After Mind

by Spencer Wolf

  Breakers tripped off the main power source from the municipal utility transformers outside. Each module had its own battery life support with only ten minutes of power to live. The clock began. But before the batteries died, two dedicated 2.5-megawatt diesel generators would synch in and take over relief for each module. If those two generators failed, a third would swing in as a last resort. Enough diesel was stored in their nine underground tanks of 3,400 gallons each for each generator to last 24 hours. Any fire that found the fuel tanks’ wick from above would shorten those hours’ life expectancy in an instant. The number-two diesel tanks would explode and send pressure waves and bits of concrete shrapnel across the office park and through the adjoining residential neighborhoods for miles around. The calculated threat of an unchecked fire spreading through the data center was extraordinarily small.

  But those small numbers were the furthest thing Cessini could think of as he curled his knees up to his chest. He wrapped his arms around his legs, dismissed the counting of numbers again and again, and cried his eyes closed while the fire bore down.

  Then a hiss from above. A frightful panging of overhead pipes.

  An awful pressurized, sizzling rush grew louder as water flooded the dry and flamed sprinkler pipes.

  Three firefighters from Southwest Station 54, in full protective gear, had fought their way to the control room. The fire team leader rammed the door, leapt the black mesh stairs, clipped the chain with a bolt cutter, and opened the main water valve. The pressure needle sprung. The iron pipe rushed with water to where iron elbows, wrists, and fingers still hung. The deluge of the office began.

  Cessini’s head ducked into his shoulders under the dry sprinkler heads above as the horrible 126-watch data center teetered back on its watery scale to full open bore. The double interlocking pre-action fire suppression system in the data module required two events to trigger the water’s release, an alarm and activation of individual sprinkler heads. The alarm blared unhindered without fail. The glass vials of sprinkler heads had long since broken in every aisle except those where he hid in the northwest. The air pressure was equalized in their pipes and the waves of water barreled in.

  Five, four, and then three aisles away, the water poured and rained, vaporizing on the hot melt of cabinets. The spray and its puddles met electricity with wicked cracks of lightning. Once the glass vials burst in his last row along the northern wall, a 30-second timed delay would be all he had before the air was gone from the pipe and water gushed from its heads.

  It would be best to get up on the floor full footed and run. He could beat the black swirls rolling up through the tiles in the middle of his row. He could jump through the fire engulfing its far end. He could make it in seconds. But not without catching the vengeance of water. If water flowed freely from above in Module Two, then that meant it was already raining torrents throughout his eastern office escape, a monsoon over his faraway exit. His body needed to flee. His mind refused. Daniel would be so enraged, so disappointed. Cessini fell back down into the air pocket and wept. The sprinkler heads over his space were the last ones dry.

  He alone would burn in a shower of fire.

  The sixteen-pronged head at the far end of his aisle opened and sprayed. The next closer popped and poured. Then the next and—

  “Cessini! Cessini, are you here?” Daniel yelled. Daniel’s muffled cry was swamped and gone. Then Daniel yelled down the closer third row. “If you’re in here, run! Run to my voice!”

  The sprinkler over Cessini’s head stayed dry. No water here was better than burn over there.

  “I’m begging you, please! Cessini!”

  As yet another closer sprinkler opened its rain, the hell of great fire was traded in for much worse.

  Daniel ended his search at the pedestrian rail of the first row. A chimney rose from the shifted, vented tile under the cart. He shoved the cart free. “He’s here. He’s here!” Daniel screamed as two firefighters interlocked his arms, and pulled him away. “Cessini!”

  The Emergency Shut Off button was mounted on the interior wall at the door. A firefighter lifted its glass cover and struck it full force with his fist as Daniel cried out in rage, “Damn you, Cessini! What’s the matter with you? If you’re in here, why can’t you be brave and run? Damn you!”

  Cessini, in his corner, heard that alone through the rain.

  All powered operations of the building instantly shut down. All remaining servers from the 588 that lived in the three modules, their CRAC cooling units, their generators, their everything, all went dead, down, and cold offline. The building was silent but for the horror of an unmistakable water count growing near.

