The Entropy Sessions

by Novo Dé

  I simply nod, no words, much like a child again.

  She continues on.

  “Rest assured Mr. Neilson, you’ll be in excellent hands with our team. And you still always have a choice. You can cancel at anytime, even after you appointment confirmation, if you’re still having second thoughts.”

  “I just, I just, I’m not sure—”

  “How bout this? Why don’t you think about it. Sleep on it. And when you’re ready, you can give me a shout any time you’d like. You can even have my direct NCL line. How does that sound?” the consultant says, pausing.

  But again, I don’t have any answer for her right away, which she can clearly see on my face, my mouth hanging wide, so she takes that as a sign to push forward, her training shining through.

  “Or we could always proceed now if you’d like?”

  But before I can utter a word in response, CHARLIE gives me a prompt that an incoming face call is coming through – Juliet in fact – saving me again from a situation I’m clearly not ready for, without her even knowing.

  “Yeah, let me get back to you,” I finally say.

  “Of course sir. I’ll email you my contact line. Have a great day! Hope to hear from you soon,” and she exits the call.

  “Go ahead and put Juliet through,” I then say to CHARLIE.

  And I’m immediately met with Juliet’s big beautiful blues.

  “Hey,” I begin, a surprised delight in my voice.

  “Hey.”

  “And what do I owe the pleasure of seeing my beautiful wife at this time?”

  A return to being on my best behavior again, the charm a little heavy.

  “No reason, really, had a break, was just thinking about you, about us, wanted to see your face, hear your voice, is all. Can’t really talk too long; just thought I’d check-in. Say hi. See how you're doin.’”

  And she touches my heart when she says such things, and all thoughts of infidelity disappear. Maybe I was wrong.

  “So what’s up?” She begins.

  “Ah nothin,’ just, messin’ around on the internet; just, killin’ time. Y’know. Same old same old.”

  “Wish it was the same over here. I’m havin’ a day.”

  My God, she really did just call to talk. No agenda. No aim. Just compelled to connect for some reason, a farcry from our usual dynamic. But why? Maybe she’s ready to forgive me.

  Forget. Heal. And maybe, move on.

  “Anything I can…do for you…?”

  “No. Maybe just, try to be home when I get home,” she says, the aim now in sight, almost right away too, my initial thoughts now a bit naïve in hindsight, a sentence to say she hasn’t forgotten anything, and that she’s paying attention to everything. Particularly me.

  “Maybe so I don’t have to worry so much.”

  And I begin to nod, much like a kid again, to say ‘I’m sorry for how I’ve been acting lately’ without words.

  “Understood,” I then say. “Nothing to worry about over here…Not anymore.”

  “Good,” she returns, mirroring my nod, with a tonal quality to suggest that she read through the lines, and believes I’m ready to turn 'a new leaf.'

  “Now…is there anything I can do for you? Want me to pick up something on the way home?”

  A peace offering.

  “Yeah, umm, how ‘bout, I could go for a good sandwich, y’know the one I love, from that one place that I always—”

  “I can do that,” she says smiling. “Well that was easy. Anything else?”

  “Nope.”

  “I’ll text ya when I’m on my way then.”

  “I’ll be here.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  January 1st, 2052

  “…e all heard the warnings; we heard ‘em for years for God sakes. We coulda really done something before it all went to hell. It could’ve all been prevented. Everything. All of it. No one would’ve had to take a side. No one would’ve had to suffer.”

  I swallow hard, audible.

  “The beginning of the end, it seemed at the time.”

  “And we could’ve rationed it all out amongst us, the world over. I mean, we all had enough. Plenty. And the advanced treatment technology was finally taking off, so I, I, I just don’t get it. It didn’t have to—”

  “Fear does incredible things to us Tybalt. And for the lower educated, they don’t think about things like treatment systems; they think only of survival—”

  “No shit – I for one never questioned why all the third-world countries began to rally together – I don’t think anyone did doc.”

  “I believe some of the world’s military leaders beg to differ. Not everyone sees things like you and me Tybalt.”

  “Jesus. And we gave them every opportunity too.”

  “But again, they saw it completely different than us; they saw it as an opportunity to protect their people, especially given the history of how more industrialized countries like ours treat the less so in similar circumstances. They simply felt like their supply was theirs, and wanted to keep it that way.”

  “That’s a nice way of saying that these people were a bunch of fucking hoarders.”

  “I’m not trying to say who was right or wrong here; I’m just trying to help make sense of their actions. Justify their means. Help you understand that there were a lot of different point of views back then, not just your own. And an individual’s vantage point is…everything.” Cohen says with a wry, almost semi-sarcastic tone.

  You snarky asshole.

