Pavlov's Colon: Book One of the trilogy A Sequence of Events

By Howard Pierce

The trilogy begins at a near future (Pavlov's Colon - 2048) where the raw comingling of religion, capitalism, and human nature has dragged a bungling world down into muffled, choking crisis. Fortunately, a handful of clear-brained individuals from various corners of the globe are brought together, either by luck or by a well-meaning algorithm, to become pivotal actors on the fragmented world stage. Driven by a shared sense of the profound inanity of the universe, they cobble together a way forward that is undeniably less bad than what almost was, and which allows human consciousness to live on to fight another day.


The second book (Macronome - 2128) describes the twilight years confronting the enigmatic band's survivors, as the rhythm of failure is once again accelerating across the globe and humanity itself requires significant upgrades if it is to survive. The reboot scheme that emerges speaks to human creativity in the face of peril and our extravagant will to live. The strategy is less obvious than a spaceship escape to Mars, but far more achievable by a rapidly degrading species stranded on a crumbling world.


The final book (Jason - 3215) offers a quiet reflection on one life and the spinning universe of universes that contains it. In conversations between Jason, a donkey mystic who comprehends all of human history, and The Methods, the sarcastic and needy manifestation of all the working rules of the cosmos, an imaginative understanding is reached, a shared appreciation between organism and organizer for the aching beauty of the doomed but universal struggle against entropy and the final stillness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 26, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667856834

Book preview

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© Howard Pierce 2022

Print ISBN: 978-1-66785-682-7

eBook ISBN: 978-1-66785-683-4

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

For Wendy and Haleigh and Liu Liu and Lola

With thanks to Bill and Richard and Dan

…..and for many others who lent me shared experiences and useful observations.

NB: None of the characters in this book are those people, or any other real people.

A Sequence of Events

Pavlov’s Colon

Macronome

Jason

The trilogy begins at a near future (Pavlov’s Colon–2048) where the raw comingling of religion, capitalism, and human nature has dragged a bungling world down into muffled, choking crisis. Fortunately, a handful of clear-brained individuals from various corners of the globe are brought together, either by luck or by a well-meaning algorithm, to become pivotal actors on the fragmented world stage. Driven by a shared sense of the profound inanity of the universe, they cobble together a way forward that is undeniably less bad than what almost was, and which allows human consciousness to live on to fight another day.

The second book (Macronome–2128) describes the twilight years confronting the enigmatic band’s survivors, as the rhythm of failure is once again accelerating across the globe and humanity itself requires significant upgrades if it is to survive. The reboot scheme that emerges speaks to human creativity in the face of peril and our extravagant will to live. The strategy is less obvious than a spaceship escape to Mars, but far more achievable by a rapidly degrading species stranded on a crumbling world.

The final book (Jason–3215) offers a quiet reflection on one life and the spinning universe of universes that contains it. In conversations between Jason, a donkey mystic who comprehends all of human history, and The Methods, the sarcastic and needy manifestation of all the working rules of the cosmos, an imaginative understanding is reached, a shared appreciation between organism and organizer for the aching beauty of the doomed but universal struggle against entropy and the final stillness.

Table of Contents

2048

The Problem

The War Room

Mongola, Sudan

Missionary Man

A Peaceful Day in the War Room

Metro

The Special Assignment

Immatong Mountains

The Tale of a Servant

God moves in mysterious ways

God, still moving

Danni

The glowing ember

Accident Report

Back in the mountains

Logic and theater

Timeline

This isn’t about money

Caravan of one

On the beach

The Players

The Plumbers

It’s all about the indexing

Doubt

Shimmering catch

You get what you pay for

Art Prank

Safely Home

Serendipity

Galatians

The Path that is Straight

Things change

It’s a quantum thing

Two angels

Perfect ambassadors

Garden gnome

Once a Mormon

Maybe there is a god

Product visualization

At the ranch

Exquisite confusion

Word Cloud

Trolls

Behind every bush

C’est la vie

Diaspora

News conference

An apology

Godless rabbit killers

Making calls

Thirty-four floors up

Love, Skramble and Hyde

Watching the world go by

Helping to make the right decision

Buddha is the router

Vigor and experience

In the weeds it gets icky

A steady hand on the tiller

Time is your particular bowl of soup

Thank you my brother

What the camera saw

Pavlov’s colon

The Arab of Oslo

Losing is winning

Heaven’s waiting room

Slow walk to a short straw

Discourse between gentlemen

Enough money for dog food

Taking the bait

Better angels

Watchful angels

Archangel Michael

2048

Paolo leaned in on the copper covered bar top with a left elbow wearing down on a familiar half-moon dent in the soft ochre surface, the comm screen news droning on above him while Grace glided in and out of view behind him in the mirror, floating between sticky bar tables and the squeaky kitchen door. It was nearly time for the sports report and he took off his sunglasses to rub his eyes. He didn’t care about sports but Grace was too busy to flirt right now so he looked up into the stale glare.

