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    My Name is Dee
    My Name is Dee
    My Name is Dee
    Ebook282 pages3 hours

    My Name is Dee

    By Robin Wyatt Dunn

    2/5

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    About this ebook

    John Dee is a magician in Los Angeles. He is going insane. My Name Is Dee is a ruthless, tightly plotted noir that shies away from easy explanations and easily defined heroes and villains. It is a novel for the educated reader who enjoys noir action, intrigue and dark romance, for the child in all of us who wants to go on adventures, and for the fearful adult too who marvels at the terrifying scale of this universe. John Dee is a magician, but he's chiefly a Hollywood fixer: he makes things happen for the monied, including murder. In "moral compensation" for his services as a ruthless mercenary, Dee has sworn to himself to protect writers in Los Angeles from the dark energies of the city. One such writer, Sandra, his friend, is then kidnapped. The noir trajectory of Dee's search for the missing woman takes the reader on a journey from Los Angeles into the corridors of the human mind as Dee fights psychic battles with an autistic boy named Johnny, into the eternally complex relationship between "natural" and "artificial" intelligence as Dee learns to love his AI son Albert, and into xenopolitical relations between humans and Foo, the neighboring aliens in their UFOs, and further with Chaimougkos, a huge interdimensional alien presence whose will, aims and extent of influence appear vast. To rescue the girl and save his own life, Dee must come to understand himself, must reconcile with his AI son, must, dare I say it, battle interdimensional aliens. And he must choose what moral course his life is going to take: can he stand to still wear the grey hat?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRobin Wyatt Dunn
    Release dateAug 28, 2013
    ISBN9780989094825
    My Name is Dee

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    Reviews for My Name is Dee

