Billy Sledge

 The Superstoic

If one had noted the percussive sounds from the monolithic bookcases, or stacks, of the University Library, then they may have, accordingly disposed, discerned their making measured.  Each “SHUNT!” “THOOK!” and “DUHT!” was as accompaniment to That Beethoven Scherzo “bombasting” from Zharko Solovich’s portable musicplayer earphones, as he shelved books.  One could accept his shelving as a dexterous shadowing of the movement’s jabbing trade of tones.  Any rests he took apart from the music’s schedule were as the tender brushing of an index finger, with what may have been, if successfully seen, a reverential affection, along the numeral “I” of the spines of volumes so marked.

            “Performing” his job among towering shelves of the Humanities Vault, arms pumping books into their decimal places, could have been used as a visual taking of the music’s pulse.  And, any idea formed from this “playing” together of working and musical work as orchestration was as a chord sounded at the piece’s end, the last book shoved flush with the others.

            Final shoving with final note:  reasonably deemed mawkish?  The premeditativeness of narration clumsily “unvalanced?”  One could liken:  a playwright’s mechanics? A film-editor’s cut?

            With certainty it seemed his shelving duties were met undauntedly.  He pursued them, as one might have said, “with the zeal of a rapt bibliophile,” and  not as one suffering as would fit the imagined concept of the “bibliophobe,” that is, as one who “irrationally fears library stacks,” and not as one fearing being caught under a sudden surge of behemoth bookcases toppling.  Not one properly perceived detail in his motion, nor in his expression, denoted a darelessness at the possibility of such an event.

            Diagnosing Solovich as “bibliophobic,” at this moment, would have been as improbable as the likelihood of finding any clinical pronouncements affirming, or at least strongly suggesting, the actualness of a “tall-bookcase phobia.”  It was as improbable as his ever mentioning to anyone that the “unreasonable anxiety” was as imagined as the protagonist afflicted by it in one of his writings.  Only by somehow managing, through some spectral stealth perhaps, to have read his story would anyone have known.  That he wrote, that he imagined, that he even felt -- was not likely to have been known to anyone through his own intimation, but seemed, rather, “found out” incidentally by, for instance, their chancing upon a discarded manuscript title page of his work in a copy-shop wastebasket, or by their noticing even the slightest upward curving of his face’s features among those of others fully warped by hilarity.

            With headset collaring his neck Solovich --

            “ . . . issues from the gauge ‘twixt titan homes for tomes.  Or is it more at:  See you there?  He breaches the air, at this moment, borne of a womb of bounded brainwork?”

            “T’was Sirrah,” as he would have undoubtedly liked to have been referred, introduced with whatever archaisms managed.  He was a student of language who could “shakespeareate in a most rhapsodic manner, upon subjects that well or ill relate.”  In private corners suspicions were pronounced as to these “improvisations.”  For some, it seemed as embracing thorns to “behold Sirrah’s impromptu Shakespearean modelings”; “too polished they do seem,” someone once said, followed by a chorus of stagy guffaws.

            Like Solovich Sirrah also worked at the library.  He once described his position as “beknighted keeper of the texts of The Bard,” after which he probably should have added, “ . . . at your service,” concluded with a deep bow.  He certainly felt worthy, as indicated by his “proclaiming” himself the University’s “sole – nay, too much – unequalled player upon Shakespearean play.”

            Such playing he applied chancing upon Solovich who was leaving the stacks, pushing an empty book cart.  He continued with,

            “Most round and discrete sir, how accommodating be the scope of your judgment ‘neath coming lunar rule?  If it has such flex’ as our own, then you’d find it fit to join us, as we intend to mass at common chapel heals ahead.”

            As had now seemed protocol for most of the student library staff, Sirrah moved on after his “invitation” to Solovich. He left with an abruptness, unimpeded by any anticipation of an answer.

            At one time, offers to Solovich of a social kind by his coworkers were completed customs -- parties, impulsive bar-goings.  Solovich’s eventual yielding to sometime group-sustained, verbal tuggings short of entreaty, seemed to produce the expressions of one bearing an achievement uncomfortably.  Their acts of inclusion had been “plotted,” undoubtedly diagrammed from discussions most represented by someone’s having mused aloud, “What would -- who could deactivate that shielding field around him?”

            Perhaps it was collectively felt, the atmosphere of a pub they frequented would have a counteracting affect on “that shielding field.”  Solovich, when once he had, always joined the group late, unfailingly, it seemed, on its periphery.  He would come with a satchel, obviously tilted by it as he walked.  From it he would produce a book, a notebook or some pages of typed research or other, toward which all of his body-above-table seemed to attend, as if what he had placed in front of him exerted a gentle polarity.  His answers to personal queries were as anemic in “selfness” as any remarks he made, if any.

