Not Even Not Traveling 55: Alaska, Entry 2

Boarding the Cruise

Saturday

The moment we boarded our ship, the Koningsdam, I experienced "acute class awareness syndrome," which is when you suddenly realize you're in a floating petri dish of economic stratification. Nobody on this ship was yacht rich - because if you're yacht rich, you don't cruise on someone else's boat, you cruise on your own while complaining the helicopter pad is too small. 

Instead, we walked into an ecosystem of wealth levels: young families with the aura of inherited money, high achievers (doctors, lawyers, etc.), folks with at least a toehold in the owning class ("I just bought another truck for my quarry"), older folks who brought their multi-generational family with them, older folks splurging everything on their "final voyage" cruise, and older folks who are definitely not on their final anything, not the final cruise, not their final Bloody Mary, not the final time at the blackjack table, and not the last on the slot machine either ("Go get me another stack of chips, honey"). The final contingent brings the numbers, for sure. Probably a third of the guests were retired, heavy drinkers although, to be clear, they were not retired *from* heavy drinking.  

My wife and I did what newbie cruise passengers do, I suppose: we scurried around like caffeinated hamsters checking out amenities. Pool? Check. Sauna, hot tub, spa heated benches that make you feel like a pampered lizard, and a steam room that gives you a voluntary tropical fever? Check, check, check, and oh, hell no but check. We discovered trivia games (where you learn that everyone else knows more about 1970s sitcoms than you) and a surprisingly nice ship library, well-stocked with hardcovers, trade paperbacks, and magazines. 

Among the varied ship's contingent, I found myself noticing a particularly striking couple - a handsome African-Canadian man with his Laotian wife and family - the kind of pairing that's unusual enough to catch your eye, but I had no excuse to talk with them. So I was basically a creepy cruise ship anthropologist taking mental notes. 

We did manage to have an extended conversation with a personable Hawaiian fellow who was taking his 72-year-old mother on the cruise. He admitted he was wrestling with the dilemma of adventure-seeking adult children: he wanted to go open-ocean kayaking but his perfectly reasonable mother considered staying alive to be a higher priority for her.

In the evening, we re-learned that my wife's sister kills at music trivia. We came within two points of the win. Most of our score was from her.  

First Day Cruise Summary:

Nice ship? Very.
Nice in-laws? Yes, but they know the difference between Laura Branigan and Olivia Newton-John. (It's the haircut, I think.) 
Nice passengers? Yes.
Nice crew? Too early to tell. We were just getting to know them. 
 

Not Even Not Traveling 54: Alaska, Entry 1

Thursday July 10

We traveled from Baltimore to San Diego, then from San Diego to Vancouver.

Advice: don't do this.

Friday July 11

To be clear: we got up early on Friday morning. We got out of bed. But we did not get to the park when we'd planned. That's because we were chatting and grabbing breakfast. Instead of taking the bus to Lynn Canyon Park like responsible, budget-conscious tourists, we grabbed a cab, which is the international travel equivalent of scoring an own-goal at the beginning of the match.

We did actually get there, though, and in a strange city sometimes any start is a good one. Also, the park was obviously lush, bordering on postcard-perfect. We gave ourselves points for our good tourist judgement.

I had originally planned to hike the entire trail loop at Lynn Canyon. In retrospect, it was about as realistic as learning Portuguese by watching soccer matches. The park, it turns out, is huge. The trails are beautiful in a way that makes you simultaneously grateful to be alive and acutely aware of the quality of your shoes. If you go to Lynn Canyon, be prepared to hop from rock to rock on the stream beds and from log to log on the trails.

The park makes a big deal out of its suspension bridge. It hangs over a waterfall. It's a nice place to get the 'I'm so alive' sensation of wobbling over a great height with a plunge to a certain death while, at the same time, being completely protected by the rails and suspension wires.

After the bridge crossing, we noticed how Canadian law is different from ours. We saw plenty of signs saying that dogs had to be kept on leashes. The dogs and owners informed us by their example that the signs were not enforceable, in their opinion. The canines involved were many and slobbery - by which I mean friendly - so it was no big deal. We hiked down side-trails that led to the creek, where we discovered that rocks are indeed slippery and Canadians are indeed willing to go swimming in a creek created by snow melt. So are their dogs.
 
We then trudged up the main trail to the tops of several hills, one exhausting climb after another, because they call it Lynn Canyon and not Lynn Gentle Rolling Meadows. We spent a lot of time looking down at where we had been and wondering if we had to backtrack. (The answer was: oh yes.) The hike was the natural world's version of the dreams where you suddenly realize you're flying, except your legs hurt, you're sweating through moisture-wicking fabric, and every dog wants to taste your flavor combination of insect spray and body salt.

