I’ve prepared an earthen cocoon where I’ll place the red corpse for the final cleaning once the birds have removed its flesh and unnecessary organs.
— 29
The incineration seems lost in the past. Days or weeks have gone by. It could have been a year. I wonder if we approach the anniversary, if a season of ice is upon us again. Or, no time has passed. This seems truer than a year. Either way, there’s only ever one day. All service skeletons are working in unison. We are a well structured force. Our fires are burning.
Elmhurst will return to us today. It has been a short time, adequate for purification of the gore, I think. Much longer and the ground will form a permanent hold over him. I’m going to the site equipped with medical wrap and tape in case his joints need mending.
It was an emotional time as the dirt and bugs fell back to the swathe of ground, Elmhurst liberated and mostly intact. A heart removed and our heart is with him. His cerebral gray is cleaned out and he evolves to one mind. In silence we communicate in thought.
Yes, your radio awaits, I told the young skeleton pilot.
— 30
I killed another bear today, before he could find a cave, I’m sure of it. Fresh meat will be welcomed at the dinner fire. Stored rations are dwindling, some spoil. This green hide will be worked in the same manner of the last. It has lasted so far and keeps warm on the coldest nights.
—ALERT
The realization is immediately apparent that at least some life survives away from the glory of our island sanctuary. All civilization has yet to completely destroy itself.
An intense situation is developing: Off our coast we have spotted a ship with a couple of boats in tow, in fact. I cannot yet distinguish the number of sailors on board. They appear to have dropped anchor. A steel ship, a sailboat and two dinghies, all connected, are stopped and anchored off our beach on the leeward side of the island. Careful not to alert them to our location. I might destroy the entire mess if they come ashore. James is on the LMG. Elmhurst is—dammit Elmhurst is just sitting there at the radio. The hell is this. Dammit they’re going to see him. He won’t get to cover.
Attention everybody: someone is coming to shore in a row dinghy. I’ve spotted a small mounted motor. I’m ready to confront him when he gets to shore.
The raider has for some reason stalled his advance. He’s searching inland for something, for us. I wouldn’t doubt he’s seen Elmhurst. His fleet is absent a standard. Still no sign of others aboard the pirate group. He has returned to rowing. Staying in cover, I’ll go to meet that rowing pirate.
— 31
Harmless, pathetically harmless even armed with a revolver. I sent him on his way and told him that he would be wise to never approach our island unannounced ever again. The fool.
Oh, I was a ghost in a cemetery haze appearing before him and he was stuttering like a dinner bell at the end of my rifle. There he goes back to his ship. There he goes. I cut his eye too. No fuel for you here. Son of a bitch, get the fuck out of here.
He lives on another island close by and listens to our radio calls, he said. Until they stopped, he said. I have to confront Elmhurst with this. If that’s true, then it seems that he actually never returned to his radio duty after being sick, after joining the skeletons. And if it is true that he has gone derelict of his duty then I don’t know, every little pirate queen in the pacific is going to think they can come on over and steal our shit. This is serious. Look guys they’ve raised anchor, they’re moving out. That’s right. Get the fuck Out Of Here.
I’m considering the proposal of this seafarer. Of course that’s true. I know he’s likely nothing more than a would-be saboteur. I know. I know that. Listen to you speaking in such a way to me. It’s shameful if not insubordinate.
Well, of course I forgive you, James. See that all is forgiven. Here, see it here, right here. See that I accept your sincere apology. That’s all I can say. Now let’s forget about that. We can’t have insecurity. Listen. You need to hear what I’m saying, ok. Ok. Ok. Ok, ok ok, yes exactly that. See this—it’s right here, right here in the manifest—that I forgive you.
I understand that caution was your intent. Thank you. That means a lot coming from someone who displays such true dedication and valor. And I mean that. I really do. Well, good.
