Before We Die Alone

by Ike Hamill

  I ignore hunger, thirst, and the horrible smells coming from me.

  I ignore pain, dizziness, and itching.

  I sit cross-legged in the forest and ignore the ants that find their way up the back of my shirt.

  I try to relax.

  I don’t know how many days I’ve been out here, but it’s too many. I’ve already shed a lot of the extra weight I packed on while I was working at ProNavitas. I’m not sure how much longer I can survive, but I’ve made a decision.

  I would rather waste away while trying to learn how to master meditation than learn how to subsist in this world.

  ---- * ----

  My breakthrough comes in the darkness.

  I imagine the sunrise. It’s mellow warmth brings comfort to my flesh. Suddenly, the trick seems easy. I slump into it and I’m surrounded by golden light.

  I open my eyes and see that the light is real.

  If I’m right, I should be able to simply move forward.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  * Return *

  I STEP FORWARD AND squint. The light is much too bright. I kick something metal and a cascade of ringing heralds my return. The air around me is filled with the sounds of rushing traffic and shuffling feet. I open my eyes to a city sidewalk. It’s almost like being inside a forcefield. The commuters part like water around me.

  A hand grabs my ankle.

  It’s a dirty homeless man. I’ve kicked over his can of change.

  When I bend to help him pick up the coins, he starts slapping at me with his grimy hands.

  Instead of helping him, I pull free from his grip and begin walking.

  I recognize this place.

  I’m outside the bus station. That means that I’m only a couple of block away from my home turf. There’s too much foot traffic for me to run. I have to blend in, but people move away from me. It’s my appearance, and my smell. I would move away from it too, if I could.

  For clarity—a ‘panhandler’ is a beggar. Homeless people stand out on the street and ask the people passing by if they can have money. It’s a form of direct charity that makes a lot of people uncomfortable. If they gave to an organization, the same people would feel good about their donation and then worry about what percentage was actually going to reach the hands of the needy. I suppose it’s more likely for a charitable organization to guarantee that money will be converted into things a person needs, like food, shelter, and clothing. Notice that we don’t prioritize water and tools in this place. We have an abundance of water and tools, at least in the developed world.

  Humans, as a group, have become amazingly good at survival. Given our technology and resources, we could easily generate enough food to feed every person on the planet. I’ve read that the industrialized world wastes one third of the food it produces. There’s more food wasted—thrown away—than the hungriest people on the planet need to survive. But pedestrians don’t want to give to panhandlers. Maybe they think that their money would fuel alcohol or drug addiction. Maybe they don’t want contact with dirty, smelly people. We’re all dirty and smelly. It’s how we enter the world and how we will leave it. Individually, we’re terrible at survival. Put us together in a group, and we’ll survive the hell out of a place.

  I stop at the crosswalk.

  Down the street, one half of one block from my current position is the door to my apartment.

  If I had the energy, I would run.

  ---- * ----

  My spare key is still taped under the electrical box in the alley. I’m not surprised, it was a good hiding place.

  I am surprised that it still fits the lock. I’ve been away for a long time. Most of my bills—including my rent—were automatically paid from my bank account, but they money must have run out by now.

  The apartment smells wrong. It smells empty. There’s something familiar though. I have a pile of mail. It’s all old. The newest thing in there is a little slip that says my mail will be held because the box is too full. I wonder if they’re still holding it.

  When I get upstairs, I grab a trash bag from the kitchen and head for the bath. Everything has a layer of dust on it, but I’ve obviously lived in worse conditions. I peel off the clothes that I was given by ProNavitas and deposit them directly into the trash bag. I look at myself in the mirror. I’m dirty, hairy, and wasted. All those years I spent dieting and exercising so I could try to be skinny. Now that I know what skinny looks like, I can’t believe it was ever my goal. I looked much better before.

  Hot water, apparently, requires conditioning.

  At first, I can only stand the water to be lukewarm. Still, once I get the temperature right, it feels unbelievably good. Clumps of dirt fall from my body. I lather up three times with soap until the suds run clear. Once I’m dry, I consider myself in the mirror again before I start shaving. My hair is still too long, but I almost look civilized again. It will probably take a few more days for the insane spark to leave my eyes, but I’m sure TV will accelerate that process. All I need is a good haircut and I’ll fit right back in.

  I wrap the towel around me and head for the bedroom.

  I stop in the hall and look into my TV room.

  There’s no time to waste.

  Before I get dressed, I take everything off the top of my bookshelf and move it into place. I cover the vent. Adam won’t be able to see me anymore.

  It takes a few minutes to find clothes I’m comfortable in. I need a new belt. For the moment, I settle on a pair of sweatpants.

  In the kitchen, I find crackers and a can of chili. Spices and processed meat—how exotic!

  For the moment, I ignore the muddy footprints on the kitchen floor. The damn bear must have left them here.

  Cleaning is for later. TV is for now.

  I turn on the news. I still have cable. This life was still here, waiting for me that whole time. It’s hard to believe.

