The conversation’s going to become awkward and stilted soon, he remembers that. He’s been here before. This is a loop. He’s sure of it now. He starts to sweat a little. That makes no sense. There’s no reason for him to think he’s in a loop but the fear is there. How many times have I driven up to this hotel? How many times?
“Do you remember Michelle at least?” asks Jon.
“Michelle? I had a friend in high school called Michelle but I can’t remember ever introducing the two of you,” says Emily.
He sighs.
All the people he knew, all the people he’d ever met were trapped in the past. Now, on this day, in this place, only these new people existed. With jobs and houses and kids either already here or on the way. And Emily, who used to be his best friend, is further away than anyone.
Emily sees someone else she hasn’t seen for a long time and waves at them, then mumbles something that people mumble when they’re going to leave for a while, something about seeing you later, lovely chatting to you, that sort of thing. Sometimes he doesn’t remember what people say, just what people mean. I need this. I don’t want that. Do this for me. I appreciate you. I hate you. I love you. Just the meaning, not the specifics. God had never once lived or loved in these details.
She turns and leaves and as she does, the light from the sea catches her red hair and turns it into a veil of light, some kind of burning halo, just for a second and then it’s gone again. He turns and looks out at the sea as the sun sluggishly works its way across the water. Everything shimmers in the orange haze of late afternoon. The light hurts his eyes and he’s forgotten his sunglasses in the car; quickly, he’s blinking away tears. He’s got a car here. There are no trains. No Peace Carriages. No doctors.
“I’ve never known you to be so emotional at a wedding, Jon,” says James, Gentle James, another person he once knew but now didn’t. They’d been friends at school hadn’t they? James swishes a bottle of scotch and hangs onto him. He used to knock on Jon’s window at night and they’d go out and smash letterboxes and run riot through the streets. No. No, they’d flown planes together and they’d bombed people, people he’d been told were the enemy. But that doesn’t make sense. Jon’s never flown a plane in his life. He went to design school.
“You know me, James, always the crybaby.” He jokes in the way people from years ago did, like they once were. It’s the harshness of friends you haven’t seen for a while and who knew you once used to mean, “I love you” when you said, “hello.”
He hates weddings. On behalf of the bride and groom and on his own accord as well. Weddings are about everyone else except the bride and groom. They are an excuse for families to get together and see each other and compare notes about what life is and where it’s supposed to be taking them.
“What are you doing these days?” asks James. They both slipped into the same trance.
“I’m a graphic designer,” says Jon.
“Really? How long have you been doing that for?” says James, Gentle James and Jon wants to say I threw your dead body out of a plane and it burst into flames and I cried so hard for so long and they took all my memories and I miss you, I miss you so much. But instead, he says, “Too long.”
“Where do you work?” asks James.
“Carnal, The Neon Jump-Rope, Bigsy’s,” says Jon, listing them off like great battles. I miss you my friend, I miss you.
“Never heard of any of those,” says James.
“Obviously,” says Jon. “And yourself? Still trying to crack a career as a professional clown?”
“That’s just a side gig now, now I’m an accountant,” says James.
“Awesome, that sounds like fun. What exactly does that entail?” asks Jon with just a hint of sarcasm.
His mind immediately starts kicking around its bedroom, going through boxes and shelves and old books because it knows it won’t be needed for at least the next 45 to 60 seconds while someone tells him something he really doesn’t care about. James never died. He’s still here. They never bombed anyone. Jon never had his tattoos cut off in a camp. In the boxes Jon’s kicking around in his head, there’s an eye-patch and a branch and a stethoscope. Jon doesn’t know why. Things move slowly.
Mumble, sharp word, soft word, swearing, next sentence, sharp word, sharp word, soft word, gesturing, the tone of someone who really believes what they’re telling you is a paradigm shift in their respective industry. Question. Pause.
Shit.
“I’m sorry, what was that last bit?” asks Jon.
“I asked you if you were really listening to me and you just nodded your head,” says James.
He isn’t actually kidding or being mean to be funny, he’s genuinely offended. Sweet, Gentle James staggers, just a little, his body fighting gravity and the booze.
“I’m sorry James, I really didn’t mean to but I just remembered I’ve got work to finish for tomorrow and I got distracted,” says Jon.
“Whatever, haha,” he snakes drunkenly back into the core of the wedding, looking for one more familiar face.
You do get to make a second impression, as long as it’s nearly ten years later, in a place like this, and this was a terrible one. It really does upset him but more in the way that he knows he should be upset about it and should use that bad feeling as a way to motivate himself to be a better person, but it doesn’t. He’s upset because he just can’t get upset about things that should matter anymore.
He has just one more drink, says goodbye to the married couple and then leaves. Early day tomorrow, big presentations in the afternoon. He walks across the parking lot, opens the door to his car, the convertible he’s always wanted, and gets in. He takes the top down before he gets out of the parking lot as he figures the wind will keep him awake. He feels like he’s just watched the people he once knew drown and die in the people they thought they’d wanted to be.
