by Riley Flynn
There were faces on the boats, all of them lined up on the edge. Alex had never met a Korean person. Not that he could remember, anyway. In the article, in the photo, these faces peering over the side of the boat almost didn’t look like people. They weren’t happy. They weren’t smiling.
But they didn’t look sad, either. It was like they’d never known that either end of the emotional spectrum was available as an option. Alex knew how they felt. The article captioned the images. A boat of Korean refugees, it said. These people probably had families. Maybe they were there with them. Each one probably had a story. Couldn’t tell that from the article.
Next was a group of American fishermen. They’d been dressed up in their thick knit sweaters, their beards bustling and rustling in the sea breeze. They were posing with a group of ten stragglers. People who’d been afloat for days in the ocean. Picked up somewhere in the Pacific. Brought back to harbor. Catch of the day, the caption read. The quiet eyes of the boat people were half-closed in the sunlight. Too close to the sun.
It was dawning on Alex, slowly, how little he knew of the world. How the cogs turned and twisted, their teeth locking together, and driving the big machine forward. How this piece connected to that, how interwoven and entwined everything had become. From tower block fires to traffic stops, GUNPLAY leaflets to refugee ships, sinking in the China sea. All that information was out there and he was immune. Inert. Passive. Maybe, he wondered, it was time to switch himself back on.
The screen shut down. Clapping the phone against the heel of his hand, Alex tried to bring it back to life. He hadn’t finished looking at the pictures. He hadn’t even started reading the article properly. He wouldn’t be able to find the same piece again later. The news moved too fast. Cursing, he threw the phone across his cubicle.
“Those Chinese ones,” Eddie announced, “they always were unreliable. I buy American. Only the best, they say.”
Eddie had reached into his pants pocket and produced his own device. Even from his chair, Alex could see that it was more polished. More cared for. Probably cost Eddie two month’s wages, he wondered. And now it was just covered in fingerprints and coffee dust. What was the point?
“Did they get a new coffee started?” Alex asked Eddie.
“Oh, yeah,” Eddie replied. “We got that new blend in, as well. Javan, I think. Rich and aromatic. I’d get down there before it’s all snapped up.”
Standing up, leaving his phone behind, Alex emerged from his cubicle. “I’m going to the break room. Anything I can get you?”
“Just your John Hancock.” Eddie motioned to the paperwork on the desk. “Time’s a tickin’, Mr. Early.”
Timmy just shook his head.
“You’re on drinks,” Timmy told Alex. “Do we need to sync our watches?”
Looking down at his bare wrists, Alex shrugged.
“Time is a cruel mistress,” Timmy agreed. “She comes for the best of us. Don’t be late.”
He turned back to Eddie and the two delved deep into some technical mess. Turning away, Alex stretched his legs out and went looking for coffee. He hardly needed the kick. But a change in scenery can often do a world of good.
He’d heard that on some travel TV show. Why travel, thought Alex, when there’s bits of Detroit still unexplored? Parts of Virginia that he’d never seen. Whole swathes of the states where he’d never set foot.
Wouldn’t have to spend money on gas, either. Alex remembered the clamp stuck on the wheel of his car and groaned. There was still an hour to go before he was allowed to leave. Maybe the coffee would help. It came from Java.
6
Alex rode the bus toward Riverpoint. People were pushed up tight against him. More than ever, he noted, people seemed to be wearing those clinical masks. It used to just be doctors on TV. Now everyone seemed to have their mouth covered in public. Perhaps they were all off to perform surgery. He laughed, in spite of himself. People edged away.
Arriving at the parking lot outside the warehouse, he saw that there was still light in the day. Alex hadn’t been in the area before sunset in years. It wasn’t pretty. It was empty. A desert—no stores, no restaurants, no people walking from place to place. On the farm, empty space meant birdsong and crickets and the wind rustling through the grass. Here, it just meant traffic sounds in the distance, nothing but a dull drone.
