Dallas: An Essay

by Robert Reed

I was in my mid-twenties, and I was a desperately old man, always tired, suffering from peculiar aches and persistent black moods and days when I accomplished nothing but sleep. But worse were the nights when I lay awake, and with a searing, exhausted clarity saw all the ways in which I was pissing away my life. The future was a visible place to me, and it was a dim and narrow place without the barest hope, and my personal future was indistinguishable from my present -- a relentless march of wasted potential and wrong turns made while time bled away, lost forever.

There's no pretty side to mental illness, and that's what was happening to me. The synapses of my brain were misfiring, leaving me clinically depressed. Today, I'm sure about that diagnosis. But at the time, in the bleak heart of that neurological turmoil, every ache felt honest, and every sadness was true and profound. If I was going to escape my future, I felt that I had to abandon my present life. And that's why I gave notice at my apartment and work, shoehorning my few possessions into my old Mustang, and then driving south to the wonderland that was Texas.

This was no random leap. Friends from college lived there -- a married couple that I had visited during a couple of hard northern winters. The Texas sun and the relative warmth had already charmed me. Our plan was that I would live and work in their spare bedroom. But somewhere between negotiations and the long drive, they got pregnant. When I arrived, my promised room was being repainted an obnoxious pink. This was a disappointment for me, and a clear treachery on their part. But after a bleak, sleepless night -- a very familiar night -- I reassembled my strength to where I could journey out into an unfamiliar city, hunting for any hovel that would take me.

Imagine the largest apartment complex in the Free World -- a city onto itself where ten thousand young professionals lived elbow-to-elbow -- and then give that sprawling creation the most inappropriate name possible:

The Village.

That's where I went first, and last.

I reasoned that a place of those proportions should have vacancies. And sure enough, I was told that as soon as my check cleared, I could move in. The only trick was to find an empty apartment with the smallest possible rent, and bless her, the young woman behind the desk didn't blink when I confessed that I had savings but no current job. My plan was to become a writer, and she asked what I wrote, and I told her, and her response was, "Really?" with an incurious but cheery tone. "My little brother reads that stuff."

"Good for him."

I settled on an upstairs efficiency with burgundy shag carpeting badly faded where the Texas sun had reached beneath the drapes. A high counter divided the room into a kitchen and everything else. A toilet and shower and clamshell sink were bunched together in what looked like a closet. The balcony was just large enough for two good friends. There was a doorbell, as if I would miss the slightest knock from any visitor. And beneath the bell's button was a brass medallion certifying to the world that my apartment was one hundred percent electric.

I bought a cheap phone and a mattress that covered too much of the floor, and my pregnant friends loaned me a tiny desk that I set beside the only window, my venerable Royal manual heavy enough to make the desk jiggle whenever I typed. My kitchen and clothes took a few minutes to unpack, and I propped my little black-and-white television on the counter, and what hadn't seemed like many possessions became a clutter, and it was my clutter, and I almost felt happy about my prospects.

For the next week or two, I hammered together useful routines. I woke late, usually after nine. I ate breakfast and read _The Morning News_, and when the paper was exhausted, I pretended to work. I would pretend until I was hungry again. Lunch was peanut butter and bananas. Then I'd nap, or at least shut my eyes, and when I climbed off the mattress again, I would sit at my desk and pound at the metal keys, the clatter steady enough to fill a few pages, convincing me that the day's story was progressing nicely.

In the evening, I'd drive to my friends' house. Or I would go for a swim. It was spring, and spring in Texas is nearly as warm as a northern summer. The Village featured a huge clubhouse with an Olympic-sized pool, and little swimming pools were scattered everywhere else. Closest to me was a nifty two-tiered affair, the high pool deep and cool with a waterfall churning into a shallow and much warmer puddle. There was always a girl or two, or ten, dressed in little swimsuits, basking in the last embers of day. Sometimes I found myself talking to one of them. But depression is a selfish animal, defending its territory by every means. I couldn't seem to work my way past the light-chatter stage. I liked some of them, and I wanted to sleep with most of them; but some epiphany would always roll over me. The girls were not my type. They were too shallow or too snobbish, and some of them were obviously crazy, and the average Texan lady always prefers a man who comes with ample money attached.

"What do you do?" every girl asked.

I'd tell them what I was doing and what I hoped to accomplish.

"Really?" they would blurt. Followed by, "My little brother or cousin or some friend in high school likes that spaceship stuff."

Good for them.

* * * *

I had picked up some ugly pounds after college, and with the easy resolve that arrives with a new life, I decided to work off the pounds. I swam laps at the clubhouse pool and ran laps through the Village. I can't say which of those laps were the soggiest. Summer arrives early in the South, the days hot in ways that no northern day can ever be. The Gulf of Mexico shoves its moisture north, the sun climbs higher than seems natural, and the commuting minions push their fumes into the already superheated air. For a prematurely old man carrying extra weight, dawn was the only bearable time to run. But I never seemed to wake early enough. That's why I usually waited for the sun to drop, and then I would drink a bucket of ice water and lace up the New Balances, slogging my way out into the smog and the inextinguishable heat.

At the center of the Village were little ponds and a few acres of sharp Texan grass, and winding through that private park were a set of narrow asphalt paths. I would jog around the ponds, and around them, again and again. It was rhythmic and painful and therapeutic. I would lift a hand to grunt, "Hey," to my fellow runners. Sometimes I'd stop under a light to read my watch. Thirty minutes of motion was my standard goal. A half hour seemed like nothing when I sat at my desk, pretending to write. But on foot, wearing a melting body, it was a relentless, exhausting eternity.

If memory serves, this happened very late on the Saturday night during the Memorial Day weekend. I stopped to check the time, and calculated that it was a four-minute trudge back to my apartment from where I was standing. Night had long ago fallen, yet the heat hadn't diminished more than a couple of degrees. Leaving the ponds, I began shuffling my way up one of the side streets toward Southwestern Boulevard, and at some point I heard what sounded like a shotgun blast -- a big sloppy bang that came from somewhere close, the sound bouncing against the soggy bones of my face.

In Texas, gunfire is commonplace. It can even be an honorable tradition. But this felt alarmingly close, and my first response was to ratchet back my already sluggish pace, watching the world with a sudden paranoid clarity.

Maybe half a minute passed. Then I noticed a young man running, wearing nothing but white boxer shorts. He was a pale figure moving with an unnatural urgency, sprinting beside Southwestern Boulevard and crossing directly in front of me before cutting across the spiny lawn, bare white feet carrying him through the open glass door of a ground-floor apartment.