On the oversaturated screen a familiar looking news reader seemed momentarily flustered, apparently distracted by something she was hearing through her private feed, but regaining her composure she picked up sheets of notes and tamped them straight before launching into the just-breaking story: "Moments ago President Lester Cleland was taken by Our Lord in a rapturous ascent from the White House Rose Garden."

The news reader seemed to look straight at Paolo, with veiled shock flushing just beneath her pale blond competence. While details are only just now coming in, Comm2 has exclusive video feed of what appears to be the miraculous rapture of President Lester Cleland only minutes ago. Let’s watch and pray.

A spoon dropped into an empty bar sink, clattering against dirty glasses. The room fell silent and Paolo from his stool watched with the other patrons and staff as a new feed filled the screen. With no preamble or introduction, the crystal clear image of Cleland stepped out from behind a large rhododendron, dreadfully naked and obese, looking first with his smarmy smile into the camera for a few seconds and then with unctuous devotion up to the sky.

As Paolo and the sparse bar crowd watched, Lester’s pallid body began to shake as if it was resisting some great sucking power coming from above. The smile of calm remained even as the building g-force pulled at his soft skin, shaking his drooping breasts and vibrating his large earlobes. With a silent jolt felt by every viewer, gravity and logic were finally breached and he lifted off from the manicured lawn with a lurching wobble, and as the camera followed with a steady frame on his head and chest Lester began to accelerate upwards. His eyes swelled in their puffy sockets and the skin around his mouth began to pull back into his jowls, deforming the rapturous smile into a fluttering lip-beating grimace.

Speechless, fifteen patrons and a handful of the Westin staff watched as the President soared up and away from the camera’s range, disappearing into the clouds above Washington. The feed cut out abruptly, leaving the Comm2 news team anxiously assembling in the background while the subdued news reader played the short feed over, treading water, promising more details to come.

After four replays Paolo slid off the stool, laid ten dollars on the bar, and walked out into the hotel lobby where reality remained mostly innocent of the craziness that was about to rain down. In that moment only one solitary older man seemed to be in on the joke. He sat in a worn lobby chair near the fountain staring deeply into his tablet with a face flushed blood red above his crisp white collar. Just as Paolo walked by, the man looked up with a confidential glimmer behind his eyes, an ecstatic glint, a look that combined righteousness and defiant expectation.

Breaking off the man’s creepy gaze and walking out onto the hotel steps above the late afternoon street, Paolo looked both ways over the bobbing heads of the flowing pedestrians. He tried to imagine how it had been accomplished and what might happen next but couldn’t seem to get very far on either tack. There was nothing to be done beyond simply observing things with care as they unfolded, so he reseated his sunglasses on his nose and headed south towards the Metro Center in augmented twilight. He would be early for their show but he would be entertained by watching the stirred behavior of the commuters as they became aware of or processed the breaking news. From his evening stage he could watch them like agitated bees staring at their devices as they headed down the long escalators to the clatter and rumble of the trains far below.

Leaning back against the poster-covered wall, his pan pipes at his feet in the half-opened backpack, he stood guard over the evening’s performance space while waiting for Sousa and the other members of his street band to arrive. He wondered if this rapture shit would be good or bad for business.

The Problem

Curtis sat, suspended above the damp tarmac in a hushed and empty cabin, waiting patiently for departure and surrounded by familiar vibrations, hums, and dim lights. Beside and below, the strip of on-ramp shimmered reddish grey with dark tufts of evening colored grass softening its edges. Periodically the runway changed hue to a greenish grey and the plane would roll a few dozen meters forward, until finally the lightning had passed and the tarmac’s surface glow turned a bright green creating a pleasing aura in the wisps of fog that clung to the ground, signaling that they could depart.

With a rising whine of turbines the plane pulled onto the ascent lane and immediately began accelerating smoothly, gaining gravity while losing weight. Water beaded, streaked, then flowed horizontally across the windows where the setting sun was just breaking through dark cloud banks to the west, falling ever lower as they climbed and rolled towards the south.

On this particular early evening Curtis was headed to the Bush Spaceport in Florida, an unexceptional venue in his line of work. Bush housed one of six secure UN conference centers distributed around the globe and Curtis had a suite of offices for his diplomatic teams at each. The group of people he would be facilitating over the coming days was only slightly more exceptional, mostly a familiar mix of leading lights in science, politics and communications, with a heavy emphasis on politics.

However, the problem at hand rated as truly exceptional. Lester Cleland, 49th president of the United States of America, had raptured.

Biblically correct, naked as a man taken by heart attack on the way to the shower, and perfectly synchronized with the pulse of national commtent consumption at 5:15 Eastern Standard Time on a breezy Thursday afternoon, Lester Cleland had suddenly left this mortal coil.

