Watchmen: Adrian/Dan, The Reason of These Fires
Title: The Reason of These Fires (1/5)
Rating: PG13 for alarming concepts
Theme: Volcanoes
Summary: It's 1990. World conflict has ceased. But the apparent "Manhattan Menace" hasn't stopped tearing the world apart. Dan Dreiberg doesn't understand why.
The Reason of These Fires
"The Reason of these Fires is the Abundance of SULPHUR and BRIMSTONE, contain’d in the bosome of the Hill; which is blown by the Wind, driving it in at the Chaps of the Earth, as by a pair of Bellows … Now, whether these Eruptions are caused by actual Subterraneous Fires, lighting upon Combustible Matter; Or by Fire struck out of falling and breaking Stones, whose Sparks meet with Nitro-Sulphureous or other inflammable Substance heap’d together in the Bowels of the Earth, and by the Expansive violence of the Fire forc’d to take more room, and so bursting out with the impetuousity we see; may not be unworthy of a Philosopher’s Speculation."
- Sir Thomas Blount, A Natural History: Containing Many not Common Observations: Extracted out of the best Modern Writers (London, 1693), pp. 398-9. More on Blount’s Natural History here.
.
His fingers tapped on the desk. "Why haven't you come?"
"I thought it was a set up."
"Well, it wasn't." He rose now, irritated, and crossed to the window.
"So I now understand. Though you have to admit, you've been known to organize set ups."
There was a silence. A long one.
"Something this extreme would be a little beyond even me, Dan," Adrian says.
.
Adrian was right, Dan thought, and knew that down the phone Adrian couldn't hear the thought, but Dan still refused to vocalize it. It was too difficult a thought to run through his brain without its sticking its spines in and hurting.
This isn't Jon. This isn't Adrian. This is nothing at all. Maybe, in the end, this is what the earth intended to do to us, Dan thought. We have been violent to her, and violence we receive in return. But he shook his head and freed these thoughts to go back to whatever PETA member they rightfully belonged to. When did he come into an ideological agreement with Poison Ivy and Namor the Sub-Mariner?
The world was falling apart. Nothing was tearing it apart. Not Jon. Not humans. Not the way it was before. This is 1990. People killing other people is passe. Now everyone has to worry about everything else killing them.
Eventually, Dan began to realize how strange it was that when people said "The world is falling apart," they really meant the various organizations belonging to the people in it.
The way it was falling apart now was more sinister. More complete. Like an apple with a worm in it. Volcanoes erupted. Seismologists jabbered with half-excitement, half-dread, about something akin to the great quake of San Francisco. Diehard Lovecraft fans (admittedly, Dan was one) cracked jokes about the Old Ones coming.
The whole time, all Dan could think of was an angry blue giant reaching out one hand. How small Adrian looked before it. How his cloak swirled like the haunches of a frightened animal. But hadn't Jon looked serene when last they'd spoken? Hadn't he promised to go away forever and not disturb their ordinary, unatomic lives?
.
In Archie from far off, Mount Etna looked like a piece of some incompetent mother's roast that has burnt and made the whole kitchen smoky. Dan squinted.
And in the smoke, he heard Adrian's voice over the radar. Somehow still pithy. Somehow still condescending. "Hello? Dan?"
"I think I'm here on official business," Nite Owl did his best to inform Ozymandias. Nite Owl had seen better days, and frankly, he'd rather shove his head up the Comedian's ass than have this conversation, but it was better than being Dan Dreiberg and talking to Adrian Veidt. In fact, most things were.
"I'm not calling you that," said a voice with too many catches and blips in it to belong to Adrian Veidt at all. "Dan, kindly get down here. People are dying -- we need more aircraft -- a second lift, a third? I remember, what you did with the burning building -- why do you think I called?"
Disgustingly, it was the breaking apart of Adrian's grammar that did Dan in.
Suddenly he was twenty-five again and Adrian Veidt, boy wonder, blond idol, knew best. "Sorry," he muttered. Fuck, and I figured any damn reason to get the old suit on again. . .and he's got kids fucking dying down there. . .
"Just get down and get the kids into the damn ship," Adrian said. The voice was like a fraying rope.
.
The whole way down, and for weeks after the rescue, Dan would be wondering. Was it a real frayed voice? Was it a false one? Certainly Adrian had never been so short with him before.
Christ, did Adrian think Dan needed falsified distress in an old, now detested former friend to motivate altruism?
Christ, had '85 turned Dan into the kind of a person who said things like "altruism" inside his own head in an attempt to reconcile this huge world?
Christ, was that a storm front on his television? No, that particular diagram of swirling colors represented chances for the earthquake. . .the earthquake they were saying would hit the city, where there were fault lines where no fault lines had been, and oh.
Sometimes Dan believed it too. That some great blue menace loomed over them. That they were all living in the shadow of the violent Manhattan.
Adrian's lies were always too good. Real distress or feigned? Adrian's fraying voice in Dan's memory, and reports of new fault lines on the television. Dan on the couch, chewing his own lips off, thinking of words like "objectivism" and "altruism" and "utilitarian."
And Laurie, calm, patient, indulgent, beautiful Laurie in the next room, wondering why they hadn't slept together for months.
