A Moment, Frozen

Hob: “Hail to the media industrial complex. A heavenly body that triumphed in the wake of ‘the rapture.’ Talkin’ heads ablaze with commentary, leaking toxic sludge from every orifice of their bloated and protuberant skulls, consigning each electromagnetic wavelength to become fetid with the stench of their verbal diarrhea. At least that’s how I saw it.

Hob took a long pause. Enough to gulp down the rest of his beer and stare off into an empty chasm of universal enigma. Jesse only gawked back, awed by the parable she was just assaulted with.

Hob: “And this is just a second hand telling. I’m surprised you didn’t get a chance to catch it live yourself. It seems like you’re the first one I’ve told that hasn’t heard it from another source by now.”

Jesse: “I’m old school. I’ve purposefully blocked the media direct feed. It was givin’ me a fuckin headache.”

Hob: “How’d you even do something like that. That channel’s firmware ain’t it? I mean, they’re the ones who sell those chips for fuck sake.”

Jesse: “You ain’t wrong. I got this one on the DL, so I don’t go around flaunting this feature or anything. But it was worth every fuckin’ cent I paid for this bad boy.”

Hob: “Can’t fault ya for wanting some peace and quiet. Anyway, do ya want me to continue with this menagerie of misery and woe or not!?”

Jesse: “Please continue, oh great and wonderful sahib of sahibs.”

Hob: “So as I was saying, bandwidth, on countless media feed channels, is being filled more quickly than a turducken on Thanksgiving. And I’m struggling to remember why I can’t place the day when all of this happened. I keep hearing these two talk about these horrific atrocities, stuff I think I would recall, but for the life of me, I can’t put a finger a single iota of what they were saying.”

Jesse: “Maybe I could give you a hint: ‘Dude, what the fuck!’

Hob: “Anyway, so I keep listenin’ and they keep spoutin’ really just like the talking heads they were defaming a moment earlier. Hypocritical Cretans. But, hey, aren’t we all. And they stop dead in the middle of their glib, narcissistic mental masturbation and begin staring off into space, gaping maws and all. This brought my attention back to reality and I noticed the entire bar had gone silent. Everyone in the bar had this dull stare on their expressionless faces. This shit was starting to freak me out. Either they had all drugged themselves simultaneously and I was missing out on the greatest high of my banal, quotidian existence or I just missed something mui importante."

Jesse: “No shit, Sherlock.”

Hob: “You’re really not making this easy on me.”

Jesse: “When did I say that I was tryin’ to do that.”

Hob: “Fuck you. Fucking asshole. Why am I even bothering to tell this to you? It’s not like you even give a shit.”

Jesse: “Jees. I’m sorry ok. I was just havin’ a bit of fun. Sensitive lot are we. Ok, continue my Homeric, Virgilic, Ciceroic friend.”

Hob: “Now that’s what I like to hear. So they were all dead eying me so to speak. All 12 of ‘em. Like zombies. And I looked back at the bartender and he looked like he was about to fall over himself. And then back at the couple of gabbers. Then just as I was about to leave the bar to get help, everyone snapped back to life, instantaneously and ebulliently. It was almost as if time had stopped and I was left to descry that infinitesimal instance. That piece of history. Everything was laid out on the examiner’s table. I had all of the time in the world and none of it. It’s actually kind of funny, because part of me misses it. Being in that moment with everyone and no one. It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. Ok, we’re back."

Jesse: “Says you.”

Hob: “….So I ask the bartender if he just saw that and he gives me a look like I’m fuckin’ nuts, so I drop it. I head for bed, trying to process what had just occurred, when this real fuckin’ nutcase stumbles out of the room next to mine. The garb he has on could only be described as such because it was a potpourri of hand towels and doylies and dish rags and mop heads sewn together. It was like a quilt of discarded textiles. And he was hunched with a scraggly beard, unkempt hair, and finger and toe nails long enough to be mistaken for letter openers. I assumed that he was put up by some kind stranger who felt sorry for him. But as I was actuating the lock on my door, he turned his grizzled head towards me and trepidatiously sang: ‘Better watch out, better not cry, better not pout, I’m tellin’ you why….’ Then he paused and blankly stared into my soul. Man, that fuckin freaked me out. Another moment frozen in time, but this couldn’t end fast enough. Like a cold shower on Christmas. A chill crawled down my spine. One dorsal root ganglion to the next."