Right, if what this seafarer says is true, then, well I do, yes, I do want a sailboat. I want to sail around the island, James. Listen to me carefully. Listen to Copeland. He has obviously heard what I said, and knows the intent of what I said. We will not be sailing off into grave oceans. No, not anytime soon. Maybe someday if this entire island is engulfed in flames and that’s our one dire option, then, maybe then. I don’t know. That’s what I told him. Drink some whiskey now drink again. Everything is ok. Ok, there they go. They better stay away goddamn, I told him what for.
— 32
Radio is dead, some wiring problem, something got into it again. Apparently Elmhurst’s radio calls have been made on a dead radio, it’s true. Maybe only dead can hear these transmissions. Maybe that’s his dark idea: to call quietly the reaper to avenge his suffering at the boney hands of sacrilegious doctors, as he put it.
I’ll get this wiring straightened out today or tomorrow, sure. No signal. No static. I’ll take it to fix. Now Elmhurst is saying, oh, he is very confident that this happened just recently. I’m not too sure about that. I’m not too sure about that. No, I’d better get a clear connection now.
The face doesn’t light up. Nothing’s coming through. The signal just decays at the edge, at the cliff. You say you want to keep it from harm, but you don’t. It’s no surprise to me I need something to keep me warm at the edge, at the cliff and maybe a knife for my protection, yeah, my protection from my self at the edge, at the cliff. You saboteur just holding on, oh no, that was a front. You were released a long time ago. Hear the reaper flying in the night. Something beckons him carrying the scythe nearer: the calling through to the other side with your death radio prayer from the edge, at the cliff. I hear the reaper flying close in the lost night, clutching his command of mortal destiny for a fiendish severing of a curved blade. I stand waiting for death to arrive.
The face doesn’t light up, nothing’s coming through. The dead radio signal decays, at the edge, at the cliff. I stand waiting above the water, an ocean of the River Styx and all these souls who had no coin for Charon join me suspended at the edge of eternity, undelivered.
— 33
Our coast has been free of invaders for days or weeks since the encounter with McKenna—is what he said his name was. When I questioned him on the beach, he told me the reason he pulled the boats was because if he ran out of fuel he wouldn’t be stranded at sea and could take the sailboat to his island home. Sitting there begging with blood on his face, he swore that he took all the sails with him so people on his island couldn’t steal his other sailboat from him when he was away and sail off or break it. Especially one girl.
Then he told me that if I gave him some of our diesel fuel to use for his steel ship that he would trade me that other sailboat with sails. That’s what I’m talking about. I would never abandon my responsibility here, I told him. Of course, that would be out of the question.
He said he had children on his island born before and after the war started, born from a native woman. A wife had died, I think is what he said. And there was a young Russian that he felt no particular fondness for. Said she would steal his sailboat and drift forever. And he said that she indeed loathed him and had shunned his advances—once upon a time—because he was old and ugly. And in keeping respect of other residents he immediately ended his advances towards her some time ago. She’s an outcast basically. He said so much about that Russian girl. I forget most of it. That he wanted to send her here, to me, mostly is what I recall.
To kill me in my sleep, likely. And then return to raid our island after she’s done the deed. Well, that won’t happen. I won’t fall to that. Come on, after everything, I won’t let them get
away with anything. He expects me to make a slave of her, I guess. No, I would never do such a thing. He had better never bring her to me, to this island. I told him absolutely: No. She’d try some of her clever maneuvers and that would be the end of that throat cutting bitch.
— 34
It’s been weeks, I haven’t seen McKenna.
—Update: Still no McKenna, one month.
—Winter.
—Winter. Still.
— 35
Rain, icy rain. I can’t always get to our mountain lookout by the towers. The road is sometimes too muddy. We know what happens if you go off the road into a canyon tracking deer, Elmhurst, that’s true. I haven’t been able to find many deer lately. Bears are back out. Bears. I’ve decided to pass on deer until I observe a few more. I’m going into the high bush for I’ve caught sight of a springtime bear.
— 36
We’re sitting here—James, Copeland, Elmhurst and I—drinking whiskey and eating bear meat right off the fire, and we see out in cold water that little armada again. McKenna’s fleet. He knows we have rockets over here to go with our rifles and pistols. More boats this time. That is one crazy son of a gun. Maybe it’s springtime. Maybe that’s why McKenna has returned.