After several geological ages of hiking, we reached that magical moment that occurs on every outdoor adventure when someone says, "We've earned a drink." This is similar to the older,  traditional recreational code of "I can't feel my feet" but it seems to conclude the hiking session with more cocktails and fewer complaints.

Lynn Park summary:

Worth it? Nine on a scale of ten, yes.
Would we go again? Eight out of ten, yes.
Dogs on leashes? One out of twenty-seven. She was very friendly.

Not Zen 204: Endless Affection

Canteen by PeachYeung via Wikimedia

Endless Affection

They arrived early. Olivia knew her boyfriend Mateo liked to be prompt but she hadn’t come with him to meet his family before. They were forty-five minutes ahead of their schedule.

“It’s a big holiday,” he explained at the door to his parents house. “I want to make sure I can help.”

"Do I need to do something, too?" she asked. "I thought your parents wanted to feed me food and ask questions.”

“That's definitely part of their plan.”

As they stood outside, she worried about the size of the house. It wasn’t located in what she thought of as a good neighborhood but it was clearly the biggest residential building in the area. Maybe his parents ruled this section of town and would expect to control her, too.

As soon as they ushered her inside, her fears eased. His parents were thin, short, and dressed informally. They had filled the main room of the house with four tables. She couldn’t tell how many chairs they'd used. Except for the overwhelming presence of so many other early guests - the room seemed half full already - there was nothing to intimidate her. The walls and shelves were filled with cheap art and sentimental knickknacks. The chairs appeared to have been scrounged from a dozen different sets of furniture.

“Welcome, welcome!” said his father.

His mother took their jackets and handed them to a younger woman, who ran off somewhere to hang them up.  The younger woman barked a quick hello as she left, friendly even in her rush.

The mother of the house took care of the introductions but there were so many, so fast, at least twenty people in a minute, that as a guest Olivia assumed she wouldn’t be expected to remember most of them. When the greetings finished, she felt lost, nearly abandoned. However, the cycle began again each time more guests arrived. Olivia found herself enlisted as one of the coat check girls. She didn't mind. It gave her something to do and she got to see more of the home.

Rather than enduring the inquisition of suspicious parents, which she had half expected, she fielded questions from the younger generation. Some of them were Mateo's sisters. She couldn’t tell for sure who were related to him and who not, but she thought she identified four siblings.

When it came time to sit for the meal, the sisters shooed Olivia away from joining them in the kitchen. They told her to find a chair next to her boyfriend. It was a rare moment of relief. Mateo immediately started introducing her to more family guests. She tried to concentrate on the names she'd heard from him before. Those were probably the most important.

She realized that despite the throng developing around her, the family had not assigned seats to anyone. Everyone sat in a rough circle around the tables with one or two unlucky guests crammed in at the corners, as sometimes happens when there are too many invitations sent out.

“I’m going to get the last of the wooden stools,” Mateo announced. “You had better occupy both our chairs for a minute to make sure we can sit together when I get back.”

Olivia expected the other guests to be irritated with her but in fact they laughed and seemed to sympathize. She found herself feeling jealous of the affection his family had for one another and for Mateo. She had forgotten more than half of them already but she knew at least one of the older men nearby, at the main table, was a neighbor. She strongly suspected that some of the others in the room weren't family either but had become traditional guests because they had nowhere better to go.

When Mateo returned, he arrived in the company of two pretty, young women. One of them, definitely not a sister, grabbed him by the elbow and whispered in his ear while he was putting the wooden stools in place. They both laughed. Then, before Mateo could make his way back to Olivia, a young man came roaring over to him and gave him a bear hug. The two fellows exchanged slaps and laughter. Olivia folded her arms, feeling excluded, and wished her boyfriend's friends would leave him alone for a few minutes.

Even after Mateo sat next to her and introduced her to more of his schoolmates and neighbors, she felt uncomfortable. She could see how close and how relaxed his old companions had become with their places in his life. His mother dropped by, too, to give Mateo a few minutes of her open admiration and love. She hugged him twice.

Another woman stopped by. She looked younger than most of the relatives but she gave Mateo a sisterly kiss on the cheek.

"Who was that?" Oliva asked after the woman had left, bound for a seat at a different table.

"That's an old girlfriend." He nodded thoughtfully. "You've heard about her."

"You have old girlfriends here?"

He glanced around. He nodded at another young, pretty woman. "I guess so."

"Why isn't the other one with her family?"

"Ah. She got pregnant a couple of years ago." Mateo looked sad about it. "I've no idea who the man was but she had the child. Her family don't visit with her so much anymore. She comes here instead. You can see her with the other young mothers. There are four of them are in the corner with their kids. Why, what's wrong?"

"I don't know. Is there any room for me?"

"You're sitting right next to me. My mom saved you the prime spot." He looked sheepish. "Or at least, she sure seems to think so."

