In the Next Life, Canto III, stanzas 153-159

While Darna knew that Ciral was obsessed,
she mostly was inclined to let it slide.
She too was rather quick to be impressed,
and Ciral never mentioned homicide.

I’m sure she wondered why he liked to weave
and to experiment with sorts of rope.
She never followed him, though, when he’d leave,
nor asked him what he did along the slope.

But did he ask himself, do you suppose,
or did he just conveniently forget
about the presence, there among his foes,
of those to whom he owed a vital debt?

Might he have reasoned that a rendered deed
without a contract merits no response?
While possible that Darna had decreed
that to be true, let’s leave it for the nonce.

As well the likelihood that he had cut
what loyalty he’d shown toward his kin.
He’d learned why he should lose those feelings, but
it took some time for all that to sink in.

Yes, he had a vindictive attitude,
but given who he was, I think we’ll find
at first, at least, his list did not include
all seven dozen souls he left behind.

I think his plan, though based on blanket hate,
had a provision for his family.
Before he changed his mind about their fate,
the process was in place to set them free.

While possible: Possible, but unlikely. Legally this may be true, but I’ve seen no indication that Objectivists deny a moral obligation to repay that kind of favor.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

In the Next Life, Canto III, stanzas 147-152

Thus Ciral, at that hour beneath those skies,
a single organism, self-contained,
renounced his birthplace and related ties.
A bond based on a real respect remained.

She took him as the child she never bore.
She passed to him her knowledge and her goals.
Then solitude engendered something more,
and neither saw a conflict in these roles.

She gave him what he thence would think he’d need.
No longer did he care that she was old.
He did not think about his wasted seed.
He did not know what he had not been told.

In those twelve months, the seventeen-year-old
went through a rather metamorphic year.
His face became more pleasant to behold,
his gait more confident, his voice more clear.

Now, normally this process will include
enhanced emotional maturity,
but no such transformation could intrude
on his deep-seated vengeful tendency.

Some places those of reason don’t belong.
It doesn’t serve one’s life to brood and dwell,
and ’tis unjust, when punishing a wrong,
to crucify the innocent as well.

Had not been told: It would not have occurred to the compounders, having no organized religion, that sex should be directed primarily toward procreation. Of course, even people of faith have sex beyond their childbearing years, and when overpopulation is seen as a threat, they feel little compunction about taking contraceptive measures. We find something distasteful, however, about younger men pairing with much older women, and I suppose even that would have been uncommon in the anything-goes environment whence Ciral came. This is probably a reference to Ayn Rand’s famed affair with the younger Nathaniel Branden.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

In the Next Life, Canto III, stanzas 143-146

She found him wanting something to believe.
He’d read of gods but had none of his own.
Without the training he could not perceive
his life as something by a potter thrown.

She filled this gaping spiritual void.
She backtracked through the existential maze
into an obligation he enjoyed
because it justified his selfish ways.

She started all this with the person qua
the person, which seemed circular to him.
That was, he knew, a necessary flaw.
All moral codes start out at least that slim.

Her standard value on which all was based
was human life itself, and he concurred.
He did not pause in his approving haste
to note the definition of each word.

Slim: As near as I can tell, the epigraph for this canto ("The standard of value…is man's life...") refers to the qualities that distinguish humans from other animals. I can’t get from that to an ethical imperative without passing through "It is that way, therefore it ought to be that way." As Ciral realized, however, it’s no worse than any other; most have their purported basis in mythology. Merrimac, as we see in the next stanza, also picks up on the word ‘life’. He apparently expects the reader, notably unlike the Objectivists, to understand that life is more than simply existing with a given nature and a continuing metabolism; it necessarily involves reproduction.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

In the Next Life, Canto III, stanzas 139-142

She showed him how to mine a home
or store for solid-state appliances and toys.
Their clients hated them but would ignore
a human if it made the proper noise.

She taught him also how he could exist
as a complete self-standing entity,
opposed to, say, a simple colonist
whose worth depended on the colony.

She helped to lift him from his mental roost.
Admittedly, the climb was not too steep.
His mind was ready to receive the boost.
He’d come to her but partially asleep.

She finished, then, a process that began
when he rejected for its lack of source
the value system of his erstwhile clan.
That happens when one reads too much, of course.

