Intentional Dissonance (14 page)

Jon’s feels like he’s outside himself, looking at himself doing this and for the first time in his life, wonders if he’s the biggest asshole to ever live or if anything has ever been real or even mattered.

Ok.

I’m just tired.

Fine.

Chapter 16

Now

The man with the white beard puts man after man into the machine, plugs in all the right photographs, screenshots, diaries, artifacts, metaphors, and symbols and all the men scream with so much despair. Each one is a story. Then the men, their noses start to bleed and their voices are filled with pure terror and then they die. And he does it again and again. Into infinity. The words appear on all the TV screens across the planet, “You have read this all before.”

Jon wakes up screaming.

“Ok, ok, buddy, relax,” says Edward’s voice, from somewhere.

Jon’s covered in sweat, and more tired than he’s ever been in his life. It wasn’t a dream. This is real. This is real, he tells himself again and again and the words echo off into a cavern in his mind.

“You got an infection or got poisoned or went insane or something and you’ve been out for more than a day, yelling some of the craziest shit I’ve ever heard,” says Edward, slowly coming into focus behind a haze. He puts a glass of water to Jon’s lip and Jon notices that they feel like they’re on fire. Then he notices a large chunk of his wrist is missing.

“Did I get shot?”

“Nope, we had to take out your wrist implant so they couldn’t track you. Mine got taken when they took my arm. Our deadly friend did a little minor surgery on you, quite delicately I might add, then he did himself. Bastard didn’t even use anesthetic, just ripped it clean out.”

“Thank you. And call him One Eye, he’s not going to give us his real name,” says Jon, rubbing his arm.

“No problem, thanks for saving my life back in the cell and bandaging up my arm. And don’t forget to thank One Eye. He did all of the hard work,” says Edward.

One Eye looks across at Jon from the other side of the old warehouse and waves. Once. He scares Jon, just a little. He rubs his arm. The wound itches but it feels ok.

“We had to get rid of the Peace Carriage. One Eye destroyed whatever was in it that could conceivably track us but we couldn’t be absolutely sure. So we trashed the lot of it. Well, almost the lot of it. We kept an undernet interface,” says Edward. Jon sees the stripped out interior laying up against the side of the warehouse wall.

“Dad was a mechanic,” says Edward, “he showed me how to strip any machine in less than ten minutes. Even one handed.” Jon notices the stump where Edward’s arm used to be. The stump is getting longer. Some of the myths are true.

“Here, eat this,” says Edward.

He gives Jon some protein bars that taste like grilled cheese sandwiches. Jon opens the wrapper and the chemicals in the bars react with the air and they heat up in his hands. They’re the most delicious things Jon’s ever eaten, or he’s so hungry they just taste that way. Jon begins to feel human again. An hour later, he’s up and walking around but something in his heart is dead. He remembers what the doctor said about Michelle now. What he saw in the video. Michelle is a ghost. Michelle is a ghost. Michelle is a ghost. No matter how many times he says it, it doesn’t feel real. Edward is fiddling with one of the hologram networks that still runs through the undernet, cobbled together from the remains of the carriage. Edward sighs and steps back. He can tell something’s eating Jon up inside.

“Jon,” says Edward.

“Yes?” asks Jon.

“What was the doctor guy talking about, who’s Michelle?”

“It’s a long story. Maybe a ghost. Maybe she’s a ghost,” says Jon. Jon stares off at a distant point that maybe, he once reached. Edward decides that now is the right time to talk about something else.

“I’m afraid we’re stuck with each other,” says Edward.

“Why?”

“Well, because all three of us have just become the most wanted fucking people on the planet. We killed a whole bunch of them.”

“Uh-huh,” says Jon. He doesn’t seem to care.

“Look at the globe feed coming from the undernet, from the people who spend their rations on it,” says Edward, still trying to take Jon’s mind away from wherever it is because he can see it’s not a nice place.

“What about it?” asks Jon.

“Well, you see all that stuff in the feed? All the stuff that gets upvoted and praised?” asks Edward.

“Yeah,” says Jon.

“Other people chose that right?” Asks Edward.

“Right,” says Jon.

“So right now you’re looking at the most popular content, pictures of cats and shit, across what’s left of the world right?” Asks Edward.

“Right. That’s a good thing. People love that, the triviality of what used to be the Internet gives them a sense of comfort,” says Jon, not sure what Edward is getting at.

“No it’s not,” says Edward.

“Popular stuff is bad?” Asks Jon.

“No, disregarding your own personal taste in favour of the rest of the world’s taste is bad. Sitting there, waiting for something interesting to come over the feed, sent to you and pre-approved by someone else, that’s bad. That’s why the art director and the copywriter on your block used to call you a consumer. Because that’s what you do. You just lie there and consume. Like a fat pupa and they can harvest you when they want to,” says Edward.

“You sound upset,” says Jon.

“The whole thing’s upsetting. Remember all the networks and applications and socialising people were expected to do, when all that shit was still allowed?”

“Are you going to tell me that was bad too?”

“Too many people mistook envy for happiness. They believed other people wanting to do the things they were doing was more important that doing the things they wanted to do. So they’d edit their photographs and edit their lives and edit and lie until from a distance, it looked like they had the perfect life. But life isn’t something that should be edited. Life shouldn’t be cut. The only way you’ll ever discover what it truly means to be alive and human is by sharing the full experience of what it means to be human and each blemish and freckle that comes with it.”

“You’re an ent, Edward, not a human. Why should I, or you, care what it means to be human? I don’t care where the chemicals in my drugs come from or where the grapes, in what passes for wine these days, were grown.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps that’s why you drink wine and take drugs. Because you want to kill the question.”