"I mean, in your life? How much of you is there to go around?"

"Your family is pretty small." Mateo sighed. "And I thought they were quiet."

"I didn't think so before this."

"Watch the kids." He gestured to a group of similarly-aged youths, all larger than toddlers but smaller than teens, and all dressed for a holiday meal. They traveled as a pack. They jostled one another at the elbows as if they were vying among recognition within their group.

"What am I supposed to notice?" The children seemed ordinary. They differed in age quite a bit, which had to be awkward for them, but they didn't seem put out by it much.

"They're going around the tables."

In a minute, a group of the children arrived in front of her. All of them, girls and boys, took turns hugging Mateo.

"Who is this?" one of them asked, pointing to Olivia.

"My girlfriend," he replied. He introduced her several times to his cousins, nieces and nephews, always as his girlfriend.

"Hi." One of the youngest boys stepped forward and hugged his uncle.

"Do you want to give her a hug, too?" He nodded to Olivia. She gestured with open hands to show it would be all right. However, the boy gave them both a frightened look.

"It's okay," she reassured him.

The boy stared her in the eye for a few seconds. Then he hopped forward and hugged her waist.

"Are you going to be my aunt?" he asked.

"Um, I don't know yet."

"Hey, here's a question," Mateo said to his nephew. "Have you used up all of your love?"

Surprised, the child laughed.

"Isn't that how it works?" Mateo insisted, pressing for an answer.

"You're being funny." The boy wasn't fooled for an instant.

"If you love your mom, how can you love me? Or your cousin?" Mateo put his right fist on his hip in a gesture that seemed to mock adult lectures to children. 

"That's silly!" The boy put both his hands on his hips, as if sassing back. "I love everyone and it's never used up."

"Not ever?"

"Never and never. There's just more and more."

"That's what I think, too." Mateo looked over the head of his nephew to catch Olivia's gaze. She took a deep breath and nodded, although her gaze drifted across the packed room.

 

Not Zen 203: The Resilient Crow

Wikimedia, Jakub Hałun

The Resilient Crow

In the deeps of a forest, a heavy chestnut tree fell. It crushed smaller trees beneath it. It broke the boughs of neighbors. In the years that followed, light flooded through the rift the tree had caused in the forest canopy. Grasses, bushes, and brambles grew inside.

During the first spring of the rift, a crow flew over and saw blackberry vines in the clearing below.

"Wonderful," he said as he landed on the half-broken branch of a juniper. The crow hopped down the branch, found a vine, located the ripest blackberry, and ate it.

"Out!" screamed another bird. "Get out!"

The crow glanced overhead and saw the shadow of a raven. Beyond the raven, he saw an eagle, which was eyeing them both. The war over the blackberry grove had begun.

At the edges of the clearing, edible thistles grew around the thicket. Then came grassy burrs. In the center of the blackberries grew a few raspberry vines. At the top of the raspberries, two juniper trees, damaged by the fall of the mighty chestnut, seized their moment in the sunlight. They burst into bloom. They offered up bitter fruits to last for a year. Taken together, the collection of edible vegetation made the clearing a prize for every animal in the vicinity. Despite the thorns of the vines, despite the burrs in the grasses, despite the prickers and needles of the junipers and other bushes, every creature who could venture into the thicket did so in the spring.

The crow had to flee from the larger birds. It had to dodge the foxes. Coyotes and large cats came to prowl after the rabbits and mice. The crow evaded them, too.  

Soon, the vines and grasses grew taller and thicker. The eagles didn’t want the berries, not at the price of so many thorns. The coyotes couldn't stand the prickers and burrs. The cats removed the rabbits from the area and, when they were done, removed themselves. Ravens flocked in as they migrated. They picked the bushes clean of ripe fruit, threw the unripe pieces to the ground, and moved on. In the process, they drove away the bluejays, squirrels, and the crows, all of them except for one.

The stubborn crow remained, hiding, but eating when it could. It dodged the foxes who returned to dine on mice.

"Why are you still here?" asked one fox, a vixen covered in burrs she had picked up during her approach. She had eaten a fat mouse but only one. She had found no more.

"The others of my flock moved to places with more food," said the crow. "But I am satisfied here."

"There's not much left." The fox laughed, her tongue out. She tried to avoid the burrs in the grass as she picked her way out of the thicket.

The crow lasted through the fall. Now, even the foxes had given up. The seasonal berries rotted. Some of them soaked the ground in seeds. Vines withered and turned into stiff canes, upon which the next generation of vines started to crawl. One day, the crow realized he had been the only hunter in the brambles for months. The place had become his home. He could reach juniper berries no one else could see. He ate rotted stuff no one else bothered about. He consumed beetles from the shattered bark of the fallen trees.

