by Chris Kelso
‘Next thing I know, I’m stuck in this place. But, I’ve reformed my thinking without the help of Mr. Dunwoody. I’m much more, uh, open-minded and I came to that destination on my own terms. They leave me alone. I never get any hassle. The key is acceptance of who you are.’
‘But I don’t fucking know who I am!’
‘Course you do. You’re you!’ – She looks at me monocularly.
I hear a rope snap and the sound of a deadweight thumping the tarmac. I can’t bring myself to look. I know we didn’t love each other, but I couldn’t stand to see Ailsa in that state, like a casualty of war left by the roadside to rot in a heap. The old woman looks over though and barely reacts. She looks at me and smiles a vacant grandmotherly smile.
‘I remember Ailsa’s husband, um…what was his name? Um, oh, Joe. That’s it. He was a Construction Management undergrad when I knew him. A guy who drops the ‘R’ at the end of every syllable. Joe was an easy guy to like. He was also head of the, uh, the, uh…the Afro-American Cultural Centre. Some people thought he was a hyperactive dilettante, oh yes. Meeting that new wife of his didn’t help. That’s how Ailsa wound up here. But she couldn’t change. She was too damn stubborn.’
She shuffles on the spot, her sturdy legs and overripe figure undulate as she attempts to stifle an itch. It’s so hot that the blood tickles the raised veins beneath the skin of my forearms.
A klaxon sounds and Dunwoody’s robotic voice emerges from the rooftops of every building in a refrain of condemnation -
… And the sun died again in a sky like black smoke. Year 295, the year of the Consulship of Tuscus and Anullinus
‘Be thankful for the clouds, Kurt, for they are a veil that hides the truth,’
‘You thought yourself safe, untouchable, but the beast is merciless. Nothing you do will stir sympathy in its heart… vast beyond measure, it has no more regard for your suffering than the human species has for an insect’s. You are less than an ant … a source of humour for the beast. And when it sees your eyes projecting that tiny cult image of god onto the infinite cosmic canvas…
‘As the feeble light of your dead world burns its final ember, the agony will have only just begun…’
The old woman and I communicate with our eyes - I go for trepidation but it’s impossible to tell exactly what’s going on in her head.
‘That doesn’t sound very promising. Tell me, before I go, what is the significance of the number 295?’
She take s a moment, gapes at me like a lobotomized idiot, like one of The People.
‘Well, the angel number 295 is a sign that you should trust and love yourself much more than you’re doing right now…’
- Fucking hell.
‘Never mind.’
‘You remind me of a Bermudan writer called Trout. He wrote ‘Barring-gaffner of Bagnialto’, ‘Maniacs in the Fourth Dimension’ and a bestselling memoir, ‘My Ten Years on Automatic Pilot’. He turned science fiction plots into jokey little parables, was quite obscure and died poor.’
‘I think he sounds familiar.’ – I reach into the cloud of names and characters hovering above the city and find Trout’s name and his creator.
‘I hope you won’t take offence to this but you seem kind of half-rendered. I can’t quite put my finger on it.’
‘Not at all.’
‘Hey, you know what? Where I’m from originally, well, we lived in a wonderful age of technology. People who didn’t have the nerve to kill themselves had this new outlet, a form of therapy called The Simulacra.
‘There’s a company called - well I can’t actually remember their name, but it’s a conglomerate acronym of some description – they created these droids that look exactly like you, act like you too. Then, uh, they put you in a room with the replica and let you do or say whatever the hell you want.
‘So, um, you can kill the droid. You can just yell at it. It’ll take any amount of abuse you throw at it. All it costs is one simple piece of information. It has to be delicate. It has to be important information. Something you were trusted to keep, something only the alien government could benefit from. I remember, I think, I remember I told the company about my father’s little side business dispensing controlled substances to bipolar patients, a crime worthy of 60 years’ incarceration in the cities of Wire and Shell County. I knew exactly what the consequences would be and, sure enough, on February, The State Drug Task Force served a search warrant at the offices my father worked and the results of the investigation were presented to an SS Federal Grand Jury.’