Taken at face value, Curtis’s starting point for any problem, this might be considered a good thing by many of the people who would be sitting at the conference table tomorrow. Some would simply be glad the earth was rid of Lester’s petty bullying presence, while others would rejoice in his spectacular good fortune as they estimated their own coming reward for similar faith and rectitude.

There was little Curtis could do for the moment other than settle into a calm space and focus on the profound absurdity of the whole rapture affair. Soon enough he would be consumed by the machinations of ‘why’ and ‘what next’, when in truth he would rather be exploring the ‘how’ of the strange event. All alone in the whisper jet, just staring at his water bottle, he already felt exhausted. It was going to take a soul draining few weeks to untangle things, to get the many interconnected flywheels of the major world states, religious orders, and comm organizations rebalanced and spinning again. Not to mention reframing the whole affair for the various citizenries once he had a clue what was going on. He would need to pace himself.

After thirty years now he was finally admitting to himself that he was tired of being patient and rational, tired of being the honest broker and taking the arrows from every side. Worn down by the usually stupid conflicts he had to try to understand and then pretend to care about, while sorting through the many layers of lies and subplots. But this problem felt different, at least so far, which was modestly encouraging.

Theory has it that what goes up must come down, but Lester never did. Maybe bits of him splattered back to earth, but not as far as anyone knew. Every comm source on the planet had the spectacular video feed within minutes of the actual event. Seventy-eight percent of those alive on earth at the time had seen the dramatic thirteen seconds within eight hours, by which time crowds had formed spontaneously across the Northern Americas and much of the EU. Crowds of those who would be next. Millions who felt the lure of the rapture story and longed to be righteous and rewarded, waited. You could feel them holding their collective breaths. If it was dark they lit candles. A few shed their clothes with evangelical discomfort while most assumed the force of the coming ascension would be sufficient to strip them back to innocence.

There were other believers who took the glass to be half empty and they waited for the plagues to commence, convinced in their pits of self-doubt that they had specifically not been chosen.

Across the land, breathtaking numbers of provider/believers opened their e-pads and wrote scripts for both of these groups. Curtis and his team learned quickly from their data feeds that Dopamil eye drops must be the perfect way to enhance the pre-apocalypse experience. Supplies didn’t last long.

And the vast US electorate, the mass viewership, looked on with benign and drug soaked complacency while chattering discussions about the meaning of it all ensued across the Comm channels. All groups shared one commonality: their uncharacteristic activities scrambled every behavioral algorithm running against every database in every government and Comm organization. The International Diplomatic Corps (IDC), Curtis Dresden’s employer, was no exception.

Curtis studied the internal graphs and reports as they generated every few hours, rippling unbidden onto his various devices. He loved the way the never-ending blue trending lines would creep upwards, first breaking through the edges of the cautionary green normal bounding zones, and then further on through the magenta abnormal warning layers, setting off dramatic and never before seen alerts that must have been machined into the system long ago by unknown programmers. Invisible typing by long-dead engineers who probably never expected their alarms to be heard.

Remembering the chaotic internal meeting he had left only a few hours ago, Curtis noted with mild self-approval that he was feeling remarkably tranquil as the jet dropped into a landing glide path. He was glad to be out of D.C. and on his own and, as he stepped off the plane and into the muted tones of the VIP concourse segregated discretely within the bowels of the H.W. Bush Spaceport, he found his spirits had perked up nicely. Despite the late hour the bright lights didn’t bother his eyes too much and walking through final security into the conference control floor he felt twenty years younger as he considered again how all the normal rules and deadly protocols of diplomacy were currently irrelevant.

He looked into the scanner, feeling the eyes of security agents scouring him remotely, and while he waited for the final door to open with its frosted glass showing tiny wires embedded in the milky plates, he called his wife Julia’s sleeping device to leave her a message. He spilled out his quick impression of the dead-of-night quarantined moment in this secure waiting area, a place so familiar but which still provoked an irrational guilt-laced anxiety after all these years. He finished the message with his love, wishes for a good day tomorrow, and a promise to keep her informed as the coming weird theater unfolded.

The War Room

His grandfather had watched an old movie called Doctor Strangelove at least once every year, and at a young age Curtis had learned about the dark illuminations of comedy by watching with him. Now, as he half-listened to the formal introductions being made, Curtis imagined he was sitting in that black and white war room while he prepared himself for the day ahead.

The huge round conference table became triangular in his mind’s eye, with each of the three sides taking on a separate color. He assigned one of the three hues to each of the conference participants. Red: for the UIC (Unity in Christ) folks who effectively owned the room and the whole space port, and therefore sat with the best view of the massive screen banks hung high on one wall. Green: for the peacemakers scattered through the assembly in a random manner, non-aligned and therefore without much strength. Yellow: for the SA (Servants of Allah), an increasingly tightly bound hodgepodge of clever imams and wily opportunists, usually a counterweighting force to be reckoned with but today off balance and with no plan other than to wait and see.

