by Travis Borne
And Jim realized, it was just like Earth. A map he could get lost in, and after time, knowing, well it just didn’t matter. He brought up the fact that Carlos was someone else. He told him straight out until even he himself began to think he was crazy. Carlos laughed it off every time and it got to the point Jim could force himself to bring it up no longer. His talk of the future, the tales, all a big story.
This, Jim thought, is going to be much harder than I thought.
While he plowed away on the plancha for the late 3 p.m. rush, Jim had begun to acclimatize. Yes, it was hot, brutally so inside the trailer with steam rising from pork like a reverse waterfall, but he felt cool. It’d been a long time, no, forever since he’d really worked, with his—wait, he thought. Stay lucid, it’s not real. I am in the Old Town map. But it felt, well, good. A hard day’s work, smiles from countless stuffed patrons. Everyone called him Güero and he received double tips. Perhaps it was the oddity of seeing him, such a hardworking gringo, slaving away, getting a first taste of the hard liquor. His tip jar was full and as well, Carlos had agreed to pay him, and, his belly was full. As the rush abated, people left.
Banana-bread lady stayed, kept calling out banana bread every time unsuspecting prey hobbled by, under her umbrella that seemed to have went to war with dust devils and had mostly lost; it made the three of them (Jim, Carlos, Luisa) laugh while they handled the hot pipes that had minutes earlier been a tent canopy. She just kept on: “Banana bread. Fresh, just made it last night. Like a sample?” Even while the wind picked up, she just clung to her tattered umbrella, a canopy of shredded rags. “Nice and heavy, and rich, fresh, just made it yesterday. I have bags. If you buy one I’ll put it in a bag.”
They loaded everything onto the cart; Carlos’ puesto remained, just a container on the edge of the field. He invited Jim and his friends, Jon and Rico, who’d stopped by with Felix for lunch on both days, to dinner. He also invited Felix and Rosita, regular visitors anyway. Jim surely agreed; it would provide more chances to convince Carlos he was actually Rafael, so they could get the hell out of here.
Get the hell…out? Jim thought. But what about all these people?
Just dream characters, Felix had confirmed it—and somehow Felix was a god when it came to retaining his lucidity—but really, what about them? Something to think about, something terrible. Ending the map, removing Felix and the others would mean the end of every dream-character life here: Rafael—the real, the fake—ah, fuck it, Rafael the painter, and Fernando would lose his wife, his tool selling days would go blank, and the countless others who’d been more than hospitable to him… Like family, they’d been. Even, Jim thought, banana-bread lady.
37. Spaghetti Dinner
Spaghetti, and damn was it good; a big change from tacos, which Jim felt like he was going to dream about for months after this was over. And the sauce—it took him a second to put it together, but just further confirmed Carlos was no doubt Rafael. It was one of the memories Jim could never forget: the taste of the sauce he’d experienced through Amy’s childhood memories.
After dinner, Rico, Jon, and Carlos talked outside. Each had a cigarette; Rico didn’t inhale, just puffed it. Jim stayed inside to lend a hand with cleanup and the dishes. He’d insisted on helping; maybe Luisa could shed light on the odd fact that her husband parried his every attempt to talk about anything real.
He conversed with her, broadly at first, while she cleaned up the table in the small, cubed hollow of a house. After washing the dishes, Jim dried the plates, even helped put everything away. Then he tried one more time, narrowing the conversation down until he finally said, facing her with sincerity, “Luisa, I wasn’t making it up. It’ll soon be time to go, out there. Carlos will have to come with me. This world, this town, everything…soon it won’t exist, neither will the colorful and seemingly individual dream characters. I realize you already know to an extent—this includes you and your children.” He could tell by her reaction, that she did in fact know.
Luisa looked like she could be a model had it not been for the apron and hair bun, and skin that’d taken a beating from the sun; her eyes ran deep, deep as that wormhole deep.
Sliding her hands from her cheeks, and bringing them together before her lips in the form of praying hands, she said, “He won’t go, Jim. I know him, I know him like you cannot imagine, and I know to the depth of my soul, if I have one, that he will never leave us. Never, Jim, never. And, I wouldn’t want him to. And what about our children, the others?” She interlocked her fingers but kept her knuckles pressed into her lips.
