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Cradling the small stack of disks in his left hand against his abdomen Trevor
turns and places his right hand back on the thoroughly cooled sanctuary of the black onyx wall. He is sitting in the absolute dark silence of the longboat as it moves slowly
through the black water. Everything is as it was. He learned long ago to roll tobacco in complete darkness. Deciding against tobacco or chewing gum he lights
a wooden match to find the miners lantern hanging on the mainmast. The light secured he removes
his jacket and shoes and eases over the rail and into the water. Floating on his back he watches the small light slowly recede from view. Dr. Ruhig always asks him for details of the dream hoping to help him find the root cause. He realizes he forgot to
look over the stern rail to see if the longboat had a name this time.
The sequential progression of the dream has infinite variations. Once in the water any heartache or gloominess dissipates. Long ago he missed the stars and moon above. Now the silence is comforting. The light is a diffuse twinkling in the distance. He
knows struggling only draws him deeper into the quicksand of prologues and epilogues. Once it took seven times of lighting the lamp and retreating into the water to be free. Tonight’s events presented some interesting scientific paradoxes and humorous
comic moments. Dr. Ruhig believes we are every character present in a dream, delusion or hallucination. Trevor mulls it over for a moment before letting go.
A snatch of a LeMond song is passing through Trevor’s imagination and he embraces it.
“When he gets off the train he never stops to explain. He has come down the
line to buy up their pain. He says without smiling, “The least is the most, on the heavenly tiling the beast is the ghost.” When he had passed, I was relieved at my post.
The oceans of life are now touching the coast. The river of music begins to sing once again. “Knowledge has its price.” Whispers a long lost friend. The light bounces once before the horizon finally swallows the brass lamp whole.
The Winter Palace

The Hermit settles into the sniper’s nest opening a thermos of fresh coffee, a comfortable roost chosen from the three dozen odd battle escarpments,
carved long ago into the five hundred foot high gorge walls. From this vantage point he has abundant
opportunity to terminate the target. The moon is three quarters full. He has infrared scopes if the cloud cover thickens.
A pencil thin vertical shaft of light exudes a low hum far below. Dr. Ivan Vulchario exits the Bell Devils Gate and begins climbing the long rocky trail to the Challis River Gate. Augustus keeps an accurate tally of how many times he has stopped the
doctor from advancing upward through the lightmach system.
The same encumbrance that kept the two gates safe for tens of thousands of years is what makes them so dangerous to use. They open irregularly controlled by an algorithm known only to their owner. To pass from the lower gate to the higher gate you must
scale a thin trail, carved into the granite rock. It winds back and forth allowing only fifty feet of vertical progress, for the life challenging price of sixteen hundred unappealing feet of lateral exposure per turn.
Augustus can hear Frank Harris and Alexander Mathias beginning to climb down the rope ladder. Extreme silence announces Michelle’s approaching presence as she begins descending.
Harris is fifty-five, dark haired, one hundred eighty pounds of alacrity that is never shaken or angered. He manages the nearby industrial park for the LX-7 consortium. Alex like Harris is an intelligence community expatriate washout. Alex is grey,
slight of build, muscular, prodigiously athletic; and the security director at Fairfield University. Michelle assigned gate monitor chores to the Challis River Hermit. Augustus served the appointment for six thousand and three years.

The men exchange curt polite greetings and watch The Owl descending cautiously. Harris and Alex extend their forearms so she can alight without triggering an avalanche. Turning she smiles at Augustus raising the green silk shirt that compliments soft
blue jeans and ballerina slippers. A belted coin changer is revealed as Michelle’s eyes narrow assaulting the hermit with mock anger.
“Yikes! Satanic death stares from the bowels of hell.” Augustus bends over removing a gold disk the size of a silver dollar encrusted with precious gems from a sock holster.
Michelle sallies forth bemused. “What ails you Augustus?”
“No such thing. It is my most ancient enemy who stalks me.” Gus counters affectionately.
“Boredom is a becursement we all share.” She holds her hand palm upwards rolling her fingers.
The Challis River Hermit surrenders The Rover’s central disk Circle-A1to Michelle giving it to Alex who is holding an anti-static lined leather sleeve. The sleeve is secured in the original metal womb that separated it from a magnetic abyss during its
construction phase. Alex places all three layers in a slim briefcase. Michelle slowly taps her ballet slipper with increasing pressure to insure ubiquitous flutters and exotic warps are now safely contained in the momentum repository regulating the
compact fountainhead. With increasing vigor she is jumping up and down on both
feet before stopping only to listen for echoes. The mummified Vulchario stares across the void.
