A few seconds later, certain that there’s no one else here, I sit and start the fire. It’s soon cackling, and giving off warmth. I sit down next to Dalcia, waiting for her to finish.
The fire cackles, the logs turn red.
“This is real, isn’t it?”
“I think so.”
“You think so,” she says, murmuring, sounding annoyed. “Can’t have a fire in the City. So tell me what this is all about?”
Not sure what she’s waving at. “I thought that you’d need some time for all the bustle up there,” I point up.
Dalcia’s obsessed with the sky. I can see why, as the clouds part, the moon falls to the other side of the sky and the milky way bursts through.
“Is it like a planetarium?”
Doesn’t seem like it. “I told you, I don’t know.”
“Yet you brought me here?”
I let out a sigh. Was this a mistake? “I wanted to give you some time to think.”
Tension bursts between us. “Do you not want to be here?” That came out angrier than I wanted it to.
She shifts away from me.
I look over. Her eyes want to kill me. “I’m sorry...” And instead of saying something comforting, instead of thinking about her and helping her along, I simply fall back on thinking about me. About me being here, in this place—this surreal place—with this girl, with this fire, with the robot Turing somewhere out there. And like that, I feel myself disengaging from my body, from my arms, my legs. I close my eyes. The fire crackles on. Through my eyelids it’s a red glow, burning brighter here and there.
I open my eyes, looking up to the milky-way. Dalcia is still regarding me like a piece of trash. “What happened to them?” I ask, my voice cracking.
She slumps. Starts looking at her hands.
I shift over to her, place my hand on hers. There’s nothing I can really add, is there? I feel foolish, only laying my hand on hers, but what else can I do? After a second of her silence, she lifts her head; her eyes meet mine.
I wait, but for several more seconds all she does is breathe in and out, her chest rising, as if she’s testing the air, as if even that she cannot trust it, let alone me.
“Fernando was shot.”
That doesn’t hit me as hard as it should. Then it does, as a few memories come through to me. I let out a sigh.
“By the cops. Three times in the back.” Her voice hardens and I understand how what I said earlier in the cab was foolish. She continues: “Never had a chance. He was coming back from work too. They found weed on him. So I guess it’s okay.” Her voice cracks. “He hated that job too. But I always said that he should do it.”
“No, no,” I say and sidle up next to her, placing my arm around her shoulder. I know where this kind of thinking leads. This if-this then-that. If I was a better person, other people would be alive. “It’s not your fault.”
“It’s...”
I hold her closer. She’s trembling now, tears rolling down her cheek.
“Why him? He always tried to do good.”
“I know.” He was kind to me when he didn’t have to be. And that thought turns into revulsion for myself. Because if the world was full of people like Fernando, I know it would be better off, but if it were full of people like me, I’m doubtful that it would be much better off at all. “He was a great man. I could tell, even if I didn’t know him that well.”
She nods her head, looking at the fire. The flames reflect off her tear-stained face, making her seem more alive than ever.
“It’s not your fault. It’s a fucked up system is what it is,” I say.
“It is.” She wipes her eyes.
I don’t bother asking about Luis. His heart could not have been strong enough to handle hearing that his grandson was dead. And just the fact that he wasn’t here was enough. I hold Dalcia tighter.
“Thanks for bringing me here.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I don’t think I like the city anymore. I don’t know if I can go back.”
“You don’t have to,” I say, though I’m not sure if that’s wise. Because, I’m not sure if I want to admit it, but I want her to like me. Not a crush, for just that having her here is quieting my worries. “You can stay here...” Perhaps that sounds too presumptuous. “Or go anywhere else you want.”
She smiles at something I said, I’m not sure what.
“Thank you. But I don’t think I’m ready to stay somewhere that might not even be real.”
Hurt, I shrug. I’m much too sensitive around her, and she can tell. She mimics my shrugging. Almost like we’re back in high school, teenagers all sensitive of each other, and yet without enough experience with life, with other humans to be anything but insensitive. I stare hard at the fire.
“But I might not have a choice,” she says.
I pull out the sleeping bags, deciding that perhaps I shouldn’t speak, nor expect much from her, because she’s completely devastated by the death of her family, so what do I expect?
When I lay out the pads as well as the bags, I slide into mine. She watches like it’s something unknown. “I’ve never seen sleeping bags like that.”
“Oh,” I say, knowing that the mummy shape can throw some people off. “They’re the warmest shape, as well as lightest. Backpackers use them.”
“They look weird. The one’s I’ve seen were rectangles.”
“You’ll stay warm in them.” I fish around for the label on her bag. “See? It says 0 degrees. That means that it’s good until that temperature.”
“That’s too much.”
“It is. You don’t have to zip up all the way.”
She shifts her feet, biting her lip and considering, or appearing to consider the sleeping bag. I, wishing I had a book, lean up on my elbows and take in the dying fire. “It’ll get cold soon.”
“I’m not a baby,” she says, angry all of a sudden. “I know when I’m cold and when I need to sleep.”
