The Alleyway (Skid – GTT character sketch)

Skid stood in the mouth of the alley that ran behind the Westminster church.  His languid gaze casually strolled both ways, trying to pierce the damp fog that shrouded the London nightlife around him. He couldn’t see any flatfoots patrolling the area, and if he couldn’t see them then they couldn’t see him.

A hooker quickly walked past him, wrapped in a thick fur coat with her shoulders slumped, giving the impression that she was ragged and beaten, and not caring enough to show her wares on this cold night.

Her jaded and tired eyes quickly looked him up and down – sizing him up as she passed.  But she saw only a fourteen-year-old street kid wearing torn jeans, a ripped shirt, and a frayed gray trench.  He was definitely not John material, at least not for a few more years.  Then she looked back to the pavement before her feet, not wanting to stare too long – afraid of baiting him into attacking her.

He thought about rolling her for a moment, but shrugged the idea off.  Juicing whores always pissed off the pimps and they were real trouble.  Those guys where colder than ice and they would as soon slit your throat as look at you.  Besides, she had obviously been at her job for far too long and was loosing what looks she may have once had. The hag probably wouldn’t have much dough on her anyway.

Ugly whores were always fairly broke – but they stayed alive because there was always some schmuck who couldn’t afford to buy anything better.  Once she was a bit further down the block he reached into the depths of his faded and beaten trench pulling out two cans of stolen spray paint.  One was black and the other red.  Now: to do the job that he was really here to do.  He grinned and turned into the alley.

The Alleyway was dank and smelly.  The fog was dampening everything there, and as a result the fine layer of dew was covering the trash.  The added moistness only made the trash rot – which added to the putrid stench.  Skid grimaced and tried to only breathe through his mouth.

As thoughts ran through his head he began to get a bit giddy from the adrenaline rush – which made it easier to ignore the fetid smell.  Tagging the house of God.  There was no act deemed greater in Skid’s skewed reality.

Skid hated God, and his hatred coursed and flowed in his veins with a dark passion love could never know.  He had grown up mostly in orphanages and catholic charity boarding schools.  His parents hadn’t wanted him, so had given him up – and he hated them too for not loving him.

But the lord of mankind held a special place in Skid’s blackened heart… But the way he figured it his heart was no worse than anyone else’s.  After all: look at all the messed up thing people do to each other every day.  But God he definitely hated most of all.  It was hatred so deep even Lucifer Morningstar would envy it and place it on display for all in Hell to see.  God had hurt him more than every other.  God had given him every piece of pain in his life.  Every shard of Skid’s shattered soul, every wasted tear, shed only to mingle with his own blood, was God’s responsibility.

Throughout his entire childhood the nuns had all beaten him for reasons he couldn’t understand.  Three of the priests had raped him and then, feeling guilty over the act, had him beaten for being the temptation that led them to sin.  He remembered the faces of all the nuns and priests.  In fact, he remembered with a perfect clarity every single face that had ever caused him pain over the course of his brief life.

Someday he would… he would get even.  Someday he would do much worse to them than they had to him.  After all, was he not taught that what you cast unto waters you receive tenfold?  He would have his revenge.  And right now he was starting it.  He was going to tag this church with his name.  He was going to make this house his spiritual property and take it away from a useless God… and he would do it to every church in London.

He quickly scanned the alley.  It was filled by cardboard fantasies of homes never had and visions of a soulless future.  It was obvious that homeless often tried to camp here but were booted out by the coppers.  Right now the only life sharing this space with Skid was a homeless old man, dirty and pale, asleep under a pile of newspapers.  Skid walked up to him and planted his steel tipped toe right into the old geezer’s ribs.

“Oi, grandfather.  Shove off!”  Just to make sure his point was gotten he planted another kick into the man’s midsection.  Much to Skid’s surprise the old man didn’t budge.  He didn’t even groan at the force of the kick.

Skid was young – he knew that he didn’t have much muscle –but his life had made him tough.  He knew how to throw his entire weight into a kick so he would break bones – a trick he learned quickly so that whomever he was fighting with would not be getting back up.  Skid looked again at the man, this time much more closely, and realized that his chest wasn’t moving.  Well, the skagger was stone cold dead.  What d-ya’ know, it was turning out to be Skid’s lucky night.  He could roll the body and at least come away with a decent pair of boots.  If he were really lucky the old-timer would have a half-consumed bottle of booze.