            And the pub they would meet was cause for remark.  It was the source of unmistakably bitter exchanges one might happen to hear, on the University campus.  It was Chapel No. 999, or often simply called, “the chapel.”  Within and without it appeared to have survived some classic era.  There were stained-glass windows and wooden tables and booths.  The bar was called “the altar,” patrons “ministered to” by clerical-collared tenders or “celebrants.”  Female wait staff wore short, well-above-the knee, belted habits.  Along with having no scheduled rites and possessing a reverential hush, the chapel also lacked crosses proper, crucifers hanging about instead, and the appropriate graven images that would reasonably be expected in a chapel were absent.  In their expected spaces stood and sat facsimile and rare antique presses, as well as framed examples of typeface.  This last aspect of Chapel No. 999’s setting was not usually integrated into debates focused on the aforementioned descriptions of the pub’s “ecclesiastical” suggestions on this night without undoubtedly scheduled proddings.  As Solovich “scanned sacred space,” he was writing in an auto mode.  Someone, from a near distance read a little of what he was writing aloud, with intoned measure:

            “The singular power of the word is represented with jocular respect.  Possibly a church and printers union lodge.  .  .  In a liminal sense each serves the other, by some ineffable word only.”

            “Does that mean he likes the place?” someone asked, looking around the table.

            “Who can know?” someone had answered.  “Who could know?” they added with an unmistakable drawl.

            From narrative distance, that instance of somewhat retarded speech would have allowed for a sudden chimerical concentration on general behaviour in the bar that night, leading to some figurative words, such as to “the beers’ slow dousing of once bright mental torches.”  There appeared the most individual expressings of the arbitrary flowings of beer.  Actions and words were as the uneven matching of the pouring forth against the draining away.

            “That’s all right about what he likes,” a woman “spewed” across the trail of the last speaker’s words.  She had actually been talking on simultaneous points since arriving; no one seemed in wonder.  “What about who he likes – I’d like to know that.”

            At that moment someone’s form, if ever there, seemed to flit away.  It was something that may well have been dismissed, as some instantly degrading pattern, cast from all the room’s activity, and then probably described as “a shrinking away.”  Apart from any applicable phenomenal associations, the vanishing, despite its quick phase, seemed so with care.

            “I think I can speak for Zhak,” Sirrah said, leaning more forward than before at the table, with a bounce suggesting an ill-timed gearshift.  “On the subject of romance:  he’s booked – get it? -- booked . . . ”

            “Stick to your Shakespeare act,” someone said amid groanings, “boo”s and “hiss”es -- all seeming quite conspicuous for their standard deliveries.

            “Thou would offend me?”

            “Hold it,” said the woman who began the subject.  “Isn’t the whole idea of this to hear Zharko speak for himself – about himself?”  She looked only at Solovich, appearing to steady her focus on him.  “We shouldn’t have to try and depress some brain functions before we can learn anything about you.  I mean, what’s up with? – I’m not scolding.  Everybody lets people – especially people they’re around a lot – see something personal about them.  I mean, what’s wrong with you? – I’m not blaming.  I mean, we see you – you sitting there – but we can’t see into you . . .   God, say something back at least.  I’m feeling really uncomfortable . . . ”  She simply receded among the others, words of a surely comforting purpose and tone to her made for an image of a forgiving enfolding.

            “No harm do we intend.”  Sirrah seemed to “step in.”  “How the confine of self-armour so suits one denudes the common breast’s valvings ‘gainst.”

Once finishing his beer Solovich drew breath as if to respond.  Its deepness seemed to warn of some “theatrical expectorate, of some reflex rebut with thespic projection compete.”

            “Have I words well whet in answer?” he may have begun but did not; at least not audibly.  For all anyone heard, at some pitch he may have recited something he had once written,

            “I prop only this:  The column orders three – Doric, Ionic, Corinthian.  Stand they before you?  The first bears all with blank reservity; the next shoulders all with notable flutings ‘long its length, the last girds all with scalloped-and-acanthus-leaf’ry express.  Not one less a column.”

            Even though he had not spoken the above, the group seemed silently saying to each other and themselves, “This is not in the script.”  Before any had offered any improvisations to his “miscue,” he had gathered his articles, left money, made a hand gesture in the attitude of an absolving papal wave and departed.

            Perhaps it had been a wave to the wings of the scene, signaling curtain fall.  It did indeed “punctuate” Solovich’s last acceptance of his coworkers’ invitations to socialize.  Their invites subsequently became fewer than initially, and, if extended, they lacked the former involvement of campaigning.  “What was with the architecture?” someone could have asked that night at the pub.  And it was reasonable that any explanation, any disclosing of implications, any answering of inferences, at some future point, would have kept the group’s interest vital . . .

            As though already there, someone in the library seemed “revealed” before Solovich as he pivoted from his banks of books, after his bowing with metronomic swing toward them.  He was likely unbalanced in his turning by the satchel he was carrying.  A person -- a woman -- “bursting into being” no doubt jolted away his sense of levelness.  The crumpled fanfold of facial features a person who might fear library stacks showed upon his face.  The satchel may very well have been a martial artist, appearing to throw Solovich --

As if up against a willful, seizing gravity he rose.  It was as though he were regrowing into himself, his height.  He stood fully, as the lumbar would guide him, “restored.”

            Solovich’s intense, head-snapping surviels wrenched his new steady stance into a wobble.  Holding to his feet, an accepting settling showed in the hang of his arms.  “Where were the wings of this thrusted dramatic set?” it would have been reasonable to ask, were one amid the fanciful inventedness surrounding Solovich.

            “Spun of the wild strands of reverie this place, in costume, construct, comport,” Sirrah may have observed had he been there.

            Roving shafts of light contradicted the night.  From what could be seen, Solovich may well have been dropped into the very bottom of the intuitive architecture of a meteor crater.  Broken strings of people could be seen through the sweeps of halogenic beams, seated, their exposed heads and hands (loosely relating) “betrayers” of their presence, as they were garbed unremarkably.  “Sprouts of this cavity in the earth” they surely fit.

