Preacher

The old man came into town in silence, bent by the weight of a hiker's backpack and set camp in the remains of the old university. After a couple of days, he emerged with a heavier looking backpack and a tote bag filled with books. Then, he spoke at the town's market.

They said anarchy came with the riots and those were brought by the drought, famine and general collapse of the economy but I know that's a lie we tell ourselves to rationalize our existence. Truth is, a false anarchy started  when everybody else became just a tool for personal gain and success. We told ourselves: money is needed to eat, to dress, to have fun and find happiness; nobody ever thought you cannot eat money. The search for happiness was lost and that of power, wealth and fame substituted it at large. The inner self diluted by the wash of pose. True anarchy would have been deliverance, instead the false anarchy of vacuity and personal delusion took hold with every inch gained by the dream of greed. True anarchy would have been better: in the sense of liberating freedom and inner peace. Instead the vice circle of selfishness reinforced itself and brought us here. There's a way out but... Could you trust me?

He didn't even look around, just got down from the old soapbox, took his stuff and walked away. 

The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King

In this the fifth installment of the Dark Tower series, Mr. King takes Roland's ka-tet closer to the Tower in a Seven Samurai (or Magnificent Seven) Mid-world spin including Dr. Doom look-a-likes armed with lightsabers and snitches while trying to figure out how to protect the rose in 1977 New York. 

Mr. King's penmanship gets the main story arc advanced and manages to twist it with a remnant from Jake's entrance to Mid-world: Suze is in troubles an developing a new personality as a consequence of her mating with the demon guardian. Also, the cast of players related to the main story arc gets larger with Calvin Tower and Deepneau's role in the story increasing as a result of Tower's family being related to the rose; and Father Callahan from  Salem's Lot becoming a part of the gunslingers ka-tet. 

Again, the book is an intertwined collection of stories. The main one being the defense of old western town Calla Brym Sturgis from the Wolves that every twenty years or so kidnap one of each set of twins to deliver them back ruined: stupid and gigant; second in importance is the storyline developing in New York 1977 where the rose is in danger as the servants of the dark try to make a grab on the vacant lot; a third important arc is the developments in Susannah Dean's life that lead into the next installment of the series. A significant part of the book is filled with Father Callahan story during and after Salem's Lot.

The novel is a page-turner as all other installments in the series are. The confluence of all of Mr. King's worlds into the Dark Tower multiverse becomes stronger with the introduction of Father Callahan and the tales of his wandering through multiple worlds. Again, I have to tell that Mr. King's is making a better job than Mr. Heinlin did in consolidating all his stories into a single multiverse; oh, he even introduces himself into the story citing Salem's Lot. Also, he cites Mr. Heinlin's The Door into Summer—a nice self-recreation time travel paradox based story (one of Mr. Heinlin favorite topics) and a must read, I guess the idea of projecting into the future thanks to cryogenic storage came out ot this one. 

Anyway, as you, my five readers, know, I have become somehow addicted to Mr. King's Dark Tower series. That's why Wolves of the Calla was my first ebook purchase ever (I got it from Kobo Books alongside their Kobo Touch ereader). I managed to get through it during my daily commute for the last three weeks and I cannot wait to get the next installment sometime next week. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Beginnings...

—Damn you, cursed creatures. May your way to hell be filled with pain...

—Hold your tongue, brother! Just a few have chosen the evil path on their one and even those were pure and holy before the seed of vice took root and consumed their soul. All have a chance of redemption once their souls are freed from the rotting flesh.

--- o ---

In the dark of night, a spark by itself is doomed to die; torches and bonfires die if abandoned. It is balance and feedback that keeps start alive for eons—and even those will come to an end...

--- o ---

Ojala pudiera a capricho hacer hervir la sangre que corre por mis venas, obligar a mi mente a recordarte. Entonces a capricho podria olvidar el paraiso que son tus besos, arrancarme del eden de tus brazos.

--- o ---

Is science a harbinger of democracy or equality? Eco's opinion on the idea of culture and mass culture may be feasible of describing science.

In old times, science was developed by a scientific aristocracy with means and time at hand—with a few exceptions.

