Player One: What Is to Become of Us (13 page)

But
no
, Luke will reject what is happening as being the end of the world, and he will reject what has up until now seemed to be his inevitable conversion into his father . . . his father, who would have said, with a pathetic false English accent — like, who was he trying to impress, anyway? — his family, who knew that Caleb had only once been to England, in 1994 for three nights at a Heathrow Airport hotel for a symposium on the subject “Man in the Age of the Rampant Machine” — machines! In 19forGod’ssake94! Caleb, who would most predictably have said, there, in the Airport Camelot cocktail lounge, “I said to the man who stood at the gate of the New Year, ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’ And he replied: ‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than any known way.’”

Rachel will stare at Leslie Freemont’s scalp and she will think it resembles a very large dissected white mouse — or maybe a rat — but Rachel doesn’t like rats, because rats might bite her, whereas mice would never hurt her. Rachel won’t, however, be freaked out by the scalp. The scalp’s presence will make her enter her clinical mode, as though she were in the local medical supplier’s lab wearing one of those freshly laundered coats they hand out that smell faintly like lavender, their crisp, starchy fabric on her forearms giving her the happy sensation of an itch being properly scratched. But the scalp? It’s just a specimen, and, as it can’t hurt her or enter the one-metre invisible circular comfort zone around her body — the zone within which it might touch her, breathe on her, or offer any sort of swift temperature change — Rachel will remain in a heightened but calm state. She knows the others are frightened, but she knows better than to tell them to not be afraid — doing so has gotten her in trouble in the past. And what on earth could there possibly be to fear from falling down into Daffy Duck’s cartoon hole?

HOUR FOUR

HELLO, MY NAME IS: MONSTER

Karen

Karen stares at the black-haired sniper, with his blistered face and seemingly powder-burned forearms. Her body still shaking, Karen asks her duct-taped prisoner, “Okay, then, what’s your name?”

“You tell me. What do you think my name ought to be? What do I look like? Am I a Jason? A Justin? A
Craig
?”

Karen begins wondering, in earnestness, if he looks more like a Justin than a Jason or a Craig — and then chides herself for so quickly going in a mundane direction.
This guy truly believes he did good by killing Leslie Freemont
. Karen wonders when and where Leslie was scalped, and if his assistant, Tara, escaped.

Luke blurts out, “Monsters don’t need names.”

“Then that’s my new name.
Hello, my name is: Monster
.”

“Very funny.”

“Very well, then, my name is Bertis.”

“We should just shoot you, Bertis,” says Rick.

Bertis is cavalier. “Then shoot me. I’m at the end of one aspect of my life, but also at the beginning of some unknown secret that will reveal itself to me soon.”

Karen thinks,
What if God exists, but he just doesn’t like people very much?

Rick asks, “Why were you stalking Leslie Freemont?”

“He was a fraud. He had it coming.”

“Why did you shoot the others, then?”

“Because I can see clearly enough to decide who lives and who dies.” He pauses and surveys the room. “Oh, don’t give me those faces. They died because it was their time. Their leaders are dead. History has abandoned them. The past is a joke. Me and what I’m doing is what was meant to happen next.”

“Who died and made you God?”

Bertis laughed. “Don’t be a child. Grow up. The people I shot bothered God. They angered Him. They wasted His time. Look at modern culture. Look at Americans — they’re like children, always asking for miracle this or love that, or
Gee, I tried my hardest
. But God created an ordered world. By constantly bombarding Him for miracles, we’re asking Him to unravel the fabric of the world. A world of continuous miracles would be a cartoon. In repayment for being an endless nuisance, Americans have become a quarter-billion oil-soaked mallard ducks. I didn’t know this oil crisis was going to happen when I woke up this morning and vowed to take out that quack, Freemont — it’s one of life’s little bonuses.”

Karen says, “You can’t lump a quarter-billion people all in together. That’s absurd. Those quarter-billion people have almost nothing in common except that they’ve been told they have lots in common.”

Bertis looks at Karen. “I like you. But you’re wrong. People are pretty much all the same — unless they’ve achieved Salvation, at which point they all become one person, one source of light. We humans have infinitely more in common with each other than we do difference. Look at this bar. Look at this hotel, the airport. Ever wonder why they sell flags and family coats of arms and
KISS ME, I'M ITALIAN T
-shirts in airports and tourist traps? Ever wonder why religious groups hang out there? Because a plane trip takes you away from all the things that make you comfortable. A plane trip exposes you to situations and landscapes unthinkable until recent history, moments of magnificence and banality that dissolve what few itty-bitty molecules of individuality you possess. After a plane trip, you need to rebuild your ego, to shore up your sense of being unique. That’s why religions target airports to find new recruits. You —” He nods at Rick. “You’re a bartender. You do nothing but watch people dissolve in front of you all day. Or scramble themselves with booze. And I bet you have no illusions about what goes on in the hotel next door.”

