[00:00:06]
>> Good morning and thank you all for coming to the press public event in our newly renovated library My name is Karen Byers I in the humanities and science fiction laboring here at Georgia Tech So today's Talk by Bill Campbell is developed as a partnership with the library and school of literature media and communication and I would like to thank the libraries Dean Katherine Mary rust Dr Richard it's the chair of L M C and Dr Lisa you just heard Bill Campbell is a critically acclaimed author whose work includes the locus nominated stories for chip a tribute to Samuel R. Delaney with Niecy show and the glyph award winning A.P.B. artist against police brutality with Jason Rodriguez and John Jennings his company Rosario publishing specializes in speculative fiction comics and a touch of crime fiction all with a multicultural flair Bill's latest edited work is sunspot jungle a 2 volume anthology of science fiction authors from our cars across countries and cultures Bill's talk today is called astral travelling exploring Afro past present and futures Please join me in welcoming Bill Campbell thank you very much as you know I.

[00:01:19]
Said my name is Bill Campbell I'm an author published or editor. Usually it's funny because today I'm here as a writer for the past 5 or 6 years I've just been generally going around as a publisher so I have this whole spiel about being a publisher and that's like well what's my spiel about being a writer and I realize it was basically of the same piece because I accidently became a publisher so.

[00:01:50]
I'll give you. I'll give you the old life story well and see that it but hopefully it will dovetail basically into each other so. I said I want to be a writer when I was 9 years old. And I never wanted to be a publisher so. The funny thing about.

[00:02:13]
My my dream studying is that it actually started in Hollywood so my mom used to make industrial films for Westinghouse if you remember that thing busting out the corporation so she basically made these industrial films about you know by our circuit breakers and our nuclear warheads so. My mom was a huge driver and she wanted to make sure that I was 2 so one time takes me out to Hollywood with her so I can see all the Hollywood magic.

[00:02:45]
And in the studios I'm watching that at it I go to the Brown Derby which back then was this big Hollywood Hangout where all the stars lands and I actually got to go to a party at Hollywood Hills where I think it was like Harry Belafonte 2nd Life.

[00:03:07]
And then 2 things happened. One I went from Billy to Bill because why Guy some big Hollywood big way. When he asked me my name I said My name is Billy he has been call themselves bill so at 9 I think came bill and then with all the Hollywood glitz and glamour and all the sequins and star Saddam I didn't want to be a director I don't want to be an actor for some reason I came away wanted to be a writer and there's actually a picture that I didn't from when I was 9 and it had like the big Hollywood sign it had me sitting there at a typewriter listening pounding away so actually at 9 years old I started writing T.V. comedy scripts.

[00:03:55]
And this is as an adult and as a parent yourself you realize like how great your parents of the adults around you are because these people these grown people were literally laughing at this 9 year old's T.V. scripts and it was like these these they are definitely like deserve sainthood for that because I'm sure it was absolutely horrible so I go through life wanting to be a writer and.

[00:04:21]
In my youth I you know I kind of pictured myself as a literary voice right like that's what I wanted so I was thinking of like mainstream literature and I was going to live in Paris and you know have like a 6 foot wall of model and like you know just live like that like the dream and then college happened and a friend of mine introduced me to science fiction.

[00:04:45]
And. It is funny because you know it was just like any other college college freshman you know boys like this this girl that I was that I had a crush on like you know you're really weird and maybe you should check out science fiction instead because this is where your mind is so she introduced me to Octavia Butler and seen lately and.

[00:05:10]
I'm a big history and. It's OK. So I'm a big history in politics and and. Science nerd as well and so like for once I felt like I was I was at home right like a lot of times in the early ninety's black folks ago like why why would you write science fiction because you can't speak to our struggle but the thing that I found with science fiction was like that was exactly what I could do you know so like I tell you about where the 1st book of hers that I read was a wild scene right and that that example you know exemplified exactly what he's looking for right it combines history politics and and the African-American struggle which I thought was perfect and then with DELANEY When I read him I was like I will never be as smart as this guy I want to do what he does because I can never reach that if that makes any sense to you right like I have this model this perfect model of an intellect I just didn't possess and it was just like to follow in something like that person's footsteps to me it felt like like the perfect kind of quest that one can take you know it's like Plato's Forms I like his Delaney and then like I just spend the rest of my life like just wanting to be mentioned in the same sentence which is why you coed it you know book with his name on it so then your name is a forever.

