Bob Forrester trudged through Central Park under a stubborn gray sky that refused to rain despite October’s promises. The air was thick, and the damp breeze carried a faint scent of old leaves and forgotten memories.

He thought he’d forgotten where the fountain was—or maybe he couldn’t remember if he’d forgotten where the fountain was. But when he located it, he sighed, took a seat on a nearby bench, and waited.

An overstuffed pigeon strutted nearby, side-eyeing him, which felt oddly judgmental. Something about being stared at with one eye unsettled him, so he looked away.

He felt the weight of the letter inside his jacket pocket—a relic shoved away for years. The corners of the envelope jabbed his chest every time he moved, a nagging reminder of things he’d rather not confront.

Just then, his phone vibrated. The screen lit up: Zenith Solutions. He answered as if he’d been expecting the call from the moment he arrived.

“I’m here,” he said, trying to ignore the background noise of the fountain’s aimless splashing.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Forrester! It’s Andy. Hope you’re well.”

Andy’s voice was unnervingly cheerful, like a Cockney-bot programmed for politeness.

“I see you’ve made it to the fountain. Does it bring back memories?”

“Not really,” Forrester blurted.

“Not really? That’s disappointing. We were under the impression this place mattered a great deal,” Andy chuckled.

“It’s been years.”

“Perhaps you prefer not to remember. We can fix that. Did you bring the letter?”

He rolled his eyes. “Yes, I brought the letter. How long is this going to take?”

“Well, that depends on you. It may take forever,” Andy’s tone shifted, still pleasant but with a bureaucratic edge. “Before we dive in, could you spare a few moments for a customer satisfaction survey? It won’t take long, promise.”

He scanned the park, half-expecting a hidden camera. Maybe even that pigeon was in on it. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Not at all,” Andy replied smoothly. “Your feedback is vital to Zenith Solutions—keeps the cogs turning, you know. Now then, how would you rate your overall experience with us?”

“I’m not even sure why I selected this service,” he snapped, digging his fingers into his pockets.

Andy sighed, the kind of sigh reserved for predictable resistance. “A common conundrum. Let’s rephrase: since our first delightful conversation—you remember it, don’t you?—have you felt more enlightened with the choice you’ve made?”

“What choice?!” He shot back, frustration cracking his voice.

“You chose the Closure Optimization, did you not?” Andy said, his tone maddeningly sincere.

“Yes, closure, I think, maybe, I don’t know. Yes, I guess I’m satisfied, whatever.”

“Alright then, pressing onward.” A weariness crept in, the sound of a teacher with an unruly student. “Next question: On a scale of one to ten, how satisfied are you with our level of engagement?”

“This is ridiculous,” Forrester muttered. “I’m not doing this. There’s been no level of engagement!”

“I see. Well, we were prepared to offer you the Emotional Asset Recovery upgrade if that would make this easier,” Andy replied, politeness now a sharp edge.

“What is the Emotional … Asset … Recovery … upgrade?”

“The survey first, Mr. Forrester. Now. True or false: I would recommend Zenith Solutions to a friend.”

Forrester mumbled something unintelligible, his nerves fraying. The pigeon edged closer, pecking at some invisible morsel.

“Mr. Forrester? Still with us?” Andy prodded.

“Yes, I’m here!” he snapped.

Andy’s voice softened. “Mr. Forrester, Zenith Solutions’ Closure Optimization may not offer the type of closure you seek, but the kind of closure you need.”

“What does that mean?!”

“Take the letter out of your pocket, Mr. Forrester. Put it in your hands.”

A chill ran down his spine. He obeyed, the letter’s weight suddenly unbearable, as if it held every past mistake he ever made.

“There it is,” Andy mused. “Your regrets, unfinished conversations, unresolved heartbreak—the entire dreadful backlog. It stymies even the most accomplished among us. But fret not, old chap. Zenith Solutions can set things right. And the wonderful thing about us is you never have to look us in the eye. We take the guilt out of guilt. Sort of.”

Forrester’s breath trembled as the letter’s edges bit into his palms. “To be frank, I left her. Here. Walked away. Just abandoned … the love of my life!”

Andy’s tone brightened, as if hearing exactly what he wanted.

“Ah, there it is. The disclosure. Always cathartic in the early stages. You left her at this very fountain. Did you even look back, Mr. Forrester? Or was the sidewalk more compelling?”

Forrester pressed his palms together, trembling.

“Perhaps it’s time to face facts,” Andy continued, almost merrily. “Isn’t that why you kept the letter? Deep down, you knew this moment would come. The letter, all these years later, Mr. Forrester! People don’t hold onto relics of indifference.”

Forrester tried to steady his breath.

Andy chuckled softly, a bureaucrat checking boxes.

“Tell me—was the so-called love of your life surprised when you dropped the bomb on her? Or did she already see the coward in you from the start? Did she cry? Tears? Did you see tears streaming down her cheeks? Or worse, did she stay quiet, sparing you the indignity?!”

Forrester shut his eyes.

“Ah, silence. That tells me plenty. Let’s move on then. Would you describe your subsequent relationships as—what’s the phrase?—‘adequate compensations’? Or have you always measured women against the one you abandoned at this fountain?”

Forrester’s hands gripped the letter until the paper crackled.

“You see, Mr. Forrester,” Andy said smoothly, “the heart is not unlike a filing cabinet. Every time you open a new drawer, you find the same old document waiting inside. Same mistake, stamped and restamped. And here you are, finally back at the source. Tell me, was it worth it?”

Forrester’s fingers skittered across the letter, a frantic spider. “Why… does it… matter?“ he asked, desperation leaking through.

“Because here at Zenith Solutions, we specialize in second chances for those brave enough to face what they left behind,” Andy replied, that maddening charm now oddly comforting. “Solutions that lead to resolutions, if you will. Now, open the letter and read it.”

“I know what it says!” he protested, resolve crumbling.

“I said, read it, Mr. Forrester. Aloud!”

Forrester’s hands shook as he unfolded the paper. The rustle was deafening. He inhaled sharply and read, “Uhhh, all right. It says, ’I still love you, Bob. And I… don’t know how to stop loving you. Please don’t let this be… the end of us.’”

The words hung between them, raw and undeniable.

“You b*****d! That woman loved you! She adored you! She would have laid down her life for you! She would have made you so much better a man than you ever deserve! You louse! You pathetic, sniveling wretch! How could you be so cruel?” Andy snapped, like a prosecutor savoring a verdict.

Forrester pulled the phone away and began to weep. The dam broke. Years of defenses washed away. He brought the phone back to his ear, but held it at a slight distance.

“Are you there? Are you listening? Tell me, Mr. Forrester, are you ready to begin anew? I’ll give you a moment to compose yourself, you bloody basketcase,” Andy sweetly but cruelly murmured. “In the meantime, what was the name of your former beau?”

“Nancy,” Forrester said, gripping his cell phone with two hands and beating back tears.

“Nancy,” Andy repeated with relish, as if testing the syllables. “Would you like us to contact Nancy? Last word was that she still loved you. She might still be out there, wasting the best years of her life waiting for a coward.”

“No.”

“No?” Andy snapped, voice dropping its syrupy coating. “Of course not. Why bother? You already rehearsed your role as deserter decades ago. Why change the script now?”

Forrester pressed the phone harder against his ear, shaking his head.

“You know what she probably remembers?” Andy pressed on. “Not your face. Not your touch. Just your back as you walked away. That’s your legacy, Mr. Forrester. A pair of retreating shoulders.”

Forrester let out a broken sound, somewhere between a sob and a grunt.

“How pathetic,” Andy sighed, his tone returning to bureaucratic politeness. “Very well then. We have a lot of important work ahead of us. The Emotional Asset Recovery upgrade is our next best option. An extension of our Continuity Services. I highly recommend that you take advantage of the discounted offering.”

Forrester fell silent again, gathering himself.

“Take all the time you need, Mr. Forrester. Heaven knows you’ve already squandered enough of it.”

“If I say yes, what happens?” Forrester’s voice was threadbare.

“You open the door to the life you left behind for starters. But this time, you don’t walk away. No. You stay, Mr. Forrester, you face it, and maybe—just maybe—you reconcile with yourself, confirm the closure you’ve denied yourself. And once you’ve achieved…”

“I’ll do it. Please! Emotional … recovery … whatever. Sign me up,” Forrester said, while slowly spinning in a circle.

“Wise choice, Mr. Forrester. Very wise. Keep in mind, at Zenith Solutions, your highest point may be your lowest. We’ll be in touch.”

Andy hung up.

Forrester took a deep breath, his chest still tight under the weight of the years over regrets, mistakes, and long silences. He exhaled and looked around the park, taking in the faded grays and browns of early autumn.

The pigeon was still at his feet for some odd reason, still side-eyeing him. Then another pigeon landed, as if summoned. Two silent witnesses at his feet, side-eyeing him, their heads bobbing in unison. Soon, a flock arrived, surrounding him, pecking at his feet, and side-eyeing, like auditors of his guilt.