Scattered here and there sat a few colorless Comm4 reps, business-like and pleasantly godless rabbit killers at heart, relatively predictable but never to be trusted. Curtis watched all of them as they settled into their seats and connected to their personal support feeds, adjusting ear buds and tipping screens for privacy.

As the requisite preamble droned on, early messages began to appear on his screen. His principal deputy Carlo, with nasal east coast voice piercing every head around the table, methodically walked down the list of all those to be recognized at the meeting, providing each with an opportunity to identify themselves and briefly burnish the group or country they represented. Curtis had drawn up the list himself which allowed him to continue reading the incoming text messages fast enough to almost catch up to real time. It was mostly lobbying drivel, heavily weighted towards the UIC contingent, exuding a selfish glee that was barely camouflaged by their oily politeness.

And then he saw what he had been looking for amongst all the odes to Christ, clipped at the mandatory two hundred and fifty characters but filled with enough spleen to give him the magical starting point the situation required, cloyingly pious, carefully non-confrontational, yet obnoxiously blunt in its after taste. The note was signed by Carl Strobe, who sat two chairs to his left, now the senior representative for UIC and close associate of the departed Lester Cleland.

On Carlo’s trailing notes of welcome Curtis rose, sipped his water, and looked around the room waiting for murmurs to subside. There was already an official problem for the convocation, he had written the text himself and sent it out to all the invitees yesterday, but the note from Strobe underscored what a mealy mouthed piece of political caution it really was. This situation demanded the proverbial kick in the collective ass, an inescapable starting point that provided no chance for dodge or diversion.

Friends, inspired by the astonishing fate of our esteemed colleague Lester Cleland, I have received a torrent of proposed Problem Statements, including some inspired thoughts from our group here just this morning. Since I can’t read them all to you, I have synthesized them into the following re-statement of our current Problem.

Curtis swung his head in an inclusive arc, casting an all-business glower across the great expanse of table which brought them all to silence and focus, and after a brief pause to remind them who was in charge he read from a handwritten note-to-self.

In short, our Christian brothers from UIC assert that the rapturous transport of their political leader Lester Cleland proves that their God wins.

Curtis waited just a short moment for maximum impact and then continued, Normally I would permit a half day of discussion in order to achieve a precisely worded consensus Problem Statement; however in light of the alarming levels of conflict potential across our scales, along with the unprecedented variations and disagreements in our predictive social algorithms, I thought it best to cut to the chase.

They waited for him, fourteen separate faces holding their breaths, unsure where he would take this provocation. Before we can discover the true circumstances of President Cleland’s departure, or usefully discuss what stabilizing measures to take, we must first come to terms with the bizarre religiosity of the event.

He could tell now that his baiting had brought the Christians to a full boil. Bizarre was a word they used only to describe others. Therefore, as I open up the initial round of declarations, I request that each party wishing to speak limit themselves to framing comments that are responsive to the new Problem Statement. You will each have two minutes to express your views regarding the existence of any god, the relationship between Lester Cleland’s exit and any particular god, and whether this event changes the balance of power at this table.

Curtis knew he had stepped way over some diplomatic line, but for a shimmering beautiful moment he once again loved his job. There was no precedent for this situation, full authority was currently vested in him and they really had to follow his rules, at least for some undetermined amount of time.

Last night on the plane he had indulged in the fantasy that a real examination and debate might be staged. God is dead says Nietzsche. Nietzsche is dead says God. But most of them sitting at this round table had missed the freshman’s discovery of timeless unanswerable questions, proceeding instead directly to the junior’s certainty in attractive and politically convenient answers. Actually most of them had missed it all as they fought and clawed their way up and out of some regional political pack. No time for Nietzsche today. They hadn’t heard of him.

Curtis caught himself wandering and refocused, steering back towards grubby reality which was truly in progress.

The center of kinetic energy at the table was hard to mistake. Carl Strobe, engorged towards stroke or head-blast, leapt to his feet, pounding the table with thin wrists and strange force. Curtis turned a calm face and recognized Carl as the clock in the corner of the central screen began its count from 120 seconds to zero. But, as Strobe’s words and spittle filled the air, Curtis found his attention diverted towards a small black man with his hand raised seated directly under the big screens. The man had a greenish reflected light from the screen above glossed over his shiny bald head, but it was the eyes that drew Curtis in, and as Strobe ran out of atomized bile all the others at the table turned towards this silent man as well.

Seconds passed as even Strobe ebbed back to audience and Curtis recognized Soheil Sanjee, senior counselor for the Servants of Allah, whispering to Carlo to switch the mike feeds to a correcting directional. Quietly, Sanjee thanked the chair for recognizing him and began his own framing statement.

After a brief lag the disembodied voice of a translation bot came through the earbuds, soothing and chant-like, while Sanjee’s brown eyes and thin lips, simultaneously business-like and mischievous, took control of the room.

