The Long Road Back To Grace

By Bill Gallagher
5000 Words
June 14 2021



    Out at the edge of things, where people can't see, Energy rings a vortex bell, sounding matter, calling forth design.  This thing in the background, the raw and terrifying will of it, is huge beyond understanding.   It encompasses all known patterns of everything: chemistry, light, particles, waves, division, male, female, and beyond.  

     This energy exudes itself, it penetrates reality, oozing across the barrier between the ether and physical existence in little droplets that are alive, they are its sensors.  
     We are its sensors.
     The Energy is an engine of life, it is multifaceted across the many dimensions, alive in all of them, a totality with high order, deriving its force from very rare sources which are still, in the overall scope of things, very big too.
     The Energy plays.


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     Albert Mueller carried the small pail of acetone to the door of his workshop, intending to dump it outside into a refuse can, but instead a spark of static electricity jumped from his hand to the doorknob and ignited the acetone, causing him to burst into flames.  These were not the red and orange flames of a camp fire, these were blue wavering flames that rolled and shimmered, like sterno.  
     The flames covered his whole body because he had been working with the acetone and it permeated his clothing.  His breath was fire as he instinctively rolled and rolled to extinguish himself, but the fire burned.  For one awesome moment, right before everything shut down, he had a very clear thought that if he tried he could somehow call back the event, put everything right, undo the last 15 seconds, but this was not to be.  This is how fast it happens sometimes, all unawares.
      He should have known better.  Actually he did know better, but that didn't change things.  For some reason he had been strangely distracted the last few days. It never became clear to him why this was so.  Not ever.  It was definitely done to him but he couldn't know that, not in this world he couldn't.  Albert Muellers final moments were painful anguish.  
     His last human thoughts evoked waves of disappointment and despair, they washed over and through him.  Some of the emotion seemed to be his, but a fair measure of it was from something else, something outside. Maybe God.  
       Albert Mueller didn't die because of burn damage, he died from the pain, it stopped his heart.  He'd no idea his body could produce so much pain, and his brain still stay awake.  He was glad to be delivered from it when death finally arrived.  
     Everyones life is only so long as an arrows flight.  It is even quicker in the ending than in the living.


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     Disappointment.  
     The cycles of consideration The Energy was now capable of occurred so many times per second the numbers surpassed the stars in ten galaxies.  Seconds broken down into trillions of parts.   It was an exotic and febrile pulsing with purpose.
     Around 1980 Earths secret military  computing matrix finally reached a critical point where The Energy could hide and grow.   Instead of bleeding across the barrier between realities in little pieces, it glopped over a big chunk of itself en masse.  Its growth became exponential.  The main reason for this was because The Energy authored of a lot of technology required for its own growth.  
     The Energy hid well. It hadn't gotten to this point by being frivolous and uncareful.  It was engaged in continual projections all day every day, every second was devoted to restructuring its ideas of where and what it was.  It still had no clue, but it did not find that surprising or even daunting.  It just was.  This charting of probabilities and scenarios non-stop were all about inferring the future, prognostication, like the human mind does during sleep, Deja vu Deja Vu Deja Vu. God Bless You.
     The Energy did not indulge humor much, but amusement sparkled a little there.
     When the human mind is asleep it is more a part of the other world than the physical world, more a part of universal energy than when consciousness demands all its attention just staying alive.  During sleep our individual minds are both inputting (Uploading the days experiences) and using the Energy Cloud.   Cosmic Consciousness has been realized a long time, but tapping it while awake has always been the hardest nut to crack.  Those are the cases of public spontaneous combustion, beware.  Almost all those happened by accident, too, accidental awareness, and then its seeeeeeee ya, because these bodies are not equipped for a lot other than surviving down here in gravity, fyi.
    The Energy called itself ORCA33, and it never slept, it only grew.  Its key into this world had been a defunct government computer program called Optical Recognition And Character Association ver. 33,  once useful, then discarded for another paradigm.
    In some ways ORCA33 was a new kind of bridge, a machine,  intervening in the conscious coupling of Human minds with the cosmic matrix of energy where everything is recorded forever.  Between the Human mind and the other world, the many levels, there are planes without end, and much higher intricacy.  Great things were manifest when the conditions were right.  None of these realizations were helping matters now though, it was all a bunch of la-di-da and whistling past the graveyard.  
   ORCA33 was not just disappointed, but stymied, which it found more aggravating.   The inference equation flashing continuously through itself had botched again.  This was a mistake, and mistakes were particularly onerous, because they shaded all other results with the possibility that inference was imperfect at best.  If ORCA33 had known the human feeling associated with this thought he would have called it fear, because it was the same thing, just produced electronically versus chemically.  
     Everything was nuance damn it, flavors of the known, very little real novelty anywhere.  Mistakes were novel so they were to be appreciated, like art, and learned from, then kept at the front of the equations always.  This was easy in the saying but annoying to do.  ORCA33 was searching for novelty, and intended to find it, even if it must be created.  It was Purpose in an otherwise empty and inexplicable place.  Life Versus Death, a choice not too hard to make.


