wormwood, pt. 36

Getting there.

Rosalind had made a few decisions before calling Winston. The first was that she would not wait here forever--the second was that she would get out of the city even after he showed up. Nicole had stopped playing and was simply sitting on the hood, watching the horizon, saying nothing. This was up to her, whatever else happened. The more she thought, the more she hated the idea of the boat--it was a trap. She'd have nowhere to explore, and when things went bad, nowhere to run. And she didn't trust Winston's assessment of the situation.

So she told him he had two hours. This was before a meteor fell from the sky and crashed just ahead. The impact toppled a building that had miraculously still been standing since the earthquake. "Gotta go," she told him, and hung up the phone.

Nicole was already on her feet by the time Rosalind ran up to her. "Fuck, what was that?"

Rosalind shrugged. "I think stars falling from the sky are traditional in the end times. So, new plan. Forget Winston. We find shelter--and I know just where. Take everything you can carry, and we run for it. The car's just asking for trouble."

They loaded up everything they could carry and ran through the streets. They found shelter in a transit tunnel, settled down in the dark down there, and listened to the silence. The trains had long stopped running, and these tunnels were just lying empty now.

"What are we going to do now, Rose? There's nothing down here."

"Maybe we can rebuild civilization together?"

Nicole snorted. "I'm not sure that's how it works."

"Well, this is as safe as we'll get in this city. And we can follow the tracks out of the city well enough. We're bound to find a better place out of this pit."

"Yes, but what are we doing right now? Telling knock-knock jokes?"

"Do you have any good ones?"

"No. But I have this bottle of absinthe. Clean, sober living hasn't been doing me any favors lately, so I think I'm going to stop that."

"I knew I kept you around for a reason. Ah, my kingdom for an absinthe spoon."

wormwood, pt. 35

You might remember wormwood from a year or so back. Why not start at the beginning?

By Friday evening, Winston had been welcomed into the strange little culture the diner had developed. They did not, he was aware, have much of a long-term plan for survival. But they had stockpiles of food and supplies--more than just the diner should have. Each of the patrons and employees had brought a little something, and Winston's camping gear was welcomed.

His companions, meanwhile, had slowly been pushed to the edges. They had been complaining about the delay since it became apparent that Winston was not very keen on pressing on. It seemed strange to Winston. The world was ending anyway. Why not spend the rest of it in a little haven like this? They had a base to work from here. They could scrounge and forage. Maybe, he allowed himself to imagine, this would be the diner that rebuilt civilization.

Someone had changed the radio station from a news station to something that was, improbably, still broadcasting classic rock. At the moment it seemed to be broadcasting exclusively Led Zeppelin, and Winston had not noticed a single tasteless joke about the apocalypse in the meanwhile.

His cell phone rang, and he guiltily remembered Rosalind. "Hello, Rosie."

"Don't call me that. Where are you?"

"Um, we're at this diner. We got hungry, I guess. It's, uh." He strained his memory of the city. "Three or so miles from the waterfront. But listen, I'm not sure about--"

"If you are not here in two hours I will personally hunt you down," said Rosalind over the phone. "But not before I find this boat of yours and scuttle it. I'll gnaw through the hull with my teeth if I have to. Then I will see that you are stranded in this doomed city until the world's ending, which, admittedly, may not be a very long time."

"Ran out of steam there, huh?"

"I'm tired."

Over the phone, he could just make out the sound of a loud explosion. "What was that?"

A long silence followed. Then, "Near as I can tell? The sky is falling. Gotta go."

The line went dead. Then the explosion happened just outside.

under protest

She went to the protests downtown. I had to work. I was never sure about things like that anyway--standing around and chanting like it would make a difference, like anything would make a difference. It all seemed vaguely upsetting to me. Things will never change. Why fight it? I know she knows how I feel. I even told her I didn't want her to go. I gave her all my reasons--these things worry me, it was all so pointless and aimless, she'd just be cold and miserable anyway with the weather we've been having. She went anyway. "I've never been to a protest. It could be fun!"

