Reversion--Part III

 The visual of his ashen housemate disturbed Josh somewhat.  He looked at Simon.  “What hap—”  He was shocked by the weakness of his voice.  His lips had difficulty forming the words, and his throat refused to push them out without some struggle.  The words left his mouth in a raspy, hollow tone: “What happened to him?  Is he all right?”

Simon’s eyes met Josh’s for only a moment.  “Josh, hey man! What’s up?” He then watched the screen attentively, and his fingers mashed the buttons of the controller.  “God, man!  I’m never getting into the next room!”

Josh coughed hoarsely a couple of times and held his chest, unaccustomed to speaking.  “Simon,” he said a bit louder, “what happened to him?”

Simon glanced over at his prone housemate and shrugged.  “The man said he was tired.  He’s asleep.”

Josh walked closer to the couch and studied the chunky young man.  “Are you sure?  He doesn’t look well.”

Simon groaned.  “Dude, can we talk about this in like twenty minutes?  I’ve been working on this building for the past two hours.  I don’t know how much longer I can tolerate it.  There are like five enemies with katanas in this room.  I don’t know why they have swords, but I can’t aim my pistol fast enough.  If I kill these guys, there’s a God.”

Josh leaned against the couch, feeling dizzy from the long journey from the hut to his living room, and from speaking.  He decided to sit on the edge of the couch and take a short rest.  On the screen, Simon’s character pulled a black pistol from a holster on his right hip and crept to a wooden door.  He was provided with the options of either breaking the door down or opening it regularly, and Simon chose the latter.  The door pivoted open, and the character tip-toed into the next room.  From nowhere there came an enraged shout, and a blade swung out from the shadows.  The screen shook and pulsed with a red color of pain, and Simon cursed.  Out from a small case on his side came a long dagger, which he wielded in his left hand and used to block the next blow.  The gun bucked as his finger pulled the trigger, and the enemy’s knees failed to support him once the bullet entered his chest.  And so followed four more enemies.  Soon all but Simon’s character were lying in a pool of blood.  The game auto-saved, and Simon moved across the room.  There were two doors.

“God, I hate when they do this,” Simon complained.  “One of these is going to be wrong, I know it.”

He chose the left door, and immediately a young man appeared with a dagger.  The game transitioned to a cutscene.  Simon’s character raised his gun for the kill, but then stopped.

“Andy?” he said, clearly astonished.

“Oh, thank goodness, it’s you,” Andy replied, lowering his dagger and embracing Simon’s character.  “Simon, I thought you were dead.”

“Only ninety-five percent dead,” the protagonist replied.  “I’m just alive enough to get us out of here.  As I can see you’ve noticed, this place is dangerous.  We need to leave.  Now.”

“But shouldn’t we talk first?  How did you get here?”

Simon’s character shook his head.  “It’s not important enough to be talked about right now.  Come on, let’s go.”

At that moment, a door down the hall burst open, and a built man in a black trench coat revealed himself, wielding a pistol in either hand.  He looked at Simon and Andy with a fierce grin.  “You two have caused far too much trouble by getting involved with me.  I have given you many chances to stop following me, but there is no stopping it.  All that there is left to do is kill you.”

Andy cowered, throwing his arms before himself like a shield.  “But we haven’t done anything!  We don’t even know you!”

“Oh yes,” said the man, “you know me quite well.  You know me better than anyone.  You know me so well, that death is now the only option.”

“But why?” shrieked Andy.  “Why?  What have we done?  Who are you?”

The enemy chuckled.  “My name is Rob Mode, and it is time to show you what happens when you follow me so closely.”

He pulled the triggers on both guns, and Simon’s character and Andy fell to the ground instantly, killed by bullets to the heart.  Simon cursed again and bashed the controller against a small table at the foot of his couch.  “I knew it!” he yelled.  “Ugh! Dude, I’m sick of this game.  You know how much time I put into this Mercenary file?  Thirteen hundred hours.  I’m a boss at this game, and this always happens!”

“That sucks, Simon,” Josh responded quietly.

