Where'd You Park Your Spaceship?, page 19
Dill Tudd is wearing blue today. All blue. Sky blue. With
faint swirls in the fabric. Like he had clouds for breakfast
and spilled some on his shirt.
He sets his bag on the chair beside him. The woman
places a small loaf on a plate in front of him.
Enjoy she says.
Thank you Freela. Dill Tudd beams. Is there anything
better?
He gestures to the bread in front of him.
I still haven’t said anything.
I know-you’re wondering what kind of bread this is, are
you not Heen Gru-Bares?
He pauses for effect. I know he’s going to keep talking.
It’s GHOST bread.
He stretches out the word GHOST like he’s frightened.
It’s off menu of course. Bread WITH GHOST PEPPERS.
And a few serranos. And two feisty jalapeños. And a
pugnacious, gimpy little chipotle, just to keep things
festive.
He pulls off a piece and offers it to me.
I take it and put it on my plate.
He pulls off a piece for himself and takes a bite.
He closes his eyes. He sways back and forth. He is lost in
his own world of GHOST BREAD. He opens his eyes and
says The universe in a loaf!!!
He leans across the table, like we share a secret.
Of course I have to bring them the peppers. And Freela
there bakes it for me ON THE DOWN LOW. The masses
aren’t prepared for this sort of oven-baked alchemy. ONLY
ONE LOAF OF THIS EXISTS IN ALL THE WORLDS AND
IT WILL SOON BE GONE!
He takes another bite.
I still haven’t said anything.
AND IT GREW OUT OF THE SOIL!!!
He says this like it’s just occurring to him. Like someone is
arguing a case, trying to convince him it’s true and he’s
just coming to terms with it.
Flour. Some water. Yeast. And of course PEPPERS.
Available to all. This is the set up??!! What a situation!
Something grows up out of the ground, something else
comes flowing down the side of the mountain, and you
mix them together in a bowl and then heat it in an oven
and then THIS????
He points to the loaf between us.
THIS!???
He leans close to the loaf.
THIS???
Like the bread is a question. About the galaxy. About
existence itself.
He takes another bite.
You’re talking differently today.
That’s what I say. It strikes me as I say this that Dill Tudd
may think I am not very intelligent.
Well, it is a blue day.
His says this with a certain nonchalance, resting his arm
on the chair beside him.
A blue day?
Yes, I’m wearing blue today. This is the program. Is that not abundantly clear?
He points to his shirt.
The sky is blue, water is often blue-we can all agree on
that. Blue is calm, clear. Blue has no agenda. Blue has no angle. Blue is not trying to sell you anything. Blue walks into a bakery, looks around, and says HEY IT SMELLS GREAT IN HERE, I THINK I’LL HAVE SOME BREAD.
I laugh out loud at this.
He smiles. That’s good, isn’t it?
I agree. It’s so dumb-BLUE walks in to a bakery?-and yet
kind of awesome. What is that?
What?
For once, Dill Tudd doesn’t go off into the deep weeds.
He simply asks What?
I lean forward.
That-that thing you do when you talk-THE WAY you talk.
Sometimes I think we’re having a conversation and other
times it appears as though you’re talking to yourself and
most of the time I’m completely lost and cannot follow
what you’re saying for the life of me and other times I feel
like I’m watching you perform-that riff about the color
blue!!!??? What was that? You talked about the color blue
LIKE IT HAS A PERSONALITY-LIKE IT’S HUMAN! That’s
not how people talk!!!
I do.
You DO what?
I talk like that. Like this.
I don’t interact with anyone like this. Dill Tudd gets under
my skin-and yet under my skin is where I ACTUALLY AM.
I’m repulsed, and I’m riveted. At the same time.
AHHHHHHH. Dill Tudd lets out a relaxed sigh, like we’re
finally getting somewhere. We contain multitudes, don’t we?
Of course he’d say something like that.
I hold up my bread.
My first GHOST bread.
I taste it.
This is what I imagine it would feel like to bite down on a thousand sewing needles. I would like a bigger skull.
Anything to relieve this pressure. DEAR GODS my mouth.
I can’t feel anything because I can feel everything. Flames
on my tongue, in my brain.
I gasp.
Water, please, now.
Dill Tudd just sits and watches me, quite pleased with
himself.
Freela appears. She’s holding a plate. On the plate is a
slice of white bread. She places it in front of me.
Here she says. This will absorb the heat. Water makes it
worse.
I put the entire slice in my mouth.
Dill Tudd looks so happy.
Funny to watch, Heen Gru-Bares. Because your mind
wants water, YES?