Gently backhanding Gus’s shoulder, “I need your help on the next bridge.” She points below
as a thin twenty-four foot vertical column opens disgorging Robert Bitterman and John LeMond.
Gus hands Michelle the custom crafted 22/250. “Well thank you for this courtesy Ms. Michelle
I would not have believed with my own eyes that two people could be that profoundly stupid.”
Michelle raised, sighted and fired the powerful accurate weapon and LeMond’s head exploded into a cloud of red mist illuminated by the closing gate. Bitterman exited with seconds to spare.
Five dinner plate sized black disks rise in a wedge formation out of the powerful currents below, sounding all seven beings present, with a clear light momentum. Identities and transaction status notated they descended back into the swift moving waters
unseen. Michelle gingerly passed the rifle back to Augustus. She beckoned him forward and he leaned in to receive a kiss on the cheek. Stepping back stifling
tears he bends, raising his other pants leg to return the ornate brass letter opener that
belongs to Aloysius.
“Keep it safe until its time has arrived.” Michelle humbly intoned the request to self-implicate.
“It would be an honor and privilege.” Augustus designed and commissioned all the active facilities and all the dormant enclosures and blockades that constitute Fairfield’s infrastructure. The private realm contained in the disk he surrendered was
a part of The Rovers core and also his home. He had lost and recovered his connection to The Origin without assistance.
Michelle metered out a brass silver and gold coin to The Challis River Hermit
concealing up to date data images. The brass coin is the natural tone image, the silver is the sub-dominate image and the gold piece is the dominant image. Augustus mood
vaguely darkened pocketing the coins.
“I really do need to get back to work; get Lisa and Aurian to visit me at the Arboretum.”
Harris and Alex shook Gus’s hand. Climbing up and away they left the ragged
haired disheveled hermit to his task. Once they were over the gorge wall Michelle placed both hands softly over her face. Augustus turned, crouched and buried both fists
forcefully into his eyes. The Owl leapt off the ledge concussing into a flight of dark light. She landed beside LeMond scooping up the home made jury rigged gemstone disk, tossed the corpse into the river and flew home. “You turd filled dung eating son
of a motherless snake.” Gus muttered at Vulchario.
The nights extraordinary hub bub concluded the hermit begins executing Dr. Vulchario .7337.
The Hermit steps into the hollow cliff face grabbing the small hand truck holding the two thousand year old brass antiquity; placing the astronomical computer by the edge of the nest. Positioning the sextant armature to sight the moon he aims the
small, looking glass, tube on the other side at Dr. Vulchario. The ALM9 arctane
lensing machine begins tracking the craggy, stooped, malodorous, creature; still traversing the third horizontal shelf of the pathway ascent to the Challis River Gate.
“Adolph’s a doddering old pensioner in a red brick cubby hole your version of hell assigned.”
Groaning and grunting copiously under the thick load of glass rods he carries bundled on his back, Dr. Vulchario uses his free left hand to pull his threadbare sandstone trench coat closer to his chest and tries to ignore The Hermit for another fifty
steps. Whether he can pick the gate’s locks with this subterfuge is unknown. He continues climbing muttering obscenities to himself.
A thin shaft of light appears. In a relaxed sweeping motion Augustus chambers
a 22/250 round firing at The Hunchback exiting the lower gate. The precise shot
to the cervical spine beheads Igor Vulchario dropping his dwarfed body into the
river.
Eschewing any tearful display,
The Vulture drops the glass rods and turns to confront his tormentor. A gifted
mathematician, military strategist and former administrator of the infinite divisions between The One and The Zero the doctor is always prepared for a final stand. The glass
rods no longer obstructed rise in unison constructing a tightly woven protective cage around their creator. Vomiting glass pellets upward towards Gus
they gather twenty feet away unable to penetrate the ALM9 arctane lens. The multicolored crystal beads
assemble into horizontal arrays, each bead contains the original essence-presence of children hunted, captured, methodically tortured unto death, the bodies cooked in stills: sometimes in groups, sometimes alone. The ultimate revelation: DATAFACE.
