The Great Jones Coop Ten Gigasoul Party Read online

  Table of Contents

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  DEDICATION

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  INTRODUCTION: UNEARTHED

  INTRO: THE MAN WHOM THINGS HATED

  THE MAN WHOM THINGS HATED

  INTRO: FLASHERS

  FLASHERS

  INTRO: BELOW THE WRACK

  BELOW THE WRACK

  INTRO: THE GREAT JONES COOP TEN GIGASOUL PARTY

  THE GREAT JONES COOP TEN GIGASOUL PARTY

  INTRO: CAMPION’S TREE

  CAMPION’S TREE

  INTRO: WINTER IN AMERICA

  WINTER IN AMERICA

  INTRO: ROYAUME DU RÊVE

  ROYAUME DU RÊVE

  INTRO: TRIPLETS

  TRIPLETS

  INTRO: THE JONES CONTINUUM

  THE JONES CONTINUUM

  INTRO: WATERLOO SUNSET

  WATERLOO SUNSET

  INTRO: MODERN CONVENIENCES

  MODERN CONVENIENCES

  INTRO: I KANT CUZ I’M TOO JUNG

  I KANT CUZ I’M TOO JUNG

  INTRO: HEAVEN SENT ME AN ANGEL, C.O.D.

  HEAVEN SENT ME AN ANGEL, C.O.D.

  INTRO: A NIGHT IN THE THIRTEENTH AVENUE MISSION

  A NIGHT IN THE THIRTEENTH AVENUE MISSION

  INTRO: STRANGE BREW

  STRANGE BREW

  INTRO: FAX

  FAX

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Copyright © 2014 by Paul Di Filippo.

  “The Man Whom Things Hated” was composed from 9/3/84 to 9/14/84. “Flashers” was composed from 5/28/85 to 6/24/85. “Below the Wrack” was composed from 7/11/85 to 9/13/85. “The Great Jones Coop Ten Gigasoul Party” first appeared in New Pathways, 1986. “Campion’s Tree” first appeared in New Pathways, 1986. “Winter in America” first appeared in New Pathways, 1987. “Royaume due Rêve” was composed from 9/24/87 to 12/13/87. “Triplets” first appeared in The Drabble Book, 1988. “The Jones Continuum” first appeared in Science Fiction Eye, 1988. “Waterloo Sunset” first appeared in New Pathways, 1988. “Modern Conveniences” first appeared in Edge Detector, 1988. “I Kant Cuz I’m Too Jung” first appeared in New Pathways, 1989. “Heaven Sent Me an Angel, C.O.D.” first appeared in bOING-bOING, 1992. “A Night in the Thirteenth Avenue Mifssion” first appeared in After Hours, 1993. “Strange Brew” first appeared in The Third Alternative, 1994. “Fax” first appeared in Pirate Writings, 1999.

  ARTWORK CREDITS

  The cover illustration of the Shimizu Mega City Pyramid (TRY 2004) has been graciously donated by the SHIMIZU CORPORATION, Coporate Communication Dept., 2-16-1 Kyobashi, Chuo-ku, Tokyo, Japan. It relates to a discontinued project of their conception.

  Published by Wildside Press LLC.

  www.wildsidebooks.com

  DEDICATION

  To all those friends and inspiring writers who have left this Earth since these stories were first written.

  And to Deborah, who saw them all in their infancy.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  All my thanks to Denny Lien, who provided scans of two stories that had escaped my own archives. A true Chum.

  INTRODUCTION: UNEARTHED

  This volume contains twelve stories which, for one reason or another, have lain uncollected after their initial publication, an era spanning the years 1986 to 1999. Additionally, four never-sold stories of roughly the same vintage—pulled from my files, with the oldest dating from 1984—see print here for the first time.

  So: some unknown and unclamored-for stories thirty to fifteen years old, back in print? Why these, why now? Why resurrect these tales after letting them lie hidden for two decades or more? A few justifications seem relevant.

