It stood in the center of the room, shining dimly in the soft light that washed in through the windows. The sky was clear, and the moon was filling the snow covered field outside with a bright blue glow, but only a shadow of that light managed to reach in, between the drawn curtains, and illuminate the squat structure that jutted towards the ceiling.
At first glance, it would have seemed totally smooth. It wasn't until you looked closer that you realized that it had tiny thin lines covering its entire surface. Those lines almost seemed to form a pattern, but a person could trace one all day with their finger and never have to cross another, nor find the end of that line.
He'd been sitting there for hours, staring at it. Trying to decide what to do next. He only had until morning to make his decision, but despite the seconds quickly falling away, he had to be deliberate. Moving it wasn't an option, and the one time it had activated had ended, poorly, at least so far as he could tell.
So for now he sat, and slowly considered his options. For the hundredth time he briefly entertained walking away. He could get up, open the door, and leave it for someone else to discover in the morning. Whatever happened to them wouldn't be his responsibility. No one had warned him when he'd walked into this room six hours ago. Why should he feel any obligation to do so for someone else.
But of course, he couldn't do that. If he did that, he wouldn't have the answer he needed, and he certainly wouldn't have the resolution he hoped for. Walking away like that would leave him wondering, for the rest of his life, whether he could have saved Elizabeth, and he didn't think he'd live long under that stress. So once more he dismissed the idea and went over the problem again, hoping he could discover some previously unrealized angle. Some key to the puzzle before him.
They had been walking along the path between the foreign language and fine arts buildings when they noticed the door. It was cracked open, with the latch caught on the outside of the door frame. It had been a nice night, and Greg was sure he was going to score, so he leapt at the chance to make their way inside. The dinner had been delicious, the movie entertaining, and he was sure that a little adventure would be all he needed to push Elizabeth over the side.
So he pointed out the open door and talked her into going into the building. Just for a moment, just to see what it was like in the middle of the night, with no one else there. Elizabeth smiled at him and put one hand on his arm and another on his shoulder as she followed him through the door. He could smell her apple blossom perfume as she crowded close to him, and feel her breath on his neck.
They walked down the dark corridor and he tried each of the doors as he went. Each one was locked, but he knew that there were couches in the lounge at the end of the hall, so if he couldn't find a dark corner before then, they could take a break there. Hopefully more than a break.
But that was when he found one door that wasn't locked. He was a little irritated about not getting to those couches, but they would be there, and maybe there would be something better here, so he pushed the door open and they went inside.
Later, he would remember that he'd never been in this room before, but there were a lot of rooms he'd never been in before, so that wouldn't have tipped him off anyway. He would remember that he'd never seen a classroom without desks and computers before, but how could he have known if that was important? He'd remember the way Elizabeth looked as she leaned over the edge of the table, examining the bright column that stood in its center. How could he have known that would be the last image of her he'd have?
She must have touched something. He was sure of that by now, but what he couldn't say. He'd held the door open for her, and she'd walked past him, so she was standing between him and the column when it happened. All he could remember seeing was a bright glow pouring out from around her and suddenly she disappeared.
He had played the scene over in his head for hours as he sat on the floor in the corner of the room. Each time, it was no different than the time before, but something came loose in his memory this time. Just as he saw the light, he'd looked up from her hips and seen her face reflected in the window across the room. He wouldn't have even been able to see it in the darkened window if it hadn't been for that sudden glow. But he did see it. He saw her face, and she had said something. Mouthed something. Three words.
But in his memory he couldn't make it out. Something. Three words. In that final moment, had she realized what was happening? Had she tried to warn him, to tell him something? Or had it simply been some innocuous comment? Something meaningless, with no bearing on the puzzle at all?
She must have touched it. She must have done something to activate it. He had been too terrified to touch it again, but he had stared hard at the side that had been facing her. He had stared at that almost smooth side, following those lines with his eyes.
But when the lines carried his eyes around the edges, and he returned to the side facing the door again, he couldn't find the place where he'd began. It hadn't moved, he was sure of it, but somehow that place where the lines seemed to point in towards each other was gone now, replaced with a series of concentric swirls.
Somehow. The lines were moving. For a while he stood still, staring at it, not blinking. But the lines never moved. Then he thought he heard a noise outside and looked away. When he looked back, the lines had moved again. Now there were parallel lines running the length of the column from top to bottom.
He backed away until he felt the wall behind him. He edged into the corner, and slowly slid to the floor. Since then, he'd sat, working the puzzle over in his head.
If she had touched it, wherever she had touched it had moved. If she had said something as that glow had enveloped her just before she disappeared, whatever she said had been lost in the confusion of the moment. Greg was good at puzzles. He usually liked them. But this time he was afraid some of the pieces had fallen out of the box.
So he sat there looking at it, and he thought about walking away. There weren't any security cameras in the room. No one could prove he had anything to do with her disappearance. He could wait until tomorrow and see if anyone came and ask them for help, but what if there was no help to be had? At best, he'd be in trouble for breaking into the school, at worst, he'd be held responsible for whatever had happened.
Why would someone leave something like this in an unlocked room in an unlocked building in a small, unremarkable college? What kind of monster would leave it where it could be found? He railed at what had happened, once more disgusted at the world for putting him in that place, at that moment. Then disgusted with himself for wasting time feeling sorry for himself instead of working at the puzzle.
He tried to recreate those words in his head. The words he'd seen in the window. Something about the column? A shape she'd seen?
It was a waste of time. It wasn't working. He stood up and approached the table. Daylight was coming, and he couldn't wait. He couldn't leave. He couldn't get help. He couldn't get away. Regardless of how many pieces he had or didn't have to this puzzle, there was one thing he hadn't tried.
As his hand touched the column he saw his face reflected in the window across the room. Suddenly, he knew what she'd said. It didn't have anything to do with the puzzle after all.
His last thought before the light completely enveloped him was how he wished they'd made it to those couches.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Sunday, January 25, 2009
A Man of His Senses
He was blind. It had come to him in a flash. From one moment to the next, everything was dark.
He stumbled through the room, tripping over the low table and falling hard to the ground. He didn't remember standing up. It hadn't even occurred to him to scream yet. He was too shocked. Seconds ago he had been sitting there, reading a book, when the whole world had suddenly shined brighter than a thousand suns, and then there was only darkness.
He laid there on the floor for a moment, groaning and clutching his leg where it had slammed into the table. He could feel something warm and slick on his leg. It burned under his hands. He closed his eyes shut as tightly as he could, despite his blindness. The pain in his leg momentarily drove his fear from his mind.
But as his thoughts cleared, and his vision did not, the fear returned. Something had happened. He tried to listen, to hear what was around him. It was then that he realized that there had been a sound of thunder when his sight went. All he could hear was a high ringing in his ears now.
Where was he now, in relation to the objects in the room? He rolled onto his side and felt a hard object stuck up against his back. He reached towards it with one hand and realized it was the entertainment center. He reached out tentatively with his foot. The pain of lengthening the muscles already knotting in his injured leg made him grown out loud again. His foot touched the edge of the table, now knocked at an angle from where it had sat in the middle of the room. He could feel the edges of the rug where they stopped covering the hard wood beneath. He was laying near the center of the room, with his feet towards the door.
He laid there for another minute. His phone had been sitting next to the couch where he had been reading. He rolled over onto his hands and knees and crawled towards the couch. Slowly feeling ahead of him with his hands as he crept across the floor, he felt the blanket hanging off the front of the couch in front of him. He worked his way, hand over hand, to the side of the couch he'd been sitting on. There was the end table. There, the phone.
He held it awkwardly in his hands, staring at it with his blind eyes. He knew what it looked like. He tried to form the image of it in his mind. It's thin black frame. The silver buttons. The blue light that emanated from its display. But no matter his efforts, he couldn't make his eyes see the phone he knew was there.
He could however, dial the numbers necessary. His hearing hadn't returned yet, so he decided to just dial 911. He pressed the numbers in, and hit the call button. He couldn't tell if anyone had answered, so he just cried out for help. He cried out in his darkness. He cried out in his silence.
He cried out in his fear.
He cried out for several minutes, and then dialed again. And again. The thought that in his state, there may be no one on the other end of the phone, and he may not even know it, was becoming a gnawing terror in his stomach.
He began to panic, and in his fear, to weep.
It was hard to determine the passage of time in that place. He never realized how much his perception of time was related to his ability to make sensory comparisons. He might have been laying there, weeping on the floor for minutes, or it could have been an hour, but slowly, some degree of rational thought returned.
If he was permanently blind and deaf, he was in trouble. Hell, even if it was only temporarily he was in trouble, but there was no way of knowing which it was yet. There was no way of knowing what had happened, and he had only the most limited ability to learn what was continuing to happen. Here, now, knowledge was the most important thing.
He tried to slow his breathing and lay still. He tried to get a feel for the room he was in. Other than the table moving when he tripped over it, everything seemed to be where he last remembered it. He couldn't feel any heat, so he didn't think there was a fire. He tried to feel for vibrations in the floor, but there didn't seem to be any. As far as he could tell, he was lying, alone, on his living room floor.
Then what had happened? What could have caused this? He had been reading a book before. He tried to think back, to remember things exactly as they happened. Had he heard the noise first, or seen the light? From which direction had it seemed to come?
It was no use. He thought he'd heard the noise, and then the light had flooded in from the big bay window in the front of the house, but it had all happened so fast, and he hadn't been looking for it. Besides, what good did such knowledge do him now?
No. That line of thought led to surrender. He would not surrender. He would survive. Whatever happened, he would get help, and he would be alright. He just needed to be calm.
He.
He.
Fear gripped him again. He what? What could he do? He'd called for help, but had no way to know if it had done any good. He thought he was safe, but who could tell? Was a fire about to consume his home? Would he be able to escape by the time he knew he was in danger? If it had been a gas line explosion, was it accompanied by a poisonous gas? Was he breathing death already?
He just didn't have the answers. He could move outside, he was sure he could find his way to the door, but would that improve his situation? He couldn't just lay outside on the ground and hope someone noticed. But he didn't have to lay in the floor either.
He moved to the couch and went back to rubbing his injured leg. He could feel the wetness drying and becoming a sticky film.
Blood then. It had to be. So, he was bleeding as well, although it didn't seem like a major wound, just a painful one.
Someone would come. If there was anyone else, if they were in better shape them him, someone would come. He had family who would want to make sure he was alright. Whatever had affected him had to have been a major incident. It had to be known. People had to be doing something. Even if he had to lay here for days, while he missed work, eventually someone would come.
But how long? How long yet? He had no way to know. He wouldn't know until they were right on top of him, and then, he wouldn't have anyway to know who they were. Fear began to eat at him again as he realized that it could be anybody. It could be someone trying to capitalize on unrest following whatever had happened. It could be looters. And he wouldn't know. He was completely defenseless, forced to rely on the aid of whoever came to help.
And that thought almost ruined him. Unless his senses returned, he would have to rely completely on others. Maybe forever. He had been a man of his senses. An eater. A lover. A reader. A musician. An artist. And unless his senses returned, it was all gone. All of it.
His world had disappeared in sound and fury, leaving nothing.
He stumbled through the room, tripping over the low table and falling hard to the ground. He didn't remember standing up. It hadn't even occurred to him to scream yet. He was too shocked. Seconds ago he had been sitting there, reading a book, when the whole world had suddenly shined brighter than a thousand suns, and then there was only darkness.
He laid there on the floor for a moment, groaning and clutching his leg where it had slammed into the table. He could feel something warm and slick on his leg. It burned under his hands. He closed his eyes shut as tightly as he could, despite his blindness. The pain in his leg momentarily drove his fear from his mind.
But as his thoughts cleared, and his vision did not, the fear returned. Something had happened. He tried to listen, to hear what was around him. It was then that he realized that there had been a sound of thunder when his sight went. All he could hear was a high ringing in his ears now.
Where was he now, in relation to the objects in the room? He rolled onto his side and felt a hard object stuck up against his back. He reached towards it with one hand and realized it was the entertainment center. He reached out tentatively with his foot. The pain of lengthening the muscles already knotting in his injured leg made him grown out loud again. His foot touched the edge of the table, now knocked at an angle from where it had sat in the middle of the room. He could feel the edges of the rug where they stopped covering the hard wood beneath. He was laying near the center of the room, with his feet towards the door.
He laid there for another minute. His phone had been sitting next to the couch where he had been reading. He rolled over onto his hands and knees and crawled towards the couch. Slowly feeling ahead of him with his hands as he crept across the floor, he felt the blanket hanging off the front of the couch in front of him. He worked his way, hand over hand, to the side of the couch he'd been sitting on. There was the end table. There, the phone.
He held it awkwardly in his hands, staring at it with his blind eyes. He knew what it looked like. He tried to form the image of it in his mind. It's thin black frame. The silver buttons. The blue light that emanated from its display. But no matter his efforts, he couldn't make his eyes see the phone he knew was there.
He could however, dial the numbers necessary. His hearing hadn't returned yet, so he decided to just dial 911. He pressed the numbers in, and hit the call button. He couldn't tell if anyone had answered, so he just cried out for help. He cried out in his darkness. He cried out in his silence.
He cried out in his fear.
He cried out for several minutes, and then dialed again. And again. The thought that in his state, there may be no one on the other end of the phone, and he may not even know it, was becoming a gnawing terror in his stomach.
He began to panic, and in his fear, to weep.
It was hard to determine the passage of time in that place. He never realized how much his perception of time was related to his ability to make sensory comparisons. He might have been laying there, weeping on the floor for minutes, or it could have been an hour, but slowly, some degree of rational thought returned.
If he was permanently blind and deaf, he was in trouble. Hell, even if it was only temporarily he was in trouble, but there was no way of knowing which it was yet. There was no way of knowing what had happened, and he had only the most limited ability to learn what was continuing to happen. Here, now, knowledge was the most important thing.
He tried to slow his breathing and lay still. He tried to get a feel for the room he was in. Other than the table moving when he tripped over it, everything seemed to be where he last remembered it. He couldn't feel any heat, so he didn't think there was a fire. He tried to feel for vibrations in the floor, but there didn't seem to be any. As far as he could tell, he was lying, alone, on his living room floor.
Then what had happened? What could have caused this? He had been reading a book before. He tried to think back, to remember things exactly as they happened. Had he heard the noise first, or seen the light? From which direction had it seemed to come?
It was no use. He thought he'd heard the noise, and then the light had flooded in from the big bay window in the front of the house, but it had all happened so fast, and he hadn't been looking for it. Besides, what good did such knowledge do him now?
No. That line of thought led to surrender. He would not surrender. He would survive. Whatever happened, he would get help, and he would be alright. He just needed to be calm.
He.
He.
Fear gripped him again. He what? What could he do? He'd called for help, but had no way to know if it had done any good. He thought he was safe, but who could tell? Was a fire about to consume his home? Would he be able to escape by the time he knew he was in danger? If it had been a gas line explosion, was it accompanied by a poisonous gas? Was he breathing death already?
He just didn't have the answers. He could move outside, he was sure he could find his way to the door, but would that improve his situation? He couldn't just lay outside on the ground and hope someone noticed. But he didn't have to lay in the floor either.
He moved to the couch and went back to rubbing his injured leg. He could feel the wetness drying and becoming a sticky film.
Blood then. It had to be. So, he was bleeding as well, although it didn't seem like a major wound, just a painful one.
Someone would come. If there was anyone else, if they were in better shape them him, someone would come. He had family who would want to make sure he was alright. Whatever had affected him had to have been a major incident. It had to be known. People had to be doing something. Even if he had to lay here for days, while he missed work, eventually someone would come.
But how long? How long yet? He had no way to know. He wouldn't know until they were right on top of him, and then, he wouldn't have anyway to know who they were. Fear began to eat at him again as he realized that it could be anybody. It could be someone trying to capitalize on unrest following whatever had happened. It could be looters. And he wouldn't know. He was completely defenseless, forced to rely on the aid of whoever came to help.
And that thought almost ruined him. Unless his senses returned, he would have to rely completely on others. Maybe forever. He had been a man of his senses. An eater. A lover. A reader. A musician. An artist. And unless his senses returned, it was all gone. All of it.
His world had disappeared in sound and fury, leaving nothing.
Real Entertainment
It was a dark and stormy night. The valiant knight approached the dark castle where the beautiful princess was being held captive by the evil monster. His polished armor glowed brightly in the bright moonlight, reflecting the brightness of the stars in the sky. As he wielded his magical elven sword he wondered about the words of the wise wizard who sent him on his quest.
At that point, I had to stop. I couldn't bring myself to care what happened to the valiant knight and the beautiful princess enough to finish reading the manuscript. I threw it on top of the pile I'd already dragged myself through. There were times when this job almost became more than it was worth. I knew that there were people who supposedly had worse jobs, janitors, and trash collectors, and kindergarten teachers, but none of them had to tolerate this kind of filth.
It was late and I'd been suffering through knights in shining armor and evil alien overlords all day. This was the kind of junk you had to put up with as an intern at a sci fi magazine, but I was starting to regret my chosen career path. Perhaps I should have stayed in college. It probably wasn't too late for me to go back. I shouldn't have to resort to this kind of work to pay the bills for the rest of my life. I was still young. Youngish.
Regardless, my work day was more or less over at that point, and it was time to head home anyway. I was living on the edge of the city. Not the good edge, where all the new construction was being done. The crappy edge, by the sinkhole, near the industrial park and the zoo. I'd been living there since I dropped out of college and moved out of the dorm. It wasn't so bad, I shared a weird little run down hovel with one of the guys I used to work with at the park and ride. The house was shit, but the rent was cheap, and our nearest neighbor was almost half a mile away. On the way home I stopped by the burger place at the corner so I could flirt with the drive through girl. She gave me extra pickles.
