listen
I will not listen, I have work to do. Who the hell dares use my head anyway? I never granted anyone permission to use my head! I barely get enough use from it! On a good day, it gets stumped half a dozen times by what people say or by what shows up for me to solve. That's on a good day. On a bad day, it might as well not be there. Anything and everything that turns up baffles it, starting with the alarm clock sounding, and only giving up when my PDA tells it to go to bed.
"Please listen! You're the only one who can hear me!"
It's a woman's voice. They must've known I'd be particularly susceptible to a woman's voice. My mother loved me, as far as I know. My little sister loved me, I'm pretty sure. Some women teachers liked me, I think, and nearly all of them smelled nice. One of them smelled wonderful but she told me I misunderstood.
"I know you can hear me. We had a conversation! Remember?"
No, I can't. I don't. I didn't. I wouldn't. They're lying to me again. I don't remember, I won't remember, I won't try. No.
They. I don't know when they started. Maybe in the fourth grade, with Mr. Grozen. He lied. He didn't mean to. He couldn't help it. There were things that were true that he couldn't believe, and things he believed that couldn't be true. He'd lost the difference, so he lied and thought he told the truth. But maybe he was the first I caught. Catching him, I paid attention and caught my father, although I think he lied because he thought his lies would make me better, and sometimes he hoped they'd make him look better. Mr. Hotchkiss, the principal lied, but he lied because he had to tell us what we were supposed to think even though he knew - surely he knew! - the world wasn't really like that. And they began for me. They. They own this world and I cannot escape them. They lie and people around me pretend - surely the people around me only pretend! - that they speak truth.
"Please stop talking over me. You are my hope, and I am yours."
Ah! See? I'm winning. If I keep talking to myself, keep making as much sense as I can, then I don't pay attention to her, to them. This may be the only place I'm winning. I have a job, and do it well, but I don't work well with others. Every year my boss tells me, as if repeating it would make it true. I do work well, and work well with the people around me. I don't talk with them, I don't lunch with them, I don't drink with them after work or on Saturdays, I don't picnic with them when the company does that. No. To do those I'd have to pretend to believe the lies. I could tell myself "only while you have to talk with others" but I fear it doesn't work that way. Pretending to believe is the first step into the mire. Truth melts away, just like solid ground. No. Once I start that, I can never get back. I will not. But I work fine with others so long as we work, it's all the other stuff I don't do well with others.
"Can you not hope? Can you not see the world need not spiral into worse?"
Hope. I hoped once. I hoped long. When I grew up, I would escape their power. When I became a soldier, I could fight back. When I had a job, I would not depend on them. All lies. My own lies, but lies. No. Only when I gave up hope could I face truth. Until then, I held truth in my left hand, close to my heart, and held hope in my right, as if it were a light, but there is only darkness.
"No! You lie to yourself again! Listen to me! Hope with me! Talk with me."
When I was little and my father talked and talked about how the world would be if it were how he wanted me to think it was, I learned to think over his talking. No, I told myself, one and one is two, then two and two are four, then four and four make eight. I ate a muffin this morning. No amount of talking will make it a watermelon. He drives a rattly old pickup and only wishes he owned a Corvette, and no word and no collection of words will ever make a rattly old pickup a Corvette.
"You're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong! Oh, in details, you're right, but when you jump to your conclusions, you go so wrong! Listen to me!"
I carried that lesson with me. We fought and we won, both were true. But we did not fight for liberty or peace. Not for us and not for the people who lived in the country where we fought. We drove off and may have murdered one group of raveners, but we put into power a different group, and we turned their country over to our corporations, some of our corporations. And we went on to fight other wars. War is not peace, and no amount of lying makes war peace, except to the liars and those who trust them.
"You may drive me to despair! What if I quit pleading? Will my world end? Will yours? Or will we merely lose this connection? Or have you lost it already?"
My managers declare things true. They announce that computers work when computers only work sometimes. They declaim that computers do the same thing given the same inputs, but computers don't. Computers sometimes crash, even though I do exactly what I did before, or the person next to me does exactly what he or she did before. Sometimes my managers declare something true that is so obviously false I have to say "But!" Then they explain that when they use such and such a word what they mean is nothing I have ever found in a dictionary, not for that word, and not for any other.
