The Spirit of America (1976)

 

The Spirit of America (1976)

I  figured I couldn’t  lose. Not that I am a particularly sharp guy, but I figured, if you got the vibes right, if you are in touch with the harmony of the Dao, or Tao, or whatever it is that hums in the background of the Cosmic Flow of Things, then you can’t lose. I guess I thought I was in tune with all that.

Ya see, I’ve been doing some Yoga (Yogi?)  meditations lately.  Yogi called the pitches and (if nobody was on second) one was a fastball, two a curve, and three is a knuckler if you have reached the point where you can stop the Universe from spinning. But then, I never would have been much of a catcher, being so skinny and left handed.

Anyway, me and a certain Mr. Constantine Delaney, he works down at the shop with me, we’ve been tracing down the circuits checking for shorts, trying to design on-the-fly a system superior to the present model. We figure, sure it seems kind of faddish and hokey, but at least it was, so far as we could tell, ecologically sound. And - they paid us, not very well, it’s true, still who are we to complain?  We just work here.

We got results too. We got the juice to run through all the circuits without burning anything out.   We had trouble turning off the machine sometimes, because, (we aren’t ready for any kind of demo yet) the self-sufficiency function, the perpetual motion aspect of it just would not turn off.  It worked too good, which of course was the wrong thing to say to the boss.  It’s like it would get stuck in the wires.  We are still adjusting it, and sometimes it seems like we are making progress, but what does that mean anyway?

A Talk with "Cuny" Delaney before Commencing the Mission 

“Of course the system is infallible if the operator is properly trained,” said the chief operator (or so he was called around the office).. 

“Infallible?  Trained? …  Infallible? …  Come on!”

 

“Control is the key,” said the controller, without looking at me.  I stared at him with studied absorption.  Could I handle it, I wondered? The housing of the system seemed solid enough, if a bit worn from age. “Have you been practicing?”

I hesitated. “Yes,” I said with forced confidence. 

“Then you should have no trouble.”

“But…?”

“But what?” 

I felt a welling up of power from Delaney.  I definitely felt it. There was no denying it. 

“But nothing,” I said. “I can do it.”

Remember - it’s all in your head.” I nodded. “You are on your own now. Now get the fuck out of my shop!”  I saw “Cun” Delaney no more.

A Mostly True Account of a Journey Across the Desert in Search of Riches and Freedom

She was in the bathroom, teasing out her beehive, and I was looking out the window, polishing my Seventh Cavalry belt buckle. I was confident. The only thing that bothered me was that we were leaving so late. I wanted to make the Salt Flats by sundown, and it looked like we would be lucky if we made it past the lake before it got dark.  Before I brought him over the Rockies with a heavy U-Haul hitched to his ass, my Javelin could have made it once we were out of the city. I remember once, coming across Southern Illinois at four in the morning, a jacked up Ford Mach One tried to…

“Come back,” I could hear the master’s voice in the ether. (he might have sounded like Alec Guinniss). But was he really saying it or was it just my conscience?  But wherever and whoever, it didn’t matter. Right now I should be meditating and I should have been doing that even more then. I should have been getting in tune with the Tao or Dao, or whatever, because I was going to need to flow with the tide if I was going to get anywhere. 

“There you go again,” I heard his voice again (was it Reagan this time - no, couldn’t be…)  I needed to get completely together, fitting the jigsaw puzzle of my soul into the seamless pattern of the big kahuna.   I’ll be honest with you. I’m talking about things that seem far away, things that took place too long ago. I was stupid thinking I could get away with this blasphemy. A minor poet wrote during the last days of the Roman Empire, :There is nothing to write about anymore.  Everything worth mentioning has been told before.”  

The scholarly medieval historian who pointed this out noted that this was typical of a society in decline, a society that had outlived its usefulness. I promised myself I would never succumb to this kind of attitude. I would be original regardless of where it took me, no matter what the implications. I will not be decadent. 

So I packed my cash (fifty bucks) and we headed out on I-80, toward Wendover with dreams of making piles of money, but most importantly, proving that we had mastered the Dao (or Tao) of Chance.  I have been successful in the last few weeks in my meditation exercises. I had begun to smoke a pipe too, and as I watched the smoke curl out of my mouth, I would watch it closely, and I could read signs in it. This smoke had been to the core of my being and would leave with the foretelling of my future. Cancer of course, but also what was in store more immediately. I felt I was ready. 

In the rear view mirror the Wasatch Mountains shrunk as the sun reflected in my eyes off of the Great Salt Lake. The radio said, “Lord knows I’m sinnin’ and a drinkin’, he don’t need your big mouth to tell the town.”  As I sang along, I sensed my mission was turning into a holiday, a respite from the struggles of life.  I turned off the radio.  It was sabotaging my focus.

