Circular Motion

by Ripple Reddwoord

  “Oh…” The little boy looked like he was thinking. Then he said, “’n wha’ ‘re th’ li’tle par’icles made ove?”

  The old man looked at the boy. “Protons and neutrons and quarks and things.”

  “Oh…” The little boy looked like he was thinking again but this time he was thinking harder. He had a funny accent. I could tell he was thinking harder because of the way he pouted his lips. “’n wha’ ‘re ull them made ove?”

  “Can’t tell you, son.” He had a red horse. It snarled and clawed its hoof on the dusty earth.

  The son’s horse was white. It also looked mean. “Why not daddy?”

  Then the scene shifted. I heard a radio playing music but I don’t remember what kind. I couldn’t open my eyes and that’s how I knew I was still dreaming. I saw a field; we were dancing to the music, Mustardseed and me, in the field. I heard the voices again.

  “Did you ever look up at the sky?” I looked. It was red now. I guess that was the father’s voice. I should probably ask Mustardseed for her real name soon.

  “No…” I think there were two moons in the sky like Endor. “I mean yes… lots ove ‘imes.”

  At first I thought I was talking but then I noticed the accent and knew it was the son speaking.

  “Look up now son, what color is it?” I checked again; it was now pulsing red. I felt its energy in low frequency cycles.

  I heard a deep breath. Breathing in the dust and the pulsing energy. “It’s red, daddy.”

  I tried to agree with the son but I couldn’t speak.

  “Are you sure?” The old man was kind.

  “Ya. Can’t ya see th’ red?”

  I felt the man smile. We were still dancing. “I see red, but it’s not the red you see.”

  “Oh…” The boy understood. His lips formed a smile. “Is tha’ why ya can’t tell me?”

  “Yes, son.” Everything turned blue. We were dancing again. No, we weren’t dancing, we were moving like the grain in the sea. The sky came down and touched us. I understood it too. I understood everything. But I was being drawn away from the men on horses and I forgot most of it. There are a couple things I still remember from that moment but out of context it sounds pretty cheesy. Some stuff about wishing I had a soul, or at least believing that I did.

  Then we were in a desert dancing. Me and Mustardseed I mean. I saw mountains far away across the sands and I remember wondering if there was any water on the other side. I saw a monolith in the desert like in 2001. I took her hand and walked towards it. There was grass around the monolith and we were still dancing. Or floating really. There were words on the stone and we read the words together. I don’t remember what it said anymore either. I still have a picture of the monolith in my head but I can’t read make out what’s written on it. I think it’s in Egyptian or Chinese or something.

  I know this is weird but bear with me cuz its almost over.

  I remember thinking more simple jumbled catch phrases like ‘this is eternity’ and ‘nothing is alive’ and ‘alive is dead’ but they had already lost definition to me. I felt like I was gonna wake up soon so I said ‘kiss me one more time’ to her.

  “I’ve been thinking.” Her hair turned red. Burning cinnamon.

  “About what?” I said.

  “Isn’t it pretty outside?” All of the sudden everything was green. And fresh. And new.

  “Ya, lets jump un th’ clowds.”

  #

  When I woke up I was lying in yellow stalks that faked life by waving in the wind. She was lying next to me, quiet. I wanted to check her pulse to see if she was ok but I didn’t wanna touch her.

  Her hair covered her neck.

  I stood up and remembered what had happen yesterday. I was standing still but I kind of lost balance for a second as if the ground had shifted. I saw the tracks and the road and the railroad crossing where the tracks met the road. The ice cream truck was black and the back of it was blown out. I forgot about the dream I just had; it wouldn’t come back until later so I couldn’t really think about it. The truck itself was lying on a patch of dirt between the grain and the tracks where the fire couldn’t spread anywhere. I guess we were lucky. Other that that there wasn’t much around us.

