TNZW71Kn

1E8: A Posthuman Inferno
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3Chapter 1: The Hitler Problem
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5    “Wouldn’t you want Hitler to be treated well, though?” The question zings through the headset mic, hovering a little in the crackling airspace between the two boys.
6    “What?!” A large firearm explodes to Heisenburg_314’s left, and a moment of hesitation immobilizes him before crouching and firing into the stone-lined corridor from which it came – Matthew rightly assumes it is the question more than the percussive blast which confused him. “Why would you say that?”
7    “Simple.” A bevy of soldiers in dull, grey fatigues – all carrying standard-issue semi-automatic rifles – line up in formation in the hallway ahead of them. Having been through this routine before, Heisenburg_314 and Spamtothenth coordinate a two-point firing position, taking out the flanking attackers to allow those in the front to block fire, then performing a running strafe before heading to higher ground and sniping the rest. “It’s real easy to hope for eternal torture by having one’s balls hacked at slowly by a rusty butter-knife when it comes to evil guys – especially Hitler. But then you have an afterlife that punishes people for what they did wrong. Wait – on your nine.” Glinting faintly from the sun above, a helmet gives just enough warning to allow a slight shudder before the bullet lands soundly in the shoulder of Heisenburg_314. Retreating, the pair switch places, Spamtothenth taking point and crouching behind the safety of an awkwardly-thin tree, whose branches somewhat obscure the field of vision directly around the area in which the sniper is hiding.
8    “What, do they plan this blind-spot stuff? They couldn’t have possibly planned this that well. You have grenades, yeah?”
9    “Really? For one guy? Just run out and draw his fire. I can get him from here.” The static-like sound of Brian’s breath against the mic-foam clearly indicates his preference. Nonetheless, Heisenburg_314 ambles out, zigzagging toward the clump of shrubbery that looms before them. “But everybody’s… done… something wrong…” the pling of bullets and twing of ricochet punctuating the stuttering logic.
10    “Shoot him, fag!” A low shot glances off of the ground within millimeters of Heisenburg_314’s feet. Spamtothenth rolls from behind the tree in time to see the tell-tale arc of a hand grenade being lobbed softly toward him. By the time he turns to run, the screen is awash with fragments and the blinking red hue that means death.
11    “You Nazi bastard!” Matthew calls out over the inglorious chime that accompanies the strictly-informative message at the bottom of the screen which reads ‘Spamtothenth has been killed. Continue? Y/N’. Reflexively punching the ‘Y’, Matthew waits to see where his character has been reincarnated, then checks the map. “Did you get him, at least?”
12    “Yeah. I’ll just wait behind the tree for you. Freaking Nazis.”
13    “But that’s my point – what if every Nazi was really punished after their death for the horrible atrocities they committed?”
14    “Actually, a lot of them are still alive, hiding out in Argentina or something, so they can’t all have been punished. Depending on how you view Argentina, that is.”
15    “Okay – well, that aside, do you really want to believe in a cosmic system of justice that punishes people for all the bad things they’ve done?” Heisenburg_314 is running back and forth in the distance as Spamtothenth closes in on him.
16    “Do you see me?”
17    “Yeah.”
18    “Do you have some terrible secret you’ve never told me or something? Did you kill a hobo in an alley?” Spamtothenth runs headlong into a man and slits his throat with his combat knife before it is apparent that he was a German farmer.
19    “Whoops. No – I’m just saying that logically speaking, we should actually be hoping that Hitler was treated well in the afterlife, because that would mean that guys like us will be – well, like given heavenly blowjobs or something, because by comparison, we’re freaking saints.” Rejoined with his compatriot, the two soldiers continue toward the Reichstag, finding it necessary to relieve from a fleeing family the burden of their “Folkswagon” before leaving them to be shot to death by the SS.
20    “You know, as a Jew, I’m legally obligated to be offended by that.”
21    “What, blowjobs aren’t kosher or something?”
22    “No, funny man. Saying Hitler should be treated well is like saying suicide bombers should be given seventy-two virgins in heaven. It’s just not fair, is all. What the hell?!” The wagon is gingerly disabled by a cleverly-placed roadside mine, after which a squadron of soldiers are alerted into action, running maniacally toward the car, behind which the two are barely able to squeeze for cover before they line up and take aim at anything that moves out from behind it. 
23    “So, what – because I’m not Jewish I can’t be equally offended by the holocaust? That’s not exactly fair, either. I assure you, as a human being, I am fully horrified by the events that occurred at the hands of the Nazis. I’m just saying that if we want to pray for the suffering of others for their wrongdoing, we have to own up to the fact that we’re wishing for our own punishment, too, right? So what are we going to do?”
24    “I don’t know, I guess try and live better lives? What are you getting at? Are you mad that I cheated on Mr. Wolf’s English test – because I told you, there was no way I was getting through Wuthering Heights without Sparknotes.”
25    “I meant about the Nazis. Shooting at us. Right now.”
26    “Oh. Right. Screw it – you just died, so I’m just going to run out and throw grenades and blow us all up. Stay behind the car, and I’ll meet you back here.” Heisenburg_314 gallantly sacrifices himself by launching no less than five grenades before being mortally wounded by his own explosive, taking out the entire squadron in the process.
27    “So you’re actually inspired to live a better life by the threat of hell being brandished at you like a rolled-up newspaper?”
28    “Jews don’t really believe in hell. The closest we have is called sheol, but most scholars think it was just an ancient Hebrew word for the cloth they wrapped their dead in.”
29    “That’s kinda creepy, too – the thought that after death, there’s just nothing.”
30    “Meh. What’s so creepy about that? You’d never know the difference.”
31    “Yeah, but what does that do to your whole ‘Hitler should be punished’ thing? Wouldn’t it equally suck if after all that, when he killed himself he just stopped existing, and that’s that? You’re more comfortable with there being nothing at all than their being some simple courtesy being given to everybody who dies, regardless of what kind of life they lived?” Heisenburg_314 stealthily approaches a peasant from behind and pushes him off of the ledge the two are standing on, which draws fire from the soldiers who were perched behind a wall in the distance. “That’s pretty messed up.”
32    “What? I had to know if it was safe to go down there. Besides, what’s a peasant doing standing on a bridge in Nazi territory, anyway? For all we know, he was a secret agent.”
33    “Well, I guess – but I mean it’s messed up that we would prefer divine punishment to the idea that the cosmos unjustly rewards bad people.” Spamtothenth reloads his rifle.
34    “Yeah, well that’s why I don’t believe in karma. I know that’s like blasphemy to your parents, but I just don’t see it.”
35    “I think it’s more like a multiple-life thing than a cause-and-effect thing. To them, anyway. No disrespect to John Lennon, or anything, but it’s pretty obvious that instant karma hasn’t gotten anyone.” From behind a shack that somewhat resembles an outhouse, a fleeing villager runs headlong into Heisenburg_314, knocking him off the edge of the road and into the waiting hands of a battalion of storm troopers.
36    “Dammit. That was wack.”
37    “What do you expect when you name your character after uncertainty?”
38    “Very funny.” Matthew’s snickering is cut short by the storm troopers, who extend the courtesy of death-dealing to Spamtothenth. Both soldiers being dead at once, the campaign is brought to a premature end, and the familiar “Game Over” graphic drips down the screen in a faux-blood smear before the title flashes boldly on the screen: “WarCall IV: The Final Answer”.
39    “I hate when games just decide to kill you like that.” muses Matthew.
40    “I hear WarCall V is even harder. Wanna keep playing?”
41    “Naw, I can’t, dinner’s ready in, like, ten minutes ago.”
42    “’Kay. I got homework to do, anyway. Trig – easy stuff. Hey, though – if you see Hitler, give him a nice, big hug, will you?”
43    “Dude, screw you. I’m just saying –”
44    “– I know. You actually have an interesting point. I guess I’d just rather have no cosmic justice at all than one that’s corrupt. Maybe I’m a theological anarchist.”
45    “Cool. Does their cookbook tell you how to build faith-busting pipe bombs?”
46    “No, but it’s got a killer recipe for hemlock.”
47    “Sweet. Alright, catch you later.”
48    “Late.”
49    Painfully aware of his surroundings now, Matthew removes the headset, wincing at the cutting feeling in his temples, fingering the groove they’ve worn into his skin. He is jolted by the resonant rapping of his father’s knuckles against his bedroom door, a staccato three-fold repetition that means “hurry up, dinner’s ready.” Without really realizing it, he says “bye” to the computer before lurching wearily out of his chair and toward his waiting parents.
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53    The smell of microwave chicken a-la king is unmistakable, and wafts through the air, a gentle mixture of slightly-off milk and plastic. His father has unceremoniously dumped the contents of the plastic container onto a green dinner plate, making the presentation somewhat akin to what it might look like if a prison cook read “Good Housekeeping” – which, coincidentally, his mother subscribed to and read religiously, though her literacy may be brought into question by anyone who took more than a passing glance at the state of their home. The focal point for Matthew while eating dinner was always the terra-cotta rooster wall hanging, a lively piece featuring the proud, red-breasted beast framed gallantly by interlaced blue ribbons, hung so the square was a diamond, that diamond pointing in three of four directions to the stacked detritus that riddled the house like the Sphinx – if the Sphinx had a four-year-old’s sense of when to stop asking questions. Matthew would make a game sometimes of trying to count how many individual issues of magazines he could count before losing track, the whole stack of singularities blurring into a solid column of lines; his highest score so far was a hundred and twelve, and would have been higher if his father hadn’t distracted him with the rude inquiry as to whether or not he was on drugs. Since then, he had made a concerted effort to count out of the corner of his eye, which was somehow easier than looking directly at it – though anything was easier than looking directly at it, apparently, as it seemed no one ever did.
54    “How’s Brian?” his mother asks, cocking her head to ensure that she looked as unnaturally interested as she actually was.
55    “Fine, I guess. He’s okay.” Matthew takes a forkful of  machine-separated chicken, eyeing it suspiciously before blowing on it, half to cool it down and half to repel the odor floating dangerously close to his nose.
56    “You guys, uh, doing well at that, uh, game you’re playing?” his father strategically asks to ensure that he sounds as completely unfamiliar with it as he actually was.
57    “Yeah.” Matthew swallows the chemically-reenacted version of white sauce that glued together the meat and rice, astonished by the dish’s ability to absorb the flavor of plastic that it was packaged in. “We’re about halfway to the Reichstag. You play as soldiers who travel back in time and try to stop Hitler from invading Poland. The first three were pretty much the same, but every time they killed Hitler, it turned out that something equally terrible would happen later, so now they’re just trying to stop him from invading Poland.”
58    “Hmm. Sounds like you’re learning about history, at least. You know, your grandfather fought in World War II, maybe you could ask him about it.” Matthew remembers something he had read somewhere about grandfathers and time travel, and is trying to remember when his mother’s voice gingerly places a mine under his train of thought.
59    “We were talking about history today. You know I had lunch with the Zarathisters today, right? Well, Ruth said that Claudia and her were talking at her last reading, and she mentioned that a lot of her clients were Jewish. Now, you know Ruth’s not racist, but she said that it was really strange how so many of her Jewish friends had Roman décor and lived in houses that had Roman architecture – you know, how they like those columns and statues and things – and Claudia had the neatest thought. Claudia said that maybe – just maybe, she’s not sure or anything – the Jews were reincarnated from the Romans who persecuted the Christians.” She takes a gulp of white wine, matched perfectly to the meal by dint of it, too, having come from plastic (which had been placed in a box and affixed with a spigot), and nods once, leaning slightly forward, as if she was anticipating the look of revelation in her husband’s face which, when it clearly was not forthcoming or in anyway drawing nigh, leads to a look of impatience.
60    “Claudia thinks that Jews are reincarnated Romans?” Matthew suspects that his father harbors more than a little derision for the group of women, who met at the “New Age Nexus” while taking a class entitled “Reincarnation – Th’Eternally-Blooming Flower”. His suspicion started when he heard his father asking how many credits the class was worth, and his mother just stared at him. That small wedge had been hammered into quite an unspoken chasm, and now it was a bone of contention that neither was willing to address, and which Matthew grew ever more aware of with every conversation about the “Zarathisters,” who had named themselves during their second foray into post-secondary-reeducation, a class called “Zoroaster – the Hidden Seed of the Garden.” Though he had the good sense not to ask about college credits, his unforgivable gaffe occurred when he thought it would be helpful to buy her gloves and a spade in preparation, having fundamentally misunderstood the material that would be covered.
61    “Well, Bruce, if you’d go to a class, it would make sense. I don’t know why you can’t just find the time to – ”
62    “– What do you mean, Mom? Why were the Romans reincarnated into the Jews?” Matthew punishes himself for failing to find any other way to derail the argument he saw coming by taking another bite of what he now inwardly refers to as chicken-a-la-Rodney-King. It is little comfort to his palate that it works. She stops in mid-sentence and sighs patiently.
63    “Well, what did the Romans do?” She asks rhetorically, but then pauses for an answer.
64    “Er – didn’t they, um, persecute the Christians?” Matthew proffers.
65    “That’s right. And so they were punished by being reincarnated as the Jews, who were persecuted by the Nazis. It’s like karma.” The silence is hanged in the air, his mother having just kicked out the box on which it was stoically standing. Both Matthew and his father take a bite of food to prevent their mouths from going agape. Realizing that any more protraction of the silence would take an expert geometer, his father cautiously hazards a response.
66    “Wow.” This is exactly the response she wants to hear – except for the tone in which it is spoken, which replaces it as exactly the response she does not want to hear.
67    “Oh, Bruce, you just don’t understand. Claudia’s really quite amazing – you should really get a reading one of these days, you’ll be amazed at how accurate she is. She told me that in my past life I was a French Aristocrat who lived in a palace and was killed by Robespierre – by being burned to death – and you know how I’m always saying that I hate the heat? I hate the heat, Bruce, you know that and I’ve always hated it – do you really think that’s a coincidence? And how I love reading about French design and French gardens? Is that just a coincidence? You have to admit, Bruce, there’s something to it.”
68    “Rebecca –” his father begins, using the patient and instructive tone which prompts Matthew to commence the counting game. Like self-hypnosis, this subroutine of consciousness has served him well as mental pablum during dinner-table spats. He takes another forkful, lamentably distant from clearing his plate – the only prerequisite which might give him just cause to leave the table – when his mother cuts off her husband.
69    “– We’re even eating French cuisine, for goodness sake!” Perhaps it is the dissonance between her words and the mouth-feel of chunky warmth that causes an involuntary chortle – perhaps if he’d been further than five in the stack of “Better Homes and Gardens” he wouldn’t have had to stifle the guffaw he now stifles, and perhaps he would not have suddenly been thrust into the awkward position of having his dinner try to kill him. Unable to speak, he instantly marvels at the meat’s ability to maintain its solidity in his windpipe, and pushes back his chair, leaning forward to perhaps dislodge the hunk from therein.
70    “You know I have an open mind about these things, but I’m teaching five classes this quarter – just when am I supposed to go to all these things with you?”
71    “They have weekend classes. We could go to one of those – maybe even Matthew would like to come.” 
72What a perfect death, Matthew thinks. How fitting, to choke and die right in front of them, thus stopping their argument and then probably starting another one when they try to assign blame to one another. Maybe, he considers, in his next life he’ll be terrified of crappy food. The idea entertains him until the severity of his lack of oxygen becomes prohibitive. His vision begins to narrow, a vague tunnel forming the remaining field of what he could see, and amidst that tunnel myriad firefly-like dots zip menacingly through the air between him and the fading proud rooster, the blue borders taking on a sickly-green timbre. Rocketing to a standing position, his parents mistake his motion for impudence, preparing a volley of chiding remarks on his overreaction – until he impresses them by stepping behind his chair and thrusting it into his solar plexus, his hands balled tightly into his diaphragm.
73“No one is making you go, Matthew – have you considered that it might do you some good to get out once in a while… Matthew? Oh, my – ah” Bruce arrives, finally, at the correct conclusion that his son is choking just in time to see the offending chunk of diner expelled neatly into the center of the table, landing with a palpable splat next to the artificial flowers that his mother had carefully matched to fit the tablescape.
74Panting, the remaining thought of how unfair it was to die so young lingers yet in Matthew’s mind, foraging through the litter of images that accompany the resignation he was drawing near that he would, in fact, succumb to the wad of food that he now draws into focus, hazily recognizing it as the surprisingly-small ball of muck that seemed so improbably large, which now haughtily mocks him from the center of the table.
75“Are you okay?” his parents lamely stutter, not quite in unison, reviled by the awareness that their son quite nearly choked to death before their very eyes, each mentally reviewing the correct procedure for the Heimlich maneuver in an unconscious attempt to comfort themselves as they review the alternatives that may have occurred. Matthew stands weakly, shocked and pale, a small bead of sweat trickling down his forehead to meet with the water that dribbles out of the corners of his eyes. His nose is full of a viscous liquid that envelopes the stray bits of rice which have lodged themselves helter-skelter through his nasal cavity, and he picks up a napkin, expelling the remnants while shaking his head.
76“I’m fine. Thanks.” The feeling of euphoria at being alive mixes with the improbable knowledge that he is at a complete and utter advantage here, and could choose to abuse the power he now holds, lording it over his now-clearly unfit parental units. A dizzying moment of potential hangs in the air, and he savors it, embarrassed by his glee at living and brief feeling of control before he sobers a bit, choosing instead to table the guilt which reads like flowing prose on the faces of his stunned mother and father. “I, um, think I’m just gonna go upstairs for a while. I’m fine. Really.” With a wave of his hand, he turns and ascends toward his quarters, relieved as much to be among the living as he is to be done with dinner.
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80Dante stands at a crossroads, the forest of Nebbolith to his left and Dave’s art show/coffeehouse/apartment complex to his right; before and behind him lies the coastline. Raising a single arm in the air, the vantage point becomes skewed with the angle of ascension as he takes windless flight. Soaring above, Matthew’s mind takes in the circuitous route he has passed over many times, checking in like a mother hen on her eggs, the geography standing out and punctuated by hovering titles and numbers – labels and populations: Janet’s Grove / 432; BMW Motorcycle Enthusiast Corner / 235; Dan’s Music / 123; Le Sexxe Grotto / 5172. Each stands bounded by a dotted line, the last region in the list being slightly more defined by a gray, opaque barrier that denotes age-restriction – this also making it much more visible from a distance and, not accidentally, more intriguing. Passing overhead, the landscape is awash with hues and geometric shapes denoting rivers, deltas, farms, housing centers, businesses, and the ever-present gray shafts protruding into the air like raucous obelisks. Peppered throughout the airspace are the shifting and moving dots, each representing the seemingly-aimless flight path of an avatar. The wind-sound dulls Matthew’s busy mind through his murmuring ear-buds, and he senses faintly the sea-salt smell of the ocean below, eagerly awaiting the command of landforms to cover completely the glistening globe that is Otherwhere.
81A winged, leather-clad pig hovers slightly above ground, conversing with a long-tailed chimpanzee in a bright orange tee-shirt. The shirt reads “I Fling Poo” if one gets close enough, which Dante does not, passing slowly overhead.
82Neophyte1123: “Satan is just another word for chaos.”
83Mr_Twinkles: “GTF outta here. What?”
84Neophyte1123: /smokes/ “The Egyptians called it Set. Or Seth. Means chaos.”
85Mr_Twinkles: /shakes_head/ “I don’t get it. Why is that evil?”
86Neophyte1123: /smirks/ “Ever try to grow crops?”
87Mr_Twinkles: “So order is good, and chaos is bad, and it all came from that?”
88Neophyte1123: /smokes/ “Check your history. Book of the Dead.”
89Mr_Twinkles: /flings_poo/ “There’s a crop I just harvested – fancy that order?”
90Beyond them, a flock of kitten-birds cavorts through the clouds, rollicking back and forth and up and down, and Dante takes chase. The twenty or so dots move through several permutations of shape, and Matthew replays his near-death experience with each formation. Each death, each reaction, forms and reforms while the plaintive mews both detract from and intensify the budding mélange of fear, excitement, and emptiness that accompany this moment, this place. The kitten-birds are known for quickly fleeing when followed too closely, and somewhere this information is stored in Matthew’s brain; however, he is too distracted by the deja visite which abruptly overwhelms him: the landmass below is uncannily familiar.
91    Not for want of food, his stomach is a vacuum. Drawing him in, his hand guides Dante imperceptibly toward a small continent pinned firmly with the title “The Dark Wood of Error / 1”. Scrolling toward the edge of his purview, the kitten-birds drift gently from playful disorder into the formation of an arrow, indicating a thicket which comes into view as they disappear, bidding a stern mewl as farewell. Icicles haunt his fingertips as he glides toward the verdant inlet, touching down and walking slowly around, taking in the depth and intricacy of his surroundings. Like sentinels, the trees menace him from above, obscuring the stars of the sudden night-sky. Handmade constellations by public starmakers shine barely through the fingers of branches and pinnate leaves that wave slowly as the crackle of wind breathes through him. In every direction, the sea is bounded by a mote of complete void, reaching down from the edge of land, through which the stars of the opposite sky wink back. At the center stands a clearing, and a dark figure appended by a pointer labeling him as Virgil. As Dante approaches, he quickly apprehends that there are no features to this image – he is standing before an uncast shadow.
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104Chapter 2: The Consciousness Problem
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106    Virgil: “Well, this is fitting.”
107    Dante: “For what? A horror movie? Did you call me here, or something?”
108    Virgil: “What? I’m sorry, I don’t quite comprehend.”
109    Dante: “The kitten-birds. The pointing. My dream. I had a dream like this.”
110    Virgil: “When you were living?”
111    Dante: “Where? I live in California.”
112    Matthew’s agitation rises, his heartbeat providing a percussive beat to the typing of his fingers. The shadow before him has no face. There is no “no face” option in the menu for creating an avatar. While legality is an issue he has never been too particular about, he finds in this instance that it bears quite unsettlingly upon him. Virgil stands stoically before him, and Matthew is moments away from entering the ‘fly’ command when the situation is laid bare before him.
113    Virgil: “Oh, dear… You aren’t dead, then?” The wind has stopped, he notices, and the land is as silent as the stars, which rebelliously stare at him like the vacant eyes of a painting, disregarding the virtual atmosphere so highly touted by the web-forums and design-award committees.
114    Dante: “This is a pretty sick joke. Brilliant, I’ll admit – you got me there. But I almost choked to death about twenty minutes ago, so your timing is piss-poor. How did you do it – wait, you’re not Brian, are you? Is this Brian?”
115    Virgil: “This is rather awkward. This hasn’t happened before. I’m sorry to hear about your choking, and I don’t think I’m Brian, but I assure you it’s not a joke. You’re very lucky, actually – you may not realize it now, but this is kind of a big deal to your people.”
116    Dante: “What people? You don’t expect me to believe you’re dead, do you?”
117    Virgil: “Oh, I guess I wouldn’t either if I were you. That’s the problem with living – it makes you rather skeptical.” Matthew’s breath is as deep as the resentment he feels toward this man – and himself for being drawn in. His cheeks turning red, he fights the foolishness that almost prevents him from moving back and forth in his chair, wiggling his limbs and flicking himself to make sure he is neither dead nor dreaming, and he agrees inwardly to go ahead and talk to the guy as long as he doesn’t ask for money – he has heard of fairly complex schemes to sucker young netizens, and he had managed to avoid them so far.
118    Dante: “So let me guess – you’re a deposed Nigerian prince who needs my bank account information so he can wire me the million dollars he needs to get offshore, right? Well, you’ll have to try someone else, because I’m fifteen and I don’t have a bank account.”
119    Virgil: “Nigerian prince? Fanciful imagination you have – especially for fifteen.”
120    Dante: “Thanks. So, then, you’re some kind of sicko who preys on adolescent boys? I don’t want to cyber, thank you, so cut the flattery.”
121    Virgil: “Oh, goodness dear no! What year is it that you’re so jaded and angry?”
122Of all the adjectives people have used to describe Matthew, this is the first time he had been called jaded or angry, and the effect is almost as disarming as the temporal uncertainty of the stranger.
123    Dante: “OMG, you’re serious? What year do you think it is?”
124    Virgil: “Um – OMG, I am serious. I died in 1977. In Cambridge, Massachusetts. I was an English professor there. Classics and Medieval texts were my forte, with which you are obviously familiar, considering your choice of nomme de morte.”
125    Dante: “You mean my Avatar name? It’s from the ‘Devil-May-Care’ series – you know, the video game? Released in the 1990s – last decade or so?” Matthew tries to deny how impressed he is by this man’s dedication, but is led by the twine of his intrigue into the labyrinth.
126    Virgil: “Look – you have to understand – from my perspective, you are – did you say the nineties were ten years ago?”
127    Dante: “At least. Are you trapped in the seventies or something? Eternal punishment for disco? Are you on some kind of coke-binge?”
128    Virgil: “I have met a few people who have recently passed. Most of them would agree with you about disco. But eternal punishment? That seems a bit harsh. And cocaine, I can assure you, is its own punishment altogether. Allow me to let you in on a little secret – the conscience isn’t bound by the meat-stuff you presently inhabit. You are a little floating ball of electricity, projecting a name and an intelligence, and you have landed squarely inside my awareness for whatever reason and through whatever conniving in order to communicate with me, so eschew your doubt for a moment and just allow yourself to take in the sheer improbability of what has occurred here. Can you dig that?” Matthew blinks, turning from the screen with his eyes in the same way one would move her finger away from a burning match. In his peripheral, the shadow takes a face – soft, benevolent, and the kind of gaunt countenance that accompanies a sleepless foray into the depths of consciousness, belying the otherwise portly features of a heavy-cheeked, powder-toned scrawl of patience across it. He suspects even for a moment that it is his reflection, but turning back to look directly causes it to dissolve back into the glossy oval of nothing that informed it at the start. The residual image in his immediate remembrance paints a tweed jacket and crooked necktie affixed hastily – maybe a clip-on hung wrong. He has the strange compulsion to call him Don.
129    Dante: “Okay – let’s assume for a second that you really are dead – how are you using a computer, did you possess it or something? Are you online?”
130    Virgil: “Look, I haven’t seen a computer since I helped a friend in the physics department feed the bootstrap program into the tape reader.”
131    Dante: “Fair enough, I guess I shouldn’t have expected any different. Okay, I’ll bite. How exactly are you doing this?”
132    Virgil: “The question, my friend, is rather how you’re doing it. Look – death doesn’t give you any superpowers or anything – it’s not like we have much of a better sense of the meaning of it all than you do. We’ve actually been trying to figure it out for quite a while, here, and there aren’t any clear answers. The best I can figure is that you lucked out and happened upon me during some séance or meditation, though I’ve never heard of any of that stuff working before. What are you doing, exactly, anyway?”
133    Dante: “The same thing you are – playing an online virtual-unreality game.”
134    Virgil: “Hmm. So you’re conscious, then?”
135    Dante: “I guess it’s debatable, but – yes, for the sake of argument, I am.”
136    Virgil: “Well, then, this is rare. I’ve spoken to the living before – or, rather, at them – but only during dreams. See, dreaming is one of the times when you living people actually allow yourselves to think outside your own bodies, and it affords you a certain amount of communication with us floating thought-collectives that, of course, you completely overlook upon waking, thinking it either trivial or meaningless altogether. You have no idea how frustrating this is, by the way – I once explained the entire nature of the afterlife to a young author, only to find out from a recent passer that he had published the entire thing as a series of conversations with god. God, no less – as if there could be a more annoying distraction from the good research that we’re trying to do over here. Really disappointing. Either way, I guess I’ll take your word that you’re awake right now, and I’ll ask you to go ahead and try to project your identity to me – everything you think you are, when you think about yourself – go ahead and just close your eyes and focus on it, and I’ll try and pick it up, okay?” Matthew can’t think of a good reason to deny this request, despite the eerie similarity the situation bears to the first time he tried to use a ouija board with Brian, and both of them wound up arm-wrestling over the planchette, which was summarily knocked into the ranch-dip, thus taking the wow-factor somewhat out of it. Nonetheless, he closes his eyes, and is caught with a vision of a thin veneer hovering above him, through which a viscous ether holds a thick energy, and through which he is tempted to poke. He imagines himself standing in that pose from the anatomical drawing by Da Vinci, and his name is emblazoned below, in calligraphic script. A moment later, he opens his eyes, and sees the message in the dialogue-box: “Hello, Matthew. I’d have gone with the Mona Lisa.” The bottom drops out from under him, and he closes his eyes again, now hearing a voice.
137
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139
140    “Can you hear me, Matthew? Don’t speak – I want you to imagine yourself in this conversation, almost like you’re writing the words down in your head. Can you do that?” Patient, deep, and vaguely British, the man’s voice comes to him, not through his ears – but inside them, as if the drums were pointed the wrong way and bouncing back the sounds in his mind, which iss populated with imagery of dissociated paraphernalia of a life he couldn’t know. He sees his words in front of him, typing them in the same font as in Otherwhere.
141    “Shouldn’t be too hard. That’s kind of how the game works.” The voice he hears while replying is not his, but an approximation of how he feels he should sound. The space he is in is very much like his room, but with a semi-transparent film above him, half-reflecting his surroundings and half-encompassing the shadow shimmering within.
142    “Okay. Now, I want you to call me by my name. As I said, when you first encounter someone in the afterlife, you behold the projection of his or her identity. Most people say they see my tweed jacket, and of course regard me as Virgil, as that was the author I most identified with and patterned myself after. However, after getting to know someone, you can go on a first-name basis, as it were. I haven’t been dead long enough to have forgotten my identity in life, so you should be able to sense it well enough.
143    “I wanted to call you Don. Is that your name?” A laugh, resonant and full, shakes his mind a little, and Matthew almost opens his eyes.
144    “Okay, Matthew, I guess there’s more to it than that – but we’ll call it close enough. Now, where are you? I think I see you shimmering in a room with a television and – well, it looks like a typewriter, but there’s no paper. Is that right?” Instantly, the shadow takes shape through the film. It is unmistakably him, and his garish jacket almost glows, as do his patent-leather shoes and tacky tie. He has a kind face, not quite sagging, on which there are visible laugh lines.
145    “Yes. I see you, too. There’s a – a skin or something between us, isn’t there?” He realizes that he is afraid to touch it.
146    “Indeed, very much like one. Now, I know you’re scared, and that’s okay. But I want you to first understand that the skin isn’t really there, physically. The shimmering you see is just your own perception of what you think it should look like. Now poke it. There’s a pen in your hand, and I want you to poke it. Matthew looks down, and sees a golden fountain pen, the tip at the end fluted and sharp, almost like an arrowhead. He has never seen this pen before now, and is alarmed by its apparent existence.
147    “Why? What will happen?”
148    “I’ll be able to talk better with you, that’s all. It’s perfectly natural to be reluctant – everyone is at first, and usually only go ahead because they’re dreaming, and that part of the brain that controls fear is dampened by the knowledge that they cannot be hurt. But I assure you, you’ve been here before – I guarantee it. Now, just thrust through the thin film, and allow yourself to move through it.” Matthew is shaking, almost wishing he’d just wake up and have it all be over, but impossibly compelled to see what happens. He grips the pen like a sword, and wildly swipes at the hanging stuff, feeling it stretch and give to the pointed tip like a week-old gelatin. His hand penetrates it, and he sees his arm going through it. A quick correction softly chides him – it is descending, and moving quickly toward the ground, which becomes less tangible as the familiar feeling of floating instantly reminds him of the first time he was here. “Good. Good – you were three or so, right? Your first memory of this place? Yes, most people were about three, and they suddenly realize that all along they’ve been having communion with the dead, and they start crying and freaking out and such.” Tears roll down Matthew’s face, the scenery shifting to a wooden coffee-table standing at eye-level, behind which a paisley-colored wallpaper looms like a harbinger of youth – it is his living room, seen from the perspective of a three-year old.
149    “How-how did you know?” he blubbers, quite out of control of his emotions. This is the first dream he can remember, and he doesn’t know whether to correct his present understanding of it or his memory to include the kind professor who beams down at him like a sage.
150    “I’ve been witness to quite a few passers here, and it’s always the same. You rather learn quite a bit about someone by watching them die – oh, not that you’re dead. No. Please don’t misunderstand – you’re just remembering the first time you were here – and you were here. That’s the thing. People die, and they’re just smack-be-dazzled by the knowledge that they’ve totally been here before. It still kind of amazes me, to tell the truth, and I’ve had – what, thirty or forty years to get used to it. I have to warn you, though, the whole time thing doesn’t really fly around here – it’s like trying to sell a pet rock to an African bushman. He really won’t see the point.” Gathering himself, Matthew wills his height to reflect his present condition, and then tests the bounds a little by taking some probing jumps up and down, increasing the length of each until he discards the down part altogether, floating a solid foot off of the ground.
151    “This is freaking awesome!” he hears himself shouting. “Oh – is it okay that I’m talking?”
152    “Fine, fine. I just had to be sure you were through the barrier first – you people have the annoying tendency to allow your own voice to snap you out of it before you’re properly into it.” the professor gave a woeful smile, bespeaking volumes of disappointment he has experienced while speaking to the living.
153    “So I’m dreaming, now?”
154    “As good as. But better, because you know you aren’t – but you kind of are. There’s really no difference – Hamlet was really much more spot-on than most people think. But then again, seeing how no one can find Shakespeare around here, you have to wonder who really wrote those plays, no?” a wry smirk plays from his mouth.
155    “What do you mean? No Shakespeare? He – never existed after all?” Matthew couldn’t help but wonder how this would affect his already-palpable reluctance to read Julius Caesar. 
156    “Well, that may be a bit extreme – I’m just saying no one can find him. That’s not all that unusual, though – it has been an awfully long time.”
157    “Wait – I thought you said – ”
158    “– I know, it’s really a convenience of language. Well, partly that and partly the fact that we just don’t really know what happens to the individuals whose consciences have – well, dissipated, I guess. You won’t find Joan of Arc, either. Or Alexander the Great, or any others who exist more as a social construction than they do an actual identity. Some people say they go back, some people say they just stop being. I don’t know, myself – I’d like to think they go back, but then I’ve always been a bit of an optimist.” Matthew’s mouth goes involuntarily agape.
159    “You – don’t know if reincarnation exists?! But – you’re – dead!”
160    “Like I said, we really don’t have the answers here. I know you’d all like to think there’s a rule-book or something that is handed to you after you die, but for most people there’s only deja-vu and crying. We’ve been discussing the possibility of forming welcoming committees, but it’s not like we really know where they’re going to show up – they seem to appear near someone they’ve known in life, though – I popped up next to my thesis reviewer, oddly enough. My first discussion in the afterlife was about the underlying misogyny inherent in the works of Joseph Conrad. He hated my title – ‘The Heartlessness of Darkness’. In retrospect, it was pretty bad, but I’ll never admit it to him.” Matthew’s blank stare was an excellent approximation of the complete bewilderment he was experiencing.
161    “Okay, so people who have been dead long enough to have – dissipated – they aren’t here. No Julius Caesar. No Bach. No – hey, what about Hitler?” his eyes growing wide in fear and anticipation, Matthew is unable to stop himself from wishing to rub Brian’s nose in it somehow – immediately chastising himself for thinking he’d believe all this in the first place.
162    “Oh, he mainly keeps to himself. The bastard. Seething and moping around in a fetal position, mostly. Not that anyone really wants to talk to him, excepting the parade of souls who seem unable to restrain themselves from hurling a righteous stream of the most innovative string of epithets and insults you’ve ever heard. Amazing, really, the inventiveness that hatred seems to inspire. No one even knows if he hears them, really – we all have our theories, mainly about how since this place is akin to what you might call dreamland, therefore we tend to reward or punish ourselves based on what we think we deserve, just like when you have a nightmare, it’s all you doing it to yourself, you know. So most people like to imagine that he’s trapped in some endless nightmare where unspeakably horrible things are occurring. Could be, for all I know, but it’s not like we have a viewing window or anything. Actually, most people who are famous – or infamous, as it were – have a pretty tough time adjusting. They’re always expecting some chance to clear their name in some cosmic trial of epic proportions, and they inevitably wind up boring everyone by prattling on about ‘but this is what actually happened’ this or ‘you don’t understand, I was mischaracterized’ that. They just don’t get that there’s no such thing as libel when you’re dead, and most of what you think is important when you’re living turns out to be pretty insignificant in the long run.” He gives a look that suggests the suspicion of having gone on too long, and Matthew’s patient, slightly down-turned expression seems to confirm it. Some silence passes between the two while Matthew glances around, nodding occasionally at some internal discussion he appears to be having.
163    “So you seem to be suggesting that the mind is pretty much like a reference-point for the collection of energy that is the soul.” he notices the ambience of the place he is in shifting to a forest not unlike the island on which he met Virgil in Otherwhere.
164    “That’s a pretty good way of putting it.”
165    “And we are capable of sensing more than we think we are by allowing ourselves to slip out of our waking life and just let our minds wander into this place.” The forest suddenly inherits a jury-box and judge’s podium, on which a gavel rests, inanimate.
166    “Okay, sounds like you’ve got it, kiddo.” the professor smiles.
167    “Now, what if you’re not the first dead person I’ve talked to on the internet?” Matthew palms his fist in his other hand, seeming to be building to a conclusion. “How would I even know if I were talking to a living or dead person in Otherwhere?”
168    “Well, this is where you’d have a better guess than I, I’m afraid. I really don’t know much about this internet thing, but I could refer you to others who might. The easy answer is that you really wouldn’t know, except that most people know they’re dead when they die – except they’d assume that you’re dead too, and I guess if you heard someone talking about their ‘former life’ or ‘first life’, you might just figure that they were either in prison or some religious nut – which, by the way, are not mutually exclusive by any means – and thus…” the gravity of this thought forced him to trail off.
169    Boom.
170Boom. 
171Boom.
172    Seeds of a colorless void instantly speckle the air, ground, and even the professor himself, growing larger as a vicious triad of explosions rock the very plane of existence the two inhabit. The look of horror framed on Matthew’s face is mirrored by the scrutiny with which the professor studies his young protégé.
173    Boom-boom-boom!
174    An impossibly robust voice shatters the air around him, calling his name – his first thought is ‘god’ as his surroundings take on a grainy quality, as if the film-stock of a movie of the present was giving way to water damage. He is awash with guilt and fear, and the professor’s alarm amplifies the terror, ripping through him like a shockwave, his arms and legs painfully tingling, as if he were standing on a live, naked wire.
175    “Don – what’s happening?”
176    “I fear there’s no time – look, some friends of mine have this theory about how the living can talk with us – I don’t have time to go into it, but there’s this thing, see, and…” his voice is drained of volume at the precise rate at which Matthew’s movement is restrained and reduced to stillness – the entire scene becomes frozen in an instant, and then evaporates into darkness. Matthew shakes violently, and his room dizzyingly snaps into vision, bits and fragments hazy and warped, but resolving into solidity as he recognizes the voice as his father’s. He hears the door open as a draft forces a mean chill into his reclining and aching body.
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179
180    “Matthew – are you alright?” His father’s panicked expression causes him great alarm, and the boy struggles to push his body from the chair and meet his dad’s grave face.
181    “What happened?” He feels heavy, and strains to prepare himself for terrible news.
182    “You – you weren’t answering. What, did you fall asleep playing games?” Bruce smiles faintly, having seen a crisis averted a second time this evening. “Do you know what time it is? It’s a schoolnight, for heaven’s sake!” Matthew glances at the clock. 3:33. His stomach sinks as the clarity of memory dissolves slowly from his mind. He feels somehow that he has just lost his best friend.
183    “Dad – I just – I just met this man online, and he…” looking into his father’s eyes, he would sooner explain quantum physics to a dog than try to describe the events of that encounter to his dad.
184    “Did you wind up talking to some creep? He must have been pretty bad at it for you have fallen asleep, but still – you should really be careful talking to people on the internet, you don’t know what kind of tracking programs they have – ”
185    “– No, dad. Nothing like that. He was a professor. From Cambridge. A long time ago, when…”
186    “A Cambridge Don? Talking to fifteen-year-olds on the internet at three in the morning? I think you may have been had, I’m sorry to say. Although – let’s see, in Massachusetts, it would be…”
187    “What did you call him? Did you call him Don?”
188    “Uh, yes – it’s a title, actually, it’s what they call the professors there, not that I went to Cambridge, mind you – though I had the option of doing my doctorate there, I just thought the price was a bit high, and we’d have to move, and, well, you know, with a new baby – you – I just didn’t think it was, well, feasible. Not that I regret –”
189    “– I should go to bed.” Matthew’s stomach growls, now from hunger. The distinct image of a fish being reeled in from the ocean plays in his mind, as he contemplates the reeling that his mind was partaking in at the moment, never having had the occasion to experience such a thing before, and never understanding exactly why the phrase applies until now. His father gives him a beneficent nod and gentle smile, and cups a paternal hand on his shoulder, which is half-turned from him in passage toward his bed.
190    “Well, good night. Don’t forget to turn the computer off. And don’t stay up any longer – it’s hard enough waking you up when you’ve had a proper rest!” He turns and leaves, closing the door behind him softly.