“I’m telling you, man.  This is my sixth character on here, and I can’t get any farther than this.  I’m lucky I’ve even gotten this far.”  He grunted.  “I’m getting bored with the Mercenary, anyway.  I’ve meant to do the Civilian for a while.”

Josh nodded and rose to his feet.  He looked down at the hospital gown again and shuddered.  “Simon, I need to ask you something.  Why was I in the medical hut in the backyard?”

Simon’s eyes were glazed, one with the projected screen.  “Do I want a ponytail or cropped hair?  What are you talking about, Josh?  Medical hut?  You feeling ok?”

“No,” said Josh, “but I’ll be fine.”  He gazed around the room.  “Well, I’m going in my room.”

“Fine, Josh,” Simon replied in sarcastic jealousy.  “You don’t have any time for your friends anymore, do you?”

Josh huffed something close to a laugh and left the couch.  As he ascended the stairs, he thought about Simon.  This was the same Simon that he once knew, but for some reason, the personality disagreed with him.  The small chunks of memory he could conjure of him with Simon seemed to include genuine portrayals of friendship.  He remembered laughing and playing video games together.  But if this was the true Simon, and had been during their years of “friendship,” then perhaps they had never really shared a bond as closely as he had thought.  For in his housemate there was something impenetrable.  There was—how could he grasp it?—a sort of artificiality coming from Simon.  Like a wall separated anyone from establishing a meaningful relationship with him.  He instantly received the vibe that nothing of seriousness could be discussed with his friend, though he could not completely understand why.  Was it the video games?  Was it simply a hyperactivity disorder?  Or was it a blend of both?  The thought injured his still adjusting mind, and so he cast his ideas aside when he reached the summit of the stairs and came to the door of his room.

His first thought was that, from the memories he could glean from the hidden storehouse of his mind, the room appeared precisely the way he had left it.  Then there overcame him an otherworldly sensation, as if he were a foreigner in an area where he had spent much of his time.  The images before him were indeed familiar to him, and yet presently detached from him; and in no way could he understand this but by comparing it to a former drunk who suddenly stumbles upon a can of liquor, only to find that within him there is no urge for the consumption of the toxin inside.  For before him, draped proudly across the walls, were posters emblazoned with characters from sundry brands of media: movies, video games, and short clips from the Internet; and these characters, once core figures of his manmade religion, held no sway over him.  He did not desire them, but part of him desired that he might desire them, for in this condition he could rediscover normalcy.  However, there were far too many questions swarming about in his confused mind, and the human mind hungers for answers to all that is concealed.

All that remained in his room were his bed, a double mattress mottled with untidy blankets and a sock or two; his desk, topped by a handful of notebooks and a black projector smaller but very similar in appearance to that which was downstairs; a bookcase beside his bed, filled with science fiction novels (many of which he realized that he had never read); a closet with mirrors for doors; clothes cast carelessly across the floor, accentuating his apparent past uncleanliness; and a window, one of which he had seen from the backyard.  His bed was a large construct, not only a mattress but bearing an imposing shelf at its head; on this shelf were numerous gadgets, batteries for those of yore, and his wallet.  He sat on the edge of his bed and sighed at the comfort it provided.  He was out of breath after clambering up the stairs, and he might have crashed and slept for days had he no fear that he would awake in a place harnessing no beauty, and only darkness.  So he rested his head against an overly thick and feathery pillow, and he reached onto the shelf for his wallet.  There were no bills inside, and no cards but his driver’s license and credit card.  He studied the picture on his driver’s license, and then stared at the mirror.  The difference in skin tone really was drastic.  He marveled that he was still alive, though he desired to soon discover the reason that he might not be alive.  He would not find the answer by asking Simon.

