a rational man

by J S Hollis

  before making the inevitable decision about the day ahead, S noticed the number “12k” in the top right of his vision. had the format changed? he pulled it towards him and the number spread into more detail.

  “12,314 people are watching you.”

  and below that: “you are currently in the top 200 most watched people on W.”

  of all the times to become famous. it was hard enough making decisions while unknown. he had to be careful. how did he look? he closed his eyes to subdue the frown his forehead had carelessly scrunched into.

  he could watch a film or read a book. what would his viewers think of that though? was it fair to the memory of his mother? it probably didnt look good. but thinking about his mum was not an option. those thoughts were best kept stuffed down the back of his head. somehow he needed to appear to be thinking about her, while avoiding the thought entirely.

  he decided to lay there doing absolutely nothing. how long could he do nothing for? he would need the toilet or food at some point, but until then he could watch the time as it ticked in his eyes.

  within a minute he wanted to scream, so he stuffed his face into the pillow. could he take a vow of silence? he couldnt continue to lie there. repression required activity. a little bit of space and a thought will jump in. run, read, watch until sleep creeps up.

  S learnt this trick when he was younger. his parents had been strict on bedtimes. it didnt matter whether or not he was tired. if he tried to read or play after bedtime, his parents quickly discovered his transgression. so he spent hours lying in bed, trying to sleep. they cruelly let his mind wander. nightmares were fostered in those enforced meditations. his parents laughed when he said he was too scared to wear his eyescreens. “what if they take me over?” he had asked. he even began to pray in those silences so he had someone to speak to. his mind had been let loose before he knew what to do with it.

  it dawned on S that the Event had not only robbed him of his parents. the various entertainments he normally surrounded himself with had been taken away too. his parents couldnt leave him normally, could they? in a low profile way that allowed S to mourn as he saw fit. probably by binge watching films. were they trying to test him? some elaborate extension of the early bedtime trick?

  he heard talking downstairs and felt drawn to it as the voices replaced his own thoughts.

  “lights on,” he said.

  perching on the edge of the bed took enormous effort. he inspected himself. his uncles lustrous shirt and bottoms no longer hung off him. they were jet black – an unsubtle rejection of the hypervibrant patterns S and his friends depicted on their clothes. S decided to leave them in black. with a push off the mattress, S propelled himself out of the darkroom.

  as he approached the kitchen, S could hear a south african accent. when he entered, he saw a giant distortion of his grandma emmas delicate porcelain face hovering by the opposite wall. the room in front of her was littered with grandparents.

  “i dont care what the monitor says, he must be ill, you dont … hello, sebastian.”

  “morning.”

  grandpa kingsley turned around suddenly and almost fell off his stool.

  “easy,” S said.

  “whats easy?”

  S shook an outstretched hand, which barely seemed connected to kingsley. as soon as he let go, grandma donatella launched herself at him. she pulled him in tight and lay her face against his chest. it felt cool through his shirt.

  “give him a hug for me,” emma said from the wall. donatella hugged him tighter. when she released him, she immediately turned towards the living wall so that he couldnt see her face.

  “shell be ok,” grandpa leo said. he was slowly rising up from his stool, like evolutionary man. he winked at S and went to embrace donatella.

  “how are you feeling?” leo asked from over donatellas shoulder.

  “numb.”

  “to be expected. the body doesnt know how to deal with this stuff.”

  donatella broke away from leos hold and wiped her nose on the top of her hand. “can i get you some breakfast, seb? carlo, phillippe and the kids have popped out.”

  “dont be silly, grandma, ill get something.”

  “please, let me.”

  “a shake?”

  “healthy or unhealthy?”

  “whatever it recommends.”

  S turned away from donatella, who was getting a glass out while crying and repeating “my beautiful daughter”. he took a stool at the end of the table so that his grandfathers flanked him.

  “i dont understand it,” emma said. “im not even sure if i believe it. do you have any idea why, seb?”

  S shook his head.

  “hes gone mad.”

  “mentally unwell,” S muttered, but the grandparents ignored him

  “they werent happy,” donatella said.

  “he has been under a lot of stress. resigning from government, you know. maybe it took its toll.”

  “stress. he killed her, emma.”

  “my son is not a murderer. he said he did it for her.”

  “did it for her? what does that mean? if only that lawyer hadnt shut him up. all im saying is they werent happy. this thing with the veil.”

  “the veil, loads of young people wear them these days. its just fashion.”

  “and the skydiving, all the time spent playing computer games.”

  “that was her job.”

  “so are you saying it was a happy marriage?”

  “im saying ive seen unhappier.”

  S glanced at kingsley but his grandfather appeared to be more interested in looking at the reflection of his beard in the glass table.

