Thomas World

by Richard Cox

  “Dude,” he says.

  “What?”

  “That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

  “You think it was a mistake to let her go. You think I should fight for her, right? Drive over to her office and get down on my knees and beg for her to come back.”

  “I mean the whole thing is fucked up, man. You got fired from your job, your wife left you, all in the span of twenty-four hours?”

  This guy Dick really is a dick. Why the hell am I talking to him about this? Why did I think he—

  “But it’s a good kind of fucked up,” he adds.

  “What?”

  “You’ve got a chance, man. A chance to do something the rest of us can only dream about. Your life was just reset. Rebooted. You can do anything you want now, man. You could move somewhere else. You could start a whole new career. You could get out of the corporate world and travel the country on foot, like a wandering nomad, yo. Move from city to city and really live there, man. Salt of the earth. Get your hands dirty and live among real people struggling every day. And write down what you see. The real shit. Live paycheck to paycheck, wander from town to town, and when you’re done you’ll have something so authentic and real it will be an important thing. It could be a film or a book or whatever. But you’ve been given a chance, man. You’re lucky. Use it wisely.”

  “I don’t know if that makes me lucky or if it’ll just drive me crazy.”

  “That’s the thing. Maybe you want to go a little crazy. Maybe you’re already a little crazy. Maybe that’s what these hallucinations are, like your mind just had enough, and it took over, like a defense mechanism. It got you out of a bad situation, which is exactly what it’s evolved to do.”

  “So you think it’s my imagination, then?”

  “Well, that’s a lot easier to believe than someone is beaming numbers into your head. Or how that guy found you in a bathroom and told you a big secret in cryptic language. I mean, honestly Thomas: Why you and not someone else?”

  I think he’s wrong to dismiss the “hallucinations” this way. Someone is trying to contact me, I can feel it. They must be. It can’t all be coincidence.

  “But it doesn’t matter, man. What matters is you are out of a bad situation. You and Gloria both knew the relationship had been stagnant for years. You hated your job. Now they’re both over, and let me say it again—not many people get this kind of chance. This clean break. You don’t have kids, you aren’t broke. You want to sit around in a suburb for the next forty years, waiting to die? Or do you want to live?”

  “But if none of this stuff really happened to me, I’m crazy. I need to check myself into a mental hospital.”

  “How can you say it’s not happening? You just told me everything. I was there for the Ant Farm conversation. I found you in the parking lot, passed out drunk. That corroborates your story. Part of it at least.”

  “But what about the blue orb? The numbers in my head?”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “Maybe that was some kind of temporary shit caused by stress.”

  “A delusion that lasted two days? Hell, even today I heard the numbers. That would make three.”

  “Do you hear them right now?”

  “No.”

  Dick finishes his beer and sets it down with authority.

  “I think you’re fine. You sound lucid. You look tired, but who wouldn’t be after what you went through the past couple of days?”

  He seems convinced. Or tired of talking about it. I have a feeling he’s ready to go.

  “I actually have to run now,” he says. “You ready?”

  “I think I might hang around for a bit. Have another drink.”

  “Well, let me tell you something, man. I’m only going to say this one more time, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Don’t fuck this up. Don’t go right back to what you were doing. Challenge yourself. Try things you’ve never tried. Get into trouble. Don’t be so damned perfect all the time. You already know what you’ve become—a boring, middle-aged marketer with tentative dreams. Get out there and live hard for a while, and when you’re ready, you’ll figure out what you can become.”

  I stare at him for a while before I finally answer.

  “Thanks, man. You’re right. I promise I won’t go back to my old ways.”

  “Good,” he says. “Good stuff. Now give me your number so I can check in later and see how things are going.”

  We pull out our cell phones and exchange numbers.

  “All right, man,” he says, and stands up. I stand with him and we shake hands.

  “Thanks for talking to me about this.”

  “No problem. I’m glad to help. And let’s keep in touch.”

  Dick leaves some money on the table, and is already walking away when he stops and turns around. He’s standing very close to the table with the European Playboy bunny and her T-shirt friends. They’re all looking at him.

  “Hey,” he says.

  “What?”

  He walks back toward me, and I meet him halfway. “I’ve got an author you should check out.”

  “Oh, boy,” I chuckle. “Are you trying to be helpful again?”

  “No, no. It’s not like before. But I was just thinking…that other stuff you told me, the hallucinations, not knowing if the world is real…that all sounds like the kind of thing you’d read in a Philip K. Dick novel.”

  “Who?”

  “Philip K. Dick. He died a long time ago. I read this article about him, how he spent his life obsessing about the nature of reality. Like, if the world was fake, how could you ever know? They say The Matrix is based off his ideas, and there were some other movies adapted directly from his books. Blade Runner, and that one with Arnold Schwarzenegger, the one on Mars? And maybe The Truman Show. I don’t remember. Anyway, most of his work is about this weird reality shit. I mean, he was really obsessed with it. Maybe you should check him out.”

  “Okay,” I say. “I’ll look him up. Thanks again, man.”

  “No worries,” he says. “And Thomas?”