After a few moments of rest, Josh returned his wallet to its position and strode to his desk.  He lifted the black projector from the glossy surface and remembered that it was a personal projector.  On one side of it was a clip one could use to fasten the device on the edge of his pants.  The device, revolutionary for even its time, would intelligently sense where it was located on a person’s body, and attempt to project before the viewer’s eyes at the press of a button.  Josh pressed the black button on the back, and the circular glass flickered for a moment before spewing out a golden light.  Floating ghostlike in front of him was a menu beneath the following words:

EL

Electronic Life©

Live Electronically®

The menu consisted of various facets a person might utilize in his life, and each facet was enclosed in its own square with rounded edges.  The first potential selection was Computer, and under the word were various operating systems to choose from.  On the right of this block was Phone, and then Video Games, and the final block was Religion (Listen to today’s hottest speakers!), with the user’s selection of desired denomination.  Josh touched the immaterial Phone block, and an Address Book opened up.  The only name on the list was “Mom.”  He sighed heavily and returned to his bed, the bright screen remaining before his face.  Into his hands he thrust his head as tears rushed to his eyes and the memories—formerly inconsistent and ambiguous—barraged his consciousness.  His mother had implored him to avoid the lifestyle that he had planned, for according to her it would only lead to downfall.  But in his mind there had been nothing immoral or abnormal about his choice; in fact, he recalled that he had deemed his parents insane because of their decision of lifestyle.  Their discussion was severed for a time from Josh’s memory, but the waves of agony crashing across his mother’s face—now extremely palpable—caused him now to wonder how he had found the wicked strength to bury his conscience and disregard her pleas.  He needed to find her.

Reversion--Part II

The second part of my science fiction short story unfolds here.  Josh moves from the backyard to his house, and begins to receive more vivid memories of his past.  This is where things begin to get creepy for our newly awakened protagonist.

 

Josh refused to turn his eyes to the sun, but his eyes adjusted fully and he could perceive it on the border of his vision.  Its warmth soaked into his skin, and he felt grateful for the strength he had mustered in leaving the dark tomb.  He looked to the right, across the glistening grass and bland concrete, and saw the back of his house.  It was a two-storied house, shaded grey, and unmarked save for two windows somewhat below the brown, brick roof and a sliding glass door beside a fingerprint scanner.  On the concrete near the grass sat a small handful of uncushioned lounge chairs and a table, four chairs tucked securely beneath the latter.  Josh, feeling suddenly invigorated by this small taste of nature, walked more calmly and manageably toward the sliding glass door, for while the outdoors alleviated him, he faintly remembered living with someone.  No, there were two housemates, two male friends of his age.  But what was his age?  Thirty, if his memory was accurate.  He had no way of gauging this accuracy without speaking to someone.

As he approached the door, he leapt at the sight of his ghostly reflection in the glass.  Dark brown hair fell messily across his scalp like scattered reeds, about as unkempt as the grass of his yard.  It partially covered his eyes like a wispy curtain, yet his irises—golden-brown orbs that pierced him even through the poor reflection—burned brightly from beneath.   A short and frazzled beard filled much of his face, and this feature surprised him, for he could hardly recall having the ability to grow much hair.  Furthermore, he could recollect a dark skin tone, but what he now viewed could be branded as a vague tan; he was near in hue to the skin of a white man.  Possibly the most terrifying aspect of this visual, however, was the hospital gown donned about him.  He had noticed it from the corner of his eye earlier, but it had not registered as something to fear.  It fell over his gaunt shoulders and hung like a dress past his knees.  What had forced him into that cold bed, beside the chanting EKG monitor?  What malady had sequestered him to the gloomy hut, prepared for the treatment of the sick?  What illness begged the use of this foul gown?  He felt his back between the opening in his dress.  This was wonderful.  Luckily, his likely pale backside was concealed from view by the mountain of a fence bordering the yard.

Although the fingerprint scanner seemed ethereal to him (for he felt that a great span of time had separated him from his last encounter with one), a natural inclination urged his thumb against the unit on the wall.  He waited for a moment, peering into the glass door, and the scanner chimed a jubilant ring of acceptance, a din that broke the silence and caused him to blanch.  “Josh Eya,” a highly seductive female voice announced from the unit.  “Welcome home, big boy.”  The door then slid open mechanically and ponderously, permitting him passage.  He entered guardedly, feeling as if he were stepping out of a net of safety and onto a dark, foreign planet.