Jesse: “Fuck dude. Yeah, me too. I could feel that shit in my bones and I wasn’t even there. Just the way you said it.”

Hob struggled to regain his composure. He couldn’t feel his legs anymore. His vision went blurry and began to fade. But just then, a shot of adrenaline went coursing through his bloodstream. His had baroreceptors counteracted his dangerously low blood pressure. A stimulant from Mother Nature.

Hob: “Woo, shit. Thought I was about to lose it there for second. Ok, I’m good. So I don’t get a lick of sleep…. That dude creeped me out way too much. I’m sure the fact that there’s at least one star constantly beaming down doesn’t help matters much. My circadian rhythm must’ve been messed up somethin’ awful.

“So our story continues. I wake up, sun still menacingly bearing through my treated window, and I get a call from the front desk. They tell me that my son, three years old, just passed away. My first thought, and I still can’t believe this was my first thought, but it was a ponderation as to why my family hadn’t let me know directly. My feed was working, at least I thought it at the time…”

Jesse: “So what’d ya think happened?”

Hob: “I’m not so sure. Maybe my link to the emergency broadcast feed had been severed. Or maybe I was the butt of a cruel practical joke. I doubt it though.”

Jesse: “No, I mean TO YOUR SON!”

Hob: “Oh right… man that still haunts me today. Why did I care that much about how the news was broken to me? It was almost as if the grief wasn’t even real yet, you know? As if the world stood still, time an enigma far more complicated, effervescent, and fleeting… I don’t know where I’m going with this, but it was like my head was dunked into the slurry of time. Everything got blurry. Then vertigo. I didn’t really know how much time had passed since the concierge had broken the news, but I knew then, as I know now that I would never be happy again.”

End Part 2

Depression at its Worst:

I’m not sure if people really understand what depression is. It’s a sensation I would not wish for anyone to endure. And, for many, including myself, we don’t know that it’s occurring at the time. We see it as our reality. Truth. The lenses we see the world through, smudged with the stink and filth of sadness, guilt, and shame. The different species of slime and protozoa, representing the sundry forms this mental illness can take. Anxious, aggrieved, guilt ridden, immobile, incapacitated, a sadness so unshakable that it grinds your innards to a pulp. The outside feels like a tiny speck, so small and insignificant, so far away it makes the Earth look huge on a universal spectrum. Hyperbole and sarcasm are the only things that give you comfort, eroding your aching bones into ash and dust. 

While some people are preprogrammed or wired for it from birth, others come to experience it from trauma, heartbreak, sickness, life’s normal stresses brewing a bubbling cauldron of despair that unleash themselves like pandora’s box on the unsuspecting denizens of the Proto-Greco-Roman civilization. Shear melodrama, right folks? Well… no. You may think that, but no. I just may make it sound that way. Depression through the eyes of the depressed.

I will say now that I was one of the lucky ones. I responded to treatment, somewhat. I was there and came back. I saw the Icaran light and did not melt. But what of it. Am I stronger for it. Probably not. It’s just something that happened; Another struggle like every other person on this Earth goes through. Life is not lived without it. Now, it is on me to keep my head above water, to stay afloat like a buoy with no shore in sight. But I believe I can do it, because so many other people have. Group Therapy is wonderful like that. The ill helping the ill. I dedicate this to them, those that struggled with me. And not just the ones that were pained themselves, but those of you that chose to support me without abandon. I just want to say I appreciate it and I will live the rest of my life knowing I have that support at my back and strength to go on. Hyperbole forever!

