Tape's Runnin'

"Tape's running," announced Klaus.

He had been working feverishly on some sort of plan since ten minutes after coming back from dreamland. Nobody could make out what it was. Nobody could make out half of what he was saying, either. And when they could, it didn't make much sense. Like now. It was true that he was standing at the analog deck though, and the tape probably was running. The whole time he'd been doing this, Ralf and Florian had been debating on the why's and what's, and bit by bit after turning down each others' other theories, they were pretty sure he wanted to record a song. Maybe all three of them together, maybe Klaus'd stay at the deck. They weren't sure.

Now Ralf couldn't hold back his curiosity any more. "Is this... is, uh, song - izzissong called 'Tape's runnin,' or y'just we're - mean we're starting soon?"

As far as Florian could tell, Klaus' mumbled response was halfway between both expected answers, like "Truhhoon" or something. Flo was tired of waiting; he sighed and picked up an acoustic guitar that was lying around listlessly, as acoustic guitars in electronic musicians' secret hideaway studios tend to do. Flo was slightly less shitty at this instrument than the other two... in Flo's opinion. He underestimated himself, and his improv was fairly pretty. It seemed to be what Klaus wanted, too. Ralf started improvising a renaissancey melody in what seemed to be French. Flo wondered if it was good French or shitty, and if it *was* shitty, whether that was pretend shittiness like with Ralf's German (which was pretty good when he wasn't pretending to be crap at it). Klaus meanwhile seemed to be content to run the sound board. Or more like, obsessed with it. Maybe he thought it was a computer game.

Just then, the doorbell rang. "Who the hell?" Flo thought. Practically nobody knew about this place but them. All was explained when, without waiting for Flo to answer, the impatient Flo outside the door jangled the key from his pocket and rushed in. "We've got -"

"Tape's runnin'," noted Klaus, still wrassling the sound board unfazed.

"Is this... is, uh, song - izzissong called 'Tape's runnin,' or y'just we're - mean we're starting soon?" wondered Flo 2 aloud. Flo 1 went back to his guitar playing... he figured it'd be for the best. Ralf was too focused on his French Renaissance "scat" to have even noticed anything odd.

A Klaus 2 rushed in past Flo 2, mumbling "Tuhrroon" as he continued towards the sound board. Klaus 1 nodded approvingly and then, for as much as he showed any emotion at all, seemed to look relieved.

Ralf 2 arrived too of course, at a leisurely stroll. This Ralf wasn't singing; he had a battery-powered effects board and wasn't afraid to use it. His improv began immediately and tended towards the percussive.

Flo 2 carefully closed the door behind him, making sure there was no-one in the entry corridor, and then reached into his nose. For long, disgusting seconds he pulled out nothing but snot, but at the end of the string was a tiny Mama Brain. He dropped her at arm's length like a sponge in a really roomy shower when you're very, very high and dropping your sponge at arm's length with an air of importance seems like a momentous thing to do. She inflated to normal size gracefully, unfolding straight to the ground. She looked impatient. She looked impatiently at Klaus 2.

"Tape's runnin'," said Klaus 2 with a distant look as he distractedly reached into his nose with one hand as the other still slaved away at the deck, and then dropped a tiny Glenn Danzig gracelessly from a snotty umbilical cord at arm's length.

Stumbling a bit from his clumsy, slimy fall, Danzig looked up at Klaus 2, saying, "Is this... is, uh, song - izzissong called 'Tape's runnin,' or y'just we're - mean we're starting soon?"

"Tuhrroon," mumbled Ralf 2, laying off the effects board for a bit.

All seven of the other faces in the room turned to stare at him.

Cody Code Code

It was September of 1980, and Cody StandingBear was stoned immaculate.  He had taken peyote a few times, and experimented with different blending of dosages of several hallucinogens before, but this time was different.  This time he had perfected it.

He wrote at a blazing speed, slipping in and out of shorthand, his mind a whir of sensations and thoughts.  Another verse done.  Then another.   Another.   It lasted for about 7 hours, until he passed out of exhaustion.  When he woke up fourteen hours later he would discover in the pages he'd written a code that he couldn't remember how to break.  Nor could he remember the special psychedelic recipe that had put him so perfectly in the zone.

The song was lengthy, but brilliant in its lyrical perfection and the message... Cody felt like his mind would pop.   It was the most excruciating sense of tip-of-the-tongue/deja vu he'd ever felt.  It was worse than right before he'd broken the Enigma code so many years back.  All he knew for sure was that he had to hide this somehow.  He had to make this song seem like it wasn't what it was.

