* * *
ALONG THE RED Mountain Pass of Colorado stands an abandoned gas station. Its pumps are red with rust, the old computer pads for ATM cards smashed. The Mini Mart, once stocked with Keebler snacks, cola, and other goods for the Mesa Verde–bound traveler, is empty. The windows of the station are broken. Dust has sifted in through the jagged glass for centuries. It has piled like snow on the counter where gas attendants once stood, and buried the toppled Doritos racks, whose metal ribs rise from the dirt like the bones of dinosaurs. Sediment has drifted into tall spires along the corners of the room. In this desolate location, among the forgotten blisters of National Parks, too costly to develop, too pointless to destroy, a green scarab beetle of a car comes to rest. Four yellow hoods step from the Toyota hatchback. They pull a man from the backseat.
Around the side of the building are two doors with white lettering. MEN. WOMEN. The tallest individual produces a key and opens the Women’s door. Inside, a circular stone staircase leads down. They carry the body into the belly of a cavern, where the air is damp and the walls are knotted with pine roots. The yellow hoods drag the man through an archway into the main chamber. One of the hoods walks along the perimeter of the room, and from his hand springs the egg-shaped flame of a lighter. He brings the flame down and lights wick after wick.
A steel hospital gurney rests in the center, reflecting the candles as though lined with a dozen fiery eyes. Upon a cold tray lie a scalpel, scissors, needles and thread, and a basin of water. The scissors are lifted and placed by the man’s throat. Their sharpened edges slice through his collar, shearing his shirt from his torso. Then his pants and boxers are sliced open. He is flipped onto his stomach.
“Are we ready?” a female hood asks. The assembled group nods. She picks up the scalpel and places the cold blade against the skin of the man’s spine. The assembled group begins to chant. Om mani padme hum, om mani padme hum. As the blade splits the flesh, the man’s eyes open, Innervision screens suddenly alive. Send off an eyemail! Send off an eyemail! Broadcast your location!
A white rag is placed over the man’s nose and mouth, his pupils turning a dull gray as Innervision goes blank. The tall one leans down, her yellow hood close to the man’s ear. “Don’t be afraid,” she whispers. “You’re being liberated.”
* * *
THE FIRST THING Douglas noticed when he opened his eyes was that the sky had broken. Thick liquid oozed from clouds and covered the horizon. There were no words for the substance that plastered the sky, and the sight hurt Douglas’s naked retinas.
“You’re finally awake,” a woman said. She came over and sat on the cot. “How do you feel?” She picked up a washcloth from a basin and dabbed his eyes with cool water. He turned his head to look at her, and saw yet another frightening sight. The thick liquid that oozed from the clouds had seeped into her features, tinting her face not white, nor black, nor gray. He opened his mouth to speak but all that came out was a moan.
“Shhh,” the woman said, putting her hands on his abdomen. “You don’t have to be afraid. You’re seeing colors. It’s a beautiful experience.”
The sound of the woman’s voice and her hands on his belly brought clarity and, with it, panic. Fragments of memories circled like burning moths: the neon buttocks of Rocky Mounds, his head banging against the glass of a car window, trying to log on to Innernet before the yellow hoods realized he was awake, watching the scalpel lowered toward his eye.
Behind the woman, a gruesome edifice split the sky. They were in a massive open cavern. Clay buildings with hollow windows rose from the ground like a city of sand. The rock faces bled color. Then, with horror, Douglas saw the framed photo of the Dalai Lama hanging on the wall. In that moment, as Douglas lay on a cot in Mesa Verde, his greatest fear was confirmed: he was being held hostage by Buddhist terrorists. He blinked in rapid succession, trying to pull up Innervision to send off a distress signal. His eyelids closed and opened. There was no small clock at the bottom of his vision, no EyeDate iconography along his left periphery.
“It’s gone,” the woman said. Douglas looked at her and tried to blink again. Nothing. Just her face, the color of the cliff walls, and her eyes, the color of the sky, as though her retinas were holes through which he could see the world. Her eyelids, however, were trembling. “Do you remember who I am?” she asked.
