textfiles/magazines/INTERTEXT/itv1n1

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           INTERTEXT - Volume 1, Number 1 - March-April 1991

                          INSIDE THIS ISSUE     

                       FirstText / JASON SNELL

                A War In the Sand / DANIEL APPELQUIST

            Anticipation of the Night / DANIEL APPELQUIST

                   Direct Connection / PHIL NOLTE

                    The Sculptor / ANDREA PAYNE

                      Mister Wilt / JASON SNELL

             Do You Have Some Time? / MARY ANNE WALTERS

                     The Talisman / GREG KNAUSS

                 Schrodinger's Monkey / GREG KNAUSS
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                 Editor: Jason Snell (jsnell@ucsd.edu)
   Assistant Editor: Geoff Duncan (sgd4589@ocvaxa.cc.oberlin.edu)
        Assistant Editor: Phil Nolte (NU020061@vm1.NoDak.edu)
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InterText Vol. 1, No. 1. Intertext is published electronically on a 
bi-monthly basis, and distributed via electronic mail over the 
Internet, BITNET, and UUCP. Reproduction of this magazine is 
permitted as long as the magazine is not sold and the content of the 
magazine is not changed in any way. Copyright (C) 1991, Jason Snell. 
All stories (C) 1991 by their respective authors. All further rights 
to stories belong to the authors. The ASCII InterText is exported 
from Pagemaker 4.0 files into Microsoft Word 4.0. Circulation: 1057 
(832 ASCII). For subscription requests, email: jsnell@ucsd.edu
       ->Back issues available via FTP at: network.ucsd.edu<-
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                       FirstText / JASON SNELL

     Welcome to InterText, the new net magazine devoted (well, I'd 
like to think it will be devoted) to the publication of fiction.
     First off, I'd like to thank Jim McCabe, the man who produced 
Athene, for all the work he did on that magazine.
     This magazine takes its place, and I hope that you will all find 
the stories we publish to be entertaining and thought-provoking. 
Publishing a commercial magazine is a risky business -- 
electronically publishing a non-commercial magazine is risky and 
essentially untried. The only similar magazine that publishes in both 
ASCII and PostScript(TM) format in the United States that I know of 
is Daniel Appelquist's QUANTA, which has been published since Fall, 
1989. (The other netmagazines are DARGONZINE, which is distributed in 
ASCII format only, and the GUILDSMAN, a roleplaying journal.)
     First, a little bit about myself: I'm a Junior at Revelle 
College at the University of California, San Diego, majoring in 
Communication with a minor in Literature/Writing. I've been writing 
fiction since I was in elementary school, though none of it has been 
professionally published yet. Of course, I haven't submitted any of 
it, so there's nobody to blame but myself.
     In addition to my schoolwork, I put in a ridiculous amount of 
time at UCSD's school newspaper, the Guardian. I'm in my second year 
at the paper, and I'm the News Editor.
     What do I expect from this magazine? All I really want to do is 
bring good stories to the people who subscribe. I'll be hunting down 
stories on any subject from all over the network, and hopefully we 
can put out an issue every two months. I'm hoping to alternate with 
the publication schedule of QUANTA, so the two magazines will 
dovetail into a semi-monthly production schedule.
     QUANTA, if you didn't know, is a bi-monthly net magazine -- and 
its specialty is Science Fiction. InterText, on the other hand, is 
for all kinds of fiction. I don't mind publishing SF here, but since 
Quanta is an established magazine with a specific format, I'd expect 
most of the SF to go there.
     Then again, since people who use the net seem to be forward-
thinking in nature, I wouldn't be surprised to find that there's so 
much SF out there that I end up running quite a bit of it. It doesn't 
matter what kind of fiction appears in InterText... it's up to you.
     Within this issue you'll find an interesting collection of 
stories, to say the least. A few stories (but not as many as I had 
hoped) fell into my lap for this issue, including two from Quanta's 
Dan Appelquist, one by myself, and one by my Assistant Editor Phil 
Nolte. Still, I'd hope that InterText won't be dominated by "editor-
writers", and so I encourage everyone to submit their fiction. There 
are some stories (especially non-SF stories) that have no other net 
outlet, and so you might still see stories by editors here, but we'll 
try to keep it to a minimum.
     (For example, next issue I'll probably end up running another 
story written by me, just because it's not SF and so I can't really 
get it into Quanta.)
     Dan Appelquist's "Anticipation of the Night" is a fascinating 
piece of work... quite strange, yes, but very interesting. His other 
story, "A War in the Sand," was sort of written because of the cover 
of the PostScript version of this issue. (The cover is a drawing of a 
dove of peace sitting atop a tank in the middle of the desert.) I 
sent Dan a template of InterText that jokingly listed a story called 
"War in the Sand." I guess Dan took me up on it. Anyway, those 
stories and the closing pieces by Greg Knauss ("The Talisman," a 
loopy Stephen King parody, and "Schrodinger's Monkey," a deep 
contemplation of quantum mechanics and bananas) form what I'd like to 
think of as a pair of strange bookends: two to welcome you to this 
first issue and two to wrap it up.
     In between are Nolte's "Direct Connections," (which we're 
printing under sad circumstances -- Phil gave it to me only after 
AMAZING STORIES rejected it), a story by me, and stories by Andrea 
Payne and Mary Anne Walters. I thank everyone for submitting and 
helping me out with this issue.
     Some people have asked about an FTP site for back issues of this 
magazine, and for those who'd rather not have the issue pop up in 
their mailer. Well, with great thanks to Brian Kantor of UCSD Network 
Operations, InterText will have an FTP site on network.ucsd.edu. Look 
in the "intertext" directory (of course).
     Before I go, I'd like to thank everyone who helped out with the 
creation of this magazine. It has been three months since I began 
working on this magazine, and many people have contributed.
     I'd like to thank Dan Appelquist for giving me help on how to 
distribute the magazine and for testing the validity of my PostScript 
code, zoetrop@ucscb.ucsc.edu for giving me a program that corrected a 
major PostScript problem, Jim McCabe for his help in easing the 
transition and allowing me to use the ATHENE mailing list, GUARDIAN 
Design Editor James Collier both for saying he liked the InterText 
PostScript edition design and for taking the picture of me that 
appears on page three of the PostScript version, and, of course, my 
assistant editors Geoff Duncan and Phil Nolte.
     And thanks to all of you for subscribing to the magazine. Feel 
free to send us letters with your comments about things we should 
change, things we shouldn't, and anything else you'd like to know. 
Geoff, Phil, and I will be sure to listen.
     Oh, three final notes. First: there will be an FTP site for 
recent issues of InterText. The host will be network.ucsd.edu, and 
both postscript and ASCII editions will be located in the "intertext" 
directory on that system.
     Second: If you do have the ability to print this magazine to a 
laserprinter, I urge you to try FTPing a PotScript edition of this 
magazine and printing it. In ASCII you get the bare bones, but the 
PostScript version is easier to read and (for this issue) runs 29 
pages in length. It also has a neat cover graphic, as mentioned 
above.
     Third: I'd like to know who I have reading this magazine, and 
how many of you there are. If you receive this magazine by some other 
route than via direct mail (i.e., through a server or via ftp), 
please drop me a message saying that you do. I'll put you on a 
"notification list", letting you know that the new issue is out and 
you can expect it coming through the mail and showing up on the ftp 
site. This way, I can keep in contact with you and know how many of 
you there are. Thanks. And enjoy the magazine.


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                 A War In the Sand / DAN APPELQUIST

     Last night I heard rockets. The sound was a familiar one, but it 
still somehow manages to grab hold of my spine. I lay there, on my 
concrete bed, shaking, trying not to think of tomorrow. I can't say 
where the rockets were coming from, or where they were going to. I 
heard no explosions last night, but perhaps it would have been better 
if I had. The explosions of the past few nights somehow had the 
intensity to jar me out of the realm of conscious thought, turning me 
into a creature of mere instinct, my will to survive primary. The 
sounds of rockets only made me think harder about who I was, where I 
was and when the madness would end.
     Last week, my cousin and aunt left, setting out on the long trek 
across the plain, the no man's land. I don't think I will ever see 
them again. I don't know why I didn't go with them. It had nothing to 
do with pride, nothing to do with a love of country. Perhaps it was 
the nagging thought that an escape from the place I have called home 
would constitute its ultimate destruction. I have no wish to become a 
refugee, to abandon all I have known, to become a nameless no-one, 
fleeing like a cockroach from a burning building.
     I have heard a rumor that the tanks of the enemy are on their 
way, rolling in a ceaseless procession through the vast desert sands. 
If they arrive, they will find no resistance here, in this pile of 
broken concrete, once a town. I welcome them now -- not because they 
are right, but because they represent an end, a bringing to a close 
of this ungodly catastrophe. I will greet them with open arms.
     This morning, there was smoke on the horizon, a column of dark 
grey painted on a backdrop of lighter grey. Grey is a color I have 
become well acquainted with of late. The very air here is thick with 
a grey soot, a residue from past bombings. A rain will sometimes wash 
the air, leaving it clear for an hour or two, until the bombs return 
and the cycle begins again. Lately, there have been no bombings, but 
neither has there been any rain, so the dust remains, settling only 
slowly onto the already debris-laden ground.
     I went in search of food today, thinking that I might find some 
bottled water, some canned fish. All I found was a ripped child's 
cover-all, stained with blood. I stood there for a long while, trying 
to remember who had lived there, who the small owner of this garment 
might have been. Discouraged, I returned to my shelter, the basement 
of some now unrecognizable building.
     When I reached the entrance to my shelter, I found a small boy 
on his way out, shirtless, obviously under-nourished, clutching as 
many of my supplies as he could carry in the tattered remains of a 
turban. I was enraged, beyond all reason. I struck him, I don't know 
how many times, I think I saw in him all that was wrong with us, all 
the weaknesses that had brought this calamity upon us. After the 
child ran away, screaming, I sat down in the middle of the scattered 
cans the child had dropped and cried. I had been reduced to my own 
object of hatred in that moment. What monsters are we men. Our 
civilization is pretense. Our science, a sham. Our kindness, a 
convenience. We would build sprawling empires out of dust.
     But when the bombs begin to drop, all our false faces drop with 
them. Carefully constructed worlds crumble noiselessly at our feet. I 
stood there in the street for a long time, looking up at the sky, 
silently cursing God for bringing us to this, then cursing myself.
     The engine-roar of a formation of war planes shrieking overhead 
brought me out of my reverie. How like birds they were, I thought. 
How graceful in their movements. How awesome in flight. No. Not 
birds. Birds do not rain destruction upon cities and towns. As if to 
answer my thoughts, a group of vultures ascended in rapid, flapping 
chaos from behind a mound of earth. I did not look to see what their 
quarry had been. Perhaps a friend. Perhaps a relative. I bid them a 
silent farewell, picked up my cans and descended into my shelter.
     Now, I wait for the tanks, for the soldiers. There is no 
feeling, only a vast, empty nothingness in my head. Now I hear the 
rockets again, and now the explosions. Why have I bothered? I should 
have let the child get away with my cans. The nourishment that now 
keeps my brain alive would have gone to much better use in his mouth. 
Perhaps his thoughts would weigh not so heavily upon his brow. I 
wonder when they will come for me, when the fire from the skies will 
finally seek out my safe haven and make a mockery of my fight for 
survival. Now? Now?
     Now.

