19
There, on the highway, with the sun in my eyes, going from Rockaway to the Clear Lake, between worlds, looking at the drivers of the other vehicles, I feel a huge disconnect.
Strangers, bound by speed, separated by steel and glass, sharing the same road.
I knew I was on time. I knew the exact minute I would punch in, because, between worlds, the sun is always in my eyes.
I take the exit, the bridge ramp that shoulders the lake.
Sensing my days are numbered at work, I wonder if I’ll quit, or be fired, or get killed.
I walk inside the trailer office and Bob, the site manager, is standing there with a stack of printed emails in his hand. Fan mail. He says people have been watching me on the construction site cameras. The email is from all around the world.
Some people are sending in requests for me to act out on the live video feed, many of them wanting to see me dance alone again. Other people want to show their appreciation for what they are hailing as a new form of entertainment, calling it augmented reality, the interlacing of the virtual with the real. I get through half of the emails when I come across a naked photo of a girl flashing her breasts. At that point, I’m honored by the attention. I quit reading the rest of the email.
The construction site is just bustling with heavy duty machines, all digging and lifting and removing and dumping. Then it’s dead. The workers are gone and the place is dead.
Saturday night turns into Sunday afternoon, turns into Monday evening, turns into Friday morning and another weekend, which then turns into a total of a year without a break from the Clear Lake.
So here I am, sitting on site, motionless in my monster truck, monitoring the main road, under a night sky that is predictably dark, but filled with bats. I look to the sky for a long time. I can’t find the moon tonight, but I examine the stars and for one very foolish moment I guess they are government run satellite cameras with high tech zoom.
It’s late, so I call Norman Long on his voice mail and I leave this message: “This is a recording for the government to intercept. Kill, kill. kill the president. Take a bazooka to the capital, and shoot, shoot, shoot the White House.”
Watching the headlights of cars that come to enter, I judge the pace of the car. If they use their blinkers or drive at a slow crawling pace, then I know they’re intruders. I pursue those people. If they drive fast and wildly around the bend, still in highway mode, then I know it’s the neighbors, accustomed to the area. Rarely does the security guard ever come in contact with the neighbors. The neighbors push the button on their garage door openers, pull inside, then the door slides down behind them, like the condo’s a snug little beehive.
So I sit here in the dark. I adjust the truck seat to recline.
I look over at the empty condo, at the side wall covering, what the workers call a sheath. The sheath is meant to protect the wood from the rain and snow, before the vinyl siding goes up. Advertising is on the sheath. But I notice tonight where it usually says, “Place Your Business Logo Here,” it now says, “Enter The Virtuplex Here.”
A violent chill runs the full course of my body.
Everything feels strange. Like I’m trapped inside an arcade. And that arcade is on fire. Or maybe trapped inside a casino, with ringing slot machines, but nobody around to play them. There are no clocks in this empty casino, so I feel lost to time, feeling the sensation of an eternal burn.
I look at the newly completed condos, instead. I see that the lights are on but the shades are drawn. No visible movement. I pull out my binoculars to magnify my search of the second floor. I see the steady glow of computer screens, with bodies sitting slouched before them, motionless.
By now, I have memorized what time each neighbor comes home. Every vehicle, I know the owner. Every mailbox has a name and I know when it will be checked. I watch neighbors take out the trash, and I note the precise minute. When it comes to detail, observing and recording, my peripheral vision is on point. Damn, my eyeballs are good.
Being here night after monthly night, I notice any disturbance in detail, with minimal effort, it’s so obvious to the trained eye. So familiar am I with the area, objects take on the most fragile feature, when moved or rearranged. I know the placement of every pipe, ladder, paint bucket, power drill, rope pulley, drywall stack, carpet roll, wooden saw horse, while practically keeping count of every nail and every shingle.
Quite possibly, someone else has been given a set of keys with permission to pass through, but I reject any suspicion. By now, my attachment to the job is so internalized, to think someone would violate, use and abuse, something I’m paid to protect, that would classify me a disgrace. I fight against the idea that my job is void of significance. I have to deny what my own senses are relaying back to my brain. I determine that anything I overlook, the cameras will certainly catch and record, leaving me less than liable.
