Dear Readers,
A long time ago, in college, I wrote a shameful, elitist technocratic liberal-democrat wish-fulfillment novel that pretty much blamed Republicans for everything and didn't really handle race or class well... though it did predict many aspects of Trumpism and the Occupy Movement, in retrospect.
As I've written elsewhere, this is why I no longer generally write stories about the politics of the near-future. Too often, my political predictions turn out too eerily accurate, and that usually means people suffer or die. It makes me feel like a Cassandra because no one believed me back then. But a lot of my concerns materialized over the next decade, though my politics shifted.
Like a lot of liberals, when I was a liberal, I thought I was a Leftist. But back then, I had a lot of really bad ideas. I thought I was so smart I couldn't have bias. But I was writing about things I really didn't understand and hadn't directly experienced.
I'm more mature and realistic now, and I've had a lot of life experiences I didn't have back then. And as a result, I'm much less egotistical. Less prone to trying to reinvent everything myself. I have more trust in other people now. I have more trust in myself. I was very insecure then, and in that first novel (which should never, ever be published), it showed.
That novel had a lot of assumptions about the way politics work I later came to question. I feel it was a very biased and problematic novel. But some of the basic character archetypes still appeal to me, and I still use them in my much more distant future stories set in the "Local Group" 'verse.
The following story is based on a reexamination of that (extremely long, too long) novel, which I usually pretend doesn't exist, but if I'm honest with myself, is still a part of my dialectic, though I've moved far away from that slice of the spectrum. So, I have kept the politics of this world unusually vague for one of my stories. The political situation isn't the point. It's about how these characters interact with each other and their world. None of them are very healthy individuals. That's because this story is about a Bourgeois family, and the Bourgeoisie are, to appropriate a Gregg Araki title, "Totally Fucked Up."
I needed to write about the "House of Roe." It was the best part of that novel, the only part that holds up today (other than the eerily prescient predictions I mentioned before, which don't really feature in this story). The rest of this story has more to do with my memory of war. Not going to war myself (I was fortunate and privileged compared to the kids my age who fought and died in that senseless conflict), but coming of age at a time when my country was beginning its longest-ever war. I knew that war would never end. That we'd be mired in Iraq and Afghanistan for a very long time. How you wage a War on Terror? The same way you wage a War on Drugs, or Poverty, I guess, and look how that turned out! The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and everybody's on drug in a combat zone. But I digress- the House of Roe.
I needed to write about the House of Roe. About the Sad Clown. About Philipe, his hedonist daughter, his militant son, and artistic wife. The patriarch of holy fools and his troubled family was resurrected for this story alone.
It was my pleasure to write about this family again, to make them part of the Local Group. I'm glad you will get to know them. And maybe, I'll write of them again, some day, but for now, I think this short story does them justice.
Set the Sad Clown Free
Yohst…
third planet of Coriander 1…
Taung
Sector… Triangulum Galaxy…
Sometime
in the 427th century…
Trapped
in God’s Tears…
The
Valley People called the idol Umrahash-Hummraha. Once, it resembled a yellow valley
jaguar, if the mosaics and tapestries were to be believed. Philipe Roe had seen
them in the museums back in Tosco County, in his native Síllion Federation, but
this was the first time he’d laid eyes on the idol of the jaguar god. According
to legend, the idol wept and roared. The remains of a primitive hydraulic
pumping system, fed by a crumbling aqueduct that cut through the jungle,
wrapped in vines, explained this.
The
mighty tears of long ago had eroded the jaguar god’s face and created the
impression of a sad clown wearing an artificial smile with little drips beneath
its eyes.
He
had to set the sad clown free.
The
villagers would be here, any minute. They had surely seen his autocopter
landing. He swung his axe and chipped away at the sad clown’s face.
As
he hacked away, he heard the villagers approaching. Quiet rustling in the
leaves of the bushes of the valley. They were murmuring anger at the sight of
the outsider hacking apart their idol.
He
dropped the axe, and he ran. The sun was breaking through the morning clouds
and the thorns snagged impishly on his camouflaged jungle garb. A warning of
arrows penetrated the bush but missed him by meters. A warning, only, not to
disturb the gods. He half-suspected the natives were unallowed to kill with
intent on sacred ground. He hid, and he waited until he could no longer hear
the villagers. Then, he signaled the autocopter.
The
House of Roe…
Silas
Roe drove his yellow Ridgemaster L500 autowagon up the driveway on the
steep hill. The House of Roe rose from the zenith, all stone and wood beams.
The House was older than old, a relic of the First Republic, from the waning
days of the Ancients. It had been months since Silas came home, but it was
time: college no longer held his interest.
He
parked the autowagon in the rough vehicular circle at the end of the driveway
by the House of Roe’s north wing.
He
had a plan, and he needed an empty house. The House of Roe was already nearly empty.
Except,
not today. Silas’ youngest sister, Phoebe, was passed out in the eclectic
living room with four other girls her age. A bottle of day-glow rested, nearly
emptied like the house, on the floor between them.
He
trod to the kitchen and looked for the coffee maker. It was broken, so he
boiled water and poured it on grounds through the machine’s filter, holding the
filter over his thermos with grip of thumb and forefinger so as not to get
burned. When he was finished, he took his coffee outside and walked among the
woods.
The
white dwarf sun of the planet Yohst shined bright, even through the yellow sky
full of industrial smog. It made twiggy shadows of the winter-bare branches.
The air was cleaner out here in Brandaniel, eight kilometers outside the city
Corthyllis. The multicolored betaphyl of the leaves glistened with dew. Beyond
the hill’s ridge, was Tempac Valley. And somewhere beyond this continent, was
his father.
Philipe
Roe- the man couldn’t be bothered with home or family. As a child, Silas knew
his father would be gone for long periods of time. His mother sequestered
herself in her studio, making abstract sculptures that captured the inner
thoughts she never expressed. When seen, she always smiled, but she never had
anything important to say. She married a holophotographer fifteen years her
senior, when she was young. He stayed a wanderer, she a homebody artist, alone
in her studio. Silas thought, she could have been down there now and probably
didn’t even know he was here, with her favorite ghostcore or tranceblast epics
on full volume.
He
was hungry. He knew he should have eaten before he set out. He wondered if
there was anything in the cryopantry.
There
wasn’t. Not anything edible, anyway. Expired goatcream, some ancient,
mold-ridden takeout, a decaying half a sandwich, and an unidentifiable, sticky
purple stain.
He
wondered if it was flavored carbofizz. He really wanted a plushberry fizz. But
there was nothing in the house except coffee, water, and expired goatcream.
So,
he made more coffee, and he listened to the news on the wireless caster.
The
voice on the caster told of the coming war with the United Ipnash Kingdoms.
And
Now, the News (electric guitar riff)…
The
Síllion Federation dominated the Northern Continent on Yohst. The United Ipnash
Kingdoms ringed the Federation in mostly unbroken island chains. A tenuous
truce existed, and had been maintain for thirty years, but times were hard,
tensions were high, and the drums of war were beating fast. A diplomatic
envoy’s ‘copter had been downed in the Sepnoy Sea, and the Federation blamed
the Kingdoms for harboring the terrorists who claimed responsibility. There
had, in recent years, been a schism between the Secular Court and the High Ipnashim
Temple. The Secularists had reached out to the Federation for help, and the
Federation had refused. So, they killed an envoy. Negotiations had failed and
the Federation was gearing for conflict. While Silas Roe drank his second thermos
of coffee, the coastal bombardment frigates were taking position in guns’ range
of the Ipnash Island Ring, and combat ‘copters of the Federal Guard hovered
ominously above the continent, buzzing as they swarmed around the airships that
dominated the skies.
Eternal
Summer…
The
clay took form on the wheel, like a breath of junjaw smoke, curing and
twisting into a complex form. Summer Roe altered the spinning clay with
practiced hands, achieving the shape she desired from the picture in her mind.
This
was a contract piece, from the town’s only modern art gallery, Evolution. They
wanted a sculpture that represented the Unity of All Things. Summer was a
Unitist herself, a member of a sect of free-spirits, and she had been selected
from a list of ten local artists to represent Unity in clay. She believed in
the Spirit of Unity, and it was the Spirit that infused her work with purpose.
Her
favorite tranceblast music flooded the studio, erasing all other sounds. She
did not know her oldest son was home. She didn’t even know Phoebe and her friends
were lying unconscious upstairs in the living room. She had been sequestered in
her studio for a day and a half. She had not eaten or slept. The work demanded
her full attention. While she worked, toxins accumulated upstairs in her
daughter’s body. The girl began to vomit but reflexively choked. No one heard
her death-shudder. No one knew it happened. The other girls slept through it,
their bodies and minds weak from three days of nonstop partying in Corthyllis.
They had all poisoned themselves competitively, but Phoebe won that contest.
The prize was a one-way trip.
The
girl choked on her own vomit as the clay spun on the wheel, and Silas brooded
over the news. In the kitchen, he shook his head in disgust and turned off the
caster. That was when he heard it. But he was too late. The other sleeping
girls awakened only as their host’s brother thumped his sister’s chest in
furious determination to resuscitate her. But he was too late. She was too long
without oxygen, and he could not clear her airways in time.
His
sickened and desperate mind turned on the other girls and he demanded they leave.
He accused them of killing her. He let loose a tirade of obscenities and analysis
and he wasn’t entirely wrong. He despised their hedonism and frivolity, but the
truth was, he would have chased them out anyway. He needed the space. He wasn’t
thinking of that, not consciously, but the priority was there, lurking, guiding
him as he redirected his rage against these unwanted guests. He hated them, and
in that moment, believed they were all that was wrong with everything. Hyper
focused as he was on their wrongness, he didn’t notice his mother coming up behind
him, her hand going to her mouth to stem, somehow, the outflow of shock.
Phoebe
was dead, and Silas turned on his mother, too. He turned on her with the same
obscenities, the same analysis, his materialist anti-hedonism, and he wasn’t
entirely incorrect, but he could have said it better. His mother wept
speechless and ran from the room. She ran barefoot into the woods. Silas never
saw her after that. She never did return. Some in Brandaniel Village claim a ghost-woman
walks those woods and leaves mysterious clay objects and stones in ceremonial
piles like the Rock Worshippers of Old. They say she wails but never speaks.
They say she walks by the abandoned rails, and the edge of the Black River,
barefoot, even in the cold, so she must be a ghost.
But
Silas doesn’t believe in ghosts and doesn’t have time for that anyway.
In
the years since that fateful day, he has transformed the House of Roe into a training
camp for young people dedicated to the Cause. The swimming pool was turned to an
artificial swamp, part of an extended paintball arena that surrounds the grounds
behind soundproofed walls. The neighbors are still too far away to know what
really goes on there: the discipline, the regimentation of those idealistic
recruits. They call Silas “the General” now. He hates when anyone calls him “boss.”
Says that’s not what he’s about. He’s pretty low-key these days. Buys his coffee
and downloads the news from the kiosk in the commercial district. Plays the
role of Warden-to-the-Estate. His name is on all the right papers and the constabulary
never bothers to check on him because no one hears the constant sounds of
simulated warfare behind those sound-proofed walls. If asked, he’s really into
paintball. Got his own team. Used the family fortune to invest in that, and a
military surplus chain. But anyone who really knows Silas knows that’s all a
front. Silas is about the Cause; the Cause is Silas.
He’ll
tell you about that Cause, if you really want to know. But he never talks about
Phoebe or Summer or Philipe.
Philipe
never made it back. His autocopter was mistaken for a diplomatic envoy and shot
down over the Sepnoy Sea. The real envoy never left the United Ipnash Kingdom. No
one knows which faction garbled the transmission that got Philipe confused for
a diplomat, killed, and started the war, but the war’s still going on, and the people
of the Federation are losing their freedoms, day by day, to a mighty, marching,
military machine. It happens slowly enough that they can rationalize it, most
of them. But Silas was never very good at that, and so to this day, he’ll tell
anyone who cares to listen how it didn’t used to be this way and the people don’t
know what they’ve lost. The airship and ‘copters still hover ominously over the
land. There’s tension thick in the air as the yellow industrial smog, and the
smog is worse now than on the day Phoebe died and Summer ran away from her terrifying
son.
When
Silas thinks about that day, he thinks it couldn’t have turned out better. He
says it was worth it. He needed this house. It was the only place his
organization could have used. The Cause was more important than his mother’s
art or his sister’s health. After Summer ran away, Silas smashed her
sculptures. It’s the only thing he regrets, other than not saving Phoebe. But
he knows the place is more useful to him now than it was when his family was
alive. It’s not a matter of sacrifice. It’s just the way it happened.
And
Silas looks with pride upon the training youths on his compound and he thinks
some day they’ll make the difference they wish to see in the world. He knows
sometimes force isn’t an option, it’s a duty. He’s reconciled himself to that.
He believes what he sees every day is more violent than any armed resistance.
And he’s not entirely wrong about that, either. His people would rather give
their lives up for peace than for the war machine. They know they’ll die either
way. They’re out here in Brandaniel, avoiding conscription, but training for an
entirely different war.
That
war will not be announced on casters. There won’t be a build-up, a drive. It
will come to the people who least expect to be personally affected by war- the
people who start wars. The people on top.
Silas
could have been one of them. But that wasn’t him. He didn’t want that. He doesn’t
want to take credit or impose. He sees himself as a liberator.
Sometimes,
you have to set the sad clown free.