New Pop Lit

The Literary Reality Index

We live in a hyperfast electronic world with no space for humanity. We’re detached from reality. Most of our entertainment consists of escapes from, or bad simulations of, reality. The biggest part of the publishing business at the current time consists of various versions of fantasy. Sci-fi, romantasy, fake medieval pseudo-histories of thrones and dragons, lords of hobbits or robots, idiotic spaceships talking lions and what not. At their core, nonsense.

Recently I read (reread really) Mario Puzo’s little-known first novel, The Dark Arena, published in 1955. A tough narrative set in post-World War II Germany during the American occupation, when the landscape consisted of bombed-out ruins and life was brutal.

The novel wasn’t a hit when it came out. Too much reality. Maybe for the same reason, it’s been ignored by critics and cognoscenti in the decades since. A hard portrayal of societal chaos: perhaps a cautionary look at where we’re headed.

The book got me thinking about realistic fiction– though The Dark Arena might better be classified as Zolaesque naturalism. “Realism” in the context of a defanged literary world has always been a narrow version of the term. Guaranteed not to offend powers-that-be in the clubby world of the literati. Never going too deep into human nature and the human condition, much less the broader context of society and its layers of crimes and cruelties.

ANYWAY, some off-the-cuff reality ratings of several in-this-world novels:

-Wuthering Heights/Bronte: 92
-Bleak House/Dickens: 96
-The Idiot/Dostoevsky: 97
-The Dark Arena/Puzo: 98
-City for Conquest/Kandel: 98
-Don’t Stop the Carnival/Wouk: 88

OTHERS

-The Great Gatsby/Fitzgerald: 50
-Vineland/Pynchon: 40
-Harry Potter/Rowling: 20
-The Hobbit/Tolkien: 10

Thoughts? Suggestions? Let us know!

-K.W.

Billionaire Frenzy!

OUT-OF-CONTROL MONEY

(image c/o onlocationxp)

EPSTEIN FILES revelations are showing the true face of our corporate-financial overlords, and it’s not pretty. More like viewing a monster movie.

(image c/o Famous Monsters of Filmland)

IN A MOMENT of perfect timing, this Sunday is THE SUPERBOWL. (“Yaaay!”) Don’t expect regular people to be there. Hyper-expensive seats and skyboxes will be filled by corporate types, most of them there on your dime via tax write-offs and deductions as “business expenses.” Right now there are tighter restrictions on aid to the poor in order to pay for those at the top of the too-steep American hierarchy: those at the game.

The SUPERBOWL– where even the players are millionaires, some near-billionaires– is an orgiastic celebration of greed for the monied elite. The football stadium and its environs is the perfect setting for an out-of-control Epsteinesque party; sports stadiums perhaps the best example of how politicians, and by extension We the People, are manipulated and defrauded by Big Money. Billionaire team owners, like pampered five year-olds, threaten to take their toys elsewhere unless a city or state (taxpayers) help pay for the giant stadium along with endless subsidies and tax abatements. The owners almost always get their way.

(A possibly even more egregious example of sports excess is college football. Prestigious universities have become mere adjuncts to the money-generating sports teams.)

A NEW SCAM is being currently run by the wealthiest tech moguls on the planet in regard to data centers. “Build us more data centers! We need them for AI! Allow us to consume enormous amounts of water and energy– or we’ll locate in another state!” Tech guys could invent the Destroy Humanity Machine– maybe they have– and offer it as a gift, accompanied by empty promises, and hapless politicians would comply.

America today.

***

(Be sure to read this poem at our Fast Pop Lit site about the 2025 Super Bowl.)

(Also, we just posted a short humor piece there which includes an NFL player.)

-Karl Wenclas

“I Married an ICE Agent!”

NEW “FICTION”

(image c/o USA Today)

At the beginning of our marriage, my husband seemed normal.

The first thing which aroused my suspicion was his insistence on moving his own sofa into the modest house we’d bought.

