Citizen 16

Roe stared at the screen. He blinked. His mouth opened and closed a few times as he wordlessly recalled the advice given out during the training he received months earlier and the advice of colleagues considered older and wiser than he was. It didn’t help. He blinked again. That also didn’t help but, to be sure, he closed his eyes as tight as he could, scrunching up his face so hard that lights danced inside his eyelids. Previous attempts to will the Universe into being somehow different had never worked but Roe hoped that maybe this time, when he needed it the most, reality would give him a break. As pain receptors fired throughout his head and the noise of the office dulled and was replaced by the muffled liquid thump of blood rushing through his body, Roe took a deep breath and forced himself to confront the world. It remained the same.

The buzz emanating from Roe’s leg informed that help was at hand. In desperation he had turned to his flatmate Ash for advice. Opening up the mobile Roe prayed for something positive to work with.

“Sorry dude. Don’t get me wrong, he’s got game but the Crusades? The inquisition? Plus a fuckton of bodyguards… One man couldn’t deal. Also: How about vexed? Or tormented would probably do. Sorry.”

That didn’t help. Vexed was good though. Ash had a tendency to operate as a human thesaurus, picking any word during a conversation except for the one that was the most plain. This wasn’t out of some malicious effort to appear superior, as seems to be the intention of most people with this affectation, but instead an almost private game of Ash’s making. He liked to play with language in the way that other people might do Sudoku puzzles. As Ash liked to point out, at least his method didn’t involve buying a newspaper. Usually Roe preferred the most direct method of making a point, but in this case ‘shook-up’ just wasn’t working. He was vexed.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. Roe took the job primarily because it looked like it would provide plenty of scope for amusing pub anecdotes, a valuable commodity in his social circle. From what he’d heard from the day shift they mostly had to field questions on directions, cinema times, local amenities, recipes; everyday boring stuff. If they were lucky they’d get a “What else was [Insert minor actor] in?” He was usually glad to be working the evening shift where they were mostly asked to settle increasingly drunken pub arguments. The directory enquiries service had employed a new batch of people, including Roe, ever since they found their “Text us any question” service was peaking around 10 as, across the city, voices were being raised about the exact minutia of a football game 30 years ago, or truths were being invoked as “God’s honest” only to be shot down in a chorus of dissent.

Roe’s training had been focused on how to deal with such drunken enquiries. The golden rule was to never give up. If the question didn’t make sense you should focus on a word or phrase and define it. If the question has no researchable answer, or was clearly absurd, then don’t have any qualms about being absurd back. Getting a ridiculous answer back from them usually proved so amusing to previously red-faced arguers that they would forget all about the conflict moments earlier. Roe had once got a question asking whether Valentino Rossi was richer than Slash and had responded that he was spiritually richer because he’d never had to work with Axl Rose.

Roe had taken to his job mostly, he assumed, because he was well versed in drunken conversation. It also helped that his flatmate worked in their local pub. Ash would often text Roe in advance to warn him of the arguments that were likely to flare up. This gave him plenty of time to prepare. Apparently the Valentino Rossi argument had progressed to physical violence by the time his reply had arrived at which point it was replaced with laughter and a full hour of Guns N’ Roses sing-a-longs (for which Ash still hadn’t forgiven him.) If there was one thing that Roe hadn’t expected, it was that this job would shake his very belief system to the core. It was never meant to force him to re-evaluate his icons.

His mind raced as he weighed up the options. Even without the ‘golden rule’ if he just gave in and sent the placeholder “Your question cannot be answered” text it would still linger in the back of his mind. It would be, always and forever, a cop-out. He wouldn’t be able to hold his head up high in the knowledge that he had defended his hero against all reasonable odds. He thought of the second rule, “Don’t take sides: It’s not important, it’s a drunken argument.” Even then Roe had found the rule uncomfortably dismissive. Some of the most thought-provoking discussions of his life had taken place in their local after four or five pints. As Ash would point out,
“They call it ‘setting the world to rights’ as if it’s a silly cliché. Nothing could be less silly. We’re defining our view of the world; seeing the injustices and debating the solutions. If we don’t set our world to rights how the fuck could we ever hope to start on the real thing?”

Here, now, the idea of not taking sides seemed downright offensive. How could they understand so little? The office laughs and jokes about the “ridiculous, idiotic questions” but have they ever actually believed in anything? Do they even know what conviction, or passion, actually is? Roe was ready to explode, to show them all what it meant to truly know something beyond all reason.