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             Anticipation of the Night / DAN APPELQUIST

     Satan, the wiles of the immaculate beast return yet to further 
trouble my already derided spirit. And what should I have expected, I 
in my innermost protected sanctum, the fire light of those withered 
memories casting a pale black shadow upon my craggy pock-marked face.
     It was only here, in the tower I created with my own pride, my 
foolish arrogance, that I felt truly safe, and it was here that the 
battle over my soul, having been planned and replanned for centuries, 
was finally fought, and lost. I say this in no uncertain terms, mind 
you. I have succumbed to that hate, that uncontrollable desire to 
which all pretend innocence. I have made my peace with it and in 
doing so I have surrendered, the half-truths of my life becoming full 
lies, at least now honest in their untruthfulness. I look upon 
others, those who pretend an existence apart from evil, apart from 
that which controls, that which contorts, and I laugh. In a corner of 
my heart I long for that time, the time of ignorance, of blindness 
punctuated by a joy so foreign to me now that I think I would not 
recognize it, or would mistake it for pain or anguish.
     Call me, then, Jeremiah. I am a man, and yet my heart is the 
heart of the beast, the heart of the man before Man. My only hunger 
now is the burning Lack, that which drives me on to commit atrocity 
after atrocity in hope of fulfillment. The time of my mortal hunger 
has long passed. My corporeal nourishment provided to me by 
mechanisms and bodily subterfuge, I cheat Death of her prize quite 
glibly. Mine is the best life money can buy.
     Ah Death, how fair you are, and yet how you must despise me for 
putting off our wedding date so rudely and so often. We will be 
joined, Death, you and I -- but not yet. I have a little business to 
attend to first.
     And so in the first year of this, a new eon on Earth, I sit, 
awake, for, in this state, even sleep is robbed from my hardly human 
body. They come to me, my minions, my demons, and show me things, 
proofs of their atrocious acts, their foulness reeking through my 
mind as their memories become absorbed into my own. For them, I have 
become a bank, a God, and father confessor, rolled into an 
incongruous one. How they must revere me, my minions. They come to me 
to deposit their memories, and by doing so to share their 
experiences, thus to make each act they commit sacred in some small 
way. A link -- to transcend prayer, talk, all earthly modes of 
expression and cut to the quick. In the instant I sense their waking 
thoughts (unable to truly break through, to take ACTION!) I become 
more than myself, and I sense them becoming part of me, their life 
stories only sub-plots of my own. Perhaps some of them think they 
control me, perhaps they think they use me for their own purposes, 
but in their hearts, they fear.
     'Jerem', they call me: 'The Reawakened'. My throne, a bed where 
my wasting body, beyond atrophy, sits vestigially, omnipotent. From 
there, I sit and relate to them visions of times long past, of things 
long forgotten; of days when men of power, ruling with steel fists, 
would stare eye to eye, knowing that even a flinch would silence a 
million voices, even the memories of whom would be reduced to a puff 
of smoke. There were such men, and I was among them. My memory of 
those days is crystal clear. I can lose myself in those memories and 
I often do, letting the players of my mind act out scenes from my 
past. It is only the most recent of memories that I now find 
strangely obscured, no doubt the product of my decrepit brain -- ah 
what a fair instrument you have been.
     Some have said that the Brain is not the true center of one's 
soul; that in this explanation there is no beauty, no harmony to show 
God's divine influence. They know nothing. Within the beautiful 
symmetry of the Brain is the ability to have such thoughts, such 
awful, grinding examples of mortality, that even I have been loath to 
look upon them. I have known Brains, oh yes. So many that they defy 
counting. The myth of the mind, that attempt by man to raise his 
faculties above the level of a simple chemical reaction, beyond nerve 
and synapse, is his last, greatest lie to himself. There is no mind, 
only the Brain, that juicy repository of all that makes us truly and 
grittily human, even to the last.
     It is not man we are truly searching for but the image of man, 
which is embellished within our consciousness through re-telling and 
re-telling. It is that archetypal hero for which we forever search, 
unable to come to terms, finally and satisfactorily with the idea 
that he does not exist, or has died away. In the time of death, 
perhaps, we come to this realization and grasp for life to be reborn 
into this new knowledge, but by then it is too late, the dying embers 
of our past cannot kindle anew the fire of our forbidden future. We 
are consigned to once more trace the same circle, forever going back 
and forth without ever truly knowing ourselves or those around us. 
For all real purposes, blind, deaf and dumb.
     In my false death, my trickery, I have surpassed that terrible 
knowledge. I no longer search for man or for any sort of earthly 
fulfillment, save the one single sinking Purpose. See them gather 
around me in futile hope that they might absorb a measure of 
greatness, of ultimate power: my acolytes, my priests.
     Once, I was possessed of earthly flesh, but that flesh has 
melted away. It exists, and yet it does so only as a convenience. 
Once my emotions were such that oftentimes I would close my eyes and 
weep inwardly, or smile the smile of true happiness. There is nothing 
that delights me now. I remember when I awoke, after they had taken 
my body from its cryogenic crypt. "Lead us," they had pleaded, those 
elite, those men of power. "Bring us power, for in the ways of 
distrust, we are mere pupils. You are the professor-professor."
     I resented them at first. I thought them mad to bring me back. I 
did not want this Godhood that was being foisted upon me, so fresh 
out of the grave. But it was too late. I had been deified long before 
my awakening. I remember my morbid fascination with the texts that 
described my deeds of life. How inaccurate they often were, and 
sometimes how stunningly correct. They knew truths that had been 
kept, I thought, only between myself and my own inner confessor, but 
of my own inner thoughts they knew nothing. Thus my re-awakening, my 
bane. That I should have been brought back into this world, this 
never-ending pain.
     How I resisted, then, and how they fought me. They did not ever 
openly oppose me, but their expectations were a ladder, each rung 
bringing more protestations, yet still leading downwards into unknown 
abysses. I know now that I was true evil from the moment lucky sperm 
met unexpectant egg.
     And then, resigned to a life such as they had planned, I 
resolved myself to change this world, this ruined landscape of man's 
blind stupidity. "Has man not reached the stars?" I asked them in my 
foolishness. "A foolish dream." they replied. "The planets, then, 
what of the colonies, teeming with fresh insight, noble spirit and 
purpose," to which they replied "there never were such places. There 
never was such a spirit." And in that moment, I despaired. I thought 
then, in my ambition, that I would bring about a change, a tornado of 
progress that would shake the foundations of the earth. I was, 
instead, drawn into the whirlpool of an ever decaying, dead planet.
     Now, my minions leave my fatherly care, to destroy, to rape 
whatever still exists in this filthy, dying world, to release the 
dragons. Ah, my sweet Delores, if only you could see me now. When I 
killed you I kept you with me throughout all time, forever 
reinventing your immaculate psyche. Now they release the Gorgon. 
Split the fragile egg of your own birthplace. Return its dust to that 
which, in a child's breath, created all that now is. I know you 
truly, now, Death. I am your angel. Encircle me with your eager arms 
and let us embrace.

--
DANIEL APPELQUIST (da1n@andrew.cmu.edu) is a senior studying 
Cognitive Science at Carnegie Mellon University. In his spare time, 
in addition to sometimes writing obscure fiction, he published 
QUANTA, the electronic magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy. He 
resides in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with his girlfriend Roberta, and 
his cat, Emma (more commonly known as the Psycho-Kitten). He plans on 
spending the remainder of this year in a desperate search for 
employment.
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                   Direct Connection / PHIL NOLTE

     A Whitman's sampler lay with its lid open on the coffee table. 
Inside, a jumble of dark brown waxed paper cups lay empty and in 
disarray. In fact, only four of the little cups still contained their 
chocolate coated treasures. Janis mentally scolded herself for having 
eaten most of the bottom layer in one sitting.
     "You're gonna miss your target weight for this week, Janis," she 
sighed, thinking aloud. Still, chocolate was her only indulgence, one 
she occasionally resorted to for solace, especially after a 
particularly trying day. Like this one had been. Her hand hovered 
over the box for a moment as she decided which of the remaining 
morsels looked the most appealing. Finally she selected one and bit 
into it, savoring the rich, dark chocolate. Ah, a coconut center, one 
of her favorites!
     Janis Tolbert was alone in her efficiency apartment, sprawled 
out on the old beat-up sofa, still dressed in her work outfit, a 
smart, no-nonsense navy blue skirt and white blouse that still looked 
reasonably fresh in spite of having been worn all day. She had her 
shoes off and her panty hose-clad legs propped up on the table. The 
boxed remains of a take-out Chinese dinner added to the clutter on 
the small table. She knew from experience that nothing worked better 
to soothe her shattered nerves than a little out of control, self-
destructive eating binge.
     "I could kill that damned Maynard Hughes!" she thought. "I swear 
to god if he ever lays a finger on me again I'm going straight to Dr. 
Parsons!"  Hughes was the reason for her present agitated state of 
mind. He was the office "lech" -- a self-appointed God's gift to 
women--and he was nothing if not persistent. Janis was the present 
target of his unwelcome sexual advances, probably because she was a 
new employee, still under six-month probation, and Hughes was 
confident that she would be reluctant to raise a fuss. Of course, it 
didn't hurt that he was married to the former Estelle Parsons -- 
daughter of J. Harold Parsons -- the founder of the Parsons Sensory 
Research Institute where both Janis and Hughes worked.
     Actually, Hughes wasn't all that bad looking; she had even 
accepted a ride home once, on a rainy day, before she knew what he 
was like. In his car outside her apartment Hughes had proved himself 
to be all hands and terribly hard of hearing. That had happened over 
three months ago but it was as though the incident had given him some 
kind of go-ahead signal or presented some sort of irresistible 
challenge to his male ego because, since that time, he had taken to 
grabbing the soft and sensitive parts of her body whenever he could 
contrive to get her alone at work. That was the other problem, Hughes 
was experienced and clever enough to make his moves only when he 
could be certain that there weren't any witnesses. Janis found it 
hard to believe that a man could be so brash and bold and so 
insensitive to another person's feelings. What an ass!
     Just thinking about it made her want another chocolate. She 
looked the remains of the sampler over carefully before selecting 
another of the little tidbits.
     Janis suppressed a shudder as the day's incident ran through her 
mind for the hundredth time. She had innocently boarded the elevator 
to head downstairs for afternoon coffee. Hughes had cleverly dashed 
into the elevator just before the door closed. As the elevator began 
moving he hit the emergency stop, which stranded them -- alone -- and 
pushed her back into the corner. She could still feel the weight of 
his body pressing her into the corner and his rough, inept hands 
painfully mauling her breasts. Janis pushed him away and covered her 
bosom with her arms. That target no longer accessible, he redirected 
his efforts to her shapely and unprotected backside, reaching behind 
her to gather a generous pinch of the soft, yielding flesh. She 
brought her knee up and slapped him as hard as she could. While he 
was momentarily stunned, she cancelled the emergency stop and pushed 
the button for the next floor. Janis stomped out of the elevator, 
straightening her clothing, her face red with anger, embarrassment 
and frustration. Her knee had missed its target -- at least there had 
been some satisfaction in the slap, but it wouldn't deter him, it 
would happen again, she knew that from experience. "Well," she 
thought, "Just a few more weeks and I'm off probation. Let's just see 
how that lecherous swine reacts to the threat of a sexual harassment 
suit!"
     Gobbling down most of the little box of chocolates had had the 
desired effect and she felt somewhat better about the incident. At 
least she could think about it without shuddering. Janis yawned and 
stretched, her arms extended outward and above her head, and glanced 
at the clock. Time to turn in!  Tomorrow was Saturday and though it 
was normally a day off, she was going back to the Institute to earn 
some extra money. The secretarial job she had didn't pay well and, 
her paychecks, like almost everyone else's, were never big enough. 
The only instructions they had given her was to get a good night's 
sleep because they wanted her rested and alert for the morning 
session.

