Spoon Knife 6: Rest Stop

Previous volumes in the Spoon Knife

series

The Spoon Knife Anthology: Thoughts on Compliance,

Defiance, and Resistance

Edited by N.I. Nicholson and Michael Scott Monje, Jr.

Spoon Knife 2: Test Chamber

Edited by Dani Alexis Ryskamp and Sam Harvey

Spoon Knife 3: Incursions

Edited by Nick Walker and Andrew M. Reichart

Spoon Knife 4: A Neurodivergent Guide to Spacetime

Edited by B. Allen and Dora M. Raymaker with N.I.

Nicholson

Spoon Knife 5: Liminal

Edited by Andrew M. Reichart, Dora M. Raymaker, and Nick Walker

Spoon Knife 6:

Rest Stop

Edited by

B. Martin Allen and J.S. Allen

Weird Books for Weird People

Copyright

Spoon Knife 6: Rest Stop, Copyright 2022 Autonomous Press, LLC (Fort Worth, TX, 76114).

Neuroqueer Books is an imprint of Autonomous Press that publishes fiction, poetry, memoir, and other literary work, with a focus on themes of queerness and neurodivergence.

Autonomous Press is an independent publisher focusing on works about neurodivergence, queerness, and the various ways they can intersect with each other and with other aspects of identity and lived experience. We are a partnership including writers, poets, artists, musicians, community scholars, and professors. Each partner takes on a share of the work of managing the press and production, and all of our workers are co-owners.

ISBN: 978-1-945955-31-0

Cover art by J.S. Allen.

Book design by Casandra Johns.

Foreword

For as long as I can remember, I have been obsessed with how people make decisions. As an admitted over-thinker, I wonder where are the other over-thinkers? Are they over-thinking in the same way I over-think, and if not, does their style of over-thinking provide a better analysis of the facts than my style of overthinking? What makes me the kind of person with forty-three open browser tabs comparing charger cables priced $20 or less so that I can find the perfect charger cable before someone in the household needs a new charger cable? I want to know the decision tree that led Naxos to secede from the Delian League. I also want to know how you picked those toppings on your pizza.

But what really fascinates me is how people make decisions in circumstances where there are no good options, when the choice is between peril and compromise, heartbreak or danger. How do people behave when picking the least worst option? That fascination was the impetus for Spoon Knife 6: Rest Stop.

Why Rest Stop? A product of mid twentieth century car culture and the U.S. interstate highway system, rest stops symbolically embodied the myth of the American Dream. In reality, a rest stop can be clean and welcoming. Or it might be filthy and frightening. Because you never know until you enter, the rest stop is a respite of last resort.

Ahead lie twenty-five pieces offering a respite of last resort. Stories and poems for when the GPS is broken and the roadmap flies out the window. Hope you enjoy the ride.

B. Martin Allen

March 2022

Rest Stop Miniature

Bill Bolin

We pulled into the rest stop parking lot. A Scarlatti arpeggio was interrupted by buzzing semi-silence as the Volvo’s engine cut off. I had chosen the darkest parking space near the exit, away from the cars and semis bunched around the cement-enclosed public bathrooms and vending machines locked behind rusting metals cages, away from the glare of the large overhead floodlights on their leaning poles, away from the insects madly swarming in the stark light.

The we was me and the small woman sleeping in backseat. Sand. Sandra Lynne Copley. As we were no longer in motion she would be presently waking. But for now, I was able to see her sleep. She was small, very pale with wispy blond hair cut short, short enough to spike slightly in the back where it gave way to the lyric of her neck. She wore a torn, black t-shirt, drastically faded jeans with tattered knees, pink kneecaps peeked through.

When she woke, she would stretch and ask about food. I had made note of a place next to the rest stop. Pit Barbecue and Catfish Barn. And it was an actual barn, painted a violent red with a blinking neon sign instructing all to Come On In. Sand would be enthralled.

