This was my Nanowrimon submission for 2022 *It’s…really wordy. And honestly, pretty boring in comparison to most concepts I’ve had. To be fair, it’s the raw output of a goal of 1500 words per day for a month. Ironically, I think it may be the only time I’ve ‘WON’ nano! *
Chapter Negative Two: Highschool
Remi loved his window seat. He had worked hard for it. In his middle school, there had been few windows, but he had sometimes been driven past the highschool on the way to his special appointments and had marveled at the windows in the main building. They were huge and sparkling, wrapping around much of the structure. In the passenger seat, Remi would also spend a few moments imagining what it would look like to see out of them, to sit next to a window all day.
But when Remi finally started highschool, there were many other things on his mind. For one, he wondered who his friends would be. He knew a lot of the kids on band, but had never practiced enough and had fallen behind in reading music by instead learning to mimic the melodies required of him by year. As a result, he had not been called back after Marching Band tryouts. He was relieved, since it sounded like a lot of work, but he also knew that it might be hard to keep hanging out with Naomi, Opal, Harrison and the other kids that he had gotten along with in middle school band.
He supposed he would keep hanging out with Washington, Carter, JJ and Peter, heading into DC to go skateboarding with the other kids in the skateboarding scene. There were a lot of them, all going to different schools, mostly boys. Sometimes they smokes weed, sometimes they went to the skate park, sometimes they just went to the local park to practice and hang out. They also spent time in carter’s basement, playing drums and guitar and trying to create tracks with a band. There were elements that Remi enjoyed about all of these activities, but at the same time they were not the ones he would necessarily had picked. He didn’t know what he would pick. All he knew was that, this is what Washington and Carter were doing, they were supposedly his friends because he did seem to hang out with them a few days a week, and if he were to continue hanging out with them, these were the activities that they would be doing - skating through Clarendon and past the Apple store, doing olley’s in the asphalt, buying Arizona’s to drink on park benches and meeting up with the other kids. Maybe they would hear about a party they would go to, where there would be alcohol.
But these things weren’t like the windows. These things; marching band, the skateboarding crews, and the first classes that Remi had on his first day of Freshman year. Windowless rooms in which he had been assigned classes. They aren’t the rooms he would have picked as they didn’t have any windows or natural light, but they were still nice, and he didn’t have a choice anyway. And he supposed that it’s probably expensive or even impossible to put windows in every room in a building. It must be, if even this expensive new highschool building with many windows still had a lot of windowless classrooms, the ones on the first floor. Remi also thought that a lot of the freshman classrooms were in windowless rooms, and that later on he would get windowy rooms instead.
He asked Pierre this during PE. He recognized Pierre from middle school, where Jeremy had been an eighth grader when Remi had been a sixth grader. Pierre felt like an elder, always holding intimate knowledge the environments that Remi had just entered, a wizened explorer of the middle school and highschool environments. It was still warm out and during PE they ran laps. Remi liked it because there were no assigned seats or even any seats at all. He could speed up or slow down, and talk to anyone he wanted. He could look at the clouds he wanted, he could watch the people walking on the street outside. Pierre was running with three other juniors. In PE, there were freshman, sophomoores, juniors and even a couple seniors all togerher, unlike the other classes. Remi also liked this about PE, because it meant it was one of the few times he could ask questions to the upperclassmen that his peers didn’t always know.
And it’s not like I have any friends to answer them anyway, thought Remi, experimenting with angst. He wasn’t really too worried yet, just constantly filled with nerves at the possibilities. To Remi, friends seemed more like something that just happened to you. But who knows, maybe it was possible to choose them. What a crazy idea. A few thousand kids. Hypothetically, he could be friends with any of them, but where to start? What if he chose wrong? And how does one make friends anyways? Mostly, he hoped that his friends were cool, that they would show the other kids in this huge school that he was someone worth respecting. Remi knew that this was wrong - you’re not supposed to care what other people think - but he also knew that everyone did care what other people think. Hell, even substitute teachers cared what students think, even though they never had to see the kids ever again.
Remi would see a middle-aged substitute teacher come in, and try to play it cool when the kids would make fun of his goatee, drawing ones on themselves. They would play it cool, but eventually would become upset. Most of them. Some substitutes in middle school truly didn’t seem to care, and others did. So not caring what other people think must be a skill.
That was why the upperclassmen Remi knew from middle school didn’t always respond to him when he said hi in the hallways. Even Pierre hadn’t, although Pierre didn’t seem to mind now that they were on the field. Remi’s theory was that Pierre was nice because he as not from the US, he was from Canada, and so he remembered what it was like for other kids not to talk to you.
“You’re lucky, the first class in the new building,” said Pierre as they jogged, only the faintest french accent left. Remi remembered when it had been much more pronounced.
“And it’s so nice!” said one of the girls Pierre was running with. Remi thought her name was Claire.
“What was the old building like?” asked Remi.
“Oh, it was trashy,” said the girl. “From the sixties. The walls were brick and they were always dirty and there was water damage on the cieiling.”
“And it smelled like wet towels!” said another girl, Jo.
“Yes. I’m grateful that we have this new building,” said Pierre, distractedly looking over at Jo. “And new smells.”
Remi was excited for his fourth period class. It was chemistry and it was on the fourth floor, with all the other science classes, unlike all the other classes he’d had so far; homeroom, PE, and English, which had all been on the windowless first floor. Or it wasn’t windowless, because from the outside he could see that there were some classrooms that did have windows, but for some reason none of his classes did.
So his heart beat fast as he made it to the classroom early. It felt strange to be early, and Remi wondered why. He realized it must be because he was usually one of the last ones into class, sometimes late and the very last one, so being in an empty classroom that would soon fill up felt strange. He was so early that even the teacher wasn’t here yet! He had left lunch early. At lunch Pierre and his friends had let him sit next to him, which was fun. They had talked about their freshman year with him, and Remi had forgotten his worries about not making friends. He knew, from some sort of secret highschool code, that he could not be friends with these sophomoores and sit with them every day, but it was helpful to hear about their freshman years.
They had told them that the chemistry teacher for this class, Mr. Varner, was very oldschool.
“He’s not a grouch or anythin,” said Pierre, “But he is um, how do you say it? ‘Ardass?”
“Yeah. He’s just very by the books. He’s a disciplinarian, does things his way. Follow the rules and you’ll be fine.”
Remi’s heart sank slightly then. Following rules was not his strongest suite.
But now, walking into this gleaming new classroom with bunson burners lined up against the window and a shiny new Periodic Table of Elements poster hung on the wall near the freshly cleaned chalkboard, Remi felt excited. The far line of desks were all next to the window. And not only that, but it was on the fourth floor!
Remi had spent a glorious fifteen minutes watching the traffic coming and going under the huge oak trees in the neighborhoods, cars and trucks and vans coming in and out of sight as they drove around downtown Ballston. He caught sight of a couple swallows. He saw adults running on the track outside where he had just been, and wondered when the students used it for PE and how they switched off with the neighborhood. Did you have to pay to use the track as an adult? Was it weird to run outside an elementary school?
The bell rang, and soon enough, other freshman started to flood in. Remi recognized Cola, a quiet kid who had joined their middle school halfway through eighth grade. Although he was quiet, he was nice and he was big for his age, so nobody made fun of him. His t-shirt wasn’t as loose as the ones he wore in middle school, and Remi noticed with some small dose of envy that had become somewhat muscular over the summer.
“Hey Cola!” Remi said, waving. He wasn’t sure if Cola was cool and it was smart to say hi to him, but since no other kids had arrived yet, Remi didn’t think too much of it.
“Hi Remi,” said Cola without a smile. But Remi knew that he wasn’t being unfriendly. That’s just how Cola was.
“How was your summer?” asked Remi.
“It was good,” Cola said, as he sat down next to Remi.
“Wait, don’t you want a window seat?” Remi asked. Cola looked around, confused for a moment, then said, “Yeah, that’s actually a good idea.” He sat down in front of Remi.
“So did you hit the gym? Like, every day?”
That got a smile. Some other kids were beginning to enter the classroom, but Cola had sat down, and was getting his binder out, placing his waterbottle carefully on the floor beside him. Remi looked briefly down at how his hoodie was spilling off the seat behind him and deftly tucked the hanging sleeve under his butt so that it didn’t touch the ground.
Among the kids flooding in, Carter was one of them, but they had stopped talking at the end of the summer, and Remi wasn’t sure that Carter saw him. He let it go. He had the feeling that maybe friends shouldn’t just happen to each other. Maybe if he was to continue to hang out with Carter and Washington, he should probably make that decision. But what if they also made a decision, and it was to not hang out with him? He filed this thought away as something to think about later, when he wasn’t in a room of slowly escalating freshman chatter levels.
“Five times a week,” said Cola.
“Is it fun?” asked Remi skeptically.
Cola shrugged. “It’s kind of like meditation,” he said. “And it gets kind of addictive after a while.”
Remi could tell that there was more that Cola wanted to say, so he held his tongue.
“It’s way easier than running though,” said Cola.
“Running?”
“Yeah. Running. In some ways anyways. I’ve been doing cross country, and psychologically, I think it’s harder than running. Or just endurance sports in general. Since. You can’t take breaks. They require more sustained focus.”
“Where do you run?” asked Remi, interested for a moment.
“Cross country team,” said Cola. “I’m still building my endurance.”
“Sounds kind of boring,” said Remi.
Cola laughed. “It can be. But not when you’re pushing yourself. Then it’s just painful.”
Remi scoffed. Okay he thought, something I don’t want to do.
On Monday the next week, Remi got picked up early. In middle school, his grades hadn’t always been great. Sometimes he was taken out of classes in order to take tests, and after school his mom would drive him to a doctor sometimes on Tuesdays. She would give him tests, too. Ultimately, his parents had sat him down one day and told him that he had been diagnosed with ADHD, something he didnt know anything about. But at the same time, he knew exactly what they were talking about.
Remi lost things a lot. It seemed unavoidable, like getting caught in the rain. Then again, other people sometimes checked the rain, and sometimes packed an umbrella. Some people invested in certainty. Remi was often distracted, and othertimes impulsive. From elementary school on, he didn’t think of himself necessrily as a troublemaker, but rather as someone who was often in trouble. He couldn’t deny that it was himself that got into the trouble - it certainly wasn’t anyone else, but he didn’t know why this was. He never went looking for it. It just happened to him. Like the lost things. He saw a tree and wanted to climb it, and next thing he knew, he was talking to the principle. Another kid said something that made him angry and next thing he knew, yup, talking to the principle again.
The principle in his elementary school had been a stretched looking woman with short straight hair and a small button of skin on the flat, expansive space between her upper lip and her nose. When she talked or yelled at Remi in her office, starting ion Kindergarten, he sometimes looked at the little button of skin. He didn’t like it, but it was better than looking in her eyes. Those were scary.
So when his parents had sat him down and told him about his diagnosis at the end of eight grade, it had been a huge relief. He had an excuse. It didn’t change much, because he felt that he already knew this, and he didn’t mind it, but it was still nice to have a name for it. He had told Washington and Carter and the other kids enthusiastically at the lunch table towards the end of the year, and they had been thrilled. “Hi I’m Remi - Squirrel!” they would joke, referencing a character in their favourite shows who was often distracted. Remi liked it. It was an acknowledgement that he was different, but it didn’t feel bad.
The man in the hallway still gave Remi detention a lot for running everywhere. Looking back, Remi wasn’t sure if he had ever tried to walk. It hadn’t really occured to him. he ran between classes, ran to the bathroom, and ran to lunch. He couldn’t remember ever running into or hurting anyone, but the man always gave him detention anyways. He would miss lunch, and hang out with other kids who had gotten detention for other reasons, and they would do dumb stuff like through their shoes through the paneled ceilings, which sometimes caused more detention.
“Do you think you’ll miss anything important for missing school today?” asked Remi’s mom as she pulled out of the kiss’n’drop outside of the school.
“Maybe. If I do, I’ll ask Cola what the homework is and stuff,” Remi said.
“Who’s that?”
“He’s my friend from chemistry,” Remi said.
“Thats a good strategy. Asking a friend for homework,” said Remi’s mom, pulling to a stop at the interesection at the end of the block. They were driving towards the buildings that they saw outside of Remi’s window seat on the fourth floor in Chemistry. The car idled, and Remi’s mom smiled her made-up smile at him where she pulled the corners of her mouth up and scrunched her eyes. It was not an unkind smile. Remi knew that it meant “I care and I am here to help,” but it was a parenting smile because it wasnt really about how his mom felt in the way a smile normally is.
“You said I’m getting medication today?” asked Remi.
“Yes! I think so. Psychiatrists don’t always give medication. They ask questions first to make sure it would help. So we’ll find out!”
Remi laughed. “If I do then it will be kind of ironic. Being taken out of chemistry to have chemistry done on me.”
Remi’s mom smiled, looking a little nervous, but she often looked a little nervous when she drove.
“Maybe you can learn about it in Chemistry. What are you learning now?”
“That might be a ways,” said Remi. “I think right now we’re just learning what matter is. Electrons and neutrons and stuff like that.”
Remi went to a small office in a large brick building and talked to a schmoozy-kind of woman about what it was like doing homework and classword and whether it was hard to concentrate, or if he ever felt sleepy or unmotivated. Remi tried to answer as objectively as possible. He was fascinated by the idea of being given some sort of drug, but he also liked to answer questions that were specifically addressed to him as honestly as possible. It felt satisfying to put things into words that had formerly been only feelings and ideas about what it was like to be him. And it felt nice to have someone so interested in those details.
The woman also looked through a binder of papers that his mother had brought. The whole thing took about twenty minutes. The woman had spent the last ten minutes or so explaining the medication he would be given, which was called Claritin, when he would take it, that he was supposed to take it every weekday, and some other details that he received in a folder with some papers like the many folders he had for school.
On the way back, they swung by the CVS and picked up one of those orange bottles with the white child-proof lids and he had taken one right away since it was early in the morning. The doctor had warned about taking one too late.
Later, Remi’s mother would illustrate why this is a problem by mixing her medication up with Remi’s accidentally. After taking it at 7pm, the effect being that she would clean vacuum and clean until the sun came up.
But it was only 11am. Remi was able to stay at home for a moment after the appointment since their house was on the way. By the time they got home, it had started to kick in.
He could feel it in his stomach, and in his lungs. It was like a small dose of adrenaline. He felt the taste of some new chemical coursing through his body. All of his protons, neutrons and electrons and whatever other subatomic particles he had inside of him seemed to line up into an order of his choosing, rather than bounce around chaotically as was usually their preference. Part of the feeling was, he would discover many years later in sicily, much like the heart-beating clarity and vitality of cocaine. But there was another part, a calmer part, that Remi felt that monring and would never exactly feel ever again.
As Remi opened the glass kitchen door, he stopped and surveyed the space. It was illuminated with light in a way he had never seen before. Or, he had probably seen this exact view of the kitchen before, but never quite like this. He felt as if he knew where everything was in the kitchen. More than that - he felt as if he even knew where some things were but should not be. The forks and knives were situated obviously in the wrong place - they were blocked by the refrigerator. That drawer should be used to store more obscure items to increase the efficiency of the space. And it almost seemed absurd that the kitchen should be on this side of the house at all. This was were all the natural light came in, and so this was of course where everyone would sit to enjoy themselves, whether they were doing homework or reading. Meanwhile, the living room was cast in shadow, rarely used. The result was that the kitchen had to content not only with the dishes and crumbs of hastily eaten meals, but also piles of schoolbooks put aside on the floor when the counter was cleared, and various odds and ends that Remi’s dad would tinker with before graduating the tinkering - often very far along in the process - to the basement or the garage, but even then would often forgetten a hammer, some wiring, or a box of nails.
The semester continued and Remi fell behind on his assignments. In middle school, he had been diagnosed with ADHD. Since then, he had been prescribed medication that was supposed to help him focus, and not lose things so much.
The first time had taken it in eigth grade, it was kind of like putting on glasses and being able to see for the first time. Suddenly, everything had a neat place where it belonged in his brain. His homework assignment from each class had it’s own folder, and he could remember just by thinking about it what the assignment was. The world around him lit up with the places objects should go, and he knew exactly where to find things when he needed them, without asking his mom. He knew where to put them when he was done with them.
He had taken the medication one morning in eighth grade, and it had started to kick in by the time he was back from the doctor’s office. He had been picked up from school early.
“Are you coming to practice today?” Cola asked in Chemistry.
“I don’t think so. I’ve been behind on schoolwork and just…tired,” said Remi.
Cola was quiet for a while. They had time to finish some worksheets on the periodic table they had gotten at the end of last class, and the class was caught in the grips of a peaceful murmur. Kids catching up, quietly goofing off, finishing homework for other classes.
Mr. Golden was in the corner at his desk, doing his best not to be involved in anything. It was often an endearing quality in a teacher.
“You know sometimes it makes things easier,” said Cola.
“What does?”
“Running. Working out. Trying actually. Not that you’re not trying,” said Cola, looking at Remi. For a moment, Remi wanted to lash out. Who did Cola think he was? Remi’s dad? but underneath that, he was curious. He was impressed.
“What do you mean?” asked Remi.
“Look. Last summer, I was really scared. Of high school. I only had a couple good friends in middle school, and they don’t go here. Every morning I woke up with this weight in my stomach. I dreaded that first day. And that dread just kind of followed me around, all day. It just seemed to get heavier and heavier. I played videogames, I watched movies, I hung out with my cousings, but it was always there at the end. I felt tired a lot. I didn’t have the energy to do anything. I think that this was normal for me. This is what summer vacation was like a lot. And I remembered all of the summers I’d looked forward and how, every time at around the end of June or maybe the beginning of July, I started to feel sort of down, like. The novelty of just doing nothing started to wear out. And this idea drove me crazy. It’s super weird, right?” Cola was getting visibly excited to the point where he lowered his voice to a whisper, as if he was afraid if he started at normal speaking voice, he would escalate into a yell. Remi had never seen Cola this way. Cola, chill, still-waters-run-deep cola.
“What’s weird?” asked Remi carefully.
“It’s weird that…we spend all year looking forward to freedom. And then, when we get it, it’s wonderful, but only for about three weeks. Two and a half actually. This is where it gets interesting. I keep a journal. Religously. Our mom made us do it when we were little at my house and she doesn’t check up that we did it anymore - no she never read them - but she used to check for the pages. She said” and now Cola did an impression of an authoritative older guatemalan woman “‘reflecting on life is one of the best habits you can form. I am giving you a gift; don’t waste it.” Anyways, I used to hate it, but I guess it stuck. As I said, she doesn’t check on them anymore. But I still do them. Every night. Religiously. I haven’t missed one for three years. I looked through the last five summers. The pattern was the same. I am absolutely elated for the first two weeks, sometimes three weeks. It averages to two and a half. Then bam. Depression hits. It’s as if, it’s caused by the contrast, you know? But once that contrast goes away, the freedom just becomes the norm.”
Mr. Golden was starting to get up from his seat.
“Okay…” said Remi.
“Look all I’m saying is, come to practice, okay? I obviously am no good at explaining this but. Come to practice. I’ll run with you. I really don’t think you should miss it.”
Remi rolled his eyes. “Okay. I’ll come today. But you better tell me the rest of this story. And it better make sense too.”
“I will, I will,” said Cola. He was whispering now. Class had started.
*A few thoughts while writing this and watching katie go through all of her old hw and essays from highschool and stuff
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All of the creative energy that comes out into doodles in incredible. You could write a whole essay on what doodles mean, and that doodles are actually an art form in themselves, practiced by the prisoners of highschool in order to escape helplessness, etc.
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also would be fun if, in that same writing class, the writing teacher talks about how literature is the heart of human because no machine, no matter how sophisticated, could ever write a story
Chapter Negative One: We Made It
“Okay last checks,” said Zoe, reading off of her laminated list. “Map?”
“Um…check”, said Ty.
“Iodine tablets?” Zoe asked.
“Check.” said Hugo.
“And twenty rations of food, check, we’ve already counted those,” said Zoe.
It had been four days of driving. Zoe and Ty had flown out together from New York, Remi from Memphis. Kola had driven all the way from DC, picking up Hugo on the way over. They’d said that as soon as they crossed the border into Colorado, the storm that followed them through Kansas had stopped and been replaced by the biggest rainbow they’d ever seen.
Kola and Hugo picked them all up from the airport and they’d been so excited, all of them had run up the stairs from the garage to the visitor’s center as fast as they could.
“Oh that’s,” Remi had said, only managing to get out two words before taking several very deep breaths. “That’s altitute.”
“twelve,” began Hugo, taking a breath between each word, “Thousand. Feet”.
“Fourteen on some of these passes!” said Zoe enthusiastically. She was from Colorado.
“Oh boy,” said Hugo, looking over at Remi a bit anxiously. Remi summoned all the breath he could. “We’ll be fine.”
The atmosphere of the shuttle up to the mountains was excitement.
“Oh my god,” Remi said pointing. “We’re going up that?”
“Look at that! What is that?” said Ty, pointing at something outside the window.
“Looked kind of like a beaver,” Kola said, getting up as close to the window as possible.
“It’s a Marmot,” Zoe whispered conspiratorally to Remi.
“What’s that?”
“They’re sort of like big fat mountain rats,” said Zoe, munching on some trail mix.
“You should probably save some of that,” said Remi.
“Eh, we have plenty,” said Zoe.
“I dunno, you almost finished the bag,” said Remi.
“On the left, you can see a marmot sunning himself at the warmest hours of the day,” said the shuttle driver. “Marmots large rodents with thick winter coats that make a very high pitched noise to signal danger. If you hear a high pitched cry, that means some marmots are sounding the alarm to their breathren.”
“A moose!” said Hugo, shouldering Kola out of the way.
“No way,” said Kola.
Remi tried to jostle his place to the shuttle window in time, but he was too late.
“Back there!” Hugo said, pointing at a glad of trees, a dazed look on his face. “That creature was enormous,” he said to Kola, who had the same look on his face.
“I can’t believe I saw a moose. I never thought I would see one of those for real.”
“Well I can’t believe I missed my favorite animal because of your fat heads,” said Remi, genuinely a bit dissappointed.
“I’ll forgive that,” said Kola,“because I know how much you like moose…mooses. You know, moose plural.
But Remi couldn’t stay in a bad mood for the long. They arrived at the trail head in a state of mild giddiness. The mountains soared above them, reflected in Maroon lake, garbed in the emeralds and golds of the different trees in fall. They took a group picture, and then there was nothing left to do. After months of planning, buying last minute gear, making changes to the plan as some of their friends flaked last minute, and buying their plane tickets, it was as if it had all come whooshing right into the present moment where there was nothing left to look forward to to start walking. And so they did.
Some of them had new backpacks, never used, the untested material of which squeaked and groaned as they walked. By the second mile, Maroon lake was already behind them, and adjustments had been made to straps. The first marmot call had been heard. No more moose sightings yet, to Remi’s dissappointment.
A couple had said something about an adolescent black bear sighting.
“Just be on the lookout. You have bear cans, right?”
Zoe confidently slapped the one strapped underneath her backpack with the nickel she had carried with her to open it.
When they’d been making the last minute transfers of food and weight between their packs in the parking lot in aspen, Zoe had explained how a flat piece of metal like car keys or a coin could be used to open the bear can, which had interna latches that disengaged when this grooved mechanism was turned.
They had four bearcans, each one stuffed to the brim with food.
By the fourth mile, Remi felt it a bit. But there was nothing left to do but keep going, and so that’s what they did. By the time they got to mile seven, all but Zoe had been hit pretty hard with altitute sickness.
“Feeling kinda lightheaded,” said Remi, but when nobody acknowledged this it dawned on him that he might have said it too quietly for anyone to hear him. Once he was relatively sure of this, he tried again, projecting a bit more.
“Okay, thanks for sharing,” said Ty.
“Do you need to stop?” asked Zoe, stopping and turning around. Hugo stopped too, looking concerned.
“Maybe just for a sec,” Remi said, realizing as he slowed down how exhausted he felt. He breathed in more oxygen, but it just didn’t seem to do the trick in the same way.
“Maybe we should look for camp. We’ve already done six miles. I was hoping more for the first day, but hypothetically we’re on track,” said Zoe.
“Not really,” said Ty, looking annoyed. “We have more than 3 thousand feet of elevation total, and four days of food. “A lot of the miles come one hundred feet of elevation or more, and we’ve barely done any. We have to do mileage today so that we can afford to do the elevation later. I say we keep going.”
“Okay,” said Remi. “That’s fine. I can keep going a bit.”
Zoe and Hugo looked thim him with concern, but slowly turned to keep going.
Remi realized within a couple hundred more feet that he was not good to go.
That first night was tough. Ty had been aggressive and stubborn about wanting to keep going, and Hugo had had to talk him down, at which point he had stomped off, leaving the rest of them to set up camp. When they had finally finished setting up camp, a black bear had showed up. They’d tried to scare it off, but it had been too curious and kept coming back, forcing them to move their camp. Remi worked with every fibre of his being to pull his weight. He set up the bear bag for the remaining food, hoping it would do the trick, and set up his tent. He ate a poptart and then let everyone know he would immediately be going to sleep.
The next day, Ty had apologized a bit. Hugo and Kola had been somewhat altitute-hungover, which affected their appetite. Zoe made them eat something.
Chapter Zero: The Greatest Fears
The friends made it to the fourth pass right on time; the fog was coming in. WIthout time to descend from the mountain, they took refuge in the caves on that last night of their journey. That is where Remi read the lines from Yuko Yasuhiro’s book and wondered what exactly he would return to. The same corporate grind?
“If you wish to ensure the accomplishment of something quite ambitious, it may benefit you to not get hung up on details.” These words shone quietly and unmoving under the yellowish glow of Remi’s headlamp, towards the top of page twelve. His weight resting on his elbows, read this sentence twice more before closing the paperback. The book had a simple beige cover displaying the words, “What I Know Mostly From Things I Learned While Running, by Yuko Yasuhiro.” Remi sighed, then stowed the book into the top of his pack and pulled his legs out of his comfortable sleeping. Already shivering, he hastily stuffed them into his pants, which were already lined with long underwear. Sweater, coat and hat followed.
Remi unzipped his tent to immediately be buffeted by strong gusts of mountain wind. He pulled his glasses out of his pocket, pushed them onto his face, and was greeted by a million stars above the White Mountains of New Hampshire.
Remi, warm again in his layers, turned his face to the sky and closed his eyes behind the lenses of his glasses.
“It’s beautiful”, said a voice. Remi turned to see a silhouette seated on the rock. It’s was Hugo’s voice.
“Thanks for coming out here with me,” said Remi. They were at an altitude of six thousand feet. At least fifteen hundred feet above the treeline. Remi shuffled over to sit next to his friend.
“Ah, thanks for carrying through. To be honest, I wasn’t sure you’d actually pull through with all the planning for this trip.”
Remi looked over at Hugo sharply, then back at the stars.
“Yeah. I normally don’t, do I - carry through, I mean,” said Remi.
Hugo was quiet for a long moment. “I wouldn’t say that,” he said quietly, almost inaudible over the flapping of their jackets in the wind. “In any case, when you do, it’s really something,” he said, gesturing at stars, the peaks of the spruces below them.
Remi thought about how many times he was late for his job. And how many jobs he had been fired from. All of the side projects he had dropped. Music, writing, painting. Not much came from it. He looked up to the stars.
If only I could be like them, Remi thought. Always on time, always in the right place.
For a fleeting bitter moment, he thought about what he had to return to when this backpacking trip. Living with his parents, grinding away as an intern programmer at a shipping company, hoping to finish his degree a couple of years too late.
“I would,” said Remi ruefully. “It’s true - I have trouble finishing things.”
Remi zipped up the collar of his coat tighter, eyes traversing over the stars and where they met the tops of the trees below, like ragged edges of some great tapestry stretched above everything.
Hugo chuckled quietly. “You know, in some ways, you’re special like that. I think it’s just because you have it so easy starting things.”
They sat there a bit longer until Hugo said goodnight and returned to his tent underneath one of the boulders like all the others, enveloped in moss.
Remi stayed until his toes began to get numb. Each star twinkled at him like a different destiny, each one he was incapable of finishing.
The alarm rang like nails in the back of Remi’s skull. He groaned, nearly hitting snooze, but then he heard someone else moving in a tent a few yards away and something in him ignited. He didn’t want to be the last one up. Something in him couldn’t afford to be the last one up for the third day in a row. He wrestled himself into the warmest combination of layers he had and unzipped the tent. He tripped on a root on his third or fourth step and was rewarded with a faceful of cold pine-needles. Groaning faintly, he fumbled for the button to switch his headlamp on, the faint whisperings of early light creeping through the branches of the pines not enough to show him where he was going.
Remi took a piss and then as the waters started boiling got to work getting his contacts in. He washed his hands first for fear of getting grit in his eyeballs. He looked at the other three tents suspiciously. A sleep noise from one, a slight shift of a warm body in a sleeping bag in another. Remi winced, and reached into his “kitchen bag” to prepare the coffee grounds.
“Coffee’s ready!” Remi shouted once the water boiled. It was a bit of a stretch but should be good enough. Over the next few moments, the camp began to come alive with activity.
The camp began to wake up, it’s members moving slowly like molasses. Cola stealthily slipped away to empty their bladders. Hugo and Ty could be heard moving around inside their tent, then emerging with the shared breakfast supplies.
“Can’t believe you’re the first one up,” Hugo said, his eyes bloodshot with altitude sickness. It manifested in different ways to the unacclimated. In Remi at had been bouts of lightheadedness the days before, when Hugo and Cola had basically had to carry him to camp towards the end of the day. In Ty, it had been aggression.
“Me neither,” said Remi weakly.
“How’d you all sleep?” asked Ty.
Remi smiled. He’d slept better than he could remember sleeping during the entire semester prior. “Marvelously. And you?”
“Not bad,” said Ty.
“Like shit,” groaned Hugo, rubbing his eyes. Remi laughed, not unkindly. “It’s the altitude sickness, isn’t it?”
“Either that or I downed a dozen shots of whisky I don’t remember,” said Hugo, still looking miserable.
“Yeah let’s get some food in you,” said Remi. Ty got out the map.