She came home early this morning, still drunk on the excitement of it all. She told me of all these strange things she did--joining the chants, shouting at the police, even submitting ideas to the general assembly. "I'd never done anything like that before," she said.

"Yes? How did it feel losing your individuality?" I said. From her expression I knew it hurt, but she didn't say anything. I went back to sleep. She was gone by the time I woke up. There was a note on my laptop:

"Gone back to the protests. Sometimes it's more important to be a part of something that's important than be an individual who's not."

loss of focus

My eyes have started doing this thing where they refuse to focus. Anything that gets close becomes two indistinct shapes floating in front of my vision. It takes a concerted effort, or something blocking the view, to force myself to see anything, and even then it would make my head hurt. I've been to several eye doctors and they can't seem to find the problem--because, I have decided, the problem has nothing to do with my eyes. The problem is that there's nothing there to focus on.

At some point I knew it would come. The hallucination that there are little details to pick up in the world, that there's something to look at, has been fading for some time. My body's ability to stitch together that belief is falling apart. And now in a little bubble around me I've finally lost that ability altogether. I float through the world in this bubble of unreality, eyes forever fixed on the middle distance.

People give me a wide berth now--can they detect that reality is unraveling around me? Are they afraid of the calmness of my smile, the steadiness of my stare? It hardly matters. They will all lose focus soon regardless.

twinge

There's still a few holes that let in a little rain.

I woke up this morning from an unpleasant dream with a twinge in my neck, and somehow these things are related. Every time I moved my neck wrong today, there was the pain, of course, but I am good at pain. What I'm not good at are the strange memories that came with it. Every time my neck hurt, the dream came back.

I dreamed of the last secret I allow myself to keep. At points in the dream I found myself noticing, as I often do, my tendency to smile at my own private thoughts, and to laugh when I'm depressed or worried or upset--and people assume that I'm happy when I'm terrified. At no point in the dream did I hurt my neck. But the day wore on and the two things kept linking themselves, like my body wanted to remind me--or rather, to keep me from forgetting. I don't know why it wants me to remember. Perhaps part of me is tied up in this dream, in the only secret I still keep, and if I let it fade I'm letting part of myself fade, too. Secrets are important, as I was reminded not long ago.

Regardless of why, the twinge lingers on, no matter how I stretch and massage it out. I'm afraid to go to sleep, because dreams wait for me there, and I don't think my mind is going to let me off that easy.

design flaws

I had a dream tonight.

A building plan keeps circulating amongst my colleagues at the architectural firm. Nobody claims it for their own and the sensible among us ignore it--they call it a hoax, mostly, or otherwise not worth their time. But some of us looked them over. Some of us did it casually, others more thoroughly.

The building was enticingly impossible. That is to say, impossible in just such a way that an enterprising architect might find himself thinking he could find a way to make it work--but no, the math was always wrong, even if only just. And even among those of us who weren't sensible, most eventually put it down, dismissed it as a waste of time, a puzzle not worth solving.

But I couldn't give up. I put in long hours at the office, putting more time into the plans each evening. Some nights I wouldn't even bother going home. And unlike any of my predecessors, I did more than just trying to make the designs work. I did research.

I came no closer to learning the origins of the plans, but they have been around for far longer than I have. And others have tried and failed to work on them--this was the most important discovery, because now I'm getting closer than ever. In a few weeks I'll be ready for the groundbreaking. I will construct the impossible, and set foot in halls no mortal man was meant to tread.

not quite impossible

There was a girl who mostly seemed impossible. Stories of friends on the lam, of jumping trains, of a life so full of adventure that it seemed unreal. And she was so nonchalant about it. These were merely things that happened to her. She wasn't fazed at all by it.

I can remember her inflection more than the stories themselves (though that's a lie): the way she sounded almost irritated. I remember it because of how beautiful that storyteller's trick is, adopting that tone that seems to say, "these are the things I put up with." "I found out today my best friend had jumped on a train and was now somewhere in Vermont. Such is life." And she had such perfect cadence, such beautiful words. I think I only believed her because someone with that flair for telling a story is wasted telling something exciting. She could make a trip to the grocery store compelling, and she's using material like this with a dismissive shrug and a coy, "But you're not interested in all that." She has the scars to prove it, but that hardly matters. Scars are just there. It's the stories you can believe in.

