O Magnum Mysterium



"You voted for Kamala, right?"
Frank looked away from the road and into his wife's accusing, anxious face.
"Of course, honey."
Lilian turned her profile to him. Age, and the light that filtered through the drizzle on the windshield, had turned her skin velvety. Brake lights from the car ahead reflected off her cheek.
"No, that was a joke," she said.
Frank had to crane his neck to look for a gap in the next lane. "Oh, uh huh?"
While he concentrated on driving, Lilian clutched at the door handle, twisting her hips as if unable to find a comfortable position. "I can't help thinking about it," she said. "More than half the country voted for Trump."
"That liar," mouthed Frank as he turned and accelerated, assuring his place in the next lane over. "Foof! So! Mikey's gonna love his truck, huh?"
It sat on the seat behind them, embedded in a cube of cardboard and plastic the size of an oven. Beside it were the bottle of wine and the strata, baked because what if Derek and Diane's oven wasn't working.
"I don't know." Lilian rubbed at the skin over the round bones of her wrist. "It's a truck. It's so gendered. Don't you think?"
Frank nodded, tracking the patterns on the retaining wall. "He loves trucks. 'Truck' was his first word after 'no.'"
"I know that, Frank."
Frank continued to focus on the road, his mouth firm.
A terrible silence rose until Lilian said, "I'm just worried."
He nodded a little and glanced her way. "I hear you. It's all right to be worried," Frank recited. "And you know? I bet you in two years, there'll be a blue wave, just like last time."
Lilian's shoulders relaxed. "No, that's complacency. That's why we weren't ready to keep him out of the White House. We'll keep up the resistance." She looked up from her lap. "And I can ask Diane what she's doing to fight."
Frank flicked her a nervous smile. "That's a good idea."
"Look out for that pickup. I don't like the way he's driving."
Frank got out from behind the truck and braked to avoid rear-ending the car in the next lane. "Look at these dopes on the road! Ha," he said, and swung his hand over the wheel as if flinging a Frisbee. "Maybe they're the ones who voted for Trump!"
"Don't, Frank."
"Guess there's no way to know."
The freeway rose and curved over housing developments and trees. Lilian searched Frank's face as he signaled and took the next exit.
Derek and Diane lived in a large, rented home on the bank of a slough. Spanish mission, it was called, which meant white stucco and a low profile.
"The magnolia's lost its flowers."
"Frank, it bloomed in May."
They rang the doorbell and waited, food and presents cradled in their arms, smiling at the closed door.
It opened a crack and slammed shut. Opened again. An eye peered up at them from between clumps of brown hair. The door slammed again, hard enough to rattle the windows.
"Michael, no! Stop that."
The doorknob turned, but the door shuddered under the thrown weight of a four-year-old boy.
"No door!"
"Stop, Mikey."
"Roar!"
The door opened a third time, now at the hand of Derek, their son. His own child squirmed in the sweatered crook of his arm. "Come in, quick. Merry Christmas."
"Merry…" Lilian's eyes darted up past him. "Where's Diane?"
"Traffic!" Mikey flung his hands up and slithered out of his father's grip. Screaming, he ran out the door.
"Don't let him get away." Derek pushed past his parents. "Mikey, don't play in traffic."
"Broom. Broom! A red truck. Grandpa, let me down."
"Don't put him down yet." Derek maneuvered himself between Frank and the road. "Mikey, go inside kiss Grandma."
"What about kisses for Grandpa?"
Mikey sank his heel into Frank's belly and made it back to the house before the old man straightened.
At the noise of Mikey's approach, Lilian turned away from her Diane, but not quickly enough to avoid her grandson, who dove into the backs of her knees. Diane grabbed her and held on until Lilian had regained her balance.
Derek sidestepped the present still in the doorway. "Mikey, did you tackle grandma?"
"No I kissed."
"She doesn't look kissed. She looks tackled."
"No!"
"It was a kiss," said Lilian, straightening. "Thank you, Mikey."
Derek shot his mother a frown taking a knee before Mikey. "That isn't the truth, is it, kid?"
"Give grandma a kiss, Mikey."