Your god does not have the power to perform miracles, neither this one nor any other. My god has no such power as well, since both our gods are trapped in the frail arms of we men. Our pallid achievements are their inherent limitations, as they are our minds’ inventions and we clip their wings with our trifling abilities to imagine greater things. So, Mr. Strobe, I invite you to step back from the precarious edge on which you find yourself at this moment. This event is big and it has been cast with precision and great production values, but soon the world will know that it was a hoax, and then…

Here was a shrewd breaking point, set like a land mine for Strobe to step on, and bursting out again with Christian indignation he blurted, We all saw it with our own eyes, a saint’s ascension. We witnessed firsthand the Word of god made manifest. Thousands, millions, have been saved through their acceptance of Christ this past week, drawn into his family by their witnessing of the promise of the Bible. Do you dare to say this is not so? Carl Strobe had never been surer of anything in his seventy plus years.

The gauntlet thrown down at the feet of the quiet North African reverberated and Curtis feared the worst. As he gathered his thoughts and prepared to regain control by way of parliamentary procedure, Sanjee resumed speaking with perfect timing and now in perfect English.

We have his head.

Curtis spoke firmly, cutting across the buzzing swarm of quiet urgencies being uttered into private feeds. Mr. Sanjee, could you be precise as you expand on that very interesting statement?

Of course Mr. Dresden. Yes, in fact a group of fishermen from the El Molo tribe found the head of Mr. Cleland at the foot of a mountain named Kulau. Sanjee smiled impishly as he continued. These men did not know to whom the head belonged, merely that it was not from their neighborhood.

Curtis interrupted him at this point with the question of the moment. Mr. Sanjee, could you tell us where these El Molo fellows live?

Ah yes , excuse me Mr. Dresden. The El Molo live on the shores of Lake Rudolph, in the territory of Kenya but within view of the Sudanese border and the mountains of north eastern Uganda. He looked at Curtis as if to say, may I continue? and Curtis could think of nothing he wished to add at that point. Thank you, that is helpful.

So Sanjee began a travelogue which, for all its stilted strangeness, captured his audience with its ring of ‘no one could make this up’ truth. Our sources, who are very close to the El Molo tribe, report that the head was quickly preserved in the bladder of a giant Nile perch, evidently a well-tested method for keeping meat fresh provided the bladder is regularly wetted down. Within 24 hours these fisherman traded the head, still with the bladder, to a caravan of Somali traders. The reported price paid was two rather ancient Uzi machine guns, a basket of ammo clips, and several Indian magazines featuring naked women. The Somalis then headed southeast around the back of Mount Kulau and into the Chalbi desert.

Laughter exploded in Curtis’ earbuds as Nestor, his producer, nearly wet himself in the control room. I guess now we know what that evil bag of shit was actually worth on the open market.

Curtis permitted himself a careful smile as he surveyed the faces at the table. The reflection back was mostly expressions of stunned and amused disbelief, with the exception of Strobe and Wain Robbe, Carl’s UIC assistant and lackey from South Africa, both of whom looked ready to explode with indignation. Excuse me again Representative Sanjee. Curtis felt he needed to lance the growing boil. Could you illuminate for us how you have come by this very detailed account?

Yes of course Mr. Chairman. The carefully timed pause was the work of a diplomatic artist. A sip of water followed by a humble face swept across the table in a slow counter clockwise motion ending with the fuming and confused Strobe. An honest and meek missionary who has lived in a small outpost in these parts for over a decade submitted this report orally to the Kenyan authorities a few hours after the Somalis sailed into the great desert. Ironically he works for the Unity in Christ and comes originally from Chicago. Shall I continue?

Text messages from all corners of the Roundtable cued anxiously on his screen, but Curtis decided to enjoy this exquisite moment with unalloyed attention. Oh by all means. I presume we will get to the parts where positive identification is made and we get a FedEx tracking number.

Before Sanjee could resume, the tree full of owls two chairs to his left rattled out a choking scream. You are an abomination and I command you to admit your blasphemous lie. You and your people are not fit to look upon any part of this miracle. Your pathetic attempt to confuse and manipulate will bring destruction to all that participate in this unholy trick. Now looking at Curtis, Mr. Desmond, I invoke article 911 and insist you have this charlatan removed from the discussion and the room.

But there was no need for response from Curtis and the misnomer Desmond, meant no doubt as a clumsy intentional snub, threw him momentarily back to his study days. Desmond Tutu and some commission he had learned about. Reconciliation? No matter, as now no one was looking at Strobe or listening to him.

On all three big screens there now streamed a silent video feed that panned across a nearly barren moonscape of scattered volcanic looking rocks. Nestor brought up the color saturation and overlaid the faint sound of wind over dunes. In the background, perfectly framed with smooth red-orange slopes leading to a rocky black top, was a mountain that must be Kulau. The image panned left and zoomed into a clutch of very short men standing in front of a tiny spherical hut made of twigs, hides, and mud. A vaguely curious donkey-like animal stands behind them, and the men don’t smile. Despite their sullen looks, one of them holds a head proudly out in front of his rounded belly. The donkey stretches its neck over the shoulder of the short man and nibbles on the left ear of the corpse-head until the man forces it back with a quick shoulder motion.