Skid knelt next to the man and started pulling the newspapers off.  One of the headlines, briefly glimpsed, amused him.  It read “London’s Abused Homeless Population: Death Rate Up By Twenty Percent.”

Sure enough the man was clutching something to his chest.  He began to pry at the man’s cold stiff fingers, eager to see what prize tonight’s treasure hunt would reveal.  But the corpse’s fingers – locked as tightly as they were – wouldn’t budge despite Skid’s best efforts.  Skid braced himself and yanked with all of his fourteen-year-olds strength, not caring if he ripped the guy’s hand off.  He wanted whatever it was the old man had valued so dearly.  He wanted it very badly.  And finally the death embrace of the old man’s hands broke – without tearing off any body parts.

Skid looked in awe at what he saw revealed.  The old fart had been hiding a fragging sword under his trench.  The blade was some type of blue gray metal and it looked sharp and really old.  The hilt was leather wrapped, and there was some writing etched into it in a language Skid didn’t even recognize.  It looked vaguely like Sumerian, or at least what Skid vaguely remember Sumerian looking like from the ancient history course he had been in right before he ran away last time.  He couldn’t even begin to read the fragging letters.  Talk about luck! This was an awesome find – hell, this was probably his best find ever.

Skid’s greedy little eyes lighted up – he should be able to pull at least fifty or sixty pounds out of this find at the right place – and that was a whole lot of money to someone like him.  He reverentially reached down and let his fingers wrap around the hilt.  It was cold to the touch and seemed to slightly vibrate almost like a heartbeat.  The old man’s eyes fluttered open and his hand shot out faster than lightning and seized Skid’s lapel.  Skid jerked back in surprise, and the fingers of his free hand tore at the old man’s fist.  Again Skid found that he couldn’t break the bum’s grip.

“Let go of me you old asshole!  I’ll cut your hand off and fucking kill you if you don’t let go of me!”  Skid was panicking – this guy should be a corpse, not alive and stronger than Skid – but he remembered enough to not shout.  Never do anything to attract the attention of the coppers.

The old man’s voice sounded like the creaking of an ancient door, rusty and feeble but with faint hints of golden times that were so much greater.  “Listen to me…  please…  please… Oh gods…  the caves… I remember them so very well.  You were so young… so innocent… so naïve and trusting… So simple – and yet you were so beautiful.”

Cloudy, dull eyes, which should have been blind, drifted to Skid’s hand and locked their feeble gaze onto the sword.  “Please… You can have the sword; just listen to my story.  I have to tell my story before it passes from this world.  Please.”

Greed instantly overcame Skid’s panic, calming him.  His hands stopped shaking and he stopped fighting the iron grip holding him down.  “All right.  You got three minutes.  Then I got work ta do.”  Fifty pounds to listen to some dying old man rant for a few minutes…  hell; Skid could be generous and do him a favor.  This was easily earned money for him, so why not.  Besides, he was pretty sure he couldn’t break away from the hand gripping his lapel, and he didn’t want to loose his jacket.

The old man imperceptibly nodded his acknowledgement.  Skid had accepted the terms so a bargain was struck.

“Thank you.  You do honor to the needs of a dying old man.”  Came his feeble voice.  “How well I remember it all – looking at you humans in your youth.  You were so weak and helpless…  But you had such strong minds, willing to believe with a force even we did not posses.  We decided to help you to rise above the caves – to nourish your type and give the gift of enlightenment.  We saw a way to gain for ourselves a much longer life span by insuring the continuance of your race.  By giving you something to focus that powerful belief on.  Ah…” The man’s voice sounded pained.  “How brightly the Morningstar shone for your sake.  How brightly…  for it was his idea to help you – and his idea how as well.”

Skid didn’t really understand what the hells this guy was talking about and finally realized that the guy was seriously deranged – a total fucking loony.  He must think he was some alien or something.  But then again a lot of the old farts eeking out a pitiful existence on the foggy streets of London were mostly delusional anyway.  Skid shifted his weight to make himself little more comfortable and waited for the story to continue.

