DISPATCHES, ROCKETS, & SALTY AIR:
When Kryses Ambiryde received his letter of admission to the University of B.S., it was simultaneously the best and worst moment of his tragically short life. The kid had found the dispatch sitting on top of his unmade bed; the two hundred and ninety-nine square foot living cell was saturated with essences of a devastated post-hurricane scene. Twenty minutes prior to the reception of this so-called "golden ticket," Kryses had been doing his best in-coffin-impression while body-surfing the local shore-pound barrels of Head-Case Beach. Getting as deep as possible in the fluid cylinders was an obsession beyond all obsessions; Kryses Ambiryde lived, breathed, and slept with an intimate desire to be in the tube. Of all the “extreme” activities the aspiring alpha participated in, his most beloved was that violently poetic interaction with Mother Ocean. Slip-sliding down a fluid permaflux-surface only to end the whole experience by getting pile-driven into oblivion; this was an acceptable metaphor for the life that Kryses Ambiryde was interested pursuing.
As he strolled into the modest A-frame house located in the beachfront neighborhood nook known as Sepueday, his mother Tethys had alerted him to the impending news of his fate.
“Kry darling, you have a letter from the University on your bed, which I must say looks a trite thrashed. Looks like someone may have been accepted….” she said, in an optimistic tone that seemed to be on a continual ascent in pitch. Tethys was known for this manner of speech, which served the purpose of making any statement seem like a positive one, regardless of what content lie behind the high-pitched utterances. Kryses was reassured of his mother’s perpetual empathy once again in her attempt at nagging him in that maternal way. The fact was, Tethys was far too nice to ever really sound like a nag.
“I really don’t see how you sleep in that room of yours. I mean, really. Don’t you ever feel like when you live in a messy room it is bound to influence the state of your mind? How are you supposed to be organized and efficient in your college studies if you don’t live in a clean and organized room?”
“Save it-” he blurted out, which unfortunately came out much more sharply than he had intended, and to which he immediately regretted saying. It's not that Kryses didn’t love being criticized by his mother, because he actually more than loved it, he necessitated it. The boy had exhibited signs of instability since early childhood, so it helped to have an understanding mom that would help keep his head screwed on. Often, he thought of his mother as his saving grace, and expressed how much he owed her his life- that is if he owed anybody anything. But Kry never gave two shit's about cleaning his room. “Not two shit's,” he would tell Tethys proudly and defiantly. The boy was always speaking of some sort of social condition that was grown out of humanity’s need to be efficient, and cleaning one’s room was right in line with the methods that were out to control the would-be rebel. Kryses told himself that he didn’t believe in doing things like cleaning your room, ultimately because it served no purpose.
“Teachers, psychiatrists, judges, wardens, politicians- all telling you to clean your fucking room or else. Or else what?” he yelled back. This kind of poking and prodding of authority was one of the major sources of entertainment in Kryses’ life, manifesting itself in every aspect of his identity within the world he was brought up in.
Although he acted like he was uninterested in the contents of the letter from the University of B.S., Kryses could hardly hold himself back from running into his room in his hurried attempt to get to the core of the matter. The boy had grown up in the smallish enclave of Sepueday all of his life; coincidentally, this was the same site that was home to one of the most prestigious state-run public universities in the country. The University of B.S. demanded most of the economic attention of the neighborhood, carrying with it an almost God-like aura of pecuniary grace and benevolence. Most of the inhabitants of the City of Sepueday earned their daily bread in some way or another from the institution, Kryses’ parents included. Acceptance to the University for the local inhabitants had thus always been a dream, especially because it was viewed for those of the lower social classes as a means of upward social mobility (read: the sovereign good of one’s life purpose). The University of B.S. handed out certificates of increased societal status every June, and Kryses Ambiryde had dreamed of walking in their ranks since he was a young lad.
The envelope Kryses received was large; the eight by ten size that usually implies acceptance rather than the normal envelope size, which everyone knew implied denial. The smaller envelopes clearly had no space for acceptance forms, financial aid applications, and long congratulatory manuscripts bearing the electronic insignia of the Dean of the University. Observant as ever with his piercing blue eyes, Kryses already knew the context of the contents; no doubt he was to be accepted into the institution and would soon be on his ascent up the American Ladder. After letting out a sigh of relief, the boy picked up the glistening black packet and opened it- first cracking the official seal, and then pulling out the large stack of stapled leaflets, reading aloud the first sentence of the cover page to himself:
“Congratulations, Mr. Ambiryde. You are officially accepted into the University of B.S., which as you know is listed as one of the top five State-run Institutions on the West Coast, and shall thus be your launch pad to future opportunities of unimaginable proportions!”
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The University’s launch site had been hurling objects of varying intentions into space since 1969- right after the first man had set foot on the moon. The Cold War progeny known as the space-race, supposedly started by the Roosky’s and their 1957 launch of the satellite Sputnik, gave rise to the modern disaster that the University of BS would inevitably become. The United State’s new national-security-based demand for scientific innovation on the Final Frontier was the flagellum responsible for the penetration of the University’s fertile educational ovum. Shagging, coitus, intercourse, sex, boning, fucking- all perfect descriptions of the relationship between the Military and the University that would eventually produce the sinister zygote known as the Offensive Missile Defense Program. The Military acted as the evil stepfather of the innocent young promising University, and as it happened the subsequent rape of the latter by the former produced offspring that should have been aborted, flushed, murdered, slain. Unfortunately shit doesn’t happen that way under the orthodox tenets of Civil Protestantism. The inception of the OMD Program came with large federal grants, and with that money the University bought the coastal neighborhood of Sepueday in 1968. At that time, the town was the only land barrier between the institution’s southern boundary and the deep vast blue.
Tracy Holmes, the then Dean of the University, explained the prerogatives of the institution in purchasing the deteriorated neighborhood in his annual Status Power-Update Address,
“...Given the highly experimental and therefore hazardous nature of our ascension of objects out of this world, the University’s Advisers have acted to choose a launch site that would provide the function of a safety net, particularly in terms of the inevitable debris that will be falling from the sky due to our persistent testing. It seems that the best option is the residential area of Sepueday, for it straddles the zone between the ocean and our launch site and would be the perfect area for minimal public outcry in the tragic yet unlikely event that loss of life occurs among the local residents.