That it’s springtime and so McKenna is back is something so funny we were just laughing because he came back, and we’re on the high ground watching this guy. He shows up in springtime like the bears, we can’t stop laughing. He anchored out there again and is moving around, and we’re dying up here because he’s back like bears. I guess we don’t really know why, we’re just laughing and he’s covered by all our guns. Copeland is cracking his skeleton fingers so close to the trigger, and McKenna is out there in the cold, maybe springtime water on a boat like a sitting duck. No, let the man be, the poor man, let him be.
McKenna is rowing his dinghy to shore again for God sake and towing another little crap dinghy too.
He called me from the beach. He shouldn’t know my name. Not happening Mick. He can’t see me. Keep away from our camp or die. If he thinks I’m going down there out in the open then man I’d have to be a baby seal or something that I am not. He’s going again, good. He left the other dinghy roped on the beach. For what, I’m not going out on that trap. He left something else there too. I don’t know. He better take his armada out of here.
Yeah, he’s leaving.
There’s a problem with McKenna’s little armada.
McKenna’s long gone, one of his boats is still anchored off our beach. Somebody’s on McKenna’s boat out there—what for I don’t know. It’s a sailboat. I don’t know. There’s someone on it, a woman. I can see a woman on that boat out there. She should be leaving soon, too, I guess.
—I fell asleep in the open last night watching the sailboat with one of McKenna’s sailors on it offshore. Didn’t get into camp until about midnight, I guess. I froze in my sleep out there. I’m going out to make sure she left.
Still there. She’s been out there all night on dark water. The plan? Oh we’re going to wait and see.
— 37
She’s fishing. She has her second fish that I’ve seen. I’m going to talk to her. Well, she should know that she can’t just fish out there all day. This is our beach. I have things to do. Ok, I’ll trade some whiskey for that fish. Oh, we have enough if you guys ease up a bit. Cases. That’s clever thinking—I’ll trade some diesel for those fish. I’d like some fresh fish, not bear, not spoiled canned fish either. All right, I’ll be careful. Don’t worry about that.
—She said I don’t have to keep an eye on her, believe that. Well, she can’t leave because she has no sails or else she would, she said. And she said that McKenna left sails on the beach, which he did. I saw those sails right there, and that she was supposed to tell me that this sailboat was mine if I wanted to keep it, and McKenna would be back in one week to pick up the barrels of diesel. No, she wouldn’t give me any fish. Because I’m making her stay out on the boat with nothing else to eat that’s why. No, I didn’t offer her the diesel. It’s a sailboat. A sailboat with no sails and she might raise anchor and drift off. Seems like maybe she’s the type to do that, I guess. I don’t know, she said so.
I have to take her as part of the deal she said is what McKenna said—on to this island. So what, it’s bigger than theirs. She admitted it was true that she told McKenna that if he ever laid a hand on her that she would cut his throat when he slept, to clarify my concern. No matter, she can’t stay. No, she will have to stay on that boat until McKenna gets back to take them both away. I’d like to have a sailboat, though. She can’t stay here. Not to sail away, to sail out, near the island, I told you guys that already.
— 38
We’ll find solace in these mountains, Copeland. We stand above the ocean where wraith howls curve in northern lights circling transit cliff. Drink, drink more as we find an ancient verse. An emerald star fixed in a great revolution crosses ultra-violet sky as it is mirrored on the surface of limitless stygian waters and in the glass of an old green pirate bottle. Enchanted creatures and a skeleton gaze upon this celestial wilderness. Death gazes back.
Life and death are separate by nature. Death kills life. I think it doesn’t work the other way, though. Knives cut and bullets scream. Life has washed against our beach. It waits anchored, unsatisfied. Dissatisfaction is pointless. When I sit here at the cliff hearing death circling in air above, I can’t imagine any other purpose than being here to face death. There’s no other meaning. Meaning continues abandoned of purpose as the reaper howls over the forest and the ocean crashes against the rocks. The capacity of a person to have knowledge of meaning or purpose seems impossible, listening to the reaper.