Suddenly, for the first time since The Question had appeared on his screen he became aware of his surroundings. The tapping of keyboards, the quickly snatched conversations between sessions of work, even the slightly chemical smell as someone poured the boiled kettle into a pot of what would, hopefully, become the edible contents of their lunch. He sensed a disturbance behind his shoulder.

“You Would Not Believe!” Carl was approaching and doing his usual trick of emphasising every single word. “Man, you’ll never guess! I just had a question from some bloke asking where the G-spot was. No Word Of A Lie!”

It was every word of a lie. He’d spoken to people who’d worked here long enough to know that nobody, ever, asks for sex tips. The type of people who would even consider it are, generally speaking, the same type of people who don’t want the government staff, who they assume monitor all communications, to know they can’t satisfy a woman. Carl, though, was the type of person who had to trump your story before you’d even had chance to announce you had a story.

“So what have you got?” Carl asked, already looking at the screen, “Oh man, that’s classic. Tell you what send it to me. I’ve got a fucking killer answer!”

Roe breathed a sigh of relief as Carl returned to his desk. He wouldn’t have a ‘killer’ answer, it would just be a lame attempt at humour, but that didn’t matter to Roe. The question was being deferred. It was the professional move, he told himself. He was, after all, too involved. It was a conflict of interest. That sounded good! A cop-out to be sure, but one Roe felt he could live with. Roe opened up the forward screen and took one final look at the question,

“Who would win in a fight between the Pope and Jimmy Page?”

He pressed send. “Jimmy could do it… Somehow…” He said this to nobody in particular and got back to work.

[Back in 2005 I wrote this, my first piece of original fiction writing, for a short story competition my university was holding. Although the original draft was completed in an afternoon I was unhappy with the structure and spent the subsequent weeks revising and editing it, missing the competition deadline. Still, it's a notable piece for me in that re-reading it 3 and a half years later I don't find myself completely hating it. I toyed with the idea of making a few edits but decided instead to treat it as a finished piece and republish it in its original form.]

The contents of the cup poured cold and rancid into Damian’s mouth. If normal coffee relied on caffeine to force the drinker awake, the liquid in front of him achieved the same effect by abusing the taste buds. Not for the first time Damian missed home. His home, so far removed from the world that reheated instant coffee was unheard of.

As Damian gulped away the remains of the cup, doing his best to ensure as little as possible came into contact with his tongue, the waitress, who had been watching him constantly, approached his table. The diner was always quiet at midday, with most of her regular customers at work or dining important clients in more respectable restaurants, and so the waitress was focusing her whole attention on the few people that were here. Using the time to practice. To get the lines, and their delivery, exactly right. Every word and look honed to perfection. Each customer at this time of day was a dress rehearsal for that one person she’d waited her whole life to serve. With a full jug of coffee in one hand she carefully walked up to where Damian sat, flashed him a smile that could have only been achieved through years of practice, and asked, ‘Can I get you another cup honey?’

As if Damian had only just noticed her for the first time he accepted the refill. He had no intention of drinking it but he had come here in order to collect his thoughts and that was going to take some time. Damian tried to focus on the waitress. To just focus on one thing in order to push all the other crowded thoughts to the back of his mind. Her faded pink dress was too tight from defiantly wearing the same size as when she had started here six years ago, despite age and childbirth having taken their toll on her body since. Her hair was dyed jet black to perfectly contrast the white-strip hat she wore at the diner. Wearing it like a glamorous cardboard tiara. Practicing for the day she finally got to live out her big dream. Young waitress gets discovered by director/producer/executive and becomes the next big Hollywood star. This dream was kept alive because it was the only thing she had in this city. The only thing that separated her from all the other anonymous nobodies. The only thing that separated her from being another failure struggling to support her child, the result of some assistant from one of the big studios telling her he had contacts in high places. Telling her he could make her a star.

Damian could see all these things. Like the game you play where you see a stranger in the street and make up their life story. Except Damian was always right. There was something else too. Something buried in the waitress’ subconscious. An act too horrific for words, Damian realised that it wasn’t the first time he’d felt it since he’d left for the city.

-

When all this had ended or, depending on your perspective, when it all began, the police would ask the waitress what she remembered about Damian. She would say he was an average man of average build. She would tell them he had brown hair, blue eyes, casual clothes and a slight slouch. No one you’d notice in a crowd. Certainly no distinguishing features, physically at least. He had seemed a little depressed when he entered although he sure as hell didn’t leave that way.

