Not Zen 203: The Resilient Crow

The Resilient Crow

In the deeps of a forest, a heavy chestnut tree fell. It crushed smaller trees beneath it. It broke the boughs of neighbors. In the years that followed, light flooded through the rift the tree had caused in the forest canopy. Grasses, bushes, and brambles grew inside.

During the first spring of the rift, a crow flew over and saw blackberry vines in the clearing below.

"Wonderful," he said as he landed on the half-broken branch of a juniper. The crow hopped down the branch, found a vine, located the ripest blackberry, and ate it.

"Out!" screamed another bird. "Get out!"

The crow glanced overhead and saw the shadow of a raven. Beyond the raven, he saw an eagle, which was eyeing them both. The war over the blackberry grove had begun.

At the edges of the clearing, edible thistles grew around the thicket. Then came grassy burrs. In the center of the blackberries grew a few raspberry vines. At the top of the raspberries, two juniper trees, damaged by the fall of the mighty chestnut, seized their moment in the sunlight. They burst into bloom. They offered up bitter fruits to last for a year. Taken together, the collection of edible vegetation made the clearing a prize for every animal in the vicinity. Despite the thorns of the vines, despite the burrs in the grasses, despite the prickers and needles of the junipers and other bushes, every creature who could venture into the thicket did so in the spring.

The crow had to flee from the larger birds. It had to dodge the foxes. Coyotes and large cats came to prowl after the rabbits and mice. The crow evaded them, too.  

Soon, the vines and grasses grew taller and thicker. The eagles didn’t want the berries, not at the price of so many thorns. The coyotes couldn't stand the prickers and burrs. The cats removed the rabbits from the area and, when they were done, removed themselves. Ravens flocked in as they migrated. They picked the bushes clean of ripe fruit, threw the unripe pieces to the ground, and moved on. In the process, they drove away the bluejays, squirrels, and the crows, all of them except for one.

The stubborn crow remained, hiding, but eating when it could. It dodged the foxes who returned to dine on mice.

"Why are you still here?" asked one fox, a vixen covered in burrs she had picked up during her approach. She had eaten a fat mouse but only one. She had found no more.

"The others of my flock moved to places with more food," said the crow. "But I am satisfied here."

"There's not much left." The fox laughed, her tongue out. She tried to avoid the burrs in the grass as she picked her way out of the thicket.

The crow lasted through the fall. Now, even the foxes had given up. The seasonal berries rotted. Some of them soaked the ground in seeds. Vines withered and turned into stiff canes, upon which the next generation of vines started to crawl. One day, the crow realized he had been the only hunter in the brambles for months. The place had become his home. He could reach juniper berries no one else could see. He ate rotted stuff no one else bothered about. He consumed beetles from the shattered bark of the fallen trees.

Two years later, the crow lived in a grand home next to the berry grove, a sheltered spot that could host an entire flock. And it did. The crow's children and grandchildren ventured in migrations across the forest. But he stayed. Often, his descendants flocked to his home. Beneath him, the mice returned. An occasional fox dropped by to eat the mice. He found them all easy to dodge.

One spring, a bird not much past its fledgling height crawled onto his branch and accosted him.

"Oh, wise one," she said. Her feathers were dark, healthy, and glossy. 

"Hah!" the crow cried. "Shows what you know."

"Grandmother says you are wise." She cocked her head to one side as she shifted her gaze. "Our flock met another flock, crows like us. She said to ask you about them."

"Ugh, crows," he said.

"In the other flock," she persisted, "they were hungry. They seemed lost and angry. They wanted to fight but when we rose to meet them, they flew away."

"Sounds like the usual." He puffed his feathers. They were not as glossy as in his youth but they still served. 

"Oh, wise one," she began.

"Ugh."

"How did you have so much success, grandfather?"

"I haven't thought much about it." He shuffled on the branch. After a while, he rose and grabbed the bark deep with his talons. He strutted back and forth. "Did I have success? I suppose. But I was the weakest of my flock."

"You?" She was young still but he looked reasonably-sized, to her.

"Thanks to your mother, you and your siblings are all stronger than me. Even as I made my home in the grove, I knew I was the most ignorant of the animals there. The ravens were smarter than me. The foxes were wiser. You are probably smarter and wiser, too."

"Then how did you win? Why does everyone call you 'Grandfather of the Berries' and 'Resilient Crow?'"

"Hah!" he cawed.

"Well, that's what they call you."

"Little one, I did not survive by trying harder. I tried and failed, tried and failed. I gave up many times. But I came back. I had to. I returned because I failed elsewhere. I gave up in those places. But not here, not quite. And I did not get berries every day. The ravens and foxes drove me off. I came back. I didn't outsmart anyone. But every time I fled from a larger animal, I came back."

"So you were smart, after all."

"No."

"You were wise."

"No." He ruffled his feathers. "All the other large animals gave up. That's it. One day, I woke and realized I was the only one who had persisted."

"You outlasted everyone else."

"Maybe." The older crow shrugged his wings. He leaned his head to one side as he looked at one of his youngest descendants. With a deep breath, he said, "So far."
 

 

 

 -- copyright 2025 by Eric Gallagher, Secret Hippie 

Not Even Not Zen 407: Towards a Collection

The Poetic Structure of Collected Stories, Followed By Mundane Reality 

Even before I finished a collection, readers pointed out the order of the parables in it is built around an illusion. Stories must appear in some sort of order, of course, when they are in a book. This is the structure I chose for them, a modified version of 'the four stages of enlightenment' from the Theravada school. Not everyone agrees with this view. I acknowledge the implied problems of adopting it as the overriding metaphor.

Poetic Structure

The stages of progress outlined in the Tea for Full Teacups collection are a view that seems likely to be incomplete, at best. These stages of achievement may have happened in this order for someone, sometime. They could have followed this order more than once, even. The structure isn't entirely misleading; that's why I chose it. However, we have no good evidence our progress must follow this pattern. We have no proof that progress follows stages at all, really, or whether these apparent stages are a retrofit imposed on us by our struggle to understand any progress we might have made.

When I reflect on my own experiences, I would say my journey may not have followed the traditional sequence. 

