Segment 18

         Sir, we’ve got him, he’s stationary finally, he’s stopped moving.
         Hm, yes, so he has.
         We’re going to get him now, this is the right moment, we can snatch him-
         No, not yet. Not just yet.
         But, sir, it’s taken this long, we don’t want him to-
         I said, not yet. We’ve waited this long, we can wait a bit longer.
         But-
         On my order, and not a second sooner. Am I clear?
         Ah, yes. Yes, sir.

         Oh, that’s why they kept me. Because I’d follow you all, to the ends of everything. And I’d never question. And I’d never look back. No matter what was bearing down. I’m so

         I’m face down in a field of silence. The earth is spinning and I’m attached to it and there’s no getting off unless the whole world tries to dislodge me. I feel a chill, there’s water in my nostrils, flecks of cold passing through me. Oh God. God help me, I’m numb. I’ve been scoured and there’s nothing left to feel anymore. My arms outstretched, I’m lying flat, time is skittering by me, trying to be quiet, trying not to get my attention, so I don’t know how much has gone by. What does it matter, then? Let it all decay under me. Dammit. Let the whole affair unspool and unravel, I can’t be carried anymore. Let me stay here without moving and see where it gets me. I can’t watch the tableau anymore. You’ve got me, you’ve worn me down, I don’t know what the purpose was but it’s been ground into me, I can feel it in every atom now. Weary, all parts in disrepair. This is what it came to, to get me here. I’m waiting for voices, for the next insideous display. What more do you have to show me, that I don’t already know? Is that how the joke went, to see how much he could take? Dammit, dammit, God dammit.
         Ah, it hurts not to move. Without will, I’m getting to my knees. Damn inertia, once I’ve started I can’t make myself stop, not even for a second. This time smells old, it’s a place I don’t know, there’s a nip of lonliness in the air, of grey clouds and thick air and that time you’re always afraid of, the place where they’re all forgotten you. Because when the last person dies who ever heard your voice, that’s when you’re truly dead. Because there’s nothing left of you, just transmissions go forever out into nothing, rocketing away from this world and into the next, out into the void and if we find it and we see it we won’t know what we’re even looking at. Old recordings of a life too quickly gone. Open your eyes, then, you bastard. If I’m going to be up, I’m going to see. I owe the people that much, to fall apart on my feet. I’m paper now, tattered, fraying at the edges, every gust of wind takes a little more away, to far off corners, to places I’ve never been to. I remember watching television and seeing exotic ports and wanting to go there, just to be somewhere that I’ve never been before. And now, there’s too much, too much that I’ll never see. They’re carrying fragments of me, to those lost places and the people there might get a moment of my scent, a lost intonation of my voice, the shadow of the way I stood when the wind was up against me, all of that in the second before it disintegrates. I don’t even have a shadow now. Stand up, dammit. Get up. You’ll only die on your knees when they cut off your legs. Ah, it’s so cold. I’m crusted over with frost, the ill winter of time. I’m coated and frozen and when I melt there’s no reason to even consolidate again. Where are you? Where are all of you? I ask the questions but there’s no answers. Take me, then, take me if you’ve got nothing else left. If you have nothing else to say.
         It’s so peaceful out here it’s suffocating. I’m looking around and the world is cloaked in snow. It’s snowing, tiny flakes falling rapidly, landing on me and going through me. I can barely see anything, the shadows of trees seen through a wall of cold, against the dead light of the sky. The sun’s out there but it’s hidden, removed. The ground is already covered, I can barely see my feet. I’m wavering, wobbling, I’m off balance with hardly any mass. I see shapes in the distance, shapes closer, it’s all too clear for some reason. Rounded and squares, all in loose lines, one row after another. I’m waiting to hear your voice and I don’t hear anything. Isn’t this how it goes, don’t I have to watch another act in this too short play, for as long as I can manage? Show me, lay it all out so I can see. But there’s no one as far as my eyes can tell. Rolling hills, a lake covered in ice, the ice covered in a thin layer of drifting snow. Not even footprints to find and track. I’m alone. There’s no one here. I’m alone.