“Sorry.” This isn’t as relaxing as I thought it would be. I half wonder what’s going on up in the City. I think about the wasted day helping out Dalcia. No, that’s not the way to think, I helped her get out of a jam. I look at her angry face. Did I? “I’m also sorry for letting that guy... them destroy your place.”
Waving her hands, she places them on her hips. “It wasn’t my place. And that’s not what I’m saying.”
I nod though I have no clue what she’s talking about. “I just wanted to get you out of the noise. The din. It can drive into your thoughts, not give you a moment’s rest...” I’m not sure what I’m talking about.
Dalcia, her hands now rubbing her upper arms nods her head, looking around. “I like this. I’ve never been... you know, in nature before.”
Not wanting to say something cliched like “it’s beautiful” I stare even harder at the fire’s red logs and close my eyes—the red formation of logs still glowing behind my eyelids, they turn dark blue—and I open my eyes as the breeze shifts and smoke sends tears running down my cheek. I cough.
“I like it. But it’s so quiet. Like I can hear my ears ringing.”
I don’t agree at all, but decide that it’s not the right time to make that point. After all, here there is quiet, but it’s the rustling of grass and the sound of birds somewhere, and the waves pushing into the beach. “I know, same here. Some times, when I go to the suburbs, it feels like a tomb.” I open my eyes.
She rubs herself harder. “You into this then? The nature?”
I look around. “Yeah, I like it.”
Digging her feet deep into the sand, she kicks some into the fire then moves over, rubbing her hands over a few lines of flames. “Only thing I don’t like...”
“What? This place?”
She’s staring hard into the fire. The air between us, though cold, is heating up with tension again. I get the sense that she hates me, but because I was there with her grandfather and brother only a short while ago, and they seemed to like me, for that she’ll
put up with me. Or even allow me to speak to her.
“Your friend. What’s his deal?”
“Turing?”
“Turing,” she says, like the word is cursed. “Is he your friend?”
“I wouldn’t call him my friend. But I know him.” Should I tell her?
“There’s something odd about him. Very odd.”
“What do you mean?”
“He started to talk to me, started to look at me, and I got shivers.” She shakes her head vigorously. “No. There’s definitely something off about him.”
I think about what I’ve seen in Turing’s mannerism’s lately that would indicate anything odd. “He’s a good guy,” I say, surprised to hear myself defending him.
“So he is your friend.”
It’s my turn to shrug. “He helps out when needed.”
“And a few of the other guys in that building. They seemed off. The same way.”
I look up to the milky way. A satellite passes just above us. My mind moves away from Turing, his metallic structure, and to the stars; could never really wrap my mind around how far away they are. I’ve seen models, I’ve seen maps. But it slips out of my grasp. Thinking about Turing is the same, on a conceptual level.
“You’re not telling me something.”
I look down. She’s staring at me, her eyes sparkling furious.
“I’m not?”
“Is he your friend?”
“With Turing, you have to realize that such words don’t mean as much.”
She steps over to me, and sits on her haunches. The intensity of her eyes forces me to look down; my face grows warm, but I don’t want to tell. I’m not sure why. She playfully punches my sleeping bag. “Is he your—“
“No,” I say, somewhat angered.
Another minute passes. “I don’t think you’re going to believe me if I tell you.”
“What, after bringing me to a place with a lake and fire underneath the city?”
“He’s a robot.”
Her eyes dance downwards, she’s thinking hard about this. “Okay.”
She doesn’t ask anymore questions, only stands and walks off to the lake. I follow her with my eyes, but she disappears behind the fire. Wondering if I should bother seeing if she’s okay, I decide to instead just stare at the sky. My eyes close.
The ground sucks me in, I feel heavy and weightless at the same time. A dream envelops me and as I’m running in the dream, I trip and kick my foot. I wake up, still facing the same sky and cold air. I look over, and see Dalcia hunched over taking off her pants, her shirt and bra off. One glimpse of her thighs and laced underwear and I close my eyes, blood rushing, my heart beating fast enough that I think she can hear me. I pretend to have the slow breathing of a man sleeping. She slides into her sleeping bag.
I open my eyes, pretending to be startled. She’s looking right at me, smiling. Her clothes are in a pile next to my face—dangerously close.
“Was I sleeping?” I say, my voice almost cracking. I remember my place, the future and I calm down.
“Yes, old man.” She has a smile. My face burns, like I know I’ve been found out.
“Where did you go?”
“Just to see the lake. The water is definitely not city water.”
A breeze shifts her clothes dangerously close to me.
“It’s real, isn’t it?”
I shift in my bag, suddenly too hot, lean over and unzip the bottom part. Cold air smacks into my sweating feet and legs. Still, it’s a relief. I want to answer yes, but still, without a way to explain this place, with the sense that I’ve been at times in my life much too close to insanity—after all, I’m still in the fringes, still thinking in the ways of a man in the fringes—and want to avoid that.
“What are you scared off?” she asks, looking me in the eyes, stirring my insides.
“The future.”
“You sense it too.”
