THE MAXWELL PROBLEM

THE TERRARIUM. Green plants and clear water at the back of the English As A Second Language classroom. The terrarium is self-sustaining. He doesn’t have to feed the fish. He turns the lights on in the room every morning. He flicks the switch and brings the fluorescence when it’s still dark outside. Class happens early and late, on the borders of the normal work day. Maybe the fish think of him as a god. A minor deity. A Bringer of Light. The terrarium isn’t his. He inherited it from the teacher before him, who had inherited it from the teacher before him. Or her. It could have been a her. There are science books in the back of the classroom, identical copies, shelved near the floor. He pulls the same book out every time. If someone came in and reshuffled the books, he would know, even though they are all identical. There is a his-ness about the book that’s the third one in from the left on the middle bottom shelf. He flips through it. He looks at the light shining through the plastic terrarium. He listens to English and to Spanish and to other languages, ones he can’t understand. Maxwell’s equations are in the book.

THE AQUARIUM. Sadly, if there are fish in there, it’s probably not actually a terrarium, even if it is self sustaining. Technically, it would be an aquarium. Right? He’s an English teacher and word meanings should be important to him.

THE GUITAR. At this point he’s between guitars. He’d sold the first one for bandwidth and cheap noodles because those things are the most important right now. 

TIBERIUS. It’s a little odd. He’s educated, but in a strange way, meaning he’s a curious person in a world full of resources. He’s in no rush to find out more about Tiberius in particular. He can count the things he knows about Tiberius on one hand. Index finger: he was an emperor in ancient Rome. Middle finger:  he wore a yellow toga, and stood next to a lake, maybe. Ring finger: he was one of the important emperors. That’s it, pretty much. Plus the Captain Kirk thing. He doesn’t know enough Star Trek minutiae to have a lot of insight into the Tiberius connection. Maybe it was just a cool name. Kirk, too, wore yellow. Actually, it was gold. Kirk is the one he cares about. Kirk could have explained a thing or two to those fish, that’s for sure. 

MUSIC. Always the thing he was best at. He can play back Brahms and Sufjan Stevens in his head with high fidelity. People are still advising him to give it up. He mostly has. But teaching his native language leaves room in his thoughts. Maybe the back of a warm classroom, without students, kindles old inspiration. He plays the desk sometimes, like the keyboard he doesn’t have. The desk doesn’t make sound though. There is only the tapping.

THE NAME. The first time it appears is three years in. Three years after he’s first gone In. He’s already been diagnosed with PTSD by a forward-thinking psychiatrist who has a professional interest in how real virtual reality has turned. Jimmy Layaway was the first character he fell into, the way other people fall in love. It’s disturbing to get shot in the chest in high resolution, total immersion, three hundred and sixty degrees of seamless virtual detail. Turns out it’s the kind of thing that fucks one up. Makes it hard to do higher math after that, anything other than music, really, that requires extended concentration. The PTSD crops up at strange times. Shopping in the supermarket, a child drops a cereal box, and he flinches, clutching his chest, no linear thoughts, just the sound of splintering bone, heart racing so hard. James Tiberius Clerk Maxwell emerges. It isn’t clear if Maxwell is the one who was there all along, or if he’s the one who’ll never die. James Tiberius Clerk Maxwell. James T. Clerk. Bringer of light. The one who can hold everything. The one who can encode all information. A spectrum propagation. Who could hurt a beam of light?

THE BIRDS. This is an Alfred Hitchcock movie that was filmed on the Sonoma Coast.

THE BAND. Dymaxion Car is James Maxwell’s band. He forms it in the summer, for something to do in the real world. He spends too much time Inside a virtual reality. A real-world band with real-world people seems like a good idea. He doesn’t play guitar at first, because he doesn’t have one. He plays keyboard when a keyboard is available, otherwise he sings. They practice after the last evening class on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Carlos delivers food and plays the drums. Jackson cleans the floors and plays the bass. James sings in the language that he teaches. Yolanda does hair and creates electronic loops with her little sister’s loaner violin and Jackson’s soundboard. At first it’s very ordinary, even a little sad. Like hugging a dead person, where the person is the life you’re not going to have because it’s gone too soon. Or maybe it’s not sad at all. They like to make music, and they’re making it. Maybe that’s the opposite of sad. It’s difficult to know. 

