The Glacier Read Online Free PDF Page B

reads:
Event Horizon
.
    Robert hesitates a moment longer.
    ROBERT
    (sheepishly)
    How do you know?
    SAMSON
    How do I know what?
    ROBERT
    If it kills you, then how do you know what it does? Before that, I mean.
    Samson grins.
    SAMSON
    Now that would be something of a conundrum, wouldn’t it?
    ***
    The surveyor’s Chevy Suburban travels down a cold country road on its way to the next job site.
    Gunner drives. Sue rides shotgun and fusses with the radio, searching for a station. Jonah sits in the backseat, looking out the window at the passing countryside and making notes in his notebook.
    Gunner adjusts his rearview mirror.
    GUNNER
    You sure don’t say much, do you?
    SUE
    What?
    GUNNER
    Not you, Nancy. It’s no wonder you don’t have a girlfriend.
    From the backseat, Jonah sees Gunner looking at him in the rearview mirror.
    JONAH
    What?
    GUNNER
    Are you guys deaf?
    SUE
    Leave him alone, Gunner.
    GUNNER
    I’ve noticed that you’re always writing stuff down.
    JONAH
    Oh? Yeah, here and there. Just making some notes…
    GUNNER
    That’s what I just said.
    Gunner watches him in the mirror.
    GUNNER
    What are you writing?
    JONAH
    Aw, I don’t know. Just thoughts, observations. Poems. They’re kind of difficult to explain.
    GUNNER
    That doesn’t sound so difficult. Give it a shot. We like poems, don’t we, Sue? We’re not completely stupid.
    SUE
    Yeah, sure. I mean, no.
    JONAH
    No, I didn’t mean it like that. I’m just not sure how to explain them.
    GUNNER
    Well why don’t you read something for us?
    SUE
    Oh, Gunner, would you leave him alone.
    GUNNER
    I’m just making conversation.
    SUE
    Well, quit being an asshole.
    GUNNER
    I’m not being an asshole. He said he writes things down. I’m just curious what he writes down.
    SUE
    Did you ever think that maybe it’s none of your business?
    GUNNER
    If it were my business then I wouldn’t have to ask about it.
    SUE
    Well maybe if you weren’t such an asshole to begin with—
    Gunner slams on the brakes. Sue slams into the dash, spilling coffee all over the windshield as Jonah slams into the back of Sue’s seat. The truck screeches to a halt in the middle of the road.
    GUNNER
    There. Now I’m being an asshole. I wanna hear what he has to say. It’s not gonna kill us, is it? Now read.
    JONAH
    But it’s just, uh…
    Jonah reluctantly flips through a few pages.
    Gunner turns around in his seat.
    GUNNER
    I said read, goddammit. Read!
    Jonah quickly chooses a passage and in his smooth Midwestern drawl, reads.
    JONAH
    â€”from a singularity on that line dividing silence from complexity. It came like a great tide, sweeping them away. A continual, invisible explosion of white heat particles twinkling and glittering in the ether between entropy and determination. Suspended and informed somehow, and brutally awake. A throbbing nerve node. Arced-mass breathing in the curvature of space as if released from its cage of flesh and skull in one precise flash. Titanium veins pounding with incandescent armies of nano-teleology. Bursting vessels of—
    SUE
    (cutting in, quickly)
    Well I’d say that is a little different. No offense. Gunner, would you mind if we kept moving here?
    GUNNER
    Read some more.
    Sue huffs and rolls his eyes. Jonah glances nervously between the two men and then continues.
    JONAH
    In the zone of twilight between the deep past and the deep future, we are living our deaths and dreaming our lives. Across the ecstatic memory of the present how could it be otherwise? Hunt like a swallow in the last cavity of evening light because dusk is forgiveness and the fire in the tree is burning down heaven.
    The men are quiet. The radio snows a soft flurry of static. Jonah shifts uncomfortably. Gunner gently switches off the radio.
    He clears his throat.
    GUNNER
    Say that last part again.
    JONAH
    Um… the fire in the tree is burning down heaven. Beauty and cruelty are so close