Better Weird: A Tribute to David B. Silva

by Richard Chizmar, Brian Freeman, Paul Olson

  As we sampled everything, I realized I was enjoying the entire experience so much, I had almost lost my energy for the reason we’d come here in the first place. The food and the casual conversation and the nearness of her had created a kind of gestalt sensation in me–all the elements were combining to be something more pleasant than it could possibly be.

  “That orange crispy beef is just incredible,” I said.

  “It’s one of my favorites.” She poured another cup of tea from a pot encircled by porcelain dragons.” But, Alec, please… we’re not here to discuss items from column A and column B.”

  I understood, feeling like a kid getting caught at some clumsy misdirection. Before I could reply, she continued. “You said there’s a ‘big problem’… that’s kind of ominous, don’t you think?”

  “Let me try to explain,” I said. “The radio thing–Curb Your Intelligence–that’s not the problem. I think it’s more symptomatic of something else that’s happening. When I heard that girl talk about two moons, it just brought everything into focus for me.”

  “Okay, you have my full attention.” She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose, stared into my eyes.

  “I’ll try to put this in the most stark and succinct terms I can–I think the human species is becoming increasingly dumber… and I think it might be happening at a geometric rate.”

  She chuckled, covering her mouth with her napkin. “I think there’s a few very good reasons for that. I mean, a really good case could be made against public education over the last fifty years or so.”

  I grinned. “There’s a lot of teachers and union organizers who’d want you stoned for such heresy.”

  “I’ll stand by the numbers and performance,” she said. “We have people entering high school who can’t read.”

  “Hey, I’m not disagreeing with you.” I held up my hands in surrender. “But I think there’re other things at work, too. Things we don’t notice.”

  “What about the manipulation of media? Subliminal messaging? And what about the Beautiful People? We’re supposed to worship somebody who couldn’t tell you the combatants of the Spanish-American War. You ever watch Celebrity Jeopardy? Gone are the categories of Latin Etymology, Physics, and 16th Century Dramatists–replaced with TV Actors, State Capitols, and Cruise Ship Destinations. I have one word for it, Alec… puh-leeze.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh at the last line of her tirade. Humor laced with tragic truth. In a few sentences, she’d sliced a gaping tear in the fabric of my hypothesis. The last thing I needed right now was her as my adversary–intimidating as she may be on so many levels. I paused, gathered my thoughts, then: “Okay, again, you will get absolutely no argument there. Our culture and our collective notions are doing a great job of dumbing us down. But like I said, I think there’s something else going on.”

  “Like what?”

  “It’s an ‘overlay,’ a global process that nobody seems to notice. If the things you brought are big logs on our funeral pyre, then maybe I found the gasoline being tossed on the flames.”

  Isabel’s eyes crinkled behind her glasses as she smiled. “I like it when you get metaphorical….”

  “C’mon, I’m serious here.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to undermine what you’re trying to say.”

  “Thanks. I think the basic idea I wanted to get across isn’t really that we’re getting dumber…. as much as we’re getting dumber at an ever increasing rate. You know how a geometric progression works–it’s relentless and merciless.”

  Isabel leaned backed, carefully replaced her teacup to the starched tablecloth. “Okay, when you put it like that, it would be scary.”

  “Not ‘would be’… I’m telling you it already is.”

  “Maybe….” She’d let her glasses slip down a notch and now she was peering at me over them. I swear she does it on purpose because she knows it make her look cute.

  Despite her impish posture, I could see her curiosity had been piqued so I pushed on. “You just mentioned Jeopardy, right?”

  “Yeah, but I’m not all that big on TV,” she said. “But I watch it some. Why?”

  “I’ve been watching it for years. Always liked it–and I always I held my own. But lately… I’ve been stumbling… struggling to pull the answer from my memory–even when I know the answer!”

  Isabel brightened. “I know what you mean–it’s like I know I know the answer is in there somewhere, but I just can’t pull it out, can’t articulate it.”

  “Exactly.” I allowed myself to smile.

  “But I think that happens to a lot of smart people. We get overwhelmed with so much now. Information overload. Multi-tasking. Cloud access. Whatever they call it. It’s too many things to keep…. I don’t know… available at any time, right?”

  I looked at her as she was talking, and in that instant I knew why I’d been watching her all those months in the IT bullpen. It wasn’t just her kind of funky, post-bohemian clothes, or her big horn-rimmed glasses, or her flair for trouble-shooting some of the strangest network snafus imaginable… no, no, it was more than that. Way more. Isabel was sexy–sexy in a way that most women could never be. She had this glow, this emanation, of confidence and brilliance, that made mere physical attributes seem… well, almost silly and inconsequential.

  “Uhmm right,” I said, surfacing from my trance. “There’s no doubt it’s happening–people are… I don’t know… losing things that make them human, make them special. It seems to me there’s been a pretty big drop-off in all the things that make for dynamic civilizations.”

  Isabel sipped her tea, smiled. “If I go to the waiting room of my dentist, or wait in line at the grocery, or any place, really, where you see people, it’s like all they can talk about is Dancing with the Stars or The Bachelor.”

  “If they talk at all. Most people just sit and stare at… nothing.”