Two years later, the crow lived in a grand home next to the berry grove, a sheltered spot that could host an entire flock. And it did. The crow's children and grandchildren ventured in migrations across the forest. But he stayed. Often, his descendants flocked to his home. Beneath him, the mice returned. An occasional fox dropped by to eat the mice. He found them all easy to dodge.

One spring, a bird not much past its fledgling height crawled onto his branch and accosted him.

"Oh, wise one," she said. Her feathers were dark, healthy, and glossy. 

"Hah!" the crow cried. "Shows what you know."

"Grandmother says you are wise." She cocked her head to one side as she shifted her gaze. "Our flock met another flock, crows like us. She said to ask you about them."

"Ugh, crows," he said.

"In the other flock," she persisted, "they were hungry. They seemed lost and angry. They wanted to fight but when we rose to meet them, they flew away."

"Sounds like the usual." He puffed his feathers. They were not as glossy as in his youth but they still served. 

"Oh, wise one," she began.

"Ugh."

"How did you have so much success, grandfather?"

"I haven't thought much about it." He shuffled on the branch. After a while, he rose and grabbed the bark deep with his talons. He strutted back and forth. "Did I have success? I suppose. But I was the weakest of my flock."

"You?" She was young still but he looked reasonably-sized, to her.

"Thanks to your mother, you and your siblings are all stronger than me. Even as I made my home in the grove, I knew I was the most ignorant of the animals there. The ravens were smarter than me. The foxes were wiser. You are probably smarter and wiser, too."

"Then how did you win? Why does everyone call you 'Grandfather of the Berries' and 'Resilient Crow?'"

"Hah!" he cawed.

"Well, that's what they call you."

"Little one, I did not survive by trying harder. I tried and failed, tried and failed. I gave up many times. But I came back. I had to. I returned because I failed elsewhere. I gave up in those places. But not here, not quite. And I did not get berries every day. The ravens and foxes drove me off. I came back. I didn't outsmart anyone. But every time I fled from a larger animal, I came back."

"So you were smart, after all."

"No."

"You were wise."

"No." He ruffled his feathers. "All the other large animals gave up. That's it. One day, I woke and realized I was the only one who had persisted."

"You outlasted everyone else."

"Maybe." The older crow shrugged his wings. He leaned his head to one side as he looked at one of his youngest descendants. With a deep breath, he said, "So far."
 

 

 

 -- copyright 2025 by Eric Gallagher, Secret Hippie 

Not Even Not Zen 407: Towards a Collection

The Poetic Structure of Collected Stories, Followed By Mundane Reality 

Even before I finished a collection, readers pointed out the order of the parables in it is built around an illusion. Stories must appear in some sort of order, of course, when they are in a book. This is the structure I chose for them, a modified version of 'the four stages of enlightenment' from the Theravada school. Not everyone agrees with this view. I acknowledge the implied problems of adopting it as the overriding metaphor.

Poetic Structure

The stages of progress outlined in the Tea for Full Teacups collection are a view that seems likely to be incomplete, at best. These stages of achievement may have happened in this order for someone, sometime. They could have followed this order more than once, even. The structure isn't entirely misleading; that's why I chose it. However, we have no good evidence our progress must follow this pattern. We have no proof that progress follows stages at all, really, or whether these apparent stages are a retrofit imposed on us by our struggle to understand any progress we might have made.

When I reflect on my own experiences, I would say my journey may not have followed the traditional sequence. 

The strongest benefit I received from studying Buddhist, Stoic, and Daoist thinking came a few years in, when I was young, when I let go of my strongest desires. It was a mundane process. I spent years practicing. Almost ritually, I let go of desires each day, often in the morning or late at night. For me, the process involved a lot of envisioning. It's a modest and small-minded method. Nevertheless, it worked well for me personally. As a teen, I used visualization to help lose my fear of heights. I used it for basketball, martial arts, and swimming. For the formalized Buddhist practice of nirodha, I envisioned letting go of possessions. Of course, I actually let go of possessions, too, but I don't want to underestimate the helpfulness of the visualization. It works, although the quality of the practice makes as much difference as the quantity.

Mundane Reality

I don't want to underestimate the value of actually letting go of possessions, either. There are many other things to stop clinging to besides material ones but tangible stuff has the advantage of being readily evident. It's like the difference between building something in your mind and building it in reality. Reality is messy and inconvenient. Actions and their consequences play a role of giving you sanity checks, even about the consequences of releasing attachments. You don't think the playbill about you appearing in concert is important? Throw it out. 

Do you miss it? Too bad. It's gone. That's a consequence. 

Even as you envision not wanting things, you need to practice genuinely not having them. Sometimes there will be hardly any difference. Sometimes the difference will be dramatic. 

