WARNING ISSUED; ISSUE DENIED!

 

I have been warned by no less than our County Leasing Agent that there are hidden agendas at play in an apparently simple request which we received at the behest of a forlorn officient to whom I gave a ride in the waning days of Summer 1997. This is so long ago that those of us who normally lurch into action at the drop of a pin feel like there's work to be done here. No one with a face blackened by years of incomparable grime like yours truly can afford to ruffle the feathers of those still standing in the face of intractable semantic whirlpools the world over. Once the terra cotta is dry, I can ill afford to allow the God-given truth to shine for all to see. Because if I do, one thing is very certain: a passage in a very rare tome will be cited, whereas before, when some of us decided to stick to our guns, the lion's share of the lubricants would be directly deposited on our formal night wear and our appearance at a rally in a Southern Methodist stronghold would become just another open and shut case. The ones who hurt the most will not be the intended victims of our perfidy. That honor itself could be tainted with the telltale rubbish from a rather imposing gent who's got all the help he needs.

We like to tell the innocent among us that we entered the picture when a very particular line was drawn across an outdated map. My confreres have struggled for what seems like a few seconds to come up with a more effective name than the one we habitually applied to those seeking redress from our highest victim to date. He looks, for all the world, like a dandy exemplar of living in a way which minimizes the scope of scoundrels around an improvised co-hash. There are structures to be erected. But now that one or more of our trial septuaries have squandered a most precious asset, anyone who makes time available during a busy part of the year, can expect only a small bit of gel to be extracted from their left hand, if that. We didn't reach this decision lightly. The one expert who was eager to be wined and dined in the end could only expect a raft of nuisance regulations to be used against him in a formal hearing not worth the paper it was printed on. And, in case anyone should see him hurling smallish parts in a room on the campus of ICU, you'll know that our work is far from done. And then some!

Kelly Rabner wishes that some of you would spring to his defense and help him polish off the last bits of a true-crime drama and deploy the full force to which you are so vainly entitled. Only one victor at a time will be enough to insure that a tangent conceals its compliment and is hardwired to make maximal use of a deficient desk appearance ticket. By their names you can tell if they no longer shower their meager messenger boys with aptly concealed teflon sheaths. Where does it say that I get to make all the rules? If she was you, she wouldn't let them foment ever newer elements when what we already have has served us so well over the last dozen years, if that. When I come to the end of my time here, let it never be said that I took time out to look askance at anyone in the robotics industry writ large. That would be a heckuva way to be remembered after all the pilferage which went uninvestigated for years on end. Why would anyone get the feeling that you're still not with us? Could it be that you've already been asked about that? That really hurts, just not the way you think it should, that's all.  

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Suspicious Behavior Elicits Emergency Response: CODE: oxcake.

 

The parents of some of the people who've escaped my notice are beginning to evince not a little suspicion. It's true that they used to drive by my house on the random weekend (in their words, 'just to check' HA!). But now it's a nightly ordeal. I try and give them all the room they need, even to the point of providing marshalls who don't mind taking part in a mindless charade. Yet still they question my motives, relationships, hobbies, educational attainment, attendance at Worship Services, blood type, stool status, morning routine, magazine subscriptions, nuclear watchdog crumbcake inspection, drug habits, affiliational proclivities and whatnot and so-on.

I've been asked more than once to stop making a mockery of their concern for folks who never amounted to much in the first place. They have made it known to my accountant that they intend to donate in excess of one hundred and twenty-three dollars to an emergency fund in the event of certain 'dangerous' ideas being bandied about to-and-fro. I've been quite clear to said accountant that they are not to be given the short end of the stick. In fact, I even went so far as to plunge the assembled throng into what passes for artificial darkness. I knew that in this way they'd be very unlikely to find some of the pieces which I'd planned to throw under a bus. People said that obviously I no longer felt any concern about these pieces,.. we all know what 'under the bus' implies, right? They just won't cop to the fact that I said 'A' bus, and not 'THE' bus. You don't think this made any difference, do you? Because if you do, please see me later and we'll see what we can do.