“Good morning comrades!” boomed Zoe, emerging from the woods. “What sort of strange and unusual punishments will we be engaging in today?”
“Well,” said Ty, knowingly, and producing the ziplocked map from his backpack to put on the table, while Cola joined them silently.
The five friends sipped their coffee, working their way through the map on the not-yet-rotten part of a fallen log.
“So we descend into the valley until we cross the river here, right?” said Ty. “Then we begin our ascent up onto this shelf on the side of the mountain.”
“What’s that, five miles?” asked Zoe.
“Four or five.”
“We could get lunch at the river if we’re hungry. Fill up our water.”
They worked out the logistics, packed up, and got moving. As the sun got higher in the sky, high enough above the mountains, they stripped their layers, tying jackets around their waists and stuffing sweaters into backpacks.
The four of them tromped through the tall thickets, near the winding stream. They went almost an hour with only a few interuptions to the silence.
“Was that a fox?” whisper-shout-asked Zoe, pointing to the right in the direction of the burbling water.
“Where?” Hugo asked.
Remi was occupied by the many colored flowers bobbing in the wind, the tall grasses as well.
“Feeling better?” Zoe asked Hugo and Cola.
They both took it as a prompt to slurp some more water from their camel-backs.
“A lot better,” said Cola.
They stopped at a nice pool in the creek to refill their water at about ten, and took a snack break, munching on candy and granola bars contentedly.
“We’re making good time,” said Ty. “Looks like we’ll probably make the pass at about noon, or twelve thirty if we keep it up.”
“Could I see that?” Remi asked, gesturing at the map.
“Um, sure”, said Ty.
“Looks like we have about fifteen hundred feet of elevation to get up,” said Remi, looking at the topo lines, feeling a small burst of pride at being able to provide new information. Remi made sure not to show it.
They argued a bit about where it would be realistic to camp that night, and eventually agreed that they could figure it out a little later in the day.
It was peaceful to pass in and out of meadows and forests and meadows again. They didn’t see any wild horses that morning as they had on the first day of the trip.
In the peace of the trees and the plants, Remi’s mind wandered more deeply than it was ever able to in his parent’s house, or at work, or even on his runs in the woods back in Virginia. He could see it in Zoe’s face too, clear as day. Her eyes moved calmy from tree to tree, shouting in delight when she saw a hawk. It was a gift to see smile that was never meant for anyone else but the bearer.
Remi looked at Kola, his face as impassive as ever behind a pair of glasses. But the way Remi sometimes caught him sniff the air, or bend down ever once and a while to examine potential pawprints showed that he was not wandering in some far away region in his mind but was instead right here with them.
“I think that’s a marmot,” Cola said, looking around to solicit the opinions of the others.
Ty and Hugo could be harder to read. Ty outwardly smiled, but whether it was the benefit of the others or from within was less easy to tell. Hugo looked, true to his last name, grim, appraising what was around them intently, but almost with concern. Remi decided it was probably due to his hangover-like altitude-acclimation symptoms. The only one who hadn’t suffered in some way for the first couple of notes was Zoe, probably because she had grown up around here. Remi’s footsteps were solid, even with the sixty pounds on his back. Where they ran into mud, he focused on stepping his shoes directly into the footsteps of the others in front of him.
The cliffs of the mountains around him reminded Remi of the cliffs in the movie Waking Ned Devine, where an Irish man won six million quid only to die of a heart attack upon finding out. The town worked together to impersonate him and share the money.
“What would y’all do with two billion dollars?” asked Remi.
“Why two billion?” asked Zoe ahead of him.
“‘Cause that’s how much is in the powerball right now.”
“Damn,” said Ty. “That’s a mind boggling amount of money.”
“Yeah that’s like a life-ruining amount,” side Hugo. “How would you even spend that?”
Remi chuckled. “Yeah it would probably be best to just give as much as possible away. All those lottery winner’s have their life ruined…”
“Well for one thing,” said Zoe. “I definitely wouldn’t take the lump sum. That’s what most people do. You take the lump sum, you have to pay like, half to taxes.”
“What the opposite, like, installments?” asked Remi.
“Yeah,” said Zoe. “You get the payment spread out over a few years. That way you don’t need to pay as much to taxes. But I mean, 1 billion, 2 billion, I like the idea of having a system that prevents me from getting it at all once. I figure most people are their own worst enemies in that situation.”
The trail began to get steeper and the five friends passed into a taller forest, less of a glad grown around the stream, but instead something ancient.
Remi spotted something rust colored flicker into view thirty feet away. Perched on the branch thirty feed away, Remi saw it was a red squirrel suspended sideways on the trunk of a tree. He caught it’s eye a moment before the creature disappeared with a flick of its tail.
“You’d have more enemies than just yourself,” said Cola ominously. “But hopefully many allies,” he added, more lightly.
“You might not really know until the news got out,” said Hugo. “The way people treated you…you would hopefully be able to understand where their intentions lied pretty early.”
“But if you couldn’t…” said Remi. “That would drive you insane.”
“So what would you do with it Remi?” asked Zoe.
“Okay hear me out - I’d give you each like five million dollars to build a giant robot and then have them duke it out in the desert.”
“Awesome,” said Ty.
“Jesus,” said Zoe. “That’s incredibly dumb. But I won’t say it doesn’t have appeal.”
“For sure. Very dumb. I probably wouldn’t really do that,” said Remi.
“Wow you sure were quick to go back on your intentions,” said Ty.
“Yeah well, I’m a fickle man. What would you do Zoe?”
“Jackhammer all of the roads up, build bike trails instead,” Zoe said resolutely.
Remi laughed. “Wow, we went from the psyche of an eight-year-old boy to eco-terrorism in seconds flat.”
“I mean I’d find a way to do it in a…legit way,” said Zoe uncertainly.
“You’d make a ton of enemies super fast,” said Hugo.
“Okay well, what would you do?” asked Zoe, audibly rolling her eyes.
“I,” said Hugo prestigiously, “Would start a summer camp. The world could always use another summer camp.”
“Ah yes, the world always needs another opportunity catering to the children of the elite,” she said.
“Oh come on. It’s summer camp. It’s a universal thing, right?”
“Not so sure about that,” said Zoe. “How much do those cost?”
“Some of them have got to be cheaper than the cost of keeping a kid entertained through the summer, right? Maybe I’d give scholarships,” said Hugo.
“You could probably keep a summer camp going, even on scholarships for every kid, for a pretty long time, with 2 billion dollars. If each kid cost a couple of thousand dollars for like a month-long experience, that’s what…”
“A million. A million summer camp experiences,” said Ty.
“That would be pretty dope. I think I’d also do something for kids, but simpler. I’d just pay it all out in school lunches,” said Cola. “It’s bullshit that some kids don’t eat lunch.”
“Like worldwide or just in the US?” Remi asked.
Cola was quiet for a moment. “I think I would start small, just in the US. Then maybe in Columbia too. Not actually sure how far the money would go. I guess I’d run into weird questions like quality lunch for a short period of time? Or adequate quality for additional years of the program?”
“Well I guess there might be some politics to it like, if you did it for just a short period of time, like two years, that might be enough to get other people to start chipping in. I mean it makes a pretty great story - a billionaire donates all of his earnings to school lunches. In a way…I don’t see how you could do any better than that.”
“Perfect,” chuckled Cola. “Then I could just go on living my life as if nothing happened.” Knowing Cola, he meant it.
The line of backpackers approached a stream that wove through the trees in intricate pathways of moss so that the trail disappeared and each of them had to be careful to pick out their path root by root. Remi got stuck and had to backtrack, while Cola picked the perfect route and waited for them all to find their own way.
Remi imagined how cool it would be for a tiny civilization to be spread out upon this miniature delta. Ships carrying supplies from town to town, hundreds of bridges spanning this world of endless rivers. It would be an agricultural mecca, a fisherman’s dream, a civil engineer’s ultimate reckoning.
They five friends made their way through the streams and up several switchbacks until they walked above the falls that fed into the streams below. Another set of switchbacks and once again, they were on top of a high rock, above the canopy of the forest below so that they could see the floodplains of the valley they had walked in, the small wooded hill they had camped in last night, and far off, the cliffside they had slept in two nights before.
“Lunchtime?” asked Cola, hopefully.
“Sounds good to me,” Remi said, dropping his pack down.
“It looks like if we’re going to make it to Garands pass tonight, we have another thousand feet of elevation to hit before one,” said Ty, his pack still on.
“Can’t do that on an empty stomach and tired legs,” said Hugo. “First break of the day. An important thing.”
“Okay, you guys are right,” Ty relented.
Everyone got out their snacks. Cola made the extra dehydrated meal left over from last night for them all to share. That’s how Cola’s altitude sickness had been manifesting - lack of appetite.
Remi chewed on a protein bar, mesmerized at how, at any given moment, there was a golden leaf falling from the trees somewhere, another to take its place a hundred feet away whenever the previous one landed or drifted out of sight.
so here I am sort of deviating. I was going to have Remi live with his parents so it was higher stakes.
It was like being a software engineer. He had taught himself to code to be independent, to be a problem solver. He had tried his best to keep his friends together even as they moved to different places. But it was always something new to be done. A new job, a new car, a new trip to plan somewhere else. A new camera - and not just material things. A new project. But they were often inwardly facing. Not like this, being with his friends, eating snacks. This was neutral. This living. Neither giving nor taking, just being.
“You know, it’s really a brilliant thought experiment,” said Remi slowly. “If money was no object, what would you do? That’s what the Powerball situation is really. But here’s the thing - there’s nothing stopping us. Everything we said we wanted to do, we could do it.”
“I mean I’m pretty sure that if I started jackhammering roads, I’d get arrested,” said Zoe, eyebrows up.
“Yeah, probably. And yours might be the worst example here but I mean, you’re end goal isn’t really just a war against asphalt, is it?”
“Nah,” said Zoe. “I mean yes, I hate asphalt when we could have grass or trees or anything else instead but. It’s just about giving up less infrastructure to cars. Finding a way to take up less space with asphalt, more with parks and nature without sacrificing anything. Sounds crazy maybe, but I heard about this thing that happened in DC. People were complaining that it was too hard to get downtown. So the city bulldozed basically an entire neighborhood. Built 295. Put another bunch of residential housing under the shadow of an overpass. The result? Didn’t improve traffic. A bunch of people were out of homes, and traffic was just as bad. I could talk all day about cars being prioritized over people and I’d get called some hippy libtard. I don’t think we can totally get rid of cars, but it does seem like they just became the default, not much thought went into alternatives, because motorized infrastructure just grew and grew over time. But if we just had a bunch of cobblestone and dirt roads and someone said “Hey, let’s cover 30% of this city in asphalt” now, then people might be like, do we really have to do that? We have bikes, electrical vehicles, subways, and all sorts of much less invasive and demanding alternatives. It might happen again but. If we could start over, I would hope we could find an innovative way to chop up the world into gas stations and parking lots. It’s such a sad thing to see.”
“Yeah. It’s hard. But I mean, we all agree with you. I’m sure a lot of people are already trying to do something on that front.”
“No, definitely. I see what you’re saying. In a way, 2 billion dollars, that would only go so far. You need buy-in. Cultural understanding. And I am seeing it. Some cities? Especially in Europe, they are so bikeable. So you’re right, I don’t necessarily need 2 billion dollars to do something about this thing that I really care about. Although I will say, it is a little overwhelming, since it’s not like, the only thing I care about.”
“Debatably, you don’t care about it,” said Ty, sitting on a stump. “An economist would say that the only reliable way to measure what an individual cares about is action.”
Zoe sighed. “I suppose there’s not much I can really say to that.”
Remi would never forget the way Cola looked then, crouched in front of the steam pouring out of the top of the camping pot. His eyes were heavy, looking at some distant point so intently Remi actually turned to see what it might be, but all there was were the looming mountains on the other side of evolution valley, which stood high above the trees of the valley, blue and distant. Then Cola looked back at his camping stove and switched it off. Efficiently, he poured the dehydrated camping food and the boiling water into his thermos and packed away the stove and empty pouch. “Let’s go,” he said.
Everyone scrambled to get their things together in time to follow. “Col, wait up!” yellowed Hugo. But Cola didn’t slow down. If anything, he picked up his pace.
The pace that Col set was unforgiving and brutal, and the group spent the next hour out of breath, racing towards the top.
“Excuse me, hope you have a great hike,” Remi said as they overtook the third group of other backpackers. The other two had been on the older side, but this group seemed to be bout their age.
“Don’t let me stop you!” the man with hiking poles said. “You’re on a roll - but you might need to pick up the pace a bit to catch your friend.”
“Seriously,” muttered Remi, trying his best to keep up. His calves and lungs were burning.
Some stuff to work with — I think it gets really hot and they run out of water sources, and in their delirium, they try some stuff. Who knows, maybe they even get giardia later! Cola sort of parries the accusations that he was upset by being as cool as ever and saying the guanine pills just kicked in for him, which is why he was walking so fast, and that all of them to try some to get through the dry area. Also, Ty could certainly draw a bit from Alex Andonian as well. But the deal is that at home, Cola actually volunteers at this immigrant’s place and he’s really fallen in love with it and wishes that he could do it more. So I think that although Cola is really more of Hugo’s friend, decides to visit Cola and see if it can help out. he lives with his parents and wants to get away anyways.
another thing - it would really be good to develop the world a bit more too. I would like to create a sort of version fo the world in which this takes place.
Also - I think that an idea that they should have when they are creating the book plan is , instead of getting AI to decide the most successful one, they just flood the market and find out that way. So they have to set up a publishing house for that.
They called to Kola to ask him to stop, but he didn’t until he reached the top of the pass, and so they had little choice but to follow. After all, he had much of the water and food. It turned out that he must have shrugged off a good deal of altitute sickness, because he raced up the mountains like a rock. The trees got sparser and shorter until there were only a few gnarled junipers, and then even those fell away to just shrubs and gravel until they were walked at an almost 45 degree angle up switchbacks carved seemingly directly into the side of the mountain.
At each turn where the switchback changed direction, a voice in Remi’s head told him to take a break, and cited evidence located within his burning calves and lungs.
But another voice asked, what if you just kept going? How long could you last? And he looked up at the last minute and saw Kola still trucking away and he did just that. He kept going, just ignoring the signs his body was giving him. Something that had never happened before happened to Remi then. He realized that he didn’t know what his limits were. He had simply ignored them, and they fell away - his body had told him it go no farther, but that had been four switchbacks ago. So Remi made a promise to himself.
If you can follow Kola all the way up to this pass at eleven thousand feet, then you can keep this feeling. You can keep on believing you have no limits. And it was a valuable prize. At the edge of his screaming brain were promises of…anything. If he had no limits, there was nothing he couldn’t do. Those promises, allthough he was too tired and his body and psyche too taxed to focus on anything more complicated than one step after the other, there was a beautiful promise just at the outside of that tiny world. The beautiful promise that anything was possible.
After what felt like an eternity, the grade began to even out. The voice in his head saw its opportunity. “You’re done!” it said. “You’re at the top!”
But Remi still couldn’t see over the mountain, so he knew he wasn’t actually at the top yet. And what’s more, Kola had not yet stopped. Then, step by step, the ground ahead of him finally dropped away, revealing clouds rolling far below, hovering above the trees like some great alpine glacier suspended in the air. Kola finally dropped his pack and stopped, looking out, and Remi did the same. As he shifted his weight to slide the pack off of one shoulder, Remi’s knees nearly buckled under him, and he staggered towards a boulder to catch himself, hoping he could make it look intentional. Then he laughed, realizing he was playing pretend for himself just as much as Kola or anyone else, for there were other backpackers and a few ambitious day hikers at the top of the mountain.
With that, Remi allowed himself to lower himself to the ground, resting his back on his backpack. He glanced over at Kola and could not read his expression, but Kola must have felt his gze because he turned away from the staggeringly beautiful vista, his hair being blown by gusts of the thin air, and said, out of breath. “What a climb”.
And Remi saw that Kola was more out of breath than him. Remi laughed again. The laugh brought a cough with it, from deep within his irritated lungs, but Remi chose not to worry about it. “Can’t shake us that easily,” said Remi.
Kola smiled. “You’re the only one to prove me wrong,” he said.
But the others showed up eventually. Hugo and Ty were severely winded, and took a long time to recover. They all did. They ate snacks, their bodies and minds slightly numb, slightly mesmerized by the breeze. In a surreal turn of events, a group of four incredibly rosy-cheeked and enthusiastic woman crested the mountain pass triumphantly bearing an entire foldable table, a table cloth, four champagne glasses and two bottles to fill them with. It was very windy and much champagne was spilled, by the women were deterred by nothing as gusts of wind threatened to blow their table off the mountin. They finished the bottles, packed up their affair, and bid their admirers adoe only to descend back down the mountain and into the valley from whence they’d came.
“Goals,” smiled Zoe wistfully. “That can be us next time.”
“That is if we survive this time,” said Hugo grimly.
“Very true grasshopper,” said Zoe,“very true indeed.”
“Well,” said Ty, looking worse for wear and far more humble than he had exactly twenty four hours before. “It’s one thirty. If we want to make it to somewhere reasonably protected from the wind and the circling vultures, we have another two miles to go. Shall we?”
He was right. They still had miles to do. Everyone got into gear, hoisting their backpacks onto their shoulders with all manner of grunts and sighs, even Zoe, although Remi suspected she simply did it for dramatic effect.
They descended into the third value. It felt somehow more mysterious, obscured by clouds as it was, and protected by many successive ridges of emerald pines that towered higher than any of the aspens or junipers they had passed under thus far. As they descended below the cover of these behomoth trees, Remi felt unmistakebly as if they were descending into an older valley, one that had been forgotten by the day-trippers and the motor tourists. One that was known only by the crazy ones willing venture two full days into the wilderness with only the packs on their backs into a deep forest, a valley separated by two volleys of mountains at twelve thousand feet each.
“So what was that about?” Zoe asked Kola at the fire that night as they boiled their water. “Breaking away and leaving us in the dust.”
Kola looked supremely embarassed. But the fire worked it’s magic, filling the silence with its crackles and pops. Perhaps for twenty seconds, perhaps for a few minutes.
“I volunteer a couple times a week,” said Kola. “It’s this place that mostly takes the kids of refugees on school notes. It’s not the best managed, but I love it. We have kids from all over, and all ages. It’s hard. The other day a kid was looking for an app on the app store to show me, but they did everything but search it. Scroleld through the thumbnails, the categories. I realized they couldn’t read. But they’re in middle school. I guess I just got mad because you’re right Ty, I could do more. But you’re wrong…that action is the metric of caring. Because I don’t know how to do more.”
“Kola, I didn’t mean that at all. I was just blabbing to be honest,” said Ty.
“No you were right. It’s all the same if you don’t do anything. But it made me mad anyways, that’s why I walked so fast. But I realized I was mad at myself. Maybe more not trying to get the managers of the program to do it better, or find a way to get the schools to do something.”
“Hey man,” said Zoe. “You can’t be that hard on yourself. That’s not all on you.”
“It doesn’t have to be, but maybe I want it to be.”
“Where is this place? It’s in DC right?” asked Remi.
“Yeah,” said Kola. “They get people from all over. Lately, Ukraine. A few from Myanmar a couple years ago. Iran, Syria. Venezuela.”
“Where’s it at?”
“Columbia heights. There’s this building on Q street I go to pretty much every Tuesday and Thursday.”
They stayed up too late that night with Kola telling them all his stories about kids that went to the Refugee Empowerment Program, or REP. They were hilarious. Ty told Kola that he should do standup with this material. Talking about all the kids in the program seemed to really cheer Kola up.
one of the themes hear that my be very important to go into is the effect that this trip has on all of them. Each one of them will come out of this trip gaining some new perspective on life, even aside from this crazy agreement they make with each other - they walk away with perspective on their own lives too. That’s what really happened anyways - I switched majors. Not the biggest thing, but it was something I felt I could only do because of that trip.
The next morning, everyone got up at the same time, no prompting required. In the morning light they realized they had set up in a Rhodedendron glade. Remi remembered something he heard or red somewhere, sleep in the rhodedendron glade is to sleep at the entrance to the gateway between worlds, where the old spirits replacae the new Where he gotten that?
The branches of the small trees twisted and turned, not unlike arms reaching over the campsite, just above reach, to create a low canopy of winding beams. As the sun rose, it filtered through the leaves, illuminating dew on the evergreen, almond shaped leaves.
Everyone was in relatively good spirits. Hugo finished brewing coffee on stove number one was finished at the same time that Zoe finished the biscuits and gravy on stove number two so that they had what felt like a relatively sophisticated breakfast for the wilderness. A nearly silent stream trickled quietly not too far away so that doing their dishes was easy and fast. But they each scraped their plates clean, so there was little to clean. After they all quickly brushed their teeth and packed up their tents into their bags.
This time they followed Zoe’s lead and underdressed in shorts and an easily removable jacket, shiveringin the morning cold but knowing that would warm soon enough. Zoe led them on the winding path through the woods, lead seemingly by the rushing sound of water. Sure enough, the small trickly of a stream was a tributary to a larger stream which then fed into a small river, glinting in the morning sun and dotted with stones where their were openings in the jungly canopies of sycamore and cottonwood trees. The water swirled white as they climbed up its banks, tumbling dowards over moss-covered stone in the opposite direction they climbed.
Under cover of the rushing water, silence between the friends was comfortable and open, and Remi found himself in eddies of thought like the water rushing in between the rocks.
A couple days ago, he had been riding in the car from the airport, full of excitement, but it had been an excitement that had blanketed underlying anxiety. Anxiety about whether he would find a job, how much longer he would have to live with this parents. He felt it thinking about the others sometimes, too, seeing their lives. In comparison, his life felt empty, and sometimes not his own, as if he had inherited an empty house that still had the photos up of people that were only half familiar.
But that anxiety did not touch him here. It was truly as if he had left it behind. It seemed likely he would have to pick it up again on his way out, but it could not follow him to this remote valley. It felt almost as if he had put down the controller to some video game and returned a world more real than that of the game he had been playing. It would be alright.
It would be alright because now, underneath this feeling freedom, instead of some underlying anxiety or worry or insecurity, there was instead a feeling of possibility. He felt that there was something underneath, and as long as he walked alongside this river, he was getting closer to venturing into it, into a place where he was at peace and able to do anything.
Three birds rose into view on an updraft, soaring through the air. They looked like eagles. The first tipped its wing and the others followed, dropping into the valley below, coasting into tiny specks above the trees far below.
“You know,” said Hugo. “I’ve been thinking about winning the lottery. And I had this thought. If most people let the power go to their heads - most people, right? Then isn’t the crazy thing to do give it all away? Not crazy in a bad way just. It’s weird, normally we take crazy to mean doing the opposite of what makes sense. But in that situation, people stop making any sense at all. They go crazy with power, or they can’t trust anyone anymore…but if you give it all away, you become a hero. And you embrace the only life you ever had any control over. After all, to be rewarded by random chance, what good can truly come of that?”
“I mean, we could get the best backpacking gear ever. Be like these super-light folks out here, carrying everything we need in just a couple grams, the most state of the art —” Tyler started.
“And we’d be happier?” asked Hugo.
“Yeah. I mean, maybe just for a couple days, or maybe a few months. Travelling the world, exploring! Hundreds of miles, nothing but a few pounds on our backs.” Ty said, his neck getting red under the burning of the sun.
“But it’s the weight. That’s what makes it great, right?”
This is fun because it becomes about me again, about michelle, and about how I tried to carry all the weight for my family because I thought that’s who I was, but by making that my identity I had shackled myself, didn’t let other people be themselves, pretended like I was the only one. I loved that feeling - being superman. Being the savior. But there was something wrong with it. Something I still don’t totally understand.
Remi felt the straps of his pack cut into his shoulders, gently, protected by his shirt. They certainly weren’t a super modern operation. Zoe even carried the old canvas and frame backpack she said her grandpa used to use. None of them knew how she carried everything she needed in that thing. Remi stepped lightly over a vein of stone cutting across the trail, and something shifted inside his pack. He hitched his pack up absent-mindedly, cinching the straps on the left side of his pack to rebalance the center of the weight.
Cola held the straps in his hands as they went over the rough terrain, and hugo unzipped a pouch on his hip to scatter a few skittles in his palm, barely catching one that rolled off his index finger.
“I just mean at the end of the day, right?” Hugo said through a mouthful of candy. “That feeling in your shoulders as you sit down, roll them. That’s what makes it great.”
“I’m tempted to say that you were a bit grumpy last night to be making that claim,” said Ty. “But…I won’t. Because I think you’re right. So, going superlight would actually ruin it then?”
“Yeah, or it just wouldn’t change much. You’d be making it more complicated. You’d have to get the weight some other way.”
“I feel like I’ve had this conversation before,” said Zoe. “Life style creep? I think it usually ends with someone saying, enjoy the journey, not the destination or something along those lines.”
“All I’m saying,” said Hugo,“Before we got off track, was that the only sane thing to do if you won two billion dollars or however much, is to give it all away.”
Remi chuckled. He appreciated that the embers of this conversation topic had flared up into the next day.
“But how easy is that really?” he asked. “I mean, who do you give it away to for starters?”
The group of friends bounced through lists of charities, the possibility of just distributing the money to lower-income families, or setting up some sort of referral system. Some of these ideas seemed somewhat practical, but at the same time each one required an infrastructure to carry out that became more and more elaborate the longer they considered it, involving the hiring of staff.
*So I have this worry, which is that if I write this about immigrant kids and REP and stuff, that’s not really my story. I’m not writing about myself, so it’s not going to ring anywhere near as true as this backpacking stuff. But that means I have to make sure that I end up writing about nutrition and sports and backpacking and finding a place to belong through those things and that idea that I have. i can draw some inspiration from Katie about REP, some from my time as a substitute teacher/summer camp counselor. But I have to make sure that I keep it authentic and write about the things that I know about *
“In any case,” Zoe said. “It would still be a lot of work. Unless you truly just gave it all away. Picked someone you knew and just transferred it all to them. And seeing what a burden this could be to even give it all away not to mention spend it, I guess that wouldn’t even be such a great service to them.”
“Weird,” said Ty.
“Hugo’s summer camp idea and Cola’s school lunches idea actually sounds pretty convenient,” said Remi. “Like with school lunches, how long would that money even last? ”
“Let’s see,” said Ty,“How many kids do you think are in public school? fourty million?”
“Gotta be more than that,” said Zoe
“I dunno, sixty, fifty million, somewhere around there,” said Hugo.
“Okay let’s say it’s fifty million, that’s easy to work with. If it was a good lunch, let’s say we can somehow do a good lunch for five dollars…that’s 250 million dollars a day,” said Ty.
“Woah,” said Remy. “So that would last. Eight days. Like Hannukah. Lunch hannukah.”
“Oh yeah, Hannukah is eight days isn’t it,” said Zoe. “That’s kind of unfair to us Christian kiddos. We only get one day for christmas.”
“This is a conversation for another time Zoe but I am really pretty confident that it’s not a problem for anyone.”
“Okay,” said Zoe.
would be funny if this came up again.
“Hmm,” said Ty. “Eight…measly…days…”
“Hold up,” said Kola. “There’s gotta be a way to draw that out. I mean for one, not all kids family’s can’t afford lunch. Like, I’m sure there are millions who can’t, but it’s gotta be below 50%, right? And second, I bet that if you did something that big, you could get other people to help. I dunno, from the math we have, it’s a stretch, but I think we could do a whole school year. Or I mean, with two billion dollars, I think you could do that.”
“Well and five dollars a lunch. That’s probably reasonably, with logistics and stuff but, I dunno, if we did it and contributed out labor, I bet we could do better than five dollars a lunch.”
“Our labor?” said Zoe. “Oh I mean yeah, I would be very down to help but, like, in a way it’s a missed opportunity not to have have the kids help. Such a great learning experience, for nutrition, for life skills.”
Ty smiled,“I mean while we’re in this very wholesome little realm of thought, you might as well get the other kids, the ones who do have their lunch paid for or whatever, you can have them help to make the lunches for those who don’t.”
Remi laughed. “That’s actually kind of brilliant. That, or you could have everyone have a recommended donation for lunch fees, with the understanding that you are paying for your student’s lunch materials, and then you can have all the kids just make lunch together, as equals, regardless of the economic status of their families.”
“I sort of love this,” said Cola.
“And then those funds could maybe make that initial amount of money last a bit longer,” said Zoe. “Guys I think we actually have something here. Like, it’s nothing crazy, it’s weirdly simple, but it would be so cool. I don’t know about you all, but I really enjoy cooking.”
“Same,” said Cola.
“Me too,” Remi said.
“Honestly, I don’t enjoy it much but damn do I like to eat,” said Hugo. This got the rest of the group to laugh.
“Yeah I’m still not sure. I love it when I have the time, but I’m not so good at just whipping something up without thinking.”
I’m sort of writing this thinking about liberal it is and also about how parents would probably get a little weird about this. First it would be allergies, then it would be trusting kids with knives, idk. Somehow some conservatives I think would find a way to ruin it. They are in positive mode and not totally serious, so maybe they don’t need to realize this yet, but it could easily be a plot point later on.
“Yeah I feel that,” said Remi. “I really like trying a new recipe, but I don’t have much memorized, that I can just make. Not like, say, my mom. She’s really good at that. She’ll just be like, “I think I’ll make pizza tonight”, and she knows that she already got the ingredients, and she’ll just sort of whip it up from memory I’m pretty sure, and get the bread rising early enough in the day.”
“Your mom can make pizza from scratch?”
“Oh yeah,” said Remi. “All the time. Or like, she would do it maybe once a week when I was in high school.”
“That’s amazing.”
“Okay so we’re teaching the kids about nutrition, how to take care of themselves, their making their own food and learning how to be independent, and their all working together and the kids who can’t afford to eat lunch are covered. I mean what’s missing? This is amazing. I dunno, I kind of want to make this happen.”
“I think theres just one thing missing,” said Remi. “I think that it’s using all that food. That fuel. I just feel like they go hand in hand. Like, that’s why I love backpacking. The food tastes especially good because you work so hard for it. And at the end of a few days like this, your body becomes this well oiled machine. It’s like, the ultimate conclusion of nutrition - using it. Being outside. Doing something active and fun.”
“This is bomb,” said Cola. “You all realize we actually have to do this, right?”