-

Watching the waitress adjust her dress in a vain attempt to find a compromise between comfort and glamour, Damian was amazed he could now bring himself to focus on one person in a city this crowded. It was an improvement from when he had flown into Los Angeles. Heightened emotions such as fear were always more overpowering than others. The handful of passengers that were afraid of flying had shielded Damian from what was waiting ahead. Once the plane had landed, their fear began to dissipate and so, just as Damian stepped off the plane and onto the claustrophobic tunnel connected to the terminal, the collective force of nearly four million people’s emotions hit him at once.
That was Damian’s gift or, as Damian himself saw it, his curse. He was able to sense an individual’s emotions to such an acute level that he could almost read their past. He could be very perceptive of the impulses that drove a single individual and had, in the days when his power was weaker, used it to gain acceptance by becoming a chameleon to the needs of others.

As he got older and the sense became stronger and more uncontrollable he found it harder to concentrate on a single person. Places where large groups of people lived together, especially cities, became unbearable to be within. The separate feelings began to weave together into a single all-pervasive cloud of emotion. The problem with this, the reason Damian hated his ability, was because the cloud, more often than not, showed unbearable pain, anger and suffering. Even a person experiencing a moment of intense joy and pleasure became lost among the lives around them. It was the cloud that caused him to hate humanity. It was the cloud that made him want to escape it all.

-

When all this had ended or, depending on your perspective, when it all began, the police would ask what the stewardess on Damian’s flight could tell them about him. At this she would smile a smile that contained no warmth or humour.
‘I’m not surprised that you’ve come asking about that one,’ the stewardess would say with barely concealed contempt. The inspector in charge of the investigation would look up from his notepad, filled with information about the case, and would ask, ‘Why’s that?’
‘There was something about the way he looked at me.’
As the inspector raised his eyebrows she would add,
‘He wasn’t leering at me or anything, I’m used to that sort of thing,’ and she would turn her body slightly as she said the last part, showing off her breasts in order to prove her statement. ‘It was something else.’
It had been, in fact, the same thing in the stewardess that Damian had later seen in the waitress. An event buried deep within her. As Damian had tried to study her further so as to understand more about the act, the stewardess had begun to feel it reflected back in his eyes and had quickly hurried away noticeably shaken.

The stewardess would begin to recall that feeling as she talked to the police and, as if to repress it, would quip,
‘The bastard’s just lucky he waited until he was out of the plane before he threw up, else I’d have been cleaning it up. Then he’d have been in trouble.’ After a pause she would ask, ‘What was it he did anyway?’
And the police would tell her. And the stewardess would have nightmares about the act for years. Nightmares far more detailed than anything the police report would ever reveal.

-

The longer Damian spent in the city, the easier he found it to push out the world around him. He could still feel the people around him, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had his mind completely to himself, but he was now able to suppress their emotions enough to collect his own thoughts. Searching for clues as to what might come next he let his mind replay the incident that had led to his arrival in Los Angeles.

He had been collecting firewood from the shed just outside of the small log cabin he had made his home. The wind was fierce and thick with snow making it hard to see. The young girl had been wrapped up in a thick white jacket, white trousers, snow boots and a scarf. Her hat had been matted with white fur and flaps that covered her ears. Camouflaged against the snow, her scarf and hat obscured her face. Damian had felt her approaching long before he had seen her. Even dressed for the occasion she appeared to be shivering slightly, but continued towards Damian’s house unperturbed. Damian quickly opened the door into the house and beckoned for her to come inside. He had, at first, struggled to realise what it was about the girl that bothered him other than that she was stood, apparently alone, in front of his house with no other living soul for miles around. She had ignored his motions to take shelter out of the cold and instead stopped a few feet from the door, looking directly at Damian. That was when he had realised what had been bothering him. He couldn’t get a single emotional reading from her with the exception of one single event. That was the first time he had felt the unknown act that had been haunting him ever since, leading him on with grim inevitability.
She had stood motionless in the snow while Damian had tried to make sense of the situation.
‘Can I help you?’ He had asked, and then had suddenly felt ridiculous for doing so.
‘Somebody needs your help. Find her in Los Angeles. She will help you in return. She will show you your path,’ the girl had replied in a matter-of-fact way.

Damian remembered clearly the look on her face after she had said this. It was a brief look of confusion as if she had suddenly realised where she was and didn’t really know why. A messenger following an eternally handed-down memory, the task imprinted onto her very being. She recovered from the uncertainty, turned around and started to walk away.
‘Hey! Hey, wait!’
After nearly two years of only ever seeing the handful of people that made up the community he had settled in, Damian was completely unprepared for what had happened. He remembered chasing after the girl, but once he had caught up with her she said simply,
‘This is not the way to the airport.’