What would you say if I told you that not one of us here will any longer take the risk of being seen in the company of those whose only concern is to appear only weakly attracted, by dint of hard work alone, to the faithless electors who, in the Summer months make our recreation center their virtual headquarters. For real, right? I think a lot of others feel the same, yet I can't get the go-ahead to install any more state-of-the-art units without the say-so of 'you-know-who'. We have it on good authority that someone you know was seen not more than three miles down wind from a very tricky 'incident'. The keys were found protruding by the truckload from a mound in the backyard of a very dear woman friend of mine. She's at her wit's end trying to control your every movement. They tell her, and I second the motion, that even if every particle is washed away in the next few weeks, the training for bio-hazard will continue, days, nights, weekends... you name it. The problem is, though, no one thinks you'd ever be able to any longer affiliate yourself with the underlying pro-cram. For that we need a sanctified spatialist. and this just doesn't describe the person who once offered my parents free passage for the cost of a mediocre cup of coffee. This doesn't sound like anyone you know, does it? Thought so.

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Story of a Man.

 

The man, who dons dull brown duopoly pants as a matter of course, believes it prudent to outwait the onlookers who gather nightly just adjacent to our vestibule to engage one another in tiresome social rituals. Due to his lack of common graces, he may not be permitted access when the time comes for 'the big reveal'. You see, about seven years ago, before we were married, my wife saw fit to carry on a torrid, if loveless, dalliance with a brilliant, now deceased, architect. This architect was a trusted confidant of the man's step-father. It turns out that they'd been on good terms until 'that' day at the quarry. No one can ever forget how the man, now just entering a squandered middle-age, took to his knees to stage what amounted to a mini-drama, all in the effort to lead a lesser cohort in an unappetizing direction.

Just across the street from where I write this, there's a plaque embossed with naive riddles. Also you'd find one or two names. They'd mean nothing if you weren't one of the ones caught cycling through cancer screening cards. We've told him that there's precious little time before he will be expected to arrive undisturbed at our remote testing facility. I routinely take him aside to explain the fundamentals. As is so often the case, he claims impunity against any ongoing designations. In any other language, this isn't enough to get you out of the loop. That's why I had to call his folks. They should be able to make it up here by Sunday afternoon. At which time I'll ask the Mom if she could get me up to speed on the basics. The last time I asked her, about a year ago, she just smiled and walked away super pissed. Go figure...

It's now common knowledge that the man feels impelled to bring in outsiders so that they can wait while he asks my permission. I know that with even one more click, he could be eliminated forever. The thing is, we both need him to stand guard in case anyone arrives after official screening hours. It will only be played once, this time for laughs. The hat he wears makes for quite the conversation piece. Why has he never told us any of this? Could it be that he found my cologne to be a righteous 'turn-off'? I'm not asking these questions to sound petty. There are only two other people who no longer feel comfortable playing juvenile tricks on elderly seamstresses. 'Self-awareness' just doesn't cut any ice with these bastards. That's why I normally stop in front of their house once or twice a day to just reflect on what it takes to succeed in life. Please don't say that you weren't warned. It's already too late by half.

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Paper and Paste? Really?!?

 

The paper and the paste I have been given are for later. The dapple-rod is for this moment, and this moment alone. I regularly meet just outside the wall with those who seem somewhat pleasing, what with their mannerisms and something else besides. When one wonders about ambient room temperature, I can't help but look at him coldly. This isn't an event which inspires confidence among my surviving forebears, of which there are maybe two or three at the top of my box. I'll go one better and open it myself if you give your word that a name will never be provided, save under a District-wide enforcement decree. I'm debating whether to tell you exactly where I will ask you to sit once we get started. It could be a total wash if you're brought in too soon. You do have kind of a 'funny' look. Just not the 'ha-ha' kind.

