This chapter is a work in progress chapter five The Shuffling Madness "I'll make this part as short as possible", I told Xel as she pulled up a chair next to my hospital bed to listen to my nightly story. "If you'd rather not talk tonight; it's alright." she replied. "You do have a big day tomorrow." "Damn doctors, and damn you nurses; damn all of you." I scoffed. "Just as you start to heal up, they want to cut on you some more." "It has to be done R.martin" Xel said, "You have fluid building up inside your scull. It has to be drained off and the pressure released. I know it sounds serious, but you shouldn't worry" "You think I'm worried about dying?" "Well, you're obviously upset, I don't think I've ever heard you use a curse word before." I laughed at that. She was more taken aback that I had used a curse word than she was that I had just cursed her whole profession. "I'm not worried about dying," I replied, "You forget; I've known since I was five years old that I would live for more than one hundred years and play an important part in saving the world. "Yeah yeah, I get that" Xel said, "then what are you so upset about?" "There are worse things than dying." I told her. "Like what?" Xel asked, "What are you so worried about?" "Like what?" I answered raising my voice more than I intended, "Like.... like....," I stumbled trying to get the words out. "OK, I'll say it.....I'm afraid I'll wake up without my psyhic abillities." "Would that be so bad, R.martin" Xel said trying to comfort me. "I thought you considered your inner more as a curse?" "I can understand how you might see it that way," I said, "and there was a time when I felt that way, but like the old saying goes; you never know how much you'll miss something until it's gone." "Still," Xel reiterated, "if you'd rather wait until tomorrow to continue, that's OK." This caused me to laugh. "What?", Xel questioned. "Our roles have reversed." I told her. "You're usually the one urging me to move the story along, but tonight, I need you to hear this," and then added, "so try not to fall asleep this time." She just rolled her eyes at me as she settled back into her chair which I took as my cue to begin. If you'll remember, I had stayed up the entire night on the main deck waiting for the sun to come up only to have it start raining just before sunrise. It was still drizzling as I left the ship. Some may have considered this a Hemmingway moment, but I've always enjoyed the rain. After weeks of sun and sea aboard ship, it felt wonderfull to be on firm ground with a cool mist on my face. I grabbed one of the many cabs lined up along the dock. As we climbed the hill into town, I could finally see all those beautiful villas I had imagined the night before. That's just what they were; my imagination. In her book about going home to Oakland, Gertrude Stein wrote, "There is no there, there." The same words could easily apply to Civitavecchia. What a beautiful name for nothing more than a deslolete sea port for big box ships. I wasn't going to let anything get me down though, as I hadn't planned on retiring there anyway. Like everyone else, I was just passing through as Rome was just a short bus ride away. Rome! What a magnificent city. I could have spent months there, years even, but I had put myself on auto-pilot letting my inner be my guide. I made just one stop at a local bank. The ship had paid my salary, tips and bonuses in cash, but it was Italian cash. I had nothing against Italian lire, but I was also in frugal mode, so I needed American dollars of which I was more familar. The next stop I made was to a rail station where I purchased a ticket on the next train heading north. I know the danger in telling you what happened next. When telling a story about the unbelievable, it's important to keep the believable, believable. But maybe something simular has happened to you. Have you ever driven home after a long day at work or school or whatever, just like you've done a thousand times before, but then as you arrive, you realize you don't remember driving home? You know you must have made the correct turns and such, or else, well, you would have crashed and never made it home. The body was there going through the motions, but the mind was somewhere else entirely. If this has happened to you, then maybe you'll understand when I tell you that I stepped on that train in Rome and the next thing I know, I'm stepping off a train in Moscow. Surely my story be more believable if I told you about being in the Berlin station telling the lady at the ticket counter that I wanted a ticket going east only to have her ask if I wanted to go to Moscow, and then thinking to myself, I can do that? I could easily tell you the world doesn't look any different from the window of a train where there are no lines or country names printed on a map. I could describe in detail the sleeping car, or all about the menu in the dinning car, but honestly, I don't remember sleeping or eating. I understand how you might doubt it's possible to travel for two days or maybe more without remembering any of it. I understand it would be safer to make up details of this leg of my journey inorder to make my story more believable, but the truth is, the time passed as if I had simply taken an elevator ride from one floor to another. I should have known my lapse in time odyssey would require some cosmic clock to be reset. That first night in the city, and the following two weeks were the longest of my life. It was after midnight when I arrived in Moscow. Spring comes late to Moscow. I'm not sure summer comes at all. As I understand it, under communism, Moscow was very much a forbiden city even to the people of Russia. Hotels were mostly unnessesary. If you hadn't been asaigned a place to live in the city, you really had no business being in the city. When the wall fell and the Soivet Union collapsed, western businesses flooded Moscow. Many hotels were built to serve the new business comunity, but they are very expensive. I couldn't see spending that much money for a room when check out time would only be a few hours away. I decide to tough out the night, and look for cheaper accomadations once the sun came up. As I walked through the city, I found myself moving away from the busier streets and into an older section of town. I wandered with no particular destination in mind, just trying to kill the night waiting for the sun to come up. The row houses along the narrow streets all looked the same anyway. That is, until I came to an area where five streets joined. A first, it was just another corner, but then I noticed a familar crack in the sidewalk, and as I looked around, it dawned on me, I had already been down each of the streets. I must have been walking in circles. It shouldn't of mattered right?. What difference did it make if I had been each of these streets a dozen times? I was just killing time. What difference did it make where I had been or which way I went now? This is what I told myself, but still, I felt a bit frustrated. Doubt set in like the cold creeping up the cuffs of my bluegean jacket. Still unsure about which way to turn, I began to feel like a rat in a maze, with no cheese in site. >soup kitchen>dreams>depression>With two weeks of rent paid up, one would think this would have given me time to consider what to do next. Quite the opposite. It was a deadline looming on the horizon which only hieghtned my anxiety. room>fever>dreams>bar>