     To her dismay, she had to share the elevator in the nearly empty 
building that morning with none other than her nemesis, Maynard 
Hughes. She wrapped her arms tightly around her bosom and backed into 
the corner, ready to defend herself. Strangely, he didn't made any 
kind of move at all. In fact, he barely seemed to notice her. It was 
like he was preoccupied with something. But the conspiratorial look 
on his face was most disturbing. She breathed a sigh of relief when 
he got off on the second floor.
     She stopped outside the door of the appointed meeting place at 
8:55 AM, five minutes early. The frosted glass window read:

                             Room 351 A
                          Gustatory Studies

     She was still a little flustered by her close brush with Hughes 
on the elevator but at least, to her relief, he hadn't attacked her 
again. Perhaps her penetrating glare had been sufficient to keep him 
at bay. She shook it off, took a deep breath, opened the door and 
went in.
     Hardly anyone in the busy room even looked up as she came in, 
except for one person at the far end of the room. She recognized the 
man immediately as he tucked his clipboard under his arm and came 
over to greet her. His was the face in the painting in the main lobby 
that gazed down at her sternly every time she entered or left the 
building. It was the old man, none other than J. Harold Parsons, 
M.D., Ph.D. himself, who was heading the team that she had 
volunteered to be guinea pig for.
     "Good morning. You must be Ms. Tolbert," the distinguished, 
silver-haired old researcher said jovially. "May I call you Janis?"  
She nodded nervously, her hands clasped awkwardly together. Sensing 
her nervousness, Parsons continued. "Did you get a good night's 
rest?"
     Janis found her voice. "Yes, thank you Dr. Parsons," she managed 
to stammer out.
     "Good, good!" he replied. "Well, we'd best get started. But 
first, let me show you our equipment. Please come this way."
     He led her over to a large, complicated chair that was the 
centerpiece of the room. She followed cautiously and looked it over 
dubiously. What she saw did not inspire her confidence. It looked 
like a kind of hyper-modern barber's (dentist's?) chair -- one whose 
specifications had come straight out of a demented electrician's 
nightmare. There were wires and cables running helter-skelter from 
the base and down the back of the chair, across the room and into a 
large glass-fronted booth which covered the entire west wall of the 
room. Through the wide, waist-to-ceiling window of the booth she 
could see a battery of control consoles and computer monitors. There 
was definitely some high-powered research going on, because each work 
station was manned by a white-coated staff member and there were more 
than twenty of them in the booth.
     At the top of the chair on a moveable arm was a small stainless 
steel dome, about the size of a large mixing bowl. Its surface was 
crawling with an even more complex snake's nest of wires that were 
gathered into a fat, lumpy cable that ran down the back of the chair 
and across the floor before it too disappeared into the glass booth.
     "We're doing gustatory studies here in our laboratory, Janis -- 
research into the human sense of taste. I think it's safe to say that 
we have made some real breakthroughs in last few months. Make no 
mistake, what we're doing here will surely revolutionize the science 
of how and what people eat!"  An assistant helped Janis into a white 
plasticized coverall, gently sat her down in the chair and buckled 
her in with a sort of webbed seat belt. The chair felt fine, it was 
softly padded, and supported her in just the right places. Janis was 
almost comfortable, except for the hard little knot of fear simmering 
in the pit of her stomach.
     	"Please relax, Janis," soothed the old doctor. "This will be 
totally painless. In fact, I think you'll find it to be quite 
pleasurable."  He carefully placed the metal mixing bowl device over 
her brown shoulder-length hair -- it fit snugly -- and after a few 
minor adjustments to position the fit, he secured it with a velcro 
chin-strap. He then swivelled a small tray over in front of her. The 
tray had a stack of wooden spatulas on it and five small containers 
that looked just like her mother's Tupperware. After looking the 
whole set-up over one more time, he smiled, patted her on the 
shoulder, and went across the room to enter the booth. Janis was 
alone with her thoughts for about half a minute.
     "As I said earlier, we are going to do some tests on your sense 
of taste, Janis."  The voice, sudden and unexpected, startled her. In 
a moment she realized that Parsons was speaking softly into a 
microphone that was wired directly into a speaker in the mixing bowl 
headset. "But first we need to calibrate our equipment. Would you 
please take a small taste of the first sample?"  One of the 
containers on the tray had a large number "1" scrawled in magic 
marker on its top. She removed the lid, took one of the disposable 
wooden spatulas from the pile on the left and, expecting the worst, 
carefully took a small taste.
     There was no electric shock, no thunder. It was salt, good old-
fashioned table salt. She felt the salty bite of it on the sides and 
tip of her tongue.
     "Excellent, my dear!" came the soft voice from the helmet. 
"You're coming through loud and clear."  She couldn't move her head 
but from what she could see, it looked as though Parsons and the 
others were busy making adjustments to their equipment. "Now rinse 
your mouth with some water from the squeeze bottle and try sample 
number two.
     Number two was pure white sugar that dissolved immediately and 
tickled at the tip of her tongue. She repeated the procedure for 
samples three and four. Three was a dilute aqueous solution of 
quinine, bitter on the back of her tongue and the roof of her mouth. 
Janis had never developed a taste for gin and tonic and the water 
rinse was most welcome. Number four was vinegar, wet and sour, which 
nibbled sharply at the sides of her tongue. Parsons and the others 
continued to make adjustments to their consoles after each sample she 
tasted.
     His voice sounded soft and clear inside the headset.
     "Very good, Janis!  You've just finished tasting samples of the 
four major families of compounds, salty, sweet, bitter and sour, that 
together make up the human sense of taste. At this stage, our 
equipment can be considered to be roughly calibrated. However, you 
probably know that the senses of smell and taste are closely linked. 
Next we'll try some familiar foods to determine how your individual 
patterns differ from our previous subjects and to tune in that all-
important olfactory component."
     The pretty, young assistant brought in a different tray and took 
the old one away. On it were a number of fruits and vegetables and 
other everyday foods like bread and cheese. She tasted each one in 
turn, all the while receiving encouragement from the disembodied 
voice in the headset. Dr. Parsons made an announcement after the 
second tray was removed.
     "Save this setup on drive B, Hamilton," she heard faintly. Then 
more loudly: "We're ready to move on to phase two now, Janis."  The 
lights in the room dimmed. "Until now we have been measuring the 
electrical signals from the receptor cells in your taste buds to the 
corresponding areas of your brain's taste center. Now were going to 
use our calibrations to electrically stimulate your taste center. 
This will allow you to experience selected tastes directly, without 
chewing or eating anything. Have another water rinse, please."  She 
nervously complied. The voice came again, "Are you ready?"
     Janis gulped and said tersely, "Okay."
     There was a change in tone of the persistent electrical hum that 
had pervaded the room all morning. Funny, she hadn't even noticed it 
until it changed pitch. Very gently she felt a sensation brush at the 
tip of her tongue. It started out faintly and ended up sugary sweet. 
Next was sour, followed by bitter and salty. Each was pure and 
perfect, only the gritty texture of the powders was missing; the 
equipment could even mimic the sensation of cool wetness that the 
liquid formulations possessed. Janis smiled -- the sensation was 
definitely weird, but really rather pleasurable, just like J. Harold 
Parsons had told her at the beginning.
     "Excellent, Janis. Okay, now we're ready for phase three."
     There was another change in the intensity of the electrical hum 
and Janis tasted the pure tart-sweet flavor of the orange she had 
just enjoyed about a half hour before. It was the same... only 
different. It was somehow amplified, better, this despite the lack of 
any familiar texture on her tongue or in her mouth. The apple was 
better, too, and she had never tasted such flavorful bread. Janis was 
favorably impressed with the new technique, to say the least!
     But they had saved the biggest surprise for last. Using 
recordings from their previous subjects that had been subtly modified 
by the computer programs to match Janis' electrical patterns, she was 
able to experience foods that she hadn't tasted earlier that day. And 
they had somehow chosen her favorite.
     Chocolate!
     Chocolate -- smooth, almost intoxicating milk chocolate that 
bathed her tongue and the roof of her mouth in creamy ecstasy. This 
was the way chocolate was supposed to taste!  Too soon, it seemed, it 
was time for something else. She was terribly disappointed when the 
wondrous sensation ended.
     But only for a moment.
     They followed it up with the rich, almost bitter taste of dark 
semi-sweet chocolate. Perfect!  Never had she tasted its like. It was 
incredibly pleasurable, nearly orgasmic in its chocolate intensity!
     But they still weren't done yet!
     While Janis was still in sensory shock from the tremendous 
chocolateness  of it all, they skillfully layered on a subtle mix of 
flavors that had her absolutely reveling in a sort of tenth-power 
chocolate-covered cherry!
     She almost cried when they shut off the power and the lights 
came back on. The assistant came over and helped Dr. Parsons 
disconnect her from the chair. She swiveled her head to and fro and 
up and down to get the kinks out of her neck. To her acute 
embarrassment, the upper front portion of her coverall was soaking 
wet. Deep in the throes of her chocolate orgy, she had apparently 
salivated all over it. Obviously they had been thinking ahead by 
having her put on the coverall.
     Parsons held out a hand to help Janis up. She felt fine, outside 
of being a little dizzy. The assistant helped her out of the coverall 
and took it away. Red-faced, she wiped off her chin with the towel 
that Parsons handed her.
     "That's one side effect that needs a little work," said the old 
doctor lightly. "How do you feel, Janis?"   She glanced at the clock 
and was amazed to find that it was nearly noon. The morning was over.
     "Uh...Okay, I guess," she said. "Wow, that last part of the 
experiment, the bit with the chocolate, was incredible!"
     "Oh yes," he chuckled. "We like to add a bit of stimulation to 
other selected areas of the brain during that phase. You might call 
it 'a blast of chocolate straight to the pleasure center!'  You 
really liked it?"
     "Any time you need a subject, just give me a call," she replied. 
They both laughed.
     Parsons' tone became a little more serious, "There are many 
possible applications for this research. Of course, none of this 
would be possible if we hadn't created machinery that can directly 
stimulate the brain using a non-invasive technique. With this 
technology many things become possible. A weight-loss program would 
be a snap, because you could experience the pleasure of any food you 
wanted while never eating a thing!  Or you could eat something 
mundane and have it taste like something sublime. Imagine, for the 
cost of the electricity, you could eat a cheap, tasteless, nutritious 
pap, while enjoying the sensations of a gourmet meal!  Or keep a 
library of the world's greatest cuisine in the memory banks, to be 
experienced whenever you have the desire or ..."  He stopped, a 
little embarrassed. "I'm sorry, Janis. I get kind of carried away 
when I start talking about it.
     They made small talk for a few more minutes and shook hands 
before they parted. She left the building with a spring in her step, 
elated with the grand experience she'd just had, glad to have most of 
a Saturday ahead of her and secure in the knowledge that her next 
paycheck would be fifty dollars fatter. She went out and did a little 
shopping and then spent the evening at the movies with her best 
friend Gwen.

