Brent needed to just get away from it, all of it. He got in his car and drove. At first he drove toward the shopping mall on the north side of town. He had spent a few afternoons walking around and looking at all the things that he could not afford. But as he approached the mall he turned left, not right, and then right again, and drove to the northwest, and out toward Stephanie's neighborhood.
After a while, he decided that he did not need to talk to his friends as much as he needed to experience something new, breaking the routine of the past couple of weeks since Christmas. The thought of studying again well into the early hours of morning, taking a combat nap and then rushing down to campus had already gotten old. He had found that he looked forward to a cup of coffee in the morning to stimulate him back to coherency, and that scared him. He was becoming just like his parents.
He turned left, intending no particular direction, as he reached the western edge of the suburbs. He knew that if he turned right, he would not go far without finding familiar places, or at least sights he had already seen. He continued along a road that he had never before traveled until he approached a crossroad. There was a sign indicating the way to Lake Travis; he had never been there. In fact, whatever was west of the city was a great mystery to him, even if everyone he knew had promised him that beyond the large man-made lake there was vast emptiness.
The turn headed him south at first, then he turned to the west out toward the hill country where, as Tim had said, there was a 'whole lot of nothing except for cattle grazing'. Brent had never been sailing on Lake Travis even though he had heard that the lake was big enough. He had never even seen the lake until the moment that he turned to travel along the ridge that skirted it. He pulled over at an overlook where he could get out of the car. He stood amazed as the vastness of the man-made wonder. It was a triumph and marvel of the manipulation of nature. Somehow it felt appropriate that near the heart of Texas there should be such a monument, evidence of the need to warp the world to serve the immediate needs of all that lived in the vicinity. Ostensibly the lake, along with Town Lake that was downstream and separated the north side of Austin from the south, served as flood control on the Colorado River. Compared to Lake Travis, Town Lake was minuscule.
When he returned to his car, he continued to drive to the west, between fields that emphasized that Texas was certainly big enough to contain vast stretches of land that was not good for anything else than growing beaver tail cactus and a few head of longhorns. He drove for about an hour completely numbed by the vast monotonous scenery. until he decided that nothing was about to change anytime soon. He stopped, made a three-point turn on the road, and headed back the way he came.
Along the way of his return, he saw someone that he had not noticed before, but he had to have passed by him. After all, the man was walking or rather hitchhiking. Perhaps someone had dropped him off. But that also seemed unlikely. There were no other directions to go in the immediate area except east and west, and Brent had not seen a car or truck on the road for sometime.
The man appeared to be carrying his life's worth in a backpack. He had a long staff that he used to assist him in his efforts. Brent pulled over at the side of the road and tooted the horn as indication that he was willing to give him a lift. The man hurried toward the car and, as Brent leaned over and opened the passenger door for him, he peered into the car.
"Are you going to Austin?" He asked.
"Yeah, com'on. Get in."
He opened the door and put his backpack and the staff in the back seat and settled into the passenger seat. "I appreciate the help," he said.
"I was just out for a drive," Brent said. "It's funny. I was driving west earlier and I didn't even notice you. Maybe I wasn't paying attention."
"I suppose that is the story of my life," the hitchhiker said. "Anyway, in case no one else ever told you before, you notice only whatever you want to notice."
"My name is Brent."
"I'm Earl."
"I have a cousin named Earl."
"Everyone knows someone named Earl, or at least that has been my experience."
"Do you have business in Austin?"
"It is the next big city on the way," Earl said. "That's good enough reason to head there."
"Where are you going after that?"
"New Orleans."
"No kidding. I have been through there exactly once, but never really saw much of the place. My brother-in-law and I decided to detour down through there as we were driving back to Ft. Walton Beach, after helping move my parents to the Rio Grande Valley."
"That sounds like quite a trip," Earl said.
"It was. We drove straight through, taking turns at the wheel. We got to New Orleans around sunset and stopped in the French Quarter just to see what it looked like - we didn't have time to stay or do anything else."
"So you were just satisfying your curiosity, just to be able to say that you'd seen The Big Easy."
"Well, it didn't seem like we should just drive straight through Louisiana and not even see New Orleans. I mean, since we had the chance and all."
