Before We Die Alone

by Ike Hamill

  “No?” Jeremy asked.

  Jeremy was falling right into it. She was pulling the same kind of stuff that I sometimes pulled on my younger brother. I didn’t have to exactly say that there was something scary in his closet, I just had to imply it. If I talked around the edges of something like that, eventually my brother would start crying and refuse to sleep in his room alone. I had never seen an adult pull that trick on kids, but that’s for sure what Mrs. Hubert was doing.

  “Next time you’re at the library, you should look it up. There was a saber-toothed cat that was big enough to take down an elephant. What do you suppose happened to all those cats. I can’t imagine that all of them went extinct, can you? Surely the woods are deep enough to support a secret or two, yes?”

  She was crazy. We didn’t have any decent forests around. The pits were barely big enough for us to camp in. How could there be a cat big enough to eat an elephant?

  “We gotta go, Mrs. Hubert,” I said.

  “Don’t you want to come in for a cookie? I just baked them this morning.”

  Her smile was predatory. She was the only big cat around, and her prey wasn’t elephants. That much was clear from the sparkle in her eyes.

  “Thanks Mrs. Hubert, but we gotta go. We won’t make too much noise,” I said. I tugged on Jeremy’s shirt and dragged him backwards until he stepped off the porch. He lost his balance on the steps and nearly stepped off the flagstone walk. For a full two seconds, he was overbalanced and clawing backwards at the air, while he went up on his toes at the edge of the stone. Behind us, Mrs. Hubert started laughing. It wasn’t a witch’s cackle, like in the movies, but that’s what I heard. I snatched Jeremy’s arm and pulled him back onto the path. We walked quickly down the back walk, towards the gate.

  We didn’t look back until we heard the door slam behind us.

  “I hate that lady,” Jeremy said. “She gives me a stomach ache.”

  I wrinkled up my face. I knew exactly what he was saying, and there was no better way to say it.

  “Come on,” I said.

  ---- * ----

  That afternoon was the greatest. We gathered rocks for a fire pit, dragged a bunch of sticks together, and built our campsite. Meanwhile, there were frogs to catch, trees to climb, and all the dirt we could wrestle in. I’ve never felt such freedom, before or since. Eventually, hunger became our master, and we snuck into Jeremy’s kitchen to steal hot dogs and chips.

  By the time the sun started to go down, I was right—only four of us had secured permission to sleep in the pits. I should have known that Mom had something in store for us. Even back then I don’t think that parents would let kids sleep out in a sand pit all night by themselves. But I was too wrapped up in having fun and being independent. I wasn’t thinking clearly.

  Even with keeping the fire going, we were out of things to do twenty minutes after the sun went down. After all, it had been a long day, and we were bushed. Jeremy didn’t have a sleeping bag, so I unzipped mine all the way and we covered ourselves with it as we laid down in the sand. It’s not as comfortable as it sounds.

  My eyes were drifting shut when Jeremy snapped me back awake.

  “Hey!”

  “What?” I whispered. My brother was already asleep.

  “Did you hear that?”

  “No.”

  He didn’t have to say anything else—we both heard it. Something was crashing through the bushes. We didn’t have any flashlights. Somewhere along the way, one of us had the bright idea that it would be more fun if we went “pioneer style.” Our only handheld light was from a flaming stick. Those soon became glowing sticks. The wood didn’t stay lit long away from the safety of the fire pit.

  The moon was up. It gave us enough light to see some version of the world around us.

  I saw it first. I hit Jeremy on the arm and pointed to the rim of the sand pit. Scrubby bushes had a tentative foothold up there and something was crunching through them.

  “It’s a saber tooth,” Jeremy said.

  I saw it too. I saw the head turning, and the giant teeth protruding from the corners of its mouth. I saw the enormous and sleek body. I saw the flicking tail.

  My brother woke up and started to call for me. I hissed at him to shut up. I cursed him under my breath until all I could hear was his sorrowful breath, wheezing in and out. Then the sniffling started. I knew he was crying in the dark. He would probably start wailing soon, regardless of how much I threatened him.

  How did ancient people survive the night with sniveling children around? How were they not all eaten before they were ten?

  “Shut up!” I whispered.

  The thing turned. When it started to stalk towards us, I realized the scope of the danger we were in.

  It came down the slope slowly, but not careful at all about where it stepped. It made a racket as it clomped through the brush. I couldn’t make out the details of the thing. Its shape didn’t make sense any more.

  When it was four or five paces from us, it stopped.

  My brother’s friend woke up. He started crying too.

  I had to pee. Badly.

  That second before it spoke was the longest second of my whole life up until that point.

  The voice was low and hoarse and familiar. “You… said… no… fire!”

  She whipped the hood off of her head and pulled a battery-powered lantern from under her cloak.

  “And you said you were going to bring the lantern with you,” Mom said.

  My hand was to my chest and I was trying to catch my breath to form a response.

  “Mom,” I gasped. “What are you doing here?”

  My brother had crossed the line into full-on sobbing, even though our mother was standing right there. He was like a reactor that’s already gone past critical. Nothing was going to cool him down now; he had to burn himself out.