Proper noise: A signal of some sort to let the carriers know they are being approached by a trader human, I suppose. We are left to guess how this could have been initiated.
Value system: As we have seen, the erstwhile clan hadn’t much of one to reject. This process would have been much more difficult had he belonged to a well-developed culture, as Merrimac presumably does. The Objectivists do, and I understand that many of them even come from strongly religious families, but they, of course, don’t remove themselves as far as Ciral or his creator.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

In the Next Life, Canto III, stanzas 135-138

The second time he stood before the beast,
he should have been less anxious than the first.
From ignorance his mind had been released.
A known phenomenon is not accurst.

He was not scared by that, at any rate.
The fear he’d faced before was history.
As well, though, was his life up to that date,
and change is scary, though it upward be.

So once again a frightened little boy
walked up and heard a greeting from the rear.
The first one, though, had not been words of joy.
Nothing like “Welcome home” had touched his ear.

The next twelve months, when not on other jobs,
he studied manuals and diagrams.
He practiced working levers, wheels, and knobs
so he’d know how to run these giant prams.

The one in which he lived would never go.
For centuries it had been motionless.
He could observe the current models, though,
by working with his newfound patroness.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

In the Next Life, Canto III, stanzas 130-134

So ere he left he spoke his word of thanks,
evoked some tears (You know how mothers are),
and thought some more on what a couple tanks
might do if someone left the gate ajar.

He figured that would be the easy part.
He’d park a carrier just out of sight,
walk back to where his anger got its start,
swim under, pop the latch, and join the fight.

The next part would be somewhat difficult.
His tube would have a hill to climb across,
but it would only bear one young adult.
Its doctor would arrange a quick weight loss.

The rest of it? I think that had he known
what shortly you and I shall understand,
he probably would not have left the zone
whose lack of lawful life he lately planned.

Unburdened with a forecast of that sort,
he set out on his boomeranging trek.
His first stop was to be the metal fort,
or, if you will, the weird yet wondrous wreck.

Quick weight loss: I.e., the removal of, and presumed sacrifice of, its occupants. Ciral is, of course, even less concerned about their fate than that of his neighbors and relatives.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

In the Next Life, Canto III, stanzas 124-129

They’d see him back to health; he knew they would,
but he would only stay ’til he could run,
and once he could, he’d run away for good.
Then he’d become another mother’s son.

He didn’t know that last part as he swam
across the pond to where he could climb out,
but he thought as he crawled along the dam
that that must be what Darna was about.

He thought some more, while making his return,
about the woman and about his dream.
He wanted now to see the compound burn.
He wanted to hear his attackers scream.

He thought all during his recovery
about how Darna fit into his plan,
which still involved, as far as he could see,
becoming, in a sense, an inside man.

These thoughts were on his mind as he prepared
a word of thanks for coming to his aid,
within which he most generously shared
where he would be if they need be repaid.

He couldn’t leave this for them in a note.
Okay, he could, but there would be no point.
No one around could read a word he wrote.
Well, Ciral could, but he’d have blown the joint.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

In the Next Life, Canto III, stanzas 118-123

Abandoned in the pond, he was alone.
It hadn’t bothered him to have no friend,
but now he felt it inside every bone.
Such hurt remains when cuts and bruises mend.

Nowhere to stay, nowhere to go to heal,
nowhere to hide from taunting and abuse,
except the once-enticing tube of steel,
within which was a woman of ill-use.

That’s not to say he’d get no help at all,
if he, with aching limbs, could make it back.
His sister Noria would hear his call
from where they slept inside the TV Shack®.

She’d tend his wounds and bring him food and drink,
although she owed him nothing but neglect.
He may have been a selfish little fink,
but he was still her kin last time she’d checked.

Was this innate genetic preference?
Attachment to her playmate as a tot?
Did she accept the “Blood is thick…” nonsense?
(Is blood as thick as catsup? I think not)

Her mother’s heart pumped denser blood than that.
The stricken boy had half her genes at least,
while Noria, not knowing who begat,
would suffer less a loss if he deceased.