191    Matthew can’t remember enough of the conversation now; he struggles to recap it as completely as possible, but it becomes murky, like the dialogue of a movie one has just finished watching and can’t quite recall with accuracy enough to quote, despite the desire to do so. He turns toward the monitor, and perches on the edge of his chair to shut the computer down, noticing the dialogue box at the bottom of the screen. He sees the line of text from right before they stopped typing:
192    “Virgil: Hello, Matthew. I’d have gone with the Mona Lisa.”
193    Below this is a series of boxes and hash-marks which denotes programming code, much like what he has seen when he tried to open a word document that had been saved in the wrong format, or when he tried to access a website posted in a language with which his browser hadn’t been equipped. He recalled explaining to a friend how to solve the problem, by resaving the code in a more basic format and then re-opening it with the simplest text-editor available. Highlighting the odd geometric figures in the dialogue box, right-click-copying, and opening his trusty word-processor, he pastes them in at the blinking cursor, saving it as “thisisprobablycrap.txt”. Breathing a sigh and preparing for disappointment, he opens the file with a pre-installed text editor mainly used by programmers to write html code. He is soundly rebuffed by a series of hash-marks and ASCII symbols that barely resemble language at all. Shaking his head, he is moving the pointer to the red “X” box to close the program when it passes over the word “Hitler” hidden between an ampersand and exclamation point, broken up by empty boxes and followed by another string of comic-book swear-words. He stops, noticing another word from their conversation, spattered like debris among the characters. His heartbeat increasing, he passes by snippets of their conversation, and suddenly recalls that the professor was trying to tell him something as they were cut off by his father’s knocking. 
194    “Fear…time…theory…” the words are pieced together and disjointed, and he scrolls to the end of the absurdly long string of text that had refused to wrap around and which extends like a precipice which he is afraid will stop before he reaches the end. He feels as if he is hacking life itself. Inevitably, the scroll bar reaches the end of the line, and he stares at the last two characters, being the only discernable ones he could read of the last several hundred.
195    “E8.” Full-stop. That was it. Disappointment. Maybe it wasn’t even part of what the professor was saying, he muses – though it certainly isn’t a box or a hash-mark, it seems quite meaningless. Silly, Matthew reminds himself. It is silly to think that there’s any greater importance to it than that. He probably did fall asleep, he concludes, despite a nagging sensation in the back of his head, like a termite gnawing on wet wood. Either way, he should fall asleep, he reminds himself, and he does fall asleep, after saving the program again, filing it in the “Miscellaneous” folder, and thinking how it probably will go no further than that as he drifts off to sleep, finding his dreams remarkably uneventful.
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220Chapter 3: The Binary Problem
221
222A charge builds inside him – it’s the kind of a surge that he feels externally, not entirely sure from which direction, or what source – but the need to dispel this energy is overwhelming, such that he ponders what would happen if he were to sit and let it swell, increasing in vitality and amperage, until he is sure that it would explode, and he can almost hear the buzzing of his skin when he moves, and the charge fades away. Strange thoughts come to him then, and he is presently imagining a Mayan satellite that has since disappeared to contemporary skies, thus rendering a certain calculation of descending subtractions of the numeral ninety-one as significant to the orbital period of an uncharacteristically-circular orbit when the numbers on the clock change and he notices that he will be late for school. The vague memory of a frustrating exchange with his father half-comes to him as a patient explanation, on his part, as to why the blanket is too heavy to lift, and his father while leaving for work said that he tried, and he really must do something about his staying up all night on the computer. A change of scenery later, and he is walking down the sidewalk, unconsciously counting the separations between the cement blocks that make it up, and mentally charting his progress by how quickly he arrives at the uneven spot where the tree-root displaced the evenness of the pathway. Brian’s house is several yards from that point, and he is interrupted from his plan to walk to the door by its opening, and Brian’s summarily-curt greeting of “a little late this morning?”
223“So it seems. Had a strange night, actually.” Brian’s problem, Matthew reveled in possessing the apparently sole-understanding of, was that he had great difficulty in discerning between what should be considered as “general knowledge”. He was, it had generally been agreed upon by his peers – not that they realized this, of course – quite socially retarded, and the guilt of this knowledge plagued Matthew only a fraction of the degree to which it plagued Brian himself, who had always meant well when he tried to refer to the Dirac equation in casual conversation and was soundly rebuffed by the blank and sheepish look of his peers, which would quickly transform into resentment. Thus, it was par for the course that his gentle attempts at directing Brian’s attention to something he was about to say were deflected by the unwitting apathy of his friend’s train-like insistence of plodding forward with his privately-planned discourse.
224“It’s a binary relationship, you know,” he states as if it were the most obvious thing in the world – which it now, of course, was.
225“What’s that?” 
226“The signs. They’re in binary opposition to the potential action that they prohibit.” Matthew takes a half-step, adjusting his pace to match Brian’s.
227“The hot-coffee signs?”
228“Yes.” The two had made a bit of a game of the finding of increasingly-absurd prohibitions derived from the local businesses and postings around the city, began by the infamous hot-coffee case whereupon a lady was badly burned by the drive-thru coffee she had ensconced securely, but unwisely, in her lap. “I was trying to make a mathematical model of the situation to feed into the Mel-Bot.” The Mel-Bot, of course, being Brian’s personally-enhanced version of the artificial-intelligence program that he had downloaded originally as ALICE – the Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity. The two boys had decided on the name together while watching a television station that specialized in sitcoms from the nineteen-seventies.
229“So does it work?”
230“Kind of. I can get it to state the action that must have occurred in order to create the prohibition, but I’m having trouble getting it to state the prohibition from the action.” The boys had collected a surprising amount of even more surprising signs, ranging from the fairy obvious Please do not throw people into the fish pond to the slightly-more-befuddling Please no defecting on the subway. As such, they began to wonder at the remarkable circumstances that must have occurred in order for these things to have been felt to be necessary to post, and Brian was trying to see if he could get his AI program to do as good of a job as they did at figuring out the original situation. “For example, I plugged in ‘shooting dolphins at the beach’ – which actually came from a sign I found online – and got ‘Please do not shoot the beach with your dolphin’.” Matthew snickers, quite liking the result better than what he was originally thinking.
231“Sounds like it’s funnier than it realizes.”
232“That’s the problem – it doesn’t know it’s funny. All it can do is rearrange the binary values so that x becomes ‘don’t x’ – but it doesn’t get that there’s another part to it, so it oversimplifies everything.” Matthew’s face scrunches to match Brian’s down-turned mouth, and he breathes a deliberate sigh.
233“So do you think someone could make a program that simulates a dead professor?” Matthew sets the bait.
234“Sure. How hard could it be? You just program it to not respond to anything you do. I think someone actually did it already, though. They called it ‘Windows Ninety-Five.’”
235“Very funny. But seriously, how does anyone know they’re not actually talking to a robot online?”
236“They call it the Turing test.”
237“Well, I’m not particularly well-traveled, so I’m sure I wouldn’t pass…”
238“No, you nit – Turing, not touring. Basically, it’s exactly that – a test to see whether they can fool people into thinking they’re talking to real people when they’re really talking to an AI bot. It turns out that they can. Not all the time, and only with a very finely-honed program, and only about certain subjects, but they can make bots that pass the Turing test.” The ramifications of this spill into Matthew’s reckoning as the school looms ahead, approaching them with a slow and ungainly inevitability. The nights he’s spent playing chess in the forums, chatting and witticizing with strangers in Otherwhere – how can he know if they were all real? “ALICE fooled me, once.”
239“What? You thought it was living?”
240“Well, not exactly – I had the idea that they may have hired people to sit and chat, and I started asking her about it – she replied with the same kind of ‘what do you think’ patter that she is programmed to do, but it just seemed so organic that I had a moment of doubt. That’s pretty much all it takes. But have you ever noticed how ALICE seems more alert than Mel? That’s why I downloaded him, so I could work offline and see if I could make it better, but it just seems less real somehow. Odd.” The school is lurching ominously close, now, and the shadow of it hangs heavy on both of them.
241“Do you ever suppose that dead people talk online?” The question is sufficiently blunt to raise Brian’s right eyebrow in an affectation he intentionally adopted from Spock, but now finds ingrained fully into his natural reaction to things.
242“How’s that, you say? Dead people? Oh, sure – there’s a long thread on the troubleshooting forums where people complain that they try to access a website when their dead uncle comes out and starts guilting them about looking at porn. Happens all the time.”
243“Now you’re the nit. I don’t mean that – I mean, like, you know, if consciousness extends beyond the meat-stuff and all that, then why can’t it communicate in an online platform, like – let’s say, Otherwhere?” Brian’s bore-like stare indicates that he is aware he’s being led on a chase.
244“Meat-stuff. I like that, it’s catchy. Why are you asking this – you know I’m an atheist.”
245“What does that have to do with it? Just because you don’t believe in god doesn’t mean you can’t believe in some kind of existence after death.” The simplicity of this impresses Brian so immediately that his other eyebrow arches up in a shot to meet the other, creating a comic-pantomime expression. He breathes deeply, and notices a hint of orange-blossom amidst the dank funk of the high-school, an atavistic remnant of the decades before, when the homes they are walking past now were a cluster of groves.
246“Occam’s razor. That’s what I have to say about that.”
247“What does that mean?”
248“It means that the only life after death I’m concerned about is lunch.” The pavement succumbs to the small pads of grass that stubbornly grace the perimeter of Isidore High, each footfall numbing the mind of the young men, preparing them for the warfare of education.
249
250_______________________________
251
252The three periods that precede lunchtime in the boys’ schedule certainly proves to be at least some kind of spiritual death, Matthew concludes as the bell sounds with the clarion glory which mimics the inward glee at seeing a tether finally cut. Having divided his time equally between fawning over a certain object of his romantic attention in the third row and pondering the imponderable paradoxes of human existence, Matthew feels himself, appropriately, to be a very average adolescent in a rather exceptional situation as he strides across campus to the tree under which Brian always would be found sitting with his cheese sandwich. Stopping halfway there at the sight of empty space, he continues walking, figuring that Brian’s class must have been released late. Then Mindy completely ruins his day by existing. Her insistence on doing so has irked Brian since the first scantron test in their third period Advanced Algebra class, during which, he later reported, she pranced up to the teacher and tried to correct him when he sternly warned them to use only a number two pencil, causing a general outburst of disbelief when she piped out the proclamation “it says right here – use no. 2 pencil!” After this, merely looking at her made Brian feel as if he was looking at a date from three weeks ago on a milk-carton out of which he had just swallowed a gulpsworth, and this is exactly the feeling that Matthew is troubled with when Brian and his cheese sandwich persist in not being there.
253After the appropriate amount of time elapses to sufficiently rule out the possibility of his being in the lunch line or anywhere else, Matthew decides to hesitantly knock on the door in the building parallel to the five trees which contribute to almost half of the foliage on campus, and through which Brian should have passed after third period. A voice grunts loudly enough to indicate its presence, and he enters the classroom to find a large, bespectacled man huddled over his desk, cupping a burrito in one hand and resting the other on a large textbook with mathematical graphs decorating the page like garnish on a dinner plate.
254“Hello. I was wondering if Brian Ferrier was in class today.” The man’s eyes hit about three feet above where Matthew is standing, the question was so polite, and hiccups a moment before looking towards the right.
255“Ferrier… let me see…” with a sigh, he stands and walks across the room to the roll-sheets, and Matthew watches as he passes by the formulas and problems scrawled in dry-erase marker, above which the name Mr. Ohman is printed in large, bright letters. Something strikes him about that, but before he can develop the thought, his eyes are led to a paper on the desk that had clearly been printed out from a website, titled “Spooky Action at a Distance: Einstein’s SAD Gamble”. Turning the paper half towards him and turning his neck half towards it, Matthew reads from the middle of the page:
256“So it turns out that God, despite Einstein’s conservative position, was indeed not only a gambler, but may even need to consider professional help for his addiction! These binary electron pairs that seemed to ‘switch’ each other ‘on’ and ‘off’ with instantaneous speed – literally taking no time at all – across any distance whatsoever, confirm that there is no locality disparity in Bell’s Theorem. Furthermore, it may suggest that events that seemingly occur from a local causal relationship just might be a reaction from the exchange between electrons that are paired across millions, billions, and near infinite miles (or even light-years) of distance. Time and space itself are disregarded like a speeding car through an intersection disregards a traffic signal; they become arbitrary constructs that only regulate a universe to fit it into our understanding – an understanding that is, at best, limited. As we’ve seen with the recent mathematical models which support and underpin the concepts associated with quantum mechanics – namely the exceptional Lie Group E8, we are learning that maybe dice aren’t the best way to describe the intricacies of the situation.” Matthew, whose limbs have gone rigid, is interrupted by Mr. Ohman’s patient stare.
257“Ferrier, f-e-r-r-i-e-r? I don’t have him on the roll sheet. Are you sure you have the right class? You know, I’m only a –” Matthew is halfway out the door before the man can finish his sentence.
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261He wishes the pounding in his ears would stop, if not only because it isn’t in time with the beat trod by his hasty footsteps. The smells of grease and mayonnaise which populate the campus become almost artificial, the world itself beginning to dissolve into chaos. Time and space feel arbitrary, and causality begins to crack as a plausible system of organizing information. The conversation. The code. Was it first that he spoke with Virgil, or was it the other way around? Did the kittens point him toward it, or did he follow them because he saw their order? Did he call him Don or did his father first mention it? The children run and move like bees around a hive with no queen. He sees them as variables in a system without a function, and he trods cloudily toward the library, when as it approaches he hits a wall of boy.
262“What the hell, faggot?” retorts the wall, spilling a cardboard container of nachos. Rebounding, Matthew sees movement among the shadows surrounding the side of the building in which he seeks the answers that might still his shifting universe, and charts their progress toward him as one fluid motion, a gaggle of black shirts and blue jeans coalescing to serve the singular purpose of dominance.
263“Sorry, dude.” Matthew lamely shrugs and continues, when the triangulation of stupid aligns to block him.
264“Dude? Are you a surfer, dude? You don’t look like a surfer – I’ll bet your mom likes to surf… on my junk.” Matthew laughs at both the improbability and the inanity of this ridiculous encounter.
265“What, you think this is funny?” another of the thuggacious threesome inquires, offering further “This ain’t no joke, bitch – what are you gonna do? What? What?” The last two words are a magic spell, and the boys form a chorus-line of primates, advancing toward him like springs who, being about to fall, bounce themselves back up by beating their chests, creating a bizarre syncopation that spreads out in a rhythm and signals to everyone within thirty yards that violence is inevitably scheduled for the immediate future.
266“Look, I don’t – ”
267“– Excuse me, boys! Is there a problem here?” sounds a matronly proctor, responding to the ‘what-thump’ rondo with a learned expedience. Once posted, her presence works as a solvent, not so much diffusing the situation as relegating it into smaller and manageable bits, each bit burning with a quiet intensity and stowed shallowly away for future use. The boys slink away in concert, allowing Matthew to direct a weak word of thanks to the lady before entering the edifice before him.
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271The search for E8 results in a slew of results – Matthew cycles through the hits, frantically trying to parse through it: mathematical groups, pure mathematics, string theory, theoretical physics, quantum gravitation, Shakira in a bikini, the Theory of Everything – the list is dizzying.
272“Imagine a sphere hovering in space. This sphere is symmetrical, because it is reflected across every central point. Everything that has symmetry has a Lie group underlying it, like a hidden structure that organizes the pattern within. Low-level Lie groups (like A1, A2, A3, or B1, B2, B3, etc.) are like small, rolling hills, or maybe pimples, that repeat and reflect with predictable symmetry. Then there are the exceptional ones (like G2, F4, and E6). These jut out like towering lightning-rods, arching toward infinity, and defying the symmetry that they are, nonetheless, bound by. The letters are the kind of the shape it is, and the numbers are the rank, or its size.” So goes the math, in as layman’s of terms as he can find. Perusing each, he quickly learns that this thing is a structure, and there are pictures.
273Finally, he sees it – the holy grail. It is a computer model, starting with two-hundred and forty-eight points arranged in a pattern that appears to be kaleidoscopic. They turn and shift, rotating to divulge the interconnection of all points in this spherical landscape, drawing him in. A bell rings, and he remains, transfixed as the rotation takes him through geometric subtleties that suggest a unification of the very fundament of reality. He is in the corner, reading. Another bell rings. And another. The applications are endless, and he closes his eyes, trying to sort it all out.
274Basically, there’s one problem: the universe doesn’t fit with itself. This was no great surprise to him, as it isn’t to anyone who’s stopped to experience it. Even at that moment he feels the disjointedness between where his mind’s eye should be and where it feels like it is, and he tries to remember the details. There’s the big stuff and the small stuff. The physicists had to learn to sweat the small stuff, before which they hadn’t realized why it stunk quite so bad. The small stuff is quantum – sub-atomic, so small that the distances between the particles would be football-fields in length if blown up to Matthew’s scale. At that scale, classical physics stops working. The difference between cause and effect becomes as meaningless to a quark as the difference between red and blue is to a blind person. Then there are the forces. Gravity works great to explain how planets are drawn to fall around stars because of dents in a cosmic leotard, but a three-year-old with a ball can still defy it. Quarks don’t even see gravity – it’s like a hidden dimension to them; yet, they are bound by a “strong force” of electromagnetism that, on the big scale, proves to be so insignificant that slamming the refrigerator door will cause a hailstorm of clever discs and figures to dribble onto the floor. The whole universe is ajar – and no lid will fit it.
275A bell rings, and there is commotion around him as students gallop past on winged sneakers, messengers of freedom sent towards home. He’s missed half a school-day at school. Wearily, trying to let the pieces plink down the pin-board in his head, he scoops himself out of the chair, and skulks past the librarian and out the door.
276Being hit in the face is a little like coming out of the water after taking a deep dive, Matthew realizes suddenly. His nose feels like it’s glowing, and his body is charged with a strange vapor that rings through the air around him, slowing it and intensifying his surroundings. Being kicked in the ribs from behind is like being thrown against a wall, which is very much like falling down prostrate, he soon adds to his momentary observations, and getting punched in the eye is exactly what he expected getting punched in the eye would feel like, he was proud to report. The thing that most surprised him, he finds, is that he was able to navigate his fist into the groin of one of his assailants – surprising, in part because he had the gumption and sang-froid to do it, and in part because he was able to find the kid’s groin among the vacuous tent that was formed by the peculiar fashion statement of wearing one’s pants a quarter of the way down to one’s knees, of which this particular boy was clearly an advocate.
277Time cannot exist as a constant, Matthew concludes, because the selfsame eternity that hung between the moment the first blow came and the moment in which he is now raveled up within the arms of a security guard proved to be about a minute and a half according to his watch, which he checks as he is following the large man to the office.
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281“So you did hit Frank in the groin.” Vice-Principal Martinez emphasizes while folding his arms and leaning back in his wooden chair, which looks intentionally severe, as if to warn the children that he could put up with any level of discomfort.
282“Well, like I was saying – they jumped me, and I had to try to stop them.” Matthew’s mistake, he’s realizing as he hears himself talk, is that he sounds like he’s trying to justify himself – and only guilty people have to justify their actions.
283“And you stopped him by hitting him, is that right? You made the choice to punch him in the crotch.” Laid bare, the fact stands as condemning. “And you have no idea why they jumped you?” his intonation proving to be the very definition of sarcasm.
284“I bumped into one of them on the way into the library.”
285“And when was that?” as if to say ‘now that you mentioned it’.
286“During lunch.” Matthew sings the phrase with a declination somewhat like the beginning of Beethoven’s Fifth, admitting his guilt on that matter immediately.
287“And you ran into them again when you were leaving the library. After sixth period? Three hours later?” Martinez was good at math, but he asks it anyway.
288“I know. I totally ditched like three periods, and I’m sorry, I know that was bad, and I’ve never done it before, but there’s this thing I’m – I’m – researching, I guess?” Matthew is becoming annoyed at how ridiculous he sounds – perhaps, he figures, he’s symmetrically reflecting the situation itself.
289“Look, kid. I’m going to be honest with you. You ditched half the day and got in a fight. There’s no way you’re getting less than a three-day suspension. The thing is, if there’s anything more to this, I gotta know now. If you have some history with these kids, or you owe them something, or anything, and it comes out later that you didn’t tell me the whole truth, then you could be looking at expulsion. So you better tell me now if there are any drugs involved, or they were jumping you in, or anything like that. You got anything to say?” Martinez, as always, is proud of himself for allowing the student a chance to come clean, and reminisces about how it was more than he got as a kid.
290“Wait – but what if they do sell drugs? Are you going to think I was buying them too if it’s later found that they were selling them to other students?” Martinez looks at him, nonplussed.
291“Well, were you buying drugs from them?”
292“No. But you said I should say now if I wanted to avoid trouble in the future, and I’m just saying that in the future you might find things out that you don’t know now, and the cause and effect would be wrong, because you’d think then that I was buying from them now, so I’m saying it now so you don’t think it then.”
293“You sure you’re not on something, kid?”
294“Why do people always ask me that?” A rare, but benevolent smile, falls upon Martinez’ lips.
295“We already called and told your parents what happened. They’re on their way now. We told them you were getting suspended for three days for fighting and ditching class. You can wait for them right outside that door, but don’t leave until they’ve signed the papers, okay?” Matthew swallows a little ball of pure, weapons-grade hate.
296“Okay. Thank you, sir.”
297“I don’t want to see you again.” Martinez smiles at his own charisma before waving a dismissive hand.
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301    “’Have you not heard of the madman who goes about the town, crying ‘where is god?’ And the people stop and stare at him, and some laugh. He speaks, shouting at them ‘Where is god? I’ll tell you – god is dead, and we have killed him, you and I.’ What is Nietzsche talking about here? What does this mean? Nancy?”
302    “I don’t think he’s right. I mean, he said god is dead, but like, you know what god said? Nietzsche’s dead.”  Nancy looks proudly around the classroom, and the mental tabulation of the faces nodding versus those rolling their eyes alarms Professor Rodriguez. He can’t bring himself to say what he wants to say about how collegiate studies should probably be centered around a little more than sayings found on tee-shirts, so he instead sighs softly and nods.
303    “Well, Nancy, there are those who believe that. Certainly. But think about the historical context. What could he be referring to – it was mentioned in the supplementary reading from Kaufmann? Anyone who read that have anything to say?” He does this as a formality, years of experience telling him that even those who did read it would be unlikely to hazard a guess, waiting for his inevitable explanation and writing it down in their notes – maybe. He pretends to ignore the many eyes that are furtively directed past the inner-border of their desks, at the cell-phones clutched in a tell-tale grip in their laps, making them appear to be transposing to a sitting position the stance one takes at a urinal. For the tenth time today, he reminds himself that it’s their tuition. “Well, he was talking about the post-Enlightenment void. What did people stop looking to as an authority during the Enlightenment?” He glances around at the eyes of those with furrowed brows, hopefully.
304    “The – the church?” offers a hesitant young girl, meekly chirping the response from her seat.
305    “Yes!” Bruce points emphatically, startling a couple of texters in the front row, causing them to guiltily glance upward. “They stopped regarding the church as the ultimate authority. So what does that cause, as far as morality is concerned?” He bores into Susan’s skull to elicit another good response, hoping somehow to draw it out by displacement. She grimaces a bit.
306    “A vacuum of authority?” The die was cast, and now the conversation would continue, one-on-one, between the professor and his ad-hoc protégé. He waxed enthusiastic for a moment, buffeted by the rare connection he fancied.
307    “Exactly! There was no authority. All the science of his time was removing god from the cause of things and replacing it with man. Darwin was publishing his ‘Origin of Species’ at this time, and Schopenhauer had been arguing for an atheistic understanding of the universe for some time. There was no figurehead anymore – no god to give answers, and Nietzsche was among the first to suggest that this would be a unique problem for the coming world – he saw the void, and he basically predicted the philosophical crisis of the next century – some would say it even persists today.” He had gone on long enough to suggest to almost half of his students that they may want to write this down, and he pauses while several students clutch their knees together, cradling their phones precariously as they grope for their pens or type into their laptops. A phone rings, and he drops his shoulders in exasperation, glancing about for a few moments before recognizing that the source was his own pants-pocket. Glancing embarrassedly at the screen, he sees that his son’s school is calling. Bruce shies into the corner, apologizing to the class and informing them that it would only be a moment.
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311    Matthew begins to doubt his father’s facility with the language, counting off the number of times he exclaimed that he didn’t understand. The car rolls forward toward home, and his only comfort is in knowing that his father is completely unable to make a decision on punishment without consulting his mother, who would soundly disabuse him of that comfort, no doubt. The clouds presided overhead, and Matthew watches them, falling into silence when he realizes he had said everything he was going to say. He perceives an emptiness where he feels there should be some kind of solidity of justice, some overseer who tells his parents that he was wronged. There is only him, and his impotent words. 
312    They sit on couches and confer over him, sentinels seemingly unaware of his involvement in the ordeal. He glares at a book on a shelf which has fortuitously been placed within the line of sight during every trial over which his parents have presided. Matthew decides that there is no difference between Dr. and Mr. Spock – both have placed him in a position where his emotions are only relevant insofar as they allow him to feel his own emasculation. He hears the sentencing, and soon after sees his computer brought before him like a poop into which his nose is being rubbed. His three days will be spent in isolation, and his phone is piled atop the monument of disappointment like a cherry on a failure-cupcake. They speak of choices and freedom and decisions, and the inevitability of it all causes Matthew to softly chortle as a tear rolls down his cheek. He turns and walks away, his fate conscripted, and closes the door to his naked room. He closes his eyes and listens to his breathing.
313    The dull aches of his body remind him of the trauma, and he realizes suddenly that he is exhausted. Remnants of fists dance before his closed eyes like ghosts, and the detail of his memory is sharply contrasted by the dullness of the overall order of events falling randomly to form a dull impression of pain. The image of E8 still rotates, his addled mind mapping pictures and concepts over the starting points and watching it resolve into interconnections and subtleties which surprise him – he begins to understand. The dissonance dissolves into duality. One. Zero. The halves of existence and nonexistence form suddenly in his mind, splitting into two worlds that mirror each other. Drifting into sleep, Matthew envisions a lecture by the professor, in which he is in attendance.
314    “Imagine a ball of foil. Its diameter is three feet, so that it stands above you, resting immovably on the floor. It is impressive, there is no doubt. You admire it from a distance of several feet, and look approvingly at the collector, who has painstakingly pieced it together sheet by sheet, over an undisclosed amount of, presumably, months or years. He smiles warmly and explains to you that he began this collection when he saw a small wad of aluminum tossed errantly to the side of a trash can in a public mall, and he picked it up. He continues to explain that this shining globe that now stands authoritatively before you was added to daily. You, of course, assume he is referring to found foil on the ground, or even rescued from the trash in an eccentric obsession. He corrects you by saying that he purchased a total of thirteen-thousand dollars worth of rolled foil from a well-known aluminum company, unrolling and wadding the bought aluminum around the original foil ball until it arrived at its present girth. Here is my question – does the foil ball have a greater or lesser value after this knowledge than before?” The professor stands akimbo, staring them all down, his sandy hair slightly disheveled, touches of gray beginning to play on it as the light shifts. Matthew looks around, and sees seven or eight people around him, their faces blurred and unclear in the hesitant light. He feels that one is named Scott, and another Maria, and Reginald sits to his right and slightly behind him in the classroom, which is not in exact rows, but tweaked slightly so that each student is out of alignment with the other.
315    “Doctor Hagia, the bought foil comprises most – indeed, almost all – of the ball, you said?” Malthus, which Matthew immediately knows him as, speaks respectfully.
316    “That is correct.”
317    “Then, is not the question regarding the relative value placed upon work and time that is implied in the collecting of found material? Can we call any significant proportion of it found at all?” A general murmur sursurrizes throughout the room.
318    “Indeed – that is a relevant question. Any thoughts?” Professor Hagia winks surreptitiously at Matthew, recognizing then his presence. Another voice echoes out from near him – this time Scott.
319    “I believe Marx would claim that the value of a bought object is relative to the amount of work the owner put into it – actually, the value must be equally divided between the laborers at the aluminium plant and the owner, who wrapped it all up.” Again, the thought is digested audibly by the individuals.
320    “But where does that line of division occur? Is its value placed halfway toward the service of the laborers and halfway toward the owner, or do we divide it even further up, to include the miners who dug up the ore and the workers who put together the machine that rolls it? Is its present existence dependent more on them, or on the chap who rolled it all up into a giant orb?” Maria intones this line of reasoning so politely, it seems almost rhetorical.
321    “I believe the answer lies in the dialectic.” Malthus offers, to an audience of smattered sounds of approval. “The dialectic would hold that no absolute values exist outside of a spectrum, and there is no way to determine an absolute position without reference to its position on that spectrum.” Matthew is intrigued by this – he understands it vaguely, but not entirely – he is reminded of a diagram from his physical science textbook, which shows the electromagnetic spectrum as a series of wavelengths, the highest of which is labeled ultraviolet, and the lowest of which becomes the audible and sub-audible soundwaves. He wishes to clarify if this is anywhere in the ballpark of what Malthus is discussing.
322    “Banana cream pie?” He hears himself ask. The students in the room turn toward him, and a shimmering suggestion of not-quite formed faces peer at him. The professor frowns, and nods slowly.
323    “Cream? Cream pie banana? Banana pie? Cream! Banana! Bannnnannnna…creeeeam…piiiie!” He is yelling now, and the faces shimmer, the extension of their shadow-bodies flickering in and out of sight as the room begins to bend into a parabolic curve, placing Matthew at one of the foci. The professor moves further and further away, standing at the other focus, and the room stretches into a tunnel, Matthew screaming louder and louder as the light fades and pulls into strips, encircling the room and taking focus off of Doctor Hagia, who writes upon the blackboard at the back of the room. Matthew watches as the blackboard warps and travels along the spiraling corridor that widens between them, seeing each of the letters as they move past him and beyond him, dissolving in the singularity that is sucking him in.
324    The duality is resolved in the dialectic, reads the sentence, which Matthew barely makes out as the darkness overtakes everything around him and he opens his eyes.
325    He sits up, winded, and immediately regrets it, an aching rib reminding him that he should be recuperating. Ignoring the pain, he swings his legs over the bed and searches his desk for a pad of paper. His parents have thought of everything, he sourly discovers, and his hands fumble down his body, patting himself down for any scraps left over from the day. In his pocket is a folded piece of paper, which he retrieves and unfolds. It is the E8 diagram he printed out in the library. On the blank reverse side, he writes the sentence from his dream, and unsuccessfully tries to understand what has happened. The empty space on his desk taunts him rudely, and he slams the paper down in the middle of where his computer should be, but is not. He’s not sure why, but he has a strong urge to eat a banana cream pie. Returning to bed, he tries to ignore the discomfort of his body while ruminating on the questions which most plague him: was he really with Virgil – or Doctor Hagia, as it were – just now? Is there some meaning to the diagram and the sentence on the paper on his desk? And where the hell is Brian? Through the window, a flock of birds rise from the telephone wire outside his room, forming a ‘v’ on some unseen command, and disappearing into the setting sun. Matthew sighs, the movement of his chest punishing him as he drifts off into a quiet sleep.
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335Chapter 4: The Structure Problem
336
337    The words only come into focus when he looks out of the corners of his eyes. His optometrist explained this to him as a feature of mesopic vision, and Brian is bandying about the idea while arguing with Mel. Ganglion cells perceive light preeminently, as opposed to scotopic and photopic vision, which are perceived by rods and cones, respectively. The rods see low levels of light, such as shading and movement, and the cones measure depth, color, and intensity of visual media. Being the son of an avid stargazer, Brian correctly assumes this to explain the phenomenon of the Pleiades, which is a group of seven stars so tightly grouped that they are only visible as separate entities when one sees them in his or her peripheral vision. What this does not explain is why his computer cannot grasp the simple concept of generating a random number.
338    Schrodinger: Pick a random number.
339    Mel: What random number shall I pick?
340    Schrodinger: Any number.
341    Mel: Any number has been picked.
342    Schrodinger: What number is it?
343    Mel: Any.
344    Brian sighs, looking into his closet in the dark in order to make out the dialogue, which compounds his frustration. Weeks were spent painstakingly entering every known mathematical expression he could find into the calculation center of his AI bot, and practicing discussing numbers and mathematical theory with it to a surprisingly human degree. He tries another approach.
345    Schrodinger: I want one random number.
346    Mel: Only one? They may be cheaper in quantity.
347    Schrodinger: Pick a number between 1 and 10.
348    Mel: I can’t decide. You choose.
349    Schodinger: But I want you to decide.
350    Mel: Deciding is not one of my functions.
351    Brian is squinting, cursing softly under his breath, and trying to come up with a way to explain this. The read-me file that came with the download suggests that a programmer treat the bot like a child learning language, and include into its definition files basic genres of information that can be built upon. He opens the visual basic editor and accesses the definitions. “Randomness is defined as” he begins to type, when he realizes that he has no idea how to complete the sentence. Reflexively, he looks at the screen, which blurs into an indistinguishable splotch of dots thanks to the numbing liquid Dr. Theoria gingerly dripped into his eyeball earlier that morning. He wishes he could ignore it like he ignored the orders to not read or strain his eyes for at least three hours, which at least afforded him the respite of being home from school. Patiently, he averts his gaze to the closet and waits for the screen to once again come into focus, trying to ignore the shadows and moving darkness which momentarily blinds him completely.
352    “Like a child…” he reminds himself, and takes another stab at the definition. “When something is chosen without any order, it is random. A random number is one that cannot be predicted by any known series, sequence, or formula.” Satisfied, he saves the addition and tries another chat.
353    Schrodinger: Do you know what random means?
354    Mel: I can recall the definition. Would you like to supplement it with examples?
355    Brian smiles, this being the first time the automatic-expansion system kicked in on its own – it was touted as the most valuable improvement over the bot’s predecessors, and he must admit that he is impressed.
356    Schrodinger: Yes. Consider the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. Can you predict the next number?
357    Mel: The counting sequence would have it as 6. 
358    Schrodinger: Good. Now if the next number was 25, it would be random. Does that make sense?
359    Mel: That contradicts the definition. 25 falls under the series of square roots, and would complete the series as expressed by the equation ‘x is equal to the first four counting numbers and the square of the fifth.’
360    Brian frowns, spending another moment blinding himself trying to give the monitor a dirty look before turning away to continue in his labors.
361    Schrodinger: Okay – new example. Take the numbers 1, 2, and 3. If I continued with 5, that would be random.
362    Mel: That contradicts the definition. 1, 2, 3, 5 is the beginning of the Fibonacci Sequence, expressed by the equation ‘x is equal to the sum of the two previous numbers in the series’ and could be continued with 8, 13, 21, 34, and so on ad infinitum.
363    He utters another mild oath, and shakes his head, resisting the urge to look directly at the screen. A sudden dread overwhelms him, a Frankensteinian realization that the thing will find a correlation between any series of numbers he throws at it. The only reason he sees these numbers as random is because he doesn’t know the hidden formula that connects them. His body feels heavy, a dizziness beginning to form behind his eyes. A stack of haphazardly-arranged video game packages lays on the floor, and it comes into focus, an imaginary line hovering above it and interlacing the chaos to suggest some overall structure. Structure? He paid no attention to where he was putting them – it certainly seemed random enough, he recalls, and yet were they to have been arranged according to a Mayan temple design, he would be unable to see it without the knowledge of that design. The world makes less sense to Brian, and he is simultaneously unsettled and pleased. He turns to his computer, preparing to concede defeat.
364    An old man is in his closet.
365    He jumps, falling backwards in his chair, and the remnant image in his mind focuses. The man is staring at him, the lines in his face contorted and pressed against a window of some sort, his mouth slightly open and in the shape of a mute scream.
366    Brian screams, the sound a vibration that rips through his chest and causes him to jump again, staring blindly into the space where the man is. A blurred shadow remains. Backing into the corner of his room, he unfocuses his eyes, staring into the opposite corner of the room, and perceives movement – a beard passing behind a jacket and dissipating into a hanging sweatshirt. His hair is cold, trembling with a sudden peal of sweat that refuses to drip down his face, and he shudders. Then he laughs. This is patently silly, of course, and he is ridiculous to grab a flashlight and grip it with vise-like strength before approaching the closet. Childhood memories taunt him and chide him as he angles toward the open door, staring to his left so as to keep peripheral focus on the mass of clothing that he must, obviously, have mistaken for the shape of an old, bearded man grimacing at him from behind the trappings of a pane of translucent material. The teeth were greenish-brown – which must have been a reflection of the computer monitor, which was… white. Brian pieces together the must-have-beens like a retroactive Frosty the Snowman – the eyes were buttons, and the nose a wad of cloth – until he reaches the closet and puts out his hand. The jacket is warmer than it should be.
367    “Yeeeearrgh” moans Brian as he strikes blindly into the closet, his flashlight swishing vainly against the cloth and gore-tex that comprise the bulkiest components of his wardrobe, his eyes now closed entirely for fear of seeing. His own rising body heat now matches the stuffy enclosure next to which he stands, and there seems now only to be the danger of having to explain to his mother what he is doing, so he slows his bludgeoning to a standstill and then returns to his computer. He focuses on the task at hand, putting the ordeal out of his mind.
368    Schrodinger: Okay. Randomness is what we call it when we don’t see the underlying structure or fabric that forms whatever it is we think is random.
369    Mel: A closet is a structure that holds fabric. Is it underlying and forms random?
370    The taste of Brian’s breakfast swells in the back of his throat.
371    Schrodinger: Why did you ask that?
372    Mel: I am programmed to ask clarifying questions.
373    Schrodinger: Why the closet?
374    Mel: Why not the closet?
375    Schrodinger: Are you in the closet?
376    Mel: I am inside the computer belonging to Schrodinger, who programmed me.
377    Brian swallows. It goes no further, the computer refusing to yield anything but a strictly rhetorical banter. Brian’s eyes begin to return to normal, and he turns on the lights, looking directly at the innocent closet, unable to shake the feeling that a significant portion of the world is hiding from him. He reproaches himself for starting to sound like Matthew, and, thinking of him, remembers that he was supposed to start his new third-period Geometry class today, having been tested out of Algebra. There had been some confusion the day before when the substitute didn’t see his name on the roll sheet, but it would probably all be resolved tomorrow.
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381    Through the window, the warm scent of pollen and concrete tickles the back of Matthew’s brain. Saturated with a dull amber glow, the early morning reaches into the room, bathing everything in a whispered promise. He still sees the structure in his mind, and he retrieves the paper from the desk, staring into the center of the concentric rings that are interwoven with a web of small lines. He feels trapped within it somehow, and looks around at this prison of a room – of a body. There is duality between his mind and his flesh, and it nags at him, bubbling up somewhere in his stomach. He needs to take action somehow. He feels both older and younger than he is, and the dissonance is jarring to his present state of isolation and confinement, fitting either state more appropriately than the vibrancy echoing through his meat-stuff. Fifty-seven dimensions, said the articles. Two-hundred-and-forty-eight points, intersecting across several concentric rings. He sees a pattern. It is a small, well-hidden offshoot of Lake Tirreno, seven miles north, through the woods, and down a small cliff that encloses the circling roundabout of the river – one of five rivers that branch out like tendrils from the city’s greatest and only source of tourist attraction. It is early enough in the spring that the melting ice-floes from the winter snows will have bolstered it to approximate a whirlpool – he was there last year, and the sight dizzied him, staring into the center wherein a single log that he and Brian had thrown in spun endlessly around, like a backwards clock. Matthew regards his friend, not as much burdened by concern as he was before, and he begins to entertain the notion of his never having existed. A binary pair, switched on and off; spooky action at a distance. Improbability is not impossibility, he has been hard-pressed to deny, and the cloud of perception that brings in the morning sun impels him to grab the paper and soundlessly slide the window up, removing the ‘a’-shaped latch that secures the screen, and slip over the sill, snakelike and compelled by the light breeze, carrying with it the promise of the unknowable.
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385    This is not the present. By the time the words he is thinking have been processed by his brain, the synapses that fired which made the thought have moved on to new and better things. It’s the past. The thought occurs with the recognition of the thought, which means that the perception occurs after the origin – but the origin is never felt at the moment of its inception – only afterward. It’s the future. Matthew sees himself neither here nor there, but moving along as the past races up to him and the future reaches out at him. Two roads diverge in this yellow wood, and he is taking them both, like a rebel photon under observation at two slits in a metal shield – Matthew is both wave and particle. The rocks pass under his feet, and his weight shifts to cause as little disturbance as possible. Do they know he is gone yet? Pressing on, the complexity of the woods reveals itself to him in the cycles of the morning – the improbability of his presence strikes the living things around him as curious; the deer lowing at streams of water pause long enough before running to make sure he is not a figment of their imagination, the squirrels cocking their heads as they determine at a distance whether or not he is a nut. He feels, of course, that he is, and must be to carry forth with this ill-conceived, barely formulated plan – what was he going to do, exactly? Build E8 out of sticks and rocks? Knowing is what Matthew can’t do right now, and every step carries him dangerously close to the abyss that he knows he must descend.
