Story: The White Rose

The White Rose v. The Ancient Autocratic Apartharchy's Fiendish Fist of Fascism

by Erik Jorgensen - copyright 2013

            From the outside, the Dreaming Caterpillar was no different than any other coffee shop in town, and the inside was pretty much the same.  Alex only went there because it was just a few steps from his front door.  Besides - getting out of his room almost made him feel like he had a social life.

            There were three kinds of people at the Caterpillar: Tourists, Dreamers, and Thinkers.  The Tourists were the ones who grabbed a cup o' joe to go as they passed by, or maybe dropped in to watch open mic night.  If you never saw somebody again, they were probably a Tourist.

            Most of the Caterpillars were Dreamers.  They enjoyed being seen and heard, and only felt 'real' if they thought somebody noticed or admired them, sleepwalking through eachother's lives.  They wore the most fashionable corporate logos on their clothing and talked about the coolest reality-TV shows on their newest-model smartphone.  Most of their life was spent stuck in traffic, commuting to a job they hated so they could afford their car payments.  They displayed their golden chains like a badge of honor.

            There were only a couple Thinkers in the Caterpillar, but they were easy to spot if you knew how.  It was sort of like looking at the night sky: there are small stars that you can't see by looking straight at them.  Only by looking next to, away from, and around a faraway star can its faint light be seen.  So if you watched the Caterpillar long enough, seeing what was ignored, you could detect a silent bubble of Think amid the babbling Sea of Dreams.  There in the corner, behind mountains of index cards, beyond forests of notebooks, the lodestone of a silent polestar orbited itself - invisible to even the loudest gaggle of Dreamers.  While it could never be found on even the most arcane starchart, this abyss had a name: Dexter Wright.

            As Alex and his steaming cup waded toward the back of the crowded coffee shop, the chattering fell awkwardly silent as Dreamers both ignored him and moved out of his way.  He suppressed a smile as he recalled the incident from last year: a particularly pompous popinjay from the table next to Dexter's loudly mocked the writer's colorless clothes, haystack hair, and silent solitary scribbling.  Bored eyes blandly bored holes through the boorish bully, he spoke sparsely, then resumed writing.  Alex couldn't hear Dexter's response from where he was sitting, but the loud shrieks of nervous laughter, and the nearby tables casually emptying themselves, told the story.  Nobody - nobody - ever bothered Dexter while he was writing after that, and since Alex was one of the few people whom Dexter tolerated, this aegis extended to Alex.  He found it convenient on crowded evenings like this.

            Dexter was drawing an elaborate picture in one of his sketchbooks, so Alex sat down quietly and watched, savoring his steaming cup of coffee.  A giant honeybee attended by a swarm of tiny bees flying around her in a figure-eight lemniscate, surrounded by scrollwork stating: I'm Stuck In an Infinite Loop.  Alex watched in amazement as Dexter added anatomic detail to each tiny bee - then suddenly realized that the tiny bees were, in turn, attended by a figure-eight of even tinier bees.  After a while, Dexter glanced up with an almost friendly grunt of recognition, then returned to his work.

            Cautiously, Alex began: "Yeah... I talked to that lawyer, and - get this - he told me, 'But that's not a Criminal Conspiracy - that's three different people!' and he held up three fingers to show me how many that was!"  Alex held up three waggling fingers to show how many that was.  "When I tried pointing out that those three fingers were all attached to the same hand, he just kept repeating over and over, 'But that's not a Criminal Conspiracy', and every time I asked him to examine the evidence, he just looked at me like I was stupid and asked, 'So, have you spoken to a therapist about this?'  You try talking to these idiots about stopping crime in the community, and they think you're trying to talk about your feelings.  I just don't know where to go from here..."

            Dexter searched through his notebooks briefly, handed Alex the sheaf of papers he gleaned, then returned to his beekeeping.  This is what Alex read:

The White Rose v. The Ancient Autocratic Apartharchy and the Fiendishly Forceful Fist of Fascism

a Rock Opera

dedicated to Sophie Scholl "The White Rose"

executed Feb 22, 1943

Overture: It Can't Happen Here…

            Alex was dumbstruck after he finished reading the libretto, Somehow, his friend had transmuted Alex's problems into prose - even the part about the three conspirators.  But it was beautiful, elegant, and tied all the real-life Kakfaesque plot twists together with saucy Seussy sassy Gilbertonian lampoonery.  Alex laughed out loud and began praising Dexter's atristic accomplishment. 
            From a neighboring table, he heard somebody nervously whisper, "Who is he talking to this time?" 
            As Alex looked over the piles of index cards and notebooks, he saw only one coffee cup and suddenly remembered - again - that nobody named Dexter Wright actually existed.  A sudden wave of nausea washed over him as he tried to put the pieces together.  How many times had he forgotten the truth about Dexter?  Images flickered though his head, frightening flashes from his painful past, and then...

            A blinding pain stabbed through Alex's eye that would have dropped him to his knees if he hadn’t already been sitting.  Dexter gave his friend a concerned look, then smiled reassuringly and returned to his drawing.  Alex was grateful, once again, to have such a good friend.  He always knew just the right thing to say.