‘So you sold your own father up the river?’
‘Do I feel bad about what I’ve done to my father? Yes, a little. Remorseful. That’s too extreme a word. There was no room for proselytism in my father’s world. Anyway, that was a long time ago and he’s dead now. He’s somewhere else entirely.’
‘I think we’re from different places originally.’
‘Immitants use liquid-cooled electronic motors to power themselves, it also gives them the capacity to learn introspection and rational thinking. A Simulacra robot is less complex, less able to learn. It lacks the recursive self-improvement of ultra-intelligent machines. It is born as an adult but has the understanding of a small child. She is a child lost in a chaotic supermarket. Worse than that, she is like a heroin baby - a child of inherited affliction. This city would gobble up that version of me in a heartbeat.’
I turn to leave, convinced this geriatric fool can’t help me, when she grabs me by the inner arm.
‘I can sell you a memory.’ – She says. This time I can tell she’s trying to communicate a seriousness with her eyes.
‘How?’
‘Easy. You just take this potion before you go to sleep every night. It’ll manipulate your dreams and completely re-build your sense of self. The black fluid is added to animal blood which acts as a potent hallucinogen and hypnotic.’
‘Huh. Can I choose the memory?’
‘That’s the snag. Because it’s such an unstable formula, synthesized from the most random and volatile properties, you kind of just have to accept the luck of the draw.’
‘I’ll take it.’
‘Here you go.’ – she passes me a vial.
‘What do you want in exchange?’
‘Nothing. What use is money here? Currency doesn’t exist! These vials are as close to legal tender, they’re the only thing that can be exchanged for happiness and escapism. If you tell me one thing that’s been on your mind for the longest time. Relieve some of your burdensome load. Tell me something you haven’t previously had the courage to say…show me some courage.’
‘I thought you knew everything anyway. I thought we were all connected, no secrets and all that?’
‘Just indulge me, please, indulge, indulge…’
‘Okay…I wish I could tell Kad I love her.’
‘Good. That’s perfect. Enjoy your dream.’
She passes me a copy of the poetry journal New Coin.
‘Some reading material. I’m in that you know.’ – She says a little smugly.
‘Really.’
I hand it back to her. I won’t rise to the old woman’s efforts at making me jealous.
‘You’re in it too.’
There is a spasm of, what must be, pride that transcends all my previous acts of heroism. I take back the magazine and observe the dog-eared page. Sure enough, there’s the name ‘Kurt’ above a poem about an antique city.
- I’m published?
‘I don’t even remember writing this.’
‘That’s because, um, you didn’t write it. I did. I guess that means you get some of the credit too, even though you appear to be subliterate. When I look at that page I see a poem about Harvard students picketing outside a university building. The name says Octavia, not Kurt. We see through our own eyes.’
‘Can I keep this?’
‘Yes, I suppose so, if you really like the feeling of being published, sure. You like this feeling eh? There’s an Evergreen Review, iss
ue 295 I think, I have it somewhere in my backpack. It says I wrote an essay about the South African poet Sinclair Beiles, but it’ll probably change title and author to suit you. Your eyes will rearrange the information. That’s what happens here. This city is one big collective nightmare.’
‘Goodbye Octavia.’
***
I find a blind alleyway running between two of the stately conglomerate buildings. I take my crewneck off and place it on the level patch of dirt and grime. The alleyway is a runnelled cave, this is the perfect spot.
Overhead powerlines crackle with life. They’re close. I don’t have much time.
I feel the encumbrance of fatigue on my mind and body, making my limbs all dense and my muscles achy.
I’m ready to melt into a silver puddle.
A bracket of bollards keep me hidden behind a long cast shadow. The People can’t take this last dream away from me. I rest my back on the labyrinth of utility ducts running up the side of the metallic structure, tilt my head and wait to be enveloped in warm sleep.