One may think that the opportunity to stay outside of a "scientific policy" brings with itself a creative freedom that may transform the establishment—of course, the directed search brought by policing may produce development.

If knowledge is an equalizer, is it possible to produce a consumer science or a science for the masses? Per se, massification involves standarization, does this leveling to the mean with certain standard deviation signify the destruction of the intellectual value?

Is there danger in the production of a processed science, ready for consumption but unable to produce an intellectual reaction or understanding, as far as it is a way to light the spark of curiosity that could lead to thought and creation?

Creation

In the beginning there was a bang! The observer was there—otherwise, how could there be a bang? You know? All that quantum koan bullshit..."if there's a bang in the middle of the megaverse and there's no observer to collapse the blah blah blah."

The observer realized that a measurement was made, cursed his stupidity and left to prepare a new multiverse—in the end, that was supposed to be a test of decoherence times and, now, it was all messed up. Let thermodynamics do its thing on this one.

4. Rebirth

Its—my—nose broke; as surely as I could feel the pain invading my temples. Without further ado, my waist turned, my left arm went up to the reaching hand and my flailing arm continued its arc down to break or dislocate its—my—arm at the elbow; it was dislocated. The thing—I—fell down to the ground with a crack that brought a wave of pain to its—my—torax. I brought my feet onto its—my—nape and slowly pushed until I could felt the hard leather of my soles on my own scalp and smell the oily scent of my boots with my own nose.

Will I die? "Sooner or later we all will die, son" answered the voice of my long gone father. Then, I stomped on the thing—myself—. It died with the whisper of a pop—and I was born.

What love is...

I gather them around. Reluctantly, they were herded uphill. Alienated, unable to speak, they got softer. Long ago I learned the hard way that privation acted marvels on the reluctant. They never were the sharpest knives in the block but, after the second day on the path, they all knew...

We reached the summit, it was a small place on the top of the world. I sat down, closed my eyes, let them roam free. I herded them back and produced the question: What is love? One by one they answered back...

The first one, unable to speak, touched my hands... I found myself submerged in a strange wave of warmth. My skin crawled. My heart sank. The entrails that filled my torso vanished and the warmth, so real, so solid, took their place. The sun, the earth, the little one embraced, and overwhelm, me.

After I recover, the time for the second one came, this one has always displeased me the most, he talked about gifts, wealth, a procession of gimme gimmes. I was about to struck him with the whole of my rage when he shut up on his own and told me... Love is time, the time you gather to run away from your job to go on vacations with the family, to relax and sit down at the movies, to read an old story that tells about you and me, to teach you how to transform the world around you with your hands, to ride a bike, to go fishing. Love is time, which most people thing there is little, finite and priceless.

I came to the third confused. I never expected that from the brat. I sat down with this one, always closer but isolated. Love, he told me, is an absolute. We shall never find Love, but the imperfect shadow of it, love. Depending on you or me it will cloud ones mind or be an eye-opener; whichever love comes to be, Love will always be an enigma to both of us. You could choose from Saul/Paul to Heinlin's definition, and it will never be close to Love. So, what's your point?

I came decided to leave alone, I had to remind myself while brought forth the fourth.

Love? There's no love. There is us, pity human beings in need of support, acceptance, attention, and whatnot. He had a hard face, but sad eyes. I couldn't help but get him closer and dive into his memories, otherwise nothing would be gained from the exercise. I saw it, like a moving picture, love was a parking lot with her leaving for humanitarian job and sure that it will be the end, that she will came changed. Love was telling her how stupid she was for trying to leave the one that loved her truly and deeply because she was afraid. It was too weird to see that love was being, being there, no matter how much it hurt, being there to do what was right for the loved ones.  So, there was love... and hate... I saw all the frustration grow and take root to give ripe hate... it seems that for this one there's such a thing as one too many...

I got to the last one tired... Have you let home for long and came back to see your mother hands, which used to look like yours look now, covered in liver spots, the skin looking so thin that you think it may break, still strong and lively when hugging you to welcome you home? Those hands are love, changed, but the same. Have you ever found yourself talking for hours, planning, laughing, fooling around with someone half a world away? Well, that's love. Have you ever found yourself sitting the long wait waiting for the flames to bring family to the netherworld with a strong arm offered by those that you never thought would be there? Well, that's love. All of them are right and wrong. In the end, love is and you, my friend, are.