REINCARNATION. James creates a character in the world’s most popular MMORPG with the real James Clerk Maxwell’s Daemon as an inspiration. He is meant to be a villain. For a while, he is. His game name is Daemon Xwe. First was Jimmy Layaway, then came Wolfgang Nova (he was seventeen, give him a break), then came Broxa. Xwe is the fourth. James, tired of dying, wanders the world Inside the game. He teaches English Outside. He brings light to the fishes.

THE GAME. It’s called Starlore. Most people have heard of it. It’s kind of about terrariums. In it, people make beautiful little self-contained worlds that spin on their axes, orbiting stars. 

TEACHING. Hello. Hello. What is your name? My name is James. Nice to meet you, James. What is the weather today? Today it is hot. Yes, today is a hot day.

PRACTICE. The band gets better. The melodies become intricate. The lyrics have always been strange. The songs don’t have titles. They’re indexed by first line. Jackson and Yolanda start having sex. Nothing is ruined, because nothing exists to be ruined. Carlos is almost fluent in English now. Maxwell spends more and more time in Starlore as Daemon Xwe, seeking the Servants of Entropy. He stands on a field of ice, watching the glitter of colliding galaxies. On Earth he’d have to wait about four billion years to see a sight like this. The Andromeda galaxy comes for the Milky Way, but not quickly. These stars are so different from the pale specks choked out of Earth’s sky by light pollution; these stars seem more real, even though they’re the virtual ones.

VARSITY POLAR EXPLORER YOUR HEART STOPS. This song is the first one that’s good. Maxwell writes it after Daemon Xwe sees the Pale Veil descend on a Starlorian planet. He’d intended to become one of those elite players that could flash freeze entire worlds by screaming the water right out of the air, but once he sees it done, he knows it’s not for him. Too sad, to destroy the real effort and art of others. He’s come so far, though. Having bad intentions turn good is almost as difficult as the other way around, it turns out. 

SHOWS. They play a lot of them. They play so many that they make enough money for Carlos and Yolanda and Jackson to buy the gear to get them into the game, and then they play shows in Starlore, too. Their debut is in downtown Radiopaque, a Dark City. They make more and more money. People start to say their name. Dymaxion Car. When he hears it, it makes him happy.

PTSD. The nightmares aren’t stopping. Hypervigilance is twisting his nerves into wet rope knots. He gets hooked on benzos. Is that better than alcohol? Probably not. It doesn’t hurt. It hurts a little. It’s not real. But that IS the sound breaking bone makes. It’s just a fact. Put your hand on my hand. Slide it into the chest. Feel the heart beating? That’s how it’s done. No thanks. Acid dissolves away Yolanda’s skin, exposing the tendons and muscles of her little hand while helicopter blades beat slow rotations above them. None of this happens. He’s dreaming. He writes a song about it. It helps a little. He needs to get out of Starlore. It’s not good for his mind. He needs to do something different. But what?

YOLANDA. Goes by Jasmine now. It’s a better stage name, she says. Prettier. She wears flowers in her hair. In St. Louis, on a humid night full of insects and lilac, she saves his life when he ODs on the heroin he was going to do just the one time. She carries Narcan. Lucky. Makes him wonder about Jackson though. Narcan is the worst. The inside of him needs a shower. 

DOWN FROM THE HIGHER COUNTRY. Is the name of their first album. To get into Starlore, it’s always In and Down that you step. To leave, it’s always Up and Out that you look, toward that higher country. The album becomes popular like a sonic disease, infecting pockets of people, tearing through, moving on. He begins to receive fan mail. You understand me, they write. You are me, they write. You have no idea. How could you know what is in my head? This is troubling. No one says, I understand you. Why is that?

