This Is the End

by Eric Pollarine

  I pass by the flat black pieces of granite and marble shining in the late day sun. It’s another perfect day. The sky is motionless and clear. The wind is brisk but mellow. Nothing like it should be right now, raining and grey, the way it should always be in a cemetery. I walk further in to the sprawling park; I pass by little dogwoods, larger magnolias and some maples that are just about done unfurling their leaves, then I finally find the large flat opening that his plot is in.

  I stare at the open grass; every plot around him has a stone, every stone has a name. It’s a pretty standard and scenic cemetery: lots and trees, some larger stones, well-manicured grass and a lake with a shrine to some forgotten Saint Whoever. I look back down to the empty piece of land without a marker and I smile. Once I’m frozen, or gone, or whatever, no one will ever know he’s here. It’s my way of saying no one ever needed you. My way of saying that no one needs to know you ever lived, ever fathered children, ever held down a miserable job. No one needs to ever know you divorced three women and hurt anyone and everyone you ever knew. You’re nothing now. You’re just an open piece of land covered in goose shit. A plot of dirt that, in a hundred years, if anyone is still burying people in the fucking ground, they will dig up and put someone else on top of. Maybe it’ll be someone who will deserve a stone, someone who’ll deserve something to remember them by.

  I crack open the bottle of whisky and the sweet, peaty smell makes me feel calm. I look down at the grass and sigh. I look out towards the lake, towards the water as its surface breaks black and gold. Tiny waves from the handful of ducks swimming in it lap at the pea stone shores that edge around it. I take a swig off the bottle. I know a whisky like this deserves a nice rock glass, maybe something in cut crystal, but right now I’m just visiting and I forgot to bring a glass.

  The whisky burns my throat and chest for a few seconds. I feel like I’m going to start coughing again but then the fiery peat grain dissolves into a warm, slow campfire and I can breathe clearly. I’m pretty sure the cure for cancer is whisky. I light up a cigarette and then regret it, because I start coughing. I take another pull off the bottle; this one is slower and I stare down at the grass.

  “I remember you though,” I say. “Every goddamn day that comes around on this stupid Earth, every time I look in a mirror, I remember you.”

  I pull the bottle back towards my mouth again but stop and move to my cigarette instead. I turn the bottle upside down and let it pour over the grass and goose shit. The ground is still cold, so as the warm whisky hits, it makes little ghost vapors. I let the whole bottle drain out and then let the empty drop on the plot. I suck back on the cigarette and say, “Goodbye.”

  I walk back to my little Ford, get in and drive. The security guard at the gate raises his hand to wave at me and I don’t look over at him. I’m crying. I will never come back to see my father ever again. I’m all right with that.

  7.

  The drive back into the city is far less picturesque than the drive out. Maybe it’s the doubts about tomorrow, or maybe it’s the fact I just spent the better part of my day either being nearly choked to death or crying like a little girl over a dead man that I hate, but I feel nauseous when I start seeing the concrete and urban sprawl begin to overtake the calm greenery of the suburbs. The sun is a burning, red eye, making the sunset, the last sunset I’ll see for a while, as brilliant as it should be. Pink and purple streams of puffy cloud cover roll out towards the horizon line. I can’t see Lake Erie from here but I’m sure that the view back in my office is pretty spectacular.

  I hit a small pocket of traffic going back into the city and it gives me enough time to tap out a request for Phil to meet me at my office. Tomorrow is the big day and I want to make absolutely sure that there are no surprises in the form of DHS or any other three-letter department of the government. I pass by some well-dressed couples out for a little stroll down East 4th and then probably over to Playhouse Square to catch something by someone famous. I don’t contribute to the arts as much as I probably should. I will tell Phil to do so tonight.

  When I finally make it to the opening of the parking garage I’m greeted by more security guys. They flag me through and then close the steel roll down doors. They allow me the courtesy of getting out of my car by myself and then escort me back towards the elevator doors.

