Chinese Eye

Chinese Eye

by Gustavo Bondoni

Gustavo Bondoni is a novelist and short story writer with over four hundred stories published in fifteen countries, in seven languages.  He is a member of Codex and a Full Member of SFWA. He has published six science fiction novels including one trilogy, four monster books, a dark military fantasy and a thriller. His short fiction is collected in Pale Reflection (2020), Off the Beaten Path (2019), Tenth Orbit and Other Faraway Places (2010) and Virtuoso and Other Stories (2011).

In 2019, Gustavo was awarded second place in the Jim Baen Memorial Contest and in 2018 he received a Judges Commendation (and second place) in The James White Award. He was also a 2019 finalist in the Writers of the Future Contest.

His website is at www.gustavobondoni.com

More TTTV stories by Gustavo Bondoni: https://talltaletv.com/tag/gustavo-bondoni/

 

 

“If you can sneak up on him from behind with a heavy stick, you should be OK…”

• Sun Tzu

The whole Oriental Philosophy thing had seemed like such a good idea at the time. A quick ticket to looking sophisticated and worldly. Girls would really dig it.

Fred laughed ruefully and shook his head. Again.

While unsure about girls in general, as he usually was, he was quite certain that the girl in the adjacent cell hadn’t dug it at all. Having come to terms with this, he was trying to look at the bright side of his current situation. Such as it was.

The bright side was most eloquently expressed by the school of thought that states: “learn from your mistakes. The larger the error, the more knowledge is available upon analysis.” Viewed in this light, much wisdom had been acquired.

Upon reflection he had come to understand that careful planning and thought before any undertaking are worse than useless. Specifically, he had come to understand that the more carefully planned any undertaking is, the more things can go wrong with the plan.

He also decided that the little warning labels used on cigarette packs (Smoking has been found to cause cancer, lung disease, bad breath, weight gain, unwanted pregnancy, and growing national debt) should be included on any book referred even remotely to ancestral oriental teachings or philosophy. He resolved that a good label for the I, Ching would be one that read “Don’t open this book for any reason unless you want to be really miserable in the medium term”. He then discarded this one for “You’d be better off smoking”, before finally settling on “Do not combine this book with alcohol or you’ll really hate yourself in the morning”.

Satisfied, he went back to staring through the bars, waiting for the paperwork to be completed so he could go home, and just generally feeling sorry for himself. How had it gone so wrong? Looking back, he thought it probably started off on the wrong foot in the first place…

***

It was a dark and stormy night, of course.

He was alone, of course.

He had just had a big fight with Flavia – his girlfriend – of course.

He was extremely drunk, of course.

He was sitting in a darkened bedroom, of course.

He was repeatedly flipping a coin, of course.

All in all, it was the perfect situation for taking a hard look at your existance¹, especially if you were sixteen years old and depressed about your love life, or, to be brutally precise, extremely recent lack thereof.

It hadn’t started out this way. Fred was a great believer in looking at things in an objective way. Being highly intelligent and more than just a little bit obsessive, he was absolutely sure that no problem could stand up to analysis by his highly trained mind. Most problems were trivial and could be solved right off the bat. If the problem were difficult, just thinking about it some more would put it to rest. Practical in the extreme, his fanatical belief in this single underlying truth overrode even the lack of any religious inclination. So, he had approached the problem the only way he could: logically.

He understood that things seemed bad because the hurt was too recent. What he had to do was to take a step back, forget about Flavia, and look at his life from a distance, as it were.

He did this for a while, analyzing his life from all angles. He thought about his friends. He thought about his hobbies. He thought about sports. He hated sports both in general terms and every sport specifically, so he thought about his hobbies for a while again. Actually, he thought about his main hobby, which was computers. Once he felt that he had a clear and accurate picture of his life, he calmly and logically reached for the whisky.

About half way through the bottle, inspiration struck.

***

For those of you who actually have a social life, and have therefore not been exposed to any great quantity of oriental philosophy or the related art of prophecy, it has now become necessary to take an aside to explain the workings of a book known as I, Ching.