My heart was thundering along. I considered a more cowardly route. But I was tired, and I didn't feel like an extra two minutes on my feet. Besides, I might have been a little curious. Or maybe I sensed that it hadn't been a gun blast. Whatever the reason, I kept running along the apartment road -- a main entranceway divided up the middle by an island forested with ornamental shrubs.

Two other people were standing along the Boulevard. A young man and young woman were staring at their own feet, looking like people trapped in a very boring date. At a distance, they seemed young and handsome. If they had a car, I didn't see it. But as I approached, I followed their gaze down, and with a slow astonishment realized that lying at their feet was a lump of garbage. Except no, it wasn't garbage but it was clothes, and there was someone inside those clothes, sprawled out on the concrete sidewalk in a pose of utter comfort.

I ran faster, and then fifty feet away, I stopped running.

Nobody noticed me. Not the pretty woman or her pretty boyfriend holding her hand, and certainly not the man on the sidewalk. The man was sleeping. Or he was a drunk who had collapsed, maybe. But then my mind noticed what my eyes must have already seen: The man's right leg was far too short and its shin had an unnatural bend to it. With a grim astonishment, I realized the leg was broken. A horrid compound fracture, obviously. And in the next instant, my mind generated its first sloppy theory: The poor son-of-a-bitch, for reasons unknown, had just fallen out of the sky.

Sweating and panting, I walked up on the odd trio.

The couple glanced at me, and with a quiet little voice, the woman asked, "Did you see it?"

"See what?" I muttered.

The boyfriend gestured toward the west. "We didn't see it either. But we sure heard it."

"The boom?" I asked.

He gave a little nod, eyes narrowing, and then a sudden odd laugh spilled out of him. "Jesus, look at that hydrant!"

The apartment road spilled into Southwestern, and past the intersection was a fire hydrant set at a crazy angle, pointing at us. I walked down the slight slope and across the apartment road, pondering the evidence. An irresistible force had struck the hydrant, but my only suspect was the man with the broken leg. I looked back at him. Then I walked toward him, counting my paces. Between the hydrant and intersection stood a slender bus stop sign. At waist height, it too was bent over. What wasn't I seeing? The concrete island that split the apartment road down the middle was planted with dense, heavily-leafed shrubs, and laying among the foliage, almost invisible, was a motorcycle, its front wheel mutilated but the rest of it in fine shape, a six-pack of beer bungied to the little chrome rack over its back wheel.

The world suddenly made sense.

I finished my walk and my count, and if memory serves, the man had been thrown twenty-five paces up a slight slope.

He wasn't wearing a helmet. But despite having landed on the back of his bare head, he was alive. And not just a little bit alive. I could hear him breathing. Five or six or seven of us had gathered around him by then, listening to a steady wet panting that made me think that he was, against all odds, just sleeping. He was a youngish man; he could have been my age. He needed a shave and he was dressed for construction work or something similar: A blue work shirt; a pair of frayed jeans; and leather work boots. The air above him was saturated with beer vapors. It was remarkably easy to look at him with a pity-rich scorn, and I know that's what at least one of us was doing just then.

Where people came from, I couldn't say.

Maybe a dozen of us were standing around him when I finally thought to ask, "Did anyone call an ambulance?"

"I did," said one fellow. He was dressed in white boxers and standing as close to the victim as anyone. "I heard his bike coming," he reported, waving back up Southwestern. "He flew around the corner, and I knew he wouldn't make it. From the sound, he was doing seventy or better. And then, boom."

Everyone had heard the impact, or they thought they had.

"I came running. Found him. Ran back home and called." This was his boy, and he was entitled to stand closer than the rest of us. He was entitled to shake his head, remarking with a loud, clear voice, "Poor shit. Not even wearing a brain bucket."

Good phrase, I thought. Laughing now.

Suddenly everyone was talking in quiet voices, discussing the accident, each relating his or her own narrow perspective. I looked at the guy in the boxers, thinking about asking where he was from. Because he sounded like a Midwesterner. But just as I made eye contact, the fellow lying between us took an enormous wet breath, held it for an instant, and then let his breath escape like a big tire passively losing pressure.

The guy had died.

That shut everyone up. We stared down at the limp, unshaven face, waiting for him to prove us wrong. Nothing. Not a gasp or a twitch, or anything.

"A pulse?" I asked. "Does he have one?"

It seemed like the thing to do.

Thank god, the guy in the boxers muscled up the courage to kneel down. This was his boy, after all. His responsibility. With one hand, he delicately took hold of a wrist, and after glancing at his own bare wrist, he looked up, asking the crowd, "Anyone have a watch?"

Without missing a beat, this guy behind me said, "Yeah. It's ten after twelve."

We laughed. I mean, what else could we do? I laughed and unfastened my running watch and handed it down to boxer-man, and he got the angle right with the streetlamp, and after fifteen seconds, he said, "Sixty a minute. Something like that."

Encouraged by news of his survival, our corpse gave out a huge gasp and took a mammoth breath, and then resumed his steady wet breathing, utterly indifferent to the strangers looking him over.

It took the ambulance better than fifteen minutes to arrive. By then, our increasingly large crowd had pieced together what had happened. A drunken motorcyclist. The vicious fire hydrant. Then after the man had separated from his machine, a dangling leg had clipped the careless bus stop sign, shattering its shin to mush.

The paramedics cut off the leg of his jeans, and I watched them work, taking a writer's internal notes. The calf muscles and skin had migrated up the shortened limb, looking sloppy and soggy and useless. If the victim felt anything, he gave no clue. He just kept on breathing, except for one or two more prolonged breaks. Practicing death, I suppose. A long board was finally pulled from the ambulance, and with a professional grace, the paramedics eased him onto the board and strapped him down. And that's when the girl appeared. We were twenty or thirty bystanders strong, and suddenly a cop was saying, "Pardon us," as he ushered the girl past me. With a sense of great drama, she bent over to stare at the victim. Nobody spoke. She didn't say one word. And when his patience was exhausted, the cop said, "Okay, miss. Is this or isn't this your brother?"

The air turned cold.

But in the next instant, the girl sobbed and threw up her arms, a slurring voice confessing, "Oh, I don't know. I can't tell for sure!"

Again, laughter.

The guy in the boxers had put on a shirt by then. He came over to me, smiling and tipping his hand, pretending to drink from his thumb.

Like all parties, ours depended on drunks. And now the cop took his drunk away, and ours was loaded into the ambulance to be whisked off to a care facility and feeding tubes and diapers, and if he was lucky, a simple life punctuated with the occasional pleasure. And the rest of us were left standing there, perhaps a little sad to be done now. The adventure was finished. I know I had a fat tangle of emotions tied to the moment. But it was very late and I was drained, and I didn't want to be the last person to leave. So I started easing my way past the others, and when I reached the outer edge of the group, I saw a familiar face. A pleasant rounded face topped with a precise crew cut. The face was smiling, apparently at me. And like that, I stopped and blinked in honest puzzlement, and after a long moment, the smiling face spoke with a frothy amusement, telling me my name.