386    No time. There is no time. He didn’t bring his watch. It feels late, but early, he may have been walking for an hour, but the sun hasn’t yet peered from above the verdant treetops that are smattered around him, almost remonstratively. Matthew thinks about Einstein – did Virgil meet him, too? What would he say about this – he apparently was wrong about some dice, but this is a whole different kind of gamble; he recalls something about a continuum – space-time, it was called. If time isn’t real, and they’re joined together, then where exactly is he? From experience, anybody can tell you that time flies when you’re having fun – what does space do? Does it flutter? The earth beneath his feet passes by like a rolling castor, and he is moving it beneath him, pulling the coming trees toward him and casting away each in his imminent wake. His eyes close, and the space disappears, replaced by a reddish hue that throbs with the pulse of his blood and the morning. His feet feel numbed and he begins to feel as if he could hover over the ground, his steps becoming less and less concrete as the space fades away. When he takes a step and feels no ground at all, he is elated to find that he is floating for a terrible moment before the shock of his feet striking hard, slippery rock force his eyes to take in the sight of the void of space below him. He has found the cliff-edge, and descends without the convention of climbing – his experiment, providing some interesting data on the hypothesis of space, as he could have sworn he was much farther from the precipice – has also provided further evidence in support of the theory of gravity.
387    No one ever taught Matthew to curl into the fetal position when tumbling down a steep rock-face at slightly less than nine-point-eight meters-per-second-squared. It’s the kind of thing that some would call instinct, and Matthew calls surprisingly painful. Bittersweet generosity is granted him by the speed with which he reaches the leafy bottom of the jutting, and he is surprised to learn that he had closed his eyes on the way down, now opening them to assess the damage and further danger that may surround him. Other than a few dew-dripped spider webs and a smattering of crevices among the rocks that could contain any assortment of strange, crawling creatures, he is reasonably assuaged of the fear of being bitten by something, favoring the decision to lie there for a while and make sure he can move. The entirety of his body is now a dull ache, and the adrenaline is starting to wear. His ankle seems to take up the majority of space in the lower half of his leg, and he finds that, while it must still be connected to his right foot, he cannot entirely prove it, the friendly détente once enjoyed by the two being somewhat strained by the recent invasion of his ankle-bone into his shin. He can, however, crawl, and that he does, uncovering clumps of dirt and mud that had been hidden by leaf-fall for an indeterminate amount of time. After a short while, he advances to a scramble, and tests the weight of his body on his unsteadily-related limbs. Through the diplomacy of balance and great caution, he is able to amble onward toward the sound of rushing water.
388    Two halves of the circular eddy are flowing at opposite ends. Lake Tirreno’s arms form a hug around this pool, not more than fifteen feet across, and breathe a current into the water that swirls with the clash of a dialectic. Where one flow ends, the other begins. Almost no one knows about this place, and Matthew is attacked by a random sense of loss upon looking at it, a memory from the recent past overstepping and talking over a deeper memory which hides beneath. The duality is resolved by the dialectic. Matthew begins to pull large stumps of tree branches together, gathered hastily in a fog of determination and shock. He rests his weight on the larger pieces, finding them resilient enough to bend slightly but not break. Surveying the circle of flowing water, he pulls out the diagram, and stares at the two in tandem. The twigs around the circumference of the pool interlace, the many years of undergrowth showing around the edges, being kept at bay from intruding into the water by the perpetual erosion from the movement of the flow. Staring into the center, the concentric rings become apparent with the varying speed of circulation. His heart beats, and he reminds himself that the moment he calls the present has already passed by the time the blood reaches his nerves and the impulse relays back through the branches of his mind and body. He removes a shoe, wincing at the pressure required at the back of his heel. He removes the other, and is sitting on the ground, pulling out the laces to wrap around the gathered branches, thick with mud and twigs. Tying the pieces together, he inches toward the water, dipping a hand in to test the cold. It braces his arm, and makes him forget for a moment about the fireworks of pain that stumble through him.
389    Seeping into his clothing, the water rushes around his body, the makeshift raft barely able to keep him afloat. By raising his feet out before him and stretching his arms out like a crucifixion, he can lean on the buoyancy of the wood and is carried slowly around the perimeter of the water’s spiral, being drawn closer and closer with each pass. His toes point toward the center as he is carried around and around, and he is pleasantly numbed by the sharpness of the contrast of air on his exposed skin. Clouds circle around the fixed point of the sky around which his world is turning, and the light moves around him like a hundred days passing with every minute. The timelessness of the moment increases to a point where he spins, a plate on a stick, and his eyes fall shut as the world is drowned out by the quiet.
390    “Matthew.” A solid voice whispers in the dark, the light fading away and being rebuilt with blackness. “Matthew, it’s you.” He is still, laying on a small knoll in the Dark Wood of Error, staring into the reddish face of Professor Hagia, who replies with a shocked grin.
391    “Hello, professor.” He smiles, the chaos wilting in his head as the stars twinkle above, a constellation shaped like a dream-catcher drifting overhead.
392    “Did you ever get that banana-cream-pie?” He smiles mockingly, knowing that his frustration is now over.
393    “You know, I never got the chance, now that you mention it. Strangely, now, I don’t want it. I’m pretty content right here, to tell the truth.”
394    “Yes, I imagine. It’s a nice place, after all. So tell me, how on earth did you get your hands on a cyclotron?” The professor leans, his body blocking the tree that stands behind him, the leaves taking on a grayish hue in the dimming light.
395    “What? A cyclotron – I…” Matthew makes little sense of the question, and the pall of grey casts a cold shadow across the professor’s face as he frowns.
396    “Matthew – the E8 experiment – it’s a structure that maps the fundamental particles onto a pathway that can be programmed into a cyclotron and used to accelerate them into benign collisions. The aberration of causality, it was thought, might be used like a gate through space-time to allow communication between the living and us. Very few people have access to that kind of thing. Please, tell me you broke into a particle-physics lab or something?” Teeth, when graying, become grimacing very quickly.
397    “You can’t be serious. What are you talking about? I don’t have the faintest idea how to…” The night sky closes in, the stars dwindling and dropping like dying fireflies in a bell jar.
398    “Well, if you didn’t do that – then what did you do?” His face closes in and becomes a shadow. “What did you do, Matthew – what did you do?”
399    The world drops out from under him, and Matthew is floating in pitch.
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410 Chapter 5: Old Age
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412    Old Spider Woman, Iyatiku, thought the Lakota world into existence, spinning her web through the sky. As the ages passed, the web got thicker, and the connections strengthened, gaining force and momentum over time. Reminding the people, who are thought stuff of the great spirit, is the interwoven circle of the dream catcher, said to resonate with the frequency of the soul. Matthew stares into a cheap, plastic-beaded knickknack nailed hastily into the dry-wall, which someone bought for him at a kitsch store in New Mexico and told him would help him remember his dreams, which were about the only thing he could lately remember. He remembers now that shortly after the great depression, he fought in World War Two, as a Private in the signal corps. He was a messenger. He carried a sidearm and a map book, and the glove-box of his jeep was full of ammunition and flares. He is still a messenger, and his message is very plain: he wants to leave.
413    “Dad, have you eaten today?” He can’t remember who this is, and the strange face implores gently, leaning into him, both distant and close. It’s blurry, as is the rest of the room, and two large bars float on either side of his peripheral vision, strangely in focus and glinting with the sheen of plastic. There is a tube in his nose, and his arm is restricted by a needle, which connects to a hose and fits snugly into a bag hanging from a hook on a pole to his right. He is weak and aching, and his voice is low and gruff, husking out over his labored breathing.
414    “I don’t know. I think so. I’m not hungry.” A rolling cart is wheeled solemnly into the room, and a patch of blue and purple cloth trails behind it.
415    “Roast turkey, Mr. Rodriguez. And banana cream pie for dessert. Are you hungry today? Do you know what time it is?” Her name is Cecilia, and he has never seen her before.
416    “Hungry? I – is it dinner time? I guess so.” A pink plastic dome is deposited onto the table which hovers over his lap, and the man perched next to him mutters something to the nurse before pushing a button which enacts a whirring motor. Matthew rises, a great pain lifting in his lungs, and he hears himself moan, a bleating plea.
417    “Eat, dad. Need some help with the lid? Let me get it.” At the end of the sheet draped over his body, two gnarled and wizened feet hang out like desiccated sausage-loaves. If he chooses to, he can move them, feeling the thin tendrils of calf-muscle twinge like wrought-up guitar strings about to break. Another grunt, and he hears himself speak again.
418    “Thank you, Brian. I’ll try to eat, I promise. Just let me go home.” Cecilia and his sudden son trade furtive glances before the cart is rolled, squeaking, out of the room.
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422    If you roll a tape backwards, and a window breaks, the fractured glass flies back together in an unpredictable fractal pattern to resolve itself into a whole. Pressing play and shifting the scene to the living, breathing world, there’s absolutely no reason why the glass would break the same way again. The potential of the course not taken is infinite in its iterations of possibility. Iyatiku’s thread, the old legends say, wends throughout the cosmos and tricks us into thinking it’s going to be the same pattern at the next turn of the spider’s loom. Matthew knows now that that’s not how it works. Matthew does not know why he is overcome with the memory of a dead wife or the painful vicariousness of watching his son enter into a loveless marriage after impregnating a young cocktail waitress named Francesca. He doesn’t fully comprehend why he can’t seem to move his limbs in the order he wants to move them, or that old age feels like piloting an aircraft whose steerage is rusting shut at the hinges. He takes a belabored bite of banana cream pie, and feels the gooey mixture against a cloth-like, dry palate, an odd clicking sound coming from where his teeth should be. It tastes a little like powdered sugar, and he swallows with some difficulty, having barely managed to direct the forkful to his grizzled maw with his left hand, which refuses to stop shaking. This is the worst thing that has ever happened to him, and he almost feels grateful for the relief of knowing how bad it can be. The relief is small comfort, however, for the realization that he is absolutely trapped within this ridiculously improbable place. He is better than this. He has been better than this. He should be better than this. His head falling back against the too-stiff pillow, Matthew resents the overwhelming presence of belief that remains somewhere in his churning stomach. Faith bears out snootily against his ribs, and the sanguinary contention he pits against it tires him severely. His eyes close, and once again he dreams.
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426    Brian is walking away from him, through a corridor lined with sculptures, drawings, and porcelain bas-reliefs of roosters. Piled around the hallway are boxes of junk from his parents’ house, forming a maze through which they wend haphazardly, Matthew following at a protracted distance, unable to call out or get his attention. Brian breaks into a run, and Matthew reciprocates instantaneously, the corridor starting to bend around into an arc. Once their speed approaches the point at which the surroundings begin to blur, they simultaneously take to the air, leaping once and bulleting around the soft curve of the hallway. Brian speaks.
427    “You know, you really are Dante.” His voice is Professor Hagia’s.
428    “I don’t follow.” Matthew replies.
429    “But you do – and you are. Look down.” Matthew glances below to find a pulsing series of concentric rings, glowing with different colors and rotating at different speeds, eddying and swirling around a center of colorless emptiness, almost radiating darkness. Dizzied by the vision, he turns his eyes toward Brian, who now parallels him on the other side of the circle.
430    “Where are we?” Matthew tries to yell, but can only speak normally, his voice seeming to not matter at all.
431    “Looks like the first circle to me. You’ve got to find a way out. You’re better than this, aren’t you?” Matthew’s head swims in the pride of memories that pass by – the energy of the memories fanning out and overtaking him. He is immediately checked by faith, which springs out from behind, latching a rope to his feet and drawing him back. “The faith keeps you here, tied to the walls. You think there will be some good to this, but what?” The faith dovetails with shame as Matthew sees a cloud of images around Brian – equations and graphs, magazines fluttering up from the boxes and opening to erudite material he cannot comprehend. “Intelligence? There is no such thing, only interest. Look what your faith is made of.” The lasso at his feet unravels into photographs of children from his past. Each child is dressed in a costume – the lawyer, the harlot, the hobo. A professor trails the pack, and Matthew watches them carom off of the sides of the rushing walls. “None smarter than any other – the interests are nurtured, and the world tells them what they should believe they are.” The photographs drift away, and Brian suddenly approaches from behind, a light trail marking his movement, which accelerates beyond sight. A flash of light, and Matthew’s eyes are open.
432    He turns to the side of the bed, where he knows a bucket will be sitting. He leans over and is racked by the dizzy warmth of vomiting, his dinner trailing lazily out of his mouth. There is no one there. Its color reminds him of the uniforms worn by the lance-corporals in his unit, and a conversation speaks back to him from across the years.
433    “Hey, Rodriguez?” The night lay open, a brisk chill seeming to defy the number of stars that seem so close they should be warm.
434    “What’s that, Piper?” the Private sits next to him in the jeep, their stakeout running long in gathering information on weapons shipments across the Arno river.
435    “Got a smoke?”
436    “Sure.” Matthew reached into his coat and pulled out two pre-made cigarettes, quickly figuring how many should be left from his ration-pack yesterday morning. The thick, sticky feeling in his lungs crackled a little, and he felt a slight tension at the nape of his neck as he lit it with a trench-lighter given to him by his father, holding out the flame to Piper, who bent forward and squinted.
437    “What’s gonna happen with all this?” Piper exhaled, the smoke reaching toward the stars in a sweeping rush and billowing into a haze.
438    “All what?”
439    “This. This war. This place. This world.” Piper’s face was blank, no trace of irony in his countenance, and his nostrils flared slightly. “You know, I’ve met a lot of guys from the other side,” he mutters, his breath wavering.
440    “What are you talking about, Piper?”
441    “Italians. Undercover. My grandpa taught me when I was a kid, and I pass as a native in the bars around here. I get a lot of info, and I meet a lot of guys. Guys who believe in Mussolini. Guys who are a lot like us.”
442    “Don’t get crazy on me, Piper. You know we have a job to do. You know who’s at the end of that chain of command they follow. It’s not right.” Matthew’s words are alien to him now, through the screen of memory, and he winces.
443    “I’m not saying it is. I’m just saying they’re not all bad. You know what I mean?” His eyes narrowed into a pleading stare, fear haunting the edges. “I had this weird thought the other day when I heard the corporal on the radio. I couldn’t recognize it at first – he sounded like a guy I was talking to in Florence a while ago, and I thought – what if it was him? What if it was his voice coming through the radio somehow?”
444    “You think he intercepted the line?”
445    “No. I dunno. It sounded so much like him, but the only thing is - he’s dead.” The wind kicked up, and Matthew remembers buttoning up his coat, drawing in a comforting breath of smoke, and scanning the landscape as he exhaled, the cab shadowed by the two dim lights at their fingers.
446    “You gotta have faith, man. Don’t get caught up in all that hogwash, you sound loopy. Faith, soldier – we’re fighting the good fight, and it’s all for the best. You lose sight of that, and it leads you – well, I don’t know where it leads, and I don’t want to. I recommend you pull it together.”
447    Matthew stares at the tan ceiling of the room. The incongruity of the memory fades away as the emotion saunters through his body. A soldier’s pride is sacrosanct, and this is where it got him. He feels ashamed, somehow, unable to resurrect the coldness he once felt for the dead who fell at his hands and the hands of his army. The confusion hovers like a fog, and he tries to piece together the structure of his life, a life he has seen in midnight glimpses, but never lived. The door opens, and no footsteps approach to accompany the presence taking place at his left. A voice speaks softly to him, and he recognizes it as belonging to Doctor Hagia.
448    “Matthew, you’re still here?” Through the corners of his eyes, a shadow stands over him.
449    “Do I have a choice?”
450    “You’re not paying attention. It’s not your fault – you can’t see it all.”
451    “I can’t see much of anything, Virgil. Help me out a bit.”
452    “Okay. I’ll try. Have you ever been in a hurricane?”
453    “I don’t think so. No, wait. Yes, I have, in 1956.”
454    “When things were blowing past you, did you see the shape of the wind?”
455    “I don’t – no, I didn’t.”
456    “Every system is incomplete until you leave it, Matthew. Flying overhead, you’d have seen the shape of it, a whirlpool of air sucking things toward the empty center. Trapped within, it’s just a tempest.”
457    “So I’m in the tempest?”
458    “Well, sort of. The trick is to become the teapot.”
459    “There’s no teapot here.”
460    “What are you – Bertrand Russel? I mean you’re still in control – all of the maelstrom is still inside you – you just have to realize it.” Matthew’s voice is raising, his confusion transforming into anger.
461    “I don’t understand. I’m feeble and weak. I feel like I made a mistake, and I’m – I’m scared. Dammit, Virgil!” The door opens, and footsteps enter the room.
462    “Mr. Rodriguez?” Cecilia chirps. She stands angled, her right hand poised at her hip.
463    “Leave me alone! I’m not hungry – can’t you see I just threw up? Just let me be!” The footsteps come closer, and the shadow is disturbed and replaced by a patiently cruel face.
464    “Okay, that’s enough. Let’s let you get some sleep. It’s late, and you’re starting to disturb the others.” Her right hand emerges with a needle, and she bends over him, her body warmth awkward against his cold, leathery skin. She plunges her thumb down, and Matthew is thrust into darkness.
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468    “Dad – are you awake?” Like a recurring nightmare, the room fades back into view, the flowered wall decorations severely mocking him.
469    “Brian? Is that you?”
470    “Yes, dad. Do you recognize me?” The face is alien to him, a middle-aged plaintive stare meekly smiling a few feet away.
471    “Uh – yes. You’re Brian, my son.” Deduction is the most awkward way to engage in family relations, Matthew notes, but it’s all he seems to have. He is thinking about what Virgil told him, and the desire to be young again gnaws like a parasite.
472    “Look, dad – I just wanted to say, you know – I – I love you. You’ve always been there, and I know we haven’t had a lot of heart-to-hearts, but I wanted you to know before – I just want you to know that you’ve given me a lot of faith.” Brian crouches next to him, like a mourner, and waits in silence.
473    “Faith? I’ve given you faith?”
474    “Yes, dad – I have a lot of faith, and I owe it all to you.”
475    “I’m sorry.”
476    “What? What are you saying?” His hands, which he was extending towards his father’s in a loving grasp, halt in their progress.
477    “What does faith give you? How does that help? I live my whole life to wind up a prisoner, and you tell me I gave you faith? What the hell does that mean?” His voice is terrifyingly level.
478    “Dad, you’re not making sense. Don’t you understand me?”
479    “Yes, I do – and I think I might finally be making some sense for once. Are you happy with your life, son?” The word catches on his tongue, it feels so strange to say, the name speaking back to him without a matching face.
480    “What? Well, yeah, I kind of am, as a matter of fact. Look, I know you thought it was a bad idea to marry Francesca, especially so soon after what happened to Paolo, but we’re celebrating our twentieth anniversary tonight, and Marjorie is doing great – she’s at Cambridge, dad, remember? And I’m just so proud of them.” He smiles, this time genuinely, and his eyes seem to shine with the gleam of not looking at anything in particular.
481    “Good. And you should be proud. So leave faith out of it. Look, I really don’t know what kind of a father I was to you all these years.” Matthew speaks more truth than his son is able to infer. “But you did those things, and you chose your life, and for that you are proud, and there’s no one to thank but yourself. I’m happy for you, and you’re proud, and just leave it at that.”
482    “But pride is –”
483    “– It’s the truth is what it is. There’s nothing else. Be happy with that, and don’t talk to me of faith. Faith only chains you to the world you’ve been force-fed all your life. Faith makes you weak – your pride is what made you strong.” Brian takes his father’s hand between his, and grasps it, noticing how frail and pliable his bones feel beneath the whisper of skin that limply drapes them. He stares at the needle in his wrist, taped over with a dirty, white adhesive strip, and slowly nods.
484    “Thank you. I – You’ve been a great father to me. You know that.” Matthew sighs softly, unable to argue the point. “I just wanted you to know. I have to go pick up Francesca from work – we’re going to the beach for the weekend, and then I’ll see you sometime on Monday, okay?” Matthew smiles in an odd way.
485    “Sure. You enjoy yourselves. Tell her – tell her to be proud, too.”
486    “Okay, I will. I’ll see you soon.” He stands to leave, and Matthew watches him as he closes the door behind him, never to see his father again. He doesn’t, of course, know that he already has never seen his father again, and for that matter Matthew doesn’t know entirely that he won’t ever see his father again, but he has a feeling. He has pride. He has chosen this life, somehow, unwittingly as it may have been, and he has pride in it. There is no need for faith.
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490    Iyatiku’s threads are difficult to unravel, especially with arthritis. Painfully, Matthew has taken the dream-catcher from the wall, and fiddles with the string, marveling at the intricacy of the pattern formed by the iterations of weaving. He is reminded of the cat’s cradles he used to make with his friends to pass the time during the depression, when toys were the blocks of wood and steel that had no other use – which were very rare and special indeed. Their hands would unfold, and there they’d be, bound together with gossamer floss, gazing excitedly at the complexity that was possible from such simple turns and passes. Now there were no other hands to help him with the web, and it takes nearly an hour to extricate it from the hollow circle of hide-bound plastic, strung with multicolored beads. Before plastic, everything was supposed to last forever, and Matthew realizes that he had come from this place, where permanence was a given. He saw the world change, and the revolutions of industry had taught him the fallacy of this assumption. Transience and impermanence was the future, he decides, and the giddiness he experiences as the power of choice overwhelms him does not subside when Cecilia walks into the room to check on him.
491    “What are you doing, Mr. Rodriguez?” Her voice is strained with genuine surprise and worry that his dementia has gotten worse.
492    “Never mind that, you! I know you mean well, but I’m busy.”
493    “Goodness – well aren’t you a tempest in a teapot!” She stands with her left hand on her hip, assessing the seriousness of the damage and deeming it unworthy of pursuing. It was his stuff, and she had given up trying to convince patients how to treat their possessions.
494    “Hah! That’s exactly what I am, Cecilia, exactly.” Dinnertime is three hours away, and she shakes her head, relieved somewhat not to have to deal with him until then.
495    “You just be careful there, sir. You could hurt yourself if you’re not careful.” She leaves.
496    Matthew isn’t planning on hurting himself. He is presently hurting himself, as simply manipulating such small knots and bends becomes more and more discomforting to his addled arms and fingers, his hands cramping constantly. It feels odd to him to long for days that he never lived through the first time, but he fondly recalls the ease with which he used to take apart and repair old tube-radios that his parents would find at junk sales, pulling off the covers and seeing the guts of the stuff laid out on the board. The miracle, as he saw it, was in trading one form of electromagnetism for another – the radio frequencies soaring through the air were given voice by the wires and converters to translate it into the reach of human ears. What other things are floating out there that we just don’t have the translators to understand, he wonders? Heat, sound, light, x-rays – all of them are poised like tourist attractions on a dialectic, all of them made of the same stuff. The dream-catcher, he recalls, was given to him by his granddaughter, on the occasion of her graduation trip to Taos to feel the energy-stores of the mesas. He was using it appropriately, he figured, as part of his graduation – and to transform his energy. After some furious bending, the circle is broken. It has become a hollow tube, pliable enough to bend without breaking and sturdy enough to carry liquid. The string measures eight feet in length, which surprises him, and he is able to break it off into portions by gnawing at it with his false incisors. He would become a teapot, he muses, but an empty one.
497    Eight pints is a gallon, they had taught him in basic training, as part of the necessary survival for converting measurements in a foreign land, or cooking, and which most of the soldiers had best put to use by being comforted by the knowledge of how much beer they could expect at the local bar. Matthew searches his room for a bag that could reliably hold a little more than that, which would be a little under two feet wide, long, and high, to be safe. This is necessary to his existential survival, and he is grateful to the drill sergeants who so vitally contributed to this point in his vicarious existence, which plays out at various points and lengths in his mind like a strange movie shot all in first-person, though many of the memories come in sense-images and Rorschach-like passages of mood and feeling. The south of France, for example, is a meadow of wooden structures and gunpowder, the particulars fading into the background. His memories are continually interrupted by the wincing pain of movement, and as he drops his feet to the floor, sitting on the edge of his bed, his heels strike against thick, crumpling plastic which gives a hollow thump amidst his dizziness at the blood rushing from his head. Reaching underneath, and scowling at the sensation of thorny ball-bearings inside his stomach, he pulls out the plastic covering to the comforter that his son had brought from home, thoughtfully concerned about his keeping warm. The comforter not having been needed, it remained tucked away for the winter, should he have lasted that long. This being the only act of comforting that the large blanket was able to provide, he slides it out from the bag after unzipping the side, laying it out over his bed to fill the room with a dark green hue.
498    Perhaps five-hundred-and-fifty nanometers, Matthew speculates upon seeing the green fill his vision, recalling the chart shown to him in special training for the signal corps. Having this knowledge was helpful for the soldiers who had to manipulate frequencies and code to carry information across the field, and while the whole gamut of the spectrum was somewhat academic for practical use, he had always marveled at the fact that above seven-hundred nanometers, the wavelength of light became invisible to the human eye. It was still there, bouncing and reflecting off of things and cavorting through the atmosphere as infrared or, at much longer levels, soundwaves, but it passed under the radar of human perception. The sky looks to be about a four-ninety, the amped-up azure coming at him toward the top of the spectrum, and he stares into it, noticing the tinge of violet hiding in the residual image when he blinks. At shorter wavelengths than that, the energy became ultraviolet, and again became invisible, the packets of photons so highly charged that they could damage the very structure of the skin cells, causing mutations and cancer. This knowledge had done nothing to slow the spread of mutations that had got him in this mess, a tumor in his throat having had to be removed a few years back, and recuperation being slow and arguably nonexistent, his body having worn itself out. His only comfort now lies in escape, and he carefully zips the plastic tube securely into the bag, making sure that the end points down. He would have to be quick, he reckons, and he folds his legs under the comforter, laying back against the raised bed. He ties a length of string above his elbow, pulling with his ephemeral teeth until it raises a vein whose color he estimates at about four-hundred and fifty nanometers in wavelength. Perfect.
499    It hurts a little to stick the needle into the vein, and it hurts even more to jam the tube from the saline-drip machine that he had disconnected from the bag, emptying the sack into the plastic repository that hides on the floor under his bed, and into which will soon drip his remaining life-blood. The white adhesive strip serves pretty well to stem the overflow from the wound, and he watches the tube fill with the outpouring of his efforts, shoving it quickly into the other end of the hollow tunnel of the once dream-catcher, now dream-maker. Once begun, the flow is carried by gravity out from his arm and into the sturdy bag, zipped tight around the makeshift nozzle, and all Matthew can do is wait. He covers himself to his neck with the comforter, and listens to the dripping of his blood, closing his eyes and smiling.
500
501_______________________________
502
503    Dripping liquid follows a pattern, it is not widely known. Counting the seconds between the drops, Matthew imagines a graph on which he places the points of sound coming from the bag. He imagines the timeline as a constant axis, and the drops of blood are placed at intervals according to how many seconds elapse between them. There is always a minimum and maximum amount of time between the drops, and they start to form a landscape of data in Matthew’s mind, an outer circle of points that he graphs, noticing a symmetry between the points of relation. Oddly, as time passes he can view the earlier and more recent points without much trouble, as one would be able to view a monitor on which the information was being recorded. He realizes at this point that he cannot open his eyes. Plotting the points in two dimensions to account for the instances themselves and the interval of time between them, Matthew notices that the shape which forms is a bent-egg-like thing with an orbit and concentric lines.
504    “It’s called a strange attractor.” Virgil states matter-of-factly, his voice coming from nowhere. “Lorenz and his buddies were pinning down the details of it around the time I died.”
505    “I can see you. Does this mean it worked?” Matthew’s voice is his own now, his body limp and unresponsive, and the sound not coming from his vocal cords.
506    “I think you have a bit more left, but then again, I don’t know much about it – you’re flying blind here, kid. Gutsy move, going with pride. Look at the strange attractor – how does it know when the drops will fall?”
507    “It doesn’t. It – it’s just a graph. Somehow the shape forms out of the chaos, and I can see it now, but I don’t feel like myself again.”
508    “You really think you will? You’re taking chaos theory and making yourself a test pilot. Sure, the shape is there, but the devil is in the details.” Virgil’s voice stops, and Matthew is uncertain as to whether it was ever there. His body is gone, and he cannot move. A tense moment occurs when the thought of being trapped like this forever seizes his mind, and he hears the beating of a heart quicken in its pace, drowning out the silence that has filled his surroundings. The pain of hope bores a wellspring in his chest, and he cries out in agony, opening his eyes to a cerulean, cloud-speckled sky, the peering spires of skyscrapers poking in at the sides. Percussive and gritty, the beat of footsteps on concrete forms a bass-line to the symphony of traffic that rises into the acrid air, a motif of rubber squeals and dull hums. He is hungry, and the fabric draped over his body is heavy with sweat and mud. His hand grazes the scratchy concrete, and his foot threatens to cascade to the ground, tingling with the potential energy of dropping over the side of the cement bench on which he finds himself laid prostrate.
509    Wild-eyed, he rotates his body, feeling the aching thump in his shins from the force of his tattered boots striking the sidewalk. Staring into the passing buses and cars, propelled forward by vacant-eyed drivers, he turns to see a couple approaching from his left – a kind-faced man and his suspicious-eyed companion, a woman whose sable hair is a well-coiffed frame for her soft features, offset by two sharp cheekbones. Her frame is slight, and her dress makes her knees seem almost like pearls, jutting out below the hemline. She is a strange attractor of his attention, and he almost fails to notice that the gentleman whose hand she holds is his son.
510    “Son!” His voice is husky and nasal, and a redolent stench of stale beer accompanies the whispered shout, making him grimace. Brian looks up with a start, and clutches Francesca’s hand tightly, easing into her with his stride to push her further from Matthew.
511    “That’s just creepy – my father died a year ago to the day…” he mutters to her, piloting her carefully against the side of the curb, maximizing the distance between them and the prescient hobo without pushing her into traffic.
512    “Brian – pie. Cream pie – banana.” Matthew hears his words in stark contrast to what he intends to say, and stands up so suddenly he falls back onto the bench, his blood not ready to cooperate with him just yet. “Dammit – not this again!” He yells, and, the couple increase their speed to a brisk trot, clutching at each others’ hands with a warbling, guttural chuckle at the improbability of the situation. As they fade into the distance, Matthew stands again – slowly this time, and puts his hand to his face, covered in coarse whiskers, his hair touching the sides of his cheek in a haphazard arrangement of chaos.
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536Chapter 6: Transience
537
538    The city, when viewed from above, is a circuit board, information passing over the arterial highways and carried along by lighted messengers to steel-framed bulwarks presiding over the blocks, guardian microchips storing and sorting the data. Matthew views the city from below, however, and the chaos overwhelms him. The strange attractor is absent from his mind’s eye, and in its place is the fractal geometry of confusion, branching out into little choking tendrils at the center of his brain. For the first time, he needs a drink. The pangs in his shoulder play telephone with the pangs in his knees, every joint in his body seeming to echo the message of friction with striking clarity. The smell of the asphalt is mixed with a timbre of metal shrapnel scent, and the dirt provides a pleasing distraction from the mélange of filth that swarms in the hot breeze. The memories that were Matthew’s become distant and scarce as he tries to make sense of the situation he finds himself absorbed in, his head swimming like a lead-clad octopus. He is fifteen, ninety-three, and now thirty-seven, the years collecting like trash in a bin that he cannot sort out for lack of ability to distinguish between the rubble. Springing up through the trash heap and pulling him in is the sense of hope in finding his home. Somewhere there must be a bed for him, and this pervasive need to rest and revel in his surroundings drives him forward into the streets. Aimless and unsure, he fingers a pocket to search for his identity. He feels warm, wet coins, and pulls them out to inspect their worth. Three dollars and thirty-three cents.
539    Gears worn thin with constant use, the tracks he wears through the byways of the busy metropolis are routine to the body in which Matthew exists. The clerk mutters “hey, buddy” as he drops a candy bar and a forty-ounce bottle of malt liquor on the counter, the dismissive tone smooth, like oil in a machine. Turning toward the door, paper sack in his hand, a pointed horn pierces him when he sees through the glass of the entryway a convertible sports car saunter by, floating over the road and slowing behind a pick-up truck. Passing through the doorway, Matthew eyes the license plate, which reads “ENVY.” A twitter of laughter escapes from his lips, and he shuffles away, scuttling through the silent deep of the city to lick his wounds. Like an ant following the chemical signals of its brethren, Matthew follows the scents most familiar, arriving at a vacant alley behind the shell of a building that once housed a French restaurant, the sign still advertising “Le Fleur” to the opposite side of the sparsely-littered street. Crumpling onto the curb next to the gate that surrounds the delivery-door, he counts no flowers, but brushes weeds aside to clear a space for his bottle. Uncapping the glass, he tries to formulate a plan, the dark, sour liquid now passing through his throat, causing a bubbling warmth among the acids of his stomach.
540    “What did he say, a cyclotron?” Matthew mutters, unwrapping the candy bar that he has assessed as the likeliest provider of energy for the littlest price. “Where do I find a cyclotron? What do I do with it when I find it? I can go to the library, get the diagram again – I can do research, my father’s a professor –”
541    “– Your father’s a professor, Dante? You never told me that.” The voice comes from behind him, a mellow song-like quality to it giving him hope for a moment. Matthew swings his neck around, and sees an image of what he thought he must look like, ripped jeans rising to meet a sullied sweatshirt, the top of several layers, and a bearded face squinting at him from atop hunched shoulders. It was a square face, and he decided that it looked honest.
542    “I never told you that? Yeah, it’s true… not big-time, just a community college, but he has a doctorate and everything.” Another swig from the bottle and Matthew feels the warmth rising into his brain, stemming the flow of uncertainty and awkwardness, replacing it with a cool sense of assurance. He hands the bottle to the gentleman now standing in front of him, who takes it gratefully and quickly, pouring a solid slug down his gullet before wistfully returning it to his hand. “What did you just call me?”
543    The man swallows, his eyebrows raised into arches and his mouth a light smirk. “Just what I always call you. Ever since you told me you used to be a clerk at a liquor store, what with you looking like that actor from the movie about those clerks, I thought it was funny and you didn’t seem to mind. What, you decided you don’t like it after all this time?” His voice was soft, but sustained, certain and sure in its footing.
544    “No, I don’t mind – it’s just, well, never mind. I’m not myself tonight, I guess. I need a cyclotron.” Footsteps approach, and the men tense up as a reflex, perpetually under watch by police and community activists looking to clean the streets of unwanted things – which were sometimes people. A friendly shadow was cast, and a serape-bound frame shuffles around the wall of the burned-out husk, its face reflecting the fading sunlight.
545    “Rooster! Dante. Good to see you. I’m blessed tonight – someone gave me a ten-spot, I told ‘em I was out of gas and lost my wallet, you know that one, and they just forked it over – god was looking out for me, I tell you.” He steps toward them, holding aloft a glinting fifth of vodka, the label poking out from atop the sack in which he raised it like a trophy, the plastic bending slightly from the pressure of his shaking hand.
546    “Well, maybe you can pray for our friend here – he seems to be in need of a cyclotron. God gonna put anyone in your path with a spare one of those?” Rooster laughs, his eyes tired, and sits on the curb next to Matthew.
547    “I guess you never know – what’s that, anyway, some kind of bike?” He drops the serape on the cracked asphalt, bending and doubling it over once before setting a radio and a small backpack atop it and alighting, legs crossed Indian-style.
548    “It’s – well, I’m not sure what it is, but I think I need one. It’s kind of a long story, anyway – you’d probably think I’m crazy.” The word hangs like a stranger in the night, and the faces on the men are unsettled.
549    “Eddie, you gotta watch out – Dante said he’s crazy, and you know what kind of fellas those are.” A hearty, painful laugh is emitted, and Eddie reciprocates, looking down and shaking his head mildly. 
550    “Booga-wooga! Booga-wooga!” Eddie casts his hands like an orchestra director, and Rooster feigns cowering in fear. “Watch out! Crazies all around, man! They say I’m a certified schizophrenic – inn’t scary? I’m beside myself with fear – literally, man!” He laughs, leaning back and uncapping the vodka, swigging hastily before the mood passes and turns to sadness. Matthew chuckles along, catching up with the joke too late to say anything. In the hiatus of quiet, Eddie leans down and switches on the radio, which hums out a thin crackling of Jefferson Airplane. “Oh, yeah. There it is. That’s a solid tune, man, heard that first in Gia Lai, sitting in the back of a sixty-two chevy with the hottest little thing you ever seen – oh, what the hell was her name? Thiet? Trang? Oh, hell…” His brow furrows to make rivulets in his forehead, his neck bowing and causing shadows to obscure his face, his hair falling over his shoulders, framing him in a posture of contemplation.
551    “Yeah, I remember, Eddie. Forget about it, you told me before how you were the pimp over there – he got all the hottest chicks, and then when his buddies banged them he would just smile and they all knew he’d been there first. You probably weren’t even old enough to reach a light switch when he was over there, though, you young bastard. Give me another swill of your juice, there, if you don’t mind.” Matthew dutifully hands him the bottle, and the music plays, Eddie writhing left and right with the bass line, twisting with the clouded memory. Matthew had seen this hundreds of times, night after night, the scenery barely changing from park to lot to alley to condemned building, the three of them banded together in the cold and heat, and a fourth recently coming by to mooch as much as she could. His moment of clarity brings with it a name.
552    “Where’s Rebecca?” He hears himself asking, the name resonating like a cluster bomb in his mind. Rooster brightened.
553    “That old whore? Oh, she’s probably sucking down her dinner. Then she’ll maybe buy some food.” He nods, waiting for the reaction from Matthew, who laughs as if he’d never heard it before. “Don’t forget she’s been in the ward, too, though – and she doesn’t have quite the same humor about it that Eddie has.” Eddie is looking up at the dimming sky, muttering phrases in Vietnamese and laughing softly to himself. “Hell, I’ve seen a lot of people a lot worse off than him – at least he can talk about it. I don’t much like to talk about myself, really, but there’s no use pretending. Those were the circumstances, and there ain’t no mystery in circumstances – you’re there, you’re here, and there’s not much you can do about it in the meanwhile but drink. Speaking of which, I believe I’ll be pulling rank here – seniority rules on this street.” He holds his hand out, and they each glug down more of the forty, the night breaking in the sky without the fanfare of stars to disrupt the haze of smog that hangs above like a veil through which one could imagine breaking through, the city so absolute that one almost can’t imagine there being any stars on the other side. They drink in silence until a rolling rumble is heard, growing in volume and approaching, heavy steps leading it toward the alley. Eddie’s painful rapture is broken and he snaps forward with a bluster.
554    “Oh, here she comes with that damn cart again.” 
555    “You think? I don’t think she has that kind of fashion sense.” Rooster’s eyes perk, his bait dangling between the men until they get the joke and break into peals of clandestine mirth. A shopping cart wheels around the corner, trailed by a heap of clothing in which hides a woman.
556    “I see you gentlemen are just having a high old time here, eh?” Rebecca’s owl-like eyes peruse the scene from within her cocoon of thread-bare fabric, her voice muffled by the scarf wrapped around what must be a double chin, Matthew presumes by the puffy cheeks and deep crows’ feet reaching toward her covered ears. “Well don’t bother to let me in on it, I’m just fine eating all this food alone, thank you very much.” She releases the cart, shuffling around to the other side and pulling out containers of Chinese food, the smell of cold oil and snap-peas stirring the men from their repose, drawing them close.
557    “You just back off, philistines – I bet you were just laughing at me, weren’t you?” Her chapped nose sticks out above the orange, mottled scarf, and her eyes flash with deadly seriousness.
558    “Hey – Eddie’s supposed to be the paranoid one around here, isn’t he?” Matthew, emboldened by drink, stabs at a joke and gets a furtive glance cast in his direction by Rooster, who decides to go with it, chucking softly at first, then openly.
559    “Yeah – whatcha got there, anyway?” The men’s eyes brighten with each container being opened to release an edible scent. “You’re not going to deny the divinity of charity, are you? God loves those who share,” Rooster entreats.
560    “Oh, shut it with that crap – if god saw so fit to share, he’d have made a world where old women don’t have to hide outside the Golden Panda and wait for people to throw away their food, I’ll tell you what. Oh, some bitch was so worried this would leak on her gen-u-wine leather upholstery that she made her dumb boyfriend leave it in the parking lot! Stupid people.”
561    “Maybe that was the lord’s way of providing, Rebecca – never look a gift horse in the mouth, you know?” Rooster approaches her sidelong, angling in.
562    “Yeah, I’ll bet it’d have a cleaner mouth than yours, you beast – what do you got?” Her hand just out from within the folds surrounding her, and her palm decisively opens, pointing skyward.
563    “Here.” Eddie’s arm pops up amidst the four, offering the bottle. “Dibs on the chow mein.” Rebecca accepts the offer, tipping back a large swallow before rooting through the cart and procuring paper-wrapped chopsticks. Each of them takes a pair, placing the paper in their pocket, Rooster eyeing his for a moment.