But before food or any portion of what one could call conversation, she would drink deep from the large flask that was always handy. Cognac or brandy from the smell. I couldn’t know for certain as this was one of the many things that she would not share with me. Like the pills in the crumpled paper bag she stashed under the passenger’s seat, like the contents of her large leather-bound notebooks, like almost all personal information.

At least she shared the strong mints that she kept in a tiny tin shoved deep in the pocket of her faded jeans. Those mints would come in handy as Sand was sure to have an order of onion rings with her truck stop barbecue. She loved roadside chow, the more rural and greasier the better. She liked to chat up the waitresses and fry-cooks. She left generous tips. We usually came away with a large slice of pie or Tupperware tub of banana pudding on the house.

But before food Sand would pull her beaten Nikon camera from the large gym bag that acted as her suitcase, portfolio, and handbag. She would wander about the rest stop photographing empty picnic tables and overflowing trash cans. Somewhere in hilly Tennessee she had shown me some prints of her work. They were a stark black & white combination of Edward Hopper and Diane Arbus. They were sad and funny and masterful. Sand offered no explanations or commentary on her work apart from these three go together or this will look better in a frame. The whole of our conversation on her work lasted no more than twenty minutes as there were cheeseburgers to dispatch.

Early in our trip there had been a tentative, liquor-flavored, close-lipped kiss accompanied by a graceless grope. All that came of that was that Sand would occasionally sit close to me on a park bench or touch my arm during one of her quiet conversations. As rare as those moments were, they felt intimate, tender even.

Before she woke, I tidied the passenger’s area which was messy with soda cans and empty plastic water bottles. The cassettes of Baroque harpsichord music would be returned to the plastic travel case with the broken latch. I paused to review the line of sticky notes that Sand had placed along the dashboard. Just ideas that come to me was all that was offered by way of explanation. Once when I thoughtlessly rolled down a window, one of these notes was swept out. Well, there goes another thought, she said with a slight, sad smile. This did prompt a brief speculation on what might happen should some traveler encounter the note. They might take it for a message from the universe, I suggested. I guess in a way it would be, she replied. We shared a laugh.

There were few laughs, but many smiles. And no arguments at all. Sand didn’t seem to have many travel preferences. She chose the music: Bach or her beloved Scarlatti. The cassette would go in and music would fill the Volvo with color from another time. For a while Sand’s fingers would perform a ballet on her exposed knee. A shy smile would play about her eyes. But before long, she would fetch a pill or three from her paper bag, take a pull from her shiny flask and climb into the back seat.

Soon Sand would wake. She was sure to notice the bats swooping in to dine on moths circling the floodlights. To her this would be greeted like a flight of doves at dawn. And the silly sadness would stretch on and on into the parking lot of another day.

Ambassador

2160, or so. Time is a tricky bugger.

There were so many names for it. The Everlasting One. The Inconstant Constant. The Lazy Observer. One of the many challenges in communicating with this alien was that it took decades for it to tell us its name. I will be using Manifestation which is short for Local Manifestation of an Eternally Fluctuating Phenomenon. It called humans Insult.

Its existence had been theorized by an eccentric mathematician named Maybeth Hinkle whose stated field of inquiry was something called Abstract Nonsense. It was a complicated, looping proof to a supposedly unsolvable numbers puzzle. The data/theory had languished in an obscure academic information cloud for decades until it was uncovered by a brilliant theoretical physicist, Clayton Renborne, who somehow managed to convince wealthy backers to fund the construction of a detection device. The detection device was repurposed to serve as a communicator/translator/interface by the Manifestation.

The Manifestation was a constantly self-organizing latticework of highly charged particles that both existed and didn’t exist all at once. Forever. It spanned the universe. It is understandable that it had great difficulty speaking with humans as we had almost nothing in common.

The Manifestation initially perceived corporeal life and humans in particular to be some form of Thought Weapon. Our very existence was an abomination, a sin against their concept of nature, which is how we came to be referred to as Insult. It should be noted that this appellation was not reserved for humans alone, but for all cellular life, sentient and otherwise. The Manifestation was not the first alien life that humans had encountered, but it was, by far, the most unlike us in every regard. We shared knowledge of the Manifestation with the many wily species that exploited us, but those chittering hive beings and clever goo-things seemed to have little interest in what they considered to be an impractical, speculative, religious delusion. If they couldn’t make something out of it, explode it, fuck it, or eat it, they gave it no thought.

