"Det är en passande titel för situationer som mina arbetsgivare låter mig hantera," svarade han.
"Dina arbetsgivare? Du menar Synchro Systems eller?"
"Gör inte för många antaganden nu vännen."
"Jag uppskattar och gillar inte dina spel," sade jag honom, och vände mig för att lämna.
"Verkligheten är inte ett spel. Det finns alltid konsekvenser för alla inblandade.”
Det förklarade inte speciellt mycket, heller.
Euthenica.
You're talking about putting it into pill form?
That's the most likely avenue the company is going to go for, I'd say.
But the nanites won't be active.
We've already solved that problem. They activate once they've been ingested. Theoretically, at least. We're still working on some kinks in the process.
Kinks?
Well, you know. Currently, only about 60% of the nanites are activating as they should. The results are pretty predictable: Memory alteration's not occurring as it should.
Fragments, again?
The same problem we had with the injected version trials.
And your team is sure that the issue lies with the microprocessors and it's not something with how the mind is hard wired? My people had some pretty strong evidence that the actual physical alignment of molecules wasn't everything required for the memories to be retained.
You're talking about the unknown element.
I'm talking about something like a soul.
We can't even get into that. The results that we've achieved so far have been phenomenal, and they're pretty conclusive that it's all taking place on a physical level. We just haven't isolated the proper chemical coding yet. Full swarm activation ought to take care of that problem, since we'll be yielding exponentially higher results.
We're running out of... blank slates.
There's no shortage of fresh minds out there. There are desperate people out there who will try anything. But beyond that, it's nothing a little monetary compensation won't fix.
Have you thought of what you'd like to call it yet?
A lot of that is going to depend on if the FDA forces us to pair up with a pharmaceutical company. But I do have some ideas. Most of the team agrees on the name 'Euthenica' for the pill form of the product.
The higher ups will never go for it. I'm sure they want it to somehow tie into the Synchronicity Drive line. Besides, it's too close to 'euthanasia'.
Our client base and target market ought to be educated enough for that not to bother them.
How smart is a lab rat?
Ha. Anyway, I'll send the reports over by the end of the day. Let me know if your team comes up with anything new this afternoon.
Things are going slower now that we're being investigated, but I'll be in touch. Thanks for lunch.
Your turn, next time.
Evidence.
Johnny watched her play with her cigarette and wait for someone to offer a light, and he had that smug look on his face when she touched his hand with both of hers as he offered. Predictable, predictable. He watched her as she sipped her Shiraz and he asked her if she liked Port, and of course, she did, and when he asked her she kind of half smiled at him, so he told her all the bands she listened to while he picked the polish off his nails. He reached into his pocket and he pulled out a tranquilizer when she wasn't looking and he slipped it into his mouth after toying with it for a bit, and he washed it down with spit so she wouldn't notice anything but a somewhat nervous gulp, one that she would attribute to some sort of magnetism or affliction similar to sweaty palms. Johnny checked his watch and he sang the same songs in his head that he always had as he waited for the half hour to slide by, and it slid by, the hands of his watch almost fluid they were so real, and he debated telling her about her favorite movies and her favorite books and about everything else that she didn't know that he knew that she'd take to a deserted island if she had to go, but instead he settled on her Spanish. When her phone rang, he left, heading for the car in the parking deck, knowing (or at least hoping) that the closed doors meant encapsulation and isolation from the tiresome redundancy of them all.
They're all the same, anyway, and they're no better than the walking dead; too deaf, too dumb, and too blind to realize that they've been finished forever, since long before they had ever even begun.
Expand.
Expansion
I was young once,
Alive.
Believed in love,
Believed in life.
October sunsets,
The winter streets.
The Christmas lights in
The willow tree.
The house behind us,
The basement stairs.
We agreed to marry there.
Fallow.
What is it like to recall your life like a dream? Some things, too real, some things, too good to be true?
How much can be taken as fact?
How much should be taken on faith?
The darkest days have yet to unfold.
57 68 61 74 20 69 73 20 69 74 20 6c 69 6b 65 20 74 6f 20 72 65 63 61 6c 6c 20 79 6f 75 72 20 6c 69 66 65 20 6c 69 6b 65 20 61 20 64 72 65 61 6d 3f 20 53 6f 6d 65 20 74 68 69 6e 67 73 2c 20 74 6f 6f 20 72 65 61 6c 2c 20 73 6f 6d 65 20 74 68 69 6e 67 73 2c 20 74 6f 6f 20 67 6f 6f 64 20 74 6f 20 62 65 20 74 72 75 65 3f 0d 0a 0d 0a 48 6f 77 20 6d 75 63 68 20 63 61 6e 20 62 65 20 74 61 6b 65 6e 20 61 73 20 66 61 63 74 3f 0d 0a 0d 0a 48 6f 77 20 6d 75 63 68 20 73 68 6f 75 6c 64 20 62 65 20 74 61 6b 65 6e 20 6f 6e 20 66 61 69 74 68 3f 0d 0a 0d 0a 20 0d 0a 0d 0a 54 68 65 20 64 61 72 6b 65 73 74 20 64 61 79 73 20 68 61 76 65 20 79 65 74 20 74 6f 20 75 6e 66 6f 6c 64 2e
Flash.