He knew this was coming. They’d discussed it with Marlo, only those who were real—as soon as Marlo was able to duplicate the sphere Herald had handed him—would be making the transition, no dream characters. Jim sighed. This was a new chord and it had just been struck…
Jim had murdered countless DCs while operating under the black-bag program: terrible but necessary; fucked-up minds just couldn’t lend naturally, as they were doing now. And now he saw everything in a different light. With his sigh came an awakening, woe with pressing weight, and a new spin on an old perspective. Objectively, Jim now understood. His maturing self was a result of the purple status and completed revert, and realizations were dull punches tenderizing his brain. He imagined the knife. That same knife he’d jabbed into many a skull, and the bullets he’d put into people of any age, and the choke holds—the first choke hold he’d demonstrated to Amy, taking down Enzo, the surfer. Big bad Jim. He thought he knew so much back then, but now he really knew, that he’d known hardly a sliver of any real truth—being sheep meant being truly oblivious.
After many seconds passed—Luisa obviously realizing no answer was coming—Jim let the words fall out of his mouth: “I don’t know, Luisa.” He shook his head slowly. She dropped her hands and sat with them between her knees. He wanted to hug her, and even though she wasn’t real, he no longer cared. DC or real person—what is a real person anyway? He continued, “All I know is that when the sky turns red, and it will, those who are not dream characters will be logged out. Tomorrow, in our world on the outside, we’ll begin a briefing with Marlo in the system, then we’ll embark on a mission to find bots while he duplicates technology that can be used to capture consciousness itself, memories, a complete copy, and they’ll receive a new vessel. But, they must go willingly. Marlo said this is of the utmost importance and the process won’t work otherwise—they’d be lost forever. He guesses, into a state of never-ending limbo. The others, you, your boys and your daughter—you were never real, mere dream characters, I’m now very saddened to say. You’re a product of imagination, mere fabrications of the six true minds that had been logged in to this system long ago—the six minds, plus of course, the mind of Rafael.”
They sat down and discussed the wild possibilities, and Luisa, although reluctant to the core, exhibited signs of belief in Jim’s words. Her brown eyes spoke worlds.
And he realized she was highly intelligent. In fact, he’d probably never met anyone so. He had told her she’d be gone, her children, and all of the town. Only Rafael and the six others, to include Felix and his wife Rosita, would remain.
And she finally disclosed to him that she knew, they all did, always have. But they’d went on for so many years, fifty it had been for them, at least—maybe more, a hundred, a hundred and fifty, because the counting had stopped—and people eventually disregarded the hard truth. She finally broke down, for herself, her life, that of her sons and daughter, yet accepted it. But she told Jim once again that Carlos would never—no matter what, he could talk all night, for a hundred years—accept this. However, she gave him one piece of information he could use, and he only had one more night to use it, tonight.
Jim had his ideas but they were guesses at best, far-reaching speculations. Jim told her he’d do everything he could for her and her family. But the town outside needed Rafael and there was no other way without him. He knew just what Rafael had done in the world and explained it to her,
as if for support, or comfort: how Rafael was a part of the reason the world still exists, both he and Herald. He was the reason she had had a family for at least the span of fifty-odd years. And, if there was any chance in hell of saving them all, yes, all in Old Town, then Rafael, not Carlos, was the only person who could do it.
He hugged Luisa as a good friend then went outside and joined the guys in a smoke. Rosita and Felix arrived late and joined them with a beer; Felix said he had some repairs to complete and apologized for missing out on dinner. They all enjoyed a beer, joked a bit, watched the kids play in the street with the old pieced-together bike, taking turns chasing each other. Children from the neighborhood accumulated and the action transitioned to a game of basketball, while Jim went away in his mind. He looked to the spotty clouds which were beginning to carry a red-orange glow, and mentally revised his plan. Scrap plan A for now. Plan B it is. Thanks, Luisa.