  “Oh, don’t cry,” she said. “Nobody likes a crying boy. Look—I brought you the lantern. You just ran off and forgot it.”

  She threw up her hands. Our shadows danced as the lantern swung at the end of its handle.

  My brother’s friend cried out as if he had been struck.

  I saw her then for what she was—a bully. Our mother didn’t do much mothering. She stuck to her garden, and maybe that was for the best. When one of her plants caught a blight, or wasn’t performing, she would pull it up by the roots and let the neighboring plants gather even more sunshine. Did she want to pull up me and my brother? Was there something else she wanted to nurture more than us? If so, I didn’t know what it was.

  A second realization burst into my head. Mrs. Hubert was in on the plan. She had planted the seed knowing that my mother was coming. They had conspired. She had probably cooked up the plan instantly when I asked for permission. She had sent us to Mrs. Hubert just so the old woman could put a fright on us. My brother was holding a hand in front of his pants. Of course there had been an accident. Of course. He was too little for pranks like that.

  One more realization came to me. I hated my mother and I wanted her to die. We didn’t need her. My father was bad enough. He was never home and didn’t pay any attention to us even when he was. But my mother seemed to enjoy when she had a chance to frighten us. If my father was especially late, she would put us to bed with the thought that he had probably crashed his car on the way home and was dead in a ditch. If one of us got sick, she would suggest that we were probably going to die very soon. If we came home with a bad report card, she would pack a suitcase and tell us that she was going to send us to Spain.

  With all that psychological torture, it wasn’t until that night in the pits when I finally realized that it didn’t have to be that way. We didn’t have to live like that.

  I buried my feelings down deep in my heart. I wished her dead. Of course, it was several years before my wish came true.

  Chapter Twenty

  * Work *

  WHEN THE LIGHT COMES on, I’m still thinking about that night. I lost track of Jeremy at some po
int. If I contacted him now, I would ask what he thought about my mom. I never thought to ask him at the time.

  The door cracks open and Janice pokes her head in.

  “You okay? You looked like you were having one hell of a dream.” She pointed up to the corner and I noticed the camera mounted there.

  “If you’re holding me hostage, there’s nobody who will pay.”

  She leaves the door open and comes in. She takes the rolling chair. “Trust me—everything we’re doing is for your own good. You seem to have a hard time staying in one place and letting yourself heal.”

  I narrow my eyes. I don’t believe a word of it, of course, but it’s good to know that she’s such an accomplished liar. I’ll have to take more caution.

  “We do have some work that we could really use your help with. I think it falls nicely into your skill set.”

  “Say what?”

  I need to get away from this woman. She’s clearly insane. Who takes a person hostage and then expects them to work? That’s 1800’s nonsense.

  “We’re working on some bio-interface controllers, and you have experience in that field,” she says.

  “I don’t care what you’re working on. You can’t hold me against my will and then expect me to do work for you.”

  “That’s one way to think about it,” she says. “You could also say that we took in a gravely injured man and nursed him back to health, despite the fact that he was a fugitive from justice. Back on the street, you’ll need to seek immediate medical attention, and during that process you’ll probably be arrested once more. Is that what you would prefer?”

  She has a point, but I won’t concede it. “You’re crazy. The cops aren’t trying to arrest me.”

  Her smile is cold. “No, not the police. If it were only the police, you wouldn’t have much to worry about. The police are quite busy trying to restore order to the world. It won’t take too long—the world craves order—but for now, the police are no threat to you. It’s the Council. The Council has agents standing outside your apartment, and at every medical center. You’re number two on the list of faces that they’re looking for.”

  “I don’t even…” I start. She holds up a hand.

  “We’ve gotten off on the wrong foot,” she says. “There’s no need for us to argue. You’re free to go at any time, but I suggest that it’s not in your best interest. You should work for us. We’ll take care of you. We can move you out of here and into one of our developer apartments. Well, we call them apartments, but they’re more like an efficiency. You’ll have a shared kitchen, and shared bath. Plenty of privacy when you need it.”

  “Wait. Stop. Point me towards the exit, please.”

  “Absolutely. I will absolutely do that. I’m only going to ask that you sit through a short presentation from the team. They’re working now, but they have their slides all ready. They can be up and running in a few minutes. Give me a second to scramble them and then we’ll have you out of here in no time.”

  This tactic smacks of those time-share vacation rental presentations. Attend a two-hour seminar and you’ll get a paid vacation to Tampa. No thanks.

  “No, thanks,” I say. “Just the exit. You say I’m free to go? I’m going to hold you to that.”

  She frowns and nods once before standing. “As you wish.” She points to my shoes, which are under the cot I’m sitting on. She waits while I tie my shoes.

  For clarity—most people tie their shoes wrong. We were all taught the same way, maybe back to the invention of laces. I’m not talking about that silly bunny-ears approach, I’m talking about the loop-and-wind method. When I make that first loop, my hand naturally wants to wrap it clockwise, but I don’t. Instead, I loop the opposite, unnatural way. It makes my second knot counter to the initial half-knot, making the resulting tie stronger. It takes practice, but I’ve gotten reasonably good at tying my shoes the better way. Regardless, I double-knot the laces, so I suppose it doesn’t matter.