I was just turning onto the gravel poured through our front yard when my roommate came stumbling outside. He was already stoned, but he was awake so that was no surprise. I climbed out of the little two door I was driving and reached out for the joint he held out to me.
“You get enough dwarves and space nazis today?” He asked sleepily as I sucked in the bitter smoke.
“You get enough porn and cheese sandwiches?” I coughed back at him as I handed the joint back. I wasn't a regular smoker, but when your roommate is, you tend to get your taste in, and after the day I'd had, I wasn't gonna say no.
He chuckled and we made our way back into the house. I left the front door hanging open as I stepped past it onto the filthy carpeting. It was early summer, or late spring, and the weather was just the right temperature. We didn't even bother to close the door at night most of the time. It didn't hang right anyway, and the thick spray of raid we applied to the door frame and windows kept the pests out. It even smelled kinda fruity.
We plopped ourselves down on the broken couch that filled most of the tiny living room and stared at the giant tv we'd rented that filled the rest. I was ready to hammer some citrus drink, get high, and watch trash.
“You hear about the Chancellor?” Kevin wasn't what you would call “up” on world events, but apparently he'd watched news at some point today, and felt like sharing.
“Yah. I heard on the way home. What the fuck huh?” It had been all over the radio. The Chancellor had died. Choked on a cookie they said. Chocolate Chip.
“And I've always thought that was the most gentle of cookies.” He actually sounded contemplative. Maybe he meant it.
We fired up the tv and plugged ourselves in. The pain was almost immediate. Ever since we'd gotten the new cables the sensation had become so much more, I don't know, vibrant, then before. Usually when we'd plug in, the pain would be more like a memory of pain, like the day after you burn your finger. It still hurts, but man, yesterday. But with these new cables, it was like knives were twisting in our toenails.
We sat there for hours. Just watching the shopping channel and drinking citrus, passing a joint back and forth. We didn't feel up to rolling after a while, so we just loaded the little stone we kept on the arm of the couch. Sometime around four I fell asleep on the couch. Sometime later Kevin found his own bed.
The next day I woke up with spittle dried in my beard. The sun was well above the horizon and I could smell what was left of Kevin's breakfast through the empty doorway that led to the kitchen. It was my day off, but Kevin had already headed into the industrial park to load pallets for six hours. They claimed to do drug testing at the warehouse he worked in, but that was really just to scare away the losers. He'd worked there for nearly two years now and they hadn't tested him once.
I shook myself and stretched hard enough that I had to sit back down on the couch for a moment. I tried again, and this time I made it all the way to the fridge to see what we had to snack on. I didn't normally go out on my day off if I could help it, but if I needed food there was a chinese place down the street, and the burger place of course. I found the remains of a bag of burgers from some time earlier in the week and took it into my room with me.
I wiped the grease from the burgers off on yesterdays shirt as I plugged in to my computer. The pain was more muted here, I couldn't afford a nice set up like we had in the front room, but it still managed to fill my mind. News about the Order vote to replace the Chancellor was ignored as I logged onto the gaming board. Old boss, new boss, not interested. The game was in progress when I joined, but it never really stopped, so I took my place and began.
The first opponent I faced was crafty. He placed his exes in the center and at the corners, but I'd seen this maneuver before and easily countered him. I continued to play for some time, and added a few other players to my challenge list so I could find them later. The pain filled my mind with clarity.
Eventually I ran out of old burgers and went back to the fridge for a drink. I checked, but we were all out of citrus, and we didn't drink the rust that came out of our kitchen sinks, so I headed into town.
As I drove past the industrial park I saw them cringing in the shadow of one of the great factories. It wasn't that unusual. They were chased away from the polite parts of town, but you could always find them on the fringe of the fringe. In back lots and stinking alleyways. There wasn't anything new or rare about the poor. Honestly, we were only slightly better than they were. At least we could afford a roof that leaked, water you couldn't drink, and doors you couldn't close. But we did have entertainment.
That was what made them so pathetic. It wasn't the dirt on their faces, or the hollowness of their cheeks. It was the empty look in their eyes. Who knows how long it had been since they'd felt pain? Even the cheap grainy pain I got through my computer was more than these poor unfortunates ever got. How could a man feel alive without pain? What would be the point?
I decided while I was out I'd stop by the chinese place anyway so I could get something to eat later. While I sat in the drive through I listened to the radio play. Nothing that mattered. World events. Celebrity gossip. Equally important. I traded my chit for the bag of boxes and headed back to the house.
On the way back, I saw the urchins again. It was unnerving, being confronted with such dejection. Ignoring them was easier, so I did. When I got back home I tossed the food in the fridge for later and decided to plug in to the tv.
I spent almost all my time plugged in to either the tv or the computer when I wasn't at work. It was funny, in a way, that I spent so much time at work editing those god awful stories for people who still read magazines, and so much time at home plugged in. Reading was so boring. Words couldn't hurt you, it just seemed like wasting your time. Real entertainment was supposed to hurt. Anything else was dross.
At that point, I had to stop. I couldn't bring myself to care what happened to the valiant knight and the beautiful princess enough to finish reading the manuscript. I threw it on top of the pile I'd already dragged myself through. There were times when this job almost became more than it was worth. I knew that there were people who supposedly had worse jobs, janitors, and trash collectors, and kindergarten teachers, but none of them had to tolerate this kind of filth.
It was late and I'd been suffering through knights in shining armor and evil alien overlords all day. This was the kind of junk you had to put up with as an intern at a sci fi magazine, but I was starting to regret my chosen career path. Perhaps I should have stayed in college. It probably wasn't too late for me to go back. I shouldn't have to resort to this kind of work to pay the bills for the rest of my life. I was still young. Youngish.
Regardless, my work day was more or less over at that point, and it was time to head home anyway. I was living on the edge of the city. Not the good edge, where all the new construction was being done. The crappy edge, by the sinkhole, near the industrial park and the zoo. I'd been living there since I dropped out of college and moved out of the dorm. It wasn't so bad, I shared a weird little run down hovel with one of the guys I used to work with at the park and ride. The house was shit, but the rent was cheap, and our nearest neighbor was almost half a mile away. On the way home I stopped by the burger place at the corner so I could flirt with the drive through girl. She gave me extra pickles.
I was just turning onto the gravel poured through our front yard when my roommate came stumbling outside. He was already stoned, but he was awake so that was no surprise. I climbed out of the little two door I was driving and reached out for the joint he held out to me.
“You get enough dwarves and space nazis today?” He asked sleepily as I sucked in the bitter smoke.
“You get enough porn and cheese sandwiches?” I coughed back at him as I handed the joint back. I wasn't a regular smoker, but when your roommate is, you tend to get your taste in, and after the day I'd had, I wasn't gonna say no.
He chuckled and we made our way back into the house. I left the front door hanging open as I stepped past it onto the filthy carpeting. It was early summer, or late spring, and the weather was just the right temperature. We didn't even bother to close the door at night most of the time. It didn't hang right anyway, and the thick spray of raid we applied to the door frame and windows kept the pests out. It even smelled kinda fruity.
We plopped ourselves down on the broken couch that filled most of the tiny living room and stared at the giant tv we'd rented that filled the rest. I was ready to hammer some citrus drink, get high, and watch trash.
“You hear about the Chancellor?” Kevin wasn't what you would call “up” on world events, but apparently he'd watched news at some point today, and felt like sharing.
“Yah. I heard on the way home. What the fuck huh?” It had been all over the radio. The Chancellor had died. Choked on a cookie they said. Chocolate Chip.
“And I've always thought that was the most gentle of cookies.” He actually sounded contemplative. Maybe he meant it.
We fired up the tv and plugged ourselves in. The pain was almost immediate. Ever since we'd gotten the new cables the sensation had become so much more, I don't know, vibrant, then before. Usually when we'd plug in, the pain would be more like a memory of pain, like the day after you burn your finger. It still hurts, but man, yesterday. But with these new cables, it was like knives were twisting in our toenails.
We sat there for hours. Just watching the shopping channel and drinking citrus, passing a joint back and forth. We didn't feel up to rolling after a while, so we just loaded the little stone we kept on the arm of the couch. Sometime around four I fell asleep on the couch. Sometime later Kevin found his own bed.
The next day I woke up with spittle dried in my beard. The sun was well above the horizon and I could smell what was left of Kevin's breakfast through the empty doorway that led to the kitchen. It was my day off, but Kevin had already headed into the industrial park to load pallets for six hours. They claimed to do drug testing at the warehouse he worked in, but that was really just to scare away the losers. He'd worked there for nearly two years now and they hadn't tested him once.
I shook myself and stretched hard enough that I had to sit back down on the couch for a moment. I tried again, and this time I made it all the way to the fridge to see what we had to snack on. I didn't normally go out on my day off if I could help it, but if I needed food there was a chinese place down the street, and the burger place of course. I found the remains of a bag of burgers from some time earlier in the week and took it into my room with me.
I wiped the grease from the burgers off on yesterdays shirt as I plugged in to my computer. The pain was more muted here, I couldn't afford a nice set up like we had in the front room, but it still managed to fill my mind. News about the Order vote to replace the Chancellor was ignored as I logged onto the gaming board. Old boss, new boss, not interested. The game was in progress when I joined, but it never really stopped, so I took my place and began.
The first opponent I faced was crafty. He placed his exes in the center and at the corners, but I'd seen this maneuver before and easily countered him. I continued to play for some time, and added a few other players to my challenge list so I could find them later. The pain filled my mind with clarity.
Eventually I ran out of old burgers and went back to the fridge for a drink. I checked, but we were all out of citrus, and we didn't drink the rust that came out of our kitchen sinks, so I headed into town.
As I drove past the industrial park I saw them cringing in the shadow of one of the great factories. It wasn't that unusual. They were chased away from the polite parts of town, but you could always find them on the fringe of the fringe. In back lots and stinking alleyways. There wasn't anything new or rare about the poor. Honestly, we were only slightly better than they were. At least we could afford a roof that leaked, water you couldn't drink, and doors you couldn't close. But we did have entertainment.
That was what made them so pathetic. It wasn't the dirt on their faces, or the hollowness of their cheeks. It was the empty look in their eyes. Who knows how long it had been since they'd felt pain? Even the cheap grainy pain I got through my computer was more than these poor unfortunates ever got. How could a man feel alive without pain? What would be the point?
I decided while I was out I'd stop by the chinese place anyway so I could get something to eat later. While I sat in the drive through I listened to the radio play. Nothing that mattered. World events. Celebrity gossip. Equally important. I traded my chit for the bag of boxes and headed back to the house.
On the way back, I saw the urchins again. It was unnerving, being confronted with such dejection. Ignoring them was easier, so I did. When I got back home I tossed the food in the fridge for later and decided to plug in to the tv.
I spent almost all my time plugged in to either the tv or the computer when I wasn't at work. It was funny, in a way, that I spent so much time at work editing those god awful stories for people who still read magazines, and so much time at home plugged in. Reading was so boring. Words couldn't hurt you, it just seemed like wasting your time. Real entertainment was supposed to hurt. Anything else was dross.
Simple Husbandry
“This is a happy story.” She argued.
She always sounded like she was arguing. It didn't matter what they were discussing, Heather was always arguing. If they were discussing politics, or religion, or their favorite pastry flavor, Heather saw it as a challenge. A battle to be won. And she usually did, either through force of logic or force of personality.
“It's a happy story, and I won't have you mucking it up with your exposition.” She was like that. You go to her, and ask her a simple favor, and she somehow turns it around and makes you the source of the problem in the first place.
It didn't seem like much. I wanted to write about our honeymoon, just a short paragraph or two to put in the Holiday letter. We'd had such a delightful time, and I wanted to make sure I did the whole thing justice, so after I finished, I asked Heather to look over what I'd written to see if I left anything out.
Of course she had to turn it into some kind of confrontation. It wasn't enough to say, “You forgot about the apple tree,” or, “what about that waitress at the diner?” No, Heather insisted that I was wrong from the get, that I was using the wrong approach by focusing on describing our vacation instead of gushing over our marital bliss.
Of course I was happy about being newlywed, and Heather knew it, that wasn't the point. The point was that it had to be a battle, which meant we had to pick sides, and since I had chosen the side of “expositor” she had chosen the side of “emoter.”
By now I was used to this little game and knew how to play, I wouldn't have married her otherwise, so I made a token defense and then granted her the victory. It was all she really wanted anyway. If I didn't defend at all, it wasn't a real battle, and she'd make sure we had one soon to make up for it. But if I defended to strenuously, she might lose, and Heather hated losing. So I'd fight the good fight, give ground grudgingly, and eventually admit defeat.
Besides, it was a happy story. We'd met in school, fallen madly in love, and being romantic idealists both, showered each other with affection. I'd buy her tokens and she'd leave me surprises. It was all very silly, and we were deeply entrenched. It was a wonderful time in our lives.
Of course, our lives weren't always wonderful, and they wouldn't always be, but with our little give and take games we had joy in the moment. Later I would rewrite the Holiday letter, she would decide it was better the first time, and I would send out the letter I'd wanted in the first place. That was part of the game too.
But for now, I put the letter aside. I had something else we needed to discuss, and the battle we'd have over this would probably overshadow the other.
“We need to talk about the help. They're restless.” She hated discussing our slaves.
It was our compassion which brought about our return to slavery.
We'd inherited them from my father when he'd retired. Dozens of human slaves he'd acquired during the war. For the most part, they were industrious and relatively easy to keep and feed, but they did have a tendency towards, restlessness.
We treated them well of course, my father had raised me to understand the importance of proper care and treatment of our property. Some people never understand the importance of preventative maintenance for their slaves, but I'd learned at a young age that having their feet and teeth checked monthly was important to getting the most out of them. Left alone, they had a tendency to overeat and let their personal hygiene go unattended. But if you controlled their diet and made sure they were cleaned regularly, they were actually quite industrious.
What made them such useful slaves was also what occasioned their restlessness. They were really quite clever little creatures. I was still sometimes surprised by their ingenuity, and I'd had human slaves for years. They had a fair degree of problem solving ability, and were unusually curious.
But occasionally those attributes led to problems. Sometimes we had to deal with sullenness, which you had to address quickly before it spread to others. Sullen workers were unproductive workers. But more importantly, there had been uprisings. Not in any of my holdings of course, I knew how to take care of my slaves, but some other holders didn't understand how to properly husband their stock. Those kinds of problems were always dealt with harshly of course, you certainly can't allow insurrection, but talk of revolt had to be dealt with far differently than revolt itself. Revolt needed to be crushed, talk of revolt needed to be smothered. A fine line to be sure.
So far, I hadn't heard of any talk of revolt amongst the slaves, but their restlessness was beginning to show. Workers pausing throughout their day and staring off into space. Dragging their feet while working. Sulking in corners. I had owned slaves since my thirteenth naming day, and I had developed a sense of their mood.
The best way to address this kind of behavior was to draw aside some of the more respected slaves. There were those amongst the humans who were looked to for guidance. Some were young, some old, it was hard to discern how they determined position, but you could tell who was deferred to, and who was expected to defer.
Heather never liked discussing the slaves. She felt that the keeping of the lands was primarily the husband's responsibility and didn't like to be bothered with it. She was also part of a small movement that felt slavery was immoral. They actually promoted manumission. Of course, Heather was young, and the young are prone to flights of fancy. I understood the true consequences of manumission and would never do that to my slaves. Cast them out into the world without shelter or means? I simply wasn't that cruel.
“You know how I feel. What do you want me to say? Of course they're restless.” She was already gearing up to retread old ground.
“I do know how you feel. But I still have to address it. And I'd like your support.” There wasn't any heat in my voice. We weren't playing the game now, and Heather sighed and then leaned towards me.
“What would you like me to do?”
“Not much. Find reasons to encourage the house. Overlook small slips, reward their behavior.” Some owners would lay a heavy hand on their slaves at a time like this, when the situation called for just the opposite. Contentment would breed cooperation. Agitation only bred resentment.
“Very well husband. I will acquiesce to your demands.” The lilting pitch of mock torment in her voice was sufficient to save her pride. A wise husband knew when to allow his wife her moments of rebellion.
We'd held humans as slaves for four hundred years now. When we arrived on their planet, we immediately recognized their value. Our initial inclination was towards cooperative trade. We were only slightly more advanced than they at the time, and felt that we could learn much from their unique perspective. Yet when we contacted their leaders clandestinely they immediately made offers of bondage. They were willing to offer their own people in thrall in return for the least of our technologies.
We were disgusted. We had left slavery behind millenia ago, and had no interest in repeating the mistakes of our shameful past. We decided to bypass their leaders and go directly to the people, but we were rebuffed.
The people cried out in fear. They ran slavering from our presence. They begged the very leaders willing to enslave them for deliverance. It was then that we realized the true extant of their depravity. Their leaders were not offering to make them slaves, they were offering us people who were slaves already. The people of this earth were little more than chattel. Poorly husbanded chattel.
So we accepted the gracious offers of their leaders. Only we accepted them all. From highest to low. Their leaders attempted to resist, but we overwhelmed them quickly. We may have been only slightly advanced in some areas, but we had non lethal force technology which made violent resistance futile.
It was a kindness. Most were given good labors, and the more highly skilled amongst them were made responsible for great tasks. We found little use for their former leaders, and over the generations they had established a new kind of hierarchy. They were allowed to breed, and maintain some of their own culture. It was slavery yes, but a more honest slavery than the one under which they toiled before.
Yet their curiosity and intellect bred discontent and restlessness from time to time, and keeping such rambunctious creatures could be a challenge. But having accepted our charge, we could hardly turn our back on our responsibilities now.