“Honey, I thought we’d get a new matching living room set,” I told him. “There’s all kinds of sales going on right now.”

To that he stared, as if his best friend had died.

“You see, I’ve had my sofa a long time,” he explained. “I feel close to it.”

I said that was okay, too. Whatever he wanted. It was all okay. I was a new wife and was in love with him and wanted everything to be okay.

Looking back though, the first clue before our marriage was when we were handling the legal end of it. He was thrown that I had to send for a copy of my birth certificate. “You don’t have a birth certificate?” he asked, surprised.

“Oh, I have one. Had one, I mean. Or my parents had it, but I have no idea what happened to it. I mean, who ever needs their birth certificate? But it’s fine, there’s one on file. I’ll send for it.”

Then there was the eyebrow incident, when he realized my eyebrows were naturally dark. Black, actually.

“I didn’t know your eyebrows were so . . . dark,” he remarked, touching them with his finger early one morning.

“Of course they are, silly!” I said. “It’s my Slavic background on my mom’s side. She always said we had some Tartar blood in us. Did you think it was make-up? Besides, thick black eyebrows are the style right now.”

“Tartar?” he said.

Don’t get me wrong. By all indicators he was a good husband. He made very good money. Many bonuses. Though he was always vague about what he actually did.

“A government job,” he’d say. “Removals, er, maintenance. Cleaning things up.”

He’d leave early morning with a large duffel bag crammed with what he said were clothes and “work stuff.”

Then there was his attitude toward my doctor.

“You have an Indian doctor?” he asked, shocked. “Do you really have to see him?”

There were his pat-downs of me, which he explained as foreplay, and then wanting to put me into handcuffs. Or his practicing barreling through doors, which he rationalized as exercise. Or the time I caught him down the basement late at night listening to German martial music. I thought I glimpsed his arm go up in a straight-armed salute, but I wasn’t sure.

Eventually, as media stories about ICE began to appear, he’d steer me away from watching television. “Er, that’s not about us,” he’d say. “Not our concern.” Then the TV stopped working altogether. The cord to plug it in had been cut.

The next day he decided we had to move from the house. “Temporarily,” he said. “I hope.”

A suitcase for himself was already packed. He brought mine out from a closet. “Hurry!” he said. “Grab some clothes. Load it up.”

His duffel bag waited in the back of the truck. He handed me a blue ski mask.

“Here, put it on,” he requested. “Just do it”– as he wrapped a green scarf around his own head, only his hazel eyes and pale eyebrows visible above it.

We clambered into the truck. Outraged demonstrators filled our street. Their outrage was directed at us. In the truck, engine coughing to life, we drove fast up curbs and down alleys to get away. The mob continued to follow. Whistles and shouting. In the distance ahead of us, another angry crowd, carrying signs while growing ever larger.

I thought then to ask a question that’d been on my mind.

“Honey, do you work for ICE?”

-K. Wenclas

The Humidorean Reaction

COUNTERREVOLT OF PROFESSORS AND CIGARS

(images c/o storablesdotcom)

TO EVERY CHANGE there ‘s an inevitable reaction. We’ve been seeing this in American culture– higher levels of the academy anyway– via expressions of outrage about DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) programs designed to level the playing field amid inevitable advantages built-in to our society, especially upper levels of society, over 250 years.

The Great Reaction has begun! An attempt by some of the most privileged members of society to return to a never-fair-or-efficient status quo. Ivy League voices are at the forefront of the sudden noisemaking.

Like pricey cigars, much expense went into creating them. Private schools. Tutors for standardized exams. Everything paid for. Much care and nurturing. They were made in a climate-controlled or climate-friendly environment, and have been stored in humidors to ensure their delicate constitutions are preserved without disruption.

Now, suddenly, the expensive cigars, er, I mean, intellectuals, have risen in outrage! Aristocrats on the march! Upset at mere hints at mild changes to their privileged environment. The status quo must be maintained! The prospect of change is intolerable to them.