The strongest benefit I received from studying Buddhist, Stoic, and Daoist thinking came a few years in, when I was young, when I let go of my strongest desires. It was a mundane process. I spent years practicing. Almost ritually, I let go of desires each day, often in the morning or late at night. For me, the process involved a lot of envisioning. It's a modest and small-minded method. Nevertheless, it worked well for me personally. As a teen, I used visualization to help lose my fear of heights. I used it for basketball, martial arts, and swimming. For the formalized Buddhist practice of nirodha, I envisioned letting go of possessions. Of course, I actually let go of possessions, too, but I don't want to underestimate the helpfulness of the visualization. It works, although the quality of the practice makes as much difference as the quantity.

Mundane Reality

I don't want to underestimate the value of actually letting go of possessions, either. There are many other things to stop clinging to besides material ones but tangible stuff has the advantage of being readily evident. It's like the difference between building something in your mind and building it in reality. Reality is messy and inconvenient. Actions and their consequences play a role of giving you sanity checks, even about the consequences of releasing attachments. You don't think the playbill about you appearing in concert is important? Throw it out. 

Do you miss it? Too bad. It's gone. That's a consequence. 

Even as you envision not wanting things, you need to practice genuinely not having them. Sometimes there will be hardly any difference. Sometimes the difference will be dramatic. 

When I was nineteen, I was absolutist about letting go of desires. I took my Buddhist reading literally (even though all of it was in translation and most of it was summarized from longer Tibetan, Chinese or Japanese texts). To me, letting go of desires meant giving up everything. Some of the things were,

giving up possessions
giving up the desires for possessions
giving up wanting people
giving up wanting animals
giving up plants
giving up wanting to achieve things
giving up signs of past glories like paper awards, ribbons, medals, and trophies
giving up all desires as generally as possible
giving up food and hunger
giving up thirst

You might see that, at times, this was getting extreme. Giving up hunger and thirst is a good mental and emotional exercise - and a good physical one, too - but there are limits to fasting. Nevertheless, that is how I felt and it is what I strove for.
 

Not Even Not Zen 406: The Mood War, Scenes 1-8 Together

 

Here's a new, short novel: The Mood War. 

That is, here below are links to  the ten percent of the material that Amazon allows as a preview. Included on the pages is a link to the novel.

 

Mood War is copyright 2024, 2025 by Eric Gallagher. 

Secret Hippie is a trademark, 2025 by Eric Gallagher.

Cover art copyright 2025 by Acacia Gallagher.

 

 

 

The Mood War 

• The Mood War, Scene 1
• The Mood War, Scene 2
• The Mood War, Scene 3
• The Mood War, Scene 4
• The Mood War, Scene 5
• The Mood War, Scene 6
• The Mood War, Scene 7
• The Mood War, Scene 8

Amazon Kindle Direct is a good choice for new authors. However, they only allow their authors to release a tenth of the material, maximum, through other venues in order to meet their classification standard for a new book.

 

Not Even Not Zen 405: The Mood War, Scene 8

 

copyright 2025 Acacia Gallagher

[VIII] Incident Report (Partial) Defendant, Mood Battle

Cell 3C, ICC Detention Center, the Hague
Scheveningen, the Netherlands

My memories after I got shot are foggy. I saw lights. Blurred shapes. My guts started churning. My legs wobbled. I got dizzy. My unit leader pulled me to my feet. He dragged me by the arm. He kept us dodging in different directions. That made my dizziness worse. I thought I was going to throw up inside my suit.

Man, that’s the one thing they tell you over and over when they issue you a suit. Don’t throw up in it.

When we held still for a minute behind a shrub ... oh, wait, I should mention there was no cover. Every other shrub was taken. So you know the monks above were firing at the shrubs. Scouts who were lying in ditches had it better. Anyway, after we held still long enough for my suit to administer medicine and my head to clear, I gawked at the scene upslope.

The nuns and monks were all gone except for one. They’d run up from the UAZs to their gate, I guess. The only one remaining, right in the middle of the open gate, was lying face down. He had a blood stain in the middle of his back. One of our scouts must have shot him.

I’d never seen a person dying before. I must have stared for a second because a bullet hit my armor. My suit stiffened. Then it encouraged me to lie down. So I did. I could feel my armor sections relaxing. When I removed my glove, there was no resistance. Next, I reactivated my rifle with my thumbprint. Within a second, the rifle communicated with my armor. It beeped. It wanted me to put my glove back on. After I did, the suit made a complete circuit check. It switched me into combat mode. My vision cleared. My eyes naturally focused on an overlay of target tracking that appeared.

When I glanced up the hill, my systems showed me that two of the temple tower windows had become red-outline targets. The UAZs out front had gotten overlays of yellow outlines. They were an option to kill. My suit was fine with me taking out the vehicles.

What stopped me was that everyone else seemed to be sane. I mean, a handful of scouts near the front were shooting a lot, yeah, but they were aiming at the snipers in the tower windows. They weren’t trying for wholesale destruction. None of the army vets were taking potshots at the UAZs. No one aimed at anything inside the compound except for the snipers.

“Hit!” someone yelled.

I couldn’t believe it, but it was true. Petrov, who had been with the leaders, had propped his rifle on the hood of the right-most UAZ. He’d fired off three shots, no more. With bullet number three, he’d managed to tag one of the snipers who was under cover, probably armored, twenty meters in the air. This was at the distance of one and a half football fields. The sniper would have been a dot if he were even in view and not hiding. I literally could not see the hit. A smart bullet from a smart rifle had to tell me about it.

Petrov turned back to the rest of us and grinned. That was when someone on the other side pulled out their hand-held missile launcher. There was a bright light on top of the wall above the temple gate.

“Holy shit!”

 

Not Even Not Zen 404: The Mood War, Scene 7

copyright 2025 Acacia Gallagher

[VII] Details from Interview 8 in Cell 3C

ICC Detention Center, the Hague
Scheveningen, the Netherlands

HR-T1: According to multiple accounts, you were the first person shot. Why have you not mentioned this?

Cruzak: It’s embarrassing.

HR-T1: No.

Cruzak: Fucking yes, it was. We were about a hundred meters from the re-occupied temple. A contingent of monks and nuns came out to tell us to go the fuck away. They set up a barrier.

HR-T1: Nuns came to the talks?

Cruzak: Two of them. We found out there were more, later. Anyway, their group had parked a pair of armored UAZs across the dirt road that was going to become the railway. Kaspar tried to walk between the vehicles but they pointed a half-dozen of elderly, Russian rifles at him and told him to back off. So he introduced himself as head of scouting for the ITB railroad and told them they were trespassing.