I would speak with their leaders tomorrow. I would encourage their individuality, stoke their egos. I would remind them of the importance of their role in our lives. They would understand and pass the message on to the others. There would be peace.
It would be a happy story after all.
She always sounded like she was arguing. It didn't matter what they were discussing, Heather was always arguing. If they were discussing politics, or religion, or their favorite pastry flavor, Heather saw it as a challenge. A battle to be won. And she usually did, either through force of logic or force of personality.
“It's a happy story, and I won't have you mucking it up with your exposition.” She was like that. You go to her, and ask her a simple favor, and she somehow turns it around and makes you the source of the problem in the first place.
It didn't seem like much. I wanted to write about our honeymoon, just a short paragraph or two to put in the Holiday letter. We'd had such a delightful time, and I wanted to make sure I did the whole thing justice, so after I finished, I asked Heather to look over what I'd written to see if I left anything out.
Of course she had to turn it into some kind of confrontation. It wasn't enough to say, “You forgot about the apple tree,” or, “what about that waitress at the diner?” No, Heather insisted that I was wrong from the get, that I was using the wrong approach by focusing on describing our vacation instead of gushing over our marital bliss.
Of course I was happy about being newlywed, and Heather knew it, that wasn't the point. The point was that it had to be a battle, which meant we had to pick sides, and since I had chosen the side of “expositor” she had chosen the side of “emoter.”
By now I was used to this little game and knew how to play, I wouldn't have married her otherwise, so I made a token defense and then granted her the victory. It was all she really wanted anyway. If I didn't defend at all, it wasn't a real battle, and she'd make sure we had one soon to make up for it. But if I defended to strenuously, she might lose, and Heather hated losing. So I'd fight the good fight, give ground grudgingly, and eventually admit defeat.
Besides, it was a happy story. We'd met in school, fallen madly in love, and being romantic idealists both, showered each other with affection. I'd buy her tokens and she'd leave me surprises. It was all very silly, and we were deeply entrenched. It was a wonderful time in our lives.
Of course, our lives weren't always wonderful, and they wouldn't always be, but with our little give and take games we had joy in the moment. Later I would rewrite the Holiday letter, she would decide it was better the first time, and I would send out the letter I'd wanted in the first place. That was part of the game too.
But for now, I put the letter aside. I had something else we needed to discuss, and the battle we'd have over this would probably overshadow the other.
“We need to talk about the help. They're restless.” She hated discussing our slaves.
It was our compassion which brought about our return to slavery.
We'd inherited them from my father when he'd retired. Dozens of human slaves he'd acquired during the war. For the most part, they were industrious and relatively easy to keep and feed, but they did have a tendency towards, restlessness.
We treated them well of course, my father had raised me to understand the importance of proper care and treatment of our property. Some people never understand the importance of preventative maintenance for their slaves, but I'd learned at a young age that having their feet and teeth checked monthly was important to getting the most out of them. Left alone, they had a tendency to overeat and let their personal hygiene go unattended. But if you controlled their diet and made sure they were cleaned regularly, they were actually quite industrious.
What made them such useful slaves was also what occasioned their restlessness. They were really quite clever little creatures. I was still sometimes surprised by their ingenuity, and I'd had human slaves for years. They had a fair degree of problem solving ability, and were unusually curious.
But occasionally those attributes led to problems. Sometimes we had to deal with sullenness, which you had to address quickly before it spread to others. Sullen workers were unproductive workers. But more importantly, there had been uprisings. Not in any of my holdings of course, I knew how to take care of my slaves, but some other holders didn't understand how to properly husband their stock. Those kinds of problems were always dealt with harshly of course, you certainly can't allow insurrection, but talk of revolt had to be dealt with far differently than revolt itself. Revolt needed to be crushed, talk of revolt needed to be smothered. A fine line to be sure.
So far, I hadn't heard of any talk of revolt amongst the slaves, but their restlessness was beginning to show. Workers pausing throughout their day and staring off into space. Dragging their feet while working. Sulking in corners. I had owned slaves since my thirteenth naming day, and I had developed a sense of their mood.
The best way to address this kind of behavior was to draw aside some of the more respected slaves. There were those amongst the humans who were looked to for guidance. Some were young, some old, it was hard to discern how they determined position, but you could tell who was deferred to, and who was expected to defer.
Heather never liked discussing the slaves. She felt that the keeping of the lands was primarily the husband's responsibility and didn't like to be bothered with it. She was also part of a small movement that felt slavery was immoral. They actually promoted manumission. Of course, Heather was young, and the young are prone to flights of fancy. I understood the true consequences of manumission and would never do that to my slaves. Cast them out into the world without shelter or means? I simply wasn't that cruel.
“You know how I feel. What do you want me to say? Of course they're restless.” She was already gearing up to retread old ground.
“I do know how you feel. But I still have to address it. And I'd like your support.” There wasn't any heat in my voice. We weren't playing the game now, and Heather sighed and then leaned towards me.
“What would you like me to do?”
“Not much. Find reasons to encourage the house. Overlook small slips, reward their behavior.” Some owners would lay a heavy hand on their slaves at a time like this, when the situation called for just the opposite. Contentment would breed cooperation. Agitation only bred resentment.
“Very well husband. I will acquiesce to your demands.” The lilting pitch of mock torment in her voice was sufficient to save her pride. A wise husband knew when to allow his wife her moments of rebellion.
We'd held humans as slaves for four hundred years now. When we arrived on their planet, we immediately recognized their value. Our initial inclination was towards cooperative trade. We were only slightly more advanced than they at the time, and felt that we could learn much from their unique perspective. Yet when we contacted their leaders clandestinely they immediately made offers of bondage. They were willing to offer their own people in thrall in return for the least of our technologies.
We were disgusted. We had left slavery behind millenia ago, and had no interest in repeating the mistakes of our shameful past. We decided to bypass their leaders and go directly to the people, but we were rebuffed.
The people cried out in fear. They ran slavering from our presence. They begged the very leaders willing to enslave them for deliverance. It was then that we realized the true extant of their depravity. Their leaders were not offering to make them slaves, they were offering us people who were slaves already. The people of this earth were little more than chattel. Poorly husbanded chattel.
So we accepted the gracious offers of their leaders. Only we accepted them all. From highest to low. Their leaders attempted to resist, but we overwhelmed them quickly. We may have been only slightly advanced in some areas, but we had non lethal force technology which made violent resistance futile.
It was a kindness. Most were given good labors, and the more highly skilled amongst them were made responsible for great tasks. We found little use for their former leaders, and over the generations they had established a new kind of hierarchy. They were allowed to breed, and maintain some of their own culture. It was slavery yes, but a more honest slavery than the one under which they toiled before.
Yet their curiosity and intellect bred discontent and restlessness from time to time, and keeping such rambunctious creatures could be a challenge. But having accepted our charge, we could hardly turn our back on our responsibilities now.
I would speak with their leaders tomorrow. I would encourage their individuality, stoke their egos. I would remind them of the importance of their role in our lives. They would understand and pass the message on to the others. There would be peace.
It would be a happy story after all.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Alone
“How was it?” he was anxious, though not concerned, and it seemed right to ask. After all, Tom had been gone for days, and now he had just walked in and dropped himself into one of the old wooden chairs. It creaked as he shifted his weight. He stared at the floor as though counting the grain in the boards.
Steve had been waiting in this small house on the edge of town since Saturday. He didn't even know the name of the place they were hiding in now. It was dark when they'd arrived. Really dark. They could have walked right by one of the large stone monoliths that seemed to dominate the landscape around here, and the only thing that might have given it away would have been the sudden lack of stars against the horizon. As they made their way into the town they'd found this small farmhouse, and after making sure it was empty, Tom had left him here to wait while he looked around the town. They still had plenty of food left, so Steve found a place where he could lie comfortably, and he waited like Tom asked.
With his leg, it was difficult for him to get around, so he made himself a nest with all the things he would need. He had the small brown bag that he kept his share of the food they'd collected in and the larger green pack that held his bedroll and extra clothes. Even that wasn't too heavy. When you carried your house on your back, you traveled light, or traveled slow. From time to time, they had wanted to move quickly, and had learned to view personal possessions with a penurious eye.
Closest to where he was sitting was the leather pouch which never left his side. Usually, it hung under his arm, but now it lie open on the table in front of the couch he was resting on. It's contents spread out near him.
A small bottle of oil he'd taken from a general store a few weeks ago.
A plastic bag carrying a few dozen cotton squares.
A toothbrush with dirty matted bristles.
A short wire brush.
A box of ammo.
A .45 pistol.
Before Tom had entered the house he had been careful to make sure that Steve heard him coming. They had worked out signals a long time ago, and now making sure each knew when the other was coming or going had become second nature. There wasn't much privacy in a relationship that required you to let someone know every time you went to the bathroom, every time you woke up in the night, every time you had to go out to smoke a cigarette, whenever they had cigarettes, but they had quit caring about privacy a long time ago.
So when Steve heard the knocking coming from the wall near the front door, he relaxed a little, but he still kept the pistol at hand. They had given up on assumptions long before they gave up on privacy.
Tom finally looked up from the floor. He seemed distracted. For a moment, he just stared at Steve. He wasn't bothered by the pistol, he carried his own weapons. Neither man went anywhere unarmed, ever. Pistols weren't their only weapons.
“What did you say?” he sounded almost, dejected. Or maybe lethargic.
“I asked how it was. Did you find out where we are?” From his mood, Steve could already tell that Tom hadn't found what he'd been looking for.
“More or less what we expected. There's a store a few miles away, we can get some food there. If we look around for a few days, we can probably find a few interesting supplies, but there aren't any people here.”
No people. Just like every other town they'd been too. It had been months since they'd seen anyone other than each other.
Tom and Steve hadn't known each other at all before the day they had met. Though they'd become companions in the days since, maybe even friends after a fashion, their relationship was forced from the beginning.
Steve had come home from work on a Saturday night, watched some tv, smoked a joint, and then fallen asleep on his couch. Nothing different than any other Saturday night. Or any other night.
It wasn't until the next afternoon that he realized something was wrong.
He woke up late that Sunday. He didn't care for sports, and he didn't care for Jesus, so Sundays didn't hold much of interest for him. By the time he bothered to turn the tv on, the sun was shining through the blinds that covered his front window and filling his living room with light. Instead of the usual garbage on Sunday morning cable, he didn't seem to have a signal.
It didn't concern him right away, other than the usual frustration of having to deal with his cable company. He tried calling their customer service, but no one answered, so he gave up after a while. They probably weren't even answering the phone on Sundays, he thought to himself. He decided to go out and get some lunch before coming back home to invest the rest of his day in marijuana and video games. That's when things started to seem strange. Even for a Sunday, there didn't seem to be any cars on the roads, and when he got to the restaurant it was closed.
Steve sat there in his car for a second, confused by how his day was unfolding. He craned his neck around and tried to see the stores around him.
All around, there were dark buildings. No cars seemed to be traveling on the roads, no people walking on the sidewalks. He turned on the radio but got nothing but static. He pressed the scan button and the display cascaded numbers as it moved through all the frequencies, but after it went through twice without stopping, he shut it off.
For hours, Steve drove through the empty city. At the gas station, the movie theater, the grocery store, there was nothing. He tried calling his friends, his family, the police, nothing. He tried to find a logical explanation, then he tried to wake up, and when fear began to take hold, he tried to pray.
Nothing.
That was when he saw Tom.
He approached the man standing alone in the middle of the intersection slowly. At first, he was excited just to find another person, but as he drove closer, he began to become apprehensive. He didn't know this other guy. What if this guy was the source of whatever was happening? What if this guy was dangerous?
What if this guy wasn't really there?
That was the fear that began to grip Steve. What if, in his desperate desire for this all to be a dream, he was beginning to, see, things? What if the man, standing still, in the middle of one of the busiest intersections in town, was just a figment of his imagination? Could he handle that? What if he was truly alone?
That was when the man turned towards him and began to wave his arms. Suddenly, relief washed over Steve in a cool wave, and he pulled up to the intersection and leapt from his vehicle.
Tom had a similar story to tell. He'd woken up in the morning to find his girlfriend gone from the home they shared. Thinking at first that she had run out to get breakfast, he had simply gone back to sleep. Hours later, still waiting for her to return, he got up and found his tv not working, no one answering the phone, and none of his friends online.
They spent the rest of the afternoon searching the city for anyone else. At the end of the day, neither of them were willing to go home alone, so they broke into the mall and spent the night in the furniture department of Macy's. For a time, they hoped that security would arrive and detain them, and joked about how they'd explain themselves.
But when they woke up the next day, each in their half sized display model beds, it was obvious that no one was coming. At that point they made a plan, or at least the beginnings of one.
They went to sporting goods and picked up some small arms, camping gear, and duffels. They went to clothing and got some warm weather outfits and hiking boots. In home improvements, they picked up some duct tape, rope, nails, and a tool set. In home and garden they picked up some flares and tarps. After that, they drove to the grocery store and stocked up on small canned goods and dried foods. They weren't planning to leave the city right away, but since they didn't know what had happened yet, they wanted to be sure that they were prepared to if it became necessary.
They spent the next week searching the city. They checked the schools, the stores, the government buildings. It became clear within days that the city was completely abandoned, but they were reluctant to give up. After all, they'd found each other within hours, surely they could find more within days. But after a week, they realized that there wasn't anywhere left to search, without going door to door, and they'd been driving around making as much noise as possible to try to bring people out. It was time to look elsewhere.
So they did. They drove from town to town. When they ran out of petrol and couldn't get a new vehicle, they hiked. In each town they picked up supplies. Along the way, they discarded the tool box, and the tarps, when they realized they were just weighing them down. There were animals, and trees, life went on. But there were no people. Anywhere.
Not in big towns. Not in small towns. Not in hospitals, or churches, or police stations. Each town they came to, they checked, and never found a soul. It had been months now. Months without anyone but each other for companionship. In the cities and villages they found, the electricity had long since failed with no one to work at the plants, so they relied on natural light and fuel lamps. They moved into empty homes, and drove abandoned vehicles. They never left each other for long, and they never went unarmed, even though there didn't seem to be any threats. This new world was frightening, and neither man wanted to die in it, or worse, be left alone to live in it.
But then they had seen this town below them in the valley as the sun went down, and decided to try to make it there in the night. It was dark, and Steve had fallen badly as they worked their way down the small rise. His leg wasn't broken, but it wasn't much better, so Tom had left him to recuperate while he reconnoitered the area. At first, being alone for the first time in months, really alone, was, unsettling. The silence was what seemed the most bizarre. But his leg really was injured, so there wasn't much he could do besides wait. Still, when Tom returned, he felt more at ease, as though a part of himself had gone missing, and then been found again.
And Tom hadn't found any people. They still didn't know any more than they'd known that day months ago when they found themselves in an empty world. Everywhere they went, there were homes people had lived in, cars people had driven, clothes people had worn. There were pictures of people on mantles, and videos of people in vcrs, and recordings of people on cd, but no people. They knew the world they remembered was real, because they were surrounded by its shadow. In some ways, maybe that made it worse. If there was no evidence of people, maybe they could have convinced themselves they were imagining their memories, but with the evidence everywhere, they weren't even allowed to give up their fruitless quest.
What had happened? Where had everyone gone? Was it local? Global? Disease? War? They didn't have the answers, or even most of the questions. They simply found themselves traveling endlessly in an empty world.
So it wasn't surprising that Tom sounded dejected, or lethargic. It was tiring, being the last men on earth. They couldn't even propagate the species like Adam and Eve. They were simply alone, waiting to die, so that mankind could finally be erased from the history books. Steve laughed at that thought.
“What?” asked Tom.
“I was just thinking about the tree. You know, if there's no one there to hear it?” Tom just looked at him. They may be companions, and maybe friends, but they didn't share a sense of humor. “Forget it. My leg's nearly healed. What do you want to do?”
Tom didn't seem overly excited at the prospect of doing anything just then, but there was really only one answer. The same thing they always returned to. Move on. Keep looking. Maybe find someone tomorrow. Leave messages in case someone comes behind us. Hope we're not alone.
They both knew what they wanted to do. They both knew what they would do. In some ways, perhaps that was the easiest. Not knowing what had happened, or where to go, or what to do, left them with only one option. Not knowing made their lives as predictable as candied corn.
There wasn't much conversation left in them. What do you miss? What did you like? What do you regret? After months of constant companionship, and no respite, they had already discussed all of that. They traveled, they scavenged, they looked for others, but slowly, inside, they lost hope.
Steve already knew. They would look and look and look. For months. For years. But they would never find survivors. Whatever happened had wiped the rest of humanity away like steam on a bathroom mirror. They didn't even know what common thread kept them here, or brought them together. Privately, Steve often wished he hadn't survived, or hadn't found Tom. Then he wouldn't have to continue this endless journey.
He thought of himself that way, as a survivor, as though the rest of humanity were dead and gone. They were gone at least, and if dead didn't enter into it, what difference? No, the two of them were alone, with each other, and Steve knew, as sure as he knew what tomorrow would bring, that eventually, when the conversation stopped completely, when hope disappeared, that they would be alone even in each other's company.
Completely alone. In an empty world. With one other person, who might not even be there.
Steve had been waiting in this small house on the edge of town since Saturday. He didn't even know the name of the place they were hiding in now. It was dark when they'd arrived. Really dark. They could have walked right by one of the large stone monoliths that seemed to dominate the landscape around here, and the only thing that might have given it away would have been the sudden lack of stars against the horizon. As they made their way into the town they'd found this small farmhouse, and after making sure it was empty, Tom had left him here to wait while he looked around the town. They still had plenty of food left, so Steve found a place where he could lie comfortably, and he waited like Tom asked.
