She stopped for a long moment and peered at the star. “The Sun. My Sun! My Sun? But where’s earth?” she said aloud.
Instantly the light grew dimmer, and a bluish orb appeared above her. Its focus was unclear, and its face was half-obscured with darkness. Margot peered up to the center of the room and saw the faint outline of light gray patches on the orb.
“Bigger!” she said, and the orb grew to three times its size, nearly filling up the entire ceiling area. The clarity diminished substantially.
“Smaller!” she commanded aloud, and the orb grew smaller.
Dream? No, no, it’s working for me. It’s working for me!
A chill went down her spine and made her shiver, and goosebumps rose on her forearms. She looked around the room at the glistening brown walls.
My God, what thing is this? What a thing this is!
“The, uh, the, this is earth!” Margot proclaimed, dumbfounded at the thought that she could see her own planet. “More clear!” she demanded, but nothing happened.
“More clear!” she said again, but again nothing. Margot could see what appeared to be the line of Baja California, jutting into the ocean.
“I see home!”
Margot stayed for a brief time, just staring, and was still in a reverie as she walked from the room.
This is my place for planning. Earth is this close. I can see it, so I can get back there. If I can see it, it can’t be too far away. If I can see it, there must be knowledge of what’s happening.
She continued to work her way down the slight slope in the floor then stopped dead in her tracks from a distinct but distant sound, like a wave cresting on the beach. She continued walking toward the noise and saw a large opening in one of the corridors from which the sound appeared to be emanating. Stealthily, she proceeded and stopped impulsively at the edge of the opening.
Five hundred Das, just meters below her, halted their eating activity and in unison bent their heads upward to the opening where Margot stood.
At the horrendous sight, Margot put her hands to her chest and felt her legs giving out beneath her. The floor moved up to prevent her fall. Just as if nothing had happened, the Das resumed their feeding activity.
Margot now lay below the ridge of the opening, her head just out of sight of the Das. Her heart was pounding, and cold sweat poured from her forehead and down her chest.
What did I just see? How many of those beasts are there? How ugly, how horrible, how in God’s name could they be so disgusting? Putrid!
My God, what if they can hear me from here, my thoughts? I can’t even think freely, nothing’s sacred, they know what I think. There must be hundreds of those beasts who all know what I think. And they are laughing at me. They have to be, I mean, Jesus, I’m just some lowly life form to them, not even dominant. God, I’m not even the dominant life form any more. I’m not at the top of any pyramid. Just some oddity, one of the few left from a dead planet. A remnant. A circus sideshow. I’ve got to get some place where they can’t hear my thoughts. I’ve got to go!
Margot drew up her legs and still in her bare feet began running down the corridors. She occasionally fell, her legs not completely accustomed to such rapid instructions from her conscious mind.
Where is that room? That room! Where’s that smell, must be the pink fluid that moderates this horrible, sulfury stench. Where is it?
She took little notice of the Wall moving with her, bending and reshaping itself as she ran, directing her closer to the room in which she had spent so much time. Finding the room with its door open, she took odd comfort in seeing the pink bath of fluid sitting quietly beneath her bed. She instinctively picked up the sheer blanket from the floor, the blanket that had draped her for so long.
"I’m so cold," she mumbled as she lay down on the floor, next to the machine where she was suspended for so long.
I wish this were my real bed. I wish Geoff were here beside me. I wish Geoff were here.
“Geoff!” she yelled out loud, a longing, stringing, gasping moan that sunk without echo into the Wall.
She closed her eyes and forced herself to remember him. Tears rolled down her cheeks spontaneously.