When I was nineteen, I was absolutist about letting go of desires. I took my Buddhist reading literally (even though all of it was in translation and most of it was summarized from longer Tibetan, Chinese or Japanese texts). To me, letting go of desires meant giving up everything. Some of the things were,

giving up possessions
giving up the desires for possessions
giving up wanting people
giving up wanting animals
giving up plants
giving up wanting to achieve things
giving up signs of past glories like paper awards, ribbons, medals, and trophies
giving up all desires as generally as possible
giving up food and hunger
giving up thirst

You might see that, at times, this was getting extreme. Giving up hunger and thirst is a good mental and emotional exercise - and a good physical one, too - but there are limits to fasting. Nevertheless, that is how I felt and it is what I strove for.
 

Not Even Not Zen 406: The Mood War, Scenes 1-8 Together

 

Here's a new, short novel: The Mood War. 

That is, here below are links to  the ten percent of the material that Amazon allows as a preview. Included on the pages is a link to the novel.

 

Mood War is copyright 2024, 2025 by Eric Gallagher. 

Secret Hippie is a trademark, 2025 by Eric Gallagher.

Cover art copyright 2025 by Acacia Gallagher.

 

 

 

The Mood War 

• The Mood War, Scene 1
• The Mood War, Scene 2
• The Mood War, Scene 3
• The Mood War, Scene 4
• The Mood War, Scene 5
• The Mood War, Scene 6
• The Mood War, Scene 7
• The Mood War, Scene 8

Amazon Kindle Direct is a good choice for new authors. However, they only allow their authors to release a tenth of the material, maximum, through other venues in order to meet their classification standard for a new book.

 

Not Even Not Zen 405: The Mood War, Scene 8

 

copyright 2025 Acacia Gallagher

[VIII] Incident Report (Partial) Defendant, Mood Battle

Cell 3C, ICC Detention Center, the Hague
Scheveningen, the Netherlands

My memories after I got shot are foggy. I saw lights. Blurred shapes. My guts started churning. My legs wobbled. I got dizzy. My unit leader pulled me to my feet. He dragged me by the arm. He kept us dodging in different directions. That made my dizziness worse. I thought I was going to throw up inside my suit.

Man, that’s the one thing they tell you over and over when they issue you a suit. Don’t throw up in it.

When we held still for a minute behind a shrub ... oh, wait, I should mention there was no cover. Every other shrub was taken. So you know the monks above were firing at the shrubs. Scouts who were lying in ditches had it better. Anyway, after we held still long enough for my suit to administer medicine and my head to clear, I gawked at the scene upslope.

The nuns and monks were all gone except for one. They’d run up from the UAZs to their gate, I guess. The only one remaining, right in the middle of the open gate, was lying face down. He had a blood stain in the middle of his back. One of our scouts must have shot him.

I’d never seen a person dying before. I must have stared for a second because a bullet hit my armor. My suit stiffened. Then it encouraged me to lie down. So I did. I could feel my armor sections relaxing. When I removed my glove, there was no resistance. Next, I reactivated my rifle with my thumbprint. Within a second, the rifle communicated with my armor. It beeped. It wanted me to put my glove back on. After I did, the suit made a complete circuit check. It switched me into combat mode. My vision cleared. My eyes naturally focused on an overlay of target tracking that appeared.

When I glanced up the hill, my systems showed me that two of the temple tower windows had become red-outline targets. The UAZs out front had gotten overlays of yellow outlines. They were an option to kill. My suit was fine with me taking out the vehicles.

What stopped me was that everyone else seemed to be sane. I mean, a handful of scouts near the front were shooting a lot, yeah, but they were aiming at the snipers in the tower windows. They weren’t trying for wholesale destruction. None of the army vets were taking potshots at the UAZs. No one aimed at anything inside the compound except for the snipers.

“Hit!” someone yelled.

I couldn’t believe it, but it was true. Petrov, who had been with the leaders, had propped his rifle on the hood of the right-most UAZ. He’d fired off three shots, no more. With bullet number three, he’d managed to tag one of the snipers who was under cover, probably armored, twenty meters in the air. This was at the distance of one and a half football fields. The sniper would have been a dot if he were even in view and not hiding. I literally could not see the hit. A smart bullet from a smart rifle had to tell me about it.

Petrov turned back to the rest of us and grinned. That was when someone on the other side pulled out their hand-held missile launcher. There was a bright light on top of the wall above the temple gate.

“Holy shit!”

 

Not Even Not Zen 404: The Mood War, Scene 7

copyright 2025 Acacia Gallagher

[VII] Details from Interview 8 in Cell 3C

ICC Detention Center, the Hague
Scheveningen, the Netherlands

HR-T1: According to multiple accounts, you were the first person shot. Why have you not mentioned this?

Cruzak: It’s embarrassing.

HR-T1: No.

