Futures Near and Far

by Will McIntosh

  “What a gruesome memory to record,” Cloe said.

  “Maybe she wants to show her family what a brave girl she was.” Violet let go of Cloe’s hand to wipe her palm on her hip, then reached to retrieve it, but Cloe had folded her arms across her chest.

  At the Dream kiosk they watched what they had dreamed the night before. Violet dreamed that Chinese people were painting graffiti all over her body. Cloe dreamed that she was pinned by a tangle of electrical cords connected to life support systems. She had to unplug them to free herself.

  “Look at this one,” Violet said, scampering ahead, “Lie Detector Spectacles.”

  She scanned the credit eye; the specs popped out on a stalk, oversized, with black frames. Violet pressed her face to them, eyeing Cloe through a haze of smudges.

  “How old are you?” Violet asked.

  “Fourteen,” Cloe said.

  A burst of indecipherable readouts lit up in Violet’s peripheral vision, then the word LIE in bright red. Violet clapped, delighted.

  “Do you watch too much television?”

  “Yes.”

  TRUTH.

  “Who do you think is better looking, me or you?” Violet said.

  Cloe smirked, shook her head.

  “Come now! Who’s better looking?”

  “You,” she finally answered.

  LIE.

  “Now we’re getting somewhere. I always thought you had a bit of a narcissistic streak.”

  “It’s my turn,” Cloe said, stepping out of the spectacles’ gaze and tugging Violet by her sweater.

  “Do you hate my mother?”

  “Of course not!” Violet said.

  Cloe pulled her face away from the spectacles, looked at Violet, nodded her head. “Yes. You do.”

  “No, I don’t,” Violet protested.

  “Have you ever looked at my personal memory videos when I was out of the house?”

  “N—no.”

  Violet and Cloe took turns hurling questions, progressing from tickling, to pricking, to ripping flesh from the bone. Do you find my breasts too small? What really happened after I passed out the night we snorted Godflash with Jenna?

  Then a question burst from Violet unbidden, as if leaping out of a black hole.

  “Do you love me?”

  “What?” Cloe said.

  “You heard me.”

  Cloe shifted from one foot to the other, looked toward the horizon, where the wonders of the park continued to shimmer and spin.

  “No,” she said.

  TRUTH, said the spectacles.

  Violet sank to the floor. A rushing filled her ears, as if they were flooding with water. She stared at Cloe, waiting for Cloe to take it back, or qualify it, or denounce the kiosk a liar.

  “I’m sorry,” Cloe said. “I should have told you sooner, but I couldn’t figure out how.”

  Violet stared. She was having one of those disembodied moments, when every word, every movement, feels like an echo instead of something happening new.

  “I should go.” Cloe turned, then paused. Violet’s heart leapt.

  Cloe reached behind her neck with both hands, unclasped the vow necklace Violet had given her, and put it in Violet’s lap when Violet didn’t hold out a hand to take it.

  * * *

  Abbet was fat, and he walked like a duck. His splayed footsteps were silent on the hard polished floor. No one paid him much attention as he approached the Fantasy Jumper kiosk—a glistening rectangle trimmed in silver and chrome. He swept his wrist across the kiosk’s credit eye, and the young woman appeared.

  “No alterations. Default model.”

  Always the same expression when she emerged—serene on the surface, but undertones of restless longing.

  Immediately, she turned toward the low wall. “This time, maybe I’ll reach the fountain.”

  “Wait, not yet,” Abbet said.

  The woman gazed out for a moment, focused not on the wonders spread out before her, but on the empty air between her and those wonders, the middle distance. Reluctantly she turned back.

  “It breaks my heart that you’re created only to die scant moments later. Such a waste.”

  The woman opened her mouth to tell him that she didn’t understand what he meant, that she had been created for falling and dying, for ecstasy and agony, but realized that saying it would only draw him into conversation, only delay her. The joy of the fall, and the horror of the pavement, beckoned.

  “Thank you,” she said instead.

  “I fell asleep at my work station yesterday,” Abbet said. “When I woke up I discovered I’d inadvertently laid my head on my keyboard, primarily on the ‘k’ key.” Bits of foam formed on his lips as he spoke. “When I woke, my screen was filled with k’s. It took me hours to delete them all.”