Briefly, I, Ching is a book of prophecy disguised as popular entertainment. It was perfected by a Chinese king with no TV. He had no TV because he was being held prisoner by another Chinese king, and also due to it not having been invented in 1141 AD. He could have saved himself and Fred a lot of trouble if he had just spent his time drinking Margaritas instead. This, sadly, was also impossible because nobody had yet thought to invent Mexico.

Much like astrology, I, Ching works through applying an arbitrary collection of rules to interpret a pattern that forms randomly. It has two great advantages versus astrology.

The first is that while Astrology can predict millions of different futures based on the positions of specific stars, planets, alien spaceships, etc., I, Ching has precisely sixty-four future possibilities for its practitioners, and they can be accessed by the simple method of flipping a coin six times. If it comes up heads, one draws a solid line, and tails a solid line broken in two. The result of each successive toss is drawn above the one before it creating a small tower of broken and solid lines. The other, more important, advantage is that the idea that the gravity of a star billions of miles away can possibly have any effect on your life is very difficult to sell to anyone who has ever heard of Newton’s law of Gravitation. Fred had not only heard of Newton, but was a fervent admirer, being a bit of a nerd.

While compressing every possible future of every individual that came into contact with the process into sixty-four outcomes is obviously practical on a mind-boggling scale, it becomes necessary to be somewhat vague, in order to avoid misunderstandings.

Imagine the following situation:

“I, Ching Hotline. My name is Wang Li, I will be your futurology satisfaction consultant today. Can I help you?”

“Yes. I was calling to complain about my reading from last week.”

“We aim to please. What is the source of your dissatisfaction?”

“My reading said that this week would be a good time to achieve greater wisdom by taking a ride in the country on a donkey with my mother.”

“Ah, yes. Future number thirty-four. A noble and elegant vision.”

“Yes, yes. Very noble, but shouldn’t the hailstorm and the pack of feral dogs that ate my mother have been mentioned?”

Pause.

More silence.

“Well?” Impatient now.

“I’m sorry sir, I don’t see the problem.”

“The problem is that by following the advice in your book, not only did I learn absolutely nothing, but also lost my mother. Not to mention that hailstones moving at high speed hurt.”

“Are you certain you learned nothing?”

“Unless you count the bit about the hailstones and the pain, nothing.”

“Ah, my friend, but that is wisdom. Another satisfied customer. Have a nice day.”

Wang Li hangs up.

This is obviously an unacceptable way to run a respectable futurology racket, for various reasons. In the first place, it would have been extremely expensive to try to train telephone operators in 12^th century China, due to the fact that a complete lack of anything remotely resembling a telephone would make people with this sort of knowledge extremely rare, and therefore costly to hire. Also the volume of complaints would have been considerable, had there been any telephones in 12^th century China, which there weren’t, and had the original publishers of the book hired trained telephone operators to answer incoming calls, which they hadn’t.

These are the main motives that the prophesizing in I,Ching is deliberately vague, which, as we rejoin our storyline, is causing Fred to do some considerable head scratching. The whisky isn’t helping much either. He has finished flipping his coin and is looking at his little tower of lines and the interpretation from the book, which he is trying to decipher.

Chi Chi – After Completion

Fred became very excited when he saw this line. Completion obviously referred to his breakup with Flavia. This was working. He read on eagerly.

— —

—– above K’an The Abysmal, Water

— —

—–

— — below Li The Clinging, Flame

—–

He didn’t really know what to make of this interpretation. The bit about the flame worried him, though. Fred was somewhat of an expert on flame, having discovered at an early age that he was a bit clumsy around candles and fondue burners. This led him to attain advanced expertise in fire extinguishers, first aid and the Byzantine workings of the Fire Insurance industry. By the age of ten, he was able to calculate a premium with an accuracy of three decimal places, an ability that was to be of inestimable aid to him when buying apartments.

Despite his foreboding about this line, he had to admit that it certainly applied to him, and this set his pulse racing anew. This was actually working!

Strangely enough, he completely ignored the line that said above “K’an The Abysmal, Water”. Oh, well. He would learn.