            “An audience?” Solovich’s eyebrows seemed to say, in what could be described as a stadium.  Ratchetful head posings began, as he probably recognized that he had been an “unexpected entrant upon the stage.”  Dissonant mass murmuring rippled.

            “Enthusiasm for our performance gratefully felt!” was said by one of other wildly emoting, “puccinellian characters,” all painted and dressed in prism-found colours of feathers and fur.

            “A great poetic pull!” another “screeched” with wing-flapping declarity, amid what could be described as swirling, contrapuntal noisings, in tones of dread and cheer of innumerable shades and crossings.

            “Interloper inspires ire initially, improvisation immediately!” a voice said, one of the “beast-foul harlequins” for sure.  With the roving rays of light and the “troupe’s” frenetic positionings, from a cautious reporter’s view, to have been able to know by whom anything was said was problematic.

            “Fresh stimulation for sure!”

            “He holds I silence!  Can this be for good?”

            “A truly blank object upon which we can confidently project – is that what he intends to serve?”

            “I object to the object of the object!”

            “I suspect there may be lines!”

            “To heart, remake the music!  With the draw of the bow, so he may be drawn to some noise!”

            It was music that would be recognized as such for its detectably organised sets of tones, and a connecting rhythm; its capriciousness sounded competitive, harmonies incidental.  Somehow there was a melody, varied each time, though, with coordinations of changing key, accent, and time, even playing technique.

            “Where’s the fruit?  He grows inward, I feel!” could be heard through a jangling, slashing sonority of “WIKKIDI!”s, “COOHOOM!”s, “SRZUTT!”s and “BOMPTEMABA!”s

            “A new style?  Honesty without words, without action?  Less to slip on, less to mistake!  Shall we follow -- ?”

            As if rehearsed to intervene, two men, unnoticed onstage to this point, rushed at Solovich with the speed of having been launched from some mechanical torsion, “hurrying their hands on him.”  Solovich offered no apparent resistance, rather appearing the middle of a merging amid shuttling shafts of light.

            Worthy of an illusionist’s act they vanished as quickly as a wink.  In perhaps the condensed time of a dream they “thoroughed” a tunnel.  They then boarded a train of trainless talking, which paused, it appeared, as for some momentary allowance for accepting new data:  a manacled Solovich, held by two darkly-dressed men.

            “We feel we’ve got him -- “

            Silence.

            “As you figured -- Yes, the behaviour is there -- No. OK.  Will advise.  I want to feel you’ll have a good night.”

            One of the men “holding” Solovich had been saying this, into an ear-mouth apparatus, without apparent care about who around them might hear.  If anyone had appeared to care, then they had most fleetingly.  The-people-on-the-train’s attentions toward each other shifted around, with the engage of a hummingbird’s.  Lines of conversation, formed essentially of emotional content, crossed, clipped and collided.  Hand gesturing resolved in the touching of someone.  Though there were definitely sounds of amusement, utterings of a cathartic potential, and plainly pleasure-purposed appraisal, the energy level of such “emissions” suggested the presence of prompting.  Assuming greater speculative risk, their interplayings seemed more in anticipation of prodding, acts out of the anxiety of not acting.

            “So that your feelings may cease to be or become confused:  You’ve been arrested.  Enforcing the laws of the City-State, we’ve taken you into custody, on the general charge of endangering the public well-being by the specific act of taciturnity.”

            “A.A.’s been doing some job lately,” said a masculine voice.  Like the audience at the stadium from which Solovich had been taken, the people on the train were dressed unremarkably, colourlessly.  Their clothing suggested nothing about them individually, and with the seemingly haphazard changing of who was speaking to whom, with no demonstrated respect to order, tracking each speaker invited mistake.

            “I don’t feel I know what you mean by A.A.’s ‘doing some job lately.’  That’s some word:  ‘some.’”

            “Please, forgive my use of such a vague word, but I felt my tone in using it was plain – “

            “I’m assuming you’re all meaning Atmosphere Administration, when you say ‘A.A.’  Talk about being plain . . .”

            “Didn’t mean to lead you to assume – “

            “I agree about today’s weather.  It is something – that is, weather one doesn’t have to weather.”

            “I know somebody got lost here.”

            “Phenomenal weather, no doubt; a thing of nature.”

            At this, naturally, there were burstings of brief “blaughter,” mixed with low, opposing sounds of the throat.

            “Praise be to energon mechanics, however they make that work.”

            “I know how it works!  It works on every hair on my body when they turn that thing on!”

            “Definitely inspiring weather for the improvisations tonight.”

            “Wasted inspiration on some, eh, goodwright?”  This was one of the “constables” escorting Solovich.  “Goodwright” sounded popular, an informal appellation, distinguished this instance with patently sardonic emphasis.  Considering the only other probable spelling, “goodright,” the narrative choice of “goodwright” was imperative.  It seemed the most compelling fit to whatever shape things were assuming.  Indeed, what form -- ?

            “Maybe Mr. Forthright has an answer to the charge -- so far?” the other “policeman” said.

            “Do we have any reason to suspect or expect an attempt to flee us?” asked the other.

