by Jeff Wood
***
The pink hallway is packed with servers voraciously consuming shots of orange liquid.
Jonah pushes through the long corridor looking for Simone as the other servers begin dropping to the floor around him.
***
Mr. Stevens walks across the hall, strolling away from the thousands of moaning, convulsing bodies. He exits the giant room and the steel door slams shut. All is quiet in the hall.
***
The service hallways are lifeless and mute. The industrial kitchen devoid of activity. The bathrooms and locker rooms vacant.
The Convention Center is rudderless and adrift.
***
In the Main Hall, the giant screens display a brilliant field of TV snow, silent and blizzarding with light.
Another steel door creaks open, and slams shut, echoing through the cavernous hall.
Samson stands now on the edge of the quiet spectacle, bright TV snow reflecting in his mirrored sunglasses. He takes them off, marveling at the room.
SAMSON
Hello?
His call echoes through the room and draws no response.
At his table, Robert is heaved back in his chair, chest and belly up, arms limp at his sides, neck hanging back like a dead man, mouth open and wide to whatever might enter from above.
His fingers are twitching slightly, floating just above the floor.
***
Jonah enters the Loading Dock Sector and stands at the end of the long row of cargo bays.
CRASH… SMASH…
He hears glass shattering in small explosive bursts. He walks down the row of cargo bays until he comes to one lit up by a utility light. He stands and watches, looking into the shipping container backed up to the dock.
SMASH… CRASH…
Simone is inside, at the back of the cargo cavity. She pulls water glasses full of ice from a glass rack and hurls them against the back wall of the trailer. The glass and ice shatter against the wall.
She grabs another glass.
JONAH
Hello?
He startles her and she spins around like a cornered animal in the harsh, bright light.
SIMONE
Who’s there? Stay away from me.
JONAH
It’s me. We were talking before.
No recognition.
JONAH
You all right?
SIMONE
No. I’m sick.
JONAH
What’s wrong.
SIMONE
I don’t know.
He doesn’t know what to say.
JONAH
It’s gonna be okay.
SIMONE
Stop saying that word. How do you know it’s going to be okay? Can you explain okay? Can you explain this thing that is coursing through me? Can you? It’s burning! All I have is my skin. And it won’t leave me alone.
JONAH
Maybe it doesn’t want to be left alone.
He takes a step forward but she warns him ferociously.
SIMONE
Don’t come near me! And stop looking at me.
JONAH
All right. I’m just going to sit down for a minute. Way over here. We don’t have to say anything. But that’s what I’m going to do.
He moves away from her and sits down against the wall at the front edge of the trailer. Just him sitting there. He waits and he doesn’t look at her and then he listens as she talks. Calmly and methodically, she speaks.
SIMONE
It comes up inside me and it won’t go away. It comes up, like a slow geyser of thick chemicals, and spreads through me. It makes me want something. I want it so much but I don’t know what it is. It comes up from the bottom like a small seed, just floating there, and it bleeds around inside, looking for me.
The empty loading dock corridor. Empty trailers. Her shoes on broken glass. Ice cubes. Her hands.
And just Jonah listening.
SIMONE
And it makes me so sad that I will never figure out what it is, just enough to let it be, all by itself. And because I want it, it won’t go away. It needs me to need it. And want me back. I can feel it moving. I can hear it and I can see it, I can almost touch it, and it is some kind of life. It is beautiful and warm and gentle and it is your friend. And then it turns, when you try and put it away, or when you can’t carry it anymore, and it isn’t allowed.
The pipes running along the industrial ceiling. The work light. Reflections of light in the smooth, polished concrete.
SIMONE
It sinks and settles and lies there moaning like a poison. And then it forms itself against the denial. And lives there like a sick frog in the corner. Deformed… Something that’s not supposed to be the way that it is. How is this possible? That something is not the way that it is supposed to be—?
He waits for her to continue and he does not look at her.
JONAH
Maybe it’s not you that’s sick. Maybe it’s everything around you.
SIMONE
Then what’s the difference? That’s just words.
JONAH
No, we could do things. Real things. Just simple things. We could go, get coffee, or go to the movies or walk in the woods and look at birds or—music—things that, uh—stupid things. Just real things.
She waits for him to say more, but he does not.
Simone moves forward in the space and lies down, curling up tightly against his body. He has no choice but to hold her and so he holds her, just breathing. Their breathing takes on the quality of two mechanical respirators. She allows herself to be there for what seems like a long time.
Then she gets up.
SIMONE
That sounds really nice. But those things aren’t possible. I think you might have a fever.
She walks away. He hears her walk down the corridor and open a loading dock door. Outside is the cold howl of space. He hears this, listening to her consider it. Then the door slams shut and the loading dock is quiet. She is gone.
Jonah is alone, sitting on the floor of the trailer in his white-face and tuxedo uniform.
He hears singing, a strange ethereal choir in the distance, briefly, and then it fades.
He waits for more. But no sound comes. He gets up and walks down the loading dock corridor back toward the Event. He exits through steel doors back into the pink hallway.
