5 pages

I'm running for Judge

2010-09-02T07:32:00.003-08:00

I live in Middleton, Wisconsin, and I'm running for Judge in Dane County, Wisconsin, in the Spring 2011 Elections.

For more information, visit Pagel For Judge:

www.pagelforjudge.com

The Scariest Things, You Can't Imagine

2010-08-25T08:14:00.001-08:00

The Scariest Things,
You CAN'T Imagine,
a collection of macabre horror stories you'll never forget.

A shape-shifting demon torments children while their parents stand by. A widower haunted by the ghost of his wife tries to understand her requests. A baby stolen from his mother by gargoyles returns, full of hatred for the life he's led. A family of children raised by grave-robbing corpse stealers tries to discover a way out. An elderly man possesses the power of life and death in his retirement. These stories present images and people who will haunt your thoughts for a long time after you read them.

See a preview below, and click here to buy it on Lulu.com.

Look for it on your Kindle for $0.99!

The Scariest Things, You Can't Imagine

2010-08-25T08:14:00.000-08:00

Chapter 14:

2010-06-27T13:52:00.012-08:00

Pages 1-5

Pages 6-10

Pages 11-15

Pages 16-20

Pages 21-25

Pages 26-30

Pages 31-35

Pages 36-40

Pages 41-45

Pages 46-50

Pages 51-53

******************************************

Looking for something in particular in a person? Something... kinky? Why not try findkinkypeople.com -- a great way to meet people who like the stuff you like, even if the stuff you like is a little off the beaten path. Or a lot off the beaten path. Or way way off the beaten path. In fact, you could probably find someone even if you like the beaten path.

That's probably a metaphor or something. A kinky metaphor.

Chapter 14 (A Crowd Of People Closes In, pages 51-53)

2010-08-24T03:52:00.001-08:00

Song for this part: "Road To Joy," Bright Eyes:

“You were here before,” Saoirse said. “I didn’t lead you here.” It seemed to her important to not receive credit for his being here.

“When I got rid of you, I got rid of me, too. I woke up the next morning, as gone as you were.” William Howard Taft moved towards the Tree now, peering at the buds on the branches as he spoke. “I woke up, oddly enough, in that house where your friend lived with you. He was quite irate to find me there, and even more irate to find you and your son, Chuck, not there.”

Saoirse wanted to say serves you right but really, she should have said it before he finished, should have interjected it when he said that he was gone out of the garden. If she said it now, it would sound like she was saying that Rory was the part that served him right.

Instead, she said “Don’t touch the tree.”

William Howard Taft looked at her, then. “I’m not going to, yet.”

“I mean it. Don’t.” She was surprised at how serious she was about the warning. When Taft laughed, a little, and turned around to walk towards the trunk Saoirse followed him. “I mean it. Listen to me. You can’t do this.” He ignored her and walked up almost to the trunk, held his hand, palm towards the trunk, inches away, and looked at her.

“Feel it.” He said. When she didn’t move, he grabbed her wrist and held it so that her hand was, like his, facing the trunk of the tree but not touching it. “Do you feel that?”

“No…” she began, but paused. She did feel something. She felt… warmth. And power. The two feelings were a strange mix that somehow worked. It felt to her like the feeling she used to get when one of her children would crawl into bed, scared, to lie between her and Austin. Stephanie, especially, had liked to do that. When she was 3 she had frequently come into their room late at night, nervous about the dark. Always a light sleeper, Stephanie. Saoirse hadn’t minded, but felt as a parent she was supposed to do something, so during lunch one day Saoirse addressed it:

“What scares you at night?” she’d asked.

Stephanie had said “The dark.”

Saoirse had told her “We got you a nightlight, you know.”

Stephanie replied: “It still leaves the dark in my room.”

That night they had started leaving her light on in her room, trying to make it that no part of her room was dark. It hadn’t worked; Stephanie had come crawling into their bed again. The next day, at breakfast, Saoirse asked what was wrong now. “We left your light on,” she said to Stephanie.

Stephanie had said “It’s still dark outside.”

After that, even with her light on, they let her crawl into bed with them whenever she wanted, waiting until Stephanie grew enough to not mind the dark outside – the dark that even her parents could not get rid of.

And on those nights when Stephanie had climbed into bed with them, she’d done the same thing each time. She would start at the foot of the bed, climbing up over the headboard. She would walk between them until she reached the pillows, and then would slide her legs down under the covers between Saoirse and Ansel, inch by inch, trying not to disturb the blankets, until she was lying in between her parents. She would lay there, motionless, for a few seconds, before turning towards Saoirse and putting her arm around her mother’s shoulders and snuggling in to her.

After that was done, Saoirse would lay there awake, feeling warm from the contact and powerful, because she might not be able to banish the dark but she could provide a place of safety and comfort that made the dark irrelevant.

Warmth and power: that came from the tree, but the sensation was more complicated even, almost beyond Saoirse’s ability to categorize it. Those feelings flowed from the Tree so powerfully that Saoirse could not imagine pulling her hand back, even after William Howard Taft let go her wrist. It was all she could do, in fact, to not push it more forward to actually touch the Tree.

But she, like Taft, did not press forward or dare to touch the Tree. They both stood there, hands held up, for a long time.

“You still can’t do it,” Saoirse said, eventually, and softly. But she did not move away or even look away from the Tree as she said it.

It's not just me that says I'm a good writer!

2010-08-23T06:12:00.001-08:00

Just Exactly How Life Looks, a collection of short stories, was recently called "funny to sad to a little strange," and includes the story "God Shrugged," which READING AT THE BEACH called "...an interesting take on the Crucifixion of Jesus, from a more modern day time, it was very good, but sad also."

Check out a preview below. Or read the Reading At The Beach review here.

Click here to buy Just Exactly How Life Looks at Lulu.com

Click here to buy Just Exactly How Life Looks on your Kindle.

Chapter 14 (A Crowd Of People Closes In, pages 46-50)

2010-08-14T05:57:00.001-08:00

Song for this part: "Breathe Me", Sia:

She rolled onto her side, looking at him. Salt water trickled down across her nose, tickling her. He lay on his stomach, eyes closed and back heaving with breaths he struggled to control. She noticed that his hat was still clutched in his hand. They were both barefoot. A shadow lay near his hand and she turned her eyes in that direction, seeing what she expected to see, the Tree.

“How did you know?” she asked.

He simply lay there, breathing, hard, and moved his hand weakly. She didn’t know what that meant,. She sat up.