-

When all this had ended or, depending on your perspective, when it all began, the detective assigned to the case would liaise with the sheriff of Damian’s hometown who would find two sets of footprints in the snow, the only physical evidence to prove that the meeting had ever happened. The detective would also go back to the dilapidated house in Los Angeles. He’d find no diary or note. He’d find no clue as to why Damian had travelled so far to meet one person. The detective would attempt to solve the puzzle in completely the wrong order and, as such, would never get the answers he was looking for. The detective would start out knowing something that Damian, sat in the Diner still trying to organize his thoughts and watching his coffee cool and form a film around its cup, didn’t yet know. The detective would start out knowing who Damian had come to meet.

-

There was something desperately trying to get Damian’s attention. He ignored the subconscious thought because he felt he had enough of his own problems to deal with without the constant reminder of other people’s. Nothing about his arrival in L.A. made any sense. He knew that there was somebody in this city with whom he was supposed to meet with. Somebody who needed his help and who, in exchange, could help him. What he didn’t know, however, was how he was supposed to contact this person.

He’d never been to this city. The mere thought of the size of its population had put him off. Even if he had known what he was looking for he’d never be able to find it. Surely if someone needed him so desperately they’d at least give him a signal as to where he should be. Deflated Damian closed his eyes, put his head in his hands and just let the city overwhelm him.

Suddenly he jumped out of his seat. The coffee cup fell to the floor and smashed, startling the other customers. He apologised and excitedly ran out into the street. He had just realised what it was his brain had been so desperate to alert him to and why he had been able to adjust to the feeling of the city so quickly. Whoever he was supposed to meet had given him a signal. They’d sent out a beacon. Now he knew why he had to be in Los Angeles. It was because of the size of its population. It had to be somewhere so crowded. It had to be somewhere with so much negativity. He would have never sensed it otherwise. The beacon reminded him of the little girl who had started him off on this journey and yet, at the same time, it was an entirely different feeling. The girl had seemed absent of emotions but this signal wasn’t just absence, it was more than that. It neutralised everything that was around it. In its silence it screamed louder than any noise. This changed everything. This proved that somebody was expecting him and, more than that, they knew who he was. They knew what he was.

The cab driver that had taken Damian from the airport to the diner was still sat outside smoking. Damian had been an obvious tourist as he’d left the airport. He’d asked to go to the nearest café but instead the cab driver had taken him to somewhere a few miles away. Damian had seemed too lost in his own world to notice the length of the journey. Now the cab driver saw, too late, Damian running towards the cab. He had no time to react before Damian flung open the back door and jumped in.
‘Hey, look man I was just…’ The driver began, but Damian wasn’t listening.
‘I know where I need to go!’ He was practically shaking with excitement.
‘OK, just name the place.’ This wasn’t how the cab driver had expected this conversation to go, but greed overtook common sense and he started up the engine.
Damian closed his eyes and once again let the city wash over him.
‘Take the first left and then straight for half a kilometre.’

-

They continued for twenty minutes, Damian navigating with his eyes closed and the cabbie trying to interpret his directions as inaccurately as possible on the convoluted road system of the city. This time any attempts to deviate from Damian’s directions were quickly shot down. Damian knew exactly where he needed to be. Eventually they stopped at a small run-down house in the middle of a seemingly abandoned street.
‘This is what you came here for?’ The cabbie seemed wary. He had been starting to catch Damian’s initial enthusiasm but now was confused why this dilapidated house was the cause for so much celebration.
‘Yes. Yes I think this is it.’
‘Well God knows what you’ll find round here but good luck to ya.’
‘Here.’ Damian pulled out all the money from his wallet and handed it to the cab driver. ‘Keep the change.’
He’d arrived. The actual look of the house might have been troubling but Damian only saw what he could sense and it was beautiful. He tried to calm down but it proved difficult. So this is it, he thought, this is where I find out my purpose in life. I can finally make sense of the years of confusion; maybe even find a way to end it. He took a deep breath and walked towards the house. Every step felt like a lifetime. He couldn’t remember ever feeling like this before.

-

Damian knocked at the door but without a lock to hold it in place it simply swung open. The inside looked abandoned. Despite being the middle of the day the house was dark where boards covered up the windows. Damian reached to his side and flicked the light switch but somehow already knew that it wouldn’t work. Whenever he looked at something he got a strange feeling of déjà vu but when he tried to search his memory for a reason behind the feeling his head began to hurt. He tried to put the slight worry this caused at the back of his mind and moved on further into the house. He was navigating by instinct and the small cracks of light shining through the wood attached to the window frame. He turned a corner into what used to be a kitchen and was confronted with the source of the signal he had followed through the city.

