In addition to Umberto Eco’s book I slowly absorb, for this trip to New Orleans I’ve brought along “Small green roofs: low-tech options for greener living,” by Nigel Dunnett, Dusty Gedge, John Little & Edmund C. Snodgrass; “Wonder Woman Volume 1 Blood” by Brian Azzarello, Cliff Chiang and Tony Akins.

These feed my subsequent storylines.

Below me, Bourbon Street narrows perspectively into the distance.

Bridges over Lake Pontchartrain hump up like snake skeletons.

Broken windows, torn roofs and new construction remind me that Hurricane Katrina is still a fresh memory, if not as painful as before.

Late-night dancers remind me that my years of running, training for 5ks, 10ks, 10-milers, half marathons and a couple of full marathons resulted in no style points — only start-to-finish times.

On the desk beside me, a Mason jar mostly full of Ole Smoky Tennessee blackberry moonshine, a half-pint of homemade moonshine, a corked jug of Chattanooga Whiskey Co 1816 Reserve handcrafted whiskey, 875 ml of Captain Morgan original spiced rum, and an open container of Monster Rehab Green Tea + Energy handed to me on a dark street corner from the bed of a truck dripping/gushing with ice meltwater by a gal sporting tight shorts and T-shirt promoting infused water in a Ball aluminium canister.

Q: What am I doing here?

A: Helping my wife make a dream come true.

What am I doing here for me? I don’t know. It’s not always about me, despite fermented contradictory evidence.

Dr. Sim C. Liddon once told me that I and only i can decide that I truly want to live, rather than merely survive until I die.

Every so often I take his advice and act as if I want to live. Usually, though, I watch the calendar days flip past in some clichéd film about the passage of time.

Who, me? Mais oui!

This evening, I compete with my wife in the less-experienced/least-judged competition category of West Coast Swing dancers.

We will dance, no doubt about that, but what are we competing against?

I compete against my own thoughts all the time, finding the most personal joy writing these love notes with my present self to my future self about my past selves in order to perpetuate the illusion of time.

…one set of states of energy…hmm…enough about me!

A nod to Buzzy & Kellie, Dean & Dawn for putting together an event to give my wife a dream realised. Time to find our dance instructor Abi for one more mini-lesson in how to keep from tripping over my and/or my wife’s feet for at least 90 seconds in front of a crowd of onlookers.

When we last looked at our protagonist (or, depending on your view, the antagonist), he was busy digging under his house.

Lee thanked the HVAC technician for inspecting the ductwork.

“And you say everything is in good working condition?”

“Yes sir. We replaced the torn ducts and repaired the few holes we found. We suggest you get the plastic on the ground redone. Also, the insulation in crawlspaces is no longer recommended.”

Lee nodded. “Anything else?”

The technician shook his head.

Lee wrote a check for services rendered and watched the technician back out of the driveway.

He smiled.

Three HVAC technicians had surveyed and worked in the crawlspace. Two crawlspace reparation salesmen had carefully measured and photographed the crawlspace for potential work.

None of them, not a single one, had seen the entrance to the cave network that coursed under Lee’s house and stored the parts, shelving and equipment for the new supercomputer.

Lee put on his gloves and unlocked the crawlspace door.

Once inside, he donned his welder’s goggles and “moon suit.”

A few adjustments, a couple of dial twists and Lee continued vaporizing the Alabama clay from around the cave entrance, making room for a rack of prewired mobile phone-based servers that would be the core brain of the supercomputer.

Although the vaporizer was noiseless, the occasional flash of light illuminated and disturbed the wildlife in the cavelike jungle of the crawlspace.

Camel crickets leapt from the walls to piles of pink insulation. Spiders, their shadows bigger than crows, spun long silk tendrils, hoping for a single cricket to feed an egg case bulging with new babies.

And, crouched in the crook of a leg of ductwork, a hybrid mouse, a long-lost experiment from the previous supercomputer, observed and counted, calculating the next flash of light, guesstimating the distance to the next hiding place, wanting to escape and breed, recreating the network of beings that were able to beat any silicon-based computing system at future forecasting, farming ants as combination algorithms/data points.