Perhaps if he answered right, told her what she wanted to hear, they wouldn’t execute him. Douglas focused on her face, the age lines around her mouth and eyes, the gray speckled through her hair. The colors brought out the freckles spread across her cheeks. Douglas had remembered her name once, back at Rocky Mounds. The bathroom, the graffiti on the wall, she had wanted to rent a comedy, it was snowing. “Blockbuster!” he said. “I remember you. Your name’s Blockbuster! Listen, Blockbuster, I just want to go home. Please. I can give you whatever you want.”
She brought her hand to her face and wiped her tears. She smiled. “It’s okay,” she said. “I should’ve expected you wouldn’t recognize me; I don’t look the same anymore. Natural reincarnation does that to you. You’ll remember; it’ll take some time.” She got up from the cot. “I’ll make you a cup of tea.”
Against the far wall stood a clay hearth with a fire smoldering. Atop it lay a piece of sheet metal. The woman took a teakettle from the floor and placed it onto the makeshift stove. “This is where we live now,” she said. “It’s the only place they haven’t found us. I’ve saved your journals to help you remember,” she nodded toward the side of the cot where a stack of books was piled, their pages yellow, the covers dirty with dust. “We’ve been rebuilding the temple,” she added. “It’s nearly finished.”
The teakettle was whistling. The woman raised the steaming pot from the stove and lowered it toward the two clay mugs. She poured the boiling water, placed the teapot onto the ground, and carried the cups toward Douglas.
“It’s chamomile,” she said, setting the mug by the side of his cot. “It used to be your favorite.” The steam wafted up, the smell familiar, earthy and sweet. “Louis, I know you’re frightened.” The name wiggled through Douglas’s mind like a lost memory. “It’s okay, you’re safe now. You tried the best you could. We’ve already smashed the crystals you brought. Their souls have returned to the natural cycle of reincarnation.” She placed her hands against his belly, the feeling of her palms familiar against his skin.
“Please, Blockbuster,” Douglas begged, “what do you want from me?”
“Nothing,” she said. Lowering her face against his, she pressed her lips upon his eyelids. In the darkness of his logged-off mind, she whispered, “I’m just glad you’re home.”
ROCKET NIGHT
IT WAS ROCKET Night at our daughter’s elementary school, the night when parents, students, and administrators gather to place the least-liked child in a rocket and shoot him into the stars. Last year we placed Laura Jackson into the capsule, a short, squat girl known for the limp dresses that hung crookedly on her body. The previous year we’d sent off a boy from India whose name none of us could remember.
Rocket Night falls in late October when the earth is covered by leaves. Our children have begun to lay out their Halloween costumes, and their sweaters are heavy with the scent of autumn. It’s late enough into the school year for us to get a sense of the best children to send off. Alliances are made early at Rose Hill. Our children gather in the mornings to share their secrets on the playground, while the other children—those with stars and galaxies in their futures—can be seen at the edges of the field, playing alone with sticks or staring into mud puddles at drowned worms.
In the school gymnasium, we mingle in the warm glow of lacquered floors, surrounded by wooden bleachers and parallel bars, talking about soccer games, math homework, and the difficulty of finding time for errands with our children’s busy schedules. Our kids run the perimeter, some playing tag, others collecting in clusters of boys around the fifth-graders with portable game consoles, the girls across the room in their own cl
usters. Susan Beech brought her famous home-baked cupcakes, the Stowes brought Hawaiian Punch, and we brought plastic cups and cocktail napkins and placed them on the table among the baked goods and apple slices.
The boy to be sent off, I believe his name was Daniel, stood near his parents, holding his mother’s skirt, looking unkempt. One could immediately see the reason he’d been chosen. The mildewed scent of thrift stores clung to his corduroys, and his collar sat askew, revealing the small white undershirt beneath. His brown slacks were held up by an oversize belt, the end of which flopped lazily from his side. The boy, our daughter told us, brought stubby pencils to school whose chewed-up ends got stuck in sharpeners. He had the habit of picking his nose and wiping it on his pants. His lunches were nothing more than stale crackers and a warm box of chocolate milk. There was a smear of cupcake frosting on the corner of his mouth, and upon seeing this detail, we knew our children had chosen well. He was the sort of child who makes one proud of one’s own children, and we looked over to our daughter, who was holding court with a devil’s square, tightening then spreading her small fingers within the folded paper while counting out the letters O-R-A-N-G-E.