He had an idea, which in his drug-hung-over brain seemed reasonable.  He could subliminally feed the code to Joe, then destroy all physical copies.  "Teach" the song to him when he wasn't aware he was being taught.  But how?

After much brainstorming he decided upon reprogramming Joe's brand spanking new Pacman console with the cipher. He just needed to meet with a little boy named José, who happened to be the state's best player of Pacman-- well, the best player as a video game tester.  Being a game tester in 1980 was probably the most cool and awesome way to get paid money.

Mezzotinte: Joe Writes a TripAdvisor Review

Having been unattended to for so long, Future Joe found the boundaries of his existence beginnning to blur.

When he came to, he was a Co-creator. But rather than feeling all-powerful as he expected, he was just another weak mortal... merely living temporarily in a life that generated his own.

He found himself sitting down to a computer and visiting an Internet site, "Tripadvisor.com."

He felt compelled to write a review for his favorite restaurant. Since it didn't have an entry on Tripadvisor yet, he had to create it.

Then he wrote this review.

"Title of your review:
Get there before the (other) hipsters do!

Your review:
You've read this review, but now you're not so sure.  You've just walked past a sex shop, and, because you're secretly a local and not an Erasmus student or whatever, your ears perk up when you realize that you've just passed the door into the once-notorious snakepit of U Hada, long a haunt of Brno's lamplight lowlifes.

But you press on. You're rewarded by a restaurant that was recently a bit ungemütlich, but now is just perfect... or is it? It isn't, and that's perfect. In any case, there's pho in it.

Let's talk about that.

Pho is the #1 reason why my countrymen shouldn't have been dropping bombs on the Vietnamese. Good pho is divine. The pho here is good.

Over time the friendly staff has learned to serve the pho with two napkins and not one, but pop over to the bathroom before you start and take two more. (I wish I took my own advice here.) Then plop half the insanely hot pepper you're served into your pho, and squeeze in a third of your lemon. Put in the other half of the pepper halfway in if you're not too chicken (although chicken is one of the options, alongside beef and chicken/beef), and portion out the lemon similarly. Order a beer to help put out the fire, because you're only human.

The fire is key to the pho, because spicy food makes your body release endorphins, and endorphins are drugs, and drugs are good. Enough said on that.

The reason why you are eating here and not in a crappy pho place like the new one at the foot of Masaryk street is because you've read this review and it told you to go here, and the reason it tells you to go here is heart. This place is visibly a family-and-friends affair, with a few rough edges, just how you like it. Maybe there's birthday-party decorations up; maybe loud cheesy music from the super-secret-treehouse music club is outcompeting the normal cheesy music. (Xin cam on!) Whatever's unusual this time, it's all part of your guarantee that nothing is guaranteed, and that is what you want.

Also, you're kind of poor, or just thrifty, and the 99-119 prices for food that would cost 30% more elsewhere are right up your alley.

Besides the phos, you'll find several other dishes, such as beef with rice noodles (delicious, more filling than it looks, and as spicy as the handy Sriracha bottle on your table will make it) and the ever-mysterious Thing With the Fish Sauce, whose name my mind has rejected out of the trauma surrounding it. That trauma comes from the taste (which lots of people love) and
the fact that I can never eat it in the Right Way, which always brings great concern to the face of the waitress, which makes me sad.

If the above has left you a bit  "ehhh..." and you'd like to spend somewhat more money and get treated like a king, then go to Go (Běhounská 4) instead. You'll love it.

If you want a crappy McDonalds-like Vietnamese experience, then I can strongly recommend the place at the bottom of Masarykova instead. (But seriously, what's wrong with you?)"

Giggy Smile

"Barth." (Joe.)

Barth blushed and smiled as he stumbled in the door.

Joe and Barth had their own name for it, the giggy smile, for that smile they got when a gig was about to start (Joe on banjo, Barth on synths) and they had no idea what they were doing and people always loved their concerts and they never knew why and they were shaking inside and had no idea how they would start and they needed to put on a good face because there was an audience out there!

"Barth, the last time I saw you was just before the Towers fell. Now we're in *Iraq*. Where have you BEEN motherfucker?!" Tearing up, Joe hugged Barth.

"He got me."

"No way." Joe let go, arms limp, deadly serious now. "And you're alive and you look like this? Normal, I mean?"

"I... think I'm OK. I lied to him a lot. He certainly gave me time enough. It's been weeks, right?"

"You're not OK, Barth, it's been months, lots of months! Uhh... what did you lie to him?"

"Every... every flavor of the rainbow. He was so *pissed*. If anybody ever grills him for information on me, he'll be so confused. *They'll* be so confused.

"Like what? Like what?"