The phone rings, which jostles me into an upright position. I’m not prepared to hear another human voice. I think I might reject the call. It keeps on ringing. I practice saying the word hello. The word sounds like a sad drone. My voice cracks and sounds foreign to my ears. Even though the ringing won’t stop, I refuse to answer.
I hear a weird buzzing in my ear, then some crackling static, like an internal radio broadcast between FBI agents about to make a raid. A voice charges up to say, “We have movement! We have movement!”
Then some more buzzing comes, but this time as the swarming sound of mechanical insects, tiny nano-scale dragonflies, rubbing thin metal legs, looking upon me with their compound-eye cameras. I can’t allow these nano-bugs to enter my bloodstream because they’ll clip my heart strings.
The all-purpose security guard, I sit still and I wait. The cameras want action, but the star of this show stays in the dressing room, sleeping.
I think of singing along to my movie soundtrack, then decide against it when I realize that no film would ever include moments like this. The silence. The solitude. The loneliness. And especially the boredom. It would never entertain anyone. The cameras around the construction site have gone straight to my head, skewed my perspective, tweaked my antenna.
I have to endure how very boring the boredom is. I have to sustain how very silent the silence is. I’m in no mood to entertain the cameras. Instead I go into monster truck seclusion, hiding from the visual pressures of supply and demand, a version of eye candy.
Carl Busby, my mentor, made the claim that technology and society were advancing too fast, beyond human control, and I want so badly to prove him wrong, sitting here on a slow night, not daring to move. But I get hungry and I think of fast food. I get horny, think of fast women. At the end of the road, through some low hedges, I can see the trail of car lights, red and white, zipping by on highway that was built long before I was born.
When I finally take a walk down New Farm Road, to the paved section, I turn my flashlight on for no other reason but to feel important. I get the distinct feeling that the camera on the street lamp is rotating in my direction. Stepping up and around the lake front, I make an exhibition of myself. I march proudly past the street lamps, like I’m part of a unique parade or special procession. I picture people on the flanks, cheering me on one side, booing me on the other, and I wave, raising my hand like a dictator, to them both. At the end of the road, I imagine a robot army has assembled for my podium speech. I announce my earthly arrival, command them to, “Rise! Rise up!”
Then, standing at the front entrance, I perform sign language for the entire alphabet, letter by letter. I kick a soda can several times and pretended to enjoy it thoroughly. I do jumping jacks. I start hugging trees. For one half hour, I whip rocks at the portable toilets, until my arm feels ready to fall from the socket. Prancing around, I throw uppercuts and stick jabs, shadow-boxing, round after round. I lay down in a big pile of leaves and begin to quiver like a fish. Then I run out of ideas, so, climbing back into my monster truck, I sit still.
Sitting still for a very long time, I continue to sit. My legs fell asleep, then my buttocks begin to tingle. There happens to be an itch on my back, but I don’t scratch it. I decide to go over to the surface of the lake, to watch for my reflection, but I fear that it won’t be there.
The stillness and the silence, that’s all I have to contend with. I can feel the eyes on me, like I’m under some kind of invisible pressure to perform. This stilted behavior goes on for two weeks straight during which time I receive false hellos and uneasy smiles from the people working in Building Base One. I only go there to drop off the security sheets, pick up my check, but all the managers, even the secretaries, can tell I consider them suspect. On every downtown visit I look up at those two white satellite dishes on top of Building Base One, wondering what images they might obtain.
I pull the remote control box out from under my seat, the one I stole from my boss.
The Eden Absolute 925
It’s a black box, with hundreds of small buttons, very super sleek. I open the side panel to see if it’s battery operated. Instead, I see two glass tubes that contain a glowing neon liquid.
I don’t know how to turn it on, so, with my palm flat, I press my hand across the entire face of the gadget. The screen lights up.