Kneeling down beside the clamp on the car, Alex prayed that his phone would help him out. He dialed the number and listened to the automated voice. No matter how much work these companies did on these machines, they could never get them to sound quite human. They never paused for breath, for example, or made mistakes and corrected themselves. Even when certain machines had been taught to ‘um’ and ‘ah’, it only made them sound less human.
Alex asked the machine to release the clamp. It complied, happy to help. After providing banking details and accepting the various terms and conditions, Alex scanned the code on the clamp and heard a clanking, heavy sound. The metal hit the ground, falling loose from the tire.
“Thank you for your cooperation,” the machine said. “We hope you have a nice—”
Alex hung up.
As per the instructions, he dumped the clamp on the side of the parking lot. Someone would collect it later. Someone, he knew, was a misnomer. Something. One of those automated collection things. Thing. There was no other word for them. Ruthlessly efficient. Magnets and satellites and constant hustle and bustle. Detroit had spent big on them, back in the day. Not many other cities used them now. But Detroit never changed lanes that quickly.
The key turned in the ignition and the engine turned over. The car, at least, was reliable. Alex was happy that something in his life ran on gas still. He could pop the hood and look underneath and hear the pistons thumping and feel the warmth humming up and off the block. A minor reassurance in a fast-moving world.
Of course, it meant only being able to drive along certain roads, having to pay through the teeth for gas prices, and having to watch the markets every day to figure out if anyone was still buying oil. But it was worth it.
A shared love of moving mechanical parts had been one of the first things to draw him to Timmy. The two had been in the parking lot at work, Alex’s engine stuttering and refusing to start. Timmy had sidled across, swinging his jumper cables from his hip like he was John Wayne. Most of their colleagues ran electric. Most people in the city did. It got them talking. And the rest was history.
Pulling out of the parking lot, Alex was relieved to find that navigating the Riverside warehouse district was easier. The Chevy was long, heavy, and the tires needed changing. Alex could feel the give in the wheel steering the car through the deserted streets, searching for anyone. It wasn’t just outside the GUNPLAY warehouse. Every building seemed to be in various states of distress. Cliffs over a bay, beaten by the waves, some crumbling and some standing strong. He drove through several blocks to get a better feel for the area and then, half satisfied, he drove away.
The road out to Timmy’s place was empty. Having spent the worst of rush hour in Riverside, Alex had the streets to himself. Still needing to pick up beer, he kept his eyes open for the stores, the bodegas, and the supermarkets that typically littered cities.
Staring out from behind the wheel, Alex could see barber shops still open. People crowded inside. Bars, their windows covered and their neon signs deliberately flickering, were still open. As he chased the setting sun down the street, he struggled to find anywhere suitable.
A retired man walked a tired dog, ignoring the mess the dog left behind. A homeless woman pushed a worn-out shopping cart, stacked high with plush toys which had seen better days. The bus stops were the only places people gathered outside. Occasional oases, society poking through the quietude. No one seemed to talk to one another.
Alex flicked through the radio dial, trying to find the people talking. It was a skeuomorphic cry for help, the dial. The radio was younger than the car. It didn’t work with the reedy antenna that prot
ruded from the roof. Instead, the new radio flicked through a hundred digital stations, music arriving by satellite. Ones and zeros raining down across the country.
The dial desperately tried to bring a sense of nostalgia to the dashboard. But it made searching for anything specific impossible. There were too many stations to settle on just one. Always something better a few degrees away. Alex kept twisting the dial until he found someone talking and let it be.
They were arguing. One wrist balanced on the top of the wheel, the other leaning on the open window, Alex drove through Detroit and took the argument with him. People were furious. The kind of anger which only comes out when there’s a knife dangling high overhead.
Cornered rats, clawing at the walls, gnawing at one another. They were arguing about Korea. Or China. Or a hundred other things. The words were interchangeable. Alex let them argue.
