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ASGARD 17, 0001 / JULY 4, 2017

• I am Valkyr of Asgard and this is my message to posterity in hope that one day,
• Life will find mankind on other planets.
• Our evolution is stopped for now and this, until we are ready to understand each other.
• I have confidence in human kind and our technologies.
• In hope that we will soon set aside our differences and begin to work together
• to accomplish what has been our destiny from the beginning.

ASGARD 17, 0001 / JUILLET 4, 2017

• Je suis Valkyr d'Asgard et ceci est mon message à la postérité dans l'espoir qu'un jour
• la vie trouve le genre humain sur d'autres planètes.
• Notre évolution est arrêtée pour l'instant et ce jusqu'à ce que nous soyons prêts à nous comprendre.
• J'ai confiance en l'homme et nos technologies,
• Dans l'espoir que bientôt nous mettrons de côté nos différences et commencerons à travailler ensemble
• pour accomplir ce qui es depuis le début notre destinée.

HI HEAVEN MAKE US FORTUNATE ENOUGH TO LOOK AT UR

FANTASTIC N FABULOUS WORLD

Yo, Jose Rodriguez Forte, un ciudadano de la tierra nacido en el año 1987 después de cristo, no creyente en ningún dios, pero si creyente en más formas de vida, se presenta ante vosotros. Suponiendo que esto será leído por otra raza en un periodo muy largo de tiempo, quiero explicar un poco como veo yo esta mi civilización. El planeta (Tierra) en si es un lugar maravilloso, pero nuestra raza, para mi punto de vista, no lo es tanto. Hemos creado el mal el odio, es verdad que también hemos creado cosas maravillosas, pero aun así yo veo mi raza como una plaga, una plaga maligna que consume todo lo que tiene a su alrededor. Espero que la raza que este leyendo esto no sea así, por el futuro del universo, me hubiera gustado que la raza humana fuera más sensata y más cuidadosa con el medio ambiente y con sus propios miembros 

He vivido en esta sociedad, con sus más y sus menos, con las leyes ya dispuestas, sin poder o querer hacer nada por cambiarlo, no digo que este mal, pero pienso que no están bien repartidas las riquezas, mucha desigualdad y a nadie parece importarle, si, muchos se quejan, pero no se hace nada. Ya les va bien a los ricos vivir su vida a costa de los demás, del planeta y del futuro de esta raza.

Escribo esto con 30 años, soy un chico sin estudios superiores ni trabajo. un paria, dirían muchos. Un antisistema dirían otros, trabajar para enriquecer a los que van a destruir mi planeta, mi raza, no es lo que yo creo que tenga que hacer.

Estoy seguro que mi raza no llegara muy lejos, me gustaría que sí, pero no es mi pensamiento.
Por eso este escrito para que razas superiores no cometan nuestros errores y puedan estudiar nuestra antigua civilización. 

Sin más que saber decir me despido, un entusiasta del espacio, un estudioso de todo lo que le rodea. Me encantaría saber todos los misterios que tiene nuestro universo, si hay algo más aparte del universo, un friki del universo

Atentamente:

Un humano.

Fuerte de San Juan de Ulúa en Veracruz

Titulo: San Juan de Ulúa: Baluarte de poderío español usado como bodega de recursos y como símbolo de intimidación.

Equipo: 3

Integrantes: García Vanti Luis Daniel y Nuñes Ocampo Jorge Omar

Grupo: 5 Idiomas

Materia 1: Historia y Arte II: Formación de la Nueva España.

Profesora: Cárdenas Cisneros Violeta

Materia 2: Metodología de la Investigación.

Profesor: Reyes Pérez Antonio

Índice.

Capitulo 1.- Introducción

1.1.- Planteamiento del problema

1.2.- Objetivo

1.3.- Hipótesis

1.4.- Justificación

1.5.- Organización

Capitulo 2.- Antecedentes

2.1.- San Juan de Ulúa durante la Nueva España.

2.2.- Historia del fuerte y etapas de construcción

2.3.- Principales usos del fuerte

Capitulo 3.- Metodología

3.1.- Técnica

3.2.- Análisis

3.3. Resultados

Capitulo 4.- Conclusiones

4.1.- Trabajo futuro

Referencias

Capitulo 1. Introducción

El fuerte de San Juan de Ulúa en Veracruz es un monumento representativo del poderío de España durante los siglos que duro la conquista del Nuevo Mundo y el virreinato de la Nueva España, un monumento a su poder económico y militar que pocas naciones podían igualar.

Es un fuerte con gran significado histórico y cultural ya que en él se unifican años de conquista del Nuevo Mundo el fuerte vio pasar, por sus puertas y su gran patio de armas, la historia de México, años del virreinato de la Nueva España y años de un México libre, desde su inicio como un puerto, sus continuas modificaciones con objetivo de la conquista y defensa de territorios para España y los reyes Católicos, más tarde después de la independencia de México se convertiría en presidio y luego como casa presidencial, su importancia militar, comercial, política y cultural han convertido al fuerte en un punto importante en el turismo de Veracruz. 

 El fuerte ha visto eventos militares, políticos y sociales importantes en la cultura mexicana pero en este trabajo se abordara él tema de la utilización del fuerte de San Juan de Ulúa en Veracruz como bodega, símbolo intimidatorio y un símbolo del poderío español durante la época del virreinato de la Nueva España, siglo XVI a siglo XVIII. 

Cuando se habla de fuertes militares normalmente se piensa en las grandes fortificaciones medievales y contemporáneas, únicamente se menciona su importancia por su desempeño, bueno o malo durante en las muchas guerras que han sucedido a lo largo de la historia pero nunca se menciona su importancia como bodegas, puntos de comercio y su uso, en tiempos de paz, como símbolo de intimidación contra otras naciones o reinos.

1.1 Planteamiento del problema

El problema de la investigación recae en demostrar que el fuerte de San Juan de Ulúa en Veracruz durante la época de la Nueva España fue utilizado principalmente como un punto, de gran importancia, en la ruta comercial que recorría todos los territorios controlados por España pues en él se almacenaban una gran cantidad de productos provenientes de cada rincón de la Nueva España y servía junto con el puerto de Acapulco como intermediario para el comercio con Las Filipinas y contrario a lo que normalmente se piensa de los fuertes, éste nunca vio una guerra real hasta la independencia de México en 1821.

1.2 Objetivo

Investigar la función del fuerte de San Juan de Ulúa en Veracruz para dar a conocer su importancia como bodega, símbolo de intimidación y como una forma de demostrar el poder, tanto económico como militar de España y así demostrar que los fuertes sirven a diferentes propósitos, independientemente de su función meramente militar.

1.3 Hipótesis

Nuestra hipótesis es que el fuerte de San Juan de Ulúa en Veracruz, además de ser un fuerte con funciones militares y una forma de mostrar a otras naciones su poderío económico, sirvió como bodega de recursos y como una forma de demostrar poderío militar por medio del despliegue de fuerzas, ya que la construcción de un fuerte tan grande en ese entonces servía como medio de intimidación pues demostraba el suficiente poder económico como para poder construir una gran fortaleza tan lejos de su nación y un gran poder militar constituido por los soldados, cañones y navíos de la armada invencible que patrullaban la Carrera de las Indias. 

1.4 Justificación

La justificación de este trabajo es poder desmentir, con base a una investigación documental, el mito que muestra a los fuertes solamente como edificaciones útiles en tiempos de guerra, ya que estos mitos nunca ven más allá de lo implícito por el propio sustantivo con el que nombra a estas edificaciones, la importancia de todos los fuertes radica, más allá de su posición estratégica o poder de fuego, en lo que defendía, lo que representaba para la nación y lo que podía hacer o deshacer con su imponente despliegue de fuerza, a través de la historia nos encontramos con numerosos ejemplos de fuertes que vencieron o cayeron en tiempos de guerra, pero si el fuerte nunca participo en ningún combate en tiempos de guerra es rápidamente olvidado por la historia, así con este trabajo se busca hacer que el lector vea a los fuertes desde otro punto de vista.

Se eligió el fuerte de San Juan de Ulúa en Veracruz por ser tan representativo en la historia de México pero aún así un gran número de personas no saben siquiera en donde se ubica, como está construido y mucho menos lo que paso ahí.

1.5 Organización 

Este trabajo abordara en el segundo capítulo el tema del fuerte de San Juan de Ulúa desde los antecedentes de lo que hoy se conoce como San Juan de Ulúa, luego la historia y etapas de construcción del fuerte de San Juan de Ulúa, desde que se empezaron a construir los edificios que más tarde se convertirían en el imponente fuerte que hoy conocemos después se profundizara en  los principales usos del fuerte y su importancia para los españoles. En el tercer capítulo se explicara la metodología que se siguió en la realización de éste trabajo, la técnica usada, el análisis y los resultados de la investigación.

Capitulo 2. Antecedentes

La isla de San Juan de Ulúa se conoció en tiempos prehispánicos como Tecpan Tlayácac (nariz o saliente de la tierra del palacio, o en la puerta del palacio), un centro ceremonial prehispánico en dónde se practicaba el sacrificio ritual dedicados a los dioses.

Cuando Juan de Grijalva llego a las costas del Golfo de México en 1518 descubrió este centro ceremonial con los restos de sacrificios, Grijalva pregunto a los habitantes que los acompañaban el porqué habían hecho eso y los indígenas le respondieron que los de Culúa los mandaban sacrificar, siendo Culúa un término coloquial para referirse a los habitantes del valle de México, los Españoles al no ser diestros con la lengua nativa pronunciaban Ulúa y con el fin de poder referirse al lugar que se convertiría después en un gran puerto y para darle un significado acorde a la fe cristiana la nombraron con el nombre de su capitán y por el santo celebrado ese día, así el nombre acordado fue San Juan de Ulúa.

Durante la conquista San Juan de Ulúa se convirtió en el principal puerto para los Españoles por de ahí llegaban los soldados y provisiones utilizados durante la conquista e igualmente por ahí se enviaban a España todas las riquezas que los conquistadores obtenían, principalmente oro.

Cuando Cortez estableció el Cabildo de la Vera Cruz frente a San Juan de Ulúa y se hizo nombrar gobernador y capitán general de la Nueva España por una real cedula en 1522 se convirtió en un hombre poderoso pues solo respondía ante el rey católico lo que hizo que este asentamiento se convirtiera casi inmediatamente en un lugar de suma importancia política, estratégica y económica, de esta manera el Cabildo de la Vera Cruz y el puerto de San Juan de Ulúa se volvieron parte central en la Carrera de las Indias que recorría todos los puntos comerciales más importantes de los territorios controlados por los Españoles. Este puerto se convirtió entonces en una especie de bodega improvisada en donde todos los bienes que eran enviados a España se reunían en espera del siguiente barco que partiera a España.

2.2 Historia del fuerte y etapas de construcción

Le edificación del fuerte como tal se inicio en 1535 por orden del primer virrey de la Nueva España, Antonio de Mendoza, con el fin de proteger la embarcaciones y tener un lugar donde se pudieran anclar los navíos, para hacer las reparaciones necesarias en estos y para aprovisionarlos para su viaje, ya fuera de regreso a España cargados de recursos o para continuar en las tareas de exploración, conquista de territorios o patrullaje de la Carrera de las Indias.

De las primeras edificaciones españolas construidas en el puerto se tiene registro de una torre de vigilancia que servía para guiar a los barcos y de varios edificios de madera en donde vivían los españoles, las primeras bodegas, una pared y una iglesia, pero todo fue destruido en 1552 por una tormenta que arraso el islote.

La reconstrucción del fuerte fue muy difícil por la escasa mano de obra, la escases de materiales y las enfermedades, por estas razones la construcción del fuerte de San Juan de Ulúa tardo mucho más que cualquier otro fuerte ya que además el fuerte era modificado conforme a las necesidades, ya fueran la construcción de bodegas, la construcción de los seis baluartes y las modificaciones para poder anclar los navíos en el fuerte.