But we wanted to talk to it. Early on, when it was learning our languages, it attempted to speak to us using music. Sound attenuators attached to the complex of translators would spew snippets of Mozart or a nocturne by Chopin. Or we would hear things that sounded like human music, but no known composer could be identified. As it turned out, the Manifestation was attempting something akin to courtesy. When it mastered the spoken word, the cussing began. Our conversations would usually begin the same each time we engaged: There would be hours, days even, of foul and pungent name-calling. As the Manifestation learned more about us, these tirades became lengthier, more specific and rather ornate.

When the Manifestation learned laughter, we were treated to a month of very disturbing cackles and sneering snickers. As it turns out, this was its commentary on our mathematics. When we told it about sexual reproduction there was a prolonged hissing followed by a strange playback of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony with all the tympani and brass elements replaced by robust farts. We misinterpreted this as humor.

It was nearly one hundred years after our initial contact with the Manifestation that a cruel form of humor was to be perceived. Since a large portion of communication with it involved mathematics so complex as to completely redefine the concept for humanity, it took our most brilliant minds years to conclude that some of what the Manifestation had taught us was its version of a rather convoluted knock-knock joke.

One of the few human byproducts that seemed to interest the Manifestation was music. It was appalled to find that musical compositions were conceived by individuals. It found this outrageous and profoundly offensive. When it was explained that it would not be possible to communicate in any direct fashion with Brahms or Branca, the Manifestation invested years in expressing disgust. Corporeal decay and cellular demise was a conceptual abomination to it.

All of which lead to my personal involvement with the Manifestation. I’m C. Abbott Fenster and I make music. I compose; I invent instruments specifically for use in playing my compositions and I meticulously document my work. My work was not popular nor widely appreciated outside academic circles. I was not in demand and my works were rarely performed. I was, however, of some slight interest to the Manifestation. It had mentioned my name in one if its communications. It also played a piece of music that sounded very much like something I might construct. This was of interest to the scientists in charge of communicating with it.

It should be noted that the Manifestation had mentioned, referenced, and even requested the presence of millions of individuals over the years since it grasped the concept of individuals. Our scientists initially submitted image files and vid feeds. This proved to be confusing to the Manifestation as it seemed to confuse live feeds with archived records. It took long years for it to accept that although the works of dead creators could be appreciated in recordings and performances, the composers, and creators themselves were frequently unavailable due to death.

The scientists proposed that the Manifestation become familiar with living creative types. The first person chosen from the very long list (that still included a number of people no longer among the living) was the well-known one-woman choir Zilla Jane Strathmore-Jones. Zilla was to be humanity’s first ambassador to the Local Manifestation. An encounter environment was constructed to the Manifestation’s specifications in the orbit of Neptune. The Embassy, as it came to be known, was roughly ovoid with a waiting room not unlike a business conference room, but equipped with a foam cot, a water closet, a vending machine, and huge Marshall amplifiers that would be used by the Manifestation for speaking to the chosen subject prior to direct interaction. Direct interaction would occur in a transparent enclosed vacuum chamber roughly the size of Manhattan. Everything that happened in the waiting room would be recorded, while what happened in the encounter chamber proper was between the ambassador and the Manifestation.

The recordings from that first meeting have been studied in great detail. The Manifestation spent the better part of a week verbally abusing poor Zilla in a variety of voices, languages and volumes. There were loud bursts of barely coherent music. The Marshall stacks seems to spit and hum. She managed to get a few polite words in during brief pauses. Zilla attempted to inquire about the Manifestation’s musical and artistic preferences. It seemed to take days to respond. Zilla Jane Strathmore-Jones’ yelling is a long dusty ocean of pain, it bellowed. It played Zilla’s music back to her at stadium intensity. The Manifestation also played music that was very similar to Zilla’s own compositions. She later reported that this music was identical to something that she was composing but had not at that time performed. The Manifestation was then silent for several hours. Eventually, in the eerie, soft voice of a child, the Manifestation instructed Zilla to put on her environment suit and proceed to the encounter chamber.