As he planted his feet onto a glossy and dim wooden floor, the door shut behind him with little sound.  His vision was still illumined by the blinding glow of the sun, and nothing but walls strewn with unclear photos were visible to him initially; then the darkness of the house shoved the light from his eyes, and he found himself in a familiar hall.  Bronze-colored walls loomed on either side of him, decked with three pictures and otherwise blank.  He walked to one picture on his right and noticed a smiling family of four standing on two tiers of bleachers; on the lowest tier were a boy and a girl, and on the tier above them were a man and a woman, their hands on the shoulders of the children below them.  Josh observed the boy closely.  It was one of his housemates, now a young man by the name of Simon; this picture of him and his family was taken when he was in his early teens.  Josh moved to a more recent photo quite near the first, and noted the face of his second housemate, a relatively plump but lively man.  He was sitting on what appeared to be the front porch of this house, his arm around a blond, attractive girl who sat beside him.  The final picture, on his left, was of Josh himself, clean-shaven and in daily attire, holding a certificate that read “#1 Gamer: The Fall of Rome©.”

The name of that game sparked a flood of random images in his mind.  Again his mother’s face appeared before him, seeming more furious than before.  He recalled making a significant life decision and notifying his parents, but only the wrath and tears of his mother stood out.  He remembered thinking that resisting the desire of his mother was the most difficult thing that he ever had to do.  There is something about a mother’s heartfelt pain for her son’s missteps that, when revealed to her son, almost irresistibly leads him down the path of repentance and conformity to her idea of purity.  He felt that decades had passed since the day of her outrage at his decision, whatever that decision was.  He received an image of sitting on a stool in his own cubicle in a broad building, a game controller held in his hands, and a monitor on a desk before him.  Other gamers were walled off from him, each in their own cubicles, and there was no interaction amongst the perhaps one hundred men and women.  Each person was immersed in his own world, and although he battled against other gamers in an attempt to attain the highest rank, their relationship was nothing more than this; they were in that building purely to prove that they alone reigned in The Fall of Rome©.

Josh began to stride down the hallway, toward the living room.  He momentarily noted some stairs to his right, before the end of the hall, and recalled that his room lay upstairs.  The large space opened before him, floored with the same wood as that of the hall.  Far ahead of him, on the other end of the room, the front door of the house stood between a solitary tiled counter littered with papers on its right, and a wall festooned with a small mirror on its left.  To the right of the counter was a plain, large window that looked out into the unpopulated street.  Across the center of the room was spread an expansive carpet, woven with black and brown intricate designs.  Centered at the bottom of the large wall to his right was a black projector, a small tube with stands that held it at the desired angle; from a single circular glass in this tube a light shone forth, projecting into the air a highly realistic picture, similar but superior to some of the old-fashioned television sets.  Josh realized that Simon was sitting on the left side of a couch on the dark carpet, holding a game controller, his eyes wholly focused on the immaterial screen. On the right side of the couch, on the floor, his other housemate was prone and quite pale.

Reversion--Part I

"Reversion" is a short story I wrote in my Science Fiction class early on in my time at William Jessup University.  It is my first attempt at the genre, but I found that I was quite fond of the plot and parallels with out present world.  It is a long story, so I anticipate it spanning the next six weeks or so.  Sit back, break out the potato chips/popcorn/chocolate/anything that makes you feel restful and is not illegal, and enjoy the tale!

 

Reversion

“Of late years wealth has made us greedy, and self-indulgence has brought us, through every form of sensual excess, to be, if I may so put it, in love with death both individual and collective.”

                        -Titus Livy, circa 10 AD

           

            The beginning was incomprehensible for Josh.  He could only explain later that nothing was, and then things hardly recognizable, figures that sparked some interest—perhaps fogged reminiscence—appeared in sundry shapes before him.  For a few moments there was a dull, repetitious sound, which was abruptly washed away by a vast darkness.  Time could not be followed in this realm of mental nonexistence, but he could later recall, in the timeline of his second birth, that the hazy shapes and throbbing sound were mixed in the initial scene.  A second awakening followed, and his mind had acquired no greater astuteness in its slumber; but the dull sound had differed, for it was no longer dull but high-pitched, and Josh’s mind moved with vague memory before it collapsed once more.  Many such episodes flooded his inconsistent consciousness prior to his final awakening, each one hardly more intelligible than the last.  In each scene of visibility he had no expectation of a stable awareness or a lapse into darkness—in fact there was no expectation at all; he simply was.  When at last the light and every misty shape remained before him, he could do nothing.  He could not move or speak, nor did he recall the ability to do such things.  He was a conscious corpse.