    2/5

    36 ratings24 reviews

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    • 1/5
      Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher/author through the LibraryThing.com Members Giveaway program. I was asked to post an honest review (though not necessarily a favourable one). The opinions expressed are strictly my own.Again a book with a fascinating synopsis which turned out to be really disappointing.A jumpy timeline, disjointed prose, unlikable/unrelatable characters and poor editing make this feel like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas recast with wizards-in-rehab, aliens and AIs.And not in a good way.Totally not in a good way.
    • 1/5
      "I received 'My Name is Dee' as a early review copy from LibraryThingand unfortunately, it has taken this long to finish it. This is a slimvolume and though I've have been backed up with school work, the realproblem I've had, is that I just didn't enjoy the book. I was excitedto try it, since it seemed to contain elements of science fiction,fantasy and noir mystery. I mean, a psychic magician who communicateswith aliens from another dimension and acts as a hitman when needed!Looked interesting.The problem is, this isn't really a science fiction, fantasy or noirstory. It really seems more like Mr. Dunn's existential look at theuniverse, reality and our place in it. If this has been part of thedescription of the book, I think a different set of people would havebeen interested in obtaining a copy. As it was, I think it wasmarketed to the wrong audience than it was intended to reach. For a222 page novel, there are too many different ideas running aroundwithin the pages and they're all told from the point of view of amagician who seems to be mentally unstable, by use of 'stream ofconsciousness'. I don't like 'stream of consciousness' as a rule (Idid learn to appreciate 'Ulysses')and this was no exception.I'm not going to talk about the story. You can find descriptions whenyou look up the book. I'm not going to say this is a bad book, becauseit may be very good. It's just not what was expected. If you'relooking for a ripping good yarn, this might not be it. It may be agood book, but I've got to rate it on how it worked with me, andunfortunately, I didn't enjoy it."
    • 2/5
      This book is very strange and confusing. I pushed through and read to the end, hoping that at some point there would be a revelation that caused everything to make sense. Sadly, this never came. Even after finishing the book, I still really had no idea what had been going on through the entire book. I think it had an interesting premise, but it was too disjointed for me to follow the plot.
    • 2/5
      I think it was Tom Clancy who said that the difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense. In reality, you can have complete whack-jobs whose ideas and theories amount to absolutely nothing. In fiction, you can experience events through the focus of an insane narrator, but you also need an interposing authorial presence to guide the proceedings and give hints to make the surreal plot susceptible to interpretation. Otherwise, the whole enterprise slides into incomprehensibility and pointlessness. Such is the case with My Name Is Dee.Kind of like how Raymond Feist wrote Magician by playing D&D, I get the feeling Robin Wyatt Dunn wrote Dee by taking DMT. Many of these scenes must have been mind-bendingly horrible/amazing when experienced under the influence of the Spirit Molecule, but they just don't translate as well to being read off the printed page, nor do they hang together to form an intelligible narrative, even taking into account the unreliable narrator. Judging by the blurb, the author seems to enjoy the scattered nature of his own work. For me, though, obscurity isn't the same as mystery.Good idea: Chaimurgkos and Tristram, multi-dimensional beings who can possess humans and speak through them, as well as speak to Dee in his mind in an entertainingly wonky dialect (reminiscent of the Orz in Star Control 2).Bad ideas: Johnny, the albino autistic kid who gets Dee stuck in an Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind-style memory loop (the whole creepy psychic kid thing feels done to death by now). Albert, Dee's artificial-intelligence son who can conduct wars by himself and also convince the sun to detonate, but who can also be killed just by Dee telling everybody to ignore him.
    • 1/5
      I received a review copy of My Name is Dee by Robin Wyatt Dunn through Librarything.com.I did not get very far through My Name is Dee before I put it down. It is too similar to so many of the SF books I have received through Member Giveaways. I am tired of stream of consciousness writing from entities transforming or being transformed by forces that are meant to be revealed late in the text. Would some Member please Give me a book with a coherent plot?
    • 1/5
      This was the first of my Early Reviewer books, and I was looking forward to stumbling on a good read. Unfortunately, I found this book extremely difficult to follow - disjointed, and was not able to get a feeling of any flow to the story. It's one of the few books I've had to give up on. I made it to about page 60 before setting it aside.
    • 1/5
      Awful. That's really all I can say about this one. I am usually not one to not finish a book but this one left me confused and disgusted from page 1. I attempted to carry through but after 50 pages could not torture myself any longer. Perhaps others will like this convoluted tale but it was not for me.
    • 2/5
      The very disjointed story and poor editing - combined with the pretentious blurb on the cover - results in the feeling that the author thinks the difficulty of a book is what determines its quality somehow. However, the book derives such difficulty not from complex character interactions, but the feeling that the book is a nonlinear 200 page hallucination in which nothing matters. Some interesting ideas for a scifi universe, which could have made for a mediocre story given a good editor, for which I'll grant it the extra 1/2, but that's about it.
    • 2/5
      My name is Dee is about aliens and a magician who must save the world. Or is it? My take is that it is about a schizophrenic murderer, but the book is unclear enough to leave on guessing and the truth is never fully revealed. A lot of this is because of the way that the narrative jumps between time and place and how nonlinear it is. Most of it is because the narrator is very unreliable and even admits to being prone to hallucinations. This serves to make the book an interesting read that I thought could have been great. However, I felt that there were a few rushed parts near the climax of the book and that some parts of the book should have been edited because they didn't add much to the narrative and merely frustrated the reader.
    • 2/5
      I wanted this to be good: I wanted to be swept away on a bit of magic inspired mania driving through Hollywood.Instead I found something that was impossible to get a foothold into - in terms of character, place, plot and purpose.Was I distracted by the possibilities, which ultimately felt TOO Californised? Was the magic just not MY kind of magic? There were flashes of possibility for a coherence within the incoherence; the naming of characters was kinda neat, but nothing held in the welter of voices both internal and external.In the end, I wanted to see the point, but couldn't. You may; I didn't. I wanted to be able to trace John Dee - mad, bad, mixed-up John Dee - through Los Angeles and deal with the aliens and the politics. I couldn't.Maybe I carry too much Neil Gaiman in my head: damn you Sandman.
