I introduced myself after the set. He bought me a drink. We talked, I don't remember about what. For all I know I babbled about brane theory and quantum gravity all night. I had never been very good at talking to people. But he didn't seem to mind me. He told me a little about himself. He had graduated from NYU that year as a film major, but he didn't want to make movies. And the usual: he was appalled by the Iraq War, President Bush, our foreign policies. He quoted Chomsky, which was familiar, and Said, which surprised me. He said he had met Edward Said as a child, when his parents had first moved to the States from Palestine. I asked him if he was Muslim; he said he was a “closet atheist.” He asked me if I was religious; I said I was a physicist.
He took me back to my dorm that night; my philosophy of alcohol consumption at the time did not include moderation. He kissed me as he pressed the call button for the elevator, as though I might not notice if he were doing something else.
"Do I get your number?” he asked.
What odd syntax, I thought, many years later. Like it was a game show and my number was the all-expense-paid trip to the Bahamas.
My good friend Billy Davis, who died last year, spent his life advocating for a full inquiry into Jake's death. I find it ironic that even now, in the midst of our global war with China and Iran, the relatively insignificant Iraq War has so much cultural relevance. Perhaps because it is the first moment when our generation, collectively, began to realize that something had gone terribly wrong in our political and social system. Jake's death symbolized too much of that moment for us to ever let it go.
They took us to Pier 57, that detention-center-turned-toxic-waste-dump where they liked to herd activists during overcrowded demonstrations. Jake was furious that day, on a manic high. He was no stranger to racism—was any Arab living in New York City after 9-11?—but the arresting officer that day reveled in a particularly nasty brand of invective. “Raghead” was the least of it (and if Jimmy Sullivan can even tell the difference between his mouth and his lower orifice, I've yet to see the evidence). After they arrested us, Jake could hardly sit still. The floor was covered in an unidentifiable sludge that slid beneath our shoes and smelled like decomposing tires. We were all chilly and desperate to get out. Jake went to ask the officers when they would release us. I never heard what they said to him, and I never got to ask. Jake started yelling and shouting. His hands trembled as he gesticulated, like a junkie coming off a high, though I knew that he hadn't had more than half a joint. I remember being terrified, afraid that they would shoot him. When they set off the taser, he dropped to the floor like a marionette loosed of its strings. He groaned, but he couldn't even seem to speak. The police officers laughed, I remember.
What did he yell? “Pigs,” certainly. But Jake hated few things more than he hated the ongoing Palestinian/Israeli conflict, and he would have never used the despicable anti-Semitic tripe certain opportunistic faux-rock musicians attribute to him. We had been unlawfully detained and verbally abused. Did Jake's behavior represent a failure to turn the other cheek? Of course. But he never meant to be a martyr.
I went to the Tombs late that night, after they released us from the Pier and arrested him. His lawyer said the police insisted on detaining him for questioning and were charging him with “disorderly conduct.” Jake was happy to see me. The police had confiscated his guitar, and one of the officers conducting the interrogation was a real (to put it more genteelly than Jake) ignorant racist. I asked Jake if he was okay. He said he was, but he couldn't wait to get out of there. There was no rope in the cell that I can recall.
He was acting a little more restless than normal. Tapping his fingers against the bars and rocking back on his heels like a drinker with the DTs. It didn't seem remarkable at the time, and it might be that I am merely creating false positives, searching for a clue where none exists.
He held my hand before I left and kissed my palm. He liked romantic gestures.
"There's something happening here,” he sang softly. Buffalo Springfield.
I kissed him. “I'll get Neil Young and the gang down here tomorrow."
"I'll see you, Angel."
It was the last thing he ever said to me.
But he had never called me “Angel” before.
* * * *
Written Communication from Violet Omura, NYU, Department of Applied Physics
To: Zacharias Tibbs; Topeka, Kansas
Date: December 25, 2025—1:05 am, EST
[Sender: Verified]
I woke up twenty minutes ago and couldn't fall asleep. Chatterjee has posted a new paper on the public archives. Did you see it?
It's been a while. Hope you're doing okay.
