Deckard wanted to dream of sheep, but the electric shocks had turned him
to an android. He obyed commands, the commands of the Eye in the SKy.
They commanded him daily to run through the maze. He sensed, despite the
fuzzy feelings, that if he ever solved the maze, it would be death.
Which is why he wanted to get to the Resort. He had to get to the
Resort, so he could relax, so he could get some sleep, and dream of those
sheep.
The eye in the sky followed him wherever he went.
‘Deckard Palmer, ‘ it would say, “isn’t about time you went to bed?’
Of course, Deckard Palmer couldn’t sleep, because of the Eye in the Sky.
Deckard Palmer secretly wished he could destroy the Eye with his zap gun,
the small device he kept secreted in the one place the Eye couldn’t get.
Deckard’s secret place. When he came to use his zap gun, he knew he would
smash the Eye, as if he were a god wielding Vulcan’s Hammer, striking
with the force of a volcano. He’d smash the Eye so hard there would be
no presererving the machine. Not even the Golden Man, the one in white
with the steel rimmed eyes who watched Deckard’s progress through the maze, not even he with his british dicks
would be able to fix the Eye. And it would be O.K.
‘Deckard’ his pal Steven Cruise would say after Deckard had been run through
the maze, ‘ You need a break, why not the Resort? Its a great place for
people like us, the minorities..”
” I’d like to get there, ‘ Deckard would reply shyly, awed by the
knowledge of Cruise who had been there, ” I’d like to get there, to the’ and
here Deckard would slowly say the phrase he had come to love, to dream
about, hope against hope for such that when he spoke it, the name eased out
in a quite breath.
“The Minority Resort…”
“I hope you do. It can be a bit tricking. You got to know the right
people, the ones with the keys. But once youre there, its the gravy train,
kid, the gravy train.”
The words of Cruise filled Deckard’s head with a divine invasion of
heavenly images. A place where there was color, where plates and utensils
were made of wood, where windows could be opened and closed. Where
everyday Deckard could drink coffee. Where there would be no Eye, no maze of
death to run.

After a run in the maze, Deckard would sit in his room. Despite the terror
the Golden Man would put him through with the head gear, the shocks,
the finger numbing tasks and the syringes with the fluids, the post maze
rush left Deckard feeling flushed. At these moments, lying on his bed
looking up at his ceiling he’d decorated with photographs torn from the
photomagazine he received every two-weeks, Deckard felt pride. Deckard felt as
if he’d just played a game, and that he’d played hard. Lurking in a
corner of his mind not scarred by the altering fluids the Golden Man fed
him through an intravenous attachement, was a sense of old berkely scanner pride. He was a
game player, and a good one. In fact, welling up at odd moments, without the darkley misting shadows from the high castle of the reportage, moments such as
lunchtime in the cafeteria, or during the groupings when all his
friends and aquaintences gathered to talk about themselves and their feelings,
would come a secret feeling of accomplishment. Deckard never spoke of this
out loud, even though he was encouraged to discuss his feelings. Instead, he kept it close. This feeling of being a good game player, of
a titan game player , gave him pleasure. And with this pleasure, came
strength. this strength kept him on his feet until it was time again.

