Day 60 - Strange Machines - Part 29

John walked back into his room, as if visiting a place he hadn't seen in years. He stared at the bed in the corner, the shelves packed full of books propped against the walls, the telescope by the window. He'd missed it all, and he'd only just realized it.

He slowly unpacked, pulling his shirts and pants from the suitcase and finding the appropriate spots for his books on the shelf. He took the small figure, his Conduit, from his backpack and placed it on a shelf, so that he'd always see it.

His notebook was the last piece, the final scrap to be tucked away. He turned to the last page he'd written and read it, again and again. He thought about ripping the pages from the spine, shredding them in an effort to erase his past, but there was no erasing the things he'd seen, the things he'd done. They were a part of him, for better or worse. Instead, he drew his pen and wrote on the blank opposite page, a continuation of the story of his life.

I've come out the other side. I've stared into the light, and it stared back into me. Then I saw it. I saw it move, and I feel vindicated, justified. I looked into the light, and I saw something move.

He laid the notebook on his desk and sat on the edge of his bed, contemplating his next move. There was still so much to be done, so much to live for. He stood up once again and moved toward the window, the sound of pills rattling in his pocket. He peered through the telescope, breaking an empty promise to never touch it again. There was a pale blue disc on the other side, a small fragment of the clear sky above. The boy smiled. He was ready to see the night again, for that first electric star to flicker in the dark.

Day 59 - Strange Machines - Part 28

They awoke late in the morning. Evan was first. He sat up from his spot on the floor with a dry mouth and particles floating in his vision. Almost immediately after, John awoke, or, at least, his eyes opened, as his body continued to lie atop the bed.

"What time is it?" asked the boy.

Evan checked his watch. "A quarter til twelve."

John propped himself up. "What do we do now?"

Evan yawned and shook his head. "I don't know. I need to take down my exhibit today. Then tomorrow my bus leaves, and I'll be headed back to New York."

"It only lasted a day? Your show, I mean."

"Well, yeah, but I've already got what I came for."

"Last night--was that really it? Was that what why we came here?" John asked, though clearly not with disappointment.

"I believe so. Did you find what you were looking for?"

It took the boy a moment to answer. He pondered the question carefully. "Yes. I think I did."

"So what do you want to do now? Still thinking about finding your mom?"

"No, I don't need to anymore. Besides, I don't know where I'd even look. I think I'd like to go home now."

Evan spun himself around on the cheap carpet, turning to face him. "What will you tell your aunt and uncle?"

"The truth, I guess, or at least as much of it as they'll believe. There's no sense in convincing them that I'm a total nutcase," said John. "I just wish we didn't have to go our separate ways. I kind of liked having a brother, even if only for a day."

"I really do have a little brother. Did I tell you that?"

John shook his head.

"He's the only reason I was able to pass as your family. Thank God I actually remembered his Social Security Number for all that paperwork. The point is: I know what a brother feels like--that relationship, and if it's any consolation, you feel like a little brother to me."

"Thanks," said the boy. "I really needed that."

"I'll tell you what--first, we'll head down to the bookstore and pick up a copy of that Murakami you need to finish. Then give your aunt and uncle a call. Tell them that you're coming home. I'll head down to the bus station and see if I can't book you a ticket on the same one I'm taking, at least for part of the way. I'd let you keep the telescope, but, well, I know you already have one at home."

"Thanks," said John. "Can I come see you sometime? When you're in New York?"

"You better."

"I think I'll buy a convertible some day--black, with plenty of space. We can have lunch and do all the things brothers do. What do you say?"

"Sounds like a plan. Just promise me one thing."

"Name it."

"Keep writing. Do what you love. The words will come to you if you let them."

John smiled. Deep down, he knew that he no longer needed any reassurance. He knew there was something dwelling within him--something that had come from the heart of a star and had seen things no one else had ever seen before. It was faint, but pulsating--a blue and white spark.

"I know," said the boy.

Day 58 - Strange Machines - Part 27

Evan woke him when they reached their destination. The effects of the pills still wore heavily on his sense of perception, but it seemed to John that they were in the middle of nowhere. Flat, white land with only the occasional patch of thick grass stretched out as far into the darkness as he could see.

"Where are we?" he asked.

"Not far from Joshua Tree."

"So now we're going to look at the stars?"

"Yeah, and wait."

"For what?"

Evan shook his head. "I don't know, but it'll happen here."

While Evan retrieved the box from the trunk and attempted to set up the telescope, John tried desperately to shake himself from his haze, but there was no escape. He felt trapped, as if the feeling would never go away. He tried to focus, staring first at his good hand as he opened and closed it. He'd surrendered control again, and he aimed to get it back.

Before an awkward attempt at meditation could be made, a pair of lights appeared on the horizon. They drew nearer and nearer, until John realized they were headlights.

"Evan!" he yelled, pointing.

Evan stared at the moving lights and then went back to work, setting up the telescope. A stuck tripod leg seemed to garner more attention than a guest.

"It's just the others. There'll be more."

"More what?"

"People."

"What're they doing here?"

"The same thing we are, I'd imagine. It's all right, John. I don't think there's anything to worry about."

It was no use. The boy couldn't help but worry.

Moments later, an old blue pickup truck with a camper on the back pulled up next to their Caprice. A thin man with gray hair and a thick mustache stepped out and approached.

"Evening," he said. "What are you folks here for?"

Evan looked from the man to John and back. "To see the stars."

The old man laughed and adjusted his jeans. "Same here, I guess," he replied. "Here come the rest." He pointed into the distance, where a particularly low field of stars were all coming closer. They were all headlights.

"What's your name?" John asked.

"Sam."

"Sam, I'm John. This is Evan."

"Nice to meet you."

"What do you do, Sam?" Evan asked.

"I'm an artist--a painter, that is."

Evan nodded. "I'm a sculptor. He's a writer."

"Is this some sort of art convention?" John asked.

"I don't know. Maybe. We'll find out soon enough."

In a matter of minutes, a number of different vehicles pulled up beside the Caprice and the old truck with the camper, and people started climbing out and congregating there in the secluded desert, in a place that had been nearly lifeless for years. There were men, women, families of four, people from all walks of life converging in one place for reasons they couldn't completely explain. It was a compulsion, a feeling each and every one of them carried deep within that drew them together. Here they all were, in the middle of the desert with a wide night sky above. The stars were all shining.

Many of the others started unpacking tents and telescopes of their own. Evan wandered through the growing crowd as everyone began to mingle, mixing together, rotating like a thousand tiny cogs in one enormous machine. They greeted each other like old friends, though they'd never met. They helped one another with heavy gear and those other situations where an extra set of hands can make all the difference. He could hear fragments of conversations, key words sticking out as if surrounded by neon lights--writer, artist, poet, philosopher, craftsman, sculptor. John had been right--they were all artists, in one form or another.

The air was crisp, clean. The wind picked up, rushing against a thousand faces, preparing them, baptizing them. Something was going to happen. There was a sudden calm that descended from the sky, and every man, woman, and child went quiet, returned to their separate camps, and looked up. They stared through mirrors and lenses, all of them lost in a field of constellations and irregular patterns of light, like scattered crumbs on a black, marble table.

Evan ran back to the Caprice, where John still sat in the passenger seat, staring straight up. His eyes were half closed, but he could see just as well--maybe even better. His state of mind, addled by pills, left him detached, exposed, open to accept the things that flashed before his eyes. He'd been a fusion of bare flesh and metal soul, two opposing spheres forced together in a single entity, but now freed. One half soared high above the other, reaching up toward the stars, ever grasping. But which half?

"You okay?"

John smiled. "Yeah, I am."

"Come on, let's check out the telescope," said Evan, attempting to rouse the boy from his languished state.

John swung the car door open and pulled himself to his feet. He trudged over to the telescope, hunched, and peered through the eyepiece. He saw a blue disc, crackling subtly with flame and spiraling electricity. He let go, backing up against the side of the Caprice and staring up with only his naked eyes.

"I don't think I need it," said the boy. He could see the exact same thing, even without the aid of the telescope. It began somewhere on Orion's Belt, an image that grew and filled the sky, swallowing all the other stars one by one. He closed his eyes, and still he could see it.

Evan took his turn with the telescope, gazing up at the gathering light.

"John, my God, do you see this?"

"Yeah," said the boy. "I see it."

There was a sudden flash, and the sky lit up. Everything went white. The core, the source of the light, whatever it was, descended. John opened his eyes and stared into the heart. It was as if a tiny star had landed in the desert, and a crowd of spectators greeted it with silence.

The boy looked around him, and the world itself flashed and rippled. The others around him were flickering specks of black and white--static, Signal to Noise. It suddenly made sense, and he realized that all along, he'd simply been out of tune. The signal adjusted, like a radio switching from a dead frequency, and the world around him shifted, creating a brand new reality--one that bore a modicum of reason. The static figures began to clarify, gaining a distinct shape and definition. There were thousands of them--black, wiry bodies covered in starlight. Here they all were, in one place--Conduits.

On some level, the boy understood, but not in any way that he could describe. He struggled to find the words, but there were none. There could be no composition, no expression of any sort within the light. It was all-encompassing, but not ensnaring. There were no walls, no boundaries to contain them. This was another place entirely--one that seeded imagination, but was not born of it.

The boy looked back into the star, the source, and he could hear a voice, so he thought. On closer inspection, he could see the voice, as if the wiring of his brain could not adequately play the transmission. The voice told him that there was nothing to be afraid of, that this was not an ending. With that simple message, the people in the desert were given purpose, hope. It was inspiring to each and every one of them, on a very personal level.

The boy stared, squinting, desperate to see something else, and there it was, a faint silhouette, hidden deep within the light. It swayed, oscillating very slowly, yet it was there, and he saw it. He saw something moving in the light.

