“I wouldn’t want you listening to every word I said anyway.”
Chad’s face dropped from a whimsical state to a serious, adult state.
“I wanted to wait for your dad to get here, but I’m just so excited,” Chad restarted.
“What about?”
“I left the city the other day.” Chad had a smile big enough to see from space.
“You left Boston? Why on earth would you do that?”
“Because I’d never done it before, and I’ve never know anyone who has. Do you?”
“No. No! Of course not.”
“There is a lot out there, Liz, it’s our future and our past. We can’t just hide in the city forever.”
“Nobody is hiding, this is where we live.”
“We lived, spread across the world once. With machines to help us travel anywhere. A world of discovery.”
“Machines and discovery that almost caused our extinction and the end of the world.”
“We don’t know that for certain. There is a lot we can learn, find.”
“The city is safe, Chad, you don’t know what’s out there.”
“I dunno what, exactly, I found a…a… zone where everything is…” his voice faded out.
“Like a daydream?” I asked. “Sounds like a movie.”
“No, I’m serious. I couldn’t stop wondering, you know, why the world changed. What was the purpose? I hiked out there,” Chad continued.
“Out there!? That doesn’t even make sense.”
“I stumbled upon it, it is only about 19 k—devrons or so west of here. At Weeks Cemetery,26 but the place has a pull. Logan has it partially cordoned off, they’re cautious of entering.”
“Whats there?”
“Creatures, maybe. Or something important from the old age!”
“What are you even talking about? This is too much.”
“There are places within the zone where gravity is at half its strength, and others where water will grab a hold of anything it touches, surrounding it like the wind, and burn it into oblivion. There isn’t any thing alive out there. I didn’t even see a squirrel or hear the chirp of a bird.”
“It’s been months since I’ve heard a bird, Chad.”
“I spent three days walking around aimlessly until I needed to come back for supplies. It looked like a crash. Like a city crashed down from the sky.”
“It’s dangerous! Chad, this whole thing sounds crazy.”
“No, I know, but it’s real. It’s something.”
“Something? That’s worth risking your life for?”
“I won’t know until I go back.”
“You can’t!” I froze, I’d just blurted the words out. I had no intention to back them up with reasons, feelings, or understanding. It wasn’t even that long ago, but I was so much younger then.
“I need to know, Liz. About the past, and whatever happened, even if there is nothing to find ever, I can’t stop looking. If nothing else, I found a lot of usual… things, machine parts and artifacts, maybe. Trees are growing through the wreckage.”
“You really plan on breaking into a Guard zone to salvage some junk and see trees? There is a reason we don’t need trees anymore!”27
“Liz.”
“I just don’t see it.28 You’re choosing to leave us when you don’t have to.”
“I’m already 24, we won’t be living as long as our parents… I don’t know how long we’ll live without the treatments they had. I want to do something with my life before it’s over without me knowing it.”
* * *
His name is Guy, and I worked with him at the water dispensary. He thought this was a date. His parents aptly named him. He is not Chad, or Chad—like, but when I could I’d pretend he is. He doesn’t know; nobody can see my thoughts. He had recently moved out on his own, too. Guy is messy; messy hair, messy clothes, dirt under his finger nails. We only came together out of some weak occupational connection and mutual disconsolance. I wasn’t sure what the movie was because I couldn’t stop worrying about the couch I was on with Guy. It was sucking me down to the depths of hell, maybe somewhere worse, and people generally find it weird if I keep moving to adjust, to escape, so I didn’t move. He put his arm around my shoulders, but I had mixed feelings: happy because it meant he liked me, sad because it pushed me farther down into the couch, and worse my shirt had slid up held between me and the couch back exposing my skin to the horrific floral fabric, which was scratchy. I inwardly shuddered so he wouldn’t think it was because of him.
It’s not because I liked Guy, but I wanted him to like me.
I couldn’t concentrate on this movie or on Guy at all. I had to fake being an adult in front of him to show him that I was strong, that I wouldn’t be a burden to him, and to make certain for myself. I was scared of growing up; when it’s real, when I could no longer pretend to be an adult or a child or anywhere in between at will.
I began to think that my skin was turning into the fabric of the couch, because of the scratching. Slowly my back turned blue with small white and pink flowers dotted across it, and it spread to my arms until my entire body was covered. I was becoming a me—couch—hybrid creature and nobody noticed. I was, as I’d folded down into a turtleish stature, a child couch. What was my mission? What could I do with my new life? Should I use these new powers to scare people? Can I do something great now that I was not a regular human, like show everybody that humans are more similar than different: “We are not so different” they will say to each other while uniting to shun me.
“Do you like the movie?” Guy asked while he leaned in towards me, snapping my mind back to reality, but I could hear him just fine from where he was.
Pretending it was Brazil29 I told Guy that I liked it. It wasn’t Brazil, but Something and Someone are Dead and it seemed good but I didn’t want to like it and I wasn’t in the mood for fate.
“We should do this more often.”