The Tree looked the same as it had in her dream: Wide trunk, immensely wide and smooth. It had the crenellations that all bark had, but they, too, were smooth, giving the trunk a strangely polished appearance, lacquered deep-set wrinkles, as if wisdom had been preserved in amber. The trunk went straight up only about 6 feet before spreading out into wide thick branches that sprung out horizontal to the ground, giving the tree a shadow with a diameter of many many dozens of feet.

The two of them were not underneath the canopy provided by the Tree, but instead just outside of it. The tree spread out like an umbrella or half-globe and from this vantage she could see the branches dividing and redividing and covered with leaves.

The leaves, she saw now, were a silvery-green and blurred a little, she thought – or not blurred, but always different, so that each leaf was a slightly different shape and color, a myriad of hues all falling into the general category of silver-green but all slightly different, the way a crowd of people at first seems the same but then erupts into dissimiliarities. The leaves were motionless, and yet were not; they felt like movement as she watched, an imagination of motion that existed, if it did, in spite of the fact that there was no breeze. She tried to focus on the leaves to decide if they really were moving, and as she did, she remembered doing exactly just that when Stephanie had been first born.

Saoirse stared at the tree and remembered, wondering why the thought had sprung into her mind so vividly.

It was the middle of the night when Stephanie was only three days old that Saoirse had watched to see if she was moving. The baby Stephanie still slept in a bassinet in her parent’s room, at the end of the bed. Ansel had gotten up to go to the bathroom and in doing so had woken Saoirse. Their bedroom at the time had been in an apartment, nearer the city, and the streetlights had been close outside and lit their bedroom up more than she cared for, more than she had ever gotten used to. She had sat up in the bed and listened to the bedroom door close and the bathroom door close.

In the middle of the night, in the stillness, Saoirse had suddenly been hit with the fear that Stephanie was not okay. She sat and suddenly wondered if Stephanie was breathing, and had crawled to the end of the bed and peered at Stephanie, wrapped snugly in a blanket and laying next to a tiny little giraffe, and watched her to prove to herself that she was breathing.

It felt like hours that she stared, time in which she saw nothing. So she’d put out her hand, but couldn’t feel breath from Stephanie’s tiny nose. Still seeking proof, she picked up Stephanie’s hand and put her thumb in the baby’s palm. Stephanie gripped the thumb, and Saoirse, who still hadn’t seen her baby breath, relaxed. She could not have grabbed my hand if she wasn’t alive, even if I didn’t see her move, she’d thought. For several nights, Saoirse had repeated that little ritual, alone in the bedroom while Ansel was downstairs, or when Ansel slept.

Now, she sat near the Tree and watched and wondered if it was moving, if there was a breath or pulse or wind that affected the Tree that was too subtle for her to feel, and wondered if she should touch the Tree to find out, if she could reach out and put her hand on a leaf and find out that way.

She decided she should not do that.

She heard movement off to her right but stayed looking at the tree, because by then she had noticed the tiny little buds that grew scattered amongst the leaves. Hundreds, probably thousands of them, tiny, darker green, pebble-like in their appearance, except that a few of them at the tip had glimpses of something… of a color that she could not quite describe… beginning to appear in cracks at the tips.

The Tree was flowering soon. Those buds were the beginning of flowers, which were the beginning of fruits, she knew. Hundreds, if not thousands, of fruits, would be appearing on the Tree probably in a matter of a week or so.

She looked over at William Howard Taft, who was getting to his feet, still wet and breathing hard.

“You’re a little early,” she said.

William Howard Taft turned to her and said “It’s not so difficult, really.

“What isn’t?” Saoirse asked, confused.

“Finding others like me, like you. That is, it is very difficult to find others like you, others who hold the key to returning.”

“I’m a little uncomfortable with that idea.”

“But you do. It’s as I told you, and I just proved it to you, now. You even had the right idea, back at your house, for how to control the After, something you deduced quickly after arriving here, while it took me a much longer time.” He looked at the Tree, reached out a hand and held it just a tiny bit away from the leaves, almost but not quite touching one. “And, you realized more quickly than anyone I’ve ever run into what had happened to you. How did you do that?” He turned towards her, now.

Saoirse looked down at her toes. “It was too perfect,” she said.

“Ah.”

They stood there while William Howard Taft reached out again and again pulled his hand back again. He waved it under the leaves.

“Is it still?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

“Is it?” he asked again.

Saoirse thought about that. “Maybe,” she said. Then: “How did you find people? How did you keep Chuck with you?”

“The second part is simple. I never let go of his hand.”

“What?”

“I never let go of his hand, I said. It’s possible to keep someone in your After, I’ve found, or in my After, by simply keeping them there. Force of will, is my deduction. And that is easier to do if physically the presence is kept there.”

Saoirse thought about that. As she did, she kept thinking how many times since she arrived here she had walked away from her family, run away from them, swam away from them.

“And you,” William Howard Taft “Needed to be kept near me. I suspected that from the moment we first talked and you took me to those places. Now I have proven my theory right because again you have led me to the Garden and this time, directly to this Tree.”

Navel rings: Not just for Supreme Court Justices Anymore.

2010-08-14T05:52:00.003-08:00

I just took a survey of the people around me about whether navel rings are cool or not, and got these ACTUAL responses:

1. "You're NOT getting a navel ring, you're a lawyer."
2. Mr F walked away.
3. "Okay, then, tough guy," (said by Mr Bunches, who likes to quote "Toy Story" these days.)

That's the problem with totally scientific surveys conducted at my house on a Saturday morning. But you don't have to believe "science," anyway -- you can just believe that belly piercings are a hot trend right now for the young and sexy, and that includes YOU, right? Well, it WILL if you get one of the real gold belly rings available online at Bellybling.net -- where you can get all your piercing accessories and keep up with the neighbors. You don't want them to outsexy you, do you? 'Cause they will. After all, I asked ANOTHER group of random participants whether the neighbors were hipper than you, and got these responses...

1. "Will you quit bugging me and make yourself useful?" (That was Sweetie.)
2. "Seriously, I'm busy here and you're not helping." (Sweetie again.)
3. "Who are you, again?" (That was a guy that was jogging by.)

navel piercing

Friday's Update On Take A Book For Charity:

2010-08-13T04:15:00.002-08:00

While I wait to hear back from Neil Gaiman about whether he's willing to Take A Book For Charity, I've also started to ask other authors to get involved. This week's Invitee:

Piers Anthony. Piers might be the single most prolific, and one of the top 5 creative, writers in the history of writing; he out-Shakespeare's Shakespeare in terms of his imagination and sheer output. You can find out more about him at his site, but I recommend getting to know him the way I did: read his great series, like The Xanth series or the Incarnations of Immortality, which was one of the inspirations for my own Lesbian Zombies Are Taking Over The World! blog.