Then just as quickly as it had appeared, the light lifted, retreating back into place as it broke into a million, tiny pieces. The stars returned to the sky.

The people were quiet. Those with tents disappeared inside, sheltered by solitude. Others silently packed up their telescopes and binoculars, climbed back into their cars and trucks, and drove off into the desert.

Evan picked up the 8-inch Meade refracting telescope and laid it gently in the back seat, atop John's belongings. Then he and the boy both took their seats in the front of the Caprice. The engine, along with a dozen others across the desert plain, roared to life, and they drove into the dark horizon, the rushing night air caressing their faces.

***

They drove back into the city, the colorful flashing lights blinding at first, but their eyes quickly adjusted back to seeing in the world they had lived in for so long. They didn't speak at all during the return trip, but only because nothing needed to be said. Evan simply stared at the road ahead, and John hovered someplace between waking and sleeping.

They reached the hotel, first passing by the looming hospital at which neither of them dared look. They shared the room. Evan offered John the bed and found himself a comfortable spot on the floor. It didn't take long for them both to fall into a heavy sleep, above any covers and still wearing their street clothes covered in the dust of a distant desert.

Day 57 - Strange Machines - Part 26

They drove south. The top of the Caprice had been let down, and the wind rushed through their hair and loose sleeves, chilling them, reminding them that the night was still a cold, dark thing. They were headed to the desert.

John could never wrangle an exact destination from Evan and began to wonder if his surrogate brother even knew. Evan, as far as the boy could tell, was following the stars. And the boy was watching them. He leaned his head back against the cushioned rest and stared up at the clear sky above. As they drove further away from the city, the night intensified, growing darker as the stars shone brighter.

The pain pills were working. He could feel himself letting go of the waking world, slipping off to another place altogether. It was a place full of light and madness, and he hung tightly to the edge, barely skirting the border. He could see things--wonderful things. It was a million blue sparks that had once seemed so menacing. Now they were welcoming, dancing. There was no longer any need to be afraid of them, but neither could he embrace them. It was still an alien world, and one that gradually shifted back to a sort of reality, where electric blue sparks froze in the sky, flickering like specks of neon before settling into the static pattern of the stars overhead.

"So what are they?" John asked, rousing himself.

"What are what?"

"The things that we see, what are they?"

"Yeah, I guess that's why you were trying to track me down in the first place, right? I hate to break it to you, kiddo, but I don't have the slightest clue. You know as much as I do. But I think the important thing isn't necessarily understanding them; it's coping with them. We do what we can to get by, to not be driven mad, so you write. You write to take a stand, to not be swallowed whole by forces you don't understand."

"And you sculpt them in plastic. Is that how you deal with them? Does it keep you from being afraid?"

"Something like that. We've all got our demons. Always remember that."

"I will." The boy tugged at his bandage. He could feel the heat of his wound--warm, but not burning.

"Have you seen anything lately?"

"Not since I woke up in the hospital, no."

"It'll come back, and when it does, you'll be ready for it."

"I kind of miss it, in a strange way. I miss seeing things only I could see, you know? I thought they were aliens at first, but then I noticed that they took the place of people--people on the street, people at school, everybody."

"We're all aliens, is that it?"

"Sounds like a perfect example of teenage philosophy, doesn't it?"

Evan shrugged.

"Anyway, then I started thinking. What if I was seeing, like, a representation of the person? What if I was seeing the thing below the surface?"

"Seeing in metaphors."

"Exactly."

"That sounds reasonable."

"But there's more to them. They aren't just flesh and blood, are they? They're machines, at least partly."

"Yeah, I suppose so."

"Don't tell me you've never thought about this stuff before," said John, slapping his hand against the top of the passenger door.

Evan shook his head. "Not really. I just sculpt the things as I see them and try to appreciate them, I guess. Not everything needs an explanation, John. That's the whole basis of faith."

"This is faith?"

"How could it be anything else?"

John couldn't think of an adequate response. He settled back into his stargazing position and felt the wind brush across his face, tussling his hair and giving him the brief sensation of flying. As long as the pills were working, he could believe it if he closed his eyes long enough.

"Do you still see them?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"When you look at me, what do you see?"

Evan briefly took his eyes off the road, only long enough to look straight into John's. "Do you really want to know?" he asked.

"Absolutely."

"Thin, black, with a million stars shining in every direction."

John said nothing else. A grin was fixed on his face. That was the answer he had been hoping for, for some reason that defied all reasonable thought. He escaped back into the stars, back to the world where they flickered to life in sharp, blue light that vibrated in place and multiplied, forming a widening landscape that was not solely above him, but in every direction at once. The sparks covered his body, and all was right in the universe.

Day 56 - Strange Machines - Part 25

The clock on the wall said five o'clock when Evan returned. He'd cleaned himself up nicely. His face was clean-shaven, and the black button-up had been replaced by a white one. A thin, black tie hung from his neck, and he carried a coat draped over one arm.

"Wow, you look great," said John.

"Thanks. You look like hell."

"Is that it? I can leave?"

"Yep. You better grab a shower first, though. We've got a show to catch."

***

Evan led John to a black 1973 Caprice convertible sitting in the parking lot. He shuffled through his pocket for the keys as John lugged his bags toward the car.

"Wow. Is this yours?"

"No, it's a rental."

"Interesting rental."

"You can rent just about anything nowadays, you know. You just have to go to the right place."

"Well, good taste just the same."

Evan took his bags and set them gently onto the dark gray upholstery of the empty back seat, and then he and John climbed into the front seats and marveled briefly at the space. Considering the both of them had just recently, though separately, crossed the country in buses with cracking plastic seat covers and cramped spaces, the car was an unexpected comfort.

They stopped at a small shopping center several blocks away from the hospital with the intent of buying a new shirt for John. The white button-up he had was now completely stained with blood on one arm. Evan took the liberty of buying him a black sport coat, also, to make him a bit more presentable for the opening. Satisfied with their choice of accoutrements, they set off for the University of Southern California campus and the gallery tucked away within.

The building was larger than the boy expected. They parked the car in front, in the open space closest to the main entrance. Evan gathered up a handful of brochures like the one's John had found in Roswell.

"That's what they never tell you about art. You're also your own publicist."

Inside, the gallery was well-lit. Large, empty spaces of white wall and tiled flooring were scattered around the open hall, broken only by white pillars supporting dark urns and small projects left in the open to be admired not for the intricate details in every shape and fold, but in the simplicity of the thing, in the straight lines and rounded edges born of a human hand.

They followed a corridor past a room filled with oil landscapes that adorned the walls like windows, each opening to another world. Seascapes and pastoral scenes surrounded each other, as if offering escape to a hundred different scenes. All the viewer had to do was choose which one, and the colors would absorb him, leaving traces of brushstrokes in his dreams. In these places, these dream countries, there was peace and infinite hope that would survive even when the viewer moved along to the next escape. It was a room of windows. They were all waiting to be opened.

Through another corridor there was a waiting, open room. A long glass table stood in the very middle, stretching from one wall to the other, and on it was a series of vinyl figures, almost uniform in color and style, their shapes subtly changing from one to the next, like evolution caught in action. John noticed something else about the display, something that hadn't been in Roswell. Each piece had its own name, embossed in dull, metallic foil on small folds of cardstock. On one end was the mostly-amorphous blob, a vague shape with tendrils reaching from the body in four directions. It was labeled Primordial. John walked along the line, inspecting each figure as if looking at them for the first time. They looked somehow different now that they'd been named, as if a crucial piece of them had been missing before.

In the very middle of the row, John stopped at a figure of which he had absolutely no recollection. He would've sworn that he'd never seen it before in his life. Amid all the other colorful plastic figures was one shaped like a man made of flecks of black and white, like living static. It's name was Signal to Noise, something he'd heard before, though he couldn't remember where.

At the very end of the row was a figure John knew very well--black, wiry, with a hundred little specks like starlight radiating from its body. Its name was Conduit. It felt very appropriate. He began to think of the miniature vinyl version packed somewhere in his backpack and wondered why, of all the others, he'd chosen it. He knew there was some hidden significance there.

"What do you think?" Evan asked, breaking his concentration.

"I've seen them before, but I've got to tell you, man, they're amazing."

"See any you recognize?"

John looked up and nodded. "A few." He turned his attention back to Conduit. "So why vinyl? I mean, of all the possible media through which you can express yourself, you settle for soft plastic?"

"I didn't settle for anything. It's as valid an art form as any. You just have to look through your initial conceptions, that's all. It's like comic books, you know? Your average man on the street takes one look at a comic book and writes it off as kiddie shit, right? They don't even stop to read it, to take in the art and experience something you can't get from traditional literary forms or even moving pictures. It's got its own kind of beauty in the misunderstanding. Same thing with vinyl. I guess I'm just used to being misunderstood."

"I hear that."

"Besides, I tried my hand at all sorts of things. I knew that I had to create something, to get out all of these stories and images languishing in my mind. I tried writing, but I was never good at picking the right words. Traditional art was cool, but not my thing." He pointed at the picture being placed behind the figures by a staff member--the ring of machines, the opening light.

"I've seen it," John said, flatly.

The first guests of the evening trickled in. Most were college students or young artists, all dressed in suits and gowns. They flitted from room to room and down the corridors, never staying in one place for very long. John imagined the entire gallery was operating in fast forward, staff and guests scurrying all around while he and the artist stood still, watching to see how it all played out.

"Okay, I need to go. I'm not trying to ditch you or ignore you or anything, but I've got to schmooze the crowd. That's another thing they don't tell you about being an artist. There are more politics than you'd think. Will you be all right?"

John nodded and adjusted his coat. "I think I can manage."