         In front of me are three stones close together, the edges smooth, the tops and fronts covered in ice and frost. I know them. I know what they are. Tombstones. Ah. I’m in a graveyard, I know, I knew that, I always did. This whole damn world, nothing but the dead, lying down there with arms out, waiting to catch us when we fell. That’s why I went up, to escape, because the only other route was down and I wasn’t ready to go. The gravity wouldn’t hold me. But I let it grab you, in my place. No, not in my place. But just like everyone else. The ground swallowed you all up. And you. Where are you? I can’t read the inscriptions, in this place. I see gates, in the distance, stark outlines against a field of shifting white. Beyond that, it’s all opaque, maybe I see streetlights, striving to break through the murk. Sidewalks and people and the things that sit past, that live outside and try not to think about all the dead buried here. Gravestones, graves and sites. The snow’s falling on us all, like he always said. We’d play and I let you hold me down on the ground and I’d feel my own warmth seep out and the chill come into my clothes. It’ll cover us, if we stay here too long. Who is this, who left this here? I’m just a figment, the shared dream of a hundred people who thought they knew me until I went away and proved them all wrong. You didn’t know me at all and I’m sorry. I tried my best. What does this say here? Where’s my hand, I can barely see. Move the frost, the ice, the frozen water caked on here like a shell. It slides right off. The dream’s dissipating now, like the movie I’m fading from the photograph because there’s no reason to remember. The voices hover in the air, held fast by icicle strings, vibrating in time with the moment, just waiting to be shattered. I can’t do that, I can’t break anymore, all I can do is fade. Oh, the names. The name. It’s your last name. I see, so close now. Your mother, was that her name? I barely remember anymore. The dates, I can’t tell the dates. I don’t want to tell her how much time she has. She has none, it’s past. I smell dead flowers, left here to dry. An anniversary, we come here to tell you that we remember but we’re doing our best to forget. I’m trying to see what the ground looks like from the inside. Dammit. Who’s the next one? There’s so many together, all the names I know, they’re gone now. Even you. You led the way, you always did, you showed us how it had to be done. No, nothing noble. I watched you claw your way back, only to fail at the last second because we don’t always win. You skin your knee and you heal but when life fades, you can’t sew it back together, not all of your bandages and all of your hospitals and all the prayers in the world will reverse the path once you’ve taken the first step. I watched you go into the dark and I can’t see you anymore. Ah, no. No, other names. Your father, and near that, your sister. All of them gone. It’s only fair. Did they think of you, in the last seconds. Did they think they’d be seeing you again, finally after so many years. It’s so long, when you come down to it. There’s no time at all and it’s forever. I’ve been avoiding the last stone, it’s the oldest, I can see the weather has been attacking it for some time. All of them, they’ve been here for years. Does anyone even come anymore. There’s no footprints. It’s new snow, maybe. Falling freshly down. Filling the grooves carved in the stone, water in the cracks, I’d run my hands along them, to feel the names, to remind myself that they existed, the only way I can. The only connection I have. That someone thought of you, while chiseling the names. The last drops are falling away, smearing away the dust, making the letters clear. I can’t close my eyes. I know what I’m seeing, before I even see it. I travel through time, I think I told you, a long time from now. I know what’s going to happen and I’m still surprised. Dammit. I know.