I'll let you know what Piers says; in the meantime, read on for more information or maybe go ahead and buy the books as outlined below:
____________________________________________________

The Take A Book program, remember, is meant to raise funds to help Mateo and McHale Shaw:

pay their medical bills; born conjoined twins, the Shaw boys have needed a lot of medical care in their lives, and will need a lot more, but they've used up their insurance coverage for a lifetime.

I'm raising money by selling a Take A Book For Charity Prize Package, which costs $50, and includes:

-- The multi-autographed copy of my book Eclipse -- a copy of my book signed by Dave Eggers, Patrick Rothfuss, and the rock band Murder Mystery (and, hopefully soon, by Neil Gaiman.)
-- A copy of each of my other books.
-- the T-shirt of your choice from my collection.
-- A copy of The Name Of The Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, sent to me with his return of the autographed copy of Eclipse.

Also, when you purchase the Take A Book Package, I'll not only send your $50 to the Shaws' fund, but I'll throw in an additional $10 per autograph in the book, in your name -- so you'll get a right-now-$100 charitable contribution in your name, plus five books, plus a t-shirt, all for just $50.

If you're interested in buying the package, contact me at thetroublewithroy[at]yahoo.com. Put "take a book" in the subject line.

Click here to go find out more about and buy stuff from Patrick Rothfuss,

Click here to go to Murder Mystery's Myspace page, and

Click here to go to Dave Eggers' McSweeney's Internet Tendency page.

The Shaw Twins were born conjoined and have gone through more operations than I can count. Given only a 5% chance of survival at birth, they've survived and thrived and they and their parents are not only nice people who can use a hand, but charitable people as well: They're helping build an accessible playground in their neighborhood. I'll give you more details in the future.

For more information about the Shaw Twins, go here. To read up on the blog their parents keep and find out how to help more directly, go to "Caring Bridge" and type "Mateoandmchaleshaw" into the "Visit a Caring Bridge Site.'

Want to help directly? You can send your contributions to the Shaws to:

Mateo and McHale Shaw Irrevocable SNT
C/O Kohler Credit Union
850 Woodlake Road
Kohler, WI 53044

Online gaming sites, Owen Wilson, and more.

2010-08-13T04:10:00.001-08:00

If you like gambling, but can't afford to go to Las Vegas (or are afraid that when you get there, those mob guys will realize you're there and will send their goons to finally get revenge on you for stealing their girlfriend and secretly marrying her in Atlantic City before settling down to run a small business producing Birch Syrup in New Hampshire, resulting in you having to go on the run to try to get back to her before the mob kills her -- but the only way to get back to New Hampshire is to ride a Greyhound Bus full of wacky copassengers who ultimately join you in your battle against the criminals, to hilarious effect)(Okay, that probably didn't happen, but it IS a screenplay I'm writing, called "BUSted!")

Where was I? Oh, yeah -- you can gamble on the Internet, you know. All you have to do is find the best games, and you can do that by reading the reviews of casino games at Jogella.com and Flaming Lotus Creations (flaminglotuscreations.com). The way they run through the facts on the casino games is great: they let you know which online sites are good, which are bad, which have bonuses for joining, and they have the links and downloads you'll need right on the site, so no further searching around.

So if you want to find the best gaming sites online, check out those links. And if you want to produce my script -- I'm thinking Owen Wilson as the mobster -- drop me a line.

Chapter 14 (A Crowd Of People Closes In, pages 41-45)

2010-08-11T05:20:00.000-08:00

Song for this part: "Bouncing Round The Room."

Saoirse dove after him, immediately, thinking, as she had on the beach, about her family, and about the things here felt so real—the sand had scribbled under her feet and been hot and the water was warm and coarse-feeling, with salt seeming to scrub her as she dove down. I’ve never even been in the ocean, she thought, and yet the water seemed actual.

She realized the pursuit was futile almost immediately. The water was green and dark and no light filtered down. She could not see him and turned back, bobbing to the surface, gasping for air and clearing her eyes. The wind still slapped at the water in gusts creating waves that pushed her. She tried to hold her position but wasn’t sure what her position was. More thunder rumbled and the clouds raced through the sky, roiling, making her wonder if it was a hurricane. Could there be hurricanes here? Would she be watching news of tragedies in the After? She caught her breath and then wondered why she’d done that and as her mind hit on that – why did I worry about catching my breath?—she dove again this time not bothering to take a breath first.

As she dove straight down the sounds from the surface faded away. There was the wind howling and waves splashing, then just her pulse and a soft pressure on her that seemed to block sound. Her eyes continued to be no good at picking out details: it was darker green below, and lighter green above, and speck-filled cloudy water in between. She dove as straight as she could, down…down…down… her arms following the peculiar beat of swimming, movement with too many pauses and too slow but movement anyway, arms pushing awkwardly, unaccustomed to being the propulsive force for her body.

She kept at it.

Her lungs did not hurt.

Her eyes did not cloud over.

The surface din grew distant.

She moved downward and tried to stop wondering when she would black out, when her pulse would stop, when she would bob to the surface. She hadn’t been hurt jumping off the roof. Or the farm-island. None of the lightning had struck her. She reminded herself of those things as all light faded and the water wrapped around her like a sodden, heavy blanket, interfering inanimately with her movements.

Time underwater stretched out in the same uneven manner that her movements did. She kept moving downward and thought that the green was greener. She thought she saw a speck and then was sure: it was a speck, a dark speck, and it was moving oddly, too. She tried to speed up, to swim harder, but found it difficult; she had only one speed.

The figure ahead was William Howard Taft, diving, too, swimming downward and downward like her, pushing against the water and his own buoyancy. She was, again, gaining on him but she was slowed, distracted by the greening of the water around her.

The light grew more green, more solid, and she could see better until suddenly it was a moot point, and she was lying on grass in the Garden, and so was William Howard Taft, and they were both soaking wet. He was panting, she was not.

Now, if I could watch Paul McCartney play QB for the Wisconsin Badgers, at these prices... well that'd be just great. Just great.

2010-08-11T05:04:00.002-08:00

I'm not very big on going to sporting events in person, but the kids like to do it, and relatives and friends like to do that, too, so every now and then I'll break down and buy some tickets to a Packer or seats at a Badger game, or maybe even the Brewers, and take the family to see a game.

And generally, the seats that I can afford for those outings are miserable -- they're either for opponents that are terrible -- like the "NIU Huskies vs. the Wisconsin Badgers" or they're so high up in the stadium that we need FAA permission to order nachos.

