Difference between revisions of "The city in parts"

Alma texts Zach asking him to walk the city with her. I can't remember what exactly she sent because I used @mail. she something about bounds, or boundaries, or edges?

Zach: Why? If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were flirting.

Alma: what? no you dork. you said I should't do anything. let's walk rounds. I promise not to do anything unless you want to do something and ask for help.

Zach: What's the value to you in it, though? That's what I don't get. Like, that's at least a day's hike, over some not so great ground in places. "rounds" like patrol?

Alma: no. edges like magic edges. like ecosystems have patches and patches aren't all contiguous sorta like I don't know I ask the universe and Note too

Zach: You mean the 'white zone' or whatever?

Alma: like the other side? no I don't know much abuot it. I mean look at eddies and listen to live in Fred (I have to say Fred for magic because you don't like my vocabulary). Fred has a cold or something. Or maybe Fred is hung over.

Zach: we can go dance

Alma: MAYBE THEY CAN"T DENSE

Zach: Sounds like you're the one leading, as you've got the plan. I can be there as a second though, sure.

Alma: ok. when it happens I will ask you. if you can't make it then it's not the right time

Alma: you lead by following

Zach (delayed text): Wait. Do you mean the thing where people are rearranging the city?

Alma (slightly delayed): I don't know. what if what I see correlates to that and i didn't know! like there's a shoal caused by rules!!!!!!!

Followed in quick succession by:

Alma: paper!

Alma: mental paper!!!

Alma: can we go to office depot?

Zach: Do you need a ride?

Alma wants to explore the edges of things with Zach. It didn't occur to her that he would offer a ride. Intrigued, so she asks what he has with him in th jeep.

Alma: I don't know I have to check. what do you have in your jeep right now. empty coffee cup?

Alma: FRY WRAPPER?

Zach: Anvil, tool bag and box, some camp gear. If you need hauling done I can hitch the trailer.

Alma: no I'm asking the universe if I need a ride. are fryies in paper or wax? I guess you don't?

Alma: you smelled like fries'

Zach: OH! My Jeep runs on waste oil from restaurants.

Alma: WOA

Alma: do you have to get a permit for that?

Zach: Maybe. Dunno. I can't get permits. DMV loses my shit after a few months and at this point I don't have any records at all. Probably not legal since I did it myself, but whatever.

There was no used coffee cups paper detritus but when he told her about the biofuel she found the source of paper and rules and evidence of a broken bureaucracy.

Alma: that's really interesting I think I need a ride

Zach: Where am I picking you up?

Alma: um.

Now that Alma has accepted Zach's offer of a ride she needs to figure out if he can be near her house. Does she want him in her neighborhood? She has to check. It takes a while.

She takes a funeral candle and some sand and shells from her brother's aquarium, they are wet. she lights a strip of paper from a carryout menu and allows ash to fall around on the sand. she remembers Kai and takes some the sage and burns it too. she gets an egg timer and lets it run while she meditates. and then she looks at the results.

Alma: Mexicantown

Alma: meet me at Amelia Earhart school

Alma goes out the front door and bikes to Amelia Earhart to wait for Zach.

Zach: Okay. ETA 22min

Alma is waiting for Zach outside of Amelia Earhart. She's actually brushed her hair and is wearing a men's plaid button up shirt with a dress pocket with some twigs sticking uot of it in case anyone is curious about how crows can use tools because you never know and people should learn about crows. Maybe they'd like islands more too. She's got a less muddy jacket for when she needs to look more presentable and is wearing that along with baggy tan cargo pants. she is standing next to her bike waiting for Zach. She does not look like she biked very far

As ever, one can smell Zach's Jeep almost as soon as one can spot or hear it. He drives into the school's driveway about 24 minutes after his text. The low rattle of a diesel motor dulls to its characteristic idle purr when he finds a spot of empty curb relatively near to where she's waiting. The bike draws a thoughtful frown, as it presents a puzzle, but after a moment's looking he turns the motor off and engages the parking brake, and hops out through the driver's side door (more of a panel, really), and starts walking towards the back. "I'm guessing you don't have your own rack?"