Mid-week was usually Deckard’s time for the maze, though lately, after a
series of repeated back-to back sessions, time seemed out of joint. Deckard
no longer knew the day or time. His watch given him a long time ago by
his mother seemed to nowdays run backwards. His daily visits with his
friend Cruise occured at odd hours, with no rhyme or reason, as they had
before. It was as if he was living in a counter clock world, or in a
type of time slip. There was a fuzzy feeling in his head that refused to
leave. All his food tasted like crackers. Only the color of his room
and the walls was constant.
“Perfectly normal, as far as we can tell, ” the Golden Man assured him
as he attached Deckard to the various diodes and nodes necessary for
running the maze. ” Your responses are in accordance with research at the
other centers. But you, Deckard are ahead of the pack! COngratulations!”
Deckard hoped his performance would be up today, if there was such a thing, him just sitting there blank
in the room with the machines and drugs. He had no recollections of what
occurred during his runs, he just hoped they would one day stop. Mainly
because of the ant, the electric ant that kept appearing to him as he
sat there in the chair and reacted to the Golden Man’s manipulations.
“Deckard, ” the electric ant would say to him, ” what are you doing with
your life?”
‘I don’t know, ” Deckard would mumble sadly, as he truly was at a loss as
to what to do with himself.
“You don’t have to take this, you know. Look at your pal Cruise, he gets
to go to the Resort.’
“I’ll get there someday, ” Deckard would reply, convincing himself, ‘I’ll
get there someday.”
” I hope you take me with you, ” the elcetric ant would say sadly
before wandering away under a heavy bank of computers.
Through all these exchanges, the Golden Man was especiially observant,
peering under Deckard’s eyelids and taking his pulse. Deckard often tried to
tell the Golden Man about the electric ant, but only drool emerged from
his mouth. Later, after recovering, Deckard would tell Cruise about the
ant as they shared a lunch in the cafeteria.
‘That ant sounds ok. ” Cruise said. “If you do get to the Resort you
should take him. He sounds like a friendly type. You know, I used to have
a pet cockroach. I think its a father thing. My father hated
cockroaches. Used to say I was one. How could I be one if I was his son? I’m glad
he’s not here.”
‘The cockroach?” asked Deckard confused and wondering if he could get
seconds on the tater-tots.
” Naw, my father. Listen Deckard, why do you let the Golden Man put you
in the maze?”
Deckard couldn’t answer Cruise clearly. The Golden Man was golden, that
was why Deckard continued with the maze….

To Be Continued!…

I first saw him that cold saturday
morning, standing in the wind, his grimy blue overcoat billowing
around him like a gigantic hospital gown. Who was he? I never did
find out. Living in the city does that to you. Keeps you apart from
the others. I clung to those I knew with the fear of a barnacle, the
closeness born of dread.

Its all become obvious now, with the
sightless timing of a stygian greek tragedy. Why was I there? An
accident of circumstance? No.

Retrospection has shown that I
suffered from a very particular malaise. I was a putz, a schlamel, a
spineless white fish drifting naively through a world imagined to be
purposeless. It was no coincidence that we met.

I worked the graveyard shift at a
small pamphlet printing operation, spending the worlds sleeping hours
maintaining a machine whose goal in life was to replicate a single
advert a billion times over. In perfect four#color harmony, sheaves
and bundles of ‘stunning price reductions’ and ‘final liquidation
sales’ were born into the world. It wasn’t a bad job, I even enjoyed
it sometimes. Having lived all my life in the midwest, with its
wide#open wheat fields, the solitude of a city locked into its dreams
was a blessing.

Perhaps if I hadn’t seen him on that
distant morning… but no. I recognize now the workings of the
rational mind, its blindness. Is it the fear of dependency upon
criteria of mere trust, the death of the ruler, the encroachment of
victimhood? Possibly, I tell myself, even though such thoughts serve
no purpose other than poor entertainment. I may as well stare at the
low#grade oil painting upon the wall. Yes, I brought it with me; it,
and the small collection of over#read books which have always
followed me around, out of sentimentality or obligation, I am not
sure.

Looking at the painting, I think she
knew. I fantasize that she still cared about me, that she was telling
me to leave, to save myself. “Dean,” she had said,
retreating from the harsh lights of dawn, holding out the flimsy
canvas to me even as she fled back into her darkened room, and her
voice had said it all.

I saw him from a block away, on the
corner of Broadway and Fifth. The streets were empty of life, garbage
blew in small dawn whirlwinds, gusting out of the calm still air. His
blue coat was dirty, stained. As I moved towards and past him, he
turned and looked at me. Those eyes… they were so empty, set in a
pasty, fleshy face that looked like it hadn’t seen the sun in ages.
Grayish stubbled fur grew on it like a white mold. I halted in my
steps, confused about the confrontation.

His mouth circled the receiver, drool
flowed from his lips and puddled at his feet. The sound was most
disturbing: a sucking, slurping noise, like beached fish gasps. In
that millennium gap of two seconds I stood frozen, he seemed to
swell, his face growing ruddy in the morning’s light. I quickly
resumed walking, avoiding his gaze, disturbed.

