And many a word at random spoken #2 – Capps Corner, Texas

Capps Corner, Texas

"Jerry, good Lord, look at that mess you're bringin in!"

The dust from Jerry's boots came back into the store with him, so he dragged his feet a couple times through the old, ragged piece of carpet they used as a doormat. He had stood outside for a little more than an hour, just to stretch his legs. People still passed through sometimes, on their way from Nocona, or drivin back down towards Saint Jo. He hadn't seen anyone yet today, but it was a hot day, bad for drivin anywhere. The August heat was finally kickin in, it was hot as hell for days now. He didn't think he would see anybody today, but he would hold out til dusk at least. Betty called him a fool for sittin up there everyday, hardly a customer in sight, but he had run the fillin station for almost forty years and he wasn't gonna give it up. His daddy never gave up his farm, even when the Depression hit. He wasn't ready to give up yet. He eyed the thermometer by the front window as the door closed behind him. It was 98 degrees in the shade at 3:41 PM, August 11th, 1985.

Most days, he was glad for Loretta's company, but this heat made her nasty sometimes. She looked at him cross with her squatty eyes, her big, fat cheeks red with sweat. "Hell, I'll sweep the rest up later," he said, expectin her to fuss over the dirt some more. "It don't matter."

"Alright. Come on in and get you a Coke, sit down and cool off."

He walked over to the cooler to do like she suggested. Loretta's daughter had just went off to college, so Jerry knew she had too much time on her hands. She had always come by three or four times a week to talk about what her girl was up to, or to complain about her sorry ass husband who didn't even call no more. He always told her it don't matter, Darrell had been no good, but she ought to get married again for her daughter's sake. Loretta kinda snorted and started down her beady eyes at him whenever he said that. "I swear, Jerry, a man ain't all that matters you know," she always said, and her look would soften into somethin like pity after a minute.

It used to be that a lot of folks came by and visited, but there wasn't many folks left of Capps Corner to come visit anymore. A lot of his old friends had passed, he bet there wasn't a hundred people even left. He remembered the days when the station was center of town, what little town they got, when everybody just had to stop by and say hello. He looked after Miss Edna's sons while she drove her crops to market, he patched up tires and filled radiators and did a hundred things that made him more than an old man holdin down a stool. Betty wanted to move to Gainsville, where their son Edgar lived with his family. Edgar offered to let them live in his house, it was big enough, and Betty wanted to be with her grandchildren so much. It sounded alright, they said he could even bring his old recliner with him, but he wasn't sure about all that. He knew a man took care of himself until he fell down doin it.

"Well, Jerry, I took up your time enough today, I need to be gettin home. Leanne is supposed to call me from school today, I hate to miss her."

"Alright Loretta, we'll seeya later, take care of yourself in his heat now." He watched as the chubby woman wandered out to her old Ford pickup and weighed down the driver's seat behind her. She drove off not too fast, but still dust shot up from the dry ground as she left. It took a minute for him to see that somebody was pullin into the station after her.

Jerry rushed out to meet them as fast as he could, even as his hip popped. "How you doin, folks, what can I do for ya?"

A young, sweet faced girl rolled down the passenger window of her big, wood panel station wagon. She couldn't have been more than 25, but Jerry saw her husband on the driver's side, and a toddler in the back seat. "We just need to fill up," she said with a pretty but shy smile.

"Oh sure, let me do that for you folks," but the girl's husband had already gotten out of the car, a tall, corn fed lookin boy.

"Thanks mister, but I will do it. Here's the money for you."

Jerry took the crumpled bill in his hand. He noticed that the boy was not wearin a ring. "Can I get you a Coke or somethin?"

"Naw, it'll just make her have to pee," the boy said, and his wife giggled a little and blushed.

"Where y'all headed?"

"We're goin to see my sister in Whitesboro. It sounds like a wide place in the road, but we've never been there," said the girl. She looked like she didn't wanna be bothered with her sister or Whitesboro.

"Do y'all need directions? Whitesboro is only a little ways from here, probly an hour."

"Naw, I got a map in here, we know it's just down 677 then you get on 82. Thanks though," the boy replied, swellin up his chest a little.

"Well, okay, then," said Jerry, "I'm fixin to go inside I guess, but let me know if you need anything else. I'll bring yer change to you." He coughed, and wiped the sweat off his brow with an old rag from his back pocket.

