Doug Goodman

Every month or so, I'll post a re-print of a story that has already been published.  Thanks to the publishers for allowing me to post these stories.

Hoops

Originally published in A Fly in Amber

 loops like a fugue.  It is confusing, not knowing where I have been.  Raven screeches at me from his empyrean atop a trashcan on the gray sidewalk.  Hozho, harmony in the universe, must have been upset.  Carelessness destroys it.  Ripple effects.  Religious chaos theory before it sprouted butterfly wings and became popular.

Anything in my mind beyond five-seconds ago is white-washed.  Gone.  To help remember, I store my information in a thumb drive.  (Tattooed “Use me” on the side lest I forget what to do with my thumb.)  Simply pop the thumbnail and insert my opposable into the first compatible I find.

The thumb holds basic stats.  Name – Masketch.  33 years old, Navajo.  But there are still so many unanswered questions – where I have been, what I did to affect hozho, why I did it.  The drive has directions.  A map. 

I print the map and follow the directions to a warehouse basement.  A leaky room full of strange psychomachinery.  Neuropistons, parietal engines.  Dendrite filters.  Wreathes of cables the myelin sheath of a once-living machine.  I put the mind engine on my head and press a few buttons, but without consequence.  Slowly, the purpose of the machine rumbles to life in my mind.  That’s my handwriting jotted on tallow desk pads…I did it!  I invented a time machine! 

In my head, dancers entwined in Chooh-wood hoops weave into images of circles of life.  Somewhere a Kachina dancer swoops in small circles for me.  Heart pumping, mind firing on all cylinders.  I don’t see the machine galumph to life.  Emerge from its cocoon and sprout sordid butterfly wings.  I remember that I have been careless.  The time machine has a problem.  It creates