"No," she answers and looks uncertain of herself. "I thought it can just fit in back? I guess I could leave it?" She looks around like she's wondering if she can take her bike back home first and then actually looks at Zach. His pants are way cool. she points at them, "pockets!" and looks pretty happy. "Here!", she offers him a stick "you can put it in a pocket. give it back maybe?" she pokes his pants with the stick to see how tough the fabric is.

Zach shakes his head and waves a limp hand in her direction to dismiss the notion. "I'll make it work," he says, of the possibility of putting her bike in. Her proposal that he put the stick into his pocket is met with a bit of shock and confusion at first, but apparently the request seems an easy enough concession - and he adds the stick to the contents of those pockets. Using a fair bit of total body strength he unlatches the outer tailgate - it comes loose with a loud -ktang- of not-so-well-fitted-steel. With that gate swung open, he's able to drop the inner tailgate, revealing a pile of tools and acoutrement for... a truly dizzying array of potential projects. The anvil (a Peter Wright) dominates the display, however. He grabs out two rag towels, a fistful of bungee cords, and two large, crude, hack-job hooks. With this free, he closes the inner gate again and sets about releasing the spare tire from the outer gate.

Alma gets really excited about the project of fitting her bike in. She sees the tools and the anvil and oooo's and then leans in to look around the jeep bed more. knocks on the anvil. When Zach shuts the gate she goes to the passenger side and starts climbing on the jeep to get to the seat. If there is anything on it, she starts to move it aside.

The front seats are clear, as is their footwells. The backseats feature more tools and odds and ends - a large hard plastic toolbox dominates the passenger side, with a lime-green, canvas bag in the rear footwell below it.

Zach gets the spare tire off, comes around to the driver's side again, and releases the clamp so that the front seat can be pulled forward such as to allow a passenger into the back. Instead of a passenger, the empty spot behind the driver's seat gets the spare tire with a lack of ceremony or grace. The driver's side seat is slammed back home - nothing about a CJ is delicate. He goes back and hangs the hooks over the top of the tailgates, now both closed, lays the towel over the bare metal and goes about bringing her bike to rest on the padded hooks. It takes a little fussing before he's satisfied with how it rests and then he lashes everything down with copious bungee cords. A test wiggle to see how stable it is produces a satisfactory result, and then he's climbing into the cabin with her, pulling the door shut and latching it closed. "Do you know where Office Depot is, relative to here?" The keys go into the ignition.

Alma says, "no" and pulls out her phone. Frowning at google maps, she looks at Zach with disappointment and says "they're so far away." Before she can get too upset, she catches herself and takes a deep breath. "Maybe it was a mistake?"

"Can't be that far if it's still in the City," Zach says, shrugging. "And the whole reason I did this greaser conversion," he gestures at the fron of the vehicle, "was because now my gas is free. If you can get me directions, I'll get us there." He stomps the clutch, wiggles the shifter to make sure it's out of gear, and twists the key. The motor up front protests for a bit, but does eventually begin a stable operation cycle. "My phone doesn't have GPS tho." He throws the Jeep into first and starts to pull away.

"Wait!"

The imperative is effective, and the brake gets stomped before he's gone all that fair. With a bit of a 'where's the fire?' look to his face, he glances over at her wordlessly once the vehicle is at idle.

"My phone has gps." She looks at him earnestly. "Is that ok?"

Zach blinks for a moment. And then some kind of meaningful understanding dawns on his face. He nods, emphatically, waving a hand as if to allay her fears. "I can't get a 'normal' phone - because I don't have documentation. So all I get are these prepaid dumb phones. I'm hard enough to track that as long as you're comfortable having it, I don't care. I'm pretty sure the Union's given up on Detroit anyway." He wiggles the shifter, puts the Jeep back in gear, but doesn't start driving quite yet, perhaps waiting to see if she's satisfied that all is well.

"oh I see," but before she squirrels after that idea she says, "No, I mean the cops. They hack peoples' phones. I can leave my phone at home if you like. I can sketch the map." She looks a little edgy. "You... find guns?"

Zach shrugs. "Yeah, even if I wasn't kind of a ghost already... I'm super white," he says this in a 'just in case you missed it' tone of voice. "Cops basically ignore me." But there's the guns question - which confuses the hell out of him. "You mean like... laying around? I guess... once or twice. It's not like... a thing that happens. What brought that on?"