Study the biographies of the loudest voices against DEI programs actual or proposed (those in support of the Jacob Savage Compact Mag essay), and you see they themselves have not been inconvenienced. The thought of potential inconvenience was quite enough to set them off.

Most of them in fact benefited throughout their lives from family connections and class background, were recipients of a very different kind of affirmative action program. One to ensure they’d always remain, at home, school, or work, within their comfortably safe humidors!

-KW

Worst ChristmasMovie Ever?

IS POLAR EXPRESS THE WORST CHRISTMAS MOVIE?

COMBINE really bad digital animation, a thudding soundtrack, Grade B imitation John Williams score, Grade C imitation Spielberg direction, Tom Hanks, and a cynically manipulative pull-out-all-stops plot, and you have, if not the worst Christmas movie ever, the most irritating. Being subjected to watching it at relatives’ homes, or at the stray coffee shop or saloon cluelessly playing it this time of year, is akin to being tortured by Nazis. The impulse being to scream, “I’ll talk! I’ll talk! Just shut it off!!”

BUT MAYBE you believe there are other Christmas movies out there even worse. If so, let us know in the comments.

Not-the-Usual-Suspects Reading List

LITERARY UNORTHODOXY

With everyone and his doppelganger posting their recommended literary reading list, I’ve decided to post mine.

These are books to read in part because few in today’s literary community suggest reading them. The idea being to find new sources of influence, and thereby, perhaps, discover new ways of writing a novel or story.

Anyway, here are my “Top Ten” suggested novels to read, with brief reasons why you should read them.

1.) The Octopus (1901) by Frank Norris.

About a monstrous business monopoly crushing independent ranchers in a California valley. As timely today, when our economy is run by gigantic companies and ruthless business monopolies.

2.) City for Conquest (1936) by Aben Kandel.

How New York City became New York City. A mass of realism, from the ground up. The kind of writing which is never, ever published now.

3.) Guard of Honor (1948) by James Gould Cozzens.

A three-day examination of problems and personalities on a U.S. Army Air Corps base during the Second World War. An inside look at the creation of American empire. Wonderfully structured. An organization as a system or machine, near-breakdowns included.

4.) Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Shelley.

Amazingly intelligent and well-written. A portrayal of A.I. 200 years before A.I., philosophical questions included.

5.) Farewell My Lovely (1940) by Raymond Chandler.

The genre novel as art. Unsurpassed atmosphere and style.

6.) Villette (1853) by Charlotte Bronte.

Described as a romance, it’s really a mystery– the mystery of personality– with no fantasy, although there is an unforgettable dream(?) sequence.

7.) Passage of Arms (1959) by Eric Ambler.

Arms dealers, terrorists, tourists, entrepreneurs, prisons, government bureaucrats– a timely and timeless look at how the world works. One of a number of Ambler novels which could’ve been included.

8.) God’s Little Acre (1933) by Erskine Caldwell.

Amid the broad, white-trash humor and steamy sex scenes is a subplot about the industrialization of the South, including a strike at a low-pay, harsh-conditions factory. Some Great Depression reality.

9.) She (1887) by H. Rider Haggard.

Likely not politically correct, as the setting is British imperialism in deepest Africa– but the actual journey the adventurers undertake is inside the human mind. Into passages of the subconscious, encountering there the ultimate woman.

10.) The Crimson Circle (1922) by Edgar Wallace.

A pop mystery novel about a secret organization of criminals. Why aren’t novels today this exciting?

***

NOTE #1: New Pop Lit‘s Contributing Editor Kathleen M. Crane does not like this list, and will be offering her own, soon.

NOTE #2: The idea behind my list is to offer a difference from the predictable literary norm. What’s the point of a reading list if it’s the same one a college professor would hand you? What? You say a college professor did put together one of those other lists?