[00:06:49]
So as I said I start off with that and it was like a very interesting struggle for me because in the beginning I. Because I didn't know what I was doing Oddly enough I got published really quickly. And I was like 2023 and 24 published in these little summer prezzies and I thought like I'm on my way and I was living in Europe at the time so this sort of like I'm really going to get my dream right I mean it was like Eastern Europe and it was like a small town it wasn't quite Paris or anything at all like Paris but but you know I was a slave sitting there I was like wow my dream is going to come true but then I started actually warning like the actual craft of it and that's like a really long and arduous process and my voice.

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Like I always thought of art and writing the way that jazz musicians and early hip hop artists were it was like you can't sound like anybody else like you have to have your own style and so that was my goal like and like I thought the biggest tribute to any writer that that you have is to not sound like them right and so while Delaney was my for are you know Octavia Butler Zora Neale Hurston were more these were these I don't in my own little universe My goal was to never be compared to them and then when so when you're looking for your own voices I mean it's a really it's it's one of the toughest juggle that you can go through is to as an artist is to find your own voice and.

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Unfortunately while I was finding my own voice because I've always been a survey can I always been a smart ass and a little bit of a dick so sad. So so so that's how I was always the thing for me but like when I was young and thing about serious literature like I thought that humor had no place in it because you know when you're was special when you're an undergrad like you know.

[00:09:06]
You know back in the in the stone ages of the eighty's and ninety's when I was when I was in undergrad you know all of the literature classes classic classes were basically you know the old white guys and reading the Tory And you know modernist postmodernist but like very few people were funny but then I came across a candied by Voltaire right and I'm like whoa because I know this name and I know that this is serious literature what the hell it's funny as hell like what's going on here and then and then I and then I ran to Ishmael Reed as I was forming my voice trying to figure out how to be the next the Laney or Butler whatever then Ishmael remotely came into my life and mumbo jumbo is like a Bible to me.

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And it's wholly changed everything so not only was I forming a voice but then it all got this rock because and I realized that I could be satirical and I could be science fictional and I still could be taken seriously so when I'm writing all these very weird and very scattershot short stories and.

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They become more and more black centered so the 1st few stories that I wrote I don't even know if I mentioned race in them or if I did it was just like being incidental like by the way that I was by but a lot of them weren't even about race or anything like that.

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I think one was about. A prisoner who is in jail for like 300 years and then the day he gets out like he dies. It was like he started a religion while he was in prison and became like this huge cultural icon like the only thing you want to do is die outside of prison and he does and then a story that I came in with the 3rd one was but the 2nd one the science fiction database group like they actually reminded me of the other story that I that I publish because I totally forgot about it and it was just literally like one of my anti-war things it was about like this you know a set on a distant planet where this photographer was constantly.

[00:11:17]
Taking pictures of a war is happening and then they get caught up in the war themselves it's like you know like that was it so you know I was becoming blacker I guess you could say and more experimental and I just didn't have a voice but in some things are very strange happens and it happened to you know most writers of my generation was you know we couldn't be published right like you just wouldn't see us anywhere in any of the magazines any of the semi-pro or anything like you just didn't see brown folks either financing black folks and the very weird thing happens in like you don't know if you suck.

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You don't know if you're like this unicorn that nobody understand because everybody's telling you that you don't exist I mean that was like the one thing that was very very real then was like you don't exist like you're not here there are no nobody nobody reads you know black people don't read science fiction nobody reads about black people in science fiction there's no market for anything in black and science fiction so you just have no clue whether it's you or the world or anything like that.

[00:12:32]
So I became like how you discouraged. But even so I wrote the 1st novel sunshine patriots in that back in 98. Yes the summer of the summer of $98.00 it started. In 91 it was actually the 1st short story I had ever written. And then over the like the next 7 years just kept growing and growing in my head and so it was written I wrote I wrote is an entire novel that was really just lacking everything in 3 weeks I was unemployed once when I got a job and I put it down and then this really strange while I was living in Atlanta and in Park.

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There's a really weird thing happened was my girlfriend at the time went to Tanzania for 3 weeks I lost my job and then there was this freak. Freaking lightning storm where the lightning hit the transformer by our house and the lightning went directly into our T.V. set and blew out the power source and that was it so I had no job no girlfriend no money and no T.V. for 3 weeks so I just set up a card table put my computer there and then I pounded out the rest of the book.

