Continuing Story by Nevile Cole

Marley was vaguely aware that he was dreaming someone else’s tale. He and a tiger alone on tiny iceberg adrift in an endless ocean…it was all too familiar. Of course, he hadn’t had an original thought in so long that everything seemed vaguely familiar all the time. Every book he read had been made into a movie he had already seen. Every movie he saw was based on a book, or another movie, or a TV show, or a video game, or an historical event or just a basic plot with which he was very familiar. Everything that happened to him on a day to day basis seemed oddly similar to something else that had already happened. It was as if he was stuck in an endless déjà vu.

He dreams now that he is sitting with some shaman smoking peyote. He vaguely remembers a similar scene in the Oliver Stone movie about Jim Morrison. He is relating to the shaman the story of how he ended up on the iceberg with the tiger and the shaman says: Oh, wow! Life of Pi I loved that movie. You tell me. How did that not get best picture?  Seriously? Argo? Argo fuck yourself, indeed!”

“You think too much,” the tiger says munching happily on a meal of flying fish. So you are stuck on an iceberg with a tiger. So it is melting. Is your lot that bad? The fish literally fly into our mouths. The rain it raineth every day. We are clearly going somewhere. Why do you have such very little faith?”

“I get this is all a metaphor,” Marley says. “But what am I supposed to learn? How am I supposed to feel?”

“Every story you ever heard or will ever hear is a metaphor,” the tiger laughs. Your life is a story and that makes you a metaphor too. The sooner you realize that reality and metaphor are the same thing, the better off you will be. Why don’t you just feel happy? I for one am perfectly content being a metaphorical tiger.”

“You are content being the content of someone else’s dream?”

“Semantics is a slippery slope. Besides, who says I am in your dream? You may be content in my dream.” With that, the tiger grunts and rips the guts out of another fish.

Back in his World News Central bunker, Don Williams is thinking too much too. “News, news everywhere…” he smiles while swishing the ice around and around his whiskey glass. “but not a lot who think.” Don has been around. He knows a thing or two about news. He remembers when WNC was a city on a hill, a shining light, the answer to the world’s woes. One World, One News. Don made his way in this business during the heady days of the 24 hour news cycle. In those days newscasters were still called anchors. Anchors! When there was a storm, when seas were rough, when all seemed lost we held on to our anchors for dear life. Once upon a time we trusted the news to see us through; but now Don knew he was just a newscaster like everyone else. He threw his line into the news waters just like A.J. Clemente, just like all of them; but, and this is an important but, Don Williams isn’t about to go after bottom feeders. He still dreams he can mean something; he just doesn’t know what exactly. After all, clearly there is no longer time for news. There is an unwritten law in the news biz: news plus time equals old news and nobody is interested in old news. Time is the enemy of modern man and the news has been boiled down to an endless streaming ticker tape of tragedy, bombast, and lies. Don blamed twitter. At some point the world decided that anything that had to be said had to be said in 160 characters or less. Who made up that rule anyway? Who decided to set the bar so low? Don Williams freely admits he doesn’t know much anymore; but he knows enough to know that the end, or glory, is near.