DAEMON. He spends time as a World Wanderer, seeking out and undertaking the minor quests in the Starlore arcana. That’s how he hears about the Talking Gull. The planet where it lives is one of the April worlds. They call them that because they’re beautiful and because it’s easier to say than the name of the family that builds them. Ánoixis. It rhymes with galaxy. They breed lilacs out of a dead land. James’s own English teacher, years before, had foretold their coming as she read aloud the words of poet who had seen the way that virtual reality would mix memory and desire, stir dull roots with—what had it been? Ah yes. Spring rain.

LAST CLASS. Where is the cinema? Go straight for three blocks. Then turn left. It is across from the museum. Where can I buy a map? You can buy a map at the bookstore. Where is the bookstore? It is across the street. Thank you!  Have a good day!  James doesn’t take the mixed use terrarium/aquarium with him when he goes. He leaves it for the next teacher. 

ÁNOIXIS. It’s what April means anyway. Opening. In the spring.

TOURING. Effacing, the way blown sand obscures a tomb. He’s not doing heroin, he’s not taking benzos, but he did buy a time compressor and he’s using it in Starlore. More and more until it’s always, and he’s living too long. It’s dangerous, but Yolanda and Carlos and Jackson are there, every day, every hour. They’d know if he got lost, stopped eating, stopped drinking, died. He can’t. Couldn’t if he wanted to. They’re doing shows every other night. 

JASPER LUKAS. Maxwell meets him on tour. He’s writing notes in a little black book, and he has only good things to say. It all goes fine until he asks James about his family, his old life, where he lives, does he play Starlore. Why would he write down the answers to those things? What is he saving, in those words, written with a real pen? He is too old for the familiar teenage love. They happen to be staying in the same hotel. Jasper is the first fan who frightens him.

THE TALKING GULL. It’s hard to find an Ánoixis world. When he does, he thinks maybe he’ll never leave. It reminds him of the Pacific Northwest. Grey skies, huge trees, the ocean. Only, there’s snow, sometimes, out over the water. He finds the gull, but it won’t talk to him. He spends time with it. Each day he comes, and he sits down on the sand. He doesn’t speak. It doesn’t speak. Maybe that’s the secret. Maybe this isn’t the Talking Gull at all. 

RADIOPAQUE. A virtual show in a virtual city, where they debut some new material, including “Girl girl girl girl girl you’re not.” The crowd is huge, the space is tight, and it hurts his mind to consider virtual capacity. Does everyone see the same crowd? No. People shift and morph as he watches. Carlos doesn’t like it. His hands are shaking. “You can go,” James says. But Carlos doesn’t go, he sticks it out. The morning after, Jasper Lukas writes an article about the virtual concert in the New York Times. James doesn’t read it. He spends the morning in Starlore, sitting on the beach, next to the gull that won’t talk to him, thinking about these Starlore worlds. That old terrariquarium. That clear plastic, those little fish. 

SCORE. It doesn’t always mean that a break is coming along weakened lines. Usually food is scored in the process of preparation. Fruit can be scored. Potatoes can be scored. So can other things that will soon be broken up and consumed.

DAEMON XWE TAKES IT AWAY. The second album is panned. It’s time to go home. It has been for a long time now. He will never write again. He stays inside. He stays Inside. There, he can make a new start. But he doesn’t. He sits next to that fucking gull. 

HATE. He doesn’t know who anyone is, or what they’re thinking, or why they hate him so much. All he tried to do was write songs. Starlore is better. He goes back to find the gull. Every day he goes. He goes for weeks, stays for hours. The gull watches him. He sees so many sunsets he begins to lose track of the days. One clear night, the gull flies away. A man walks out of the sea. Like the gull, he doesn’t speak. He stands silhouetted against a red sky at night. He looks at Daemon Xwe, still sitting on the sand. Atmospheres of pressure press down.

CARLOS. Comes to his house, does his laundry, opens his windows, and is kind. He asks James to play something. His hands feel awkward. He doesn’t sing. This is not something Carlos needs to do. Why would he bother? Dymaxion Car’s first album has made them all enough money that they’ll never have to work again. Game over. He goes back to bed.

