Friday, May 22, 2020

Do Not Resuscitate, Part 2: Square One


We think we can go back. (Who, exactly, do I mean by we? What, exactly, do I mean by go back?) Again, the animal instinct to "return" to "normal" and resist change overtakes the higher functions of considering the larger ramifications of what we are seeing.

This is just beginning, both in terms of medical science and in economic terms. Eighty thousand people already dead, a couple thousand more every day, thirty million people out of work. In about eight weeks.

And that's what we know about. That doesn't count deceased who may have been intentionally or accidentally misdiagnosed by coroners, who in many cases are really just county sheriffs and not medical doctors. That doesn't count states like Florida who are openly concealing (there's an oxymoron for ya) COVID-related numbers, because the governor, like all Florida governors in recent memory, is a corrupt slapdick who cares more about kissing the chief executive's bulbous ass than protecting his citizens. He's like a character out of a Carl Hiaasen novel, except even Hiaasen would have dialed down the caricature out of artistic responsibility.

Whatever your particular circumstance during this crisis so far, it may have occurred to you at some point that the people who are supposed to be managing it -- that is, Trump and his dead-eyed failson-in-law -- are not doing a quality job of it. Indeed, they appear not to be interested at all in finding ways to improve their response to the epidemic.

In fact, if you were to go by what they've said and done so far, you might start to think that they are completely indifferent to the human consequences of the plague. That is to say -- and I mean this quite literally -- that whether the final death tally had actually been zero, or if it ends up being five or even ten million, their reactions and responses would be unchanged. They do not care. At all.

This is a powerful, disheartening thing to consider, for sure. This is the ethical code of serial killers, that human life has literally no value, except insofar as it affects someone they actually know and care about, or their precious, precious money.

There is -- or was, it seems to have already passed by without notice, much less consideration -- an opportunity to think with moral clarity many of the things we take for granted in this weird, predatory society we share -- housing, health care, money, food, education, and yes, even climate change. In the past decade, the Ebola and Zika scares were just mere hints of how pandemics, aided and abetted by the broader tropical and temperate zones created by climate change, could wreak havoc on complacent, unsuspecting societies -- especially ones like the US, completely unwilling to do any serious thinking about any of it.

Then again, we have not been a serious nation for a very long time. Serious nations don't keep shoveling impossible amounts of money and power over to obvious grifters and shitheads. Half the gastropods in this fucking hellscape would fight each other with rusty pocketknives for the opportunity to give their paychecks to such people, so long as it affirmed their idiotic prejudices and imaginary grievances.



The other side of the ridge at first appeared to be a vast expanse of desert emptiness, waterless plants somehow persisting -- even thriving -- in this permanently baked wasteland. Looking more intently as he descended carefully, he could see larger pockets of darker greenery, colors of wooded copses and even perhaps jungle canopies further back.

Time and distance still did not register clearly, not yet anyway. It was warm and bright, yet there was still no sign of the sun and he wasn't sweating. There was no evidence in sight that any human had ever ventured here.

He adjusted his walking path slightly toward the nearest small grove of trees, suddenly aware that there was no way to situate it as a cardinal direction, "north by northeast" or whatever. No matter; it was over there slightly to the right several hundred yards. Or several hundred feet. Or a mile.

Take it a step at a time.

Finally -- or suddenly -- he found himself in front of the grove of what appeared to be madrone trees, bark peeling, fat clusters of red and orange berries hanging from a few of them. He wasn't hungry and the berries didn't look especially good anyway. Faint chirping and chittering rose in the air and fell, like the water ebbing from a tidal pool.

He kept walking into the grove and instinctively reached to his belt with his left hand, and was startled to feel a knife handle sticking up from a sheath, right behind the hip. Had that been there? He pulled the knife, not out of worry that it might need to be used, but just to see it. It was a beauty -- eight-inch blade Bowie, carbonized Damascus steel, serrated top edge, light but sturdy bone handle.

Holding in his left hand, hefting it for a minute, feeling the knife's weighted balance, turning it back and forth in the dappled light, as the dark patterned steel almost seemed to glow at certain angles, he kept thinking, Where the hell did this come from? He sheathed the knife and looked more closely at the workman's belt.

There was a small flask at each hip. The one on the right felt empty, while the left flask sloshed a bit when he shook it. He opened and sniffed cautiously, detecting a subtle aroma, not sure. He took a sip, tentatively, and was rewarded with the flavor of a fine reposado, the cool of the blue agave followed by the rush of alcohol warmth. The flask felt about halfway empty.

Or, you know, maybe half-full.

He returned the flask to its loop on the belt, shaking his head incredulously. What the hell? Looking deeper into the grove, he could see the duff and ground cover around the madrones and white oaks, a subtle but clear line breaking through, heading back into denser foliage.

Left hand dropping behind his hip to the knife almost out of pure lizard-brain instinct, scanning the ground, he slowly pressed forward down the only thing resembling a trail. The animal noises of the forest lulled and then ceased, and after about fifty feet (or five hundred feet), he could hear the faint burbling of water.

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