrella-drink and then out the window when the plane turns off the taxiway and onto the runway.  And, hey, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do eh?”

Wink-wink, nudge-nudge.

Cuba.

O’Cannan’s three days in Cuba had been pleasant.  He bought some Cuban cigars, went to a jiggle show, took a ride in a 1958 DeSoto cab, drank the local rum, and marveled how grim and crumbled and subtly desperate and hungry Havana was.  No problems coming into the country, no problems delivering the company mail, and no problems leaving. 

And it was all camouflage for some snapshots.  Someone wanted him to take pictures of something in the area of the airport, and someone else was unhappy that he had done so.

For three purgatorial days O’Cannan was cocooned in the white light of his white space.  He read.  He thought.  He slept badly.  He examined again everything he could reach (the ceiling was too high) in his white-coffined white world: water taps, sink, under the sink, all the hems of the white cotton sheets and the white cotton blankets and the white cotton pillow and the white cotton towel.  Nothing.

“Finding anything?” asked an amused mechanical voice from on high.

“I’m looking for my lost virginity; have you seen it?”

“Oh, well, good luck with that, O’Cannan; Triskelion’s got your soul but not your honor.  Just to tell you: you don’t have a light switch but I do; when you want to beddy-bye just sing out for some dimness.”

“Okay, thanks; I’m feeling pretty dim already, though.”

O’Cannan kept on, inspecting everything centimeter in the whiteness of the only world he was permitted for three days.

And on the third day the whale coughed him up.

After breakfast the mechanical voice beeped.  “Okay, O’Cannan, you’re normal enough for us; we’re moving you onto the beach in a half-hour.  Take only your personal stuff; leave the bedding.”

A committee of black-uniformed Triskelions, one carrying a clipboard while O’Cannan carried the useless cloth slippers, escorted O’Cannan through corridors and up a lift and through another corridor to yet another painted door, this one clearly marked: “Lucky Bag.”

“Got a customer for you, 11.”

Number 11 lazed behind a long, steel-topped counter just like those used for issuing military uniforms at the beginning of recruit training.  He displayed the insouciance and indolence of a four-year corporal, with just a soupcon of the resentment of the girl at the courtesy booth at a piles-of-Chinese-junk-store who must interrupt her ‘phone calls to speak with a customer.

11 flipped a cigarette away.  “Oo’s this, then?”

“Don’t you know?  This is the notorious Brendan O’Cannan.  Everyone’s heard of him.  Kit him out, would you?”

“Right.  Okay…hmmm…here’s yer own stuff, yeah.”  11 pushed O’Cannan’s own traveling clothes, freshly cleaned, and his old canvas hiking bag across the counter to him.  “Now, then, you’ll need some more clothes.  You like blazers; goin’ for the Patrick McGoohan look?  Take a look at these…oh…this one’s got holes in it.  I missed that one.  Now take a look at these…

O’Cannan and his escort left the new wing of the installation and crossed a glassed-in flyover to a much older stone structure.  O’Cannan barefooted along carrying his bag, the clothes he had been wearing on his last delivery, Carry On, Jeeves, and of course the useless cotton slippers.

“Old castle and fort,” said his escort, indicating the old, joined together just anyhow parts of the building they were walking through.

The corridor floors here were uneven and all was darker.  For the first time O’Cannan saw other prisoners, all wearing apparently the clothes of their choice, no uniforms, going about their routines. 

“You’re an accomplished man, O’Cannan, you won’t be mopping floors, I’m thinking.”

“Well, I was in the Navy, eh; it wouldn’t be a new experience.”

“You were in the Navy?” asked the caregiver with the clipboard, flipping papers.  “Navy?  Is this the wrong file…no…oh, well, it’ll be sorted out later.  And here is your home for the next week or so.  We’ll get you your own cubby and more freedom later if you show us that you can play nice with our other children.”

O’Cannan entered a long, low room with rows of cubicles with four bunks each.  There were no hatch covers, only curtained openings, and the walls of the cubes reached neither to the overhead nor to the deck.

The only other person in the area was an elderly man in dungarees and smoking a cigarette.  He pushed a broom with the speed of a union hand, and eyed the arrivals with some curiosity but said nothing as he worked.

“Find an empty bunk anywhere, and welcome aboard,” said the minder with the clipboard, and she and the other warders left.

“Where is everyone?” O’Cannan asked the old man.

“They are doubtless in the library conspiring to escape; conspiracy has become their morning custom in the few days they have been here, and almost surely a futile endeavor.  If you will proceed along the passageway to your left, turn left at the next crossing, and carry on until the end, you will surely find the library.”

You can’t miss it.  Translation: you’ll be hard put not to find yourself in the dark on an unmarked road in the next county with the headlights showing only glowing eyes in the underbrush. 