            With Solovich, silent, in the middle of the two “officers,” he looked like some bracketed, misplaced negative variable.  He was not factoring into their expectations, evinced by their wincing and wrying features, which were consistent with one’s having tasted something unexpectedly acrid.  Solovich looked uninterested in their looks as the subterranean scenery from the train’s windows fell behind them.

            An urban view began to expand, to grow, in a very organic sense.  Looming clusters of dynamic designs, imposing upon the land, were likely unlike those of any city Solovich may have ever seen.  To have followed his eyes would have been as to trace along the passing buildings, all misaligned with one another, each occupying a space that appeared to serve “its own dimensional expression.”  Grid organization seemed the exception.  There were resembling architectural types, but each structure looked varied in a union and collision of fashioning wills.  The results suggested concretions tending something naturally crystalline, broken integrations of once-displaced facets.  Against a “backdrop” of a faintly starred night, the thoroughly lighted city’s skyline was more that of a range of mountains than a scheme of buildings.

            From his eyes one could tell Solovich observed contemplatively, his eyebrows twitching like the springy needles of a gauge measuring some stormy activity.  Surely “registering” in his field of view, along with the “capricious construction,” and the active shadows behind their innumerable windows and transparent doors, were the “autonomic” responses of other mass-transit vehicles.

            As Solovich was led through pulsing traffic, his “flankers” continued a conversation they had begun shortly before they had all disembarked the train, assumed after perceivable impatience with their detainee’s unbroken responselessness.  They exchanged statements of disbelief at Solovich’s “damned criminal withholding,” traded obviously speculative words attributing his being an “inward” to a folk-sounding, reasonably supposed aphorism, “an injustice paid then becomes spent.”  And they debated the excitement potential of silent sex:  “Muted passion has to be as satisfying as the stuffed-nose gulping of food.”  “Adequate analogy.  But allow me to reach for the edge.  It seems we can only hold ourselves at the very peak of passion, at the limit of bliss, reverently mute.  Now, remember, I’m only playing an extreme role -- that’s probably why there’s a sadness once we’ve prolonged this moment as close to eternity as humanly possible.”

            As they changed to a subject in the form of some “officialspeak,” their words and the heavy hardness of their heels became dull and retarded ricochets off the shiny-stone walls and pillars of a great hall.  An insignia of linked loops, ribbons and swords was darkly prominent on the reflective floor.  “Public Welfare Commission” bordered the design.  Large rectangular screens at seemingly random spacings and levels were suspended throughout.  Silent, still images of people, apparently observed and captured at one time engaging one another with clearly emotional gestures, flared from within each screen; they then dimmed and disintegrated into a haze, which “spritted” aglow and reformed into another captured moment of some outwarded feelings between people.  Though the images could be taken as having occurred naturally, proposing the pictures were posed could be accepted as well.  There was a representativeness about them.  And if one had considered the “shots” more loosely, then they may have appreciated their possible instructive, didactic, even propagandic readings.  The screen-borne views were arguably bound to the most elemental band of emotional expression.

            “You wanted to kill her, right?” could be heard, as Solovich was taken through image-bearing double doors  “Then get in there!”  A visored man was shoved into a transparent room.  He donned a suit of glinting, “electro-iridescent scales.”  Persons dressed identically to Solovich’s “escorts,” “posed” the man opposite an also visored and sparklingly clad woman.  An aggressive pantomime ensued, preceded by, perhaps, a predator’s tentative approach.  Their separate “instinctive simulations of violence” became a “duet of brutal ballet.”  Images of them as they probably ordinarily appeared that to “develop” from seemingly unplanned spots on walls and the double doors Solovich was led through.  Comments about the “lunge-chase-grapple dance” by Solovich’s “ushers” as a “good-spirited exhibition,” and, “Act it out, you two, so the rest of us won’t need to; ah, the purgative potential,” suggested the virtual event was being broadcast, conveyed by sensory means either camouflaged or so microscopic as to have been atmospheric.

            Just on the other side of the doors, a man in “gatekeeper stance” waited with a “severe squint,” carrying some kind of case.  When Solovich was “delivered” to him his bearing shifted to that of the most affable host.

            Indeed, this man of medium mold “functioned” as if in appreciably balanced initiatives, speaking with unaccented, level tones at a “tortoise’s rendering,” moving as through some invisible buoyancy.  “Zharko Solovich . . . intriguing to meet persons of such an event as yours,” he said, directing Solovich in butler manner toward a waiting “mist-glass” room (which represented both transparency and translucence possessed by all the rooms in the building).

            Once Solovich was seated at a bare table inside the small room, his manacles fell from his wrists like two suddenly expired armored arachnids.  His hands and arms “retreated” from the tabletop, as two wary reptiles would.  Drawing his limbs down into his lap, like any of his actions since “appearing,” was performed with the posture, pace and pause of unsureness.

            “As the object of such a physical imposition, you should try to find some feeling of assurance when I tell you, the purpose of the bonds was more for your protection than for our own.  Your rigid self-protection persuades us that you neither intend nor plan any outward resistance to our authority.  That you have offered no form of protest concerns us, conservatively speaking.  To what you’re holding in reserve we would apply no bonds; for, we would pursue the possibility of restraining your self-restraint.  We’re determining a course that you can influence.  I’m here to help you help us decide how to proceed with disposing your case.  My name:  Meridian; I’ve been appointed your intercessor.”

