Free Concrete Underground (2010) by Moxie Mezcal Page B

connections, get your assistants out of bed, cash in all your favors."
    "So, what exactly do you get for winning?" I interjected.
    He dug a small red metal box from his pants pocket. It was rectangular in shape, no more than five inches long and two high. "The winner gets what's inside this box,"
    "And what's that?" I pressed.
    "I swear to you, we didn't script this," Max said as an aside to his audience. A few light chuckles rippled through the crowd. "To find that out, D, I guess you'll just have to win."
    "I guess so," I replied. "And what if I lose?"
    Max turned to smile at me once more, but this time he didn't offer any further explanation.
    "Weatherman says the sun rises just after seven. You have five hours give-or-take, children. I suggest you get moving."
    As everyone else cleared off the roof, Max put a hand on my shoulder, indicating that he wanted me to stick around. I noticed Saint Anthony and Lily were also not moving to leave - Anthony's hand gripping her wrist tightly, her head hung sullenly.
    Max paced back and forth along the parapet while his eyes darted back and forth among the three of us, that grin of his still fixed in place. This went on for several minutes, even after the last of the other guests had left. The three of us just stood there in the cold and waited for Max to do something. I was miserable, Anthony didn't even seem to notice the weather, Lily was shivering so hard I thought her bones were going to shake right out of their sockets, and Max looked like he was savoring every second of it.
    Eventually, I decided I was sick of listening to Lily's teeth chatter, so I slipped off my jacket and offered it to her.
    "No!" Max yelled. "Everyone will remain dressed exactly the way they are."
    I held out the jacket to Lily again, but she refused it, keeping her worried gaze fixed on her employer.
    "Look at this thing," Max declared, stamping his foot on the parapet. "Ridiculous." His eyes returned to us just long enough to make sure he had our full attention. "What purpose does it serve? Think about it. Would it really be so dangerous to have just a plain flat edge? Is this little bit of wall going to actually save lives?"
    I shrugged.
    Max continued, "And if someone is actually dumb enough to fall off the side of a building, are we as a species really better off with that person alive and procreating? So much of our energy is expended styrofoam-padding and sterilizing our existences to protect us from ourselves, from our own humanity.
    "We realize just how hopeless and fatalistic our human condition is, how we are at the mercy of forces beyond our control. So we try to trick ourselves into a false sense of security by dreaming up phantom perils, harmless straw men that we can build a wall around or bury under concrete and feel like we have control over our destinies.
    "We pass more laws, we arm more cops, we build more prisons, and we lock up more of our neighbors in the name of our own freedom. Our fear of death drives us to poison ourselves with 'medicines' that at best only postpone the inevitable. And to what end? We still die of cancer, we still get sick - sometimes as side effects of the very drugs we take to keep us well. We still crash cars. We still make war. So where has all this gotten us as a species?"
    "It's gotten me freezing my nuts off on a roof like a dumbass, wondering what the hell you're talking about," I offered.
    "I'm talking about changing the rules of the game, D," Max replied. "If you don't make peace with your own mortality, you'll never know what it's like to truly be alive. The indigenous people who originally lived in this valley had a tradition of the vision quest - going out into the wilderness with nothing, surviving by your own wits, proving your worth as a human being and discovering who you really are in the fundamental core of your soul. But we've paved over the wilderness and blanketed the starry sky with GPS satellites. How many times have you actually stared your