Although the incident stuck with me
throughout my dreams of that day, when I awoke, refreshed, it had all
but passed my mind. Sarah was just getting home from work, I
recognized the tread of her feet in the hall. We’d been living
together for almost two years now, and we were pretty serious.

“Dean?” I heard her call. I
rubbed the sleep from my eyes. The bedroom door swung open.

“Dean!” she smiled at me,
her long brown hair glinting in the red light of the city’s sunset.
I smiled back.

“Wake up, sleepyhead. How was
your day?” she said, plopping heavily down on the bed. Eight
hour days of secretarial work had given her a bad back. My job was to
massage it all out of her, starting with her tense shoulders. A three
year stint as a chiropractic assistant in San Francisco had given me
a wealth of technical ability.

“Oh, that feels good,” she
murmured, leaning heavily back into my kneading fingers.

“Julie’s coming over for dinner
tonight, were going out for a movie. Mmmm… a little lower… that’s
good.” Julie was her best friend from work. They gossiped
constantly about their annoying slimy bosses and Julies ever-morphing
love life.

“What time?”

“Eight o’clock, the movies at
nine-thirty.”

“I cant make it.”

“I thought…”

“No, its Tuesday. I start at
five.” Her face fell.

“I forgot. Oh well…” We
fell silent a minute, locked into our own thoughts. It was nice, that
silence, the silence which is shared with someone other than the
wind, the emptiness.

“Dean, we never see each other
enough. Couldn’t you find a new job?”

I kissed the back of her neck.

“Sarah, you know the apartment
costs too much. This job pays a lot,”

“Because nobody in their right
mind would want it,” she said, pouting.

“Hey, ill try looking again, but
you know how it was before…”

We had had to borrow money from her
mother-in-law, all that was left of her side of the family. She was
the kind of old spinster who held onto money with an iron grip,
blackmailing her youthful kin into abiding by ancient cultural codes.
We had to live together secretly, at least until we were married.

Sarah fell back into my arms. I looked
at the clock. It was time to get ready for work.

Yes, I remember those days now,
sitting alone with my warm fire in these wooded hills. Today I killed
a rabbit, and its pungent roasted odor filled the tiny cabin, the
rich taste filling my stomach. Does memory make the fear any
stronger? I have often pondered this question. Sometimes it haunts my
sleep, making me toss and turn. On nights like those, I awake
fitfully in the dark, reaching out beside me… but she is not there.

It must have been a month or two later
that she got the first call. Usually I talked to her from work, when
the supervisor took a cigarette break outside. Around eleven, she
would go to bed, and Id call and wish her good night. I miss those
calls. Perhaps they were dull, ordinary, the kind of thing you love
to hate when you’re single, but they were human. And now, in the
absence of all that was, its role became all the stronger.

She said she was feeling a bit tired,
ill. I asked if it had been a hard day at work, but she said it
hadn’t. I told her to see how she felt in the morning, said I loved
her. We hung up, and I worried all night long to the background of
the noisy presses.

On my way home that morning, I
encountered the man in the blue coat again. This time, he was across
the street right outside the building, hunched over in a glass
payphone box. The city didn’t have many of them left, they were too
much of a target for vandals. Why do people fight to destroy the past
so much? Is it a dread of things walled up, of old conversations and
moments trapped in the glass boxes, anger at the fragility of the
glass which hems them in? Its not worth wondering about, but its what
my mind does. I watch it like I used to watch tv, the changing
channels. Never getting too deep.

I spied him from the corner of my eye.
The booth was covered in city grime and graffiti, making it
impossible to discern the foggy shape, but I could see enough to
recognize him. He seemed agitated, shivering, attacking the handset
with some violence. I hurried on past, trying to shut out the noises
escaping from his presence, floating out into the dawn air.

At home, I entered the bedroom and
threw my keys on the desk. Sarah was still asleep, the covers pulled
up over her head. Gingerly, I peeled them back. She had slept in, it
was past time for her to leave for work. Seeing her, I understood
why. Her skin was pale, sweaty, and her eyes were black holes of
bags.

“Sarah,” I whispered,
shaking her shoulder, but she didn’t wake up. “Sarah,” I
said again, louder, speaking into her ear. Her eyes creaked open as
if they were heavy weights, fluttering with the effort and blinking
against the morning sun.