I told him his.

Almost five years it had been, and wasn't this something?

* * * *

It would have been the next day, that Sunday afternoon, when I told my married friends the entire epic -- about the wreck and the amusing rabble that had gathered, and with a final flourish, I mentioned, "Oh, by the way. Guess who I bumped into there."

"Who?" they asked, in reflex.

Then I threw another coincidence into the pot. "And guess who's got an apartment just half a mile from mine."

Easily and without a trace of surprise, they offered me the correct name. Then the expectant mother added, "My folks said he was down here, somewhere. He's doing research for -- "

I blurted out the corporation's name.

"Yeah. Them."

I'll call our mutual friend Dallas.

"I guess I forgot," I admitted. "You and Dallas both came from Blue Springs."

She was a year younger than the rest of us, and more energetic, having finished college in three crisp years.

"How's the genius look?" she asked.

"The same." We were in our twenties, and that's how the universe worked for us. Faces never seemed to change. "We talked ... I don't know ... five minutes or so...."

"About politics?" her husband joked.

Everyone had a good laugh at Dallas's expense.

Then I told them, "No, not a breath about politics." And after a contemplative silence, I added, "You know, I've always thought ... if you forget what he believes, Dallas is a perfectly good guy...."

* * * *

I can't remember when I called him or when I was first invited over to his place. But it was probably the next week, and even if I can't recall details, I know exactly how the visit went. Dallas had an upstairs one-bedroom apartment in a newer portion of the Village. His balcony was spacious, and it overlooked one of the Village's countless swimming pools. His furniture was new. His housekeeping was immaculate. If it was a weeknight, he would have been wearing his work clothes, minus the dark tie and dress shoes. If it was a weekend, jeans were permitted, but only new jeans washed in cold water, still thick with their blue dye. Dallas was a modest man. He was a Midwestern man. The perfect host, he always offered me the contents of his kitchen, and there was always a cold can of pop waiting, and a glass and ice, plus three or four coasters in easy reach. I've never quite trusted politeness, since it can mask so much of what a person is really like. Yet I couldn't help but feel charmed by the free Dr. Pepper and salty snacks and how Dallas would sit in his recliner with his stockinged feet up, asking me about my writing and life, wishing me success with the effortless zeal of someone who knows more than a little something about succeeding in the world.

I once asked, "What's the worst grade you ever got?"

"A's," he told me. Flat out.

"Not college," I said. "High school."

"They gave Ones. I got all Ones."

"Okay. How about graduate school?"

No hesitation. "All A's," he said, allowing himself a thin, prideful grin.

Dallas already had his doctorate. After college, he went to a private institution with an accelerated program in physics, and, armed with an advanced degree, he got work with a computer firm that had too much R&D money. If prompted, he would talk in general terms about his current project. I already knew more than most people about chips and data storage and the mystical world of electrons. But the nuts-and-bolt details couldn't have been more boring, and I can't remember specifics, and since this was more than twenty years ago, I'm sure that all of those vaunted new technologies long ago turned clunky and crude.

We talked about old times at college. I had only been a biology major, true. But we'd shared a few classes and professors, and there were classmates both of us knew. Sometimes I talked about growing up in a relatively big city, while he offered tales about life in little Blue Springs; and occasionally I would repeat the Blue Springs stories to the expectant mother, giving her the chance to retell them from her vantage point.

She always liked Dallas, but they passed through school separated by a full grade, and both of them were loners, if different sorts of loners. They were friendly but never friends. When the four of us got together for dinner, at the couple's house, I felt as if I was Dallas's old buddy and the others were outsiders. When the conversation grew stale, I knew what to say to my buddy to get him talking again, to keep him interested and engaged. I liked the guy, and if I saw him today, I'd feel as if I was seeing an old friend. Sure, he said things that left us uneasy. He loved Reagan and hated the Soviet Union. He loved the U.S. military, but his favorite generals were Confederates and George Patton. Yet politics was just politics, abstract and permissible. The trouble came when Dallas smelled acceptance where there was only polite patience, and then he would say something more. America was full of crime, he would complain. The welfare state was unfair and criminal and it sapped the nation of its greatest strengths. Or he might talk flippantly about some imprecise ghetto, or mention African-Americans in a certain coded way. Not that his basic views were any worse than those held by my own father or most of my father's generation. For Dallas, it was as if the last twenty years of the civil rights movement hadn't occurred, and if I was forced into a corner and told to defend my old friend, I'd argue that he was pretty much like any white male who grew up in a rural landscape -- a landscape that was stolen from the Native Americans and then settled by Germans and Swedes. The differences in Dallas were more of tone and volume, and an intellectual depth, and, despite rumors to the contrary, the Bill of Rights gave him permission to think whatever he damn well wanted to think.

With religion, Dallas had distinct opinions, and he held onto them tenaciously. During high school, he'd stumbled across a churchless church led by a retired major or colonel whose name never quite stuck with me. Instead of Sunday services, my friend listened to tapes. Canned lectures, or sermons, or whatever. Sometimes I showed up unexpectedly, and after ushering me inside and offering a pop, Dallas would hurry back into his bedroom to rewind the tape recorder to a convenient spot. Standing in the kitchen, I would hear little snatches of an old military voice talking about Scripture and Communism, great destinies waiting for our nation and wicked perils ready to destroy our world.

My married friends didn't know much more about that religion or its leader. But through work, the husband had met a couple of other men who belonged to this seemingly nameless faith. "They're smart guys," he offered with a hint of frustration. "Not the sort you'd expect to fall for a cult." And my friend was no atheist. He had seriously considered becoming a minister in a mainstream faith. Shaking his head, he admitted, "They're smart, but like Dallas is smart. You know? They're very organized and quick to learn, but ... what else is it, dear...?"

"They're rigid."

"Inflexible, to a point ... yes...."

"Plus racist," she snapped. "And they're sexist, too." Then she gave me a hard look, waiting for my rebuttal.

The best that I could say was, "I like the guy anyway."

"I'm just saying," she remarked. Then cupping her hands over her swelling belly, she admitted, "I like Dallas, too. But sometimes, he seems like this really bright guy who doesn't know much about anything."

* * * *

Two or three times a week, I'd go over to Dallas's apartment, and we'd grill out or call out for pizza, then invest the evening just chewing the proverbial lard. That's something I don't do anymore; I can't remember when I last spoke to just one person for hours, beating a hapless subject to death.

