In Search of Jack Grey, pt. 1
tpc004
The Underpants
Stanley sits in the Chroma Park with silver sparkling all around him. Her underpants are bright blue. He flinched when he looked up from The Molecular Structure of Lester Finn, a second-rate fiction pad he picked up yesterday afternoon. He glances around. No one is watching him. He feels guilty, but it’s a gift, so he looks. She lays on her back wearing a short, thin-material skirt. She must know; the wind blows the front of her skirt like a parachute. It’s as if she’s lying only in her underwear in the middle of the Chroma Park in the middle of Metro.
Her underpants are girlish, small-shaped, aqua blue. Her stomach above the waistband is white and flat. The breeze picks up, raising the skirt higher. The bottom of her breasts peek. Stanley catches his breath. Her head lifts; she looks around with her hand above her eyes visor-like. She makes no effort to hold down her skirt. Stanley struggles with his self esteem as his eyes shift down to the pad and back up again.
The Molecular Structure of Lester Finn
Four years ago Jack Grey wrote an unnoticed fiction pad called The Molecular Structure of Lester Finn. In the story Lester Finn is a philosopher-scientist who’s interested in human evolution. He believes that the brain is a tool, is overrated as a spiritual device, and that all mysticism is simply humans witnessing the hidden powers which they themselves hold and thus potentially could control. The pad did not sell well. Jack Grey had zero financing and almost no distribution capability. The pad was passed around to friends and friends of friends. Underground culture began to embrace the story about two years ago. Jack Grey is at work on part two of the story. A part two in the mobius strip ideal of one author’s works wrapping at the end back to the beginning and forming an infinite, twisted world. He plans to write eight pads. It might take him twenty to thirty years. Most of the hundreds of characters won’t overlap from pad to pad. The common factor in each is simply the world in which each takes place; the author remaining as the binding force through tone, style, and locale.
Skate Trog
Denise watches the skate trog slowly roll down the fuzz pavement street from her compartment window. Fuzz pavement is the gravely layer of chunky tar that Works people lay for a cheap alternative to the smooth melted stuff that more traveled roads get. Fuzz pavements are no good for skate trogs. He isn’t even hanging his back foot off the board to brake. The chunks keep him slow. He pops off the board and bends to pick it up. He jogs up his stairs in the comp across the street from hers and out of sight. Seventeen seconds later his light comes on, and he’s in front of his window directly level with Denise’s. Off comes his shirt. He uses it to wipe off sweaty skin. His arms raise and show shadowed muscles. He moves toward his bed. He opens the bag that lies there. He takes out a vid card that is still in its case. He opens the case and removes a bag. He puts the bag in the top-left drawer of his clothes holder. He pushes the card into his vid screen and blue-white light emanates showing Denise his face aglow. His features are young. His skin is smooth. Denise thinks, “his stress level must be low.” Images begin. He steps back. The screen is too small for her to make out more than colors. He pulls his shorts off and stands in tight mid-thigh under-skins. The commercial says they make thighs burn; they don’t mean the man’s. Denise feels her face flushing. He leans over the bed giving her a new voyo-record. He glides into his bed to the left of the window. She sees no more except for colors on the vid screen. She checks her watch and notes the time and date on her OCR pad.
The Bag
Bill wakes up with a dry mouth and a headache. His static-filled vid screen lights his blue walls blue. He climbs out of his bed and switches it off. He totters to his stuff shelf blind and hand-searches for his mini lamp. It casts a low, warm, yellow glow dissolving the blue. He sits on the edge of his bed and rubs his face. He hears a creek in the hallway. He hears another outside his door. He reaches for his go-pack. Someone tries his knob. It’s locked. He pulls a bag from his clothes holder. He can hear a pick in his door lock. Bill grabs his board and crab crawls to the window. He opens the window and climbs out onto the ledge. The cool summer air shocks his skin, his breath becomes dew in the air. He steps onto the ledge and shuts the window as his door eases open. Bill quietly climbs his roof rope. He pulls the rope up after himself and crouches. He shivers in just his underskins, slowly unzips his go-pack, and pulls out a long-sleeve T-shirt. He puts it on and hugs himself trying to knock out the cold. Over the edge he peers past his window at the street, and waits.
(continued in pt.2)