The Birth of Dystopia

by A. Q. Moser

  “What kind of walkie-talkies did you use?” Billy sidetracked the story.

  “I can’t remember exactly … the cheap kind, I guess. The buttons were silver trimmed with red.” Wolfgang waved his hand in the air to dismiss the question that diverted his intention. “We moved away from the York West neighbourhood after my father discovered something in our basement. He was examining the cause for a burnt wire on a broken switch and came across a concealed compartment in the upper right corner of the fuse box. He wouldn’t have noticed it had it had not been for the burnt wire discolouring the paint in the fuse box. Inside the compartment he stumbled upon some unusual wiring and an extra part. This part was linked to the incoming feed of the TV box.”

  “Well, what was it?” Billy demanded to know.

  I leaned forward in my chair, taken in by the suspense.

  “He didn’t know exactly what it was but he believed it was some sort a computer microchip or possibly a tiny microphone-like device?” Wolfgang studied our faces expecting someone to faint at the mere thought of such an apparatus.

  Thrilled and eyes wide open, Billy stood with open palms towards Wolfgang wanting to see the device. “A computer chip or a microphone? Where is it?”

  “My family was always well-off as I could remember.” Wolfgang continued his story in spite of the buzz. “My house had all the electronics and the alarms to protect us. Did they break in and plant this? Was it there before we moved in? Who knew? Fearing more espionage bugs, my father hired a crew of trained espionage personnel to come in and electronically search the entire house including the front and back yards. As a child I didn’t understand what was going on but later on my mother told me. The team couldn’t explain the rig in the basement nor could they tell who or where it came from. The only things they could say for sure was that the set-up was hidden for a purpose and it was more advanced than anything the professional team had ever seen before. With my bad dreams becoming a further nuisance, my father started linking the two together. At first my father took time off from work to look into how it got there and who was responsible. Unable to find anything, he quit his engineering job and sacrificed more time to uncovering the truth. He tried combing through various news articles, Internet, court cases and so on but got nowhere. I remember him at one crazy time wanting to torch the house that he loved so much. In the end, we moved away. And soon afterwards he had the old house torn down. It was inevitable.”

  “My bad dreams still continued but my father knew the damage was done. My mother said that the stress of the matter led him to drink heavily. One thing led into another and my mom later divorced him. Beaten, he died shortly thereafter from asphyxiation. Since then I never wanted to touch an alcoholic beverage.” Wolfgang stared down at his bubbling ginger ale drink all the while tapping the glass with his wedding band.

  I could feel Wolfgang choking up as he exposed the deep pain from within. I sympathized with him, as we all lost a piece of our lives over these nightmares. I could not count the number of times my parents had to console me during the sleepless nights.

  May also gazed down at her cocktail drink, swirling it around in pity. Without any remorse, Billy looked disgusted and bored. He made facial gestures, mocking Wolfgang as he described his rough childhood.

  “Do you have any of the wires or stuff your father got?” I inquired in my best soothing voice without sounding too eager to see something concrete.

  Four people could talk all day about the nightmares and how haunting they were but to have a physical object in hand was worth more than all the stories combined. It was a step forward at uncovering the truth behind the plaguing nightmares.

  “I have the things before my father passed away. He had me hold on to them as if it was all we owned.” Wolfgang paused to wipe a bitter tear in memory for his dear father. He slowly reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a leather wallet stained over time with blotches of brown discolouration. Mixed with loose change, he retrieved a few items and laid them on the billiard table. He sat back in his chair with his head down, humbled by the revelation.

  May immediately picked up all the treasured pieces. Billy and I huddled around her to stare at the devices. At the center of Wolfgang’s family misery were three discoloured wires and a minuscule spherical ball with a sharp, rounded protrusion lay before us. They stood apart from her palm, a glorious prize to be held high like a gold medal—treasured for keepsake and definitely not to be shown to just any outsider. It was as if we had stolen a tiny thread from the portrait of the Mona Lisa and only a select few could be trusted to grasp its glorious presence. The items were invitingly beautiful and dismally frightening at the same time. A ménage of pain and glory all rolled into one package no bigger than a dime.

  Billy reached out and gently pressed the ball into May’s palm testing to see that the glistening sphere was solid. Wanting to touch the items too, I took my turn and rolled the shiny sphere a few millimetres across her hand—a near-perfect sphere with the hardness of a metallic consistency. Could this be the conduit of our insomnia and nightmares? Could some object so small produce so much agony?

  Billy peered in for a closer look at the polished sphere to the point where he could have almost snorted it. “I can see my reflection in it,” he noticed.

  May raised her hand to her face, wanting to see closer. “Wooowww,” she said, like someone seeing a baffling magic trick. “The round thing is so clear that I could see a flawless reflection on it.”

  “The wires look glass-like too,” I added, awed by the bizarre items.

  Wolfgang kept his distance, almost fearing the objects he had unleashed. We all looked at him expecting him to voice his expert opinion on the purpose of the device.

  “What are you thinking?” May queried kindly.

