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| Victor Anderson Network Solutions | ||||
| 4102 13th Ave Apt D6 | ||||
| Brooklyn, NY 11219-1333 | ||||
| Click here to end further messaging. |
Nov.9th Jupiter time
Dear diary,
For someone who sags on the couch with snots hanging like a pocket watch during soap opera hours, I've lost count of the notebook pages blotched by black, oily tears.
So, dear diary, let's rewind my life in one go for the last time, in case someone wants to put this in the museum
I'm going to spoil, dear diary, Angelica doesn't get the robot in the end. Can you believe it? Five years and six seasons, and she rejected I10-99 just because society forbids human-robot relationships. That is not my money wants to hear after spending on diluted one-year macronutrient drinks with five receipts. Alita: Battle Angel is better.
Ah, scratch that, I'm starting to feel tiny flecks of heat pumping through my chest. I'm still waiting for movie two.
My rent terminates next year but I gave the exact money to the landlord this afternoon. I've been here for ten years, and her hair still cascades down like black silk to her hips. Her smile is always 45 degrees up and her fingers wraps around a cup of brewed oil. I moved here seeing the same thing but lying in bed, miserable with amnesia.
?Hi Ben, are you feeling any better?? my landlord said, sitting on a stool beside my bed.
I will forever treasure the shocked face I made when she knew my name. I couldn't even recall the first letter of the alphabet song. Did I meet her at the bar and did the do? If my brain could hallucinate any further, my room would be the smell of straight highway roads to the never-going-home destination.
?I'm your landlord,? she introduced herself and I call her "landlord" ten years from then. ?.. I'll take care of you for the next few days.?
My landlord registered a therapist after I settled my room. I lied, dear diary. My landlord carried mysterious packages to my room while I slept all way until Jupiter occupied the sky. My therapist is a walking architecture of art. His chest has a small turbine that whirls like my computer fan. His body is made of metal, stretching like branches from head to toe. Dear diary, I am not kidding when I say his body makes music as Scottish windpipes do when the wind blows.
?Yes, Ben. I'm a cyborg,? my therapist said. I was going to sue everyone for leaking personal data.
?And you are a cyborg as well.? Ah, civil lawsuit, then.
I practiced in front of the mirror countless times before meeting my therapist.
?Hi... uh..., Mr. Stranger? That sounds like a superhero name... Mr. Therapist. That's better,? I said. ?I only remember two things: my first name and my gender.?
Dear diary, by the fourth time I saw myself without a thing underneath my crotch, I wasn't so sure Biology was my grade-A subject anymore. So when my therapist told me that I'm a cyborg my whole life, my vocal cords suddenly sounded artificial to me. But I was relieved not to live on as a male human being without a vital organ.
?Then... is my landlord also a cyborg??
?Everyone is a cyborg here, Ben.?
I felt like drowning, dear diary. Is there a species called human, because I swear I'd aced Anatomy in high school! My face grew hot and my neck twisted in a way I could dig my head under my right armpit. I was surprised the hairiness of my underarm was never a sensation. Awesome! I get to be a fictional character without cosplay.
Except it's not. Awesome. I could live with oil of different brands and cooking methods all right, my ass. After a week, without having my memory back, I asked my therapist if restaurants exist in this block.
?On Blitz, oil and macronutrients are what we have.? my therapist patted my head and let the wind play some relaxing music with his body.
Now dear diary, "Blitz" is not jargon from an online game, it's a planet where I live and will leave tomorrow morning.
?So this isn't Earth?? I said.
?Ah, Earth,? said my therapist, ?that's a legend to us now.?
Cyborgs don't get dressed. I spent 365 days feeling naked and nine years walking around, letting the citizens enjoy the view. My landlord said that the body armor I'm wearing belongs to a robot cop. The broad chest and strong thighs explain well. My body was neon blue but when I run, my chest ignites the metal red like a setting sun.
The space agency and I clicked like long lost soulmates. The interview was tedious. However, dear diary, as soon as I met my crew, this planet wasn't black and white anymore.
My therapist keeps on visiting me when Jupiter lies in front of my window. He introduced me to a drama series, Across the Black Hole, which the one I've spent five years watching and crying when every episode comes. I never figure out the reason why my therapist wants me to feel my lungs sucked out all the air and watch my inky tears ruin another couch. But I'm obsessed with it.
Angelica, why can't you ignore the law and be with I10-99? Is it so hard for you to be the bad girl when you already know the law is outdated?
Dear diary, some things sure happened without expecting. Across the Black Hole did trigger my memory though. The opening song was on when I was brewing oil, and little Angelica popped on the screen.