Reading on eagerly, he came to the Judgment. This is basically the prophetic part of the process.

The Judgment

After Completion. Success in small matters.

Perseverance furthers.

At the beginning good fortune,

At the end disorder.

Fred stared at this line for a while. He didn’t really like it that much. It didn’t say encouraging things like “you will be covered in glory” or “the woman of your dreams is just around the corner”. It also didn’t address his favorite topic, which was hamburgers. He supposed that this was understandable, as he was almost sure that McDonald’s had not yet established itself in China in the twelfth century. Even so, he felt a bit cheated. How hard could it have been for a man who claimed to have the gift of prophecy to have predicted the advent of ground beef, and included a truly significant line, such as “you will eat the best bacon cheeseburger of your life this week”. Evidently, Chinese sages weren’t as good as their marketing suggested. Shaking his head, he read on. The next section was the Image.

The Image

Water over fire: the image of the condition

In After Completion.

Thus the superior man

Takes thought of misfortune

And arms himself against it in advance.

Ah! Much better! All the worry caused by the mention of “disorder” in the Judgment vanished, since this line removed all possibility of harm. Fred knew he was a superior man. This was obvious every day at school. He was simply the best student in any subject that required even the slightest bit of natural intelligence. These lines were made for him. He would have thought that they were for him alone, had it not been for the lack of hamburgers. Even a hot dog or a side order of onion rings would have been welcome.

Well, no matter. This was the prophecy for the next week of his life. He was already convinced that it was accurate, so he began planning. Careful, rational planning would be the key to success. He carefully and thoughtfully decided not to read the Lines, the third part of the prophecy. The Lines are basically an in-depth look at what each line of the diagram means in its current position. Fred rationalized that looking into each line would be useless, since he was just looking for a general idea of what was coming. He was smart enough to plan the details himself. There could be no harm in ignoring the Lines.

Fred, being a superior man, immediately understood what the prophecy was telling him. It clearly meant that, having completed a stage in his life, he had to move on. The only way to move on would be to take control of his destiny. Only he had the power to shape his future.

Being a superior man also allowed him to lead lesser beings. He decided to call Bondo, his best friend, and invite him on his quest. It would be a great honor to be allowed to witness the logical resolution of all problems. Everyone wanted to better themselves, and Bondo was no exception.

As Fred saw it, Bondo was the perfect choice to be subjected to his leadership, this due to his being extremely shallow and very unlikely to attempt to solve a problem through logic or even to show even the smallest inclination to think things through prior to doing something stupid. From Fred’s point of view, the most impressive thing about Bondo’s personality was his ability to make absolutely the worst possible choice in almost any situation. And this without conscious thought. His talent was admirable.

Yes, Fred thought, Bondo would be the ideal person to appreciate intelligence at work. Even if he couldn’t identify what was happening, at least he would learn that there were powers of the mind beyond his comprehension.

Fred dialed his number.

The phone rang and rang. Finally, Bondo answered.

“Yes, hello?” He sounded as if he had just woken up.

“Hi Bondo,” said Fred.

“Fred, I sincerely hope we’ve been invaded by Martians who have decided to kill us all tomorrow, and you’ve called to say goodbye, because, otherwise, I will take enormous pleasure in killing you myself the next time I see you.”

There was a pause.

“That wasn’t very nice,” said Fred, eventually.

“It’s two o’clock in the morning. You don’t deserve nice. You’re lucky I’m too far asleep for real sarcasm.”

“Just listen a second, this is important.”

“OK,” said Bondo, “I’m listening.”

“Well, it’s a bit of a long story. I broke up with Flavia and-“

“This,” interrupted Bondo, “is evidently some definition of the word ‘important’ that I was previously unaware of. Thank you for enlightening me.” Bondo hung up.

Fred called him again.

“How drunk are you, exactly?” Asked Bondo when he picked up the phone.

“That doesn’t matter right now. I’ve found the solution to all our problems.”

“What problems?”

“Well, to start with, I broke up with Flavia and-”

“That’s not only not my problem, it isn’t even a problem for you. Hell, even you can do better than Flavia,” said Bondo. “You should be out celebrating instead of disturbing innocent people’s rest.”

