by K. L. Denman
I don’t realize how strange this meal is until it’s over. Then Fred heads out, Mom takes off for the gym, Dad settles into his chair in front of the TV and I’m back in my room, facing the computer. For no reason at all, I feel like crying. I don’t cry. I just wonder how I went back like that, into my old skin. It’s as though I experienced a weird sort of time warp, a strange collision of before and after. Before what? I shake my head, try to get rid of the elusive sense that the world is shifting. I should know what I have to do.
When Ike shows up, he can tell right away that I’m confused, maybe even having second thoughts. “You’re not wimping out, are you, Kit? C’mon, man. This is your chance to be somebody. You’ve got no chance if you don’t go through with it.”
FOUR
I’m at school, standing at my locker and trying to decide whether I can handle going to my science class, when Ben stops by. He says, “Hey, Kit. How’s it going?”
I shrug. “It’s going.”
“Yeah? Good. So what are you doing tonight?”
“Tonight?”
“Yeah. Friday night, you know? Thought you might like to go with me and the other guys. We’re thinking about seeing a movie. Then maybe hang out at Joel’s place. Like old times.”
I see Ben talking to me. I hear him. But there’s this strange barrier between us, like a sheet of ice. Freaky. I look down the hallway, swallow hard and manage to grunt, “Yeah.”
Ben says, “Yeah? For sure? That would be great. You want to meet us there, say around seven thirty?”
“Seven thirty.”
Ben hesitates. “You okay, Kit?”
I reach into my locker and grab my science text. “Fine. You?” I glance his way and find him frowning.
He says, “I’m good. So, we’ll see you tonight, right?”
I nod. He starts walking off, but I catch him looking at me over his shoulder. I half raise my hand, and another kid barreling past knocks into me. It’s just enough of a hit to force me to take a step to rebalance, and my locker door connects with my back. My tattoo. The skin feels tight where it’s scabbing, and bashing into the door hurts. I can’t afford to wreck my tattoo. “Asshole!” I yell.
A teacher appears out of nowhere. “That sort of language is unacceptable. It’s Kit Latimer, isn’t it?”
I don’t look at her. I don’t say anything. This is too much.
“Well?” she says.
She’s looking for me to say something. What? I know. “Sorry,” I mutter.
“Hmph,” she snorts. And she leaves.
I leave too. I’ve got to check on my tattoo. And I have plenty of other stuff to get done. Soon. Real soon.
The first thing I do when I get home is take off my shirt and go into the bathroom, twisting myself like a pretzel to see my back in the mirror. It looks wrong, maybe because I’m twisted. The twisting pulls my skin, and the tattooed area feels tight. I grab a hand mirror from one of the bathroom drawers and look again. The letters seem okay, but there’s something funny about the lines and dots. I never noticed this when Tony showed me his work in the dingy mirror at his shop. I was distracted because he was telling me to keep it covered with gauze for a day, then put on lotion to heal the scabbing. I should put on some lotion.
But those lines and dots. I look in the mirror again, and now I’m certain Tony did something weird; the tattoos are in a pattern. I didn’t ask for a pattern. I don’t even think I asked for lines and dots on my back. It must be a code. For what? I don’t want to show Ike because he’ll tell me I’m an idiot, and I can’t show anyone else.
I shift around for a different angle and drop the hand mirror. It shatters into silver shards, scatters all over the tiles. Seven years bad luck, just like that. Hilarious. Is there such a thing as bad luck when you’re dead? What could possibly go wrong after that?
Whoa. I know. Wild animals could eat me. A coyote, a wolf, a bear. Or those birds that like shiny stuff—ravens?—they might take my artifacts. Crap. I’ll have to hide my body. How do I do that? Snap! I know. I’ll dig a tunnel into the snow, crawl in and collapse the entrance behind me. Wait till Ike hears about this—he’ll be impressed.
