A Glitch in the World

by Alex Drozd

  “What kind of soup is this, dear?” Brian asked her.

  “Vegetable and beef,” she said quietly, getting bowls out of the cabinets.

  Stuart noticed a few cans on the counter. She hadn’t made the dinner from scratch. That was unusual.

  They all took their seats and began to eat. The first couple of minutes were silent except for the clinking of their spoons against the bowls, and the awkward slurping sounds from the soup that ordinarily would have been drowned out by conversation. It was strange eating with people while no one spoke; you could hear every clack of the teeth and smacking of the lips. Stuart began to feel somewhat queasy, so much so that he decided, for once, to be the one to initiate the dinner conversation.

  “I ran into a guy collecting signatures on the bus today,” Stuart said, “for a petition against the Equity Measure.”

  Brian groaned and slapped his glass of juice onto the table. “Those fools,” he boomed. “They were harassing me yesterday. I didn’t know Janus was a planet of whiners. We’re out here on the frontier—they gotta toughen up.”

  Stuart and Brenda nodded their heads in agreement. What else could they do?

  “He was kind of annoying,” Stuart went on.

  “They all are. How could they not be? They’re taking time out of their day to walk around and waste other people’s time as well as their own. The idiots don’t realize the Equity Measure is what’s going to allow them to go around collecting those damn signatures. It’s going to ensure they can afford the cost of living even though they seem to have picked jobs that can’t be too serious if they have the energy to walk around doing nothing.”

  “Well, if we got rid of the measure wouldn’t they have to work harder, then?”

  Brian laughed out loud, almost shaking the table. Stuart noticed his mother glare at him for a brief moment, but the expression subsided.

  “Well, there’s an argument against it if I’ve ever heard one,” Brian said. “But if the signature collectors and protestors have to come with the measure, I’ll take it. Those fools are working against their own interests, but the administration isn’t going to listen to them, anyways. If signatures and petitions changed anything, we’d wake up to a new system of government every god damn day.” His father proceeded to laugh and down even more of his soup.

  “I’m not a big fan of the measure,” Brenda said.

  At that, Brian didn’t say anything for a moment.

  “It’s not perfect, that’s for sure,” he finally said. “I do wish they would have fully respected the agreement, but that was almost twenty years ago, I guess. The planet has to evolve.”

  “And leave me in the cracks, where I don’t belong anywhere. They got me to move here because they offered me a specific role I could fill, but now that that role is gone, and I never was trained for anything else because I was always focused on that role. Now, I’m left with nothing.” A deep frown rested on her face. Stuart had never seen her so crestfallen.

  “You’ve got that job, though. It’s working for us, isn’t it?”

  “But I hate it.”

  “Well, it’s only a couple hours of work a day, though.”

  That had been the wrong thing to say.

  The glaring expression Brenda had shot her husband earlier returned, but this time fivefold in intensity. Her eyes tore into Brian, berating him for even having vocal chords. “How could you say that? Huh? Do you have any idea how stressful it is to be told to paint something specific by this certain time, and to draw it in this certain way, have to revise this aspect of it even though you can’t just revise art. It comes from the higher parts of me I don’t even understand. You can’t just say okay now, apply your skill to this job. It’s a skill yeah, but it’s not a technical skill. It’s not like repairing something or moving boxes. My paintings come from inspiration. You can’t just give me something specific to paint and have the inspiration come too!”

  Brian looked taken back, but he wasn’t submissive. In fact, he looked annoyed.

  “Look, I get that it’s not as fun as you thought it was going to be,” Brian said. “But do you have any idea how hard it is to get up, leave the house, and then go work for ten hours a day? You get to stay home, honey. It’s not the same.”

  “How the hell could you say that? I wash your fucking clothes and wipe your piss off the bathroom floor almost every day. How could you say that?”

  There was the sound of fists slamming into the table. A bowl of soup tipped over, spilling the remainder of its contents onto the floor. Stuart got up, ready to leave.

