Deep Thunder

The Light and the Dark

2008-01-07T11:53:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, September 27, 2019

“I am Arhiziel, Messenger to the Light and Servant of The One,” said Geeky Dude. “You guys were there, is that what you heard?”

The usual cast of characters was gathered around the TV set. I admit that I enjoyed The Preacher’s company, and I could even put up with Born Again, but Geeky Dude gets on my nerves. He seems to exist in some kind of science fiction fantasy land and he has the annoying habit of making comparisons to scifi science. Born Again and Geeky Dude routinely go off on tangents – fighting over religion and science fiction, which in a way seems to be Geeky Dude’s religion. They’re both nuts, if you ask me, but they’re regular paying customers so John puts up with them.

Geeky Dude’s question sounded like the beginning of more of the same.

“What do you mean?” asked The Preacher.

“Well, it’s kind of odd phrasing don’t you think?”

I hadn’t given it much thought, but since he brought it up – yeah it was kind’ve odd, but then again it really didn’t sound much different from the phrasing attributed to most ‘messages from on high.’ And I said as much.

“No,” Geeky Dude said. “Look at the sentence structure.” He had a copy of the Tribune laid out on the table. Arhiziel’s message has been reprinted dozens of times in the last month, along with the messages from the Angels in Kansas and New York. From what I can tell, they are all pretty much the same.

“What are you getting at?”

“Look – ‘Messenger to the Light. To the Light, not of the Light.”

“Translation error,” John said.

“That’s why I asked, what did you hear? You were there.”

We all looked at each other, John, The Preacher, and me.

“To,” I said. “That’s what I heard.” The others nodded agreement.

“Translation error,” John said, again. “Look, I’m more convinced now than ever that there is nothing ‘divine’ about these creatures. They’re carbon based lifeforms, just like us. Their technology is so advanced that it looked like magic to a bunch of Iron Age sheepherders the last time they were here, but we’ve come a ways since then. And, Clarke’s Law aside, their technology has limits…”

“Sorry, no,” said The Preacher.

Anybody else, John might have slapped them down right there. But the three of us are becoming friends. I suspect that The Preacher is former military, though not Army, and while we don’t see to eye to eye on a lot of things he seems to respect both of our opinions. Respect earns respect, so John just raised an eyebrow at the interruption.

“Leaving aside your unsupported assumption that they’re carbon based for a moment, look at the rest of it, the message,” The Preacher said. “It’s stilted, sure. And there are some minor differences in the transcriptions depending on which source you read, but that part is always the same. I think the angel meant exactly what he said.”

“So, what’s it mean then?”

“Dark Matter,” said Geeky Dude.

“What?”

“Dark Matter,” continued Geeky Dude, he was getting exited. “Look, if you read that literally, Arhiziel is claiming to be a messenger for something else, The One, he said.”

“God,” Born Again said, somewhat predictably I thought.

“Sure, OK, whatever. But by definition God in indefinable, right? And so is Dark Matter or Dark Energy. Despite our best efforts we have never seen it, never detected it, yet supposedly it makes up 60% of the universe – we know it must be there, we can see its effects even if we can’t see it. Isn’t that exactly how you Christians see God? In science, Dark Matter is a matter of faith.”

“So you’re saying that the Angels are made of Dark Matter?”

“No. The Angels themselves said they are merely messengers in the service of something else. It seems to me that if that something else could interfere in the affairs of man directly, it would. Instead, it has dispatched servants who can. This doesn’t contradict anything in your bible, in fact – there are dozens of references to the Light and the Dark, aren’t there? What if they are literal, not allegorical?

I was sure that The Preacher would have something to say, instead he just looked thoughtful. Geeky Dude and Born Again went off on some tangent at this point. John sent me to inventory the storeroom; we haven’t been getting our regular supplies. But the farmer’s market is supposed to open tomorrow and we’re going down to stock up if we can.

I thought about what Geeky Dude said, and frankly I don’t see how it matters (heh) one way or the other. We are in the hands of powerful creatures, and I don’t see what we can do about it other than to cooperate.

Posted by VanDerDecken at 10:02 PM

2007-12-06T12:27:00.000-08:00

Thursday, September 26, 2019

“Never throw shit at an armed man,” John said.

“Niven’s Law,” said The Preacher.

The morning after the Angels killed a thousand people in Balboa Park, the three of us were huddled in the café, drinking coffee and trying to figure out what we had just seen.

“I didn’t throw anything at anybody,” I said. I was still scared clean through and I hadn’t slept much – I kept expecting Arhiziel and his Host to break down my door. I kept seeing those cops come apart like rag dolls. I hadn’t yet started to get mad, then, I think I was still in shock.

“Niven’s Second Law, Van”

“What’s that?”

“Never stand next to somebody throwing shit at an armed man.”

Makes sense. This Niven guy should probably amend his law to ‘don’t shoot at Angels either.'

It had been a grim twelve hours by then, since we’d made it back to the café. The Preacher had slept on the couch upstairs (with the curfew and martial law and everything else it didn’t seem safe to let him go home). We’d been open for an hour, but nobody had come in. Martial Law, people were staying off the streets. Military trucks had been going by all night, and about 7:00 AM one pulled up at the corner down the street near the highway entrance and soldiers got out, Guardsmen, and started setting up a checkpoint. That was nearly a month ago, and the checkpoint appears to have become a permanent installation since then.

If nothing else, the Angels have effectively ended the war in the Middle East – at least for us, though it doesn’t appear to have done much for the sectarian violence between Sunni’s and Shia’s. If anything, I say its worse – everybody’s trying to get in their last licks before Judgment Day I guess. But they’re going to be doing it without us I guess. Where we’re going to get our gas from is another story.

The troops have been returning home here in California for the last two weeks, and being redeployed in the cities. LA is practically an armed camp from what we understand (John has a cousin up that way and he talks to her on the phone when it’s working). There are checkpoints throughout San Diego, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not. These guys have spent the last twelve months manning checkpoints and doing patrols in the Triangle. They’re used to shooting first and not asking any questions. Though I think most people are glad to see them for now.

I personally haven’t seen an Angel or those giant Nephilim since that day in the park. But rumors are everywhere. Supposedly they’ve set up some kind of base in the park. The Army has the whole place surrounded, from the Cabrillo Bridge across to Pershing and north of the Zoo. Who’s feeding the animals, if anybody is, I don’t know. I guess they tried to truck a bunch of them out to the Wild Animal Park up near Escondido, but the Army stopped them before they were finished. The Army won’t let anybody near the place, and so far the Angels have left the Soldiers alone.

We keep hearing rumors of Angels or Nephilim on the streets, but we haven’t seen them. Rumors are that there have been miracles, and more killings, and people just disappearing, but nothing for sure. There was a woman on the local news last week who was sobbing and hysterical, claiming that she’d been raped by Nephilim. It sounded fishy to me, but according to what I’ve read, that’s what Nephilim did back in the day, and I guess a lot of people believe her. There was a mob outside the city office demanding that the government do something. What exactly they expected, I don’t know. The news said that the woman had spent time in a mental institution and that she had ‘emotional problems,’ but that she had been assaulted. Then the next day they said none of that was true and that she hadn’t been assaulted.

I saw this bit in the opinion section on the Tribune Online:

Bearing false witness is a sin! [she’ll] be called to Judgment when JESUS returns, which will be SOON! She must be brought before HOLY Arzheil (sic) and judged. The Rule Of Man Is At An End! ALL sinners and atheists will be JUDGED unless they accept the LORD as their savior NOW!

There were a hundred more comments exactly like that and only one disagreeing.

I fear for the future, I do.

Posted by VanDerDecken at 3:58 PM

Obey or be destroyed

2007-12-05T14:32:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, September 25, 2019

My God! This month has been insane.

I haven’t been online for a while. I understand things are different in other parts of the country, but here in SoCal things have disintegrated into chaos. There have been four more good sized quakes, and dozens of small ones. We haven’t had stable power for two weeks, and up until this morning the city grid has been ‘temporarily offline by order of the Department of Homeland Security, Information Directorate.” Make of that what you will. I’m not commenting, I’ve got enough problems.

Angels appeared in Los Angeles and San Diego on the morning of August 27th, two days after the Mexico City Ultimatum, and a day after the events in Washington and Buffalo and Kansas City.

I guess they were welcomed in the Midwest, John and I watched their arrival in Kansas City, it seemed as the whole population was out, singing hymns and holding up candles like some 90’s We Are The World concert. I guess it was fairly peaceful there, at first. We haven’t heard any reports out of there in a week though, so I have no idea what it’s like.