SPLIT. Life? What life. Music? What music. James Maxwell, Daemon Xwe. Should he create a new character? Again? One who will know what it means to live?

THE FISHER KING. The man can’t speak, or won’t, and traces his name in the sand for Daemon to read. He’s almost a memory, almost everyone that Jimmy Layaway tried to save but didn’t, almost everyone that Wolfgang Nova spun to life, almost everyone Broxa captured in crystal. All those past lives. Has Daemon met him before? Has anyone? James has too many memories to sort this out. Too many nightmares. There are real people who wait for him outside his real door, scraping along raw nerve. James Maxwell needs to move behind fences; he has enough money to do it. The first night in his new place, he dreams of the Fisher King, showing up on his porch, riding one of those golden firebirds that come before the ending of the world. It ends badly, though. The world always ends badly.

PRAZOSIN. Is a medication he’s trying that isn’t working very well. The Starlore beach is becoming an interesting place. Had the Fisher King always been there? Is he the bird? Will he ever say anything? He looks at Daemon Xwe like he can see James Maxwell and all the other dead ones. Maybe he can. 

ADVICE. Jackson tells him he’s spending too much time in Starlore. Come on, they say. Let’s go out. Let’s have a good time. They have to ask him every week for nine weeks. 

OPEN MIC. He won’t go out, but he will go down. Down (and In) From That Higher Country. They play a show in Radiopaque as James T. Clerk and the Demon Collective, a Dymaxion Car cover band. Different name, same faces. There aren’t many people in the crowd. But the people who are there know who they are. Too many phones that aren’t even phones, held too high. They love you, Jasmine whispers, after the first song. They always have. He’s not so sure about that. In the crowd, he sees Jasper Lukas. They play three songs. People reach out to touch him.  His shirt, his hair, the hem of his pants. They call him Max. They say his name again and again. He looks Up and Out. 

AFTER. James watches the replay of the Starlore cut scene. Just once. That’s all it takes to understand why people react as they do. Even he falls in love with Daemon Xwe a little bit, which should be impossible.

BEFORE. They are on the beach, not speaking. The Fisher King is tracing constellations in the sand, and doing whatever he does behind the scenes to keep his world in balance. Clouds and sun and sea. It’s the afternoon. Daemon is whistling an old song. Chicago. All things go. All things go. 

DURING. They remind him of the seething masses, of the Eumenides, of the rabid fanatic hordes that would as soon tear him apart as touch him. The Servants of Entropy. Four of them come, hate in their eyes. Why so many? They scream ice right out of the air. They bring the curtain of death for which there are many names. The Entropic Cascade. The Pale Veil. They kill people like the Fisher King. Empathy, maybe, twists at James Maxwell so hard that Daemon Xwe warps space and time and the code of Starlore. When he does it, his stats fall away, his feed goes public. There is a terrible fusion. James Maxwell and Daemon Xwe are one. He did not mean for this to happen. 

WHAT THE FISHER KING THOUGHT. James can never quite tell. The Fisher King doesn’t speak, but he had screamed as Daemon Xwe ripped the game open and dragged him from the planet that had already begun to freeze. He’s not even sure whether the Fisher King is another player or whether he is part of the game. Maybe he’s Starlore itself. 

GALAHAD. Album sales undertake a Galahadian ascent to heaven. It isn’t right. The real Galahad was supposed to heal the king, not split the fabric of reality and drag him screaming through. There is no real Galahad. Get a grip.

CONFIDENCE. Grips are hard to come by. James splits and splits and splits again. Three games and the real world. With a compression compiler it’s possible. So many characters. More is better. Why are you doing this? his forward-thinking psychiatrist asks. James feels a little bit sorry for her, and asks her to please start calling him Max.

THIRD ALBUM. It’s about mountains, kind of. James T. Clerk and the Demon Collective make way again for Dymaxion Car. Maxwell collects more names. The Demented Topologist, the Orpheus of the Honeycomb Dark, the Greatest Vocalist of All Time. Many people are nice to him. But he was Light Bringer to those fish. He hasn’t forgotten them.

