THE NATURAL STRANGER :: BOOK 1, "THE AEON" :: CHAPTER 13, EPISODE 1

The dead who dream, the Devil's dead - choking bandwidths on nameless days - have boobytrapped the Kramden web with rattraps. Theses, antitheses collide, fold into syntheses unrecognizable... chlorine clouds swelling over flats of metallic sodium. A bowl of Uay ideograms seasoned with Zambo and Miskito participles and US military slang.

"I'd have found a sponsor for him," Junior says, of Carlo. "We'd train in San Antonio together, comrades!" He pretends to bite his tongue and winks, "Buddies, I meant." Suelans always boot up to San Antonio for training and maneuvers... Arcilla sent waves of barefoot boys whose brutality and dog stupidity still bring regretful smirks from Vern and Ottie at the Tropique... Ernie's cadets, massed every September, have been of much better quality.

Look at the grouse!

We look to ruins, see their origins in gray years we've become; narrowing bandwidths throwing off gray decades in clouds of technicolor false memories. Politicians who don't smile like JFK anymore, bands stiffly imitating Elvis, Otis, Beatles... robber barons ludicrous in the shadow of Morgan or Rockefellers, even Harry Stone.

Morning is, the Marrow but a dream.

There is no Lentex jet, no "dora"... the Greek for "spear", uncannily replicating that mountain towards which the Soviets raced Project Alsos to pry Zuse and his brother spiders from. Only beer and football in the family room... a Cotton or Sugar Bowl (from which Bud drinks) while I play solitary rounds of pool, balls smattering across the table like little switches following Herschel Walker through the Fighting Irish backfield. Finally, Manny rings the bell, having brought the Lincoln round for the return trip. He holds New Years' Day papers, headlines crawling like maggots, dusted in snow.

There's prerecorded talk soup on the radio... Mitchell early in December, BL (before Lennon)... closing sale on Tandem; his political afterlife still rumors, his own sentiments ambiguous. "I think there should be a bipartisan initiative to remove some of the litigiousness from American life - it would be a major boost to business and, let's face it, Dan, most ordinary people don't care much for attorneys."

"But wouldn't privatization of civil justice work against the little guy?" the Devil's advocate clucks.

"No," Mitchell answered. "Even if it did, correct solutions always rise from the private sector. Take that day care center your previous caller mentioned, that one with the unauthorized murals of Mickey, Donald... other characters Disney is suing them to tear down. Sure they have to protect copyrights, but it'll cost them in PR, throwing little black kids out on the street, making the mothers have to quit their jobs maybe go on welfare. Why couldn't someone else step in... Hanna Barbera, Warner's, one of the comics companies even... build a new center with Spiderman or Batman's sponsorship? In a free society and with a free media like you doing your job, everything's negotiable..."

"You are one cold customer," Banks remarks, at the station. Puke walls and tacked up caricatures of suspected arsonists and Puerto Rican bombers his way of bringing me down to street level. "Walking out on your customers at midnight's stroke, not even calling in to see who's made it out and who's fried. You had some inkling your little cash chariot was about to turn into a pumpkin, all that horsepower to rats?"

"I had another appointment," I say, "and was tired. Are you going to arrest me for that?"

"Not that," Banks admits.

The scaly guy in the blue suit, finding no audience outside Aeon anymore, had followed the firetrucks to the sidewalk outside Midtown Station, dragging his guitar, but instead of repeating ascending and descending conjunctions of nine notes, he's chopped his repertoire to five... they squirm through police walls like termites chewing through butter. My headache the size of an old Petra...

Look at the grouse!

"Did you know the moon," Duck said, in the Zone, "used to be only thirty seven miles from earth?"