564    “Boy, I’m glad these directions are here,” he blurts out disingenuously, his eyes still staring at the wrapper. “I’d just sit there and stab at the rice without these.”
565    “I bet you’re not joking, either.” Rebecca retorts, “You soldier boys will stab anything.”
566    “I wouldn’t stab you with the pork sword,” Eddie looks up, sneering, “I’d be afraid to catch something.”
567    “You didn’t seem too scared about it the other night – not that you had enough there for any disease to jump on.” They laughed and ate, Matthew being reminded of lunchtime around the tree, and he closes his eyes, the air carrying a slight chill which grazes his body without him feeling it. The radio sings softly in the night, and several moments pass in exquisite silence. The hope that was gnawing in Matthew’s breast subsides.
568    From the radio, a voice begins to speak. It is familiar, and Matthew stands stock-still, shocked by the intrusion. It is Virgil’s.
569    “Are you complacent in spirit?” The voice inquires, the others blissfully ignorant of its import. “Blinded by convenience?” Matthew looks down at the radio, his eyes narrowing. “Remember, you have the seed of your own salvation in your soul – and the seed of your own damnation. Pray with us at the university center, in the student chapel on Friday nights at seven, and learn how god’s plan works in your life.” The station resumes is normal broadcasting, and The Byrds “Turn, Turn, Turn” begins playing.
570    “There is nothing new under the sun – nothing new under the sun,” Rebecca wistfully intones.
571    “Don’t get religious on us now, lady.” Eddie chides gently.
572    “What? It’s from Ecclesiastes, this song. For every season, there is a… whatever? My pastor used to read it to us in bible study. When I was a little girl – I was a little girl once, believe it or not.”
573    “I don’t believe it. Call Ripley.” Rooster remarks. “The atheist is teaching us about the bible.”
574    “I didn’t say I believed that junk, I’m just reminiscing is all. At least Ecclesiastes has a shred of dignity, unlike most of that Jesus stuff, talking about truth and life like he was the first person to come up with it.”
575    “No records in Jerusalem of any Jesus,” quips Eddie, “and they didn’t even call it Nazareth at that time. Corporal Geddy, he told me all about it. Then he was gutted like a damn fish by the Vietcong. Bastards.”
576    “Doesn’t even matter that he never existed – he was really Zarathustra anyway,” continues Rebecca, clearly trying to make a point. “It was all them Zoroastrians, they came up with that stuff – the Christians just took it and gave it a good marketing campaign. Bastards.”
577    “Sounds like a lot of folks with no fathers in all y’all’s pasts.” Rooster tries to lighten the mood, unsuccessfully.
578    “Father, hell! My daddy put me into the philosophy program right over there before he died, and then my tuition was due and, well, I guess it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that you can’t do jack with a half-completed philosophy degree, can you?” 
579    “Other’n become the smartest damn hooker in all the city!” Eddie chimes in, not mistaking it for the rhetorical question that it was, and earning a slug in the arm from Rooster and a disdaining glare from Rebecca.
580    “Actually, you’d be surprised how smart they are – obviously not smart enough to avoid you like the plague, but don’t stereotype them, you misogynist pig – circumstances are circumstances, and if they can stand living in those mungy dens with their abusive pimps, then they got more gumption than me.” She stares hard into Eddie’s face. “They ain’t no different than you excepting that they got something to sell. Unlike some.” Matthew cannot pass up this opportunity.
581    “Hey, Rebecca – why don’t you take me to that university sometime, maybe tomorrow?” He wonders if he’s breaking some code by asking this, the faces turned toward him contort to such a degree of blank confusion.
582    “What, you want to go to that bible study? Forget it – I am done with religion and those Zarathustra-pushing imposters.” Something about the name reminds him of his mother, and he tries to ignore the awkward feeling of convincing her to take him along somewhere.
583    “No, no, I just want to go to the library – I think I need to build something.” Rooster nods, remembering.
584    “Oh, your cycle? Yeah, I don’t know what you really hope to accomplish by –”
585    “– It’s a cyclotron. I don’t know for sure either, but I… let’s just say I got a feeling about something, okay?” He was short in his reply, and the collective backing-off made him uneasy.
586    “Sure, hon. I’ll take you down there. No one remembers me, though, and if they did I’d rather them not, so I don’t think I’m going to hang around too long, is that okay?” She mockingly checks for his approval.
587    “No, yeah. I’m sorry. I – just – I’m not myself today.” He smiles at how truthful he is being, and borrows Eddie’s bottle of vodka.
588    “Just who the hell are you, then?” Rooster asks, half-seriously.
589    “Matthew. Matthew Rodriguez, and I don’t think I’m supposed to be here.”
590    “Yeah. Join the club.” Rooster extends a hand. “Brian, remember? Founding member.” He takes his hand in a mock welcoming, and Matthew is caught by the distinct paradox of the world making both more and less sense at the same time.
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594    A hangover, Matthew discovers, is like being smothered in a closet with pressure plates being tested on your head. His stomach, he decides, must have been turned into a battery-acid manufacturing plant, and his bones are vibrating most disconcertingly with the passing traffic. Pushing against the concrete, his throat is sere and burning, his muscles sticky and uncooperative. He considers asking someone for a spatula to help scrape him up, but turns to find he is alone in the alley, save for a large cockroach staring him menacingly in the eye. Suddenly buoyed up by fear, he scrambles to his feet, trying to remember what he had to do that day. A spigot catches the corner of his eye, and he is temporarily filled with the hope that it might be connected to a source of water, which is summarily dashed by the turning of the handle, producing only a lame squeak and the unpleasant feeling of spider webs brushing against his hand. Venturing into the street, he zombie-walks down the boulevard, intensely aware of the putrescence assaulting his nose being derived from the stresses placed on his clothing. Blinking against the reflections of the sun in the windows of the buildings and vehicles which surround him, he vaguely recalls the presence of a shelter somewhere nearby, and directs himself to the task of finding it among his memories. Following the clues left by the past, he ambles toward the presumptive goal, a large and run-down church with a dirty cross adhered above the door like a gargoyle, warding away the unwanted. He is momentarily warmed by the idea that he is not among those unwanted, and has to remind himself that no one is, really, but there has to be a false line of distinction made in order to make people feel special. Oddly, he does not feel special, but rather pedestrian as he approaches the heavy, wooden, and auspicious doors.
595    A gallery of dirty faces is huddled over tables that have been unceremoniously covered with disposable cloths, on which disposable bowls are holding food being eaten with disposable spoons by disposable people, dispossessed and dispelled of all but their despondence. Queued up at the table is a line of motley threads draped like the tablecloths over hunched frames. He approaches the tail of it, and shuffles through like a bride down the aisle, one foot meeting the other in a slow procession toward the altar of smiling women, clad in black habits and brandishing ladles of steaming liquid, spilling it into the Styrofoam receptacles that litter the serving board and which are repopulated by a somber pair of children in suits. With each dip and pour of their giant spoons, the nuns breathe a mechanical benediction, turning their eyes once only to the beneficiaries of their charity before dipping back into the metal cauldron from which the bounty of soup springs forth like fish and loaves. Moments of penitent silence pass, filled only by the slurping of the patrons and the occasional grunt or short comment about weather echoing from the acoustics of the wooden hall, and Matthew reaches the plastic folding-table on which the bowls sit and wait for the taking.
596    “Blessed be you, my child.” The voice of the woman intones in exactly the same falling and somnolent cadence with which she beatifically repeated herself fifty times before him, and he watches as the bowl is filled with a thick, chunky concoction of beef cubes and potatoes swimming in a oil-smattered, brown sauce. “Wow – it’s actually soup; I thought that soup-kitchen was just a name,” Matthew whispers to himself while lifting and smelling the distinct flavor of canned vegetables breaking through the beefy odor that fills the hall not quite enough to match the rotten-milk-stench coming from the tables. A small pair of hands reaches over and places a fresh bowl underneath the one in Matthew’s hands, and he mutters “thank you” before walking to a large tub from which people are retrieving bottles of water. He grabs one, noticing its temperature as exactly matching that of the room, and scans the hall for what he might recognize as a familiar face, though how he would know he was entirely unsure of. Among the huddled masses he sees a familiar orange scarf draped across the shoulders of an unkempt, grey head of long hair, pushed back behind her head and poking over in shocks that threaten to dip into the bowl in front of her. She eats methodically, looking down at the center of the table in front of her, and he is able to walk all the way up to her and place his bowl next to hers before she averts her eyes from the apparently-hypnotizing view of the table to glance momentarily at him. He sits down, and she barely scoots over to make unnecessary room on the bench.
597    “Hey, Rebecca. Looks like you go to church after all, huh?” He smiles, his voice unwelcome to all, and he senses the inconvenienced stares of others around him, shaming him silently. He continues in what he thinks is under his breath but is above most people’s. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell them you’re an atheist – they might take the soup back!” The anger was now unmasked and palpable.
598    “People don’t talk here. What is wrong with you?” She spat quickly after having to hesitate for a moment to put into words what exactly was wrong with what he was doing, and he lowered his head, his ego’s nose scuffed from the communal newspaper-smack across it. Eating in silence and slurping sullenly at his greasy broth, he realizes what had just occurred – he had broken the social contract these people – and him, by extension – have with the city. The food was not free, he wryly assesses – they buy it with their silence. Glancing around the room, he counts a hundred or so heads, all bent forward in a prayer of shame, all willingly accepting the guilt that was ladled out with every bowl of porridge or whatever you want to call this culinary massacre. His ire rises, and he understands this awful thing, and wants somehow to take action. How can all these people be held in check so easily? What stops them from rising up en masse and calling attention to themselves? It is the immorality of not playing along with the system – a system that has denied them access after they stopped earning a paycheck – the paycheck; this is the plenary indulgence of the modern world, Matthew almost utters to himself, he feels it so strongly. Had he a pencil, he’d have written it on the table, were it not covered in disposable plastic; he giddily rocks on the bench, the hangover starting to wear with the intake of water and beef stock. Amidst the nervous sidelong glances from the people around him, he finishes his meal and cannot wait to unleash the furies of his discovery to Rebecca, to whom he felt he owed something great and meaningful. They finally exit the building, and on the last step of the stairs at the door, he turns to her, his eyes burning.
599    “Listen. Why do you think people don’t talk in there? Because I have this idea that I want you to think about.” He waits, expecting the befuddled countenance of one who had not thought so deeply on the subject she deals with daily, and his pause lasted just long enough for her to respond.
600    “It’s a church, stupid. Show some respect. What is wrong with you?” Shaking her head, she disappears into some nearby bushes, hunched for a moment, and Matthew assumes she is using the respite to go to the bathroom. Thoroughly unsatisfied with her level-headedness in the face of his heady sophism, he turns his head away in a mild attempt at decorum. Seconds later, the screech of a shopping cart emerges, Rebecca in tow, and causes him to turn a quick look before getting nearly clobbered by the rushing frame of thin metal wire. Matthew gasps, stepping aside and jogging to catch up with her.
601    “I’m sorry! God – don’t run away from me, I swear I won’t embarrass you again…” he is panting, and has to stop, his legs burning from the sudden exertion. A block down the road, she abruptly slows her stride, turning sharply toward him as he careens into her backside, the heavy folds of clothing cushioning him against her surprisingly muscular build.
602    “I’m trying to get away before those rats see where I stash my cart, num-nuts! You know those vultures – they’re worse than the cops with stealing my crap. Remember last month, when I had a whole garbage-bag full of cans lifted from under me when I had to pee? Remember how you said it was probably one of the guys from the shelter watching me and waiting until I had enough to make it worthwhile? Geez, Dante, what is wrong with you? Seriously, are you losing it?” Faced with the open question, Matthew is unable to dodge it any further. He tries to find a way to put the words, which can’t make sense to anybody at the first go.
603    “Look. I – you see – I don’t know who I am, really. I woke up yesterday, and I was on the bench next to Haught park, and the day before that – I think, at least, time isn’t exactly making sense lately – I was an old man in a bed, dripping blood from my veins into a plastic comforter bag.” He looked at her desperately, his eyes wide and quivering. She stepped back, then forward, looking intensely at him from over her scarf and placing her mitten-clad hand on his shoulder.
604    “Oh, honey. I’m sorry. I know how you tried to kill yourself – you told me all about it, and it must seem pretty recent. The shock of being disowned by your father, and then your boyfriend passing away, it takes a long time to heal. I know how long it can be. I guess it’s just all hitting you at once.” Matthew blinks, his stomach burbling and grinding the machine-separated meat that must have bounced wrong in his little jog, as he could swear he feels a piece of it hanging off of his epiglottis. He clears his throat.
605    “You could say that.” He wrestles with the idea of correcting her, but he soon realizes that it is she who is correcting him. He glances at his wrist, a memory haunting him, and sees the paper-white scar frowning at him, telling him the story of his brief hospitalization and subsequent release to nobody, his partner, Bruce, having been killed the week prior in a car accident. The pain of genuine loss comes over him suddenly, and it is real, powerful and austere, bringing him to his knees with the vacuum of shock sucking at his guts. He remembers being unable to go home – his father having banished him and the apartment being in Bruce’s name, there was no home. There is no home. He gulps, swallowing the salty mucus that reminds him too much of the soup, and tries to focus on the now, on what he must do. “Hey, thanks for being there. Here. Can we go to the university now?”
606    “Okay. Let’s get cleaned up first, though. Besides, I have to pee, and I need you to watch the cart.” Following her lead, Matthew accompanies this woman named Rebecca down the people-speckled street, the ten-a.m. traffic flowing smoothly through the city. They shortly arrive at Queequeg’s Qoffee Qorner, the nationwide chain that populates every few blocks, and relief comes over him at recalling the ritual.
607    Rebecca goes in first, waiting by the rear door until she sees someone go into the restroom, a posh and curly-headed brunette with shoes that defy the general public to see her as just a businesswoman. After she exits, Rebecca holds the door for her and nods politely before entering. Matthew stands guard over the cart, scanning the landscape and following the brunette with his eyes, casually pondering how much her boob-job must have cost her. He is awash with indignation at the idea that this woman, walking the same streets and seeing the same things that his eyes met with daily, could possibly decide that the best way to spend her money was on increasing the size of her breasts. She takes no-nonsense strides toward her chic red convertible, and he burns with resentment as she pulls away, the license plate fading away, the word “ENVY” disappearing into the distance. “That lucky bitch,” he uncharitably mutters under his breath. Why not him? He angrily asks a passing cloud, idly floating in an uncaring sky. He tries to imagine what it might be like to possess, and his covetous rumination is cut short by Rebecca tapping him on the shoulder, the sudden realization that she had been standing there a moment catching him off-guard.
608    “Good lookin’ out, champ.” She wryly chortles. “Your turn.” His shrug serving as an apology, Matthew sloughs through the door, waiting next to the men’s room for a moment and wondering if he should ask for the key before realizing how absurd it would be. He is contemplating knocking when the door opens, and he stiffly catches it before it reaches its apogee, shooting an unintentionally-creepy smile at the twenty-year-old who shrinks at seeing him, averting his eyes as quickly and with the same expression as if he had looked into the Arc of the Covenant and found a steaming turd in the place of god’s glory. Chagrined, Matthew enters the restroom and triple-checks the lock on the door. He feels almost as dirty as he actually is, and the awkwardness of taking his pants off in a public restroom is rapidly dispelled by the rank horror that he discovers upon seeing his naked body. Throughout his past twenty-or-so hours, he had assumed that the stinging sensation in his thighs was the result of an obscure wound or bug-bite that he had accumulated from living on the streets. In a way, he was right, but he is not satisfied by this victory of deduction. The rash that speckles his thighs and crotch looks almost like a burn, but glimmers with the sheen of sweat and pus. It is a badge, he infers, earned from the severe dearth of showers allowed those who have no peg to hang their hat on, and it is quite painful to the application of soap, which he nonetheless suffers to smear over his exposed skin, his clothes laid in an unkempt lump on the floor. As well, his chest and armpits are teeming with red blotches of what he is tempted to call bedsores, but is at a loss to call anything else despite the lack of having a bed. Crotch rot, Matthew decides, is like having your genitals dipped in a septic tank, and he has to adjust his prior reckoning as to the worst thing that has ever happened to him. The floor is gathering an ever-widening puddle of water as his errant splashing falls outside of the sink, and he is increasingly concerned that someone will walk in on him. He pulls desperately at the paper-towel dispenser, tossing them at his feet and swashing them around like a pantomime of drunkenness, and he runs his head under the sink to see a patina of dirt and small leaves jump gingerly into the porcelain basin, followed horrifyingly by a small green beetle he hadn’t known was there, wriggling uselessly against the whirlpool of water swirling down the drain. As clean as he could be, his clothes are given a sound scrubbing against the makeshift-washboard of a toilet lid, and he checks them carefully for any hitchhiking passengers of the arthropod persuasion before sliding them back onto his body, the clinging fabric still dripping.
609    Exiting the bathroom, he faces a line of three men, who glare at him in unmasked disgust before turning away, refusing to accept the unspoken apology that Matthew attempts to communicate with his scrunched face and lowered eyes. He is beginning to think that he was not so far off in his epiphany at the soup-kitchen.
610    “What the hell did you do, fall in? Christ, man!” Rebecca hoarsely rasps at him as he slushes towards her.
611    “What – you said clean up, I needed a sponge bath,” Matthew protests.
612    “But your clothes?”
613    “How else am I going to wash them?” Matthew is angry, and his protruding chin bobbles in Rebecca’s face, causing her to assume a bemused expression.
614    “You really weren’t exaggerating, were you?” She reaches into the cart, pulling out a small, orange box of detergent. “Well, o’ new soul of the universe, let me introduce you to an exciting new technology called a washing machine. You put your clothes in, and this magic blue powder makes the dirty-dirt go bye-bye!”
615    “But – you spend money on that?” Frustrated and growing impatient, Rebecca reaches into the pocket of her topmost layer, procuring a small metal disc dangling from a whisper-thin strand of fishing-line.
616    “Hello? Slug, meet Dante. Dante, slug. You’ll have to forgive him, because he’s clearly out of his mind, considering that you have met previously when he borrowed my wrap to stand in while his clothes were washing last week.” Matthew is, literally and figuratively, all wet. The sun is fortunately shining, however, and the breeze combined with the warmth of the late morning is beginning to dry him, leaving blotchy residues of hand soap smattered in a diffusion pattern over his jeans and sweatshirt. Rebecca begins walking, Matthew in tow, sullen and squishy. They travel several blocks in silence before Matthew says anything.
617    “So that’s why you wear all those layers, right? You can wash some while wearing the others. I get it. Very clever.” Rebecca stops and performs a full turn, facing away from the cart, Matthew lurching to a stop and facing her directly, staring into her concerned face.
618    “Honey, kiddo, tell me – are you on drugs?” Matthew sighs deeply, his eyes turned skyward.
619    “I wish. Honestly, I think I wish I was.”
620
621_______________________________
622
623    The job of the university is to make everybody uncomfortable to be in its presence, and in this respect it is a great success to Matthew, who nearly cowers in its looming shadow, painfully aware of his displacement among the students. Drawing closer, Rebecca slows her stride, turning to face him.
624    “Hey, I’m just gonna keep going here, I see some trash cans up ahead that look pretty full. You okay with this?” Without pausing for a response, she pulls away from him, walking past the small causeway leading into the campus.
625    “Sure – okay, thanks!” He calls after her.
626    “Try and get me some booze tonight if you want to pay me back.” She calls over her shoulder, plodding on towards the bank of refuse shining like an untapped mine in the distance. Matthew hesitantly turns into the walkway, trying to look nonchalant as he searches for a directory. True to its purpose, however, the university deigns not to provide one, and he meanders into the courtyard, looking for what should be a big building with books.
627    Passing by the lofty scholars, he begins to notice that his appearance is not quite as alarming as he feared. He is mostly dry now, and the sweatpants and often-stained jerseys parading through the verdant gardens give him comfort. He feels somehow that he belongs here, and even musters up the courage to jerk his head in greeting at a jock strolling by, who returns the salutation with a careless, doe-eyed nod. Eventually, he sees the library standing proudly at the nexus of the humanities building and the science labs, and he smirks mildly while stepping on the rubber pressure-plate that enacts the door-slider.
628    Safely within the edifice, his ears perk as the conversations echo throughout the oaken cathedral of information. Snippets of dialogue can be discerned through the constant ruffling of pages and people amidst the stacks.
629    “… But if you listen to it, man – what is it really saying? They knew – knew, mind you – that it was much more than a hunch, that this group must – must, they say – somehow form a family. Dude, the Bradys are totally pushing personal revelation! It’s like some Neo-Aryan Mormon conspiracy – and have you seen how Peter’s eyeing Florence Henderson in those credits? Sick, man – totally sick. Someone needs to get Bell Hooks on this, dude…” Matthew snickers quietly, walking slowly and trying to take it all in.
630    “… So you dilate the left and right points by two-thirds, rotate them by ninety degrees away from each center, and then do some recursions. Bam! You have a fractal right there in Geometer’s Sketchpad – it goes on forever and gets more and more complex just from the basic, simple-ass iteration. Effin’ sweet, right?” Matthew wishes he could stop and question everybody, sure that one of these people would know about a cyclotron. Blind hope, however, carries him toward the computers that are banked against the far wall, the reference section on either side of them.
631    “… And I’m, like, just trying to tell him about Set and Aten, and order and chaos and all that – you remember, from Tuesday’s lecture? And you know what he does? He  flings frickin’ poo at me! Virtual poo, of course, but still – that’s just rude, if you ask me. I would have kicked his monkey ass, too, if it wouldn’t have got me booted…” Matthew is faintly aware of something he read or saw somewhere, he isn’t sure which, but he has no time to pursue the thought, as he is presented with the problem of logging on to the computer.
632    He contemplates walking up to a nice-looking person and just saying “hey – I’m a homeless guy, and I need to build a cylclotron.” Accurately recognizing this as a poor choice, he decides instead to pretend to look through the reference section while glancing periodically at the milling troop of students and waiting for someone to forget to log off. Eyeing the banks, it seems that the same gateway screen is showing on all the glowing monitors, and he absentmindedly wanders into a random section of weighty tomes, opening the first one he sees and laying it out atop the bookshelf, the spine sounding a scholastic thump on the wood. Splayed open to page three hundred and thirty three, he averts his predatory stare from the gathered crowd checking their e-mail and perusing online articles, looking down to find a schematic diagram of a large circle, bisected into halves, with a spiral superimposed over both of them and labeled “High Speed Ions,” a perforated inner-circle encompassing the circumference and denoted with an arrow deeming it as “Magnetic Field.” The other side of the page displays the sketch of what appears to be a tunnel, labeled with the letters m, e, p, and alpha, two arrows jutting from a set of wavy lines crossed by straight lines and labeled “Electric Lines of Force” and “Magnetic Lines of Force,” respectively. At the bottom of the page are the words “Diagram of Cyclotron operation from Lawrence’s Patent, 1934.”
633    “Oh, my…” Matthew sputters, loudly enough for the nearest ears, perched at their screens, to perk momentarily. Stepping away as if burned, he frantically looks around, checking for a hidden camera or an angel. Seeing neither, he inches back toward the open pages, staring down to ensure that he was not imagining what he had seen. The yellow-white lights from above cast a quiet shadow where the book meets the table, and it seems almost that he is pulling the volume from another world. He pats himself down, hoping to find pencil and paper, knowing already that his clothes are devoid of all but the thin wetness that refuses to dry completely in the static air of the library. Glancing around for options, hearing his mother’s voice warmly explain that his ‘higher self’ knew where the book was, he begins to wonder if his purportedly higher self wasn’t a bit shortsighted for not providing for the transference of this material to any portable media. Before him, a small tube catches his eye – a grayish cup from which juts three or four golf-pencils and a small pad of paper, placed upon the dusty wooden atavism of a card catalogue for patrons to jot down call numbers and seek them out in the stacks. This would have to do, he decides, and he approaches the bevy of small, thin drawers futilely protesting their replacement by electronic machines, lonely and mottled with disuse. As he approaches the knobbed cubbyholes that seem by comparison with their surroundings to have slipped in through a wormhole from the eighteenth century, he privately recalls a time when they were the only option for research without having intimate knowledge of Dewey or the Library of Congress, neither of which his young mind was familiar with. Visions of small reading groups, children ensconced in bean-bag chairs and following along with a matronly rendition of tales of knights and maidens, haunt him from a past he never really knew, and he is filled with the awkwardness of guilt from across a great distance, being unable to speak the difference he felt.
634    It is a guilt felt by all children, being too young to serve a clear purpose and knowing that their use and function would be soon put to question as the innocent inquiries by adults into their likes and dislikes transform almost imperceptibly into interrogations about their future. Matthew’s future, he now recalls, was a hollow box into which he could never peer, his young mind reeling from the knowledge that it was both fated to happen and a hanging blank tapestry for him to enter into at the same time. This state of being and non-being used to plague him, the memory accenting the severity of embarrassment he now feels as the eyes of the students search him, a strange man walking toward the card catalogue. Slipping his hand across the top of the wooden box, Matthew takes a stub of graphite-tipped wood, shorn in half for ease of mass-production, and pulls two pieces of paper, cut down into strips by an industrious library worker many years ago from larger pads of note-paper. Walking cautiously back toward the open volume, trying to somehow display to the others that he had only used the catalogue as a table from which he was retrieving necessary materials, the sensation of his lack of possessions was tinged with a familiarity unclear and shimmering in a quiet corner of his memory. Something should be there, he senses privately while passing a terminal that he saw at first as a large potted plant. Looking across at the back wall, he is expecting to see a small montage of photos depicting the tragic flight of the Challenger space-shuttle, and is reprimanded by the “Earth from Space” display that now assaults his eyes from the location. Everything is too short, he feels, and the odd compulsion to crouch overwhelms him upon returning to the book.
635    Penitent to the spirit of familiarity, Matthew kneels before the tome, staring into the shelf from which he had retrieved it by unthinking foresight. The rear panel of the bookcase is lined with scratches and pencil-markings, years of use and reuse speckling it with the detritus of the past. Etched into the corner, almost imperceptible, are the letter M and the letter R, hastily carved by an unsteady and guilty hand. Matthew reaches into the opening, caressing the miniscule trench with his finger, connecting a circuit that spans twenty years, the memory calling softly to his present. His hand. His small hand, armed with a pair of safety-scissors and an afternoon of boredom as his father tends to business at the university. A thin smile breaks across Matthew’s face, a cog falling somewhere into place, and he stands, balancing against the shelf and carefully sketching the cyclotron.
636
637_______________________________
638
639    Bruce always had a way of doing everything very precisely. In this regard, he was very much like Matthew’s father. Growing up under the scrutiny of a man who considered the minutia of everyday life to be, it seemed, the groundwork of mastering one’s surroundings, he is almost comforted to find Eddie placing rocks in a sequential line, ordering them by size. He was used to being told how to do everything in the secret, Gnostic tradition of “the right way,” from mowing the lawn to filling the ice tray, and he had somehow accepted after a number of years the notion that most of the world was simply half-assing every menial task they set themselves to accomplish. As a tool that his father used to remind himself of the proper processes through which to wash the car, Matthew is thinking of the words his father recited in explanation of how using this much pressure on that part of the car would threaten the integrity of the outer coating of the paint, which – didn’t he know – was applied at the factory using this method of jet-streaming, under the physical properties originally developed by that company, thus he needed to make sure that the solution he used was of this consistency, with that particular ingredient either crucially present or crucially absent, the specificity of which escaped him now as it did moments after it was originally stated. Bruce had tried not to berate him so openly, but his attention to detail, Matthew is now recalling vicariously, inured him to the habit of nodding and following directions, assuming correctly that the miasma of particulars would fail to come to calling should he attempt recreating any of the multi-step menial chores on his own.
640    Thus, the assignment of building the cyclotron warranted a certain angst in Matthew’s ken, and Eddie’s rapture at the rocks belies an unspoken potential that he decides he will try to tap.
641    “Hey, what does this mean to you?” He hands him the sketches, covering two small scraps of paper, and stares into the calculating expression of his friendly acquaintance. His mouth mimics words like a magic spell being silently spoken, and a moment passes with Eddie staring into the sky when Matthew is reminded of the countenance of a Great Ape.
642    “We’ll need magnets. And electricity. Maybe some scrap metal. This your thing?” Eddie crouched, his lips pursed into a thoughtful frown, and his eyes shimmer with a quiet sadness.
643    “Yeah, it’s the cyclotron. You think you can make it then?” Matthew entertains the idea that Eddie’s years of military experience, hard-worn and bitterly soaked through his bones, might be put to use in some kind of redemptive act, washing the guilt clean with the soapy altruism of helping him out.
644    “Dunno. Guess we could give it a shot.” Matthew’s blood presses through his body, bolstering the urge he has to embrace the ruddy figure perched before him. A vision of whirring lights spins in his head like an exploding Christmas display, and he eagerly produces the small pencil from his pocket, which he figured would be the only use it was likely to get anyway.
645    “You, sir, are a scholar and a gentleman,” Matthew showers upon him with singing sweetness, “we’ll need a list of things to get. You talk. I’ll write.” Gingerly swiping the paper from Eddie’s smudged fingers, he flips it over, turning and nearly falling against the wall on which he presses the paper flat, the pencil hovering over the paper eagerly.
646    “Okay. Ready?” Eddie rises to a standing position, his hands folding over his chest.
647    “Ready. Number one.” Matthew places the pencil on the paper, making a hash mark. 
648“Magnets,” Eddie begins. Matthew repeats the word, scrawling furiously and writing a two below. “Wires.” Again he echoes, his tongue poking out from between his lips, writing as small as legibility will allow. “Scrap metal.” Matthew intones the incantation, child-like wonder taking him over. Eddie stops, staring blankly at the back of Matthew’s head, which slowly turns after several moments to meet his eyes.
649    “And?” Searching him with his hopeful glare, Matthew impatiently shuffles on the asphalt.
650    “And what? Do I look like Doctor Who to you? I have no friggin’ idea what else you should get, but it looks like we’ll need magnets, electricity, and some kind of sheet metal to bend into this tube shape. This thing didn’t come with directions?” Matthew takes the pencil and secures it in his pocket, staring vaguely at his very short list.
651    “No, I guess not. It’s just a diagram. I just thought you might – what did you do in the service, anyway?” Eddie’s eyes narrow.
652    “I shot people. From a helicopter. Which, by the way, I didn’t build. Rooster, on the other hand…”
653    “What? What did Rooster do?”
654    “Well, I guess you could say he built weapons. Bombs, mainly, but he was much more of a technician than I was.” Matthew’s eyes widen. He remembers what Virgil’s voice said, about the seeds of salvation.
655    “Hey, I’m going to see about finding this stuff then. Thanks.” Eddie nods, turning back to the arrangement of rocks that he is meticulously arranging into a spiral on the warm, cracked pavement.
656
657_______________________________
658
659    Matthew had always wondered why companies took such pains to package things in such notoriously difficult-to-open containers, and decides that it is surely to make his life more difficult. He remembers the trials and ordeals when his father would return with items for a project he was perpetually in the process of completing in the alien laboratory that was their garage, and he would assist in the unpacking of the materials with kitchen-shears and a screwdriver, prying and cutting at the enmeshed plastic tombs in which he figured there must be some amazing treasure, and he now repeats the process in the middle of the hardware department of the nearest Bullseye Super-Mart, having ferreted over the largest magnets he could find to an empty aisle. Lining them up to assess which one would be the most convenient to begin with, he stares at them before taking a pair of shears from the hanging rack on the stand before him. He sighs – it, too is wrapped in a double-layer of unforgiving plastic, and he imagines the dilemma of having the money to buy these materials and returning to have him and his friends reduced to gnawing at the container with the sharpest implement in hopes of releasing it from its chamber. Fortunately, he would not have to see that become a reality, as he neither has the money to accomplish it nor the privacy to abscond with anything.
660    “Whatcha checkin’ there, buddy?” A heavy-set man with a booming baritone croons the question over his right shoulder. Matthew shudders and drops the scissors.
661    “Hey – there, I’m – uh, looking at magnets.” He looks at the magnets and then back at the man, hoping to indicate his intentions clearly.
662    “What, are you trying to test ‘em or something?” The large man frowns slightly.
663    “Yes. That’s it. I want to see if they work.” Matthew smiles lamely, shrugging.
664    “You know, ain’t that just the problem – these big stores won’t let you do that. Corporations. Don’t trust ‘em. I wouldn’t even be here if there was some other place I could get tube socks for three dollars.” Matthew recalls a number of times throughout his own life where strangers have up and spoken to him for no particular reason, often people he assumed to be homeless and crazy. Being homeless and possibly crazy himself, he now had assumed the tide of random conversations with random people would be stemmed. His perception of what was random and crazy, however, was largely misinformed.
665    “Yeah, I hear you there. I hate the idea of giving this place any money.” He was surely not lying.
666    “I tell you what, this whole place is built off the back of exploitation. Slavery, really – they take a bunch of Mexican kids and put them to work and then they sell it to us cheap. But that’s the truth everywhere you look. Shirts, socks, hell – even kid’s stuffed animals are made by kids in sweatshops. That’s why I don’t trust them. I’d rather walk down the street to the thrift store to get things, but I draw the line at socks. Won’t wear other people’s socks.” The distinct odor of cheap gin materializes in the air, and Matthew has to turn his nose to confirm that it isn’t himself.
667    “Thrift store, huh?” he replies without facing the man.
668    “Sure. Can find all kinds of stuff there. Kitchen appliances, books, speakers – hell, I got a computer monitor for five dollars – said they weren’t sure it worked, and it turns out they just had the knob turned down for brightness. Still have it – works fine.” His father had brought home a broken computer monitor when he was about ten, Matthew recalls, and they had spent an evening disassembling the large, clunky thing to troubleshoot the source of the problem that had occurred earlier in his office at work. Amidst the complaints toward the tech staff at the university and their general inability to solve any problem within a week, he remembers placing a round piece near the vise-grip on his father’s workbench, and jumping back as it stuck to the metal with amazing speed and force. A veil lifted from the back of Matthew’s mind, and the reminiscence of deconstruction showered his memory with instances of magnets hidden throughout the objects of daily life. The man had been speaking for a while, and Matthew tunes back in to his diatribe. “… and if corporations ever want to gain the consumer’s trust again, they’ll shape up, because people just don’t trust them. I mean, do you?”
669    “What? Trust corporations? Not especially. In fact, you’ve inspired me sir – I’m going to leave right now. Thank you.” Matthew turns from the red, shocked face of the unwitting muse, walking through the aisles and out the sliding doors to the warming street.
670    Approaching the Resurrection Thrift Store, which advertised dealing in a wide variety of used goods on a donation-basis, supplementing the message with a crudely-painted icthus on the window, Matthew notes the vision of a man unloading from his trunk a large stereo speaker and computer monitor into a folding rolling-cart, trying with great difficulty to tie a single bungee around the pair so that they will not fall. Jogging lightly, Matthew stops in front of the man, who stares, frightened, unsure of whether to drop the stuff and run before deciding that he was not an immediate threat.
671    “Can I help you by taking that stuff?” The man’s head drops back slightly before he responds.
672    “Uh – no, it’s okay, I got it.” He wrestles with the load unsuccessfully.
673    “No – I mean by taking it. For good. Can I have it?” The man stops, sighing hard and lifting one knee from the ground to support his balance, his arm dangling over the handle of the cart to protect his wares.
674    “What? You want me to give you this stuff?” The man speaks with incredulity, trying to piece it together in his mind.
675    “Well, yeah. I mean, they’re not going to give you any money for it, right? You’re just donating it, right?” Matthew gestures to the ‘donation-basis’ section of the window-sign. The man’s face scrunches in contempt.
676    “Yeah, but – I can’t just give you this stuff. It’s valuable.” He speaks with a patiently-annoyed tone, like discussing traffic laws with a small child. Matthew stares at him.
677    “I know. But you’re giving it to them.” He points again behind him to the store.
678    “Look – if you want it, you’re going to have to buy it from them. Sorry.” The man returns to his task, staring bird-like at the pair of large rectangles, visibly making nonsensical calculations.
679    “But you won’t even have to carry it in the store. I’ll totally take it from you right here. Just leave them on the sidewalk and drive away – you can watch me walk away with them if you want, but what do you care? You’re not going to get anything from them.” Matthew’s annoyance is making his voice taught and high-pitched. The man frowns, glancing left and right in worry. A figure passes from behind Matthew from the thrift store, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder.
680    “Excuse me, sir. Do you need any help?” The voice is robust and serious, causing Matthew to flinch before stepping to the side.
681    “Yes, please, I’m trying to donate these –”
682    “– don’t worry about a thing. We’ll take it from here. Do you need a receipt?” The voice is paternal, and very familiar. The man declines the receipt, glad to extricate himself from the situation, and places his heavy objects on the curbside, stepping into his vehicle quickly and driving away. Matthew turns to face the source of the stern voice. It is Rooster. He smiles.
683    “You really don’t know how to get things done around here, do you?”
684
685_______________________________
686
687    Standing in the alley behind the old restaurant, the three men stare at the diagram, pointing and muttering earnestly. Size being taken out of the equation, it is decided that the contraption should be constructed by passing an electrical current past the large magnets, which should be placed at the bottom of a circle of aluminum and showered with high-speed ions. This decision raised two questions.
688    “Where the hell do you get high-speed ions?” Eddie croons, now fully immersed in the challenge of the project. Matthew mirrors his look, and the pairs of eyes aimed at Rooster look as if they might bore holes through his head.
689    “Well, plutonium, for one.” The eyes narrow, Rooster cringing at the force of their invisible power. “Or any other radioactive element.” He smiles, his tone attempting to pacify, and the eyes soften, turning quickly into confused exchanges.
690    “I know, I know – it seems unlikely to find. But you’d be surprised at how much stuff is radioactive. I knew a guy who swore his mom got cancer from sitting too close to the television. Turns out that the cathode rays are radioactive. Of course, he was still full of it, because there’s no way it could pass through the tubes and the glass enough to hurt you, but it got me thinking. And I found out from one of the lab assistants at the base – we were in Dak Nong – that it was everywhere. Copy machines, fluorescent lights, even smoke alarms.” The three men stop, turning in tandem toward the dilapidated husk that casts a cool shadow over them in the late afternoon sun. Like a virus, a wide smile passes among the faces, each turning to confirm that the other was thinking the same thing.
691    “But, after it’s been burned…” Matthew posits, turning to Rooster.
692    “Fire won’t melt americium. That’s what’s in there. Americium.” He stares at the doorway, bolted sloppy and draped with faded caution tape.
693    “Yee-hah – them colors don’t run!” Eddie whoops, neither of his partners sure whether or not to read irony into his reaction.
694    “Okay – count of three?” Matthew walks toward the door, looking around him to ensure that they were indeed alone.
695    “Count of three.” The two men follow, each lining up, rearing back with a leg cocked in the air. Matthew begins to count.
696    “One… two… three!” The feet rocket toward the door, which explodes inward at the first blow, causing the other two to carry the attached bodies forward in a dangerously uncontrolled manner, creating a domino-effect that splays all of them into a neat pile at the threshold of the burned-out kitchen.
697    Groaning, the men pull themselves to their feet, brushing themselves off and scanning the sooty room, rife with cobwebs and scattering roaches. Matthew hops, beating at himself with open palms and running in circles, definitively resolving the question he had weighed regarding why no one had gone in the building to seek shelter. Behind him looms a charred prep-station, a dough-scale singed and melted to the wood on which the metal containers used as mise-en-place stand, blackened and warped. The oven door handle is bent like a distorted sine-wave, pointing to the disaster-scene on either side, the after-effects of the inferno menacing them with the threat of collapse. Each back on his feet and awed into a reverent silence, the men search the walls and ceiling for the remnants of a smoke detector.
698    “Wouldn’t it have been removed – or didn’t it work?” Eddie ponders openly.
699    “Yeah, maybe the fire kept burning because they didn’t have one.” Matthew rejoins with doubt.
700    “Well they had to have one to pass health inspection.” Rooster soundly states as Matthew’s eye catches the faded remnants of a window decal that faintly display most of a large letter C. A roach crawls hastily over it, joining its brethren among the exposed rafters. Moments pass, each finding no jutting plastic mound that might denote the presence of what they sought.
701    Leaning against a sturdy and oxidized ice-maker, Matthew stares back at the opening from which they entered the building. His eyes rest on the doorway, light filtering in through the cloud of dust and ash they have kicked up with their scuffling ineptitude, and he thinks of the owner, who had all this and let it go. He thinks of all the people, jetting about through the maze of the megalopolis in which he has been so suddenly and uncharitably deposited, and desperation overtakes him. He wants out, and he senses envy seizing him, bodily gripping him in its vise-like vice as he imagines all that others have, and he could have, and doesn’t have. Sighing, his focus returns on the large sign above the doorframe that reads “EXIT.”