  I light up another cigarette as I get into the polished chrome cylinder and push the button for my office. It takes another three seconds to get back up to the top.

  “Top floor. Thank you,” says the horrible computer voice as I exit and I remind myself that I need to have that changed before I freeze. I feel like there’s so much more to do, so much more that I should be doing. But tomorrow is the day and I’m not going to postpone this for anything. When I look up I see Phil sitting on the couch tapping something on his tablet. He stands up and moves towards me and we shake hands. It hits me that this is probably going to be the last time I shake Phil’s hand. He gives me a weird look back as if I just said, “This is going to be the last time I shake your hand.” He asks “What?”

  I say, “It’s nothing,” and press my finger on the scanner. The doors click open and we move inside.

  * * *

  “Rob was here?” he says back to me, it’s more a statement than a question, but I answer back with a head nod. He looks around and finds the chair that I was thrown into still on its side, then brings his hand to his forehead and starts rubbing. “Jesus.”

  “I know, and he said that there might be some problems tomorrow,” I say as I move towards the kitchen to make a pot of coffee.

  Phil looses his tie without looking up at me. “Let me guess, your little press conference.”

  “Yeah, he wasn’t happy. He mentioned something about Project Mobile,” I say back as I finish pouring the water into the reservoir and flick the on button.

  “Also, I’m about to have my last meal; do you care to join me?” I ask.

  He picks his head up from his hand and says, “Actually, I would be honored.”

  I sit back down in my chair and smile. “You’re a terrible liar, Phil. I’m paying you well, and you’re not honored.”

  I motion for the screens to come back to life and bring up the code I wrote earlier today. I know what “Project Mobile” is, but I decide to let Phil talk for a few as I’m deciding to on what I want for my last meal.

  “Why don’t you refresh my memory on that particular little outing?” I ask as I go back over the strands of code, checking to see if I used the right version of the languages, the right syntax and characters. I know I did, but I want the bug to work, so double-checking isn’t a bad idea.

  “What, you want me to tell you about Project Mobile? I thought we were having dinner.”

  “Humor me. Besides, you can have anything you want tonight, the best drinks, food and desert you’ll probably ever eat. Also, I’m dying.”

  He laughs and looks around the office then says, “No, Jeff, you’ve already used up all your ‘I’m dying’ credits. You’ll have to try something else.”

  “How about not paying you?” I say back to him stonefaced and serious enough that he decides not to call my bluff.

  “It’s your time and money,” he shrugs and says back with a smile.

  8.

  I ordered stuffed steak with mashed potatoes, green beans, boiled carrots, fried apples, sweet potatoes and finished it all off with a small German chocolate cake for desert. Phil decided he would have something healthy and ordered a Kobe steak, salad with a pear vinaigrette dressing and some sort of onion soup thing. It smelled and looked like vomit.

  While we eat he tells me about “Project Mobile,” how we’re developing ghost apps that will be running behind the two main operating systems all over the world, effectively turning all mobile devices everywhere into little beacons of streaming information. I look on unimpressed.

  “How is that any different from what the government has been doing since 1996, when cell phones started becoming homing d
evices?”

  He shakes his head.

  “You’re not seeing the big picture here, Jeff. It’s not just beaming info out, it’s beaming info in—straight to the user’s eyes and ears. Subliminal signals, multiple digital frames and tones per second. Imagine being able to beam pro-Western messages into the heads of Chinese children 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Or Iranian children, soldiers, women. Hell, imagine being able to beam stand-down orders into the heads of every army on the face of the earth—except ours.”

  I can’t believe what Phil is saying, but it makes sense now. All the work we’ve been doing, all the secrecy. I keep out of most of it. I know about pieces, but not the whole puzzle.

  I know it now, though, and the code that I worked on today isn’t going to help any. I look down at all the unfinished food; I suddenly no longer have an appetite.

  “That’s fucking brilliant,” I whisper into my plate.