“Fine.  Bunk anywhere?”

“You may indeed.  May I be of any assistance?  I’m Neville Travers, by the way.”

“My name’s O’Cannan, Brendan O’Cannan.”

“Pleased to meet you.  I’m a priest.”

“Oh, one of those black-hearted Anglican heretics, eh?”

“Lord, no, I’m a Catholic. A bad one. Born in Manchester, council school for a bit and then later Downside Abbey on a burse.  Diocesan studies, then a year in Rome, a year in Louvain…”

“But why…?”

“Oh, here I sweep the floors and make the beds in the Lord’s service.  Rather keeps me humble, you know.  Neither Triskelion nor most of the customers here are much concerned with the state of their souls or why Saint Jerome and Saint Augustine couldn’t get along or whether the Luminous Mysteries are not really heretical.  They’re not, of course.  Not that anyone prays the Rosary.  Not even in Rome.  And most assuredly not in Louvain.”

“So they made you a cleaner-upper.”

“‘Tis my limited service, but ‘tis one.’”

“Macbeth, Act II, I think, when Macduff exits to awaken the King.”

“So you know your Shakespeare!  Delightful, young man!”

“Nah, my teacher showed us the movie.  Over and over. And over.”

“Oh, well, quite good enough, rather.”

“But why are you here, Father?  Did you annoy a bishop?”

“Possibly, and I surely did annoy the diocesan contract accounting firm by writing the bishop letters asking unseemly questions about the figures regarding donations from the Walk for Colon Cancer and the Save the Rain Forest-Athon, among other numerous, numerical, and fiscal activities.  The diocesan accountant was the bishop’s brother-in-law, it seems, and was also somehow connected with a member of the cabinet.  I’m only speculating, of course, but thousands and thousands of pounds were disappearing, one charity at a time.  One day I was practicing my googly in the alley after morning Mass and the next day I was here.  So now I sweep floors and make beds and clean toilets.  It’s a much cleaner vocation than finance, really, more honorable and decent.  And Triskelion do let me offer Mass for the faithful daily; I hope you’ll come and increase my customary parish attendance by precisely 33.3333 percent.

“I will.  Oh, Father Travers, we Catholics are a sorry lot.”

“Indeed; we’re not to be trusted at all.”

“We should all be taken out and shot.”

“I used to read than in the London newspapers.”

“So you’re not with the others, planning to escape or overthrow Doctor No, or whatever it is?”

“No.  Tidying up keeps me out of trouble and keeps me humble.  I needed some humility.  And besides, I wasn’t asked to join.  Rather an exclusive club, you know.”  Father Travers winked.  “But go along and find them.  Perhaps you will be the one to get us all out of this.  Not to sound as if I were a stereotype, but I do miss cricket.  Cricket on a village green, cricket at Lords.  Holy cricket.”  He sighed.

“Cricket.  And the real crickets chirp when that yawn-inducer is played.  But I’m pleased to meet you, Father.  I’m going to change and find the others.  And shoes – I’m looking forward to wearing shoes again.”

Father Travers smiled.  “Just deposit your jammies in the laundry hamper.”

“Thanks.  And, Father, you needn’t make my bed.”

“My son, I wouldn’t dream of not doing so.  Would you deprive a poor man of his place in God’s ekonomia?”

A few minutes later O’Cannan, feeling much more the man in his own old slacks, old shirt, old blazer, and old shoes, real shoes, was alone in the centuries-old corridor, walking to the library, walking without an escort.

Left turn…or was that a right turn…nope, this was it.

The library doors were open to the corridor, and the collection, at a distance, at least, seemed pretty good, not unlike a nice little red-brick university in the era before glowing screens.  Individuals were reading here and there, or searching the stacks, but the assembly of six men and women somewhat proprietarily occupying the table with the best view over the scree and the ocean appeared to be the group of which Father Travers had spoken.

He approached, but no one welcomed him.

“And you are…?”  The clipped, neutering, interrogatory sentence was left unfinished by a young woman who, O’Cannan speculated, wore a red blazer in her previous life and who made existence pure Newark for anyone subordinate to her.

“Brendan O’Cannan.”

“Doctor O’Cannan, we are so pleased to meet you!” exclaimed the bald gentleman in the sweater-vest and half-rimmed spectacles, half rising from his seat.

“Oh, no, I’m high school graduate O’Cannan, eh.”

“You’re not Doctor O’Cannan, the ethno-eco-bio-engineer and visiting fellow of ethno-eco-bio-engineering at the Ali Bin D’Ouevre Institute in Beauville?”  asked the grey-haired lady in the Che Guevera pullover.

“No, I’m ‘umble Mr. O’Cannan, the delivery man.”

