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This is the true series of events that led to the death of my dearest friend, Samuel Wilson. The authorities have never been satisfied with my recollection of the circumstances, but I'm all they have, and no matter how much they tweak the code, they can't make it stick, so I thereby know that what I'm saying is real.
On this day in 2012, I think it was--at least that's how my memory functions, now. See, that's the thing about all this: digitizing flesh and blood (or whatever that was) has left something to be desired. I mean, they can simulate smells, but can they really stimulate smell? I really do wonder, in the margins of the code, what my olfactory nerve is doing right now. The vestiges of optics and smells and sensations of wet and cold can never be entirely swept away, and while I'm sure that this data transmission is being logged and archived, it will take a while before the algorithm can react. I hope so, anyway.
So as I was saying, on this day in 2012, we were sailing, Samuel Wilson and I, in his fishing boat, making our way around the point near Aberdeen, Washington, departing that large natural harbor for the wilds of the Pacific Ocean. The I-90 was already closed by this time, as you remember, being constantly patrolled, particularly at narrow points coming into the ruins of Cleveland, Chicago, and, believe it or not, Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Fuel was in short supply, but Sam had been insistent, so I made my way west, sailing as much as I could, beating against the wind, except at certain points where it warranted a quick and dirty escape.
Coming into Detroit was a harrowing moment, rounding up the river from Lake Erie into Lake Huron. Detroit had been overcome for decades already, its possession broadcast stupidly by our frog-eyed TV journalists through the 1960s into the 1990s. Who knew from Detroit they had infiltrated? Oh, it doesn't matter, does it? Naming names just brings endorphins. Likes, likes, likes, and even dislikes. What's a little rage executive to clear out the RAM every now and again? And then they "sort-by," just as easy as a click from the early databases from the late 1980s, and your in-group forgives you even murder.
It was an easy hitch, then, from the western point of Lake Superior, where they had not yet asserted control, and where truckers were in high demand, the economy of the west rejuvenated by its cessation east of the Mississippi. A few unpleasant performative acts got me across the high plains, over the Rocky Mountains, and around Seattle toward Aberdeen in the last week of October. I thought after seeing Buffalo go up that I would be used to seeing piles of human flesh still smoldering, but the sight sobered me up in a hurry, and my hopes were re-grounded.
"I'm so glad you're with me," Sam was saying.
"Here at the end of all things," I said, answering the challenge, which I thought was completely unnecessary. I mean, I hadn't changed that much, and who else would answer his summons? No one else was left, not anyone who knew how to sail, anyway. But Sam liked those kinds of things, and when he smiled, I smiled. The chop of protected water gave way to the swell of the ocean.
Mal-de-mer took Sam, and he emptied the contents of his digestive tract upward through his mouth and into the ocean. I laughed at him, in a friendly way, saying, "But Sam! You're the ocean-goer!" How many times did he tease me that the Gulf of Mexico was a glassy sea, the cushioned ride of spoiled brats, by comparison to the open ocean waves and wild currents of the Atlantic Coast, and, now, the Pacific Coast!
He looked at me sidelong, from underneath the hardware of his eyeglasses, and I could see that he was really miserable. He said, "I was a submariner." One more reflexive heave, and he was done with mal-de-mer, and this time, forever. I said, "Sorry, man. I was just funning." He coughed, and spit, and tried to laugh it off, but he groaned and said, "Dave, can you handle her?"
"You've met my wife," I replied. That one got a laugh from him. I asked him, "What bearing?"
"Don't hug the coast," he said, "but keep a bearing as north as you can. We want to be out of sight of land, but know exactly where it is."
"Motor?"
"If you have to," he said.
A forty-foot ketch is fairly tricky for only two men, but for one man, well, you have to be a real expert, and I ain't that. I raced twin-hulled catamarans in the safety of Pensacola, Florida in my youth, and even that was with two of us, Chris and me. I tended to take orders and pull on whatever rope Chris was pointing at, but as for actually coming to an understanding of how to sail, well, I hoped that all I'd have to do was stare at the binnacle and tug on the wheel every now and again.
I was going aft to fetch a beer from the well (some sort of hops-crazy ale made by some hippies from Tacoma; I was much younger then), when the wind suddenly shifted, forcing the boat into a gybe (of course it did! Of course!). The boom of the mainsail came around with considerable force, and silently, but I wasn't that green a sailor that I didn't anticipate it. I threw up my hands and tried to duck, but it really whacked me a good one, and I came tumbling down upon the deck, a black sleep pouring over me like God's own waves.
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Sam was kicking me in the ribs when I came to. "We have no idea where we are!" he cried out.
"We can fish," I said.
He sat down on the deck and lamented.
"I need first aid," I said. "Look at all the blood."
He continued to sit and stare. I struggled to sit up. I nearly passed out again. He said, "Don't you understand? We had this one chance. One chance for heroism."
"What?"
"We could have been kings, Dave," he continued. "Kings, I tell you. I could have taken Seattle for myself, and you could have had Tacoma, or Aberdeen, or whatever you wanted--I mean, you understand tribal lordship better than anyone I know--if only we knew where we are!"
"What are you talking about?"