         Ah. It’s you. Of course it is. I knew that. I could fill this place with the things that I know and choose to disregard. Your name on the stone, so smooth, the wind is wearing it down. I see snow and water slide against it, across it, erasing a little bit of memory with every inch, tiny grains of cold grinding on the rock, the smooth granite. The names. I’m looking at them and trying to keep myself together. Your family, you’re all back here together. Maybe the grandchildren are here too, it feels long enough, the same way that the early part of the century feels to us, lifetimes removed, the people nothing more than figures that inhabit stories, still photos that never age. They’re all here. All of you. I’m standing on your grave, you’re somewhere under me, maybe not anymore, maybe you’ve already dissolved into the soil, I can’t tell, I can’t say. It says things on your grave. A hundred years would have still been too soon. It doesn’t say that. You don’t know what years are, but I do, I’ve felt that sift through my hands, caustic sand, it burns us and wears us down and eventually we’re just white bone with nothing to hold us together. I’m thinking of your parents. Whole generations trapped in the earth, dear God. What was it like, to have to pick out the stone? Why even put the dates on it, just to remind you? Could they even look at without letting it become a mirror, staring back at themselves. You did this. I tell them. I’m not rational. I’m standing in the snow and the snow is passing through me and my friend is dead and she hasn’t died yet. But here she is. You did this. You killed her by letting her be born. We wouldn’t be here, if not for that. But what choice did they have, in the end? You get some moments and you have to pretend it was better than no moments at all. I’ve told you things that you probably never told anyone else and now they’ve died with you and I don’t even remember them. You held a piece of me somewhere inside and I want to retrieve it because some of you is on it as well and I want to have that, I think I deserve just a tiny fragment, something to hold me over in the dark, when things become too clustered, when I need something to remind. But it’s gone into the ground. With your parents, all of them. They thought I’d marry you, at some point. Because that was how it worked, in their day. You dated a girl and you stayed with her and she was the one. We moved too fast. Nothing’s moving now, the wind knocks some snow off trees and they fall silently, starting in a clump and landing scattered. That’s us. We stick together until the friction becomes too much and then we fall apart, we leave to fend for ourselves. I left, I’m sorry. It’s so easy to say that now, when you can’t hear. We all said we’d stick together and I broke away. To what? To when? I don’t have any excuses now. This is where we come to. Everyone I know is lying in places like this somewhere on this world, slumbering, awaiting the day their bodies dissolve and there’s nothing left. Nothing but memory. Who’s left who knew you? Did your sister have kids and did they ask who you were, who’s that pretty girl in the old photos, who’s so thin and looks so much younger than really she is? Where is she now, mother, that we don’t see her anymore? Did they film you, because that’s something. A recording of a voice of a moment. I can’t stand it. It all crumbles. Dust to dust to dust. I’d name a child after you but it’s not fair, to burden them like that. Why do I have her name, they’d ask. Because she died too young and we want to remember her. So we forget, we turn and forget and write down other names and stick them in other places and maybe sometimes they’d sit around and talk about you, when the twilight was coming, when it wasn’t as easy to pretend that they weren’t alone and that it didn’t hurt as much, to let you go. They’d talk about you and the silly and stupid things you did and how much they want you back to do those moronic things all over again. But there’s not enough stories, they all run out after a while. Ah, God. The dates, they’re just too close together. And you move further and further away from them and you think, oh, she would have been this old and she would be doing this. It’s all conjecture. We have to make up stories, to pad the ones that are there. I’ve got a million stories and it’s not enough, to make a person. It’s just a sliver, each one. A thousand different perspectives and none of them are you. Just paper and stone, easily discarded. I’ve left drops of myself all over your history, the way blood splatters against a window, the way it rattles when you’re not expecting it, against a certain breeze. Did it surprise you, to know that I was there? I’m so transparent now, I’d go away but there’s nowhere to go to. Heaven won’t have me and hell doesn’t need me. We believed in those things, we went to church and you all ended up in the ground the same as anything else. I keep waiting for your voice to tell me to go stand somewhere else, that I’m blocking the light. That I didn’t waste all this time to just stand there and not say anything. I came all this way but I was already too late. I bypassed the years but nobody thought to stay around. I don’t know. I don’t. Snow’s falling down in a peaceful blanket. It’s nice, where they have you, where you put you. I can imagine your family coming here to visit, sitting up on the ground and staring out at the scene, at the verdant grounds, the clear lake, the thick grass dotted with flowers, the silent distant figures of other people, all following their own loss, to whatever the destination might hold. They’d tell you how things were going, what was new. Because it matters, to say these things. To pretend that you were still involved, watching over us all. To watch the impossible sky and pretend that some fragment of you survived. But it’s a dream. The same dream that made us think we could see snowflakes as individual crystals. It’s just water, in the end. All this beauty and when you close your hand it all goes away. You never saw it. It runs off your skin, all you have is the memory of the sensation, how it felt, all you wanted it to feel. And even that’s gone, over time. After time has gone by. And you’re gone. That’s what it means. I don’t even have the memory of water. You’re gone. I’m standing in a field of the dead and I’m alone and you’re not here. I don’t know where you are, but it’s not here. Damn. Dammit. All of you, just, ah, dammit. Who hears? Who listens? You’re gone. I said, okay, I said it. You’re not here. You’ve gone away. Oh, hell.