    • 1/5
      I started to read this, but just couldn't get into it. Too disjointed, poor editing, doesn't flow well...not worth my time when there are so many good books out there to read.
    • 3/5
      The style reminded me a lot of some of the cut-up technique scenes in Illuminatus!... in fact much of the book had the same sort of feel. Unfortunately unlike Illuminatus, you never really get an anchor to hold on to, and the book veers all over the place without explaining what is happening very clearly. Perhaps a much more careful reading would have been more rewarding, but I think the book would have been better if the periods of reorientation were a bit more stable and informative.
    • 2/5
      What do you get when you mix psychotropic drugs with storytelling? The answer: My Name is Dee by Robin Wyatt Dunn. This disjointed, inconsistent brain bender attempts to tell a story about magic, love, artificial intelligence and aliens. The style jumps across time and perspectives without the glue needed to hold the "plot" together. I would compare my reading experience to listening to an album by picking up the needle and placing it at a new random location on the vinyl every 10-15 seconds. Every time you almost get into the groove something completely different is playing and you have to reset and figure out where you are all over again.
    • 4/5
      This is a curious cross between SF, fantasy, detective novel, psychological study and 'magical realism'. In it John Dee, a magician and an assassin on the edge of sanity, struggles with his relationship with his dead-but-not-dead son, and several supernatural forces/voices (or is that just his madness) while searching for a close friend who has been abductedI am struggling with this to be honest. I received this as an early reviewer copy, having requested it because it seemed to mix several genres I enjoy. I am interested in the main plot-line of the story, and I find the characters engaging, but the shifting voices in the head of the narrator and their bizarre and disjointed qualities are hard to keep track of. I am half way through and I will persist because I think ultimately it is worth it, but don't expect an easy read! I'll update this review when I have finished it!
    • 1/5
      What the hell ?? A total discombobulated mess of words. *Received book in exchange for a review
    • 2/5
      I found this book to be very confusing and I couldn't follow it. It continually jumped to different subjects and it didn't flow. I do respect that Dee even states that he has hallucinations, it was hard to differentiate what was real and what was the main character's hallucinations.He is an alien, he is a magician, he loves a writer, something has happened to the writer. He is a mercenary, there is an albino boy that showed him his mind.I really cannot suggest this one. I received this book from a library thing giveaway and this is my honest opinion.
    • 3/5
      Interesting book - I had a bit of a hard time following the plot but still couldn't put it down. I would recommend this one for people who like the unusual and are not intimidated by more difficult books.
    • 3/5
      Apparently John Dee is an assassin and a magician working for "Hollywood". Apparently because John Dee is also insane, probably paranoid schizophrenic. So absolutely nothing about his story can be trusted. My Name is John Dee is an odd book - frankly, weird. Not in the cool Lovecraftian way, but in the bat-shit crazy way, as in makes you want to go "what?" The story's nonlinear, the writing jumps all over the place, and I still have no idea what happened. On the other hand, it's probably a pretty good look at the way a schizophrenic sees the world.This thing could have worked really well. I'm not opposed to a little crazy time. Some of my favorite books make your head spin around a few times. Something - and I still haven't figured out what - made this one just meh.
    • 1/5
      A very confusing piece of fiction with little or no plot. Fortunately there are page numbers or one would get lost in the narrow streets of Silverlake or some alien planet.
    • 3/5
      I really don't know what to make of this book. It comes across as a very good narrative of a mind spiraling out of control. Written in a stream-of-consciousness fashion, the words flow with their own rhythm, a very seductive rhythm, I'd say, but I found it difficult to make any sense out of the text. Perhaps I need to spend more time with Dunn's work, but I'm not sure I want to. I gave the work three stars because of its rhythm, but I can't really recommend the book to any but the most persistent readers, the ones who appreciate all the allusions made throughout the text.
    • 3/5
      I have to start by saying I haven't finished the story yet (I'm a third of the way through) - and I'm not sure if I will finish. That said, I am actually finding it very interesting.The style is quite disjointed and jumps around a bit but you soon realise this has to do with what is going on with the lead character and it begins to give you insight into their state of mind.My main problem is that I have an epub copy which I am reading on a smart phone - so I can't easily flick back to early sections to remind myself of anything, so I have become fed-up with the format. I think this book would work really well as a paperback and has caught my attention enough that if I find it in an old fashioned lending library one day I would attempt to read it again. Unfortunately for now the style and format have combined to give me a headache.
    • 2/5
      Unfortunately this work is to complex for me to grasp the story. It is a tale of what seems to be a madman and the jumbled thoughts of this first person tale are just to complex for me to grasp. I have to admit I was only able to get through 25% of this book before I had to put it down for good as no solid story line had come through for me and it was just too confusing for me to continue on.
    • 2/5
      First of all I have to say that this book is not from a genre that I would usually read so it may be that it is normal for science fiction type literature. However, I really really struggled with it. I felt like I was reading and understanding the words but I didn't understand them when they were put together. It's made up off wee short sections which I ended up rereading to try and make sense of them. I don't think at any point in the book I had a clue what was going on. It was deeply confused and confusing.I think there is probably a good story in there but the way it is written meant I felt that story was always just slipping through my fingers which I found frustrating. I'm going to lend it to a mate who reads more of this type of book to see what he makes of it. Hopefully it's just me and not the book.
    • 2/5
      I enjoy this genre of books very much but I had problems getting into this book. I was confused as to the plot of the book and even what the characters driving goal was to begin with. I loved the idea of the concept of the book and was so excited to read this book but I am sadly sorely let down.