"See? Because you see through the web of lies, the smoke of make-believe, that is why I need you, why you need me. Listen!"
I don't know how they found their way into my head. I don't know how they made a woman's voice in my head. I don't know how they made her sound familiar. I'm sure if I listen, I will sink into the other lies, the lies in which consumers use up electrons the electric companies produce, in which we can always find more oil, in which laying people off is good for the economy, in which making people dependent gives those people freedom. It is a swamp, a quicksand. Accepting one lie only sinks the acceptor a little, but makes it easier for the acceptor to accept one more, which only sinks the acceptor a little deeper, and so on. Before long the acceptor must accept another just to keep breathing.
"Oh for pity's sake! Even if it is true, you are so maudlin! No wonder you hide away in this techie job in a non-techie company! Stop maundering! Listen!"
A techie job is a safe job. No matter what my manager says, I know when a PC works and when it fails. No matter what he tells other people, I can tell when the network works and when it disconnects one or more PCs. I know when to replace memory and when a PC needs a new motherboard, and it isn't blather; it's what's so. I know when to remove a router and put another in its place, and he can claim that nothing happened all he wants. I know.
"Yes. You're right. You can and you do. And you use that to hide. And to feel smug. Stop that! Listen to me. I offer you adventure where you don't know and nothing is safe, nor ever will be again."
When I was little, I loved adventure stories. Oh heck, much later than that, I loved adventure stories. I loved tales of wonder and stories of heroes in my teens. As a soldier, I hadn't time for them. When I wasn't killing and staying alive, I needed the drinking and gaming and the women. Oh, I needed the women! And then it was over and the women were gone. They brought us home and told us we had won peace.
Well, I've already talked about that. No use to repeat myself just because they do.
I tried stories again, but couldn't believe them. People don't fight that cleanly, or they die and often die horribly. The women I met in war weren't clean, didn't smell all that good, and they didn't love me. They made love with me, in one meaning of that phrase, except what we did was satisfy me and maybe her. I never knew about her, in too many ways, any of the hers.
"Listen to me then. Maybe some of us are different. Maybe you're different."
Maybe that's how they found me, got inside my head, came up with the voice of a woman, the familiar voice of a woman. Maybe they detected how badly I need one, want one, wish and hope for one. Ah no. That would mean in some way I'm important to them. Lie! None of us is important to them. We are slaves, tools, disposable as shell casings, once we've done our jobs. Count the homeless any time you want to know how important one of us is to them.
No. This isn't a to-me message. This is to any of us, all of us, disaffected and with such a need. Wait. Would that mean I am not alone? Are there others like me? Need I only find them? Lie! No! No others like me. Alone. People around me believe the lies, believe what they say, what they want us to think. I see no one else refusing to talk or drink or picnic with people around him or her.
But just because I do not see others like me doesn't mean others like me aren't there! I don't see electrons; I know electrons exist; I see what electrons do; I build circuits that shape what electrons will do. Electrons exist. Electrons are as true as numbers, as bridges, as walls and chairs.
"As I am. You need a different test for me. You don't expect me. You can't control what I say. Yet I hear you. I respond to what you say. And sometimes I don't respond to what you say. Sometimes your talking over me is just beside the point. Irrelevant. Oh please stop and hear me. Listen!"
There. I got through my workday. I did my job. I worked. I helped. I worked well with others no matter what that bastard says. But I didn't talk with others. I didn't pretend to believe what they tell us, what they want us to think. Now I can go home.
Gather my stuff. Touch no one else's. Walk slowly. Meet no eyes. Respond to no smiles, no jibes. Ride the elevator down. Hold the door until I can pass it on to another man. Asshole! You could have taken the door! Nevermind. If I start a fight now, I won't know when to stop. No sergeant will call me off before it's too late. Grit my teeth. Walk carefully to my motorcycle. Turn off the alarm. Unlock the motorcycle. Mount it. Back it out. Ride carefully. Hah! Thought you'd cut me off, did you? Wait your turn, creep. Stop that! Ignore car drivers. Shut up. No! Keep talking to myself! But shut up about car drivers. Watch the cars, evade the cars, but ignore the drivers. Car drivers aren't paying attention anyway, not to me and not to each other. Car drivers are listening to what they say, drinking in what they want us to say, to believe. Hah! Missed me, you jerk. Never even saw me, or so you'd say, but I dodged you and lived to say it. I won.