I didn't have a choice in the past about that, because I had to take the tickets I could afford. Now, though, I've found out about the StubHub coupon code available at Savings.com.

Savings.com, I thought, was just for people who want 25% off on their purchase of electronics or a $1 back on peanut butter. But they've got savings on TICKETS, for sporting events and live shows -- right now today there were deals available for discounts on Jay-Z tickets, if you like that kind of things, and Paul McCartney tickets -- and everyone likes THAT kind of thing, 'cause Paul is great. There's even codes for NFL tickets, so I might FINALLY be able to watch an NFL game between two NFL teams, instead of having to settle for those preseason things where they take on Local Scout Troop 2354 (which is still a tougher fight than Cleveland. Am I right?)

I'll be back soon.

2010-08-09T17:46:00.000-08:00

Hey, remember that thing where I almost died twice?

Turns out it's not over yet and I've got to go get some doctor-y stuff done, so I'll be out Tuesday, August 10, and maybe a little longer than that. Thanks for your patience. Maybe check out some of my other blogs that you haven't had time to read up on lately, and also enjoy this optical illusion -- thanks to Petri Dish's suggestion that I do this whenever I make people wait for my posts.
(from Mighty Optical Illusions.)

Thinking The Lions: Make Life More Interesting. Stories about me, and the things I think, and the songs I listen to. But mostly about me.

The Best Of Everything: Our Opinions Are Righter Than Yours! Pop culture served up with a side of philosophy, and sprinkled with inanity. And superheroes, because... well, just because.

Nonsportsmanlike Conduct! The sports blog for people who hate sports blogs.

AfterDark: Short horror stories in serial form. Up now: Temporary Anne: The Hunting. Join Temporary Anne as she tries to find a way to finally be free of Mephistopheles' curse on her existence.

5 Pages: Read a serialized novel 5 pages at a time. Up now: the After: When Saoirse dies in a plane crash and wakes up in Heaven, her first instinct is go home. After meeting William Howard Taft and finding a way back, though, she's no longer sure whether her seemingly fake existence is better than what he plans.

Lesbian Zombies Are Taking Over The World! Rachel woke up two weeks ago, not sure who or what she was. On the advice of her Octopus she set out on an adventure that finds her falling in love with a betraying waitress, making out with her own clone, and leading an army of lesbian zombies in a battle to save the 73 dimensions.

Family and Consumer Law: The Blog: Actual legal information, hidden amongst the sarcasm and stupid lawyer jokes.

Chapter 14: A Crowd Of People Closes In (Pages 36-40)

2010-08-05T03:40:00.000-08:00

Song for this part: "Aloha Oe," Johnny Cash:

“But I did learn to take a more active role … in others lives. I gathered, after some time, that most of us here in the After are in our own worlds, our own existences, that each of us creates an After of our own. Before today, I never came across more than one other person at a time who was aware, who knew. I would meet them, and nobody else in their world appeared to know the truth. My conclusion, and it is only a hypothesis, because how can I prove it right or wrong, is that each of us is alone in the After, each of us is alone… in paradise, living here with imaginings we create.

Or we were, until me, that is. Once I walked away from my life, I met others like me and like you, people who were aware of this existence, aware of how it differed from the real that we had known. And over time I realized that nobody I met had ever met another like me.

“That made me …” William Howard Taft paused again. “… Well, I did not like to think about that.”

The sky was darkening. There were clouds moving in, quickly, not the peaceful calm drifting clouds that flow across the sky until they blanket away the sun, but the tremulous advance that starts white and becomes gray to eventually turn black and threatening. She heard a rumble.

“I continued to search for the Garden,” William Howard Taft said, “But I also did not like the feeling that I would, ultimately, be alone. No matter how wonderful the world tried to be, I did not want to be alone.”

The wind picked up and carried his voice away, making it thinner and harder to hear, as the increasing waves lifted them up and down, up and down, more often and more powerfully. There were more rumbles. Saoirse remembered the rain storm outside the Pizza Lady’s store and suggested that they head back.

“No,” William Howard Taft said. “I will not.”

“You can’t stay here,” she said.

“I will.”

She floated there, with him, as the clouds became thicker, the rumbling more frequent, the day darker still. The clouds stretched behind her now to the horizon almost and she could only see a thin crevasse of daylight between the water she’d swum through to get here and the clouds that pressed down from above. She pondered swimming for it herself.

“I kept Chuck with me,” said William Howard Taft, suddenly. He said it so quietly, and the wind was now so powerful, that Saoirse barely heard it.

“What?” she asked, the rumbling now constant and growing louder. There was no rain yet, no lightning. Just thunder, over and over and over, and the wind, frosthing the tips of the waves.

“I learned how to do that,” William Howard Taft said. Saoirse tried to focus on what he was saying, trying to keep the water out of her mouth and to stay near him. She fought the urge to turn around, to swim back to shore, to find Ansel and dry off and spend the rest of the day, the rest of their vacation, the rest of eternity, lying in that bed with him in the house with no air conditioning. She did not want to be floating here in the ocean with William Howard Taft during a looming thunderstorm.

But she listened.

“When you walked away from your world, when you left that restaurant, I stood up and I took Chuck’s hand and I led him outside the restaurant, too, and began journeying through what has become my After, an amalgam of the worlds I have seen and the worlds I have imagined and the worlds that have been seen and imagined by those who have passed on. I kept him with me at all times,” William Howard Taft was almost shouting, now, as the rumbling became actual peals of thunder ringing on top of each other, beginning to come so rapidly that the booms and crashes tumbled over each other in their rush to pound the ocean. The waves hauled at the two of them, pulling them down and pushing them up and across. Saoirse was swimming in place and wanted desperately to turn towards the shore. “I kept him with me,” William Howard Taft said, “Because I knew you held the key! Because of the pool and the ocean, you see!”

Water hit Saoirse in the face. The wind howled.

“When I first met you, when your worlds began dissolving and reforming, we saw a tidal pool. We saw an ocean. The ocean with the stars, the calm ocean, the stars so close. And I knew, I knew what those meant. I understood what the symbols were telling me!” A wave careened over him and he went under. Saoirse blinked water out of her eyes, spit it out of her mouth, looked around. She could only hear thunder, could only see dark green foaming waves that appeared to be watery versions of the clouds that seemed to hold angrily just above her head now. She spun around, and looked for the man, for his black coat and sopping moustache and round puffy drooping red-sunburned face.