Then the camera begins a steady zoom in on the head. Without doubt, and with the devastating understatement of news feed made by a master war rep, it is clearly their dear departed Board member and President of the United States, Lester Cleland. Right down to his signature elephantine earlobes and greasy jowls.

Impossible, lies, this is a trick of the most foul and dark side of the devil himself. We will burn your rotten confederation of godless, backwards, little dung-states to a smoldering pile of stinking cinders.

Before Strobe could draw a breath Ula Bronjson, cold blonde hair and thin blue eyes, from the green side of the table’s world, signaled her place in the speaking cue.

Curtis allowed himself a curt and dismissive transition. Mr. Strobe, Article 911 is not a useful invocation at this time. Yes, Ms. Bronjson, you have the floor.

That feed is the first thing I have seen in the last several days that feels like solid reality. The resolution is excellent, and while trickery is always a possibility in these times, it certainly looks like Lester Cleland to me. Ula’s eyes actually sparkled with a bit of playfulness which was distinctly out of character for her. When can we expect to have our technicians inspect the exhibit?

Curtis held up his hand in official hesitation, he froze the mikes and feeds with a slightly dramatic press of the red button switch in front of him, and he listened to his earbuds as Nestor Montrose, his jaded but trusted producer, tried to choke off laughter and complete a useful sentence of late-breaking information. Curtis, Curtis, yes they do have the head. It’s on a Comm1 jet expected into Zurich in about 30 minutes.

Curtis stood up and stepped away from the table in order to keep his conversation private. Who has it? Who found it and connected it to us? And why a Comm1 jet, why not one of our IDC planes?

Nestor took a breath on the other end of the line. He had a lot to summarize and he was without a full deck of cards. Well, it would appear that there was a missionary in the area who notified the Kenyan police, but that’s not particularly relevant it seems. Lackey and his boys are still collecting crumbs and tracking down various threads, but here is what I think we know.

The shuffling of documents on Nestor’s desk could be heard and Curtis knew he was positioning various portals on his many screens. Intake of adenoidal breath, clearing of throat, chuckle. So there was also a tourist safari in the area, budding biologists or sociologists or something, getting a look at the cradle of humanity. The natives show them the head to scare the gaggle of blond girls. I guess it was still clear that Cleland was a white guy. The girls recognize the face and start to blog to their friends state-side within minutes; they may even have sent a picture, that part’s unclear. The guy leading the safari hears all the giggling and comes over to check it out. Gets the drift of who the un-shrunken head belongs to and gives the Somalis enough money to take possession before they head off back into the desert. He, a guy named David Amery, connects with Lloyd’s online private auction and brokers it for 2.7 million in a matter of two hours. Guess who the buyer is? Dying to know aren’t you?...your little buddy Sanjee’s folks over at Comm1.

Nestor stopped for a breath, and to savor the irony and oddness. All this with a timeline of between seventy-two and eighty-four hours from the original blast-off. The Servants messaged us about two minutes ago to say the jet was on the way, dry ice and all. Before Curtis could respond Nestor added, Lackey can’t find a fault in the compiled timeline so far. He gives it a ninety percent likely. Your turn, have fun. Oh yeah, Lackey says there may be more to those El Molo brothers than meets the eye, but the Somalis are well known nomadic traders in that area.

Curtis turned back to the political chaos of the roundtable, trying to craft a next step plan while a small part of his brain marveled suspiciously at how well-preserved Lester’s head was. Perch bladder was bound to become the next low-tech rage, maybe as a skin cream.

Mongola, Sudan

As the comm line rang, Dahlgren was making tea and watching the early morning BBC political feed. Behind the screen, out the open window and beyond the scrubby brown lawn, the big river carried a floating pile of disembodied thorn tree branches across his field of view. The brown spiky mass held two large birds perched atop and what looked like a fluttering white flag of toilet paper snagged in the prickly stack. It drifted by as he turned a part of his attention to the call.

While in the foreground, Norris and Werner sat like two browned Buddhas in lawn chairs, ten meters back from the edge of the river bank. Aged into well-leathered characters from an African Alice in Wonderland, each wore a colorful cotton wrap cinched across a happy gut and each held a well-oiled rifle in his lap. Norris, a hard edged Brit whose sixty-plus year-old frame was slowly desiccating in the African sun, favored a vintage Polish sniper’s rifle. Werner, as a contrarian statement regarding his Germanic heritage, used a scope-less Israeli Ligate. Slightly shorter, with a welcoming smile that seemed to counterbalance Norris’ glare, Werner looked the part of the senior bush veteran who could tell stories late into the night. Between them a small carved table held two bottles of Tusker Ale and a cheaply decorated water pipe. It was 6:30 in the morning and another perfect day on the banks of the Nile was just beginning.