"Mom, wait." Derek put a heavy hand on the boy's shoulder. "Mikey, are you brave enough to tell me the truth?"
Mikey frowned and turned up his nose. "Harrumph!"
"In front of your family? On Christmas?"
"It's all right." Lilian tried to meet her daughter-in-law's eyes. "You tell your child 'no.' I've read that that's not as traumatizing as we used to think."
"Right. Sorry." Diane ducked to pick up Mikey. "It's okay. Sorry. Lilly, I haven't asked if you want something to drink."
"Let me down, Mom!"
Derek got up and pulled the door closed behind Frank and the present.
Diane had spent the previous day polishing the cabinets and the smells of beeswax and orange oil turned the Spanish mission into a dark and towering cathedral. Candle-flames nodded over wax in the shapes of fir trees and Santa's head, illuminating the two stratas in their pans, the fruit salad, and the mugs of coffee.
A choir sang softly from a hidden speaker, and the Christmas tree threw shards of colored light across the walls. Cars, trucks, warrior robots, and the elements of hopeful STEM kits had been spread evenly across the floor to a depth of six inches.
Mikey waded through his bounty, new truck on his shoulder, shouting "Brow! Broom! Action! Watch out, Grandma."
Frank leaned forward and raised his voice in an effort to be heard. "Which is why we can't understand it. We were just talking on our drive down here. How could half the country have voted for the man? Derek, what do you think? You think there was hacking?"
"I don't know, Dad." Derek pulled back, shoulders raised and voice fast and breathless. "I don't really watch the news."
"Mikey," said Diane, "should you be doing that?"
Frank spread his hands in disbelief. "But you gotta stay informed, kid. Now, more than ever."
Derek shrugged again. "Yeah, I guess."
"Mikey, think about what you're doing."
"Well, what are they saying at work?"
"Nobody can say anything."
"I know what you mean." Frank leveled his finger at his son, whose eyes focused as if on the barrel of a gun. "Your boss came out for Trump, didn't he?"
Derek lifted his eyebrows and scrubbed a hand through his beard. "Our founder? Yeah?"
"Three," said Mikey. "Two!"
Frank leaned further. "Why do you think he did that? Because he feared what Trump might do to him if he didn't kowtow?"
"Frank, I think that's offensive," said Lilian, nodding in Diane's direction.
"Submit?"
"I don't know," Derek told them. "Who knows what anyone is thinking? Right? Mikey, don't throw that truck."
It crashed through a mound of empty boxes.
"I dropped it."
"That wasn't dropping, Mikey, that was throwing."
"Good thing he didn't hit the tree," said Frank, and Mikey started laughing.
"Oh, my God." Derek turned in his seat and put his hands on his knees. "Hey, Mikey, you want me to go get out the tablet?"
"Uh, Derek?" Diane leaned closer to her husband, lowering her voice and keeping her eyes on her in-laws. "It's Christmas."
"I understand," Lilian told her, and her hands under the table turned her own phone face-down. "There's so much toxic masculinity on YouTube."
Derek grit his teeth and growled at his wife, "But there's things I want to say."
She drew back. "So, say them."
But now everyone was looking at him. Derek put his hand over his mouth.
Lilian looked from one child to the next as silence swelled. "But how are you, Diane? We should have asked you sooner about your work."
"Yeah," said Frank, eagerly turning his attention from his sulky son. "I bet they're doing something big at the university. Some sort of protest in the works?"
"Probably," said Diane. "But, well. Sorry, but I guess I didn't tell you before. I don't work there any more."
"Since Mikey's last birthday," Derek grumbled.
Lilian put her hands across Diane's wrist. "But what are you going to do? And how could they fire you?"
"I wasn't fired. I took a leave of absence. And I'm looking for a new job right now." Diane smiled and ducked her head. "In the private sector."
"Oh, the private sector," Lilian recited before she registered Diane's expression.
"Mom. Mommy!" Mikey was under the table.
"What? Yes, Mikey, what is it?"
"Where's the goose?"
"It's still in the oven."
"It's cooked," said Frank.
"What I mean," Lilian said, "is that there's so much more misogyny in the private sector. Even than in academia."
"Right," Derek declared. "The university was a snake pit."