A team of caterers quickly assembled a long folding table, covered it with a white sheet, and set down a number of large, metal platters of cheese and other small foods. At one end, an attendant stood quietly next to half a dozen full bottles of wine and a spread of long-stemmed glasses.

Pleased that he'd been the first to discover the food, John helped himself to the cheese and was surprised to find that the attendant offered him a glass. He considered taking just one glass of a nice red but thought better of it. He scratched absently at the bandage hidden beneath his shirt and jacket. It was almost time to take another pill.

He settled on just the cheese and snatched a bottle of water for later.

In the hour that followed, John spent a considerable amount of time staring at the same vinyl figures over and over, as if they were on the verge of telling their secrets. He eventually gave up and wandered off into the gallery by himself, with a handful of cheese cubes bulging in his pocket.

He spent a considerable amount of time in the room with all the landscapes, staring at them one at a time. There was so much to see, so much more than he'd realized. The pills were kicking in. The doctors had told him that one would be enough. He took three. His limbs began to feel weightless. The colors in the paintings grew dull, then intensified.

He felt something coming on. A tiny blue spark flickered into existence in the corner of one eye and danced across his field of vision to the other. It was all happening again. He could feel it in his bones, beneath his bandage.

Then he felt a hand on his shoulder.

"Ready to go?" Evan asked.

The spark disappeared as quickly as it came, leaving the boy to wonder if he'd even seen it at all.

"Already? Is it a good idea to ditch your own party?"

"I have a feeling none of them would care one way or the other. Besides, we have someplace much more important to be tonight."

"And where would that be? Is that the surprise?"

Evan grinned and wound his way through the gallery and out the main entrance, to where the Caprice sat waiting. John quickly refilled his pocket with cheese and soon followed. Evan was waiting in the parking lot. He popped the trunk of the convertible and stepped out of the way.

"What is it?" John asked.

"You tell me."

The boy slowly approached the trunk of the car and peered inside to see a box. The sky had grown dark, but a nearby street lamp gave just enough light for him to make out the large words printed across the cardboard.

"It's an 8-inch Meade refracting telescope."

"Exactly. Tonight, we're going to see the stars, little brother."

Day 55 - Strange Machines - Part 24

John lay still in the bed. He'd barely moved all morning long, and even then, only when the nurse came into the room to check on him. She'd already been in three times that day, and it was the same one every time. He recalled seeing her several times the night before, also, and began to wonder whether her hours ever ended.

"How are you feeling this morning?" she would ask.

"Fine," he'd reply with a half-smile.

She would then see if there was anything he needed. There seldom was. The last time she came in, she opened the window blinds at his request, and daylight flooded the room. Then she would leave, only to return an hour or so later to check on him once again.

He hated the feeling of being watched. He knew that's what they were doing. They were watching him. They were careful about it, trying hard to be inconspicuous, but he knew better. Most of all, he didn't blame them. He knew the nurses and the doctors were just doing their jobs, watching to make sure he didn't harm himself any further. But that didn't make him feel any better. After so many days of trying to go unseen, he found himself unable to disappear. He was no longer invisible.

Just after noon, the door opened, and John expected to see the nurse walk back in with that warm smile on her face. She wore white scrubs with pink dots and rubber shoes that sometimes squeaked against the hard floor, but she wasn't there. This time, Evan walked in with a casual nod. He pulled his chair back to the bed side and sat down. John noticed that he still wore the same black button-up shirt from the day before.

"How are you feeling?"

"You know that song 'Suicide is Painless'?"

"Yeah."

"That's a big, damn lie right there."

"They giving you meds for that?"

John nodded. "Don't much care for them, though. I kind of like being in control again, you know?"

"You'll have plenty of time for that. But first, you need to heal up. It's going to hurt, no doubt about that, so the painkillers really do help."

"You've been through this, too? Did you... you know?" John pointed at his bandaged wrist.

"No, not exactly. Bike accident when I was about your age--shredded up part of my arm." Evan pulled back the sleeve of his left hand, showing John a long, crooked scar on his forearm.

"Ouch. Guess I'll have one of those, too--the scar, I mean."

"Chicks dig them," said Evan with a wry grin, rolling his sleeve back into place. "That's what they say, at least. Not so much in my case. Sorry to disappoint."

"Did you talk to the doctors?"

"Yeah," Evan replied with a slow nod.

"So what's the verdict? Am I headed to the crazy house, or what?"

"Well, I turned the charm up to eleven, and they're releasing you to my custody. Apparently, they don't think you're much of a threat to yourself anymore. We'll need to come back first thing in the morning for a checkup, though."

"I think I can live with that. Thanks. Thanks for everything, seriously."

"It's nothing. You'll just have to pretend to be my brother for one more day, and then we're home free."

"So what do we do now?"

"They're going to release you in a few hours, just in time to catch the opening of my show tonight."

"Shit. I'd forgotten all about that."

"Yeah, well, I've got to get everything set up at the gallery, so I've got to book. As soon as they give me a call, I'll be back for you, though, okay?"

"Sure, I'm not going anywhere."

"Oh yeah, one more thing: I've got a surprise for you after the show tonight."

"What is it?"

"It's a surprise, dumbass. You'll have to wait."

Even after Evan left, the smile still hung on the boy's face. To him, it was a foreign expression and one that left the muscles hidden in his cheeks sore from relative overuse.

So this is what family feels like, he thought to himself. It'd been so long since he'd seen his father, even longer since he'd seen his mother. He'd forgotten that warm feeling, that embrace that remained with him, like the comfort of a ghost.

Day 54 - Strange Machines - Part 23

The room was mostly dark. Only the glow of the street lamps seeped through the closed blinds, hanging in a rough yellow patch near the window, but it never threatened to move further, to inch closer and closer toward the solid white walls and light up the room, bouncing from one reflective surface to the next. That was fine with John. He'd seen enough light lately.

He lay still in the bed, beneath a layer of stiff hospital sheets and a blanket that could double as a Brillo pad. He was drained, both physically and emotionally, yet he couldn't sleep. More than that, he didn't want to sleep. He forced himself to lay awake, afraid that he would awaken to find himself in an even more precarious situation. After all, the last time he surrendered complete control of his conscious mind ended with a suicide attempt that he still couldn't fully rationalize.

He wasn't sure he could if he could move, even if he wanted to, and made no effort to prove himself wrong. This state, however brief, was peace, or at least the closest thing to it he'd found so far. A steady hum from the ventilation system vibrated through the walls, and its drone became absorbed and accepted until he no longer realized that it was there. He stared at the ceiling, vacant and unconcerned with the world around him. An occasional flash of light from the window caught his eye, but he attributed these to headlights in the parking lot or helicopters flitting through the air with patients in tow like dragonflies--large, metal dragonflies.

His mind drifted to nonsense and recollected tales of alien abductions he'd read in the UFO Museum. He remembered people describing a feeling of numbness and helplessness. They were unable to move. They heard noises on the other side of the door, felt the impression of something with mass flattening them against the bed, and saw shapes of things that weren't quite human standing silently by their feet. But John could recognize the signs of sleep paralysis, the conditions of which he'd only read about. When the brain wakes before the body, the sensation is often one of awareness accompanied by the inability to move. In this state, the mind can play tricks on the victims. They experience things that can be better described as waking dreams. There are no aliens keeping vigil at the foot of the bed, only the frightened exaggerations of a mind that cannot accept a loss of self-control. For John, this was the ultimate expression of self-control. His was a voluntary paralysis, a defiance of a greater power that would have him, for better or worse, act.

Evan was gone, but his impression had been left behind--an echo. He'd given John something to believe in again. He'd given him hope that there was some strange purpose in life, that there was a way to fight back against entropy, that not all things fall apart, that sometimes the center can hold. He'd reassured him that there were others out in the wide world, just the same as him. They'd seen things that others could not. They'd seen a light and the movement within. But most of all, Evan had given him that which he had needed most--a place to belong, family, and though there was no blood relation to be found, John realized that he'd had a brother all along.

***

Evan leaned against the balcony, his forehead pressed against the inner angle of his elbow. An empty bottle of Baliol whiskey sat beside him, and its disembodied odor hung heavy in the air. Lights glared all around him--street lamps and lit up advertisements, the glow of his hotel room and the building across the boulevard, the parade of headlights along the highway. The pulsing city sounds wrenched their way inside his head, and he could hear it all--the steady flow of traffic, sirens blaring from miles away, the muted cacophony of television from every room in the hotel. It was all white noise. It was a bombardment of sound and radiance so intense and invasive that his brain began to perceive one sense as the other.

All the car horns were flashing when he opened his eyes, and the street lamps were all screaming. He tried to focus, to push all the extraneous fanfare from his mind and hone in on a singular, distant signal. He stared into the night sky, straining to see the stars through all the light pollution. Explosions rocked all around.

At last, he could see them. He could hear them. They spoke, but only to him.

"Yes, I can hear you. Yes, we'll be there."

He collapsed in a heap on the concrete platform, where he lay unconscious for the next few hours. Just before dawn, he awoke and crawled back into his room. After struggling to grasp the bed spread, he climbed on top of the bed and lay there until sunlight came spilling in through the open balcony door.

Day 53 - Strange Machines - Part 22

His thoughts burst into a thousand little pieces when a man entered the room. He was no doctor or nurse. He appeared to be in his mid-20s and wore a black dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His short, brown hair was meticulously styled to give him the appearance of someone who doesn't care how his hair looks. Otherwise, he looked disheveled. His jeans were frayed, and two days' worth of stubble grew on his chin. He brought with him a faint smell of alcohol.

Their eyes met, and relief washed over the man's face, like his prayers had been answered.

"How are you feeling?"

"I've been better," said the younger boy. "So are you my brother?"

"So you heard already. Sorry about that. I wanted to tell you myself when you woke up, but as far as everyone around here knows, I'm your older brother. I've been worried, and it was the only way they'd let me see you."