The Legend of Gyorko Mergatroyd

Pilot: The Legend of Gyorko Mergatroyd

The Tanker Station is as remote as it gets. Not because of its physical distance to notable destinations, but because of its seeming improbability to exist.  Jamie Jameson, the sole proprietor and manager, receives business on a spasmodic basis in biochemical and mechanochemical varieties. She fills tanks utilizing an automated dark matter dispersion system, which has required minimal maintenance over the past 56 years, The Tanker Station’s Inaugural year. But the financial foundation of the corporation is rock solid. The only other business within 3 light years is a small eatery, renting the extra space unused by Jameson’s stark apparati.  Regular shipping routes cross the exponential abyss of interstellar space, intersecting at this backwater fuel depot.

This station, far from as humble as its name assumes, is a statistical anomaly. Ensconced on an outer planetoid in an abandoned solar system, devoid of atmosphere and usable indigenous materials, its location provides no favors for extraterrestrial commerce. Yet, through modest monetary patronage, the business plods along a seemingly invisible path.

The tavern is currently inhabited by Jessylnick Pitsnoggle and Hoboken Jahusafet, who respond to the surnames of Jesse and Hob, along with Ms. Jameson, Durnemantum Humbleton, a “native outworlder,” and Selvenery Gestalt, a restless traveler, whose passion lies in exploring remote, desolate locales. Selly and Hum sit at the bar, both of whom are currently nursing Terran based booze. Jamie is leaning against the rail, back to her clientele. And Jesse and Hob are situated in the far corner, conversing about this and that.

Hob: “Love, like any other emotion, is far from static. It evolves with the person, with their environment. We strive to explain everything so simply. The science of genetics lords its presence over behavioral determinism, as a child contemplating and manipulating the power of ‘no.’ No scientific discipline or otherwise can fully explain any one metaphysical concept, especially one as convoluted, misinterpreted, and effervescent as love itself, because multiversal truths are hardly definable as recognizable patters. The quintessential truth of existence is existence. Truths explicating themselves through their own veracity are our own attempt to understand for the sake of understanding something. The identification of recognizable patterns in a natural setting (i.e. the discrimination of poisonous flora and fauna, the causal flow of herd migration, the relationship between seed and plant, etc.) ….”

Jesse: “Hey everybody, we’ve got ourselves a self-loathing philosophe over here.”

Hob: “Yeah, you’ve heard this all before. Metaphysical bullshit, attempting to debunk the physical truths of our reality, when in fact, the reality, of which we currently reside, works perfectly well without logical supposition and syllogism to prove its presence. We are here. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be hearin’ these words comin’ out of my mouth, contemplating the possibility, or lack thereof, of your possible non-existence.  But getting back to that first part, about love, it’s an interesting feeling, not because of its Platonic relationship with the human spirit or because of its place in a meaningful life, but because everyone wants it. Scratch that… I don’t want to make generalities here… most people crave it, even when they believe they have it. Some look to others to provide this for them, while others are perfectly content to love themselves in a contemplative or narcissistic manner. And that’s not supposed to be deep or anything, but it’s supposed to feel real. You see, I have this thing against reality naysayers, because they can never be proven wrong. For every theory out there that attempts to describe the theory of everything, there’s a theory out there that attempts to describe the theory of nothing. What if the verifiable universe is a simulation?”

Jesse: “You know what? It’s Friday. Friday the 13^th Terran time. How the fuck did I know that? Why do I care? I can’t stop hearing about it from my media feed. Every talking head has to have their opinion. A piece of the action, so that more people will tune in to hear them spout whatever bullshit flies into their head. Everyone, ‘or everyone that matters so to speak,’ has access to every factotum the human race has ever conjured up or wished into existence. Thanks to our good old memory augmentation surgeries, now mandated on every normal planet in the system. But the real thinkers are the ones that can do something with it. You know.”

Hob: “Yeah, I guess. Paraskevidekatriaphobia. You wouldn’t expect such a superstitious concept to stay buried in the recesses of societal consciousness for as long as it has. Then again, you wouldn’t expect capital punishment in its dubious and sundry forms to exist as a pecuniary measure for crimes of any severity in today’s Interplanetary Judicial Consortium (IJC). But some habits die hard. It all comes down to marketing I guess, and ethics. But mostly marketing and monetary suppuration, the discharge of the fatty corpuscle that is the Space Trade Cooperative. I wish we enlightened Homo sapien sapiens could have used history’s supplication to improve our governmental infrastructure to avoid such conflicts of interest. But human nature is a tough nut to crack. One day the powerful may take responsibility for those who emboldened them with their status. I’m afraid that day is far off, my friend.”