"What? What happened?" asked Frank.
Derek's eyes darted away and his hand went back to his mouth. "Never mind."
"Sorry," said Diane. "Yes. Never mind."
This was enough to make Lilian take hold of Diane's wrist. "Was it sexual harassment?"
"Well." Diane looked to Derek, but he was glowering at the wall.
"Mommy!"
"What?"
"Is the goose crispy?"
"I don't know, Mikey." She looked back up at her mother-in-law. "Sorry. I have no right to complain. There are people in this country who are dying because they don't have jobs." She passed her hand palm down over her head, ducking slightly and smiling disarmingly. "I'm really privileged to have—"
"What's it thinking about?"
"What's what, Mikey?"
His frustrated sigh from under the table sounded exactly like his mother's. "What is the goose thinking about?"
"Nothing. It's dead. Derek, will you?"
"Go play, Mikey. Let us talk."
"That's not what I meant." Diane turned back to Lilian, who was still gripping her wrist. "I mean that I will work when I get my new job, but, you know." She paused, but when nobody stopped her, she had to continue. "I don't have to watch what I say so much?"
Lilian pulled back, eyes wide. Her hands left Diane to clutch each other. "What does that mean?"
"No, that doesn't sound so bad," said Frank. "Don't have to watch what you say. I wouldn't mind that sometimes. Lilly?"
"Frank. Don't interrupt her."
"I don't know." Diane waved her hands like a stage magician directing her audience's attention. Her expression was one of fear. "It was a big department. There's a lot of different viewpoints to be aware of, and?"
Lilian turned to Frank. "It was bullying. Like what happened to me."
Diane hung her head, and put her hands away. "Yeah."
Derek moved as if to hug her, but patted her shoulder, instead. "Sorry, babe."
"What are you apologizing for?" Frank asked him.
"Empathizing, Dad." And in a lower, less sarcastic voice directed at his wife: "I know it gets exhausting."
Frank squinted across the table. "Someone harassing you too, now?"
Lilian swatted his shoulder. "Come on, Frank, how could they be? We're talking about Diane and her hurt."
"No, no, it's been good for me," Diane assured them. And, when more details seemed to be expected, "I'm glad to have more time to spend on…" she turned her head, searching. "Myself."
"Yes, that's all right," said Lilian uncertainly. "If it's on yourself."
"I've been able to work out again, for one thing."
"Oh, working out. I'm so glad."
"You've lost weight."
"Frank!"
Diane smiled a little. "It was hard to give myself permission, you know? To not be Diane the health policy instructor and just, uh, honestly…" She looked at Derek, who had stood up.
He raised his nose. "We've been completing an awful lot of sentences."
Mikey was okay. He had climbed into the large freezer in Derek and Diane's garage and curled himself into the hole where the goose had been. He was trying to shut the freezer door from the inside when his dad found him.
"No!" Mikey wailed from Derek's arms.
"Don't sit in the freezer!" Derek raised his hand above the back of the boy's head, but looked up at the rest of his staring family and froze. His face reddened.
"You know what?" he said. "Let's take a walk."
The adults distracted themselves with the business of Mikey's coat and mittens and getting his boots on the right feet. In the front yard, they could argue with him about who should ride in the stroller ("Mom!") and on the bridge, everyone could be worried about the traffic on one side and the slow, brown slough on the other.
"You see that, Mikey? That's a coot."
"Yeah, just like me."
"No! Mikey, you have to stay with Mom."
"I got him, Diane. I got him."
By the time they arrived at the park, they had temporarily exhausted their ability to worry. But silence gathered around the little hills and the pond. They each of them looked around, but saw only frazzled palm trees and the green turds of Canada geese. The clouds had burned away, but the sky was as scary as the view over the edge of the bridge.
"Honk honk!" Mikey made a dash for it, pretending to be either a truck or a goose.
"I'll get him." Frank did his best to catch up.
Derek looked ready to escape as well, but Diane asked, "So, Lilly, what's going on at your church? Are you still involved in the Women's Auxiliary?"
Fear flashed across Lilian's face. "Well, of course we're all still shocked about the election."