The Sex Machine raced the sun and in middle age showed a hint of what he had been in his prime. 80,90,95 then he coughed and I let up, and we sailed on like we had just left nothing for nowhere. She slid over next to me, between the bucket seats, and the sun went down before we reached the Salt Flats, but it didn’t matter now because I knew that whatever happened didn’t matter. 

Didn't matter? Yes - that was it! That was the ticket to ride!

Wendover was brightly visible in the dark, a magnet in the wilderness, and like a spacecraft hurtling toward a planet, we picked up speed as we got closer. The gravity pulled us off the freeway and we crept up to the State Line Casino.

What Came to Pass in the Bowels of the Monster, 

How it Devoured Our Hero, 

and Spit Him up, and 

How he Returned Again, 

Only to be Vomited Again, 

and Be Driven Back Across the Desert  

Thick carpets, gaudy colors, Tension, more tension, no smiles, packed like sardines, packed with people who smell like they eat sardines while they smoke. The Black Jack tables are full, there is no room to play. Crowd around the Crap table like victims of a dysentery epidemic around an outhouse. No smiles when they win, no frowns when they lose. Surly barkeep. Hokey  entertainment. I feel like I am starting to crumble.

I came back from the cashier with quarters, and started playing the machines. “Keep pumping those quarters in,” quipped a hippie with a leather headband, long silky hair, knee-high buckskin boots, an Indian print pullover who was holding hands with a lifeless, hollow-eyed hippie fairy queen. The old lady next to me did what was commanded and kept pumping in quarters. I went looking for a drink.

Frank Sinatra had been there only last week. He cussed out the woman he came with and pushed her down. His karma still hung over the room like a bad smell, and there was an anti-matra humming in the room that was staining the souls of everyone there.  We sat in the lobby, away from the machines and watched two young children talk to one another.  It seemed profound at the time, 

“Wow, I said.

She shook her head. 

I said, “You know this isn’t like the friendly poker games we have at lunch hour at the shop.”

Again, she shook her head.

We sat there, in stunned silence wonder what we were going to do next.

The Crap Table    (a parable of green)

A forty year old woman, alone, was standing across from me at the crap table. She was drunk and getting drunker, chain smoking, betting sporadically, and needed more Poligrip. I was betting and losing irregularly,  winning just enough to keep me at the table. Every four or five passes, when I ‘won’, she would reach for my chip as if it were hers. Sometimes I wouldn’t be sure if it was mine or not.  Mostly she would just hold it down with her finger, pushing it in a circle, but once she took the chip. I just stared at her. The croupier looked away.

“That’s mine, mam.” 

She stopped and acted like a helpless flower about to be picked by a wanton little boy.  I looked to the right, and an older man,  in a cowboy hat, who had a complicated betting system said, “It’s yours.” She slowly pushed  the chip away from her pile with her forefinger. She looked at me, and then the man with the complicated voting system and laughed with a slightly hysterical tinge, then bet again.  I suddenly realized I had lost my thread, that any good vibes I had before left the building after I submitted to the judgment of an old man in a cowboy hat for a lousy five dollar chip. The magic was gone, if it was ever there at all.

This Is My Problem

I had ten dollars left out of the fifty I brought. I thought, OK, don’t go back broke, quit now.  But something still gnawed at me.  

“Forty bucks, just like that!” I said to no one in particular, even though she was walking right next to me as we searched that parking lot for The Sex Machine. I was half hoping someone would try and rob us. I wanted to fight somebody. 

But she was grinning. Her beehive was drooping over her ears. This was just a masquerade ball for her, and I think she was amused by my distress. She had shown no interest in my theory of riding the Tao to bending the laws of chance in our favor.

We had about an eighth of a tank of gas in the car, about enough to get back the Salt Lake City.  It was close though. We had decide now, because there were no gas stations out on the Salt Flats. Play it safe, buy more gas, or play for keeps and hope the camel can hump it home.

“Let’s get something to eat,” I said.  I wasn’t talking to myself when I said this, but I might as well have been. Then I saw her shake her head, almost imperceptibly, so I was pretty sure she heard me.

“Look,” I said as we walked into the diner, where the walls were covered by a multi-generational panorama of the many rocket ships on wheels that had broken succeeding land speed records on the flats  just west of here, “are you pissed off at me for losing almost all of our money? For nothing?”  

And she knew what I meant by nothing too, because the whole evening had been a drag, as if we were being dragged behind one of those rocket ships on wheels, over cold sand and cacti. Or cactus. 

“Naw!” She gave me a big kiss. Then I looked closer at the wall behind her. It was Craig Breedlove standing next to his rocket ship on wheels,  “The Spirit of America”. It was beginning to make sense to me now.  It wasn’t a drag - we were being pulled into the future.

We split an order of onion rings and a BLT, both of which tied for the title of “The Worst”. 