         This frozen world, what does it mean? Encased in ice, it barely moves. But it revolves, it turns. It passes. I used to say that I was just passing through, but that isn’t true. I didn’t go anywhere. You passed by and you passed away and it was over before it really even began. The way gossamer dissolves in the breeze on a summer day, when the air is so pleasant that you don’t immediately notice the loss. You reach out, expecting to feel the caress of silken fibers and there’s nothing. Nothing to clasp. It’s all gone. Transparent, framed against the endless sky, you can’t see it. I called after you, didn’t you hear me? I tried to make my voice heard. But you passed, they said, you passed. I barely got to know you, in the years we had. What a time. But was that it, was that all you got? I’m staring at your grave and it’s so damn final. Snow is building up on it, threatening to cover it up, cover over everything, erase the whole damn scene, color it white and make it disappear. I can’t take this. I don’t want it to go away. I stretch out my hand and it’s covered in crystals, dots of light, flickering and reflecting. I want to brush the snow away but I have no mass. It stays and lingers and the wind with supple fingers has more luck than I ever will. I’m thinking of you, and I can’t stop and I’m thinking of you under the ground not moving or breathing or doing anything ever again that will ever remind any of us of you. I’m shaking. Christ, I can’t stop. It was too soon, I said, I told them, I said it wasn’t enough time. Nobody listens. The world could care less. It sits there static and we run across it and people live and people die and it just goes on. Ripples, maybe, if we’re lucky. A hole, perhaps. For a second. You created a hole, dammit, when they took you away. But where is it now? They put you in it and they covered you up and there’s no evidence anymore. The world repairs itself. We find the patch and keep moving because we have no choice. Another step, that’s all I ask. I’ll beg you, if I can. But you’re gone. I said it. I can’t make it hurt. I’d cut myself with it if I could. Where are you now, that you can’t be with us? I want to know and I can’t say and all the answers I get aren’t answers at all but stony glares and awkward silences and the things that suggest it’s worth knowing. You knew her, they say, that has to be enough. It’s over and content yourself with that. No. No. I said, no. Grey whiteness falls from the sky and I’m a monochromal galaxy, all dim lights and distant flickers. Can you see me, from wherever you are? I want you to, I want to be a beacon you can respond to. But it’s not possible. You’re too far away and I don’t shine as bright as I used to. Things were different, when we were young. They tell us. You’re older than me now, and I haven’t aged. These paths. We followed each other for a while but then the ways branched and I lost sight of you in the trees and by the time I got back the work was over. It was done. I went to the clearing and I found you there, lying down, already departed. But it wasn’t you, it was only a mirage. You were somewhere else and what I thought was you crumbled when I came too close. Your voice haunts me from the trees, the world’s so concealed, we don’t know what we find until we’re right up against it. Black stakes on a blank canvas. Ah, you don’t know. I’m covered in glass. If you could see me now. Dammit, where are you? I got here and you never showed. I’ll pinwheel, if I can. Try to spot me, try to follow. Come on. Please.