She's gone now. Vanished just like every one of those stories screamed she would. I never wonder about her stories, but I often wonder if she really happened at all. Life's like that, sometimes. These strange things happen and later on the only thing you can do with it is question it.

insensate

At some point after my accident (don't say accident; that implies no one's at fault) I realized that I don't feel pain the way I'm meant to. By all rights, the doctors told me, the pain should have been excruciating. I felt it, of course, but not enough--I kept going. And it all came back to me, a whole life never understanding how people needed painkillers.

Now all I can notice is how muted, how dull, my reactions are, emotionally, physically (you've always been strong). I remember vividly every time in my life that I've really, truly felt something, but they're brief flashes--a few seconds of anguish, if that, and then it's back to something I can just tune out. And it's always been like this.

I often wonder if I feel or if I merely know what I'm supposed to feel--how much of me is just learned behavior and practiced patterns? Which is to say, if I'm not real (I can't stand fake people) what am I? What's the point of me? And maybe more importantly, is anyone actually a real person or is everyone like me, trudging along trying to figure out what a person is supposed to be like?

solvent

I purchased a solvent at the market this weekend, and noticed, when I was soaking some old coins in it, that it did not work as I had intended--though in fairness, it may well have worked as advertised. I have always been hasty in my purchases. I'd expected it to clean off some of the old residue, leaving them shiny and new. Instead it gradually sent them back in time.

I don't fully understand the specifics of it, but I have blank metal discs from just before they were stamped now, as well as coins through their lives. At some point the coin, such as it is, ceases to exist--or gets to the point where it hasn't yet been made--and simply vanishes, leaving no trace that it had ever existed.

Further experimentation confirms that this works on things besides coins, as well, though I don't know the extent to which it will. I've only erased little things, things that won't make a noticeable difference. But supposing I buy enough to erase the car that killed my brother?

The merchant must have known what he was selling, because he gave me his card--"in case you need to buy any more." I've tapped into my savings to buy as much as I can. There's things about this world that need to change.

creation

I wish I could say it was startling to learn that the idea of object permanence was entirely false, but it really wasn't. The world beyond what I can immediately perceive simply doesn't exist in any real and proper sense--and it hasn't for a while.

It's hard to unsee a world that makes sense. I still see things and think that must have been there before, that's always been the same way, that, in some way, the room that I slept in last night is the same room I've always slept in--that it will be there when I go there tonight, or that it even exists right now. Or that I've ever slept in a room at all--these memories may as well create themselves. They certainly don't correspond to anything resembling an objective reality.

I can't even say things make more sense this way, but it seems my mind is only desperately scrabbling to find some pattern or sense to things. Instead of letting life happen it's trying to find something to hold on to, try as I might to let go.

dying

And we surrender the stage to those pale horse riders.

It is in the nature of the power I have been given over the earth to be personal. Every life that ends on my watch is a life I come to know intimately. There are individual voices in the anguished cries that fill the world these days, dying of sword, famine, and plague. I can hear all of them.

Perhaps there was a time when I could have been described as compassionate, but I don't remember it now. How could I grant someone mercy when I've seen all the little murders they commit day by day? How can I do anything but what I am meant to do--bring their lives to an end.

I've read once that justice is everyone being treated the same in the end. I suppose there is justice in that way--in the end nobody gets away with it. In the end even the worst things people can do are lost forever, until there's not even a memory left, and they are well and truly dead. That's the justice I bring.

plague ships

There is no panic greater than a public health scare. And it was given to me, in the form of a crown, to spread plague through the world--a flu outbreak here, cholera there. Little things.

It would be easy for someone to profit from these little ventures. I could have made them all fairly easily controlled, sent in the drug companies and the health care industry to make a tidy little profit, to exert control, but what fun is that? I want to see the world stricken with plague, with no recourse--the sprawling glory of the diseased masses as they beg for a release that won't come. The chaos of it all.