"So, did you like what you saw?" he asked.
"I guess so, but it was different than what I expected."
"Isn't that always the way of it? You can imagine all sorts of things that simply can't be," he said. "Of course, in New Orleans a lot of things are possible that would never be allowed anywhere else. I'm a friggin' genius when it comes to things like that."
"Really."
"Yeah, really."
"Are you from New Orleans?"
"Anyone who moves to New Orleans is instantaneously and magically transformed. They are suddenly and irrevocably made into natives of the city, regardless wherever they have previously lived. Who is there to say any different?"
Brent laughed. "I guess I'll have to go there sometime when I can spend a few days to really see the sights."
"What's stopping you from going now? Giving me a ride all the way there is a perfect excuse to spend some time."
"I have classes."
"Oh, so you're a college student," he said, but it almost sounded like a curse, or at least a form of summary judgment.
"I'm nearly done with school. I have three more semesters, Spring and two Summer sessions and then I am done!"
"I tried college exactly twice. The first time, I should have known better, and the second time, I guess I hadn't learned my lesson from the first time. The second time around I had volunteered for the US Air Force, trying like hell to avoid having to go to 'Nam. But, damned if the Air Force didn't find out that I'd been to college for a bit! The decided that maybe they could teach me a foreign language. They sent me to Syracuse University on their ticket and taught me Russian."
"Wow!"
"Yeah, wow!" Earl said. "It might have been the most useless thing I have ever learned, except that learning it so that I could do what I did in 'Nam actually allowed me to survive the whole insane experience of being there."
Brent frowned with his incomprehension, but did not comment, as he steered ahead.
"Now, you may ask what in the Hell was I was doing in 'Nam and why did they need me to be able to understand and speak Russian. I wondered that myself. But sure as hell, they sent me smack dab in the most humid, stinky part of this world's groin. I might even tell you the truth of what I did there, except that it is still at least confidential and those people that I worked for are everywhere," he glanced at Brent. "For all I know, even you could be one of them."
"I assure you, I am not."
"Well, anyway the real reason I was there was to play the game. It was the special-edition, global version of chess that we call The Cold War. It was the place that the two most powerful nations on Earth had decided to set down the board and set up all their playing pieces, after having ended in stalemate the last time the board was tossed down in Korea. What did either of the two big guys care about 'Nam? No one cares about the real people who have to live in any strategically necessary place. Their armies and their people were trapped in between the two bullies who had just entered their block and taken up temporary residence. Through no fault of their own, the common people always end up suffering, and for what? Is it merely the accident of birth? They should have been born into a better life, into a country that was not so strategically important in the Superpower view of the world. But then, who has a choice in such things?"
"I couldn't say."
"We were moving our pieces and advancing our proxy's pawns, but at least we weren't doing it in our homeland, or throwing the substantial pieces of hell that each of the Superpowers possessed at one another's mother country. That was how I saw it, anyway. I was there to do my small part in keeping the Russians from invading America. Oddly, it occurred to me that I was also there to keep America from invading Russia. I know it makes no sense, because it is senseless by its very nature. After all, I'm American. But somehow and somewhere, I had become a part of the elaborate balance designed to produce no change in the overall status quo of the prevailing world order. I had been through all the training and had been fully convinced in the validity of what I was doing. I understood all the strange nuances of political intrigue in a very fundamental way that all of the politicians in the world could never possible explain to their representative masses."
"You fought there?"
"I did a sight bit more than fight. I interrogated people and then, usually I killed them. If I felt really benevolent, it was one bullet through the temple," He pointed his finger to the exact place for emphasis. "If they had been belligerent and seriously pissed me off, I cut them open from their sternum to their hoo-hoo and pulled their guts out and hung them in a tree close to where ever I was camped. That served very well to dissuade others from interrupting my naptime. That was my part of the game."
"So, you have actually killed people."
"Who was in 'Nam that survived and didn't kill?"
"Well, I don't know anything about it."
