Do you think maybe people in general hold a fairly dark view of things? Which view they just suppress?

Yes. Dont you?

I dont know.

People prefer fate to chance. Soldiers really do believe that there is a bullet out there with their name on it. I think most people believe not only in a book of life but in a book of their life. Fate can be appeased, gods prayed to. But chance is just what it says.

Do you believe in a book of your life?

Only in the sense that I’m writing it. Which of course could be an illusion. Anyway, it’s hardly even a question. Next Thursday at ten am I will be somewhere. I will be either alive or dead. My presence at that place and at that time is a codlock certainty. A summation of every event in the world. For me. I wont be somewhere else. A lack of foreknowledge doesnt change anything.

Codlock?

Another southernism.

Do you think of yourself as an atheist?

God no. Those were the good old days.

I dont know if that’s a serious comment or not.

I know. Me either. What can I tell you? I’m a modern girl.

Well. I’ve known a few modern girls. I cant say that you fit the profile particularly. Do you want to call it a day?

I look unhappy? Tougher mettle is called for I suppose. I’m all right. For a long time I’ve suspected that we might be simply incapable of imagining the epochal evils of which we stand rightly accused and I thought it at least a possibility that the structure of reality itself harbors something like the forms of which our sordid history is only a pale reflection. I thought that it was something Plato might have considered but could in no way bring himself to express. I see by your look that you have at last beheld the very incubation of lunacy.

I’m listening. I take it that you have never seen the Archatron.

I would never imagine such a thing to be seeable.

Seeable.

Yes.

As distinct from visible.

I dont know if he’s visible or not. I only know that I cant see him. It.

We’ve had this discussion before. Or something like it.

I know.

The caravan moves on. It’s just some sort of sinister archetype.

A troubling notion in clothes.

And an archetype of what.

I dont know. I suppose the catalog of referents goes on at some length.

Who arrived first, the Archatron or the Kid?

The big guy. I think he might even be the reason that the Kid did show up.

Has the Kid ever made any reference to him?

No.

Did you ever talk to your brother about the Archatron?

Yes. I did.

What did he say?

He said he thought straitjackets came in a one-size-fits-all but that he wasnt sure and it could be that there was a small, medium, and large and that he’d have to look it up.