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And then probably about a year or so later I started submitting it to different publishers. Such a page is a very weird novel and it's very rough. And. You know messes with time it has its own dialect. It's very violent. And. That's very black and nobody wanted it and yet again it's sort of like well maybe I say.

[00:14:23]
I don't know like maybe I'm just a horrible writer so then I stopped writing. Fiction totally because I spent. Most about 7 years not being able to publish a thing. And then I started writing screenplays because I know what else to do with my life and I add a few I was Northwestern which if you know is a big Hollywood factory so if you go to Northwestern you have like 3 or 4 friends who are who are in Hollywood doing stuff you know and it's really funny because you know now that I'm older Well you know Mark Brock She's one of those Black Lightning she's a prisoner there yeah we were we were like in a sketch comedy show together like really the exact same here but I never talked to her she was like so beautiful.

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I tell you how beautiful she is right now Playboy has that whole girls of the Big 10. And she is in it with a big old sweater on and books across and like they were like We don't care like you're so beautiful we want you and as you say I'm not taking off my clothes in any event that's fine so.

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Literally one of the only 4 we called women you will ever see in Playboy in the ninety's but a way. That was out of line so I started writing so writing screenplays and. Yet again they were black focused and all that stuff and I did have connections and yet again nobody wanted anything that I that I did you know and.

[00:15:59]
So basically what ended up happening was I took my computer with all my old stories and I threw them away. In 2002 I was done I was just on land it want to write anymore because I thought that I obviously would just chose the wrong path. And it was actually kind of painful when I actually think about it.

[00:16:25]
And then the really odd thing happened was the wholesale publishing. Route started taking off right and some friends who read sunshine patriots back in 98 Hey why don't you self publish and it really took them about like a year it was like my friend's family really well and she just do it because else you never know and I have a really big problem about never knowing like there's a certain part.

[00:16:57]
In my life probably was around your age where I meet all these middle aged people and they said I would've could've should've done this stuff and I just said to myself I never want to be that person I would rather fail spectacularly then never know if I could have done something yes so I had to ring rework sunshine patriots because people outside were giving me hope it's like one of those rare instances in life where people tell you that you have value when you don't believe that you have about yourself so you know being friends like that is very important you never know what kind of stuff that you stir.

[00:17:33]
So it's actually really funny because because one of the things with sunshine page papers was that since it was my 1st novel I basically called that like my kitchen sink novel because like I threw average thing in there like I could possibly think of it's like basically all the thoughts you've ever had in your 1st 20 years were in the 1st draft of that book.

[00:17:54]
So it's actually the finished product was actually $200.00 pages smaller than the 1st draft of the book. I had everything and. But then I did ultimately you know self publish. You know that in 2004 so right yeah 2004 so what I know of doing was. Because you know if you going to be a bear be a grizzly right so if you can come out with a book why not just have a book tour you know discount it so so I took 2 months off of work.

[00:18:31]
And I arranged for myself a 20 like 23 city book tour and basically fortunately you know even though as I said I'm a survey can can be kind of a dick I do have friends and so I took like every every city where I had friends was so I could have a couch.

[00:18:51]
And I arranged I arranged my book tour for that right so I ended up here which is just how I actually think that's a 1st well the 2nd time that the 2nd time we met and I. Actually the OK so the funny part and I don't even know if you know this but so was that Chapter 11 right I don't book science Chapter 11 and your professor here.

[00:19:17]
Took me to manuals with some of her students and the reason I'm telling the story because All right so I'm not a public I wasn't a public or well I call myself a famous nobody now but I wasn't even that I was just like nobody with a book and I was so bad that my own signing somebody said hey are you Bill Campbell and I got like paranoid.

[00:19:39]
I was like I was like yeah why how do you know no like well I'm here for your books I'm like that makes I'm sorry but it was funny because Lisa here and her students were asking me all the questions you ask an author but I had never been asked those before so apparently I couldn't myself well but I was freaking out like I was just like why are you asking me all these questions about my life and my work this makes no sense to me which you know because that's where I my headspace was.

[00:20:09]
And actually that night was the inspiration for my 2nd novel called my beauty novel. Because. They asked me a typical question what are you working on and what's your next book and I wasn't working on anything and so I had this really sarcastic answer that I was working on a beauty novel.