Finally, he found a store that had stayed open. Pulling the Chevy to the side of the road, he stepped out and left the window down. No one wanted to steal this car. It was the safest set of wheels in the city. From the outside, the store seemed normal. The windows–these ones weren’t barred–were covered in stickers for telephone companies and money wiring services, cryptocurrencies and special offers. He stepped inside.
To his left was a refrigerator, cola bottles chilling just below room temperature. To his right, a weary man bent down, reading a computer screen. Alex asked where he kept the beer and the man just raised a hand, a finger pointed toward the rear of the store.
The shelves were as empty as the streets. There were pockets of products. No one had wanted the cat food, it seemed, or the washing detergent. But the canned foods were plundered. Entire shelves held nothing bust dust. Maybe they knew something he didn’t. Alex brushed past them, finding his way to the back of the store.
There was another refrigerator here, but it was turned off. The beer was inside. Alex took out a six pack, closed the door, and began to walk back to the checkout. He paused, went back, and collected another. Always buy more bullets, Timmy had said. Close enough.
The cans clunking down on the checkout made the owner sit up and take notice. Tearing his eyes from the computer screen, he glanced around the shop over Alex’s shoulder.
“You want anything else?” he asked.
“You got anything left?” replied Alex.
The shopkeeper started shaking his head, ringing the cans through the register. He looked like he’d been running for miles, running hard with something chasing him. As he reached for the second six-pack, the scanner shut down. The entire machine crackled and sighed. It was a sound familiar to everyone. The reboot loop. Alex knew he’d be waiting here for a few minutes yet. A cost of doing business.
“Driver was late.” The shopkeeper gestured at the empty shelves, making conversation to cover up the faulty register. “Haven’t had any deliveries in days.”
“That so?”
“Sick. I ring up, say I got nothing to sell, they say they got no one to drive. Sick, the lot of them.”
“You know how it goes,” said Alex. “Bugs spread pretty quickly. Same thing happens in my office.”
“Half the trucks are automated, though,” the man replied. “But they don’t send those ones down here.”
“Think they’ll be back by the end of the week?” Alex asked, watching the computer screen as it reset.
“Doesn’t matter. You miss one delivery, the whole thing messes up. One thing, two things go wrong? It all comes down. ‘Cause a supplier couldn’t send stuff out, it’s there rotting in some warehouse. Then the truck won’t load up anything that’s in that condition. Then I can’t get a delivery because the truck won’t travel when it ain’t full. It all comes down, you know?”
The man was animated, tapping the flat of his hand against the table with every mistake he described.
“Used to be so simple,” he went on. “Field to table and all that. Now? Now we don’t know what the hell.”
Alex had tried corn from the field in Virginia. It had come right in from their farm, through the door, through his mom’s hands, and on to the plate. He’d been sick of corn by the time he was twelve.
“All the stores like this?” Alex asked.
“All the stores down here. You need something, you get in your car and you drive over to Windsor. They got it good over there. Hell of a time to get there though. They take that border seriously.”
Surveying the shelves where the food used to be, Alex wondered whether Timmy would have something to eat. Maybe he should get something. Maybe Timmy wanted to eat cat food. Whatever, he thought. We’ll just order pizza. Thirty minutes or less. The one constant in an ever-changing universe.
The register was back online. The owner cursed at the machine, slapping the side of it. He rang up the beer cans and waved Alex out of the store. The Chevy had remained resolutely unstolen. With the cans on the passenger’s seat, he began to dial up the pizza number. It was a dead line. The phone reset again. He threw it into the foot well, and the reboot loop called out again. Reliably unreliable. Another universal constant. He started the car and made straight for Timmy’s house.
Quiet roads, quiet streets, and a quiet drive. The road out to Grosse Pointe was easy. All Alex wanted was for the things in his life to work. For the complicated structures and machinations to ease off and allow him to settle into a nice rhythm. For it all to make sense.