El fuerte fue construido, en sus inicios, con ladrillos de piedra Múcar (corales utilizados para construcción) unidos unos a otros con una mezcla de arena y cal de mandrágoras, lo que le dio una textura llena de curvas en la que se pueden apreciar claramente los fósiles del coral y las conchas  pero a lo largo de los años el fuerte se fue modificando conforme a las necesidades y los materiales utilizados fueron cambiados, así con cada modificación se puede ver una referencia en los materiales usados por cada arquitecto, un ejemplo de esto es la etapa de construcción de el Coronel Cristóbal de Erazo que durante los años de 1560 y 1580 construyo el muro de las argollas y un baluarte pero la construcción quedo estancada hasta 1568, como la fortaleza contaba apenas con una torre y un baluarte, cuando los piratas ingleses John Hawkins y Francis Drake atacaron el Veracruz con la intención de robar oro español y reparar sus navíos, dañados por su recorrido de saqueos a lo largo de la Carrera de las Indias, tomaron la fortaleza y saquearon paro su ataque fue finalmente frustrado por la llegada programada de la armada española que iba en camino para recoger el oro para transportarlo a España, el saldo de este combate, entre los seis navíos ingleses y los trece navíos españoles, fue la derrota total de los ingleses pues perdieron cuatro de sus barcos y todo el botín recolectado durante un año. Después de esta batalla se mando construir una nueva torre que después se convierte en el baluarte de San Crispín y un muelle de mampostería pero la construcción volvió a quedar estancada en 1570.

Ya en 1590 el fuerte contaba con la casa del comandante, barracones, capilla y bodegas y fue hasta 1634 que se construyeron dos baluartes más que apuntaban a la ciudad de Veracruz para así atacar con fuego cruzado a cualquier navío enemigo que intentara pasar. De 1687 a 1691 Jaime Frank continúa con la construcción del fuerte e incluye una casa para el gobernador, un hospital para inválidos, una capilla y un almacén de pólvora. Fue hasta 1707 que se termina el plano de la fortaleza casi como la conocemos hoy día con sus cuatro baluartes principales (el de la Soledad, de San Crispín, de San Pedro y el de Santiago), dos semibaluartes para evitar flanqueos (el de Santa Catarina y el de Nuestra Señora del Pilar) y el revellín de San José que funcionaba como una primera entrada al fuerte.

En el siglo XVIII, 1742 a 1763 los ingenieros Felix Prosperi, Miguel Corral y Manuel Santiesteban reforman y modernizan la fortaleza, implementan baterías y garitas. En 1766 a 1786 el ingeniero Manuel del Corral hace otras modificaciones y actualizaciones al fuerte, principalmente en materia militar, implementando el uso de nuevos cañones y morteros. De 1843 a 1846 ingenieros militares de México crean un perímetro al noreste del fuerte en tierra firme que contaba con 36 cañones.

2.3 Principales usos del fuerte

Como ya se ha mencionado el fuerte sirvió principalmente como un puerto seguro para la recolección y envío de recursos de la Nueva España hacia España, sus grandes bodegas sirvieron para guardar y proteger grandes cantidades de oro, plata y recursos, del clima, piratas y posibles ataques de otras naciones, además el puerto tuvo mucha importancia en términos de logística pues se acondiciono para poder reparar navíos dañados y también aprovisionaba lo necesario para que los navíos y los territorios tierra adentro pudieran seguir produciendo ganancias, hay que recordad que en este puerto era donde llegaban la mayoría de los Españoles ya fuera para buscar fortuna o por orden del rey así mismo todos los decretos reales tenían que llegar primero a San Juan de Ulúa para poder ser enviados por tierra a su destino final.

Sus grandes bodegas permitían almacenar toneladas de recursos provenientes de cada rincón de territorio español en América y también desde territorios españoles en Asia donde, gracias al puerto de Acapulco y el Nao de China (o Galeón de Manila), los bienes provenientes de Asia, en especial seda y porcelana, eran llevados al puerto de San Juan de Ulúa para ser transportados a España, por supuesto todos, siendo productos frágiles y muy importantes tenían que estar seguros y en buenas condiciones y gracias a las grandes bodegas de San Juan de Ulúa casi la totalidad y en buen estado de lo que llegaba a su puerto era enviado a España, ya que la travesía que los navíos recorrían de Europa a América y de vuelta podía durar meses las bodegas y las buenas condiciones en las que se debían mantener los productos eran imprescindibles.

El fuerte y el puerto también servían como una especie de base general para los barcos militares y comerciales que de ahí salían a los diferentes puertos pertenecientes a la Carrera de las Indias pues mientras los barcos mercantes comerciaban los barcos le la armada invencible tenían que patrullar las rutas marinas comerciales de los ataques y saqueos de piratas, principalmente ingleses, que con permiso (aunque nunca oficial) de la reina Isabel I atacaban rutas mercantes españolas y daban parte de sus ganancias a la corona inglesa, esto lo hizo la  reina inglesa con el fin de obtener parte de las ganancias que los españoles sacaban de la Nueva España ya que solamente hasta 1588 que los ingleses tuvieron el poder marítimo suficiente para enfrentar a la armada invencible de España en una batalla que cambio para siempre la posición de Inglaterra y España en términos de poderío militar ya aunque Veracruz fue atacada varias veces por piratas, principalmente durante los siglos XVI y XVII si vio un notable descenso en los ataques al fuerte, atribuibles al poder de intimidación del fuerte una vez que logro ser completado, ya que los ataques de piratas se basaban en atacar, saquear y huir, un puerto desprotegido, como lo estuvo en sus inicios San Juan de Ulúa y gracias a su importancia se volvió rápidamente un lugar atractivo para los piratas pero igualmente su importancia para España hizo que se pudiera construir e ir modificando el fuerte según las necesidades de la corona, así una vez terminado el fuerte el número de ataques exitosos piratas descendió a cero e incluso avanzando hasta la independencia de México se puede ver su poder en términos de fuerza militar pues al proclamarse el plan de Iguala en septiembre de 1821 la fortaleza no cedió terreno y siguió siendo el último reducto del gobierno virreinal hasta 1825, año en el que capitula después de ser sitiada por el ejército mexicano, el fuerte vería de nuevo acción militar durante los conflictos mexicano con Francia y Estados Unidos, y más tarde se convierte en prisión durante la época de Porfirio Díaz y luego la casa presidencial de Venustiano Carranza durante algunos días en 1915 y fue hasta 1984 que se convierte en el museo arqueológico de Veracruz del fuerte de San Juan de Ulúa, y aunque actualmente el fuerte no tiene ninguna función militar real uno de los baluartes tiene presencia de la armada de México.

Capitulo 3 Metodología

En este capítulo se explicara la metodología con la que realizo el estudio del tema. La recolección de datos y las herramientas usadas para este propósito. El proceso de análisis de la información y los resultados reales obtenidos.

3.1 Técnica

Se decidió que el mejor método para investigar la Fortaleza de San Juan de Ulúa y su uso durante la nueva España es el método documental pues el tema a investigar, al situarse temporalmente en la época de la Nueva España S. XVI a S. XIX y en un lugar geográfico más allá de nuestras capacidades actuales, solo puede ser investigado a través de documentos históricos y trabajos enfocados en  ese fuerte y en esa época, para poder recopilar información relevante y analizarla para poder argumentar nuestra hipótesis su recurrió a fuentes bibliográficas obtenidas en bibliotecas y por medio de internet.

3.2 Análisis

El resultado de nuestro análisis es que el fuerte de San Juan de Ulúa en Veracruz fue un lugar de gran importancia para la corona española e incluso desde antes para los habitantes del golfo de México, su importancia para ambos, conquistadores y conquistados, se mezcla para convertirse en testimonio de la mezcla de culturas, en este fuerte se encuentran más de quinientos años de historia.

Su importancia se aprecia desde el año de 1535, año en el que inicio su construcción, ya que rápidamente se convirtió en el primer gran puerto español en las tierras recién conquistadas y por su localización geográfica se convirtió en pieza central en todo el sistema económico español que recorría los territorios españoles en América y más tarde incluso Asia, así fue necesario protegerlo de posibles ataques y al mismo tiempo convertirlo en un lugar seguro para el almacenamiento de recursos. Con el transcurso de los años y con la necesidad de mayor protección tanto para las bodegas y para la ciudad de Veracruz el fuerte sufrió una serie de cambios, modificaciones y mejoras que lo convirtieron en un fuerte capaz de defender por si solo la costa inmediata de  la ciudad de Veracruz de los ataques piratas, aunque el fuerte nunca vio acción real en tiempos de guerra durante el domino español, sino hasta la independencia de México, donde por fin se vio el fruto del trabajo puesto en el fuerte, cuando se convirtió hasta 1825 (cuatro años después de la firma del plan de Iguala), en el ultimo pedazo de tierra perteneciente a España en territorio mexicano y que nunca fue tomado por las armas sino por un largo asedio que obligo a los soldados españoles apostados en el fuerte a rendirse a causa del hambre, sed, falta de munición y enfermedades.

3.3 Resultados

Entre los resultados obtenidos encontramos que la fortaleza si sirvió como una gran e importante bodega en el sistema económico español, también su importancia geográfica le permitió ser considerada como un importante y el principal punto estratégico de la Carrera de las Indias, aunque nunca vio combate en una guerra directa real contra Inglaterra a excepción de los ataques piratas patrocinados por la corona inglesa. Cuando el fuerte fue terminado casi en su totalidad, hasta el siglo XVIII, su impacto moral evito mucho que fuera presa de muchos ataques piratas esto se le atribuye a su imponente poder defensivo pues hasta este siglo fue cuando los ataques piratas cesaron casi en su totalidad., compuesto por las defensas del fuerte y los patrullajes de navíos de guerra españoles a lo largo de la Carrera de las Indias, los piratas que intentaron atacar el fuerte o la ciudad fallaron en su misión. Su importancia como principal engranaje económico y militar le hizo merecedor de la fama de una gran fortaleza, símbolo de Veracruz y símbolo del poderío español.

Capitulo 4 Conclusiones

El fuerte, desde los inicios de su construcción, fue un lugar de suma importancia, tanto política como comercial, lo que dio paso a que tuviera una gran importancia estratégica en el control, administración de la Carrera de la Indias por consecuencia al tener tal importancia fue necesario crear un medio de defensa y un modo de intimidar a cualquiera que quisiera aprovecharse del puerto y la ciudad.

Conforme crecía la importancia de San Juan de Ulúa también fue necesario modificar el fuerte para cumplir con las necesidades de almacenamiento y protección de los recursos.

Así la conclusión de esta investigación valida la hipótesis propuesta en esta investigación,  sin embargo falta mencionar la importancia de su úbicacion geográfica en relación con la cartografía de la zona y el clima, también falta mencionar su importancia como puerto mercantil, militar y como astillero para el mantenimiento de los barcos Españoles lo que se puede comprobar en trabajos futuros.

4.1 Trabajo futuro

Para un trabajo futuro sobre este tema es mejor disponer del tiempo y los recursos para hacer investigación de campo en la fortaleza de San Juan de Ulúa en Veracruz, así como también buscar bibliografía en bibliotecas especializadas en la historia  de Veracruz y así poder obtener más información que no se puede obtener en la ciudad de México como son documentos históricos reales, cartas, mapas y planos de las distintas etapas de construcción, mapas de las corrientes marítimas y rutas comerciales marítimas utilizadas por los españoles durante la conquista y el virreinato que pueden ayudar a dar una mejor explicación de la importancia del fuerte para los españoles.

Referencias Bibliográficas

Hernández, J. (1996). Tecpan Tlayácac. En P. Montero (Coord.), et al. San Juan de Ulúa, Puerto de la Historia Vol.1. (pp.61-78).México: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia e Internacional de Contenedores Asociados de Veracruz.

Hernández, J. (1996). Tiempo de Expediciones. En P. Montero (Coord.), et al. San Juan de Ulúa, Puerto de la Historia Vol.1. (pp.79-93).México: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia e Internacional de Contenedores Asociados de Veracruz.

Hernández, J. (1996). Conquista y Asentamientos de Veracruz. En P. Montero (Coord.), et al. San Juan de Ulúa, Puerto de la Historia Vol.1. (pp.95-121).México: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia e Internacional de Contenedores Asociados de Veracruz.

Hernández, J. (1996). Se Consolida el Virreinato. En P. Montero (Coord.), et al. San Juan de Ulúa, Puerto de la Historia Vol.1. (pp.123-135).México: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia e Internacional de Contenedores Asociados de Veracruz.

Montero, P. (1996). Guerra, Navegación y Piratería. En P. Montero (Coord.), et al. San Juan de Ulúa, Puerto de la Historia Vol.1. (pp.137-157).México: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia e Internacional de Contenedores Asociados de Veracruz.

Hernández, J. (1996). Veracruz Frente a Ulúa. En P. Montero (Coord.), et al. San Juan de Ulúa, Puerto de la Historia Vol.1. (pp.159-181).México: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia e Internacional de Contenedores Asociados de Veracruz.