Cruzak: Fucking yes, it was. We were about a hundred meters from the re-occupied temple. A contingent of monks and nuns came out to tell us to go the fuck away. They set up a barrier.

HR-T1: Nuns came to the talks?

Cruzak: Two of them. We found out there were more, later. Anyway, their group had parked a pair of armored UAZs across the dirt road that was going to become the railway. Kaspar tried to walk between the vehicles but they pointed a half-dozen of elderly, Russian rifles at him and told him to back off. So he introduced himself as head of scouting for the ITB railroad and told them they were trespassing.

HR-T1: How did the clergy react?

Cruzak: I didn’t listen closely. They talked for half an hour, probably more. It got boring. Kaspar kept a phone line open to the Shaymak chief for assistance Both of them looped in some sort of ITB lawyer. She stayed on the call, too, dispensing her advice and insisting that Kaspar say exactly the words to the trespassers that she wanted him to say.

HR-T1: So it was peaceful.

Cruzak: Yeah. I asked if I could plant some of the grass seeds I had in the suit.

HR-T1: Were you given permission?

Cruzak: I sort of started doing it and then asked, but yeah.

HR-T1: Were you the only one doing construction scout work?

Cruzak: Maybe. I was in the middle. A lot of the others behind me sat down. Up front near the UAZs, the unit chiefs and Kaspar kept everyone standing at attention.

HR-T1: Were you the only one?

Cruzak: Yeah, I think so.

HR-T1: So you did your normal work as the talks continued.

Cruzak: When the order came to lower our face masks closed, I filed an objection. Once you snap that visor shut, it puts the suit into a different mode. The AI parts think you’re ready for a fight, so the whole thing jerks you around more. It’s a pain in the ass.

HR-T1: What were your exact words?

Cruzak: I said, “Fuck, no. Let them see our faces.” The scouting chief didn’t have time to repeat the order. I knew that. He had to keep going with his negotiations. So maybe two thirds of the scouts lowered their masks. But I didn’t.

“Lower mask, Cruzak,” my unit leader ordered me. He texted it to me over the comm, too. But since I didn’t have the helmet sealed, the comm display was minimized. It didn’t really bother me.

“Come on, Zielinski.” I felt like I could talk him into making an exception. “They don’t care about us back here.”
“Close face masks. That is the order.”

“It makes us look military. It’s less friendly.” Around me, though, the other stragglers were clamping shut. I could see it.

“Lower mask.”

“It is not friendly.”

“Have you not been listening, Cruzak? They are not so happy.”

“Well, okay, but I protest. This is bullshit.” I rose from my crouch, let my grass seed dispenser slip back into my suit sleeve, and paced. I still hadn’t closed up. The view from inside the helmet screen is better than real life in some ways. It doesn’t have as much glare. You can telescope your view by thinking, too. But the colors are off. They’re muted. Contrast is higher. It’s all a bit different, and I wasn’t used to it. I wanted to get a good, real-life look at the mountain.

“Cruzak.”

“This is totally unnecessary.” I pushed my visor down. I heard the sealing mechanism make its vacuum seal. At the same time, my filter system went green. And that’s when I got shot in the head.

HR-T1: (Chuckles.)

Cruzak: See? Fucking liar. I got hit right on the front left of my face. It happened while I was walking, and my helmet did some sort of compensation thing, so I went down hard. A couple of the scouts laughed. The Nigerian woman, Zala, pointed at me and howled.

HR-T1: You were fine.

Cruzak: I didn’t feel fine. I felt like I’d been shot. Anyway, from the Shaymak chief’s point of view, it established a few things. They had more weapons than we had seen. They were willing to kill us. Maybe they could. Someone on their side had downed our drone. They had at least one sniper. However many they had, their snipers could hit us from a tenth of a kilometer. The caliber of their weapons was kind of crappy, at least to judge by my surviving. It looked like they would need multiple shots.

HR-T1: This was good for you.

Cruzak: Yeah. I’m alive. But they struck fear in me, man, and in the rest of us. All of a sudden, we were in a fight.
HR-T1: But you were an army. You had army suits.

Cruzak: No, ma’am. I told you. We had no ideas about combat. We went to put an end to any idea of a fight. They had come with the opposite approach. They set us up for their main plan. That’s when they dropped their fear bombs. They expected us to run.

HR-T1: Stop calling it a fear bomb.

Cruzak: Fear bomb.

HR-T1: It was a chemical weapon.

Cruzak: Fear bomb.

HR-T1: A gas.

Cruzak: Fear bomb.

HR-T1: Please stop.

Cruzak: Fear bomb.

HR-T1: You are being childish.

Cruzak: Fear bomb. It’s a fear bomb.

HR-T1: Fine. Please move on.

Cruzak: Then they dropped the fear bomb.