At least the car was on his side. The old gas engine rumbled out in front, the exhaust rattled out behind. It was a calm moment. Alex enjoyed it while he could.
7
This was the suburbs. Grosse Pointe. How Timmy lived out here, Alex would never know. This was a whole different kind of quiet. He found the house easily. The huge SUV outside acted like a lighthouse, steering the Chevy to shore.
Parking in the street, Alex could almost feel the curtains twitching in the windows of the other houses on the row. Collecting the beer from the seat, locking the car this time, he walked up to his friend’s house and knocked on the door.
Waiting on the step, he looked around. The house was simple. Just the one floor, probably a basement below. Other houses in the area had pools and white picket fences. Timmy barely had a lawn. He’d concreted most of the space in front of the house, the SUV parked in front of the garage and the ground flecked with oil stains all over. No quarter shown to the home owner’s association.
Alex looked at the house. It seemed different. Most of the homes were decorated to look like sitcom houses, postcard pictures which had fallen on hard times. The closing of all the factories had hit hard here.
It was how Timmy had gotten it so cheap, he kept telling Alex, snapping it up for a fraction of the real price. But the windows of Timmy’s house were different. They were frosted. Thick. Barely windows at all. If someone wanted to fortify a suburban home, this was how they’d start. All the brutalism of the nuclear family, nicely packaged in one American household.
Timmy was taking his time to answer the door. Alex knocked again. There was movement on the other side. A mechanical sound. A deadbolt shifting. A lock being turned. Another. And another. There must have been five different ways this door had been sealed shut. Finally, it swung inward and there was Timmy, grinning his lopsided grin.
“Glad you made it.”
“Expecting trouble?”
“Always be prepared, Alexander. Always be prepared.”
“Never had you pegged for a boy scout.”
“Never had you pegged for an Alexander. But here we are.”
Waving his friend into his home, Timmy took a quick look through the door and then sealed it up. They left the suburbs behind them.
This was the first time Alex had actually been to Timmy’s house. For a while now, he’d been hearing about all the crazy additions and grand plans that his friend had been considering. If he’d been invited into the home, then it meant the project was nearing completion. Castle Ratz was almost online.
That meant taking the tour. The
y started in the hallway, which seemed innocuous enough. Step through the front door and there was a simple, straight corridor which carried through to the kitchen. There was another door, fitted with thick steel plates, which presumably led to the basement. There were pictures in frames lining the walls. It was remarkably unlike what Alex had expected. He said as much.
“Look closer, man,” said Timmy, taking the beers and making a beeline for the kitchen.
Alex leaned in on the pictures. Whereas most families had photos of kids, cousins, pets, and friends, that wasn’t right for Timmy. Instead, Timmy seemed to have printed photos from the most famous moments in American history. And there, casually and artificially inserted, was Timmy. He was watching Nixon board the impeachment chopper. Sitting alongside a stressed Kennedy in the Oval Office. He sat behind Roosevelt during the Pearl Harbor address. He was watching Johnson get sworn in on the plane.
There was Timmy, dressed for the period, a part of history.
As they stepped into the kitchen, things did not get easier. The freezer had a padlock. The floor tiles were gun metal blue. Timmy seemed to have enough kitchen gadgets to feed a small army, including a vacuum packer. Alex was shown the various experiments, including carrots, kiwis, and watermelon, all of it sealed shut from the world.
Once the beer was in the fridge, the tour began properly, in the garage. The heartbeat, as Timmy called it. The SUV outside, Timmy had a ditch dug out of the concrete floor. It was lined with bright bulbs, all pointing upwards. It was for working on the car, but Timmy called it his punji pit.
Along the wall was every tool imaginable. Each one had a place. Around the tool, Timmy had drawn a thick black outline. Take the tool off the rack and there was the empty shape, ready and waiting. It was spotless. Alex wondered whether Timmy ever actually worked in there or whether it was all for show.