"MAKE NO MISTAKE,” Holmes suddenly bursted while pounding the podium with a clenched fist, his tone growing more seething with each breath, “it is a dangerous world out there filled with evildoers. In an environment of global anarchy, it is our job as the only benevolent hegemon in the historical record to provide an adequate safety-umbrella under which the whole of the free world may find solace and security. As we find ourselves in the precarious position of privilege in this so-called ‘Cold War’, education is of vital national importance. When I say this, I do NOT mean to endorse those barefoot pony-tailed freaks that write poetry about how wrong it is to eat meat. When the Russians or the Chinese come knocking your door down, the last thing you want as a defense is a nation whose elite population is saturated with pacifist sissies preaching values of peace, love and non-violence. No no… when I say education is of vital national importance, I am talking about the chemists and the physicists and the engineers and the geneticists and the atomists. Poetry never contributed a God-damned thing to our Security Umbrella, however someday in the near future these young scientists will.”
With a swift stroke of his red ballpoint pen, Dean Holmes used the OMD blood money to turn this fringe neighborhood into a government-controlled property, delegating to it the new responsibility of extending support to the burgeoning Military Industrial Complex.
Prior to the creation of the OMD Program, the UBS had been relegated to the middle tier of state-run educational institutions. This was primarily because it was viewed as a place where lazy pot-smoking deadhead surfer types spent their parent’s inflated home equity on what could easily be described as a Club Med academic experience. Accomplished scholars of the fun-hating variety scoffed at the early UBS, dubbing it less of a school and more of a resort. (We’ll disregard the simple fact that most of these serious scholars come from geographical areas where the weather, and the overall lifestyle in general, basically sucks balls.) Writers, artists, musicians, dramatists, and other economically unproductive forms of hippy academics dominated the sleepy beachside academy in its early days.
Situated atop a series of rolling green bluffs overlooking the ocean, the University site was peppered with a broad swath of surf breaks below the cliffs, varying from barnyard-beginner paradises to world-class shreddable points. A true geographic gem of the California coast, Sepueday provided a perfect environment for a blossoming socioartistic community. The town's air possessed a crisp saltiness that seduced the nostrils in the same way that a home cooked meal at mom’s house might. In fact, the smell would even come as a relief for those lucky to experience it enough to become accustomed to it. Anytime that Kryses would have to leave town for a family function, such as the obligatory familial celebrations of Jesus’ highly suspect birth and death, he would anxiously fiend the smell of the ocean on the drive West from the Central Valley, and would always be the first to roll his window down once the vast blue was within reach of his olfactory fingertips.
Technological and scientific advancement became the central goal of the institution in a gradual manner; it wasn’t exactly zero-to-sixty in five seconds. The purist ideals the old University harbored didn’t get brought to their knees over night. It wasn’t as if government henchmen showed up during hours of darkness gagging and bagging the liberal artsy professors who decried the increasingly scientifically managed University system. Rather, much of what caused the demise of the University- (specifically its ability to hand out a quality education)- had ironically been the subsequent result of its initial successes.
During the immediate period following World War II, a college education was still a rare and valuable asset. Upon their glorious victorious return, hundreds of thousands of GI Joe’s bought single-family homes for the first time. The White Middle Class pounced on the opportunity to create and sanitize their own bleached-white tract-house Levittowns. Behind closed doors in these Disney stencil communities, GI Joe fucked his dirty housewife non-stop like a rabbit, churning out new babies with new souls by the dozens. A little material prosperity and an abundance of privacy blazed the trail for an orgy of traditionalism and the creation of the suburban Baby Boomer generation. These newly prosperous patriarchs, embedded with all of their civil protestant values, saw to it that their kids attended the best educational system in the world (which happened to be in their own backyard). However, throughout this period the cost of a college education was drastically cheaper than in today's world. So while the usual elites gained entry onto the societal launch pad, those with more disadvantaged backgrounds who had showed merit and tenacity in the lower levels of the crooked public education system were allowed to attend the publicly provided circus as well.
If the entry rate for educational systems such as the University was at the pressure of the average household sink prior to WWII, then the Baby Boomers had the violent effect of Birmingham fire hose. The survival of the University thus necessitated a swift and innovative accommodation, and the old adage of so-and-so being blah-blah’s mom prevailed. Administrators of this sacred faceless educational entity were charged to draw on the principals of scientific management as a solution to the efficiency problem that their university was facing.
Efficiency is the holy grail of scientific managers everywhere, yet its methods carried ambivalent consequences for the actual substance of the education that the school handed out. It was true that many people who had previously not received a post-high school level of education (if that) were now afforded the opportunity to compete in the mythical meritocracy of the American economy. But shit also got real impersonal.
To see manifestations of this new form of academic authority, one need look no futher than the introduction of scantrons and clickers and perm numbers, transforming each student from the former status of a pupil to the current status as a customer. Worst of all, the introduction and rise to prominence of the academic philosophy known as "publish or perish" became an integral aspect of the University's faculty selection criterea. As it happened, the most prominent professors were no longer in such a position because they taught with passion and creativity or because they significantly facilitated the inspiration of students. They would become the best because they spent the most of their time locked away in their reclusive office-bubbles, blitzed as fuck off a myriad of stimulants, busily churning out contributions to the "body of knowledge" as if they were brownies for a bake sale at a Unitarian Transcendentalist Church.
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Kryses, along with his rat-pack grommet group of friends, illegally watched the launches with utter amazement since childhood. The rockets signified the boys' desires to do as the vessels did, climb upward, upward, upward- eventually climbing so high as to become out of sight. Although during every launch the local residents of Supueday were prohibited from being outdoors due to the threat of potential falling debris from malfunctioning shuttles, Kryses had consistently broken what he perceived as a silly law in order to absorb the awesome spectacle of human ingenuity that was manifested in those launches. He had never seen nor heard of any such catastrophe. The kid always thought it weird that there had never actually been a malfunctioning rocket from the University launch site near Sepueday, yet the Advisers had been insistent that the folks in the neighborhood not be outdoors while the launches occurred. What were they not to see? While he could not help but wonder this, in all his viewings Kryses was never able to extract one significant piece of profound evidence that would suggest some sort of overall negative intent on the side of the University, or the State for that matter. That certainly doens't imply that the young conpiracy-theorist in training wasn’t looking...
After receiving his acceptance letter to the University of BS, Kryses called his girlfriend Jules to see if she wanted to watch the sunset on the bluff. “If we’re lucky there may even be a launch tonight. What a better way to send me off than in the blazes of glory?” Jules needed a bit of convincing on this night- more than the other nights for sure. She was saddened at the prospect of Kryses using this opportunity to break the news of the end of their relationship to her.
The two had been together for a little less than a year, and they were just reaching the pinnacle of the much heralded "romance stage." Kryses loved that girl with all of the limited knowledge of love he possessed. The charming Kry had a relatively easy time convincing the reluctant Jules to meet him for a rendezvous at dusk. “I’ll swing by your place in 20, cool?” She agreed, and within seconds Kryses had fired up his blue-beater Toyota pick-up on his way to her house, which was in the suburbs of Sepueday about 25 minutes away from where Kryses lived.
