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“The food’s running low,” Eddie said.

“I keep thinking of things I thought I hated,” Ben said. “Onions, friend chicken, the smell of broccoli boiling, paper cuts.”

“It’s running low,” Eddie said. “Maybe a few more days. We have more oxygen than food.”

They watched the earth above the gray horizon, quiet and blue. Deep dark cracked the surfaces about them. Black slowly rolled into the craters with the drift of the sun.

“And the wind. One thing you can’t learn is how not to live with wind and rain. I’ve forgotten what it’s like to have skin.”

Eddie nodded behind his sunshield. “We might get the transmitter back. But I’m tired. Is that a storm do you think? You wouldn’t think there was traffic or concern.”

“The definition of those clouds says storm,” Ben said. “But it’s still very blue.”

“If we can get the transmitter back, at least they’ll know. Better that they know,” Eddie said.

Ben listened to Eddie’s breathing. In their suits and out on the barren basalt maria, he found it difficult to distinguish whose breathing belonged to whom. Sometimes he felt he would fall. He often had the sensation of a sudden change in the axis of balance, much as some people do during sleep, waking just as they’re about to hit bottom.

“We should get back,” Eddie said through his radio.

“We move very slow,” Ben said.

“Yes, very slow,” Eddie said.

Ben said. “We should really at least let them know.”

Tinkerton hits a pocket of suspended space. On the street the cars have stopped moving. A plane overhead is a quieted image, pastel drawn, a stop-motion bullet, long in the sky.

or

Tinkerton hits a pocket of suspended time. On the street the cars have stopped. He remembers watching out the window of a plane as a child, wondering what it would be like to die.

and

The earth rising or the plane falling, he guessed it would be the same, but still. Would it hurt and how much time would it take? Would he scream? It was important for him to know if the plane dropped from the sky would it hurt or would he scream.

or

Tinkerton hits a space of fear on the outskirts where languages change, music plays counterclockwise, and the fretful landscape is difficult to see through the lurking fog. He hears an approaching car. Tinkerton hears the engine ease down, a door close, the sound muted by the improbable mist.

“Tinkerton, are you there?” a woman’s voice calls out. Tinkerton didn’t know what to do. Should he reveal himself? Inform the woman of his whereabouts? For Tinkerton it was important to know what to do in just such a situation.

or

Tinkerton, in a moment of suspended breath, clamps his fingers to the side of the precipice. He regrets clawing his way down. He could’ve let the ball go. His mother might purchase a new one, after all, another 30 cent toy. But he’d come down to save it. He can see it now on a ledge just below. All Tinkerton has to do is turn slowly, take a few more steps down, reach carefully and grab for it. But an insight comes. It comes to him with the call of a bird, some lonely bird, singing out of the vast empty air beneath him. The insight is that the ball may be above rather than below him. He hasn’t the desire to open his eyes.

or

Tinkerton caught in a moment when the crowd has paused. In the air, an orange balloon has come into view. He senses that some in the crowd are asking about the balloon’s origins, another asking about it’s future, all others simply transfixed by the beauty of a balloon altering the pattern of the day.

and

Which explains why the cars have stopped, the streets suddenly quiet, the plane stamped against the young blue sky. Tinkerton trapped, an orange balloon passing behind one of the taller buildings, and gone.

and

He opens his eyes on a cliff face, in his hand, a bird’s egg. It’s important for Tinkerton to know where the ball has gone and how a bird’s egg has assumed its figure into his hand.

or

Which explains why the cars have stopped, the streets suddenly quiet, the plane stamped onto the young blue sky. Tinkerton hears his voice called. He turns. “You forgot your lunch, Tinkerton,” a woman says, approaching. “And why are you standing in the street, blocking the traffic.”

My scientist friend invented a time machine and we went back in time and did a number on some Neanderthals. I don’t know anything about the time machine except that it works with anti-time, my friend said.

We went back to the time of the Neanderthals and they were real as you and me. Except that they were more sophisticated than the anthropologist, who came with us, believed, or so the anthropologist was so kind to tell us.

These Neanderthals had pretty elaborate towns. Except that they made them out of mud, and because mud doesn’t last, we never knew about them, or so said the anthropologist, who was pretty fucking amazed at the complexity of the structures.

“Separate rooms? Impossible,” the anthropologist said.

We saw a house that had two stories and a basement and they had plumbing, too, because we figured that everyone can put two and two together and if it smells bad we could make a technology to make the source invisible.

Before we whooped ass on the Neanderthals, they gave us a pretty nice tour of their town and their government. They had a leader who was kind of like a warlord chief. He organized war parties and made truces with neighboring tribes. The thickness of their faces, as we’ve all have seen from commercials and National Geographic magazine was less than we had figured or that the scientists figured, as I wasn’t much figuring on anything and really couldn’t give a crap about the size of the bones of anyone’s face.