“Ya know,” I said, not quite between mouthfuls,”We got about six bucks left.” She nodded.  “And they have almost forty five of ours.” I paused to let that sink in. “This is a critical decision, right here honey.” She looked puzzled, but I was beginning to get my bearings. You can’t go wrong if the other person doesn’t not know what you are talking about. THey can’t second guess you then. “We have to go back to the casino. If we quit every time things don’t go our way, we will never get anywhere.”

“Let’s put some gas in the car fir…”

“No!” She shook her head and rolled her eyes, as she finished my coke. I wanted to ask her for a sip to wash down the bacon that was sticking to my teeth, but I wanted to save any moral strength to rally her for our counter attack on the casino. 

“What if we lose?”

I didn’t want to entertain that kind of question. “Don’t worry honey.”  The thought of her doing a little ‘play for pay’, passed through my head very very quickly, but I dismissed it unequivocally.  I was almost sure we had enough gas to get back. We were going uphill, and the gauge was a bit below a quarter tank, but it reads like that on an up-slope.

Anti-Climax

I looked at my watch, and drummed my fingers. How long was this going to take. I kept staring at the door, waiting for her to come out. She never takes this long. Finally, she hiked up her slacks as she walked toward me. 

“You wouldn’t believe that bathroom,” she said.

It was after one. We went back in and it was packed.  But the black jack tables were closed for some reason.  I knew it was hopeless, but we tried craps again and the band was playing, as the croupier took our last $5 chip, and she laughed as walked out to the parking lot.  Maybe I am not such a big Zen Master after all.

But we couldn’t stop laughing as the Sex Machine took us home, and that felt pretty good. "Kun" Delaney is going to have a big laugh too on Monday morning. But really it was only fifty bucks after all.    

The SwiftPad Takeover predicts Christian Pulisic's goal (raised in Pennsylvania...)

 See more about the first volume of the SwiftPad Saga

Read more about the SwiftPad Takeover

    The SwiftPad App had a whole interactive story based on just such a

boy, raised in rural Pennsylvania, who had never played basketball

or baseball or football, in fact didn’t even know such sports

existed. The App “player” connected with the actor player in the

App (assuming the device had sufficient voice recognition, otherwise

a keyboard popped up). The young boy, Tad Lopstyk, was not

even the star of his youth team, and he worshiped Aldo Donelli.

The SwiftPad Chooser journey was titled The Lopstyk Effect, and it

predicted when the US had 18.7 million young boys like Lopstyk,

the United States would win the World Cup.

    The App player could change history either way, depending on

actions. Italy won the World Cup championship in 1934 and beat

the US 7–1 in the first game. To make it worse, the Cup was hosted

by Italy, or rather by Mussolini.

    But the App’s Journey changes that fact. An old black and white

film print of the game’s highlights morphed into a full 90 minutes,

importing Lopstyk into the 1934 US team’s mid-field. Lopstyk and

Donelli strike again and again, matching Italy’s goal barrage, with

frequent cut-aways to a not-amused Il Duce. In history Italy’s win

was Mussolini’s victory and Lopstyk’s time traveling (i.e., The Swift-

Pad user/Player) changes history. The fascist victory against the US

turns into a 7–7 tie and Hitler’s enthusiasm for the Berlin Olympic

Games two years later was much diminished and with it, Germany’s

love affair with the Fuehrer. The consequences are only hinted at,

because you can only take the Butterfly Effect so far, because…well,

it is still happening.

    Donelli was the shining example of just who Lopstyk wanted to

be. The App, using still shots both real and auto-animated, jumps to

the future and Lopstyk stays on the pitch and scores the winning goal

in his late twenties, in Qatar in 2022. SwiftPad produced a renaissance-

like, high holy scene, with angels blowing trumpets and saints

gazing with tranquility at an animation of Donelli looking down

approvingly at Lopstyk in his interactive uniform that provided a full

sensory playing experience for the dedicated fan. (Available in several

colors, with free delivery, if you order two. In the future you would

catch the highlights in your head, not on ESPN.)

Review of “No Way to Die” (Cal Claxton Oregon Mysteries Book 7) by Warren C Easley