  “But they fired the first shot; they put the whole damn thing in motion—”

  “Did they? That’s up to debate. I think many of the news outlets would lead you to believe such as idea. But, many act as these, machines to propaganda, especially now-a-days. It’s hard to tell. Especially in our post-NCL era, where many of those stories have been rewritten, to create a good versus evil narrative, especially after we won the war. All we can really go on anymore is…what’s in our memory.”

  Memory is fundamentally human. Without it, we’re nothing.

  “How true that is doc.”

  “But how things can be distorted even there,” Cohen says.

  “Oh sure,” I concur. “And it’s almost impossible to completely fathom all the details of that conflict, because of just the scope alone, even if we had all the facts. I mean, it was the first time a world war was true to its name. Every country on the planet had a dog in this fight. For obvious reasons. And you’d have to be a fuckin’ professor of history to truly understand it all; you’d have to dedicate your whole life to studying it.”

  And Cohen chuckles.

  “Probably so.”

  “Man, I hated those days.”

  And Cohen gives me the look. I already know what he’s going to say before he even says it.

  “I know I know. Elaborate. Got it doc. Well Juliet’s absence obviously had a lot to do with it. But it wasn’t just that. It was the war itself. And all that surrounded it. All, just the politics of it all. God, I fuckin’ hated that shit.”

  “I think we all felt that way Tybalt.”

  “Just all the lies, the corruption. I didn’t know what to believe. Still don’t. I mean, I want to think that their side fired first. That they started it all. But I also remember thinking that the only real reason we were in the war, was because we wanted to take over the reserves. Give a big ‘fuck you’ to the UN share-treaty we signed. And for a moment there, I wanted us to.”

  “Because?”

  “I think it might have just been a survival instinct of my own kickin’-in doc, I don’t know. Our western cultures are different n’ all, but we feel the same thing, don’t we?”

  “Of course,” Cohen acknowledges, nodding.

  “But did I do anything about it? Of course not. I didn’t do a damn thing. Didn’t even protest. I mean, my own wife enlisted to serve, and I just stared at a screen like it was a new entertainment program. All fuckin’ day. Always waiting
for the next bombshell.”

  “But it’s important to understand that you didn’t have to do anything. A lot of people look at that as a protest in and of itself. A ‘silent protest’ if you will.”

  “But it felt like everyone was doing something, except me.”

  “That’s just not true.”

  “But it felt that way.”

  “Tybalt—”

  “The whole thing was just too overwhelming.” I continue on, not even acknowledging the interruption. “That’s when I realized how weak I was. How weak I am. I couldn’t take it. Couldn’t keep up with it. The ‘spin’ stories happening on a daily basis. On our side and theirs. Every action, every military move, challenging my beliefs. Alliances broken, and then mended, and then broken again. Enemies becoming friends becoming enemies. It just piled on and on. And it was all piling on the fact that Juliet was gone. And that I might never see her again.”

  I grow silent and stare at the white walls before continuing on.

  “Her absence was definitely the cause of the self-medicating, but the war, the war itself was the catalyst.”

  “When did you start?”

  “The drinking started when the denial ended. After a month or two of waking up in my bed and rolling over to constantly finding my wife’s side cold, vacant. The reality that she was truly gone hitting home. And when the denial ended, the loneliness set in.”

  “How much would you drink?”

  “A lot. Enough to consistently black out and not know what day it was. Enough to keep me away from watching the news day in and day out. Enough to keep me in a state that is akin to being ‘comfortably numb.’”

  “And how long did that last?”

  “A good while, until my body began to break down and I realized I needed to fill my time with work again, because it was anyone’s guess how long the war was gonna last. But I just shifted to more of the ‘legals.’ Mostly pot.”

  “And?”

  “And it ran its course pretty quick, got bored with it. Went back to drinking, but still worked; had to cover the war at one point, which I absolutely hated. Which led to moving on to more of the hard ‘legals.’”

  “Microdosing?”

  “It’s not really microdosing when ya did as much as I did in a day.”

  And Cohen scrunches his face, his lips shifting to the left.

  “But man was I fuckin’ productive. Even finished a book at that time, along side working my day-job. Took about a month. But never published it. Didn’t put out my best work on all that shit y’know.”

  “And Juliet?

  “Juliet made the whole thing worse. Never called, never texted. Nothin. My guess was that she wasn’t allowed to, given the scope of this being an actual world war. But how could I be mad y’know?”

  “I can’t imagine what you must have been going through.”

  “Doc I was gettin’ close to killing myself.”

  “And I’m glad you didn’t.” Cohen quickly counters.

  “I’d like to say ‘me too,’ but I don’t know anymore. Given our relationship these days, me and Juliet’s, it’s almost like she did die in that war. I mean, I never see her. She’s never around. I don’t know what to think anymore.”

  “Well it’s never too late to start over. What about when she returned home. Didn’t you—?”