"Thank God or whatever you worship that you don't," Earl said, drawing a deep breath before continuing. "I knew what they knew about global policies, and that none of us understood that level of selecting the proverbial shit from the Shinola. In the game we were playing, the rules were pretty simple. If anyone got caught, you knew what would happen. You got pumped for the information you possessed and then afterwards, after all the torture that you never believed one human could put another human through and have anyone survive, you would spill your guts figuratively just to make the pain go away. That was where I fit in; me, the mean interrogator who would extract every possible secret through torture, then spill their guts literally, making the pain subside forever. It was a professional courtesy, one spy to another - that sort of thing. I knew it up front. They knew it as well. It was part of the code, the unwritten rules of international espionage. So, knowing that if I was ever captured, I was a dead man, I certainly and particularly avoided capture with a good deal of urgency. I became pretty damned good at hiding whenever I needed to."
"I'll bet. So, you were in the Air Force?"
"Yeah, well, they were the ones that paid me. I went through basic training and all that crap, but I was always in a special group who the Air Force had sent to language school on Uncle Sam's tab. I even went through survival training on the same ticket. After I was deployed, I was given civilian clothes to wear and told that I needed to blend in, as much as possible. They gave me press credentials!"
"They? You're telling me that you were a spy, like working for the CIA."
"No, I worked a time or two with those clowns," he laughed. "Don't get me wrong, one of those clowns saved my hide once, but the people I worked for, no one ever hears about. I was part of something essential to the peace and balance of the entire world, something that transcended national interests. I belonged to something euphemistically called The Program."
Brent's eyes widened. "I have heard of The Program."
Suddenly, Earl fell silent.
"What can you tell me about them?"
"Nothing," Earl said, curtly.
"Did I say something wrong?"
"You know enough about them already. If you know them at all, you know too much to be an outsider. Our conversation is over. I have already said far too much. You can drop me off here."
"Look, I'm sorry. It's just, I have received correspondence from them. I have heard about them from someone else, someone who lived in Asia."
"Then run away while you have the chance, not that it will matter much. If they have targeted you already, you have no choice."
"I can still tell them no."
"Yeah and you can believe that for now. So, you don't work for them, yet," Earl laughed. "Look, I appreciate the ride and all that. I really mean that. But you can let me out now. Really, it's fine. Anywhere that you want is okay. You go ahead and say no to them just for shits and giggles, and then see what happens."
"I have interviews coming up, one with the CIA."
"What in the hell is wrong with you?"
"I thought it would be a good practice interview."
"There is no practice about it. You start testing the water with your toe and suddenly the shark comes up out of the water and capsizes your boat and you're trying hard as hell just to tread water while the sharks keep circling around you, trying to decide where to bite you first, or waiting for your to shit youself because maybe we taste better that way."
"I have some other interviews scheduled with banks and an oil extraction company."
"And what makes you think that is not working for them all the same? If they like you, they are going to give you a cover job. After you go through the training, they always give you a cover job until they need to deploy you. Sometimes, the cover job is even in the military, which makes it very easy for them. Once they have identified you as someone with the gifts and talents that they desire, you have no choice but to work for them."
"I'm not sure I believe that."
Earl shrugged. "You're a good kid. I mean that in all sincerity. You were probably a high school hero of some sort. Maybe you were even some star athlete or something. I hate like hell to know what they are going to do to you, but I also know it is as inevitable dying. They will fuck you up so badly that you will believe in their causes, even when what they tell you to do is diametrically opposed to what they told you to do the previous week or even a day before. They will program you to be a perfect mercenary. It is how they achieve their goals. At the end of it all, when you are emotionally and physically spent, they will cast you aside and discredit you as a lunatic, just as they have done to me - just in case someone like me might shoot my mouth off to someone like you."
"How can they do that? I mean, isn't it llegal?"
"There is nothing illegal about it. They make the rules as they go, Brent. They always have. The system that you believe in is a government and the bodies of laws. All nations have that and some are even proud of the peace and stability that they credit largely to their constitutions and the strength of their governments and militaries. At times, there are some things fabricated to keep the masses under control, so that they focus on the guy who ran a stop light, or the jealous woman that 'offed' her husband after finding him in bed with the babysitter. All the while, the real players are concerned with geopolitical matters that have ramifications extending beyond anyone's lifetime."
They were nearing the lookout at Lake Travis, and so Brent pulled over and temporarily parked.