Behind her, she heard sputtering and spun again. He was only a foot away as he surfaced, talking again. “I knew what the tidal pools and ocean meant,” he yelled. “I knew that we are in a tidal pool, that we could only stay there, stay there until either the ocean took us back or something lifted us from that pool into a new existence somewhere else. The tidal pool is an interim existence and nothing leaves it on its own. We would be taken back to the ocean or taken on to something else. And then…” he sputtered and went under again, and Saoirse had trouble staying afloat herself. Ansel, she thought, and pictured him, the children, on the shore, staring at the clouds. Would they wait for her? When would they get out of the storm? Then, she wondered Is the beach even still there?

“We went to the ocean,” William Howard Taft said, closer to her. He was right next to her face, and she felt his hand brush her arm as they paddled to stay up, as they rode up waves and down them. “And the stars were so close to the ocean and the ocean was so calm, and I knew it was a sign, a sign that I was to seek the ocean, and that the ocean was life. I was to leave this tidal pool and go back to life.”

More thunder cracked and a wave broke on top of them and he sputtered again and cleared his eyes and spit and Saoirse did the same.

“That was why I had to keep Chuck with me,” William Howard Taft told her. Then he dove down and began paddling down under water.

Friday's Update On Take A Book For Charity:

2010-07-30T05:45:00.002-08:00

I haven't forgotten about Take A Book For Charity. I've asked Author Neil Gaiman, via his assistant, if he would be interested in signing the circulated copy of Eclipse; while I haven't heard back yet, I'm sure he gets tons of emails and it may take a while to get through to him. I'll keep you posted on that.

The Take A Book program, remember, is meant to raise funds to help Mateo and McHale Shaw:

pay their medical bills; born conjoined twins, the Shaw boys have needed a lot of medical care in their lives, and will need a lot more, but they've used up their insurance coverage for a lifetime.

I'm raising money by selling a Take A Book For Charity Prize Package, which costs $50, and includes:

-- The multi-autographed copy of my book Eclipse -- a copy of my book signed by Dave Eggers, Patrick Rothfuss, and the rock band Murder Mystery (and, hopefully soon, by Neil Gaiman.)
-- A copy of each of my other books.
-- the T-shirt of your choice from my collection.
-- A copy of The Name Of The Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, sent to me with his return of the autographed copy of Eclipse.

Also, when you purchase the Take A Book Package, I'll not only send your $50 to the Shaws' fund, but I'll throw in an additional $10 per autograph in the book, in your name -- so you'll get a right-now-$100 charitable contribution in your name, plus five books, plus a t-shirt, all for just $50.

If you're interested in buying the package, contact me at thetroublewithroy[at]yahoo.com. Put "take a book" in the subject line.

Click here to go find out more about and buy stuff from Patrick Rothfuss,

Click here to go to Murder Mystery's Myspace page, and

Click here to go to Dave Eggers' McSweeney's Internet Tendency page.

Mateo and McHale Shaw Irrevocable SNT
C/O Kohler Credit Union
850 Woodlake Road
Kohler, WI 53044

Tomorrow Night: Me + Internet Radio + You = Good Times, and maybe a free book.

2010-07-30T05:44:00.000-08:00

Just a reminder that I'll be a guest on the wildly popular radio show hosted by James Strait; I'll be appearing at 6:30 p.m. Eastern Time, August 1, 2010.

As the post title notes, you probably have a radio laying around, but why bother ever looking away from your laptop screen? You haven't turned off the Internet in 3 years, so don't start now. Instead, You can listen live here.

Originally, we were going to talk about indie publishing and my blogs. In light of recent events, I'm expecting to repeatedly explain that although I have sky-high cholesterol, that wasn't why I almost died. So jot down the date and time and tune in.

I'll be giving away a book to anyone who listens -- all you have to do is comment or email me with a quote from the show I'm on and you'll get a free book.

See you on August 1 at 6:30.

Coming soon: Hours of my home movies, available online. (I know you're excited about that.)

2010-07-30T05:38:00.002-08:00

I'm in the market for one of the newer digital camera camcorders . My old one is still serviceable, I guess, but I got it about 6 years ago. As a camcorder it's okay -- but it doesn't have much range, and the images aren't that high-definition, and it's pretty big and bulky. Plus the battery power lasts only a couple of hours, so recording enough video from a Saturday Adventure with my Babies! is tough.

Newer pocket camcorders have better resolution, more easily transferable images, and better battery life. That's just the way tech goes, and that's why I've been checking out PCworld-- PC World.co.uk -- to read up on the latest and best camcorders and pocket camcorders. They've got those FLIP video minicamcorders that are about the size of my cell phone and can take 60 minutes of video before needing to transfer; I like the size and I like that I could record a whole hour without problems, but I may need more memory, too. The FLIP Ultra II is only a little more but it gets 2 hours of video in lower-light conditions, so if we're out at dusk or in the reptile house at the Zoo, I can use it there, too.

I'll probably go with that one. Now, where'd Sweetie hide those credit cards?

So I Almost Died

2010-07-25T06:48:00.002-08:00

Sorry to have not posted anything in a while. I've been in the hospital -- and still am. But I'll be up and around soon. It's nothing serious; I just almost died. Twice.

So be patient and I'll be back soon. Here's what I'm listening to as I get back to speed:

Two things to keep in mind, dealing with radio and debating.

2010-07-15T03:43:00.004-08:00

Don't forget: I'll be a guest on the wildly popular radio show hosted by James Strait; at 6:30 p.m. Eastern Time, August 1, 2010 I'll match wits with the host of Strait Talk to discuss my writing, my blogging (which is, somehow, in my mind, different from my writing), and publishing and more.

Mark the date and the site: you can listen live here to his show, even before August 1. And if you listen and then leave a comment on any of my blogs mentioning something I mentioned on the show, you'll get a free copy of one of my books.

Also: I'd like to start up a regular feature on two of my blogs (The Best Of Everything and Nonsportsmanlike Conduct! in which I'd debate someone(s) about something(s). The format would be like this: I'd lay out the question, you'd respond, I'd reply, and so on until we'd ended the debate. It'll be done by email, and I'll repost the email chain as a post on those blogs. A sample question might be: Which is The Best Star Wars Movie, or Who's the Bret Favre of Other Sports?

You don't have to be an expert to take part -- just entertaining. If you're interested in trying this, email me at thetroublewithroy[at]yahoo.com and put "debate" in the subject line. You won't get paid, but you'll get famous and I'll link to you and all that other non-monetary kind of stuff.

Chapter 14: A Crowd Of People Closes In (Pages 31-35)

2010-07-15T04:01:00.000-08:00

Song for this part: "Full Fathom Five."