  I have to flip channels a few times, but I finally catch a date. I’ve been gone about a year. It’s spring

  A year of my life has disappeared.

  With my laptop, I solve the mystery of my finances. My former employee gave me a severance package. Between that and the savings I had, everything just coasted along. Apparently, I don’t spend all that much money when I’m not around. Tax day came and went. I’m going to have to sort that out. Aside from that, I’m hard-pressed to come up with any emergencies. I’ll need a job at some point. I can’t continue to coast forever.

  That’s all a task for another day.

  Today, I just want to enjoy my couch, my TV, my crackers, and my bowl of processed chili.

  The ProNavitas logo appears in the corner as the anchorwoman turns to the camera and begins the next story.

  “Next up from Australia, the startup energy company, ProNavitas has launched their new offering—InAeternum. We go to our correspondent, Nile Burnham, who was on the scene for the company’s press conference,” the anchorwoman says. “Nile, what can you tell us about InAeternum?”

  Nile doesn’t talk about the technology. He talks about the energy and the marketing strategy. He talks about the patents and the licensing. They use shorthand in their conversation and the anchorwoman gives quick recaps. This isn’t the first time they’ve talked about ProNavitas and InAeternum. I wonder how long this has been a news story.

  Before long, they’ve moved on. She turns to a new camera and the graphic in the corner becomes a picture of a missile launching from a trailer. People continue to fight for land, or resources, or ideology.

  I go back to the kitchen and wash my bowl.

  The inside of my dishwasher is a society of black and green mold. I dump a bunch of soap in there and set it to the pot-scrubbing cycle. I go to my room and sink into my bed.

  I’ve never felt such comfort.

  ---- * ----

  When I wake up, the city is asleep.

  I look out my window for a long time. Because of the angle of the bedroom window, I can only see a little corner of street. It’s a whil
e before anything passes. I see a man walking fast, with his hands stuffed down into his pockets. He’s only in view for a couple of seconds, but I spend a few minutes trying to guess at the man’s sinister deeds. I’m sure that he is up to no good, and I’m sure that I will be the victim of the terrible crime he’s about to commit.

  A woman walks into sight from the other direction. She pauses and then crosses the street. Did she see me? Did she cross the street to go tell someone that I was back in my apartment.

  I back away from the window. Yes, I understand the depths of my paranoia.

  I sit on the bed and meditate. It’s more difficult to do when I’m comfortable. When I was out in the wilderness, I could shut down my senses, one by one, and find my way to stillness. In my apartment, there are no bugs crawling in my hair. There are no roots poking up from the ground. I have no obvious distractions to retreat from.

  ---- * ----

  When I wake up, the sun is starting to rise. Over the outlines of buildings, I see a sky that’s starting to glow.

  I head for the kitchen.

  The refrigerator is bad, but not the cesspool that I imagined. I take the vegetable drawer into the bathroom, so I can scrub it out in the tub. I double-bag most everything and add it to the trashcan that I’ve put in the middle of the room. My body is still digesting the chili from the day before. I can’t find any appetite at all.

  Once the kitchen is clean, I wander back to the television. It feels like there must be more important things to do, but I can’t think of them. Grocery shopping can wait. Going to the post office can wait. Getting a haircut can wait.

  They’re talking about ProNavitas again. The story gets bigger every day.

  They’ve opened a free charging station for people with electric cars. They’ve given an exclusive tour to CNN. I see Janice’s face on my TV screen. There’s no sign of the bear. I laugh.

  Work has started on transmission lines. Janice doesn’t talk about that, but a reporter with a camera gets some footage. They must have struck a deal with the local utilities or something because they’re putting up big lines. It’s only a matter of time before half of Australia will be supplied with nearly free power, I’m sure. That’s when we’ll see the countdown to a change in the world economy.

  “In other tech news, a local company is reinventing the way we walk. Here’s our own Burt Nichols to tell us more.”

  “Thanks, Sarah. You use a GPS to navigate in your car, but what about when you’re on foot? The entrepreneurs think there’s a better way to get around.”

  I sit up straighter. I recognize the box clipped to the young man’s belt. It’s a Bumble Six. From what I can tell, it’s processing the input from an eye-tracking system. The new device is tracking eye movement and then painting on the retina using lasers that are mounted to a pair of glasses. It’s not a new idea, but it appears that it has finally been perfected enough for production. I can’t imagine why anyone would want a laser shooting into their eye, or why anyone would need instructions on where to walk. Navigating on foot is not a complicated issue that needs more technology. In most cases when people have trouble, it seems like they need less technology. People need to stop paying attention to gadgets and just watch where they’re walking. Maybe I’m getting too old to appreciate gadgets.

  I think about my father.

  Before he started to lose his mind, he had a number of health issues. I’ll never forget how delicate he became. It wasn’t just that his body was frail, he also became unable to deal with pain and suffering. Every time a doctor jabbed him with something, he flinched like he had been shot. I would think that someone his age would eventually grow accustomed to discomfort and pain, and be able to sit stoically through anything. Instead, he moaned and twisted. He resisted examinations and refused treatment. It seemed like the more he needed something, the more of a fuss he would create.