NOTE #3: Most of the novels on this list– with the exception of #3– contain strong pop elements of some kind, are not just intelligent, in a variety of ways, but fun to read. Isn’t that what it’s ultimately about: to get people reading?

-Karl Wenclas

“The View of the Gang”

An Excerpt from The Loud Boys.

While the exchange between captor and captive took place, the gang stared– gaped– at the female body in their midst, which stood before them with tangible presence, as if gigantically tall.

They felt her vibration, her reality. Representation to them of waiting fertility and vulnerability– for many of them a living symbol of their dreams and disappointments. Their failures. A few hated her. Others wanted her, lusted after her, without thinking consciously about her. Innate drives and frustrations kicked in. There in front of them, the waiting woman, to have or ravish– hungers which might or might not be displaced and satiated by the promise and anticipation of beer and pizza.

(The Loud Boys is now available at Nook, Kobo, and Kindle.)

“Press Conference”

AN EXCERPT FROM THE TOWER BY KING WENCLAS

“Bobo!” Rick Romeo barked. “The press conference begins in twelve minutes. You have to be there.”

The bizarre looking mascot, who’d been skulking around the facility, raised a costume hand in acknowledgement while running off. Not necessarily in the right direction. The stadium was so huge, had so many levels, turns, and byways, corridors of blue, orange, or green, Rick wasn’t sure the mascot knew where he was going. But if anyone knew the facility better than Rick did it was Bobo.

A gum chewing office staffer named Connie ran up to Rick with what she said were seven important phone messages come in during the last thirty minutes. They’d been scratched onto memo pad sheets with imprinted cartoon characters on them, “URGENT!” written in thick letters at the top of each one in Connie’s exaggerated handwriting. Connie’s hyperbolic personality was easily sent into high gear by impressive voices on the phone.

Were they now using unauthorized memo pads? Tychon wanted everything in the office to carry the team logo.

Rick perused the memos while Connie stared brazenly at his face, which a few of the young female staffers were fond of doing. Rick ignored that.

“They’re very important,” Connie said, still chewing gum, any moment about to blow a bubble.

Connie’s south side accent jarred in this environment. She came from Rick’s own sprawling neighborhood. Anna’s revenge– he’d chastized Anna once for hiring from the mass of applications only dull-witted rich kids from the Old Line. Rick noticed one of the calls was from the mayor’s office.

They stood in a wide, blue carpeted walkway on the second level. Rick’s eyes became distracted by activity outside the sweeping glass window to the side. He spoke into his hand-held radio.

“Keep that flake Sheila away from the entrance,” he told his security force.

Sheila was a street artist who hung around the stadium painting portraits of anyone who gave her a few bucks. She kept up on anything happening here, as today. Rick had chased her off more than once. Keeping unlicensed vendors off the property was a constant battle. Tychon ordained all concessions be in-house.

Rick’s radio beeped while Connie continued to stare at his face.

“Reporters filing in,” a voice informed him.

“Ten-four,” Rick responded. “Keep me apprised when the coach appears. Bobo also.”

“Ten-four. Out here.”

Rick hadn’t decided if the team mascot was crazy or just stupid. He had different worries about the head coach. Young Connie, who was nineteen, popped a gum bubble. He handed her back the memos.

“Connie, they’ll just have to wait.”

Rick was already striding down a corridor to get to the media room.

The head coach was a special problem, a laconic type from the deep South, that if you asked him something he’d take five minutes to answer, accompanied by sighs, grunts, and coughs which indicated either weariness or total disgust. If forced to talk it’d be with a glare through eye slits in his bulldog white face. He used this effectively on reporters, adding to his every response the attitude of, “You must be really stupid for asking me that.”

The coach held undisguised contempt for East Coast journalists. In his way, he was as arrogant as Tychon or Rick Romeo. Rick worried the coach would have enough of this circus and leave.

