New People of the Flat Earth

by Brian Short

  He stepped in wide, long steps down the uneven concrete of the sidewalk, which slanted hard in sections, given long years of fundament slide and the slow growth of tree roots. The air around him was full of birds. The birds were making noises. The noises were a liquid mass without beginning or end. In the sky, little tufts of clouds dotted the blue span overhead, those and the long-scraped, crosshatched lines of contrails, left like pencil marks, smudged, gradually feathering in high-altitude currents. Proteus looked down to see that he was being followed, paced alongside by the golden-haired dog, which looked up at him with its long tongue hung pink to one side. “Whose dog are you, anyhow?” he asked it as it loped beside him, four legs trotting lithe and lightly. The animal gave a bark, looked ahead, looked back again up at him, then split to one side and continued on, away across the street.

  In front of the coffee shop, he stopped, looked inside the one long window near the door. At the table there sat Davis, who was not alone. Proteus knew him by his severe posture and the spike of hairs on top of his head. Across from Davis was the Professor, wearing what, he couldn’t make out, though it seemed to sprout from the man in various directions and have little baubles that hung there, jangling. The two of them were bent, intent on the layout of small, shiny pieces over a board on the table between them. It was a board game. They were playing – or at least carefully studying – a board game, of some sort.

  Proteus walked on a little farther, past the door. Down the sidewalk, in the same spot where yesterday the Prius had straddled the tall curb, there were now varied stains of different fluids, but no car. It had been towed away; he’d called the impound yard himself. The stains would remain indefinitely.

  •

  “I see, he is here, the sheriff, good man, he’s found it worthy of his time, so important as it is, to arrive to work today. Yet he does not wish to throw the time away, coming in when, for instance, he needs to open the store.”

  “Good morning, Ig. I’m sorry. I’ve overslept.”

  “‘Overslept’, he says, and, ‘he is sorry’.”

  “I truly am. The problem was I’d not understood that I was sleeping.”

  “He wishes to explain. Or is it he makes excuses?”

  “You can always tell this crucial difference, I suppose.” “He supposes I suppose. Yes. Excuses are hurtful to the soul.”

  “Between sleeping and awake, was what I meant.”

  “Of course this is what you’ve meant. But the difference is clear always only after. Before, when I sleep, I do not see this. After, when all is clear, I hurry to make myself show up.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Again, with this, the ‘he is sorry’. Of course you’re sorry. I know this. And you are still late.”

  And with every turning moment of the unseen clock, its hands in signal patterns, and with every slight shift of this thin, dry air, each fluctuant of temperature and humidity, that follows upon some human figure’s entry through the framing door, however un-square or uncertain it may be – the sound, the next approach of this, what screens the light, and what vibrates, reverberant and hollow – there is that which allows a message of some sort to pass cracked lips…

  “What are those two doing, beside the window?”

  “You know the game of chess?” says Ignatius.

  “Of course.”

  “It is nothing like chess.”

  The man-beast asking this stands beside Proteus, facing the owner Ignatius. He is extraordinarily tall, salt-pepper beard the length of a forearm, the same-colored hair atop his head, and no shorter either, a field jacket draped over his massive body, but legs that are thin, like cornstalks, in skinny, fashionable pants. There is a moment that passes between these three, silent though not still – not quite – as always there is that which hums and holds the entirety of all creation together. The moment passes and is gone. There is a shift, and again, all things lag behind a little from the moment of their making.

  “Congratulations, by the way, are in order,” said the overlarge man to Proteus. “I didn’t know,” he continued, “you had it in you.”

  “Well…” Proteus began, squaring his shoulders, “it is a new role for me. Not something I ever would have expected, certainly not what I would have chosen for myself. But these things, they have, I suppose, a way of leveling out, putting themselves into order, as such…”

  “As long as I’ve been in this town,” the skinny-legged bear continued, “as long as I’ve seen these… people… come and go, the one thing I should understand by now is that nobody, no man or woman, is ever one thing only and only that. Sometimes,” leaning in, peering into Proteus’s eyes in a way that he found a little unnerving, “you look at someone and get a pretty good idea of where they’re at and what they’re capable of. You…” poking him playfully in the chest, enough to send Proteus staggering for balance, “I’ve never understood. Because I look at you and I see a blank. Nothing. You talk, but I hear no words, only muffled noises, the small sounds that come from your mouth. Honestly, I’d taken you for a hollow person, an empty man. No offense. Just that some are that way. But I see now that you’ve done this… thing. I’ve not seen the evidence; I’ve only heard of it. But maybe there is something inside you after all, and I was wrong.”

