Words on a Page

I’ve been a bit negligent of the Tumbles lately. Mostly because this novel revision has devoured my life. I recently came across something that convinced me that all is not lost. Here’s a chapter from my book that not only do I not hate, but actually think is some of my best writing. So, throwing caution to the wind, I’m posting it here for your reading enjoyment, and to prove that I don’t just drink whiskey and surf facebook…

Chapter 9: The Deadman’s Switch

Callie and Twist ascended the main staircase from the rail platforms. The city-station opened up into a grand chamber off of the tracks. A brick-lined network of chambers and ante-chambers each containing blocks of buildings and pathways. If not for the glass-network overhead, the space above the buildings would easily be mistaken for night sky rather than the buttresses and beams of a brick-lined vaulted ceiling.  Past the merchant alleys and commercial corridors of the central Galleria, the open storefronts and glass-front business give way to private quarters and residences. Periodically, the smell of food will waft down a hallway denoting the presence of a restaurant somewhere down that particular branch. And just as the hustle and bustle of commerce and trade give way to restaurants and apartments, so does the spread of wealth. The further back the branches are the darker they are. The helios is only projected so far before the rate of decay for the light is too great. Especially in a Station like Alisade, outside of Hypogean jurisdiction due to being in the Lower Q. Without regular maintenance and monitoring from the Menders of the Glass-setters, some rows of the station saw little light at all. Most resorted to gas-lamps or the sort, as stored electricity was a rare commodity. They headed down a back alley several paths off of the central Promenade, past the reach of the glass network that no matter what time of day the inhabitants relied on gas lamps or electric light.

It was down one of these darkened corridors. The tile floors made slippery with soot from the gas-lamps, behind a plain door with the initials DMS atop a glyph of a rail lever set into a circle with the top left quarter cut out was where Callie and Twist had found themselves to relieve themselves of contraband cargo and avail themselves of drinks to stave off the negativity of the last two days in transit.

The Deadman’s Switch was a bar owned and operated by a Canine Fauna by the name of Jaxx. He mostly used the bar as a de facto meeting place for Freelance and Privateer train operators. Alisade Station was at the edge of the Wild Q and run by the Sikorsky Firm. Callie and Twist were contracted Privateers for the Sikorsky Firm, and as such MadCap Sikorsky had a hand in nearly every deal they made, as well as just about any deal made in the entire station.  Sikorsky was the biggest firm, and the more dangerous, as MadCap still tried for an illusion of legitimacy, even going so far as to take contracts from the Timekeepers in the Wheel proper. But that sheen legitimacy sat atop a ruthless iron fist that brokered no leniency for anything unsanctioned. Tucked away in one of the darker wall-side alleys the Deadman’s was as good a place as any to attempt an anonymous deal or two.

They stepped through the surreptitiously marked door into the gaslight of the bar proper. It was a small space, built for purpose more than looks. Rough-hewn root-wood tables and cheap metal stools. The bar was made of pipe fittings holding up a concrete slab of a bar top. There were a few darkened booths in the back for private deals and those that preferred to drink alone. There was a gas-lit lighting fixture hanging from the center of the ceiling that appeared to be made from a repurposed train wheel.

Behind the bar, the proprietor, Jaxx was cleaning a glass until he looked up and saw them enter.

“Hey!” he barked, his voice was sharp but not aggressive. Callie and Twist had known him for a long time. His reputation for being able to fetch just about anything someone would want was legendary around the Lower Q. His willingness to use privateer operators working freelance on the sly was less known, and it was that discretion that Callie liked best about the hound-dog bartender.

Like most fauna, Jaxx looked mostly human. He had light colored skin and a full black beard, save for white patch down the center of his chin. His black hair was full but short and his eyes were brown and soulful. Besides the black furred tail protruding from his lower back, the only other fauna feature he exhibited were longer than normal canines and hair covered ears with a slight flop to them. He smiled brightly at them and set a couple of glasses up on the bar.

“What’ll it be for my two favorite operators in the Quarter?”

“Jaxx, I know you’re just saying that because we’ve got cargo for you.” Said Twist, settling in on a stool.

“Doesn’t mean I like you any less. But since you mention it…” Replies Jaxx suggestively.

“Platform 11, and I’ll have a pratai, neat.” Said Callie, warily.

“Wouj dlo, for me. Make it a double.” Twist followed up.