THE STARLING. Swarms or schools rather than flocks.

NARCISSISM. He writes himself backwards, the narcissist’s ultimate hack. Jasper Lukas says this about JTC Maxwell. He’s become a critic. 

NARCISSISM II. He hacks himself writewards, the ultimate narcissist’s back. JTC Maxwell says this about Jasper Lukas. He’s become hermitic. Outside, he has.

JACKSON. Has to come Inside to find him after Carlos gets arrested. Don’t you care what’s happening in the world? Jackson shouts, over the clang and clamor of the battlefield. He does. Of course he does. He cares about more than one world is all. Come back with me. Jackson looks Up and Out. Max follows him, finds himself on a hotel room bed. Call someone, Jackson says. He slams the door as he leaves. Max props himself on an elbow to look out the open window. He doesn’t recognize any of the buildings. Montreal? No. Carlos wouldn’t get arrested in Montreal. It’s hot. They’re somewhere in the south, where they don’t like the cut of Carlos’ features. The Fisher King will wonder where he is. Days have already passed, probably, Inside, under that compression compiler. Call someone. Right. He calls the New York Times. Then he calls Rolling Stone. A member of Dymaxion Car gets racially profiled. Bad publicity for whatever city this is, or good, depending on filter sets. Jackson is annoyed when Carlos is so grateful. Whether Jackson is annoyed because he’s starting to hate Max, or annoyed because Carlos doesn’t hate Max, or annoyed because Max can fix things easily, or annoyed because only Max can fix them this way—Max isn’t going to try to find out. Before the show, they have drinks together in Jasmine’s room. It seems too hot for the time of year it is. 

CONVERSATION. What do we know? Here are the facts. We know he was left handed. We know he really sang. We speculate he was at least half Japanese. We know he made it too far. Is making it too far the same as going too far? Probably not. What happens if someone goes too far and makes it too far? What we aren’t certain of is where the spiders were in all of this.

ZIGGY. Max is pretty sure they’re trying to tell him something. Whether it’s that they’re going to crush his hands any day now or they don’t want him to get torn apart by aliens is extremely unclear. It’s probably a little of both, and metaphorical all the way home.

VIRAL. He sees himself everywhere. He can’t remember all his own names. Daemon spends more time with the Fisher King, and tries to be certain that the Fisher King isn’t Maxwell too, somehow. People go to great lengths to tell him how much they hate him. In-game murder is on the rise. They want to kill him and desecrate his corpse in various ways. It seems unnecessary. Jasmine helps him look for hate like this in other places, so he can try to understand it. It’s easy to find. It’s everywhere. They talk to professors at Harvard, because they can. Maxwell reads the Iliad. Most of them love you, Jasmine says, high pitched, and maybe tearing up behind her sunglasses on the sidewalk table outside an anonymous coffee shop, where they sit with huge hats, and clothes covering as much of their skin as possible. The music shuffles to “Early Times Disappear Like Wildfire They Go.” Maxwell sighs. They leave.

BIRD, NOUN, SINGULAR. He sees it first in a dream, but in the dream it feels like a memory, so maybe it had hovered in his peripheral vision during any number of memorable Inside moments. A crowned raven. Clear crystal claws. No, they sparkle so much that they must be diamonds. One would think he would have remembered it, had it ever really been there.

STAGE BANTER. How we all doing tonight? All right. It’s great to be here, in—Atlanta. Sorry. Austin. I knew that. They both start with an A. South by Southwest. Right. I don’t know about you guys, but I definitely know where I am and what day it is. We also definitely have a set list, which starts with— Did you just shout Free Bird? Well, guess I walked right into that one, didn’t I. Fuck you, though, for the record.

THE LAKE. It’s Daemon Xwe who constructs the world where the sky and the water fold back on themselves and become one. He makes it for Maxwell, as if they really are two separate people. It’s JTC Maxwell who goes In, walks along the sea, finds or creates the birds there. Going In as the Outside self is a line that experts advise against crossing. But Maxwell has never been a real person anyway, so it’s all right.