Alma looks back at the map on her phone partly because she isn't sure what to say, and picks a Home Depot on the map and shows the map to Zach on her phone. "I saw you at that gun place and you gave the owner a gun that is used for crimes?" because that's what she thinks burners mean. "And you said if someone tried to shoot you in the face?" she seems half frightened.

Zach ahhs, nonverbally, as he pulls into traffic and makes his way towards the Financial District, which acts as the defacto hub of the City's streets. "She's a gunsmith, it's my gun, it needs work. I don't know what it's been used for in the past, but I can't buy guns at a store - at least not in New York, where I got that one. So yeah, the dealer was a bit shady." But the second half of that, "I uhhh... I like to get into trouble, if you haven't figured that out from my reputation. I live in the spaces between - and I tend to jump into situations that people don't want me sticking my nose in. Sometimes that means I get shot at. It's not an every day thing, but... yeah. It happens."

Alma relaxes while Zach explains this, and says "oooh the thing" under his explanation. After he explains that. "Fair enough. I thought it was..." She trails off. "Spaces between!" Alma says, "That's it! Like edges. and rivers." she bounces and waves her hands trying to get words out. "Patch dynamics. but patches don't mean they are next to each other." she looks uncertain but continues, "Islands have boundaries and systems get isolated by an ocean or mountain ranges..." she looks out of the jeep and threads her fingers through the wind. "I'm learning this about the city. From my advisor. Not," she says, "Fred. From my university advisor." She looks at Zach a bit disguntled but kind of quirking her mouth at the same time. "But Fred too. Everything dovetails."

Zach rolls his eyes when she names Fred. "Look," he says, with some measure of fatigue in his voice. "It's not the word 'magic' itself that bothers me - it's the meaning that's packed into that. When you assign quote-unquote 'supernatural' status to something, when you label a thing an esoteric practice, you are implying a measure of superiority or exclusivity to the practice - and especially to the people who have developed those specific skills.

"It is fundamentally Othering. Calling it 'Fred' doesn't change the fact that you're taking one set of practices and separating them from others. That separation is inherently false - easily disproven by the fact that these things are manifest parts of the universe. They exist! They happen! Pretending that this somehow goes against the rules of existence is rhetorical nonsense meant to elevate the subject. And once you've elevated yourself, in your mind, above the 'Sleepers,'" boy howdy does he HATE that word, "then you've laid the foundation to justify oppression, violence, and hegemony in the name of your supposed superior nature." He turns away from the road to punctuate the gravity of his next three words, "Fuck. That. Noise."

"I don't know how to say it when something happens to me that didn't happen a year ago! It was easier in New Caledonia! I study non-primate intelligence! I felt the same way! Everytime someone defines intelligence by saying it is only what humans do we find out that it is not and then they move the goalposts. That's still true this year!" Alma is now clenching her jaw and gripping the edge of the seat hard.

Zach shifts and pulls onto the highway while he thinks. If he's put off by the raised voice, it doesn't show - in fact, he may even find it comforting in a way that some would find weird. "Shorthand is fine," he concedes, "but it's super imprecise. It's totally okay to not have words for an experience, though. I think it's actually superior to admit that lack, and talk your way around it anyway. The messy is gonna be more true. I'm curious what the current definition of intelligence is, though. My definition for 'human' is a bit skew from the mainstream I'm sure."

"I don't know what you mean by a skewed definition of human but I like 'people'. the crows in New Caledonia are people." Her voice is more level but she's still agitated and doesn't know how to answer Zach's question yet. Alma slaps the dash (do Jeeps have dashes that can be hit?). "Maybe god is a fish!" slam. "Why assume it is about us!"

"Sentience plus Sapience," Zach answers, readily, having no quarrel with her assignment of personhood to crows, at least none that shows. "Possession of a personal, internal identity and the ability to learn and express that identity through choice," that's one half, "and the ability to recognize the individual identity of others, place those others and oneself in a moral context, and truly understand both the concept of causation and that consequences follow from them and also that these consequences impact the other individuals around them." He gives a moment before he adds examples, "Animals, for example, have the first, but not the second. Humanity's definitive traits are those two things, if you have those two things you are, therefore, human." That's his definition.

