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Angels and Electrons: A Sub-Suburban Tale
Copyright 2012 Paul Hawkins
Dedication: To the memory of my father
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant
Emily Dickinson
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant---
Success in Cirrcuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind---
Author’s Note: I have consulted the characters’ own notes and recollections to tell this story
to the best of my ability. It is not my fault that some of them are slightly addled. None of them
set out to lie, I don’t think, but may do it subconsciously out of habit. That happens when people
retell the past to themselves too many times until they can live with it. Special thanks to Rosalind
Russell, who thoroughly interviewed the other participants in order to sift the truth from fiction
and, in the process, now remembers events she never actually attended.
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Contents
Prologue - by Blaise Bohrs........................................................................................................4
Vacuum Tube Technology.....................................................................................................4
It Had Been an American Century.........................................................................................5
The Sub-Suburbs....................................................................................................................6
Chapter 1: Blaise........................................................................................................................7
From Blaise’s Journal............................................................................................................7
From Rosalind’s Journal: About Blaise.................................................................................9
Did You Find Out Where He Gets His Money?..................................................................13
From Blaise’s Journal..........................................................................................................15
Chapter 2: Blaise and Jude and Carmelita...............................................................................16
From Rosalind’s Journal......................................................................................................16
From Blaise’s Journal..........................................................................................................19
From Rosalind’s Journal......................................................................................................22
From Blaise’s Journal..........................................................................................................30
From Rosalind’s Journal......................................................................................................31
From Blaise's Journal...........................................................................................................32
From Rosalind's Journal.......................................................................................................32
From Blaise's Journal...........................................................................................................33
From Rosalind’s Journal......................................................................................................35
Did You Find Out Where He Gets His Money? - Part 2.....................................................36
The Present: From Jude's Journal.........................................................................................37
Chapter 3: The Breakdown......................................................................................................39
From Blaise's Journal: My Father........................................................................................39
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They Made a Machine to Talk to the Dead..........................................................................44
Chapter 4 - The Breakdown, Part 2..........................................................................................47
From Rosalind’s Journal......................................................................................................47
From Rosalind’s Journal: The 1980's: Coda and PLOVANDO..........................................56
From Janet’s Journal............................................................................................................56
From Tess’s Journal: PLOVANDO.....................................................................................58
Chapter 5: The 1990's..............................................................................................................69
From Rosalind’s Journal: The Eurotrash.............................................................................69
From Blaise’s Journal..........................................................................................................73
From Rosalind’s Journal......................................................................................................73
From Blaise’s Journal..........................................................................................................78
Chapter 6..................................................................................................................................80
From Jude’s Journal.............................................................................................................80
From Blaise’s Journal: So That Is How It’s Going To Be, God?........................................80
Did You Find Out Where He Gets His Money? - Part 3.....................................................83
Chapter 7: Escape from the Sub-Suburbs................................................................................85
From Blaise’s Journal..........................................................................................................85
From Rosalind’s Journal: At the Bait Store.........................................................................85
Did You Find Out Where He Gets His Money? - Part 4.....................................................89
From Blaise’s Journal..........................................................................................................90
From Blaise’s Journal: Icarus Tyrannus.............................................................................92
Chapter 8: Conclusion............................................................................................................100
From Rosalind’s Journal....................................................................................................100
From Dale Charboneau’s Journal.......................................................................................101
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