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.It was a hard time.Wartime.Let me think: there was Cleopas and Joses, Cephas and Nicodemus, Mnason and Manaël, Rufus and Lucius and Eurion the splay-footed, Zabdon and Zakron.And many more.I was smoking cigarettes all day long, and all night long, except when coughing or kissing, because the tenor of my life in that place was unbearable, and I could find no rest, I could not sleep, I still can’t sleep.The first morning I was there I was sent to pick up pieces of men.All the wounded men and all the dead men had been carried away and there were only pieces of men left.Someone had to try to match the pieces together.That was me.Does this arm go with that arm? This leg with that leg? And worse.I was twenty years old.I began to smoke.I smoked all day long and all night long.Tobacco is not so bad.The ritual is soothing.The brief flare of flame.The sweet pull of that first drag.It makes you forget for a moment.But I remember them.Their names on their shirts.The scraps and tatters of shirts.Their names on their metal necklaces.The necklaces glittering in the mud.Let me think: there was Johnny and Joey, and Peter and Phil, and Eddy and Teddy, and Bob and Bill, and Michael and Matthew.Matthew the publican.I found some of him late in the afternoon.He was a child.The bones of a bird.A boy in a uniform asleep in a field, his head resting gently on a bed of ferns.4.Cedar and Worried Man stare at the maps on the long table in the cavernous central well of the Department of Public Works building.The maps sprawl and splay.In the center is a topographical map of a mountain.That’s where it is, says Worried Man.They stare at the mountain.No way, says Cedar.Yes way, says Worried Man.Consider all factors.If, as we have discussed, time is capable of different speeds, let us say ten speeds for ease of discussion though there are certainly more, then it is akin to film or video and can be sped up and slowed down.There is a master mechanism for its control.We do not know the master mechanism, nor the master mechanic, nor if there is a master mechanic.Such questions are not our purview.However the actual material at hand, the stuff of time, is our purview.Such material must be tactile.It cannot be ephemeral.Time does move, it does pass, it consists, it exists, it is not a dream, it is a thing.If as we have agreed we are talking not just perception but reality, actual phenomena perceived by more than one person at one time and not attributable to mob psychosis or misperception, then we are talking about tactile material.For ease of operation such material would be stored near the site where it is to be processed.For ease of storage after use it would be stored near the site where it was processed.A sensible arrangement would be to divide the processing areas into regions.Suitable storage places in regions would require isolation, difficulty if not impossibility of discovery, and, I believe, inasmuch as they are probably filmic, temperatures at or below freezing.In this region only two sites present themselves as serious candidates, and of the two sites one, Lavelatla, the fire mountain, is dangerously active seismically.The other, however, is essentially stable, is sufficiently remote and isolated in its nether parts, bears ice every day of the year.And I would argue further that it is agreeable as a storage site because of its very proximity to a large urban area.One would never think something so valuable would be stored in plain sight, as it were.If there is a master mechanic we can assume he is as devious as all other mechanics, exhibit A being you.Therefore.Both men stare at the map some more.No way, says Cedar.Yes, says Worried Man.You make a good case.We have to go there.Do we?We do.Billy, we are neither of us young anymore.Yet we have to go.Do we?We do.What about May?I’ll talk to May.What if we don’t come back?We’ll come back.What if we don’t? What if we freeze or fall off a cliff or get buried in ice?We won’t.What’s the matter with you?She’d be alone.We’d be leaving her alone.Cedar.We’ve waited all our lives for this.This is our chance.This is it.I know it is.It’s there.If we wait we will just get older.If we wait we will lose the chance.If we wait we will always be waiting [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]