Together We Will Go

by J. Michael Straczynski

  MARK ANTONELLI: Bullshit.

  PETER ROUTH: Totally true, it was just that casual. They called it a virtuous death. The only people in Rome who weren’t allowed to kill themselves were soldiers because their asses belonged to the Empire, slaves because it wasn’t good business, and people accused of crimes because if they died before a judgment could be made, the state couldn’t confiscate their money. It’s always been about money and power and control and who has it and who doesn’t. Shit, the Church didn’t say boo about suicide until Augustine came along in the sixth century to say that only God had the right to decide when we die. Well, I say fuck that. Killing yourself may be the only decision you can ever make that is truly, honestly, and one hundred percent your own.

  MARK ANTONELLI: Do you ever breathe? I mean seriously.

  PETER ROUTH: It’s the ultimate fuck-you to the system. That’s why the courts made it illegal, and the medical world made it a sign of mental illness, even though the assumption that all suicide is the result of mental illness has never been proven and never will be.

  Back in the nineteen fifties in London, if you tried to kill yourself and the court decided that you were crazy when you did it, that was fine because it gave the system the authority to put you in a box with no control over your body, your property, or your money. What scared them was the possibility that the court could go the other way and decide that you were sane when you tried to kill yourself, which acknowledges that suicide can be a rational decision, and that’s the last thing the politicians wanted. They said they were worried that it would send the wrong signal to others who were thinking about doing the same thing, but the truth is they didn’t want to lose the control that a verdict of insanity gave them over people.

  So they passed laws that made trying to kill yourself straight-up illegal, regardless of whether or not you were sane when you did it. They put it in the same category as murder, or trying to break into someone’s house. They called it felo-de-se, which means a felony against yourself, if you can believe that shit. You want to know what else they called suicide?

  MARK ANTONELLI: You’ve spent a lot of time on Wikipedia, haven’t you?

  PETER ROUTH: I studied this shit for two years, motherfucker, and they called suicide, quote, the crime of depriving the King of a subject, unquote. As far as they were concerned, you belonged to the Crown. So if you killed yourself and the court declared that you were sane when you did it, they took your family’s land, property, and money as penalty for trying to steal from the Crown. Since the government can’t take your stuff away anymore for trying to kill yourself, they’ve gone back to saying it’s crazy.

  But that’s just not true. Suicide is the tenth leading cause of death in the United States, fifty thousand last year, twice as many suicides as homicides, but doctors could only point to psychological issues in less than half of them. That means the rest of them weren’t crazy, they knew exactly what they were doing. That’s why I had this tattooed on my chest. See right here? What does it say?

  MARK ANTONELLI: Do not resuscitate.

  PETER ROUTH: You think I’m not serious? You think I’m just dicking around and I don’t really mean any of this? That’s why I picked this up the other day—here, let me drag out my backpack.

  MARK ANTONELLI: Whoa. What’s that, a katana?

  PETER ROUTH: Wakizashi, the smaller version. I didn’t know if you guys would show up, if you were real, if I’d agree to go with you, or how you guys planned to finish it up, so if this didn’t work out, I figured tonight’s party would be my goodbye. Go out old-school, you know? I’m as serious as anybody else on that bus, Mark, maybe more so because for me this isn’t an emotional decision, it’s not some kind of impulse, I’m not doing it because my mom didn’t love me or I have a tumor or my girlfriend just broke up with me or I’m super depressed, well, maybe a little, but Jesus fuck, these days, who isn’t? I’m doing it because it’s the only choice that makes any kind of goddamned sense. So if I get on the bus with the rest of you, great, we’ll do it together later, but I’m also cool with doing this right here, right now. I can go either way.

  MARK ANTONELLI: Then come on the bus. Totally signing off on you.

  PETER ROUTH: Great, as soon as I sign off on you. Want another beer?

  MARK ANTONELLI: Fucking A.

  END RECORDING

  * * *

  LIsa

  Tonight was very strange.