The vicious commenter Anon Y Mous, whom I’ll just call Mouse from now on, told me to stop giving second hand reports. I never intended to be a source of news, Mouse, and I have no idea of where you live, but you’ll get your wish today if you’re still around. What I’m about to say I saw with my own eyes. And I really wish I hadn’t.

About 10 AM on August 27th, we were sitting in the dinning room watching the news with what has become our usual motley crew: Geeky Dude, Born Again, and the Preacher (who is turning out to be an interesting fellow, more on that later). Geeky Dude’s phone rang, he answered it, and turned pale as milk.

“They are here,” he announced. “In the park.”

Balboa Park of course.

“Get your hat, Van,” John said to me. “I want to see these things for myself.”

“Screw that!” Geeky Dude said. “I’m going home and hide under the bed. I don’t want to be anywhere near those things. Nobody has heard shit out of Buffalo in two days! And you all heard what happened in Tehran, right?”

We’d heard. But I didn’t have any intention of throwing rocks at Angels or Aliens or whatever they were. Yeah, yeah, hindsight, but even canny old John didn’t see this one coming.

We locked up and I hung the “closed” sign on the door. Geeky Dude went home to, presumably, hide under his bed and Born Again went off to find a prayer meeting or something. But The Preacher tagged along with us. As I said, he has turned out to be an interesting fellow, not at all what either John or I were expecting. No fire, no brimstone and he hasn’t tried to convert either one of us, yet.

We took the trolley down to the zoo station. And zoo was the right word, the crowd was huge and growing larger every minute. There were prayer groups and people singing. There were a lot of frightened looking, ordinary folks. And lots and lots of crazies. I saw a dozen big guys who looked like they were having the time of their lives; they were dressed up as science fiction soldiers and had painted themselves leaf green. I had no idea who the hell they were or what they were doing, but they seemed to be having fun. It was pretty obvious that the cops had completely given up on enforcing the ordinance, and were just settling for trying to maintain some kind of order. There were more Blackrivers than I’ve ever seen, but even with all of their fancy gear they couldn’t do much more than the PD – so they just stood around glaring at people and stroking their machine pistols. Somebody said the Angles were near the fountain in front of the museum, and we pushed through the crowd in that direction. John took point, he’s built like a bulldozer and he forced a path for me and The Preacher. We made our way through the Spanish Village and around the Natural History Museum, and managed to find a spot on the steps.

And there they were, less than a hundred yards away.

I don’t know if you seen the pictures. I’d put some up but my bandwidth is limited at the moment, maybe in a couple of days. I’ll try to describe it. There were twenty of them at first, in a circle around the base of the fountain, facing outward. As far as I could tell they were identical to the ones that appeared in Mexico City. Giants, The Preacher said, and giants they are. If you haven’t seen one, they are enormous – comparing them to the fountain, I’d say they are at least nine to ten feet in height, and huge across the shoulders. They look like men in football gear, only not.

“Neanderthals,” The Preacher said.

“Yah, that’s what I thought too,” John answered. “But, damn, I thought cave men were shorter than modern humans.”

The Preacher gave us both a look, and I’m still not sure what he meant when he said, “I guess God can make his servants any size he wants. The Bible and the Torah both speak of Giants, Nephilim. Goliath was a giant, supposedly. And there are Neanderthal skeletons in the Dan Carmel natural history museum in Haifa, in Israel, I’ve seen them. No giants, but…”

“You’re saying those aren’t Angels then?” Somebody shouted from behind us, The Preacher had been overheard, apparently. People started making growling noises, I swear, they wanted to believe and it was about then that I realized just how quickly things could turn ugly.

“No.” Preacher said in that reasonable tone he has. He held up his bible so everybody could see it. “According to Jewish text, Nephilim are not Angels, they were the giants of Canaan…”

“Fuck the Jews, those bastards are going to get judged today!” somebody shouted.

“Shut up. Now.” John told The Preacher.

“Yeah, big mistake.”

John and I pushed the crowd back but I thought we were going to get lynched right there.

And then it happened.

I just caught it out of the corner of my eye when the Angel appeared over the fountain. There was a crack like thunder and then dead silence; you could hear echoes from the boom rolling down over the city. I’ve never seen so many people so suddenly quiet. There was a scream or two, then – nothing. People began falling to their knees, I would probably have been one of them, but we were pressed up against the railing and could barely move. I guess up to that point I didn’t really believe that they were actual Angels. Even seeing the Nephilim with my own eyes hadn’t completely convinced me, Hollywood and Disneyworld are just up the road after all, and some of their special effects are just as convincing. Maybe more so.

But the Angel was different. It glowed with a fiery white light and its wings were like nothing I’ve ever seen. Oil on water, somebody said. Yeah, if the oil was burning in a thousand unnamed colors, colors you didn’t even know existed before you saw them, and if the oil was floating on water that reflected the light of a thousand nebulas, like those pictures from the old James Webb space telescope. It’s been a month and I can’t get the image of those wings out of my mind. The pictures on TV and the internet are nothing but shadows compared to the real thing. Those wings are like a door into another dimension, or into Heaven.

The Angel was different from the Mexico City Angel. Smaller, though much taller than a man. It hovered above the fountain and its robes floated around it like those ghosts in the final scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The wings moved, but not like a bird flapping, and it was pretty obvious to me that they weren't what was holding the Angel up. The Angel was thin, elfin almost, and its skin glowed with pale light. There was a halo around its head – a ghostly rainbow of light. I couldn’t see it very well from where I was standing, but afterward people said that it was like when light bends going through water. And no matter how you looked at it, it was always the same, the same orientation as if there was an invisible sphere around the Angel's head that you can only see then the light passes through the edges.

It raised its arms and spoke.

Obey the Word. Cooperate and be rewarded. Resist and be destroyed.

Its voice was like nothing I can describe. It was like, well, angels. Like a choir. Like an earthquake. Like a thousand people screaming. Like buildings falling. Like worlds colliding.

Like the Voice of God.

I heard it in English. I understand that others heard it in different languages, and heard different words though the message was the same. I don’t know. I don’t know if I heard it with my ears or somewhere inside my brain. People fainted. People were crying. I heard ten thousand people moaning together and I might have been one of them. Rapture.

I am Arhiziel, Messenger to the Light and Servant of The One. The rule of man is at an end. We have returned and things will be as they were. The Host will move among you. Obey the Word, do not interfere. Failure to heed the Word will unleash the fires of Heaven.

Until I die I’ll remember those words, I can’t forget them.

And I’ll never forget what happened next either.

There was a popping noise. And people screaming. And you could see across the plaza something was going on, people trying to run, but so packed that they could hardly move.

What kind of batshit crazy does it take to shoot at an Angel?

Arhiziel turned to face the sound, unharmed so far as I could tell, and raised his horn. Up to that point I hadn’t even noticed that he had one. I only got a brief glimpse, but I’ve seen pictures since. It doesn’t really look like a horn, other than the flared bell, and I couldn’t describe it any better than I can describe the Angel’s wings. But I can describe the results, it's not a horn or a trump or any other musical instrument – it’s a weapon.

There was a sound, more terrible than anything, and the buildings began to come apart. I only saw what was happening to the people for a second, I saw the whole front line of security go down and come apart just like the buildings, before John grabbed me from behind.

“Time to go!”

“Where!”

“Through the building, this way!” The Preacher led us towards the doors and I noticed that he elbowed Jew Baiter in the nose as he went past. We made it through the doors with the museum ripping apart around us. The sound was unbelievable! We found a fire exit on the far side of the building. We got through the crowd faster than I would have believed possible, people were still pushing towards the fountain, toward the carnage, they hadn't figured it out yet. We yelled at them as we went past but nobody was listening. Eventually we made it across the Cabrillo bridge and across US5.

A dozen Blackrivers were running ahead of us, dropping weapons and uniforms. John got one of the machine pistols, and The Preacher grabbed two more. Me, I just ran and had just enough remaining sense to realize that an ex-con with a weapon was a very, very bad idea.

It took us hours to get back to the café, we walked most of the way.

I don't know how many people died. If the government knows, they're not saying. Martial Law came down that night and has been in place ever since.

And that, of course, was only the beginning.

Posted by VanDerDecken at 8;02 AM

Ultimatum

2007-12-03T14:04:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, August 25, 2019

So they’re saying that the communications blackout had nothing to do with the Angels, apparently the Mexico City data hub overloaded and shut down. Sounds a bit coincidental to me.

