Our bikes went over the crest of the hill, and the wooded river valley opened up under us. I looked at Vee and saw she was grinning. We coasted down. Her dark hair went streaming out in the wind.

It was a mild October. The leaves had turned color and fallen, leaving only some bright spots in the hedges. Crunchy autumn leaves were everywhere underfoot and underwheel.

Somewhere along there we locked our bikes together behind a tree and tried to find our way down to the river. It wasn’t as easy as it looked. I pointed out the poison ivy to avoid. Vee is originally from Italy, and they don’t have poison ivy there. We have lots of shrubs with “leaves of three”, but you want to keep an eye out for something a little more glossy, with a just few jaggies on the edge, and that odd thumb sticking out on the side of the leaf.

Of course, this time of year it’s easy. They go bright orange. They tell you who they are!

We scrambled over fallen logs and through brush piles. At one point the ravine led us down into an impenetrable thicket of thornbushes full of muddy marsh smell. We almost gave up. It was like one of those problem dreams where you can’t quite get where you want to go. But this wasn’t a dream. We backed up and got around the prickly parts.

Eventually we worked our way down to the river bank. A sharp twig ripped a hole in my coat. We sat on the bank looking out at the eddies in the muddy water and the rock cliffs with the sunlight on them, like we were the first people to see this.

“Lou, I love you,” she said.

“I do too,” I said. And so she tried to push me into the river. It’s a bit we do.

When we got home we made linguini with mushrooms in cream sauce for dinner.

* * *

Now, this next part is a dream: there’s blinding sunlight in my eyes, coming in through the leaves overhead. The leaves are still green. That’s wrong, I’m thinking, it’s not summer time. I look ahead. There’s a wide and level path in the woods, and someone is here with me. It’s Vee, walking ahead of me. I make her turn and look at me with that slightly sarcastic smile of hers – I can do that! I’m a lucid dreamer. I know I’m dreaming, and I can make things happen in the dream. As long as it isn’t a nightmare.

It doesn’t feel right, though, so I let her turn away and we keep on walking. Beams of sunlight are finding their way through the branches and lighting up small patches of flowers beside the path. Hell if they aren’t sparkling!

* * *

I suddenly realize it’s morning. I have an alarm clock as backup, but I wake up a few minutes ahead of time and shut it off before it rings. It’s time to get up.

I always lay out my clothes the night before, and also my breakfast cereal, but the mocha pot for the coffee has to be assembled in the moment. I had just gotten it placed onto the small flame on the stove when Vee came out into the kitchen. She doesn’t work until later, but she gets up with me anyway. Out of solidarity, I guess.

She can be cranky, though, until she gets her coffee. I kept an eye on that little walnut chin – if it crinkles, I might be in trouble.

“Why is it so cold?” she demanded.

“Good morning, you,” I said.

“Oh, good morning, also you,” she said, thawing a little, and went to stand in front of the coffee pot on the stove. “A ciascuno secondo il suo bisogno!”

* * *

At the bus stop, someone had put a nice poster of a guillotine on the glass. There were no people in the picture, just an articulate drawing of the guillotine by itself, with a big heavy triangular blade that looked just about ready to drop on whoever’s neck might be placed under it.

I looked at the poster carefully. It wasn’t taped to the glass or anything. It had been glued on somehow, really solidly. I remembered hearing that people use a thin flour paste that you slop on over and under the poster.

I didn’t really mind one way or the other. I disapprove of badly done graffiti, like when it’s ego tags or gang stuff, or ugly and done without craftsmanship. But this one was well done.

Looking out of the bus window on the way to work, I noticed some chalkings that hadn’t been up the week before. They said “Medicare Now” and “Martinez for Prez”.

* * *

I work on databases in the back office of an insurance company. You don’t trust AI with this stuff. It’s nothing that couldn’t be done remotely, of course. But there’s plenty of vacant office space in downtown Minneapolis, so it’s cheap for the company to hold us in an office and keep us tugging on the leash.

Vee and I didn’t end up getting another car after my old Ford died. Vee bikes to work at the restaurant. I could bike, too, but downtown is pretty dangerous for bicyclists. It keeps happening where, you know, a car doesn’t see someone, and turns, and hits them. So I take the bus to work.

“Lou,” Gabe said, “do you know why the system isn’t responding?”

“No idea,” I said, “I just got in.”

“It’s just spinning and timing out.”

“I’ll take a look.”