Jesse: “Don’t you work for the STC?”

Hob: “I have, but I’m on leave for obvious reasons. Why? Do you?”

Jesse: “Yeah. I’ve been haulin’ their shit for years now. It feels like forever since I’ve had the chance to see the wife and kids. Almost as if I don’t exist to them. At least if the paychecks keep rollin’ in, I’m good for something.”

Hob: “It feels like that’s the only attitude that you can take these days without losing your mind. I tell ya, the time they make you take away from you family will make any family man weak in the knees. I wish I could say that’s the reason I took off, but then I’d be lyin’.”

Jesse: “So why did you? Take off, I mean.”

Hob: “Well now, didn’t I say that was obvious? You saw through my ruse right quick. Alright, let me regale you with a story so obscenely grotesque, macabre, and morbid it’ll make the Holocaust look like children’s fairy tale.”

Jesse: “I’m all ears, eyes, noses, and throats.”

The Legend of Gyorko Mergatroyd

Hob: “Catchy title, huh? Came up with it just now. You like? Eh, whaddo I care? Alright, so some backstory on this bad son of a bitch. The name Mergatroyd just sounds evil dudn’ it? I mean, really evil. Like killing fawns, puppies, panda cubs, and chicklets with a hammer evil. Just born to be that way I guess. I was making a delivery to this SOB’s home planet, Kepler PH1 (surname: Phoenix). It’s circumbinary status has resulted in a never ending light cycle that must mess people up something awful. Anyway, I was waylaid there after a systemic malfunction of my boat’s life support machinery. The mechanic in the STC ‘BHMO’ (Boat Health maintenance organization) relayed to me the severity of the damage. He had discovered that alloy wiring - I can’t believe they still use that shit… motherfucking cheap bastards… control the means of production and the process of dissemination and you’ve got yourself a pretty sweet monopoly going on – the circuitry tasked with the maintenance of carbon dioxide concentration and filtration had melted. Apparently, this system, with little modification, was used on board the space shuttle missions at the turn of the 21^st century. What the fuck is it doing on board my boat? That enough would make you think twice about working for this company further. But I felt I had a duty to the company, the customer, and myself to promptly and efficiently deliver packages of vital importance to burgeoning pioneer communities on outworlds, a category which this hell whole fit all too well. And I kid you not; I was delivering air recycling and filtration units. Can’t get much more important than that."

Jesse: “Real humble. I suppose you figure yourself a real man of the people.”

Hob stared at her coolly.

Hob: “So I ask the mechanic how long he was gonna need to fix ‘er up. And he tells me a few days. I begin to ponder what the fuck I’m gonna keep myself busy with for the next 72 Terran Hours (THs). He tells me about this bar I could stay at about 200 kilometers magnetic west here. A community unit was stopping by here in a few and would get me to the tavern in no more than two THs. So I gather up my stuff and head off on this journey, a journey that never seemed to end because of Phoenix’s strange light cycle, an endless day. Draining just thinking about it.

“So I get there, and there’s this mean lookin’ dude tending the bar. 6’5”, 250. Solid. Not a guy you want to fuck with. And I come up to the bar and I ask for the rail since I was fuckin’ broke. He brings me back something the likes of Vonnegut or Palahniuk couldn’t have even dreamed of: smoldering detritus, stinking of horseshit, rat piss, and a hooker’s armpit. Supposedly it was beer. Bull fuckin’ shit. But what the fuck could I do with the Hulk serving me. So I went sober that night. And man could I have used a drink, cause my fucking bed was just barely this side of a stone slab. Ahh well… what can ya fuckin’ do when you’re at truck stop in the middle of fuckin’ nowhere. Ain’t that right Jameson!!!

Jameson: “Ehh, go fuck yourself.”