“Look, what I mean is that today is an important day. A new beginning. Today, we can seize control of our lives. Our actions tonight will redefine what we are forever.”

“And I assume that doing this all tomorrow just wouldn’t be the same?”

“Of course not.”

“Of course.” Replied Bondo. Fred, however, was too drunk to notice the lack of enthusiasm shown by his audience. In fact, he was on a roll.

“So we need to get moving.”

“Why?”

“To take control of our destiny,” said Fred, starting to lose patience, “haven’t you been listening to anything I said?”

“Yes, yes, whatever. Where, exactly do we need to go to do this?”

Ouch. Fred hadn’t quite thought this bit through. He had assumed Bondo would agree quickly, and then give him ten minutes to think of something. More than enough for a superior man. One thing Fred didn’t like to do was to make things up as he went along.

“Uh, to a bar?”

“A bar?” Asked Bondo.

“Yes,” said Fred confidently, “A bar.” There was a long pause.

“Fred?”

“Yes Bondo.”

“Go to sleep. Call me tomorrow so I can laugh at your hangover. Do not call me again until after the sun has been up for at least five hours.”

“But-”

Bondo hung up.

“Shit,” said Fred to himself.

***

Fifteen minutes later, he was on the move. The whole bit with Bondo had been a setback, but not a terminal one, as the alcohol in his blood had explained patiently. You can do this alone. Carpe Diem! The strength of this argument had gotten him out of his apartment, through the hallway and into the elevator.

Fred lived on the eighteenth floor, so the ride down should have been long enough to insure that he would come back to his senses by the time he reached the ground, and would, as a result of this, simply have turned around and gone back up. Unfortunately, Fred was one of those people who are difficult to put in motion. This might not seem relevant to the current situation unless one takes into consideration that the corollary of this characteristic is that once they get in motion they have a terrible tendency to stay in motion.

He stayed in motion through the elevator door. He stayed in motion through the foyer. He stayed in motion as he walked out the door. He stayed in motion until he was halfway across the street and noticed the rain he had completely forgotten about until that very moment.

The main thing he noticed about it was that there was a hell of a lot of it.

His motion accelerated noticeably before finally coming to a halt under an awning. Shivering, he contemplated the wisdom of going on without an umbrella. Being an accomplished student of human nature wasn’t necessary to understand that if he went back inside to get one he wouldn’t be coming out again.

“Perseverance furthers”, the Judgment had stated. His course was clear. And, at least, this explained the bit about “water above”, which he suddenly remembered.

Huddled against the rain, he picked his way through the puddles on his way to the bus stop.

And froze when he saw her, standing in the downour without an umbrella. This immediately caused a great first impression, involved as he was in what even his slowly clearing mind was able to identify as a quixotic undertaking. Standing at a bus stop in the rain at two in the morning obviously made her a kindred spirit, there being absolutely no other explanation for this sort of behavior. It had, after all, been raining in a noticeable and noisy way for the past few hours, so lack of an umbrella could mean one of two things: total preoccupation with other, more important matters or just sheer stupidity. Either was a quality that Fred could, at the moment, identify with in a deep and personal way.

At least this is what he told himself. A much deeper, usually suppressed part of his being noticed that, under the soggy, shoulder length, straw-colored hair plastered over her face, the face was pleasingly proportioned. Likewise the soaked clothing hid a thin, delicate frame. Not a classical or aggressive beauty, but certainly a very pretty girl of about his own age.

Unbeknownst to, or at least unadmitted to by Fred, it was this hidden realization that dictated his next actions. He stood where he had stopped, about a yard and a half in the road, in front of the curb on which she was standing, and prepared to speak to her.

This course of action turned out to be unprofitable in the extreme for all involved, which in this case included Fred, the girl about to be sucked into his life, and the bus driver, who, citing low visibility and lack of adherence due to the rain, as well as the fact that he was absolutely not expecting to find an idiot standing in the middle of the road, was unable to bring the bus to a complete stop and bumped him softly, with just enough force to drop him ass-first into the rather large puddle immediately to his right.