Kryses swaggered up to 1492 Golden Bear Blvd wearing blue jeans, white skate-sneakers, and a black T-shirt with the words “DON’T BE A SHEEP- Fuck Commercial Radio!” printed on the front. He walked up the brick-lined walkway that stretched from the sidewalk to the pseudo-porch (it was never meant to be used in the traditional neighborly way; no one used porches like that anymore these days), noticing the ominous sign above the dark green door labeled “The Temple’s.” Next to the sign, or rather slightly hiding behind it, was a camera that feed into Jules’ father’s compound-control-center.
Mike Temple was a local police officer who had recently been promoted to Detective in Sepueday’s homicide department. Having only had the job for three months, Mike was quietly appalled at the large amounts of gruesome murders that occurred in the town. Mike Temple had grown up in Sepueday, and had never heard of such a steady stream of violence as what he was witnessing firsthand.
Years later, Mr. Temple, who was the son of a locally successful ophthalmologist, would come to discover that the City Council of Sepueday took great pains in restricting the flow of information regarding violent crime in their city. The local "authorities" did this in order to make it look much more safe on paper than it was in reality; this was just one of the many attempts the local government had undertaken in order to preserve the inflated land value of their city. Many of the inhabitants of Sepueday falsely believed the city to be free of the problems that most of its neighboring metropolitan competitors possessed, such as drive-by’s and prostitution and homeless drug-fiends walking the streets. On the contrary, Sepueday possessed them in per capita numbers that may have outdone their fellow Californians, yet the image of the city was one of safety and security. Many called it white-washed.
Kryses looked up at the camera as he stepped onto the mat that exclaimed in bright red letters, “Welcome.” (Wasn’t that a warm welcome- I see you too asshole!)
“Hey Kry, how ya doing buddy?” a voice came from the speaker next to the doorbell. It was the stern tone of Mike Temple, trying pathetically to sound as if he wasn’t sitting behind a screen extremely paranoid of his surroundings.
“Pretty good Mike, pretty good. Got some great news- I’ve been accepted into the University! I’m here to celebrate with Jules.”
“You did? That’s great son. I’m really happy for you. Now you’ll be able to do something about all of that bitching I constantly hear coming out of your trap…” Mike replied, chuckling jovially. “I’m kidding, slow down now. Jules is just in her room, let me buzz her and she’ll be right out.”
Before the buzzing sound came from the intercom-doorbell a small figure opened the door, her silhouetted outline illuminated by the lights of the family room from which she emerged. Jules Temple was an attractive girl, to say the very least. She was a classic Scandinavian beauty- blond hair, blue eyes, tight body, and a smile that consistently melted Kryses' normally overbearing linear thought-process. She wore faded jeans- they were ridiculously overpriced no doubt- and a pink spaghetti-strap tank top with a matching pink bra that was visible underneath the spaghetti straps.
Much smaller in stature than Kryses- who was himself about six foot tall with a thin medium build- the young girl shuffled up to her boyfriend and planted a passionate kiss directly on his half-open mouth before he could even tell her how gorgeous she was. With no words necessary, the two jumped into the rusting truck and sped off to their usual spot overlooking the cesspool of collegiate residency known as Diablo Vista.
When they arrived, Kryses had to get out and open the door for Jules because his P.O.S. vehicle had a broken passenger-side interior door handle, ensuring Kryses to act like a gentlemen and open the door for his lady whether she liked it or not. As with many aspects of his personality, Kry took the broken pieces he possessed and worked hard to see the silver-lining.
“When did you find out?” Jules asked.
“Today after I got home from Head Case. Babe, you should’ve seen these things that were rollin’ in today. I mean MY GOD…”
Kryses went on for a few minutes about the slabbyness of the surf that particular day, and relayed a story of how his buddy Don, “got guillotined by a lip about two feet thick!” Jules nodded and listened intently yet quietly, never bothering to interrupt him to talk about what was really on her mind, as she often did when Kryses rambled on for days on end. After a few more painful minutes of listening to the surf-jive went on, Jules interjected.
“Are you going to break up with me now that you’ve gotten into the University?” Halfway through her sentence Kryses could see her blue eyes begin to become damp, sublimate to wet, right before a single tear was blinked out and slowly rolled down her velvety cheek. Kryses immediately shut the fuck up at this sight. He knew, looking at her welling eyeballs, he would have to get straight with it. The truth was, Kryses did bring her here to break up with her. He knew it, and she knew it.
“No babe, why would you say that?" Kryses said, sighing deeply. "I love you- you know that. And besides, I’ll only be on the other side of town, not on the other side of the universe.” As the words dripped from his tongue, Kryses knew them to be lies. It was obvious to him that he was going to have to be single going into college. He heard the stories, saw the pictures, and had always imagined himself in the middle of it all.
As if reading his thoughts, Jules replied “Really? I know you love me Kry, but I honestly don’t think that you mean that stuff about us being able to be together after you leave and all.” The tears turned from a trickle to a flow. She looked up at the sky, took a deep breath, and shouted, “I HATE THIS!” at the top of her little lungs. Jules knew the deal. She knew Kryses. That was apart of the reason he found himself so infatuated with her, as she was an amazing reader of the soul. Before Kryses could say something to comfort his young lover, he was cut off by the loud wail of the Sepueday Sirens.
The sirens were the local authority’s way of alerting the population to an impending launch. Once the sirens sounded, all the local inhabitants of Sepueday were under a curfew of sorts, no longer allowed to be outdoors or even have their blinds drawn. The two watched the folks of Sepueday scurry inside at the piercing sound of the sirens, and Kryses let out a chuckle. Where they were, no police would find them. Kryses and Jules were safe from the bullshit below, and rather than continue their difficult yet necessary conversation the two just crumpled onto the moist grass of the bluff where they were situated and wrapped themselves up into each other, attempting to make a pretzel out of their horizontal posture.
Kryses lay on his back with his hands behind his head, and Jules lay on her side with her head propped on his shoulder and her leg draped over his stomach. A loud rumble sounded in the distance- so loud that the two could feel its rumble on their backsides through the ground. The two gazed into the horizon just as the spark was lit underneath the mysterious rocket, just as it began its heavenly ascent.
The noise was always deafening, and tonight was no different. The vessel slowly lifted off the launch pad as the thrusting propulsion below it gained inertia and force, and within seconds the ship was climbing upward, reaching for the stars. It was such a beautiful sight to witness, so beautiful in fact that each one drove Kryses a bit mad at the thought that the Administrators saw fit to keep such a divine spectacle from the population’s gaze. What were they hiding? Why would they not want the people to witness these awesome spectacles, particularly if they would come to appreciate and respect them in the same way that Kryses had come to? The answers to these questions went unresolved in Kryses’ mind while the reflection of the rocket’s burning tail illuminated the glassy surface of the boy’s indigo eyes.