Catsup: One must admit he has a point. I’m not sure what it is, but I’m happy to admit it. The original line was ‘Is blood as thick as semen, say, or snot?’ That confused the issue because semen relates more than blood to genetics
Less a loss: The way I understand it, in a typical society with high genetic diversity, a biological parent shares 50 % of the child’s genetic material, slightly higher due to occasional and remote inbreeding. A full sibling would share the same percentage if one could be absolutely certain of paternity, but for purposes of this discussion it is the likelihood from the relatives’ point of view, and no siblings could ever be completely sure of having both parents in common, so in most cases it’s probably a little less than 50%. In Noria’s case, it would be much less than 50% because there is no assumption of common paternity at all, but well over 25% due to the low number of potential fathers. In any case, it would be roughly half of what it is for the mother.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

In the Next Life, Canto III, stanzas 114-117

"Well, look who visits in our little vale!”
“It’s Spiral!” “He’s too smart to stay with us!”
“Hey, Spiral, do you have a piggy’s tail?”
“Let’s see if he has something to discuss!”

He dived back under, but they sprang the gate.
They grabbed his head when he came up for air.
The gruesome details I shall not relate.
You know as well as I what happened there.

They tossed him, barely conscious, in the pond,
which saved him from the rodents on the shore.
The splash of water helped him to respond.
He pushed his knees into the muddy floor.

He turned his swelling head, but kept it low,
and from the bank it looked like he had drowned.
They threw some careless rocks and turned to go
to the returning hunters’ cheerful sound.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

In the Next Life, Canto III, stanzas 108-113

He’d surface in a murky little lake,
dammed at the compound wall a ways downstream.
He’d wade along the wall for safety’s sake.
To stay unnoticed kept within his theme.

He usually performed this when the sun
was in the south, behind the creek’s ravine.
With only stars for light, it should be done
with little chance of Ciral’s being seen.

Unless the men were still away, of course,
in which case he’d be greeted by his peers,
who would be free to use whatever force
was needed to intensify his fears.

Now at this point our story can diverge—
we don’t know how long he’d been in the can—
but I believe I must resist the urge
to keep the skin intact on our young man.

I wish that we could take another train.
I hurt with him; this guy is like my son.
I feel indignance, helplessness, and pain
as they humiliate him, one by one.

The line that leads to safety for the boy
goes to a place where all will stay the same.
To make our tale, he must want to destroy.
He first must pass through ridicule and shame.

Surface: Apparently there was no room to insert something like “Upon his return…”, or maybe he wanted to avoid repeating a phrase he had used a few stanzas back.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

In the Next Life, Canto III, stanzas 104-107

At dusk was when the men would hunt and steal.
The carriers had trouble seeing then.
On their return, the tribe would have a meal,
but first the older boys would meet the men.

Outside the wall, the kids were not allowed,
but while the men were out, they’d watch the gate.
They’d let their elders in, and they were proud
to know that soon they wouldn’t have to wait.

The settlers had enclosed a stretch of brook
when they had made a mound around the mall,
so they could drink, dispose waste, clean, and cook
without transporting water through the wall.

Their egress was a path along this creek.
’Twas gated well but guarded from afar.
When Ciral went out, maybe once a week,
he’d hold his breath and swim beneath the bar.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

In the Next Life, Canto III, stanzas 97-103

So by the time that Darna came along,
old Seven Six’s load was pretty light.
While reason told her that was nothing wrong,
she’d known for quite some time it wasn’t right.

When she and Engadin began to fret,
there wasn’t much that medicine could do.
Though Abraham and Sarah could beget,
this time around no miracle came through.

Now, Ciral, as I said, was unaware
of who she was and how she got that way.
The poor kid must have gotten quite a scare
when he was told that he would have to stay.

Wait, wasn’t this his dream at last come true?
Was this not where he’d wanted to reside?
Well sure, he would have felt a thrill run through
if he had been the one who could decide.

His plan, such as it was, meant taking charge.
That wasn’t where he would be for a while.
In fact, he’d less than likely be at large.
To be a prisoner was not his style.

And so, as soon as Ciral saw a gap
in Darna’s vigilance, he gave the slip.
He didn’t know that it would be a slap.
He didn’t think of it as jumping ship.