At first I think it’s just an all-in-one electronic device, good for watching movies, hearing music, maybe even making phone calls. But I learn just by scrolling the options, this is a far more advanced machine. I’m able to retrieve information in such a way, it seems to tap into an almost all-knowing database. I can give The Eden Absolute my lifelong questions, so I ask if there is a God in existence. A voice comes back to me, saying, “There is no God, when God is all things.” So I ask where I am, and it tells me: "You are in the Virtuplex, a computer generated community, created by Pixel Perfect 3000.” Another option is, I can locate any person anywhere on the globe, so I choose the body chemistry for Charlie Moon and his walking gait, providing his name and birth date, allowing for the satellites to track his heat sign, his brain wave frequency. He’s in Brooklyn, having a slice of pizza that he paid for with his credit card, talking about touring his new album. The satellites actually let me listen to his heart beat.
But somehow I make a mistake. I press the wrong button, because the world around me becomes increasingly insane. I’m not in my truck anymore. I’m soon confronted by a huge mechanical monster. The backhoe digger has transformed itself into life. My disbelieving eyes see it now as a huge dinosaur. Maybe I’m having visual hallucinations. Maybe this giant beast is nothing more than one of the machines the workers left behind for me to combat. When I see the futuristic megabeast, I think of running in the opposite direction to save my life. But then again, the flashlight in my right hand has just gained significant weight. My flashlight changes into a battle sword, long and silver, pulsating with an electrically charged tip.
The enormous legs of the T-Rex Machine are stomping towards me, shaking the ground. For one dramatic moment, the megabeast sways its long neck from side to side, letting out a terrific roar. I remember feeling a shift in my courage. Something tugs comically at my heart. I’m about to slay this epic creature and nobody will know about it for miles—nobody will know how brave I’ve been for standing under those monster bucket teeth.
As it lowers its head to jaw snatch me, I plunge the sword into its breast plate. Only I see it totter on two legs. Only I hear the collapse of thunderous metal.
I kill it. I claim the victory, however heroic.
But I suddenly realize this is no time to celebrate.
There’s something rising out of the Clear Lake.
I look over to see it glowing, under the water. It glows, under the surface, until it finally it starts to emerge. Gradually, three oblong spacecrafts lift up. They reach a point in the sky, then slowly hover above the condos.
The lights that ring around the spaceship windows remind me of the same neon liquid that powers The Eden Absolute. I press another button on the remote control box, and when I do, the three hovering spacecraft shoot down fireballs onto the condos, releasing flaming projectiles, torching the new homes. None of the neighbors, I fear, will escape alive.
I’m frightened out of my wits. Enough of this place, I think. I decide that I’m done. No longer will I work here. I’ll quit. I wait until the rusty morning light, then I quit. So, grabbing my sword, I run. I run for the exit. I run for the highway.
Some of the cars and trucks pull over to the side. Many remain traffic jam stuck. The young man in uniform, I bolt up the middle lane, running right up the yellow divider strip. I stop, only to plunge the sword into the front tire of a school bus. Then I climb the hood of a car to mount the roof. Raising the sword to the sky, I welcome the news helicopter. When I hear the police sirens approaching from all angles, I jump down and run for the toll booth. I slice off random car antennas as I go.
Officer Boykins, the first to arrive to the scene, is soon faced with my unruly behavior. I wave the sword around my head, point it at him, like a scorpion tail. The cop draws his gun. Our eyes meet, lock on. There is some negotiation over the value of my life, which ends with me dropping my weapon. I’m instructed to place my hands on my head, then to walk backwards into the awaiting handcuffs. I’m identified as Mike Miller. But when pressed for further information, I won’t speak. Officer Boykins spares no force when throwing me into the back of the cruiser.
I just sit there trying hard to listen through the closed window glass. I hear them call for an ambulance once the police chief decides a psych evaluation should determine my mental status. Another cop says he can smell a gas leak further down the highway. By the time they all spot the smoke and the forty foot flames that rise above the distant tree-line, an explosion shutters the area. It comes from the new condo development by the lake. I sit forward, mouth agape.
A collection of small white porcelain elephants from one condo now rains down from the sky. They pelt the cruiser.