Monday, March 18, 2024

zero plus nothing equals - 18. betrayal


by jeremy witherington

part eighteen of 31

for previous episode, click here

to begin at the beginning, click here



the stranger rode across the desert,.

he was bitterly disappointed at not keeping his rendezvous with the queen.

he decided to get his revenge.

but against whom?

against the queen, who had not kept her promise to meet him, no matter what the obstacle?

though the heavens turn to ash.

and the oceans turn to sand.

those had been her words to him.

under the old oak tree,

on the night before she was to be delivered to the king.

accompanied by ten thousand horsemen of her uncle, the great emperor.

whose empire had turned into sand.

the very sand the stranger was riding across on his strange beast.

night fell, and the stranger decided, having put a hundred leagues between himself and the town, which was the only remnant of the empire, to stop for the night.

when he fell asleep, the strange beast wandered away in the direction of the great mountain.

the stranger slept, blissfully unaware of the beast’s perfidy.

everybody had betrayed him.

the queen.

the beast.

and the world.

he had a dream in which he was walking down a dark road.

he decided to get his vengeance,

not against the queen, whom he still loved.

not against the beast, whose betrayal he was unaware of.

but against the world.

against the world.

to be continued




Sunday, March 17, 2024

zero plus nothing equals - 17. missing!


by jeremy witherington

part seventeen of 31

for previous episode, click here

to begin at the beginning, click here



i am sorry, doctor, but your protege has not returned. i do not suppose you have any objection to our starting the conference without him?

of course not. i warned the headstrong youth of the consequences of his impetuous folly, and now he must suffer them.

very well then, everyone else is here. let us begin.

our first speaker is doctor dee, also known as number one.

algernon was lost.

and alone.

people flowed past him a kinetic dance of obfuscation, blotting out the doors and windows of the myriad shops and cafes in the endlessly looping streets.

just when he thought he recognized a shop from a previous passage, he would be swept past it.

not that he wished to enter any of them.

all he wanted was to get back to the safety of the hotel.

he turned on to a quieter street.

surely he had not been on it before.

the street sloped up a hill, and seemed occupied not by shops, but by dwellings with curiously small windows.

old fashioned automobiles were parked in front of the dwellings, and algernon thought he heard the sound of children shouting, although he could not see any actual children.

the street grew narrower, and the buildings and the automobiles and the shouts disappeated.

he reached the crest of the hill.

and looked down upon a city square, with not too many people walking around it.

and there was a movie theater - perhaps the same one he had seen on first leaving the hotel by its side door!

but it was not to be.

the marquee of the theater did not read “ to be continued”.

it read -

how will you meet your end?

algernon took a deep breath.

he resolved to ask one of the passersby where he was, and how to get back to the hotel.

he had heretofore refrained from this bold step, fearing the worst.

but now there was nothing else for it.

excuse me, sir -

but his first target went by him unheeding -

so far from being daunted, algernon felt a fresh surge of optimism.

excuse me, miss -

next





Saturday, March 16, 2024

zero plus nothing equals - 16. the funeral


by jeremy witherington

part sixteen of 31

for previous episode, click here

to begin at the beginning, click here



sam jones woke up.

he rolled over and went back to sleep

he had a dream in which he was walking down a dark road.

he could not remember his name.

was it dave fenster?

or was it siddharta lollipop?

that is a funny name, sam thought halfheartedly.

but it is not my name.

no, it is not, he heard a voice say.

the voice came from the front seat of a long black limousine parked by the side of the country road.

get it the car, the voice continued, we have work to do.

suddenly sam remembered.

<

he was not sam jones, or dave fenster, or whatever lollipop.

he was nick olivetti, and the driver was dave fenster.

nick got in the back seat of the long black limousine, and dave fenster started it up.

sorry if i was late, nick muttered.

you were not late, dave reassured him, as he maneuvered the limousine around a sudden bend in the road.

we have all the time in the world, he added.

where are we going? nick asked innocently, as the moon suddenly appeared through the trees.

to a funeral.

not mine i hope, nick replied with a laugh.

you know, dave replied, you always had a great sense of humor for a guy who never said anything funny in his life.

suddenly bright yellow headlights flared up ahead.

who can that be, nick asked, who would be out on a country road like this at this time of night?

you are a real bright boy, aren’t you?

almost as bright as these lights bearing down relentlessly upon us.

you use some real big words for a guy who never said anything intelligent in his life.

look out!

the car with the bright lights somehow whizzed past the long black limousine.

dave fenster laughed.

you weren’t nervous, were you? he asked nick over his shoulder.

who, me? nick replied nonchalantly.

the road got bumpier and darker.

the moon disappeared again, behind the tall black trees.

next





Friday, March 15, 2024

zero plus nothing equals - 15. the hotel


by jeremy witherington

part fifteen of 31

for previous episode, click here

to begin at the beginning, click here



algernon looked out the window of the hotel.

the desert stretched away for miles.

the hotel rose thousands of feet into the air.

and algernon could not wait to go downstairs to explore the thousands of shops and restaurants on its lower floors and in the city surrounding the hotel.

albert einstein stood im one of the doorways of the suite and looked pityingly at algernon.

beware, my boy, he intoned. you may well lose your way if you go downstairs, and not be back in time for the conference.