"Oh, of course." She turned and raised her voice. "Come back, Mikey!"
"Maybe the Auxiliary could make a rule like 'no politics,'" Derek suggested.
"You can't avoid politics." Lilian spoke gently but firmly, as if about homework. "Everything is political. Silence is violence."
"Yeah." Derek turned. "Just sort of herd him back this way, Dad. Okay?"
"Honk honk!" The little boy powered up the hill and threw himself at Lilian's knees. This time, he did kiss them.
"You want to show Grandma the geese?" asked Diane.
"Come on, Grandma! Watch out, they can bite. They can bite hard. Like this!"
"You protect Grandma," said Derek.
"I'm sure I don't need protection."
Mikey tugged Lilian past Frank, who stooped and bent forward, hands on his knees.
"You okay, Dad?"
"Fine, fine." He straightened, groaning. "Man, I can see how you lost weight, Diane. That kid's a better coach than the girls at the fitness center. Women. I should come here twice a week." He didn't give his son or daughter-in-law time to respond. "What were you kids talking about up here? Ha. Trump didn't do anything while I was gone, did he?"
"Um, Dad?" Derek's hand went to his mouth again, but he spoke around it, scratching his beard and looking away. "I'm a little worried about Mom? Um." He checked his father's expression. "She just, she's taking this election stuff awfully personally."
Diane looked up at him. "You mean you think it isn't personal for her?"
"Uh. Yeah." He pressed his fingers to his lips and leaned into them, as if thinking deeply.
Frank watched his son and daughter-in-law. "Well, yeah, I guess it is personal and stressful. For everyone." When they didn't respond, he turned away. "Ha. Look at that kid go. He's a firecracker all right. Gonna take over the world some day, huh?"
"Yeah." Derek let go of Diane's arm and stood next to his father, watching his son. "I don't know how he's going to handle nursery school."
"But he has to go to school," said Diane in a tone of terror.
"Even after Trump guts the education department," said Frank. "We'll think of something. Looks like they're coming back."
"Should she be carrying Mikey like that?" Diane started down the hill.
Derek jogged past her. "I'll take care of it. Mom, you don't need to lug him around like that. Let me have him. Mikey, you can walk."
"I'm pooped, Dad."
"No, you're not."
"I can carry him. Well, if you think he should — oof!"
Mikey kicked off his grandma and landed on his dad's chest. "Mecha-Daddy," he said, pulling himself onto Derek's shoulder.
"Okay, okay. Mecha-Daddy." Derek reached up to twist his son's legs into position. "You're all right up there?"
"No, I'm the head! I talk. You say bvvv-tshr."
Derek took a heavy, stop-motion step, making noises like a hydraulic system.
"Action!"
"Not so loud, Mikey, that's Dad's ear."
"No, Dad, say bvvv-tshr."
Lilian picked her way towards Frank and Diane. "Well, we certainly taught those geese a lesson."
"Sorry he made you carry him," said Diane.
"No, no. I missed this." Lilian looked from husband to daughter-in-law. "What have you been talking about? Oh, that reminds me, I got a news notification while I was chasing after Mikey." She reached into her coat pocket and Diane looked up into the sky.
"What's wrong, sweetie?" asked Frank.
"It's nothing. I'm just tired."
Lilian nodded, still searching. "Me too. It's the stress of always lying."
Frank and Diane snapped their attention onto her. Lilian pulled her hand out of her pocket and held it up as if in self-defense. "What did I say? Lying? I meant we always have to be polite, I mean to put up with people. Strangers, you know, and you're always wondering which of them might have," she took a step back, "might've been on the wrong side."
"Oh," said Diane. "Right."
"I think what she means to say…"
"I'm sure you know, Diane, that I don't usually let him speak for me."
"Of course, Lilly. I wouldn't think that."
"Maybe we should head home?" said Derek.
"No! Mecha-Daddy, run away!"
"Mikey, I'm tired."
"No, you're not."
"Like Mom and Grandma." Derek knelt. "Mikey, get down now, I really am tired."
Mikey tightened his grip on his father's hair. "That isn't the truth."
"It is. Ow!"
"No! Are you brave enough to tell me the truth?"