’Twas dark when he effected his escape.
He wasn’t sure how long ’til day would break.
If he ran, he was sure to get a scrape.
To wait there with the rats—which would you take?

Abraham and Sarah: Genesis 21:2

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

In the Next Life, Canto III, stanzas 92-96

No one disturbed their once-robotic host.
The compound-dwellers’ superstitious fear
was amplified by subtly playing ghost.
No other outside humans e’er came near.

Their values were the kind that tend to last.
They lived as they would live, which was their goal.
Their code through many generations passed…
until they reinvented birth control.

Do you have children? If so, what’s it worth?
Is there a quantifiable reward
to weigh against the pain of giving birth?
The time and money you can ill afford?

If you were rational in the extreme—
completely selfish—would you procreate?
I know it’s hard to know how it would seem,
but I think you’d think twice, then hesitate.

What motive would you have? Posterity?
What’s it to you who’s living when you’ve died?
Support in your old age? Well, I can’t see
how all that sacrifice is justified.

As they would live: See Darna’s first remark to Ciral. The Objectivists’ focus on ‘nature’, as in a set of more or less fixed traits, makes them sound deterministic, and Merrimac’s focus on this aspect of their belief system and on their work ethic sounds like an effort to paint them as Calvinists, despite their gleeful mockery of religion.
Rational in the extreme: This sounds oxymoronic, doesn’t it? Merrimac is saying here that Objectivism is unsustainable over multiple generations. He appears to believe it will go the way of Shakerism for essentially the same reason. Indeed, Rand and most or all of her close disciples were childless.
Support in your old age: He glosses over this one pretty quickly. Could there not have been a period between the advent of the family unit and that of the ability to accumulate wealth during which the return would have outweighed the investment? Is there not such a situation in some parts of the world even now? Undoubtedly Merrimac would counter that a selfish parent’s offspring can be presumed to have a similar level of selfishness. Since children cannot be expected to sign a contract with the providers of their food and shelter, they can have no enforceable obligation to return the favor. That children do support their parents is due to religion, or at least to some ethical structure, rather than to rational or innate behavior.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

In the Next Life, Canto III, stanzas 86-91

They rescued some insiders from the fate
of insiders whose carrier had died.
From interviews they learned what the things ate
and what was hard to get from the outside.

This market research led them to begin
collecting things the carriers required.
They’d knock on doors and find nobody in,
the leases having long ago expired.

The failure of electric power grids
had rendered useless all the links and nets,
so people had to entertain their kids
without PCs or television sets.

Attempts to stay alive when all was dark
had not involved disposing properly.
A bit of hope, a momentary spark,
would not be wasted on such luxury.

The carriers, to make their fancy brains,
had need of substances like silicon.
For transistors, they’d trade their surplus grains.
They’d let the hated humans cross their lawn.

And thus the splinter group began to trade
in used appliances and sundry goods.
They learned where they could find the highest grade:
the very best suburban neighborhoods.

The fate: This refers to the last part of Canto I, where we were informed that the insiders are unlikely to survive without the protection of the carriers. After many generations in confinement, as it were, I suppose they would have no chance at all. In Canto II, 4797 predicted her insiders would pour out, suggesting she knew she was about to die, but she did not speculate about what would happen to them after that point.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

In the Next Life, Canto III, stanzas 82-85

They saw the carriers and those inside
as wealth producers who deserved respect.
They thought the communards exemplified
the looters they’d been told they must reject.

With that in mind, six persons climbed the bank
up to the spot where Seven Six had wrecked,
supplied enough to live inside the tank
a week or two while they tried to connect.

It hadn’t been too long since the attack,
so they were able quickly to restore
some functionality to their new shack.
Soon they were living better than before.

They didn’t try to break the monster free.
They kept it quiet, as they were afraid
that moving it would risk discovery.
Their neighbors didn’t know how close they’d stayed.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

In the Next Life, Canto III, stanzas 76-81

And after all these babies had been born,
some sperm was needed for another brood.
All healthy males had sworn a solemn oath,
and none would risk a life of solitude.

No girl would just steal from her mother’s friend.
The women, though, knew something had to give.
If all gave up toward a higher end,
with common husbands most of them could live.

So fatherhood among the men was shared—
a free-love commune they had once thought weird.
Those who had problems with it and who dared
to leave the compound never reappeared.