Something bad has happened or was going to happen today, somewhere but not here. Phantom memories tease his brain. There was a wooden monster, a man with a white beard, Michelle, Michelle, Michelle. Where’s Michelle? And Emily? Why did things feel so wrong? Everything came into view sharply and then disappeared just as quickly.
The sun explodes overhead in a thin white line, hot on his face as it turns the coastline into cascading lava pits. The creatures of the sea kill themselves on the white sand while tanned bodies move like out of focus ghosts, on their way to the other side of the sun. It’s happening again, Jon tells himself as the blast wave devastates the surrounding countryside and a wave of shadows howling and calling for blood crash over the remains. I did this. I do this. I will do this.
Suddenly he’s not there; he finds himself next to Michelle on a couch and there’s another power failure. He’s telling her how much he loves her and she’s smiling and nodding. He kisses the back of her neck and she smiles some more and they make love and he thinks he knows what happiness feels like and some part of him just wants someone else to touch him and tell him he’s real. She does that and she asks for so, so little in return.
And now they’re walking through a park holding hands and she lets go because she sees a child lying on the ground and he’s hungry. She forces Jon to go home and get some food from the MicroPVR and bring it back. He grumbles about it but he loves her for it and he’ll never admit it. He hates the world but he loves her because she doesn’t.
And now he’s drunk and verbose; they’re at the Cabaret and they’re arguing, fighting.
“You know what the problem is? You buy things and then you keep them clean. You take care of them. Keep them in a special pocket. Away from keys and coins. Away from other things that should be kept clean and taken care of as well. Then they get scratched by accident. And scratched again. And again. And again. And again. Soon, you don’t care about them anymore. You don’t keep them in a special pocket. You throw them in the bag with everything else. They’ve surpassed their form and become nothing but function. People are like that. You meet them and keep them
clean. In a special pocket. And then you start to scratch them. Not on purpose. Sometimes you just drop them by accident or forget which pocket they’re in. But after the first scratch, it’s all downhill from there. You see past their form. They become function. They are a use, nothing more,” says Jon and even he does not know what he means anymore.
“Are you talking about me?” asks Michelle.
“No. I’m just tired,” says Jon.
“I love you.”
“Ok.”
“…ok,” says Michelle.
Now they’re somewhere else and Jon finds himself talking at her, not to her, lecturing her because he’s so fucking smart.
“You watch the news and think you’re informed. You listen to the radio and think you enjoy music. You speak to the same friends you’ve had since high school and think you’re socialites. I know better. I’m better. But thinking that just makes me feel worse,” says Jon.
“…You don’t have to like me or who I am but I do love you.”
“I said ok.”
“Bu—” begins Michelle.
“OK.”
He gets up and looks for something to slam, something to make his point. She buries her head in her hands and cries. Ok. I’m fine. I’m just tired. The things people say when they don’t know why they’re fighting anymore and just want to go to bed.
Now he’s just talking at the air and she’s sleeping. “I wish I knew what a traffic jam felt like. I wish I knew what being afraid of doing your taxes was like. What it felt like to be bored of a job or to really, really hate one, to feel like you were doing what you had to do to survive and not what you wanted to do. I wish I knew what it was like to have kids. I wish I knew what a hot dog that didn’t come out of the PVR tasted like. I wish I knew what going on holiday was like. All of that seems so much easier to deal with than this,” and he rambles on, until the sun comes up.
Jon’s feels like he’s outside himself, looking at himself doing this and for the first time in his life, wonders if he’s the biggest asshole to ever live or if anything has ever been real or even mattered.
Ok.
I’m just tired.
Fine.
Chapter 16
Now
The man with the white beard puts man after man into the machine, plugs in all the right photographs, screenshots, diaries, artifacts, metaphors, and symbols and all the men scream with so much despair. Each one is a story. Then the men, their noses start to bleed and their voices are filled with pure terror and then they die. And he does it again and again. Into infinity. The words appear on all the TV screens across the planet, “You have read this all before.”
Jon wakes up screaming.
“Ok, ok, buddy, relax,” says Edward’s voice, from somewhere.
Jon’s covered in sweat, and more tired than he’s ever been in his life. It wasn’t a dream. This is real. This is real, he tells himself again and again and the words echo off into a cavern in his mind.
“You got an infection or got poisoned or went insane or something and you’ve been out for more than a day, yelling some of the craziest shit I’ve ever heard,” says Edward, slowly coming into focus behind a haze. He puts a glass of water to Jon’s lip and Jon notices that they feel like they’re on fire. Then he notices a large chunk of his wrist is missing.
“Did I get shot?”
“Nope, we had to take out your wrist implant so they couldn’t track you. Mine got taken when they took my arm. Our deadly friend did a little minor surgery on you, quite delicately I might add, then he did himself. Bastard didn’t even use anesthetic, just ripped it clean out.”
“Thank you. And call him One Eye, he’s not going to give us his real name,” says Jon, rubbing his arm.
“No problem, thanks for saving my life back in the cell and bandaging up my arm. And don’t forget to thank One Eye. He did all of the hard work,” says Edward.
One Eye looks across at Jon from the other side of the old warehouse and waves. Once. He scares Jon, just a little. He rubs his arm. The wound itches but it feels ok.