Girls were a viable topic. We'd study the pool beneath his balcony, discussing the tans and tanned bodies that were lined up for our visceral pleasure. If I remember, Dallas had a thing for buxom, girl-next-door girls. Or was that me? Either way, he was a thorough gentleman about his lust, using only polite terms for the female anatomy. On all occasions he was relentlessly mannerly, though his manners were built on Old Testament values: The female sex was smaller than us, and weaker, and he often reminded me that we wouldn't be Christian men if we didn't want to protect our women from the hazards running amok in the world.

Like a billion guys, we had a thing for sports. We could watch any contest at any time, forming hard opinions about players and strategies and where the game had been won or lost. For Dallas, football was a passion. A subreligion, and a rich source of honorable moral lessons. Unlike me, he had played the game in high school. He wasn't tall, but he had a robust frame that should have served him well in the small-town divisions. The trouble was, Dallas was slow. A favorite coach once threw an arm around him, telling him flat out, "Son, you couldn't run out of sight in a week!"

Dallas loved that story, laughing at himself whenever he told it.

Like me, he had very few friends. I remember meeting just one of them: A buddy from grad school -- an ex-Marine several years our senior -- staying the night while driving cross-country. I expected a big strong jarhead with tattoos, but what I met was a short pudgy fellow already practicing the middle-aged comb-over. The two men belonged to the same church; when I arrived, Dallas's tape recorder was set on the coffee table. But neither man mentioned the connection. They talked about school. About Reagan. About the swimming pool and its girls. The ex-Marine was something of a gourmet cook, of all things, and he tried to teach us a few secrets from the productive kitchen. Over a dynamite red snapper, the two Cold Warriors discussed the coming conflagration with the Soviet Bloc: When would they invade Germany, and would China join the Bloc, and which side would the French belong to? I absorbed as much of that catastrophe as possible, and then I excused myself, leaving the two puffy warriors to finish Armageddon by themselves.

Dallas rarely met my few acquaintances, either. Which was part of the reason why I felt close to the man. Like me, he lacked some basic social gene. Like me, he had a routine and he was loyal to it. Work was honorable, and he believed that good people lived quiet, unassuming lives, and I can't fault any of those bedrock notions. But I also liked him because when I talked about my work, he would listen to me. Not just politely. Not just for a few minutes. But he listened with a perceptive if somewhat inexpert ear.

No, he didn't read my kind of writing. Save for the occasional Michener and Wouk, fiction didn't hold his interest. But the future was a real place for both of us, and it was immeasurably important, and as the summer passed, that became our best common ground.

I could rattle on forever about space travel and the grand potentials in the new technologies, real or imagined. And Dallas listened with the same purposeful intensity that had brought him perfect grades in school. When I moved too fast or took too many unreasonable leaps, he would stop me, asking a question, or ten questions. And when he grew bored, I would stir him up. I knew tricks. "You know what," I'd say. "In our lives, maybe in just a few years, we're going to build machines that think as well as men. And then, better."

That always made Dallas sit up, blood coloring his round face.

Then he would dismiss me, shaking his head, explaining to the foolish layman, "We're so far from understanding our own brains, much less making them from scratch. Even the best microchips ... well, they're huge and they're very simple...."

"But getting smaller and faster all the time," I reminded him.

"No," he would snap. Astonished by my ignorance and undoubtedly proud of his own expertise, he'd explain, "There are huge differences between neurons and silicon chips. In structure. In packaging. In the entire design." Then his deepest-held beliefs surfaced. "Humans are unique," he told me. "The best that we could do, ever, is create a machine that can pretend to think like us. And even then, only to a degree."

"How about in another thousand years?" I asked.

"No."

"In a million?"

Dallas would smile, politely but fiercely, and without a wisp of self-doubt, he would say, "Never. Which means forever. No."

"'We're unique,'" I quoted.

"Exactly."

"Then what about alien intelligence?"

He would blink and force up a laugh. "What about it?"

"Do you think little green men exist?"

Dallas had a way of looking past me, his gaze glassy and engrossed. Then he would admit, "Really, I couldn't say. I don't have any data."

"But what's your best guess?" I would press.

"Not in our galaxy, they don't." He said it flatly, and he never sounded more certain. "The odds are just too enormous that there would be another world of the right size, in the proper orbit around the perfect sun, and that all the biochemical necessities would line up in the correct fashion, and no big asteroids would hit it, and no passing suns would explode."

"Then we're alone," I would growl.

A sober expression built on what only seemed to be a simple face. Then, with an easy gravity, he would add, "That's why we have such an enormous responsibility here. You see? Our species, and our way of life ... everything's so precarious ... and that's why it matters so much...."

* * * *

Nothing makes a person into a nationalist faster than abandoning his homeland for another country. And that's what Texas did to me. My state university fielded a good football team that year. No, a great team. A national championship team. Even if I hadn't moved away, I would have watched the games. But living in Texas was the excuse to be homesick and homeproud at the same time. And my new best friend was an extraordinary fan: Dallas knew every first-string player by name, and the plays, and our coaches, and, most important, he had a big color television that with sufficient tinkering was able to pull cable channels from the air. We always got together to watch the games. Our team won that fall, and won, and won again. Then on the first Saturday in October, Dallas called before eight in the morning, waking me, telling me with a flat but apologetic voice that there had been some sort of emergency, that he had to make an appearance at work, but he would get back in time for the kickoff.

He kept his word, if only barely.

I was climbing the stairs on one side of his building, and he came up the opposite side, halfway panting, fishing his keys from his trousers pocket. He looked tired, and his smile was like a picture of a smile, not quite convincing anyone. But he didn't explain why he was late, and, being Dallas, he didn't let himself grouse about the stupid, cruel bosses who would call him in to work on the weekend. I'd already eaten lunch. He hadn't. He brought out potato chips and pop, and he opened a cold beer and drained it. Usually Dallas allowed himself one game-day beer. But then he opened a second can minutes after kickoff, and I watched him drain it and open a third before we were through the first quarter.

There are moments when I envy people with ordinary salaried jobs. But this wasn't one of those times.

I asked, "Anything happen at work?"

He didn't react. Our team was winning again, but he had to remember to smile, shrugging and setting his new empty on the cork disk. "Nothing much," he remarked.

"How are the chips?" I joked, rattling the sack.

He said, "Fine," too quickly, missing the humor. "They're fine." Then he glanced at me, the smile faltering, and something about his face was suddenly years older than it should have been.

The poor guy was down. Which was a state I knew something about. So I told him, "After the game, let's go to my place. I bought some cheap steaks yesterday. We can broil them, and I don't know ... get some potato salad up at Tom Thumb...."

Dallas's eyes were pointed at me. But I don't think he saw me.

"Fine," he said again. He might have been describing his computer chips again. I wasn't sure until he said, "I'll get the salad. Okay?"