Forrester suddenly realized the absurdity of it all and laughed once, a thin, almost embarrassed laugh. And in that laugh, something shifted—brief, insubstantial, but real enough. It was a flicker of lightness. It was the high point of the entire day—a zenith, if not a solution.

© Michael Arturo, 2025

Michael Arturo is a playwright, screenwriter, and fiction author who also writes random essays on social and political issues. He was born and raised in New York City. His plays have been produced in New York, London, Boston, and LA. He also created the Double Espresso Web Series from 2010 to 2014.

To support his work, please donate, purchase a subscription, leave a comment, or follow. Thank you.

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Foghorns moaned low across the Hudson as first light strained against heavy clouds, draped like wet cloth over the tenement buildings along MacDougal Street. On the third floor, in a narrow kitchen with a view of Passanante’s Ballfield, the morning chill seeped under the windowsills, threading its way into the bones of the small apartment where Julie lived.

From her window, she saw a cluster of figures in the field on Houston Street—practicing Tai chi in the mist, their slow, deliberate movements blurred into abstraction. They moved like ghosts, rehearsing something ancient and private. Further off, the Twin Towers were lost in fog, their presence felt more than seen. She loved mornings like this.

But then she opened the refrigerator and realized she was out of coffee.

Marlon Brando: more than an idol to Johnny “The Ram” Rampole—something akin to a saint or a wayward prophet. Since his teenage years, Johnny had modeled himself after the Method great: dressing in torn T‑shirts, worn dungarees, and gritty leather jackets so retro they stood out like a sepia ghost in modern Manhattan.

Now in his forties and decidedly out of shape, Johnny looked like a miscast statue from a wax museum’s “1950s rebel” exhibit—thick around the middle and terminally confused.

His cramped Lower East Side flat was practically a shrine to a bygone era: black‑and‑white portraits of Brando, James Dean, Montgomery Clift, Paul Newman, Geraldine Page, Eli Wallach—each one peeling off the wall with affectionate neglect. His bathroom was doubled as a library: dog‑eared manuals by Stanislavski and Stella Adler, Brando’s scripts, a signed “Streetcar Named Desire” by Tennessee Williams, a shower curtain patched from Brando’s old movie posters—a retro‑movie saint’s altar, only dustier.

Johnny inhaled every Brando biography. He memorized every role, every nuance. “The Godfather” remained his morning ritual—slurring the Don’s lines into his coffee cup with cotton in his jowls, like some makeshift Marlonish apparition.

Meanwhile, the world whizzed past in the glare of TikTok filters, 15‑second celebrity pitches, and natural‑acting “charm.” Stanislavski and Strasberg were considered arthritic dinosaurs. Johnny himself became the token relic that casting agents half‑smirked at.

“They wouldn’t know Stanislavski from a hole in the wall,” he’d mutter, pledging silent revenge on a world that rewarded conformity, not soul‑torn breakthroughs.

His best friend was his mute neighbor, Silent Al, who faithfully listened to Johnny’s endless rants over toothpicks and Tahitian‑themed house specials in their dingy cafe booth.

“Actors used to be rebels! And now they’re spoon‑fed social‑media clowns! Me? I’m an open wound! The next bum hurts as much as I do, but I bleed from the inside out,” he’d proclaim to Al, who only chewed his toothpick harder in solidarity.

Johnny then turned to a Vietnamese waitress in a Tahitian grass skirt who spoke no English and told her he’d buy her an island if he ever made it big.

But that was all before the escapade that truly defined Johnny’s folly occurred. A long‑buried Brando passion project—“Wally and Bud,” about Brando’s friendship with Wally Cox—was revived by Alexandra Tamar, a VP of a major streaming network. Johnny, convinced he was destined for the Brando role, took a job as a taxi driver and stalked her address.

“Just a quick hop downtown,” Ms. Tamar said as she bounced into Johnny’s cab.

“You’re not—wait—are you Alexandra Tay-maar?” Johnny asked as he pulled away from the curb.

“Tay-mar.”

“Wow, what a coincidence; I was just reading about that Brando script in the trades a few weeks ago. Can you believe this?”

“Oh?” Ms. Tamar countered suspiciously.

“Like Brando, I myself am an actor with a tragic past. And, let’s say, like Wally Cox, I’ve had friends I’ve mistreated in the past and come to regret. Take my friend, Silent Al, for instance. Maybe he never says anything because I don’t let him. Life teaches you things.”

“I suppose it does,” Ms. Tamar replied, not knowing what to add.

“And many people don’t realize how truly sensitive Marlon Brando was. Have you ever read the love letters he wrote to Solange? Now there’s a movie—Marlon and Solange—that was a painful breakup,” Johnny said as he bit his lower lip.

“You can leave me off at the corner,” Ms. Tamar said.

Johnny gripped the wheel tighter, his throat working as if to swallow words he could no longer keep down. His eyes glazed over, and before he could stop himself, the dam broke.

“Ms. Tay-mar, you gotta cast me. I’d be the perfect nobody to play Marlon Brando—I can’t even believe I’m here before you, but look at me! I’m a loser straight from Palookaville, a nobody who coulda—coulda been somebody!—if fate didn’t slap me with a couple rotten breaks! I ain’t got nuthin’ in this life, Ms. Tay-mar, but a lousy broken dream to make good! I just wanna belong, damn it! You gotta gimme a chance!”

Ms. Taymar couldn’t get away from him fast enough, as she exited the cab and hurriedly boarded a city bus back to sanity. Johnny was left wondering what he might have said wrong.

Time crawled. Auditions failed. Johnny’s apartment’s once‑vivid lighting grew dim. Silent Al died—so quietly, in that silence, Johnny felt every word he had wasted. At the funeral, he sobbed through a eulogy thick with irony and grief:

“The thing I loved about him most was—he never said a word. It was all in his eyes! Now his eyes are shut! And that’s the tragedy here today, people. What kind of world… is a world where everyone has their eyes open but cannot see? And one man has his eyes shut but cannot speak?”

With Silent Al’s passing, the darkness inside Johnny stirred something fierce. He trained, polished his headshots, took elocution lessons, networked—he remembered what it meant to fight. Silent Al, the silent witness, would’ve wanted that.

Then came the audition: indie, Brando-esque, with a hint of possible redemption. It was a “Guys and Dolls” themed deodorant commercial, but still, there are no small parts, only small actors. So Johnny strode in, eyes alive, syntax meticulously crafted, ending with a flourish so fierce—he even plucked lint mid‑monologue—that the room's air crackled. The director’s gaze widened. Then: “You bring a real authenticity to your work, Mr. Rampole. We’ll be in touch.”

But, as days stretched into weeks, the call never came. Johnny figured that was that. What authenticity? He was a phony, and he knew it. “The Ram,” as he dubbed himself, was a ham. He walked the solitary back alleys of the Bowery like a two-bit nobody. Condemned to death. Even drunken derelicts wouldn’t give him the time of day. The city swallowed him.

“My problem is I wanna be great even before I’m good, and that’s why I suck,” Johnny thought to himself, kicking an empty soda can down the street.

Overcome with suicidal thoughts and tears streaming down his face, Johnny whispered, “All I ever had was a crummy dream to be an actor! For God’s sake, Marlon, I tried; I really did! But time after time, I came up empty! I could have been a contender if I wasn’t such a pretender!”

Just then, Johnny’s cell phone rang. So before throwing himself into the East River, he thought he’d answer it. “Ya’ never know, it could be another audition.”

“Hello?”

“Do you know what you’re doing?” a low and gravelly voice asked.

“Excuse me, who is this?” Johnny asked, clearing his throat.

“Who do you think it is?”

Johnny took a few uneasy steps as the voice at the other end sounded unmistakably like that of none other than Marlon Brando.

“Cat got your tongue?” the voice asked satirically.

“Is this someone playing a game?” Johnny sputtered.

“Are you playing a game?” Brando’s voice countered wryly.

“WHO IS THIS?!”

“I have spies everywhere in the world. I could be at your side and punch you right in the mouth in ten minutes flat if I like. So don’t get me angry.”

“Is this … Marlon Brando? I thought you were dead.”

“You thought I was dead? How do you know you’re not dead?”

Johnny gasped and searched for words.

“You’re a weak man, Johnny Rampole! WEAK!” Brando boomed, forcing Johnny to reel back as though pierced through the heart by a dagger.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Brando, I tried!”

“You tried nothing! You want to be me, and yet you don’t know the first thing about me!”

“I’m not trying to be you! I’m just going through a life-long lull!”

“Shut up and listen, you slobbering fool,” Brando commanded, “You’re going to call that director and tell her to give you the role.”

“Wow, you mean just call her? Wait, you didn’t see my audition, did you? I knew it! I knew you were there! I did everything Elia Kazan and Francis Ford taught us. Remember the concentration you had in ‘Apocalypse Now’ as Colonel Kurtz? That’s how deep I went! So, okay, yeah, I’ll call the director if you say so.”