Chapter Four: DC
Remi watched the asphalt disappear behind them out the rear window of the rental car. Their bags were all piled together in the trunk, bouncing when they hit a nick in the road or a changed from road to bridge.
He was imagining quitting his job. He hadn’t thought of it once before this trip, but now, every moment he thought about it, it seemed more and more like something that would happen. He couldn’t imagine going in and doing something that made him feel so dull anymore, not in comparison to these blue skies, and those huge mountains in the distance getting smaller and smaller.
As they receded into the horizon, he turned around and looked out the front. Zoe was behind the wheel and her and Cola were jamming to the alabama shakes. Ty was next to him deep in his book - it looked like he was near the end. Hugo was looking out the window, earbuds in his ears, hand tapping long to some rhythm that Remi couldn’t hear.
Remi tapped Cola on the shoulder.
“Next time I come to visit DC, would I be able to volunteer?” Remi asked.
“Well,” started Cola. “You have to fill out a form, background check. It takes about a week and then, yeah.”
Five months later, Remi showed up in DC. He met his new roomates in person for the first time. He was subletting a room in an apartment located in a neighborhood called Mt. Pleasant. It was surprisingly quiet, near somewhere Rock Creek Park. It was strange, he hadn’t known that the capital had so many trees right in the center of an environemnt that was otherwise so gritty, dominated by concrete like any other city.
Those first weeks passed by quickly. Remi decided to join a running group. He figured it was as good a way to get to the know the new city as any other.
On Thursday morning, he got coffee with Cola.
“You get a job yet?” Cola asked, looking over Remi with a half smile, not quite able to figure him out.
“Nope,” said Remi, “But I’m looking.”
“Okay. You know, I have a friend who’s a programmer you should talk to, he might know of something. I think that the washington post has an intern program, if you were interested.”
“Oh I dunno,” said Remi,“that sounds pretty presitgious for me.”
“I mean, it’s interns, how prestigious could you get?”
“Yeah that would be amazing. I would love to talk to him.”
The two friends say back, Cola drinking his coffee, and Remi just smiling at him.
“So,” started Remi. “Are you volunteering tonight?”
“Yes, indeed I am,” Cola said, setting down his mug carefully, and adjusting the coaster. “Thought you might ask that. You want to come?”
“Sure, I’ll check it out,” responded Remi, nonchalantly.
“Ah, well you probably can next week. But you need to apply first,” said Cola.
“Right.”
Wouldn’t it be better though if Remi was moving to DC with Cola’s help? I’m not sure
It actually might be kind of problematic to base this story on refugees themselves. I think that in a way, trying to keep this relatively fictional and within the imagination is a good place to start.
Remi was nervous when he arrived a week later. His application had been approved. He had spent most of his day at a coffee shop on H street all day, applying to jobs. He applied to the internship with the post, as well as a motion graphics position and a kayaking guide, to work at the desk of a swanky hostel, and to work as an intern at a startup incubator. He wasn’t totally sure what he was looking for, just that he knew from past experience that he needed a way to occupy his time during the day and keep him from digging into his emergency fund.
The sun was setting as he arrived at what seemed like the parking lot of the church that seemed to serve as the headquarters of the Team Refugee Youth. He got out of his car slowly, taking care to lock it, make sure he had everything. Water bottle. Phone. What if he wasn’t any use? He had been a substitute teacher once. It had been hard. What if the kids made fun of them.
“Hi, I’m here for Team Regugee Youth?” Remi said to the first person it. It was a woman around his age in a hoodie.
“Oh you mean TRY? You don’t sound so sure,” she said seriously, looking him dead in the eye. Remi opened his mouth but wasn’t totally sure what to say to this. The woman’s face broke into an easy smile. “First time?”
Remi exhaled. “Yeah,” he said.
“Come on, the sign-in book is in the cafeteria,” she said, and started walked down the hallway in the way she had been coming from.
“Leticia, can you go upstairs and find a group activity with the middle schoolers? I agreed to stay later for the afternoon shift but I really have to go,” said a tall man with a boyish face of indeterminate age.
Leticia sighed,“Okay, but will you sign this guy in before you leave.”
“Oh uh, yeah I can do that,” the man said, noticing Remi for the first time. “You can grotesque corpse! They liked that last week!” he yelled after Leticia as she walked briskly up the stairs.
“Mr. Tony, Petro isn’t sharing the colored pencils,” said a solemn girl who had seemingly materialized to tug on the shirt of this Mr. Tony.
“Ah,” said Mr. Tony. “Well that’s no good. There were plenty of colored pencils last time I checked.”
“Who are you?” asked the girl.
“Oh hi, my name is Remi,” Remi said to the girl. The application had said to avoid any physical contact, so he just sort of stood there, although he was wondering if fist bumps were okay. The girl looked about eight. “Okay,” she said, and turned around, racing in the direction of what Remi had ascertained at this point was the cafeteria.
“Anthony,” Mr. Tony said, extending a hand. “Sorry, I would say it’s crazy around here but this is pretty normal.”
“Remi,” Remi said again lamely.
“Yup. I really do have to go, but let’s sign you in and let you loose,” Anthony said, and Remi followed him into the other room.
There were about fourteen kids in the cafeteria, some on tables playing with toys, a few in the corners playin on iPads, and a group of around four of them in the center of the room sharing a giant sheet of newspring engaged in a very elaborate looking activity that looked, at first glance, to be a giant map.
Anthony sorted out the situation with the colored pencils, and petro seemed to relent relatively easily, which relieved, as Anthony had to leave shortly afterwards, making Remi the only person in this room with a bunch of kids he didn’t know. Anthony had assured him that someone was coming to help out, and luckily he was right. About four nail-biting moments of uncertainty in which he realized increasingly that he had no ability to control this room of more than ten children if chaos were to emerge out of what was a relatively rare, peaceful situation for this age group, an older woman hustled in.
“Thank you for joining us,” she said formally, extending a hand. “Camille.”
“Remi,” he said again.
“How has Remi been doing Abir?” she said, turned to a shockingly tiny girl.
“I made a butterfly!” Abir said, holding up two popsicle sticks that were glued not only together, but also to her fingers.
“That is lovely!” said Camille. “Can you teach our friend Remi how to make a butterfly?”
“You can have this one!” Abir said, attempting unsuccessfully to pry the sticks of her fingers.
After two hours, Remi had participated in butterfly-making and map-making, as well as a few good sessions of supervised Temple Run. Somehow no fights had broken out, except for another debate between the girl who had had a dispute with Petro and another girl named Amina.
By the time he got into his car, he was exhausted. He drove home and went straight to bed, somewhat dissappointed he couldn’t join his roomates for movie night as he didn’t want them to think he was unfriendly. He didn’t know if it was nerves or constantly projecting an air of calm authority, but his stomach hurt a bit and he was definitely ready to go unconscious. He wondered vaguely where Cola had been.
“I’m glad that you did alright. Yeah I totally forgot to tell you, I had my anniversary with my girlfriend and I couldn’t make it,” said Cola.
“What do you even say to kids?” asked Hugo. The three of them had met up at Dupont Circle where Remi had found he really enjoyed watching the squirrels.
“That’s a really good question,” said Remi.
“The same stuff that you would anyone else. Just, you know, keep it PG. Generally.” said Cola. “Ready?”
The three of them set off towards rock creek park.
“I can’t believe you talked me into this though,” said Cola.
“What are you talking about,” said Hugo. “I saw this guy hauling ass the other day in the Mall. He’s clearly been training.”
“Only a couple times a week,” said Cola.
“Well I hope you guys can keep me humble,” said Remi. “I’ve been picking up this videography gigs covering this concerts and I’ve started smoking like crazy. My lungs hate me.”
“You started smoking? You, mister fitness?” said Hugo.
“I’m honored,” said Remi. “But I don’t deserve that title.”
Pain seeped into Remis lungs as they reached the mile mark. It seemed too soon, and Remi put it out of his mind. The last intense physical training he had done had been in colorado. The move and the job search had taken his time and contorted his body into odd shapes along the way.
A sparrow darted over traffic, the setting sun glinting on the tops of suburbans, the rush of a bus. If birds smoked they’d die” thought Remi, and that was almost where the thought ended until they passed a few pigeons shuffling along near a dirty corner of the sidewalk with a fire hydrant. Remi rethought his conclusion. Maybe not.
“So do you ever go to any parks with the kids at TRY?” asked Remi
“Wel now that the weather has gotten colder, not so much, but last year I had just started and my first day we went to see the Washington Monument.”
The three of them ran by the waterfront near georgetown, watching couples walk their dogs and college kids get high by the bushes. A car cruised by, generated wind in short staccato bursts as it passed the parked vehicles on the bike lane. A few too many cyclists whizzed past, and looking wildly behind them, they shifted onto the sidewalk even though it impacted their feet harder somehow than the asphalt of the bike trail.
Somehow all at once, the gritty concrete pillars supporting the overpass on which the bass of heavy trucks and commuters speeding back home to their homes in Maryland gave way to great oak trees. They passed under a bridge, past the steep stairs that Remi was told were used to film a scene in the original excorcist, and the trail wound into the woods so that only the tops of the pointy buildings in georgetown could be seen over the tops of the trees, and even they dissappeared.
The pattern of their feet synchronized. A groups of runners zoomed past them going the other day, their feet fast and light. “That’ll be us by the end of the year,” Remi said, laughing.
“You think?” said Hugo.
“For sure. We keep this up, and I stop smoking, we’ll be racing all of them in no time.”
They ran through the emerald greens of the forest in spring, and Hugo and Cola informed Remi that they had a work thing with some friends.
“You sure you don’t want to come?” asked Hugo in a sort of pained look.
“Nah, it’s your work friends - I’d just feel out of place,” said Remi, not totally honestly.
“Okay, well we’ll catch you later,” said Hugo, looking somehow relieved.
Remi’s mind was a near blank as he continued on alone. It made sense. This wasn’t his home, it was there’s. He was still a visitor, a transient. He kept going. On his left, in between the branches of trees being slowly strangled to death by the beautiful floral snares of wisteria, he saw a couple tent piled high with blankets over it, a collection of bicycles peaking out from beneath a tarp, accompanied by a shopping cart. Remi imagined the person within biking into the city to busk or raid grocery store dumpsters. On his right, apartments and towering houses of georgetown peaked out at him from between the collosal honeysuckle bushes. Did families live there? Single couples who shared a law practice?
Remi kept running all the way back to Petworth to find his roomates gone. Some Saturday plans. Maybe Hugo had wanted him to come. No way to know.
Remi showered, cleaned the kitchen, listened to fragments of conversations drifting in through the window.
‘Not exactly what I meant…’
“…at least double the celery you’d need! And not exactly fresh…”
“…at least I’m not a little bitch about it…”
“…but with these modern beehives…”
While he was at it, Remi cleaned the floors, somethow the toilet, and was pleased to see the sun was still just descending from its highest point in the sky. Remi popped open a beer and began to scroll through craigslist, and various other sites, sending emails at intervals. He had given up applying to actual jobs, just as he had given up going to TRY. It was far, and when the tuesday and thursday nights showed up, he would tell himself that he was too tired - he could do it next week. So those nights, too, he would crack a beer, scroll through craigslist. He found one that said it was for a congressional event, so he made sure to craft an especially professional email for that. If he could break into doing photography and video for the political scene in DC, he’d have it made. Then he could…well he wasn’t quite sure what he would do. But whatever it was, maybe he could do it then.
He looked at job postings in Arizona, Colorado, the state of Washington. A small voice in his mind asked him what he was doing, had he not come to DC for a purpose? But the stronger current within him made him want to throw it all away. He thought back to the way Hugo and Cola had invited him to their friend’s thing today. Maybe they had meant it? Something strange in Remi’s mind wanted them to have not meant it. A twisting within him enjoyed the way that felt, the betrayal. To move back to the city they’d grown up in and yet have no one to turn to. He had heard a word for this once, negative fantasy. Yet even with a name, it still had power, did it not?
He stopped at a miscategorized craigslist posting. A schoolbus had been listed under the job postings.
2001 International 3800, 8,000. What was wrong with it? It was a rich green color, the color of spring, with a white roof. Remi scrolled through the photos and then took a deep intake of breath and closed his eyes. Jerking his laptop shot, Remi turned towards the door.
Although it took a moment to register, outside felt bigger than inside. The rush of traffic, probably on rock creek parkway, drifted over the trees into Mt. Pleasant like an ocean. The red of a a distant radio tower winked at him over the sillihuette of buildings. His boots scratched at the sidewalk and a cat dissappeared into the tall grass at an abandoned lot.
Two laughing girls entered a car, and an old man smoked a cigarette on the corner. Remi walked, wishing he was biking, but glad he was outside. There was a group of people gathered by the small grocery store. It looked like a man with a newscamera was there too. People spread flowers on the ground in front of a cross which was, in turn, in front of a mural. Someone must have died.
“This is not the first immigrant to have died to the perils of a foreign land,” said a voice, of an older woman, euologizing. “And it won’t be the last, but let it be the last.”
Remi said fuck it and turned back to get his bike. It took longer than he would have liked, but he needed the speed. He cranked it up the hill and than flew down, knowing he should be higher visibility but not especially caring.
He biked until he his sweat was cold on his scalp, and he let his bike fall to the grass at the park by the library. The great dark shapes of oaks surrounded the meadow-like shining rectangular surface of the basketball court, strangely empty. Above the trees, the twinkling buildings rose up like sentinals with no true allegiance. Above them, a few faint stars twinkled, but nowhere as bright as their true selves. Remi wished he could remember how it felt to see them in Colorado, but he only remembered enough to know they had shone brighter then than now.
The flywheel on the back wheel on his bike was clicking rhythmically to a stop as a he looked at his palms, glowing slightly in the moonlight and the light pollution. As he sat there, and his flywheel finally stopped clicking, he noticed a distant sound, growing louder than traffic. It grew louder, and was accompanied by the sound of clapping, and of whoops and shouts. He sat frozen, until he saw the gleam of the horn players emerge from around the corner. It was a strange, slow beat, doled out by the snaking rhythms of saxophones. A stand-up base rolled on a dolly behind them.
Feather, by Ishmael Ensemble
Remi knew that he couldn’t give up. He had to try every bit of the dream he had remembered back in Colorado.
He made smalltalk with the uber driver who took him to a late night gig to document a symphony happening at the center of the Reynold’s gallery.
“Whatever you’re running from brother, it’ll be right there waiting for you wherever you go,” over the ethiopian jazz on the radio, just like what played at Remi’s favourite coffee shop on H street.
The man had an impeccably trimmed white beard, and said he was a priest.
“You’re not wrong. But I’m also not running from anything.”
“Well, the same goes for finding things. Whatever it is you’re looking for, you probably don’t need to go far.”
It felt luxurious to work at such an expensive and beautiful place, even just for a night, surrounded by well dressed people and meticulously-polished woodwinds and brass, occasionally snagging an hours-deuvres from one of the circulating platters.
Remi ignored the uber driver’s advice and moved to Petsworth where rent was cheaper and his roomates were worse and he could save up money to buy a schoolbus to convert.
He found one and rented a spot in the lot behind the apartment for an extra $50 a month from the rental company. He hoped the vehicle looked so dinged up that nobody would break into it. All the same, he kept his powertools that he had scored, hard-won, from various estate sales, inside, where they could not be stolen.
Okay, I think I need to workshop with Katie, or someone. I’m losing it. Or just try something new.
Chapter Twenty Eight: The Flight of the Bumblebee
The kids all signed their permission slips except for Ernie, but that was okay because Remi had Ernie’s mother’s number and he was going to figure it out.
“It’s weird getting permission slips signed,” said Hugo as they wrapped up the sandwiches the kids had made that day.
“Oh my god, do you know what Noah Johnson said to me today? He said ‘I will not eat meat until all animals are free.’ I told him that hotdogs had meat in them and he hasn’t talked to me since then,” said Remi.
“Oh my god. That kid is wonderful,” said Hugo.
“Do you think he’ll forgive me though?” asked Remi.
“For sure. Unlike Amina. That girl holds a grudge. I remember that on my first day here, I told her that she needed to share some of the green crayons and she looked at me with murder in her eyes. Never really treated me the same since.”
“I’m so excited guys,” said Cola.
They’d spent all day making ‘custom sandwiches’. They’d stocked up on all sorts of things, some that had been donated and some that they’d been able to buy using the funds from the paying parents. They’d had pickles, sandwich meat, tofu, pineapple, lettuce, tomato, and all sorts of things. Remi had maintained that although it was not advanced cooking, making a sandwich was an important skill that not everyone had.
The next morning the kids met them at one corner of Meridian Park and they all got loaded onto the bus. They had four parents who came as chaperones.
“Are we coming back to the city?” Alyssa asked Remi before she got on the bus, clutching a pillow.
“Like, back here? To DC?” asked Remi, confused. Some of the other kids were yawning, but Alyssa was wide-eyed and sincere. She nodded.
“Of course Alyssa! It’s just a day trip. We’re just going out to the mountains like we told you and then we’re coming right back here. You’ll be back before the sun comes down completely, and you’ll get to sleep in your own bed and everything.” Alyssa processed this information and nodded before getting on the bus.
“Jesus,” Remi said to himself.
The Flight of the Bumblebees got out of DC without a hitch, although there were was a driver who cut him off and nearly caused him to crash as he got onto the key bridge, but he managed to curse under his breath and not loudly so as not to scare the kids.
Hugo was teaching them songs, which was actually super surprising, but Remi supposed that he had been in Chorus.
As they made it onto the Virginia side of the bridge and the city began to shrink behind them with the morning light gleaming off of the tops of its rooftops, the kids ooh’d and ah’d. Many had not seen the city from a distance before.
“It’s just like a spiderman!” said Noah. “When Peter Parker is flying through the air!”
Remi smiled. He had barely been able to imagine it, but this is exactly where he had hoped he would be two years ago. It had taken a while, but he had made it, and the best part was that he didn’t know what came next.
The trip was a success. On the way back, the kids were full of uncontrollable conversation.
Noah was talking passionately about how well bears could smell, and showing Benjamin the bear fear that he had found on the trunk of a tree. Benjamin was smiling for once, admiring the fur carefully in his hands like a special artifact from another planet.
“How big do you think it was?” asked Benjamin, excited. Hugo was driving back, giving Remi a chance to observe. He didn’t run any activities for a bit, just let the kids talk.
Alyssa seemed to have taken pity on Andrew, showing each other drawings they seemed to have made on that trail.
“Wow!” Alyssa said, looking at the monsters Andrew had drawn crawling though the trees like demons made of shadow. Andrew was swelling with pride.
“They’re demons!” he whispered excitedly.
“Oh, my mother tells me to ward of demons with rosemary and whistling when I walk alone in the dark.”
“Yup. They’re bad. Mostly,” said Andrew in an authoritative tone.
Muhammad, Ikram, Aleksei and Amina were all turned to face each other towards the back, singing the song they had sung on the trails earlier.
“Goin’ on a bear hunt, not a runt it’s a rull big bear, I swear, in’t go anywhere we gonna track it by sniffin the air,” Aleksei rapped experimentally as the others clapped, and Amina surprised Remi by breaking in and singing with a sweet, steady voice;
“back from the bear hunt, running from the lair, do not stare because we are not there…anymore! We ran away!”
The other kids laugh, repeating the verses they had laid down so far, while Muhammad wrote them down in his notebook.
“This is great stuff guys,” said Muhammad, putting on the authority of a record label excecutive, putting his fingers together in the ok signal,” quality stuff.”
They crossed through Rosslyn and that familiar sound of traffic and moving vehicles began to envelope them. Next to peeled painted surface of the dingy bus, all the cars looked unreal, as if from a different dimension in which everything was sleep and featureless. But the bus was not alone - the old copper light posts on the key bridge swooped past, along with the near-sillihuettes of biking commuters and pockets of tourists, more akin to the world of singing children and old school buses returning from the woods somehow.
Noah and Benjamin both got up against the window to try to get a glimpse the water passing below them off the side of the bidge, of the reflections or the buildings.
Remi couldn’t help but smile watching them. He wished he could hand them a small telescope that they could put in their pockets to see the same vista anytime they desired. But perhaps that would devalue it.
“Okay everyone! Eyes on the ceiling! Eyes on the floor! Eyes on me!” Remi yelled between his hands. “Hugo is pulling us back up to Meridian park! Help me out by activating the stop signal.”
As they had practiced on the way over, the kids started with a low noise, and began emit a noise louder and louder as if something was charged up. When they reached the top, Remi threw his hands up as if to illustrate an explosion of force or energy, and the stop sign on the side of the bus shot out, covered in the laminated and colorful bumblebees some of them had created in Mrs. Zawinsky’s class.
Through much commotion and hurriedly ended conversations, the kids were herded down the isle and out of the bus, where a line of their parents were waiting, Muhammad and Yelena’s parents hurriedly putting out their cigarettes beneath their shoes, Aleksei’s mother beaming as they got out, both of Benjamin’s parents looking very relieved once they saw their son’s face.
Each child made their way over to their parents, some hugging willingly like Noah, others being hugged against their will, like Aleksei.
“Okay say bye Aleksei,” said Sofia, Aleksei’s mother.
“I can’t go back tuesday?” said Aleksei, turning to ask Remi.
“Of course you can come back tuesday!” said Remi, laughing. “Why would you not be able to come back?”
Aleksei shook his head, smiling in relief. “Okay! See you tuesday Mr. Remi! By Yelena!”
He yelled back towards Yelena, dawdled at bottom of the bus stairs, and Remi quickly became anxiously aware that nobody had come to pick up Yelena.
“Yelena! Let’s hang out in the bus while we wait for your uncle to come. Your uncle, right?”
Yelena nodded somewhat uncertainly.
“Come sit with me,” said Zoe, tilting her head and tapping the bus seat next to her welcomingly. Yelena slowly came over to sit with Zoe.
Hugo got out the info binder and looked up Yelena’s uncle’s number. She was embarassed, but he picked up right away, and they drove back up to the building Columbia Heights and dropped her off.
“Thank you for a wonderful day,” said Yelena with familiar directness, but a calm that the four adults had not heard from her before.
Yelena’s uncle shook their hands and walked away with Yelena, speaking to her in Russian.
“So what do we think?” said Remi, smiling broadly at Hugo and Zoe. The light in Lady Marigold’s drafthouse was an incondescent gold.
“Well,” said Hugo, holding up three fingers, and consequently putting them down. “Nobody got hurt. I think everyone had fun. And we got everyone back,”
“I think,” interjected Zoe.
“Right,” said Hugo seriously.
Ty returned form the bar, setting all of their drinks down on the table.
“Well I’m bummed I couldn’t make it,” said Ty.
“Eh no wories,” said Cola with a sly smile.
Ty gave him a stern finger. “Watch it young man, I might think that you didn’t even want me.”
“How was studying?” asked Remi.
“Oh it was fine. I learned some really enthralling things about the potential ancient civilization of Xia.”
“What?” said Zoe.
“That’s for another time. Tell me everything.”
“Oh we were just celebrating that we probably didn’t lose any of the kids,” said Zoe.
“Cheers to that!” said Ty, raising his glass.
The five of them raised up their cups.
“Okay who remembers how this started?” asked Hugo.
“Okay, but you’re going to have to be a little more specific,” said Ty.
“Well,” said Cola. “I think that it was basically my idea. I—”
“Okay back up, it was definitely me,” said Remi. “I started talking about the movie Waking Ned Devine.”
“Oh yeah, I do remember that.”
“But I mean the lottery conversation happens all the time,” said Hugo.
“That is a fair point,” Zoe frowned. “I have had a lot of conversations about winning the lottery. I think that one was the most enjoyable. Definitely in the top three.”
“What about my summer camp idea? We’re just going to forget about that?” said Hugo shrilly. “I mean, that sowed the seed, you know?”
“I’ll also say that, if it hadn’t been for me, y’all would have staight up died,” said Zoe.
“That’s actually very true,” said Cola, his consternation transforming into a grin.
“Pshht we would have been fine,” said Ty, downing a huge gulp of beer.
“Easy for you to say - your altitute sickness manifested in roid rage. You didn’t have to deal with it, but we did,” said Remi, rolling his eyes.
Ty sputter on his beer. “Roid rage? What are you even talkinga bout?” he said, looking around for support.
The others grimaced. “Yeah, you were not the most pleasant,” said Zoe after a beat.
“Wait what is this? What did I do?”
“If I recall correctly,” began Hugo,“You were going to leave Remi behind to get in a few extra miles.”
“Leave Remi behind? I do recall a few exta miles, yes, but I didn’t want to leave anyone behind!” Ty said, wiping the beer off his lips his hands.
“I’m sure you wouldn’t have actually left me behind,” said Remi, remember the moment with a bit of a wince, bringing his glass to his lips but then bringing it down. “I don’t think you totally realized how close I was to straight up passing out.”
“Yeah, but how much would it cost you to just apologize?” said Zoe, rather abruptly.
Ty was taken aback. “Nothing,” he said. “I’m sorry. Remi, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it man. I’m telling you, it was the altitute sickness. See? You have a readimade excuse,” said Remi.
“I dunno,” said Ty. “I can definitely be an asshole sometimes, right?”
‘Yes but you’re our asshole,” said Hugo. “Our shared, conjoined-”
“So I saw Yelena smile today,” interrupted Zoe. “Benjamin told her she was a good leader because she was walking in the front, and she smiled. I have never seen that girl smile.”
“And benjamin! He said more words today than I’d seen him say, probably, ever! He asked questions, he really seemed to like the fungus.”
“Oh yeah,” said Remi. “The fungus was a big hit. Alyssa and Andrew really loved sketching it and Alyssa was very psyched to inaturalist it on my phone. Andrew really liked using my phone to iNaturalist the different mushrooms and things.”
Chapter Twelve
The clouds coming over the mountain looked heavy and Zoe was getting worried.
“Ty, how bad does that look?” she asked.
“What’s up?” Ty said loudly, and Noah turned to see who said something. Zoe smiled at him, and when he turned away her face returned to its look of concern.
“Do you see those?” Zoe asked, pointing at the clouds coming over the tall range of mountains.
“Oh,” said Ty.
“Do think we can make it through the pass?” asked Zoe.
“I’m not sure if we have a choice. We’re exposed here, and we’d have to backtrack a ways in order to get back to the tree cover.”
“Worst case, there’s supposed to be a boulder field. That might give us some cover.”
“Doesn’t sound too promising to me”.
“Guys, we have a situation,” said Remi, coming up from the back, and signalling for them to stop. The three of them put down their packs.
“I know, it looks like it could be bad,” said Remi, looking up at the clouds.
“Sorry? Some of the kids are really struggling. I just helped Andrew throw up into a bush. Alyssa and Ikram are both acting really sluggish as well. I think it’s it’s altitute sickness,” said Remi, concerned, biting his lip.
“Fuck,” said Zoe. “Well we don’t have too much time to figure it out, look at those storm clouds.”
“Ah. Yeah those don’t look great,” said Remi, glancing up at the clouds. “Shit. Well. Just facts, I think that this pass is too hard for them until they’ve rested. So there’s no choice but to go back.”
“But going back is more than twice the distance. We don’t have enough food for that long.”
The three thought about this for a moment.
“Well, if I take a small group and go through the keyhole pass, especially the stronger ones, then we can leave you with more food. If we can take that pass, we’ll be through by early tomorrow.”
“What if you get stranded or stuck? I don’t think it’s a good idea to split ourselves up.” said Remi, looking at Zoe to back him up.
“I think that’s actually a pretty good option. We’re so close. If we go back down, we don’t have to take the whole lap back - there’s a shortcut. You can meet us after restocking the extra supplies from the car if you need to.”
Remi bit at his nail. “How sure are you about this?” he asked.
Zoe grinned. “70/30. But we’ll figure it out. And if we can get in contact with someone, that will go a really long ways,” she said. “The question is just, who goes?”
If this isn’t making sense, the thing to consider is the same idea with my mom - going FARTHER into altitude didn’t really make sense
“I can stay behind with Alyssa, Ikram and Andrew,” said Cola. “I’m tight with them. Plus, I’m not as agile over those boulders as you guys.”
“Oh you think two of us should go through the pass?” asked Remi.
“Yeah. six kids versus three.”
They gave the kids a quick brief. Ikram burst into tears.
“Don’t leave me behind!” Ikram sobbed, gripping Amina tightly.
Oops, I accidentally brought both of them with…The intended group of Muhammad, Bejamin, Noah, Yelena would be very interesting, so I’m going to write them into the other group as well and then bring more of Yelena and Muhammad in
“I’m not leaving my sister,” said Amina.
Zoe knelt down next to Amina. “Okay. I won’t make you do that. Follow my fingers with your eyes, I want to make sure you are strong enough to take care of her.” Zoe put her fingers in front Amina’s face, watching carefully with the gaze of an EMT as Amina’s eyes tracked Zoe’s index finger.
“Good. It looks like the altitude hasn’t gotten to you. You’re looking very strong. Promise me you will help Cola take care of the others?” said Zoe.
Amina didn’t look as sure as she usually did, but she needed, looking around at the gazes of the others.
Some of the children quickly gave each other last minute hugs, some of them tearful, while the adults transferred the necessary food and supplies out of various bags and into new ones. They were as careful as they could be to make sure that each subgroup had enough materials to function on its one - one stove each, enough water, the enough tents.
“Okay team Alpine, let’s go,” said Zoe, calling over her shoulder. “Remi, be caboose okay?”
Remi made train noises, and Noah and Benjamin joined along, seemingly distracted from the tension of the situation.
They began to climb up the increasingly rocky terrain, their legs fresh and ready to go after all of that talking.
As they had become accustomed to by now, they encountered several false summits. The trail wound them up the path of a small stream cascading over the side of the mountain, and in not too long they had made it to the source of the series of tiny waterfalls. A massive, forboding dark blue lake lay in a quiet, alien oval.
“I feel like we’re on another planet,” whispered Noah. Indeed, all of the vegation and any visible life was behind them. The dark clouds above were moving quickly towards the sun. Which each step, Remi hoped that the kids hadn’t yet noticed them.
“Shit,” Remi said, feeling a drop. He looked down at his sleeves and saw a droplets forming on them.