Gabe is mostly harmless. He’s balding on top, in his forties, and a few inches shorter than me. He keeps a picture of his family on his desk. He has two little boys. His wife Olivia is a cute blonde.

Yes, the database was causing the problem. I could have fixed it myself, but they don’t give me that specific power. I had to email someone in a different city. That person wasn’t in yet, so we were left to wait and twiddle our thumbs.

Nolan joined us. “Efficiency of the capitalist system!” he said, waving his enormous coffee mug like a streaming banner. He’s painfully young. Fresh out of college, tall, dark, and intense. A few inches taller than me. I’m exactly the right height, myself.

“Why are you city guys all commies?” Gabe asked us.

Some fine day Nolan is going to get lynched for not starting more coffee after he empties the carafe in the lunchroom.

* * *

“I’m still waiting to hear back from Underwriting about what they want in the export,” Gabe said.

“Why is that a blocker?” Joe Vecchio demanded. “Just built it and send it over. Let them complain if they want it different.”

“Okay, I’ll get on it right away,” Gabe said, uncomfortably.

It was a completely unreasonable demand, of course, and Nolan and I sat motionless to avoid drawing unnecessary attention. But Gabe always gets the worst of it. Joe was basically demanding that Gabe piss off Underwriting for no reason. It was wasted work in any case, because it would have to be redone. That would put Gabe further behind on his other things, and then he’ll catch hell from Joe for those other things. But that’s the way Joe wants it. That’s why he wears the tie. Nobody normal wears a tie these days.

“Sorry!” Zoe Liu ducked into the meeting room to get something out of one of the filing cabinets along the wall.

Joe held a mild glare on her until she got what she came for and retreated. I would have gotten yelled at for sure. Zoe tends to get a pass, like she’s hardly there. Because there’s less of her? I’d love to be able to disappear like that.

“Louis,” Joe said.

I put on a dutiful smile.

“How’s the repair coming?”

“I’ve cleaned up most of the mess,” I said, “and I’ve got the orphaned records sorted out now. The ones that have to do with transactions, I went through them one by one, and relinked them. The rest can be deleted. I just wanted to check with you before I do it.”

“I don’t want to hear any complaints.”

“You won’t. Nobody needs those records. And they should get deleted because leaving them in there will just cause more confusion later.”

“Okay, go ahead. What about the user issue?”

“I’m still not sure why that one user is showing up wrong in the app. I need to dig into it some more.”

“Get on it, then!”

“Sure,” I said, and smiled briefly.

So it goes.

* * *

Happy hour at the bar after work is usually okay. Unless I have to listen to Nolan singing along with the music. Or against the music, more like: “no woman, no worry, every little thing gonna be all right.”

He went back to his speaking voice. “You know, I always thought that meant, you know, I don’t got a woman, so I don’t got no worries. That’s all right. But later on I figured out he’s talking to the woman, actually, and he’s trying to make her feel better. That’s fucked up!”

“Chill,” I said. “It’s fine. I know you and Zoe broke up.”

“The whole thing is a downward spiral. There’s no point.”

“Sure.” I smiled, and let him rant.

“Where’s Gabe, anyway?” he went on. “Why’s he never come out for a drink with us after work?”

“Hey, you know. He’s got a family and kids.”

“That supposed to mean you never get to have a minute with the guys?”

“Kids gotta see their Dad. Gabe’s a good guy. He’s not going to hang out with us losers.”

“He’s just pussywhipped.”

“You’d take that whipping. Come on, you know you would.” I grinned. Okay, maybe I leered.

“No, I wouldn’t.” He seemed offended.

“You chump,” I said. “I shouldn’t hang out with you either. I’m only here cause Vee’s working.”

“You’re pussywhipped, too.”

“Whatever.” I decided that if he was going to be offended, then I would be offended too.

“No woman to follow, the world is all mine, and I love none so well as I love that moonshine!” he sang, and took a chug of his beer. Then he looked down at his glass. It wasn’t quite moonshine, I guess.

* * *

I worry about Vee biking home after dark, especially when she’s closing the restaurant. She won’t wear a visibility vest, so I wear one myself, for her, and I come and join her for the ride home.

She pinged me, “1 sec,” so I waited for her to get done. The Alex Petti memorial is right by there. And there was some garbage blowing down the street in the dark. The wind has teeth in it, in October. When the gales of November come early.

Vee appeared, and her coworker Dess came out after her. Dess gave me an unpleasant look. I think she gives everyone unpleasant looks. Except on the job, I suppose.

