Portly and puffing, Harvey walked eastward on Flamingo Boulevard, computer case in his right hand. Granny glasses sat atop an old man’s bulbous nose that shadowed a white mustache. Harv, as he liked to be called, walked towards an encounter, not with destiny, but with his morning coffee shop. A bit unsteady at times, he strode along, his titanium knee, combined with heel pain, caused a slight stumble now and then, but he kept on going. Headset in his ears, he listened to an audio book. Lawrence M. Krauss A Universe From Nothing. Physics, hard science, or philosophy, in his retirement, Harvey had gotten curious.
The view, as he strode down the boulevard that morning, was well worth the walk. The desert skies were clear and cold. Icy contrails streaked the sky, mingling with wisps of clouds high in the stratosphere. Fluffy piles of grey, rain laden cumulus, lined the distant horizon to the north. Pools of shadow chased across the majestic desolation of the desert mountains to the west. To the east lay the glitz and glitter, the Strip, and the casinos of Las Vegas. Harv loved the walk.
He walked through the door of the coffee shop and smiled to himself when he saw an empty table. He walked to it, pulled his coat and cap off, sat them on the table with his computer case, and took his place in line for his morning coffee. The baristas knew him well. By the time he made his order, and had his money clip out, they were handing him a venti hazelnut Mocha.
He returned to his table, took out his iPad and keyboard, and took that first sip. He placed his coffee to the right, centered his keyboard with the soft mushy keys in front of the iPad, and at last he was ready to record his every thought.
Harv thought to himself, “What to write today? I need a government, but what?” He looked through the window and saw drifting clouds, palms and pines swayed in the breeze, framing a pale sliver of moon, that harsh mistress.
“So, comrade, you want, perhaps, to use Free Luna State for this new government,” asked Manuel Garcia “Mannie” O’KellyDavis, computer tech, co-conspirator, revolutionary, and protagonist from a book the Harvey had read a long time ago.
He looked at the young man sitting in front of him, with that strange appendage where there should have been an arm. It was kind of a claw, but it had a LASER welding tool in the pointing finger.
“I dunno. I was thinking more along the lines of Starship Troopers and the Federation, sovereignty from service.”
“Federation is piece of crap. Even Robert said so in later books. Free Luna State, now that is government by the people and for the people,” the young man affirmed, almost slamming his artificial hand down on the table.
“But,” Harv objected, “how would Free Luna react to such a catastrophe as Earth/Moon being flung into interstellar space?”
“Ha. Lunies say let Earth float away. Luna is own sovereign state. Not need Mother Earth,” and this time Mannie hit the table with his claw, making a rat-a-tat sound. Brakes squealed and truck tires stuttered on an eighteen wheeler outside the coffee shop. Harv, distracted, looked to the street, and when he looked back, Mannie had returned to Heinlein’s story line.
He sat, and pondered life, the universe, and everything, and had another cranial fart. “42? Uh, no, don’t go there,” he grimaced. He sipped some coffee and looked out the window.
A figure walked east on Flamingo Boulevard in a purple hoodie. “Maybe that’s a story,” thought Harv. “Where is purple hoodie going? Some nefarious meeting? Maybe purple hoodie is an assassin, walking to the Trump Tower? Uh, no. The Trump tower is three miles away. An assassin worth Hollywood notice would be driving a Ferrari, and wearing a $2,000 suit, not a purple hoodie he or she found in the .99 cent store.”
Harv sipped coffee. He pondered that blinking cursor in that blank page, and thought to himself, “Brainstorming. Maybe brainstorming would jar things loose.” He typed the first word that came to mind. No, he tried to type the first word. He tapped a few more keys.
“Hey,” he said to himself, “the keyboard ain’t working,” and he knocked off a brief sequence of ryryryry. “Dang, keyboard Bluetooth dropped the connection. Turn the stupid thing off, and now back on.” Another quick series of r yryryry. A sigh of relief, “Ah, connected again.”
“Damn, forget it,” he thought, and went to the Facebook app on the iPad. “Crap, some dickhead is pontificating on gun control, again. And here’s another: Global Warming is a farce. So go join the Flat Earthers, idiot.” Mumbling and muttering to himself, he continued swiping through articles. Liking some, hiding some, and replying to a few, he avoided that blinking cursor. “Barf, some cutesy kittens to share. Oh yeah here’s one of those ‘You’ll never believe what happens when she turns around’. Pixel drivel. More Facebook crap. Oh, this I like. My brother posted some pics of his grandkids. Yeah, that is cute. Nice, more pics from my niece’s family. Like, Like, and another Like. Neighbor’s horses, of course. Like. Damn, she’s growing up so fast. Drivel. Drivel. Crap. Hide. Hide.”
Closing Facebook, Harv drifted into Mail, and again managed to avoid the blinking cursor. “Who has sent me mail? Junk. Junk. Oh wait, yeah, I got a reply on the last story I posted to the forum. Yes, this guy’s review I want to read.”
He read the review, posted a reply, and finished his coffee. Another cup-a-joe from the baristas, venti hazelnut Americano this time, and again Harvey sat, and pondered.
Another look out the window. Another sip. A shadow crossed over the street and the parking lot. Car tires squealed as drivers swerved to avoid bodies falling from the sky. No, not bodies. Sixteen parachutists stepped from under collapsing rectangular canopies. Men and women in adaptive camo, gathered up gear and sprinted for the parking lot in front of the coffee shop. Two by two they crept to the door, weapons ready, eyes flitted back and forth. Two secured the door, and the commander, with practiced ease, entered the coffee shop in a combat crouch, and stopped at Harv’s table.
“Look, you killed me off in the last story. Do you have a mission, or is this just some creative bullshit you’re playing?”
“Oh, sorry, yeah,” Harv said, sipped his coffee, and the men and women of the special-op forces wafted away into his imagination. Outside, traffic on Flamingo Boulevard continued, never having diverted for a camouflaged parachute landing force.
Harv looked back to the sky, blue fading to deeper blue overhead. Was that a bright spot heading his way? Yes, the asteroid! It’s going to smash the Strip! “Oh stop it, you’ve done that one too,” he said to himself, and the bright spot drifted away, a tissue in the wind.
Another sip of coffee, and he thought to himself, “Let’s see, where do I begin?” But that thought caused a right turn in his brain and he sang to himself, “Where do I begin to tell the story of how great a love can be,” not exactly on pitch, but somewhere in his range.
“Stop it. I need a beginning. When? Sheesh … I wonder just how many possible places and times I can begin? Let’s see … how much space in the universe?” Ripping his iPhone from his Velcro belt case, and firing up the calculator app, his face became a mask of concentration. Beeps and boops followed as Harv entered numbers into his iPhone. “Oh yeah, diameter in light years … radius cubed … damn volume is funny, multiply by four and divide by three … convert to meters …” Many a mumble later he said, “Whoa, that’s a 1 followed by over forty zeroes.” Continuing his gedanken he asked himself, “How many seconds?” More beeps and boops. “Damn, another biggie, over sixty zeroes. So how many places and times can I begin? Multiply the time by the space,” and the were more booping beeps.
“Holy crap, that’s over a googol. I’ve got 14 X 10e104 possibilities, and all I have to do is pick just one.”
Becoming Writer 2016 Anniversary Contest 