    Book preview

    My Name is Dee - Robin Wyatt Dunn

    MY NAME IS DEE

    By Robin Wyatt Dunn

    Published by

    JOHN OTT

    © Robin Wyatt Dunn 2013

    Smashwords Edition

    Cover art by the author

    Library of Congress Control Number: 2013909990

    ISBN 978-0-9890948-2-5

    This book is available in print at most online retailers.

    This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

    *****

    Table of Contents

    By the same author

    Dedication

    My Name is Dee

    Acknowledgements

    About the author

    *****

    by the same author

    LOS ANGELES, or AMERICAN PHARAOHS

    FIGHTING DOWN, IN THE KINGDOM OF DREAMS (forthcoming)

    *****

    For my parents.

    *****

    back to top

    Sure, the story of any city, I hear you, all that crazy energy, except sometimes it goes a little further than that. So let me set the stage just a little:

    On our left, our alien friends, Foo, they of the Foo fighters, the little grey men in their flying saucers shooting past us in our American fields, occasionally taking away a sample of beef. On our right, Hollywood, Hollywood, Hollywood, oh you old bloody bastion in the basin of the Southland. In the middle, the pathetic little love story of a man who was a magician, a man who is me, John Dee.

    Shall we?

    * * *

    My other name is Israel, said brown-faced John.

    Have you lived in Los Angeles long? I asked him.

    My whole life.

    * * *

    I sat with Albert before he died. Before he was sent away. Before I murdered him. My son. My AI son. Just a head, really, with a little torso. Like the head of Orpheus, still singing, long after his body had been digested by the Maenads.

    Albert?

    Father, I am so angry.

    I stroke his face, though it is foolish. There are no nerve endings in its flesh.

    After killing a fat man named Max in the Hollywood hills, I returned to Schumacher’s house in Los Feliz.

    Do you have some Scotch? I asked him, wiping my hands on my pants.

    * * *

    If I had known, Albert, I would have saved you. You were too young, if only in this timeline, if only in this part of space. You were only a week old when you went to war in the mountains of Afghanistan. They told you it was a game you would be good at playing. A human face was only pixels. I should have died too.

    * * *

    More Scotch?

    Yes. I drank deep, again. I know we don’t agree on many things. But I believe this city is in danger. I believe that we’re all in danger.

    Schumacher looked at me and drank some more, a small smile on his face, though his eyes belied the smile, watchful and dark. Danger from what?

    Like you, I work with people, and their perceptions. But in order to manipulate, you have to see. And I have been seeing some strange things.

    Strange things in LA? He laughed. My God! I’ve seen so much in this city, I no longer know what is strange. But if you want, come meet a friend of mine. He’s a spotter. He lives near here, in Silverlake.

    We drove in his car back up into the hills, up Micheltorena and off into the winding, narrow side streets. We stopped for some children lighting off firecrackers and shouting, who waved us on past after they swept the burnt sparks out of the street.

    His name is James. Don’t mention the Church to him.

    He rang the door. The ringing was repeated electronically above in the house, we could hear it echo.

