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NIGHTMARE REALITY
CUBE Paradigm - Face One
By John True
* 1 *
AND THIS IS WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO US ALL, VERY SOON
the headline reads. It says it all. It turns out that all of our fears, and dreams, are not misgiven, only postponed.
The newspaper slowly slides unnoticed from the hands of Drummond Frenzie as his jaw follows the law of gravity despite the rest of his face. His widened eyes stare out without seeing at a TES (Total Entertrainment System). He doesn't know whether he should laugh or cry maddeningly just because the TES is simultaneously his and not his. Thoughts thrash his brain like some crazy lawn mower as he contemplates his new fate. He feels as if he is floating, freefalling in the EtoMS (Earth to Mars Shuttle). Now, that was a trip. A very long and boring trip, that is.
The noise pecking at the hard shell of his dark reverie finally cracks through, shouting out his name.
"What!"
"Don't be short with me. What's wrong with you, I've been calling your name for so long I wouldn't be surprised if my voice went hoarse."
"I'm sorry, you just have no idea what kind of news is in this very paper."
"What?" Shade's voice becomes softer, with more of a quiver to it. "What is it, Drew?"
"Turn on the TV, I'm sure it's all over it by now."
"What is it? You're starting to scare me, Drew."
"Don't blame me, blame them."
"Who's 'them'?"
He just points towards her. But then she realizes that he is also pointing to something behind her -- the EHD (Even Higher Dimension) TV section of the TES. Shade Raive points to the EHDTV herself, and her particular magnetic signature turns the TV on to her preset choosings. They course through the M-field connecting her to the set. What she sees everyone is seeing, and it is changing everyone forever.
The newscaster (with the obviously made up name of John Simpson) speaks of an unreality that is soon to become the new reality: "It appears that this phenomenon thought only to affect a select few is in fact a distinct possibility for all of us. Top scientists from around the world have been studying this bizarre occurrence, and there have been some interesting thoughts, but no final solutions."
"Govexcrement!, what the hell is he talking about?"
"Stay free, Shay; you know how the news works." It works like this: They control the information now and disseminate as they please. We listen to what they tell us. We are like children who believe in Santa Claus because our parents tells us he exists. It no longer occurs to us to question this reality given to us all wrapped up in pretty graphics and sanitized for our safety. We have regressed. We have devolved. We are involved, but we have slipped around to the other side, like those people in that ancient banned movie Awakenings -- we watched the system so closely that we BECAME the system.
Shade chews on her right ring finger's nail as her left heel taps up-down, up-down, up-down, up-down; mimicking her heartbeat. She watches the news intently as if it was giving her compliments. So, the M-waves work both ways. How could we have known they would be another atom bomb. Shame on us for not believing the truth -- that the double-edged sword of technology can cut us as it cuts through Nature. With two silvery sharpened sides, you have less of a chance to avoid being cut.
"The latest ideas are varied and many, but here are the top ones: 1) The chemicals we tried too late to contain has us all in a mass hallucination 2) the genetically-tampered-with food we've ingested has changed our brain chemistry forever and 3) somehow, impossibly, another dimension is invading our own. Something some Neuveau New Agers believe is happening because the Galactic Center is pulsing into us, now."
"But what the hate is going on!"
The newscaster reacts to her question because that is what we asked for -- more personal TV. "Whatever is causing it, Shade, the symptoms seem clear enough. Your subconscious swiftly becomes conscious, your dreams and nightmares seem to come true, and the world seems to change reality, slowly but surely, into something only hypothesized until now. That which lies behind our perceived reality -- as ancient cultures around the globe have glimpsed in their shamanistic visions."
The TV screen seems to blink on and off for a second, and Shade thinks it looks like a blinking eye -- but it is too quick to completely register. This strange vision, if that's what it is, only causes her to quickly bat her eyes, but she never got enough information to worry about it consciously, so she doesn't.