"Oh, no, mister, Billy will come inside and get it. We don't need nothin. You don't have to mess around in this heat for us!" exclaimed the girl helpfully. Jerry looked over at Billy, this young fool was named, and saw his face soften. Jerry had rather he kept puffin his chest up than look around goddam feelin sorry for somebody.

"Okay, well I'm right inside. Thanks for your business folks."

Jerry went inside, half brushed his boots off on the old rug again, and sat down on his stool behind the counter. Billy's dumb ass tried so hard to fill up the tank without havin to get back change that he spilt gas all over the ground.

Still, they got almost all their money's worth, and after Billy folded himself up behind the wheel again, they drove off, that sweet, pretty girl wavin out the window.

Jerry sat there starin at the empty spot they'd left at the pump. When he saw another car drive by down the road, he found himself cryin for no good reason at all.

* * * * *

Betty was putting fried chicken on the table as Jerry walked in the front door.

"Wipe off your feet," she said, with the practiced kindness of an old Texas wife.

Jerry did so, and came to sit down at the table. As Betty poured him a glass of iced tea, she thought his eyes looked puffy, but she didn't mention it. She could tell the station had been empty today, and she stopped herself from begging him to give it up again.

"Honey, I think maybe we should talk to Edgar about going down there to Gainsville," he said a little firmly.

"Oh, really? I think that's wonderful, Jerry. I just know you will love being down there."

* * * * *

Betty sat on the porch with Edgar after dinner. She hated that he was drinking a beer out where everyone in the neighborhood could see, but she kept quiet. Herself, she was perfectly happy sipping on Sissy's iced tea. She had asked Jerry to sit with them, but instead he shuffled off to their room and sat down in that awful brown recliner. It was all she could do to even get him to come to dinner some nights.

"Daddy talked to that fat woman, what's her name, from Capps Corner today. You know, the one that helped y'all move. I guess y'all miss it down there, huh?" said her son, wiping a spilled sip of beer off his shirt.

"Oh, I sure do. We knew a lot of good folks down there," said Betty, smiling her best. "Sure do miss it."

"I guess Daddy misses it too. I don't think he likes it much here."

Her son's sadness reached her. "Now, honey, it's not that. Of course we want to be here with our family, we love y'all. Your daddy will be fine. He's proud. All he ever did is run that station," she said, and she found herself tense again. "He doesn't know what to do with himself now is all." Betty thought of Jerry's father, how he always talked about a man working hard, how that's what made a man. She sipped her tea without meaning it, gripping the glass unconsciously.

"Maybe so," Edgar said, but he still looked like a scolded child. "Did y'all decide what to do with it, anyway?"

Betty listened as her voice said, "You know, I don't care one bit if somebody tears that damn thing down board by board."

And many a word at random spoken #1 – National Recording Registry

National Recording Registry

Examining all the recordings was taking longer than Gabriel expected, but he preferred it to the rest of the group's work. Many of them had been damaged by the building's collapse, or worn by exposure to the elements and the passage of time. Still, the group believed in this work, and Gabriel believed most of all. The recordings were all that could be salvaged from the library, and they held the best chance of understanding those who lived during the library's existence. Even fragments of sound or seemingly random words could help them understand their ancestors, and more importantly, what happened to them. All of them hungered for understanding.

He remembered learning as a child that his world was new and hopeful, a second chance for humanity; that sometime in the past, those who gave birth to his world had simply gone silent. It took forty years to send Earth a message and receive the subsequent reply, and for a time, both worlds clung to that tenuous connection. But Gabriel's world had not received a message from Earth in just over one hundred years. Gabriel's people continued sending messages, their urgency always increasing. Nothing but cold silence came back home.

When one hundred and forty-two years had passed, Gabriel's people were no longer satisfied by silence. The expedition they sent found an almost unrecognizable world. The first time he saw what remained of Earth, Gabriel remembered the pictures he'd seen of her vast, blue oceans, and the childhood dreams he'd had of swimming in the Pacific. He wanted more than anything to remember those pictures when he looked at the angry, blackened water before him. Endless kilometers of ash and bone explained why no one had answered their messages.

If I understand how they lived, Gabriel had hoped, then I might understand why they died. So, he pored over the recordings he found in the remnants of the library, even though few of them were intact, and even fewer made sense to him. But the one he had just found was undamaged, and it was wondrous, a song sung by a kind, plaintive voice. Gabriel turned the volume up on his equipment, and fell silent. The messages exchanged with Earth were far more advanced than this recording; they had contained text, images, computer data, as much information as their science allowed them to send. Still, the voice in this long-forgotten recording said more than a thousand such complex messages could carry. The ghost of a man sang hopefully, and certainly, as though he'd lived until the end of time and arrived in the presence of God.

