Now he got to see. Ms. Temple was slamming the end of a long ruler against her forehead, over and over. The whap left red streaks. This went on for fifteen minutes until the timer went off.
She took a deep breath before whipping out a small mirror and redoing her makeup.
Sammy Finkelstein, a short boy with glasses and brown curls, yawned. It made Charlie yawn. All the children yawned.
At that moment, Matilda’s hand grazed Charlie’s. He looked at her. She half-smiled but didn’t look back.
“All eyes on me!” yelled Ms. Temple. “It’s time for our weekly Misgivings.” Some groans went up. “Anthony Vasquez!”
The boy named Anthony sighed, stared at his shoes.
“You’re still playing baseball, yes?”
Anthony nodded.
“Right or left-handed?”
“Right, Ms. Temple.”
“Okay, then.”
Anthony stepped up to Ms. Temple and turned profile to her. She punched him on the right arm three times.
“But I have to pitch today,” he protested, massaging his bicep.
“That’s the whole point!” Ms. Temple flung him around and sent him back into line. Her face crinkled. She seemed to be in discomfort. She dug through her purse and quickly swallowed three extra-strength pain relievers. “I’m going to get diabetes, I just know it,” she said to no one in particular and took a big bite from a piece of cake on her desk.
Charlie stared at the cake. It was decadent and triple-layered and had icing with pearls on top. He watched Ms. Temple finish her bite, shake her head at herself in disgust, then dig in for another. When she was done, her face sagging with anguish and heavy cream, she grabbed her stomach and lifted herself out of her seat to continue the Misgivings.
She called little Alicia Evans to the front. Alicia was smart, maybe the smartest in the whole class. Ms. Temple made her stand on her head for fifteen minutes until she nearly passed out.
Then it was Matilda’s turn. Ms. Temple looked her up and down and decided, like every week, that Matilda had enough wrong with her, that there was no reason to impair her further, and sent her back to the line—but not before berating her for all the things wrong with her, and warning that if she was ever going to be someone she’d better learn to fix them.
Beaming, Matilda returned to the line. She is so beautiful, Charlie thought.
“Charlie!” yelled Ms. Temple. “You can see now, correct?”
“Yes, Ms. Temple. But no better than anyone else. In fact, the doctor said I see a little less good than most people.”
“Hmm.” She leaned back, tried to find something, but seeing as how she couldn’t find anything wrong that set him apart physically from the rest of the class, she decided not to punish him that way today.
She did, however, yell at him about the color of his eyes.
As Charlie walked back into line, he and Matilda shared a snicker. She touched his hand.
Upon seeing them touch, Ms. Temple flew into such a rage that she sprinted to the school kitchen for another massive piece of cake. When she returned, she shoved half of it down her throat. She gasped for air, wheezing and gurgling. Her red, bleary eyes bulged in menacing alarm. Snot flew from her nose.
When she was finished, she screamed into the little intercom on her watch, made the necessary arrangements, and soon two agents whisked Charlie out of the classroom.
He was transferred to another school a few blocks away, where the authorities were sure he and Matilda wouldn’t speak. Their child-love had set them apart from their classmates—had elevated them too much. If only they’d kept it secret.
His parents weren’t angry, of course. These things happened. His own mother, that day in fact, had been demoted from her position as project manager at the nuclear plant for no reason except that it was her turn. Her pay decreased by fifteen percent.
Chapter 4
Wreckoning
That weekend, while Charlie was sitting in the backyard, about twenty yards from the house, he heard the wood creaking. He’d been watching the gremlins with the steel teeth chomp at the baseboards of his home. There were more today, maybe two dozen of them.
Every now and then a golf ball would whiz by on the course. If it was a bad shot, the golfer would sigh with relief. If it was good, well, the curses Charlie heard were not meant for such young ears.
When the gremlins finished eating the foundation of the house, it leaned to one side and fell, shattering the neighbor’s fence. (A lawsuit, no doubt about that.) Charlie dove behind the old oak tree to avoid the shrapnel.
When it looked like the dust was settled, and all of the family’s belongings were busted, flattened, or covered in dust and asbestos, Charlie walked up to one of the gremlins that was pedaling its feet sideways on the ground. Its back legs had been partially crushed by the falling home. Charlie absentmindedly kicked the little beast. The loose metal springs in its synthetic belly sprang sideways and onto the grass. Its jaw opened and shut with a snap—then its gears slowly ground down and all was quiet.
Charlie’s parents arrived a few minutes later. Mr. Webb stood with his hands on his hips and said, “Alright, who’s hungry?”
They went out for pizza. They laughed and joked. It was the happiest night of their lives.
For the next six months, they lived out of a hotel while their home was rebuilt. Mr. Webb oversaw the reconstruction effort, each day whistling as he drove to the site, cleaned up the rubble, and directed the architects and the contractors and carpenters. He’d never been so full of joy. He felt like a new man.
And when it was done, he stood with his family in the shade of a peach tree he’d planted in the front yard. They marveled at their new home, filled with pride and a sense of achievement.