  “My father sacrificed his life for that.” Wolfgang looked up and then back down. “He … he couldn’t find anything about it. And when paranoia set in, he arrived at the conclusion that there were people wanting to retrieve those pieces. He believed people were following him around. He even went as far as swallowing them to stop anyone from taking it away from him. His sickness grew beyond anything imaginable. There were days where he would simply stare at those things pieces you regard so highly and drink. If my father only knew then how closer we are now, working as a group to uncovering the truth, his relieved smile would light up the darkest night. I say this unequivocally, our bad dreams were a result of animals, not humans, out to experiment on children.”

  May came in for a second look. “What’s that bubbling spike on the round thing for?”

  “It could be a computer chip,” I remarked, thrown off by the roundness of it and the lack of any definite plug in to the mainframe for the transfer of data.

  Wolfgang subtly cleared his throat. “My father believed it was used for spying or controlling a digital signal or perhaps both. Even the wires are unusually thin.”

  “Look how small it is,” May cooed, still impressed by the objects.

  Looking up, heavenward as if evoking his father’s name, Wolfgang grimaced stiffly. “My father couldn’t piece together why only I had the bad dreams and no one else.”

  “I was the only one in family to have the bad dreams too,” May confirmed.

  “I was an only child and no one else in my family experienced the insomnia brought on by nightmares,” I blurted without a second thought.

  “I’m an only child too,” May admitted.

  “Me too.” Wolfgang cringed at the coincidence.

  May turned to Billy. “What about you?”

  Billy nodded, not sure how to digest the disturbing similarity.

  “This is absolutely weird,” May commented out of fear.

  “Just to get back on topic, I want to make myself clear, we can’t go around showing this stuff to anyone,” Wolfgang warned. “We can’t afford to lose this because it’s all we have. I think our best option is to separate the pieces among the four of us in case anything should happen to
me.”

  “I’ll keep the shiny sphere,” Billy readily accepted.

  “No,” May sternly retorted. “Wolfgang should keep it. For his sake and for his father’s sacrifice. If we ever run into trouble, we can decide then.”

  May’s brilliant words collected no argument. Billy backed down and accepted the proposal. Wolfgang’s face was no longer visible; his suit coat collar covered his head. His shoulders bobbed up and down. May delivered the shiny sphere and the three wires by placing them on the billiard table in front of the mourning professor. She then put her arms around him to hold and comfort. He fought it off but eventually succumbed.

  Our selfish interest shifted as we felt one man’s loss. Although he appeared not to care, Billy wiped his face with his open palms and then went back for another drink. I returned back to my chair with my eyes fixed on the ceiling. The precious four items sat unattended in perhaps the first time since its discovery.

  Seated, I tried to grasp how sad I should feel for all this. Although I lost sleep and had horrible nightmares, Wolfgang lost something more—his father. How could anyone make sense of this? Why would anyone want to invade a home and hide an object for the purpose of spying? And then it occurred to me, someone was also in my home. This invasive object was in my house to bring about pain and suffering beyond any measure. Why would anyone want to do this? It was an attack on the privacy of a person’s mind.

  “Someone broke into my home and placed these things into my house,” I announced, irritably pointing to the vile objects. “This was in all our homes. These things made us have the nightmares. The steamboat nightmare, the treasure chest hunt, the evil vampires, the school bus accident, all of them.”

  There was a moment of cheated silence from my statement. I could sense an explosion of anguish.

  “You’re right,” May responded, anguished by the notion. “You’re so very right. But my parents never noticed anything out of the ordinary,” she noted out loud.

  “Very true,” Billy admitted angered by the realization. “We go back to our old homes and look for more of these shiny objects,” he advised, spurring a mob’s gung-ho reaction.

  “What if the people who did this cleared the homes already?” May tried to put sense into the brash charge.

  “Then they know Wolfgang has their stuff,” Billy argued back, agreeing to my claim.

  “We need to find out who was involved in this,” I declared.

  Wolfgang looked like he was going to budge but instead kept his head down in his arms. “I was going to destroy them.”

  “What?” Billy interjected, revolted by the idea.

  Wolfgang raised his head from its rest area. His eyes were bloodshot. His face looked old and wrinkled—he must have added ten years to his life with this revelation. “I was going to destroy it because I hated it.”

  “Destroy it?” Billy responded quickly. “Are you crazy? This could help us.”

  Wolfgang pointed to the four-piece set. “No! I hate these things. I hate the way it shines, I hate the way it feels. I despise it all.”

  Billy ran his hands through his short hair like he was going to pull it out. “This is evidence we can use. This is somethink major so much so that it’s out-of-the-park major. It’s leverage of the biggest magnitude.”

  May nodded her head in agreement. “Wolfgang, this can really benefit our cause,” she said in a soft tone.

  “It could also consume us.” Wolfgang threw in his doubt on what we were embarking on.

  “Your father, God rests his soul, made a big sacrifice for our sake and we will not forget it.” May spoke with the assurance of true reverence. She reached out and rubbed Wolfgang’s back in a circular motion.

  Wolfgang’s shoulders buckled up and down a few times before May stretched both arms around him to hold him tight. With genuine sadness for his father’s sacrifice, she comforted him as best as she could.