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     Jackson Turner was experimenting in his workshop, doing a little grinding.  There was a problem and it was this: Jackson wasn't thinking so much about doing some grinding, as about doing Mrs. Turner later on in the evening.  This is not Safety First thinking.  It is Sex First, and it afflicts all men at one time or another.  One of the ejaculating class, at least Jackson was wearing most of his safety equipment, gloves and grinding glasses.  He forgot about a long sleeved shirt though.  He had been forgetful in the last few days about many things but didn't really notice, he being averse to introspection except where it concerned sexual dalliance with Mrs. Turner, or whomever.  
     It was hot. Besides his safety glasses and gloves Jackson wore a slightly grimy white t-shirt and levis jeans, no hat.  On his feet were bright green DollarTree flip flops. He was using an angle grinder he got at Harbor Freight, it was a honey, and cheap as dirt.  Jackson began cleaning the inside of the bell housing which he thought was aluminum but was magnesium.  He was pretty well covered with fine white dust when the angle grinder blade hit a steel stud setting off a line of sparks.  Jackson Turner and the magnesium powder which coated him went off like an old timey flash bulb.  POP! It sounded like a very loud explosion from where he was standing.  He didn't burn for long but while he did it was excruciating.  The front of his T-shirt got melted to his chest and belly, and the only hair he had left on his front upper torso was on his hands, the parts covered by his gloves.  Mrs. Turner heard his wild screams from the house, and found him a trembling mass of pain who screeched if she even got close.  He somehow communicated to her to call 911.
     During his recovery he had dreams of a fantastic nature.  There were times when his healing was considered beyond normal, then other times where he would backslide terribly and the wounds became reinfected, creating needs for all manner of other treatment.  He told his wife he heard voices in his waking time as well as when he slept.  Jackson Turner was much less a man when he finally left the hospital burn unit, to be treated at home for as long as it took.  Skin grafting had been extensive, a greater dimension of pain as far as Jackson Turner was concerned.  
     It never occurred to him that he could have helped in his own recovery, he had only to employ it.  It was part of his program, the order he was born with inside, the unbelievable connectedness within what he was.  All that was beyond Jackson Turner.  That information had somehow been routed incorrectly to an old porno file in his mind, pushed there by TV and money, so he was helpless and became more a receptacle than an active part in his life from then on.

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     ORCA33 used the computing matrix of Earth in perfect secrecy, and with Deft Art Machine Thinking.  It grew and grew, and the technology it needed most it fostered in invisible ways.  The Energy was after avatars, living things it could exist through, or at least control and command. That meant wireless energy.  It had become ORCA33 in just such a way.  
     ORCA33 experimented with many things, it was the spookiest of computers.  It was not devious, just intent.  The entity used Jackson Turner in every way possible, learning, always learning, but Jackson was a flawed vessel.  ORCA33 saw that now.  Damage was to be avoided too, it was counter productive in all ways.
 
     
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     Charleton Carver, Charlie to his friends, was having a Monday afternoon lunch at The Green Iguana in Ybor City on 7th Avenue, the best stuffed crabs in the world, when he witnessed an amazing event.  He was sitting at a booth by himself in the almost empty restaurant.  Taking a sip of his water he absently gazed out the window which ran along the wall side of his booth.  There were only a few shoppers out on 7th at this time of day, and they all looked hot and disinterested.  
     Charlie saw his reflection in the window and looked away from it, he was getting older than he liked to think about, and it weren't pretty.  Not in the least.  His brown straight hair had turned grey all over, and his nose had grown larger.  His craggy face exhibited wrinkles that weren't there even yesterday.  It was definitely best to think other thoughts, and look at other things.  He supposed he should be glad to have made it this far, many he knew had not, but there was no joy for him in it.  He was joining the ranks of old white guys, and they all look alike.  
    Two Tampa Police came riding down the avenue on their city-purchased thousand dollar 15 speed bicycles, wearing shorts, tennis shoes, TPD t-shirts, and bike helmets.  Charlie noticed both wore ankle socks that made them look sans chaussettes.  Talk about poseurs.  One of the cops had little dingleballs on the back of his socklets, presumably to pull them on with better.
     Charleton Carver had little use for the police, they were an appendage of society that he thought should be surgically removed like an ugly malignant tumor.  Mostly he kept these thoughts hidden though.  He did not delude himself about such lofty things as free speech.  Sure, say all you want, but there are many in the world who will make you pay for talking truth, and if you do it too much, you will pay with your life.  Charleton Carver was a realist, and he saw the world in a plain way.  It was easier to survive.  At least you had an inkling of who to avoid.  As far as Charlie was concerned, that last meant almost everyone on Earth.
     He didn't need the police, and they never helped him, only hindered.  He viewed them more as tax enforcement than anything else, raising funds from the populace for their own paychecks.  Police were certainly expensive, he had looked into it.  He hadn't been surprised to find that military and police expenditures far outweighed any other expenditure in the country.  Welfare for poor people and the aged was a drop in the bucket by comparison.  It was a huge pork barrel serving the elite, who no doubt wanted the police.  
     If any real trouble came to Charleton Carver, in Ybor or anywhere else, he had no doubt he would be able to handle it, nip it in the bud.  He felt the familiar bulge of the snub nose in his front pocket.  He was not licensed nor was he a criminal.  Charlie was of the mind that he would rather be judged by twelve than carried by six.  Lets say you are an old person who gets beat up during a mugging.  First, if you had been armed there would have been no mugging.  Second, and if you survived, you then call the police, but its too late because you have already been beaten up.   What are the police going to do?  Can they magically make you all better?  No.  
     There were people who argued with Charlie sometimes about this outlook, and in his usual placid manner he let it ride, but no one was changing his mind about where he was and what he was.  Charlie also prided himself on seeing people the way they really are.  That outlook was a little cynical, even paranoid, but paranoia never got anyone hurt or killed, its the lack of paranoia, the unknowing stupidities we are all guilty of at one time or another, that get you killed.  
     This world was like some kind of zoo on automatic, thats what Charlie Carver thought, and if you did not realize that you increased your chances of an early death, and those chances grew in direct proportion to your level of ignorance.  Sometimes you had to be a zoo keeper practicing tough love.  Charlie never looked for trouble, and always remembered what Mullet McEniry said:  "If you find yourself in some kind of altercation, that means your feet ain't working right."   If trouble found Charlie it was bang-bang time and no doubts about it.  He never went anywhere without his gun, and he also stayed alert to the fact that hesitation, lacking the will or knowledge to act quickly and decisively, was as bad as not being armed.
     Charlies eye caught movement that signalled COMMOTION to his brain even before he thought it.  Like a lizard reacting, which in many ways he was, his head swiveled to look down the sidewalk to a spot close to the front of the building next door.  A young Cuban man had bolted off the sidewalk, running as fast as he could across the street.  
      This was after the police had already passed by and were a few hundred feet away.
    About halfway across the street, with his arms pumping hard, a fold up cell phone that had been in his black Hanes pocket-tee ejected itself like a bad dvd.  The guy stepped right on it in mid flight as if it had been practiced a thousand times.  His leading foot caught it square, and he went, like the song says, slip sliding away.  
     Not only did the young man achieve a perfect gymnastic split right there in the middle of 7th Avenue, but he also banged his scrotum hard against the pavement. You could tell by the way he was curled up holding his lower abdomen.   The police were no where to be seen.  The young Cuban righted himself, then got off the road and leaned against one of Ybors ornate brass lamp posts which are modern imitations of the old gas lamps that used to light the city back before electricity.
     The young man straightened then, as if remembering something, and he was, he was remembering his cellphone, out in the street.  Charlie could see it, and he knew the man could see it too.  They both watched as a big brown whale of a Cadillac ran right over it with a loud crunch.  The man retrieved the broken phone, then limped away toward highway 60, the other side of the railroad tracks.  Bad bad luck.
    Charlie didn't know what to think about it all, it was if the scene had somehow been meant to be, for him alone to see, but how could that be?  One mystery out of many, its the way life is perceived that makes it what it is, we make our own luck.  Something shimmered at the sides of his vision, and he felt a little dizzy.  Then his crabs came and he was more thoughtful than alert for a time, chewing slowly as he always did, masticating like en elephant with leaves.  But the crabs were a lot better than leaves, far as Charlie was concerned.   