We stayed up until midnight, hoping for some news. I guess Reuters got their satellite link up and running right after we turned off the set and went to bed, so we didn’t see the text of the message until this morning.

Obey the Word. Cooperate and be rewarded. Resist and be destroyed.

Two days we waited for that?

“They wanted our attention,” John said. “And they waited until they had it.”

Reuters said that there was more; private instructions, ultimatums I guess, for the heads of state, but that’s just details – the message is clear enough – and it scares me clean through.

Posted by VanDerDecken at 5:38 AM

Waiting

2007-12-01T11:03:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, August 25, 2019

Well, so much for Geeky Dude’s analysis. It sure didn’t move like any insect I’ve ever seen.

I guess it was waiting for the world leaders to arrive. I wonder if the Angels are insulted that Stauch sent the Secretary of State instead of coming himself. I don’t know if Angels get insulted.

This evening the café is full, mostly our regulars, most of whom had been here all day. I don’t think anybody, anywhere went to work today, except for the news reporters that is – but I guess that would figure, covering the end of the world must be the ultimate story. John usually goes to the market on Tuesday mornings, but we didn’t go today for obvious reasons. None of the delivery guys have shown up either. So we were down to canned tomatoes for dinner. John made spaghetti and garlic toast.

I was behind the counter, straining noodles and trying not to scald myself when everybody shouted. I put down the big pot, carefully, and ran around front where I could see the TV, just a little too late to see it actually happen.

“Ah,” John said, “The infantry as arrived.”

“Giants!” Born Again said, I thought he was having a heart attack, he was pale and sweating. But after a minute or two he seemed to perk up.

I wish we had a bigger screen, and HD, it took me a minute to understand what they were talking about. You’ve seen it and they’ve played it back a hundred times today, but in those first couple of minutes it just didn’t make any sense to me. It still doesn’t, even though I’ve watched the replay over and over. To me, it was like they had been there all along, only nobody noticed them. Like all hundred of those big damn giant soldier looking things were standing in my blindspot. No sparkles, no magic transporter effects, no smoke and flash, just suddenly there they are in a perfect chevron around the original Seraphim. MSNBC played it back frame by frame, and I don’t think even IL&M could have duplicated that effect. I don’t see how that could have been technology, no matter how advanced, I think John is wrong.

“What the hell are those things?” Somebody asked.

“Infantry, soldiers, the alien equivalent of Black River Security,” John said.

“Nephilim.” The street preacher was standing behind us. I hadn’t even heard the door open.

He came in and I thought we were going to get a sermon, but he sat down at the lunch counter. “Spaghetti? Smells good.”

John gave me the raised eyebrow – John’s pretty damned clear with the non-verbal communications: it might be the end of the world, but people still got to eat, get on it – and I hustled around the counter to dish up the food.

“Nephilim,” I asked him, “were supposed to be fallen Angels, right?”

“No.” He smiled at me and took a bite of garlic bread. "That's Hollywood."

“Nephilim are giants, the offspring of Angels and the daughters of man,” Born Again was waving his bible. “Genesis, Chapter Six, Verse One” (I’m paraphrasing here, I didn’t actually catch chapter and verse – I had to look it up later).

The Preacher said, “Correct. They were supposedly warlike.”

“Well, they sure as fuck look warlike to me,” Geeky Guy said. He’s got a mouth on him, Geeky Guy does, somebody told me that he used to be in the Navy twenty years ago – I’d believe that. The army, the squad room, and prison – even I don’t swear like he does. I had to agree with him though, they do look like soldiers. Big brutal bastards. They’re what? At least nine, ten feet tall, like the biggest pro-ball linebackers I’ve ever seen. Massive, that’s the word I’m looking for; they look like they weigh a thousand pounds. No wings on them that I can see. No glow either, no halos. No obvious weapons, but they look like they could tear a man apart with their bare hands. I’ve got to agree with Born Again, they look more like men than the Seraphim does, not quite right, but they look like giant men. John’s got to be wrong, why would aliens look like men?

I was looking directly the screen when the Seraphim finally moved. Maybe somebody else can describe it better, to me it was like music, I’ve never seen anything move like that. Geeky Dude is wrong on all accounts, it doesn’t move like a bug and even on our crappy LD tube its wings are like rainbows – Oil on Water, Street Preacher said. Insect wings my ass, they like a waterfall, like fire. How do you describe such things in words? I can’t. I can’t even imagine what it must be like in person. It must be incredible. I looked at some webcam footage of the crowd, people were falling to their knees, sobbing, crying. Hell, at least three quarters of the Mexican Army grunts dropped their weapons and were on their knees, can’t say I blame them.

Every channel kept their cameras on the Angels, I didn’t realize until just now that it stopped in front of the Mexican president and the other delegates. I was looking directly at the screen when it finally spoke and the sound went dead. When the picture went out, I thought it was just the Mexican cameraman dropping his camera or something. But it’s out on all channels here, no sound or video out of Mexico City. The CNN anchors are going apeshit, MSNBC has the 'Please Stand By' notice up, I guess they're not even trying.

We’ve been sitting here for the last hour, waiting for the news to come back on.

Posted by VanDerDecken at 6:13 PM

Clarke's Law

2007-11-27T13:07:00.001-08:00

Tuesday, August 25, 2019

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” John said to me.

It took me a second to understand what he was saying.

“Clarke’s Law, Van.” As in Arthur C. Clarke, the Space Odyssey guy, I looked it up. John’s skepticism was shaken, but unbowed I think.

“You’re saying that the Angels are aliens? Space aliens?” I asked. Everybody in the place was listening to us. There weren’t many customers, only about half a dozen. I think everybody else was home glued to their LCD’s or busy finding a church – where they were probably watching TV between prayers and baptisms.

“You’d rather believe that those things are really angels? Biblical angels? Come on, people. Look at what we know. That big blue light in the sky. Gravity waves. Radiation – that’s their ship, man! Didn’t you people have science in high school? Why would angels need a space ship?”

One of the customers started to agree, but everybody else shouted him down.

“Yeah, but how come we can't see a ship? It would have to be huge!”

“Stealth, Van,” John said. “The Air Force can disappear an entire bomber squadron off a radar screen. Any creatures that can travel between the stars would sure as hell have a shitload better stealth technology.”

“Like the Romulans from Star Trek, right?” Somebody said (One of our regulars, a little tubby, bearded 60-something fellow, who I’ll call Geeky Dude). “They can make a whole warbird invisible!”

“Uh, sure, OK.” John looked at me as if to say – Hey, look! Crazies!

Geeky Dude pointed at the TV where MSNBC had a picture of the Mexico City Angel running in continuous loop. We’d turned the sound down; the Angel hadn’t moved in hours, it might as well have been a statue. “Look, clothes - robes anyway - that horn thing, and it’s wearing some kind of crown or something on its head. And the light! White light. It’s an energy field, some kind of environmental suit or a protective force field or something. People say that they can feel heat radiating from it. Technology, Man! What? They got Wal-Marts in Heaven?”

Newly Born Again Guy took offense at that. “God makes the robes! And everything else the Angels need. It glows with the Word of God! Seraphim are the Voice of God, that’s their job, you’ll see. Soon. And then it’ll be too late!”

“Oh come on, does God run a heavenly laundromat too? To keep the clothes clean?”

I almost laughed, but more because I was scared clean through. Still am.

“Don’t be stupid!” Born Again was getting pretty shrill at this point and John told him to settle down, so the guy started in on John. “How can you not see it? You think they came in a spaceship? What spaceship? Every telescope in the world has been looking for two weeks. There’s nothing up there. Nothing!”

“OK,” John said, still trying to be reasonable. “Then what is it?”

“What we’re seeing is the door to Heaven opening.” Born Again was totally convinced of what he was saying.

Geeky Guy wasn’t though, “Look! Look at it, at its face.” He pointed at the TV.

No kidding, right? As if we’d been looking at anything else all morning.

“No, Man, really look at it. Look at the eyes, the shape of the head. And those wings, fucking six wings, Man, and those sure as hell aren’t fucking bird wings. Look at them, they look like a cross between dragonfly wings and an energy field. That ain’t human. It looks more like an insect, the hive queen or something. It’s a fucking termite. Look at it standing there. It hasn’t moved in hours! Like a spider waiting for a fly. I wish it would move. I bet it moves just like an insect.”

I thought for a minute Born Again was going to hit Geeky Dude, but he didn’t. He wanted to reason with us. “How’d it get there? Huh? Where’s its space shuttle? It just appeared! Bang! Right in the middle of the city. In front of the Columna de la Independencia! The Angel of the Independence! El Angel! The Angel! How do you explain that!”

