by David R. Bunch
In my small room with the red-cover bed and the two gray shade-drawn windows I would see the Tower, not in the sundown of memory, for indeed I had never been there, but in the moonlight of thinking. And in my thinking it would be a glorious thing, if only four feet tall, with the moon striking down on the tank that would hold my chains, and the platform inviting, empty. A tall form would stand in the street, hale and straight for an instant, in the moonlight of thinking (although I am a good five inches less than a decent height), then turn and stride for the goal, in good tread, in good speed, the chains riding easy on two little carriers with wheels, silent and clear of the road. In a celebration of moonglow we would scale the Tower to its very top and easily sit on the platform over the metal tank. The chains would slip silently from the wheeled carriers, down through the slotted holes of the tank, pulling our feet after them, until we sat quite triumphantly in silence measuring the win we had done. Not ashamed of the smallness of our victory, indeed quite not ashamed, we would pull out the gay Saunters we had saved, long and patiently saved, against this hour of our deed. Inflating the two small balloons, one red, one almost impossibly bright green, and tying one each to a wrist, we would sit there gay and victorious in the moon-glow, our chains down in the tank, our head up in the stars, from a Tower, but four feet tall.... So much for moon-glow.
The mornings yawn, the sun comes real, cruel and bright, to magnify our chains. The moonglow is gone and the thinking. It is instinct now, pure instinct and fight, to face them where they snarl. Sure, we have dreamed of elephants, big brown elephants with gold houses on their backs and we in a house each morning, riding down in triumph, striding down on stately elephant strides to our tank and leaping off so fast onto the platform that no one would see our chains. A clink, a slip, a small tink-rattle and they’re gone, down in the tank, the chains quite gone to all the world but us, and we sitting high on the platform, four feet high, blowing up the balloons and stone-facing to the crowd. And the crowd muttering, angry, disappointed, somehow debased, and refusing finally to believe that their victim is truly without his chains. I can see them now, bobbing their tonsured and greasy and bald and curled and shave-cut gray old heads together in small worry-clusters, pecking out their shame and their shameful need, wanting somehow to know, desperately needing to know, that though they may not be there now showing to the air, somehow the chains are still there. They must be! Oh yes, they’ll circle the tank; they’ll peer and thump and in small-childish spite kick at my elephant, and they’ll hate me as I sit so gay with my celebration balloons whipping in a spanking cherry-apple wind on that bloom-filled rejoiceful fair spring day. And some one of them, some desperate bright spiteful one of them, will suddenly think all on a sorry debased instant, “They’re in the tank! Probably. He’s dropped them down through holes!” Then it will hit them all, like a big wave on a beach hit them, break across them and engulf them with the pleasant wetty thought, “We’ve got him again! They’re in the tank. Probably! He’s dropped them down through holes!”
Well—then it will be just a short matter of bringing up the X-ray machines, taking pictures from all sides and all angles and confirming what is to be confirmed. They’ll cut in after that, with their big acetylene torches, and some will be on the far side from the heat, with little can openers, busily working, making with the marks, so desperate will be their need to get in through the bottom, expose me and confirm that I still have my chains. The acetylene torches will get in; the can openers will not. But it will be all the same. They’ll put my chains out through the bottom of the tank, through the holes they’ve carved with the acetylene, and they’ll pull my legs out too as far as it is reasonable to do it. And I know I’ll make a sorry sight then, my celebration balloons whipping smartly and pertly above, green and red flashes in the apple-cherry-blossom air, my leg chains, feet and legs blooming small common unnecessary arcs, twin-pendulumlike down from the tank holes, and I in between the gaiety and the common shame, grim and exposed and determined.... So much for elephants. So much for Towers and tanks, too, for that matter. But don’t think we’ve been beaten. Defeated? Oh no! I’ve a trick for it; just for this kind of thing. I’ve a trick.
It is called mooning the sky egg and working up the air. What we do, we stick a structure such as an egg, one with smooth brown walls and little specky windows, up into the sky, up into the blue, high, high, impossibly, almost, high, high as we can go in thought, in any thought. Then we pick a task for the baser one of our selves—everyone being at least two selves as I guess is almost universally unarguably understood—and put him on the rock pile of his job. My self with leg chains, the self that longs to go up on a little Tower for a small victory and a concealment of chains, but never makes it, I have been putting here of late on a job that is called rolling the air, or on a job that is about the equivalent of rolling the air, this job being called unrolling the air. Either of these jobs requires very little or no physical labor, not a prohibitive amount of mental strength or mental health, and either of these jobs can keep a person’s self well occupied for quite a long, long time. And sometimes in thinking of it I am at a loss to know why this type, or a closely related type, of work shouldn’t just as well be all the people’s tasks for a lifetime of achievement.