?Daddy,? she said, ?Is it true there's another galaxy behind the black hole??
?Of course there is, Angelica,? I said, mixing the oil with macronutrient, ?It's already a fact since 3020.?
I got suck into a flashback with three people chatting in a blurry background.
?It's a one-way ticket,? said a bearded man, which I recognized as thirty-year-old human me. ?None of us are going to make it alive.?
?I agree with Ben,? said a petite woman, my wife, Angelica.
?The Mirror Black Hole Theory has won The Shaw Prize,? said one of the crew members. ?There is indeed another solar system across the Black Hole.?
?There's no way back, Angelica. Your husband's going to be a hero when he comes back.?
?Except he's not,? I said. The door sign crashed to the ground.
Dear diary, in case someone finds you on the desk and decides you be one of the milestones in cyborg history, The Mirror Black Hole Theory explanation is below this sentence.
Some brilliant scientist believed that the Black Hole serves as a bridge between two galaxies. Both galaxies are reflections of each other. During the Shaw Prize speech, the scientist proved that both galaxies contain the same amount of solar systems. All planet masses and the distance between one another in the solar system are the same as their counterparts.
The only thing I could remember during the speech was the name of Earth's counterpart, Blitz. The next year, the space agency sent five astronauts to space to prove the theory. I was one of them; however, it wasn't until the last day with Angelica that I figured out this trip might be a death trail.
The oil left my right foot a stigma and I missed out on the whole episode. I ran to my therapist and then to my space agency on Blitz, bursting out all the information my brain contained until my body spasmed. The next five years until Across the Black Hole ends were the years for me to get back to Earth and for them to prove the theory right.
I never recall the memory during the trip inside the black hole. As far as my body tells me, I feel the tremors and the pressure every time my eyes closed. It's like my body squeezes out all the oxygen and the blood stops circulating while being pressured and diced into small molecules repeatedly. My therapist and landlord said the citizens found me breathing while half of my body was gone. My human nerves were black when they attached the body armor with my head.
Five hours until Jupiter sets. I'm going to feel that sensation once again. Maybe it will feel good if the destination is Earth. Somehow my stomach starts churning when I imagine getting together with my Angelica again.
Dear diary, sleep tight. I am going across the Black Hole tomorrow.
It was one of those days where nothing was supposed to happen. Or at least, nothing out of the ordinary. The first rays of the sun were peering in from behind the greyish-white clouds. I had my morning cigarette tucked in the corner of my lips, the tobacco smoke tickling my nostrils with familiar warmth. A pair of birds flew twittering over my head. I cannot recall exactly what they were because I didn't really care much for birds, but I hoped I had looked up.
At least, I would have noticed that each bird had four wings instead of two.
And that the sun's rays were emitting a pinkish haze, and the faint smell of jasmine was drifting through the air I would have, once again, noticed, if I had not been smoking.
Instead, I was bent over, slowly preening my potato plants, rubbing beneath the waxy leaves to check for mealybugs or aphids, or whatever other critter decided to drop by without paying. I will not stand for that. This plot of land had been watered with my own sweat, tears, and blood, and no multi-legged or winged creature was going to live off it.
Not when I am still alive and kicking.
And then I heard it.
That child-like giggle echoing around the garden as if it was an enclosed cave with the acoustics of an ancient cathedral. I nearly whipped my neck when I turned to see where it was coming from, and then I laughed it off, taking the half-finished cigarette from my mouth. "Hmmph," I shook my head at myself. "Looks like they were talkin' sense about one smoke too many doin' numbers to yer brain. See, Jed, yer old head's hearin' kids now. And you hate 'em, barkin' kids."
I snuffed the cigarette's glow out with my calloused thumbs and chucked it away, and continued scrubbing the bugs from my plants. For about a few more minutes, nothing much happened.
And then, as I groaned as loudly as I could as I pulled out the eighth cluster of pigweed from the plot, crushing it in my gloved hand and staring at the soiled remnants on my palm, I heard it again.
That giggling, now growing louder and louder, as if some bugging kid was just by my side.
"OI!" I bellowed as I swirled around, armed with my rusting shovel and my bucket with its blue paint peeling off more than it usually did, like a weary knight in battle. "Get yer arse o'er here before I call your parents!"
Of course, there was no response.
I sighed and shook my head again, and decided to walk away from my potatoes and towards my shed, where my old collie was fast asleep in a bed of grass. Her snout was almost fur-free now after she was attacked by a rogue rat, and as she slept, her tail twitched and she pawed at the air, grunting softly. She slept most of her days away now, a shadow of her former, hyperactive self. At least, there was no strain on my aching hips anymore from running after her. Smiling at her, I gently pushed open the door of my shed and walked in.