On the tour we saw Neanderthal children and Neanderthal lovers. I saw a Neanderthal man give a flower to a Neanderthal woman. “Amazing,” said the anthropologist.

Some of the women were downright pretty and the men could pass for just about any other men, but the angles of the face were somewhat scary. Basically, the typical Neanderthal face is pretty serious. They always look like they’re about to beat the crap out of you, even when they smile, but we weren’t scared as these Neanderthals were pretty small of frame, the biggest one I saw no more than five feet high, at least a hell of a lot shorter than me.

But they were goddamned strong little mother fuckers. I taught one to arm wrestle and he almost tore my arm off at the shoulder when he got mad because he couldn’t employ the proper technique with his stubby arms.

The reason we had to whoop ass on the Neanderthals was because we caught some of them messing with the time machine. We told then not to mess with the time machine as it was our only means back to modern times and the scientist was pretty keen on getting back and revising both theories of time travel and theories concerning Neanderthal culture. Both the scientist and the anthropologist were pretty excited (that’s an understatement: creaming their jeans was more like it) and they weren’t going to have a pack of primitives fuck with their means of transportation.

But they didn’t want violence. “No killing,” my friend said. They didn’t want to disrupt the time line or mess with the cultural life of the Neanderthals, which was why we always had to go around in clothes like they wore, which were pretty sophisticated outfits made of leather, treebark and skins. I have to give it to the Neanderthals because it was the Neanderthals who invented hats.

One night I heard a bonging of metal. I saw a couple of Neanderthal boys messing with the time machine, beating at the sides with sticks, while a couple of the older men had come with a litter which they were intending, I figured, the bear the time machine off to their town, maybe so they could worship it or disassemble it to guess at how it worked.

Luckily, we had the foresight to bring real weapons, weapons the like of which the Neanderthals had no chance against defending. The scientists liked to joke that the deeper humans move forward into history, the more their technologies and societies progress, the more the past is put into jeopardy because we simply gain more and more ability to move back into it and thus fuck with it enough to alter “delicate progressions,” as the anthropologist called them.

“It’s something we often don’t think about,” said the anthropologist. “Global warning, sure. But what about our ability to shape “delicate past progressions?”

Such as was the case now, as I had to pull out a revolver and fire it above the heads of our enemies after my respectful “please don’t do that, assholes” went nowhere. One of the young Neanderthals, probably made crazy by the explosion of the gun, a sound which he’d never imagined, grew a little disoriented. He rushed my way, so I shot him in the neck.

And then all hell heated up. We were attacked on all sides. I shot about ten of those Neanderthals until they tore off wailing.

The scientist and the anthropologist worked quickly to remove the bullets from the bodies which took some amount of time even with knives, as Neanderthal muscles are very dense. In the distance we heard what I figured was an approaching army of Neanderthals.

The scientist cranked things up and we came home. The scientist and the anthropologist were pretty shaken about the killing but the first thing they did on return was to hit their computers to analyze data, organize photographs, get to work on papers, and make phone calls. The lab assistants and students and reporters were all stunned by the success of the scientists. I was paid quite well for my trouble, as you’d guess.

Later in the week I met with my scientist friend. He said that they were scheduling another visit to the past, this time for an expedition to the age of the dinosaurs.

“Everything’s changed,” he told me. “The community is at a loss for words. And the curiosity on the part of my colleagues for other times and other places has been peaked. We’ll need you for security. This next trip may call for more intensive forms of protection, if you understand me.”

I told him I understood him just fine. That if he wanted me to whoop ass on some diplodons, or whatever you call them, that’d be fine by me as long as the price was right. And we shook hands, but I doubt I’ll actually go through with the deal. Lizards aren’t really my thing.

Imagine this as a sitcom. It’ll be a killer.

We have Nancy and Bob Henderson, the parents of five children who live on an average street in an average town. The funny thing about them is that the five kids have no heads, which will make for a great laugh track when the Hendersons head over to Granny’s and Granny opens the door to the Henderson Family and Bob and Nancy Henderson festively say, “Happy Thanksgiving!” except for the children, who just stand there with no heads between their shoulders, like holiday turkeys dressed in autumn flannel.

The funny thing about Granny is that she’s a transvestite and the Hendersons are a little embarrassed by him (a running sub plot) and Bob says, “Remember when you wore a suit, Father, just like all the other Dads?” which will lead to a rather poignant scene where Granny and Bob hug in the backyard and agree to let bygones be bygones after Granny reminds Bob about all the persecution he endured wearing dresses in high school and how he had to hide his true self from his army buddies, but we ease off the poignancy by then moving the lens of the camera to the children and to Nancy, who’s weeping, watching Bob and Granny hug each other and reconciling, and the kids just standing there with no heads between their shoulders.