Martín, F., Elizabeth, S., José, A., et al. (2010).  Fortalezas Históricas de Veracruz. Veracruz: Gobierno del Estado de Veracruz y Secretaria de Educación.

Carricart, J. (1998). Corales Escleractinios, “Piedra Mucar” y San Juan de Ulúa, Veracruz. [.pdf]. http://190.11.224.74:8080/jspui/bitstream/123456789/207/1/Piedra%20M%C3%BAcar%20Carricart-Ganivet%201998.pdf

Toussaint,M. (1947). Ensayo Sobre los Planos de la Ciudad de Veracruz.[.pdf]. http://www.analesiie.unam.mx/pdf/15_19-43.pdf *  -Documento digitalizado en el año 2008.

'Hayatın bize sunduğu bu güzellikleri kaçıramayız ve insanlığın atacağı en büyük adımlardan biri olacak asgardia 

The Atheist Bible
Michael Leam

Copyright © 2012 MichaelLeamy

All rights reserved.

ISBN:978-0-9921584-4-6

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious.

Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Layout and Cover Design by CopperSpoon Publishing.

Editing by Veronica Knox of Silent K Publishing.

Also available in digital format

ISBN: 978-0-9921584-0-8 (ePub)

ISBN: 978-0-9921584-1-5 (Kindle)

For mom.

She taught me to ask "where's the beauty?"

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Like so many seemingly small things, a great many people have helped make this work possible. These are the people I want to send my appreciation to.

My three kids Kelsey, Kieran and Erin. When the world was telling me to stop they gave me the encouragement and support I needed to keep working. There is nothing as motivating as your children asking about 'the book.'

Veronica Knox, my editor, put in more hours than I care to admit. While I worked to make sure my symbolic elements made sense, her guidance ensured the most grievous of my grammatical and continuity errors didn't interrupt their hidden dialogue.

… and Mark Jackson, for the letter 'F.' 

"Forgiveness is not a unique or absolute product of the religious mind."

I've come to see this as my first atheist thought. That's important, because I think it killed my wife.

The sun is coming up, and I've been awake for two days. There is a park outside my hospital window, a wide rolling field dotted with oaks and maples, and even with my limited vision it is very pastoral in this summer weather. I can also see a large branch, its bark thick from age, swinging gently in the breeze. The tree itself is out of my line of sight, but it must be very close to the building as the foliage is nearly touching the glass. Its leaves are a vivid, living green, and they accent the more sombre and earthy greens of the grass beyond. If what the doctors tell me is true, I'll be here long enough to watch those leaves change. Fall will come, and on such majestic old trees as these, the colours will probably be spectacular. I'm not in too much pain right now, as long as I don't move. I suppose that isn't a big surprise considering the amount of drugs they've been feeding me, and that's nice. To be able to disconnect from the pain and just heal.

They tell me the car was totalled. They tell me I'm lucky to be alive.

Four ribs shattered. Both legs and my right arm in traction, with my hand looking like a science experiment. My jaw is wired shut, and my face feels swollen and hot. I'm guessing the bandages on my head do nothing to hide the fact I probably look like a ghoul. The list goes on. Internal bleeding, and a line of stitches along my hip that will leave a truly manly scar. I was told they removed an impressive collection of junk from a hole punched into me just above my pelvis, and when I asked what it was, they said it appeared to be the contents of the glove box.

The glove box. In my guts.

I try to lean over, I want to see if my one good arm can reach the water, and a searing pain tears up my spine. Of course the cup is just beyond my reach on the day table. I'm guessing the wheels are really slick, because I've noticed it moves all over the room as the day wears on. From the moment I woke up yesterday I haven't been able to reach it. They've pinned the call button to my sheets near my good hand, and after some fumbling, I trigger it to see if I can summon a nurse or an aide to help me get a drink. For the briefest moment I dream, allowing my head to wander back in time. Just a moment.

She did it on purpose. I'm broken and she did it on purpose.

The bright red light blinks reassuringly above my head to let me know the call button has been activated, and I lay unwillingly on my back, thinking bedsore thoughts, as I begin the wait. I am now officially meat, and I have been since I arrived. A warm sack of formerly human goo that makes noises and leaks at various times of the day and night. The management of the leaks, the wrappings, the weights and the pillows - that's the job of the hospital. I won't be human again until some time after I leave this place, this horrible, terrible place I need so much, which they assure me will actually happen. Until then I am maintained and managed.

As time passes, the call light remains busy just beyond my sight. I know this from its reflection on the thirty-year-old traction rig, the tubes alternating from industrial grey to industrial pink, and my mind sinks deeper into this dreamy blank state. I'm floating and waiting. The drugs in my heart making my love for myself personal. I watch the light tinker with the clock, and it just keeps flashing, steady and perfect, while I imagine watching the nurses ferry syringes to and fro. Back and forth. Fill the syringe and empty the syringe. Rush to the desk and fill out a form, while the light beckons to them from the console.

I am room 4b. I know my light is blinking at them over drugs and pens, while papers witness the time passing and I'm still afloat in my room, anxious and waiting to get a drink from my wandering table. I've been awake for two days, and the routine of being a passive patient has asserted itself so strongly, I don't even think to question it. I am pliant. I do as I'm told. I wait for what I need, and if I'm lucky they will bring me drugs. I'm not in too much pain, as long as I don't move, but yesterday when I first woke up, I was. Great pain. It was so large and so vast, I wanted to use colours to describe it. Nothing mattered to me but the pain, and as I think these thoughts my little red light keeps distracting me, insisting I watch its repetitive boredom on the traction bars over my head. With a jarring suddenness it occurs to me the pain will return, in fact I can feel it trying, and my call light becomes a bit more important. I'm thirsty, and as I look at my sterile room, I hope they remember to give me my pain meds as well. My drugs. Mine, and I want them to know it. I want a drink, and I'm in pain, and I'm becoming afraid.

What has she done to me?

“Nothing you didn't ask for ... nothing you didn't deserve.”

I loved her. What the hell am I supposed to do now?

I'm going back again. Time is contracting and I'm trying not to see. The green walls are bare, save for the tubes and connectors and lights all hospital rooms seem to need, and I'm trying not to think how I ended up in this bed, afraid of a pain I can feel creeping towards me from the shadows, unable to remember a time when I was brave.

I think I killed my wife, and for my trouble she tried to kill me back.

“You did not kill me, you saved me, and I tried to save you.”

I really need to get out of this hospital. I'm not going to survive it. The drugs are keeping me alive, but they feel like they're killing me to do it.

I've been awake for two days, and I don't want to remember my life. I wish I could fall back into my bed, to float and not care, but the light hurts my head, and I'm feeling time pass more urgently. It's like I've just walked into a room, interrupting a fist fight. The vibrating tension in the air is shaking my broken bones and I don't understand why. I wish the light would stop. I wish my wife had not tried to kill me. I wish I could find my time. I can't feel my feet, and my legs look too large.

The sun is shining through the window, and the trees in the park remain bright and beautiful. Persistently normal. I can feel the panic rising, and I try to listen to the outdoors. Something from reality that can help me stay sane. These rough hospital blankets are smothering me, and I strain to hear through the window. Glass lets in the light, but I need a sound, any sound. On the branch I can see a small yellow bird. I want to hear it sing. I look closer and I can see its small beak move, but no sound` accompanies the motion. Focus on the bird, I tell myself, watch it sway on the branch and watch the beak. The motion of sound. The look of sound. I know it exists, because I've heard it before.

With effort, I find I can hear him singing.

The faint song isn't able to easily penetrate this room's convalescent fog, but I've brought as much of it in as I can, and I won't let go. The light keeps its anxious time over my head and I hear a bird on a branch outside my window. He's chirping. The bird is a Yellow Warbler. Dendroica Petechia. A male. I don't know how I know this, but I trust the knowledge and refer to him as he in my mind. I have him in my head, holding onto the real world by seeing him speak. The hint of the sound is keeping the call light away from me. I can't see it anymore and suddenly I'm a bit safer.

I feel a small bravery trying to return to me, and the joy of its arrival makes me larger. I take a slightly deeper breath.

A gun goes off in my chest and I stop everything. My heart. My lungs. My blood and my bile. I stop it all to allow my body to live through the pain my deep breath has somehow triggered. The bird is gone. My courage is gone. I'm once again cowering and alone, and the jarring red curse, endlessly counting the seconds over my head, is going to make me scream.

“This is your reward. Your atonement. Your lack of faith has angered God and you are being punished!”

“Enough! Stop!” I yell at her through the grotesque remains of my lips, but the pain and the wires reduce my effort to choked whispers.

"Nurse!" I try to yell. A croaking wad of steaming meat makes a splashing noise.

There is no God. There are no gods. I cry to the walls and the blankets, silently screaming my pain into the universe as I tell my bird companion the gods are not real, and it will need to deal with its bird life alone, and I'm crying because knowing doesn't make the pain go away.

The nurse walks in to find me quietly sobbing. In between sobs I'm muttering incoherently to myself, at least to her, and she reaches over my trapped body and turns off the call light. A part of me senses its absence, but I can't stop feeling my heart beating, caged in my chest. She glances at her watch and makes a note in my chart while I gurgle next to her. I open my eyes a bit wider and see she is lifting my blanket, probably to check my bandages. I can see her face, that passive face of the common action, and I watch as it changes in front of me. She sees what I see, I know it. She sees there are no gods to save us anymore, and she feels her own panic rising. It's right there in her eyes. My blanket falls from her hand and I feel better knowing I'm not alone. I can feel my body floating in the bed, a soft cotton sphere. She reaches for me and we console ourselves in the warmth, a wash of love coursing through me. I love everything. I don't care about the past anymore.

I killed my wife, and for that she tried to kill me and now she's dead. My wife is dead, and I am in love with the universe in the arms of my nurse, as I bleed through my bandages and into my slowly filling lungs.

My home. I have a home.

The night is quiet on the ward and my hearing is improving. The curtains are drawn on my window in the evenings because the lights illuminating the parking lot make it hard for patients to sleep. Without the view, I find the time passes more quickly thinking. Laying in bed with my wide thoughts keeping me company, and during this selfish time it just now occurs to me, I have a home, a home full of life, and I'm not there to take care of it.

It's an old two story brownstone full of plants, two large tanks of the fish and corals I've been nurturing for years, and a young cat I've been sharing dependency issues with. The cat's name is Franklin, and I named him that for no better reason than it popped into my head looking at him for the first time. He's an especially beautiful animal, at least I think so, with shortish hair that's nearly perfectly black. Franklin has always been healthy, but I've been here for about seven days, and he can't get out to forage for food while I'm gone.

"Franklin will starve ... help him ..." The sound of my broken voice grates my ears, and the words are unrecognizable. My soul feels stained.

I think of my fish in their large saltwater tanks. Marine tanks. Hard to maintain, and not something any random person can walk into the house and check. Salt levels, protein levels, light levels, heat levels, acid levels, every level has to be perfect or the minute ecosystem of the tank dies. The fish die. The corals die. Even the damn rocks die if I'm not watching everything like a hawk. It's been seven days, and I suspect even with professional help I might have already lost them - and then I remember that until now I hadn't even given them a thought.

I feel like I've betrayed them. Franklin and my nameless fish.

Franklin is not a large cat, but I haven't left any food out I can remember, so I know he is suffering. The thought crushes me, and in my head I see myself getting up, and with courage beyond my species, I make my way home. He sees me crawling up the cold stone steps, with bandages trailing behind me and blood in my eyes, and his look of appreciation is there, right there in the window, and I see it. We have connected, and we share the feeling of joy together, because I've saved him from certain death, and he loves me for it.

A patient cries in the room next to me and I realize I'm dreaming.

Five days of torture. They tell me my body is healing, and I'm being dragged along for the wretched ride in spite of myself, but I know my mind is toppled. I don't trust my eyes or my heart. I can't stop my mental wandering. One minute I hope the pain meds are coming, and the next I try to forget what Hellen looks like.

Hellen is my wife.

My wife tried to kill me.

Hellen tried to kill me.

Now she won't leave me alone.

It's too much, way too much emotion and I start to sob again. After the incident two days ago, every movement is dangerous - they still haven't figured out what collapsed my right lung and caused me to tear my stitches. They will soon; they've assured me they have been working on arranging the operating theatre and the proper specialists to make it happen, but until then I have to keep as still as possible so I don't start the bleeding again.

I wake up short of breath, and they drain the fluid out of my lung with a tube.

The sobs will go away soon, as they have before, and the fear I feel in the darkest part of my consciousness is helping put them down. Hellen is the topic I can't touch. She's the golden dagger, and my still-beating heart her sacrificial target. I just hope I'm not insane.