(Bzz bzz bzz) The cellular phone in Kryses’ pocket tickled his star-crossed lover’s inner thigh as it rang. So she might enjoy the vibration a bit longer, he chose to let it ring instead of picking it up right away. Jules laughed and kissed Kry for ignoring his phone so she might get another second of the minimal yet sweet pleasure.
His phone vibrated once more; whoever had called found it an important enough matter to leave a message. Among his group of friends this was odd- no one ever left a voice message. If it was something that was really that important, no doubt a to-the-point text message would suffice. Texting notoriously did well at cutting through the small-talk bullshit that humans had grown so accustomed to. This generation didn't have time for that shit- they needed to get to the matter at hand without a second of time wasted. Kry dialed the voicemail number on his phone and waited for the message to being its transmission. To his surprise it was his father, Stavry Ambiryde.
“Hey son, its Dad. I’m just calling because I heard that you got accepted into the University. That’s great. I’m really proud of you. When you get a sec give your old man a call, ay? Alright, talk to you later.” Click.
Kryses’ heart sank a little at the sound of the message ringing through his brain. He was pleased to hear that his father actually cared about his acceptance; he was extremely confused as to how he found out in the first place. It had been almost a year since the two had spoken. Kry stopped calling the day his grave-digging father had accused him of ringing only when he needed something, such as money or clothes or advice or a fucking ride home.
“Who was that?” Jules asked as delicately as possible, for she saw the look on his face turn while the digital noise reverberated in his ear drums.
“Dad. It sounded as if he wanted to congratulate me for getting into UBS, although he sure did keep it short and not very sweet. Whatever, at least he actually called…” The rocket vanished into space as he spoke those last words, leaving only a thin trail of illuminated smoke as evidence of its expensive existence.
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(Beep beep beep) The alarm sounded in Kryses room the next morning, and when he looked at the clock the illuminated letters read, “5:30.” Jules had left only about four hours ago from the night before. Kryses had gotten only a couple hours of solid shut-eye, so he hit the snooze button with a bit of force. It felt as if the moment he closed his eyes, the beeping started again.
“God damn already, I’m fucking up,” he told the inanimate blinking clock, often talking to things that had no ability to listen to what he was saying. Kryses threw the blankets off and hopped out of bed as if it was noon and he was late for an important appointment. Another noise from an inorganic possession sounded. This time it was the buzzing of his cell phone.
The only people who ever called him this early were drug addicts or surf buddies; he knew which one it was this morning without even having to look at it. For this generation of youngsters, the cell phone saw the elevation in status to the level of an appendage to the living body. It now served a fundamental homeostatic function of the social life. No one could live without them these days it seemed, and Kryses was no exception to this new middle-class custom. It was his friend Jerry calling, no doubt to inform Kry that the surf was going off and there was a minimal crowd partaking in the cornucopia of watery ramps.
“What up?” Kry answered, trying to sound more tired than he really was.
“What up yo?” Jerry’s voice was high-pitched this morning, indicating to Kryses that he must be a bit excited for having gotten up at the ass-crack of dawn to play in the ocean.
“Nothing, chillin’. Whatchu doin?”
“Chillin’, chillin’. You surfin’ this morning?”
“Yup. Just got up. You check it?”
“Yeah, I’m actually standing on the bluff looking at Rockers right now. It’s a little hard to see it ‘cause the sun hasn’t come up yet, but I’d say we’re looking at peaky punchy five-footers rollin’ through pretty consistent. Plus the models are saying that it’s supposed to pick up throughout the day, and the tide is gonna be a negative point four at six o'clock this evening. So if things come together, maybe we can get a little sunset session at Illegals...”
A light went off in Kryses brain at the sound of the last word that came out his friend's mouth. Illegals was the boys’ favorite spot, and it was without a doubt a true sanctuary for the troubled souls that made up the local rat-packs. These children of the military industrial complex in paradise who came to age in this rugged beachy home-front guarded the sanctity of the spot with swift and ruthless violence. It was simply one of those spots on the globe that a person did not go to unless they knew they belonged (god help them if they found the place by accident, which had been the case in a few unfortunate scenarios the boy had witnessed in his early grommet days.) Kryses always felt ambivalent about that reality. However, he ultimately justified this cultural hostility towards outsiders by telling himself that although war is ugly, the aim of its arrow is essentially benevolent order; therefore, darkness can sometimes be a necessary evil to ensure the greater good of their community.
Government Bay was located just above the northern boundary of the Sepueday coastline, and the University used it as a testing facility for their newest anti-terrorist sub-destroyers. As the sight necessitated pool-like conditions for the classified experiments to run properly, a large titanium breakwater had been installed inside the bay to stop the constant barrage of breaking waves from interfering with the manufactured serenity of the bay. Facing southward out to see, the southeast corner of this man-made facility unnaturally captured sand that drifted down with the current. This was a pure example of the Military Industrial Complex extending its domineering influence over nature. As if it were God dealing out Good-Karma-Credit to the local surf population, the structure's primary positive externality was the creation of a world-class sandbar point.
As a swell bounced off the wall of the breakwater and was sent backwards towards the next incoming wave, the two would collide in grand fashion, resulting in a split-second opportunity for a paddling surfer to stand to his feet. A second after the backwash strikes the incoming swell the whole wall of water cataclysmically doubles over onto itself, sucking out to create the meanest cleanest deepest tube for a hundred miles. Every time the boys got to surf Illegals they considered themselves among the luckiest living inhabitants of this humble planet. The young rat-pack did not take for granted the divine experience they were being afforded by the invisible benevolence of chance; they didn’t choose to be born in this moment in space-time, however they were there and god damn fortunate to be- and knew it.
“That would be sick,” Kryses responded in a perked up tone, imaging himself locked into a deep cylindrical shack with 75 yards of a draining, sucking, spitting bowl in his immediate future. “Are you gonna paddle out at Rockers right now?” Kry said this while grabbing his wetsuit and turning it inside out, its cold damp sting making him slightly regret not buying that stupid hanger/heater thing he saw on TV the previous winter.
“Fuck yeah. I’m already suited up actually, just giving you the heads up. You cruising?"
“I’m getting ready now. See you in the lineup brotha.”
“Coo. Late dog.” Click.
This conversation happened exactly this way almost every day from the months of October through March. The daily dispatches' only level of variation existed regarding the linguistic details of that particular day’s surf. Literally every other sequence of words the two exchanged was virtually identical to the others, as if they were enigmatically bowing down to the power of predestination.