“I still worried that I was mad, that I was losing my sanity, and I did not trust anyone. I took to studying this, to reading up on psychology wherever I could, but I could no longer trust my senses, no longer trust my mind. I began keeping a journal, each day, writing down the date and writing down the weather and the significant events that day. I began it the very next day, which I recall was June 2.

“I did not recall the months of April or May passing, though. I knew that the day before I had lectured my students, but June 1, which would have been the day before, was not a school day – we never had classes into June.”

Saoirse looked at William Howard Taft’s eyes, which were narrowed and dark. She wondered if he was trying not to cry.

“I was in church one morning, one Sunday morning, months later, when I pieced it together, as the pastor preached about being cast out of Eden, about leaving the garden, it occurred to me that I had recently been to a garden, had been shown the garden, and that I was living a life in which there were few, if any, troubles. The only trouble, in fact, was that I was aware that there were no troubles, that I was fearing my own sanity.”

“Your journal…” Saoirse said. “Did it help? Were the dates moving?”

“Yes and no. By then, it was August. But, you need to understand, it did not help just then. Because it was still summer, you see. It was still summer and I could not tell if we were having a particularly pleasant summer or not. There were no too-hot days. There were no terrible rainstorms, although there were pleasant rainshowers that never caught me unexpectedly. It was difficult to tell what was happening, and I simply continued to fear for my own mind and not tell anyone of my suspicions. So to that end, it did not help.

“But on the way home from that sermon, that day, I realized that I never heard bad news. Ever. I realized that on the way home from that church sermon. I turned to my wife and said there has certainly been a lot of good news lately, and she said Yes, I suppose there has, and I walked her home and she went inside. I told her I was going to walk around a bit and enjoy the weather. She asked if I wanted her to go with me, and I said that I did not. I went and bought a newspaper from a boy selling them, a few blocks away. I took it to a bench and I read it, and I found not a single piece of bad news in it.

“I folded up the paper, and I began walking. I walked away from that life, which was not my own.”

He stopped talking, and they bobbed up and down, then, silent. Saoirse wanted to ask what else happened, what he saw, how he walked away from that life, how he ended up on her doorstep. But she didn’t. She floated in the ocean and tried to imagine what that would be like, how long he had been in the After before he realized. Had he turned the corner and found electric cars and televisions? Would she swim back to shore and see dinosaurs, or spaceships? The thought did not excite her. It scared her, and bore down on her with what she realized, in a while, was its seeming fakeness.

Wouldn’t everything here be just a figment of her mind? So if she did see dinosaurs, if she did go to Mars, it wasn’t real, was it? Whatever eternity she created, it would simply be a fiction.

“It was fate that I meet you,” William Howard Taft said, suddenly. They had both been quiet for some time, so long that Saoirse tried to figure out how long it had been. Her hair had not dipped into the water in so long that it was dry. She was carried up on a wave, slipped down the other side.

“Why?” she asked.

“I have met a lot of people. I seem drawn to them. I end up near them, and all of them are people like me. Like you. People who know we are dead. I have never met one who has just arrived here, though, until I met you.”

“What happened when you walked away from your life?”

William Howard Taft ignored the question. “When I found you, I did not expect to be finding you, or finding anyone. I had in fact despaired. I was actually thinking that perhaps I should just resign myself to staying here. I know that sounds odd, to resign oneself to staying in paradise, but I had never again found the Garden. Not since that first time that I saw it, since that first time that I realized the city I walked through was the Garden, or the Garden I walked through was the city I thought I lived in.”

He paused and looked into the distance, then spoke again. “I had searched and talked to people, trying to figure out the nature of this world. I dare expect that I became, am, more well-versed in the intricacies of our existence than others, than any others. I learned a great deal, including…”

He stopped and looked to his right, at Saoirse. He had drifted, slightly, so that he was facing obliquely away from her.

“Including what?” Saoirse asked. She paddled her hands back and forth in a horizontal figure eight to keep afloat.

“Never mind.”

“What are you trying to hide from me? Look at us. There’s nobody else around. Tell me.”

“Some people,” William Howard Taft said, “Appear to have a greater ability to manipulate this world than others. Most simply live in it, unaware entirely of the state of their existence, and their afterlives are mundane, mostly recreations, and poor ones, of the lives they lived. Others have more powerful minds, or more control, and they have vivid or unusual afterlives. And still others, like us, are completely aware of the After and what it is.

“Among those of us who know the truth about this state of being, there are those who have learned to, in a greater or smaller degree, control it. That was what initially led me to hope. I noticed those who could control the After, those who were like me but who seemed to have a more conscious ability to shape this existence, and I tried to watch what they did. I was, though, never able to fully do that, never able to fully control this world.

“There have always been through history those who claim to shape their dreams, to be able to consciously act in their dreams; I read newspaper and periodical articles about them in my life. And always I thought who could prove them wrong? If I were to claim to you that I was the manager of my sleeping dreams, that in them I could create worlds and people and interact as I chose to manipulate them instead of being, as most are, a watcher and helpless participant in the dream stories I create subsconsciously, how could you prove me wrong?

“But in the After, there are those who appear to do that and they can prove it – they can do it to me, and to themselves. They control their world. They could decide they no longer would live in their house and it would be something else, a great city, or a tropical island. They would be tall, or short, or married, or not. And they were quite content, generally. I wanted to learn how. I thought if I could learn to do what they did, I would be more content here, too. But only as I started to try that, did I realize I would not be any happier.”

“It’s not real,” Saoirse said, quietly.

William Howard Taft did not look at her. He just nodded.

Your villa awaits you in Spain.

2010-07-15T03:36:00.002-08:00

Did the World Cup remind you that Spain exists, and now you want to go there and visit this wondrous country yourself? You can -- and you can even get villas in spain more easily and for less than you'd imagine.

Planning a trip to a foreign country is never easy. Or it never WAS easy, in the past. But it is now, because Toro Holidays is there to help. They're a site that lets you choose from more than 32,000 places to stay in 9 different European spots to visit, including Spain.

They don't just list the places, either: You can book your villa or rental home or apartment or ever cottage for your stay right online, using their secure site. And if you're not the planning type, they can accommodate that, too: they've got last minute villas available in the next 2 weeks, so if you woke up this morning and said "By Jove, I've got to get to Spain!" then they can work with you.

(They can't do anything about your choice of expletives, unfortunately. "Jove?" Really? Are you Perry White?)

Finding a place to rent through Toro Holidays is a snap -- just click the map where you'd like to stay, like, say, "Ibiza," which I picked because the map showed me it's an island, and you get listings with pictures and details and prices, all laid out in a snappy, easy to use system. The places I found had satellite TV and great swimming pool and looked like the kind of place where a rich person would live if a rich person lived on Ibiza -- which is the way I'd want to travel in Spain.

