by Jerry
Marx was the rallying point. Marx was the face of the revolution. We got him to make speeches that were written for him weeks in advance; sent photos of him with Committee leaders over the communication networks, photos of Marx speaking, of Marx lecturing, of Marx giving orders, moving the revolution forward. He was on banners across the country, his image on computer desktops in thousands of houses, his voice on the radio, jamming the commercial stations, his rhetoric on cable and satellite television.
He took it rather well. He must have sensed his position, here, was one of figurehead, not leader, but I could tell the action excited him. He would not have lived to see a revolution in his time, he knew that now. And being able to participate, to fight for the cause, to—in an important sense—lead the revolution, that was important to him.
After a few days at the mountain camp, I came out of my hut (shared with three other Comrades) in the early morning to see Morgan come out of Marx’s quarters, a luxurious chalet that sat at the heart of the camp.
When she saw me she waved, but before I could respond she disappeared into the fog, leaving me standing there with the irrational wish that Joe would never have found the entrance to the Chrono Institute’s labs, never would have led me to that small room and the time machine inside it which had taken away the woman I loved.
But the revolution was going well. We were gathering forces, stealth ones in orbit, silent and dark, and small groups of people on the ground, converging together into a massive, if disorganised, army.
When the attack began we were all there together, Marx’s entourage, travelling with him to newly-conquered areas, to army-camps, to the front, where Marx insisted on being for most of the time, as excited as a child in a sandbox.
The war progressed satisfactorily; until we reached Washington.
I was on the steps to the White House when the first missiles hit, and I jumped over Marx, covering his body with mine as masonry rained down on us. He pushed me away and stood up, oblivious to the noise, and dusted himself off.
“Are you crazy?” I shouted, my voice fading in the storm of dust and smoke into nothing. I grabbed him and carried him into the cover of the White House’s lobby. There was no one around. The President, so we’d heard, had abandoned Washington weeks before. Before we left I could see it in my mind’s eye: The Battle for the White House. The last, most glorious battle of the revolution.
Now, from my vantage view in the building itself, my former dream did not look that convincing.
Marx turned to me. “You should leave while you still can,” he said in a soft voice. I had to strain to hear him. “Parts of the building are booby-trapped.”
“How do you know?” I shouted.
He smiled and—and this had stuck with me ever since, the almost comic nature of his act in the middle of this desolation—tapped his nose.
There was another missile hit, close by, throwing us to the ground again. “Fuck this.” I grabbed him, throwing him onto my back without ceremony, and ran into the White House’s maze of corridors.
“I’m going to have to go.” Marx’s voice came strangled from his upside down position.
“What do you mean you’re gonna have to go?” I yelled over the shrieks of artillery. I couldn’t believe this, freaking out about Marx, of all people Marx, weighing down on my shoulder.
“Put me down, you idiot!” He started to wriggle and I was forced to release him.
He glared at me, oblivious to the bombing.
“About now.”
“What?” I turned in the direction of his gaze, saw Monty and Morgan come running towards us.
“How did you . . .?” I didn’t get to finish the question. Another missile hit twenty meters down the hallway, knocking all of us but Marx to the ground.
He turned to us, his face thoughtful. “I am sorry, comrades,” he said. He scratched his beard. “What you tried to do is noble and worthy, and I wish it would have succeeded.” He paused again. “It won’t. The government forces are prepared to use nuclear devices. In two days, Washington D.C—and subsequently half of the U.S—will be wiped out by atomic bombs. I wish it wasn’t this way. My advice to you is to escape now. Head to the coast, find a place to lie low, to start again. If you stay here you’ll die.” As if to affirm his words another explosion shook the ground. “For you, especially,” he said, looking down at Morgan and smiling with a wistful air. “I hope you choose to escape.”
Morgan glared at him, blushes of anger appearing on her face.
“But there is good news!” Marx cried, his air of sad contemplation lifted.
I looked at him in the midst of that carnage and wondered if he had lost his mind.
“There will be another revolution in the twenty-eighth,” he said, the last words I would ever hear him say—“and this time, comrades, we will succeed!”
He saluted us then, looking both wild and jubilant, and then there was a . . . shift. It was as if something invisible had suddenly unfurled, and in its movement took the four of us, and the ruins of the White House, with it. It only lasted for a fraction of a second, and when it was over, almost before it had began, Marx had disappeared.
They called it the Summer of Love, in the years to come. As if the mushroom clouds above Washington and New York, and over half the Midwest, were somehow heart-shaped; they said Love was in the air when the wind shifted and fallout blew, a burning love, all-consuming, dangerous. It had acquired the capital easily.
Monty had died somewhere over Kansas, two days after Marx disappeared. His RLV, in trying to escape the outer layers of the atmosphere into safe orbit, suddenly blew up. It was suspected, though never proved, that the launch vehicle was sabotaged: whether by government agents or due to the anger of the Committee no one wanted to speculate.
Joe stayed behind, assuming an organisational role behind the scenes. He survived the bombs and the fall-out and the purges, and went on to assume leadership of the much-beaten Movement. I know he remembers Marx’s words, and believes in them. If anyone can make us ready for a successful revolution in eight centuries it’s him.