The walls are dark and the ward is quiet. The patient in the room next to me was electrocuted while moving a stove in his home, and the electricity blew off a part of his leg. The cries I hear from him coincide with my own constrained agonies, as we both weep, inside and out, for the coming of the pain killers. Our lives are being lived in four-hour increments, and the woozy sleep of narcotic lust is what we are each trying to achieve. His cry a few minutes ago makes me wonder if we are due, but I'm not feeling much discomfort, and I wonder if perhaps there is something other than physical suffering making him yell.

I am alone in my room and the past is making me cry, making me feel I've lost what little mind I have left. Perhaps my neighbour is alone as well, and if there are demons who feed on our singular visions in time, could they be at him too?

"We are all God's children, and we will all be saved."

Hearing her voice, I feel my body attempt to run a chill down my spine, but the damaged parts of me are holding so tightly to control, the chill is stifled. I can feel my jaw is trying to hold the tension in spite of the pain it's bringing to me, and although I can't tell, I fully expect I'm grinding my teeth. How much does it take to chip a tooth with your jaw wired shut? Will it hurt?

The lives in my charge take back my thoughts, and I remember I'm facing a problem.

How am I going to get help for my cat and my fish, when I can't even speak?

I reach up slowly with my good arm and try to grab hold of the nurse's chart. It is sitting on the edge of that fucking rolling table, and if I can just get hold of it perhaps I can write something down. The effort is more painful than I expected though, and although I can get my hand up to the chart, I don't have the strength to grasp it. The drugs and the damage have made me so weak I can't even hold the pen, so I slowly lift and drop my blunted arm in an effort to move the chart closer. I imagine an observer would see my efforts as feeble, but to me I'm a superhero. I keep lifting my arm, the pain in my side burning away my reason and logic, and the hand I know belongs to me keeps opening. My fingers rest softly on the board, and each time they make the trip I cheer inside, but it's a sham. They are simply resting against the papers. Resting against the thin aluminum of the clipboard. When I try to pull them down my fingers slide off, leaving no trace. My skin is as dry as the papers I've been trying to move, and they aren't able to generate enough friction to tease my goal anywhere nearer to me.

My mind cracks slightly as I repeat this futile dance.

I'm so weak. How can I live like this? I'm trapped in this broken shell while my whole world slowly dies. I don't want to hurt them. I don't want to return home to an abattoir of my failures. Franklin has done nothing wrong, so why does my injury have to hurt him?

My wife tried to kill me, and instead she killed my cat.

She killed my fish.

She killed my plants and my home.

She killed my world.

"There is no death, only rebirth. If your world is dead, it is because you killed it."

I take a shallow breath and try not to think about it. I stop trying to get the clipboard and allow my arm to return to my side. Betrayed by my own body. Utterly betrayed. I hate myself in a way I don't remember ever experiencing before. If I could, I would hit myself. I would ball up my one good fist and smash myself into the oblivion I deserve.

Crush the mind that can't see past my truth. Crush the heart that would have me dead. Crush the weakness I am. Just crush the whole thing.

I want to leave. I want to die.

What have I done to deserve this hell? What did I say to Hellen that made her do this to me?

But, I know what I did. I told her the truth, and it made her insane.

I fall backwards in time and remember the recent close call with my stitches, and I realize for the first time even if I had managed to get my hand around the water glass, I wouldn't have been able to drink from it. I was not in any condition to do it.

That was the kind of truth Hellen faced, only instead of the truth of water, she was faced with the truth of her soul.

I told my wife she didn't exist, and she believed me. Her death was nothing more than a prophecy of self, fulfilled.

Part of me remembers the real world. The world of logic and love. The place I used to rest my head when I was tired, the place where I used to run in the rain. I'm getting stronger, just a little, and as I do, part of me wants to return to the place outside of here.

Outside of my annihilation.

There isn't any real comfort in my life, unless I count the artificial love of the drugs. I'm not happy or positive. As I watch the world outside live its life without me, I'm holding on to the hope the doctors are telling the truth, that I'll eventually make a full recovery. They say they can justify such optimism simply because all of my injuries are minor when viewed individually.

They make a hell of a noise together though, I think to myself.

My left arm is working passably now, and I was able to write an awkward note asking for help to take care of my home. That's helped me a lot because as much as my life is a living hell, losing Franklin and my tanks in such a cruel way would have made the damage so much worse. The nurses were actually quite amazing, really. From my few scratches on the paper they realized what I wanted, and I was able to guide them through the phone book, pointing out the people they could call for help.

Getting my plants watered and Franklin fed was actually pretty easy in the end. They called my boss and asked if he could stop by my home and do the work. He was fine with the idea of helping one of his own, and I was relieved to hear later Franklin was at the vet's office, skinny and tired, but with proper nourishment he would be fine. It had been almost nine days, but he had made it.

As for the tanks and my plants, things hadn't gone so well.

Most of my smaller plants had died from a lack of water and light. I keep the shades drawn after dusk, and the accident which put me here happened long after I would have normally been in bed. The larger plants looked like they might be salvageable, at least according to my boss, and all I can guess is size matters, at least for plants. The tanks were gone though, just finished, and nothing was going to save them.

Marine tanks are not easy to maintain, and although I don't know exactly what happened, I can guess. The artificial ecosystem became unstable somehow, maybe too much protein in the water, or more likely a small fish died from lack of food. One small rotting body would quickly poison the tank. The bacteria feeding on death would cause the oxygen levels to crash, and the remaining corals and fish would have smothered.

Two worlds destroyed, unremarked and without witnesses. My fish had no names, so I'll mourn their loss alone.

Trying not to think of my life before this place is making me tense. I find my thoughts drawn back, against my will and better judgement, to my life before the accident. Held fast, lying on my back, stretched by wires and wrapped for company, I've nothing else to do but work hard at keeping sane. How was I able to function before this? I think of the things I did every day as if they were impossible. My body did the work and I fed it. That was the deal, and it was going along just great. Hellen, that miserable word, seemed happy to be with me, at least until I killed her, and the space that image takes in my thoughts is immense. Impossible. It couldn't have been as easy as I remember it.

We lived in one of her family's more modest homes, six bedrooms on twenty acres, and when she asked me to leave, I suppose she did it to protect herself from me. The day I left, both of us supervising heavy men abusing my things into a crude looking van, we tried not to be cruel about it.

"If I had wanted to be cruel I could have been. Easily."

"Leave me alone." I respond quietly.

Hellen came from a very wealthy family. She was a senior banking executive of indeterminate job description, at a level where applications are less important than breeding. She made more money than most people can comprehend and she wasn't aware, at any level, the family money that came before her had made it possible. She always thought, and was never afraid to say, the people who didn't do as well as she were somehow just not trying hard enough. Homeless people were homeless because they were lazy. Families were broke and the elderly lacked proper care simply because they had not been frugal enough. It was never because the system had been so obviously skewed against them. Against us all. She couldn't see it. It was because of this background when she looked at me, even as far back as the time we dated, I could see she 'understood' my choice of career to be far beneath her.

I drove a bus.

Really blue collar stuff, and really difficult to explain to someone with her upbringing. She always told me she thought I was above the job, and I suspect she said it to convince herself she had chosen a worthy mate. If I had chosen to drive a bus for reasons other than some sort of noble self-depreciation it would have reflected badly on her, at least in her eyes, and more importantly in the eyes of her family.

In hindsight, I think our getting together was a compensation tactic on her part, and a symptom of apathy on mine. I know she saw me in the same delusional light as any one of a hundred random magazine articles, each of them describing in envious tones some bored stockbroker abandoning his wealth and stature to do something romantic and menial.

"I gave up all that money to drive this little boat in the Caribbean, guiding tourists through this beautiful coast," the newly liberated millionaire says in the interview.

They never mention he used millions of his dollars to set up his little escape, and they never mention the millions sitting dusty but loved under his mattress. I was Hellen's way of telling herself she wasn't one of the affected rich. She was in touch with the common person, so much so, she even married one. The fact she made herself believe I wasn't common, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, well, that's what delusional means.

For my part, my apathy allowed me to not care. I saw a rich, beautiful woman who seemed to love me, and I was too young to realize her wealth and her heart would never really be mine.

Thinking about this isn't easy, and in the most unhealthy sense I've been mulling the days of my life with her in my skull, like rocks in a tumbler, for days. The memories and the emotions are wearing smooth, rolling more and more quietly together, and they are becoming more beautiful each time I examine them. Removed from reality and removed from time, they seem somehow better than just emotions, better than just memories. They are becoming smooth and clean, and no trace of blood or tears or soil or sand remains.

"We were a miracle. You were on vacation and I was travelling for work. The two of us so far from home, surrounded by millions of strangers, and yet we found ourselves together in the same small cafe. We ordered coffee as a couple for the first time that morning, and we fell in love. Our joining was beautiful. You can't say otherwise."

I open my eyes, pulling myself back from my introspections, and look outside. The time of day seems unimportant and I'm surprised by the sun. My eyes start to water, causing my vision to blur for a few seconds. The gruesome smell of my bandages, my consciousness trapped by an odour, makes it hard for me to look outside without tearing up.

Since I arrived last week, the park hasn't changed, but I see it more clearly for what it is, a small ecosystem struck and minted in the middle of a busy city. The birds and the squirrels, the crows and the dogs and the cats, all of them living with people, feeding off our scraps, walking and living and mating and dying, with us on the hill.

My eyes are full of quiet tears as I watch the world happen on the hill. I can't go there, not yet, but I can try to picture the person I will be when I do. The impossible person in my future who is above this crap. The hero who will not hate this artificial world with its pain and its drugs. The person who will be able to recognize his insanities and love them for what they are.

They will be me.

Right now, the smell of these bandages is keeping me in this room, in my cell, in this rank and broken body I can't use without suffering. The walls smell of rotting wounds. When I pull my chin down painfully to look at my swollen, purple legs, I can also see minute spots of blood on the bed rail by my feet.

When I think about my time with Hellen, it sends me to a dark place. Crucified to my bed in this temple of blood. I'm told I'll live again, but until I do, Hellen's memory will keep me lodged in this rankest pit of hell. I used to love her in my own way, but the golden dagger prods deeper into my heart, and the temple of blood is vibrating.

Like so many couples, we used to enjoy our talks.

"I still do."

Once, soon after I began to openly discuss my new-found atheism, I told her the weekly confessions of her church were just a big religious lie, and she should come to terms with the fact a truly moral person wouldn't need to be threatened by a god in order to want to do good, or to desire being moral or just. I called it owning our evil, and when I suggested the idea she should somehow own the evil she did, that she should be personally responsible for her unjust hatreds and her unfair derisions, she stopped me cold. 'This sort of nonsense will not be entertained' was how she phrased it. It was just a few days later we had the fatal conversation. Just a few days until I said the words that killed her.

Hellen had come home from work quite upset. Large protests were happening outside her office tower, led by people who wanted some accountability from her bank. They demanded an open accounting of the bank's actions and they demanded restitution for the results. Hellen understood the issues, not surprisingly considering she helped make the decisions. She knew she didn't have a moral leg to stand on. She also understood better than most, the bank's well-documented history of financial actions against the interests of common humanity. Eventually, the police had to be called to clear a path, allowing her staff into the building.

As she was ferried through the crowd behind large shields and even larger men, the accusations hurled at her by the protesters struck her as naive and silly. On her way home, Hellen visited her church, and when she returned home later that evening, we spoke of what happened. She tore into the people who had been so publicly angry with her.

"You can't expect people to be perfect all the time, as if we lived in some sort of Utopian fantasy," she began.

"People are callous and mean, and they will steal and lie to get what they want all the time. We all sin, we all fail at being good, and you have to forgive them those sins, otherwise there would be no hope of salvation for anyone," she said.

Without any warning my face reddened. Without thought or filters, I spoke from my heart. I became angry, at her specifically, and not just her point of view. I heard her words and they became nothing more than a scripted cop-out. A way for her to excuse the bad behaviours of bad people. The bank Hellen worked for was well known for its brutality in the name of its capitalist ambitions, and even better known for its lack of concern for the consequences of its actions. She wanted to add a layer of religion in some vain effort to excuse herself and her company? The arrogance of it made me want to scream. The protesters were not the ones doing the evil, but somehow that was what I was being asked to believe. I wouldn't have it. I told her if she wasn't comfortable with what she'd done, then that was her moral quagmire to resolve. I told her she shouldn't paint the innocent victims as bad people, simply because they wanted her company to behave morally. As I spoke, her anger grew, and as the angry moments passed, I could see her building the next justifications in her mind.