The old man drew a ragged breath then continued.  “First came the paintings…  such bright and vivid pictures… and how wondrously you sang our praises for us.  But how very quickly you became clever too…”

Skid saw a tear forming in the old man’s eye.  “Why?  Why?  You could have given us forever…  and we would have given you everything you wanted…  We would have gifted you everything you could ever hope for.  Life immortal and every other desire your hearts had ever dreamed of…”

Skid was beginning to feel the overwhelming pressures of panic again.  What if this crazy wouldn’t let go?  What if he died and rigor mortis set in?  He’d have to cut his fragging jacket and man it was too cold out to rip up his jacket.  But again greed showed its ugly head and he managed to settle back down – after all the money made would more than pay for Skid’s troubles.  He’d go ahead honor the rest of the three minutes.  After all, there is a shifty type of honor amongst thieves and criminals… and by Skid’s reasoning anyone the cops hassled was a criminal – and the cops hassled the homeless more than anyone else.

The old man seemed to realize that whatever internal struggle Skid had been facing was finished.  Sighing, he continued.  “But you are all fickle.  Even more so than us…  And you had no idea what it was that you actually wanted.  You’ve never known your own hearts.  Oh, Morningstar I loved you so.  You were brighter than any of us…  brighter than all of us combined.  Why did you have to die out?  Oh why did you have to leave us?  We needed you…  Why did I have to witness you fall to a mere human?”

The man bit back a sob.  He seemed to be talking to someone out of the past, someone only he could see.  “You taught them to write, to read, to think.  And they killed you.  We guided you through your lives, your so short but so bright lives…  And in the end you betrayed even us…  We gave you the gift of immortality, a way to live after even death…  to be a part of the universe.  And you threw it away.”

Sorrow deeper than any Skid had known passed across the old man’s face  “All we ever asked was your praise and love – in such a way that we could find strength and will in it.  We guided your kings and princes.  We led those whose love flowed most freely to the greatest victories.  We allowed them to lead other men and conquer nations.  They were allowed to inspire the hearts of thousands.  What a small price to pay…  only a year or two from each life.”

Skid felt Goosebumps crawling up the back of his spine.  The last thing this guy had said…  hadn’t life spans been going up over the last few centuries?  This guy was really starting to creep him out.  He didn’t – and couldn’t – really understand what the old man was saying.  But deep down, in the tarnished soul that Skid held in nothing but contempt, the words resonated with truth – and that scared Skid even more than when the old priests had told him about the little ‘games’ they would be playing.  These words scared Skid more than anything ever had.

Numbness spread throughout his brain but he heard his own voice quietly echoing in the space between them.  “But what changed it all?”  Some deep part of Skid’s brain seemed to be comprehending the story being told to him.

A deep chuckle came from the old man’s throat.  He was seeing some grander joke in Skid’s words, but still retaining his iron grip on Skid’s collar.  “One of yours did it.  He shone brightly, that one did.  He had the fire and passion to rival any of us – with a mind to match.  He almost burned as brightly as the Morningstar himself…  But young Jeshua did not understand the depths of our love or the tenderness of our compassion.  He told me once that he felt like a slave – destined to live by the decree of another.  He could not understand the gift we gave both him and you…  We tried to teach him the ways of the universe – but the dedication we showed was invisible to him.”

The old man stopped talking and began to cough.  The fit seized him and racked his entire body, rattling deeply in his lungs, but he never released his vice-like grip.  The old man obviously only had a few moments left to live.  Skid was so lost in the man’s words he didn’t even think to try breaking free and didn’t realize that the three minutes had elapsed.

Once the coughing fit subsided the old man hungrily sucked air into his lungs and then continued with his confusing story.  “So he turned against us.  He betrayed the ones who had loved him so – and we had shown him a love greater than any of you ever has or ever will know.  He left us… and once he had left he used the fire and beauty of his vision to attempt to lead our children against us.  The monks called him the great teacher and gifted him the title of Christos.  So he led them and he taught them his warped version of the truth inherent in us…  He used the very concept that we had created to benefit you – the greatest of beings who watched over all – against us.  He tried to turn and warp that worship to himself, or at least away from us, to reap the rewards of ages of our workings and take it away from those that loved you all so much.  He tried to destroy us to free humanity and never realized that so doing would eventually destroy humanity as well.”

The man’s voice wavered with sorrow and regret.  “Oh that our most beloved son would turn against us so…  The pain it caused within us all – that such beauty and tranquility in one of you could turn to such hatred and loathing upon us.  It was a heartbreaking time for us…  We were all so unsure of what our course of action should have been…  You see, we wanted so badly to save him, but in the end we simply couldn’t.”

“We all mourned so much for him, but he left us no choice – If we were to survive we had to take his essence.  It had to be done, and publicly, to stop him and his followers.  It was necessary to stop him before it went too far… before he could succeed.  We mourned so at doing this terrible deed, but should he have triumphed in usurping us it would have meant all of our deaths.”

