Back when I still lived in Los Angeles I worked for a software company called Covient. I was hired to help write training materials for the company that were used by sales people to show our clients how to use our products. I didn't spend much time writing, though, since most of the materials that we needed were already produced. I simply had to add new stuff whenever a new version of something came out. And I had to be careful not to add too much because that would increase our translation fees. The translation work was outsourced, but apparently it wasn't cheap.

When I lived in Los Angeles I lived in a rooming house just west of downtown. My salary was decent, but I could not stand living on my own in some apartment in some building on some street in some cozy little neighbourhood. I'd tried living like that before and everything I owned disintegrated before my eyes. I could not keep the place in decent shape, and I had no idea what to do in the kitchen. Now I go with some of the other guys who live in my place to a takeout place most nights, and life runs smoothly, more or less.

I shared a room with a fellow named Ellison who used to live out in Twentynine Palms and insisted that he had hosted a radio talk show out there before I was born. Anyway, Ellison worked part-time as security guard and spent most of his time scribbling away at his chronicle at the little desk we had in the corner. He would write in little spurts, pausing whenever he had a coughing fit, which was quite often. Sometimes he'd cough so loudly one of our neighbours would bang on the walls or stomp on the ceiling. If Ellison worked through the night, I wouldn't get much sleep.

Anyway, one evening I came home from work and Ellison was sitting on his bed, reading some of his work. When he saw me he held the sheet of paper in his hands out towards me. "I want you to take this, " he said.

"What is it?" I asked him.

"It's something I was working on today, " he said. "The thing is that I can't use it. So I want you have to it."

"What am I supposed to do with it?" I asked him.

"You read it, and you pick up the story where I left off, " Ellison said.

"Why don't you keep it?" I asked him.

"I can't do that, " Ellison said. "You have to take it."

"This is your project, not mine, " I said.

"Someone has to take this and keep it going, " Ellison said. "It just can't be me. I'm positive about this. You have to believe me."

I took the sheet of paper out of Ellison's hand. "Is it bad or something?" I asked him.

"That's not a question I can answer, " Ellison told me. "It's not a question you can even ask. I wish you hadn't."

"I don't know what you want me to say, " I told Ellison.

"You ask me if this is good or bad, " Ellison said. "As if that's a valid question. I thought you understood what I was doing with this chronicle. It's important work. Don't you get that?"

"I know you work hard at it, " I said.

"Read that, " Ellison said. "Read it out loud."

I sat down on my bed and did as Ellison told me. I didn't understand then what he talking about at the time. I find that hard to believe now. But the fact is that I read from the page Ellison gave me simply because I didn't want to agitate him any further. I didn't understand the real nature of his work.

"In 1182 a band of raiders sailed up and down the coast, attacking many towns and taking hundreds of men hostage, " I began. "Travelers who came through town said that these evil men plundered the churches and then burned them to the ground. Some claimed that they had come from a kingdom across the sea, while others insisted that they were Christians who had fallen from the faith.

"In October of that year approximate thirty families arrived at our gates, and claimed that these raiders had destroyed their homes and their fields. They told us they had been wandering down the coastal road for nearly three weeks, and that they would keep going until they could find a place where they could all settle down. They did not want to be separated. They insisted on moving together in one pack.

"The landholding men in our town gathered together at the customs house to decide what to do about this situation. Some suggested that we should tell the families to move on and find someplace else to settle. Others said that they could find room for maybe three or four of them on their lands. Eventually they had settled on a way to divide up the families so that all could live as tenants on one holding or another.

"The landholders presented their offer to these homeless men and women, who had camped out outside our gates. They accepted and gave thanks to God for such a blessing.

"As it turned out, however, this offer was not the blessing that these wanderers had believe it to be. The landholders here are mostly vicious men who charge high rents and impose new taxes on their subjects whenever they need to hire soldiers to wage war on one another. They fight constantly, and the soldiers they hire ravage the countryside, destroying the fields and farms of their enemies. To be a tenant on the land of one of these men is to live a life of misery.