"Agreed."

Our team won, again. I walked home and cleaned up before the appointed time, but he didn't show. So I called his place, and nobody picked up. Dallas was already half an hour late, which was bizarre behavior for him. Then, just as I felt a stab of concern, the doorbell rang.

Dallas arrived carrying a paper bag filled with beer and Dr. Pepper and three kinds of supermarket salad plus a tub of ice cream, and after stocking my refrigerator with his gifts, he said, "It's early. How about a swim?"

"At the clubhouse?" I asked.

"You've got a closer pool, don't you?" He was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, the fringe of a swimsuit showing above the belt.

I changed in my bathroom. Somehow, that felt best. Then I put on shorts and a shirt and found my least smelly towel, and we walked over to the local pool. A couple of girls were sunning themselves -- a last dose of UV before winter. One of the girls was very dark, the straps of her bikini pulled down to let those magnificent shoulders bake all the better. I can still see her sitting nearby, eyes hidden behind sunglasses. Jokingly, I remarked, "So this is why you got me out here?"

Dallas seemed to laugh, but just for a moment.

Cool nights had chilled the deep upper water, but the lower pool had been warmed by the day's sun. We climbed in and splashed for a few minutes. Dallas was no swimmer. In modesty or out of respect for the waning sun, he wore his T-shirt, the soaked fabric hanging heavy on his broad body. Once or twice, I caught him watching me. At some point, I felt an uneasiness that made me more angry than anything else. I was feeling relatively good on that particular day. My nagging blackness had temporarily receded, and I didn't want anything to threaten what could almost be confused for happiness.

Dallas moved back toward the waterfall, hunkering down in front of the splash. Then with a little nod, he coaxed me closer.

I got near enough to feel the water grow cooler.

Then, with a quiet and very odd tone, he spoke. "I've got something for you." After a deep breath, he said, "A story idea," and I could smell the beer riding on his breath.

"A story?" I repeated.

He said, "If you want it."

"Sure," I said. "Tell me."

But he had to first lick his lips a few times. And he glanced over at the bare-shouldered girl. Then he slipped deeper into the waterfall's spray, saying, "What if?" almost too quietly to be heard.

"Yeah?" I coaxed.

"There is another living planet," he proposed with a grave, sober voice. "Not the Earth, but not much different from us, either. It has oceans and continents, and free oxygen, and living on it is one highly intelligent, tool-using species -- "

"Okay."

"The species prospers. It learns to farm and build cities and nation-states. Religions and armies are built, and culture. And eventually, the sciences emerge, plus most of our modern technologies."

I nodded and said nothing.

As the cool water washed over the back of his head, Dallas asked, "What if ... what if one of these alien scientists came across a secret, unexpected machine? By accident, I mean. Without looking for it, or even suspecting that it could exist. A string of unlikely events ends up exposing the machine -- "

"Whose machine?"

"I don't know." He offered a shrug and a shy dip of the head.

"What? Like a spaceship?"

"No." Shaking his head, he explained, "It's larger than a spaceship. And quite a bit stranger."

"Okay. Where is this machine?"

"Everywhere," he said. And having said it, he broke into a wide, odd grin. "At the very least, it is an envelope easily large enough to contain the entire planet."

"Huh," I said. Then I asked, "So what's the big envelope do?"

He hesitated.

"Wait," I blurted, thinking of another question. "What's it made of?"

"Is that important?"

"And why can't we see the machine?"

Dallas hesitated, glancing at me while remarking, "There's no 'we.' This isn't our world."

"Okay. But why's it invisible?"

"Many things are," he assured. Speaking as a rigorously trained physicist, Dallas reminded me, "Neutrinos are everywhere, and we only rarely see them. Except with gravity, we can't see the dark matter between the stars. And there are highly organized relationships between every atom, and quantum actions that occur over a great distance, and, on an individual basis, all of these effects are nearly impossible to detect."

"You're not going to tell me what it's made of."

"Composition isn't important," he replied. "That's just a detail."

Which was a very odd statement, coming from a man who had a tenacious love for details.

Again, I asked, "So what did this envelope do?"

"Did, and does."

"It's still functioning?"

He looked off into the distance, a smile flickering. "What it does, it helps."

"Helps?"

"In subtle ways, yes. Constantly and carefully."

"It helps the aliens?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"By protecting them. Supporting them. Making certain their world remains habitable, helping them develop and prosper, and making it much less likely that they destroy everything that they've accomplished."

"But how?" I blurted. "If you want a good story, you need a mechanism here. How does this fancy machine act on the aliens?"

He started to answer.

"Wait," I said. "Let's just suppose we're talking about human beings. And your mysterious envelope is wrapped around the Earth."

Dallas let his eyes fall halfway closed.

"Hypothetically," I cautioned. "Just so I can imagine this better."

"Okay."

"How does an invisible machine protect and support us?"

The eyes opened wide. "By listening to our troubles," he began. "And through a variety of means, solving them."

I said, "Okay."

Then I shook my head, adding, "You're talking about prayer. Aren't you?"

"Maybe." Dallas shrugged and tipped his head back under the falling water for a moment. Then, with a low, certain voice, he said, "But prayer is really only a tiny component. Important sometimes, but rarely critical."

A little laugh seeped out of me.

With a thick finger, Dallas tapped the side of his head. "A hard drought comes, and the world prays for rain. Rain ceremonies are held in every capital. Priests make all the usual sacrifices to the rain gods. But most of the wishing comes from the millions of farmers who watch their crops die, each one of them spending every waking hour imagining a sky filled with storm clouds."

"And the rains always come?" I asked doubtfully.

"They always have," Dallas remarked. Then with a grin, he added, "Did you know? Over the last hundred years, our climate is as wet and stable as it has been in the last hundred thousand years."

"Because our farmers imagine rain," I muttered.

"Maybe because there have never been so many people wishing together," he countered.

"Besides climate," I asked, "what does this envelope do?"

"Whatever is asked of it," he replied. "It supports good nations over the evil ones, helps the just and slowly destroys the cruel. Just wars are won, or they are lost in honorable ways. The envelope lifts prosperity, blunts plagues, and sometimes, maybe ... it gives a great insight to some ripe mind...."

Damn silly, I thought.

But instead of saying it, I returned to an earlier topic. "And how did we actually find this vast, invisible machine?"

"I said. By accident."

"You're not going to tell me how?"

"It's just a story. You'll have to make something up."

"Is this machine ... what? Magic?"

He snorted. "No."

"Or like a computer? Is that how it operates?"

He smiled for an instant, saying, "Not particularly. No."

"But how does it actually do its job?"