Rating: PG13 for alarming concepts
Theme: Volcanoes
Summary: It's 1990. World conflict has ceased. But the apparent "Manhattan Menace" hasn't stopped tearing the world apart. Dan Dreiberg doesn't understand why.
The Reason of These Fires
"The Reason of these Fires is the Abundance of SULPHUR and BRIMSTONE, contain’d in the bosome of the Hill; which is blown by the Wind, driving it in at the Chaps of the Earth, as by a pair of Bellows … Now, whether these Eruptions are caused by actual Subterraneous Fires, lighting upon Combustible Matter; Or by Fire struck out of falling and breaking Stones, whose Sparks meet with Nitro-Sulphureous or other inflammable Substance heap’d together in the Bowels of the Earth, and by the Expansive violence of the Fire forc’d to take more room, and so bursting out with the impetuousity we see; may not be unworthy of a Philosopher’s Speculation."
- Sir Thomas Blount, A Natural History: Containing Many not Common Observations: Extracted out of the best Modern Writers (London, 1693), pp. 398-9. More on Blount’s Natural History here.
.
His fingers tapped on the desk. "Why haven't you come?"
"I thought it was a set up."
"Well, it wasn't." He rose now, irritated, and crossed to the window.
"So I now understand. Though you have to admit, you've been known to organize set ups."
There was a silence. A long one.
"Something this extreme would be a little beyond even me, Dan," Adrian says.
.
Adrian was right, Dan thought, and knew that down the phone Adrian couldn't hear the thought, but Dan still refused to vocalize it. It was too difficult a thought to run through his brain without its sticking its spines in and hurting.
This isn't Jon. This isn't Adrian. This is nothing at all. Maybe, in the end, this is what the earth intended to do to us, Dan thought. We have been violent to her, and violence we receive in return. But he shook his head and freed these thoughts to go back to whatever PETA member they rightfully belonged to. When did he come into an ideological agreement with Poison Ivy and Namor the Sub-Mariner?
The world was falling apart. Nothing was tearing it apart. Not Jon. Not humans. Not the way it was before. This is 1990. People killing other people is passe. Now everyone has to worry about everything else killing them.
Eventually, Dan began to realize how strange it was that when people said "The world is falling apart," they really meant the various organizations belonging to the people in it.
The way it was falling apart now was more sinister. More complete. Like an apple with a worm in it. Volcanoes erupted. Seismologists jabbered with half-excitement, half-dread, about something akin to the great quake of San Francisco. Diehard Lovecraft fans (admittedly, Dan was one) cracked jokes about the Old Ones coming.
The whole time, all Dan could think of was an angry blue giant reaching out one hand. How small Adrian looked before it. How his cloak swirled like the haunches of a frightened animal. But hadn't Jon looked serene when last they'd spoken? Hadn't he promised to go away forever and not disturb their ordinary, unatomic lives?
.
In Archie from far off, Mount Etna looked like a piece of some incompetent mother's roast that has burnt and made the whole kitchen smoky. Dan squinted.
And in the smoke, he heard Adrian's voice over the radar. Somehow still pithy. Somehow still condescending. "Hello? Dan?"
"I think I'm here on official business," Nite Owl did his best to inform Ozymandias. Nite Owl had seen better days, and frankly, he'd rather shove his head up the Comedian's ass than have this conversation, but it was better than being Dan Dreiberg and talking to Adrian Veidt. In fact, most things were.
"I'm not calling you that," said a voice with too many catches and blips in it to belong to Adrian Veidt at all. "Dan, kindly get down here. People are dying -- we need more aircraft -- a second lift, a third? I remember, what you did with the burning building -- why do you think I called?"
Disgustingly, it was the breaking apart of Adrian's grammar that did Dan in.
Suddenly he was twenty-five again and Adrian Veidt, boy wonder, blond idol, knew best. "Sorry," he muttered. Fuck, and I figured any damn reason to get the old suit on again. . .and he's got kids fucking dying down there. . .
"Just get down and get the kids into the damn ship," Adrian said. The voice was like a fraying rope.
.
The whole way down, and for weeks after the rescue, Dan would be wondering. Was it a real frayed voice? Was it a false one? Certainly Adrian had never been so short with him before.
Christ, did Adrian think Dan needed falsified distress in an old, now detested former friend to motivate altruism?
Christ, had '85 turned Dan into the kind of a person who said things like "altruism" inside his own head in an attempt to reconcile this huge world?
Christ, was that a storm front on his television? No, that particular diagram of swirling colors represented chances for the earthquake. . .the earthquake they were saying would hit the city, where there were fault lines where no fault lines had been, and oh.
Sometimes Dan believed it too. That some great blue menace loomed over them. That they were all living in the shadow of the violent Manhattan.
Adrian's lies were always too good. Real distress or feigned? Adrian's fraying voice in Dan's memory, and reports of new fault lines on the television. Dan on the couch, chewing his own lips off, thinking of words like "objectivism" and "altruism" and "utilitarian."
And Laurie, calm, patient, indulgent, beautiful Laurie in the next room, wondering why they hadn't slept together for months.