Why Visit America

by Matthew Baker

  “It’s unnatural,” a neighbor grimaced, speaking of the operation, which was the closest that any of the neighbors ever came to condemning him in person. When he wasn’t around, his mother knew, the neighbors gossiped about him constantly. When he was around, the children on the street weren’t allowed on the property, as if the neighbors were afraid his thinking might be infectious.

  “The internet is a beautiful place,” Mason murmured.

  He had never left New Orleans. He had lived in the same neighborhood in the same district in the same city his entire life. He had always had his family nearby to protect him. The internet wasn’t a beautiful place. The internet was a dangerous place. His mother stayed up late into the night, sitting alone in the kitchen with the lamp lit, searching the news for stories about postcorporeals. Earlier that month a postcorporeal from Indianapolis had been infected with a virus that had damaged her programming so severely that she had crashed and hadn’t been able to be revived, effectively killing her. And only the week prior a postcorporeal from Baltimore had been attacked by hackers, had her memory looted for credit card information and social security numbers, had random sections of her data vandalized apparently just out of spite, and been left in the digital equivalent of a coma. While the year before in a highly publicized case a company in Salt Lake City that hosted postcorporeals from across the country had failed to maintain its facilities properly, not out of negligence but rather in a deliberate attempt to increase profits, regularly skipping the safety inspections standard to the industry, which had come to the attention of the public only after the servers at the data center had been fried by a power surge from a lightning strike, resulting in hundreds of postcorporeals vanishing from the world in a flash, in a disaster the magnitude of a collapsing hotel or a crashing plane, an event that never would have happened had the place been up to code.

  She wouldn’t have any way to watch over him anymore.

  How long would he survive out there?

  For Mardi Gras his family had a tradition of spending the day together, which was an important event every year but this year had taken on particular significance, because the operation was scheduled to take place the following morning. It was going to be her last chance to be with him. She tried to suppress her sense of grief to focus on making the day as perfect as possible. That was all she wanted, a perfect day, so that after losing him she could at least always remember that her last day with him had been special. She shook her head at his father and sent him back into the bedroom to change out of the tank top and cargo shorts he had picked out into something nicer. She made his brothers promise not to pick any fights with tourists. She loaded her purse with spray-on sunscreen and bottled waters.

  And the day was perfect. His family looked beautiful, proud parents and polite children dressed in fine clothing made by respected brands, and in the morning his family snagged prime spots for viewing the parades and saw floats so spectacular as to be truly among the best in living memory, and in the afternoon his family got ice cream cones piled high with generous scoops of butter pecan and rocky road and vanilla bean and blue moon and then strolled along the riverfront cracking jokes, and in the evening his family stumbled onto a live performance put on in a park by an unassuming band and heard a funk concert that wowed the crowd to such an extent that afterward members of the audience formed a line to shake hands with the musicians. And then after dusk his family set up on the patio of a cafe, splitting a platter of nachos and sipping from pints of ale, people-watching over the fence, and that was perfect too. The temperature was mild, the breeze was pleasant, and dazzling stars filled the sky above the street. The road was strewn with colorful debris. Metallic noisemakers, cracked to-go cups, a trampled bouquet, tangled strings of beads, fluorescent dildos, an acrylic bong. Revelers streamed past the patio, people grinning behind feathered masks and people primping rainbow wigs and people whose skin was painted with mesmerizing swirls and people in sequined outfits twirling jeweled canes that glittered under the streetlights and people breathing fire to the cheers of people riding by on unicycles and people embracing strangers and people chanting nonsense with friends and people in billowing capes skipping with each other down the street, and even in the midst of all of that pleasure and joy and happiness, Mason still seemed faintly bored. Eventually he took his phone out of his jacket, hunching over the screen, responding to messages, sending new messages, ignoring the carnival completely. He had only nibbled at the nachos. He had merely nipped at the ale. And at the concert he hadn’t clapped between songs and instead of watching the performance had just fiddled with his phone, and along the riverfront he hadn’t even wanted an ice cream cone and instead of watching the steamboats had just fiddled with his phone, and during the parades he hadn’t bothered to catch any of the throws and instead of watching the floats had just fiddled with his phone. The day had been perfect, and the day had been ruined anyway, because he had been too distracted to experience any of it. His mother leaned back in her chair with a frown. She had worried that she might get so sad tonight that she would cry, but all that worrying had been for nothing, because she wasn’t sad. She was furious. He might as well have already been gone. He couldn’t look away from that fucking screen.

  She stood from the table so suddenly that her chair toppled over backward with a smack.

  “You disgust me,” she spat.

  Mason glanced up with a startled look.

  “I want no part of whatever type of life you plan to have after tomorrow,” she said, walked out of the cafe, and drove home alone.