Rick walked briskly toward the Media Room, scanning broad walkways for stray journalists. Various security personnel signaled A-OK. His radio beeped. The voice of McGunn, Rick’s second-in-command.

“Coach is in the room,” McGunn said. “Polka Dot arriving now.”

Polka Dot! The delinquent clown. Possibly the worst looking mascot in the league. Tychon had designed the costume himself– one of his few creations to go wrong.

Rick Romeo positioned himself in the open entrance to the Media Room, prior to closing the doors. Sports reporters holding cups of coffee took their seats inside. Grabbing chairs at the back were several stadium staffers, including Anna; Todd, the sales manager; and a couple from Legal engaged in a poorly hidden romantic affair. The coach’s press conferences were a good place to hide, to flirt, or to sleep. Several reporters already were yawning.

As Rick turned, his hand on one of the doors, an aggressive redhead stared through him as if her eyes could command him out of the way. Though she barely came much above the height of his chin, her demeanor suggested she would stomp him into the carpeting if he didn’t make room for her. She wore press credentials around her neck. A spoiled brat journalist.

“You know the rules– or should,” Rick said. “The coach doesn’t like latecomers.”

“Who are you?” she asked. “Mr. Authority? Lord of the Stadium? Keeper of the Door?”

He continued to block her way as they sized up each other. She crossed her arms and looked at him with amusement.

“Are you made of granite?” she asked. “Are you square and fit into a box?” Then she brushed away his arm and entered the room.

The sideshow began. Bobo stood in the right front corner, fidgeting noticeably. A full contingent of reporters. Team colors of blue, green, and orange criss-crossed the ceiling and walls in broad strokes. At the podium, an indolent, insolent coach. The coach grimaced and pointed. Questions began.

The first questions focused on the condition of the defense and prospect of stopping the Laser a few games from now. The encounter would test the team’s progress.

As Rick watched, his brain signaled a warning. He became alert, wondering what was happening. The snippy redhead had moved herself into the front row. Oh shit. This could be trouble. Rick was trained to anticipate problems. He saw one now. His hand instinctively went to his radio, in the same way, in a different situation, it would’ve reflexively grabbed a weapon.

The coach drawled out an answer to another softball question. He knew by now the easy reporters. But, the redhead– she’d positioned herself closer to the center of the row, reseating the stooges of the press. Having her way with them. In control. The coach blinked, pointed– at her.

“Coach, what I’d like to know”– a clear and strong voice– “is your opinion of this facility. This beautiful stadium which you and your team are privileged to use.”

Rick moved closer up the side aisle.

“Yes, ma’am,” the coach said.

“Are you aware, Coach, that the public paid for this, for all this largesse, including the luncheon we’re going to feast on afterward?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“That the possessor of all this, this magnificent palace, paid for by we the taxpayers, one Arthur Tychon, still owes the city millions of dollars and no one not anybody will talk about it? Least of all the lapdogs of the official media?”

Rick brushed past the mascot to position himself behind the coach. The redhead scanned around herself.

“Is there one of you with an activated mind?” she asked. “Or are you so used to Tychon doing your thinking for you you’ve forgotten how to engage your brains? Are you jellyfish? Do you care that this mad sport, the entire business, is a reflection of caste, or that the athletes like disposable gladiators pumped up by hormones and drugs are destroying their brains and bodies, that many of them will be dead by age fifty, or disabled, or brain damaged, all to sustain profits for a handful of plutocrats? You study plays between the lines, you scribes of the press– you journalistic experts– you analyze and debate every trivial detail, but are unable to see outside the lines to notice more meaningful and dangerous plays taking place in boardrooms, more significant and expensive plays, I assure you. Isn’t that right, Coach?” The coach gurgled and sighed and cleared his throat a few times.

“I’m a football coach, ma’am.”

The reporters she’d called lapdogs were furiously sending texts and tweets. They’d recognized the voice as soon as she began speaking. The same message they sent via cellphones went up immediately as headlines on local news websites: “It’s Her!”