Geeky Guy made a sound like he was in pain. “It’s a big fucking open space in the middle of the city, you dolt! You can see it from orbit! Where the hell else would they land! But, if you're right, how come the damned thing didn’t appear in front of the Vatican? Or in Jerusalem?”

“God doesn’t answer to me!” Born Again was completely pissed now. “And he sure doesn’t answer to you! His Messengers go where He sends them, according to His plan, not yours!”

Things were getting pretty tense and it was getting on my nerves. But John just laughed, “Well, I’ll tell you all one thing – Angels or aliens, whatever, they’d better have their papers in order if they try to cross from Mexico into the US. Those ICE guys are assholes!”

Everybody laughed, even Born Again Guy, but I don’t think we’ll be laughing for long. That creature is here for a reason.

Posted by VanDerDecken at 2:23 PM

HOLY SHIT!

2007-11-26T13:28:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, August 25, 2019

I am at a loss for words. John too. We watched the video this morning, we’re watching it right now. There are a dozen people crowed into the café, and more coming in off the street looking for a big screen. Outside people are standing in the middle of the street staring into their phones. People are crying. Hell, I’m crying.

I don’t what to think. They are Angels, or close enough that it doesn’t matter.

Seraphim. It's a Seraphim. I had to look it up to make sure I remembered right – and the talking head on CNN just said basically the same thing. The live video from Mexico City washes out every time the camera points directly at it. It glows. People are saying that the light is blinding. But I found a dozen pictures on the net where you can see the wings clearly enough. Six of them and that makes it a Seraphim. They are nothing like the pictures I saw in Sunday school.

Wow! The light changed, dimmed a little, I think they just put some kind of filter over the lens. You can see the creature, the Angel, at least a little. God, it’s beautiful. I can make out its face, just a little, and the horn. Christ, it’s holding a horn, a long trumpet, like in the paintings of the Archangel Gabriel. My God, what if it is Gabriel?

This is amazing. Incredible. I don’t even know how to describe it. John hasn’t said a word, he just keeps looking at me and shaking his head. I know how he feels, I can’t catch my breath. The reporter just broke away to the studio for a minute; she’s saying that there are now reports from other cities. At least four other confirmed reports of, what? Sightings? Arrivals? Manifestations? Hell, I don’t know. New Delhi, Tehran, and I didn’t catch the last one. Mexico City is so far the only Seraphim, the others are different. And now they’re saying that there are more Angels appearing in Mexico City. I’m going to log off here. I can’t watch and type at the same time and nobody is reading this anyway.

Posted by VanDerDecken at 8:03 AM

Only a matter of time

2007-11-26T13:24:00.000-08:00

Monday, August 24, 2019

I suppose it was only a matter of time until people started seeing angels.

Here, this morning’s top story was from Mexico City. I guess something like a hundred people saw an Angels in a corn field outside of town. Halo, wings, robes, blinding white light – the whole works. The boarder crossing is jammed with people headed south to view the ‘Miracle.’

“Yeah,” John said, “and funny how not one of them had a dammed camera isn’t it? A couple of Black Rivers knock the shit out of some citizen in front of City Hall, and there are ten different clips of it on YouTube within five minutes. Angels? And nobody has a phone handy. Give it an hour and some old lady will have a cheese sandwich with a moldy Virgin Mary on one side.”

I guess. But there were a hundred witnesses. And there are a dozen other reports from around the world this afternoon. I don’t for one minute think that people are really seeing Angels, but they’re seeing something.

Posted by VanDerDecken at 6:18 PM

Idealism

2007-11-19T11:19:00.000-08:00

Saturday, August 22, 2019

I started this journal for a number of reasons.

One, because I felt I needed a form of confession. Truthfully, in the last two weeks, I’ve come to see that this was probably somewhat misguided on my part, I find that knowing others are actually reading my words, tempers what I say. I didn’t know if I could be completely truthful, and I still don’t. Confession requires a particular kind of self-honesty, which is why it is done in private to an anonymous father-confessor. Confession requires humility, something that I struggle with. I’ve tried over the last ten years to be honest with myself, but it is a painful experience and one that I’m not very good at (see? I’m trying to be honest with you here). Re-reading what I have written, I see that I have been avoiding certain things. As I get more comfortable with this process, I hope that I may be able to write more than just observations on the world around me, instead I hope to be able to put into words the things that I feel – and do it honestly.

And two, because a prison psychologist once recommended that I keep a journal. She said, if I remember right, that by putting my thoughts and experiences down on paper I would have to examine each one – and that self-examination is the beginning of self-healing. I don’t know, at the time it sounded pretty ‘new age’ to me. And putting your thoughts and feelings down on paper in prison creates vulnerability. Both your fellow inmates and the guards always have reason to use your words against you, so you learn damned quick to keep your mouth shut.

Yesterday, someone named Elizabeth left a comment. This is the first time that I realized that people may actually be reading what I write and it has made me think a bit more about myself. Last night, for the first time, I really started to think about how I got here, and what I am trying to do with this journal. And I have sat up all night thinking about it, and thinking about what’s going on in the world right now. I can’t see the comet, the sky is hazy and there is too much light, but I know it’s up there. Scientists are saying that it’s not a material object at all, definitely not a comet, but I don’t know what else to call it. ‘The Big Blue Fuzzy Light in the Sky” seems a little clunky. The best I can gather from what I’ve read is that they seem to think it has something to do with ‘tearing superstrings and the gravitational manifestation of a Dark Matter collapse.” I have absolutely no idea what that means, and I can find a dozen other interpretations including a number of mainstream news organizations that have reports taken directly from Revelations. Biblical or scientific, both seem to agree that there is a significant danger to Earth and there doesn’t seem much we can do about it either way – other than to pray I guess. Maybe it’s just me, but it truly does seem as if the world is on the edge of an abyss.

And so, I will try to be honest with you, Elizabeth.

I said that people seem to find it funny that not so long ago politicians and Soldiers swore an oath of service to a piece of paper. Kids today seem to find that kind of idealism amusing. I guess I never realized that doctors swear an oath too, an oath to an ideal. Your comment made me think about my own ideals – and I realized that for the most part I just don’t have much in the way of passionate ideals anymore. I did once; I joined the military and went off to war because I believed that it was the right thing to do. Oh sure, like most young kids who volunteered in those days, it wasn’t entirely about idealism, maybe not even mostly about idealism. My mom used to say that I was full of wind, shit, and excitement, and truthfully I saw the Army as a way to raise hell and bust heads without having to suffer the consequences. Combat didn’t much change that. But the Army did instill in me a strong sense of idealism by introducing me to the concepts of Honor and Duty and Patriotism. Later after I had returned home and become a cop, I clung to those ideals. In those days, it was not illegal to publically disagree with the President, and there were many who did just that. And it infuriated me, I had fought for this country and somehow seeing those protestors felt like a slap in the face. And so my misplaced idealism led me to join Shelly Watson and her band of vigilantes - and ultimately to the murder of people we saw as unpatriotic. It was only after we were caught and brought up on charges of domestic terrorism and I had to look the families of those we killed in the eye, that I began to have doubts. And by then it was too late. You know, of course, that Shelly was convicted and went to Gitmo and died there a year later of a heart attack during “questioning”. I don’t know if she regretted the path that her life took, I never spoke to her again after we were arrested. But I damned sure regretted it, and yes, to be perfectly honest with you, at first I only regretted that I had been caught. I still thought that what we were doing was right, but maybe we hadn’t gone about it in the right way. Shelly’s conviction made me realize that people, even those that maybe held the same views we did, saw us as terrorists. And, now, I realize that many people still see us as no better than the Jihadists who destroyed the first Washington Monument. Eventually, of course, they let the rest of us ‘co-conspirators’ plead to murder and conspiracy charges and Feds dropped the domestic terrorism rap and turned the whole mess over to the state – they had Shelly and they didn’t need us any more.

In prison I met a lot of people who were there because they’d spent their whole lives making excuses, and rationalizing that their situation was somebody else’s fault. They spent their whole lives blaming society, or poverty, or their parents, or something for their situation. I once had a cellee who was in for killing his girlfriend, and he said over and over again, “Bitch had it coming, I’d do it again – only next time I do it right.” At first, I felt a sense of smug superiority to those convicts. I’d been a soldier, a cop. But after a while, I started to realize that I wasn’t any different at all – in fact I was probably worse, because I should have known better. I did a lot of soul searching, and despite all my rationalizations, I began to realize that what we did was dishonorable and that I had never really understood what duty meant.