“Do you usually watch movies like this?” I asked, grabbing for anything to say, but instead of answering he just kept leaning in towards my face… “I’m just glad it wasn’t CSM.” His face smelled like beeswax32 and his breath was like baking soda and mint. I guess he wanted a kiss, a confirmation of a connection between us, but I wasn’t there. As he got extremely close I had to fake a sneeze to keep my personal space, I had just returned to humanity after transforming into a couch creature and I needed to regain my personal bubble.
My shift began the same, hum in
the dark with no escape, but the hum
rattles in your head even when we’d sleep and I only
thought it was sleep. Except this time,
outside the ship, was a gaseous giant planet that orbits the same
star as the Refulgent world we seek. The Sapphire Jewel
sits outside the window now as I
write this letter, a whole new hum
here. It’s hard to fully grasp what you have
accomplished by coming here, the quiet sounds of rain
and thunder below us, and it is hard to imagine
what I will accomplish when we meet the creatures who live here.
The stasis process takes a quarter of your planet’s rotation to fully awaken
my subjects, perhaps this will be our last letter home for
some time as we adjust to a new life; we won’t have the time to write me a short letter, so a long one will have to do.
The trip here was quite uneventful,
as we Zeals, and I, would no doubt prefer. It has been a long time
since we left… You’re not even sure who this letter will be
sent to. My sister, dear ♪∂Ϟ♭♬, you hope they are well, or perhaps
we are long dead,
and my progeny receive this letter. Have you told them
about me? About how you would sneak
out during the night to watch
the stars, how angry father would
get because of how tired I’d be
in the mornings, especially after mom died, forced to do chores.
While I’ve been in stasis you had dreams
of that time, you were young
and happy, most of the time, I didn’t worry
about silly interstellar implications of finding and meeting
alien life or how all society was on the verge of
tearing myself apart.
Space travel, seeing worlds much larger than ours,
and numerous, makes it all seem
— ∂ϞϞ¥Ƙ
Reality is reality whether it really happened or not. I walked out of the station because I was confused. How had I even gotten there? George: remember! The air smelled like sour milk and my head felt as if I’d been crying. Even if it’s not a reality we’ve all shared, reality is in the mind of the beholder. Sometimes. I think. Reality is reality whether it really happened or not. Do we see the same view as others? Darkness backwards and lightness forwards, or as our hair and voices differ are the insides such amounts different? As I measure the curve of the roadway I walk. How do I measure the thoughts and the memories, the feelings and the dispositions, the matter and dismatter in the other than I? Some are like waves, but can be predicted easily while others are like the night sky with endless amazement. Is your reality the same as mine or is that the point?
My emotional state rebounded as I jaunted down the station’s stairs into the city, trying to whistle the songs I’ve heard from birds throughout my life, trying to calm myself and blend into the coming dawn.
I had thought everything was getting better.
Saraswati sent me on an expedition to find her friend. She said we could share his friendship, a perennial somewhere south of I—90. He is said, said Saraswati, to be one of the wisest, most powerful in all the world— the ancient Ganesha. I was to find him inside a large obsidian colored cube between the city and the sea with history inside.
Crossing the boarder of I—90. Returning one again to the apocalypse of ancient decay I was immediately sad by the state of absolute abandon. Everything was red with neglected, alone, it hurt to walk through with no way to offer change.
Buildings are meant to be lived in.
I heard a roar from the havoc of what was once apartments and suddenly a beast the size of a dozen dogs leaped from the iron scraps. The beast chewed on iron rust from the collapsed ancient carapace. Mid—mastication it looked up and noticed me. The beast roared and I ran while wetting my pants. The apples Saraswati sent with me tumbled to the ground. The beast crushed them with hoofed feet and so much force they burst like the explosives they used in the old world; magnalium mixed with strontium, potassium perchlorate,33 and… and… what else?
Fire burst as the stomp of the beast exploded the skin of the apple in all directions.
I fled through an iron curtain of rusted mist that seemed to emanate from the back of the beast; I ran as fast as I could.
The beast followed.
I ran.
I could feel the monster, heavy gravity was all around me, come hot and powerful and ancient, like a rocket piercing through the sound barrier, that wrecked clouds and mountains alike. The beast was not from this world— it devoured it, showing me true destruction up close and in progress. The quadruped forced itself towards me with destruction meant to stop flowers from blooming, children from dreaming, life from living. Mist flowed off its back like a cape dissipating towards the horizon.
The monster was anti—love with a sly, indicating smile.
Passing through a thicket I entered a glen, a hole of peace somehow placed between the corpse—shells of buildings on all sides, and music34 was playing. The glen was accompanied by several plastic climbing tubes that children once played on surrounding a dinner table. The music seemed to emanate from every direction.
“Hello, friend, don’t mind me.” A small human—like creature hummed.
“I’m… I’m…”
“Running, I know. Covered in sweat. Out of breath. Lost your apples?”
“My apples… I need those… where are we?”
