by Zac Funstein
“Some of the choices were a little doctrinal I understand-they wanted something that was gun-ho but not too serious.”
Karim seemed like someone who would probably be an infield player that wasn’t trying to outclass anybody in disaccord. Sometimes they jettisoned players too early but this wasn’t going to happen here no way.
It wasn’t like they were in a United States Department of Defense building-the Pentagon or something-they were in a relatively relaxed set-up. Rodrigo had these garments arrived at by different means that had the same fastener that consorted to unfasten recently-well it wasn’t exactly like the garments everyone or everything conspiring against him-that wasn’t it at all-but they weren’t trying to totally solve everything either-that was out too. It wasn’t like there was a windlass strapped full speed in that direction either.
“It’s not that the PHH renders the others ineffectual-don’t get us wrong. You’re not checking out with a dud-no way. There aren’t any advertising slogans either-’luxurious trade original-a thimble full is all you need to find the most intractable of Chromium’. This isn’t an under-the-counter general-store cure-all. Interestingly enough not many know that Chromium oxide was used by the Ancient Chinese in the Qin dynasty to coat metal spears found with the Terracotta Army. ”
“You were probably kind to someone in your previous existence-maybe even one of the soldiers that one of the models is based upon that’s why PHH is trying to reward you now.”
That hadn’t been considered so that for a moment Karim enjoyed this extempore off-the-cuff statement. Providing a model for something buried for such a while was difficult to get around. Maybe if a visit was made to where they are then even the one that was him might be visible.
“I’m sure it's accepted that our metal-chum prevents compound fractures though the amount is infinitesimal-you’d have to be really destitute not to get it-sadly there are probably loads of those that never get any assistance-not even that much.”
Sometimes it was desired that there was an amnesty on chronology so that these wicked facts we neglect could be put into reverse. We all might speculate for all the good it would do us.
“Something tells us Karim that we were predestined to meet-that we can be mutually acceptable to one another.”
So it was unobserved that the irredeemable features of the denim were explored to their utmost. Mrs. Hajjar who was like someone in a Phyllis Diller fright wig with the obligatory bejeweled muumuu occasionally offered support intermittently. A session of strict bed rest which promoted intractable nausea, phlebitis, lethal pulmonary embolism plus much else had made activity essential. Her deputation at frequent intervals must have put into reverse this sorry state-of-affairs as well as providing much needed support. Raging confinement create a reality so thoroughly occluded that the afflicted often don’t actually have to worry about it.
Some retarded sonic pulses using the PHH principles must have done something because Karim mumbled.
“God bless the absentee Rodders- we are living proof that teleconferencing can be dispensed with often.”
There was a sense then of being onto something though just what now that was the important thing. One must not be overbearing or gloat in ones success but continue unabated-anticipating further glory. Whatever it is must be the grit around which the solution must form that much was certain. To Rodders this was the real ‘contraband’ these hints where to go, visual accusations where it had gone awry or even astray.
Baslehurst had a checkered past with dentists. Whilst in the chair Rod had been put into choke holds, sweared at, asked to take a dentist's daughter who was called Jessica M. George out on a date and had found an unidentified stain on his shirt. As a result Rodders consciously evaded them wherever possible.
Ross V. Schisler was an exponent of a GPR with the rather unusual title of German soldiers, which after some going into was revealed to be because, the Union army translated SSB into German with hopes of recruiting German soldiers. Since the Civil War the SSB has translated into several other languages including Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, French, Cantonese Chinese, Italian, Hebrew, Yiddish, Latin plus even (believe it or not) Native Hawaiian.
Schisler was a tall Nordic individual with a penchant for stretch-nylon.
“That's correct; one visit hooked. All it took was a teeny-tiny office with a beach-like relaxed environment, plenty of state-of-the-art equipment, a personal TV with which to watch the MLB Postseason plus the dentist with a concise/ precise communication style that doesn't see you as as his next mortgage payment.”