  I was initially proud of all of them, unsold ones included, even if some second hesitant thoughts led me, when assembling earlier collections, to bypass them. Upon rereading them recently, my pride in the accomplishments of my younger self was reawakened, and I thought they should be honored with a new life. (You’ll learn more about each piece in the individual story introductions.)

  Secondly, they represent a certain arc of my career and development, a segment of my writing which, I imagine in my vainglorious folly, might be of interest to some fans of my work—and even to some critics and historians, should I be lucky enough ever to attract such attentions.

  Finally, I think they represent some good storytelling which has the potential, like all well-wrought tales, to amuse and entertain and even enlighten the reader.

  Thus, for all these reasons, I’ve chosen to “unearth” these stories, the only fitting strategy for a fellow whose first piece of professional fiction appeared in UnEarth magazine!

  INTRO: THE MAN WHOM THINGS HATED

  When I wrote this story, I had never heard of the term “resistentialism.” And yet I instinctively knew, as all humans do, that the universe is filled with balky “inanimate” objects that desire to frustrate us and do us harm. This simple little story was my attempt to spread the warning, by imagining the plight of one poor fellow who was particularly hated by the cosmos. At the time, I had read Algernon Blackwood’s “The Man Whom the Trees Loved,” and envisioned this as a kind of counterpoint to his piece. The metaphysics may be a little wonky, but I think the effect comes through.

  THE MAN WHOM THINGS HATED

  Hours ago, the snow had been an icy mattress beneath his parka-clad back. Now it merely felt warm and comforting, a down-filled hollow he would never leave. Hours ago, the pain in his mangled right leg had been excruciating, causing him to cycle through a personal season consisting of periods of hellish awareness followed by merciful blackouts. Now the agony was simply an old friend, part of his very essence.

  Harry Strang, dying, possessed of a curious lucidity, considered his life.

  * * * *

  They called him a clumsy child, and he believed them. At least for a time.

  How else to explain the incredible misfortunes that dogged him, like the Furies plaguing Orestes?

  Little Harry was totally maladroit among the modern appurtences of everyday life. The artifacts which everyone else dealt with so easily were intractable with him. Any significant encounter between Harry and a manmade object—and naturally such encounters were innumerable and unavoidable—ended in humiliating and painful defeat for him. His life, till age ten or so, was an unending succession of minor and major disasters.

  There had been, for instance, the time he was leaning out the window at school to shout to a playmate below. Inside the old-fashioned frame at that instant, the frayed rope holding the cigar-shaped sashweight had given way, and the massive window had come crashing down on Harry’s back. He had been in the hospital nearly a month following that. And somehow, he had gotten all the blame, as if he could have known the condition of the hidden mechanism, and had deliberately taunted it, by placing his frail body beneath it.

  When the emergency brake in his father’s ’59 Chevy Bel Air chose to fail, he had tried desperately to steer the rolling auto down the hill and onto a grassy median. Instead, all his best efforts brought on a collision with telephone pole at ten miles per hour. Harry took away a sickle-shaped scar on his forehead from his “clumsiness” that time.

  When an aerosol can of Endust accidently fell off its closet shelf and into the bag of paper trash—the very trash which it was Harry’s job to incinerate in the backyard burner—the resulting explosion peppered Harry’s left arm with hot metal shards. His father called him a “damn clumsy kid without the sense he was born with,” and told him
he was lucky not to have lost his eyes.

  Dramatic and potentially fatal accidents such as these were interspersed with a hundred other lesser daily humiliations. Tripping over extension cords around the house; reaching into a toolbox and stabbing himself with an icepick; breaking the dinner glasses he was assigned to dry; stepping on rusty nails with bare summer feet; dropping a pan that held boiling water and scalding himself.

  Harry’s body always bore a dozen black-and-blue marks, shifting like sunspots from week to week. Islands of permanent scar-tissue were more stable features of his topography.

  Harry’s despair and sense of helplessness would have been total, had it not been for the time he spent in the woods, which he loved.