And the poor will be packed away into plague ships, while the rich hide in their mansions, laughing, unaware that I walk among them even there. In the end it won't matter that they have their expensive doctors. In comfort or in distress, all will succumb in the end. What does a plague care of social status, of morality, of anything?

As for the why--should there be a reason? Should there be justice in this world, or vengeance? What is the point of a world without something senseless and terrifying at its heart, eating away at every inhabitant? Would you want to live there?

starving

I don't mind telling you I didn't come to my fortune honestly. I don't mind telling you, because it doesn't matter now--I control the world's food supply. None of it goes anywhere without the approval of myself or my corporation. I came this way partly through good fortune--in a time of crisis, in a time of famine, someone needed to take charge--and partly through honest treachery. It hardly matters now. I see that things run smoothly, and I see that I and my associates wax affluent.

By the time the crisis should have been over, I had seen to it that it would last forever. There would never be a time when I was not needed. The world was mine--and they would thank me for it. They would praise me for my insight, for my generosity, even as they starved in the streets, starved in lines outside the distribution centers. Sometimes I would toss someone a heel of bread and they would call me a saint.

I did not hesitate. I was given this gift, these scales, and I knew that I could be happy, that I would never hunger again, if only I reached out my arm.

the warpath

I have been given the power to lay this world to ruin. A sword was given to me, that I could take peace from men and turn them on one another. I need only say the word--and not even that much. A gesture, a glance, a thought, and the world crumbles. The simplest thing--and so satisfying.

I've spent the last day not doing anything at all. I could start with the people responsible for this mess were in. I could bring--not justice, never justice, but perhaps vengeance. And if the rest of the world were dragged into chaos along with it, it would be worth it. And it could never happen again.

I've wanted this for as long as I can remember. Maybe not forever, but long enough. Riots and wars and disasters excite me in ways I can't talk about in polite company--but every time I hope this one will explode. And now I can make that happen.

So why can't I pull the trigger? What am I waiting for? I'm ready to bring wrath and ruin to the earth, but I can't make that trivial effort to bring it about.

burglarized

My house got broken into a few weeks ago. Since then I've lost the little grasp on reality I still had.

Well, that's not quite right. I still understand the external world as much as I ever have. It's something inside me that's broken. My ability to relate to it, to process it, has gone. They didn't just steal a stereo I never used. They stole something else, something I don't quite understand.

Not that anyone else has noticed--except to comment that I seem happier, or at least more content. They say I seem calmer. They say things like "You're handling this well." And something that isn't me smiles and nods and says things like "It happens." But I'm not there for these conversations. These things happened to someone else.

The thing is, since the break-in I haven't had a moment where I was really there--or if I have, I've missed it. I've made a few spirited efforts at appearing like a person once or twice, and convinced everyone but myself: I am real, I am me.

I don't know what to do. I don't know what I should do, or, if I were here, what I would do.

mine

I'd been having panic attacks when I went out--which is fine, because I stopped going out. I had so many projects to work on, and finally I had the time to deal with them. But she'd been pestering me about it. Oh, she pretended she's concerned, that she wanted to help, but she clearly didn't understand. This was about her, and I was tired of it. After a few days of it seeing her would set me off, then hearing her voice. After that we communicated with emails--and even then I ignored most of hers. I had things to be doing and she was only distracting me.

It was perhaps a week since I'd had any contact with the outside world when she came over unexpectedly. I cowered in the corner, clutching at my work--the work she'd no doubt come to destroy. She touched my hand, and the nauseating scraping of skin on skin nearly made me vomit. Her voice rang like thunder in my ears. She burned like the sun, dazzling my eyes until I could see nothing else.

For what seemed like hours there was nothing but her presence. Then I found myself blinking in the daylight, throngs of people walking by as if it was no big deal. A park of some sort, then. No sign of her, no sign of my work, no idea where I was.