“Okay everyone, drop your packs and get out your tents if you have them. If you don’t, make sure you get out your rainjackets,” Zoe said calmly, far ahead of Remi.
“We’re sleeping here?” asked Yelena.
“Probably not but-” at that moment a huge rumble of thunder interrupted Zoe.
Zoe Looked up for effect. “But we’re going to want to get some shelter.”
“Isn’t it better to keep going?” Remi asked Zoe as quietly as he could as the kids were preoccupied carrying out her directions.
“Rain and lightening can’t hurt us as long as the kids get on their sleeping pads. That’ll insulate them from the ground and prevent them from getting hit,” said Zoe.
The kids had gotten fast, and two tents were already up. Zoe and Remi realized that they needed to set up their own.
“Let me help,” said Noah, attempting to take off Remi’s backpack.
“Thank you Noah, but can you do something else for me? Make sure that the other kids know to stay on their sleeping pads. It will protect them from the lightning,” Zoe said sweetly.
“Yes miss,” said Noah, and turned to get the news to the kids. Remi got out the tent from his pack as Zoe made sure to help get this information out. It was around this point in time that the rain started coming down very hide, in violent sheets.
After anbout another two minutes, all three tents had been set up all next to each other, their doors facing each other so that the occupants of each one were able to easily talk to one another. over the occasional rumbling of thunder.
CRACK
A particularly loud strike of lightening elicited cries of fright from the kids. Benjamin was yelling. “I can’t see!” he said.
“Are you okay Benjamin?” asked Remi.
“I can’t see!” Bejamin repeated.
Remi got out of his tent and into Noah and Benjamin’s tent.
“I saw it in the lake - it struck right in the middle of the lake in a solid line. But now I can’t see,” said Benjamin.
Remi shot a worried look at Zoe, who stared back at him with a mirrored one.
“I wish I had seen the lightning,” muttered Yelena.
“Why would you say that?” yelled Noah. “He can’t see anymore!”
“That’s normal Benjamin,” said Remi, “If you see lightning directly, you go blind temporarily, but your vision will return soon.”
“Okay,” whimpered Benjamin. “It did look pretty cool though.”
As soon as it had come, the absolute torrent of rain pelting the surface of their taints began to abate, and, in not too long, recede to just a very faint pitter patter.
Zoe peeked out of the tent see relatively clear skies.
“Okay team,” Zoe said. “Thanks for being so brave. We need to pack up and get moving. There’s an opening in the rain, but not for too much longer.”
“I want to go home,” Aleksei sobbed. “I want to see mama.”
Zoe looked at Aleksei and then at Remi as if to say, do something about that.
Remi lowered himself down to where Aleksei was sitting inside of the tent, even as the other tents were being deconstructed.
“I know big man. Everyone feels that way sometimes. But your mom isn’t here, okay? It’s us. Your team. Your team is here, and we’re all going to take care of each other, okay?”
Alekei kept crying, but he nodded, and began to get up and help Remi take down the tent.
Soon the group was back on the move. In a single, tight line, the six of them grimly ascended up the mountain in a narrow strip of gravelly land where a smaller lake fed into the bigger one.
Zoe was holding Benjamin’s hand, leading him.
“I am starting to be able to see again,” Benjamin reported in a relieved way to the rest of the group.
The rest of the kids let out a cheer, including Yelena.
“Sorry for saying that I wished that I had seent he lighning,” the girl said. “I guess that was kind of…insensitive.”
“Good word!” said Remi, banging his chest twice.
Noah and Aleksei copied him by hitting their chest twice and saying good word, and then laughed.
“Thanks,” said Benjamin. “I forgive you, Yelena.”
They arrived at what must be a final body of water. It was smaller, but there was ice on the corners.
Noah and Benjamin still had their walking sticks from earlier and were using them. Zoe was guiding Benjamin slowly by the hand on a narrow bit of gravelly ground that was just slightly less inclined than the surrounding terrain, which sloped more steeply towards the lake fifty feet below or so.
Behind him, Noah slipped, and began to slide down the gravelly hill. Remi shot his hand down to catch the back of Noah’s pack, and the two of them watched his walking stick cartwheel down the hill and hit the surface of the lake below, making a loud CRACK as it cut through the ice, leaving a long line where it passed through.
Noah and Remi looked at each other.
“Thanks,” said Noah.
“You got it.”
Even more carefully, the group continued. Remi had his eyes on the dark clouds. They were beneath a gap in the storm, but more of them continued to move towards them, crackling with lightning, and causing Benjamin to flinch whenever Thunder rumbled and broke somewhere over the mountains that surrounded them, for tall, unforgiving grey peaks surrounded them on all sides, blocking out most of the sky.
On the map, the keyhold was just a tiny break in the mountain, and the group threaded through this opening. On the other side of the lake, the sky from the next valley began to open before them.
“Woah!” said Benjamin.
“Can you see now Benjamin?” asked Zoe with concern, as Benjamin had let go of her hand and had nimbly walked up the side of a boulder that blocked their way.
“Oh yeah!” yelled Benjamin. “I can see. Come up and look!”
Zoe skipped up several stones like a staircase to join Benjamin at the top.
“You’re fast,” said Benjamin, looking up at her with admiration. Zoe smiled, putting a hand on his shoulder.
“Ain’t that something,” she said, looking at at the valley before them. Soon enough, Remi had gotten the rest of the kids up with them.
The next valley lay before them like a soft green blanket. A forest took up patches through it, where it was relatively flat in the east, with a flat and calm river running through it. On the west side of the valley, the river became cruel, carving through steep canyons. But before they could get to any of that they would have to get past what lay before them. A mountainside of builders, each as big as the cab of an eighteenwheeler, any hope of flat ground solidly beneath them.
“Remember,” said Zoe, cautioning them. “You can always stop and ask for help.”
“Also remember,” Remi added,“That with your packs on, you are quite top-heavy. If you fall…don’t fall.”
Remi caught Ikram and Amina squeeze each other’s hands before Ikram took in a deep breath and hopped carefully to the next boulder, her backpack bouncing with the force of the leap. The backpacks made every movement like a step on a planet with double gravity, so even small hops like these felt more like longer vaults.
Would be fun to add in a nurtle here if I have to that’s about someone saving someone else
Methodically, like a strange breed of mountain bunny, the adventurers hopped from one boulder to another, eventually making it to flatter ground. By the time found grass beneath their feet again, the sun had almost set, and the clouds had opened again.
“Set up your tents!” yelled Remi over the sudden, defeaning downpour. “Try to get them on high ground!”
It was all they could do to set their tents up in the powerful winds. Remi stopped trying to keep his hood up as he and Zoe put of their tent and threw their packs inside before going to the kids to try and help them get shelter up quickly.
Amina and Ikram had theirs up in no time, but Noah and Benjamin were having trouble.
“Grab that end!” yelled Noah to Benjamin, but they were holding the long end of the rainflow on the short end of the tent footprint.
Remi shifted the rainflow so that they held it correctly, and in a few moments the tent went up on its aluminum poles and the boys, by now soaking, were able to retreat inside. Zoe through their bags in after them.
“Oof,” said Noah.
“Watch it!” said Benjamin.
Zoe giggled, And Remi imagined the sound but could not hear it. He turned tail and rolled into their tent, pushing the bags aside to make room as he rolled his sleeping pad out, hearing Zoe yelling something.
oh boy oh boy is there opportunity for romance here?
Zoe dropped her sopping wet jacket to the tarped ground in the vestibule outside the entrance of the ten, then slipped inside. She leaned over, dropping off an equally wet baseball cap, and rung out her hair with her knees together still inside the tent as Remi scrambled through their bags to find the stove and some of the last dehydrated meals they had left. His fingers found the inflatable Nat Geo lantern first. He quickly inflated it, then turned it on so that the golden light flooded the space, illuminating the drops appearing and then rolling down the sides of the rainfly above.
“What do you think, should we make these meals or just let the kids go to bed hungry?” asked Remi, glancing over at Zoe once, and then twice.
“I asked them, they said they weren’t…” she said, still outside the opening, and then pulled herself in into the cramped space of the tent, zipping the door closed behind her, sealing out the sound of the rain into a dull bass throbbing.
For a moment, they were incredibly close. Remi could see the freckles inside of Zoe’s eyes, and the rain dropping off her eyelashes. Simultaneously, he was aware of a warmth spreading through his chest and, strangely, the stress from the day still held on this shoulders. Her voice and the tension of her body, he could see that she was holding that same weight. Of the backpacks, and perhaps the heavier weight of fear that one of these kids would get hurt on their watch.
She exhaled halfway, and it was warm on Remi’s face. Remi’s hands released the plastic bags they had been holding. It was as if his fingertips themselves could imagine the warmth of her body in his arms.
Remi’s perception of physical space inverted. A moment earlier, he had been in a tent in a vast valley in a rainstorm, far from any other human beings outside of their team, as far as he knew. Now, world outside, although defeaning and chaotic, was sealed away. Remi was aware not of the the way their bodies occupied the limited space in the tent, but rather on how little space there was in the tent that was not their bodies.
Remi could tell tell if he leaned forward a fraction of a centimeter or if simply wanted to, and just like that, the choice presented itself.
Zoe had not yet looked away, nor had she frozen. Her eyes searched his for something. Remi’s did too. They searched for the same surprise that he felt.
“The kids,” she finally said. “Do you think they will hear us?”
Remi blushed. Mentally, she was a few steps ahead of him. “Not if we just do this” he said, and kissed her, softly and only for a moment. He withdrew, shivering slightly as adrenaline pumped through his body. She kissed him back harder, and Remi no longer restrained himself. He reached out his arms and they held each other closer, the warmth of their bodies burning through the cold rain on their skin.
I feel like in this situation, Remi is taken by surprise to an extent, because he was stopped himself very quickly and very early on from indulging in the kinds of throughts that lead to infatuation precisely because he KNEW they would go to far, very quickly, and make things difficult.
I’m also not totally sure if this should happen like this - it is definitely an option for one of them to stay in one of the kids tents. It would be awkward but probably possible. What happens now? I mean, do they not have sex after that? It’s hot as hell - how are they going to sleep in a tent together after that steaminess.
Merged, the two tents were not too cramped for Cola, Amina, Ikram, Andrew and Alyssa to share them, even with Alyssa and andrew laying down. Cola played music from his phone and they all drank tea from their camp mugs as the rain came down around them. Cola hoped they felt safe.
“It’s nice to have a rest day,” said Amina.
“It really is!” exlaimed Andrew. Alyssa had felt better after a short nap, but Alyssa and Ikram were still more or less out, sometimes coming to consciousness long enough for Cola to dote on them and try to get them to drink more tea, only to go under again.
“Peanut butter,” Amina said with a smile. They were playing the card game BS.
“Ah shucks!” Andrew said, gleefully pretending to be dissapointed. Cola’s heart smiled. He hadn’t seen Andrew this happy since the beginning of the trip. Cola caught Andrwe occasionally shooting glances over at Alyssa where she slept. Perhaps he was simply happy to not be the the one holding everyone back this time.
“So we’re going to sleep here Mr. Cola?” asked Amina.
“Not unless you want to hike down the mountain in the dark and the rain,” said Cola.
“Oh no, definitely not,” said Andrew emphatically. Amina shook her head in agreement.
“Rest day she said,” presenting a fist bump to Andrew, which he happily took. This had been what Cola had told them as the others left. He had to get all their spirits up for them to cover the necessary distance the next few days.
“Three jacks,” said Cola, slapping down his three jacks.
“BS,” said Amina, looking him squarely in the eye and snarling her nose.
Cola returned the gaze, his lower eyelids half up in challenge.
“Enjoy your new gifts,” said Cola coolly.
“Ah!” Amina through up her hands in defeat.
“Oof Amina, that’s a lot of cards,” said Andrew sympathetically.
“I know. Cola, why do you hate me?” she asked dramatically.
“I don’t hate you. I don’t go easy on you because I know you can take it,” said Cola, giving her a little head nod.
Amina nodded, then tilted her head and smiled. “Rest day,” she said, extending her arm.
Cola laughed. “Rest day,” he said, bumping her fist.
Idea: what if the story of Natu came in here? Could it fit? The kids could help to develop it.
When Cola awoke the next morning, he emerged from his tent under a violet and blue morning sky. He switched off his headlight. The light from the moon and the peaking sun was enough to see small figure sitting on a rock with its head inclined towards the fading stars. The moon hung quietly over the Keyhole where the other group had dissappeared the day before. Cola looked into the space in the mountain, an opening between rocks. The storms of yesterday had passed, the sky now as clear as a clean sheet on line. The camp now three tents instead of six.
Small pebbles crunched under Cola’s boots as he walked to the figure. The small figure and the hat with the pom pom told Cola it was Ikram.
“Feeling better?” Cola whispered, sitting on a rock next to hear.
Unstartled, Ikram turned her face slightly towards his but did not avert her eyes from the stars.
“Yes,” she said, and then she did look at him, an easy smile resting on her lips.
Cola nodded. “Good,” he said. “I’m really glad you’re feeling better.”
“Rest day,” she said.
“Rest day,” Cola repeated with a chuckle.
Ikram and Cola’s song: Shiva’s flute
Ikram turned her gaze back to the stars.
“Are the stars the same everywhere?” she asked.
Cola thought about this before answering. In the morning chill beneath his coat, with the stars twinkling above, he felt no hurry to answer. Perhaps he did not know the answer. Maybe he shouldn’t answer at all, or simple say “I don’t know.” But that wouldn’t be true.
“Well, the stars are big burning balls of fire, way out in space. They probably change, like a fire, not staying exactly the same all the time. But they definitely look different depending on where you are.”
“So they are still there in the daytime?” asked Ikram.
“They’re still in space, yeah,” Cola said. When Ikram didn’t say anything for several moments, he added,“And if we were in the same place as one of those stars, like, maybe that one, then we probably couldn’t easily even tell if it was daytime where we are on earth.”
“Is it nighttime right now?” asked Ikram.
“Well, it’s still pretty dark, so sort of. But technically, it’s morning, because it’s 5am, and 5am is considered morning.”
“Is it 5am at home?”
“In DC?”
“Yeah. At my house, for my mama and my brothers and sisters.”
Cola looked at his watch pointlessly. “It’s actually an hour earlier,” he said.
Oh shit they’d totally have to be in New Hampshire, if that, maybe Upstate new york
“Like time travel?”
“No like, the sun. Traveling. The sun is there, and it will rise over us, but your family is that way, very far, a hundred times farther than we’ve walked, so it will take longer to reach them.”
“And what about at home? How long will it take to reach my home?” asked Ikram.
Cola was puzzled by this, until he realized she must mean where she had been before DC.
“Where is your home?”
“Sana’a. It is in Yemen.”
“Ah,” said Cola. “I think they are having lunch.”
Ikram laughed. “I think I knew this.”
“Speaking of which, it’s almost light. Should we wake the others?”
“No. It is not light yet. We should wait until it is a little lighter. Until it is harder to see stars. I have to save them all up for when we get back to DC!” Ikram said softly, smiling up to her cheeks.
“Good,” said Cola. “Save them up.”
They say there for a while longer, until it got bright, and they agreed to wake up the others, but only if everyone was feeling totally okay. Cola knew that they had a lot of distance to cover, but there was no use panicking anyone. That could come later, if necessary.
“How do you feel?” asked Cola outside of Alyssa and Andrews tent. He was initially greeting with some groans, and then an accusation.
“You took my pillow!” came Andrews voice.
“Did not,” said Alyssa groggily.
“How can you even - you’re still sleeping on it!”
“Okay if you’re awake enough to fight, you’re awake enough to eat breakfast,” said Cola, careful to say ‘eat’ instead of ‘make’, as of course, he was not their butler but he didn’t exactly need to draw attention to this.
Despite some normal grogginess and irratibility, breakfast went well. Cola was relieved to see that Alyssa’s altitute sickness recovery seemed to have been so complete that she did not even seem to remember that yesterday she had been through hell.
“So,” said Cola,“How do you feel?”
“Fine,” said Alyssa, eating her oatmeal, but then stopped when she realized that Cola was staring at her expectantly.
“And compared to yesterday?” said Cola, raising an eyebrow.
“Fine! I feel totally…fine!” Alyssa said with a mouth full of oatmeal, getting up. She started to do a little shuffle with her feet.
“Probably that extra pillow”, said Andrew in mock-grumpiness, but Cola have him a grin and when Andrew returned it Cola could see that it was going to be a good day.
They set out down the mountain ahead of schedule. Ikram and Alyssa spotted birds. Andrew told Amina about a dream he had had that he wanted to turn into a movie that was about zombines, and Amina rolled her eyes a lot but provided him with a steady stream of feedback about why, for “science reasons” a zombie that ate a lot of other zombies probably wouldn’t become a bigger zombie. The argued happily through their first snack breack, and even their next.
They cruised along, backtracking all the way to the river at the bottom the value. The rainfall from the previous night had turned it into a monster, twisting, turning and exploding against the rocks like an enormous dragon flying down the center of the valley. As they made it around a nend in the river, Cola’s heart dropped to his stomach.
Where the bridge should have been, there was just twisted wood on either side of the river, a gaping wreckage of slats like a ribcage splayed into the raging torrent.
Cola slowed down, approaching this new situation. The conversations of the kids began to slow and quiet.
They stopped at slight hill above the ruined bridge, underneath a dying sycamore.
“Who here can swim?” asked Cola. Amina raised her hand hesitantly. She was the only one.
“Okay. You can put your packs down for a second. Let’s check this out.”
“Can I got pee?” asked Andrew.
“Yes Andrew. Just get far enough away that we can’t see you this time, okay?”
“Okay,” Andrew said, scampering off as soon as he had slipped out of his packpack straps.
Cola and the three girls walked cautiously over to the ruins of the bridge. Cola could see almost right away that one of the large wooden beams that held up the now scattered, broken slats, was still extending across the river, at a slight angle from how it had disengaged from its foundation on the opposite side of the river. It was just a large column of wood, likely just a fallen Ponderosa Pine repurposed by the trail builders, stripped of its branches so that knobs remained at intervals along the length of the horizontal trunk.
In fact, some of the slate still remained, so that there was really just four or five feet of exposed trunk to walk on. That is, if it was a good idea in any universe to walk on it.
“I hate to say this,” shouted Cola over the roar of the water,“But I think we’re going to have to cross over the bridge still.”
“Bridge?” said Amina. “What bridge?”
“You have a point.” said Cola.
Cola stroked his chin in thought.
“We can walk downstream to see if there’s another way to cross,” said Cola. He looked out at the broad expanse of rushing water with no other traversals in sight.
They walked back up to the top. Andrew had returned. Cola asked Alyssa to walk with him as they travelled down river, leaving Andrew, Ikram and Amina behind. Cola kept feeling optimism bubble up in him again every time they made it around a bend in the river, only to be greated by a view of an uninterrupted river, coursing downwards. Cola lookd for rocks that could be hopped that rose high above the water, fallen trees, any natural bridge. The river was narrow enough that it seemed possible, wide enough it seemed unlikely. They found nothing. Alyssa and Cola said nothing on the way back, ad Cola looked at his feet, trying to think of what other options existed to them. What other options…until Alyssa put her hands over her mouth.
“Ikram!” she said, and started running back towards where they had left the others.
“Alyssa wait!” shouted Cola. He was going to call out again to stop her from running but then he saw what she must have seen. A small yet lumpy shape, one of the kids, was halfway over the log suspended over the river, unmoving.
And another one was on the other side of the river. Jumping up and down and calling for help.
Cola began to run too. As he grew closer, he realized that the child on the log was Ikram, and the one on the other side of the river was Amina. Of course. But she was not calling for help after all. She was yelling words of encouragement. Cola saw Ikram’s pack wiggling gently on her back as she inched forward, and couldn’t help but imagining the heavy pack swinging a little too far one direction and taking Ikram off with it, into the swiling water below. Cola’s eyes flicked to the ground by Amina’s feet, and saw that hers was there as well.
“You are almost there Ikram!” Amina was shouting in encouragement. “You are so close!”
Cola had misinterpreted the other shape as well. It was not a child paralyzed with fear. Not exactly. Afraid, yes. But Ikram was steadily moving forwards, arms hugging the sides of the log, eyes scrunched up. But with each breath, Ikram pulled herself a bit further forward.
Cola made with his hands around his mouth to shout something at her, probably to stop, or go backwards, but saw that going backwards would be much harder than going forwards. Shit. Cola couldn’t swim either. And he sure as hell couldn’t afford a lawyer with his teaching salary.
Unsure of what do, he looked over at the kids that remained within his reach.
Andrew was white as a ghost, standing completely rigid. Alyssa, on the other hand, looked inspired.
“YOU GOT THIS IKRAM!” she shouted, and started jumping up and down too.
When Ikram made it across, Cola breathed a breath of relief. Ikram pulled herself to her feet, dropped her bag next to Amina’s, and dusted herself off, absolutely beaming.
She held her hands up, her smile faltering just slightly when she saw what Cola could only guess was a murderous expression on his own face, and then gave Amina a hug. Amina shook her friend back and forth with excitement, jumping her up and down.
Cola said nothing to them. He faced Andrew and Alyssa. Alyssa still looked excited. Andrew was biting his fingernails, looking across the river with a thousand-mile stare in some sort of trance. Cola had been seriously considering finding another pass to a parking lot. Calling a shuttle service or possibly hitchhiking. But that would require having faith that the other group would be okay with limited food. They had a lot of food just in case the altitude sickness didn’t resolve itself quickly. The other group had very little.
“Andrew, do you think you can get across the river?” Cola asked.
Andrew shook his head vigorously.
“I’m sorry to ask as if it’s a choice buddy, but I think we have to. What if I could get your pack over for you, so that you could get over with just yourself and the clothes on your back?”
Andrew looked at him with shining eyes
Okay well, not a no. That’s good, that Cola.
“What about you Alyssa?” Alyssa lookeda at Cola and then at the girls across the river and took a deep breath.
“Do you think you can do it?” Cola asked.
Alyssa nodded.
“Okay. Leave your pack though. I’ll get it for you,” said Cola.
Alyssa nodded.
“Go for it,” said Cola, giving Alyssa a nod. She hesitated for a moment, then began walked towards the bridge. She experimenting with stepping out, but then withdrew her foot, and got down on all fours, a tribute to Ikram’s method.
She was over in no time.
“Okay Andrew.” said Cola. “It’s your turn buddy.”
Andrew took a deep, rattling sigh in and began to walk forwards, but then stopped, and simply sat down in the dust, looking down.
Seeing Andrew’s face was not reassuring. He had seen that look before. The look of indecision, a gaping pit of despair that just pulls a person deeper and deeper. A median on the highway suddenly appearing between lanes, but no decision is made. Time stuck forever at the moment before impact. A thought crossed his mind. What if he couldn’t get Andrew across? He pushed the thought away, but started to move. He would get all the backpacks across first. He didn’t want to give Andrew too much time to stew in his put of despair, but if something where to happen, it would be better to have all his ducks in a row. Get the supplies over first. Then handle this last challenge.
Cola moved efficiently but carefully, beginning to cross the bridge. He was able to do it while standing
crossing the bridgle relatively easily on foot once, then twice, then three times, until his backpack, Alyssa’s and Andrews were all across.
Cola got down on his knees, trying to get low enough to look Andrew in the eyes, but Andrew wouldn’t look up, so he just put a hand on his shoulder.
“See? No sweat. And you don’t even have to carry a backpack. You can do this. I know you can,” said Cola. Nothing. Locked down, looking at the dust.
“I really wish that we had another option,” said Cola. “I really do. But I can’t ask them back Andrew.”
“Why not,” Andrew mumbled.
“Because they’re right. We have to go that way anyways. We need to meet up with the others and make sure they’re okay. We need to be strong so that we can get back to our team and take care of each other, okay?”
Andrew had picked up a twig and was drawing X’s in the dirt. Cola watched him draw a few of them. Cola thought about wha
“I know you can do it. Look at me,” said Cola. He put a finger underneath Andrew’s chin and gently grew it up. His eyes were still downcast, but after a moment he looked at Cola.
“Okay, so this is what you’ll do. Visualize this with me. You’re going to walk down to the bridge, get down on all fours, like this.”
Cola fully commited, getting on his palms and knees like some sort of animal. Against his will, a small smile surfaced on Andrew’s scared face.
“Okay step two, right? you’re going to hug it, okay?” said Cola. He started to mime hugging a log with his arms, but then out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a log.
Cola scuttled over to the log, not bothering to get up off the ground at this point, and hugged it tight.
“You’re going to grab it tight. Pull your knees up. Reach up. Repeat. Okay?”
Andrew nodded, thought about it and then shook his head and started to cry.
“Think of Alyssa. She would be really proud of you. So will Amina and Ikram,” Cola looked over at the three girls and saw they were still watching. He pointed at them,“See?”
Seeing that Andrew was looking at him, the three girls started jumping up and down, shouting words of encouragement.
“You can do it Andrew!” Alyssa yelled.
“And I’ll be proud of you too,” said Cola.
Andrew had started breathing really quickly, but was instinctively trying to stop himself.
“That’s it. Breath steady.” Cola breathed in, then out, slowly. Andrew’s breathing matched his own. The boy’s face was starting to get sunburned from sitting in the sun, and Cola wondered how long they had been sitting over there.
Andrew breathing had steadied, and Cola took his hand and gently pulled him up. He waited, and Andrew led the way towards the ruined bridge. He didn’t take a single look back, but immediately did what Cola had shown him, getting down low and grabbing the log. Although the bridge support timber was wider in diameter, Andrew put his skinny arms around it and held himself tightly to it, looking straight ahead.
Andrew pulled his knees up. Cola made a silent fist bump bump. Yes.
Andrew repeated the process. He got around halfway there, and looked back at Cola, beaming nervously.
Cola gave him a thumbs up. Andrew gave him a thumbs up in return.
Pulling his hand off the log had through Andrew off balance, and he teetered to one side, his expression quickly becoming one of surprised terror. His upper body felt sideways on the log, as if side-saddle on a horse, and his knees clamped tighter to keep himself from sliding of. Cola had already made to rush towards andrew, but in the moment that he leaned forward to start running down the log, Andrew’s leg’s slipped. He slid sideways off the log and dissappeared into the rushing water.
Cola froze for an instant, then continued running across the log. It didn’t even occur to him that he could fall. Alyssa was still screaming.
“Stay here!” Cola yelled as he passed them, sprinting as fast as he could in an attempt to outrun the rapids. When he could, he spared a look over his left shoulder to look for a shape bobbing in the water.
The river to a circuitous and perilous route through boulders peaking out of the water. For maybe one full second, Cola saw Andrew bob up out of the water, gasping for air, and then go under again as the water cascaded over a rock.
A moment later, he reappeared, this time managing to stay above the water where it was flat for about thirty feet. But he was moving fast. If he kept going past this point, that was probably it. Cola didn’t think he would be able to catch him. This was it - in more ways than one. Cola through down his jacket on the ground.
“Swim towards me!” Cola screamed, waving his arms, reapeating this as many times as he could intelligably.
Andrew saw him, and he started swimming.
“Harder!” Cola screamed. “Swim harder!”
He was sure that Andrew was doggypaddling as hard as he could, but making slow progress. And he was swimming straight for the bank, and not at a diagonal. The river was pulling him downstream at least five times faster than any progress he made. It wasn’t enough.
As Andrew passed him, Cola dove into the water. It was ice cold. Pure, screaming pain flooded through Cola’s body, but he did his best to ignore it, and told his muscles to swim despite the sudden instinct to contract into a ball to conserve warmth. Two strokes later, the feeling was gone, replaced by a torrent of adrenaline.
He had never been on the swim team, but had trained for a triathalon once. He had become a relatively strong swimmer then. Cola swam slightly into the current, letting it take him towards Andrew. He cut into the center of the river, towards Andrew. But Andrew had dissappeared. Cola couldn’t see him anywhere.
He must have gone under Cola thought.
Then his head knocked into a rock, hard. He tried to intake a breath in pain, but instead he inhaled a mouthful of water. It took a disconcerting fraction of a second, but while he was struggling to cough up the water and replace it with oxygen, Cola realized that he hadn’t hit a rock. His skull had knocked against Andrews.
Cola spit out as much of the water he had swallowed out. He flailed his arms around and found something incongruously soft. He pulled it towards him. It was Andrew sure enough. Desperately, he flailed them towards the side of the river. But it didn’t seem to be getting any closer. Just the rocks. Before he knew it, they were forced under. Cola didn’t know which way was up, but he held on to Andrew. When they resurfaced, Cola opened his eyes, which were waterlogged and bleary, making it hard to tell which way he was facing.
I might not have many more chances at this Cola thought. Andrew was heavy in his arms. He had pushed just to get to Andrew that his reserves of energy were dwindling into nothing. Each kick of his legs took all his effort, as if he was swimming through a vat of marbles.
Cola oriented himself, heard Andrew’s reassuring sputtering, and found the direction of the bank again. It looked perfect. Sandy, gradual, a perfect place to beach themselves. But it was still far. If anything, it looked farther away. Okay. Plan B.
Cola looked towards the other side of the river. The rocks on that side were steep. No place to go. Farther down the river, Cola couldn’t see much - his view was blocked by a large rock that was coming up, sticking out of the water like a wedge, driving water to the right or to the left in mean-looking currents that dropped out of sight to who knew how much farther below. It might even be a full-on waterfall. Although…a small amount of water splashed up on top of the rock, which had a relatively flat surface pockmarked by small holes, filled with water from the rapids.
Cola tread water as well as he could with one arm. He looked over at Andrew. Still breathing, still conscious, but with his eyes screwed shut.
Cola did his best to situated them right in the center - not right, not left, but head on with the rock. A collision course. And then he kicked, hard, doing his best to deccelerate before the imminent impact. Or maybe there would be no impace — maybe they would just slip sideways with the current like nothing. It was impossible to tell from the surface of the water what would happen. But the slower they were going, the better their chances. That was Cola’s theory anyways.
“Kick backwards!” Cola yelled. Andrew’s body began to bob strangely, and Cola could tell he was trying at least. “Harder! Keep kicking!” Cola yelled.
That was it. They’d done what they could. A moment later, Cola’s knee exploded against a hard rock. But he kicked upwards, forcing his body out of the water over so slightly, and his chest made contact with the flat rock. Andrew’s body went right, pulling forcefully at his right arm, trying to pull Cola with him.
While still holding Andrew, Cola brought one knee up on the rock, then the other, gasping with pain where his injured knee pressed against the rock. Andrew’s arm slipped in his arm, and Andrew drifted downstream. But Cola’s hand caught Andrew’s wrist before he was gone. And now that he was on top of the rock, Cola was able to reach with his other hand as well.
He reached towards Andrew with his left arm. It destabalized Cola, so that he fell onto his left side, but it didn’t matter. Just more surface area and friction. One hand gripping Andrew’s hand, another gripping his wrist, Cola tried to pull Andrew up. It was awkward, but after a few tries, he got Andrew’s upper body up as well. With a final heavy, he pulled Andrews small body out of the powerful grip of the river, and onto the safety of the rock.
Andrew gasped violently to catch his breath, wretching up water, and Cola was relieved to see he was conscious.
Satisfied that Andrew was safely on the rock, Cola collapsed onto his back, breathing heavily. The sky above was still peaceful and clear, just like that morning. A hawk soared high, high above them.
so were are we headed here? Probably towards the kids having an amazing time despite themselves, and the leaders of the trip being unsure whether they should be doing this - I guess they might learn something like, the outdoor education program is working really well, buuuut they need more expertise/safety precautions for this type of trip, or possibly just that this sort of trip is too dangerous for kids of this age.
“But what does the spirit of the mountain want?” asked Noah, sitting cross-legged on his sleeping bag.
“Well,” said Benjamin, thinking carefully. He was lying on his back his his head on a pillow, snugly in his sleeping bag. “I think he - or maybe it’s a she - wants us to brave.”
“Then why would she created all these scary storms, and almost blind you with lightning?” asked Noah.
“Well that’s to give us something to brave about. If it was all just sunny, and no altitute sickness, and warm and nice all the time, we couldn’t be brave,” said Benjamin.
“But what if we had been hit by lightning? Or blown into the lake, or off the rocks? It seemed to me like the spirit of the mountain was trying to hurt us,” said Noah. “You know, if it existed,” he added, expertly, to Remi.
Remi lay there watching the shadowbox of the raindrops running down the side of the outside tent with a slight frown on his face. The drops built up to a certain size before they were heavy enough to fall. Then they merged into other drops, sometimes one way, another. It was impossible to predict which way they might go, which ones would combine and recombine.
Why in the night sky are the lights hung, why is the earth floating round the sun… Fragments of lyrics floated through Remi’s mind, mingling with this chatter from the young adventurers.
“No,” said Benjamin confidently, repositioning to face Noah where he was sitting on the other side or Remi. “I guess I can’t know for sure, but I think of it like, it’s an old mountain, right Remi?”
“Oh yeah,” mumbled Remi,“Been around since the dinasaurs I think. Tens of millions of years old.”
“Woah,” said Noah and Benjamin togethert.
“So like I was saying, it’s a very old mountain spirit. She’s like a wise old woman. She must have had millions of storms in her lifetime, just like we’ve had millions of steps. She wouldn’t misstep and hurt us. She just wanted to show us her power so that we knew.”
“To show off?” asked Noah.
Benjamin laughed. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I just can’t forget that bolt of image striking the water. It was…beautiful.”
Benjamin was looking at the ceiling of the tent again, but his eyes looked farther, up through the material of the tent and into the sky, through the run that was still pouring down on the them, through the rainclouds.
“There were so many pieces of lightning. Like a forest. And where they touched the water, there was fog, or mist.”
“Steam?” asked Remi, looking at Benjamin now, thoughts of Zoe and the way raindrops combined and recombined out of his mind for a moment.
Benjamin continue to look up, his eyes bright and distant.
“Steam. And the whole valley was lit up like it was a bright day. And the lightning looked like trees, with roots everywhere.”
Noah looked over at his friend with wide eyes, mouth just slightly open.
“Okay boys,” said Remi. “Let’s try to get some sleep. Big day tomorrow, and it’s late.”
“Okay,” said Noah and Benjamin together. Noah crawled into his sleeping bag, shifting around inside of it for a moment.
Once he stopped moving, Remi reached for the Nat geo lantern and turned it off. In the darkness, the rain continued to patter ceaselessly on the top of the tent. The wind made rippling and shearing sounds with the fabric, the tent supports creaking as they flexed this way and that. The trees howled, and distant thunder rumbled.
“So the spirit of the mountain will keep us safe?” asked Noah.
“Yes,” said Benjamin’s voice with finality. Nestled in between them in the cramped tent, Remi smiled in the darkness. With each patter of rain, his mind emptied itself of another thought or hope or worry, until it was completely empty and he was finally asleep.
They were awoken to the tent being shaken violently.
“Who’s there?” Remi attempted to yell, but it came out as half formed words, weighed down by dreams.
“Rise and shine baby birds!” came Zoe’s voice outside, giving a few more shakes. The dirt under boots shiftly wetly as the sound of footsteps grew further away. The stopped, and there was a moment of beautiful morning silence, followed by the sound of another tent being shaken.
“Spread your wings lil’ baby hatchlings!” Zoe’s voice sang, a little louder this time.
There was a scream and then laughter from within the tent.
“You scream like a girl,” Yelena’s voice said from out of site.
“Do not,” said Aleksei’s voice indignantly. Then he screamed again, and it did sound like a little girl. The laughter was heard again; it was Yelena’s. She screamed too, beginning a screaming conversation. Benjamin let out a scream as well inside of the tent.
“Okay,” said Remi grumpily. “That’s enough! Everyone is definitely awake now!”
Remi busied himself with packing up some of the loose materials while Zoe got breakfast together and everyone else did their pre-meal packing.
“Eat up everyone,” he said around oatmeal. “We eight miles to do today,”
“How many did we do yesterday?” asked Noah, through a moutful of oatmeal. “Sorry,” he said, after swallowing. “My mom says it’s rude to talk with an open mouth.”
“That’s probably true,” said Zoe. “So yesterday we did six miles, but we climbed fifteen hundred feet of elevation. That’s one thousand and five hundred feet up.”
“How many feet of elevation today?”
“About the same. So we’re going farther and climbing the same amount. But! Hopefully we won’t have any rainstorms today. Sky looks clear,” said Zoe, taking a sip of coffee with gloved hands, looking out over the rolling tree tops to the mountains on the other side of the valley.
“We’re towards those mountains, through the valley. And then hopefully we’ll be able to meet up with the other group.”
They began hiking. The sun was bright, and everyone got their hats on. Zoe let Aleksei borrow hers, and loose strands of her hair blew in the mountain. They were making very good progress, and spirits were high.
Aleksai and Benjamin were engaged in a speed-walking competition that quickly gathered competition from the other kids, even Yelena. Remi smiled, and began announcing.
“And Yelena Anwar takes makes an attack from the back, quickly gaining on the other contestants! And she’s done it, she’s made a brilliant outside pass! The only question now is, can she hold her position?” Remi shouted ahead. Zoe looked over at him and he grinned. Although Remi had been taking up the back of the group and Zoe towards the front, the kids have left them in the back.
Zoe smiled back, and Remi began to take off at a lot jog to keep up with the kids.
“But Benjamin Ni isn’t going to give up that easily! Him and his long-time teammeate Noah Johnson draft off one another, in fast pursuit!” Zoe yelled alongside Remi as they quickly gained on the kids, who had much shorter legs than their adult counterparts.
“But although Aleksei is falling behind, he won’t give up that easily!” Remi shouted as they reached Aleksei, who was huffing and puffing a bit to keep up.
They were all now chugging along, at a half-walk half-run with the heavy packs. The packs were at least a good deal lighter than when they had started, as much of their food had been eaten. Perhaps a bit too much.
In response to this commentary, Aleksei put his head down and began to burn a bit harder on the uphill, catching up with the others.They reached the top of the hill and Yelena wooped with joy. On the right, tall pine trees extended into the sky, and on their left their was a steep drop into the ravine were the water in the river twisted and turned below like a race track. The path dropped away before them in a gravelly hill.
Now on a downhill, the kids picked up a lot more speed.
“Be careful! Don’t go too fast!” said Remi, realizing they might have amped the kids up a bit too much. But it wasn’t clear if the kids could hear him over the sound of gravel spilling underneath their boots or the sound of the wind in their ears as they raced down the hill. Aleksei caught up to Yelena at the front and almost lost his footing as his heel rolled on the loose terrain, but caught himself, maintaining his position neck-to-neck with Yelena.
Remi burst up to catch them, with a plan in mind. As he raced past the kids, they screamed in delight.
“Mr. Remi is so fast!” Benjamin exclaimed in surprise. The kids seemed to pick up their pace. Clunk. One of them went down, groaning. Thud. Another one did too. Remi wanted to turn around but knew that would cause him to fall. He skidded to a halt near the bottom of the hill, where the path did a hairpin turn, a steep ravine in front of it. Remi grabbed a springing aspen, absorbing his momentum. Noah slammed into him, followed by Yelena, but both managed to awkwardly stay standing. Remi looked back up the hill, where Zoe was making her way over to Aleksei to help him up. Benjamin was dusting himself off.
“That was fun,” said Yelena, looking at him with shining eyes.
Remi laughed. “Yep. Maybe a little too much fun. Everyone okay?”
“Yeah,” groaned Aleksei. Everyone else expressed their assent as well.
Breathing heavily, the group continued into the valley, going more slowly on the treacherously loose gravel. Sometimes the downhills are just as difficult as the up, and Remi caught Aleksei wincing a bit with some of his steps.
“Great plan. What exactly was it?,” Zoe asked, rolling her eyes.
“Well the idea was to make sure I was in front of them so that I could stop them from going off the edge. But. It kind of backfired.”
“Sort of. You got Ben and Aleksei to go down,” Zoe said, then continued forward towards her place at the front.
“Yeah, that wasn’t my goal.”
Cola was still shivering, even wearing the warmest things he wore around the fire that Amina and Ikram had helped him build. He had started it, but the two girls started gathering firewood almost as soon as he had staggered back with Andrew. Alyssa had helped Cola get most of Andrew’s wet clothes off, and Cola has asked her to retrieve as many of Andrew’s clothing as she could. Cola had then moved Andrew into his tent, wherein Cola had continued, completely stripping Andrew naked. Andrew was too cold and disoriented to protest it. Cola, shivering violently himself at this point, quickly swabbed down Andrew with a spare t-shirt, getting him dry while trying not to embarass the kid too much.
“We’re just going to get you into some warm clothes, okay buddy?” Cola said.AAndrew’s knees were an angry purple color, and his left one was missing a large flat of skin. There wasn’t time to attend to that now. He also had a slight bruise on one cheek, and some scratches on his arms. Andrew’s fingers and nose were almost completely blue, and his teeth were chattering so violently that Cola was afraid that he might bite his tongue off.
Cola put Andrew into fresh underwear, and a dry t-shirt, along with Cola’s own long, flannel long-underwear, He quickly rolled up the bottoms so that they didn’t hang off like ribbons. Once Andrew was fully bundled up and in a sleep bag, the boy had stopped shivering, and his eyelids had begun to droop.
“How do you feel?” asked Cola.
“Tired,” said Andrew.
Cola knew that Andrew was coming down from all the drenaline. Cola would probably be pretty tired too if the fatigue wasn’t balanced so powerfully by the level of anxiety he felt.
“That makes sense. Try to stay awake for a little longer, okay? I want to make sure you’re okay, and that’s harder to do if yo’re asleep.”
Andrew nodding, yawning quietly.
“What year is it?”
“Um. 2016,”
“Okay, good. Whats your name?”
“Andrew”
“Full name?”
“Andrew Rumsfeld.”
“Where are we?”
“Um, New Hampshire. The uh, in the mountains.”
“And how old are you?”
“Nine,” Andrew said. Cola was pretty sure he was actually ten, but he could probably let that one pass. There weren’t any signs of brain trauma.
“Do you have any pain in your neck? Wait don’t move it too much, move it slowly.”
Andrew moved his head slowly, then a bit faster.
“It feels okay.”
Cola began to feel relief flood through his bones like a warm liquid, from his shoulders and hips down to the tips of his fingers and toes, in his lungs. With it came a deep tiredness, so strong that he wanted to lie down right next to Andrew. He remembered that he, too, was freezing, and threw off his pants and jacket and threw on what he could. His downjacket, a long sleeve, a second pair of thinner tights. Most importantly, a hat on his head. He tied another shirt around the hat, just for good measure. Most of his heat was escaping through his ears, which were painfully cold, as if someone had drilled ice into his skull on both sides. They throbbed with sharp pain with each beat of his heart. He tied the shirt tightly around them but couldn’t bring warmth into the inside of his skull.
He left the tent to see an enormous pile of tinder.
“These are amazing,” he told the girls. “Look for some wood that’s even thicker. Six inches to a foot thick, okay?”
He caught them staring at him like he was a ghost. He probably looked just as awful as Andrew.
They nodded alertly and scattered to fulfill his request.
Cola got to work arranging the tinder into a teepee, crumpling some paper from his notebook into the fire. A couple journal entries. Better to be warm. His fingers were clumsy and entirely numb. it was difficult to pick up sticks without being able to feel them.
He reached into his pocket for his lighter, stupidly trying to flick the flame on until realizing that of course it was entirely waterlogged.
“Fuck,” Cola said in a moment of panic, until he remembered the spare matches that they stored inside the cook kit. He scrambled for it, unzipping the tent and retrieving it to see Andrew with his eyes closed.
“No sleeping yet,” Cola said.
“Mhmm,” Andrew said, barely awake,
At least the wood was dry. The dry leaves starting to smoke quickly, and then ignited, bringing the twigs with them. Cola quickly added a layer of thicker tinder on, clumsily razing his own fragile teepee of existing firewood, but it was okay; the wood was so dry that it continued to ignite under the heat it already hat. By the time Ikram and Amina had returning with large sticks, there was a small fire that Cola was able to quickly add to with sticks that he crunched over his knee and under his feet.
Don’t go fast, go steady, Cola thought to himself, catching himself scrambling for the wood hecticly, out of panic as the heat left his body and his brain became foggy. What was scariest wasn’t the numbness in his fingers or Andrew’s fast-approaching sleepiness, but the fogginess of his mind. It was hard to think. He was thankful for how simple the task at hand was; feed the fire. Anything more complex at this point, like replacing Andrew clothes, seemed incredibly complex. In fact, he was having trouble thinking of what they would do after the fire was made. Was having trouble standing too. Was breaking the wood sitting down.
“Mr. Cola,” said Alyssa gently. “It’s okay. The fire is big enough.”
Cola checked the size of the fire for the first time and saw that it was monstrous, ten large sticks piled high, the flames licking up almost to the height of Cola’s shoulders. Looking around, they were not too far from the large, dead Sycamore tree. Cola saw that Alyssa was right, and jabbed some of the logs out of the fire and onto the side, where they could not burn as easily. Then he sat down, took off his socks, his hands. They were itchy and painful at first as they blood in them began to warm up and flow at a less sluggish pace.
“Alyssa, could you bring me my water?” Cola asked. She nodded, and dissappeared into the tent, reappearing a few moment letter with his whole backpack.
“Good thinking,” Cola said, wearily.
“Can we make hot chocolate?” Ikram asked tentatively.
Cola nodded, thankful that this gesture articulated assent without the necessity for words.
“Are you okay Mr. Cola?” asked Amina after a moment, while Ikram scrounged through the kitchen kit.
Cola nodded. “I’m okay,” he said. He was exhausted. He pulled his water out of his backpack. Bu the heat of the fire and the cool water brought some clarity back, and soon his body felt as if it had some reserves of energy to offer again.
With the girl’s help, they carried andrew over to the fire.
“Don’t get the sleeping back material too close, okay?” said Cola to Andrew.
“Okay,” said Andrew sleepily.
Some time went by until the hot chocolate was ready. Andrew accepted some gratefully, his hands reaching out of his tent.
The sun was still high - it was about four o-clock at this point. The shadow of the synacmore tree a bit longer, but just a couple clouds in the sky. Two hours since they had seen that the bridge was down. It felt as if the rays of sunshine had removed most of the cold at the core of Cola’s head, but not quite all of what remained in his bones.
Andrew and Cola drank their hot chocolate quickly.
“Thanks for saving me,” said Andrew, his eyes still close in his sleeping bag, back propped up against a couple of their backpacks. That had been Alyssa’s doing.
Cola let out a deep sigh, eyes wild, then collected it and looked over at Andrew, shaking his head. “Thanks for holding on in there,” Cola said.
“How is everyone doing?”
Everyone gave the thumbs up, Andrew included.
“Well, do we think we can keep walking?” asked Cola. The girls nodded uncertaintly, but Andrew opened his eyes.
“Do you think it’s okay for me to walk?” Andrew asked earnestly. It was strange to hear him consult someone else about the extent of his abilities, even now. The Andrew Cola knew tended to complain and broadcast that information without any searches for external validation.
“Do you think it is?” Cola asked.
Andrew began to draw himself out, groaning quietly as he lifted his arms.
“Ooh,” Andrew said, putting some weight on his knee as he tried to get up, and then collapsing onto his hands and gritting his teeth with pain.
“Are you okay?” asked Alyssa, getting up and walking over to him.
“Yes, I’m okay,” said Andrew, his face relaxing, using the other knee as support to get up. Once up, he wiggled his legs, fingers, and stomped his feet a bit. Then he faced Cola and the others with a smile. “Yeah. I think I’m good to go. Can we have another cup of hot chocolate first though?” he asked.
Cola felt the relief again. “Definitely,” Cola said, the fatigue hitting him hard. Maybe he should have asked himself if they could keep going first.
The kids packed up, and it seemed to Cola as if they were going at lightning speed. Cola thought he saw Yelena eye him with concern as he dropped his tent supports. There were a couple more hours of daylight.
The kids were done before Cola, and he worked to get his backpack ready. For lack of coordination and energy, he had simply stuffed many things in his backpack in no particular order. They started walking down the valley.
Right left, right left. As Cola’s feet began to move beneath him, he felt his mind begin to focus. He brought his water to his lips, and it was a sweet ambrosia. He opened up a bag of candy he kept at his hip and popped the little sugary pieces in his mouth.
“Thanks for saving me from the water Mr. Cola,” Andrew said, walking alongside Cola.
“I had to! I was the one who told you to go across the log, and you tried as hard as you could.”
Andrew was quiet for a moment, a somber look on his face. The boy watched the pebbless he kicked with the toetips of his boots. They had begun to descend further into the valley, where it was green and aspens swayed in the breeze, waving with their circular green leaves that were paler green on the bottom.
“But I was so scared. That’s why I fell off,” said Andrew.
“That may be,” said Cola. “But you did the best you could do.”
“Maybe,” said Andrew, not so sure. “I don’t know. Sometimes I have trouble doing things right. I get too worried that they might not work out.”
They somehow made the miles they needed to that day. Cola was exhausted, but they made another fire, recounting the days events around it as the embers crackled and the bugs around them sang their chorus in their unseen positions in the branches and brambles.
“I couldn’t believe it when you dove in!” Alyssa said. “You were just standing there, and then you just started swimming as hard as you could into the water.”
“I wish I could swim that well,” said Yelena.
Cola shook his head. “I wish you would have waited for me.”
“I know,” said Yelena, her head down, picking at something of her boot in the glow of the flames.
“What if Ikram had fallen in?” said Cola. “I wasn’t there yet to swim down and get Ikram.”
“I would have gone down to get her,” said Amina, experimentally.
“That could have been even worse. Two kids to swim in and get. But I’m giving you a hard time - you were right. In the end, we did have to cross the river.”
The next day, Yelena was the first one to catch sight of Noah’s green beanie. Cola looked towards where Yelana was pointing and saw it, bobbing above the undergrowth in the
*It would also be easy though if the other group met up with some other people and heard that Cola had a fever from saving Andrew. That could be an interesting way for events to unfold. Yeah, let’s do that.
The weather was gray when Remi and Zoe and the kids reached the meeting place. It was an old, moss-covered stone bridge over the river, where it was narrower and calmer than up above where it came down the mountain.
“We must have gotten her first,” Remi said to Zoe, and she nodded uncertainly.
They began to set up camp there, until Remi heard some others coming down the path from the mountain.
Remi looked over the top of the tent he was setting up while Zoe gathered kindling with the kids.
It wasn’t the other half of the group. It was two women with their own packs coming down the trail with walking sticks. They were looking at Remi with comprehension though, as if they knew him. Remi stood still, holding the unassembled pieces of the tent, waiting for them to be within conversational distnce.
“Are you Remi?” the first woman said. She was about thirty five, and had blonde hair braided back. She walked with the confidence of a very experienced backpacker.
Remi nodded.
“I think I met your friends up the trail. Said his name was Cola?” she said.
“Yup! Came out here with him. And he was with some kids?”
“Yes,” the woman said, getting ready to continue, when Remi interrupted. He couldn’t help himself.
“And the kids are okay?” he asked, remembering their altitute sickness. He had all the confidence in the world for Cola, but for a moment he wondered if he had put his friend in too difficult a situation.
“Yes, they seemed fine, but your friend is having a hard time. He told me that he had hypothermia, and he looked it. Said to ask you to go to them if I ran into you.”
Remi heart began to beat faster, but the wind was still calm and gentle on his skin. The whispering in the aspen trees was peaceful.
“Where were they at?”
The second woman turned around, gesturing from the direction they came. “About three quarters of a mile back. By the junction of the two rivers,” she said.
“Okay,” said Remi, looking worriedly at Zoe.
Amina’s back felt a lot lighter on her back. She had a bottle of Iodine tablets, granola bars, fruit leathers, and enough snacks to last the night if she got stranded.
“If you get lost, ask for help but tell whoever it is that you are close to your group,” said Ikram. Ikram had wanted to come with, but Amina had told her to stay. She was worried about Alyssa and Andrew’s ability to take care of themself. They were good at reading books, but she was not sure that they knew how to take care of themelves. Ikram might not know it, but Amina knew that she would be okay on her own, just like Amina knew that she herself was able to take care of herself. She had done it before in Iraq when her apartment had been “shelled” as her father had used to say. She understood now that it was so that she would be okay. She hadn’t been able to get help fast enough then. She had gotten lost. But this time she was going to do better.
She took off from the campsite very early, when the sun was still behind the mountains, and walked by the light of her headlight. She wondered for a moment if this was a good idea, but the trail was simple. She scanned the edges of the path and the surrounding terrain carefully. Their were beautiful flowers that looked like trumpets extending from vines off of the trees. She could not see far, just a narrow tunnel of light around her where the branches of the trees reached and grabbed.
At first it was scary, the sillihuettes of shapes like reaching hands and claws arching over her, needles hanging from them like the debris accumulated over millions of years. Amina imagined they were frozen giants, stopped just moments before they swallowed the path by a powerful wizard that had wandered in from the desert to protect travelers. But the spell could wear off at any minute, and they were commence to swallow her and everything on the path. Cola, Ikram, Alyssa and Andrew, Mr. Remi and Ms. Zoe and all the other kids, and nobody would ever hear from them again, swallowed without a trace.
The thoughts made Amina shiver. But as she continued to walk in the darkness, she caught moments in which morning stars twinkled between the branches. A toad hopped myopically and quietly on the pine needles underfoot.
Amina smiled. As she walked, she laughed at herself and how her thoughts turned from thinking of the trees as monsters to thinking of them as her protectors.
She was making good time, and as the sun glowed in an orange and pink burst of light over the far purple mountains, Amina looked back and saw that she had travelled far enough down the valley that the junction between rivers was now out of sight, hidden by the sheer mountains behind her. Amina’s legs felt strong underneath her, and she trusted them as they continue to take her forward on the path.
Once the sun was high enough to illuminate everything in a golden-pink glow. She took no breaks. Far below her, the stream was curling with foam and current in intricate spirals, just like the painting she had seen once at a chinese restaurant with her uncle. She followed it down with her eyes, her head bomping rhythmically to the music of the trail. It was strange to feel so at peace as Cola had a fever and wasn’t making sense up at the campsite. She had tried to move him, to get him to wake up so that she could try to carry him, but she had not been strong enough to bring him up to a standing position, and even splashing cold water on his face had not been enough to stop his delirium.
“Going to miss the flight…” he had murmured in his sleep. “Remi, would you check that everyone is here…”
Amina picked up her pace a fraction. It felt as if she was caught in an equilibrium, the fuel in her stomach driving her forward with a momentum that nothing could stop. It was strange; her legs were beginnig to grow sore, her back tired, but it did not seem to matter. Continuing was easy, and even these aches and pains felt satisfying in a way, doing nothing to impede her progress but instead driving her forward like a challenge or a dare. She did not stop, but she did let herself look at the birds, and a strange insect on a leaf.
And then she saw something. The bobbing of a hat. A green hat. She knew that hat. It was unmistakably Benjamin’s.
She stopped in the middle of the trail for a moment to be positive, then began running towards him.
“Benjamin! Benjamin benjamin benjamin,” she yelled running towards him.
“Amina?” Benjamin said, surprised. “Amina!”
“Is everyone here?” she asked him, her face becoming serious. She couldn’t afford to dilly dally. Before he answered, she could hear the others through the woods, and began running towards them.
She ran into Remi, and him and Zoe quickly gathered everyone together. They listened carefully to what Amina had to say.
“So you think he has a fever?” asked Remi,
“I think so. His forehead is hot and he is not making sense. He is lying down and we aren’t able to wake him up.”
“He’s totally unconscious?” Zoe asked, her voice alarmed, putting one of her feet forward.
“No, he talked sometimes, and it seems like he’s awake, but then he doesn’t make sense.”
“How far up are you stopped?” asked Zoe, her face a blank.
“Five miles?” Amina blurted out. That’s what it had felt like.
“Five miles?” asked Zoe in alarm, and Amina knew that it must not have been that far. She had just felt as if she had gone a long ways. “How long did it take you to get here?”
“Since about when the sun came up,” said Amina.
“So about fourty minutes. Maybe two miles,” said Remi.
“Can you hold down the fort?” Zoe asked Remi. Amina wondered what a fort was.
Remi nodded.
Noah looked at Remi and Zoe with concerned eyes. “Is Mr. Cola going to be okay?” he asked.
“Let’s find out,” said Zoe. “Amina, lead the way.”
By the time they made it back, Cola was conscious enough to be relieved. As he hadn’t yet gotten better, the others had already begun to pack away his things.
“Amina! You found them!” Alyssa exclaimed. She looked worried. Ikram looked stangely calm, providing Cola with some water that he drank eagerly but with his eyes closed. Amina could see all this through the tent flap.
They finished packing away all of the weight from Cola’s backpack. Even Andrew took some. “Are you sure you can handle this much weight?” asked Ikram, watching with concern as Andrew had struggled to hoist the pack up to his shoulder.
“If Cola can jump into a freezing cold river, I think I can carry a little bit of stuff,” said Andrew in a slightly strained way, but with a smirk.
Ikram shrugged, returning his positivity with a smirk. “Alright,” she said. Remi looked over.
“What did you do to Andrew?” he asked once they started walking down, Cola suspended on Remi’s shoulder, with Amina supporting his weight on the other side as well as she could, both of them wearing backpacks.
“Well, he fell into the river,” Amina said.
“The river by where you were camped out?” asked Cola.
“Yeah, that’s how Cola got so sick,” said Amina in response. Cola a grunt. “Yup,” he said. “Hypothermia, fever,” he numbled, his head down and eyes clothes, feet shuffling along. The roughly two miles that Amina had taken to find the other half of the group in the morning took much longer with Cola. About an hour, double the amount of time. Remi kept checking his watch, which once caused him to take a tree branch to the face and curse.
“Cola jumped into the river,” said Remi once they had met back up with the others.
“It was my fault,” said Andrew, his voice supported by undercurrent of shame.
“You fell in the river?” asked Zoe, looking more distraught than any of them had seen her. “Jesus, I mean, wow this is not great.”
“It was my fault,” said Amina, stepping forward. “I crossed the river on the log. So then everyone else followed. But it was difficult and Andrew fell in. That’s why Cola had to get him and that’s why he’s so sick,” said Amina, and all at once she began to feel that what she had felt that morning trekking over to the group had not been peace at all, but instead an axnious sense of purpose that propelled her to try to set things right. Her eyes began to well with tears, and she looked out over at the sky so that she didn’t need to meet Zoe’s eyes, which she was sure where full of rage and blame.
Amina looked over at the chiseled and broken-looking mountain tops. She realized they just have once been taller, but had been broken down and chipped so that they looked the way they did now. She wondered what they had looked like, before, when they’d been perfect. Her cheeks grew hot with the eyes of the others. Such stupid thoughts to have. It didn’t matter.
The mountains were an Ocean, she thought, and the idea surprised her. They are waves of a very very slow ocean, and we are stuck in a tiny window in time, the blink of an eye to this world. This thought made Amina feel neither good nor bad, but detached, as if her body was not her own, but she floated in the air like a gust of wind, soaring overhead without a home.
Then Amina felt the warmth of arms around her, and a cool check against her own.
“It’s okay Amina,” murmered Zoe’s voice next to her own. “Everyone is going to be okay. Don’t beat yourself up. You did it. You got help. You did good.”
Amina heard a strange sound and realized it was her own quiet sobs. She hugged Zoe back, tightly, and she was surprised to find that didn’t want to let go. For a long time, she didn’t. When she withdrew, she wiped some tears out of her eyes, and then saw that Noah and Benjamin had come forward as well, and each of them gave her a hug as well, which caused all the other kids to join in. Amina gave a strangled little laugh and after a moment pushed the away.
Pushing her tears away for a second time and feeling with distant surprise how hot her cheeks had become, she said indignantly, “it’s Cola who needs the hugs, not me.”
Noah shrugged, and then with a squishy “Cola!” He went over to where Cola sat looking like a slumped over pillow that had lost his fluff.
“Oh, oh,” Cola said in surprise. “That’s very nice,” Cola said in a raspy voice. “But I need more than hugs. I need medical attention,” he said, but he had a smile on his face (which wasn’t totally shared by Zoe and Remi.
“Well you heard the man,” said Zoe, wiping something out of her eye quickly, her voice and posture business-like. “Let’s get out of here”. And with that, she held up Cola by the shoulder and Remi got the other side, and thry all began to march down the mountain.