A Great Procedural Murder Mystery About the Oregon Coast  (As reviewed on Goodreads, 11/22/2022) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49534640-no-way-to-die “No Way to Die” is set in Coos Bay Oregon, a depressed little seaport that the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) industry has in its sights as a main tanker terminal on the West Coast. There is money to be made by local luminaries, but local environmentalists are warning about the potential for disaster that the project threatens the community. Cal Claxton is vacationing nearby with his daughter, who is taking a break from a high pressure research project at Harvard. While they are fly fishing in a scenic creek, his daughter discovers a body, hog-tied and floating next to a tree snag. The vacation is over, and we are pulled into local scandals, corruption, drug running and of course murder. Warren Easley’s Cal Clayton crime stories are getting better and better. “No Way to Die” is a thoughtful, action packed and totally believable story of big money corrupting a small city that is trying to recover its glory. I have read a couple of his earlier novels, and Easley’s writing style compares well against some of the acknowledged masters of mystery writing. If you like John McDonald’s Florida based Travis McGee novels you will fall happily into Cal Clayton’s Oregon. Easley’s characters reveal themselves in their action and dialogue with verve and intelligence. Calvin Clayton, a widowed lawyer who lives in Dundee Oregon (wine country), is slowly but surely becoming one of the great fiction characters of the genre.  What makes the story “unputdownable” is how Easley skillfully tells the story, making it seem effortless and casual. He weaves together the pressure of running a small law firm, the lives of people struggling on the coast, in addition to following tenuous leads in a murder investigation. The novel unfolds and we are treated to scenic coastal beauty as well as various and surprising depictions of weak people trying to be decent (and occasionally but not always succeeding). We also meet people driven by greed and depravity, but even then we get a glimpse of their humanity.  Cal is not a rich lawyer. He needs to keep his practice afloat, while working through the dangerous investigation. Oregon itself is ever present, it’s natural beauty and treacherous back roads are always zipping along with the intriguing investigatory details that slowing and deliciously come together. But most of all "No Way to Die" is a brilliant procedural that has to take a wild ride with dead ends and trapdoors galore before it all fits together.  It is exciting to watch a good writer in the process of becoming better and better. Easley’s Cal Clayton mysteries are on their way to becoming part of Oregon lore. “No Way to Die” is a great read.

A Halloween Story, (from the early 80s)

 No Marks on the Body

(Written in the early 80s for a Halloween contest sponsored by a Eugene Oregon Literary magazine, (I forgot it’s name, but am sure it no longer exists).  Not only did this story NOT win but, (this was 40 some years ago, so the details elude me) I remember reading notes in the November issue congratulating the winners, and how much better the winning story was than a particularly sick story they had received, one that nearly ruined the experience for the judges. Or some statement that to that effect - but however it was said, it was plain they were talking about how much they disliked this story…

I have done a bit of minor editing, which I doubt would have mattered.)

He sat at the kitchen table watching a squirrel make a quick estimate of the potential nut yield on his front yard. The cool, gray, misty, late October overcast bore down upon the tree-dwelling rodent’s calculations. The yard was raked and manicured, and any nuts that had been there earlier were gone. The squirrel looked  back at him, (there was eye contact, he was sure of that), then it leaped over the fence to seek nuts elsewhere. 

He had just arrived home from work. He popped open a can of beer and looked out toward the street and  saw  a nubile adolescent Cat Girl dressed in black, accompanied by a chunky woman who was dressed as Speedy Alkalizer.

“Damn!” He stood up to pull the drapes and the room got dark. He finished his beer and walked back to his bedroom to change his shirt. The polyester golf shirt he had been wearing all day at work carried a foul B.O., like the plague basilicus and he was visibly relieved when he donned a black cotton hooded sweatshirt that was a size too big. Who was that woman? 

Then he remembered standing in the ghetto Safeway express line on sixth street where Speedy had tried very hard to talk to him.

“What are you going to be for Halloween?” He remembered her asking that stupid question out of the blue, and how he ignored her by pretending to read the National Enquirer. 

But he relented and without looking up said,  “Myself.” 

She said nothing, so he looked and smiled at her, but she seemed perplexed. Then she began telling him about moving into town from some hamlet in the coast range, and her recent enrollment in a computer class at the local community college. He was trapped into listening to her because the cashier was waiting for the manager to bring some quarters. He nodded blankly. She stopped talking, looked at him and smiled. He suddenly realized that beneath her vagabond rustic hippie apparel was an attractive woman, or at least once had been. She continued to smile at him. He quickly grinned back and paid for his beer and walked out. She called out at him as he left,  “There are more things around here than just in your head sweetie.”

Anyway, he sat in his kitchen watching Speedy and what appeared to be her teenage daughter harassing an older man and woman, although they all did appear to laugh at something. He pulled off his socks and shoes and walked over to the living room, laid down on the couch and turned on the TV. 

About five minutes later he heard shuffling on his porch and then a knock. He lay still as a fawn for an uncomfortable length of time, then, again, he heard knocking. He still didn’t move.

Finally it sounded like they walked off the porch. “When I was a little girl,”  he overheard as they left, “we used to soap the windows of people who didn’t give us anything. It’s too bad I don’t have any soap.”  He peeked out at them through the curtains. 

“If they don’t answer, do you still soap their windows?”  The girl’s pipe cleaner whiskers and black Lycra leotards balanced the effect of two floppy, quilted ears that matched neither in size nor color. 

“Sure, if we didn’t like them.”

“Do we like this house?”

“No.”