“Dean?” she croaked, her
voice dry.

“Sarah, honey, its past time to
wake up.” She sat up, startled, but instantly collapsed weakly
back into bed.

“Ooohhh I don’t feel well. I
don’t think I should go…”

“Whatever you want. Think you
feel like seeing a doctor?”

“No, its probably just the flu.
Can you hand me the phone?”

I passed her the phone and went out to
the kitchen to make some breakfast. There was a dusty can of chicken
soup in the shadowy rear of the cupboard. Sarah stumbled sleepily
into the kitchen letting the door slam behind her.

“Why don’t you stay in bed? Ill
get you breakfast,” I said, holding up the soup can and smiling
like a centerfold.

“No, i’m going in today. Mr.
Reiner has some German clients coming by today. He really needs me.”

“What a slavedriver. Well, what
do you feel like? Eggs or soup?”

“I don’t feel that hungry…
maybe one egg. I’m going to get ready,” she said, treading
exhaustedly out to the bathroom.

While I was cooking us both some eggs,
watching the butter sizzle and fry, the phone rang. It was Julie.

“Hi Dean,” her piercing New
Jersey accent rang in my ear. I could hear cars in the background,
drowning out her voice. “Where’s Sarah? Were supposed to share a
taxi.”

“Sarahs sick, shell be a little
late,” I said, wondering if I should yell into the phone. The
background noise was terrible. It sounded like a building was being
destroyed.

“Is that Julie?” Sarah
yelled from the bathroom.

“Yeah,” I hollered back,
realizing that the pan was starting to release a cloud of noxious
butter fumes. I turned the heat down, missing what Julie was yelling
back at me.

“What?” I said into the
phone.

“I said, was that Sarah?”
Julie shouted into the receiver.

Sarah hollered something from the
bathroom.

“What?” I yelled back,
covering the phone with my hand.

“I said, what does Julie have to
say?”

“Just a sec!” I yelled back
at her, turning to the phone again.

“Now, what?” I said to
Julie.

“Can I talk to Sarah?”

“Shes in the bathroom.”

“Well, should I wait, or should I
go myself?”

“Sarah!” I yelled into the
bathroom. “Julies waiting for you!”

“Tell her to go… Ill see her at
work.”

I finally managed to get off the phone
that first morning, and Sarah got off to work ok. I had a job
interview at another uptown printing firm for an early morning shift,
which would mean Sarah and I would have more time to spend together,
so I was unable to see her before I went to work that night.

I was going to try and call her around
eleven, but my supervisor sent me on a van run to the downtown office
where they stored the new ink shipments.

On the way, I pulled over and stopped
at a payphone, dialing the number, but the line was busy.

I drove through the gauntlet of
shifting traffic signals wondering how she was feeling, my mind
drifting, when a flurry of blue and white flashed in front of me. I
slammed on the brakes, my heart pounding.

Pinned in the headlights like a pale
fish, the man in the blue coat’s face was caught startled, his eyes
open and coldly empty. His shirt was soaked with spittle and drool,
which ran down his chin and shirt and disappeared into a dark stain
below his crotch. I had almost hit him in a crosswalk, I swore at
myself, noticing the light had changed. I hurriedly rolled down the
window and leaned out into the cool night air.

“I’m terribly sorry… I didn’t
see you there, I’m really, very sorry…”

The man just stood there, frozen. Even
then, I admit I felt a little peeved at him, a little bothered about
the way he responded to me.

“Look, I’ve seen you before you
know,” I told him. He grunted, in a strange guttural way, as if
he had somehow lost the power of speech, as if his tongue or vocal
chords had been cut out, then turned and fled into the dark shadows
of the buildings. I lay back, sweating in the seat. Another car
behind me idled up and honked. The light was green. I drove on.

When I returned the van, I decided to
try and call her again even though it was almost twelve. The phone
rang for what seemed an eternity. Finally, she picked up.

“Sarah? Sorry I’ve called so
late. How are you feeling?” I said, relieved to finally have
gotten through. A tiny voice, so tiny it startled me, barely escaped
from the headset.

“Sarah? Can you hear me?”
The sound of tiny scratching mice floated out and dissipated in the
air. Listening, I heard my name appear faintly, as if on a cloud a
million miles away.