  “i agree with dona,” leo said. “something wasnt right with that marriage.”

  “cecil isnt easy. he gets that from his father. but he loved her.”

  “maybe he did,” donatella said, “but all this stuff between clara and tom, perhaps cecil was angry.”

  “my son wasnt stupid. he could see there was nothing there.”

  “im not saying he was stupid but it is possible emotion got the better of him.”

  “did he look emotional?”

  “has he ever looked emotional?”

  “what do you think, kingsley?”

  “about what?”

  “about last night?”

  “what about last night?”

  “kingsley, why do you think cecil killed clara?”

  “oh, no idea.”

  leo rubbed his bald head with both hands. “dona, can you stop pacing? youre making me more nervous.”

  “relax. im just waiting for sebs shake.”

  donatella took the shake out of the processor and handed it to S. “sorry about all this, seb. we are just trying to understand what happened.”

  S sipped his drink – it was sweeter than normal – and watched his grandparents conversation with bitter wonder. he couldnt remember the last time he had seen them all together. like different charges, they tended to keep a natural distance from each other. by bringing them together, the Event had demonstrated its almighty power. a human super collider that had forced the different charges together.

  perhaps this accounted for the energy transfer between leo and donatella. donatella was like a bird. constantly moving from place to place in the kitchen, twitching and inspecting. leo, on the other hand, who had always seemed massive and shining to S, had been left like a shrunken rain cloud.

  S wanted to console them but he didnt know what to say. parents dont expect to be at their childrens funerals. what could he do? his mother was dead. S felt more silent than ever.

  “sebastian.” donatella put her hand on his shoulder. “have you thought anymore about what you are going to do after school?”

  “something that makes the world a better place.”


  “what is that exactly?”

  “well, i have applied to do MIS – moving image studies.”

  “of course, i knew that. does that mean you will be editing W footage and stuff like that?”

  “no,” leo said. “poor boy has told you this before. it means he will be studying the history of the moving image, its social impact and stuff.”

  “sorry, seb, i forgot.” she didnt look at leo. “and what are you going to do with that?”

  “i dont really know. be a critic, or a historian, or move into editing after that.”

  “that sounds wonderful.”

  “its not so easy to get a job these days though,” leo said.

  “he knows that, leonard. better for him to do something he is passionate about and then he can excel. cant you, seb?”

  “i guess.”

  “we would never have accepted all this unemployment,” emma said. “we fought to give people a reason to live.”

  leo looked up towards emmas huge head. “it was different then, emma,” he said. “now its almost respectable to be unemployed.”

  “well it would have to be.”

  “i dont like it,” donatella said, “all these young people spending all day obsessing over their health stats and watching W in tiny flats. what kind of life is that?”

  “better than working in an office,” leo said.

  “is it? what do you think, seb?”

  “it depends.”

  S wasnt sure how studying MIS would make the world a better place. he had argued that the moving image defined modern society and so understanding its influence was essential to understanding and therefore improving the world. but, in truth, S had once spoken to a random respectable looking man, while on holiday with his family, who told him that MIS was the only thing worth studying. having convinced his parents and teachers, and the universities, that MIS was what he really wanted to do, he now realised that he may have been too quick to listen to one man. even if he was the most certain person S had met. the man was quite old – maybe seventy – and probably had no idea what university was like these days. and it was unlikely he was factoring in the current employment environment.

  leo flashed his eyes across the cricket news. “if worst came to worst,” he said, “you could start your own business.”

  “i guess.”

  “or just become a writer like your grandmother.”

  “thats the worse case scenario is it?” donatella asked, while dragging a stool so she could be right next to S.

  “im not sure i have anything interesting to say.”

  donatella almost smiled. “well, im not sure i ever had anything interesting to say. but if nothing else, theres worse you can do than entertain a few people.”

  “if you entertain a few people,” leo said, and winked at S.

  “as if you ever made a single person happy.”

  “thats a bit harsh, dona.”

  “i meant with your travel agency, not generally.”

  “we did well enough.”

  “you always say ‘well enough’. according to whom?”

  “you always say ‘you always say’.”

  S could tell they loved each other once. only people in love could spend enough time exploring one anothers brain to the point that even the most indistinct personality detail becomes irritating. S wondered if his parents had loved each other. they never argued like his grandparents. was that proof that they didnt know each other?

  “kingsley,” emma said, “arent you gonna say anything?”

  “like what?”

  “like tell seb how his mother is now with god.”

  “whoa, whoa, whoa, youre not getting away with that,” leo said.

  “with what?”

  “your son kills our daughter and you want to make out like she has gone to some better place.”

  “its not an excuse, just what i believe.”

