The cursor blinked on the
command line. Its pale-yellow light reflected off of David's
glasses as he sat there, hunched over. The glare irritated him: something about the way the eyes deal with light in the darkness, magnifying the tiniest shards of it into something blinding. He pulled them off his face; he had to clear his mind.
The
cursor ignored him. It just blinked.
The white Gate to the
Temple slid open and shut with a
hiss-crack. White light poured out, bright enough that David had to shut his eyes against it. And...there she was. He'd found Catherine slumped over in the kitchen only an hour ago, but the chill in his body told him it was far, far longer. She smiled. God. He thought back to the time on campus, walking through the Field, when he'd seen that beautiful girl do
that thing with her hair in just
that way...she'd caught him looking of course. She smiled.
The
warmth he'd felt through his entire body was the same warmth that rushed into him now, soothing the pain, removing the wounds as if they'd never been there. He'd faced the most primordial, deepest fear only seconds before: now he knew the most glorious of joys.
David ran up and kissed his wife and suddenly the world descended into blackness around them, everything and everyone else dying from sight sound smell mind all else gone it was just the two people, two people whirling and twirling through the purest light.
David didn't do Mondays. There's a certain feel to Mondays, he thought. Must be something about the lack of
REM sleep; perhaps the shorter dreams made his waking hours feel like a
dream? Everything was just slightly farther away than it should be, as though he were viewing his life through a telescope that'd zoomed out a few degrees. He pondered the deep implications, vowing to write a book, found a
philosophy!...
Or I'm
hungover. What the hell did I do last night, again? He faced the mirror at that question. " 'I like men and suck cocks?' "
"How the fuck did that get written on my stomach? 'Penis-munchers unite?!?!' "
Definitely hungover.
"Wild night last night, Dave?"
"Oh, shut up, Jacob. I have work to do now. That's why we're here. We have
jobs now, remember?"
"You're no fun. You know you'd have done the same if you found me passed out in Susy's backyard, not the other way around."
"...I was at Susy's house last night?"
"God, man, you don't even remember that? You and Catherine went together in one of those new
Cesium-powered cars, playing a big joke on us when it was just rented and we thought you'd hit it big?"
"Still not recalling it. Anything else that happened that night?"
"Birthday cake,
strippers, JarCorp
Synesthesia machine, puppies and a visit to the Temple for Ameer. Any memories yet?"
"...We had strippers? And I can't remember it?!"
David felt a sharp poke in the back and for the second time day he turned to hit his attacker. It was a smiling Catherine.
"Working hard?" She gestured to his computer.
"Oh...yeah."
"Well, don't overexert yourself. I'm heading out to
yoga." She stepped forward and kissed him. "Love you!"
"Love you."
David watched her back as she left. It was Catherine and it wasn't Catherine. He thought again of that miracle, that white-clad
angel stepping out of the gateway in a real-life resurrection. After what he'd just read, saw, and heard, David didn't want to think about that right now.
"
Doctors used to have to cut people up, even. Crazy stuff, David, crazy stuff.
"What is it with you, man? Ever since Wednesday you've been an ancient-times zombie."
"I'm just curious how it all changed."
The sky was beautiful outside. Always was, of course, always will be. Not many people noticed it. David always did. He made his way to 16th and Rice. Jacob wasn't there.
A hard finger poked him from behind. David spun and brought his fists up to strike.
It was a kid. Couldn't have been more than eleven years old. Red jacket, green-and-blue scarf, miniphone on his belt and an envelope in his gloved hands.
"Hey, mister, are you David Castonelli?"
"Yes, and who might you be?"
"I was paid to give this to you. Some guy named Jacob. Said he was your friend." The kid shoved the envelope into David's hands.
"Thanks."
"
You ever think about what life was like before all this?"
"Before all what?"
"Computers. Electricity. The Temple. Running water. Can you imagine living back then?"
"I learned about it in
high school with you, remember? I can't imagine how people got by without them. They're absolute necessities."
"High school was almost forty years ago. To people back then, that'd be about half your life gone.
We'd be old men."
"That's not really living, is it? Sort of a
half-life, without all the fun we have. Anyway, let's not talk about this. The past sucked and I feel sorry for anyone with the shitty luck to be born then. That's all I need to know about
history."
Jacob shrugged in response.
David wasn't feeling too well after a few hours so he asked Jacob for the rest of the day off. Jacob understood. He smiled as he signed the note. Hard to believe that someone like Jacob ended up being David's boss, when to everyone who knew them both years ago would've pictured it the other way around.
He got home and opened the door and he saw her and the dropped salad and the broken glass and the tears and the body, oh God the body...
"
How the fuck did someone like her end up with a loser like you?"
"I have no idea."
"
You better thank what ever divinity you believe in everyday."
"I do."
...and the knife in the body, and the body at an unnatural angle and the stream of crimson flowing where the knife met the body to pool at her feet....
"You know, our bodies wouldn't be in such good shape at this age."
"Huh?"
"Back then. We have the bodies of one of their twenty-year olds."
"Thank the Temple and Her Doctors for that one. Why are we still talking about this?"
David woke up on Friday to the beeping of his miniphone. Fucking
phone. He groaned and pressed the button on the belt. Jacob's voice answered.
"David, I have something serious to tell you. Meet me at the corner of 16th and Rice."
It was weird. Sounded like Jacob, alright, but there was this...scarcely concealed desperation in it.
The envelope was the most amazing package David had ever received.
He opened it up after he jogged back home and found a
CD inside. David took 10 minutes shoving things around in his closet before he found his external drive; he hadn't even seen a CD in, what, five years?
On it was an audio file, some text and movie documents, and a program. The audio file was named 'open me first!'. So he did.
"David, if you get this message, I wasn't able to meet with you face-to-face. I have, hopefully, already left the country. Or I'm in custody. Let's...not think about that possibility.
I delved too deep, man, and like the
warves of
Moria I stirred up a
Balrog. The Temple is a sham. No one gets healed there; the Doctors have some sort of copier device that spits out a perfectly healthy replica of you. I don't have a fucking clue how it works, but the copy has all your memories, your personality, everything. The original gets disposed of. This happens every time someone visits the Temple! You're not David, you're David 5 or 6 or 23 or whatever now!
All of your past selves were murdered!
Look at the videos and read the documents. The evidence is all there. When you're done, open that program off of the command line. It's an internet
script I threw together last night that'll upload the contents of this CD all over the world. It uses
distributed peer-to-peer, so once you run the program, there's nothing anyone can do to stop us. Everyone has to know! They must know!
I'll get in contact with you when it's safe. You're the closest I've come to having a brother, so I expect to see you when this all blows over. Be careful.
Goodbye."
And so David sat there, his right index finger hovering silently above the Enter key that would change everything. He asked his dark apartment: "What the hell do I do now?"
The only other one present didn't respond. It just blinked.