“If I say so? Where’s the conviction in your voice? Without conviction, the words of an actor are meaningless. Show us who you are!”

“What do you mean? Precisely. No disrespect, I’m just trying to find the subtext to what you mean.”

“You know perfectly well what I mean. What is your intent?” Brando asked, putting Johnny on the spot.

“My intent is to um … is to find … what I want and why … in the scene,” Johnny whimpered.

“What would Silent Al say?”

“He wouldn’t say s**t, he never said anything!”

“He served a purpose in your life! Every time you looked into his eyes, you saw the truth! What would those eyes say now?”

Johnny took it in but said nothing in return.

“Let me tell you something,” Brando continued, “When I was a child, I had a friend whom I tied to a tree and left there. Because I considered him my inferior, it was an act of malice and cruelty that I’ve never quite forgiven myself, even these many years later.”

Brando’s voice cracked with emotion as he recalled his childhood and lifelong friendship with Wally Cox.

“As it turned out, that friend forgave me and stood by me my entire life. I’ve always been in awe of his strength to forgive me. He taught me what strength was—he whom I once saw as my inferior. My intention in life is never to be that cruel to anyone again. What is your intention in life, Johnny Rampole?”

Johnny was silent for a long time before Brando took a deep breath and spoke to him again in that low, dramatic voice that seemed to resonate from his soul.

“You’re the last Brando, the very last Brando. Act like it!”

At that point, the line went dead.

“Mr. Brando? Mr. Brando, are you there?”

Johnny took a moment and looked up at the night sky. He could hardly believe what just happened to him.

“Marlon Brando just told me I’m his heir apparent! Hey everybody, wake up! I just spoke to the Marlon Brando!“

Johnny ran through the streets, screaming to any window that would listen. He called the director, breathless and half-insane, praying that it meant something. And miraculously, her voice came back: “Your audition was magnificent…but you’re too short.”

Two inches. Two damned inches stood between him and his dream.

He trudged home, like a rebel without a clue, soaked from the bucket of water an annoyed neighbor lobbed at him as applause, heart thudding with loss—and the faintest, rebellious bloom of pride. Because Brando had called. Brando declared him his successor.

He crawled into bed: tears of grief, elation, regret all mingling. Brando’s voice, Al’s silent tutelage, velvet shadows of old‑world artistry—Johnny held them all in his roaring pulse. And, slipping Last Tango in Paris back into his DVD player, he drifted into sleep—dreaming that one day, someone would exhumed this kind of acting from its grave and, damned if they wouldn’t find Johnny Rampole waiting there.

© Michael Arturo, 2025

Michael Arturo is a playwright, screenwriter, and fiction author who also writes random essays on social and political issues. He was born and raised in New York City. His plays have been produced in New York, London, Boston, and LA. He also created the Double Espresso Web Series from 2010 to 2014.

To support his work, please donate, purchase a subscription, leave a comment, or follow. Thank you.

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Jimmy Tong was dead. Eddie Cardone had watched the life bleed out of the only man who’d ever taught him the rules of Chinatown, the man who’d pulled him from Columbus Avenue street corner cons into better-paying hustles. And then, when Eddie needed him, Jimmy had tried to save him, driving him out of Chinatown under fire, but the night had eaten him alive.

That left Eddie to run alone, without his closest ally, through streets that felt stranger with every step. He remembered Lillianne as he ran, and why he couldn’t leave Chinatown on his own. He loved her. It was that dumb love where he had nothing to base it on but a belief that, against all odds, she was the one.

Vic Martelli’s crew ran uptown, everything north of Central Park. They had the high-end card rooms on the Upper East Side, and all the dope moving through Harlem. Ran it classy, too; never had to shout when cash could do the talking.

Carmine Russo’s boys—they had the West Side. Hookers, dockside smuggling, and a bunch of nickel-and-dime street rackets that kept the lights on.

Martelli was silk. Russo was sandpaper.

They worked together fine, mostly—until somebody got in the way. Then, yeah, maybe a guy took a bullet. But business always came first.

So, when word got out that somebody big just got clipped—real big—mourning incorporated went into action.

The thing is, nobody knew who it was. Like, even that was a secret.

Nevertheless, both families were urged to show up to pay their respects. Business is business, and everyone who’s involved knows the consequences of stepping out of line. That said, when a brother-in-arms takes a bullet, men of respect put aside differences and give him a decent send-off.

Besides, funerals are a great way to catch up.

February 2, 1981, was a mere 56 days since the world had reeled from the murder of John Lennon, a beacon of peace in a chaotic world, and 56 days before an emboldened hand would attempt to alter the emerging redesign of President Ronald Reagan’s America. It was a day that stood as an equinox between the tragedy and turmoil of epoch-defining events, and, though many worlds away, it was a day in the existence of 78-year-old Rose Melito, who lived at 112th Street and Pleasant Avenue in East Harlem, would take a fateful turn.

That day’s air was heavy with the sense of an era’s end and another’s uncertain beginning, the same air that breathed through the narrow halls of Rose’s tenement apartment building, where she had lived for more than half a century. In the heart of a neighborhood that had witnessed the comings and goings of dreams and despairs, Rose, with the steadfast resolve of her 78 years, found herself entangled in the tides of change. The looming encounter with Javier Ramirez, a Nuyorican youth she once knew untainted by the vice that now held him, would soon echo the violence of the times, a personal microcosm of the collective cultural shifts shaking the very foundations of society around her.

Rose was the matriarchal fixture of her building, her presence as constant as the Italian arias that once resonated through the neighborhood’s alleys, now mostly silent but alive in her memory. A widow of some years, her children settled far away; she lived alone but was hardly lonely, her days filled with the comforting routines that had shaped her life.

In her modest kitchen, where the morning light draped itself over old, sturdy furniture, Rose moved with a quiet purpose. She was preparing a sauce, the kind that required patience and love, a sauce that told the story of her life with each simmer. On the radio, a voice was discussing the changing face of New York, but she was lost in her thoughts, considering the day ahead.

Rose’s story was the story of East Harlem itself. Born to Italian immigrants from the Campania of Naples who had settled nearby on 114th Street, her childhood was a medley of dozens of Italian dialects and customs. Sicilian, Barese, Genoese, Calabrese, Abruzzese, Neapolitan, and dozens of others packed into the largest Italian-American community in the country, mirroring Italy’s regions so precisely that every street was a distinct village. However, the Italian culture faded with time, and the Spanish language and culture became dominant. As she stirred her sauce, Rose reminisced about her childhood and how the Italian hellos of her youth had changed to Spanish greetings as the community evolved.

In the 1950s, a new wave of immigrants from the Spanish Caribbean arrived in Harlem, adding to the cultural tapestry of the community. Down the hall from Rose lived the Ramirez family, whose son Javier now stood on the precipice of his own harrowing story, which had been woven into the fabric of “El Barrio” as it came to be known. Javier, once a bright-eyed child whose home was filled with the joyous sounds of Tito Puente’s salsa rhythms and whom Rose had watched grow, had been claimed by the streets, his potential siphoned off by the allure of narcotics.

By the 1970s, drug addiction gripped the streets of Harlem with ruthless efficiency, with heroin carving a particularly devastating path through the lives of many residents. This epidemic brought with it the ancillary scourges of crime and violence, further eroding the social fabric of the neighborhood. Pimps and junkies became commonplace figures, haunting the corners and alleyways, symbols of the desperation and decay that had taken root.

Meanwhile, New York City teetered on the brink of financial collapse; its near-bankruptcy in 1975 was a stark indicator of the widespread fiscal crisis. This economic turmoil only compounded Harlem’s woes as city services retracted and investments dried up, leaving the neighborhood to fend for itself against the rising tide of urban blight. By the late 70s, Harlem was economically depleted and resembled nothing less than a post-apocalyptic war zone.

In her earlier years, Rose had borne witness to the smoldering unrest of what would become known as the first modern-day race riot in America. As a young mother of four children, the echo of shattered glass and the bitterness of smog from torched buildings clouded her perception of the American Dream. The theft of a penknife was the pebble that started an avalanche, laying bare the deep-seated fissures of economic and racial injustice that simmered beneath the neighborhood’s veneer in the Harlem race riot of 1935.

On August 1, 1943, an African American soldier stepped in as a white police officer attempted to arrest a Black woman, accusing her of disorderly conduct. During the altercation, shots rang out, and the soldier was wounded by gunfire. In a repeat of the pattern seen in the 1935 Harlem riot, false rumors quickly spread, claiming the soldier had been killed. This misinformation ignited anger and spurred another riot in the community.

And yet again, in 1964, another race riot unfurled as a brutal refrain of the earlier strife, disrupting Rose’s adulthood with a renewed wave of violence and disillusionment. The death of an African American teenager at the hands of a white off-duty officer reignited the all-too-familiar flames of anger and helplessness. From her stoop, Rose watched as the community’s sorrow and rage spilled out onto the streets, a lamentation for lives discounted and futures blighted.