Merry (godless) Christmas, Zach.
* * * *
Written Communication from Zacharias Tibbs, Topeka, Kansas
To: Violet Omura, General Communications Inbox, Columbia University Physics Department
Date: March 18, 2027—6:01 pm, EST
[Hi! This message has been approved by your filters, but contains some questionable material. Would you like to proceed?]
[Okay! Message below.]
Professor Omura:
Though I know you have not heard from me these past two years, I hope you do remember our long correspondence and will still read my messages despite your new Tenured Position at the venerable Columbia University.
I have not Written due to increased Problems with my Health and also, perhaps more importantly, a crisis with my Faith. You might think that facing Death & the Great Beyond, as I am (a persistent Cancer, which no medicine can treat) would drive one in to the Bosom of their Lord, but I find myself instead Contemplating the letters you have sent me over the twelve years of our correspondence.
You have presented to me a mind steeped in rationality, who does not even let deep grief over personal loss sway her to the side of a comfort that she does not feel has a basis in reason. Is Faith a Good Thing? I ask myself. As a child, I loved mathematics. At the library, I read books about Pythagoras and Newton and Einstein. But in the end I preferred Money to Knowledge, as any Ignorant eighteen-year-old might. I passed over my chance at College. My Father got me a good job as an auto mechanic in his Cousin's shop. Last year, I retired. I had worked there for Sixty-Five Years. I had kept my Faith and raised children. I had read the Bible and tried to use Math to Prove the Beauty of it.
I have wondered why I still Wrote to you, Professor, when you so Clearly held my Views in Disdain. I think now that I Respected the Knowledge you held. The Mathematics that I had loved in Childhood are your Life's Work. I thought if I could Convince you of the Truth of my Faith then it would not be Faith any longer but Reason.
And now, I think I have failed. I face death without the solace of Christ and I think it is not as Hard as I imagined in my youth, but hard enough.
With My Thanks and Respect,
Zacharias Tibbs
* * * *
Written Communication from Violet Omura; Brooklyn, New York
To: Zacharias Tibbs, Topeka, Kansas
Date: March 19, 2027—3:20 am, EST
Zach,
Call me Violet. Would you like to meet for lunch sometime soon? I know of a great fondue place on Flatbush Avenue (that's in Brooklyn, where I live).
Violet
* * * *
Audio-Visual Transcript of U.S. Internal Investigations files
Originally archived on the diffuse-network, proprietary GlobalNet, intercepted and transcribed by Chinese Intelligence
Subject: Omura, Violet; U.S. Scientific Authority and Academic;
Status: Dissident
Date: September 12, 2027—2:22 am, EST
The subject's apartment is dark. She walks to the window overlooking the street. She removes her shoes and stockings (a run in the back: 4.2 cm). The subject's hair is styled in an elaborate bun. She removes several bobby pins and tosses them to the floor. The subject empties a small, gold purse onto her coffee table.
Contents:
One (1) funeral program. The cover reads: Zacharias Tibbs: He was Right with Our Lord
One (1) small rolled marijuana cigarette.
The subject lights the cigarette with a match. Upon completing half the joint, she extinguishes it on the windowsill.
OMURA: [Soft laughter]
OMURA: [Inaudible]
The subject turns from the window. She abruptly ceases almost all movement. Her breathing resumes after 2.4 seconds. It is at this point that the subject begins to behave very erratically. Her eyes are fixed at a point in the room, as though she is interacting with a person, though motion sensors and audio bots indicate she is alone. The subject has no known history of mental illness. [NOTE: However, our own psychiatrist has stated that her behavior here strongly indicates a psychotic break possibly triggered by the marijuana usage. Hearing voices is common in such incidences.]
OMURA: What ... Jesus Christ. Jesus Fucking Christ, what's going on?
The subject pauses. Her body relaxes and her head movements are consistent with someone listening to someone else in conversation.
OMURA: Jake? Holy fuck, what was in that pot?
The subject takes two steps forward. [NOTE: The consulting psychiatrist has determined that the person to whom she believes she is addressing herself is standing between the coffee table and her couch.]
