Category Archives: Historical

Steampunk and Bonsart Bokel – a Q & A

By INFAMOUS 🦀

After having reviewed both The Wrench in the Machine and Journey to Elysium, we felt it necessary to have a little interview with the visionary behind this universe we are so much enjoying. All the way from the Netherlands, Mr Bonsart Bokel!

 

Q1: is what you are writing steampunk? Or what should we call it?

 

Bokel: Yes, although I use different descriptions for every book. The Wrench in the Machine takes my definition of the Steampunk genre, Cyberpunk in the Past, to ‘Eleven’.

Q2: Steampunk seems like a very niche subgenre; what the general audience sees seems to be very limited and restrictive for creativity to thrive. Do you agree?

Bokel: I think the problem is we haven’t had the conversation on what Steampunk should be. To many, Steampunk is just an aesthetic. They discard the idea of being a genre entirely. So it became “Steampunk is like porn. You know it when you see it.” 

Currently, there is a lot of Fantasy with a Steampunk skin. (This is not necessarily Gaslamp Fantasy either).

The other cliche is the overall approach to history. This being the ‘oppressor vs oppressed’ or ‘class struggle’ narrative. It might make for decent stories, but does not make good Alternate History.

Q3: The ‘historical’ element in fiction has been underrated or even misused. Do you feel your approach is different when applying history to your stories?

 

Bokel: My series has a high emphasis on Alternate History, so I’m taking the ‘Past’ part of the definition very seriously. There are more Steampunk authors like that. But you wouldn’t know them. They went to a different school and live  in Canada now.

Joking aside, some ignore the historical part just to give themselves the freedom to explore historical processes without seeming biased. The Guns Above series is a good example of this. 

Q4: My favorite character from Journey to Elysium was Subject-09…Any chance we might see her again or even have her own dedicated novel? I love her character and not because she is a woman or because she is disabled either!

Bokel: Subject-09 is kind of an accident. A silly idea that people really love for some reason. Even as a short story (Cough, check out my page on Ream, cough) S-09 quickly proved people’s favorite along with Subject-06. 

Currently, I am still exploring ideas for the future novels. Although I have ideas for her, S-09 place is in the bigger picture of the overall series. There is still so much I need to figure out for what I call Phase1 of the Association of Ishtar, I wouldn’t be surprised if I can’t get her to shine until the start of Phase 3. When will Phase 2 start? When I finally know what I want to do for the third novel. Until then, she’ll make some small appearances, like in Anwin and Journey to Elysium.

 

Q5: Tell us briefly about your latest project going live soon on KS. Is this a comic book or a novel?

 

Bokel: The Kickstarter will launch on March 17 if all goes well. The Casket Girls is a novelette about mecha pilots serving in the French Imperial Penal Legion that will be illustrated. It will also contain various miniatures for your 3D printing pleasure as we are working on an RPG.

Q6: Originality in modern fiction seems rare these days. I think you are carving out the blueprints of something new and original. What can we see from the Association of Ishtar next?

 

Bokel: I already mentioned the RPG we hope to present by the end of the year.

I’m working on various books. One is a second Anwin novelette, which is about an autonomous doll and her owner, Igraine. Another is the Knights of Avalon, which is kind of the male chivalrous counterpart to the Casket Girls. 

Of course we also hope to have the second issue of our comic Journey to Elysium done.

Overall, I hope to create a community creating new Subjects, Constructs and Planes to be explored. I’m already doing it on the illustration front with our Alternate History videos on Youtube. Finding a way to collaborate with co-writers would be great if only to explore other genres beside hard sci-fi without losing sight of the themes of Steampunk.

 

(Gee, and here I thought Alternate History stories were simply about taking famous characters from history and swapping race or gender LOL!)

🦀

Don’t forget to back Bonsart!

And also follow him on REAM!

 

Journey to Elysium 1: the Remains of Babylon – a Review

Bonsart Bokel is building an ambitious steampunk narrative via various mediums including prose novels, comic books, and video mockumentaries. The alternate history world-building and extensive esoteric research that must have gone into this effort seems exhaustive.

This is the first comic book entry. I prepared for this review by reading the expository entries on Ream. In the comic itself, there are some vintage newspaper stories and technical documents that are also helpful to the reader (unlike the “Black Freighter” inserts in Watchmen).

In 1791 a gigantic bell-shaped object appeared in space, in a parallel orbit with our moon.

 

Napoleon Bonaparte’s reign in France followed the historical narrative we are familiar with. However, underneath the broad-brush historical developments, the technology of his Empire advanced to levels that (in some fields of science) rival those of the Second and Third Reich’s in the next century. For instance, just as the Germans launched V-1 and V-2s at Great Britain after Hitler’s war machine ground to a halt at the English Channel, Bonaparte’s Rocket Corps also terrorized the Brits with his own retro-Blitz.

In the 1820s, in an attempt to send cosmonauts to the Elysium Object (the massive bell-shaped object that appeared in the previous century), one rocket designed by Ghulam Ali (Bonaparte’s chief rocket scientist) explodes on the launch platform, and another mysteriously disappears after launch.

We come into the story some five decades later. Corporal Maurice Havelaar, late of the Dutch-Indian Army, is assigned a mysterious mission. I say mysterious because even the general thrust of the mission is withheld until the last panel. Never mind specifics.

 

I’m about to mention something that might be considered a spoiler by the author, though he certainly provided enough clues for the reader to figure it out on their own: even though Napoleon died on St. Helena generations ago, he is back, in an influential role. He has been reincarnated (?) as a girl with a spinal condition which has rendered one arm and one leg useless.

Is this the author’s way of incorporating the obligatory gender confusion into the story, or just coincidental with the current year’s obsession with cramming LGBTWTF down the audience’s throat? Not enough evidence yet to determine either way. Perhaps future installments will reveal if this is the typical ticket-taking bounce onto the Troon Bandwagon or not.

This character (the 7th Chairman) is escorted by a zeppelinful of “Elite Airborne Dragoons” to a converted oil rig platform in the Atlantic, where the elderly Ghulam Ali now lives, with an unlaunched third Elysium Rocket.

 

With or without Ali’s help, the 7th Chairman is taking over his abandoned Elysium Program, before a rival space program run by competitor Utter Krapp can launch its own mission.

Then Havelaar arrives at the oceanic platform weeks later, and the implication is that he will be included on the Elysium Rocket Ride.

We’ll have to read Part Two to see where this goes from here.

Part One, honestly, is a teaser. Obviously, it’s not much of a plot. But it does promise a significant and ambitious plot to follow, hopefully with some action and lots of adventure. This setup for the story, mostly establishing the exposition so you won’t be lost on the adventure, succeeds at intriguing the reader enough to keep turning pages.

The artwork has a lot to do with that. The style of the illustration leans to the simplistic side, but it’s drawn with attractive linework and coloring, and striking composition that enhances what storytelling is being done.

There are several NGOs and paramilitary organizations to keep track of in this universe. I’m unwilling, at this point, to put in the homework necessary to keep them all straight. Over time, that might become easier and worthwhile.

The writing is competent, and possibly will prove to be exceptional…it’s hard to say, so far. There were numerous typos. Some of them perhaps intentional, as in the faux newspaper stories and technical documents. The name of the rival company (Utter Krapp) is the only humor I could discern, and as such felt out of place. It reminds me of some of Howard Chaykin’s wink-wink-nudge-nudge verbal humor in a lot of his faux-trademarks in American Flagg–except Chaykin had it spread consistently enough through his comics that the contrast between that and the sober character behavior was also consistent, and seemed intentional.

The bottom line, I suppose, is: do I want to read more of Journey to Elysium? At this point, yes, I do.

THE WRENCH IN THE MACHINE by Bonsart Bokel – a Review

By INFAMOUS 🦀

Though The Wrench In The Machine is officially Book 1 of the ‘Association of Ishtar’ novel series by visionary Bonsart Bokel, this represents just one small cog (pun intended!) in his enormous worldbuilding machine. To call the author just ‘a writer’ wouldn’t do him any justice. The man has a vision and writing is but one single layer of his vision. We will have Mr Bokel in a Q&A interview soon, where we will be able to take a deeper dive into this vision.

 

When Inspector David Ol’Barrow answers the call to a railway triple murder, he finds himself involved in affairs way above his pay grade, involving secret societies, associations, and individuals of questionable backgrounds. With the unusual company of a strange young girl, Igraine, and three-legged mut, Old Boy, Ol’Barrow must rely on his instincts and intuition to stay ahead of the game…And that’s only the beginning!

So you may ask, is this a Sherlock Holmes-ish type of trope? The answer would be: No. It does have a mystery murder element to it but it’s not that. This is something new, fresh, and innovative that is based on three major components: historical, technological, and supernatural. The author is able to combine those components in ways that we haven’t read before, and the result is a brand new sub-genre with infinite possibilities.

Of course many might label this as ‘steampunk’ since the author is and has been a student and expert of the genre for years. But to call this steampunk would too be inaccurate, though it lays some of its roots in the genre, albeit detaching itself from the clique associated to it.

To me, the Association of Ishtar is where new fiction goes ‘next level’. In a fantasy literature market oversaturated with the same old tired out tropes and cliques, it is rare to find some originality comparable to this.

If there is one single personal irk I had with the novel itself that would be the father/daughter relationship that develops between Ol’Barrow and Igraine. I liked the execution and how this relationship grows organically from beginning to end of the story. You can see how Ol’Barrow goes from annoyed with the girl, to curious, to slightly caring for her, to risking his life for her. But in the end, she really comes off kind of cold, not even reciprocating the love he displays throughout their ordeal. I was expecting her to at least be a little more grateful, but honestly she seemed more excited to have her little doll Arwin back than anything…

To finish on a positive note, I’m glad to say that Wrench In The Machine puts Bonsart Bokel in my list of ‘legendary’ guest authors of the likes of R. V. Mills, M. Lane, and E. Laurence Jr.

Looking forward to reading book 2!

🦀

The Spirit Phone

It is August 1899, and Thomas Edison proclaims his most amazing invention yet: the Spirit Phone Model SP-1. At nearly the same time, a cocksure young mage named Aleister Crowley inexplicably teleports into the home of Edison’s archrival, renowned inventor Nikola Tesla.

As insanity and suicide multiply among spirit phone users, Crowley and Tesla combine their respective skills in “magick” and technology to investigate the device’s actual origin and ultimate purpose.

Embarking upon an adventure of astral travel, demonic invocations, and high-speed airship journeys, they are soon embroiled in a desperate race to stop the spirit phone’s use by an unknown adversary to inaugurate a hell on earth from which none shall escape.

Review coming soon to Virtual Pulp!

Steampunk Double Feature

In the year 1875, Inspector Ol’Barrow of Dover’s borough police finds himself grappling with the emergence of radio dramas when a perplexing murder case lands on his desk. Together with his colleague, Bigsby, they face an enigmatic assassin with origins beyond this world.

Driven by duty and a thirst for redemption, Ol’Barrow joins forces with a covert organization known as the Association of Ishtar. They serve as advisors to the authorities, specializing in managing anomalies called Rifts—innocuous gateways to alternate realms harboring untold dangers. Ol’Barrow’s eyes are opened to a reality where Napoleon wields futuristic weaponry against England, corporations pioneer otherworldly technology, and societal progress comes at a perilous cost.

As humanity hurtles towards a technocratic future, the question looms: Where will it lead? For some, biology is a dead end, and humanity must ascend.

Coming soon: Comic review by Hank; Novel review by Gio.

Codex Babylon by Robert Kroese – a Review

How could I pass up a novel with time travel, demonic conspiracies, the Knights Templar and their modern day descendent (an organization called GRAIL–see what they did, there?)?

GRAIL has a time machine. They’ve been monitoring demonic activity in the present day and believe the world is at the breaking point because of it. But if they are able to recover a Medieval text on demonology (the eponymous Codex Babylon), they might just be able to turn the spiritual tide against the unseen enemy.

Martin Raines is a unicorn honest attorney who has just won a case that could open big doors in his career. But he is choosing early retirement instead. He doesn’t just want to leave the rat race of law, but the Current Year dystopian madhouse altogether. Neither he, nor the narrator, bother to articulate just what all is wrong with modern society, but he knows things are getting increasingly ugly. He is relocating his family to rural Idaho, where he hopes to protect them from the worst of whatever insanity is yet to come.

The ambiguity of the demonic outbreak was no problem for a reader like me. Whatever the author means by “demonic activity,” it was easy for me to assume he was referring to the Cold Civil War, the culture war, and the spiritual conflict behind them. A normie reader would just chalk it up to a fictional aspect of the world the author built, and read on, giving it no more thought than the existence of monsters in a Larry Correa novel.

GRAIL finds Martin and informs him that his instinctive revulsion to current events and trends isn’t ultimately due to woketardery (or whatever), but instead is a result of a drastic upsurge in an age-old demonic force.  It will soon achieve such power that Martin’s family won’t be safe, even in Idaho. To have a chance at checking the demonic power, GRAIL needs the Codex Babylon. And Martin is their best candidate to send back to get it.

After the obligatory hero’s resistance, Martin finally agrees and is transported back to the Middle East in between crusades.

The Knights Templar, like so many institutions, started out with good intentions, but eventually transformed into something antithetical to their original purpose. Kroese has his main character go back to the point in history when the Templars’ apostacy arguably began.

That, too, was one battle in the demons’ war against the good, beautiful, and true.

What we know about Martin Raines is:

  • He loves his family.
  • He’s fairly well-studied in history.
  • He’s better-than-average at learning languages.
  • When he dreams, he can communicate with GRAIL’s empath (?) back in the 21st Century.

Martin’s quest is a frustrating tour of Medieval Europe and the Middle East, chasing the spoor of anybody who might know where to find the demonology book. There were times when I felt like yelling at some of the characters. (“Go look at the papers on Benedict’s desk, you dolts!” “Don’t trust her, you moron!”) However, if you can accept time travel as a plot device, everything that happens in the story is believable.

Codex Babylon is Book One of The Cross-Time Crusade Series. It does arguably stand alone. But the link (cliffhanger) to the next book in the series does seem rather tacked-on. This is a common issue with series fiction. Authors employ different literary tactics to make episodic novels both stand alone and work as an integrated narrative. Sometimes they work better than others.

Another common issue with series fiction is that the first book ends after setting the stage, but often before the story hits its stride. This might be the case here, too. There’s a lot of intriguing ingredients introduced in this book. I may have to read Book Two (paid link) to see what  kind of dish is produced from this recipe.

Steampunk: An Inside Look

by INFAMOUS 🦀

 

Steampunk. What is it exactly? How do we define it as a genre?

If you ask 10 different people you’ll most likely get 10 slightly different answers. I admit, I’m no authority on the subject, but ever since its conception in the 70s/80s I always felt that this genre never reached the recognition or full creative potential in fiction literature I felt it could reach. These days we see a lot of ‘sword and sorcery’ content being written, followed to a lesser extent by science fiction and some cyberpunk. For the most part Steampunk has been a fringe, relegated to the awkward cosplay characters at cons and some mediocrely written comic books and novellas. 

There hasn’t been an author to really put Steampunk on the map. And that’s too bad, for the genre itself offers some most peculiar and exciting elements. 

The main element (for me at least) is certainly the ‘historical period’ element: Steampunk is based on a dystopian Victorian era that sees the introduction of technological advances that have influenced everything from communications, to architecture, to fashion, and beyond. 

This world is posh, austere, elegant, and intriguing. It’s in this retro style that we should find the source of great and unexplored storytelling. But do we?

Just putting goggles and top hats on some blimp-flying characters won’t make for great stories, but it seems that most of the steampunk content we have is just that: unoriginal, mediocre stories dressed up in Steampunk attire.

Virtual Pulp was able to connect with a ‘certain individual’ I firmly believe to be an authority on the topic. 

This gentleman will help me and you better understand Steampunk in relation to the current fiction literature trends, and dispel any and all misconceptions. He is also a proficient writer and thus we will also feature his first novel and first comic book, complete with a thorough review.

 

Napoleon – a Review

If you didn’t see this movie in the theater, you might be tempted to watch it now that it’s streaming on Prime and possibly other services. Read this first.

For fans of military history, Napoleon represents an historical force. His accomplishments should be studied with respect, if not reverence.

It is safe to assume that director Ridley Scott is not a fan of military history.

Like nearly everyone calling the shots in Homowood, government, and every other institution, Scott is a geriatric leftist. There are exceptions, but his demographic is notorious for bad relationships with their fathers. Why Scott chose to treat the subject matter as he did  might have been guaranteed by his life-long contempt for strong patriarchal authority figures–especially those widely considered to be great.

This is not a film about Napoleon the strategist, Napoleon the Emperor, or even Napoleon the ambitious overachiever. It is a pedestrian screed against “toxic masculinity” which elevates the female (especially Josephine) to the Eternal Pedestal. Even Marie Antionette is granted a more sympathetic portrayal than the eponymous character.

Since this movie is about a man obsessed with a woman, it’s relevant to warn you that he is portrayed as emotionally unstable, egomaniacal (not just egotistical, which the real Bonaparte probably was), and sexually inept.

In reality, Bonaparte’s fixation on the sexually adventurous widow pointed to his own capacity for blunder in his personal life–if not a sign of ignorance, arrested development, some sort of fetish, or a character flaw. In the movie, it is inflated to carry the all-too-typical gynocentric trope that a man’s value as a human being depends upon the approval/acceptance of a woman.  The message comes across that (with the exception of Toulon) Bonaparte’s military successes were directly linked to his social credit score with Josephine. As their relationship soured, his great victories turned into colossal defeats. And when she died, that brought about his ignominious end.

Part of what was necessary to pull off this message (in a biopic about an historical figure defined by his military exploits, no less) was to simply ignore Bonaparte’s multiple campaigns and shove 95% of his military career off-screen. Only three battles are depicted–and only in part: Toulon, Austerlitz, and Borodino. The last was reduced to an half-assed montage of cavalry galloping through snow, in a half-assed  Russian Campaign sequence that amounts to an ambiguous afterthought.

Also painfully lacking is sufficient insight into why the battles (much less the respective wars) were fought.

C’mon, guys: the director has better things to do than spend that multimillion dollar budget showing you yucky military stuff in a biopic ostensibly about a military man.  The director’s primary role is an apologist for female behavior–in this case, a haughty royal blinded by her own privilege, and an unfaithful slut who married up about as high as she could go, but still drunk with entitlement to the point she delighted in making her husband miserable.

Creative license was used to the opposite effect  for the men, of course. There is not one single male character in the film that is likeable.

This is a cinematic hit piece, at most–a depressing one that leaves you wondering what the point was (other than “patriarchy bad”–gee, what a groundbreaking message).

Although there is an actor who wears funny hats who you see throughout the film, he he bears little resemblance to the Napoleon Bonaparte of history. I suspect he’s really a stand-in for a filmmaker’s father.

 

Paradox Chapter 17: The Big Spooky

You’d have to be blind to not notice how stupid-happy I was after that short little evening and morning. Still, Dad didn’t press me on it. He left me alone with my thoughts and fresh memories for the next leg of our trip.

I did finally ask him if it would be possible to correspond with Gloria. He turned thoughtful, gave me a long look, turned back to the road, thought some more, and finally said, “It’ll be tricky, but maybe we can work something out.”

***

After a few more days, I was able to function again and actually think about something other than Gloria Benake.

While meandering through the plains and deserts of the Southwest in that hot rod Willys, we got into a discussion about time travel. Dad asked me a question he had to rephrase a few times. But once I understood what he was getting at, I would think about it a lot as I got older.

“Okay, Sprout: You’ve been to a few different points in time already. You started out with your life there in St. Louis. Then you jumped back to the Orange Grove. You jumped forward with me to BH Station. Then way back to New Orleans for Sullivan-Corbett. And now back to this road trip. Did I get it in the right sequence?”

“Um, yeah.”

“Really? You’re sure?”

“Yeah.”

“How do you figure? How can you be sure of any linear sequence when the illusion of time is no longer relevant?”

My reply was steeped in wisdom and just slopping over with all the intellectual prowess of a pre-adolescent boy: “Huh?”

“The only solid evidence we have that time even exists is entropy,” he said. “But anyway, of all the space-time coordinates you’ve visited, New Orleans is the earliest. BH Station is the latest. So wouldn’t the correct sequence of your travels begin with New Orleans, and end with BH Station? And where we are right now should be in the middle, right?”

“No,” I said, vigorously shaking my head.

“Why not? That’s proper chronological order.”

“Because that’s not the order of how it happened.”

“So you’re saying that St. Louis is the singular reference point; that everything else is lined up in the sequence according to that coordinate.”

“Um, yeah,” I said. “I guess so.”

“But why? How do you know what sequence is correct? 1892 came before any of the other coordinates, right?”

“Well, yeah, but…”

“And 1934 comes after 1892. Then 1947 comes after 1934. So the chronologically correct sequence is New Orleans, the Orange Grove, then this vacation, St. Louis, then BH Station. That’s just simple math. 1892 is the earliest date, so of course you went there first. 1934 is the next earliest date. So that’s where you went next.”

“That may be the historical sequence,” I said, “but I visited those times in a different sequence.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I remember how it happened.”

“Ahh. So your memory is calibrated from that one reference point, back in St. Louis. And your memory records remain consistent throughout the series of warp jumps. Why is that?”

“Because that’s just the way it happened.”

“What you’re saying is, that’s how all the puzzle pieces fit together in what you consider reality,” he said. “But can we even define reality anymore? Is our concept of reality even relevant?”

“I don’t understand what you’re asking,” I said.

“I’ll answer the question for you: Yes. You’re right. And the supporting evidence is relative growth. Even though you’ve been moving backwards and forwards through time, you’re still aging—according to a sequence that is anchored in the reality you lived in St. Louis. You didn’t grow decades older when we went to BH Station, and obviously you didn’t grow younger for every year we went back, or you would have ceased to exist before we got to these coordinates. So you’re right. But why are you right?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“I don’t know either, Sprout. But I’ll tell you—I sometimes wonder if that truth is ironclad. Maybe reality can change—and our memory will self-adjust to accept it. Wouldn’t that be a mind-blower?”

I didn’t answer. This whole conversation sounded crazy.

“Pretty smart scientists have proposed that time itself is just a stubbornly persistent illusion,” he said. “Other scientists have determined that there are at least six dimensions beyond the four that we perceive. Now, somebody with a warp generator can pierce the illusion and jump through unperceivable dimensions. That means it’s theoretically possible to exist outside of time altogether.”

I wasn’t following his logic, so I remained quiet.

“Let’s say it’s Thanksgiving and the Macy’s Parade is underway. You’re watching it from the top of a skyscraper, with binoculars, while most people are watching it at street level. Down there, the Budweiser float has just passed the people standing at Times Square or wherever. Right in front of them is the Coca-Cola float, and if they lean to peak around that Coca-Cola float, they’ll see the one with the Charlie Brown and Snoopy balloons.”

“Okay,” I said, trying to picture the scene he described.

“So you remember the Budweiser float. You see the Coca-Cola float in front of you right now, clear as day. And you think you can see far enough to predict that the Peanuts float is coming next. Budweiser is the past, Coca-Cola is the present, and Peanuts is the future. Well, up on top of the skyscraper, you see all three floats simultaneously. You can see every float in the entire parade. You don’t have to remember or predict anything, because past, present and future are all there for you to clearly see. In fact, there is no past or future. Everything is present.”

“How does that relate?” I asked. “You say I’m on the skyscraper…outside of time. How could I actually get there? Who could actually be there?”

“Outstanding question, Sprout. Maybe you can’t ever get there. Probably only God is outside time like that, looking into our stream and seeing everything at once. But if He’s there, looking at past, present and future simultaneously…then that’s the reality that supersedes all others, ain’t it?”

I had no answer for that; nor was I prepared for what came next.

“So if that’s the true reality, then there is no actual separation. There is no linear progression. It’s just a stubbornly persistent illusion—it’s an imposed limitation. Well, I suspect our subconscious mind can glimpse into the unperceived dimensions sometimes. Some people more than others, probably. But that might explain where some of our weird dreams come from. Or bizarre phenomena like deja vu.”

“Dreams?” I asked.

“I have dreams, sometimes, that don’t make much sense,” Dad said. “But when I analyze them, I wonder if they’re not evidence that my subconscious is perceiving into different streams. If there is one true reality, then not only do past, present and future exist simultaneously in a given stream; but even the different streams themselves…the different realities…are all actually one. God simply determines which illusion we are limited to and calibrates our memory accordingly. You, me, anybody with a warp generator can trespass into illusions we weren’t assigned to, but our calibration anchors our cognition to the reality we originated in—at least during conscious thought. And our biology, too.”

“I’m confused,” I admitted. “I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”

He chuckled and shrugged. “Well, at least remember this conversation. Think about it. One day you’ll understand at least what I’m asking. And if you ever think you’ve found an answer…let me know.”

“Okay.”

 

Not long after that, we were driving somewhere north of Roswell, New Mexico, and I experienced an oppressive, creepy, foreboding sensation. I got goose bumps, and began looking around in and outside the car, wondering if the source of the feeling was visible.

Dad noticed me looking around and studied me. He noticed the hair on my arms standing up, and pulled the car over onto the shoulder of the road. That’s when I noticed that he had goose bumps, too.

“What is it?” I asked.

“You tell me,” he said.

“I don’t understand.”

He rubbed his own arm, then looked down at mine. “You feel that, right?”

“I feel…something,” I said.

He got out of the car, gesturing for me to do the same. “Describe what you feel,.” he said.

I did my best to put the sensation into words.

He nodded, using his more expansive vocabulary to clarify my attempt at description. “Ominous. Tumultuous.”

“Maybe evil…?” I suggested.

“Interesting,” he mused, looking out over the plains. “I guess this might make sense.”

“It does?” I asked. “What does?”

“Maybe it wasn’t a weather balloon after all,” he muttered.

“Say what?”

“I guess you never read the details about this,” he said, then pointed out into the plains. “Somewhere out there is a ranch—not very far, I’d guess. Right about here and now, something has crashed, is crashing, or will crash very soon at that ranch. You never heard of the Roswell UFO?”

“I’ve heard of it,” I said. “Area 51. Hangar 18. Right?”

“I dunno,” he said. “I’m not a UFO nut. But now I know something is happening here, too.”

“Here, too? You lost me, Dad.”

He chewed on his lip for a while, studying first me, then the landscape. “Tell you what: let’s take another field trip real quick.”

We got back in the car, took off, and immediately warp-jumped to a place he called “S.A. Station.” The scenery was exotic and beautiful.

It turns out “S.A.” stood for South Africa, and the year was 1958. But we had only stopped there to pick up the VTOL with cloaking capability.

The VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing) was quite an aircraft, even without the Predator technology. It had retractable, forward-swept wings and cowled propellors that could swing from vertical to horizontal. But Dad distracted me from examining it much by showing me some equipment similar to what the Erasers used.

It was like a heavy poncho—the outside of it covered with thousands of little L.E.D. screens. Wires crisscrossed inside the fabric of the poncho. For every screen, there was a microcamera on the opposite side of the poncho, recording whatever it “saw.” So the LED screens displayed live footage from behind whatever or whoever the poncho covered. No matter what angle you looked at it from, you simply saw a distorted image of the background on the far side of it. An electronic, active camouflage. Dad said that more advanced cloaking tech had come out since the poncho was made, available in jumpsuits and facemasks. He said the suits were very heavy and hot to wear, and they still just distorted the light rather than truly enabling invisibility; but made a person or vehicle extremely difficult to detect, unless you knew where and what to look for. He turned it on, and it became just a visual anomaly. Then he handed me his sunglasses and told me to put them on. When I did, I could see the poncho, with all its tiny LED segments glowing.

“That’s why you wear these all the time,” I said. “What are they?”

He hung up the poncho, shut it off, and took the shades back. “Relatively simple technology. The lenses block ultraviolet light, and are also polarized. The polarization keeps the LEDs from tricking you.”

“So you can see the Erasers, plain as day,” I said.

He nodded. “One of my science labs is working on a contact lens prototype. For now, we’ve got these.”

“Can I get a pair?”

“I guess so, Sprout. But let’s hope you never need them.”

 

We strapped into the VTOL and took off—up and away. We shot a warp and Dad cloaked the craft as we approached a large city.

There was a park or something with a little patch of woods inside the city. Dad guided the VTOL down through a gap in the trees and landed it expertly. We disembarked. Using the electronic compass in his “pocketwatch,” Dad navigated on foot to the edge of the copse, coming to a halt before breaking through the treeline. He held his arm out sideways to keep me from emerging into the open.

The city we saw from our ground-level perspective was quite an eyeful. Tall columns lined the streets, colorful banners hanging from them. Heroic sculptures were placed all over. The architecture of the buildings was alien to me. Some of it could perhaps be described as art-deco, but most of it looked like something else—gleaming new, but stylistically a throwback to antiquity.

Upon a large parade ground were perfectly- arranged mass formations of soldiers and vehicles. Just beyond this, dominating the scene, was a colossal structure, shaped like a sporting arena. The enormous stadium reminded me of pictures I’d seen of the ancient coliseum in Rome, only much bigger. A roar of a great multitude cheering rose out of the stadium.

“You’ve been studying history, right?” Dad asked in a hushed tone. “You know where we are?”

“Nazi Germany,” I said, noting the hundreds of huge red banners with black swastikas inside white circles.

“Specifically, the Olympiad,” he said. “Berlin, 1936. The Olympic Games. I discovered this at a Nuremburg Rally, but it’s here, too.”

“What’s here? I asked.

“The Big Spooky. Relax for a minute. What do you feel?”

Before I could answer, what looked like clouds of swirling confetti wafted up from the stadium and into the sky—defying gravity. The roar of 100,000 voices shook the air again.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Pidgeons. Or doves. Some kind of birds. Supposed to symbolize world peace or something.”

“Yeah, right,” I said with a sneer, remembering what the Nazis actually brought to the world.

“Concentrate, Sprout. Evaluate what you feel.”

I tried to both relax and concentrate at the same time, ignoring my conditioned response to all the swastikas, and the inherent danger of the situation which caused us to speak quietly, lest we be discovered.

“It’s a lot like what I felt back in Roswell,” I said, incredulous that the same unusual oppressive atmosphere would be here on the other side of the planet and 11 years earlier. “Only, there’s also…”

Dad nodded. “Right. In this case, it’s ominous…but it’s also got a seductive quality, doesn’t it?”

“Seductive?” I repeated, confused. “You mean like in sex?”

“That’s not how I mean it. I mean appealing. There’s almost a temptation to want to be a part of the great, momentous event going on.”

“Yes!” I agreed, amazed at how accurate his description was of something I personally felt. “That’s it, exactly.”

He nodded again. “It was the same at the beginning of the Bolshevik Revolution. But I’m not taking you there. This is a big enough risk.”

“But this is a sporting event,” I observed. “Not a UFO landing.”

“Right. I don’t know exactly how the Olympiad is so significant in the scheme of things, but there’s no denying the sensation. And that extra, seductive aspect…it must be the added zeitgeist factor—like at Nuremburg and 1917 Petrograd, and 1959 Cuba, and…”

“What’s a zeitgeist?” I asked.

“It means ‘spirit of the times.’ It’s when mass portions of a population all get on the same page. They all jump on the same bandwagon, share the same emotion collectively, believe in the same ideology, adopt the same goals…this is one coordinate right here and now that has it in droves.”

“Too bad we can’t watch the Games,” I said.

“Yeah. Jesse Owens won four gold medals for America and embarrassed Der Fuehrer right out of the stadium. But we’re taking a big enough risk already, Sprout. Neither of us speak the language and you don’t want to go barging into one of these socialist Utopias without your papers in order. Besides, the games last for two weeks, and the cloaking tech is gonna drag down our batteries much sooner.”

He took one last glance toward the imposing stadium, and sighed. “What’s really going on here, under the surface? It’s more than pole-vaulting and discus throws.”

We returned to the VTOL and lifted off out of the little copse, into the sky.

We jumped a warp once airborne, and Dad began to breathe a bit easier. But soon we were approaching another city—more modern, but at least as big. He noticed my curious expression, and announced, “Dallas, Texas. November 1963.”

We approached a downtown area, descending on the way. “This…sensation you felt,” he told me, “I discovered it by accident, but I started tracking it through history. It happens a lot, at coordinates all over the four-dimensional map. We’re just hitting some of the highlights this time. For some reason, in the ’60s they spring up all over, like popcorn. Like weeds. Most of them are like the Olympiad—meaning I don’t know exactly what’s so significant about the coordinate. I picked this one for this trip because it’s fairly easy to grasp the significance.”

He lowered the VTOL to a landing in a grassy field in the middle of a square bordered by multi-story buildings, and shut it down while leaving the cloak active.

“This is such a public place, out in the open,” I observed, as we stepped outside. “What if somebody bumps into the VTOL?”

Dad shrugged. “People are gonna see all kinds of stuff here tomorrow that doesn’t make much sense. Whatever doesn’t fit The Narrative will be ignored or discredited. At worst, somebody’s story of an invisible futuristic craft parked in Dealey Plaza the day before the assassination will be easily dismissed as just another ‘crazy conspiracy theory’.”

“Assassination?” I asked.

He just nodded.

We strolled around the plaza. Dad studied the top of a few buildings; a rain gutter and a grassy area behind it; sections of the street; trees, light poles and signs. “You feel it?” he asked me.

I nodded. The ominous sensation was as thick as gravy. You couldn’t see it, hear it, smell it or touch it, but it was there in abundant quantity. I wondered if being exposed to deadly atomic radiation was like this, or if you wouldn’t even know you were exposed to it until your skin started falling off. Or maybe some people could feel it—as I was feeling whatever this was, now.

Assassination. Dallas. 1963. Dealey Plaza. These words came together in my mind and triggered something in my long-term memory. “Kennedy! JFK—this is where he was shot?”

“Not ‘was’ shot. Will be shot. Tomorrow.”

It began to rain. Pedestrians around the plaza opened umbrellas. Dad ushered me back to the VTOL.

Before he took off, he opened a metal case and activated a squadron of microdrones, disguised as flying insects. One at a time he remote-piloted them to different spots around the area, landed them, and placed them on “stand-by.”

“You’re going to record the assassination?” I asked, strapping in.

“Yup,” he replied. “I plan on getting a lot of footage from multiple angles and vantage points. Nobody here and now knows about my drones, and therefore they can’t be tampered with.”

He fired up the engines and we took off.

“Why?” I asked, remembering his speech about how changing history would split the timestream and tip off the CPB to our presence.

Dad shrugged. “‘Cause I want to know what really happened. Don’t you?”

I didn’t answer. The JFK assassination happened long before I was born, and hadn’t particularly interested me so far. The name “Lee Harvey Oswald” echoed through my mind. They knew who the killer was, so there was no mystery to solve. To me the battles of the Crusades or the best Rose Bowl games ever played were much more interesting.

***

Our next stop was Chicago in 1968 during the Democratic National Convention. Yup—same old goose bumps. Same ominous, foreboding sensation. The “Big Spooky” was on the scene. We mixed with the crowd a little bit, seeing what we could see. I watched smelly, long-haired potheads and drug addicts clash with police in riot gear. Dad seemed more interested in listening to people not engaged in violence—whether they were in a conversation or shouting slogans to any who might hear.

“What’s different about this coordinate?” Dad asked me once we had broken away from the crowds and had some relative privacy.

“Nobody was fighting at the other coordinates,” I said. “There was unity. Right?”

“Yes and no. There may not have been a manifestation of violence in Berlin or Dallas, but there was violence in the air. And don’t let the conflict here fool you—there’s still a zeitgeist at work…a powerful one. This is just a struggle for control of the left-wing. People on both ‘sides’ want the same thing; it’s just that the New Left want it faster than the Old Left, while the Old Left wants to maintain the facade of actually loving what they’re trying to destroy.”

“Who wins?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Hegel.”

“I don’t know who that is, Dad.”

“You’ll learn about him when you’re older.” He pointed to the building where the convention was being held. “Thesis.” Then he pointed to the rioting protestors. “Antithesis.” Now he waved toward me, then himself. “The world we grew up in is the synthesis.”

I had no interest in politics yet, and let the subject drop.

“The ’60s is the beginning of the end for America; but it still has a lot going for it if you can ignore that,” he opined, as we strolled back toward where he had hidden the VTOL. “Fantastic decade for a young man—especially the last half.” He craned his neck to ogle some women in miniskirts walking toward the convention. “It’s easy to get girls; females are still feminine; and obesity is still fairly rare.”

Meeting Gloria had jump-started a process in my body and mind that would soon result in radical changes. My attitude toward the opposite sex began to change with it, so I did take an interest in Dad’s observation.

***

Our next stop was another November—this one in 1910 at Brunswick, Georgia. After leaving the VTOL cloaked in an area surrounded by tall trees, Dad and I snuck over to a small, lonely, terminating rail station. We chose a discreet point to observe from, and ate snacks quietly while a train rolled up in the dark of night.

It was the shortest train I’d ever seen, and I whispered as much to Dad.

“That’s a private car in between the locomotive and caboose,” he whispered back. “Came all the way from New Jersey. If you knew anything about railroads, you’d know somebody powerful had to pull some strings to get this little train’s routing priority above all the crucial freight and passenger trains. In these times, the railroads are the national infrastructure. They’re how people get mail, food, fuel…everything. You don’t make room for some private ‘duck hunting trip’ in the middle of all that unless you’ve got enormous clout.”

“Duck hunting trip?” I echoed.

Dad nodded toward the private rail car. It looked fancy. The windows glowed dull yellow—probably from kerosene lamps inside. Shadows flashed in the flickering light, betraying movement inside.

“That’s their cover story,” Dad said. “Do you feel anything?”

I shook my head. “Feels normal.”

He nodded, then gestured for me to follow. We left our observation post and crept quietly toward the train. When we came within a few yards of the private rail car, the Big Spooky hit me with such force, I nearly wet my pants.

Dad looked at me, an expectant question in his eyes. I nodded.

On the other side of the train from us, the conductor opened a door on the rail car, and a handful of men began filing out. I could make out feet and legs by peering underneath the train. I heard their voices, too.

Now the Big Spooky throbbed so excessively that my eyes watered.

Dad grasped me by the shoulder and steered me back toward our surreptitious vantage point. As we went, the oppressive sensation faded. Once back in our spot, I felt tremendous relief.

“Why didn’t I feel anything until we got close?” I asked.

“It’s concentrated, here,” Dad explained. “I’m not saying we can’t find the Big Spooky at earlier dates, because we definitely can. I have. But here and now it’s like…I don’t know…a seed, or something. Maybe a beach head. From here it grows and spreads out—like to the other places we found it.”

“It sure was intense right there,” I said. “Is this another one you don’t understand, or is there something significant about these coordinates?”

“Oh, it’s significant,” he said, solemnly. “The men getting off that train—they’re gonna climb on a boat that takes them to a private venue on an island, where they’ll have a meeting. In that meeting, they’re gonna develop a plan to destroy the United States of America, and freedom…and a whole lot of other stuff.”

“Destroy America?” I asked, confused. “But…”

“Not tomorrow,” he said. “Not next week. Not by some sudden catastrophe. In fact, their plan won’t seem to have made much of a difference for a long time. For three years there won’t be any evidence at all that an American could point to. But they’ve put something in motion. Three years from now, they’ll take a big step toward their goal.”

“Their goal…” I mused. “Destruction of the USA?”

He nodded. “In seven years they’ll take another step. They’ll suffer a few setbacks here and there, but 19 years from now they’ll take another big step. In 22 years they’ll start taking huge steps, one right after the other…starting in another November, in fact.”

I didn’t understand what he was alluding to, but I was getting the idea that November was a popular month for the Big Spooky.

“There will be plausible deniability for generations,” Dad went on. “In the post-war USA, it’s the most prosperous time anyone in world history has seen. Only a crackpot would argue that anything could be wrong, right? Even back in the coordinates you came from, almost nobody could see the problem.” Now he pointed to the locomotive. “America was a big, powerful, fast-moving engine, with a lot of momentum built up. It took over a hundred years for the cancer, eating away at her from the inside, to be obvious to enough Americans to even be mentioned in the mainstream. By the time there’s enough people aware of the problem to demand repairs, the poison will have spread everywhere. It’ll be too late. The locomotive will come off the rails; the boiler will explode; the whole thing will collapse into a pile of mangled metal. Then all the foreign vultures we’ve helped and protected over the generations will move in and pick through the scrap, taking whatever’s valuable to them. That was happening in the coordinates I came from.”

His speech had lost me. He must have realized my confusion, because he sighed and forced a grin as he tousled my hair. “But you and me have a way to cheat Fate. At least we can survive the slow-motion train wreck. And some day you’ll take an interest in history. We’ll talk then—a lot. Then all this should make more sense.”

We made our way back to the VTOL. Once inside it, I asked him, “Is there something special about us? I mean, why can we feel the Big Spooky but nobody back in Dallas or Berlin did?” I frowned and scratched my head. “Or did they? That would be even more confusing.”

Now Dad’s smile didn’t appear forced. “That’s a great question, Sprout.” He leaned back in the pilot seat and folded his hands. “You ever hear the parable of the frog?”

I shook my head.

“If you want to boil a frog,” he said, “you don’t throw it into a pot of water that’s already hot—it’ll jump out. What you do is put it in the water with the temperature nice and comfortable…then gradually turn up the heat in stages. Be patient. The frog gets used to water that’s 70 degrees, then you turn it up to 80. It’s uncomfortable for the frog at first. It may complain a little, but if you’re patient, it’ll become acclimatized to the discomfort. Then you can turn it up to 90. It’s uncomfortable, but not uncomfortable enough for the frog to jump out of the pot. The Founding Fathers said something, in the Declaration of Independence, along the lines of: ‘men prefer to just suffer, while evils are sufferable.’ That’s what the frog does. If you keep cranking up the heat, but you do it gradually enough for each new level of misery to become the status quo for a while, eventually you’ll boil the frog alive.”

“Have you ever done that to a frog?” I asked, disgusted.

He sneered. “Of course not. I’m not a sick, sadistic dirtbag. This is a parable. A metaphor. It’s how America will be destroyed. It’s why the people who wouldn’t take shit from the Japs, or the British, or the Barbary pirates, will let their freedom and future be stolen from them by enemies in their own government. In fact, they’ll obediently fund the thieves who do it. But I think it might also be why people living in certain coordinates never notice the Big Spooky. It comes on them gradually enough, they acclimatize to it. You and I notice it because we ran into it from ‘normal’ times, and it hit us all of the sudden. Like a stinky house—if you live in it, you get used to the smell, and don’t notice it. But if you enter from out in the fresh air, it hits you hard.”

“I guess that makes sense,” I said. “But what is the Big Spooky? What causes it?”

“I don’t know yet,” he said. “I wish I did.”

