18-Zarry and the Roses

“Reclusive” Zarry has a natural instinct to concentrate, apparently some sort of thought crime in 2026, and he managed to do that without even ever having set foot in Starmer’s UK. After having undergone some practice he never lifts things with his telekinesis the way people seem to imagine the unexplainable; so he doesn’t show them. He is not interested in grand gestures, utilizing fake dramatic squinting. His control is quieter, almost clerical, like one of those utopian hermit monks of yore. He adjusts forces the way someone adjusts the volume on a radio; small, precise, incremental.

As he looked out the window in his room to see the apple tree that his Mom and Dad had planted, he sort of spaces out. He wants to do precisely that, while simultaneously pushing whatever buttons bring up Pandora Radio’s supposed ability to suggest songs he’d like. He recognizes that their algorithms care little about what he’d like to hear, and rather serve to regurgitate what he has already heard; but they’re the only game in town now. They invariably lean on their “state of the art” ability to recognize a virtual duplication, to produce a triplicate of it, which was usually of no interest to him.

Zarry is not a seeker of redundance; at least not musically. But this time the controlling AI got Zarry lucky and played something he was not yet totally bored with. It was more or less a silly depiction of what is un-interperable nonsense or not, insofar as that can be determined, though inextricably and unfortunately devoid of the kazoo, the humor coming from the serious, “learned” interpretations attached and most often avoided; an acquired taste, and one a bit un-common in the young.

Absolutely Sweet Marie

Bob Dylan

Well, your railroad gate, you know I just can't jump it

Sometimes it gets so hard, you see

I'm just sitting here beating on my trumpet

With all these promises you left for me

But where are you tonight, Sweet Marie?

Well, I waited for you when I was a-half sick

Yes, I waited for you when you hated me

Well, I waited for you inside of the frozen traffic

When you knew I had some other place to be

Now, where are you tonight, Sweet Marie?

Well, anybody can be just like me, obviously

But then, now again, not too many can be like you, fortunately

Well, six white horses that you did promise

Were finally delivered down to the penitentiary

But to live outside the law, you must be honest

I know you always say that you agree

Alright, so where are you tonight, Sweet Marie?

Well, I don't know how it happened

But the river-boat captain, he knows my fate

But everybody else, even yourself

They're just gonna have to wait

Well, I got the fever down in my pockets

The Persian drunkard, he follows me

Yes, I can take him to your house but I can't unlock it

You see, you forgot to leave me with the key

Ah, where are you tonight, Sweet Marie?

Well, I been in jail where all the mail showed

That a man can't give his address out to bad company

And now I stand here lookin' at your yellow railroad

In the ruins of your balcony

Wondering where you are tonight, Sweet Marie

Written by Bob Dylan

Zarry’s classic desk is a Sheraton era, inspired anticipation of the regency to come. It is marred only by the junior monolithic, plastic laptop extended from the desk’s more or less hidden slide, depending; the slide that is.

When the cut roses in the beaker on the hidden side begin their slow guided slide toward the edge of the table, he notices it the way a carpenter notices a board going out of square. Not with alarm; just with recognition, until the slip.

The beaker carries water which has been accused of being sentient. The friction drops. Gravity does what gravity always does. The beaker reaches the edge of its world, and begins its gentle, inevitable fall toward the floor.

Zarry doesn't move. He doesn't even look directly at it. He just extends attention; a kind of mental fingertip, and gives the falling object a counterforce equal to the one pulling it down.

The beaker slides off the table but drops less than six inches. The roses inside barely tremble. Zarry holds it there, suspended in a clean, geometric stillness; not frozen, just balanced, every force accounted for, every vector neutralized. To anyone watching, it would look like the world had briefly forgotten to finish a sentence.

Then he does something harder. He doesn't simply put the beaker back. He reverses the entire motion; not rewinding time, but reconstructing the exact path it took on the way down. The beaker drifts backward along the same shallow arc. The water inside ripples in the opposite direction, as if reconsidering its earlier decision. The roses’ stems rotate a few degrees counterclockwise, or seem to do that, to the naked eye, returning to the angles they held before the slip, which because of the water’s distortion seems to be off line where the water meets the air. It's not showmanship. It's a restoration.

Zarry places the beaker precisely where it had been; same position, same orientation, same distance from the table's edge. It was a perfect return to the original state.

Zarry doesn't smile or comment. He simply withdraws his attention, the way someone closes a drawer after putting a tool back in its proper place. The roses sit in their beaker of water, unchanged.

The table is quiet again. And the only evidence anything happened at all is the faint, settling ripple in the water; already fading.

The process had finally gone full circle; at least as far as anyone could currently tell.

Or vice-versa, more or less. It’s neither here nor there. Zarry focused his attention back on Pandora, hoping it wouldn’t play another Dylan number. ......... It did.

Rainy Day Women #’s 12 & 35

Bob Dylan

Well, they'll stone ya when you're trying to be so good

They'll stone ya just a-like they said they would

They'll stone ya when you're tryin' to go home

Then they'll stone ya when you're there all alone

But I would not feel so all alone

Everybody must get stoned

Well, they'll stone ya when you're walkin' 'long the street

They'll stone ya when you're tryin' to keep your seat

They'll stone ya when you're walkin' on the floor

They'll stone ya when you're walkin' to the door

But I would not feel so all alone

Everybody must get stoned

They'll stone ya when you're at the breakfast table

They'll stone ya when you are young and able

They'll stone ya when you're tryin' to make a buck

They'll stone ya and then they'll say, "Good luck"

Tell ya what, I would not feel so all alone

Everybody must get stoned

Well, they'll stone you and say that it's the end

Then they'll stone you and then they'll come back again

They'll stone you when you're riding in your car

They'll stone you when you're playing your guitar

Yes, but I would not feel so all alone

Everybody must get stoned

Well, they'll stone you when you walk all alone

They'll stone you when you are walking home

They'll stone you and then say you are brave

They'll stone you when you are set down in your grave

But I would not feel so all alone

Everybody must get stoned

Written by Bob Dylan

But at least this time Pandora got one that not only had the kazoo thing going, but the tuba too. Zarry was impressed.