With his leg, it was difficult for him to get around, so he made himself a nest with all the things he would need. He had the small brown bag that he kept his share of the food they'd collected in and the larger green pack that held his bedroll and extra clothes. Even that wasn't too heavy. When you carried your house on your back, you traveled light, or traveled slow. From time to time, they had wanted to move quickly, and had learned to view personal possessions with a penurious eye.
Closest to where he was sitting was the leather pouch which never left his side. Usually, it hung under his arm, but now it lie open on the table in front of the couch he was resting on. It's contents spread out near him.
A small bottle of oil he'd taken from a general store a few weeks ago.
A plastic bag carrying a few dozen cotton squares.
A toothbrush with dirty matted bristles.
A short wire brush.
A box of ammo.
A .45 pistol.
Before Tom had entered the house he had been careful to make sure that Steve heard him coming. They had worked out signals a long time ago, and now making sure each knew when the other was coming or going had become second nature. There wasn't much privacy in a relationship that required you to let someone know every time you went to the bathroom, every time you woke up in the night, every time you had to go out to smoke a cigarette, whenever they had cigarettes, but they had quit caring about privacy a long time ago.
So when Steve heard the knocking coming from the wall near the front door, he relaxed a little, but he still kept the pistol at hand. They had given up on assumptions long before they gave up on privacy.
Tom finally looked up from the floor. He seemed distracted. For a moment, he just stared at Steve. He wasn't bothered by the pistol, he carried his own weapons. Neither man went anywhere unarmed, ever. Pistols weren't their only weapons.
“What did you say?” he sounded almost, dejected. Or maybe lethargic.
“I asked how it was. Did you find out where we are?” From his mood, Steve could already tell that Tom hadn't found what he'd been looking for.
“More or less what we expected. There's a store a few miles away, we can get some food there. If we look around for a few days, we can probably find a few interesting supplies, but there aren't any people here.”
No people. Just like every other town they'd been too. It had been months since they'd seen anyone other than each other.
Tom and Steve hadn't known each other at all before the day they had met. Though they'd become companions in the days since, maybe even friends after a fashion, their relationship was forced from the beginning.
Steve had come home from work on a Saturday night, watched some tv, smoked a joint, and then fallen asleep on his couch. Nothing different than any other Saturday night. Or any other night.
It wasn't until the next afternoon that he realized something was wrong.
He woke up late that Sunday. He didn't care for sports, and he didn't care for Jesus, so Sundays didn't hold much of interest for him. By the time he bothered to turn the tv on, the sun was shining through the blinds that covered his front window and filling his living room with light. Instead of the usual garbage on Sunday morning cable, he didn't seem to have a signal.
It didn't concern him right away, other than the usual frustration of having to deal with his cable company. He tried calling their customer service, but no one answered, so he gave up after a while. They probably weren't even answering the phone on Sundays, he thought to himself. He decided to go out and get some lunch before coming back home to invest the rest of his day in marijuana and video games. That's when things started to seem strange. Even for a Sunday, there didn't seem to be any cars on the roads, and when he got to the restaurant it was closed.
Steve sat there in his car for a second, confused by how his day was unfolding. He craned his neck around and tried to see the stores around him.
All around, there were dark buildings. No cars seemed to be traveling on the roads, no people walking on the sidewalks. He turned on the radio but got nothing but static. He pressed the scan button and the display cascaded numbers as it moved through all the frequencies, but after it went through twice without stopping, he shut it off.
For hours, Steve drove through the empty city. At the gas station, the movie theater, the grocery store, there was nothing. He tried calling his friends, his family, the police, nothing. He tried to find a logical explanation, then he tried to wake up, and when fear began to take hold, he tried to pray.
Nothing.
That was when he saw Tom.
He approached the man standing alone in the middle of the intersection slowly. At first, he was excited just to find another person, but as he drove closer, he began to become apprehensive. He didn't know this other guy. What if this guy was the source of whatever was happening? What if this guy was dangerous?
What if this guy wasn't really there?
That was the fear that began to grip Steve. What if, in his desperate desire for this all to be a dream, he was beginning to, see, things? What if the man, standing still, in the middle of one of the busiest intersections in town, was just a figment of his imagination? Could he handle that? What if he was truly alone?
That was when the man turned towards him and began to wave his arms. Suddenly, relief washed over Steve in a cool wave, and he pulled up to the intersection and leapt from his vehicle.
Tom had a similar story to tell. He'd woken up in the morning to find his girlfriend gone from the home they shared. Thinking at first that she had run out to get breakfast, he had simply gone back to sleep. Hours later, still waiting for her to return, he got up and found his tv not working, no one answering the phone, and none of his friends online.
They spent the rest of the afternoon searching the city for anyone else. At the end of the day, neither of them were willing to go home alone, so they broke into the mall and spent the night in the furniture department of Macy's. For a time, they hoped that security would arrive and detain them, and joked about how they'd explain themselves.
But when they woke up the next day, each in their half sized display model beds, it was obvious that no one was coming. At that point they made a plan, or at least the beginnings of one.
They went to sporting goods and picked up some small arms, camping gear, and duffels. They went to clothing and got some warm weather outfits and hiking boots. In home improvements, they picked up some duct tape, rope, nails, and a tool set. In home and garden they picked up some flares and tarps. After that, they drove to the grocery store and stocked up on small canned goods and dried foods. They weren't planning to leave the city right away, but since they didn't know what had happened yet, they wanted to be sure that they were prepared to if it became necessary.
They spent the next week searching the city. They checked the schools, the stores, the government buildings. It became clear within days that the city was completely abandoned, but they were reluctant to give up. After all, they'd found each other within hours, surely they could find more within days. But after a week, they realized that there wasn't anywhere left to search, without going door to door, and they'd been driving around making as much noise as possible to try to bring people out. It was time to look elsewhere.
So they did. They drove from town to town. When they ran out of petrol and couldn't get a new vehicle, they hiked. In each town they picked up supplies. Along the way, they discarded the tool box, and the tarps, when they realized they were just weighing them down. There were animals, and trees, life went on. But there were no people. Anywhere.
Not in big towns. Not in small towns. Not in hospitals, or churches, or police stations. Each town they came to, they checked, and never found a soul. It had been months now. Months without anyone but each other for companionship. In the cities and villages they found, the electricity had long since failed with no one to work at the plants, so they relied on natural light and fuel lamps. They moved into empty homes, and drove abandoned vehicles. They never left each other for long, and they never went unarmed, even though there didn't seem to be any threats. This new world was frightening, and neither man wanted to die in it, or worse, be left alone to live in it.
But then they had seen this town below them in the valley as the sun went down, and decided to try to make it there in the night. It was dark, and Steve had fallen badly as they worked their way down the small rise. His leg wasn't broken, but it wasn't much better, so Tom had left him to recuperate while he reconnoitered the area. At first, being alone for the first time in months, really alone, was, unsettling. The silence was what seemed the most bizarre. But his leg really was injured, so there wasn't much he could do besides wait. Still, when Tom returned, he felt more at ease, as though a part of himself had gone missing, and then been found again.
And Tom hadn't found any people. They still didn't know any more than they'd known that day months ago when they found themselves in an empty world. Everywhere they went, there were homes people had lived in, cars people had driven, clothes people had worn. There were pictures of people on mantles, and videos of people in vcrs, and recordings of people on cd, but no people. They knew the world they remembered was real, because they were surrounded by its shadow. In some ways, maybe that made it worse. If there was no evidence of people, maybe they could have convinced themselves they were imagining their memories, but with the evidence everywhere, they weren't even allowed to give up their fruitless quest.
What had happened? Where had everyone gone? Was it local? Global? Disease? War? They didn't have the answers, or even most of the questions. They simply found themselves traveling endlessly in an empty world.
So it wasn't surprising that Tom sounded dejected, or lethargic. It was tiring, being the last men on earth. They couldn't even propagate the species like Adam and Eve. They were simply alone, waiting to die, so that mankind could finally be erased from the history books. Steve laughed at that thought.
“What?” asked Tom.
“I was just thinking about the tree. You know, if there's no one there to hear it?” Tom just looked at him. They may be companions, and maybe friends, but they didn't share a sense of humor. “Forget it. My leg's nearly healed. What do you want to do?”
Tom didn't seem overly excited at the prospect of doing anything just then, but there was really only one answer. The same thing they always returned to. Move on. Keep looking. Maybe find someone tomorrow. Leave messages in case someone comes behind us. Hope we're not alone.
They both knew what they wanted to do. They both knew what they would do. In some ways, perhaps that was the easiest. Not knowing what had happened, or where to go, or what to do, left them with only one option. Not knowing made their lives as predictable as candied corn.
There wasn't much conversation left in them. What do you miss? What did you like? What do you regret? After months of constant companionship, and no respite, they had already discussed all of that. They traveled, they scavenged, they looked for others, but slowly, inside, they lost hope.
Steve already knew. They would look and look and look. For months. For years. But they would never find survivors. Whatever happened had wiped the rest of humanity away like steam on a bathroom mirror. They didn't even know what common thread kept them here, or brought them together. Privately, Steve often wished he hadn't survived, or hadn't found Tom. Then he wouldn't have to continue this endless journey.
He thought of himself that way, as a survivor, as though the rest of humanity were dead and gone. They were gone at least, and if dead didn't enter into it, what difference? No, the two of them were alone, with each other, and Steve knew, as sure as he knew what tomorrow would bring, that eventually, when the conversation stopped completely, when hope disappeared, that they would be alone even in each other's company.
Completely alone. In an empty world. With one other person, who might not even be there.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Driving
The day had seemed just like any other. He'd gone to work, wished he was anywhere else, and left as soon as he could. He wasn't in any hurry to get anywhere specific, he just hated his job. It was understandable, after all, his job was boring. So he left as soon as he could and he started driving.
He wasn't in any hurry to get home. He wasn't in any hurry to get screamed at. She would probably be drunk by now, and walking in to that was too difficult straight from work, so he just drove. Things had gotten worse lately, and he was spending more and more time just driving.
He never went anywhere important, he didn't even usually go to the same places. He just wanted to be behind the wheel. Driving around, with the windows down, it was the only time he really felt like he was at peace. He could just listen to the sounds of the city, and feel the cool evening breeze in his hair, and sometimes he'd end up home before dark, and sometimes he wouldn't. It didn't really matter, she wouldn't notice either way.
So he drove. After a while, he turned left. A little later, right. It didn't matter. He wasn't going anywhere, he was already where he wanted to be. Eventually he'd give up and go home, maybe she'd still be awake and maybe not, but for now, he just wanted to drive.
So it wasn't really all that unusual for him to end up in a part of town he hadn't been to before. It wasn't a big city, but it wasn't a small one anymore either, and sometimes he ended up in neighborhoods he didn't recognize. He just kept driving.
The people in their yards here didn't look any different from the people in the parts of the city he was familiar with. On the porch of one house he saw an old fat woman sitting on a porch swing, slowly rocking back and forth. In the yard of a small blue house he saw two small boys chasing each other in circles. For a minute, he smiled, but then he was past them and the feeling faded.
It was like that a lot lately. He'd think of something, and after a moment or two, the feeling would fade away. He was aware of it of course, it wasn't anything to be concerned about, it was just the way things were. Ever since the plague had come, lots of people had that kind of problem, it wasn't anything unusual. It didn't interfere with his work, and it didn't make his home life any easier, so he figured it was a push.
He turned his truck onto a road he was familiar with, one he'd driven down many times before, and decided that maybe it was time to head home. Maybe he should pick up some dinner on the way, she certainly wouldn't be in any condition to have anything ready when he got there.
He didn't blame her. It was the same everywhere. Things were different now. People had lost themselves. Even when he got upset about it, the feeling faded fast enough. It was just the way she was now. He could stop her from getting the alcohol, but who was he to begrudge her that? She wasn't hurting herself, and not everyone could handle things like he was. Not everyone had the same things to handle. If it made life a little easier on her, well, what sacrifice it if it made life a little harder on him?
Still, it was late by the time he drove home, and the food he brought with him was cold when he put it in the fridge. It wouldn't have mattered, she was already asleep, so it would have been cold before she ate any of it anyway. Luckily, it seemed like she had spent most of the day in bed, so he didn't have to carry her this time. He tucked her in, and decided to go back downstairs.
He made his rounds, just like every night, checking the doors and windows, and locking up the animals. Finally, he stood at the foot of the stairs, with the bedroom above him, and the front door to the house behind, with his hand on the light switch. He didn't stare at anything in particular, he just stood there, and after a few moments he nodded his head, and turned off the light.
As he pulled the truck back out of the driveway he rolled down the windows. It was important that he feel the wind in his hair. The feeling might fade, but as long as he kept the wind blowing through, he was able to hold on to that sensation. So he rolled down the windows and he rolled down the street, and the wind blew in his hair.
He thought about turning the radio on, but he just wanted to listen to the wind and the silence, so he kept it off and rolled on. He passed small houses, and restaurants, dark storefronts, and empty parks, and he kept driving.
It wasn't long before he reached the edge of the city. He hadn't left the city in four years, but tonight seemed like a special kind of night, and he didn't even slow down as he drove past the sign. He didn't have to look up to know what it said. Everyone knew what the signs said.
Unincorporated Area Ahead. No Patrols. Do Not Enter Without Sufficient Petrol And Supplies.
He didn't have either, but he didn't plan to be out long, so he wasn't concerned. Besides, out there, he could get up some real speed. Then he'd really feel the wind in his hair.
The highway had been something special once. The kind of thing that kept a country alive, like veins filled with travelers. Four years, a little more, and the highway had fallen a long way.
The billboards were discolored and faded, he couldn't even tell if they advertised restaurants or rest stops. In places where there had once been rails on the sides of the road, there was wild growth, like nature had slowly begun to invade what man had left behind. The roads themselves were still straight and level, nature wasn't strong enough to undo that yet, so he hit the gas.
He wasn't planning to be out long, but he wasn't in any hurry to get back, and since so few people used the highways between cities anymore, there wasn't any traffic to slow him down. He went faster and faster, and the wind whipped through the cab of his truck. The little calendar he'd stuck to the glove box began to dance. The plastic bag in the back seat holding the clothes he still hadn't dropped off at the dry cleaners crackled and snapped in the wind.
He drove faster.
The food wrappers he'd left in the floor of the car got picked up by the breeze and blew around for a minute before getting sucked out the window.
He drove faster.
His hair whipped around and tears streamed from his eyes. It was almost too cold now, with the crisp night air blowing through the windows, but the feeling didn't abate, and so he drove faster.
That's when he remembered.
He had just gotten home from work. He was so proud of what he did for a living, every day, he'd go in and find ways to help people. It was the kind of work a man could be proud of. He'd just gotten home, and he walked in and found his wife lying on the floor in the living room. He wasn't frightened, not right away, because he was sure that nothing bad would happen to them. They were happy together, and he was proud. Not the kind of pride that brings men down. The kind of pride that lifts them up.
So he wasn't frightened, because he didn't have any reason to be. But then he called out to her, and she didn't answer. He shook her, but she didn't wake. That was when he first felt fear. He remembered then. The feeling. He tried to call an ambulance, but the phone was busy, so he put her in the car himself.
On the way to the hospital, he knew something was wrong. There were people everywhere. Car accidents, and traffic jams. People on foot, with tears in the eyes. Something was wrong. He tried to call their parents, but they didn't answer. He tried to turn on the radio but all he could find was music, no news. Something was wrong.
They did eventually figure out what it was. They found a cause. They found a cure. But not fast enough for his wife, his parents, or her father. So in the end, he'd moved in with his mother in law, and he quit feeling, because feelings hurt, and she'd started drinking. Helping people didn't seem right anymore, so he got a boring job to pay the bills, and his days were reduced to working, tucking her into bed at night, and those brief periods of time in between when he was driving.
People had been too frightened to leave their places of comfort for a long time after that, and by the time they did, people didn't travel from city to city much anymore. Things were different now, the highways were the smallest part of it. People had lost themselves. Even those who survived the plague didn't all survive the years that followed. Life was back to normal, but people weren't, and so while children played, adults sat, and slowly rocked back and forth.
Eventually he did make it back into the city. He didn't run out of petrol, and he didn't need supplies. He just headed home, and pulled his truck back into the driveway.
After he turned off the engine, he sat their for a minute, thinking about his wife. She had been so beautiful. He had been so proud. Perhaps it was the wrong kind of pride after all. For a moment, his lip curled into a grimace. New tears began to well up in his eyes.
But after a moment, just a moment, the feeling faded, and he headed inside for the night.
He wasn't in any hurry to get home. He wasn't in any hurry to get screamed at. She would probably be drunk by now, and walking in to that was too difficult straight from work, so he just drove. Things had gotten worse lately, and he was spending more and more time just driving.
He never went anywhere important, he didn't even usually go to the same places. He just wanted to be behind the wheel. Driving around, with the windows down, it was the only time he really felt like he was at peace. He could just listen to the sounds of the city, and feel the cool evening breeze in his hair, and sometimes he'd end up home before dark, and sometimes he wouldn't. It didn't really matter, she wouldn't notice either way.
So he drove. After a while, he turned left. A little later, right. It didn't matter. He wasn't going anywhere, he was already where he wanted to be. Eventually he'd give up and go home, maybe she'd still be awake and maybe not, but for now, he just wanted to drive.
So it wasn't really all that unusual for him to end up in a part of town he hadn't been to before. It wasn't a big city, but it wasn't a small one anymore either, and sometimes he ended up in neighborhoods he didn't recognize. He just kept driving.
