Variations on a(n Historical) Theme: Part II

Second Part: “The Spirit of Radio” - Wherein Alex begins his grand adventure.

'The day had just started to drag on as Alex put things in order. His basement bedroom at his parents' house was starting to look more like living quarters and less like the burrow of some large rat. The bed was shoved into the corner with a digital clock on the nearby windowsill, books and compact discs were strewn about the floor and piled onto the duo of lackluster bookshelves at odd ends of the room. There was no order to the books, just a simple, accepted acknowledgment: a couple-three bibles of varying translation and condition mingled with textbooks which touched on Jainism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Daoism; Stephen King and Neil Gaiman novels were cluttered alongside some of Alistair Reynolds' space-opera epics; Far Side collections shared shelf space with Kant and a much-worn double feature encompassing the Mill treatises “Utilitarianism” and “On Liberty.”

Ancient audio equipment shared as much real estate as the bookshelves, speakers that made better furniture than sound production equipment flanked a television stand. Next to these stood a long, thin teardown table made of white plastic. Beneath this sat the behemoth that was Alex's desktop computer tower – atop it, the vast black portal that was its monitor as well as a keyboard and mouse. Keys and a dated-looking mobile phone filled the majority of the mouse pad, and the shattered-but-functional remnants of a touch-operated mobile music device clung by umbilical to one of the PC's several forward USB ports.

“And where are you going again?” Alex's mother was a worrier, which couldn't be said of everyone.

He shrugged, shuffling papers, deciding which manuscripts were worth reworking and what of his prose work was garbage, and responded with a single word: “South.”

“That's a lot of area.”

“Yeah, it's most of the country,” he sighed. “I get the feeling we're headed to Pennsylvania or West Virginia or Tennessee or something. Maybe northern Georgia. Maybe I'll even get to see Blood Mountain, see about finding that crystal skull or cyclopean sasquatch.”

“What?”

He looked up at her, blinked, and realized that he'd just rambled off a good chunk of a Mastodon's third album. “Nothing.”

“No, you said something about a skull. Are you sure this trip isn't about black magicks or ritual sacrifice or anything?” Alex's mother's concern never failed to simultaneously astound, alarm, and – ultimately – confuse him.

“Mom, allow me to recount a short tale for you,” Alex started, putting clothes and books into a duffel bag. “When I was fourteen, my friends and I started looking into Dungeons and Dragons. You told me that the game would end up responsible for my death: that the authorities would pull my half-starved, probably asphyxiated corpse from the maintenance tunnels beneath MSU because we would wander said corridors fighting imaginary monsters. No matter how much I claimed to understand that the monsters only existed in the context of the story on paper, like a book, and that I would be a combating these monsters on paper only to allay your fears, you insisted that we research what can essentially be called the Church's view on the game. And do you remember what finally made you decide to let me play?”

“No,” she shook her head, playing with the doorknob as he slung the pack over his shoulder and pocketed the phone, keys, and MP3 player.

“Your mind was changed by a thirty-something employee at a local hobby shop, who laughed in your face when I told him what you thought of the game, and summed up play sessions as essentially a poker game with less alcohol, fewer cigars, bigger cards made of flimsier paper, and dice.”

“Oh,” she replied halfheartedly.

“Besides,” he kept going, walking past her into the furnished basement. “That wasn't the game you should have been trying to keep me away from. Player characters can be driven insane by occult horrors in Call of Cthulhu.”

“That doesn't make me feel any better about this trip!” she sputtered as he reached the small foyer which branched off to kitchen, garage, utility closet, and laundry room. He put down the duffel and started sliding his feet into pair of old-timey Clarks. After tying the shoes, he stood and held three fingers up near his shoulder in a Scout's salute.

“I solemnly swear not to intentionally kill, or intentionally allow the death, of any person – or of any animal not intended for sustenance.”

“What about self-mutilation?”

“Mom, I'm not even going to acknowledge that one.” With that he opened the door to the garage, waved to his friends in the waiting vehicle, and turned back to his mother. “Bye, I'll see you in a few days. I'll call from wherever we stop tonight.”

“Okay, Allie, I love you!”

“Yeah,” he choked out, nodding. Those were tough words for him to hear, and tougher ones to say. They always had been; not least because he was entirely convinced that no single person had ever meant them toward him.

# # #

“So why are we taking twenty-three?” Alex asked, peering up over the seat backs toward the dash, trying to catch a glimpse of the directions they'd printed off after having watched the I-96 exit fly past.

“Why not?” David asked from the front seat.

“Because it makes no sense. I-75 hooks up with just about everything southeast of Michigan, and we would have taken sixty-nine over to ninety-six, or at least we would have just hopped onto 96 back there if we were headed west.”

“I'm still not entirely sure why we haven't told him where we're going. I doubt he'd know what was going on if we did,” Michael asked through bites of cherry Pop Tart.

“Yes,” Alex played along, “I am ignorant of all things south of Cedar Point, including people who may or may not live there.”

“He has to figure out what he can on his own. He'll get where we're going soon enough, I'm sure, but not exactly for whom.” George was driving and searching the airwaves for some radio station suitable for the drive. He finally settled on a country station, to the chagrin of the other passengers. “This might do us.”

Talk turned to school. David was in graphic arts at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, George was finishing out a history degree at the same school, Michael was waist-deep in a chemistry program at U of M's Flint campus, and Alex was dissatisfied with being three quarters of the way to a Bachelors of Science in Psychology from Central Michigan University. He seemed to be the only one who hated what he was learning, which didn't help his inherent feeling of isolation.

They drove south, eventually jogging several tens of miles to the east to hop back on I-75 just north of Toledo, verbally ribbing each other and being a general pack of twenty-something hooligans. George, while he drove, kept jumping between pop and country stations, as though trying to single one voice out of a crowd. Alex started to doze, and had the strangest dream of sitting on a park bench next to a pretty singing girl. He accepted that the imagery probably had to do with the radio, and let himself fall asleep as the sun sank beneath what had become Ohio's horizon.'