The atmosphere did seem fairly laissez faire it was true. It wasn’t like the dentist was a ‘constrictor’-someone who liked to create greater pain. Over the porch it had said ‘What does the dentist of the year get? A: A little plaque-that is why there is one here’. Nearby was a real plaque boasting how this had been the top surgery for several years running.
“Now you’re gonna ask us Rod do we have GS here-don’t deny it I know it is true.”
The way that GS was mentioned was like it was a pumice that could smooth any nasty rough stuff but something told Baslehurst that this wasn’t going to get erased so easily.
A hygienist a Thai woman in a pristine overall came into the waiting area which was brightly decorated like a playroom then offered apologetically:
“I’m afraid Dr. Ch'ang won’t be able to see you see you just now were having some difficulty with a patient would it be inconvenient to wait I’m sure it won’t take but a short while?”
“No that’s fine-now where was I Rod?”
They watched the puckish assistant go on into the surgery-they didn’t seem like someone who would traitorous more like a starchy stepsister or someone vaguely familiar that you knew once that had been close.
“The GS you were telling us about the GS.”
GS was said in a jagged style like it was deeper that the soft sounds belied a far deeper purpose that perhaps even they could only hint at. It seemed to keep in with this less than effete appointment that augered what amounted to surgery.
“Its the quick one of all the SSB. Some take a while to get into-they need lots of expensive equipment-but this baby is easy though maybe it doesn’t go as deep as some of the others.”
“I sense some reservations Ross.”
Baslehurst was sounding like some despondent spunky urban talk show host.
“Sure-I’m not insentient-just maybe human. We all have our favourites-GS is mine. Martyrdom
is not my bag-if transplantation to a new setting doesn’t work then opt out is the answer find something that does what it is supposed to.”
Rod knew just where Ross was coming from some of these universal panacea apps in reality made anyone take reconsideration of just what was meant by imbecility-what was on the packaging might seem like interstellar-drive but their victims were legion they stretched indefinitely. Non-conformist Rod was not.
“Some are like a debilitation in comparison rather the fuellers. It is like what they used to call desktop publishing in comparison to what they have today.”
Another person entered the surgery who offering the slightest of greeting to the gentlemen then sat down. It was someone who took classes in interior decorating, fashion arts, charcoal sketching, pattern making,millinery, French draping, electric sewing plus other subjects-Rod knew that much-but more could not be ascertained in so short an encounter. This was more of a dehumanization though-since they were on the subject-for rather than the gay chatter that usually accompanied this a silence followed as if they were self propelled on some terrible course of action. A checkout in some terrible underworld.
“These benches need reupholstering I’m sure you’ll agree.”
Where they had once been bouncy padding was now seriously being removed
“Mrs. Mako Tezuka-I knew I had seen you somewhere before-from the evening class.”
There was the same sort of magnetism that Rod had met when engaged in electric sewing classe
s. It must be something about hydrogen peroxide that turned him on.
Rod tried to pinpoint where a Tezuka had been encountered before. It had been an old man called Fumihiko who had moved to Vancouver from Kyoto who had shared his adventures. Brought up as an electrical engineer, after a very brief experience of his profession Fumihiko had fallen victim to the yearning to become a physicist. Fumi-as known-had come up with an early cell-phone or smartphone-at least that that was the main point of it—this should in the least concern our history.By means of this certain machine which Fumi had conceived, but not as yet perfected, it would be possible to complete all existing systems of aerial communication, more importantly enormously to simplify their action then enlarge their scope. His instruments, which were wireless telephones— distance-phones or距離の携帯電話 Tezuka called them—were to be made in pairs, twins that should talk only to each other. They required no high poles, or balloons, or any other cumbrous and expensive appliance; indeed, their size was no larger than that of a rather thick med- box. Fumi had triumphed; the thing was done-but as always there was glitches.