HR-T1: How did the clergy react?

Cruzak: I didn’t listen closely. They talked for half an hour, probably more. It got boring. Kaspar kept a phone line open to the Shaymak chief for assistance Both of them looped in some sort of ITB lawyer. She stayed on the call, too, dispensing her advice and insisting that Kaspar say exactly the words to the trespassers that she wanted him to say.

HR-T1: So it was peaceful.

Cruzak: Yeah. I asked if I could plant some of the grass seeds I had in the suit.

HR-T1: Were you given permission?

Cruzak: I sort of started doing it and then asked, but yeah.

HR-T1: Were you the only one doing construction scout work?

Cruzak: Maybe. I was in the middle. A lot of the others behind me sat down. Up front near the UAZs, the unit chiefs and Kaspar kept everyone standing at attention.

HR-T1: Were you the only one?

Cruzak: Yeah, I think so.

HR-T1: So you did your normal work as the talks continued.

Cruzak: When the order came to lower our face masks closed, I filed an objection. Once you snap that visor shut, it puts the suit into a different mode. The AI parts think you’re ready for a fight, so the whole thing jerks you around more. It’s a pain in the ass.

HR-T1: What were your exact words?

Cruzak: I said, “Fuck, no. Let them see our faces.” The scouting chief didn’t have time to repeat the order. I knew that. He had to keep going with his negotiations. So maybe two thirds of the scouts lowered their masks. But I didn’t.

“Lower mask, Cruzak,” my unit leader ordered me. He texted it to me over the comm, too. But since I didn’t have the helmet sealed, the comm display was minimized. It didn’t really bother me.

“Come on, Zielinski.” I felt like I could talk him into making an exception. “They don’t care about us back here.”
“Close face masks. That is the order.”

“It makes us look military. It’s less friendly.” Around me, though, the other stragglers were clamping shut. I could see it.

“Lower mask.”

“It is not friendly.”

“Have you not been listening, Cruzak? They are not so happy.”

“Well, okay, but I protest. This is bullshit.” I rose from my crouch, let my grass seed dispenser slip back into my suit sleeve, and paced. I still hadn’t closed up. The view from inside the helmet screen is better than real life in some ways. It doesn’t have as much glare. You can telescope your view by thinking, too. But the colors are off. They’re muted. Contrast is higher. It’s all a bit different, and I wasn’t used to it. I wanted to get a good, real-life look at the mountain.

“Cruzak.”

“This is totally unnecessary.” I pushed my visor down. I heard the sealing mechanism make its vacuum seal. At the same time, my filter system went green. And that’s when I got shot in the head.

HR-T1: (Chuckles.)

Cruzak: See? Fucking liar. I got hit right on the front left of my face. It happened while I was walking, and my helmet did some sort of compensation thing, so I went down hard. A couple of the scouts laughed. The Nigerian woman, Zala, pointed at me and howled.

HR-T1: You were fine.

Cruzak: I didn’t feel fine. I felt like I’d been shot. Anyway, from the Shaymak chief’s point of view, it established a few things. They had more weapons than we had seen. They were willing to kill us. Maybe they could. Someone on their side had downed our drone. They had at least one sniper. However many they had, their snipers could hit us from a tenth of a kilometer. The caliber of their weapons was kind of crappy, at least to judge by my surviving. It looked like they would need multiple shots.

HR-T1: This was good for you.

Cruzak: Yeah. I’m alive. But they struck fear in me, man, and in the rest of us. All of a sudden, we were in a fight.
HR-T1: But you were an army. You had army suits.

Cruzak: No, ma’am. I told you. We had no ideas about combat. We went to put an end to any idea of a fight. They had come with the opposite approach. They set us up for their main plan. That’s when they dropped their fear bombs. They expected us to run.

HR-T1: Stop calling it a fear bomb.

Cruzak: Fear bomb.

HR-T1: It was a chemical weapon.

Cruzak: Fear bomb.

HR-T1: A gas.

Cruzak: Fear bomb.

HR-T1: Please stop.

Cruzak: Fear bomb.

HR-T1: You are being childish.

Cruzak: Fear bomb. It’s a fear bomb.

HR-T1: Fine. Please move on.

Cruzak: Then they dropped the fear bomb.

HR-T1: (Sighs.)

Cruzak: Up until then, no one had panicked.

 

 

Not Even Not Zen 403: The Mood War, Scene 6

copyright 2025 Acacia Gallagher

[VI] Incident Report (Partial) Defendant, Mood Battle

Cell 3C, ICC Detention Center, the Hague
Scheveningen, the Netherlands

As Zielinski brought us back to the main camp, I could see Kaspar with his foot on a big rock. He motioned for everyone to stay back. We could hear him arguing with our Shaymak chief, Demytro Melnik, about the temple ahead.

Melnik was the boss who had taken my tools. He was working two kilometers behind us. Turned out he’d ordered drone surveillance of the mountain peak. He didn’t trust the scouts. Plus, he was furious about the ballast getting laid down behind us. That’s why he was in his position. His bulldozers had prepped the mountain subgrade perfectly. But the team behind the bulldozers had used the wrong crushed rock for ballast between the mountain and the steel tracks. He’d ordered coarse granite, no smaller than quarter-inch pieces. What the team had laid down was a cheap-ass pea gravel made out of sandstone. That wouldn’t do.

He couldn’t blame the scouts for that. But he could blame us for the temple.

“You are responsible for the drone!” he shouted loud enough for Kaspar to distance himself for a moment, with the phone at arm’s length.

“Bullshit. This is not good,” Kaspar said into his handset. “They shot down the drone. That is not our responsibility. It was a peaceful drone, no defenses, and we are only scouts.”

The chief’s voice softened a bit. Those of us around Kaspar could only hear one end of the conversation.

“Yes, that is hostile, boss. Of course. You have the pictures from the robot camera. We can see the temple dome. Yes, it is fixed. Agree. Agree. That is a hard job. Fixed anyway. It is fixed.”

They traded some phrases in Russian. Or maybe it was Ukranian.

“Look, there are monks in the stupa, boss. You have seen them walking in the pictures. They have at least six vehicles.”

“No, no. They are all Russian armored, three UAZ models, two Burlak, one KrAZ 214.”

At this point, Kaspar began raising his left hand. He paced back and forth in front of his rock as he talked.