“It’s you!” Vee said, with pretended surprise, and kissed me on the cheek.

* * *

“KT6VA5, WZ0YF8,” I articulated the callsigns into the microphone.

I glanced up at the wall. I have a poster of the Titanic, sinking, with its lights on. I also have a postcard from a nondescript town. It says “Greetings from Port Stanley.” This is the wall on my side of the bedroom, which is also known as the radio shack.

It was dark outside the window, but forty meters was being staticky anyway, so I spelled it out phonetically: “Kilo Tango Six Victor Alpha Five, Whiskey Zulu Zero Yankee Foxtrot Eight.”

It was our usual time and frequency, but there was no immediate reply. I went to the kitchen to get a beer. While I was there the speaker crackled.

“WZ0YF8, KT6VA5.” Or something like that, coming through the static. I’m WZ0YF8. My sister Evelyn, who lives in Chicago, is Victor Alpha Five.

I came back into the bedroom and held down the PTT button. “Hi there.”

“Yankee Foxtrot Late!” she said.

“Sure, sure,” I said. “You can always call me, you know.”

“What’s the point? At least my radio is on.” On the phone she would have gotten in a few more jabs, but on the amateur bands you’re speaking in public, so we try to be more polite.

“Anyway, it’s been a quiet week in Minneapolis,” I said. “The usual office politics. How about you?”

“I’ve been baking bread. It’s really good. There’s nothing like fresh bread,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said, “I don’t have time for bread to raise, though. And when we have a day off, Vee and I want to get outdoors.”

“Jake’s been making drama about Oscar piddling on the floor. I don’t know why I put up with him.”

“The dog?”

“Jake.”

“I’m on Jake’s side.”

“Of course you are.”

We went on for a bit. It was nice and pleasant. I also chat with random people out in Missouri and Texas and North Carolina. Since I live in an apartment, I have a pathetic little antenna that won’t even do eighty meters, and I have trouble getting the West Coast.

“Well, that’s the news,” I said.

“Okay. I’ve got to go check on Oscar.”

“WZ0YF8 signing off,” I said.

“Over and out, KT6VA5,” Evelyn said.

* * *

“What do you believe, Lou, for true?” she asked me.

We were in bed, listening to the muffled noises of traffic outside.

“People, I guess,” I said.

“No!” she said. “Some people are wrong.”

“Sure. Some are more right, some are more wrong.”

“No, it is completely wrong, some people.” She dug her elbow into my chest.

“Okay,” I said. “What do you do about it, then?”

The sheets and blankets are warm over us. A small light shines on Vee’s hair as she turns her head. She prefers darkness, but often lets me have some light. I appreciate it.

“Oh Lou,” she said, “you cannot feel it. You cannot feel it at all, can you? The feeling of everyone together. The great numbers. The will of the masses, together. The wrong ones, they will be crushed. When we are together. But you – you cannot feel it!”

I laughed. “I know. You told me about politics back home. The church on the town square, and the communist party offices, facing each other across the square!”

“Don’t laugh. Not me. I’m from Rome. But my parents, the town of my parents, of my grandparents, yes. And they were members of both. The church and the party. Everyone was.”

“But you don’t like any of the parties.”

“Of course not! They are all corrupt. All the parties have to go out. Fuori! The church has to go. All the institutions have to go. Corporations, they have to go. Universities, they have to go. They are all corrupt. Malicious! But the feeling of the masses, that is real. It is real, the idea of the masses. That is not corrupt.”

She’s said these things before. I’ve pondered on them, but somehow I can’t see the solution in them.

“You say the idea is not corrupt. But what idea, exactly? The one about the means of production?”

“The workers take the means of production, yes. That is not corrupt.”

“Maybe not, but then what? The government owns it? But isn’t that another institution, again? I know it’s different,” I raised my hand to forestall her, “but I’ve never been comfortable with the government taking the means of production. Won’t that just lead to corruption again?”

“Maybe the workers, they take it, then,” she shrugged.

“Well, if it comes back to the individuals – I dunno, what am I going to do with a piece of something? A piece of a building?”

“I say, you can have the bathroom,” she announced, with careful judgement, “and you can keep it clean for everyone.”

I saw we were not going to be solving this one tonight.

“All right, then,” I said, and put on a grim look.

“Oh Lou, I love you,” she said, and laughed, and she reached out for me.