  The firefighters retook the end of the first row, wrestled the pressurized nozzle of their hose forward, and threw back the handle. They doused the aisle, from power lines above to deadened floor below. Water saturated the cabinets and flooded through the perforated tiles.

  Daniel fought back. “Not the hose!” he screamed. “You’ll burn him with the water.”

  The fire team grew up the aisle. Cessini only got to his feet. He was trapped, darting in his corner. His bloodcurdling scream of panic drove the fire team faster toward his rescue.

  Moments before, he was terrified to run through sprinklers showering 100 gallons per minute at 50 psi. Now charging him into his corner was the onrush of a two-and-a-half-inch attack hose spraying 200 gallons per minute at 275 psi. In an instant, the forward mist of the water was upon him, then the full power of the hose. It was a wetting protectorate to carry him to safety, but drenched instead, he boiled. His eyes filled red and wild. His body writhed in agony, an unquenchable fire.

  “You’re killing me!” he screamed and fought back as a rabid beast overwhelmed by the tossing strength of a lead firefighter from Southwest 54. Cessini rose up into the air as a sacked creature, hoisted and thrown atop a heroic shoulder. Flown closer to the ceiling, and carried beneath the full open sprinklers’ inundation of the row, he burst as if set on fire alive.

  Outside, in the yard beyond the safety of the trucks, Cessini ripped at his skin, desperately peeling off his wet clothes as he wailed. A tending paramedic attempted to settle the tortured mind of whatever such a poor boy could be doing. He was reaching to comprehend the trauma psychology of a boy who thought his body was aflame.

  “It’s okay, little man,” the paramedic said with his hands reaching and open. “You’re not on fire.”

  Daniel stood at his distance, his life’s work snuffed in a blaze before his eyes. He pulled an oxygen mask from his face and stared at Cessini, raw. “Don’t,” Daniel said to the paramedic. “Let him cry.”

  The building was gone. It was a horrid cost to shoulder. Cessini fell to his wet knees clawed bare. He locked eyes with his father, and then his mind collapsed. He looked down. The grass under the bared skin of his knees was wet too.

  In the light of the fire trucks, they saw together the overflow water that soaked down the yard and cried in its rivers to his knees. The aisles of red welts of his face flamed and streaked from the run of his tears.

  “It’s his dermatology,” Daniel said as he softened. “He’s crying because his body hurts. It’s not his mind. It’s his body.”

  Daniel lay down the silver fire blanket he was given to wear as a shield, and came to comfort and dry his wet son.

  Cessini’s face was covered in pain. He wanted to scratch at his face and body until it bled, to peel away his inescapable skin that had in itself become his own blanket of fire.

  “What did you do?” Daniel lamented.

  Cessini was silent. He could hardly swallow.

  “You took us apart,” Daniel said.

  He shivered and fell only to Daniel’s arms.

  “Why would you do that? Why?”

  “I was afraid,” he said as his eyes shut in their swelling. “I was so afraid.”

  Daniel exhaled and pulled him back in. “You should have just told me.”

  Cessini hurt too much and pushed a
way.

  “We’ll pull through this together, don’t worry,” Daniel said. “We’ve done it before. We can do it again.” He cupped Cessini’s face in the gentle air of his hands and assured him, “We’ll pull through this together, I swear it. Did you try to save us? Is that where you were going? If so, your mother would have been so proud.”

  And with that, his tears ran anew. He fell back into a hold. Guilt was trumped by forgiveness. And the stronger the bonds of arms, the greater the tears of water to savor.

  NINE

  BALANCE

  CESSINI LAY IN his bed on his side and ran his finger up and down his mural-painted wall. A hospital identification band was still wrapped around his wrist. The mural of trees and waterfalls had been changed. The waterfall was dry. Its form remained, but rocks and sprouted landscape replaced the water. The wave machine stayed on his nightstand and rhythmically pumped its white noise for a sound night of sleep. But the old machine’s deeper influence was not so easy to take.

