Everybody Loves A Winner (Guest Post)

Hey everyone. GTD here. I have invited a close friend of mine to do a guest post on the Escape Plans Blog tonight. My guest’s name is Jack. He has a site called The Post Apocalyptic Thief, where these blog posts will also be displayed. That site claims to embrace a genre called ‘Autobiographical Fiction,’ whatever that means.

While I had planned on doing a fiction piece at least once a week here on this blog, I decided instead to have Jack do a guest blog once a week, based on the cue from Search Engine Stories, a very cool blog I have enjoyed lately.

Jack claims to have led a fascinating and adventurous life, and he hopes to share some of the essence of it through his storytelling by way of guest blogs here, and through his own posts on his own site.

Without further introduction, go ahead Jack!

Thanks GTD for that brief introduction. My stories will have to impress upon you some facts about me, since GTD has left so much to your imagination…

Have you ever heard the phrase, “Everybody Loves A Winner”? Well, my grandpa used to always say that to me before my wrestling matches in the 6th grade. I won a few matches and then gave up. Either way, no one seemed to give a damn. Now, my concept of winning and losing has transformed into a completely different beast. Most games people play happen to have a general losing effect on everyone involved. No matter who wins, everyone seems to lose.

Most folks don’t even suspect the existence of a game at all. Most have confused some arbitrary role or another as “life” and “reality.” R.D.Laing once wrote,

They are playing a game. They are playing at not
playing a game. If I show them I see they are, I
shall break the rules and they will punish me.
I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game.

A hell of a lot of people out there would like to punish me for what I tried to do. It took fighting through and then finally abandoning some ill-fated drive to save the world by trying to expose people to some basic truths, but the more people I told, the more they hated me…so now, I keep things to myself, and I keep on getting deeper and deeper into all that surrounds me, inside and out.

So Grandpa said that Everyone Loves A Winner. Grandpa always watched the Chicago Cubs play baseball, and then he watched the stock ticker at the bottom of the screen on the news channel. In terms of baseball and stocks, “Everyone Loves A Winner” holds true. Everyone loves a winning stock, and everyone loves a winning sports team, though the real winners own stadiums, baseball teams, logo and merchandise rights, parking lots, and TV stations.

I like to make up my own games, and play by my own rules, while putting on a show that makes everyone else believe that I don’t believe that anyone plays games at all. One example of this arises in my theft of books from libraries around the world. No one at the libraries suspects that someone has left messages for me in the books, and no one suspects that I have shown up to retrieve the messages. You see, I have to take the books too, because the texts in which I find the clues provide a context for understanding how to integrate and adapt to the new information, and give me some idea of where to look for the next clue.

Sometimes I just get letters in the mail that tell me a library to go to, other times, I have to simply follow my gut, and it leads me to the right place. Although, I have a hell of a lot of other adventures besides just getting the books, not the least of which comes with traveling around the world and doing other heists to support myself and my adventures. The oldest book I took so far comes from around 1500. I’ll tell you more about that later on, but first, remember that saying, “Everybody Loves A Winner”?

I found myself at a blackjack table in a back-back-room in a bar deep in the woods of northern Minnesota in the middle of winter. The tall Red Pines popped and crackled in the 26-below-zero winds, and the smoke from the log-cabin-style bar’s chimney spread out flat just above the cabin roof and drifted away in thin strips into the darkness.

I had just learned how to count cards, and how to read a hell of a lot about people by what they wear, how they hold their tensions, what their faces look like, the sound of their voice, and all kinds of things you might never notice. I earned this education from a combination of studying Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories of that famous detective and techniques of olde time mentalists, with some hints and inspiration from the fragments of vellum that kept conveniently turning up in every single book I happened to steal.