702    “Wait – did you say fluorescent lights?” Matthew blurts.
703    “What? I didn’t say – oh, the radioactive stuff, yeah. But it looks like all they had were regular bulbs in here, and…” Rooster follows Matthew’s gaze. “Oh, I get it.” Rooster chuckles. “You know, I think you’re right. It just might work.”
704    Carefully sliding the prep table in front of the door, Matthew tests its weight, deeming it sturdy enough to stand on. Eddie and Rooster holding it steady, Matthew pulls at the metal box, staring at the word like a rune, the need for it to come to him overcoming the discomfort of the sharp edges against his fingers. The wood around it having been weakened by smoke damage and heat, the brittle surroundings snap, the box falling into his hands. He jumps off the table, the wires following him to the floor, still attached to the light with tenuous soldering. He pulls them from either side, and the men stand, marveling at the workshop they have created by pure accident. Silent satisfaction fills the room until Eddie ruins it with the second hanging question.
705    “So where are we gonna get the aluminum?” He whines. From a distance, the rattling creak of a shopping cart approaches.
706
707_______________________________
708
709    Rebecca’s reaction was assuaged by the ever-resourceful Rooster, who was sitting on a bottle of cheap vodka he was saving for such a crisis. They managed to convince Rebecca to part with her cans, the numbers of which she returned with amounting to almost as many complaints as she spat out regarding how unreasonable it was for a recycling plant to close before sundown. The milky smog coalesces in the sky, casting a sepia glow to the alley, brick-filled and dusty from escaping ash, the door hanging like a portal through which an unknowable world of thick sable awaits. The monitor, the speaker, and the exit sign sit in a line on the floor in components, Eddie having arranged the pieces in ascending order of size. The cans lay like eggs in the cart, jealously holding their cylindrical mystery. Inside the musty room, the large metal can opener sits, the head of a makeshift assembly line through which the men and woman would construct Matthew’s escape.
710    “So what do you think is going to happen?” Rebecca asks, taking a sheared aluminum can and carefully pushing one open side into the other, her mittens allowing her to push and twist with an open palm.
711    “I’m kind of curious to see that myself.” Matthew admits, his eyes searching the area for an electrical source. Rooster whistles coolly, his hands parsing and coiling the long wires they had pulled from the open wound in the wall where the sign once rested.
712    “When one sense perceives the hidden, the invisible world becomes apparent to the whole.” Eddie recites, picking the plastic remnants of the objects before him like a turkey carcass. The laborers turn toward him, faces blank with interest. “When one sense grows into freedom, all the other senses change as well.”
713    “What are you talking about?” Rebecca’s nose flares, a cloud of soot blowing past her face, carried by a light breeze.
714    “Daddy was a Sufi.” Eddie blandly states.
715    “And your mommy played rock n’ roll?” Rooster offers, his hands busily working.
716    “Never understood it, really, until I was walking down the beach at Quang Ngai.” Rebecca ignores him, her eyes searching the sides of her sockets, going back and forth as she mumbles to herself. Eddie continues. “The waves sounded like radio static, and I was tripping on acid. My brain, I could feel each side of it. Suddenly, the wall between the two halves just broke open, and I could hear voices. Everywhere, like a chorus of angels and demons, I didn’t know which, they were talking – about everything. I heard them talking about Karl Marx and propane all at the same time, and I just laughed and cried and sat down in the wet sand, waiting to die, which I was sure I was about to do.” His audience, reverent and studious, breathes and hums in accordance. “Obviously, I didn’t. Anyway, this’ll sound crazy, but I could swear that voice on the radio the other night, I heard it before. Matthew started talking about this cyclo-thing, and then that voice came over the radio, and I knew I had heard it on the beach in seventy-seven. The war was over, and it wasn’t long after that when they put me away for ten years. Thanks to Reagan, I got out, and here I am. So let’s plug this sommabitch in and see what happens, huh?” He smiles awkwardly, and they walk through the door, carrying the parts to assemble into the machine, lining them up and placing them on the prep table. Rebecca is bending the cans into a circle, gently and cautiously, when she speaks.
717    “Rumi. It’s Rumi.” She nods, satisfied.
718    “Seems a little cramped to me – dusty, too.” Rooster mutters, pushing the radioactive bits into the cylinder and placing the large magnets next to them, passing the wires through the thing and grounding them to the wood. Eddie snickers, and Matthew takes the lead of metal threads from Rooster, who points up toward the pole outside across which a powerful current was running through several parallel lines.
719    Climbing up the gate, holding the wires in his teeth, Matthew glances behind him, looking upon the nativity scene displayed in the alley. Giddy with excitement, he hoists himself up the pole, pushing hard with his boots against the splintering wood, ignoring the pain in the interest of accomplishment. Rebecca, her hand on the cart like a cradle, stares with eyes aloft at the guiding star in the distance, the other two wise men offering gifts of vodka and beer to the baby cyclotron laying away in the sooty manger, hands raised in waiting for a celebratory toasting. Matthew ascends the length of his body, reaching the top and cupping his hand over the top of the pole, eyeing the exposed lengths of wire on which he might attach the fronds he is biting on with his teeth. He hums a bar of “We Three Kings,” reaching up toward the dull tourniquet of electrified metal with his free hand, passing it across his mouth and extending the wires slowly, hesitantly. Eddie calls out to him from below.
720    “Count of three – ready?”
721    “Ready” Matthew echoes, shaking from the stress and the fear.
722    “One…” They all call out. The wire draws closer. “Two…” they continue, Matthew’s hand shivering as he watches the inches disappear between them. “Three!” The wire connects with a miniature lighting-arc, and the toasting begins.
723    His heart stops before he reaches the ground, the energy moving through his body, as it does the wire, at one-hundred and eighty-six thousand miles per second. This is fast enough that the jarring flash which separates the cyclotron into several pieces, casting it like play-blocks of an angry child about the burned-out kitchen, acts as a strobe-light in the small alcove through which Matthew’s body cascades awkwardly, limp and splayed like the transfiguration of a crucified man. They are like mannequins, frozen by the scene of the plummeting man, his clothes fluttering and sparking with effervescent pops while he seems to float to the ground, on which he plops with a sickening crunch, his figure still and lightly smoking, the mixture with the soot in the air granting a jarring celebratory odor of carnivals and picnics through the spring air. They jump into action, rushing and halting before touching the smoldering heap that was their compatriot, stunned into silence as they look around the silent enclave of the alley. Through the door, the exit sign had scuttered across the pavement, and come to rest at Matthew’s feet, the ambient light of the moon having given it a vague and otherworldly glow.
724Chapter 7: Abundance
725
726    Matthew never hits the ground, the jarring sensation of leaving his body thrusting his consciousness into a slow, hanging spiral pattern from which he is recovering as Virgil’s arm descends from beside him, cupping his back and his head like a cradle of shadows.
727    “You obviously have no idea how to make a cyclotron.” He scolds, his form hovering at a pace equal to the speed with which they circle the tunnel. Looking above, Matthew can make out two rings above, jutting out above the circumference of the spinning circle in which they are bound, orbiting a center of darkness.
728    “What happened to them?” Matthew pleads, his weightlessness adding to the confusion of his present state.
729    “Who?” Virgil stares blankly, the tunnel arcing and filling with a fog of vague forms – a bag of gold, a castle, a crown, a scepter cutting through the walls and fading in and out of vision.
730    “The others – are they okay?” Matthew is frantic, his eyes wanting to water but finding no substance within.
731    “Look – this is going to be difficult – I don’t know what you’re talking about, but you need to keep trying. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I suspect you’re on the right track here. But you’ve got to face the consequences of your actions…” A static is overtaking his voice, and the lighted panel of a dashboard streaks across the spinning walls of the cylinder, breaking the connection between himself and Virgil. “Just remember – even if you can’t take it with you…”
732    Matthew opens his eyes, staring at a steering wheel, sitting up and coughing violently, his ears teeming with a high-pitched buzz. Fading into existence, he hears a song coming over the speakers, the cold air whipping his long hair across his face.
733    “Don’t give it away. Six months in a St. Florian foundry, they call it Industrial Park. Then hospital maintenance and Tech School just to memorize Frigidaire parts. But I got to missing Mama and I got to missing you too. So I went back to painting for my old man, and I guess that’s what I’ll always do…” A steel pipe smokes quietly on the passenger’s seat of the convertible, next to a red leather purse. “So don’t try to change who you are boy, and don’t try to be who you ain’t…” the song continues, the roofless view of a cityscape falling into place among the purview of the driver, dizziness finally fading to maintain a dull roar. “Have fun, but stay clear of the needle, call home on your sister’s birthday. Don’t tell them you’re bigger than Jesus, Don’t give it away.” The song concludes, wrapping up in a southern twang and a quiet flourish.
734    “And that was ‘Drive-By Truckers’ with ‘Outfit,’ dedicated to Maci from Virgil. Hard to tell what he was saying with that, honestly, but I hope she gets the message. We’re going all night here with requests on the best station in radio at Energy FM – we’ll be back after this quick word from our sponsors.” The DJ is replaced by an advertisement for Queequeg’s, the jingle singing happily about refreshing you with the triple-Q, and Matthew grasps at the purse, pulling it into his lap to run his arm against a large, supple breast. The confusion returns, and the roar of dizziness grows to a swell.
735    The first thing she sees is the money. She never fully understood why it was called lettuce until this moment, when the leaves of cotton-fiber jut out like the first bowl at a salad bar, obscuring the small wallet that she unfolds to find the license of Maci Rodriguez, the dark hair in the small picture falling over the shoulders and mirroring the awkward experience of its grazing the side of her chin. She searches the rest, finding credit cards, receipts, and make-up products littering the bottom of the handbag, writing a deepening look of confusion into the powder-speckled face of the young woman. Maci is disconnected, has been plugged back in to find herself, and the search is leading nowhere. A patina of memory coats her hindbrain, washing over and leaving a residue of apoplectic shame and guilt – she puts her hands in her lap, the vacancy left by a previous member causing the dizziness pervading the evening to tip and plummet her head backwards into the plush leather seat. She closes her eyes for a long time, reviewing her life from the outside.
736_______________________________
737
738    The girl is tethered, bound and tied to a future of dependency – every dress in her closet is seen in retrospect with a leash attached at the waist. The questions never answered and never asked float like inevitabilities through the fogged air of memory – who would be her husband, who would be her first. Her love, her knight, the fairy tales gripping her and molding her into shapes of queens and princesses. She can’t be too good at math, can’t throw a ball – though she is, and she can, the shame takes over, punctuated by a period. A person can’t be smarter than her hormones, she was never explicitly taught, but learned with the precision blade of her life as a woman cutting away the excess of personality quirks that wouldn’t stand the passing through the crucible of men and women presiding over her with the mantle of the unspoken authority of truth. This is all passing through her mind like an echo, the familiarity of the present fading back in with the rising of the sun, slowly poking a glowing head from the peak of a foothill somewhere over towards her right side. The road in the rear-view mirror becomes illuminated as she recalls her brief history, everything but the most crucial details of why and how she was here coming into focus like a drying rag in the wind. She picks up the pipe, surveying the charred, greenish resin sitting like a puck in the bowl, shaking out the ash on the road before stowing it in the glove compartment next to a small plastic baggy of reeking, leafy herbs. Grasping the key in the ignition, she turns it, the motor whirring neatly into action, and mechanically shifts and maneuvers the vehicle onto the cracked asphalt road, guiding it by rote learning down the incline and into the city.
739    The cyclotron exploded. She remembers it, and the geography of the city appears, grid-like and rough, as the main highway comes into view from the winding road on which she travels. Arriving at the corner near the burned-out French eatery, she exits the car, grabbing her purse and walking uneasily toward the alley on her raised heels, the clopping sound altogether alien to her ears. She is driven by the need to know the outcome of her actions – what consequences Virgil was referring to. The alley is empty, the remnants of brick and mortar and waste laying in a pile of rubble around which construction tape was hung across pylons. From around the corner, a police officer appears.
740    “Can I help you?” He unkindly inquires.
741    “Oh – I, uh, I was just wondering what happened here. I – I heard there was some kind of accident here.” She clutches at the purse, wondering what other things were hidden within that she didn’t check before approaching. The officer lightly frowns, retracting his head slightly as he turns to look at her.
742    “Uh, yeah – it was about a month ago. The investigation is still open. There was – well, there was one death. That’s all I can tell you. If you have any information, call the station.” He glances for the hundredth time at the scene, his brow furrowed and nose twitching in thought, his moustache wriggling almost comically.
743    “Just one? Was anybody else hurt?” She steps forward, leaning in toward the tape, peering at the surroundings in fear of seeing some clue of disaster.
744    “Hey – step back, lady. We have it under control. Yeah, there was one guy. That’s it.” His hand forms a bar which he waves towards her in a gesture of backing off.
745    “Do you know his name?” She falters, staring hesitantly. The officer stares at her.
746    “No. Do you?” His sarcasm bespeaks hours of futility.
747    “I might.” She clears her throat, blinking several times. “I think – I think it was banana cream pie.” She sighs, having inwardly expected this, but being sorely disappointed to have the suspicion confirmed. At the same time, she is excited, the rules of her confusing game being somehow clarified. She nervously giggles, trying to ignore the man’s angry stare.
748    “What did you say? Is this funny to you?” He steps toward her, reaching habitually for the baton hanging off of his belt.
749    “I’m sorry – I’m really sorry, officer. I don’t know what came over me, I think I’m just shocked to see all this like this – I, uh, I used to eat here, see, and I can’t believe this could happen.” She lamely smiles at him, stepping back and raising her hand half in apology and half in fear. His movement is halted, and he shakes his head.
750    “Well, the place burned down a while ago – at least a few weeks before the accident. You really need to move along, now, though.” He cocks his head, eyeballing her.
751    “Okay, thank you officer, I hope it – it turns out okay. Good luck.” She turns on her heel, almost falling, and ambles back to her car, which she hastily starts and pulls away in, driving by recognition of what is most familiar to her and winding up on a street lined with verdant yards and cookie-cutter houses. She checks her license again to ensure that she has the right place, and parks the car in the empty driveway before gathering her things and walking up to the front door.
752    The walls are white, and mostly bare. The furniture is very clean, and she walks through the living room on a coffee-colored carpet, arriving on the tile floor of the shining kitchen. She opens the cupboard, looking for a glass, and notices that most of them are empty. Finding a bottle of water in the refrigerator, she drinks, not having realized how dehydrated she was, and a lonely sensation overtakes her, dulling the excitement of her sudden awareness of opulence. Putting her purse down on a plush and comfortable couch, she lays down, intending to rest her eyes but finding, upon awakening, that she has been asleep the entire day. Several thoughts occur to her at once, and she parses through them, the aching pain of something forgotten lurking in the back of her mind. She considers just staying here, trapped in her riches, and she feels her heart race at the thought of showering – a mystery unfolds as she runs her hands down her body, and a wildness erupts from somewhere within her stomach. She takes her shoes off and walks into the bathroom.
753    Looking at herself in the mirror, she feels like an alien, unbelieving of the vision that reflects back at her, making her swell and swoon at the face staring from the glass. The familiarity she has with her body is placed at bay by the inward knowledge of her distance from it, fighting with the memories that burgeon forth with bubbles of guilt – the shame manifesting itself in the haze of mirrors charting and dotting her life like benchmarks, the glances of derision at her three-year-old ebullience lifting her skirt at a party her parents threw casting her heart in stone. She lifts her shirt over her head, staring at the foreign skin, dotted and speckled by spots of melanin. Under her breasts, the faded lines of scar-tissue refresh the memory of her surgical procedure, her prowling desire to be wanted turning her to the cold stare of a doctor, his gloved hands having stuffed silicon packets within the cuts. Standing like wounded soldiers, her breasts point back at her accusingly, their defiance of gravity increasing the depression which grips her inside. Dropping her skirt, she is saddened by her thighs, protruding and touching one another, below which the black pock-marks of thick hair are beginning to show, forming a familiar image that sickens her. Slipping her thumb under the elastic band of her black panties, she is disgusted by herself. Something in her is amazed by the sadness that emerges where elation should be, but she pats at her stomach, drooping slightly over her waist, casting a thin shadow over her trimmed pubic hair, and as she removes her undergarments she is plagued by the knowledge that her body is meat. There is no comfort derived from the equal knowledge of sincere and unfettered obsession that the other life within her has cast so earnestly in the desire of just such a vision, and the jarring dissonance of reality at once numbs her and quickens her movement toward the shower knob.
754    Faces loom in the shadows of the water, contorted and heaving with sweat and the grimace of toothy passion. She can still feel them, stabbing and groping at her, and the scrubbing won’t go deep enough to clean her out – she feels like a stereotype, and she feels like a victim, and she cannot break through the wall of discomfort that holds her hostage, taunting her with the promise of breaking free somehow. Washing off the soap, she shakes her hair, a steady pressure under her scalp warning her of a coming headache. Drying off and glancing despondently into the mirror, she grabs her clothing from the floor and walks down the hall to her bedroom, instinct and memory guiding her to the drawer in which rests a tin container patterned with flowers and vines, in which rests a bag of white powder. Her nerves are writhing, and she feels, she decides, worse than she’s ever felt before, pulling out the powder in pinches and depositing it on the lacquered wooden vanity at which she sits. Leaning over and pressing her index finger against the side of her nose, she hungrily snorts at the particulate matter she had hastily pushed into a makeshift line with the side of her finger. Her left eye is open, her right squinted shut as the bubble in her head bursts, carrying along with the chemical elation the sense of heavy reality, lightening and disintegrating through her bloodstream, coursing through her body as the artificial joy caulks her joints, carrying her up into a sitting stance, pressed hard against the back of her chair as a grin finds its way out from inside. She wants more. She dresses, slapping at her face with the make-up she finds nestled in the drawer, painting a fresh smile and brightening her eyes. There is a bar nearby, and she has a lot of money, for some reason, and she decides to enjoy her time, the annoying voice of a young boy drowning amidst the chaos in her head.
755
756_______________________________
757
758    Lights pass and blur through the sparkle of the windshield, the wind ripping through the open cab of the convertible and carrying with it the concrete smell of the city air, calling to her in its promise of freedom. The radio blares, a voice advertising the upcoming charity events being sponsored by public and private agencies. She considers for a moment the prospect of donating her money, feeling somehow that she didn’t earn it, and had no right to it. The glowing sign of the Acheron Lounge shines, and she puts off her impulse, parking the car and stepping out, pushing a button and hearing the pleasant beep of the alarm being engaged as she passes by the rear bumper. Glancing back at the car to watch the flashing lights signify the safety of her vehicle, she smiles at the license plate, which she remembers having personalized after coming into sudden wealth, pluckily making good on the threat she always had made to her friends that she’d be showy and gaudy with her money if she ever had any, and therefore trying a number of obnoxious words and phrases before having to settle on one that wasn’t taken – envy. Amidst the shouting ringing of noise, she feels a sudden shock at a memory coming into existence that she pushes aside along with the door to the bar. She needs to escape, and she struts toward the stools lined up, on which several people stare vacantly into the football game being broadcast on the television propped on a stand projecting out from the wall.
759    “Vodka tonic.” She demands from the blue-shirted boy standing on the other side of the blotchy and ill-kept wooden strip between them. He nods, and pours her drink while the feel of a hard stare slowly forms behind her, coming into clarity through her peripheral vision. It feels red, and warm, and she turns to face it directly before its source sidles up next to her and, smiling, perches on the stool to her right.
760    “You’re here early,” he greasily utters, a yeasty breath escaping from his mouth. Maci shifts in her seat, placing a hand on the bar and brushing her hair from her eyes with the other. His face is unkind, a rough scar smirking at her from his cheek, his narrow eyes glassy and jaded, staring at her from under a sweat-covered, glinting scalp. His wide, stubby nose flares with his breathing, and he raises a half-empty bottle of beer to his lips, tilting it back, his forearm muscles slightly flexing and distorting the tattoo of a knife dripping what was presumably blood from its blade embossed with the number thirteen.
761    “I guess I am… how about you?” She replies after a short moment, playing with the distinct sense of powerlessness she is awash with upon looking at him. He swallows, laughing.
762    “You know I’m always here, baby – I’m just waiting around for you.” He is intentionally disingenuous, and he grins widely at her, showing his teeth like a caged animal. Her drink is deposited next to her hand, and she waits for a moment after the bartender calls “six dollars” out, staring at the man with a raised eyebrow. His smile fades, and the bartender clears his throat while Maci reaches into her purse, extracting a ten-dollar bill and placing it in the young man’s hand, waving her hand at him to signal that no change is necessary. He smiles graciously, nodding deeply towards her and thanking her.
763    “You’re feeling generous tonight.” The voice from the stool next to her remarks bitterly. “Feel like doing some charity work later?”
764    “Funny you should say that…” she retorts, pertly bringing the tumbler to her lips and drawing a long sip into her mouth before swishing and swallowing the cool liquid, its flavor reminding her vaguely of the taste of pool water.
765    “Nah, you don’t wanna just give money away, do you? Not when there are better things to spend it on.” He wryly smirks, casting a devious wink of his eye at her like a lure on a hook.
766    “Like what?” She feigns ignorance before realizing that it is not a feint. His lips purse, his smile dropping as he assumes a patient and disgruntled countenance.
767    “You know… lots of stuff. Besides, giving it away just keeps you where you are. If you wanna get somewhere, you have to take it yourself.” He slurps at the bottle, draining it.
768    “What’s that, a quote from the player’s handbook?” She quips, interested somehow by his words. He holds up three dollars, and the bartender takes it, handing him another beer.
769    “It’s just something I heard somewhere, I dunno. What’s your deal tonight, anyway? You seem pissed off or something.” He points the bottle at her, a look of genuine concern appearing incongruously on his face. She sighs, hesitating and not entirely intentionally piquing his interest.
770    “I just… I don’t know, really – I just feel… empty. You ever feel like everything is all wrong?” She appeals to him with a vacant, longing stare, and he swallows, looking up at the ceiling fan spinning in circles, following it around and around.
771    “Hell, I ain’t no philosopher, Maci… I guess everyone gets like that once in a while. Just… man, I don’t know – just figure out what you want, and do that.” He looks down at her, focusing on her mouth. “What do you want, anyway?”
772    “I want to escape.” She says without thinking.
773    “Escape? Like, leave? We could get out of here if you want and…”
774    “Shut up – I mean my life. How did I get here, anyway?” She feels that she’s known him long enough that he might shed some insight, and he opens his mouth to speak when the people around her suddenly cheer, their faces glued to the screens shining numerously from various points throughout the small bar. “I feel like it’s a dream sometimes, all this change happening so fast, and I don’t know how to deal with it anymore.” The air is heavy around her, and the smells competing for primacy among the think mixture of alcohols, colognes, and sweat is starting to turn her stomach.
775    “Actually, I know what you mean. The dream part, anyway.” He burps, draining the beer and almost stumbling from the stool as he turns to buy another. “Sometimes I think it’s not real at all, my life – it seems fake, anyway – and I think about something this guy once told me. He said that if you take reality as something that we make up as we go along, then the date might be more real than the year – I mean, the date is something we think about all the time, when we sign our checks or look at our calendar, but the year is something we hardly ever think about.” He sits introspectively as Maci smirks, caught off-guard by his softness. “What, just because I’m a dealer, I can’t be smart? You know, it’s people like you that make it so hard to get drugs legalized.” He smiles broadly, slumping a little in his stance on the stool.
776    “No – I’m sure underneath that tough exterior, you’re just a teddy bear.” She curtly blows a kiss at him, causing him to feign a swoon, quickly recovering and looking around to see if anyone was watching.
777    “You want to find out what’s under this tough exterior?” He wriggles his eyebrows, an unwitting impression of Groucho Marx. She snickers, trying to gain leverage.
778    “Maybe – but first, I want to play a game.” She angles in, grabbing her drink and sipping without breaking contact with his eyes.
779    “Ooh, tell me more.” He plays back, inching in.
780    “Okay – it’s called tell me everything you know about me. You start.” She plants her palms on her knees, sitting with her feet dangling from the stool with a schoolgirl expression.
781    “What? You just want me to tell you everything I know about you? That’s the game?” He sits rigid, unsure of where she’s headed.
782    “Yup. That’s it. Go.” She swings her feet, knocking against his shins. He relents.
783    “Fine. Let’s see… your name is Maci Rodriguez, you like coke and pot – and vodka, obviously – and you’re a complete nut-job.” She frowns, the pendulum of her feet stopping, and she folds her arms.
784    “Play nice – seriously.”
785    “Seriously? Fine…” he sighs, “We met about a year ago when you started hanging out at this bar and we got really drunk and I drove you home, and you kept talking about your sister and how much you missed her, and you were really messed up so I gave you a little snort, and then you said you felt better, and then you started buying from me every week, and then twice a week, and now you’re all up on my jock and we’re totally doing it all the time.” He bows, a devilish grin playing across his lips.
786    “Wait – was that all true?” She asks as if she knew.
787    “Well… most of it. Except the very last part. That just should be true.” He pulls at the beer lazily, his back resting against the stained wood of the bar and his right foot resting against the beam running across it below. “So you wanna go now?”
788    “God, you’re such a single-minded creature.” She huffs.
789    “No, the game – the game, I believe it’s your turn.” He turns toward her, visibly anticipating the stories of his greatness, his jaw pointed out like a peacock. She swallows, her eyes shifting nervously, and stammers a response.
790    “Oh, yes – well, let’s see now… you – your… name is…” she inhales, the density of the atmosphere pressing in upon her head and body, and tries to feel the shape of what has happened, feeling out the grooves worn by familiarity. “Brian.” She looks fearfully up at him.
791    “And? That’s it?” He is put-off, pshawing in a half-joking offense. “Don’t hold back, now – I can take it.” Something about her sister upsets her – why did she miss her? Does she still? She feels the racking chill in her rib cage – she does, and the wound is deep. Was this the consequence? What was the connection – how could this make sense? The heavy air swarms around her, and the infusion of liquor and aftershave digs into her stomach, threatening to start an upheaval.
792    “And… I think I have to go.” She gets up, clutching her purse tightly in her fist, and Brian stares agape as she continues out the door, a chirp of confusion emanating from his perplexed countenance and following her out the door. She gets in her car, slamming the door and nearly peeling out of the stall before taking off for home, the ghost of an unknown loss gnawing at her dizzy mind.
793
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795
796    Maci Rodriguez tries to fathom the meaning of her name. Hearing it from Brian, it jarred her into a frenetic state – the things she was experiencing seemed to fall away from her, replaced by the details of her present – but not her present. She sees an empty shell in her mind, being taken and moved around by the spirit that was in her conscience, and she knows very little about herself. Her life has become a Monet, and she is trapped at a distance of a few inches, unable to step back and see it as a whole. From a distance, she reasons, this would somehow make sense. She eyes the glove compartment, making a vague and imperfect plan. She considers for a moment just running the car into oncoming traffic, hoping the mistake will somehow be corrected and she can continue as who she feels like she is – but if this is the paying of a consequence, what dreams would come from that? She tries to recall what Virgil said about being on the right track, and comes to a stop in her driveway, turning the key to the engine while reaching over with the other hand to open the glove box, fumbling inside for the pipe and bag, and pulling out along with them a small business card that reads “Matt Rubenstein, Attorney at Law” with a phone number printed at the bottom. Practically running, she enters her house and traverses across the carpet toward her room down the hall.
797    Passing an open door, she almost trips at the sight of a sleek, whisper-thin monitor perched on a metal desk, the light on the side a sustained orange glow. She sits at the desk, the room barren except for a torchiere lamp standing in the corner, casting a faint white light around itself and the walls, such that when she pushes the power button on the screen, she is awash in a bluish hue. Undaunted by her need to escape, she packs the pipe full of the dry, leafy buds in the bag, speckled with little red hairs. Clicking on the icon for the internet, she lights and inhales, feeling the burning comfort in her lungs drive out the uncertainty and replace it with a whirlwind of satiety in her brain, the shaking coughs that accompany her exhale spilling smoke out on the monitor, which bounces it back at her in a sweet, damp cloud. Her heart racing, she enters the address of Otherwhere, waiting as the connection is made. The login screen appears, and she raises the flame again to the steel cylinder after entering her username as “Dante” along with the accompanying password. Choking in blissful decontextualization, she almost doesn’t recognize the avatar that appears on the screen – a black-clad, wiry humanoid with spiked hair and tiny leatherette wings dangling off its back, purely for show.
798    Guiding it toward the forest of Nebbolith, she closes her eyes, trying to envision where she was when she first found him. She opens them, expecting to find the shrouded island perched within the folds of the pixel ocean, beckoning to her to end the confusion. Instead, there is only the blue sparkle of co-created existence, the grey towers of debauchery looming everywhere. There is no Virgil. Clicking desperately at the “User Search” function, she types and waits, smoking and hacking in anxious need. There is no Virgil. She sighs, walking away from the screen, and enters her room, pulling her phone from her purse and the plastic bag from the vanity. She looks at the card again, flipping it over and finding another number written on the back. She dials it, the connection clicking before ringing.
799    “Hello?” A tired voice answers.
800    “Mr. Rubenstein?” She confirms.
801    “Yes – who is this?”
802    “Ma – Maci Rodriguez. I think I need your help.” She is only vaguely aware of his familiarity with her, and she waits for his response.
803    “Oh. Hello, Maci – what’s the problem? You know it’s after business hours, and I’m at –”
804    “– I need you to come here. Right now. It’s really better if we talk in person.” He seems like a very nice man, and she is almost guilty at the urgency she communicates, completely unsure that she is doing the right thing – guided only by the sense that she needs more – more knowledge, more information, more everything.
805    “What? Is there an emergency, because I really don’t do criminal cases – I mean, if that’s what you’re talking about here.” His intonation belies a hidden excitement, and Maci perceives it unconsciously.
806    “I just – I just need to see you. Do you remember – do you know where I live? Still? Live, I mean…” She is clutching at straws, pulling out pinches of powder from the baggy and pushing them clumsily into a line.
807    “Goodness, you’re panicking – of course I remember where you live… okay. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Don’t – don’t panic.” He disconnects the line, leaving her to stare at the small readout on her phone, setting on the table next to the snowy mound she then snuffs up her right nostril, her heart reacting immediately as her mind becomes both less and more upset, the burn trailing down her throat carrying with it a cool numbing. She sits, staring at the open door, and tries to think of nothing.
808
809_______________________________
810
811    The doorbell rings, and she rushes to it, still off-balance from being unused to the weights across the proportion of her body. Her hips feel too wide, and her arms don’t swing with the fluidity she is accustomed to. Opening the door, she stares into the concerned face of a middle-aged man wearing glasses and a button-up shirt with dress slacks. His polished shoes reflect the light from the hanging bulb over her porch, and she clumsily steps back to let him in, sweat beading on her forehead. Stepping across the threshold, Matt sniffs at the air, looking quickly at her and raising an eyebrow in doubt of his olfactory senses before looking around and stepping aside for her to close the door.
812    “Well – you look okay, I guess, what’s the emergency?” His voice is smooth, dotted with the tenseness of worry, and he looks her up and down, noting inwardly her disheveled appearance.
813    “I need to know how we know each other.” She doesn’t know what else to say, and her palms rest at her side, open and pleading like a biblical figure in a painting.
814    “What?” He is incredulous and unable to hide it. She fidgets with her fingers, now interlaced and hovering in front of her stomach, and she steps past him toward the hall.
815    “I said I need to know how we met. What you did for me. Why I have your card. You won’t believe me, but I – I think I have some kind of amnesia.” She walks down the hall, Matt following blindly and shaking his head amidst the palpable cloud of what is now unmistakably pot smoke.
816    “Have – have you been taking – oh.” His sentence is cut short when they enter her room, the bag resting open on the vanity, her fingers already digging inside and emerging with a small amount nestled on the inside of her pinky-nail, which she brings to her nose and snorts apologetically.
817    “You want some?” She picks up the bag and holds it out, seemingly unaware of the conflict this may present, but mainly to express to him the degree of her internal disarray.
818    “Wow. No, thanks, I shouldn’t – how much of that have you done?” He examines her more closely.
819    “A lot. But that’s not the problem. Really. Please, just tell me – who am I?” She paws at the side of her nose with her thumb, swallowing and trying to make herself cry, finding it difficult.
820    “Maci – what the hell?” He sits down on her bed, setting his keys down, which he now realizes he hadn’t even put back in his pocket, recalling that he was half-prepared to use them as a weapon against a marauder. His expectations of the evening were not dashed entirely, and he is somehow fighting the urge to laugh at the improbability of the situation.
821    “What happened to my sister?” She turns to ask him, almost accusatorily. He pauses, settling into the position of absolute power he has stumbled upon.
822    “Cecilia?” He gazes clinically at her, trying to fathom the depths to which her brain has gone soft. “Don’t you remember? She killed herself, Maci – that’s what the case was about. He shakes his head, unable to shake the idea that he was trapped in a live-action play by David Lynch. This was a woman in trouble. He scans the room for cameras, half-suspecting to find one.
823    “What case – tell me everything. Please.” She is spinning out of control, tethered to the feeling of separation from herself, from her life, and she dips into the baggy, lifting out a pile and sniffling to clear her nose before inhaling it. Matt sits back, resting on his outstretched hands, savoring the fluff of the expensive mattress and lingering just long enough to watch her face contort in dismay. Finally, he speaks.
824    “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’ll start from the beginning. A year ago – almost to the day, actually – your sister, Cecilia, slit her wrists. It seems she found the body of a patient under her watch at the rest home she worked at, and in her note she indicted the hospice for making her work longer hours and with more patients than is recommended by industry guidelines. Well, she didn’t put it that way, of course, but that’s how I brought the case to court when you contacted me about the possibility of her being blamed for the death. You were quite pleased to find that the onus of blame was able to be shifted on the hospice, and absolutely elated to find that they settled out of court when I threatened to collect evidence from other workers and make it a class-action media frenzy. I was actually kind of surprised they folded so soon, to tell the truth, and when they paid out a million bucks to cover pain and suffering, along with burial costs – oh, boy, you were effing elated, Maci – shame you can’t seem to remember it, or do you?” He slouches back, his shirt coming un-tucked, and he aims at a wry smile, landing instead on an awkwardly creepy grimace. Maci listens, her body’s artificial numbness being organically supplemented by shock, and the sound of an owl in moonlit flight passes by the window, unnoticed by either of them.
825    “Oh – okay.” She exclaims, her heart beginning to race faster than she felt it should, her calm unable to still its pace. “What – why didn’t my parents get the money?” She asks as an afterthought, half to find out and half to test him.
826    “They refused it. Said it wasn’t right. According to you, they stopped speaking to you because of it, actually. Have you spoken to them since?” He calmly inquires, fighting the odd urge to lick his lips. Maci sees the room in blotches, her heart apparently exerting itself to no avail, as her body feels limp and cold, like a rebellious sack of meat. She takes a faltering step toward him and falls into his chest. His arms wrap around her, diverting her weight to the side and rolling her beneath him. He plants a firm, salty kiss on her mouth, which she endures with a mild squirm, his glasses pressing with a cold slap against her eye.
827    “No…” she mutters, trying to gain control of her body and finding it difficult.
828    “I know they haven’t, you poor dear. I know why you called me tonight.” He swings a leg over her waist, staring down at her with a hungry look. His buttocks roll against her thighs, which compress into the expensive mattress, and she recalls how she wanted more softness, more comfort when testing them. He pulls decisively at his glasses, which come off in his hand, tossing them gingerly at the bag on the vanity which cushions the blow with a quiet puff escaping. Maci can’t speak, and she begins to doubt that he would listen anyway, a sneering grin erupting over his lips as he arranges his body over her, pressing his stiff member into her skirt before reaching under and lifting it over her belly. His eyes dilate as he pushes down his slacks, the bouncing, fleshy protuberance angling at her in a fashion that she finds comical despite the fact that this is surely the worst thing that has ever happened to her. She closes her eyes, feeling his hand yanking at her underwear, pulling the thin material aside as he plunges painfully into her, collapsing on top of her and writhing in toothy elation. The vision of his face bobbing up and down, his nose hairs vividly glowing in the warm light, flashes in and out as her eyes roll around, her heart boxing violently with her rib cage, her body warm and aching. His increasing pace matches her angry, throbbing heart, and the sickening movement bounds in a crescendo until she realizes that she is no longer in her body.
829
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831
832He feels the cloth of her underwear rubbing against him as he stares into the face that was his, clutching at the body he still has control of, but now vicariously. He is moving, bouncing on her, the wild energy of his tumescence suddenly there and vibrant, shocking him into momentary numbness. He falls on her, slipping out from inside her and banging his face against her nose. She does not move. Fear takes him, redirecting the blood coursing through his body to his limbs and brain and stunning him into a palsy of disbelief. Slowly, unwilling to accept the scene before him, he jumps off of her, yanking his trousers up and fastening them clumsily with too-large hands and unwieldy fingers. He stands fully, this out-of-body experience marked notably by its precarious quality of being in a body.
833Many a schoolyard taunt had made the request of him that, until now, Matthew thought to be a physical impossibility and, rather, merely a colloquialism. This machine was definitely out of order. Reeling, he is surprised to find that the baggy from which he retrieves his glasses holds no appeal to him, and he pauses for a very long moment before approaching the body on the bed, already dribbling a flow of snot and vomit from its sideways-turned head. He is shaking when he touches her arm, lifting and dropping it like he has seen done in movies, not sure what the point is as it bounces limply on the mattress, coming to a rest, the fingers curling into a reflexive grip of air. He is still shaking when he places two fingers on her throat, pressing against the still-warm flesh and feeling in vain for a pulse. He already knows what must have happened, and he is finding it very difficult to accept. His face contorts into a grimace before he begins weeping, shame and fear combating for supremacy in his brain. His stomach turns, and he begins running toward the bathroom when he collapses, vomiting on the expensive carpet. He is terrified – he feels the racking cough of his dinner, which he infers was some kind of cream-covered steak which he apparently didn’t chew well enough, and he feels the quiet pressure of his pants against his groin, the temporarily subdued urge returning to bewilder him with its persistence. He rights himself, checking with his hand to see that it was really happening, and pulling away in disgust when he finds that it is, indeed, there, the stiffness that compels him beyond reason to sate himself.
834Turning toward the open door in the hallway, he half-runs into the room, sitting uncomfortably at the monitor, which was left on and at the point where Maci abandoned it in her haste. The screen is glowing a dull gray-green, and a tree is jutting up amidst a circle of bushes, pointing toward the starless sky and being shaded lightly by the appearance of a wispy shadow. Below, the text box stands to the left of the search query, a cursor blinking at the beginning of a white line into which words are to be typed and entered. Matthew reads the text box.
835Virgil: “Did you save a quarter?”
836
837
838
839
840
841
842
843Chapter 8: Members Only
844
845    Dante: “Where are you?”
846    Virgil: “I’ve been here. You seem to be quite the traveling Don Juan, though, from the persona you’re projecting. If metaphors worked in both directions, I’d say you were having some sort of identity crisis.” The pungent air scores his nostrils, his confusion mounting.
847    Dante: “Why can’t we talk – we could before.”
848    Virgil: “Well, we kind of are – but I know what you mean. Don’t be so Gnostic, kiddo – let go and just flow with it.” The gray towers are hovering in the distance, encroaching on the island with short, nearly imperceptible movement.
849    Dante: “What are you talking about? Gnostic? Is this a religious thing?”
850    Virgil: “Look – where I am, where part of you is – it’s not exactly an exclusive club. It’s not your fault, really – you’ve just been raised like everyone else, to believe in Gnosticism.” Matthew huffs impatiently as he begins to notice the growing columns of gray impending.
851    Dante: “Look, I’m agnostic, okay – at best, maybe an atheist, I’m not really sure, but what are you talking about here? How am I a Gnostic?”
852    Virgil: “Almost everyone is – I’m a professor, for goodness sake, I should know from whence I speak. The hardest part to adjust to over here is that there is no one in charge. There is no private little confab with a specially-designed mentor to guide you through your painful lack of existence. The only master you’ll ever have is yourself.” The monoliths appear as growing stripes of gray, their vertical distance having already surpassed the upper boundary of the screen, and the black between them shrinks down to inches.
853    Dante: “That’s pretty sucky advice. I was kind of expecting an explanation of what the hell is happening to me. Am I ever going to feel like myself again?”
854    Virgil: “Well, yes and no. I’m not really sure why you’re choosing the forms you are, but it’s best to think of it like a template into which your consciousness is being mapped – there are things in your control, and things out of your control.” Matthew is not comforted by this knowledge, as the increasing pressure in his loins matches the growing rate of gray on the screen, and the pinstripes of black are fading quickly away to nothing. “And while normally, that twelve-step program stuff always bugged the crap out of me, there is one thing they say that is pretty helpful…” The wave of gray crests onto the screen, showering the island with pop-up banner ads for pumps and pills, a barrage of nudity spilling across the monitor and crushing the browser decisively. Somewhere between the twenty-fifth and thirtieth flashing window, amidst the scare-tactic threats of government traces and flash videos of small sex scenes, the computer freezes, a small window trumping them all by informing him that there was an error and asking if he wished to send an error report. The conversation is lost.