There was more laughter. He was paralysed with a strange fear. He knew he had to get out of there, before they came back. He waited, not moving a muscle as he heard them walk away and  was glad they had no soap. 

When he was sure they were gone, he changed into loose clothes, put on some running shoes, and locked the front door. He started running. He ran across town, heading south, then up Lincoln street passed a house with columns, then up the hill, and then east, over across Willamette.  He passed hundreds of frightening little demons, all with horrifying single mindedness, out on a socially sanctioned glucose binge. By the time he got into the deeper recesses of south Eugene, it was dark.

He slinked down into a hillside cu-de-sac and crept into some shrubbery outside of a house that was at the bottom of a steep winding driveway. Jack-o-lanterns leered out of every window. Witches and skeletons floated around the fire-lite foyer. 

He noticed that the trick-or-treaters were getting older. Not all of them were in costume, but the unmasked ones were often stranger, and more hideous looking than the fairy queens, gobins, Elephant men, Nixons, bumblebees, Reagans, and Batmen, (and Batgirls), and a Flash that seemed to come and go in an endless procession. Fog was rolling in, and the smoke from the house’s chimney curled down, putting a darkening odor of hellishness in the air.

Someone in a black sweatsuit came out of the house and said something inaudible, and quickly disappeared up the cul-de-sac into the fog. He was disturbed, his stomach was queasy and he felt himself losing control of his thoughts. He continued to watch the house. Purple haired punks, frat boys and freeloaders were making their way into and out of the house.

He didn’t quite understand it. Behind him, (regardless of the direction) was a beating of footsteps that became louder and more rhythmic, raising his anticipation and fear, only to fade again. And then again. He sat still, and closed his eyes and it faded. A long time seemed to pass in an instant.

He pushed his way through the wooded area behind the house and moved quietly away from the houses. He continued running and walking along the Amazon, then turned east to climb up a steep sewer easement.  Again, he thought he heard something behind him, but when he looked he saw nothing. He kept hiking up the hill.

 He found himself under a house on stilts,  that from a distance, looked like a Martian landing craft. It was late. He looked down across South Eugene. Most of the lights were out now.  He picked out the house at the end of the cul-de-sac that he had just watched and saw little flickers of light rising from it like the embers from a fire.  He was very tired, but forced himself to go on.  He jogged on a path through Hendricks Park, and then down through the University, across Franklin Boulevard and then across the Willamette footbridge.

He wandered, jogging and staggering out onto the bark chip covered running trail, built on an old landfill. He could feel the ground moving, breathing, belching gas and growling. He walked east toward I-5, then sprinted under the freeway, and continued, now thoroughly exhausted, on the bikepath toward Springfield. It was well past midnight, into the silent early morning hours. 

 He knew someone had been following him for sometime.   At least he hoped it was someone. The idea that it might be something rather than someone was slowly making its way into his awareness and overwhelming his imagination.  He tried to tell himself  it was only the echoes of his own footsteps, and just as he had half convinced himself of that, he saw darting shadows in the peripheries of his vision.  When he turned to look, it became dead still, and embodied the form of a stunted oak tree…he was downwind from it now and he smelled a certain sulfuric odor. 

He faked left then spun right. He heard a whoosh…then across his vision streaked a sleek, black, nimble feline form that quickly disappeared into the brush. A slight wind swayed the trees. The gnarled branches of the stunted oak tree reached out toward him, then pull away. He stopped and stared. 

 “Pull yourself together”, he whispered. As he restarted walking, there were footsteps again, in front of him now, fading as quickly as they came. The wind died, and the oak tree became still and rooted again. He turned quickly, and felt himself beginning to panic.  He turned again, and started running…

He didn’t feel or see it. But something hit him, and he felt himself becoming smaller as the darkness around him swelled. Then whatever he was, what he had been, if indeed he had existed at all, left like a popped bubble, and he was gone.   

Chapter 23 - The SwiftPad Extinction

 Arkie teaches Sequoia about his brainstorm

Mid-October

The Saint Petersburg Flood Prevention Facility Complex (Ко́мплекс защи́тных сооруже́ний Санкт-Петербу́рга от наводне́ний, kómpleks zashchítnykh sooruzhéniy Sankt-­Peterbúrga ot navodnéniy), unofficially the Saint Petersburg Dam, is a 25-km (16-mi) long complex of dams for flood control near Saint Petersburg, Russia.…The complex is intended to protect Saint Petersburg from [Baltic] storm surges by separating the Neva Bay from the rest of the Gulf of Finland.…The northern and southern parts of the dam act like two giant bridges, providing access from the mainland to Kotlin Island and Kronstadt.

Historically, storm surges from the gulf have caused over 300 floods of varying severity within the city, some with devastating effects. The dam has the capability to protect the city from water rising up to 5 m (16 ft).