         We’ve come so far and we never went anywhere at all. I remember holding your hand and thinking how damn warm it is, that your skin was slippery and you seemed to be shaking. Maybe it was me. I was your friend and your boyfriend and then your friend and then I was the guy who stepped sideways into nowhere and never came back. But it wasn’t true, I constructed the myth and you believed it and did it to yourself. No, life did it. They handed you a death sentence the day you were born. Was it fair, to let you go so early? So young? All our times together, you never brought it up, you never said how little time you had. But we all knew, in the backs of our minds. You ignored it and pressed on and let it take you. You should have fought, you should have hung on. I know, I know you did. I’m sorry, dammit. Where are all the people, all the people we ever knew? Ghost flickers, sequestering the boundaries, on the borders of my vision. Surrounding me. No, wait, give me one more minute. All you ghosts, don’t take me yet. I can’t go back to you, when there’s so much I have to say. Step back, give me room. Oh, this stone, this damn silent stone. I’m so close to it and it hasn’t changed. I’m ringed with light and I’m so cold. The temperature hurts. Why did you go? I was supposed to show up at your house one day and pretend that I had been down the street the whole time. It’s all ruined. Don’t you know that? Of course you don’t. All the possibilities have faded. I know, I remember and I’m the only one. Standing in the background of your college graduation, handing you a card when you weren’t looking and then disappearing, making you wonder if I was ever there. Sneaking into your wedding and stealing a seat, catching you in a dance, off guard, when you weren’t expecting. Trying to convince you to name your first child after me. Failing that, the second. Telling you about the days, even when they were years apart, like no time had passed at all. You were my own personal time traveler, I crossed the borders without effort, without will. I wanted to be there for everything, like friends do. Men, do you see? I didn’t leave her. But she still had to go. Did she? Did you? I don’t understand, I never will. I wanted to see you live to be a hundred, just to spite the odds, and see you blow out the candles on a birthday cake that could set the air on fire. Did it happen, even somewhere in our dreams? It never did. It never will. Dammit. I’m angry, I’m so angry. I don’t want to shout at you but I’m tired, I don’t want to stand here and say that you died and that you’re in a better place. You’re not, there is no better place, the best place is here and there’s nothing else. This is all we have. This soft world, the laughs of friends, the touch of family, you had all of this but your grip wasn’t strong enough. I would have lent you my strength, if it was allowed. Any of us would have. Even these people, drawing closer, phantoms in the swirling air. Can you come closer, I can’t hear what you’re saying. Don’t be angry, it’s not possible. I can’t do it. I can’t pretend that there’s anything good about this, that we say we come from a world that’s fair and yet there you are, a lifetime gone before a new generation can even be born and that’s right? Who says? I don’t say, I can’t agree. Don’t be angry? I have every damn right to be. They took you away, this goddamned world, they infected you and rotted you from the inside and you smiled the whole time they were ravaging you and now they want us to smile even though there’s an empty space where you used to be. Dammit, make me. I told you. You try to move on and that implies that it’s okay. It’s not. It never is. You deserved ten times what you got and it’s a package we’ll never deliver. I’ll never be okay with it. I’ll shout and rage as best I can, because it’s not all right. Do you hear me? It’s not. All of you there, can you hear me? Oh God, I’m so heavy. The weight’s got me, it’s taking me down. If I could only touch you. God damn. It’s so cold, finally. Tell me. Tell me to go away, to go find myself somewhere else. I came all the way here, to find you already gone. You didn’t wait. I can’t follow you. I wish I could. I’m sorry. I’m sorry that’s all you got. The snow’s coming faster now, it’s bearing down on me, a storm on my senses. I’m on my knees, my hand out. I’m falling, oh God. Make it stop. You’re gone, in infinite time and you only exist for such a small moment. It’s not enough, it will never be. Shimmering presences, glistening at the edges of my vision. How long will you wait? The tombstone hovers, too solid. It’s your name, I can’t deny it. I won’t, anymore. You’re gone. I don’t like it. You went too fast. Too soon. I don’t accept it. But there it is, carved out. Don’t touch. Let me have another moment. Oh, hands in the air, it’s so much brighter all of a sudden. I want to leave my fingerprints somewhere, so that you know I remembered. The air is humming. I’m reaching out. I see now, there’s snow on my arm. Don’t blow it off. Don’t melt. Stay there, I need it. Gather around. Grief tries to take me, fits in a place inside of me that’s too small. I’m distended, distorted. This life was too small for you. And I’m sorry. I wish it could have turned out differently. I really do. But this was all you had. It’s not fair. But it never is.