The girl and driver immediately ran over to check on his welfare. On seeing that he was all right, the driver climbed into his bus and drove off, leaving the now drenched girl to deal with the completely disoriented Fred.

“Let me take you to my car. I’ll get you home. Where do you live?” she asked.

“Your car? You’re not supposed to have a car.” Fred explained patiently. “We’re kindred spirits walking in the rain.”

Fred watched her as she reconsidered offering assistance. He could imagine her thinking that he was either drunk, crazy or had suffered a blow to the head in the impact after all. She evidently wanted nothing whatsoever to do with any of these scenarios. He tried to atone for this by standing up and walking steadily alongside her until they finally came to a parked car.

“I’m Fred,” he offered.

“Caroline. And this is my car, which, it seems, I’m not supposed to have.”

Fred looked at the car, about which his superior intellect immediately began to give him information. Yes, it was a car. It was also missing the driver’s side window, pieces of which seemed to be strewn all over the middle of the street.

The fact that she had a car still nagged at him. It didn’t fit with his image of her as a heroically defiant and highly symbolic individual. He tried to explain this to her, but, in an ironic turn of events the alcohol in his blood, which made him unable to finish the sentence, actually saved him from making an even bigger fool of himself.

Finding himself unable to speak, he decided to pick up the pieces of glass in the street, presumably for the purpose of reconstructing the window, although it is just possible that he wanted to melt the glass down and create hideous freeform sculpture from it. At this point, the alcohol in his bloodstream had reached sufficient vital organs to make any speculation on his motives an exercise in futility. In any event, the only tangible effect of his actions was that, for the second time that night, only the reflexes of an innocent bystander driving by saved him from becoming the world’s drunkest hood ornament.

As the driver sped off into the night, Caroline sighed to herself and made a decision. She knew it was a mistake even before opening her mouth, but justified it by thinking to herself that she wouldn’t sleep at all that night if she didn’t make sure that this idiot could make it back to his house alive. And he evidently wasn’t going to make it without considerable assistance.

“Let’s get inside. There’s a bar across the street. Come on.”

Fred looked at her. Evidently this was his kindred spirit, despite having a car.

“Just what I was about to suggest,” he said. “I could definitely use a drink to clear my head.”

Caroline rolled her eyes.

***

Fred had never been any good at bars. This was especially true of the kind of bar where loud music played and you were expected to enter the bar alone and leave in the company of a member of the opposite sex. Or fail to do so while sacrificing your dignity.

Fred, at least, had the second option down pat.

The cigarette smoke that came out the door as they entered was a clear indication that this was precisely the type of bar they were entering. Caroline deposited Fred at a table and went off to get them something to drink. Therapeutic caffeine for Fred, and therapeutic vodka for her.

Thus abandoned, Fred was free to observe the goings-on at other tables. To his right, an expensively attired guy at a table had purchased two very expensive bottles of champagne. Judging by the face of the pretty girl sitting in front of him, he seemed to have consumed most of them himself. He would be leaving alone, thought Fred.

To his left, the bar glistened with the spills of the previous hours. A pair of cheap beers stood in one of the larger puddles. They were being ignored by the couple necking and groping each other on the nearest barstools. By the energy the guy was expending, Fred could tell that they had met that night. By hers, he could infer that they would be leaving together.

Lucky bastard, thought Fred, I hope he catches something contagious. Which, though seemingly uncharitable in the extreme, but is what most men think in these situations. It is well known that men are envious creatures even at the best of times.

Women, of course, are worse.

Nevertheless, Fred was heartened at the thought that his luck just might be changing. After all, here he was in a pickup bar with a pretty girl, who, despite having an unexpected car, hadn’t yet told him to leave or tried to mace him, which was a welcome change from the more usual practices. Yes! Tonight was definitely the night on which a superior man could finally break out of the rut of always leaving these bars alone.

At the very least, he would walk her back to the car, thereby justifying the existence of that execrable device.