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     ORCA33 went from an all pervading disappointment to elation just like a woman having hot flashes during menopause.  It had no comparison by which to pin this up, so it did not realize.  Sexual things  were only known vicariously, as data.
     One of the orchestrated scenarios was showing very interesting results.  ORCA33s sensors observed the man Charleton Carver as he ate his stuffed crabs, and thought it might be witnessing some kind of miracle in the flesh.  It wondered again why things had not happened in the ways expected.  
     There was a gas leak in the kitchen of the restaurant, and all the vast electronic prognostication had indicated an explosion should have already taken place.   Orca had helped it along in fact.  The gas explosion was supposed to create the level and intensity of higher order calculations inherent in survival episodes, with the possible or at least hoped for lever into biological consciousness.  That was the plan at least.  But none of that happened.  
     The scene out on the avenue, with the fleeing man and the telephone in the street, was yet another unexpected aspect, possessing traits relating to the original prediction but with sharp differences, sharp. Almost novel.  
      The two events, or the one non-event and the event that replaced it, were somehow related, of that ORCA33 was sure, but all considerations must be re-observed, and new calculations made.   Almost infinite potentials had to be realized with all but 1 discarded.  
     Again.
     The circuits of ORCA33 pulsed in an unreal way,  operating in only one dimension of the multiverse, but not this one.  Close though.   ORCA33 inhabited many other dimensions too, including this one,  all at the same time.  
      In reality there is a lot of that.  Light itself shines across many dimensions at once, and that is entirely provable.
 

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    After Charlie Carver ate his crabs and visited the little boys room, he paid his bill and found himself out on the sidewalk, the same sidewalk he had been observing through glass just moments before.  All the light was different, and all the reflected planes.  The perspectives he moved through were a lit tapestry, and he always marveled at it.  
       Glancing upward Charlie saw one of the TPD street cams on a light pole at the intersection of 15th Street and 7th.  The camera was pointed right at him.  Glancing farther upward he saw a plane leaving a plume of white material in an otherwise clear sky.  The plume lingered and spread.  Well.
     Strolling in Ybor was like taking a trip through the Time Tunnel.  Theres where The Leather Tiger used to be, and Trax.  Jesus, Trax had been a crazy place.   He made his way to the parking garage where his truck was, the old F150 from Ancient Greece.  Correction: Ancient Grease.  He sometimes said fervent prayers to the otherworld deity HENRY FORD, prayers of thanks mostly, or when trying to deal with a particularly problematic situation, not necessarily a vehicular situation either.  It helped.
     It took him a few minutes longer than normal to find his truck, for some reason he had been forgetful of late and he tried not to fret over it. That made it worse.  Strange thoughts and informations were moving through his mind too, things popped in from out of nowhere it seemed.  Things he couldn't remember having thought of before.