* * *

I’m standing in open floor space in an empty office. A few desks and chairs are shoved up against the walls, piled on each other, covered in heavy dust.

I start taking a few steps on the carpet, and my feet stir up the dust, catching in my throat. The window blinds are down and it’s dark outside.

I have the feeling there’s something I forgot to do. I could make a door appear to my left, if I wanted to make a door appear, and then the door would open to a lobby with elevators down to the street level. But I don’t want to go there yet. I need to find something first.

Going around a corner, I can see that a whole section of the ceiling is down. There is more destruction ahead, a mass of concrete rubble strewn over the floor, and the building is open to the night sky. I keep on walking. Now I am outdoors on a gray plain. There are no buildings in sight. The ground level of a rocky plateau has come up to meet me where I am.

I can sense a menacing presence nearby. I look around, and I see there’s an enormous troll some distance away. He’s a pile of boulders, big as a hillside, with huge square teeth, and grumbling to himself. Wearing a tie. He hasn’t seen me yet. So I throw up a granite shelf to deflect him away to one side. Next, I make second wall for myself, just taller than I am, with a fractured and mossy top. This is fine. I walk around the other side of my own wall, and I come out onto a friendly street. The street is bordered with trees. It’s daylight again.

Yeah, so this is a ridiculously obvious problem dream with my boss in it. An ordinary problem dream. I haven’t had any nightmares in a long time.

* * *

There was a new poster up at the bus stop. This one was by someone else, and it was nowhere near as well done as the guillotine poster. I had to look at it for a while before I could even figure out what was going on.

This poster had a bunch of labelled characters sitting around a table, with knives and forks in their hands. On the table was a dead body with x’es for eyes. The characters were labelled “Pharma,” “Doctor Mafia,” “For-Profit Hospitals,” and one fat lady was “Insurance.” The writing was too small, and the drawing was too messy, but I did feel a sense of passion there.

I had looked up the flour paste recipe. It’s one cup of flour, four cups of water, one tablespoon salt, and you cook it to get the right consistency. You brush in on, put up the poster, brush more paste on top, and then use a squeegee to get everything smooth.

On the ride in I saw a new “Medicare For All” on a wall in spray paint. Frankly, I prefer when they do it in chalk.

* * *

The system was down again. Nolan cornered me, pushing back his stringy hair, which was getting into his eyes.

“Lou,” he said, “did you see the latest freakout over those Medicare Now guys?”

“You know I don’t look at the news, Nolan,” I said.

“The cops arrested some dude in Boston. For making threats they say. Medicare Now says he’s not even a member – you have to go to their website to find that out, of course – but the cops claim he’s a supporter. So the news sites are all screaming to shut down Medicare Now.”

“Why do you look at this garbage, Nolan? It just riles you up.”

“They’re running scared. Both the Republicans and the Democrats. The RepDems. The DemReps. They know Medicare is popular. So the billionaire blogs are all screaming their heads off.”

“Sure,” I said.

We were looming over Gabe’s cubicle. He looked around warily for the boss. However, at this time of the morning Joe Vecchio was usually in a video meeting in his office with his door shut.

Nolan brushed his hair back again. “You know, if they do try to shut it down, it’ll be like George Floyd all over again. People won’t put up with it.”

“Nah, it’s too far away,” I said. “George Floyd was right here. And ICE was right here.”

“The Warzoning of Minneapolis!” Nolan said.

“Whatever. Those times were right in our face. That’s why everyone got pissed off. Some political party gets shut down, nobody cares.”

“I sure hope they don’t,” Gabe said.

I looked puzzled.

“The riots,” Gabe said.

“What are you talking about? What riots?” I asked.

“But they said there were riots.”

I shook my head. “Gabe, you live in the burbs. You didn’t see anything. We live here. There weren’t any riots.”

“Oh sure, there was some trouble,” Nolan said. “After George Floyd, we had troublemakers come in from out of state and start a few fires. Then our local baby gangsters took off their license plates and drove around and broke into gas stations to steal cigarettes. That’s all that happened.”

Gabe had such an innocent wide-eyed look on his face that I wanted to laugh. I kept it down to a smile, though.

“But it was dangerous,” Gabe said.

“Not dangerous,” Nolan said. “I walked along Lake Street. And up and down Snelling Avenue. People’d protested and made their point. A few jerks did some damage. Then it was over. I didn’t bother to carry. No need.”

Nolan has a permit to carry a pistol, and he talks about it. I’ve told him in the past to shut up about this. If you’re going to do that crap, you should keep it quiet.