"This is as good a place as any to drop me off," Earl said. "Thanks for the ride, Brent. And best of luck with the bastards that will relentlessly hound you," he said as he proceeded to get out.
"Look, I still have some questions here. Maybe you know the answers. Let's talk for a bit."
"Me? I have no answers. I'm nuts, Brent. Hasn't that occurred to you? Look at me; I am you, only ten or twenty years from now. I;ve been stripped of my sanity but not my pride or dignity. Somehow, I salvaged a bit of that."
"When you came back from 'Nam, what did they do for you?"
"They did absolute shit. I was so fucked up in the head that nothing seemed real to me anymore. I checked myself into a hospital. I needed some help determining where I fit in with the world. This world made no sense to me, anymore. People didn't just capture one another, pump out the information and then get rid of the empty husk. What I learned in the hospital was that there were some people there who were more fucked up than I was at dealing with the world; some of them were orderlies, nurses and doctors."
"A mental hospital."
"Yeah, I was in the loony bin. That's what the future has in store for you, Brent: a lot of very well-meaning people telling you that you must have imagined everything that you ever did previous to you checking in and seeking their 'professional' help."
"You recovered. I mean they let you out."
"I told them I had recovered. I proved to them that I was sane enough to pass their silly fuckin' tests. I was good enough with the real crazies that they even hired me as an orderly. They assigned me to watch this guy named Dave. He was one scary son of a bitch, that for some reason, had become attached to me. He never fuckin' slept, so he had to be watched all the time. The orderlies took shifts watching him 24/7/365. He talked constantly. At times, I listened to his rants, not that I should have been doing that other than monitoring for the two key words that indicated he was about to become violent. Whenever he mentioned Jesus or Elvis, all hell was about to break loose."
"I can maybe see Jesus, but why Elvis?"
"Who the fuck knows? He was nuts!"
"Okay."
"One night. he was in rare form. I was paying attention to some of what he was saying because it was different than the usual fare. The guy pointed out some disturbing things at times that made you think that maybe he wasn't the crazy one after all. Then he started talking about a past life that he had, and so I violated the one hard and fast rule, never to engage a conversation with him. I immediately asked him if he believed in reincarnation. He turned and looked at me straight in the eyes in a way that he never did with anyone, and, then he smiled. Do you know what the sick bastard said to me?"
"No," Brent responded.
"He said, 'well you made it back now didn't ya?'"
A sudden and irrepressible chill ran through Brent."
"Anyway, his saying that really 'creeped-me-out' so badly that I knew I had to get out of there. After that, I put in my notice. When I was out of the hospital, I went to work for a contractor removing debris from a work site. He eventually figured out from talking to me that I had a pretty good education, and he let me do his books and such. It paid pretty well but I always had a pain that never quite disappeared. It was a self-destructive tendency that I even blamed on The Program. They make it hard for us to survive outside, and so I thought that maybe they even programmed me to self-destruct.
"I started drinking, smoking pot, doing everything that I could think of to kill myself short of taking an overdose, swallowing Drain-o or sucking on a the barrel of a loaded gun until deciding to pull the trigger. The Society just doesn't want complications lingering around. I have been defying them ever since I figured that out."
"Why not go back to work for them?"
"Fuck that! I'd rather be dead!. After all the shit I have been through, I would never even talk to them."
Brent started his car.
"Wait! I was in the process of getting out."
"Look, you need a shower and a place to sleep for a day or two," he said, as he backed the car away from the barrier and pulled back out onto the road and headed toward the edge of the city. "You can hang out in my apartment for a few days."
"I have never been to Austin," Earl admitted.
"It is a place that God had in mind when he was working on a prototype for Heaven."
"Yeah, I have heard nothing but good things about it. I had always wanted to come through this way just never had the chance."
"You are traveling far from the Interstate, aren't you?"
"A guy I worked with in 'Nam lives in San Angelo which is back up the road, a right turn or two and a left or three and you're there."
"Well, I think you should stay in Austin at my place for a few days, get to know the place. Hell, my roommate stays at his girlfriend's place all the time; you can crash on his bed or the couch in the living room."
"That's an awfully nice and unexpected offer."
"Consider it the one thing that someone did in gratitude for what you went through for this country."