“This place is mine. Nobody enters here without my knowing, my approval. I saw you chased by that horrible beast, I helped you.” All at once: completely weasel, man, horse, tiger, dragon, and woman. The only thing in common between the creature’s shifting forms was a spider—like movement and deep red paint covering its body like clothing.
“Thank you.”
“You are my guest. Have a seat,” itsaid pointing to the table made of ancient wood surrounded by chairs uncomfortably close together, none matching, with a smattering of chipped, broken, and pulverized vitreous, translucent ceramic material resembling the shell of a cowrie spread across the surface.
“Won’t the beast follow?”
“No.” It said while running fingers through porcelain dust.
“How can you be sure?”
“I can be, yes. Absolutely certain. Those monsters have no food here.”
I slowly wandered a few paces while gazing around, “aren’t we his food?”
“Oh no, no, no. Of course not. They eat the ruin.” It’s stature was amorphous as it pulled a human corpse out of a plastic tube and brought it to the table, posing it in a seat. I felt as if I must’ve been dreaming, but I knew I was awake.
“Why did that thing chase me?”
“To kill you. You startled it. Perhaps it thought you were hunting him. Creatures, they have instincts,” it hoisted another corpse from another tube, sitting it in another chair.
“It was never this dangerous before.”
“Well, it isn’t “before” now, is it?”
This creature did not seem dangerous, but when I saw how he handled the corpse with ease and whimsy I knew he could be malignant. He was some kind of powerful hermit beat—brain or beat—brain god.
“What is your name?”
I told him my name, he told me he has had many names since the start, “I am from and of the earth. I come from far out,” but I could call him Iktomi; Iktomi was male, or the creature’s all—at—once—ness disguise had given up, or decided, and presented me with one solid and consistent image. A tall, hunched man, only slightly older than myself, with brown hair like mine reaching down below his knees. “It is all rather simple if you can see all of human time. You won’t have to worry about any of that for awhile yet. Maybe you’ll be ready in the future. I’m not sure. I’m really rather uncertain. Good luck. You, well, you I like.”
“What are you preparing for?” I asked knowing all along he saw nothing wrong or strange with how he handled the bodies, that if I offended him I might become one— a prop— and that his power so exceeded my own that once I entered the glen with Iktomi I would never be in control again.
Iktomi was more interested in cleaning dishes with his button—less, open sleeve, then he muttered: “When there are clouds in the sky, and they are all brown, always brown, you may be sad, but remember they’ll soon pace away.”
“Okay…”
“Look—” he gestured around the glen, “do you see the point?”
“What is the point?”
“—not everything has a point. For example, a pencil is pointless.”
“A what?”
“Never mind, well, I want to know a ploy to distract us— There are apples, right there, on that tree.”
On the table appeared a whittled porcelain tree with the largest apples I’d ever seen almost crying off the branches. Twice the size of the ones Saraswati grew, the apples were dark red and every shade till light yellows emerged. I quickly began to devour one from each hand.
“Yesterday was the perfect day to be lonely,” Iktomi started, “but today it seems companionship is in order. This transient form is nothing more than a nodule. You are only a piece of what you think of as ‘self.’“
I ate.
“Each ‘individual’ is nothing more than a non—periodic signal, a decaying signal, we are but an effect produced outside of the mind.”
Apple after apple, it felt like a trance as I focused on Iktomi’s words.
“We are on a journey, an experience, to new realms of thought. The scope and content of the experience is limitless.”
As I ate I felt strange.
“Turn on! Think for yourself.”
All of a sudden my entire waking life
seemed to be a dream,
then a terror,
then not mine
I was laughing and crying in turn about
it all, then moving on, instant after instant a new life.
I felt as if my body was filled with air instead of blood, like I could float and if I tried to hum I would, I could, but I didn’t.
I tried to stay on the ground,
the moment passed like
ripples across a pond
I got scared I missed it forever—
cursed to walk the land as I always had, blood bodied. I felt like all of life
is some kind of careful balance between holding back
letting loose
just enough
to keep from destroying
butterfly wings with dragon’s fire
until only few truths remain.
The look and feel of porcelain had become miraculous to me. The dust ran through my fingers, my fingers, I could see the origin of life, I was the source of the Earth and sun and every moon there was! I was a rising wave! I was—
Wait, no. Is that right? Wait.
I felt sick. Unsure. Where exactly was I?
“I’m alive now, right now; confirmed now. For now.” Iktomi looked at me with a smirk.
My lungs were rebuilt by butterflies which is why I can fly and my brain used to be mush but Saraswati helped me repair it— the lightening struck the lump of clay and it was alive. A brain built of brains, each growing on top of the previous until a usable whole was formed.
A trail of turtles, 17 long, limbs of fire and shells of ice, crossed my path. The second 7th turtle grew large as a carriage when the line stopped in front of me so I hopped on his back and went for a ride. The turtle’s back elongated as he turned into a dragon, long and thin, with a mane of unburning fire. The dragon tried to fly, but its weight kept us down and its paws created chasmic prints.
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