            All the while Meridian “introduced” himself he unpacked his case.  Foldered documents and a “softly weeping hunk of spherical crystal, chromatic changes playing on its facets,” were laid as if in some order upon the table.  Then a satchel, which was probably Solovich’s, was brought up from under the table, placed at the far-right edge of the tabletop.  There were, perhaps, moments when Meridian looked at Solovich, brief appointments of attention.  Possibly, they were moments of opportunity provided for Solovich to acknowledge his understanding or for him to react.  These pausings seemed only cursory proofs, minimal demonstrations of duty, performed along an accountable checklist.

            Narrating assumes a latitude, breadth, scope, an aspect -- within influencing and varying states and conditions, seemingly covering all relatable sense yet leaving bare communicable reason.  “Wherefore within or without narrative’s depictional province did Solovich’s physical attitude and manner reside?” as one would perhaps have posed, after having witnessed a rigid flinch, on the order of “a micro fraction of a serpent’s strike,” or “a silence-saving halt of hiccup, sneeze.”  Was it suddenly suppressed curiosity or recognition at the articles tabled?  The presence of the “reactive geodesic orb” and its pulsating colors certainly was not sensible.  Or was it an instantly stifled attempt at making sense of the pages revealed in the folders?  Unless Solovich qualified as an obscure, never-heard-of-before “enigmologist,” “cryptolinguist” or “forensic semiologist,” his having been successful at farming anything familiar from the foreign flow of figures would have been as dreamed of as by anyone who may have strained to originate terms to describe “the scripture beheld,” such as its  being “iconomic,” with its “pictoscript” and “ideoglyphs.”  For those of due dispose these representations, these rebus resemblings, surely would have appeared arrestingly cipherous.  Narrative arrogance might presume the pages held horizontal lines of “words” and what could be called “’andrograms,’ linear simplifications of formal human posing and emoticons,” linked in combinations whose structural characterizations could only be guessed at, “splicings,” “montages” and “juxtapositions” among apt possibilities.

            Whether Meridian could detect any “cognitive cares” in Solovich about the documents were not evident, save “forensic” scrutiny of his next, self-directed act.  Perhaps the transparent bulb either had always been in his hand, or had been fantastically produced from his palm.  As if somehow “dodging ceremony, he applied the clearness within the clearness to his warily accepting eyes.”  “Squeeze forth not his own tears?  What for the tears?” someone may have written, leaving a reader probably as “quizzied” as such much a reader of Meridian’s face likely would have following his optical administration.  His face “shuddered through a diagnostic of the visage (facial) expression program, or V.E.P.,” which may be described as a cascade of twitches over the face, in each “possible glimpses of the spectrum emotional.”

            At the end of said “length” Meridian’s “facestorm subsided,” his body briefly slumping – a bodily sigh it seemed.  He sat still for a short moment.  He then “jittered” back to an “attentivity” now seemingly urgent, in perhaps a fuller bearing than  before --

            “An unusual -- atypical -- case, the commissioner feels you are, given previous infiltrations -- regretfully referred, given some now better understood physical understandings -- infiltrations, again a regretted term, due, you should feel assured, probably not of any knowing or unwitting act by you . . . ”  It should be noted, periodic representations of Meridian’s discourse were imposed upon its sudden coursing quality.  “Our increasingly successful tamperings with the ethereal element, it appears,” he continued, “has not only resulted in some idyllic weather, but also in occasional ‘people products,’ whom we’ve quickly deduced were not incredibly relocated members of our own world, but, rather, no less incredibly relocated from other worlds . . . ”

            From here Meridian’s animation took on the “savored passion of an entranced orchestra impresario.”  He seemed taken away by the subject of teleportation, by the “serendipity of elemental science,” by the manipulation of, indeed the meddling with,  “the lacings of physical essence.”

“Theoretical threads to be sure, philosophy fibers.  You and the others would be the material for such matters.  Far-flung fantasization seemed to serve as well as any of the myriad proposals of scientific speculation to describe “energon mechanics.   But we have you.  And we feel you are phenomenal proof of, at least, the permanent persistence of change -- what it generates:  planes, dimensions.  You and the others and where you came from are ‘parallelisms,’ if I accurately understand all the terminology, the same but scrutably different:  ‘radical redundancy?’ ‘radical reiteration?’ ‘reflection variation?’ ‘signature multiplication?’  It occurs to me rather suddenly, rather epiphanously, that this phenomenon would be most worthy of worship.  Being, no matter its state, is irrepressibly expressive one could conclude.  Is it the nature of things to be discrete?”

            Though the question rang rhetorical, the following pause seemed to possess the imperative force an interrogative often exerts, a compelling collapse of interpersonal space.  Solovich offered nothing into the vacuum Meridian may have knowingly created.  Any gesture of his awaiting a response was not distinguishable among an almost readably desperate “quivering” all over him.  Holding what would be defined as a pause appeared a breath he could not hold.  He had only caused, it would follow, his flow of speech to swell within his throat and throb itself back to its streaming state.

            One would likely agree that Meridian had strayed into a potentially metaphysical morass, and that his yielding probably signaled a corrective rerouting of his verbiage.