The people in their yards here didn't look any different from the people in the parts of the city he was familiar with. On the porch of one house he saw an old fat woman sitting on a porch swing, slowly rocking back and forth. In the yard of a small blue house he saw two small boys chasing each other in circles. For a minute, he smiled, but then he was past them and the feeling faded.
It was like that a lot lately. He'd think of something, and after a moment or two, the feeling would fade away. He was aware of it of course, it wasn't anything to be concerned about, it was just the way things were. Ever since the plague had come, lots of people had that kind of problem, it wasn't anything unusual. It didn't interfere with his work, and it didn't make his home life any easier, so he figured it was a push.
He turned his truck onto a road he was familiar with, one he'd driven down many times before, and decided that maybe it was time to head home. Maybe he should pick up some dinner on the way, she certainly wouldn't be in any condition to have anything ready when he got there.
He didn't blame her. It was the same everywhere. Things were different now. People had lost themselves. Even when he got upset about it, the feeling faded fast enough. It was just the way she was now. He could stop her from getting the alcohol, but who was he to begrudge her that? She wasn't hurting herself, and not everyone could handle things like he was. Not everyone had the same things to handle. If it made life a little easier on her, well, what sacrifice it if it made life a little harder on him?
Still, it was late by the time he drove home, and the food he brought with him was cold when he put it in the fridge. It wouldn't have mattered, she was already asleep, so it would have been cold before she ate any of it anyway. Luckily, it seemed like she had spent most of the day in bed, so he didn't have to carry her this time. He tucked her in, and decided to go back downstairs.
He made his rounds, just like every night, checking the doors and windows, and locking up the animals. Finally, he stood at the foot of the stairs, with the bedroom above him, and the front door to the house behind, with his hand on the light switch. He didn't stare at anything in particular, he just stood there, and after a few moments he nodded his head, and turned off the light.
As he pulled the truck back out of the driveway he rolled down the windows. It was important that he feel the wind in his hair. The feeling might fade, but as long as he kept the wind blowing through, he was able to hold on to that sensation. So he rolled down the windows and he rolled down the street, and the wind blew in his hair.
He thought about turning the radio on, but he just wanted to listen to the wind and the silence, so he kept it off and rolled on. He passed small houses, and restaurants, dark storefronts, and empty parks, and he kept driving.
It wasn't long before he reached the edge of the city. He hadn't left the city in four years, but tonight seemed like a special kind of night, and he didn't even slow down as he drove past the sign. He didn't have to look up to know what it said. Everyone knew what the signs said.
Unincorporated Area Ahead. No Patrols. Do Not Enter Without Sufficient Petrol And Supplies.
He didn't have either, but he didn't plan to be out long, so he wasn't concerned. Besides, out there, he could get up some real speed. Then he'd really feel the wind in his hair.
The highway had been something special once. The kind of thing that kept a country alive, like veins filled with travelers. Four years, a little more, and the highway had fallen a long way.
The billboards were discolored and faded, he couldn't even tell if they advertised restaurants or rest stops. In places where there had once been rails on the sides of the road, there was wild growth, like nature had slowly begun to invade what man had left behind. The roads themselves were still straight and level, nature wasn't strong enough to undo that yet, so he hit the gas.
He wasn't planning to be out long, but he wasn't in any hurry to get back, and since so few people used the highways between cities anymore, there wasn't any traffic to slow him down. He went faster and faster, and the wind whipped through the cab of his truck. The little calendar he'd stuck to the glove box began to dance. The plastic bag in the back seat holding the clothes he still hadn't dropped off at the dry cleaners crackled and snapped in the wind.
He drove faster.
The food wrappers he'd left in the floor of the car got picked up by the breeze and blew around for a minute before getting sucked out the window.
He drove faster.
His hair whipped around and tears streamed from his eyes. It was almost too cold now, with the crisp night air blowing through the windows, but the feeling didn't abate, and so he drove faster.
That's when he remembered.
He had just gotten home from work. He was so proud of what he did for a living, every day, he'd go in and find ways to help people. It was the kind of work a man could be proud of. He'd just gotten home, and he walked in and found his wife lying on the floor in the living room. He wasn't frightened, not right away, because he was sure that nothing bad would happen to them. They were happy together, and he was proud. Not the kind of pride that brings men down. The kind of pride that lifts them up.
So he wasn't frightened, because he didn't have any reason to be. But then he called out to her, and she didn't answer. He shook her, but she didn't wake. That was when he first felt fear. He remembered then. The feeling. He tried to call an ambulance, but the phone was busy, so he put her in the car himself.
On the way to the hospital, he knew something was wrong. There were people everywhere. Car accidents, and traffic jams. People on foot, with tears in the eyes. Something was wrong. He tried to call their parents, but they didn't answer. He tried to turn on the radio but all he could find was music, no news. Something was wrong.
They did eventually figure out what it was. They found a cause. They found a cure. But not fast enough for his wife, his parents, or her father. So in the end, he'd moved in with his mother in law, and he quit feeling, because feelings hurt, and she'd started drinking. Helping people didn't seem right anymore, so he got a boring job to pay the bills, and his days were reduced to working, tucking her into bed at night, and those brief periods of time in between when he was driving.
People had been too frightened to leave their places of comfort for a long time after that, and by the time they did, people didn't travel from city to city much anymore. Things were different now, the highways were the smallest part of it. People had lost themselves. Even those who survived the plague didn't all survive the years that followed. Life was back to normal, but people weren't, and so while children played, adults sat, and slowly rocked back and forth.
Eventually he did make it back into the city. He didn't run out of petrol, and he didn't need supplies. He just headed home, and pulled his truck back into the driveway.
After he turned off the engine, he sat their for a minute, thinking about his wife. She had been so beautiful. He had been so proud. Perhaps it was the wrong kind of pride after all. For a moment, his lip curled into a grimace. New tears began to well up in his eyes.
But after a moment, just a moment, the feeling faded, and he headed inside for the night.
Monday, January 19, 2009
What Is Real
I was sitting there, staring at the screen in the dark. Candice had gotten tired of waiting and had simply turned off the lights and gone up to bed. I had mumbled something about being right behind her at the time, but that was hours ago. It had been some time since I'd heard the familiar creek in the floor between us that told me she was still awake and tossing in the bed.
I didn't know why, but I was drawn to this image. There, on the screen in front of me, was what seemed to be a simple picture of an office building. An ad banner running down the side of the page promising that all the top companies were reading their magazine, and if I did too, my future was secure. I'm still not even sure what drew me to this particular ad. Out of all the flashy, dancing, singing, scantily clad ads which scream at me from every page to buy or try or wear or sell their product, this one seemed to grip me.
I began to wonder where this building was. What could possibly be going on there. What were the people who worked there doing now, in the middle of the night. Did they even know they were being photographed? Did they really read Business Investors Report, or was it just some stock image placed under some bold text to get my attention and lend the ad some air of credibility? The article I'd been reading about Elizaphan Ntakirutimana no longer interested me as I sat and stared and wondered.
Then I saw something. I wasn't even sure what it was exactly. Something about the ad seemed, different. Perhaps this was why it grabbed my focus originally. I couldn't even tell you now what I saw, but there was something there. Almost as if the image skipped, just briefly. Or like two images were trying to display themselves at once like when my lousy local digital cable would act up. For just a second I thought I could understand what I saw, but just as quickly it was fading from my mind, and the more I struggled to focus on it, the more my conscious mind wandered away. Soon it seemed like another distracting banner ad, and as I glanced at the clock I realized how long I'd left Candice upstairs alone. I shut off the computer and went up to bed.
My dreams that night were visceral. I don't normally have nightmares, but more and more lately I've been waking in the night, terrified of what I'd seen in my dreams. Not just me either, my wife was experiencing the same thing. I've had violent dreams for some time. I think it's too much spicy food. But these dreams were different. The images weren't violent. They were, wrong. As though I was experiencing something that almost made sense, but in some important, unnatural way was disturbing. Like seeing that little girls head spin around. It wasn't the zombies and the monsters that were waking me in the night to huddle close to my wife. It was something else. Something that seemed like it could invade my waking world too if I let some part of me stick out too far from the covers. More and more lately.
I got up the next day feeling like shit. I knew I hadn't slept well, but I also knew I needed to exercise before work. Thirty minutes on the bike, then forty-five minutes of cardio followed by the weight routine. I used to be an athlete. Now I was fat. Not even chubby, or out of shape, or soft. I knew what needed to be done. So for a while I'd been getting up every morning and working out. But I just didn't feel right.
Those dreams. They were so vivid. The part where I ripped off my attackers face and stabbed him in the brain until I vomited. That image stayed with me. In the daylight, it was silly. I know enough about anatomy to know your brain isn't free floating beneath the skin, but still, I felt sick just thinking about it. And the way he taunted me. And being stabbed and cut over and over again.
Candice wasn't feeling well either. She also complained about bad dreams, but didn't want to talk about it. I tried turning on some tv while I worked out, but after she left, everything seemed disquieting. The house seemed too empty. The light too artificial. Even with the highlights from last nights AFC match up on the television I couldn't shake this feeling. Like the world was somehow less right today. I don't suppose football highlights on Friday from a Thursday night game helped much.
I showered, took care of the dog, and went to work. It was going to be a long day, but I hoped for a busy one. By the time I got to work the voice on the am radio had erased most of the lingering feelings from that morning, leaving only a subtle aftertaste in the back of my mind. I drove into the parking lot and parked in my usual space. As I grabbed my things and headed inside, everything seemed normal again. The smell, the muffled sunlight coming in through the tinted windows of the lobby, the sounds of people answering phones and making appointments. It seemed like another normal day.
Sometime after lunch I was sitting at my desk going over some reports that Katie had emailed me. She wanted me to fact check some of the information they were basing their fourth quarter projections on so I clicked over to my web interface and started taking notes. It seemed like things were mostly in order so I didn't expect to take very long working on it. After this, the rest of the day was pretty much empty. Maybe I'd check out early and see if I could meet Candice for dinner. We needed some time out. I thought a nice meal and a movie might be just the thing to take our minds off the stress we'd been under.
That's when I saw it again. Right out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the flicker. This time it was an ad encouraging me to register to vote. With the elections coming up, both parties had their rock the vote campaigns in full swing, and this was just another mindless pop up ad promising that I could change the world with my voice. But just for a second it wasn't the senator's face on the image. It was someone else.
It was gone too quickly for me to be sure, and at first I thought I was just seeing things. It had been a hard week. The jeep had broken down and we'd had to move some money around to afford to get it fixed. Maybe it was just stress making my mind act up late at night and at the end of a busy work day. If I had anything else to do that afternoon, maybe I would've ignored the whole thing. Maybe one more deadline would have driven the idea from my mind completely, but instead I flipped over to a search engine and typed in, “banner ads images flicker.”
You can imagine the kind of worthless returns that got me. Page after page of garbage. Nothing interesting, just more offers to buy advertising space on banner ads, or list my product with linking companies. I was about to give up when I saw one foreign language result.
It was on the twelfth page of search results and I couldn't understand a word of it. I though it was in Portuguese. I clicked on the little link next to it that said, “translate into english.” What popped up was some kind of web forum.
The forum seemed to be a simple cork board with no formatting scripts at all. Even translated into english it was hard to follow because the translation was broken and inaccurate and the lack of formatting meant some posts ran way off the page while others seemed like the struts were off and the lines of text would overlap. I couldn't find any information about where it was hosted and for the most part, it seemed to be a discussion of how to make small wooden puzzle boxes. There was one post towards the bottom though which caught my attention.
What seemed to me to be a more well known poster on the site had included a link to another site in his reply. As far as I could tell, someone had asked him about buying some special tools, and he was directing that person to a site in South Korea. There were several responses after that, but towards the bottom of the page I saw this one.
“The site I saw it what ad? Flicker on did and off. Something there was not.You see of it? Anyone else, you saw what we see?”
I didn't know if any of this had to do with what I thought I'd seen, but I followed the link to the South Korean site. This time I was completely unable to comprehend what was on the site, and other than some pictures of wood cutting tools and drills, I was lost. I didn't see any ads that acted strangely though, so I closed the site and flipped over to a tech support forum I'd used recently when my computer had been acting up. I quickly fired off a simple post about what I'd seen, “Anyone notice weird banner ads? Keep seeing ghost images on my screen,” and then gave up. I figured I'd check back later tonight and see if anyone had any ideas.
In the meantime, I finished off the report for Katie and powered down my office. I decided dinner and a movie was just what the doctor ordered and dropped off the report with my notes in Katie's office on the way out.
That night, we had a lovely Italian dinner and watched a ridiculous movie about two people who meet one night in a cafe and then part ways without exchanging information, only to search for each other five years later when both their marriages fall apart. Only in Hollywood could such a story find fertile ground. In case you're curious, they find each other in the end only to realize they've been almost running into each other for years.
When we got home, we were happy and at peace. We didn't even turn on the tv or computer as we went up to bed. By the time we fell asleep, we were both too exhausted to dream at all.
The next day she had to work, so I got up, worked out, and went downstairs. I grabbed a cup of coffee and turned on the news and the computer. Corporate malfeasance, political corruption, war overseas, nothing interesting. I surfed for a while on the internet, checking sports scores and reading about Lew Rockwell. I decided to buckle down and return some emails so I pulled up my account. After deleting the junk offering me free sex videos and twenty million in foreign lottery winnings I had an email from the tech support forum. It was informing me that someone had replied to my post. I clicked on the link and read the following message.
“How are you sleeping?” -anon.
How was I sleeping? Pretty well I thought, as I reflected on last nights activities and the restful feeling I woke to this morning. Thanks for nothing anon. Stupid anonymous posters. The internet is the greatest thing to happen to civilized and uncivilized man alike. We can create, share, and educate, and they can snipe, grief, and generally annoy from the comfort and relative anonymity of their couch. Delightful.
But hardly the response I'd hoped for. I didn't even reply. The following message asked me to run a quick HijackThis scan and install some anti-malware to remove any files which might be corrupting my video drivers. This seemed more useful, so I quickly followed the posters advice, posted my logfiles in a reply, and went back to my email.
A short time later, I received another email informing me that there were more posts on the web forum, so I clicked over again, only to read this,
“Do you have nightmares? Could you post a logfile of your dreams?” -anon.
My first reaction was to use the ignore feature on the forum to block the poster, but as I was about to click on the ignore tab, I reflected on my dreams recently.
My wife leaves me stranded in a complex twisted system of highways and overpasses to make my way home on foot alone.
At a party a man confronts me and tries to lure me away from my family who are trapped in broken vehicle.
A knife weilding attacker taunts and assaults me in a running battle through an empty city at night.
A little girl with no face comes into my home during the night and stands at the foot of the bed and watches my wife and I sleep.
My dog becomes rabid and I spend hours trapped in my room trying to barricade the door to keep her out.
The dead move among us slowly turning more and more people, and though they are clearly around all the time, no one seems to notice.
Instead of ignore, I clicked reply.
“We all have nightmares. What's your point?”
A few minutes later I reloaded the page and saw that there was already a reply to my post.
“When you see your nightmares in your waking world, will you question your sanity, or the world's?” -anon
At this point, I didn't feel like playing anymore, so I closed the site and decided to go out for lunch.
I sat there, alone, in the corner of the little Japanese restaurant listening to the harp player play. It was beautiful. Peaceful. I wrapped my hands around the small stone cup and felt the warmth from my tea. This was how I wanted to spend every moment of every day. Usually, this brought me peace I would lament until I was able to return. This time, it seemed only to distract me from what I'd read.
“When you see your nightmares in your waking world, will you question your sanity, or the world's?”
I didn't want to confront that. I returned home, without having tasted my lunch.
I walked into my home and shut the door. As I turned towards the wine cabinet to put my keys and my wallet in the drawer I saw it again, only this time it wasn't on a computer screen. Just out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flicker. Just a flicker. The kind of thing you think you see sometimes, but convince yourself isn't real. Any other day I would have ignored it. Just a reflection in the glass over the fireplace I thought. Surely just that.
Any other day I would have believed it. But that day, something else was on my mind. I wasn't ready to ignore anything strange that day. So I sat down in the living room and started looking for it.
I sat and stared around the room, waiting for anything around me to flicker, sure that something would. I sat there for an hour, staring as hard as I could at everything around me. I saw nothing. Finally, exhausted and frustrated, I leaned back into the couch.
That's when I saw it again. It was there, on the edge of my vision, like a shadow in the hall. This time I relaxed and let my eyes wander. I didn't stare at anything, I just let my eyes drift out of focus.
It was everywhere. I could see the shadows all around me. At first it was terrifying. What were these things? For a moment I panicked and tried to shrink in on myself as much as I could, afraid to let any of those shadows reach me.
But they didn't try. They just flickered there, just beyond what I could see clearly. I couldn't identify anything specific, they just seemed to be gone whenver I looked for them and there whenever I stopped. I turned on my computer and logged back on to the web forum.
My post was still there. I hit reply again.
“What can I see when I let my eyes wander? What are the shadows at the edge of my sight?”
I reloaded the page immediately but there were no additional posts. I tried waiting for a few minutes, but anxiety pushed me to post again.
“Anon, are you there?” I reloaded the page again.
This time there was a reply.
“Have you begun to question yet?” anon had posted again.
“What's happening? Who are you?”
“Do you want to know what you're seeing.”
Now that was a question. I did. I thought I did. Then again, what I'd experienced so far was terrifying. What more could I learn. How much more terrifying could it become?
“What am I seeing?” I needed to know.
“Imagine a thousand points of light. A million. More than you could ever count. Imagine that those points of light make up every image you see. Imagine if someone else could manipulate those points of light, to manipulate what you see. Or what you think you see.”