Each piece of vellum got me deeper and deeper into this mess, until I learned enough to turn things around for me. The stakes got higher and higher, until I realized the stakes never existed in the first place. I will have to explain that to you a bit later on in my story, if at all. Like I said, I have tried and tried to explain some of these insights to people, but they get either angry or bored, or some combination of both, so in my own best interest, and in yours, I will just tell you my stories, and maybe someday I will share a bit more of the fragments.

One day I found the piece of vellum that would later prove to contain hidden inside it a script. The script described word for word what happened that day in Minnesota when I counted a few too many cards and won a few too many hands of blackjack after everyone had had a few too many shots of whiskey. Not everyone loves a winner.

I got out of there with all of my money, but I lost most of it running through the snow over the next couple of hours. My hands started to freeze, so I had to drop the sacks of cash I had packed up in such a rush just to keep my fingers warm against my belly while I ran. Once the lady gets back here in the next couple of days, then I’ll take account of my winnings.

It looked like most of the guys came out after me when I made a break for it with the bags of cash. If the distraction worked, she got outta there with John Friedman’s journal, and I will finally discover just how he fits into all of this. I spotted him so many times in so many places that I suspect he and I have some ties in Indra’s Net that I have yet to discover. Perhaps he knows more than he lets on.

Sometimes we have gone out for drinks, but the conversation never gets any deeper than talking cards or women. Well, after tonight, he won’t want anything to do with me. Especially after I dropped most of his $50,000 losses in the snow on the way back to my cabin. No one forced any of those guys to keep on playing. A sucker is a sucker, and Everyone Loves A Winner, right?

Well, at least my musical education set me up with more useful knowledge than my grandpa had for me. I could tell right when I needed to split before anyone reached for a pistol or a blade. I knew they wouldn’t follow me very far into the cold, anyway. Since the whole game was illegal, no one would call the cops, either. And we all agreed to never let each other know where we lived. That way, the games could get lively, but the players were more likely to stay alive to come to town for the next game.

The winnings didn’t matter as much as getting close to Friedman. Damn, that journal could hold the key to the next step toward resolving some of this madness. If Friedman knows what I know, why the hell would he feel the need to follow me? And If he doesn’t know, and he isn’t following me, who the hell keeps arranging for he and I to meet up all over the world?

Well, that diary of his ought to reveal something. I have seen him writing in it inside a cable car in Oregon; in a coffee shop in Shasta City, CA; in a revolving restaurant above Honolulu, HI; in a hash bar in Vancouver, BC; and nearly every country in western Europe over the past year. That little black book will add much to my collection, if not my direction.

The vellum script ended with me getting away in the snow. It might as well have been written by Kenny Rogers, since it so closely resembled his song, The Gambler,

You got to know when to hold em, Know when to fold em
Know when to walk away, Know when to run…

Now, time to warm my frozen fingers and toes on this fire, smoke a little, and drift off into a couple days of hibernation, until that fine woman strolls in with that little bit of textual treasure.

Ah, How I love my life in the Post-Apocalypse! Back to my bearskin in front of the stone fireplace. I wish you could join me. These frozen lakes covered in powdery snow reflect the moonlight in tiny specks in the eyes of beautiful women. Hell, they might work even in my own eyes, but I like to see myself reflected in my lovers’ eyes instead of in a cold, hard mirror. Flesh reflects flesh better than a mirror anyhow…

If only you knew what I know, you wouldn’t confuse fact with fiction, and fiction with your personality, and your personality with your true self. Oh well, it doesn’t really matter anyway. Enjoy the Post-Apocalypse, whatever you do.

This is Jack, signing off. Check me out over at Post Apocalyptic Thief I look forward to it.

Ok, there you have it folks. A little story from my olde pal Jack. I plan on having Jack over once a week for a guest post. Check back next time, with another story inspired by Search Engine Stories.

-GTD

Wanderer, traveler, lover, warrior, yogi, massage therapist, trainer, visionary, creator, writer, seeker, admirer of consciousness.

Tags: blackjack, blog, books, mentalism, search engine fiction, search engine stories