  The woman glanced over her shoulder. Rays of sunshine painted the dust and dandelion blooms swirling in the space she longed to fill. She could be out there with them now, she could pass through those bands of light, create a draft that sucked dust and dandelion blooms after her.

  “I’ve kept the tags from all my clothing since I was a boy, so I can track the changes in my body. I keep the tags in a brown chest.” He watched her face carefully, searching for some reaction.

  “I have to go now,” she said, leaning on her right foot, the one she would step with first. “Please let me go.”

  “Please, talk to me a while,” he said.

  “Why don’t you talk to one of the women from the sex kiosk?”

  “They only want to have sex. They don’t want to talk. No one wants to talk.” He kicked at a bottle top lying prongs-up on the ground, but missed.

  “Are you the same each time?” He asked. “Or are you a new one each time?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why do you want to reach the fountain so badly?”

  “I don’t know. I imagine I was made that way. But it doesn’t matter. It would be so wonderful, to hit the water, to feel it all around me, pouring into my throat and my ears.”

  “Your wishes are so simple,” Abbet said. “Mine are so complicated. I’m not even sure what all of them are.”

  She didn’t say anything, just looked at him with desperate eyes.

  He nodded glumly. “Okay, go, if that’s what you want.”

  “This time I’m going to reach the fountain.”

  “You’ll never reach it, you know. It’s much too far...”

  Her artificial heart pounding in anticipation and terror, craving the fall but dreading the pain, she planted the arch of her foot against the edge of the low wall and catapulted herself into the air, arms spread wide, gaze fixed past the wide grey expanse of pavement to the shallow ripple and spray of blue-white water beyond. She flew horizontally first, feeling the thrill of weightlessness, the anticipation, the potential represented by the space between her body and the ground. Then she fell, gaining speed. Her long, chestnut hair snapped in the wind; her cheeks puffed as air rushed into her half-open mouth.

  Too soon, all at once, it was over. She lay staring at a red and white popsicle wrapper lying by her nose for one last, agonizing heartbeat, then she died.

  * * *

  Still clutching Cloe’s vow necklace in her sweaty palm, Violet watched the earnest fat man talk to the Fantasy Jumper, then watched the Fantasy Jumper leap. Part of Violet wanted to follow the Jumper, to be free of her sadness. And, maybe even more importantly, to saddle Cloe with a lifetime of guilt and remorse. But there was bound to be a safety field around the roof to stop anyone but the Fantasy Jumper from jumping.

  The fat man waddled away without even watching the Fantasy Jumper hit the ground. Violet went to the edge to look at the Fantasy Jumper’s body. It was already gone.

  A jolt went through her—Cloe was walking on the pedestrium below. She must have stopped in the bathroom. Violet hoped she’d stopped to cry.

  Violet turned away, absently caressed the brass piping of the Fantasy Jumper’s kiosk. She looked at her
reflection in the window, at her too-small breasts and her beak nose.

  A wonderful idea occurred to her.

  She swept her bony wrist over the credit eye, and the window came to life.

  “Just like me. Exactly like me.” In an instant, it was as if she were looking at her reflection again.

  “Come,” Violet said.

  The window raised, and the Fantasy Jumper stepped out. “This time, I’ll reach the fountain.”

  “Wait!” Violet held out an arm to block the Fantasy Jumper from the wall. Cloe was still fifty meters from the fountain. Violet had to time it just right.

  She fastened Cloe’s vow necklace around the Fantasy Jumper’s neck, instructed the Jumper to wait for her signal, then hurried to the telescopic viewer and focused it on Cloe. She wanted to see Cloe’s face.

  “Get ready,” Violet said as Cloe approached. “Now!”

  Violet felt a slight breeze as the Fantasy Jumper passed. Silently she counted to three, figuring it would take that long for the Fantasy Jumper to land.

  Cloe’s hands flew to her open mouth. Her eyes widened with recognition. Then, for an instant, Cloe smiled. It was a fleeting half smile, quickly masked by faux shock, but Violet saw it. She was sure of it.

