It is impossible to overstress the discomforts and dangers to which a sensitive soul in these debased times is subject. So far from being an harmonious Golden Age, like that of ancient Greece or Rome, when Mankind lived in unison with Nature, respectful of and not injurious to Her, demanding not overmuch of Her bounty, this modern era is a Time of Lead, in which Nature is continually affronted, one might almost say raped, if one cared for stronger language. I myself have suffered continuously from the impediments, the very “improvements” of modern life, to which clings a nearly visible miasma of ill will. Every newfangled device I have ever attempted to incorporate into my life—through the mistaken desire to seem au courant—has rebelled and turned on me, drowning me in a sea of misfortune. My life has literally been almost forfeit on a number of occasions too bizarre to recount. Even the simple implements of an earlier age seem to possess a positive hatred of my touch.
I do not consider myself to be an overly ham-handed fellow, and was long at a loss to explain why I, seemingly alone of my contemporaries, had to suffer these indignities. At last, after much laborious cogitation, I have formulated a theory as to my misfortunes.
I have always, since my days in knee-pants, been a sensitive soul who found the abode of Nature a cheerful, comforting place. Amidst Nature, I always felt I could discern her proud and sovereign peacefulness. If we posit that the spirit I intuited has some external reality—as the best classical minds assure us—and further, that those portions of Nature which are ripped from Her bosom and hammered and pounded by Man into submission, soon learn to hate humans as the agents of their separation, why should they not seek to strike back? Unfortunately for Nature, however, Mankind is armored in his ignorance and contemporary cynicism. Just as a witch doctor can harm only those who credit him with power, so can Nature take revenge only on those who—paradoxically—believe in her rightness and primacy. It is as if a goddess spurned by armored unbelievers were to take out her anger on her faithful priests.
Perhaps she even hates us, her visionary followers, a bit more than others, since only we perceive the full magnitude of her degradation…
Harry laid the book down on the scarred, initial-carved table. The one-room library suddenly seemed to shrink down around him like a coffin, and he was forced to flee.
Weeks later, through research at the state historical society, he learned further details of Alden Winship’s life. His death had come in the belts of a threshing machine, as he stood talking with a neighbor. An eyewitness had recounted in the weekly paper of the time how the humming, slapping belts “seemed to reach right out for his coattails.”
* * * *
Alaska was far from Harry’s village. But it was safer, he hoped. As a frontier and periphery of civilization, it could not be beat. Harry’s cabin was a log affair distant from all others. He lived a simple life, trapping small animals such as rabbit and otter with snares (he dared not carry a gun) and trading their furs for his meager needs. A garden in summer supplemented his diet. He used candles for light and wood for heat. He was very careful with the axe. Most of the time, he tried not to think, or to miss people, and was content.
One winter’s day, after a fresh snowfall, he was tramping along the path of his snares. He wore boots but not snowshoes, since the winter had barely begun. Under the dense pines, he welcomed the sun on his face.
One certain step was his last. The jaws of the hidden bear-trap snapped shut on his right leg above the ankle, biting through flesh to bone, and he went down.
Before losing consciousness for the first time, he wondered who had intruded on his territory. But he could not bring himself to blame the unknown human, for he was not really the agent at all.
* * * *
Harry’s strength was almost at an end. He felt peaceful for perhaps the first time in his life, knowing he would never have to worry about the implacable hostility of Nature again. He studied the glittery snow on the branches above him, considered the red patch beneath his leg. He was reminded of the winters of his youth, when he had found such solace amid the silence.
Suddenly, a gigantic figure materialized before him, hovering in the frosty air. Its head was a massive block of anthracite coal, with pool’s of gas-blue fire for eyes and mouth. Tears of petroleum dripped from its sockets. Its torso was rusty iron, its arms and legs huge tree trunks with the bark still on them. Here was Nature, then, he thought, Winship’s vengeful goddess, if only as Harry’s faltering mind conceived of it, come to witness his demise.
The deity seemed to communicate directly with his mind. Its message did not come in words, But Harry Strang grasped its import.
It reminded him that Man, rebellious and independent as he was, constituted part of the web of life. Soon Harry’s molecules would meld with the earth. It would reclaim him as its own, and he would share its mode of being. There would no longer be enmity between them.
And someday, the atoms that had been Harry Strang, incorporated into leather or wood or some more exotic substance, would wreak their own revenge.
INTRO: FLASHERS
I seem to recall being under the influence of Tom Disch’s great novel Camp Concentration when I wrote this. Also not a little of early J. G. Ballard. I also recall editor Ellen Datlow’s comment about the title of the story, when she rejected it for Omni. Something along these lines: “All I can think of is dirty old men naked under their raincoats.”
FLASHERS
“The upheaval of our world and the upheaval in consciousness are one and the same.”
—Carl Jung, Modern Man In Search Of A Soul
“If our brains were organized differently, we would experience a different reality. We would have different psychological needs. A slight change in our brains could almost be guaranteed to alter our psychology and our sociology. We would be convinced by new kinds of arguments (or perhaps we wouldn’t require convincing at all).”
—Richard Restak, The Brain
The beads of rain upon the bus window—fragile, wind-shifted, writhing chains—reminded Tinker of the molecular structure of neuropeptides: vasopressin, oxytocin, all those busy intermediaries that flooded the brain upon ingestion of a dose of CEEP. Staring intently at them, Tinker gradually lost cognizance of his surroundings. He was falling into a post-CEEP flashback. The soot-grimed window with its dancing beads became a horizontal glassy plain upon which he looked down like a powerless god. The snaky chains appeared to beckon with mute meaning, offering a new knowledge beyond anything Tinker’s mind could currently hold. Their ceaseless movements seemed to comprise the alphabet of a metalanguage that hovered frustratingly at the borders of comprehension. Tinker, floating above their mocking saraband, strained to unravel their meaning. His mind ached to pierce the unaccustomed veil that hung between him and diamond-bright insight. For what seemed an eternity, he exerted his perceptions and intellect in tandem, striving desperately to recreate the familiar synchrogenesis flash that had once been his whole reason for existing.
But it was no use.
His brain was empty of cheep.
Through greed, he was a flasher no more, nor ever would be again.
The normal world had his brain in a straitjacket for good.
Reality reasserted itself. The glassy plain became merely a rain-flecked window again, outside which dingy buildings rolled by, beneath a lowering grey urban sky. The uncushioned plastic bus seat was hard beneath his buttocks. The stale air inside the bus was redolent of nervous sweat and wet wool. Faltering heaters occasionally gusted weakly against the penetrating November chill.
Tinker glanced nervously around the bus, checking if his near-catatonic reverie had alarmed his fellow passengers. (God, how he hated riding the bus! But his withdrawal from cheep had left him unfit to drive. Imagine falling into such a fugue at fifty miles an hour...)
Apparently the other riders had taken no notice of his aberration. Many of them seemed similarly preoccupied, sitting with grim faces, slow to respond to most stimuli. But Tinker knew that their condition