Zilla interacted directly with the Local Manifestation for 4 hours. When she returned to the waiting room, she was visibly shaken. She was bleeding slightly from mouth and eyes. The Manifestion played Bach sonatas to her and read Adrienne Rich to her in that same child’s voice while Zilla drank coffee from the vending machine. She cleaned herself as best she could and waited for her long ride home.

In the debriefings, Zilla, who had been a very outspoken and demonstrative performer prior to meeting with the Manifestation, said very little. She said that it went into her, and she suspected that it still might be there. She said that the experience was like a year of pain and pleasure and just too much. She retired from public life and secluded herself on her property on the coast of Oklahoma.

After Zilla there were seventeen more such interactions with artists, writers, physicists, and one profoundly confused young chef. All of their encounters were similar: days of vile abuse and loud music, a child’s soft voice and then intense pleasure/pain. All reported a timeless quality to the experience. All of them bled. There seemed to be no permanent physical injury. As to the impact on their mental health, the scientists could only speculate. All subjects, Ambassadors as they were to be called, withdrew from social life. Those that had families were cared for by them, those with no close relations were provided with professional caretakers and nurses. Each of them declined psychiatric treatment and no such treatment was imposed upon them as it was determined that they were not a risk to themselves or society. They all continued working, but in complete seclusion.

As preparation for my own interaction, I was allowed to review all the waiting room recordings as well as the debriefing interviews with the Ambassadors that had proceeded me. I found little there to reassure me. In the flood of loud abuse and cacophony that made up the recordings, there was little repetition and no pattern that either I or the scientists could detect. With the exception of the chef, each ambassador had played to them some version or interpretation of their own work. The deeply disturbing child voice always preceded the instruction to enter the encounter chamber. The voice always said you disgust me again and again, like some childish chant. Then it said, I will eat you. Then the doors to the chamber would open.

I found this disconcerting.

On the trip to the Embassy, the scientists provided me with drugs: depressants, painkillers, and muscle relaxers. I had never been one for any chemicals more powerful than a strong cup of coffee, so this was new to me. I was given a cleansing enema, which was also new to me. When I entered the waiting room, I was wobbly, drowsy and my ass was sore. And despite the drugs, I was frightened.

The loud music and confrontational abuse began as soon as the scientists departed. Some snippets of music were recognizable: Bach, Chopin, Patti Smith, Branca and long passages of my own microtonal percussive work. Were the verbal abuse to be edited out and the volume reset, the resulting playlist would have been interesting. I attempted conversation in the infrequent lulls. The abuse simply continued, sometimes in my own highly amplified voice. This went on for days while I drank coffee and ate vending machine energy bars. I suppose that the drugs that scientists used were time-released as I was woozy throughout my time at the Embassy.

And then came a silence that seemed to scream. I prayed the only prayer of my long life. Then a little girl’s lisping voice said, You are wretched, you are an insult to existence, you disgust me. There followed a storming pause and then, I will eat you. I put on the bulky encounter suit and the door to the encounter chamber opened.

As it turns out, the door led to a very long, narrow hall. It went on for countless kilometers. Near the end of the corridor I saw dim, flickering lights. Stars. The huge encounter chamber was transparent. I floated weightless. After some time, the space about me began to glow. Light danced about me. A quiet voice said, Now. The voice was everywhere: within me, all around me.

Then all of my feelings, all of my nerves were set ablaze with both searing pain and absolute pleasure all at once. All memory at once. All love, all bitterness, all at once. Convulsive beauty. Flowering heat and stark cold. Everywhere the Manifestation sang, Now. I was lost in screaming non-time. Everything went white.

❖

I returned to myself as the door to the waiting room slid open. The first movement of Branca’s 6th Symphony began. The volume was brutal. Somehow, I found myself on the floor. I tasted blood.