     After her Sunday morning workout, she decided to have the 
remaining chocolates in her Whitman's sampler with a cup of coffee. 
She carefully selected one of the remaining miniatures in the yellow 
box and delicately took a small bite of it. Funny, it had the right 
texture and feel but it didn't taste right at all. The flavor was 
off, the tidbit tasted more like wax than it did like chocolate. She 
washed it down with a gulp of coffee and threw the rest of the piece 
away. "Stuff goes bad so quickly," she thought, and reached for the 
one remaining piece, a chocolate covered almond. The almond flavor 
came through just fine, but again the chocolate tasted funny, like 
paraffin. She sighed and finished her coffee and then got busy doing 
her laundry and writing out checks to pay her monthly bills. She 
thought no more about it for the rest of the day.
     In the evening she noticed that the chocolate mint she had after 
dinner had the same sort of weird taste but it really was kind of 
old. Wasn't it?
     She began to get worried when the Mr. Goodbar she bought out of 
the vending machine on Monday morning to have with her coffee break 
tasted the same. Alarmed, Janis offered half of it to one of the 
other secretaries to see if she thought it tasted funny.
     "Mr. Goodbar," said the older woman. "One of my favorites."
     "Does it taste alright to you, Phyllis?"
     "You bet, nice and fresh. It's perfect. Thanks, Janis!"
     A few minutes later Janis was outside of room 351, trying to 
calm herself down enough to knock, enter and explain her problem. She 
screwed up her courage and rapped softly on the door.
     Dr. Parsons answered the door and though she might have imagined 
it, she thought he looked a little nervous himself when he saw it was 
her.
     "What is it, my dear?" he asked. "You seem rather upset."
     "I'm sorry to bother you Dr. Parsons, but I'm afraid there's 
something wrong," she said.
     "Wrong?  What do you mean?"
     "It's chocolate," she said. "It doesn't taste right anymore. 
I've tried several different kinds in the last two days, since the 
experiments, and they all taste the same to me -- just like wax."
     The old doctor nervously ran his fingers through his hair. 
"Please sit down," he said solemnly. He took a deep breath and let it 
out with a sigh. "I'm very sorry, Janis. I was afraid that something 
like this might have happened. "You eat a lot of chocolate, don't 
you?"  Janis nodded. He continued. "Did you eat a lot it just 
recently?"  She nodded again. Parsons shook his head. "That's what I 
thought. After you left I noticed that the gain on the transmission 
unit was two clicks higher than it should have been during the 
chocolate input test. The result is a sort of fatigue of the nerves 
as a consequence of sensory overload. We were lucky that it wasn't 
more intense. Hopefully your condition will get better soon."
     "What do you mean by soon?" she asked, just managing to keep her 
voice controlled.
     "Well," he replied. "Certainly less than a year, possibly only a 
few months."
     "A year!" she cried. "This is terrible, chocolate is my favorite 
food, my only vice, it helps me get by!  What'll I do without it?"
     "Now, now," he said, lamely. "It could be worse."
     "What if I decide to sue you?" she said as her resolve began to 
crumble, knowing that the threat was hollow even as she made it.
     "You did sign a waiver, if you remember," he replied.
     It was obvious that Parsons had no idea how miserable life would 
be for a lonely, single woman who couldn't enjoy a bit of chocolate 
once in a while!  Janis fell back on her last line of defense. She 
began to cry softly.
     Parsons looked at her for a few moments, and his face softened. 
Even after thirty years as a Psychologist, the old doctor was still a 
sucker for the young woman's tears. He endured her onslaught for only 
a few moments before getting up and putting his arm around her 
shoulder. "There, there," he soothed, "let's not argue. I think I 
have a solution that we can both live with."  She looked up at him 
hopefully. "You were such an excellent test subject that I'd really 
like to continue working with you -- to find out more about what went 
wrong, if nothing else. If you really miss chocolate so terribly we 
can just hook you up to the machine and take you for a ride. What do 
you say, Janis?  I'd like you to become an integral part of our 
research team. The pay will, of course, be a lot better than your 
secretarial job."
     Janis knew when she was being offered a good deal.
     "I accept," she said, wiping her eyes and sitting up straight. 
"But make sure that those dials are on the right settings from now 
on, okay?"
     "Just be thankful that you're not Maynard Hughes," said Parsons.
     Her ears perked up at the sound of the name. It occurred to her 
that now was the perfect time to bring up that subject.
     "Hughes," she said. "I've been meaning to talk to you about him, 
Dr Parsons. He's absolutely terrible, a real sex fiend, always 
grabbing at me and the other girls in the hallways and in the 
elevator. Something should be done about him."
     "I had been looking the other way because of my poor long-
suffering daughter," Parsons confessed. "That and I'm afraid that his 
condition is partially my fault. Hughes volunteered to be a subject 
on the McAllister sexual stimulator a couple of months ago. 
Unfortunately, the results were not quite what we expected.
     "Oh really," asked Janis, intrigued, "what happened?"
     "Because of his highly oversexed nature -- which I didn't know 
about, by the way -- we had the power set five notches too high when 
we hooked him up to the simulator. He suffered a numbing of the 
senses just as you did. That old McAllister unit had one more side 
effect that we've corrected on the new simulators: the subject was 
afflicted with an overpowering and irrational urge to satisfy his 
desires. That explains his awful manners. Maynard would do or say 
almost anything get relief. Eventually he found that he could only 
get satisfaction by hooking himself up to the simulator. The poor 
fool began coming in after hours, boosting the power ever higher with 
each visit. Hamilton finally caught him one evening. We took away his 
key and gave him a stern talking to. Unfortunately he must have had a 
duplicate because he came in and hooked himself up again this 
weekend.
     "Hm, that must be where he was going when I saw him last 
Saturday," said Janis, remembering her brief panic on the elevator.
     "Probably. He set the machine on full power and I'm afraid that 
he irreversibly overstimulated some of the nerve channels to his 
brain. This time his condition is not reversible -- the power was set 
too high. It's tragic. If only he'd had a little self-control!"
     "Poor Maynard!" said Janis.
     "Yes," said Parsons. "Thank goodness we've licked the irrational 
addiction problem on the new machines."
     "I'm glad to hear that, Dr. Parsons," said Janis, getting up. "I 
really should get back to work now."  She glanced at her watch. 
"Actually, I have about ten minutes left."  She thought for a moment. 
"You don't suppose you could hook me up to that machine right now, do 
you?  I mean, just to see if it works. It would only take a few 
minutes, wouldn't it?  Please?  You realize that I haven't tasted any 
chocolate for two whole days now! Please, Dr, Parsons, please?"

--
PHIL NOLTE (NU020061@vm1.NoDak.edu) is 42 years old, and works on 
potato diseases as a full-time research specialist at North Dakota 
State University in Fargo, North Dakota. He is also a part-time 
graduate student who must graduate with a Ph.D. this spring. He 
writes science fiction as a hobby, and because he thinks there is a 
shortage of the good stuff. He says he will keep writing until he 
finds that he hates doing it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------

                       The Sculptor / ANDREA PAYNE

     The marble was flawed. Anyone could see that. Though the 
translucent block of pearl-white stone appeared whole and lovely, 
moving into a different angle of light clearly revealed the tiny webs 
and fractures that made it all but useless for sculpture. The 
Sculptor eyed the marble with a critical and irritable eye.
     "Perhaps Michelangelo could create from this damaged stone," he 
thought, "as he created the timeless 'David', but I am not 
Michelangelo!"
     He turned and walked around the block where it stood on his 
artists' pedestal, again and again, taking in the sight of both the 
glory and failing of the stone. 
     "I cannot work with this," he sighed. He laid his hand upon it,  
and felt the tingle of mystic power within the vibrant pillar -- deep 
in his mind he felt fashioned the image of what lay hidden within.
     The Sculptor stepped back to his worktable and took up the 
narrow-bladed chisel and the small wooden mallet, the tools of his 
artistry. Then returning to the marble he carefully placed edge 
against the stone, lightly tapped it with the hammer, and the first 
shaving of his creation slipped away like gossamer on the wind...

     Caleb MacDhougal was impossible. He was intractable. He was 
rude, and curt, and foul-mouthed. He was unapproachable, solitary and 
unkind. Very few persons in the graduate program for Art Therapy at 
Brakespear College held much hope for his success in that field. Very 
few persons wanted anything to do with him, because he was so all-
around unpleasant. But in spite of all the negative things he was, he 
had a way with whatever medium he chose to work in, and the spark of 
genius could be said to burn in him somewhere.
     "If only he weren't so damned secretive and arrogant and 
unsociable!" said Lindy Walker as she walked with friends toward 
Hillyer Hall, the site of the first of many practicum classes for art 
therapy grad students. She spoke to her circle of friends, gathered 
in the previous year of the program.
     "And strange," added Alex Burton. "Always wearing that hood and 
cape and those tan leather gloves!" He pursed his lips. "I've even 
seen him in the studios painting or drawing or whatever, still 
wearing the hood and gloves. I think he's obsessed."
     "With what?" asked another of the group. She was a newcomer to 
Brakespear, having transferred to the school to finish her degree. 
Alex looked her up and down, as if to say "I don't know you, so why 
should I answer your questions?"
     "Jyl-Ann Korotev," she ventured by way of introduction, and at a 
slight nod by Lindy, Alex continued.
     "I think he views himself as some kind of eccentric artiste, 
with his put-on airs. He won't make much of a therapist, though, with 
whatever emotional baggage he carries along with him all the time. 
That's why he's so rude, you know?"
     Conversation ceased as the group entered their classroom. It 
ceased not because of their entering, but because the subject of 
their discussion was already there, seated defensively with his back 
to the far wall, facing the door. Jyl-Ann got her first look at the 
much- discussed genius cum s.o.b.
     There wasn't a lot to see. Caleb MacDhougal wore a long, 
midnight blue cape which sported a deep hood. This effectively hid 
his face in deep shadows, even in the bright fluorescent light of the 
classroom. All that could be seen was the slight movement and angry 
sparkle of his eyes. His jeans poked out from beneath the cloak, and 
the hint of a dark shirt could be seen in the sleeves that were 
firmly overlapped by the ends of long, tan leather gloves covering 
his hands. 
     He studiously ignored the others after their entrance, and they 
all took seats on the opposite side of the room from him.
     Jyl-Ann was intrigued. Caleb radiated quite clearly that he 
wished to be left alone in whatever private hell he was in. Jyl-Ann 
couldn't imagine what could tear a person up so... or she could, but 
having dealt with her own darkness with the help of a loving husband 
and a committed priest-counselor, she sometimes lost sight of the 
pain and anger that could twist and gnaw and destroy a person's self-
respect and self-love.
     Rather than join the others in their rejection of Caleb, Jyl-Ann 
walked over to the seat next to his and asked, "Is this seat taken?"
     The hooded head jerked up and bright blue eyes turned to glare 
up at her... she sensed the utter rage trembling beneath the 
eccentric clothing. Nothing was said for a moment, then he croaked 
hoarsely, "No, sit wherever the hell you like," and returned to 
contemplation of the sketchbook he was holding.
     Jyl-Ann cautiously stole a glance at the image of charcoal tiger 
lillies and cornflowers on the paper. It was elegant, and she said 
so. Caleb snorted in disgust, whisking the sketchbook closed and 
slamming his books upon it with a finality that reverberated across 
the room. Gingerly she took the seat next to him, surreptitiously 
finding Lindy's gaze, hoping for support, but finding nothing but 
tense astonishment there and in the eyes of the rest of the class. It 
was with relief that she realized Mark Kaiser had entered the room 
and begun taking role call.
     When finished, Mr. Kaiser turned to Jyl-Ann with a reassuring 
smile. "Ah, yes. A fine new face in our midst. Would you like to take 
the floor and tell the class something about yourself?"
     "Sure. I've been interested in art therapy since I was a senior 
in high school. I took one of those general interest computer tests 
and realized art therapy was the perfect combination of my love for 
the visual arts and what I believe to be a gift for helping people. I 
don't want that to sound conceited, but I have been told over my 
lifetime that I'm sensitive -- sometimes overly so -- to the hurt 
felt by others, and have wanted to alleviate that hurt as best I 
could whenever possible. I've been working toward this degree on and 
off now for over seven years, and am very glad to settle down and 
finish it here at Brakespear."
     "Well, good. We're glad to have you here. Now for an icebreaker 
to get everyone loosened up for the year ahead. Think of an object or 
group of objects that symbolizes what you would like to accomplish 
this year. Using any media you have available, depict that object or 
objects, and then partner up with one or two people and tell them 
about your goals."
     Jyl-Ann watched Caleb while arranging her materials. He sat 
still, but for twirling a silver pen, staring into space. She settled 
to work, mentally sighing and asking for prayerful guidance. Her 
gentle scrolls were abruptly interrupted by a series of low growls 
from Caleb and the scrape of rough strokes of charcoal meeting paper. 
Then silence.
     She shifted her weight to lean closer to the dark form next to 
her and cleared her throat expectantly. "Caleb." A nudging. Soft. He 
began twirling the pen again. Before him on the page lay a stark, 
reflective hunting knife glistening with fresh blood. He said no 
word.
     "Caleb." She brushed his shoulder with her hand. He started 
violently and leaned back away from her to stare viciously. "My 
friends call me Jyl. Um, my goals are depicted here" she moved the 
pastel scrollwork of vines and leaves around a glowing cross closer 
to Caleb's workspace "by the obnoxious growth of these flowers... I 
hope not only to be taught how to be an art therapist, but also to be 
my own client, working with others and God to better understand me 
and my inner soul."
     Caleb stared at her with clenched jaw until she squirmed 
uneasily, then slowly turned to his own drawing, tapping a slow beat 
on the blade of the knife with the pen at each uttered word. 
"Revulsion. Fear. Mutilation. Death."
     After class Lindy caught stride with Jyl, popping with 
questions. "What do you think of Caleb, Jyl? How could you stand to 
sit next to him? Did he say anything to you? Haven't you heard the 
stories about him? Did you get a look at his face?" At this last 
Lindy put on a contorted expression.
     Raising an eyebrow in question Jyl replied cautiously, "Alex was 
right about Caleb having a lot of baggage."
     "His face and hands are withered and welted with ghastly scars! 
Jason told me during class that he caught a glimpse of them when 
Caleb was rinsing his face in the men's room during that heat wave 
last summer. Caleb tried to get him to keep quiet about it, but 
Jason's a born blabbermouth."
     And you're certainly not helping matters, thought Jyl, looking 
around guiltily at the throng of people they'd entered near the 
Towers snack grill. 
     "And Alex says he heard that Caleb got those scars from 
attacking a woman with a knife and trying to rape her--but she got a 
hold of the knife herself and cut him up!" 
     "Knife?" Jyl gulped as she remembered Caleb's chilling drawing 
in class.
     "But Sherry says he was caught in a horrible house fire while 
babysitting two boys."
     "Did they survive?" Her voice held a note of sarcasm as she 
recovered from her personal panic at the rape story. All of this was 
probably an active textbook case of rampant rumor.
     "No. Personally, I think he murdered them and hid them in the 
basement."
     "Lindy, that's ridiculous."
     She quickly put a finger to her lips as a threateningly cloaked 
figure stepped in line two or three people behind them.
     "Do you think he heard us?" rasped Lindy in an ill-disguised 
stage whisper.
     Eyes flashing warning, Jyl shook her head curtly and said, "Even 
if he didn't, which isn't likely, most of the students in our class 
are probably wondering about him, and I'll bet your talk has piqued 
interest in our present company, too. Has anyone actually asked Caleb 
why he wears his cloak?"
     "Are you out of your fucking mind?! I won't go anywhere near 
him!"
     "Uh-huh. Which means you've compounded his isolation. Now 
instead of simply an obsessive oddity you've created grotesque 
reasons to be both ridiculing and curious of him. 
     "I want to be your friend, Lindy. And Alex's, and Jason's, and 
Caleb's, and everyone else's friend. If not close, then politely 
amiable. I doubt Caleb trusts anyone. But believe me, I want to 
change that. After all of this spewage gets around, whether or not it 
is true, Caleb will be doubly hellish, I'm sure. If you have 
curiosity to cure, confront him yourself. I want no part in your 
cruelty."
     Jyl turned away from Lindy's shocked open-mouthed "O" with sick 
grumblings in her stomach...but not before they both sensed and saw 
Caleb gazing steadily at them.
     It was with a great shuffling that the girls gathered their food 
and moved into the room. Jyl stopped and looked apologetically at 
Lindy. "I'm sorry. He scares me, too. But I'm determined not to let 
my fear keep me from trying to get to know him better. I'll see you 
later. I'd like to be by myself for awhile." Jyl moved away slowly 
and took a seat in an almost-deserted alcove and picked dejectedly at 
her salad, her appetite long gone. Brooding, she glanced up to see 
stark blue eyes gazing at her from the depths of a hood not more than 
two table lengths away.