I came to the hill to throw them away, to shed the burden off my shoulders... we came down the hill together, a whole, being one. 

In the end, love is and I am.

3. Awakening

The real alarm clock beeped. I woke up, faithless and godless. It was uncommon in me to wake up bellowing in anger; or was it pain? Anyway, the alarm clock ended up crashing into the wall. For the first time, I hated myself for being a social drinker and not having any alcohol at home. It seemed like the most logical path to force my mind into oblivion.

The routine kicked in. Every muscle doing what it had been trained to do for years on end independently of the state of my mind. That was me, a part of me, most of the time impervious to the state of my mind, doing the job.

In no time, I found myself walking the road back to the lab trying to keep my mind busy with the eerie world provided by the morning fog out from the river. Sunrise got me at the underpass through the river. The long tunnel filled with  thick brume refracting the nascent light in such a way that the passersby were rendered as mere blurry, inhuman silhouettes.

Time stop. I became no better than a piece of marble. Unmovable. All the silhouettes frozen at their places. 

That's when the infernal sound came. If pure, distilled pain had a characteristic sound, that unearthly cacophony would have been it. My skin wanted to crawl; it couldn't. A silhouette at the other end of the tunnel—no, not a silhouette, rather a dark void devouring all the scattered light—started moving towards my direction. Whenever it brushed one of the human silhouettes, the tunnel was filled with the hellish sound, and I felt this urge to ran away in every cubic centimeter of my body.

It advanced slowly, the silence in between encounters a periodic witness to its approach. The silhouettes of those in front of me getting blurrier as soon as my ears ringed again with the infernal sound. I thought of destruction... of undoing, but the silhouettes remained. Tendrils of pure darkness slowly creeping over them, slowly engulfing them. Everything in me begged to flee.

The black void stood in front of me. At its heart, a figure clad and hooded in a black robe stood.

A sleeve slowly rose until its empty end was in front of my face; a pale hand covered in thick, lively tendrils of pure darkness reached out for my face.

My skin crawled. Before I consciously registered the feeling and the though, I found my hand flying towards the hooded figure. 

My fist hit the mark and I found myself staring at Corruption itself. It had my face...

Broken...

I walk the land.

I come and go randomly following the wind, the tide or the stars.

Sometimes I live, most of the times I watch. Every time, I do.


I'm broken. By doing,  I hope to be fixed.

My hands fixed, brought grins back to the surface.

In fixing, I hope to be fixed.

My hands fix no more. My hands break, mash... destroy.

I'm broken.

Now, my hands are broken too.

2. Dreams...

The door welcomed me in silence and stubbornness. Time warped by each blink of my sleepy eyes... hallway... darkness... staircase... darkness... hallway... darkness... lonely bed... darkness... fast approaching pillow... darkness... 03:14 in square red numerals... darkness.

*bleep bleep* 

Repetition of an every day's routine made an automata out of me. Morning came, I was a mere mechanical imitation of a human being, the incarnation of the "instant human, just add coffee" meme.

Turn off the alarm clock... check. Get naked and grab a towel... check. Walk to the bathroom to have a shower... in progress.

The bathroom's door was friendlier than the apartment's door; it received me with a warm mist and the calming sound of flowing water. "That's how a morning is started," I thought while getting into the shower. 

"Ayip, Birtanem!" She said with the most wonderful and radiant smile upon her face. It was contagious! I couldn't help but grin. "That's really how a morning is started!" I said to myself again. 

"Günaidin askim," I said while staring at her, taking delight on her wavy reddish brown colored hair, amber eyes, pale skin and red lips. We kissed. 

"All is well that ends well," I thought, the grin still on my face. She left, to get the morning choirs started. Sleepy, I put myself into taking a shower, with the feeling that I was missing something. I dismissed the feeling; I have never had a good memory, anyway.

I came to the hallway in my usual polo and denims. Before I took five steps,  the most primitive, dangerous and adorable beast leapt upon me, slowly climbing from leg to waist, from waist to back, and finally settling down on his regal throne: my shoulders. "Tsao Papa!"