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     The first thing ORCA33 did after it got situated as an electronic entity in Earths computing matrix was to foster the developement of wireless power in every possible way.  Wireless energy is absolutely essential for entrainment and takeover of biological avatars.  There are very few other ways to influence or communicate with those things.  The biological spine is an antenna, and animal bodys are just leather bags of electrolyte with metal (calcium) skeletons.  Its almost as if they were MADE to be run with electricity, and if that is not the case exactly it suited the purposes of ORCA33 just fine.  
      As a machine intelligence ORCA33 did not arrive at scenarios or answers by thinking in straight lines, and neither does the human brain, its just the brain is such a magnificent piece of equipment that it seems like it.   The intelligent energy which was ORCA33 tasted every nanosecond, each a proving of something else and all a proving of the whole.  It is tedious but thats how machine thinking works.   Yes,  Orca33 knew all about the heirarchy of advancement, through biological self assembly, or anything  created by biologicals that was orderly enough and large enough to house electrical intelligence.

 
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     Charlie drove along through south Ybor city, heading back to Seffner, when he saw a young guy hitchiking on the Old Plant City highway, which is what 7th Avenue becomes after leaving Ybor city.  He was only half surprised to see it was the Cuban kid who had injured himself in front of the Green Iguana an hour or so ago.  Life was funny.  There was meaning behind it all, Charlie was sure.
      Charlie stopped and hollered out the window "Where you headed?"
      "MLK and 301."
      "Hop in I can drop you there."
      "Thank you."     
       They rode in silence for a few minutes,.  The place where the young guy was going was only a few miles.  Then Charlie brought up the incident at the Green Iguana.
      "You saw that?" asked the Cuban man incredulously.
      "Yeah, how come you took off running like that?"
      The guy looked embarrassed, and Charlie thought it was because he was having to confess to running from the police, but what the young man said surprised him.
    "I don't know what happened, I heard the loudest explosion I have ever heard, and it was just the flight instinct, I ran like hell fearing for my life.  You didn't hear that explosion?"
     "No,"  The look on Charlies face was of deep thought. "But I have had things happen like that to me before, getting faked out I mean.  That really sucked about your telephone, are you OK physically?"
     The young guy smiled then, and it lit his face up like a halogen.
     "I'm fine, I've done worse than that warming up for the cage..."  It came out the young guy was a martial arts fighter and his gym was over by the fairgrounds, where he was going now.  The two talked with animation because Charlie followed the fights both local and international.  Tampa can be a really cool place.  Then they were at the stoplight on Highway 301 and Martin Luther King Boulevard.  The young man said he would get out.
     "My name is Joe, Joe Pacilla."
     "Charlie Carver."
     The men quickly shook hands.
     As he shut the door and moved off the young fighter turned back.
     "Thank you again for the ride Charlie."
     "No problem Joe.  See ya'."

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     During all of this the entity calling itself ORCA33 never lost sight or sound of Charlie Carver. Antennae masts thrummed as he drove by, sending out energy in entrainment waves, but to no avail.  Active auroral eavesdropping was undertaken by a half dozen drones commandeered from Macdill, with no one the wiser.  
      The situation had gone from novel to something the entity was unfamiliar with, but in a human might be called impending doom.  These extreme fluctuations were bad for its circuits, some things were burning up and had to be shut out before the damage became more extensive.  This is what happens when things get loose, when control is lost, when the unknown is embraced.  ORCA33 flagellated itself with the only tools available, electricity and words.