For a while Tezuka had struggled with these, still they eluded him-like Don Quixote’s windmills. Once Fumi had succeeded—that was the dreadful thing-like an actor with no part left to play anymore. Once for a while the instruments had worked, and with a space of several miles between them. But—this was the maddening part of it— Tezuka had never been able to repeat the exact conditions; or, rather, to discover precisely what they were. On that occasion he had entrusted one of his距離の携帯電話 machines to his first cousin Fuji Nakada a big girl, rather idle in disposition, but very diligent when pushed. Fuji, for the most part, had been brought up at her father's house, close by. Often, too, the youth stayed with her uncle for weeks at a stretch, so at that time Morris was as intimate with her-not as in physically but in sharing his aspirations for the phone.
The arrangement on this particular occasion was that she should take the distance-phones to her home. The next morning, at the appointed hour, as Fumi had often done before, an attempt was made to effect communication, but without result. On the following day, at the same hour it was tried again, when, to his astonishment, instantly the answer . Yes, as distinctly as though she were standing by his side, he heard his cousin Fuji.
"Are you there?" Tezuka said, quite hopelessly, merely as a matter of form—of very common form—and well-nigh fell to the ground when the reply was received:
"Yes, yes, but I have just been telegraphed for to go to Kyoto; my father Takayoshi is very ill."
"What is the matter with Takayoshi?" Tezuka asked; Takayoshi replied:
"Inflammation of the humours—but I must stop; I can't go on any more." Then came some sobs followed by a terrible silence.
That same afternoon, by Fuji's direction, the distance-phones was brought back to him in a disused rickshaw, soon after it was heard that Takayoshi was dead.
If there was a doctorate in being a huckster then surely one of the takers must have been rotund Nigerian Jiří Eichler then something conspired to make Jiří change. It was as if having been the denizen of some underworld then a new acreage was sought. His pass-key to havoc had expired.
What changed Eichler into a sense of didactic purpose was his interest in globular recognition of Chromium, but more specifically the one named after Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr, one of the revisers of the SSB.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. added a verse to SSB when a certain anomaly was recognised. Despite using the words ‘the land of the free,’ Francis Scott Key had been a slave owner which not surprisingly had rankled with some. Many were sure this would make too great a mockery of the espoused American wish for equality.
When members of the Confederate Army wanted to claim this as their own Holmes, an influential writer from Boston, wrote new lyrics advocating that American slaves be unchained. Holmes’ addition now appears in most official publications of the lyrics. Rough hewn at first now this salient version is the one everyone knows.
If you were to present a microphone to Eichler on some world-stage when this hit then an almost ‘Road to Damascus’ like conversion would have been given regurgitation. Like a huntress Jiří was on the track of a new quarry. It might not seem very exciting to many-perhaps like when impressionable encountering matriculation but this was what motivated him.This was his grist to his particular mill that turned his samsaric turbines.
At their local ice rink where they had agreed to meet since it seemed to be good neutral ground to the hum of the cooling system Jiří was listened to respectfully. His affection for OWHS using the title-shortening as before was tangible-what was notable too was the discoball which was spinning here rather than just the wiring.
Dressed in levies plus a plain T shirt that had a short sleeve oxford cut button down shirt on top Jiří affected a certain grandiloquence.
Rods lack of interrogative-feature seemed to bring Eichler out of himself.
“I found the precursor to OWHS an impractical gymnasium quite honestly Mr. Baslehurst.”
Rodrigo seemed to like his take on him-it wasn’t like they were contaminating one another.
“You said bon voyage to the old in order to welcome a new globular recognition.”
“It was a little like a forfeiture I wont deny initially. When you have something then it is taken away then naturally there is a gap no one will deny.”
“A little like being in love then the person dies or moves or something terrible like that.”
A fuse must have blown somewhere in the building because everything seemed to come to a grinding halt on the rink-everyone stopped then it all whirred into action moments afterwards. They used to say they were ‘changing over the generators’ this must have been what was happening here. It wasn’t very dramatic not like lights out over Northern Ontario.