The gleam in his eye lasted only a moment. Charlie watched as his face dropped. The life seemed to fade from him.
Mr. Webb shook his head. “I’ve got lung cancer. It’s the dust from the house. I can feel it in my body.” He sighed. “It’s too late for me. I just know it.”
A breeze from the synthetic atmosphere blew through Charlie’s hair. His father looked at him, a tear running down his face. He collapsed on the ground in racking sobs.
And that was how Charlie learned to be an adult in this world. Now he could really see.
The Cosmos of Meaning
Elliot had been seeing double on and off for a week, feeling woozy and disconnected from his surroundings. The Terran doctor looked him up and down, kneaded his tummy while peering through shining instruments, then sent him upstairs to the neurologist, who also found nothing wrong. Elliot was sent home with some benzodiazepine in case what was diagnosed as severe anxiety was to return.
He awoke the next day nervous as ever. Amid swirling thoughts, he rushed into the forest near his home and tramped right off the path so he could find some peace and quiet. He could no longer hear anything except what was inside his head. At some point, he fell to his knees and began weeping.
When he was finished, he looked up and blushed. An older gentleman was resting not ten feet from him, legs up, lying back on a naturally inclining tree stump that had been split down the middle. The man looked quite comfortable.
Elliot rose, wiped his nose, and shoved his hands in his pockets. He stood there awkwardly. He wore blue jeans, now covered in mud, and shoes resembling those worn by teenagers on Terra. He silently chastised himself and resolved to throw them in the trash and buy another pair. Something more adult, yes.
“Ssh,” the man said, grinning, one hand signaling Elliot to remain silent, head cocked, listening to the sounds of the—
“Albino parakeet,” the man said. “Rare these days.” He smiled and jotted something in his notebook. “You almost drove it away. It’s the last species of bird I had to document in these woods. So glad I finally finished.”
And as sometimes happens between two strangers who stumble across each other in the middle of the woods, they talked for some time until the subject of Life eme
rged, and Elliot, feeling comfortable with this strange man who wore a scarf and smoked a pipe, let the innards of his mind spill onto the forest floor.
“I don’t know what’s happening to me,” he said. “I have a wonderful job as a writer. I live in my favorite city. I have plenty of money. I’m freer than I’ve ever been in my whole life, but I’m anxious all the time. I feel like I’m not living at all. I can’t sleep, my head spins a million miles a minute. Everything is wonderful on the outside, but on the inside I’m a complete mess. I’m so indecisive, even trying to figure out what to make for dinner is like negotiating peace talks with Martian rebels. I just keep asking myself what’s wrong, and I have no good answer. Does that make sense?”
“Perfect sense.”
“I can’t even have a normal conversation with friends. The second I step out into the street, I start hyperventilating. I’m having an existential crisis, that’s it. Or I’m going crazy. I can’t tell which.”
The old man nodded, then lay back onto the log. “Tell me more.”
“Living life feels like I’m just playing a role. Always pretending to be something. When I was young, I had to step up and be the hero and take care of everyone because my father was a drunk, and I’ve read that’s what happens sometimes in families like mine. But I know that’s not who I actually was deep down. It’s just who I needed to be at the time.
“And then I went to school. But I was just playing another role based on who I thought I was supposed to be, or who I thought others thought I was supposed to be, to get along, to get good grades, make a living, whatever. I was a class clown for a while, tried to wear the right clothes, date the right person. And it didn’t stop after school. The roles followed me into my job. I went to law school and got a degree, and I hate law!
“It’s like we assign ourselves these roles because we need them in order to live in society and make money, or have friends, or be a part of a group. I even got married once because I thought I should. I met her at a job where I pretended to be outgoing and extroverted—and it was all fake. Look where that got me!”
Elliot took a deep breath. “So when I realized this, it made me think—‘Who am I?’ And I freaked out!”
“I’ll bet!” said the old man.
“But now all I see are masks. Personas. What’s real? What’s real about anything we do? Am I crazy?”
“That depends on who you ask. What you’re experiencing is a kind of break from society’s rules. A schism. By refusing to play the game, you’re leaving the collective delusion of society.”
“Is that it?”
“Possibly. But let’s back up. Your idea is an interesting one, so let’s use an example we can both relate to: family. Why is it so draining to be around family for long periods of time? I believe it’s because each family member has joined this group called ‘family’ and is now supposed to play a role in it, even if it’s not who they truly are. Each family has its own story, and that abstract idea must be upheld or else the ‘family’ falls apart. This is different than the family’s biology, mind you. This is about a story. It’s not limited to families, either. It’s true of any group, including our overall society.
“So, in one sense, you are experiencing a type of insanity. Society’s rules are a way of keeping things organized, and you are consciously choosing to dis-organize them by refusing to wear a mask. And when people refuse to join the collective, they are placed in asylums or treatment centers, whereby after a time they may be allowed to rejoin society. Which is another way of saying they are being allowed to rejoin society’s delusions, its constructs, its abstractions.
“But on the other hand, you are absolutely sane. The ego of our world is a mask, and societies wear them just as individuals do. The question is: what do you do about that?”