Home. Open a beer. Sit and sip and close my eyes. No! I'd listen! I won't listen! Sip the beer, yes! Play some Sibelius. Start supper. Wash. Oh wash and wash and wash! I wish I could wash out my ears, my brain!
Oops! Get back to the kitchen. Stir the onions. Turn down the potatoes and the succotash. Turn the steak. Oh, write down meat and milk. And butter. Maybe I'll go to the store tonight. Thank goodness stores stay open late now!
Okay, supper's ready. Sibelius is nearly finished. How about some Rachmaninoff? Yes! Good supper music.
"If you'd listen, I'd take you where your own actions moved you like Sibelius' and Rachmaninoff's music."
No! Leave me alone! Let me eat! If you talk, I'll play rock'n'roll. I'll play it loud. Nothing gets through loud rock'n'roll! Not thought, not feeling, and definitely not your voice.
Thank you. Mmm. Steak tastes so good. So does succotash when the blend is right and everything is still crisp. Potatoes are a little soggy; I'll have to boil them more carefully next time. But the tomato! And the beer. Bless the beer.
Oh damn. Rachmaninoff finished and I've finished supper. Okay. Do the dishes. Put them away. Tinker with building my new computer. Yes. Yes yes and yes. Can do this for hours and don't even have to talk over it. Bless electronics. As soothing as beer. There. All of that works. Doesn't it? Well, leave testing for tomorrow. Look at the time. Must sleep.
"Good. Maybe you'll listen while you sleep."
Not me! Think mathematical thoughts. The sum of the lengths of two sides of a triangle is greater than the length of the remaining side. Pi times the square of the radius gives the area of a circle. Wait. That's just the definition of pi disguised. The area of a parallelogram is the product of the length of one side and the perpendicular distance to the opposite side.
This is a dream. It's not even a good dream. I'm dreaming that I lie awake in my bed in my bedroom in my apartment. In a good dream I lie on nothing, or on a cloud, or on grass far, far from the city, from people, from them. In a good dream that recurs for me, I lie on grass and watch a stream. Sometimes the stream floods, sometimes it dries away to a trickle, sometimes a rock falls into it, and the stream cuts a new way around the rock, but no matter what happens, nothing there lies to me. Except that it's a dream. Sometimes I nearly weep to wake from that dream.
But this. My bed, my sheets, my bedroom. Damn. I need to straighten that painting. Maybe I can dream it straight? No? I knew this wasn't a good dream. Except her. What have I dreamed? The best parts of every woman who's let me close? No, she's better than that. Ouch!
"Stop staring at me. Or talk while you stare. Crimeney! You talked enough while I tried to get your attention! Now you just lie and look."
"You're not real. You're just a torment. Ouch! Don't pinch me!"
"So you felt it. I suppose that fits with torment. What if I tickle you? Would you dream a woman tickling you? What if I poke you, like that, and that? Am I still not real? Would you like another test? Hah! I bet you would! Not unless you talk!"
"What? What do you mean? Oh. If I talk, I might? Oh. I'll talk! I'll talk! What do you want me to say?"
"Nothing you'd know to say. Listen. You need me. You need anything like human contact! How dare you shut yourself off so much that no one can reach you, not even inside your head! What a jerk! But I need you too. I need you to come with me. I need your soldier skills, and your skills at seeing past lies. But I need you to communicate! With me. With other people who might see past the lies if someone told them the truth, any truth. What can you lose? Look around you! You live in a dump! You listen to dead composers and how electronics work! You have no woman and crave one. This is stupid! It's cowardly! You were no coward in your war!"
"Cowards don't live in a war."
"Or anywhere else! They cringe away from people, from action, from the morass of lies that surround them. No! You must engage! Even if you wear yourself out fighting the cobwebs of lies, you may die having cleared a little space!"
"Bah! You just want me to hope again. Hope I can make a difference, hope anything can make a difference. Wake up! The party was going when we got here and will continue when we leave. It runs on its own rules, and they make the rules just like they make the lies that other people see as reality."
"Then what have you to lose? Mathematics? Electronics? Hmph. Those were here before you arrived and will outlast you too. No, cling to them if you must. They provide truths. But don't cling only to them. Wait. Let me show you. There. Wouldn't you enjoy clinging to me more?"