“Wow, must’ve been a rough couple days on the tracks. You guys don’t usually go for the hard stuff,” he said, pouring the drinks after telling two of his employees the platform number and seeing them leave. This was standard procedure for working freelance with Jaxx. He never handled the cargo directly and that gave him plausible deniability at all times. Operators came into the station with cargo. Parked the cargo at an out of the way platform, came to the bar, told him the platform number. He would tell his employees the location, and they would confirm retrieval of the cargo from the platform while the operator and Jaxx had a drink. Once the employees contacted Jaxx with confirmation of the goods, he paid the operators and they were on their way. “We got ambushed by the Mechanics on the inner rim line,” said Twist. At this Jaxx nearly drops the bottle of wouj dlo he’d just poured from.

“I thought the Klaxxon was off limits to the Mechanics,” he said. Callie really wished he hadn’t. Twist was suspicious enough of her link to the zealot group as is.

“Turns out otherwise,” She says dismissively as she takes a drink of the pratai or potato liquor. Not her usual drink but definitely called for to calm her nerves.

“You know that’s one of the primary reasons I use you guys right? I mean the Klaxxon’s fast and all but it’s not worth the bedlam should MadCap find out you’re freelancing for me,” he said,

“Look, it’s unusual for the damn suicides to be working the inner rim line as well, so I’m sure it was an isolated incident. Right, Callie?” Said Twist, looking at her rather eagerly.

“Yeah, I’m sure it is,” she says, downing her drink. She gestures for another. She should be relieved that Twist has her back, but she could also tell by his tone that there would be compensation in return.

****

Callie and Twist had been at the bar waiting for confirmation on their cargo from his men when another train crew came into the bar. Callie recognized them immediately and she immediately bristled.

“Don’t look now, but our day just got worse.” Callie said under her breath to Twist, “The Torque is here.”

“Wow, they should raise the standards on who they let in here.” Said Twist, looking over his second glass of wouj dlo. Callie could smell the sweet red liquor, distilled from beets, from where she was sitting.  

“I heard that, furball,” said Jaxx, making a point of not looking at the crew coming in the door.  “Can’t afford to discriminate at the door. Trust me if I could I would.” He replied under his breath.

The train crew that had come in was the Torque, a rival privateer train contracted by the Kobold Firm. Both firms were basically criminal organizations. However, the Sikorsky Firm maintained a certain appearance of legitimacy and such as things are in the Lower Q, tended toward the shadier side of the moral spectrum. Not that the Kobold firm or the Torque’s crew were any better. They were true mercenaries and would take any job for the right amount of Coin. The difference being, they were just honest about being thieves.  

“Callie, don’t look at him and maybe, just maybe we can get out of this without him–”

“Well, well well, if it innit the Klaxxon…” says one of the two Torque operators.

“Bugger all, it’s Kline.”

Humboldt Kline, the engineer of the Torque was considerably shorter than Callie but just slightly taller than Twist. He was wearing dirty coveralls with an incredibly old leather jacket over it that looked as though it might have been a TDA uniform jacket at one time, however, the patches have been removed. It was unclear if the man was once a Timekeeper or a Dispatch Agent or if he took the jacket off of one of them.

“Word is, you’ve been away for a bit. What’s MadCap got you doing these days?” He asked suspiciously. Sidling up to the bar taking the seat directly to the right of Callie. Rake, his Engineer settled in the booth next to Twist.

“What brings the Torque to Alisade? Fair ways from Tyrmel Station.” Asked Twist, deflecting the question.

“Funny you should ask that, Red. See we just got back from a salvage job just the far side of Clocktower Station over in the Root Quarter,” He said, “Little favor for the Tick-Tock’s, y’know.” He said, with an annoying wink. Kline seemed far too pleased with himself for Callie to be comfortable and way too chatty.

“Word from one of the Agent’s we were working with is someone or another sparked the network just inside the Stone Q without paper. You wouldn’t know anything about that now, would you?” Kline’s partner was sitting with his back to the bar. He was doing his best to stay calm but Callie could feel Twist tense up and one hand was now resting on the hilt of one of his knives while the other still held his drink.

“All they get is a signal spark? Could have been a local roamer.” Said Callie, playing it cool, or trying to.

“The Dispatch sent the Triumph to investigate. And they’re claiming there was a freelance operator on the track that just vanished.” Said, Rake.