“Do you mean I'm seeing some kind of illusion? Some kind of hologram?” It wasn't making any sense.
“No. What you see is real. If what you see changes, what is real changes.”
“Then what are the shadows? What is the flicker I keep seeing? What are the nightmares?”
“The shadows are the rough edges of the image they've put in front of your eyes. The flicker is your mind refusing to believe a lie. The nightmares are real.” And with that I felt something...pull.
The room seemed to twist around me, and suddenly I was somewhere else. I was strapped into a chair, with a wall of televisions directly in front of me. My eyes were watering and I tried to blink them, but something was holding them open. I tried to reach up to feel them, but my arms were strapped to the chair. I tried to scream, but my mouth was gagged. On the televisions in front of me I saw my days playing out.
On one I was eating at a chinese restaurant.
On another I was reading a book before bed.
On another I was working on the reports Katie had emailed to my office.
Day after day was played before me on the screen. On screen after screen.
“So you've awakened. We wondered how long it would take this time. The program seems to have lasted a little longer. What was it this time? The flickering?” Two men had entered the room from behind me, they began to undo my restraints while one of them questioned me about the experience.
I began to remember.
“Yes, it was the flickering again.” I had volunteered for this. “But that just got me curious. It was the nightmares that fed my fear. I would have overlooked the flickering and the shadows except for the nightmares.” To save my family.
“Yes, well, there isn't much we can do about that yet. We've tried filling your days with pleasant images to soften the nightmares, but they seem to break through over time.”
“There was someone in there, someone who made me remember. Who pulled me out of the program. Who was it?” My family had been attacked, it was all coming back now.
“It was you again. Every time you start to realize the program is there, you search for an answer. Once it was a priest. Another time it was a radio talk show host. This time a computer user. Each time they explain the program to you and you wake up. Are you ready to try again?”
I thought about my family.
Our world was not a safe place. I knew where I was now. Inside a hardened facility, safe from the things we'd created outside. We hadn't meant to, but somewhere along the way we'd gotten greedy, and now our whole world was paying a price.
It had begun as an attempt to make dreams come true, literally. We had developed a program which could project your dreams onto a monitor. It was used for therapy at first. As holographic technology advanced, we developed a way to interact with your dreams. A kind of lucid dreaming you could live in. It was supposed to be a new horizon.
But all dreams aren't pleasant ones. By the time we realized what we'd done, there were nightmares among us. It wasn't as easy as just turning off the machines. The program was supposed to be self sustaining. It was supposed to live on. And so it did.
They were out there. The girl with no face. The family trapped inside the abandoned car. The knife wielding attacker. And worse. Things no one should dream. We'd learned the hard way to dream about happy things, but no one could stop the nightmares outside, so we came up with a new plan.
We'd brought our dreams into our world, what if we could go live in their's? What if we could escape this place where we weren't safe anymore, and go to one where we were? The program was supposed to work, but somehow, our brains kept refusing it. So I volunteered. For my family's sake. They weren't safe here. So time and time again, they sent me into that place. Where I had a wife and a dog, and I tried to make the program work. It should work.
But each time I had learned the truth.
“What you see is real.”
It should work.
“The shadows are the rough edges of the image they've put in front of your eyes.”
“Yes, I'm ready. Send me back.”
“The flicker is your mind refusing to believe a lie.”
It should work.
“The nightmares are real.”
But it doesn't.
I didn't know why, but I was drawn to this image. There, on the screen in front of me, was what seemed to be a simple picture of an office building. An ad banner running down the side of the page promising that all the top companies were reading their magazine, and if I did too, my future was secure. I'm still not even sure what drew me to this particular ad. Out of all the flashy, dancing, singing, scantily clad ads which scream at me from every page to buy or try or wear or sell their product, this one seemed to grip me.
I began to wonder where this building was. What could possibly be going on there. What were the people who worked there doing now, in the middle of the night. Did they even know they were being photographed? Did they really read Business Investors Report, or was it just some stock image placed under some bold text to get my attention and lend the ad some air of credibility? The article I'd been reading about Elizaphan Ntakirutimana no longer interested me as I sat and stared and wondered.
Then I saw something. I wasn't even sure what it was exactly. Something about the ad seemed, different. Perhaps this was why it grabbed my focus originally. I couldn't even tell you now what I saw, but there was something there. Almost as if the image skipped, just briefly. Or like two images were trying to display themselves at once like when my lousy local digital cable would act up. For just a second I thought I could understand what I saw, but just as quickly it was fading from my mind, and the more I struggled to focus on it, the more my conscious mind wandered away. Soon it seemed like another distracting banner ad, and as I glanced at the clock I realized how long I'd left Candice upstairs alone. I shut off the computer and went up to bed.
My dreams that night were visceral. I don't normally have nightmares, but more and more lately I've been waking in the night, terrified of what I'd seen in my dreams. Not just me either, my wife was experiencing the same thing. I've had violent dreams for some time. I think it's too much spicy food. But these dreams were different. The images weren't violent. They were, wrong. As though I was experiencing something that almost made sense, but in some important, unnatural way was disturbing. Like seeing that little girls head spin around. It wasn't the zombies and the monsters that were waking me in the night to huddle close to my wife. It was something else. Something that seemed like it could invade my waking world too if I let some part of me stick out too far from the covers. More and more lately.
I got up the next day feeling like shit. I knew I hadn't slept well, but I also knew I needed to exercise before work. Thirty minutes on the bike, then forty-five minutes of cardio followed by the weight routine. I used to be an athlete. Now I was fat. Not even chubby, or out of shape, or soft. I knew what needed to be done. So for a while I'd been getting up every morning and working out. But I just didn't feel right.
Those dreams. They were so vivid. The part where I ripped off my attackers face and stabbed him in the brain until I vomited. That image stayed with me. In the daylight, it was silly. I know enough about anatomy to know your brain isn't free floating beneath the skin, but still, I felt sick just thinking about it. And the way he taunted me. And being stabbed and cut over and over again.
Candice wasn't feeling well either. She also complained about bad dreams, but didn't want to talk about it. I tried turning on some tv while I worked out, but after she left, everything seemed disquieting. The house seemed too empty. The light too artificial. Even with the highlights from last nights AFC match up on the television I couldn't shake this feeling. Like the world was somehow less right today. I don't suppose football highlights on Friday from a Thursday night game helped much.
I showered, took care of the dog, and went to work. It was going to be a long day, but I hoped for a busy one. By the time I got to work the voice on the am radio had erased most of the lingering feelings from that morning, leaving only a subtle aftertaste in the back of my mind. I drove into the parking lot and parked in my usual space. As I grabbed my things and headed inside, everything seemed normal again. The smell, the muffled sunlight coming in through the tinted windows of the lobby, the sounds of people answering phones and making appointments. It seemed like another normal day.
Sometime after lunch I was sitting at my desk going over some reports that Katie had emailed me. She wanted me to fact check some of the information they were basing their fourth quarter projections on so I clicked over to my web interface and started taking notes. It seemed like things were mostly in order so I didn't expect to take very long working on it. After this, the rest of the day was pretty much empty. Maybe I'd check out early and see if I could meet Candice for dinner. We needed some time out. I thought a nice meal and a movie might be just the thing to take our minds off the stress we'd been under.
That's when I saw it again. Right out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the flicker. This time it was an ad encouraging me to register to vote. With the elections coming up, both parties had their rock the vote campaigns in full swing, and this was just another mindless pop up ad promising that I could change the world with my voice. But just for a second it wasn't the senator's face on the image. It was someone else.
It was gone too quickly for me to be sure, and at first I thought I was just seeing things. It had been a hard week. The jeep had broken down and we'd had to move some money around to afford to get it fixed. Maybe it was just stress making my mind act up late at night and at the end of a busy work day. If I had anything else to do that afternoon, maybe I would've ignored the whole thing. Maybe one more deadline would have driven the idea from my mind completely, but instead I flipped over to a search engine and typed in, “banner ads images flicker.”
You can imagine the kind of worthless returns that got me. Page after page of garbage. Nothing interesting, just more offers to buy advertising space on banner ads, or list my product with linking companies. I was about to give up when I saw one foreign language result.
It was on the twelfth page of search results and I couldn't understand a word of it. I though it was in Portuguese. I clicked on the little link next to it that said, “translate into english.” What popped up was some kind of web forum.
The forum seemed to be a simple cork board with no formatting scripts at all. Even translated into english it was hard to follow because the translation was broken and inaccurate and the lack of formatting meant some posts ran way off the page while others seemed like the struts were off and the lines of text would overlap. I couldn't find any information about where it was hosted and for the most part, it seemed to be a discussion of how to make small wooden puzzle boxes. There was one post towards the bottom though which caught my attention.
What seemed to me to be a more well known poster on the site had included a link to another site in his reply. As far as I could tell, someone had asked him about buying some special tools, and he was directing that person to a site in South Korea. There were several responses after that, but towards the bottom of the page I saw this one.
“The site I saw it what ad? Flicker on did and off. Something there was not.You see of it? Anyone else, you saw what we see?”
I didn't know if any of this had to do with what I thought I'd seen, but I followed the link to the South Korean site. This time I was completely unable to comprehend what was on the site, and other than some pictures of wood cutting tools and drills, I was lost. I didn't see any ads that acted strangely though, so I closed the site and flipped over to a tech support forum I'd used recently when my computer had been acting up. I quickly fired off a simple post about what I'd seen, “Anyone notice weird banner ads? Keep seeing ghost images on my screen,” and then gave up. I figured I'd check back later tonight and see if anyone had any ideas.
In the meantime, I finished off the report for Katie and powered down my office. I decided dinner and a movie was just what the doctor ordered and dropped off the report with my notes in Katie's office on the way out.
That night, we had a lovely Italian dinner and watched a ridiculous movie about two people who meet one night in a cafe and then part ways without exchanging information, only to search for each other five years later when both their marriages fall apart. Only in Hollywood could such a story find fertile ground. In case you're curious, they find each other in the end only to realize they've been almost running into each other for years.
When we got home, we were happy and at peace. We didn't even turn on the tv or computer as we went up to bed. By the time we fell asleep, we were both too exhausted to dream at all.
The next day she had to work, so I got up, worked out, and went downstairs. I grabbed a cup of coffee and turned on the news and the computer. Corporate malfeasance, political corruption, war overseas, nothing interesting. I surfed for a while on the internet, checking sports scores and reading about Lew Rockwell. I decided to buckle down and return some emails so I pulled up my account. After deleting the junk offering me free sex videos and twenty million in foreign lottery winnings I had an email from the tech support forum. It was informing me that someone had replied to my post. I clicked on the link and read the following message.
“How are you sleeping?” -anon.
How was I sleeping? Pretty well I thought, as I reflected on last nights activities and the restful feeling I woke to this morning. Thanks for nothing anon. Stupid anonymous posters. The internet is the greatest thing to happen to civilized and uncivilized man alike. We can create, share, and educate, and they can snipe, grief, and generally annoy from the comfort and relative anonymity of their couch. Delightful.
But hardly the response I'd hoped for. I didn't even reply. The following message asked me to run a quick HijackThis scan and install some anti-malware to remove any files which might be corrupting my video drivers. This seemed more useful, so I quickly followed the posters advice, posted my logfiles in a reply, and went back to my email.
A short time later, I received another email informing me that there were more posts on the web forum, so I clicked over again, only to read this,
“Do you have nightmares? Could you post a logfile of your dreams?” -anon.
My first reaction was to use the ignore feature on the forum to block the poster, but as I was about to click on the ignore tab, I reflected on my dreams recently.
My wife leaves me stranded in a complex twisted system of highways and overpasses to make my way home on foot alone.
At a party a man confronts me and tries to lure me away from my family who are trapped in broken vehicle.
A knife weilding attacker taunts and assaults me in a running battle through an empty city at night.
A little girl with no face comes into my home during the night and stands at the foot of the bed and watches my wife and I sleep.
My dog becomes rabid and I spend hours trapped in my room trying to barricade the door to keep her out.
The dead move among us slowly turning more and more people, and though they are clearly around all the time, no one seems to notice.
Instead of ignore, I clicked reply.
“We all have nightmares. What's your point?”
A few minutes later I reloaded the page and saw that there was already a reply to my post.
“When you see your nightmares in your waking world, will you question your sanity, or the world's?” -anon
At this point, I didn't feel like playing anymore, so I closed the site and decided to go out for lunch.
I sat there, alone, in the corner of the little Japanese restaurant listening to the harp player play. It was beautiful. Peaceful. I wrapped my hands around the small stone cup and felt the warmth from my tea. This was how I wanted to spend every moment of every day. Usually, this brought me peace I would lament until I was able to return. This time, it seemed only to distract me from what I'd read.
“When you see your nightmares in your waking world, will you question your sanity, or the world's?”
I didn't want to confront that. I returned home, without having tasted my lunch.
I walked into my home and shut the door. As I turned towards the wine cabinet to put my keys and my wallet in the drawer I saw it again, only this time it wasn't on a computer screen. Just out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flicker. Just a flicker. The kind of thing you think you see sometimes, but convince yourself isn't real. Any other day I would have ignored it. Just a reflection in the glass over the fireplace I thought. Surely just that.
Any other day I would have believed it. But that day, something else was on my mind. I wasn't ready to ignore anything strange that day. So I sat down in the living room and started looking for it.
I sat and stared around the room, waiting for anything around me to flicker, sure that something would. I sat there for an hour, staring as hard as I could at everything around me. I saw nothing. Finally, exhausted and frustrated, I leaned back into the couch.
That's when I saw it again. It was there, on the edge of my vision, like a shadow in the hall. This time I relaxed and let my eyes wander. I didn't stare at anything, I just let my eyes drift out of focus.
It was everywhere. I could see the shadows all around me. At first it was terrifying. What were these things? For a moment I panicked and tried to shrink in on myself as much as I could, afraid to let any of those shadows reach me.
But they didn't try. They just flickered there, just beyond what I could see clearly. I couldn't identify anything specific, they just seemed to be gone whenver I looked for them and there whenever I stopped. I turned on my computer and logged back on to the web forum.
My post was still there. I hit reply again.
“What can I see when I let my eyes wander? What are the shadows at the edge of my sight?”
I reloaded the page immediately but there were no additional posts. I tried waiting for a few minutes, but anxiety pushed me to post again.
“Anon, are you there?” I reloaded the page again.
This time there was a reply.
“Have you begun to question yet?” anon had posted again.
“What's happening? Who are you?”
“Do you want to know what you're seeing.”
Now that was a question. I did. I thought I did. Then again, what I'd experienced so far was terrifying. What more could I learn. How much more terrifying could it become?
“What am I seeing?” I needed to know.
“Imagine a thousand points of light. A million. More than you could ever count. Imagine that those points of light make up every image you see. Imagine if someone else could manipulate those points of light, to manipulate what you see. Or what you think you see.”
“Do you mean I'm seeing some kind of illusion? Some kind of hologram?” It wasn't making any sense.
“No. What you see is real. If what you see changes, what is real changes.”
“Then what are the shadows? What is the flicker I keep seeing? What are the nightmares?”
“The shadows are the rough edges of the image they've put in front of your eyes. The flicker is your mind refusing to believe a lie. The nightmares are real.” And with that I felt something...pull.
The room seemed to twist around me, and suddenly I was somewhere else. I was strapped into a chair, with a wall of televisions directly in front of me. My eyes were watering and I tried to blink them, but something was holding them open. I tried to reach up to feel them, but my arms were strapped to the chair. I tried to scream, but my mouth was gagged. On the televisions in front of me I saw my days playing out.
On one I was eating at a chinese restaurant.
On another I was reading a book before bed.
On another I was working on the reports Katie had emailed to my office.
Day after day was played before me on the screen. On screen after screen.
“So you've awakened. We wondered how long it would take this time. The program seems to have lasted a little longer. What was it this time? The flickering?” Two men had entered the room from behind me, they began to undo my restraints while one of them questioned me about the experience.
I began to remember.
“Yes, it was the flickering again.” I had volunteered for this. “But that just got me curious. It was the nightmares that fed my fear. I would have overlooked the flickering and the shadows except for the nightmares.” To save my family.
“Yes, well, there isn't much we can do about that yet. We've tried filling your days with pleasant images to soften the nightmares, but they seem to break through over time.”
“There was someone in there, someone who made me remember. Who pulled me out of the program. Who was it?” My family had been attacked, it was all coming back now.
“It was you again. Every time you start to realize the program is there, you search for an answer. Once it was a priest. Another time it was a radio talk show host. This time a computer user. Each time they explain the program to you and you wake up. Are you ready to try again?”
I thought about my family.
Our world was not a safe place. I knew where I was now. Inside a hardened facility, safe from the things we'd created outside. We hadn't meant to, but somewhere along the way we'd gotten greedy, and now our whole world was paying a price.
It had begun as an attempt to make dreams come true, literally. We had developed a program which could project your dreams onto a monitor. It was used for therapy at first. As holographic technology advanced, we developed a way to interact with your dreams. A kind of lucid dreaming you could live in. It was supposed to be a new horizon.
But all dreams aren't pleasant ones. By the time we realized what we'd done, there were nightmares among us. It wasn't as easy as just turning off the machines. The program was supposed to be self sustaining. It was supposed to live on. And so it did.
They were out there. The girl with no face. The family trapped inside the abandoned car. The knife wielding attacker. And worse. Things no one should dream. We'd learned the hard way to dream about happy things, but no one could stop the nightmares outside, so we came up with a new plan.