For Rose, these were not mere events but formative scars; she had seen it all, and she survived it all. But her ultimate test was yet to come.

As Rose contemplated her morning, a knock came at her door—a sound that was as out of place as a crack in the well-worn vinyl of a beloved record. It was Javier, the kid from down the hall. Now, a young man whose veins told the story of his vice. Javier’s addiction was no secret; his presence at Rose’s door was an omen that she read instantly. She had seen Javier’s desperation and need before, but it pained her anew every time.

At first, the conversation was pleasant, but Javier quickly became jumpy, as if he had to relieve himself. Rose offered him food to take to his mother, but Javier refused; he needed something else.

Javier requested a paltry sum of ten dollars from Rose —money meant not for sustenance but for silencing the demon clawing at his insides.

Rose, weathered by years but sharp in judgment, saw through the veil of his plea to the raw, festering need beneath. Her refusal was laced with a pearl of melancholic wisdom; she mourned the innocent child she had once known, now trapped by the relentless vice of heroin’s call.

It was a mournful no, echoing with the memories of who Javier once was before the insatiable beast of addiction devoured his brighter tomorrow.

In the tight space between breaths, where conscience and addiction waged a silent war, Javier’s resolve crumbled. The battle was fleeting; the drug’s siren song drowned out the faint cries of his better angels. With the recklessness of one who has little left to lose, he produced the gun—a tarnished specter of his descent—his hand shaking as if it, too, were reluctant to follow through with the grim charade.

He told Rose he needed the gun for protection and would never use it on anyone. But when Rose asked him to hand it over to her, Javier strengthened his grip on the butt of the gun and pointed it at her.

The barrel of the gun, cold and impersonal, bore the weight of his brokenness. It was a tool of desperation, an instrument of fear that his once-clear eyes could barely reckon with. As it pointed towards Rose, an emblem of the life he once knew, the gravity of his actions clawed at the edges of his fraying mind, a cruel reminder of the boy who had played in these halls, now a man on the brink of an abyss.

The standoff in that cramped hallway was not just a meeting of former neighbor and wayward youth; it was the collision of past and present, of the world as it was and as it had become. Rose, standing firm, saw not a gun but the broken dreams of a child she had known. When his gaze, for a heartbeat, flickered to their outstretched hands—his seeking solace, hers poised for survival—she acted. Gnarled by age yet swift from necessity, her other hand snapped up and grasped the revolver barrel.

Decades of household labor had turned Rose Melito’s hands into instruments of formidable strength. When Javier Ramirez threatened her with a gun, her muscles, hardened by years of domestic toil, reacted with automatic precision. She twisted the revolver toward him, taking advantage of the precarious position of his wrist. Before he could react, Rose’s fingers, deceptively strong, snatched the gun away, her swift action defying the expectations of her age.

Holding the gun was an unfamiliar and burdensome sensation for Rose. As Javier, driven by a mix of desperation and the fading instincts of his addiction, made a sudden move toward her, she acted in a split-second decision, aiming to scare him off with a warning shot. The gun discharged with a deafening crack that shattered the silence of the hallway. The bullet, however, did not follow its intended course.

Instead, it struck the time-worn marble floor, which had been laid by Rose’s own Italian forebears generations before, and from there, it caromed wildly. A stray shard of the bullet’s metal found its mark in Javier’s neck, piercing his jugular and severing his life force as swiftly as a shadow passes. He fell to the ground, life ebbing away in an instant.

Rose stood silent, a pillar of resolve amidst the chaos, her house dress marred with Javier’s blood. She had intended only to defend herself but now bore the heavy mantle of having taken a young life, even if by a cruel twist of fate.

The aftermath was a silence that spoke louder than any gunshot could. Javier lay still, and Rose stood, the gun heavy in her hand, not as a weapon but as the weight of a hundred years of history. Her action was not one of malice but of a tragic necessity, the final act of a drama that had begun decades before on the very streets that had promised hope to so many.

Rose quietly returned to her domicile and laid the weapon on the kitchen table. She phoned the police and, in a suddenly quivering voice, told them she had accidentally shot her neighbor’s son. She then sat in the living room, looked out the window, and waited for them to arrive.

Rose Melito was a product of her environment, forged in the melting pot of New York City, a woman whose life was a testament to the strength and resilience required to navigate the complex web of community, culture, and survival. In her story, in the story of Javier Ramirez, in the stories of all those who had made East Harlem their home, lay the truth of the human condition—the struggle, the pain, the fleeting moments of joy, and the enduring hope for redemption.

And so the legacy of 112th Street continues, a narrative written in the stoic faces of its inhabitants, in the silent prayers whispered in the church pews of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, in the clinking of glasses at Rao’s Restaurant, and in the echoes of Italian and Spanish words that have danced through the streets like leaves in the wind. It is a story that does not end with a gunshot but lives on in the hearts of those who remember what East Harlem was, what it has become, and what it will always be—a symphony of stories, a chronicle of humanity.

As the Reagan years unfurled, their tapestry of change was woven with threads harsh and unyielding to those like Rose Melito and Javier Ramirez. The social safety nets that once cradled the most vulnerable were frayed and cut, one by one, in the name of fiscal austerity and a free market crusade. With her widow’s income and old-world reliance on community, Rose would have found herself navigating an increasingly alien landscape. The social programs and community bonds that had been the mortar of neighborhoods like East Harlem began to crumble, leaving behind those who needed help to keep up with American life’s new, unforgiving rhythm.

For Javier, already entangled in the throes of addiction, the Reagan era’s escalation of the War on Drugs would not have been a war waged against narcotics but against those like him, the people with an addiction, who were often victims themselves. The support and rehabilitation he might have sought were overshadowed by policies more punitive than healing. As cities gentrified, the cost of living soared; the familiar faces and corners of East Harlem that might have offered some anchor to those cast adrift were swept away in the tidal wave of “urban renewal.” This new era demanded resilience in the face of structural indifference, a trait that neither the old widow nor the wayward youth could muster indefinitely.

In the shifting sands of the 1980s, Rose and Javier would have been relics of a bygone era—she with her ties to a community that was being eroded by change, he with his afflictions magnified by policies that punished rather than rehabilitated. The fabric of life that had once made a place like East Harlem home was being unraveled, and with it, the last strands of existence for those unable to adapt to the harsh new day dawning.

February 2, 1981, was just one day; it just so happened to be the mid-point between John Lennon’s murder on December 8 of the previous year and the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981. It was a day that unwittingly balanced on the fulcrum of history, suspended between the end of a counterculture icon’s life and an attack that almost claimed the leader of the free world. This date captured a snapshot of an America in flux, the end of an era where a bohemian’s dreams were not just private aspirations but public manifestos, and the beginning of another where capital would consume everything in its path. For Rose Melito, locked in the narrow corridor of her East Harlem tenement with Javier Ramirez, the significance of the date was overshadowed by a moment of stark survival, a confrontation that distilled the vast societal shifts into a singular, sharp instance of a life-altering decision.

© Michael Arturo, 2025

Michael Arturo is a playwright, screenwriter, and fiction author who also writes random essays on social and political issues. He was born and raised in New York City. His plays have been produced in New York, London, Boston, and LA. He also created the Double Espresso Web Series from 2010 to 2014.

To support his work, please donate, purchase a subscription, leave a comment, or follow. Thank you.

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Back at Mission Control, planners, engineers, and politicians were locked in an intense debate over how to handle the "Disaster Zone Ramon Situation," as it was now officially being called.

Senator Johnson, a guest at Mission Control and a member of the NASA oversight committee, leaned in to McDavid. "You realize NASA's funding will be cut in half after this fiasco!"

"Yes, sir. Accidents do happen."

"Accidents?! The President is fuming over this!"

"I spoke to the President myself, sir. I think we're overlooking something."

"And what might that be, McDavid?"

WHITE HOUSE PRESS BRIEFING

Journalist: “Mr. President, are you considering shooting down the illegal Mexican crossing the border between the Earth and the Moon?”

President: “You’re fake news. Next question.”

2nd Journalist: “Mr. President, given the unprecedented nature of the current situation involving a civilian of Mexican descent, one not formally authorized to engage in space operations, does your administration retain any active contingency plans to intercept the Ganymede craft? Specifically, would you consider the use of force to neutralize a perceived threat, notwithstanding its, shall we say, more symbolic or humanitarian implications?”

President: “I like the syllables you work with. Big vocabulary. Here’s what we’re gonna do: total rebrand. Ramon? I’m not condoning Mexican space theft, which is very illegal, but he’s the best thing that’s ever happened to NASA’s public image. Tremendous for the base. He’s like Rocky Balboa—if Rocky stole Apollo Creed’s spacecraft.

3rd Journalist: “Are you saying you would pardon Disaster Zone Ramon, Mr. President?”

