by Gary Bolick.
Hot had, long ago, stopped being a descriptive term, it no longer worked as an adjective.
“An element, now. Maybe the fifth one. No different than air, earth, fire or water. Just there. Sure, a physical thing, but now it affects the head, the metaphysical, the philosophy of things. Ancients thought the elements were the key. Understand how they work together, you can decipher the world, its workings . . . us. Elements, they’re all just there. Just like the heat now: hot. There. Yes, there is here. Has taken over everything.”
Laughing, Luther blew a perfect, silver-blue ring of smoke out between he and Alfred, saying, “Hot is as hot does. Right Forrest,” then rubbed out another non-filtered Camel.
Yes, hot.
Alfred sat down in the small shelter along the running path at Reynolda Park, looked up through the lattice work that enclosed it, wiped his face with an already saturated bandana and sighed, then chuckled, remembering his conversations with Luther. His head throbbed; his brain felt like a pile of wet rags pushing down on the base of his neck. Adjusting his cargo shorts, his crotch was on fire. It was a given that when he showered for the third, no it will have been the fourth time that morning, that the inner lining of his thighs and his scrotal sack would be fire-engine red. Yes, hot, humid, and oppressive.
Tapping the small implant just below his left ear, he listened to the latest weather update: “Eleven a.m. temperature: one hundred three. Relative humidity: eighty-nine percent. Afternoon high topping out at one hundred sixteen. Humidity expected to remain in the nineties. Still no chance of rain.”
‘Rain? Why even mention it? Not a drop in ten years,’ Alfred mused as he laughed, then shook his head whispering, questioning his own sanity, “So why do I insist on still walking every day? It’s no different than wading through forty-weight engine oil.”
‘OK,’ he thought, ‘there’s your answer: engine oil. Dead machines and their dead language, both from a dead time. I’m just holding on, by the fingernails, to what was and will never be, again. Still looking for . . . I’m an idiot.’
Alfred let his eyes pan out over the destruction. Willed to the good people of Winston, the estate of the former tobacco baron was once a glorious meeting place. Resplendent with both manicured gardens and art-deco architecture, the park was always busy and bright and full of people until the inversion. Now? Once, grand live-oaks, pine, magnolia and maple were now rotting ghosts, wheezing, adding their own particular stench to the cornucopia of foul odors oozing out of the dead and dying vegetation.
Yes, the inversion.
Alfred remembered watching a CNN special warning the world. The world’s greatest climate scientists had gathered at the North Pole. The administrator and spokesman, Dr. Menager, had on a Hawaiian shirt; another was in sandals. The rest? All gathered in a semi-circle, similarly dressed, to drive home the point that the top-of-world was, now, the perfect place to gather for a backyard barbecue. Menager’s tone was strangely flippant, dismissive, as if to say to the world watching and listening, “Screw you,” but still spelled out all the facts for, “Yes, for the umpteenth time. The atmospheric dome covering the earth may as well be constructed of cement, steel or granite, for what it traps in, and for what it will not allow to enter. Horrible, stagnant stasis; a stinking, sweating Turkish bath of our making. We, here at the WCO, sorry, the World Climate Organization have gathered at the North Pole, not to warn you, again, but to say goodbye.
“With all the permafrost gone, we have added more carbon to the atmosphere than if we had, no check that, we have burned all the oil. So now, add to that, all the methane from all of the ruminating species, the total destruction of the rain forest and-”
Doctor Menager stopped short. Took his glasses off and cleaned them. Turning to his compatriots gathered around him, he raised his eyes as if questioning them on his next move. All nodded in agreement. So, Dr. Menager took the press release, wadded it up, and threw it away. Turning back to the camera, he said,
“Science has not so much failed as it has been too nice, too calm, almost doting, very much like a sweet kindergarten teacher resistant to disciplining her class. Kind to a tragic fault. Had she, that is, had we, the scientific world, been more drill-sergeant than kindergarten teacher, maybe . . . no, no, who are we kidding, wouldn’t have mattered. No.”
Doctor Menager shook his head and smiled, then leaned into the microphone and whispered, “School’s out. Have a nice endless summer, kids.”
After shaking each of the other scientists’ hand, he walked away.
The inversion. What once was below was now above. And what was above, now, offered no entry to the sun, no view of the stars─nothing. An impervious shell whose color, more often than not, was described as a dead-fish-yellow-gray.