  While I was daydreaming, the news moved on to a story about electronic voting. Taking their cue from online privacy software, a company had developed a new method for guaranteeing electronic voting results. It relies on a biometric identification of the voter that was somehow encoded into the vote itself. It’s supposedly anonymous and impossible to forge. The news is full of new innovations. I begin to wonder if it was always like this. Maybe I am only noticing the new technology because I have been away from it for a while. I miss ProNavitas. I miss leading a team.

  That’s what I need to do—start looking for a job.

  I grab my computer.

  There’s no shortage of openings for project managers and software developers. I want something that combines the two. One listing makes me smile—puzzleBox is hiring. I would rather not work for them. I doze off while scrolling through the listings.

  ---- * ----

  I’m barely able to climb the steps with my groceries. I underestimated how difficult it would be to carry everything home from the store. When I get to the top step, I’m dizzy. I need to eat more. Regardless of whether or not I’m hungry, I need to put back some of the energy reserves that I burned while I was wasting away in that forest.

  I stop at the top of the stairs.

  There’s something in here with me. A year ago, I might not have noticed. I don’t know if it’s some uncatalogued sense, or maybe a combination of all the senses added together. I don’t smell anything in particular, or hear anything. And I certainly don’t see any threats, but there’s something here. I set the grocery bags down right where I’m standing and I look back towards the stairs.

  Fight or flight is not the impulse anymore. In my world, the interior struggle is whether or not I will be embarrassed later. I can always run, but if there’s nothing here, then I will have only embarrassed myself. This is the same reason people will walk towards a mugger for half a block, and then be completely unsurprised when the man pulls a knife. They would almost rather be mugged than appear racist in the face of clear danger.

  All things considered, I would rather go back to fight or flight. I’m not going to ignore my instinct, and I’m not going to run.

  I step towards the kitchen.

  She’s there. She’s regarding the inside of one of my nearly-empty cabinets.

  I ask my question through clenched teeth. “What are you doing in my house?”

  “Hey,” she says. She tilts her hips and rests a hand on the counter. When someone is trying to act casual, and failing to pull it off, they appear very dangerous to me. “I came here looking for you. We were worried about you when you disappeared.”

  “How did you get out of the forest? You said that only Adam had ever pulled it off and you didn’t know how.”

  She tries on a smile. “That was maybe a little stretch of the truth. Some of us have learned a couple of folds here and there. We’re not experts, but we have a little control.”

  “And how did you know where I live?”

  “Listen,” she says. Her voice is quavering. “I’ve been rude. I’m very sorry that I broke into your apartment, but I was really only concerned for you. It took forever to track down your apartment. You look like you’re on your way to getting back on your feet now. I’ll leave you to it.”

  There’s finally some real emotion showing through. She’s frightened. Had I met her on the street, I would have nothing but sympathy for her. Her animal-skin clothes are dirty and completely inappropriate for the city. She looks tired and weak. When I appeared in her world, she didn’t give me help exactly, but she offered advice and was reasonably nice.

  “Tell me the truth—how did you get here?”

  She looks down and her face softens. When she looks back up, I sense that she’s telling the truth for the first time.

  “After we all shared your food and left, I came back to give you some advice about the meat. There are ways to smoke and pack it so it will last longer. But you were gone. Your disappearance made everyone crazy. You had only been there a short time, but you had somehow figured out how to leave. When Adam came back, we nearly attacked h
im.”

  “Adam?”

  “Yeah,” she says. “He came back looking for you. As soon as he got away from us, he came here. A couple of the guys figured out how to keep track of the fold, and one of us comes here every few days to keep it open. We don’t have money or anything, but a couple of us have been venturing out.”

  “I don’t understand. Once you found a way back to Earth, why wouldn’t you stay?”

  “It’s difficult here. I’ve lived in the forest so long, it’s tough to fit back in. This is a different place than where I was taken from. Either that or I’ve changed too much.”

  “Where is this fold?”

  She points. Back when there was a bakery next door, it connected to my apartment through a door in the kitchen. It was sealed over when the business was sold, but that’s what she’s pointing to. I have a set of shelves mounted to the door now. She reaches for the handle. As far as I know, the door opens to a solid wall.

  “Wait!” I say.

  Her hand stops.

  “Back away,” I order. I move between her and the door. “What’s your name?”

  She blinks a few times while she makes up her mind. “Vanessa,” she says. “What’s yours.”

  “I’ll tell you when you’ve earned my trust,” I say.

  I open the door, expecting the worst. There’s a solid wall. My head swivels back to Vanessa. This is when she’ll attack. She’ll take advantage of my distraction and come at me. Then, I’ll learn her deceitful mission.

  She’s simply standing there.

  “You have to wait a second,” she says. “There.”

  I look back and see a little golden glow. There is a fold there. Perhaps she’s telling the truth.

  “Why did you really come here?” I ask.

  “What are you talking about? I told you.”