  Perplexed, Proteus looked around himself for something to, so to speak, take ahold of and steady his wavering self with. Finding nothing, he sputtered, “Uh, thanks, I think, and I’ll try and see to my responsibilities in, well, a responsible manner, worthy of the office…”

  “‘Responsibilities’! And ‘the office’!” the bear said to Ignatius, who nodded slowly, knowingly, his forlorn agreement. “Will you listen to this man! What a funny man. He is very funny. All the same,” he turned again to Proteus, who was now deeply confused, “it will be interesting to see what you’ve got inside you, when the time comes.” He took the paper cup of coffee that Ignatius offered him and muddled his way back outside, squeezing, in his unseasonably heavy jacket, through the doorway again to dissolve back into the light.

  “Who was that?” asked Proteus, taking position behind the counter.

  “Sarfatti, the sculptor. You’ve seen him before.”

  “Yes, I’ve seen him. I didn’t know his name.”

  “He is Sarfatti the sculptor. He’s in every day. He’s lived in Cleric longer than anyone else around, I think. He does not respect you.”

  “…”

  “All the same, congratulations do seem to be in order. I’ve got to admit that I’m very curious myself. Surprised, really.”

  “I… What’s there to be surprised about? The whole time I’ve been here, you, Amanda, everyone, you’ve all been pushing me toward this. I’ve been reluctant, I admit. I still am. In fact, I don’t exactly know what happened, and I really don’t know what you all want of me, but I guess… I’ll just do my best, I suppose.” Self-consciously, he hitched the belt of his gun holster, loose as it was.

  “Yes,” said Ignatius, peering curiously down his nose at his employee, “a funny man. You are this. The work is done already, silly man, funny-funny. Now, you sit back and you watch as the others all make their opinions. We hope that your skin is very thick.”

  “I don’t suspect it’s a job, necessarily, for making friends in?”

  “A job, yes. We’ll see what sort of friends you make, yes.” With that, Ignatius wandered off into the back room, his mind already elsewhere, leaving Proteus to tend the public. Thus, with a moment’s inactivity, he found himself staring forward, unblinking, his mouth falling open, jaw slack.

  “Ah, good, you’re in!” Mary Margaret approached the counter, looming. “I’ve arranged things with a framer. This is somebody I’ve used often before, and his work is usually pretty good. He’ll come by in the next day or two to pick it up, so have everything ready for him. The cost we’ll take from your proceeds – I’ll front it, so don’t worry, I know you’re not exactly crawling in cash yet. But that will be straightened out soon enough. I
t’s a little harder, granted, with an unknown like yourself, but I’m confident we’ll get the interest we need to move these. It may have already been arranged, but don’t quote me on that. In the meantime… well, there’s catering to consider, beverages – wine, of course, though nothing too expensive – and you can do the coffee yourself! Wouldn’t that be fun! The cost for all this… well, it’s your responsibility, naturally. But again, I’ll cover it, you’ll reimburse me from your profits; it’s how I always work. Just be ready. Wear your best. Believe me, you’ll want to be prepared for this!”

  “Yes,” said Proteus, blinking. “Yes, I will.”

  “Great. No time for coffee now. I’ll touch base with you later.”

  “Okay.”

  “Great.”

  “Okay.”

  And Mary Margaret was gone, out the door she’d entered through, enmeshed, again, into the light and its furies.

  Ours in the brevity, thought Proteus, looking into the portafilter in hand, his focus receding, despite or because of shiny reflections cast from the burnished metal into his eye, ours also in touch, in word or figure, in shivering substance, in lack of substance, in word or distance. Perhaps in word only. And he realized then that he’d understood none of what Mary Margaret had been talking about.