Nowadays military men swear allegiance to the President. There is no room for ambiguity; it isn’t left up to Soldiers to determine what the Constitution means. And I guess that’s a good thing.

And me? I guess I’ve left idealism behind. Idealism is a young man’s passion. I’m just trying to get by.

Posted by VanDerDecken at 05:32 AM

Curfew and Cabbages

2007-11-16T15:10:00.000-08:00

Friday, August 22, 2019

A couple of cops (not BR’s, but actual city beat cops) came in this morning right after we opened.

They didn’t look at me twice, city cops don’t get the fancy networked helmets and smart-ware that the private security forces do, apparently, at least not rookie foot patrollers anyway.

They ordered coffee and talked to John about putting up a curfew notice in the front window. We’d heard about the curfew already, of course. It was all over the local news this morning. There’s been looting down by the Navy base where the lights are still out and there was some kind of prayer rally in Balboa Park that turned ugly when the cops tried to break it up. The news didn’t call it a ‘riot’ exactly, but you could tell that was because somebody in Homeland Security told them not too.

I could tell John was pissed about the curfew in general, but there’s not much we can do about it. You’ve just got to love the Homeland Permanent Emergency Act, don’t you? So anyway he took the flyer and had me tape it to the front door – and he charged the cops double for their coffee, I don’t think he wants them coming back. After they left he said that it was probably better if people knew what the rules were, rather than get their heads busted because they ran out to get a 6-pack before the late show.

So, we’re under curfew between 10 PM and 6 AM. It’s not nearly as bad as the one the Feds imposed during the Peace Riots. And it doesn’t really bother me, because, well, I guess I’m used to being restricted after lights out, or just restricted in general. John was fairly fired up over it though.

“Goddamnit, Van,” he said. “How much more of this shit are Americans going to put up with? Tell me that?”

I didn’t have an answer, and I don’t think he expected one. I mean, what’s to say? The HPEA has been in place for what? Seven, eight years now and Americans are getting used it. Used to being in a permanent state of war. Used to following orders. It’s amazing to me how much has changed since I was a kid. Hell, when I was in the Army we used to swear our oaths to the Constitution, not personal loyalty to the President like they do now (Yeah, yeah, I understand why that was necessary). Nowadays people think that’s funny – swearing allegiance to a piece of paper. I don’t know, it didn’t seem funny to me back then, but things were different. I guess I was different. Congress doesn’t even talk any more about canceling the Emergency, and it’s not like talk would mean anything anyway, unless it’s the President doing the talking. So I just don’t see much point in bitching about it. And Stauch and the HPEA have made America a safer place, you have to admit that. I said something along those lines to John, and he looked at me like I’d lost my mind – but he’s a generation older than I am and I think he’s still living in the past.

We’re still cleaning up from the quake, but fortunately we haven’t had any more. It’s worse up north I guess. LA is under martial law (which should hardly be different from the norm, I doubt Angelinos will even notice). Not much news coming out of Anchorage today, but you can tell its bad up there. I saw Stauch on TV at Camp David, but didn’t catch the whole speech, just the part about staying calm and working together. He looked worried though, tired.

One of John's produce suppliers came by in the afternoon. He didn't have much, only about a quarter of what we'd ordered. And the prices have gone up again. I understand that it's different in the Midwest and the North where people can grow gardens, but here in SoCal the only place you can grow vegetables on a large scale in the San Joaquin. And the cost of water and Union labor have tripled in the last couple of years, according to John, and without the Mexicans a lot of commercial farms are going out of business. Coupled with the price of fuel (diesel is $10.15 a gallon here this week), and you just can't get produce any more. People have been trying to farm rooftops in the city, but there's only so much room - so people are forced to choose between solar panels or gardens. The supplier had a couple of bags of onions and a bunch of cabbages, and not much of anything else. John had me making coleslaw all afternoon while he was on the phone trying to find another supplier. I could tell he wasn't having much luck. He went out later and came back with a couple gallons of vinegar, so I guess we'll be making sauerkraut tomorrow.

If the current craziness would just slack off for a couple of months, maybe the country could catch its breath. I've been thinking that maybe I'd go by St. Mary's tomorrow and light a candle, it couldn't hurt.

Posted by VanDerDecken at 10:36 PM

The Quake

2007-11-15T13:06:00.000-08:00

Thursday, August 21, 2019

I haven’t been able to write for a couple of days.

Tuesday, we had a pretty big quake here, about 5.2 on the scale, and power has been out. The AfricaBox worked fine, of course, it doesn’t need the grid, just elbow grease. But the city wireless has been out for the last two days and just came back on this morning.

The quake happened about two in the morning. It dumped me out of bed onto the floor, heart pounding trying to remember where I was in the pitch dark. After the shaking stopped, I went across the street to make sure John was okay. He was, but the café was pretty stirred up. We lit a couple of battery lamps and started checking for gas leaks (actually, I was still kind of disorientated, but when John started sniffing around the stoves I got the idea and got off my ass to help). No leaks.

After checking the place, we sat down with the portable radio to wait out the aftershocks, of which there were three or four big ones and a bunch of little ones.

“Wish we had some coffee,” I said. Without electricity the coffeemaker was dead, of course.

“Hah!” John said, “I knew I was right keeping that thing. Van, there’s an old percolator pot in the storeroom. Big blue enamel jobber, old fashioned camp stove type, on the top shelf, back wall. Go get it. The gas is still on, we can use the stove. I’ll find the coffee.”

Frankly I had no idea what a ‘percolator’ was, but I figured I could find it, so I took a flashlight and went looking. The storeroom was darker than the inside of a Gitmo cell, and there were cans and boxes all over the floor. I was holding the flashlight in one hand and trying to find the coffee pot on the top shelf when something moved in the dark behind me. I dammed near jumped out of my skin, and just about broke my neck when I stepped on a can of peas tying to spin around and look behind me. I ended up on my ass, under a pile of paper napkins which I managed to knock off the shelf (because, you know, there wasn’t already enough crap on the floor). I looked up and there were eyes, big yellows ones, glowing in the beam of the flashlight, head height, right behind where I had been standing.

Look, I’ve been in some pretty hairy situations, but I’ve got to be honest here, that scared the shit out of me. I was already shook up from the quake and everything else that’s been going on. Sitting on my ass in the dark, looking up at glowing yellow eyes, I though…well, I don’t know what I thought. Demons, devils in the dark, I guess – the product of a strict Catholic childhood that I thought was long forgotten. I must have yelled bloody murder.

John came running to see if I’d broken my fool neck in the dark.

“Hell, Van, you scream like a girl.”

He had a battery lantern in one hand and with the extra light I could see what the eyes belonged to.

“Murphy!” John said, obviously delighted to see a cat on the top shelf of his pantry. “I wondered where you were hiding. Come here, baby.”

By that point I was feeling more than a little bit stupid. “Murphy? Strange name for a cat.”

“She’s Irish, you can tell from the accent.” John grinned. “Did you find the pot?”

“No.”

“Nevermind, I see it. Come let’s go see if I remember how this thing works.”

Coffee from a percolator tastes, well, different. Strong, bitter. Kind of like prison brew, but damn if it doesn't smell good when it’s perking. We sat, listening to the radio and petting Murphy the cat, until the sun came up, and spent the rest of the day, and all of Wednesday, picking up.

Yesterday, we opened the place up and served canned soup all day (John wanted to keep the coolers closed until the power came back on, so we only served what we could make from the storeroom supplies). And last night, after we closed, John offered me use of a spare room upstairs. He didn’t say, but I think he actually owns the building, and he lives in an apartment above the restaurant. This morning I squared up the week’s rent with the hotel across the street and moved what little I have into the back room. The view is nothing special, just a cement wall across the alley and the dumpsters, but its home for now. Rent comes out of my paycheck, but I’m moving up in the world, yes I am.

People are scared. These quakes are dammed weird, and last night with most of the city dark you could actually see the comet. It’s a freaky blue smudge up high up in the eastern sky, way above the mountains. The radio said that the Astronomers still can’t get a fix on it, and now they’re saying something about ‘super strings’ and ‘gravity lensing.’ Frankly I don’t think they know any more than I do, and I don’t know jack shit other than this can’t be good. The only guy who seems to know what he’s talking about is the street preacher, who was back today and he had a pretty big crowd outside our window. A couple of BR patrols went past and just kept going – and frankly that’s even weirder than the crazy comet and the quakes and a city that smells like smoke.

