Late-K Lunacy

by Ted Bernard

  LATE-K LUNACY

  Ted Bernard

  Library of Congress subject headings:

  1. Collapse---Fiction. 2. Panarchy---Fiction. 3. College students---fiction.

  4. Fracking ---Fiction. 5. Student strikes---Fiction. 6. Ohio---Fiction.

  SMASHWORDS ISBN 978-1-927032-86-2

  Editing, design

  Peter Geldart, Danielle Aubrey

  Petra Books | petrabooks.ca

  Cover art and interior graphics: Emily Apgar.

  Diagrams on page 74 and 75: From Panarchy edited by Lance H. Gunderson and C.S. Holling. Copyright © 2002 Island Press. Reproduced by permission of Island Press, Washington, DC.

  This is a work of fiction. All names and places are imagined by the author.

  The best efforts have been made to contact copyright holders. Should you have any questions, concerns, or corrections, please contact the publisher; new information will be reflected in future editions.

  The educated global citizen may be aware of today’s “small world” but almost certainly they have little idea of its vulnerability. They are oblivious because the social and political institutions — in fact, even environmental and resource management institutions — dedicate vast resources to stave-off breakdown, to invent work-arounds, and to cover up or misconstrue warning signs.

  — Katja Nickleby

  DEDICATION

  For my Millennial students and those on whose shoulders they wobble. Though I am not solely responsible for the tarnished planet you’ve inherited,

  I do apologize for the lack of foresight of my generation.

  Table of Contents

  DEDICATION

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ONE - Kate

  OVER THE CLIFF

  Chapter 1

  TWO - Stefan's Worlds

  THREE - Panarchy

  OVER THE CLIFF

  Chapter 2

  OVER THE CLIFF

  Chapter 3

  OVER THE CLIFF

  Chapter 4

  FOUR - Stefan's Journal

  FIVE - We Resist

  SIX - Occupy

  OVER THE CLIFF

  Chapter 5

  SEVEN - Hurtling Toward Omega

  EIGHT - The Genius that Invents the Future

  OVER THE CLIFF

  Chapter 6

  NOTES

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Were C.S. Buzz Holling never to have inspired hundreds of scholars and teachers, myself included, I could never, ever have conjured the theory of change from which this story derives. I am indebted to him and the Resilience Alliance that continues to generate amazing science. I am more grateful than I can adequately express to Danielle Aubrey of Petra Books, whose steadfast support, incisive criticism, and openness to the premise of the novel and its myriad characters have been extraordinary. Closer to home, tons of thanks are due for the critiques of several readers of this novel in its formative life and for suggestions of other kinds that enriched and helped shape the story. Among those, I would first single out Ann Barr, who challenged and deepened our friendship through months and months of smart and tough-minded editing. Without her, I might well have relegated the project to the recycling bin.

  Others who deserve accolades for grand as well as tiny but artful, even cunning, nudges include Jonathan Bernard, James Bernard, Geoff Buckley, Lois Carlson, Nedra Chandler, Joe Brehm, Eden Kinkaid, Lily Gianna Woodmansee, Kevin Hansen, Patricia Parker and Donna Lofgren. Especially Donna, who provided unfathomable daily acts of nurture and love, in spite of the ever-looming 400-page elephant in the room. Emily Apgar rendered the book’s cover with expertise and imagination. Emily, who was an Ohio University student at the time, was unerringly the fair-minded professional which undoubtedly derives from her gifted mentor, Professor Julie Elman. And finally, speaking of students, where would I be without the hundreds and hundreds over the years who prodded and challenged and inspired and befriended me? The answer to that is nowhere.

  ONE

  Kate

  Through the weathering of our spirit,

  the erosion of our soul,

  we are vulnerable.

  Isn’t that what passion is —

  bodies broken open through change?