“We had to get rid of the Peace Carriage. One Eye destroyed whatever was in it that could conceivably track us but we couldn’t be absolutely sure. So we trashed the lot of it. Well, almost the lot of it. We kept an undernet interface,” says Edward. Jon sees the stripped out interior laying up against the side of the warehouse wall.
“Dad was a mechanic,” says Edward, “he showed me how to strip any machine in less than ten minutes. Even one handed.” Jon notices the stump where Edward’s arm used to be. The stump is getting longer. Some of the myths are true.
“Here, eat this,” says Edward.
He gives Jon some protein bars that taste like grilled cheese sandwiches. Jon opens the wrapper and the chemicals in the bars react with the air and they heat up in his hands. They’re the most delicious things Jon’s ever eaten, or he’s so hungry they just taste that way. Jon begins to feel human again. An hour later, he’s up and walking around but something in his heart is dead. He remembers what the doctor said about Michelle now. What he saw in the video. Michelle is a ghost. Michelle is a ghost. Michelle is a ghost. No matter how many times he says it, it doesn’t feel real. Edward is fiddling with one of the hologram networks that still runs through the undernet, cobbled together from the remains of the carriage. Edward sighs and steps back. He can tell something’s eating Jon up inside.
“Jon,” says Edward.
“Yes?” asks Jon.
“What was the doctor guy talking about, who’s Michelle?”
“It’s a long story. Maybe a ghost. Maybe she’s a ghost,” says Jon. Jon stares off at a distant point that maybe, he once reached. Edward decides that now is the right time to talk about something else.
“I’m afraid we’re stuck with each other,” says Edward.
“Why?”
“Well, because all three of us have just become the most wanted fucking people on the planet. We killed a whole bunch of them.”
“Uh-huh,” says Jon. He doesn’t seem to care.
“Look at the globe feed coming from the undernet, from the people who spend their rations on it,” says Edward, still trying to take Jon’s mind away from wherever it is because he can see it’s not a nice place.
“What about it?” asks Jon.
“Well, you see all that stuff in the feed? All the stuff that gets upvoted and praised?” asks Edward.
“Yeah,” says Jon.
“Other people chose that right?” Asks Edward.
“Right,” says Jon.
“So right now you’re looking at the most popular content, pictures of cats and shit, across what’s left of the world right?” Asks Edward.
“Right. That’s a good thing. People love that, the triviality of what used to be the Internet gives them a sense of comfort,” says Jon, not sure what Edward is getting at.
“No it’s not,” says Edward.
“Popular stuff is bad?” Asks Jon.
“No, disregarding your own personal taste in favour of the rest of the world’s taste is bad. Sitting there, waiting for something interesting to come over the feed, sent to you and pre-approved by someone else, that’s bad. That’s why the art director and the copywriter on your block used to call you a consumer. Because that’s what you do. You just lie there and consume. Like a fat pupa and they can harvest you when they want to,” says Edward.
“You sound upset,” says Jon.
“The whole thing’s upsetting. Remember all the networks and applications and socialising people were expected to do, when all that shit was still allowed?”
“Are you going to tell me that was bad too?”
“Too many people mistook envy for happiness. They believed other people wanting to do the things they were doing was more important that doing the things they wanted to do. So they’d edit their photographs and edit their lives and edit and lie until from a distance, it looked like they had the perfect life. But life isn’t something that should be edited.
Life shouldn’t be cut. The only way you’ll ever discover what it truly means to be alive and human is by sharing the full experience of what it means to be human and each blemish and freckle that comes with it.”
“You’re an ent, Edward, not a human. Why should I, or you, care what it means to be human? I don’t care where the chemicals in my drugs come from or where the grapes, in what passes for wine these days, were grown.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps that’s why you drink wine and take drugs. Because you want to kill the question.”
“Or I drink wine because my head likes being drunk and I take Sadness so I can actually feel something besides the fucking chemically induced happiness the government puts in the water in this God forsaken city. Not everything is some big philosophical fuck-show.”
“I disagree.”
“Fine. But life is what you make of it. Plenty of people have lived and died, perfectly content, without ever having asked why the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.”
“Jon, if you can show me a life without a question, I’ll show you someone without purpose.”
“You’re starting to sound upset, Edward.”
“Of course I’m not upset. I’m not allowed to be, am I,” says Edward and he takes a swig from his water bottle.
“I’d give my kingdom to care,” says Jon.
“Why the hell are you being so goddamn melodramatic?”
“Why the hell are you trying to be so fucking philosophical? And since when did you give a shit about any of this anyway? I don’t even fucking know you.”
Jon can see he’s hurt Edward somehow, someway. He’s not used to having conversations like this. He avoids them. Edward turns away and goes back to the remains of the Peace Carriage. Maybe trying to get Jon’s mind off whatever was bothering him was a bad idea. Maybe not. He’d rather have Jon turn his anger outwards than inwards. He cares about the stupid human. It’s a strange emotion. He knows Jon saved his life. He’s indebted. Each of them owes the other something.
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