John let the guy stay out front, though I could tell the end of the world bit was irritating him. The sermon was pulling in business for us. People would stop to listen, and then smell the soup and the coffee. Between filling bowls of Minestrone and chicken noodles, I could hear the preacher talking outside (we had the front door propped open this morning, no air conditioning). If anything, the guy was even more reasonable sounding today than he was last week. He didn’t mention the polar bears today, but the disaster in India and Alaska, the comet, and the quakes were getting top billing. People were listening, really listening; you could see it in their faces.

“Bah,” John said when one of the customers asked him what he thought about it all. “I’ll believe it’s the end of the world when the angels show up, until then I’ve got other things to worry about.”

Posted by VanDerDecken at 11:15 PM

Restitution

2007-11-09T14:42:00.000-08:00

Monday, August 18, 2019

It’s been a long day.

We had the news on most of the morning and the disaster just keeps getting worse.

John put out a jar, a big old pickle container, on the counter, for donations to the disaster relief effort. And by the end of the day it was full.

After the lunch rush, we closed up shop and took the money and a bunch of other stuff, including a dozen of the AfricaBoxes from the storeroom, down to the Red Cross drop-off point in John’s old hybrid GMC. Stuff was coming in from all over, and the Red Cross people were overwhelmed, so we stayed for a couple of hours and helped sort the donations into shipping containers.

On the ride back my stomach was rumbling from the smell of cooking french fries (the truck runs on homemade bio-diesel made with oil from the deep fryers). John laughed and swung through the drive up at In-and-Out and bought us both lunch, and it was the best burger I’ve had in ten years. But, I couldn’t help thinking that it was funny, a month ago I was in prison for murder and conspiracy to deny people their basic human rights, and here I am today helping to load supplies for humanitarian relief. I’ve always felt guilty for my crimes (and you can believe that or not, but it’s true, I regret it every single day).

Today, I felt good about myself, and that’s something I’m definitely not used too. Ten years in the can and two hours loading MRE’s doesn’t make up for what I did, but it’s a start – and there will be more of it.

Posted by VanDerDecken at 10:28 PM

The Tsunami

2007-11-09T14:39:00.000-08:00

Saturday, August 16, 2019

I came in this morning around 0500 to find John glued to the TV set. A cup of coffee was sitting on the counter behind him, apparently forgotten. Something bad going on then, for sure.

“Sit down, Van, listen.” He turned the news up.

And we watched the disaster unfold. Jesus, they’re saying a 100,000 minimum dead in India alone. And they’re expecting more waves in the next two hours.

I’m reading through reports on the box right now. Looks like the quake in Anchorage was pretty bad too, no hard numbers on size though. I see anywhere from 7.2 to 10! And they’re expecting big waves all along the West Coast.

What hell is going on?

Posted by VanDerDecken at 5:15 Am

Group

2007-11-09T14:38:00.000-08:00

Friday, August 15, 2019

I went to Group this evening after we closed up.

I tried group therapy in the can a couple of times, mostly as a way to get out of work detail, and thought it was stupid.

This wasn’t like that, it was more like an AA meeting (I went to a few of those in the can too), more like a support group for ex-cons trying to go straight. Everybody stood up in turn and talked about what they were doing to turn their lives around. Some seemed to be doing ok, but most just made excuses: nobody will hire a con, I know I’m not drinking too much but my PO won’t get off my back, the bitch married some other guy while I was in the joint and she won’t even let me see the kids, etc. People offered each other advice, most of it the things one convict says to another, and just about as useful. I tried not to be judgmental, really tried, stones and glass houses again, but it seemed more like reinforcement of bad habits and excuses.

I promised myself that I was done with excuses, and I don’t see much use in mutual masturbation.

Afterward we all stood around and talked about the comet and the quakes, the war, and rest of it. You know its bad when even bottomed out ex-cons are worried about what’s going on in the world.

I may go back next week, but probably not. Unless the PO makes a big deal out of it.

Posted by VanDerDecken at 11:58 PM

Irish Stew

2007-11-09T14:35:00.000-08:00

Friday, August 15, 2019

I don’t know why, but the street preacher yesterday really got to me.

I dreamed about the End Times last night. Weird bloody, smoke filled nightmares, with me running down the cell blocks or back in the Desert with the preacher. In the dream the world was like those scenes of hell in the movie Constantine and the preacher looked a lot like Keanu Reeves, weird because I haven’t seen that movie in years. And there were camel spiders, I dreamed that the preacher kept saying the spiders were a Sign, and when I looked down one the size of a dog was crawling up my leg (when I was in the desert, we used to wake up with those dammed things under our sleeping bags. Bodies the size of a peach, I’ve seen them as large a pie plate, I swear. God, I hate those things). I woke up shaking, thinking I was back in my old cell. And when I flipped on the light, there was a rat sitting on the end of the bed which is probably why I was dreaming about shit crawling on me.

I really have to find a new place to stay.

I got up and looked out the window, hoping to catch a glimpse of the comet (comet-like object). It’s supposed to be visible to the East from here, but the sky was a bright, hazy uniform grey; city light reflecting off the smoke from wildfires up near Temecula, the whole city has smelled like it for a week, fire season is coming earlier and earlier every year. I know that the White House says Global Warming is crock, but you couldn’t prove it by me. I did see that John had the lights on in the café though, so I skipped the shower, got dressed and headed across the street.

He didn’t seem surprised to see me knocking on the window at 0400. He let me in and then handed me a key to the front door. “If you’re going to come in this early, you might as well have your own key,” he said. Trust. Nobody has trusted me in a long, long time. I can’t even begin to tell you how good that felt.

I got a couple of cold biscuits and cup of hot coffee (John always has good, hot coffee. Always. Day or night) and sat down with the AfricaBox. I looked up The Revelation to John, from KJB Wiki and read while eating, stopping to crank every couple of minutes.

John looked over my shoulder, “Ah for shit’s sake, Van, you’re not buying into that crap, are you?”

“I don’t know. As a Christian (yeah, a piss poor one said a voice in my head) you’ve got to admit, there’s some parallels to what’s going in the world right now,” I said.

I figured John for a skeptic right from the first, but I could tell then that it went deeper than that. He’s an atheist, for sure.

“Oh come on, Van. The bible is so dammed vague that you could interpret any time in history as the ‘End Times’ of Revelations. You might as well be reading Nostradamus.”

I should say here that if it seems that John and I were talking like we were old friends, it’s because in a way we were. The military does that to you. There’s a bond between veterans, and especially between combat veterans, even if they don’t actually know each other. We have shared experiences, shared background. And even though, for both of us, our time in the service was years ago now – it was still there. If you don’t understand what I’m saying, I can’t explain it to you any better than that. I expected John to speak bluntly to me, that’s the way of it. And after the Army, the squad room, and ten years in General Population, I’ve got a pretty thick skin. So I wasn’t even remotely offended.

“Van,” he said, “It’s just a dammed comet. A weird one, sure, but I guarantee you that in a week the guys up at Palomar, or Wilson, or out in Hawaii will have it figured out. And nobody will give a shit anymore. They’ll go back to hating the President and protesting the war. Now finish your coffee and start peeling potatoes. I’ve got a guy bringing over a bag of barley this morning. I’ll teach you how to make Irish stew.”

And that’s John for you, right there. A good stew takes precedence over the end of the world.

Posted by VanDerDecken at 6:31 AM

Gifts and Revelation

2007-11-09T14:33:00.000-08:00

Thursday, August 14, 2019

John gave me the AfricaBox! It’s an old piece of shit (did they ever give these things out to kids in the Congo? They’re nearly indestructible and were supposed to cost a $100 or so, but you can’t even give them away nowadays – except to me, thanks John), the software is at least five years out of date and the case is day-glo yellow like something made by Matel instead of Intel. The capacitor is circling the drain, I’ve got to crank the charging handle every ten minutes or so, but it’s mine. I haven’t had anything of my own in ten years. I worked an extra two hours tonight after closing, scrubbing fryers and lugging the plastic buckets of old soy oil out to biodiesel reactor, just to make sure he knew how much I appreciated it.

“Don’t worry about it, Van,” he said. “I’ve got a whole stack of them in the closet.”

I don’t know, maybe its luck or maybe God really is looking out for me. I’ll say a couple of extra Hail Marys tonight.