  •

  Tall Davis rolled his eyes. He looked up, over; he bent toward Proteus who stood above and surveyed the table, with its game board laid out between the tall man and the Professor, its small pieces haphazardly scattered across the board’s divisions.

  “I got the police man involved,” said Davis, in the direction of Proteus, if not directly at him. “I got him involved.”

  “Hello there, my boy,” beamed the Professor. From the angle where he stood, looking down, Proteus could see that the Professor wore a tall, leather cowboy boot on one cold foot and an old, grubby tennis shoe on the other. If he’d not made these choices deliberately, it did not seem likely either the result of simple inattention.

  “Professor. Davis.” Toward each, he practiced the tip of the hat, holding it by the crushed wreckage of its dome.

  “Ah,” said the Professor, and, “ah hah…”

  “What’s…” said Proteus, “er, what’s this?”

  “A game of some complexity,” the Professor explained, “and of some impossibility.”

  “This is something…” He stared down at the arrangement: a board of equal sides, of alternating red- and white-colored squares, and various small parts on or near it. “It seems…” But the edges of the thing were blurry and ill-defined, and the elements in play somehow unfixed. The worst of it was that it all seemed somehow familiar, like a dream he’d had once and forgotten long ago. “I don’t understand these game pieces,” he settled on at last.

  “Nor do I.”

  “That’s the Bird,” said Davis, staring into the table.

  “I don’t think it looks like a bird. No, it doesn’t at all.”

  “That’s the Bird.”

  “What’s… what’s this?” Proteus rested his finger on what looked like a ball bearing.

  “Don’t!”

  “I’m only asking.”

  “You can’t move that. You can’t move that. You can’t move that.”

  “I wasn’t going to. I was only asking.”

  “You can’t move the Fulcrum until the Bird has crashed into the Window and we’ve both seen it die.”

  “So this is the ‘Fulcrum’?”

  “Fulcrum. Window. Bird. Die. We both have to see it.”

  “Are you following this, Professor?”

  “Well, son, I’ve been –” but he was interrupted by the terrible, resonant bang just immediately beside his own head, which caused all three of them to jump. Proteus’s reflexes were just quick enough for him – as well as the others – to take note of the brown spot of feathered blur that had right then smacked into the window and caused a tone, now followed by a sickeningly long and hollow reverberation. The bird body itself fell to Earth, to the curb outside the window. All three pressed their faces to the glass and looked down to where it had landed. The broken thing laid on its side while one wing pumped slowly, reflexively up and down. A nerve twitch, no doubt; the creature was clearly dead.

  “Well. What do you know.”

  “I think it’s a finch.”

  “There… There… Now you can move the Fulcrum.”

  “But I wasn’t playing.”

  “The police man is involved.”

  “Congratulations,” said the Professor, “I believe, are in order.” He tugged at his wide, brown, ruffled felt collar.

  “Oh. Yes. Well, thank you.” Proteus, by now, was a little tired of hearing it.

  “Your own show. It is a solo showing, isn’t it?”

  “A what?”

  “At the Infinite Eye? Mary Margaret’s gallery. It’s quite prestigious, you know – no home for pikers, hardly some little tourist boutique, not at all, but a true world-class gallery. She has regular clients from all over the world, and quite wealthy ones. Some famous, even. I’d say you’ve done quite well for yourself.”

  “Oh. I, uh… that’s what, uh… Oh?” Scratching his forehead with a spastic hand knocked the hat askew, knocked it all but off his head.

  “You can move the Fulcrum now.”

  The bird on the sidewalk continued to pump its wing mechanically up, down, despite how demonstrably dead it was. Proteus wondered how long it would keep doing that.

  “The woman’s representation pulls quite a bit of weight, you see. One might almost say the artist doesn’t matter, nor the work itself; that she could sell a wadded-up piece of wet newspaper to a moneyed collector for top dollar. Her word alone would make it hold value.”

  “How… how does she manage that?”

  “Oh, nobody knows.”

  “You can move the Fulcrum now. Move the Fulcrum. Now.”

  “How’s it working out, what with your being the sheriff, and all? Are you liking the job well enough?”

