He’d gotten a job for a while as a paparazzi for hire. People would ask him to take pictures of them in the company of potential lovers, to create the idea that the person those potential lovers were talking to, was a big deal, such a big deal that a photographer wanted to follow him or her around and take pictures of them. It didn’t last long. Jon was too quiet. He didn’t yell enough, according to most of his previous clients and when he did yell, it was sometimes rude.
Now, back here in this apartment, Emily puts three drops on her own tongue and smiles before slipping her shoes off and taking a few paces over the rich Persian carpet Jon’s standing on, standing a little nearer to him.
Emily undoes the band in her hair and her red hair falls.
“Do you want music? I can put on some Ambient Music For Airports maybe? Or some of Maynard James Keenan’s last works if you’d like?” asks Emily.
“No, the sound of you yammering on is music enough to my ears.”
“You’re a bit of a bastard, Jon. You know that right?” Emily smiles.
Jon just nods, lost somewhere in things that have already happened and smiles back at Emily, despite all the random things bumping around in his head.
She shrugs and makes her own choices for the music they’ll need. Even though she knows he almost never answers or if he does, it’s with sarcasm, she feels it’d be impolite to stop asking.
Brian Eno’s opening notes of 1/1 fill the room, washing everything with an almost-tangible pink haze. The vinyl worked. The technology ration Emily had spent getting it was worth it and it returned that soft texture modern technology had once missed. Digital bits have no colour and less texture. But this piano, this piano being played in this song keeps the sound and colour coming at him, breaking over him like a wave, before it reaches Jon’s throat. The drug, the Sadness, is working, breaking the horrible, dull, boring, mind-numbing happiness imposed on him and everyone else in NewLand by the antidepressants in the city’s water supply. Jon almost never drank water and if he did, it was an emergency and he was dying. He hated that feeling when he had to, the numbness, the death smile, the lying of the soul. Nothing felt real. The world felt at bay. So he drank crudely bottled water, collected from the rain that still fell and then was filtered. It was either that or beer. Some of the Sadness junkies lived on beer but that seemed like a hollow existence. Hundreds of years ago, it was almost always safer to drink clean beer than dirty water. Now, history has repeated itself; you either drank the water or dealt with the overwhelming depression that had existed since the day of The End. It was so bad, if you were out on a hot day and didn’t have enough water to drink, some were just as likely to die from suicide as heat stroke.
“Can you feel it?” asks Emily. A single, hot tear runs down her cheek, ruining her make up.
Jon remembers a word.
Frisson: The word used to describe the moment the hair on the back of your neck stands up when you are struck by a climax of beauty in art.
“Yes,” whispers Jon, “Fuck, yes…” He bursts into hot, shuddering sobs, “…yes.”
Jon’s feelings completely overwhelm him, rolling over him like an unstoppable black wave. The light inside goes dark. This is a kind of chemically induced sadness but it’s so fucking beautiful. He digs his fingernails into his palm, trying desperately to create some kind of physical manifestation of what he’s feeling, trying to bring it out and make it all real. To make him real again, to feel something one more time.
The world quickens and he falls backwards in his mind and here, out of it. If Jon is capable of real, objective thought at this point, it might strike him that beyond the obvious, there’s little to be sad about in this moment. No acid rain fell on his way home to Michelle, the girl, then woman he has loved without question for ten long years. No songs reminded him of his father dying on the day the world ended or his mother who lasted only a little bit longer. No phone not ringing. No reminder of his past or present or future.
And so Jon descends into warmer places, a rich and fertile crystal garden of feeling and emotion. Really though, he’s on the dusty carpet, slowly surrounded by light. It’s soft, white and you can almost touch it.
A voice from nowhere, from the air itself, whispers, “It’s all going to be ok.”
It reminds him of the last time he saw his father: his father held him, then gave him a pill and Jon fell asleep in his arms. Then, in his mind, he sees the image of a fascist bastard Peace Ambassador, one of those entrusted to uphold the peace in NewLand, holding the limp body of a child that had been hit by a passing carriage, and the cop, he’s crying, the soulless scum is crying. Jon saw that walking home once. Each feeling hits Jon full force in the chest and then appears in front of his mind’s eye, represented by different vivid visions, the black wave washing over him, again and again like a relentless tide.
It feels like he’s falling forever. He clutches his knees, turning himself into a ball. The world is brought into terrible, beautiful focus. Everything is tragic and wonderful at the same time.
Nerves flare, synapses snap and shivers run up and down his body, like someone’s running their hand over him, just a hair’s breadth above his skin but never actually touching.
He remembers the first time he’d felt pain and had a name for it; stepping on a green piece of glass, a broken bottle in the gravel driveway of his parents’ small, white suburban house. He remembers being in a row boat once with his father and mother and noticing the way swans move without moving and it’s so beautiful, it’s all so beautiful. Abstract phenomena, memories, stories, symbols, and metaphors crash through his mind, one after the other.