  Living in a brand-new suburban tract during the ’fifties, Harry had easy access to the countryside that bordered the development. Acres of oaks and pines, birches and elms, ledges and streams, lay just beyond the last cracker-box cottage. There, Harry discovered—slowly, against all evidence—that he was not really clumsy.

  He never fell from the trees he climbed, nor the rocky outcrops he scaled. He could leap from stone to slippery stone across a chilly stream without once getting wet. He never bumbled into the nests of yellowjackets. Lightning-blasted branches never fell on his head. In short, he navigated through forest and meadow with a growing confidence and surety utterly lacking in his home life.

  Each time he returned from a sojourn among the trees, he would strive to convince himself that his competence would persist, that this time he would be transformed, all his awkwardness magicked into grace.

  It never happened that way, though. Each re-entry into society with all its devices was like the expulsion from Eden replayed, all celestial harmony decaying into earthly strife.

  Harry fantasized about simply fleeing to the woods for good, so disheartening was his mundane, catastrophe-filled life. But he was no true loner—although forced to be one, since his peers jeered him for his misfortunes—and he realized with a child’s clarity that even if he could survive physically in the wild, he would soon grow lonely and sad.

  So Harry lived till roughly age ten with a curious dichotomy he could not rationalize, but only endure. At home and at school, anywhere in fact among the trappings of modern life, he was an utter incompetent, prone to seemingly inescapable collisions with everyday innocent objects. In the woods, he was simply a normal, well-coordinated boy who did not suffer at all.

  One night, the split in his perception of himself was healed. As he lay abed, drifting into sleep, all his half-formed intuitions, those vague and inchoate night-thoughts of childhood, assumed a definite shape and substance, became a clear and coherent theory that could explain everything, a theory which he would alter or refine only slightly over the next twenty years. At the instant his suspicions crystallized, he felt two simultaneous strong emotions.

  Immense relief and justification, since his theory allowed the belief that there was nothing wrong with his physical self.

  Equally overpowering fear and dismay, since there had to be something very wrong with the world he was forced to inhabit, despite all the teachings of science and religion to the contrary.

  Harry’s theory was simply this: manmade objects possessed a certain vitality, a shadowy kind of life allowing desires and the will to enact them, in whatever limited way they could. One of their desires was “to get him.” It was as straightforward as that, and the only possible explanation. Since his body did not betray him among natural things, but only among artifacts, then it must be the fault of the artifacts, and not his body.

  Harry fell asleep eventually that night, his mind torn by elation and despair. In the morning, his theory stood clear in his eyes as fact. While he had slept, it had assumed a weight of reality beyond anything his conscious mind could have deliberately conferred. Only two unresolved things were to trouble him over the next few years: where did artifacts derive their energy and malignity from; why had they singled him out of everyone he knew as their victim?

  The answer to the first question he deduced himself after a few years. The second he had revealed to him by a dead man.

  Harry was a great reader. Thrust into his own company, he was forced to be. In early adolescence, he came, by a combination of chance and research, upon the writings of all the great believers in animism, whether as metaphor or reality. Thoreau, Emerson, Wordsworth, Eisley, Muir, Burroughs (John, not E. R.). Their accounts of their perceptions of Nature dovetailed neatly with his own experiences, and he came to see the very soil beneath his feet, every particle of living and “inanimate” matter as imbued with some fractional charge of Nature’s great life, forming a unified whole. This belief explained rather neatly where manmade things drew their energy from. They had simply always had it. All the refining and forging, shaping and annealing that Man applied to ores and hydrocarbons and plant byproducts had no effect on their connection with Nature. If the veins of iron below the ground carried any intrinsic force, then so did the alloy head of the hammer which had cruelly smashed his thumb the other day. Man’s intervention had no effect on the true preternatural qualities of the materials.

  Of course, this did not explain the enmity of artifacts, which Harry began to feel more and more as a palpable scheming aura. Nature in the raw imparted no such sensation, either in his own experience or in the works of the authors he had read. Even when Nature killed, as by avalanche or flood, there seemed no overt hatred or revenge involved. The violent, sadistic personality of manmade objects was not readily explicable, but Harry—through pain and misery—was forced to accept it.