"Who are you, really?"

"I'm the guy that found you in that alley."

"Oh."

"What's your name?"

The younger boy paused for a moment, as if putting a serious amount of thought into the question.

"Kafka," he replied, taking the name of the protagonist of his lost book--the other boy who'd run away from home to find his place in the world and who had a mother somewhere that he could not remember. It seemed like a fitting name. They were practically the same, anyway.

"I'm sorry. I meant your real name."

The younger boy was once again silent in thought, straining for an answer.

"I saw the Murakami in your bag, kid. You aren't the only one that's read Kafka on the Shore," said the man. "Is that it? Did you run away from home, too?"

There was no response.

"Listen, if you did, that's fine. I'm not here to rat you out to the cops. I just want to help you for some reason that I can't even begin to explain. Besides, I've already lied for you. As far as they know, your name is John and you're my 15 year old brother."

"I'm 14."

"Well, I had to make a guess. At least I was close. But come on, just tell me your name. You owe me that much."

"You were right. My name really is John. Good guess."

The man smiled and pulled a chair from the opposite wall to the side of the bed. As he sat down, he rubbed his chin, absently taking note of how overgrown his stubble had become.

"So did you run away from home, John?"

The boy nodded, defeated. His game was over.

"Great, now we're getting somewhere. Why did you try to kill yourself?"

"I don't know."

"Is that I don't know like I'm honestly not sure or like I don't want to talk about it?"

"Both, maybe," said John. "Are you a psychiatrist?"

"No, just a concerned citizen."

"Then how about you tell me something about yourself first."

The man checked his watch, and then the white clock on the white wall, and grimaced.

"I have to go soon, but I'll try to come back later tonight, if they'll let me. It may be morning, though."

The boy nodded. He tried to absorb everything that surrounded him--the words, the shapes, the smells and tastes. The sensory information was rushing quickly to his brain, which, unfortunately, was still having problems processing everything. He was scared and confused, and he couldn't completely hide it.

"What's going to happen to me?"

"You're under something called Emergency Protective Custody. They're keeping a close eye on you just in case you try to, you know, finish the job. My guess is that they'll try to get an actual psychiatrist in here to see you. They're trying to determine what to do with you once you leave this room, and that includes shipping you off to an institution. I might be able to talk them out of it, though. Just don't blow my cover, okay?"

"Sure. Thanks, I guess, but I'm still not sure why you're helping me."

"Neither am I. Not yet, anyway. That's why I need you to talk to me."

The boy sighed and threw back the bed covers. Though his arm was numb, he could feel some distant traces of pain, like echoes, that ran back and forth across his forearm. He was hesitant to move it much, afraid to open the stitches he was sure he now had, and now that he was here, coherent and safe from the troubling lights, he had no intention of harming himself further. Using the elbow of his other arm as a prop, he slid upright with the back of his head resting against the wall and repositioned a pillow to make himself more comfortable.

"Fine. What do you want to talk about?"

"How about the reason you tried to kill yourself?"

"No offense, but I don't think you'd understand."

"I think you'd be surprised at the things I understand."

The boy drew a deep breath and rubbed his eyes hard, leaving circular impressions of light against his closed eyelids. "Fine. It was a lot of things, really--stuff I can't completely explain. Like, when I did it, I was stuck in this feeling of being totally overwhelmed, and I didn't see any other way out. Everything just seemed so bright, and... looming, you know?"

The man nodded. "Big cities can do that to a person."

"Not like this, they can't."

"So what else was overwhelming you?"

"I don't know. I've got a lot on my mind, I guess. I'd put so much of my faith into a bullshit concept like destiny, only to find out there's no such thing. Life is just a bunch of coincidences, all thrown together in a jumble that makes no sense, and that's all there is. It's just one big tease by an eternally bored universe."

"So does that mean there's nothing worth believing in?"

"If everything means nothing, then I guess not. It's all pointless. It's all empty."

"You're kind of a nihilist, you know," said the man.

The boy smiled, perhaps for the first time in a long while. "Yeah, I guess I am. But more than that, I think that I'm not right, somehow. I'm not a normal kid."

The man nodded and reached down toward his feet, grasping at something laying in the corner where the bed met the wall. It was the boy's backpack, which he lifted briefly and set carefully back in its resting spot against the wall. "I see you like to read."

"Yeah, maybe a little too much."

"There's no such thing as too much reading, believe me. I was the same way when I was your age. I still am. Nothing this complex, maybe, but still."

"Oh yeah? What did you read?"

"Anything I could get my hands on. I was a pretty big sci-fi fan in those days, I'm embarrassed to admit," said the man with a smile.

"There's nothing wrong with a little sci-fi."

"Thanks. Alfred Bester was my favorite author, especially The Stars My Destination. There was just something about that story that got to me--really sunk in, made me want to see the stars. You ever read that one?"

The boy nodded. "'Millions for nonsense, but not one cent for entropy,' right?"

"Wow. Yeah, that's the one." The man raised his eyebrows, impressed, and scratched at his almost-beard.

"I liked it, too."

"Do you believe that?"

"Believe what?"

"That quote. Do you believe what he says?"

"Yeah, I think I do," said the boy. "It's just like the real world. Everyone's spending their money and their savings on frivolous trash that won't outlive them, and we're so caught up in our own selfish entertainment that we don't even notice the fall of society all around us."

"So you're a nihilist and a pessimist? I don't know, you sound like a normal teenager to me."

"Thanks, that makes me feel much better."

"So you don't want to be normal, is that it?"

The boy stumbled for words. "I don't know. I guess not, but I don't want to be as strange as I am, if that makes any sense."

"It's starting to. Look, John, I've got a confession to make. After I found you, I picked up all your things and brought them here, and I was struggling to make sense of why you would do that to yourself. So I read your notebook."

"Oh." What was left of the color in the boy's face drained away.

"Yeah, big invasion of privacy, I know. I'm sorry, but I had to find out who you were. To be honest, I'm glad I did. You've got a lot of potential as a writer, you know."

"Is that the nice way of saying I suck?"

"It's the nice way of saying you have potential."

"Oh. Thanks."

"You just need to focus yourself, you know? You've got thoughts all jumbled up and speeding through your head at a thousand miles per second. You just need to get organized." He tapped a forefinger against his temple. "And I want to help you."

"Are you a writer, too?"

"Not quite, but I know a bit about the creative process."

"So, the stuff you read in my notebook--"

"Interesting stuff. Gets kind of dark and incoherent toward the end, though."

"Yeah, well, I did try to kill myself."

"I noticed."

"So you read about me seeing things--weird things, and yet you haven't gone to the cops or the doctors or whomever else and convinced them to commit me."

"Now you're using that head of yours."

"Sorry, I'm still kind of woozy, but why?"

"Because you aren't alone, John. You aren't the only one that's seen things from the corners of his eyes. It gets easier, I promise. You'll be able to turn it on and off like a light switch, and when you step back and take a look at the whole picture, you begin to understand. You begin to realize how incredibly beautiful the whole thing is."

The boy didn't stir. He simply stared with glassy eyes and let the words spill softly from his mouth. "Who are you?"

The man smiled and reached into the backpack near his feet, grasping something and pulling it up to the same level as his eye. He opened his hand to reveal the small vinyl figure, standing in the palm of his hand. "See this? I made it. My name's Evan Grayson. Now tell me, John, do you still believe there's no such thing as fate?"

Day 52 - Strange Machines - Part 21

When he awoke, he found himself in a white room. At first he thought that it had come back, that the light had returned to him, and then his vision cleared to a sharper resolution, revealing sterile, static white walls closed in around him. Immediately, he realized where he was, and soon after, sadly, he realized what had happened.

He was lying in bed, wrapped in white bed sheets and wearing a white hospital gown. There seemed to be no escaping the white, as if every other color had been sucked from the room, drained of its blood. He found it strangely comforting.

A nurse was bent over the side of his bed, tugging and adjusting a wide bandage wrapped several times around his wrist. Her eyes flicked up casually, meeting his, and she smiled sweetly.

"Glad to see you're awake."

He felt the need to reply but found himself unable. His mind was working, but his lips wouldn't respond--not right away, at least. It was a horrible feeling of helplessness that lasted only a few seconds. He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths until he was sure once again that he--and only he--was in complete control.

"Thanks," he said, at last.

"I've got to check on a few other patients, but if you need anything, I'm just a call away. Okay?"

"Okay."

"And you're brother should be getting back in a few minutes. He said he had to step out for a bit."

"My brother?"

At first, he thought it was a mistake. He was still drowsy and almost definitely not in his ideal mental state, but he was completely certain that he didn't have a brother. He'd always wanted one, though. He began to wonder if he'd awoken into another dream. He wasn't seeing anything out of the ordinary, and the last waking memory he had was of being overwhelmed by the visions that swelled up around him. Maybe this was the vision, fully realized, as if he'd been sucked into another world or dimension, some place where he did, in fact, have a brother he never knew.

"What about him, dear?"

He chose his next word carefully, knowing there was no use in arguing against something of which he could not be completely sure. He awoke to find himself in a hospital bed after what he could only hope to describe as a mental breakdown, and he had no desire to enter any sort of confrontation until he could be positive of what was happening. Besides, at that moment, he very much wanted to meet his supposed brother, if only to pretend for a few moments that he was not alone.

"Nothing."

The nurse smiled, revealing tiny, worn lines around her eyes, and quickly left the room, leaving him alone in bed, with only his thoughts to keep him company. That was the whole problem in the first place, he thought to himself.