  I looked up and the sun was pretty high and I wondered why she wasn’t up yet. I didn’t know what to do. I sat back down and figured I should just wait. The stalks waved in the wind. (integrated circuit)

  I remember watching this insect crawl up one of the stalks. I remember watching the legs move.

  This feeling of desertion crept up on me. And the sun was creeping too. I was alone watching the bug. I remembered when I was a kid I was scared at night of shadows cuz I thought there might be aliens watching me with their big black eyes. I don’t know why I was so scared of them; maybe I was abducted as a kid and have some repressed memories. Imagination like dreams would reawaken those memories. But I never really did believe aliens were real though.

  Sometimes I would just sit in my room and drink red wine out of the bottle. Bordeaux. Appellation Saint-Emilion Grand Cru Contrôlée.

  She awoke. She sat up and blinked and rubbed her eyes. I think I felt lonely again cuz it was over now and there was no need for her to stay with me anymore. I said, “Good morning.”

  She shook her head and looked at me and smiled. “Good morning.”

  “I think it’s over now.” I looked over and saw the burnt truck. Her stomach grumbled. She stood up and saw it too. The truck I mean. She stood up and saw the truck.

  “Ya. He’s not gonna follow us anymore.” She started walking towards the ice cream truck and I followed her. I wonder if she had dreamt anything that night. Her dress was wrinkled but everything I saw was bleached by the sun. No more trees.

  A line of carbon-like stuff encircled the truck; it made me think of Bucky balls. I know some orgo buzz words too. She stood in front of the truck for a second and then turned to me. “We’d better get going.”

  “How?” We couldn’t really take the ice cream truck.

  “Hitchhike.” Her forehead had some blood caked on it.

  “Ok.”

  Pedro

  I wondered how I looked with maybe cuts and bruises as well. My arms and legs were sore. Drained. I think I was getting homesick. I was thinking about how much I liked my dorm room. It was messy but I could wake up every morning and look at it and think, ‘I’m home’.

  The color of the sky was very unusual. The sun bleached the ground but left the sky blue. It was like finger-painting in kindergarten. But now I don’t understand finger-painting as well as I used to and it makes me sad. I think the sky would have been prettier to me if I still understood it. Finger-painting I mean. The sky would have been prettier if I still understood finger-painting. Silly, isn’t it?

  We walked to the road and started away from the tracks. She walked farther away from me than usual. I was worried that maybe someone would stop to pick her up and pass on me cuz I wasn’t anything special.

  #

  We were walking on the wrong side of the road if we had been driving. We kept about four feet apart with me walking lead. A couple cars came towards us and passed us. While we were walking I think I remembered the dream that I had the night before. Later, I turned around and started walking backward. “How are you feeling?”

  “Ok. Kinda thirsty.” Her head was hanging low. Then she looked up. “My face is pretty bloody, isn’t it?”

  The tics were definitely slowing. I had to inject another hit if I was going to remember anything. “It’s pretty colorful.”

  That made her smile. I walked forwards again. The sun was above us and in the distance I saw mirages of water on the road.

  “So what do you do anyway?” It was about time I tried to find out whom she was.

  “Me? I got this grant to do some research.”

  “On what?” The mirages sizzled in the sun.

  “It’s this theory I have about reality existing as a circular loop.”

&nb
sp; “Huh?” My legs were getting tired. I stepped off the road gravel onto the dirt and that helped a bit. “Like history repeats itself?”

  “No.” She breathed in and exhaled. Like she’s given this lecture a few times before. “For example I was working on religions for a while. Dogma changes over time. On day you can just pray for forgiveness and the next you have to give donations to the church. You can relate those dogmatic changes to social issues that affected religious policy. But there is an underlying religious core that doesn’t change. By doing a correlation study between dogma and society you can gain a glimpse at this religious core. It exists in a lot of other areas like philosophy and economic theory. It is what I call core perception.”

  No clouds in today’s sky.