When the local people become inconsolable, the paper and the paste are set to be my 'go-to'. The rags which were all the rage three or four years ago have come and gone and now no one worth his salt can find the time to frame the entire area in a grid to make our portions stand alone when the light fades.  A barely consonant feeding-post helps everyone get settled. I lead them via individual halters and they seem contented enough that any fear of swarming amounts to one of us taking on something which is decidedly over our collective head. I can't quite place the guy who told me just the other day that he'd found an empty binder in a park not far from here. This is important because I've had my doubt from the beginning as to when, or even if, we have any right to expect a priority notice. It's not every day that you have to compile a series of factors. This could get ugly. Please bear with me.

While we've been waiting in real time for our house to be completely demolished, I've been staying downtown at a rooming house normally frequented by high-flying nobodies who're just trying to get a grip. As if that's something that strikes a bell! The children have been placed behind a local Catholic girl's school where they can busy themselves with makeshift projects and possibly even earn extra cawthorns for all the trouble they've been. In my day, we took to flying through windows with a snippet of torn fungus as backup. I'd say it was worth every penny, except that when the car stalled smack dab in the middle of the Lincoln Tunnel, my wife decided that that would be the perfect time to perfect the timing of her outbursts. I'd like to say that I've never had it so good. But, before I say that, it'd be more appropriate if people on your level could investigate personal growth modules. Someone may have gotten the wrong idea, among much else. Why so gloomy?

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A Cautionary Tale.

 

From her own lips it was not at all unthinkable that a verdict would be rendered, at distance if needs be. Still, those of us who stood to gain could take pleasure in knowing that her perspective was not without its very own zone of impactive tussle. We could lift a measly tribute and have it for her by the following week, except that time itself was rumored to have begun a process of telescoping which, quite frankly, has some of our most eminent physicists scratching their balls in wonderment. Try as we might, each of us has to face the real possibility of having to go without in the near term. What rankles us, though, is how your average passerby will seemingly go to any lengths at all to appear unconvinced. Our appeal to some well-armed colleagues is all for naught. Which leaves us no alternative but to seek redress through an informal arrangement of the fifth kind, thus confirming the unadorned suspicions of amoral data brokers from Day 1.

I have it within my power to transgress all prior novelizations in one fell swoop. But this shouldn't encourage like-minded refugees to begin scouring the countryside in search of clues to the whereabouts of a missing bannister. Because, even though I'm one of the people most enraged by her high-handed tactics, I will still leave it to my betters to breach a flaccid barrier in service to an emaciated agricultural agent. He will be a force for our own incipient removal to an isolated Summer residence where our sleep habits and morning routines can come under the kind of scrutiny which any fair-minded adult would have a hard time denying. The lone service provider who we've seen underneath our area was forced to admit to having waited for smaller members to take the hit. Otherwise, he told us the other day, he might never have been able to tell his family about where I did my post-graduate work.

From the way she styles what's left of her cotton-nibbed mane, the feeling in the room is one of incisive declension. Yes, I continue to roll my smallish cylinders just to the right of the can on the floor of the Third Annex. My erstwhile compagnard, Jerome Afgew, thinks it wise to prepare ourselves for an unballasted reliance on sybaritic cow-herds if things go our way. If not, we could be looking at more than three dozen training sessions, courtesy of Joe Ivy Associates of Bangor, Maine. They will most certainly deploy the most up to date lighting technology and no doubt bring in timing prods by the boatload—literally! Meanwhile, I rest in my ballow, trunk in hand, beasterage at the ready, hoping for a common solution to an age-old conundrum. It irks me to say it, but I'm only mildly ensnared by her seemingly eternal rapid-release response. Not that it doesn't rub the other fellows in a way which says, 'You can't get there from here!' Please, if you're reading this, try not to get too puffed up. It could happen to you as well, and probably will, if I have anything to say about it. And I do. Plenty, in fact. Wouldn't you like to know? No.

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Client Observation Notes.

 

Just yesterday, I saw that he watched their torsos and how they were manipulated at distance. He had a very sufficient reason to feel ill-at-ease. If training seeks its level in randomized cups, then whose pressure will afford the likely return to a status quo release? The question answers itself, if you ask me. If not, I will bring him straight to you. This will allow for permanent inspection as to the merits of his glade. For some moments now, he has been permitted to hum softly into a shiny all-seasons canador crèpe. Each instant is indeed up for grabs but the girl as he's known her has now been shifted into an overbearing frequency alert. The badge on the cudgel says it all. And now I myself will find a space to mourn a knotting displacement from room to parapet to absenteer. How they sell them is their own bloody business. If they enter my payment system, though, one defective awning could make or break a year's worth of incendiary promotional novelty slippers.