"In December of that year a terrible storm swept in and flooded our street almost up to the church of Saints Peter and Paul. Though God spared his church from any damage, others were swept out into the waters, never to be heard from again.

"It was at this time that I realized that our town had fallen out of God's favour. We had committed an evil act by condemning those wandering refugees to such a terrible fate, and we were going to pay for our sins."

At that point Ellison had stopped writing. "This is an interesting story, " I said, not knowing really what to say.

"It's not a story, " Ellison said.

"I don't know what you want me to do with it, " I told him.

"I have to get rid of it, " Ellison told me. "It will kill me if I keep going from where I left off. I'm going to start in a new direction as of tomorrow. I need to take a break and think things over."

"I'll just get rid of this for you, " I said. Can you believe I said that?

Ellison, of course, would have none of it. "Give it back to me if you don't want to keep it, " he said. "But I have to warn it will kill me if I have to keep it. I won't last another week. I won't be able to live with myself."

"This doesn't make any sense, " I said to Ellison.

"Promise me you'll keep it, at least for a while, " Ellison said. He was looking down at the floor now. He could not even look me in eye anymore. I could see that he was serious. He seemed as if he'd died a bit already. He had done damage to himself by writing as much as he had. I can see that now. At the time I only had a vague understanding of what was going on, however. But I agreed to hold on to his work. I told him I'd bring it wherever I went.

So the next day I was back at my desk at Covient editing something I had written the day before. Ellison's work sat beside my keyboard. I kept looking at it during the day, rereading passages here and there. It was then that I realized how completely isolating my work was. Few people came to bother me. I had meetings once a week where we made sure we had projects to work on, or else we were assigned new material if we were about finish something up. Other than that, I was alone for most of the day. Some of my co-workers took breaks and went out to lunch together, but I never got involved with any of that stuff. I can't even remember half the names of the people I worked with.

I was about to head out when I picked up Ellison's work and read the whole thing over again from beginning to end. I thought about what Ellison told me. About how important it was that I continue his work. And then I turned back to my computer and opened up a new document.

"In January 1183 a comet streaked across the sky, and left a trail that was visible at night for more than a week. A local clergyman wrote a treatise claiming that the comet had appeared in a vision that had appeared to him in a dream nearly a year earlier. He said that a glowing figure had appeared in the sky as the comet passed, and that it was a sign that terrible events were about to occur.

"The clergyman read this treatise aloud in front of the church of Saints Peter and Paul several times a day for more than a month. Eventually our bishop heard this news, and was so upset that he personally came to town to tell the clergyman to stop reading his work. He told him that to make such claims was heretical and against God's law, and he would have to be excommunicated if he continued to read from his treatise. Moreover, the treatise was to be handed over to the bishop for inspection. The clergyman complied, and was led out of town by the bishop. His ultimate fate was never revealed to us, though some claim to have seen working in the field of a small monastery not too far away from here.

"When winter ended the raiders once again began to perpetrate their treacherous acts. We all knew that they would soon arrive at our shores, and we began to build up our coastal defences. We strengthened our walls and recruited all able-bodied men to form a new militia to patrol our streets at all hours.

"In April of that year a terrible rumor began to spread that there was a saboteur in town that was working for the raiders, and that he would throw open our gates when they arrived. Accusations were made against nearly every man in town, though most of these were entirely baseless. Old rivalries between families had led to these false accusations, and at times the situation grew so dire that blood was shed in our streets. The militia was called in whenever such violence occurred, and those who were responsible for these vicious acts were quickly arrested and brought before the local judge.

"By the summer of that year the situation in town had grown nearly intolerable. Everyone was so suspicious of one another that the Sunday market often had to be closed early because a quarrel would break out between rival factions. The very fabric of our community was being torn apart. We did not need the raiders to destroy or town. We were doing that ourselves."

I stopped writing at that point. I knew I had to continue, but I couldn't get everything down in one shot. Ellison was right, though. He was old and in bad shape. He couldn't have kept the chronicle going in this direction. He wasn't up for it. I only wish he hadn't left it up to me to continue it. I wish he had found someone else.