He could not later recall exactly when his psyche lobbed images of the past at him, but suddenly he viewed familiar pictures in the undying camera of his mind.  A woman stood before him, her lips moving, and the words that she spoke to him, mingled with the crumpled features of her countenance, reminded him of some rebuke he had been given.  She was his mother, a ghastly visual he could not touch.  His lips struggled and his throat flexed to form the words “Mom,” and the image fled from him as his mind was filled with a sense of shock at the audibility of his own voice.  Tears surfaced to his eyes, and he managed to turn his head to the left and right.  The repetitious sound was squealing at him, now quite distinct, while the figures surrounding him were still impossible to describe.  His chest heaved as he asked, “Mom, where am I?  Where am I?”  He panicked.  “What am I supposed to be doing?”

His energy was expended quickly, and he halted his movements altogether.  He did not lapse into the phantom, dark realm again, but it seemed natural for him to shut his eyelids.  There was great comfort in that act, great familiarity, and he contentedly allowed his body to slump into a vegetative pose.  He wished to remain there until the end of his days, if the world before him was real at all; there was a dreamlike quality to it, and yet so tangible did it appear that fleeing it again seemed altogether loathsome to him.  For time immeasurable, those ethereal photos of the mind, his dreams, had seeped into his brain and played before his eyes, now familiar, now wholly foreign.  If this visual was solely among that canon, then it was by far the most realistic, for he could feel a cold substance beneath him; the bleeping din behind him penetrated his ears and caused his body to leap; and some source of illumination above him shed lovable warmth.  As much as he desired to revert to his immobile state, with his eyes shut, he feared that he would lose this beautiful realm.  Some natural inclination pressed him to remain as alert as possible, and so he decided that he would not only stay awake, but find the ability to move and explore.

It took an immense sum of strength to erect his upper body, for in his chest there was the heaviness that one feels after a prolonged period in a prone position, an invisible weight pleading the continued repose of its victim.  He nearly swooned, but he then stabilized himself with his arms.  Josh Eya.  His name was Josh Eya, and he had the faint notion that behind him was a long extension of life, but of life not fully lived.  For when he attempted to recall anything of great significance, the broken countenance of his mother stabbed his mind’s eye, and all else was white.  He immediately began to reflect on his abrupt awakenings and fadings, and was able to separate them quite easily from birth.  I clearly haven’t just been born, because if I had, I wouldn’t be thinking this right now.  This episode was doubtlessly a new birth, a chance to live life, but his mind was so unstable that he could not comprehend it without hindrance.

Josh gazed at the room, now able to take in a full view.  The monotonous beeping returned to him, penetrating through his unfocused thoughts, and his head naturally turned to the left. A small, black EKG monitor crested a stand and hummed its repetitive tune, apparently detailing his cardiac rhythm and a highly realistic picture of a beating heart in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen.  The images terrified him.  With a surge of adrenaline, he leapt from the bed beneath him, and the EKG monitor chimed its speedy response.  His head swung away from the machine and to his right, quickly sweeping over a counter laden with tubes of colorful, medicinal fluids.  Across the dark, wooden floor there were stools and nothing else but loose papers and some bins for storage.  But facing the end of his bed there was a single oaken door and two windows with nearly transparent blinds, permitting enough sunlight to warm the body, but, thankfully, not enough to score his still adjusting eyes.

His knees did not seem prepared to bear his body; they noticeably quavered beneath him, begging him to return to the bed.  Refusing to fulfill their desire, Josh took two meticulous steps toward the door and grimaced.  Were there millstones tied to his legs?  At this rate, he could trudge his way to the doorknob in an hour.  He decided that he would wait until he had acquired equilibrium before he would attempt to exit this tomblike room.  But what lay outside?  The sun, the light, the antithesis of the absence thereof –that darkness which he had found himself far too familiar with—awaited him beyond.  And was there anything besides?  The world.  My home.  And thus he recalled his location.  He was presently in a small hut in the backyard of his home, designated specifically for its proprietors in times of medical emergency; and his home—difficult to mentally construct in form, but remembered in some vague sense—was one of many in a community.  He could not recollect any communal attributes of his community, however.