Geoff, I need you, damn it. I need you here. Why can’t you be here with me when I need you so badly? Do you know what this is? This horrible nightmare I’m in? Do you know what I am now? I’m nothing. This is worse than I felt without you; no, no, but it’s at least as bad. I’m lifeless, limp. My energy has left me. You left me. You left me. Geoff, how could you do this? How could you be so damned stupid? So insensitive! You looked me straight in the eyes, straight in my eyes, and you told me you weren’t seeing her. That she was only a friend, that it was okay for you to talk to her. That that’s all it was! Nothing else. So how did I end up with your STD, you scum? You scum of all men. All men! You were serious about the toilet seat, weren’t you? But I saw you both, I know, the way you looked at each other and so quickly pretended that the topic was running or weights when I came near to you at the gym. Like I couldn’t tell that you looked at each other with desire. Just friends? Make me sick, you liar. How could you screw her? I know that’s what you did, that’s what I call it, anyway, because you just lusted after each other. There was no love there, that’s for certain, you just wanted each other’s bodies. Your pleasure obsession, or innate insecurity, killed the best thing you had. And then you turn right around and with your gentle persuasion tell me it’s all not true. That my own eyes couldn’t see the truth. That all my friends were wrong and they didn’t see the same thing. You are rotten in your heart. How could you do this to me? I had to tell you I had the disease, and you dared to blame it on me? Then you were begging for forgiveness a few hours later after my heart burst open and I had nothing left for you? No respect left for you? How could I continue to love you after this? Your lust? You’d never get that thing near my body after this! How many times? What days? Tell me, where, when, why, as I pounded on your chest and fell to the ground and scratched at your legs, my eyes a pool of tears, the life sucked out of me, and you in the chair with your brown corduroys. I hate corduroys now, I hate them, because you always wore them. And I sat there on the floor, couldn’t look in your eyes for the guilt you showed, but looked at your crotch, your terrible pursuit of hormones and pretty face, and I said no more, never again, I wouldn’t let you ever love me or touch me again.
But you made it worse. I may have forgiven you if you simply confessed. It wasn’t even the few weeks that it had been happening, though. No, it was the few months. Of my noticing, and my friends at the gym speculating and talking about you, how you and she were always whispering. And it went on and on. I denied it, but my heart began to ache. I denied my intuition, always a mistake, until it was too late. Then my own mind was laughing at me. You tiny little man, how could you do this to a person who loved you so richly, so deeply? You’d never get that from someone else, from anyone else. This love was one in a million, and you screwed it up. You’d never find another. I knew that. You knew that. But you let your gonads rule you.
She was blonde. You said you never had a blonde. How could you speak to me that way? Was that some excuse? Was that your attraction? Then you told me that she wasn’t blonde everywhere, with that sick little laugh, that sick little laugh that I used to think was so cute because you always did it when you were being naughty. But to tell me that, to describe the color of her pubic hair to one whose own was wet from the pus of the disease you had given her. I threw up, right then, right there, on your new shoes, on your brown corduroys. I tried to extricate you from my heart right then and there, from my body. And you got up so suavely and said those were your new shoes, and you ran to wash them off, as if my own hands and hair weren’t covered with my expulsion of you as well.
I was sobbing with lungs of burning lava, and the stainless-steel sink stared back at me as I watched bits of my lunch run down the drain. I was so horrified that I couldn’t talk. I pointed at you to leave, but I couldn’t say the words.
My jaw was locked, trembling, and you looked at me as you emerged from the bathroom, shoes in your hands, like you had not done anything so horrible, like I was wrong for not forgiving you, like it was my fault for being so sensitive that it caused me to puke on your brown corduroys and new shoes. I screamed ‘get out of here’ between my clenched jaws, but it didn’t sound like that, it didn’t sound like anything. Yet you had the gall to stop at the door and warn me ‘this is your last chance.’ Last chance? Who are you to say that to me? I gave you two years of my life, you soul-sucking leech, two years! All of me, the best of me. Last chance? I fell on the floor, my wet hair tangled with puke and the smell making me retch once more, and I grabbed my gut and curled up because the pain was so unbearable, and my ribs were on fire from crying.
Geoff, you terrible, imperfect boy. Then you died. Two weeks later you died. Not in my arms! I never saw you again. I never saw your face. What were you doing up there? What were you trying to prove? Why did you make a climb that was so far beyond what you could do? Did you plan it that way? Did you want to be a martyr? Did you do it because you loved me, that you mourned the loss of me, or did you just make another careless mistake? Were you just not thinking when your hand slipped from the rope? Did you see a snake? A scorpion? Did you see me when you were falling? Did you see me? Did you see her?