  Ever since I got that email from the Bitch, I’ve been sleeping more than usual. Just didn’t want to deal with it. I think my fellow passengers are happy when I conk out, and I can’t blame them. So yeah, I’ve been pretty down, though I had to smile when the guy who delivered my message called to say that when my dad found out she’d burned my note, the whole thing turned into a big blowup. So Dad, if you’re reading this in the Aftermath: please don’t invite her to my funeral, because if she shows up, I swear I’ll crawl out of my casket or my urn (depending on how much is left to work with) and kick the shit out of her.

  Anyway, when Mark said we were going to a party, I got excited for the first time in days, and the hyper part of my brain (not the Crazy Lisa part, we’re past that now) went into overdrive. I couldn’t keep still, so I was popping Molly and Bluetoothing Caravan Palace through the bus speakers and dancing in the aisle with a crowd that wasn’t there, and TheresaAndJim were being all pissy about it and nobody else joined in, but I didn’t give a shit if it was just me dancing because Just Me was Just Lisa and for once I was totally down with that. Everybody else just rolled their eyes like “Well, there she goes,” except Shanelle, the new girl. She thought it was funny and said she was going to keep an eye on me when we got to the party so I didn’t get in trouble “because girl, I have heard some stories.” That was a surprise, and kind of nice.

  The whole time we were walking across campus trying to find the dorm, I’m jumping up and down like some kind of goddamned jackrabbit. I was happy to be out of the bus and going to a party and Molly was being so exceptionally sweet to me that I offered to introduce her to Shanelle, since they had not previously met, but she only took a quarter and Theo passed, so that left me to be the Fun Machine for the evening.

  And I tried, I really did. The place was shaking, the music was great, there was a lot of really good booze and everybody was into it… but I couldn’t kick loose, like something was holding me back and I thought, Molly, you bitch, you straight-up ghosted me just when I needed you, so I dug around in my goody bag until I found some shrooms. Washed them down with beer and waited for the hit.

  Usually with shrooms, I can feel myself shaking off my body and letting go pretty fast. But this time I got stuck inside, like I was looking at everything through a periscope in the top of my head, me watching me watching them watching me. I was inside, outside, and above but not quite there, if that makes sense. Then the music and the voices went away and everything got really quiet.

  When I was in high school, I went through this phase where I was fascinated by YouTube videos of Ye Olden Days. Around the turn of the century (the last one, not this one), somebody would rent a truck or a horse-drawn wagon, load up a hand-cranked camera, and go down one street after another, shooting silent film of cities like New York or Chicago or San Francisco. Grainy little movies of people just living life, driving around, crossing the street or selling newspapers. I couldn’t get enough of them. I’d get real close to the screen, trying to see past their faces to what they were thinking, where they’d been and where they were going and what they’d do when they got there, and I’d think, All those people are dead, and all those buildings are gone… that place, those people, and the world they knew doesn’t exist anymore, like I was looking at them through the window of a time machine.

  That’s how I felt tonight. Like I was a time traveler peeking in at the party from another time and place. No sound, no voices, no music. Except they’re not the ones that are going away.

  I am.

  In a few days or weeks, they’ll
still be having parties, there will be booze and Molly and music and dancing. But I won’t be here to see it. The world I know won’t exist anymore.

  Somebody turned the camera around, and now I’m the one looking out from a piece of film, long gone.

  I am no longer a part of this world. I am a picture in somebody’s yearbook. A face on a security video somewhere, adrift in time.

  I am a memory.

  * * *

  Username: Zeke

  Hey, Mark, it’s Zeke! Just leaving this here to follow up on what you said about writing a journal entry. So here it is. But wait! Should I have said Hey, Mark or Hey, Somebody Else? If all this gets beamed up to the Starship Enterprise when the bus goes over that cliff in San Francisco and you never get to read it, maybe I should start this with Hey, Whoever! Or To Whom This May Concern! Or Hey You! Ha-ha! I like that one.