The tattoos on my back tingle: they feel like bugs crawling on my skin. Creepy. I’ve got to put lotion on, lots. That’ll help with the scabbing, sure, but it’ll smother the lines and dots too. I find some of Mom’s lotion and gob it on. The tingling intensifies and starts stinging like crazy, so I pile on more lotion. Man. It takes a while, but finally the sensation subsides.
I head for my computer and pull up the list of artifacts. Here’s what I have so far:
- Blackberry
- books—Which ones? Check best-seller list
- music of the century—to be loaded into Blackberry
- laptop computer with documents saved to hard drive, including my manifesto, Ötzi’s story, video of current events and popular games
- video of me on Blackberry (Ike’s idea)
- some sort of food—maybe popular fast food? Hah. Some of that stuff never rots, even when it’s not frozen
- my sports-card collection (sealed in Baggies), a baseball, a ball cap, Lego
- my fossilized seashells that I found in Alberta (so cool to think the ocean was once in Alberta)
- one of those portable solar-energy panel devices
- myself as artifact: normal clothes that a guy my age wears, including boxers, socks, jeans, T-shirt, hoodie, heavy jacket, gloves, tuque and hiking boots
- vodka
We’ve already got the vodka—took it from my parents’ liquor cupboard. Ike said it wasn’t stealing because it was in my house, and what was the difference between that and a peanut-butter sandwich? We argued about that, but in the end, he won. It’s hidden in the back of my closet.
I haven’t decided on my last two meals. When my corpse is examined, they’re going to find out what I ate. When the scientists analyzed Ötzi’s intestines, they found out what he ate for his last two meals; one meal was mountain-goat meat and the other some kind of deer meat. Both meals included grain, roots and fruits. The grain might even have been in the form of bread, something the scientists were a bit pumped about since it showed how long people have been making the stuff. They even analyzed his hair to learn what else had been in his diet in the last few months of his life.
A ripple crawls over my skin. They’re going to examine my hair and find out what I had for lunch yesterday? Freakin’ weird. I wonder if they’ll put me into some sort of chemical to preserve me while they do their tests. Maybe formaldehyde, like the cow eyeball we had to dissect in Science 10. The smell of that stuff made me want to puke.
I can’t think about that; it’s just too bizarre. I look over my artifact list again and decide that had better be it. I’m worried about having enough money to get this stuff, never mind more. I got money from my grandparents for Christmas, and I’ve got some saved from my job last summer at the golf course, but I might be short. The tattoos and the bus ride to Nanaimo already cost me three hundred bucks.
Another thing that’s bugging me—it’s only about a half-hour drive from where I live to Strathcona Park, but I can’t get a bus to the area I need to go, so I’m going to have to borrow Mom’s car. I have my license, but it’s like the third degree every time I want to use her car. Where are you going? Who will be with you? When will you be back?
I’m not going to get permission to take the car anywhere out of town. No way. But I’m going to have to take it. It’s not like I’ll damage it. Sooner or later the car will be found in the parking lot up there. Ike says I can’t leave a note to tell them where I left it or they’ll follow me. I don’t know. Mom needs her car to get to work, and she’ll be mad at me for screwing up her day, won’t she? It would be polite to leave a note.
There’s quite the scene when Dad comes home and walks into the bathroom. I forgot to clean up the broken mirror, and when he steps on the glass, he starts hollering. He isn’t too impressed with the spilled lotio
n either. Says something about it adding an element of treachery.
“It was an accident,” I tell him.
“And you just left it?”
“I forgot about it.”
“How can you forget about a thing like that?”
I don’t know what to say, and that seems to piss him off even more. He tells me I damn well better get busy and clean it up, pronto. So I start cleaning, but that doesn’t stop him from going off some more.
“What’s wrong with you, Kit? You’ve always been a good kid. Kind of a dreamer maybe, but that’s another thing. You used to talk about your ideas. How you wanted to get your pilot’s license. You were going to build a dune buggy. And a boat. And a house.”