President: If he comes back alive, we’ll have to reconsider the whole enchilada. It’s not rocket science. Actually, it is rocket science, which makes this even worse.

In the following hours, as NASA's best minds plotted and Ramon made himself at home among the stars, the world watched and waited. Petitions went viral; "Bring Ramon Home" became a global rallying cry.

Behind closed doors near Mission Control at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, as plans were finalized to bring Ramon back to Earth, a new chapter quietly began for the agency and, perhaps, for all of humanity.

“Who leaked this?”

“How were we supposed to keep it quiet?”

“The world is watching … if we can’t bring him home …!”

The crisis room was dimly lit, casting long shadows across the weary faces of NASA’s top officials. At the front, a large monitor displayed the arcing trajectory of the Ganymede—a sleek, experimental vessel built for deep space exploration, now commandeered by an untrained janitor-turned-accidental astronaut. Its unscripted voyage had cast a heavy pall over the room, thick with tension, uncertainty, and the dawning realization that history was unfolding far beyond anyone’s control.

"Twelve hours," muttered Ted McDavid, the chief engineer at Mission Control, "For twelve hours, Ramon Hernandez has been alone in that spacecraft with no clue how to operate it."

“He may have compromised vital systems," snapped Dr. Felicia Garvey, Head of Operations. "The safety protocols on the Ganymede aren't designed for... accidents like this."

“Ganymede," began Dr. Lawrence Green, the Chief Engineer, “is designed for deep space exploration, not joyrides. If its systems aren't operated correctly, the consequences could be dire. It may be impossible to bring him back."

The room was filled with hushed conversations, speculations, and strategies. Occasionally, someone would glance at the screen, tracking the progress of the fugitive spacecraft.

Suddenly, the doors burst open. A technician, out of breath, strode in, clutching a tablet.

"Excuse the interruption, everyone; I have some bad news," he panted, "we've got an even bigger problem on our hands!"

All eyes were on him.

“This morning at dawn, a disturbance of solar flares was detected on the sun. They're heading towards our space station. The flares will be powerful enough to damage systems and compromise the safety of our astronauts."

Murmurs erupted.

McDavid slammed his hand on the table. "People! We need to focus and prioritize! How do we address this?"

Dr. Green looked thoughtful. "The space station is equipped with solar shields. They could protect it from the flares. But the shields may not deploy to their full capacity with the energy drain from normal operations.”

Everyone stared at the trajectory of the Ganymede, connecting dots in their minds.

McDavid took a deep breath. "What if... what if the Ganymede docks with the space station and transfers some of its power to boost the shields?"

The room erupted in laughter.

"You can't be serious!" exclaimed one of the officials. "An untrained maintenance worker docking a spacecraft? It's suicide!"

McDavid raised a hand, silencing the room. “Okay, how about this? How about everyone aboard both the space station and Ganymede dies? Who’s in favor—raise their hands! Anyone?”

No one said a word.

“I didn’t think so. Because that’s what we’re looking at. Like it or not, we have only one option. We've trained astronauts for complex maneuvers before. It’s not impossible. Humans have an uncanny ability to rise to the occasion. And right now, this … Ramon person, well, he’s not just a human, he’s a Mexican maintenance superhuman with an American can-do spirit! And I’m staking my reputation on him."

Dr. Garvey nodded. "I'll get a team to guide him through the docking procedures."

“Let’s get to work," murmured McDavid.

Outside the glass walls of the crisis room, the low hum of computers and telemetry feeds filled the air, while engineers sprang into motion with the tense choreography of a pit crew during a thunderstorm. Within moments, McDavid had returned to his console, headset in place, eyes fixed on the live feed from the Ganymede’s cockpit.

He keyed the mic.

"Ramon, do you read? This is Ted McDavid, Mission Control. Captain Hernandez, this is Houston. Do you read?"

A moment of silence passed before a voice crackled through the comm, half-asleep and fully unconcerned.

"I'm taking a siesta, amigo! This weightlessness is better than my hammock in the backyard!"

McDavid winced, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Ramon, it's Chief Engineer McDavid. We have an emergency here, and we need your help."

Ramon yawned audibly. "Emergency? Look, I don’t want to alarm you, but this spaceship? It's moving slower than my Tío Luis’s donkey after it’s had three tortillas and a beer. I mean—can this thing go any faster?”

“I think that’s about as fast as it can go.”

“What about the speed of light, yo?”

"Look, Ramon, can you give me your attention? We have a matter of some urgency to discuss. We have some NASA technicians who will guide you through an emergency operation."

"Am I getting overtime for this?"

"Ramon, we'll have to dock with the space station. The lives of NASA personnel are in danger due to a rise in solar flare activity."

“Wow. This is like a Bruce Willis movie, man! And I'm like the hero, eh?"

"That's right, Ramon, now listen carefully …!"

Hours felt like minutes. NASA’s best-trained technicians communicated with Ramon, guiding and instructing him. Despite his inexperience, Ramon's courage and determination shone through.

The moment of truth had arrived, and Mission Control was abuzz. Technicians and engineers surrounded McDavid, standing in front of multiple large screens displaying data and visuals from Ganymede's instruments and cameras.

"Alright, Ramon, listen carefully. We're initiating Operation Solar Flare Shield," McDavid began. "The first thing you will do is initiate the RCS thrusters to align your approach vector to the ISS docking port. You'll find the RCS toggle on your main control panel."

"Roger that, Ese! Right here, these thrusters, baby, love them! RCS thrusters, approach vector, got it. Let's see... Ah, here it is," Ramon's voice crackled over the comm, filled with focus but a touch of his usual irreverence.

A tense few moments passed. Everyone's eyes were fixed on the telemetry data streaming in, confirming that the thruster burns were successful and that Ganymede was aligning with the ISS docking port.

"Good, you're aligned. Now engage the KURS automated docking system," instructed Sarah, the lead engineer for spacecraft systems.

"You want me to engage the what now?"

"The KURS, Ramon. A big button should be labeled 'AUTO DOCK' on your control panel. Press it and let it do its thing. It will communicate with the ISS's navigation system and guide you."

A slight pause, then, "Okay, AUTO DOCK engaged. I see the distance counters decreasing."

"As you approach the ISS, you'll see the Docking Target Indicator light up. This is a good sign. It means the KURS system has established a lock," Sarah continued.

"Check. The indicator is green," Ramon reported.

"We're getting a telemetry handshake between Ganymede and the ISS. That's good. Now, Ramon, switch to manual docking override, but don't touch anything yet. It's a safety precaution," McDavid instructed.

"Manual docking override is now on standby, Houston."

"Prepare to engage the Soft Capture Ring once you're within 20 meters of the docking port. This will enable the initial mechanical connection between Ganymede and the ISS," interjected Stuart, the docking systems specialist.

"Soft Capture Ring? Sounds cozy," Ramon joked nervously. "Okay, engaging now."

A collective holding of breath filled the room at Mission Control. The screen showed Ganymede inching closer and closer to the ISS. Finally, the data confirmed that the Soft Capture Ring had engaged successfully.

"We have Soft Capture," Stuart announced, breathing a sigh of relief.

"Now, Ramon, engage the Hard Capture system. This will ensure a stable and secure docking by retracting and locking the docking hooks," he continued.

"Hard Capture system engaged," Ramon confirmed after a tense few seconds.

Cheers erupted across Mission Control—brief, restrained, hopeful. McDavid allowed himself a tight exhale, nodding to the room.

"Excellent, Ramon. Now, begin power transfer to the ISS solar shielding system. Engage the CrossFeed Control Unit."

Ramon’s voice came back quickly. "Copy that, switching over now. CrossFeed Control Unit... activated. I think."

Suddenly, the room's telemetry screens flickered. A sharp, oscillating alarm blared from one of the systems consoles.

“Wait! I’m seeing instability in the current loop!” Ellen, the flight dynamics officer, shouted. “The power’s not transferring—it’s reversing. It’s pulling power from the ISS!”

"Abort power transfer!" McDavid barked.

"Abort sequence initiated!" Ramon called, fumbling at the controls—but then, sparks flared on his monitor. A panel crackled. “Uh, Houston—we've got a crispy situation here. Something just fried. The controls are locked.”

In Mission Control, a secondary monitor lit up with a warning: ISS Power Systems Overload: 80%… 92%… 97%

"Ramon, the interface relay’s fused! You're feeding raw power into the ISS's critical systems—it's going to burn out their shielding!" McDavid’s voice rose with urgency. “We’ll lose the entire crew!"

"Jesus," Sarah whispered. "They’ve only got minutes before the flare hits."

The power feedback surged higher. Onboard the Ganymede, red lights danced across Ramon's console. He stared at the mess, then his eyes landed on a small maintenance hatch labeled Auxiliary Bypass Manual Access.

“Standby,” Ramon muttered. “I think I’ve got an idea…”

"Ramon—what are you doing?!" McDavid demanded.

"Gotta improvise, man. Disaster Zone Ramon to the rescue, ese!"

He grabbed his multi-tool—one he’d snuck aboard in his back pocket—and popped the panel open. Inside, a tangle of wires glowed ominously. Ramon yanked off his belt, removed a copper keyring from his pocket, and bent it expertly.

“Gonna reroute the junction manually. Kinda like fixing a toaster with a coat hanger, just with more explosions,” he said.

Ramon jammed the keyring between two contacts and bridged a bypass circuit using a stripped cable and a paperclip from the Ganymede’s emergency manual.

Mission Control watched, horrified.

"Power’s stabilizing!" Ellen yelled. “He’s reversing the flow—he’s actually doing it!”

“Hold—holding…” Ramon grunted as he secured the patch with duct tape. “There. She’s rerouted.”

On the screens, the readings dipped into green. The overload dropped. The ISS solar shield batteries surged to full charge just as a tremor of solar radiation hit.

The ISS held.

Applause erupted in Mission Control. Sarah leaned back, hands over her face. McDavid sat in stunned silence before whispering, “He MacGyvered a billion-dollar interface with a belt loop and a paperclip.”

Ramon’s voice came over the comm, breathless but victorious. “Hey, Houston—remind me to put ‘space electrician’ on my résumé.”

"You just saved the station, Ramon," McDavid said, his voice trembling. "You saved them all."

"Damn right I did," Ramon replied. “Now, do I get frequent flyer miles for this, or what?”

Through an unbelievable twist of fate, Ramon Hernandez, the accidental astronaut, had become an unlikely but undeniable hero.

As the docking clamps fully engaged and the airlock hissed open, Ramon unfastened his seatbelt. He floated from the cockpit of the Ganymede to the space station, where a handful of astronauts awaited him, clapping and floating in joyous disbelief.

"Welcome aboard, accidental astronaut," Commander Jackson said, shaking Ramon's hand firmly as he entered the station.

"Happy to be here and happier that you all still are alive," Ramon responded, the weight of the moment settling in. Lives had been on the line, yet everyone was safe against all odds.

Within hours, they boarded a shuttle, leaving behind the Ganymede, its onboard systems shut down and its mission complete, if unorthodox. As they soared back to Earth, NASA's administrators weighed the cost of the lost spacecraft against the lives saved. The consensus was unanimous: the sacrifice was well worth it. Instead of an interstellar space exploration craft, the Ganymede had become an improbable chariot of salvation.

Back on Earth, Ramon was swarmed by friends, family, and fierce media, all clamoring to know the details of his daring escapade. Overnight, he became a national hero, though which nation could claim him became a subject of international debate.

“Madam Presidente, it's an honor to speak with you," the President of the United States greeted his Mexican counterpart over a secure line.

"The honor is mine," the President of Mexico responded. "However, we find ourselves in an interesting dilemma. Although a naturalized U.S. citizen, Ramon Hernandez, the hero of the hour, was born in Mexico. Our country believes he should be recognized as having flown for Mexico, not just for the United States."

A tense silence stretched over the line before the U.S. President replied, "Well, considering the international composition of the space station crew he saved and the collaborative nature of space exploration, I propose we share the honor. Ramon can be celebrated as a hero for both nations and, indeed, for all of humanity."

After another pause, the Mexican President chuckled, "I can agree. Like his Primo Segundo before him, Ramon has already shown us that borders vanish when viewed from the stars."

"Well, I wouldn't go that far."

"After all, who better than a Mexican maintenance man to get things done in a pinch?!"

"Okay, got it!"

"Maybe you won't deport so many of our people next time! Right? Give us your tired masses and your huddled poor!”

"Hey, hey, that's enough!” The U.S. President said before abruptly hanging up.

Though he had never trained to be an astronaut, Ramon Hernandez had navigated the most challenging domains of space and international diplomacy, and he had done it all by flying by the seat of his pants. But as he often said afterward, during the countless interviews and ceremonies in his honor, "Teamwork makes the dream work."

Ramon Hernandez stood as a symbol of universal courage and ingenuity, transcending national boundaries. The governments agreed to celebrate his heroism as a triumph of international cooperation in the face of cosmic adversity. Ramon was just grateful to be home, overwhelmed by the gravity of his actions.

His story, that of Disaster Zone Ramon, NASA's maintenance man turned accidental astronaut, has become an inspirational tale for the ages. Once the butt of workplace jokes and known more for mops than mission logs, Ramon Hernandez now stands as a symbol of what can happen when the least likely person is given the most unlikely chance—and rises to meet it with duct tape, daring, and an unshakable spirit.

© Michael Arturo, 2025

Michael Arturo is a playwright, screenwriter, and fiction author who also writes random essays on social and political issues. He was born and raised in New York City. His plays have been produced in New York, London, Boston, and LA. He also created the Double Espresso Web Series from 2010 to 2014.

To support his work, please donate, purchase a subscription, leave a comment, or follow. Thank you.

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Immortality isn’t what it used to be.

Take the vampire, that old cliché of eternal life. Say you were “born” in 1300 AD. Your first century or two was easy. Europe was a slow-motion soap opera of plagues, crusades, and candlelight. If a king died, you might hear about it next season, maybe in the form of a monk’s gossip while you drank his blood behind the abbey. Horses stayed horses, swords stayed swords. Fashion was a spectrum of “wool” to “slightly nicer wool.” It was the golden age of immortality.

Then, a little change here and there: the printing press. You learned to read. A hundred years later, maybe gunpowder. Irritating, but manageable—you just stopped biting soldiers. The Industrial Revolution was brisk, sure, but you could still lurk in gaslit alleys and whisper to yourself, Ah, the modern world. By the 19th century, the biggest threat to your peace was some Gothic novelist making you a sex symbol without your consent.

Fast forward to now. Immortality is a gig economy job with bad Wi-Fi. You’re hiding in a smart city, and even rats have tracking chips. No more disappearing into the mist; the mist has cameras. Crypts have been converted to Airbnbs. You wake up at night to feed, only to find that humans don’t carry blood—they carry oat milk lattes and wearable tech that notifies the police if their heart stops.

Alaric Veyl, whom I recently caught up with and spent time with, has been in a cave binge-hibernating since 1987. So, I’m very grateful he granted me an interview.

“Alaric, the real existential problem you, Nosferatu, LeStat, and others are facing now is that technology is moving faster than ever before. The internet must have been challenging, unless you were able to master it, but now everything is AI-generated. And with quantum computing on the way. How are you dealing with all of that?”

“It’s overwhelming. Try stalking prey when half the humans on the street are androids or augmented reality projections. You sink your teeth into a warm neck, and it says, Error 404: Jugular Not Found.”

Alaric laughed, but dark and hollow. He continued:

“And when you do find someone, yeah, blood isn’t what it was either. It’s all oat milk and antidepressants now, right? Bloody disgusting is what it is. Keto, vegan, microdosed on psilocybin. I drank from a tech bro last week, and he tasted like a mix of cold brew and battery acid. My fangs ache for the old days—farmers with iron in their blood and terror in their eyes. The warm, slow pulse of a life unpolluted by energy drinks.”

“The real question I want to get to is immortality itself. With everything that’s happened in the last, say, 30 years—do you ever consider throwing it all in?”

“I don’t want to sound egotistical, right? But seven hundred years ago, I was a god. A literal f*****g nightmare people prayed against. Okay? I mean, let’s just call it what it is! Villagers nailed garlic to their doors, and priests raised crucifixes like shields. It used to be that a villager would see my shadow on the wall and faint dead away. No b******t. Wooden stakes, holy water, the occasional mob with torches—I was somebody. Now? No one even knows the rules anymore. Wooden stake, silver bullet—who cares? People walk past me on dark streets like I don’t exist. Staring into their phones. So, yes, yes, of course, I am genuinely considering just going back to the coffin and letting the centuries roll over me in solitude. Eternal life used to feel like a privilege, it doesn’t anymore.”

“Right, right. Then there’s the problem if you do want to—let’s just say, for lack of a better word, die, right—who can you get to help you?”

“Right, I mean, you get it! I can’t die unless someone bothers to kill me. And who has time to hunt a vampire when there are emails to check and streaming shows to binge?”

“Well, thank you, Alaric Veyl, for taking the time today.”

“My pleasure. You wouldn’t happen to have vein popping in your neck for a quick in-and-out blood burger, would you?”

He’s survived plagues, swords, and the slow erosion of centuries, but now every year feels like a decade of noise: phones buzzing, drones whining, data flowing faster than blood. Even the act of feeding feels like a relic; everyone tastes of preservatives and Wi-Fi. Alaric Veyl no longer dreams of glory or fears a stake—he only dreads obsolescence. Still, he soldiers on, a pale silhouette against a future made of glass and screens, resigned to another century of dodging security cameras and sipping the thinned-out lifeblood of humanity, because quitting is one luxury eternity never allows.