***
Jonah stands at the end of the pink hallway. The corridor is packed with bodies, the bodies of cater-waiters lying on the floor in a long pile, huddled, collapsed, and intertwined. The very light hum of voices floats through the hallway.
He moves down the length of the hall, carefully stepping through the mass of tuxedoed, white-faced bodies.
***
In another section of the labyrinth, Samson walks along a corridor. He rounds a corner and approaches the office at the end of the hall. The office door is ajar and he sees Mr. Stevens sitting at his desk.
Cautiously, Sam stops in the hallway at some distance from the office door. Stevens is doing paperwork and smoking a cigarette, business as usual.
SAMSON
Jack?
Stevens looks up from his paperwork and takes a drag off his cigarette. He speaks to Sam in a tone that is oddly too low and hushed for the distance between them.
MR. STEVENS
It’s beautiful, isn’t it? It’s like church. So unnecessary, but so—
SAMSON
How long have they been out, Jack?
MR. STEVENS
It can be confusing. But it’s such good fiction, isn’t it? Otherwise what else is there? The good news is that if God is finally just a figment of the imagination, then anyone is free to play him.
Stevens checks his watch and returns to his paperwork. He makes an entry in his ledger.
MR. STEVENS
(to himself, notating)
In Girum Imus Nocte Et Consumimur Igni…
Sam walks away.
Stevens take
s a thoughtful drag off his cigarette.
***
Sam cruises down a length of pink hallway. He rounds a corner and nearly slams into a waiter.
SAMSON
Excuse me.
Sam keeps rolling. But the waiter stops. It is Jonah. He watches Sam walk away and then he stops him.
JONAH
Sam?
Sam stops and turns around.
SAMSON
Yeah?
JONAH
Sam— It’s me.
Sam is confused, and then he recognizes Jonah beneath his white-face make-up.
JONAH
I think it’s—r-r-really close, Sam. It feels really close now.
Sam watches Jonah. He tries to figure out how it is that they’re in the same space at the same time. He looks at his watch.
SAMSON
We’re inside it, aren’t we.
JONAH
It’s much—m-more—than I—expected. It’s nice to see you.
SAMSON
You too.
They stand beneath the raw fluorescent lighting. The lighting seems to be getting harsher as their faces begin to wash out. An acid wash. Jonah has great difficulty speaking.
JONAH
I didn’t want to die, Sam. But— Thank you. The mirror. It’s what I— Everything. Happening. I mean— Whole. Inside. It’s— In reverse. I don’t know how to— It doesn’t talk anymore. I I ccccann’t— So b-beau— I I— I— I ddidint—
SAMSON
Jonah.
The lights are almost strobing. Their complexions are deathly. Weeping.
JONAH
I think I have to go to the big room now, Sam. Thank— Goodbye.
Jonah turns around and walks away leaving Sam standing alone in the pulsating pink hallway. Samson watches him go. Then he turns and exits the hall through an adjacent bathroom door.
***
Sam turns on the tap in the large bathroom and rinses his face. He leans into the sink, his face dripping, and looks into the mirror.
He grabs some paper towels from the dispenser and dries his hands and face, slowly, thoughtfully. He gazes into the large mirror, absently drying his hands. He repeats Mr. Stevens’ palindrome to himself…
SAMSON
In Girum Imus Nocte—
He stops, watching. Then he quickly backs away from the sink. And a fish suddenly jumps out of the mirror.
A brilliant, beautiful rainbow trout, radiating with color, leaping horizontally out of the mirror, flipping its tail, spraying silvery droplets of water into the bathroom, and then falling sideways back into the mercurial liquid.
The mirror stills.
Sam waits.
He takes a step closer. And leans in a bit—
An enormous king salmon leaps out of the mirror, swallowing Samson whole and flopping onto the bathroom floor. It lies there, bloated, with its belly full, gills sucking at the air, slapping its tail in silver mucous on the bathroom tile. The fish flips over, attempting to throw itself back into the water, and then it finally hurls itself back into the mirror.
The bathroom is empty and quiet except for the sound of the running faucet.
***
Jonah walks down a long pink corridor and exits through steel doors leading to the Main Hall where the screens are aglow with the bright and silent light of television snow.
The 5000 guests are lying facedown on their tables and slumped in their seats. Some have fallen, sprawled out on the floor.
Jonah walks across the hall and stops at the perimeter of the tables. He hears them all breathing. He walks between the tables, walking through the still-life of drooling mouths and rolled eyes. A slight murmur rises from the tables. The bodies breathe and hum.
The humming swells until all the bodies are moaning in a unified tone. A droning chord fills the room, undertones and overtones, bodies singing a vegetable meditation.
Jonah stands near the center of the room, listening to the collection of tones and Oms vibrating around him. Then suddenly it stops and the room is quiet again.
He approaches a body, Robert. He looks at Robert’s pale face. He grabs him by the jowls and moves his limp head back and forth. He presses his fingers to Robert’s jugular and takes a pulse. Then Jonah takes his own pulse. His pulse is pounding.