They walked hard and fast, crunching pinecones underfoot, and made it back to the trailhead before the sun had totally gone down. Cola was taken to the medical tent that was thankfully set up right next to the Park Office, and he was sat down on a stretcher and attended to thoughtfully and seriously by medical students who told Remi they were interning here for the summer under the supervision of a veteran Wilderness First Aide Ranger named Marcus who was off with the heli response team attending to a hiker who had just been found, apparently, this morning, after being MIA for two weeks.
“Alive?”
“Thankfully, yes,” said one of the students, letting out a sigh
Maybe it would be equally good if they all carried Cola’s pack distributed between them and Amina and Ikram held up Cola so that he could get down, even in his delirious state
Okay so they are on this trip, this adventure. Do they ultimately find validation in this model of bringing adventure to kids, but at the same time, they realize that short trips outside are better? It’s a better way to bring the outdoors to the kids?
Benjamin’s song: savasana sunrise: dawn flow
Song: blue spotted tail: I think this might actually be the song of the whole story
*Zoe, Remi, Aleksei, Noah, Benjamin, Yelena - 6
And the other group is Cola, Amina, Ikram, Andrew, Alyssa
Thursday started at: 38604
Goal: 42,763
storyend
asdf
Chapter One: Blank Slate
what I was thinking is that one of their uncles owns an Airbnb (this airbnb is in North carolina and it is based on Walter’s, but also on the idea that some friends could just cheaply rent an airbnb/cabin and hang out if they wanted to get together, which MIGHT be cheaper than puerto rico, depending on where they are. Although, i suppose it is the remote nature of it that I like. Maybe it could also be a house in Puerto. The other useful part of it is that they could potentially be backpacking while doing it
In the mountainous town of Candler, North Carolina, three friends arrived in a car they had rented from the Charlotte airport. The car buzzed with quiet excitement on the drive over. Remi was between jobs, Hugo was on fall break from grad school, and Ty had taken a week off from work. They had all agreed to take this week to do something that they had been planning for a year; they were going to come up with a good idea. A really, really good idea.
This plan had been born on several backpacking trips. The friends all lived in different places - Ty lived in Beijing, where he had studied. Hugo lived in Pennsylvania. Remi lived in DC, near where they had all been friends in high school.
It was a Tuesday, and three friends had all met at the airport the day before in Charlotte, rented a car, and arrived in the mountainous town of Candler North Carolina the day before, all according to plan. Last year, they had almost stayed at this same house before deciding to do their backpacking trip in New Hampshire instead. There had been others besides the three of many, many of whom said they would show up again. But everyone had bailed at the last minute except for Ty, Remi, and Hugo.
The door of the garage creaked open slowly, casting a blanket of light over anonymous silhouettes of things, their details concealed by the cloth sheets spread over them. A motorcycle perhaps, a bureau. Particles of dust hung in the air, some swirling in eddies as if dancing in curiosity for who these new arrivals may be.
“What does your uncle do?” asked Ty.
“He does construction,” said Hugo as he flipped up the light switch on the concrete while. A single naked bulb flickered to life where it hung from the ceiling, further illuminating most of the room, besides the corners and the spaces behind the larger pieces of forgotten furniture. Shelves of power tools, a large hookah, and some large and unfinished nude paintings in a box nestled between towers of books that went nearly to the ceiling.
“And some other stuff,” added Hugo, with less certainty.
“Bingo,” whispered Remi, walking over to a large chalkboard. Black slate with a wooden frame. Upon further investigation, his attention alighted on a couple paper boxes of chalk.
“That thing is classic,” Hugo mentioned, appraising this aged artifact. “Here - I’ll grab this side.”
Several minutes later they had the chalkboard and other supplies they had found in the study. They had all been to the bathroom. Hugo sat comfortably on the couch with a mug of coffe. Ty sat on a stool by the island with a mug of tea, and Victor had almost finished taking a rag to the dusty old blackboard.
“Okay,” Remi said, adjusting his glasses, a piece of orange chalk between his fingers. He turned to face his two friends. “I’d like to start with the why.”
“Money,” said Ty without missing a beat, and the others laughed in mock-suprise. “Or fame,” he added as an afterthought.
“What good is fame though?” asked Hugo, puling up a chair to get a bit closer, and putting his coffee down momentarily as he turned it around so he would be able to rest his arms on the top of the backrest.
“Influence.” said Ty matter-of-factly.”When people have heard of you, it expands your reach. Unlocks opportunities.”
“Okay, okay. Well, as long as we’re in that neighborhood, we might as well consider making the world a better place,” proposed Hugo.
“Making…world…better…place” Remi muttered, writing at eye level under the underline word ‘WHY’. When he was done, he considered the words, then turned back to his friends.
“Knowledge?” Remi ventured.
“Knowledge,” the other two men repeated, nodding at one another, and Remi recorded that word as well.
“Just, I mean, it’s under the umbrella of making the world a better place—” started Hugo.
“That’s so long, can we shorten that?” asked Charlie, extracting his teabag and placing it on a small plate.
“Muh twab…” Remi said experimentally.
“Muh twa bip?” said Hugo uncertainly.
“Mwabip,” said Ty. “drop the t.”
“Nice,” said Remi to the board, writing it down.
“So what I was sayinh was, happiness. Or joy. You know? Distinct from the relief of suffering, or the promise of…more opportunities for, whatever. Just…joy. Creating joy,” continued Hugo.
“Okay,” said Remi, his eyebrows up. “Yeah, that’s more specific, which is good. I guess I could add suffering up there too — relieving it, I mean. And death? Preventing death, aleviating suffering.”
“Well I mean you can’t prevent death,” said Ty.
“Hey man,” grinned Remi. “We’re not here to brainstorm what we can’t do.”
Ty gave his short bubly laugh. “Fair enough.”
The board now read as follows:
-
Money
-
Fame
-
Knowledge
-
Mwabip
-
More Joy
-
Less Suffering
-
Less Death
“Welp. That’s the long and short of it I guess,” said Hugo, slurping up the last of his coffee.
“The stuff that matters, I guess? There is something missing still though. Some…je ne sais quois,” said Ty, gesticulating in his best french accent.
“Art?” said Remi.
“Sure,” said Hugo agreeably. “I mean literature, music, yeah. They sometimes cause suffering, but can also relieve it. And art is often informative but no, you’re right, it doesn’t have to be. It’s really its own weird category.”
“Alright,” said Remi. “Now we have a nice even number.”
“Nice,” yawned Hugo, making performatively loud stretching noises he always made when standing up, and often when sitting down. Ty stayed put, staring at the ceiling with an inscrutable smile. Remi ambled into the kitchen, where he turned on the stovetop to boil more water.
Ty’s gazed turned towards the plants in the green room, where something caught his eye. It was a collection of jade plants, some just a few inches tall, others snaking up to the indoor balcony that overlooked the greenroom from the second-floor bedroom.
Ty observed how they subdivided, both random yet constrained by some unknown rules of symmetry and interval. Their woody stems with a texture of rough elephant skin branching into incremental canopies of fleshy green leaves were random yet balanced, like a jungle tree in a miniature forest.
“We have to make rules.” Said Ty to the room, loud enough that his voice would carry to the other rooms.
“What are you thinking?” Remi asked.
“Well, without any structure…there’s no accountability. I hate to say it, but what if we dont’ choose any idea? What if we don’t think anything is good enough? Then we’ll just all go back to our lives, having done nothing,” said Ty.
“Okay, how about Thursday as a deadline. Thursday at noon - we need to lock something down. Title, description, a definition of what success would be,” said Hugo. They wrote some of things down on the board, different colors of check intertwining to connect them.
“And a contract.” said Remi.
“Oh come on,” said Hugo. “Is that a bit beaurocratic?”
“Definitely not. I want an agreement that we will actually try it. I’d theorize that coming up with the idea will be easy part. We need to agree to the consequences for not carrying through it.”
“Okay well,” began Ty. “You know what would be better than a contract? I mean sure, we can do a contract too but - you said consequences, right? How about this - we all have to, like, ante up. Right? And whoever is last to continue executing the idea gets the pot.”
Remi: “Oh interesting. So as long as we never give up we can’t lose our ante?”
“Yeah…” said Ty, as they all started to see a snag.
“How do we define that critical moment that someone stops trying to execute on the idea…?”
“We need a referee,” said Remi, chuckling. “An unbiased, outside observer. Someone who can’t be bought, but is invested in the success of the project.”
They all looked at each other. “Zoe,” they all said, almost in unison, laughing when they all said the same name without hesitation.
Zoe had always been the one with the idea that they go backpacking together. Out of their friends who hadn’t made it this week, she was the one with the most valid excuse - her mother had recently had an aneurism, and she was spending a lot of time at the hospital recently as her mother recovered. She had been really bummed that she hadn’t been able to make it to this trip that they had been actively planning for a year, and had been talking about for half of a decade.
When they started backpacking, Zoe had had the least experience. Her family had never taken her camping, so she had of course done the most research so that she wasn’t ignorant on the matter. She had basically planned the entire first trip - where to go, which season, what park passes they needed, equipment, the route, nutrition, etc.
“Honestly it’s a shame she has to be referee and that she can’t be here,” Hugo said. “She would be brilliant at this.”
“To be honest, she would probably qualify all of these reckless male energy,” said Remi. “Which, yeah, would probably be for the best but…maybe less fun.”
“I don’t know…” said Hugo. “You remember that one time that she ran at that bear with a skillet?”
“You have to show the bear who’s boss - speak in a language of aggression,” said Ty, in an imiation of Zoe’s knowledgeable, would-be-humble way os speaking.
“Okay so Zoe it is,” Remi said, dialing her up. “Hey Zoe? Hey! So we need you to be our referee. Here let me put you on speaker.”
The others had been leaning up agains tthe phone that Remi was holding to get a better shot at hearing what she had to say.
“I am so bummed I’m not there! How is it going?” Zoe’s voice said from the phone speaker.
“Well, we decided two things - one, all of the reasons for why an idea could be a good idea,” said Remi.
“That’s a relatively small step,” said Zoe.
“Fair enough, fair enough.”
“But we need a referee,” Hugo jumped in.
“Please elaborate.”
Remi: “So we decided we’re all going to put in some money. Ante up, if you will”
Zoe laughed. “What??”
They explained what they needed form Zoe, and she immediately asked, “So how much are you going to ante? What’s at stake here?”
The boys looked at each other.
“A hundred bucks…?” said Remi.
“Lame,” said Zoe.
“Oh come on, we’ve all got some savings, right?” said Ty. “I think Zoe’s right. A thousand, minimum.”
“Oof,” said Remi.
“Oh boy,” said Hugo. “Wait - what if the idea takes some investment? Can we pull from that pot to do it? I can probably afford to do this do ante, especially since I’m not going to be the first one to drop out, but like, I don’t have much more disposable income to fund it.”
Remi: “Yeah, I think it can have that dual purpose. It’s the investment, but also the accountability deposit. What do you think, unbiased referee?”
“Ooh I like that. Accountability deposit. Sounds good to me.” said Zoe.
“So you’re down?” asked Ty. “You’ll be our referee?”
“Oh of course. ‘twoud be my honor,” said Zoe. She asked how the cabing was, and they described the integrated greenhouse, the remoteness of it, and how they had to drive about a half hour to get to the grocery store. Zoe agreed - this remoteness and lack of distractions should surely be conducive to creativity, purity of thought. Hugo asked Zoe how her mom was doing, and Zoe’s tone got a bit more somber, but she seemed to be doing as well as possible, all things considered. “All-in-all, she’s on the mend.”
When the time they finished the call, Ty checked the hour. It was 10:30. Not bad. Although Remi in particular was not a morning person, they had all agreed to awake, fed and caffeinated by 8am each morning.
The three friends decided to on a walk. Remi brought his backpack, with a journal and some paper. Ty carried his notebook in has hand. Going against the grain, Hugo brought nothing, not even his phone.
They had come in on a gravel road and parked the rental SUV at a slight angle near the front door, but on the other side of the house, there was a narrow dirt path interrupted by rocks and roots leading into the woods, which is what they took now.
Although the path was narrow, glades and meadows opened up on either side of it at intervals, only to close back up again and wind between the towering columns of pine and spruce of emeralds and blues. It was not sunny, but overcast. Although it did not rain, the branches of needles spoke in tones of understated urgency as gusts of wind raced through them, only to subside into near silence, the conversations of the wind moving on to other parts of the forest.
“What would you all do if money was no object?” asked Remi.
“That’s the original question, right? The one that we talked about the entire trip in new Hampshire.”
Remi grinned. “Yup.”
“Oh I really liked this one. Because then it’s less about making money than about what we want to do…”
“But let’s be honest with ourselves, do we really not want to make money?” asked Ty.
“Another question we have to ask is, is there any point in thinking what we would do without it, when many of the things we’ve talked about would definitely require some capital?” added Hugo.
“I mean, where there’s a will there’s a way, right? A good reason to do something is debatably a better resource than unlimited capital, in terms of return. If you through a million dollars on a problem that you think will make money and you fail, you’ve lost a million dollars. If you start with an idea that you think will make a million dollars, you can’t lose anything, but if it’s worthwhile enough and you can convey that you may have investors lining up to help you out.”
“Sure, provided you are qualified to pull it off,” said Tyler. “I mean, I’m not opposed to using venture capital, but -”
“Oh I am,” said Hugo. “Or at least, I’d like to avoid it. Come on, do we want to spend all our time pretending against all odds that we are qualified, or become qualified by trying something and failing? It reminds me of the learned helplessness experiments I learned about in school. Of the many unethical experiments of the eighties, two groups of dogs randomly given electric shocks, but the control group was able to avoid them by jumping over a barrier and moving another area, while the second group had no ability to prevent the shocks. When both groups were moved into a new type of enclosure where they both where able to avoid the same type of shocks but in a more complex way, the first group worked hard to try to find a way to avoid the shocks, while the first group did not try to avoid them anymore, unless they were shown, sometimes several times, that the shocks could be avoided.”
“Jesus,” said Remi.
“Sorry I don’t quite understand what I’m supposed to get from this.”
“Well, the idea is that asking other people for money, that’s like the second group. Asking other people with influence to validate your idea. The shocks here are this belief that we are unable to find the resources and solutions to do something on our own. We are assuming we are dependent on another group for it but…we’re not. Even fancy investors and VC groups are wrong like, 90% of the time? 99% of the time? It’s massively high risk, high reward. And so is…trying something on your own. Debatably, actually trying and then directly benefiting from your own experiments, whatever they may be, is a lower risk but even higher reward scenario than going to someone else. In fact, it almost has to be, otherwise there wouldn’t be a whole industry of investors and VC firms going out and trying to parasitically - or maybe that’s too strong a weird - but you know, benefit off of the people who are actually going out and trying stuff. Who are trying reform education, disrupt transportation-”
“Or hell, just forging creating rock climbing equipment that’s better than anything else on the market, like uh, what’s his face, Yvon Chouinard.”
“Who’s that?” asked Ty.
“Oh man, he’s the creator of Patagonia. His story is so amazing in his simplicity. He just wasn’t really happy with the quality of the rock climbing equipment available in, like, the 50s. So he learned how to make his own, and he made them really well, better than anything anyone else was making. He built a business off of that, and basically just kept going to create really high-quality things that was better than what existed.”
“Huh,” said Ty. “I think it’s just a trade-off. I heard someone say once, it’s just as hard to build a small business as it is to build a large business. To make a big business, you need a lot of external funding, and you need to fulfill on big promises of big growth, and on a small business…you don’t need to make as many promises to anyone, and you can grow more slowly, but you get a lot less help.”
“But I mean, we don’t necessarily have to have a good business idea, right? I mean anything is on the table, right?”
“Like what?” asked Ty.
“Well, like we could create some sort of program that was volunteer based,” said Hugo.
“Exactly. Or like, maybe this huge art project.” said Remi.
“Okay sure, fair. Yeah I guess you’re right - Zoe kind of tore us apart for creating that ‘why’ list, but I guess it didn’t illustrate that following the money, or even creating something within a market was necessarily the only thing to do. Since we have things like art and joy on there and…yeah, thanks for reminding that. I guess I should know that better than anyone - I mean science, or knowledge to use our term on the board, is another example, right? It can function as an idea within a market, but it can also just be. You know. Science. Journals, the pursuit of knowledge. It needs to be funded usually, but it’s funded through a different system than like, small business loans or VC funding or profits. ”
“That’s very true. Science is another great example of a place that great ideas can thrive outside of markets. But speaking of markets, you made me think of something; another place an idea, or innovation or whatever, can thrive outside of a market is a market itself. I mean markets must be invented.”
“You lost me.”
“Sorry, I guess I should just come out and say it. There are some people who have created devices that recycle existing plastic on like, a consumer level. Normally recycling is done in large facilities, and of course it’s not really very effective,” said Remi.
“It’s not??” asked Hugo.
“Oh no. Honestly, for a while, most recycled material was just sent to China because it was more profitable to ship it away than to re-purpose it on American soil.”
“Can confirm,” said Ty. “There used to be a lot of American shipped over there. Then once the Chinese economy grew, it started getting sent to the Phillipines.”
“Oh damn,” muttered Hugo.
“Anyways, some newer sort of gassroots movements are focusing on actually creating ways for individuals to recycle things themselves. Think about it! A whole class of people who can just repurpose old objects into new ones, who don’t need to buy as much shit off amazon or whatever.”
“Okay I’ll hold off my other questions for now because I want to know, what does this have to do with markets?” asked Ty.
“Well,” said Remi, “It’s sort of like renewable energy, right? We don’t really need to make that much stuff for ourselves at any given time. Like let’s say I lost my waterbottle, which I do all the time.”
“It’s true,” said Hugo. “Do you even have a waterbottle right now?”
“In fact, no! I don’t. What I’ve pieced together is that I left it somewhere in the Reagan airport. Which blows. I really liked that one. But that’s beside the point. The point is that if I had the ability to create a new one out of repurposed plastic that I cleaned, and cut up myself with scissors, and put in my own machine and then 3D printed into a water bottle…” Remi continued.
“Woah, wait that would actually be really cool if that could be a reality,” said Hugo. He looked to his left, where he could hear running water somewhere out of the sight.
“I know, right? I think I’ll actually research it a bit more when I get back to the house, since there are some really cool things happening there since people have woken up to the fact that recycling actually makes almost no economic sense to solve the waste crisis we have as societies, but what I’m saying is, that might be a lot of work to just make one waterbottle. It would be super cool, and I would totally do it. But I would be even happier to do it if I could just leave it running overnight and pump out like fifteen 3D printed water bottles for not too much more extra effort, and trade those for other items when I needed them. Like some sort of bartering credit system.”
Ty laughed. “I like it, but there are a lot of layers to that whole situation that need to be unpacked and checked for realism.”
“Like what?” asked Remi.
“Well, firstly technology. The technology available dictates a lot of what’s possible. Like, is the quality comparable to the plastic products we’re used to.”
Remi nodded. The trail had brought them to a creek so they walked alongside it. Fallen leaves of many colors passed them, tumbling through small cascades created by small rocks. The branches of a sycamore on the far bank extended over the water, laying a dappled shadow over the surface.
“Second, the what, consumer dynamics here. Are enough people willing to make these things when it’s so easy to buy them? How difficult is it? And the social dimension of it. Are people willing to collaborate on something like this? To barter, as you said, to make more than they need for the sake of efficiency.”
“Oh man,” said Remi. “So first of all-”
“Wait,” said Ty. “I can’t wait to hear more about it. But shouldn’t you make sure your case is well-researched before using the time to defend it?”
“But I think I can defend it.”
“I think you can too. But what’s the value of defending it to me? I don’t know anything about the plastic industry, or anything more than the average person about the history of recycling. You’ll be up against big plastics, big retail, and the constraints of 3D printing. Would you rather do that now, or once you’ve armed yourself with a bit more information?”
Remi opened his mouth to speak, his eyebrows knotted together in intensity. The wind rose for a moment, the leaves whispering, dancing through the air in their circles. A change came over Remi’s face and his brow relaxed. His mouth closed.
“For the record, I think it’s as good an idea as any. It’s brilliant in a few ways,” said Ty, turning to face Remi. “But that’s exactly why we have to take it seriously. I read this book once. I can’t remember what it’s called, but it’s all about how there’s nothing more expensive than something that sounds like a good idea. If you are convinced you have had such a good idea that you are prepared to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on it, and years of your life, only to find some fatal flaw later on…”
“But isn’t that how it works?” asked Remi. “You think you have something, you’re as sure as you can be, and so you give it a shot. Then you find out later. You at least have an advantage over all the people who never even had the guts to try.”
“I mean, to an extent, yeah, I think you’re describing innovation. You’re describing a class of investors and dreams and boldness that runs through history. History forgets many of them who never made it. And I think that we can, well, be bold while still arming ourselves with a bit more caution, by being the biggest critics to our own ideas that we can be. What do they say in writing? Kill your darlings, right?”
“Okay, point taken, point taken,” Remi said.
The path had become rougher where rain had perhaps poured over it in a great storm not too long ago. They watched their feet carefully, navigating over the exposed roots and rocks.
They came to a fallen log which led them to the other side of the stream, where the path continued on the other side. In the distance, there was a dull roaring. It seemed that somewhere down the way the wind or the water, one of them, had picked up in intensity.
“So do we need to do something realistic then?” asked Hugo.
“What do you mean by that?” asked Remi, getting up on a log to follow the trail where it crossed over the other side of the creek.
“Well,” said Hugo, a little meekly. “There’s something I want to do, but it sounds kind of silly.”
“Well I want to hear it, ” said Remi.
“Okay, I’ll lay out it. Then you can let me know how silly it sounds.”
“What, so you can calibrate your idea of what’s possible? And in the future, you can discard all the thoughts that occur on the other side of that imaginary line?” asked Remi.
“Well yeah, but maybe just for the sake of this trip. I mean, I don’t know.”
At that moment, an alarm on Remi’s phone went off.
“Oh shit,” he said. “I’m sorry guys, I have to get back to my computer - I have an interview in ten minutes.”
“Oh woah, good luck,” said Ty.
“Geez,” said Hugo, watching a very stressed looking Remi sprint away. “Do you think he can get back to the house in ten minutes? We’ve been walking for what, fifteen minutes?”
“He’ll be fine,” said Ty. “He’s pretty fast.”
Hugo let out a burst of air. “Yeah but, what about prep time.”
Ty shrugged. “He can prep while he’s sprinting.”
Hugo shook his head and chuckled. “Geez,” he repeated.
The two of them walked comfortably in silence. The path had wound to the right, into a dense forest of pine and hemlock where the needles blanketed the ground, absorbing sound so that all but the distant roaring of the wind could be heard.
“What was the idea you were going to share?” asked Ty a few minutes later.
“Oh, it’s goofy,” said Hugo.
“Out with it!” demanded Ty.
“It’s sort of a little kids thing.”
Ty said nothing.
“So boston robotics, you know, they make those quadrepedal robots? Probably bipeds too, right? I was thinking, it would be cool to make a bipedal robot too, but I don’t know why you would have to make a lifesize replica. In fact, I was thinking it would be really cool to make a quite tiny one, maybe two inches tall. To use it, you could get some sort of video feed, and you would have sophisticated controls to, you know, manipulate it’s movements. Walk around, pick things up, maybe even climb things, swim.”
“All terrain,” said Ty neutrally.
“Yes, ideally. I mean probably not the first edition, but potentially.”
“And what would it be used for?” asked Ty, prompting Hugo to chuckle again.
“I didn’t really get that far, that’s why I said it was goofy. I always thought of it as, basically, a toy. How much fun would it be to tromp around the woods, the swamp, whatever? Since it was so small, you could probably interact with all sorts of animals.”
“You’d get eaten,” said Ty.
“Probably.” said Hugo.
The forest got darker and quieter, most sounds having faded away almost entirely.
“It’s so quiet,” Ty whispered.
“Must be the pine noodles,” said Hugo.
“Kinda spooky.”
“Did you ever get used to walking through the cemetary at night?” Ty asked.
In highschool, the three had spent many nights travelling through the cemetary situated between the Remi and Ty’s house. It was possible to go all around the cemetary, but it felt a little soft to the long way, even late at night, when there was a perfectly fine direct path going straight there.
Hugo didn’t say anything for a moment. “I’m not sure,” he said.
“I don’t think I did,” said Ty. “I got comfortable enough with it, but I could never totally do it calmly.”
“I guess that’s about right for me as well.”
A strange call from a good distance away echoe through the forest, and the two men stopped.
“Sounds like…an alien,” said Ty.
Hugo nodded. They waited to hear it again, but hearing nothing, kept walking. The sound of water intensified as they moved, until the path brought them to the edge of a cliff, a sheer rocky face. The water from the stream fall into a pool below - no, it was a river really. At least ten feet across, coming from somewhere and going somewhere else.
A scramble of rocks lay below them.
“Think we could get down there?” asked Ty.
“Yeah,” said Hugo optimistically. “Or, at the very least, Remi could.”
The leaves over the river were golden and red with the light from the setting sun. They were high enough they could see over the canopies of the tallest of the trees, down the mountain and into the valley below, where the sun was just cresting the distant mountains above Asheville or Brevard.
The two men stood there until the sun kissed the tops of those mountains, then wordlessly made their way back.
“What about you?” asked Hugo. “Do you have a dark horse?”
Ty didn’t say anything for a bit, and Hugo was just opening his mouth to clarify when Ty said “Nope.”
“Nothing?”
“Not really really. Nothing good,” said Ty.
“I find that hard to believe,” replied Hugo, true skepticism in his eyes. “All that time travelling, seeing the world? Going through your grad program? There was nothing, that whole time, that you thought hey, here’s this ambitious idea. That’s worth doing. I just don’t have the time.”
Ty took just long enough to respond for it to be believable. “Uh uh. I’m just not the ideas guy.”
“Okay,” said Hugo. “Okay.”
----
Chapter Two: The Leaves Change
In which the leaves turn suddenly from golden to brown. There are flashbacks in this chapter where we explore what brought this whole thing about to being with, which the reader is probably wondering about by now. I feel like I need to prove that they would actually carry through with this, be it arrogrance, be it commitment. Or maybe I should then do it in the next chapter
Chapter Three: Commitment…?
Zoe called early the next morning. The night before, Remi had apologized but had spent the rest of the night following up with job postings out of anxiety for almost missing his interview. It turned out he hadn’t missed it, but he had doubts that he had any shot at getting the position because of how frayed his nerves had been, not too mention how strangely heavy his breathing was.
“Time to ante up,” said Zoe.
“Oh, right”, said Hugo into his phone. “Let me, uh, put you on speaker.”
“Okay nerds, you have the terms laid out for this thing?”
The boys apologized; they did not. While Remi worked on his job stuff, Hugo had worked out and Ty had read.
“Okay here’s the deal - I’m going to give you one hour about the terms of this thing. I love you guys, but if you don’t come up with it by then, you’re gonna need to find yourself a new referee.”
“Can we get two hours?” Remi asked nervously.
“Okay, two hours, deal. Kapiche?”
“Kapiche” Hugo said, and Zoe hung up.
“Geez,” said Remi, eyes wide with disbelief. “That girl drives a hard bargain.”
“Yeah she does,” grinned Hugo, perhaps a bit misty eyed.
“Welp. Better get to it,” said Ty grimly.
They had the thing typed up in about an hour and a half. Here’s what was one it:
-
We will agree unanimously to a single idea to execute with the following components:
-
Definition(s) of success
-
Definition of failure
-
Any other details about the idea that must be carried out otherwise the idea will be considered a failure even if otherwise not considered one
-
Time frame that this idea must be executed is one year from the signing of this document
-
Each member must entrust their ante of $1007 with the referee until the idea is completed
-
The referee must distrute the money for any purpose that either she OR all three members unanimously decide is necessary to the execution of the idea
-
Any of the members of this party/squad/squazzurp (referee not included)
-
If an idea with all of the components listed above has not decided upon unanimously and in its entirety by November 14th, 2018, all ante money must be returned to the depositors.
-
If the referee judges that any member of the party/squad/squazzirp is has “given up” on executing the idea by the decided upon completion date of one year from the signing of this contract, they forfeit their ante.
-
Upon success, failure, or time-out of the idea, each member will be returned an equal portion of the deposit that remains after any expenses from item #3
-
If the squazzirp fails to fulfill
“Okay,” said Remi, taking in a deep sigh followed by a deep slurp of his now cold coffee. “Look good?”
“Looks good to me.” said Hugo.
“Ditto.” said Ty.
With a heavy look, they all looked at each other, and Remy sent the document to Zoe’s email address that they had left over from school projects. A few of her emails, just in case they had it wrong.
“Okay Zo,” said Hugo, “We sent it.”
“Alright alright, let’s see here, what. do. we. have…” Zoe said, a couple clicking noises audible from her end on the speaker phone. “Very good, very good, yes, squazzirp, quite officious. So far everything seems to be in order. Ah I see you have included $7 in addition to that big ol’ rack, very sweet, my favorite number. Okay, should I sign?”
“Yup,” said Hugo.
Zoe sent it back, and before long they each had a PDF with each of their four dated signatures on it in their inbox.
“Oooh, little robots that can do anything? I like that,” said Remi from his hammock. They had moved the chalkboard outside by the picnic table at the edge of the woods. There were snacks, newsprint to write on, the various journals and writing materials of each of them, their laptops and phone.
“It’d be awesome right?” said Hugo.
“For sure. We could corner the market for the allowance of teenage boys,” said Remi.
Ty groaned. “Ooh, absolutely roasted.”
“Oops sorry, I guess that is a roast. I didn’t mean it that way.”
“That kinda makes it worse,” said Hugo good naturedly, only to side-eye Ty. “Don’t worry, I’m sorry I can contribute even more in the ideas department, if only to make up for *some
people.”
“Hey, I’m telling you, it’s all in the execution,” said Ty. “Ideas are a dime a dozen.”
“Wait, there’s nothing you want to do? No golden dream to dredge up from the sun-starve depths of your deepest-buried dreams? No fantasy to unearth from the dredges of your anemic heart, so robbed of its vivacity but the monotony of this dreary adult farce?”