OMURA: What do ghosts look like at the Planck scale...
20-second pause.
OMURA: Zack did this?
3-second pause. She shakes her head.
OMURA: Maybe. Yes. In a strange way. He could have changed the world. But he fixed other people's cars.
The subject begins to cry. Her hands have a pronounced tremble.
OMURA: Jake, oh fuck. Fucking God, why are you ... why now? I never believed, not once, and fuck do you know how much I wanted to? I could kill you! Christ, Jake, 30 nanograms of pot and not a fucking drop of lithium!
12-second pause. A siren is heard in the background.
OMURA: I knew that. You think it makes me feel better? I should have known! The DTs, I said. Like you were manic. I saw it all then. I've known it all for years. 30 nanograms of pot, 2 milligrams of Tylenol. 0 nanograms of your fucking life.
The subject steps closer.
OMURA: Then why did you? Oh, you came back from the grave for me? God, my maudlin subconscious.
11-second pause.
OMURA: Like Hamlet's father? Did the ghost love?
2-second pause.
OMURA: Like me. Jake ... if you're real and not my own degenerating brain ... I'm sorry I asked you taunt—no, listen, I should have known what you were going through. I shouldn't have put you in that position. Not with those trigger-happy assholes. Engineer a conflict? Get it on the news? What a fucking cunt I was.
The subject is silent for nearly one minute and thirty seconds (1:30). Halfway through this period, she closes her eyes and shudders. [NOTE: From the heat patterns in her body, it appears as though she is having a sexual reaction.]
OMURA: The last thing you said to me, what did it mean? Why did you call me Angel?
The subject opens her eyes and looks around. Apparently, the room now appears empty to her. She staggers backward and sits on the couch. After a minute (1:00) she begins to cry with audible sobs.
OMURA: I don't know either.
* * * *
Associated Press
War Desk: For Immediate Release
September 14, 2027 (SEOUL): Accounts of Chinese warships equipped with long-range nuclear warheads heading into the Hawaiian archipelago have been confirmed, and evacuations of major targets on the United States West Coast will begin within the hour.
* * * *
"The Score” was born out of an extended period of reading political and scientific blogs. These venues incubate conspiracy theories like microbes, most often through their comment threads. September 11 truthers, global warming denialists, germ theory denialists, you name it, comment sections are a fascinating record of the ways people are able to delude themselves into believing the palpably untrue. As my idea for the story grew, it encompassed music and cult followings and the social effects of post-World War II U.S. foreign policy. This I projected onto a future that is not so much dystopian as barely functional. The end result became interstitial, I think, because I needed to use the techniques of so many different modes and genres of writing to convey these disparate pieces of the puzzle. I read CounterPunch and Rock & Rap Confidential and odd left-libertarian weblogs. I've seen people with writing styles more exuberant than Zach's in my piece, peddling theories even less coherent. It's in the spaces between the pieces of this puzzle that the reader finds a story.
Alaya Dawn Johnson
[Back to Table of Contents]
The Two of Me
Ray Vukcevich
I was not quite ten when Renata grew up out of my right shoulder like a second head. She was just a blemish at first, a smudge that looked a little like the state of Florida. Then she was a squashed spider mole, then she was a monster, a mewling, squirming mass of purple flesh that smelled like raw chicken, and then she was just Renata, my little sister, saying let me have the arms, Davy, I need the arms, my nose itches, please please please, give me the arms, so I can scratch my nose!
I'll scratch your nose, I told her, hold still, okay, here we go, honk honk, ha ha!
You're so mean, Davy! She was about to go off like a fire alarm in my ear. I hunkered down for it, but she changed her mind and switched strategies so smoothly you had to think she was planning this from the beginning—tears and puppy dog eyes, not that they were so easy to see that close up, but I knew what she could do with those eyes. I'd seen her use her big brown eyes on other people—oh, you poor thing! Let me get you a glass of juice, would you like a cookie? Don't cry. Let me see that big girl smile, I know you can do it. Yes, you can. Here, here's your cookie. Davy, hold the cookie for your sister.
Jeeze Louise.