  — Terry Tempest Williamsi

  1

  THE AFTERNOONS IN SOUTHERN OHIO of the 2030s were sweltering. Instead of taking his siesta in the shade of a veranda, he rambled from the village. He found his way to a clump of river birch on the east bank of the river a half-hour’s walk south. Idly, through the August haze, he gazed toward the confluence. He could see that the Big River was low, its dams and locks blown out by the epic 2021 flood. It flowed freely, unhindered. Which meant you could ride your horse across the river in this season — if you owned a horse. Below him, the Shawnee, a tributary, meandered back and forth atop sediment that had filled its former channel, the one that had been relocated and widened five decades back. He noted the familiar tail-end of the helicopter’s buried wreckage. It pointed toward a severed bridge that once spanned the river. A reminder of times gone wrong. The riverine forest had begun to advance across the floodplain toward the wreckage: sycamore, birch, willow, elm, cottonwood — native species reclaiming ground that long before had been cleared for agriculture and industry and flood-prone homes. Though the wreckage had been partially strangled by Japanese honeysuckle, the memory of it would not fade with ease.

  In his hand, he held a tattered book, a bible these days, written by his beloved mentor. Infrequently, in the few spare moments of a life defined by burden and hardship, he would reread a chapter. He would ponder its prescience and renew his indebtedness to its author. His mind wandered to an African evening back in '08.

  ~

  The camp was imbrued in equatorial dusk. In minutes, it would be pitch-black. The incessant chatter of weavers, the plangent pleas of mourning doves began to hush. Creatures of the night would soon stir: frogs along the river, hyenas cackling, male lions roaring, wild dogs and bat-eared foxes barking, owls and nightjars calling: the nocturnal soundscape of the African savanna.

  Their camp was pitched in a fever tree forest on a fast-flowing stream spilling out of a gorge, and running southeastward toward the Indian Ocean. Spectacular mountains ascended above them, their thick volcanic soils and lush montane forests, their myriad species of broad-leafed evergreen trees towering thirty meters upward, their vines and epiphytes holding, like a vast sponge, rainfall that over a year could fill a swimming pool. He who had trekked through those forests and had climbed those mountains could picture the twisting paths worn by generations of honey hunters; could hear the owlish hoots of black and white Colobus monkeys high in Podocarpus trees; could sense forest elephants tip-toeing on lead-gray slippers and the bone-chilling coughs of leopards; could smell the pungency of growth and decay.

  Theirs was an isolated spot downslope from those mountains looming above and bountifully imagined. It was July. Nights were chilly. Absalom, his assistant, had built a crackling fire. He and Kate prepared dinner. She had just arrived to help them wrap up the two-year field project. The three gathered at the table to eat kuku kwa wali — leather-tough chicken butchered three hours earlier and rice mixed with pigeon peas and onions — and to drink their warm beers.

  After dinner, they shared the washing up, stowed things away from night-raiding baboons and hyenas, and drew their chairs to the fire. Absalom tossed on more wood. The fire flared briefly, out-shining the starry sky for some moments. Kate Nickleby welcomed the serenity of the African bush, a respite that had already begun to soothe her anxious soul. Absalom reminded her that two generations earlier this very place had been embroiled in battle: Shifta insurgents exchanging fire with soldiers of the Kenya African Rifles.

  “Yes, and n
ow a day’s drive north we’ve got al Shabab playing on the world stage,” she said. “They make the Shifta of the sixties seem like amateurs. I hate to keep saying this, but their terrorism is yet another emergent property of our precarious world.”

  “What are we to do?” Absalom asked.

  “Drink another Tusker,” Kate replied, smiling almost gleefully.

  Later, after Absalom had excused himself, he and Kate relaxed into familiar hushed conversation about life in the field, Kenya politics, Wisconsin gossip, climate change, and other heartfelt causes. He beheld her in the flickering firelight: this beautiful person a decade or so his senior, her perfect skin and trim physique, her unusual diamond-shaped face with lilac-gray eyes, her graceful jaw line and curly sandy hair, her warmth as a human being without an ounce of pretension. On this night, he was certain that never had any of his lovers looked so appealing, under a universe of stars, a million miles from their assigned roles.