“For a supposedly tough as nails privateer, you suddenly seem very chummy with the TDA.” Said Twist. Callie really didn’t like where this was going. She knew Twist thought Kline was a blowhard but really hated Rake. She put her hand on Twists arm to reassure him. He relaxed some but still didn’t take his hand off his knife.

“Chummy with the Tick-tock’s?! Ha! That’s rich coming from MadCap’s hotshot crew. Word is she’s setting up a long-term contract with the big man Exeter hisself.” Kline said. “Seems like the way things are gonna be for all us independents out here. Firms aren’t going to be any better than the Dispatch itself.”

“Yeah, well we’re just trying to stay rolling. MadCap makes that happen for the time being.” Said Callie, finishing her drink. She motioned for Twist to leave. Jaxx stopped them.

“Hey, Callie. Your tab?”

“Bill it to my usual account.” She said, confirming to Jaxx where their payment should go for the freelance job. Thankful of the discrete code. She and Twist made to leave. Just as they were about to reach the door Kline spoke up again.

“Funny thing, that Dispatch train, the Triumph, also said there was a whole mess of Zen Mechanics on the tracks. Looking like they’d been in quite the scuffle and lost. But when the survivors were asked what train they got into it with, they all seem to have memory loss.” Callie knew why the Mechanics weren’t talking, she just didn’t want to admit it. Least of all in front of Kline and Rake.

“Everyone knows the Mechanics are nuts. It’s why we call them suicides.” she countered. “Just saying, aren’t many trains in the wheel can pull off a ‘vanishing act’ and be covered by the Mechanics after an attack.” Said Kline, “MadCap might be paying the bills for now, but should her toy train get caught stepping out? Wouldn’t want to see that happen.”

“That a threat Kline?” Challenged Twist. Callie rolled her eyes because she realized they’d been baited.

“Nope, a friendly warning. If an old Privateer like me can figure it out. Won’t take long for your boss.”

With all of the turmoil and division in our country lately. Between the election, the violence in Charleston, and now the tragedy in Houston. I’ve noticed an increased amount of discussion surrounding religion. This has traditionally been a sensitive subject for me as I’ve only just recently been able to be open and honest about my beliefs within the past 10 years or so. 

Surprisingly, I’ve found that by being open and honest about my own beliefs, I’ve seen them begin to change in a very organic way to a place where I am the most comfortable with my practice and faith than I ever have in the past. I am, however, concerned by own continued temptation to explain or justify said practices to anyone who feels differently or is on a similar but different path. For anyone reading, I apologize, as I’m being intentionally obtuse here, I will get to some specifics in a moment. One of my core beliefs when it comes to religion is that there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution. Everyone finds their own way to peace and enlightenment. Be it through the bible and Jesus, the Torah and Yahweh, or a Book of Shadows and Gaia.

For years I bristled against Christians of all stripes. Primarily because of my resistance to rules and dogma, but also because of a significant amount of negative experiences with various churches in my youth. It would take me another decade and a half before I would meet anyone of the Christian persuasion that I didn’t feel like they wanted to crucify me or burn me at the stake for daring to not adhere to their beliefs. That was when I went to a Jesuit university to finish my bachelors in English and was required to take a theology course taught by the wonderful Jean Weber. She was a Sister of Ignatius and one of the top Bible scholars in the world. When we were asked to go around the room and discuss some of our feelings on faith, I took a chance and came out of the broom closet, so to speak. At that time, I was still identifying as Wiccan. Dr. Weber’s response to my honesty was so remarkable that It stuck with me forever. Here’s this dyed in the wool member of the Catholic church, and here’s this thirty something non-traditional student in a night course declaring that he’s a witch in front of a class of theology students and her response is,“That’s fantastic, I don’t have a lot of experience there but I’d love to learn more from you.” This has been my own go to response to anyone of a faith I’m not familiar with ever since. I’ve responded this way to everyone from Mormons to LaVeyan Satanists, and have found that this response garners me more respect than scorn.