He pauses for breath and shakes his head. “You used to build things out of Lego all the time, you and Ben. Haven’t seen Ben around for ages. What happened to him?”
I shrug.
“Kit, I dunno what’s up with you. You know…all those ideas you had, they were great.” He snorts. “But I haven’t seen you do a damn thing lately except sit in front of that computer. I’ve got half a mind to toss the thing out.”
“No way!”
“Well, we’ll see about that. You just better get with the program—and I’m not talking about the one on the computer.”
I swallow the words I want to spew at him, and finally he leaves. I finish cleaning and go straight back to my computer; I need to work on my music list, so I do that for a while. Then I get started on my manifesto.
Manifesto of the Frozen One: Shortly After the Dawn of the Third Millennium AD
To the People of the Future:
My name is Christian Thomas Latimer, but most people call me Kit. I am seventeen years of age and I live in the town of Courtenay on Vancouver Island, in the province of British Columbia. British Columbia is part of the country currently known as Canada, which is on the continent of North America. On planet Earth.
By the time you read this, these places may not exist. I’ll bet the names will have changed. Part of me even wonders if the land itself will still be here. Vancouver Island (I’d like to name it Luline after a green-tailed comet) is situated alongside a major fault in the Earth’s crust. Some scientists think that if a major earthquake were to occur here, this island would be wiped out.
I’ve decided to take my chances with that because it seems to me there is no 100% safe place on the planet for a human to preserve his body and his artifacts for five thousand years.
I’m here (wherever HERE is) to create a time capsule for the future. Another man, whose real name we will never know, died on a mountain on the continent of Europe five thousand years ago, and when his mummified corpse was discovered, we learned a lot about life back then. I’m certain it will be just as fascinating for you to know about life in the early part of the third millennium AD, so I have deliberately selected some contemporary artifacts and am willingly laying down my body in a place where I hope it will remain for a long time.
I think you will be pleased to hear from me because maybe it will help you see where you’re going when you know where you’ve been.
That other man on the mountain was nicknamed Ötzi, and in honor of his memory, I’ve had his name tattooed on my back. It’s quite possible that you won’t be able to read it (my skin is probably quite withered by now), but if you’re wondering about my tattoo, that’s what it says. I also have dots and lines tattooed on my back, behind my left knee, and on my right ankle because Ötzi had tattoos in those places. In his case, no one knows why he had them, but there is speculation that it was done to mark his rite of passage into manhood or even as a form of acupuncture (sticking needles in) because X-rays show he may have had arthritis in those joints.
I am hoping that this, my manifesto, will survive so you will know even more about me than we were able to learn about the original Ice Man. I’m also hoping you will find me frozen above a glacier on a mountain that has, for millennia, remained snow-covered, but there’s no guarantee. I can only hope.
FIVE
Ike turns up at his usual time, right after dinner, and he’s in a weird mood. For the first while, all he says is “Ooga chucka, ooga chucka,” over and over again. I crank up the sound on my computer to drown him out, and he finally stops.
“What’s the matter, Kit?”
“You’re really annoying.”
“Oooh. Nasty. Ooga chucka.”
“Jeez. Will you stop already? I want you to check out my music list. I’ve got some jazz from the twenties, some Gershwin and big-band stuff from the thirties, Bing Crosby plus R & B from the forties…”
“They had R & B in the forties?” Ike snorts. “You sure about that?”
“I’m sure. I found a university site that lists this stuff.”
“Yeah? So what else have you got?”
“Okay, I’ve got Elvis Presley tunes plus some Broadway music for the fifties. The sixties had a lot of different styles, so I’ve included more from that decade. The Beatles, folk stuff, plus some acid rock. And that’s as far as I’ve got.”
“That’s it?” Ike asks.
“It takes a while, you know. I have to do the research first, then pick the songs, then wait for them to download, then—”
“Okay, okay, I get it. Listen, I’ve thought of a few more things you should take.”
