Void Check
He was feeling un-made, as if all the parts of his body were no longer separate, but blending together into a churning, indistinct mass; it was hard to keep track of all his symptoms. He awoke on this morning to a throbbing pain in his joints, which sent him into a brief panic until he remembered that he had been feeling the same thing for weeks. This confusion of thought paralleled the breakdown of his body’s systems, and it stoked a fear that had been building for some time. He was afraid, but not about the end. He gave no more thought to survival, had no concern for death – his own, or Eva’s. He would die, she would not. But he was thinking a lot about what he was leaving behind.
There was a kind of perpetual debate in his head, which he couldn’t win or resolve: the loudest voices accused him of various sins of omission, judging him for every good thing that wouldn’t survive into the future. Sure, the voices said, he meant well, but he could have done so much more. He said he did it for the children, but what he created turned out to be only a sad imitation of a children’s theme park, and he forgot to make it fun. They were right, except that it was even worse than that. This was a theme park with only one ride: an endless loop through an animatronic mob of multi-ethnic characters celebrating the Wonders of a Small World, only without the song.
Now, sitting on a bench at the edge of the square, Albert looked up at the town that used to be here, then wasn’t, and now was here again, and he drew rough lines in the sand with the edge of his shoe. He looked at the buildings. It was good enough, he told himself. It wasn’t fair to expect perfection. He knew every criticism, felt the sting of so many disappointments – the architecture, the food, the flowers that grew like flowers but gave no aroma ... the creeps. Damn it, the creeps. He couldn’t argue with the nickname.
He was tired of wrestling with ghosts, tired of losing mental debates, tired of resisting. There was nobody left, nothing left to make sense of, no more fights to win or lose. Even the buildings around the square seemed to have given up already: they communicated no sense of place, no security, because they were barely there. Their existence, in the middle of this dying world, should have been reassuring. The town would be made and remade daily while everything outside was slowly unmade by weather and time. In his darkest imaginings he wondered if it was wrong to continue to prop it all up.
Enough. He was ready to stop thinking about the architecture. He had bigger problems.
Brigid had been gone for a week now. She ‘d hitched a ride with a soldier raised in Eureka who hoped to see their childhood home one more time. Brigid didn’t know if she’d get to see her own family, but was ready for the trip north. She told him that she felt the time had come to take her stand at the boundary between the ancient forest of giants and the great expanse of the Pacific. She was also responding to the pull of memory, in a way, recalling Irish childhood visits to Achill Island and the beech at Keel, where she trembled to face the North Atlantic and the vastness of the waters before the horizon. Now, she said, she was ready to find her center somewhere out there. Exposed, she said, but also, she told him, feeling peace: to be seen, to be known. It was hard to let her go.
Finally, here he was, all alone, looking out over the town with its shrunken horizons, where Eva would live out her life. Her multiple lifetimes? Her one long life to make up for all their lives-cut-short.
The engineers were signed off, and the Director was the last to log out of the system, before finally and fully switching over control to the Machine. He felt none of the peace he wished for at the end. He thought he’d earned a little peace, because he had provided everything she needed to be comfortable. Yet, his own experience told him that having every comfort was no guarantee of peace.
This tension revealed itself in surprising ways in his relationships at the end: he was surprised to have experienced a kind of peace in the middle of profoundly uncomfortable circumstances. Much of this discomfort was caused by the increasing distance between the survivors. But some of the discomfort came by way of increased intimacy. He wasn’t always comfortable around Brigid, but he had sought out her perspective more and more, even if it meant exposing himself to a passionate debate over one thing or another.
He missed the arguments, because, while she may have challenged him endlessly, he also grew to believe that she saw him, understood him, that she knew something about him that he himself maybe didn’t know so well, and that gave him a kind of peace at the end of the day. She seemed to believe that she had some kind of claim on him, not only to berate him for some past decision, but to insist on something better for the future, even to insist on something better for himself.
He would have been happy to explore the center of gravity that had begun to develop between them, where to be exposed was to be known. Time had run out on that connection, but he was glad that she, at least, was still able to respond to the pull she felt ... to the trees, and the ocean, in the North.
