tesla waves chapter 3

i don't want to think about chalkboards or anything else. i have a borderline migraine and the mounting sense of space and time dislocation that usually comes shortly before my going blank for an hour or two. i don't need the damn bus driver testing my mental health.

"excuse me?" i say to the driver. he doesn't say anything in reply and just looks straight ahead, making me believe that i may have only imagined that he spoke to me.

my wave badge serves as a bus pass, entitling me to yet another free ride. i board the bus and find a seat as far to the rear as possible. most of the other passengers appear to be u.t. students heading to evening classes.

some of these college kids notice my badge and are sneaking glances at me as i sit down. one guy, cant be more than nineteen or twenty, is staring at me through wire rimmed glasses while typing on his blackberry.

probably a psyche major, taking field notes on me like a zoologist in a rain forest.

i would like to tell him that it is always, always, rude to stare, that i hope i wouldn't behave like him if our positions were reversed.

but i can't work up any real anger towards him because right now i am too worried about going blank. fortunately, i have just enough presence of mind to remember the meditation techniques they taught me in the hospital after i was diagnosed. i start counting my breaths while concentrating on the back of the seat in front of me.

after a few minutes, my headache recedes. when i look up, reality is in it's rightful place. the bus has stopped at the far western edge of campus and the students are all gone. 

as the bus pulls back in to traffic, i hear a voice behind me.

"don't tell me."

i look. the voice belongs to a heavyset young man with a ragged beard and a mountain of dark curly hair covering his forehead almost to his eyes. what gets my attention mostly is that he has a wave badge safety pinned to his flannel shirt.

but he is not being friendly. he is not making polite conversation with a fellow wave person.

"don't tell me. don't tell me. don't.... tell... me..!"

he is yelling and squeezing his eyes shut, a line of spittle running down his chin. in a wave person, this can only mean one thing : mayhem effect. when his eyes open, he will become homicidal to the person closest to him.

his eyes open, and he sees me looking at him, only two seats away. he stands, and i realize how big he is just as he lunges toward me, fists swinging at my head.

to be continued

tesla waves chapter 2

all i am doing is waiting for the bus when a motorcycle cop notices me and pulls to the curb. he talks to me without lifting his face shield.

"feeling okay tonight?"

no. in fact, i hate life right now. but what business is that of his?

"feeling fine, officer."  i force myself to smile.

his question isn't friendly, and he has not picked me at random. wave people have to carry visible identification. it's the law. most of us wear a laminated badge hanging from a neck cord. i also wear an old school med alert bracelet, just in case.

it's the law because approximately thirty percent of wave people become randomly violent. so many of the screamers got shot that the badges were mandated as a way of persuading the cops to use non lethal force.

the cop has a microtaser on the back of his right hand. his fingers are drumming on the handlebars, excited at the possibility of suddenly extending his right arm in my direction and scrambling my neural impulses even worse than they already are. i wonder if i should explain to him that i was diagnosed with the blank effect, not the mayhem effect. that won't matter, though, if he really wants to hurt me.

"yeah, had some problems today. just wanted to see how you were doing. what happened to your head?

what happened to your head, dude, i mean, to make you want to be a cop? i don't dare say that though.

"oh, man. i walked in to a door... shit....!"

act goofy 'cause that's what he expects. he nods and pulls away from the curb, his electric bike humming quietly, leaving nothing behind but the smell of ozone.

the real reason i have a one inch gash on my forehead is that i had what you might call an "episode" at work today.

one second, and i am about to get in to a fight with an asshole waiter (i'm a superior life form because i work in the kitchen).

the next second, and the dumpster next to us begins asking me questions. i had a split second to ponder this phenomena, and it's implications regarding my overall stability. i mean, it's never a good thing when inanimate objects start talking, right?

then the viewmaster changes scenes again and i am on my side, gravel sticking to my cheek, staring at the waiters shoes. i think he must have sucker punched me.

but when i look up he is shaking and talking rapidly.

"dude, dude, it's gonna be okay. they're calling an ambulance right now. just stay still man. they're calling an ambulance." he repeats himself.

i try to say something like: could you please explain to me what happened, and how i came to be in this position?

but all that comes out of my mouth is "whaaaa?"