38. Pissin' Under the Milky Way
The four real people, besides Felix and Rosita, weren’t difficult to talk to. There was a bit of sorrow but they’d always known the day would come, yet didn’t concede, totally. While Jim worked with Carlos and Luisa, Jon and Rico had laid it out clearly in a meeting without dream-character participation, the very next day, after the first long and drunken night at the bar. Whenever they tried in the company of DCs, no matter how serious they’d attempted to come off, the discussion would take a turn. Disagreement or mockery would ensue, or the conversation would sway like a boat in a hurricane, letting the substance of their words spill back into the sea. Some would pretend not to hear, some became disinterested, and the effect, each and every time, seemed contagious.
Four on board—depending on one condition. Now it was time to tackle that stipulation.
Jon, having spent such a deadly serious, although short time with Felix in the hover-jet the last time they’d met, and Rico, his son, although it seemed from another life, caught him alone during a piss, outside at the rear of the bar: their last night, Sunday, 1 a.m. Their tequila-polluted streams pierced the cool morning air. Each looked up like dominoes falling down, absorbing the view. The Milky Way was a celestial thunderstorm sloppily concealing a trillion-watt bulb; purple and orange injected the foggy ends; white stars were diamonds in a building-sized hour glass that had taken innumerable cannonballs. It seemed to stab the desert like a lava lamp filled with dreams, one that was in the process of exploding, and it enthralled six eyes for the remainder of their detoxifying spew. What Old Town lacked in technology, and light, it gained a thousand times over in the form of a preternatural show able to nab seconds from Chronos himself. Felix wobbled a little, and a shooting star shot by before Jon shattered the silence.
“He told us, you, your memories and consciousness, could be placed into a bot.”
“Again with that craziness,” Felix said.
“Papa, it’s this or nothing,” Rico added. “Soon all of this will be gone, the map will be shut down.”
Man in the middle—Felix’s head was a bobble in limbo; on his opposite side Jon added, “And we could really use your help out there, Felix. We need every man and woman we can find.”
“For what, just end the damn thing,” Felix replied. “This is our home, nuestro casa. We’ve been here for what feels like an eternity, and we like it. Estamos muy comodos aqui. Estamos familia. When it’s time to end it, we go with the system—off. Why drag out our existence anymore, especially plunge us back into war? We’re free here, and we’ll die here when it gets shut down.” He zipped up his fly with a clumsy jerk. “With mezcal in our blood, and buen amigos.”
Jon said, “A ship arrived, Felix, shortly before Herald was able to rescue the town, a first and unlike anything ever seen. Half of the town was abducted and taken to who knows where.”
“And,” Rico said, choking up, “it is my fault, Papa, something I’ll have to live with, unless…”
“Que pasa, Hijo, what happened out there?” Rico shook then zipped up. Jon had some type of never-ending stream and kept pissing.
“Papa, I sent them out. My order, against the system’s recommendation. I am at fault for their entrapment and as far as we know they could be trapped in a sort of hell, at the mercy of the machines, logged in to a map, purgatory, perdition, whatever you want to call it.”
“Jerry, Felix,” Jon said, finally zipping up the fly on his brown, borrowed slacks. “They got Jerry. Scanned him from the cave where we’d hid out. We raised and protected Amy there for nearly five years.”
Rico added, “Jerry is Jim’s brother, too. And Jim is the one who convinced half of the town, the lenders, others as well—” He sent a nod to Jon. “—to stay, and we are going to get them back. The rescue of all rescues.”
“And how in the world are we supposed to battle an army like that. I lived in Jewel City for years before they got me. I saw the power when that horde of drones leapt over the wall, they mowed into us like ten-thousand mowers to a patch of weeds. One came down right on top of me, ground my flesh and bones to a pulp—and not too quickly either. They made sure of that. They took off my arms first, starting at the tips of the fingers, and they knew the others were watching, somehow. My death was slow, Hijo, and bad, real, real bad.” Felix put a hand on Rico’s shoulder. His head dropped as if the liquor was finally winning against its omnipotent opponent, himself. “I do not want that for you, son. Jon, I don’t want that for you, or Señor Jim. Jim, just like you now, Jon, are my family. I care deeply for you just as I do every good soul in this tiny pueblo. We can live here, increase the time difference as I feel you have done—”
“You know about that?” Jon asked.
