Catching My Breath

Aren't I the paranoid one?

Turns out my flight from the trailer park may have been a little hasty.
As soon as I could, after I left, I put some inquiries in to some buddies "on the inside."

After a few days of checking, they could find no evidence of any official operations against me. In fact a couple of them laughed at me for having the delusion of being more important than I actually am.

So now I feel like a total fool for having run away like that. Not only did I scare myself silly, but I had to throw away some dear possessions, all because of some strangers coming around looking for me. What in the world would somebody want with a drunken old slacker such as myself anyhow? The only thing I could think of was my Almanac (which will stay well-hidden all the same).

That being said, I've decided to stay in SoCal after all.

I got an apartment over the weekend, a charming old Polynesian complex that appeals to the incurable romantic in me (although I won't divulge where it is this time ;) ). It's got plenty of verdant foliage, and a pool surrounded by huge tikis illuminated by colorful floodlights. A veritable haven, it is liquor store and strip club close.
I look forward to summer nights beside the pool, steaks sizzling on the grill, my brain pleasantly fogged with tropical drinks...

Speaking of the Almanac, Eddie read my blog for the first time the other day, and scolded me for my use of the term. What would you have me call the most prized relic of my youth, Eddie?
Yes I have seen "Back to the Future" several times, and no, you're right, it is not a sports almanac; rather it is a guidebook and catalog of nearly all of the temporal nodes placed on this Earth, as well as a few of the Russian ones and a couple on the moon. I say nearly all because my tattered copy is the 1966 Varo edition, which of course is woefully out of date. It doesn't list the improved C and E models introduced in the late sixties and early seventies, nor the ones scattered throughout our solar system.

Hah! They're shaking their heads now, Eddie! You satisfied?

Eddie is one of those guys who babbles on about how "Information wants/needs to be free," or some other similar BS. He never considers the consequences of someone placing detailed instructions on how to build your own bomb, or desktop fusor, or LSD recipe, etc. on the internet. I've met some of the very people who should never get ahold of said "free information"-- mentally unbalanced types who are bored with ordinary reality, who are just waiting for the next big thrill.

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if my mystery visitors are some friends of yours, Eddie.

Could you look into that?

I hope to be posting more regularly, now that I am not running around with my tail between my legs. My connection should be up in the next few days, my new ISP tells me.
Thank God! I am tired of mooching bandwidth at Starbuck's already...


Cheers!

A Little History

I first met the Wizard back in the early seventies, through a mutual friend.
My father operated a sheet metal fabrication shop in Artesia then, and I would help out now and then.
Dad would employ various drifters and other assorted guys as well, some good, most bad. Employment never lasted beyond a few weeks, and then the guy would move on to God knows where.
One of those hires, though, would change the way I looked at things forever. His name was Ed, and he was the one who introduced me to the Wizard.
Ed was this intense little guy in his 30s. He would rattle on about free energy devices, Tesla, and something called the Bourke engine. I was fascinated. I had never heard of any of this stuff. My young mind ate it up.
At about this same time Deadman came into the picture. Deadman was some aerospace industry veteran who died and left a bunch of interesting hardware behind. It fell into the hands of one of my dad's shop neighbors, who in turn asked if my dad and I would take it off his hands.
He brought over a small truckload of stuff to my dad's shop, and my dad, Ed and I sat for a couple of hours poring over boxes of vacuum tubes, aircraft parts, and other various bits of unidentifiable hi-tech gimcrackery.
Ed was beside himself. Spit flew from his mouth as he jabbered excitedly and pointed at the boxes of gear. "The Wizard would love this stuff! Especially THIS!"
He held up a 2' x 3' bakelite panel festooned with switches. I thought it looked cool too but of course I wondered who this "wizard" was. Ed could see it in my eyes. "Let's take this over and show him! You wanna meet him? He's got a lot of cool shit! And he knows everything!"
Well I was hooked in. We bade my dad farewell and climbed into Ed's VW bug and drove off to meet the Wizard.
It was quite a drive. The wizard lived in El Segundo, in a cramped little cracker box of the type mass-manufactured right after the war.
The Wizard answered our knock and greeted Ed warmly but squinted at me suspiciously. But he let us both in anyway. He looked like the pictures of Howard Hughes in his last days (the sketches were in all the papers back then)--middle-aged, skinny, but with a huge unruly shock of hair and unkempt beard.
He led us through a dimly lit maze of ceiling-high stacks of newspapers and boxes, back to his bedroom, which resembled something like Frankenstein's laboratory. There were electronic devices and control panels choking the small space, and the air was thick with ozone. But the picture that always stuck with me all these years was that of his home computer.
You heard it right. He had a home computer in the early seventies, before anyone else. Not only that, but he had a couple of monitors hooked up to the thing, and a graphical user interface there on the screens! He had a mouse, too, not like the ones we use today, more like a metal box with pushbuttons on it. He also had a lightpen, which he waved around like a wand, jabbing at the screens as he mumbled to Ed. No wonder he was called the Wizard.
When Ed unwrapped the bakelite switch-panel and presented it to the Wizard, the Wizard locked onto it with some intensity, but that quickly faded as he announced dismissively, "early computer input device. They were programmed by laboriously inputting numbers on these rotary switches. Don't need 'em! We use this now." He pointed to his keyboard. Ed, dejected, handed the switch-panel over to me.
Nevertheless, the Wizard spoke of all sorts of forbidden and esoteric knowledge that day. My small brain reeled with the revelations:
"They're deploying the TRB-3 now! They've gone to the moon and back in under ten minutes!"
"Reality is multi-dimensional! You and I and everybody else pass through multiple dimensions every day and don't even notice it!"
"Of course there is time travel! The government's had the capability for years!"
And that, my friends, was my first visit with the Wizard. I couldn't wait to visit again...