He opens his eyes and manages to blink away some of the hot tears. Emily has fallen on her back, on some pillows, on the Persian rug, on the parquet floor; the same thing consuming him is consuming her, eating her whole, burning her up. She moves at a thousand frames a second, her eyes open and a steady stream of tears falls down past her ear, into her falling hair. Her make-up leaves dark trails across her face.
Everything falls.
She falls.
He falls with her.
She’s slowly beautiful and even in all its current sadness, even in so much chaos, so is the world. Even though it’s all fucked up. Even now. It’s years since it all happened and so much has changed.
Her chest falls as his rises.
Chapter 2
Then
A plane flies overhead and inside it is a writer who has spent most of his life as a law clerk, even though he’s always known deep down that he’s a writer. For the first time, he’s worked out what he wants to write, what the truth really is. He begs a napkin and a pen off the air hostess and he writes down the most beautiful sentence ever written, as the engine catches fire outside and the plane starts its plummet to the ground. It doesn’t matter to him. It’s the only sentence he’s ever written and it is the last and no part of him cares. The sentence falls through the air with singed, black edges and comes to rest in a tree, in a park, miles away. One day, around ten years from now, an old widow of an astronaut will find it when a strong breeze finally blows it from its hiding place. She will read it and she will weep.
The kitchen is covered in plants and Jon’s father patiently trims a bonsai. Jon’s friend, James once said that his father had green fingers and that made Jon spend a lot of time when he was younger trying to imagine what that meant. Outside, the oak tree where Jon’s old swing still hung breathed slowly back into the world, leaning backwards and forwards into the early evening air. The oak tree had been Jon’s best friend when he was younger. He was always climbing, turning its fallen branches into swords and spending time beneath its shade, reading.
Jon’s father has tried to get him to learn maths. He’s tried so hard. Jon sometimes thinks he’s adopted, just every now and again, because surely if his father is good at maths, shouldn’t he be good at maths too? Isn’t that how genetics worked? Don’t you get the same abilities, the same talents that your parents hav
e? Apparently not. Jon’s father, Peter Salt, is working on the cutting edge of human technology: teleportation; genetic transformation; white/black hole looping; things that shouldn’t be invented but are in the process of happening, in the process of becoming real, everyday things. There’s a lot of work meetings that leave his father with his head in his hands and when anyone asks what’s wrong, he always tells them the same thing: he’s not allowed to say. Jon is not going to get the same job as his father. He knows that. Jon likes to pretend he doesn’t care that he’s ridiculously bad at all these things but it gets to him and, he does actually care. His father patiently sits with him at the old wooden table in the living room, repeating the numbers over and over again, repeating the ways and mechanics that made the numbers turn into other numbers, hoping they somehow, in some way, start to make sense. The words make sense to Jon, their letters hover in the air to make beautiful patterns, like “S-e-7-e-n” but the numbers never do. The numbers are just words. He doesn’t understand. He’d once tried to replace parts of the words with numb3r5 8ut th4t d1dn’t accomplish anything beyond making him more confused and really, really upsetting his maths teacher.
It makes him feel alien. Sometimes, he aches and gets angry and that core of ache and anger builds on itself again and again until he’s a walking ball of ache. Maybe other children see this in him because they can see these things easier and aren’t afraid to say something about it. Or at least, haven’t been taught yet to ignore it and move past it.
Right now, Jon has a distant look on his face. The kind you can read from a few steps away. Something about his posture or the way he moves things around the table or the way he doesn’t really answer questions. A machine that could be a microwave bings and Jon’s father leaves the bonsai, walks over to the microwave and takes out a steaming bowl.
“Try this,” says Jon’s dad and he gives him a bowl of what looks like melted, grey cheese. He has a crop of blonde, turning grey hair. Jon stabs some with his fork, puts it in his mouth and immediately spits it out.
“It tastes like rotting fish,” says Jon, still spitting.
“Whoops. It’s supposed to taste like fresh fish.”
“What is it?”
“We’re trying to recreate food using different kinds of algae. With the right combination, in the future, we might be able to recreate any kind of taste and any kind of texture.”
“That’s exciting,” says Jon but he doesn’t mean it.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing.”
“You can’t bullshit a bullshitter and your old man’s a bullshitter, Jon. What’s wrong?”
“I got kicked out of the band,” says Jon under his breath.
“Why?”
Jon doesn’t immediately respond.
“They said I suck as guitarist,” says Jon, “but they’re the ones that suck.”
“Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Do you suck?”
“A real dad wouldn’t ask that question.”
“You don’t have a real dad, there’s just me, the unreal dad.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe what?”
“Jesus, maybe I suck as a guitarist, ok? Are you trying to make me emo?”
“I don’t know what that last word you used means and something tells me I don’t really care to know.”
“That’s because you hate me.”
“Yeah, that’s why I bought you that guitar in the first place, because I hate you so much. How many times this week have you practiced?” asks Jon’s dad.
Jon shrugs and turns away from his father.
“Jon, pay attention for once: people become the things they want to. If you really wanted to be a guitar player, you’d start by just wanting to play the guitar. And if you want to play the guitar, you’ll play every day because that’s what you enjoy. That’s what you’d want to do. Are you sure you don’t just want to be famous? Do you want to be a rock star?”
