The ticks were getting quicker and the clock speeded up.

In an instant he knew that a child wasn’t there in his current psychological regime of weapons and other things, it had not appeared and yet, now this child appeared before him. And a man with a wife. And Charles underwent a tinge of a change and it may have been in baht. He didn’t speak of men with kids much or what was necessary when you had them, and yet deep within he knew the love of a child and knew that love could be a love greater than baht or dollars or currencies of other nations. Somehow, he’d always known. A family he met on a beach. He won’t go into it much. But it taught him some things.
His rationale was the bars that held him in prison. At this point in his life he wanted out and away from the Western daemons that made him think so much of obligation and contracts signed and cash put out. He wanted to be himself. And yet he, too, knew the love of a child and its disintegration. And what it meant for society, and he thought of himself. How could he make a wrong right? Greed would have to be conquered, and those that were wrong would have to be made right. Back story in a back story, the ultimate sin. The kind of sin that we are taught by the religious right. Sometimes it takes a bit of back story to make a story right. He came from a nation that was for fun and now was perverted by the religious right. The FRC, the far right Christians fighting for their rights — to control who worked and had a home and who didn’t have the right. So right. So right, and yet in some un-media way so wrong. Like a word meant to be a pun. So right, and yet so horribly wrong. Enough wrong. Now. let’ make it right. To make a lot of money is my main goal. I wouldn’t say it’s my main goal. But I do want to make a lot of money. The expectations were huge, the pressure was enormous. It is a disease; well, it takes a world to cure a disease.

***

He always remembered Anna who one night drove her compact under a semi-trailer and would serve no more people and receive no more tips here.
Just eight years later, the busboys (kitchen helpers) in restaurants in Southern California put broken glass in the water glasses with ice and gave it to the customers. Charls never saw the humor in it. It just wasn’t cool. It rather felt like there was a storm brewing in 1980. The first of the MTV generation didn’t seem to like life. Charls didn’t think much of sexually oriented videos and music linked together. He figured they were two separate things; beauty should be in the music; the other in Playboy magazine. He liked both of the genres a lot, but he liked his sex sex and his music music. He was of a different generation, only separated from the first MTV generation by eight years or two Generation Jones’ years. A lot could happen in eight years. Am I ashamed in a society that knows no shame? No I am not. I’ve seen those who know shame and yet in an instant are unwilling to admit that shame. I think not.

The ticks were getting quicker and the clock speeded up. He would reach his destination sooner than expected. He would have to write faster now. Only eight years separated two generations. Would the generation after his own be separated by just four years? Could they keep their senses straight, or would they be discombobulated and confused? They would all have a common language (If twelve million Mexicans were not considered), but would they be able to communicate? Would the Tower of Babel once more be destroyed? Not by not having a common language but through differences created between people, space, and time?
Will the next advanced civilization once again be dispersed? Will God’s I.D. be stolen — identity theft of mega-proportions. Just as the tower reached the sky would it babble, then bobble and fall over? These were thoughts that Charls wasn’t old enough to have yet, but would consider later in the tale as his own life became entwined ever more tightly with the Devil. He was spinning a tale on a spool. He didn’t have a plan at first, only a plot. That plot was growing darker as the days on Earth grew shorter, burdened by tidal drag. He was trying to slow down the Earth. He wanted to get off.
Someday there would be those who tried to explain what happened and why the tower fell. Charls figured later that it would all be written down in code and inscribed on stone. The story would first be written in sand, but the tides would not be able to erase those letters in the sands of time no matter how much water washed over them. Things once written in sand might make their way to stone. Transformed by many groups with many reasons for committing treason and whatever political party — a new testament of sorts — that happened to be in power at any given moment. Once again things would be jumbled and a lesser human put in charge — another Nimrod taking over another people’s will and once again the human race will go on fighting for thousands of generations. Each drop of blood depletes the human gene pool, until one day people realize that there are not enough genes left to go around. And Armageddon rears its ugly head and once again life is hell on Earth and not only for the puritans who having been expelled from England now had a new land to humiliate and new souls to torture. Skinny dipping was a no-no in puritan land.

News Flash: Scientists have determined that after the final battle there are not enough genes left to ensure genetic diversity sufficient to recreate the human race. The Earth is no longer fecund. The horizontal and vertical lines of the cross have been made parallel. There is not enough knowledge to fix the problem. Even if all the animals in captivity are captured and put into PC prison they will not have their own identity. It will have been stolen. They will not have a soul. They will all be politically correct and exactly the same. They will be like Sea Monkeys in a bowl. You will have to get a pair of X-ray Specs to see them.

These were all thoughts that, of course, now, Charls could not have. But twenty five years later he would start to have them and to live them. He would start to question God and his nation. He would figure God…damn it would the real God please stand up and do something to solve the problem before the Tree of Knowledge and Fertility was broken; before it was too late. He would be finally … pissed off with the world. When twenty- five years later it would seem to have gone mad.
It was about twenty-five years later that a Korean immigrant would kill thirty students at the University of Virginia and that, almost daily, killings were reported. Just today a mother drowned four children in a tub and called her husband to explain that they were at peace now. At least some are.