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And I was it. But man it sounded funny. So so that was my 2nd book but that's that's after the fact so I did the tour and one of the funny one of the horrible things about the tour was sunshine patriots is an anti-war book right and this is $2004.00 a year after we'd invaded Iraq so people were still waving around their American flags and like fuck yeah America right and I'm walking around on like.

[00:21:05]
Yeah I mean it was it was so bad like we were I was like yeah I remember being in Montgomery like a ball or what your book about and I'm like nothing. You go over here and here's the the Vinci Code would you like that's Or like I was like that was like my entire Toller lism me deny denying that I wrote my own book like 3 times it was very new testament so when I got back you know I think I had was like a severe case of depression.

[00:21:37]
Because it was so horrible I gained 40 pounds. On this or because all I was doing was literally sitting on my ass for 2 months eating because that's what your friends do when you come into town they take you out to eat. And then I have this like really funny idea for you know.

[00:21:57]
Just the title so then I was like basically my booty novel was basically making fun of myself because it was about a science fiction writer whose 1st Tor fails miserably. And then I. Had the time my day job please help produce audio books for the buying for the Library of Congress.

[00:22:21]
And those years everything was like chick lit and Ladley and the one thing that really got me about those books was like these were human beings that I never met in my life. So I thought well when it be funny to just make fun of those books and meanwhile And so that's how my body novel happen right so it was the 1st time I've ever done anything since I was in high school that reflected real life or what Dylan calls mundane fiction and it was it was like This is a very bizarre experience because people liked it and I was like I wasn't used to people liking my writing either so.

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I even know what to do with the world so. I actually ended up getting an agent and I got this my agent was so powerful that Washington Post Book World did a feature on him like he's like one of the only agents I've ever seen featured in. In the book where I was a suddenly going because he couldn't sell my book right so I'm like sitting there one day and I'm like you know what I do the kids I'm a kid so I was like what why is my agent in here and I'm not like what is this and it was and it was even a comic.

[00:23:38]
So he had like a comic about him and well because he had a sign. Of a famous comic book artist and the conflict I just didn't think about him some like looking at that and I'm just like hey blank. Why can't you sell my book. His answer was I was in ghetto and F. So I was like key.

[00:24:09]
Because. My father's from Kingston Jamaica and my mother is from a small mining town in western Pennsylvania it is so small it doesn't even have one stoplight it's got about 7 stop signs and I go when they met in Duff's business school business school that has a campus in Pittsburgh and in Kingston.

[00:24:36]
So when they met there and after they moved the Jamaican and then had to leave because all the teachers were being killed and moved back to Pittsburgh. They moved to the suburbs so it's like a complete you know accident of birth right that nothing to do with me it was just where I was raised.

[00:24:57]
And the thing that upset me was you never tell a white writer that they're not Apple ation enough right he just like you know I just don't really get a lot of seeing Diego from you know. There's a you know I'm just not there's not enough likes in your sentence I just don't believe this is a white woman you know this is.

[00:25:22]
Like these are these are things that white writers never have to face really straight lines when you get into that later. But I was just like absolutely furious but I was also paralyzed because here I was again you know they don't like my science fiction for some reason they don't like this this you know cute little black satire they don't like my screenplays like nobody likes anything that I do apparently even though there are people who do but of the powers that be like nobody likes with what I do so.

[00:26:02]
And one of the very strange things. That was happening to me because I am like a history and I like reading all kinds of things about demographics and stuff I started just like I mean it's like going to a bad movie flashback like I would wake up in a cold sweat and be like you know I get enough get enough to enough get in and.

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Then I'd be like. I'm like you know wait wait maybe i am. But this is all the work and. But I would really like all these weird like little bits and pieces like these stories of. You know. You know the black college population has gone up 40 percent in the past 20 years or you know like you know race and test scores like more like race and class and test scores and you just say you know in like 70 percent of black people don't even live in black neighborhoods and is this like wait but you tell me like I've got to keep retraining black people in this light that we're not even live it right and you keep find out like 030 percent of black men will end up in prison I'm like that isn't a stat that was a projection like that was actually a report that came out by the U.S. Justice Department and they said if current trends continue by 20202030 percent of black males will end up with some sort of criminal record but it wasn't 30 percent as there has been 30 percent it was a projection that people just report is real or just like the whole they're more black many in prison than are in college which has never been true as a city going like wow every time I turn around all you do is patrol us negatively right and it's just like I'm going into my head it's like every single thing like I'm reading about us is just negative like you know you talk about like the whole model minority thing is like you look at my parents' generation their parents weren't allowed to go to go to high school.