The knob was far rustier than I remembered, but I did not give it any more thought.
"Hmm," I wondered to myself as I walked in, my boots creaking against the soggy, wooden floor. Around me, vines of ivy and morning glory were also bursting through the cracks as if they had been waiting to do this their whole lives. I tended not to give them too much attention for their presence failed to bother me. There were also a few new cobwebs in corners of the shed, and one of the spiders was feasting on a fat bluebottle. There was also a new hole in the roof of the shed, where a palm-sized section of wood had rotted and fallen away, allowing the critters from outside to realise that they now had more space to roost.
That explained the barn swallow nesting in the upper corner, its tiny chest puffing with every breath it took.
"A bird's got nothin' on me", I remarked and moved on, further into the shed. "Huh?" I stopped when I saw that the table where my tools had laid was now nothing but a blanket of powdered rust and blackish mould, the type you see growing around sinks and shower where water had been left to fester. I saw the bright red handle of my new handsaw and rubbing my eyes with the back of my right arm, I picked it up.
I held back a gasp as my handsaw, brand new and barely a week old, fell to dust in front of my very eyes, with only the plastic of the handle left in my hand. The metal was gone, rusted away into brown dust that floated and settled on the ground by my feet, as if I had picked up an ancient relic instead of my new handsaw.
Heck, even those iron swords my little girl saw at the museum in Sweden once belonging to Vikings seemed to be in better shape. And those were from some many thousands of years ago.
"What the?" I nearly dropped the plastic handle in shock as my shed keys, which I was holding in my left hand, also suddenly dissolved into brown dust, and I was now grasping at air.
My heart and my pacemaker were beginning to race in my chest, as I turned suddenly, my hips hurting and my knuckles gone cold for now reason whatsoever. "Okay," I called out, "whatever yer joke was, I'm done. I'm a sorry ol' man and tis is no way to treat yer ol' men..."
There was no response that came but a bludgeoning, deafening silence that gnawed at my ears like the woodworms in the old shed.
I began to walk towards the door and the stopped. "Ah, I know, tis is a dream. I will wake up soon." Thus, I took in one deep breath, clenching and opening my fists to keep my knuckles from freezing over, and sat down, crossed legged, on the very floor of my shed. I had survived three surgeries and two car crashes. No way a stupid tobacco fuelled dream was going to stop me.
And with my hands on my knees, I breathed in deeply and closed my eyes.
---
A passing wind will come
And iron and wood will rot
What seen once you shall see twice
There will be naught where once had been
We see all and we hear all
For a decade passes yet another
We shalt take what is ours
And never look again away.
The girl stared long and hard into the slip of paper in her hand, squinting at the strange words. "What do they even mean?"
"Why ask me?" The bespectacled, suited man next to her shrugged. "It is all they found here twenty years ago."
"The old man who lived here? What happened to him? Did he leave?" The girl looked up, tilting her head ever so slightly that her pigtails danced in the gentle, blowing wind.
"Yes, my dear," the man replied, gently brushing away a strand of her strawberry blond hair from her face. "It is said that he left without a trace."
"Did he die?" The girl's voice trembled slightly and the man just smiled.
"No, my dear," he replied. "The man just left to serve the land."
"Serve?" The girl asked again, clearly not satisfied, and her eyes suddenly lit up at something that caught her attention. "Oh! Sir, sir! Do you smell it? It is the flowers again! Jasmine!"
"Of course my dear," the man replied, a grin plastered across his thin lips. "It is spring and the awakening had begun."
"Oh, what happens at the awakening?"
The man smiled, and he blinked, slower than how one usually blinks, and when he opened his eyes again, they were the same blue as they had been, except that he had no longer had irises. His hands had turned a ghastly, pale white, nearly as white as the frost in winter, and the veins against his skin were as blue as his eyes. His hair was now grey as slate, and he bent to plant a kiss on the girl's cold cheek. "Now, we wait, my dear, for our turn."
The girl looked up at him, her face and hair also morphed, and flashed him a toothy, ivory smile. "I am hungry."
The man only smiled as the door of the shed creaked open behind them, and a young woman walked in, puzzled at the rust dust left on her hand after touching the knob.
And then he stood and brushed the rust away from his doublet. "Come, my daughter, it is time."
The girl nodded and grabbed his hand, and as the next gust of wind blew in from the top of the shed, the feast had begun once more.
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