"It _steers_ us." Then he seemed to hear himself, and he added quietly, "It steers the aliens, I mean. It guides them and their world through an ocean of potentials."

I didn't respond.

He tipped his head beneath the falling water, and then brought it out and spat, suddenly looking a little drunk. "Existence only looks inevitable," he warned me. "Every moment can happen a thousand different ways. A trillion different ways. What the envelope does ... if you know it's there and study it carefully ... you can see it manipulating people ... steering them through the multitude of disagreeable possibilities ... finding the easiest, smoothest course that keeps the world living and its population a little happier with each succeeding generation...."

I stared at him for a long, uncomfortable moment. "Is this your entire story? Aliens find an artifact that protects them?"

"It's just an idea," he admitted.

I agreed. "But it takes more than one idea to build a story," I cautioned. "Where's the drama here? If you have some force, some subtle weird presence, that's always keeping you safe -- "

"Not safe," he warned. "Not on an individual basis, normally. It just insulates the world and your species from the worst hazards."

"Like nuclear war?"

"Of course," he replied, without hesitation.

"Who built it?"

"Why?"

"Maybe that's your story," I offered. "The alien world ... it could have been seeded eons ago by a highly advanced species. Seeded and left behind. But the mother species didn't want to leave its children unprotected, particularly from themselves...."

His eyes narrowed for a moment. "That's one possibility, I suppose...."

Halfway laughing, I said, "Maybe the universe is full of shrouded, protected worlds. That could be interesting, I suppose."

He didn't respond.

"But I'm still having trouble finding your plot here. Do you understand?"

"Not really."

"What you're telling me.... "I paused, thinking it through for a long moment. "If I decide to jump off a high building, I'll go splat. But humanity itself would never wish for suicide, which is why it can never happen."

He nodded carefully.

"Which means all the things that people like myself worry about ... all the ways the world can end ... they aren't genuine threats. Environmental collapse. Solar flares. A superflu. Or total war with the Warsaw Pact." I laughed with a scorching disdain, telling him, "We've wasted billions building missiles that can never hit their targets. Nukes that will never detonate. The Soviets and America might trade a few cities during some little war. But according to your logic ... what? JFK pushes us to the brink of war over some missiles down in Cuba, but of course there is no drama. No reason to worry at all. We're being steered past every disaster, every miscalculation. The incident has no choice but to end with the best imaginable outcome."

If anything, Dallas appeared deaf. His face was empty and the staring eyes had a vacant quality, like the glass spheres buried in a wall-mounted deer. The day was rapidly ending. The two sunbathers had vanished; we were the only people in view. Into the growing chill of an autumn night, my best friend in the world stood, his soaked shirt looking heavy and clumsy as he walked into the middle of the pool.

"It's a stupid story," he allowed.

"Paranoid and more than a little goofy," I added. "Sorry."

But he took the news with the same good humor that he used when the football coach told him that he was slow. He laughed. He showed me his face laughing. Then with a louder voice than necessary, he said, "Those steaks. How about it?"

* * * *

The intriguing, intoxicating kiss of depression comes with visions, dark and profound, your world filled with a noble doom, countless bits of paranoia offering themselves for your admiration and adoration. And when you're a writer, or pretending to be, the early stages of depression can masquerade as a blessing. You can still bang out words on a sheet of cheap typing paper. You can even string your words into sentences and complete entire pages and stack the pages neatly, declaring your story finished and shipping it off to an editor. That's what I had accomplished for an entire half-year: I wrote stories and sent them off, and when they came back unsold, I sent them out again, feeling that flicker of optimism that always preys on gamblers. It wasn't until the shortened days of November that my energies truly failed me. And even then, I didn't think of depression as the culprit. I was reasonably sad. I was understandably tired. And if I didn't climb out of bed until ten or eleven in the morning, what did it matter? And if the pages weren't being filled with words, whom did it actually hurt?

From Dallas, I heard little.

He was busy at work, including a weeklong visit to the company's California division. After he was supposed to have been home for a few days, I found the resolve to call his apartment. His phone rang and rang. But it was barely seven in the evening; he was probably still driving home from work. I made a mental note to call at eight, and then forgot until after ten, which was too late, but I called anyway, counting the rings until I lost interest in that little game.

I tried to reach him at work the next day. Not for the first time, I looked up the number for the main switchboard, told the operator exactly who I wanted, but then I found myself talking to the wrong person. It was an ordinary, even banal mistake; the two men had similar names. Again, I explained whom I wanted, and the fellow promised to transfer me, and after a song or two of elevator music, the line was abruptly disconnected.

That evening, for the first time in ages, I went running. In the black wet cold, I slugged my way around the ponds, and then on an impulse, I found my way back up to Dallas's building. His living room was lit up. So I went upstairs and rang the bell, watching the faint light leaking through the peephole. The light was eclipsed, and a moment later, the door opened. My friend gave me a good look. A smile emerged, followed by a near-giggle, and with a sweeping gesture, he told me, "Come on in. Please."

He said, "I've been meaning to call you. It's work -- "

"I know," I started to say.

"Dr. Pepper? Help yourself." Then he seemed a little embarrassed, adding, "I've got something to finish. Just a minute. And if you would? Stay off the furniture? You're a little soggy, and all."

I said, "Sure."

Dallas vanished behind his bedroom door. I fished out a cold can and opened it, and I heard a hard clunk followed by the muted voice of a man speaking with a practiced authority. On quiet feet, I wandered into the little hallway. With my head tipped, I heard the military bearing in the voice, the speaker remarking with a reasoned tone, "The dark races, like all children, suffer from a poverty of discipline."

When Dallas emerged, he found me sitting on his living room floor.

As best as I can remember it, my intention was to ask, "Really, what is this goofball racist faith of yours?"

But then the phone rang, abruptly and urgently.

Dallas answered. "Hello," he said, his gaze going off into the distance. Slowly, a smile emerged. Then he laughed loudly and called to me, giggling when he asked, "Guess who had their baby!"

I talked briefly to the new and happily exhausted father.

Dallas suggested that we go to the hospital that night. "Get home and shower," he told me, "and I'll swing by in forty minutes. Okay?"

"Sure."

Dallas drove an astonishingly old Monte Carlo. But it was clean, of course, and in good repair, and since both of us were distracted and mostly silent, there was nothing to listen to but the purposeful hum of the engine.

The baby girl was smaller than I had expected. Mom looked like hell, and both parents were numb with happiness. I was completely out of my element. About the visit, I remember almost nothing. About the drive home again, I remember more. I glanced over at Dallas before looking straight ahead, and then with a voice that was dry and a little nervous, I said, "I figured out that story of yours."

Nothing happened for a long moment, except that the car accelerated before slowing again. Then he quietly said, "Forget it."