For myself, I had decided the moment Marx’s words penetrated that I was getting out. I set back trough our forces, until I could slip out and make my way, as quickly as I could, to the coast.
Morgan, somewhat to my surprise, had decided to join me.
We are settled now, in peace with ourselves. Marx’s apparent betrayal shook Morgan: these days, she is a political analyst at a local institute, studying foreign politics, and while she is cynical she remains, deep down, passionate. I had enrolled at college again, studying marine biology. The plethora of mutated water life that is emerging now is as fascinating as it is disturbing.
Sometime we talk about burying a little time-capsule in the ground, with a final message for Marx, a letter or a short video-message.
And each time we laugh together, and sip our wine, and leave the future to take care of itself.
After all, we know what it holds.
There will be a revolution.
And it will succeed.
2006
THE ’84 REGRESS
Douglas Lain
Life in the ’80’s
Life in the eighties isn’t all bad. Television, for instance, is better than you might remember it being; there are fewer stations, fewer commercials, and everything is slower, slowed down. There aren’t ATMs or FAX machines; there aren’t any e-mail messages.
Driving on the interstate, counting the yellow dashes that zoom by, it all makes sense. The last sixteen years were just a series of bizarre nightmares, everything was just as unreal as it felt, and the year 1984 never ended.
Let me repeat:
The year 1984 never ended.
It’s my own unified field theory. Generation X, the Clinton presidency, Jay Leno, my relationships with women—all of it makes sense now.
The Breakup
Cindy and I broke up in 2001.
The problem was that Cindy didn’t know
how to argue, or more to the point, she didn’t know how to sublimate. She’d been through therapy just like everyone else, and she took her medication, but she could never stick to the issue at hand. I’d start in about how she squeezed the toothpaste tube, or complain about her haircut, but she always tried to figure out what was really going on.
“You don’t care about my haircut. You just don’t want to marry me,” she said. She didn’t understand how the game was supposed to be played.
“It’s your hair. It’s your hair. I know you don’t understand, but it really is your hair.”
She looked great actually, her hair was fine, but when she stood there looking at herself in the mirror, in her mother’s wedding dress, and with her hair pulled back and her tan face shining, suddenly I couldn’t stand her.
I took my pill. I took my pink pill and smiled.
“You should try on the tuxedo,” she said.
“I can’t,” I said. “Because of your hair.”
Cindy and I broke up. We broke up because she didn’t know how to argue.
The Smiths
I left Cindy and moved into a studio apartment. I moved into a tiny room with yellowed walls and a shared bath.
I met Mrs. Smith the first day.
She knocked on the plywood door to my place.
“Hello neighbor,” she said. “Can I borrow some butter?”
She was on the young side of middle aged, maybe thirty-seven, but she still looked young somehow, acted young. She wasn’t really fully dressed. She was wearing a pair of men’s boxer shorts and a sports bra. Her hair was a solid brown, darker than it would naturally be, and her body was trim and fit.
“Butter?” I asked. “I’m not sure. I just moved in.”
“No? Well I think I might have some. Why don’t you come over and borrow some from me.”
“What?”
“Welcome. I’m saying hello to the new neighbor and welcome. Come on over. I’ll introduce you to my husband.”
She led me to her apartment, to their apartment. She and her husband lived in a much bigger place than my own, and much more expensively decorated. She opened the front door and led me past overstuffed chairs, through a hallway with track lighting, and into the front room.
A man who I assumed was her husband was resting on the perfectly white sofa. His socked feet dangled over the armrest and his head was propped up by throw pillows. He was working on a Rubik’s cube.
“Winston, the new neighbor is here,” Mrs. Smith announced to the man on the couch and then she turned back to me.
He didn’t say anything. A mechanical ticking sound filled the silence. The Smiths had a large reel to reel tape recorder underneath their glass coffee table and the red light was on; the VU meter was swinging back and forth in tiny arcs as Mr. Smith turned the colors on his Rubik’s cube.
“Are we recording this conversation?” I asked.
“There’s nothing I can do about that. That’s not ours,” Mr. Smith said.
“Whose is it?”
He didn’t answer. “You’re diagnosed, right? What they got you on?”
It was a rude question. Not that I had anything to hide, exactly. “What about you? You’ve been diagnosed too, right?”
“What are you on?” Mr. Smith asked again.
“Ritalin mostly. I’m distractible,” I said. “But I’m okay, really. I can work. I was even going to get married.”
“You’re a voter then?” Mr. Smith asked.
“Yeah. I’m a voter.”
“We’re not voters,” Mrs. Smith said. “Most of the tenants here aren’t voters.”
“We used to be voters,” Mr. Smith said.
I shrugged. Being a voter wasn’t something I took too seriously.
“Do you think we could, maybe, borrow a few of your pills then?” Mr. Smith asked.
“Just to try them out. Just a few of them,” Mrs. Smith asked.
“My pills?”
“Two or three is all.”
“Hey, listen . . . I’m on a routine, if I gave you anything that would disrupt the schedule.”