The old man’s mouth twisted into a bitter smile.  “But In the actions we took we only managed to sow the seeds of our own downfall.  The Morningstar tried to save us all – he foresaw what none of us could have…  He assumed our beloved son’s form three days after his death – thinking to spread a new gospel through our dead son’s disciples.”

A chill ran through Skid’s body.  He was finally beginning to understand…  and with his dawning comprehension a wave of nausea slid over him.  His hushed voice came out barely audible and filled with a dread chill.  He feared what the answer to his next question would be.  “And what did the Morningstar tell the disciples… what did he tell them when he came back as Jeshua?”

The old man coughed for a moment more then refocused on Skid.  “He sacrificed himself in the attempt to save the rest of us.  That was what his words brought.  How noble he was…  but how naïve – although I suppose we all were back then.  He named himself as the true evil, as the counterpart to the one we had created, hoping that fear of evil would get humanity to love the rest of us that much more…  he fed himself only hatred and disgust.  It was such a foolish sacrifice.  How twisted and dimmed he became before he… before he finally died.  He was only the dimmest of shadows compared to the intensity with which he used to shine.  Even so, with corruption and hatred eating at the very essence of his being, only I amongst my kind actually outlived him.”

Tears were now running unfettered down the ancient’s face.  “His last attempt at survival spawned such evil…  He used the visage he assumed to twist the minds of millions and plunge the world into one of its darkest ages… to kill millions upon millions more… and he turned against the ones who were our first children.  Plunging the entire world into war was not enough for him.  He created camps of slaughter, trying to reap as much hatred, fear, and death as he could.  In death and corruption he hoped to find the power he lost when he gave up the love of your kind to try to save the rest of us.  And that much death is what ended up killing him.  It almost finished me too – and I was half the world away, hiding from it all.  Despite my hiding it would have killed me too, had it not been for my particular aspect…  Throughout the ages I have become used to the mass death of your kind.  It is why I have found the strength to continue as long as I have.”

Yet another coughing fit racked the man’s body and Skid gazed down upon him.  The ancient one was standing one the threshold of death’s door.  The puzzle pieces of what he was saying were finally clicking together and reaching the greatest depths of Skid’s mind and soul – and something that was not a part of him was burning deeply inside of him.  Skid felt the beginnings of a sickening vertigo – a sense of loss that was coming from him – and was slowly seeping into the depths of his soul.

Hatred and rage boiled inside his twisted heart and they were slowly worming their way through his being and into his every level of consciousness.  His mind was swimming and his thoughts were becoming numb – forlorn with knowledge unbearable by even the strongest man.  He was slowly understanding that his greatest enemy did not exist in a way which he could wreak his vengeance.

The old man looked up through fading eyes – greed and recognition shone from behind those eyes.  He began the final stretch of his tale.

“The Morningstar’s great plan failed.  None of us could see past the need for love… the need for essence.  It burned in us and consumed us.  In a way it twisted us all.  We created an image that humanity could love, and stole the love for ourselves by placing us as His seconds.  But the only one of you to ever shine like one of us undid everything.  For he had found such a burning hatred for our kind that it easily bested all of our love.  But a few of us learned to live on the hatred instead, forsaking love, even though it only twisted and blackened us.  We did it – though it drove most of those who learned how insane.  The need for survival was far too great.  And then the need for vengeance became to strong to forsake by dying off…”

The old man burned with an inner rage of his own and his words came out like fire, forever searing themselves into Skid’s head.

“I curse you and your kind.  We loved you.  For aeons we loved you.  And you killed the God we made for you… you killed Him.  And then you fed us nothing but hate and in the end you took even that away leaving us to die… we shall have our revenge…”

And Skid snapped.

Years of hatred and fear – years of being the underdog, forced into action by the whims of others – welled up in his spiteful little mind and took over.  Ripping his jacket free he stood up, towering above the dying old man, sword raised high above his head.

The old man looked up with mutual hatred shining in his eyes and a smile crossed his face.  “You’ve spent the last two thousand years killing us off and now I am the last.  But I will survive… In one of you if I must!”

Spittle flew from his mouth as he rushed to get his last words out.  “You alone still hate.  Why?  What do you live on?  I must know.”

His eyes locked with Skids but found only emptiness.

