Guided by Voices

By T Jackson

What happens to you when the universe begins feeding you all of the knowledge and secrets that you can bear? Well, if you are fresh off the boat transplant Aki, you option it into a ludicrous amount of money.. Which would be fine if your actions hadn't garnered the attention of powerful negative influences .. Will Aki survive the war throughout the  night .. Or will the darkness overpower him? Maybe with some unexpected help, things might change.. Or maybe, the darkness will overwhelm them all. 

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• Language: English
• Publisher: T Jackson
• Release date: Jun 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393070092

Book preview

Guided by Voices

A C T  O N E 

THIS THING THAT I AM?

I am only like this for a  moment

This way that I am?

I am only like this for now

And in between the there, here and again?

Resides a story too big for me to fit into this small space of this now..

Which is your here (when?)

Nevertheless I shall try..

It deserves that much.. If no more other kindnesses shall be extended

This is a telling of how I became this way

This is an explanation of the station of where I am

This is my origin story

This is my dissertation that exposes how I am the broken way that I now am

We begin on a sidewalk..

The urban circumstances being hot dog carts and strewn blowing refuse and walking structures that (claimed to be) other people and the millions of other micro-minutiae that make up a passing big city street scenario.. 

And as we players in this unscripted screenplay of life tarried a multicultural melting pot hodgepodge of struggling ideas coalescing.. The city streets that we congrued upon?

We are in the streets of the Big Apple..

Big, beautiful, diverse and politically incorrect New York City

"Come on man!'... The wall street banker's frustration with Aki was clearly growing..

'We've been getting rich working with you!.. Why ruin such a profitable relationship for the both of us ??.. Think about how much more we can make!!.. With your insights and our connections?.. What's the song say?  ‘Fuck with me and get some money son!’.. Brook's brother's two buddies nodded in total agreement with the sentiment...

The smells from the kitchen of this upscale bistro wafted the scents of steak, shrimp,  amuse-bouche and truffles all around..

There were the smells of sauces.. And the scents of reductions abounding in the main dining room of these upper echelon socialites gathered in these rooms of presumed class.. 

And measured indifference..

The back house sounds of clanging dishware being slapped onto a board and running through the industrial washer distracted Aki.. 

But not enough to detour him from getting behind the logic and intent of the main stockbroker’s sentiments...

Aki's predictions with the stock market had been unerringly accurate for the past couple of months... (Aki is second generation American Korean, from the Huang province) and his abilities to circumvent and anticipate stock market activities outweigh even the newest AI algorithm machines and the best MIT mathematicians.... He was so good, in fact, that the Brook's brother's brothers (the group of three former strangers that he currently found himself entangled in negotiations with) had to intentionally fudge some of their investment and hedge funds procurements, as to avoid unnecessary attention from the authorities..... As an Asian American Korean man, Aki realized that 1. How stereotypical the irony was, and, yet 2. How often stereotypes are actually also truths, (and ask about 69% of black guys if you don't believe that one)

Sitting in front of Aki, in this upscale micro plate diner, (the kind of place that would have identified Aki as the help, or a dishwasher, or a wandering street urchin, perhaps, if not for his present company) were 4 checks, all made out to him, as payment for his work with these Wall street brokers, in varying amounts... The highest being one for $200,00 US dollars, the lowest was $40,000 of the same.. The same monies that the Brooks brothers were trying to get Aki to reinvest some portion of with them...

Aki.. While a great many things.. He himself a product from the wrong side of the tracks, a member of the people of poverty, was nonetheless, nobody's fool, and had been waiting for this payday for far too long to piss it all away now...

A flagrant pragmatist, he knew that this kind of windfall was the type that could change, literally everything for him and his mother, and grandparents...

He being the only breadwinner besides his overworked Mother, who barely has time to rest in between her double and triple shifts at the local ER...

Aki also knew that no matter how much money that these pieces of paper represented?...

He could buy new clothing and properties? 

But he'd never truly escape, no matter how much he tried?.. The stigma of low status that his lack of proper healthcare and consumed shelter dinners had given him..

That smell of desperation that the Brooks brothers brothers.. And all of these upper crusters could simply sense upon him..

As unwanted as an untouchable in India..

Rejection by economical diaspora..

Like bum piss on your pants..

Or he?

Some dark alley to be avoided at all costs, lest some strange symbiosis occur, and the lack of social standing and inability to influence somehow leech itself onto you....

Aki mused that the uneven playing field rarely ever seeks to right itself, but.. staring at this obscene amount of money in front of him?

He couldn't help but notice that some recalibration, at least on his part, had occurred..

And he certainly couldn't help but love the universe for it.. And he certainly wasn't going to waste it away now, on a gift that he 1. Had no idea where it had come from and was 2. Totally uncertain on just how long it would last.

Aki had just turned 21 when his world seemed to turn around topsy turvy, and fractals began to follow every move that people made, { the faster the movement, the more elongated the tangent } and the secrets of the world began laying at his feet and spreading their legs before him like wanton temptresses begging to be plowed.

His great grandfather was a highly esteemed member of some council that Aki could make neither heads nor tails of, and, when he was a child, his great grandfather would often take him to be ’presented’ to this secret Council, and his great grandfather would regal him with tales of the ‘Gifts’, sensations or abilities that would imbue themselves in certain family lines every third or fourth generation..

It was all a bit confusing, to say the least..

While Aki still gave his great grandfather a great deal of respect, even as he pulled his dripping dentures out of piss filled bedpans, he didn't ever tell the old man that he thought he was kooky... But this was the same man that shat his sheets and wet himself constantly towards his end, so let's just say that Aki had taken all he had said with a grain of salt.. At least, he had until the universe's panties had laid themselves, drenched and desiring, down in front of his second rate tennis shoes and begged to be screwed..

How he wished that that old man was here now...

He