“Or I drink wine because my head likes being drunk and I take Sadness so I can actually feel something besides the fucking chemically induced happiness the government puts in the water in this God forsaken city. Not everything is some big philosophical fuck-show.”

“I disagree.”

“Fine. But life is what you make of it. Plenty of people have lived and died, perfectly content, without ever having asked why the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.”

“Jon, if you can show me a life without a question, I’ll show you someone without purpose.”

“You’re starting to sound upset, Edward.”

“Of course I’m not upset. I’m not allowed to be, am I,” says Edward and he takes a swig from his water bottle.

“I’d give my kingdom to care,” says Jon.

“Why the hell are you being so goddamn melodramatic?”

“Why the hell are you trying to be so fucking philosophical? And since when did you give a shit about any of this anyway? I don’t even fucking know you.”

Jon can see he’s hurt Edward somehow, someway. He’s not used to having conversations like this. He avoids them. Edward turns away and goes back to the remains of the Peace Carriage. Maybe trying to get Jon’s mind off whatever was bothering him was a bad idea. Maybe not. He’d rather have Jon turn his anger outwards than inwards. He cares about the stupid human. It’s a strange emotion. He knows Jon saved his life. He’s indebted. Each of them owes the other something.

Jon shakes his head and leaves to go back to the makeshift mattress. He’s usually had several doses of Sadness by now and the withdrawal’s making him a little crazy. And Michelle. Michelle, Michelle, Michelle, whatever she was, wherever she was. He felt like the last ten years hadn’t happened. Around him, black plastic trinkets with single red lights and swipe screens, interactive sensors and tangible interfaces float in the air like neon snowflakes. The future is tacky.

They’ll have to work out what to do next; the doctor will be hunting them but there’s an unspoken understanding that whatever they do, it can wait until morning. Jon sleeps the rest of the day and that night, they sit around a space heater with all the lights switched off, keeping an eye out for any Peace Patrols.

“You know they used to pay the crime writers more,” says Edward, chewing on a protein bar.

“What do you mean?” asks Jon.

“You know when sometimes they show old shows like CSI or Law & Order on the news blimp? The guys who worked on that stuff made more money,” says Edward.

“Why?” asks Jon.

“Because they wanted everyone who got home each night to learn the same lesson each time and that lesson is so important, they used to pay them more,” says Edward.

“And what lesson was that?” Asks Jon.

“Do the wrong thing and you’ll get caught,” says Edward.

“We should try not to do that then,” says Jon.

“The fucking cops are the only ones who got to live in the future. They’re the only ones who got to see what technology could really do. The rest of us get the scraps. The technology rations. But they’re still a bunch of morons,” says Edward.

“Now I’m confused. Are you telling me I will or I won’t get caught if I do bad things?” asks Jon. It’s fun to wind Edward up and for a moment, it distracts him from the missing space inside him.

“I’m telling you that everyone in this time, in this place, is playing a lottery with very few winning numbers, whether anyone wants to admit it or not,” says Edward.

“Now who’s being melodramatic?” asks Jon.

Jon’s comment cracks the tension and they laugh and then they notice that One Eye is laughing too. It is the strangest laugh they’ve ever heard, like two cans filled with pennies scraping against each other. Edward and Jon slowly turn to look at him, stopping laughing. One Eye slowly stops too. There’s a silence.

And then, they begin to laugh again.

Chapter 17

Now

The last man alive in Africa has survived ten years but now he’s convinced that the sun is finally going to burn him out. He crawls through the shack he’s in and edges up to the windows, careful not to let the sun touch his skin. Each morning, he puts paper over the windows and by the time the sun goes down, they’re burnt up. He writes messages on bits of newspaper, should anyone ever find this place again, so they could know what happened. So they could know what he went through. The idea that someone one day might know what happened is the only thing that brings a smile to his parched, cracked lips and he only allows himself to think of it once a day, in case the thought stops bringing him happiness. He rations his own happiness. He leaves the notes under rocks, away from the sun, so they won’t get burnt up. Late at night, he thinks he can still hear the shadows outside.

On the other side of the world, One Eye and Edward are asleep. Jon has something he needs to do. Some part of him accepts it and some part of him knows he’s just talking to a piece of himself but it’s a piece that he once loved. A piece that he still loves.

He thinks of Michelle.

And she’s there.

As if she’s always been there. A single tear runs down Jon’s face.

“Do you know that those cigarettes we smoked in the park, that night we first met, that’s the last time I ever smoked,” says Jon.

“Of course I know. Why wouldn’t I know? I’ve known you forever Jon. I know every inch of you,” says Michelle.

“I just didn’t want to ever smoke another one, because everything changed with that cigarette and I didn’t want things to change ever again.”

“I know.”

“You know because you’re just a figment of my imagination, aren’t you?”

Michelle nods and bites her lip. “I never meant to hurt you, Jon. I’m a part of you. I didn’t want to hurt myself. I didn’t want to hurt us. I had to keep the truth hidden.”

“How are you so beautiful?” asks Jon and he touches her face.

“What?”

“I said: how are you so beautiful?” repeats Jon.

“I heard you, I just didn’t understand the question,” says Michelle.

“Do you understand it now that I’ve said it again?” asks Jon.

“No…not really. I don’t have a choice in how I look. I just look how I look. This is how the universe made me,” says Michelle.

“But you’re not beautiful because of how you look,” says Jon.

“Then what makes me beautiful?” asks Michelle.

“Something else I guess,” says Jon. He looks at the stars through the holes in the roof and wishes they would rain down on him. He knows now, he knows she’s a lie but she’s a comforting lie.