Daily Roach: Feb. 25th

In a casual turn of events, the world ended.

Daily Roach: Feb. 24th

I caught a fish from the river, trapped a burnished and bright-scaled year from the relentless rush of geologic history.

Daily Roach: Feb. 23rd

No word, no thought, no emotion; all willpower typing, and then a sudden period.

Daily Roach: Feb. 22nd

The ache had settled in the slabs of his muscles, a grainy burn, and a reminder that he'd been born an old, old man.

Daily Roach: Feb. 21st

"Intolerable," he muttered, puttered as he cleaned up their mess, a quiet little machine running on the petrol of his resolve.

Daily Roach: Feb. 20th

The day dawned sun-thwarted, half-lit, a gray re-run.

Witness

copyright (c) Jonathan M. Dobson

THIS IS THE STORY OF HOW JASON GOT AWAY WITH MURDER, committing the act as it were in the middle of a busy mall, with one hundred people watching, and cameras too. A reader might find lesson in this tale, or she might not: the justice is in the telling, for it must be known, this crime, and its rendering will force all those who look at it to take up the mantle of judge, the axe of the executioner, or, in plausible turn, the role of disbeliever. Probable doubt is the spirit of our law, and therefore that pestering ghost will haunt you as you read, (touch upon you now at its mentioning), and come in full force after you have finished – whispering, high on advice, bobbing its head sagely and disappearing when you give a mental nod of consent.

**

Jason was possessed with the conviction that he was the Center. Of the universe. I say possessed because it overtook him at tea-time, and he fell to the ground sputtering with the cerebral weight of it. He was quite the sight, on all fours of Langdon Hall’s hardwood floor, spilt tea soaking the knees of his dress pants, and he, mouth dripping and agape, staring sightlessly through a collection of elderly ladies. His fortuitous revelation implied several things, important things, things that we shall consider presently, but chiefly that such wondrous knowledge (though destiny, he asserts now) was dangerous. If men in power discovered his centrality, he might be used to dark purpose. He assumed, of course, that as the center of the universe he was imbued with certain powers. One, he was practically invincible. Two, he was virtuous beyond compare. Three, he knew all, understood all, and only had to remember. Four, he was always right. Five, the natural world, through circumstance or perhaps even direct intervention, would seek to hide and protect him. This last was particularly appealing, for he had always felt himself attuned to nature, to rock and soil, tree and grass, and thus his revelation could be substantiated by a history of such secret emotion. Not that he had ever pursued an outdoor life. He was retired at twenty-five, with a board of director’s title in a relinquished tech start-up he founded three years past. But if politicians or other demons of opportunity should discover his bright secret, then his powers might be used for evil. They could plumb his mind and soul for illicit knowledge; could harness his innate divinity to turn the world into a State of Personal Whim; could establish a hierarchy of tyranny upon the foundation of his indomitable blood – a substance assuredly potent in things arcane and powerful. He understood all this instantly as he soaked up tea through his knees. He understood that his financial security, acquired at such a young age, attested to his position in the cosmological monarchy.

“I’m a king,” he said, at once relishing the idea.

**

Now Sarah is an altogether different sort of person. She had a revelation too, although hers proclaimed that she was worthless. Mud. (It was perhaps her father and mother who, over fourteen years of constant howling, drove this belief into her, but she had had her own moment of spontaneous light, where resulting casts of shadows confirmed her inferiority, and so she believed.) She was lower than the field mouse, and thus exaggerated its nervousness, her hands and eyes full of twitches, her mind always taking note of the general surroundings and prevalent escape routes. She was smaller than the fly, and so walked with a tenuous, uncertain gait, never following a straight line, always changing directions, only achieving rest (and it was an achievement) when she stopped to sit. Sitting she learned from dust, for she was even smaller than that, and learned to move when the big and great strode by, learned to be disturbed by the impossible motions of massive others, learned to sit only when no one was around, and even then she would fall gently, more gently than dust, and more quiet too. You might think it default now for her to be an ascetic, and you would be wrong. She was not a loner. She was a full-person, with a full life and full thoughts. But how could a being like her have a life at all? The Internet.