“I mean, I could probably look some good ideas up if you really want me to.”
“Yeah I thought he was just saving something for later, but I think he’s serious,” said Hugo in an amused tone.
“What? I just can’t accept this. You, Ty Elizabeth Ramses, no grand visions to your name?” asked Remi, leaning so far out of his hammock that he sort of tipped into a pushup.
“It’s just not my thing,” said Ty. “I read about all sorts of things and it just, honestly it sort of makes me jaded. All these entrepreneurs, just “innovating” and “creating value” and all of these scientists even, convinced that technology and new information will save us all…”
“You literally made me write knowledge on the board the other day! You love knowledge, you bookish fool!” said Remi, standing now, waving his arms a bit.
“Sure I like to learn about the world, keep up to date, understand the giants whose shoulders we’re standing on, yeah,” said Charlie, still sitting quite calmly at the picnic table. “But do I really need to contribute to it? There’s like, a few billion people out there already convinced they’re the next big thing, and if they are, power to them but, who cares? We’re just like, I dunno, sediment in the current of human progress. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen. The ideas are aleady there.”
“Okay, I mean, that was actually quite eloquently put,” said Hugo, glancing briefly at Remi as if he was an enthusiastic dog and Ty was the mailman, “But still, you have some explaining to do. Trying something out, being bold, changing the world - as cliche as all those things are, those are sort of the point of…all of this.”
I have to make them a bit further on in their research for this conversation to totally make sense, which i think should be pretty doable
Hugo gestured to the schematics on the newsprint around them, the chalkboad that had been erased and re-written upon so many times that it could have been taken from a first grade classroom.
“I mean, I believe in you guys.” said Ty. Remy’s face softened and he was about to say something, but Ty continued, “And it’ll look pretty great on my doctorate program applications if we do something prolofic.”
“Come on!” said Remy.
“Oh boy,” said Hugo.
“Can’t you see that’s worse?” said Remi. “Worse than being ‘just another person trying to change the world’, is being someone so jaded that they just leave all that to someone else, to dream, to try to get some skin in the game.”
“It’s bit dissappointing,” said Hugo.
“Look, I appreciate you guys. But the ideas are really just not the important part, okay? That contract we signed this morning? The important part is not the idea. It’s the execution. None of you batted an eye at that.” Ty countered casually. He still had on his light smile, his calm manner, but he closed his computer and put it under his arm, then walked away, throwing out one last thing. “Just let me know when you’ve got something.”
Remi looked around at the elaborate drawings and even watercolors in one case. The second monitor Hugo had scrounged up from the maze of a basement so that they could type their combined research on one and keep notable articles and sources of information on the other.
“This is all us.” Remy realized. “All he brought out here was his computer.”
By the time the sun was going down, Hugo’s head was in his hands.
“I’m not sure it’s possible to cram enough servos necessary for bipedal movement into something so small,” he said, pouring over sketches on the printer paper in front of him.
He looked over to Remi. “How’s your thing going?”
“Well,” said Remi, frowning. “It looks like some people are trying to do this in portugal already and are doing a really good job. So I’m not positive I have a fresh take on it. And they are already really far along. I don’t know, would it be an option to join in on another project instead of creating our own?”
“That does certainly make a lot of sense. It’s a bit less arrogant than just assuming we can jump into something like robotics or recycling where people have spent lifetimes becoming experts, and think that we could do a better job.”
Remi groaned, and swatted at a misquito. “Damn, I can’t believe these things are still out. It’s fall for christ sake.”
“I hate to say it, but maybe Charlie is right?”
“I mean he is right, ” said Remi scowling. “But that doesn’t mean we’re wrong. But it also doesn’t mean we should just go ahead and try to do something that’s already been done…or to compete with experts in a super technical field like robotics. When none of is an engineer.”
“Yeah. I mean maybe we could, but not if we’re not that confident. And I’m not that confident that I’m the person to build a tiny robot.”
“Same. I’m not exactly a die-hard recycler. The other day I threw a beer can away. I’m a hypocrite.”
“Ehh. Don’t be so hard on yourself. I think we just need to take a break,” said Hugo.
Remi looked over at him, saying nothing.
“I’m going to called Zoe,” said Hugo.
“Tell her I say hi. I hope her mom is doing better.”
Chapter 4: The Odyssee
Remi yawned, stretching as he walked down the stairs to the kitchen.
“There’s coffee in the pot,” said Ty.
“Oh cool,” Remi said sleepily.
“Hey I’m sorry about how I acted yesterday,” said Ty, bent over the kitchen table. Remi noticed that he had paper and some books out in front of him. He had also brought out a printer from somewhere and put it on the kitchen table.
“S’okay”, said Remi, reaching to grab a mug. Remi saw Ty tracing his fingers across his notes on the table, then moving to look over a book, and then another book. He furiously scribbled something on a sticky note and stuck it in the book.
“Oh sorry about all this, do you need me to clear something?” asked Ty impassively.
“What are you working on?” asked Remi, sitting down.
“Well I couldn’t go to sleep last night. I was just thinking about our conversation. Our fight. And I realized that I had been pretty lame. And that…you guys had actually offered some ideas that were pretty dear to you.”
“Ah. Robots…some recycling scheme…they were pretty naive ideas,” said Remi, taking a deep sip of his coffee.
“But they aren’t. That’s the thing. They aren’t dumb ideas. We might not be qualified to do them, but I think that both of those things have potential. Are they the most practical things to spend our time on? No, probably not. But none of this is. We’re doing it out of a sort of commitment, and I think that the commitment, and having an idea you think is important - those are the important ingredients.”
Remi yawned again. “Sorry,” he said, then yawned again.
Ty appeared to be waiting.
“So you got something?” asked Remi.
“Yeah, I think I got something.” said Ty.
“Nice. I want to hear about it. Just gimme a few minutes? Still waking up.”
“Okay,” said Ty, grinning fiercely. He returned to his notes.
Remi observed him. In a big sketchbook with blank pages, Ty’s nimble fingers were writing something into a sort of outline. Ty licked his fingers, and turned to several pages back, referencing something written in a previous note, then returning.
He seemed to have gotten near the end of one of the books. He laughed at something in the afterword, stuck a sticky note in it, and then closed the book, pushing it away.
The cover said Story, by Robert McKee
Remi slurped the second to last slurp of his coffee, looking outside. There was dew on the windows. The leaves of the plants in the greenream gleamed with sunshine.
“Okay, let’s hear it,” said Remi.
Ty finished writing something, then closed his notebook, still looking down.
Remi waited.
I mean why would they not want to start a film studio of some kind - that sounds way more fun and less VC-ey and lame than any of this other stuff. Can I integrate that somehow? That the greatest story ever made gets turned into a movie?
“You’ll tell me if it’s stupid, right?” said Ty.
“Oh I’ll tell you,” said Remi.
So Ty began to talk, and Remi tried to make up his mind.
By the time Hugo got back from his morning walk, the two men were pouring over books in the study. A banana leaf hung over remi, where he drew a diagram with many lines and arrows. Ty was working his way through a large stack of books under a jade tree.
“What’s going on here?” asked Hugo.
It took a moment for either of them to answer him, but when Remi finished something in his diagram, he looked up with a grin. “Come check this out,” he said.
What Remi showed Hugo was a block of text.
Remy was the one who wanted an adventure, while Ty was the skeptic - always analytical, a bit doubtful, perhaps because he knew the responsibility would eventually fall on him when shit hit the fan. Not so strangely, it was Hugo who bought them together to, in his words “do something bold, I don’t care what’“. Strangely, and more or less to everyone’s confusion, they ended starting the first AI publishing house ever made. It was successful beyond their wildest dreams, but one day, something unexpected happened. They all woke up to find the AI publishing house closed, the employees gone, and no clue as to what happened. They only had each other to rely on, and the uncertainty of what happened was a weight they couldn’t carry. Ty started drinking, Remy started using drugs, and Hugo…well, Hugo just sort of shut down. He stopped leaving his apartment, stopped communicating with anyone. It was as if he had lost all hope. But then, one day, they received a letter. It was addressed to them, and it simply said “I’m back”. And they knew it was Hugo. It took a while for him to return, but eventually he did. He was different though. He was more determined than ever before, and he wanted to reclaim the company they had built. It was a tough road, but eventually they were successful. But things still weren’t right. Something was still missing. Then, one day, they received a package. It was sent from Japan, and when they opened it, they found a book inside. It was an old book, written in a language they didn’t understand. But when they opened it, they found a note inside. It simply said “Find the Publisher”. They didn’t know what to make of it at first, but eventually they realized that the note was referring to the book they had found inside the package. It was an old manuscript, written by the founder of their company. It was the story of a journey, of a quest. And it was called…The Odyssey.
“What did I just read…?” asked Hugo. “Is this like, fan fiction you just wrote about us…?”
“Yeah it’s not exactly the best,” said Remi, still grinning. “But I didn’t write it. It was AI.”
Hugo laughed. “Oh that’s pretty cool. I mean, it doesn’t totally make sense, but I didn’t know that it could do that. How long did that take?”
“There are better ones,” said Remi. “But that’s not all. Ty, tell him the whole thing.”
And so Ty told Hugo everything he had told Remi.
“Well for someone who says it’s all about the execution, that’s pretty creative,” said Hugo impassively. Ty and Remi looked at each other and then back at him. Remi bit at the fingernail on his left hand.
“And?” he asked urgently.
“And I think we have our idea.” said Hugo.
Chapter 6: Fifty Ways to Make A Record
Chapter 7: The Plan
“Step one - map out the best stories that exist. That means the cadence, the ups and downs, the way the characters each have their own objectives, successes failures, and how it goes together. We have to graph it,” Ty said, weilding his pointer stick prodigiously to point to the word “MAP AND GRAPH” on the old chalkboard Hugo had carted to Memphis, Tennessee in his truck.
One of the students raised her hand.
“How do we quantify success in a story?”
“So we’ve put together a master list of texts that were critically acclaimed using a few different indicators. Nobels, pullitzers, bookers, and whatever other lists of successful stories. We also grabbed screenplays from award winning movies.”
“That’s going to handicap us,” she said. “For those, all we have is an amorphous indication of prestige, maybe a bit of information about reception. We need something more granular.”
Ty lowered his pointed stick.
“Did you have something in mind?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Line by line would be great. An indication of value.”
“That’s sounds great. Where are we going to get that kind of information? Run a study and pay people to read books?”
“We build an app for readers. Comment line by line. Everyone wants to do it when they love a book.”
“You’re saying, build a social app for reading books and sharing what exactly?”
“Favourite quotes. Annotations. That way, we can quantify the impact of certain passages on a reader.”
“Who is she? Is she the MIT mathematics student?” Remi asked Hugo in their side chat.
I hate it, Hugo typed back. He’d never been big on video chat. Build an app for reading books. That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. But yes. Her name is Gabriella Kwan.
Remi turned on his video before Ty could shoot her down. “I think it’s a great idea.”
Ty looked at Remi as if Remi had spit on him.
“But we don’t have the budget for that,” Remi said quickly. Hell, we don’t have the budget for any of this, he though. “Marketing, engineering, cross-platform development…it’s just outside the scope. I wish we could, it’s a great idea. But our job here is to cut any corners we can and still make the greatest story ever told.”
“That’s fine, but we can’t do that - using artifical intelligence anyways - without the data. And we don’t have it. Not from some best-seller’s lists.”
“Can we scrape it?” Remi asked.
I actually don’t really want Remi to have this idea - I think it would be better if it was someone else’s idea. Like a student. Mostly cause the line “We already have that data. Or at least, it’s out there and we can get it.” is such a cool line.
“What?”
“People share quotes all the time. You know, from the bible, from movies, from literature. Can we scrape it?”
Another student broke in. “To the extent that people on the internet cite their quotes, accurately, yeah, we can scrape it. Find all the quote attributions, and if they correctly say at least what book or movie they are from, we can pull that into a database.”
“They won’t be,” said Gabriella.
“Alright, well we can start with the lists of prize winning books and go from there,” said Ty, a little shortly.
I’ve never seen Ty so frustated. said Hugo.
“Are you kidding?” said Remy. “I’ve never seen him so patient.”
“To clarify,” said Gabriella, a little more carefully this time. “I think that Jonathon is onto something brilliant, but trusting scraped data for accuracy is not part of it. Here’s what we do - get good enough at determining if something is probably a quote, and then we crossreference it against any book or screenplay or anything it could be from.”
“Are you crazy? That would take like, the computational power of every computer on earth.”
“Not if we do it right,” said Gabriella. She had everyone’s attention now. Some of the people who apologized for not showing video had turned theirs on, and were watching attentively.
“By checking for references in a likely quote, we can narrow it down to likely genres. Some will be harder to find than others, but in addition to the context clues Jonathon was mentioning, like potentially accurate attibutions, I think it’s possible. We definitely should do some math and figure out what scale of computation it will require. It will take a lot of computation, but what’s a month a hundred supercomputers go for these days? That should be doable. And what we’ll end up with is a map to the greatest literary and narrative moments of all time. A list that humanity has been compiling ever since there were readers. These are references, quotes and attributes in forums I’m talking about, in one book refering to another, I’m talking forewards, references in movie scripts, in textbooks. What we get is a new dimension superimposed on top of all of the content ever created - a dimension of storytelling impact. And that’s it. What’s what we need. From there, it would be dead simple to train an AI to recognize what a great story looks like. In addition, of course, to the infomation about best sellers.”
“Come on Ty,” said Remi over drinks later. “This is exactly what we’re looking for. Who cares if she’s totally right. This is exactly the kind of talent we are looking for.”
“It was never a question of if we could find the talent,” said Ty, almost hissing. “Haven’t you thought about what will happen once this works? She was stepping all over me from day one. We have to kick her out.”
“She was not,” said Remi. “She was confident, and rightfully so, and so she found an opening and didn’t wait. That’s exactly the kind of energy we need on this team”.
Ty sighed. “What am I saying,” he said wearily. “You’re right. I’ll make sure she knows it.”
“Jonathon too,” said Hugo. “He wrote me an email with analysis about the converstion today and I think you should read it.”
“There were two jonathons right?”
“Yeah. Wooly and seabrooke.”
“It was Wooly. He was the one who emailed me. He actually sent me over demo.”
“Are you sure? It’s been, what, an hour?”
“Seriously. Check it out.”
It was just a text file with about three thousand lines. Most of them appeared to be correctly attributed quotes.
“He said he’s in by the way,” said Ty wryly. “He emailed me confirming that he can start next week. But he’s got one condition…that Gabriella is on the team.”
“Well we better make sure we get her then, right Ty?”
“Yeah.” Ty sighed heavily. “I’ll email her now.”
“That’s the ticket!” said Remi in his poor impression of a british accent.
“‘Ello govnah!’” said Elliot.
“Ello govnah!” Remi replied.
“I’ll be back…” said Ty, making to grab his computer.
“Hey hey, come on. What’s wrong with this room.”
“No more ‘ello govnahs.‘”
“Deal.” said Remi.
Short Aside: Remi Running and thinking about stories
Remi ran down walker listening to the strumming and harmonics intensify. The trash cans were lined up on the side of the street like squat old men waiting for the bus, but the trues stood like sentinals in the navy blackness above him. As he passed under streetlights, he closed his eyes as if baptized by their light.
The sounds of traffic faded into his attention as he neared cooper, hitting the sidewalk hard as he swerved around a couple. They were on their way back, their story impenitrable. But a man walked along, shuffling, and Remi knew he was at the rising action of his story, before he truly realized what the conflict was. A group of friends laughed around a table at a table outside, and Remi knew that they were either at the beginning or the end, that dangerous part where you might be a character in any story.
This is a pretty good question that I don’t really have an answer. I mean in real life, I think that this is usually the best thing to do
Chapter 9: Explanation
Stories have been so important to the human race throughout history that it’s actually most of the word history. Some have suggested that it’s phonetic similarity to the words “his story” belies the deeper truth that history is in fact written by the victor, which can also be made to mean by those in power, not only often men but even more aggressive or ruthless human denomination more often than not.
And yet the story is owned by no single man, no single woman, no single person. We each have our own. Some of us are still writing it. Others have several, and are trying to understand how they fit together. Still others are in a period of heavy revision, for better or worse (looking at you Rowling. You too Yeezy).
And like it or not, we live within the stories of others. The stories of countries, of religions, of tragedies that existed before we where born, and adventure stories that will continue long after we die.
Until now, stories had to be written. They may exist in the air, their essence floating around, and waiting to be captured like fireflies, but we relied on talented writers, screenwriters and artists to distill them for us into forms we could understand, relate to, and use as blueprints for our understanding of the human heart, mind and soul.
And yet we know that stories are collective. For thousands of years, before the widespread availability of the written word, the greatest technology ever created by human beings, the oral tradition reigned supreme. Generation after generation would iterate and pass down the same stories, distilling the drama and characters with every retelling in reaction to the laughter of children around a fire under the stars, revising on the fly to correct weaknesses eliciting groans and bored silence. Our great mythologies and some of our great scriptures emerged from this process, creating sagas that captured our hearts and minds, so much a part of us that perhaps parts of our identities in fact emerged out of these stories creating thousands of years before. Orpheous and Eurydice. Anansi and his mischief. The Raven that stole the Sun. The journey in which Thor found his Hammer. Arthur and Excalibur. Mulan and her sword.
We have thousands of stories created over thousands of years. We have had our AI read Millions more. According to a study conducted by Google Books, there have been 129,864,880 books published since the invention of Gutenberg’s printing press in 1440. As a species, we churn these things out because we are hungry to understand our past, our future, and our selves. It’s a beautiful process and not one that we wish to replace.
But we are here to announce an improvement in storytelling. Something that will change storytelling forever. Some of you have heard of AIs that have a mastery of human languages, and can read books and spit out their own stories and text that has become more and more indistinguishable from human text each passing year.
Diagram
Remi - Ty
Hugo - Ty
Hugo - Remi
Hugo - Remi - Ty
Some business ideas to go through
-
Consumer plastic idea
-
Free lunches / outdoor adventure program / cooking nutrition program
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Creating story formulas for novels
-
Little robots that can do anything
I really want this scene to be while they are backpacking, to be honest. Maybe the other scene happens when they come back from the trip.
“What would you all do if money was no object?” asked Remi.
This was really a watershed question for me, and simiar to me and Katie talking about recieving 2 billion dollars
The Story of Natu the Prince
This is basically based off of Princess Mononoke:
Write a love story in which a young man becomes a fighter pilot in order to go and explore foreign lands. In this story, the young man is secretly a prince, but along with this royalty comes a curse, as his bloodline has the curse of the demon of Astergath, a presence from another world in which there is no light, but only whispers. How will the prince survive despite this evil that lives in his body? When he meets ghosts, will he turn them so that they become his allies, or will they abandon him to the spymasters of the far reaching cities that are still cloaked within the shrouds of war? The prince had always dreamed of becoming a fighter pilot. It was a way to explore foreign lands and learn about other cultures. And, of course, there was the thrill of battle. So when he had the opportunity to enlist, he took it. But the prince had a secret: he was cursed. His bloodline was cursed with the demon of Astergath, an evil presence from another world where there is no light, only whispers. The demon would often take control of his body, using him to commit atrocities. The prince tried to keep the demon under control, but it was always there, lurking in the back of his mind, waiting to take over. One day, while on a mission, the prince’s plane was shot down over enemy territory. He crash-landed in a haunted forest. There, he met ghosts who told him of a city where spymasters were using people like him as pawns in a war that had been going on for centuries. The prince knew that he had to find this city and stop the war. But first, he had to deal with the demon inside him. He met a young woman on the road, and with the power of the demon he fought with her against the raiders that had taken control of her village and terrorized its people. Although the woman’s parents were dead, the woman said that the man had inspired her to be a part of the world and risk what she had to use her strength to fight for those who had no strength. She asked the young man if he would go with her so that they could together rid the world of evil. The young man, Natu, knew that he could not be with her while he had this demon inside of him, and so he fled. She followed, and he cursed at her and told her to leave so that she wept in anger and told him he was a fool. Natu fled into the wilderness in order to fix what was broken inside of himself. Nearly starved for lack of food and parched for lack of any water except that which moisture he was able to drink out of the leaves of the tropical jungle plants, the prince wandered into the town, and he was lucky enough to be taken in by a poor family with many children. But despite the many hungry mouths they already had to feed and the many animals they had to tend to on their farm, they nursed the young man back to health. When he was strong enough to continue on his way, he asked them if they knew of any wizards, sorcoresses or powerful elders who knew how to fight evil within. They were afraid, and almost drove him out without saying anything but finally, the woman of the house whispered to him “Kilusant”, and the man came out from the house and gave him a parting gift of sesame paste and bread so that he may have strength on the road ahead. And so the prince, named Natu, set off to find this Kilusant. He finally found the wizard in a small village near the city. Kilusant was an old man, but he was still very powerful. He agreed to help the prince, and together they began the long journey to the city. On the way, they were attacked by demons, but the prince was able to fight them off with the help of Kilusant and the ghosts. Finally, they reached the city. The prince snuck into the palace and confronted the spymasters. He fought them, and with Kilusant’s help, he was able to defeat them. The prince freed all of the people who had been captured and used by the spymasters. And then, finally, he was able to confront the demon inside him. With Kilusant’s help, he was able to banish it from his body forever. The prince returned to his home country a hero. But there was work to be done.Like the demon, the spymasters were simply banished, but not yet vanquished. In addition, Natu could not forget the brave woman who had freed her town with little more than the strength of her body, the cunning of her mind, and a suggestion that she did not have to sit passively and wait as her entire world was taken from her. So he set out to find her with nothing but the clothes on his back and the good wishes of the people he had met on the road. And, together, they would fight again and again to protect the innocent from those who would do them harm.
In sorry, he finds that the woman and her son had dissappeared into the desert. The son reminds the prince of himself when he was young, and Natu weeps under the moon for the womand the boy who was like a child that he has lost. The town is distrustful, and few will talk to him, but a young girl does tell him that she had been friends with the boy, so had her sisters, and that the townspeople say that the Woman had gone mad and wandered into the desert.
After walking for two weeks, Natu sees smoke descending out the top of the shell of a giant armadillo. He find wolfprints inside, and he knows that it is the giant wolves of the desert, who are fearful and many in this part of the world say are made half of shadow half of flesh and who have calls when the moon is full that will drive mad only but the stupidest of men.
Perhaps it is because he is nearly dehydrated with thirst that the calls do not rake his mind into oblivian. Thinking they have takent he boy, he follows the calls.
Natu follows the calls to an oasis, but as he drinks he is surrounded by fearsome wolves and he knows he will die. He is tired, and without the strength of the demon that once gave him strength. He gives himself up to die, and closes his eyes, but when he opens them he sees not the afterlife but instead the strangely wise eyes of the elders of the desert, They have silver-blue hair and call themselves the moondogs. They say that this is their Oasis, and ask him why he has ventured farther than any other man in a thousand years.
Natu asks surely I am not the first - there is a war, and forces converge over borders in order to flank the empire of the sun.
No, says the oldest of them. They do not. They are driven mad by our calls and they slaughter each other or dissappear to the hills in the west, only to drown in the River Mana or perhaps to starve. And it is true, some of the coats of the rival army are suspended from branches on the trees.
Natu was a prince who had found love during a crisis and banished the dark demon Nozfalemu with the help of Kilo, the great wizard, but the woman he loved was lost in the desert, and so was her son. After surviving the terrible night in the armadillo shell, he had made contact the people who turn into wolves, the moon-dogs. They agreed that if he truly was the friend of the woman he spoke of, the youngest of their number would take him to her. But he must prove it to them in a series of trials. He said yes, I will do anything in order to find Marui. The first trial was to battle a dragon. He did so, but lost because he was not focused and his swordmanship was poor. The moon-dogs thought that he was not worthy to continue and told him that he needed to find the courage to be brave in order to find Marui. He went on a second adventure and this time met a beautiful sorceress who asked him to help her defeat her sister. After they defeated the sister, they both decided they wanted to go their separate ways, but the sorceress said she would keep an eye on him and help him if he ever needed it again. He returned home feeling more confident and ready for the third trial. The third trial was to journey into the desert and retrieve a sacred object that had been lost there for many years. He succeeded in retrieving it, but when he got back home, he found out that the woman he loved had died while looking for him. In his grief, he threw the sacred object into the fire, believing it was responsible for her death. The moon-dogs told him that this was not true and that it was only destiny that caused her death. They then banished Nozfalemu from his world once again with Kilo’s help.
*so I would definitely like to make a map of this world and perhaps some illustrations of the it’s reatures and the things
I think that what happens next/eventually is that he does find the woman, and that begins an adventure in which they are chosen to travel across the see for an expedition - althought perhaps they should still be pretty young in order to do this? So how old does that make the boy? Is the boy their son? Should he be?
The last 2000 words
So one of the problems with these four characters is that with Me, elliot and Charlie, I know what our shared interestes are. But with these four characters I don’t - I think that one thing that would work if if they, say, were all on a running team. that would give them a sort of shared understanding. Or runners turned backpackers. But as is, they are all too different. Nothing keeping them together. I can see them hanging for lunch like one time but probably not keeping in touch once they graduate.
Chapter -1: Riverspot
In which the four friends are acquanted for the first time. I want to channel vibes like when Corinne and I went to the river for the first time mixed with that time that I was sort of dipping out class after we went to the cemetary, and I ended up meeting those people and finding the river spot, which was sort of like the room of requirement. I had some great times there - it was and is a magical place. I don’t know - maybe Zoe comes in later? Maybe she’s just IN the entrepreneurship class? I can’t imagine her in this setting quite as easily. What if…Zoe met them as part of the biking group? Can they be part of a biking group? I don’t see why not
The idea started on a bike ride with four friends in high school. Laughing and racing each other, they sailed through the Saint Ilya cemetary when they probably should have been in fourth period instead.
“Someday, we should do something big, you know?” Naomi had said, laying out on the grass with her jacket like a blanket behind her.
The sky above was blue as an ocean, golden leaves crossing over it like a voyage of ships crossing the sky. The fallen leaves could be heard scraping along the asphalt of the cemetary access road along with the sound of the bicycle wheels still spinning there they laid sideways on the ground.
“I always wanted to like, live in a Van,” said Ty.
Zoe laughed, not unindly. “If you could do anything, is that what you would do Ty?”
“I’m a simple man,” he said. “I can’t think ”
“I mean like, I wouldn’t stop there,” said Ty, uncertainly. “I’d get really good at it, and flip it. Move on to the next one. I’d convert hundreds of Vans!”
“Have you ever seen those schoolbus conversions?” asked Hugo
“Do you think you could make a “
Chapter 1: Why?
In the fall of their Junior year, their housing plans had fallen through, and they were all living in different places. Coursework was getting busier, except for Remi who always seemed to have free time on his hands much to the jealousy of the others, especially Zoe, whose CompSci program was ramping up violently.
“Twenty percent of the program has dropped out,” Zoe said, shaking her head as she watched as a boy across the center of the campus flew a drone near the videography building.
“Oh my god!” said Tyler. “That’s insane!”
“It was the recursion assignement that drove everyone insane though. We had to write a language that was capable of writing itself, and I swear a couple of students truly lost their grip on the real world.”
“I don’t really understand what you just said, but that definitely sounds hard,” said Tyler. “How’d you do?”
“I got an A-,” said Zoe quietly. Tyler looked like he was going to congratulate her, but she shot him a death glare.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she sadly. “But it’s good to see you guys. I miss you. I feel like all I have time for is studying and coding these days.”
The boy with the drone cursed excitedly as the flying device crashed into a telephone line and somersaulted towards the ground.
“All I was gonna say was,” said Tyler, wincing as it hit the ground in an expensive-sounding crash before turning back to look at Zoe ernestly, “Was that if it’s just a credits thing, you should totally take one of these entrepreneurship classes that the MassComm students have to take. They’re like, super fun and not that hard.”
“Oh yeah?” asked Naomi with a familiar glint of interest in her eye as Zoe returned to her thousand yard stare,“And they’re interdisciplinary? Like, anyone can take them?”
It might be a good idea to draw from the personalities of me, Pooyan and Laura
“Yup!” said Tyler.
“I mean, it does sound better than Corporate Programming Realities, which is, bless their hearts, pretty much the only elective that the CompSci program offers. I don’t think all programs are like this, but I feel like my department has no creativity.”
“Sounds good to me,” said Naomi. And it was settled. Despite all being in different departments, they were able to share a single class together.
The first day, the teacher, Dr. David Cancel, told them to split into groups and think of an idea that they wanted to make as a business.
“Okay who wants to be the scribe?” asked Naomi, buzzing with excitement. “I feel like we need a scribe.”
“Sure, I can like, write stuff down,” said Ty, getting up and grabbing a dry erase marker, “So of course we have to start with the why” he pronounced in his best dry professorial tone.
They went through the business list, and unanimously decided to go with Shronkland. They almost got B’s, but Tyler couldn’t keep himself together during their presentations, so eventually the professors started to resent them. However, to the other kids, they were heroes, and would go to live in legends of the entrepreneur program for many years after that.
but if this happens, there probably needs to be a reason of some kind. Like maybe their teacher doubted them? This could actually work - since Shronkland is one of the dumbest ideas on their list, then it sort of goes to show that even the dumbest ideas or craziest ideas are possible
They hired the best musicians in the Jazz program to play an avant-gaurde version of smashmouth, served onion-cake as planned, and sold cotton candy spiderwebs, love-me love-me-not sunflowers, and others. Needless to say, they their professors had no choice but to change their Cs to As when Naomi vehemently made the case that out fo the group, they were the only ones who had managed to actually turn a profit. And in fact, they had made enough money that they could each pay themselves 20 dollars an hour for the time they spent in class.
but what if they actually created shronkland? What would happen? Like, what if they did that and made a killing?
Four friends sat on a table in a
“Okay so to start I was thinking that…” Ty started, sliding the whiteboard in from another room. He struggled a bit to get it out of what looked like a storage closet, and the whiteboard swung on its axis to bop him on the brow.
“Oh Ty, Ty,” Naomi exclaimed, getting up from the couch to help him out. “Let me help,” she said.
“I’ve got it,” Ty mutter perfunctorily, easily moving it into the room with Naomi’s help. Once it was in place, Naomi returned quickly to her spot on the couch.