     The form was there. A basic, rough-hewn shape almost clawed from 
the stone by the chisel laying inert now in The Sculptor's slick- 
sweated hand. A precarious balance was held in this block. He traced 
the dark flaws with his fingertips, straining in his mind to see how 
he might integrate this ugliness into the frozen beauty he wished to 
create. A misplaced tap, a too-eager breaking out of the form toward 
the details he saw deep within the rock could end in absolute, 
shattered chaos. It was a precarious balance indeed.

     Jyl stared at her salad for a long moment, stabbing at it with a 
trapped vengeance while under Caleb's scrutiny. Why does he watch me 
so? "...trying to rape her..." It's only a vicious rumor... right? 
She  pushed her bowl away in contempt. How could she allow herself to 
fall into that talk trap...even momentarily? She set her chin in the 
cup of her hands, fading into thought.
     So what's wrong with admitting I'm afraid? He does cut a 
menacing figure, even if I don't know the true reason why. How would 
he react to such honesty? Is he afraid of nothing? The memory of his 
staccato croaks, "Repulsion. Fear. Mutilation. Death." echoed in her 
mind, causing her to narrow her eyes and lean into her hands to 
attempt to read the suddenly guarded sparkle staring back. Or does he 
soak up all fear and hatred and shock encountered from others to 
reflect it out again in a front of omnipotence? If it's only a 
front...
     But even if it is a front, I still can't bring myself to ply 
excuses for Lindy's "revelation" about him. Surely he heard. And I 
doubt he's a fool. 
     The best I can do is try to find the good in him and focus on 
it.
     What if, inside, hidden beneath the shield of dark shadows and 
wicked silence there is a man repulsed, afraid, and lividly hateful 
of himself? 
     Then I can only accept him as he is, reach for the good, and 
continue to be honest. Perhaps he may come to trust me.
     At this she walked over to him and waved meekly. "You've 
frightened me, watching me this afternoon. What do you find so 
fascinating about me?"
     Caleb snorted, retorting, "You're afraid. Good."
     Jyl felt a shiver of dread pale her face ashen. "They're only 
rumors!" she screamed to herself.
     "As to fascination, I could ask the same of you." He rose then, 
towering above her in a swirl of cloth and scent of soap, and stalked 
from the hall, whipping his dishes on the conveyer belt with a 
clatter.
     Over the next few weeks, Jyl gently and persistently greeted 
Caleb every day in their classes with a soft "Good morning" or 
"Hello". Tense and silent, he turned his back on everyone while 
working, jealous in his protection of his project plans before 
completion. Jyl never intruded, but she let her presence be felt by 
tentative verbal nudgings when the frustration of artistic failure 
loomed too closely.
     One morning, Jyl came to class early to gain some quiet time for 
finishing a project, and Caleb's entrance was felt more than actually 
seen. Her greeting to him was subdued and preoccupied. He settled 
with a huff, then grumped a low "Hi" in her direction. Jyl froze for 
a fraction of a second, her eyes grown wide at the gutteral sound. 
Her smile of pleasure was evident despite her attempt to control it.

     Another sliver fell away. With an exasperated expulsion of air, 
The Sculptor pushed away from the table and stood to stretch. The 
faint hint of a leaf. But that damn flaw held him in check. He was 
tempted to crack it with one deft blow...but that would shatter the 
grace he'd been coaxing from the stone. Little pieces of marble, some 
no longer than his thumbnail, littered the floor. This was the only 
way.

     To Jyl's dismay, her classmates did not share her desire to 
befriend Caleb. Most simply ignored him. One or two bordered on the 
obnoxious with references to the "Phantom of the Opera" and "the 
Shadow knows". And of course there were the rumors. The frequency of 
halted conversations at her entry and Caleb's increased gruffness 
caused her to be afraid.
     Did Caleb even notice the energy she used to protect him from 
Jason and Alex's incessant teasing and spying? She tried to pierce 
his menace by being present for him, tried to remain vulnerable and 
accepting to ease him into a friendship with her. She shuddered with 
the realization that he could heartlessly rend what threads of 
watchfulness and privacy she'd already drawn with only a few curt 
words or actions. He was cold, arrogant, and sealed in a shroud of 
crushing bitterness. Was she really up against the monster Lindy 
hinted lurked in that hood? One who did not want her protection nor 
her attentiveness no matter how subtle she was? This possibility had 
not occurred to her before. And it hurt like hell.
     Maybe she could work out some of her anxiety in the ceramics 
studio. Clay didn't move as freely as a pencil and paper, but she did 
find it was safer to punch around than most other solid objects, like 
apartment walls.
     Anxious and pensive on entering the room, she found a little 
relief in that there were only a few people present, but not so much 
that Caleb was one of them. Her greeting to him was barely a whisper. 
He shifted his weight uncomfortably, gave her a shallow wave, then 
returned his attention to the potter's wheel he contemplated. She 
quietly stepped up beside him and studied the cylinder of clay with 
him. "What will it be, Caleb?"
     "A study in clay netting. Coiled lace on the outer walls."
     "You must have very deft fingers for detail work like that, 
Caleb. I'm sure it'll be gorgeous." Jyl turned to slice off a chunk 
of clay from the storage supply, and began kneading it and mashing it 
just for its energy absorbing properties. Caleb fired up the wheel 
and began weaving the shining coils around his vessel. As the pattern 
grew, Caleb half stood in his concentration. Out of the corner of her 
eye Jyl saw Christy lugging a five-gallon bucket of glaze behind 
Caleb, trying to get through a space too narrow. With a clunk and a 
splash the bucket hit Caleb in the back of the knees, throwing him 
forward.
     The sound of Caleb's work collapsing beneath his body seemed 
loud in the sudden silence of the room. For a moment, everything 
seemed frozen in a tableau. Then Caleb was straightening up, whirling 
on Christy who backed down the aisle between two worktables, 
terrified at the angry fire in his eyes. Caleb's arm was an accusing 
lance pointing at her as he hissed, "You clumsy... stupid... fucking 
FOOL ! DAMN you!"
     Jyl covered the distance in two strides, yanking on Caleb's 
shoulder in urgent determination. "Caleb! Caleb, stop it! Look at 
me!" Jyl stepped between Caleb and his quarry, near-desperation in 
her eyes. She took his hands in hers, encased though they were in 
clay-mucked plastic and leather gloves, and peered into the deep 
hood.
     She would have recoiled at the danger she saw there, but 
suddenly the pressure of control between them was not hers. "Caleb?" 
she whispered, fighting down the apprehension as she stared at the 
shadowy fissures and weathered parchment that were the left side of 
his face.
     "I have been working for two months on this piece, and she 
doesn't even have the grace to say 'excuse me'? I could have moved 
aside, you know." Christy's inane babbling apologies caused Caleb to 
turn on her, still gripping Jyl's hands. "You're careless. You're an 
idiot. Why didn't you just ask me to move? I don't know how you ever 
got into this program. You've destroyed two months of my work!"
     Jyl tugged on his hands, drawing his attention back to her. 
"Caleb, was this a project for one of your classes?" she asked.
     "Hell, no," he said bitterly. "I was just doing this for... 
for... me. Just because I like ceramics... and sculpture... just 
because..." His anger was lessening. His grip on her hands weakened. 
And finally, his lips pursed tightly in a thin pale line, he 
brusquely pulled his hands from Jyl's. He turned to the wheel, swept 
the crushed fragments of his creation to the floor, and strode coldly 
from the room without a backward glance.
     Jyl didn't know if she should give chase or remain still. But 
she probably should breathe again. With a whoosh she let the tension 
of the last few minutes go, and sucked air into her lungs once more. 
Christy was crying. "He's not a monster, you know." Jyl looked at her 
defiantly, threw her poundings and Caleb's fragments into the scrap 
barrel, and left.
     A quick stop at the front desk confirmed Caleb's apartment being 
a floor up from Jyl's. She climbed the stairs, and soon found herself 
poised to knock on his door. But the muffled sounds of metal against 
stone stopped her. Working again. Didn't his ideas ever stop? Didn't 
he ever get blocked? Didn't he ever get tired? Jyl smiled, shook her 
head. He's okay. And she snuck back to her rooms as quietly as she'd 
come.
     Jyl remembered she still had to mount three drawings for the 
critique tomorrow. It was actually a finalist judging done by the art 
professors for the Brakespear Student Art Show. They would choose no 
more than five entries from each class. Hope and competition was high 
in the studios this time of year.
     Jyl hoped Jason wouldn't throw a fit about Christy. They'd been 
going together for two years, and he was almost fanatic about his 
protection of her from Caleb. Nothing had happened. Jyl had seen to 
that. But events like that always managed to blow out of proportion. 
She sighed and settled to work. Only morning would give the answers.
     When Jyl entered the gallery the next day where the judging was 
to take place, Jason and Caleb were already having an argument. Or 
rather, Christy was standing off to the side with a smug look on her 
face talking to Lindy while Jason yelled at Caleb. Said midnight 
tower stood his ground in silent contempt.
     "One of these days, Mr. MacDhougal, you'll go too far. Then 
you'll be sorry you ever haunted the Brakespear campus." Jason never 
addressed Caleb by his first name. The formality lent more non- 
humanity to his attacks.
     "Don't threaten him, Jason." Jyl walked over.
     "Oh, so now you've got a guardian angel, Mr. MacDhougal. Is she 
acting as your tongue today?"
     "No." One word.
     "Let it be, Jason. Caleb didn't hurt Christy physically, and he 
was rightfully angry. Caleb lost a piece of artwork. Christy lost a 
little courage. It's over."
     "That's what you think." Jason crossed the hall grumbling.
     Jyl didn't like the look of things. She shot a side-long glance 
at Caleb. He met her gaze. "While the profs are puttering around, how 
would you like to do a tandem critique of our own work?" she asked.
     "You want to know what I think of your work?"
     "And I'd like to see what other ingenious ideas you've tried and 
been successful with. That vase was fantastic."
     "Yeah." Gruff. "Well, come here then."
     Their voices were low as the judges started their rounds. Jyl 
was careful to praise and encourage, and to ask Caleb before handling 
any of his pieces. They were all sculptured in some form.
     "How do you do that, Caleb?" Jyl remarked on a three-foot-high 
marble carving of a gnome. "It's stone, for God's sake. How do you 
get a creature like that out of stone?"
     "You've seen my woodcarving, right? It's like that only the 
surface is much harder." Caleb moved in front of Jyl's softsculpture 
train. "I think your embroidery balances the cab and cars well. 
You're talented in sculpture and details too, Jyl." Jyl blushed under 
the fond warmth in his eyes.
     They sat on a bench to critique other students' work for the 
rest of the afternoon. And immersed as they were in their world of 
color and symbolism, they both started when Jason exploded in fury at 
the judges' announcements of the show entries.
     "I should have been in this show. Not YOU!" He pointed a vicious 
finger at Caleb. "What did you do to weasel your way into this thing, 
you son-of-a-bitch?"
     "He didn't do anything other than produce work better than 
yours, Jason." Jyl looked from Caleb's gold -starred gnome to Caleb 
with a smile.
     Jason turned on Jyl with disgust. "And you!" Jyl's head snapped 
up in surprise. "What the hell do you get out of being near him? A 
good fuck? Is he "loveable and capable"? Do you "ease his pain" with 
sexual favors? You're a goddamn fucking SLUT!"
     Jyl sputtered and shook at the absurd cruelty of Jason's words. 
She suddenly felt very small. Choking back a sob, she ran from the 
room to escape the eyes that stared at her.
     Caleb rose slowly from his seat, and glared at Jason squarely in 
the eye, measuring him. "I usually let shit run off me like water off 
the back of a duck. But not when it involves my friends." He hauled 
back and hit Jason in the stomach, doubling him over. Caleb looked at 
him dispassionately and then stalked from the hall.