"Like, uhh... Like, he really wanted to know how you and I met, right? And I told him we met on a hunting trip a few years back. And I told him that we met when we were eleven. And I told him that he introduced you to me, and I was really disappointed in him for forgetting. I got beat a *lot* for that one."

Barth briefly lifted up his shirt in back. ("Holy shit. No shit," thought Joe.)

"And I told him that I didn't know a guy named Joe and I didn't know what he was talking about. And I told him that I'm a tranny and you picked me up because that was your fetish. I had my own special personality set up for that one and everything. And three or four more. And that was just for that question. I had just as many for every other question too. The hard part was keeping the rotation as random as I wanted. It's a good thing he never swept my cell... lots of dirt and twigs to scratch out the order with."

Calmer again, full of relief and wonder - "But why are you smiling your giggy smile?"

"Joe... you know... I'm always performing for you. I'm always performing for all my friends. For Katryn too. Damn she's gonna be so mad I visited you first... And especially no. I feel like whatever I say, it'll be another lie..."

"I'm the same, Bart, I'm the same. In all of it." He was crying now, hugging again. "But you know our audiences have always loved us."

They both smiled, and both they knew it without needing to see it.

Mezzosoprano 5318008

They're talking too much. I can't think. I can't even remember how to write Mezzoforte... that's not it either. *That* word. That word that says I'm writing purely to goof, or at least not to develop the story.

It has been the fate of every Joe story of any considerably length (he wrote, pompously)

(We'll talk with Salvador Dali in just a moment.)

to

It's really about the mental exhaustion. But I don't do *shit.* I waste so much energy and that's the exhaustion. I'm a Facebook page on a dot-matrix printer.

to develop a plot. That always used to kill the story, as it loses its spontaneity over time. And that still does happen with our wild chat stories, so close, somehow, to the original format.

New Mezzosoprano is up!

Will I switch to a different YouTube video, or keep with this one?

"'Not based on face.'

'On faith.'

'Not based on faith.'"

Well now I know what Salvador Dali sounds like.

Will this stretch my writing limbs? Perhaps. It's a rare use of these Myxlplyxs, I think. I *think* I've done it before. Mostly I've developed ideas outside the main plot. Plot.

Oh this is too much. Whiny hipster. Next video, please!

Will I always be this tired when I'm self-employed? Will I always be this uninspired?

I think I just need to pull back just a little and I'll be fine.

They're not talking anymore. I love them both dearly, as much as my odd soul can love. Anna's back in her cave, Olga's washing the dishes. Maybe I

Why am I listening to this playlist collecting deliberately stupid videos?

I can do this.

Smooge and Goosh

The perfect green sky was clear and the sun shown down on the boy as he climbed out of the broken ice and sat on the ground next to Ray.
   
   "S-S-s-s-so l-lukewarm," shivered Norse, putting on a dry t shirt and shorts that he had been holding in a huge zip lock bag inside the ice.  Ray offered the kid a piece of celery, which he accepted and greedily devoured.

   "What do you think would happen if you asked Barth what he thinks would happen if you asked him to tell you who you are to him?" offered Marston.  Ray very slowly turned his head towards Bartholomew Norse.  He felt the drugs wearing off him a little, he thought...

   "What do you think would happen if I asked you what you think would happen if I asked you to tell me who I am to you?" Ray asked Barth.

Barth grabbed Ray's right hand and looked into his eyes, there was a slight electric shock as their fingers touched, a static spark.  Ray's demeanor changed with the spark, and he rubbed his left index finger and thumb slowly together, staring at his other hand in Barth's as Bartholomew Norse said:

"You are the meanest evil sonuvabitch that ever walked the earth, Bad to the Bone, a cyclone of righteous rage and one of God's most blessed soldiers in the war against the Devil and his children--the leftists, the communist liberals, the faggots, and all the half bred spawn of Sodom.  You are my best friend's Dad and a spy for the government or something.   You have a bad temper and P.T.S.D.  You drink and smoke too much.  You keep live ordnance in the house.  Your wife hasn't--"

"That's eNOUGH!" Ray Eawest shouted, "Cripes!"  Ray was feeling more himself now.  Marston grinned.  Ray took out a small notepad from his back pocket and a pen out of his breast pocket.  He looked into the Norse kids face.  Barth could tell that Ray was serious, and it scared the bejeezus out of the poor kid.  "NOW," he continued.

"Mr. Norse," Ray said, "How many years have you known my son?"

     "Well, since we were kids, Sir.   I mean, you all moved from the base to town here when Joe and I were both aw, about 11 I think?  So about six years?"

"Ray, what if you ask him if he can remember every detail about his favorite game." Marsten whispered to Eawest discreetly.