         I reach out. There’s crystal spires crusted on my eyes. My fingers brush stone. Oh God, I’m condensing. It hurts, I’m all out of phase. My hand lies flat on solid rock. I feel the indentations of your name, of the scant time you had. Light erupts inward, it’s all around me, in this empty space. The sky is filled with voices. I’m trembling, I’m shaking, I’m rattling in every which way, on planes I can’t even comprehend. Time will tear out my bowels. The men are coming backwards, landing in this moment by the backways. They’re all around. I’m falling, I need to support myself. They’re calling out.
         “. . . got him, he’s isolated . . .”
         “. . . be careful, we don’t know what he might . . .”
         Oh, all of you, what took so damn long?
         “. . . at him, he’s hardly there, he’s so faint . . .”
         “. . . touch him, don’t do it, Christ, just surround . . .”
         But you don’t know. You don’t.
         “. . . we don’t know what he is, just . . .”
         “. . . on my mark . . .”
         My teeth clenched, I rest both hands on your grave. My eyes are slits, nearly closed. The shaking hasn’t stopped. It’ll tear me apart, if I let it.
         “. . . wait, unless he says on my order, we have to . . .”
         “. . . look, he can’t, he’s not going to . . .”
         There’s no strength in the lifeless. My mouth is forced shut.
         “. . . listen, we have to dispatch, just careful . . .”
         “. . . watch it, watch . . .”
         And somehow, I think of you and tear the words out of myself, so I can be saved.
         “I, ah, I-I . . . muh . . .” my voice is sandpaper. It hurts, oh.
         “. . . wait, did he just . . .”
         “. . . no, on my mark . . .”
         I close my eyes tightly and let it burst from me. “M-my name is . . . ah . . .” I gasp, stumble and try to swallow.
         “Jesus, wait, hold on, wait . . .”
         “We can’t, we’re not secure, we can’t . . .”
         I grunt and let the rest roll out. “Ah, t-this is . . . Fuh-first Captain Joseph Brown . . .” my hands are gripping the sides of your grave, my knuckles are white. The cold is cutting me, blowing sideways past me, tiny knives in the air. “Ah-activating the ah, dammit, l-lost man protocols, codetype alpha f-four . . .”
         “. . . what . . .”
         And that’s it. I have nothing else. I sag against the grave, against the ground. It’s not enough. It wasn’t enough.
         “. . . hold on, wait, what . . .”
         “. . . wait . . .”
         “. . . what do you mean, what did he . . .”
         “. . . hold on, abort, I said it, dammit, abort . . .”
         But somehow, it’s enough.
         “. . . good God, it’s him, he was right, it’s . . .”
         “. . . wait, he’s one of ours, he’s . . .”
         They gather around me, in a loose circle. It’s so cold here. I can’t stay. I’m sorry. I wish I could stay longer. But it’s not right.
         “. . . don’t you see, it’s, it is him . . .”
         This isn’t where I have to be.
         “. . . his vitals, they’re all over . . .”
         “. . . get him out, we have to get him . . .”
         And they lift me, like carrying a child and I lose contact with you.
         “. . . quickly, before he shifts again, we have to . . .”
         “. . . no, I think it’s all right, I think he’s . . .”
         But the pressure remains. And I take it with me. I have to. Even as the world inverts, starts to become light.
         “. . . careful, easy with him, listen you’re going to be okay, just . . .”
         As the snow melts, becomes water, becomes vapor, becomes nothing at all but something invisible and still beautiful.
         “. . . we’ve got you, Captain, it’s all right, we’ve got you now . . .”
         So they carry me, they take me.
         “. . . everything is okay now, we’re got you, everything is just fine . . .”
         And like that, we go away. We go. We go home.