"Elijah, you are gonna break your Papa; he's not young anymore!" Said Lale. We laughed.

*bleep bleep*

1. Beginnings...

The world came to me in sporadic bursts of colors. Sounds were beyond my ability to register the reality of my surroundings. The long walk leading to the staff's living quarters became shorter due to the intermittent darkness brought by my erratic blinking. My depleted energy reserves barely allowed me to perform route correction. Still, I managed to imagine myself raising arms and mumbling "brrrraaaaiiiiiinss;" it put a grin on my face. I was a  picture perfect zombie after three days of troubleshooting my piece of the  elephant. Back then, we called it "the elephant." Each and every one of us was hired to design a pretty specific piece of equipment under the most stringent specifications. Each and every one of us was kept in the dark as to what other pieces of hardware were being built. Our confidentiality agreements clearly stated that any breach of secrecy were to be considered an immediate forfeit  of  the involved parties' remuneration. The certainty of being under surveillance 24-7 and the lack of interest in losing a seven figures paycheck kept our mouths shut off.

The Damned: El Capi

—Oh, c'mon. Don't give me that look. Surely, you were young and naive as well. I can bet a few bucks on the fact that you wanted to change investigative reporting and do things right just for the pleasure of doing things right.

—You see, I was right.

—I guess it came slowly, just like it may had happened to you.

—How? It started from afar. You are on the field and then you heard the stories of a certain unit that turned into the dark side for money or glory. Who cares? It is a story and you don't really believe it will not happen with this unit.

—Then? Well, one day you are transfered and the stories stop being of a unit stationed afar. Now, they are about your unit leader. How he made a sergeant take the fall from him during an assault, how he took the credit from another unit leader for an operation he was just providing with support.

—Yeah, of course you don't believe those. C'mon, is your unit leader! Your life depends on him. If you cannot trust him, then you are blind; you become a oars-less raft in the middle of the effing ocean.

But then, then you happen to be in a briefing where he shifts the blame for a failed op into a chap gone dod trying to do his best to get the job done.

—I mean, it may be ok... once. The problem is that all the stories start clicking and taking their place in the jigsaw.

Next time you find yourself taking a real good deep analysis of your orders. Sitting down with your chaps and realizing that either the highly polished brass or your unit leader has no idea of what is going on out there.

—I can understand, my rank required that I should be able to think and plan. What I didn't understand was how he always managed to avoid going into the field with us. When it becomes normal that things goes afu, something is wrong.

—Yeah, of course, I thought it was my fault missing something in the debriefing. But you sit down with your peers and start going over the briefing, the mission... You know, it is hard to forget something when your grunts are out there pinned down when they were supposed to be fighting an easy one.

Then, everything starts falling apart...

The stories you have heard... the lack of deep planning... the repetition of old and well known tactics... the shift of blaming on us or the grunts... suddenly, everything is very real and you know that the next op may be the last one...

—I think you are right, that's when the survival instinct kicks in. You start taking more time planning and trying to cover. It is not about him anymore, it is about you and the grunts.

—I wish it were that simple... Disregarding direct and specific orders of a superior is not something simple. Not when that superior is somehow acquiring a nice shine on his brass.

—Well, this is what made it.

We were sappers. You know, this bridge, that foundation, just leave it to us. Most of the time, even with the wrong data, we managed to complete the missions without any dod.

But this one time, it was too much. A few days ago we got this really wrong intel briefing. It was a simple hit and run, kidnappers. We were supposed to open a back door to get the vics out as soon as possible. We prepared as reported by our glorious unit leader.

We came to the place, rigged the back wall. Waited for the orders... and boom! it goes... but the wall was not as thick as we were briefed... the grunts closed down on the bad guys not fast enough to get the vics alive...

So, we have this really bad vibe... how the eff can you miss that simple and vital intel? Well, it happens that that lazy bastard was lazy enough not to go all over his brief and trickle down incomplete information...

—Yes, we thought in doing something. Then we got this call. A mountain road has to be cleared in the Sierra. Urgently! There we go! And the asshole decides to ride with us. We rig the place and go for it when half the hill comes on top of us. It took me almost a week to dig my way out.