  “You can gather data about a past moment’s core perception, but the current one is elusive. When people come up with a new theory they try to create something timeless within a system dependent on time, rather than the core. So religions end up with changing rules. What I’m trying to do is construct a model of my present reality and then remove that reality from my perception of it. It’s hard though. There’s no easy way to describe something outside a system using the system.”

  “That kind of reminds me of this class on abstract algebra I took once. We brought wine in and got the TA drunk one night.”

  “Ya, a lot of people have been telling me it’s related to some math theory. I need to look that stuff up sometime.”

  After that we were quiet. A little while later a white van came down the road from behind us. She turned around and stuck her thumb up. I didn’t really notice it at first but then the van passed us and skidded to a halt in front of us. The van looked new or at least freshly painted with black markings on its side and a mini satellite dish on top. There weren’t any windows in the rear. A guy with a cigar in his mouth rolled down the driver’s side window and stuck his head out.

  “Hey, señor! How are you?” He waved at me. I didn’t think my name was señor. He pulled in reverse and backed up to us. “What are you doing here? A beautiful señorita with, presently.”

  He had this cowboy hat on and cocked his eyebrows at me. “What?”

  “Come, get in quickly señor.” He smiled and waved us towards him. I heard this noise coming from the van that sounded like one of those Shel Silverstein recordings. I looked at Mustardseed and she shrugged so we walked towards him. “Have you no umbrellas? The sky is open always, yes?”

  My body was still tired and I was dazed. The van had this radio antenna with lightning bolt shooting out of the top painted on it and the letters KCFU written next to the graphic. Then when we got halfway across the street his hand made this funny shape. It was like two fists on top of each other except his bottom index finger came up through his top fist. He did this so the horizon I could see behind him cut between the two hands. I didn’t know what he was trying to do. “Uh, hi.”

  Then he looked at me; I got the impression that he wanted me to do something. I think maybe I could have figured out what he wanted but I was dazed and couldn’t think. He stopped smiling. I looked over at Mustardseed. She just kept walking across the street one foot in front of the other perpendicular to the white van. I looked back at him. His left eye seemed to twitch.

  “Oh, understanding is here, señor.” He motioned toward Mustardseed. “She is separate from us. But she is good, si? Come please get in. Before they do see us.”

  This was getting very strange and I was thinking about trying to run and get away from it all but she kept on walking to the other side of the van and I didn’t want to lose her so I followed her. She opened the passenger side door. “Hello.”

  “Hola, señorita. Please make yourself at home in the back. Pedro must discuss many things with your compañero here.” He said this while unbuckling his seatbelt and putting out the cigar in an ashtray velcroed to the topside of the dashboard with Velcro. Then he reached over and opened the door. “Ah, what is this, you were attacked? With faces like this Pedro would think you are dead.”

  I guess he saw the blood on her face. She smiled at him. “No. We had an accident.”

  He squinted his eyes at her. “Understanding is here. Brave you are. You are both very brave revolucionarios against the hidden ones.”

  He pulled her up and she stepped into the back of the truck and then I climbed into the passenger seat. I got a good look at him. He had had black hair and his skin was tanned and he had a silver tooth in his smile, or at least a silver cap on a tooth. “Thank you.”

  “Señor, a brother is one who you do need not thank, hey?” I closed the door and he shifted the van and got going. He turned the volume down on the stereo. “Remember me you do not, si? Ah well, whom are we that dream a poor farmer’s boy would be known by you, who is of King.”

  I smiled and said ‘I am truly sorry’. I guess he was mistaking me for someone else but I didn’t say so. I heard Mustardseed shuffle around in the back. He twitched again. I’d say it was a wink except his eyelid wouldn’t fully close. His eyebrow and cheek would spasm in unison and pinch his eye socket.

  “Believing a formal introduction of ourselves is in order and necessary, Pedro is the name called by those of our House.” I wasn’t sure whether I should capitalize ‘house’ or not but I’m gonna keep it capitalized just in case. I think he was trying to say his name was Pedro. “As you can see Pedro is one from House Number 3.”