  And to believe that he was its sole object within his ken.

  All this intellectualizing about his condition allowed Harry to fare a little better through adolescence and into adulthood. Before, he had had no reason to approach objects suspiciously, believing that if he only exerted the utmost conscious control over his muscles and will, then he would not suffer any “accident.” The failure of such a policy had not been enough to induce a thorough wariness in him. He had always felt that the problem was ultimately under his control, amenable to some heightened carefulness on his part.

  Now, however, knowing that all things sought to entrap and hurt him, he was able to avoid their worst efforts. Realizing that skillets were liable to twitch out of his grip, he held them with two hands. Because electrical appliances were likely to short out when he touched them, he always made a point of flicking light switches, for instance, with nonconducting pencils.

  This was not to say that Harry passed the succeeding years unscathed. Locker doors left bruises on his shin. Guitar strings snapped under his touch and whipped across his cheek. Toilets flooded if he so much as flushed a cigarette down. And naturally, he never dared to drive, all cars qualifying as the epitome of human-contrived complexity.

  On the whole, Harry lived a halfway normal life, as long as he kept his vigilance up. His long walks in the woods allowed him to recover a semblance of dignity after the traumas of the day. He sought while afield to commune wordlessly with Nature, to ask it why its man-warped offspring hated him so.

  He received nothing but a subliminal susurrus of alien contentment in reply.

  When Harry discovered psychiatry and its easy labelling of complex mental states—especially that one termed “paranoid”—he became a bit unsettled and unsure of himself.

  But a quick slice with Occam’s razor soon pared away his doubts. His solution was the simplest. These things happened to him. He had to be right.

  By the end of high school, Harry was a quiet, well-adjusted, cautious and slow-moving young man. His parents remarked occasionally how he had outgrown “that clumsy young colt stage.” (Harry managed to keep the most outrageous of his continuing accidents secret from them.) They wanted Harry to continue his education, but he refused. He knew that simply to enter a college chemistry lab would be to seal his do
om. Instead, he informed them that he was moving away. He said it was “to find himself.” (It was that decade.) Really, it was because his parents’ house was too full of hostile things, and because the town they lived in had over the years become an urbanized eyesore where one such as Harry could feel the weight of artifice like a brewing oppressive storm.

  Amid many tears and gruff handshakes, Harry departed. He found a small rural village and landed the least mechanical job he could find: tending horses at a riding stable. There the only instruments he had to deal with were curry-brush and shovel. Even so, more than once he found the horses’ tackle inexplicably wrapped around his neck.

  He lived in a single room that was almost bare. His mattress rested on the floor, since the slats in a conventional bed tended to break quite often. His single lamp he turned on with a pair of insulated pliers. He did not cook, but ate all his meals out. Briefly, he had a girlfriend named Mary Lynne. Until the night they decided to make love, when five condoms in a row shredded away in his fingers, and Mary Lynne’s waterbed burst. She never answered his calls after that.

  At times, Harry still wondered, Why me? He briefly identified with Jonah, and those people who, science claimed, could stop computers and other devices dead merely by approaching them. But his case was not precisely like theirs. He did not usually bring misfortune on anyone else (despite the soaking Mary Lynne had suffered). And he did not have the ability to hurt gadgets. Quite the opposite: gadgets hurt him.

  Diligently, Harry searched through mountains of literature for a life similar to his own. When he finally found it, he almost refused to believe it.

  The volume was a thin hardcover, bound in black cloth and privately printed by a regional press. Entitled Confessions of a Hater of Civilization, it was owned by the village library, and had been written by one Alden Winship. The book was mostly a tirade against modern (First Printing: 1921) life. Spurious enjoyments, creeping commercialization, disappearing morality, all the immemorial complaints that had filled books since Ur. Harry nearly stopped reading a dozen times. But something kept him going. On page 97, he found this passage: