Bill Harrington was walking down Fillmore Street in downtown Lafayette to a job.  It had just rained and the storefronts had the look of watercolors, a long palette of reds, yellows, greys, and greens, whose order seemed arranged by the spring winds. Further ahead, there was a tall, still grassy hill upon which the city advanced, house by house, like cat’s paws, seeking a view. The people were beginning to peer out their doorways.  They looked up at the bright dehydrated yellow sky and at the departing clouds, green-stained by the fields they had wrestled with. While the cars roared up and down Fillmore Street with a sound like the river out of which Lafayette had risen, had been spilled some said. Bill Harrington walked over the sidewalk with purpose, ignoring the puzzles formed by the irregular pools of water.

Part of our Ficciones series (in honor of the great Argentine writer-scholar Jorge Luis Borges) dedicated to philosophy and literature, the underpinnings and explorations of politics as it should be, at the technological intersection of the experimental and accessible.  If you have a work of fiction of any kind or a thoughtful literary/philosophical exegesis looking for a home, let us know!…

Instead he walked heavily through them, scattering them into new patterns even more complicated than before.  He was rapidly advancing on the corner where the Loeb building stood over the city.  Tiny flecks of gold in the sun, the last of last year’s leaves, swirled down from their shelter on its ledges as the edifice shook itself dry.  Some fell in Bill Harrington’s hair, but he did not notice. The street light at the corner turned yellow and stayed there.  Bill H strode towards the flashing red DON’T WALK light as if he expected it to last forever.

He seemed to be dull, lacking in all imagination, not to have seen any or all of these things. Yet he was an avid reader–Borges, Calvino, et al; he had often imagined himself jumping into the air and gliding down asymptotically for miles and miles, just inches above the surface of sidewalks like these.  These sensations, and others like it, had come to be so vivid and real in his mind that as for the rest, like everything described above, he took said literally in stride, so-called reality. He was not even entirely surprised when his feet left the ground and he began to rise in the air.

And almost before he realized it, he had risen to a point above the street that was level with the third floor of the Loeb.   The stone appeared fresh, just set in self-satisfaction. The panels of large windows had been tinted blue to shield those inside, the mid-level executives from the light, but from his vantage point, the occupants looked like slow-moving fish in a public aquarium.  One of the men had spread his young secretary on his desk like a battlefield map and seemed to be inhaling life from her limp body. She saw him floating there, and her eyes widened, but she held the man’s kiss on her mouth, and Bill continued upward.

Now he began to see things in the building that had probably never been seen before; evidence of shoddy workmanship and maintenance, though none of it appeared life-threatening and, in any case, was none of his business.  On the top floor, the windows were clear and bright.

There was a meeting going on inside, and mean strode across the room in the finest suits he thought he’d ever seen outside a television set or movie theater.  Large pads of tear-away paper stood around the edges like castle ramparts; this was a strategy session, brainstorming to sell a new product or re-sell an old.  It looked particularly difficult, judging from the agitated motions of the men, and yet there was something mannered in their actions that indicated they had done things this difficult many times before, pacing, wheeling to write and draw.  One older man sat silently, opposite the window.  He saw Bill, but did not seem surprised.  He looked sad, weary, and the dull gloss of envy came into his eyes as he watched Bill rise.

Atop the Loeb building was a long radio antenna, far more spindly at close range than Bill had imagined it from below. He had hoped to grab hold of it, but it appeared he was only able to rise straight up, as if drawn up in a column, in his own personal private elevator of air. And as the top of the building receded below him, he began, for the first time, to fear that he would fall.  He felt strings of cells popping like corn, in cold oil.  And yet he also knew, not suddenly but like a dull ache, that he was responsible for his rise, that it was all within his power. Of course, this frightened him all the more, and it seemed the rate of his rise was increasing greatly, for coming towards him was a Lear jet.

The jet was filled, he knew, with top executives from a national or even a multinational company, for whom Lafayette was not even a place on a map, but had been sorted and divided into far-flung demographic pots. Through the portholes of the plane, he could see pieces and parts of the people inside, and from each he could construct elaborate portraits, which would also be completely wrong.  The jet passed below him, and when he looked up he could see the blue of the sky already beginning to dissolve into black.  He could not imagine how he could rise higher. He could not understand how he had risen so high.  He wanted desperately to fall, even to his death. But this, too, had no effect.

Now a spy plane glided soundlessly across a thin sheet of cloud. Perhaps he might be shot down.  As it approached, the plane banked slightly, like an eyebrow raised–they were aware of his presence–but then it banked back, and as it passed below, he could see that the cockpit was empty. He had been processed and it had been determined that he belonged here, still rising. And as he looked down, he could see the earth slowly bend and curve.

For all the lessons, photographs, and films he had seen, he realized he had never really believed in its roundness until now.  Were it possible, he would have said he felt as if he were looking at the truth, far enough from his eyes that he could see it, receding.  It was becoming difficult to breathe.  Above him were hundreds of black and white dots, like flocks of geese, but leaderless, in no order or pattern yet all moving in a straight line.  He almost smiled as he thought of angels. When he got closer, he could see they were thousands of cannisters, filled with toxic wastes. He passed silently through them, and the earth seemed as real now as a star.

He thought of the wonderful things he had had there. He thought of moments and days, encounters and travels. Friends and family. He thought of things he had still wanted to do, to paint, to compete, to lead a double life, to be a better uncle to his nephew and niece.  Things he would have done, had he been able, but was not, was incap-able.  He rose sharply as he thought this, but no longer in a straight line.  He had begun to gently drift.  There was no sensation in his body; it hung from his neck as if paralyzed.  But he was in pure dry ordinary space. He was not dead, he was not going to die; he could still breathe, it would get no more difficult to breathe than it was just now.  All around him were the stars, so many more than he had ever seen, looking like the fires in his eyes just before he woke or slept, like the dawn and dusk of dreams.

He wanted to fall, back into warm fleshy arms, into the sweet stink of earth, but rose higher still, and high had begun to lose meaning.  He tried to think of people he had wronged, but the effects on his rise, as before, were indifferent.  He was powerless to stop it. He became angry, swinging wildly, at foes he could not even imagine as he rose.  He realized or accepted suddenly that his life had not been wonderful, with a wave bitter and painful.  He had been cheated badly. There had been many people who hated him, who stood in his way, and denied him the fruits of his talents. Immediately he felt dirtied and mundane for having had these thoughts, but no god hurled him down for his ingratitude or malevolence.  What he said was true.  He began to fall freely.

I never had a single true friend, he said, as he spun through the armpit of another Lear.  They all just used me, took what they could–which was little–and laughed behind my back.  Already he could see Lafayette below. Really, he thought, when his plunge slowed for a moment, noone has ever cared what happened to me, and no one ever will.  He was back on the ground shortly, lying, his arms and legs spread in an embrace of the globe, in a farmer’s field.  The ground was soft and smelled of morels; it was complex and appetizing. The air was sharp, clean, and refreshing, and he still found it difficult to breathe. A small bird walked along the ground nearby, singing a thin song like ice cubes in a breeze, that spiraled towards the clouds. The sun shone on his back like a warm blanket.  He realized that the farmer had recently manured his field, and his clothes were ruined, but he thought he might like to lie here forever anyway. Every bone in his body had been broken.

May, 1987

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