This Book Does Not Exist (23 page)

p
.s. there was something else, something in the 'war is' mess that flew my mind and
i
can't retrieve it.
no
matter how much this disturbs me
i
have to accept it's lost like much of war – the thing that could've happened; one step left, a second less, a bullet more.
or
like the bullet that just left - it's gone.
forgotten
in a stream of life.
i
can't be sure my short term memory lapse is so elegant but
i
can only hope.
and
only hope that like a lost bullet it's left a mark somewhere that someone will find someday.

7.29.98 (hours later)

...
i
may have found it.
the
extremity of war makes us look deeper – it's very difficult to look at war and not see something more than what it physically is.
it’s
life at its best and worst – where the deeper, more important significance of the moment is most easily seen and known.
the
ability to transcend this shallow basin of knowledge exists only at extremes, to see life significantly as we walk on the street and look at the people in the cars, to find something more...we must first understand war.
to
do this is to better understand life.

The logic in the alleged journal entry is circumspect. The sentence structure is fractured. Meaning is evident but layered and imprecise. It reads like a missive from a foxhole. As with the other entries, I can’t remember writing it, but the content is reasonably similar to something I can imagine having written in the past. I do not, however, have any recollection of watching
The Deer Hunter
while I was in college.

My
phone vibrates.
A notification from
Facebook
.
As I swipe to read it, my phone vibrates again. Not once, but two times, and then not two times but three, four, five, six, seven. My phone won’t stop shaking. I grip hold of it and watch the number of notifications pile up – eight, nine, ten, eleven, fifteen, twenty and climbing.

It stops when I open the app.

In sum, twenty-eight new pictures have been posted to my wall.

All twenty-eight have been added by Geppetto
.

The first photo is of
the Door
. It is cracked open. Pure white light leaks out.

The next picture is also
of
the Door
, taken from the same angle and distance, except in this one,
the Door
is open a bit more.

The photo after that is another replica, but
the Door
is open wider still.

I scroll down. Every picture in the series is of
the Door
. Combined, the photos are
like a flipbook. Each image in the line depicts
the Door
more open than the last, and more open and more open, until it’s being ripped off its hinges by a manic, invisible force that ultimately obliterates it, leaving nothing but particles of wood dusted through the air.

The twenty-eighth and very last photo shows the doorway, entirely absent
the Door
, just a sharp rectangle of blinding white light.

I get the message. If shutting
the Door
was an option before, it isn’t anymore.

A red mark fills the globe at the top of my
Facebook
page, indicating yet another notification. I tap on it to receive an abbreviated description:

“
Geppetto
W. wrote on your wall.”

To see exactly what he’s written, I refresh my profile.

I thought things were getting better, not worse.

I was mistaken.

Geppetto
has written three words on my wall:

“World War 3”

http://tinyurl.com/intheeventofmydeath

Outside I hear war, only war. Seventeen minutes have passed since Geppetto wrote on my wall. Moments ago, an explosion blew a hole in my motel room. Fearful of stray gunfire, I snuck downstairs into the basement of the building, which is where I have stayed.

So far this incident has evolved differently than the others. Geppetto has not made an appearance. No parameters have been set. A specific situation I need to work my way through has not been defined. World War 3 just seems to exist – and I have to deal with it.

The
motel’s guests and employees are gone. I’ve tried reaching Tim and my parents and Naomi by voice, text, email, Twitter, and
Facebook
. No one has responded. I’m getting wireless for my
MacBook
from a connection labeled “
Pre_Apocalypse_Now
. The war itself is on all of the news websites – CNN,
The
New York Times
, MSNBC, ABC,
CBS
… It is indeed being called “World War 3” and from what I can gather based on frantic skimming of the main articles, a consortium of countries including China, Russia, Pakistan, India, Iran, the UK, France, Spain, Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, and even Israel are in the opening stages of an invasion on US soil.

Another way to put it would be America versus the World.

The war is being written about as the culminating event in a succession of dramatic global changes: world leaders have been assassinated, the polar ice caps have melted, an earthquake registering 9.3 on the Richter scale has shattered Southern California, and cyber attacks on American infrastructure have crippled the economic system. There is more, all of it linked to the fall of the United States, but I know it’s merely a narrative created by the other world to challenge me, one more booby-trap on the path to finding Naomi.

None of my
Facebook
friends are available to chat, but all of the statuses are about the war. Some people have asked for prayers – “please pray for us” and “please pray for my boyfriend he was just shot in the head.” I read RIP messages with tags like “we will always love you.” I find a contingent of updates from people apologizing for things they did before the war started, for hurting loved ones or for taking an old relationship or a child or a family member or pet for granted. New statuses are frequently being written. I read about destroyed homes and people wanting to join the army and fight the enemy and protect and love America. Vitriol about the invading countries is spewed, including ethnic and racial slurs, but the
amount of these ugly declarations is dwarfed by the number of personal notes on people’s walls
. Brief questions like “are you ok?” and “are you safe?” are coupled with answers like “
i
am.
are
you?” and “I
dont
know all I hear are
bommbbs
”.

In multiple instances, one person has told another that they love them and attached a qualifier such as “
i’ve
always wanted to tell you that
i
love you but never had the guts to do it.” I notice another status, a man informing his brother he misses him and that he’s sorry for not calling more often.

