In the event you were concerned, The Machine is not dead. I picked it up again a few weeks ago when I started a writing class that focuses on how the heck to put a story together. Story is my challenge, which I defined in mid-August while taking a creative essay class. Story is what happens between A and B. It’s the PB&J slathered between slices of warm, chewy bread. It’s the journey between Earth and Mars. The how the heck did we get here?

Maybe you already knew this—it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it—but, sometimes, I need a flashing billboard and dancing cats before something clicks into place.

Several months ago I started TM with a narrative voice, but not much else. That voice took me through a few pages, then stopped. Some writers can just create a character who then wanders around, creating adventure, and voilà! a story is born. I’ve never been able to do this. My characters are usually some sliver of me, so they generally find a nice corner and beat their heads against the wall, because that is how you discover the meaning of life.

The class I’m taking has opened the story enormously so far, just through the writing of What if? questions. What if I wake up one morning as a gigantic bug? What if my family finds me repulsive and locks me in my room? What if my fairy godmother observes my distress and beams down a handsome prince to save me? What if that prince refuses to kiss my pincher lips and now we’re both locked in this room together? What if my sister, who has always loved me and is distraught at my transformation, peeks through the keyhole to check if I’m alive, sees the prince, falls in love, steals him away, and they are married that evening?

It’s kinda fun. Not that I had fun creating my own list—it was a little frustrating at this stage when I don’t know my character or the world well enough, but the list-making did bring a lot of great questions to mind, and I have a loose idea now of where the story will go, so my character can stop beating their head against the wall now.

This is a draft, and feel free to tell me your thoughts: likes, false moments, where I should add unicorns.

What Ifs:

What if TM has always been an oddball, on the outside of the circle, because they didn’t get the unspoken social rules or fit into any groups, because of their overly analytical nature?

What if this lead to intense loneliness, which TM ameliorated through books?

What if this caused huge conflicts with their mother, growing up, because she didn’t understand their behaviors and related conflicts (bullying)?

What if this led TM to disconnect even more from their emotions, further preventing them from relating to others, at times? Though this doesn’t mean they completely lack sympathy or empathy; it just takes a lot to get them to feel.

What if TM moves out as soon as they turn 18 and get their housing allotment, further straining the mother-child relationship?

What if TM’s affect prevents them from getting a job, since most available require intensive personal contact and TM always fails the culture interviews, even for the few computer-based jobs?

What if TM practices “normal” human behavior at home then uses this at interviews?

What if it doesn’t help but catches the attention of Sara, who is intrigued?

What if Sara contacts TM and manages to get TM a job in one of the few non-interpersonal areas, namely link clicking?

What if Sara and TM become best friends, possibly lovers?

What if Sara is someone TM can relax with, emote more with?

What if an antibiotic-resistant plague (The Loss) begins sweeping across the world?

What if Sara gets sick, but TM doesn’t notice?

What if Sara convinces TM to see a psychic with her?

What if the psychic tells TM to go to the water?

What if this doesn’t make sense to TM, especially given the water restrictions, including access to the ocean?

What if Sara dies a few days later?

What if TM locks themself into their apartment, numb, waiting for the plague to stop spreading?

What if TM loses their capacity to escape into books?

What if TM survives because of the way their building is designed—ea. apt. is its own unit, nothing connects, an experimental unit?

What if once the All Clear sounds, 50% (or some horrific number) of the population has died?

What if this includes TM’s mother?

What if TM inherits their mother’s cat, which, btw, their mother could have left to any number of friends, and let’s not go into what the cat did to their mother’s corpse.

What if TM doesn’t understand keeping pets, including cats?

What if TM considers killing the cat or somehow getting rid of it?

What if TM changes their mind and keeps the cat? [maybe Sara loved cats]

What if the inability to read, the cat in that tiny apartment, and loneliness drive TM into the world?

What if they respond to Marcos’s (work overseer-type) attempts at friendship/relationship?

What if Marcos is very popular, wealthy, and introduces TM to a different class of people?

What if TM, again, acts normal in order to fit in?

What if TM succeeds (perhaps the complete lack of emotion, due to grief, is the ticket) and becomes popular among these friends?