  Back at the house she changed into baggy sweatpants and a shirt that had been washed and dried so many times that the fabric was soft and wispy, an outfit which generally gave her great pleasure to wear, but which of course now she was too angry to enjoy. She had meant what she had said. She hadn’t planned to say it, but she didn’t regret saying it, either. She was done with him. She was livid. She grabbed a bag of caramels, popped the cap from a stout, and sat down at the table in the kitchen with the lamp on to eat and drink and enjoy it, not just out of spite for him, but out of spite for all postcorporeality. She was still sitting there when headlights swung into the driveway and a key rattled in the door and in walked his father, who could see that she was in no mood to talk, so kissed her head, patted her shoulders, and then went into the bathroom to get ready for bed. Snoring soon filled the house, but she was too restless to lie down, too wired on beer and sugar, so she cleaned instead. She scrubbed the toilet, she scrubbed the tub, and she scrubbed the grime that had formed around the faucet of the sink, trying to avoid thinking about him, which she couldn’t, so eventually she gave up. She thought about him. She wandered the house in the glow of the streetlights coming through the windows, inspecting the contents of cabinet drawers and closet shelves, examining different mementos from his life. Here were the stuffed animals that he had tolerated sleeping with. Here were the action figures that he had endured playing with. Here were the hand casts that he had complained about posing for even after having finished posing. And, oh, here, this was the container full of messages he had written to her at school during lunch. She peeled the lid from the container with a sense of awe. When packing lunches, she had always slipped a note into each lunchbox. And at a certain age he had begun writing her back, shutting a reply into his lunchbox for her to find when she later opened it to empty out the used baggies. His messages had been written on scraps torn from the corners of notebook paper, using whatever type of utensil he had favored at the time. Crayons, then colored pencils, eventually markers, and gel pens as a teenager. The messages had never said anything memorable, just remarks about his classes, or comments about his schoolmates, but she had loved those notes. None of his brothers had ever written her back.

  She remembered now, that was the last thing he had said to her at the cafe before becoming engrossed in his screen. He had been explaining the logistics of the operation. He had smiled, “I’ll message you after it’s finished.�
��

  She dozed off on the couch at some point during the night and ended up with an arm and a leg dangling over the side and her face pressed into the crack between a pair of cushions. His father woke her just before leaving for work. Rain was drizzling. She brushed her teeth, tied her hair back, threw on some eyeliner, put on some lipstick, and got dressed in her uniform for the motel. By then the rain was a downpour. The wipers on her car needed to be replaced, and her breath was fogging the windows, so she could hardly see as she drove. She felt terrible. Mason would be at the clinic by now. Nobody had gone with him. She should have kept her mouth shut the night before. She had just been so angry, but even if his choice was abominable, he was still her son. The guilt was awful. The wipers thocked back and forth. She swiped at the fog with the cuff of a sleeve. Her pulse sped up as she made the decision. She had to go. She was terrified by the thought of being there for the transition, the moment when his body would be suddenly empty, the moment when his mind would be suddenly gone, but she needed to hold him one last time before she lost him. She drove past the motel and merged onto the highway.

  The clinic was locked. After buzzing her in, the receptionist asked for her identification and checked a list for her name and then led her down an empty hall into the operating room, where he had already been sedated. Tears welled in her eyes. The procedure was underway. She wouldn’t have a chance to say goodbye. A machine enclosed his head completely, with the rest of his body extending out of the machine onto a gurney. His palms were crossed over his chest. A neon pink plastic wristband identified him for the operators. Aside from a pair of plain white boxers, he was naked. Seeing him in there like that was so upsetting that she almost turned to leave, but instead she wiped the tears from her eyes and forced herself to take a seat on the stool next to the gurney. She leaned her umbrella against the wall, she set her purse on the floor, and then she held his hands in her hands. The operators nodded at her, and then went back to work, adjusting dials and skimming scans. There was nothing to do but wait, and the wait was terrible. The constant feeling of dread that she had been living with since his announcement was so much worse than ever before. Rain pelted the roof. Indicator lights blinked. The operators murmured to each other. She kept wondering whether the moment had passed, waiting for some sign that the transition had occurred, but there was no way of telling. Her muscles were tensed. Her teeth were clenched. And her dread just kept building.

  She was bracing for the moment of the transition, squeezing his hands with a tight grip, breathing so fast that she was slightly dizzy, staring at his body, when she became aware of a faint beeping coming from a monitor on the machine. The sound made her think of her phone, tucked into the breast pocket of her uniform with the volume on high. She actually would know when the transition had occurred, she realized. When he messaged her, her phone would chime. She glanced down at her uniform, looking at the bulge her phone made in the pocket, and when she did, the strangest thing happened. She felt a burst of joy. Excitement so intense that a shiver passed through her. This sense that she wasn’t about to lose him forever, but instead was finally about to meet him, truly meet him, for the first time. The feeling confused her, but the longer that she stared at the pocket expecting her phone to chime at any moment, the stronger that the feeling grew, until she was nearly overcome with anticipation. His hands were still warm, but whether the life had left his body yet didn’t matter. She felt certain of that suddenly. It wasn’t him. It never had been.