“Dean?” it whispered.

“Sarah? Sarah? Are you there?”

“Dean…” her voice, a
little stronger now.

“Sarah? Whats going on? You sound
terrible.”

“Dean, I’m.. I’m ok. Just tired.”

“Are you sure you’re ok?” I
said, distressed, but she reassured me she was. I hung up when she
said she just wanted to get some sleep.

“Hey Jerry,” I called out to
my supervisor, knocking on the window of his office. The door swung
open, as if pushed by a breeze. He sat, limply grasping a coffee,
listening to somebody on the other end of the phone line. A half
attempted crosswords lay scattered on his desk. I mouthed words to
him, but he was very engrossed in the call. Finally, he seemed to
recognize that I was there and pulled himself off the phone.

“Jerry, my girlfriends really
sick. You think I could take off early, in a couple hours?” I
could see he really was against the idea, but I pushed him anyway. He
brought up some flimsy excuses as to why he really needed me there,
but soon relented, and I returned to my post feeding the hungry
machines.

At about two o’clock in the morning, I
took off for the walk home. It was a brisk night, cool and chilly. I
didn’t see any sign of the man in the blue coat, but a couple blocks
from the apartment, an elderly lady lay nearly collapsed on the steps
of the old stone church which had been turned into a furniture store.
At first I thought she was just an ordinary bum and felt sorry for
her, continuing on past, the habit of the city. Glancing at her,
though, I saw she was actually very well dressed. I turned and
confronted her, leaning over her supine form.

“Ma’am? are you all right?”
I asked. Her face weakly emerged from under her bent arm.

“I’m cold, so cold..” she
stuttered. I stepped back. her face… she wasn’t an old woman at
all, perhaps in her early thirties. But her face was sunken,
collapsed, as if she were suffering from starvation.

“Do you live somewhere near?”
I asked, and she feebly lifted a thin arm to point back the way I had
come.

“Stay here,” I said, and
hurried down the street to a well lit deli which was just closing. I
knocked on the door, and a man wearing an apron came over to the
glass doors.

“Yes?” he yelled, muffled
through the thick glass.

“Theres a woman down the street,
I think shes hurt. Could you call the police?”

He opened the door a crack, peering
where I pointed into the blackness. The womans form was just barely
visible in the dark.

“She hurt bad?” he said.

“No, I think she just needs some
help. Call the police, would you?”

He went back inside and I saw him
dialing. In about three minutes a low blue car crept around the
corner and pinned its lights on her. I watched as the two officers
got out and talked to her, then into their radios, before I decided
she would be ok and continued on, eventually reaching the building.

The lightbulb in our hallway flickered
as I opened the door to the warm dark of the apartment. I crept in
quietly so as not to wake Sarah. Feeling my way into the bedroom, I
switched on the nightlight her mother had given her. She lay
stretched out, the covers rumpled and thrown back.

The phone dangled off its receiver. It
must have been beeping all night I thought, moving it tenderly out
from under her hand. I placed it silently on its base. She looked
even worse than she had last night. I felt her wrist, and put my hand
on her head. She stirred slightly, murmuring in her sleep. Her
forehead felt cold and clammy. I lifted the covers over her, and
decided I would call a doctor for her tomorrow for sure. The day at
work must have drained her, she shouldn’t have gone.

Sitting up with her that long night,
which seemed to stretch on and on… its another strong moment which
I remember with clarity. I realized that night the strength of my
emotions. I knew then that if Sarah wanted to, I would marry her, be
with her forever. Caring for someone who is ill brings on a strange
clairvoyance, even if it is rooted in delusion. For an instant, a
surge of feeling, a recognition of another dimension of life in which
we all exist appears. It connects us with history, all the times that
existed from old, and all the times that will ever exist.

She didn’t go to work all that week. I
called the doctor on tuesday, and he dropped by, took her temperature
and pulse, checked her tongue.

“Shes all right, possibly some
bad food,” he said. I kept my mouth closed, holding back my
tendency to worry too much.

“Give her plenty of fluids, keep
her warm,” he said, writing out a prescription for diuretics. He
also left a bottle of strong multivitamins with minerals to replace
what she lost.