  “please. keep your beliefs to yourself.”

  as he sat at the table listening to his grandparents bicker, S became acutely aware of his parents absence. he needed them to guide him through this process. to tell him what to do. to react so that he could impersonate their reactions.

  S got up to leave the room.

  “you ok?” donatella asked.

  “shower.”

  S returned to the darkroom and sat on the edge of the camp bed. he had wanted to cry in front of his grandparents. to demonstrate to them that he understood what had happened. but he couldnt find the sadness. he conjured a picture of his mother, but nothing. he tried to stare so that his eyes would well up but they became drier. what kind of son was he? he knew tears were part of mourning, but what else? how could he show that he was a good son?

  remember?

  move on?

  S lay down on the bed and decided to watch how other people reacted when they lost a family member. he scanned through W and found an elderly man with a raisin face. on his AIA legs, he paced in front of his friends and family, who were reclined on neon pink couches. they were trying to stop themselves giggling as the raisin faced man ruminated on his dead wifes inappropriate behaviour. it seemed the poor woman had an ongoing problem with stripping in public places.

  “one time,” the old man said, “i was at work and went to meet lauren in reception. i found her starkers talking to my boss about schools. i rushed over and said, ‘should we go now darling? we need to get to dinner.’ all my boss said was, ‘its a bit nippy out there, you might want to put on a coat.’”

  “why did grandma like being naked?” a young boy asked.

  “who knows? maybe she was bonkers, like the institute said. definitely different. but i like to think there was something profound about her madness. you know, robbie, she seemed to target her nudity like a bullet. she certainly became popular on W. and god knows, i couldnt get her to take her clothes off for me. i just dont know what war she was fighting. i guess she surrendered in the end.”

  S sent the raisin faced man a message of condolence: “im so sorry for your loss. my thoughts are with you at this time.”

  S flicked to a young woman, who was blinking into space. family and friends orbited around her. her son had been killed by a falling solar panel the day before. one blonde lady, toweringly tall, an obvious thirties baby, sat down in front of the grieving mother and spoke softly to her.

  “i know theres nothing i can say to make this better,” the blonde tower said, “but we are here for you, whatever you need.”

  the mother looked up and said “thanks”, before lifting a cup of cold tea she pretended to sip.

  S moved on. a man was dictating a message to livelong, his mothers health monitoring company: “earlier this week, my mother died from a sudden heart attack. your livelong application provided no forewarning of this risk. W records indicate that seconds before the heart attack, livelong registered a “heart normal” reading. i understand that your application cannot be expected to pick up all health problems. but my mother was only in her late eighties. there must have been something wrong with her heart. i plan on making full inquiries and if your application should have detected her heart defect, i will take the appropriate legal action. yours, simon chan.”

  these people didnt seem like they were acting. they were dealing with death in their own ways. and, as far as S could tell, no one was criticising them for it. no one was telling raisin face that jokes were inappropriate at this time or simon chan to relax. S was left without a precedent for his own approach.

  if only he could have stopped the Event. if only he hadnt been playing chess, or if only clara had let him study at home. then he would have been in the house. the Event would never have happened if he was in the house. and he would have been there if clara hadnt stubbornly insisted on sending him to pentonville college. she had set her own perverse fate in motion.
r />   S wasnt blaming his mother for her own death. at least he didnt think of it as blame. the Event had simply revealed to him the infinite consequences of trivial decisions. did that make our decisions more meaningful or meaningless? how could an event be entirely unpredictable and absolutely inevitable all at once?

  or was claras death somehow his fault? should he have done more to swing destiny another way? he cast W back a couple of years to a discussion about his future schooling. clara had wanted to give S the impression he was involved in the decision. a rigged vote. so she scheduled a family meeting to discuss his fate. when S entered the kitchen, his parents were situated at either end of the granite slab they used as a table. he sat between them.

  “shall we start?” clara said. “i come to this table with an open mind and hope both of you do too.”

  they nodded.

  “this is a democratic process and i promise you, sebastian, that the majority decision rules. so where would you like to go to school?”

  “virtual.”

  “and why do you say that?”

  “better results, better employment prospects, socialising with people from across the world and less of the fake stuff you get at school.”

  “what do you mean by fake stuff?”

  “you know.”

  “im sorry, i dont know.”

  “just there is more, you know.”

  “ok. do you have anything else to add?”

  S shook his head.

  “cecil, would you like to go next?”

  cecil stood up and his shadow fell across the table.

  “as a general rule, i can see the advantages of vschools. they are a better use of resources and provide more equality in terms of educational opportunity. but just as important, in my view, is what is best for each child. i fear that the fake stuff seb hates might be exactly what he needs to understand. then again, the vschool community may allow seb to study with people more like himself. let me hear what you think, c.” cecil sat down.