  “Yes?”

  “At any point during our conversation today did I space out and tell you a super important cryptic message?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Are you fucking with me?”

  “I don’t remember doing it last time, so I figured I should ask.”

  “So you are fucking with me.”

  “Maybe a little.”

  “Get out of here.”

  “Okay,” he says, smiling. “Take care, man.”

  I turn around to head back to my table, and that’s when I hear someone else say my name.

  “Hey, Thomas.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  I turn around and the girl in the galoshes is looking right at me. All three of them are. The two dudes both sport the same intentionally messy haircut and tough-guy facial expression. Neither one of them could possibly weigh more than 160 pounds. The European Playboy bunny is staring at me with her legs crossed, one of her galoshes dancing in the air. Strangely, her eyes remind me of Gloria’s, that specific shade of blue. And despite her Slavic features, something in her face, in her expression, reminds me of Gloria as well. I can’t quite put my finger on it.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I said, ‘Hey, Thomas.’”

  “Right. I heard that.”

  She smiles suggestively, her mouth slightly open, and beckons me with her finger.

  “C’mere.”

  My eyes bounce from her to the two dudes, who are both staring at me with expressionless faces, purposely expressionless, as if they’re playing a game of poker. The dinosaur guy sits across the table from her. The other one is right next to her, wearing a blue shirt that’s really an ad for Benjamin’s surf shop, which apparently is located in Corpus Christi, Texas.

  “C’mon,” she says. “Don’t be shy.”

  I step forward, closer to her, and she beckons me again.

  �
�Come closer. I want to tell you a secret.”

  She wants to whisper something to me. Her perfume is spicy, like patchouli oil, and it’s mixed with the smell of her makeup and what could be some kind of body spray. I lean down and feel her breath on my ear, her lips only inches away. It makes my skin tingle. Goosebumps swell on my arms, my neck. Little mountain ranges of excitement.

  “This world isn’t real,” she says.

  I jerk back from her. For a split second I think I might fall over backwards, but the girl reaches out and grabs my wrist, steadying me ever so gently.

  “I’m just kidding!” she squeals.

  “What?”

  “I heard your friend say that stuff about Philip K. Dick.”

  “Oh.”

  She chuckles. “Dude, I didn’t mean to freak you out.”

  “You didn’t. I just…”

  “You just what?”

  “Nothing. Sorry.”

  “Um, okay. Whatever. I do have a real secret, though.”

  “Oh yeah?” I say with bravado. “What is it?”

  “You’re cute.”

  “I am?”

  “You are. Want to sit down?”

  The two pencil-thin Johnnies are still looking at me with the same poker-faced toughness.

  “Okay. Let me go get my drink.”

  On the way to my table I think absently about my wedding ring, wondering if Gloria’s request for divorce means I should take it off. I do this often when I’m upset with her, touch my ring with my thumb, except this time something is different.

  It isn’t there.

  A little jolt of adrenaline shoots through me—any married man knows what I’m talking about—because I can’t even think of what I might have done with it. When the hell did I take it off? Where is it? I’ve spent so much time drunk over the past couple of days that it could have been anytime. Maybe it’s on the desk in my study. At the very least it’s in my house somewhere. It has to be, right?

  As I walk back toward the girl’s table I realize I am becoming drunk again. My feet feel heavy, like my shoes have lead weights in them, and I hear this ringing in my ears, a high-pitched, noisy screech. Underneath it I swear I also hear a tangle of guitar strings, or violin, or something. You must be tired of hearing about this mysterious music. I’m tired of it myself, but unfortunately that hasn’t stopped it from happening. And I don’t know where my wedding ring is.

  I look up to find an extra chair at the girl’s table. One of the T-shirt dudes has moved his chair, and the empty one has been squeezed in right next to her.

  “Hi again, Thomas,” she says. “Sit here.”

  Her smile is 1.21 gigawatts of delight. I breathe in the aroma of her, spicy and exotic. The chairs are crammed so close together that our legs touch, ever so slightly, and I expect her to move. But she doesn’t. If anything she seems to be intentionally pushing against me. Her legs are smooth as glass.

  “So what’s your name?” I ask her.

  “Sherri. S-H-E-R-R-I.”

  “Nice to meet you, Sherri.”

  “Total,” she says with a smile. “So what were you and that other guy talking about?”

  Her face, her mouth, her lips are just inches from mine. I haven’t been this close to a woman who wasn’t my wife in ten years. And that was Gloria when we were still dating.

  “Um,” I say.

  “Don’t lie,” she adds with a smile. Her eyes are blue like jewels. “I’ll know it if you do.”

  I can’t tell if her two friends are bored or threatened by my presence. I don’t think either has blinked since I sat down. They could be androids.

  “I’ve been having doubts,” I say.

  “About what?”

  “About everything.”

  “Wow, dude,” the dinosaur guy announces. “That’s deep.”

  “Like your shirt is deep?” I reply.

  He chuckles and looks away. “Whatever.”

  No one says anything for a moment.

  “I’m sorry about Kevin,” Sherri says. “I think he’s jealous of you.”

