A Then, Now, Next Beginning
From “Complex God,” by Scott Sigler:
She stood on rubble-strewn Woodward Avenue, turning slowly to take in a desolate scene lit up by the setting sun. Snow clung to the few bits of buildings that remained standing, making them look like broken teeth in a mouth rotted brown.
It wouldn’t look like that for long, though.
Everyone loves a parade, she thought. Especially parades that aren’t radioactive.
The opening paragraph in “Complex God.” Then this.
A picture of How It Was; How It Is; and How It Will Be.
How It Is
Start in the middle, which is also the most salient.
Perverse but real, the past informs its future — your present — by having created its rubble and rotting the teeth in its mouth. The bombs of yesterday made your view of today.
You can only see today, so this part of Scott Sigler’s opening must be the element you could sense if you were standing outside that real Detroit.
And it does feel like I could crunch the snow under my feet and squint my eyes at the horizon and smell residue of destruction that happened perhaps before my life started. I’m sickened, too, by my mental comparison of the rot of an abandoned mouth to the buildings that crumble in the distance.
It’s incredible that Woodward stands recognizable. The street probably falls apart as you walk toward the city center.
As salient as Sigler makes this absolute moment, though, it stands as only a reflection of what came before and what will come after. It’s the first to shine off the page but plays less of a role than someone might expect given the characters’ movement within it.
How It Was
Beneath the veneer of the present, less bright but with more depth, sits what was. This is the real ground under foot. The pavement wasn’t laid today, so I can’t see it with my eyes; instead, I must reason about its creation to capture more than what a visual glance of the present can show.
Sigler guides my reasoning and helps my mental wandering feel complete.
Again, I read his specific mention of Woodward Avenue. I consider the former organized completeness of what are now the “few bits of buildings that remained standing.” Sigler’s characters, and therefore I, can recognize these landmarks and believe in what they were. People used to drive this road and live and work in these structures.
Nuclear blasts don’t eliminate matter from existence. They replace.
Heat burns. Force topples. Fallout pollutes.
Ash. Rubble. Radiation.
The putrid mouth used to contain pearly whites, at least in peaceful Winter times. The past becomes in my mind both an example of what was and an inescapable glow in the Detroit of “Complex God’s” today.
How It Will Be
As much as Sigler sends me into the past, I think he doubles that effect in sending me to the future.
It’s a bit different than my reverie about the former Michigan. I must guess more, and for that, Sigler places more clues. Specifically, he alludes to time and mechanics.
I’ll not have to wait, he says in “it wouldn’t not look like that for long.”
This tipping of the hand hits nearly like the fiery blast from the city’s recent history. I think it’s coming, it’s coming in a panic of trying to make sense of what might occur.
Sigler hints at a shape to this future, which I’m unsure how to take. “Parades that aren’t radioactive” are all the parades I’ve seen, so in a sense, I think Sigler suggests that normalcy will arrive in the next thirty pages.
But: Thirty Pages to Normalcy is more a self-help book or emo band headline than an anthology about robot uprisings.
Something will go wrong because it has to. Those are the stories we read. When the parade doesn’t catch on fire, we set down the book.
I’m floundering. Off kilter. When will the parade start, and what will it become?
The unease keeps me reading to find out more. The history gives me depth about the road I will travel. And the view into the sunset offers me a present where I can stay grounded until the proceedings begin in full.