Author: jthomasstervenson

Greetings

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In order to regulate my interactions with coworkers, I’ve developed a standardized set of tics. If I’m forced to interact with someone spontaneously, the experience is guaranteed to be unpleasant for the whole team unless I’ve got a grab bag of pre-made interactions into which I may dip.

A favorite is simply pointing. I eschew violence in all forms, so I do not employ the gun-finger method of pointing. My point is a loose variant on the plain finger point. I find that, often, my thumb does not close the circuit with the forefinger. This looseness results in a genial gesture, as if to say, “You, my friend are the one I was hoping to see, and the gift of your presence has yielded a weakness in my gesture.” This gesture is inappropriate when directed at a member of the opposite sex. The gun-finger variant, when directed at a woman, is inherently misogynist, and frequently shows up in the journals as a warning sign.

I’ve known fathers of my friends who’ve mastered the craft of winking. It’s a coveted skill. It produces almost the same result in the winkee as a higher dosage of Demerol delivered by intramuscular injection into the right buttock. An overwhelming warmth spreads through the body, satisfaction dulls the eyes, and in general, this vale of tears fades away. The true master of the wink has taken “less is more” as his axiom, and knows that the slighter the wink the more intense the effect. In nature, the model is the bird’s third eyelid, the nictitating membrane. The wink happens so quickly that its audience may not fully comprehend it the first time around. Over the course of a conversation, it may take four repetitions until its meaning lands. But when it does, it is felt both in retroaction and accumulation.

The fact that I can’t wink has never stopped me from trying, or from making the drive-by wink my default greeting in the hallway. Because I attempt the slight wink, it frequently appears to whoever I’m greeting as a momentary seizure or a harbinger of tragedy—an expression like a lizard anticipating a stroke. Coworkers respond in various ways. Some modestly avert their gaze. Some stretch out arms to break my impending fall. Most act as if nothing unusual has happened, as though a grown man making indecipherable faces at them up to four times a day was normal. As though, instead of establishing eye-contact and saying “Hello,” the way a human adult might, it’s enough to make a silent, generic contortion, and move on.

The last item in the bag I’ll mention is my response to inquiries about how I’d doing. Unless I’m feeling fully self-possessed, my invariable response will be, “Not too bad.” It’s almost always true.

Greetings

The Hermit Mite

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Not too long ago, a friend sent me a link to an article, along with the text of the article in the email.

Here’s the article as I received it:

“Acarologists in Argentina are currently at work to understand the mysterious workings of the Hermit Mite. This tiny creature hijacks pain receptors and perceptual capabilities of humans. They infest and feed on the skin, fat, and muscle of their hosts, who are unable to understand that anything untoward has come to pass, even as their are consumed by the parasite. They feel no pain. They look in the mirror and see no problem.

The parasite also protects the host from outside infection, producing its own approximation of antibiotic. When the parasite infects individuals actively engaged in social life, the effects are quickly observed by others, friends, family, coworkers. In these instances, the problem is dealt with. However, when the host is isolated in some way, the problem does not become obvious. Hermits have been found afflicted with the parasite for perhaps decades. Their flesh has been almost entirely consumed, but they appear to be in otherwise fine health.

Strangely, their devotional and spiritual lives appear to be augmented by their infestation; they achieve an intense concentration during meditation, and tests are currently underway to establish whether or not some reports of whether or not they can actually communicate a tangible sense of calm to others. Early evidence indicates that a few minutes in the same room with infested individuals lowers cortisol levels in test subjects.

Another curious fact; as has been observed in some aphids, the Hermit Mite is capable of a photosynthetic-like process, and when the host is thoroughly infested feeds the body energy from the sun in an almost direct process. Through unknown mechanisms these hermits can generate an observable light. They glow. None of the individuals observed have died prematurely—they routinely live to 80 or 90 years of age.

In situations where the hermits have been ‘cured’ of their infestation, they have all demanded to be re-infected. Despite their concerns, citing the extreme effects of the wasting disease, the scientists and medical professionals involved with the research have not been able to see a reason why they should not be allowed to pursue re-infection. Some of them, after spending time with the hermits, have even chosen to infect themselves.”

I found the article very interesting, but received it early in the morning, read it before breakfast on my phone, and was unable to pursue any further research into its details. Several days later I remembered the article and went back to it in my email. I clicked the link (www.mysteriumscientiaeoccultum.biz/news/hermit-mite/) and found that it directed to much more prosaic article about hermit crabs and mites.