To roll the air, I first divide, mentally, all the air in my task block into neat, uniform strips, each strip being as wide and as thick as I want it to be for it to make the kind of roll I think will best fit in with the overall air-rolling mission for that day. And this stripping-the-air, as I speak of it, necessarily lends itself to almost, or quite, an infinite number of variations in strip width and strip thickness. I can have every other strip the same, every third strip the same, side-by-side trips the same, no strips the same, all of the strips the same, five strips the same, then vary four or five or six and on and on. But I do always try to keep to some recognizable pattern, some sense, as it were, in my stripping. And I never start the actual roll part of the job until I have completed the entire stripping of the task block or, as you might say, my complete air area, and have tabbed it in my mind. Then, after stripping the complete air area and tabbing it firmly in my mind, it is just the jolly and diverting task of sitting there on my chains in the middle of the street on an edge of the task block and amidst the smirking, the coughing and the bright sayings of the crowd, starting my roll and winding in! Of course I have to be mentally sharp, up on my toes, as the saying is, to keep each strip stacked with its sister or brother size, which can have a very great bearing on the intensity of my task when it comes to the unrolling part of the job. Because I’m just doing this as a kind of exercise actually, or a diversion in achievement, we could say, and I have absolutely no attention or desire to permanently rearrange the air in the task block or, as we said, the air area. To leave it that way, permanently rearranged, indeed would make me feel un-worthy, and from such an act very guilty of a violation of nature.
And up in the sky-high egg, high, high away from the mains, the tanks, the tasks, and all the tonsured, greasy, bald, curled or shave-cut peering heads—all, All! malicious watchers—how goes it? Well, it goes fine there. And how means it? Well, it means fine there. Ummm ... mm ... rrimm ... mmmm ... Oh, the blisses of swaying in the sky-high egg ...
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Afterword:
When I am not writing literary stories (and verse) that pay usually nothing or very close to that, or science-fiction-fantasy stories that pay usually closer to nothing than they should, I earn my living doing things (in a civilian capacity) for the U.S. Air Forces. Because I do not have to depend upon my writing for a livelihood, I wear no editor’s and no publisher’s collar when I sit down to that white paper. Which isn’t to say that I wouldn’t like to earn a living as a writer. But I should also like to keep my writer’s soul intact. And since I’m no fool in such matters, I’ve accepted a compromise. It’s a hard compromise really, because the other work takes considerable time and energy away from the writing. But then the whole bit is a bit of a compromise. I suppose, the whole little drama of the kicking and thrashing around between the long sleep of the Before and the longer sleep of the After.
Except in Moderan! In Moderan there is no sleep of the After. Those chaps are designed forever. And do they compromise? You’d better believe they do not! They just sit back at the switch panels of War Rooms for around-the-clock launching of war heads—varoom varoom varoom—in their main game of war. And when an uneasy truce flares up, they don’t paint flowers or rush off to Sunday school. They are their true-bad selves. They know how to earn mean points in peace as well as in war. And they don’t bend or pretend. Hate is their main virtue, as war is their main play. And entirely admirable they, because they have no hypocrisy. They step right out there and say it in the daylight, speak of good launchings, of Strongholds honeycombed and of arms and legs of enemies stacked by the Wall.
So I’ve overdrawn it. But I’m saying something in both these stories about truth and untruth, as indeed what else does a serious writer ever have in mind? The I in both is true. In one the I suffers a great deal, being a dreamer, from the niggling nagging cares of the everyday world and its people. But he escapes to truth finally in his sky-high egg after first confounding his tormentors and saying something to them in his own way (the absurd air-rolling and unrolling tasks) which they no doubt do not understand. In the other story the I has arrived at truth a long time ago. Just by being a Moderan master, shiny and sure, he is at truth, the cold unarguable truth of the switch panels, the War Rooms, the “replacements” to live forever, the introven, as opposed to the absurd hopes and unsureties of the flabby flesh-bum and his talk of decency, whatever in the world such an alien word could mean! ... In one story the I has to escape into fantasy for the world of truth he wants. In the other there is no escape required. He has the world he wants, the only world he knows really, and the only one he can see as possibly workable for a satisfying life forever. The world of the flesh-bum, replete with flesh-hopes and flesh-doubts, is merely an absurdity the Moderan people have left a long time ago and far back.