  I watched poor Wolfgang attempting to gather his teary emotions. Despite some successes, the nightmares had a detrimental effect on all of our lives. What kind of monster would prey on children? My thoughts returned to a gun-wielding hermit following an assumed name Cadet and our hopes for redemption.

  “These people will pay,” Billy bitterly proclaimed. “We have somethink that we can use against them.”

  “I agree,” I offered my support.

  “No offence Wolfgang but why didn’t you tell us this before? Why did you hold this back?” Billy changed gears and questioned Wolfgang’s cooperation in the matter.

  “I wanted to make sure I could trust all of you,” a red-faced Wolfgang owned up. “Plus I reread Aerial’s list and it said I should trust. Create the trust with a foundation of truth.”

  “Yes, trust is important. And Billy, calm down. We’re all on the same team.” May tried to dial back the tense situation. “I’m sure you’ve made mistakes too. By ignoring our emails and then waiting for Joel to email Wolfgang and me.”

  Humbled, Billy turned to the bar and poured out a shot of bourbon. Despite her grace and beauty, May knew how to put a big name rock star in his place. She used his past, public misbehaviours as a means to deliver an aggressive push to back off.

  “What if these were tracking devices implanted inside of us?” I postulated. “The pointy thing looks like an antenna or transmitter, sort of like a walkie-talkie.”

  May’s eyes widened at the idea. “That would be freaky.”

  “These implants could be controllink us?” Billy stated with a high degree of confidence in the conspiracy theory. “How do we know if we’re being controlled? I mean if we believe our actions to be voluntary, then what about the actions of others? Who can we trust anymore?”

  Wolfgang cleared his voice as a professor would prior to lecturing. “Imagine those who live on the edge of life like skydivers and extreme rock climbers. These people can set before them a path of death free from any limitations. It boils down to free thinking through freedom to act as one so chooses.”

  “What? How’s that?” Billy questioned.

  Wolfgang straightened up in his chair, distracted by the philosophical discussion. “Well think about it. When people act differently, like in a controversial situation, we’re comforted by the fact that Big Brother is neither on them nor us. A lot of controversy is bad and we might normally be repulsed by it. If it were so the case, then logically, we can expect it to stop these sorts of things.”

  “So lack of conformity and controversy proves free thought?” I summarized.

  “No, controversy proves lack of conformity,” Wolfgang corrected from his deduction. “Trust me. I did a lot of thinking about this to demonstrate to myself that I wasn’t alone.”

  “So Mister Professor, are we growink as a society with all this lack of conformity?” Billy continued his brash train of thoughts.

  With a new sense of confidence, Wolfgang was intrigued by this conversation. “It’s hard to say what good specific types of unconformity do to a society. I would imagine that complications could arise from this process. I believe that people who travel the path less travelled seem to do more good than harm. Science is all about exploring different paths. From another perspective, the realm of thought appears controlled or forced. Look at impact of marketing and product brandying in society. The chains of society are more overbearing than we think.”

  “Originality is what it’s all about. Pushink the boundaries and shiftink norms,” Billy declared, proud to proclaim his rocker beliefs.

  “For once, I agree with your philosophy,” Wolfgang complimented.

  “Agreed.” May spoke up.

  Not to be left out, I nodded at the fact that our differences made us unique and free.

  “Fine,” Billy relented sourly. He then leaned up against the wall and looked at his wrist, pretending there was a watch. “Its gettink late.”

  “Tomorrow morning we go talk to Cadet,” I pushed for action. “Maybe we need to be insistent and unrelenting that he confide in us. Aerial said somethi
ng like that.” I looked to May to intervene and back me up.

  Mustering up some courage, Wolfgang rubbed his bearded chin, determined to go onwards. “Let’s be vigilant in how we approach this hermit. We need this guy to talk.”

  May looked up at Billy. “We need to follow through with Aerial’s advice and talk to Cadet.”

  “Who cares about Aerial?” Billy woke up, revolted by the mention of the psychic’s name. “Say what you want but I don’t think this gun guy can do anythink but cause trouble. Maybe he’s workink for them?”

  I disagreed. “Cadet could help us. What other opportunity do we have?”

  “We need to see what he has that we don’t,” Wolfgang settled the matter despite previous hesitations. “Call me tomorrow, you have my phone number.” He stood up, gathered his precious items and headed out.

  “Ciao Billy.” May waved me over to follow.

  I leapt to my feet. “See you tomorrow Billy.”

  “Yeah, later.” Billy poured out another drink.

  Moving halfway up the stairwell, May was waiting for me. She nudged me as I stepped up. “Billy is weird.”

  I nodded back, not because I agreed with the statement but it was an attempt to keep the conversation at a minimum. It was an awkward discussion to have especially since we were in Billy’s mansion. We had one violent episode with him throwing a glass at Wolfgang. When Billy was in one of his moods, it was difficult to shake him out of it. He was one of those rich guys whose eccentric nature was possible because of a self-perpetuating ego.

  As a team, we lacked any of that essential cooperative organization that made other teams so successful. We needed to band together to the point where each member pulled the line more rather than be along for the ride. Without teamwork, there was no reinforcement of our purpose that would drive us to success. We were like pieces of a puzzle but not from the same puzzle.