            “Your condition, your state of no expression,” he transitioned, “we’ve reasoned must be an idiomatic effect of ‘passing-through’ – your own physical response to the phenomenon.  From your possessions we’ve concluded that you should be able to understand us, and we you, for the most part.  Though our writing and yours only coincidentally resemble at points, most of the sounds they represent are effectively identical.  Of course, even that would not necessarily make us comprehensible to one another.  But it seems our people possess an endemic facility for audible communication, so far unduplicated in anyone that has passed through.  Though not infallible nor perfectly accurate, acknowledging the nature of language, we are universal receivers of ‘people peeps,’ able to decode practically all their combinations and meaningfully mimic them.  Hopefully, this doesn’t all sound like awkward narrative coverage to you.  What does this all sound like to you?”

            From his eyes dropping glancingly toward the “sensing sphere,” which was mute and passive in colors, the question was surely a test he knew the results beforehand.

            “The charge against you is reflexive, necessary, given our Establishment.  Though not one of its natives, the rule of ‘openself’ still must be upheld, for a lapse in vigilance may lead one to mistake, and so loose the destructive permutations of ‘errorance.’  Bringing one into line must be done immediately, always successfully.  Neither segregation nor banishment is an option.  Punishment is a matter of perception . . . ”  Meridian trailed off in a tone of displeasure at what he was saying.  He did not seem as “enthused” about this turn of subject as he had about the former.  “Your obvious condition accelerates this constraint, which we feel is an effect of your “passing through.”  It’s a phenomenon we’ve yet to understand as much as your being here because of  it.”

            At this point Meridian seemed to seek Solovich’s eyes, which moved in a “comfortably surveilling manner,” glancing off Meridian’s at times.

            “Yours may be,” Meridian began, “a case not uncommon, in your world or in ours.  For whatever reason you are ‘selfsworn,’ as we identify it.  This ‘disbehavior’ must be overcome for the collective good.  In time I came to realize this goodness.  With you I empathize, for I naturally resemble you.  With help I am able to super the selfsworn defect -- as I now recognize it to be -- and see that to withhold one’s self from others’, to achieve some selfish notion of freedom, obscures the sight of the freedom of openness.  At one time, your appearance would have been exploited by me and a society of selfsworns, to have served our cause of primacy of the individual, of being who one naturally is disposed to being.

            “And, you must agree, the universe is ‘amp’ with anomalies, aberrations and ‘abordinations,’ a word entering currency among our scientists.”

            In perhaps a scripted sense a woman entered, though, if so, she had begun her “line” before breaking the plane of the scene, “like a premature immateur,” or someone slung forth after “abeying” themselves longer than they comfortably could.  One would have expected the woman to have held some momentary, introductory distance once “breaching” the room as she had.  She continued speaking at a strong volume and a spitting force.

            “’Synaptic leap,’ ‘neuron displacement field?’ – such theoretical leaps!  Such allowances are as frivolous as the value of an ‘intercessor,’ as valueless as this ‘intuitor!’”

Before finishing, her hand was “swooping” down on what must have been the global “intuitor” on the table.  With a patently crushing grip she slung it at Solovich, her whole body following through as fully as her extended arm.  In less time than the casual deal of a card this took place, Solovich’s reaction the slowness of the rapid maturation of seeing into believing, retarded, it appeared, by some hopeful attempt to arrest the action against him by understanding its motive.  He was struck in the shoulder by the “ballistic ball” whose course would have ended in his chest. It seemed Solovich’s “facial constellation” expanded from an explosion of awareness; it shrank back ahead of a gush of air from his mouth.

            “Commissioner Fidelian, I can bear your doubt of my professional purpose; but are you comfortable with your tantrum timing,” Meridian said retrieving the “somewhat sobbing globe.”

            “I can tell you more than that rationality in your hand can, that unimpressibly impressionable reflector.  He has a threatening will, not simply some defect.”

            “And we should take the opportunity to fairly determine this, don’t you feel?”

            “I feel irremediable danger.”

            “Protocol persists, however; we are, after all, law-abiding . . .”

            “I deplore diplomacy, Meridian; I find formality frustrating:  they are disguises, disfiguring in their guile – “

            “Nevertheless, Commissioner, we are constrained to an effort toward the light of objectivity,” Meridian said in an understandably self-saving boldness.

            Turning toward Meridian suggested Fidelian’s turning on him, a facing whose visible tensity seemed to suddenly slacken.

            “I’m obliged to agree,” she said.  “The sake of the City-State must compel us to transcend our positions, toward the truth of our shared conviction.  The compass points for the journey are to be found in the evidence.  Let us truly educate ourselves about our ‘aberrant’; let us faithfully present him to himself.”

            After saying this Fidelian “whished!” to the table, seizing upon Meridian’s documents.  “By account the ‘questionable’ favors his ‘condition.’”  Fidelian deftly searched Meridian’s papers.  “Since you refuse -- choose -- not to speak for yourself, because I feel you are not incapable of speech, your intellectual product will have to serve.  Gleaning, if that word at all appropriately can be applied, from your written words -- “

            “Taken from his individual experience, in itself -- “

            “Necessarily impeachable, a reasonable take.”

            Fidelian began fluttering the pages she held.

            “What should one ‘take’ from this commitment to page, from an activity he titled “Shelf Life”:  “ . . . etiquette, protocol, ceremony . . .  I am paralytic, comatose-still at such.”?”

            “How is this, I beg, Commissioner, at odds?” Meridian “objected.”  “This would appear a defense against any radical remedy.”