THE NUANCES OF MY HOME
Fig. 1: The sudden flame or intense heat produced by a bomb or other explosive device.
"I don't remember how I ended up in your bathtub, actually. It's as if that's all that's ever been, except that I know better. I feel that there was much more to my life before that. And obviously there was, I mean, I didn't just suddenly start to exist in the middle of a bubble bath, and I obviously crave cigarettes for a reason! I just don't remember why, or how it came to be that I was in your house," She paused, swinging her feet a little bit, heels banging against the cabinet door beneath her. "I remember really weird things. For example, I feel that the disorientation I'm experiencing is to be expected, as if it's nothing out of the ordinary: normal. But at the same time, it feels as if I've just woken up out of a very lucid dream. My other memories, the few I can recall, at least, are fading fast, replaced by new ones that don't make any sense, and then the new ones are changed out for even newer ones. It's like my brain's stuck in overdrive, trying to recover a lot of lost information at once, and it's really confused about where to file and store it all."
Then, the lights in the house dimmed for a moment. I could hear the pitch of the central air conditioning unit winding up. Noises like that you only notice when they change, or when they start or stop altogether; they're part of the background music of everyday life. The refrigerator, old beast that she was, clicked and chugged, sputtering out a few cubes of ice into the freezer box, capable of only a small percentage of her previous levels of production in her old age.
She distracted me from my observations of the nuances of my home by executing a fall from the counter top then, unconscious. I barely caught her, only just in time to slow her fall, right before her head hit the floor.
FLASH! What happens when the sky falls?
Fn05.
there was something there that I found that I hadn't held before, but alone on a hard and musty single occupancy bed, in a room much like a prison, we create these types of theologies. we want that religion, the one they built the towering cathedrals for, we want to be a part of something more than a mere fingerprint thrown stray from the hand of the creator, we demand to be creased, and broken, and tested by fire and by division. we do this so that we know what we are missing later when we look behind u
s; we do this so that the pain of life can escape the miring in our souls.
Fog.
Mother
... And so the prince and the princess lived happily ever after, and the dragons were all banished from their kingdom, forever.
Daughter
Mommy? Are there such things as ghosts?
Mother
Of course not, honey! They're just in scary stories.
Daughter
Like the ones that grandpa tells us on Halloween?
Mother
Yes, exactly.
Daughter
What about monsters? Are they real?
Mother
No, there's no such thing as monsters, either.
Daughter
... But sometimes I hear noises. In the basement.
Mother
The noises in the basement? Those are just the furnace, or maybe the pipes. There's nothing down there to worry about!
Daughter
Are you sure?
Mother
Of course I'm sure. I'm also sure that it's time for you to go to sleep. Goodnight, honey. I love you.
Daughter
I love you, too, mama.
(Mother exits, turning off the light, hesitating at the door for a moment. She does not close the door all the way.)
(Some time has passed. The mother is in the kitchen, reading a newspaper, when the daughter enters, carrying a doll under her arm.)
Daughter
Mommy, there's a monster in the basement. I can hear it.
Mother
Don't be silly. There's no monster in the basement.
Daughter
But it's scratching on the floors!
Mother
Okay. I'll go down there and tell the monster to stop making so much noise and leave so that you can sleep.
Daughter
Be careful, mommy.
Mother
I'll be as careful as can be!
(Mother exits to the basement while the daughter waits. Time passes. More time passes. The child shifts, worried, slowly moving towards the door leading to the basement.)
Daughter
Mommy?
(The daughter opens the door to the basement, and gathering her courage, makes her way down the stairs into the basement. It is empty.)
Daughter
Mommy?
...Mommy?
Where are you?
(There is no answer)
Follow.
Six months ago, we agreed to meet here, should we ever become Lost, should we ever desire to be Found.
[ x ]
Where is she now?
To get to heaven, you must first pass through hell.
Footnote #1.
I don't remember writing this. I found the torn page beneath the stove in the kitchen one day as I was searching for wherever it was that the mouse was coming into the apartment from. Penned in my handwriting, it defied reasonable explanation, yet there it was.
A page that shouldn't exist.
Footnote #4.
There's blood on the walls and it's getting worse every day. I'm starting to wonder if it's not just the moths and the mice that are dying as a result of my carefully placed traps. I'm starting to wonder if something larger has been injured and is watching from the shadows, or from the closet, or from underneath the bed. Waiting for me to leave, for me to drop my guard, or for me to fall asleep on the couch. Every so often, the air's a little too stale, a little too dead to be innocuous, and there's a little more blood on the walls.
Maybe I'm dead, this is hell, and I'm only just now starting to realize what's happened. Maybe you're not even real anymore. Maybe I imagined you all along.