"dude, you had a seizure or something, they're calling an ambulance" he says for the third time.

that gets my attention. please god, not an ambulance. if i go to a county emergency room, they will call my counselor. my counselor would probably review my case. she might decide that i shouldn't be working, or worse, living in my own apartment. at the very least, she would probably put me on some meds. the kind that will leave me less of a person than i already am.

you have to think about these things when you're a ward of the state.

i sit up. "uhuhuhuh. no fucking ambulance"

"dude, you're bleeding!" and i am. blood is running in to my eyes.

the nameless girl, i think she used to be a waitress but now she's a manager, appears suddenly at my side, hugging me while toweling blood off of my forehead.

"ohhh bobby." she says, exasperated, but with a catch in her throat like she might cry.

i like it when people say my name out loud. it jogs my memory without me having to look at my i.d. card- (fulton, robert daniel, a.k.a. "bobby". d.o.b. 3-8-1988 FWB (federal wave benefits) number... same as my social security number, which i never could remember anyway)-

the ambulance hums to a stop a few feet away. at least they didn't come down the alley with lights and sirens.

the paramedics are all grins and beer guts as they swagger up to me. "what's happening there player?"

i don't know what i'm supposed to say to that. i really just want them to go away.

"he a wave? did he fall out, all of a sudden like?"

my coworkers both nod.

"got a lot of this going around town. some moron put in the wrong feed on the lakeway tower. caused a big ol' surge."

the girl is still hugging my shoulders. "so... what's that have to do with bobby here?"

"look honey, they make anything that uses electricity with a buffer coil these days. folks like your friend here? they don't got one of those."

they seem just then to notice i'm bleeding. they ask if i have hemmo fever.

"are you serious, since when do we have that in austin? he's a wave. he doesn't have the plague."-the girl again. they ask if i can walk to the ambulance. i don't move.

"i'm not going with you. " i finally yelp.

they both look disgusted. one of them mutters something about fucking shockheads.

"you know, he is a person, and you fine people are treating him like a broke down car. what's wrong with you?"

now they're mad at both of us. the waiter steps forward. 

"have you guys had dinner? just fix him up and forget to document. i can get you anything you want, on the house."

the thought of free enchiladas seems to work for the paramedics. they spray the blood away, sanitize the gash, and staple my head. all in less than five minutes.

at least the dumpster kept quiet through all of this.

......

i finally remembered that the manager girls name was haley. haley wanted to pay for a cab to get me home, but i felt like i had caused her enough problems for one day. she asked me three times if i was sure i was okay to take the bus. i finally got away from her.

the bus is approaching. i see that it's not smart, it still has a living, breathing driver. the few remaining capital metro drivers are almost all near retirement age and practice surliness as an art form. they speak only when spoken to, and never look at your face.

the bus pulls up. the door slides open. the driver turns to me, grins and says;

"well how's my favorite chalkboard doing this evening?"

to be continued

tesla waves

i remember having a viewmaster when i was a kid. this was a plastic binocular looking thing that showed 3d images on little cardboard disks that you had to manually turn to view the next images. i had a whole shoebox of these disks. my favorite was the one that told the story of the apollo moon landing.

moon landing. a rocket with spacemen went to the moon and came back in 1969, almost 60 years ago.

i add the moon mission to the list of things i know. when i'm scared or depressed (i'm both right now), i start making a list of all the things i know. sometimes i remember something i don't remember knowing about, like my viewmaster and the moon missions. i picture the three dimensional scene of the return capsule burning with fire as it approached the earth, which was a white and blue half disk in the lower right side of the scene. i was scared to death of the fire and confused about how the astronauts could have splashed down safely after this.

my third grade teacher explained the concept of re-entry to me, something about how the speed of something coming out of space into earths atmosphere produces fire., and that this is what makes shooting stars, which are small meteors burning up when they hit the atmosphere.

sonofabitch! something else i didn't know i knew. i guess the spaceship must have been fireproof.

i would be happy about remembering so many things in one day, but i am confused and scared because the viewmaster with it's manual scene shifter was the first thing i remembered when my day shifted from work to whole foods without any memory of how i got from there to here.

 i must have cried out because people in the store were looking at me and then not looking at me like they were embarrassed for me.

my cell phone buzzed and i fumbled to answer it.