Geoff, I hate you for what you did to me. I hate you! But right now, my heart longs for you, my gut has an emptiness for you. I need you here with me in this place. I want you with me. I am scared, so scared and alone and open and exposed in this brown hell, this brown hell, and I have no escape, not even the way you escaped, for I cannot die, and I am destined to this world where nothing is private, my God, even my thoughts about you they will see, and they will laugh inside, laugh at my weakness, that even after you shredded my soul I still miss you, I still want you here with me, I still need your words of encouragement, your affection, your unshaven face cupped in my hands.
Chapter 10
“MARGO, WAKE UP!” SERGIO whispered as he shook the limp body gently. “Margot,” he insisted, “Margot, it’s time to get up, sleepyhead, bean-brain.”
Margot threw her arm over her face to cover her eyes. “Go away, go away, you little runt. I haven’t gotten enough sleep.”
“It’s been about ten hours, Margot,” Sergio continued. “If you don’t get up, I’ll get Rovada in here to stink up the place. You know he smells worse than the rest.”
“Oh, twerp! I don’t remember telling you to come into my room,” Margot moaned as she opened her eyes to a blurred vision of the dark-skinned boy, his teeth shining in the dim light. “My breath stinks and I’m not ready to get up,” she said as she rolled over on her side, her back now facing Sergio. She covered her exposed ear with her arm.
Sergio worked to pry the arm away. “Margot, fargo, fatty largo, muy largo, muy gordo. I’ll get your toothbrush, then, and you can brush your teeth.” Sergio ran into a small room, grabbed a toothbrush and applied some paste to it. He brought it back to her and shoved it under her nose.
“Doesn’t taste like the real stuff.”
“I know, Margot. I liked Crest.”
“They should’ve gotten the recipe.”
“But you know, some things they just didn’t record while they were there. Like Rovada said, ‘why take a sample of everything?’”
Margot pushed herself up on her elbows, still bleary-eyed. She frowned at the young boy. “Regardless, they ‘recorded’ virtually everything else. I mean, why get the content of disposable diapers down pat, to the last thread of cotton, but not get Crest toothpaste with mint?”
She saw Sergio shrug his shoulders with uncertainty. Happy that he managed to wake her, he ran over to a part of the Wall that opened into a small room. “Gonna watch!” he said.
“You watch too much!”
That’s all they had been doing in the last few months it seemed, watching the history of many worlds. Watching in three dimensions. Walking right into the events. Seeing beings and exotic planets that spanned the universe. But she, too, was watching too much. Her legs moaned to climb, and it seemed she missed earth a little bit more each day.
It was horrible at first, horrible, and she thought that she was losing it. Indeed, she still wasn’t comfortable with her mental state. Those ugly Das, that sulfury, nose-burning smell, the rules, the damn rules of getting along, everyone’s benevolent nature. Couldn’t just one of them yell once in a while, get angry and fly off the handle? She hated the damn lack of emotion in them. Even Penny was more exciting to deal with than most of them. At least Penny was a challenge. So stone-faced.
I love to make her boil, to hear those tense words like ‘Let’s go now, Bing’ or ‘Bing, Margot throws her weight again, so time to leave.’ She knows I’m sensitive about my weight, not that I’ve put much on.
Margot pulled the neckline out from her nightgown and peered down, past her breasts to the single roll of flesh at her waist. She sat up straight on her behind, sucked in her gut, and the roll disappeared.
I’m sure I haven’t gained anything, and if I have, well, I’ll start climbing again and stop watching the Viewing room.
The Viewing room. It was surely not television, but more like a cataclysm of events. It was far more than holographics, or at least the version of it she had seen on earth. This was the floor and walls coming alive, with people and events and beings, with hundreds of places and planets and life forms. Not real, of course, but, as Rovada said, a pretty accurate representation of events.