And Skid brought the sword down as hard as he could.  Every muscle in his young body focused into that single stroke of the sword.  There was a sickening crunch as the sword sliced through skin and crushed the ribs in its way.  Blood splattered over Skid and the wall he was going to tag.  The blood was gold and icy to the touch.  As it hit the wall frost formed around it.

Unseeing and unthinking Skid began to kick the body.  Over and over again he smashed his boot into the corpse while tears streamed down his cheeks.  Years of hatred, fear, and self-loathing had snapped his mind – and his innermost psychological defenses could not find a way to heal the fracturing.

Skid had walked into that alley to make the house of God his own.  But now all that stood in the alleyway was an empty husk slowly filling up with something else, kicking over and over again, the tears streaming down its face the last vestiges of its humanity.

And finally the body broke down.  There was no energy left to continue.  It slumped to its knees and started rocking back and forth.  He curled into a ball, sobbing and letting his frail human psyche try to rebirth itself.

But finally there was not even energy for that.  His body shut down and he slept.

Much later he woke.  It was still dark.  A faint smile played across his lips.  He stood up, tall and proud, lacking his usual slouch.  He hefted the sword and gazed thoughtfully at it.  A dim golden glow was barely visible in his pupils.  Suddenly the blade burst into a bright and warm flame.

His eyes wandered to the sky as he savored his newfound essence.  The sun was just peeking over the horizon, adding a rich red glow to the encompassing fog.

“I finally understand.  Your fear is so great you have only apathy to survive on.  Your race hides from its own passion…” He said in a voice that was not Skid’s.  The figure seemed to ponder this for a moment.  “Even Morningstar never foresaw this.  But I can survive with this.”

And the Archangel Uriel, flame of God, the angel of transformation, stretched his new body and strode into the foggy London morning to avenge the death of his kind.

Writing and wishing… the instant manuscript

Sometimes, I wish life was a little more like Harry Potter..  You know?

So that I could just tap a wan against my temple, say something like ‘Creatus Manuscriptus!”

and..  poof…   there it would be!

sigh.  Back to typing :p

North by South, a GTT character intro

North by South

From The Ian Stone Cases

The thug’s fist slammed into my jaw.  Even rolling with the punch, I felt one of my molars shatter and cut the inside of my left cheek.  The thug grinned and spit his toothpick into my face.

I looked up to him and smiled.  ‘So, why the hell are you here?’

‘Shaddup!’ he snarled and fed me another knuckle sandwich.  This time my shattered tooth cut me badly enough that I had to spit out the blood or choke on it.  I looked back up at him, working my jaw trying to stretch some of the soreness out of it.  The guy was wiry as hell, maybe six feet tall or so, and wearing a blue silk shirt with the top half of the buttons undone; the guy looked like he was right out of a 1980’s cop show.  Yeah, he thought he was a real Guido.

He was rubbing his knuckles, trying to massage some of the pain out of them.  It doesn’t matter how strong or experienced you are, shatter a guys tooth with a hit and you’re taking some damage to your fist.  His lips pulled up into a sneer. ‘Not so tough now, huh mr. private dick?’

Tilting my head up till I could look him in the eyes, I grinned and let the blood spill out of my mouth.  I love a good straight line.  ‘Thanks pal.  You just saved me the seven hundred bucks that getting a root canal was gonna cost me.  I’ve got a bad one on the other side too, think you could get that one next?’

With a snarl he smashed his heel down onto the arch of my left foot.  I felt something break, but didn’t let it show.  Time to pause for a second while I explain why a broken foot was worth it; just to get to deliver one tough guy line.  The thing about being a private eye is that you have to know how to take advantage of your timing.  No matter how much you work on cultivating that no nonsense, tougher than nails, dumb looking but smart on the inside, hard boiled gumshoe lifestyle, the simple truth is that ninety-nine percent of the work you land is boring as hell.

Skip traces, reading court records, checking websites, occasionally finding lost pets, and sneaking through bushes with a camera is most of what a P.I. does.  The majority of the work comes from one of three places – Lawyers, Courtrooms, and suburban wives with too much money and too little to do who fill their hours with unfounded suspicions.  A good P.I is fast with a computer, since their usual day is just sitting at a desk scanning files.

Which is why when you wake up to find yourself handcuffed to a chair in your own office, with a thug putting more shots into you than a sadistic E.R. doctor gives out during flu season, you have to thank your lucky stars and make the most of it.  Which I did.