© Michael Arturo, 2025

Michael Arturo is a playwright, screenwriter, and fiction author who also writes random essays on social and political issues. He was born and raised in New York City. His plays have been produced in New York, London, Boston, and LA. He also created the Double Espresso Web Series from 2010 to 2014.

To support his work, please donate, purchase a subscription, leave a comment, or follow. Thank you.

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Ramon Hernandez was a familiar face at the NASA facility in Houston, having spent nearly two decades as a maintenance man there. At the age of 48, he had become something of an institution himself, known for his distinctive blend of competence and clumsiness. While he was undoubtedly the go-to guy for fixing leaky pipes and unjamming stubborn doors, his colleagues often shared stories of occasional mishaps that earned him the endearing nickname of "Disaster Zone Ramon."

Not that Ramon was without skills; he was literally a jack-of-all-trades. An electrician, a plumber, a house painter, a roofer, an auto mechanic, a household appliance repairman, a landscaper, and a gardener, you name it. With minimal schooling or practical training, Ramon could do it all. Sometimes, he was a little hasty in his approach, covering up imperfections and even working them into the finished job.

Ramon relied heavily on instincts, common sense, and a can-do attitude. Every task was manageable for him. He'd find electronics, computers, and TVs discarded by neighbors, take them home, disassemble and reassemble them like new. His home was filled with items he had either made himself or refurbished. A home, by the way, he built from the ground up. Okay, so what if the front porch was a little lopsided? It was built to last forever.

One fateful day, while Ramon diligently did his routine cleaning tasks, he found himself inside a high-security facility area. There, set about on a launch pad, stood Ganymede, a top-secret space exploration craft whose name was derived from the largest moon in our solar system. Ramon stood back and admired the craft, perched high atop a rocket launcher extending through an opening in the facility’s rooftop, reaching the sky above. It was a sight to behold.

"Ay, chingado!" Ramon excitedly blurted out to himself. "Check this s**t out! Mamacita, mamacita! All of my friends, with their dumb-ass low-riders—they haven't seen anything!"

Unable to resist, Ramon's eyes wandered around Ganymede's exterior. His rough hands traced the sleek exterior as he marveled at the technology before him. It was as if the dreams of his youth, long buried under the daily grind of maintenance work, came flooding back.

"You are a real beauty, my friend! A real beauty! I want to take you to the moon! Yeah? No, maybe further than the moon, damn!"

Ramon's aspiration to become an astronaut traced back to an inspiration kindled by the achievements of the first American of Mexican descent to venture into space: Jose Hernandez. While it was confirmed that Jose Hernandez had been born in the United States, much of his formative years were spent in Mexico. In a remarkable twist of fate, Ramon and Jose shared not just a surname but also a familial connection, both hailing from La Piedad in the state of Michoacan.

Ramon couldn't help but share this intriguing connection with his co-workers, proudly declaring, "He's like a second or third cousin to my father's family." It was as if the cosmos had conspired to link him to the world of space exploration, and that bond, however distant, resonated deeply within him.

As a young adult, Ramon began to dream of becoming the first Mexican-born astronaut, a dream nurtured in his early adulthood by the stories of Jose Hernandez's achievements. However, as life's practicalities and responsibilities took hold, the dream slowly receded into the background, obscured by the everyday demands of life and raising a family. Nevertheless, he jumped at the opportunity to work at NASA and took pride in being at the facility daily, even though his work was far from being an astronaut's.

Now, Ramon was many things—curious, adventurous, and, of course, a bit too impulsive—but he was never one to back down from a challenge, especially when it came to anything resembling a "fancy" gadget. As Ramon stood before this remarkable vessel of human ingenuity, he couldn't help but feel a resurgence of that youthful ambition of flying to the stars, even if it was just a fleeting moment to satiate a fanciful dream.

Ramon looked around carefully, hopped onto a long ladder extending to Ganymede's capsule, and entered the space vehicle through an open hatch. His heart raced with excitement as he contemplated the possibilities that lay before him.

"Hey, poca madre! This is some jazzy stuff in here!"

Ramon's attention shifted to the ship's expansive instrument panel—a dazzling array of lights, buttons, switches, and screens, each piece of technology more intricate and mysterious than the last.

Ganymede's master control panel seemed like a canvas of the future, an invitation to explore the boundaries of human knowledge and ambition. Ramon touched the smooth surfaces with trembling fingers, his rough hands now caressing the epitome of cutting-edge engineering.

For a maintenance man who had spent most of his work life wrestling with leaky pipes and stubborn doors, this moment felt like a dream, a journey from the mundane to the extraordinary.

And then, in a moment of impulsive daring, he let his gaze fall upon a shiny red button that seemed to beckon him.

Emblazoned with the stern warning "DO NOT TOUCH," the button appeared to challenge Ramon's adventurous spirit.

"Do not touch? What about that raise you promised me, NASA, huh? I'm tired of listening to you pinche people about what to touch and what not to touch!"

With a hint of trepidation and a sense of anticipation, Ramon extended a trembling hand and pressed it. What he didn't know at that moment was that this seemingly innocent action would trigger a cataclysmic chain of events, setting in motion a 20-minute launch sequence that would lock the exit hatch AND SEND HIM ON LIFE-CHANGING JOURNEY INTO OUTER SPACE!!

In that split second, the world around Ramon exploded into chaos. Klaxons blared, lights flashed, and the entire spacecraft vibrated unnervingly. Ramon, gripping onto any available handhold for dear life, realized that he had just set off something monumental. Ganymede began to rumble and was set to launch.

“Ah baby, lemme feel ya’! Lemme feel ya’, little mama!”

Meanwhile, inside Mission Control’s confines, the launch sequence’s sudden activation triggered a wave of panic. Alarms blared, and a frenzy of activity ensued as NASA officials, who were caught off guard, desperately attempted to reverse the sequence and abort the launch. Their voices, laced with urgency and anxiety, crackled over the intercom.

"This is Mission Control! What in the Hell is going on?"

"Yo, it's Ramon. I was just cleaning up in here, you know, and I never been inside one of these rockets. So, I got curious and such, then something happened!"

"Ramon?! Who is Ramon? JESUS CHRIST! WHO IS THIS GUY?!"

"Ramon Hernandez from maintenance! I'm the guy who cleans the toilets, yo!"

"The what?!"

"I pressed the button that says 'Do Not Touch.' I guess I shouldn't have!"

Ted McDavid, the chief engineer at Mission Control, turned to a colleague to ask who Ramon Hernandez was, but no one knew.

"He says he cleans the God damned toilets!" a flabbergasted McDavid screamed across the room.

"Oh, that must be 'Disaster Zone Ramon'!" someone chimed back.

McDavid clutched his head, "You mean to tell me a maintenance man whose nickname is 'Disaster Zone Ramon' activated the launch codes of a top-secret multi-billion dollar spacecraft?!"

"Yeah, but he's like Primo Segundo to Jose Hernandez, that other Mexican astronaut."

"What other Mexican astronaut?!"

Meanwhile, Ramon discovered a NASA spacesuit and helmet and tried them on for size. They fit nicely, and pleased with himself, Ramon began to strut about the craft's interior.

"Hey, Captain Kirk! Beam me up, Homes! Haha, I'd like to get one of these with a Mexican flag, right?"

As the clock ticked relentlessly toward the point of no return, the communication channels crackled to life with Mission Control's frantic attempts to reach Ramon inside the spacecraft.

“Ramon, are you there?!”

“Oh, yeah, man, I’m here. Where else am I gonna go?”

“Listen carefully, Ramon! I need you to stop the engines right now! Is that clear? Cut the power!" McDavid shouted in desperation.

"I just want to know if there's enough oxygen and food for me to get to the moon, Ese."

"The moon?!"

"I'm just kidding, man! I don't know how to cut the power! I tried to open the hatch - the pinche hatch won't open! Everything is crazy in here!"

"You are unauthorized to be in that spacecraft; it is the property of NASA and the U.S. government! I want you to follow my orders and cut the God damned engines right now!"

"Ah, man, don't get so impatient! You're spoiling all the fun!"

"Mr. Hernandez, this is a life-or-death situation! You could get yourself killed in there!"

"Since when are you guys so concerned about the health and well-being of your staff, yo! Seriously! I take my life in my hands every day on this job! Do you know how many times I’ve fallen off a ladder or something? I broke my forearm one time, no healthcare. Nada! I just wrapped it up in some old sweatshirt and came to work the next day, Homes!"

"Ramon, I need you to take this seriously!"

"I'm serious as a heart attack, b***h! Just tell me what to do!"

Mission Control proceeded to give Ramon specific instructions to abort the launch. Ramon scrambled to follow their instructions, his heart pounding in his chest, but his inability to decipher the complex array of buttons and switches before him did not change anything. The spacecraft vibrated with an unsettling intensity as the engines roared to life, defying his every attempt to regain control.

"Turn the damn thing off, Ramon! Find the shutdown procedure!" another voice urged him, the tension in Mission Control palpable.