I worked half-days the rest of the
week. Jerry hadn’t been showing up either. I talked to Ed, my
co-press operator, and got Jerrys phone number. If the stats and
layouts weren’t there, we couldn’t work. It was a problem of the
top-down organization. Lose touch with your immediate superior, and
you and everyone under you were instantly abandoned in the desert of
infinite confusion. I called him up, but the line was busy. “Screw
this,” I told Ed. “I’ve got to go. You cover for me?”

Ed was a good guy, somewhat of a
loner. “Sure, man. Go.” he said. I ran home, past an
ambulance that had pulled up, administering life support, mechanical
sucking machines and breathing pumps hooked up to another street
wino.

Sarah was feeling a little better by
the end of the week, and Id decided to treat her to a vacation for
the weekend, out of the city.

“Oh, Dean, you didn’t have to,”
she said, smiling, when I showed her the reservations for a cabin
retreat an hours trainride to the north. “Ill bring my paints
with me.”

Woodlands was a place wed gone to when
we first met. It was a nice idyllic location right near some suburbs,
but you couldn’t tell, since it was hidden in a private valley with a
brook and running streams. I was happy, seeing that she knew how much
it meant to me, and also the reciprocation in her eyes.

That evening, I went by work to see if
Jerry was there, so I could tell him I wouldn’t be able to make the
late sunday shift. I tried calling, but the phone had been busy for
hours.

The place seemed deserted, and I
wandered through the eerie labyrinthine corridors, past the silent
machines to Jerry’s office door. The light was on.

“Jerry,” I called, pushing
open the door. He was there, sitting at his desk. Actually, it was
more like he was being supported by it. He was on the phone again,
but his eyes were blank, his face lax and unfocused.

“Jerry?” I said, moving
closer to him, but he didn’t even blink. That’s when I noticed the
drool, leaking from the swollen flesh of his drooping mouth.

“Jerry,” I spoke again,
louder, waving my hands in front of his eyes. He didn’t even respond.
Fearful now, confronted with such a strange sight, I pulled the
receiver away from his ear and put it to mine.

“Hello?” I said into the
silent instrument, but there was no answer. Listening closer, I
heard sounds begin to emerge from the handset. Munching, slurping
noises, noises of big lips sucking oily flesh. I quickly hung up, my
heart pounding, afraid. Once more, I forced myself to put my hands on
jerry and shake him awake, but it was no use. He slumped forward,
dead to the world. I backed out of the room and left, afraid, not
turning around until I was back home.

The next morning I quickly packed
everything up for the trip, got Sarah up and out the door. We caught
the seven-thirty train. I remember being in a state of mental
turmoil. I wasn’t communicating correctly, Id stopped letting things
out. I held them in.

Id left Jerry as I found him. Denial?
Certainly. I only cared about my own emotional sanity, and Sarah.

I watched the landscape fly by, the
buildings lessen, until eventually they disappeared into trees. Sarah
napped on my shoulder. She looked so thin and pale in the morning
sun, I wrapped her in my coat and held her tightly. When she awoke,
she was snappy, annoyed, but I attributed it to her illness.

Eventually we made it to the cabin and
relaxed. I put a chaise lounge out on the deck, and wrapped her in a
comforter.

“Dean… its so beautiful here.
Lets move out of the city,” she said, gazing over the beautiful
scene, taking in the small stream and dense forest bed. Her earlier
discomfort seemed to dissipate into the raw nature. I held her hand,
stroking her hair, wishing she would get better soon.

When the sun rose high enough to shine
through the tree tops down on us, I daydreamed about our future
together. Perhaps we would go out west, where it was much more
relaxed, and where nature wasn’t metered out by the square inch. In
that setting, that time, it all seemed so possible.

Later in the afternoon, after the
people had brought us a wonderful lunch of soup and sandwiches, which
Sarah only ate half of, she asked me to bring her paints out.

“What are you going to paint?”
I asked her, handing her the small kit I had bought her for her
birthday two years ago. She took the canvas out of my hand and placed
it in front of her, the palette on her lap.

“You,” she said, smiling at
me.