“I don’t know,” says Jon, “Maybe. So what?”
“Well, then that’s not wanting to play the guitar. People become what they want to become. Dancers, dance. Writers, write. Famous guitarists are famous because they’re very good at playing guitar and they’re very good because they play every day and they play every day because they love to play the guitar. People who just want to be famous, just spend their lives wanting to become famous. Or actors maybe. You won’t become anything you don’t actually want to become,” says Jon’s dad and he puts his hand on his son’s shoulder.
Jon nods slowly.
“I’m not trying to make you feel better. We hate each other remember? You’re going to be a man soon and I want you to understand how life works. If you want a hug and the words, ‘It’s all going to be ok,’ go and watch a movie. Life isn’t a movie. Life is real,” says Jon’s dad and Jon gives him a hug because he loves him.
Jon turns around slowly and starts walking out the room, now lost in his head, trying to work out if he just wants to be famous or learn to play the guitar.
“Go to sleep,” calls Jon’s dad after him and despite everything, you know that he loves his son, so much.
Later, Jon is lying in his bed, trying to sleep. The walls are filled with posters of superheroes and he thinks it’d be easier to be one of them right now. His favourite poster, from The Black Kracken, takes pride of place in the centre of the wall. His dad had once asked him what made it so special and Jon had tried to explain about the mystical pirate ship, about the crew of one-eyed space pirates that floated through space on it protecting each other and the universe from behind their black cloth masks that hid their faces. They never spoke. They only communicated with each other and the outside world by writing. Something about them made them special to Jon and it was the one comic that his father had ever bothered discussing with him. The rest were just filled with monsters. Monsters. You can fight a monster. You can’t fight maths.
He has a HUGE maths test tomorrow that he didn’t even tell his father about and now, there’s nothing he can do about studying for it. Going to bed early makes more sense to him than staying up and studying. He finds studying hard. It’s hard to think about the same thing for too long. His brain flitters back and forth over things like a desperate moth. He spends a lot of time inside his head; it’s a beautiful place. He’s never had a fear of missing out, just a fear of joining in. This makes him bad at some things and good at other things. He’s staring at the ceiling and the light from the hallway coming in the gap between the door and the frame is like a lance made of pure light, keeping the darkness at bay. That’s what he told himself when he was really small; it’s a lance made of liquid fire and if anything truly bad, truly monstrous ever comes in here or appears out of the ground or breaks through the ceiling or however monsters enter a room, he’ll just reach out and somehow that lance of pure white light will be real and he’ll take it and drive it straight through the monster and kill it with light.
Jon is getting closer to sleep now. Random thoughts are flooding through his head, words and numbers, pictures and places, and he jumps through them like an acrobat slowly arcing between giant cinema screens. Those screens are slowing down now and Jon is approaching a dream; it’s probably going to be about being unprepared for school. At the edge of consciousness, he’s called back by something.
Nothing.
He starts drifting back to sleep, then he hears it again. There’s a noise in the dark. Someone or something is knocking softly on his bedroom window.
Chapter 3
Now
Somewhere in the distance, an algae farm is wrapping up for the day and the workers are retreating to their tiny sleeping and living cubicles where most will sell their dreams to the last corporations left on Earth, looking for fresh research and innovative new ideas for exciting new product lines, which will then be sold back to the remains of the world. A woman with silvery brown hair falls asleep as soon as her head hits the pillow, her dreams no lo
nger her own.
Meanwhile, somewhere else, Jon worries that she’s felt too much and maybe now there’s nothing left to feel. He worries that he might run out of things to give her to feel but he tells himself that every day, he will have enough to give and she will have something for him in return when he gives it; a smile, even a slight curve of the lip was more than enough. He discovered that night, now so long ago, after an entire childhood of feeling like something was missing, that she was all he’d ever wanted, her and that slight curve of her lip. And so Jon takes the steam train, the last real public transport available, home to Michelle.
His father used to take him on the train, a normal electric one, as a treat and this experience, the sound of the tracks, the gentle sway from side to side and the world rushing by, rhythmically, in bursts of houses and bursts of nothing, makes Jon think about him. It’s something he instantly regrets as he makes eye contact with someone else, an old man, maybe homeless, on the other side of the steam train. He always worries that people can feel what he’s feeling if he makes eye contact with them while he’s feeling it.
How could something that affected you so intensely be a private experience? Surely the people around you could pick up on the soft water in your eyes, the moment of strain passing like a shadow across your face.
He’d decided long ago, he didn’t want anyone else inside him but him. Especially not anyone from this leftover hell. He’d heard someone say that there were pigeons at the zoo. He’d like to take Michelle and go and see them. No one has seen one in years. It’s just the crows now; the only real bird population to speak of. And the crows are everywhere, circling like black clouds before a storm. The train passes ruin after ruin of what were once suburbs and shops, now burnt out empty shells, covered with graffiti and with broken windows that made the buildings look like they were weeping for what once was. An overpass has the words: ‘Beware: Here be shadows.’ like an epitaph scrawled across it in blood red paint. It tells him that he’s approaching his station.
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