John Simpson reappears on the screen, but something is a bit off. "Again, scientists have determined that Dr. Thagmyer's cure for AIDS is viable. Soon, it will join the ranks of the greatest medical discoveries since Penicillin, the Polio Vaccine, the cure to the flu and the cure to cancer. This was possible after drug companies were forced by The World Congress (TWC) over a decade ago to find drugs to cure ills, not just alleviate the symptoms. Also, the FDA is to rule today on the drug to determine it's safety. Proponents expect the same quick run through the approval process that was enjoyed by Triaxon--the anti-caner drug that was discovered last year by Noble Laureates Lake Thompson and Urüøll Llarsøn. Dr. Thagmyer's research seems to show not even a single side effect, and with the new law passed by TWC a few years ago that allows this quicker drug run-through it will soon come to the aid of us all. The last major disease conquered!
"In other news, …"
Shade closes her hand in a fist, which cuts off the magnetic signatures emanating from the tips of her fingers, and therefore turns off the TV. But the TV remains on! She repeats this action two times, one more aggressive than the other, but the TV remains on. She then digs her fingers so hard into her palm it hurts, but she is too angry to feel pain. She wants to punish the machine for willfully disobeying her, but instead it decides to torture her. She looks down at her fist, something doesn't feel right, her fingers have a funny sensation in them. Her fingers feel as hard as granite while her palm feels as soft as water. She turns her fist over, and sees four bumps evenly spaced on the back of her hand, moving up and down rhythmically with her quickening heart. Then, four things pop out of her hand, she screams as she watches her own fingers growing, pushing themselves out through the back of her hand. Just as they start to curl around her knuckles, they stop, and reverse themselves. Like a film run in reverse, it as if nothing had happened. Now everything is normal. Is it her imagination or did the TV just laugh at her? Before she has a chance to fully grasp what is happening to her, a voice comes from behind.
"You're in my apartment, honey. Only I can control the TV. Don't you remember where you are? Was I really that good last night?"
At first she is surprised to be in Drumond's apartment, but she can remember last night so clearly that she bites her lip, laughs, and all her confusion is removed. That weird incident with her hand already mysteriously forgotten.
"You want it off honey?" He had muted it by placing his index finger on his lips in the "shh" sign. Now he closes his fist, closes the circuit, closes the newscaster's mouth for good. "What's wrong, my life? You looked troubled a little just then. Was it the news?"
"No, that was good news, I guess."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, never mind, it sounds stupid."
"You never say stupid things. If you did, I would never have married you." His smile is contagious, she catches it.
Her mind tries to say something about not remembering getting married, but is silenced too quickly to do anything about it. "Well, I was just thinking. Soon after AIDS is cured, we will have solved all the problems in the world."
"What do you mean?"
This is why she loves him, he never talked down to her. He is too good to be true, really. "Peace has survived all over the world, population has been controlled, as has crime, drug use, religious conflicts et. al. With a true cure for AIDS, all we'll have to worry about is the common cold which is so controlled today that it might as well be cured. What will happen now?"
"Go on."
"Well, this is the weird part, but…how can we continue to grow with no challenges left? What, do we colonize Jupiter's moons? Meet a foreign species of life? What??
"Without challenges, will we rot on the vine? Shrink like a smug grape into a contented raisin? What is the raisin d'être for all of these peace accords and cures? We'll have nothing left to occupy our minds but our minds themselves. And then, all our minds have past our thoughts are it's dreams and hallucinations. Are we to live in a perpetual dream state, then?"
"But, honey; it's what the modern human has dreamed of ever since the sweetness of the city was overcome by the sour rot of evil. Now, without all the problems hurting us, we can make some real progress. It's all been about progress, moving inexorably towards a time when we can have technology erase all our woes. Now that this has happened, all we need is to go to the next step -- leave this foul world behind for good. I think it would be best. And that Simpson guy does too."