  Hey, you!

  Well shit, now I have to actually write something.

  But see, here’s the thing. I don’t think any of the stuff I’m supposed to write about actually means anything. If I tell you I was born here, I went to school over there, my folks were good or bad or not there most of the time, it doesn’t tell you who I am right now. Past’s dead. If we let something that happened years ago decide who we are right now, well, that’s pretty stupid, right?

  The only thing I remember from my half year of math in junior college is that time doesn’t actually exist. Everything is happening at the same time, there are no straight lines from here to there. It’s only perception and the way our minds work that make us think that this thing happened today, that thing happened yesterday, and something else is going to happen tomorrow. It’s quantum mechanics, and I’d love to explain that to you more, but I never made it past the intro class! Only reason I remember the part about time is that I thought it was really cool. It means that right now I’m being born, right now I’m graduating high school, right now I’m shooting up for the first time, right now I’m getting on the bus, and right now I’m dying. That’s crazy! But there’s math behind it, so I guess it’s true.

  If there’s no such thing as the past, if there’s only right now, then why dwell on it, right? Move on. (Yeah, I know, there’s no such thing as “moving on” if the future is also bogus, but you know what I mean.)

  So yeah: What to write? I don’t think I have a lot to say that’s worth much of anything. My folks would agree with that, for sure. Always did.

  One thing I guess I should say is: thank you for letting me on the bus so I could get to know everybody here, even Lisa, and have some company to go along with me and Soldier on our last big adventure! It really means a lot to both of us.

  Thinking about it a little more, maybe there is one thing I can say. Something I only figured out the other day.

  Like I said, Soldier and me are close, but in a funny way. I mean, he’s never been ultra-affectionate. He’d let me pet him and pick him up and carry him around without trying to wriggle away, but he’s not one of those cats you see rubbing up against people, or booping heads, that sort of thing. Never came up and licked my face. I just figured he was shy, you know?

  Any time I had some money, I’d buy food for Soldier first, then get whatever I needed with what was left. I looked after him. Protected him. Because he loved me. You could see it in his eyes. Love, man. Crazy stupid cat love that was five times bigger than he was.

  But he never came over. Weird, huh?

  So while we were looking out the window on the bus today, I remembered something. Don’t know why, it just came up at me, like when you’re sitting at a stoplight with your brain in neutral waiting for the green and something you hadn’t thought about since forever swims up at you out of nowhere and you think, where the hell did that come from and why now?

  I remembered the day I went out to score some party favors and left the door open by accident. We were squatting in this abandoned apartment, no water or heat but it had a roof and walls and that was all we needed. I hadn’t had Soldier very long and he was always looking out the window like he wanted to go for a walk. It was a pretty rough area, so I kept the door closed so he wouldn’t wander out and get grabbed or lost or hurt, but this one time I was withdrawing pretty hard so I was kind of spaced and not paying attention so I forgot to close the door when I went out.

  When I came back and saw the door open, my heart just sank. I ran inside, figuring by now he was long gone, but there he was, sitting in his favorite spot, right where I left him, front legs tucked under his chest, really calm, just looking at me like, Of course I wouldn’t leave, as if I could’ve gone away for five years, and he’d still be sitting there when I came back, waiting for me. And I realized how any time I left the room, wherever he was when I left was where he was when I came back. Whenever we went for a walk, he always stayed beside me, never getting too far behind or ahead, so I’d always know he was right there.

  And I finally got the message.

  Soldier didn’t need to show me all the time that he loved me. He knew it and I knew it and that’s that. What he was doing was giving me a safe place to put my own love.

  It’s like he was saying, I’m never going to leave you. I’ll wait for you. I want you to know that I’ll always wait for you, that it’s safe to love me, that you have a place to put all the feelings you can’t give to anybody else because it’s too dangerous, because you’re worried they won’t understand, and they won’t wait for you. I’m here. I love you. And I will wait for you. I’m not going anywhere.