Hob: “Will do. Thanks for the hospitality. So as I was saying, the tavern was just a fuckin’ pit, but I digress. So in the bar I overhear these two drivers, a guy and a gal gabbin’, much like we’re up to at the moment, and they’re discussing the most recent events of the day. This guy Gyorko, a monster if there ever was one, was recently indicted for planetocide. D’ya hear me!!!! PLAN-ET-O-CIDE!! They made up a fuckin’ word for this dude’s crime, because no one had ever done something like this before. And here’s the kicker. No one knows why he did it. People still don’t know. But to me the more interesting aspect of this unimaginable tragedy was how the motherfuckin’ monster went about perpetrating it.

“So I keep listening and they say that he obtained a ginormous carbon monoxide bomb. This bomb, composed of multiple tons of heavily compressed CO stabilized by a carbon fiber based magnetic field, when introduced to a metal ore saturated, mineral rich planet core at extraordinary pressure inflows, readily acts as a reducing agent, violently soaking up oxygen like an angry sponge. This reaction increases pressure within the core as well as charges the ferric and nickel alloys. This comorbidly acts to induce vicious natural disasters at the planet’s surface including earthquakes, magnetic storms, volcanic eruptions, etc… you know Armageddon shit. On top of all of this, communication with extraterrestrial sources becomes impossible and electronics cease to function, due to the geosphere’s varying electromagnetic field, disallowing any calls for help or any attempts to counter. Mass hysteria ensues… game over man.”

Jesse: “So you’re tellin’ me that one bomb destroyed an entire fuckin’ planet and nobody did anything to stop it!?!? You’ve got to be motherfuckin’ kiddin’!?!? Do YOU hear MEEE?!?! That’s impossible! No way the STC or IJC stands by and does nothin’!!! No Fuckin’ Way!!!”

Hob blankly stared back, took a swig, and continued…

Hob: “And they continue on and on about the federation’s media coverage of the disaster, powerless to stop such an out of control force of nature. The electrofulgurations were so powerful that satellites in geosynchronous orbit were deteriorating and falling right out of the sky. It was also reported that terra-formed ozone was readily being stripped from the planet’s troposphere by solar winds, providing windows for cosmic radiation to cook the planets inhabitants. Images were captured from a lunar station orbiting the doomed planetoid, now being dubbed ‘Hell IRL.’ The planet’s surface had become so inundated with volcanic activity that a continental plate had been ripped in half allowing for pyroclastic flows to shoot more than 100 km into the air. One close up showed a city being lifted into the air, detached from its earthly foundation caused by converging cataclysmic seismic rift valleys. Other stills portrayed landlocked bodies of water boiling under intense geothermal pressure. An iconic image went viral during the live coverage of “The Rapture.” It was a 3-dimensional image of one the planet’s hemispheres. It appeared as if someone had lit a match under the orb and delighted in watching it burn.

End Part 1

My Aside: 

When Fear Feels like It Is Coming from Nowhere:

Have you ever had the creeping dread? That feeling of doom with no logical causation leading to its fruition. A seemingly existential problem, questioning your being and worth as an organism in this vast and lonely universe.

Well I have. So those of you listening out there that identify with that statement, you are not alone. It would be nice to explain all of life’s fears rationally. But in many, fear manifests itself irrationally.

What can you do combat these feelings, you ask. It’s hard to do so, because there is nothing to cope with or explain. It is an utterly absurd emotional response. But here is what I posit. Take a good, long reflective look at your life. What, if anything, is there to fear? Does anything warrant such irrational behavior? Are you or have you ever been threatened physically or emotionally? Are you in or have you ever been to a war zone? Are you terribly and terrifically alone? Any of these questions and more may influence that creeping dread one might feel as a response to increased, hypothalamic induced, catecholamine activity.

But that’s all it is. An increase or decrease in endocrine regulation. That’s how I take control of the situation. By analyzing the crap out of it and understanding the underlying mechanisms behind it. Stress is an emotion like any other that had voluntary and involuntary components. The more voluntary these components become, the less stressed we can make ourselves in the end.

So let me end with this, friends. This is a quote from Dune, quite possibly the greates1 scifi book ever written: “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” 
― Frank Herbert, Dune