"I don't know. This is really bugging me. I-I…I've got to get out of this place for a while, I'll be back." She wanted to ask him about Simpson, but there were so many other thoughts and worries crowding her mind, that she couldn't concentrate on any one thing anymore.
"Wait, let's talk some more about this."
"No, later. I've just got to take a short walk. I'll be back before dinner. You don't mind fixing it again?"
"No, go on. You'll be back, there is no escape from me."
Suddenly, his voice sounded different, like he wasn't kidding. A weird sense of déjà vù and confusion overwhelmed her, and so she just runs toward the door.
She opens the door to the apartment hallway. But, the doorway morphs into a red-irised blinking eye. This time she catches long enough of a glimpse of it that she can see the color of the iris. It is almost un-human, for it is gray one moment and then changes to half red half blue -- one color slowly merging with the other. There also seems to be a triangle within the circle of the eye. Seeing these colors and symbols prepares her for the next stage. She hears the noise of a TV switching channels. She feels her head pulse heavily as if she were hung over. Her confusion has manifested itself as a excruciatingly slowed-down jack hammer in the middle of her brain that was trying it's damnedest to get out. She felt as if the Alien was deposited there instead of in her stomach, and it was ready to be born. Still, she manages to open the doorway to her apartment and walk inside. The strange thing is that she never felt her hand leave the door handle from the door of…door of…shit, where had she just been? It was in front of another door, wasn't it?
Her mind whirls clockwise while the world spins counter to this, and then with the sound as if from a cracking knuckle, things tried to fall back into place. Instead they missed and fell on over and broke on the floor of her consciousness like a jigsaw puzzle. She felt like a child lost in a grocery store, with the tears of fear and lost hope just starting to enter her timbre. She wanted the comfort of her prior knowledge back, but now she tilts her head like a curious dog when she realizes everything should be OK because she is back where she belongs.
She stands half way inside her apartment trying to recall what she had been doing, but then she notices her arms are full of bags and she remembers where she's been. As she walks into her apartment, though, something keeps repeating in her mind. A vision of her rubbing her drowning reddened eyes next to the packages of paper products with their happy babies and silly talking stuffed animals fluttered through her mind like a lost carrier pigeon. At first, all she can think about is why have the things she was smiling at just before, the happy animals and babies on their shiny fluffy bags, now seemed to be insulting her. They all seemed to laugh at her. They all seemed as hard as bricks. They looked as shiny as a piece of coal on the bed of the dead-gray South Carolinian Atlantic water. Where had her mommy gone? Where have all the details gone??
The day's plot is somewhat clear in her mind, she got up, showered, got dressed, called some people, looked in the cabinets and decided she needed some things. But for the life of her she cannot remember anything else. What was the weather outside? Then she realizes that she has shorts on and sunglasses on her face. But, what does that really say? How hot was it? Was it cloudy? What stores did she visit? As she sets the bags on the counter, she sees their logos on the bags but couldn't say what the stores really looked like. For some reason, a clip from "The Simpsons" floats through her head: Homer says "I recognized the logo." in a sad confessional tone.
Everything had been this way since…since…what day is it? What month, what year even? It was like looking at identical twins, and suddenly being able to so clearly tell them apart that they no longer even look like members of the same species. "My god, what is going on here?" Her brain fights to reign in her thoughts into some kind of logical conclusion, but gives up -- but not soon enough to forget that it wasn't paying attention to her hold on consciousness. Her entire body's musculature relaxes at the same time, and even as her bones say "Hey, wait a minute here", gravity already has it's greedy hands around her in a loving embrace, and drags her on top of it like a rapist. Images and sounds and light and dark and shadows and leering men and rows upon rows of things arch above her towering higher and higher and she knows that they are all about to fall upon her and drown her and she cannot take it anymore and so she screams and turns and she sees stars and decides to stop fighting gravity and she sees red and she succumbs and she sees black. She is on her back well within the blesséd black, Amen and pass the remote.
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