I've been trying to stop the moths and the mice for weeks now. They persist. I lie motionless on the floor for hours and listen to them in the walls as they do the things that mice and moths do. I have holes in my sweaters and holes in the drywall behind the kitchen sink. I smell their shit in the carpet. Last week, the scars on my left arm once again became apparent. Yesterday, it was raining when I thought I saw you through the window, calling to me. Black water ran down your cheeks like tears. A trick of the light? After a moment, you were nothing... gone.
What are these perpetual context clues and why can't I decipher them?
I remember what it felt like to put my face against your naked belly and the smell of your skin. I remember counting all of the fine hairs just below your navel as you ran your fingers across my head, you sang songs without words to me, and I mumbled forgettable things to our unborn child. How I put my hands over the pages of the book you were reading and you reached for the glass of water on the bedside table. I remember what the condensation looked like, the way it made a ring on the polished wood and how it ran down your wrist. Broken pieces of ceramic on concrete: the way the ice cubes sounded as you spit them back into the glass. How your fingers were cold when you placed them on my eyelids and told me to sleep.
Was life ever real? I would like to think that it was, that it is, that you are, but something bigger than that kind of life is lurking in the crevices of my home and it's almost audible: no, no no. The blood on the walls is real, when all I have left of you is the memory of experience that in it remains suspect. What have I captured? Or perhaps, more appropriately, what is it that has captured me?
Footnote #6.
We are Islands
She laughs.
I tell her that I love her, too.
She tells me to be serious.
"It's not going to come true, now, anyway, because I told you what I wished for."
So what you're saying is that we're doomed to fail. Cursed until the end of time, I say.
"Do you believe in Fate?" she responds, holding her hands up, palms facing outward. "Can you feel me?"
Freedom.
Johnny climbs behind the wheel, pops another trank, and starts the car. He hits the windshield wipers to clear the dew off the windshield and he turns off the radio. He fumbles in his pocket for a lighter and there's a cigarette dangling from his mouth.
Johnny clicks on the headlights and stares at the wall of the parking deck and he grips the steering wheel with both hands, now, and he presses his face into the steering wheel and he half-scream-half-growls with his mouth closed and he waits. He sighs. He closes his eyes. And he remembers.
Games.
Have you compromised too many of The Good Things in favor of stability?
"What a fun game!" I exclaim
As my arm is twisted to the point
of breaking. No more faking it,
Tomorrow, all of the lies will be true.
Likewise, the love of you
Will be tested again, and again.
With this bottle, I drink to my sins.
Fear, Dismissal, Fear again.
Let's get together.
Roll the dice, just one more time,
Spin the chamber, and let the steel
Give us a kiss,
Goodnight.
It stops, empty again. Again
I wait for tomorrow,
Another day to try again.
Hands.
Do you sleep easily at night? When stars rest blinking behind a blanket of clouds, like your head, your hair, drifting across your pillow, spilling across the sheets. These patterns, of which we all dream. Do you dream of yourself? Those days when your focus on things was so concise that, like a razor, you could cut to the core of all that passion and extract, hold in your hand, even, things that others only imagined to exist.
Did you discover something, somewhere, in all of your searching, which frightened you? Here the bones remain, all heavy with doubt and fear, scored by a life of cowardice and hesitations.
Her wishes were to remain by the sea.
Have We Met.
So there are these boxes on the bookshelf, and when I'm searching, I began taking them down. What did I put in these boxes? Why did I seal it with tape when I closed them up?
&
nbsp; The most recent one isn't taped closed, so I open it, sitting in the middle of the floor. It contains letters that I've never sent to people. I remember filling up the other boxes, now, and sealing them when they could hold no more. I remember when I started making the boxes in the first place; back when I realized that the letters that I was mailing weren't being read. When I realized that the recipients of the mail didn't care enough to respond. I remembered that the first box had letters in it that I'd sent, but had been returned, back when I first began collecting the letters.
I still had to write them, though. You have to say things, not just sometimes, all times. You have to take the thoughts out of the ether, pulling them down from the sky like clouds or satellites or stars, examining them, and then apply them to the paper. Even when nobody's listening. The papers, the ink, they're there to help you get it all out.
I miss you
I love you
Don't go away
Don't come back
I hate you
I can't remember what your face looks like
You know how it is. Stages, relationships, friends, lovers, enemies. I wrote letters, some like lyrics, some like songs, and some like long run-on sentences that didn't make sense. Short and long letters, and folded them, sealed the envelopes, and then I placed them inside of these boxes.
Would you read them if I sent them your way? Would the things that I had to say to you a year ago, two minutes ago, would those things even matter to you? People, how I miss you, you lost parts of my past.
RETURN TO SENDER
The easiest and best way to avoid rejection is to not extend oneself at all. There is loss in this sacrifice, I know, reminded as I am sorting through the more recent past, all organized into tiny paper packets inside of a red cardboard box. But there is something not lost, as well, and that something, at times, seems much more valuable to me. I am too afraid that it will hurt again, even still, and so the risk is avoided by the creation of these mailboxes.
You don't remember how many times that I've tried. You don't know how many ways I've told you that I loved you. You can't see the millions of characters all calling your name, or the hours that have died in your honor. And all of those hours are kept in a box.