They're my arms, I said. Get your own arms.
I'm trying! she yells. You know I'm trying, Davy!
I do know that. I can see she has shoulders now. She didn't have shoulders before. It's like she's rising up out of me. Some day she'll be all out of me but her feet. I'll be down here, and she'll be up there, and I'll be her big brother bunny slippers, and then one day, plop, she'll pull one foot out, and plop, she'll pull the other foot out. Then she'll run off into the woods throwing flowers to the left and to the right and back over her shoulders.
When I get my arms, I'm going to strangle you, Davy, she says, spooky voice, I'm coming to get you, I'm creeping up on you, here I come now, boo! Giggling. She knows that I'm the one who could do some serious strangling, since I have the arms, but she also knows I never would. I take a deep breath and let go of the control of my right arm. She can feel me do it. Her smile is so big and bright. You just get the one, I tell her. Oh, thank you, Davy! She closes my right hand into a tight fist then opens it up and spreads the fingers. She lifts the hand to her face and scratches her nose and sighs and sighs and sighs. It seems to me she is getting an indecent amount of pleasure out of a simple nose scratching, but then I see that she is looking at me out of the corner of her eye, almost smiling, she's up to something, and before I can grab control of my arm again, she gives my nose a retaliatory honk.
So there! So there! So there!
She had her own arms by the time we got to high school. Things were getting a lot more crowded with us. I had to look up to see her face. But wait, there's more—as her shoulders emerged from me, not only arms were revealed but also a couple of hideous growths on her back. Wings, someone said, and someone else said yes, that must be what they are. Everyone was so sorry for her, like she didn't have enough to worry about being so tightly attached to me who could be known for not always being so nice. Poor Renata! All the time having to be superduperglued to a smelly boy. And now wings.
Once, before she got her arms all the way out, I put a paper bag over her head when I wanted a lit
tle privacy. She put up such a fuss people came running to see what the matter was, and when they saw her, saw us, the two of us, Renata with the bag over her head, and me being, well, me, she making a Middle Eastern ululation of despair that she had picked up from watching public television, and me all what? What? She's fine. She didn't look fine when I snatched off the bag to show everyone how fine she was, she looked terrified and lost, but I knew her well enough to know that a lot of it was for dramatic effect. She played our keepers, our fosternistas, like stringed instruments, a big bass for Charlie, who was really the nicer of the two, and a squeaky squawky fiddle for Debbie, who was like a rat terrier. Renata was wailing and Charlie was looking at me so disappointed and Debbie was yapping and I was the rat. I wished Debbie would just bite me or something and get it over with, but she didn't.
Shortly after that, Renata got her arms, and we settled the privacy issue. I opened the bag and put it on the table in front of her and ignored it. It only took a couple of minutes for her to pick up the bag herself and put it over her own head. You pervert, she muttered, and that was that, no fuss, some muss.
In most other ways, she was a lot harder to live with once she got her arms all the way out of me. Not to mention the growths on her back, which by then were clearly wings. There were no feathers. We both wondered if she'd ever get feathers, but there were never any feathers. Her wings reminded me of unborn things. You could see the blood pulsing in them if you looked closely, and given my position, I was always able to look closely. They were a strange pale greenish yellow color with just a little of the pink the rest of her had become, and I should mention by this time we were both in our early teens, and girls grow up quicker than boys, so there was some hullabaloo made over the fitting of feminine tops and attaching them in the back between the ribs and the “wings,” and I was not to look, and I pretty much didn't, yes, yes, we fought all the time, but we were so close, it was easy imagining how she felt, or maybe it was just that she was so good at showing how she felt. You never had to wonder. It was all deliberate. She used the display of her feelings as a subtle tool. She knew you could see just how she felt, so when she wanted something, she opened up wide, and it was really really hard to say no, since you knew exactly how she felt. Like alone together in the dark at the end of the day, do you think we'll always be like this, Davy? I don't think so, I told her. Think about it. Every year you grow more and more out of me. It makes sense that some day you'll just be out and can walk away on your own two feet. Do you really think so, Davy? I really do.
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