Derek stopped with his hands under his son's armpits, looking up into the faces of his family.
For a moment, nobody knew what to say.
Lilian felt as if the ground were splitting beneath her. She always knew the right thing to say, but now, facing this terrible question, her voice failed her.
"I voted for Trump," said Frank.
"Huh what?" Derek paused with his heavy son halfway-off his shoulders. "Me too."
Diane turned on them. "Why didn't you tell me?" she demanded, and both men cringed.
"Put me down, Dad!"
"Because I voted for him too."
"Ha!"
Derek's arms trembled. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Why didn't you tell me?"
Mikey kicked, and Derek let him down in a motion just slow enough to not count as a fall. "I wanted to stay married."
"Me too."
"Ew! That's poop. Is that goose poop?"
Lilian pressed her pinkie into the inner corner of her eye. "Oh," she said.
She could hear Frank's footsteps on the grass behind her, but he didn't try to hold her.
Diane looked up from Derek's embrace. "Oh. I'm sorry, Lilly."
And what could she say? "I feel like a fool. I was so afraid of what you'd think of me." She grabbed her shoulders and and clenched her teeth. "And now I'm crying. Isn't that just. Stupid."
"Come here." Frank said from behind her. "Better to stop being stupid than keep on being stupid, right?"
Turning took more courage even than speaking. But when she saw his face, he still loved her.
"Me too," she told them.
"Brow!" Mikey shoved his parents aside and ran at full speed down the hill toward the lake. They let him.



The story above is dedicated to Marilyn Simon and Zero HP Lovecraft, who have written of their wishes to talk to their families about politics. It would be foolish to expect your conversation to be as painless as the ones in my story, but not so foolish to pray for some kind of miracle.

I should also note that, although I borrowed a house where we used to live and a certain Christmas dish, the family in this story little resembles mine. We didn't all vote the same.

My garden gate has a latch that hasn’t worked in at least sixteen years. To keep it closed, somebody welded a pair of hex-nuts to the gate and wound a thick wire of appropriate length around the frame. When you exit the gate, you can, if you turn around and use both hands, hook the wire through the hole in the outermost nut and close the gate.
It was a Sunday afternoon, chilly and bright gray. I closed the gate behind me and turned from it to stride off in the direction of dinner with friends. I was thinking, “Finally. I broke the dragon’s back.”
At 9 AM on Saturday, I had called Pavlina, away on a team-building, and told her I planned to relax and “play with Thracian.” I shut my laptop on Sunday, at 1 AM.
I know more or less what I was trying to do. There are two fairly good examples of the past tense used in inscriptions on Thracian grave markers: igekoa and gegeoeka. It’s plausible that they are both past tenses of “I live,” related to English “quick.” The i- at the beginning of igekoa looks like the augment that prefixes Ancient Greek and Sanskrit past tense verbs (English “I lived”). These languages also reduplicate the first syllable of a verb to mark the perfect aspect (English “I have lived”). The -k suffix might also indicate the perfect, as in Greek. Was it the same in Thracian? In pursuit of this question, I burned my entire Saturday.
There is nothing that it’s like to be caught up in an obsession. It’s a flow-state, a fugue, when awareness, reflection, and memory are swallowed up by the task. 1st person active present athematic. 1st person active present imperfective. 1st person active present thematic. I ground down my list of Proto-Indo-European verb suffixes, walking each through the sound-changes I’d derived, comparing each to Ancient Greek, Phrygian, and proto-Albanian. Every mistake or new interpretation would pull me back up to the top of the list to start the grind again.
Did igekoa mean “I had been living” and gegeyoeka “I had lived”? The truth is that there isn’t enough material to answer questions like that. If Thracian were just a little better-preserved, I’ve be able to definitively answer questions about its grammar. If worse, I could just invent whatever I wanted without fear of contradiction. But the language is just the right combination of known and unknown to draw me on. Endlessly, I now see.
That’s why I smiled on Sunday. Before, for years, there had always been family or work to force me out of my fugue. I’d think, during a class or a meal or a trip to the beach, that if only I had enough uninterrupted time, I’d be able to determine for certain how an ancient people spoke. When I finally got that time and sacrificed it, the answer I got was “You won’t.”