  I exhaled slowly. I can’t describe how I felt at that moment. A chill passed through me. Not only did my friend share what I’d been feeling lately, but she also seemed to really like me. Just thinking it made me a bit giddy.

  “You know,” she said. “If it is happening–people getting dumber and dumber–at your geometric rate, it’s not going to be very long before….”

  “Before what?” the words burst from me. There was something about the way her sentence trailed off that was downright scary.

  “Alec, I honestly don’t know. Except that it would be really, really bad.”

  She stared into her teacup for a moment, as if the answer might lie smudged across its curved interior.

  “But you believe me? You think I’m onto something?”

  “Yes, I do.” She adjusted her glasses again. “I hadn’t ever thought it out like you have, but I’ve had things kind of … you know… noodging around in my subconscious, I think. Vague, unspoken feelings things haven’t been feeling… how do I say this–not right, I guess.”

  I leaned forward a little. I wanted to reach out and take her hand, but I didn’t want her to think I was using all this as a way to get closer to her. “That’s exactly what it is. ‘Not right’ is how I’ve been feeling for a while.”

  Isabel removed her glasses, rubbed her eyes. It was an automatic gesture, but it made me think what we’d been discussing exhausted her in a way that was unsettling. When she spoke, her tone was subdued. “It’s not something we can easily prove, you know.”

  I nodded. “We may never be able to prove it. But if it is happening, and we want to do something about it, then we need to figure out what’s causing it.”

  Isabel agreed and suggested that we both spend some time analyzing the possibilities, and then have another brainstorming session. We were interrupted by the waiter, who placed the bill in the center of the table. Isabel snatched it up and announced a figure that constituted my half, including the tip. I was actually glad she did it, because I’d been torturing myself with how I would assume I should pay for the whole tab, and thereby officially
make our dinner together a “date.”

  Sometimes I over-think things.

  ****

  It was dark when I walked Isabel to her car, and as she unlocked it and slipped into the driver’s seat, she smiled at me. “Thank you, Alec.”

  “No, no. Thank you,” I said. “For listening to me, and not thinking I was a nutter.”

  She smiled. “In a way, I wish you were. Then the things you’re making me think about wouldn’t be so… so troubling. I hate to say it, but like I said before, I think you’re onto something. But I have no idea what it is.”

  “I know the feeling.”

  “But there’s one thing I do know,” she said. “It’s kinda bothering, scaring me, actually.”

  Without thinking about it, I found myself reaching out and placing my hand lightly on her shoulder. It was a very natural gesture on my part, and it felt right. “Hey, it’s nothing to be afraid of. We can figure this out–if we do it together.”

  Isabel offered up a wan smile. “I like that idea. See you at work, Alec.”

  I removed my hand as she keyed the ignition and her little silver Honda fired up. As she drove off, I stood in the street watching her tail-lights blend into the traffic until they were lost in the swarm of red.

  ****

  When I got to my street in Canton, all the spaces had been scooped up and I had to leave my car east of Patterson Park, with a long walk back to my rowhouse. Keying the lock, I entered and looked around the interior of my home as if seeing it for the first time. Well, no, that’s not right–more like seeing the way Isabel would see it for the first time.

  I’d always figured I kept it neat enough. No empty bottles or cans fighting for coffee table space with gaping pizza boxes. No dirty plates in the kitchen with ossified remains of dinners past. I mean, I’m sure there was some dust on my bookcases, but I did own a small Oreck vacuum, and I used it when things needed it. If she looked on my shelves, she would see a mixture of fiction–some thrillers and sci-fi mostly; and non-fiction–leaning into biographies, history, and some Idiot’s Guides. All of which might give her a few clues as to who I really am. I noticed my walls were somewhat barren–pretty much intentional. I’d decided not to hang up anything I didn’t really like a lot. Pre-framed generic pictures from Ikea and Target, plaques, certificates, diplomas, and stuff like that just didn’t cut it for me. I had a few original pieces from convention art shows, and some prints from the dealer’s rooms, but not enough to make a difference upon my largely blank walls.

  My office upstairs was a lot more messy because it was where I spent most of my time–working on my own stuff when not in my Weller and Fein cubicle. More time here than my kitchen, dining room, or living room, and it looked it. I had a big desk, desktop PC and screen against one wall and the opposite one buttressed by a long table I used as a kind of workbench. There were scavenged parts of old computers, boxes of connectors, stacks of CDs full of programs. My eventual plan was to run my own business, doing freelance IT, website design and maintenance, and even some basic repair stuff.

  Does that make me a geek?

  Maybe.

  But there are other facts which may be more significant markers. Like: I don’t have many friends. It’s not that people don’t like me; but rather they don’t notice me enough to even form an opinion. I’ve always been shy and quiet, so I’m not surprised I spend most of my time alone. Women are largely a mystery to me because I’ve never been able to tune-in to their particular wavelength. My involvements with them have been embarrassingly limited and full of fumbling, awkward moments. Only one girl in four years of secondary education–well, I did go to an all-boys Catholic high school–and that was nothing more than a few movie-dates. College was different in that I let myself experiment with all the things that were supposed to be fun, but alcohol made my face go numb and I was too smart to ignore the terrible things most drugs were doing to my body. I ended up joining a service fraternity that restricted itself to doing charitable activities and whose idea of a party was Krispy Kreme donuts and over-sweetened punch. But my state university was so big, I couldn’t help but meet women who were just as socially stunted as myself. In a series of failed relationships, I at least learned enough to leave the ranks of the uninitiated.

