The Jellyfish Effect
Page 11
I grab a few pieces of stale cake from the fridge in the staff room and head to a room with an old computer and an ancient printer. All pieces of hardware were once white but now they’ve all faded into a pale yellow. I turn on the computer and wait for a couple of minutes until it gets back its senses.
“In the janitor’s great memory,” I type. “the last play on Earth will be screened at our on-site theatre tonight at 9:00 PM. An ode to the absurd and a poor demonstration of scientific theories. Free entry.” There, print this.
The old printer begins working, making sounds like a stack of bones getting grated to dust. Meanwhile, I browse through the files on the old computer that buzzes and screams in a low-pitched noise each time I click something. The disk has been filled up with ancient versions of long-forgotten software, a troubleshooting guide for an old CRT TV, a pixelated photo of what appears to be a beach, a racing game that came out three decades ago, and a text file. I open the file and a quick inspection reveals that it’s not written in either of the two languages that I speak. I type the first sentence into the translation app on my mobile hoping that it will detect the language. It does.
Scene 1. In the Bedroom. Setting: A disturbed male tosses and turns in his bed. The disturbed male: Someone must have left a cuckoo clock inside my chest.
I scroll down and pick another random line to translate.
Scene 4. Two midgets run to the door and open it to welcome the disturbed male.
I rinse and repeat.
Scene 6. A rocky island. A goat is feasting on shrubs. A naked alien in human form is reading a porn magazine.
I scroll down to the bottom.
The Final Scene. They dump the body off a bus and drive away. He comes back to life to open his eyes as he lies on the roadside and shakes his head.
The janitor: I’m happy to exist. He then closes eyes and dies. The curtain closes. (Hopefully there will be a big round of applause after a long silence!)
Once the printer stops crushing bones, I leave the room to look for Baco inside the building, calling his name as I walk down the grey halls. I find him in the janitor’s workshop, attaching strings to small marbles. He says he’s been thinking of ways to demonstrate the bulk phenomenon before he repaints the marbles.
“Paint them black, if you will,” I say. “It doesn’t matter. He wrote a play after all. The janitor. It appears that he wrote everything that has happened to me, you, and everyone we know. It’s the real tale of the absurd. There must be an explanation.”
Baco forces a smile, which seems more like a facial paralysis. As I know that he’s a poor excuse for an alien who is entirely devoid of humour, it dawns on me that this time, this time he’s entertained.
“Certainly, there is an explanation. But I decline to deduct or analyse to discover it. I’d very much rather remain ignorant of the reasons and let the mild curiosity amuse me until I die.”
I guess I feel the same. I needed something that I couldn’t explain. I needed an absurd joke to weave itself into my life, freeing me from all the earthly fears. So, I suggest to Baco that we read the janitor’s play together to which he happily agrees. I gaze into the cockeyed octopus hanging from the ceiling. It doesn’t gaze back.
We spend the afternoon reading the script and drinking wine. “My trip to Earth wasn’t so mundane after all,” Baco says.
Once we’re done reading, I put on my topcoat and we walk outside. The mild breeze doesn’t penetrate through my coat, but it stings my cheekbones. A loud horn is heard in the distance.
“This is it,” Baco says. I put my hands into my pockets. I’ve outlived countless beings to witness the end of life on Earth. And this is it. It hasn’t been a perfect ride, so many beings were born and died, but at the end of the day, we’ve all had our share of existence, whether or not it meant anything.
The colours fade, all figures blend into each other, and a wave of light hits everything. I’m all but happy. There’s neither shock nor pain. It’s all very tranquil. The light expands and fills us with itself rather than destroying us, or so it feels.
“There won’t be any busses,” I want to say, but first the words, and then the thoughts fall down a waterfall into a fading river that flows into nothingness.
I dissolve, stripped of an I, and that’s where it all ends.
The Absolute End