This history young Ciral had discerned
from diaries and vital stats and lists.
About a part of them he had not learned—
A part who called themselves Rejectionists.

These couldn’t stand to live in a commune
because that way involved self-sacrifice,
and when one steals, one’s rationales impugn
themselves. Thus, they’d been violated twice.

In short, their principles were much the same
as those their fellow compound-dwellers held,
but theirs were based on more than just a name.
Their rules of life were by man’s nature spelled.

A part: cf. ‘a part of who we are’ in Ciral’s first exchange with Darna

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

In the Next Life, Canto III, stanzas 70-75

The second generation in their teens,
while picnicking outside the walls one day,
were set on by some wannabe marines.
The boys were killed; the girls were forced to lay.

The raiders with the settlers made a trade:
one damsel at a time for some supplies.
And when the final ransom had been paid,
they stormed the banks to take again their prize.

They had no more success than Seven Six
(The carrier, much later Ciral’s jail)
at getting past the razor wire and bricks
while climbing through an artificial hail.

While Seven Six had donated her shell,
the others left a much more subtle mark:
their genes, of course, but something else as well:
They changed life in what Darna called “that park”.

Before the raid, both parents of a child
affected its development two ways:
the first, as the genetic code compiled,
and then by teaching, punishment, and praise.

But here they had a slew of pregnancies
with none of them a father anywhere.
Somehow the unaffected families
found selfishness a little hard to bear.

Hard to bear: Remember, they started out “…being careful not to share.” At this point, though, they were only shortly removed from the influence of the mores with which you and I are familiar and with which they had been raised, so most of them were fairly easily returned. By Ciral’s time they had lost these sentiments again, due to lack of reinforcement rather than willful suppression.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

In the Next Life, Canto III, stanzas 66-69

At first, they and the carriers ignored
each other, though the teams at times were tense,
but when the group ran out of what they’d stored,
their principles and pride lost precedence.

As long as they had cans of food to eat,
the way that they preferred was right and just.
When times got hard, the carriers had wheat.
They did what those with starving children must.

They knew that other humans owned the stuff,
and some of them would not participate,
but when their own supplies ran low enough,
the colonists with weaker morals ate.

They roamed outside their walls to look for food.
Though incorrect, they sent out just the men.
At night, they could afford more latitude.
The men would sleep by day inside the pen.

Incorrect: Another difference between the two groups we have been discussing. Most Objectivists would snicker at political correctness, while libertarians, though just as opposed to enforced equality,  tend to be uncomfortable with making assumptions about things like work assignments. This, being one of the later values acquired, would be among the earlier forgotten when times get tough.
Pen: This would be the compound.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

In the Next Life, Canto III, stanzas 60-65

If J-1 hadn’t come upon the scene,
they would have either failed or been suppressed
(or some of each or something in between).
No group could be allowed to pass that test.

The hollow that they picked was right next door
to that in which the founders left their shells,
and when the carriers returned to shore,
the few survivors left for safer dells.

The libertarians, meanwhile, had sought
a shopping mall they thought they could defend.
When other people fled, they stood and fought.
Their inclination was to buck the trend.

Despite a limit on their food supplies,
they made some items that did not compute.
They bargained for the worries and the cries
because they knew that babies would be cute.

They also wanted to extend their lives.
They felt the need for branches from their stem.
In our descendants part of us survives.
At least that’s what their parents had taught them.

While they believed in rights and moral laws,
they had no gods by whom these could be blest.
Their children, though instructed in the cause,
were free to choose the way that they thought best.

Next door: This is not so implausible a coincidence when one considers that somebody was likely to live near the carriers. Less believable is the apparent distance from the coast, although I suppose both the founders and the libertarians would have selected secluded, thinly populated locations. The presence of a shopping mall is somewhat incongruous, then.
No gods: This is certainly not true of all libertarians, but it would fit the vast majority of those who would participate in such an endeavor.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

In the Next Life, Canto III, stanzas 54-59

“No ‘we’ is anything, you simple snip,
for only individuals exist.
You can’t be part of some relationship
that’s merely an abstraction in the mist.”