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When Kryses Ambiryde received his letter of admission to the University of B.S., it was simultaneously the best and worst moment of his tragically short life. The kid had found the dispatch sitting on top of his unmade bed; the two hundred and ninety-nine square foot living cell was saturated with essences of a devastated post-hurricane scene. Twenty minutes prior to the reception of this so-called "golden ticket," Kryses had been doing his best in-coffin-impression while body-surfing the local shore-pound barrels of Head-Case Beach. Getting as deep as possible in the fluid cylinders was an obsession beyond all obsessions; Kryses Ambiryde lived, breathed, and slept with an intimate desire to be in the tube. Of all the “extreme” activities the aspiring alpha participated in, his most beloved was that violently poetic interaction with Mother Ocean. Slip-sliding down a fluid permaflux-surface only to end the whole experience by getting pile-driven into oblivion; this was an acceptable metaphor for the life that Kryses Ambiryde was interested pursuing.
As he strolled into the modest A-frame house located in the beachfront neighborhood nook known as Sepueday, his mother Tethys had alerted him to the impending news of his fate.
“Kry darling, you have a letter from the University on your bed, which I must say looks a trite thrashed. Looks like someone may have been accepted….” she said, in an optimistic tone that seemed to be on a continual ascent in pitch. Tethys was known for this manner of speech, which served the purpose of making any statement seem like a positive one, regardless of what content lie behind the high-pitched utterances. Kryses was reassured of his mother’s perpetual empathy once again in her attempt at nagging him in that maternal way. The fact was, Tethys was far too nice to ever really sound like a nag.
“I really don’t see how you sleep in that room of yours. I mean, really. Don’t you ever feel like when you live in a messy room it is bound to influence the state of your mind? How are you supposed to be organized and efficient in your college studies if you don’t live in a clean and organized room?”
“Save it-” he blurted out, which unfortunately came out much more sharply than he had intended, and to which he immediately regretted saying. It's not that Kryses didn’t love being criticized by his mother, because he actually more than loved it, he necessitated it. The boy had exhibited signs of instability since early childhood, so it helped to have an understanding mom that would help keep his head screwed on. Often, he thought of his mother as his saving grace, and expressed how much he owed her his life- that is if he owed anybody anything. But Kry never gave two shit's about cleaning his room. “Not two shit's,” he would tell Tethys proudly and defiantly. The boy was always speaking of some sort of social condition that was grown out of humanity’s need to be efficient, and cleaning one’s room was right in line with the methods that were out to control the would-be rebel. Kryses told himself that he didn’t believe in doing things like cleaning your room, ultimately because it served no purpose.
“Teachers, psychiatrists, judges, wardens, politicians- all telling you to clean your fucking room or else. Or else what?” he yelled back. This kind of poking and prodding of authority was one of the major sources of entertainment in Kryses’ life, manifesting itself in every aspect of his identity within the world he was brought up in.
Although he acted like he was uninterested in the contents of the letter from the University of B.S., Kryses could hardly hold himself back from running into his room in his hurried attempt to get to the core of the matter. The boy had grown up in the smallish enclave of Sepueday all of his life; coincidentally, this was the same site that was home to one of the most prestigious state-run public universities in the country. The University of B.S. demanded most of the economic attention of the neighborhood, carrying with it an almost God-like aura of pecuniary grace and benevolence. Most of the inhabitants of the City of Sepueday earned their daily bread in some way or another from the institution, Kryses’ parents included. Acceptance to the University for the local inhabitants had thus always been a dream, especially because it was viewed for those of the lower social classes as a means of upward social mobility (read: the sovereign good of one’s life purpose). The University of B.S. handed out certificates of increased societal status every June, and Kryses Ambiryde had dreamed of walking in their ranks since he was a young lad.
The envelope Kryses received was large; the eight by ten size that usually implies acceptance rather than the normal envelope size, which everyone knew implied denial. The smaller envelopes clearly had no space for acceptance forms, financial aid applications, and long congratulatory manuscripts bearing the electronic insignia of the Dean of the University. Observant as ever with his piercing blue eyes, Kryses already knew the context of the contents; no doubt he was to be accepted into the institution and would soon be on his ascent up the American Ladder. After letting out a sigh of relief, the boy picked up the glistening black packet and opened it- first cracking the official seal, and then pulling out the large stack of stapled leaflets, reading aloud the first sentence of the cover page to himself:
“Congratulations, Mr. Ambiryde. You are officially accepted into the University of B.S., which as you know is listed as one of the top five State-run Institutions on the West Coast, and shall thus be your launch pad to future opportunities of unimaginable proportions!”
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The University’s launch site had been hurling objects of varying intentions into space since 1969- right after the first man had set foot on the moon. The Cold War progeny known as the space-race, supposedly started by the Roosky’s and their 1957 launch of the satellite Sputnik, gave rise to the modern disaster that the University of BS would inevitably become. The United State’s new national-security-based demand for scientific innovation on the Final Frontier was the flagellum responsible for the penetration of the University’s fertile educational ovum. Shagging, coitus, intercourse, sex, boning, fucking- all perfect descriptions of the relationship between the Military and the University that would eventually produce the sinister zygote known as the Offensive Missile Defense Program. The Military acted as the evil stepfather of the innocent young promising University, and as it happened the subsequent rape of the latter by the former produced offspring that should have been aborted, flushed, murdered, slain. Unfortunately shit doesn’t happen that way under the orthodox tenets of Civil Protestantism. The inception of the OMD Program came with large federal grants, and with that money the University bought the coastal neighborhood of Sepueday in 1968. At that time, the town was the only land barrier between the institution’s southern boundary and the deep vast blue.
Tracy Holmes, the then Dean of the University, explained the prerogatives of the institution in purchasing the deteriorated neighborhood in his annual Status Power-Update Address,
“...Given the highly experimental and therefore hazardous nature of our ascension of objects out of this world, the University’s Advisers have acted to choose a launch site that would provide the function of a safety net, particularly in terms of the inevitable debris that will be falling from the sky due to our persistent testing. It seems that the best option is the residential area of Sepueday, for it straddles the zone between the ocean and our launch site and would be the perfect area for minimal public outcry in the tragic yet unlikely event that loss of life occurs among the local residents.