Speaking of God, there was this crazy coot on the sidewalk today, in front of the café, one of those “End of the World” nuts. He didn’t have crazy eyes, long hair, a beard, or a sign. He was just some guy in a black suit, waving a bible and talking in a loud, reasonable voice about the Second Coming. With the quakes and the comet (or comet-like object to use today’s new term) I guess they’re coming out of the woodwork. From what I gathered, he’s a regular around here. The gist of this guy’s sermon was The Revelation of St. John the Apostle, what else? Apparently all the signs of the Apocalypse are now manifest. He had a whole list of them, signs that is, and despite a youth spent in St. Mary’s Sunday school and Wednesday catechisms, he had some I’d never heard of. The comet for one. The quakes. The War. The Draft. The Midwest drought and the dust storms and the recession and the dying polar bears and a bunch of other stuff I’ve forgotten. And apparently the President is the anti-Christ. Of course, a lot of people would probably agree with him there. Not me, I’m not saying shit, I don’t care if Stauch declared himself President for the Emergency. I think that’s a fine idea. Hear me, NSA? I just wash dishes.

The funny thing is – people were stopping to listen to the preacher.

After fifteen minutes, there must have been twenty, thirty people gathered around. With everything that’s going on, people are nervous, and it shows. And I’ve got to admit, he was getting to me, before the BlackRivers showed up and dispersed the crowd (In SoCal, a gathering of more than ten people on the street without a permit is a violation of the local Security Ordinance and the BR's could have started busting heads, but they didn’t). I thought they’d Taser the preacher though, for talking that way about Stauch, but they just looked through his bible and patted him down looking for IED’s or something. They must have been on their way home, or off shift, and didn’t want the trouble. Good luck for the preacher, I guess, or maybe God is watching out for him too. Or more likely, the BR's were just as nervous as everybody else. There is definitely a weird vibe in the air today.

Posted by VanDerDecken at 9:52 PM

The Parole Office

2007-11-09T14:30:00.000-08:00

Thursday, August 14, 2019

My new PO is a condescending asshole. But, aren’t they all? And I guess I’d better get used to it. He holds my life in his hands, one word and Blackwater or Homeland Inc. will be knocking down my door and dragging me back to the can. And that’s not going to happen, I learned my lesson, I won’t even so much as jaywalk ever again.

The PO seemed unimpressed that I’d found a job already and that I’d been honest with my employer (he asked). But John had given me the paperwork to prove it. Just the same, Cheapsuit called the café to confirm it. He talked to John like I wasn’t right there sitting in front of his desk. He took great pains explaining my crimes and the conditions of my parole to John, just to make sure “everybody understands the situation.” He obviously thought I’d been lying to him when I said that I told John everything (then again, how many lies does a PO hear in a day? I’m an ex-con and not to be trusted, better remember that. Hell, the truth of the matter is that I wouldn’t trust a convict, especially me). He kept me in his office for three hours, even though the interview only took about ten minutes, waiting on ‘the system’ to process my paperwork he said. To be fair about it, there have been network outages here in SoCal again today. More gravity waves? I don’t know, the state wasn’t wasting money on a newsfeed for ex-cons in the waiting room and I think he was just making sure I knew what’s what. Don’t worry, Bossman, I got the message.

Because it took so long I didn’t have time to look for an apartment before heading back to the café. I’ll try to do that tomorrow, if John can spare me for a couple of hours after lunch.

Posted by VanDerDecken at 12:01 PM

Signs in the Heavens

2007-11-09T14:28:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, August 14, 2019

Gravity waves? What the hell is that?

There’s been network disruption all morning here in Southern California, because the satellites have shifted slightly in their orbits and the local cable companies had to realign their dishes. Weird.

We got service back about noon, about the same time the national TV feeds came back on. It’s the same all over the country. The world too, I guess. Everybody who came in for lunch was talking about it. A couple of them said that it has something to do with the comet, and that’s what’s causing the quakes too. Only it’s not a comet, according to John (I didn’t have time to watch the news, he kept me busy washing dishes and cleaning the walk-in cooler all day).

The Palomar pictures I saw on the tube in passing looked like a comet. Not that I’m any kind of expert or anything – they didn’t offer astronomy 101 in prison school and the Army taught me to keep my eyes on the ground. Grunts with their head in the clouds don’t last long, cops neither. Anyway, John said that the tail is pointing the wrong way, roughly towards the sun instead of away from it. It beats the shit out of me; I always thought that comet tails trailed out behind, like a girl’s hair in the wind. He just laughed at me when I said that. It’s even weirder than that though, according to John it’s too far away to even have a tail. Exactly how far away it is, even John doesn’t know because according to the eggheads up at Palomar they can’t seem to get a fix on it. First they said it was inside the orbit of Mars, then beyond Neptune. They said a bunch of other stuff too, which I caught in between stocking the counter and emptying the trash cans, something about neutrino emissions and increased gamma ray flux. Gamma rays I’ve heard of, I had NBC training in the Army, but I had to look up neutrinos in the wiki, can’t say I understand the explanation. Like I said before, it beats the shit out of me. If the eggheads don’t know what’s going on, I don’t have much chance of figuring it out. Like anything else, I suspect this will be old news in a week or two anyway. I think people are interested just because it’s something other than the endless war headlines and body counts.

Besides I’ve got more important things to worry about. I’ve got to meet with the PO tomorrow, and I’ve got to find a more permanent place to live – I found rat shit in my clean underwear this morning. It looks like the job with John is going to be OK. He doesn’t seem to hold my past against me, which is more than I can say for myself. He knows what I did, but he hasn’t asked me about it and he’s giving me time off tomorrow to find a place and go to the parole office. The job isn’t hard. Its menial labor, but a least it’s honest and there’s plenty of it. And it’s something I can do and it keeps my mind off the past, so that’s a good thing.

Damn, just had a little quake. Half a dozen glasses fell off the counter and busted all over the concrete. This is getting a little worrying, wished I could move somewhere a little more geologically stable. I guess a bunch of little ones are better than one big one though.

Back to work.

Posted by VanDerDecken at 1:22 PM

Good Start

2007-11-09T12:58:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, August 13, 2019

I’ve got a job.

I got down to the trolley station early and waited for the first train, just like I was a regular commuter. You’ve got to wonder if the other people on the platform would have been so friendly or indifferent if they had known who I was. Then again, it’s been ten years and a lot of shit has happened in that time. Maybe nobody cares anymore. Anyway, I did my best to blend in, despite feeling like I have a giant tattoo on my forehead that says “ex-con!”

I was trying to read the headlines through the front of the newspaper machine when, somebody tapped me on the shoulder, John.

“Off to work, eh,” he asked.

“Off to find work,” I answered.

“I thought so.” He looked at the triangle on my arm. “How particular are you?”

I shrugged, “Not very.”

“I could use some help around the place, and I can probably pay you enough to get by.”

I had to admit that I was an ex-con, on parole. I figured that would be the end of it right there. Instead, he surprised the shit out of me. “I know who you are,” he said matter of fact.

Turns out he’d known right from the first time I walked in the door. Despite the short time I’ve known him I’ve had him pegged as a pretty astute guy. He doesn’t miss much. Standing there on the trolley platform, he wasn’t watching me, he was watching everybody else. Certain habits you just never lose, I guess, not if you want to make it alive out of the meat grinder.

With the cat out of the bag, there wasn’t any point in hiding things. “I’m supposed to go through the SEO,” I told him. “It’s part of the parole conditions.”

“No problem.” John actually had State Employment on speed dial; according to him he’d been trying to hire somebody for over a year. “Government bullhockey,” he told me (I’d never heard that term before, I’ll have to remember it). “There’s got to be a million jobs available since they kicked the ‘cans out. Shit, I haven’t been able to get a decent burrito in four years. Half the yards in Scripps Ranch are outright jungles because there isn’t a white guy in all of Southern California who can operate a lawn mower. But people are still standing in line waiting for a job, because nobody dares to hire anybody without a SEO stamp. Idiots! At least I know your status.”

I took his offer, I’d have been stupid not to. So I’ll be washing dishes for a little better than minimum wage – and free meals and net access, and a half promise of something maybe better down the line if I do a good job. After squaring my employment up with the SEO, John put me to work right there. I went with him to the farmer’s market and helped lug back the week’s produce. It was very strange for me, surrounded by people who were just going about their lives. I didn’t have to ask permission to use the pisser. I didn’t have to worry about getting spiked in the kidneys (vigilante ex-cops don’t last long in prison unless they are very, very paranoid). Hell, John even bought me breakfast, some kind of spicy wrap thing from a bug-wagon run by an old Filipino women John seemed to know. Frankly I couldn’t understand a dammed thing she said.

