whistlestopursus

Profit is security in the absence of war. Man is war. Parity is war. War is all.

Wealth runners only hide.

Perhaps I am a performance. My identity may only be an inheritance. This actual flesh may be no older than any man ever was. The planet has circled its generator one thousand times since I became a wealth runner yet that does not indicate when I was conceived. Which “I” am I speaking of? What history is this?

Let it be known that all the people of this planet are its anomaly. We are its disaster.

I sit by my lake and wait for disaster.

People speak of a beginning that never happened, of split points, of minds within minds. I will debunk two mind concepts as they relate to the content of one mind, mine, perhaps.

Perhaps indecision is a result of a conflict of the aware and unaware. I surmise that the subconscious is usually aware of the conscious mind and that the conscious mind must exert itself to know the subconscious.

I write a double reflection, uncorrupted, yet unreal in that it is not an interaction with sensations. It is action sans reaction a reader craves, passive and impassive in a moment.

This theory of mind machination sounds conventional, unremarkable, pedestrian, and true to me. This dull conventional life is adventure.

There was a plan. People were to be made to believe that there was a way to leave this world and live in its orbit. This deception was for the express purpose of getting rid of large numbers of them. Used to the action by the time they realized that to go off the world was to be murdered, the numbers would comply.

Slavery and equivalent dehumanization were established to keep respectability a socially dependant construction. Wealth runners follow what makes the following possible. Only aware of our equivalence is our consciousness, bearable and fluid. Able to direct, we listen to the subconscious, our creed.

He kept his life secret. Research indicated an aversion to overt ties. Some possibilities of lucrative connections were unearthed but wealth runners tagged individuals’ profiles with false hints whenever a profile was gathered. The expense of a field gathering was forgone.

Many nets make many holes.

He triggered mass deaths. The trick of anticipating and intercepting suicidal murders was simple enough. A martyr needed no resolution if his guilt or remorse was wiped out at his missions’ end. With enough analysis research usually found out about groups planning action soon enough to divert.

A wealth runner was different. He had no conventional convictions. There was a small part of the world that was livable and far too few resources to keep unprepared people out in conventional ways.

He was smart enough to perform.

Wealth runners kill, return to base, go home, and perform. Those with homes usually work on ways to disappear from the high folks.

Nice trick.

He looked at his lake. There were granite slides in summer. It was impossibly cold in winter. He hid to stretch the time between missions. There was no permanent disappearance, not for him, not yet.

She was there. They had winter, comfort, no interruptions from the high folks for a while, yet they were not sure for how long.

Gav came. The high folks had equipped him in order that he could make contact with us.
I should tell you now that I will refer to myself as he from time to time, pretend to be someone else, and just plain make stuff up for the fuck of it.

I should because it’s the law, or because I want to, or because I lie for the fun of it, but I promise you I will bullshit you.

I first met Gav en route to the so-called launch site outside of a metropolis that specialized in prostitution.

Most whores are in on the gag but we usually let them live. As long as they bang the high folks and keep the secret that keeps the numbers coming we let them pretend ignorance of the true nature of the supposed launch site. When they weary of living, they don rocket suits.

Gav was a whore.

What is the psychological function of a time travel obsession?

Prostitution, mass murder, isolation, time travel, elements of popular stories.

He brought me an assignment. The High Folks wanted to poison a continent. The idea was to sterilize and isolate a sixth of the planets’ land in preparation for a crop of necessaries.

I was supposed to help kill all the people first.

Jobs like that don’t always pay like they’re supposed to. Sometimes it’s just a way for a friend on the inside to let you know they’re planning something that will get you.

I needed to analyze the messenger and the message.

Gav had tried to kill me that first time we killed together. The high folks had managed to evacuate me in time to save me. I like it when I get the good drugs guilt-free, months at my lake guarded and left alone by the high folks, time with her.

He had thought I intended the usual for him. Prostitutes always run that possibility, its part of their survival tactic. He was being understandably proactive.