"MAKE NO MISTAKE,” Holmes suddenly bursted while pounding the podium with a clenched fist, his tone growing more seething with each breath, “it is a dangerous world out there filled with evildoers. In an environment of global anarchy, it is our job as the only benevolent hegemon in the historical record to provide an adequate safety-umbrella under which the whole of the free world may find solace and security. As we find ourselves in the precarious position of privilege in this so-called ‘Cold War’, education is of vital national importance. When I say this, I do NOT mean to endorse those barefoot pony-tailed freaks that write poetry about how wrong it is to eat meat. When the Russians or the Chinese come knocking your door down, the last thing you want as a defense is a nation whose elite population is saturated with pacifist sissies preaching values of peace, love and non-violence. No no… when I say education is of vital national importance, I am talking about the chemists and the physicists and the engineers and the geneticists and the atomists. Poetry never contributed a God-damned thing to our Security Umbrella, however someday in the near future these young scientists will.”
With a swift stroke of his red ballpoint pen, Dean Holmes used the OMD blood money to turn this fringe neighborhood into a government-controlled property, delegating to it the new responsibility of extending support to the burgeoning Military Industrial Complex.
Prior to the creation of the OMD Program, the UBS had been relegated to the middle tier of state-run educational institutions. This was primarily because it was viewed as a place where lazy pot-smoking deadhead surfer types spent their parent’s inflated home equity on what could easily be described as a Club Med academic experience. Accomplished scholars of the fun-hating variety scoffed at the early UBS, dubbing it less of a school and more of a resort. (We’ll disregard the simple fact that most of these serious scholars come from geographical areas where the weather, and the overall lifestyle in general, basically sucks balls.) Writers, artists, musicians, dramatists, and other economically unproductive forms of hippy academics dominated the sleepy beachside academy in its early days.
Situated atop a series of rolling green bluffs overlooking the ocean, the University site was peppered with a broad swath of surf breaks below the cliffs, varying from barnyard-beginner paradises to world-class shreddable points. A true geographic gem of the California coast, Sepueday provided a perfect environment for a blossoming socioartistic community. The town's air possessed a crisp saltiness that seduced the nostrils in the same way that a home cooked meal at mom’s house might. In fact, the smell would even come as a relief for those lucky to experience it enough to become accustomed to it. Anytime that Kryses would have to leave town for a family function, such as the obligatory familial celebrations of Jesus’ highly suspect birth and death, he would anxiously fiend the smell of the ocean on the drive West from the Central Valley, and would always be the first to roll his window down once the vast blue was within reach of his olfactory fingertips.
Technological and scientific advancement became the central goal of the institution in a gradual manner; it wasn’t exactly zero-to-sixty in five seconds. The purist ideals the old University harbored didn’t get brought to their knees over night. It wasn’t as if government henchmen showed up during hours of darkness gagging and bagging the liberal artsy professors who decried the increasingly scientifically managed University system. Rather, much of what caused the demise of the University- (specifically its ability to hand out a quality education)- had ironically been the subsequent result of its initial successes.
During the immediate period following World War II, a college education was still a rare and valuable asset. Upon their glorious victorious return, hundreds of thousands of GI Joe’s bought single-family homes for the first time. The White Middle Class pounced on the opportunity to create and sanitize their own bleached-white tract-house Levittowns. Behind closed doors in these Disney stencil communities, GI Joe fucked his dirty housewife non-stop like a rabbit, churning out new babies with new souls by the dozens. A little material prosperity and an abundance of privacy blazed the trail for an orgy of traditionalism and the creation of the suburban Baby Boomer generation. These newly prosperous patriarchs, embedded with all of their civil protestant values, saw to it that their kids attended the best educational system in the world (which happened to be in their own backyard). However, throughout this period the cost of a college education was drastically cheaper than in today's world. So while the usual elites gained entry onto the societal launch pad, those with more disadvantaged backgrounds who had showed merit and tenacity in the lower levels of the crooked public education system were allowed to attend the publicly provided circus as well.
If the entry rate for educational systems such as the University was at the pressure of the average household sink prior to WWII, then the Baby Boomers had the violent effect of Birmingham fire hose. The survival of the University thus necessitated a swift and innovative accommodation, and the old adage of so-and-so being blah-blah’s mom prevailed. Administrators of this sacred faceless educational entity were charged to draw on the principals of scientific management as a solution to the efficiency problem that their university was facing.
Efficiency is the holy grail of scientific managers everywhere, yet its methods carried ambivalent consequences for the actual substance of the education that the school handed out. It was true that many people who had previously not received a post-high school level of education (if that) were now afforded the opportunity to compete in the mythical meritocracy of the American economy. But shit also got real impersonal.
To see manifestations of this new form of academic authority, one need look no futher than the introduction of scantrons and clickers and perm numbers, transforming each student from the former status of a pupil to the current status as a customer. Worst of all, the introduction and rise to prominence of the academic philosophy known as "publish or perish" became an integral aspect of the University's faculty selection criterea. As it happened, the most prominent professors were no longer in such a position because they taught with passion and creativity or because they significantly facilitated the inspiration of students. They would become the best because they spent the most of their time locked away in their reclusive office-bubbles, blitzed as fuck off a myriad of stimulants, busily churning out contributions to the "body of knowledge" as if they were brownies for a bake sale at a Unitarian Transcendentalist Church.
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Kryses, along with his rat-pack grommet group of friends, illegally watched the launches with utter amazement since childhood. The rockets signified the boys' desires to do as the vessels did, climb upward, upward, upward- eventually climbing so high as to become out of sight. Although during every launch the local residents of Supueday were prohibited from being outdoors due to the threat of potential falling debris from malfunctioning shuttles, Kryses had consistently broken what he perceived as a silly law in order to absorb the awesome spectacle of human ingenuity that was manifested in those launches. He had never seen nor heard of any such catastrophe. The kid always thought it weird that there had never actually been a malfunctioning rocket from the University launch site near Sepueday, yet the Advisers had been insistent that the folks in the neighborhood not be outdoors while the launches occurred. What were they not to see? While he could not help but wonder this, in all his viewings Kryses was never able to extract one significant piece of profound evidence that would suggest some sort of overall negative intent on the side of the University, or the State for that matter. That certainly doens't imply that the young conpiracy-theorist in training wasn’t looking...
After receiving his acceptance letter to the University of BS, Kryses called his girlfriend Jules to see if she wanted to watch the sunset on the bluff. “If we’re lucky there may even be a launch tonight. What a better way to send me off than in the blazes of glory?” Jules needed a bit of convincing on this night- more than the other nights for sure. She was saddened at the prospect of Kryses using this opportunity to break the news of the end of their relationship to her.
The two had been together for a little less than a year, and they were just reaching the pinnacle of the much heralded "romance stage." Kryses loved that girl with all of the limited knowledge of love he possessed. The charming Kry had a relatively easy time convincing the reluctant Jules to meet him for a rendezvous at dusk. “I’ll swing by your place in 20, cool?” She agreed, and within seconds Kryses had fired up his blue-beater Toyota pick-up on his way to her house, which was in the suburbs of Sepueday about 25 minutes away from where Kryses lived.