***

We jumped a warp and came down inside another city—this one easily the biggest I’d ever seen. It had art-deco skyscrapers to prove it. We landed inside a vast expo complex and, this time, Dad turned off the cloak and shut all the power down. I asked him about this as he locked the VTOL’s hatch. He told me people would assume our craft was an exhibit and, by the time organizers looked into it, we would be gone.

1939, New York, New York, USA — In Flushing Meadows, Queens, the grounds of the 1939 World’s Fair are illuminated at night. — Image by © CORBIS

It was 1939 in New York City and the goose bumps sprang up from that oppressive, ominous sensation. Again, Dad said there was no obvious reason why the Big Spooky was present at that space-time coordinate, but it was unmistakable—although at a weaker dose than other stops on our tour.

He also revealed the purpose of this tour: to confirm that I recognized the same sensation at the coordinates where/when he experienced it.

The research portion of our experimental time tour over, he advised me to try ignoring the Big Spooky and enjoy the rest of the day.

Over the course of the day I gradually grew accustomed to the Big Spooky—kind of like how I hardly noticed the noise of traffic, barking dogs and gunshots around the old trailer park. I did enjoy the 1939 New York World’s Fair, very much. We spent the entire day there exploring “The World of Tomorrow.” I was fascinated by everything—in detail and as a whole. And I could tell Dad enjoyed it all, too.

There was a big robot (named “Electro the Moto-Man”); a time capsule; a carnival-style ride that took us through a “city of the future”; some fantastic, futuristic (in an art-deco way) locomotives and trains, showed off in a special railroad park; new fabrics and inventions on display (including the “tele-vision” and a “View-Master” which you could use to look at three-dimensional slides); new music, sculptures, paintings and other art; and a science fiction convention.

Evidently this was the first world sci-fi convention ever held. Dad bought me an armload of books (and some of the very first superhero comic books, about characters like the Human Torch and the Submariner) while he stopped and chatted with some of the authors.

Of course most of the speculative “technology of tomorrow” envisioned at the World’s Fair was long obsolete by the time I would be born, but I still found it incredibly cool. I had never owned or seen a View-Master before, so the 3D slides were new to me. It was neat seeing what television was like when the technology was new. And it was cool discovering what artists, authors and scientists thought the future…my lifetime, give or take…would look like, even though they were almost all completely wrong.

For most of my life after that initial exposure to the 1939 World’s Fair, I found myself wishing that the future some of those dreamers imagined had turned out to be the real one.

 

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Paradox Chapter 14: Fiat Currency and the Dangers of Resounding Success

We took a tour of New Orleans, collecting from the various bookies. Each one paid us $400 in then-current denominations. With a net of $300 from each bet, we now had a couple thousand more than what we’d brought there.

We found our horseless coach where we’d left it, climbed in and shot a warp back to the hangar at BH Station. As we got out, Uncle Si handed me the stack of money and said, “And that’s one way to get yourself some seed money.”

I flipped through the stack of bills, unbelieving.

“You could take that stake right there, buy up a bunch of real estate in Florida, and you’ll be a millionaire in the post-Disneyworld USA.”

As I examined one of the bills, I was reminded of what had bothered me before. “Uncle SI, why does it say, ‘the United States will pay to the bearer $100?’ If you’re the bearer, you already have $100. What’s gonna happen—they just trade you this hundred for another one?”

He chuckled and tapped his temple. “You’re sharp, Sprout. It’s good you notice these things, and question them. You should always be that way.”

I followed him back into the cool underground labrynthe and he explained on the way. He began by producing a bill from his own wallet and handing it to me.

“Compare those two,” he said. “Aside from the denomination and the design, what else is different?”

After I pointed out a few superficial differences he shook his head, made a cutting gesture, then pointed at the bottom of my bill.

“What does that say?”

“United States Note,” I replied.

Now he pointed toward the bottom of the bill he’d pulled from his wallet. “How about that one?”

“Federal Reserve Note,” I read, aloud.

He took his note back. “You don’t see anything on here about paying the bearer anything, either.” He flopped it around a bit before putting it back in his wallet. “Just some vague statement about it representing legal tender for all debts, public or private. This is what’s known as ‘fiat’ currency. It has no worth whatsoever, beyond durable fire kindling. It’s propped up only by assumptions, and the credibility of a government.”

He now pointed to my stack of money. “That’s not real money, either. It’s paper. The difference is: it doesn’t pretend to be real. Before it was replaced by funny money, you could take it to a bank and exchange it for real money—the amount of money printed on the note.”

I scratched my head. “Okay…then what is real money?”

“Gold or silver. That’s what a government backs paper currency with, if it’s honest, and not trying to screw the people. At your age it’s probably too much of a complicated, boring mess to be of much importance to you. But we’ll talk about it more when you’re older. Ultimately, the fate of the USA was settled by this very issue.”

***

We turned in our period clothing at the wardrobe and dressed comfortably again. Carmen fixed a meal for us, then we relaxed in the living room.

“So tell me what you learned on our field trip,” my uncle said.

“Well,” I said, “if you can travel through time, that means you know the future when you’re at earlier points in the time stream. You can make easy money when you know about what hasn’t happened yet.”

“Well said, Sprout. And now you know one of many reasons why history is important for you to know.”

“How many times had you seen that fight?”

“That was my first time.”

“B-but…” I stammered. “How…?”

“I’ve studied history,” he said, with a smirk. “I knew that Corbett won that fight.”

“But you knew more than that,” I protested. “A lot more. You were predicting what would happen, and when.”

He tapped his temple again—obviously one of his most common gestures. “Pattern recognition. I’ve got it. You’ve got it, too. That’s one reason why television bores you so much.”

“Especially sitcoms,” I said, reacting to his remark without considering how he knew this about me (we’d never talked about TV before).

“As you get older, it’ll help you out when you apply it to stuff beyond television, too. Important stuff.” He cleared his throat. “Of course, I’ve read a little about Sullivan, and a little about Corbett. Enough to make some deductions. The other part is, I know about fighting, and fighters. I’ve seen a whole lot of fights in my life. I’ve been in a few. That’s gonna become part of your training—watching fights. The more you do it, the more you’ll learn. When I first started, I didn’t understand much. I couldn’t tell when a man was hurt. I assumed the guy with the best physique was stronger and therefore would win. I didn’t understand why clinching was so effective. Actual real-life knockout punches didn’t look that impressive to me…partly because in Hollywood movies, guys get hit with freight train haymakers all the time…with bare knuckles, no less…and it hardly fazes them, unless some 98 pound chick throws it. Or unless the plot calls for it”

He opened a dark bottle of something and took a swig. “So what else?”

I replayed the “field trip” in my mind, briefly. “People couldn’t have been more wrong about the matchup,” I said. “It was completely backwards from how they thought it would go.”

He chuckled and leaned back in his seat, gaze roaming across the ceiling for a moment. “So much for ‘experts’—then and now. There’s some psychological factors at work, here. It can give you clues about human nature; and you can extrapolate from there into other situations. The sports writers who wrote all those articles you read? They probably saw Sullivan in action back when he was young, in shape, and hungry.”

“He sure didn’t look hungry when I saw him,” I said.