Kagan describes: thoughts of existence can produce sorrow. Meaning is perfectly elusive to a human being meandering in a meaningless world. As sounds of maddened voices, of pathetic unsatisfied people sitting in—or walking by—the cafe are evidence of a felt absurdity, a lack of meaning.
He claimed it didn’t matter that absurdity was true—belief in the absurdity of life confirms it. Contemplating and analyzing its existence becomes a distraction. Absurdity is true—it’s the angst of a blossoming consciousness. Absurdity exists to be destroyed without effort.
Thinking there’s no meaning in life identifies the concept of meaning and its absence. It could be that a person searches for it or desires it. Yet, it exists unspoken, within consciousness. Kagan attempts to remove the concept, and the desire, also, to return to a natural state of existence: consciousness—existence of meaning without definition. Existence as awareness of mind—the essence of consciousness. That is freedom from absurdity according to Kagan.
See, Copeland, though Kagan knew suffering, he knew content. He noted it, what one day he had said to me at the cafe:
Contentment is realized when understanding its necessity is an illusion.
Kagan’s ramblings are all that’s left of any of them. He often observed the egotistic and materialistic tendencies of people in the city, in the cafe. His enmity of such behavior would not condone its physical destruction. Even if their superficial madness was deemed worthless, he would say that shallowness should be overcome.
I feel less inclined to indifference, in hindsight. Yes, Copeland, freedom was abused. Yes, we did suffer, all. We were irresponsible with the utter freedom liberty bestowed upon us—and that may be unforgivable, a debt not payable except by the lives that it dissolved. As the multitudes sought satisfaction in meaningless schemes, their destruction neared. It was uncommon to live in a way of actual freedom. It was all dependent on the worthless.
I think that believing life is meaningless or absurd is irrelevant. It exists with or without you. The world requires no observer to exist. Death requires no observer to exist. Another life would still exist if a bomb didn’t kill cities the way it killed you, Copeland. Here, we have meaning and it is self-determined.
— 39
Have some whisky. Listen to these voices. Listen to Kagan. List
en to his confusing dream. Hear the pen gliding over paper, then it is wind, thoughts of birds, wings dividing air and now you must attempt to hear a silent voice of an unknowable omniscience, the mind of God, Copeland. Trace the mind of God as if meaning in the world depended on your unattainable perception imagining an everquiet God. As if this is today, Copeland. When it passes, ends, ceases to exist—and it will at any moment, it’s going to happen—the world will end in an instant. Any second now. Greater than death, for there will be nothing left that ever lived, no perception, investigation, no investigator, imagination or imaginer. No viewer, no thing to rot. No stench. No frost, nothing.
—The word nothing made me think how it’s said: nothing is created in a vacuum. And, I thought of it as a positive statement describing the creation of nothing. So, nothing is said to describe anything and everything. Nothing, meaning all things—
Soon, there will not even be gravity or space, no vacuum or void. Nothing. You wonder in your skeleton mind how there could be no existence. No mineral, gas, liquid, celestial body in orbit, stars. There is no answer for you. It’s all a figment of an imagination and once the imagining mind can fall asleep, or be abandoned in death, it will disappear as well. All cyphering will vanish from this once imagined page.
Copeland, observe with your wide open skull eyes this other world. See that it still exists, please, in the same way as the ocean, celestial ice, and the cold reaper flying—the way that somewhere off our distant beach is a sailboat with a Russian girl on it. No, we can’t see her from here. She’s an unseen reality floating on the night water—yet we know she exists, like the destroyed world.
— 40
I was fixed on Kagan’s exploration of the destruction of consciousness, and look, the tide has changed. Moonlight exposes shining obsidian in the boundary of the dark ocean of perdition, resting place for the damned. The terrors that waged war and killed millions face reckoning there, suffering the abyss.
Pilot Manifest: The Source of all Things Page 4