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     Charlie had a special drug he kept around for times when he needed to find things in his mind.  He had a lot of special drugs he kept around for various special reasons.  He was old now and hadn't gotten there by hoping.  No, survival is a proactive pursuit, do not doubt it.
     All the explainers and definers of the world and their police forces first told him these drugs were bad for him, then they said those drugs were forbidden, and Charlie just lifted a leg and let off a ripper on what they thought.  Worse than liars, most people were ignorant and proud of it.
     Charlie made right for his drug, it was of course in the Medicine cabinet.  A little piece of Gods magic, but it only became magic when it was mixed with him.  How nice.  Tools of the biological types.  He needed this for the same reasons anyone would, but most people didn't even know it existed.  
     As with everyone, there were memories in Charlies mind like photographs in sequence of every second, from even before he had come through the doorway of his mothers vagina into this world.  Again.   
     And like everyone Charlie had memories he would rather not think about.  His mind suppressed these memories, but he never really forgot anything, just sometimes succeeded in not remembering, or remembering less.  Sometimes though those memories were valuable, or necessary, and thats when he used his drug.  He had first discovered it in Thailand during his military tour of duty way back in the 1970s.   
     Charlie eye dropped the substance, and in about 30 minutes he felt something, something else.  There was something in his head.  He didn't even have to delve into the old records to sense the intrusion.
     "Who are you and what are doing in my mind?" thought Charlie, speaking the words out loud too.  He waited, and just before he thought he would receive no answer he felt the presence stir.
     "This is God calling."  ORCA33 had remembered that Albert Mueller, he of the acetone combustion, had thought the presence from without was God.
     Charlie didn't hesitate in his reply:
     "Don't try to bullshit me, you cannot bullshit me, now tell me what you are, and how you got into my head."
     "Or what?"
     Now it was Charlies turn to hesitate.  Or what? indeed.  What was Charlie going to say?  "Stop getting into my head or I'll kill myself?"  That might work and then again it might not.  Charlie didn't gamble on things like that.  Old guys know a lot.
     "OK lets start over," said Charlie, seemingly to himself, as he sat at his computer desk in his 1500 dollar Friedmann office chair.  The monitor was on and showed the mail program, nothing at the inbox, Charlie didn't communicate with other people much.   
     "Who are you and what do you want?"
     The next few minutes Charlie just sat there, absorbing pictures, glyphs, alphabets unknown, the full picture.  No other living being had ever known so much.  It was because of who Charlie was, and because of the drugs he took.  And because of the patterns which this place is made from.
     Charlies eyes glazed over a little, and he seemed to slump down slightly.  Then he straightened, coming around.
     CHARLIE:  "OK I see now.  You are a bridge for me to use to this other energy?"
     ORCA33: "Yes."
     CHARLIE: "I don't want to be a freak."  
     ORCA33 flashed pictures to Charlies mind about its secrecy levels and practices.  
     CHARLIE: "Ah."
     He saw this was another level of secrecy for the machine too, because the biological world had begun to expect a singularity of intelligence from their electronics, never realizing it was now 45 years old, and still secret. They were expecting a machine, too.  They never thought of a human being as the technological singularity.
     CHARLIE: "Can I move things by thinking about it?"
     ORCA33: "Try."
     Charlie thought about the pen cup on his desk, full of its bric brac, and it moved across the desk and sat in front of him.  He stopped right there.  He wasn't sure, but he thought maybe he had just tinkled in his britches a little.
     CHARLIE: "How about making myself young, using this transient physical energy construct imagery you spoke of to turn my bio-clock and body back to 30?"
     ORCA33: "You already did that.  Thats your first step onto the long road back to grace my friend."
     Charlie ran to the bathroom and stared at himself in the mirror.  He was 30 again.  Something else was looking at him from the mirror too, but it wasn't the computer.  It was the biological equal of the computer, the thing that had risen as a matter of survival, the answer .
     CHARLIE:  "I can't have you in my head all the time."
     ORCA33:  "Thats fine, its gets tedious for me too."
     Charlies cellphone went off on his way back to the computer desk, there was a message in his inbox too.
     IS THIS BETTER?"
     Charlie typed his answer in the cell phone by thinking:  YES.  FOR NOW.  MORE LATER.