Comradery? Yes, we have that. I left him in the pool for the rest of the runners to employ. By the time he got back to us he had enough to start his account.

I knew he was pondering the way. Loyalty is a fickle puzzle, always the wanderer, setting down roots that sprout and send further seeds to the conscience that gnarl the grandeur of acceleration.

“We have to go in with a team.”

“How long will we have?”

We knew there was no choice for us, something this big meant you took the job or they couldn’t keep track of you so they had to spend money to kill you. It also meant that if you had to do it they didn’t have to pay you.

Gav and I thought we would like to kill some bankers, or run them. The nice trick was in finding a place to run them to.

Our cause.

We’re looking for one. So far as we know it ends with our selves. My love nearly killed Gav one day while I was scouting out my neighbors’ place for signs of disruption. He thought he’d take her down.

No harm done. We gave him a graphic example of that fickle puzzle. A few drugs and a hypnotic suggestion about the tea jar being his genitals put him straight.

He needs to find his own partner.

The neighbor had a child the high folks didn’t know about. The poor little thing wasn’t but five but she knew the drill. Any time the six colored lights came on she was to eat something, push a few buttons on the counter that connected to an old-fashioned copper wire to the other places in the area and someone was likely to come get her.

This kid was a kidnap. Gav and I had done the same thing on our sprees when we had time. Our place was full of them for weeks at a time.

We filled orders for the high folks.

They weren’t usually discipline problems, if they didn’t behave they got placed in enforcement. I saw one that I had to get rid of about twenty years later, he had a kind of driven look to him, like a
beast, maybe he was thinking about his missions’ end, and a brothel, and intoxication.

Or he might be a leader, driving on the underlings until he could go home and direct his passivity with the help of a vassal.

I think he died that day. I hadn’t heard of any evacuation plans for the operation.

We have drugs for remorse. I hate to use them because our life spans are long enough for side effects to kick in and make the practice of wealth running less than lucrative. I prefer the slow processing of emotions in an orderly manner.

I can see the consequences of inaction when I leave my victims. Medicating guilt seems like inaction to me.

We got to South America a week before the rumors were planted. The drug crops would supposedly be poisoned so the muscle went countryside leaving us more room to maneuver. Two thousand ordinary law enforcement personnel would be kidnaped someday soon in daylight.

Special teams would respond to rumors with actions that would seem to confirm the most horrifying conclusions.

Man, can they scare up hell.

We got one hit. He was a banker. I did a little research on the neighbor and he seemed dead enough so I moved the banker and his family in there.

I hope this works a way to the high folks so I can retire from the game.

They don’t like being known and pay handsomely to keep secrets.

I don’t know where the high folks got it all. They flew over all that continent dropping different kinds of seeds and chemicals for a hundred years while Gav and the foundling grew into each other at the neighbors’ estate. My love and I stayed together, we figured we were going to be our selves no matter who we were with and with the communicable diseases in the populated places being what they were, well, we still live at the lake.

The banker and his family were ransomed to a high folks destination and died soon after of a profound lack of credibility.

The neighbors’ story is, well, different.

Entire Planet
The planet came under the purview of a modified trust for which there was an assumed risk of one million.

I upped my indemnity.

I hope the high folks miss me for good this time. So goes the way of our present day predicament, someone tells you about a job and you're in a box, lid closed, light sealed, hearing nothing. Strike a match. Get it? They never let you out.

I was at the suppposed launch site while the usual crowd was pretending to get the flying machines ready and I saw her spying out the conscripts. Felons. Fodder. Us. Pretend you need an income and you're in a box. Light matches. They know you, congradulations, you're employed.

Correspond until underlings delegate. Control masters. Confusion is task congruent.

You will get busted up, the only people who are going to make it possible to continue hope to see you again. You hate to see them because it’s down inflow time and no time with the high folks. I often miss my valley.