  “Juliet returned home at a time when the outcome of the war was uncertain. We didn’t know if we were gonna win or lose. Hell, I didn’t even know she was coming home until one of her colleagues emailed me a month out. I selfishly first thought, ‘fuck, you can’t even pick up the phone.’ And then I thought, maybe she really can’t. Either way, I knew I had to clean up my act, and quick.”

  “And then you saw her?”

  “Then I saw her. And not a scratch on her. But she was different.”

  “But you were together again.”

  “But not for long. Not long enough for me to feel like life was normal again. We definitely tried to play nice, but…”

  “But?”

  “But it wasn’t the same. All the same shit you’ve heard a million times over. And soon after, she had to return. Which really made everything doubly worse. I really wished she had never even come home to begin with. Wished she either got to come home for good, or was simply killed in action, because at least then I would’ve had some sort closure. Her going back, just, just, reopened this, this—”

  “I understand,” Cohen says putting out a hand of comfort again.

  “That’s when I decided I was actually going to kill myself doc. Couldn’t deal with it all anymore.”

  “Really?”

  “But that all changed when I got my CHARLIE unit as you know. And it’s funny too, because, I originally bought it for her. With me gone, I thought, if she actually made it back home, at least she’d have someone to help her take care of the house while she acclimated back to ‘everyday’ life.

  Luckily...we got to talking. Or I wouldn’t be here.”

  “I take it the second tour was harder to endure?”

  “You’re damn right. But CHARLIE helped to counter it all. It was harder to see the world turn on itself at that point. In real-time no less. Sometimes I wish the war went nuclear, full nuclear. Put an end to it all. To us all. Felt like we didn’t need to go on as a species anymore. Not like this.”

  “But it didn’t.”

  “Nope, we came out on top. And it’s clear now that we were always going to win. We had the technology, the weaponry, the man-power, the numbers. I don’t know why I couldn’t see it then.”

  “No one really knew what was going to happen, who was going to win Tybalt.”

  “Hmm,” I reply with my throat.

  “Your guess was as good as mine,” he continues. “I for one, however, am glad we didn’t all kill each other.”

  “You would,” I say dryly, my pessimism bleeding through every breath.

  “What about after that? After we won? Surely you felt a weight come off your shoulders then?”

  “Yeah, maybe a little. I mean, I knew I wasn’t going to die from a nuclear holocaust. Didn’t have to wonder about that anymore. But Juliet. She hadn’t returned yet. And all I could think about was how our new life was going to be, her coming home from the war for good, after all that time grappling with how life had become. And of course, who’d she be when she got back.”

  “And was she this new person upon return?”

  “In a way yes and no. She was still my Juliet. But just like the end of the first tour, she was different. She wasn’t warm anymore. She was hardened, coarse. You could tell she had been around death for a long time. Couldn’t even look me in the eye for the first of couple of days back. And then there was the PTSD. She still deals with that actually. Fuck, I think I had some of that too.”

  “Perhaps. PTSD is not exclusive to veterans. It just seems that way given how it’s covered.”

  “I definitely found that one out the hard way. But eventually, things settled, and we found our way back to our blessing and curse – routine. And by then, we had a new buffer: CHARLIE.”

  “Ah yes.”

  “CHARLIE’s the best kind of mediator: objective and doesn’t take sides. Granted, we both had our own profiles, but we found ourselves overlapping quite a bit. Nevertheless, he became our glue.

  But still, something was different about her. Fuck, the whole world was different by then. The dust of war finally settling as a new global socioeconomic infrastructure was building. But of course that created a whole new slew of problems didn’t it?”

  “And we’re still dealing with them.”

  “Damn straight – well at least we weren’t at war anymore. At least we were closer. All of us. I felt that way until I saw the birth of the neurological communication link. When I saw that, I knew we’d be up against something new, a new struggle, but not with each other.”

  Cohen quickly shifts, fast-forwarding to Juliet again.

  “And when then…did you two dec
ide?”

  I unfortunately know exactly what he’s referring to.

  “We didn’t decide anything doc. This wasn’t ‘getting pregnant.’ This was the war all over again. She didn’t ask. She didn’t ask me shit. She told me. She told me she was gonna get one, and that was that. She had already made up her mind. And I quickly learned that there was nothin’ I could do to change that.”

  “I see.”

  “This time though, she did ask me something – to come with her – Hand in hand. Even have our ops on the same day. But when she asked, I had no words, and she knew.”

  Cohen pivots again.

  “I don’t understand why you’re so against them. Other people have really found—”

  “You just don’t get it doc. Just like the war, I knew, and still know, that shit isn’t worth dying ove…”

  January 1st, 2052

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  January 2nd, 2052

  “…an’t sleep much these days,” I murmur, almost mumbling. “I mean, I haven’t been able to sleep well, for a long time actually, but lately, it’s just getting,’ real bad y’know. And then there sometimes that, I just don’t even wanna try.”