The scene on Twitter is very much the same, except paradoxically more and less personal, with 140 character messages that bare the soul but are also knowingly being broadcast to strangers. Many are less specific but more poignant and loosely esoteric. “Can anyone else hear someone shooting outside?
help
!” on
Facebook
becomes “
i
can hear them shooting outside.
shadows
whole world against us + me.
why
god why?
save
my family help
help
help
” on Twitter. These fits of sentiment are integrated with tweets from reporters and news sources, in addition to notes from men on the street like “military is rounding
ppl
up on 3rd
ave
and 12th” and “triage on ocean.” “#WW3” is the number one trending topic worldwide, above things like “guns” “RIP” “bomb” “death” “USA” “shot” and “blood”. I click on the
hashtag
. Every usage of it coalesces into a single feed. Clinical reporting and screams from the populace aggregate in one constantly updating digital stream. The picture it provides of the war is ominous, dark, and bloody. I know it will only get worse.

Outside, the sounds of battle
intensify. Instead of moving away, the war is getting closer. And why wouldn’t it? The war is here because of the other world. The other world is here because of me
.

The way I see it, I have two options:

Option 1: Hide
in this basement for as long as possible, hoping no one finds me and the building never gets raided from the ground or bombed from the air
.

Option 2: Leave the
motel altogether. I put myself in the middle of the war, and I try to get to
the Door
and destroy it. How exactly, I don’t know. But maybe, just maybe, this is the last incident. Maybe its purpose is to yield the final discovery and the understanding that will allow me to find Naomi once and for all.

I don’t think I can win the war hiding underground.

I close my laptop, place it
on a box in the basement, scribble out a note, and prepare to enter the invasion
.

Even if I fail I have to try to finish this.

If I die trying, so what?

At least I tried.

I am standing in front of a door I don’t want to open but know I must, a door that leads into the lobby of the motel, the final buffer between me and the war zone.

What I suspect is mortar fire buffets the exterior of the building. Soldiers speaking languages I can’t comprehend chatter with volatile intensity over shrieks and screams from Americans in distress. Sharp differences in the volume of each of the noises enable me to guess the position of their sources outside – where people are dying, where the enemy soldiers are, where the Americans who may want to help me can be found, where the mortar is dropping. My accuracy is probably not great. But it’s something. It’s a start.

I open the door and push into a corner of the lobby before daring to look outside. When I do, I see about what I expected from this vantage point – barely anything at all.
The night sky is lit by stars and crummy parking lot halogens
. No soldiers, American or otherwise, are visible from here. I can’t see any of the mortar fire or any civilians. I can hear it all, gunfire and shit blowing up and breaking apart, but I can’t see any of it.

From what I can gather through the dust and debris floating above and around the cars and the blacktop like an alien cloud sucking away whatever clean air is left, the parking lot appears to be untouched. Rather fortuitously, my car is unharmed. I doubt I can get out of the parking lot without being shot at or cordoned in by the enemy. I think I hear trucks down the street… Before seeing them roll towards the intersection in front of the motel.

I listen to the war long enough to determine the rhythm of the action – what the highs and lows sound like – as I search for a pattern that might suggest the best time to break for my car.

To widen my perspective, I crack open the lobby door and peek outside. The Anti-American forces are across the street, near the newly arrived military vehicles but further down. Mortar shells are launched northeast of the motel while simultaneously covering a small advancing squadron is covered with machine gun fire. The Americans fan out behind and around the building – they’re being shot at and hit – as stray civilians recklessly try to abandon the combat zone. The distances and placements of the various entities are about what I expected based on the sounds. It amazes me that I got it right.

With the Americans clearly on the defensive, I anticipate more movement from the opposition – and sure enough five soldiers from the Anti-American forces jog across the parking lot. They are close. I can see their battle-scarred faces.

I wait. Based on the attack patterns, a break in the symphony of war should be coming right about now
.

It comes.

I run-

-
into
the cloud of debris and ash and I keep my head down and go
go
go
towards my Mazda, pounding the remote unlock button on my key chain so many times that the car may never lock again. I hear four or five different languages shout, and feet stomp, and a plane flies overhead. Gunfire comes at me. I swerve because I’ve read that that’s what you’re supposed to do if someone shoots at you, and I reach and grab the handle on my car door, popping it open as bullets sweep the truck in front of me. I get in my car and lock it as if that matters. I battle my quaking hands to get the key in the ignition and the engine started and there’s more gunfire. But my car starts and I back up and spin the wheel despite not being able to see anything through the post-destruction particles that have taken over the air. I think I remember the outlay of the parking lot. I’m thankful for that but unthankful for the onrushing foreign voices and the clattering of boots on the pavement. I can’t see. I really can’t. And the mortars and the machine guns and their residual impact on property and infrastructure are so loud, so much louder than they were two minutes ago, that I can’t think, and I’m pretty sure I run over at least one man while my car is lacerated by bullets. I drive with my head below the steering wheel since I can’t see anyway and I turn the car and I think I’m on the street and I wait to barrel into a tank or a Hummer or a helicopter or something that will put a stop to all of this but it doesn’t happen, not now, not yet. I flick the switch on my windshield wipers just as bullets demolish my back window and blow a gaping hole in my dashboard. The wipers tick upwards and some of the ash clears away in favor of blood and grey matter and flesh. I spray fluid on the window and turn the wipers up to high and most importantly I lift my eyes above the steering wheel. There is open road ahead, and it is the most precious thing I have ever seen. Waiting for more gunfire, I bury my foot into the gas pedal. I know it will come at some point, but it doesn’t come now and for the first time in a long time I smile and actually mean it.