But he knew that tonight he should not settle for that. This was, after all, the first night of the rest of his life. He would show her what kind of person he truly was. A superior man! And with this, convince her to see him again afterwards. This would be a great night. Suddenly, se was certain that he would not leave this bar alone!

And he was right. A short time later, Caroline returned to the table, and Fred immediately got his wish. He accompanied Caroline back to the car.

Unfortunately, four uniformed policemen also insisted on accompanying them back to the car as well, rudely ignoring Fred’s explanations that the car, despite being inconvenient in a philosophical sense was not, in fact, illegal.

This, agreed the policemen, was absolutely true. Sadly, however, the car was stolen, which was, in fact, illegal.

Fred explained that this was not an issue, as the car was more a symbol than an actual object, and therefore should be exempt from the minutiae of normal law enforcement.

The policemen patiently went on to explain that while the previous argument was very convincing, it was basically a matter of point of view. A point of view that they didn’t share. Furthermore, the large quantities of drugs and falsified clothing in the trunk were also signs that their opinion just might be justified.

Then they hit him over the head with a Billy club to get him to shut up.

Over the course of the following few hours, Fred came to understand two things. The first was that getting sober after large quantities of whisky and being clubbed over the head was not fun at all.

The second was that the policemen didn’t actually seem very convinced that he had anything to do with the crimes after all. It transpired that they had been chasing Caroline all night and suspected that he was just an innocent bystander. What’s more, they felt that without his intervention slowing her down, Caroline would probably have slipped out of their net.

This didn’t stop them from going through with full police procedure, including dunking his head in the toilet while asking him questions and hitting him with assorted lengths of garden hose, but it seemed to Fred that they did so half-heartedly. More out of a sense of duty and a desire to give him his money’s worth than any true hope of getting useful information out of him.

Eventually, they got bored and stuck him in a cell.

***

Having had plenty of time to review his mistakes, Fred found that he was finally making progress.

He was now unhappy with the present instead of the past.

Family, he thought, is always embarrassing. Mothers in particular. Under other circumstances he would have preferred for his mother to be very far away. Unfortunately, though, his lawyer, another of his friends, had been unable to get him out of jail as yet, so he guessed he would have to take being embarrassed, as only someone who has changed your diapers and likes to recount the details thereof could do, like a man.

After all, it was his fault for hiring a guy who had taken fifteen years to become a lawyer and the past three to pass his last exam.

His mother, at least, failed to disappoint. After harassing everyone from the cleaning lady to the police commissioner, including various repetitions of diaper-changing tales, she finally managed to spring him without the need for bail. The price of this aid was quite high, including dinner at her house three times a week. The most painful bit, though, was the look in her eyes that said, smugly, ‘You’re still my son and you need me. Even though you think you’ve grown up.’ Basically, this was the look on her face when they opened his cell door.

The look on Caroline’s face in the adjacent holding cell was one of contempt.

“Make sure your mommy holds your hand the next time you cross the street. God knows you need it!” she called out after him.

Fred barely heard her. He had something he wanted to do right now.

There was a book he needed to burn.

***

His final mistake was one committed out of pure, stupid curiosity.

On arriving home, he decided to read the final part of the I Ching prophecy: the Lines. This robbed him of the taste of revenge, however symbolic, on the shady characters in the Oriental Philosophy racket.

He knew that he could not, in good conscience, burn the book. But, at least, he got a good laugh out of the whole thing. At too high a price? Possibly, unless one considers the ancillary benefit: he never went near the I Ching again.

The Lines

Nine at the beginning means:

He brakes his wheels.

He gets his tail in the water.

No blame.

Six in the second place means:

The woman loses the curtain of her carriage.

Do not run after it;

On the seventh day you will get it.

Nine in the third place means:

The Illustrious Ancestor

Disciplines the Devil’s Country.

After three years he conquers it.

Inferior people must not be employed.

Six in the fourth place means:

The finest clothes turn to rags.

Be careful all day long.

Nine in the fifth place means:

The neighbor in the east who slaughters an ox

Does not attain as much real happiness

As the neighbor in the west

With his small offering.

Six at the top means:

He gets his head in the water. Danger.