And I realize that even if I have lost my wife, my trade, that perhaps I don’t have the right to complain as she does, this young woman dangerously close to being cut down at so young a age. “Sense what?”
“This place. It’s beautiful, but it smells, feels tainted.”
I sniff the air, only smelling the sweat perfume mix that is her clothes. “Tainted?”
“You said he was a robot.” She leans in to say this, leans in and whispers.
“Turing?”
“Yes. I knew he wasn’t human.”
“You didn’t.”
“I did,” she says without effort, as if she’s thinking to herself. Her eyes dart off into the distance, then back at me.
It’s apparent that she’s much more intelligent than I.
“Okay.”
“He led us here. It’s his place, isn’t it? That’s why it smells, it feels... tainted.”
“Turing is all right,” I say, without much force. “He’s going to help. He knows how to help.” I turn my attention to the embers of the fire, now kicked up by the latest breeze; red dots streak against the dark sky. “He’s all right,” I repeat. It’s very possible that I’m at the end of my wits and I’m trying to grasp at straws. “He’s going to help us.”
“I don’t like him,” she says.
“I felt the same way at first.” I pause, feeling tired. “Why don’t you like him?”
“There’s something wrong about him.”
“That’s it?”
“It comes from here,” she says and pounds her chest. “This is what has guided me throughout my life.” She looks at me for a few seconds, her eyes licking up my face. I’m sure that she’s toying with me, thinks that I’m nothing but a thing to be won over. “And you said you felt it too?”
What to say? That at this age you, if you haven’t won many bets, start to disregard your gut feeling? Perhaps, but I don’t feel much like bashing myself anymore. “What do you think of the world? Of how things turn out?” I think of some of the images that Turing shared with me. Of how he wanted to show and needed to show me the vicious images of what our government and other governments were doing around the world. “You watch the news?”
“What does that have to do with Turing? The help he’s going to give us? Listen,” she says as she pulls closer. “Those who can, push. Those who can’t, join them or die.” Her voice cracks and she moves away from me.
I move closer to her, and place my hand on her shoulder. My mind rests on her—she’s right, the poor always seem to sense power games better than most—as do my eyes, and when she opens her eyes, I try to smile. But it comes out like a half smile, and I’m sure that I look goofy.
Her face breaks into a brave smile, a smile much prettier than mine, I’m sure. “Thanks,” she says, pulling her hand out of the sleeping bag and placing it on mine.
Now my mind travels far away from here, to the previous question she’d asked me about Turing and her doubt. Why am I placing so much faith in him? He is, in my opinion, a potential answer to some question, some rock inside my chest and mind that grates and tears down much of my thinking, because out there in the world there always seems to be some level of injustice. But how? Why so much faith in algorithms and boolean logic?
Dalcia snaps her fingers in front of my face. “You are a space man, aren’t you?”
She points her finger accusingly at me, a smirk on the corner of her thick lips. “I know you. I know your kind.”
I tilt my head, unable to suppress a smile from forming on my lips.
“You’re the kind of guy whose mind doesn’t stay here,” she says and indicates towards the ground, “with us on earth. It likes to fly up there, right?”
My chest tightens. She’s not only smarter than I am, but she’s also burrowing her way through my soul.
“You do. That’s why the world still surprises you.” She shakes her head. “What did your ex think?”
That sounds so final, ex. I cannot respond to that. She probably thought the same.
“Well, fly all you want,” Dalcia
continues, “just make sure that you don’t fall and hurt your loved ones below.”
My face burns; my eyes drift over her shape in the sleeping bag and over the dead fire to the lake and a few clouds lingering in the sky. I’m not sure why I’m taking this.
“So you trust Turing?”
“He knows how to get money, and he sees the world like I do,” I say with a certainty that shocks me. “The world will be better. That stuff about the about pushing. This will help. Trust me.”
“That’s it?”
She looks at me with either pity or admiration. I’m glad she didn’t question me or my world view—though they’re the same thing in the end.
Again, silence reigns.
She pulls up closer to me, and I let her, drifting off to sleep.
I jerk awake to her pinching me.
“Do you know art?”
I mumble a curse word. “What?”
“Art.”
I tsk. “I know something about it.”
“I always wanted to do art.”
“You can still try.”
“I can’t. I don’t even have a place to live in.”
Not sure where she’s going with this, I keep silent. Perhaps it was the wrong reaction. Silence fills the air, and soon I’m moving away and drift off to sleep.
When I wake up, a few birds, small things with yellow crested chests, are pecking at the remains of a packet of peanuts. They hop over a few mounds of sand and closer to me. Dalcia, who’s up against me, shifts and the birds all jump back. Except for one. It’s hopping, is the only one with a red crown, and regards her movement as something of an intrusion. For a second, I realize that the glint on this bird’s eyes is not the same as the others. That it’s a little too glassy, a little too clean. Dalcia mumbles and moves away from me. All the birds, except the red-crowned one, hop and glide a few feet away from us. The red-crowned one, jumps, then slowly settles on the remains of the fire, a charred log looking like the remnants of a burned building.
The Labyrinth of Souls Page 29