i know the managers name is adam. "hey dude, uh, you left the kitchen without clocking out or saying goodbye and you left a pot of soup on the stove. was this intentional?"

i'm beyond embarrassed. i'm mortified. i start stammering out an apology.

adam just seems tired.. "dude it's okay. nobody is mad at you. do you want to go on home or come back to work?"

i need to go back to work. i need to complete tasks.

adam says to relax. that he will come and get me. he reminds me that my new phone has the memory cue app.. he suggests i study it while i wait.

i go the store's outside cafe and find a table away from other people.

i activate the memory cue and review a series of wikipedia articles which explain to me, for probably the umpteenth time, about how the last major energy crisis was solved when a team of scientists funded by a texas billionaire studied the notes of a genius named tesla who thought that electricity should flow through the air from the source to the user, not through wires. he also thought that the planet was covered with some kind of naturally occurring electrical grid that could be tapped into for free.

well, not exactly free. it took a multi billionaire funding thousands of brilliant minds about twelve years, but they finally cracked the code. figured out where tesla had got it wrong when he came so close to getting it right. the electricity was everywhere and needed only a special magnet to pull it out of thin air.

these articles have been customized for a reader like me. which is a polite way of saying they were dumbed down. i had a problem understanding science even before my brain got fried.

shockhead. frybrain. the current politicly correct term for people like me is "wave people".

i hate that. call me a frybrain 'cause that's what i am.

everything has a price. people like me were the price of free energy. after the squat, black pyramids housing the e-receivers began appearing just about everywhere, people like me started acting funny. some of us were vague, detached from reality. some of us went completely crazy, even became violent. some of us heard voices.

and there were a lot of people, like me, who might remember how to tie their left shoe but not their right.

a car honks and i look up. it's actually two cars, one with adam and one with his wife. i put the phone away and stand up.

adam smiles weakly. "hey dude, my shift is over, so i'm just going to put you in my car, i'll pick it up tomorrow."

he gestures towards the passenger door of his car and walks to the other car.

wtf! he knows i can't drive with my condition. oh yeah. smart car. i get in the passenger seat and fasten the seat belt.

the car leaves the parking lot and merges in to traffic. a computerized female voice says "arriving at seraphim diner in...fifteen...minutes."

exactly fifteen minutes later the car parks itself behind the diner. i walk in the back door and in to the prep kitchen. people look at me. some have names, some don't. some like me, some don't. i wash my hands, find a cutting board and a knife, then realize i have no idea what i'm supposed to be doing.

a girl without a name walks up to me. "hey, i'm glad you came back. we need california rolls for dinner and maybe some ziti. then you can stock the kitchen and go home." she gives me an artificial smile.

all of this takes me about ninety minutes. every so often i glance up from my tasks. here and there government mandated signs are posted on the walls. safe food temperatures, basic first aid, federal minimum wage.

the one i keep looking at details the employment rights of "wave people". the feds consider me disabled. since my employer gets most of my salary rebated by the i.r.s, i have a right to demand customized video memory cues and memstim programs.

i don't make these demands. it means a lot to me to remember how to do something. my california rolls have all seven ingredients. i stock almost everything on the proper shelves the first time.

as i throw my trash in the dumpster, i smell pot. the nameless girl and a nameless guy are smoking just around the corner. they didn't look to see who was throwing out the trash.

"....wave people. just stops what he's doing around two o clock and walks out without a word, adam has to go drag him back."

"why did he bother?"

"well. he's not so bad some days. plus we get a lot of his salary back from the feds."

"have they thought about just not paying him? not like he would remember."

i round the corner and walk into a cloud of smoke and laughter. they both look at me, startled and then frightened. the guy hands a pipe to me like some kind of peace offering.

"can't. my memory is already fucked. remember?"

it seems like i am trying for sarcasm, but i don't know what that word means.

i form my hands into fists.

the dumpster clears it's throat.

to say that this changes everything..... gross understatement.

i look at the dumpster. it is still an industrial sized metallic trash container . green paint giving way to rust in spots, Central Texas Refuse stenciled on the side facing me. but it has suddenly acquired sentience. and it is talking to me.

"you didn't pay for anger, so i'm not allowing that indulgence. are you ready to be a chalkboard again?"

to be continued