He wondered where the police were. He had no identification, of course, but he thought that by now, someone surely would have put all the pieces together. There was still a boy from North Carolina missing, and his guardians would have had plenty of time to attain a statement from the bank revealing that he'd purchased a bus ticket to Los Angeles. There should have been posters, flyers, electronic notices to the bus line staff informing them of a possible runaway. Someone found him and brought him here, so the authorities were obviously aware of what had happened and where. If there was to be no real escape from his life, then he should have been caught by now.

Day 51 - Strange Machines - Part 20

When he was a boy, he woke up early one morning to a bright light streaming in through the window. It lit up the room and seeped through his closed eyes, and in a darkened mind that once dreamed of a field of poppies the boy had seen years before, a sheet of white decimated all signs of life and clung to the ground and sky. The boy was lost in a dreamed blizzard, blinded by the sun's reflected glare, and was pulled violently back to the waking world.

He cowered behind his covers at first, growing more brave when it became clear that nothing bad was happening to him. He crawled from his bed and looked around the room. Everything still had its definition. The toy-box against the wall had its smooth curves and the gap between the base and the cover. The blanket still wrapped around him like a shroud was covered with a million folds that he absently tugged on as he tried to make sense of what was happening. But there was no color to the world, only an intense white glow that left no shadow.

There was no sound from the other side of the window. There was no odd scent in the air. Only his vision betrayed him, so he crept up to his window, pulled the white curtains aside, and peered out at the world beyond. But there was only light.

It was painful to look at anything for very long, but the boy's curiosity could not be dissuaded. He likened it to staring at the sun, which his father had warned him against many times before. But he couldn't help it. He had to look--if only because now, he could see something else outside, something vague, only a shape, but it was there. He could see something moving in the light.

He stared at it for what felt like hours, and it did not go away. It was something special, he knew. He was only a child, but even children know when they've seen something remarkable. This was a moment that he would remember for the rest of his life, and he intended to make it last as long as possible. There was a feeling of warmth--not physically, but emotionally. The light made him feel important and gave him a strange sort of encouragement, and yet it was just a light.

When he finally gave in, after his eyes began to sting and his head began to ache, he returned to his bed and lay there with eyes shut tight. There was no hope for sleep now, but at least he could find rest and some small amount of peace away from the still chaos of the light. Dreaming proved impossible, no matter how hard he tried. He wanted to let his mind wander, to find himself back in that field of poppies before the snow fell, but there was no hope. Even in his mind, all he could imagine was light and an indistinct shape moving within.

When morning came, the light faded with the rising sun, and color and shadow returned to the room. Everything was the way it should have been. Only then did the boy fall asleep once again.

The next day, he sat down with a plain, white sheet of paper and a box of colored markers. He intended to capture and recreate what he had seen, but he had no idea how to begin to describe something that was so personal and emotional. He left the sheet of paper blank--solid white--the most suitable tribute that sprang to his mind.

He never mentioned what he had seen to anyone. His parents never knew, nor did his friends. Keeping the secret was his own decision and one of his first expressions of self-control. He knew no one else would ever understand how he felt or why, especially since he couldn't understand it himself. It was simply something that happened. He witnessed something important, and he was content with that much.

As the boy grew older, he became further detached from the world around him. He spent less time with his friends and gave little thought to the family around him. Instead, he was happy alone with his books, absorbed in stories far less fantastic than the things he himself could imagine, yet he became inspired, knowing that someday he could create great things of his own--meaningful things.

Adventures in space and time were born in his head. They had clear beginnings and resolutions. People, alien creatures, and strange machines lived and died in his imagination, and he began to wonder if they were truly his own creations or simply pieces of things that he had glimpsed through a window many years before.

So he began to create, to make concrete the ideas that circulated through his brain. He picked up paper, like the sheet he had once left blank, and filled it in, black against white. He molded shapes and ideas from nothing, destroying empty space with his creation.

Though he felt a clear purpose, he still felt unfulfilled. It was as if there was something missing, and the answers he lacked were no longer an avoidable gap. He wanted to reach out into the world and find something to make himself whole. He wanted to know if there were others like him, staring up at the clear night sky and wondering if there was more to life than a series of random coincidences.

He began to see things--at first small occurrences in the corners of his eyes, only those places where he wasn't looking. Then slowly, bit by bit, he discovered that the world around him was not the only world there was. There was something else, hidden just beneath the surface.

The boy more and more desired to share his creations with the outside world, to let others know what he had seen, and to do so, he had a journey to make. He traveled west, following the same path that pioneers had taken hundreds of years before. This was a voyage of discovery, both of the self and the universe as a whole, and the boy became a man.

So it was that one day the man found himself on a bus to the city of Los Angeles, not knowing what to expect or how to find any further signs. He threw his backpack across one shoulder and carried a heavy suitcase with his other hand, and he stepped out into a city that was tinged with a blue light around the edges. This was an electric place. Power surged through the air like wind, overwhelming the senses at first, but it all became balanced. The man could feel the energy of this city and all of the machines in it.

A sound caught his attention. He could hear a pained, low moan around the corner of the building, just out of reach of the street lamp that suddenly flickered on, carving out a small island of yellow light in the approaching darkness. The man's curiosity blazed similarly, oscillating before settling into a prolonged hum that drowned out every other sound and image that flashed across his mind. He crept close to the source of the noise.

In the middle of the alley lay a body, still and surrounded by a suitcase and a backpack that had been neatly placed against the bus station wall. The yellow lamp light revealed little, but the blue glow of the city showed him everything he needed to know. The body was that of another boy, one years younger. His eyes were closed, but his chest heaved sharply with every breath.

"Are you all right?" the man asked, but the younger boy did not answer.

Then the man noticed something else: a pocket knife in his hand, the blade coated in blood. The younger boy's opposite sleeve was rolled up, exposing a gash across his wrist. Blood streamed down his arm in thin strands, staining his surrounding flesh with the color of a sunset.

"Oh God," the man muttered.

He dropped his bags on the cold pavement and sprinted back inside the bus station to find help. A few passengers sat waiting in orange plastic chairs for their next bus, completely unaware that another life was ending on the other side of the concrete wall. A clerk sat vacantly behind the counter, a telephone poised right in front of him.

"Call an ambulance!"

The clerk stared, dumbfounded.

"There's a boy bleeding to the death in the alley. Call an ambulance."

As if just waking up, the clerk's eyes widened. He quickly reached for the phone in front of him and dialed 911, stuttering as he told the emergency operator what was happening.

The man ran back to the alley, back to the younger boy and their respective baggage. He hadn't moved. He still breathed, so the man knew there was hope yet. He approached the younger boy carefully, kneeling down beside him on the cold pavement.

"Can you hear me, kid?"

A quiet moan, like an exasperated final exhale, left the younger boy's trembling lips.

"I can hear you," said a voice, slowly. It was the sound of air, venting.

"Good. You're going to be okay," said the man, affirming himself more than the boy bleeding to death.

There came another moan, like a grating, whispered laugh.

"What's your name?" asked the man, desperate to maintain some sort of contact and unwilling to let the younger boy die nameless, by himself in a dark alleyway.

Sirens blared across the streets, coming closer and closer. Flashing red lights reverberated through every intersection. An ambulance swung around the corner, coming to a halt right in front of the yellow street lamp, and paramedics descended from every corner.

The man stood up and backed away from the body, letting the emergency workers do their jobs. The ones around the body quickly applied a tourniquet while two others wheeled a gurney to the mouth of the alley. The man, feeling useless, glanced at the younger boy's neatly placed bags. The backpack was open, exposing the contents hidden below. The man saw a stack of thick books and a small vinyl figurine that made his eyes widen and refuse to blink.

"Do you know what happened?" one of the paramedics asked him, breaking his trance.

"No, I'm sorry. I got here too late."

"All right. He's lost a lot of blood. We'll have to get him to the hospital."

The man nodded as he watched the younger boy being picked up from the cold asphalt and pulled away on the metal gurney.

"Do you know the victim? We've got room for one, but we have to leave now."

The man stared back at the open backpack on the ground and the small pool of blood beside it.

"Yeah. Yeah, I do. He's my brother."

Day 50 - Strange Machines - Part 19

I've survived the San Bernardino transfer. LA, here I come.

I think I'll find a book store first and pick up my Murakami, and then I'll figure out things from there. For the first time in a very long time, I feel good. I feel happy.

***

It's a comic book. Jesus Christ. Why didn't I see it?

It's a goddamn comic book.

It was on a rack in the book store. At first I was happy. I found my image again. I found my dream! Then it hit me. I'd seen it before. I'd seen it before the dream. Some guy on the bus had a copy, I think, or maybe it was in the station. Christ, I remember now, and it's all so clear. And then I had the dream. I dreamed about the art on the cover.

A circle of machines and the light in the middle. There it was, staring back at me.

IT'S A GODDAMN COMIC BOOK.

Shit. What does that make this? What does that make this whole thing? Is there even a point to this trip? Is there a point to anything?

Don't tell me it was a coincidence. It can't be. There's got to be more to it than that. There's more to life than coincidences. There's more to life than chance and luck and all that shit.

It was bad before, but now it's worse. Overwhelming. It hurt so bad. A jab in the brain with an ice pick. I walked out, and all I could see was light. Not white light. Not my light. This was their light. Everything went blue, first. It lit up like a neon wonderland, and there weren't any people. There wasn't anyone at all. I'm in a ghost town. Then the other colors came. Signal-to-noise too high.

God, my head still hurts. All that light, straight into my eyes. I don't need the corners anymore. I can see straight ahead. I can see when I close my eyes. And it hurts so bad. Even here in the dark. I ran away. I'll run some more.

Damn it. Damn this whole thing.

We're machines, the whole lot of us. That's all. Multiplication and long division. We consume fuel. Pistons pump, and we reproduce. We're all machines. That's what I see. That's all I see. That's what there is beneath tender flesh. Cold, hard machines.