With sweat trickling down his forehead, Ramon scanned the control panel frantically, his fingers darting across buttons in a desperate search for the elusive shutdown mechanism. Each moment felt like an eternity to the maintenance man who found himself in the cockpit of an interstellar vehicle, wrestling with technology foreign to him.

"Look for a green switch, Ramon!"

"Red to turn it on, green to turn it off - doesn't that sound a little backward to you?"

"Just follow our instructions!"

"Usually, I can do anything I put my mind to, you know? I can drive a tractor, a forklift, an R.V. - I can even drive a 16-wheeler, but this spacecraft thing, man, this could take me a few minutes to pick up!"

Despite Mission Control's unwavering guidance, Ramon's efforts seemed futile as precious seconds ticked down and the two-minute countdown began.

"T-minus two minutes and counting. Houston, rocket boosters are activated."

"Get the President on the line!" McDavid cried as he reached for a hotline that directly connected to the Oval Office.

"Mr. President, this is Mission Control at NASA. We have a situation here! An unauthorized launch is set to go off in less than two minutes!"

"What'd ya' want me to do? Shoot the damn thing down before the Russians get their hands on it!" the President blurted out.

"It's not in the air yet, sir!"

"Then blow the damn thing up!"

"There's a man inside the craft. He's a maintenance man, sir, a Mexican; I don't think that would be wise!"

"A Mexican maintenance man? What the Hell are you people doing down there in Houston? Call ICE and have him deported! On second thought, send him the Hell up into space and teach him a lesson for all I care!!"

"Thank you, Mr. President," Ramon, who had been listening the whole time, added, "I'm definitively going to make you proud! On second thought, I'm going to make Mexico proud, and you can go to Hell for all I care!"

As the countdown climaxed, a thunderous roar filled the air, and the rocket's engines burst to life, spewing flames and billowing smoke. The ground shuddered beneath the colossal force of raw propulsion, and the rocket began its ascent, defying Earth's pull.

Ramon, fitted with a space helmet and strapped in tight for lift-off, cracked an uneasy smile across his face as Ganymede lifted off from the launch pad.

"Houston, we have lift-off! Repeat, we have lift-off of the Ganymede Space Explorer!"

McDavid watched from the windows of Mission Control in stunned disbelief.

“Lord in Heaven, what have we done?”

As Ganymede soared higher and higher into a beautiful blue Texas sky, panic swept through the room; the realization set in that Ramon, a maintenance man turned astronaut, was hurtling toward the unknown, forever altering the course of his life and the NASA space program.

The incident that saw Ramon launched into space was a colossal embarrassment for NASA. As the dust settled and reality set in, officials at the space agency were left with the daunting task of deciding what to do next. Their first and most immediate decision was to keep the entire ordeal under wraps. They believed that the less the public knew about Ramon's accidental journey, the better.

Behind closed doors, a sense of hopelessness hung heavily at NASA. "The technical glitch" that had propelled a maintenance man into space was a problem they had never anticipated. They realized they had no immediate means of retrieving Ramon from his unexpected voyage. The sheer magnitude of the error left them speechless.

Meanwhile, Ramon was in awe at the views he saw through the craft's windows.

"Yo, Houston! Que pasa? This is Captain Ramon Hernandez! Haha! You can call me Captain from now on, right? Check this out! Ave María purísima! I can see Mexico from up here! Oh, can you do me a favor, Ese? Hey! Call my wife and tell her I won't be home for dinner tonight! Seriously. Tell her I had to go to the moon on a secret mission or something. Haha! Oh, and also, I need someone to water my chilis! They won't survive without me!"

Back at Mission Control, McDavid rubbed his temples as if trying to erase the nightmare unfolding before him magically.

"Did he just ask us to water his chilis?" he muttered incredulously to his colleagues.

"Captain, um, Hernandez," McDavid said, clearing his throat, "Yeah, um … we're going to try to figure out how to get you back. You should be concerned about that, too, you know?"

"Oh, I'm not worried, amigo. You know how they say, 'What goes up must come down.' That's physics for you! Now, is there a manual around here somewhere? Or maybe even a YouTube tutorial? Oh, wait, no Wi-Fi, huh?”

"You could try the glove compartment," someone at Mission Control sarcastically suggested, getting some eye rolls and a few chuckles.

"I'll have you know, I once built a whole gazebo using a three-page IKEA manual, so I think I can handle this," Ramon chuckled as he rummaged around the cabin, accidentally pressing a couple more buttons, which changed the lighting inside the capsule to a disco-ball effect.

"Oh, nice! Party mode! Ay, caramba, all we need now is some Selena music!"

McDavid was a step away from pulling out his hair. He sighed deeply and turned to his team, "Alright, folks, assemble our best minds. We'll need a very elaborate plan to get um … Mr. Hernandez back safely. And I mean safely. We already have an international incident on our hands; let's not turn it into a tragedy."

While the boffins at NASA scrambled to figure out a recovery mission for their accidental astronaut, Ramon was floating effortlessly in the cockpit, munching on some freeze-dried tacos he had found among the rations.

"Hmm, not bad! Needs some salsa, though. Hey, picture this: Ramon’s Moonbeam Tacos, si or no? Call the President, man! See if he wants to send all the Mexicans to the moon! Turn the Sea of Tranquility into like a Taco Haven, no?"

The communication channel crackled back to life, and McDavid's voice was tinged with urgency. "Ramon, are you listening? We at NASA want to thank you for injecting fun into the situation. But we’re dealing with a serious … “

“I get it! I screwed up! Just chill out!”

“We will try to guide you through some procedures to stabilize the spacecraft. Can you focus?"

"I can fly this baby by the seat of my pants!"

"Seat of your pants or not, let's not test our luck more than we have to," McDavid responded with a slight chuckle. "First, we need to adjust your orbital parameters. You will manually engage the Orbital Maneuvering System—OMS—for a corrective delta-V burn."

"Delta-what-now?" Ramon joked, scanning the control panel in front of him. "Ah, here we are. OMS button glowing like a Christmas tree."

"Exactly. Initiate a prograde burn for 4.5 seconds. That should give you a slight boost along your orbital path to circularize your trajectory," instructed McDavid.

"Prograde burn. 4.5 seconds. Man, you make it sound like I'm reheating leftovers in a microwave," Ramon quipped as he initiated the burn.

The telemetry data showed the spacecraft's velocity increasing steadily. "We have a good burn. The trajectory looks more circular," announced Ellen, the flight dynamics officer.

"Great. Now, to ensure that you remain in a stable orbit, we need to calibrate the gyroscopes. Navigate to the 'Stabilization' submenu in your control interface," McDavid continued.

"Stabilization submenu got it! Yeah, yeah, yeah, looks like my mom's old TV remote," Ramon said, pressing buttons with a newfound confidence.

“Select 'Gyroscope Calibration.' The onboard computer will start the automated sequence. Your role is just to monitor and confirm the calibrations."

"Call a Mexican to get the job done right! You feel me, Houston! Haha! Engaging Gyroscope Calibration. Ah, this old spinny thing is doing its dance, Ese," Ramon reported, eyes flicking over the readouts.

"Excellent. You're doing great, Ramon. I mean, Captain Hernandez. Now, listen carefully. We need to minimize fuel consumption and unnecessary torque, all right? Therefore, we will deactivate any non-essential reaction wheels. Go to the 'Power Management' section and toggle off 'Reaction Wheel 3' and 'Reaction Wheel 4.'"

"Deactivating non-essential wheels. Are we going green or what?" Ramon chuckled, carrying out the command.

"We're going efficient, which I guess is a shade of green," McDavid answered, smiling. "Now, confirm that your Orbital Stability Indicator has changed from amber to green."

"Orbital Stability Indicator is green. And not the Hulk kind," Ramon relayed, his voice tinged with relief and disbelief.

The team in Mission Control erupted in cheers. "We did it. Ganymede's orbit is stable," Ellen confirmed as she looked at the orbital parameters on her screen.

"Great work, Ramon! You might be flying by the seat of your pants, but you've got a whole team of experts stitched into the fabric," McDavid said, the relief palpable in his voice.

"I told you I got this! Teamwork makes the dream work, baby!" Ramon replied, echoing the sentiment.

Indeed, miraculously, and with considerable expert guidance from Houston, Ramon had managed to stabilize Ganymede's orbit, further solidifying his unlikely yet unforgettable role in space history.

"Okay, Ramon, you're temporarily stable. We're going to be working on a recovery plan for you, but it's going to take some time."

"Take your time! No rush. And by the way, if I encounter aliens up here, I’m going to give them citizenship. If that’s cool with you guys.”

End of part one

© Michael Arturo, 2025

Michael Arturo is a playwright, screenwriter, and fiction author who also writes random essays on social and political issues. He was born and raised in New York City. His plays have been produced in New York, London, Boston, and LA. He also created the Double Espresso Web Series from 2010 to 2014.

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