I saw then, the truth of her argument. She didn't care about the justifications or the rationalizations. They were unimportant. The reality was, she simply saw me and anyone who opposed her as stupid. As beneath her. She assumed anyone not on her side was an idiot.

She was on the side of faith, and nothing more needed to be said.

I opened the bomb-bay doors, and let fly the first of my many assaults on her immortal soul.

"People are not perfect, I never said they were, but when you screw up you have to understand the evil you perpetrated, the wrong you created, was a creation of your own. God did not make you do bad things, you did. If you steal a mortgage from a family for profit, you did not abrogate your will to anyone, and you haven't been guided by some mythical hand. When I hurt the woman I love by telling you this, I do it by my own free will, hopefully for our mutual gain, and with my own desire to not be harshly judged. However, when your immoral actions are discovered, when they are exposed and judged, you have to remember only you did the wrong, nobody else. Not your parents, not your peers, and most certainly not any sort of god.

"The society we live in must deal with you, just as the protesters are dealing with your company. If our society is healthy, if our culture is not corrupted, then you can expect to be forgiven. Restitution will be expected, but in the end, if you are to return to society as a productive member, forgiveness must be assured and it must be absolute. Did you imagine somehow only a church goer can forgive? Seriously, forgiveness is not a unique or absolute product of the religious mind. Those protesters are right. You and your company are in the wrong, and nothing but your actions from this day forward will change that. If you and your banker friends want to rejoin decent society, you will all need to stop. To expect forgiveness before then is delusional."

Her heart stopped at that moment.

My legs hurt, and I can't hear the birds through the smell.

The surgery to find out what collapsed my lung was today and it went well. They removed a splinter of bone from a broken rib which apparently caused all the trouble. I could breathe better this afternoon once the anaesthetic wore off than the day my lung collapsed. I still can't look down well enough to see, but I'm told the scar is quite small, with only seven stitches.

When I was a kid seven stitches would have given me demigod status in school. Now it's considered a minor hiccup in my day.

I was surprised when my nurse showed me a photograph of the splinter. It was much smaller than I would have guessed, certainly much smaller than the stiletto it forced between my ribs each time I tried to breathe without tears. They say it was literally pointing sideways, directly into the layer of tissue that surrounds the lungs. The Pleural sac. All I knew from my little spot in hell was I couldn't take a deep breath, I couldn't cry, I couldn't do much of anything until they drained the gore that filled the place my lung was supposed to be.

Morning ablutions took on a whole new meaning for me. A person doesn't easily forget a tube in his side releasing cupfuls of odiferous hot blood plasma every morning. I won't miss that, now that I can begin the process of forgetting it ever happened.

A nurse offered me my first meal since I arrived, a chocolate flavoured nutrition drink, and she was very good about feeding me. I've never been fed before, and if I wasn't so helpless I might have actually enjoyed it a bit more. The drink itself was delicious, and if it was chalky I didn't care. As I worked hard to swallow each small sip, my stomach tight after two weeks of inactivity, the nurse kept playing with her hair. Some sort of french braid she was constantly adjusting as she held my straw. Watching her the entire time she was helping me, I was human and connected. After I finished eating she placed a bedpan under the day table. She did it just before she left, in the same way someone would turn off the lights.

Hospitals are about habits.

I am literally being held, partly suspended over my bed by threaded bolts which go through what's left of my bones. Those bones are being pulled straight by the bolts, which are in turn being pulled by straps, which are then connected to cables, and those cables are attached to weights. It would take bolt cutters and a lot of morphine to get me out of this bed. It should be easy to understand why not one slight deviation from the usual routine has ever been detected by me, not in the two weeks I've been awake.

Awake, drugs, sleep, awake, turn white from the pain, drugs, sleep, awake, grind my teeth in pain, lights out, drugs, sleep.

The nights tend to be less eventful.

I'm beginning to distrust habits. After Hellen and I had our first little talk (the one where I let her know I wasn't going to be her soft shoulder to cry on whenever her bad behaviour started to cause her problems) it was almost as if a habit had been created after just the one event.

Our talks, during which we used to have a great time discussing some pretty weighty topics, went badly downhill. I became the self-appointed finder of her intellectual flaws, and the flaws I found (my intellectual bread and butter) always focused around her two religions: money and the church. Each of them provided her with a myriad of moral blind spots, which I was able to weave into and out of as I took my shots at her. As I dissected her spiritual corpse.

If a man ever deserved to be killed by his victim, I suppose it was me.

After more assaults on her spirituality than I care to remember, Hellen knew very well I was not going to capitulate to her beliefs any longer. Our last big talk ended when I belligerently explained to her morality, forgiveness, compassion, altruism, all of the great and noble states of the human condition were in fact just that - traits of humans. In doing so, I lost her completely. To her, these traits were the direct result of being pious and well-bred, while I saw them as traits that were co-opted. Taken, then corrupted to serve the wants of small and dangerous men.

"The bastards own your soul, and they expect you to pay rent!" As I spoke the words, I could see her flinch. From her point of view, my attitude was heresy.

"It is."

She was gone to me from that moment on, but even if I had noticed, I couldn't act. Speaking those words, hearing myself voice them to her, something had changed in me as well. Something had been awakened.

I never actually told her that night (she might well have died an even more tragic death if I had) but as I tore into her for the last time, as my attempted destruction of her personal illusion came to its climax, even greater ideas were forming in my mind. They came to me with a speed and certainty I still can't explain, and as the final, fatal words came from my mouth, as I sent the last volley of canon fire into the bow of her spiritual ship, I realized fully and completely a person who worships a religion could never be as noble or as just as a person who did not. The reason was simple and elegant.

Her churches and her cash - they were her filters on the world, on the universe, and the reality of it we all share. They would never allow her to see honesty, or faithfulness, or anything good about us as people. She couldn't see it because her beliefs tainted the colours of the real world, giving everything she saw a wash of her beliefs, altering their shades to match and conform to the beliefs she had been taught since her birth. Everything she saw was tinged. A shade applied that was untrue. Nothing of her view could be honest. Nothing could be truthful. Not her motives, not the results of her actions. It was all filtered through the mental obligations of her wealth, of her piety.

As I voiced those final parting words I could see, without those filters, everything was sharper. Brighter. A person's good was more pure, and because we own our evil, a person's evil became an even greater blight on themselves and our species. Without the filters, without the ideologies they perpetuated, a person was liberated to see the world as it was. The universe became both larger and more real. Time had meaning and the little yellow bird on the branch outside my window, who I still see from time-to-time, can exist along side me as an equal. I can react to him with a truth that would be impossible if I saw him as less than myself.

I'm different, of course, but more? A lack of filters say no, just different.

My first atheist thoughts eventually brought me to a place where I pitied Hellen, but they seemed right. That was enough.

Thinking back to the day of the protest, I know a part of me also died. How could it have not? The ideas, the direction they would clearly be taking me, they were new to me, and I wasn't expecting them. They were so immediate, so obvious and scary for their novelty. I've always been content to allow life to happen. I was easy to please ... but this line of thought took hold of me, the feeling of freedom I couldn't even explain ... I found myself wanting to follow up. I wanted to be a part of this scary new world I was imagining.

I think my old self took one look at where I was headed and simply stopped breathing.

To this day, understanding the limitations placed on her by her religion and her cash, I still can't think of any way she could have been the better of me as a person. Not one. Her enormous wealth allowed her to buy far more than I ever could, and she had so many friends she even hired staff to manage her relationships with them, but as far as what was good for the human race? During our talks I started to feel she was dangerous, in a way I didn't yet comprehend. I became aware a small part of me was afraid of her, and because I didn't fully understand why, it confused me.

Of course, judging by the lovely purple and red colour of my two legs bolted to the bed in front of me, I was right to be afraid. If she had been told to put the whole of humanity into the car with us that night, to protect her beliefs, I'm not sure she wouldn't have done it.

We all live with our fantasy of the end, of our own personal apocalypse, and I know hers had been bred into the bone. She was taught to play her role in one way only, and her great tragedy was she didn't even know she was just acting.

Give me chocolate carbohydrates through a straw and suddenly I can think. I've been awake for two weeks, and I can see I'm slowly healing. I'm still insane, but it's starting to feel like the good kind of insanity. The kind that can make friends.

Habits are dangerous things, especially in the herd. When everyone follows them, as they do here in the hospital, the habit becomes invisible. Nobody sees them. They become the shadows of our intellect, kept in a small envelope in the basement, easily forgotten but so important. I can see it all the time in this place. The staff rush by doing the important work of important people, and at no point does it appear to dawn on anyone they are repeating the same important work they did just minutes before. The older nurses, the ones who have already celebrated their first retirement only to return a year or two later, they understand. They are answering to the power of habit. The way it keeps you safe. The hard edge it keeps to your throat to motivate you, to make you work. But that's not its job. There might be such a thing as right and wrong, but it doesn't care. A habit's purpose is to be. Its measure is itself, always looking inwards towards its fulfilment.

Ideology and rhetoric are habits, and they are the enemies of rational thought. They are its enemy primarily because they look so much like it.

My legs are smaller, less swollen, and I'm feeling braver than I did even a few days ago. I know it's an illusion though. I know, nailed to this bed, in spite of everything I do to avoid it, eventually I'll become a child in pain, fearful and scared, eyes begging for the needle. Until then I'll enjoy this time. No tears, no anger.

There is such a thing as right and wrong, but our problem is its measure. No god, no economic rule, no mantra or religious doctrine can ever presume to tell us what is good. That can only be judged by one simple idea. If what we do is going to hurt our species, individually or as a whole, either directly or by wilfully damaging any part of this world we need to survive, then it is, by that measure, evil.

No filter will let that one through. Not ever.

I've been thinking about Hellen today, and I wish I would stop. I'm tired of living in this past I seem determined to relive, tired of trying to understand something I want to forget. I wish I could become the bliss ignorance promises, but instead I'm finding myself brooding. Thinking in circles about why Hellen did this to me. I realize after our final conversation, on the day we separated, I left somewhat fearful of her, and yet I did nothing. I even entertained the idea we would eventually get back together.

Why?

I suspect it was a lack of imagination on my part. I couldn't believe one of the sophisticates, one of the financially blessed, was capable of such barbarism. My fears were apparently rooted in a place that understood us as a species far better than I. If I had listened to my instincts I might not be here today, in this morgue of personal identity.

My fear centered on that Orwellian ability of the religious and the rich to have two completely opposing viewpoints, yet somehow not be conscious of the conflict. It's something that bothered me in a vague sort of way my entire life, and it was hard for me to miss even as a child. Hellen had that ability, to think two opposing thoughts at once, and she used it all the time. When I witnessed it, the suddenness could take my breath away.

In our talks I tried pointing out those contradictions, those logical impossibilities she presented to me as debate, and eventually I gave up. She couldn't see them, and the more I pushed the more she fought to explain her rationalizations. It always ended in circular frustration for both of us, with our mutual anger unsatisfied, leaving each of us hotly anticipating the next battle. The last time it came up was when I presented my question to her regarding the impossible gun.

I've often wondered how those special religious fanatics, those terrible religious warriors who kill the innocent as a matter of pious duty, could reconcile their hatred and disbelief of the earthly world of science with their use of the technologies and tools those sciences create.

I asked Hellen directly, how does a person who sees the world as a recent creation of a god, and who is opposed to teaching their children about things scientific (even the most basic concepts such as evolution, for fear of polluting their minds) pick up a gun and use that deadly creation of our scientific knowledge to kill his enemy?

When I talked to her about it, I used the term 'Orwellian' deliberately. That ability to both see and not see simultaneously.

I argued a gun is not something that just spontaneously forms under a rock. It is perhaps one of the most eloquent examples of evolution ever created. Its existence begs the question of the technologies required to actually make a modern firearm. As it turns out, they are not inconsequential.

As usual, it always starts in the earth. In the rocks on which we live. The materials used to manufacture the gun have to be mined, so we need survey and mining technologies. Refining technologies, techniques to purify and isolate, must then be created to allow us to make those raw minerals into something useful. Once that is completed, metallurgy becomes important because no metal harvested directly from the earth, except a few rare and expensive examples, could withstand the forces a modern gun creates. So using the ideas metallurgy teaches us, we bring our base metals to a foundry to carry out the very non-intuitive science of alloying, and after all of this hard work, all we have at this point is a lump of very hard metal.

It should be mentioned foundries historically used coal as a source of fuel, and assuming our fanatic thinks the earth is only thousands of years old, the foundry ovens are therefore powered by a fuel that cannot exist.