     The Sculptor had been working for hours. Paper was strewn over 
the table and floor in utter disarray, sketches of the form before 
him. Maybe it would work. Why hadn't he thought of it before? Could 
he actually make the flaw a fair part of the statue?

     The next day, Caleb's chair in class was empty. Jyl tapped her 
pencil on the table. He'd never missed a class. She looked furtively 
at Jason and Christy. The former was stonefaced. She traced circles 
over her paper with her fingertips, made some weak scribbles. She 
frowned. Was he sick? Had something happened to him? She made a face 
at her work and threw it away.
     Afterwards, Lindy came up to her with awe in her eyes. "You 
should have seen what Caleb did to Jason after you left!"
     Jyl's stomach took a flip. "What did Caleb do after I left?"
     Lindy put her arm on Jyl's shoulder confidentially and said, "He 
rumbled something about crap not affecting him unless it had to do 
with his friends, and then he slugged Jason in the gut!"
     Jyl's eyes were wide with concern."What did Jason do then?"
     "He just doubled over moaning, and Caleb walked out of the 
room."
     Jyl looked around, hoping to see the familiar dark shadow, but 
he wasn't there. So why hadn't Caleb been in class?
     She practically ran to Caleb's apartment, surprised to find no 
answer to her knock, and the door unlocked.
     But more astonishing was the fragile marble cluster of flowers 
on the table. Polished and glowing, it sat in elegant splendor among 
a sheaf of scattered sketches, which showed various views of a deep 
flaw in the stone. Jyl traced the delicate form with her fingertips, 
then remembered why she'd come. 
     "Caleb?" She walked to the living room. No one. She walked down 
the back hall, and knocked softly at his bedroom. No answer. She 
peeked in. He lay sprawled on his bed in peaceful slumber, bare to 
the waist. His scars extended down his arms and chest, slightly 
warping the muscles in streaks of white and faded brown. Embarrassed 
to find him so vulnerable, she approached slowly, and drew the cover 
over him to his neck. Her touch awakened him.
     He pulled back somewhat, his eyes shifting between question and 
guarded uncertainty. "What are you doing here?"
     Jyl's embarrassment increased. "You...you weren't in class this 
morning. I...I was worried about you. So I came up here to check on 
you."
     "Oh." He burrowed deeper in the blanket, gazing at her 
uncomfortably. "Why were you worried about me?  Why bother?"
     Jyl smiled and gently touched his scarred cheek. He started to 
pull away, grimaced, then allowed himself to come back against her 
hand. "Caleb, you're my friend." She squeezed his shoulder, then 
rocked back up on her feet. "C'mon. Get up. I'll go in the other room 
so you can get dressed."
     "Jyl."
     "Hmm?"
     "Thanks."
     She walked out in the hall, then called back, "Those flowers on 
the table are gorgeous."
     "Oh that. I've been working on that for a long time. The biggest 
bitch was trying to work around the flaw."
     "How did you do it?"
     "I realized I had to work with the flaw, and not against it. I 
think the whole thing is stronger now." 
     "Like Michelangelo's 'David'?"
     "Yeah, right."
     They were silent for a few moments, then Jyl scuffed her toe on 
the carpet and asked, "Why didn't you go to class today?"
     A long pause, then a sigh. "I had some thinking to do."
     "About?"
     "My scars."
     Jyl nodded to herself, stroking the scars on her arm, 
remembering the hopelessness and pain in a young girl's mind so many 
years ago. "Do you want to talk about it?" She moved to the living 
room as Caleb emerged in jeans and a green short-sleeved shirt.
     He stood running his fingers through his hair, watching her. 
Abruptly, he turned to trail his hand along the edge of the table. 
"I've been working on this all semester, you know." He grazed the 
petal edges of the statue with his fingertips. "Do you recognize it?"
     Jyl moved to stand opposite him. "No...you've never done... wait 
a minute! Cornflowers and tiger lillies!" She locked her gaze with 
his in confirmation. "It's from that drawing I saw the first day of 
class, right?" 
     She crouched down at eye level with the piece to scrutinize it 
more closely. Then she turned and said softly, "Does this tie in 
somehow with what's bothering you?"
     "Yeah." He ran his fingers through his hair again, not looking 
at her.
     "Caleb." She rose, taking one of his hands in hers, gazing at 
him plainly. "I'm your friend. Talk to me."
     He pulled away and strode to the window. For some time he simply 
stood gazing out at the lawn. "When I was in third grade my art class 
took a field trip to a glassblower's shop," he spat through his 
teeth.
     "A field trip."
     "Yeah." His face took on a pained expression, his knuckles white 
on the sash of the window."Some of the finished pieces sat on a 
shelf, cooling. They glowed. I thought there was some kind of magic 
inside." Then he turned and slowly sat down on the couch. "Why the 
hell am I telling you this?  You don't need to know this! I feel like 
it's being pulled from me one fucking word at a time."
     Jyl wondered if he'd ever fully trust her. Her voice was very 
quiet as she spoke. "What do you think I'm going to do to you if you 
keep talking, Caleb?"
     "I don't know. Go away."
     "That's right. You don't know. And I'm not going away, either. 
That's what everyone else has done, isn't it? Talk to me."
     Caleb turned to stare at her. The light in his eyes was hard. 
"What do you know about what others have done? Except run away from 
me as fast as they could because they were terrified at what they 
saw?"
     "Caleb, I didn't run away from you. And I don't blame you for 
your being scarred. Did you ever think that the others ran away from 
you not because of what they saw, because you've always worn your 
cape, but because of what they've felt from you? When I approached 
you that first day of classes, I could almost tangibly grasp your 
anger."
     "Of course I know that!" he exploded. "I drove them away! That 
fucking cape is my protection against this whole shit-filled world!" 
His voice caught and he covered it over with a cough. "But hiding 
doesn't work anymore." he added softly.
     He sat there for a minute or two, clenching and unclenching his 
fists. Then he laughed without mirth, saying, "When no one was 
looking, I put my hands around one of those fucking vases." He mocked 
childlike wonder and the fateful action. "The shock sent me into 
convulsions, and the glass spread and splattered over my body like 
the Blob." He rubbed at his arms and hands as though to scrub the 
scars off, then wiped his hands on his thighs. He looked reluctantly 
at Jyl. "The damage was already done by the time the teachers could 
get there to help me."
     Jyl sat still for a long time, letting his words sink in, trying 
to send acceptance to him. She slowly held out her hand. "Magic is a 
great thing, you know. And I think there's still a spark of it inside 
you, because you've managed to become a successful artist despite the 
pain you experienced."
     He glanced at her then, and back to his open, welted palms. 
"Yeah. Pain. It's interesting, isn't it, that I'm a sculptor now, and 
that I work with cold things... clay and marble and the like." 
Uncertainty still lingered in his voice.
     "Jyl." He gingerly placed his hand in hers. "I realized 
yesterday that I've never let the bitterness go." His grip tightened. 
"For all these years I've clung to the rumors, to the teasing and the 
cruelty and the ugliness, and let them devour me into a shadow." He 
took a shaky breath, looked at her squarely. "I've never stood up for 
me as a man. I...I've always lived as the monster everyone's said I 
am. I've had to come to terms with that."
     Jyl smiled at him, stroking the back of his hand with her thumb. 
"You've taken some large steps toward that goal right here, Caleb."
     "I know. But I think I've still got a long way to go. I've only 
begun to break my own shell." He paused, thoughtful. "I realized 
something else, too."
     "What's that?"
     "Being present and listening to a person is 95 percent of being 
a therapist. Not jabbering advice." He looked at her with a spark of 
hope in his eyes. "Thanks for being here, Jyl."
     "That's what friends are for."
     They sat that way, in comfortable rapport, for the better part 
of half an hour. Then they stood, and Jyl moved to give Caleb the 
hooded cloak hanging by the door. But he stopped her with a wave of a 
disfigured hand.
     "No, I don't need that anymore."