And I can't be one any longer. I can't be here. I can't do this anymore. Nowhere to run. It's too late for that. I want to go home, but I don't have one.

Not here.

Not back there.

Nowhere.

Just me and this silicon soul.

I have to stop. I found something sharp, electric in my bag. Not much, but it will do. It's all I have left. It's my last bit of control. My last breath and last word in my own voice.

I can't do this anymore. I just want it to end. To shut down.

I thought it would be more meaningful when it finally happened. I don't know, a clear purpose or something. Not now. But this is not me trading a bang for a whimper. I just want rest. I want peace and quiet and rest.

This is not a cry for attention.

This is not a desperate plea for help.

This is me letting go.

This is me trying to make some sense out of something that has none.

I wanted to see more. I did. I really did. I wanted to see the light again and find out, once and for all, what was really in it. It doesn't matter now. It was nothing. It was empty. Meaningless. White noise. Just like everything else.

No easy answers. No paved road. No chance of escape. Just forward propulsion until you hit something. That's all there is. No one gets off this world alive.

So here it is. This is the end.

Day 49 - Strange Machines - Part 18

It's 4 am, and I just woke up. I'm still a bit groggy. I think I'm in Phoenix. At least, the driver just announced that we're all to depart and unload our luggage. I hope this is Phoenix.

I grabbed my bags and ambled into the station with the rest of the living dead. I'm actually surprised that I was able to sleep. The last thing I remember was stopping at some small town in New Mexico, the name of which has long escaped. I'm just grateful that I didn't wake up on a lawn this time. That's the funny thing about sleeping on long trips--you want to doze off to help the time pass more quickly, but the next time your eyes open, you're a stranger in a strange land.

God, I have to stay here for another hour. I'm in no condition to write much at the moment, but I like filling in the blanks whenever I get the chance--makes a journal feel more like a journal. I don't really think I can read, either. Besides, now that I've finished Calvino, all I really want to do is finish Kafka on the Shore--the one book I no longer have. Damn it. Why didn't I look for a bookstore back in Roswell? I would've had plenty of time.

Maybe I'll have some coffee, as if that would even help. I have a lot of sleep to catch up on, and I have a feeling that as soon as I make myself comfortable, I'll pass out again. Maybe that's for the best. California still feels so far away.

***

Well, I was right. I grabbed a cup of coffee at the bus station in Phoenix and spent the remainder of the hour in a state of complete disarray. I changed back into my hoodie and found an empty bench outside, where the crisp early morning air was enough to keep me awake. So there I sat, my back against the cold brick wall and a hood covering my head in the still darkness. I was invisible again. I was awake, and I was in control But as soon as I took my seat on the bus in Phoenix, I fell asleep.

It was a nice sleep, a dreamless sleep. I didn't know what to expect, to be perfectly honest. Wait, that's not right. I knew exactly what to expect. I expected a dream. There's only one that's on my mind now. Our bus is traveling down a dark highway, machines as big as mountains blocking the sun, and then the largest opens. The light spills forth.

I'll see it again in one form or another. I know I will. Other people have seen it. So unless I'm dreaming the paintings of some urban vinyl artist I've never met or even heard of before, I know I'm not completely crazy. There's more to the dream than random imagery that was hatched inside my unconscious mind. It has to be the light--the light I saw as a kid, the light from the machine. It's blinding, encompassing. It's like a beacon.

Now there's a theory I haven't considered before. Maybe when I saw that light--the first light--it was meant just for me. I wasn't some innocent bystander stricken with an increasing paranoia. I was the target. Sure, that's not as realistic as some astronomical phenomenon or as unselfish as a random alien visitation, but what if it was a message directed only at me? By whom, I don't know. Someone from far away, in space or time or both. Maybe it's a message from my future self--some grand, self-invoked event that would lead me down the path of my proper destiny.

Whatever the reason, it's the explanation that currently makes the most sense to me. I saw a signal. I saw something that told me to wake up, and now I have.

But I'm starting to think I still need some more sleep.

It's strange to think I've made it this far without something getting in my way. I haven't been caught yet. I'm starting to wonder if anyone is even looking for me. I tell myself that I don't care, that the only future I have lies to the west, but I can't shake that feeling of, I don't know, something. Homelessness, maybe? Oh well, I'm a nomad now.

Day 48 - Strange Machines - Part 17

The clock on the wall said 3 o'clock, and I was inclined to believe it. Time zones are funny things, especially when you're horrible at math. Cross enough of them in a short period of time, and they start to mess with your head. Your intuition tells you one thing--the time you think it should be, the time it feels like, but when you're that sure of yourself, there's always something to prove you wrong. There's always a clock ticking out the beat of the world, and everyone believes what the clock says.

There are always internal clocks, I suppose. I used to wake up at 7 o'clock every morning when I was going to school. It got to the point that even on the weekends, when there was no need to set an alarm, I woke up at 7 o'clock. When summer came, I woke up at 7 o'clock. When I stayed up until 3 in the morning, I woke up at 7 o'clock. It had become my routine, something ingrained in my unconscious mind that willed me awake at the same time every morning, whether I wanted it or not.

But the mind can be fooled--maybe not by anything in nature, but mankind fools itself all the time. We invent things to change the way we perceive our environment and survive in this world. In the beginning, Earth was all there was; then somewhere along the line, we invented maps, and suddenly, the world became something that could be conquered and divvied up behind intangible borders. We were fooled into thinking that control, and the power that comes with it, was the most important thing in the universe, so we set out to control other aspects of nature. We built dams to halt the flow of mighty rivers and flood dry land with new lakes of our own design. We built monuments and skyscrapers to rival the heights of mountains, and we constructed complex systems of irrigation that let us grow gardens in the deserts. All of this brings me back to my original point--our most devious scheme of control ever. With the invention of time zones, man's conquest of time was complete.

I'm so bored.

I'm tired of reading, so it's only by writing the most inane shit I can think of that I am able to keep myself occupied. It doesn't hurt, though. I need the practice. When you listen to professional writers doling out advice to all the wannabes, the thing they always stress is the importance of sitting down and just writing, getting as many words on the page as you can (albeit in an orderly fashion, of course). In other words, if you want to write, you have to write. So that's what I'm doing.

Hopefully, we'll be loading our stuff onto the bus sometime in the next few minutes. According to my ticket, we're due to head out of here in the next fifteen minutes. Near the counter is a small table with a clunky, old PC sitting on top of it, and a piece of paper has been taped onto the side of the monitor with the words INTERNET TERMINAL printed on the face in a large Courier font. The computer itself was secondhand junk, but it worked. When I finished reading Calvino, I went online to check my bus route. I went with the absolute cheapest rate I could find, so even though I knew where points A and B were, I had no idea where the line between them would run.

There were about a dozen tiny towns that popped up on the resulting schedule, and I'd never heard of any of them. There in the middle was Phoenix, Arizona, the only other city I recognized between Roswell and Los Angeles, and I'd be spending an hour there before switching buses. Aside from one last transfer in San Bernardino, California, for the last leg of the trip to LA, all the other stops were fifteen minute intervals to pickup and drop off. The total estimated time is twenty-two hours.

Great.

That still leaves one whole day before the this invisible machine exhibit opens in LA, and I have no idea how to spend the time. Sounds fun, right? I suppose it would be if I had any idea of what to do once I get there. Usually, I have these things thought out ahead of time, but since I was relying completely on fate and faith, I'm left clueless. It's not like I can just walk around LA with my head in a book the entire time. Frankly, I'm worried that what happened to me here in Roswell will happen again in Los Angeles, and I have a feeling it will only get worse.

A monotone voice rings out over the PA system telling the waiting passengers that they may now board the bus to Phoenix and LA. That's me. Time to go.

Day 47 - Strange Machines - Part 16

When I'd taken it in--the nature of this place and the people in it, I really started to look around. I moved from exhibit to exhibit, wanting to find something to convince me, to make me believe. I studied dioramas of UFO crash sights and alien autopsy rooms, locked away behind back-lit plexiglass walls, and I moved on, shuffling across gray vinyl flooring. There were framed newspaper articles hanging on the walls along with printed accounts of the UFO experiences of so-called influential people. If nothing else, I learned that Jimmy Carter saw a UFO in October of 1969. He was outdoors with several members of a Lions Club somewhere in Georgia. They saw something bright in the sky and looked up. It moved toward them and then away several times, vibrating in the night.

I moved along. My sneakers squeaked on the floor. There was a map of the United States covered with thumbtacks representing all the places where UFO sightings had occurred. Honestly, I'm surprised there weren't more. I had a sudden, inspired idea to check my own hometown and see if there was a red pin pushed on top of it, as if that would be some validation for my light, but there was nothing there--just empty space.

Further down was an enormous collection of photographs featuring crop circles around the world, and I died a little inside. Okay, I can accept people having faith in flying saucers and close encounters, but crop circles? Seriously? It's all rubbish. The first ones popped up in England, I think, and they were complete hoaxes. The pranksters even crawled out of the woodwork to admit as much, and--big surprise--there are hundreds if not thousands of copycats around the world who thought they'd be clever by duplicating the joke with increasingly intricate designs in their own fields. Seeing a supposed alien landing site that looks like a giant Star of David really takes away what little credence was contained in an already flimsy hypothesis. It took a few deep breaths to calm down a bit, but only because people actually point to this stuff as gospel in their argument for the existence of aliens. I moved on quickly.

In the back, away from the hokey sequined models of alien spaceships was the good stuff, the hard stuff. Here was the science, the astronomy. Pictures of distant galaxies and nebulae. Now this was the stuff that really caught my attention. You can look at all the plaster alien busts you want, but there is no greater case for the existence of alien life than simply look up at the sky. There's so much out there--so many places that we may never see or imagine, and among this multitude of stars and worlds, the odds dictate that there is more to this universe than just one tiny speck that was given the burden of life. That's all we really want, isn't it? Those of us in that museum, those of us that peer through telescopes, those of us that look up at the night sky--all we really want is to know that we are not alone. We want to know that we aren't the only ones who have to face mortality and the everyday choices of life. We want to know that we are not an accident.