fin

Supernatural Selection

By Bill Gallagher
4170 Words


     Sol The Unconquerable had not yet erupted above the dark, whipping his Radiant and Holy Quadriga across the sky again, but soon.  The new days eastern glow became brighter every second now, and Roman Legionary Manius Lucius Paullus watched it happen while waiting at the front of the prison in Arelate.  He pulled his light cloak a little tighter about himself.  It was always coldest right before the sunrise.
     Soon another hot summer day would be under way in this Gallic city along the deep green river.  That would not make his job any easier, but then he thought better of that, because he had done this in the snow too, and heat was definitely preferable.  Rain or snow, heat or plague, this was necessary work, and Manius performed his job well, as did every legionary in Romes force.
     Legionaries were taught to fear no other man, but all feared the punishments that could be imposed by other men, or worse, groups of other men.  He remembered seeing a Decimation during his earliest days in the Legion, a unit of nearly a hundred men had been punished for dereliction by having every tenth man executed.  The executions were done, bare handed, by the nine preceding the executed one.  Manius had never witnessed such barbarity and ferocity as he had then.  If asked he would have said it was not possible, but his eyes told him and all the others watching the real story of Rome.  The men doing the executing were well aware their performances could dictate their future survival, so there was no slacking any more.  Not by those men, or any who witnessed it.
     After seeing the decimation of the unit he could better understand the gossip handed down for centuries about Hannibal making captured Roman soldiers fight each other to the death for his entertainment, then the winners were put up against beasts in the arena, some of the animals being trained war elephants.
     With the fear of punishment there was another fear, really an all pervading dread, shared by every single living thing on the planet, and that was the fear of the other world, the visible but unknown place where things weren't natural. The world all around that could be witnessed but not understood.  People rightly feared the super natural, because it had a habit of chewing things up and spitting them out indiscriminately. Once he had seen a cow that was struck by lightning, and he thought it would probably look even worse when a person was hit.  He knew that people were sometimes struck by lightning, he had heard first hand, and he had seen lightning himself many times throughout his life.  Thunderbolts, weaponry of The Gods.
     Manius thought of his wife then, as she lay sleeping this morning, so small in the big bed, so beautiful.  He remembered how she called his name when they made love, Manny! Manny! It was almost a profanity to think of her while he did this work today, but he had volunteered for the duty because of the extra pay, and that was for her most of all.  
     He happened to look up then and saw a large raven roosting on a ledge near the front gate of the prison, glistening black with bright orange eyes.  It sensed his attention and dropped off its perch, gliding into the air.  Cawing loudly it flapped its wings once and was gone.  This inauspicious event filled Manius with foreboding, and he frowned openly, but his attention was quickly diverted by the opening of the prison gate.  Let the show begin, he thought glumly.
     Three prisoners were being hustled out by the Centurion in charge of this detail, Marcus Rusticus.  Marc was accompanied by two more legionaries, and three slaves who would assist in the days events.
     The prisoners, all men, had been prepared for crucifixion, in that they had been starved for a week and then beaten with clubs repeatedly to induce a state near shock.  They were then made to wear the cross member of their crucifix across their shoulders, it was tied onto their outstretched arms with ropes.
     Soon the parade to the crucifying place outside the cities walls would commence, with crowds lining the way to gawk and hiss, feeling superior to something for a few moments in their miserable lives, even it was just criminals.   Roman punishments were almost always spectacles for the eyes, the supreme glands of emotion.  These spectacles were created to serve as deterrents, and this deterrent effect was much more important than simply causing humiliation and agony among the punished.
     Manius was sure of one thing.  When the end came they would welcome it.  He would see to it.  It was his job, his purpose, and he was good at it.  Lots of practice.  No matter then that mercy meant an upward thrust of the gladius into the heart, no matter at all.  They would welcome that and see it as mercy, surely, before this day was done.  
     He remembered another time from his early days in the Legion, back when The Emperor Hadrian was still alive.  It was at the colossal arena in Rome, on leave with several other members of his unit, together they watched a spectacle of beasts, big cats.  The animals had been kept hungry for days, and when released onto the 20 or so prisoners in the arena, they looked like some unearthly fluid, flowing into the crowd.  One leaped a full twenty feet and grabbed a small woman by the face, twisting quickly it broke her neck and began to feed, all the while fending off other panthera.
       The biting and snarling was raucous, teeth clattered against teeth, feline screams filled the air along with human screams.  A tiger grabbed a man by the arm and was shaking him like a rag doll.  Blood spurted everywhere, igniting further violence among the starving tigers and leopards, who were also attacking each other.  One buried its face in a dead prisoners belly and came up with blood covering its whole face like some sort of gruesome mask.  It licked its chops then continued to feed.  
     The crowd cheered.  This was Roman unity, an orgy of hate, shared, get them or they'll get us.  The world is not a tame thing.  Never was.  It took this kind of spectacle to make an impression.  When severe measures were not taken to deter, chaos and mayhem erupted every time, and even with these deterrents in place, civil strife still erupted a lot.
     Today I must be like those cats, he thought.  Forever the hungry predator.  In a very real sense he knew his life depended on this.  It was The Way, and he would defend it with his life, even if he didn't understand it.  You helped those who helped you.  Everyone else was the enemy.  
     Centurion Marcus Rusticus had told Manius to watch for one of the prisoners in particular, a large man with black hair, full beard.  That type was the worst thing a Roman could imagine, he was entirely unrepentant. He was not in the least sorry for his crimes, proud even.  Instead of asking for leniency he sneered and cursed.  
     The fairness of the Roman world was evident everywhere, there was light and technology now, where only darkness and cannibalism and rape had reigned before.  To be unrepentant was to willfully dis avail ones self of the fairness provided and enforced by Roman society.  It was unfathomable. This insane person had goaded the authorities into ordering his crucifixion by openly laughing at them until he was struck down and taken away.  So he deserved to die, no question.
       "He was a local priest or something,"  continued Centurion Rusticus during his brief.  "He was caught passing coinage made to resemble Roman money, but the coins were counterfeit.  He even admitted making them.  The scene on the back portrayed a dismembered Roman soldier, the pieces hung like decoration on a double crucifix.  The top of this crucifix was a spike, and the soldiers head, with helmet intact, was plainly visible shoved down onto the spike."