"We shall overcome," he asserted, "we shall overcome."

It was the first of many songs Gabriel uncovered, but the rest of the expedition found nothing so encouraging. The ruins surrounding the library were all that remained of what was once one of the planet's largest cities. All of Earth's major cities were similarly destroyed, and the planet's smashed computer systems were inoperable. As Gabriel spent weeks extracting and preserving the recordings, the group's scientists found traces of radiation left behind by extremely powerful weapons. Further tests revealed catastrophic environmental damage, even before the weapons were used. No one spoke openly of the inevitable conclusions as Gabriel's group returned home. For the first time, Gabriel came to understand why his world existed, why his people had left Earth, why he had been taught suspiciously little about humanity's history. His nausea refused to pass for days.

* * * * *

Ten years had passed since the expedition returned home.

The group had given detailed reports of their findings to Gabriel's leaders, and they decided to hide the truth of Earth's destruction. The public believed that natural disasters forced Earth's population to evacuate to an unknown destination. Gabriel had never disagreed with a decision so strongly, but he kept the truth to himself. Though he knew the truth could save them, that it could secure the next thousand years if everyone truly understood the thousand before, he knew that it could also mean the end of his people's hope, and his uncertainty kept him silent. He learned to live with his lies, even though he felt like they might choke him. We shall overcome, he thought.

But Gabriel's silence had not been enough. Someone from the expedition had secretly released their findings.

Their world had never known war, but the truth about Earth's fate quickly split his people. Gabriel's leaders cried out for understanding, for patience, for peace. The weight of Earth's history must balance against your anger, they said. If we do not choose our actions carefully, we will destroy ourselves as surely as they did. Gabriel was respected amongst his people, and he echoed the call to peace, but he knew it was not enough. His leaders discovered that the citizens most outraged at their lies were organizing, secretly arming themselves. No one knew what was coming, nor were they prepared.

The fighting was terrible, made especially savage by the fact that its perpetrators were as unprepared for violence as their victims. Gabriel remembered the blackened oceans of Earth, and was unsurprised by humanity's rediscovery of its cruel capacities. We shall overcome, he told himself, even as his cynicism grew, as he saw a million wills bend toward bloodshed. Only when rebellion threatened to swallow his world whole did Gabriel's leaders come to him to finish secret plans they had begun long ago.

Even though they had not known of Earth's ultimate fate, they knew all too well that part of humanity's history they had hidden. It was only a matter of time, they finally told Gabriel, until the chaos we escaped came to find us.

Gabriel agreed to leave on another expedition, this one possibly longer, and with an uncertain destination. He had embraced those words of faith he found on Earth ten years ago, he had believed that the lost treasures he brought home would teach his people the lessons their ancestors had learned at so high a cost.

As Gabriel's ship left to find humanity's newest home, he could see the explosions rocking its last one.

He was determined to record the true history of his people, to shout it at the top of his lungs, if necessary. He knew those left behind had to avoid the mistakes that destroyed humanity's second chance. He could not stand the thought of another expedition returning to the crumbling planet he'd left, only to bring back horrible secrets that threatened to end them. He had never liked his world's name, Novo, he had never used it. Had "Novo" really been so new when its people brought old demons to it?

* * * * *

Humanity came to the sixth world that had cradled it.

They had long since lived among the stars, but they had undertaken the arduous task of studying their former homes to better understand their past. They still hungered for understanding.

Their science lacked knowledge of any other species that had migrated so drastically and survived; humanity debated the significance of this fact frequently and with great passion, but could not conclude whether it spoke well of them.

The sixth world had been evacuated without signs of destruction. Their first discovery was an orbiting satellite, broadcasting a single message in multiple data formats, including an outdated language.

"We have found it again," she said, with satisfaction.

"We shall overcome," spoke a disembodied voice to the night.

Experiment?

I was browsing random articles on Wikipedia and decided I'd try something new -- I'm going to take a series of random Wiki articles and write something about each one. It might be a story, or a part of one, or just a few lines, but I'm talking something creative, not a book report. And, by random article, I mean that I'm going to click "Random article" for each one. No cheating, or picking articles based on the inevitable, lengthy Wikiexploration that happens anytime I look something up.

So, I'll start that pretty soon. Look (out) for it.