  And I just started crying.

  That’s why I can’t let him die alone. I can’t let him go too far ahead of me, or fall too far behind me. We walk together. When he gets to the other side, he’ll wait for me until I come to pick him up and hold him. And I don’t want him to wait a minute longer than he has to.

  It’s love that put us on the road, Mark, or whoever’s reading this. Love is what put us on the bus, and love is what’s going to carry me and Soldier across to someplace where we can play forever.

  Crazy, huh?

  * * *

  TylerW1998

  The only drawback to explaining the Blueness of Me to newcomers is that by now everybody else already knows the story and they’ve started to develop a sense of humor about the whole thing. So when Peter, the latest member of our merry band of misfits, got on the bus and saw me, before I could launch into my explanation, Shanelle grabbed him, pointed at me, and said “Ohmygod, he just turned this color, what should we do, oh shit, call 9-1-1!” and Peter’s grabbing for his cell phone and I’m trying to explain the situation while she’s laughing her ass off.

  “It’s Chronic Smurfitis,” she says, and hugs me. “We need to get him back to his village, fast. Sleazy Smurf will know what to do.”

  Humor is so subjective.

  * * *

  VaughnR

  Carolyn and I tried for years to have children, but it never seemed to work out. There was one miscarriage about a year after we got married, and after that, nothing. For a while we thought it was me, but the doctor said everything looked normal. It took a lot more tests, but finally the doc said that Carolyn had this thing called Primary Ovarian Insufficiency that stops the ovaries from functioning properly. We tried different treatments, but none of them worked so finally we gave up. We talked about adoption but never followed through, and settled into being just the two of us together. What with both of us being our folks’ only children, I guess we were used to the idea of being on our own.

  When Carolyn’s dad retired, he and his wife moved to Alexandria, Ohio, because the world was getting too big and busy for them and nothing much ever happened in Alexandria. Before leaving, he asked if I’d run the company in his absence. I’d never seen myself as a boss, sitting in an office moving around pieces of paper all day, but that’s where I ended up. Every morning I’d get up at seven, make coffee, two scrambled eggs and toast, moving real quiet because Carolyn liked to sleep in, read the paper (yes, some of us still do that), then wal
k the two blocks to work, which mainly consisted of requisitioning supplies, walking the floor, and approving purchase orders for the same sixteen kinds of false-faced fiberwood boards that we’d been producing for the last twenty years. At seven p.m., half an hour after everyone else left for the day, I’d finish the day’s paperwork, close up the office and walk the two blocks back home. Most days I’d spend the walk thinking about whether we’d done better or worse than the day before, or trying to guess what Carolyn was going to make for dinner that night.

  Other days, though, I used to think about sneaking into the car when I got home, driving to the airport, and taking the first plane out to anywhere: Bali, Rome, Berlin, Hawaii, or any of the other places I’d never been. I began to wonder if I was living my life or my life was living me. But I always tucked the thought away before walking past the car in the driveway and through the front door.

  There was only one time when things kind of got away from me a bit. I was working late one evening after everyone else had gone home, approving a bunch of purchase orders, when I realized I’d grabbed the wrong file from the cabinet. This one was from five years earlier. I got them confused because both sets of orders were from the same construction company in Ohio, for the same things, in the same style, in the same amounts they’d been ordering since Carolyn’s dad opened the company. Looking at those purchase orders side by side was like looking at five years of my life doing the same thing, over and over and over.

  The only way I can describe what happened next is that everything went all upside down in my head. One minute I’m staring at those two identical sets of paper, heart racing, hands shaking harder and harder, and for a second I think I’m having a heart attack but I guess it wasn’t because the next thing I remember is sitting on the floor in the middle of my office, the filing cabinets tipped over and papers scattered all over the floor, the desk and the window blinds half torn off, and all the framed pictures on my desk are broken and there’s glass everywhere.