So now we’re gonna play out the next few seconds nice and slowly, just so you can appreciate the finer details.  As mr. oh so clever repartee’s fist came rocketing towards my face, aimed at that same tooth, I braced both of my ankles against the chair legs and twisted my left wrist just right; which made my thumb collapse against my palm.  My first case ever was to find a lost pit-bull.  When I did find the dog, he satacked me and all but ripped my left thumb off.  It never healed quit right, and I’ve been able to do interesting and occasionally useful party tricks with it since then.  And for some reason I can’t fathom, the left side of my body tends to get a lot more torn up than the right side.

My hand slid out of the cuffs, only taking a little skin with it, right as my own personal thug straight from the set of Miami Vice dropped an a-bomb on my face – finally ripping my left cheek open.  I let the force of the blow carry me, pulling up with my ankles and whipping around, letting the inertia help me pivot the chair on one leg.  I grabbed the back of the chair with my right hand, releasing the pressure with my ankles and just slumping forward.  Ever seen a tetherball?  It goes low on one side, then rockets high on the other side.  That’s what me and the chair did.   I went low, the chair went high, with all that spinning force behind it.

I’m not even sure if I have the stomach to describe what it did to his face.  A lot of blood went flying over me.  Lets just say this – ever tried to break a piece of oak?  His face shattered the chair, and the chair took the lesser of the two beatings.  K.O.  Goons, zero, private detectives one.

I slowly pushed myself up, using the corner of my desk to help me, and carefully testing my weight on my broken foot.  Not comfy, but it’d get me around for the time being.  I’ll admit I wobbled a bit until the world stopped spinning, and then limped over to the downed thug.  I reached down, grabbed him by the shirt and hauled the dead weight over to the radiator.  I grabbed my cuffs and secured both of his wrists behind his head.

Slapping him a couple times I grinned and said ‘Hey, jerk off.  Miami Vice stopped casting twenty years ago.’  Nada.   Yeah, he was out cold.

So instead of pushing his primitive ape brain and trying to get info out of him, I limped back to the desk, picked up the phone, and dialed the local police station.

A tinny sounding female voice answered after just a couple rings. ‘District six dispatch.’

I sighed and did my best to enunciate around all the damage to my mouth.  ‘Hi.  Can you patch me through to Sergeant Haskins, please?  Tell him it’s Ian Stone with a pretty big emergency.’

There were a couple of clicks from the phone and the operator’s voice came back.  ‘He’s at his desk right now. I’ll put you right through Mr. Stone.’

‘Thanks.’ I replied.  Hey, hard boiled gumshoe or no it always pays to be polite to your local law enforcement.  You never know when you might want them to return the favor and be polite to you, after all.

‘You’re welcome, Mr. Stone.’ The line got quiet and I started hearing those background clicks again.

I only had to wait about twenty seconds or so before a gruff voice came across the line. ‘Haskins here.  What’s the matter, Stone?’

I smiled.  Haskins had spent so much time behind that desk since his promotion that even on his home line he had started answer the same way.  “Hey, Sarge.  Got a little problem here at my office.  I just had a goon who’s dressed straight from the 80’s bust into my office, taser me, cuff me to a chair, and then vent a lifetime of frustration at being born in the wrong decade all over my face.  And Haskins, the hell of it is, I’ve never met the guy before and he wouldn’t tell me why he was here.’

There was a sharp intake of breath over the line. ‘Jesus, Ian.  You okay?  Uniforms or paramedics there yet?’

Blood dripped onto the mouthpiece of the phone and sighing, I wiped it off on my shirt as I peeked out the window from behind my blinds and looked down at the street below my office.  ‘Yeah, I’m fine.  Look, I can’t waste time.  I have to figure out why this guy was on me.  So, I called you first.  I want to dodge the ambulances and the reports till I get a good grip on this.’

Haskins chuckled and I carefully watched the street.  ‘Alrighty.  I’ll grab a black and white and be there in five to ten, tops.  Can you wait that long?’

‘Not Sure.’ I replied. ‘I think I have his partner sitting in the street down here.  Looks like a two thousand and two silver Lincoln towncar.  You better come unmarked so we don’t spook him.’

‘Already on the way.  Hold tight, Ian.’  The line went dead.

Down to business.  Limping over to my medical kit, I cleaned up a bit, trying to go as quickly as possible without further injuring myself.  I glanced at the clock.  Two minutes down.

Again I pushed my broken foot.  I knew I had to move fast, no way Haskins would let me out of his sight when he saw the condition I was in.  I got down on my knees in front of the K.O.’d goon and emptied his pockets.  While there I looked a little more carefully at his hands and the way he was dressed.  On a hunch, I cleaned the blood off his hands and studied them more carefully.