The source was a woman no older than he was. Her clothes and appearance were plain, but to Damian’s extra sense she seemed composed purely of silence. For the first time he could remember his mind was completely empty of the thoughts of others. He noticed the surroundings for the first time. On a makeshift table by the woman’s side was a laptop displaying information on various historical figures. It was the only source of light in the room and so focusing on any one detail caused Damian’s eyes to hurt. Again he felt a nagging feeling from the familiarity of the surroundings but couldn’t make sense of it. He’d never even visited this city before, let alone this house.

‘Hello Damian. My name is Angela.’ Angela’s voice was soft and sweet although slightly tainted by sadness or, at least, regret.
‘Why am I here?’ Damian’s initial joy at finding what he was looking for had been replaced by caution. Something that he didn’t understand felt wrong.
‘You are here because I need you and because you need me. You are here because you and I are the same. Everyone is the same.’
‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’ Damian asked, frustration making him angry. Angela smiled at this.
‘I apologise if what I’m saying seems cryptic. I’m not here to hide anything from you, but the explanation isn’t easy.’ She motioned to one of the portraits on the laptop.
‘Have you heard of the philosopher John Locke?’ Damian indicated that he hadn’t.
‘He believed that, at birth, a human being is born with a clean slate, or tabula rasa, and that knowledge is built through experience. While he is wrong about this on an individual level, it is true if you view humanity as a single entity. I am the blank slate. The Beginning.’
‘Then what would that make me?’ Damian tried to sound dismissive of what he was hearing but was far too concerned to do so.
‘The opposite. You are the end. Whereas I am the first body that life inhabited, you are the last.’
‘The last body? That doesn’t make sense.’ Damian was more confused than ever. Seconds before Angela spoke Damian already knew the answer. His head was racing as he struggled to understand it all.
‘It makes perfect sense. Think of the human race as one long strand of life that jumps through time, seemingly at random, into each person that has ever, and will ever, exist. Experiencing itself through different eyes and gaining new insight each time. I am the start and you are the end. That is why you can sense what people are feeling, because you have felt it all.’

There was a look of sadness in Angela’s eyes as she noted the pain this last sentence seemed to cause Damian.
‘You said you needed my help,’ he said after a pause.
‘Yes. It’s time for us to carry on the cycle.’
‘What do you mean? You said I was the end!’ Damian was starting to panic. This wasn’t what was supposed to happen.
‘There can be no end. Life must continue. You contain the model that life must follow and I am the clean slate that will purify you. We have to move to the next body together.’
‘But why? There is so much pain and suffering in all the people I see. Why does life have to continue if its existence is agony?’
‘Because there is nothing else,’ Angela replied simply. ‘I don’t know what came before. Maybe we are God and we created all this. Maybe we didn’t. But life found a way. We exist and there is nothing else, so we will continue to exist.’
‘No!’

Anger and panic rose within Damian. This couldn’t be all there was. He couldn’t be expected to endure everything he felt all over again. Without thinking he reached down and picked up the knife lying on the counter beside him. Not pausing to wonder how he knew the knife would be there he ran towards Angela and, in a moment of blind fury, thrust the knife into her. Immediately he recoiled away in pain and shock at what he had done. He flinched and looked towards his own stomach and saw his own blood staining his clothes.

Angela gave Damian a look of deep sympathy, the knife still lodged in her. Blood dripped down the blade’s handle and onto the floor. Both of them remained still for a moment, silently dying.
‘We are the same. This was the task you had to perform.’ She knelt down and held Damian, to support her own weakening body and to comfort him. She leaned closer to him and whispered into his ear.
‘”Of design he was created thus, his own waste providing his own food, and all that he did or suffered taking place in and by himself. For the creator conceived that a being which was self-sufficient would be far more excellent than one which lacked anything.”‘

She could see Damian was suffering and was saddened that there were no words to ease him. In his mind he had consigned himself to eternally experience the pain he felt from the world, to his own vision of hell. Soon they both lay still, destined to relive every moment. Subconsciously the event imprinted into every life they inhabited, the blueprint for renewing humanity. Forever.

-

And there it ended or, depending on your perspective, began. The police would close the case and, eventually, it would be lost to history. From time to time someone would stumble across the investigation in the police archive: Two people with seemingly no connection found dead from identical knife wounds. Something deep down inside them, at the very edge of their soul, would tell them not to pursue it any further.