I now felt a strong curiosity about why my friend would send me this apparently fanciful email. I’ve long known about his interest in ascetic lifestyles and mystical tradition. I replied with questions about this little fable and its meaning. I waited for a response. As my friend is eccentric and not entirely dependable, I gave him over two weeks to respond. When I heard nothing, I sent another email. I waited another two weeks. Still nothing. I called him. His number had been disconnected.

I called his girlfriend to learn that she was now his ex-girlfriend, and that they broken up around the time I’d received the first email. In the ensuing conversation I found out two things: that she held nothing against him for the breakup, and that he’d left the country. When I asked where he’d gone, she told me he’d flown to Argentina.

The Hermit Mite

The Happy Circumstance of Your Mom Being Gone

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Argent came over to hang out with us the day that Liz Chaplin got my friend Jippy to tell me that if I asked her out, she’d go out with me.

“Using gasoline as an accelerant isn’t that crazy,” Argent said. “I know that people make a big deal out of not playing with gas, but if you’re not an idiot about it, it’s fine.”

We looked at Argent with looks we wanted him to read as “what are you talking about?”

“I mean, you guys light stuff on fire anyway, right?” he said.

We all nodded or intoned a low ”yeah.” Argent made the gesture you make with your hands in front of, palms upturned, akin to a shrug, that says, “we have to admit that I’m right, don’t we?”

“I do it in my garage at home all the time, and I’ve never gotten caught, never burned anything down. Like we have this hole in our garage floor, and I found this old metal pipe that’s this long,” Argent held his hands 12 inches apart,” and I put it in the hole, and then pour some gas in there, drop a match down it, and boom, shoots fire almost to the ceiling.”

We all laughed, against our will. I laughed against my will. Argent didn’t hang out with us, which had been fine with us, or me, because he felt unmanageable. He wore clothes with sports insignia. He followed, and considered himself a fan of, specific professional sports teams, for reasons that we, or I, couldn’t understand. I could understand why someone would enjoy sports, but I couldn’t conceive of how someone could choose a particular team to follow.

“I do that in my garage, without anyone finding out. And my garage is connected to my house, unlike yours.” He waved a hand around to draw our attention to the structure whose threshold he stood inside. ”Not to mention the happy circumstance of your mom being gone.”

Jippy shook his head like he was trying to swing a spider off his nose. We called him “Jippy” because his younger brother called him “Jippy” because his younger brother even at eight years old could say only the words “eggs” and “gun” clearly,

“Cool,” Jippy said. “Lighting gasoline on fire sounds cool. I’ve mystified my mom by burning off several cans of PAM cooking spray. Do you know PAM brand cooking spray? It creates a pretty neat blowtorch if you use it in conjunction with any kind of kitchen lighter. The ones with the triggers. But that was a few years back.”

He shook his head a few times. Jippy’s default vocal attitude made him sound like a gameshow host at a cocktail party.

“What I think is really cool,” Jippy said, “is your jacket. You support the Bulls’ basketball team?”

“Yeah,” Argent said in a way that made it obvious that he was wondering where this line of questioning was headed. We were all wondering where this line of questioning was headed.

“I couldn’t help but notice,” Jippy said, his eyes focused at a spot five feet left of Argent’s knee. “I guess because I supported the Orlando Magic for awhile when I was 12. Because a basketball team with magical powers sounded ideal to me. Basketball without magical powers seemed fine, just not quite as interesting.”

Argent stepped back into the garage. He picked up a roll of paper towels, rolled several off into a bundle, and lit this on fire. He tossed the flaming bundle onto the ground in a gravelly divot in front of the garage. The sheets unballed themselves a bit as they flared up, then turned to leaves of ash-paper that glowed orange, then turned black and crumbled in the breeze.

“Very cool,” Jippy said. “Even devouring some paper towels, fire truly is an elemental force, and inspires, in me anyhow, both awe and respect.”

Argent ignored him.

“See, lame,” he said. “Without an accelerant there’s no flair to it. You want to feel the heat on your forehead, some sweat. Get your own personal sprinkler system going.” He took several jumpy steps backwards and grabbed the gas can.

Another spasmy bout of head-shaking overtook Jippy.

“Picking up that other thread of conversation, I actually went so far as to buy an Orlando Magic baseball cap. Then I was unsurprised but still disappointed to confirm that the team possessed no magical powers. I never bothered to learn the name of a single player on the team. I found the hat several months later, in the wet part of the basement, under a have-a-heart-trap, ruined. All moldy. The little stars of magic around the logo, that accompany and signify magical deeds accomplished, all black with mildew. As was my love for the team the hat represented.”