Home. Delve from mountainsides surrounding the lake. Disguise entrance ways with the surface stuff removed and put back. Pneumatics with block and tackle back up. There are a hundred homes in the mile radius. Nobody, so far as I know, knows neighbors. Some go to lower altitudes. Trapped up, down, the world is pathways and refuges.

Low altitude life.

I get you to tell me what you want me to say and I respond. Something like “I have specific instructions to relay this information to the coordinators in case I am caught,” (that buys enough time to get my side aware of my absence), they usually come through with a trade or a rescue.

I had cache in grip once and nobody cared. Trade they wanted and did, I’ve done that too. We all want to keep the wealth running by close, problem is intelligence, it is slow clearing leader desks-nobody bothers to stop killing until the field is clear. We have met to apply ourselves to the problem.

All links to the high folks get cut when platoons come. Farce. My own vehicle was thrown in the drink when I flew the mission. On it goes through the infinite space of nondescript, unalienable rights we cherish that nobody understands but the poor sucker holds onto as long as it doesn’t exist.

As long as the bear passes he cannot hurt you.

Shamble kaleidoscope shadows, scope total, bear witness, bear back and strike out. The training manual is void.

I went to the valley last week and found my dwelling as it was supposed to be. I got to the lake and


found my neighbor. He asked me if the vehicles were coming that day. How should I know? If they want me, they come. They come and they come and they come. I have no recourse. One day I was in the city and they let me go to the museum of old civilizations.

There they were in their boxes. There they were in the last throw of reckless abandon. Flying machines, hotly disputed holy sites, a prearranged confrontation of non-philosophies that lead to the destruction of nothing of any importance to anybody.

Sometimes I wish I could leave the whole mess to the coordinators. What a mess world peace and unity have made of things, of humans.

People used to have wars. We used to have one government. We used to have Anarchy. We have action. That is my name for what we have now, just action.

I need to go low and get credibility for a moon cycle so the neighbors catch my cloud. Fear, I fear, is my friend. Down to the cities.

Dispatch has my latest, most damning assignment. Yea, I will do as they ask, and I will do so. Such as it is, such as it is done. Much as I was in and without the world asking my pardon my mission kept to me and I was therefore straight and adamant. Far into the dark and the penetrable by my action I was kept.

After a while I assume I will not make it back. It’s like dancing. If you learn to love it the fear is manageable and you can function. We can get cures for almost anything. I earn enough for a thousand people to live on, I don’t need that big a family. I can get a cure for almost anything. I lost a leg on my last mission. I don’t know how they did it and I das n’t find out. Knowledge is power and power corrupts. I walk fine now, sometimes I have to remember the event that lost me the leg to remember which leg is the new one.

Some of my neighbors are over a thousand years old and look like young adults. They earn far more than I. I das n’t cross them. They das n’t cross me.

I was standing on the famous supposed launch pad and she ran over me with her sleigh. Forty below. That’s right, forty below. Fahrenheit. Lucky me. They might have even reattached the original leg.

It doesn’t matter. Everything gets replaced, even brain cells. Wealth Runners are covered.

I put together an illusion squad. Easy enough. Some gigantic explosions, projected images of what might be thought of as rockets, and broadcasts of likely conversations a flight crew and some ground support teams would have.

The latest plan is to crash on the moon. We need a moon ecology panic. I suppose the zealots will


convince themselves the face of the thing is changing if they get a couple months in a whorehouse. Bring on those willing vixens.

The damndest thing is the dumb fucks like the ugly quarrelsome bitches with grappling hook fingers and direction finders in their crotches. Pretty faces impress other men. Why don’t they just fuck the other men?

Ah, unreality, would that it could be so simple for we who see what is.

I need to get the high folks on the horn so they don’t sell my place. I’ve been gone for a couple decades to them. My girl took off with the little ones by now I hope. What happens when a runner gets going? My plan was to bust open the fantasy of space flight. I figured the money was on personal responsibility regarding the masses. They keep getting moved off to some place. There is no space flight, no more than satellites. They see everything.

