NEVER STOPPING THINKING FROM THE MOMENT I wake that’s me and welcome to it we keep going down down I did not know there were so many levels but of course there must have been so many countries peoples ideologies in contact so much hatred influence and pressure brought to bear does Jefferson have any idea how difficult this will be they couldn’t organize themselves and make peace or stop the earth boiling or feed the potbellied children or stop the plague and he thinks he can get a hundred thousand juveniles to stop killing and raping and stealing oh well that is why I like him I suppose the way you like a dog chasing birds good boy what a dreamer she was a dreamer too Chu Hua her flower-petal hands and exquisite face and matchless courage and now she’s dead and her flesh is feeding the bugs and rodents and the corruption of her beauty is aloft in the air and maybe drafts of air carry her past all the paintings in the Metropolitan that’s enough of that I grab my attention and rope it back like I do all day like I do all my life the aim now is one foot in front of the other down the raw concrete stairs we have taken 1,217 steps since we left Jefferson up at ground level and have descended 72 stairs what use is that to me now I remember when I recited that whole page back to Mom when I was only six it was just as clear as a PDF scan in my mind’s eye and she looked proud amazed scared and this is a blessing and a curse I remember every moment with her every slice of the extruding spheroid of my witnessing of space-time like I notice that Chapel and Peter tend to brush against each other more than is statistically likely and especially more than would be invoked by the rules of society curious perhaps an impulse toward the continuation of the species but then the action of evolution is on the level of the gene not the species I believe Dawkins not Wilson it’s all the same to me I mean it’s all the same smiling breathing touching pleasure attachment plus what I have realized since she is gone and part of me with her there is not enough love in the world anyhow why would I find it wrong we are as we are made by nature which is the only God and love really is only a spandrel in the architecture of biology but the accidental beauty of the world is the only reason to live now the stairs level out and we are in the underbelly of the complex vast and dark and damp I suppose if I were poetic I would compare it to something like a living organ but things are what they are exactly and precisely if we had the equipment to see things truly instead of these five weak and lopsided senses we would know that and Washington said people are the sensory organs the universe uses to apprehend itself and maybe that’s why I’m stuck here in this little machine of a body I’m just a taste bud on the tongue of God ha-ha how’s that for a metaphor there is a central corridor rooms to the side at first the corridor is blank but then we find evidence of a fight not kids but adults of long ago something went wrong here even in the larger going wrong of it all skeletons in dark suits earphones umbilicaling up to their skeleton nonears their guns fired empty and others with submachine guns clubs knives a wall blown out and collapsed from an explosion Peter is registering shock and gooseflesh fear but Chapel looks excited why is that we stop at a metal door where someone died jammed in the doorframe beyond that a round room comfortable but utilitarian a panic room maybe here everyone is in a gas mask guns in hand we look at all of them and I see a face through the pane of a mask I have seen this man many times he was the president of the United States when there was one Peter says is that I say yes it is holy shit says Peter and Chapel says nothing he is not even looking at the president he is looking at the bodies nearby and he finds what he is looking for a fat soft black leather briefcase or suitcase it is attached to someone by a stout gray wire Chapel is staring at it I say what is it nothing he says just some papers but he has not even looked inside so why would he say that I say we should look inside he says no time we need to get the generators going so we keep going and down at the end of the corridor we find the works department a big genny there are stores of fuel to get her going a simple business for me I tell Chapel I need to go back for more fuel though and Chapel looks like he does not believe me but he says go I go back to the room with the president and his men and I open the bag a kind of satellite phone a fat binder full of plastic-coated sheets of protocols a card with codes now I know what this is I look over all of it and take pictures with my mind and I thought so says Chapel he is standing in the doorway I understand I say the whole reason this makes sense the Resistance what do you really want and he says justice and I say this can’t give justice and he says it is the only thing that can give justice his gun FLASHES