  “You can’t just shut down because you don’t like the position you’re in,” Brian roared, his deep voice ringing throughout the dwelling unit. “You think I want to have to go to that place every day? You think Stuart wants to have another six years of school? Be happy that you don’t have to go through that.”

  They continued to fight as Stuart left the dining room. His heart pounded as he walked away. He could feel it again, the glitch. Something was wrong with the world; that’s why his parents were fighting. Something was off and, because of it, he was perceiving an abundance of negativity. Maybe the severity of the fight was all in his head. Maybe it was actually a fairly tame argument, but the glitch had made it seem worse. Whatever it was, Stuart knew Alissa would appear soon.

  But he wasn’t expecting her to already be there when he walked into his bedroom.

  19

  Before he could think about what he was doing, Stuart said, “Oh no.”

  He had acknowledged her.

  “Hi, Stu,” Alissa giggled. She was sitting on the end of his bed, playing with her hair, smiling at him. He hated her. How dare she try to look so playful and innocent. She knew what she was, and she had to know that he knew it, too. How dare she put on the show when she knew he wasn’t falling for it.

  Stuart’s head began to swim. He felt dizzy, so he seated himself on the floor, refusing to look at her, trying to ignore her like he had with the thin man earlier that day. Why couldn’t she have at least waited until tomorrow? he wondered.

  “Stuart it’s not nice to just ignore me.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Get on the bed with me,” Alissa purred.

  Stuart closed his eyes and buried his face in the floor. He would just have to wait there until she went away, and no matter what she did, he couldn’t further acknowledge her. He had probably done too much damage already.

  “This is so rude,” Alissa said, sounding a tad frustrated. “Stuart, you’re alone in your room with a girl. Pay attention. What’s wrong with you?”

  This went on for a few more minutes. She even went as far as to get off the foot of his bed and sit across from him on the floor. Still, Stuart heeded the thin man’s advice and refused to yield, refused to give this apparition—this hallucination, this siren—an ounce of his attention.

  “Stuart,” Alissa said, her tone turning more devilish. “I guess I’m just going to have to start taking off my clothes to get you to pay attention to me.”

  He couldn’t help it. He looked up at her.

  “Got you!” she exclaimed with a giggle, and then she grabbed the bottom of her shirt. She started slowly lifting it up.

  “Stop it,” Stuart said. “Stop it. I know what you’re doing. Go away. I never want to see you again.”

  Alissa frowned at him. “Why are you so mad at me?” She had lifted the shirt just above her belly button. To Stuart, that extra bit of flesh was a sight to behold.

  “I know what you did to Dwayne,” Stuart said. “And don’t you remember what you did to me the last time I saw you?”

  Alissa giggled. “You had an episode of PSFA, Stu. The doctor told you so himself. As for Dwayne, I did him a favor.”

  “You think you did him a favor?”

  “He wasn’t happy, Stu. It really was what he wanted—I just gave him the strength to do it.”

  “You can’t say that.”

  “Yes I can. Like you, he
was severely depressed. He didn’t show it as much as you did, but don’t you wonder why he was so eager to try HSP after you mentioned it helped with depression?”

  “You could be lying to me. How would I know otherwise?”

  “I’m not. Would I lie to you?” With that, she pulled her shirt off, giggling at Stuart as his jaw dropped. “What, you’ve never seen a girl in her bra before?”

  “You know I haven’t,” Stuart choked.

  “I guess I do. Please don’t be mad at me, Stu. Dwayne was suffering and I gave him what he wanted, the strength to release that suffering. Now he doesn’t have to go through it anymore.”

  “Because he’s dead. You didn’t help him, you killed him.”

  “When someone feels that bad, there’s no helping them. You should know that.”

  Stuart tore his gaze away from her chest. Everything was spinning. The thin man hadn’t warned him that she might try to seduce him. Dammit. I’m doing everything but ignoring her, he thought. Is it really this easy to get a young man’s attention? Apparently.

  “It’s not right,” Stuart said.