Ty fumbled in his left pocket and then his right, from which he produced a black dry erase marker and learned over to write on the board.
“WHY” were the words that he wrote in a lively cluster of characters, and then, after looking out at the three faces staring back, underlining them.
Chapter 2: Stupid Brilliant
Naomi saw the advertisement in her own company’s magazine for the first time. She usually copy edited the stories, by her coworker had asked her that day if she could she help her with final her final pagelocks as she had agreed to look after her neice’s kid or something and was behind on the deadline. Naomi usually picked her favors carefully, but liked Jean, who would offer to pick her up Coffee from time to time, and got excited when she saw certain kinds of birds outside of the office window. Maybe it was that the stories for the week’s issue weren’t especially good and Naomi felt like taking a break from them. Or maybe it was that she always wondered how she would do as a designer. Or could it just be that I’m a pushover? Naomi asked herself.
Faint grey lines flew over the paper in the sunlight. Naomi looked out the window in the print room. The morning had been grey, but Naomi had left the windows open anyways, even though management didn’t love it. Some honks from the street below wafted up like discontent cries from large beasts roaming through the canyons of purgatory.
But the distinct shadow of a ginko leaf danced over the serifs and headers, the tip of its arc gracing the edge of an article. Naomis eyes flicked gently up to the artwork above the ad.
It was a painting printed on the page, pixels rendered in ink. A woman with an expression of serenity and hair raising her hands to the sky. In her palms there sat a rather grizly brain, dripping slightly. She was surrounded in a halo of radiant golden light.
The title of the ad was “Stupid Brilliant”. Naomi’s mouth fell open slightly as she read, and she absent mindedly reached for her phone. She read the article twice, and then she took a picture of it and sent it to the Shronkland chat.
*The shronkland chat would be the name of the chat because, early on in their friendship, they all started talking about business ideas. They met in college, all in different departments as far I know, but I think Tyler and Naomi knew each from school and got a little closer in college. But Naomi had the idea that because they were all in different departments, and were having trouble hanging out as their schedules got busier, they could all take an entrepreneurship class together since it was interdsicipinary. This was a perfect idea because they had bonded a lot about sharing their dreams and adding them all to the “business Ideas List.” At parties, they would even have others add to this list.
Zoe: Miss you guys
Remy: Yo! Guess who I ran into?
(picture sent of him and Tyler biking together)
Tyler: Groupcall tonight? Or should I just buy a flight.
Naomi laughed out loud.
Naomi: What, to come to New york?
Tyler: I mean, sure, you got a couch?
Naomi: Yup. And an airmatress. that’s most of my place, but I think we can all fit.
Zoe: Damn girl, you can host three people in Brooklyn? Not bad.
Namo read over the article one more time.
“You’re craziest, most out there ideas. We want them. We will consider the first two thousand entries. The deadline is the solstice, December 21st”
*I’m thinking that we can go like, season by season? So that last one was fall, now winter. Although, it would make more sense to start in Spring, so that now we’d be in summer”
Chapter 3
The seagulls cried and circled. Remi’s head was spinning.
“You okay bud?” Naomi asked with concern.
“Yeah, yeah, I just need to get some fresh air,” said Remi. He needed to move. He finished tying his other shoe and flew out the door. “Be back soon!” he called over his shoulder, flying down the pavement and hitting the pavement hard. He took off so fast time got scrambled and it was if he was still in that room, talking about ideas, but also approaching the sea, no, he was at the sea, seagulls above him, crying plaintively.
You’re the one they seemed to say. You’re the one we want. We want to eat ever bit of flesh off of your bones
Remy shook his head. Why couldn’t he do this? He picked up his pace. He must have looked a mess - the locals shied away from his slightly, like he was contagious. Left, right, left, right. He popped in his earbuds, and his footsteps merged into the beat, the frantic sound of his breathing dissappearing into heavy percussion and light keyboard samples, racing guitars. Before he knew it, another track played, and then another.
Did you know, uh, that love is all around you? were the words.
The sun had gone down, and the streetlights illuminated the brick wall that separated Remy from the sea fifty feet below him or so at an unknown part of San Juan.
“What are we doing?” he called into the wind. “What’s the point of any of it?”
“Do you think he’s okay?” asked Naomi.
Zoe sighed. “Yeah”, she said, eyes downcast. “He’ll be okay. Honestly, he doesn’t have the worst idea. I think I’ll go outside for a second.”
Once the door was closed, Tyler asked.
“Do you know what’s going on?”
Naomi laughed humorlessly. “I’m not sure. You?”
Tyler looked out of the window onto the balcony, where Naomi was taking her first drag of a cigarette.
“I’m not positive but…” Tyler shot a look back at Naomi. “Do you think that maybe…” he nodded his head sideways towards Zoe.
Naomi raised her eyebrows at him. “What?”
“You know.” Tyler said, looking around uncomfortably.
“I really don’t”.
“That they’re an item! I mean, maybe they got together. They were both in DC for a second together.”
Naomi scoffed. “It’s not that.”
Tyler laughed, “Yeah I don’t even know where I got that.”
Naomi busted a rhyme. “Dunno where you got that, dunno where you bought that, if you gonna thought htat you gon need a thought cap”.
Tyler laid down a rather poor beat.
Naomi reached out towards him and took his hand. “Thanks for being here man,” she said.
Tyler smiled sheepishly. They went to bed not that long after, but Naomi stayed up until she heard the other get back in.
The next day they went surfing and didn’t speak fo the night before at all. Naomi was really good, and tried to give Tyler and Remi lessons while Zoe went off, more or less by herself.
“So are we not even gonna try to do anything with this grant money?” asked Tyler through a mouthful of burrito.
“You’re talking crazy dude. I thought we had it all decided.”
“That’s news to me,” said Naomi, her eyebrows raised, before taking a sip of water.
“The NLP thing,” said Zoe, looking each of them in the eye, brushing some hair out over her ear.
“You said that would never work,” said Naomi indignantly.
Zoe shrugged. “I mean, I don’t know if it will, but we can definitely do it.”
“How are you saying we can definitely do it, but also saying it’ll never work?” Naomi said, hearing her voice get a bit heated for the first time that trip. She was just surprised it had taken so long.
Tyler stood up. “Come on. What happend to Shronkland?” he asked, looking at each of them, looking at Remi last, who just sat there quietly, not eating his food but just looking back up at Ty with those wide eyes.
“You know. Doing something dumb. Supid brilliant. Is it crazy? Good. Is there a chance for failure? perfect.”
Tyler stood there looking rather impressive for a few more moments. Remi smiled and started to clap. The others broke in too. Naomi felt self conscious about the heat in her cheeks, and Zoe actually smiled for once.
“No pressure no Diamonds baby” finished Tyler.
“You almost managed not to ruin that dude,” laughed Remi.
“Not a chance,” grinned Tyler. “Okay so we have to do a blood bond or something.”
“No Ty” said everyone else.
---
Chapter 4: The team
Remi got to work with the marketing. He said he had something special up his sleeve, just you wait. They kept him in the loop as things were progressing, and he would dissappear for days at a time, but whenever they talkedto him on the zoom calls, he was beaming just like that free kid that met down by the river that one day.
Naomi was on calls all day. She talked to old professors, writing buddies. She read all night. Haruki Murakami, The Rubiyot, the Bible, Hero of a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell, Story by Robert McCee, Old Man and the Sea, the old myths of Mulan, the mythologies greek, norse, egyptian, native american, east african, west african, aboriginal, Shakespeare, Homer, Yuri Yasashiri.
Zoe dove into the code. They barely saw her. She entered a program she said she always wanted to do. Naomi thought for a moment she was ditching and felt guilty about it.
“This program? Recursive. It’s actually in Berlin. They let you work on anything you want, as long you are becoming a better coder. I realized that a lot of AI and ML and NLP experts are actually doing it this cohort, and the faculty is absolutely steeped in them.”
She more or less disappeared off the face of the earth for about six months.
They spent a bit of their own funds, but for the most part, 300,000 was more than enough for them to pour everything they had into this.
*Yeah that’s as much of a premise as anything - it’s like, you are given an opportunity to work on anything for a year, all expenses paid, what do you do? Super fun question. What does this look like through that lens?
Chapter 5: Zoe’s Creation
Within the first couple weeks Zoe’s results were okay. She wrote code in the morning, waking up early, which was unlike her. But she felt a driving force inside her unlike that which she had ever felt.
She thought of Tyler, of his strange transformation into a marathoner. That he found the willpower somehow to train so thoroughly. He said it helped him think.
I dunno, I sort of like the idea of Tyler running more than Remi? That’s how I originally thought of it - Tyler feels that he is not entirely sufficient when compared to the others, is afraid he will be replaced, and wishes he was “stronger”, or smarter or something. So he pours that impetus into running, and it helps him focus. It helps him become a better vlogger and to undersand himself better - it represents a sort of journey that I have personally been though, from college to now, in which perhaps Tyler realizes that it’s not all about skill or intelligence or girls or power or money but maybe that there is an internal and not external achievement that exists which is just to be strong enough to be true to one’s vision
And Zoe thought, if Tyler can do that, then surely I can work harder. I have managed to work very little my whole life, just getting by on my brains.
She thought back to the day that Naomi had asked her where she had come from, and how much she had hated Naomi, just for a moment. For acknowledging her presence, for giving her no choice but to acknowledge that she, Zoe, did in fact have a story and had to exist. It was hard to explain. But Zoe was afraid sometimes and other times felt it was quite important that she remembered that Naomi had treated her like someone with a story, and that had been hard. Because it meant she had something to live up to.
That is what she remembered now, pouring over diagrams, printouts she had gotten from journals online and books she had ordered or checked out from the library. The whole room was an atlas of this project. Sticky notes adorned one wall, huge sheets of newsprint another. At first she had written all of her ideas in her computer, and then in a loose-leaf notebook, but she abandoned these for larger formats. Newsprint with every square but of space taken up, only to be photographed, the ideas within distiled, and a new shoot placed over it so that much the walls were almost paper-mached, twenty layers thick.
Maybe I should turn it into Paper-Mache, Zoe though. Halloween was coming up…she could be The Timetraveller from the H.G. Wells novel.
These thoughts did not come one after another, but instead were separated by hours of deep focus. Zoe dipped in and out of the theory and the articles online and execution of the code she had written, repurposed or reverse-engineered. She tested it as she went, and was pleased with the results so far. She had built her storytelling engine from scratch - literally - she had even built the servers that did the heavy-lifting. Their fans were so loud that she kept them in the next room over.
But nothing she had created so far was too remarkable. It was at least as good as the leading NLP models, and that would probably be enough, but Zoe knew that if she stopped now she may never be able to do such advanced work every again. No, she was given full reign to keep going. They were a little worried after waiting so long to hear from her, but they could wait another month. That’s all it would take to create something beyond what had ever seen before.
*Here’s a good line I kinda wanna use:
“What’s more dishonest, me making a mistake, or me pretending like I never had?”
In response to opening up about somethign from the past, like stealing as a teenager, and then having someone shame you for it, as if you didnt have a choice to trust them with that information *
It was a ramshackle bunch that came up the path, around the lake, to the parking lot.
“At least the weathers okay”, Cola had groaned, limping and resting half of his weight on Remi and Zoe alternatively.
“Don’t jinx it Cola!” Zoe had hissed, supporting him, eyeing the clouds with mock paranoia.
Remi meanwhile had a permanent expression of dread, and kept whispering to Zoe and Cola about lawyers.
Andrews knees were bloody and bruised, blood caked around the edges of the bandaids that were too small to cover his battered knees. But he had a pep in his step that he hadn’t brought with him from DC. On the way into the hike days before, Andrew had dragged his feet, eyes looking downcast, looked up at the mountains with trepidation. But now his knees were high, and his eyes were to the sky.
“A marmot!” He said, tapping Alyssa. One of the fat mammals sat on a rock, attentively flexed in a half-pushup position.
“Oh good eye!” Alyssa said. She seemed happy that Andrew was taking it so well. “Amina, Ikram, look!”
What’s Alyssa’s character arc? She’s so chill.
“Woah!” Amina said. “Did you see it Ikram?” The two girls were holding hands. “Of course I saw it! It was so fat!” Said Ikram.
Remi’s frown couldn’t help but falter a bit looking at Amina. She looked more carefree than he had ever seen her for a moment, then caught him observing her and gave him a worried expression. She was still afraid that she was in trouble.
The marmot emitted a shrill squeak and then disappeared like a pancake sliding off a plate.
Benjamin was still sputtering on about the spirit of the mountain with Noah, who had a huge smile on his face against all odds.
“What a great trip,” Noah said, too quietly to hear.
They were all dirty, and bruised, and scratched, and a little tired looking. Remi and Zoe in particular had dark circles under their eyes, but a close observer might see that sometimes Zoe would spare Remi a little smile or a wink and Remi’s cheeks would get a little red.
“Well,” said Zoe, “You better enjoy your time with us on the drive back because your parents might not let you come back to the program looking like this.”
Low and behold, rumbling grey clouds had returned,
“Cola you jinxed it!”
The rain began to came down. Not heavy rain, and not light rain. The kind of rain that steadily soaks you completely over the course of a half hour. They sped up their course, passing slower hikers and day tourists who clapped and cheered.
“Take me with you!” A teenager with his family said..
“Those are some good little troopers you got there,” an older woman said.
They made it back to the bus.
“You have the keys right Cola?”
Cola, almost delicious with exhaustion, did his best to respond. “Yeah. Back pocket. Farthest one out. The mesh part,” he said on one knee, practically sitting on the wet asphalt.
“Got it!” Remi said. He opened the door. “Come on in!” He instructed the kids.
They began to pile in.
“All the way to the back! Make room for everyone!”
The kids moved as efficiently as they kid, except for Andrew, who got a little stuck in the doorway, but Noah and Ikram worked together to get him unstuck. Once the kids were in, Remi helped Cola into the front seat where he lied down the best he could.
“Okay everyone, dry clothes. That’s an order.”
The kids, some of them a little embarrassed, did their best to change their clothes without much privacy.
“No peaking,” Remi said, looking at Andrew.
“You too Alyssa,” said Zoe, then exchanged a glance with Remi. Her face was wet with the water and hair clung to the sides of her face. Remi rubbed his hands through his own hair to get the moisture out.
“Hey!” Zoe yelled, screwing up her eyes to defend against water spraying from his hair at her.
“Sorry” Remi said, but not fast enough. Zoe shook her head like a dog, getting water everywhere.
“Okay,” Remi said, “Let’s go home.”
They stopped at a barbecue place, where the kids who had been too embarrassed to change clothing could do so in the bathroom and fill up their water bottles while they waited for their food.
Once it arrived. They were all in heaven. Noah, true to form, got a veggie burger, they all entered a state of complete euphoria as they ate their food.
“I missed real food,” said Benjamin.
And of course not too soon after that, there was another round of bathroom breaks. Rather long ones.
The ride back was uneventful besides music and singing and the recounting of stories amassed on the trip. Naps were taken. Legends were told. Cola started to look more his normal self. Stretch breaks were taken in Kansas, and ghost stories told in Illinois just as they were on the ride over.
After two days of driving, they arrived back in DC at the community building. The parents came in, asked how things were going.
Andrew’s parents seemed more impressed with Andrew’s attitude than worried by his banged up knees.
Remi overheard Benjamin’s parents asking him about the trip, and didn’t hear him mention anything about lightning or storms. He talked all about the rocks Noah and him climbed and the spirit of the mountain.
Amina and Ikram cried as they said goodbye, Amina going with her uncle and Ikram with her much older sisters. But the Uncle and one of the sisters seemed to hit it off, and the goodbye was prolonged until, after not too long, they had lunch plans and left as a group, thanking Remi, Cola and Zoe for the trip and returning the kids safely.
Noah’s parents were the most concerned, asking questions about safety and bears and allergies and storms, but Noah, to his credit, said that the trip had been boring and uneventful. Remi could have sworn he saw Noah wink as he left.
“I guess we don’t need any lawyers,” said Cola.
Remi groaned. “I dunno. Kids love to talk. I would start asking around.”
“You guys worry too much. Kids have terrible memories. The rest of the time their melodramatic. I’m sure we can sort out whatever level of concerned parents we get without litigation,” said Zoe.
The three of them didn’t stay long. The three of them hugged, congratulated each other on a trip without casualties, and headed their separate ways for the day. It was Sunday, and time to settle back into life.
——
Soon more kids started showing up on the weekly Wun (run walk). They asked about the bears, and lightning and Cola saving kids from rivers. They were eager to go backpacking, but Remi tried his best to keep them in the present by telling them that they were “training”. After all, he wasn’t sure if he had it in him to do another trip like that. They needed more training. More staff. More experience!
I want to create this character from outward bound that they can talk to to get advice about how to run their program. Since they are sort of in danger of reinventing the wheel in some ways I don’t want them to entirely disregard the fact, and I don’t want the book to disregard the fact that there is a lot of work out there already that really resembles this. I should look at, for example, the blue sky fund in Richmond.
He told Robin from the outward bound program about the trip over a coffee at Buzzed and Wired.
“Sounds like it went great,” she said, biting into a muffin-top and watching the pedestrians go by outside.
“It’s only been a couple weeks though. I’m still waiting for Andrew’s parents to contact us and ask about the river thing.”
“I wouldn’t worry so much.”
“That’s what Zoe says,” said Remi, thoughtfully. “And she is a forest firefighter.”
Oh wait, does she live in Colorado? Would she have stayed there?
“I would listen to this Zoe. Things happen. What’s important is that you were able to figure it out,” she said.
Remi might have stayed in thought for a bit too long, and Robin asked. “So tell me about this Zoe character.”
“Oh she’s just another friend from high school. Her and Cola got me into running. It changed my life, really.”
Robin smiled. “They sound like good people. I would hang on to them.”
Remi stopped gazing off into the distance and looked straight at Robin, caught off guard, then nodded for a moment.
“Yeah,” he said. “They are.”
It was a Tuesday before the lunch rush. They were surrounded by the idle chatter of professionals, students, cyclists. Just outside, cars parallel parked and cyclists whizzed past, beginning the Capital Crest trail, or perhaps commuting to or from Bethesda. The sounds the cafe became crisp and apparent as if the volume had been turned up without making anything louder. Robin sat in front of Remi looking peaceful, sipping her coffee, observing him with a slight tilt of her head.
“Do you ever feel like you just woke up?” asked Remi.
Robin didn’t say anything immediately, thinking.
“Yeah,” she responded, looking up abruptly and giving a single nod. “I do sometimes. Sometimes it’s when I…am leaving a moving theatre after seeing an incredible movie!”
She smiled, gazing past the hanging light fixtures and through the ceiling. She must have been recounting one such instance.
“And other times, I don’t know. It happens other times too. But I couldn’t tell you when. It’s certainly confirmation bias, but now is certainly one of those times.”
Remi laughed.
“Is it okay if I make a call real quick?” He asked.
“Of course” said Robin. “And you can make it longer than real quick if you want. I have to get going, but I’m glad the trip went well, and that you’ve kept in touch. I can’t wait to hear more about it. And you really are welcome to join us at any point if you want to pick some things up from outdoor bound, like you said.”
Robin got up, wrapping her muffin back in its paper bag and sliding it gently into a backpack. She extended her hand, which Remi took, standing with her.
“Bye Remi,” she said, then walked out of the of coffee shop, turning on the street towards her motorcycle. Remi felt the glow of an encounter well-met. Two people meeting, exchanging their experiences, and then heading back out into their own lives where they disappeared into their own mysteries outside of what they had shared, that neither of them understood, and both would wonder at until they met again.
“Hey,” Remi said, into the phone. His nerves jittered with coffee and yet his mind was strangely clear. “Do you want to go kayaking or something?”
Remi waited an impossibly long moment, probably less than a second.
“I’m on my lunch break. So…” said Zoe. “Sure!”
I think that Remi is probably afraid that at the beginning of all of this that Zoe and Cola are going to let him down or say he’s stupid in some way when he brings the idea to them. As an actual thing that they are going to do.
———
Later that year, the Hungry Hikers project had officially partnered with outward bound, sending some its yearly trips through supervisory groups made up of Outward Bound and Hungry Hiker guides, half and half. By the end of the year, 60% of the School Nutrition participants donated, and the kids that participated tripled. Six hundred kids made their own lunch three times a week, rotating their cooking groups every week and learning how to make nutritious food from cultures around the world. Over video calls other kids from three other countries did monthly culinary sharing classes, sort of like pen pals, but with food.
The Hungry Hikers project had articles written about it in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and an AMA with the founders made it onto the front page of reddit more than once.
The Greatest Tale ever Told
It was a sham shackle bunch
It was a ramshackle bunch that came up the path, around the lake, to the parking lot.
“At least the weathers okay”, Cola had groaned, limping and resting half of his weight on Remi and Zoe alternatively.
“Don’t jinx it Cola!” Zoe had hissed, supporting him, eyeing the clouds with mock paranoia.
Remi meanwhile had a permanent expression of dread, and kept whispering to Zoe and Cola about lawyers.
Andrews knees were bloody and bruised, blood caked around the edges of the bandaids that were too small to cover his battered knees. But he had a pep in his step that he hadn’t brought with him from DC. On the way into the hike days before, Andrew had dragged his feet, eyes looking downcast, looked up at the mountains with trepidation. But now his knees were high, and his eyes were to the sky.
“A marmot!” He said, tapping Alyssa. One of the fat mammals sat on a rock, attentively flexed in a half-pushup position.
“Oh good eye!” Alyssa said. She seemed happy that Andrew was taking it so well. “Amina, Ikram, look!”
What’s Alyssa’s character arc? She’s so chill.
“Woah!” Amina said. “Did you see it Ikram?” The two girls were holding hands. “Of course I saw it! It was so fat!” Said Ikram.
Remi’s frown couldn’t help but falter a bit looking at Amina. She looked more carefree than he had ever seen her for a moment, then caught him observing her and gave him a worried expression. She was still afraid that she was in trouble.
The marmot emitted a shrill squeak and then disappeared like a pancake sliding off a plate.
Benjamin was still sputtering on about the spirit of the mountain with Noah, who had a huge smile on his face against all odds.
“What a great trip,” Noah said, too quietly to hear.
They were all dirty, and bruised, and scratched, and a little tired looking. Remi and Zoe in particular had dark circles under their eyes, but a close observer might see that sometimes Zoe would spare Remi a little smile or a wink and Remi’s cheeks would get a little red.
“Well,” said Zoe, “You better enjoy your time with us on the drive back because your parents might not let you come back to the program looking like this.”
Low and behold, rumbling grey clouds had returned,
“Cola you jinxed it!”
The rain began to came down. Not heavy rain, and not light rain. The kind of rain that steadily soaks you completely over the course of a half hour. They sped up their course, passing slower hikers and day tourists who clapped and cheered.
“Take me with you!” A teenager with his family said..
“Those are some good little troopers you got there,” an older woman said.
They made it back to the bus.
“You have the keys right Cola?”
Cola, almost delicious with exhaustion, did his best to respond. “Yeah. Back pocket. Farthest one out. The mesh part,” he said on one knee, practically sitting on the wet asphalt.
“Got it!” Remi said. He opened the door. “Come on in!” He instructed the kids.
They began to pile in.
“All the way to the back! Make room for everyone!”
The kids moved as efficiently as they kid, except for Andrew, who got a little stuck in the doorway, but Noah and Ikram worked together to get him unstuck. Once the kids were in, Remi helped Cola into the front seat where he lied down the best he could.
“Okay everyone, dry clothes. That’s an order.”
The kids, some of them a little embarrassed, did their best to change their clothes without much privacy.
“No peaking,” Remi said, looking at Andrew.
“You too Alyssa,” said Zoe, then exchanged a glance with Remi. Her face was wet with the water and hair clung to the sides of her face. Remi rubbed his hands through his own hair to get the moisture out.
“Hey!” Zoe yelled, screwing up her eyes to defend against water spraying from his hair at her.
“Sorry” Remi said, but not fast enough. Zoe shook her head like a dog, getting water everywhere.
“Okay,” Remi said, “Let’s go home.”
They stopped at a barbecue place, where the kids who had been too embarrassed to change clothing could do so in the bathroom and fill up their water bottles while they waited for their food.
Once it arrived. They were all in heaven. Noah, true to form, got a veggie burger, they all entered a state of complete euphoria as they ate their food.
“I missed real food,” said Benjamin.
And of course not too soon after that, there was another round of bathroom breaks. Rather long ones.
The ride back was uneventful besides music and singing and the recounting of stories amassed on the trip. Naps were taken. Legends were told. Cola started to look more his normal self. Stretch breaks were taken in Kansas, and ghost stories told in Illinois just as they were on the ride over.
After two days of driving, they arrived back in DC at the community building. The parents came in, asked how things were going.
Andrew’s parents seemed more impressed with Andrew’s attitude than worried by his banged up knees.
Remi overheard Benjamin’s parents asking him about the trip, and didn’t hear him mention anything about lightning or storms. He talked all about the rocks Noah and him climbed and the spirit of the mountain.
Amina and Ikram cried as they said goodbye, Amina going with her uncle and Ikram with her much older sisters. But the Uncle and one of the sisters seemed to hit it off, and the goodbye was prolonged until, after not too long, they had lunch plans and left as a group, thanking Remi, Cola and Zoe for the trip and returning the kids safely.
Noah’s parents were the most concerned, asking questions about safety and bears and allergies and storms, but Noah, to his credit, said that the trip had been boring and uneventful. Remi could have sworn he saw Noah wink as he left.
“I guess we don’t need any lawyers,” said Cola.
Remi groaned. “I dunno. Kids love to talk. I would start asking around.”
“You guys worry too much. Kids have terrible memories. The rest of the time their melodramatic. I’m sure we can sort out whatever level of concerned parents we get without litigation,” said Zoe.
The three of them didn’t stay long. The three of them hugged, congratulated each other on a trip without casualties, and headed their separate ways for the day. It was Sunday, and time to settle back into life.
——
Soon more kids started showing up on the weekly Wun (run walk). They asked about the bears, and lightning and Cola saving kids from rivers. They were eager to go backpacking, but Remi tried his best to keep them in the present by telling them that they were “training”. After all, he wasn’t sure if he had it in him to do another trip like that. They needed more training. More staff. More experience!
I want to create this character from outward bound that they can talk to to get advice about how to run their program. Since they are sort of in danger of reinventing the wheel in some ways I don’t want them to entirely disregard the fact, and I don’t want the book to disregard the fact that there is a lot of work out there already that really resembles this. I should look at, for example, the blue sky fund in Richmond.
He told Robin from the outward bound program about the trip over a coffee at Buzzed and Wired.
“Sounds like it went great,” she said, biting into a muffin-top and watching the pedestrians go by outside.
“It’s only been a couple weeks though. I’m still waiting for Andrew’s parents to contact us and ask about the river thing.”
“I wouldn’t worry so much.”
“That’s what Zoe says,” said Remi, thoughtfully. “And she is a forest firefighter.”
Oh wait, does she live in Colorado? Would she have stayed there?
“I would listen to this Zoe. Things happen. What’s important is that you were able to figure it out,” she said.
Remi might have stayed in thought for a bit too long, and Robin asked. “So tell me about this Zoe character.”
“Oh she’s just another friend from high school. Her and Cola got me into running. It changed my life, really.”
Robin smiled. “They sound like good people. I would hang on to them.”
Remi stopped gazing off into the distance and looked straight at Robin, caught off guard, then nodded for a moment.
“Yeah,” he said. “They are.”
It was a Tuesday before the lunch rush. They were surrounded by the idle chatter of professionals, students, cyclists. Just outside, cars parallel parked and cyclists whizzed past, beginning the Capital Crest trail, or perhaps commuting to or from Bethesda. The sounds the cafe became crisp and apparent as if the volume had been turned up without making anything louder. Robin sat in front of Remi looking peaceful, sipping her coffee, observing him with a slight tilt of her head.
“Do you ever feel like you just woke up?” asked Remi.
Robin didn’t say anything immediately, thinking.
“Yeah,” she responded, looking up abruptly and giving a single nod. “I do sometimes. Sometimes it’s when I…am leaving a moving theatre after seeing an incredible movie!”
She smiled, gazing past the hanging light fixtures and through the ceiling. She must have been recounting one such instance.
“And other times, I don’t know. It happens other times too. But I couldn’t tell you when. It’s certainly confirmation bias, but now is certainly one of those times.”
Remi laughed.
“Is it okay if I make a call real quick?” He asked.
“Of course” said Robin. “And you can make it longer than real quick if you want. I have to get going, but I’m glad the trip went well, and that you’ve kept in touch. I can’t wait to hear more about it. And you really are welcome to join us at any point if you want to pick some things up from outdoor bound, like you said.”
Robin got up, wrapping her muffin back in its paper bag and sliding it gently into a backpack. She extended her hand, which Remi took, standing with her.
“Bye Remi,” she said, then walked out of the of coffee shop, turning on the street towards her motorcycle. Remi felt the glow of an encounter well-met. Two people meeting, exchanging their experiences, and then heading back out into their own lives where they disappeared into their own mysteries outside of what they had shared, that neither of them understood, and both would wonder at until they met again.
“Hey,” Remi said, into the phone. His nerves jittered with coffee and yet his mind was strangely clear. “Do you want to go kayaking or something?”
Remi waited an impossibly long moment, probably less than a second.
“I’m on my lunch break. So…” said Zoe. “Sure!”
I think that Remi is probably afraid that at the beginning of all of this that Zoe and Cola are going to let him down or say he’s stupid in some way when he brings the idea to them. As an actual thing that they are going to do.
———
Later that year, the Hungry Hikers project had officially partnered with outward bound, sending some its yearly trips through supervisory groups made up of Outward Bound and Hungry Hiker guides, half and half. By the end of the year, 60% of the School Nutrition participants donated, and the kids that participated tripled. Six hundred kids made their own lunch three times a week, rotating their cooking groups every week and learning how to make nutritious food from cultures around the world. Over video calls other kids from three other countries did monthly culinary sharing classes, sort of like pen pals, but with food.
The Hungry Hikers project had articles written about it in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and an AMA with the founders made it onto the front page of reddit more than once.
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