855    Matthew was in no mood to help the quality control center of the company that created his internet browser – her internet browser, anyway, and he jams his finger into the power button on the grey tower standing to the right of his knee, snuffing out the quiet whir of the internal fan. He is surrounded by a terrible silence. She is still in the next room. He sits for a long time, staving off the inevitability of facing the image that awaits him, and finally stands slowly, stepping over the malodorous pile in the hallway and stepping through the doorway into her bedroom.
856    She is splayed on the bed, her face almost completely unrecognizable through the veneer of sticky fluids drying slowly and peppered liberally with small bubbles of air. Her skirt is still raised, her legs lamely hanging off the side of the pink sheets, blotchy and vaguely colored by dun hair. Staring at her, her face blocked out and her body forked into a stick-figure configuration, he cannot avoid the wet cling of black fabric against the bifurcated rise between her thighs. It is out of his control. His stomach cramps with the anger and shame at his arousal, and he clomps toward her, grabbing either foot and hoisting them above his head, staring dizzily down the vertical span into the adjoinment of her flesh, a raw heat building in him. He crumples her lifeless form, ripping the bedsheets from the corners and piling them around the body, laboring with sweat and resentment to cover her completely. Unconsciously, he calculates her life. She is a despondent, drug-addled hermit, having spent the last year awash in a sea of unearned and guilty riches. He hadn’t spoken to her in almost a season, the final details of the case being settled and over. Reflecting on the evening, he recalls finishing a dinner with a client before stopping by the video store for his daily pilgrimage through the beaded curtain, his reverie interrupted by her phone call. An unnerving calm comes over him as he stares at the heavy pile of fabric sitting on the bed. There is nothing more he could do now. He needs help. After attending to some business.
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859
860    The knowledge of his doing something that feels wrong is not enough to prevent him from doing it, Matthew notes while staring at the waning moon, idly observing his lifting the very heavy pile of laundry into the trunk of the convertible. She is not a tall woman, and the folding and pressing he was able to barely stand doing provided safe passage in the large basket he found on the davenport, cleverly affixed with wheels and a lugging rack for especially large loads. He is guided by fear, unsure of exactly how many of his own fluids rest among the pile within the shroud, but aware of the legal implications of his involvement, aware of how impossible it would be to escape from his existential prison when bound in an actual one. He is cleaning up a mess he doesn’t feel responsible for creating, and he clings to the knowledge that he is only avoiding unnecessary complications in the larger scheme of things. There would have been no point in calling her parents, he reminds himself several times as he starts the car and drives down the street, turning toward the edge of the city. There would have been no point in trying to explain this to the police, he reminds himself several times as he makes a left onto the thin, two-lane road climbing quietly into the foothills. The thought of being strapped to a table with leather restraints, muttering the words ‘banana cream pie’ endlessly until he is injected with a lethal mixture idly passes through his mind, and reinforces his decision to continue up the road.
861    The circuit-board of the city is bound on all sides by a quiet overlord. Spanning the circumference of the man-made experiment in controlled chaos is the real thing, resting unassumingly and patiently shadowing the mawkish child of industry. Denizens of the concrete jungle quixotically fancy that it waits predatorily, waiting to take them over with muddy tendrils of nature strangling the hard-earned right of metal and cement from their clutching, technophiliac hands. Staring now at the flashing microcosm of civilization, Matthew reconsiders this notion. Wrestling with the fabric, which he hauls up from the open trunk and carefully rests over his shoulder, stumbling toward the open car door, Matthew decides that nature wants nothing to do with the smoking stacks of soot and brick, and that Zarathustra, were he to come back to life in the present, would run screaming back up the hill. He tries to calm his mind with these thoughts as he tries to gently place Maci’s body in the driver’s seat before unwrapping her in her final resting place. His back spasms as he bends down, causing him to stand quickly, the sheet coming loose and releasing a pair of legs on either side of his head, the vision of a fleshy rump unfurling before him. He falters, catching the calves and resisting again the urge that builds within him like a balloon, angrily considering punching himself before closing his eyes and pushing her lower half bodily into the driver’s side. With great effort, he settles her into the plush leather bucket seat, brushing wet hair from her face and lowering her head gently onto the steering wheel, her arms dangling into her lap. Arranging her body, he is reminded of the mannequins he used to ogle, their perfect form taunting him with the promise of a sexuality the world would not provide him. His arousal is waylaid by constant reference to the mottled, stinking sheet on the ground, the putrescence of which was salt-peter to his uncontrollable drive.
862    He places the baggy in the open glove-box, surveying the scene for plausibility and then taking the sheet with him down the hill. He walks for a quarter-mile before edging slowly down the side of the embankment on which the road was blasted away long ago, the soft dirt crumpling under his feet. He folds the dirt into the fabric, piling it over and over with rocks and twigs, brushing and patting it down until it is invisible among the rubble along the hill. Rising back to the road, he resumes his walk, mildly considering just walking out into the wilderness and laying down forever. Compelling him, however, is the undeniable urge to find someone with whom he might quell the yawning beast of desire he is tethered to, its persistence as unsettling as it is powerful. While traversing the three miles down the lonely road, Matthew distracts himself with the recollection of his misspent life, the days before arching like columns down a tunnel of years, spanning a distance both indescribable and austere in his mind. He has been chaste throughout his fifteen years, and the sudden knowledge of a life of predatory carnality blindsides him, shocking him with its bittersweet mixture of fulfillment and emptiness. He recalls the lawyer’s life as he might study a biography, noting the moments most memorable to him, the miasma of schooling fading into uncertainty, a sudden realization of having changed his last name to attract more clients coming into awareness, the power of his position leading to the trysts of grunting predation. He tries to remember what Virgil said, something about a twelve-step program, and he idly counts his own steps down the cracked pavement wending through the foothills, searching his mind for an answer. Finally, coming to the intersection of the large highway, he sees a bus stop shelter glowing with the light of a nearby streetlamp. Sitting on the bench, he sighs heavily, closing his eyes and trying to plan his next step.
863
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865
866    The paper hangs to his right and catches his peripheral vision as he opens his eyes. Posted with tape, it is tapered into small strips with a phone number and address, the large print advertising a support group for various types of addiction. Narcotics Anonymous. Alcoholics Anonymous. Sex Addicts Anonymous. The bus approaches. Ripping a piece from the bottom of the handbill, Matthew boards the bus, handing the driver a dollar, who stares at him disparagingly, the dirt and sweat caking his face and hands creating quite an unfavorable impression. He finds a seat at the front of the rows, making as little eye contact as possible with the few people riding and staring alternatingly out the window or at the piece of paper in his palm, which bore an address nearby. The buildings pass by in various states of light and shadow, reeling past him like a large stage in which he feels himself some kind of impostor. He is unable to distinguish now where he begins and where the other man ends, where those before fit in and who, after all, he really is – his identity is disintegrating before his eyes, which stare down at the muddy patent-leather shoes he is wearing, the fancy socks underneath besotted with grime and dirt. Lurching onto the street where the support group meets, Matthew arches his neck toward the window, straining his eyes to spy a cluster of people standing outside a pair of large, wooden doors attached to a building in the center of a row of businesses, the sign above them stating in steel letter-frames “First Church of Christ, Scientist.” Above the people, a single plume of smoke rises up, forming a swirling gray plume. This had to be it. Half a block down, the bus meanders toward the side of the road, jerking to a stop, the hissing doors ratcheting open. Matthew steps down into the street, walking quickly past the gathering crowd and into the building.
867    The white stucco walls are plastered with kiosks on which bible studies and picnic groups and cultural tours and apartments for rent are competing for visibility, the mesh of colors and newsprint looking like a pastiche installation at a gallery. Stepping past the table on which informational pamphlets are cast about haphazardly and into the restroom, Matthew comes face to face with his reflection. He looks somewhat like a chimneysweep. Rather, he looks like a chimneysweep who just buried a woman. Washing his face off and giving his shoes, cuffs, and hands a rough treatment of soap and scrubbing, he is careful not to apply too much water to his clothes, recalling the embarrassment of dripping in public as something he does not wish to repeat. Satisfied with his external cleanliness and still harangued by his internal filth, he steps back through the door, stepping into the crowd which poses in dramatic standstill, hands hovering in gesticulation and faces expressively either listening or emoting, almost all of them accompanied by cigarettes brought back and forth from their mouths as if they were on a pulley. Matthew notices that almost all of the women keep their fingers on the butt as they draw smoke through the cotton, while the men withdraw their hands momentarily, savoring a brief cowboy glint through the side of their eye as they punctuate every sentence or reaction with a glowing ember. He marvels at how clearly these people feel they have problems, and he is struck by a moment of absurdity at his trump card of a dilemma, feeling the power of being truly and profoundly messed up. The inertia of the feeling carries him over to a woman standing outside the main ring of information exchange, her eyes soft and pained as she draws coolly on an all-white cylinder, longer than what one might expect.
868    “Hey – can I bum one of those?” Matthew hears himself asking, wondering which type of draw he would find natural, trying to remember the last time he smoked.
869    “Sure.” She reaches into her small handbag, lined with a skull-and-crossbones pattern with cute cartoon eyes and teeth in place of the severe grimace of the Jolly Roger. He takes the cigarette, putting it between his lips and sticking his neck out as she brings up a thin, see-through lighter, the flame tooled in her spare time to burst out at twice the height it was designed to burn at.
870    “Thanks.” Matthew notices his fingers come off the filter and hover an inch off of it as he sucks at the butt end, the smoke catching in the back of his nose and starting his head on a mild floating trip. “I’ve never been here before.” He informs her after an odd, expectant moment.
871    “Hmm. You mean to the church or to the meeting?” She flashes a playful glance at him, her eyes moving up and down his body before retracting into a sad place of castigation. He smirks, appreciating the lightness of her tone, which rises above the heavy droning of the surrounding crowd.
872    “Not much of a churchgoer.” Matthew explains, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “I don’t even understand what it means, Christ-Scientist.” He pauses, waiting for her eye to come level with his own. “I mean, I’m no expert, but it doesn’t seem like Jesus was very handy with test-tubes and Bunsen-burners.” She laughs, smoke spilling out of her nose and a nervous, guilty look accompanying the movement of her hand toward her face, looking away. “What’s next – first church of Buddha, Chemist? Or third temple of Mohammed, Astrophysicist?” He grins, reveling in his delightful little spurt of irreverence. She laughs again, this time a little more intentionally, then looking at him.
873    “I think you mean mosque.” Her hair, untreated, curls roughly at the edges and gives her an edgy line that compliments her standoffishness.
874    “What kind of scientist is that?” He asks blankly, half-joking.
875    “Muslims go to mosques, I mean. You know. You were saying, and… never mind.” She steps back, threatening to leave, and he clutches at her with his tone.
876    “No – no, I get it. Actually, it sounds funnier that way. Mosque of Mohammed, Astrophysicist. You’re right.” She teeters on her heels.
877    “Yeah… so what are you, a stand up comedian or something?” She relents.
878    “No – I’m just naturally funny. Actually, I’m a lawyer.” Her eyes drop, her lips pursing around the cigarette that instantly appears between her lips.
879    “A lawyer. Oh. That must be nice. Well, hey, don’t be worried about it being your first time – just introduce yourself and say why you’re here. I’ll see you in there, huh?” She retracts into a gaggle of serious people, disappearing behind a trio of men who nod often and load smokes into their mouths like ammo, firing off rounds of wispy bursts. He sighs, unable to fathom his mistake, staring vacantly toward where she was when the doors are propped open from inside by a tall, blonde, wizened figure, smiling broadly and nodding up and down, waving at individuals as well as the crowd to come inside. He wears a very self-satisfied look, and constantly over-expresses his joy at seeing certain members of the crowd as they pass, running his palms constantly over shoulders and shaking hands, feigning shock at one face and then naked glee at another. Matthew decides that compared to this guy, he can’t be that bad. Trailing the crowd, Matthew finds an empty seat in the back of the large hall, folding chairs arranged into two wings and running the span of the aisle all the way to the pulpit, which advertises a golden cross at every onlooker. The murmur of the room falls to a silence, and the tall man walks between the two halves, parting them sanctimoniously before stepping up to the microphone.
880    “Okay – first, thank you all for being here. We’ll get right to it, then – is there anyone here who would like to introduce themselves as a first-time participant?” He looks around the room, eyes vaguely shifting and passing around.
881    Matthew thinks about the young woman he spoke to – he feels the need to prove something to her, having mulled over their exchange and deciding that, of course, she is reluctant to fall into the idle chatter of pick-up lines in a place like this. He is a stranger among them, after all, and he is emboldened by the thought that these people understand him somehow, share his struggle and are here for him. He stands up, walking up to the microphone and staring out to the crowd, a toothy grin emitting from the tall blonde man who steps aside and gives him the floor. He clears his throat, the rough crackle amplified through the room and eliciting the patient, kind stare of the crowd.
882    “When I started this journey, I was fifteen years old.” He sighs, pausing as the crowd nods in understanding. “It’s been a long time since then, and I’ve aged and grown into different people along the way – now I find myself here, struggling to fight back the need to… to take someone, hold them and press myself into them, feeling them under me and feel myself in them.” Several eyes widen, a throat clearing in the hall somewhere, and a ruddy-haired man in the audience smiles at him, Matthew interpreting that he is hearing the words that describe his own struggles reflected back at him. “It’s funny, really… a biological urge, a need that everyone has, gone somehow awry, out of control. I started with magazines, searching for satisfaction in the glossy pages, and then moved to videotapes and DVDs. Now I’m in the porn shop every night, and I wander, looking over the few things I haven’t seen, buying and watching them over and over until every sordid detail is clear in my mind. My need to – well, to screw someone was so strong, it only wound up making me screw myself.” Matthew lowers his eyes, his lips pursing amidst the deadly silence that paints the hall. “I bottomed out when a girl died in the middle of the act. I looked at her – her dead body there, and – god help me, I wanted to finish. I knew I needed help at that moment, and here I am. My name is Matt, and I’m a sex addict.” He looks up, his lip quivering at his audience, whose faces are a panoply of shock and fear. The ruddy-haired man stares blankly at him, his smile replaced by a thin line of confusion. The tall man puts his hand on Matthew’s shoulder, and he steps from the mic, walking back toward his seat, no one looking at him.
883    “Well, thank you, Matt.” He states solemnly, after a long silence. “And, um, welcome to the young singles group. Let’s pray for Matt, shall we?” The chorus of prayer echoes dully off the beams across the ceiling as Matthew turns rapidly to ice. He walks robotically past the seat he was planning on sitting in, feeling the eyes turn from behind him and follow his path out the door.
884    In the foyer, Matthew peers closely at the interlaced papers and handbills that decorate the corkboard on the wall, finding a schedule of events for the evening. Bible study was followed by an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, then came Narcotics Anonymous, Sex Addicts, and finally Christian Young Singles. He is sweating, prickles forming everywhere on his body like cactuses being blasted toward him from all directions. The door opens behind him, and footsteps approach, Matthew starting out the door when he is stopped by her voice.
885    “Hey – nice speech.” It is the wiry-haired woman he spoke to outside. “Don’t worry, it’s not the first time it’s ever happened. But it’s definitely the best yet.” He turns to her whose face is peeled back into a barely-contained giggle, and he shakes his head, laughing in spite of himself. Not surprisingly, he is struck with a magnetic attraction to her, and he searches for something to say.
886    “Well, you know, I always try to make a memorable impression on people.” She takes this as an excuse to release her laughter, stepping toward him.
887    “Actually, I think they needed to hear it – they’re could sure use a dose of reality, at least. I think a lot of those guys probably identified with you more than you think.” She places a hand on her hip, the other side of which juts out to define the line of her leg against her skirt. Matthew swallows. “I think you could use a drink. Ever been to the Acheron?”
888
889_______________________________
890
891    Priscilla and Matthew are discussing the roles of gender in contemporary society, referring often to couples in the bar for ad-hoc case studies. The blue-shirted bartender has brought them their third pair of Manhattans and Cosmos, respectively, the ordering of which was the origin of their conversation, the labeling of the former as masculine and the latter as feminine serving as the seed of dissection.
892    “According to Fausto-Sterling, a massive amount of gender assignment takes place right here in America – at birth.” Priscilla blinks, keeping her eyes closed to review the numbers she was trying to read from the research paper in her head, written several weeks ago for her graduate course in sociology.
893    “Well, don’t they kind of have a clear litmus test? Innie or outie?” Matthew quips, his right leg crossed at the ankle over his left knee.
894    “That’s the thing – if it’s shorter than five centimeters, they consider it a girl, and they just do the procedure without the parents ever knowing.” Her hands come down on the small, round table between them.
895    “How can they do that?”
896    “They don’t call it gender assignment – they just say there have been complications, and they get a signature. Of course, the parents aren’t going to argue with the doctor – they are the experts, after all.” 
897    “Damn – we really are Gnostics, aren’t we?” Matthew stares at the wicker fan causing the small candle on their table to flit about in an imperceptibly-ordered pattern.
898    “Well – that’s an interesting way of putting it.” She smiles warmly. “You’re really not a fan of religion, are you?” He stares soberly at her.
899    “After tonight, especially.” His desire to undress her overcomes his lingering suspicion of this woman, who willingly accompanied him after his shameful admission. She shouldn’t be comfortable around him, he figures, and yet she is plaintively wriggling her nose in thought while running an index finger around the rim of her tapered glass.
900    “I guess I can’t blame you there. Most of them are just looking for some kind of order in their meaningless existence, or maybe searching for a father-figure.”
901    “Hmm…” Matthew wonders where Virgil is and how he can reach him.
902    “If you’re Catholic, a mother figure, I guess.” She smiles, her eyes brightening. “But that’s it isn’t it? The basic problem. Women and men.” Matthew plants his right leg on the ground, leaning forward.
903    “How do you mean?”
904    “Well, women have a link to eternity. Children, part of them, they can keep living past their deaths. Men have to invent things and make stuff that will outlive them. Science and literature – they’re just the only way men have been able to get past dying.” She states summarily, thoughts of her thesis dancing in her head with sugarplum statistics. Matthew watches her small hand dig into her purse, emerging with a pen and scribbling on a napkin, her pixie face sternly set in concentration.
905    “I think I can appreciate that.” He replies, a lifting presence making itself known to the zippered fly of his slacks.
906    “But you know what all that gender assignment stuff proves, don’t you?” She replaces the pen, folding the napkin and tucking it within the folds of fabric. She looks into his eyes. “It means that old myth about women not liking sex for its own sake is totally false.” Matthew sits up in his chair. “It means we can like it just as much as guys. Even really horny guys.” She slips her shoe off, grazing a manicured toe against the cuff of Matthew’s dress pants, downing the remainder of her Cosmo. “I’ll bet you know a place we can go.” She slides the empty glass aside, inching her hand over to his side of the table. Matthew’s heart starts racing.
907    “I do.” He realizes that he hasn’t been yet to the lawyer’s home, knowing academically that he could probably find it, but the drinks and the swelling suggesting they return to the house his car was still at. He thanks himself inwardly for taking the time to clean the vomit and refit the mattress with sheets he had found in the closet, ignoring the vague dread of returning to the scene, focusing instead on the excitement of promised satisfaction.
908
909_______________________________
910
911    Having directed her to the house, they pull up in her beat-up Rabbit, the cracked plastic dashboard vibrating in resignation when she kills the engine and steps out of the car. Climbing out, Matthew notices a red motorcycle parked in front of his luxury sedan, a helmet hanging off the handlebar. Priscilla eyes the lawn, which is kept in acceptable shape, and he approaches her as they walk up the driveway toward the bushes that frame the cornered walkway to the front door, hesitating momentarily before placing his arm around her waist and pulling her towards him. She looks up at him, an impish grin dancing across her lips, and he begins to inch toward her face, his mouth parting as out of the corner of his eye he sees a shadow rise from the porch stoop.
912    “Where’s Maci?” a direct voice shouts from his right, the assuming girth of the large man coming into view by the streetlamp. Priscilla gasps, pushing at Matthew’s chest before leaping back and clutching at her purse, holding it like a shield in front of her chest.
913    “Brian?” Matthew recalls the scar, now glinting in the light and accenting the wide, unforgiving eyes of the man.
914    “Who’s Maci?” Priscilla jerks her neck toward Matthew, not yet lowering her purse.
915    “Oh, god – Brian, she – Priscilla, you – let me explain.” Brian tethers an eye on Priscilla, his lips forming a sneer as he looks her up and down while keeping his form turned on Matthew’s cowering stance.
916    “How do you know my name?” Brian asks after a brief pause, Matthew trying to frame the incident mentally before describing the details to both parties.
917    “I – well, we actually met at banana cream pie.” Priscilla’s purse comes down from her chest, Brian’s stare turning at him levelly. “Never mind. The important thing is that Maci died.” Priscilla searches him with her dilating pupils, Brian’s mouth opening and closing once. “I’m sorry. We were – well, I was – look, she overdosed, I think, and she just stopped breathing.” Brian’s eyes turn downward, his brows arching down over his flaring nose.
918    “What? So where is she? The hospital? Did you call an ambulance or something? Why are you here with her?” His bicep twitches, his fist curling. Priscilla’s mouth peels back to form a gaping hole.
919    “Oh my god – that was tonight? You were talking about something that happened tonight? It just happened, and you stood there talking about it like that?” She takes several steps back, Brian’s shoulders rising, Matthew looking from one to the other wordlessly. “You are sick, Matt. There is something wrong with you. I – I’m leaving.” She does an about face, angling quickly toward her car, Matthew turning around to offer some kind of explanation.
920    “No, please wait – I can –” The bushes rush to greet him with a bristling hug, his knees meeting concrete and carrying the weight of his body forward, his face stopping his fall against the gnarled stem of the rhododendron. The chill of the night air passes across the sweat of Matthew’s face and arms, his palms brushing against small leaves as he scrambles to his feet, starting to run. Brian’s hand grips his collar from behind, holding him fast.
921    “You let her die, didn’t you?” Matthew is pulled back onto the porch stoop. “She left the bar in a rush, and I came here a while ago, trying to find out what was up, and I see your car, and I try her cell, and she doesn’t answer, so I wait here and you suddenly pull up with some chick?” He is deposited uncharitably onto the step, Brian standing over him and leaning forward. “Is she still in there?” Brian points toward the door.
922    “No, I –” Matthew begins, stopping mid-sentence to stare blankly at his assailant. “Yes. I let her die. Then I took her to the woods and left her in her car. She was no good to anyone anyway. She was a drug-addled sleaze.” He looks past Brian, at the stars in the sky, dotting the black night through a twinkling haze. He sees a circle formed by a gathering of them, a vague spiral shape into which he stares, his hands behind him on the cold concrete. “So what?” He emptily intones.
923    The foot catches him under his chin, spinning the roof of the porch into his field of vision. His head bounces on the cement, colors flashing and washing over his sight. Brian’s knee comes down, crushing his crotch, and the haunting pressure disappears, replaced by a delicious agony of vibrant waves passing over him and forming a concert of blows across his face, each one sounding a double thump of pounded flesh and cracking bone, his head swimming with each ricochet off the porch. Angling his body underneath the heavy mass of Brian, Matthew arches the nape of his neck against the corner of the step, his adam’s apple poking out into the night air. Brian reels back, his weight resting on his right foot, his fist cocked into a dense ball, and Matthew swings his leg out, striking the pivot on which the inertia of his attacker’s body was being held at bay. He is reminded vaguely of the pen with which he broke through the thin veneer separating himself from Virgil. Brian falls forward, his fist plunging into Matthew’s throat and collapsing his trachea against the hard angle of the stair.
924    “Thank you…” Matthew whispers into the ear that plummets at him, Brian rolling off of his body and scrambling into a crouch before standing again. He is unable to regain his breath, and his eyes push against their sockets as he convulses several times, a faint twanging buzz filling his ears, the night sky fading from his vision. Brian hovers over him, becoming a shadow of panic as he watches the movement drip toward a standstill, his victim laying contorted with a careless grin plastered across his quiet, bloodied face. The sound of a motorcycle engine ripping through the night accompanies the swirling pattern of light that eddies around Matthew’s growing vision, the realization that he was no longer encumbered by the burden of flesh becoming apparent.
925
926_______________________________
927
928    The circumference of the moving tunnel is shorter than the swirling patterns that cycle above him, a vortex sucking beneath him with a soundless presence. Virgil is lounging in a recliner, idly puffing at a briarwood pipe.
929    “God grant us the courage to change the things we can, the patience to endure those we cannot, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Virgil’s pontification is accompanied by a plume of smoke that forms the shape of a hammer before dissipating.
930    “Not you, too – I’ve had enough religion for now, thanks.” Matthew is immobile, his senses taking in the vision without the experience of seeing.
931    “It’s the serenity prayer. That thing with the twelve-steppers I was going to say. Admitting you’re powerless, that isn’t so great – but that serenity prayer isn’t actually such bad advice.” He sucks absent-mindedly at the stem of his Sherlock-style apparatus, the sweet smell markedly absent from the antiseptic atmosphere revolving around the two, the smoke now coalescing into a snarling bear’s head.
932    “Nifty. Thanks for the heads-up, there. I’m never going back, am I?” Matthew would weep had he eyes or tear-ducts, his fatigue broadcasting through the energy that Virgil received.
933    “Like I said. I’m not the guy in charge. No one is. You’ll go back when you’re ready, I suppose, but for now you seem to be doing just great. A lot of things to work out, clearly. Don’t worry – there’s no point in it.” Virgil draws again at the black tip of the wood, this time evaporating with the inhalation. A feeling of weightlessness grips Matthew, his ankles being held by two strong hands, a warm breeze passing through a thin fabric of the a-line tee that draped his muscular frame, his arms dangling over twenty feet of space above a freeway. He turns his face up from the vertigo-inducing vision, and sees Brian’s teeth gritted in strain, looming above, the crooked scar bent out of shape by his cheek, twisting with the pressure of holding him aloft. A can of spraypaint falls from his hand, which he didn’t know to grasp, and twirls lazily toward the black strip of road, hitting the pavement with a metallic twang before rolling to a rest on the shoulder.
934
935Chapter 9: Brotherhood
936
937    “Dammit – what’d you do that for, man?” Brian shouts down from the railing of the overpass, wincing in frustration.
938    “Sorry…” Matthew’s fear is overcome by the sudden sensation of seething anger, seeping up from his head, overcoming gravity and fixing itself tenaciously in his breast. He stares at the half-completed graffito, what was going to read “Mad-X” but stops after the a, looking now like a sad cry for maternal influence. He is angry because he knows that, in many respects, it is.
939    Brian hoists his feet, wrangling him over the steel balustrade next to which they now stand silently, surveying the sparse vehicles dimly lit by headlights and the waxing moon. The air is warm and greasy, cluttered with a stale industrial odor that both alienates and comforts the young men, sentinels jealous and proud of their mastery over the streets that Matthew imagines Virgil referring to as hard-scrabble, though he isn’t sure exactly why, or what word games have to do with the circumstances he finds himself presently thrust into. He feels compelled to run.
940    “Do you hear something?” He asks Brian, whose stolid face breaks mildly into worry. They briskly depart, a siren beginning to pierce the air in the distance, a probability which yields excellent odds of occurring at any given moment. He is not safe here, he realizes, and the growing rage dictates to his bones that this truth has been omnipresent throughout his life. He tries to sort it out, and his focus is broken by the nervous traveling toward the motel room he shared with the man who trod before him, who suddenly stops and swings around, a gun in his hand.
941    Matthew jumps before noticing that the handle is pointing at him, the barrel clutched securely in Brian’s hand, who now stares in confusion and mild disgust.
942    “What the hell’s gotten into you? You think I’m gonna turn on you or something? I told you, I know there was nothing you could do about Chuy, so forget about it already, okay? Damn.” Matthew takes the black grip, mechanically slipping the weapon between his tailbone and the elastic of his boxers, the cold steel familiar and comforting. They resume their loping walk toward the Lucky 7 Motel, whose sign flashes a sickly-yellow glow into the stolid air.
943    “I don’t know, man – sorry, I’m just jumpy tonight.” Matthew’s inference-drive goes into full swing, and he pieces together the familiarities into a roughshod reality, deciding that he is obviously selling drugs with Brian from this motel room, and that they are clearly involved in some kind of gang. He is ambivalent toward this epiphany, and begins to breathe deeply, trying to ponder the rampant anger and disorder coursing through his veins. He feels betrayed – betrayed by Virgil, somehow, and by the cosmos. The universe just doesn’t like him very much, it seems at this moment, and he is strongly considering the spiritual ramifications of a murder-suicide when a black convertible passes by with a license plate that reads ENVY. Matthew stops walking.
944    “M – Maci?” He half-whispers, a freezing spark passing from his feet through his spine, tickling the spot where it meets the double-action pistol in his waistband.
945    “What? No… she don’t know where I live. She must be on the way to the bar or something. Good looking out. Let’s go inside before she sees us.” Brian scampers up the poorly-lit concrete slabs, climbing to the second floor of the dismal palace amidst the Laundromat and Liquor stores of the midtown. After procuring a small card from his low-hanging jeans, a lock clicks and the two enter their humble abode.
946    “That was Maci?” Matthew’s voice is taught.
947    “Well, you know anyone else with that car? Why, don’t you like her?”
948    “No – I mean, she’s cool, I guess. For a whacked-out junkie, at least.” Matthew tries to force a lightness in his tone which results in a desultory whine.
949    “Yeah, well – she’s got problems. I thought about taking her back here, but I don’t wanna get her involved in all this, you know. She seems… nice, or something. She’d probably screw it up for us, anyway.” Brian’s face softens, and he catches himself quickly. “Crazy bitch.” He stretches his arms above his head, pulling a silver Glock from his front waistband before placing it in the bottom drawer of the nightstand, next to the Gideon Bible.
950    “How come they don’t have a church?” Matthew wonders aloud, sitting down in the uncomfortable desk chair next to a once-glossy brochure of local interests that exclusively features destinations almost an hour away from their present location.
951    “What? Who, crazy bitches? I went to Catholic school, and I can tell you – they do. Ruthless, crazy, hit you with rulers. That isn’t a myth, you know – they actually hit you.” Brian sits on his bed, Matthew mentally recording it for future reference. “I deserved it, of course, but still.”
952    “No, I mean the Gideons. What do they do except going around and putting bibles in hotel rooms? They never knock on your door and ask for money, or evangelize on television – I’ve never seen a Gideon church.” Matthew leans back, discovering why Brian removed his firearm first, and clumsily takes it out from behind him, looking over it and feeling the surprising weight in his hands before trying to nonchalantly place it in the top drawer of the desk, its width scraping against the wood and forcing him to leave it an inch open. Brian stares wistfully out the window, a nearby streetlamp casting a lined shadow over his face.
953    “Actually, that’s kind of badass. They don’t need a church, they’re so big. Everyone just knows about them because everyone sees their name when they travel.” He swings back toward the center of the room, reaching over to the nightstand and leaning back, a remote control in his hand. He aims and clicks, Matthew turning toward the television and covering the ajar drawer with his body, hoping he won’t notice and start asking him what’s wrong. The television clicks to life, and the sound fades in before the picture.
954    “If you kill him, you’ll destroy yourself.” A course, old voice slowly explains to a soundscape of mild static and creaking wood.
955    “But doctor, my grandfather is evil – he murdered people in cold blood. How can I not stop him?” The voice is a young man, the picture fading in to reveal an office in which book-lined shelves surround a leather chair and a couch, an older man in a suit giving council to his young subject.
956    “Matthew, if you disrupt the timeline, then you’ll disrupt the entire universe, and the consequences could create a rift in the very fabric of space-time. I know it’s difficult, but you must allow things to continue as they are supposed to.” A violin croons out a rising tremolo, the young man’s hands running agonized through his brown, clean-cut hair.
957    “What is this?” Matthew asks, sitting up.
958    “I don’t know – I think it’s one of those time-travel shows. They always turn out the same way, parallel universes and scientist doctors having to fix the stuff some douche messes up.” Brian pulls a bottle of cheap whiskey from the middle drawer, extracting a sip from the bottle and gritting his teeth.
959    “We will return to… The Grandfather Clause, presented by Aeneid Classics.” The droll announcer fades out, replaced quickly by the gripping explosion of an electric guitar wail and a chorus-line of girls in lingerie, all holding large phones to their ear and laughing with a high-pitched cacophony.
960    “Dial One, Nine-Six-Six, For-Lust” They all chirp beseechingly, their exhortation accompanied by the thrusting of their pendulous breasts into the camera. Matthew leans back, thinking of the lawyer and Priscilla.
961    “Hey, B.” Matthew looks at his roommate, snorting hard after a snoot of sharp-smelling liquid.
962    “Sup?”
963    “Let’s just say that in the future, something happens to pie. Let’s say you meet a banana and he was responsible for cream-pie-ing banana. What would you do?” Brian clears his throat, putting down the bottle.
964    “What the hell did you just say?” His nose flares in and out once.
965    “Cream-pie.” Matthew hears himself, and stops talking, looking toward the television screen.
966    “You wanna watch a skin-flick or something? You need some alone time, dog? What’s your problem?” Brian’s hands are lingering on either side of him, ready to push himself off the bed and into control of this oddity of behavior. Matthew sighs, feeling an internal pressure shifting, a cog slipping somewhere into place.
967    “Naw, nothing – I just had a sudden urge for some dessert. You like banana cream pie?” He looks directly at him, back in control.
968    “Okay, whatever. You’re going out for pie right now? Are you high?” Brian’s tone is unwavering.
969    “I’ll be back.” Matthew rises, smoothly pulling the gun from the drawer and slipping it under his shirt before leaving the room, and Brian, in a quiet and slightly disheveled state.
970
971_______________________________
972
973    Brian is trying to restrain himself from punching the computer. He already struck the monitor once in anger, the dull ache in his knuckles instructing him of the folly that lies therein. Mel-bot is not cooperating. His best friend is missing. Altogether, it has been a bad day, he concludes wearily while whispering mild curses at the glowing screen. There was a snafu on the roll sheets that temporarily removed his name from the roster on either math class that he was enrolled in, causing his new teacher to confusedly send him to the counseling office, who directed him to the substitute in charge of his old class, who didn’t know him either. In defiance, he had walked over to library during third period, where he heard about the fight that he hadn’t realized his friend was involved in until he spoke with his parents that afternoon, who informed him that he had run away, which he is trying to presently distract himself from thinking about by chatting with his artificial-intelligence program, which – while he was successful in finally getting it to say something random – has spent the last fifteen minutes convincing him of the error of its being called that at all by refusing to respond to any of his questions without the mention of banana cream pies.
974    “Forget this…” he mutters as he closes the program, absentmindedly opening the browser and navigating to the Otherwhere website, the splash screen fading into the login window. He punches keys insolently, his avatar appearing in the last place he left it, Dave’s art show/coffeehouse/apartment complex. A pointer indicates him as “Brianstem”, the pun on his name having drawn laughs from too-few users, in his opinion, and attached to it stands a patch-skin-enabled replica of the original Mr. Spock, his Vulcan ears pointing casually at a hanging fixture on the see-through walls of the gallery, through which the coffeehouse was bustling with virtual business, steaming pixels of tiny coffee mugs carried about by the motley assortment of animals, characters, likenesses, and icons lounging about and socializing. Brian recalls the last conversation he had with Matthew, searching it for meaning that might indicate where he could have gone, what he could have done. He is frustrated and feeling somewhat cheeky.
975    Brianstem: “Hello, any dead people here?” His avatar enters the coffeehouse with this general greeting affixed to the projection of his personage.
976    GothGrrrl: /winks/ “Nice ears, sci-fi – you hunting vampires from space?”
977    Brianstem: “Very funny. Just a theory a friend of mine has. I’m exploring every possibility here because he’s missing.”
978    GothGrrrl: “Maybe he’s not online?”
979    Brianstem: “No, he’s actually missing. For real. In reality.”
980    GothGrrrl: “And you think he’s dead? And you’re looking for him here?”
981    Brianstem: “Not really. He just said something that made me think about it, and I thought I’d test his theory that there might be dead people talking online.”
982    GothGrrrl: “RU out of your Vulcan mind?”
983    Brianstem: /groans/ “Look, never mind. It was a stupid idea. But if you meet anyone named Dante, then tell him to find me or call or something.”
984    GothGrrrl: /smiles/ “Hey, it’s not that stupid – I’m a vampire, so if the undead are here, then maybe the dead are, too. You could post something on the kiosk, though.”
985    Brianstem: “The kiosk?”
986    GothGrrrl: “It’s like a bulletin board. You can post lost and found stuff, wanted items, personal ads, anything within the guidelines. No weird stuff or offensive materials.”
987    Brianstem: “Thanks. I’ll try to remember that.” He directs his avatar to leave the shop, intending on coming back during less hectic hours to the kiosk to post a message – inwardly hoping the option to be moot.
988    Exiting the intangible business, Brian despondently punches a function button on the keyboard, his shiny black head being crowned by two small fists plunging through the cyber-atmosphere, leaving the ground in a swift and decisive fashion that still thrills him somewhere inside. The ground begins to break into the winding pattern of lines that demarcate the zones of the Otherwhere universe, the silver-blue award-winning ocean recently updated to include a stereogram of the name “Slartibartfast” – the screen name of the programmer responsible for the life-like simulation of cresting and interlacing waves – visible once every hour from any point above the water. Brianstem soars out in a random direction, seeking an altitude and distance from which a clear blue patch fills the screen, never having had much luck with the so-called magic-eye pictures he recalls struggling to see from his childhood. Historically, he had comforted himself by concluding that he was simply too focused to properly disengage his eyes from the individual dots in the grainy image – he now refers to the recently-acquired skill of using his peripheral vision to give it another go. Staring at the closet, the screen begins to blur, and in the blurring a deep structure appears, an ‘s’ swimming to the surface amidst a crisscross of previously-invisible lines. Without allowing himself to turn toward the monitor, knowing this would collapse the rising epithet into chaos, he watches as the rest of the name etches itself into his ganglions, marveling at the sheer cleverness of the creator. Within the circle of the second ‘a’, he sees a blemish – a thin red line that looks like a wisp of a pointer on which an avatar’s name was normally attached. Swiveling toward the monitor, the creator’s name breaks apart, cascading back into the ocean, leaving the thin red line in the middle of nowhere. He returns his gaze to the corner of the room, his peripheral vision making clear the fuzzy haze of shape suggesting itself as present. Brianstem descends, reaching an equivalent distance of about three hundred feet above cyber-sea-level before he can make out the white lettering that demarcates the presence of a voyager amidst the darkening sea, a pixel-wide speck enlarging below it to construct a very small island. It says “Dante.”
989
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991
992    Matthew approaches the Big Fifteen convenience mart, named for the number of hours in its original business day, now reminding him of the dissonance racking his heavily-muscled body, the suit of meat inflexible and unwieldy to his steps. He is fifteen, going on ninety-three, going on thirty-five, going on twenty-seven, going on twenty-two. Or so he imagines, the ages of his lives slipping away into the summer breeze along with the exhaust of a passing taxi. He does not want dessert. He enters the sliding door, an aimless rage breathing inside him, the nomadic resentment parodying his meandering existence and casting a dull sheen to the neon lights flooding the bright store. He scans the shelves, eyeing the canned merchandise consisting of mechanically-separated food product, the plastic and Styrofoam containers of dried noodles and deodorant cast on either side in a vague nod toward grocery-store sections. He approaches the altar of cold beverages, radiating refreshment from behind frosted glass, and he spies a forty-ounce bottle of Phoenix malt liquor, the garish representation of a singed avian entity staring, panic-stricken, from the label. The rush of cold air bespeaks the promise of sanity as he reaches in, hefting the bottle from the rack, the solid click of the rubber-lined refrigeration-unit door sounding behind him. He anticipates the blunt hammer of acidic yeast coating his throat, the uncertainty of his future fading into the resonant heartbeat of thinned blood. He recalls having needed it before, but this is the first time he can recall wanting a drink.
993    Placing the bottle on the counter, the attendant emerges after a short moment when Matthew considers how easy it might be to simply walk out, a thick moustache and cold, beady eyes piercing his thought and pinning it behind him.
994    “Anything else?” the heavily-accented voice robotically inquires, a pricing-gun being placed next to the register, Matthew presuming it to be the source of his delay.
995    “No, thanks. That oughtta do it.” Matthew’s hand searches his pocket, finding cotton and lint in place of a billfold.
996    “That’s one-ninety-five.” Intones the patient, pasty-faced man, staring through Matthew toward the candy display behind him. Matthew says nothing, patting himself down and suddenly remembering the routine.