  The squid-bellows lamp stood up on its eight bound arms, its outer mantle breathing out and in to the count of three in synch with the lapping wave sound of the ocean tide. His mangrove rivulus was still alive on its shelf, if older and slower, and it nestled in solitude in its moist hollow log. He watered it bi-monthly according to its need, though with more robotic habit than genuine human care. He tried, but he simply could not identify with a semi-aquatic fish that was neither his opposite, nor equal.

  A vial was at the bottom of the tank in the small pool. It was a treasure chest filled with a younger boy’s long-forgotten cure for the ills of his soul, a triangular brew of two parts animal and one part plant. A fish scale, a beetle’s wing, and a bud of a dandelion. Each lay stale in the capsule at the bottom of the rivulus’ unused pool.

  Robin whispered herself in and sat on his bedside. “Your father thought you might want some company.” She turned off the wave machine and waited for the mantle to let out its last gentle breath. Cessini didn’t turn to her, though she set her hand on his shoulder for him to talk.

  “Ten million, seventy-four thousand,” he said.

  “What is . . .?” she asked.

  “The number of times it breathed since he made it.”

  She looked amazed as the lamp settled still. “Is that a guess?”

  “It’s a six-second cycle. Like a metronome. Three-second breaths, out and in. I sleep eight hours a night. Three hundred sixty-five days a year. It’s been five years, nine months since he made it. I didn’t count. I multiplied in my head.”

  “Looks like your dad made his money’s worth, then,” she said as she poked a finger to the thin of his back.

  “I don’t even hear it anymore,” he said. “Or the waves. Not unless I’m sleeping. And when I sleep, I can swim underwater. Do you believe me?”

  He turned to face her. The welts from the fire were smaller. The streaks of tears ran sideways across the bridge of his nose to his pillow-pressed ear. She dabbed a spot of white cream onto her finger from a tube. He held still as she touched the salve onto the lines of his remorse.

  Meg stood in the doorway like a soft, crying ghost.

  “What is it?” Robin asked her, no more than a stitch above being a wreck herself.

  “What did you do?” Meg asked Cessini.

  “Nothing. Looks like now we both have a secret.”

  “No, stop, I don’t. Talk to me. I could have—”

  “Go back to bed,” Cessini said.

  “Mommy?” Meg asked.

  “It’s okay, honey. Go back to bed.”

  Cessini rolled onto his side and hid against his wall.

  “It’s late,” Robin said to Meg. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  Meg stood a moment for answers Cessini couldn’t yet give. He hurt. She didn’t go with him to the data center when he asked. Maybe she could have stopped him. Maybe there was nothing she could have done. Or, maybe they would have died together. In all, there was only one thing left he could say. “It’s a good thing you weren’t there.”

  She turned away from the door, silenced, then left to go back to her room.

  Robin rolled her palm on Cessini’s back as tears welled in his eyes. “Don’t cry,” she said. She dabbed another spot of cream from her finger to his cheek.

  “What are we going to do?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Robin said. He bunched up the sheet to rub at his eyes. “No, don’t. You’ll smear the magic.” She dried his cheek with the cuff of her sleeve and begged him, “Please don’t cry. It’ll get better. Your father, he’ll get better. You’ll see.”

  “How?” He sniffled.

  “I don’t know. But he will. Tell me. Please tell me what’s the matter?”

  “This safe room. It’s pure, but I have to pass the four-watch to get to the front door.”

  “What do you mean four-watch?” she asked.

  “The kitchen. The bathroom is a five-watch with a three-count drip.”

  “I don’t know what you’re telling me.”

  “The shower drips if you don’t turn it off all the way and I don’t want to reach in by myself. What if I fall?”

  “How are you going to fall? It’s right at the tub. Wait, you keep track of all these . . . counts, when you leave the house?”

  “Ever since I was little.”

  “Every place you go, wherever you are?”

  He did.