At eight o’clock the principal took the stage beneath the basketball hoop, a whine from the microphone as he adjusted it. He turned to us with open arms and welcomed parents and students to another year at Rose Hill. He thanked Susan for her cupcakes, and all of us for our contributions to the evening’s festivities. Then, forgetting the boy’s name, he turned to the family and said, “We hope your child’s journey into space will be a joyful one.” We all applauded. His parents applauded less than others, looking a bit pale, but parents of the chosen often seem pale. They are the sort of people who come to soccer games and sit alone in the stands, a gloomy sadness hanging over them, whose cars make the most noise when they pull into our school’s parking lot, and whose faces, within the automobile’s dark interiors, remind us of a sorrow none of us wish to share.
His speech delivered, the principal invited us to join him on the playground where the capsule sat, cockpit open, its silver sides illuminated by the glow from the launch tower. It’s a truth that the child to be sent into space grows reticent upon seeing the glowing tower and the gaping, casketlike rocket. We saw the small boy cling to his mother, unwilling to leave her side, and so we let our children loose. I watched my daughter pry the boy’s fingers from his mother’s leg as two larger fifth-graders seized his waist and dragged him away. The nurse, a kindly woman, helped to subdue the parents. She took the mother aside and whispered to her while the gym coach placed a meaty hand on the father’s shoulder and assured him that the capsule was stocked with water and food tablets, plenty to last the boy a long time into the future. To be honest, it’s a mystery how long such supplies last. It’s a small compartment within that capsule and we are all aware funding was cut to our district earlier this year, but still we assured them there was nothing to fear. The boy, if hungry for company, had a small microphone inside the shell, which would allow him to speak to himself about his journey, his thoughts, and the mysteries of the universe.
The boy was strapped into the capsule, his hands secured, and he looked out at us. He spoke then, for the first and only time that night. He asked if he might have one of his pencils with him; it was in his pencil box, he said, the one with a brown bear eraser. The principal assured him that he wouldn’t need it in outer space, and the custodian noted that the request was moot; the boy’s desk had been emptied earlier that day. So, they closed the cover. All we could see was the smudge of the boy’s face pressed against the porthole.
When the rocket blasted off, it made us all take an involuntary step backward, the light of the flames illuminating the wonder upon our children’s faces. The capsule rose from the playground, leaving behind our swing sets and jungle gym, rising higher, until it was a sparkling marble in the night sky, and then, finally, gone. We sighed with awe, some applauded, and then we made our rounds, wishing one another goodnight, arranging play dates, and returning to our cars. Those of us on the PTO remained to put the gymnasium back in order for next morning. And the boy faded from our thoughts, replaced by the lateness of the evening and the pressure of delayed bedtime schedules. I had all but forgotten about the child by the time I laid our sleeping daughter on her bed. And yet, when I took out the recycling that night, I paused beneath the streetlamps of our cul-de-sac and thought of all the children high above. I imagined them drifting alone up there, speaking into their microphones, reporting to themselves about the depths of the unknown.
OPENNESS
BEFORE I DECIDED to finally give up on New York, I subbed classes at a junior high in Brooklyn. A sixth-grade math teacher suffering from downloading anxiety was out for the year, and jobs being what they were, I took any opportunity I could. Subbing math was hardly my dream job; I had a degree in visual art, for which I’d be in debt for the rest of my life. All I had to show for it was my senior collection, a series of paintings of abandoned playgrounds, stored in a U-Pack shed in Ohio. There was a time when I’d imagined I’d become famous, give guest lectures at colleges, and have retrospectives at MOMA. Instead, I found myself standing in front of a class of apathetic tweens, trying to teach them how to do long division without accessing their browsers. I handed out pen and paper, so that for once in their lives they’d have a tactile experience, and watched as they texted, their eyes glazed from blinking off message after message. They spent most of the class killing vampires and orcs inside their heads and humoring me by lazily filling out my photocopies.