  “Er…”

  “You’ll see it’ll make a man of you yet. Put hair on your chest. So they say.”

  “…They say what?”

  “They say, son, that many are called, but few chosen. Actually, few are even called. It looks in fact like you’re the only one. But how’s it going so far?”

  “No… no… I don’t think I was called to it either. Really, I don’t want the job. I don’t think it pays… anything, not anything at all, not so far as I can tell. But I have managed to piss old Albert off. I think we’re at war now, of some sort. War, you know. He makes a move, I make a counter-move.” His eye kept straying, without comprehension, back to the game board. “We have to do it. We’re locked in it now. Not that I’ve wanted that either. He’s threatened me with the actual Wrath of God, you see, though I don’t think he can really deliver. Still, Albert being a paying customer here and all… it’s not good, so far as Ignatius sees it, for business. Something more he has to complain about.”

  “DAMN IT. MOVE THE FULCRUM. MOVE THE FULCRUM NOW!”

  “Davis. Calm down, Davis.”

  “You can move the Fulcrum now and now you have to.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “It doesn’t matter what you want. It doesn’t matter.”

  And so Proteus, though he was not in the game – not so far as he understood, anyhow – picked up the dun-colored ball bearing and stuck it over some several places sideways, clear of the other pieces to a square by itself. “There,” he said. “Is that okay? Will that do?”

  SIXTEEN

  Fake City

  [Outside Time]

  No, no, that was the airless quality. That was not a sun. The sun dot city dot dot up in the airless quality; could not help but think of it as she. She?

  That was not a sun up there. There was something familiar about it, yes, but it wasn’t the sun. There was light, but no source of light, and the light was even and wan and somehow limpid, if a bit thick. And it was not as
bad, and it was not as dark, and it was not as difficult as it once seemed or felt, to walk these airless blocks as if I were still living… yet there was an emptiness to it also, a bodiless-ness. No. No. I couldn’t feel my feet. I could feel the feet were there, but not feel anything through them, detached by the airless quality. And in the back-forth-ness of even, persistent movement I found how a false stability may be maintained. It was to a point effective, but not to other purpose; I was only walking. I had nowhere to go. The city was changeable, a construct within a bubble – it had proven that much already, as the forms it took came into focus, shifted, and then were gone – and on its canvas were put in order a variety of similar forms, all having their relations, composed and repurposed, composed and disassembled, where persons, flocked like grouplings, moved, moved with traffic, moved again to follow the signal, where persons then waited with the signal, and waited… It didn’t seem so important to feel through my feet anymore, all considered. Just that my feet were there. The distance between them and the rest of me allowed a directionless wandering, a wakening, and that was as much as a body could allow for. How to hold a person together? That was a question. Enough to keep a form? Another question. But with as loose a step as this – it was so like feeling myself – or no, if not feeling; or no, if not myself; then – a fish, perhaps, without a fin. A sucker.

  But this was not my body. It was hardly that. As best as I could manage. So where was the body? A thing could not be gotten over. And also: where was the mind? The real mind? Oh, that thing in the sky? This was not a mind. That was another thing. And where… damn it, where had Finch gone off to? Yeah, I knew… I knew where he’d gone to, as much as I could know about that. I wanted to tell him how he’d got off too easy, disappearing like that, off to the smoky void – though near twenty years of following me around in ghostly form, all considered, had been anything, I’m sure, but easy. But what I did not now want to admit, how with my “friend” gone, I had maybe started going a bit unraveled. Un-rav-el-ed. Bits and parts and pieces of it, all a-scatter. Yes, the mind. This, this, this was no place for the living, clearly so. It seemed as such one had need of a ghost companion, parasite though he was, to keep from falling apart. Here. This was bad news, bad news, this. Oh and how I would have loved to just stop walking, just stop walking around this way, to no point, to do other, no other point than to keep from un-rav-el-ing. For myself I kept my hands stuffed into my pockets, and my arms held rigid to my sides. Shuffling. Not going to pieces. But I was alone, nowhere to go, and the light here was too abstracted, too thick and too diffused to seem much of anything like regular daylight. Though it did at least allow enough to see.