Alfred threw up. Then as he tried to pull in a good, deep breath, his lungs refused as they began to burn and close up. Pulling out an inhaler, he found momentary relief. His stomach cramped; his head still throbbed. Still, he felt it was worth the risk and the pain and nausea. It was impossible to remain cooped-up in his assigned bubble. If not for these walks, he would have committed suicide by now. Looking up and into yellow-gray sky, he saw it, again.
‘Yes, there it is, every time after I stop from my walk, sit down and look up, a strange dark movement flutters just above my face and becomes stationary. There, at twelve o’clock and again, the colors, the show!’ he thought. ‘Makes it all worth it.’
Just above him, to his left, Alfred saw a shimmering, an interruption, as though the hard, smooth shell was developing texture and shape. Waves of green, white, yellow and blue seemed to be undulating, trying to break-up, pierce through monotone sickening, mucous-like color that was overhead.
‘It’s there. I know it is. No matter what Luther said,’ he thought.
“It’s a coping mechanism,” Luther told him as he sipped on his tenth coffee while crushing-up the empty Camel pack, dropping it to the floor, laughing, “Number six! Lungs feel like they’re a perfect medium-well.”
Lighting another cigarette, Luther pulled in as much smoke as his laboring lungs could tolerate, and smiled. After blowing out the smoke, he began to cough. After an extended bout of coughing, he returned to his Camel, pulling in another long, deep breath of smoke. Letting the smoke filter slowly out through both his nose and mouth, he rubbed out the still glowing butt and said, “Why not smoke? It’s gone now. No, not us, but the time. Who and what we really were and are, or hope to be, all that pre-dates, scratch that, it’s pre-historic, even changed how we dream, no, I-“
Seeing Alfred flinch; his face drain of color, Luther switched course.
“Maybe not. I hear some kid in India has come up with a formula, a conversion of the inversion. All us down in the rabbit hole, suddenly out. At least that’s the plan.”
It was the last conversation they had together before being assigned their bubbles. One last gathering, before being banished into hibernation.
Luther lit another Camel off the one he was just now finishing, then spun the hubcap he used as an ashtray so the mountain of ashes he had carefully constructed flared up and filled the small cubicle.
“Twister! Funny, we’d kill to have one of those now. Air moving, wind, rain, hot and cold, clean.”
He picked up the hub cap, held it up above his head and pointed,
“See it? My great-great grandfather’s initials. He was some kind of alpha dog in Detroit. Had this, I mean, his Cord custom-made. That was Ike, all right. Took the most beautiful and expensive car of his time, and then, had it custom-made to suit, to fit him! Even had his initials on each hubcap just like the cuffs of his tailor-made shirts. No, those boys didn’t start this, they just made it so sexy we couldn’t stop it. Here, I’ll show you. One of the few keep-sakes I’m taking with me, that is if the Camels don’t work. Just look at all the detail!”
Luther opened up a manila envelope and pulled out ten glossy black and white photographs from the 1937 Detroit Auto Show. His great-great grandfather was in most of the photos standing next to his beloved Cord. The other photos were of the interior showing the hand-tooled leather seats, and the bamboo inlay of the dashboards. And knobs. Sterling-silver for the radio, the light reflecting off their high-gloss finish seemed to jump up and out of the photograph.
Looking up through the lattice work of the shelter, Alfred again, saw the brief interruption across the sky, the quick dark swooping of what would have been a bird, once upon a time, then the colors.
‘Again, yes, maybe there’s a chance, right Luther?’ he thought. Then, before he could look up again, a strange, almost foreboding feeling seized him.
‘We did, yes, I’m sure we, Luther and I discussed the colors before, that is, after reconditioning, before the entry into the bubble. Yes, yes, OK, yeah, good. Right. Yes,’ he thought as he looked back up into the sky.
“I’m seeing them more and more now. It’s what keeps me walking, forces me out into the shit each day. Just as I promised myself. Once in the bubble, I’ll find a way to escape, to somehow, some way, make it out to see them. I know, I know. The air is frying my lungs, compromising my immune system. I know. Still, it’ll be worth it. Just the thought of staying inside of the bubble for . . . God knows, how long until wonder boy, or nature . . . is there any nature left?”
Luther nodded his head, held up his hand, and drew in a long, deep drag of smoke, then rubbed out the butt.
“You don’t have to convince me, I, well-“
He tapped the implant below his right ear and nodded his head.