The city overwhelmed me. Every day I’d walk by hundreds of strangers, compete for space in crowded coffee shops, and stand shoulder to shoulder on packed subway cars. I’d scan profiles, learning that the woman waiting for the N enjoyed thrash-hop, and the barista at my local coffee shop loved salted caramel. I’d had a couple fleeting relationships, but mostly I’d spend weekends going to bars and sleeping with people who knew little more than my username. It all made me want to turn off my layers, go back to the old days, and stay disconnected. But you do that and you become another old guy buried in an e-reader, complaining about how no one sends emails anymore.
So, I stayed open, shared the most superficial info of my outer layer with the world, and filtered through everyone I passed, hoping to find some connection. Here was citycat5, jersygirl13, m3love. And then, one morning, there was Katie, sitting across from me on the N. She was lakegirl03, and her hair fell from under her knit cap. The only other info I could access was her hometown and that she was single.
“Hi,” I winked, and when I realized she had her tunes on, I sent off an invite. She raised her eyes.
“Hi,” she winked back.
“You’re from Maine? I’m planning a trip there this summer. Any suggestions?”
She leaned forward, and warmth spread across my chest from being allowed into her second layer. “I’m Katie,” she winked. “You should visit Bar Harbor, I grew up there.” She gave me access to an image of a lake house with tall silvery pines rising high above the shingled roof. “Wish I could help more, but this is my stop.” As she stood waiting for the doors to open, I winked a last message. Can I invite you for a drink? The train hissed, the doors opened, and she looked back at me and smiled before disappearing into the mass of early morning commuters. It was as the train sped toward work that her contact info appeared in my mind, along with a photo of her swimming in a lake at dusk.
* * *
IT TURNED OUT that Katie had been in the city for a couple years before she’d found a steady job. She taught senior citizens how to successfully navigate their layers. She’d helped a retired doctor upload images of his grandchildren so strangers could congratulate him, and assisted a ninety-three-year-old widow in sharing her mourning with the world. Her main challenge, she said, was getting older folks to understand the value of their layers.
“Every class they ask me why we can’t just talk instead,” she shared as we lay in bed. Though Kat
ie and I occasionally spoke, it was always accompanied by layers. It was tiring to labor through the sentences needed to explain how you ran into a friend—much easier to share the memory, the friend’s name and photo appearing organically.
“At least they still want to speak. My class won’t even say hello.”
“You remember what it was like before?” she asked. I tried to think back to high school, but it was fuzzy. I was sure we used to talk more, but it seemed like we doled out personal details in hushed tones.
“Not really,” I said. “Do you?”
“Sure. My family’s cabin is completely out of range. Whenever I go back we can only talk.”
“What’s that like?”
She shared a photo of walking in the woods with her father, the earth covered in snow, and I felt the sharp edge of jealousy. Back where I grew up, there hadn’t been any pristine forests to walk through, just abandoned mini-marts, a highway, and trucks heading past our town, which was more a pit stop than a community. The only woods were behind the high school, a small dangerous place where older kids might drag you if you didn’t run fast enough. And my parents sure didn’t talk. My mother was a clinical depressive who’d spent my childhood either behind the closed door of her bedroom or at the kitchen table, doing crossword puzzles and telling me to be quiet whenever I asked her something. My father had hit me so hard that twice I’d blacked out. My history wasn’t the kind of thing I wanted to unlock for anyone, and since leaving Ohio I’d done my best to bury those memories within my layers.
So, I spent our first months sharing little of myself. Katie showed me the memories of her best friends and family while I showed her the mundane details of substitute teaching and my favorite bands. I knew Katie could feel the contours of my hidden memories, like stones beneath a bedsheet, but for a while she let me keep the private pain of my unlocked layers.
Children of the New World Page 13