  In their years of collaboration, Kate had become more than a mentor, more than a co-author, more than a platonic friend. In all innocence, or so he believed, he welcomed their deepening friendship, his comfort in sharing innermost thoughts. Kate too was irrationally secure in the company of her peaceful student whose ways of thinking and speaking inspired her, as had no other, their roles often oddly reversed. She recognized her hunger and her inability to stifle desire. She found herself yearning for an intimacy perilous if not impossible to imagine. Her eyes periscoped his lean body. Her unsure heart skipped beats.

  He heard rustling at the edge of camp and stepped away to investigate. He caught a glimpse of two bush babies scampering up a fever tree, their saucer eyes trying to fathom the torchlight. When he returned to Kate, he found her gazing into the middle distance, over and beyond the subsiding fire. He tossed a twisted log on the coals and sat by her. “A shilling for your thoughts,” he said delicately.

  “I am thinking about you, my dear friend. About your research and how soon you and I must part. It makes me a tad gloomy.” Her intonations, a blend of South African and Canadian English, were as familiar as his own mother’s, in her case a blend more Latvian than English.

  Here is a new twist, he reckoned. Does Kate require my consolation? He hesitated before he spoke, aiming to alter the course of the conversation. “There will be other students who will flock to your side and we shall continue to co-author brilliant papers. Hey! We’ll dream up more and more questions to explore, right to the end of our lives.”

  She leaned across to him. “Yes, but I am a woman with a clock ticking. Come here.” She took hold of his hand. He arose and dropped her hand. He stalled, fearing the few steps between them. She observed his hesitancy and glided gracefully into his arms. She seemed to be whimpering. “Hold me, hold me.” After some long moments, with deliberation and aplomb, she unfastened his shirt, button-by-button, and dropped it to the ground. Likewise, her own blouse, and blithely tossed it aside. Now, flesh pressing flesh, astonishing and unforgettable, their hands feverish on tensing scapulae, they kissed — an eternity at the edge of a precipice.

  ~

  And then, as he began to read the book’s first chapter, his mind drifted to another day at the University of Wisconsin in early 2009, indeed one of the most grief-stricken of his life, foreshadowed that evening at the African campfire. Over the years, he had stitched together fragments of that day without which his purpose in life would have been sorely diminished.

  ~

  Kate stared out her window into the darkness. Behind her, a small office, the clutter of an academic life in full flower, an open laptop on a steel desk. Across the street, she glanced at dorm lights flicking off one-by-one. She was exhausted. Was it time to go home? She rubbed her temples, felt fatigue in her shoulders and arms. At thirty-eight, her health and fitness had been slipping. As middle age loomed, she felt flabby: sculpted arms, trim thighs, flat stomach — where had they gone? Life of the mind trumps sleekness of the body. So she rationalized.

  In the midst of a burgeoning career, half way through a brutally paced semester, Professor Katja “Kate” Nickleby, on a frigid Wisconsin winter night, put finishing touches on her book, the one reviewers predicted would be a best seller — the ‘Silent Spring’ of these times. Everything she had done in her illustrious career led to this moment. And she was within days of submitting the final draft. She turned back to the work at hand. She owed this to her students.

  In the four steps from the window to her desk, she felt a small ping just beneath her left breast. It was subtle and familiar. Like a nerve twitch but deeper and somehow metallic. She ignored it. She sat down and pulled her chair toward the desk. Nausea surged into her throat. She swallowed hard. Her body felt clammy. She pulled her fleece more tightly around her. A tingle, stunning as an electric shock, shot swiftly from her chest to her left arm, then to her shoulder, neck, and jaw. Beads of sweat on her forehead. She rose, realizing she had waited too long. She was dizzy. Her vision blurred as she tried to remember where she had left her phone. She saw it on a stack of books. She teetered toward it. A colorful, iridescent fog spread across the room. She paused, bedazzled. She must call someone. She could not make her mind focus, did not remember she held the phone. She fell forward, her face slamming the floor.