Now to the machine shop. Lathes working in tolerances the human eye cannot even distinguish, made using even more exotic alloyed metals, carve the lump of metal into a finished gun. Mechanical engineering technologies, of the type that created those curious automatons of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, have reached a level of perfection hard to imagine. A human hair is a clumsy and blunt object in comparison.

Are we done? Not even close. We built this gun, but how did it get designed?

To design a tool as advanced as a firearm one needs to understand the limits of what our alloyed metals can do, so technologies were created to allow us to test them. This would include the ability to microscopically x-ray solid metal parts looking for signs of stress. Once we understand the limits of what our metals can do, those mechanical engineers need to apply the theories of their craft to the functioning of this proposed tool, and once that's done, they communicate their designs to those who will construct them using one of our very oldest technologies.

Writing and drawing.

Of course, even that has progressed. We have evolved from cuneiform and glyph to technical drawing, which can take forms as familiar as the old-fashioned hand-drawn blueprints to the most modern three-dimensional computer-aided design images, or CAD drawings. Most people don't realize the majority of the cars we see every day in magazine ads are not the real item. They are computer-generated pictures taken directly from CAD files. The resulting images are so perfect, we can't tell the difference from real.

The gun is complete, and yet it's still a paperweight. We have forgotten the part that goes boom. That's chemistry, or alchemy as the church used to call it. With gunpowder, we finally reach a point where we have a tool that seems fully-functional, and yet what have we forgotten?

Aiming the damn thing. Trajectory technology, Newtonian mathematics really, and it was one of the primary motivators for the creation of the first computers as we know them today, such as ENIAC.

There we go. I presented that entire line of thought to her and then asked how someone could deny any of it exists? How could a person who does not believe in science deny they are surrounded by it?

"Of course it exists, God put it all there for us to use," was the only answer I could get from her.

Thousands of years of scientific inquiry, most of it done with the threat of death for heresy hanging over their heads, and Hellen reduced it to one line. As I said, she could take my breath away.

Perhaps, in hindsight, it wasn't overlooked. Perhaps it was simply being used to enforce a moral measure not in keeping with good and evil as I now see it. In the same way a person uses a computer without knowing about binary number systems, or drives a car without understanding internal combustion, the religious simply use the gifts of science. Use the scientific gifts given to them by thousands of years of (mostly atheist) thought and discovery. In the case of the gun, they use those gifts to kill us.

Perhaps we shouldn't enforce laws to keep guns away from children and the insane. Perhaps we should instead create laws to keep guns away from saints and prophets, and their followers.

The window has saved me more times than I care to count. I watch as the world spins along in the park, and I hope for visits from my yellow friend. My medical captivity has been an experience I am finding difficult to translate into words, it is so foreign to what I've known before, and yet, as I said last week, the routines assert themselves so quickly my head reels every time I think of it.

The protein drinks are making me feel strong. Really strong. My good arm is able to carry water to my lips, and I'm able to write clearly enough the game of charades I've been playing with the nurses is becoming a memory. My neck is starting to feel better as well, and this has given me a better view of my room, and all the goodies in it.

First, there is that rolling bedside table. It leans over me, being useful as it should, not straying from where it's supposed to be. My good arm can manoeuvre it forward and back, allowing me a bit of perceived freedom. I say perceived, because I'm still tied to the bed in traction.

Looking forward, over my discoloured legs and through the weights and pulleys, sits my dresser. Two drawers with a few small pots of flowers on top. My nurse read the messages to me. They are mostly from acquaintances, like my boss who rescued Franklin. She tells me the largest bunch is from work. I could have guessed. The bouquet is standard issue human resources get-well-fare, so I know if I look for a signature, all I'll find is a Transit logo along with the obligatory stamped signature from the CEO. I think it's pretty funny he would try to take back thousands of dollars of my wages through a war on my union, but somehow still feel completely OK sending me flowers. He's certainly not a friend, in fact I don't think I've ever met the man, so why send me such a shallow gift? I suppose his religion told him to. Seeing them sitting on the dresser under the window, I wonder who they were supposed to make feel better?

I can't help but grin at that thought.

I also have a television. The man in biological hell, with wires pulling him this way and that, has a television. I see them as our modern replacement for the telescope, but with a caveat: they usually only allow us to view artificial worlds. The nurse told me if I want to watch anything I'll need to pay a weekly fee, which made me laugh. The TV itself is a small one, the old kind with a picture tube, and it's folded (mostly flat) against the wall. It sits on the end of a telescopic arm, and if I were to ask they would pull it out, allowing me to mentally unplug, drooling medicated serenity into the idiot box.

I know better though. Since I arrived, I've come to realize morphine is much better for that. Television, in all of its blue phosphorous glory, is for amateurs. To gain admission into this cult of calm, the staff demands commitment from their followers. The kind of commitment only a syringe can deliver.

I'm grinning again. What an idea. Me talking about my appreciation of pharmacological bliss. I'm the guy everyone knows will only drink a beer if I don't have to work the next day, and yet here I am, getting drugs from a needle. The hardcore stuff too, right in the fattest part of my ass. It feels raw from the number of times they've loaded me up down there, and I just hope the sum total of all those injections won't leave some sort of pin cushion scar.

Scars. I forgot about that.

Obviously I haven't had a chance to stand in front of a mirror, so I can't actually say what scars I'm going to take away from my stay in this church of the blessed sphincter. From what I'm feeling though, I can guess. There is going to be a huge scar over my hip where the glove box went, and I'm still trying to figure that one out. Then, there are the smaller scars on both my legs. Some of them will result from the threaded rods through my bones that hold me in traction, and some of them are already healing from where the car managed to push its way through me. Judging from my injuries, my best guess as to how I got most of those is I was somehow pressed under the glove box, legs first. The easiest way I've found to envision this was to imagine myself crawling into the foot well, with my mid section on the seat and turned slightly to one side, my head, shoulders, back and arms pressed against the door. What a thought!

My right arm is a mess. It is still completely wrapped up, and they tell me I may need some minor skin grafts. Each of my fingers has it's own little splint, and they are clearly trying to force my hand to heal into something I can use again. They had said all my injuries were minor, but I really question what that's supposed to mean. I'm looking at a hand that should probably have been hacked off at the scene of the accident. It's swollen too, even after all this time, so the small parts of my fingers showing through the bandaging don't look like fingers - more like raw sausage. I'm getting a chill just looking at them.

Staying here, seeing my injuries and feeling how I feel, is hard on the head. As the nurses work on me they talk, mostly to themselves, about how I'll be fine. That may be so, but that's not what's been giving me the hardest time. It's the smell. The damn smell is so overpowering, I can't think from the distraction. What makes it worse is the knowledge the smell causing me so much distress is actually me. Not my injuries, not this place, but my new normal self.

My scent is completely different, and it's revolting.

In my frustration I scribbled a note to a nurse, asking her where the smell is coming from. After she made sure none of my wounds had gone septic, she realized what I was talking about. She said it was the drugs.

It seems when you pump dose after dose of antibiotics, pain killers, and who knows what else into a person, a body has to get rid of it somehow. Most of it comes out in our urine, but some of it comes out in our pores. In our skin.

This hospital, in the name of saving me, has invaded my body with steel, my mind with routine, and the rest of me with drugs. The holy trinity of the blood healers, making me well by changing and owning me.

I smell disgusting, and it makes me cry.

It might seem obvious, but I'm still finding my emotions very hard to control. I fool myself into thinking I've gotten over Hellen, at least on some sort of surface level that let's me think about her. That emotional fantasy evaporates when I'm faced with the truth of my behaviour. One minute I find myself thinking dispassionately, objectively, about the elements of our life together, and the next? I can't even remember the colour of her hair without completely breaking down.

She was a blond when I met her, but she started to dye her hair brunette within a couple of years. She explained to me, in her very matter of fact sort of way, the people she worked with saw blonds as sluts. From her descriptions of the various company outings she was required to participate in, I would have to take that description one level further. Her bosses, and she had many, made sure the prostitutes they hired to accompany them were always curvy, willing, and above all ... blond. Hellen dyed her hair because she was tired of looking like the main course in the company bimbo buffet.

Put that way, I can't say I blame her.

I find it funny to think about. I remember the stories she told to me, usually during one of her weirdly vulnerable, sherry-lubricated, evening confessionals. The sins of her co-workers laid bare and exposed to my criticism, and somehow I never thought to ask her why she stayed with the company. I knew the pay was more than good, it was actually obscene, but to be treated that way, even indirectly, seemed like such a huge compromise. I don't think I could have done it. One afternoon, while we were out shopping, I remember asking her what she liked about her job. Her answer surprised me.

She liked it because everyone who worked there was a 'family person.'

Seriously. She said it with a straight face. I didn't ask again.

I think she saw herself as a family person, or at least she wanted to. We never had kids. Hellen miscarried three times, but she always imagined if she could just carry to term, she would be a wonderful mother. I could see it in her eyes. I wasn't as convinced, and I always wondered if she would put our kids on the company payroll, just to make sure she could reliably book a meeting with them twice-monthly. Once, while discussing the possibility of trying to have a baby, and thinking I was being funny, I told her. The anger it brought out of her shocked me.

I thought she was going to punch me.

In hindsight, I'm just glad I recognized it as quickly as I did and made amends right away. She calmed down eventually, but I never again dared question how good a mother I thought her schedule and her work would allow her to be.

Her cash and her church. They each made their demands on her life and her time, and like all religions they don't tolerate unbelievers graciously.

I'm feeling my legs now. The pain is always there, but after a while it starts to get distracting. I know I only have a few more minutes of relative comfort left before the waiting game starts. That's when I slowly shut down all the higher functions and start the process of living through it. Deep breaths and progressively louder curses in my mind, at least until the next shot of morphine arrives. I can't hear my next door neighbour yet, but if I'm feeling it I'm guessing he is too. We have definitely kept a bizarre synchronicity about our pain I suspect speaks volumes to either the efficiency of the staff, or the fact we are both listed in the restricted meds list. It's easier and faster to do the paperwork and prepare the two doses at the same time, rather than signing off on each one separately.

Whatever, at this point I don't really care. I'm waiting to give my offering, the golden gluteus maximus of persistent pain, and the chickens are dancing in the streets. Dancing in my veins and in my muscles. It really is hard to think straight when your body starts to speak to you in razor blade and knife dialects.

The breathing helps a bit, so I just keep at it and try to get lost in the rhythm. It's never perfect, and I spend almost as much time trying to get my focus back on my breathing as actually feeling any sort of minor relief, but that little bit makes the rest much easier to take, so I breathe.

Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in and count to four, breathe out and count to eight. Back and forth. In and out. Blue and yellow and red and yellow and green and blue and yellow and ... shit this helps ... and yellow ... fuck ... and blue.

Man, it's getting tight.

I always try not to speak. I try not to vocalize in any way when the pain starts to get out of control, because I imagine that would only make it worse. I also think I would die of embarrassment if I were to cry out, yelling like some sort of idiot, which I think is about the stupidest thing yet in this place. I'm the fractured little man who feels emotion, and I care enough for the comfort of others I don't want to impose my suffering on them.

"Suffering is good for the soul. I think you would do well with a great deal more."

"What the hell would you know about suffering, Hellen?"

Next door starts to moan. Yeah, we're both there now.

He doesn't know I'm here, at least I don't think he does, and so I feel like I have an advantage. I hear him cry, his shouts and his curses, and I use them as a surrogate for my own pain. I can contain my outside by allowing his pleas to be mine. We are sharing this violation of our bodies together, but only one of us has the company and solace of an accomplice.

We are both prisoners who will eventually leave this cult of blood ... fucking nurses who are taking their damn time to get the papers done ... and when we do, perhaps I'll find him and we can relate our times here to each other.

Broken men and their broken souls, talking shop.

What can I do to stop this? I feel like the muscles are trying to leave my body, swelling and bloating in their effort to dislodge themselves. The blood vessels cursing the captivity of the flesh and trying to escape however they can. The pull. It's so hard on my brain. I feel like I can't stop the screaming from coming. It happens so fast, and it stays for so long. The nurses won't be by with the drugs for at least another half an hour, and I'm almost dead. I won't make it till then.

Oh man, why can't I just die? All I need is a brick and some leverage. This is not what a human is suppose to face, this is not a normal life.

We were never designed to suffer like this.

n

"And how are we doing today?" the nurse asks routinely. She doesn't expect a response.