  “Whatever,” Kevin says again.

  “Anyway,” she continues. “What do you mean ‘everything’?”

  I’m hardly in the mood to start all over with the blue orb, and besides, they would all laugh at me. So instead I tell them about the Ant Farm game. About the cockpit chart and the ant prayers and the rules. I speak slowly to make sure everything comes out clearly.

  “One of the rules was ‘Do the ants derive genetic benefit from reproducing with a variety of ants?’”

  “Well, that’s true in real life,” the other guy, not Kevin, says. “Animals do derive benefit by spreading their genetic information among many partners. And I’m David, by the way.”

  “The animals themselves don’t derive any benefit,” Kevin counters. “It’s their DNA that benefits. DNA is what drives that behavior. The animal actually suffers because he might contract diseases from promiscuity, and his offspring suffers if he doesn’t grow up with stable parents.”

  “That is sort of the point of the game, isn’t it?” Sherri says. “To demonstrate the conundrum?”

  “I guess. Another rule was ‘Does society approve of taking many partners for the reproductive act?’ And a lot of the rules were like that, illustrating the differences between what culture tells us and what our bodies tell us to do.”

  Sherri smiles. “Like if you’re married but you want to sleep with someone else?”

  I know you’re going to hate me for saying this, and I’m not proud of it, but I can’t help but imagine what it would be like to touch this exotic woman, to kiss her, to caress a body so young and curvy and velvety.

  “And there were rules about the stamina of ant relationships,” I tell them. “‘Do the ants maintain a similar level of attraction over a long period of time, or does it decline? How quickly does it decline?’ That sort of thing.”

  Sherri just looks at me, her lips slightly parted.

  “Whoever wrote that game was obviously focused on the absurdities of human life,” David says. “Trying to reconcile instinctive impulses with the ability to reason.”

  “The game wants you to ask why the world is set up like that,” Sherri says. “Don’t you think, Thomas?”

  “Sure. In the game, you get to play God, and at first you think the point of the game is to win, like any other game. But it doesn’t take long to realize winning isn’t the point. The point is to understand you are playing with people’s lives. That your rules can be arbitrary and even confusing. And then you begin to wonder why God would do that to us. If He’s all powerful, why did He tell us to do one thing but make us want something else?”

  “To challenge us,” Kevin says. “To test our character.”

  “But He created our character,” David shoots back. “He already knows what we’re going to do before we do it. It sounds like in this game you get to decide everything, and then on top of that you judge the ants for what you made them do.”

  “I am so tired of this argument,” Kevin says. “This flawed creator thing. Maybe it’s true, but who wants to think of their life as someone’s game? I sure hope there’s more to life than that.”

  He’s so tired of this argument? Like they’ve discussed it before?

  The waitress appears and asks if we need more drinks. David and Kevin each order another beer. My glass is completely empty, but instead of ordering another I ask for a water instead.

  “Dude,” Kevin says. “Water?”

  “I’ve had a lot to drink today. I could use a break.”

  “It’s only six-thirty.”

  “I’ve had a lot to drink.”

  He doesn’t say anything else, and for a little while the table is quiet.

  Then Sherri asks me, “Are you religious?”

  “Yeah. I’m not a Bible thumper or anything, but I go to church and I believe in God. Or I did.”

  Kevin asks, “You’re going to stop believing because of a video game?
”

  Of course this story doesn’t make complete sense without telling them the rest of it, the experience in the church, the numbers in my head, everything. But I already tried that with Gloria and she walked out on me. I told most of it to Dick and he didn’t believe it, either. I don’t think I can bring myself to say it again.

  “It’s not just the game,” I say to them. “It’s the very premise of it that bothers me. If those ants thought they were real, if everything about their world seemed real, how do we know we aren’t in the same kind of situation?”

  “It’s not the same,” Kevin says.

  “Why not?”

  “Because their world is just a bunch of information in a computer. It’s just bits and bytes.”

  “Just like our world,” David says.

  “Our world has trees and oceans and the sky,” Kevin explains.

  “It’s just information,” David tells him. “All that stuff is just particles arranged in a certain way. It’s all made out of the same stuff, the same tiny bits of matter, and the only difference between the sky and a tree is the way those particles are organized. It’s not any different inside a computer. A computer pushes electrons around. Electrons help make up all the matter you just described. So how different is it, really?”

  Something isn’t right here. Before yesterday I had never once in my life imagined the world as a simulation. Nothing of the sort had ever crossed my mind, and now, after the church and the Ant Farm game and everything, I just happen to run into people at a wine bar who are experts on the subject?

  That’s more than coincidence. It’s intentional. It has to be. It’s part of this script I’m supposed to be following.

  “Obviously our world is different from the inside of a computer,” Kevin says.

  “It looks like it to us,” Sherri says. “But how do you know?”

  “Because I can see it.”

  “But that seeing is happening inside your head,” David says. “Everything you ever see or hear or think is all inside your head. You can’t even say for sure you are sitting here. You could be asleep right now, dreaming this conversation.”