nonsense, algernon responded merrily. i have a perfectly good tracking device attached to my person. no harm can befall me.

professor einstein sighed. very well, but do not say i did not warn you.

algernon got on the elevator and waved goodbye to the sage.

he was the only person on the elevator and it quickly deposited him in the ground floor.

he was surprised at how empty the lobby was.

there were only a few chairs and sofas and no one sitting on any of them.

he saw a desk in the distance and a man with a pencil mustache and sporting a purple bow tie with white polka dots on it standing behind it and staring, with what algernon perceived to be a glum countenance, into space.

algernon turned toward the revolving door out to the street but as he did so he noticed a sign over a door to his left saying - shops.

that is just what i iwant, algernon thought, i can have jolly fun gazing at the merchandise and not worry about getting lost, because i can always ask the people in the stores how to hget back to the lobby here.

and so he walked through the door marked “shops”.

he found himself in a short corridor with a floor sloping upward away from the street where he could see a few well dressed people strolling casually along.

the corridor turned sharply to the left.

to another, shorter corridor, with a staircase at the end of it.

the staircase was unmarked, and only went down, not up.

algernon went down it.

and found himself on another, very different looking street, with crowds of people, many of them not at well well dressed, thronging it.

and across the street was what looked like a movie theater, with an old-fashioned marquee reading simply-

how curious, algernon thought.

he was tempted to turn back into the hotel.

next





Thursday, March 14, 2024

zero plus nothing equals - 14. the stranger


by jeremy witherington

part fourteen of 31

for previous episode, click here

to begin at the beginning, click here



avast, thou knave!

what a curious phrase.

even for a curious dream.

number ten woke up.

his connection had been repossessed.

so he decided to tell himself a story.

it was a bland afternoon in the town of nowhere.

but the young person was determined to be served.

the king was irate.

business was bad, and he was under the weather.

he knew he must not get too excited.

the sun shone on the coral reef on the horizon.

the knave was sad, and gazed longingly at the young person.

the king blamed the knave for the bad business the town was doing.

and the king also did not care for the longing glances the knave was directing at the young person.

suddenly a stranger appeared on the horizon.

the stranger was riding a strange beast, such as had never been seen before.

the stranger arrived on the dusty street and tied his strange beast up in front of the saloon.

as the church had been burned down earlier that week.

howdy, the king politely addressed the stranger .

what is good about it? the stranger replied, apparently mishearing the king’s word.

well, the king, polite as ever, replied, the sun is shining, and plans are in effect to rebuild the church which so unfortunately burned earlier this week.

where is the queen? the stranger rudely interrupted him.

i am afraid she is indisposed.

in that case i will be on my way.

would you like a drink? the saloon is open, even though the church burned down.

without bothering to reply, the stranger turned and untied the strange beast which he had tied up only moments before, and remounted it.

and rode out of town, never to be seen again.

this is all the knave’s fault, the king mused bitterly.

next





Wednesday, March 13, 2024

zero plus nothing equals - 13. number one


by jeremy witherington

part thirteen of 31

for previous episode, click here

to begin at the beginning, click here




number one woke up.

they were lonely.

well, kind of lonely.

actually, quite lonely, if you really want to know.

number one suddenly thought of number ten.

number one called number ten on an impulse.

did they not call them on the phone?

hello, is this number ten?

you woke me up.

i am sorry, i was feeling lonely.

i was not feeling lonely, i was feeling sleepy.

i am sorry. it was thoughtless and unconscionable of me.

i bet you do not even know to sell unconscionable.

i believe the phrase you want is spell unconscionable.

now you are being hostile. goodbye.

number one stared at their phone.

what an ampersand number ten was, they thought ruefully.

number ten closed their eyes.

it was the year ___________.

depending on how you look at it.

it was the beginning or the end

do you mean, the beginning of the end?

there was nothing good on.

number one was still lonely.

well, maybe a little less lonely.

they went back to sleep.

and dreamed they were walking across a desert inside a great walled city.


next




Tuesday, March 12, 2024

zero plus nothing equals - 12. sally


by jeremy witherington

part twelve of 31

for previous episode, click here

to begin at the beginning, click here




sally johnson woke up.

she got up and got dressed.

she had a dream in which she was lost in a strange city.

will i ever find my way, she wondered.

i had better watch my step, or they will find me, whoever they are

they will think i have returned from the dead.

forgive me, i did not mean to ignore the program.

it will not happen again.

flowers bloom in the spring.

unfortunately sally was not a flower person.

except in her dreams.

where the flowers were behind the windows of the endless stores she passed trying to find her way back to the hotel.

where she was supposed to be attending a seminar at that very minute.

a seminar on ” loss - its true meaning”.

how ironic, she thought.

a seminar on loss and i really am lost ha ha.

on an impulse she decided to enter one of the endless stores with flowers in their windows.

as luck would have it, at that moment she woke up from the dream.

outside the sky was gray.

it was too late to go anywhere, even if she had somewhere to go.

maybe it was cold outside anyway.

maybe it was cold in paris or rome.

or all the other places she would never see before she died.

get a grip, sally told herself, and get up and make yourself a sandwich.

a nice peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

eating it would beat walking through the endess streets in her dream of the strange city.

which was not paris or london or hong kong or singapore or even new york.

but where was it?

and where was she?

and who was she?


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