From Wikipedia Article on the Saint Petersburg Dam

Sequoia and Arkie walked over to the house. Nate and Elwood were sitting at the kitchen table, in front of two glasses of white wine and a bottle that was almost empty. Two .22 pistols (a Walther and a Beretta) were also on the table.

“What are you guys doing?”

“Playing Russian roulette. Want in?”

“The last line of defense, huh?”

They both gave Arkie the finger as he and Sequoia went down the basement stairs.

“Actually, that is what we are going to do right now,” said Arkie.

“Russian roulette?” Sequoia looked concerned.

“No. Design the last line of defense.”

Only one person was working in the monitoring center. Usually there were at least four, but neither Arkie nor Sequoia was surprised everyone was topside. Alice was hosting a vegan barbecue, and it was nice fall weather. They sat in front of one of the stations and Arkie logged in.

“OK, let me do a little navigating.” Arkie then pulled out a scribble he kept in his back pocket, filled with IP addresses and users and passwords. “Go ahead, write this down. Don’t video it or even store it on your systems. I mean it, this is – of the highest possible importance. It has to remain secret!” It was a layered set of systems, about seven deep, meaning he had to pass through six portals, darkweb-type entry points, just to get to the starting point.

“OK.”

“OK here – I was up all night looking up Siemens Switch command syntax. And researching hacks into the OS of the switches themselves.”

“But – why?”

“Ever since 2011, the Russian city of St. Petersburg on the Neva River has been protected against the threat of high water from the Baltic by a dam and giant gate across the Neva Bay. There is a low pressure system in the Gulf of Bothnia, between Sweden and Finland. It might be nothing, or it could mean a Baltic cyclone. They sometimes  take a couple of weeks to form. There have been cases of it lasting a month or longer, before it breaks up or forms a storm.”

“OK, so will the dam hold?”

“Ha!” Arkie smiled, and continued to test. “Probably. The dam is five meters above sea level. That is a lot. No, it is going to take a major off-the-charts storm to overflow that! Someday, sure, with climate change, and rising sea levels, but not yet. Unless…”

“Yeah…”

“Unless the gate on the dam doesn’t close during a storm. Here is the piece that will be difficult. Check this out! I am into their control center. I came in through a server in the St. Petersburg City Admin building, so – the thought is – that their intrusion detection won’t see me if I come in from one of their boxes. The Russians are good at attack, and sloppy on defense. Anyway, I have been working on this off and on for the last two months. We need to give Chubby some leverage when and if he tries to get GG out.”

“So,” said Sequoia, “What does that box control?”

“This is the Simatic PCS 7 system. I know this system. I helped some people with a simulation of an attack on process control systems years ago. It still looks pretty much the same. Command set is similar to Cisco’s, turns systems off and on to activate, then steps down to lower levels to control those system functions. Of course the operators don’t do it like this, they have a GUI they can mouse around. I know a guy who can crack it. He owes me.”

“Who?”

“Well, I don’t actually know him. I don’t even know what country he lives in; I think he is in Europe somewhere. But he hates Siemens, the company. I don’t know why.  Maybe used to work there, or maybe something to do with the war, or maybe it is even more personal than that. Doesn’t matter.”

Arkie demonstrated how they could move around the system; he was displaying and cutting and pasting the current settings of the devices it controlled – pumps for flooding and draining the lagoons, motors for lifting, and releasing the gates, etc.

“Here,” he said. He looked over and saw Sequoia was mesmerized. “See, look – here is a map of St. Petersburg. See where the city is? It is all reclaimed marshland. Peter the Great built it during the 1700s and hundreds of thousands of workers died – froze, disease, the whole thing. It is hard to see how it was different from Stalin’s worst atrocities. But the results speak for themselves. It is a waterway to Western Europe – the Baltic. Here – see this line across the bay? That is called the KZS – 16 miles of dams. Flood control. During storms it stops the flood surge and protects the city. The whole thing – the key point – is here. The S-1. On Russian maps it is “C-1” because C in Russian is pronounced like an S. This is a gate – 200 meters long – a floating gate that is almost always open – for shipping. But during a storm – it closes. It has only closed a couple of times since 2011.”

“And the Siemens industrial control system controls it.”

“Exactly. Well, there might be a storm coming; it might be nothing or it might be big. But there is an extremely low pressure polar vortex developing and if it moves south and hits the high-pressure hot air – bang! We have a massive Baltic cyclone that moves up into the funnel of the Neva Bay. So if we can take control of this system…before it hits…if it hits…”

“…Take control of the system and don’t let them control the S-1! Right?”

“Exactly.”

“Give us the girl, or we flood the city!” Sequoia said in a low, gravelly, hoodlum voice. Arkie laughed.

“As you can see we have breached the first layer of their defenses – we can get to the Simatic login prompt. Which means we can change things – but we need to understand the procedures they use to make it work. Their failsafe systems, etc.”