So I stared at those vivid photographs of green and purple clouds, old and young galaxies hiding secrets that we're never meant to learn. That's where our hope lies. If we're to have faith in anything, it should be faith in distant stars.

I'm not sure how long I spent in that one tiny section of the museum, as if I was expecting something momentous to happen. I did feel inspiration--the same sort I'd tasted at the Goddard exhibit in the other museum, but without the overwhelming sense of inadequacy. This was pure inspiration--bright, white, shining. I wanted to see the stars again.

After that, I paid little attention to anything else displayed. There were a lot of models, I recall, and there was a tiny scrap of metal purportedly not of this world that did steal a bit of my interest. For the most part, though, I'd seen all that I needed to see. The museum itself was a curious little place and a nice distraction from everything else that was happening to me, but it meant nothing more. I was reminded of this when I came full circle right at the entrance of the gift shop, which was easily half the size of everything outside. This was business--the business of diversion. I left quickly.

There was a small cafe across the street, sharing the same building as a small souvenir shop, and I realized that I hadn't eaten anything for awhile. Honestly, I can't remember the last thing I'd had--nothing earlier in the morning, of course. Maybe I'd grabbed something last night in my sleep-deprived state. We stopped a few times, after all, so it was entirely possible. All I knew was that I was hungry and sure of that much. I tried to look past the large, aluminum foil-covered spaceship that was mounted on the outside wall above the windows, which took every last bit of strength I had. I was growing hungrier by the moment, as if the very thought that I hadn't eaten instantly reminded my stomach it was empty, so I swallowed my pride and walked inside.

The place was small, with a few empty tables to choose from. I ordered a Coke and a burger, which was much better than food in an alien-themed cafe had any right to be. It was cheap, too, easing the gradual hemorrhaging of cash from my pocket. I ate quickly and left before the overflowing stock of bullshit souvenirs threatened what remained of my sanity.

I turned back to my map and set out for the bus station, wading through the traffic and the campy advertisements that lined the street. I noticed something that began to worry me--the electric blue field in my peripheral vision had returned. I hadn't noticed it since I left the art museum earlier in the morning, so either it had gone away or I'd simply gotten so used to it that it no longer bothered me. But here it was back again, and there was no question that it was stronger, brighter. I wasn't seeing the mechanical and organic things I usually see--only blue. At one point there was a spark--a tiny flare of blue light that broke away from the sidelined mass and buzzed erratically straight in front of me, into my direct line of vision. It pulsed and raced away quickly, like the reflection of a cop's flashing blue lights down a wet street.

This had never happened before, and quite frankly, I was a little scared. I could handle the corners, the quick glimpses of things I could never be certain about, but this was different. This was something from that world blatantly taunting me. That single spark of blue light represented everything that terrified me. I may joke about going crazy and hanging by my last thread of sanity, but it really is the thing I'm scared of the most. If I can't trust my senses and my most basic faculties, what can I trust? I will not become a vegetable. I won't be made a wracking huddled mass unable to feel or think. My life is mine to control, not some spark or strange machine's.

I stumbled the rest of the way to the station, the rubber toes of my sneakers skidding across the pavement. Inside, it looked like all the others I'd been in over the past couple of days, so much so that I'd never be able to otherwise tell what city I was in. I walked up to the girl behind the counter and explained my situation--or at least my version of it. I was on a sleeping medication, I told her, and last night I wandered away from the station while under its effects. It was like sleepwalking, I explained. I still had the ticket to prove that I was supposed to be on the bus to LA that left very early that morning, but I don't think she bought it.

"Sorry, no refunds," she said.

It's my own fault. First of all, that's what I get for picking the cheapest cross-country fare I could find. But I had to leave, and I'm glad that I did. As I scraped together my remaining cash, digging through my pockets and my sock for folded green scraps, I decided that it would be worth it to blow all my remaining money just to get to LA. I would pay anything for answers.

And I did. Aside from my ATM card, which I worried way too much about using, I was now broke, but I had a ticket in my hands. The departure wasn't for another three hours, so I settled into one of the uncomfortable orange plastic chairs and began to read.

I dove back into Calvino and his Invisible Cities. It was a thin book, and since I had already finished the first half, it didn't take long to read the rest. I thumbed quickly and carelessly through the pages as I read, resulting in a cut on my right forefinger. Blood rose to the surface, but was quickly forgotten.

I absorbed the descriptions of Marco Polo's cities. They reminded me a bit too much of the things I'd seen--fantastic, vibrant, existent only to the man who had seen them, leaving the receptive Khan to wonder and secretly doubt. Here I am, a sort of Marco Polo, staking out invisible territory and telling a silent world what I've seen. The only difference is that in my case, there's no one to care.

I spend the rest of my wait deep in my books and my journal. I don't dare take my eyes off the pages or lose my focus even for a moment. I can't take anything else right now.

Day 46 - Strange Machines - Part 15

The Roswell UFO Museum is, without a doubt, the kitschiest thing I've ever seen, and I came to this realization before I even stepped through the door. I suppose this is the downtown district, and earlier when I said that this town embraced the whole alien culture, I had no idea what I was in for. Plastic alien heads adorn the street lamps. Every shop within the four or five blocks surrounding the museum features an alien of some sort in the front window, whether painted on or in the form of mannequins selling everything from cowboy boots to Coke.

At the corner of a major intersection stood the International UFO Museum and Research Center in all its glory. At this point, I couldn't not go in. Of course there was one catch--a five dollar bill was mysteriously abducted from my pocket. I suppose I shouldn't be too scornful, though. I'm sure they have bills to pay.

The place was packed with people, even though it was still mid-morning. To tell the truth, that made me a little sad. I'd just come from an art museum, where the culture of mankind was on display for all the world to see (or at least all the people in Roswell), and yet it stood empty while this celebration of extravagant exaggeration was taking place in another sort of museum.

I looked around the large open room that made up the bulk of the UFO Museum, and sure, most of the people looked normal--tourists passing through town who were too curious for their own good and that sort. But I could pick out the stereotypes, too--the lonely conspiracy theorists with their nervous ticks staring far too long at each display before moving to the next, the science fiction fanatics with their desperate faces trying so hard to believe in something other than the suffering they face on this planet, the slack-jawed yokels talking loudly in packs about how they saw something exactly like those saucers in the displayed posters flying over their trailer parks. Thank God the room was dark. I didn't want to see anymore of these people than I'd already seen. I'd hate to have seen what they looked like underneath, and yet I am curious. They ponder the existence of little gray and green men and of worlds far beyond their grasp, choosing instead to ignore the world around them. They worship fiction. These aren't aliens, these scrawny, bug-eyed little bipeds that they adore and fear so much. I wish I could show them real aliens. I wish I could turn all the lights on and show them the things I've seen. It's us. We're the aliens.

I don't know why I'm so angry. I realize that they're all just people who want to believe in something more to the universe than what they see around them, but it pisses me off. I believe in something more, too. I believe in higher powers and distant intelligences. I believe that things come to our world from other places, visiting in flashes of bright light. I've seen them, after all.

Maybe that's it. That's why I'm so angry. Because I looked around this room, and I saw people that were exactly like me. They were all empty, unfulfilled, searching for something--anything--to give them meaning. They were exactly like me. I hate them because I hate myself so much.

Thank God the room was dark.

Day 45 - Strange Machines - Part 14

Anyway, after the woman in the pantsuit left, I decided to check out the rest of the gallery. I've never been much of an art person, but I'm trying to open myself up to new things, I guess. This was as good of a place as any to start.

Unfortunately, nothing particularly caught my eye, at least not the way Dia de los Muertos or this invisible machine did. I got the impression that the majority of the pieces on display were from local or regional artists. The southwest was a major theme in at least one section, anyway. There were lots of earth tones, most prominently the pinkish-brown color of adobe.

I wandered into a large section at the center of the building that housed a collection of large, wide-mouthed vases and various sculptures. They were all very nice--detailed, colorful, expressive, but none of it really excited me. I saw a glow, though. There was a subtle, constant light seeping into my field of vision--a pale blue edge of my world. I kept moving.

In the back were several historical exhibits, which were interesting in their own right. One featured the work of Robert Goddard, essentially the father of rocket science. There was even a replica of his workshop set up in the display, along with large models of several different rockets. It was something to see. I think I felt more of a connection here than with any of the artistic displays outside this little room. There were photos and various documents hanging on the walls. I think I would have like to have met Goddard, but I don't know why. He was a man who wanted to reach the sky. Maybe I know what that feels like.

At least Goddard had the brains to follow through. He launched the first ever liquid-fueled rocket and was a huge inspiration to the generations that followed in his footsteps. Me? I'm just some punk kid who likes to look at the stars. I get the feeling I'll never be anything more. When I finally left that room, I wasn't exactly inspired. I guess I was more ashamed--ashamed of myself. I know I shouldn't be. I know that I'm still young and that my best years are ahead of me, but when I looked at all his work, all his accomplishments, I can't help but feel somewhat inadequate. It doesn't make sense, I know. There isn't a lot that does.

I followed the corridor down to the planetarium, but it was closed. That really disappointed me. I needed a place just to chill out for awhile. I've never been inside a planetarium before, but I can imagine it. I can imagine an enormous dome above me, like a model of the sky, the lights dimmed way down, and a thousand tiny lights sparking into existence. I would've liked to have seen that.