“Oh, ho, ho, you will have your little joke with us, Doctor O’Cannan.  Come and join us; I’ll make introductions all ‘round.  We’re all new here, it seems.”

O’Cannan sat at the table; red-blazer woman pointedly moved her chair away by a millimeter or two.

“I’ll begin with myself – I’m Doctor Calvus Vertex, astronomy, University of Trout Creek, occupying the Mr. and Mrs. Bertram Augustus Gloriosus Chair of Astral Studies.”

O’Cannan nodded slightly.

“This is Doctor Sordida Mulier, professor of chemistry and advisor to the educational commission of the government of the Channel Islands.”

O’Cannan nodded slightly and murmured “Ma’am.”

“Quite,” replied Doctor Mulier, as if she were saying “quiet.”

“To my right is Doctor Anicula Vetula, former chair of mathematics…”

“That is ‘Chair of Higher Mathematics,’ thank you, doctor.”  One could hear the capital letters.

“My apologies, esteemed colleague.  Chair of Higher Mathematics” – Dr. Vertex accented the ‘higher’ ever so slightly, microscopically south of anything that could be adjudged irony – “at Inflatio Composite University.”

O’Cannan nodded slightly and murmured “Ma’am.”

“Kindly do not call me ‘ma’am.’  I am Doctor Vetula.  You just don’t understand.  I worked so hard for my doctorate, and I would appreciate it ever so much if you would call me Doctor Vetula.”

“Doctor Vetula,” replied O’Cannan slowly, slowly, selecting his words cautiously, “I apologize for greeting you respectfully as a gentleman to a lady.  I will always regard you as a doctor of higher mathematics.”

“You Americans simply don’t understand how to comport yourselves in an academic setting.  At a recent conference in San Francisco…”

“Doctor Vetula, I further apologize if I have unintentionally led you to infer that I am an American.  I am in fact from Newfoundland.”

“Newfoundland – well, that’s a part of America.”

“Doctor Vetula, Newfoundland is, sure, a part of the North American continent, but although we like to think that I’s d’ bys, we are unfortunately associated politically with the Canadian regime, who too often do indeed act like the more unfortunate aspects of lower Canada, meaning our separated colonial brethren and sistren of the United States.”

“I’m sure I don’t understand your sub-cultural folkways and dialect.  And, anyway, I have had little time for indulging in – harrumph -- geography while developing my quondam theory of higher geometrical progression of albino waves with regard to bio-tabular mega-micro-mechanics as interpreted through a holistic feminist filter of self-actuated thoroughness.”

“Damme if I wasn’t reading that in The Sun just last week, Doc; it was right next to the picture of Miss Saskatchewan Tractor Pull.  Man, you shoulda seen the power takeoff on that little hottie..."

“I THINK WE MIGHT NOW CONTINUE WITH THE INTRODUCTIONS,” said Doctor Vertex in a suddenly powerful let’s-get-on-with-this voice.  “Doctor O’Cannan, we also share incarceration with Doctor Inanus Vercelli, mathematician and consultant to numerous Silicon Valley firms.”

Doctor Vertex was speaking rapidly now.

“Here we are pleased to have Doctor Contus Saltator, who has reached the height of the study of physics, and next to her is Doctor Tarde Progreti, famous for his publications in impedance studies. 

“Well, then, that’s our merry little band of intellectuals, as unfashionable as that term and that concept may be to certain disaffected right-wing no-nothings who would take us back to the Dark Ages of the 12^th Century. 

“And now to our new member, Doctor Brendan O’Cannan, the famous ethno-eco-bio-engineer whose radical and ground-breaking theories in ethno-eco-bio-engineering have pushed the envelope of the boundaries outside the box in that earth-shattering new mathematical discipline.  His ideas will be of immense and immeasurable and uncountable help as we struggle to free humankind of the shackles of Triskelion.”

“Um…thank you, Doctor Vertex, but two problems appear to obtain.  And before I begin, is everyone taking notes?  Okay, here goes: (1) Don’t you think Triskelion is monitoring everything we say? And (2) I’m really, truly, and honestly not a doctor of anything; I barely graduated from high school.  Honorable doctors, I am as I say, a deliveryman.”

“I understand,” whisper Doctor Vertex.  “You want to fly under the radar.  If Triskelion only knew…”

“I am quite sure Mister O’Cannan is no academic,” said Doctor Vetula.  “He shouldn’t even be here.  He can help that old fool who does such a poor job of cleaning up our dungeon.”

“I agree,” said Doctor Mulier.  “He shouldn’t be here.  He isn’t known.”

“Aw, I’m havin’ so much fun,” drawled O’Cannan.  “Think I’ll sit a spell and rest my feet.  Not used to shoes yet, eh.”  Turning to Doctor Vertex he asked “So what’s the plan for getting’ off this rock, eh?”