--
ANDREA PAYNE (picasso@buhub.bradley.edu) is a junior at Bradley 
University, majoring in art. She has been an artist of sorts since 
age 11, and has dabbled in media such as drawing, painting, ceramics, 
embroidery, and crocheting. She has interests in Scottish medieval 
history, classical music, archery, and in helping others. The last 
has led her to become a private duty nursing assistant, and she hopes 
to continue her education along those lines by working toward a 
Master's Degree in Art Therapy.
--------------------------------------------------------------------

                       Mister Wilt / JASON SNELL

     I was so tired that I couldn't keep my eyes open. It was eight 
in the morning and I was sitting, hair still wet from my early 
morning shower, on a cold wooden pew in church. It had taken me until 
2 a.m. to get the skinny, squinty-eyed girl I had invited over "to 
watch television" into bed with me, and it took me over two hours to 
get her out of the house once we were finished. I had managed to get 
three hours of sleep that night, and I didn't feel very cheery.
     I was tired, I didn't like the feeling of my wet hair, and 
church is not my favorite place in the whole world. My mother and 
father were sitting on my right, and my little sister was in my mom's 
lap. Andi was asleep -- mom is a more comfortable backrest than these 
horrible Methodist pews.
     When we moved to Clarkesburg, I figured that my life would be 
pretty much like it had always been. But instead, my parents had 
decided to transform their lives into something straight out of the 
fifties. That was appropriate for my new hometown of Clarkesburg, 
Pennsylvania, which was also straight out of the fifties. Maybe even 
the eighteen-fifties. The whole town was either Baptist or Methodist. 
Half the town was sitting on the same hard pews that I sat on.
     A little man with a wrinkled face sat on my left, evidently 
unconcerned about the time of day and the pain caused by those awful 
pews. Old Wrinkly was wearing a plaid shirt and a bow tie, and sat 
with his hands folded together in what I assumed was a praying 
position. A good supposition, I think, considering that we were in 
church.
     I assume he saw me staring at him, because his tiny eyes popped 
open and he turned to look at me.
     "What's your name, boy?" he whispered to me.
     I straightened up and looked straight ahead at the minister.
     "Jim," I said out of the corner of my mouth.
     "Talk to you after the sermon," the man said.
     A wrinkly old Methodist wanted to talk to me after the boring 
service. It was just what I wanted to hear. At that moment, there was 
no place that I would have rather been than back home in bed -- 
except maybe back in California. No such luck.
     After the service, my parents and I stood outside of the church. 
Before we could move toward our car, the wrinkly old man sauntered up 
and began talking to us.
     "Hello there," he said to my father, and held out his hand. 
"Name's Mr. Wilt. Pleased to meet you."
     My father shook Wilt's hand and smiled. Yeah, my dad had fallen 
for this down-home Pennsylvania bullshit. He loved the hard pews, the 
boring church services (we're from California, for pete's sake -- 
we're not supposed to go to church!), and especially the crazy people 
who lived in this town. Wilt was just another nutty old Methodist. I 
was sure of it.
     "I was talking to your boy in church earlier," Wilt said, and 
pointed at me. "I don't recognize you folks. Guess you're new to 
Clarkesburg, aren't you?"
     "Yes, we are," my father said.
     "Wonder if you might like to come over to my place for Sunday 
brunch? My wife, she's a Baptist, but she's still one hell of a 
cook." He chuckled at his joke. I didn't. "Seeing as though you're 
new here, I thought it would be hospitable of me to invite you all 
over."
     My father's face lit up. Of course, nobody was this nice in 
California, but dad didn't have to actually accept the guy's offer. 
"Thanks for asking, have a nice day" would be acceptable enough, 
right?
     Wrong. Like I said, my dad is completely enchanted with the 
"quaint old-fashioned charm" of the people of Clarkesburg. He 
accepted Wilt's offer.
     Any hope of my getting back to sleep was gone. I could only pray 
(it was Sunday, so why not pray?) that Mrs. Wilt's food was edible.

     Wilt's joke was right -- even though she was a Baptist, Erma 
Wilt made a wonderful breakfast. The tiny gray-haired woman cooked 
and served us bacon, eggs, pancakes, and orange juice all by herself, 
and managed to keep a smile the entire time. It didn't taste that 
bad, and just the fact that we were being served authentic 
Pennsylvanian hospitality cuisine made my father very happy.
     I really wanted to be home in bed, asleep, or at least propped 
up and watching a football game or something. Then I remembered: 
football doesn't start until one in the afternoon out here. What kind 
of place was this?
     "So," Mr. Wilt asked as we finished our brunch, "how did you 
folks end up here in Clarkesburg?"
     "Well, I got tired of the hectic lifestyle in Los Angeles, and 
decided that my family and I needed a change. My parents grew up just 
few miles down the road, in Bucks County, and so I figured we'd come 
back here."
     My father is a writer. He bought a computer and a modem, and 
suddenly living in a big city near his agent became pointless. Using 
new technology is all well and good, but dad didn't have to move us 
all to an area with nothing but bearded men driving wagons, old Civil 
War battle sites, and wrinkly Methodists.
     "It's so nice here," my mother said, and smiled. She had bought 
into dad's fantasy. She was entranced by the Wilts' old-fashioned 
charm.
     I, however, felt extremely ill.
     "Can I go outside, mom? I need some air." I didn't need to hear 
my parents rave about the virtues of eastern Pennsylvanian life 
again.
     "Jamie, that's very--" 
     Mr. Wilt cut her off in mid-sentence.
     "Sounds like a good idea," he said. "Let's go get some air, 
boy."
     Wilt led me outside into his backyard, and showed me an old 
wooden shed, overrun by moss.
     "This shed was my workshop years ago," he said. "Back then, I 
wasn't a God-fearing man. I just did my work and figured that 
everything else would take care of itself."
     Then Wilt's eyes opened wide, he turned around to see if anyone 
was nearby, and began to speak in a whisper.
     "Turns out, I have to be a God-fearing man. If there aren't 
enough God-fearing men, then Satan wins."
     Maybe Pennsylvanians weren't as dull as I had thought.
     "Satan's out there, boy, and he's working against all of us. 
Doesn't matter if you're a Methodist or a Baptist or a hedonist or 
anything. He's still out to get us. You've got to fear God if you're 
going to survive. Understand, Jim?"
     I nodded. I figured that if I said the wrong thing, he might try 
to exorcise me.
     "Fearing God's not enough, though. You've got to know the 
secret. My wife, she's a Baptist. She can't know the secret. Your 
parents, they're from California. They can't know the secret. Your 
sister, she's too young. She can't understand the secret. But you, 
Jim-boy, you can understand. It's not too late for you."
     He was speaking quickly, but his voice was so soft that I could 
barely hear what he was saying. Still, it was hard to miss his 
general point.
     "This is the secret, Jim. Don't tell anyone unless they can be 
trusted. They've got to pass the test! You understand?"
     I nodded again. Sure, Wilt, sure. Whatever you say.
     "When people are eating their food, that's when you've got them. 
Check to see how many times they bite into the food, boy. Five, ten, 
those are fine numbers. Twenty's even fine. Up to twenty-two, you've 
got no problems. But if that person sinks their teeth into the food 
one more time, twenty-three, and then swallows, they're in on it. 
They chew their food twenty-three times, then down it goes. Those are 
the people who work for Satan. Got it, Jim?"
     "Twenty-three times," I said, and nodded yet again.
     "Good, good boy. Now, you've got to be careful -- all sorts of 
people are in on it. I remember seeing one of those state dinners on 
TV, and Gerald Ford was eating sirloin steak. Sure enough, twenty-
three bites. Not even Clarkesburg's safe. My wife made chicken for 
the mayor one night last year, and like clockwork, he chewed on each 
piece of that bird twenty-three times."
     There was a knock from the house at this point. Mrs. Wilt had 
opened a window from the kitchen and was looking out at us.
     "Don't scare the boy, dear," she said. "Come on back inside."
     He waved, nodded, and started back in. Why did I have the 
feeling that Mrs. Wilt had seen her husband behave like this before? 
     "Not a word, Jim," he said. "Not a word."
     It turns out that I chew my food about eight times before I 
swallow it. I counted. Wilt probably counted my chewing too -- before 
he took me out to the old shed, he made sure I didn't swallow after 
my 23rd bite of Erma's bacon, eggs, and pancakes and swallow.
     After 23 bites, all food is reduced to nothing but a disgusting 
wet paste, made more of spit than of food.
     I guess that's how Satan likes it.

--
JASON SNELL (jsnell@ucsd.edu) is the editor of this publication.
--------------------------------------------------------------------

               Do You Have Some Time? / MARY ANNE WALTERS

     He looked down at the gold Rolex on his wrist. The time was 
1:00, Eastern Standard Time. He thought, once again, that there is 
never enough time.
     "Excuse me, do you have some time?" A simple question.
     She was tiny and pert looking, and very well-dressed. She was 
also in a hurry. There was no time to stop and chat. With an 
irritated glance at her watch she said, "Yes, it's 1:00," and went to 
move on.
     "No, no, no. I didn't say 'Do you have the time.' I said 'Do you 
have some time."  You see, I've run out and need some more."
     Her eyes glazed over, and the look on her face was one that most 
people save for use only when they are required to deal with a child, 
a fool, or a lunatic. "I'm sorry, I'm in a hurry. I have no time for 
this."
     With that, she scurried off, like a tiny, pert looking rat in a 
maze, rushing nowhere, but determined to get there on time 
nonetheless.
     He sighed. He walked a block more. Turning, his eyes scanned the 
crowd. They were all rushing. But, there, in the shadow of a 
building, was a young man in jeans and a tee shirt. The T-shirt said 
IF YOU HAVE THE MONEY, I HAVE THE TIME. Quickly, he walked over to 
the young  man and said, "I have the money. Do you have some time for 
me?"
     "Sure, dude. I got all the time in the world."  The boys vapid 
face was surrounded by stringy blond hair. There was a bit of fuzz on 
his upper lip. The boy grinned, but it looked more like a leer to the 
man, who cringed.
     "While I doubt you do, in fact, have all the time in the world, 
I would like to avail myself of some of the time you do have. You 
see, I seem to have run out of time myself, and I could use a little 
more. So, if you will tell me how much you charge for your time, it 
will be easy for me to compute what amount of money I will need to 
acquire the amount of time I desire. I have found that 24 hours in a 
day is just not enough--I, myself, would prefer about 32 hours..." As 
he spoke, he say the boy's leering smile turn to a scowl.
     "Buzz off, buddy. One thing for damn sure is that I got no time 
for weirdos like you!" The boy sauntered away and resumed his languid 
pose in another shadowy corner, where he was soon approached by a 
timid little man with a bald head, glasses sliding off the end of his 
nose, and the look of a rabbit gathering the courage to sneak under 
the fence into the cabbage patch.
     He sighed again, heavier. Once more, he scanned the crowd. He 
needed someone with time to spare, but who understood the importance 
and the value of time. People in a hurry had no time to spare. People 
who seemed to have an abundance of time, like the boy, were somewhat 
unbalanced. He searched for the perfect mix.
     There, on a park bench, was an older man, reading. He wasn't 
reading a book (took too much time) or a magazine, but was reading 
the newspaper--and not just the headlines, either. Aha! Could this be 
the one? He approached slowly.
     "Excuse me, sir. Do you have some time?"
     The man on the bench was wearing a rather wide, garishly 
patterned, luridly colored tie. His suit was on the dusty side of 
grey, made of some thick material that gave off a damp-closet smell. 
He looked up, and answered in a booming voice, "Sure, the time is 
1:24."
     NO, No, No, NO! Not THE time, SOME time! I wanted SOME time!"
     "Well, there's no time like the present. What time did you want?
     "Did you want some of my time?  I'm usually a little short of it 
myself. Hey, maybe I should take some of your time! Heh, heh, heh. 
Actually, you're in luck. I have some spare time right now. We could 
spend some time together. And, speaking of time, let me show you some 
of my samples." The loud man spoke fast, in a machine-gun-like stream 
of patter. He looked down, reeling from the assault on his senses. 
The loud man was opening up his briefcase and there within it was a 
display of watches, all cheap, and all ticking. The hours were 
wasting away before his very eyes. With a look of horror, he flung a 
hand up over his face, as if to ward off a blow, and blocked the 
sight from his eyes. He recoiled, and looked for a way to escape this 
wretched man.
     "Wait! Don't go! My bus is late. Stick around for a while--we 
can kill some time together."
     That was it. The final straw. He spun on his heels and fled.