  “I know,” says Phil. I look up and he’s looking out towards the city skyline. I join him. The distant blinking lights of communication towers look like earthbound stars; windows in office complexes form binary Rorschach tests. Stoplights and cars pass by in time with imaginary dance club rhythms. The real stars in heaven are eclipsed by LEDs and fluorescent bulbs powered by burning dinosaur bones. The world is small and silent.

  I look back at him and he pulls himself away from the window, then smiles and says, “That was delicious.” I nod and then move to the bar and open another bottle of Laphroaig—but this is just the regular ten-year—pour two dry glasses, then walk back and hand him one. I pull the pack of cigarettes out of my pocket and light one up. I begin to wonder what the fuck else we’re doing for them that seems as crazy as this, but stop.

  “Is there anything we can do?” I ask him, but I know there isn’t. We signed over our souls a long, long time ago for funding.

  He takes a sip of his whisky and shakes his head. “No, the project has gotten out of control. Do you want to know how much debt they’re burning through just to get this done?”

  I think about it for a few seconds and take a drag off the cigarette. It makes me want to cough, but then nicotine and whisky flood my internal sensors, calming my lungs down enough to avoid the spell.

  “No, I guess in the long run it doesn’t matter.”

  He holds his glass up in the air and leans back in his chair and toasts, “Here’s to the brave new world.”

  “To the promise land,” I say back and clink the air.

  We go on to drink the whole bottle and half of another before the night is over.

  9.

  I wake up and immediately want to puke. I reach the kitchen in time to run the water in the sink and then I let loose a stream of projectile vomit that would make the effects people on the set of The Exorcist jealous. I try breathing, but start coughing as more bile and liquor fight their way up the back of my throat. I slump over the sink and try to aim, but really, right now, it’s a crap shoot.

  “Oh, sweet hell,” I manage to gasp out before moving back towards the sink. I’m supposed to be getting frozen for years and years to come and the last thing I want is to be frozen with a fucking hangover. There’s a man inside my head and he is beating a tympani to death with an elephant. I try to open my eyes and then quickly realize that the pulsing thump behind my eyeballs is enough to make me never want to see anything ever again. I close them quickly and try to make my way down towards the floor. I feel like I’m burning up on the inside. I make it halfway down the cabinet but then come slamming down to the ground. My hand is covered in vomit and I feel as if I’m going to shoot more of last night over everything for a third time.

  My nose and eyes and mouth and throat all burn with the taste of liquor and acid. It smells worse than it actually tastes. I’m covered in it. I gently open my right eye and the room does a fantastic swirl. I lean over and lay my head down on the cool linoleum as gently as I possibly can. I begin to cry. But it’s not tears of joy, or sadness, or pain, it’s just precious water trying to escape the horrible feeling inside my body.

  The floor soothes me back into a state of semi-consciousness. My brain starts to try and process what it is that I have to do today. The sober part of my brain, the one part of your brain that always makes you regret every shitty thing you’ve ever done in your entire life, starts to yell at me about timetables and procedures that I’m late for. I try to open one of my eyes again, but I couldn’t tell you which one this time. It’s closest to the floor; I think it’s my left one. I see the melted orange juice concentrate pools of puke on the floor in front of me.

  The light from the windows is bright but not sunny. I hear the pitter-patter of rain drops across the windows. They sound like tiny gunshots going off; everything is too loud. I know that I have to move; I know I have to try and get to the phone system and call for Carol or a doctor—anyone with anything to make this go away—but I can’t. Lying slumped over on the floor is a good plan, says the rest of my brain, the part that’s still trying to fight off the bottle and a half of whisky. I look over towards the cabinets; I catch my reflection in the stainless steel dishwasher. I look terrible, like a corpse, rotten and green. I feel it start somewhere in my abdomen but I try to fight it. It comes out in great rolling guffaws and snorts. I’m laughing at myself, the ghost in the reflection of the machine. I laugh and cough and feel sick and spit out a little more bile that’s pooling in the sides of my cheek.