He had a good idea of what she meant.
He’d read about what’s real and what’s pretend.
He knew of those whose thoughts were heaven-sent
and those who cracked their eggs the other end.

He knew that some maintained that gods
installed a sense of duty in the human soul,
but Darna (for that was what she was called)
apparently believed the self was whole.

His ancestors thought something like that, too:
’Twas wrong to use initiated force;
all government was evil, through and through;
and knowledge had a pure objective source.

Unable to persuade Society
that laws were slavery and taxes theft,
unwilling to be something less than free,
they resolutely packed their bags and left.

With what they’d managed to accumulate,
they bought a valley way out West somewhere,
pretended it became a sovereign state,
and traded, being careful not to share.

Eggs: This reference to Gulliver’s Travels implies that Merrimac saw no real difference between the faithful and the rational. Obviously he believed there is a tremendous difference in the final result; he has the belief system of Darna’s people (later named as Rejectionists) failing to perpetuate itself. Indeed, as we just discussed, it dies off more rapidly than the nearly nonexistent mores of Ciral’s folk. I think the similarity is in their tenacious dogmatism, so lacking in the compound, and in the ultimate source of their values.  Randian Objectivists like to think their entire ethos is based on Aristotelian postulates, but the very imperative to have such a thing in the first place is essentially irrational, no less than if they claimed a supernatural source for it. Put differently, they would not, and could not, have begun to dream up such a thing if one that they consider completely nonsensical had not already existed. Try to imagine a group of people with no values, one of them saying “I’ll bet we could get along better if we had some ethics,” and the others concurring. If someone has a less ridiculous scenario for the spontaneous generation of that kind of thinking, I’ll be happy to include it in the next edition.Objective source: This seems inconsistent with the distinction otherwise drawn between the two groups. See the following note.
Theft: A mantra of the Libertarian Party. That Merrimac is so familiar with and so dismissive of Objectivism is an indication that he is or has been involved in the libertarian movement, which seems to be largely composed of refugees from Objectivism. See Jerome Tucille, It Usually Begins with Ayn Rand. Note that I’m following the practice of libertarians themselves by using a capital L only when referring to the political party. I’m using a capital O throughout, however, to emphasize the orthodoxy of the Objectivist movement.
Pretended: A lot of libertarians dream of seceding or otherwise creating their own relatively lawless nation. Some have actually attempted it, but of course under normal circumstances such an endeavor wouldn’t be allowed by whatever armed group claims authority over their territory.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

In the Next Life, Canto III, stanzas 47-53

A short time later, Ciral came aboard,
assisted by a pulley and some rope.
He did not feel exactly like he’d scored,
but now he could observe; that gave him hope.

The first thing he observed once he was in:
A crumpled body through an open door.
His captor was still calling Engadin,
who probably could hear her call no more.

When she discovered this to be the case,
she closed the door behind her for a while.
When she came back, she had composed her face,
but he could tell that she had forced her smile.

“I know that I’m irrational to mourn.
It is more like your people than like mine,
but none of mine have recently been born.
There were but two of us left in the line.”

The boy informed her that such sentiment
was not a central theme as she implied,
but inexperience did not prevent
his feeling sorry that her loved one died.

“Yes, loved one—do you know what those words mean?”
She looked at him, intrigued by his remark.
“With your kind, sex is always so obscene.
There are no families inside that park.”

“I’ve read enough about that sort of thing
to know that what you feel is not so far
as you might think from how we sadly sing
when we have lost a part of who we are.”

Who we are: At first glance, this is inconsistent with the portrayal of the compound as devoid of almost all morality. Perhaps Merrimac is saying that collectivism, though strictly speaking irrational, is an intrinsic human attitude that doesn’t fade away when ethical support systems are removed. Also, this sets up the contrast between the compounders, who are just now starting to drop in numbers due to their lack of values, and their neighbors, who are already effectively extinct because individualism, which is their primary value, discourages rather than encourages procreation.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

In the Next Life, Canto III, stanzas 41-46

He hadn’t finished taking in the threat
behind her invitation’s see-through veil,
and now she’d made the poor thing try to get
cylindrically projected into scale.

He reckoned if he ran, the odds were slim
that she could make him stay against his will,
and even if she could hold on to him,
to climb with him would take uncommon skill.