Trevor is stirring haltingly after seven hours of broken sleep. Padding down the hall he knocks on Doc’s apartment door watching it give way unlocked. Smelling coffee he skulks to the kitchen and pours two large mugs. Hearing Doc’s large camera
click a picture he goes into the bedroom to find his childhood playmate scribbling wildly on a yellow legal pad by the double windows. From atop the Harland building, McBain looks east, down the long hill of the
T-shaped intersection towards the harbor; noticing everyone is dressed for another warm day.
Holding the coffee under Doc’s nose he startles Pierce Daniels to attention
and passes it over.
“Any luck sleeping Mac?” Doc asks sincerely while picking the nights pictures up off the floor.
“Same old thing.” Trevor replies dodging a Polaroid the evil eyed tripod spits at his chest.
Pierce says excitedly, “I got a nibble from Bitterman’s people so I’m reworking the song.”
He sighs watching a boat pass through the dike gate. “Stick to writing books it pays the rent.” “Tatianni called, her mother wants us to drop off
some stuff for her uncle at the old farm.”
“Is Templeton going?” Trevor asks slugging his coffee staring out the window as the masons climb the scaffolding draping the church across the street. The camera’s timer begins whirring.
“Yeah she is. She tried to get me to wake you up.” Doc caught a Polaroid in mid-sentence.
“Here’s your five bucks. A bet is a bet.” Trevor spoke quietly acknowledging the pile of stone now at ground level that once comprised the steeple. He believed the masons were just going to be pointing up the exterior brick. “It’ll help you
pay for this outdated mammoth contraption.”
Aurian Tatianni and Lisa Templeton are waiting outside the gate as the Volkswagen Sirocco pulls into the wide driveway entrance. Lisa taps her wrist at the guard in the gatehouse.
The brawny black gateman opens his window smiling, “Nine thirty-five Miss Templeton”
Lisa knows both of her childhood friends share a habitual, neurotic avoidance of wristwatches.
Lisa’s Secret Service detail falls in behind them at a discreet distance of
three hundred feet. Her father Senator William Templeton is leading in the polls to acquire the presidential nomination.
The party of four stops at a five thousand seat arena one mile away that is owned by Tatianni’s extended family. The doors are closed and locked during the early morning hours for the figure skating sessions. Olympic hopeful Michelle Gauthier is
standing outside. Pierce pulls into the driveway and Aurian steps out to let her in. Michelle takes the middle seat. Both Lisa and Aurian are prone to car sickness when Doc is driving. They drive Old Reservoir Road for five minutes and turn onto Farm
Road; passing through the large fieldstone arch and open wrought iron gates. The Sirocco stops at the small parking lot near The Arboretum. The young women exit the car their hands loaded with small shopping bags and head off to see Auri’s elderly
uncle who works as The Gardener. Michelle handing her sundries off to Pierce circles back to the car, Trevor, lost in thought is still settled in the passenger seat. The radio is lowly droning a Dead Boys song.
“When the music calls, don’t forget to pick up the phone.
Have a pen and paper ready, make sure you’re alone.
Catchy songs riding on the air is coming long your way.
Don’t surrender while there’s still a movement left to play.
Out driving round last night, feeling oh so much too free.
I asked one of those really evil girls, to throw one of her wicked spells on me.”
Michelle approaches cautiously and taps him on the shoulder, “You all set Mac?”
Trevor responds sluggishly “I have a ten o’clock with Ruhig.”
She lights and hands a cigarette to him. “Want some company for the walk?”
Trevor takes the flask from his back pocket emptying it, “Yes that would be
helpful.”
Walking down the long line of bushes to the clinic’s pathway Michelle falls
three steps back noticing Major Danes approaching. Trevor and Ted meet at the open pathway.
“The whole place is still infested Trevor, The Farm, The Industrial Park, Fairfield University,
Wickenshire Prep, Beckandale Prep. Even the rebuilt Oldham Air Force Base. That
was my last sanctuary, it’s under attack as we speak. If this continues I’m
moving my men across the river.”
“Save it for group Ted.” McBain spoke politely. Ted was rubbing eyeballs with his flu fears.
“It’s the ZB-12A mark my words Trevor “THE WAR” is here.” The Major
was immobilized.
Trevor put his left arm around Ted walking him through the open bushes down the path and into the waiting room, settling him into a chair he checked in, “Ten O’clock with Dr. Ruhig.”

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