Dumping the payload from his pockets onto my desk, I gratefully collapsed into my leather chair.   Here is another tip about being a private eye.  Invest in a damned good chair.  Besides the fact that you are gonna spend a lot of time in it doing the mundane jobs, you gotta be sure to have a god chair for just such situations as this.  I mean, beat to bloody hell with broken bones…  Would you want a chair that didn’t have all the goodies and about six inches of expensive padding?

Four minutes down.  I spread out the contents of his pockets and took stock.  One set of brass knuckles.  Which was odd, because this guy had calluses all over his knuckles, and brassies leaves the marks on your fingers instead.  So, fact one.  He enjoys his work.  Wallet.  Almost five hundred cash, one driver’s license, season pass to the football field, and an injury report on the local teams.

I glanced at the license and groaned.  I hate it when stereotypes are right.  His name was Antonio Guido Pazzuchi.  Well crap.

I grabbed the cash and looked at the last pieces of pocket junk.  Hey, don’t look at me like that.  I might have been cuffed to a chair, but he had engaged my services by my reckoning, and five hundred is one day plus expenses.  So, a paperclip, a pack of gum, three cents, and a folded piece of paper.  I unfolded the piece of paper and found a smudged name and address, barely readable.  It smelled like beer.  Hmm…  My name, and my address..  but not quite right.

I heard a commotion downstairs and outside.  That’d be Haskins, grabbing scumbag number two. Almost out of time.  C’mon stone, you have the edges of the puzzle, now put ‘em together.  On intuition I grabbed the phonebook out of the bottom drawer.

I swear to god, it clicked right as Haskins walked into my office, roughly pushing the other guy in front of him.  The guy couldn’t keep his balance with his hands cuffed behind his back, and fell forward onto his knees.  He looked pissed but was keeping his lips firmly sealed.  Same slicked back hair and mid eighties bad guy look as the guy I had laid out too.

Haskins took in the scene, ran a hand through his graying hair, and started to speak.  ‘Ian, holy…’

‘Wait.’ I interrupted and held up a finger.

I sighed and looked at the kneeling goon.  ‘How much does Stone owe?’

The guy looked from me to Haskins then at his partner, out cold and cuffed to a radiator; and decided communication was probably his best route.  I’m sure it didn’t hurt that as bloody and torn up as I was I must have looked like an axe murderer at that moment.  ‘Uh… You owe ten large, with fifteen points on your late fee…’

I threw the phone book at him and grabbed the piece of paper, holding in front of his face.  ‘No, I don’t, you asshole.  This is SOUTH Colorado boulevard.  Your stone is north.  NORTH.  Learn to read, moron!’

I saw Haskins get it, and he threw back his head laughing.

As it turns out, the two guys had warrants out.  I claimed a thousand dollar reward on each, walking away from the whole thing with twenty five hundred – and just over three grand in medical bills, as well as a cast for a month.  Sometimes being a P.I. is a dog’s life.

Random Thoughts: Our World

1)   The meaning of words does not always match the perception of words.   For instance:  The perception of the word philosophy.  Great thought, asking questions, trying to find the true nature of things.  Yet the meanings the word is built off..  wow…

Philo- Love
Sophis (Sophism) – Deceptive or philatious argumentation.

you do the math.
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2) When you find something you truly hate, look closely at it – for within it, you will find a reflection of something in yourself that you must learn to love.

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3) Time is an illusion.   Like a painting, Matter is the paint, energy the brush, space itself is the canvass..  and time is the way the mona lisa is ALWAYS looking RIGHT at you.

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4) People wear masks all the time..  cope.  Just learn to be thankful for the bits beneath the mask you do get to see – just as you should hope poeple are thankful for what you show them occasionally beneath your masks.

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5) Movies rot your brain.  Television rots your brain.  Age rots your brain.  Society rots your brain.  Its gonna happen, so enjoy the things you do!

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6) If you can’t beat the game, change the freaking rules.

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7) Beaurocracy is to be tolerated with patience, virue, a healthy respect, and a bulldozer once you are out of those other things.

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8) Faith is an amaing and beautifull thing – which each person should hold onto and cherish as thier own.   Religion is what happens when you mix greed for money into Faith.

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9)  Society and education are built on little lies to help us understand bigger truths.  Sometimes to learn you don’t have to study something new, but instead learn to look at the old with new eyes and thoughts.

