Rant: The Oral History of Buster Casey

Allan Blayne: Both Vehicles One and Two burst into flame, igniting the cargo of adjacent railroad cars as well as the creosote-treated ties of the track bed. Witnesses place the time of the incident at 11:35 p.m., and four engine crews responded initially. It took one additional crew to bring the event under control, but the wreckage was sufficiently cool for investigators to recover the bodies by 4:15 a.m.

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: Throughout all mythology, the gods have created themselves as mortals by bearing children by mortal women. The deity simply emerges from the infinity of Liminal Time and manifests himself in the form of an angel or a swan or beast, and completes the seduction or announcement that will result in a mortal offspring. The divine made flesh. The infinite made finite.

It's when you cross this mythology with the Grandfather Paradox that the reverse occurs and mortal flesh might be made divine.

Allan Blayne: Over the course of the search, our unit recovered the charred remains of two adult males and two adult females who witnesses report being in the first, parked vehicle at the moment of impact. In the process of searching the remains of the second automobile, this crewman heard what I took to be sobbing from the collapsed, forward portion of the passenger cell. Using a hydraulic chisel to relieve the buckled, tightly folded structures of the passenger compartment, further investigation revealed a single survivor, an adult female, apparently the driver of the second vehicle. The sound originally believed to be sobbing could now be heard to be laughter, most possibly hysteria-related.

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: If a deity can make himself flesh by conceiving a life with a mortal, perhaps a mortal can achieve immortality if he's able to travel back in time and destroy one or both of his parents. In this response to the Grandfather Paradox, the time traveler eliminates his physical origins, thus transforming himself into a being without physical beginning and therefore without end.

Stated simply: a god.

Allan Blayne: In my capacity as a crewman, I counseled the survivor, a woman approximately twenty-five years of age, coaxing her to remain calm until she could be examined by paramedics already at the scene. Encasing the survivor was what can only be described as a shell or cocoon of rigid netting. Inspection of the inside surface of this shell proved it to be the burned and melted remnants of synthetic-fiber apparel and headwear, apparently the remains of a long white dress and veil of the type worn by brides at traditional wedding ceremonies.

In my effort to keep the survivor calm, I asked her age, her name, and birthdate.

Perhaps due to shock, she responds, 'One hundred and sixty-three years old next month.' Twisting her shoulders and torso inside the cocoon of debris, the survivor then said, 'That was way fun; now get this burned shit off me…'

Tina Something: Waxman watches this miracle girl walk across the tracks, barefoot and wrapped in a blanket, and Wax says, 'That's where I want to get…'

I guessed Wax meant she was pretty.

This miracle girl is looking right back in his eyes.

But that's not what Wax meant. Not even close.

Neddy Nelson: You want I should introduce you to a Historian? You want to be alive and stupid, or do you want to be a know-it-all dead body?

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: In a somewhat hideous parody of the Annunciation, the time traveler would make a pilgrimage to a direct ancestor, ideally the traveler's mother or father, at a time before the traveler's conception—for the purpose of killing that ancestor.

Shot Dunyun: Again, do not confuse Stoking with Resolving Origin. Stoking means you flashback to breed a better you. Resolving Origin means you slaughter some ancestor to make sure you'll never be born. I'll grant you, they're both pretty nasty.

Neddy Nelson: Historians, don't they call it Destroying Source or Severing Origin? Haven't you heard it called Resolving Origin? Doesn't it make sense, that, serial killers like the Zodiac and Jack the Ripper, those were people dropped back into time and having trouble finding and 'resolving' their mothers?

Tina Something: I never hear from Wax, not until a long, long time after Rant Casey takes his suicide dive off the bridge. In the meanwhile, certain police have been asking me if Wax has been in touch. It seems some kids died rolling a Jaguar X-Type inside a concrete highway tunnel. The car turned out to be stolen, and Wax's wallet was in the back pocket of some jeans left behind in the wreck. As if Wax totaled a Jag, killing two kids and leaving his gaddamn pants behind…

Neddy Nelson: You wonder why we always have war and famine? Can you accept the fact that the people, the Historians who run everything, they get off on watching our mortality?

Tina Something: A couple weeks later, the cops are calling about Wax again. Seems another kid's died in a stolen car, this time a BMW 3 Series 325i. Seems a witness is ready to swear that, the second after the car sailed off the top of an eight-story parking garage, landing nose-straight into a concrete sidewalk, killing the kid in the shotgun seat, after that disaster Karl Waxman climbed out from behind the shattered windshield and walked away.

And again, I told the cops I hadn't heard a word.

Neddy Nelson: How can you expect Historians to feel anything for the suffering of the rest of us? Do you cry when a flower wilts? When a carton of milk goes sour? Don't you think they've seen so many people die that their sympathy or empathy or whatever is pretty much wore out?

Tina Something: Another time the cops called, they claimed they'd matched fingerprints on the steering wheel of the BMW to fingerprints in Wax's apartment. The cops asked, was I harboring him?

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: One of the common tenets shared by widely divergent spiritual beliefs is the rule that an individual can only attain true power by 'killing his father.' One possibility is that said rule was not meant metaphorically. The primary difficulty would lie in transporting oneself backward to a time before one's birth.

Then, of course, comes the physically easier but emotionally tricky task of murdering one's own parent.

Tina Something: To try and find Wax, I looked up his mom in the phone book, Gloria Waxman, but she's not listed. Her maiden name was Elrick, so I call the few Elricks I find. One says, wrong number. When I ask for Gloria Elrick or Waxman at the other number, some old lady hangs up the phone on me. About ten times this old lady hangs up, so I drive over for a visit to the address listed in the phone book. Behind the apartment door, the same old-lady voice tells me to go away, but I don't.

I keep knocking and pounding, saying I know Gloria and Wax are around and saying I only want to talk.

Finally, I threaten to tell the police, and somebody inside unlocks the apartment door. Some old man opens the door enough I can see the gaddamn chain's still on, and he tells me to go away or he'll call the police himself. This old man says his daughter, Gloria Elrick, she died almost twenty-some years back. Seems she was parking with her steady boyfriend, and a maniac shot them both dead in the car. A total stranger, a young man with no apparent motive, somebody nobody knew from Adam, had killed Gloria and her boyfriend. And the old man slams