Earl chuckled. "Well it isn't the only thing. I got a blow job once just because I was a vet."
Brent laughed. "I won't compete with that."
"I wouldn't expect you to. Besides you are not my type."
After a while, he decided that he did not need to talk to his friends as much as he needed to experience something new, breaking the routine of the past couple of weeks since Christmas. The thought of studying again well into the early hours of morning, taking a combat nap and then rushing down to campus had already gotten old. He had found that he looked forward to a cup of coffee in the morning to stimulate him back to coherency, and that scared him. He was becoming just like his parents.
He turned left, intending no particular direction, as he reached the western edge of the suburbs. He knew that if he turned right, he would not go far without finding familiar places, or at least sights he had already seen. He continued along a road that he had never before traveled until he approached a crossroad. There was a sign indicating the way to Lake Travis; he had never been there. In fact, whatever was west of the city was a great mystery to him, even if everyone he knew had promised him that beyond the large man-made lake there was vast emptiness.
The turn headed him south at first, then he turned to the west out toward the hill country where, as Tim had said, there was a 'whole lot of nothing except for cattle grazing'. Brent had never been sailing on Lake Travis even though he had heard that the lake was big enough. He had never even seen the lake until the moment that he turned to travel along the ridge that skirted it. He pulled over at an overlook where he could get out of the car. He stood amazed as the vastness of the man-made wonder. It was a triumph and marvel of the manipulation of nature. Somehow it felt appropriate that near the heart of Texas there should be such a monument, evidence of the need to warp the world to serve the immediate needs of all that lived in the vicinity. Ostensibly the lake, along with Town Lake that was downstream and separated the north side of Austin from the south, served as flood control on the Colorado River. Compared to Lake Travis, Town Lake was minuscule.
When he returned to his car, he continued to drive to the west, between fields that emphasized that Texas was certainly big enough to contain vast stretches of land that was not good for anything else than growing beaver tail cactus and a few head of longhorns. He drove for about an hour completely numbed by the vast monotonous scenery. until he decided that nothing was about to change anytime soon. He stopped, made a three-point turn on the road, and headed back the way he came.
Along the way of his return, he saw someone that he had not noticed before, but he had to have passed by him. After all, the man was walking or rather hitchhiking. Perhaps someone had dropped him off. But that also seemed unlikely. There were no other directions to go in the immediate area except east and west, and Brent had not seen a car or truck on the road for sometime.
The man appeared to be carrying his life's worth in a backpack. He had a long staff that he used to assist him in his efforts. Brent pulled over at the side of the road and tooted the horn as indication that he was willing to give him a lift. The man hurried toward the car and, as Brent leaned over and opened the passenger door for him, he peered into the car.
"Are you going to Austin?" He asked.
"Yeah, com'on. Get in."
He opened the door and put his backpack and the staff in the back seat and settled into the passenger seat. "I appreciate the help," he said.
"I was just out for a drive," Brent said. "It's funny. I was driving west earlier and I didn't even notice you. Maybe I wasn't paying attention."
"I suppose that is the story of my life," the hitchhiker said. "Anyway, in case no one else ever told you before, you notice only whatever you want to notice."
"My name is Brent."
"I'm Earl."
"I have a cousin named Earl."
"Everyone knows someone named Earl, or at least that has been my experience."
"Do you have business in Austin?"
"It is the next big city on the way," Earl said. "That's good enough reason to head there."
"Where are you going after that?"
"New Orleans."
"No kidding. I have been through there exactly once, but never really saw much of the place. My brother-in-law and I decided to detour down through there as we were driving back to Ft. Walton Beach, after helping move my parents to the Rio Grande Valley."
"That sounds like quite a trip," Earl said.
"It was. We drove straight through, taking turns at the wheel. We got to New Orleans around sunset and stopped in the French Quarter just to see what it looked like - we didn't have time to stay or do anything else."
"So you were just satisfying your curiosity, just to be able to say that you'd seen The Big Easy."
"Well, it didn't seem like we should just drive straight through Louisiana and not even see New Orleans. I mean, since we had the chance and all."
"So, did you like what you saw?" he asked.
"I guess so, but it was different than what I expected."