But as I’ve stated in the beginning, my openness to talk about my particular belief and religious leanings have allowed me to examine it and allow it to evolve. When I was asked in that class almost 10 years ago, I was still identifying as Wiccan. I had been identifying as Wiccan since college as at a time when I needed spiritual help the most in my life, I was met with not Christians offering to help, but a group of novice Witches, who embraced me with no judgement, and were willing to answer any questions I had, yet did not seem adamant on recruiting me. It would be several years later that I would self-identify as a witch myself. In my time since meeting that group of Wiccans in college, and adopting the practice myself, to coming out openly as a Witch in my 30’s on a Jesuit campus, I’ve picked up a significant amount of study in the area and have adopted an eclectic and singular practice and ideas on faith and belief.
I no longer call myself Wiccan. I know many Wiccans and I respect their practices and their structures. However, those practices and structures do not work for me spiritually any longer. If I’m being honest, I don’t think they ever did. However, at the time that I was finding myself magickly and spiritually, I lacked the confidence, and the vocabulary to identify as anything else. The way in which I identify currently is simply Pagan. Being neither Christian nor Jewish belief and adhering to a pre-Christian polytheistic mindset. Even that is an incomplete description of my beliefs. Though Pagan is the easiest way I have to answer the question, “What is your Religion?” If I were to be more specific I would state that I am a Fictionalist Chaote Weirdsmith. If some of those words sound made-up to you, you’re correct. At a certain point, my spiritual ideas and identity reached a point in which I had to find new ways to identify it. I’ll break it down one by one.

Fictionalist: This one, above the other two, is probably the core of my beliefs. So much so, that much of what informs my belief in this instance supercedes and even contradicts the other parts of my own spiritual identity. I refer to myself as a fictionalist because, I feel all fiction, that being the classification for any story or setting that is derived from imagination, to be sacred. To better illustrate my feelings here, let me use a quote from Neil Gaiman in his book American Gods.

Fiction allows us to slide into these other heads, these other places, and look out through other eyes. And then in the tale we stop before we die, or we die vicariously and unharmed, and in the world beyond the tale we turn the page or close the book, and we resume our lives.

In my own words: 

Fiction is the story of how we see ourselves, told without the constraints of empeirical evidence or plausibility. Our turest selves, without the burdens or banality of experience. Fiction is the experience of life with the boring bits edited out. Fiction demands empathy as you expeirence life though another’s eyes. Just because something is fictional, doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Just because it never happened, doesn’t mean it’s not real.

Often, Christians will bristle when I state that I believe the Bible to be a work of fiction. What they don’t understand is that, for me, that is stating it is sacred. Whether or not the people and places depicted in the book really existed as living breathing people is not as important as the story they tell or the lessons they teach. I also believe that one can learn as much from Tolkien, Jane Eyre, Douglas Adams, Jane Austen, and any other work of literature as you can from the Bible, the Quran, or the Torah. To me, all fiction is Sacred. When I describe myself to others as Pagan, they will sometimes ask if I believe in other gods. I will say I do, I believe in all gods. Does that mean that I believe God or gods exist? No, not empirically, I believe that a deity is a fictional construct that we humans create in order to interact with the world beyond comprehension. That leads me to the second part of my spiritual designation.

Chaote: an easy definition of Chaote is one who practices Chaos Magick. The Wikipedia description of Chaos Magick is

A contemporary magical practice which emphasizes the pragmatic use of belief systems and the creation of new and unorthodox methods.

Which I find fairly accurate. I ran across the concept of Chaos Magick when I was first learning my way around Pagan beliefs. I had a few friends who had dabbled in Discordianism for a time. Finding that to be insufferable, I slowly discovered that my own magickal practice veered away from much of the ritual and methods of traditional witchcraft and Wicca. Still adhering to the basic tenant of Do No Harm, I began experimenting with my own instinctual methods and settled in on a practice that is singular to me, simple, and unorthodox. In my research of Chaos Magick, I learned Sigil Magick from the magician and author Grant Morrison. I came across cartomancy on my own, through exploring my own fascination with playing cards and stage magic. I combined the two and began recording my findings in my own book of Shadows. I understand that there may be a lot of jargon there and what I’ve just typed may not be exactly informative. Though I hope the bit about fictionalism is at least straightforward enough to be intriguing. The Chaote bit is a bit messy by design. It is chaos after all.
Finally, Weirdsmith: This is a term I made up for myself as an identifier that sums up the other two combined. It is also a reminder to myself that whether I regularly practice anything else, be it magick or prayer or anything. I could give all of that up, and as long as I continue to contribute to the general weirdness of the world, I’m still being true to myself.
The purpose of this little missive isn’t to sway anyone to my side of the fence or anything. I have had a number of inquiries into my particular belief structure, and I also feel that describing something in writing is a good way to explore and study it. And in my experience, beliefs need to be studied and explored, and ultimately questioned on a regular basis, if they are to be trusted at all.
So, whatever your belief, be it Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Pagan, or something else entirely, I find it fascinating and hope to learn more from you.  