What possibilities for connection remained? None for him, he knew, but what about for Eva? When she woke, surrounded by community, would there be any connection to speak of? Certainly they would all be at her service forever. But would any one of them ever have a claim on her, or allow her to have a claim on them? Was it too late for such questions?
He felt the urge to cross the square, burst into City Hall, and demand action. So he did.
He pushed open the door, and walked across the hardwood floor, which creaked in a reassuring way. He approached the receptionist, who became alert to his presence in a way that appeared, somehow, aggressively passive. He displayed a pleasant authority suggesting years of experience, and he calmly met the Director’s gaze as if Albert was not the first person ever to require his services, was not the first real interaction to have taken place in this room since it appeared out of nowhere, on this spot, exactly one week before.
‘Afternoon, how can I help?,’ asked the man sitting behind the desk, at the boundary between worlds, front-door receptionist to the here-and-now ... back-door receptionist to the future. Above him, a curiously verbose printed notice: ‘Paying your utility bill? Fill out form CC-106B-R and insert it with your check into one of the provided envelopes before depositing in the dropbox. Submissions without the form, or checks drawn on insufficient funds may result in suspension of services!’
Albert hesitated, distracted by this oddly specific message of debatable relevance, then: ‘Good afternoon. Would it be possible for me to see ... current population data for the town, um, demographics?’
Watching the clerk eagerly shuffle around to collect hardcopy documents containing the requested information was uncanny, like having a personal internet in a corner store, hyperlocal and efficient. The receptionist returned and smoothly presented a binder with an attitude that communicated an apparently genuine satisfaction at the opportunity to serve.
The Director retreated to a small carrel near a bulletin board covered with advertisements for local events and services. Cooking classes. Singing lessons. Auditions for a mime troupe. Mime troupe ...? Where did that come from? Focus, Albert. No time to worry about the details, he told himself; the system was going to have to figure some things out for itself. Focus.
Flipping through the large binder, he asked himself what he was looking for. The town was complete – well-drawn, as it were. Yet it felt empty. Was he wasting his time searching for meaning in the mob of characters that made up the town, like the one behind the counter here? Finally, he knew that he had seen all there was to see. He knew that any face looking back at him would reveal nothing new because it could only reflect his own, which really meant the creeps could only reflect the limitations of his own corporate process, written in fear. Made in the image of. The creatures he’d foolishly brought into the world were hopelessly limited, developmentally disabled, and destined to carry on the family tradition of timidity and passivity. Saint Brigid had done her best for Medalion’s bastard children; she insisted on more, for Eva’s sake. She should have been set free, to use her full power.
A fire was growing in his belly, an unsettling, and he knew he was approaching a dangerous place – not a line in the sand, but the edge of an abyss; a wide open place, chaotic, without shape or boundary. The creeps should bear a better image. Eva deserved more. But what image was there to provide a better reference? What face might the Machine look into to learn its true purpose? There was only one face left, after all.
He slapped the binder shut, and carried it back to the receptionist whose eagerly empathetic face rose to meet him.
‘Find what you were looking for?’
‘No. I did not.’
The creep replied with a combination of regret and enthusiasm: ‘I’m sorry to hear that! Is there anything else I can help you with?’
Albert considered this last moment, this last act, searching, scanning internally, externally for any warning – to stop, to leave well enough alone – awake to any input, a sign, a check on his impulse to flip one last switch, or for some assurance that his work could be finished and that he could lay down to rest.
They were right. Brigid, Abdul, Eva, all of them. She wouldn’t be free if the system was fixed. There could be no redemption without reciprocity. How did they expect her to appreciate the gift of life, relationship, community, if she were allowed to have no claim on the system she was a part of? She wasn’t impressed when they told her that she’d been given a chance at a future, because, she said, they hadn’t given her a choice.
Alber knew he wasn’t the one to make a choice for her. But he could give her the chance at a hopeful future by making a choice possible.
He turned again to the receptionist, who was now looking at him with a mix of concern and unsettling good humor.
The Director leaned forward, carefully placed his hand on the countertop, and spoke.
‘I’d like to file a complaint.’