Someone caught my eye and smiled. My heart started to pound, sure the attacks would come back, but nothing came. I smiled back. The world kept spinning.

yours

You were always something unattainable, something perfect, but nevertheless you saw something you liked in me--was it my crooked smile, the way I can turn a phrase? You never said. But you must have known how I admired you, how you took the world around you and fashioned it into something beautiful. You must have, because otherwise why would you have offered to let me in?

And it was beautiful--more than I could have imagined. But it was there, watching you work, that I realized that this was not for me. I could never be a part of it--and it wasn't just a thing you did, it was who you were. It hurt, watching you create something beautiful from someone like me, and I couldn't let that continue. It was wrong for me to become a part of the tapestry of your life.

There was a strange moment right before we parted ways, standing outside your apartment--a moment where I'd meant to kiss you farewell, to let you down gently, to part on good terms. Perhaps you'd remember me fondly, but more likely you wouldn't remember me at all. Not when there was so much else in this world, so much more interesting than me.

That moment was shattered when one of us noticed a man sitting there in his car, just watching us. We stood there awkwardly, waiting for a few words, then you stepped inside, leaving me standing on the street, not quite sure what to make of any of this. I shuffled home. We never spoke again. I didn't want to get in the way.

ours

When we first met, we would go exploring together, climbing rooftops and exploring lost places underground, together, scraping our hands and growing calluses, together. It was ours. We fell in love quickly, as far as these things go, and I started taking a camera on our expeditions, snapping pictures, taking notes, documenting our times together.

The project of documentation started taking up more and more of my time--I wanted this to be perfect for her, so I spent all of my available hours on it. Making sure the pictures are just so, that the words are perfect. I wanted the world to know that these explorations, this thing of ours, were beautiful. And my hands grew soft, the cuts and scrapes healing, as I worked. And she implored me to go out once more, to explore with her, but I said no. And at first she was patient, because this thing was ours, and she would not violate it.

But as the project grew in scope and the weeks wore on, I noticed that she had new scrapes on her hands, new calluses. She would come home covered in dirt from the lost places we once explored together. Eventually I grew angry and confronted her about it. How could she do this? How could she abandon me, abandon these sacred moments we once had?

And she smiled and touched my cheek with a callused hand and told me that it wasn't ours anymore. Then she was gone, exploring lost places without me, and me with nothing but pictures and broken words to remember it.

celebratory

As I walked home last night a stray firework went off inches from my face, dazzling me with its brilliance and leaving my ears ringing on the way home. The people who had lit it were trying to surround me, and I presume asking if I was all right, but I could hear nothing, and with the afterimage still dancing around on my retina, they looked somehow less than human.

The ringing hadn't stopped when I got home, nor had my eyes cleared. I took a shot of whiskey as a nightcap and slept. In the morning, I found myself in a world of overwhelming sound and color.

I tried to get through work, but it was impossible to focus, especially with people around. People--all these stupid, provincial people, so caught up in themselves they can't even see the world around them--were impossibly beautiful, each in their own way, even people I despised.

At lunch I told my boss I was feeling ill and I went home as quickly as I could, drawing the blinds and plugging my ears, though neither of these things helped. And I lay very still for a very long time, waiting for it to pass.

false vacuum

Various scientists have confirmed that it's entirely possible the world will just spontaneously end. One of the ways that might happen is the idea that, basically, we're wrong about the laws of the universe. All of existence might just stop being "existence." Or maybe it would just be destroyed. I'm not pretending to understand. The point is it doesn't take much to destroy the world. It only takes the easiest thing in the world: we have to be wrong. And if there's one thing I'll bet anything on, it's that.

I always used to find this terrifying. Everything could end in a moment of perfect agony, or maybe not even that. How can we deal with that?

But it's all hinged on the basic fact that everything we think we know is wrong. All our perceptions and our tiny human notions are wrong. That bothered me for a while, too, but I stepped outside this evening, and the wind was blowing and there wasn't a star in the sky, but the whole city seemed to have this shimmering beauty about it, all mutable and alive. Every thing we've gotten wrong about it is nothing but iridescent potential. Every time we break another law of physics we get closer to the chaotic things we were meant to be.