I sat for her the rest of the
afternoon, enjoying the warmth and the smells which the sun baked out
of the earth. I must have dozed off, for I woke up just as it was
getting dark and chilly. Sarah had gone inside, I didn’t see the
canvas anywhere.

That night, Sarah got a lot worse. She
wouldn’t let me turn on the light in the room, she said her eyes
hurt. I had a hard time sleeping. Tossing and turning, the nightmares
of the city flooded my brain, forcing my eyes open against my will.
The dark ceiling filled with movements and fear. Listening to Sarahs
weak, labored breathing, I knew how closely linked my fear was to her
health, her tenuous survival.

After the restless night, I woke to
Sarahs coughing. It was a weak dry heave that didn’t sound good at
all. I walked down to the managers cabin, and asked if there was a
doctor around. Mrs. Whitterly, the old grey-haired bookkeeper, told
me shed send him around when he arrived later that noon.

The cold quiche and juice was
delicious, but I couldn’t enjoy it. Sarah wouldn’t leave her room,
she only wanted to rest, she said. I peeked in on her once at about
twelve. She was sitting up in bed, painting, but she quickly whipped
it behind her when she saw me.

I smiled at her childishness. It made
me feel that our fates were connected, intertwined together. I waited
for the doctor on the porch. Was this what it would be like when we
were old, waiting on each others doctor? I fervently hoped so. Sarah
was my purpose in life, my goal and dream.

When he arrived, I took him into
Sarahs dark room. She was sitting up at the dresser looking thin and
pale, the big dark bags around her eyes creating a skull-like mask.

“No, no,” she insisted to
the doctor. “I’m fine. Just, I just need a little sleep. That’s
all,” she tossed her head back, managing a laugh. I could tell
it wore her out, creating that smile, that toss.

“I’m afraid I must insist, at
least let me check in on you later tonight,” the man said,
putting his instruments back in his case. Sarah looked put off, but I
consoled her.

She slept the rest of the afternoon
and into the evening. I wandered around the cabin, discontented. I
hadn’t expected to vacation with a corpse.

Even then, my fear was beginning to
congeal into a sense of morbidity I hadn’t experienced before. If I
could have, I would have left then, perhaps it would have been better
to become hardened against my emotions. But they give me hope now,
they help me forget. When memories become named as memories, they are
pushed to a special place in the mind, a place that doesn’t interfere
with day-to-day existence.

The afternoon of the day we were to
head back, she gave me the painting. It was painted in bright, spring
colors, straight from the tube. Two roughly drawn figures, one with
my face, the other with her hair, stood in front of a huge lush
mountain landscape holding hands. The road they were on stretched up
the mountain, into the infinite expanse of bright blue sky. Off to
one side, she had painted a beautiful castle, decorated with
many-colored flags. The moon and stars shone through a darkened strip
of sky along the top of the canvas. I packed it up with the other
things we had brought, and knocked on her door.

“Sarah? ready to go?” The
door opened, and she walked out unsteadily. I offered her my arm, but
she brushed it away, annoyed.

We didn’t speak the entire ride back.
In the apartment again, she moved into the bedroom and shut the door.
The void in my heart opened up, and the sadness flowed out. I called
up work on the kitchen phone, but it just rang and rang. I needed to
get out, clear my mind, find the strength to go on when my world was
falling apart around me.

Evening had fallen, and I walked down
the street to the little park that was just around the corner. The
city seemed deserted. I sat on a bench, trying to think of nothing,
to relax. Why was Sarah so moody lately? It must be the illness. The
thought occurred to me that Julie hadn’t called lately, that maybe I
should get in touch, let her know her friend was sick.

I spotted a payphone at the edge of
the park and walked over to it. Reaching for the receiver, I suddenly
drew back, aghast. It was dangling down, into some bushes that grew
below. In the bushes, a man lay, dressed in a suit and tie, his hand
still clenching the handset tightly. His face was a horrid, pasty
white, a desiccated husk of what had once been human. I turned and
ran.