“Yes! What do I do?”
“Do you want the real answer?”
“Sure.”
“You won’t like it, but I’ll tell you anyway. Are you ready?”
“Come out with it already, man.”
“Okay, then,” said the man named Sartre the 57th. “My answer is that I don’t know what you should do. You are condemned to freedom.”
“Huh? Condemned to freedom? What does that even mean?”
“It means you’re responsible for what you do.”
“That doesn’t feel like freedom, much less freedom from any of society’s delusions.”
“You’re right. It doesn’t. Freedom requires responsibility. And responsibility doesn’t feel free. It feels like responsibility. What you’re describing—your anxious state—is your waking up to freedom. You have seen beyond the masks, and that’s important. You are free from the delusions you previously chose to believe.”
“But I didn’t choose to believe in any of this,” Elliot protested. “I was just a child when I learned society’s delusions or whatever you call them.”
“That’s right. If you think about it, you really don’t choose much in this life. Nobody chooses their parents, their generation, the society they’re born into. Nobody chooses their DNA, their biological looks, their innate gifts, even.
“However, we do choose our own actions in any given situation—even if at the time we felt like we had no choice. Sure, we can tell ourselves we had to leave our spouse, or cheat on a test, or buy a home, but the truth is we always choose our actions.”
“I call bullshit on that,” Elliot said. “Are you saying that slaves made a choice to be slaves? That children, poisoned by chemicals, are choosing to be poisoned?”
“Absolutely not. I am only describing attitudes and actions. For example, let’s say I’m accused of wizardry and am locked up. I’m unable to leave my cell, so I have only a few options. I can choose to do my time quietly or try to break out or go on a hunger strike. I didn’t choose my getting locked up, but I do have a choice about what do now, yes?”
The old man stretched, yawned. “Now, your situation. You are free-floating. You have no real problems that I can see. On the outside, all seems well.”
“Yes. But what’s the point of it all? If all we do is try to get along with our masks, and assign fake roles to fake people so we can live comfortably—what is the point? What do I do?”
“I already told you. I don’t know what you should do.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Of course it is. Choices are the chains of freedom. Understand? You have to make your own decisions. But I’ll give you a hint, which is only a hint and not an answer.
“If you’ve stripped away the masks of society and have found the truth—which is that there is NOTHING beneath the masks—then it’s your duty to go into the emptiness and find meaning.
“The point of life is not, as some people say, to be happy. Rather, it is to find meaning in the vast emptiness of life. It is paradoxical, maybe, but you must find meaning in the meaninglessness. You must. It’s your responsibility now, as a free person.”
“But I didn’t ask for this responsibility. I don’t want it.”
“Who cares what you did or did not ask for? You choose little in your life, as we’ve already established. But it is your life, and you must take responsibility for it—unless, of course, you choose not to do anything about it, which is perfectly all right if that’s what you choose and are willing to bear the responsibility for your non-choice.
“Your journey into meaning—and meaninglessness—is a solo one. No one can, or should, make meaning for you. That’s why I say I have no answers. Meaning is located somewhere in the void, so no two people find it in the same place. The search is lonely and chaotic and alienating, but that is life. It isn’t good or bad, it’s just the way life is.”
Elliot sighed. “Okay, I have a problem though. When you talk about responsibility, it sounds an awful lot like you’re talking about personal responsibility, like those assholes on the Forum who rail against poor people.”
“I’m not commenting on anybody’s personal situation. Life situations can
not be qualified in those ways, though commentators like to try. I’m only saying that everybody—regardless of their life situation, regardless of their position in this collective delusion we call society—has the power to choose their attitudes and actions and the meaning of their own lives. That’s all.”
“Fair enough. Now, about my—”
“Yes, about you. I’ve noticed you care an awful lot about yourself.”
“Well, why shouldn’t I? It’s my life, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is. And it’s important to care about oneself. You can’t do much for others if your own house is burning down. However, given your present situation, I doubt you’ll find much meaning—for yourself—by paying so much attention to yourself.”
“That seems paradoxical. Isn’t that where you’d find meaning?”
“Perhaps. But many people who are focused on self-improvement—who take workshops and meditation retreats and food detoxes—to improve themselves—are some of the saddest people I know. Most of the time they end up using those activities to strengthen their masks rather than to transcend them, and therefore become more enslaved to themselves than ever before. They make ‘self-improvement’—which is named that for a reason—an end in itself, and what meaning do you expect to find by constantly improving your mask? Those people are only creating barriers to their own emptiness, and what point is there in that?”
“So what I do is . . .”
“That is your freedom, and it’s yours to figure out. I would never want to take that from you. But I’ll tell you what I’ve observed about you from our conversation so far.
“You spend an awful lot of time thinking about yourself. You’re looking at the ground when there is a whole world in front of you. And above you. Perhaps your answer is in the stars.
“If you want to find meaning—which is to say, to see it—you should try to create meaning for someone else. Then you will know it, for you will see the effects.”
“And how do I do that?”
Escaping Midnight (What Goes On in the Walls at Night Book 3) Page 10