What if this popularity spills into professional life and TM skyrockets up the ladder, an odd combination of faking it ’til you make it with totally rational decision making, plus the world’s a thinner place.

What if Marcos, initially attracted by the depth he saw in TM, is confused by this changed and obviously fake behavior? [Why does he wait so long to confront?]

What if he confronts TM about the change?

What if this confrontation triggers the grief over Sara’s death that TM has been refusing to feel, like the pebble holding up the mountain until the elephant sneezes?

What if the shame, guilt, and anger causes TM to lash out at Marcos in a pretty unforgivable way?

What if everything else comes tumbling down as a well, the faking it no longer an option?

What if TM finally takes the psychic’s advice and goes to the ocean (now they can afford it, too)?

What if this is the beginning of a transformation?

What if TM decides to escape into the world of their favorite book (must have some sort of water theme)?

What if TM decides to build a boat, which is illegal?

What if TM finds someone who will sell them wood and hide it in a certain place near the ocean?

What if TM works on the boat in secret?

What if Marcos finds out (something about keeping tabs on them, huge sums of money moving around)?

What if Marcos threatens to report TM?

What if TM goes into hiding (with the cat), in a cave near the ocean, working on the boat?

What if TM swims daily, and the transformation continues, something about the grief and loneliness healing?

What if TM’s sudden fall from popularity and financial activity (boat materials bribe) catches the attention of the media?

What if the media finds TM on the beach, probably because some people saw TM when they visited the shore?

What if the media tries to get TM talking?

Again, what if TM escapes, this time to the ocean, with no plan?

What if the aborted interview and the escape are broadcast?

What if TM isn’t arrested, even though their activities are illegal, because, well, entertainment, also, 50% of the world just died, priorities are different?

What if at some point during this journey out to sea TM simply accepts Sara’s death, their difference…maybe some other stuff, and this opens the emotion barrier that opened with Sara, that had been closed in childhood.

What if that leads them to turn the boat around and go back?

What if Marcos is there to greet them, whisk them through the throng and back to safety (his apology for the role he played in this)?

What if TM resettles, this time in a slightly larger microapartment, with more space for the cat?

What if someone reaches out to them, another oddball, one who watched the escape story?

What if they become friends?

What if TM finds a community?

Theme:

This is a story about someone trying to connect with others.

This is a story about social contradictions: valuation of the emotional over the rational while automating the workforce, life; valuation of individuality over conformity while being increasingly able to avoid introspection and interaction with difference; possessing increasing amounts of personal information about each other while knowing less and less.

*** *** *** ***

And please enjoy this Medusa sculpture from Habana. Unlike The Machine, she bristles with emotion.

theresa

Read (1) and (2). I’ve started including the notes to myself and potential edits, just in case anyone’s curious about my thought process.

Some time ago I went with a friend to a psychic. My friend was—taken in The Loss—a great believer and insisted I try at least once, to the point that she paid the fee equal to ten days of clicking. “I’ll hate you if you don’t,” she said, handing me the damp paper ticket. I didn’t then, but I see now the slight shaking of her hand and the pale amber tint to her eyes. The early stages. We’d been given pamphlets by the government and received messages over the emergency network, and the disconnected had received personal visits regarding the signs. ATTENTION AND TIME IS EVERYTHING. I’d laughed, as you do, as I do when the border between serious and humor is unclear. And that day it was.

Did she know? Because…. No, I can’t give you that, the last of her. Not yet. We’re still strangers and I have too many questions. How did you survive The Loss and how much did it cost? Or did you even know about it, living so far up here? Was it something you only had to read or watch? 

We entered a white, windowless room: that was the first oddity. The second was the lack of incense or candles burning. In fact, the room was lit with bare industrial bulbs and completely spare but for three chairs, one of which was occupied by a man in a brown suit. He faced the wall, away from us. For the first fifteen minutes of our meeting I saw only the back of his head. Black hair, wavy, freckles, slightly jutting ears, and erect posture. I couldn’t see or hear him breathing, but the freckles gave away his humanity. gave him away.

She pushed me toward the right chair, sat in the left and [something about tension leaving her body? or that will happen when he mentions the end is coming.] Of course, my friend had been through this, none of it surprised her. 