  “If only you could see me now,” I say to the reflection and laugh again. I slip back into unconsciousness and stay there on the floor until Carol comes in to deliver the last of the pills that I’m supposed to take before I go under.

  I hear her scream; I think she thinks I’m dead. “I’m not,” I try to say but can’t. She moves to the phone on my desk and calls one of the doctors. I know this because when I come to again, the doctor is there with an IV drip, poking me. The next time I wake up, I’m lying in the infirmary in the middle of my building staring at the freeze chamber. They poke me with more sharp things, things that would hurt me if I could feel them.

  I’m drugged. Everything is happening slowly but in triple-speed, as well. There are people in zip-up plastic suits pulling my clothes off. I let them. I’m the emperor and I have no clothes. I giggle and one of the men in plastic looks at me like I’m crazy.

  I hear, “He’s ready.”

  I hear the machine turn on. It’s loud. I don’t fight. I know what’s coming. Someone picks me up. I’m naked except for my own plastic pair of underwear. I look down and my body follows my head. The plastic men catch me and one of them says, “Whoa there, fella.”

  I look over Fella’s shoulder and I see Carol outside the door, and for a split second I think I see Phil. Smiling old Phil and my brain snaps back into focus. Smiling Phil is holding hands with smiling Janet? No, that’s not right.

  The plastic men do what they need to do; I don’t fight them.

  I hear the door to the chamber lock. It’s very cold—very very very cold. The air sucks out. I’m dead, says my brain. So cold when you’re dead. Smiling Phil is holding hands with smiling Janet and I’m in here, so cold. Then I’m dreaming again. But this isn’t dreaming.

  10.

  I’m alive. At least, I think I’m alive and if you think you’re alive then I guess it’s as good as being alive. I can’t hear my heartbeat; I can’t feel my lungs, but I know that I’m breathing. There are machines making me breathe. Lack of oxygen is what damages the brain, or lack of oxygen in the blood is what damages the brain. I think. I don’t really know. I’m good at code. I’m good at perfect things: lines and strings of letters and numbers, commands that tell other “Things” what to do.

  It’s white, very white like snow. It was cold when I went in here, and I’m sure this is just my brain trying to dream up some connection, make a pattern and display a picture. It’s telling itself to do something, to make something. It’s writing code.

  I laugh into the vacant white. I’m alone and
this is dreaming without being able to dream. This is death. Time is, of course, completely meaningless. There are no seconds, minutes, hours or days. There is just white like a blanket of snow or cotton or milk or marshmallows or whatever else is white. Like an open editor on a screen. Empty. This is death; death is empty. I wish more people knew that. It would make living bearable.

  PART TWO

  1.

  My left eye opens first, then my right—very slowly, just a quick flicker of my eyelids—then they shut again. It’s so bright. The next sensation that hits me is that I can hear my heartbeat, not outside of my body; I’m not floating above it like a ghost. I can hear the steady thump-thump-thumping of my heart. First, it’s behind my eyes. I don’t want to open them again; it’s so bright and white, just like the dream I was just having. Then my breathing hits me. I can’t hear the machine, but my chest is rising and falling in slow, shallow breaths. I’m alive. I’m alive enough to know that I’m alive, at least. I can feel the tubes connecting me to the machine. My stomach feels emptier than it’s ever been. I slowly open my eyes again; this time I squint until I can bear the light. It’s not white anymore. The window to the tube I’m in is fogged over.

  I move my fingers at first, just enough to try and make a fist, just enough to make an open hand. I have enough room to move my arms a little and I try that out. My legs feel like jello. I’m somewhat seated. Mental facilities seem to be fine. Motor skills are setting in and so is my apparent dizziness.

  Inside the tube smells terrible, like a mixture of a hospital and a port-a-potty. Speaking of which, my bladder says it’s full. I wait a few seconds and then decide to see if I can move enough to pull off the breathing mask. I hit the foot-thick clear composite window on the door. When I brush it with my arm, it leaves an open spot in the fog. I see the floor.