The Future Is Blue

I will copy my friend Pablo. This is how humans learn, by copying better humans. I am Desmond Patrick de Aspera Orbital Satellite de Registration 887D de la Boreal-Atherton Corporation y Wright. Born East Lansing, Michigan, 1988. Died…no. I don’t like died. Died is sticky. Died comes with sound and image files attached.

Yellow lines on black. Solid. Dash. Solid. Dash. Like morse code.

Richmond, Virginia: 67 miles

A woman’s voice shaped like the fireplace inside a white clapboard cottage by the sea: I thought maybe we’d go up to Maine for the summer next year. Like we used to do when the kids were little. What do you think, Dez?

Sounds from some industrial hell: screeching, crunching, thudding, snapping, grinding, and the slow drip of everything into the storm drains. Blood, petroleum, rain. The sound of died.

Scalpel, please.

The damage is much worse than we thought.

I drown every day in a sea of random access memory. It really eats into my productivity.

It’s a win-win, Desmond. And if you do end up fulfilling your end of the contract, you’ll be far past caring about the details.

My world is very orderly. When I close my eyes, I see the clock turn over 0700. I do what any man does, the same routine I’ve been running for the last twenty years. Throw on a bathrobe, have a good morning piss, wash my face, stumble downstairs, make coffee, pour myself a bowl of my son’s cereal, read a book while I eat so I don’t have to listen to the newscasts blaring through my kitchen windows, my refrigerator door, my bathroom mirror, anything with a screen. I’ve been working on Kafka. Real cheerful guy. Sometimes I get the idea that turning into a cockroach is his idea of a happy ending.

When I open my eyes, I see the clock turn over 0700. I activate my dormant systems, run a self-diagnostic, clear any buggy code, dispatch drones to repair any equipment malfunction (and there is always an equipment malfunction), scan the passive surveillance archive for any anomalies, run active surveillance programs, access darkweb listen-in protocols, and attempt contact with ground control.

But God, it feels like throwing on a bathrobe, having a good morning piss, washing my face, stumbling downstairs, making coffee, pouring myself a bowl of my son’s cereal, reading a book while I eat, not listing to the window/door/mirror newscasts. Peering at Kafka over my glasses. I can see the coffee mug in my hand as I switch over to active surveillance sequence 1139. The mug says You’re My MAINE Squeeze! on it. The handle is chipped. I don’t have a bathrobe. I don’t even have shoulders to throw it over anymore. But it’s there when I start combing through code lines. On my skin. The sash around my waist, under a belly that’s a little too big for a fifty-year-old guy to be proud of. But I don’t have a belly. Even a little one. Desmond Wright doesn’t have a body anymore. I don’t have a face to wash or a downstairs or a coffee pot or cereal or a son. But I hear his voice humming through the quiet corridors of the darkweb.

Daddy, Charlotte won’t share her paint! She’s hogging it ALL!

I say: Charlotte, share with your brother. It’s an autonomic reflex, like breathing or adjusting a solar panel to match low Earth orbit.

Somewhere, in an underground radio room, a computer screen flashes text: Charlotte, share with your brother.

My daughter’s name is Charlotte. And knotted to the name Charlotte like a magician’s trick scarf come other names, other images, one after the other:

My daughter’s name is Charlotte.

My son’s name is Lukas.

My wife’s name is Eliza.

White lights. Silver knives. Masks.

I was a doctor. A neurosurgeon. Before Richmond, Virginia: 67 miles. I was good at it. At brains. At minds.

Scalpel, please.

If he wakes up, pump him full of Ativan and hold on to your goddamned hat.

I see my hands on people’s bodies. Broken bodies. Patched-up bodies. Comatose bodies. Eliza’s beautiful, familiar, warm body. My own well-worn body. My children’s slippery bodies in a blue tile bath-tub. In the emptiness of space I smell the strawberries-and-cream bubble bath. I feel the foam. I am so hungry for myself. For them. I search my data reservoir for Dr. Desmond Patrick Wright, employee, Boreal-Atherton Labs.

The white clapboard cottage by the sea. The fireplace inside it. An unfinished poker game played for pennies and mint candies left out on the dining room table. Summer storm clouds drifting in from the Atlantic, battering the windows with rain. A cross-stitch sampler on the wall reads:

Desmond Patrick Wright, M.D. Ph.D., born East Lansing, Michigan, 1988. Died Richmond, Virginia 2042.

Yellow lines on black. Solid. Dash. Solid. Dash.

Why don’t I remember?

A yellow note on the refrigerator in Eliza’s endearingly messy handwriting: Volunteer, Aspera Project. After a night of anxious dreams, woke to find himself transformed into a cockroach.

It’s a win