We'd brought our dreams into our world, what if we could go live in their's? What if we could escape this place where we weren't safe anymore, and go to one where we were? The program was supposed to work, but somehow, our brains kept refusing it. So I volunteered. For my family's sake. They weren't safe here. So time and time again, they sent me into that place. Where I had a wife and a dog, and I tried to make the program work. It should work.
But each time I had learned the truth.
“What you see is real.”
It should work.
“The shadows are the rough edges of the image they've put in front of your eyes.”
“Yes, I'm ready. Send me back.”
“The flicker is your mind refusing to believe a lie.”
It should work.
“The nightmares are real.”
But it doesn't.
The Fall of Athos
He sat there with his head in his hands. Outside he could hear them trying to force their way through the gates. Wham. Wham. Wham. It wouldn't be long now. He had been preparing for this day for weeks. Ever since he heard they were marching towards the city. Wham. Wham. Wham. He'd known that by the time the news reached him, they would already have been within a week's march. He could have run, but with his enemies that close, what good would it have done? He knew that even if he had run, he wouldn't have been able to stay free for long. He was a wanted man, everyone knew his face, where could he hide?
So he stayed. He spent his last few weeks in relative luxury, waiting for a miracle, and more and more, wishing he'd tried to escape. Logically he knew it wouldn't have done any good. Still, when they surrounded the city and he had to close the gates, he wished he'd tried. They were inside the walls now. The pounding had stopped, and he could hear the sounds of men dying. Perhaps there was something he could have done, something he could still do. Perhaps there was something he could offer them to ransom him his safety.
Closer now. He knew there was nothing. He'd looked at it from every angle and come up empty. Even if there had been something, after the losses they'd suffered over the last week, they could accept nothing less than his head. He knew that, still, he prayed. Not too anyone in particular. He wasn't so lost as to think any god would listen now. Just in desperation. They had to be right outside. His men would fight, they had no choice, but they wouldn't hold for long. We are all dead men, he thought to himself. We cast our lots, and now, we pay even on our debts. In these last moments he couldn't help but wish he'd never found the statue, but then, he'd never regretted it before.
When the sounds of fighting stopped, he knew it was over.
The door to his throne room opened. Ragged men stood in the passage outside. Their armor was a rough mismatch of pieces. He could see they wore bits from the imperial infantry, the border legion, even some they must have taken off the bodies of his own men. Scavengers every one. They took from this world what they could use. Their arms were crude, but clearly effective. On the floor behind them he could see the bodies of men. Some theirs, more his own.
The man removed his helmet and addressed his king.
"Athos." His long blonde hair was red and matted from a wound he'd suffered in the fighting. "The time has come. I am Caren, and as commander of these men I place you under arrest."
The king continued to stare at the bodies of his fallen soldiers. He felt no pain at their loss, they meant no more to him than any other tool, and less now that they could no more serve their purpose than a dull knife. Still, that simple peasants could overcome the Red Century, that was shocking in it's own way. Just another sign he supposed. They had made their deal with the thing in the statue as well. They knew this day would come. He looked at the man who spoke.
"You have come to my home, killed my men, and now would place me under arrest? Who are you peasant, to have so much victory in one day?" He was their King. He would not be treated this way.
"I am your conqueror Athos." He waved his men forward. "Your day is ended." They grabbed Athos by the arms and dragged him down from his throne.
He had intended to be strong. He had meant to show them how a king dies, but now, surrounded, defeated, and at the mercy of rough men, he broke. He screamed. He struggled. And all the while they dragged him out, past the bodies of his dreaded Red Century. Out of the Spire, and through the streets of Dail. All the while he strained at the grip of the men who held him. Their faces grim, they ignored his cries. In the city, the fighting was mostly over. As they passed, men, busy stripping the dead and finishing the wounded, stopped and rose quietly to watch. It was almost reverent. And all the while Athos cursed his captors for dogs, and fought with every ounce of mad strength left to be free.
They took him past the gates and out to the edge of the cliff that the city was built against. Down below, almost too far to be heard, the waves were crashing against the rocks. For a moment, Athos thought back to when he was a child, and his father would take him to the sea.
He remembered how his father would stand on the cliff with his mother while young Athos looked out over the ocean with his attendants. They had a small summer home out here, past the city gates. Enough room for the family and their guests, some horses in the stables and livestock in the fields. Just a few dozen servants, grooms, cooks, and hereditary help. He remembered the sun shining down on him one day as he looked up at his father. He'd shielded his eyes against the glare so he could see his father smiling down at him. He remembered the great king lifting him up on his shoulders so he could see the masts of the ships coming in to the harbor below. The sound of the waves had always brought him peace.
As he pitched end over end towards that dark water, the men at the top of the cliff watched in silence. This was what they had spent a year of their lives for. Plotting in dark farmhouses with veterans too tired to do more than offer advice, and young men too ignorant to know better. Sacrificing their lives, their land, and their honor. Becoming little more than a band of vicious cutthroats. All for a greater cause. To rid their land of the Tyrant Athos and the Bastard Armiin. And now it was done.
Armiin had fallen in the battle at Taayo.
Athos was king no more.
So he stayed. He spent his last few weeks in relative luxury, waiting for a miracle, and more and more, wishing he'd tried to escape. Logically he knew it wouldn't have done any good. Still, when they surrounded the city and he had to close the gates, he wished he'd tried. They were inside the walls now. The pounding had stopped, and he could hear the sounds of men dying. Perhaps there was something he could have done, something he could still do. Perhaps there was something he could offer them to ransom him his safety.
Closer now. He knew there was nothing. He'd looked at it from every angle and come up empty. Even if there had been something, after the losses they'd suffered over the last week, they could accept nothing less than his head. He knew that, still, he prayed. Not too anyone in particular. He wasn't so lost as to think any god would listen now. Just in desperation. They had to be right outside. His men would fight, they had no choice, but they wouldn't hold for long. We are all dead men, he thought to himself. We cast our lots, and now, we pay even on our debts. In these last moments he couldn't help but wish he'd never found the statue, but then, he'd never regretted it before.
When the sounds of fighting stopped, he knew it was over.
The door to his throne room opened. Ragged men stood in the passage outside. Their armor was a rough mismatch of pieces. He could see they wore bits from the imperial infantry, the border legion, even some they must have taken off the bodies of his own men. Scavengers every one. They took from this world what they could use. Their arms were crude, but clearly effective. On the floor behind them he could see the bodies of men. Some theirs, more his own.
The man removed his helmet and addressed his king.
"Athos." His long blonde hair was red and matted from a wound he'd suffered in the fighting. "The time has come. I am Caren, and as commander of these men I place you under arrest."
The king continued to stare at the bodies of his fallen soldiers. He felt no pain at their loss, they meant no more to him than any other tool, and less now that they could no more serve their purpose than a dull knife. Still, that simple peasants could overcome the Red Century, that was shocking in it's own way. Just another sign he supposed. They had made their deal with the thing in the statue as well. They knew this day would come. He looked at the man who spoke.
"You have come to my home, killed my men, and now would place me under arrest? Who are you peasant, to have so much victory in one day?" He was their King. He would not be treated this way.
"I am your conqueror Athos." He waved his men forward. "Your day is ended." They grabbed Athos by the arms and dragged him down from his throne.
He had intended to be strong. He had meant to show them how a king dies, but now, surrounded, defeated, and at the mercy of rough men, he broke. He screamed. He struggled. And all the while they dragged him out, past the bodies of his dreaded Red Century. Out of the Spire, and through the streets of Dail. All the while he strained at the grip of the men who held him. Their faces grim, they ignored his cries. In the city, the fighting was mostly over. As they passed, men, busy stripping the dead and finishing the wounded, stopped and rose quietly to watch. It was almost reverent. And all the while Athos cursed his captors for dogs, and fought with every ounce of mad strength left to be free.
They took him past the gates and out to the edge of the cliff that the city was built against. Down below, almost too far to be heard, the waves were crashing against the rocks. For a moment, Athos thought back to when he was a child, and his father would take him to the sea.
He remembered how his father would stand on the cliff with his mother while young Athos looked out over the ocean with his attendants. They had a small summer home out here, past the city gates. Enough room for the family and their guests, some horses in the stables and livestock in the fields. Just a few dozen servants, grooms, cooks, and hereditary help. He remembered the sun shining down on him one day as he looked up at his father. He'd shielded his eyes against the glare so he could see his father smiling down at him. He remembered the great king lifting him up on his shoulders so he could see the masts of the ships coming in to the harbor below. The sound of the waves had always brought him peace.
As he pitched end over end towards that dark water, the men at the top of the cliff watched in silence. This was what they had spent a year of their lives for. Plotting in dark farmhouses with veterans too tired to do more than offer advice, and young men too ignorant to know better. Sacrificing their lives, their land, and their honor. Becoming little more than a band of vicious cutthroats. All for a greater cause. To rid their land of the Tyrant Athos and the Bastard Armiin. And now it was done.
Armiin had fallen in the battle at Taayo.
Athos was king no more.
The Towers
It shouldn't be much longer now, thought Todd, as he huffed into his hands and rubbed them together. It was a cold night, and he'd been waiting for hours, but he was sure she'd be coming out soon.
He'd left work early so he could go by the house and get the last of their things. He'd wanted to make sure he had plenty of time, but things had gone smoothly and there hadn't been much traffic, so it had just left him with a lot of time and nothing to do. So he thought about what they'd done, and as the the sky grew dark, and the time ticked by, and the air grew crisp, Todd huffed, and wondered, and waited.
He was sure he could find his way out to their cabin, even in the dark, and he felt safe that with the supplies they had stored there, and the things he'd packed, they should be fine for at least a few months, maybe more if they were careful about how they rationed. As long as no one followed them out there. As long as things in the city didn't spill out into the countryside, at least not much. Finally he saw the door open, and he fired up the old charger as Sarah walked out to the car.
“Did you remember everything?” she asked as she glanced in the back seat and tossed her purse on top of the bags.
“Yep.” replied Todd. He pulled out onto the empty street and headed for the freeway. “You need to stop for anything before we leave town? We don't have a lot of time, but I can stop if you need me too.”
“No, I'm fine.” Sarah imagined how packed the empty streets would be in just a few hours. It was a good thing they'd planned ahead, four hours later, no one would be getting to the freeway in a hurry.
They were quiet as they sped down the dark road, past exists and billboards. Sarah reached over and turned on the stereo. She flipped past sports highlights, and newscast, and some talk show about shadow people who controlled the government, until she landed on an old rock station. They listened to Jon tell his story about Tommy and Gina for a while. As they drove further away from the city the signal faded and Todd switched it back off. It was a long drive, but about twenty munutes after they passed the last tower, Todd turned the car down a rural road and Sarah got the hand written directions out of the glove box.
They'd bought the cabin last year before everything had been set in motion. In a way, buying it was the first step towards this night. Since they'd purchased it, they hadn't been out there. They didn't want anyone to know about their cabin in the country, so they'd been using private couriers to deliver supplies and equipment to the property. Whatever they couldn't order they'd slowly stockpiled at home, until they had an '94 charger's worth of spam and rice. As they puled off the gravel road and onto the asphalt drive leading behind the garage, Todd looked down at his watch.
“It should have started by now. Let's get this stuff inside and then we can find out what's going on.” He killed the ignition and grabbed one of the bags out of the back seat before heading up to unlock the house.
It took a while for them to get all the bags inside, and then Sarah flicked on the tube.
“...all over the city. Information has been hard to come by. Officials seem unsure about the source and even nature of the disturbance or disturbances, and emergency services are currently overwhelmed with calls. Even though people are being asked to stay in their homes, all arteries leading out of the city are clogged. Please stand by for more information as we receive it. We are currently efforting the Mayor for an official response to this developing situation.” It continued in that vein, and Todd went into the kitchen to make them some sandwiches.
“There are numerous reports of looting and violence, although at this time, we can not confirm anything specific. We have numerous crews in the field, but retrieving their reports has been challenging. All cellular networks appear to be down, and communication has become difficult.”
“It looks like things are more or less as we expected.” Sarah called into the kitchen.
“Have they figured out what's going on yet?” Todd called back as he cut the crust off the sandwiches.
“They don't have any idea what's happening.” She replied as he walked in and handed her one of the two plates.
Todd sat down next to her on the couch and watched the coverage with her. They both knew that the television stations would only be reporting for a short while before they too went off. By this time tomorrow there wouldn't be any kind of electronic communications.
It had all started three years ago. They were driving through the city when they passed one of the towers. It had begun as a kind of passing fancy. Taking down the towers. It was pure silliness of course. No one could, and why would you want to? Without the towers people would lose everything. The towers were more than just communication. They were energy. They were everything. Why would anyone want to take them down?
But what started as a joke became an obsession. Over time, ideas were considered and discarded, and occasionally evolved into new better ideas. For two years they plotted, just the two of them, on exactly how it could be done. The more they considered their plan, the more committed to it they became. Todd ended his planned engagement and Sarah quit returning her parents calls. They were pulled into their mutual obsession, they lived for it. And after two years of planning, they set things in motion when they bought the cabin.
It was difficult, with just the two of them, but early on they realized that two was already one to many to keep a secret, and no one else could be trusted with an idea like this. So they kept their conspiracy small. Just the two of them. And over the last year, they'd slowly put everything in place, all in preparation for tonight.
Just as they knew would happen, the television stations went off the air a short time later. They listened on the radios after that, but they knew those wouldn't last either.
After that, they only had themselves. They knew that without the towers the power would go, but they'd planned for that with generators and propane heaters and lamps. It was trickier getting their hands on propane generators then they'd expected. With the towers, most people didn't need them anymore, and finding some for sale had been challenging. But like all their other supplies, they had purchased and had delivered several of them months before they moved to the cabin.
Their days became more or less the same. Canned food. Books. Sitting outside. Sometimes they wondered what was happening in the city, but most of the time they just waited. Eventually they would run out of supplies. Their hope was that before that happened the power would come back on. That would tell them that the towers were back up and it was safe to return to the city.
They weren't really terrorists. They were just curious. Any two people, given enough time, could obsess over a thing. Could make it their only goal in life. They didn't have an agenda. They didn't have an endgame. They didn't even have a plan beyond taking down the towers and moving to the cabin. The towers were the plan. By the time they came to the cabin, it was already over.
So they waited. After a few weeks they were getting bored with spam and rice, so they started opening the cans of instant soup they'd stocked up. The television hadn't come back on yet, but they didn't expect it too so soon, so they weren't concerned. It wouldn't be until later that it would occur to them that it might not come back on.
After a few months, they still hadn't heard anything, and Sarah was starting to get antsy. Todd kept reminding her to be patient, but the towers were what brought them together. Now that that was over, their conspiracy was as well. Living in the cabin was part of the plan, but their obsession had been fulfilled, and now they were empty. Sarah wanted to know what was happening outside. Not knowing was filling the place in her where her obsession had been. One morning Todd woke up, and Sarah and the charger were gone.
She was back that afternoon, but she wouldn't talk about what she'd seen. She just told him he needed to go with her to the city so he could see it too. At first, Todd was uninterested on going on her little adventure, but eventually he came around, thinking, hell, she made it there and back, it's only a few hours, and getting out of this place wouldn't hurt either.
They drove back, down the rural road to the freeway, past the towers, and towards the city. On the way, Todd tried at first to question her about what she'd seen, but soon her silence was answer enough, and he simply gave up.
When they reached the edge of the city, the first thing Todd noticed was the buildings. Most had some damage, and several were ruined, but almost all of them seemed empty. Almost dead inside. It was like people had just given up and walked away from the city. As they drove down the empty streets, Todd realized they were all alone.
He wondered where all the people had gone. Had they died in some civil upheaval? Had the lack of power caused mass starvation? Had the government moved them out of the area? He asked Sarah, but she just shook her head. She didn't have the answer either.
They continued towards the center of the city, and still their were no people. The houses seemed empty. The vehicles parked on the road seemed like they had been abandoned wherever they sat. The buildings were still dark. Most of all there was the silence. It was like their charger was the only island of life in the entire city.
At the center of town they found it. It was on the fountain. A plaque, made of stone, with words etched into its face. The words that explained the empty city. The words that explained what had come of their obsession.
“God has forsaken us. The towers have failed. Those of us who survived have left. There is nothing left for us here. Perhaps there is something for us somewhere else.”
“They gave up.” Sarah sounded strangely distant. “They just gave up. It's why the tv never came back on. They didn't even try to determine why they failed. They didn't try to repair them. They just gave up and left.”
She was right, Todd could see that. It didn't make sense, but there it was. All that planning, all those nights considering and discarding idea after idea. Considering what challenges they might face and how to overcome them. Their obsession, and everyone else had just given up.
Suddenly Todd became angry. Taking down the towers was a great achievement. They had sacrificed everything for it, and the people of the city had just given up. It wasn't fair. His obsession, and they're ambivalence. It wasn't fair.
But there it was. Todd raised his eyes to the heavens and screamed all his frustration at the sky. Sarah just looked past him at nothing, and Todd screamed until his voice grew hoarse. He howled and she stared, and the city answered them with silence.
He'd left work early so he could go by the house and get the last of their things. He'd wanted to make sure he had plenty of time, but things had gone smoothly and there hadn't been much traffic, so it had just left him with a lot of time and nothing to do. So he thought about what they'd done, and as the the sky grew dark, and the time ticked by, and the air grew crisp, Todd huffed, and wondered, and waited.
He was sure he could find his way out to their cabin, even in the dark, and he felt safe that with the supplies they had stored there, and the things he'd packed, they should be fine for at least a few months, maybe more if they were careful about how they rationed. As long as no one followed them out there. As long as things in the city didn't spill out into the countryside, at least not much. Finally he saw the door open, and he fired up the old charger as Sarah walked out to the car.