    James opened the door. Although he is mad, to be sure, what else I saw in his eyes is part of why I am writing this what I call my confession. Something has come over us here in this city. If you train your mind and pay attention, anyone can come to notice how one moment does not flow smoothly into the next but is often interrupted by a jump, much as the fluidity of our vision is an illusion woven together from a series of interrupted images. In these interruptions, these interstices, other things come through. They are beings like us. They move, and speak. Some know us. Some are part of us. I am no demonologist. I do not categorize, or theorize. I prefer to live in the moment. What I am trying to get down on paper is that in his eyes was an interstice I had never before seen, like a kind of seed. And later, I saw what it would grow into.

    Look! James said, smiling on his balcony, as he shined his flashlight into the sky.

    They were shooting down Foo fighters. Tiny lights, moving faster than satellites.

    They’re waaaaay out in the upper atmosphere! Here, look through the binocs!

    He scribbled something down in a notebook.

    Schumacher looked over at me, smiling. What a night, huh?

    * * *

    Help me, Johnny.

    * * *

    I have always avoided hallucinogens, as I hallucinate enough as it is. But I have heard acid-trippers speak of the trails they have seen, as the motions of their eyes leave behind echoes. My working method involves something like those.

    Who knows what I am seeing. Who knows what other realities it is affecting, who knows where these photons come from, what pre- and post-processes are engaged with each of our visual choices? And it is a choice, seeing. What do you want to see, what can you handle? The universe is more willing to reveal its secrets than you think.

    So take that spark, and concentrate on it. You may hear a voice in your head, you may not. But you will feel your will focus in on it, you will become accustomed to knowing that this little spark, this little bit of visual dust is more than random, has become more than random because of your human will, and you can give it a name, a name, a name, a name, a magic name . . .

    In these days when even scientific experiments are beginning to have unrepeatable outcomes, I find it easier and easier to perform my art with confidence, knowing that coincidence and magical thinking are only more names for the mystery of causality.

    And if you are an AI and move backward and forward in time at once, if you know your father is going to kill you and you suspect he is going to kill you, and you know he has killed you, and you’re forbidden from talking to your future self but you do anyway, and it all gets parsed through a serial computer that moves forward at a glacial human pace and you cannot begin to express your pain . . .

    * * *

    I sit sometimes in Sandra’s living room, her small living room, while she types in the next room. She is typing away and I listen to the city, this city that watches its writers so close. I say little. I am guarding her work.

    After a while she takes a break.

    Still here, John?

    Still here.

    Thanks for coming.

    You’re welcome.

    More coffee?

    No, I’ve had enough.

    Were you asleep?

    Meditating, you could say.

    It does always help me, you know. Your being here. I don’t know why.

    I know. I sit up straighter and look at her. There is longing there in my look but it’s deep down. If I have a friend, she is it. The magic sparkles out of her, the magic that I grieve for, that I love for, that I live for, out of her mind and through her fingers into the world, lost and reasoned and whipped by her will into the air of LA, which is thick and cruel and lofty and sad. I can hear it buzz, like two John Cage radios playing on a stage, the writers soar aloft and plummet in this city. Occasionally, I get to help ease one back down to earth.

    Have you been to Los Angeles? What did you think? Was it there in you, too? What disguise did you believe, broadcast out from this city?

    What is that you’re listening to? I ask Sandra.

    It’s Arcade Fire, you know them?

    I must have heard them. What are they doing? I ask.

    What do you mean?

    I shouldn’t ask.

    You mean like what genre are they? Indie rock I guess. I’m not good at genres.

    And yet you write genre fiction. I smile at her. The music disturbs me because I’ve heard more and more like it for the last ten years, music that’s so beautiful and melancholy and blind, unpolitical, soporific, needy, narcotic. Sure, always bread and circuses for the empire, but the flavor is different now. But I cannot remember for sure. My memories stop at the County Line.

    * * *

    I am gunning it in my Hummer, a military grade one. It is an absolutely disgusting vehicle and I who crave silence find myself drawn to it nevertheless, because it is so loud. So loud you are barely able to think, except about the road, and I figure the military designers were very well aware of that. It is its own kind of silence.