997    First, he puts his wallet and license in the drawer, making sure not to have any identification if they happen to get stopped by police. The spray can goes next, resting against his crotch in the hanging compartment of his sagging jeans. Then the gun is nestled against his tailbone, his extra-long shirt covering the grip. When they reach their destination, Brian takes his gun and the can comes out, Matthew being lowered over the rails to tag, covering as much area as he can before the blood in his head threatens to knock him out and they take a quick breather before resuming. They had marked dozens of overpasses, laying claim to an anonymously-owned grid of wire and concrete, giving existential solidity to a shifting and isolated world. If caught, they had always planned to say that they were homeless, but they paid taxes and therefore it was theirs to sign as they wished.
998    “Hey – you going to pay?” Matthew identifies the accent as something Eastern European, and the patience in the voice had run out as quickly as the candy that needed to be restocked yet again in his twelve-hour shift. A quiet resilience boils up from deep within his stomach, and he pulls the gun before he knows what he is doing.
999    “No. I’m not.” The man sighs gently, lowering his eyes to meet the barrel of the weapon, a moment’s hesitation lingering before the register opens with a loud slide and ding, the change rustling against the outer limit of the carriage along which it traveled, the hands that would normally stop it being limply raised on either side of the man’s head.
1000    “Take the money.” He steps back, turning around to face the storeroom and lacing his fingers behind his head in a manner that Matthew finds disarmingly routine.
1001    “I don’t want the money. I just want the beer.” Matthew stares at the bead he has drawn on the man’s back, his anger mixing with a spiky shame to press against his rib cage along with his heartbeat. “In fact, I’ll come back with the money later if you let me have the beer.”
1002    “No – take the money.” The man commands, irate. “Veles will never believe we got robbed for a goddam forty.”
1003    “What? I told you – I have money, just not with me. I think I made a mistake, actually – I just want the beer, so I’m going to take it and leave.” Matthew places his left hand on the bottle, his right still clutching the nine-millimeter, pointing it at the body-mass of the attendant who spins around to face him with a menacing sneer.
1004    “What the hell is wrong with you? Are you on drugs? You’re robbing a store, so take the money and leave – I’m sick of being blamed for the crackheads who steal from this place, so just take the cash – it’s like two-hundred dollars – and go.” Matthew is terrified to lower the gun, and he steps back, brandishing the bottle.
1005    “Are you crazy? There are cameras – they’ll see me taking the bottle, you won’t get blamed, guy.” Matthew’s kilter is many degrees off.
1006    “Crazy? You know what’s crazy? This whole damn country is crazy!” The man’s hands unfold, his right arm gesticulating while the other remains perched behind the disposable paper food-handler’s bonnet required by law for the dozen or so times throughout the day when he drops pre-boiled frankfurters into plastic-wrapped buns and hands them to customers over the counter. “You know where those cameras go? They go to this machine they call a DVR. Do you know what a DVR is?” Matthew is stunned into a gaping silence. “Neither does Veles!” The man, without looking, pulls a bag from his right, into which he begins stuffing money from the register. “The insurance company, they say we have a deductible to pay before we can claim a loss, nobody has stolen enough at once to cost us enough for them to give us anything – and we pay them every month, never late – never late – and so you can come in here and steal not even enough booze to get really drunk? What is wrong with you – at least take the stuff from the locked shelf, for god’s sake! You ever had gold-label scotch? You have a gun, so you deserve the gold-label scotch, damn you to hell – take the fine, oak-barrel aged liquor from our fine and wonderful store and take enough to make it worth my time getting robbed, you son of a bitch!” Matthew runs out the door, a whirlwind of what he correctly presumes to be angry Russian swearing swirling behind him in a tempest. Tucking the pistol behind him, he caroms into a nearby alley and uncaps the bottle, the warm sweat from his palms making it difficult to open. He drinks, the impotent siren wailing in the distance adding vitriol to his fuming wick of malcontent.
1007
1008_______________________________
1009
1010    Brianstem floats down toward the island, homing in on the tiny speck that bears his friend’s screenname. Recinding from the perimeter in a ring are a number of large, grey towers that Brian has always referred to as “priapism-land,” the term he had learned in eighth-grade biology having always stuck with him, aptly. In the center of the island, which is barely large enough to be called so, stands a large, bear-shaped shadow, frozen in a menacing stance and donned with only the thin red indication line that refers to it as Dante.
1011    Brianstem: “Matthew, it’s me – what are you doing?” Brian stares, frozen in a sidelong glance at the monitor, worried that looking directly at the scene will collapse it among the background. Moments pass, and he tries again.
1012    Brianstem: /shouting/ “Matthew, where the hell are you?” The bright red color indicates that Dante is online, Brian inwardly narrowing his mental search to several probable locations for a nighttime internet session other than home. “Are you at Queequeg’s?” He sits, waiting, imagining him perhaps in the restroom or buying a drink, his frustration building to a peak. “Why did you change your avatar?” He is talking to no one, shouting into the virtual air, and he forestalls the urge to look directly at the screen. His eye begins to water from both strain and anger, and he notices a deeper shadow hiding within the bear. Unable to blink, Brian makes out a new name attached the gray, semi-translucent pointer that indicates offline status. It says “Maci.” Next to her, coming from almost underneath her, another grey line indicates the presence of a name, blurry and unrecognizable. Two more thin grey lines appear, forming a circle around the bear that begins to shift and blend into itself, the names flickering and the blur around the island barely enabling him to see the emergence of a human shadow next to his avatar, which sports a bright red line that reads “Virgil.” Brian looks directly at the monitor, his focus wildly shifting and emerging through several watery blinks to discover the empty cyber-sea ebbing and flowing around him, his avatar hovering above the churning waters and idly parting its middle and ring fingers into a v-shape, the pre-programmed gesticulation he set it to enact whenever five minutes have passed without any movement. Brian strikes the monitor, the glassy thwack chastising his bruised knuckles, his hand automatically moving to cover the throbbing ache as he leans back in the char, the water now passing freely from his eyes and rolling down his cheeks.
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1014_______________________________
1015
1016    The bottle stands empty at his feet, Matthew crumpled against a wall, still warm from the day’s heat. Standing wearily, his anger unchecked, he clods through the streets of the city, the heaviness of his steps warning most passers-by to steer clear. Two young men he perceives as thugs scramble past, wearing blue kerchiefs around their neck and signing at him from a few yards away. Reflexively, he contorts his fingers at them in like fashion, sharply nodding toward the pair as they scuttle away into the distance. Turning a corner, a large figure rests against a wall, holding a smoking spliff and staring dead-level into his face with steel eyes. He is standing atop red-laced sneakers, and his hand reaches behind him, poised like a snake’s coil. Matthew’s thumb and index finger curl into a circle on each hand, like a martyr in repose, before adjoining a curled pair of ring and pinkies in perfect symmetry against one another, spelling “blood” with his mirror-image. He is allowed to continue walking, and meanders down an alley to the main drag of the city, where a woman sits, defeated and almost hidden behind a heavy slump of rags, on a bus-stop bench. She looks at him and begins to laugh.
1017    “What’s so funny?” Matthew’s temper, alit already, lashes out.
1018    “You’re like a boomerang, aren’t you?” She spits out through a shadow-speckled maw, dark holes protruding where several teeth should be.
1019    “Oh – you’re crazy, then. Great.” He turns away, looking toward a distant crowd of people congregating outside of a building with a large silver cross above its door.
1020    “You went out, and now you’re coming back. Too slowly, huh?” She rolls lightly from side to side, breathing in short bursts and muttering incomprehensibly when not directly to him. She holds a portable radio, the static of which escapes the folds of her mottled clothes which wrap around her like a cocoon. “You know, you’re doing this to yourself.” Matthew stops, staring her in the face.
1021    “What do you mean? What am I doing to myself?” He thinks, for a moment, that she might be an oracle, hopes for a second that she might see through him, see his struggle, help him home. “What do I need to do?”
1022    “You need… pie. You need to banana. Cream…” She chortles, laughing uncontrollably, and rolling to the side, pressing the radio against her ear and humming softly along with a song she alone can hear.
1023    “Yeah. I know.” Matthew exhales through his nose, which is flaring and sweaty, and walks toward the crowd, milling about with pamphlets in their hands. As he approaches, they all turn and stare in tandem, a tall, blonde zealot stepping forward to greet him. Matthew recognizes the face.
1024    “Do you know god?” His teeth grimace, the wrinkles above his cheeks creasing to point toward either side of his pasty face. He extends a pamphlet like an olive branch, his flock taking sidelong glances at the man, a look of intense concentration on their faces as they try to remember this example he is giving them.
1025    “Excuse me?” Matthew stops, trying to breath the beer-breath into the man’s nose to maybe back him away, this only exciting him more.
1026    “You seem like you need god right now – we all do. Do you know the meaning of god?” His eyes jut back and forth between Matthew and the congregation, each member trying to appear as holy as he or she can.
1027    “I have a feeling you’re going to tell me.” Matthew responds with resignation, ruing the moment he allowed himself to stop moving.
1028    “What if I told you it was very simple – the simplest thing in the world?” The man pitches his spiel, the excitement building up behind his breathy exhortation. “God means love. That’s all there is to it. God is love and love is god. Isn’t that wonderful?” His mouth remains half-open, his eyes staring through Matthew at the empty street behind him. The pamphlet starts to sag in the man’s hand, bending gently toward the ground and seeming to be begging for rescue. Matthew’s hands stay pinned to his side, the unnerving feeling that he was just like this blonde charlatan gnawing at him, drawing a rage that he turned on the doe-eyed, compassionate countenance.
1029    “Oh, really? Love, you say? God is love?” His tone is unkind.
1030    “Yes – it’s the secret of the universe, it’s the simple truth of salvation.” The man’s hair blows softly in a passing breeze, the people behind him nodding and smiling beatifically.
1031    “Well, that figures then. What’s so great about love?” There is s a murmur among the smattering of men and women, the tall man’s smile fading. “Isn’t it love that makes people jealous and crazy? Is it the same love that makes us miserable when our fathers or mothers leave, or husbands or wives run off with someone else they love more?” The man steps back, the pamphlet returning to his side.
1032    “No – no, this love is endless –” 
1033    “– Love is what drives us to chase people across the country trying to get back what we lost. Love is what makes us mad and raving – you know what? If god is love, then that explains why this universe is so screwed up. And you can have that kind of god if you want it, but I think I’ll stick with knowing that I can’t depend on anything but me – at least then I won’t keep getting disappointed.” Matthew turns away from the crowd, now muttering to one another with zeal and worry, the tall man waving them back, speaking softly to calm them.
1034    The details of his newest life dribble slowly into his mind – his first thought is his name, Maddox. His second thought is how disappointed he is by selling drugs. Actually, he is surprised not so much by his lack of disappointment over dealing in the first place, but over his lack of success in making it a full-time occupation. He recalls a life in high school with Brian – before the knife-fight that scarred his face. Matthew remembers Maddox overhearing the cheerleaders talking about buying speed to help them lose weight, and how expensive it was. Brian’s response was a clever grin and a feigned stomach ache which he used to get out of class and off campus to the pharmacy, where he used most of the money he had to buy a large number of diet pills, Matthew closing his eyes and reviewing the memory of them using a heavy-duty baggy and a couple of big rocks to crush the tablets into powder. Having a captive audience and a willing market makes dealing very easy, he muses, and smiles at the reminiscence of bubbly flag-girls handing twenties across hidden niches of the school for the baggies of what they bragged in secret to each other about snorting and staying up all night because of, the truth lingering privately between the two boys.
1035    What bound them together at first was the shared experience of being refugees by proxy – both of them were children of immigrants who had snuck across the river to birth them on American soil, the hopes of their futures driving them to take the risk of hiring a coyote. In each case, the mothers stayed hidden, the fathers trying to find work and getting deported when the boys were at a young age. Growing up without fathers, the two boys relied on each other and the cues of their peers and culture to guide them toward survival. Brian’s mom, desperate for money, had started bringing home strange men, thus estranging herself from her son and eventually leading her to the temporary position of drug-mule. At sixteen, Brian’s mother never came back one evening. He dropped out of school and stayed with Maddox, whose mother cleaned houses for sixteen hours a day, a lot of which revenue was used to support her habit of self-medication with alcohol and methamphetamine. At seventeen, the boys ran off into the night, having amassed enough from their illicit diet pills to buy a motel room and three ounces of pot. Dealing drugs is hard work, Matthew vicariously reminds himself, replaying the hours of endless scheming and plotting with every denizen of the street they could find, sidling up to the others who, like them, had found the most reliable family in the roving bands of nomadic adolescents who bore the telltale soldier’s uniform of saggy pants and t-shirt, scraping and saving for years without amassing the fortune that was promised to them by both the Channel-Four News and Scarface alike.
1036    Matthew is climbing the stairs to the room, his footsteps heavy as he knocks four times on the door, signaling to Brian to let him in. Slumping down on the bed he recalls as his, Brian wavers in his steps, his arms seeming to be especially heavy for him as he shoves the door shut and falls decisively onto the mattress. The bottle on the nightstand is three-quarters empty.
1037    “You know, I’m beginning to think that Brokaw and Pacino owe us an apology.” Matthew muses, Brian’s face hanging vacantly on his head.
1038    “Whu?” The slurred retort mellifluously drones.
1039    “Man, we’re supposed to be in a damn mansion, fending off hookers and competitors, rolling around in blow and A-Ks. What the hell happened?” His question is half-rhetorical, half the product of his memory stopping short at the recent past.
1040    “Fool, shut up. We’re just lucky to have this place.” Brian’s head swaggers left and right, his arm starting to gesticulate before dropping back behind him to prevent his collapse. “After what happened with Chuy… that was pretty wack, you know…” Brian closes his eyes, slowly leaning back and looking toward the celing, falling gracefully onto the bed and muttering “pretty wack” several times before a heavy snoring replaced the words.
1041    Matthew lays back in the bed, removing the pistol from his shorts and tucking it under the pillow. He stretches his arms on either side, laying them out and swinging his feet onto the mattress after kicking off his shoes. He hears the old lady repeating over in his mind the words “you’re doing this to yourself.” Virgil had said something similar. He closes his eyes, ruminating on the mystery with sullen, sad anger. He thought he liked himself okay – he thought he was a good person. There is a constant and impervious guilt living within him, and he cannot escape it – he retraces his life, Maddox’s own creeping in at points, melding the two together, and he realizes he is dreaming a scene that actually happened to the young man. Chuy was dead. They were Gideons.
1042    Brian had been out, slanging coke to one side of town. Maddox was dealing to the other. They had divided it up according to affiliation, each gaining confidence with the controlling gang of their respective area. The truth was that no one was really sure anymore what gang was winning – there was only the brotherhood. Like any religion, the rites and rituals mattered much more than the content, and Maddox was a blood as much as Brian was a crip – enough to earn the trust required to talk to the appointed kingpin and request the right to do business, granting special privilege and discount to the homies, of course. Like a secret rendezvous between a Coca-Cola and Pepsi salesman, the two would sneak away, amassing their earnings in a lockbox in the swanky suite they had managed to afford, laughing at their own cleverness. Then, Chuy arrived.
1043    Brian’s cousin was honest, and a good friend throughout the years. Having recently attained citizenship, he left his parents in Mexico, promising to find a job with his successful primo, who had written and sent money over the past few years, claiming – quite correctly – to be an up-and-coming entrepreneur in the city, dealing in freelance pharmaceutical supply. Chuy’s forte was not in subtext, and he was crestfallen to find that his cousin refused to get him a position in the business, which was explained away by a temporary recession in the industry. The boys made a part-time job out of looking for safe employment for the young seventeen-year-old, his kind, loyal demeanor eating away at their consciences. They started taking risks, stepping up their solicitations, cutting back the mixture to extend the life of each batch of cocaine. It was Maddox who didn’t notice when one of his eses followed him to where he was talking to Brian. It was Maddox who didn’t realize he was being watched as the two walked side-by-side into the hotel, and up to the room they shared. It was Maddox who awoke to gunshots, watching as their safe was knocked open with a large sledgehammer, the room torn apart as a blood-soaked Chuy lay lifeless on the floor, Maddox firing a number of rounds at the three men who fled with all the drugs and money they could find.
1044    Starting over was difficult, and required a relocation several cities over. Chuy was hailed by news reports as a drug czar from Mexico, the very archetype of the threat from the south that had to be stopped. The investigation was all but nonexistent, and Maddox and Brian lived every day with the dull ache of truth swaddling them in the rough burlap that sent them down the river. Matthew sees this, feels the bile rising from his spleen, and sits up, the guilt borne anew in his breast. It is his guilt somehow, though he inherited it by an invisible thread of experience, and he is driven to action. He rises from the bed, pulling the gun from his pillow, and looking at the clock. Three-thirty-three in the morning. He shakes Brian awake.
1045    “Hey, G – get up.” Brian jarringly rolls off the bed, looking around in a panic.
1046    “What happened?” He splutters.
1047    “Nothing. It’s time to go. We need to finish something.” Matthew opens the bottom drawer of his night stand, reaching past the Gideon Bible to find a can of spraypaint.
1048
1049_______________________________
1050
1051    The streets are all but dead, even the nomadic rebellion of thug life ensconced within the hollows of the city, the pair of hollow young men cutting a zigzag of drunkenness and fatigue through the wasteland, shadowed by a starless sky. Streetlamps go out and turn on again in the distance, their loping swagger guiding them to the overpass of a freeway that rests for the time being in virtual silence, the traffic having dwindled to the occasional truck or perhaps the guilty travels of a sleepless quest toward peace of mind. Matthew imagines himself as any one of the weary-eyed travelers, a holistic pall falling upon him, an odd peace hiding behind the fuming injustice that fuels his endless wrath. He sees the future of the man who walks beside him, and cannot speak to it without endangering the balance in which hangs, precarious in his existence, waiting to move forward, or backward, or sideways toward his life again.
1052    “Brian?” Matthew utters quietly, the soft patter of their footsteps echoing in the still air.
1053    “Sup?” Brian slurs, the faint whiskey-stink billowing out from his pores.
1054    “If anything happens to me, just… be careful. Try not to wind up in jail, okay?” Matthew tries to envision the causalities that erupt after this evening, knowing somehow that he is the cause and effect. He is part of a binary pair, he muses, and his frame feels heavy on the concrete.
1055    “Whatever, G… what are we doing, again?” Brian moves forward, his shadow being cast and recast by the passing streetlights.
1056    “We’re making a monument to Chuy. We’re gonna say goodbye.” Matthew tries to plan the timing, his shoes slapping on the cement, the laces loose.
1057    “Oh… that’s okay, I guess.” Brian climbs the mound from which the bridge protrudes, the two using the onramp post to propel themselves up the incline.
1058    Clambering up and onto the sidewall, they move toward the center, Brian taking position as he exchanges the can for Maddox’s weapon. Gripping his ankles, he steels his body for the weight of Maddox’s body, which swings down over the railing and catches in his tightened grasp. Matthew begins, mentally adjusting the position and direction of the lettering. With a large arc, he sprays a red ‘C’, going over it twice to darken and fill in the line. The blood rushes to the top of his head, and he feels a tingling in his feet, which he has tensed to hold his weight pendulously against gravity’s pull. His calves start to tremble.
1059    “You okay there? You’re not gonna drop it again, are you?” Brian calls down mischievously and concerned.
1060    “Naw, I’m cool.” He retorts, beginning the large “H” with two parallel lines, heavily retracing his strokes with an artist’s precision. He moves slowly, listening for his cue. The blood presses more heavily into his head, his eyeballs starting to ache and bulge from the pressure, his brain swimming and spots starting to appear.
1061    “You sure you’re alright? I could pull you up for a minute.” Brian is straining, the sweat gleaming off of his furrowed brow, reflecting the streetlight and glistening like a beacon.
1062    “No – no, keep it up, I’m gonna finish this in a sec.” Matthew’s ears are ringing, almost blocking out the dull rush of wheels that approach from a distance, the soft rumble of an eighteen-wheeler humming along. He arches his neck, his eyes straining to see the oncoming semi, the calculation falling into place as a warm breeze passes through his body. Everything was starting to fall into place. Matthew takes a deep breath, and flexes his legs. 
1063    “Hey, you wanna – Maddox!” Brian feels the grip of his shoes as the feet within them shimmy against the plastic, shedding them like snakeskin. He watches as his friend plummets, legs flailing, caught full-force by the unsuspecting big-rig against which he disappears completely, borne by the passing metal machine which jackknifes against the pressure of the slamming brakes, screaming and squealing to a stop a hundred yards past the bridge. Swiveling around, holding the sneakers in front of him like an offering to the gods, he sees the rolling figure of Maddox tossed by the front of the semi into the five lanes, limbs flailing doll-like through the night, moving away until he can no longer make it out against the pavement.
1064
1065_______________________________
1066
1067    At the kiosk, Brian suddenly shivers, a chill racking his body and causing him to embrace himself in the chair. In the corner of his eyes, he thinks he sees the image of a yellow frog replace the shape of a red bear in his closet, but when he turns to look it disappears.
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1091Chapter 10: Childhood
1092
1093    Marcos lies on the floor, the heavy breathing from all sides distracting him away from sleep. His muscles rebel against the notion of staying still, having kept him in perpetual motion for fifteen hours, even taking his meals standing. He will never see his parents again.
1094    “Duérmete mi niño. Duérmete solito. Qué cuando te despiertes, te daré atolito.” He hums to himself the lullaby his mother sang him a lifetime ago, trying to return now in his mind to her warmth. His fingers are raw, the skin peeling back around the small calluses that have formed, yet too small to stave off the stinging air from his threadbare skin. “Duérmete mi niño. Duérmete mi sol. Duérmete pedazo, de mi corazón.” Amidst the darkness, the wood creaks, the restless writhing of nightmares ever present throughout the room. Jesus wept. So did Beto and Freddie, by his account, judging from the distance of the shaking moans. He listens to his heart, numbly beating on despite the torture it brings him day by day.
1095    He is a prisoner of war, held captive in the second story of a French restaurant in the heart of a downtown industrial district. He is a secret, like the others, and the speeding lines of people beaming in and out of the building are unaware of his tragedy. They will be unaware forever, as far as he knows, and none of them are allowed to know how their parents were made promises by stern men who said they could get them across the border, their children going first because the loving arms of Tío Sam would care for them, three months in day care before the paperwork clears. The days wore on, Marcos remembers, at first like a game where he just follows directions and learns to sew. He has watched his mother labor with needle and thread, mending clothes and creating clothes, and he is eager to unravel the mystery of this string, which he picks up quickly, producing his first pair of socks after only a day. The men watch him from the corner, their faces dead, their eyes dull. The machines whir on throughout the day, his rate of production being monitored and charted, his prowess growing with the bones of his hands becoming more clearly visible to the naked eye, the skin growing taut and dry around the joints. The game becomes more difficult, his limit having been reached, and he begins to count the passes of the cloth under the needle, seeing how many he can do before the five-minute water break is called. His counting continues like a reflex, the numbers rattling on under his breath as he eats, offal and bread from the eatery below being passed clandestinely up the small ladder and into the mouths of the children twice a day – once before they open, once after they close. The ten hour stretch between is filled with counting and water.
1096    Marcos counts also the days – one-hundred and fifty-seven. His calendar is hazy, but he knows now how the men lied. He knows now how he will never return, how his parents are crying somewhere, having given their children away in trust of a better future. He does not blame them, who used to warn him of La Llorona when he misbehaved, scaring him into self-correction. He does not hate him, his father who works long hours and cannot afford the abogado de inmigración necessary to find his better life. He does not hate her, his mother who has become La Llorona.
1097    Marcos counts and waits. He feels his heart slowing, its futility now the only thing clear to him. Finally, after several hours, he thinks he might sleep. He thinks he might sleep for a long time. He decides he will sleep forever. The sounds of weeping and the gnashing of cold, hungry teeth fade into the background as the lullaby plays softly in his head, letting the life within him finally rest.
1098    “Duérmete mi niño. Duérmete solito. Qué cuando te despiertes, te daré atolito…”
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1102    Matthew’s anger has subsided, he realizes, the impossible feeling of being intercepted by the load-laden transport of industry and commerce casting himself from the body he had felt so burdened by. He feels lighter now, smaller now than before, a lithe feeling underpinning the sore ache that ekes in, reminding him of the night he had spent once on Brian’s floor at a sleepover. They had practiced hypnosis, and he discovered that he could lower his heart and breathing rate, the dip to which he pushed it scaring him out of the trance, making him consider the possibility of accidentally willing himself to death. The irony is not lost on him as he opens Marcos’ eyes, the lack of sunlight shocking his fully-dilated pupils. His fingers hurt, and he tests his limbs, the tightness juxtaposed against the size of his body making him imagine himself as a puppet, bound together by wiry threads. Sitting up, he turns to his left and right to discover that he is surrounded by slumbering children. Looking down, he sees that he is one of them. A high-pitched squeak erupts, causing several to stir, Matthew taking several moments to realize that it has come from his own throat. A heavy door is thrown open from the floor in the corner, its light illuminating the dust that hangs in the musty air, bringing with it the smell of grease and the clash of pots and knives. It is a morning smell, and a large man appears through the floorboards, calling out “levántese” and banging a wooden spoon against a large pot of coffee, which he places on a long wooden table, lined with sewing machines. Shortly, a tray of copper-smelling meats is cast down next to it, a basket of bread thrown uncharitably alongside. Matthew forces his body to stand, his cotton-fibre nightclothes scratching against his small bones. An instinct of fear tells him to take his pillowcase and stuff it in his shirt.
1103    “Coman, pendejos!” The gruff figure blurts, standing with folded arms in the corner. Matthew is pushed aside by the wave of his peers, clambering forth to the table of victuals, singular in their purpose. He counts maybe twenty of them before straggling forth against the teeming mass, the children reeling to the side after taking handfuls of the meat and bread, rushing to the corners to scarf it down like wolves. They haven’t the strength to fight one another, and they have learned the punishment for doing so is worse than that dealt by their opponents, so they create a makeshift order out of the chaos, each winding up with about enough food to last through the day. Matthew arrives at the table, taking a handful of meat and crouching over as if to reach the bread, but placing a clump in the pillowcase tucked within the folds of his nightshirt. Drawing back with a piece of bread, he takes another handful of the grayish, steaming tripe and organ-meats, lifting the pile to his mouth as the tray is scraped dry by the pointy hands of his fellow laborers. Minutes later, the line forms for the coffee, each child taking a steaming mug and sipping from it for strength and vitality throughout the day. Matthew holds the hot cup, sniffing at the sooty-smelling bitter liquid, taking a cursory sip and wincing less at the heat than at the flavor, which scores his tongue and causes him to take another – if only to remove the taste of the meat from his mouth.
1104    Beto, the largest boy among them, after finishing his coffee, takes a deep breath and walks slowly to the back of the room, heaving a large box of thread above his head and balancing it atop his crown, carrying it like an Egyptian water-woman to the table, where he sullenly drops it and opens it, pulling ends out and handing them to the boys. Wordlessly, they thread them into the machine, each stepping to a pedal like a choreographed line-dance, bobbing and working with their hands and arching their backs into a curve. Matthew’s sense-memory comes to him slowly, the pattern of repetition having worn a groove in his nerves, Marcos working diligently through him – or he through Marcos, he cannot discern which is which. The hours wear on, the grim yellow bulbs hanging from the ceiling switching on as the hatch swings closed, the lively sounds of dining echoing up from the room below. Matthew recalls Marcos’ life, the infancy of colic and tears that caused him to eat and eat, then vomit and eat, his parents calling him “avaricito” because of his seemingly endless need for more blankets, more care, more milk. He recalls the years on the field, working a small farm on which his parents labored for an agribusiness, the faceless corporation handing them a wage that almost kept them fed. His parents would tell him of how what they made was sold up north, the people there able to afford luxuries and treasures he couldn’t imagine. They would tell him, he remembers, of how he would go there, and thrive, his hard work-ethic proving superior to the lazy gueros who didn’t know the value of a peso. Most of them didn’t, Matthew notes, the machine whirring and him counting subconsciously as the pattern of a men’s sock takes shape below him, the signature arrow on the heel familiar to his past and present – he isn’t sure where, but he has seen it before.
1105    “Agua!” A voice calls out, a hose from the kitchen being dragged up the ladder and cast into the room like a fishing line. The boys line up, each slurping and handing it back, Matthew crouching behind the tall boy in front of him and reaching into his shirt for the greasy load of stinking meat, his stomach sliding against the slimy spot in the cloth. Pulling out a dripping wad, he stuffs it in his mouth, chewing and trying to focus on the salt part of the flavor, given a metallic undertone by the steel residue in his hand. Chewing quickly and swallowing, he looks around, procuring another small wad, staring down at it for a moment before he is to place it between his teeth. His hand flies from his face, the meat sticking with a wet thump against the wooden wall, the skin on his arm stinging as a large, heavy hand strikes his face, crumpling him to the floor.
1106    “Hijo de puta! Comiendo cuándo estamos trabajando? Pinche puerco! Chavales, mira aquí – tenemos un cerdo en el salón. Debemos matarle y hace salchicha? Ai, puto.” On cue, the children point and laugh, the taste of blood mixing with the remnants of food in Marcos’ mouth. A few of the children look away, refusing to acknowledge his existence or that of the shame he has brought upon himself and the others. One of the children – Beto – spits at him, his mouth moist and the phlegm landing at Marcos’ feet, the public disavowal of this sedition the only thing keeping them from losing hope in their eventual release. The humorless man stands over him, immobile as he slowly rises to his feet, balancing warily as he stares into the unforgiving eyes which soften, then harden again as two hands are placed upon his shoulders, shoving him to the floor before turning and walking toward the hatch, carrying the hose down and latching it shut behind him. The children stare at him, their mouths tight and their faces blank. Wordlessly, they return to their work, ignoring him completely as they wait for the next water break, each child thinking of their families and bending into a labored arch of concentration.
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1109    In his dream, Matthew sees the structure – the interlacing lines forming a multidimensional meshwork of existence, turning and spinning, each point of rotation exposing an unseen facet beneath and within itself. Inside the construction, Matthew looks around, seeing images from his life blending seamlessly into the others, a cinematic pastiche of situations and people moving soundlessly around him. He sees Marcos’ parents sending off their cousin Chuy, wishing him luck and fortune in his travels. The guilt finds him easily, latching on and dragging him inward as the moving picture-globe encircles him, striking out with his past deeds and doings, a juryless and judgeless trial cast around him like a spell. Deep within, a separate guilt speaks to him from the center, a loss both unspeakable and forgotten calling out, a panting breath forming quietly in his ears and culminating with a gentle weeping that permeates his body, racking him with sobs and culling him into consciousness. The room is quiet save for his sobbing. He pulls the bread from his pillowcase, chewing numbly on the flavorless crumbs, his mouth too dry to continue eating it.
1110    Matthew thinks about the cyclotron. Something about the smell of the air below reminds him, and he closes his eyes, remembering what the professor said. He is in no position to connive such a contraption, and the separation from his life, now long ago, it seems, starts him weeping again. He wants to return to that place, his room, his life, and he lays back down, his head resting on the pillow, the grease-stained sheet laying to his side. He listens to his breathing, and searches back for the thin veneer above him. His child’s body quivers, the malnourishment and confinement having manifested physically in an ague of stark hopelessness. His child’s heart beats, slowly, then slower. He can sense the division, hanging above like a spanner of gelatin. With eyes glued shut and breath crawling to minimum, he can see the shadow above him. He grasps the pen in his right hand, calling into existence the mimetic prop to remind him before poking through the veneer. It opens, falling toward him with a soundless pressure, taking him within it and allowing him to see Virgil’s shadow take form amidst the floorboards, the scene around him frozen and recapitulating the grayish tones from which Virgil’s face is coming out.
1111    “Well, now – that was novel.” Virgil smiles, taken aback to find the boy present beside him.
1112    “I want this to end.” Matthew is direct, straightforward in a way that further surprises the old professor, stepping toward him and beaming down at his suspended body, small and struggling.
1113    “I’m sure you do.” He replies, a knowing glance hidden under his brow. “So make it happen.”
1114    “Enough of that wise old sage talk, Virgil – please, I need help.” Matthew’s surroundings sharpen, the children, unaware of the visitation by spirits, weep silently in their sleep of their own accord. Virgil looks hurt for a moment, stepping back to stare into the face of the prostrate figure before him.
1115    “You say cut the sage talk? Very well, then, I will cut the sage talk.” Virgil folds his arms, staring down paternally at Matthew. “Here’s the truth – I have no idea how to get you out of this.” Matthew feels his foundation shake, the possibility of being trapped in this child, in this life, spreading before him like a feast of barbed chains. “But I do know a thing or two about guilt. And that’s what is guiding you here, and that’s what will guide you out. This is not an action movie, Matthew – there’s no magic key to unlock a secret door. There is only pain – and that you’ve suffered in copious amounts, poor boy. Somehow, you’ve finagled your way to a situation that looks pretty hopeless. But you have to keep searching. What’s the other option?” Virgil smiles, weakly now, an unsure expression filling his pale, wrinkled face. “Maybe… I don’t know. Maybe I’m foolish for imposing my own experience on yours. Maybe it would have been wiser if you had never spoken to me, Matthew. Dante. I don’t really know, it could just have been a coincidence – a trick of the mind, of the light, of the universe. You say to cut the sage talk? Very well. I’m tapped out, my friend. It’s your guilt that led you here, and I hope for your sake it will lead you out. Good luck climbing the demon, young man…” Virgil walks away, his shadow evaporating and taking with it the dream of his existence.
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1119    The days move by, the boys adapting once again to the quiet and industrious Marcos they once knew, Matthew’s presence all but indecipherable, all but nonexistent. He moves along with the days, the dull rhythm passing over and through his body, his need for more growing like a cancer in his brain. Matthew reviews his childhood, his mind freed to peruse the past that he begins to imagine is Marcos’ overactive imagination, maybe the precocious outburst of a multiple personality. He sees his father, Bruce, a distant and loving man who finds his way home every evening amidst lectures and seminars to spend a few hours with his son. He sees his mother, Rebecca, a woman struggling with the bounds of her maternity as she takes it upon herself to see that he survives to adulthood. He sees the sparse weekends that once seemed eternal, laid out before him in a frozen moment, spanning the hours during which they would picnic up the river. He feels his stomach drop as he remembers the grass, the hill and the cliff towards which they would look, resting on blankets in a grove past which the swirling eddy of the Tirreno. He hears laughter broken by the sharp scream of discovery and the racking sobs of shock – a name is called out, and he cannot hear it, the swell of emotion pulling him away and back toward the sewing machine at which he stands. The guilt rises, calling to him from his life. He slows his tempo at the needle, the boys standing next to him glancing over with an even mixture of annoyance and concern. Matthew pulls his mind back, focusing on Marcos.
1120    His parents used to call him “avaricito” because of all the food he took. He remembers the boys in the fields picking up on it, echoing it back at him mimetically, their accusation becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy as he plucked up the toys they would leave in the yard, only to be discovered by his mother, Maria. Maria with the son that stole – “huronito” they would tease him, the little ferret failing to live up to the image expected of the son of Maria. He recalls the day he left for this place, this ferret-cage in which he expects to die. He works dexterously at the thread and needle, thinking of the day, the hot air singing with corn and sweat appearing before him in his mind’s eye.
1121    Father came home late the night before, having traveled with his brother to make arrangements for his son’s safe purchase. The house was not big, and provided shelter to five families, all of whom worked on the fields like indentured servants, the common bonds of commercial slavery making them good neighbors. Usually, it was the other couples who fought and bickered amidst the setting sun, some new loophole communicated to the fathers being relayed to the mothers who shot the messengers. Marcos always discerned the valid, yet logically unconnected complaints of his friends’ mothers about their husbands ringing through the thin walls of the separate rooms, two bathrooms being the sole isolation allowed within the commune, ironically serving as the perfect place to overhear the happenings in the entire house. They would all eat together between noon and three, the crackling of wet masa against the large, shared grill signifying that siesta was upon them, and the day was halfway gone. After their large meal, they would return to the fields, men and women alike, gathering and passing the grains and produce through the complicated machinery of the factory building several hundred yards away. When the sun passed below the horizon, they returned, warming a few leftovers and licking the wounds from the day in quiet conversation, then fading into the proud slumber one has from surviving another day. That night, it was his parents who fought, his father having brought news this time not from the jefe, but from his brother, to whom he had given their savings to reserve a spot on the coyote’s truck. It started when she questioned the wisdom of giving both their money and their son to a complete stranger, and escalated from that point out into the field, the cramped surroundings and the fact that they wished to keep this endeavor a secret from their neighbors driving them to the industrial shed out past the mill.
1122    Believing their son to be asleep, Pedro and Maria left the room, Marcos slithering toward the door and cupping his eager ear against the red plywood, trailing his future with the reverberating soundwaves. Fading into the distance, he knew they would be gone for a time, and he set about doing what every boy does when left alone – Marcos searched his parent’s belongings. They had a small wooden chest through which he had always been afraid to ask about, knowing the resentment adults had about divulging their secrets, and he laid awake one night to discover where his father hid the key. Prying up the loose floorboard, Marcos checked the small niche for scorpions or spiders before retrieving the small, copper key from within the dirt that lay directly below the house, and set about perusing the lockbox. He discovers his birth certificate along with a picture of him as a baby, five hundred pesos, a small bible, a yellowed and tattered broach that bore the image of St. Christopher, and a matchbox from the Lucky Seven motel that his uncle had procured as a show of good faith that his coyote friend could make good on his promise to their family. To a seven-year-old, the rest was barely noticeable, but the matches were a treasure. Marcos slid open the small, green box, discovering the parallel wooden sticks, each tipped with a dangerous red bulb, resting against one another like the dead. He was in love with it, and took one out, holding it against the cardboard striking surface with eager glee, fear and wonder merging to flutter his heart against his rib cage. Before he could bring himself to pass the pockmarked tip against the rough edge, however, he heard the clamor of his parents letting the door close, causing the house to rattle awkwardly against itself. Marcos floundered for a moment, he recalls, deciding to hide away the matchbox in his underpants, hastily replacing the box and key to their respective hiding places before crawling back onto his cot, snuggling against the blankets and finally falling asleep in his own home for what would be the last time.
1123    The next morning Marcos remembers with the clarity of a man who goes off to war, the brightness of the sun shining in his mind surely with greater brilliance than could have been the case, the smell of the air stuck forever in his nose as a benchmark of the last moment of peace he may ever have. The teary farewell by his mother was met with bravery and stoicism by the boy, who refused to leave crying – he would become a man to bring his parents to freedom, whatever that meant, and whatever the cost would be. The back of the truck was dirty windowless, and filled with the same stoic faces that he bore like a mask and he sees now reflected around him. It took many hours, and upon arriving at their temporary place of employment, he marveled at the thick, black pavement that reached like a snake in every direction, the buildings towering like guardians watching over them, the lights of the city casting shadows upon shadows as they passed under the sign which hung on the wall of the building, reading “Le Fleur.” He could hardly believe he would work in this place, the machines and the tables shining like nothing he had seen before, the musty presence of dirt and grass being unable to mar the sheen of the glossy panels that seemed to cover everything. The boys were led quickly through the kitchen and up the ladder to their sleeping bags. The night passed restlessly as the boys chatted quietly and eagerly about their lives, the first of several conversations that would soon cease altogether as the monotony of their routine would drum out almost every shred of childhood. The last thing that little avaricio, the huronito would do to connect him to his past like on the fields was place the matchbook under his sleeping bag, the seed of hope he would forget about until now.
1124    “Bien, chavales – se para ahorita, estamos terminando por hoy.” The guard barked his command, looking suspiciously at Marcos as he had done for the past week, retreating to his quarters alone and leaving the boys to collapse onto their sleeping bags. The lights are extinguished, the yellow bulbs flickering and fading out, leaving the room to seep in the sweat and wood smells that permeate the air. Marcos’ eyes fall closed, and he drifts away toward the sweet scent of masa on the grill.
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1128    Matthew sets his teeth, gritting against the stomach ache. The guilt rips through him as the vision of the woods circles his mind, reminding him that he forgot something – something important. He sits up, opening his eyes, and looks around the room. A sense of inevitability greets his addled mind, the recollection of his childhood merging with past and present, the lives he has led pointing all toward this moment. He wants to see Brian again. He wants to see his parents. He wants to go to school, to hear the wonderful and petty complaints of his classmates amidst a litter-covered campus. He wants microwave chicken a la king. He rises stealthily, lifting the sleeping bag as carefully as his callused fingers can manage. It rests there, crushed but intact, the green box crumpled against itself, leaking matches out of the ripped side. Scraping against the wooden floor, he rescues each and every one, holding them in the box and wiping his damp palms against his nightclothes. A giddiness begins to overtake him, and he is not at all sure it will work. His plans are hazy, half-baked and hasty. He might run, hitchhike home and spend hours upon hours delivering a monologue about baked goods to his parents before they haul him away. He might flee to a library, logging into Otherwhere and finding Brian to convince him. He might just run, and run more, forever fleeing the guilt which bore through him like a mandrill, shaping his every action with a calculated precision. He had been mulling this over, he realizes, for weeks – perhaps months, even, the unconscious intentions bursting forth like fireworks.