“We notice. Our minds think differently when the time is adjusted, but only at first. We sense the shift and know someone is arriving, not who, not when, but we know. We’ve been here a long, long time, together. It’s like a storm in the distance on Earth, the real Earth, you feel it chill your bones. We feel this in our minds—like a slight burning, a heating up, friction. The thoughts, they grind like fingernails on a chalkboard, although not so invasively—for a day or so. The processing, tal vez, the computer processes faster and we feel its acceleration. There’s a bit less dreaming for a while, a hand inside the skull squeezing the brain. But we can live with that, here, we can live here for a long, long time. The weird feelings are only temporary—whoever adjusted the time can turn it up to max—”
Rico interrupted, “Marlo said he was able to, now that he’s unlocked, to give us more time here to convince you, and—someone else.”
“Who, Hijo?”
“Rafael,” Jon said. “Felix, he’s here in Old Town. Jim told me, back inside at the table during our first night here, that Carlos, yes Carlos, is actually Rafael.”
“No puede ser,” Felix said. He looked down with a sigh, then up to the sky, shaking his head. The gloss of his eyes reflected the weight of the galaxy. “That can’t be. Rafael, he—”
“Marlo told us,” Jon affirmed, and he put a hand on Felix’s thin shoulder, “that Rafael didn’t really end it.”
Felix shook his head again. Still staring at the Milky Way, he said, “Rafael was my friend. He was destroyed at a choice he’d made, that he had to make to save us all. I was right there when he did it too, in Jewel City before we really locked everything down. And I tried to talk him out of it but he couldn't pull himself from the despair. Because he killed her and just couldn’t go on any longer.”
“Jewel,” Jon said. He remembered the campfire correlations with Marlo.
Felix nodded, then continued, “We spoke a lot. He went down to the fusion room, locked himself in, and never came up again. Banging on the door like a fool. I was a fool. I tried and tried to get him to come out, to no avail. And when the door finally did open, he was Rafael no longer. Not a trace. Nelman was there, with all new programming, and he never came to the surface. Somehow, deeply, like unimaginably deep, Rafael had deleted himself but ingrained the most powerful lock into Nelman, and the town. From the
n forward everything went strictly according to Herald’s plan.”
“Papa, estas bien?” Rico asked, lending and arm of comfort.
“Sígueme.” Felix headed to the front. Jon and Rico watched him depart somberly, then followed him around the side of the Saloon. Felix took a seat on the front steps. Inside, they could hear laughter escalate. It was Jim’s idea, with a twist: Carlos was downing a full row of shots, he’d won the lotería (or lost depending on how messed up he was). Two other DCs who’d arrived earlier were explosively cheering him on. The infection, if there was such a thing, had seemed to obliterate Jim’s lucidity again, but at least he was having a good time. And being the only bald guy—for some reason someone always seemed to notice—he’d again been lent a grand, colorful sombrero. Jon and Rico looked at each other and smiled for Jim; he needed the break, he deserved one. They mutually returned their gaze to Felix; he had a blank stare as if reliving another lifetime in his thoughts. They took a seat on the old wooden steps, one on each side of the weathered old man.
After pulling a half-smoked cigarette from his pocket, Felix lit it, then he let it all out. His English became clear, even his accent seemed to float away with the cool breeze wisping by, and it shuffled his mega-thick, jet-black hair. All traces of the funny guy departed and his serious side emerged…
“Rafael killed his love. Told me all of it. As the days went on, he only got worse, more and more depressed. He said they’d stolen her—Rafael, along with Herald, and Red who’d flown the hover-jet—a prostitute bot from a Pagosa Springs resort hotel. He had to extract some sort of signal he’d said, but when the time came, and as the minutes ticked away and the world became a fireball, pressure mounted. With all the processing power of his magnificent mind he still couldn’t save her, and although he’d known from the beginning that he might have to, kill her completely and totally to get it, he couldn’t quite get over the fact when it came right down to it. Rafael, for the first time in his relatively short but potent life, could not manage his subjectivity. And because he couldn’t, and no longer could ever again, it pained him deeply.