I was not really in my best mood when I found a charge half the way up on that steep slope. Even in covering his tracks, that sob was a slop!

That's when I decided to go awol...

—I was a mess, I cannot remember when was the last time I was sober before Monseñor found me. He took me in and told me about the damned...

Now, I have not forgotten about that lousy sob but right now there are better things to do to get this place clean.

The Damned: El Indio

There is a man in front of me. I was about to write 'an old man' but I realized that the deep wrinkles on his face are a result of inclement weather exposure rather than age. He speaks a rural sort of Spanish in an affable manner. Although he uses 'patron' to refer to me and the others, he is not condescending, nor patronizing. His whole stance perspires an aura of self abandon.

— You know patron, 'la mula no era arisca, la hicieron a palos.' I used to be one of the best in the wood household furniture business. People from the Capital came to my workshop and ordered dinning sets, living room sets, the whole thing.

— I learned from my Tata; my father got no time for teaching us kids while trying to get the frijoles for the family. So I sat with the old man learning how to carve the wood, how to understand its flow, how to see beyond the trunk into the chair, the bed or the door.

— Ansina es, those were good years. Hard but good. The town was peaceful. You could close the workshop after a long day and walk to the plaza to see the muchachas while sipping from a glass of aguardiente. That's how I met my wife, Dios la tenga en su santa gloria.

— Those cabrones came one day, with their rifles and trucks. They went workshop by workshop, visiting all the craftsmen in the Pueblo. They said that we had not to worry about the crime and the war as far as we help them helping us. We were peaceful hard working men, the mayor and the authorities were there, seeing all of this and they did nothing, thus we collected the money they asked and waited for them to come back.

— And they came back, three days later. With more people, more trucks and more guns. Even though we gave them the ten thousand pesos they asked, they took some of our muchachos and muchachas. We never saw them again.

— Si, that's when we decided to arm ourselves. You see patron, we didn't want any trouble. If we had to eat just tortillas for one month to give them the money they asked, it was okay; we were peaceful before that visit.

— My boys? One of them lost his wife, those ojetes took her. He and his brothers started sharpening their machetes. I went to the Capital and signed in the oficina of Sedena to get a shotgun. We didn't want to loose our beloved ones again.

— El indio es ladino, we have to be cunning to survive in this country. We have learned to be strong and patient. So we cried our lost and prepare; watching posts were constructed on the two entrances to the Pueblo and we sat down to wait.

— And they came, six months later. So confident, so regal, like they were the dueños del pueblo. Ahi mesmo se quedaron. Those that were not caught dead ran away like shamed dogs. We thought they would learn that 'el valiente manda hasta que el cobarde quiere.'

— That's when the face slap came. The army came, three days after we repelled the bastards. We were happy when we see the convoy coming. We thought our prayers were answered. What a foolish thought it was. The army sweep the Pueblo that day, house by house, workshop by workshop, and they took with them everything that could be used as a weapon. By dusk the army left...

— Si patron, not two hours after the army left, those cabrones came back. They collected all of us in the plaza, raped our girls and wifes, beat our old to death, they took all of our youngest, assassinated the mayor and our union leaders in the kiosko in front of everybody else. And then, while those cabrones... while those culeros took turns with our wives... while everything happened there, in front of our miserable eyes... while they beat the soul out of my body... then I saw the jefe de policia with them, ese puto, taking a beer and having dinner with the capos like nothing happened.

— I survived; my pobrecita gorda and sons didn't. When the cabrones left, I crawled to su humilde casa and then out of town into the sierra to gather my forces. I don't know how long I was there, in the sierra, thinking, planning, waiting, the pain eating at my mind and my entrails.

— Then I found the other cabrones. I was deep in the sierra tracking a venado that I was hit early that day when I stumbled into their sembradio. The guards found me when I was leaving with the beast in my shoulders.

— I realized this were the others. I told them my story and asked for a chance to help them. They smiled, they smiled a lot at my despair and thirst for vengeance. Again, they beat me until they were tired, and refrain from killing me just because they were in need of men.