Kryses swaggered up to 1492 Golden Bear Blvd wearing blue jeans, white skate-sneakers, and a black T-shirt with the words “DON’T BE A SHEEP- Fuck Commercial Radio!” printed on the front. He walked up the brick-lined walkway that stretched from the sidewalk to the pseudo-porch (it was never meant to be used in the traditional neighborly way; no one used porches like that anymore these days), noticing the ominous sign above the dark green door labeled “The Temple’s.” Next to the sign, or rather slightly hiding behind it, was a camera that feed into Jules’ father’s compound-control-center.
Mike Temple was a local police officer who had recently been promoted to Detective in Sepueday’s homicide department. Having only had the job for three months, Mike was quietly appalled at the large amounts of gruesome murders that occurred in the town. Mike Temple had grown up in Sepueday, and had never heard of such a steady stream of violence as what he was witnessing firsthand.
Years later, Mr. Temple, who was the son of a locally successful ophthalmologist, would come to discover that the City Council of Sepueday took great pains in restricting the flow of information regarding violent crime in their city. The local "authorities" did this in order to make it look much more safe on paper than it was in reality; this was just one of the many attempts the local government had undertaken in order to preserve the inflated land value of their city. Many of the inhabitants of Sepueday falsely believed the city to be free of the problems that most of its neighboring metropolitan competitors possessed, such as drive-by’s and prostitution and homeless drug-fiends walking the streets. On the contrary, Sepueday possessed them in per capita numbers that may have outdone their fellow Californians, yet the image of the city was one of safety and security. Many called it white-washed.
Kryses looked up at the camera as he stepped onto the mat that exclaimed in bright red letters, “Welcome.” (Wasn’t that a warm welcome- I see you too asshole!)
“Hey Kry, how ya doing buddy?” a voice came from the speaker next to the doorbell. It was the stern tone of Mike Temple, trying pathetically to sound as if he wasn’t sitting behind a screen extremely paranoid of his surroundings.
“Pretty good Mike, pretty good. Got some great news- I’ve been accepted into the University! I’m here to celebrate with Jules.”
“You did? That’s great son. I’m really happy for you. Now you’ll be able to do something about all of that bitching I constantly hear coming out of your trap…” Mike replied, chuckling jovially. “I’m kidding, slow down now. Jules is just in her room, let me buzz her and she’ll be right out.”
Before the buzzing sound came from the intercom-doorbell a small figure opened the door, her silhouetted outline illuminated by the lights of the family room from which she emerged. Jules Temple was an attractive girl, to say the very least. She was a classic Scandinavian beauty- blond hair, blue eyes, tight body, and a smile that consistently melted Kryses' normally overbearing linear thought-process. She wore faded jeans- they were ridiculously overpriced no doubt- and a pink spaghetti-strap tank top with a matching pink bra that was visible underneath the spaghetti straps.
Much smaller in stature than Kryses- who was himself about six foot tall with a thin medium build- the young girl shuffled up to her boyfriend and planted a passionate kiss directly on his half-open mouth before he could even tell her how gorgeous she was. With no words necessary, the two jumped into the rusting truck and sped off to their usual spot overlooking the cesspool of collegiate residency known as Diablo Vista.
When they arrived, Kryses had to get out and open the door for Jules because his P.O.S. vehicle had a broken passenger-side interior door handle, ensuring Kryses to act like a gentlemen and open the door for his lady whether she liked it or not. As with many aspects of his personality, Kry took the broken pieces he possessed and worked hard to see the silver-lining.
“When did you find out?” Jules asked.
“Today after I got home from Head Case. Babe, you should’ve seen these things that were rollin’ in today. I mean MY GOD…”
Kryses went on for a few minutes about the slabbyness of the surf that particular day, and relayed a story of how his buddy Don, “got guillotined by a lip about two feet thick!” Jules nodded and listened intently yet quietly, never bothering to interrupt him to talk about what was really on her mind, as she often did when Kryses rambled on for days on end. After a few more painful minutes of listening to the surf-jive went on, Jules interjected.
“Are you going to break up with me now that you’ve gotten into the University?” Halfway through her sentence Kryses could see her blue eyes begin to become damp, sublimate to wet, right before a single tear was blinked out and slowly rolled down her velvety cheek. Kryses immediately shut the fuck up at this sight. He knew, looking at her welling eyeballs, he would have to get straight with it. The truth was, Kryses did bring her here to break up with her. He knew it, and she knew it.
“No babe, why would you say that?" Kryses said, sighing deeply. "I love you- you know that. And besides, I’ll only be on the other side of town, not on the other side of the universe.” As the words dripped from his tongue, Kryses knew them to be lies. It was obvious to him that he was going to have to be single going into college. He heard the stories, saw the pictures, and had always imagined himself in the middle of it all.
As if reading his thoughts, Jules replied “Really? I know you love me Kry, but I honestly don’t think that you mean that stuff about us being able to be together after you leave and all.” The tears turned from a trickle to a flow. She looked up at the sky, took a deep breath, and shouted, “I HATE THIS!” at the top of her little lungs. Jules knew the deal. She knew Kryses. That was apart of the reason he found himself so infatuated with her, as she was an amazing reader of the soul. Before Kryses could say something to comfort his young lover, he was cut off by the loud wail of the Sepueday Sirens.
The sirens were the local authority’s way of alerting the population to an impending launch. Once the sirens sounded, all the local inhabitants of Sepueday were under a curfew of sorts, no longer allowed to be outdoors or even have their blinds drawn. The two watched the folks of Sepueday scurry inside at the piercing sound of the sirens, and Kryses let out a chuckle. Where they were, no police would find them. Kryses and Jules were safe from the bullshit below, and rather than continue their difficult yet necessary conversation the two just crumpled onto the moist grass of the bluff where they were situated and wrapped themselves up into each other, attempting to make a pretzel out of their horizontal posture.
Kryses lay on his back with his hands behind his head, and Jules lay on her side with her head propped on his shoulder and her leg draped over his stomach. A loud rumble sounded in the distance- so loud that the two could feel its rumble on their backsides through the ground. The two gazed into the horizon just as the spark was lit underneath the mysterious rocket, just as it began its heavenly ascent.
The noise was always deafening, and tonight was no different. The vessel slowly lifted off the launch pad as the thrusting propulsion below it gained inertia and force, and within seconds the ship was climbing upward, reaching for the stars. It was such a beautiful sight to witness, so beautiful in fact that each one drove Kryses a bit mad at the thought that the Administrators saw fit to keep such a divine spectacle from the population’s gaze. What were they hiding? Why would they not want the people to witness these awesome spectacles, particularly if they would come to appreciate and respect them in the same way that Kryses had come to? The answers to these questions went unresolved in Kryses’ mind while the reflection of the rocket’s burning tail illuminated the glassy surface of the boy’s indigo eyes.