  ~

  He dabbed an eye at the memory. He remembered the morning, himself jogging a swift pace toward Nelson Hall. It was 6:15 AM, bone-chilling, pitch black. Beneath his feet, the snow crunched like granulated sugar. He turned down Bayview. At the curb, the swirling strobes of an ambulance. Climbing to the top of the stairway, he came upon a kerfuffle: campus police, first responders, custodial staff buzzing around an office three doors from his. He went to Hernando Valdez.

  “Nando, is it Kate?”

  “Yes, it is, Stefan.” His tone was morose, barely audible; his eyes cast down. “She died in the night. I found her a few minutes ago. My supervisor called the police. They wait for the coroner.”

  An officer appeared. He asked Stefan to follow him to Kate’s office. Kate’s body had been laid on a gurney, covered, EMT at the top end. The officer turned to him and asked, “First, if you are able, could you please identify the deceased?”

  He nodded, grim faced, eyes stinging.

  They peeled back the sheet. Seeing that familiar face, bruised and lifeless as plaster, he could not contain the tears. Wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, he confirmed the identification. In response to questions, he relayed what little he knew: Kate was born in Cape Town. She grew up in Hamilton, Ontario. She attended McMaster University, got her PhD at the University of Manitoba. He said Kate was single; she lived near Vilas Park.

  The day wore on. In the departmental commons, his fellow graduate students drank coffee and languished, somber, single syllabic, grieving the way twenty-somethings do, with eyes and minds lost in little screens. They were told that Kate’s death had been caused by a heart attack. There was no evidence of foul play. That was that: a sudden intrusion on their presumptions of invincibility. No warning. No precipitating illness. No time to prepare. Their somberness was heartfelt and somehow what they thought the world expected, at this moment, of Kate’s elite students.

  In the afternoon, one of those students furtively led Stefan to her office. She and Stefan had been colleagues and friends with no history of intimate pretention. They sat mournfully in her meticulously organized space, which like her persona, was perfectly groomed. Her tiny body seemed to shrink in her office chair. Round-faced and bright-eyed, on most days she looked eighteen. Today, her face was streaked and drawn, her eyes moist and red. She had dragged him here. Now she was mute.

  “What’s up, Ginger? Why the stealth?” he asked.

  Ginger hesitated, shifting back and forth anxiously. In her porcelain hands, she absently rotated a book of Rumi poems, a tiny niche edition one might receive in a holiday gift exchange. No doubt Kate had given it to her. Finally, she spoke. “What I am worried about is Kate’s manuscript, the draft we looked ov
er last week. Hernando told me her laptop was open and hibernating on her desk. She was probably at work on it when she died. He also said the police left her office intact until her family had been notified.”

  “All true.”

  “I think you and I ought to go there now. We could borrow the laptop a few minutes. We could download the manuscript. We could then send her final …” She caught herself, sniffled, wiped her nose. “I mean her book manuscript … forward it to the publisher.”

  “Hmm,” he responded, his mind ticking off risks. He looked across the desk at Ginger. In her eyes, he could see a tug of war: her determination and good-heartedness on the verge of victory over vulnerability and despair. After some moments, he said, “Yeah, let’s go. If we don’t do this, who will?”

  Well before the university and Kate’s family began to clear her office, well before they told the media she had had a congenital heart condition, well before her memorial service and their graduate careers were recalibrated, Ginger and Stefan nabbed Kate’s files and sent them to her publisher.

  OVER THE CLIFF

  Katja Nickleby

  Chapter One

  A Most Sustainable Community

  THE CITIZENS OF BRIGHTS GROVE, a town along the meandering Wisconsin river, thought of themselves as one of North America’s most sustainable small communities. Three generations of citizens had cobbled together collaborative projects to accomplish good things for the community, its natural environs, and its economy. At an annual celebration on the town’s commons, the mayor extolled these traditions. She said, “We must never take lightly the community spirit of this town and the well-being it provides us. I am very grateful for our accomplishments but we must never lose our humility and our respect for the fragile Earth that nurtures us.”