Jonah places his hand on Robert’s forehead. Then he opens one of Robert’s eyes. And looking into his pupil…
We plunge into Robert’s eye, descending through the neural tunnel leading to the visual cortex in Robert’s brain. The neural network. Synapses sparking and firing. A new connection is made. A pathway to the brain stem. Descending. A spiraling pathway of information. Symbols, languages, icons, sonic surges, and encoded psychedelic patterns of fractal form. Primitive psychedelia. An aria of mandalas, perpetually unfolding, diffusing, and coalescing their visual narratives.
Forgetting where we were, we continue falling through the elements of mercurial evolution, carcasses, insects, and fossils, the horror and music of the spheres, streams of painted light trickling, sucking into the pool, a primordial womb, direction-less, but expanding with the pressure of sound, expanding until we burst into—
Interstellar space.
The black vacuum. Droplets of silvery amniotic-substance glistening reflectively in the anti-gravitational free-fall.
Moving along the periphery of phenomena. Gaseous masses and coagulations of stardust. Rippling dark matter. The perimeter of a solar system. A planet. Moons. The rings of Saturn. More planets. The familiar monochrome landscape of our moon. Then the Earth. And falling fast into—
A suburban street.
Houses destroy and rebuild themselves in a repeating cycle of self-annihilation and regeneration. The neighborhood crumbles and reconstructs in a looping circuit of collapse and assembly, over and over and over again—
Robert suddenly awakens with a loud guttural cry. He’s looking up at Jonah.
ROBERT
It’s coming.
Robert looks around the room, panicky, not sure where he is, or what’s happening. He sees the thousands of lifeless bodies—
The room suddenly erupts. Thousands of bodies simultaneously come to life, and panic.
Absolute pandemonium. Instant crowd hysteria of people not knowing where they are, trying to get anywhere, climbing over the tables, and each other, running through the aisles.
And as though coming to the rescue of the confused and panicking masses, Mr. Stevens stands above them on stage and proclaims rapturously into his headset microphone:
MR. STEVENS
IT’S COMING!! IT’S COMING!!
A beat kicks in on the sound-system and the crowd begins to spontaneously organize. They move in unison, performing a choreographed group line-dance ala the Macarena or the Electric Slide. The simple, physical ecstasy of group participation.
The crowd moves in concentric circles around the stage, dancing to the pop beat, through the aisles, between tables, a floral mandala of people in the giant space.
Robert moves with the herd, dancing up a furious storm. He shouts over the music, dancing to save his precious life, sweating and heaving with ecstatic relief and release, joy.
ROBERT
AHHHHHH!!
Over the heads of the crowd, the video screens are blazing with white light. Glistening and searing. Sound receding and dissolving…
Nothing but white light.
Illuminating the audience. Us.
And Jonah’s quiet voice.
JONAH
Look around. There are people all around you now. Was something wrong with the world? Was something strange? If each of us at the core is perfect and free, then nothing is happening, and nothing has ever happened at all.
Nothing but a field of brilliant white light.
VIII
Snow flurries out of the white. Heavy traffic flows over a freeway overpass. A silent river of cars. Exactly as it is. The soft winter sky. Muted and unchanged. Flat and folding clouds. Some aluminu
m ventilator spinning on a rooftop.
IX
Jonah walks down the long row of identical storage units.
He stops at his space and unlocks it. He rolls up the door and gags, forced backward by something he sees and smells inside. He stands in the alleyway, mouth and nose covered, looking into the unseen space.
Then he enters—
***
The open garage door.
The sound of typing.
Clacking on plastic keys.
It stops.
***
The mud man steps out of the storage unit—
X
The tree is on fire, burning in the black field.
Roaring out of void. Burning in reverse.
Burning into dusk, into black.
XI
Falling snow, inside the globe.
Flocks of black starlings swoop and dive in swirling patterns of aerial choreography en masse. Bright red cardinals ignite with color against the snowy ground, searching for seeds.
The tree stands at the center of the winter field.
JONAH
The killdeer come crying across the fields. Limping and crying. Like something hot was buried in the ground. Eventually there’ll be some field left, because it will stop. Or maybe it’ll just keep on.
Bare winter branches cross, merge, and mingle in random patterns of line and space. A thicketed tapestry of layer upon layer.
Power lines. Radio communication towers. And houses. Thousands of hibernating houses. Brand new homes everywhere for everyone.
A lazy circus song gently bubbles from the sleep. The clumsy melody floats through the empty suburban streets.
***
Samson rounds a corner, steering his white truck. He rolls down the street, trolling for business.
A front door flies open and a child sprints across the lawn. He runs down the street, a lone runner chasing the music.
Suddenly all the front doors fly open and children pour from the houses, running across the lawns. Thousands of children streaming from the houses and flooding the street.
The parade of children follows Samson’s truck down the street like the Pied Piper. The bubbling, jubilant, chaotic voices of children, running, jumping, and crowding the street.
The voices of children laughing and chattering.
Then silence.
And just children.