(Bzz bzz bzz) The cellular phone in Kryses’ pocket tickled his star-crossed lover’s inner thigh as it rang. So she might enjoy the vibration a bit longer, he chose to let it ring instead of picking it up right away. Jules laughed and kissed Kry for ignoring his phone so she might get another second of the minimal yet sweet pleasure.
His phone vibrated once more; whoever had called found it an important enough matter to leave a message. Among his group of friends this was odd- no one ever left a voice message. If it was something that was really that important, no doubt a to-the-point text message would suffice. Texting notoriously did well at cutting through the small-talk bullshit that humans had grown so accustomed to. This generation didn't have time for that shit- they needed to get to the matter at hand without a second of time wasted. Kry dialed the voicemail number on his phone and waited for the message to being its transmission. To his surprise it was his father, Stavry Ambiryde.
“Hey son, its Dad. I’m just calling because I heard that you got accepted into the University. That’s great. I’m really proud of you. When you get a sec give your old man a call, ay? Alright, talk to you later.” Click.
Kryses’ heart sank a little at the sound of the message ringing through his brain. He was pleased to hear that his father actually cared about his acceptance; he was extremely confused as to how he found out in the first place. It had been almost a year since the two had spoken. Kry stopped calling the day his grave-digging father had accused him of ringing only when he needed something, such as money or clothes or advice or a fucking ride home.
“Who was that?” Jules asked as delicately as possible, for she saw the look on his face turn while the digital noise reverberated in his ear drums.
“Dad. It sounded as if he wanted to congratulate me for getting into UBS, although he sure did keep it short and not very sweet. Whatever, at least he actually called…” The rocket vanished into space as he spoke those last words, leaving only a thin trail of illuminated smoke as evidence of its expensive existence.
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(Beep beep beep) The alarm sounded in Kryses room the next morning, and when he looked at the clock the illuminated letters read, “5:30.” Jules had left only about four hours ago from the night before. Kryses had gotten only a couple hours of solid shut-eye, so he hit the snooze button with a bit of force. It felt as if the moment he closed his eyes, the beeping started again.
“God damn already, I’m fucking up,” he told the inanimate blinking clock, often talking to things that had no ability to listen to what he was saying. Kryses threw the blankets off and hopped out of bed as if it was noon and he was late for an important appointment. Another noise from an inorganic possession sounded. This time it was the buzzing of his cell phone.
The only people who ever called him this early were drug addicts or surf buddies; he knew which one it was this morning without even having to look at it. For this generation of youngsters, the cell phone saw the elevation in status to the level of an appendage to the living body. It now served a fundamental homeostatic function of the social life. No one could live without them these days it seemed, and Kryses was no exception to this new middle-class custom. It was his friend Jerry calling, no doubt to inform Kry that the surf was going off and there was a minimal crowd partaking in the cornucopia of watery ramps.
“What up?” Kry answered, trying to sound more tired than he really was.
“What up yo?” Jerry’s voice was high-pitched this morning, indicating to Kryses that he must be a bit excited for having gotten up at the ass-crack of dawn to play in the ocean.
“Nothing, chillin’. Whatchu doin?”
“Chillin’, chillin’. You surfin’ this morning?”
“Yup. Just got up. You check it?”
“Yeah, I’m actually standing on the bluff looking at Rockers right now. It’s a little hard to see it ‘cause the sun hasn’t come up yet, but I’d say we’re looking at peaky punchy five-footers rollin’ through pretty consistent. Plus the models are saying that it’s supposed to pick up throughout the day, and the tide is gonna be a negative point four at six o'clock this evening. So if things come together, maybe we can get a little sunset session at Illegals...”
A light went off in Kryses brain at the sound of the last word that came out his friend's mouth. Illegals was the boys’ favorite spot, and it was without a doubt a true sanctuary for the troubled souls that made up the local rat-packs. These children of the military industrial complex in paradise who came to age in this rugged beachy home-front guarded the sanctity of the spot with swift and ruthless violence. It was simply one of those spots on the globe that a person did not go to unless they knew they belonged (god help them if they found the place by accident, which had been the case in a few unfortunate scenarios the boy had witnessed in his early grommet days.) Kryses always felt ambivalent about that reality. However, he ultimately justified this cultural hostility towards outsiders by telling himself that although war is ugly, the aim of its arrow is essentially benevolent order; therefore, darkness can sometimes be a necessary evil to ensure the greater good of their community.
Government Bay was located just above the northern boundary of the Sepueday coastline, and the University used it as a testing facility for their newest anti-terrorist sub-destroyers. As the sight necessitated pool-like conditions for the classified experiments to run properly, a large titanium breakwater had been installed inside the bay to stop the constant barrage of breaking waves from interfering with the manufactured serenity of the bay. Facing southward out to see, the southeast corner of this man-made facility unnaturally captured sand that drifted down with the current. This was a pure example of the Military Industrial Complex extending its domineering influence over nature. As if it were God dealing out Good-Karma-Credit to the local surf population, the structure's primary positive externality was the creation of a world-class sandbar point.
As a swell bounced off the wall of the breakwater and was sent backwards towards the next incoming wave, the two would collide in grand fashion, resulting in a split-second opportunity for a paddling surfer to stand to his feet. A second after the backwash strikes the incoming swell the whole wall of water cataclysmically doubles over onto itself, sucking out to create the meanest cleanest deepest tube for a hundred miles. Every time the boys got to surf Illegals they considered themselves among the luckiest living inhabitants of this humble planet. The young rat-pack did not take for granted the divine experience they were being afforded by the invisible benevolence of chance; they didn’t choose to be born in this moment in space-time, however they were there and god damn fortunate to be- and knew it.
“That would be sick,” Kryses responded in a perked up tone, imaging himself locked into a deep cylindrical shack with 75 yards of a draining, sucking, spitting bowl in his immediate future. “Are you gonna paddle out at Rockers right now?” Kry said this while grabbing his wetsuit and turning it inside out, its cold damp sting making him slightly regret not buying that stupid hanger/heater thing he saw on TV the previous winter.
“Fuck yeah. I’m already suited up actually, just giving you the heads up. You cruising?"
“I’m getting ready now. See you in the lineup brotha.”
“Coo. Late dog.” Click.
This conversation happened exactly this way almost every day from the months of October through March. The daily dispatches' only level of variation existed regarding the linguistic details of that particular day’s surf. Literally every other sequence of words the two exchanged was virtually identical to the others, as if they were enigmatically bowing down to the power of predestination.
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