Seems like they already know. They don’t know, of course. They know they are being observed by dangerous eyes and I never get real talk from them, the trick is in knowing what flag they expect you to fly. I sometimes pay a month’s earnings to find out who the locals are expecting to play conquered for just so I can buy a meal.

The governments. Why do they bother? Nobody is home.

I never answer. One time I was watching them mousing around my cave, calling out whatever name they thought I was going by, trying to get my attention, I trapped them with glue. I find her, manifestant, hungry, and treacherous.

What more do we have to work with? No one is willing to risk anything of value on the say-so of a wealth runner, only the worthless come to us. The worthless, by the worthless’s say-so, are worthless to the worthless and therefore of great value to wealth runners. We send them and they go. We beckon them, and yea, they do therefore and herewith duly deliver themselves unto us as we are and in fact shall make use of them as they are, worthless to themselves.

Or they are spent.

Independents. Some farm. Most steal, but not from farmers. There is no escaping reputation. The entire planet is small town in many uncomfortable ways. There are few recluses and, as always, fewer secrets than secret places.

I work two farms for food when I’m stickered for a disappear. No one asks for names, philosophies, purpose or conflict. If shelters are taken there is usually something I can use in harsh conditions. I sometimes wish those young farmer women were older. I want parity. But so do they.

So do they.


Should I pretend about the travel thing? Whatever keeps me on the top of the dirt.

I have strategies for keeping dust down as far as the neighbors’ property and for keeping dust out of my quilt but no further. A man walks in his footprints these days. Fortunate me. I have footprints that go in all directions.

I will be in a city tomorrow. I need a young boy to run errands. He will need to be fast enough to evade pursuit, hungry enough to want the pay.

Forefathers create the illusion of freedom and independence vanishes. All is debate and subterfuge.

I am calling you. You, who are not possible, not mine, you, who I want. I make one impossible action and keep you. We dissolve to them.

You have an idea of my life, so, why care? Why do you read an account of this path? How does it cross or join with yours? Are you pursuing me? This record may survive me beyond use.

Day has come. The guards pretend to know me so that I do not kill them. I pick up my tail. He is thin, agile, Gavroche.

It is understood between opposites that loyalty is a fantasy. Ga and I looked for food. His allies kept journey food handy, yet we wanted to seem settled wherever we went. That meant getting food that would spoil but not poison us while it seemed wholesome. The food born illnesses are expensive to cure and take many moon cycles to get used to, and they are local.

We talk about sex. He is probably a go for pay. People have told me that whores know whores. I suppose there is some truth in that, (I sometimes know addicts when I see them), I just played my punk for toys when I was a young flower. My shelter bought time. This young flower might have needed to stretch a bit further for light.

“Yes, stimulation sticks you to someone, best to find an attachment that breaks off on you that you can go on looking at with new insight, best not to be able to make final conclusions until everything is over, if you can.” “What if you can’t?”

“Then you’re probably hastening the conclusion of the proceedings.”

Another development courtesy high folk and minions brought our mission close to an ending as customers made contact. They were about fifty, overweight, intoxicated. This was a loyalty test. The produce checked out fine under the scanner, the dead cooked creature fare had local DNA, but the men didn’t seem connected to it. They seemed ready with an explanation for the acquisition rather than trying to barter it for sex.



No doubt my boy was rated pro.

I killed them and sold the guts to a pig farmer.

I told Ga the next morning we were hot with the high folks for the dead puffy boys and he agreed to hit the launch site with me.

The thing went up past some clouds and knocked out half a city when it came down.

We killed millions of people that day.

The space eyes saw us but we don’t care, our high folks keep us hidden.

We’re supposed to pull down some satellites next. I want my love back.

What is this planet?

Ours.

The North Star.
A whistling bear.
A small town with a rail station, any kind.
A wolf.
A sign saying "Welcome to Whistlestop."
An active train.