One funny episode might involve the children, who are all twins, trying to communicate to their parents that they want friends over to spend the night but it’s impossible for them to do this as they can’t write or speak and Bob and Nancy have no idea what the children are trying to tell them with those funny arm jerks and that frenetic hopping, which is all a secret language that the children have learned over the years but have keep hidden from their parents and now regret (another running joke). The children, by the way, also communicate by scratching each others’ palms and by punching each other.

The laugh track’ll go crazy as the audience watches the children try to convey their aims to Nancy and Bob, and Bob and Nancy misunderstand the messages and bring home a pony (“Oh, you want a pony,” Bob says), give the children a swing set or a trampoline (one of the children tries it out and goes flying into the bushes and crawls out with a squirrel chattering in the space between his shoulders), or load the children into the RV for a cross country trip (“That’s what they want, Honey; they want to go on vacation!”), which is the way the episode ends: with the RV turning out of the driveway and the children lined up in the back window all headless and pathetic, Bob and Nancy beginning a travel tune, maybe something like “the ants go marching one by one, Hurrah . . . ” and then the credits fly.

The audience’ll be on the floor.

In another episode, Granny is staying over at Bob and Nancy’s because the studding of her house is being reduced to powder by termites. The episode begins with Granny sneaking a lover up to her room and suddenly Granny stops, shakes her head at the lover and says to the lover out loud, “Don’t worry about the children, they have neither eyes nor ears and Nancy and Bob sleep like the dead.”

But the kids do know because they understand the meaning of vibrations and the remaining space of the episode is driven by the children playing tricks on Granny’s lover. For example, while the lover sneaks in to the bathroom, one of the children, who’s hiding inside, opens the shower curtain with a gap-toothed pumpkin balanced in the crook between his shoulders, and the lover runs from the bathroom screaming. That’s just one example of the tricks the children play on the lover, who is perpetually hiding under Granny’s bed in the guest room when Bob and Nancy come in to ask, “What’s the matter, Dad? We heard screaming.”

The final scene shows Granny’s lover moving quietly through the house and out, and as he departs the yard, the camera moves to a window where the children are standing headless but satisfied not watching but watching the lover disappear off set and the credits fly.

The ratings’ll go off the charts.

The audience’ll want to know what this headlessness is all about but the sitcom will naturally avoid explanation as explanatory narrative is typically uninteresting and doesn’t suit comedy but the reasons for the disfigurement might factor into scripts as a diversion (as an aside, we might simply write in that the children understand the vocalizations of the people around them by interpreting vibrations on the surface of their sensitive skin). One episode, perhaps a powerful season ender, might involve one of the neighborhood kids, the only child of Chefs Henry and Tina, who becomes curious about why the headless children appear so fun-loving, have such cool and plentiful toys, and take so many interesting trips.

So, after an afternoon on the trampoline and rides on the pony, he tells one of the headless children that he wants to be just like him. Then maybe his parents will bring him a pony or purchase him a trampoline, take him to amusement parks, and so he tells one of the headless children that he’s going to go right home and use one his parents’ butcher knives to cut his own head off. The remainder of the episode will involve the children trying to make Bob and Nancy understand their friend’s impending decapitation but Bob and Nancy, of course, understand none of this, so the children take matters into their own hands and take off down the street toward their friend’s house with Nancy and Bob chasing after them shouting, “Is it a cat you want?” or “Oh my, Honey, the street lights!” and the dog too, yapping, and the credits will fly until next season.

The advertisers will come in droves. The audience’ll be on the floor.

One day the earth cracked in two. There was a great rending noise at the separation point followed by tremors. A reporter reporting on a crime looked down and said, “What the hell? Get the camera on that.”

But as people can only see a few miles in any direction, most considered the crack a local phenomenon. The band at the high school lined up at the crack in the field. The band teacher said, “Don’t get too close. We don’t know how deep it goes.” One of the trumpet players blew a note into the crack and everyone listened to the echo.

Climbers came to the crack in a mountain and leapt across and continued on their way. In the suburbs a family watched as all the water in the pool disappeared in a great silver swish along with the youngest one’s rubber duck. “God, I’m glad none of you kids were in that,” the mother said, amazed.

Cruz dragged his girl friend Maricela from bed. “Come on. Look at this crack.”

She said, sleepily, “Not now, Cruz. Maybe tonight.”