Sequoia took over the controls and started maneuvering around. She listed out the users, and their authorities. “We are just a guest user here. Go slow. We can look but not touch, right?”

“You are right. We will need to get super-user authority. Have to find a buffer overload sequence. I know we can do that – or my friend can – in fact he probably already has the steps for that. Hear, listen to this – ‘The S-1 submersible storm surge barrier is 200 meters across and 16 meters deep. In the event of a flood warning the barrier’s giant gates close shut. Each one can move freely, functioning like a submerging submarine.’”

Arkie and Sequoia spent about 14 hours straight working on penetrating the dam operation. Arkie’s friend in Europe found a working version of the Simatic PCS 7 – including its virtualized panel – and allowed them to practice on it. He also gave them a technique to buffer overload the guest user and – voilà – super-user! Which meant they could lock out everybody else when the time came. His friend also gave him access into the classified section of Siemens databases, and found the full specs on the hydraulics and access points into the dam.

“The problem – well – the ultimate problem – we have a bunch of problems,” Arkie shook his head.

“Let me get you some coffee; I need a cup myself,” said Sequoia.

“The default setting – if you just let it float and open the valves – is for the S-1 gate to be closed. But they almost never close it. To keep it open they have to activate the hydraulic piston – and the motors that push it – there are two of them about five meters in diameter.”

“Is there a manual override?”

“Of course,” said Arkie. “Here, look at this schematic.” Arkie pulled up a visual of the floor plan of the control room. “In order for this to be a surprise, we would have to activate the gate and lift it after the storm is surging. They will close it well before the surge arrives. So we will have to time locking it ‘open’ before they close it.”

“Or figure out how to open it after it closes.”

“Yeah. I hadn’t thought of that. We will need to game both scenarios.”

“We don’t have time. We have to keep it from closing. Which means we have to sabotage it in a way they don’t suspect until it is too late – for them. And of course have a way to fix it,” said Sequoia, “to open it later.”

“Right.”

“The good news is that the dry dock where it sits when open will be flooded. The gates float out and close on their own. We just have to keep the dry dock ‘dry’ and keep people off it so they can’t open the spigot manually – assuming we can shut it down with the process control.”

“So if the hydraulics don’t work – it will lift the gate up until it floats free, then the water pushes it closed. We can’t let the gate float,” said Arkie.

“It seems impossible. We have a long way to go…”

Longing for the Year Zero

photo - Album cover "Year Zero" Nine Inch Nails.

 I am midway through my 70th year. 

I always had a premonition that life would get shitty around this time.  My Dad went though WW2 and it was over when he was 25. It was all gravy after that. I was born in the gravy, but I always knew, somehow, it wouldn't last forever. I “read'' history in school, (as opposed to ‘studied’; I never studied anything.) And from my reading I came to believe that everything was cyclical, from the vibrations of subatomic particles to the business cycle, and to the alternate stages of peace and war, chaos and harmony, etc.  The cycles of history seemed more likely to me than the inexorable rise from the Flintstones to the Jetsons.  Then I went to China, and learned that this cyclical stuff was all old ground for them, that they saw that yin and yang, and the ‘Mandate of Heaven’ controlled the ups and downs of everything. 

I think that these cycles have sped up, the amplitude, (the measure of how shitty it is going to get) and the technology coefficient 'b', have both increased causing the sine curve to get steeper and narrower. 

Below is a “Natural” sine curve.  The Amplitude on the Y axis is the severity of “disturbance” or distance from the harmony.  An Amplitude of ‘1’ is ‘normal’, whatever that is. 

X axis is time.  The ‘period’ in is π,but in this case, it is x number of generations. When the curve is  near zero life is good. As it approaches zero on the X axis it is getting better, as it moves away it is getting worse.

When amplitude is at its zenith, the maximum benefit of the technological shift is enjoyed, but it is also the point where the retrenchment against the effects of technology begin to consolidate.

  

Our current state - amplitude has increased, and each cycle is farther from harmony. Time (number of generations) between cycles has shortened.

Technology coefficient T = 2

The amplitude (a)  increases to 2 as T increases.

The period decreases as T increases. Multiple the reciprocal of T by the base period π = π/2.   

So as ‘T’ increases, (technological innovation) the time between cycles shortens, and the severity of the cycle increases. If π= One lifetime, (a measure of the change in the 20th century, say 70 years) then we should expect one cycle every 35 years or so. As tech innovation increases, it will get shorter still, and the amplitude will correspondently increase.  

In the Middle Ages life didn’t change much from year to year. As we learned more, life changed faster. 