  Even at the World’s Fair it was possible to trick someone, to convince them that the Fantasy Jumper was someone they knew, someone they once loved. But only for an instant. Only for that first primordial moment before the higher faculties caught up, and reminded them of where they were.

  Cloe looked up, realizing what Violet had done. Was she disappointed that it was only a trick? Probably.

  Violet screamed in rage. She shoved the telescopic viewer into a spin and stormed back to the Fantasy Jumper kiosk. She made another Violet Jumper, and sent it over the wall.

  Then she made another, and another. They vaulted over the wall, slammed to the concrete below, one after another.

  “This is how much pain I feel!” She screamed at Cloe as she swept her wrist over the eye yet again. “These are my wounds!” She howled, her wrist a blur.

  Like a movie caught in a loop, the Fantasy Jumpers leapt one after another, spattering blood and chips of artificial bone, screaming in agony, writhing as they died. The ground became littered with them as they piled up faster than the ground could absorb them.

  One Jumper landed atop another, her spine snapping with an audible crack. Still more followed.

  A pile formed.

  A Jumper dragged herself out of the pile, her leg shattered, her torn scalp exposing a ragged quilt of stringy fibers, but her arms and back intact.

  Cloe screamed when she saw the Violet-shaped Jumper dragging itself toward her, gasping in pain, tears pouring down its cheeks. She backed up to the edge of the fountain, then scurried around it.

  Slowly, awkwardly, the Jumper dragged itself, its eyes fixed on the sparkling fountain. The tattering of the water spilling down upon itself drowned out all other sound.

  Finally, she reached the edge, clawed her way over the marble lip, and plunged into the cool water. A billion stars exploded in her mind.

  * * *

  On the roof, the latest Violet Jumper paused, stared down at the fountain in disbelief.

  “I did it,” she said.

  “Jump!” Violet cried. “Why don’t you jump?”

  The Jumper shook her head. “There’s no need.”

  Violet followed the Jumper’s gaze, saw her skinny self floating face-down in the fountain. She laughed bitterly. “At least someone got what they wanted.”

  Violet headed for the stairs, oblivious to the open-mouthed stares of the onlookers gathered on the roof.

  * * *

  Rando passed Violet on the stairs, on his way back up to the roof. He was hoping Maya had returned there to wait for him.

  * * *

  The roof was silent, and nearly empty. The Fantasy Jumper looked out over the park, unmoving. The undertones of restless longing were gone. She looked as if she might stand there forever.

  “Would you care for a cup of tea?” Abbet asked her.

  “I don’t drink tea,” the Fantasy Jumper said.

  “Perhaps a conversation?

  “I don’t know.”

  He took her hand, led her toward the stairs.

  “Every so often I like to empty out all my drawers and put everything in a pile,” he said as they left the roof.

  Incompatible

  The Methodist Church was selling pumpkins. There were thousands of them—thousands of setting suns spilling across the straw-covered grass, stacked in rolling piles, and propped on makeshift plywood displays. This was a power place. Leia would be safe here.

  She got out of the car and waded in among the pumpkins, absorbing the goodness, the realness of them, letting fond memories of Halloweens past wash over her.

  The dots shrunk and receded. The squeeze of anxiety receded with them, the sweat on Leia’s palms drying in the crisp fall air. The respite was sweet; she drank it in, inhaled deeply and easily, picking up a hint of burning leaves. The scent of burning leaves was good, too. It was not as powerful an ally as the pumpkins, but Leia appreciated all of her allies.

  She checked her Scooby Doo watch: it was two fifteen. The sale would be open for at least another three or four hours. The trick would be to spend all day among the pumpkins without appearing to be a total nutcase to the two women running the sale. Leia returned to her car and pulled a camera out of the back seat.

  She began snapping photos of the pumpkins, moving about as if she knew what she was doing. It felt good to be out. Once it got cold and she had to close the drive-in for the season she could go days without seeing a soul.