“How would I know? They have Russian armor pieces, all old. That is what I know. If you want more, send me another drone. A better one.”

He had a funny habit, not of smacking himself on the forehead but of slapping on top of his head when he got impatient. He did it now and left the hand in place for a while.

“No, I will not fire weapons from it. Holy cows. Do not be silly. Unless that is your order. Is that your order, boss?”

Then the phone got loud enough to hear his supervisor’s voice. We couldn’t make out the words. At least, I couldn’t. Come to think of it, this part might have been said in Ukranian. Kaspar paced for a while. He propped his right foot on the rock.

When he hung up the phone, he stuck it in a big equipment pouch he kept strapped onto his armor. He nodded to Sokolov, Mendez, and Negasi.

“Hokay, we are off to talk with the men at the temple. No more pussying around.”

“Is that an order from the Shaymak boss, Melnik?” asked Mendez.

“Da.”

“Shit.”

“Why are we going to talk?” asked Gillian, the American.

“Because we are ordered.”

“No, I understand, but what are we going to say to the folks up there?”

It made Kaspar dig his hands in his back pockets for a minute. Not for the first time, I noticed that the unit leaders generally had better suit coverings with places to hold more weapons and tools. Kaspar had assigned himself the improved gear five days before. He’d been thinking about this. He didn’t know how to answer Gillian’s question, though.

“No more shooting down drones by them. That was bad.” He spoke slowly. Kaspar seemed to be reminding himself of what he had just been told. “They are being where they should not be. Those monks, if that’s what they are. No more. No more getting in the way of this construction.”

“But our tracks go right through the middle of their compound. Temple. Stupa. Whatever.”

The American swept her arm upslope. A few of the others turned to see the tiny dot of the temple dome. The rest of us didn’t want to look. We had been worrying about it for most of the day.

“Because we are ordered,” Kaspar repeated.

There was a long moment of the men and women standing around. Everyone sort of digested the mission summary. It was a little like my last girlfriend breaking up with me over the phone. No one wanted to catch my eye or share the moment. As the awkwardness faded, one of the Ethiopian women pointed at me, then at Kaspar. It made me wonder what I’d done.

“In peace?” Gillian asked in a quiet voice.

“Da.” Kaspar nodded. “Yes, listen to me carefully. All weapon safeties are on?”

“Yes,” said Negasi.

“Da.”

“Agree.”

“Right. Now, everyone who did not fire practice rounds, there is a lock on the weapon safety. Activate it. That is to prevent accidents.”

“Regular safety also prevents accidents, Kaspar.” Sokolov gave him a reproachful scowl. “Unlocking takes a few seconds with no glove.”

“Anyone who did not practice, I want them to have to take the seconds.”

“Yes, boss.” Negasi stood to attention, an untroubled expression on his face. All of the Ethiopians had practiced with their rifles. The order didn’t affect them.

“Si. Yes.” The skin on Mendez flushed red. He muttered an order to the woman next to him. She triggered her safety lock.

“Da,” said Petrov.

Sokolov kept his scowl but he nodded. He exchanged a glance with Mendez. I don’t know what that was about. He tried to catch Szymon Zielinski’s eye, too, but my unit leader was busy punching text into his comm. Maybe the other unit heads thought he was giving us orders. Nothing ever came through the comm but I noticed a couple of my line partners locking down. I hadn’t practiced with my weapon, so I locked down too.

Then for an hour we hiked up a narrow trail left by the original engineering team. It was mostly flat, not graded to the sides, and it followed the natural slope of the mountain. There were big earth mover ruts that would need to be flattened but the nearest bulldozer that would have shaped the earth for us had moved back. It was about a kilometer downslope. At least there had been no rain. That meant the trail was okay, not eroding under us as fast as we could walk. The Shaymak range didn’t get many squalls but, when they came, they made gullies out of our flat roads. It didn’t take much to erode the soil.

Run-off is a problem all around the Shaymak plateau. The peaks are dry. There aren’t many trees high up and they’re usually stunted.

That day, we could see down into the valleys, where it had flooded just before the engineers passed through. The greening in the lower half of the peaks happened surprisingly fast. It’s a natural thing. Also, the artificial irrigation installed to support the railway had kicked in. The lands we built on had been made as fertile as any other converted desert in the world. That’s not a lot, because the plants are still cold desert plants. But it’s something. The water condensers and pumps allow grasses and shrubs to hold down the soil.

In retrospect, it was the irrigation that drew the additional settlers to the area. It wasn’t just nice to have the railroad nearby for its cargo transportation. The locals really needed the extra water. They started new villages along the side of the mountain and farmed as close to the rails as they could. The additional water was, maybe, why the monks at the peak thought they could revive their old temple gardens and support themselves.

Or maybe it was all crazy religion stuff from beginning to end. I don’t know.

“Everyone to the left,” Kaspar ordered when the lines of hikers drifted too far apart.

We had two moments of weirdness on the way to the temple. One was when Kaspar ordered us to line up. We achieved something close to a row. Our suits decided that’s what we wanted and they jerked us into perfect position, a straight line. It was awful. Everyone cursed. A few Russians yelled at Kaspar but I don’t know what they said.

The second crazy thing was a practical joke. Gillian, the American, was hiking up front next to Kaspar because she was part of his unit. One of the Ethiopians, Zala, raised her rifle and took a shot at the lump of ammo on Gillian’s back.

Zala’s smart rifle beeped at her. From where I marched behind, I could see her weapon flash green as it locked down. The AI in it had figured this for a bad shot or a joke.

Nagasi, about a yard in front of Zala, stopped when he heard the beep.He lunged, ripped the gun from Zala’s hands, and threw it on the ground. She stepped back. Me and Zielinski gave them lots of room. It’s not like we were soldiers or anything, but a couple of the scouts had been in their national armies before this gig. Nagasi had been a corporal.

I think, as he stood in silence, that he was realizing Zala wasn’t military. She didn’t have the sense of discipline he expected from her. This whole event, despite the look of it, wasn’t an army maneuver. We were a construction gang. He couldn’t shoot her or send her to the stockade or anything like that. He wanted to, though.

Anyhow, I don’t think Gillian or Kaspar ever knew.