The hallway in front of the planetarium led directly back to the front desk, and its walls were plastered with children's drawings of spaceships and aliens. Cute. I'm reminded again of where I am, a small town that will forever possess a stigma of lunacy. At least, in the little I've seen of Roswell, they try to embrace it, exploit it even. Sure, maybe a large percentage of the outside world sees it as a haven of conspiracy theorists and UFO crazies (and I've got to assume that they do travel here, like a pilgrimage to some bizarre Mecca), but even those social fringe groups have money to spend.

I circled around the building for one more look at Grayson's work before I left, and all the vinyl figurines I could by then picture in my mind were still waiting for me there. It's as if he sculpted them straight from my mind, from some region of the brain that serves as a fluctuating border between my reason and insanity. I didn't really want to leave, but the electric blue walls were starting to close in on my vision. I was feeling overwhelmed.

I noticed the gift shop in the back and made a quick stop to see if anything relating to the exhibit was for sale. Suddenly, I realized why the woman in the pantsuit had emphasized that the figures were unique for their size. An entire collection of miniature vinyl figurines by Evan Grayson was stacked on a shelf beside the counter, and they were all available--for a price, of course. Some of them were obviously from different lines, but the majority were from the this invisible machine series.

I don't know much about urban vinyl--mainly just that they're collectible and are seen as a contemporary urban art form, for whatever that's worth. I know people that collect it, though, and in that respect, they're no different than comic books or coins or records. They're worth different things to different people, and these were suddenly worth a lot to me. I checked my pockets for cash, preferring that over my debit card just in case the latter could be tracked. I had fifty tucked away in my left sock and another fifty stuffed in my pocket, but at nearly ten bucks apiece, the figures were a little pricey. I settled on just one. It was the dark, wiry figure covered with specks of light. It was the one that reminded me of the waitress in Knoxville, someone that seemed to exist an entire lifetime ago.

The guy with the glasses was behind the counter, looking incredibly bored. He nodded at me when he saw me--the way you nod at someone you pass on the street when you make accidental eye contact and feel the need to make some gesture of acknowledgment. I set the small vinyl figure in front of him and handed him a ten from my pocket.

"Good choice," he said to me, as if he knew all my secrets.

"Thanks," I replied, pretending I had none.

He handed back some change, and I dumped it back into my pocket, where it rattled and clinked annoyingly as I walked out of the gift shop and straight to the front of the museum, where the tall girl in the skirt sat smiling in the information booth. The woman in the pantsuit stood nervously beside her and stared at the front door, as if expecting an enormous crowd at any moment.

"Heading out?" the girl asked me.

"Yeah."

The woman in the pantsuit finally noticed me and gave an unsettling smile. It was forced, I could tell, and almost sickening.

"Did you find everything you need?" she asked.

I nodded. "Yeah, I roamed around a bit, too. It's not often I get the chance to come to a place like this."

"Good. Well, if you need anymore information about Georgia O'Keeffe, there are some books available in the gift shop."

I held the plastic bag I received in the gift shop aloft. Of course, she didn't know there wasn't a book inside.

"I'm way ahead of you," I said.

"Oh, and pamphlets! Would you like a pamphlet?"

"No, thank you. I believe I'm set."

"Great! Let me get your bags for you."

The woman then ducked down beneath the desk alarmingly fast, causing the girl still sitting there to jump backwards in her chair and flash an annoyed look at the back of the pantsuit lady's head. When she reappeared, she hauled my bags around the corner and set them on the tile floor with a satisfied grunt.

"Thanks," I said.

"You're welcome. We hope you enjoyed your visit," she said.

So I left. I walked outside and the overwhelmingly bright daylight stung my eyes, giving me no chance to adjust. When I finally did, I realized what a beautiful day it was. I had a goal now, and nothing could stop me.

I dug out the folded map I'd used early in the morning when I first found my way here. It was bent and marked with long grayish creases from what I must assume was my own abuse. I honestly didn't remember walking through the town in my sleepless haze, but I didn't appear to be too far from the bus station. According to the map, I just had to follow the main road back through town. There in between the station and the museum was another marker on the map for another kind of museum--the UFO Museum. There was no way I was going to miss that.

I tucked my black coat back into my suitcase and set off down the sidewalk, both of my bags slung over my shoulders. I didn't feel like a tourist anymore. Now I was a traveler. I had a place to be.

Day 44 - Strange Machines - Part 13

Finally, I came to the small collection of Georgia O'Keeffe paintings and turned into a small alcove on the opposite side. My heart was pounding, and I opened my eyes, wide and focused. The first thing I saw was a painting straight in front of me. It was heavily stylized (in a very cool way), but I recognized the scene immediately. There was a ring of gray, mechanical towers adorned with cogs and pistons, and in the very middle was a massive machine that appeared to be opening, and a bright light was spilling out. This was it. This was my dream.

In front of the painting were several display shelves stacked around and on top of each other, and on all of the shelves was a series of nearly a dozen plastic figurines no taller than 8 inches. It was an exhibit of urban vinyl--designer toys, I've heard them called. All of the figures were sculpted with the same stylized flair as the painting above, with an exaggerated geometry. Sharp edges were rounded, and the colors were vivid and shining. But I definitely recognized some of the images.

Front and center was the cable-thing I'd seen on the flyer. There was another that was little more than a roughly shaped gray blob, and one that was covered with several nodes painted bright yellow. There were more that at least bore a resemblance to things I've seen from the corner of my eye. The board below the display shelves bore the title this invisible machine, and in small script at the bottom was the name again--Evan Grayson.

I knew then that I had to find Grayson. I had to know what he knew. For the first time I could remember, I felt a genuine connection with another person, even though I'd never met him. I was about to head back to the information booth to find out all I could about the artist when I saw a stack of brochures at the mouth of the alcove detailing the exhibit and all its stops on the tour. Right below Roswell was the next city--Los Angeles. The opening there was scheduled for the day after tomorrow at the Fisher Gallery of the University of Southern California, and according to the brochure, the artist himself would be there.

It looks like I'm going to LA after all. What are the chances of that? Of knowing exactly where I had to be? Of finding this place and this exhibit? Honestly, what are the chances of that? My answers are there. I know they are. I'm more determined than ever.

I don't know how long I spent looking at each individual vinyl figurine. Eventually, I noticed someone sidling up behind me. It was the woman in the pantsuit, smiling at me.

"Beautiful, aren't they?" she asked.

I nodded. "Yeah. Isn't this a little unusual, though? I mean, do you normally display work like this? I would've figured this place focused on more traditional forms of art."

"You have a point, but Mr. Grayson lobbied our board of directors very intensely to schedule an exhibition here. As you said, urban vinyl isn't exactly the type of art you would expect to find in a gallery like this. It's also typically produced on a larger scale, so you don't typically see one of a kind pieces."

"It's still a form of sculpting, though, isn't it?"

"Absolutely. In fact, though the product may not appear very traditional, the artistic process, as the artist himself demonstrated, is virtually indistinguishable from any other form of sculpting."

The lady liked to talk, I noticed, but she seemed to be one of those people who didn't have much to say-- talking for the sake of talking. It got on my nerves, but this was the longest conversation I'd had in days. Sometimes you just need to hear a human voice.

"So how did the exhibit end up here?"

"Well, Mr. Grayson assured us that these are the original pieces and are much larger than the ones available for purchase, and after careful consideration, we decided to permit his collection to be displayed, if only for a few days. He really won us over with his imagination. Just look at some of these! It's no wonder he wanted them displayed here. They do look like little aliens, don't they?"

"Yeah, I suppose they do."

"So what's your guess?" she asked me.

"Excuse me?"

"Your interpretation of the work."

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe instead of characters, they're supposed to be portraits, like a representation of the world around the artist. Maybe he's saying that we're the aliens."

The woman nodded absently. "That's an interesting way of looking at it. Whatever they mean, we sure are going to miss having them around here."

"It's a good thing I came here when I did, then," I said.

"Oh, are you a fan of Mr. Grayson's work?"

"Actually, I've never seen it before in my life, but I like what I see."

"Wonderful!" She smiled widely and patted my shoulder. "I love to see young people taking an interest in art."

She looked me over. I could almost see the thoughts in her head whirling and clicking.

"Shouldn't you be in school right now?" she asked.

"I'm doing research on Georgia O'Keeffe for an art history class I'm taking. It was my teacher's idea to take a look at her work in person."

I lied. I think I'm getting better at it.

Lucky for me the O'Keeffe exhibit was close enough to point. Thank God I'm one of the 14-year-olds that actually knows who O'Keeffe is. The lady in the pantsuit seemed to have bought my story. There was a satisfied grin on her face, and she patted my shoulder once again.

"That's a terrific idea," she said. "Do you need any help? I know all about her work."

I'm sure she did.

"No thanks," I said. "I thought I'd take the opportunity to look around. Looks like there's a lot to see, and I'm always looking for inspiration."

"Are you an artist, yourself?"

"Something like that. I'm a writer."

It was a truth. It felt kind of strange to say one aloud. But there was a sudden gratifying sensation in the words. I am a writer, after all. It's what I'm doing now. It's what I love. It's what keeps me from going completely crazy.

"That's great," she said. "If you need any more help, just let me know."

She wandered off.

I may not have remembered the conversation word-for-word, but that was the gist of it. I'm getting better at remembering, too. I wonder if that's all part of being a writer--a liar with a good memory. I know I haven't had many conversations lately, but I've tried memorizing the ones I have had, along with how the things around me look and what people wear. I try to keep all of that right at the top of my mind and the tip of my tongue, and then I write them down. The bits and pieces I've forgotten are left up to my imagination, I suppose, and I have to try to remain honest when I interpret them. But what about other writers? It's not like there's anyone out there with perfect total recall, as far as I know anyway. Does that mean we have to scrutinize everything, or just accept the fact that there's no such thing as a reliable narrator?