  Even at the drive-in the dots could ambush Leia if she wandered to just the wrong spot, like the drainage ditch that ran along the woods, or the little room around the back side of the snack bar that stored the cleaning supplies. The dots were black—blacker than the background on which they hunched, or floated, or whatever it was they did. It didn’t help Leia to think about them, didn’t help to face her fear. She’d always heard that you should face your fears, but this fear only got worse when you faced it.

  A guy in a red wool cap was looking at her. He was trying not to be obvious, looking away whenever she looked in his direction. He trying to look without being a creep. If he did it much longer, though, Leia would still think he was a creep.

  She rolled a big squat pumpkin into her lap, focused to get some close-ups, enjoying the cool weight of it pressing against her thighs.

  The guy had stopped looking at her. He was sorting through a barrel of little pumpkins, rotating them in his palm as if choosing produce in a grocery store. He had shoulder length hair and round Lennon glasses, a lupine face that was odd but not unpleasant. Not that it mattered what he looked like, given Leia’s issues. Given the dots.

  Her earliest memory was of the dots. She was in bed, her mother leaning over her, tucking her in as she said her prayers. Mommy wanted her to say a special prayer for auntie Julia, who had gone to the stars. When Leia closed her eyes and thought of the stars, instead of seeing bright flickering lights she saw black dots. They were humming and bobbing, and they scared her so badly her breath froze in her chest. They were so bad. Leia sensed this from the first moment. So bad.

  The guy was staring into the distance now, exhaling cold mist. Leia surreptitiously snapped a picture of him, then turned away.

  It was getting cold. She pulled gloves out of her coat pockets while scanning for good photos. An infant in a lime green windbreaker pointed at a pumpkin by Leia’s feet, then looked up at her mother, who said something in an encouraging tone that was drowned out by a passing truck. Leia snapped some photos of them from a respectable distance. It felt so good. If only the girl had a little red wagon to pull her pumpkins in. That would have shrunk the dots to specks.

  The mother and daughter picked out a pumpkin and left, but the guy stayed. Leia suspected he was staying because of her. He was pointedl
y not looking at Leia now, keeping his back to her as much as possible, strolling among the pumpkins, his hands bunched in jeans pocket. His jaw was tense from the cold, his pointy nose pink. She kept expecting him either to leave or hit on her. It was awkward, both of them taking such an inappropriately long time to choose a pumpkin.

  Leia lifted a medium-sized pumpkin by its stalk and took it up to the women sitting in lawn chairs behind a rickety card table. She was hungry anyway; she’d grab something to eat and then come back. She handed one of the women a ten; the other opened the green cash tray to get her change.

  “I hope you don’t mind me spending so much time here.” She lifted her camera. “I freelance for magazines.”

  “Oh, no, that’s wonderful,” one of the women said. They were both overweight, with wonderfully motherish clothes and hairstyles.

  “Would it be okay if I came back in a while, to catch them in a different light?”

  The woman waved away the question. “Stay as long as you like, we enjoy watching you.” Leia thanked them and took her pumpkin to the car.

  Her heart began to thump as soon as she pulled away, as soon as happy orange spheres were replaced by strip malls, telephone poles, cyclone fencing. Bad things, things that nourished the dots. She felt the dots stirring.

  She headed toward Boyd’s Drug Store, which had a bit of power. She’d have a tuna salad sandwich and a cup of tea, then return to the pumpkins.

  Icy blasts of anxiety hit her, one on top of the next. She tried imagining she was in a place with incredible power—a museum of power places, where every turn revealed something wonderful: a shiny new Good Humor ice cream truck, or a cozy comic book store filled with vintage Richie Rich and Hot Stuff. Sometimes it helped to imagine power places, but not today.

  The dots pulsed, their baritone thrumming registering at the roots of Leia’s molars and deep in her belly. To Leia it was the sound of fear, cold and metallic and mindless. She covered them with phantom hands, struggled to suppress them, felt them slip past her hands as if they were greased. There were two of them. Sometimes there were three or four. Once there had been eight. She’d been in English class in middle school on the Day of Eight, as she’d come to think of it. She’d wet her pants when she sensed them all there (wherever “there” was), crammed into her mind’s eye. Urine had dribbled off her chair and onto the Formica floor, and she’d scurried to the nurse’s office clutching a notebook over the front of her pants.