CURRENT COUNT. How many of them are there? There’s the one that plays the music, the one that creates worlds, the one that attacks gods, the one that hunts ghosts. There are at least four. He is sure he’s not the Fisher King. Isn’t he? The Fisher King doesn’t speak. Could he be an echo of the self? A Doppelgänger? Who is the original? Could it be the Fisher King? Is James Maxwell stealing his life? Could Daemon Xwe have called him forth? Who is whom? And what had the first one’s name been? The one who had taught English as a Second Language and brought light to fish in a terrarium aquarium? Had he even been the first one? Or had there been more, before him? Had his name ever been James? Who had really made that plastic and water world for those fish? Maxwell doesn’t remember. If the English teacher is still alive, then there are at least five of them. 

THE THIRD HORSEMAN. Rides out of Maxwell’s brain at a show in New York as if he has been waiting in the wings for the guy in charge to let his guard down. The only reason Maxwell doesn’t have a Jim Morrison in New Haven moment is that Jackson tackles him before he destroys the stage. He screams a line from an old film over and over again. The crowd goes silent. Carlos whisks the snare drum like butterflies while Jasmine plays arpeggios on the piano and sings in front of a crowd for the first time. Jackson sits backstage with Max and they don’t talk. Max sees gray felt swifts swoop around them without sound. Goldfinches made of glitter explode gently in the air above Jasmine as she sings. He tells Jackson about them, and later, the police tell them that the crime lab found an LSD derivative in Maxwell’s drink. That explains it. The New York Times reports on it as an attempted poisoning. Maxwell develops synesthesia that doesn’t go away for a long time. He sees a lot of birds that aren’t there. Everyone tells him it’s not his fault. But what if the birds had been there all along?

WE ARE NOT THE SAME. The Fisher King spells the words in little shells on a gray beach. But it doesn’t reassure Daemon Xwe, because how would he know the answer to a question Daemon never asked aloud?

ICEGULL SUMMER. Is the name of Dymaxion Car’s fourth album. Maxwell wanted to call it The Birds, but, as noted above, that title was already taken years and years before by Alfred Hitchcock. The bone sparrow that flies with a cracking sound starts to appear everywhere. So does the owl with the stopwatch heart.

DEPERSONALIZATION. His forward thinking psychiatrist writes a book. How is that allowed? Max could probably sue for damages and win, but he’d rather just not be any of his selves. He tells this to his new, and extremely secret psychiatrist, but he kind of agrees when the Fisher King traces the words: Not really an option, in the sand. No one thinks of me as a person, Max says. The Fisher King just raises an eyebrow, like Spock. The eyebrow might mean: stop being such an emo rock-star, it’s tedious. The eyebrow might also mean: you aren’t a person. But in the nicest possible way. 

MAXWELL THE SINGER. Is the one who’s so upset. So probably it’s time for him to exist less. Much like the teacher with the aquariterrarium. Dymaxion Car will be fine without him. He says goodbye to each of them in that way that doesn’t seem like a goodbye in the moment, but that will, when viewed from afar, after he’s gone. Jasmine almost catches him. He’s always liked her the best anyway, so his face probably gives it away. Maybe she knows for sure and doesn’t call him on it, because, Thank you for teaching me English, she says. It’s probably one of the better things he’s done. He had wanted to give her something, something important, maybe from the mother of the teacher. But he doesn’t have anything. So he buys her a necklace with a silver twist in it that looks like a fish. Maybe a bird one would have been better, but there hadn’t been any birds back then. There had been only the fish. He wishes he could give her the terrarium aquarium. She would take good care of it, he knows she would. He drops the necklace into her hand. She says, What is this for? He shrugs.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE. James, teacher of English as a Second Language. James T. Clerk Maxwell, the frontman of Dymaxion Car. Daemon Xwe, master of Lore, the dearest friend of the Fisher King. The Third Horseman, Bringer of War. The Torch, Hunter of Ghosts. That’s just the current cast. Each one of them is so real, they forget the others beneath the stage lights of consciousness. This may not be the best way to live. 

JAMES R. KIRK. That’s the name on Kirk’s tombstone in the episode of the original series called Where No Man Has Gone Before. It’s just a continuity error. Or is it? Over time, that R starts to disturb him, especially considering the tangled Star Trek timeline. Had there been a James R. Kirk? Probably. It seems more and more likely all the time. Had he worn gold, too?

FKA DYMAXION CAR. Jasper Lukas gives them a great review. It’s as if losing their center turned them into a spinning disc of melancholy. Strung out emotions clump together to form lost worlds of wistful longing. That’s what he writes. A man without a name smashes all his dishes. The Third Horseman goes on a three day rampage. Damon Xwe creates a world where time stops and the sea solidifies. The ghost-hunter descends into the labyrinthine dark. Everyone is very angry around here.

WHERE HAS JAMES CLERK MAXWELL GONE? Long time passing. Where has James Clerk Maxwell gone? Long time ago. Where has James Clerk Maxwell gone, gone to small birds every one. When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn? Where have all the small birds gone? Long time passing…

HOLY GRAIL. Daemon Xwe saves the life of the Fisher King again. How many times is this going to happen? It’s like people are trying to kill the guy. Making a real effort. Oh wait.

DESTROYER. Jasmine uses the word at a concert, describing Jasper Lukas. It’s delivered with a beautiful composure in a beautiful voice. It isn’t said in overt anger. Sources close to Jasper Lukas claim he is devastated. He stops writing. The ravening crowd turns on Jasmine. Silencer, they call her. Your name was Yolanda, they scream at her. You had no right to change it. It was not yours to change. Jasmine apologizes. This does not appease them. It only makes more people angry. They start calling her Yolandmine, and then just Landmine. Jasper Lukas writes a book about the incident. He claims, at the end, to finally and fully understand James Tiberius Clerk Maxwell. He promises a forthcoming series. In the meantime, he free-associates in a series of flash pieces that all start with a single word or short phrase. He films himself writing them. Sometimes, he weeps. His pieces are collected. They do not win the Pulitzer Prize but they are featured on MTV. 

SILVERFISH. The Jesus bug. That’s not right. The Jesus bug is a water skimmer. Jasmine wears the silver fish. The fish she wears represents a real fish that swims in real water. Not an insect. Not a bird. 

GONE. In the desert, the First Horseman sings “The Migraine Day When Snow,” high and clear, like Landmine does it, her hair catching the light. Above them, water falls from a lake suspended in midair. Maxwell, says the Second Horseman. Who’s that? asks the Third Horseman.

IT’S ME. The girl says, wearing a silver fish, approaching Daemon Xwe from out of the crowd. He hesitates. There’s a little snap of her wrist, the kind he knows to look for. Before she can throw her knife she falls backward, fake stats going dark. Don’t say I never did anything for you, the Fisher King says with his eyebrow, then he retrieves his Garnet Throwing Star from the assassin’s neck. He reequips it and, with an edge, delicately in the sand, he traces two symbols with its cut crystal. An asterisk. An enemy. Another asterisk. An enemy in the real world. Jasper Lukas? Someone else? You can start speaking any day now, Daemon says, annoyed. The Fisher King looks amused.

GREEN. Are the hills around the still water. The land is beautiful, but the ground is full of holes and the skies house a demon aviary. It’s there that the person who might be Maxwell gives his last, famous interview. There are no questions. Only one long answer. It was summer, he begins, but the seagulls were covered with ice. 

THE MAXWELL PROBLEM. Seven simultaneous Maxwells emerge Inside. They look like him, they sing like him, they all make music that sounds like Dymaxion Car. The one who plays in the Dark City of Radiopaque even replicates the real man’s prosody. A student at Northwestern takes a surreptitious video of a janitor who sounds like Maxwell, who cuts the same profile while singing “Keep the Cliffside Watch by Day the Oceanwatch by”. When the student makes a sound, the man flinches and runs away. The video goes viral. Is it Maxwell? Is it not? No one knows. It’s becoming a problem.