  “That must be exhausting,” she said and sat closer. Then he saw something he hadn’t noticed before. Her whole body shook, ever so slight. Her hands trembled, even as she sat still. “Well, if counting works for you. It sounds like you have everything figured out.”

  “Why do your hands shake?”

  She raised her eyebrows in surprise. She laughed. “They don’t. I put cream on your spots because I feel bad.” She tried to rub again. “Because I love you. I want to take care of you. Make you feel better.”

  “But why do your hands shake?”

  She hurried her hand behind her back. Then she brought it out front and level. “You want to know? Well, to tell you the truth, I swore on Meg’s life I would never tell anyone. And that means most of all you.” She dabbed a finger to his nose.

  “Don’t,” he said. “You can tell me.”

  Her words were stuck in the purse of her lips. She couldn’t say why. She covered her mouth with a hand that shook.

  “Do you want to know my secret, then?” he asked and pressed up on his elbows.

  She looked toward the sky and shored up her nerve. Then she looked back down with a nod that was clearer than the muffled cry of her single word, “Please.”

  His words were far easier to say. “I hurt so many people and have no friends to tell. I’m lonely.”

  She choked out a breath and dropped the tube to his sheets. Then she fell into his arms for a long-needed hug. “Me, too. And so did I.”

  He wouldn’t have known. “How?”

  She laughed a bit, maybe somehow relieved. Maybe not. Her hair tickled his nose. She rubbed her eyes and sat up straighter. She pressed the back of her hand to her forehead. “Lonely is a terrible place to be. What about your friends at school? Isn’t it getting better?”

  “They still call me Packet.”

  “That’s good, isn’t it?”

  “The wet wipe.”

  “Well, you are not a wet wipe. That’s not you. They don’t know you. And they don’t know what greatness you are going to achieve.”

  “I know.”

  “Good. So you want to play computer with me before bed?”

  “Sure.” He sat up straighter.

  “Tell me what you believe? What do you know?”

  “I believe I need a new skin. I know I can’t have one.”

  “So how do you resolve that?”

  “What do I want? What do I need?”

  “Nice. Okay, you tell me.” She seemed happier still.

  “I want to be a computer. I need to be a human.”

&nbs
p; “Ah, I can see now why you’re lonely. Anyone ever tell you you talk like your father? Anyway, you are a human. Humans are born with the skin they’re in. You know you can’t do anything about that, right?”

  “I’ve got one for you. Computers burn in water. I burn in water. Therefore, I must be a computer.”

  She weighed her head side to side, like measuring the thought with a balance. “Well, now that is a good one. I’ll have to give you that one for now.” She recapped the tube of cream and set it down on his nightstand. She turned the wave machine and squid-bellows lamp back on. “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”

  “The—”

  “Shh, I’m just kidding you.” She brought up his covers and leaned in for a kiss goodnight.

  Meg’s holler from the other room broke their silence. “When is it my turn? Tuck me in.”

  Robin kept her eyes on Cessini, and smiled at Meg’s nerve. She settled her hand on the top of his blanket. “We’ll talk more tomorrow?”

  But there it was again. He could feel the tremor of her hand through the blanket on his chest. He nodded without words.

  “Okay, good,” she said. “Hey, what’s the one time in your life it’s good to be a chicken?”

  “I don’t know, when?”

  “Thanksgiving,” she said and crinkled her nose. “Remember, computer or human, I love you very much.”

  “Are you coming?” Meg screeched through the wall. She tested their patience. “It’s my turn!”

  “And Meg adores you,” Robin said.

  “I know, like glue.”

  “Mom!”

  “I’m not coming if you don’t stop!” Robin said with a tsk then stood from the bed. “Feel better?” she asked Cessini as she went to the door.

  He rolled closer to the edge of his bed and watched her. She stopped. Her image was distorted through the glass walls of his rivulus’s tank. She had tended to the aches of his skin so dutifully with the cream. He thought he should do the same for his drying rivulus. A rivulus that lived in its tank and managed to control beyond the walls of its world. It got what it needed; it wanted water from a dropper.