Toro Holidays presents over 32,000 holiday homes in 9 selected European destinations, giving our visitors the security to book online through a trusted source of villas, apartments and holiday cottages at the best price possible.

Chapter 14: A Crowd Of People Closes In (Pages 26-30)

2010-07-12T18:39:00.000-08:00

Song for this part: "All My Days," Alexi Murdoch:

Saoirse mulled that, then changed the subject, a little. “How’d you get to my house?”

“I woke up one morning and was standing on your porch. That happens to me from time to time. I assumed, as I have so often, that I was meant to be there for some reason. I try to divine here the reasons why things happen, the reasons why I am put one place or meet one person. It is difficult. It is like trying to divine the meanings of memory.”

“Don’t you mean dreams?”

“I do not.” He waited while one larger swell carried them up and down. “I mean memory. Have you ever stopped to look around you, to discern this world and its details and whether they are correct, or seem to be? Have you looked at the finer points to see how and why you remember things? Did you, during life, stop to think about the things you remembered and why and how you remembered them?”

“Um. No.”

“Exactly. People even in my time worry about the meaning of dreams and sleeping thoughts but give far less attention to the way their mind works while awake. Why can you remember some things and not others? Why does your mind choose to store certain information and not others? How are you editing things? Those have more of an impact on your life than dreams – dreams are merely random fragmentary notions drifting through the ether and when you arrive in your After, you see how true that is just as you get to know the world your mind chooses to shape by what it noticed, what it remembered. Memory is more important than the sleep world your mind relaxes into each night. So, no, I do not mean that divining the methods of the After is like divining the meaning of dreams. It is like divining the workings of your active mind, which you do not understand even in the slightest -- but which you give no thought to, anyway.”

They floated there a long time while Saoirse thought about that. She tried not to feel insulted by his tirade.

“So why do you think you came to my house?” she said, finally. “You couldn’t have remembered that. You died before me.”

“I do not know,” William Howard Taft said.

“Don’t you think you need to figure that out before you go on with this plan? Shouldn’t you know everything about your whole scheme here?” Saoirse bit her lip. “I mean, you’ve got eternity.”

“I have my suspicions. I just do not know for sure.”

“What are your suspicions?”

“You gave me the final pieces to the puzzle. That is why I needed you.”

“I did?”

A wave carried them up and down, first him, then her.

“Yes.”

Saoirse tried to think how she’d done that, helped him, but couldn’t. “How?” she asked.

“You must remember when we first met, here.”

Saoirse did. “You mean, those places we went, right away? The tidal pool? The ocean?”

“Yes.”

“Will you just tell me? I’m not good at cross-examining.”

William Howard Taft wiped a hand across his forehead, which was turning red in the sun. Saoirse tried to figure out how long they’d been out here. It couldn’t have been more than an hour, could it?

“I had been to the Garden a few times before meeting you. Twice. The first time, I did not realize, immediately, where I was. The first time was shortly after I arrived here. It was the first time, too, that I realized that I had passed on, that I was dead. I had been living my life, almost, exactly living it again, it seemed, only without all the troubles and problems that had beset me the first time. I realize that now. I did not realize that then. I was working as a professor at Yale University, studying the law and maintaining my contacts in the Capital, and enjoying life, generally. It was…” Taft paused., a moment, looking at Saoirse, then said: “Always spring. Always.

“I did not realize that at first, but one day, walking along, enjoying the blossoms on the bushes and the new leaves on the trees, it occurred to me: I could not remember when it had last snowed. I puzzled over that on the way to my office, and went through my lectures that day, and that evening, I asked a colleague, as we were leaving, whether he could remember how much snowfall we’d had that winter. He could not. He looked puzzled, and said why? Hoping to do something about it? And he laughed.

“But I pressed on. I said Was it a lot, would you say? A little? And he looked at me and said You know, I just don’t remember. I guess I did not pay it too much mind. Then he waved and went away. And I went home to dinner with my wife and throughout the dinner, I thought about asking her whether she remembered how much snow there had been that winter. But I did not, and I believe you know why.”

“You didn’t want her to be exposed as…” Saoirse looked for the right words. “…Not real.”

“Exactly. I don’t know why my colleague did not simply tell me that there had been no winter, whether there was a winter for him and I did not remember it or if instead he was simply play-acting, but I knew something was wrong, something was very wrong. And I loved my wife very much and did not want to believe that she was also a play-actor and did not want to see her try to cover up if she was. I did not, at that time, know what was going on.

“Then I began to wonder more—such as if she was my wife at all, and whether I loved her, my wife, or the person who might not be my wife. That disturbed me greatly. I did not know what was going on but I did not like it. I feared, I will tell you, for my sanity, and I grew more and more agitated as things progressed. My wife, if she was my wife, and I hoped she was for she was a good woman, saw that and inquired whether I would not enjoy a walk to settle me down. I said I would, and I went for a walk.”

The sun was directly overhead. Saoirse tried to paddle in the water and shield her eyes. That meant it was noon, right? She’d been out here a long time. There was nothing but the waves and the water and her and William Howard Taft, and the sky and the sun, of course. She thought she should be tired. She was not. She thought she should be thirsty, or hungry. She was not.

“As I walked along the streets, the buildings began to change. Before my eyes. I did not even realize it at first. But as I walked, a long route with a cigar to calm myself, the buildings became translucent, little by little fading in the evening light, and as I walked, the ground became softer, becoming dirt. Eventually the buildings were little more than ghosts of their selves, and the ground was soft brown dirt, spring dirt, almost mud but not. Then the shells of the buildings disappeared and I stood alone in the midst of a rolling terrain of brown soft sweet-smelling dirt.

“I paused then, and watched, amazed and afraid. As I watched, the grass grew, around and under my feet and all around the dirt, slowly appearing and growing to a height of several inches before a ripple stopped it. Then the flowers came, bunches and bunches of them, fields of them swaying and bright and beautiful, then bushes sprung up, all too quickly, and flowered and grew berries and then hung there. And suddenly it was the beginning of summer, that time when spring passes into summer, when the weather changes such that there will be no more truly cold days but the truly hot days have not yet arrived.

“I cried, not because it was beautiful, even though it was, but because I feared I had lost my sanity. I sat down on the grass and cried, then, and grew angry because I prized my mind and I prized my intellect and now I had neither of them, but was lost in a beautiful, peaceful world that I did not want..” William Howard Taft did not need to pause there, but he did, and he looked at Saoirse, who fully understood the significance of that sentence.