“No, Ike, I don’t—”
He cuts me off. “Would you pay attention here for one minute, Kit? Can you do that for me? Thank you. All right, it’s like this. You’re getting ordinary stuff that’s all about an average guy. It’s boring. Plus it’s discriminatory.”
“Discriminatory? What do you mean?”
Ike sighs. “It means you’re ignoring the kind of stuff that plenty of guys I know would have with them if they keeled over and croaked. If you weren’t such a nerd, you’d know what I mean.”
I cross my arms and lean back in my chair. “You’re a real jerk, you know that?”
“Yeah? Well maybe I can’t help it. Maybe I didn’t grow up in a home where Mom cooks dinner every night. Where I get my own computer and people just give me money and I’m so blind to the rest of the world I think my life is normal.”
“I don’t think I’m normal,” I tell him.
“No? Well you are. You’re so normal you’re scary. You don’t think outside the box, man.”
“Really? And you do?”
“I don’t have a choice. Life hasn’t been a cushy ride for me. I’ve had to learn to think on my feet since day one. And I’m telling you, Kit, you need to consider the less fortunate.”
“Okay, so let’s say you’ve got a point. It’s true: the stuff I’m planning to bring along is high tech and pricey. I don’t even know if I can afford it all. But here’s my point. What would poor people have that I don’t?”
Ike snickers. “Did I say I was talking about poor people? I wasn’t. I was talking about people who aren’t sucks. Guys who keep a few condoms in their wallets. Not that they’d want to use them if they didn’t have to, but they’d have them for show, right? And they’d have a couple Baggies too. And one of those bags would hold weed and the other would have, oh, let’s say E. Or meth.”
I can’t believe it. “You think I should pack weed and meth? You’re crazy. Forget it.”
“Fine,” he says. “I’ll forget it. But you’re not going to be a very convincing Ice Man. You’re going to betray your times. If you don’t have stuff like that, it’s like leaving a false trail. Painting a fake picture. ’Cause real people do that stuff. Sex and drugs, man. Sex and drugs.”
“Maybe some people. Not me.”
“No, not the perfect Kit. Never. I can’t believe you’re such an idiot. I’m not saying you should do the stuff, man. Just have it with you. Let the future know about our social problems. Seems only right. Honest. Not that sex is exactly a social problem. You ever had sex?”
“None of your business.”
“So you haven’t, eh? Shit. That means you’re going to die
a virgin.”
There’s silence as we ponder this. The face of my old girlfriend, Melissa, floats into my mind’s eye. Maybe if we’d stayed together…
But then Ike is saying, “Hey, no big. You remember the Ice Man had no penis?”
I come back to the present with a jolt. “God. You’re not saying that I…”
“Shit, no. I’m not saying you should whack off your dick.” Ike laughs. “That would be crazy. All I’m saying is that maybe Ötzi was a virgin too.”
For some reason, this makes me feel better about my virgin status. “Yeah, maybe he was. Or maybe that part just didn’t survive five thousand years. But they did say something about how he might have been infertile, didn’t they?”
“That’s right. And because of that, they thought he could have been some sort of social outcast. Just like you.”
I shake my head. “Man, you don’t let up, do you?”
“You know what they say. If the shoe fits…” He lets the cliché hang.
I decide to ignore him and turn back to my computer screen. I type in a search for the best-selling books of all time—I don’t want the flavor of the week— and am stunned to see what appears as number one.
“Can you believe this? The best-selling book of all time is the Bible.”
Ike says, “No way.”
“That’s what it says on this list. It’s sold almost six billion copies.”
“Yeah? What does it say for number two?”
“It’s The Little Red Book, otherwise known as Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung. But the note here says that’s no surprise since it was compulsory for every Chinese adult to own a copy.”
“Oh, right. Chairman Mao was the dude who ran the Cultural Revolution in China, right?”