Today’s words on a page are going to be short and sweet, as Life(™) has decided to become considerably more complicated. 

I won’t get into specifics, but I’ll just say that balancing a day job, home life, dog, and a minor amount of extracurriculars while also trying to write a novel is difficult. When I hear these nuggets of wisdom and advice from professional writers about writing every day and writing every spare minute you can find and first drafts should be done in 3 months (it took nearly a year for mine) I get nervous. As if this very personal and nebulous craft of writing can somehow be done wrong, and I’ve found the way to do just that. Do it wrong. This, of course, leads to a miasma of self-doubt and circular over-thinking that further contributes to my lack of output. This coupled with my tendency toward perfectionism, I realize why I’ve spent two and half weeks revising one chapter repeatedly. So, rather than engage in any more necro-equine abuse, I’ll leave it for now.

If you’ve bothered to read this, please send whiskey, a case of it should do… 

jdk

p.s. Life(™) is a term I borrowed from Greg Rucka… credit where credit’s due. 

I turn 40 in less than a year. For the better part of a decade, my email address has been thirtysomethinggeek and as of next year that address won’t apply to me anymore. So I decided to change it. It turns out, that when deciding your email address in google, you should consider it with the same seriousness as choosing a tattoo because they’re just about as permanent. Doing some web searches online I discovered that there was no way to simply change my email address. I would need to establish an entirely new Gmail account. Which meant an entirely new google account. Bear in mind, I’ve been a loyal android and google infrastructure user for the last 6 or 7 years. And I’ve used the google suite of docs and drive exclusively to write my novel.
Now before I go into the trials and tribulations of me changing my google accounts, let me clarify something. This isn’t just about an email address. This isn’t me being some tech geek wanting to play around on the internet or anything like that. This is about me trying to get my shit together. This is me attempting to carve out a professional space for myself. The past few years was me blindly figuring out how to use the tools at my disposal and this is me cleaning up the toolbox and polishing those tools for a professional job. I think all too often, in the digital space, we can fool ourselves and others that things we do aren’t serious, or don’t count. I think it’s because many of these tools are available to everyone and for the most part, people use them to a fraction of their potential for very personal and sometimes trivial reasons. So when taking these tools and deciding to clear things up to use them in a more professional manner it’s no small thing.
And it wasn’t easy either. Google is very good at being intuitive to your usage patterns and habits. It’s very useful when it comes to providing access to things you use regularly and helping with things like passwords and regularly used files. However, it’s also very good at insinuating itself into your life in ways you never imagined and taking that away to start fresh was daunting, to say the least. I set up my new account and went through the painstaking process of forwarding my mail to my new address and importing most of my old archived email as well. This was simple enough but took forever and I’m still not sure I didn’t duplicate a process and thus given myself multiple copies of emails to work through. I know I did that with my contacts. Why? Because I’m impatient and that is not something to be when working through a process like that. Next, I went about transferring the most important thing, which was my google drive and docs. As I’ve stated, my entire novel, every draft, note, and chapter were stored on my drive. Again, because I was impatient, I didn’t read all the instructions that I found on Lifehacker, and went about doing the transfer a very long and arduous way, that ultimately turned out to not work. I used the google back up and sync function to store all the documents locally to my laptop and re-uploaded those docs to my new drive. What I didn’t take into consideration were the ownership rights of each document. So the next morning when I couldn’t open any of the files to work with them, I was horrified that I’d just deleted and/or corrupted my entire novel. Thankfully, Google doesn’t have an automatic clear-out of the trash folder so I was able to recover all the documents, to my old account. Next, I followed the rules this time and first shared the files to my new account and then changed the ownership. Then there was the changing of emails in all of my various goods and services, banks, subscription sites, credit cards, etc. As well as navigating how exactly the google account system works on your phone and your browser and remembering to check which account is logged in where. At least until I can delete the old account. All said, approximately two and half days outside of my regular work and activities were spent working to get this situation settled.
And to think, I could’ve spent that time writing…
As usual, if you’re reading this, and made it to the end (you poor soul,) please send whiskey.
jdk