Argent tore a train of paper towels off. He soaked the remaining roll in gasoline.

Jippy’s stream of language and Argent’s determined series of actions worked together to incapacitate me.

“Let’s light these,” Argent said, in a voice that made this seem unassailably reasonable.

“I tried buying hats that had nothing to do with sports teams after that,” Jippy said. “I tried to wear hats that someone in James Herriot’s Yorkshire might wear.”

“Shut up, Jippy,” I said.

Argent twisted the loose paper towels into a sort of fuse. He poured gasoline over the fuse. He ran the fuse to the roll.

Jippy moved towards Argent as Argent stuck his hand into his pocket and retrieved a lighter. The rest of us stood there or sat there.

“Don’t light it,” Jippy said. “I tried the indirect approach, but I think you should stop. All that’s required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.”

Argent kicked Jippy in the knee. We stood there. Argent lit the paper towel fuse on fire, the flame ran to the paper towel roll, which grew like a bush of flame. The dry grass around the front of the garage caught fire. The overflowing contents of the trashcans just inside the garage caught fire.

“Stomp it out,” I said. I was walking towards the garage.

“Don’t,” Jippy said. He pointed to the gas can, which sat just a couple feet away from the trashcans. “That’ll catch in just a second.”

We moved away. The gas can caught and exploded, threw flames further into the garage. Our bike tires expanded then exploded. The whole garage was on fire.

Argent walked over and stood next to me.

“I love Liz,” he said. He walked to the street and away.

We moved further away from the garage, as sweat grew on our faces. The flames from the garage burned without any concern for our opinion of them. They danced as if we were not watching.

“Argent will probably get arrested for this,” Jippy said.

We all just nodded and sat there.

Reuben, who’d been silent this whole time said, “I think I love Liz, too.”

I told him to shut up.

Jippy walked over and stood in front of me. He was about to say something when my mom pulled up in the car and the push mower exploded.

The Happy Circumstance of Your Mom Being Gone

A Man Went Looking for Death

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A man woke up one morning, fixed himself a bagel, drank two cups of coffee, and went looking for Death. It won’t be hard, he thought. He usually shows up even when someone’s not looking for him.

He crossed the street, walked down the sidewalk, down to the farmer’s market, and walked up and down the rows, ignoring the beautiful girls at the souvlaki stand. No sign of him. He checked behind the cantaloupe stand. Nope. Death wasn’t there.

He crossed the street, went to the Used Bookstore and stood in the various sections he deemed most likely to attract Death. He flipped through some of the books. He whistled Schubert. Death wasn’t there either. The man felt ripped off. Come on, Death! he thought. Where are you? Then he had an idea.

He crossed the street and headed to the hospital. He found the most terminal of patients and waited among their beds. The monitors and things beeped along happily. The man stayed for an hour or two, but, sheesh, no Death. He didn’t have time to hang around with the infirm and dying all day. He needed to find Death!

The man had a thought as he walked past a crowded public pool. Maybe he could just go pull someone under and get Death’s attention that way. But then he was like, Hold up. Let’s not get carried away. His questions were mainly academic, and he had to face the fact that he wasn’t really the murdering type.

This was really proving to be quite a conundrum. More than he wanted to deal with on a Saturday morning. He thought he would just breeze out, find Death, ply him with a few questions, and then spend the afternoon reading. But he’d invested so much time hunting for Death by now, that he just wanted to crack the problem. He ran through scenarios, plots, ideas, all trying to figure out some way of getting through to Death. He turned back toward home, absorbed with the question, but also getting pretty interested in lunch.

He crossed the street, focusing on how to lure death in, while ham sandwiches crowded in at the back of his mind, when WHACK! he was struck by little Honda hatchback.

When he floated up from his body, he didn’t even recognize Death, couldn’t remember a single question he’d had. He breezed back to the farmer’s market to check out the Souvlaki girls.

In the hatchback, the driver leaned his head forward, rested it quietly against the steering wheel.

“Oh,” Death said, throwing the car into park and lifting his head up from the steering wheel to look at the body in the street. “Oh, not again.”

A Man Went Looking for Death

Found: Meditations on Rag-Wool Gloves

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I found these thoughts written on the blank back pages of a used copy of Hermes Trismegistus: Truth or Source of All Truth?.