“It could be worse," said Doctor Progreti.  “He could be an English major.  Goodness knows we don’t want anyone of that sort around here.  Beowulf.  Romantics.  Blank verse.  How perfectly reactionary and, well, déclassé.”

Doctor Vertex, barely suppressing a grin, held his lapels in his practiced Churchillian fashion and intoned:  “Our plan is to shut down the Cloud of Electronic Unknowing, send radio and visual signals offshore free of interference, and thereby effect our escape from this fascist concentration camp.”

O’Cannan considered the six decidedly ineffective oddities at the table and said to himself: Escape? Bet me.

-30-

Kitsch, Kitsch, Kitsch

Perhaps the least artistic and most sentimental kitsch is an obsession with seeing kitsch in others. 


Reference: the current number of Catholic Phoenix

A Prisoner of Triskelion. Chapter 1: Intake

Spy yarns and escape stories fascinate me: The Great Escape, The Prisoner, Doctor No, and others.  I considered how an ordinary man, most unlike John Drake / Number 6 or James Bond, might keep his sense of self if he were imprisoned, and how he would attempt escape. 

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

A Prisoner of Triskelion

Chapter 1.  Intake

A man sat on a bench in a fluorescent-lit corridor of green-painted cinder blocks in the institutional night.  He did not know that he was in the night; existence only felt of night, and there were no windows to hint the drifting hours through shifting natural light, only painted steel doors here and there, the hum of the fluorescents, and the slight movement of mechanical air.

The man could not remember a time before sitting on the bench.  But yes, he could.  Images of airport waiting-areas flickered across his synapses.  Corridors.  A book stall where he rejected first vampires then spies then bosomy maidens on the covers of fat paperbacks.  A foam cup of coffee and a newspaper.  An airplane below and beyond, through a window.  Baggage handlers driving little trolleys.  He remembered.  A foam cup of coffee.  Was there something else? Name.  His name would come. 

These were not his clothes.  Some sort of scrub suit thing, and cloth sandals.

A man in a black uniform came along and wordlessly helped him to his feet.  Black uniform – with dandruff.  Black is not a good color because it shows dirt and stains and dandruff.  A room, a table, a chair, a plastic tray of plastic food. 

“Try to eat something; you need it.”  A voice neither cruel nor comforting, rather, a mechanical one.

The prisoner’s hands – for by now he realized he was a prisoner – moved clumsily.  Toast – he knew what toast was.  It tasted of nothing.  A foam cup of something.  Not hungry.

Walking slowly along a corridor.  Someone held his arm so he wouldn’t fall or get lost.  The cloth sandals slipped off.  The man in the black uniform picked up the sandals and smiled.  “The floor’s clean anyway.  I don’t know why they have these things.”  Corridors.  Fluorescents.  A lift. 

“Brush your teeth.”  He had been on a toilet.  Why were they watching him?

A door.  A key turning a lock.  A box of white fluorescent light. A bed.  In bed.  A white cotton blanket pulled over him.  Silence.  White fluorescent light.  Sleep.

At some point without time he awoke with a slight headache, but he knew who he was.  He remembered his childhood in Newfoundland, how much he didn’t like his French teacher in school, his time in the Navy, his job.  He remembered everything up until the hour he was sitting in an airport lounge in Copenhagen drinking a foam cup of coffee and reading an English-language newspaper.

The room was a box indeed, a high-security cell – he had seen pictures of them – associated with something called a supermax prison.  But what had that to do with him? 

The cell was slightly wedge-shaped, maybe ten feet long and as high, with a toilet half concealed, and thus not concealed at all, at the back.  He was sitting on a mattress on a bed of smooth concrete, and facing a ledge of smooth concrete with a sink of smooth concrete and a water tap of smooth steel operated by a button of smooth steel.  The bulkheads were smooth concrete and the deck was smooth concrete.

Why did he think in terms of bulkheads and decks and hatches?  His youthful service in the Navy years ago hadn’t influenced him all that much.  Maybe it was the fluorescent lights and painted walls and the smell of chemical disinfectant.  The milieu was like some office block in the bureaucratic wilderness of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, often known to recruits as Saint-Jean-sur-Bitch-ilieu.

A vague click.  The small square of glass set in the hatch was opaque, so he couldn’t see if someone were watching him.  A double knock, and the door opened.  A man in a black uniform brought in a plastic tray of plastic and foam dishes. Behind in the corridor was a cart with other trays, and another woman, a watchful woman, in a black uniform.