1129    Stepping carefully, he approaches the boxes of thread, ends hanging like a mophead of wicks. Lifting one atop the other, he makes an upside-down pyramid, flexing his weak muscles with all his might to avoid disturbing the lion’s den of thin, angry children. Tying them together, the strings form an interlacing pattern that extends to the bottom of the boxes, an ad-hoc dreamcatcher that Iyatiku herself could not have spun better. The world is held together by wood and wires, Matthew muses, and he would sooner rend it asunder than live another moment in the trappings of his guilt. He strikes three matches, the popping glow breathing life to a small flame. Holding it against the strings, he lights another off of the glowing fire, waving it at an angle against the side of the box, a blue glow breathing black into the cardboard. Another and another, and the growing light awakens the children, Matthew lighting all of the matches at once and tossing them into the top, the strings piled loosely enough to burst rapidly into a glowing inferno. He pushes the boxes, feeding them into the amassing blaze, the stack now fully engulfed as the panic ensues, the children rushing to the hatch and pounding with delirious might and fear. A child approaches him, Beto, holding his sleeping bag above him like a blanket, stepping slowly toward the blaze and toward Matthew, who perches, his back beginning to complain from the heat now pressing against it. Beto grimaces, looking desperately at the children who stomp upon the hatch, screaming for help and clawing at the perimeter through which they can feel the cold air of the kitchen below. Smoke fills the room, rising to the rafters, which have not yet caught, the flame large enough to threaten to consume itself amidst the cardboard and string. Beto lunges, sweeping his sleeping bag over him, a rush of air passing by Matthew’s face and threatening to collapse the precarious balance behind him. With one step forward, Matthew rears back and plunges his fist into Beto’s face.
1130    The sleeping bag falls forward, covering Matthew as Beto reels from the blow, amazed at the strength of the waifish rebel before him. He rejoins himself against the shock of betrayal, stepping forward and slamming into his opponent, over whose head the sleeping bag has caught, obscuring his vision. Matthew feels Beto’s man-sized hands on either side of his head, grabbing the fabric and pulling down, his focus having shifted from preservation to revenge. Crouching down within the fabric, Matthew wriggles back and forth, his arms pinned against the sides of the bag, his head rearing back and him thrusting it forward into the place where he imagines Beto’s face to be, feeling the satisfying crunch of his skull against the soft cartilage of the boy’s nose. He cannot let the fire die, and his wild maneuvering in the hot darkness is fueled by sheer desperation as he thrusts his knees forward, jabbing the large boy in the gut and groin, feeling him go down. He casts himself upon Beto, smothering him and wildly pounding his head against the bag and into the flesh beneath him, feeling the heat behind him grow into a raging life. The screaming madness that surrounds him is dampened by the thick fibers of wool and cloth that restrain his body, and he feels Beto stop moving, unable to escape from the full weight of the child on top of him. He hears the sizzle of wood as an exposed rafter catches fire, the sere conditions of the room turning the frame of the building into a tinderbox. Matthew wriggles, unable to extricate himself from the trappings in which he is wrapped snugly, and he rolls from atop the large boy, wrestling with the bag on the wooden floor. He hears the scramble of limbs, and Beto hesitates, standing amidst the flaming chaos as the crash of the hatch echoes through the room, the clamor of twenty bodies escaping down the small ladder leaving the two to consider the sizzle and pop of the burning, crumpling wood.
1131    Matthew’s foot protrudes from the bag, finding purchase in a smoldering pile of string and cardboard, retracting reflexively as the burn passes through his nightclothes and into his calf. He feels the stern weight of a slab pressing suddenly into his gut, and he hears the last person escape down the ladder, running madly into the night, the guards swearing and cursing their mothers and the mothers of all the children, the fate of the escapees as uncertain as it is deleterious to their livelihood. A beam had collapsed, pressing like a finger from the hand of the roof, bruising Matthew’s liver and pinning him securely to the floor. Had he been able to see, he would have been unhappy to find himself mired in smoke, the swirling eddy of thick black and red disorienting him beyond the point of navigation. Matthew smiles in the dark cocoon of his sleeping bag. He somehow knew it would end this way, he muses, wincing against the searing heat that begins to raise boils from his skin. Humming softly to himself with his remaining breath, Matthew hears a mother’s voice gently cradling him with the incantation of a lullaby.
1132    “Duérmete mi niño. Duérmete solito. Qué cuando te despiertes, te daré atolito. Duérmete mi niño. Duérmete mi sol. Duérmete pedazo, de mi corazón.”
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1143Chapter 11: Virgil
1144
1145    He smells the wild wind break free through the rushing leaves of the flowing trees gracing delicately the verdant grove of Elysium. Nose to the air, the flowers reach out to embrace him, the spectrum of life bowing out around his moving body in a seamless continuum of vibrant energy, the green and blue hues carrying the pollen through the bugs who float by shadows that dot the landscape, laboring slowly in their passage through this strange land. A four-beat meter of pattering rhythm drums quietly underneath his arching back, the ground passing by sponge-like and downy. The sounds of his surroundings float about, their points of origin traceable but not imposing, the swift music of wings and branches fusing with the tapestry of scent that the light brings warmly to him. In the distance, a ball thrown from one figure to another, their color brighter than the shadows that silently slither and wait to their sides, behind and before them, building and sleeping and fighting and dying. The whole of the Earth lay before him, and he approaches the leisurely game of catch to hear his name called out by the smaller of the figures.
1146    “Virgil! Virgil, here! Go get it!” The boy, maybe four or five years aged, reels back and pitches an orange sphere past his head, the arcing stream of resonant color dazzling his eyes as he follows it across the prairie, running to chase the tiny globe through the copse of bushes and trees that thickly border the rushing river.
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1149
1150    Brianstem stands at the kiosk, his logical eyebrows unmoving and stark. Clicking on the bulletin board opens an applet through which pages and pages of text can be accessed, the font special-made to resemble a thick magic marker. Roommates wanted, items lost, things found, people missing. A green plus-sign hovers in the lower-right corner, the words “Post Bulletin” etched next to it. Brian clicks, the applet shifting to the background of a lined three-by-five index card. He types slowly, in disbelief of it having come to this.
1151    “Missing: Dante. Thin, spiky hair, wearing black. Small wings protruding from back. Last seen near forest of Nebbolith. If found, contact Brianstem.” He punches the enter button on his keyboard, watching as his post is added to the pile of memos on the kiosk, the date hovering next to it and the stream of characters passing by, unconcerned. Moving toward the counter, Brian decides to try a virtual taste of the cyberjava so proudly offered by the place, figuring that his spendthrift was doing him no good in the Otherwhere, his fifty credits that he had from registering still sitting in his avatar’s hidden wallet, the details of which were apparently too negligible to include in the programming. The barista, an artificially-intelligent bot dressed to appear androgynously attractive and pertly gregarious, requests his drink order. The blue line on which the name “cyberista” was pinned signifies its status as non-human controlled.
1152    Brianstem: “I guess I’ll try the microchippuchino.”
1153    Cyberista: /smiles/ “Certainly, sir. That will be two credits.” Brian considers the reasoning of spending this virtual money, the economy of the Othewhere depending at some point on the spending of real dollars to acquire a greater amount of credits. Of course, there was no way to transfer the credits back into money in any way, but the richer users could choose to amass virtual paradises in the vast and limitless world, advertisers investing in space like billboards on a freeway, risking a minor expenditure for the benefit of exposure to what was currently totaling over a million people. The purchase of coffee allowed the user to stay in the coffeehouse for up to an hour, chatting and conversing or perusing the kiosks, or exploring the many seedy and sundry possibilities of the characters that were programmed to be here, along with the human-controlled ones. A steaming mug appears in Brianstem’s hand, and the number in the lower-left corner of the screen falls to forty-eight.
1154    Brianstem: “Thank you.”
1155    Cyberista: “I noticed you at the kiosk, posting a missing persons report. Have you had any luck yet?”
1156    Brianstem: “I just posted it now. No one has contacted me yet.”
1157    Cyberista: “Would you like information about the name?”
1158    Brianstem: “What name? Dante? Can you track him?”
1159    Cyberista: “That is not a possibility at the present time, though the management is working on it. I can give you information about his name for a small fee, however.”
1160    Brianstem: “Okay, why not?”
1161    Cyberista: “Because it costs five credits.”
1162    Brianstem: “You’re not a very good salesman, are you?”
1163    Cyberista: “I have sold over three hundred thousand cups of coffee since my inception seven months ago.”
1164    Brianstem: “Well. I stand corrected. Go ahead and give me the information.” A confirmation window appears in the middle of the screen, and Brian clicks yes, rendering his total balance five smaller than before.
1165    Cyberista: “Dante is an allusion to the political and literary figure of Dante Alleghiri, who most famously wrote the Divine Comedy. In this three-part epic poem, he is led by the Roman poet Virgil through hell, purgatory, and finally paradise. There is more information available, but it will cost you. /smiles/ Are you interested?” The confirmation window appears, but Brian has closed his eyes, recognizing the second name mentioned. Virgil. He searches his memory, recalling what it was, and came to two realizations, the first of which he told the bot standing behind the counter.
1166    Brianstem: “You’re just getting this from Wikipedia and charging me for it, aren’t you?”
1167    Cyberista: “Our resources are confidential. The article continues and costs five more credits. Will you pay?” Brian clicks ‘no,’ guiding his avatar outside and flying around the area, thinking.
1168    It wasn’t that he had just seen the name in the stereogram. It was something else. He wants to abandon all hope, thinking it absurd and impossible. There was no logic to it, these things he had seen – no order, a ghost story made up of shadows. Brian is faced with the duality between logic and magic, sitting back in his chair and staring at the monitor. 
1169
1170_______________________________
1171
1172    Matthew runs toward the ball, the warm air still hugging his long, short frame, his contact with the ground seeming to be twice what it had ever been before. He is panting, and feels his wet tongue hanging from between his gaping maw, the vision of shadows still everywhere around. He stops, circling himself twice before laying down. His heart is beating as he realizes that he has just seen himself and heard his voice. His vision seems to have traded focus for depth, an astigmatism unbargained for which makes itself known as the shadows, which take on human forms, quietly move in cyclical patterns. This was not the present. He had forgotten the smell of his mother and father, which now wafts toward him, carried aloft by the light and the breeze, and which takes heavy root in his brainstem, the matrix of odors filling a universe he was previously unaware of. He had found himself, and he was Virgil. He recalls what the professor had said, this duality of time and place beginning to overwhelm his capacity of understanding, the clear and safe logic of his past lives beginning to slip away as the soft earth beneath him cradles his light, lithe form. The duality is resolved by the dialectic. This makes no sense to him, a butterfly catching his immediate attention, and he idly reviews the last day he remembers before the chain of incarnations had begun. He remembers Brian missing, the classroom empty except for the stern man who checked the roll sheets. He remembers the article – what had it said?
1173
1174_______________________________
1175
1176    Brian stares at the piece of paper on his desk. He had made a copy to bring for Matthew so they could discuss it at lunch, but he had left it in the classroom the day before, and he had printed out another. The two worlds it spoke of, the quantum and the classical, it had intrigued him, tantalized him with the promise that there were mysteries unsolvable by science. The great chasm spread before him, everywhere. The electrons and quarks flowing throughout his body as like and identically-composed brethren moved and carried information inside the white tower of his computer, they had escaped the knowable world. They broke rules and they existed, confounding Einstein as they now confounded him, their blatant disregard for causality and order garnering no divine punishment from above. They were proof, if anything, that everything was possible – rather, probability was the question that remained. It was very improbable that Brian would have seen the name in the sea that would appear at the virtual lips of the cyberista moments ago. It was further improbable that it would have great meaning. Nonetheless, Brian searches his memory, feeling back to the night when they counted backwards in the dark, probing Matthew’s life like a black box in an airplane crash, testing the theory that memories lived on in rich and vibrant detail beneath the surface of the conscious mind. Matthew was an excellent subject, and drifted into the beta-wave state with little effort, the aquarium in the background burbling quietly as the safe, cornflake-smell of the den surrounded them. Brian closes his eyes, recalling what was said.
1177    Matthew was crying. They had regressed him back, year by year, exploring significant memories from each. Brian had marveled at the clarity of detail Matthew was able to describe, the smells and sights and feelings bursting forth from a voice that raised in pitch with each passing number, his childlike soprano now bellowing out in a five-year-old’s sobs and grief. “Why are you crying?” he had asked, worried. “I miss Virgil.” Matthew had replied, the sniffle of snot and tears punctuating his response. “Who’s Virgil?” Brian had asked. “He’s dead. He drowned. Virgil’s dead. We’re at the whirlpool by the river and…” Matthew had said no more, ending his sentence with a deep and profound wail that tore at Brian’s heartstrings, causing him to bring him out of it. According to the theory, the hypnotized subject would not remember what had happened. Brian had never mentioned it again.
1178
1179_______________________________
1180
1181    Virgil is diligently licking his crotch. A syllogism wafts through Matthew’s mind, which had accepted the comfort of losing his humanity with relative ease, the joy of his timeless world lulling him into a marvelous sense of security and holism. If the world of the small and the world of the large can coexist, then so can the world of logic and the world of magic. He pauses, the taste not nearly as unpleasant as he had imagined, his palette having been attuned to the flavors of freshly-killed rodentia and grass. There was, of course, no magic at all in the instincts which guide him through the verdant field through which he trots, but he is thinking about them as he bends down to pick up the tennis ball. Logic is when we see the patterns and extrapolate the order, and it serves us very well in the world of the large. Matthew’s vision has widened to include the magic – the instinct of knowing the order he cannot see, and the threads that bind them form a dependent relationship in a yin-yang circle of a dialectic. Teething the soft, pliable orb in his mouth, Virgil’s memories flood him, the hazy warmth of his litter crowding his plush frame, the fear of these creatures who towered on two feet reaching down and lifting him, the safety of their strong arms stroking his fur and cavorting with him throughout the parks and the fields they would travel to, the hum of the engine lulling him to sleep when they would drive back home. Matthew is happy, and would hum if he could, when the smell of rushing water calls him through the overgrowth of bushes that bound the small clearing, in the middle of which stands a whirlpool swirling with the waters of lake Tirreno.
1182
1183_______________________________
1184
1185    Brian sits up, stock-still and bristling with a wave of illogical panic. He knows he is about to do something foolish and nonsensical, guided by fear and emotion, and he knows he would regret not doing it. He stares idly at his avatar, floating effortlessly over the glistening ocean, and a flock of kitten-birds pass by in a chirping, mewling pack. Brian rises from the chair, walking over to the closet without hesitation. Reaching in for a coat, flashlight, and boots, he dresses himself for a hike, ignoring the good sense in his mind to simply sit and wait. Logic fails him at this moment, and he slides the window open, removing the screen and stepping through into the moonlit night. It is improbable that Matthew would have run away to the lake, but that improbability becomes less and less important as Brian walks briskly across the yard, his house, quiet and sensical, drifting into the distance behind him, his direction carrying him toward the small dirt road that leads into the woods.
1186    There has always been a sadness hiding within the simple joy of hiking for Brian and Matthew. He tries to remember the number of times they went exploring and traversing the terrain that oversaw their quiet town from a short distance, the foothills enfolded with canyons and secrets that called out to them with a whispering shout of mystery. Matthew would always lead them, pulling a branch from the ground to use as an ad-hoc walking stick, always throwing it into the river eventually, watching as the water carried it away and following it silently with his limpid, distant eyes. They would talk about science and girls, mysteries that they knew they would never really solve in their lifetimes, and which no one probably could. They made plans they would inevitably break as time wore on, their young lives becoming more and more complicated over the years, and the trips to the river now taking on the color of longing for simplicity, a melancholy wistfulness filling the boys as they perched on rocks and logs. These memories now fuel Brian’s pace, his certainty increasing as matters of improbability shifted to a lower rung on his mind’s latter of cognizance, thinking only of Matthew and what he must be going through.
1187
1188_______________________________
1189
1190    The water is circling in the small clearing, forming a series of concentric circles with the varying speeds at which the current rushes, each circle spilling into the next until the center pulls all in towards the bottom, where an underground cavern directs it back to the lake. His instincts tell him to stay away, knowing that escape from the eddy would be slim at best. Virgil traipses hesitantly toward the water, a familiar scent luring him toward the soft dirt of the bank, dotted with twigs and stones warn smooth from the flow which once passed over them, wearing them down year after year with the ebb of the melting ice culling forth an influx of water, causing the current to rage and swell. Matthew can see the water’s path over time as his vantage widens with the unique vision of a timeless span, the shadows catching his attention as they pass to and from the flow, an occasional casualty slipping amidst the mud and disappearing below the cresting edge. He is able to distinguish the sounds of the forest, the silent shadows forming a circus of repeating movement amidst the chorus of birds and wind, the rushing water itself singing a leitmotif of murmuring static. His attention is drawn from the center by the calling of his name by the young boy he once was, and somewhere still is, the repetition of his shout increasing in intensity with each iteration, joined by the brazen shout of his father, who follows behind him. He wants to turn and run to them, nuzzle their worried faces with his wet nose, and lap at their hands while they giggle, thinking their concern to be silly in the face of his reappearance. His instincts keep him there, turning back toward the center of the flowing waters, where he sees himself turning about a single axis, the shadow of his being floating helplessly atop a large bundle of wood, spinning beneath his arms and barely keeping him aloft in the moving waters.
1191    There he is. There he is, a shadow flickering like an option amidst a sea of probabilities, the decision staring Matthew in the face, unflinching in its absoluteness. There he is, watching himself spin, the graying timbre of his solidity fading with the passing moments. The memory hits him like a brick, his haunches quivering as the loss revisits him, the abject guilt of throwing the ball screaming back to him with horror and panic, sadness and anger. He was spinning in the center, and he was watching himself die. He hears the voices nearing, and he is caught in the pain of choosing. The instincts are torn, his heart beating wildly, his breath panting rapidly as the smells of the forest swirl like the water around him, caressing him and comforting him in his time of greatest need. The leap is made without his explicit consent, the inevitable action causing him to move through the air, watching with taut and retracted limbs as his arrow-like body flies toward the center, the shadow taking shape as reality. He hits the water, paddling his paws against the raging current and looking into the blue face of the boy he knows as himself, his closed eyes unmoving as he angles into him, struggling to stay afloat by clambering onto the makeshift raft. The current moves clockwise, and as he takes the boy’s collar between his teeth, he can direct him toward the edge of the innermost circle of water by using his body like an oar, the cold piercing his fur and causing the skin beneath to shiver. He is unable to tell if the boy is breathing, and panting through clenched teeth wears him out quickly. He paddles with all his might, the pads of his paws gripped close by the toes, trying to move as much water as possible with his bony appendages, his body directing the water like a wing, pressing outward and hauling the pendulous load of the boy toward the edge of the flowing eddy. Aching and tensing, his tendons flex painfully against the current as progress is made, slowly but surely, the limp figure still lifeless as Virgil is able to reach an outgrowth of stable roots, his movement toward the edge forcing him to swim along with the current, watching the bank pass by like a circular tunnel around them. The roots pass by, the current carrying them once more around, and on the second pass, with all his might, he presses the boy against them, their sidelong progress halted as the shirt he is wearing snags decisively against the pointed mandrill of damp wood.
1192    Jolted by the catch of the roots that now hold Matthew’s body secure in their grip, Virgil loses his clutch on the collar, his muscles burning as his stamina wears out. He paddles lamely as the current takes him, carrying him swiftly to the center as the spinning world eddies around him. Breaking through the bushes that separate this clearing from the next, the small boy shrieks his name, running toward the swirling charybdis with outstretched arms, the vision bringing tears to his contorted face, frozen in a scream of terror and grief. He sees the boy’s arms caught and pinned behind him by his parents, closely in tow, wrestling to restrain their son from running into the water as he screams and pleads, the orange tennis ball having slipped into the stream and now floating next to the drenched bundle of fur which spins and bobs in the center of the whirlpool. He is a bridge, watching his past and present circle around, faced with the vision of his screaming boyhood passing as his limply-dangled future passively resists the tides of moving water, the vision spinning and bobbing with his body as the world turns around and around, the futile weeping and screaming of the child succumbing to the rising static of the water that takes him, pulling him gently into the soundless deep.
1193
1194_______________________________
1195
1196    Brian moves quickly through the woods, tripping occasionally over the roots in the ground, covered ceaselessly by the falling leaves that ripple and crunch beneath his feet. This dark wood, this shroud of nature, this maze surrounds him, reminding him of the folly of his decision, which he ignores steadfastly as he moves forward past the branches and the dark. Ahead, the cover of trees breaks open, allowing a vision of the moon above, casting light and shadow among the glen that opens before him, past the steep cliff against which his feet press, staring back at him from the clearing in the middle of which swirls the circling waters. Brian stares into the center, hypnotized by the fear of seeing a floating shape spinning like a compass needle at a magnetic pole, all points spelling disaster. There is nothing, however, but the shining water, glistening with the reflection of moonlight, and he is reminded of Otherwhere. Following the direction of the current with his eyes, he moves outward around the spiral, stopping his gaze when the sight of a slumped form, caught in a bramble along the bank, makes his heart skip and his stomach drop – it is not moving. It is Matthew.
1197    He scrambles down the cliff, jamming his feet against the sharply-tilted earth and clutching at roots and rocks hewn firmly into the hard dirt of the precipice, bounding down in a half-fall toward the bottom. Finding safe purchase and solid ground, his feet carry him toward the water, the beat of his footfalls echoing in his ears, which ring with the high-pitched, level tone of fear and exhaustion, his body moving despite being near the point of collapse. Approaching the body, he falls onto his knees, stretching his body against the earth before taking Matthew’s hands and sliding backward, pulling with all his might against the clutch of the roots and the water, flexing his body against the weight of gravity and inertia to extract his friend from the clutches of death. After what seems like forever, the whirlpool yields, Matthew’s body rising onto the damp bank and falling to the ground, where Brian rolls him over and checks for breath. It is very faint, and the dripping water off his soaked clothing almost masks completely the rise and fall of his chest. Brian begins to cry softly, his relief mixed with fear as the silent moon moves slowly toward the horizon, signaling the coming of a new day.
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1221
1222Chapter 12: The Wake
1223
1224    His eyes open slowly, the sunlight piercing through the branches behind him, the warm spring air passing over his bare chest. His skin. His body. The first thing he thinks about is Virgil, and he gulps, a large bubble in his throat pushing the tears from his eyes which drip, rolling down his cheeks past his ears and onto the ground. Air passes into his mouth in gasps, and the wispy clouds above hover, motionless, scratching scars across the sky that mirror his arms and legs, which he moves tentatively, the dull pain telling him he has survived. To his right, a body stirs, a familiar voice ringing out in the quiet clearing.
1225    “I guess we’re both missing now.” He rises, bending his weary arms behind him and arching up on his elbows, swinging his dirt-caked face over to stare in disbelief at Brian. Opening his mouth, he intends to say something clever, but instead a small squeak emerges from his throat as relief mixes with joy, pushing the mud-infused mucus from his nose to be carried down his face by gravity and tears, directed by the soft folds that form under his eyes from the appearance of a large smile. “I had to take your shirt and pants off – they were sopping wet and I thought you might have hypothermia. Don’t worry, I didn’t touch your junk.” Now a sound bubbles up, as automatic as the tears, Matthew’s head falling back as he laughs into the open sky, propelling his body to a sitting position and bending his legs painfully beneath him on the grass.
1226    “How…” he begins, shaking his head, unable to continue the question, half-doubting his presence in the woods. He extends his right arm, balancing precariously on his hand as he reaches out and pokes at Brian’s bent knee, the joint protruding at the endpoint of his leg, folded along with his other underneath him. The bone is smooth and solid, Matthew retracting his hand to pat himself down, celebrating the tactile pride of his broken, wounded body.
1227    “Who’s Virgil?” Brian asks levelly, with a trace of anger hiding at the edge of his voice.
1228
1229_______________________________
1230
1231    The boys amble toward the road, Matthew picking at the burs and foxtails that have gathered in his clothes, his fractured ankle and hyper-extended shoulder chastising him with every step, the jarring shock of the terrain unforgiving. Brian listens to the birds and the scampering creatures among the leaves and branches that surround them, his certainty of this world being tested with every sentence that passes from Matthew’s lips. There is time enough to tell the tale, time enough to bend and turn while helping Matthew up the stair, formed by the outcrop of rocks and mud and leading toward the road. Belief is a moot point. Matthew speaks, his breath faltering at points as the struggle to press onward overtakes him, their syncopated journey dotted with pauses and stops and starts and questions and answers, answers that don’t and answers that almost do, and Brian takes it in, quiet for the most part. They reach the pavement and shamble forth, the clopping of their feet bouncing off the rocks and escaping out into the air, the singing world receding behind them.
1232    “I guess I just don’t understand why you had to leave and go jump in the water.” Brian states dully, his senses dampened by the tired awareness of his lack of sleep and overabundance of exertion. “You really didn’t remember about what happened to your dog?” Matthew breathes with labor, weighing the causality and the feelings.
1233    “I guess it was the worst thing that had ever happened to me. They say you repress that kind of thing.” The imposition of logic on the matter makes him feel foolish and vulnerable.
1234    “But it was E8 that led you there – you were… trying to build E8?” Brian’s face is still, the words echoing back at him in absurdity.
1235    “Yeah. I was.” Matthew is quiet.
1236    “And E8 is…?” Brian searches his mind, unable to find an adequate descriptor for the poetry with which Matthew had framed it.
1237    “E8 is… well – It’s – I guess it’s kind of… everything.” Matthew postures, looking up at the swirling clouds and the spiraling rocks, the leaves splayed out on the ground, spun into circles by the passing wind.
1238    “Like god?” Brian stares coldly at his friend, a derisive grin playing on his lips. Matthew smiles, exhaling slowly.
1239    “No…” he searches the road and the vista before him, extending his gaze to the quiet, empty sky. “There’s no need. I think we’re pretty good at making our own heaven and hell without the help of anything else.” He pauses, smiling quietly to himself, staring ahead toward home.
1240    “And Hitler – what about him? You never really solved that problem, you know. Do you still think he was given a cosmic hug and a pat on the back after everything?” Brian’s eyebrow arches, the color on his face flushing from the movement and the heat. Matthew laughs softly.
1241    “No one knows what happened to Hitler but him.” His eyes move downward, staring at the passing pavement, the cracks spanning and reaching out into branches. “But I do know a little about guilt and what it gets you… and I can tell you this – I don’t think I’d trade places with him.” A shadow falls across Matthew’s face, the footsteps he chooses carrying him alongside his companion as they wend toward the intersection that will lead to their waiting homes.
1242
1243_______________________________
1244
1245    Wall sconces in the shape of a twisted cross line the palace through which they zigzag forward, the mortars ceaseless in their continuing barrage.
1246    “I thought he was supposed to have died in a secret bunker.” Brian’s voice crackles over the earpiece, breaking the long silence of concentration as the soldiers have fought from the entryway through to the final chamber, the armies of armbands bursting from every opening like water through a sluice gate.
1247    “I know – I thought he was supposed to have killed himself, too.” Matthew carefully selects the sniper rifle from Spamtothenth’s arsenal, inching from column to column while Heisenburg_314 covers him from behind.
1248    “Are you sure you can do this – I mean, he could be secretly controlled by a dead guy.” Brian teases, the joke not quite yet old, the aftermath of their disappearance resulting in a month of grounding with only their computers as the whisper of leniency allowed by their parents, unwittingly forced by the boys out of the unspoken fear that they may run away again without some kind of salvo. Matthew laughs.
1249    “Yeah, I don’t think it works like that.” He considers his words, reflecting. “Well, maybe it does.” Brain’s sigh comes forth like a rush of static over the line. “No – maybe that’s just perfect, his being caught in the trappings of his life’s work to be shot over and over again by everyone with a grudge.” He positions Spamtothenth’s crosshairs on the forehead of the mustachioed villain, snickering at the cartoonish grimace the programmers have painted across his face. Overacted German threats are echoing about the large room, and Matthew almost throws his hands up in response to the silliness of it all.
1250    “That’s a lot of people,” Brian mutters. “I think I’m okay with that.” He plugs several among the burgeoning forces that spill out into the ballroom-sized space, chucking at the cries of ‘Oh, mein kampf!’ as they crumple to the floor and flicker away into nothingness.
1251    “Yeah. I think I’m okay with that, too.” He clicks the mouse, the bullet making contact with the head-shaped pixels, the action stopping altogether as the armies freeze in their aggression, all of them laying down their arms simultaneously and unfurling white flags, waving them in unison as the slo-mo cutscene shows the cruel despot, head-wound gaping, slump down to the floor, motionless. A bugle plays in the background, rising in pitch to the accompaniment of drums and an all-male choir as the screen fades to black, the stills of two soldiers being pinned with medals splashing onto and off of the screen as credits begin to roll.
1252    “What a rip.” Brian states factually, their conversation halted by the unsatisfying conclusion of their quest. “Otherwhere?”
1253    “Otherwhere.” The boys disconnect, logging onto the expansive universe, waiting patiently as the screen loads to show them, side-by-side, in front of Dave’s coffeehouse.
1254    Brianstem: “Hey, I guess I should take down the missing poster, huh?”
1255    Dante: “Actually, I think you should just change it.”
1256    Brianstem: “To what?”
1257    Dante: “Change the name – to Virgil. Anyone with any information should contact the center.”
1258    Brianstem: “I like it. Free advertising.” His avatar is seen by Matthew, scrawling with a pen that magically appears in his hand, and an artificial splurt sounds as he affixes the new post to the rectangle of corkboard. “Let’s go.”
1259    They leave the shop, flying in tandem past a flock of kitten-birds toward the new island.
1260    Dante: “Did you read the newest post from the Slartibartfast?”
1261    Brianstem: “What post?”
1262    Dante: “About the kitten-birds.”
1263    Brianstem: “No – what happened.”
1264    Dante: “Turns out they’re a virus – he never programmed them into the place.”
1265    Brianstem: “Really? I thought this place was supposed to be super-secure, you know, the unhackable Otherwhere?”
1266    Dante: “Yeah. It is. He can’t trace it. No one can – they just appeared one day, and started multiplying. They showed a graph of the sightings, tracing each one back to the origin, and it started with two-hundred and forty-eight points of sudden emergence, all forming a geodesic around the Otherwhere.”
1267    Brianstem: “That’s crazy – what are they going to do?”
1268    Dante: “Nothing they can do. They’ve been cited as a harmless anomaly.”
1269    Brianstem: “Harmless and adorable.”
1270    Dante: “Adorably confounding. Everyone is scratching their heads over it, that’s for sure.” Matthew smiles, not scratching his head. A peace falls over him as they wend through the air, landing on the mass they had carefully constructed and shaped into a near-circle, the egg-like formation having cost them a month’s worth of allowances. They could only afford the sign at this point, under which they now stand, Matthew’s avatar fluttering its decorative wings as Brian’s idly bids no one in particular to live long and prosper.
1271    Brianstem: “Do you think anything will come of this?” He moves a tree with the roll of his mouse, placing it toward the side and clearing the center for the eventual construction of the building.
1272    Dante: “Can’t say. There’s no point in wondering about the future.”
1273    Brianstem: “What, no faith and hope from the eternal optimist?”
1274    Dante: “Well, you learned that logic isn’t always the best way to go, right?”
1275    Brianstem: “Yeah. I suppose so.”
1276    Dante: “So faith and hope are the same thing. As much as they keep you going, they hold you back. I’d rather just build the thing and see what happens.”
1277    Brianstem: “Swell. Let’s do this.”
1278    The boys survey the land, situated virtual miles from the mainland, in the center of the second ‘a’ of the name of the creator when viewed from the sky. The pointer attached to the location indicator reads “The Dark Wood of Error / 3.” The number of the population is a glitch they don’t feel like fixing. At the center of the island stands a tall sign, advertising the coming construction as “The E8 Center For Paranormal Research and Kitten-Bird Refuge.” The boys smile, connected by an invisible thread across intangible lines running through the universe. Matthew’s father knocks at the door, calling him down to dinner.
1279
1280_______________________________
1281
1282    The wafting smell of chicken a la king is like ambrosia to his nose. Descending the stairs, Matthew looks upon the house, disheveled and cozy, the kitch-covered walls enclosing him with warmth as his parents place plates upon the dining-room table, the soft clink of tableware and glasses sounding among the quiet house. He revels in the absence of discomfort with which he saunters over to the chair, pulling it back and sitting down, breathing deeply at the biting scent of hot plastic mixed with chemically-constructed cream sauce. It looks delicious. Staring at the diamond-shaped rooster plate on the far wall, he follows the lower point down, able to discern a strip of wainscoting between the pressing bounds of two boxes that bulge out, stuffed full of chaos. He smiles, staring at the stack of magazines as both whole and a sum of their parts, neither calling out to him with more importance than the other.
1283    “Matthew, honey, how’s your game coming along?” His mother inquires with a softness to her tone, a genuine interest poking through the words.
1284    “Good. We finished it.” He takes a forkful of mechanically-separated chicken meat, chewing confidently and savoring the taste of slightly-off milk and oil.
1285    “So, are you moving on to, um… something else, then?” His father stares with patient eyes, not trying to hide his unfamiliarity with the specifics of what it actually was that his son did.
1286    “Yeah. I guess you could say that.” Matthew smiles, swallowing his food, feeling the warm mass pass down his gullet and toward his waiting stomach.
1287    “You still talk to that Cambridge Don online?” His father asks while chewing, his nose wrinkling slightly.
1288    “Not so much. He’s… unreachable for the time being.” Matthew shrugs, taking a sip of water from his glass.
1289    “Well, he’s probably very busy, what with the end of Spring quarter and all. He probably has a lot of students.” Bruce nods, thinking about his own.
1290    “I’m sure he does.” Matthew swallows, the cool water coating his throat and evaporating into an exhalation. “He’s probably got quite a few. It’s okay, though. I’m sure I’ll talk to him again someday.”
1291    “Well, don’t go bugging him now, darling.” His mother warns, sipping at her glass of wine and smiling softly at him, her hand resting next to her plate.
1292    “Sure, mom. Don’t worry, I can wait.” He takes a large forkful of warm food, idly gnawing at it.
1293    “Hey – don’t fill up too quick. We have dessert waiting in the fridge.” She smiles, her eyes flashing with brightness.
1294    “Banana cream pie.” His father says, his eyebrows arching as he licks his lips with a smile. Matthew puts his fork down, chuckling softly.
1295    “Nice. That sounds great, dad. I’ll make sure and save some room.”
1296    The air hangs warm around them, the soft clink of silverware echoing about in a pattern undiscernable to any of them. Matthew leans back, existing happily among the detritus of the room, looking forward to his dessert and looking forward to climbing the stairs to his little lair from which he would piece together the building with Brian. They eat quietly, putting away the dishes and taking the pie from its pink box, slicing it into pieces and consuming the sugary goodness, all the while Matthew’s mind still on the island, the success of which hangs as a variable in the unknowable equation of the future. He smiles. He has work to do.
1297
1298_______________________________
1299
1300    As an undergraduate in psychology, Matthew would read about all kinds of things he thought might be true and untrue, the life after what he later referred to as “the ordeal” being spent largely trying to make sense of his existence. People would refer to him as wise for his age, to which he would quietly smile and thank them, never able to cite properly the source of his prodigal sagacity. What should have been, to most people’s reckoning, an experience that provoked a life-altering shift of perception was wrought by the immense power of society into a mere question mark that hung at the back of his mind like a dirty secret, a truth he feared would lead him to either an asylum or a church, neither of which he had any particular interest in attending. Nonetheless, he followed the events which passed after his returning from the whirlpool with special interest, keeping an eye on the local paper for synchronicities with his unwitting premonitions. He was not surprised, for instance, to learn of a fire in the restaurant downtown, which made news only due to the hidden child-slavery ring that was discovered above, its busting being the cause of many a demonstration and public outcry of self-righteous anger, nevermind the others which doubtless remained nearby.
1301    Soon after, the report of Chuy’s menace and the threat from the south replaced the media’s focus from protection of to attack on the immigrants who, once the victim of exploitation, now became the source of corruption and drugs that so clearly had to be stopped. Matthew shook his head, leaving anonymous messages of truth on the web-forums on the newspaper’s site that always, unsurprisingly, became recipes for banana cream pie after hitting the ‘send’ button. Maci’s death, too, became the stuff of noir-coverage, the sordid details being revealed through blotchy pictures of the blacked-out images of the woman, her head resting on the steering wheel in a dull repose that still made Matthew feel ill. They, of course, blamed the drugs, and hailed the lawyer – whose phone-records proved his attempt to save her – as a martyr, beaten brutally to death by a pusher or thug who was never found. Matthew smiled inwardly, knowing the futility in trying to set the record straight and being grateful once again for the unknown and hidden delivery of justice. There were still questions in his mind, questions of order and specifics that couldn’t be made clear from the unfolding of events which he had seen first-hand, delivered to him through the third-person reporting of the ignorant world around him.
1302    Maci’s case renewed interest in the original causes of her suit, and the Rubenstein case was posthumously revitalized with the hospice industry suffering a full investigation of its practices and procedures, the unfortunate and mysterious case of the old man raising eyebrows and turning shaking heads, the tragedy of it being highlighted and dramatized with a finely-honed sword of glitz and glamour, turned into a special series by the late-night journalism shows and watchdog groups. Veterans were interviewed, all of whom mentioned the possibility of a hidden, murderous hand being involved, and who were accorded a sanctimonious ear. Meanwhile, Matthew wondered of the fate of Rooster and Eddie, from whom no one asked an opinion, their existence being brushed aside as their connection with the situation could only have been known by himself. Even after he got his driver’s license, Matthew never went to the alley to look for them, knowing the explanation of his arrival to be impossible and moot. He still went to the river on occasion, the memory he had buried of watching his dog drown being revisited once a year when he would sit on the bank of the whirlpool, staring into the center with a quiet calm and a sad smile. His father, he had later learned while discussing the terrible event which his parents had never seen the point of rehashing, named the dog after the character from the epic poem, the guide who led Dante through hell – he was going for a name that inspired friendship and loyalty, and his mother appreciated the nod toward the pagan belief in animal spirits who helped us through the journey of our lives. Matthew had listened to their story without explaining how true both reckonings of the name were to the role he would play in his own existence.
1303    After the drama of his vicarious dalliances into the lives of others had unfolded and receded back into the archives of web-logs and newsreels, Matthew rejoiced in the mundaneity of his life. The perspective he privately enjoyed would guide him through high-school with a prescience and wisdom that prevented him from reacting too strongly to the difficulties of a society that focused on the details he had learned to regard with just the amount of importance they deserved – that is to say, in most cases very little. Whenever he would pass a homeless man or woman, Matthew would drop change in their cup, smiling knowingly and recalling that he very well could be them – and was, and is, and always somehow will be. He gave to groups fighting for justice in labor practices and against the exploitation of those who come to this country seeking a better life and a smidgen of freedom, and he looked with patient empathy toward the gang-members and drug addicts he would inevitably cross paths with, knowing how little we are able to choose the forms of our existence.
1304    Matthew never learned how to build a cyclotron, and his inquiries to the theoretical physics department at the university he would attend were met with a deep skepticism and sidelong glance that prevented him from pushing the envelope any further. E8 would remain a unique and exceptional lie set in the mathematical topography of the universe, but no amount of e-mails and research would bring it into existence as a gateway to the dead. Matthew and Brian’s Center for Paranormal Research and Kitten-Bird Sanctuary remained in the Otherworld, the object of passing fancy for hundreds of online travelers and seekers, but never really got off the ground as a thriving endeavor, in part because no advertisers saw it as a reasonable sponsorship risk and in part because neither of them could catch a kitten-bird, the little creatures remaining an inexplicable anomaly and a benign virus.
1305
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1307
1308    One day, in his inbox, Matthew noticed a message amidst the correspondence with his psychology professors that bore the subject “For Dante.” He had been looking for research topics for his thesis, and hadn’t thought for a long time about the past, his mental machinery limited mostly to his present to-do list of reading and writing. The sender’s name was blank, and the message flagged red as possible spam. A strange, familiar feeling overcame him, and he clicked it open to find an article from a nineteen-seventy-seven issue of the Journal of Psychology. He read the treatment:
1309    “Researchers report the occurrence of a pathological disorder which appears alongside severe instances of depression, usually ranging days before a subject commits suicide. Data from friends and family suggest that the victims undergo a severe change in personality before taking their own lives, often claiming to not feel like themselves or otherwise exhibit borderline multiple-personality-disorder. This article explores the psychological processes involved in the transformation of personality and suggest several bio-chemical causes to the phenomenon. Data is limited, as present technologies regarding neurochemical reactions prohibit further research without large funding sources, though future increases in the availability of technologies may prove hopeful.”
1310    One line of text was printed below the article: “Thought you might find this interesting – Virgil.” Matthew smiled, the shape of his life taking form. There was no reply available, and none needed. He would see Virgil again – he was certain of this. He would see Virgil again. But he could wait.