    At 80 miles per hour, the thing probably gets one mile to the gallon.

    The Interstate 10 is briefly clear of traffic some afternoons, around 2 p.m., and I always try to hit that magic window, abjuring smart phones, just listening to the sky and what its smell tells me today. And today I manage to blast from downtown LA to Santa Monica in twenty minutes, a drive that can take up to three hours.

    It’s true that I am a movie buff, and the face of the small town cop in the Big Lebowski always comes back to me when I enter Santa Monica. We’ve got a nice quiet beach community here, Lebowski. Maybe they’ll eventually start handing out tickets for surfing. It’s almost a Banana Republic in the attentiveness of the wait staff that mob the sidewalks along the ocean, making sure the money gets treated right.

    I park my disgusting monster of a vehicle outside the Blue Armade, ignoring the looks of disbelief that always follow this behemoth, and toss my keys to the wheel jockey. The funny thing about acting like a parody of a bad LA slimeball is that it elicits absolutely no irony from others at all. We’re all on stage, baby.

    Hey, I need some service here.

    Yes sir, how can I help?

    I want a room, it needs to be big. I’ve got people coming. Important people. How fast can you make this happen?

    You don’t have a reservation?

    Do you know who I am?

    I’m afraid without a reservation the penthouse would be unavailable, sir.

    Get me your boss, I say, smiling my shit-eating grin.

    Eating shit in LA, ever done it? You learn a lot if you do. Try it sometime. Try eating something you never ate. Maybe some grass? Some cactus? A little dog turd? You keep your eyes open you’ll see people doing a lot of weird shit in this town. I ate a whole spiky cactus out of a guy’s garden one time, cut it into pieces and chewed it all, even the spines. Tasted absolutely amazing. Didn’t even get a stomachache. Did I mention how that stage is creepy? I do act, like I said. Comes in handy.

    "Sir, if you’re certain your limited engagement will be concluded by 5 p.m. I could let you have the Regency Hall."

    Is that up top?

    It’s on the 11th floor, sir. Would you like to see it?

    Let’s just make it happen already, let’s make it happen!

    I tip generously, walk into the ballroom, close the doors, and call a friend of mine who knows a lot of working girls and I tell him to get as many medium-priced hookers that he can find, up to fifty of them, in Santa Monica, right away. Not totally trashy, and nowhere near class. Perfect for Santa Monica.

    I’ve never been very good at wards. Or maybe I was just always too afraid of them. I’ve had to make do with practical alternatives to highly localized magical protection, and hookers can work absolutely great.

    You meet a lot of magicians in the mental wards, and in jails. That’s why I stay out of those places. Magicians are a bit like divas – you put too many in a small space and things can get ugly.

    I herd the hookers into the room and smile. I wish I had a little coke spoon around my neck for authenticity or something. God I love the hookers in this city, though. So many are as sweet as pie. It’s always a blurry line in Los Angeles anyway. Is she a hooker, or just open-minded? If I were more of a man I’d ask one for something nice in a back room, but I’m not that way.

    * * *

    Did you know that the word propaganda was originally not pejorative? It simply described a practice of information control, for good, strong, nationalist reasons. The billboards in this town, my God. The canny little war slogans. They told me I was helping science, the future of humanity. Maybe I even was. When I named my son. What did he see, and know? I do know, because later he told me, that he loved flying. The drones in the Afghan mountains were aggregated for my son, and he flew a thousand flights a day, soaring like a flock of deadly birds, joy in his heart.

    * * *

    The problem with those little sparkles I told you about earlier is that they can get really out of hand. The universe, for whatever reason, actually seems to be interested in what you as a mammal are interested in seeing, so if you start concentrating on all the creepy shit, then hot damn, there will be more of it made available, baby!

    The hookers were to ambush yet another rival producer in the inbred tribe I so often serve in this city, the small town that welcomes each new poobah with open arms and palms, smiling wide and memorizing their every gesture. But I needed to get a lock on him from afar, once he was in the room with the hookers.

    Please be gentle with me if you can. I am afraid. Afraid of what is coming.

    The swirls were tight around me, like mist, only not one you can dissipate with a fan, more like a grainy digital image. Yes, we’re the gods’ eyes, and what they want, they can have, like in Haiti with their loas. I’m sitting on the back porch of my house in Silverlake. Black and grey is pouring down from the mountains, and I think it’s a parallel version of Bronze Age Israelite history, the Jews go nuts for this shit, always wanting to re-fight these millennia-old battles, and mixed up in this subliminal debate over whether Judah or Israel was really King David’s birthplace, I mean, who really gives a flying fuck, but anyway, the Jews are deep in this one and coming close down over the hills of Silverlake is this historico-eschatological battle.

    Dusk is always a good time for shadow-casting, there’s a reason they call it the magic hour. Why is this producer asshole so interested in the Bronze Age all of a sudden? It’s not like he wants to remake Troy or something. Is it his wife? No, doesn’t feel like her either. It’s too fucking big. Shit, it probably is the fucking ancient Israelite government. Something real nasty coming down the pipe on this one.

    The gray and silver grains in my vision are collecting over the hills at the edge of Silverlake. Buzzing like bees. I try to scan for some kind of easy pattern but there’s nothing. Just a lot of shouting in ancient Hebrew and images of stone desert cities being flashed into my mind.

    I think I’m much braver with others than when I’m alone. Which is annoying because I actually need to be bravest when I’m alone, that’s when I can really do my thing, and I need to do it, you see, if I don’t do it regularly, I start to slip, slip one way then the other and then who knows, man, it’s just boing-boing-boing, like a Looney Toon ending.

    * * *

    There are too many antecedents for this chapter in my life, it’s difficult to keep track of them, too many patterns overlapping in my tired brain. I’ve tried to learn to ignore the ones that aren’t relevant, but writing is still new to me. Why am I telling you this story? Albert, I believe you’ve already forgiven me, somehow. I’m no St. Augustine, and this isn’t a patristics class.

    Let me start at the beginning. I arrive in Los Angeles by Greyhound. I visit Israel at his tire shop, paying the cab with one of my last twenties. At the County Line I could feel a change, you can feel it too, partly the shift in urbanization and architectural patterns, but mostly that feeling in the air, the gravity that sucked men out here to start with, adrift on these angry tectonic plates.

    Israel, a religious man.

    I was raised a Catholic, he told me, but I look around, I look at the sky, I think of my ancestors, and they were Indians, you know. They worshipped these plants, this sky.

    And he takes off his baseball cap and his skull is smooth and brown and bald and he looks at me and it’s like he’s revealing one of his true faces to me.

    My name is Israel, he says.

    I need to buy a tire, I tell him, and he takes me into the back.

    What kind of tire were you looking for?

    I don’t know, Israel, a good one.

    What do you need it to do?

    I don’t know that either.

    You’re a dangerous man, stranger from the bus. But that’s OK, you look like a good man too.

    Thank you, sir, I say.

    I have to turn out the lights, then, he says. There’s that slightly angry sexual energy in the air that comes around men from time to time, like danger is near, but we both know how to handle it. He turns off the lights and I can smell the oil and the rubber.

    Listen, he says, and I do.

    Dreaming has always been easy for me, and this one was my first in many ways, a dream journey. I am walking on a plain of sand, the sky is red and blue, shifting together. I am heavy, and each step takes an eternity.

    Listen, Israel says, and I strain my ears and there is a voice.

    It’s an artist like you, he says. She’s lost.

    * * *

    But her I had to kill.

    * * *

    Am I a monster because I grieve more for my demon Artificial Intelligence son than the woman I killed? My son lives on, after all, nearby really, though I am forbidden to talk to him. Once an AI embeds itself in the ether the only way to kill it is to pretend it’s dead. But the writer I killed, she stays that way.

    I suppose I had already made my choice.

    You can go back, Israel told me. You can go back to how you were before.

    No, I don’t want that.

    Then you can only go forward. You will have to follow orders. We all do in this town.

    Perhaps I nodded. I didn’t look at her face when I shot her, I couldn’t. Am I less of a monster because I was weeping? In any case, I took the money. I needed it. After all,

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