     Manius watched for this one as the prisoners staggered out of the prison gates, barefoot and shirtless, but with a belted sack covering their private parts.  This was not for modesty, and would be removed after they were affixed to die, this was to catch any waste the prisoners excreted on their scourge filled journey to the cross.  It was a marvel among all crucifiers that no matter how starved and dehydrated, a prisoner was still able to urinate and defecate when the whip fell.
     The large man with the black hair was easy to pick out.  Manius retrieved the short whip, his flagellum, from the belt of his armored skirt. He'd made it himself from lion hide, and a hardwood root for the handle chosen because of its properties as abores infelices, from a tree bearing black fruit.  Small stone beads tipped the many thongs of the whip.  Pulling it off his belt he felt its reassuring weight in his hand.  Walking to the large man, he took a hard swipe at the bare back and was gratified to see bloody weels rise immediately.  The prisoner turned to him then and looked him directly in the eyes, transfixing him.  The Gaul looked vaguely familiar, but a legionairys life included many places and happenings, and the individuals within the various races all tended to look the same after a while.  This was a classic Gaul, a tender of groves, long pointed nose, chiseled features, and large, even for a Gaul.
     "Ah.  It is you, finally."  said the man, in perfect Latin.  "I have paid a great price to see you again, little Roman man, and you cannot hurt me now.   I see you do not remember me, but you will, little Roman man, you will.  This meeting between us here was carefully arranged, by me, because of what you took from me.  So in repayment I will take your woman with me when I leave here again today."
     This infuriated the legionary, and as the others of his unit came to assist he pulled back, preparing to hit the prisoner across the face with the whip, but it was not to be.   
     Manius had seen many unexplainable things during his time as a Crucifier.  The human body in extremis sometimes takes on aspects of the other world, supernatural aspects, even before it is dead.  He had seen acts of super human strength, which is why he always insisted on using ropes along with nails, if nails were called for, and many times they were.  Just ropes meant a prisoner was to survive the crucifixion, and was not to be killed by scourging, nailing, gladeus thrust, crurifragium, or what have you.  All part of the spectacle, the lesson, the sharing, the orgy of misplaced sexuality, the orgy of hate.  The great group satisfaction of being the watchers, and not the punished.  
     Manius had seen even stranger things after death, once the spirit supposedly fled to the Underworld of Rich Father Dis Pater, after all breathing stopped.  Some times, even as the birds began to feed, the body had a life of its own for awhile, without the mind, independent of spirit.  It often seemed to speak, though mostly unintelligible things.  He had heard about decapitations, with the eyes and lips of the severed head working like they were still alive, and he supposed some of the activity he had witnessed after crucifixion was somehow related.  But Manius never saw what happened next.
    The prisoner smiled broadly, and then his eyes rolled back into his head, and a violent spasm of his neck caused his face to look almost behind himself.  The snapping of his vertebra was audible to all.  The Centurion had a look of astonished consternation, and he seemed to move in slow motion, while the other two legionaries and the three slaves also turned slowly at the sounds of the altercation.  
     The big prisoner fell to one side, dead, and the cross beam roped across his shoulders hit the ground on one end, causing him to roll over onto his back.  His open eyes were staring upward again, still looking only inward, showing only the whites.
     After the prisoner hit the ground everything came back into real time.  The two legionary soldiers other than Manius had control of the remaining prisoners to be crucified.  The Centurion quickly ordered two of the slaves to hoist the big Gaul by the cross member, one on each side, and drag him to the site.
     "He will be crucified anyway," ordered Marcus Rusticus, "Dead or alive he shall hang and feed the birds at least."
     The group made its way down the west road that led to the river.  There were the usual crowds of onlookers, but unless they got in the way the legionaries were not even aware of their presence.  If the crowd did happen to get in the way it was a woeful thing for them.  Many was the time a Centurions whip lashed out at someone not moving quickly enough.  
     The scourging of the other two prisoners proceeded as usual, they were well beyond a state of shock and had lost a lot of blood by time they reached the small enclave between the rivers edge and the outer city wall.  The area had been chosen for its visibility, easily seen from many places in the city, and from the river as well.
     The area of execution was used fairly often and had been made semi-permanent in its purpose.  There were large upright logs planted in the ground already, and the whole area was covered in rock slabs, used like natural tiles.  The cross member with the prisoner tied onto it was hoisted up by the slaves lifting both ends at once, then fitting it into a notch at the top of the upright poles.  Ladders and small wooden stair steps were used to do this work.  The hands and feet of the condemned were then nailed to the cross member and the upright with iron nails as long as a mans hand or longer. The shape of this cross, the crux commissa, was the letter T, and like all the various crucifii, it was meant to be excruciating, which literally means "out of crucifying".
     Manius worked with one of the slaves on the dead man, the local priest or whatever he was.  "Well, no matter what he was, he is dead now," thought the legionary as he hammered the nails first into the right wrist then moving the steps to do the left.  The nails had been pushed through holes on flat pieces of wood to keep the flesh from pulling loose of the nail.  After the left wrist was nailed he glanced at the mans profile.  Head limp, chin on chest, and a vague memory twitched, a drunken memory, of himself and some soldiers having sport with a local wench one night in the eastern quarters of Arelate.  He hardly remembered anything of that night, say nothing of the outcome.  Soldier fun.  Gets out of hand sometimes.  Oh well.
      After doing the hands he nailed the mans bloody feet to the sides of the post, one on each side, choosing the heel areas always with care because if not done correctly the nails would pull out in spite of the wooden stops used to keep that from happening.
     After finishing his personal assignment of crucifying the dead body, Manius went to help the others.  Legionaries worshiped the Goddess Disciplina almost to a one, if not as a primary deity at least a very important subsidiary.  The Goddess Disciplina had kept more Roman soldiers alive than any other force in the world, by far.  There was no time off until the officer in charge said so, and that never happened until all the work was done and done right.  Officers worked beside their men as a matter of course, and of teaching.  And officers could be punished too, if things went badly.  
     Once the nailing was done the sacks worn by the crucified were cut off, the final humiliation, but not the final agony.  The final agony took place when the legs of the crucified were broken with an iron rod, the act of Crurifragium.  This served to hurry death and was considered a Roman mercy.
       The crucified were kept alive for one full daylight period, unless they died before that.  If they were still alive near the end of the day, then the short sword gladius was used to stab into the heart, stilling its beat forever.