"But I came up with something interesting," I said.

"I never should have mentioned it," he replied. Dallas was staring straight ahead, shaking his head while trying to laugh. "You were right. It was a silly idea for a story."

"Your hero finds an alien machine," I said. "Some kind of marvel designed to answer the world's demands, keeping us mostly happy and reasonably safe." Then after a dramatic pause, I added, "But it is a machine. And every machine can be manipulated. Fooled. And sometimes, stolen."

Silence.

"Just think what could be done," I mentioned. "If you could take control of the world's envelope for yourself. If you could somehow find a way to talk for all of humanity, I mean. If God heard no other voice but yours...?"

He punched the accelerator, just a little.

"That would make a compelling little story," I allowed. "How could one man shoulder that enormous burden...?"

* * * *

I drove home at Thanksgiving and stayed through the holidays. By home, I mean my parents' house. By stayed, I mean that I slept in the cold basement, my bedroom remodeled into my father's new home office. I was as welcome as any adult child without a job or prospects of gainful employment. Advice was given to me frequently, without tact. Encouragement was offered with pointed voices. In the end, I was being treated to some rather harsh speeches about the poverty waiting in my future if I didn't pull my head out of my ass.

"Hey, folks," I could have told them. "I see blacker shit than that coming!"

Our football team lost its championship game. I've never been more emotionally bound to a sporting event, hanging on every play until the gruesome end, and, when it was finished, I was crestfallen. Sick with misery. I crawled into the office -- my old bedroom -- and called Texas. My married friends were under the mistaken impression that they'd seen an exciting and honorable game. What Dallas thought, I don't know. His phone rang and rang, and he never answered, and I teased myself with the image of his thick body dangling off his balcony, one of his narrow work ties yanked snug around his choked throat.

That next day, I drove back to my apartment.

A week later, when I finally got around to calling Dallas, he claimed that he had gone walking through The Village after the game, working off his nervous energies.

Probably so.

I didn't see him often in those next couple of months. In part, it felt like a mutual decision. We'd obviously had too much of each other's company, and this was a convenient break. And more to the point, my savings were spent, and, needing cash, I got work with a temporary service, logging odd hours and long hours doing jobs ranging from the boring to the transcendentally awful.

The Texas sun vanished that winter. But instead of good Northern snows, there was rain, and while the air was usually above freezing, there was a constant wet chill that forced its way into my home and my bones.

An old wall lamp was nailed above my little desk. On a weeknight in late February, I was sitting in front of my typewriter, thinking hard about turning off the lamp and going to bed. I remember looking up and hearing a noise, impatient and violent. Tires skidded. That's what I heard. And there was a thud or several thuds in quick succession, followed by an impact that I felt through my feet and the chair, and the building shuddered and my old lamp jumped up, pivoting on its bent nail and then bouncing, sending its borrowed momentum back into the quivering wall.

A car crash. Someone had wrecked. Adrenaline took me, and I was running. The endless cold rain was falling. I didn't see any wreckage on my side of the apartment building. There was no sidewalk to the south, so I ran through the sopping grass, circling and finding what looked like a monster squatting against the west-facing wall. That was my first impression: Eyes glowed at me through a bluish breath rising like smoke. The eyes had a wounded, hateful life to them, and I heard a deep wet voice saying, "Uuush," from somewhere behind the eyes. For a sliver of an instant, I pulled up short. Then I let myself realize that it was just a car -- a newish Corvette, as it happened -- and it had come off Southwestern, slamming sideways into the brick face of the apartment building.

I looked through the open passenger window, ready to grab anyone and pull him to safety before the car erupted in flames. Except the car was empty. And both doors were shut, the driver's door jammed against the dished-in wall, helping to keep the wall from collapsing completely.

I scanned the surrounding grounds. The only people were neighbors coming out, alone and in twos. Not even two minutes had passed since the crash. I ran home, punching 911 on my cheap phone, reporting what had happened in a rush of words and breath. The operator wanted my name and address. I don't remember giving either. Then I threw on a rain jacket and stepped outside again, flying down the stairs to where I found a tall stranger waiting for me.

He said, "Excuse me," with the echo of a Germanic accent. He was an elderly man, but fit. Long delicate hands lifted into the air between us, and betraying embarrassment, he said, "Can you help me, sir? I seem to have misplaced my car."

Go on. Try and guess what I was thinking.

"Your car?" I said, letting sarcasm thicken my voice. "Can't find it?"

He said, "I cannot," and blinked, and winced. Then he glanced at the parking lot in front of my building, observing, "This is a very confusing place, I think."

"Have you already looked here?" I asked, pointing at the rows of cars.

The old man didn't seem to hear me. In profile, he was a handsome fellow with sharp features -- the kind of face you'd see on a Roman coin. The lights around us made his eyes bright, but it was an empty, lost brilliance signifying nothing but a teary sheen. He gave a little sigh and turned to face me again.

"I looked," he reported. "My car is not there."

"Then let's go find it for you," I told him.

I took him back around the building. Of course. I led him up to the Corvette, and then paused. An audience had gathered, people talking quietly, the bravest few peering into the open window and poking at the loose bricks. The headlights still burned, but the antifreeze had run dry. One of The Village's private cops was pulling up along Southwestern, his pretend-cruiser flashing its little red lights. I glanced at my companion, trying to read his expression. He seemed bored. His gaze kept reaching into the distance. So I asked him, flat out, "Anything look familiar?"

A low snort was his first response. Then he pointed with a mock-certainty, saying, "I parked my car over there, I think. Yes."

No, he had not. We strolled into the next lot, looking at every vehicle, and we did the same with a lot to the north, and we might have hit another two or three in our little tour of The Village. I was patient as a saint. I admitted that it was difficult to navigate this maze of lookalike buildings and unnumbered lots. With a reasoning tone, I asked about the make and color of his missing car. "I'll know it when I see it," he promised me, or maybe himself.

The man was drunk, or he was senile. Or maybe he'd smacked his head when his Corvette skidded into the wall. Any of those explanations could have been true. Or none. I asked if he lived in The Village, and, with a haughty tone, he said, "Oh, no. No." Which led to the next reasonable question: "Who did you come to visit?" But he wouldn't tell me or give me the barest clue. It was enough that I was walking with him, and he seemed desperate to keep me close. We ended up beside the two-tiered swimming pool, and over the sound of the frigid falls, I suggested, "You could go back to my place and call for help. If someone came and got you -- "

"No, no, no," he muttered. He begged. "I don't want ... I can't ... no ... !"

We weren't alone just then. I looked up, noticing a guy a little younger than me walking away from us. Or rather, limping away from us. He was dressed in office clothes. Good trousers, good shoes, and a rumpled sports jacket. He was making steady progress despite a weak left leg. But there was a pitiful quality that made me wonder if he was just as lost as the man standing beside me.