In my life we in the U.S. have gone from fear of nuclear annihilation, the McCarthy era of fear and silence, with legalized racial discrimination, to a youth revolt against injustice and the constant preparation for war, to a kind of stability in international relationships (with the opening of China and the Fall of the Soviet Empire) leading to a sense of progress, an ‘end of history’.  Social attitudes softened, people’s differences began to be accepted, and from the outside it appeared that we had  a general agreement as to how we want to live. (Of course there was the Balkan War, the Falkland War, and all kinds of other nasty occurrences to provide fodder for naysayers).

Now that seems to be unraveling.  We have passed zero on the x axis, and are moving toward a downward amplitude, perhaps a very steep amplitude.  The decline started with the Bush/Cheney unprovoked War in Mesopotamia, then Russia fell back into tyranny, and started an unprovoked war in Ukraine, China reneged on its pledge to leave Hong Hong alone for fifty years after 1997, and now seems to be saber rattling in the Taiwan Straits. We just came out of a worldwide plague, and frequency of mass murder in the US, much of it racially motivated, is increasing.

Global deaths in combat

This shortening of the period, and the increase in the amplitude (the ‘b’ coefficient  getting larger) is driven by technology, which has been shrinking the world over the last two millennia.  Shrinking the world, as in driving us closer together. Over the first thousand years after Rome, it moved very slowly, but then in the Renaissance, it began to speed up.  In the last 600 years, technology gave us the printing press, voyages of discovery, gunpowder, steam engines, transatlantic cables, the airplane, dynamite, wireless communication, Relativity, rocketry, nuclear bombs, the computer, smart phones, and social media.  Did humans evolve fast enough to keep up? Maybe not.   

Think about the past, and here I speak of the cycles in Western civilization.  Starting with the disintegration of the Roman Empire, which took a thousand years if you count Byzantium (Constantinople) , to the herding of wandering tribes into nation states, the rise of monotheism and the countless wars it engendered, the slow advances in agriculture which moved people into cities, where they discovered politics, and diseases like the Black Death discovered them.  All of those processes took centuries.    People’s lives didn’t change much, they lived and died in the same village they were born in.  And over the course of generations - they changed but only imperceptibly.  Stirrups arrived from the Steppes putting soldiers on horses, creating a demand for bigger horses, allowing deeper and earlier plowing to increase food supply, increasing populations.  But while all this was happening, nobody noticed.  Century after century, stuck on the same farm, families developed habits and customs that suited their unchanging lives. They were sure about their place in the universe. 

But now this process has been upended. In the 20th century, people born on the farm died in the city. Now we are born into towns that die off between grammar school and high school, while some become so rich on this process of capitalistic 'creative destruction" that their wealth buys a ticket off the planet, while others are stuck, and social statistics say they will stay that way.  And many look back and wonder if it was worth it, if it is better now.  If you read social media, you know you are a loser, you know you are missing out on everything, that they are getting rich and having fun are you are not.  You look out at the weather - is it really changing? If it rains, the forest grows too fast, and when it is dry there is more fuel to burn. And storms more storms are on the way.  

Our system of resource allocation has led us into some vicious traps as well.  Capitalism proved effective at first, but it led to a new class of tyrants, and a deep wealth divide.  Capitalism was based in part on an unlimited supply of natural resources.   We have come to the end of that supply. Now we have to control our use of nature, or we will end our rise as a species, and perhaps begin a catastrophic decline.   

Now the world is listening to the call of the demagogue again.  

The nation state is dying. The would-be American nationalists are looking abroad for allies. Putin wishes Trump was still President, because he knows he would have green-lite his invasion. American conservatives are worshiping Hungary's Viktor Orban who has ended free expression in Budapest.

In China and Russia I admire those democrats and liberals who refuse to break, even if they have to remain quiet for now. Only by destroying their own lives and their families lives can they oppose their governments. Nevertheless some still stand up and oppose.

We know we in the US might be one election away from being in the same 'State'.   

Politics is slowly becoming international.  I have compatriots in Russia and China, and  political opponents in the U.S.  

I am with my compatriots fighting authoritarians, not with the Americans in Budapest.

Geography, ethnicity, and language are fading as barriers. We are divided by social media, a ‘Meta” political landscape. Neighborhoods and families are being fragmented.  ‘Texas’ is controlled by the same “party” that controls Russia now.  Millions of good Texans are stuck in a state that they don’t seem able to change, just like the people in St. Petersburg, Russia. 

 

We have no agreement that any of this is true. This is a fart in the wind. People will dispute every detail of this, and in the end, will avoid the questions until we can no longer ignore it. We have seen how this plays out. We ignored the rise of Fascism after WW1, then we didn’t, and after that we seemed to begin a long steep dive toward zero. 

When did the peaks occur? Was one in 1969? Woodstock, Charles Manson and the Moon landing? Maybe, maybe not, but we have definitely  passed the zero, and are on our way to another amplitude.  If the last peak was the end of the Clinton administration, when did we pass zero? When will we hit perigee?