Now who could that be thought Dahl, as he moved the whistling kettle off the burner and opened the comm line? In answer, the BBC moved to a background square and Curtis Dresden’s face filled the center frame.

Well, what a wonderful morning it is already proving to be. said Dahl. Curtis, it has been far too long since we have seen one another, how are you this fine day?

Curtis smiled as he watched Dahl pour the boiling water into a steeping pot cast in the unmistakable shape of the head of Albert Einstein. Dahl my old friend, can I start by asking if this line is secure? I’m sorry to begin with the bureaucratic detail but I still live in the world you abandoned and things here are touchier than ever.

Not to worry my diplomatic brother. We are heard only by the crocodiles here; although my friends and current house guests Norris and Werner will be coming in for tea in the next few minutes.

Well then Dahl, I will move quickly to the business end of this conversation and we can chat more generally in a few moments. I have an urgent request of you, a delicate errand that needs to be run in the next few hours. It will pay extremely well and may prove to be both diplomatically significant and of some personal interest. You know I wouldn’t call at this hour if this were not a very sensitive job; a job that must be handled with the utmost professionalism and discretion.

Dahl looked up from the mechanics of his tea ceremony to see both a tired looking Curtis and behind him out the window, two aging snipers preparing to fire at a yellow plastic bottle floating down the muddy river. Yes, you wear your mood on your face my friend. What is it you want me to do?

As he launched into a description of the doings south of Mongola, complete with pictures of the donkey and El Molo, along with an explanation of the pressing need to discover a bit more unbiased detail regarding the head of Lester Cleland, two shots rang out and Curtis raised an eyebrow ever so slightly.

That is just a bit of pre-breakfast target practice. My associates are amusing themselves while awaiting a proper morning meal. By the way, it sounds as if this rapture thing has created quite a stir in your neighborhoods. I must say it seems a silly bit of theater from our quiet seats here in the desert.

Well, silly as it may well be, the forces of the Christian gods have chosen to stake their dubious credibility on the righteous meaning of it all. So it’s in all our best interest to get to the bottom of the drama as quickly as possible.

Dahl smiled and the camera tracked the whiteness of his teeth and turban as he settled himself onto a couch, pulling back to capture a clean but worn floor of dark brown wooden planks and an ochre wall with a smallish picture centered over the couch. Curtis tightened the zoom and noted angular and drawn signs of aging on Dahl’s brown face. Still the ever present smile of friendly complicity lay just beneath. He had known and worked with Dahl for over twenty years. Steady, balanced, always inscrutable, he had been the perfect diplomat until one day a few years ago he had suddenly announced his retirement and disappeared from the scenery. Curtis suspected that he was one of very few people from Dahl’s former life who could still contact him, which he had done only two or three times. He appreciated that Dahl had chosen Africa for seclusion but knew very little about his life there. He wasn’t even sure if Dahl thought of himself as African or Arab or neither. Somehow he thought he might be Tunisian originally. Anyway, the fact that his chosen retreat was so close to the land of the El Molo seemed a piece of karmic good fortune.

OK my friend, why don’t you tell me the whole story, and where I fit in. Dahl sat motionless on the couch with his tea pot on the table in front of him, masking the vague uneasiness that was now seeping into his morning.

Watch this served as the only introduction as the screen rolled over to play a recorded feed allowing the now infamous donkey to make its appearance. Curtis served as the narrator, providing a deadpan recitation of the story of the ‘head’ followed immediately by a request for Dahlgren’s assistance investigating what had actually transpired at the foot of Mount Kulau, which happened to lie only a hundred kilometers to the southeast of Mongola.

When the feed ended Dahl began with, Well I suspect we can try to be of help? just as the morning marksmen trooped in for tea and breakfast.

Introductions were made and Curtis grew circumspect and vaguely anxious around the edges. Just as an uncomfortable pause loomed, Norris salvaged the moment with a grizzled squint at Curtis and a candid commiseration. You’re the IDC bloke who has to sort out this rapture crap aren’t you? How’s that going? If you want my opinion it’s just a marketing stunt to keep the sheep all marching towards the tithing gate. Are they all still milling about with their knickers down waiting for the lift to heaven?

Dahl, I hate to be unsociable but this conversation is a bit sensitive. Would it be possible to ask your friends to take their tea back outside so we can continue in private? No offense Mr. Norris and Mr. Werner.

Werner and Norris, exchanging looks that clearly translated into fuck him and his stupid rapture madness, stood and headed for the door. But Dahl halted their progress with a friendly challenge which reminded Curtis of Dahl’s old knack for handling the stressful world that he had walked away from with grace. If you want me in the Chalbi today it will be Norris that has to fly the chopper, so they might as well stay. Besides I vouch for them. We pledge ‘cone of silence’ and all that.