"Isn't that always the way of it? You can imagine all sorts of things that simply can't be," he said. "Of course, in New Orleans a lot of things are possible that would never be allowed anywhere else. I'm a friggin' genius when it comes to things like that."
"Really."
"Yeah, really."
"Are you from New Orleans?"
"Anyone who moves to New Orleans is instantaneously and magically transformed. They are suddenly and irrevocably made into natives of the city, regardless wherever they have previously lived. Who is there to say any different?"
Brent laughed. "I guess I'll have to go there sometime when I can spend a few days to really see the sights."
"What's stopping you from going now? Giving me a ride all the way there is a perfect excuse to spend some time."
"I have classes."
"Oh, so you're a college student," he said, but it almost sounded like a curse, or at least a form of summary judgment.
"I'm nearly done with school. I have three more semesters, Spring and two Summer sessions and then I am done!"
"I tried college exactly twice. The first time, I should have known better, and the second time, I guess I hadn't learned my lesson from the first time. The second time around I had volunteered for the US Air Force, trying like hell to avoid having to go to 'Nam. But, damned if the Air Force didn't find out that I'd been to college for a bit! The decided that maybe they could teach me a foreign language. They sent me to Syracuse University on their ticket and taught me Russian."
"Wow!"
"Yeah, wow!" Earl said. "It might have been the most useless thing I have ever learned, except that learning it so that I could do what I did in 'Nam actually allowed me to survive the whole insane experience of being there."
Brent frowned with his incomprehension, but did not comment, as he steered ahead.
"Now, you may ask what in the Hell was I was doing in 'Nam and why did they need me to be able to understand and speak Russian. I wondered that myself. But sure as hell, they sent me smack dab in the most humid, stinky part of this world's groin. I might even tell you the truth of what I did there, except that it is still at least confidential and those people that I worked for are everywhere," he glanced at Brent. "For all I know, even you could be one of them."
"I assure you, I am not."
"Well, anyway the real reason I was there was to play the game. It was the special-edition, global version of chess that we call The Cold War. It was the place that the two most powerful nations on Earth had decided to set down the board and set up all their playing pieces, after having ended in stalemate the last time the board was tossed down in Korea. What did either of the two big guys care about 'Nam? No one cares about the real people who have to live in any strategically necessary place. Their armies and their people were trapped in between the two bullies who had just entered their block and taken up temporary residence. Through no fault of their own, the common people always end up suffering, and for what? Is it merely the accident of birth? They should have been born into a better life, into a country that was not so strategically important in the Superpower view of the world. But then, who has a choice in such things?"
"I couldn't say."
"We were moving our pieces and advancing our proxy's pawns, but at least we weren't doing it in our homeland, or throwing the substantial pieces of hell that each of the Superpowers possessed at one another's mother country. That was how I saw it, anyway. I was there to do my small part in keeping the Russians from invading America. Oddly, it occurred to me that I was also there to keep America from invading Russia. I know it makes no sense, because it is senseless by its very nature. After all, I'm American. But somehow and somewhere, I had become a part of the elaborate balance designed to produce no change in the overall status quo of the prevailing world order. I had been through all the training and had been fully convinced in the validity of what I was doing. I understood all the strange nuances of political intrigue in a very fundamental way that all of the politicians in the world could never possible explain to their representative masses."
"You fought there?"
"I did a sight bit more than fight. I interrogated people and then, usually I killed them. If I felt really benevolent, it was one bullet through the temple," He pointed his finger to the exact place for emphasis. "If they had been belligerent and seriously pissed me off, I cut them open from their sternum to their hoo-hoo and pulled their guts out and hung them in a tree close to where ever I was camped. That served very well to dissuade others from interrupting my naptime. That was my part of the game."
"So, you have actually killed people."
"Who was in 'Nam that survived and didn't kill?"
"Well, I don't know anything about it."