            “You ignore the submissive, perhaps.”

            “Not more than a moment ago, did you not express unfavorable feelings toward formality generally, diplomacy specifically?” Meridian quickly said, in a “seizing-upon-the-pause” way.  “A shield of express do these things express, don’t you feel?  For him to write of avoiding these masking crafts of indirection(s) strongly suggests a soul sympathetic to our own.”

            “The soul is the thing.  While I do disdain that would divert from or otherwise confuse the recognition of its path, I don’t dismiss them without merit.  Though they may distract or poorly mediate, allowing for the concealing of harmful motives, they developed out of our interactions to make defined, predictive connections, I feel -- ‘interactions’ and ‘connections’ valued words here.  ‘Etiquette, protocol, ceremony,’ and others he does not mention but are no doubt included, have value in a  market of expressions.  He would choose not to trade at all.  To this his words would attest:

            “ . . .  To this I do adhere, as bound to what might bind these bounded biddages, that which I find boundfully bridging this bounty of books, that which to one may refer -- defer; rely -- comply; remain -- sustain.  Among them, the stability of silence may be fully appreciated.  I find refuge in the permanence of the page.  I am as sure of what harbors these vessels of print, for they stand as sentinels of the scripted.  Yet I cannot seem to ignore how they do tower, as if to impose, reaching a prideful height that would threaten to unbalance them . .. ’

            “I could go on – “

            “On to the truth, certainly.  As he is, though confined to ‘the page.’”

            “He then should be from such liberated!  Doing so doesn’t merely serve us, it cures him.  You’ve not returned to that submerged agenda that this “withholder” would well serve?”

            “I came to realize how the outer serves the inner cause, and, therefore, chose the cure,” Meridian said.  “I only argue for giving this hapless, defected, accidental immigrant the opportunity to choose, as I was given.”

“You are native; he is not.  The misleading pull of your expressive limitations was constantly countered by the influence of us so not encumbered.  He has not had that benefit, I feel.  He would not likely  choose correctly, as you did.”

            “Perhaps there would be value in allowing him to remain in his state of misformity, for the sake of study, as perhaps, a deterring example . . .?”

            “Intercessor Meridian,” – he appeared to blink at this – “as long as the peculiarity of life – people – is unlikely to rest, our best path to peace, I feel, is not a course of selfish and strategic retirements, but a continuity of communal connecting.”

            “I could construe your brevity, your truncated “passionization,” as the openness doubt leverages.”

            “It’s your doubt I’m beginning to open toward,” Fidelian said, becoming seemingly “puffed for confrontation.”

            “How can we in our lawful openself, sworn against the selfsworn, be closed, even averse, to the expanse of ways to be open?  My role as intercessor suggests that we haven’t the final answers; unless I’m merely superfluous, an empty, conspicuous formality we’re so wary, a dishonest appearance meant to help keep us honest.”

            Then, without any introductory transition, Meridian began reading from something else of Solovich’s labeled “Thought Sketches”:

            “The forward thought . . .  How does it begin but backward?  How to begin a thought then?  What is the feel of a thought, if it is such?  One step sure unto itself?  Once unto itself sure, another?  A step -- from a thought, a feeling?  For what? -- a thought?  A feeling?  For what -- a thought?  This ‘cyclic sense’ has to make sense, how?  Centrifugal yields settle, ‘at rest is best.’  But what force stirs through, as if to settle the settled?

            “To life thought is owed; safer to assert this than its converse.  To express life, it seems, must repress -- return to what it expresses, its product.  But isn’t life the ‘reproduct?’  Persistent reproduction as though the repeating were the point, the means, the material, the measure?

            “ . . .  Memory would be the thing!  Isn’t it what that thing does? -- life? remember itself?  The viability of life’s vitality upon it depends, that life recalls itself faithfully forward in its growth and regrowth?  The furious flurry of being is founded and ‘refounded’ at its most micro.  Changes are the chances for ‘unchange’ . . .”

            “To be as our enduring encoded essence our so indebted minds aspire.  It is expressed in its expressions, seeking to endow memory with the stubbornness of etching upon metal, engraving upon stone, carving upon wood, writing upon tablet.  These are not reliabilities we seek upon to rely, perhaps in mnemonic service to memory’s memorious mandate?’ --

            “Philosophy’s descriptive aim is certainly well-served here,” Fidelian “obstructed”; Meridian did not continue reading from Solovich’s “thought sketches.”  “Memory for memory’s sake?   That is, if I am judged to have been appropriately attentive to his words . . .  The state of ‘the thought’ you address.  Which thought, or better: feeling, is better trusted?  The least hidden, I would argue, the least harbored, the least hindered.  What is truest to (the) thought, to (the) feeling, is that which is as true to their occurrence . . .”

            With some perhaps theatrical positioning, Fidelian “cued herself confrontationally, wide-leggedly” before Solovich.

            At his rising she produced a bulbous device, “a ponderous-teardrop-of-a thing,” resembling what Meridian had earlier used to drip some clear liquid into his own eyes.

            “We would do wisely not to trust him,” she said, pointing the “nozzley” part of the “clear-bladder-in-palm”:  “I do not trust him.”

            Heretofore Solovich’s responses had appeared the definition of unresponsiveness.  “What moves the unmovable?” has arguably been one of the oldest philosophical questions, aptly invoked or begged once more, but surely not revoked, now seeing Solovich offer what appeared a defensive readying of himself.