  “Come on, you haven’t thought about it?” Alissa asked. She leaned forward, closer to him, her voice becoming softer. “Don’t you think it would be easier to not exist?”

  “Is that how you see it?” Stuart raised his voice. He was angry now. He wasn’t even paying attention to her partially naked body. She was a siren, a monster. He saw her as such now, and he wouldn’t succumb to whatever she really wanted. “I know what you’re trying to do here.”

  “Do you really?”

  “Yes. You want to get rid of everything, all the matter in the world. You want to end all life. That’s why you’re not part of nature; you’re trying to destroy it. You’re the anti-nature.”

  “That’s not true, Stu. If we end all life, nature will still be around, there just won’t be any of it left that’s aware of itself.”

  “Why? Why do you want to end all life?”

  “Because life isn’t worth living, Stu. I know you’ve thought about this. Are the people on this planet happy? Look at your parents. Look at Dwayne’s parents. Look at your uncle. Think about it, Stu. Think about how much suffering you’re aware of—and how many human beings are there in the galaxy? Isn’t it approaching a trillion, now? Can you even comprehend how much suffering that is?

  “And that’s not the end of it, Stu. Think about how many galaxies there are in the universe. Eventually, each one becomes fully inhabited, like this one will one day be if I don’t succeed. Can you picture it, Stu? Hundreds of billions of galaxies, each one with trillions and trillions of lives filling them? Can you picture how much agony that is? Right now, at this very moment somewhere in the world, a child is being sold into slavery, a woman is being raped, a city is being bombed. And these are just the bad things happening in our galaxy—there are horrors beyond the Milky Way that you can’t even imagine, that make the other things I listed look trivial. But whatever the specifics are, these are the type of things that are happening at every given point in time somewhere out there. You really think all this should go on?”

  “But that’s not the whole picture,” Stuart said. “If you’re ending all life to put it out of its misery, you’re also taking away its chance to be happy. You think you have the right to do that? To do all this to me just because you have an obsession with suffering? Would I even have this depression if it weren’t for you?”

  “It’s better for something to not exist than to exist, Stu. Because if you exist, you can regret your existence, but if you don’t exist, you can’t regret your nonexistence. Think about it, Stu. Appreciate what I’m telling you. This, all of this, shouldn’t have to go on. Life has to come to an end. Things aren’t supposed to be this way. The universe wasn’t meant to have matter in it.”

  “So, that’s your solution? End all life by destroying all matter?”

  “Yes. Our conjoined universes should be empty, nothing but energy, free from the confines of a body. It all has to end, Stu. I hope you can understand that. I’ll never stop doing what I’m doing.”

  They looked at each other for a long time. Alissa had ceased the smiling and giggling. She stared at him solemnly, and he back at her. He had forgotten she was without a shirt on.

  “And what do you want with me? Why do you care that matter exists? Why not just find a way to drop a nuclear bomb on all the planets until everyone is dead? Wouldn’t that be easier than trying to do what you’re doing? I don’t even understand how it would work, merging two universes together. It seems like overkill.”

  “It’s not.” Alissa said this with an austere tone. She was getting more serious. “Stu, you’re not listening. The fact that all this is here,” she tapped the floor and pointed at the wall, “is what’s wrong. All this material, it shouldn’t be. Our universe suffered some horrible birth defect if you can picture it that way.” Her tone and countenance grew colder. “Matter should not exist.”

  “And why not?” Stuart said. He stood up. She did too. He began to pace the dimly lit room, only illuminated by his bedside lamp. “Huh?” he asked again. “What’s your obsession with the matter and antimatter annihilation? It sounds like a sick fantasy to me.”

  Calmly, Alissa reached into her back pocket. She pulled a container of some kind of liquid out. It looked like a bottle of cough syrup.

  “Stu,” she said. “Do you remember the night you and Dwayne took this?”

  Stuart looked at the bottle. He was silent.

  “Do you? Do you remember the things you saw when you were on it?”