“October 29
I just went looking for my gloves. I have two pairs. One is the pair that I don’t give a handful of deer-droppings about. (Don’t worry about the handful; I’m wearing gloves.) They’re black Thinsulate gloves. The other are these fingerless gloves which have a flipbackable mitten flap. It’s the glove equivalent of the flip-up shades that convert normal glasses into sun(glasses). They’re rag-wool gloves, an oatmeal color. I love them. They’re cheap. There’s nothing special about them except that I get to indulge my childhood whim of fingerless gloves without sacrificing the sensibility full-finger covering mittens. It isn’t that I simply use the rag wool gloves more. Both pairs have their use. Black Thinsulate gloves: used for heavy snow interactions (shoveling, sledding). Ragwool gloves: looking great and feeling fabulous.

What if our desires create vortices around the things we love. What if my desire for my rag-wool gloves attracts the notice of other forces in the universe, causing them to desire the same thing? What if those forces lead to one of my rag wool gloves going missing? Sucked up by the world that is within this world, further in.

My love for the rag-wool gloves creates a gravitational field around them. Other forces (cosmic, supernatural, household) desire them, because of my desire for them. It’s like how the sun bends space. Massive objects cause space to bend around them, and the result is gravity. My love for a given thing causes a pool of gravity around that thing, which causes the thing to attract the attention of the various forces (see above), which results in the loss of that thing. I can always find my black Thinsulate gloves, I can never find my rag-wool gloves.”

Followed by this:

“October 30
Meditating on this, I’ve realized that my love for rag-wool gloves bears no comparison to my love for my wife and children. The gravitational pull around them must be exceptionally strong. If this is true, the attraction of the universe toward them must result in their loss.

If I want to keep them, I must learn not to love them.”

Then this:

“October 31
Having considered this further, I think the danger is posed mostly to things that cannot return love. When love creates a bond, the gravitational pull becomes so great that the aforementioned forces cannot impose themselves on, or affect it. So I must love my wife and my children, and do what I can to evoke their love for me, to the greatest extent possible, so that the gravity of our love will never admit our loss to each other. I think that this is the secret of eternal life. I think we will live forever.”

I bought the book at an estate sale last Saturday, and found the above text later that same day. It’s given me much to think about concerning my own wife and children.

Found: Meditations on Rag-Wool Gloves

Books with Teeth? Bat Wings?

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My parents moved me into my room. Come on. It wasn’t my room. It was a room owned by books. They sat, straight-faced, on shelves and stared at the opposite wall, careful to show how they took no notice of me. My parents wanted me out of a room full of smaller kids, they said. They moved me into a room full of books, every book bent on murder. Not books about murder. Containing the odd murder, I’m sure. But not thrillers or how-tos on murder. It was the books themselves that wanted to erase me.

When he moved me into the room, my dad said, “Keep an eye on the shelf. It’s pretty stable, but if it falls on you, that’s it. That many books, it’s heavy. You’re done.”

Then I dreamed every night about the books bringing the shelf down on me, hating me in the room. My parents just laid out futon on the floor for me. I didn’t have a real bed. Just a mat, like some paralytic in the New Testament. If the shelf fell, it fell right on me, flat down. I’d be jelly. Ready for the jar and the label. I cowered in the shadow of books.

One day I thought about all this perceived animosity between me and these books. Why did I think the books wanted to erase me, end me? Where did that come from? Why did I imagine them with teeth? Bat wings? Voracious appetites for human souls?

I took a book down from the shelf and read it. The Horse and His Boy. I read it. Harmless. I read another. The Grey King. Fine. The D’Aulaires‘ Book of Norse Myths. I don’t see a problem. Cat’s Cradle. On the Road. A Good Man Is Hard to Find. Miss Lonelyhearts. The Brothers Karamazov. So on.

I looked up one day. Horror crept over me like a wine stain on a page. I was jelly. I was gone. There was nothing left of me. It was all books. The books had gotten inside me. They had erased me.

Books with Teeth? Bat Wings?

Flesh on a Mechanical Interface

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The spy walks down the street. He moves as though in a gauze of secrecy, except that if he moved in actual gauze his steps would be somewhat encumbered and he’d draw attention to himself. The gauze of secrecy does not make itself known. He looks like he’s just a guy walking down the street. The gauze of secrecy is in his mind, where it does not entangle his feet.

But even there, in his mind, it is taking a toll.

The spy looks at a store window. He knows just where to strike it, with how much force, to break and clear the glass. He would incur zero injuries, and duck safe inside the store. The rules of the physical world are less than solid for our spy.