  “Pleased I am to become of your acquaintance, Pedro.” After a while I would notice myself start to talk him. I do that sometimes; I’ll speak with the same idiosyncrasies as those that are around me. We passed a green sign on the highway saying that the next city was 42 miles away. “Now, where before have we had meeting?”

  Pedro was watching the road now. He would glance at me every now and then. “The time was in the Basque we had, maybe some years ago now. The briefing you ran there and Pedro was honored as being House ambassador for rebelión. A fine time we had, si?”

  “Yes.” He smiled at me. I still didn’t know what he was talking about but I tried to pretend I did anyway. “Beautifully executed I must say.”

  “Yes, those were fine times.” He looked at me again and leaned over and winked. “And who is this señorita with you, she must be a fine piece in bed, si?”

  “Yes.” I couldn’t say any more. There was a pause.

  “Understanding is here, señor. No need to speak with such things between the brothers.” He smiled again and looked back at the road ahead. “So how long have you been out here under this sky of spies?”

  I guess he meant out in a grain field away from civilization. I said four days. I’m not sure why.

  “Really? So you do not know about the success of House Number D?”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. (trap state) But then I remembered that this was different, this is what I was asking for. “No. Is… done has it become?”

  “Yes! We grow daily with such amazing strength. To think they have taken the location from directly under the mucus filled filthy longhaired nostrils of this government, right in the heart of the Tyranny itself. They think themselves tricky with hiding it where only the fish may see but now we too may perceive such things.” I wasn’t sure about capitalizing ‘tyranny’ either. But whatever. I’m sure there are plenty of other things that should be capitalized or made into acronyms that are not. He smiled at me again. And then he held up four fingers with his knotted hand. “But four days, señor, you must be exhausted. There is a cot in the back, take rest if it pleases you. Pedro has some food as well. Follow me will you?”

  I was gonna thank him again but then I remembered that we were brothers and brothers did not need to thank each other so I just nodded. He flipped a switch next to the instrument panel of the van and a red light blinked on near where the stereo was set. Then he got up and pushed through this black curtain that separated the back from the front of the van. I got worried for a second since no one was driving the car and the speedometer said we were goin
g about 85 but then I noticed the steering wheel moved back and forth making the car stay in the middle of the road. A bend came in the road and the wheel turned to compensate for it ok. I guess it was some kind of automatic drive. I followed Pedro to the back of the van.

  The rear was kinda strange. The right side of the van had a cot, a sink with a mirror, a little freezer, and some cabinets like a miniature kitchen. The left side was jammed with all of this electronic equipment. There were half a dozen screens and a couple racks packed with black boxes with knobs and LED lights and LCD displays. There was a flat piece of wood protruding from the wall like a table with a chair next to it. There was a PowerBook on top of the table with a blank dead screen. Two of the monitors had feeds from television stations on them and the other screens had data and numbers and graphs on them that I didn’t recognize. Next to the PowerBook on the desk was one of those old-school green and white printouts with the words ‘Possible SR’ written on the top in red letters. On the back wall there was a handgun in a black holster hanging off a peg. The inside of the van was painted white too.

  Pedro was by the cot. He was looking at something behind me and didn’t talk to me until I went up to him and stopped looking at the van. Then he turned around and I think zippered his fly and said, “Your little friend here is sleeping.”

  “What?” I think he was talking about Mustardseed. I saw her on the cot with her face clean and a green blanket covering the rest of her body. I couldn’t remember what happened to her shotgun. “Oh, I guess she cleaned herself up and went to bed.”

  I didn’t have my wallet anymore either. Then Pedro put his hand on my shoulder and looked at me with his twitching eyebrow. “How far would you come with Pedro?”

  I didn’t say anything at first and he took his hand of me and sat down on the chair next to the table and the PowerBook and the printouts.

  “For a long time still we will be heading northward.”

  “To the next city, I think.” I didn’t want to stay too long in here. I mean Pedro was a little crazy. (tic, toc) “And there we must part company.”