“Just two?” Mrs. Smith asked.
“No,” I said. “I don’t like you even asking.”
“Just one?” Mrs. Smith asked. She put her arm around my waist, trying to hold me. I jerked away and stumbled back, catching myself from falling. I brushed past the overstuffed chairs beneath the track lighting.
“You don’t have to go,” Mrs. Smith said as I opened the front door. “We’ll be nice.”
I didn’t say anything to her, but half stumbled and half ran back into the hall. I leaned against their door and immediately reached inside my jacket pocket for another pill. I reached inside but there was nothing there. The pills were gone, the bottle was gone. They’d lifted them off me.
“Hey!” I yelled at the door. I pounded with flat palms on the wood. “I’m on a schedule! Open the door!” I pounded and pounded. “I need my medication. Open the door.”
“You’ll be better off without it,” Mrs. Smith said from behind the plywood door.
“I need those pills!”
“No. We need the pills. We need them!” Mr. Smith shrieked from inside. “We don’t have a future without them!”
Growing Up Stoned
I fidget with the radio dial, seeking out static. Cindy tells me to watch the road, but I can’t help myself. I can’t keep my fingers from nervously drumming. I lock and unlock the driver’s side door and finger the shift stick.
I was diagnosed, at the age of eight, with attention deficit disorder. They put me on Ritalin, and it was almost fun. I’d get totally stoned on these chemicals, with full sanction from my parents and the school district, and then take off on my Bigwheel. Pedaling faster and faster I reached speeds unimaginable.
Now I’m clean and I feel sluggish. Worse, I can’t keep my hands and eyes from wandering.
“It’s not you. It’s this boredom we’re living through. The tedium of all these billboards and exit ramps,” Cindy says. “Keep your eyes on the road.”
I take a package of spearmint gum from the glove compartment, chew up a wad, and swallow.
I hope for a placebo effect.
Withdrawal
At first I thought I could handle it. I didn’t want to explain anything to my doctor, didn’t want to end up begging for a refill at the pharmacy or going to Cindy so she could let me raid the old apartment for an extra bottle. I didn’t want to face Cindy at all. Whatever distractions came up I’d just have to cope with, and then after work I’d go by the Smith’s and get my pills back.
But, within an hour of my arrival at work, I was emptying my desk drawers, sorting through the first aid kit in the employee’s kitchen. I even asked the secretary for one of her pills.
“Why are you staring at me?” she asked.
Sheila was in her thirties with frizzy blonde hair and she was always in the same red turtle neck and brown skirt. She was practically invisible; she liked to be inconspicuous, but I was determined to draw her out. She had something I needed.
She stood next to the filing cabinet, pulled the top drawer half open, and then stopped.
“Do you have any pills?” I asked.
“What?”
“Withdrawal,” I said. “I’m going through withdrawal. Do you have any extra pills?” I asked.
“I took my daily allotment already,” she said.
“Please.”
I crossed the room and stood next to her at the filing cabinet. I took her by the shoulder and pointed her toward my cubicle.
Sheila sat down at my desk. She pushed my cup of number two pencils, my swingline stapler, and the solar powered calculator I’d stolen from the marketing department, out of her way and pressed her cheek against the coolness of the metal desktop.
“What do you want from me? I don’t know anything. I’m not anybody important.”
“I need your pills. Just a few pills, that’s all.” I was deranged already. Streaks of transparent gold
and cellophane red wavered in front of my eyes and when I looked at Sheila, she looked younger than she had before. She’d changed. She was sixteen, maybe seventeen, years old.
“Your phone is ringing,” this teenage version of Sheila said.
It was, it was ringing like a bell rather than trilling out its usual computer generated farts. When I didn’t move to answer it Sheila picked up the phone herself and handed me the receiver.
Mrs. Smith was on the line.
“How did you get my number?”
“It’s on the bottle.”
“What do you want?”
“How are you feeling? A little funny maybe?”
“I feel fine.”
“You don’t, but you could. You want to feel better? Why don’t you come over? Take some time off work?”
“I’m on a routine—” I started, but then I caught myself. I didn’t want to beg and wasn’t going to justify anything.
“Come on, pay a visit. I’ve got something to show you.”
In the Mirror
Cindy stares into the mirror above the bathroom sink and runs her index finger down the curve of her neck. She lets her clean white towel slip from around her midriff and fall to the tiled floor.
“It’s the only perk of coming down,” she says.
“What’s that?”
“Youth.”
I pull back the thin coverlet on the motel’s king sized bed, grabbed the remote control off the night stand, but don’t turn on the set.
“You look beautiful,” I tell her.
Cindy shrugs her shoulders and sucks on her finger. She cups her breasts and arches her back, displaying herself to herself.
“I’ve got perfect breasts,” Cindy says.
“Yes.”
“I’ve got perfect skin.”
I agree with her, but all I can think about is getting another fix.
“Do you want to fuck?” Cindy asks.
At nineteen she’s beautiful, her skin is perfect, and my own twenty-two year old body is a good match: a flat stomach, thick shoulders, but sex is the last thing I want.