The world, he realized, was much more important than his own equilibrium or sense of safety.  He moved forward with brisk intent, when a stabbing pain rose from his left hand.  An IV, pumping the necessary fluids into him to assure his survival, was injected into a large vein on the top of his left hand.  His heart trembled; he feared needles, and so with a haste that astonished him, he tore off an adhesive that kept the IV’s needle in place, and pulled the needle from his skin.  He felt for other adhesives or nodes, especially those commonly connected to EKG monitors; when he found none, he disgustedly decided that someone had planted an EKG chip inside of him, which would accurately deliver his heart palpitations to the monitor from a distance.  Without further hesitation, he lurched unstably in the door’s direction.  The EKG, a persistent alarm clock, screeched in the background as he felt his pulse launch within him.  For a moment he felt the need to vomit, but decided that it would be a terrible sight and feeling, and so he swallowed roughly and continued to sway toward his destination.  The beeping sound, unrepentantly cyclical, abruptly went flat.  He was now out of its range, and was on his own.

The wooden floor beneath him creaked beneath each heavy step, and each sound was magnified and echoed in his scattered mind.  His left leg abruptly rebelled against his will and cast him against the counter, and the wooden edge bit his ribs.  What was going on?  The last that he could remember of walking, it was quite simple when he was sober.  Something quite potent indeed must have caused him such loss of equilibrium, but the gap between his mother scolding him (and him living in this noncommunal community) and wakening to this lonely tomb was one that could not be bridged.  He longed for some visual to construct that bridge, and to push him to some objective; there was nothing that he desired more now than to reach the door and grasp his purpose.  With a grunt he planted his weak hands against the counter’s edge and lifted himself solidly to his feet.  His head throbbed from his short journey, a hardly tolerable drumming that continued the recurring chirp of caution of the dead EKG monitor.

The slick doorknob felt cold to his touch.  The muscles in his face strained awkwardly into a smile, and he took a deep breath as he opened the door.  A light from the heavens, the sun now unobscured by any film, blasted his eyes and caused him to wince.  He cupped his hand over his brow, averted his gaze, and blinked the fogginess away, hoping that he was not partially blinded.  As the world became clear to him, the first color that he noticed was green.  It was the grass of his backyard, horridly unkempt, clawing at his knees.  But it was beautiful to him, for it was life, a growing thing beneath the rays of the father of the sky.  His flesh urged him to collapse in the buttery tendrils, but his heart denied his desire, for he feared to be tackled into the black abyss and lose this beauty forever.  With relief he touched a strand of grass and plucked it from the earth; then he lifted it to his eyes.  It seemed to him that this was his first time that he had actually seen grass, not viewed it carelessly as a part of earth undeserving of laudation.  He could not recall ever spending time looking at this grass, which made him wonder why he had even demanded a piece of the world’s natural beauty to be installed like a machine into his backyard.  But he supposed that everyone had to have a chunk of nature someone in their yard simply to have it.

For some time he did not turn his eyes above ground level, partly because of his fear of being temporarily blinded again, but mostly because of his appreciation for color.  But he eventually looked to his left and noticed dark planks of wood jutting from the grass and pricking the sky.  These were part of his fence surrounding the yard.  The fence was quite nearly black, and was much taller than he.  To see anyone living nearby, one would need to engage in a brief hiking expedition before reaching the crest of the rough wood and peer over.  Nothing remarkable about this fence caught Josh’s eye, but the sky above was like an endlessly sweet treat to him, an immeasurable expanse of color that seemed long removed from his sight.  Its majesty, as bare as it was, captivated him and forced tears from his eyes.  He did not comprehend what had lain between his hardly-perceptible past and his present, but he felt blessed that it had occurred.  Only now could he enjoy the splendor of this world.