Oh, you see now, don’t you, how she could be less than dust and yet as large and horrifically organized as pyramid. There were no faces on the Internet, and when she entered chat rooms she was not only monumental, but queen. She could type faster than anyone, and when in front of the screen, her mind came alive like a hibernating creature, shaking and starving after long seclusion, a bright sort of flower that bloomed red and bloody, rosy with intent. She of course made her living off of the Internet, the Webmaster of several sites, paid through direct wire to her bank account.

After this she becomes quite the typical recluse – food delivered to her door, in love with television characters, her phone empowered with call display, and her windows made purposeless by thick, black blinds. There are other typical things, but they are of small consequence.

**

As you can see, I have populated this story with both king and queen. They don’t know each other, and never will, save as fictional instances in your mind, poorly copied artifices of poorly crafted literature. Concepts. That’s it. But concepts don’t kill each other, and the king of this (true) story kills a queen.

**

The center of the universe had amnesia. He could not remember all that he knew. Slip-streams, the fire burning, a star made of glass, shimmering portraits, dark fields. He endeavored through random mental gluttony to stir up images and knowledges. It was his reasoning that the universe was infinite, and if he was its center, and its circumference was nowhere, then he was everywhere. Knowledge was inexhaustible, which meant that not only did anything conceived exist, but any conception existed an infinite amount of times. There was not one Jason, but a billion-billion Jasons. More. So random thoughts, though seemingly inane, were valid sources of true knowledge. And if his reasoning were flawed, then the very act of thinking something would make it be.

Nightmare took him, however, (razorblade, black snow and upwards rain) because he had wondered if he was flawed. If the center of the universe was aware of itself, and conceived that it might be flawed, then it was indeed flawed for having the initial thought, or if not flawed, had thus then made itself so. Oh silent night, he fell into null, and like a fallen star he raged against the descent. Anger took him, and the only way he could cling to his monarchy was to lie to himself. And so he did.

I am the center. I must be. I will it to be. If I can will it, then I must be the center.

Well, you see the obvious cyclical path of this insanity. His five powers – invincibility, ultimate virtuousness, omniscience, righteousness, and affinity with nature – were one by one proven false, and in that order. The first was a simple cut to his finger, and he bled his potent blood onto the floor, all over his invincibility. The second was a small lie to his mother, a white lie really, but then lies don’t truly have color. His curiosity proved the bane of his omniscience – how could he be curious about something, if he knew everything? He lost a game of hockey pickup with his buddies, and his righteous white-feathered wings wilted to brown, soggy knots of shame at his shoulders. The last – he fell from a tree, which had not only failed to save him, but had neglected to protect him from a dangling wasps nest – made him hate nature, thereby cutting off that assured affinity, a severed third arm protruding from his back. And yet.

I am the center. It was his faith, you see.

Needless to say, the rage that had brought him to his deception sustained him in it. His power was in his anger, at times a cool and relishing tuber or worm, at other times a shard of pure senselessness, the kind that destroys. The politicians and demons of opportunity never did find him (he attributed this to nature’s help), but he found them. Let them think they can use me, was his thought. I will use them.

For all of his divinity, Jason was yet a man of the world. There was a mall in the city, a despicable place of mortal activity, he felt, but a place he needed to go to buy clothes. Besides, they could all see him, touch him with their eyes, behold him. It was a matter of responsibility and duty: the center of the universe should walk amongst its peoples. BMW with the top down, iced cappuccino, credit card, 140 in a 100 zone, the wind of the universe washing through the universe of his hair.

**

In a play the trivial actor’s costume is just as important as the lead role’s. Sarah was frumpish, to be sure, her hair tangled and that dull brown color so common among bit characters. But she knew when to buy new clothes. The problem with the whole need was that one had to try articles on before purchasing them. Ordering outfits over the Internet was useless. Sizes were not standardized, nor registered components of the ISO.