On Sunday, I slept in, had my breakfast, called my family and went back to my book. When people read Wealthgiver, they’ll like it for its characters, their relationships, and the atmosphere of exotic danger that surrounds them. Only once they’re drawn in will they bother to read the made-up words in italics, and very, very few will ever examine the suffixes. I want those who do to find something, but “world-building” is fundamentally decorative. These active-indicative-past-perfect flourishes might amuse or intrigue, but they will never warm a heart or nourish a soul. For that, I need to live a life.
With this in mind, I finished the translation I hadn’t even started on Saturday. It was the last one I’ll need to make, since the rest of the book is in English. With the dragon’s back broken, I went downstairs and took a hot bath. I soaked and read about determinism until it was time to get ready for dinner. I got dressed, went out to see my friends, and closed the gate behind me. Those eight seconds of messing with the hook gave me more to write about than fourteen hours of obsession.

Now, in December, it is the month of sales. My alternate history Tesla-punk romance The World’s Other Side is now on Kindle Unlimited, so you can read it for free if you’re a member. And even if not, it’s not that expensive and it has hover-cars. Treat yourself.
While you’re at it, take advantage of my sales on Patreon and Substack, where for less than $3 a month, you can join the readers of Wealthgiver and tell me whether I got the imaginary verbs right.
***
And I read some things in November:
Undermining the System by Inadvisably Compelled
The previous book in the series ends with Cato freeing one planet from the oppressive artificiality of the System. Now he has to do the same thing on as many planets as possible simultaneously, facing resistance from enemies who take him seriously. The author digs deeper into why someone might support the System, although some of the arguments are better than others.
Kim by Rudyard Kipling
I listened to this audiobook on my morning runs, and it make pre-dawn exercise a pleasure. I was reminded of Tom Sawyer, except it’s set in turn-of-the-century India with international espionage as the plot. Otherwise, there similar humor and compassion, with brightly-colored impressions of broad, deep characters. “She chuckled like a parrot over the sugar-lump.”
What Christians Believe by C.S. Lewis
Lewis takes you from atheism to "a child saying a child's prayer," then to the problem of evil and the nature of Christ. I appreciate his religion as a way for people who are already adults to continue to grow up. I'll have to read it again.
Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain
Like Innocents Abroad, this is a collection of short essays, descriptions, and reminiscences that the famous author wrote as a famous author. Some of it seems to have been written to give his readers something to do, but there are a few spots of real inspiration. The story of Twain’s past as the pilot of a paddle boat are the perfect balance of fact and feeling.
Biomedical Self-Engineering by Jon Svenson
When Carl, a divorced night watchman in his 70s, is bitten by an alien, he becomes an animorph. He absorbs DNA from every animal he touches and can use those genes to alter his body. So, after he clears out his tumors and shrinks his prostate, Carl touches a dog so he can sniff out buried gold, which he uses to invest in failing business. It’s…not what I would do if I had DNA powers, but after a while I really wanted to know if Carl would be able to turn that restaurant around! Like most LitRPGs, this book is idle wish-fulfillment, but it’s saved from being boring by an unusual protagonist with interesting things to do.
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
This is the most distance I’ve seen between a book’s reputation and its content. At best, people talk about Atlas Shrugged like it’s a shoddy story straining under its philosophical burdens, but when I read it, I saw a Russian science fiction novel.
In one scene, a group of government functionaries on a train need to be in California by midnight. Because most of the rail line’s employees were hired for political reasons, all rail lines but one are closed and there is no functioning diesel locomotive. The management, also political, is less concerned about fixing these problems than passing the blame, so the decision of what to do is finally made by a mid-level manager. This manager had a brother who killed himself after his workplace was nationalized by the People, and the news of this suicide was suppressed so as not to damage the People’s morale. Now, the manager orders that the a coal-burning locomotive should pull the train through a tunnel in the Rocky Mountains, a solution that will asphyxiate all its passengers but get their corpses to San Jose on time. “And?” the manager thinks to himself, “who is on that train? I bet it was People.”
I’m going to have to write a longer review of this book.


See you next month.