“Heart rate’s tripled since yesterday. Lung function’s down to ten percent. Almost there. I, sorry, yes, we were talking about the shimmering waves, the colors. Shuster, says. Sorry. Larry Shuster, he was my cellmate during the first week of reconditioning. Just disappeared after the fifth day. Strange.
“Anyway, he said it’s just a coping mechanism. The last act of a desperate mind. You’re not really seeing it. Something that is buried in the pit of your unconscious is helping you cope. Evolutionary. You’re, ah, how did he explain it? Got it! It’s in your DNA. A marker, a gene, ah, well, something, is setting off an alarm. Survival. So, no, don’t get your hopes up. Inversion is still there. Hallucination. You know, like being out in the desert, you saw something that’s not there. Sorry. Cigarette?”
Alfred stepped out onto the footpath and dragged his feet through the mushy, wet sand and laughed, whispering, “No, Luther. It’s real.”
Then glancing down at his watch, Alfred figured that it would take him twenty minutes to arrive back at his small bubble. Reaching up, he swore he could touch it now. Jumping up, he felt the wet, viscous sky in his hand. Pushing, it resisted, then moved.
‘So close,’ he thought, ‘how? Sure, maybe it’s happening. Maybe the Indian kid did it! They said it would be like the lungs breaking up the congestion. Damn! Maybe the raw crotch and pounding head were worth it!’
Above the sky was more gray than yellow, now. The humidity was climbing. As he started to walk, he paused and turned to his left to look back at the abandoned mansion on the hill. Lichen, moss, mold, and crawling vegetation covered the columns and porticos. The air smelled even more acidic and rotten than before. His head was throbbing, his crotch screamed.
‘Twenty minutes to the bubble? But those voices. How?’ he wondered. ‘No, not the news. Just voices, familiar ones. Nothing. Damn, it’s hard to breathe. Still, yes, I did see it. The kid in India’s really done it. Yes! Great day.’
Turning to his right, he started walking down the path. Another gut shot. Spread out in front of him, as far as he could see, what were once thick, lush woods, were now a barren, smoldering pile of stench. His stomach cramped, again.
‘No . . . no! As soon as it takes hold, it’ll start clearing. New growth, clean air. So, walk. Just get back there and wait it out,’ he thought.
Alfred bent over a second time to try and catch his breath. Raising up, strangely, magically, his head felt surprisingly clear. Looking up toward the sky, he saw what appeared to be a hand brushing across his field of vision. Alfred closed his eyes then excitedly tried to pull in another clean, clear breath of air. Nothing.
‘What gives? Now it’s even harder to breathe,’ he thought.
Again, the hand, but this time it was framed. Clean, crisp light-brown bamboo in the form of rectangle. No, a door. Yes, a bamboo door frame, and not a hand, but a knob, a door knob, a bright silver door knob. Studying it, it reflected back darting, restless flecks of sunlight; shining so brightly, Alfred, for a moment, mistook it for a replica of the sun.
Reaching out, Alfred grasped the knob; the metal was cool and moist. Turning it, he felt a soothing electric shock run up his arm through his shoulder and into the back of his head. Then, pulling the knob towards him, he felt a wisp of coolness. As the knob swung past him, the bamboo frame collapsed. Taking a long, deep breath, Alfred was astounded, he smelled fresh lilac and rose. Looking up, yes, there it was: a soft blue sky and a lemon-yellow sun.
‘Yes, OK, he’s done it! The wonder boy’s done!’ he thought.
“Ralph! Check pod 457698-1. Seems we have quite a bit of neurological activity. Increase the melatonin, start a sedative drip. Get him below REM, quick. Send him down, deeper,” Lance shouted as he peered into Alfred’s bubble.
Ralph began to push several buttons on the control panel then stopped to touch the implant just below the nape of his neck. Lifting his hands from the control board, he nodded and shouted back to Lance,
“Nope. That’s a negative. Number’s up. Three times, he’s out. It’s the law. Central says he’ll never make it. Not in here, and even if the inversion were to ever clear . . . negative. This one would never be able to fit back into-”
Ralph stopped short and tapped his neck implant a second time to silence it. He stared silently at his fellow tech, Lance, who still had his hand resting on the top of the bubble. It was a strange, but sweet habit he had, as though he were, somehow, comforting the subject in distress.
“Back into what?”