I nod.
Your mind is not thinking MORE BREAD PLEASE right
now, your mind thinks LESS BREAD I’M BEING
ATTACKED BY BREAD HOW CAN I RUN AWAY FROM
BREAD? And yet. MORE BREAD IS WHERE THE RELIEF
IS.
It works.
Slowly.
But it does work.
I didn’t know this.
White bread absorbs heat?
I wipe a tear from my cheek.
Dill Tudd leans in.
Heen Gru-Bares, do you know what tears do?
I got this. For once, I’m a step ahead. Yes, Dill Tudd. I do know what tears do. They speak to me.
He wasn’t expecting that. I’m quite proud of myself. I
have sunk to such a new low that catching this odd man
off guard thrills me.
And what do they say to you Heen Gru-Bares?
They tell me not to eat your bread.
He’s delighted with this.
Oh Heen Gru-Bares, I thoroughly enjoyed that one. Can
you name anything else that your tears do?
He is just so relentless.
I give up. What else do my tears do?
Dill Tudd reaches for his bag, puts it over his shoulder, stands up, and says to me They water the ground at your feet so that new things can grow.
And then he walks out of the bakery.
I ask Freela for another slice of white.
*
I tap the disc.
For the first time ever I have written out my report. Word
for word. I need Randy to know that I am back to my
usual precise and articulate self. I read to him facts about
the speed of the GLIDES and the buildings in CIRCLE 5
and the park in CIRCLE 6 that clearly needs a few trees
trimmed and the river in CIRCLE 2 that doesn’t have
enough benches along the south bank-I am in peak form.
I finish by telling him about the owner of the bakery in
CIRCLE 8. I describe the way his employees avoid him. I
mention his menace.
*
Once my dad and I were walking home from the market
and I was wearing this fuzzy, floppy striped hat that he
had bought me. He looked over at me and said
My brother used to have a hat just like that.
He didn’t ever talk about his brother.
I asked him How come Uncle Dir hasn’t come to see us in
a while?
He thought about it.
It has been a long time, hasn’t it?
That was the last we ever spoke of Uncle Dir.
*
Ziga Mey and I are scoring the olive rolls.
We each have a knife.
I’m adding a touch of sea salt.
She asks me, without looking up Heen, are you close to
your mother?
I have had a thousand choices like this over the laps.
To reveal or conceal. To be this pretend Heen, the one they know, or the actual Heen.
She hit her head when I was young.
I go with Actual Heen.
Oh no, in an accident?
We were playing Forky.
I used to love that game.
I did, too.
She hit her head?
Yeah, on the table.
Ohhhh, she slammed too hard?
Exactly. But we didn’t know at first-me and my dad. She
seemed fine. Then she appeared to be a little dizzy. And
then she started repeating herself-and then asking these
questions that made no sense. She was really disoriented.
So was I.
I can only imagine-how is she now?
That’s enough.
I have told Ziga Mey enough.
Time to bail on this line of questioning.
She’s doing okay-How about you? Are you close to your
mother?
I realize in this moment that Ziga Mey asked me about my
mother so that she could talk about hers. All that I just
disclosed was for something else. I see it in her shoulders,
in her breath, the visible relief that comes over her.
I never knew her. She died giving birth.
To you?
To me.
I am not good at these sorts of things.
Oh.
That’s what I say. Oh.
I say it like I care, like I feel it. Because I do.
But still. Oh.
I am a blunt instrument.
CIRCLE 4 had just been built. The THRIVAL was barely up
and running, so they didn’t have what they needed to help
her. That’s what my dad said. But he also blamed me.
Wait-you? Your dad blamed-
Yes. As a kid you feel your way into knowing things, right?
You sense something-and then later you find out why. One
day he erupted and actually said it-we were sitting at
dinner, me and him, and I had burned the meal. Just a
little. But something about that set him off.
Ziga Mey holds up her knife like a pointer and lowers her
voice Not a day goes by that I don’t think about the day
you took her from me.
Back to her normal voice.
That’s what he said.
A tightness in my chest.
Devastating I say.
I set the bowl of salt down on the table.
It was. It still is she says.
Like a magnetic pull that is impervious to my resistance, I
feel myself getting sucked in to this story. A part of me
wants a way out, a distraction, an exit. But I can’t find it. I
speak.
Phileep.
She eyes me expectantly. Phileep?
I go on. He doesn’t get this-your mother questions.
Mother questions?
Yeah. Mothers are fascinating, aren’t they? You missed all
that. I kinda did, too, now that I think about it.
She slowly nods. I didn’t have one, so I want to be one.