"Damn! Put your clothes back on! Put on a robe! No fair! Of course I'd enjoy clinging to you more! But if I do anything, you'll slap me down and call the cops!"
"And say what? 'I was standing naked in his bedroom, arms spread, legs spread, and he touched me!' Would that make sense?"
"You wouldn't say that. You'd say something else. You're just trying to trick me."
"I am. I'm trying to trick you into living. You're a zombie. You're dead already even though you ride that beautiful motorcycle, even though you put together those wonderful electronic devices, even though you get them to talk to each other or at least let their users talk to each other through them."
"Yeah, but the users just repeat what the users already say to people around them, lies, lies they want us to believe."
"How do you know? You've so cut yourself off, you don't share any experiences with people any more, users or not. You don't even talk to other techies!"
"You're not telling me anything I don't know."
"But I'm telling it to you passionately! When was the last time you felt any passion? About anything? Can you even work up any passion about having me? Or are you already remembering it as a biomechanical exercise? Thinking you can do the same with me if only I'll let you?"
"I feel passion!"
"Yeah? About what? Show me."
"Huh? Show passion? Just like that? Pluck it out of a box like a magician's scarf?"
"No, silly. Pluck it out of your heart. Yes, just like that! Snap!"
"What are you talking about? I can't just invent passion! Passion comes to you or it doesn't! It's not something you have any control over!"
"Nonsense. Worse, sad nonsense. What are you going to do? Walk around, sit around, waiting for passion to fall on you? What crap! If you don't invent it, you'll never know it! What a sad and useless life!"
"You're crazy! I'm useful. People use the computers I build. People use the computers I repair. People use the network I keep working. They get things done with them, and they couldn't if I weren't useful."
"Do they thank you?"
"What? Of course not! People don't thank you for being useful! People thank you for saying what people want to hear!"
"Say something I want to hear. See if I thank you. Maybe you'd like my thanking you."
"Why? You're not real. I'd just be pleasing myself. Ouch! Stop it! Don't pinch me! Don't tickle me either! Stop! Okay! Okay! You're real! You're real!"
"Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Put those thoughts away! Yes, I'm real, and naked, and in your bedroom, but don't get grabby! Not because I'll call the police, because I'll make you sorrier than you were before you saw me! And that was pretty sorry!"
"Okay! Okay! I couldn't help it. Okay, I might've helped it but I didn't want to. I do now. So what do you want me to say?"
"What? Nothing! Clearly I'm wasting my time with you. Nevermind. Go back to sleep, go back to your endless self-justification, go back to your living death."
"Wait! Please! Don't leave. Don't abandon me. Please. Maybe I can be worthwhile. Passionate. Alive. I already care that you not leave! That's a start!"
"Bah! You just know this is your last chance."
"Okay. I didn't. But I do. It makes sense. Listen, I haven't talked to a woman since my war. I mean I have but those conversations have always ended in disaster. I don't want this one to. Please. Help me please you. In so far as I can, I promise to make it worth your while."
"Now there's a promise I wouldn't bet money on. Why would I bet my time? And maybe my body and my life?"
"What?"
"C'mon. What are you putting up for stakes? What makes this promise one you'll keep? What do you bet that you can't recover?"
She's crazy. I shouldn't listen. I shouldn't look. Crimeney! How can I not look? And if I look, I listen. And she won't wait long. Her interest is already fading, I see that in her eyes. Gulp. "My heart, my life, they're what I have."
"Your heart. Well, maybe. It's such a shriveledy little thing! Fresh prunes have more juice. And your life? What would you care if you lost it? You hide in this apartment and tinker with electronics. 'To learn!' you tell yourself, but to hide, I say. No. Your heart and your life would be like betting last month's rent, they're already spent."
"My rent then, hell, my whole paycheck. It'll be here next Friday. Or Saturday."
"I'll be gone by then."
"You could wait."
"Ha ha ha ha ha! Live three days with you so you'd have something to bet? C'mon. When was the last time you had a relationship last three days after she moved in with you? Ever? What would keep me here then?"
"Dammit, what's left?"
"Up to you. This offer's closing soon."
"Wait! You said you need my soldier skills. I've still got them. They're a little rusty, but I can get them up to speed. I work out. I still do my calisthenics. Really! Please don't close the offer!"