“And then, when they Warzoned us, that was mostly grandmas with signs blowing whistles,” he said. “We shoulda given them what they came for.”

“No, we shouldn’t,” I said. “Let the grandmas do their thing. See, it worked out for them. Mostly.”

Gabe’s look had deepened into disbelief.

“I’m glad I’m out in Robbinsdale,” he said. “People are normal there. You guys in the city are crazy.”

“Okay boomer,” Nolan said, and patted him on the head. Gabe shook him off, irritated.

“Cut it out, you loonies,” I said. “Alright, fellow inmates, it looks like the system is up again. For the next ten minutes, maybe.”

“You’ll be wishing you lived in the suburbs, too, if you get your way with this nonsense,” Gabe said.

* * *

We were putting on our winter coats to go home, and Zoe gestured at the picture on Gabe’s desk.

“How’s your kid doing?” she asked.

“Nate?” Gabe threw an eye around to check for the boss. “Oh, okay, he’s doing okay. The treatment’s working, so we’re very thankful for that. Logan’s being a trooper about his little brother getting all the attention. But it’s still a bit stressful.”

“What?” I asked.

“He’s got muscular dystrophy,” Gabe said. “It used to be, you know, a, a death sentence. But it isn’t anymore. If we can stay in the program. The treatment program.”

“Ouch,” I said. “Yeah, I wish we had the Canadian system. They don’t have to worry about stuff like that.”

“It’s okay,” Gabe said. “The insurance is covering it for now. We’re just going day by day. We’ll get through this.”

“They’re such cute kids,” Zoe said. “How old are they?”

“Nate is five, and Logan is, let me see, eight.”

“Well, good luck,” I said. And immediately felt like a jerk for saying it like that. But I couldn’t think of anything better to say. So I told myself to shut up.

“Let me know if there’s anything I can do,” Zoe said.

“No, that’s fine, thanks though,” Gabe said.

“See you all tomorrow!” Zoe said.

“Bye,” I said.

* * *

I locked up my bike next to Vee’s bike. They were closed and the restaurant doors were locked, so I tapped on the window, and Vee let me in. Dess was there too. She gave me the usual dirty look.

“All I’s saying is that there’s got to be reparations for what gone on,” Dess picked up, while she was running the mop. I dodged.

“And I’s saying that’s special things,” Vee answered. She wasn’t making fun of Dess – I’m sure of that. She was falling into her way of saying things. I’ve noticed myself doing that, too, and I have to stop myself before someone gets mad at me. But nothing’s going to slow down Vee.

“Black folk today got nothing. That’s today. That’s not gone by. Only one way to fix that.”

“No! Fix that for every body!” Vee was sitting at a table doing rollup. Rolling tomorrow’s silverware in napkins and putting them in a bucket. Her hands were moving really fast. “Like Basic Income.”

“Oh, you keep away from that one! Dess swiped viciously at a corner and dunked the mop. “Giving money to Bezos! To Musk!” She glared at me like I was one of them. I just kept back and away from the mop.

“Si! Is the same. Same for them, same for you, same for me. Otherwise, where you make the difference?”

“I’ll make yo a difference.”

“Just to make a difference of people. And I know this from Italy. This politician, he say, look, this guy from Africa, he come and he take your job! And with the other hand, the politician, he is stealing all the money. You see him stealing the money! But you can do nothing anymore, because you are all angry about the guy from Africa. Just to make a difference of people. Make it same for everybody. No more tricks! Everyone the same.”

“We didn’t come from Africa because we wanted! We’s robbed.” Again, Dess looked at me, like I did it.

“I know, yes, yes,” Vee said, waving her hands around. She was done with rollup.

“You don’t know nothing!” Dess got the mop wrung out. “You just pretending. You sitting on your butt saying, oh, I understand,” and she waved her hands around like Vee had done.

“Eppure,” said Vee, “it got to be everyone.”

“Ain’t nothing wrong with special things!” Dess said.

“Who is the special people?” Vee demanded.

“Everybody special,” Dess said, “but it got to make up for what gone on.”

“Plenty to go round. Take Bezos. Take that money, all. Give back the Basic Income to him.”

“You got Basic Income on the brain, girl.”

“Biking clothes,” Vee said, and disappeared into the bathroom.

Dess ignored me and went into the kitchen. I turned and looked out of the window until Vee got back and was ready to go.

* * *