In the grassy churchyard coming up on the right the man spots Amanita phalloides, the death cap mushroom. It is the third naturally occurring poison he’s spotted in the past block. With five minutes and minimal effort, he could fatally poison up to twenty humans, just using organic material found accessible in the past thirty steps. To the spy, the world appears infinitely fatal.

An attractive woman approaches him, walking the other way. He observes her demeanor (hips slightly overswung), her manner of dress (fabric greatly overtight), the confidence of her step in high-heels (a firm C-), and deduces the words, touches, and minutes it would take to seduce her (minutes, twenty). Our spy is a decent man, and does not exercise this power without just cause (nuclear launch codes, infiltration of radical Islamo-Feminist terror cells), but he sees woman, and humans at large, as flesh on a mechanical interface. The spy knows the code. Humanity is imminently susceptible to un-encryption and exploitation.

Like all spies, this one knows that at this altitude he can sprint for a half mile. That’s an easy one. All factors of his physiognomy are known to him.

All except one. As the spy walks the street, his mind gauzy with secrecy, his manner transparently opaque, the spy suffers from a near incapacitating case of constipation.

All cures have failed. The spy has ransacked his vast medical knowledge. He’s stopped eating. He lives on laxatives, and to no avail.

If he were to follow certain paths of thought, he might consider that he has grown to believe only in control. He has come to believe in holding in. He believes in hiding. He holds these beliefs tight in his mind.

Two possibilities: (1) his mind has taught his body these beliefs, or (2) his body is a trickster and a teacher, and smiles as it tightens and holds and hides and controls.

Flesh on a Mechanical Interface

Joseph and Gregory at the Lake

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Here’s a thing for you:

Exploding lakes. It’s true. Lakes can explode. It happened in Cameroon, which, if you don’t know, is a country in Africa. No one knew it could happen. Not even the Scientists. Everyone’s been walking around lakes this whole time, the whole of earth’s history, thinking, “Well, at least that huge mass of water won’t erupt and drown who it can and asphyxiate the rest in a cloud of CO2.” Think again, population of earth, particularly inhabitants of Northwest Africa. Some lakes have gone bad. Some lakes are bad apples. Some lakes lie in wait, wind just shimmering across the surface, spirit on the face of the deep, spirit under the face of the deep, and after thousands of years, once everyone’s sure they won’t, they leap out and grab you. Or you’re sitting at home, ten miles away and suddenly you can’t breathe, and you suffocate in your home, knitting, or reading, or collecting firewood, or whatever people in Cameroon were doing in 1986 when Lake Nyos exploded and a cloud of CO2 spread over 16 miles of land and suffocated 1700 people.

Let’s say there are these two guys, Cameroonian farmers. They live close to the lake, but don’t know (no one does) that way down below the lake, some slow volcanic process is releasing CO2 into the cold water at the bottom of the lake, which is fine, as long as nothing disrupts it. As long as everything stays exactly like it is. One of them is afraid of the lake. His name is Joseph. The other loves the lake. His name is Gregory. They don’t really know each other, but Joseph has watched Gregory enjoying the lake, swimming, diving, in love with the way that water makes the human body capable of flight. But Joseph has also seen the terrible power of water. The lake—let’s assume, because of its close relationship with the Oku Volcanic Field—has been bitch to occasional seismic or volcanic activities. These have produced large waves from time to time. When Joseph was five years old, still just a wader, he saw three cows and a favorite dog swallowed up, crushed, and otherwise drowned by a 20 foot wave that rose like a whale from the center of the lake. He has undiagnosed PTSD (it’s the 1980s, in Cameroon; all PTSD is undiagnosed), and can’t handle the lake.

Gregory spends every day he can in the water. Friends and family have told him that his mother must have mated with a fish. Sometimes Gregory wonders. His skin is mottled in a peculiar pattern along one side of his rib cage, it reminds him of scales. He loves the water. Though neither of them remember it, Gregory was near Joseph for the wave, but, being a strong swimmer even at the age of seven, was caught up further out in the water, and rode on top of it. He felt the power of water too, but, as he emerged without injury, felt that he controlled it, could handle it.

But then here’s August 21st, 1986. Joseph has attempted to face his fears many times, but today will be the day. He’s at the water. Of course Gregory is at the water. It’s practically all he ever does! He’s developed this method of swimming and fishing at the same time. He can swim on his back, cast and reel and haul, the whole thing, just bobbing around like a clawless otter.

