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[16 | Riddles of the Pounding] Download or Read PDF

When James gets home, he doesn’t hear anything. He sighs in relief and says, “Thank you, Jesus!”. He then maneuvers down his little hallway that stretches more than half the length of his tiny five hundred square foot apartment into the kitchen. 

He opens up the cabinet, takes out a bottle of Tanqueray Gin, and pours a few ounces into a Collins glass over a golf ball-sized sphere of ice. He then grabs his notebook and ballpoint pen and retires to his rocking chair. Before sitting, he angles the chair next to the window for maximum exposure to the city. 

He sips on the Gin for a few minutes, thinking, (Life is good. The universe will give you what you need if you ask for it, and what I need is some quiet time. The time-wave equations are almost complete. I just need to make the one last connection for them to be finalized. Once I find this connection, I can model them to show that my findings are what is needed for time-displacement to be feasible in our lifetime.)

Once he finished the Gin, he gets up and pours another few ounces over the shrinking sphere of ice. He returns to the rocking chair and takes his notebook off the windowsill. He opens it, and the moment the pen hits the paper, eight rapid thumps radiate from the half-broken ceiling. 

THUMP-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump

Frustrated, James slams his notebook on the windowsill and stands erect from the rocking chair, leaving it swaying back-and-forth. He grabs Watson and exits his condo heading down the hall to the elevator. He waits at the elevators holding the ax with both hands staring at the butt. He imagines what someone’s skin wrapped skull would look like as it drives deep into the back of the cranium. (I bet the skin will fold inward, staying intact, and the hair will look like a fresh sheet of sod rolled out over a sunken hole.)

James lives on the sixth floor, so he thinks it would make sense that the pounding in his ceiling is coming from the 7th floor. He gets in the elevator and shoots up a layer. He arrives a few seconds later and begins walking up and down the hall pressing his ear up against every unit’s door—listening for the poundings—but he hears nothing more than televisions and conversations between people. Flustered and confused about the situation, he returns to his unit for another drink. 

When he opens the door, he finds that the place is in pieces. The walls and ceiling had been smashed to bits. The floor is littered with jagged chunks of sheetrock. He walks into the condo feeling his feet crunch on pieces of drywall laying atop other pieces. The mess doesn’t register to him. He just makes his way back to the rocking chair, only stopping to fill a glass with more Gin.

After an unknown amount of time passes, James drunkenly swings his head around to look for the ax, but it isn’t where he left it when he came in. He starts to panic, thinking he may have left it somewhere in the building and someone may find it. He quickly gets up out of the chair and moves to the door. He walks through his condo like he is on ice, sliding his feet through the dust and pieces of wall, leaving what looks like a trail in a fresh snowfall.

Once out of the condo and in the halls, he makes his way to the elevators. When he arrives, he forgets why he is at the elevators and decides that it would be best to go to the lobby to see if there might be anyone to converse with. When the elevator reaches the lobby, and he exits it, he sees a few people dressed up. Some are standing, and others are sitting in the Victorian chairs. They are all holding holiday cocktails and have essences of Christmas tied to their outfits. 

James hears music coming from the entertainment room. He stands near the elevator watching the people, and become