Gary A. Braunbeck - Cages and Those Who Hold the Keys

* * *

I read an on-line article a few days ago that said by the end of this decade, something like two-thirds of the cars manufactured in the United States will come equipped with some form of GPS technology, and by 2021 every car in the country will have it. So the Road will always be able to find you when your number comes up.

The more I come to understand how precise this system is, the more I find myself admiring it. And hating myself for it.

* * *

Dianne never called me. I’m guessing she erased the message when she heard my voice. I can’t blame her. I still miss her. I always will.

* * *

I quite working for Brennert. He was pissed but, being the type of guy he is, he didn’t let it show. He told me he understood if I was feeling burned out, and if I ever changed my mind and wanted to come back to the job, it’d be there waiting for me. Before I hung up, I finally asked him: “Do you ever think about the Leonard house?” “Every day,” he said. “I was always sorry about the way Mark and I treated you that night.” “I know.” “Doesn’t help much, does it?” “Not a goddamned bit.”

Click .

* * *

I did some digging on-line one night—a free night for me, which doesn’t happen very often—and found something interesting.

I’d been thinking about what Ciera had said about Daddy Bliss and Road Mama, how they were the only two who remembered their real names, and I began wondering if maybe there was something out there in the ether of cyberspace that might tell me something .

It turned out to be a lot easier than I’d thought. I just entered the words Driscolland Cars, then Blissand Cars. I figured that might be a good way to begin.

Both searches pretty much started and ended right there.

On August 17, 1896, in London, Bridget Driscoll, age 44, became the world's first person to be killed in an automobile accident.

As she and her teenage daughter crossed the grounds of the Crystal Palace, an automobile belonging to the Anglo-French Motor Car Company and being used to give demonstration rides struck her at “tremendous speed”, according to witnesses—some 4 MPH (6.4 km/h). The driver had apparently modified the engine to allow the car to go faster.

The jury returned a verdict of “accidental death” after an inquest lasting some six hours. The coroner said: “This must never happen again.” No prosecution was made.

While Bridget Driscoll was the first person killed by an automobile in the world, Henry Bliss (1831 to September 13, 1899) was the first person killed by an automobile in the United States. He was disembarking from a streetcar at West 74th Street and Central Park West in New York City, when an electric-powered taxicab (Automobile No. 43) struck him and crushed his head and chest. He died from these injuries the next morning.

The driver of the taxicab was arrested and charged with manslaughter but was acquitted on the grounds that it was unintentional.

So now I know. The Road acquired its taste for blood early. And Daddy Bliss and Road Mama have been parents to their family for a very long time.

* * *

My first really big assignment is coming up in a few days—the weekend of the OSU-Michigan football game. I’ve set up three different tracks for this. Thirty-eight fatalities and twenty injuries—not all in the same place, of course; the Road can’t be too obvious about its methods.

I figured out a way to run several tracks simultaneously without blowing any fuses. I rig them to run off of car batteries. Seems to me there ought to be something ironic in there, but I’m too tired to figure it out.

I’ve been practicing with the controls. I’ve gotten really good. My hand/eye coordination has never been so sharp.

* * *

Ciera called me. Daddy Bliss is going to let her come visit me the weekend of the OSU-Michigan game. I’m really looking forward to seeing her. I remember the way she kissed me and hope she’ll want to do it again. And maybe other stuff, too.

It’s been a while.

* * *

And that’s it. I don’t know why I decided to write all of this down. Maybe to have some record, for my own sanity. Maybe I did it in case I decide to do a Miss Driscoll with some pudding and pills. But that would mean no Ciera weekend, so I doubt that’s the reason. Hell, I don’t know.

I tried to think of some clever way to end this, some witty remark that would leave you with a grin or something, and I’d almost decided on “Drive safely” but the truth is, even if you do—drive safely, that is—it won’t make a damned bit of difference.

It never did. And never will.

Keep on truckin’….

Kiss of the Mudman

“Music’s exclusive function is to structure the flow of time and keep order in it.” —Igor Stravinsky “Without music, life would be a mistake.” —Friedrich Nietzsche

1

Of all the things I have lost in this life, it is music that I miss the most.

I read once that humankind was never supposed to have had music, that it was stolen by the Fallen Angels from something called The Book of Forbidden Knowledge and given to us before God could do anything about it. This article (I think it was in an old issue of Fate I found lying around the Open Shelter) said this book contained all information about Science, Writing, Music, Poetry and Storytelling, Art, everything like that, and that humanity wasn’t supposed to possess this knowledge because we wouldn’t know what to do with it, that we’d take these things that were supposed to be holy and ruin them.

I remember thinking, How could God believe we’d ruin music? I mean, c’mon: say you’re having a rotten day, right? It seems like everything in your life is coming apart at the seams and you feel as if you’re going under for the third time...then you hear a favorite song coming from the radio of a passing car, and maybe it’s been twenty years since you even thought about this song, but hearing just those few seconds of it brings the whole thing back, verse, chorus, instrumental passages...and for a frozen instant you’re Back There when you heard it for the first time, and Back There you’re thinking: I am going to remember this song and this moment for the rest of my life because the day will come that I’m going to need this memory , and so you-Back There taps you-Right Here on the shoulder and says, “I can name that tune in four notes, how about you?”

You can not only name it in three , but can replay it in your mind from beginning to end, not missing a single chord change, and— voila! —your rotten day is instantly sweetened because of that tune. How could any self-respecting Divine Being say that we might ruin music when a simple song has that kind of power? I’ll bet many a sad soul has been cheered by listening to Gordon Lightfoot’s “Old Dan’s Records,” or broken hearts soothed by something goofy like Reunion’s “Life Is A Rock (But the Radio Rolled Me)”; how many people in the grips of loneliness or depression have been pulled back from the edge of suicide by a song like “Drift Away,” “I’m Your Captain,” “(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66,” or even something as lame as “Billy Don’t Be A Hero”? You can’t really say for certain, but you can’t discount the thought, either, because you know that music has that kind of power. It’s worked on me, on you, on everyone.

(It never occurred to me before, Byron Knight—yes, the Byron Knight—said to me the evening it happened, how frighteningly easy it is to re-shape a single note or scale into its own ghost. For example, E-major, C, G, to D will all fit in one scale— the Aeolian minor, or natural minor of a G-major scale. Now, if you add an A-major chord, all you have to do is change the C natural of your scale to a C-sharp for the time you're on the A-major. Music is phrases and feeling, so learning the scales doesn't get you “Limehouse Blues” any more than buying tubes of oil paints gets you a “Starry Night,” but you have to respect the craft enough to realize, no matter how good you are, you’ll never master it. Music will always have the final word.)