“Did you remember everything?” she asked as she glanced in the back seat and tossed her purse on top of the bags.
“Yep.” replied Todd. He pulled out onto the empty street and headed for the freeway. “You need to stop for anything before we leave town? We don't have a lot of time, but I can stop if you need me too.”
“No, I'm fine.” Sarah imagined how packed the empty streets would be in just a few hours. It was a good thing they'd planned ahead, four hours later, no one would be getting to the freeway in a hurry.
They were quiet as they sped down the dark road, past exists and billboards. Sarah reached over and turned on the stereo. She flipped past sports highlights, and newscast, and some talk show about shadow people who controlled the government, until she landed on an old rock station. They listened to Jon tell his story about Tommy and Gina for a while. As they drove further away from the city the signal faded and Todd switched it back off. It was a long drive, but about twenty munutes after they passed the last tower, Todd turned the car down a rural road and Sarah got the hand written directions out of the glove box.
They'd bought the cabin last year before everything had been set in motion. In a way, buying it was the first step towards this night. Since they'd purchased it, they hadn't been out there. They didn't want anyone to know about their cabin in the country, so they'd been using private couriers to deliver supplies and equipment to the property. Whatever they couldn't order they'd slowly stockpiled at home, until they had an '94 charger's worth of spam and rice. As they puled off the gravel road and onto the asphalt drive leading behind the garage, Todd looked down at his watch.
“It should have started by now. Let's get this stuff inside and then we can find out what's going on.” He killed the ignition and grabbed one of the bags out of the back seat before heading up to unlock the house.
It took a while for them to get all the bags inside, and then Sarah flicked on the tube.
“...all over the city. Information has been hard to come by. Officials seem unsure about the source and even nature of the disturbance or disturbances, and emergency services are currently overwhelmed with calls. Even though people are being asked to stay in their homes, all arteries leading out of the city are clogged. Please stand by for more information as we receive it. We are currently efforting the Mayor for an official response to this developing situation.” It continued in that vein, and Todd went into the kitchen to make them some sandwiches.
“There are numerous reports of looting and violence, although at this time, we can not confirm anything specific. We have numerous crews in the field, but retrieving their reports has been challenging. All cellular networks appear to be down, and communication has become difficult.”
“It looks like things are more or less as we expected.” Sarah called into the kitchen.
“Have they figured out what's going on yet?” Todd called back as he cut the crust off the sandwiches.
“They don't have any idea what's happening.” She replied as he walked in and handed her one of the two plates.
Todd sat down next to her on the couch and watched the coverage with her. They both knew that the television stations would only be reporting for a short while before they too went off. By this time tomorrow there wouldn't be any kind of electronic communications.
It had all started three years ago. They were driving through the city when they passed one of the towers. It had begun as a kind of passing fancy. Taking down the towers. It was pure silliness of course. No one could, and why would you want to? Without the towers people would lose everything. The towers were more than just communication. They were energy. They were everything. Why would anyone want to take them down?
But what started as a joke became an obsession. Over time, ideas were considered and discarded, and occasionally evolved into new better ideas. For two years they plotted, just the two of them, on exactly how it could be done. The more they considered their plan, the more committed to it they became. Todd ended his planned engagement and Sarah quit returning her parents calls. They were pulled into their mutual obsession, they lived for it. And after two years of planning, they set things in motion when they bought the cabin.
It was difficult, with just the two of them, but early on they realized that two was already one to many to keep a secret, and no one else could be trusted with an idea like this. So they kept their conspiracy small. Just the two of them. And over the last year, they'd slowly put everything in place, all in preparation for tonight.
Just as they knew would happen, the television stations went off the air a short time later. They listened on the radios after that, but they knew those wouldn't last either.
After that, they only had themselves. They knew that without the towers the power would go, but they'd planned for that with generators and propane heaters and lamps. It was trickier getting their hands on propane generators then they'd expected. With the towers, most people didn't need them anymore, and finding some for sale had been challenging. But like all their other supplies, they had purchased and had delivered several of them months before they moved to the cabin.
Their days became more or less the same. Canned food. Books. Sitting outside. Sometimes they wondered what was happening in the city, but most of the time they just waited. Eventually they would run out of supplies. Their hope was that before that happened the power would come back on. That would tell them that the towers were back up and it was safe to return to the city.
They weren't really terrorists. They were just curious. Any two people, given enough time, could obsess over a thing. Could make it their only goal in life. They didn't have an agenda. They didn't have an endgame. They didn't even have a plan beyond taking down the towers and moving to the cabin. The towers were the plan. By the time they came to the cabin, it was already over.
So they waited. After a few weeks they were getting bored with spam and rice, so they started opening the cans of instant soup they'd stocked up. The television hadn't come back on yet, but they didn't expect it too so soon, so they weren't concerned. It wouldn't be until later that it would occur to them that it might not come back on.
After a few months, they still hadn't heard anything, and Sarah was starting to get antsy. Todd kept reminding her to be patient, but the towers were what brought them together. Now that that was over, their conspiracy was as well. Living in the cabin was part of the plan, but their obsession had been fulfilled, and now they were empty. Sarah wanted to know what was happening outside. Not knowing was filling the place in her where her obsession had been. One morning Todd woke up, and Sarah and the charger were gone.
She was back that afternoon, but she wouldn't talk about what she'd seen. She just told him he needed to go with her to the city so he could see it too. At first, Todd was uninterested on going on her little adventure, but eventually he came around, thinking, hell, she made it there and back, it's only a few hours, and getting out of this place wouldn't hurt either.
They drove back, down the rural road to the freeway, past the towers, and towards the city. On the way, Todd tried at first to question her about what she'd seen, but soon her silence was answer enough, and he simply gave up.
When they reached the edge of the city, the first thing Todd noticed was the buildings. Most had some damage, and several were ruined, but almost all of them seemed empty. Almost dead inside. It was like people had just given up and walked away from the city. As they drove down the empty streets, Todd realized they were all alone.
He wondered where all the people had gone. Had they died in some civil upheaval? Had the lack of power caused mass starvation? Had the government moved them out of the area? He asked Sarah, but she just shook her head. She didn't have the answer either.
They continued towards the center of the city, and still their were no people. The houses seemed empty. The vehicles parked on the road seemed like they had been abandoned wherever they sat. The buildings were still dark. Most of all there was the silence. It was like their charger was the only island of life in the entire city.
At the center of town they found it. It was on the fountain. A plaque, made of stone, with words etched into its face. The words that explained the empty city. The words that explained what had come of their obsession.
“God has forsaken us. The towers have failed. Those of us who survived have left. There is nothing left for us here. Perhaps there is something for us somewhere else.”
“They gave up.” Sarah sounded strangely distant. “They just gave up. It's why the tv never came back on. They didn't even try to determine why they failed. They didn't try to repair them. They just gave up and left.”
She was right, Todd could see that. It didn't make sense, but there it was. All that planning, all those nights considering and discarding idea after idea. Considering what challenges they might face and how to overcome them. Their obsession, and everyone else had just given up.
Suddenly Todd became angry. Taking down the towers was a great achievement. They had sacrificed everything for it, and the people of the city had just given up. It wasn't fair. His obsession, and they're ambivalence. It wasn't fair.
But there it was. Todd raised his eyes to the heavens and screamed all his frustration at the sky. Sarah just looked past him at nothing, and Todd screamed until his voice grew hoarse. He howled and she stared, and the city answered them with silence.
The Cold
“It's not that unusual,” replied Bob, “these things go out all the time.” He flicked the switch on and off several times, then turned to the man beside him. “That's why we started carrying these,” he added, as his hand moved to the flashlight on his belt
“What causes it?” Joe sounded anxious. He couldn't help but wonder if he was just unlucky, or if every night was gonna be like this.
“Hard to say. Could be a lot of things, could be nothing. Probably something though.” Bob was mumbling as he twisted the end of his flashlight, bringing it to life. “Maybe it's the cold.”
It was cold. The man on the news had said it would be overcast, but no one had accounted for the wind. It was blowing hard, and it left Joe feeling like someone had blown the steam off his coffee.
Joe had come in to work tonight with hope in his heart. He'd hoped his coworker wouldn't be a hard ass. He'd hoped he could handle the job. He'd hoped it would be a quiet night. But he'd learned not to expect much, no matter his hope. It had been hard enough getting this job, he couldn't afford to lose it. Lucy'd probably kill him if he got fired again. So he twisted his small flashlight to life and followed Bob into the tunnel.
Bob talked all the time. He didn't seem to care if Joe was listening or not, he didn't even seem to notice, and Joe didn't care if Bob talked so he let him go on. Bob told him about the girl who worked weekends at reception. He told him about his neighbor with the cats. He complained about traffic, and politics, and the weather. He went on for a while about last night's game and whether his team was going to go the distance this year. He only stopped talking for a moment when they passed the blind man, but he started up again as they turned the corner, rushing to fill the empty space. Soon enough the reached the door leading outside.
“Alright Joe, you know what to do? First time right?” Joe nodded his head and licked the corner of his mouth. He hadn't expected to go outside his first night, but here he was.
“Remember, just stay on the path and you'll be fine. I've done this plenty, and you will too if you work here long enough. They can't hurt ya long as ya stay on the path.” They'd gone over all that in orientation, but Bob had seen more than one new guy panic outside, and he'd learned to take his own precautions. “Alright, let's go.” And with that, Bob turned his key in the lock, and the door began to swing slowly open.
It was a heavy door, and large, but soon enough light began to pour in around the edge and they could kill their flashlights. After a moment, the light was so bright it began to make Joe's eyes water.
“Is it always like this?” He asked.
“Always,” Bob sounded bored. “You get used to it. Let's get this over with.” And with that, he led the way out into the light.
Joe could hear them. Their voices. He could hear them all around, calling to him. Bob could too, but he'd learned to ignore it. Listening didn't help, didn't make it any better. No, better by far to fix the generator and go back inside where you couldn't hear them anymore. Bob had seen what could happen if a man listened, if he left the path, so Bob stayed on it and walked towards the line station. And because Bob did, Joe did too.
It was different outside. The light sure, and them, but the weather too. Inside it had been cold and windy, a gloomy kind of gray you could feel, but soon Joe was starting to sweat a little, and the light was getting poured on with a bucket. It was strange, and he was just wondering how he'd describe it to Lucy when Bob stopped.
“This is the one. You can see where the cable burned through. Looks like it was the cold. People using so much juice inside it wore the unit out.” He was pointing at some red wires coming from the small white box. “Hand me your torch Joe, this won't take long.”
Joe reached for his belt and fumbled for the small beam cutter he'd been issued. He started thinking about Lucy, and what she'd look like in all that light. He imagined her out there, standing on a hill a short distance away. He felt Bob's hand on his arm, so he turned towards him and tried to wave him away with the his beam cutter. As he moved off the path, towards that little hill so far away, he wondered where the light had gone. It wasn't long before it was so dark he couldn't see at all. He sat down and thought about Lucy as the cold began to set it.
“Goddamnsonofabitchshitlovingnewfuck!” Joe could hear Bob's voice. It began to get warmer and he could just make out hands holding his leg and dragging him back inside. After a few moments, he could even see Bob's face. It looked as though he had been badly burned, and he was putting some kind of cream on his cheek and ear. “Earplugs goddamnit! Earplugs and piss fucking sign language. Like it used to be. That's what we need. You awake yet you sonofabitch?” Bob was shaking Joe violently by his shoulders. “You in there prickass?”
“What happened?” asked Joe, confused and alarmed.
“You shot me in the goddamn face with your torch, that's what happened.” growled Bob angrily. “I told you to stay on the path. I told you not to listen. Instead you shot me in the face and damn near froze to death out there. They told you not to listen. I told you not to listen. It's not real Joe!” Bob was yelling at him now. “I told you to stay on the saint's fucked path, and you shot me!”
Bob was clearly frustrated as he began to apply the quick seal bandages they had been issued to his burns. Now that they were inside and out of danger, Joe was beginning to be more afraid of losing his job than freezing to death. He was trying to piece it all together, what had happened. They were going to fix the generator, and then,
“Jesus Bob, I'm sorry. I just had to head out there. I don't know what happened. There was something I needed out there, needed more than air to breathe, and when you tried to warn me, something told me I had to stop you. I just had to.” Joe couldn't make sense of it. He just sat there hanging his head and staring at nothing.
But Bob could make sense of it. He's seen it before. “It's them Joe. They want what we have, and they know how to get a man's attention. It's why we have to stay inside. It's why we have the path and the generators. Ya can't listen to em Joe. It only makes it worse. 'Sides, they're lyin' anyway. Aint nothin' out there for us Joe. Nothin' out there but the cold.”
“What causes it?” Joe sounded anxious. He couldn't help but wonder if he was just unlucky, or if every night was gonna be like this.
“Hard to say. Could be a lot of things, could be nothing. Probably something though.” Bob was mumbling as he twisted the end of his flashlight, bringing it to life. “Maybe it's the cold.”
It was cold. The man on the news had said it would be overcast, but no one had accounted for the wind. It was blowing hard, and it left Joe feeling like someone had blown the steam off his coffee.
Joe had come in to work tonight with hope in his heart. He'd hoped his coworker wouldn't be a hard ass. He'd hoped he could handle the job. He'd hoped it would be a quiet night. But he'd learned not to expect much, no matter his hope. It had been hard enough getting this job, he couldn't afford to lose it. Lucy'd probably kill him if he got fired again. So he twisted his small flashlight to life and followed Bob into the tunnel.
Bob talked all the time. He didn't seem to care if Joe was listening or not, he didn't even seem to notice, and Joe didn't care if Bob talked so he let him go on. Bob told him about the girl who worked weekends at reception. He told him about his neighbor with the cats. He complained about traffic, and politics, and the weather. He went on for a while about last night's game and whether his team was going to go the distance this year. He only stopped talking for a moment when they passed the blind man, but he started up again as they turned the corner, rushing to fill the empty space. Soon enough the reached the door leading outside.
“Alright Joe, you know what to do? First time right?” Joe nodded his head and licked the corner of his mouth. He hadn't expected to go outside his first night, but here he was.
“Remember, just stay on the path and you'll be fine. I've done this plenty, and you will too if you work here long enough. They can't hurt ya long as ya stay on the path.” They'd gone over all that in orientation, but Bob had seen more than one new guy panic outside, and he'd learned to take his own precautions. “Alright, let's go.” And with that, Bob turned his key in the lock, and the door began to swing slowly open.
It was a heavy door, and large, but soon enough light began to pour in around the edge and they could kill their flashlights. After a moment, the light was so bright it began to make Joe's eyes water.
“Is it always like this?” He asked.
“Always,” Bob sounded bored. “You get used to it. Let's get this over with.” And with that, he led the way out into the light.
Joe could hear them. Their voices. He could hear them all around, calling to him. Bob could too, but he'd learned to ignore it. Listening didn't help, didn't make it any better. No, better by far to fix the generator and go back inside where you couldn't hear them anymore. Bob had seen what could happen if a man listened, if he left the path, so Bob stayed on it and walked towards the line station. And because Bob did, Joe did too.
It was different outside. The light sure, and them, but the weather too. Inside it had been cold and windy, a gloomy kind of gray you could feel, but soon Joe was starting to sweat a little, and the light was getting poured on with a bucket. It was strange, and he was just wondering how he'd describe it to Lucy when Bob stopped.
“This is the one. You can see where the cable burned through. Looks like it was the cold. People using so much juice inside it wore the unit out.” He was pointing at some red wires coming from the small white box. “Hand me your torch Joe, this won't take long.”
Joe reached for his belt and fumbled for the small beam cutter he'd been issued. He started thinking about Lucy, and what she'd look like in all that light. He imagined her out there, standing on a hill a short distance away. He felt Bob's hand on his arm, so he turned towards him and tried to wave him away with the his beam cutter. As he moved off the path, towards that little hill so far away, he wondered where the light had gone. It wasn't long before it was so dark he couldn't see at all. He sat down and thought about Lucy as the cold began to set it.
“Goddamnsonofabitchshitlovingnewfuck!” Joe could hear Bob's voice. It began to get warmer and he could just make out hands holding his leg and dragging him back inside. After a few moments, he could even see Bob's face. It looked as though he had been badly burned, and he was putting some kind of cream on his cheek and ear. “Earplugs goddamnit! Earplugs and piss fucking sign language. Like it used to be. That's what we need. You awake yet you sonofabitch?” Bob was shaking Joe violently by his shoulders. “You in there prickass?”
“What happened?” asked Joe, confused and alarmed.
“You shot me in the goddamn face with your torch, that's what happened.” growled Bob angrily. “I told you to stay on the path. I told you not to listen. Instead you shot me in the face and damn near froze to death out there. They told you not to listen. I told you not to listen. It's not real Joe!” Bob was yelling at him now. “I told you to stay on the saint's fucked path, and you shot me!”
Bob was clearly frustrated as he began to apply the quick seal bandages they had been issued to his burns. Now that they were inside and out of danger, Joe was beginning to be more afraid of losing his job than freezing to death. He was trying to piece it all together, what had happened. They were going to fix the generator, and then,
“Jesus Bob, I'm sorry. I just had to head out there. I don't know what happened. There was something I needed out there, needed more than air to breathe, and when you tried to warn me, something told me I had to stop you. I just had to.” Joe couldn't make sense of it. He just sat there hanging his head and staring at nothing.
But Bob could make sense of it. He's seen it before. “It's them Joe. They want what we have, and they know how to get a man's attention. It's why we have to stay inside. It's why we have the path and the generators. Ya can't listen to em Joe. It only makes it worse. 'Sides, they're lyin' anyway. Aint nothin' out there for us Joe. Nothin' out there but the cold.”
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