HR-T1: (Sighs.)

Cruzak: Up until then, no one had panicked.

 

 

Not Even Not Zen 403: The Mood War, Scene 6

copyright 2025 Acacia Gallagher

[VI] Incident Report (Partial) Defendant, Mood Battle

Cell 3C, ICC Detention Center, the Hague
Scheveningen, the Netherlands

As Zielinski brought us back to the main camp, I could see Kaspar with his foot on a big rock. He motioned for everyone to stay back. We could hear him arguing with our Shaymak chief, Demytro Melnik, about the temple ahead.

Melnik was the boss who had taken my tools. He was working two kilometers behind us. Turned out he’d ordered drone surveillance of the mountain peak. He didn’t trust the scouts. Plus, he was furious about the ballast getting laid down behind us. That’s why he was in his position. His bulldozers had prepped the mountain subgrade perfectly. But the team behind the bulldozers had used the wrong crushed rock for ballast between the mountain and the steel tracks. He’d ordered coarse granite, no smaller than quarter-inch pieces. What the team had laid down was a cheap-ass pea gravel made out of sandstone. That wouldn’t do.

He couldn’t blame the scouts for that. But he could blame us for the temple.

“You are responsible for the drone!” he shouted loud enough for Kaspar to distance himself for a moment, with the phone at arm’s length.

“Bullshit. This is not good,” Kaspar said into his handset. “They shot down the drone. That is not our responsibility. It was a peaceful drone, no defenses, and we are only scouts.”

The chief’s voice softened a bit. Those of us around Kaspar could only hear one end of the conversation.

“Yes, that is hostile, boss. Of course. You have the pictures from the robot camera. We can see the temple dome. Yes, it is fixed. Agree. Agree. That is a hard job. Fixed anyway. It is fixed.”

They traded some phrases in Russian. Or maybe it was Ukranian.

“Look, there are monks in the stupa, boss. You have seen them walking in the pictures. They have at least six vehicles.”

“No, no. They are all Russian armored, three UAZ models, two Burlak, one KrAZ 214.”

At this point, Kaspar began raising his left hand. He paced back and forth in front of his rock as he talked.

“How would I know? They have Russian armor pieces, all old. That is what I know. If you want more, send me another drone. A better one.”

He had a funny habit, not of smacking himself on the forehead but of slapping on top of his head when he got impatient. He did it now and left the hand in place for a while.

“No, I will not fire weapons from it. Holy cows. Do not be silly. Unless that is your order. Is that your order, boss?”

Then the phone got loud enough to hear his supervisor’s voice. We couldn’t make out the words. At least, I couldn’t. Come to think of it, this part might have been said in Ukranian. Kaspar paced for a while. He propped his right foot on the rock.

When he hung up the phone, he stuck it in a big equipment pouch he kept strapped onto his armor. He nodded to Sokolov, Mendez, and Negasi.

“Hokay, we are off to talk with the men at the temple. No more pussying around.”

“Is that an order from the Shaymak boss, Melnik?” asked Mendez.

“Da.”

“Shit.”

“Why are we going to talk?” asked Gillian, the American.

“Because we are ordered.”

“No, I understand, but what are we going to say to the folks up there?”

It made Kaspar dig his hands in his back pockets for a minute. Not for the first time, I noticed that the unit leaders generally had better suit coverings with places to hold more weapons and tools. Kaspar had assigned himself the improved gear five days before. He’d been thinking about this. He didn’t know how to answer Gillian’s question, though.

“No more shooting down drones by them. That was bad.” He spoke slowly. Kaspar seemed to be reminding himself of what he had just been told. “They are being where they should not be. Those monks, if that’s what they are. No more. No more getting in the way of this construction.”

“But our tracks go right through the middle of their compound. Temple. Stupa. Whatever.”

The American swept her arm upslope. A few of the others turned to see the tiny dot of the temple dome. The rest of us didn’t want to look. We had been worrying about it for most of the day.

“Because we are ordered,” Kaspar repeated.

There was a long moment of the men and women standing around. Everyone sort of digested the mission summary. It was a little like my last girlfriend breaking up with me over the phone. No one wanted to catch my eye or share the moment. As the awkwardness faded, one of the Ethiopian women pointed at me, then at Kaspar. It made me wonder what I’d done.

“In peace?” Gillian asked in a quiet voice.

“Da.” Kaspar nodded. “Yes, listen to me carefully. All weapon safeties are on?”

“Yes,” said Negasi.

“Da.”

“Agree.”

“Right. Now, everyone who did not fire practice rounds, there is a lock on the weapon safety. Activate it. That is to prevent accidents.”

“Regular safety also prevents accidents, Kaspar.” Sokolov gave him a reproachful scowl. “Unlocking takes a few seconds with no glove.”