Next, The Mood War, Scene 7

Not Even Not Zen 402: The Mood War, Scene 5

copyright 2025 Acacia Gallagher

MOOD WAR: DAY ONE

 

[V] Details from Interview 37 in Cell 3C

ICC Detention Center, the Hague
Scheveningen, the Netherlands

HR-Spec-9: There is a blank in your transcript. It is not an important time, maybe. Just friends horsing around.

Cruzak: (sounds of shuffling)

HR-Spec-9: Did your Polish team conspire to start a fight with the monastery?

Cruzak: No. (Snort of laughter.) Anyway, that’s not how the problem started. It wasn’t with us.

HR-Spec-9: Then why give nothing to the records? Why no account?

Cruzak: Dunno.

(Twenty seconds of movement, all quiet.)

HR-Spec-9: I have to ask, Herr Cruzak. This is where you got angry before.

Cruzak: They’re all dead.

HR-Spec-9: Excuse please?

Cruzak: They were my friends. They’re all dead.

(Twelve seconds of silence. Three seconds of paper moving.)

HR-Spec-9: I think I see. For now, let us move to different gaps in the transcript.
 

 

Next, The Mood War, Scene 6

Not Even Zen Humor: The Muppets Challenge

Some silliness my wife asked for ... the 'challenge' is to replace five USA presidential administration posts with five Muppets.

Here's my list:

5. For Surgeon General - Dr. Teeth. We would get a song with each new surgeon general recommendation, so that is a Schoolhouse Rock type of bonus. Plus, he's got an appropriate degree, apparently.

4. For head of HHS - Scooter. Just for the level head and the power of getting things done. Plus, he listens. It's a good position for listening before deciding.

3. For head of DOD - Miss Piggy. I know it's a dangerous appointment but underlying all the aggression is a core of calculated sanity. Plus she listens to Kermit, sometimes. And appropriately doesn't listen at times, too, because some bad person has revealed who they are. Hiiiya! (Karate chop.)

2. For VP - Statler and Waldorf. Hey, they're listed together as one Muppet on the membership lists. They are old enough to talk the language of the U.S. Congress, which has ancient leadership. Plus they would worry everyone that we need Kermit to stay healthy.

1. For President of the USA - Kermit. It's hard to pick anyone else. 

Extras:

Press Secretary - Fozzie Bear
National Science Foundation - Dr. Bunsen Honeydew
Agriculture - Janice
Interior - Sam Eagle
Education - Rowlf the Dog
FEMA - Rosita
NOAA - Elmo
Deputy Press Secretary - Animal (if Fozzie starts bombing, Animal rushes out to scatter the reporters)

Not Even Not Zen 401: The Mood War, Scene 4

 

copyright 2025 Acacia Gallagher

[IV] Incident Report (Partial) Defendant, Mood Battle

Cell 3C, ICC Detention Center, the Hague
Scheveningen, the Netherlands

This is a test. I’m failing, as usual.

Ha ha, that’s a joke. I am taking [redacted/HR-T1]’s advice and I’m starting from the beginning again to dictate my account of what happened to us east of Shaymak.

It started on Thursday. That’s the afternoon when we horsed around with the weapons in our armor. We had done this sort of thing before. As jokes, the Russians would try to push each other off cliffs. The suits stopped them. Either the first suit wouldn’t allow the push or the second one would stop it. The pieces of armor linked up to form a unit and the units talked to one another. The artificial intelligence embedded in each piece kept us from screwing up. Basically, it did what it was supposed to do. It kind of did what we were supposed to do, too.

Each section of leg armor had five layers. There was the inner lining, sensors and controls, the exoskeleton, more sensors and controls, and the skin. The armored skin and temperature sensitive lining are full of layers, too, but I’m going to ignore that so I can just say I was fucking amazed by the rest of the suit. There are gyroscopes, fiber optics, and an internal wire and pulley system between the sensors and the skeleton. Now, the collection of stuff may sound hodgepodge but, I’m telling you, it was fast. Our units had quicker reaction times than the human nervous system.

When we did what the suits expected, we were world-class athletes. When we did ordinary things, we were ordinary. And when we did something contrary to our suit expectations, we had seizures, brief ones, before the suits recalibrated. The suits did give in to what we wanted. We weren’t puppets. On the other hand, the seizures tended to train us. They’re not comfortable. They push hard against your ligaments and tendons. You learn to avoid them, which means the suit AIs have a lot of control.

“Jasna! Jasna!” Zielinski screamed in Polish when his rifle auto-loaded. “Holy shit,” is what a lot of the guys were saying as we tested the suits after they had joined with the weapons. Of course, when we were surprised, a lot of our words came out in different languages. We were Canadians, Ethiopians, Mexicans, and Poles. We had Ukranian and Russian supervisors. There were a few other groups represented, but I’d say that was our basic mix.

Thing is, no one spoke Tajik. Really, no one. The Russians had taught everyone to swear in their lingo but that was about it. I thought the names of our two youngest scouts were Opezdol and Eblan because, for a week, I couldn’t figure out they were constantly calling each other the closest equivalents to “Hey Stupid!” and “Fucking Idiot!”

My second language is French because I grew up in Ottawa but honestly, I got Cs and Ds every year. I dreaded the school trips to Quebec because everyone could see what a dummy I was. That’s how I felt in the rail scouts. Even after months of other languages with them, I have to stick to English.

Everyone else in the scouts, though, spoke English and something else. That’s why English was the official language of our ITB branch. My helmet spoke eleven languages. It was smarter than me. I’m not sure if I could have beaten my ammo in checkers.
“Well, now,” said one of the Russians. “We are some dumb guys in smart suits.”

“Hokay, Opezdoli!” shouted Kaspar. “Six groups I am assigning to you. Look to your suit comms. Get together with the teammates listed on your screen. Practice.”

“Practice what?”

Kaspar shrugged. “We are only going to march to the temple and back. Show those monks that we are not to be scared from our mission.”

“So we practice walking?”

“How about make sure we don’t shoot ourselves?” said Negasi, one of the Ethiopians. “We are ten pounds heavier. But we do not trip. We do not fire our guns like fools. Do not let us look stupid.”

“You are a group leader, Negasi.”

“This is good, boss.”

“Zielinski, Negasi, Petrov, Sokolov, and Mendez, pick your practice areas. Get your groups together and go through some drills. My work gang, come here to me. Now.”

“How about target practice, boss?” Sokolov raised his hand. There was a rifle in it.

“If you want, yes. Tell your smart ammo that it is practice otherwise it will get too smart, yes? And fire it into the ground.”