“No,” he said. “The one outside.” On the porch, she accepted a cup of coffee and observed the crack in the yard, a three foot wide fissure. The dog kept leaping across it and barking. They left the porch and followed the crack in Cruz’s car and parked at a higher point on the road outside of town.

“Look at it, Cruz. It cuts across the floor of the desert,” Maricela said.

“It reaches to the edge of the earth,” Cruz said. “Or maybe it does. Look at the other side of the crack, the bushes, the hills. They look like they’re moving farther away from us. My god.”

Just then, Cruz’ cell phone went off. “There’s a crack? Yes, Mama. How big is it? The cottonwood’s fallen into the river? Ay,” Cruz said. “Te llamaré pronto. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Your mother has a crack? Why didn’t you tell her about this one?”

“I didn’t want to scare her,” Cruz said.

Maricela phone rang. “Hola,” she sad. “There’s a big crack in your yard? Shaking? Like an earth quake? Yes, Papa. Well, how big is it? Your car? Is she okay? No, I don’t know. Maybe Cruz and I can come down soon. Sure. Yes, I love you too.”

Maricela pocketed the phone. “Everyone has a crack,” she said. “Your mother and my father. He said he almost had a heart attack because my aunt had just gotten out of the car and then, boom, the car fell into the crack. He says it’s that big.”

Cruz said, “It’s either everyone we know has a crack and there are many cracks or this is the same crack, which would be even more amazing. Look how far it goes and it’s getting wider. Look at the dunes. They’re drawing away from us.” Cruz kneeled and touched the ground delicately with his fingers as if feeling for movement deep inside the earth. “But what makes this odd,” he told Maricela, “–if this is the same crack, then the crack has somehow traced a vector that links us with those we love, a strange connector.”

“Call Eduardo. Ask him,” Maricela said.

Cruz called his friend Eduardo. “He’s not answering. You, you call Henry and Maria.”

Maricela called Henry and Maria. “No answer,” she said. “Call, Jaime or Hector.”

“Jaime, Jaime. Is there a crack in your yard? There’s a crack? The whole other side of the block? Fires? The lake is spilling in? All of it? They’re dead? Oy, I’ll call you back.”

Maricela had her face in her hands.

“It’s confirmed then,” Cruz said, walking to the edge of the shoulder. “This is the same crack and it’s everywhere. It’s everyone’s crack. I’ll bet that if I call James in London and he calls Susan in Tokyo, they’ll all tell the same story. A crack has opened in the earth but somehow, impossibly so, it’s appeared for everyone. It’s swallowing lakes. At this moment, the oceans are disappearing, draining into this impossible crack. The coast lines will dry up and the mountains will crumble and soon the earth will divide down the center and who knows what will happen after that.”

“I don’t know,” Maricela said. “But it’s growing wider and I feel a tremor under my feet.”

A moment of warm, unique silence passed. Maricela said, “Look: birds. Cruz, look at all the birds coming. All kinds. I’ve never seen so many birds.”

Down for review.

It’s morning and a crowd of people is in the street. I have a conflict: I work for the state and the state has claimed these crowds, these people, illegal, and I work for the state and must enforce its declarations. But I’m also a human being and these people in the streets are human beings and they are shouting, “Freedom. Freedom. Freedom.”

I carry a shield, a baton. I work for the state who has declared these people illegal. There in the crowd is my brother and my sister. My neighbor’s brother and sister are nearby. But at my back is the state in which we all live, which has provided me work, education, and safety from our powerful enemies. The state claims that these crowds are bringers of chaos, and chaos is the enemy’s sword. Order, according to the state, is more important than any one life or twenty lives of even maybe a thousand. Order is the mother of the future. Order is the father of the past. I hold order in my baton. The state and order are at my back.

But what about my brother and my sister and my neighbor’s brother and sister who stand before me? What about them? Do they hate order? Do they hate the state? Do they want chaos or just another kind of order, another kind of mother and father, who speak and act differently? We ate last night without speaking. They know I work for the state. They understand I am a human being. They don;t know what I think of them. My sister would not look at me.

I have a baton, a shield, and I hear orders. My leader says these are the enemy. My brother and mister are agents of chaos. I and my baton will teach them the truth. The sun is strong and the voices of my brother and sister come at me. They don’t sound like they did when we played as children.

The state shoves at my back and my brother and sister call to me. I want to live. I want the state to live. I want my brother and my sister to live. I want them to look at me when we eat. I want to eat and laugh with them.

I hear orders coming from behind. My brother and my sister and the crowds are singing now in the street. We approach each other, one side armed, the other holding signs. We are singing the same song, the police and the crowd. It’s a beautiful song. We all used to sing it in school.