[00:28:07]
25 percent of them with the college Well you got the greenies right and use like constant amazing story right while segregation was still in effect. Right 25 percent of the population goes to college well before less than 5 percent were going and most of the most of their parents never even went to high school with things saying happening with Latinas now where it's like when you actually look at the Cimon of like where their parents went where they are it's like absolutely amazing but we have to always portray this stuff negatively or you can't take what should be a moment that America would be proud of itself where they said yeah we're still fucking with you but you know if I could do less and look what you did though it's like no we're just going to say like bad shit about you no matter what you do and I and I just sort of thing about that in a very real political sense and I could and then I thought about you not good enough you not good enough you're not good enough and I was like whoa you want me to be a part of this you want me to be become complicit in your bullshit.

[00:29:15]
That's a college or. How is this like wow OK so I'm not going to be a part of your brain be a games and I'm just not going to do it and that's how coon town happened was that I just kind of the side of that I wasn't going to be complicit and then I lost my agent.

[00:29:42]
Because he was incredibly upset with me that I would do such a thing and I ended up self publishing that one as well and then the thing that end up happening with that was very weird was that I ended up having to self publish again. And I was going around to different.

[00:30:04]
To you know different events past fairs book festivals flea markets that really matter but while that was happening a few colleges started teaching it so it was like this really weird thing where I was a self published author that nobody even knew and then selling books out of the back of my car and all this and I would have to like go to Wisconsin or go to Virginia and give a lecture about this book and I and I realized in that process and that.

[00:30:46]
That. There must be other authors like that that that have that this experience where there is actually quality to their work. That other people appreciate but for some reason that they're just whatever the reason they be that they were just not receiving. The approval of mainstream publishing so even and this is how what ends up happening is how Rosemary I'm is is I'm born so.

[00:31:25]
It was that was quite a back to give something that was playing around in my head but one of the other things that was happening was that you know as I was saying like a lot of black authors saw that they were alone but with the explosion of social media we could suddenly see that we weren't there was actually large groups of people around the world who were writing science fiction who just weren't being published so I asked a guy right there.

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And who knows a lot more about science fiction than I ever will. To help me to. To bring some of these authors to light which is what was what mothership tales from after Futurism and beyond was was just this whole idea that we were going to not only we were going to have authors of color.

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In a 1000 fold authors of color or the main character had to be a color like so for once I want to not just those early take away the white gays but also this feature of people that generally aren't featured so you wouldn't get the sidekicks you wouldn't get the magical Negroes you would get that because people would get to speak for themselves and for me as a publisher and as a writer like and just not just in a cultural sense but in a in a political sense that I think that people having their own voices is probably the most important thing that you can ever give somebody because I realized.

[00:32:57]
Like I will lead. She's a writer and an editor she did Octavia's Burton but she says that out of black people are science fiction. Because we were never supposed to exist black people in America was never supposed to exist. I often think of. This as a legal status because in order for slavery to happen in all the present happened that they legally had to define what a black person was in order to so that they could you know treat them horribly So like that's how you know you're Black was a very good natured you were really and it's like when the immigrants come most immigrants come to this country they are treated horribly as though they are black and then hopefully one day for the for them that they can be considered white which has happened to most of the white population from the Irish to the Polish to Italian.

[00:33:52]
And all of this stuff happens because of of a cultural narrative. Right like the people who are in charge of the culture like he who controls the story holds the power. So whenever they can say anything about you they can do anything to you right so it's not even just a matter of a cultural a static like hey I have this culture that I really love and I want to share it with you but it is almost imperative in a very real political sense for you to have your own voice because when people say stuff about you you have this counter they often think of not just blackness is a as as a legal status but I also think that you're black people is a figment of America's imagination right like they had to create us in order to save us and then they have to have these these narratives they have to make up these narratives in order to do what they want to do with it so you have like the happy slave.

[00:35:00]
Right to maintain slavery you have the criminal black a menace which you know starts soon after reconstruction because they need a black labor and the only way they could do it was to imprison them so they come up with all these stories about how black people are doing all of this crazy stuff and so us as writers and I was a publisher like in a very real sense hocks to come out with all these different stories to just counter that narrative and it doesn't even matter what the story is like it can be like this ultra political thing it could be you know a sword and soul it could be other fantasy can be you know if superheroes will endeavor but the entire point is is that.