By now you see where this is going. You can imagine Sarah leaving her house, a frail particle amongst behemoths, her infinitesimal presence inside the long steel cave of the bus, her ears in the company of lightning and sharp thunder as the vehicle screeches and protests at each stop, the blur that is her vision as when very small things see the limited surface of objects too large to grasp, even in peripheral. You could pray for her, if you wish, as she must distinguish her stop, as she must navigate through the cathedral-like pathways of the mall, dodging colossal strangers and looking for that particular glow, the blue glow of the Ashton Ladies Wear sign, for she mistakes it for the food court entryway every time. You could pray, oh you could pray, for she must not make that mistake this time, for if she does a king awaits her, an impatient and angry monarch who has no time for mice or flies or dust, though he claims to be their sovereign.

**

You could pray. But this tale is post-mortem, and time travel has not been invented yet. Or the invention of time has not yet been fully traveled, one of the two. So this meeting must occur, will occur. And you must read it no matter if you cringe or desire not to. I know. I desired the same thing, but then I was sitting there, eating at a table in the food court, even as it happened.

**

You could see his impatience from afar, a translucent and transforming film that twisted his features at each delay, made him clench his fists when he got stuck behind an elderly cane-walker, or mother and baby-stroller, or impertinent teenager stopping to gawk at something. He was hungry. That was why he was coming to the food court, to grace his presence among us plebes, we motes of mortality, that we could watch him eat. Then you could see her fear from afar, she in her stained clothes, the small eyes shifting and shifting and shifting. She moved so slowly, and he moved so fast, far behind her, a boiling storm that rained upwards. Their trajectories were inevitable. The king back there, coming on strong like a warhorse, the queen up here, almost beside my table, the probing snail. Oh, I saw it; I saw it all happen before it happened (and thus precognition exempts me from judge and executioner and disbeliever, those roles are for you.)

He was trying to get through the throng.

She managed to well up some courage and take a step. In front of him.

He ran into her.

She gasped, for words were not permitted her, so small was she compared to the center of the universe.

His eyes lit up.

I remember dropping my fries.

He spoke, a roar: “MOVE!”

A shard of anger detached itself from him, snagged and pulled by that one awful word, becoming substantial in the space between them. His seething sent it to her, and oh we both know how slow she was. It struck her in the back, she jumped, found her voice then, but it was an unintelligible chirp-scream with no words in it.

Then she moved, but her soul before her body. It leapt out of her with a snap, an uprising droplet of shadow-water, and her body fell, but not like dust, not so insignificantly – hard and profound and complete at the end of my table. There were one hundred witnesses, I among them, and cameras, and the center of the universe itself, though he stepped over her and kept walking.

**

There was no touch, no direct physical contact, and so evidences could not be gathered, or laws challenged, or crimes duly tried. Though innocence had not been declared, it was yet permitted to function. (Later he had won ton soup, thai noodles, and an extra large coke.) It was as though nothing had happened. There is, in fact, no Jason and no Sarah. It must also be admitted that Jason is not the center of the universe. You are. And I, a queen of another sort, revolve quietly around the mental sun of your mind, a particle briefly examined, the transitions of my orbit dictated by the speed and accuracy of your reading. You see, you are about to kill me. Therefore I appeal to you as judge, exhort you as executioner, and command you as disbeliever to destroy this work - lest I die again every time you set yourself upon this text. Where Jason destroys with the shouting of a final word, you destroy with the reading of one. Our meeting is not altogether different either: we join in a busy, cavernous room, where a throng of people-thoughts witness, where cameras of a neural sort record (some say never forgetting a thing that transpires), each of us on different missions, I to bring forth an impending crime, you to consume a good story. You are large and all, and I cannot comprehend you. I am small and, perhaps now, cliché or abrasive or immature. I can, however, exert some small crux of power, a power granted to me by your designs, your ways of constructing letters and scripts and copies of letters and scripts. I can choose what word you read last. And I choose that to be you.

copyright (c) Jonathan M. Dobson