     The bus driver was only trying to make up for lost time. That 
broken traffic light put him way off schedule. Now, time was of the 
essence. He had to be on time--not early, not late. His record was 
one of the best, and he was proud of it. And, he was mad at the delay 
that had robbed him of the precious minutes and had made him late. 
With all these thoughts on his mind, it was no wonder he never saw 
the well-dressed, wild-eyed, and generally harried looking man that 
dashed out in front of the bus. By the time he realized, it was too 
late.
     "Shit! Now I'll never get back on schedule!"  This thought was 
echoed by the majority of the people on the bus, to include the tiny, 
pert, well-dressed woman who got on at the last stop, as well as by 
the timid, balding man in the car behind the bus (whose passenger was 
a dirty, languid blond boy, his lip curled into a leer).
     A loud and damp smelling man stepped off the curb and walked 
over to where the previously well-dressed (but now considerably 
rumpled) man lay, sprawled in the street, still as a stone. He 
reached down and took the gold Rolex of the now-broken wrist. The bus 
driver walked over, unsure whether he should attempt to stop this 
ghoulish act.
     "Don't worry," the loud man assured the bus driver, "I saw the 
whole thing--this guy stole one of my samples, then ran out into the 
street, right in front of you. That's what happened, all right." The 
loud man replaced the gold watch with a cheap imitation, and let the 
wrist drop back to the pavement. "That's what I'll tell the police." 
He winked a particularly nasty wink at the bus driver, who breathed a 
sigh of relief nonetheless. The loud man laughed.
     "I guess his time ran out, hey buddy?"

--
MARY ANNE WALTERS (m13079@mwvm.mitre.org) is a librarian specializing 
in Department of Defense research topics at a federally funded 
research and development center. She has an undergraduate degree in 
English and American Studies and a Masters in Library and Information 
Science. She reads voraciously, and kills time by watching movies, 
mostly film noir and horror, and anything she can get to by Peter 
Greenaway.
--------------------------------------------------------------------

                       The Talisman / GREG KNAUSS

     Duncan watched as the fat little disk that had so shaped his 
life bounded up and down in front of him. He stared at it intently, 
almost hypnotized by its motion -- so regular, he thought, so 
precise, so easily controlled. He flicked his wrist in a thoughtless 
motion and the flattened sphere obeyed his command, knowing what he 
wanted without him speaking.
     God, I love that, Duncan thought.
     It hadn't always been as easy as it was now, sitting here. They 
had taunted him back when he had cared, called him meaningless things 
that had seemed tremendously cruel at the time. Worst of all, they 
made fun of IT. The disk, the one thing he loved.
     DUN-CAN, DUN-CAN, THE YO-YO MAN! DUN-CAN, DUN-CAN, THE YO-YO 
MAN!
     The yo-yo sped up and down a little faster as he remembered, his 
motions became a little more intense. He never had to look at the yo-
yo while he used it, but now he stared intently into the distance, 
his jaw-line hardening, his eyes no longer those of a nine-year-old.
     He didn't blame his parents. He loved them more than he would 
have normally -- they gave him this friend on a string when he was 
only two years old. He had taken to it immediately, quickly becoming 
an expert in the yo-yo parlor tricks of the early eighties.
     He had taken it to his first day of school, clutching the 
smallish plastic disk instead of his mothers skirt and soon the older 
kids began to lay into him.
     HEY, DUN-CAN THE YO-YO MAN! PEOPLE WHO CARRY YO-YOS WET THE BED!
     YEAH, DUN-CAN! WASSA MATTER? YOU WET THE BED?
     HA HA HA HA!
     He tried to ignore them. He tried to find friends with common 
interests, friends he could relate to, but nobody at school seemed to 
be interested in yo-yos. He told his parents about the big kids 
making fun of him, but they didn't understand. They wanted to take 
his yo-yo away! They said that if that was the only thing causing the 
trouble he should stop taking it to school.
     They didn't understand. His yo-yo was the only thing that kept 
him happy, kept him safe. He loved his yo-yo, and his yo-yo loved 
him, he was sure of it.
     He was getting better, too. He had moved past everyone he had 
seen on TV and was now inventing tricks of his own. His beloved yo-yo 
would whiz around, up and down, back and forth at speeds where he 
could no longer follow it with his eye. But he knew where it was at 
all times -- he and the yo-yo were one, connected by twine.
     One day, during recess, he was in a corner of the playground, 
casually using his yo-yo, when he was approached by the group of 
bigger kids who found endless fun in mocking his love.
     HEY, HEY, DUN-CAN. HOW'S THE OLD YO-YO? LOOKS PRETTY GOOD TO ME.
     CAN I HAVE IT?
     Duncan froze, the yo-yo spun up its string and he closed his 
fist quickly around it. No, he thought. No, no, no . . .
     YEAH, IT LOOKS MIGHTY GOOD.
     MAYBE I'LL JUST TAKE IT.
     No! Duncan's wrist flipped up and the yo-yo shot out from his 
open palm. It hit the big kid in the stomach and he looked as if he'd 
been hit with a fist. The kid doubled over as the yo-yo swung back 
towards Duncan. He whipped it behind him, over him and down, in a 
high, graceful arc, into the back of the kid's head. There was a soft 
crack.
     UUNGH.
     The kid was on the ground. He could have been sleeping, but 
there was a yo-yo embedded in the base of his skull.
     The other kids scattered away from Duncan as he flicked his 
wrist and forced the yo-yo up its string into his palm. He smiled.
     The yo-yo rolled steadily up and down its string as he wandered 
away.
     He was sitting on the curb now, slowly rubbing the blood off his 
yo-yo. He could hear sirens in the distance and he supposed soon they 
would find him and want to take him away. He knew what he had done 
was a bad thing, but just letting that kid take his yo-yo would have 
been worse.
     He supposed they might try to hurt him, but Duncan wasn't really 
worried.
     His yo-yo would protect him.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

                   Schrodinger's Monkey / GREG KNAUSS

     If nothing else, it explains a lot.
     For those with a technical education in physics, it seems the 
Everett-Wheeler-Graham interpretation of quantum indeterminacy, with 
a few addendums, turns out to be correct. For those without, a little 
explanation is needed.
     Physics, for years now, has had a central question: What is 
wrong with quantum mechanics? Quantum mechanics is a method of 
calculating values on the atomic and sub-atomic level, a little like 
Newtonian mechanics can be used to calculate values on a larger 
scale. Newtonian formulas can predict where a rock will fall if 
someone throws it in the air, quantum formulas try to do the same 
thing for atoms.
     But it never worked quite right. Newtonian physics, real-world 
physics, always comes up with one specific answer -- it many not be 
the right answer, say, if some factor was forgotten, or some 
measurement misread, but it is always a single answer. Quantum 
physics, though, always produces more than one answer, ALL of which 
are technically, mathematically correct. It's called "indeterminacy." 
Newton says the rock will land HERE; quantum mechanics says that the 
rock will land HERE and HERE and HERE.
     This is, of course, impossible.
     In the real world you can't have more than one answer. It's not 
a question of actually throwing the rock and seeing where it lands. 
The formulas should provide one answer, and one answer only. Period.
     Schrodinger came up with his famous cat to try to illustrate the 
problem. Imagine: there's a box, with no holes or windows, that 
contains a cat. The cat has some sort of lethal device hooked up to 
it -- I always liked to think of it as a guillotine, but Schrodinger 
used poisonous gas -- that can be triggered by some nameless quantum 
event.
     Now, after a specific period of time, is the cat dead? Quantum 
mechanics will return a number of answers, one of which might say 
that the cat has been killed, another of which might not. So without 
opening the box, is the cat dead or alive? Schrodinger said it was 
both -- an obviously false statement --<2D>just to point out that 
quantum mechanics has a gaping hole in it.
     There were a number of explanations for what was going on. 
Einstein had the Hidden Variable, Von Neumann and Finkelstein had 
Quantum Logic, Bohr had the Copenhagen Interpretation, Walker and 
Herbert had "Consciousness" Nonlocality, Sarfatti had "Information" 
Nonlocality. They were all attempts to rectify what quantum mechanics 
predicted with what actually happened, ways of looking at the 
universe to make it fit quantum answers.
     As it turns out, events have proven Drs. Everett, Wheeler and 
Graham correct. Their model suggested, perhaps fancifully, that for 
every indeterminacy -- every Schrodinger's Cat -- an entirely new 
universe is created, exactly the same as the first, but for that 
single quantum event. In one universe, the cat would be dead; in the 
other it would be alive.
     Of course, quantum events are happening by the trillions every 
second, by the trillions of trillions. Universes would be splitting 
and re-splitting and splitting again, taking every possible course 
imaginable. Judging by the rough estimate that the universe is 10 
billion years old, the number of entirely separate universes is 
beyond human imagining. The amount is inconceivable.
     I suppose it should be obvious that eventually they'd run out of 
room.

     The way I see it -- and this is just my particular model, 
obviously derived in a hurry, last night -- each universe acts 
something like an atom of hydrogen might, enclosed in a glass jar. 
When there are only a few hydrogen atoms, they float about freely, 
gaseous, and rarely collide. This is the Gas State.
     If these atoms, however, were able to duplicate themselves, 
along the lines of Everett-Wheeler-Graham, the jar would slowly begin 
to get crowded. Collisions with divergent universes explain a lot of 
what we're seeing.
     Of course these collisions would become more frequent, and 
pressure would eventually begin to build. As more atoms were created, 
eventually liquid hydrogen -- the Liquid State -- would condense out 
of the ever more crowded gas. Collisions would be innumerable nearly 
constant, even.
     And that's what's happening to us. I don't claim to know what 
the "jar" is -- Thornton Wilder would probably call it "the Mind of 
God" -- but I think that collisions don't take place physically, at 
least not in the lower three dimensions. There's no thud of our 
universe running into another one.
     Universes seem to "tap" each other lightly -- perhaps there's 
some sort of natural repulsion or elasticity -- and only a small 
exchange takes place. Parts of the other universe slosh over into 
ours and parts of ours spill over into it, following some upper-
dimensional conservation of momentum, like giant bowls of milk.

     What does this mean in practical terms? If nothing else, it 
explains a lot.
     It explains Jesus rising from the grave, for instance. Say three 
days after his crucifixion, there was a rare Gas State collision with 
a universe where he wasn't killed, and their Christ was bumped to our 
world.
     It explains what happened to a Spanish book that disappeared 
from my locker in high school.
     It explains what happens to everyone's car keys, and the one 
sock that's always missing from the dryer.
     lt explains Atlantis and Big Foot and the Loch Ness monster and 
unicorns and every other myth or legend in the world.
     It explains why there's another me, very close to an exact 
duplicate as far as I can tell, sitting in the kitchen gorging 
himself on bananas. We talked for a long time last night, after he 
appeared in my bathroom, and the only glaring difference we found 
between our universes was that in his, bananas never evolved. Some 
quantum event far back in the past prevented whatever it was that 
eventually became bananas from mutating in a certain way. He -- the 
other me -- loves them, and has eaten over three dozen by my count.
     Now that the universes are condensing into the Liquid State 
we'll be seeing a lot more of that sort of thing. I wonder how much 
longer some sort of societal order will hold out. Somehow I doubt 
people will be too concerned with the law if they know that 
everything they know as fact might cease to exist at any particular 
moment.
     And I wonder how long we have before the Solid State.

--
GREG KNAUSS (gknauss@ucsd.edu) is a senior at the University of 
California, San Diego, majoring in Political Theory. Greg wants to be 
Bonnie Raitt when he grows up. He's also loopy as a loon.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

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