“You’re right on that.”

Karen remembers her assignation with Warren, which now feels as if it happened three weeks ago.

Bertis purses his lips and X-rays the door area to see the hotel behind it. “Nasty,
nasty
hotel. Cracked-out teenagers watching trash TV and eating sugar. Fornicating on towels decorated with Disney cartoons and brands of beer. And maybe on a good day you’ll find a prophet alone in an empty room on the top floor, the elevator rusted shut; a prophet stripped of his founding visions, forced to live in a world robbed of values, ideals, and direction.”

The four of them stand staring at Bertis, who sits with perfect posture.

“Look at you all. You’re a depressing grab bag of pop culture influences and cancelled emotions, driven by the sputtering engine of the most banal form of capitalism. No seasons in your lives — merely industrial production cycles that rule you far better than any tyrant. You keep waiting for the moral of your life to become obvious, but it never does. Work, work, work: No moral. No plot. No
eureka!
Just production schedules and
days.
You might as well all be living inside a photocopier. Your lives are all they’re ever going to be.”

“I agree with him,” says Rachel, sending a ripple through the group.

“Really?” asks Rick, genuinely surprised.

“Not the meaningless bit. But the bits about everyone being the same. I can’t tell faces apart. It’s hard to tell people apart. I can’t distinguish personalities. When my high school yearbook came out, it was like looking at a thousand identical faces. I couldn’t even find myself.”

“I think you’re unique,” says Rick.

“You do?”

“I do. It’s not just that you’re beautiful. It’s your mice. And the way you think so hard about everything. I’ve never seen anyone think so hard in my life.”

Rachel confesses, “Earlier, when I was supposed to be looking up the price of oil, I was actually looking up the price of white mice.”

“So you feel guilty. We now have official evidence that you’re human. Welcome to the club.”

“Really? There’s a club?”

“No, there isn’t. But I’m starting one now, and I welcome you to join me.”

Rachel walks over to Rick and says, “Thank you,” seemingly hypnotized.

Rick says, “What’s the great thing about normal, anyway? What’s normal ever done for you?” Rachel smiles.

“So what is it we’re supposed to be doing here, then?” Bertis snaps.

“Doing?” she says.

“Are we waiting for the police to show up? Is this some hokey citizen’s arrest? Am I going to be brought to justice? I’ve been outside, and trust me, there won’t be any cops here for a week.”

Karen asks, “What’s it like out there?”

Luke, who’s been pretty quiet up to now, says, “Excuse me, Karen.” In a flash, he raises the rifle and fires it at the floor in front of Bertis, hitting his foot. Bertis screams, then cries out, “What the hell did you do that for?”

“I had to do
something
to you. I’m sick of waiting for the law. And knowing the courts in this country, instead of sending you to rot in prison, they’ll send you to Disney World with a life counsellor and a dozen juice boxes.” Luke sets Bertis’s rifle down on the bar. He says to Bertis, “That was richly satisfying and you richly deserved it.”

“You’ll burn for that.”

“That from
you
of all people.”

The carpet near Bertis’s foot resembles a run-over squirrel, but Karen’s seen worse. Even though it’s hard to be compassionate for Bertis, she goes to the bar and pulls a bottle of vodka down from the mirrored racks. She walks over to Bertis. “I’ll sterilize it.”

Bertis is inspecting his shattered toe, grimacing. He glowers at the room, and his voice deepens as Karen unscrews the vodka bottle’s cap. “You’re all of you praying a prayer — a prayer so deep and strong and insistent you hardly know you are praying it. It comes from that better place inside you — the place that remains pure. You never manage to access it, but you know it exists.” Bertis glowered at a six-foot-tall cardboard cut-out promoting Chilean wine. “I don’t need to justify my actions to the courts of this world. The only valid viewpoint to make any decision from is Eternity.”

“Lovely,” says Luke.

Bertis squints. “You don’t believe in believing, do you?”

“You picked a very strange day to ask me that question.”

Rachel says, “Luke was a pastor up until yesterday. Then he lost his faith and stole twenty thousand dollars from his church’s bank account and flew here, to this airport, essentially at random.” She looks to Luke for confirmation.

“Timing is everything,” says Luke. Karen grabs a white linen napkin and tears it down the middle, improvising a bandage, which quickly reddens as she lashes it onto Bertis’s toe.