[00:35:44]
When these largest stories come that you have something to say to yourself but this isn't true and to the world at large the say those things are true in a lot of ways because we are dealing with an imagined landscape whether historical present or in the future that this is the round that I personally deal with as a writer.

[00:36:07]
Because you know right now we're dealing with the narrative that you know make America great again because America's always been this white country and America has never been to what country. It is always had a large brown population I mean we literally live in a country where the capital was not only built by black cans but the city itself was partially designed by a black person right but it's always been a white country and we can go on and on and go through all these different stats or whatever but I mean the fact is that this country has never been totally white in fact most people who classify themselves as white now weren't white in 1905 so.

[00:36:49]
This is an imagined thing but it's very real make America great again is a very real thing there are people who are being deported and I'm hoping the guy that it's not my family because of this I think there'd So we think that we're just like partaking in a culture just like seeing these stories but this is all very real like when you watch say a revolutionary war movie and one out of every 6 years is not black you're watching a fiction you're not watching anything historical right if you're watching old westerns right if one of every 4 persons is in black you're watching a fiction and it all wraps up into this real very real political reality so in a way is like a cultural producer you know my responsibility is to.

[00:37:42]
Address these imagined features and imagine passing these imagined presence even if I'm just doing it with my imagination and even if I'm just trying to make you laugh or of I'm trying to make you think so that's pretty much what I do. Not the crit out pretty quickly.

[00:38:04]
OK that's cool so did you want me to read something real quick. I. Says I think I'll have time for one little thing out. So. To give us a little idea of what I'm about 3 Joe said sometime Patriots was a kitchen sink novel as I say so there's all kinds of stuff in it but it's an anti-war novel but one of the things that I focused on was M M I on and I am on it OK All right Michael so one of the things I focused on was this one character named Cotto in Dealy which I care remember which language it is but it is the word actually means in the land of the spirits so one of the things that.

[00:39:04]
I want to explore with them because. The United are through these soldiers fight for is this basically this. Of earth is ruled by competing corporations so when they go off to fight in different wars they're actually fighting for corporations as opposed to countries. Thing but in this whole you know corporate world that they that they created.

[00:39:32]
Basically all these different cultures are wiped out for corporate interests so things are just so basically wherever you're from you pretty much don't know the history of where you're from or your own people so there's one guy. He's latched on to this idea of the ancestors and the spirits but he doesn't really know much about it so this whole time he's been kind of like creating is that setting himself up is like this this again is a voodoo priest in this holy band in this Schama and but meanwhile he's just making this all up.

[00:40:12]
Because he needs he needs that connection but he actually doesn't know what that connection is so at this one point when he's doing one of his. One of his ceremonies which is he's taking mouth mouth mouthfuls of rum and spitting into 4 different directions because he read about something that happens.

[00:40:34]
This alien presence kind of snatches it and then lets him go so he doesn't know what that is so right now he's just. Thinking about that. Actually if you don't mind. Perhaps that thing that it grabbed him had been the ancestors warning him telling him not to summon them until he properly knew how to do so a slight hint a tiny taste of the harm they could do to him if he continued his charade that couldn't explain why they grabbed a strap of and why they felt the need to kill good boy none of those poor middle has believed in the ancestors that.

[00:41:22]
Profess to know it could not have been the ancestors it had to have been something else what the hell they come to really know of the ancestors Anyway he knew a bit about plants and herbs and could heal a lot of ailments except bullet holes in leaves or ones that was the extent of his knowledge in amateur herbalist nothing more in the universe of the spirits come to him Billy was an imbecilic outsider why did he pantomime such otherworldly skills why did he act the wise man when he was no better than an idiot savant why.

[00:41:57]
Look at him and his fellow Fools the ones he'd been living and dying with for almost half his life the gyros gunner stood inside the large metal frame with one with his gun frogging at the mouth for any target because a chunk of it was actually not surfing but still sat in his usual catatonic blue stupor The lieutenant was popping bizerk others the best conflict resolution pharmaceutical in the market who will help you get up when you need to get down.