There could now be a wigwam in our trial-edition couvet. Until now, no one has seen fit to raise their voice in defense of my final attacker. When we live outside the reach of impressive realms, then we risk mutual exposure through radically exfiltrative media honchos. Our way of feeding resolves itself into a brisk movement. Only stolid frauds are welcome to try their hand at a fractious input strategy. Each will come to his or her mind in a matter of seconds. If I slip a darning hoop through the window to a reluctant addressee, just who do you think pays for that anyway? It could be a person on his way downtown to perform a banal civic ritual. Or maybe the son of one our brighter citizens will enter without the required wristband. Who could tell whether this gesture was, in fact, 'serious' or not? It would have to be someone we've known for at least a day or two. More than that and I'd need more than a cursory nod. And I won't be wearing anything either.

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Juvenile Stunt: Admission

 

For some reason, I feel remarkably comfortable admitting to my part in a rather juvenile stunt. You should know that I've been home-bound since the accident and I've lost the ability to tell the difference. What I could do, though, was reach through very quickly and then withdraw my hand before anyone got wind of a creeping suspicion. From the way they looked at me, no one would ever guess that I once dated the Swedish puff-ball champion, Ilona Stewart. These kinds of things just come with the territory. Or so I thought until that day in the early Spring of '97. I'd been let go from my job at the Carruthers Parking Light Facility due to unsupervised hiatus clumps. My best friend in those days, Jamie Basnik, had enrolled his son in a tertiary program and I was on guard for skin eruptions which would only complicate matters. Especially where it matters most, which would be right in the cabasa!

By the time I shifted into second form, I knew beyond any kind of shadow that the officers who'd made my life pure hell for the last sixteen years were now on their way to dancing with the wrong end of a hedge trimmer, if you catch my drift. Their names were Eplar Panistode and Rasmin Bastirk. If I recall correctly, the taller one had a shifty gait and the other just couldn't be bothered to make even the smallest effort at conjugal living. I'd seen an article about them in a Sunday supplement several years before things got really out of hand. I'd tried to rein in their activities by keeping them on a short leash. For some reason I got it into my head that they might enjoy a brief excursion to a lakeside mall of some renown. What I didn't count on, though, was the way they would try to intimidate some of the younger busybodies who thought nothing of trashing people's reputations by the truckload. Now that I've had time to reconsider, there's no doubt in my mind that some of our emergency personnel could use a refresher course on basic mental hygiene. It might save them a pittance in the long run.

But now, or so I've heard, everything is ruined. In that some of the folks we attended school with in the early aughts seem to have a strangle hold on effectuating apparent misconceptions. It always seems to bring out the best in people who should have no right to expect a fair shake in life. If I ever have to sign off on a home invasion already in progress and then take the heat for significant breakage of frail items, someone might be asked help me take a calming breath when the whole thing comes apart in her hands. Because if there's one thing you can be sure of, it's that her hands have never really seen anything remotely like the kind of trouble that could get us into hot water. The little booklet which I make a practice to keep at-the-ready is replete with a full roster of planning stage revisions. I already had to take a bath when things went majorly south. But I could always count on some of our Efficiency Experts to try their hand at wheedling a distracting affair to smooth things over. It's when stuff gets a bit 'crinkly' that I usually have to take a leak. If anyone thinks that my family is unlikely to hold off on following through, they should maybe return to an earlier chapter for professional guidance. Because, if there's one thing which remains to be determined, then I'll have one of my suits hand-delivered to our boys downtown and they'll see if they can talk sense into some of our piebald participants. Otherwise I'll be forced to look into the acquisition of a solution-oriented enigma. Don't say you weren't warned. We have ways. And ways to go. Just don't let it stamp you as a quitter.  

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