Alma is puzzling over terms. "Animals..." she restarts, "So when you learn about an animal that has a theory of mind and causal understanding they are no longer animals to you?"

"You are only the third person I've ever met who's been able to go right there without me having to drag them through the scenenic route," Zach says - and it's a compliment, a high one, to boot. "Yes, exactly. Your student Jim, for example. I'm not perfect, I still see him and think he's an animal until he's poking at me and having a conversation with me, demonstrating capacity for moral understand and whatnot."

Alma waves at the road, "the scenic route." then she rubs her stinging palm. "I get mixed up too. I see two people sometimes and feel like I am friends with the Raven but the human is a student working for me, if that makes sense." Her voice is calmer again. "I can't explain intelligence like it's one thing. I don't like the word. It's too vague. I shouldn't have used it."

"It means something, but I think people obssess about it as the way to separate us from animals because they want to feel superior, and it's a thing they think they can measure." Zach finds this, perhaps, a little funny. "Turns out the world is more complex than we think. Shocker." (He's not shocked.)

Alma nods, digging around in a cargo pocket she pulls out 'Sonnets to Orpheus' and it falls open easily to a bookmarked page. "Orpheus" she says, as though it has some meaning. "I think Rilke was a prophet." Then she quotes, "See," pauses, "now we two together must bear piece-work and parts as though it were the whole. Helping you will be hard." she closes the book, and her hands fold over, holding it place so it doesn't slide off from the motion of the car. "Helping you would be extremely hard. So what I think is, I follow my flow. You help me. But I can't do anything unless you ask for help. If I see a weak spot, I don't do anything."

Alma continues, "I don't know where to go but you mentioned people changing hte boundaries of the city. It's a vote, people vote? It's city hall. So... paper" then she threads the wind again with her fingers, "and wind and water... it's more than that, but the boundary in everyone's minds that creates a city or..." then she waves her hand around in something, not a circle. "I'm going to guard it all. I'll show you. You tell me no so that I learn what you mean."

Zach listens, with difficulty. Hard indeed. "It's not a vote," he says, however. "It's a small group, maybe even just one guy and his pupils. They've been forcing erasures and re-writes of the city landscape. Erase a building here, replace it with a new street there." He shakes his head. "There's... collateral damage. Maybe. I thought that might've been what you were talking about since the changes are pretty violent, and on a large enough scale that I've felt them all the way across the City."

Alma looks horrified and frightened. Then she tears up. "That's horrible." she puts her book away and props her feet up on the seat and wraps her arms around her legs. "I don't know if I've felt that. I follow things, but I can't tell what they are."

"Yeah," Zach agrees, grimly - some measure of anger there, not directed at her. "Like I said. I stick my nose in stuff, and sometimes I get shot at. Sometimes it's worse than being shot at. This is supposed to be Council business. I'm pretty sure it's a Hermetic who's up to the things. But either way - I haven't seen a few friends in a months since the first of these changes started. When I find these clowns and ask them what happened, the answer had better be 'They're fine.'" He clearly doesn't expect that to be the case, however.

Quietly, "I need to go home." Alma wipes one of her eyes on the back of her hand. "Can you take me home?"

Zach is surprised, perhaps, and an expression of guilt hits his face, but there's no way the answer that comes back is anything but, "You got it. Which way?"

"Mexicantown. Near where you picked me up. I'll tell you when we're close." She puts her legs back down and grabs her phone out to send a text to her niece.

"Would I remember if something changes?"

Zach nods and begins the process of finding an exit off the Interstate with a cloverleaf he can turn around on, heading back the way they came. "Depends, I figure." Now he's got a profound measure of sympathy. It doesn't mean he suffers her to hear any prettied-up version of things, however. "The more you understand about the changes, the more you'll see the nuances, see the craftwork - the marks left by the hammer that made it. I have memories of a person named Irene who now never existed - casualty in a civil war. Most people don't remember, because most people can't accept a world where someone could do this sort of thing, so they have to suppress the memory in order to live a cognitively coherent life. On some level everyone knows, it's a matter of how honest with yourself you are. I suspect you probably would, at least in some shape or another."