She is here to deliver the pain medication to 4b, and the patient is held rigid in his bed in a frame of grey aluminum rods and thin steel wire. She is in no hurry as she checks his pulse, his blood pressure, his breathing. He has broken a sweat today, more than normal, and his brow seems to be wet and spongy when she wipes it. She notes it in his chart, and it confirms the pattern from her previous entries. He isn't reacting well to morphine. Nothing serious, but he might need to be weaned earlier than normal.

The syringe is on the bedside table, and if she had cared to look she would see he was staring at it, desperate, animal lust in his eyes. He is barely holding on, but she doesn't see it.

Content with his vitals, she unceremoniously pulls up the thick open weave blanket and exposes his backside to the air. He is not able to turn, so she leans down to get a better look at his ass and plants the needle squarely into the deepest part of the muscle. A professional pull back on the plunger, and then she quickly empties its contents into him.

The needle comes out, and with a quick flick of the wrist she breaks the point off into a yellow sharps bin. It's a bio-hazard now, and the staff must be protected from it.

Adjusting her braid, she looks down at him for the first time today, possibly the first time since he arrived so long ago. She wonders if she knows him. He looks familiar, at least as familiar as a swollen and distorted person can in this position.

It must be his eyes, she thinks, they seem familiar.

She stands over his body as it heals, just for a minute, and she can see the drug taking hold of him. The effect always intrigues her. His eyes lose focus almost right away, and within seconds he is asleep and oblivious. If she were to check his blood pressure again, she would see it was down quite significantly.

"You're not going to be happy if we cut your dose, I can see that."

The patient and the walls are both oblivious to her comment.

The door opens, the door closes. Silence returns to the room. Outside, a yellow bird sits on a branch just a few feet from the window, and every once in a while it makes a sound that gently pushes the veil back. Each note ends quickly, and afterwards the tubes and the wires rush to rejoin the stillness, while the floor doesn't even notice the sound at all. The man on the bed is dreaming of fish and cars and boats and his bird.

His manly bird, and outside the manly bird makes the sounds of prideful noise it loves.

I had a paper and pen chat with the doctor today and I'm guessing things will be a bit weird for a while. It seems I'm showing symptoms that suggest I'm not tolerating the morphine well. Early signs of dependence, odd skin reactions, blood pressure too low, generally the kinds of things they don't like to see in the patients they care for. They tell me none of it is very serious, but they want to change my dose. The goal is to keep my pain under control, while getting the dosage down to a level my body can handle.

My head says that sounds smart, but not my gut, and I'm sweating as I think about it.

I feel like they are playing a game with me. They give me these soul-killing drugs, and then just when they start to work I'm told they will be taking them away.

I'm getting better every day, but this talking about the pain killers is really scary. I don't know how I can face the pain I still feel every second of every day without something to numb it down. To take the edge off. They say they'll reduce the dose gradually, but I don't feel comforted.

I feel like I'm holding on to my self control by a thread, and they plan on cutting it.

My father was an intellectual and an addict, starting way back in the sixties when it was still cool to be that sort of thing. He was the prototypical hippie hedonist, and by the time I was born his philosophy was to do as many drugs as his body would allow, for as long as it would allow it. He followed that philosophy until his body stopped. The fact he made it past twenty five was a testament to the power of the human body to heal itself. The fact he made it to sixty five was an even greater shock to anyone who knew him, and I include myself in that pile.

He was a brilliant idiot and he didn't give a shit about anything, especially himself.

My mother was from the same small one church town and she was the brains in the marriage. Not to say she wasn't a major hippie acid-dropper like he was, she just knew when it was time to let the liver swelling go down a bit. It didn't save her though. They died within months of each other, each of them in their sixties; each of them from liver cancer.

The two of them together must have been an amazing sight when they were young. They were an impressive couple, if somewhat addled, even before they died. He was big and aggressive, often for no other reason than he wanted to indulge a need to bully someone ideologically, and she had an imagination that could fix time and show you the gears. I read some of her poetry, I was about twelve, and it traumatized me. I'm guessing it still affects me. It sure as hell changed me back then.

My mom was a hedonist, just like dad. She was also a stereotypical hippie and a heavy drug user. Thankfully for me, she did manage to clean herself up somewhat, and as she aged beyond her teenage bloom, she realized she could fake respectability well enough to get and keep a job. Eventually some good ones. However, aside from her drug use, she did carry one thing from those early hedonist years with her into adulthood, and eventually right into her old age.

She wrote, and very successfully sold, her poetry.

Her highly-graphic, highly-descriptive, highly-imaginative, pornographic poetry.

Years later, when I was in my early twenties, I was in the unfortunate position of having to describe my mom's writing to a friend. This girl I had just met recognized my mom's name from a few books she owned. I told this potential girlfriend my mom was like all the hippies back then - they were always out trying to find themselves. The only difference was that when my mom did find herself, she put a vibrator on it.

The girl laughed, and I blushed. The humorous truth in what I said reached deep into my youth. It reached downward into my most personal depths, those hopefully lost chasms in the deepest part of my psyche. Depths I had hoped at the time would never be plumbed. It was a joke that carried the weight of a century of psychoanalytic study and a seemingly endless trail of sticky tissues, carefully hidden under my mattress.

My mom's poetry traumatized me because I eventually found myself using it as ... how can I say this gently?

Wank material.

Freud would be proud. It was almost a relief when they died.

So here I am, trapped in this abattoir, knowing very soon I'll be begging the universe for the very thing I know did so much damage to my family and my childhood, and I decide to recount the decline and fall of my parents.

My messed up family life. We learn our lessons in spite of what we have.

I don't really have any clue what a normal family is, considering my own experience. I had the mom and dad, and we even had the occasional open-minded dog, but was that supposed to be normal? Judging from the stories I remember hearing from my friends in high school and college, my experience did seem to be somewhat less exceptional than I might have guessed, but was it still anything worth protecting?

This thing I'm facing with the hospital drugs, a part of me knows I'm already hooked. If they let me, I'll happily keep taking whatever chemical nirvana they offer once every four hours, until a vital organ gets tired of the abuse and dies. I've lived my whole life in fear of becoming my dad, a once formidable intellect turned dead head, his uniqueness killed by his own shaking hand, or my mom, who lost her moral centre so badly she wrote lyrical ballads of herself giving blowjobs, eventually earning a living from it. I know where my road goes, so in spite of an impending addiction, in spite of the fear malignant and sharp growing in the pit of my brain, I want the doctors and the nurses to keep me away from it. To change it. Make me forget it, so when I do get out of here I won't find myself talking to overconfident men in khaki shorts and flip-flops, assholes sipping lattes and talking about how worldly they are, while I make a deal with them for hundreds of dollars worth of some dead guys meds.

I saw my dad do that once, and it hurt my childish soul forever to realize how low he really was.

Families shouldn't be like that.

Hellen and I spoke of my family at times, but as far as she was concerned my parents simply reinforced her stereotype of working class intellectuals. Two humans, broken, written off. Eventually it was obvious there would be no solace in her company on the issue, but as we spoke of family it became clear, as much as she would have denied it, she came from a family as dysfunctional as mine.

She came from money. Lots of it, and they were a clan of solid church goers. A person could be forgiven for thinking she had a clearer understanding than most on the topic of family. A perfect and inspiring view of what good family is. Having lived those values. Having learned what those values were all about. Of course, she had no clue.

Short version: her father was morbidly workaholic, and he was extremely proud of the fact he made more money each successive year he was alive. Hellen saw him about once a week for most of her pre-adult life, and when they met, usually over ice cream or haute couture, his self-imposed duty was to brutally chastise her for whatever failings he could detect. His unthinking harshness was supposed to motivate her to achieve great things. Then there was the tragedy that was her mother. She was the bored housewife, that fantastic fantasy of pizza delivery boys and plumbers, revered and celebrated in sit-coms and romance novels. It was an open secret among those with the power and wealth she craved she could be had for little more than a compliment. She drank a lot as well, usually at parties that left the walls reeking of stale scotch and angry sex, but that didn't define her. Her desire to sample males, any and all males with the authority and gravitas to turn her head, was the thing she would have wanted marked on her tombstone.

Family? Hellen knew what it meant less than I did.

"Such arrogance! How could you possibly expect to understand my family, when you have denied yourself membership into the greatest family in the world?"

I'm feeling dizzy a lot, lately. I should probably spend less time thinking about things that upset me.

This feels weird.

My next door neighbour with the exploded leg had company yesterday. A lot of company. If I had to guess I would say probably fifteen adults and at least six kids. It sounded like some sort of family event had been planned, a reunion most likely, and the family from out of town descended on his room in full force to catch up and wish him well.

They were immediately disappointed.

I didn't know this, but the hospital enforces a strict three visitor limit. With just over twenty people visiting, there were problems. They eventually worked it out, but I thought the solution was a bit odd. Instead of allowing the visitors to stay for a short while, they had them play a sort of visitor tag team. Three family members at a time would each spend about fifteen minutes in his room with him, after which, the next round of family would take their place. The group ended up being there for almost three hours, laboriously cycling through tired and anxious adults as they tried in vain to entertain the bored kids. The system was setup after a five minute discussion with the nurse, and I unwillingly heard it all. How could I not? With that many people in negotiation over something as important as visitation rights, the volume went up even though tempers didn't.

People can only be so quiet when standing in the presence of so many other people ... who can only be so quiet.

That made sense.

I'm feeling rough and short-tempered. It's been two days since they reduced my dose, and I'm not happy about it. I'm in a lot more pain, which I suspect is obvious to anyone who looks at me. To make my time here even more fun, I find I'm pretty much in a constant state of anxiety waiting for that damn needle. They are giving me pills to help me relax, but the pills aren't helping. The blinds are open again today, but the bright morning sunlight is bothering me, it's making my eyes sore from squinting, so I lay in bed. Tense. Listening to the room and the ward.

I overheard the doctor talking about me. They said I might be taken out of traction in another week or so, and as much as I look forward to the freedom of not being nailed to my bed, I am not at all interested in finding out what it will feel like to rest my broken limbs on this plastic hospital mattress. They throb and pulse like air horns at a soccer match. I don't want to be awake for this. I wish they could make it stop.

I know this is for the best, but I don't care. I want them to get me back on a proper dose. An effective dose. Right now.

I noticed yesterday the noise from the visitors helped me forget myself for a while. The vicarious company of humans. I could fall into their voices and be a part of their intimate bond, part of those real people who still live in the real world. It didn't last though, and before long the distraction became the problem. Every fifteen minutes there was a new wave of hellos and goodbyes, people organizing the next exchange, and others making sure they hadn't been shorted for time. Their voices started to hurt, cutting into my thoughts and making me angry.

This whole affair with his visitors made it seem pretty obvious, from my vantage point anyway, this hospital is not very family-friendly. Imagine shunning family, in a place where it could be so useful. I know if I had someone, anyone, I would want them here by my side. All day, all night, to help me get through.

Would I deal with my pain differently if I had a son, if I had a daughter, to talk to?

At times, I'm very aware of my isolation, my solitude, and the staff of this hospital seems to prefer it this way. It's not a surprise to me, because I've always thought this idea applies to our whole society.

Hellen and I had it easy. Two incomes, one of them so high the word obscene was applicable, and childless. If the mood struck us we could drive small cars, or live in a small home, and because we consumed so few resources we would have small bills. But what about the men and women I worked with? The ones with kids?

An SUV isn't a political choice for them, it's a daily need.

Water bills that are pro-rated to reward the low user? They will never get the low rate. Bathing three kids, plus washing their clothes, makes that impossible. They face the same problem with heat, and electricity, and even access to the internet. All of it pro-rated to make sure families pay more than individuals.

A home? That white picket fence symbol of the affluence of North Americans? With stagnant wages and vastly inflated prices, slum rentals oftentimes become the only option.

Procreation without a trust fund has become a financial death sentence.

When did our culture decide hating the kids, or at least profiting from them, was so important?

I'm in so much pain I find it hard to engage my polite filter. This is a topic that's been mulling around in my head for years, and it was the subject that actually caused the most serious rift between myself and Hellen. At least it was, until I started the chain of events that brought me here.

The bank Hellen works with is pretty open about its dislike of children. After a few glasses of the dry white, she used to half-admit the worst thing she could do for her bank's reputation would be to show up pregnant. At some level I know she must have resented that, but for the sake of her share of the family empire she would never let on. Our fight started when she came home a bit flustered. She was upset because of a woman she had to fire.

I listened.

