Where there’s buried…

No!

I refuse! Uh-uh! No fair.

I’ve done enough this evening, now leave me alone! I’ve agreed to be more reasonable, to let myself relax a bit and enjoy what’s left of my life. But you can’t make me remember, Brad. I won’t do it!

Chuck hunches his shoulders and shoves his hands into his pockets. He shakes his head vigorously and walks toward the sound of drums and guitars, toward the door to the Yankee Dollar.

Imagine a blockade… a quarantine.

The stars are as numerous as specks of pollen blowing across a prairie. Life blossoms everywhere, and yet the glimmer of intelligence is rare.

Imagine an ancient civilization that cherishes the openness, the emptiness. They are reflective and refined—and selfish. They do not want space filled with clamorous young neighbors.

Imagine that one day a new species emerges, bright, curious, vigorous. The Old Ones set up a blockade as they have done in the past. With a severe kindness the fact of the quarantine is kept secret from the newcomers. A merciful discretion.

But now, imagine a traitor, an Old One who disagrees with Policy… And imagine a few precocious natives…

The set is over. A slow song plays over the FM and Elise waits at our table, moving her lips to the words of the song. I watch her as I walk along the dim bar and motion for Joey to give me a fresh beer.

Every so often, when I let her, Elise sings to me. Softly, holding my head on her lap and running her hands through my thinning hair, she croons her gentle country melodies and helps me sleep.

Right now her eyes are focused out beyond the bandstand somewhere. I suppose she’s just staring out into space, but there’s something in her expression… She does that sometimes. When she’s puttering with her plants and I’m trying to adjust a jammed sprocket, suddenly she’ll stop and look intently at nothing. At times like that I worry that she might actually be thinking.