Microphones and tape recorders pointed in her direction. Cellphone cameras and professional photographers clicked away. Rick Romeo stepped in front of the coach and grabbed the microphone.

“Do you have another question?”

“I have a lot of questions!”

Her eyes weren’t intimidated by his. Their eyes collided. Rick stepped back.

On her way out, amid the tumult, she ran hard into Bobo, who did a reverse somersault and landed on his back, where he remained for a full minute. No one could tell if his injury was real or an act.

Newspaper headlines the next day: “IT’S HER!” “CRUSADER REVEALED.” “THE BEAUTY BEHIND THE VOICE.”

(The Tower is available here.)

“The Princess”

Chapter Three of an unfinished novel, Nightmares of Detroit

(Read Chapter One here.)

(Read Chapter Two here.)

The Sewer Rat was now in a worse environment, amid the remains of enormous factories which made him feel like an ant. He was in Hell itself. On his face dropped the polluted smell; on all sides the steel strewn lots and towering furnaces of the industrial world. The furnace of the city yet operated; that which had once powered the entire planet. Black iron outlines against cascades of red. Roaring huge semi-trucks bursting from fenced-in yards, Sewer Rat almost run over without being seen by the monsters. They were far worse than the dogs. The tires of Rat’s bike went punctured and flat from nails and metalled scrap. (His feet were protected by steel-toed boots.)

Sewer Rat raised the bike over his shoulder and walked in-between narrow spaces next to fences. On one side spread the remaining industry of southwest Detroit; on the other, to his left, as if he could fall over an edge into it, lay the surging river of the straits of Detroit which grew in power as it went downriver before exploding in one last force of release toward Lake Erie; gigantic terminals and factories rising like a wall around it. A spectacular picture. Behind, he knew, without seeing it, was the Ambassador Bridge. He saw everything in his mind’s eye. This was a hard inhuman world of inhuman scale. The hardest world. The toughest city. How could any living creature survive in it? Only rats could.

The man turned his path away from the river toward a large railroad yard spreading between the monster factories; a gray repository of pollution which made the ideal hiding place. The Rat had worked in it when he was in his early twenties, ten years ago or so. He knew the yard well.

As he walked to it, up a slowly rising hill, across an avenue, he passed a black-spired Catholic church built by Hungarians or Poles a hundred years ago, now closed. He passed dingy gray shops and saloons which still served stray workers, hiding aged old-time residents, and impoverished black welfare mothers; even a scattering of Mexican newcomers; sparks of life in a city written off as dead. The people were as beaten-down as their environment. He passed a soot-coated cemetery of decaying monuments which no one visited. The relatives of the dead had abandoned the city decades ago. Ahead he could barely see– only because he looked for it– the silhouette of the railroad tower that was his destination.

Still carrying the bike, heavy and painful now on his shoulder, the Rat climbed a steep hill of weeds buried in snow. He clutched desperately with his left hand for a grip, his hands cold with his gloves gone. He arrived at the top and gulped cold air, his eyes alert. Silently and carefully he stepped toward the shape of the gray tower when movement noise a shadow a pair of searing large eyes caught his attention– he hissed his mouth snapped eyes bristled the bike off his shoulder thrust behind him as he grabbed the human in Rat’s territory with both hands around the throat. “Yikes!” he heard in the squeak of a soft voice before he squeezed the life out of the person. In his hesitation he felt surprisingly strong hands around his wrists while he stared with shock into a young white woman’s face. Helpless before her strength or her illusory beauty he stopped his fight. He stepped back or was pushed back.

“Hi there,” the girl said after a pause, regaining her composure, though her lips trembled.

She carried the bearing of a training he’d never encountered. It occurred to the Rat that he knew who she was, had heard of her the way one hears of personages of a city, such as Mr. Five; such as himself.

“Don’t trust any white woman in Detroit with good teeth,” his lunatic brother with admonishing finger had advised him once. “They’re undercover cops. No one else has health care.”