  As I emerged from my twenties, I remained unattached and a loner. I worked hard, made investments, planned for my entrepreneurial debut. I knew I didn’t want to make it a solitary journey, but had somewhat resigned myself to such a course if necessary.

  Until I met Isabel.

  From the first day she came to work in our department, she just kind of hit it off with me. She had an open, relaxed way of talking that was so refreshing. No arrogance, no aggression, no sarcasm. I acted different around Isabel, and one day I realized she was the first woman I’d ever known who made me feel truly comfortable in her presence.

  ****

  I blinked and realized I was standing in the center of my office just staring at the closest wall. I had been thinking of Isabel and why I was so attracted to her when the greater importance of the moment crashed over me in cold rush of truth. I needed to focus, to try to fathom the subtle possibilities of what I’d been observing and feeling. If we were, as a population on the planet, losing some of our most vital survival tactics (such as the ability to retrieve knowledge from within and use it to intuit new paradigms), then someone (maybe me) needed to sound the alarm.

  But it was late, and I was exhausted by both the length of the day and the lingering buzz of having shared my anxieties with Isabel. I knew I should be concentrating on the larger process I believed I had tapped into. Something was happening to us–the whole of the civilized world–but I lacked the means to completely articulate it. Worse, I knew Isabel would be expecting me to have a cogent analysis to share in the morning.

  I fought off the marginal sensations of being overwhelmed with the simplest solution: I needed rest. My batteries needed recharging and my mind needed that break from all the daily input to so much free-range, free-wheeling speculation.

  Leaving my office in darkness, I retreated to my bed and immediately plummeted into the depths of sleep.

  And of course I had a dream….

  ****

  … I am wandering across an unfamiliar landscape. It is simultaneously stark, barren, cold; but also seething with some unseen energy waiting to break free. I seem to be gliding rather than trudging across this endless plain. Even though I know it’s not possible, I am able to peer beyond the horizon, to bend the light coming into my eyes, to see the curvature of the planet. It is an exhilarating sensation, as if I have gathered to myself some special power.

  And that is when I see it.

  The speed of my passage increases as if I were skating on a frictionless surface. I advance upon an object that lay an immeasurable distance ahead of me. It reminds me of a scene in William Hope Hodgson’s story “The House on the Borderland.” As I approach it, the indistinct planes and angles begin to coalesce into definite geometrics. Suggestions of ancient constructions darken the horizon. Obelisks. Tors. Ziggurats. Domes. It is all of these things and none. The sky seems to bend and bow around the looming shape. Light and darkness swirl like oil and water as I hurtle towards the strange architecture that pulses with greenish light, an inner luminosity that beats like an unseen heart. As if the edifice was somehow a living thing.

  Ever closer, I can now see it as an immense structure, a series of receding levels and steps–it is a temple of some kind, and very old. I have no idea how I know this, but the truth of it passes through me like a burst of radiation. The speed of my approach slows to nothing as I hover above the temple. Now I am close enough to see countless columns of people all ascending the endless steps from all directions. Naked and featureless, sexless, the figures move in an eerie choreography to unheard music and rhythms. There is something about their concerted movements that terrifies me. As I drift closer to the summit of the great temple, I can see the ultimate destination of all
the marchers.

  At the apex of the structure sits a great cube, like a capstone on a mausoleum, and its four faces all project an image that reminds me of a New Yorker cartoon–a caricature of the generic IBM computer of the sixties. Whirling tape drives for eyes. Punch card slots for the mouths…. An absurd icon that should appear comical, but in this moment does not.

  Not at all.

  The endless streams of naked humans reach the top of the temple, kneel, and place their hands upon the face of the cube. Then each one simply…. fades away.

  Vanished.

  Gone.

  An ethereal afterimage, then… nothing.

  I witness this transaction in a timeless dream-state as the endless procession pays homage to their god….

  ****

  … and awakened, as we often do from such dream-lives, covered in a patina of sweat and total disorientation. But this time was different, and I knew my churning subconscious had given me a chance to pull back the curtain, to see something I wasn’t supposed to see. I lay in the darkness of my bedroom–hopeful the feeble probings of dawn’s light were on the way–and I struggled to hold onto the dream, to force myself to not forget its other-worldly experience. I knew I’d stolen a glimpse of something important, and if I could retain my grasp on it, I would understand. And by that, I meant beyond the obvious symbolism of the dream.

  As I staggered from my bed to the shower, I felt as if I hadn’t slept, as much as I’d endured some torturous journey. The rush of hot water stung my face and the shock yanked me fully back to reality. I realized it wasn’t the simplistic images of the dream as much as what lay beneath them. In that moment, my thoughts sharpened, my vision and comprehension achieved a new clarity, and I knew I had an answer.