I don’t remember much after that, the
blur of images fueled by panic. Opening the door of the bedroom, what
had once been our bedroom, seeing Sarah’s evaporated shell lying
dead, broken on the bed, the phone still held tightly to her ear…
trying to call the police, her mother in arkansas, anybody… but the
phones were dead. Only an empty static, a vastness filled with quiet
whispers and immeasurable distance, reached out to me. I pulled
myself away from the sound. Straining with incredible strength,
helped by my fear boiling up from its unknown pit, obliterating
consciousness, obeying only its timeless master, I thrust the vile
thing upon the floor, crushing it in a frenzied destruction of lamp
and boot.

I quickly threw together a few things,
that’s when I must have grabbed the painting, some snapshots, all
that I have with me now. I did not look back when I closed the door
behind me, burying the past in the coffin of 3-G.

Outside, the city was a mess, a
confusion of accidents, of slow-moving people with dark, baggy eyes
and pale complexion, unseeing, directionless. Now that I had become
aware, I could spot the tendencies everywhere, as people tried to
continue on in their daily lives. Cars ground to a halt at
intersections, the light changing to red, to green, to red again.
Pedestrians slowed down, caught in the middle of crossing the street
by an invisible magnetic pull, rooting them. But the worst were the
husks, sucked of life, collapsed near phone-booths, with cell-phones
in hand, on benches they clambered onto with the last strength in
their failing bodies.

On the train north only a few people
were aboard. Even the engineer pushed the train extra-slowly,
everyone was white-faced and frail, as if a plague had descended upon
the world. In Ternsburg, the farthest north the line went, the train
stopped. People gathered at the doors, standing like zombies waiting
for eternity, but they wouldn’t open.

I ran up to the engineers booth, and
found him slumped over his controls, barely breathing. I punched the
button labeled doors, and the pneumatic whoosh echoed down the long,
empty train. Ducking out onto a platform that was still, deserted,
devoid of anything, I avoided the slow shuffle of the remnants of the
crowd which trickled out of the train behind me.

There was a car in the lot, a young
suburban housewife slumped over the wheel, one hand on a cell-phone.
I pulled her out; no-one cared, no one tried to stop me. They
wandered around as if in a thick fog, stopping when they bumped into
a tree, standing, waiting for it to move.

It was a nice Mercedes, but I had to
stop for gas frequently. Sometimes the computerized pumps wouldn’t
work, and I had to pull the collapsed attendant with the phone
tightly grasped in his fist away from the counter, pushing at random
buttons until it worked.

The stores were a mess. Scattered
trails of food, broken wrappers and growling dogs scavenging amongst
the insect shells of people, barely recognizable. I stopped when I
saw a gun shop, but it had been stripped. In the back room, a
desiccated husk of a man lay gripping a shotgun in one hand, the
phone in the other, a look of pure blankness etched on his face. Two
young people lay on the floor, dead, holes in their chests leaking
dried, clotted blood and tissue. I found a couple knives, pried the
mans gun from his hand and pocketed a few boxes of shells.

Farther north, into Massachusetts and
New Hampshire, I met people who were unaffected, like me, but I kept
to myself. I was sure they wouldn’t believe me, I was sure they
wouldn’t listen… I shouldn’t have listened to myself then, I wasn’t
thinking right in my head. Maybe if I had acted differently, I
wouldn’t be alone now. But the past is that which has already
happened, not that which listens to maybes.

The man in the blue coat comes to
mind, also, in this long stillness. Who was he? I may never know.
Was he the first, the only? Did he exist only as a figment of my
heated brain, a broken identification with the beginning of the end
of my dream-times? I am still unsure of anything.

The long trip up here to Vermont
convinced me of how large an area had become affected. I don’t know
if it has spread, or if it was all a massive break with reality. I
talk to no one. It has been almost four years now, as well as I can
tell the time.

The winters are harsh, the summers
have been beautiful, the food is abundant. I’m glad that the city is
behind me now, i’m glad I don’t live there anymore. Is the country
safe? I don’t know. Its a rough lifestyle. And even though
civilization may eventually reach me, it’s still a large enough world
that’s hidden out there for my lifetime.

For all the nervous, paranoid doubt
that has become my life, I still have one thing that sustains me,
that gives me hope.

I know Ill never have a phone.

Technology is all in our head

Publisher: Tacoma Libertarian Press

Year Published: 0000

Bibliography Information and notes: “A brief tract on Gibson’s topic of choice“