One hour later a late model helicopter with the orange and blue markings of the Gates-Buffet Foundation lifted from its carefully raked patch of hard sand by the Blue Nile and, swinging hard over a rusting Quonset hut, headed south across the big blue lake with the Imatong mountains rising green off to the west.

Norris, a stickler for regimen and preparedness, put the chopper through its paces every Monday of every week, and he kept an entire parts machine stashed away in the back of the Quonset hut just in case. Now, with his obsessiveness richly rewarded and Werner’s teasing routed, he flew with amusing purpose and clear coordinates while scanning the dash and horizon from behind polished dark glasses. From the co-pilot’s seat Dahl could tell Norris was happy to be on a hunting trip with his beloved machine, and in the quiet isolation of the noise cancellation earphones he considered the possibilities of what they might find. Like Norris, he felt the juices of unwished for invigoration flowing, which was disconcerting.

Back at the cabin, Werner went inside to have a biscuit and switch on the private comm channel. He turned the screen on its articulated arm to face towards the window and then strolled back outside to take up residence in his lawn chair for the morning. The sun was higher and the heat was beginning to build. He decided he would back his chair up a bit into the shade of the roof overhang and he arranged the little carved table so that it could serve as a foot hassock. With a last look about, scanning down to the mechanic’s sheds and along both sides of the river bank, he settled in to take a short nap. The barest of winds wafted in synch with the shifting cattle across the water, and the only sounds were the viberous chirp of crickets and the oscillating background static of the comm channel.

Missionary Man

Werner awoke abruptly from his nap and looking up from his chair he simultaneously heard and saw Norris’ voice penetrating the buzzing static on the monitor. He rubbed his eyes and pushed the engage button which brought Norris, Dahl and the rear of the chopper’s cockpit into real-time. The background noise resolved into semi-cancelled prop wash and Norris’ scrambled accent converged onto recognizable words. Wake up you old Bavarian slacker. Are you hearing me yet?

Yes, yes, I’ve got you on the screen as well so no drooling. Where are you? I was just having a lovely nap and I awake to the horrid noise of your chopper, and your face way too close to the camera.

Norris glanced down at his navigation controls as he read off a set of numbers he knew would be meaningless to the German, a slight dip of the head suggesting he was probably reading the bearings and not making them up. Beyond that, we will be coming in from the south in about twenty minutes and we need you to scout around the perimeter a bit. Just to make sure we don’t have any guests prowling about.

Who are we expecting? Werner was waking fully now, the transition from his dream to this odd break from the Mongola routine complete.

I don’t think you will find anything as we have been very discreet, but just in case take Thomas and a few of the boys down at the shed along for the ride.

I’ve got my device and I’m on my way. Werner lurched up and swept by the comm screen with hat newly in hand. Norris called after him while looking at the empty image of the dirt lawn running down to the Nile, Careful what you say over the air if you need to call.

Werner’s first stop with the lorry was the corrugated mechanic’s shed a quarter mile back from the house and river. As he roared up he imagined Thomas and the younger guys hopping up from their stools at the sound of the approaching truck. They all appeared as a group from the dark shadows of the doorway looking quizzical and cheery. Werner thought about a dog his wife Helena had in Munich a number of years ago, a small spaniel-type of dog that loved to be taken for walks in the park by the station. Whenever Werner moved in a way that seemed to indicate he was going out, the spaniel would appear from nowhere with the same look on its face.

Thomas, take Sammy and a phone and run up to the equipment yard. I want you to look carefully but very quickly to see if there is any sign that someone has been snooping around. Dinga and Nelson you two ride with me. Stand in the back and hang on tight and keep your eyes peeled for anything strange. Everyone grab a mach.

Thomas slowed his step towards the shed. We are not looking for animals bwana? Werner smiled at his friend No, we are probably looking for nothing, but Dahl and Norris are flying in after doing a favor for an acquaintance, and we want to make sure they didn’t step on anyone’s toes by mistake. Bring a device and call if you see anything.

Little swamp-green automatic guns were passed out and Werner set his on the seat of the lorry. Despite years of living with guns and hunting both live and virtual prey, he hated every aspect of this type of weapon. A necessary evil given the problems the GBF had to deal with from time to time. They were ugly and felt disposable, cheap and inaccurate. You couldn’t fix or maintain them in any sense he understood, sealed plastic units with a slot for a clip, a safety and a trigger. They filled a small space in the great universe with a randomized array of metal slugs.

But after a bumpy chase around the compound and up onto the little rise to the west, all seemed in order. High powered glasses revealed the familiar dusky haze of a cattle camp a mile farther on down the road to Juba. No movement beyond a few gazelle otherwise. As they pulled back up to the shed the noise of the air machine drew all eyes towards the sun as Norris set the chopper down without fanfare into a cloud of ground dust.

Where two had left, three returned. The third man out of the cab was gray haired and wiry, younger than Norris, maybe about Dahl’s age, whatever that might be. To Werner, who waited with Thomas by the shed out of the swirl, the man didn’t seem