J: best quote on the internets ever: “Our Viking ancestors spoke stories of battles with trolls, and today we still see them on the internet.”

G: Them who?

J: ?

G: The Trolls? Or the Vikings?

J: The trolls. 

Remember when you came up with this great plan to cut yourself just to feel _something_? Only, after you finally got the rasor out of your mom’s leg shaver you chickened out and so instead you went into the little secret hiding place you made in the back of your closet and cried yourself asleep?
Ok. That never happened.
But remember how you figured all that out. That you would like that to happen? Remember?
Remember how you said when you broke up with her, you would feel like a building was faling down around you? And when she broke up with you, you didn’t feel anything? Remember that?
Remember how you cried and cried, but you didn’t really want to cry, you just thought you were _supposed_ to be crying so you did? Remember how you really just wanted to stay in your room for the rest of the month, not crying? Remember how you used to hide in the garden shed for days at a time so your parents wouldn’t know you weren’t going to school, but you didn’t want to go anywhere where you might have to see someone, so you sat in the garden shed for weeks and weeks reading through four years of playboys from the mid 1980’s? Rememer how you couldn’t find the June 1986 edition, and it kind of pissed you off becuase that had the conclusion of a long running short-fiction story you’d really enjoyed reading.
Remember how you started smoking then, and you couldn’t believe how much you liked the way the cigarettes tasted, but not the way they smelled.

They never just went bang. That was the problem with them. They always sizzled or beeped first and that was not nearly as satisfying as a simple staccato report would have been.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, there was no need for the bang. It was just a simple little burst of sound that augmented the whole proceedure. And it was kind of scary. But mostly, it was just a bang. Disapointing.

Nobody asked after the Bang. When the bang stayed up late nights he stayed up alone. He sobbed gently into his hot green tea, served at just pre-boiling temperatures and steeped for exactly three minutes— and not a second more. HE had a special timer just for his tea, did Bang.

“It’s not that simple,” I said.

“Oh, this modern age,” said she.

I am sitting on an overstuffed love seat. It feels freshly uphoulstered, but not new. The fabric on the cushions has the faintest smell of bleach. She, my therapist, is sitting on a well worn wicker rocker. It’s upholsterery— a couple of threadbare seat cushions, is obviously not new, and probably smells not of bleach, but of years of wear and tear, especially on the part where she rests her elbows when she leans in to give the appearance of paying her clients rapt attention.

She’s leaned in on her elbows now, and I assume she’s paying rapt attention to me— because that’s what her body language tells me. And, I assume, that is actually what she’s doing, too, or else what am I paying her for?

I am, I should note, not crazy. I chose to come to see my therapist. For me, it is a great value. As she was lamenting the modern age with feigned distress, I might have guessed she was frustrated with the back seat that her profession had taken to technology in recent years, but I thought I knew her better.

In todays world mood regulation was a product bought and sold freely, and, for the most part, without regulation. Calm. Serious. Studious. Compassionate. All brand names of highly regulated super drugs. Party sold best on Thursdays, oddly enough— but I digress.

So, why then, do I find myself, week after week, returning to my therapist- when a simple twice-daily cocktail of Relax and Work Hard would probably suit me just fine. Oh this modern world.

I already said, I find it a great value. I like to pay someone to listen to me. And I think she likes to listen. Or, at least, she does a great job of _appearing_ like she likes to listen.

“It’s not that simple,” I say again. “I just want to know who I am.”

“We all do, Peter,” she said. “We all do.”

I notice that there is a new box of tissues on the counter between us. It carries the Ely Lilly logo on one side. I wonder what this could mean, but then It comes to me.

Dr. Rivers leaned back from his terminal, flipping the pen across his desk and spinning the thumbwheel to make the screen whirl back and forth.
“Yeah, See. There’s nothing there. It’s all smoke and mirrors. It’s a crime.”
“Sure it is, Pete,” said Robert Grinder; “They don’t do have of the great stuff we do here.”
I looked across at my liaison and raised one eyebrow. Was this guy for real?
“See,” said Dr. Rivers, leaning in to me and lowering his elocution level as if he were speaking to a small child, “They think that they can say they’ve got it all made because they run a battery of tests, right?”
He paused, waiting for me to acknowledge him. I nodded him on.
“But I don’t need 40,000 credits worth of tests to know that there’s something wrong with this kid, right?” Another pause. Another nod. “He wouldn’t be coming here if there wasn’t something wrong with him.” He looked over to Grinder for confirmation and Grinder shot him back a loud, raucous laugh, confirming my first and primary suspicion about the man; he was a suck up.
Science had solved man kind’s medical problems— but no matter what kind of genome mapping, rotovirus RNA-implanting stem-cell regenerating bio-nuclear petri dish mumbo jumbo you threw at mankind, some people were still assholes.

Water dribbled across the yard, slowly slopping across the gardens and flooding out through the mulch and landscaping. When it hit the large flat concrete surfaces it traveled more easily— less organically— and faster too.
It was at the sidewalks, Rose Kingsford thought, that we shall put in our boats. The sidewalks, she hoped, would carry her ship, the supply barges that followed it, and her people outside the walled confines of the yard and beyond. What lie behind she couldn’t know, but she alone had decided it was time to move her people, and she alone would make the choices that would either lead to their doom or salvation.
She had, of course, every reason to believe that beyond the walls and fences there were places where her tribe could flourish. She’d been shown those places by an anicent mystic— the same one who had delivered the proficy of distruction that woud befall the yard.
She allowed herslef a rare smile as she watched the water dribble out of the grassed areas and into the concrete sidwalks where it gained speed and purpose. This was going to be a hell of a ride. While in the grasses, the onslaughts of water were crushing, slow moving death and entrapment, on the sidewalks, the waters unstoppable power would be their ally. And, she chuckled, it might even be a little fun.
She decided to head back to the vilalge to tell her advisory council what she’d decided. The sidewalks would be their savior, and barring any nasty surprises beyond the gate, she was certain that her people could find a new yard to call their own. One free of th e plauge of the unending waters. One free of the infestations of insects. One free of random shifts and changes of the great mountains. But most importantly, one free of the great devil who’s shit clung to her asshairs.