“Da.” The Russian radio engineer nodded. He was not a practical joker or a weapons enthusiast. He was just a methodical guy. The group leaders were generally like him, picked from the best workers, except maybe for mine, Szymon Zielinski.

Don’t get me wrong, I liked Szymon. He liked me back. His uniform suit was crap, though, and it was worse before I made some basic fixes and swapped his left arm out for a unit with feature compatibility. That’s a problem with equipment that has different versions and patch levels in the software. Szymon was sloppy. He’d picked pieces that looked nice, not ones that worked well. He was good with people and he was kind of senior in the Polish contingent. That’s why he got selected.

“Hey, we have Mister Cruzak repairman!” he shouted. He greeted me with a big hug as I joined his group. “We are very lucky!”

He was slapping me on the back in a few seconds. So were the other Poles. Someone put a drink in my hand. Those fuckers had alcohol available at all times, somehow. I have to admit, they got me laughing with them.
 

Next, The Mood War, Scene 5

Not Even Not Zen 400: The Mood War, Scene 3

cover art copyright 2025 Acacia Gallagher

[III] Details from Interview 34 in Cell 3C

ICC Detention Center, the Hague
Scheveningen, the Netherlands

HR-Spec-9: Introductions are over, Herr Cruzak. Recorder is started. Tell about your war experiences again now.

Cruzak: Hah. None. You’re new. Is that a Dutch accent? German? Anyway, I guess you’re calling it the Mood War because the news services are doing it. It wasn’t a war. The action lasted for less than a dozen rounds of battle, all in one place. When the skirmishes started, my job title was ‘railway scout.’ Damn sure no one thought the scouts would get into a fight.

HR-Spec-9: Before the recording began, you told me you were not a scout.

Cruzak: When I started at the UN transportation board, I wasn’t. I was a gravel truck repairman. All diesel engines. Later, I fixed electric buses. I got an award for that.

“Anyone can repair train engines,” my boss said after my award. He transferred me to the train detail. “They’re big and simple. Magnetic trains have the same parts as electric buses. It’s like you’ve been working on them all along!”

Last April, the International Transportation Board sent me to Dzhartyrabot. I got a promotion in grade.

HR-Spec-9: (Rustling sounds. The interviewer reports that he took some notes on paper at this time and he found the promotion in grade to be correct.)

Cruzak: “Why are you here?” my new boss said, soon as she met me. She put her hands on her hips. That was because she figured out that I couldn’t speak Tajik about a minute into my on-site meeting. Speaking the local language wasn’t a written requirement. She thought it should have been. She said, “Blin!”

She repeated “blin,” and “davai, davai” a few times. They sounded like nonsense syllables to me. She tried a few other Russian phrases on me. It became obvious that I couldn’t speak that, either.

“Daaavai,” she moaned at me. I liked her attitude. She wanted work done. And I wanted to do some. I would have liked her better if she hadn’t shipped me right back out. She said, “On this site, engine repairman Mister Cruzak, you are surplus.”

She stretched an arm across her desk. In a few seconds, she moved my file into the spreadsheet of her assistant, the branch chief in Shaymak. Now, Shaymak is a decent-sized city at the eastern edge of Tajikistan but it’s a long way from Dzhartyrabot. It dawned on me my shipment of clothes would need forwarded. Plus, to get to my new work site, I’d have to take a bus ride over the mountains. The ride took two days over plateaus, down valleys, and back up mountains again.

This was, in theory, the best way to meet the branch supervisor. In fact, my meetings with him took place over the airwaves. We got in touch as I approached Shaymak. He was a Ukrainian fellow, thin and harried, and he kept moving around. Every time I managed to reach him on my phone, he was somewhere else. Sometimes he lost connection in the middle of my call. He followed his road crews working on the rails of the magnetic suspension trains around Shaymak.

HR-Spec-9: This is an admirable project.

Cruzak: I thought so. The trickiest part of it is that the trains don’t work in the mountains. They convert them to use cogwheels. Only cogwheels can help trains to climb up slopes. No vehicle short of a rail gun could do it with only magnets.
 
HR-Spec-9: Is this so?

Cruzak: Oh yeah. Even amusement park rides start with gears and cogwheels for the initial climb. I could see right away that it made sense. As I read up on the technologies during my travel, I saw that the way the engines and gears converted from one type of transportation to another was pretty neat. That was just my opinion, though. Everyone else on the job felt we were doing crap work. Cogwheel tracks are the sort of crude but efficient transportation that the ITB builds in backward areas. Just being assigned to the project made the engineers feel bad.

HR-Spec-9: That cannot be correct.

Cruzak: (Laugh.) Sorry if you believed the propaganda. I did too, but it’s bullshit.

HR-Spec-9: Do not tell me I am bullshit. You are in prison. You are bullshit.

Cruzak: Wow, you’re swimming in it. You can’t even smell the shit.

HR-Spec-9: (Silence for 24 seconds. Sounds of shuffling paper.)

Cruzak: Anyway, I remember ... “Let me know when you get in.” That’s what my Shaymak boss said over the phone on my last morning of bus travel. “I’ve had to move since we last talked.”

“Again?” I remember saying. Damn, but he got around. He was exactly the sort of guy who should have missed the fighting by being too busy. Instead, he came to help us and died on the second day. “I’m pretty much at the end of my bus route.”

“Is that as far as you’ve got? Well, it takes you to the ITB helicopter pad outside of Shaymak.”

“Then what do I do?”

“Do you expect to go sailing? It’s a helicopter pad, Cruzak.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

HR-Spec-9: (Quiet laughter.)

Cruzak: I was tired of sitting. It was exhausting to think of doing nothing again. After I hung up the phone, I got a little excited for the first time in days. Because, hey, even if it meant more sitting I was going to take my first helicopter ride.

That leg of the trip was disappointing. The flight was five minutes straight up a mountain. The pilot let me inspect the engine afterward. As vehicles go, it wasn’t much, an old turboshaft model that used avgas. The engine block was a weird shape, long and narrow to fit above the cockpit. I hadn’t realized that the gear wheels, turbine shaft, fuel tank, and everything that’s important sits above the passengers. That makes perfect sense, really, to keep it all near the rotors but it seemed dangerously top-heavy. I had to mention it.

The pilot admitted it was a problem.