  Life Sentence

  Home.

  He recognizes the name of the street. But he doesn’t remember the landscape. He recognizes the address on the mailbox. But he doesn’t remember the house.

  His family is waiting for him on the porch.

  Everybody looks just as nervous as he is.

  He gets out.

  The police cruiser takes back off down the gravel drive, leaving him standing in a cloud of dust holding a baggie of possessions.

  He has a wife. He has a son. He has a daughter.

  A dog peers out a window.

  His family takes him in.

  Wash is still groggy from the procedure. He’s got a plastic taste on his tongue. He’s got a throbbing sensation in his skull. He’s starving.

  Supper is homemade potpies. His wife says the meal is his favorite. He doesn’t remember that.

  The others are digging in already. Steam rises from his pie as he pierces the crust with his fork. He salivates. The smell of the pie hitting him makes him grunt with desire. Bending toward the fork, he parts his lips to take a bite, but then he stops and glances up.

  Something is nagging at him worse than the hunger.

  “What did I do?” he says with a sense of bewilderment.

  His wife holds up a hand.

  “Baby, please, let’s not talk about that,” his wife says.

  Wash looks around. A laminate counter. A maroon toaster. Flowers growing from pots on the sill. Magnets shaped like stars on the fridge.

  This is his home.

  He doesn’t remember anything.

  He’s not supposed to.

  * * *

  His reintroduction supervisor comes to see him in the morning.

  “How do you feel, Washington?”

  “Everybody keeps calling me Wash?”

  “I can call you that if you’d like.”

  “I guess I’m not really sure what I like.”

  Lindsay, the reintroduction supervisor, wears a scarlet tie with a navy suit. She’s got a bubbly disposition and a dainty build. Everything that she says, she says as if revealing a wonderful secret that she just can’t wait to share.

  “We’ve found a job for you at a restaurant.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Working in the kitchen.”

  “That’s the best you could get me?”

  “At your level of education, and considering your status as a felon, yes, it really is.”

  “Where did I work before?”

  Lindsay smiles.

  “An important part of making a successful transition back to your life is learning to let go of any worries that you might have about your past so that you can focus on enjoying your future.”

  Wash frowns.

  “Why do I know so much about mortgages? Did I used to work at a bank?”

  “To my knowledge you have never worked at a bank.”

  “But how can I remember that stuff if I can’t remember other stuff?”

  “Your semantic memories are still intact. Only your episodic memories were wiped.”

  “My what?”

  “You know what a restaurant is.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But you can’t remember ever having eaten in a restaurant before.”

  “No.”

  “Or celebrating a birthday at a restaurant. Or using a restroom at a restaurant. Or seeing a friend at a restaurant. You’ve eaten in restaurants before. But you have no memories of that at all. None whatsoever.” Lindsay taps her temples. “Episodic memories are personal experiences. That’s what’s gone. Semantic memories are general knowledge. Information. Names, dates, addresses. You still have all of that. You’re a functional member of society. Your diploma is just as valid as before. And your procedural memories are fine. You still know how to ride a bike, or play the guitar, or operate a vacuum. Assuming you ever learned,” Lindsay laughs.

  “Did you do anything else to me?”

  “Well, of course, your gun license was also revoked.”

  Wash thinks.

  “Did I shoot somebody?”

  “All felons are prohibited from owning firearms, regardless of the nature of the crime.”

  Wash turns away, folding his arms over his chest, pouting at the carpet.

  “Washington, how do you feel?”

  “Upset.”

  “That’s perfectly normal. I’m so glad that you’re comfortable talking with me about your feelings. That’s so important.”

  Lindsay nods with a
solemn expression, as if waiting for him to continue sharing, and then leans in.

  “But honestly though, you should feel grateful you weren’t born somewhere that still has prisons.” Lindsay reaches for her purse. “Do you know what would have happened to you a century ago for doing what you did? The judge would have locked you up and thrown away the key!” Lindsay says brightly, and then stands to leave.

  * * *

  Wash gets woken that night by a craving.

  An urgent need.

  Was he an addict?

  What is he craving?

  He follows some instinct into the basement. Stands there in boxers under the light of a bare bulb. Glances around the basement, stares at the workbench, and then obeys an urge to reach up onto the shelf above. Pats around and discovers an aluminum tin.

  Something shifts inside as he takes the tin down from the shelf.

  He pops the lid.

  In the tin: a stash of king-size candy bars.

  As he chews a bite of candy bar, a tingle of satisfaction rushes through him, followed by a sense of relief.

  Chocolate.

  Back up the stairs, padding down the hallway, he pit-stops in the bathroom for a drink of water. Bends to sip from the faucet. Wipes his chin. Stands. A full-length mirror hangs from the back of the door. He’s lit by the glow of a night-light the shape of a rainbow that’s plugged into the outlet above the toilet.