"Thank God or whatever you worship that you don't," Earl said, drawing a deep breath before continuing. "I knew what they knew about global policies, and that none of us understood that level of selecting the proverbial shit from the Shinola. In the game we were playing, the rules were pretty simple. If anyone got caught, you knew what would happen. You got pumped for the information you possessed and then afterwards, after all the torture that you never believed one human could put another human through and have anyone survive, you would spill your guts figuratively just to make the pain go away. That was where I fit in; me, the mean interrogator who would extract every possible secret through torture, then spill their guts literally, making the pain subside forever. It was a professional courtesy, one spy to another - that sort of thing. I knew it up front. They knew it as well. It was part of the code, the unwritten rules of international espionage. So, knowing that if I was ever captured, I was a dead man, I certainly and particularly avoided capture with a good deal of urgency. I became pretty damned good at hiding whenever I needed to."
"I'll bet. So, you were in the Air Force?"
"Yeah, well, they were the ones that paid me. I went through basic training and all that crap, but I was always in a special group who the Air Force had sent to language school on Uncle Sam's tab. I even went through survival training on the same ticket. After I was deployed, I was given civilian clothes to wear and told that I needed to blend in, as much as possible. They gave me press credentials!"
"They? You're telling me that you were a spy, like working for the CIA."
"No, I worked a time or two with those clowns," he laughed. "Don't get me wrong, one of those clowns saved my hide once, but the people I worked for, no one ever hears about. I was part of something essential to the peace and balance of the entire world, something that transcended national interests. I belonged to something euphemistically called The Program."
Brent's eyes widened. "I have heard of The Program."
Suddenly, Earl fell silent.
"What can you tell me about them?"
"Nothing," Earl said, curtly.
"Did I say something wrong?"
"You know enough about them already. If you know them at all, you know too much to be an outsider. Our conversation is over. I have already said far too much. You can drop me off here."
"Look, I'm sorry. It's just, I have received correspondence from them. I have heard about them from someone else, someone who lived in Asia."
"Then run away while you have the chance, not that it will matter much. If they have targeted you already, you have no choice."
"I can still tell them no."
"Yeah and you can believe that for now. So, you don't work for them, yet," Earl laughed. "Look, I appreciate the ride and all that. I really mean that. But you can let me out now. Really, it's fine. Anywhere that you want is okay. You go ahead and say no to them just for shits and giggles, and then see what happens."
"I have interviews coming up, one with the CIA."
"What in the hell is wrong with you?"
"I thought it would be a good practice interview."
"There is no practice about it. You start testing the water with your toe and suddenly the shark comes up out of the water and capsizes your boat and you're trying hard as hell just to tread water while the sharks keep circling around you, trying to decide where to bite you first, or waiting for your to shit youself because maybe we taste better that way."
"I have some other interviews scheduled with banks and an oil extraction company."
"And what makes you think that is not working for them all the same? If they like you, they are going to give you a cover job. After you go through the training, they always give you a cover job until they need to deploy you. Sometimes, the cover job is even in the military, which makes it very easy for them. Once they have identified you as someone with the gifts and talents that they desire, you have no choice but to work for them."
"I'm not sure I believe that."
Earl shrugged. "You're a good kid. I mean that in all sincerity. You were probably a high school hero of some sort. Maybe you were even some star athlete or something. I hate like hell to know what they are going to do to you, but I also know it is as inevitable dying. They will fuck you up so badly that you will believe in their causes, even when what they tell you to do is diametrically opposed to what they told you to do the previous week or even a day before. They will program you to be a perfect mercenary. It is how they achieve their goals. At the end of it all, when you are emotionally and physically spent, they will cast you aside and discredit you as a lunatic, just as they have done to me - just in case someone like me might shoot my mouth off to someone like you."
"How can they do that? I mean, isn't it llegal?"
"There is nothing illegal about it. They make the rules as they go, Brent. They always have. The system that you believe in is a government and the bodies of laws. All nations have that and some are even proud of the peace and stability that they credit largely to their constitutions and the strength of their governments and militaries. At times, there are some things fabricated to keep the masses under control, so that they focus on the guy who ran a stop light, or the jealous woman that 'offed' her husband after finding him in bed with the babysitter. All the while, the real players are concerned with geopolitical matters that have ramifications extending beyond anyone's lifetime."
They were nearing the lookout at Lake Travis, and so Brent pulled over and temporarily parked.
"This is as good a place as any to drop me off," Earl said. "Thanks for the ride, Brent. And best of luck with the bastards that will relentlessly hound you," he said as he proceeded to get out.
"Look, I still have some questions here. Maybe you know the answers. Let's talk for a bit."