About the only familiar thing were the pricks in BlackRiver uniforms and machine pistols, sweating in their body armor. I got real familiar with BlackRiver in the can. I don’t know about the rest of the country, but ever since Stauch signed the Emergency Act those mercenary bastards have been all over SoCal. Hey, I was a good Soldier – and a lousy cop, but I never busted heads for money. Yeah, I know all about stones and glass houses, and I know that what I did was hardly patriotic, even though it seemed so at the time. I’m not making excuses. I thought I was above the law; at least these guys have the law on their side, what they do for a living is legal. I made dammed sure to behave myself, though. And I’m sure their helmet cogware hit on my face. Every one of them I passed turned to stare at me. Remind me not to piss off my PO.

After we got back to the café, John had me clean the kitchen. I’m good at that, five years in the Army and ten in prison, you better believe I know how to operate a mop and sponge.

Two more little quakes today and CNN is saying something about weird shit in the sky. Some kind of comet, or something. I don’t know. I’ll look it up later on the AfricaBox, when I get done washing the dinner dishes. If I still have the energy to crank the handle that is.

Thank God for John. I haven’t prayed for anybody but myself in a long time, but I thanked God for John tonight.

Posted by VanDerDecken at 10:48 PM

Bad Start

2007-11-09T12:33:00.000-08:00

Monday, August 12, 2019

I’m staying at rundown hotel that stinks of cigarettes and rat shit, the kind of place where the rooms used to rent by the hour (damn, rereading that - I feel like I should add and then a dame walked in... Heh. But it's true, that's exactly the kind of place it is). It’s so lousy that the local gangbangers don’t even bother trying to shake down the owner or the customers, so despite the roaches and the rats it’s fairly safe. And it’s a step up from my last residence, I’ll say that. Even as few as five years ago this place would have been full of illegals, migrant laborers waiting to make a dash north to the San Joaquin Valley truck farms or south to the border, but since the Emergency Act and the Expulsion four years ago it’s been mostly empty save for the whores, the druggies, and people like me. There’s a reasonably decent little takeout place across the street. I’ve been getting dinner there every night, and the owner lets me use an old vanilla AfricaBox while I wait for my order (which is where I am right now). I’ll call him John (not his real name of course, you understand if I don’t make it too easy for you to find me). He seems like a reasonably decent chap. He’s got the Green Triangle tattooed on his left forearm, same as me; the Arabic around his is different than mine though. I haven’t asked him what it says, and he hasn’t asked about mine. Just as well I suppose, ‘Burn Baghdad Burn’ seems fairly stupid to me now.

I got up early this morning and took a long shower. I’ve got one of the few rooms with working plumbing and I’m dammed sure going to take advantage of it. The water is only piss warm and there isn’t much in the way of pressure, but I’m not complaining, it’s been a long time since I’ve taken a shower without having my back to the wall.

I took the rail downtown to the employment office. I thought about walking, I’ve got to make what little money I have last until I can get a job and make it to the first paycheck, but it was at least seven miles and I wanted to get there early. So I spent the money, including the new energy tax which was more than the fare itself. The first deposit better come soon, that money would have bought me at least two meals. I promised myself I’d walk home. I made sure to get to the employment office an hour before the place opened. I should have spent the time in the shower instead, because the line was already around the corner of the building. I think some people slept on the sidewalk there the night before. Sign of the times, as they used to say – and still do.

If there’s one thing prison teaches you, it’s how to wait. Eight hours more or less, I stood on that sidewalk. I never even got in the front door to put my name on the list. The place closed at 5:00 PM and I was still three people from the door. The time wasn’t wasted though; the guy ahead of me had a widescreen NetPhone. He propped it up, and a bunch of us stood around watching talk shows and news pirated from the State Office WiFi.

It’s been a while since I’ve watched TV, the lockup I was in didn’t have TV’s in the cells and the one in the common area had been smashed when a couple of Skin Heads got to fighting over who had the better racist prison tats. I knew there had been a bunch of little earthquakes up north in San Francisco over the last two weeks. We had a couple here too, but I hardly noticed them. What I didn’t know was that there’s been a bunch of quakes all around the Ring of Fire, Japan and Indonesia have had a couple of big ones. Alaska has had a bunch of small quakes. And I guess there’s been shaking in Europe too, especially Italy. Weird. They had some guy on Good Morning America who was saying something about ‘sympathetic resonance’ but I didn’t really catch it because about then a Salvation Army lady came by in one of those electric ‘bug wagons’ handing out free coffee in paper cups. I wasn’t expecting it to be much better than prison sludge, but it was actually pretty dammed good. Could have used some sugar though.

When the office closed I thought about staying right where I was, sleeping on the sidewalk with the rest of the unemployed, but I hadn’t brought any food and I was hungry, with nothing but one little cup of coffee in my stomach the whole day. So I walked back to the hotel. And here I am at John’s place waiting for my evening bowl of chicken and couscous. John’s got a TV, an old fashioned low-def tube, mounted above the counter, and I’ve been watching it as I type. I guess there was another quake in LA today, 3.8. They’re getting bigger. Nothing here though, thank God, I hate quakes.

Tomorrow I’ll get up an hour earlier and catch the first train downtown. I’ll take something to eat with me, stop by here first and have John make me a sandwich or something, and sleep on the sidewalk tomorrow night if I have to. I’ve got to meet with the parole officer on Thursday, and I figure I better have at least met with one of the job counselors by then.

Posted by VanDerDecken at 3:21 PM

Confession

2007-11-09T12:28:00.000-08:00

Sunday, August 11, 2019

I will start this by saying that I don’t ask for your forgiveness or your blessing, but I have sinned. And it’s been, well, a very long time since my last confession. It’s been nine years, six months, and three days to be exact. It should have been ten years, but I got six months off for good behavior.

You should probably know that I was once a soldier and I served in combat. I was even decorated. I fought in Iraq, of course, back when this conflict was simply a ‘War on Terrorism.’ I got out long before it spilled over into Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, and Israel; long before the ragheads blew up the Washington Monument, and long before the draft and the protests and the Homeland Permanent Emergency Act. Sometimes I think it would have better if I’d have stayed in, I would have been there at the Khwor Abd Alamaya when the Ayatollahs gassed the 92^nd during their landing. Maybe I could have helped, but I probably would have died with the Division on the way to Tehran and maybe that would have been better for everybody. I don’t know. Instead I took an honorable discharge in the summer of 2008 and came home to be a Los Angeles cop. I was an LAPD Patrolman for five years and if you’re old enough, then you’ve probably heard of me. I was in the news nearly every day for a while, during the trial. My face was on the front page of every major newspaper in the US on the day I went to prison. I expected to die there, and I’m sure that many thought I deserved to die there – can’t say I blame them. Instead, ten years later I walked out a free man. Ashamed, damned, an ex-con with no usable skills, but mostly free as far as the State of California was concerned. I still have to report to my parole officer twice a month, and I am required to meet with a state appointed anger management counselor once a week for the next year. I can also go to group therapy if I want, and I’m thinking about it. I am required to get a job, and tomorrow I’ll report to the employment office to find out what kind of work a convicted murderer and ex-cop can get.

I, for reasons that should be apparent already, won’t tell you my real name. There were thirty seven of us cops, all former Soldiers, twenty two of us served in Iraq. Four died in prison, one of cancer and the other three slipped on a bar of soap in the shower - to use the vernacular. Seventeen of us have been released in the last month. So, you could probably figure out who I am without much trouble, but I’d ask you not to. Those of you who read this will, in all likelihood, call me many things, none flattering, and I certainly deserve it. But for convenience sake you may call me VanDerDecken. Taking that nom de plume is perhaps a bit arrogant, but arrogance is what brought me to this pass, and arrogance was Captain Henrich Van Der Decken’s sin too. So I think it’s fitting.

No one knows better than me how far I’ve fallen. I don’t think that it is possible to find my way back to His grace. I don’t believe it is possible to atone for my sins, of which there have been many - both in thought and deed. I don’t need you to tell me what fate awaits me, and I’m not looking for either divine absolution or for your forgiveness. I can’t forgive myself for the things I’ve done and I surely don’t expect those that I’ve wronged to forgive me. Perhaps God, in his infinite compassion, can, but I don’t expect that either – and I won’t ask for it. If I do one thing right in my life, it will be that I take full responsibility for my situation.

I can’t bear to set foot in the Church again, at least not for a while anyway. So instead, I’ve started this journal as a form of confession and you can read it or not as you choose.

Posted by VanDerDecken at 7:49 PM