— They took me as servant, I would clean their clothes, cook for them, do all the menial tasks. They kept me chained the whole time. After a few months of asking for a chance to show them my hatred towards the other cabrones, they saw my rage and need of vengeance. They gave a gun and a machete and left me in the outskirt of the Pueblo.

— Mi Pueblo was a sad view to already sore eyes. The place where I grew up, always colorful with the shinny facades and the well kept gardens, was no more. Half the houses were empty and most of the faces were new. I managed to find some of those that I have met and they told me how the survivors left at the first chance and how the cabrones came and took their houses. We talked in hushed voices, we drank aguardiente, we planned and waited...

— It was hard to do, but we had our hearts and souls rotten with rage. As silently as possible we visited each and every one of the occupied houses to slit their throats as they slept. As dueños del pueblo they were overconfident and unprepared. It was not easy, but not many of us died. When morning came, we got together in the plaza, sip some aguardiente and said adios.

— I started my way to the sierra, when the other cabrones picked me up. They had seen everything from afar and were delighted with our work. They took me back to the sembradio as one of them, I cooked a guajolote for them and they brought out the whiskey bottles. In their borrachera, nobody realized I was not eating, just serving more and more to all of them.

— Midnight came and they all were on their way to the infierno, where I might see them again if God in his righteousness is unable to forgive me.

— When Monseñor and The Damned came, all the corpses were still warm like drunkards dozing after a long party. I was sitting in the middle of all them with a bottle of aguardiente in one hand and a handgun in the other. They took the weapon out of my hands. Monseñor offered confort, not forgiveness, and questioned me while the others secured the sembradio searching for more cabrones.

— By the time the place was alight in flames I was a corpse walking the sierra behind The Damned, I was one of them...

— I am one of them.


(Again, I'm waiting for simulations to finish, so I decided to keep building the story behind The Damned, now I went to picture just one of them and give hints as to the background of another. Let me see if I can get more socio and psychopaths for the whole bunch of The Damned.)

The Damned

—Have you ever heard the voice of God?

—O father, why the surprised face?

—Is that fear? You, of all of us in this room, are the one allegedly serving Him, the most Holy One. Us? We all have strayed into the dark path. We are the ones walking through the valley of shadow and death excommunicated from the comfort of His rod and staff. Surely, if you kept the cloth after all you have done in these years, you believe it all was good to the eyes of the Lord and not sinful at all. Then, there's nothing to fear.

Here, take this rosary, find your prayers. Examine yourself.

—Money? We don't care about money. Forgiveness? Haven't you been listening to us? We cannot forgive nor judge. Find your peace! We are not the legion nor the angel of death. We are just the damned collecting a fellow one.

—Brothers? No, you got it wrong. He said collecting, not recruiting. Alas! We are damned, we have sinned and keep sinning. We have chosen to fall and take with us the likes of you.

(Sometimes, mostly when I cannot find my bearings, I try to get my mind off-topic and 'reset.' As I keep banging into a wall with my research, today, I am trying something completely different to my usual love stories and I wrote something really violent where, I hope, different sociopath antihero characters can be realized.)

Hope

And, then, the day came,
when hope, now, didn't fade.
Instead, at first sight of delusion,
it stayed, strong and fueled,
by the same illusion
that destroyed the past

The cobblestones (2005)

"Love doesn't exist," he said loudly to the new moon in the night sky. Slowly, his drunken steps took him away from the hlavná namestie. The outer rim of the staré mesto, with its tower gate, surprised him whispering to himself, "nevertheless, I wanna believe it does." A world away the girl he wanted to believe he loved was probably sleeping, trying to solve her own troubles.

It was a good day, why not? After the rain, the sun always shine the most, and the skies are the most beautiful shade of blue. "Such is life", he thought, "after the dark of the night the light of the day comes, once and again."

The stride built up momentum, and then he found himself walking with a smile on his face, and a proud stance on his body, "nevertheless, I wanna believe it does", he said to the cobblestones of the road.

The bus

She came in a hurry into the bus, a mess of boxes and bags. It took him a second to stand up and offer his seat to her; politely, she declined; gentlemanly, he asked again; honestly, she accepted. They crossed words, just a few. What came in excess, flooding the bus with the warm of kindness, were disguised smiles and stares...