[00:42:25]
They made a grunt cocaine for an sick boil the testosterone and adrenaline murder frenzy the last thing the officer needed Rostropovich still probably feeling the vines around her throat had her picture cards out and was mumbling frantically that new kid just couldn't keep his eyes off the motherfucking Berber who seemed to be taking peculiar pleasure into pay as antics Jess was making funny face funny grunting grabbing faces in her new tattoo Tut tut to Tiger markings.

[00:42:57]
Excuse me why because he needed to after all the bloodshed on his hands come to a needed to feel absolved only the insane didn't seek absolution he desperately needed to be part of a world that made sense when that didn't snatch children from the rubble to die on some distant cold rock the ancestors called for his embrace or he for theirs it didn't matter who called whom the need was obviously there but they've been buried long ago beneath the chaos of United Earth the ancestors.

[00:43:27]
Repressions war marry out missions to many gullible Africans now they were fossilized forgotten hurried throughout childhood come to had seen their terrifying terrifyingly funny masks and costumes cannibal mocked on the hollows to the Ouagadougou street kid had been these comedies were sources of laughter for his model glue highs it had never occurred to the boy that these hollows were ridiculing him with each laugh he'd actually been making himself ever smaller Had it been that laughter that it close the door between the soldier and the ancestors now he constantly prayed for forgiveness he'd been a kid contrition radiating radiating from his bald head yet that heavy portal between them remained closed he could only spit white rubber mat it for 5 years now there was on his only leave in the 11 years of his service where he discovered the barrier the corporal then a part private had a company barber on his buddy's Earth tour he had planned to stay with and the entire way doing what celebrities friends do taking advantage of their friends' celebrity and to finally see again the plane he'd been fighting for all these years but in Cairo the sense of home what gives you was too strong the grunt had somehow had enough marks to make the trip across the shrinking Sahara he and Barbara separated for the 1st time since they'd been shaved together in the at the school of freedom Erin to further to further cement his legend and make commercials come to the end on.

[00:45:01]
He never made it back home and invisible hand broke his guided down in an anonymous Libyan Province town that place consisted of only underground hobbles our faces black smoke Disney refinery and sand the glider's shattered quote cooling system was going to take a while to fix the driver had said the entire tour was stranded and yes to ease them he roamed around aimlessly for the $32.00 minutes it had taken to circumnavigate the town the great returned Haley to the glider rested against its medals medal side and stared hallucinations at the refineries building black smoke a gentle desert breeze tumble to long the sand the fuchsia flyer pasted itself against him Billy's boots with nothing better to do he peeled off his leather and looked at it the paper which he could barely read an ounce a revival meeting of some ancient deteriorating woman who called herself loyally either to the Kosi E.Q. and this meeting was happening as M.B. Lee was reading Cotto had no clue what the meeting was all about but he was going to be a while in this hole of a desert town he started walking to where he guessed it might be being held suddenly a large bustling crowd appeared before his marijuana eyes he had no clue how he'd missed the large congregation on his walk where the hell had all these people come from and Billy followed the dour faces until they became so thick he knew he derives the flow bottlenecked into an unassuming hole in the ground everyone was hauntingly silence and look straight ahead into the entrance something was pulling him counsel had had to see what all the fuss was about he really worked his way through the teeming crowd until he was through the entrance into the large underground assembly hall and finally able to see this all ye its indeed Cosi goo woman was a spectacle just like those old.

[00:46:57]
Hollows he'd seen as a kid she was a slight black woman who. By the years her Obsidian head was sparsely dotted with a few grey curls her wrinkled face drooped to the floor chin joining her sagging breast she was biblical old dressed in a Technicolor robe and had a rainbow collection of color to be necklaces around her throat her gnarled arthritic hands clutched a wooden staff that had a bird carved on its head it looked like the women would crumble into dust before their eyes but when she began speaking thunder roared from her belly she had been in authority a power that overwhelmed and dropped people to their knees the krantz hall trembled in her words this woman spoke of an African never mentioned in the hollows of in Billy's memory in Africa pride and majesty and riches kingdoms warriors elephant hunters gods and ancestors that protected their people their children and gave them survival victory against the slavery and guns of the snow and Crescent I didn't Vader's the US has slipped away intimidated Cotto so uncontrollable tears streaming down his face a strange familiar magic opened before him and our invaded him sweat exploded from his pores in volleys the soldier suddenly found himself thriving epileptic epileptic on the floor thrashing wildly yet calm protected.