Whatever is not nailed down is mine

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PART ONE | WRECK CREATION |

Episode Ten

Atom encounters a man on a horse.
The man and horse move as one; as if they were born that way.
The horse’s hide is a shade of brown suede and its head wears a poker face.
The rider sports a lycra suit; black, white and primary red; a black riding cap and whip and his face indicates that he is sucking on something sour.
Atom presumes that the horse is carrying the man of its own free will but is unsure how the reins fit into that arrangement.
Facing one another on the gravelly path, both parties stop.
The horseman looks down his nose at Atom.
The horse looks down its coffin shaped nose at the Company Bicycle.
The horseman rearranges his face but the sour white expression remains.
The horse snorts a cloudy breath.
“I presume that you do know that this is a bridle path?”
“A bridal path?”
“And in presuming I presuppose that you are merely some ignorant yobbo who refuses to obey the rules”
“Are you the groom then? There are rules?”
The horse shows its teeth and nods in an approximation of silent laughter.

Episode Nine | INDEX | Episode Eleven

A short conversation with a field

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PART ONE | WRECK CREATION |

Episode Nine

Photo by Pisces Iscariot

“I am the countryside” says the field under its breath of fresh air.
Atom leans the Company bicycle against a tree and sits down on the stump beside it to catch his own breath which has escaped while he was busy pedalling.
After his gasping subsides and the dizziness in his head wanders off to explore, Atom notices a playing field of white painted goalposts cut off by the curve of the field in the foreground and the voices of the teenage football teams come to him over the distance, their cries like the calls of arguing sheep.
He muses awhile on the wisdom of sheep but is soon distracted by an engine hum from behind him.
Apprehensive, he stands and turns toward the sound, imagining some gargantuan harvester looming on the horizon, eating everything in its path; turning the peace into prosperity.
He notices the birds crowding just above the crest of the field’s rise, on whose far side a tractor tracks the field between ink-blot winter trees and watercolour sky.
Atom realises that the birds are picking life from the warmth of the freshly turned earth.
“They’re ploughing,” he says to the field, “...or sewing...or sowing?”
The trees’ bare branches remind him of the little reindeer girl back down the road he turns to find that she and her grandmother are still visible as two ‘i’s in the yellow distance.
Looking back once again toward the receding sound of the tractor he sees that birds are now flocking to the tractor’s wake in an arrowhead wave, growing in number to swirl.
“The word is out” breathes the fecund earth to the field’s amber question.

Episode Eight | INDEX | Episode Ten

Aunty Molly, please collect your children from the Customer Services counter

As children we played
In the grass below
The oak that he planted
From acorn who was to know
That we’d all grow up enchanted

By the sound of her laughter
As it echoes down the years to glow
In our hearts our lambs to the slaughter

Like a bird on the wing
Like the flurries of snow
That bite my cheeks as I grow
Through the world as it warps
My mind between immediate concerns
And the wanting to know
What lay behind her eyes

So frightened alive
In a body that no longer
Knew how to survive

But I don’t want to silence that laughter
As it echoes down the years to glow
Beneath the oak from acorn
Determined to grow
In the fragile hereafter

Of dirt you're made and to dirt you will return

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Episode Eight

via TattyAnn

“I’m a Reindeer” the little girl laughs as she holds dry branches up to her temples and gallops along some distance behind her grandma.
“And I’m the Sheen of Queba” grandma sucks the world through her cigarette.
“Look Gramma look”
Atom squeezes the obscene bulb on the Company bicycle’s hi-tech horn to warn them of his approach.
“Look Gramma, I’m a reindeer”
Her little fists hold the branches to her temples in an echo of Atom’s little fists on the handlebars.
Grandma turns exhaling a plume of grey lung, glances at the passing fool on a bicycle and wishes she was back in front of the telly-vision with nothing to bother her but her own loneliness.

See Mad Scientist’s Notebook (Entry No 1.4)

Episode Seven | INDEX | Episode Nine

Intermediacy (Kiss my Dragonhide)

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PART ONE | WRECK CREATION |

Episode Seven

Sierra Telegraphica ~ Jacek Yerka

The road is made of ash and the remnants of a billion butterfly wings; or so Atom surmises as he pedals through the wasteland.
Looking back with slight apprehension, he sees he’s created in his wake a grey cloud that half-obscures the receding green island of Blue52.
In his peripheral vision the sides of the road are littered with dead husks dreams; half-formed creatures with wings decayed to skeletal fingers and ribcages fit to imprison the mind in their complex weave; grey phantoms that disappear as soon as Atom plucks the courage to look at them directly.
To his right, in the distance, a commuter train barrels in sketchy black silhouette and Atom realises that he’s broken his daily prescribed routine and wonders if they’ll miss him.
In the gloom ahead expands another green island and as Atom draws closer he sees trees and fields and hears the sound of birds.
“Area Green15” says a sign beside the tree-lined entrance.
Beneath the official letters someone has scratched out the words “Unthank welcomes careful diverse”

See Mad Scientist’s Notebook (Entry No 1.3)

Episode Six | INDEX | Episode Eight