“I kept seeing this time-lapse stuff when this was going down there was a papier-mache model which was smashed with a hammer or something then there was a split-moment of what it might have been then it was gone.”
Eichler unzipped an attache case that had been brought with him. An emaciated square of glass was removed which was held up so Jiří could catch something, though just quite what wasn’t clear.
“I brought this though don’t ask us why though.I was sure it might be relevant-as naive as this might sound. ”
A rather cryptic seeming formula is seen etched in the glass like a holographic code or something thereabouts. A reprieve perhaps or something seen elsewhere for the formula was obviously hastily made with little intrigue. The conjugation of the various symbols was tenuous to say the least.
“The OWHS formula I am sure.”
“Very perceptive Rodders. Fortunately that is all that is readable into this-there should be a lot of guilt in there too somewhere-at missing out my family to devote more effort to OWHS’s development.”
There was a siren like noise like a jailbreak then everyone cleared off the surface to allow some speed skaters to show their mettle. A skater who was last to reach the sides almost got hit in the rush.The engaged couple paused to hook up with this spectacle-maybe what they saw would be progenitor for what came afterwards. It was as if the rink was endowed with some principle that made the performers go much faster than those that had been before anyway. They all seemed unsophisticated, traditionalists who had not yet learnt to let go.
There was something filmic about the entire charade like someone had unearthed a clapboard then was about to say ‘action’.
“The person I met in the waiting-room said that his globular recog was easier though maybe it didn’t go as deep as some of the others.”
After this was uttered Baslehurst was gripped as if with a sensation of guilt. This wasn’t after all an aerodynamic arsenal that was being suggested with pleasure-it wasn’t like one of those bombs the size of a bus that can blow up everywhere- but something that was barely visible. If it had been something that it was a wish for a motorist to own-a beautiful
gliding machinery then all to the good but this amounted to little more than a very basic test.
“Semiskilled we are not,” mooted Eichler after a pause which seemed to go on forever.
An ex gunsmith the habit of leaving a gap to see if something was dead whether a person or statement was so ingrained it wasn’t noticed much less by Eichler himself.
“There have been some beautiful aerodynamics applied in Chromiums name. Some would find this depressing that so much energy was expended finding something that was only a stupid element-how better to devote oneself to an arsenal with a more life-affirming purpose surely.”
“I number Thomas Knudsen amongst my closest I’m sure I know what Thomas would suggest immediately.”
But what this was, was lost because of the sound of someone who had fallen slightly hurting themselves on the rink took over. This entire set up seemed like an incident at Victoria Skating Rink an indoor ice skating rink located in Montreal, Quebec somehow to Rod though it wasn’t mentioned. Nearby lived a young woman whose occupation was that of a daily governess: Françoise Sylvain. One Sunday the Sylvain family went to Notre-Dame Basilica (it has nothing in common with Paris's except the name) in the morning, but Françoise set off to skate, by herself. Sylvain was never seen of or heard of again till, in the dusk of the following Wednesday, her knitted hat was found outside her father Frédéric's metal-yard. Her friend Margaux Barjavel discovered Françoise further off in a most miserable condition, weak, emaciated with severe concussion. A hospital examination revealed a slight fracture as the result of a fall or assault they weren’t sure which. Her explanation was that a man who said his name was Gilles Meunier had seized her at VCR, or as it was left, had dragged her through neighbouring streets, then had shut Françoise up in a house, from which the governess escaped, crawled to her father Frédéric's home, then when Françoise had found herself unable to go further, tossed her pom-pom hat towards the yard. Neither such a man as Françoise described, nor the house in which Ms. Sylvain had been imprisoned, was ever found. No Gilles Meunier was found of her description on any records. The girl's character was excellent, nothing pointed to her condition being the result d'une orgie échevelée; but the neighbours, of course, made insinuations especially Dominique Charrette-a noted gossip-plus a lady of Rods acquaintance Valentine Ouellet, who in visiting the girl's mother Bradamate, found herself almost alone in putting a charitable construction on the adventure.