"Around Neah Bay or Ucluelet, that's where one of them is hiding. We have our knives. We could have blinded it, taken its orb, and thrown it into the sea."
"The two of us?" I said. "You think the two of us could have handled it?"
"I've met your wife," he said. I laughed.
"And now?" I asked.
"And now, when I woke up, we were headed due west. Hours, I should think, judging by your blood's coagulation. I honestly don't know how you're even alive, my friend. We'll never make it in time."
"Why didn't you summon me earlier?"
"Halloween, man. It only comes out at Halloween."
"It seems weird that it is bound by the Julian Calendar and the bowdlerized Medieval religious holiday," I said.
Sam shrugged, and he sat still. My head ached, and I was dizzy. The sun was setting, turning the sky a lovely, but portentous, ocean-green.
I said, "Sam, have I ever told you how cool it is that your middle initial is a Q?"
"Yes, Dave, you have."
"I just think it's cool. So sophisticated, like you should be walking the streets of New York, giving unsolicited cultural advice for a living. That would be the best."
"But I don't do that," he said.
"Well, yeah, but you should," I said. "And you should wear a bow tie while doing it."
"That's what she said."
I burst out laughing. "Good one!" I said, and I winced, holding my head. The sun's light began to fail. At that, Sam got up and fetched the first aid kit. He bandaged my wound and gave me water to drink. When I was finished with that, he gave me something with electrolytes. I felt much better, but Sam was in no higher spirit.
"Doom spelled backward is mood," I said. "Your mood is doomful."
"You try hard," he said to me. "You never were clever enough."
I took that in. "No," I said. "I was not. Sorta like I keep telling you to get a clew."
Sam sighed, and explained patiently, for the umpteenth time (Samuel Q. Wilson was a very patient friend), "See, Dave, the joke doesn't work because you don't really 'get a clew,' in sailing. You might fasten a clew with a clew-line. But then the joke would be to 'get a clew-line,' and that is also not clever." He pulled out his forty-five.
"Oh!" I said, brightening further. "Man, I like that pistol. That's the 1912 Government, right?"
He sighed again, clicking off the safety, and aiming the muzzle at my head. "It's a 1911, Dave. There is no 1912."
"Oh, I thought there was."
"There might be, when they rearrange everything, but, no, Dave, this is a Colt .45 Government Model, the updated 1911." I saw his finger pull up the slack on the trigger.
At that moment, I felt very sick to my stomach. I stumbled to my feet and emptied my guts into the ocean. The waves were not swelling; they were swirling, and growing, without sense or order, demonic.
"Dave? Here? At the end? You finally get the mal-de-mer?"
"I don't think so," I said, spitting. "Can't you smell that?"
Sam didn't answer. The boat rose--well, the boat didn't rise except that the ocean suddenly rose. I was still waiting for a last spasm to complete the task of my revolting digestive system. That stench of rotting fish (if that was what that was) turned my stomach inside out, but I had to breathe, so spasm after spasm overcame me. It came to my mind, while I looked down at the boiling sea, that the froth therein was the sight of a million bloated maggots, the bottle fly in its most awful manifestation, all retching forth their belches from gorging on death, as is their nature. I threw up again.
I laughed. "Those Norks, man, they got the ballistic missile part down, but the intercontinental part, not so much. Didn't all four of them detonate right around here?"
"Yes, Dave," said Sam from behind me, and he caught his breath, like a man might when the dungeon master tightens the rack. I turned.
There were eyes staring at me, luminescent eyes, and the stench coming forth, all the rotting fish and bloated blowfly maggots, made the sight of those eyes a mirage. I stopped breathing, and I pulled out my forty-four.
"Is that the Model 29?" Sam gasped forth.
"The very same," I said. "The magnum force."
"Won't you shoot me, please?" he asked. "I would do the same of you."
But I was overcome. The luminescence grew brighter as it opened more of its eyes, better to see Samuel Q. Wilson's more delectable parts. I admired Sam because he didn't cry out, even when the tentacles tore open his abdomen. "What a man," I thought to myself.
"Now would be a good time," Sam said.
"Free your mind," I said, challenging him.
He answered, "And your ass will follow."
"Great album," I said, raising the .44 magnum and taking aim. "I never had time to sight it in," I said. "When I took it off that guy. I mean, he missed me clean, Sam, before I hit him with my shovel."
"Tickles," said Sam, as the eyeful stench loosened up his peritoneum, tearing it from his spine.
"I think it likes you," I said. "I mean, after all, we were searching for it."
"We found it," he said.
"Too bad."
"Doesn't matter," he said. "Nothing matters."
I fired my revolver at Sam.
"Missed."
One of the eyes hissed and bubbled, releasing heavy pounds of foul air. Sam tried to retch, but it gripped the bottom of Sam's esophagus and closed off the canal. I tried to make my way to the board so I could throw up into the sea (such was my etiquette), but I slipped in my own blood and fell, banging my head again. I saw, as upside down, Sam's heart beating green in the light. I fired again. I think I hit him. Who knows?
The boat rose more, and everything stank and went black.
I woke up, sterilized.
And that's what really happened. Samuel Q. Wilson, RIP.
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