            But Solovich’s “reaction” seemed synchronous with a clock slower than that of Fidelian’s actions.  It was as though they were moving in “discrete temporal fields,” but served not as shields from one another.

            Meridian’s “Commissioner, don’t!” accompanied the clear spray from Fidelian’s bulb in hand.  Solovich’s arm-blocking motion far from intercepted the mist-sized drops from landing upon his face, into his eyes.  Maybe he could have, with the knuckles of his fingers, massaged tears into his eyes to take away the unknown solution before it worked on whatever it was “inflicted” to solve.  But he did not.  He shut his eyes to their most shut, as reflex, of course, but held with such press as to, maybe, contain something.  Whatever open spaces of his body that could close closed, locked, with trembling tension.  It was as though he were a marionette suddenly “souled,” defying the pull of strings upon the expressive moveable parts of his body, a fight for rigidity that resembled a person seizing, yet which attracted none of the urgent attention from those around him to attempt to ease or subdue the violence of his tight shaking.

            Would this scene have been worthy of  “Shakespeare’s spying on’t, from some tuck’d point?”  What “inky scratches of the quill” might be read afterward?  Such speculation would have best-suited Sirrah; an approximation of his Bardic approximations may have gone thusly:

            “Hold did he so fast upon himself that a turbulent rigour was conceiv’d, perceiv’d ‘gainst no define, cousin nor kith to the angry quest of perdition’s vapour ‘gainst banish below.  At any moment should he glow with a heat?  The bits that build him would appear in friction, and as hot they would not hold as they hold.  Would they soften to pool as paraffin, or scatter as countless ember sparks on the air?  The end would compare not so, as what roiled about within could thus only have, ‘neath the govern of a stoic super . . . ”

            Just as it looked as though speech might vomit from his mouth, Solovich lunged toward the table, clutching his satchel’s handle and swinging away with it --

“ -- probably falling like someone tranquilized,” someone was saying among others in a “consultatory” grouping of themselves, all “coated” in a medicinally sterile white reflecting that of the room’s blankness.

            “Or like someone having a seizure,” someone else said.

            They all talked, officially badged and clipboard bearing, just beyond the foot of the bed on which Solovich lay “lashed down by the linens.”  His eyes had just “cracked open.”  The small odd moves of his head and the disconcerted twitchings of its features, suggested discomfort both at the bandaging around his throat and over what it bandaged. 

With what would be the start of sudden recognition, the center-most person’s voice fell to some whispered, instructive-sounding utterings, after which the others left uniformly, as silently as floating.

            “How do you feel, Mr Solovich?” was asked at a hover from bedside.  “I can tell you’re still working on a pearl in there.  In the meantime you can string together the synthetic kind on this pad.”  Solovich accepted the tablet and pencil handed him, with ceremonial slowness.  “If my costume -- lab coat, stethoscope and all -- and all the telemetric feeders your hosting aren’t clues enough, you’re in a hospital.  Don’t I fit the role of a doctor?  Sorry.  I’ll refrain from questions.  No need to trouble you with the impulse to verbally respond.

            “You’ve sustained acute trauma to your throat from, I must say, a freakish fall.  Your trachea and larynx have been damaged to the point that speech is compromised.  Our hope is that no radical measures will be necessary to restore normal capability.

            “Apparently there was a woman with you at the time of your fall:  a Miss Timora Heartgate.  She didn’t seem a person fond of speaking; she wasn’t much help with questions of causality.  What we could construct from the evidence of injury, and how you were found, you fell with a leather valise or bag of some kind with books, upon which your throat impacted fully.  It appears you made no effort to prevent or protect yourself from falling.  This suggests your losing consciousness from some cause, or by the interruption of voluntary and involuntary function by something introduced or by some existing neurological defect.  Hopefully tests will answer this.

            “Miss Heartgate said something cryptic -- accepted only as such because she failed to explain what she meant:  ‘He was gone, just gone,’ she said.  But here you are.  How did we find you?  Perhaps you looked dead to her, maybe that’s what she meant; maybe you did leave us for a short time, we’ve found no effects of it if you did.  ‘He went when I got close to him,’ that’s another one of the few things she said that causes the brow to crease.

            “I confess, I’m not endowed with the greatest beside manner.  I hope I’ve expressed myself in a helpful way.  I’m sure you’re much better at it than I am.  I guess for a while you’ll get used to the limits on your self.  You sure seemed to have a lot to say when emergency services found you, until you arrived here.  You were so struggling to speak, thrashingly so, that we were forced to sedate you.  Maybe you can get it all out, whatever you wanted to say, on paper now.

            “Anyway, you have the signaler if you need anything.  I’ll be around later with test results and for any questions that occur to you.  So, ‘til then, rest your voice -- ha! ha!”

            With soundless steps the doctor left, perhaps grinning a grin of pride at what he had just said.  Solovich was left with the “respectfully low tones” of monitoring machines.  He looked over at a chair near his bed; his satchel rested on it.  It was close enough for him to reach it; he reached for it.  He took from the bag his musicplayer.  After fitting the headset over his ears Beethoven played into them.  In motions that seemed jauntily graphing the music, he wrote, with the pencil and pad given him, in all capital letters at the top:  THE SUPERSTOIC.