“That’s not the kind of hunger I’m talking about,” he said. “It has nothing to do with food. Once upon a time, Sullivan was hungry…probably starving…to prove himself. To make his mark in the world. To become a world champion. Then to stay champion. It made him very dangerous. He was a wild brawler, but was probably pretty good back in the day, relative to his contemporaries in the game. Remember that boxing was mostly illegal up until the fight we just saw, so there were social disincentives to get involved in it at all. There might have been somebody better during his own time—but if so, they didn’t fight him. Hell, Corbett himself might not have been able to keep out of range from the young, hungry John L. Sullivan.

“Anyway, that’s the Sullivan people remembered. When he wasn’t in a fight…and he’d been inactive for four years when he met Corbett…it was like he was invisible to the public at large. They didn’t realize he was becoming an alcoholic couch potato. They still remembered him as he was in his prime, and that’s who they expected to see again.

“In fact, they had probably exaggerated their own memories until he was better in their minds than he actually had been. There were 10,000 men in the audience, and most of them had never seen him fight before. All they knew about him was from exaggerated stories they’d heard—second or third-hand hearsay in a lot of cases, embellished at every telling. That’s why so many people assumed he was invincible.”

I nodded. This made sense, when I considered it this way.

“That sort of thing is a danger for everybody, to some extent,” he went on. “If you’re not careful, you’ll add to or take away from memories, until the actual truth is replaced by some more pleasing, or more convenient, modified version. Then you cling to your romanticized truth, and even if you’re reminded of the actual truth now and then, you’ve grown to like your version better, so you hang on to it and dismiss whatever disagrees.”

“That’s silly,” I said, laughing.

He shrugged. “Human nature is often silly. And what I just described is mild. Some people keep twisting and twisting the original data in their mind until they fall off the deep end. They can’t accept reality anymore because this fantasy they’ve concocted becomes their reality. And what’s even crazier is that groups of people…sometimes in the millions…can all adopt the same basic fantasy, insisting that it is truth and that their fantasy is the actual reality.”

I hadn’t yet witnessed this. Without experience or context, I couldn’t imagine it. I was sure Uncle Si knew what he was talking about, but the phenomenon had no more meaning or import to me than did the “West Coast Offense” during my life before picking up a football magazine in my mother’s favorite hair salon.

“What else?” he asked.

“What you’ve been teaching me about sudden violence,” I said, “it really works. It worked for me against the kids in the park. It worked for you against the guy with the handlebar mustache.”

He waved, as if shooing a fly. “That clown was no threat. Except to our ability to watch the bout. What else?”

“About Sullivan and Corbett?”

“Well, yeah. For starters. I’ll give you something to think about: what you saw there in New Orleans is the culmination of a pattern that has happened over and over again, and probably always will.”

I leaned forward and rested my chin on my fist.

“You see this especially in the Heavyweight Division of professional boxing,” he said. “Western boxing, that is. Some brawler comes along, and he’s a wrecking machine. He doesn’t just score knockouts on his way up the ranks, but he ends careers. His victories are so devastating, the victims are psychologically damaged afterwards. They’re beat so bad, it shakes their confidence. They’re never good enough to seriously contend again after a beat down from the Bad Boy. So finally, he slugs his way to the top. He is crowned champ, and in such convincing fashion that people assume he’s invincible. Including himself, sometimes.

“But then, now that he’s on top he gets complacent. Maybe because he believes the hype about himself, but also because there are no serious challengers now. None of the potential contenders have survived the mauling he dished out on his bloody climb to the top. So guess what happens?”

“He stops training?”

Si nodded, pleased with my answer. “Sure—in many cases. Or he stops taking his training seriously. Bottom line is, he gets soft physically at exactly the same time his ego goes out of control. What does overconfidence do?”

I recited what he taught me: “It leads to arrogance. Arrogance leads to recklessness. And recklessness leads to defeat.”

“That’s my man, Sprout. So while the Bad Boy is on his ego trip, up comes some fresh new guy, who wasn’t a victim of the bad boy’s rampage…maybe he hadn’t turned pro yet; was too young; inexperienced; whatever. But he climbs up the human rubble left over from that rampage, and next thing you know, he’s in position for a title bid.”

“And nobody takes him seriously?”

“Of course not! Not in a fight against the Bad Boy. The Bad Boy is invincible!”

I laughed at this.

He knocked back another shot of booze. “Let’s call this guy ‘the Challenger.’ Y’know, I can think of one time when he wasn’t even all that good, but the result was the same.”

“Big upset? New champion?”

He nodded. “That’s right. Every single time. Well…I take that back. There’s one exception in the history of western boxing: Marciano. The Rock never got complacent; never slacked off on his training; never stepped through the ropes without bad intentions…until retiring undefeated as a professional. And he stayed retired.”

“I think I’ve heard of him,” I said.

“But like I said: the Rock is the exception. The only exception to this pattern.”

“So the same thing happened to Corbett?” I asked.

He grimaced. “Not exactly. Corbett was never a wrecking machine, so he doesn’t fit the pattern, anyway. Still…there are similarities. After he became champ, he got lazy. Starred in a Broadway play about himself instead of defending his title.”

“And along came the Challenger!” I crowed, proud of how clairvoyant I was.

“Bob Fitzsimmons,” my uncle said, nodding. “A blacksmith by trade, so he had pretty good upper body strength. Looked like a heavyweight from the waist up, but skinny little birdie legs. He was actually a middleweight, if memory serves. Tough son of a bitch, too, I’m guessing.

“So he gets a title shot. Gentleman Jim isn’t at his best, but he hasn’t fallen apart, either. I forget how many rounds they go, and Corbett just makes him look stupid. But Fitz isn’t out of shape and over the hill like Sullivan was. He’s game, and waits for his puncher’s chance.”

“I guess he got it,” I surmised.

“Yup. And a body shot, at that. Sports wags called it ‘The Battle of the Solar Plexus.’ Knocked the wind out of Corbett. Gentleman Jim couldn’t beat the count. New champ.”

“The solar plexus—where’s that?”

He reached over and gently pushed his fist against the center of my torso just under the sternum.

“Pit of the stomach. You take a big shot there, it can paralyze you for a minute or so. It’s one of those nerve centers I’ll teach you about down the road. There’s another one in your ass. Anybody ever literally kicks your ass…I mean between the cheeks and up into the hind part of your crotch…it hurts like a blind mother. I mean pain like high voltage chainsaws ripping all through your body.”

I knew what he was talking about. Allyson had kicked me there when I was six years old. The pain was crippling. She made fun of me for crying, but I couldn’t stop.

“So what else did you learn?” he asked.

I thought some more before answering. “Corbett’s technique had flaws. His punches were sloppy—lousy form, and sometimes he telegraphed, too. It’s just that Sullivan couldn’t slip or block them, anyway.”

“So what does that teach you?” He fixed me with a piercing gaze.

“Perfection isn’t necessary to win,” I said. “Sometimes mediocrity is enough.”

He scared me by jumping to his feet and whooping, his bottle held high over his head. “Helmuth Von Moltke the Elder! Outstanding!”

Carmen entered the room to see what all the noise was about. He pulled her into an embrace and covered her mouth with his. I turned away as they seemed to be trying to eat each other. But then he pulled away, Carmen’s lipstick now smeared all around his mouth, and pointed at me. “That is one sharp young man, right there! What’re we gonna do with him?”

What he would do with me, it turned out, was test me to see if I could put what I knew to use.