“Anyone who did not practice, I want them to have to take the seconds.”

“Yes, boss.” Negasi stood to attention, an untroubled expression on his face. All of the Ethiopians had practiced with their rifles. The order didn’t affect them.

“Si. Yes.” The skin on Mendez flushed red. He muttered an order to the woman next to him. She triggered her safety lock.

“Da,” said Petrov.

Sokolov kept his scowl but he nodded. He exchanged a glance with Mendez. I don’t know what that was about. He tried to catch Szymon Zielinski’s eye, too, but my unit leader was busy punching text into his comm. Maybe the other unit heads thought he was giving us orders. Nothing ever came through the comm but I noticed a couple of my line partners locking down. I hadn’t practiced with my weapon, so I locked down too.

Then for an hour we hiked up a narrow trail left by the original engineering team. It was mostly flat, not graded to the sides, and it followed the natural slope of the mountain. There were big earth mover ruts that would need to be flattened but the nearest bulldozer that would have shaped the earth for us had moved back. It was about a kilometer downslope. At least there had been no rain. That meant the trail was okay, not eroding under us as fast as we could walk. The Shaymak range didn’t get many squalls but, when they came, they made gullies out of our flat roads. It didn’t take much to erode the soil.

Run-off is a problem all around the Shaymak plateau. The peaks are dry. There aren’t many trees high up and they’re usually stunted.

That day, we could see down into the valleys, where it had flooded just before the engineers passed through. The greening in the lower half of the peaks happened surprisingly fast. It’s a natural thing. Also, the artificial irrigation installed to support the railway had kicked in. The lands we built on had been made as fertile as any other converted desert in the world. That’s not a lot, because the plants are still cold desert plants. But it’s something. The water condensers and pumps allow grasses and shrubs to hold down the soil.

In retrospect, it was the irrigation that drew the additional settlers to the area. It wasn’t just nice to have the railroad nearby for its cargo transportation. The locals really needed the extra water. They started new villages along the side of the mountain and farmed as close to the rails as they could. The additional water was, maybe, why the monks at the peak thought they could revive their old temple gardens and support themselves.

Or maybe it was all crazy religion stuff from beginning to end. I don’t know.

“Everyone to the left,” Kaspar ordered when the lines of hikers drifted too far apart.

We had two moments of weirdness on the way to the temple. One was when Kaspar ordered us to line up. We achieved something close to a row. Our suits decided that’s what we wanted and they jerked us into perfect position, a straight line. It was awful. Everyone cursed. A few Russians yelled at Kaspar but I don’t know what they said.

The second crazy thing was a practical joke. Gillian, the American, was hiking up front next to Kaspar because she was part of his unit. One of the Ethiopians, Zala, raised her rifle and took a shot at the lump of ammo on Gillian’s back.

Zala’s smart rifle beeped at her. From where I marched behind, I could see her weapon flash green as it locked down. The AI in it had figured this for a bad shot or a joke.

Nagasi, about a yard in front of Zala, stopped when he heard the beep.He lunged, ripped the gun from Zala’s hands, and threw it on the ground. She stepped back. Me and Zielinski gave them lots of room. It’s not like we were soldiers or anything, but a couple of the scouts had been in their national armies before this gig. Nagasi had been a corporal.

I think, as he stood in silence, that he was realizing Zala wasn’t military. She didn’t have the sense of discipline he expected from her. This whole event, despite the look of it, wasn’t an army maneuver. We were a construction gang. He couldn’t shoot her or send her to the stockade or anything like that. He wanted to, though.

Anyhow, I don’t think Gillian or Kaspar ever knew.

Next, The Mood War, Scene 7

Not Even Not Zen 402: The Mood War, Scene 5

copyright 2025 Acacia Gallagher

MOOD WAR: DAY ONE

 

[V] Details from Interview 37 in Cell 3C

ICC Detention Center, the Hague
Scheveningen, the Netherlands

HR-Spec-9: There is a blank in your transcript. It is not an important time, maybe. Just friends horsing around.

Cruzak: (sounds of shuffling)

HR-Spec-9: Did your Polish team conspire to start a fight with the monastery?

Cruzak: No. (Snort of laughter.) Anyway, that’s not how the problem started. It wasn’t with us.

HR-Spec-9: Then why give nothing to the records? Why no account?

Cruzak: Dunno.

(Twenty seconds of movement, all quiet.)

HR-Spec-9: I have to ask, Herr Cruzak. This is where you got angry before.

Cruzak: They’re all dead.

HR-Spec-9: Excuse please?

Cruzak: They were my friends. They’re all dead.

(Twelve seconds of silence. Three seconds of paper moving.)

HR-Spec-9: I think I see. For now, let us move to different gaps in the transcript.
 

 

Next, The Mood War, Scene 6