But going up presumably would mean
something he’d only vaguely hoped to do:
to get inside this wonderful machine—
a guided tour by a woman, too!

He kept his back to her as he arose.
As soon as he was on his feet he felt
his sandals separating from his toes,
but first a force effected on his belt.

This time he landed squarely on his butt,
so he could see her standing o’er his head
and waving what could easily have cut
that part of him and left a stump instead.

The female voice had been a pleasing sound.
Those fantasies are big at his life stage.
On seeing her his dream-ship ran aground
on sands of time (or was it rocks of age?).

Cylindrically projected: With her map analogy, Ciral’s heretofore unnamed captor is trying to represent him in fewer dimensions than he in fact possesses. This informs us of the author’s opinion, shared by many, of the simplistic characterizations of Objectivism.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

In the Next Life, Canto III, stanzas 37-40

“You let this damned thing near! Are you asleep?
What are we going to do, now that he’s come?
He has a life he has a right to keep.
He’s human, though he’s barely more than scum.”

The conversation, still with but one side,
drew closer to the subject of the slur,
who didn’t know to whom the words applied
nor why his presence had caused such a stir.

“You might as well come up.” She stood astride
the prostrate boy, whose face was in the dirt.
“When I find Engadin, then we’ll decide.
For now, you stay with me, and no one’s hurt.

“So what’s this ‘learning who I am’ claptrap?
You shouldn’t have to search for who you are.
Each locus is a point upon the map.
You can’t stray from your nature very far.”

Engadin: I have given up trying to make sense of this name. I can find some significance in every other name in this canto, usually by reversing the spelling.
Claptrap: This is a poke at the tendency of Objectivists, on the founder of which movement this character is apparently based, to scoff at most varieties of sentimentality. I think they don’t really object to people learning about their own nature, but in the context, “learning who I am” sounds like touchy-feely self-discovery, and they do seem to have a problem with that.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

In the Next Life, Canto III, stanzas 33-36

As he approached the leg, his head grew light.
He hadn’t learned to force his diaphragm.
He’d read, however, something to recite:
“If nothing else, I’m learning who I am.”

The morning sun was reaching o’er the trees
behind his head—at least he’d planned that much—
and, with the light, it brought a little breeze.
They both revived him with their gentle touch.

He drew a breath, then shifted back a bit.
His trailing foot prepared a spot of ground.
He’d fallen ere he knew that he was hit.
He registered the impact, then the sound.

Someone had tagged his backside with a rock.
He fell down more from fear than from the blow.
Prone on the ground, and paralyzed from shock,
he heard a woman yelling, “Where’d you go?

“If nothing else…”: What’s that? Did I hear something? Okay, so technically it’s not dialog at this point, since he believes himself to be alone, but at least it’s a human voice.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

In the Next Life, Canto III, stanzas 29-32

Though Ciral didn’t know that steel should be
reduced to dust when centuries have passed,
he grew suspicious when he neared to see
that all the legs displayed an oily cast.

If anyone was using oil out here,
it must be recent, else it would be dry.
Machines unused for much less than a year
would show no trace. So who, and when, and why?

It must be something other than the stuff
the outsiders would work so hard to find,
and which no one would ever use enough
to coat the limbs of something left behind.

He’d come with no specific plan in mind;
he’d thought he’d lose his nerve when he came near,
but now the balance had been realigned.
Again, his thirst for knowledge trumped his fear.

Balance: This gets us used to the idea of opposing influences whose relative strength shifts, leading to changes in behavior. Thus we should be prepared to grasp the “break in equilibrium” in Canto IV.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

In the Next Life, Canto III, stanzas 25-28

Thus armed, he faced the one remaining thing
that only common knowledge made him fear
(the live ones, in contrast, by reasoning,
were something that he didn’t dare go near).

The shell itself was mostly free of rust.
The moving parts had not fared near as well,
but Ciral had no method he could trust
the composition or its life to tell.

He’d recognized the creatures when he’d seen
some photographs of airplanes in the store,
then studied every book and magazine
that dealt with aviation facts and lore.

The wings, tail end, and landing gear were gone,
but he could see the scars where they had been.
The legs and other parts were added on.
’Twere these that had corroded way back when.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac