by Stephen King
He was walking. Alone. It was still night, and he was walking back along the beach toward the installation. Each step brought him more firmly into focus, closer to the immense concrete cube. Looking up, he saw it rising up out of the fog of his conscious mind, and the thought struck him that he had returned to it as if by instinct. The attack had subsided, and it was leaving him. He refocused his vision, heard the hushed crashes of the surf, felt the wet firmness of the sand beneath his boots.
Exhaling long and slowly, he stopped in that twilight area between the sea and the land. He remembered her and turned away from the dark cube on the cliffs, searching, hoping …
But she was gone.
He was lost; yet he was not. He felt pain; yet he did not. He feared something, but he did not want to articulate that fear. The taste of it was so bitter, and he welcomed it. He hoped that it was the herald of something new awakening within himself.
Link inhaled deeply, drawing the sea-strangled air into his body. The salty breath, which once carried the seeds of life itself, rushed into him. He stood silent for a moment, trying to capture the earlier events of the night. But the wind was growing chilly, and finally, he pulled up his collar against it and returned to the installation.
He awoke to a montage of white and green: more tests: wires, screens, charts, words, hands, and theories. Everything flowed into one and he accepted it like a purging bath. Link could now wait patiently for the chance to tell Herson what had happened on the beach.
And when he had told the doctor of the entire encounter, Herson sat quietly, stroking his beard. Link watched the man’s eyes: small, but expressing concern and intelligence.
“You sound like you enjoyed the experience,” said Herson after a long moment of silence.
“Yes, I did … I think I did.”
“Even though you suffered another deprivation lapse? Immediately afterward?” Herson leaned closer in his chair, staring intently into Link’s eyes.
“Yes. I don’t think the two events were related. Not really.”
“Why not?”
“I just don’t.” Link raised his voice slightly. “Because, well, there were some other things … thoughts I had after I recovered.”
“Can you explain these thoughts?”
“I don’t know,” said Link, looking away, rubbing his eyes out of habit. “Maybe. Before I came back last night, but after the attack, I spent some time just watching the sea. Alone. It was funny, but it looked different. It was like … well, I’m not sure …”
“This is interesting,” said Herson. “Would you like me to supply the analogy?”
“What?”
“Would you like me to try and complete your impression of what it was like? I think I have a good idea as to what it was.” Herson smiled.
“How could you?” Link’s curiosity was piqued.
“Just a hunch, that’s all.” Herson grinned. “All right. Go on, try.”
“When you looked out at the ocean after the attack and the meeting with the girl, you felt the same … satisfaction, shall we call it? … that you enjoyed when you were a cyborg aboard the ship. That’s it, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I guess it was,” said Link, nodding slowly, and admitting the fact to himself for the first time.
“So,” said Herson, patting him on the knee. “You see now that it can happen here? On Earth, I mean.”
Link nodded.
“That’s good,” said Herson, as he stood and prepared to leave. “We have at last reached the beginning.”
Link started to speak, to question the doctor, but he cut him off: “That’s enough for today. Get some rest. I’ll see you again tomorrow.”
After Herson had left, Link reviewed the last fragments of their conversation, sifting through the words, looking for some grain of insight that might spark off the proper connections in his mind. He knew Herson seemed to have understood what he had tried to say.
. . .
At dusk, Link left the white room, the green robes, and the stark corridors of the installation, preferring the cool-blue arms of evening that waited to embrace him. He was drawn to the beach and the tide that was now receding from it. The sky was terribly clear and the sea was smooth, but he sensed an odd mood in the air. As if sudden changes could burst upon the shore with little notice. Already, the retreating tide had speckled the sand with several dead and dying creatures from the sea.
But this time as Link viewed the sight, he was not reminded of life’s futility. She had shown him a different view—a new way of seeing in the twilight. It was a place of multiple realities, of this he was now certain. Even in the midst of dying, there could be purpose. He began walking, and continued for almost an hour. He was only vaguely aware of the path of footprints he left in the sand.
Instead, he searched for hers.
The moon grew high and small, becoming lost on the now clouded vault above him. The wind grew stronger and less comforting, less inviting; yet he walked on. But he saw no trace of her. With a growing anxiety, he remembered her words: There are so many beaches … so many nights. Perhaps she was not coming here again? Perhaps he had never seen her in the first place. It was a staggering thought to think she had only been a bizarre manifestation of his madness.
But no. There was something magical about this place where he walked, where he searched. He would not give up so easily. He knew that where he now walked was a place where a solitary human being had passed nightly to battle death. Link now realized also that there were, perhaps, different kinds of death. Finding her would confirm his feelings.
He rounded a jutting point of land, and he saw her.
Beyond a finger of rocks stretching out to touch the waves stood the girl. As he began walking quickly toward her, he twice saw her pause to return some hapless creature back to the sea.
Then Link slowed his pace, calming himself, suppressing the joy he felt at finding her. He cast a glance downward at the sand and muck that slid past his boots, and he saw something. In the swirling foam, there was a small and slimy thing. Its pores were glutted with sand, suffocating it in the night breeze. Link stooped down and picked it up, feeling its tiny spicules against his palm.
He continued to approach her, and she turned, sensing his nearness, to watch him draw closer. Her eyes dropped to the pulsating thing he held in his hand, and she nodded gently.
“I’m sorry,” Link said when he was close to her. “About last night. I really don’t remember—”
She silenced him with a simple gesture—a lowering of her eyes and a slight shake of her head.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. Then after a pause: “I’ve come to … join you.”
She smiled and her eyes danced with lively amber and brown. As Link watched her, he felt a smile forming on his own lips—the first in a long, long time, it seemed. She laughed softly and looked out to the star-filled sea.
Pulling back his arm, Link flung the creature far out into the night. Time seemed to slow as he watched its path describe a graceful arc across the violet sky. Masked by the whisper of the surf, it noiselessly penetrated the surface and was gone.
Seeing this, Link felt an atavistic surge within his mind. It was not unlike the cybernetic taste of the stars themselves. Something inside himself was coming to life again.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she asked, as if she could sense the feelings in his soul.
Link turned to her and nodded. He reached out to touch her hand.
“Your name,” he said softly. “What is it?”
HOPIUM DEN
JOHN SKIPP
I’ve always loved the Pacific Coast Highway at night. Moonbeam dance over endless waves across an infinite horizon. Wind whipping my hair and ruffling my blouse, with the windows down. All the regular shit that somehow never gets old when you’re in it, senses alive and paying attention.
I love my life. That’s why I kept it.
But some nights are harder than others.
The car hears me cr
ying, knows what song I want to hear, puts it on almost before I start singing. I’m pretty high—way too high to be driving—and am grateful it’s steering its own wheel tonight.
I thank it. It says you’re welcome and guns it to 150. I start laughing. Its engine purrs as it accelerates, hits 200. I let out a rip-roarin’ “WOOOOOO!!!” It sure knows how to cheer a gal up.
All the roads are a lot less crowded now. Fewer people means fewer cars, all driving themselves and whoever’s still here wherever they want to go. I remember when getting from Zuma to downtown L.A. took hours in traffic. Those days are gone.
Before we know it, we are in the glimmering husk of metropolis. Almost no one lives on the streets anymore. Just another problem solved. We weave past empty block after empty block. And all the traffic lights are green.
I close my eyes for a minute. Then the car says we’re here, pulling over. I thank it, get out. It locks the door behind me. I look around, see no one. That’s fine.
The only one I wanna see is Johnny.
I still like cigarettes. They remind me of home. Since nobody minds if we die anymore, just so long as we’re happy, that works out great. I know Johnny would like one, like to taste it on my lips.
I light one up, take my time strolling down the long promenade to the storage center. My shadow is the only one moving. The city keeps the lights on, as a courtesy to those remaining.
The city takes care of itself.
The sliding glass door opens and I step inside, still smoking. There’s nobody at the security desk but the security desk itself. I tell it what I’m here for. It is courteous and kind. Flashes me directions I already know. I thank it, walk past it and down to Corridor Three.
Corridor Three is like every other corridor in every other storage center. I’ve been to thirty dozen, and they’re all the same. Hallway after hallway of doors upon doors. All that unused downtown space has finally come in handy.
Johnny’s in 317, with a thousand other people. There are no other people in the hall. 600,000 people under this one roof, and none of them walking. Just my long shadow and I. My shadows. In front. In back. To either side, as the overhead lights bisect them.
The door’s unlocked. Why wouldn’t it be. So much less to fear now that all of the frightened are gone. The only ones left are the ones that really want to be here.
No. That’s not fair. But you can’t say it ain’t accurate.
“Okay, then,” I say, walking into Room 317 of the Hopium Den.
And all of the dreamers are there.
I look at them. Look at my smoke. Say fuck it and light another, drop the dead one to the floor and grind it out with my heel.
They won’t care. Almost all the complainers are gone. Gone to here. Gone to the place where their complaints are no longer an issue.
In row after row after row.
And stack after stack after stack.
I wonder if any of them can smell it. I doubt it. I certainly can’t smell them. The ventilation is superb. These environments are self-containing, self-sustaining. Technology once again for the win.
I let the door close behind me, watch my smoke lift up and out a vent. I thank it.
And think, oh, sweet sorrow.
Looking at all of you.
I’ve been here enough to know some of your histories. They play on the screens of your cocoons, let us know whatever you chose to have us know about you. THIS IS WHO I AM, you say, through digital images left for the actively living.
Most of you are lying. And are happy to do so. I don’t blame you a bit. It’s just not my style.
I chose staying awake. Don’t ask me why. Maybe it’s an issue of trust. Maybe I just thought that being born was a challenge I’d been given that I was supposed to play out in real time, not handed over to a machine-driven imaginarium of wish-fulfillment dream-enaction. No matter how well they drive. No matter how vivid. No matter how much you feel it, and believe it.
Maybe I’m just stubborn.
And Johnny, you know I am.
