I pried my fingers loose from the armrests on my chair and came forward to Hambone. I straddled him, legs around his waist, and suppressed my gorge as I scrabbled at what I still thought of as his “scar” until it peeled back. My fingertips skated over the plugs and the knots of skin around them, and then I did toss up, spraying vomit and losing my grip on Hambone.
I ended up atop Jenna. The plane screamed down and down and I locked eyes with Hambone, silently begging him to do something. His gaze wandered, and my eyes stopped watering long enough to see Hambone do something to his armrest which caused the cabling on his seat to snake out and mate with his brainstem. The plane leveled off and he smiled at us.
It couldn’t have taken more than thirty seconds, but it seemed like a lifetime. Timson cursed blue at his arm, which was swollen and purple, and Jenna cradled her bumped head in arms that streamed blood from dozens of crisscrossed webbing cuts. I got us strapped in as we touched down.
We got escorted off the ship by a bunch of spacemen with funny accents. They didn’t take us to the hospital until they’d scrubbed us and taken blood. They wanted to take Hambone away, but we were very insistent. The spacemen told us that he was very “high functioning,” and that the plugs in the back of his neck were only rated for about five years.
“They’ll have to come out,” one of them explained to us. “Otherwise, he’ll only get worse.”
Jenna said, “If you take them out, will he get better?”
The spaceman shrugged. “Maybe. It’s a miracle that he’s still bloody alive, frankly. Bad technology.”
They de-quarantined us a month later. I’d never been cleaner. Those Aussies are pretty worried about disease.
The four of us took a flat near Bondi Beach. Timson found a job in a bookstore, and Jenna spends most of her time working with Hambone. Some days, I think she’s getting through to him.
I’m on the dole and feeling weird about it. I can’t get used to the idea of just showing up at someone else’s place and taking handouts. But the Aussies don’t seem to mind. Very progressive people. They ran our story on the news and a music store in Canberra donated a bugle and an electric piano.
I’m teaching Jenna to blow. It’s not that I don’t like playing anymore, but it’s hard to sing and play at the same time. All four of us practice every night, out in our garden. We still flinch every eight bars, waiting for the roar of a jet to interrupt us, then smile sheepishly when it doesn’t come. The important thing is, we’re playing.
Even an interloper like me knows how you get to Sydney Opera House: practice.
A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO SURVIVAL BEFORE, DURING, AND AFTER THE APOCALYPSE
CHRISTOPHER BARZAK
First, remember what it means to be human. Even when your country has turned against you, even when some other part of the world has been decimated (by bomb, by terrorist cells, by forcible entry and removal of dissidents to dark and forgotten chambers, by hurricane or tornado or tsunami), even then remember that you can retain your humanity if you continue to be humane.
Despite that, you will have certain struggles, like finding work when you’re not the right sort (too young, too old, too female, too ethnic, too queer), or like that time you went to the grocery store and the cashier refused to touch your money because you were one of them: one of those Other People. Stay calm. If you are not a part of a normalized group, your chances of being strung up for giving the wrong look or replying with the wrong tone might be more than enough reason for a society gone wrong to cast you out even further, or perhaps kill you. Instead, say, “Thank you.” Say, “I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant.” Say, “You’re absolutely right, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry.” Say it again: “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Wear the requisite uniform. Brush the dust off your shoulders and polish your shoes. Look like you mean this pose you’re taking. You love this country more than you love life itself. Practice these phrases: “I am a patriot of the first order,” and, “God has shown me the light,” and, maybe the most important one, “If you don’t like it here, go somewhere else.” This last one is most effective in proving your loyalty. Do not hesitate to degrade your fellow man if it means your life or his is at stake.
Go to underground meetings in the back rooms of bars and coffee shops. It will not be like the 1960s. There is no free love, just fear, fear, fear. Despair reigns over these conversations, and occasionally you find yourself trying to annihilate your desperation by taking other meeting-goers to bed after too many drinks. Say, “Do you think this is it?” And when they ask, “This is what?” say, “The end of the world. Do you think this is it?”
They’ll say, “If it isn’t the end of the world, I don’t want to know what is.”
They will cry after you make love to them. They will tell you secrets. Secrets about the child they aborted ten years ago, when that was still legal, before they began to arrest women post-facto. That was what they called it in the Reformation Papers: post-facto. After the fact. Retrospective retribution. They will tell you secrets about the last lover they had, before their lover was outed during the Reclamation Period, when all of the homos and queers were given the choice: normalize or die. It was fairly simple. Most chose life. It is one of the most unfortunate aspects of being human, this drive to survive no matter what the cost. Their last lover will have been called Jason, and you’ll wonder what sort of person Jason was, what kind of lover. Do you remind this person with whom you’ve chosen to abandon reality of Jason? Do you have the same eyes? The same smile? The same voice? The same scent? Are you Jason-esque?
Take drugs. They will keep you not-feeling. Numbness is important when the world is coming apart. Refuse the hallucinogens. Accept the dampeners. You need to see the world as it is. You cannot afford to see it as it isn’t.
Remember. This is one of the verbs they will try to remove from your brain. Remember. If you cannot remember, they can tell you anything about the past—your own or the world’s—and you will not be able to know if they are telling the truth. Sit in the library, that most taboo of places, and read as many books as they still allow to be kept on the shelves. Download illegal information. Use false service provider addresses. Move around. If you stay still, you’re certain to be caught.
When the first of the bombs go off, go into hiding. When you are safe, grieve. Sit in your cave, the one in the hills that used to belong to your family, and grieve the loss of so many lives. Lives you never knew personally. Imagine their faces. Imagine the faces of those you knew and loved. Imagine the mushroom clouds and the clouds of viruses. Imagine the way skin crackles and crisps, the way the body can turn against itself in mere minutes or hours when exposed to the right amount of radiation or illness.
Stay where you are. Keep silent. When you hear others pass by your carefully obscured cave entrance, bite your bottom lip and pray. Pray, even if you don’t believe in a god. It may help you to keep silent if you are speaking the language of angels, which can never be heard by human ears. It is the language of thought, plucked like rays of light from the sky and carried off to some other place, where you hope some higher power may hear you.
At night, build a small fire out of moss and straw and twigs. Do not risk the luxury of true warmth and light. It will reach the eyes and ears and noses of those who would take what little luxury you have planned for: a six-month supply of canned meats and vegetables, a mattress and a pile of blankets, a lantern and gobs of oil to burn. Soap. A creek you can wash yourself in at night, even though it chills you to the bone.