This girl had fine teeth yet looked too young to be an undercover agent. She continued shaking, her stoic front unable to hide her fear. The Rat grunted. “Follow me,” he told her.

He glanced behind him to make sure she did. The young woman wore a new looking poncho and baggy trousers, was lean and almost his height. Her large eyes reflected what little stray light existed in this long railyard through which few trains any longer passed. They approached a gray vertical tower blending into, yet at the same time looming out of, the noxious sky.

“Wait here,” he said as he disappeared along the side of it and reappeared with a long crowbar he’d hidden: the tool of bar-men who opened rail cars and banged them shut. The rat saw an image of three gleaming puller engines bringing trains out of the underground rail tunnel from Canada with tremendous power. Before seeing them one would hear them coming in a roar of noise, vibration shaking the tower, its walls and floors, three yellow diesel engines pulling a hundred-car train leaving a layer of soot on everything as they went by.

It was a big joke in the Del Ray neighborhood years ago that Hungarian immigrants would hang their just-washed sheets on clothes-lines behind their shack houses only to see the white sheets tint brown from the polluting shops, slaughterhouse glue factories, and diesel engines of the neighborhood– as well as from the huge smokestacks of the nearby Mammoth complex. Bizarrely, the never-ending pollution had been a sign of economic health: available jobs. Now that most of the jobs were gone, only the layers of pollution were left.

The Rat used the crowbar to force open the heavy metal door into the tower. The girl hesitated. “It’s getting colder,” he said, motioning toward the sky. “This is refuge.” She stepped in and he pulled the heavy door closed behind them.

He was out-of-practice talking to women. Try not to scare her, he thought, though some quality about her scared him. It was a factor beyond his comprehension– maybe that, unlike with the dogs, he was now encountering an animal more intelligent than himself. With an instinct of survival he sensed this. The question was whether she realized it herself.

Yes, he’d heard about the girl, a runaway from the declining neighborhoods of Grosse Pointe; the once-glamorous haven of the automotive rich which was now in a state of collapse. The turning clock. “The Princess,” people called her. He’d wondered if she existed for real and now she was right in front of him.

The building smelled of sulfur, soot, and urine. The Rat made his way up the metal stairs which rose in darkness. The girl followed. They passed several doors numbered “2,” “3,” “4,” in large bright painted letters before Rat pulled one open. They entered a room at the top of the tower, window overlooking the entire yard.

Beyond lay the awesome smokestacks of Mammoth Motors pouring lighted clouds of fiery orange smoke toward the heavens. A living beast. It never failed to be an impressive sight for him. Once it’d been the wonder of the world. “The Arsenal of Democracy”: At its birth the greatest industrial complex ever known. Yet it throbbed! The company a heartbeat away from bankruptcy but not silent yet. What maneuverings took place to save this corporation, this city, in the offices of their headquarters; what conversations between the powerful executives, their many designers and engineers? They existed in a circle of activity and knowledge far above him.

The girl continued to shiver, a look of displeasure on her features.

“The john’s in the basement, all the way down,” he told her. “Kind of smells.” A men’s john at that. Underground dungeons. He’d have to use it himself. For now he took off his jacket and pulled blankets out of a steel locker against the wall. Two large gray metal desks faced each other in the center of the room.

“Do I have to walk all the way down there?” she complained. “I mean, is that the only one?”

Preppy irritation; unwillingness to walk alone through the unfamiliar darkness of the solid structure. Then she was gone. Again, something about her cautioned him: a ready ability to overcome fear.

As he gazed at the belching old smokestacks which never stopped, he sensed that everything was related. The sweep of police cars and helicopters were connected to the fate of what sat like a resting giant before him. Did someone feel they could save Detroit by capturing the likes of him? A last desperate battle for control had opened. The girl returned and the Sewer Rat shut down his thoughts.

-Karl Wenclas