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Kelvin - Part 5
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Kelvin - Part 5 |
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fractal007 Senior Member
since 2000-06-01
Posts 1958 |
Standing and watching the young obese man, Wu thought of his options. It was obvious that he'd been discovered, that someone had been watching him and listening in on – on his thoughts. No, it had to be something simpler. Someone had read his early attempts at integrating his father's pastimes into his own. But he'd written all the manuscripts in his coded writing system. No one could read that. “Who are you?” Wu said. “Kelvin,” Kelvin said. “Kelvin Basir.” “I'm Wu. Come with me,” Wu said. He was not about to discuss this in the streets for everyone to hear. There were so many who could gather reconnaissance on his plans, in order ultimately to destroy his interest in pursuing the writing craft. All around him he could see the scanning eyes of cynical predators looking for youth whose dreams they could steal in a rapture of ecstatic criticism. But Wu would destroy Kelvin before he could get a chance to destroy him. Now was the time for the two of them to enter death ground together. Who would break first? That was all that mattered. Wu knew that Kelvin had the supreme disadvantage. He was fat. He had only the weapon of a hard-nosed cynicism resulting from so many years of teasing to aid him. In all likelihood, Kelvin was using eating to escape from himself, to escape from this or that failure or to escape from the obligations which came with success. He was taking the easy route. Don't succeed; eat your way to happiness instead. Wu had seen this phenomenon before and it was well documented in several of the manuals for strategic interpersonal interaction that Du Mu had had him read during his upbringing. Kelvin followed Wu as they left the square, walking away from the thing which looked for all intents and purposes to be a well but which, according to Lindsay, wasn't one. He followed Wu, who brought him through the various city streets. Around him were strange sights – a man with puss running from boils on his face, a shirtless woman standing atop a wooden box and talking of the woes of modern society, and a group of youngsters engaged in some kind of callisthenics. They finally stopped in a shed outside a house. The walls were lined with set squares, scratch awls, saws, hammers, and other implements. Wu pored through a chests under an oaken desk and produced a stack of papers. “This is my work,” Wu said. Kelvin was impressed. He had tried writing occasionally in his spare time but never anything as copious as this. Still, this was all very awkward. He was worried that Wu would make him read all of the manuscripts and ask that he comment on them – not that Kelvin could actually read Wu's writing. Nevertheless, It always made Kelvin feel guilty when someone sang to him or read something to him and then asked him to comment on it. He didn't like artistic performances and so it was difficult for him to comment on them without letting that annoyance show through. “I can't read it,” Kelvin said. “Of course you can't!” Wu said. “Do you think I would allow just anyone to read my work?” It made a kind of sense to Kelvin. “No,” he said, “I guess not.” “So I will teach you to read it.” Kelvin was taken aback. It didn't seem likely that he could learn this strange language in a few hours as Wu seemed to be suggesting he could. The language seemed so intricate and exotic. But as he looked at it, Kelvin began to discern patterns. For example, the strange s-shaped mark always appeared at the end of a word and sometimes it had a tick after it. “Kelvin,” Kelvin heard Lindsay whisper to him, “I'm going to make this easier for you. It's going to take months for you to apprentice with Wu to learn this language.” Kelvin felt like he couldn't respond to Lindsay without being impolite to Wu. “It's okay,” Lindsay said, “You can talk to me.” “But Wu--” Kelvin began. “He won't notice,” Lindsay said. In fact, Lindsay had already taken care of Wu by splitting Kelvin's existence into two distinct times. He existed now at two points in his personal history. When he heard Lindsay he was having a conversation he would have five hours from now. But when he heard Wu he was in the present. Indeed, to be even more technical, Kelvin occupied three positions in time. In the world of work, time was not moving at all for him. He was frozen in an instant, walking away from Salam – or the person he knew as Salam – while he lived in a moving present over here in Weiland. Indeed, with a race like humans – dependent as they were on primitive cellular structures to implement a field of conscious experience – time was entirely irrelevant. One could place a human in any location with moving its body anywhere. “Well okay,” Kelvin said, “What are you going to do to make this easier for me?” “This.” Kelvin found himself now standing beside Wu in a different room. It felt strange to have grown a beard in an instant. Kelvin looked down and saw before him a paper on which were written familiar words – his words. The situational awareness of standing there listening to Lindsay mentioning how long his apprenticeship would take faded to be replaced by an alien confidence, a dwelling of knowledge into which accommodation grew steadily easier. Presently they stood in a tiny cottage Wu had built for himself some three miles from his parents' house. This was where Wu preferred to write, though he stored his work in the shed near his own house in order to confuse any would-be attackers. If they found the cottage they would not find the writings. If they found the writings they would not know they were his. “I think we're ready to work on this together,” Wu was saying. He smiled as he saw Kelvin standing there daydreaming again. He had seen Kelvin do it enough times over the past few months to have grown accustomed to it. “I know,” Wu had said on one occasion a few weeks ago, “You have trouble concentrating on what's going on in around you. You see things from a different world, like me.” Wu had grown to like the young man, as fat and insecure as he was. Kelvin was a dreamer, like Wu. He was a victim of society's rejection – perhaps by choice, perhaps not. It was difficult to tell through the cloud of defensive rhetoric he employed like a chaotic thicket of brambles around his person. Kelvin and Wu had already written many compositions together. But Wu had yet to show Kelvin his own writings again after that first moment back in the shed. But this time, Wu had promised, he would bring the story itself, and they would work on it together. Wu placed before Kelvin a page of his work and Kelvin began to read: Phillip the faithless wandered through a desert. Seldom did he find water and rarer still food. The sun bore down upon him and the dunes crept slowly, monotonously. For a long time then, Kelvin, occasionally with the help of Wu, read of the desert wanderer. Life's short. Think hard! |
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rad802 Member
since 2008-04-19
Posts 279KY U.S.A. |
On to 6. A worthy legacy is the irrevocable consequence of dreaming. |
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