Memes, replacing the genetic model with an organic model.

I usually use myspace to blog, but I’m trying to start being more wordpress conscious

Definitions (provided by Wiki):

Meme: A meme (pronounced /meem/ – rhyming with “cream”), is a postulated unit or element of cultural ideas, symbols or practices that gets transmitted from one mind to another through speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena. The etymology of the term relates to the Greek word mimema for “something imitated”. Supporters of the concept of memes believe that they act as cultural analogues to genes, in that they self-replicate and respond to selective pressures.

Memetics: The discipline of memetics, which dates from the mid 1980s, provides an approach to evolutionary models of cultural information transfer based on the concept of the meme. Memeticists have proposed that just as memes function analogously to genes, memetics functions analogously to genetics. Memetics attempts to apply conventional scientific methods (such as those used in population genetics and epidemiology) to explain existing patterns and transmission of cultural ideas.

Viral Growth: The buzzwords viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet. Viral promotions may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, avergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, or even text messages. The basic form of viral marketing is not infinitely sustainable.

Harmonic Consonance: In music, a consonance (Latin com-, “with” + sonare, “to sound”) is a harmony, chord, or interval considered stable, as opposed to a dissonance (Latin dis-, “apart” + sonare, “to sound”) — considered unstable (or temporary, transitional). The strictest definition of consonance may be only those sounds which are pleasant, while the most general definition includes any sounds which are used freely.

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts…” ~ William Shakespeare

The Great Barrier Reef is composed of over 2,900 individual reefs, created by billions of coral polyps, and it’s 1,600 mile length can be seen from outer space. The Aspen tree grows in groves connected underground by a single root system – with each tree in the grove being genetically identical. Yet as each tree grows into its microclimate it is shaped differently from each other tree in the grove and carries the appearance of individuality. The largest Honey Fungus in the world covers over 3.4 miles and is thousands of years old…

However, the oldest and largest living organism on the planet is human consciousness. Some would argue that a civilization is not a single organism, nor is a species – but I’m not talking about us as a species or a civilization. I’m speaking of the fear of what lives under the bed, the monsters hidden in the darkness of an unlit room, the tentacles and teeth swimming up for you from really deep water… The memories that live in the space behind the eyes and below the brain.

Our memes resonate with each other. Each idea propagates; and we remember the dissonances and the consonances of those ideas all too well. Much like an individual’s growth from childhood to maturity, we have lost many of the details of the human consciousness’ infancy, but the fear of the T-Rex and the joy of a fire are still there, buried as murky memories. The study of history is a racial pursuit to rediscover our childhood. Napoleon? Hitler? The Spanish Inquisition? Teen angst.

What can we look forward to as we reach the legal racial drinking age? The beginning of conceptualization of ‘mature’ and ‘sophisticated’ ideas? Will we be able to pay the racial electric bill? Or did we party too hard and wake up in an apartment filled with empty beer cans, a killer hangover, and a pink slip?

Hopefully we didn’t party too hard. Our growth is starting to show fruits, and we have to water them. A terrific example is viral marketing. As we, as polyps, are beginning to get more sophisticated in the construction of our coral reef we learn to communicate more constructively in order to build more durable structures. A Viral Product is partially defined by its shortness of life – but breadth of impact. An important concept – but somewhat lacking in the mental picture it builds. When humans thing of a virus they think of something destructive, even deadly. While it is true that Viral Market spreads rapidly, it is not inherently destructive – just the opposite, it is a creative force. Yes, some people attempt to misuse it, as with any creative force, however that does not change the nature of the force.

A Meme is an idea which is passed along and propagates, creating new Memes and evolving itself. Though a Darwinistic approach has been applied to Memetics, the musical model is much more fitting. Each ‘idea’ is a frequency, it carries through our voices till the signal peters out, and interacts with other frequencies along the way, creating new consonances and dissonances, which themselves are Memes. And the acceleration of ideas (Memes) is not viral, it is a ‘perfect’ consonances – or a consonances that is pleasing to a large number.

Darwinism does not apply to a single lifespan of a species, but rather the generational growth of a species. Looking at human consciousness as a single as the single lifespan it is makes modern communication and the growth of ideas much easier to understand, and provides a much more stable platform to grow the idea of Memetics & Communication. The world is a stage; we may repair it, or break it, but it is a single stage; and we have known it for centuries – we just haven’t realized it yet.