___

Suddenly incapable of processing any more of what was happening to her at the present time, Karen let her mind drift back to that morning, a morning that had begun so full of hope. She remembered packing her toiletries for the flight, looking in the mirror, and thinking,
Karen Dawson, you are a well-nourished, rich-looking white woman. You could burn polka dots onto the mayor’s front door with a crème brûlée torch and nobody would bother you. And this Warren fellow will be putty in your hands
. Then she caught herself from a certain angle and saw her mother’s face contained within her own — a face now blankened by Alzheimer’s, a face resting in an expensive ozone-smelling room in Winnipeg.
Am I going to get Alzheimer’s? My genetic counsellor says three chances in four
. Karen’s mother was no longer knowable; her mother was gone. Staring at herself in the mirror, Karen wondered,
When do people stop being individuals and turn into generic humans? And from there, when do they stop being human and become vegetable, then mineral?

Perhaps people are all, in the end, unknowable. But at least some people are loveable, and at least some of them love you. Of course, they can also
stop
loving you. When Kevin fell out of love with her — and into love with another receptionist, no less — Karen wondered,
How many married men are out there whispering like truffle pigs in the ears of temps by the office snack-vending machine?
She wondered,
How many are spending their noon hours in a motel down by the lake? And their wives — how many are starting to drink Baileys while folding laundry? How many are almost sick with jealousy over “that bright young gal” who’s turned the marketing department upside down with fresh ideas? That bright young gal with a future as big as Montana and legs like Bambi’s mother’s.

As she looked in the mirror, Karen thought,
Okay, so there’s no permanent love in this world, and you can never really know anyone, but at least there’s heaven. Perhaps
heaven is being in love and the feeling never stops — the feeling of intimacy never stops — you feel intimate forever
.

Zipping up her sandwich bag filled with cosmetics in airline-approved bottles smaller than 1.5 ounces, Karen began wondering if she was past love — if she had felt pretty much all the emotions she was ever likely to feel, and from that point on it was reruns. She wondered,
Which is lonelier: to be single and lonely or to be lonely within a dead relationship? Is it totally pathetic to be single and lonely and to be jealous of someone who is lonely inside a dead relationship? I feel like the punchline to a joke I might have told ten years ago.

What had happened to her earlier good spirits? She ought to have been whistling ditties to the love gods, but now she felt manless and marooned as she contemplated a life of repetitive labour, a few thousand more microwaved dinners followed by a coffin. What a wretched tailspin to have fallen into. She chalked it up to nerves over meeting Warren.

At the breakfast table, Karen learned that Casey had chosen that morning to unveil an even more extreme version of her blue and black hair: a set of blue extensions that bulked it up, doubling its volume. But Karen was not going to be roped into a style squabble. Not today. Not over a bowl of oatmeal.

“What do you think of my new do?” Casey asked.

“It’s great. It’s fine,” Karen said.

“It’s part of my campaign to become immortal.”

“How’s that, Casey? Pass me the brown sugar.”

“History only remembers people who invent new hairdos: Julius Caesar. Einstein. Hitler. Marilyn Mon-roe. Why bother with conquering Europe or discovering nuclear science when all you need is a bit of style innovation? If Marie Curie had given a bit more attention to her appearance she’d have been on the ten-dollar bill.”

“Very clever.”

Casey senses that Karen’s not in a fighting mood. “Mom, what do you think happens to you after you die?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you believe in something specific, like a religion, or do you think maybe there’s a warm cosmic flow, followed by the total extinction of your being?”

“Casey, this isn’t something I expected to be discussing on a Tuesday morning.”

“On
Star Trek: Generations
, Soran said, ‘Time is the fire in which we burn.’ Imagine that, Mom, burning inside a fire of time.”

“It’s Tuesday fricking morning, Casey. And you know I’ve got a big day ahead of me. You tell me, what do you think about an afterlife?”

“I don’t know,” said Casey. “If I was truly practical and green and into recycling and all of that, I’d request that you put my body into a big pot and then reduce it until it turns into that soup powder they put in your ramen noodles.”

“But you’re not practical.”

“No, I am not. I want to be buried, not cremated. And no coffin. I repeat, no coffin — just put me in the dirt.”

“Just dirt? That’s kind of ick.”

“Not true. Being soil is a good idea — I’d be moist and granular, like raspberry oatmeal muffins.” Casey scraped up the remains of her oatmeal. “Kendra from my twirling class says death is like a spa resort where everything is pre-decided for you and all you have to do is lie back and submit to the regime.”

“Kendra sounds a bit lazy to me.”

“Kendra is wicked lazy.”

“Let’s go. I can drop you off on the way to the airport.”

“But you haven’t told me what you think about death!”

“Well, Casey, I don’t remember where I was before I was born, so why should I be worried about where I’ll go after I die? When we die, we have no choice but to join every living thing that’s ever existed — and ever will.”