  When I look up, Janice is staring at me.

  “What?” I ask.

  “You’re a very strange man,” she says.

  “Why do you say that?” I ask. I stand up and pull my shirt on. They’ve done a pretty good job with my lacerations. My skin doesn’t feel so tight and stretched anymore. And the fabric of my shirt doesn’t make my chest feel like it’s on fire.

  “I’ve never seen a man your age who narrates the act of tying his shoes. It seems like you would have mastered that skill by now.”

  She leads me through the door and across a small lounge.

  “Cut me some slack. I’ve been stalked and terrorized by goddamn bears.”

  We cut through the office kitchen. All the drinks in the soda machine are marked “FREE” where the price should be. I like an office that supplies comforts like that to their employees. I would weigh about four-hundred pounds if I worked in one though. I can’t turn down a free drink. I suppose the coffee is terrible, or else why would Janice walk all the way to Rittle’s?

  I’m thinking about my apartment. If I’m in the offices of puzzleBox, then my place is just around the corner. I wonder if I could risk a trip back there. I’ve been gone for a while. Maybe the bears have given up looking for me. I can’t have been a top priority for them.

  Janice takes a left and I suspect that she’s taking me on the long way out. The hall has a glass wall that looks in on a big open office. It’s one of those workspaces where both the desks and chairs are mounted on wheels, so they can be repositioned at will. They’re expensive chairs, too. They’re the kind that have a million levers and knobs to customize the chair perfectly. Power cords are on long, springy attachments to the ceiling to give the desks maximum freedom. The whole thing looks like the world’s most boring bumper cars. I take all that in, but it’s not what catches my eye.

  On the far wall, the giant display shows a rotating animation of a haptic controller block.

  I slow down.

  “The exit is this way,” Janice says.

  I stop. There’s something on the side of the unit that’s not right.

  “If we just continue through this door…” Janice begins, pointing.

  “What are they doing to my controller?” I ask.

  “To be fair, I don’t think he was stalking you,” she says. “If anything, my ex was there looking for me.”

  “What is that thing wired into to the sensors?” I ask. I bang on the glass with my palm. One guy looks up from his monitors. The rest ignore me.

  “Please don’t disturb my developers. One little distraction can throw them off for twenty minutes.”

  “Just tell me what that abomination is doing on the side of my controller,” I say. I really shouldn’t care. The company I built that thing for has since fired me. But it’s difficult to turn away from the sight of my beautiful controller with something jammed on the side. It’s like my perfect daughter is being finger-banged by a clumsy, panting teenager in there, and all I can do is look through the glass.

  “The wave sensors were sub-optimal. Some of the guys came up with that workaround, and it’s picking up much better now.”

  “Sub-optimal?” I ask. She’s talking about the most solid, well-built, perfectly-engineered wave sensor the world has ever seen. Anything these clowns did to it has surely only diminished its performance. Part of me—of course the part that’s currently being overridden by my absolute rage—knows that she’s playing me. She brought me here on purpose, just to show me these clowns.

  “Yes. It had high-frequency interference from the battery monitor, and impurities in the plastics were acting as a notch-filter.”

  These are damned lies.

  “The guys are seeing twenty-percent better reception, especially in users of Latino descent.”

  “Latino?”

  “I know, I shouldn’t say it like that. Users with less correlation between the alpha and beta troughs. Is that better?”

  “Better? Hold on—that device performs perfectly. It has a unity
curve in all tests.”

  “Lab tests, maybe. First run, maybe. But this is a production unit, taken at random, and tested in the field. I think you’ll find that once the production leaves your hands, shortcuts are the downfall.”

  “Downfall? That’s the best-selling controller on the market.”

  “Yeah, for casual interfaces, I suppose that’s true. It’s a good base for us to start with. But with an application this advanced, you can imagine why we strive for higher standards.”

  I’m looking for the door before she even finishes her sentence. I’m already hooked, of course. She pulled off her trick. There should be a word for hindsight that you have beforehand. I know, it should probably be called “foresight,” but that’s something different. The word foresight implies that I see something coming and use that knowledge to make a better decision, or avoid some calamity. With “hindsight,” it’s always implied that I made the wrong decision and saw the signs later. In this case, I saw the future but I ignored it. I knew I would get roped in to whatever those people were doing. I knew I would become a pod-person, sitting in an expensive chair, in front of a rollable desk that was tethered to the ceiling.

  I knew it and I went to the door anyway.

  ---- * ----

  I’ve heard that gymnasts work so hard that their bodies don’t develop like a regular person’s. For clarity—a gymnast is an incredibly gifted athlete who throws away their talent and decides to swing and jump around like a baboon. Their puberty is actually delayed by the stress they put on themselves. It makes me wonder—are they short because of their profession, or are they just excelling at their profession because they are short?

  I could ask the same thing about these programmers. Sure, they look like they’re fifteen. They look like if they pulled their pants down, they would be smooth like a Ken doll. The only signs of puberty around me are the pimples that surely predict a future of sparse facial hair that will have to be shaved at least once a week.