I steered my man back toward my apartment. I didn't spell out my plan or even mention our destination. But I meant to deliver him back to the scene of the accident. Even if it wasn't his car, I'd let the authorities take him and help him. That was the best scheme I could come up with.

But we didn't make it back.

We were crossing my parking lot -- the lot he had already searched -- and he stopped abruptly and said, "There," as the hand went into the jacket pocket, keys jangling. "Yes, I think ... yes ... !"

It was a little sports car. I don't remember the model, but I know it was foreign. Japanese, I think. Not that it matters.

He cried out, "Yes," when his key fit the lock. Then he opened the driver's door and hesitated. What was he forgetting? He had the look of a man searching his thoughts. Oh, yes, he remembered now. He looked back at me with a mixture of relief and resurgent pride, perhaps deciding that I belonged to an embarrassing past best left behind. He said, "Well then," in lieu of thanks. "I'm going now."

And he drove away.

I returned to the wreck just in time. The limping boy wandered up when I did, and someone in the audience pointed him out to the official cops. They eased him aside for a little chat, probably curious about his blood-alcohol levels and why he felt compelled to leave the scene of an accident. That left the private cop in charge -- a puffy little guy who looked as if he had failed every test in his life, save the one that gave him this minor job -- and he used his newfound authority to shout at everyone, "Go home. Go away. There's nothing to see here. Leave!"

* * * *

Better advice was never given.

I spent the entire night loading my belongings back into my car, and early in the morning, after making final arrangements with The Village, I drove over to see my married friends and have a last long look at their newborn. "Your desk is there, if you want it," I said, handing over my last key. "Take the mattress and anything else you find. Or leave them. I'm paid up into next month, and then they'll dump everything and keep my deposit for their trouble."

My friends were disappointed but not even a little surprised. The wife was the one who asked, "What about Dallas? Have you talked to him yet?"

I hadn't. Honestly, I hadn't even thought of it. But because it seemed unlikely that I would actually reach him, I drove back across town before leaving. I rang the bell in the middle of a weekday morning, and for no imaginable reason, Dallas was home. "Caught a cold," he claimed, though I don't remember much more than a little hoarseness in his voice. "Come in," he beckoned. "Want a pop?"

I had a quick one. "I'm leaving," I explained. "Driving north today."

He took the news calmly, and happily. About our last conversation, I remember very little. But he was polite, I'm sure, and I know that he shook my hand when I left, wishing me well in my life, and I told him, "You, too. All the best."

I hadn't slept in more than twenty-four hours, and I felt wonderful. I drove into the white ruins of the winter, pushing into Kansas before stopping at a Holiday Inn for the night. And I woke up feeling energized and ready. The next day was bright and cold, and my head was perfectly clear. I remember driving across the last slice of Kansas, thinking easily and rapidly about every possible subject. For no clear reason, my depression had lifted. Had been expelled. I wasn't exactly giddy with happiness, but I could suddenly cope with the world and my own dark nature ... and with few exceptions, that's how it has been for the last twenty-plus years.

On occasion, I still visit Texas.

My married friends have two kids, nearly grown now. They used to socialize with my old best friend on occasion, but Dallas remains busy at work. The last time they saw him was at his wedding; his wife is a beautiful brown Hispanic woman, I'm told. Which must mean something. People can change their minds and nature, it means. Or love is relentlessly powerful. It means that Dallas isn't the same person that I remember, or I didn't really know him in the first place. But even when I visit, I never seem able to find time or the desire to seek him out. Which also means something, I suppose.

Writers are a paranoid species of borderline personalities.

Even on our good days, we see relationships where others see nothing, and obvious stories where sober minds find mere chaos. That day, driving north across the plains, I found myself replaying the moment in the swimming pool -- how Dallas told me his story idea while hunkering down in the water, as if worried that someone might overhear any part of this very strange topic.

He was never the most imaginative soul. The notion that he could invent something as outlandish as that, using his own talents, struck me as laughable. Preposterous, even. But didn't he claim that the machine also delivered insights to the ripe mind? Which made me wonder: Could any of it be true? Was there an enveloping machine that lay over the world and our souls, helping us to navigate through a universe of potential disasters? And did my friend discover it by simple accident? Unless Dallas was only repeating what others had told him. What he had learned with the same studiousness that had earned him straight A's.

Was a secret project unfolding somewhere inside Texas?

Of course there was, I thought. Texas is rich with secret projects. But what if one of those projects was delving into the workings of the invisible God machine? And if so, who was in charge? An odd nationalistic religion? Some multi-national corporation? Or the most secret division of the government? Unless of course it was my friend working alone, in his spare time, using a collection of homemade and very much ad hoc equipment.

If there was a miracle machine, I wondered, how would somebody study its operation and potentials?

On a small, clinical scale, of course.

Then an obvious question finally occurred to me: How did Dallas end up at that first accident? He was a homebody, and it was late on a Saturday night. His apartment was more than a quarter of a mile from the crash, and I knew for a fact that from his balcony, looking out over an empty swimming pool, he couldn't have seen anything suspicious.

With a paranoid's delight, I envisioned The Village serving as somebody's laboratory, a place where odd experiments were performed on ignorant human subjects. The alien machinery was borrowed. A useful nexus was identified and controlled -- like a traffic accident, for instance. Then dozens of random lives were manipulated -- odd, unlikely paths drawn for each of us through the otherwise unwielding quantum potentials -- and the residue of all that careful work leaves one man happily driving across a snow-covered landscape.

What would happen if there were such a machine, and if a man like Dallas took charge of it?

The Soviet Union would eventually vanish, I decided.

Prosperity would rise, and the power of our own great nation, while crime rates would fall to their lowest levels in decades.

But of course, if one man could take charge of such a powerful tool, then others might stumble into the same discoveries. Which made me envision some future world where several determined souls, each with a different set of beliefs, tried to move the world in conflicting paths.

The rumble of a good story announced itself to me, and then as often happens with good stories, it slipped away again ... this time for more than twenty years....

My gas tank was nearly empty.

At what felt like a random spot in the road, I pulled over and bought fuel and a little lunch from the convenience shop. A young woman was working behind the counter, and we talked while I ate one of her greasy microwaved sandwiches. I got her to laugh at my jokes, and she told a few of her own. Then after a little while, she asked, "What do you do for a living?"

I told her.

"I like to read that spaceship stuff," she said. "I love it, in fact."

"What town is this?" I asked.

She told me, and then asked, "Why? You thinking about sticking around?"

I repeated the name of the place, and with a big smile said, "Good place as any. For the time being, why not?"