“I was in that world for an indeterminate time. Maybe an hour, maybe two. I do not know. Eventually, it faded away, in reverse of how it had come. The bushes reversed first, the berries exploding into flowers and the flowers spreading their petals wide before folding up and pulling into the stems, the leaves curling up and disappearing and then the bushes pulling into the ground. The flowers folded up and left, the grass retracted, and the dirt was all that was left. For several minutes I stood in the dirt world again and then the buildings began to come back, all at once, slowly fading into view, first the outlines of them, then the walls, then the doors, then the streets, and then I was standing, tear-streaked face and wild-haired, in the evening streets of New Haven.”

They floated, then, for a long time. William Howard Taft watched the waves and the sky and did not look at her.

“How did I help you?” Saoirse finally prompted him.

So I'm Gonna Be On The Radio; Better Save The Date.

2010-07-12T18:29:00.002-08:00

Hey, readers! I've been invited to be a guest on the wildly popular radio show hosted by James Strait; I'll be appearing at 6:30 p.m. Eastern Time, August 1, 2010. Strait Talk is hosted by a guy who proclaims that his ideals include "a love of fast sports cars, skilled artisans, people who value his and their own time, individualists, one special brand of ice cream, and home made apple pie."

He doesn't say what that brand of ice cream is, though. Maybe I can get it out of him when I appear. Or he may say it on his show every day at 6:30 p.m.; you can listen live here.

So if you're curious to hear what I sound like (I've been told that my voice is mellifluous. [Does saying things to yourself in the bathroom mirror count as being told something?]) or curious to hear my thoughts on stuff before they're written down, jot down the date and time and tune in. I'll be giving away a book to anyone who listens -- all you have to do is comment or email me with a quote from the show I'm on and you'll get a free book.

See you on August 1 at 6:30. Well, I won't see you. But you could see me. You could paste a picture of me onto your radio while you listen. That's what they did in the 1950s, you know.

Body piercing jewelry the way you like it: delivered to you, and awesome.

2010-07-12T18:22:00.002-08:00

I am not much for body piercing jewelry... on me. That's because to pierce any part of your body, you've got to want to draw attention to that part of your body, and when it comes to my body, my best feature is my mind. But they don't have mind-piercings yet. Yet. That will be cool when they do, I agree. I've got my mind pierced, I'll be able to tell people, and they'll be like That's so punk... in a very metaphysical way.

And punk is best when it's metaphysical.

But if you're not like me -- that is, if you're into body piercing and have a body worth piercing, then get your body jewelry online at Bodybling.net. They've got nose ring retainers and every kind of barbell tongue ring and pretty much every other thing you can stick into every other part of your body -- all available for browsing online and all delivered right to you. It's so handy, I was tempted to go ahead and get myself a little something to jazz up my image, but then Sweetie said that nobody's into "elbow piercing," and she pointed out that I like to lean on my elbows when I'm watching TV, which is pretty much all the time, so we're back to square one.

Chapter 14: A Crowd Of People Closes In (Pages 21-25)

2010-07-11T04:52:00.002-08:00

Song for this part: "Comme Des Enfants," Coeur de Pirate:

“They’re nothing,” said William Howard Taft. “They are all figments, creations, wisps. They are wisps of imagination and memory, not real people.”

“Not all of them,” Saoirse said. She felt a little guilty for not defending Ansel, or any of the others who might not be here… yet… “None of them are just wisps,” she said, belatedly. “They’re real. They’re here, in my world. This world.”

William Howard Taft said, though: “I created this.”

Saoirse stared at him. “What does that mean?”

“You’re in my world.”

She felt uncomfortable at that and wondered why.

“No, I’m not,” she said, because she felt she had to.

“I sent you here.”

Saoirse didn’t answer.

“To my world.”

Still, she kept quiet, moving her feet in a bicycle-pedaling motion under the water.

“You’re in my world,” William Howard Taft told her. He looked sternly at her. “And that bothers you, doesn’t it.”

“You’re mean,” Saoirse decided. She thought it sounded stupid as she said it, but didn’t know what else to say. “You’re mean and you like it, don’t you?”

“I’m not.”

“Being afraid makes you mean. You shouldn’t be so mean.”

William Howard Taft turned away slowly and began swimming.

“Where are you going?” Saoirse said.

“Away.”

“Where do you think you’re going to go? Where do you think you can get to? Your After or my After, do you think you can just swim across the ocean? That’s dumb. You’re scared and mean and dumb.”

He didn’t look back. He said over his shoulder “I don’t intend to swim across the ocean.”

Saoirse thought about that. He was now about twenty feet away, moving slowly. She bobbed up and down on the waves and so did he, him going up, now, as she went down, so he was about two feet above her. Then they reversed places.

“You can’t drown here.” She said.

“I know that,” William Howard Taft told her.

Saoirse watched him swimming. He was thirty feet away. What was he doing?

Then she knew. He was hoping to almost-drown, or whatever it would be here. He thought that would send him… somewhere. Back to the Garden? He must think so. He must know so. He knew how to work things here, better than she did, apparently. She paddled after him, wondering about that. Did he know how to work things? He’d found her, he’d kept Chuck with him. He’d sent her here. Had he? Or was he simply taking credit?

She had too many questions and so she focused instead on swimming after him, putting her back into it, and when she got near, she grabbed his ankle.

“Stop,” she said, and got a little more water in her face. “Stop running,” and she pulled up. He turned to face her, his suit billowing around him in the water that appeared very blue now.

“Tell me the truth,” she said. “Did you send me here?”

William Howard Taft just looked at her.

“How did you find me at that farm house?”

Nothing.

“How did you keep Chuck with you?”

He didn’t answer.

“You should tell me these things.”

“Why should I? The more you know, the more you will try to stop me. And I don’t intend to be stopped. I intend to carry out my designs.”

“To end this all?”
“If I must.”

Saoirse knew that discussion would get them nowhere. She paddled her hands back and forth and thought. She didn’t even know what she wanted, she realized. How can I tell him not to do this when I might want to do it, too? But she wasn’t sure whether it was a good idea anymore. And all those new people seemed to think it was a bad idea.

“Don’t you think we should talk it out with those others?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“They have made up their minds.”

“So have you.”

“Exactly. There is no need for debate.”

“Why’d you come looking for me?”

“I did not come looking for you.”

“You came to my house.”

“But I didn’t come there looking for you. I wasn’t sure who I would find when I got there. I wasn’t sure, even, at first, why I was there. My After has been a sometimes-bewildering experience.”

“But… isn’t that what you want, then?”

“If I want it, then I want it subconsciously and my waking mind does not want it. What should I do about that?”