Alma's eyes get huge, and she scrambles to open the book to a different bookmark. She says, "'Woe, an absent hammer lifts' I can't assume... it's just, that. I need to see my home again. It's not the paper, I don't need to get it."

Zach shakes his head when she reads from the book, something about that whole thing not quite jiving for him, but he doesn't remark upon it. Instead, "Did you ever need it, I wonder?" Zach says, instead. "It felt like it sort of came out of the blue, and it seems like the idea just sort of cropped up because you followed a chain of thoughts from changes in the city, via voting, to that?"

"I needed... wanted to know how you would judge. I texted." She shifts a little to face Zach more. "because of what you said the other day. How to act. I do rounds to guard the city. Every... all the people." She's stopping and starting and starts again, "I want to see you not act when I would act. Or act when I would act. So I invited you. that's why."

Then she realizes she didn't answer the question about the paper. "A coral reef? no. A tide... like, what if bureaucracy made a shape in the mind and it was part of the existence of the city and that affected the invisible life? if I know that shape I would know the route to it. that's why. I never go to Office Depot. I hate big box stores. That's why I wanted to go. Bureaucracy is made of paper and people. They have paper there. I hate it. So I thought it was a starting point. I don't ... feel like that anymore?"

Zach hmmms. He nods, once. "Okay, that makes sense." A fact which surprise him a little, perhaps. "Yeah, I'll tag along with you. That sounds... educational, at the very least." But first, he's driving her home. The Interstate races by. The Jeep isn't... fast, per say. The engine noise is pretty loud by modern standards, and the thin canvas walls don't shield against much of the racket, but all the same, he's making that steady progress back towards Mexicantown.

"I have a niece. Her parents died. I just want to know the house is still there. She should be at school right now."

Something there clicks, Zach doesn't speak on it, but he's /terrible/ at hiding the emotional reaction. He nods, knowingly, "Makes sense," is all he says. "I'm sure it is, though. They've been mostly working in the downtown core, the financial district, the places the City has worked so hard to isolate from the rampant poverty all around it. Still don't really know why - but they haven't seemed to care about where the poor people live... which is consistent with Hermetic values."

"I met two," She admits. "One seemed defeated, but like he hadn't given up. He was fighting."

"Locally you mean?" Zach asks. "At the University maybe?" He probably has someone specific in mind.

"Him too? maybe. I couldn't tell as much. No woo ok? Just talking to them. One of them at a bar. He was the sadest. He was drinking at lunch. He was the first I met. He's still... still has goals. like he hasn't given up. I don't kow as much about the other. He just looked so sad, but he wasn't drinking at noon?"

"Graham," Zach says, nodding. "He uhhh... lost someone dear to him pretty recently. She was... an experience." His demeanor softens a bit, to make room for the ways that this person's death has impacted him as well. "And Graham was never much of a feelings guy to begin with." He hits his turn signal and takes an exit ramp, Mexicantown is near now.

"Do you know Lansing St?"

"Not really, I live over on the other side of town."

Alma shows Zach which way to go once they reach Mexicantown. "I feel... I'm sorry for taking up your time on a mistake. I get impressions sometimes, and I thought it meant we had to go there. I owe you, ok?"

"Already paid," Zach answers, shaking his head with a measure of fervency. "The conversation was worth the trip. I'm a duelist - but really a duel's just another type of conversation."

Alma didn't feel like, "I didn't feel like I was fighting. I mean,I got really angry at you for a while." She admits. "But it wasn't fighting."

"Duels are like conversations," Zach repeats, "Not necessarily the other way around. It's the dialogue I like. You said something the other day about not learning anything from talking to people you agree with? Basically my personal motto; I also learn much more from losses than from wins. So talking with you like this? Super valueable, not a waste of my time at all."

She admits, "I get a little nervous when everyone agrees." She sees her house. "Look, I'm here. I need to go sit down." She points to a house with a porch and a swing on it. "I'm going to sit here and hope that my niece comes home."

Zach nods, "You want company, or should I get lost?" As in leave, not as in lose his way. Something something not all who wander, etc.

"Maybe." she says. "You can see the fish".