[StLee]

I killed it, man. I saw all the dead bodies lying around Magnolia's stage. I chased Esther Ralston across the Commonwealth. I walked to her star, and then blew back in time like Dorothy's tornado. Oh, Esther. The silent queen. I found your lost film, and watched you grow. From Bar Harbor, Maine, to Hollywood, to your demise in Ventura. But, I killed it all, man. Sat in a dark room with a brain-thing. Watched the play come to life.

I watched my fence go up. It was the most excitement I've had in eight months. I tried again. I tried to be creator of worlds. Again and again they came and then I looked into the future and saw what they became. A silver shround rising from a gutter of despair.

I'm slipping through time again. 1923 and 2301 and 2022 and 2077. They're all one. All one. Look at that man in the suit. Fancy and poor and old-fashioned and stepping out of a vehicle. Slip, slip, slip.

Focus. There is baseball. And they are great. Ruth, Murtagh, Jones. Effing Jones, man. Baseball, what do I see? Think, think. No, borrow. Beyond each game, he sees another, and yet another, in endless and hopeless succession. He hits a ground ball to third, is thrown out. Or he beats the throw. What difference, in the terror of eternity, does it make? He stares at the sky, beyond which is more sky, overwhelming in its enormity.

Where is Long Lew when you need him? Crawl out through the fallout, baby. That first light outside the vault. So bright before the radstorm comes. Walk, walk through the Mall. Walk, walk through the neons. Walk, walk through the Freedom Trail. See the light dark as night.

The shadow man comes and then he goes. His second coming was not a surprise. We cannot live if we fear what comes next. The void. The limbo. A hole in the unisphere. What is this lair of lesser gods I see? Nothing more than creativity?

There is a person I am looking at looking at me with technology from a place I have never seen. He watches a screen and they talk about him while he types. I have come to the wrong place. Turn and turn and turn and see the divergence.

Play it all again. That place where Damon lives and Ty is cancelled. Babe never picks up wood. Gilda is caught in a Corvega fire. The matryoska at work.

Peel, peel. My mind is bursting. Cast low in bland composition. Think, think. See them call your name. One of the 16. Baseball. It is all. Where am I in time right now. That I cannot tell, for the bell tolls many and the time shows plenty. Create, create. And the black clouds break up, and dew springs again to the green grass, and the stands hang on, and his own oppressed heart leaps alive to give it one last try.

Carry, carry. Carry on.