“Brekker, old man.  Enjoy it.  You’ll be wanted for an interview in an hour or so.  Oh – and there’s some aspirins next to yer coffee.  That stuff they use on ya gives you a header.  You’ll be wanted in an hour or so.”  The accent was vaguely Yorkshire with a hint of a failed Oxbridge fresher term in it.

The warder set the tray and a fresh set of scrubs next to the prisoner’s own shaving kit and left. 

His own shaving kit.  The prisoner searched it carefully.  His shaver, toothbrush, comb, a few coins, and other untidy odds-and-ends were still there, as well as the large-denomination notes secreted in the probably not-so-secret pockets.

Breakfast was bacon and eggs and potatoes, the bacon somewhat limp in the tradition of roadside cafes where the cookery is indifferent.  The toast was buttered with real butter, not yellow-stained grease, and the coffee was quite good.  Eating with a very soft plastic spoon was something of a challenge, but then, he wasn’t dining in the ambassadors’ room at the United Nations.

After a wash and a cat-bath from the sink he changed into the fresh scrubs, feeling quite vulnerable without any underwear, and was ready for the new day, whatever that might mean. 

The prisoner straightened his bedding, not out of any sort of neatness compulsion but because, after examining everything in the white-lit space, there was nothing else to do.  He wished he’d tucked a paperback into his shaving kit.

After a time which the prisoner had no way of measuring, another double-knock signaled a change and some time out of the white concrete box.

“You’re up for your intake interview,” said the black-clad warder.  A curious little three-armed device in brass adorned his collar.

After a few metres the cloth slippers had made their own break for freedom.  The prisoner paused to pick them up and carry them.  The floor was very clean.  “I dunno what they even bother with them things,” observed the warder.

The prisoner tried to estimate distances and count doors and, on the lift, count floors, but he was unaccountably weak and mentally vague.  He was brought to a white-painted metal door free of names or numbers.  The warder knocked and entered.

The office was clearly an outer one, an interview room with little more than a desk with two chairs facing each other.  The walls were paneled wood, though, and an incandescent lamp on an etagere somewhat humanized the room.

Behind the desk sat a man with the sturdy, no-foolishness-now look of a chief petty officer or sergeant-major.  On the table before him was a file folder with a few typed papers.

“Have a seat, me lad,” said the man, who nodded a dismissal to the warder.

 Was the accent Irish, perhaps, modified by military service in England or America?

“Let me begin this unpleasant interview by giving you the worst possible news in the worst possible way: you have been sentenced to death…easy, now.”

Existence seemed to fade out of the prisoner in a nothingness of white light.  Voices.  Hands holding him up, firmly but without cruelty.  Had he fainted?

“Don’t be embarrassed; if I was to get that news I’d probably turn a little green meself.  Here drink this…”

Brandy?  The prisoner drank whatever it was.  From a foam cup.  He was alive.  The drink had stung his throat and made him gasp for two breaths.

The interviewer’s eyes were very, very blue, the blue of a Norse captain considering whether to let his prisoner live was in his best interest.

“Now, then, back to business.  No one you’ve ever known will ever learn what happened to you.  Your death will be very quick and probably painless – clearly I haven’t taken that trip meself – and your body will be ground almost into powder and disposed of quietly in the ocean.  Your future, lad, is fish sticks.

“Now, then, it gets better.  Your death sentence’s not to be carried out unless you make it happen.  It’s your choice.”

“But…but there must be some mistake…”

“Oh, Brendan, me lad…” 

Brendan.  His name was Brendan.  Brendan O’Cannan. Right.

“Oh, Brendan, me lad, and you a readin’ man – Agatha Christie, Wodehouse, the Romantic poets, all them flamin’ English writers – I was expectin’ you of all people to come up with something more original.”  The interviewer almost smiled.

“I’m not trying to be original; I’m trying to stay alive and figure all this out, eh.”

“Now, then, you’ll stay alive, probably for a good long time, but you’ll never know why you’re here.  Neither will I.  It’s not important.”

“Well it’s important to me.”

“Yes, but you’re not important at all.”

“I’m important to me, eh.”

“Then you’ll want to stay alive.  Now back to business.  You now belong to Triskelion.  I’m Triskelion.  This little rock of an island is Triskelion.  Your world is Triskelion. 

“You’re important only as a source of income for Triskelion.  We deal in humans.  We keep humans.  We’re paid to do that.  Some government, some institution, maybe your employer, maybe some very rich individual has found your continued existence inconvenient.  They’re paying us to keep you, well, convenient.  The world’s a little kinder this century; a few decades ago and you’d have been shot or hanged or starved for being unfashionable.  Tyrants are a little softer these days; they let people like you live.  At least for a while.”

“But I haven’t done anything.”

“I don’t know why you’re here, only that you’re here.  I signed a receipt for you, and that’s it.  I accept that you don’t know why you’re here; I certainly don’t know, don’t need to know, and will never know.”

“There’s nothing I can tell you.”

"Oh, I’m not asking.  All I need to know about you is here in your file.  This little morning exercise is to tell you about this island and the rules of our little family.  Quite a few of you inconvenients here.  You’ll find no Russians or Chinese, though.  Their governments play by the rules of the 20^th century.”

“Where am I, then?”

“You’re in an island.  I won’t tell you where, but you can probably work it out by checking out a book on basic astronomy and looking at the sky.  But it’ll do you no good; you’re not leaving. 

“Bet me.”

“Don’t think about it, me lad.  Triskelion is pretty patient with his children in most ways, but like Kronos he’ll eat you if you try to escape.

“Here’s the plan to begin with: you’ll spend three days in that little closet, and we’ll be lookin’ at you.  Like this morning when you were checking the sheets for labels, and the plumbing, looking to see if there were manufacturers’ names, and in what languages.  Maybe that would give you a clue as to where you are.  But we’re careful about that sort of thing.  And we’ll be looking at you, seeing how crazy you might or might not be.

“If you’re stable, we’ll move you to a ward, a dormitory, like, to see how you get on with folks.  That’s maybe a week.  Then we’ll find you a nice room of your own, unless you want a roommate, and your file indicates you prefer solitude.  When you’re all settled in, you’ll pretty much have the run of the island – but you won’t escape.  If you try, we’ll probably have to go ahead and give you the death.

“And if I’m not stable – by Triskelion’s norms?”

“Then you’ll stay in that little room and you can babble to the ceiling for the rest of your life; I don’t care.

“But I reckon you ought to settle in and enjoy life.  It’s not so bad here – library, movies once in a while.  You’ll find no books and see no movies more recent than fifty years ago.  Newspapers, the wireless, the telly, the ‘net – no longer a part of your life.  You don’t need to know what’s happening out there now and Triskelion doesn’t want you knowing.  And it’ll do you no good to know.” 

“But I don’t know anything.  I have no secrets.  I can’t tell you anything.”

“We don’t need anything from you.  I’m here to tell you things, things that will keep you alive, if you want to be alive, and maybe you don’t, and that’s okay too.  But I’d rather you be alive, because we’re reimbursed for each team member on a monthly basis.  You know, lad, if we have to fulfill your death sentence, we’d wait until the second or third day of the next month.  It’s a month’s more income, you see.  So, hey, choose life.

“Notice the file folders, the typewriter, the old rotary telephone.  Minimal technology, barely out of the 19^th century inside the island.  But outside, this community is enveloped in an electronic cloud of unknowing – you’re a Catholic; thought you’d like the allusion.  I can’t hear it myself, but some people say there’s a perpetual hum from the Cloud.  Radios, the telly, computers – nothing like that’ll work here.  No information comes in except on paper, and no information goes out except on paper, and that’s kept to a coded minimum written in rapidly-deteriorating gel ink on flimsy paper that crumples into powder if someone even gives it a dirty look.

“We once had a fellow who built a radio receiver mostly from an electric shaver.  Remarkable what’s goes into an electric shaver.  Anyway, when he gave it a go the thing blew up in his hands.  He still has his hands, by the effin’ way, but they’re not pretty.  The Cloud picked up the first little signal and immediately fed it back, amplified, into the batteries, and, well, POOF!”

“Sounds like incarceration got him into a lather.”

 “Oh, well put, lad!  You’re fitting in already.  But go ahead and use your electric shaver; you’ll come to no harm unless you try to rebuild it as a boat or an aeroplane.

“Now back to business.  Triskelion have plenty of inexpensive amusements for you – a nice library, movies one night a week, fishing tackle, a little gardening on the few bits of arable ground, musical instruments, records and record players – the Cloud won’t let anything magnetic or digital work.  We even have our own little newspaper.”

“Printed in disappearing ink on disappearing paper?”

“Certainly.  But don’t disapprove; after all, isn’t the ephemeral the very core of everything Steve Jobs ever did?

“We unlock the door to your room at 0600, and breakfast is in the mess hall at 0700.  You are free to roam around the buildings and anywhere on the island except for restricted areas, and those are posted and locked.  We won’t watch you much once you’re out of isolation because, after all, except as a warm-body source of income, you’re just not important.  And, really, you’re not all that capable.  If you were a super spy or something like that, dangerous and skilled, you wouldn’t be here.  We tuck you in all nighty-night and cosy at 2100 hours.

“No signaling with flashlights or mirrors or handkerchiefs, please; we’ll break your hands for that sort of thing and then lock you down in a hole…I mean, therapy…so dark and so deep you’ll think you’re in Hell.  We’ll keep you there until what’s left of you promises to play nice.  And don’t look for rescue; this island is not some sort of Doctor No experience; it is a homeland territory of – well, you’ll figure it out.  Our host nation lists this island as a military no-go zone, so while the Russians and the Yanks occasionally snoop from trawlers and submarines because Russians and Yanks are preternaturally nosy, all they can do is look at you from a distance.  The Cloud and our own careful avoidance of technology mean they can’t pick up any signals because there are no signals.  The antennae on the roof are dummies there to give the snoops the fits about some sort of superior technology.   But mostly the nations think this island is a military prison and don’t bother with it.

“We have men and women, both as clients and as minders, and we’re very progressive about romance.  We also have some troublesome priests on the rock so you can go to Mass like a good, obedient Catholic and pray for the effin’ soul of Triskelion.”

“Triskelion needs praying for.”

“No doubt, me lad, no doubt.

“You patients have names; we, oh, client specialists have numbers.  You may address a caregiver by his or her number if you know it; otherwise 'sir' and 'ma’am' are fine.  No doubt your mother – let’s see – died four years ago – thought you special.  That doesn’t mean anything, so did mine.  You get to keep your specialness; Triskelion keeps itself to itself behind another Cloud, the Cloud of numbers.  Useful things, numbers. 

“And now you’re going back to your cozy little room for the next few days.  Any questions?”

“Lots, but I don’t suppose you’d tell, eh.”

“Oh, yes, I would.  We’ve got all the time in the world.  Eh.”

O’Cannan smiled and rose.  “Maybe another time.”

 A warder escorted him back along the corridor.  They paused briefly so that O’Cannan could take off the cloth slippers and carry them as he barefooted along.  The slippers really were useless.

 Back in his white-lit, white-painted hole, O’Cannan saw that Wodehouse’s Carry On, Jeeves was on the shelf-table.  He picked it up – it was his own worn and much-marked copy from his own flat.

“Lunch in an hour or so,” said the warder as she locked the door.

Death of an Ikonic Visionary (or is that Visionary Ikon?)

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Death of a Visionary

The death of a visionary is often an occasion for labeling the man an ikon, as if he were a religious image painted on a board.  One longs for accuracy in eulogies.  But how can one speak of such a visionary ikon (or is that an ikonic visionary?) without resorting to florid language.  Let us gush veritable gallons of effusion in celebrating how he touched our lives and changed our world forever.

With hagiographic hyperbole and muddled metaphors let us remember a truly visionary man, a man on the cutting edge of technology, a man ahead of his time,  a man who transformed communications forever, a man whose invention made a cosmic leap (“cosmic leap” combines hyperbole and a tired metaphor in a two-fer) in how people saw the world around them, and how they wrote about it.

This man’s invention spawned new industries, and not only made easier the transmission of traditional cultures from one generation to the next, but in a sense created its own cultures.

This man, before he was thirty years old, created a technology that launched a reformation in the economy and even in literature and art.  His new way of manipulating language and culture through the production of useful objects became in itself its own object of near-adoration, making technology and its physical manifestations as aesthetically pleasing as they are utilitarian.

Generations of tinkerers will surely display the great man’s image as a sort of technology ikon in their garage laboratories, and classroom posters of him will inspire generations of children to work hard so they can be just like him.

Before this man, all was darkness and superstition; after him, a new enlightenment.

Yes, gentlepersons all, let us hold in our hearts forever the memory of Henry Mill, who patented the typewriter in 1714.

 -30-

"A Barrow Piled With Books"

Over the way is a barrow piled with books. A lean young man picks them over eagerly. A working lad: a hungry-looking young man. He counts out six pennies and buys a book. I am curious. I edge up and look. Milton's Paradise Lost! And he so hungry; and lucky, too, in the long run! A thing you always remember happily is the way you starved yourself for books.

 - A Manchester street scene in H. V. Morton's The Call of England, 1936

Ashes to Bambi and Dust to Rocky the Flying Squirrel

Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Ashes to Bambi and Dust to Rocky the Flying Squirrel

“Do we all holy rites. / Let there be sung ‘Non Nobis’ and ‘Te Deum.’ / The dead with charity enclosed in clay.”  -- Shakespeare, Henry V, IV.viii.128-130

 A couple of hands in Alabama will, for $850, load the ashes of your loved one into shotgun, rifle, or pistol rounds for that final hunt.  The company is called Holy Smoke, and the owners, Clem and Thad, insist that Holy Smoke is a “reverent business.”

Oh, yeah.  When you think of reverence with regard to the passing of a loved one, you just naturally think of a funeral establishment called Holy Smoke.

In Virgilius’ The Aeneid, that masterwork of Augustan propaganda, funereal cremation is part of several Mediterranean pagan cultures.  When Aeneas abandons Queen Dido after a sure-I’ll-respect-you-in-the-morning moment during a hunt (a hunt perhaps using arrows made from dead people), she flings herself onto her own funeral pyre, possibly singing “C’mon, Baby, Light my Fire.”

In The Aeneid, cremation followed by the burial of the remaining bones and ashes is so essential to the worship of the gods (we now call them film stars) that the soul of someone who is not burned and buried properly cannot be ferried by Charon across the Neches to Louisiana. 

Along the eastern short of the Inland Sea the Philistines sacrificed their first-born to Moloch by throwing them, alive, into a fire, no doubt explaining to the child that this was a mother’s right to choose the autonomy of her own body.

In Nordic paganism kings and war leaders were honored to have their bodies, weapons, grave goods, a wife or two, and a dog piled onto their favorite warship with lots of kindling, and pushed out to sea in flames.  Too bad about the poor dog.

In an episode of the television series Alice Flo says that she wants to be cremated and her ashes scattered over Robert Redford. 

Christianity has historically preferred inhumation, possibly as a reaction to pagan usages, but has permitted cremation on occasions of mass deaths because of plagues, hurricanes, earthquakes, war, or Governor Chris Christie tripping and falling from a podium onto his audience.  Because of land-use issues and population density, Christianity is now more open to cremation.

One of the finest men I ever knew left instructions for his daughter, a pilot, to scatter his ashes at coordinates that were never to be revealed to anyone else.  That’s neat. 

On the occasion of a lengthy visitation before the funeral of a boyhood pal I sat myself down in a pew and wondered idly why there was a cardboard box in the pew along with a Bible and a box of Kleenex.  I read the label on the box – inside was all that remained of the boyhood pal.

And on yet another occasion of visitation I clumsily bumped against a table and very nearly dumped the ashes of another honored friend onto the floor.  Leave it to me to make a complete ash of myself on solemn occasions.

And they were indeed solemn occasions, with loving families making genuinely reverent decisions.

But having Grandma or Grandpa shot from guns, like the childhood breakfast cereal advertised on television in the 1950s?

What is the culinary convention of using powdered relatives for hunting?  Lots of folks enjoy sausage made from pork, venison, and spices, but will they like sausage made from pork, venison, and Grandpa? 

Just askin’.

Will Catholics have ol’ Dad molded into Rosary beads?  This would be one way for the survivors to forget ol’ Dad, just as they have forgotten the Rosary.

Fishermen could have a problem: do they skip the cremation part and have Uncle Clem cut up into bait? 

Reverently, of course.

Our masters, the Chinese Communists, have been recycling dead humans for years, and will have a healthy prisoner shot to specification for an organ transplant for the world’s wealthy.

But the prisoner is recycled reverently.

As for the less wealthy among us, we can only wonder if that nice leather belt stamped “Made in China” was made by Prisoner Chang or of Prisoner Chang.

Reverently, no doubt.

How about that final hymn:  “Abide with (POW!) me; fast falls (KA-BLAM!) the eventide; / the darkness (KA-BLOOEY!) deepens; Lord, with me abide.”

A toxicologist, according to a USA Today article, says that hunting with “ashes would pose less of a problem than any lead pellets historically used.”  That would certainly help the priest or minister with the eulogy: “Ol’ Thad – whatever else we can say about him, he was less of a problem than lead pellets.”

Break out the sniffle-tissues.  But then from what – or from whom – are the sniffle-tissues made?  Maybe from human tissue?  Hmmmmmmmm?

Or perhaps from the tattered, ragged remnants of a collapsing civilization.

-30-

TeleCheck and Tractor Supply Company -- Not Professional

I have shopped at The Tractor Supply Company in Beaumont for years.  If you can avoid the junkier made-in-China stuff, TSC features some good products at good prices.  However, I'm going to avoid the Beaumont Tractor Supply Company altogether in the near future until they become more professional, and will stay away from any other business entangled with TeleCheck.

On Tuesday I bought some pet food and a hose repair kit (made in China, to replace the even worse made-in-China connections on a made-in-China hose not even a year old) at the Tractor Supply in Beaumont, and my check was refused.  I feared that perhaps my checking account had been compromised and so paid in cash and drove straight to my bank.

In the event, my account was fine; the problem lay with TeleCheck and with Beaumont's Tractor Supply for retaining TeleCheck's services. 

The young person at the cash register was professional, and I do not fault her at all; she has been let down by an employer whose concept of customer service is a presumption of guilt.  Having one's check refused in front of several employees and customers is embarrassing.

I wrote TSC corporate a polite but firm letter in the matter.  In addition to not patronizing Tractor Supply Company, I'm going to avoid shopping at any store in collusion with TeleCheck, even though I almost always pay cash.