This woman apparently had to be let go. Hellen insisted nothing could be done about it, but the woman wasn't fired because she wasn't doing her job. Not at all. Instead, this woman was fired for having a second job. Of course, I asked why. Was she working for a competitor? Had she been caught divulging secrets? Hellen said no. She explained the woman was fired because she had three kids and she needed the extra cash to make ends meet. Hellen then explained to me, while she made herself a protein smoothie, having a staff member under that much financial stress made them targets, vulnerable to bribery and being manipulated.

I listened more attentively.

She explained, for reasons I can only guess, the studies her company had undertaken showed their wage structure was more than enough for a person to live on. The fact this woman chose to have a brood was entirely her fault, and Hellen couldn't see how the company should be expected to suffer for it.

She actually used the word brood.

Hearing this, I understood. The woman was fired because Hellen's company wasn't paying a living wage, and the bank didn't want to expose themselves to the downside of being the slumlord employer.

Hellen said, however obliquely, the woman was fired for having kids.

I stopped listening.

I work in a very blue collar job. I see the most marginalized members of our society every day, the people who are the very worst off. Over the years I've learned they all share something in common. However rough they look, however scrambled their minds have become, they are just tired and hungry people, trying against the odds to make ends meet every day. I try to help in my own small way. I give them free rides when they ask politely, I ignore the smell, and if they show up with a giant bag of bottles and cans during rush hour, I let them board whenever possible. Listening to Hellen explain her backwards attitude, watching her as she wore her complete lack of empathy for the woman's needs like some sort of twisted capitalist merit badge, caused me to speak more plainly than I ever had before. I wanted her to know just how callous and inhuman I thought she had become.

"Hellen," I began. "I sincerely hope you never decide to lower yourself enough to get a job at Transit. From what you just told me, you would fire half the people there, all the while claiming you were forced to do it. Then you would come home, pouting, feeling sorry for yourself, and trying to blame them for making you feel bad. Did the mean ex-staff force you to watch as they walked out the door with no future? What ungrateful bastards. I can see your noble attitude of self-sacrifice is going to do society no end of good."

Her response?

Her eyes shifted downward. I saw the understanding in her. I was right, and part of her knew it.

"You don't understand." was all she could say.

Still angry, and knowing I had won without a battle, I administered the coup de grâce.

"I hope I never do."

We didn't speak for three days. That was the fight. We didn't talk.

Time passed. Things cooled down a bit and eventually returned to normal, at least until I went all atheist-minded on her. Her response always bothered me though, because when she said I didn't understand, she was wrong. She was the one who didn't understand, but she didn't want to face it. She couldn't.

My wife, my dead wife, wanting children but always somehow miscarrying, fired a woman who was trying to raise a family. I think it bothered her somewhere in a place very close to the surface, and I think her unconscious answer to the dilemma was to fall back on her two religions: cash and the church.

She ended up following the God of Cash. That god always won, which meant her other religion became upset with her.

Our capitalist system works best if employees are constantly available and have no interest other than moving the company forward. When children are thrown into the mix, all sorts of problems are created because parenting forces an employee to split their attentions between the company and their children. Inefficient, and in our culture, unacceptable. Hire someone without kids, without a spouse if possible. Divest yourself of them when any unfortunate spawn assert themselves on their performance.

Naturally the church, Hellen's church, has other ideas. They want their flock to produce as many little followers as possible, for the obvious reason indoctrinating kids is a lot easier than converting adults. It really is like taking candy from a baby. Spiritual candy. Hellen's religious upbringing was against damaging a family in order to maintain a profit margin, so she was trapped by her position. Threatened by it. Normally someone as confident as Hellen would have railed for an hour justifying the firing, but to simply tell me I didn't understand? I could see she wasn't convinced. My having called her on it simply exposed a flaw in her personal morality she didn't care to examine.

The sun is shining and is still too bright. Since they lowered my dose, I find the sun painful in the mornings, especially since I can't really move away. The light moves slowly down the bars of my traction rigging to my brow, causing me to sweat. The jitters I feel in my gut make me short tempered. I press the call button with the hope someone is available to come and close the blinds sometime before nightfall. This whole idea of family is pissing me off. Our cultural attitude towards family, the one we brag about, the one we showcase on every television show and movie, is a giant lie.

We don't want families; we want employees. Children are loud and messy and the ultimate proof of our lack of control over the universe, and we resent everything they need. Resources go to the state, to the company. What right do children have to make demands on them?

Hellen once lobbied to have a playground replaced by a sitting park. She was part of a neighbourhood committee created to build this unspoken child-free zone. It was to celebrate a wealthy deceased couple who had established the first branch of her bank some sixty years earlier. I asked her about it once, and it truly never occurred to her the kids who played there every day would have nowhere to go.

"They'll find a spot somewhere. That old park is run down anyway."

The mothers and fathers who had rested while the kids played somewhere safe were now without a haven.

"It costs a fortune every year to keep that fence maintained," she had said.

The park she and her committee created exists today as they envisioned it, and save for the crickets and the raccoons, it is unused. The land is overgrown with weeds and the benches left unrepaired as they age. The job done, Hellen's committee disbanded soon after the park was built, and none of them will ever have to answer for the land going fallow, or that all of the families who once lived in the neighbourhood have moved on.

Since then, no new families have come to take their place.

A popular outdoor pool nearby was closed three years before they re-purposed the park, with money also being the excuse. They didn't need a committee to shut it down, and in its place today sits a parking lot.

What are we saying to our kids? What are we saying to our future? Are these the priorities of a healthy society?

The sun is directly in my eyes, blinding me, and I'm frustrated and confused. I've been in this bed for something like three weeks, and the person I can thank for it is happily dead. I wish there really was an afterlife ... so I could send her a PFO.

"Thanks for not being a friggin' human being Hellen."

" I told you before, you brought this on yourself."

Where the hell is that nurse?

My body hurts. My mind hurts. I can't see.

Fuck.

I'm human. At no point did I ever agree to a situation whereby having a kid would be tantamount to an economic crime. A healthy society remembers its roots. Civilization was created with the sole purpose of making families safer. Raising kids was much more difficult in the days when food sources were unreliable, so our solution was to domesticate plants and animals. We took charge of our food supplies, and from that forward thinking grew a stable society, eventually allowing the prolonged education we take for granted to become possible. Education that allowed our culture to grow technologically. The advancements that followed as the centuries passed allowed more children to reach an age where they could raise their own families. Through our work, we created civilization.

It was only after we invented the gods, and let their earthly representatives run everything, the whole thing started to fall apart.

The gods we made only wanted followers. Families were a side effect, so for thousands of years the gods could bullshit us claiming they loved families, but our latest god is not so cool with that. Money, economics, the immutable rule of the cash god over we, the corporeals. This new god has seen what families are, and it wants nothing to do with them.

A healthy society should place the welfare of families as a priority. Anything less is cultural sickness and an evolutionary dead end.

With the sun still in my eyes, I speak to Hellen. I can see her face in front of me, blurry and judgemental.

"Hellen, do you remember the woman you fired? Do you remember her name? Your god took her family as a sacrifice from you, and you didn't even have the decency to remember her name.

"Did you deserve to die Hellen? Because you were working against the good of the species? I think so. I don't know. You were working against the good of people. We humans want a society that values the future, values our species and its place on this planet, and values our families, whatever their description. You value your God of Cash, your selfish and destructive superstitions, and above everything your tired and relentless desire for things.

"We humans are not impressed."

I'm happy when she doesn't answer.

A big guy just walked into my room and turned off the call button. He introduced himself to me, and in my surprise I completely miss his name.

He is working on my IV, checking the flow rate in that bored familiar way nurses have, and watching him work I can't look him in the eye. His heavy fingers manipulate the thin tubing, and I see his hands are hairy and calloused. I wonder if he's washed them recently. I think I'm afraid of him. His greenish-blue nursing uniform doesn't convince me he's really a nurse, and I suspect he might be here to cause trouble.

People do that, don't they? There are people who sneak into hospitals to steal things, to hurt people, while dressed as staff. I know I've heard of it.

"You're looking better today. What was it you needed by the way?" he asks. He looks me in the eyes as he says it.

I'm startled by his familiarity and directness. How would he know I look better?

I motion with my good arm to the window, and reach for my pen and paper. He figures it out before I get to it though, and apologizes for not having thought of it already. I watch through my irrational distrust as the big hairy nurse walks over to the window and closes the blinds. My eyes are immediately grateful, and I notice he doesn't start digging in my drawer.

"My wife can't sleep with the blinds open, even at night. The room needs to be pitch black or she'll be restless and twitchy until morning and I won't hear the end of it. If you want I can pull the curtains, just to make it a bit better on your eyes. How's the pain?"

This torrent of speech surprises me. The other nurses seem to see me as dead weight, held wet and fast on a string. He can apparently see me through my dressings, and because of it I find myself questioning my distrust of him.

I nod my head no, very gently, and as I do I realize he doesn't know which question I'm saying no to. I motion my arm to the blinds and shake my head gently again. I don't need any curtains. I then scrawl on my pad, "Pain. Very bad."

"Gotcha." he says. "You're due in less than an hour. I'll get it ready so you won't have to wait."

I feel better hearing this. I thought it was at least two hours until my next shot.

I haven't been sleeping well since they reduced my dose, and my sense of time is screwed up. I realize I like this new nurse, but I wasn't ready for someone so overtly male. I don't like how the unfamiliar is always so scary.

I know why though. I feel so vulnerable, and thinking about it I feel a new anger well up within me. Hellen put me here, and I wish she were alive so I could rage at her. Instead, I'm tied up inside and out, and I tear my bed apart in my mind. Claustrophobic and alone, I know my whole marriage was a scam. I was her crutch, the man she used who allowed her to feel she still had a right to call herself human. I let her do that to me.

I hate myself for letting it happen.

The big nurse is standing next to my bed, and with the comfort of an old friend he starts the routine. He checks my heart rate, blood pressure and temperature, marking everything down in my ever growing file.

He lifts my good arm to get the pressure cuff around my bicep, and I quickly become aware of the difference between how it feels when a man lifts my arm versus a woman. Because of the accident I'm quite small, but I've always been in good shape, so small for me is still much larger than most women. When a female nurse lifts my arm, unless I'm able to help, it's clear an effort is required. Mr. Big Nurse has no such troubles. My arm doesn't present any challenge to him, and he had no problem getting the cuff on. The contact is different as well, and I find I miss how the female nurses tended to brace my arm against their hips.

His hands are dry and hot. What an odd feeling.

He takes my temperature quickly, and then listens to my breathing with a stethoscope. Heart rate and pressure appear on the machine, and all the various numbers are jotted down. He's good; he knows what he's doing.

"Your heart rate is up, blood pressure too. Probably nothing, but I'll watch it the rest of my shift to make sure you aren't having some sort of reaction to the reduced dose. I should probably let you know, the doctors are thinking about removing the wires from your jaw in a couple of days. Your notepad is going to be obsolete soon." He says the last part with a grin, as if I had accomplished something the doctors didn't want or expect.

I notice he even has hair on his neck, just above the collar. This man is a gorilla, and he is my nurse. It's no wonder I was afraid of him, he looks like a character from some Smithsonian Stone-Age diorama.

I see a sweaty Cro-Magnon male, gnawing the thigh bone of a mastodon. I'm staring at him through thick museum glass, learning about his time from seeing his artificially-dirty, polyester feet. They hold his shiny wooden form upright and noble, beside his hairy and productive, polyester female. Their lives are lived on the fake earth of the museum display, showing us who we used to be. As if to make a point, the plastic tusk of a boar has been knotted into his beard, and that tells us he is very primitive indeed.

His work done, the big nurse leaves the room. I'm once again left alone to tend to the silence. In spite of my smouldering anger at Hellen, I find I feel good, better than I have in a while, and I don't know why. I'm still afraid, feeling more exposed and vulnerable than I ever have in my life, and these are not the sorts of things that would normally make a person feel cheerful.

My red meat brain churns through the blood food it craves trying grasp a wet thought. Smouldering chemical intellect makes itself aware of something it hadn't noticed before, and it sends the realization upwards, through the pale thin layer of emotion, through the crushed layers of meat and viscera, into the conscious parts of me where I spend my life. I realize why I feel so much better.

My giant caveman nurse, he speaks to me as a person, and that means I'm on my way back to being human again.

It never ceases to amaze me how much I've learned from people who have bad BO.

Asgardians can read the rest of this work by sending their email address tomichael@leamy.ca. Once you have it, please share the digital file with your friends. If you would like to support my efforts, as I work to complete the next two books in the trilogy, please consider purchasing a digital copy from Amazon, or a paperback copy from Createspace.