"Me? I have no answers. I'm nuts, Brent. Hasn't that occurred to you? Look at me; I am you, only ten or twenty years from now. I;ve been stripped of my sanity but not my pride or dignity. Somehow, I salvaged a bit of that."
"When you came back from 'Nam, what did they do for you?"
"They did absolute shit. I was so fucked up in the head that nothing seemed real to me anymore. I checked myself into a hospital. I needed some help determining where I fit in with the world. This world made no sense to me, anymore. People didn't just capture one another, pump out the information and then get rid of the empty husk. What I learned in the hospital was that there were some people there who were more fucked up than I was at dealing with the world; some of them were orderlies, nurses and doctors."
"A mental hospital."
"Yeah, I was in the loony bin. That's what the future has in store for you, Brent: a lot of very well-meaning people telling you that you must have imagined everything that you ever did previous to you checking in and seeking their 'professional' help."
"You recovered. I mean they let you out."
"I told them I had recovered. I proved to them that I was sane enough to pass their silly fuckin' tests. I was good enough with the real crazies that they even hired me as an orderly. They assigned me to watch this guy named Dave. He was one scary son of a bitch, that for some reason, had become attached to me. He never fuckin' slept, so he had to be watched all the time. The orderlies took shifts watching him 24/7/365. He talked constantly. At times, I listened to his rants, not that I should have been doing that other than monitoring for the two key words that indicated he was about to become violent. Whenever he mentioned Jesus or Elvis, all hell was about to break loose."
"I can maybe see Jesus, but why Elvis?"
"Who the fuck knows? He was nuts!"
"Okay."
"One night. he was in rare form. I was paying attention to some of what he was saying because it was different than the usual fare. The guy pointed out some disturbing things at times that made you think that maybe he wasn't the crazy one after all. Then he started talking about a past life that he had, and so I violated the one hard and fast rule, never to engage a conversation with him. I immediately asked him if he believed in reincarnation. He turned and looked at me straight in the eyes in a way that he never did with anyone, and, then he smiled. Do you know what the sick bastard said to me?"
"No," Brent responded.
"He said, 'well you made it back now didn't ya?'"
A sudden and irrepressible chill ran through Brent."
"Anyway, his saying that really 'creeped-me-out' so badly that I knew I had to get out of there. After that, I put in my notice. When I was out of the hospital, I went to work for a contractor removing debris from a work site. He eventually figured out from talking to me that I had a pretty good education, and he let me do his books and such. It paid pretty well but I always had a pain that never quite disappeared. It was a self-destructive tendency that I even blamed on The Program. They make it hard for us to survive outside, and so I thought that maybe they even programmed me to self-destruct.
"I started drinking, smoking pot, doing everything that I could think of to kill myself short of taking an overdose, swallowing Drain-o or sucking on a the barrel of a loaded gun until deciding to pull the trigger. The Society just doesn't want complications lingering around. I have been defying them ever since I figured that out."
"Why not go back to work for them?"
"Fuck that! I'd rather be dead!. After all the shit I have been through, I would never even talk to them."
Brent started his car.
"Wait! I was in the process of getting out."
"Look, you need a shower and a place to sleep for a day or two," he said, as he backed the car away from the barrier and pulled back out onto the road and headed toward the edge of the city. "You can hang out in my apartment for a few days."
"I have never been to Austin," Earl admitted.
"It is a place that God had in mind when he was working on a prototype for Heaven."
"Yeah, I have heard nothing but good things about it. I had always wanted to come through this way just never had the chance."
"You are traveling far from the Interstate, aren't you?"
"A guy I worked with in 'Nam lives in San Angelo which is back up the road, a right turn or two and a left or three and you're there."
"Well, I think you should stay in Austin at my place for a few days, get to know the place. Hell, my roommate stays at his girlfriend's place all the time; you can crash on his bed or the couch in the living room."
"That's an awfully nice and unexpected offer."
"Consider it the one thing that someone did in gratitude for what you went through for this country."
Earl chuckled. "Well it isn't the only thing. I got a blow job once just because I was a vet."
Brent laughed. "I won't compete with that."
"I wouldn't expect you to. Besides you are not my type."
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