Fishing Trip

Greetings, friends.
I've been out of town on a "fishing trip" the past few days. No I didn't catch anything, but I did visit the Wizard, who's been ill for a couple of years. It's just a matter of time (sorry Theo if you are reading this); I think his days are numbered. He's got at least 20 years on me, god save him. At least he's got plenty of morphine.

Upon my return to my beloved abode yesterday, I retrieved a note affized to my front door. It was from Dora, my neighbor. Apparently some suspicious characters were skulking around, looking for Yours Truly. With an awful feeling in my gut I unlocked the door, worried about burglary and the like. I did a quick assessment of things, made sure the almanac was still in its hiding place, and determined that no one had broken in. Good thing I have nosy neighbors...

Later Dora followed up on the note, showing up at my door, babbling excitedly about the visitors' "funny car" and "strange behavior." The most excitement poor Dora has seen in a while I guess. I poured her a couple of glasses of good Scotch and let her bend my tired ears for a pace. I wasn't supposed to be drinking that stuff, but there it was, and besides it kept the rising panic at ground level. Later I thanked her by sending her off with the rest of the bottle. I never saw her move that fast to her trailer before!

I am so tired of trouble, and am almost regretting starting this blog, because I am positive that my big fat mouth has betrayed me yet again. I have gotten soft and sloppy in my old age-- I guess it was pretty stupid to reveal where I live. I haven't heard anything from these guys in years, and now bam! They show up at my doorstep.
Well to hell with them. There isn't much they can do to me anymore, except steal the almanac, except guess what guys, I hid it again, and you will never find it this time. And I won't be where you think I will be next time you come looking. I have, as they say, moved on. Mobile!

More to come later...

Where do I start?

Shall I start with my first meeting with the Wizard, or the story of my life?
Heck if I know right now. I'm woozy with fever and can barely think straight, let alone type.
Suffice it to say that right now I decided to share my life's adventures with everybody because I don't know how much longer I have to live on this earth. Not that I feel that I am dying anytime soon, mind you, but I am 57 years old, living in a stinking trailer park in Garden Grove, and I have an alcohol problem (to be quite honest).
Besides, everybody's got a story to tell, don't they? Who was it that said there are heroic tales to be found in even the most mundane person's lives?
The earth is a strange and wonderful place, and I am here to say that there is more to reality than you and I could ever believe, and that the human senses, however amazing, hardly show us the whole picture. But I got to peek behind the veil for a brief time, and you can make what you will of what I saw.
True or not, I hope at least it will be entertaining...