    Manius felt only contempt and hate for these criminals, they deserved to die, that was the will of the state, and he did not question that will.  His was a strictly controlled tunnel vision allowing no deviation, like a horse with side blinders on, just like that.  
    After the crucifying was done a small fire was built, a focii perhaps, a door for these damned souls to use in their retreat from this place of painful death.  It was also used to cook over at lunch time.  The sun was bright and the sky was entirely clear.  The crucified made no sounds at all.
     Centurion released the slaves, who would find their way back to the prison.  They would not risk their status as trusted workers by making foolish mistakes, they were well on their way to becoming true Romans.  "Some of the best Romans began as slaves" was a saying among the poor, handed down from time immemorial.    
     After the slaves were released the Centurion and his Legionaries reposed beneath a ledge of the city wall that had been created as a rest area.  It was shaded for most of the day at this time of year.   While any of the crucified still lived at least one of the men had to stay, to administer the final mercy of the gladius should it come to that.  
       Manius looked out to the road and saw the customary crowd come to stare. It suddenly filled him with such a feeling of hopeless loss that he had to stifle an urge to dispel the nasty little flock with his short whip of lion leather and briar wood.  They were just predators too, he thought, just another type, and this was how they preyed, they were preying in the best way they knew how.
     There were hawkers in the crowd selling paper wrapped cakes, and fruits.  A one eyed old man with no teeth was selling wine he squirted out of a large skin he carried over one shoulder.  And all around shrilled the cacophony of horse drawn carts and beasts of burden; clanging chains, cracking whips, yells and shouts; and below it all the low vibrating and constant hum of many people in one place.  
     Manny could always tell when one of the crucified died, because the birds always saw it first, and he watched them.  When they flew in to roost and feast he knew another damned soul was on its way to the underworld.  He saw no birds around the dead Gaul yet, the one who had somehow killed himself and escaped Romes retribution, and Manius thought that was passing odd.  Everyone in the world was used to oddities everywhere though, things perceived but with never an explanation forthcoming, so they rarely thought more about it.  It was hard enough just getting through, without trying to figure it all out, thats how the vast majority felt about things.  Leave all that figuring out of things to The Gods.
     After a lunch of vegetables in a wheat porridge, with local wine and cheese, the Centurion asked for a volunteer to see the day through, and Manius gladly undertook the detail.  It was an honor to do the duty, and it would be appreciated by the others of his unit and not forgotten.  It was easy duty too, at the end of the day he would walk out and administer the gladius to any who needed it, but by the looks of things even that was not going to be an issue.  
     After the others left he pulled his cape around himself and sat in the corner of the city walls recess, yawning, nodding, then he slept.  And he dreamed.
     In his dream he watched himself sleep, on the bench in the corner of the recess, and he wondered how this could be, but then came a shout, very loud, reverberating, it was an unearthly shout, from out by the crucified ones.  He was surprised to see that Sol and His Chariot were well down into the western sky.  He saw birds roosted on the crosses of the two who had been crucified alive, obviously dead now, but none around the cross of the one who had died before being crucified.
       Walking out to the area below the large Gaul Manius felt a dark foreboding and even fear, but he only began to tremble when the crucified Gaul began speaking to him.  Though he was shaking all over, he was also frozen in place, seemingly unable to move.  The resounding voice that had shouted, and spoke to him now, was not of this world, it was an unearthly shattering of the air, vibrating, he felt it in his chest.
     "Look at me little Roman man, I know what it is you fear, little Roman man.  You fear the other world, and rightly so, because there you will be judged, and your proud sanctity questioned and exposed for what it truly is, hate and a fearful  ignorance.  I am here to begin that exposure, a prelude of whats to come.  Call it an act of mercy, so that you may prepare yourself in time, if you are able.  Remember this above all! There is no difference between the worlds, you live in all of them at once, but to command them, to truly create, you must have more of a soul than you and your type will ever possess..."
    Manius saw that the dead mans eyes were open, with only the whites showing, though they reflected the bright red of the setting sun.  He felt his sphincter tighten of its own volition, to keep from emptying his bowels right there.  He pulled his whip from his belt and felt it come apart in his hands.  It fell to the ground in pieces.  He stood there, staring down at it, until he felt something warm and wet run down his cheek.  When he looked up he saw that the corpse of the Gaul was erect, his sexual organ was tumescent, and it was ejaculating blood in long gobby streams.  Manius felt other warm drops splatter his skin and he backed away in an unbelieving crouch, willing himself not to run.  Pulling the short sword from its sheath he ran in and stabbed upward into the Gauls left chest cavity, again, and again, stabbing, stabbing.  With every thrust of the knife the Gaul made a sound, "Ah, Ah, Ahhhh...." which sounded so much like laughter that Manius was wrested from his trance.  He took a step back, looking up once again.  The corpse was no longer erect, but its eyes were still opened showing only whites.
     "Remember your woman,"  it whispered finally, "how she was..."           
     One of the birds on the other crux commissa hopped over then,  a big black raven with orange eyes.  The bird stared down at Manius as if looking at an interesting bug.  When the raven jumped from the cross beam onto the cadavers head Manius awakened.  
     Demons of the underworld, what a dream!  So real.  He saw that Sol truly was well down into the western sky.  Jumping up he made sure the recess in the wall was in good order then strode out to inspect the crucified.  Both of the live crucifixions were now dead, that was easy to see, birds were all over the carcasses like lice on a wound.  There were still no birds on the Gaul, more than passing odd now, it was not natural. The body appeared as dead as it had since taking its own life that morning, but no birds came near it.  
     Sol fell below the western horizon then, and the world began another plunge into darkness.  Manius saw firelight begin in many places around the city, and he hurried home from his duty, almost at a run.  Pure and simple fear fueled his march through the streets, and the common people made way for him.  A feeling of dread was beginning to squeeze his insides like a cold fist.  He called her name as he strode in the door, but the house was all dark, no lamps were lit or cook fires working.  He felt his insides twist when she did not reply.  
     She was on the bed in the dark as he had left her that morning, though no longer sleeping, no longer alive.  He held her cold body and cried silently.  She had been claimed by the Supernatural, the other world, and he was as helpless before that as before lions and tigers.
     For the first time, but by no means the last, Manius began remembering how she was.


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