A large black man shut off the TV. Through the orange jumpsuit a network of tattoos peeked out. Visible on the fingers of his large left hand were four letters from some semi-literate tattoo artist spelling out D-E-T-H. The man let out a frustrated sigh of relief and turned to the group to discuss politics. “He just keep going to all these schools tryna keep up appearances. When y’all think the big man gonna come down here?”
Smith left with a single file folder. On the bus home he looked at the assignment. It looked like one of those 3-D pictures you were supposed to stare at cross-eyed, a jumble of random dots with no clear writing.
As soon as he closed the door into his apartment, Smith checked his phone to see if he had any messages. Manolios had returned the little Nokia with a knowing smile, but it had obviously been upgraded while in his care. There was a tiny camera attached to the back and linked into the phone battery. Smith had heard that the Redshirts were at least a decade ahead of civilian technology, but he’d never expect something as mundane as all this.
Part 1- Crossing
Chapter 1- Applied Application
There was only one cloud in the sky above the bus stop at Ste. Nero where two men and a very pregnant woman stood waiting. One of the men wore a nice brown jacket, the kind that said I don’t need to be taking the bus with you people, but something something global warming. The woman was done up in a nice thick sari that covered her arms and body from the crisp not-quite-fall wind. The last man, however, had only an old short-sleeved dress shirt to protect him from the early September chill. As a breeze ruffled the first man’s long jacket and the woman’s sari, the last man’s tie flew up into his face, wrapping around his long nose and revealing a mustard stain on his shirt. It would have been a miserable sight if one could help from judging the overall appearance of the third man.
Geraldine Salinas stood perfectly still in the hallway. The bell was going to ring in a minute or two. Gerry held her notebook in one hand and the book she was reading for class, Peace and Boats, in the other. “What’s it about?” some overfamiliar stranger would ask her. “Peace,” Gerry would invariably reply. “And boats.”
You get off the bus and it’s still sorta cold out but not quite cold enough to snow, so you’re drenched in freezing rain. Let me tell you something: there is nothing worse than freezing rain. It reaches to your core and freezes that and then your body takes the rest of your nerves along for the ride. It makes you feel barren. Not even a living human being. You are a husk of ice.
Your history teacher was talking about the Holocaust when Jews and Socialists and Homosexuals were killed and she said that trauma is indescribable with regular words. The only way to know is to feel it yourself. So you know you’re cold, but you can never really tell somebody what it’s like.
Robin Garcia 