Part 4 (2/2)
”You think it's enough? You got me a pretty nice one, okay, but you thought that would do it, that would take care of me, for the rest of, for good?”
”Mom. G.o.d, Ma. You just say that to me, like that, this late? Now? Why didn't you, G.o.d, why didn't you say something earlier?”
”Early when? Tonight? Last year? When you were first showing me the brochure?”
”Jesus, Ma. I'm, I'm sorry.”
”You can't stay. I know. I know. Can you stay? I know you can't. Can you? Just a little while?”
”Ma.”
”I know, I know.”
”You know I want to, Ma. I can't. You know I can't.”
”Okay, okay, bye. No sorry. You are a good son. No sorry, okay? I have to cook now. It's okay.”
She shuts the window, turns, and goes back into her sixty-minute life.
On the way home, I see a lonely s.e.xbot standing next to an empty gla.s.s vending case. She's an older model, on the plump side of zaftig, a face so sweet it's wrong to look anywhere but at her eyes, but I do anyway. Dark-haired with a hairstyle that seems slightly out of date, but then again, of all people, I'm not really one to talk.
I try to walk past, but she flags me down. Something about the look in her eyes gets me, even though I know they aren't really eyes.
She asks if I could loan her a little bit.
I say what for.
She says n.o.body buys her anymore, so she wants to buy herself.
I fish a bill out of my pocket. It's a five.
”This probably won't get you much time with yourself.”
”Actually,” she says, ”that's a lot,” and she looks so happy about the five-dollar bill that it makes me feel sad. Even the s.e.xbots here are lonely. There really aren't even any bad guys anymore. I'm not sure there ever were. Everyone's always questioning themselves. Am I doing this right, is this how I'm supposed to look? Am I good enough to be a good guy, am I bad enough to be a bad guy?
Up the street a song cloud floats by, sagging a bit, but still intact. I walk faster and catch up with it just in time to hear the ending, a symphony orchestra, the sound full and resplendent, and it is one of those times, you know those times every so often when you hear the right piece of music at the right time, and it just makes you think, This music didn't come from here, it was given, it fell from some other universe, This music didn't come from here, it was given, it fell from some other universe, and it reminds you of that other universe, some place you've never seen but in your mind you know is there, because you have felt it, this special universe, stranger and better than the ordinary one, and you hang on to the sound of the violins for as long as you can, savoring the feeling of that special universe and wondering if you'll ever get to go there and also wondering if maybe we don't realize it, but we're in that one already, and we have been all along. and it reminds you of that other universe, some place you've never seen but in your mind you know is there, because you have felt it, this special universe, stranger and better than the ordinary one, and you hang on to the sound of the violins for as long as you can, savoring the feeling of that special universe and wondering if you'll ever get to go there and also wondering if maybe we don't realize it, but we're in that one already, and we have been all along.
By the time I get back to my room, it's almost five in the morning. Ed, a bit confused, still gets up to greet me.
I take my toothbrush and a facecloth down to the sink at the end of the hall. Who is that, in the mirror? That's me, in the past, a moment ago, when the light bounced off me. I brush and spit, wipe my face hard to get the grime of the city off me. A lot of news and vapors and s.e.xbot perfume are floating around in the atmosphere here. After a night out in the lost half city, you end up with the dust of dead robots in your hair, or someone's dreams, or their nightmares.
As I'm falling asleep, I can see, out the window, the fracture line of the disintegrated city, where this minor universe was left undone, not quite finished. Maybe it's just something I imagine in the last moment before sleep, but I swear what I see, behind a peeled-back corner of the sky, is another layer underneath us, a second, hidden layer, one that is present at every point, and always has been.
from How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
convenience, particular sadness of Services available in the city include
Ex-Girlfriend Hologram Pay-per-minute Alternate History Viewing Booth Products available in the city include
False Memories of Home (chewing gum) Aerosol Essence of Nostalgia for Summers Past Nearly six thousand varieties of s.e.xbots Drinking buddy bots Friendbots, of varying humanness
When it happens, this is what happens: I shoot myself.
Not, you know, my self self. My future self. I shoot my future self.
What was I supposed to do? What else could I have done?
After my night out walking in the cold city, my body, unaccustomed to the exertion, had crashed, and when I woke up to the late-morning sun in my face, I knew something was wrong. I'd way overslept and woken up a quarter past eleven, thrown everything into my bag, grabbed Ed with one arm and the parcel my mom had given me in the other arm, and hustled down to Hangar 157, which is where I am now.
The clock says eleven forty-five as I run into this vast, climate-controlled s.p.a.ce. Two minutes to go. I put Ed down and we run together, down endless aisles of identical-looking TM-31 machines, turning right and then left and right up until we get to the designated s.p.a.ce, cage number 31-31-A, with, by my watch, eleven seconds to spare.
And there's that jerk of a repair bot, watching the gigantic overhead floating clock display, counting down the seconds, hoping I'll be late, and as I'm running up to my machine, I see a guy, future me, stepping out of that machine, with his own Ed the dog, future Ed, and his own service tool backpack, and even carrying his own brown-paper-wrapped parcel, and I guess I panic, because everything they ever tell you about what to do when you see yourself in a science fictional universe just goes out the window, and I take my corporate-issue prototype paradox neutralization concept weapon, and I point it at his chest and he reaches out with his right hand and he tries to pull the barrel of the gun down and what happens is that instead of the chest, I end up shooting him, once, in the stomach, just as he is saying something to me, it all happens very quickly but what I am pretty sure he says is ”It's all in the book. The book is the key.”
and I don't know yet what the h.e.l.l that means or even what book he's talking about but in any event it's too late because I've already squeezed the trigger, activating the facility-wide alarm system, and there are klaxons and flas.h.i.+ng lights and some kind of whooping noise and an official-sounding voice comes on the PA system, saying something official-sounding, and the two-mile-square hangar gets turned into one deafening echo chamber, and the future Ed flips out and runs away, because s.h.i.+t, I just killed my own future, and I think for an instant about chasing after Ed but I see corporate cops running up the aisles at me from all four directions, so I have no choice but to jump into the time machine that future me was coming out of, my time machine, which I suppose is his, too, but I notice a little too late that the hatch is only part of the way open and so I bang my knee against the silver-iridium alloy edge of the TM-31's hatch, I bang it about as hard as I can imagine banging it without it actually shattering into tiny knee-shards, and I do an awkward and terrible half-somersault tumble into my machine, headfirst, while screaming in pain at TAMMY to go go go go go go go.
(module )
from How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
in the event you find yourself trapped in a time loop
(i) See if you can figure out the sequence of events that make up the loop.
(ii) The thing to remember is this: the fact that you are in a time loop is most likely your fault.
(iii) You are the one who interacted with yourself, for whatever reason you thought you had.
(iv) a.s.suming you want to stay in your current universe, you will need to be able to reproduce your actions exactly in order to avoid inadvertently changing your own past and thereby diverting yourself into a different, alternate universe.
(v) Once you have established the sequence of events, see if you can figure out why these things are happening.
(vi) Try to determine what, if anything, you can learn about yourself from this time loop.
(vii) In most cases, you will not learn anything. You will just go around and around, until you get bored enough that you decide to escape, even if it means losing your own life, exiting the universe for another one.
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