Why did Bing and Penny not care to watch? They could have one adjacent to their own rooms if they wished, but they chose not to. I even invited Penny to see some earth history. Remember that part about the Japanese invasion of China? I thought she would be interested, but she shrugged off my invitation, and I even asked her nicely. Her response was like ‘on a cold day in hell I will come to your room.’ And Bing, he’s so fishy. When I asked him if he wanted to see it, the first thing he said was, ‘did you ask Penny?’ When I told him her response, well, of course, his eyes told me his own answer. Yes, I would like to spend time with you, to see this, but Penny, she may need me, we may do something together. Like, who cares what is done by anyone anymore? Who cares?
Margot dropped her nightgown’s neckline and patted it against her chest. She was still brushing her teeth, being careful not to spill any of the foam on her chin. The dread feeling swept over her again.
I can mourn, can’t I? Sure, I can still mourn. I can feel a little sorry for myself. I can spend a little time each day being self-absorbed. I mean, God, everything is gone. My family, my Joey, my dog. The Viewing room, it’s wonderful, it’s engulfing, hypnotic. I get lost, time sails by, immersed in worlds and civilizations long past, far beyond earth. But even when lost, when in the deepest absorption of the experience the Wall so willingly provides, I still know I’m not actually there. And it can’t match my desert. The smell of desert sage in the arroyos. The rustle in the bushes of a javelina. A million crickets, the food of the desert gods. A hummingbird’s sharp chirp. A jumping cactus attacking my ankle. Only so much was recorded. What is inferred from the videos and films and the Das’ own recordings, only so much was retrieved and stored. Such a shame they didn’t spend most of their time precisely recording all things desert. The Mojave, with its weird Joshua Trees. And my Sonoran. That’s what I miss the most. More than my Subie, more than my friends almost, more than Facebook. Well, at least they got most of the music from the libraries’ databases. It doesn’t seem like the same music anymore, though, knowing that all the groups and musicians are dead. The lyrics have lost all their meaning, especially ones about love. I just hate seeing earth now. I just hate it.
I have to stop this stuff. The Viewing room. It’s an addiction. What else is there? I have to do something else. Maybe today, I, we, will go to see Isda, Fishda, whatever. I’ve been meaning to get to him, but the Viewing room has kept me away. So absorbing, so many things, that room, God, too many
things. I’m washed-out. Too much, like too much bleach. My mind has been bleached with these things I’ve seen. Jesus, the diversity of the universe, beyond anything I could have created. Yet with all that, I wish I could touch the real earth, just once more, to put my hand in the dry desert dirt, to walk down a wash, to really be afraid of the snakes. That would be worth dying for.
“Margot, come see this!”
Margot walked over to the Viewing room, a large chamber connected to her own room. Sergio was in the corner, watching something in the center of the room. It was dark, and Margot could see the firelight flickering on Sergio’s face. “What is it?” she asked.
“Come here! You gotta see. You gotta see!” he repeated.
“Give me a minute,” she demanded. Margot spat out the foam, rinsed her mouth and walked into the room, stepping over a few bushes and winding her way around some rocks. The room, depending upon what was being watched, would modify its shape to fit the recorded or presumed environments. This event must have been recorded at a distance, given that all of the event variables were not recorded.
Sergio was jumping. “Geez, hurry Gordita, hurry!”
Margot clicked her tongue. “Nice. Little fat one. You are going to get it with your teasing one day.”
When Margot reached the boy, he pulled on her shoulders and forced her to sit down on a fallen log. “Shhhh!” he urged as if their own activities could in some way affect the event that was being played-out by the Wall. “Look at that!” he said, wide-eyed in disbelief. “It’s Roger!”
Margot stared at a man peering into the dark sky. Stars glared brightly overhead. “What’s Roger doing in here?” she asked.
“No, no, no, it’s not him. I mean, it’s the Wall.”
“This is recorded from earth? Why is he in here?” Margot asked, still not understanding.
“Look!” Sergio said, jumping up and placing his hand through the image of Roger. “Look, it’s not him. It’s him!”
The Space Between Her Thoughts (The Space in Time Book 1) Page 13