The filth covered semi-permeable concrete is cold beneath my buttocks, even through the fabric of my crewneck…
It’s okay though. It’s almost…
Almost time…
For a real rest…
To dream and…
To learn who I once was
Embrace the artificial reverie
All I can do is pray it’s a damn good one. Pray there are no mirrors in sight.
I remove the cork and flex my nostrils over the lip of the vial. Smells like bologna. I swig back the purple potion. It tastes kind of like fizzy soda, it bubbles in the throat, goes down scratchy. All I have to do now is find a quiet place to go to sleep and dream.
Maybe my attitude should be ‘I’ll dream when I’m dead. Once I find Dunwoody and try to set Kad free’, but I’m tired. And, hey, perhaps I’ve even earned it. There shouldn’t be a big price on earning a decent sleep free of psychological anxiety.
I can’t shake the premonition. My god is a merciless god who hates all his creations equally. The dark throne above all those mountains of bone. The bones of women. I open the issue of New Coin and glare proudly into my name until the letters become blurry.
This will be like my last meal before execution.
I’d risk dying just to dream a happy song
A group of men in lab coats are talking like grand ayatollahs behind a glass screen. They see me looking in and someone draws a pair of venetian blinds to shut out our view.
A dustcart drones across the decaying tenements lined up along the opposite side of government headquarters. The glass and metal has given way to crumbling stone. Our orange moon simmers in the reeking haze.
The dream…I have a memory embedded in the back of my skull. A memory of a human life half-lived. I am practically a boy in this memory, in this dream - A guy, a glamorous crook - like a young John Dillinger or Baby-Faced Nelson.
I was walking up to the cash desk. I put down a can of Coke and some bubble gum on the counter. I don’t think I had any intention of paying for the items.
The clerk was an old Asian man who looked at me suspiciously over his spectacles while he scanned through each item. We were the only two people in the store.
‘2.95’ – he said.
I started rooting around my pockets, pretending to search for change. I still had no intention of paying.
Then, my hand met the cool, metal haft of the cooking knife buried deep in the thick goosedown dimensions of my puffer jacket. The clerk was leaning on the desk, still looking at me over both hemispheres of his spectacles.
‘2.95!’ – he said, aggressively this time.
I took a deep breath and went to jerk out my weapon. What the fuck was I thinking? Suddenly the sensory door chime went off and someone entered the shop. I panicked and fled towards the door. The clerk called after me a few times – ‘Hey! 2.95! 2.95!’ – but I got away safely into the street and round the corner into the alleyway without being pursued. I think I was a shitty person, a sad and lonely person.
At least I was a person. I get outside and meet a girl with dark hair. The majority of the dream is taken up by our sexual exploits. We seek union in beds and on floors, against walls, in the cramped spaces of Cinquecento’s and beach coves—we’ll fuck anywhere on offer, this dream girl and I.
I’m certain I’m lousy at it even in the dream. But she keeps coming back for more. Like she loves me anyway.
My mother continues to smear her reflection with Windolene.
My father continues to eat with his mouth open.
I have an old brown car, a Cinquecento. I’ve had it for years and it remains unblemished. I think that it was never a great car but it got me from A to B and served me well during my time among the dream-living—nothing too ostentatious.
Then I’m in a basement. It smells dry, as if all the wood rot and moisture accumulated throughout winter has been absorbed into something else. Sparks fly out from the breaker panel, partially illuminating the dim basement. Then I see it. The beast of the final act.
I’m standing with a phone to my ear…
I pick up the telecom receiver and dial in the code. My hands are sweaty, I hear my own hyperventilating in the echoey mouthpiece. Straight away I get a muzak version of Harry Nilsson’s ‘Without You’. The elevator music cuts suddenly and a nasal voice emerges.
Eight -
Nothing is true, everything is permitted.
- William S. Burroughs
Heat from the filtered sun beats down. Smells of metal and alloy. The whispers from the light create a cool breeze on the back of my neck. I wake up, shoot a ceilingward gaze. The familiar sense of dread returns.