"Why? Or rather why not? What would I gain? What would you gain?"
"Gain? Uh. Well, you'd gain my soldier skills, my ability to see past lies. You said that. Oh! And you could teach me to express my passion. You'd have a willing student. Avid! Really! I have passion. I must! We could discover it! Bring it to life, to flame. I promise!"
"Well, it's a thought. It might even make a plum again of your shriveledy little heart. No, you're close, but you're not there yet and you're running out of time. Maybe you weren't the man for me after all. Maybe I only thought so because you did hear me, you even had that conversation with me."
"I did? I thought that was a dream!"
"I could hate myself for this, but I'm going to give you a clue. You're closer than ever. What will you bet?"
"A dream? No, that couldn't be it. I've already had that, or in your words, it's already spent. A dream. What can you mean? Wait! My dreams? My dreams! You want me to bet my dreams?"
"Closer and closer! Now you need to know, you'll die without your dreams. But there's something even dearer, and yet you barely listen to it any longer, not just your dreams, but like them, except in some sense realer. And not your wishes and hopes either, don't lose this by sidetracking that way."
"Realer than dreams? That makes no sense! Dreams have no reality. Well, wait, I am talking to you and we only communicated in dreams and thoughts before. Thoughts? That can't be it! I really would be dead without my thoughts. But my thoughts aren't real at all. They're less real than my dreams! Gone almost as I think them."
"Oh nonsense! You maunder around in your thoughts over and over again. If you were a pig, your thoughts would be your wallow! But no, you're getting colder. Dammit, one more hint then I give up. Why do you stay at your job? Why do you try to make friends now and then? Why are you pleading with me?"
"Dammit, I have never played games like this well."
"This is no game. It's your life."
"It's not my life. It's a chance at a life. Chance? Is that what you mean? Chance? Possibility? Opportunity? You're asking me to bet my last chance, my possibilities? Any opportunity I have?"
"Your choice. Wait! No take-backs. You bet, you come with me. You enter into a war from which there is no escape. You'll probably die, but you're going to die anyway. If you make this bet, though, you may die horribly. Worse, you may die slowly, while someone picks you apart, looking for the you in you. On the other hand, you undertake both subversion and revolution. First we have to recruit an army and win support for it, support from people who have resigned, who have so given up that they think they have what is done to them by choice, by their own choice. They think they are free."
"Huh? But that's like people around me."
"More so than you can imagine."
"And if we win?"
"Ah. Win. Not much chance of that. Worse, if we win, we'll probably - almost certainly - find we've become the new they, or part of it. But maybe, just maybe, people will this time seize freedom and hold it with a passion. It could happen. It might. With enough revolutions, once it might. It might."
"I'm in."
"What? That was too easy. You're expecting me to drop into your bed and reward you first, right? It doesn't work that way."
"No, really, I'm in! This is the alivest I've felt since my war, maybe since I first discovered they lied to me and to everyone. A chance to hit back? You bet! A chance to have other people see past the lies? Damn betcha! A chance for people, maybe even us, to live without the lies? Oh man! Yes, I'll subvert, I'll recruit, I'll convince, whatever it takes! And if you ever discourage, lose heart, I'll bring you back, hell, I'll give you mine if that's what it takes."
"You won't have it to give. That's your entry, giving your heart to me."
Gulp. "Okay! Done! It's yours. If you lose heart, then I'll find or make one for you. Whatever it takes. I said that before."
Silence. Wasn't that enough? What does she want now?
"C'm'ere you silly, courageous, mad galoot. I accept your heart. I can at least kiss you now. Then we have to go.
Oh. Oh. Oh. This is kissing? I never knew kissing! Oh! This is worthwhile!
"Wow! Gosh! Thank you!"
"You're so adorably innocent for such a cynic! C'mon. Time to go."
"What is that? What are you doing?"
"This is a hole. It looks like a hole in your wall, but it's a hole in your mind. Take my hand, let's go."
Gulp. I knew I shouldn't have listened. Listen and what happens? She opens a hole in my mind. My mind! Step through? This is crazier than Alice! Oh. But that kiss! And maybe another like it? And another after that? Sigh. No take-backs she said. Grab her hand quick.
"Let's."
Wyatt Underwood © 2024
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