Display - Flash Fiction

Intersections - Nonliteral by Jiri Horacek

Display

 

Taxis honked and jockeyed as always.  The wind blew up between the skyscrapers at a brisk pace and stole Bjorn’s breath away as he turned to face it.  A traffic light was out somewhere, the incessant whistle of the policeman blew directing traffic.  

Bjorn Andersen started up steps to the museum entrance and finished his climb at the polished brass framed glass doors fifteen-foot high.   They pushed inward effortlessly.

He stood in the front of the gift shop with all its miniature reproductions of displays beyond the reception desk leading to the building’s interior.  A man looked up from a computer screen.

He waved Bjorn over. 

“Dr. Andersen, how good to see you.  You are here to inspect the laser work?”

Bjorn nodded.  “Yes, I am happy to see you too, Dr. Dull.  I hear the wall is done.”  Alan Dull, Bjorn learned was to pronounce his name as Doll. Bjorn liked the unpretentious curator of the museum of all things known.  The museum rose twenty stories, a diminutive structure among the surrounding skyscrapers.  Yet, it held something for every science of human endeavor to understand. 

“The wall is finished on schedule, just as you said it would be.  I have to say it is spectacular.”

#

Bjorn and Alan stepped out of the freight elevator onto the Twentieth floor.  “Welcome back to the Solar System.”  Alan gesture with a sweep of his hand.  The area was littered with sawhorses, concert saws, nail-guns and stacks of quartz floor tiles, white with gray ribbons running through it, lying among all the rest of the construction materials.   

Fifty strides later was the laser; its mount was nail-gunned to the cement floor.  Hydraulics raised and lowered it on the X-axis and a cross arm allowed it travel on the Y-axis.   Next to it was a bank of computers that controlled the sweep of the beam on the wall. 

Bjorn turned to the wall.  The Sun just a little off center, as planned, of the thirty-foot-high wall and the same wide.  The planets orbits carved in their tracks around the Sun represented a moment trapped in time.

“Ten men polished the granite for two weeks.  What do you think?”  Alan asked.

A lump formed in Bjorn’s throat.  He couldn’t have predicted this outcome.  The polish had added depth to the wall as though it went on to eternity.  The side lighting brought throughout the rock sparkles that twinkled as though there were real stars light-years away.

“It’s beyond words,” Bjorn finally croaked out.  He stepped to the corner of the wall and read the six-inch-high letters laser inscribed, inlaid with white enamel. 

THE SOLAR SYSTEM

EQUINOX - FIRST DAY OF SPRING

9:15 A.M. 20 MARCH 2018

“Perfect, just perfect,” Bjorn mumbled to himself. 

“And, the statue is finished.  You want to see how it will look.  Of course, you have to imagine the floor laid in and all this debris cleaned up.  Anyway, here…”  Alan pulled a tarp from over a six-foot-high figure.  He wrapped his arms around the waist and hefted into place in from of the wall.  “It’s fiberglass, so not too heavy.”

Alan turned the figure in a long-hooded robe with an outstretched hand to the wall, so the hand rested on the third ring from the bottom and stepped away. 

Bjorn caught his breath.  Man is reaching out to the cosmos in search of understanding, to quale his need to know what his place was in the Universe; if only to stand in awe of a God capable of orchestrating a balance of forces that brought about our existence, gave Bjorn a feeling of humbleness.   Sure, he designed the laser and programmed it to capture the system at this point.  But the outcome, well it was way beyond his expectation. 

Alan grinned, “I think it lends a certain level of mystic tone to the display.”

Bjorn stared at him.  Really, that’s all you take away from this?    Then rethought it. “You know, it does.”  It will add an appeal to those that don’t believe in God.  Those that think all this, everything is an accident, a coalesced product of the big bang.  Yes, the figure will add to their pleasure of the display as well as those like myself. 

~~~#~~~

It took another six months to finish the 20^th floor.  The walls were rimmed in displays of all the planets.  Each with descriptions and photographs from Voyager 1, now 10 billion miles away to images captured by Hubbell.   The wall of the Solar System was ribboned off to prevent an accumulation of hand grease.  The robed figure stood on the white contrasting quartz.  Bjorn realized his robe wasn’t black but a deep blue iridescence that added a magical tone.

Bjorn Andersen studied it for a while.  Nice, now what next?  Perhaps, the Milky Way.

An Evening on the Beach - Flash Non-Fiction

Japanese Restaurant by Andrew Haimerl

An Evening on the Beach

It had a ring around it.  The ring was much like the ring around the bathtub after washing three boys before bedtime.  A brown/black scum that takes a hard brush to eradicate.  Even then the ring persisted.

This ring was six blocks wide and encompassed the U.S. Naval Shipyard in Yokosuka.  It was replete with liquor bars, package stores, tattoo parlors, souvenir stores filled with stolen intellectual property and an occasional restaurant of repute. 

My evening started with my shipmates and a visit to a nice restaurant.  From there a round of some souvenir stores to get a pool cue and bootleg music on 45s and LP.  After that, one of the lightweights would peel off from the group and head back to the ship taking all our merchandise for us. 

That’s when we hit the package store for a couple liters of Coke and 151 rum.  I picked up a couple six packs of Colt 45 malt and a pint of rum of the kerosene variety.  With our evening in our arms, we headed to the nearest bar.

As the Sun fell behind the ocean, the ring became less distinct.  The worn constructions and trash disappeared into the shadows, and as the display lights grew brighter in the rising darkness, the ring started to look pretty.   That didn’t really matter though.  In the bar, it was dim night and day.  At the counter, we checked in our booze for a hundred Yen.  They would provide us with our own until we either ran out or passed out.  There were plenty of barflies to bring them to us for an occasional purchase for them of a Coke and Coke.  They acted as though they were getting drunk along with us.

I found us two couches facing each other with a large coffee table between them.  My several drinking mates and I plopped down and commenced to have a relaxing evening getting hammered.

How could one measure one's consumption?  Especially after having a few belts of 151.  You start stacking the glasses on the table.  They weren’t large glasses, bigger than shots but smaller than a kitchen glass.   They were starting to pile up.

The evening was going along swimmingly.  I’m kicked back, burrowed into my niche on the sofa with my long legs stretched out under the coffee table.  To the Japanese, I am a giant.  Six-foot-one and a fit 180 pounds.  Non-descript to them, my face could be any one of hundreds of sailors that pass through.  Then… all hell breaks loose.

A First Class Radioman, Jonesy, comes ambling into the bar about seven.  He’s built like me, a six-footer and lean.   He plops down next to me and helps himself to a couple of our drinks and gets into an argument with one of my fellow Sonar Techs.  Who knows what it was about. 

They both scream I’d drink your piss.  Yuck, this situation was degrading rapidly.  Nearly as soon as said, the pair drops their drawers and commence peeing in the glasses and tossing down piss shots.  I can’t believe my eyes. 

The Japanese are going crazy, screaming at us.  They call the Hard-Hats.  That’s Shore Patrol. 

The Radioman departs before the law gets there.  When the Hard-Hats arrive the Japanese point to me.  I’m hauled over the back of the couch by my armpits and taken outside.

“It wasn’t me!”  I shout. 

I wasn’t drunk enough.  Shore Patrol believed me, but I was forbidden to re-enter the bar.  With my booze lost and my buddies still in there.  I headed back to the ship.

There will be another day.