It’s impossible to wake up in a city like this without a true, overshadowing sense of your own mortality. I can’t help but feel we missed the initial stages, we weren’t organised enough. We should’ve banded together sooner, while the uprising was insipient.
Instead we waited. That’s why we lost. That’s why we’ll never win. Never.
- How long was I out?
I don’t feel any different. I achieved a memory, a sense of self and yet I feel utterly empty. Perhaps emptier than before.
‘You…’
I look upwards and see Dunwoody is standing atop the open-air roof deck of the 72-storey bank tower. He flickers like a hologram, wearing a cableknit pullover and filling the bowl of a corncob pipe with synthetic opioid.
‘Are you ready to listen now my little firecracker?’ – He takes a puff.
I am worn-out by his whitewash, each loss chips away a new part of my soul leaving an irreplaceable gap. I’ve been set up by Octavia. My copy of New Coin is nowhere to be seen.
‘You resisted long enough. You proved your point.’
‘Have I?’
‘Yes. You should know that the black fluid that bleeds from everyone is from a blown capacitor on the power supply or motherboard. This place is coming down, we’re going with it unless you join me. The insects are on their way. If you think this place is bad…just wait.’ - All that’s left inside is raven blackness, my insides have been scraped clean. I can’t handle another defeat.
‘I know you think my attitude displays an un-comradely cynicism, but please tell me what I am.’
‘You are not a man, but you’re not an animal either. Hackers know you as Bandookay Ray, a backdoor virus created on the 2nd of September 2005 who attacks the Windows family. You took out four of the company’s main computers and they hold this against you to this day. That’s why they’re sending the beast. You now exist within the mainframe of the RAD750 Processor units. You were created by BrianII, RyanII, ZionII and LionII. They are my friends. We’re the same, you and me. We’re both viruses. You just happen to be a virus who writes poetry.’
‘I’m published.’
‘If you are published then you should believe in miracles. I am your designer, or the cities designer. Decoding signals from the retina, that’s all the scient
ists are doing. They played every B-movie you can think of and recorded their neuron firings. The city is a projection of an old science fiction movie. You and I, we have enzymes but not hormones. Hormones require target cells, which viruses lack. You could inhibit my body and together we could bring down the scientists from the inside, then all the people of the city would be finally free.’ – He exhales a spiral of blue vapor.
‘You don’t want freedom Dunwoody. Freedom is the end of your existence. Without the humanized suffering of slaves, you serve no purpose. You’re like Al Green or Hitler, the progression of human society does not interest you. You need the conflict, otherwise you’ll die.’ – Dunwoody reaches out and touches me with his hand, bumpy as a cat’s tongue. I withdraw my claw but feel the phantom sensation of a fully-digited limb. My hand. Five fingers.
An arbitrary gesture from the Lord?
- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 fingers… but wait…
Dunwoody’s face is impassive, like he never even heard me.
‘No. No, I don’t need you. I could easily let you all kill each other, stay here to suffer, but I am the mother. You will do as you’re told. I have written on holy …’
‘Mandatory speeches will kill us all. All I have to do is walk away.’ - Rage continues building up inside my body like air being furiously pumped into a deflated football. My mouth is full of the hot dust of eternal noon.
‘And go where? I exist simultaneously in many worlds.’
I take a deep breath.
‘You know, I never just sat down and thought about it. About why you care so goddamn much about what I think and do. And, well, I’ll be honest with you, Miles, I don’t buy for a second that you’re some hyper intelligent computer virus who thought us all into fucking existence. I’m sorry, my brain just can’t untangle that into something that’s plausible – but I do believe you’re some kind of gnostic demon, maybe a demiurge, who has fallen in love with humanity, or the idea of humanity at least. The problem with that is, that in the moment you grant a vessel sentience, when you offer it humanity even as an illusion, you can’t then hope to control it.