A look of recognition.
It’s so complicated-and it’s also so simple, isn’t it?
I don’t really know what I’m referring to.
That’s quite profound, Heen.
*
I wake up.
Middle of the night.
I was having a dream.
I don’t dream.
But that was a dream.
I was hiking.
Somewhere on Lunlay.
I knew the terrain, but it was scrambled, distorted.
Stones made of rubber. The air was slippery, but it wasn’t
raining.
Familiar, but unfamiliar.
There was someone up ahead.
A boy.
Walking slowly.
I caught up to him.
He turns to face me.
I recognize him, but I can’t place him.
He’s carrying a dog.
I’ve seen the dog before as well.
But where?
He’s saying something to me, this boy on the mountain.
I can’t make it out.
Something about the dog.
He looks down at the dog.
It disappears.
Right out of his hands.
He looks at me.
You saw that, right?
I did.
It was here, and then it wasn’t here, right?
He’s frantic. There is a need in his question, to know that I
saw what he saw.
I did. I saw it. You were holding a dog, and then it
disappeared.
I thought I was going crazy.
This brings him great relief.
BABAK!
I yell it.
He nods.
Yes. I am Babak.
Babak Aspar, Pabbi Apsar’s brother! The kid who could
cry on command. You’re his brother. We met-
When you and your friend came to our house.
He remembers me. And Nord.
Yes. And then you went away…
It’s returning, this event, in bits and pieces. The graffiti on
the library. CHUBBS WHO LOVES CHEESE. The dog.
It’s coming back to me in the dream at the same time the
dream is coming back to me sitting up in bed in the
middle of the night. I’m remembering the remembering.
There’s a question I had for him.
In the dream.
I kept trying to ask it but my mouth wouldn’t move.
I finally get it out.
Babak, where did you go?
*
I have a thought, as I walk to the bakery.
In the dark.
It’s a new thought.
A thought I am not allowed to have.
It’s also quite random.
I push it down.
It comes back up. With more force.
Like when you hold a ball underwater.
It’s also quite random.
This is not what I was taught. I was taught that the
CHAIRS take the DATA and the FACTS and the
EVIDENCE and they make the proper adjustments to the
ARRANGEMENTS so that everyone can thrive.
That’s how the universe works.
Complex, of course.
But also quite simple.
Elegant, even.
This thought is like a mosquito in the dark.
It’s also quite random.
I swat and swat but can’t seem to kill it.
I keep looping on that moment when that woman was talking about the owner of that bakery in CIRCLE 8 and she jabbed the air on those words HORRIBLE and WRETCHED.
I heard that.
I overheard that.
And then I followed it up.
And noticed that man.
And then reported it.
There are lots of things to overhear.
I overheard that.
Because I was setting that basket down on the counter.
Because those baguettes were ready to be put out.
Because we had trouble getting the rye dough right and
so we baked those baguettes first.
Randy got the report he got-the CHAIRS got the report
they got-because I heard that.
And chose to note it.
And decided to follow up on it.
And then reported it.
That is the DATA.
The DATA the CHAIRS use to shape how we live.
They decide.
But I decide first.
I decided.
Me.
I’m the data.
I’m the one who determines what I report.
Me.
A Series 5.
This job.
I haven’t had this thought before.
The ground has always been solid beneath my feet.
I play a role.
A necessary role.
Within an airtight, reliable system.
I notice. I tell Randy.
He tells whoever he tells.
Others do the same.
Things get better.
And Randy-I decide what I notice and pass on-does he decide as well?
I know the answer to this.
Yes.
Is it double random?
Who does he pass along my report to?
Does that person decide what to pass on that Randy
passed on to them that I passed on to him?
Is it triple random?
Random stacked on random?
RANDOMS, ALL THE WAY DOWN.
Do I work for the system or am I creating the system?
I’m walking through a section of houses just south of the
bakery. They’re arranged in a circle with a large fire pit in
the middle. Someone has just lit the fire. A few lights are
on. A woman is sitting in front of the fire, braiding a young
girl's hair. Next to her is another woman, doing the same
for her daughter. They’re chatting away. A dog lies on the
ground between them.
A man on the other side of the fire is arranging his food in
an iron pan. He places it on a rack above the fire.
A number of the houses on Firdus are like this-private
sleeping and living rooms with a common outdoor kitchen
and eating area. If you want to be with other people, you
go outside. If you want to be alone, or just be with your
family, you stay inside.
The houses are shaped like domes, made of soil, with
steel-curved beams under the soil to support the roofs.
What looks like a lid opens on top of one of the domes. A