She turned to me and smiled (that smile!) then walked strongly/forcefully/boldly to sit in the left chair. Sara grayed early and wore her hair long. Today it was in a single braid, rather than her usual two. As was her habit when sitting, she snatched up the braid and looped it into a bun. How many times had I watched her do this? Why didn’t I see that she could now wrap it five times? [like the implication, but this seems weak to blame self for. Or she now has one instead of two braids, whereas her hair was too thick like that before.] LOOK FOR HAIR LOSS. Why are we so pathetically unobservant? Why isn’t there a billboard or pamphlet or emergency alert for that?

My footsteps twanged/bounced off the walls like plucked rubber band as I crossed to the remaining chair; and an image of me sitting on the tile to remove my shoes flashed, but that was a ridiculous idea, who cared if I made noise, and my shoes stuttered and squeaked as I stopped/halted and continued in the same moment and was sweating as I sat, without scraping the chair, beside Sara. She squeezed my hand with hers. ARE YOU SUDDENLY COLD? But Sara was often cold and her fingers swollen and numb, both from poor circulation and nibbling at her cuticles. She said it was genetic and carried a pair of gloves with her, even in the summer.

“I got laughed at a lot in school,” Sara told me once. “No one ever wanted to touch me during handholding games. Ew, the glove girl. She’ll make you sick. But I had such a great collection. Grandma had saved my mom’s from when she was little and Grandma had made most of those, because gloves are usually so boring. I had stripes and spots and flowers and plaid and every single color you could think of. The hardest part of getting dressed was figuring out which to wear that day. Mom said she could read my mood from the gloves I chose. Now they’re mostly worn out and in a box somewhere, and I’m stuck with the boring ones.”

I mimed putting gloves on, but Sara only smiled and turned to face the back of his head again. So this is the back of a psychic’s head. Looks pretty normal. Is the facing away stuff real or is this part of the hocus-pocus bullshit, to create some air of mystery so we’re sucked in? Sara’s breathing became deep and regular, almost as if she were asleep. Not that I could hear it or anything in that room other than the irregular pounding of my own heart. I attempted to match Sara’s breaths but that just made my heart beat faster and louder, like those torso sized drums in marching bands that keep everyone stepping together. Except this was making me fall apart: sweat started dripping down my face and arms and blackness began creeping in from the sides of my vision until I was just about to lean over and put my head between my knees, like you’re supposed to do in a faint, and he turned around.

Here’s the part where I describe what his face looks like. I can’t. I have no memory of it. I assume all the parts were there, but I couldn’t tell you even if threatened with metal splinters beneath my nails scorpions and the rebirth of my mother. His voice reminded me of a recording I saw about the old candy making process, where people tugged on thick ropes of sticky sugar and folded it back and pulled and folded it back. His voice was deep and strong like that, and as he spoke the sound seemed to be pulling something from me, something I struggled to keep and relinquish simultaneously.

[My weakness at description is painfully evident here.]

“I’m only borrowing it,” he said. As I let go a slow chill spread across my chest and down through my groin. Goosepimples rose; my lower back ached. I leaned closer to Sara and, I realize now, to him. My hand was enveloped in his own—did I give? did he take? all agency had drained away, my head throbbed—enormous hands, with blunt fingernails and fine black hairs on the knuckles, I wanted to pet like a small animal. I flexed my new hands, because they were mine now, both mine and his, and across from me sat Sara and my now empty body but it wasn’t me there but him, staring out from my eyes….

I’ve tried to reconstruct the hours we were in the room, but I’m putting together a puzzle with half the pieces missing, and the pieces that are there, I can’t look at directly, but with a side eye. Most of what I see is Sara’s eyes, practically glowing amber in the falling darkness. And I’m suddenly very sad. His voice speaks from within my body. My/his throat vibrates deeply. “You must return to the water. It will help you deal with what is to come.” I stop breathing then, for just a moment as I let go of the bridge railing and fall forward, as I had so many times before while my finger click click clicked, and gasp only when my body slams into the water, my lungs filling, my arms flailing, my eyes seeing only another’s. And they are closing.

[Note to self: tense issues]