“When I don’t have a passenger,” he told me, “I like to bring a present for wherever I’m going. Around here, it’s usually a two hundred liter tank of water. I carry it full, so the load won’t shift. It weighs about as much as a person.”

“Water as a gift?”

“On mountain tops? Hell, yeah. The crews are happier to get water than people.”

It sounded like I wouldn’t be well received at the Shaymak work site. That suspicion turned out to be correct. I didn’t find anyone in place to meet me. For a while, I stumbled around the tarmac with a hand shielding my eyes because the sun was so bright. I figured I must be missing a secretary or some co-worker who would come out to give me the tour. After a few minutes, I headed to the nearest shack.

Folks at the ITB base had to know that I was new. They sure hadn’t seen me before. But they weren’t helpful. Every one of them begrudged listening to me as I asked for directions. When I finally did locate my barracks, I discovered that my new toolbox had arrived before me, which was nice, but I also found out my boss had stolen most of the tools out of it.

On the top was a hand-written note.

I needed the drain pan. Then the wrenches and the general diagnostic box. The special screw bits. You know how that is. I took the torx set. Then the vendor diagnostics. You really got issued a very good tool kit. Sorry. Taking most of the rest of your kit, now. Will return it all soon.

The ink of the scribbles alternated between blue and black. It looked like he really had cannibalized my kit section by section starting the day it arrived.

It’s a good thing I couldn’t reach him right away. I started to yell at him by means of a voicemail message but I had half a minute to think, so I deleted it. After a few more tries at being polite but failing, I settled for, “You’ve got my fucking engine tools. What the hell am I supposed to do now?”

In the middle of the night, in my bunk, I received a voice notice.

“I am assigning you an exploration suit.” My boss sounded calm and pissed off at the same time. “Don’t fuck it up. I’m serious. The suits are expensive. You see, I have been informed that you must be given full-time work. And I have taken your tools. So you are getting a suit.”

Ten minutes later, he followed up.

“Here are three locker combinations. You may piece together your outfit from what is available. Please, Pahn Cruzak, do not fuck up. You have been temporarily assigned as an engineering scout.”

HR-Spec-9: What is Pahn? Your name is Daniel. Oh wait, I am remembering.

Cruzak: You’re looking it up. I can see you.

HR-Spec-9: It means nothing. It is a Russian or Ukranian honorific. Like calling you ‘herr’ or ‘mister’ Cruzak.

Cruzak: Yeah, thanks. Anyway, he said that normally, this would mean a decrease in pay.

“But the construction chief for the Tajik Project announced that we have only two-thirds of the engineering scouts we require,” was part of the voicemail. “Anyone who gets assigned to scout duty keeps their previous pay and receives a bonus for their first, valid engineering report.”

That sounded pretty good to me. The problem was that I wasn’t qualified for engineering, not even in the bottom ranks. Under the circumstances, I suspected it wouldn’t matter. And I was right. At fifteen minutes past the opening hour for headquarters, my authorization forms came through. They asked me to sign, so I read the forms. It looked like my assignment wasn’t permanent, just two months. I got a bonus for signing, another wad of cash at the end of thirty days, and another wad at sixty days.

HR-Spec-9: This is another bump in pay. Good deal.

Cruzak: Hell yeah. I slapped a suit together out of the crap pieces, which got me a better outfit than most staff did although I wasn’t aware of their equipment problems yet. For a while, I stomped around the locker room, practicing. My elbows kept bumping the walls. Since I was a couple inches taller in the suit, I had to reach down for the door handle. But I got the hang of it.

After I practiced, I commissioned a jeep ride to the engineering scout camp. The jeep had a special back seat where two scouts could sit side by side in their armor. There was only one of me, so I spread out.

“Are you in a hurry, sir?” my Tajik driver asked.

“I want to get to the scout power station and activate my bonus pay.”

He got a laugh out of that. But he couldn’t speak much English and I didn’t know phrases of other languages to try, so I read my suit manuals for most of the ride. After about forty minutes, I discovered I had translator modes in the suit. I didn’t try them, though. It seemed too awkward after all the silence.

HR-Spec-9: You were not wearing all the same pieces when you returned to ITB.

Cruzak: Right, right. On the third day of the fighting ...

HR-Spec-9: No, no. The previous interviewer said you always get out of order. Please tell in order. I should not have spoken.

Cruzak: Start on the first day?

HR-Spec-9: We are to go back to the day before, please. When you were scouting ahead of the railway construction.

Cruzak: There was no real scouting, you know. Certified engineers did that. Folks at my level took their already completed diagrams, headed up the hills, and warned the construction crews if the terrain had changed. We lugged equipment around for them, built the construction crew rest stops, stuff like that. We installed charging stations for folks like us who had powered suits. We did all this with just two hours of training.

HR-Spec-9: A self-defense course?

Cruzak: That would be crazy. They assigned a standard service course on engineering ethics. The material didn’t cover conflicts. I spent most of the time listening to lectures about how I shouldn’t lie to engineers. Then there was a quiz where every question was basically like ‘should you lie?’ and the correct answer was no.

HR-Spec-9: You mentioned this part before recording this morning. Personally, it is hard for me to understand that this is an issue.

Cruzak: There’s a morale problem among the scouts. If you do the job for long, it’s sort of brainless, and there’s a chance you’ll stop doing it right. You won’t keep careful records. That means you’ll make things up on your reports.

HR-Spec-9: Aha. (Sound of a pen on paper.) Did you have this habit?

Cruzak: No, I wasn’t in the position long enough to get that way. Actually, in my couple of weeks around Shaymak, I loved it. I thought this stuff was great. The best part was the other scouts. The ones I worked with were nice. They were happy to see me. Wojchek was super considerate. Szymon, too. We used to get together before the shifts and ... and ...

HR-Spec-9: Stop that.

Cruzak: (Choking noises, then sniffling.)

HR-Spec-9: Stop. Nenavizhu tebya. Ich hasse dich. (Sounds of a chair pushed back. The interviewer apparently rises and calls loudly.) Gewebe, bitte. Gewebe! Tissues! Can I get some tissues here? Yes, you. I forgot to bring the box of tissues.

(Silence and soft noises for 14 seconds. A door opens and closes. Silence for 57 seconds.)

HR-Spec-9: Normal scouting. How did it proceed, Repairman Cruzak?

Cruzak: The armor is so smart. Smarter than humans are, really.