But as Joseph approaches the water, determined, the water at the center of the lake begins to froth and bubble. He watches for a minute. It’s bubbling more vigorously. Well, he thinks, that’s a sign. All it takes for him to not go back in the water is some bubbles. He gets on his motorcycle and rides listlessly away from the lake, then hears the boom. He stops his bike. And turns around. He’s still in sight of the lake and can see an enormous tidal wave swelling. He makes out a figure on top of the wave. This causes him to take a sharp breath. But then he smells a horrible smell. He tries to call out but can’t. He doesn’t know it, but his lungs have entirely filled with CO2. Joseph lies down.

On top of the wave Gregory can’t believe what he’s summoned. He’s 80 feet up, and moving fast for the mainland. He knows there’s no way out, and that nothing good will come of riding a wave as big as a god to the shore, but Gregory is smiling.

Joseph and Gregory at the Lake

Exosekeletal Decomposition and What It Means to Me

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A crayfish in your hand clicks. It makes strong strokes and sounds like a Frankensteined piece of plastic, a living thing whose life surprises you. You have to force your hand to clamp.

The farm creek carried a rot smell of manure that, when I didn’t ignore it, felt like touching an electric fence with my brain. The electricity wasn’t just in the fence. It came at me hard when I lifted the right rock and found a crayfish there. Or when I walked on the bank and splay-legged frogs hit the water. Seeing a living thing in the world felt like you spotted the single star in a blank sky.

I no longer need to put crayfish in a bucket and ride my bike home carrying the bucket full of water and empty the bucket into the kiddie pool. Then, I’d walk out the next morning and watch them there, but I wouldn’t feel that electric shock of finding them curled between stones in the water.

Then they’d boil in the pool. We’d smell the smell of chitinous exoskeletons decomposing, a burning plastic fish smell all through the yard. The electricity in each crayfish body turned off. Like refrigerators, you unplug them and everything inside rots and thickens the air to let you know it.

Every time I carried a bucket back, I knew what was coming.

Exosekeletal Decomposition and What It Means to Me

The Teachable People of Sweetditch

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Sweetditch had a community center until it burned down. At one time it sat next to the library, less than a block from Main Street, on Route 100. The basketball courts lay behind it. Jacob Ulster took the blame. The gasoline fed fire started the night he lectured on primitive gift economies in the community center. At the time, the local high-school employed Jacob in a research post. His grant-administered contract stipulated that he had to deliver “at least one improving lecture per quarter to the teachable people of Sweetditch.”

His previous two lectures had both ended in riots. A lecture on folk singing had inspired Sweetditch to rise up and take hold of famed local banjoist Twitch-Finger Rollins and nearly offer him as a sacrifice unspotted to atone for their sinful neglect of communal singing. When they made their way out of the center for the monument to the Unknown Lady, where they intended to shed Twitch-Finger’s purifying blood, the crowd had a hard time describing what their intentions had been. They dissipated, some going home, others struck with a dull impulse to drink and sing “Oh My Darling, Clementine.”

Jacob’s next presentation, on the rocking chair’s place in rural culture, resulted in his audience’s destroying the “dead” folding metal chairs the center offered, and forming a posse to seek and destroy any and all chairs incapable of the true solace found in the rocking chair. Again, once the crowd passed out of the hall, they regained their senses, with a veiled hankering for something they couldn’t recall. More than a dozen citizens slept on their porch swings that night, “for a change of pace.”

Only fifteen minutes into Jacob’s presentation “Some Interesting Observations About Primitive Gift Economies That No One Needs to Get Upset About or Take Too Seriously”, the social fabric had come apart. The people rent their garments and prostrated themselves, horrified at their dependence on a system of currency that destroyed the bonds of community. Finding no ashes, they resolved to set fire to the community center, which they now viewed as a tumor grown on a sick culture, dependent as they were on the government to create meeting places for them. They could then blacken themselves with ash and repent properly.

The center also housed some of the town’s landscaping equipment, including a number of gas cans. The flames started in the auditorium. A pile of rocking chair remains—replacements for the metal folding chairs destroyed several months previous—served the mob’s purpose. As the fires continued, the people fled the building, and once again found themselves unsure of what had just happened. Some even recovered their senses enough to make attempts to fight the fire, but once the fire reached the gas, the crowd’s previous intentions carried through. A confused mass of people watched the building burn to ashes.

It took months to discern the exact cause of the riots. Finally, Jacob Ulster was held responsible, but not-guilty.

The Teachable People of Sweetditch