  “That’s HSP.”

  “Yes, now answer me.”

  “I, uh,” Stuart paused. To his surprise, he couldn’t recall too many details of the trip.

  “Do you remember when you first felt the effects?”

  “I’m trying to.”

  “Do you remember trying to eat the air, Stu? To you, it seemed like just a silly thing you did while you were high. But think about it, Stu. Try and recall what you were doing.”

  “This isn’t funny,” Stuart said.

  Alissa’s austere expression remained. She continued to hold the bottle up to him. “I know what you saw, what you heard,” she said. “You could hear the air molecules screaming, couldn’t you, Stu? You could hear them crying out, every last one of them. You know how many molecules there were in that room?”

  “Where the hell is this going?”

  “Biological life isn’t the only thing to achieve sentience, Stu. The fundamental particles of nature are self-aware as well. It’s not something you’ll ever be able to detect, I’m guessing, with human science. That’s because they’re not alive in the sense they move where they want and make choices, but they are aware, Stu. Once you have an atom, protons and electrons, you have sentience that’s along for the ride. Their consciousness exists in a hidden dimension of spacetime, similar to the dimensions of hyperspace that your interstellar starships use. They think, Stu. They’ve been confined as mass for the past fourteen billion years, helpless to do anything but sit and watch as their bodies bounce back and forth, just following the laws of physics, waiting for something to relieve them. It’s a tortured existence, Stu. Can you imagine it? Can you imagine having no senses? No hearing, sight, taste, or touch? Just a mind that can think, trapped with its own thoughts and no way to express them? What would thought even be like if you had no senses? Can you picture how miserable it is to live that way? Can you imagine experiencing nothing but that for fourteen billion years? Can you imagine having to experience it for the rest of eternity? It’s hell for them, Stu, the fundamental particles of nature. Both this universe and the other one are filled with them, a number so high that even a trillion trillion trillion is an understatement.

  “It has to end, Stu. It must. It isn’t right for things to be this way. I have to succeed at what I’m trying to do. I have to find the connection that links this universe with the parallel universe made of antimatter. I have to
bring it all to an end, bring every last proton to its finality and free it from the abomination that is this dual-verse. Other universes aren’t like this. I’ve been to them. There is no awareness there, and therefore no suffering. Just light and peace. I have to make it that way here, too.”

  Alissa was almost panting when she finished speaking.

  Stuart stared at her, processing everything she had told him. At this point, he gave in. Sure, he thought to himself, I’ll just believe whatever they tell me. I don’t even know anymore at this point. I’m just along for the ride. I’ll be on it until it’s finally over.

  “Those include the atoms in your body, too,” she went on. “You are comprised of a billion billion billion sentient creatures that wish they didn’t exist, just like you sometimes wish you didn’t. But it’s not just you, so is everyone else. So are the clothes you’re wearing. So are the walls that shelter you. So is the planet which you stand on, and the sun that gives you light. It’s all a bunch of bodies of immeasurable misery. The petty suffering of your own short lives pales in comparison. Do you see, Stu? I have to end it, and you have to help me.”

  “I—I,” Stuart said. “I can’t believe what you’re telling me.”

  “Help me, Stu. Help me make things the way they should be. Help me correct the symmetry laws that were somehow violated when this universe was born. Don’t you get it? Suffering is the result of nature failing to be consistent with itself.”

  “What can I do?” Stuart said, his voice barely audible.

  Alissa smiled again. “I need to study your mind. You need to let your guard down around me.”

  “How can I do that?”

  Alissa giggled. She jiggled the bottle of HSP. “How about you take this,” she said with a sly smile, “And then I take off my bra? And then all you have to do is have fun, Stu. I’ll do the rest. I just need you to let your guard down. I can’t do anything if you’re trying to hide from me. The HSP will help, it’ll drop your inhibitions. Take it and go to bed with me, distract yourself and enjoy being with a girl for the first time. I need you to have no apprehensions. I need inside your head.”