HR-Spec-9: What has this to do with scouting?

Cruzak: (Blows nose.) They don’t need humans in the suits. The armor takes about half of the readings. They could just build in more surveying instruments and mineral analysis. They wouldn’t need people. But people are cheaper, I guess. That’s probably the reason we had jobs.We were easier to maintain than smart armor, even in our second-hand scout-level stuff.

HR-Spec-9: Do not keep calling it armor. That does not help your case. You were issued a survival suit. These suits save men who get lost in the mountains.

Cruzak: We called it armor. Everyone did. Why would it matter if ITB, the transportation board, called it a survival suit? It was a collection of armor. Half of the pieces had weapons built in, for fuck’s sake.

HR-Spec-9: (Groans.)

Cruzak: The normal scouting job was nice. The other scouts taught me how to think like a bridge engineer, a railroad designer, a survivalist, and just about every other viewpoint I needed. I learned how to find water and store it in a reservoir in my suit so I wouldn’t have to drink my recycled pee. Gillian, one of the Americans, showed me flowers I could eat. Petrov, a Russian fellow, showed me how to make my suit recycle a type of shrub into edible paste that the suit stored in packets. He wanted to charge me for the lesson but then he decided that we’d barter.

HR-Spec-9: You were popular.

Cruzak: Not especially. The scouts were nice, that’s all. When they found out I was an engine repairman, they started bringing me pieces of our suits to fix. They were patient with me. For the first week, I had no luck. I just collected a bag of stuff I had to lug around. I learned, though. Like I said, the scouts were tolerant. The suits helped me. They’re smart. They can tell you what needs to be repaired if you understand their language.

HR-Spec-9: They can self-diagnose, correct? Just not self-repair.

Cruzak: The pieces have their own sensors, yeah. The sensors are usually the parts dying, though. The self-diagnosis part is wrong. If you learn to listen and if you have a few basic instruments, you can figure out what the sensors should be saying.

HR-Spec-9: Where were you on the day before?

Cruzak: Oh yeah. (Rustling noises.) We had moved our camp to the east of Shaymak. Some of the older scouts told us about a Buddhist temple and how the railroad went right through it. This was the first time I saw the place. Sure enough, the building sat right on the top of the mountain. Damn weird spot for it. The path of the railroad led right through the gates. We stood there looking at it for most of the day.

HR-Spec-9: Didn’t you work?

Cruzak: We cleared bushes and put up a shelter for the construction crew behind us. We installed a charging station for our suits, too. Most of us got a proximity charge. But no matter where you stood on the slopes, you couldn’t help seeing the temple. Thing is, it wasn’t in the engineering plans. The blueprints showed a place marked ‘ruins.’ Instead of a pile of rubble at that spot, there was a real temple. No one had torn it down or anything. It had walls.

HR-Spec-9: Could you see the monks?

Cruzak: We were too far away. But we could tell they were there. Even from a kilometer downslope, you could see the walls had fresh paint. Once, I thought I noticed a change in the dome, a shadow like someone had climbed up on it. (Ten seconds of silence.) Clouds of dust billowed from the temple down the south slopes for about half an hour that day.

HR-Spec-9: You have been asked to write about your experience. Have you composed your report?

Cruzak: I’m trying.

HR-Spec-9: You must do this, even if you dictate it to a machine. These interviews are not a substitute. You are an employee of the UN International Transportation Board, like me. This is an ITB investigation. Your report is a requirement.

Cruzak: I know, I know.

HR-Spec-9: (Sighs heavily close the microphone. One second of static.) So, it is the day before events. What you do that day, it is only the surveying work?

Cruzak: No. At lunch, our scouting chief pulled up in a truck. He made me and Ahmed help him unload a bunch of crates from the cargo bed. The first one said SMART .22. The next was SMART .44. There were a few more of SMART .44, some SMART .33, and then SMART RIF, SMART RIF, SMART RIF.

HR-Spec-9: Rifles. Weapons.

Cruzak: Yeah. Kaspar, the scouting crew chief, started handing them out.

HR-Spec-9: Did anyone refuse?

Cruzak: One of the Poles, Wojchek. And Gillian Baker.

HR-Spec-9: The American woman refused?

Cruzak: Not just her. I think everyone was getting ready to tell Kaspar to fuck off. He could see it coming. He held up a hand and announced that the rifles were mandatory. He said he wouldn’t make us arm them. We were only going to intimidate the Buddhists in the temple to make sure they didn’t interfere with our work.

HR-Spec-9: Who authorized him?

Cruzak: Maybe no one. It could have been just Kaspar’s decision. I don’t know. He didn’t have rights to dock our pay or anything but he’d thought ahead, like he usually did.

HR-Spec-9: He still does.

Cruzak: Aha, so the army hasn’t had him shot or anything. (Sounds of a chair moving.) Good. Last time I saw him, he wasn’t wounded. Anyway, he’d given everyone bonuses in the past week. Although he couldn’t touch our regular pay, those bonuses were at his discretion until the end of the pay period. When Gillian didn’t accept her rifle, he revoked her bonus and made everyone watch. Wojchek grabbed his weapon then. Everyone else did, too, although it took a couple minutes of arguing until we were done. Hell, I picked up my weapon before he could threaten me. No one wanted to part with a ten percent bonus over wearing a rifle.

HR-Spec-9: The American died, yes? Did she take a weapon?

Cruzak: Yeah, but no. Kaspar kept negotiating with her. He convinced her to carry a backpack of ammo in return for half of her bonus restored.

HR-Spec-9: This is what time?

Cruzak: I’m sure you’ve got it from the readouts in the armor. The guns and the suits started communicating as soon as everything powered up. The smart components adjusted to each other. Most of us had ammo in our suits but we hadn’t known about it until the suits loaded the ammo into our rifles.

HR-Spec-9: That is unfortunate. Do you remember the time?

Cruzak: After lunch, so ... maybe 11:20 in the morning.

HR-Spec-9: That is not before lunch?

Cruzak: Nope, after.

HR-Spec-9: You were in an Islamic area. The hills, the valleys, the steppes, all of it. All the villagers were Muslim. Did it not seem unusual to encounter a Buddhist stupa?

Cruzak: Not to me. In retrospect, that was ignorant. Any group who would re-occupy a Tibetan temple outside of Tibet had to be fanatical. It sure worried Kaspar.

Next, The Mood War, Scene 4