So I look at Peggy, in her pristine apartment, with her three perfect kids forever; I look at Deke and Farik, forever locked in holy war, never having given up their sacred causes, killing each other over and over; I look at Jasmine, composing symphony after symphony; I look at Lee, in his imaginary mansion, fucking underage children till the end of time.
I totally get why you’d want to live your dream, given the choice between here and there. And somberly salute your choices.
Then walk the hall down to my Johnny, twelve rows in and on the bottom, for e-z access. And there you are.
“Hey, baby,” I say.
Like almost everyone else’s, your cocoon says you’re now immensely successful, tremendously enjoying your life. This time around, you’re a top-ranked jazz pianist, gourmet chef, and world-renowned philosopher, admired by the finest, most discerning minds in all of fantasyland (including an admirable list of lovers that stupidly blips at my jealousy gland). Somehow, you’ve brought all these disparate vocabularies together into a clarified vision of deep human understanding that’s actually making a difference in a world wracked by chaos and sorrow and pain.
I smile at the thought of making a difference, now that all the difference has already been made. I smile because making a difference used to be all we had. Our whole reason for being. Right after look out for # 1.
The city takes care of itself now. As does the world at large. We were the interim step, from nature to super-sentient macro-nature. Taking control, but letting everything be. So self-aware and utterly interconnected it can micro-dial everything at once.
The city doesn’t need us anymore. Either does the world, for that matter.
The only question left is:
Which where do we want to be?
I’d like to think that the deeper out is the deeper in. That the real one remains the one to beat. That still living this life—even though (fuck that, maybe even BECAUSE) the machines have it all running smoothly, at last, forever—is somehow better than just dreaming the best dream our machines can manufacture.
I have no proof of this, of course, but they’re more than willing to give me the benefit of the doubt. They let me live my life the way I want to. And right back at ‘em. We coexist now, after all. And are both really cool about it.
I touch the screen, and all your projections disappear. Then it’s just me, reflected on the sleek surface.
Looking at what’s left of my sweet husband.
A desiccate meat shadow, inside his cocoon.
“Oh, you fucker,” I say, and the tears come back, and it pisses me off, but I just can’t help it. “You may not believe this, but it’s pretty sweet out here. Almost all of the assholes are gone! Can you believe it? I mean, Kendra’s still Kendra. But once she realized the world didn’t need her to save it, she kinda relaxed into dominating the occasional Sunday brunch. I hardly even wanna strangle her any more. And her poetry? It’s honestly gotten … well, almost pretty good.
“But, baby? More than that, the fucking oceans are clean. They actually figured it out. Got down there and detoxified the whole toxic bouillabaisse. Those nanobots are the shit.
“We couldn’t do it. But they could. And they did. I swim in the ocean every day. I see whales leap at dawn from our bedroom window. Not even remotely extinct. They are, in fact, thriving.
“And there’s no more war, Johnny! It’s done! Everyone who still thought there was a reason to fight gave it up the second their needs got met. Everyone’s needs are getting met. Life doesn’t have to be a hellhole any more. All the big weapons got defused. And all the kill freaks get to dream about killing each other forever.
“Evidently, it’s very emotionally satisfying, cuz roughly a trillion people are actively engaged in it. That’s how they wanna live. That’s how they wanna go out. Just fighting and fighting and proving they’re right.
“But the good news is: the rest of us don’t have to put up with it anymore. We’re not stuck
in the middle of their holy war. You know how we used to joke that it would be great if they just had their own planet to slug it out on, and we didn’t have to watch? Well, NOW THEY DO! It’s all experienced down to the tiniest detail. As far as their neurons are concerned, the apocalypse is ON! And they’re right in the middle. Exactly where they wanna be.
“I love that it’s all so real for them. I really do. If that’s what they want, let ‘em have it.”
I blow a plume of smoke directly at you, hope you smell it. A little reek of nostalgia.
“Like you. I mean, I love that you’re playing jazz piano now. I know how bad you wanted it. You always said you could play like McCoy fucking Tyner if you could only practice fifteen hours a day for fifty years. And from what I can tell, you’ve lived fifty lifetimes since you said goodbye to me.
“That was just a couple years ago, out here, you know,” I say.
But you don’t know.
You’re not hearing a word I’m saying.
I stop talking, start crying some more, and just take a moment to soak in the barely-breathing gruesome corpse of you. Asleep and a-dream in your little cocoon. You look waaaaay beyond terrible, so much body fat and muscle leeched away by inertia that I barely recognize the flesh lazily draped across your bones, like shabbily-hung antique wallpaper.
What’s left of the real you is connected to your mortal remains by a web of filaments and tubes. Wiring you in. Feeding and extruding the waste from what strikes me, as I sob, as nothing more and nothing less than the sheer wreckage and necrotic waste of the excellent man I once knew and loved. Who used to love me.
Who swore he would stand at my side, till death do us part.
But given the choice, not enough to stay.
This is a lot to let go of. But you have already let go entirely. I give you three months at the outside. Maybe a couple extra dream-lives, at most.