Ray cleaned the tablecloth of the Smooge remainders and went on to prepare the garnish for the final tableau, the brief sweet treat at the end, the Goosh.  The three of them looked lovingly at it on the tablecloth.

"Barth, how would you like to make a wager?" Ray slyly cooed,  "I bet you...your freedom!  That you cannot remember every detail about your faaaavorite game..."

Bartholomew Norse looked confused for a second, then said:

"Well that isn't very specific.  I mean, do you mean Ms. Pacman or The Game of Joe?  Or you could even be talking about Rise of Rock City, although you probably know it isn't our favorite anymore."

Ray frowned, looking out over the Rhine.  He felt slightly confused himself.  Oh well, no matter.  "Well, what about the Game of Joe?  Do you remember the song you and he used to sing when you played it? What is it, again? (ahem) 'When Machine Gun Kelly died, the women all came out and cried,' or somethingerother?"

Picnic on a Frozen River (Deuxième Tableau)

"...we're going to interrogate Norse. We think he's key to what your son's been up to... second only to the influence of that... man who usurped you as father."

"That sounds appropriate, Harold. However, won't I get a briefing on what I've missed since my capture? And about the capture itself?"

"All in good time. It's important, but that bad seed of your can do so much harm and has done so much harm - with no offense. We need to puzzle him out, and we need all the pieces ASAP. Especially with you out of the game for so long."

"None taken, Harold, but this is ridiculous. How can I interrogate Norse if I don't know who I am, where I am, what I am?"

Ray could hear Harold sighing impatiently into the phone. "FINE. I don't think it will help, and I don't care about your emotional needs, since you know as well as I that those have no place in our work. But out of respect to you as my superior, I'll provide you a 30-minute schmorg with me before the subject is brought in. That will be at 1100 hours on June 6th, 2015, approximately 3 hours after your flight from JFK lands in Hamburg. Lufthansa LH 180; your flight number is 0 220 2100257541. I repeat, 0 220 2100257541. You will find your passport in the passenger side of an unlocked Ford Taurus in section B8 of the airport parking lot. It is currently 1100 hours on the 5th, and yes, you are in the state of New York. Naturally I'm certain you can arrange land transport on your own. In Hamburg your English-speaking driver will transport you to the village of Wümme. You recognize him by your name card: Stanley Firston. You will be visiting Wümme to visit your brother, with whom your first activity after your reunion will be a picnic on the Wümme river, just before it enters Wümmepark. Note that Wümme can hardly be found on a map; if you'd like to check one, look for the adjacent town of Tostedt. Any questions?"

"I sure do have a question, young man. Why in the *hell*" - Ray uncharacteristically lost his composure and glanced furtively around - "Lord please forgive me. Harold, *why* are we meeting up in Germany??" He hoped he was being vague enough. By this point he might be followed... He also wondered if he should be something about those drugs he was sure were in his system. But one thing at a time.

"The subject was brought into custody in that location - damn globetrotters - and it's easier to discreetly transport you than him."

"This had better be a good family reunion, Harold. I'll see you there." He slammed the receiver down. He was in a foul mood anyway, but he felt the SBLAM fit well into an act of an angry ending to an angry family call.

A day and a half later, Ray was in place according to the relayed orders (Marston Smith was never clever enough to come up with such elaborate plans on his own, these must have been from higher up), and was a little the wiser. Everything he could fact-check matched up. It certainly was 2015, for example. And he certainly was just outside Wümmepark, and that certainly was Marston there waiting for him.

"You've certainly put me through the wringer, young man. Let's begin the schmorg.

Like every good schmorg that Ray had been in since elementary school, this one began with a 3-minute morsalampi. (Where Ray grew up, schmorg terminology was in French; for example the first *tableau* in a schmorg was the morsalampi, and the second was the smooge. Not like those Commies in Cali with their Italian schmorg phases.) It was enlightening... it really made Ray remember why he'd picked Marston to serve under him. They morsalampid as they walked out onto the frozen river. Ray allowed himself one positive emotion - the sheer pleasure one always gets from walking out onto a frozen river in the summer.

Marston spread out the tablecloth and asked if they could move on from the morsalampi to the smooge.

"Naturally," Ray replied, and so Marston pulled out a saw and cut the frozen Bart out of the ice. A tough kid, that Bart. It's not like a few hours of encasement in midsummer 70-degree ice would kill a kid, but he might be looking more uncomfortable than he was. The ice cracked open quickly and smoothly when given a swift rap. "As 70-degree ice tends to do," Ray thought.

"So, kid, what do you have to say for yourself?"