I awaken to the sound of the emergency scramble alarm, panicking as I jolt out of bed and rush to grab my gear from the far wall. Outside the door I can hear the hasty footsteps of crewmates running in the direction of the flight bay, and I turn to join them. But as my wandering eyes pass the port window I realize it isn’t a drill, freezing as I spot the remains of a neighboring freighter, the scattered debris floating aimlessly around the empty void of space

And I wonder just how long I’ve been asleep.

American Nobody
Chapter Six; Luke 12:49

Like most of the Greg’s hastily thought out ideology, I quickly disregarded his talk of global warfare, filing the information away in a dark corner of my mind and going about my business as usual. However it wasn’t long before I was forced to acknowledge his apparently insightful grasp of the situation, the same scenarios he’d spelled out now debated by the various experts of our times. They had different interpretations of the issues of course, of the likelihood of a draft, of the possibility of nuclear warfare, of whom or what was really responsible. But always they came to the same conclusion. We were now steadily approaching World War III, and it was very unlikely either side was going to win.

Like most good Americans, my uncle remains firmly glued to the television like a vegetable, the sensationalist imagery that fills our rumpus room interrupted only by the occasional commercial break. I myself cannot watch more than a few minutes at a time of the seemingly endless newsfeed, the major networks all fighting for ratings in the wake of this impending global holocaust. It sickens me to know that despite the end of the world lurking around the corner, all we could do was watch helplessly, too caught up in our routines to do anything about it. We acted the same way we always did in these situations, ignoring the problem for as long and as hard as we could, expecting that eventually someone else would make everything right again. Not that I was without blame. I was as useless as any of them. We were not foolish people; we all knew quite well the horrible nature of our own sad situation. Yet we were simply too ashamed at our powerlessness to acknowledge it.

Yet for some reason, Greg remains almost retardedly upbeat, passing through the slow sad crowds of our disillusioned classmates with a cheeky grin. At first I think he’s simply lost it, his newfound optimism an unlikely side effect from all the chemicals in those homemade fireworks he spent his time cooking up. It isn’t until a few days later however, that I realize something is truly wrong, Greg claiming he’s too “preoccupied” with schoolwork to hang out. The excuse itself is impossible. Greg let his pressing scholarly obligations interfere with the time-honored American pastime of slacking off, as evidenced by his record as a notorious truant. But despite the inconsistency in his alibi, he sticks by it, and any attempts to press him on the subject just leads to more of the same answers, vague mumblings of upcoming tests and papers.

In the end though I decide to let it go. To be truthful I was just as busy myself. In addition to babysitting my comatose legal guardian, I was also in the process of figuring out which college to attend in the fall. I’d been accepted into a variety of institutions, some with scholarships even, and I had taken the time to attend tours of these illustrious campuses. Not that it mattered much, each of them seeming completely similar to each other. There were tiny differences sure; whereas one had an active ultimate Frisbee team the other had a Taco Bell in the dining commons, but in the end it was all the same. Old brick buildings full of young eager scholars like myself, the future leaders of our dead generation. Still I attended these guided demonstrations out of a strange sense of obligation. I figure they’d deemed me worthy of a few thousand dollars worth of free education, I owed it to them to at least take a look.

However, despite the uniform nature of my experiences, there was one notable incident. The college itself was a small liberal arts campus only a few towns over, the modern design of the school very odd when set against the empty miles of farmland that surrounded it. As our inhumanly enthusiastic guide leads us past the library our tour is briefly interrupted by a student demonstration taking place on the school commons, a large mass of students gathering to protest the current situation with China. I regret to say that for a brief moment I was inspired. I had apparently been proved wrong, as here were a group of people who were actually fighting for change, people who were willing to reject their apparent powerlessness and fight together, united for a cause. Quickly though I realized my misjudgment, seeing them then for what they truly were. The sons and daughters of the bourgeoisie, kids who had never dirtied their hands in American soil once in their life. All of them wearing hemp clothing and taking pictures for their internet journals, as if somehow the mere act of caring about something was akin to doing something about it. This was not an attempt to change the world. It was simply another social cliché, a big party so that the privileged class could congratulate each other on being so progressively minded. So infuriated was I then to know that these were the dissenting voices that sought to represent us. Those who deserved most to perish in the fires of Armageddon. Those who had worked for none of what they had been given, and yet were so afraid that these unearned freedoms might all be taken away.

I find a bathroom and dry heave into the sink, staring at myself in the mirror and wondering if any of these people deserved to be saved.

That night I search hard for my discarded bottle of pills, a distraction, something to dull the reality of this world. And finding nothing I can only lie there in the dark, too aware of the meaninglessness of it all. We human beings clung to life so desperately, lamenting our sad fate for as long as we could before we were dragged screaming to our graves. And yet why did we care so much? I look at my hands in the dim moonlight, furling and unfurling my fingers just to prove I had any control over anything. But that was the extent of my power, the ability to will this husk of organic flesh to action. Even those lucky enough to leave their mark on this world were eventually forgotten, as we all would be when the universe eventually collapsed inward on itself. So why then? Why did we struggle so hard to achieve such meaningless results?

“Finish strong. Go out with a bang.”

I almost laugh to think of it. Greg was probably the only person I’d ever believed in. I think back to that cold autumn night, me and Greg standing amidst an audience of corpses as he decried the fate denied to him, wondering if maybe it wasn’t too late for us both. It was a childish dream Greg talked of, an attempt to embrace the childhood ideology of long gone cartoon cowboys. But now it seemed even he had submitted to the crushing burden of reality, accepting our brief and meaningless existence as satisfactory. Watching along with the rest of the world.as we plunged further into darkness. Praying to our dead gods and hoping the silence in itself was some sort of answer. Hoping against hope that some imaginary savior would arise out of the darkness. And still we rushed headstrong towards our own deaths, believing that our tendency towards self-destruction was somehow beyond our prevention.

“Don’t worry about it.” He’d said. “I’ve got a plan.”

I wonder just what he’d meant.

************************************

“I have come to bring fire on earth, and how I wish it were already kindled. I have a baptism to be baptized with, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I came to bring peace on earth? Not at all, I tell you, but rather division. From now on, five people in one household will be divided --.”

“Where are we?” A voice interjects suddenly. The elderly man at the front of the room smiles kindly at the intrusion before responding without a hint of annoyance.

“This would be… ah, Luke 12:49.”

I’m lured from my philosophic semantics by this break in the passage, the comforting lull of Mr. Jenks voice cut short by this haphazard interruption. Looking around I find myself surrounded by a contingent of bored teenagers, each waiting to be released from their cages back into the living breathing world. Seeing the fair weather outside, I didn’t blame them for their impatience.

I was required two literature courses for graduation, though while most students opted for the hipper subsections of modern fiction; classes like “Transgender Literature” and “Graphic Novels & Culture”; I had actively chosen “Bible Studies,” a class usually reserved for those students lacking in the initiative to submit their course sign-up sheet in a timely manner. It’s not that I’m a religious person. To be completely honest I wouldn’t even know where to begin if I decided to start living piously, which of the ambivalent dead prophets would be best to spend my nights apologizing to. To be honest I’m not sure the exact reason I’d signed up for the class. One part of it was the small pleasure I got from watching the senseless debates that erupted almost daily over the obviously sensitive material, the scoffing atheists and zealous faithful each fervently denouncing the other side for being ignorant un-savable fools. Another was that I knew Greg would be copying my class schedule verbatim in an effort to have someone to cheat off of, and I figured I might as well try to expose him to some legitimate literature. But the real reason was that I, for some reason, have always found something strangely compelling about the bible. The words of men who had seen gods, these days such writings would be lunacy. But when left to gestate over a period of two thousand years, this type of hyperbole becomes the foundation by which men live their lives. Stories of boys triumphing over giants, of sad kings turned prophets and of gods disguised as men. And how odd it was that something as simple a worn faux-leather bound copy of the King James Bible could stir even a religious dullard like myself to such emotion.

 “Now then, can anyone speculate on the meaning of this passage?” Mr. Jenks asks in his quiet aging voice. I quite liked our teacher, the boyish old man with a collection of sweater vests rivaling that of a children’s television personality. I likened him to one of those aging monks waiting in secluded mountaintop temples, enlightened individuals prodding you towards the secret of life with wry smiles. As a few hands around the room go up our sage points towards one, a blonde blue-haired Aryan nation potential with an unnecessary level of enthusiasm.

“I’d say that the fire like represents Christianity” she begins in a valley girl drawl. “So Jesus is like, talking about how he’s come to spread the word of god and die for our sins you know? And he just wishes like, that everyone could’ve just been good Christians to begin with.” Mr. Jenks nods at this rather vanilla interpretation, pointing to the sullen angst case in the corner.

“I’d say Jesus didn’t care if people were good Christians, seeing as how he was a Jew and all…” he says this with a noticeably mocking tone in his gravelly voice. The waspish athletic in the corner looks upset at the jab, possibly the valley girl’s boyfriend. I briefly envision him pummeling the shit out of the darkly dressed bastard, a great show of antiquated masculine bravado. “Anyhow, I think that he’s referring to the fires of judgment, how humanity had been judged as wicked and how their punishment is to be forced to crucify their own god.” Our instructor nods as others interpret the passage, not offering any sort of hint as to whether he agrees or disagrees, rather letting the discussion carry itself through its natural course. I’m interested in the material but despite my best efforts I find myself drifting in and out of lucidity, briefly imaging what it would be like to be crucified. For some reason it didn’t seem like one of those terrifying executions, things like the needle or hanging where the impending immediacy of death is the primary concern. Rather crucifixion was a long and slow process, one dying gradually over a couple of days. At first it would hurt sure, as those nails were driven through your hands and feet, bleeding out as you hung from your own wounds. Though gradually crucifixion became less about the pain and more the torture of annoyance. The dull aching of wounds, the hot sun beating down overhead, the awkward position your body was left in. I can only imagine how Jesus must’ve felt. That he; the son of god; had come to die for our sins, and we didn’t even have the decency to make it quick. Humanity, God’s annoyance. A mass of gibbering unruly children constantly crying out to be saved from the consequences of our silly mistakes. Never giving him a moment’s rest.

God offered forgiveness. We didn’t really deserve it.

Lost for a moment in my daydream, I realize suddenly the classroom is looking at me for an answer. Flustered I look towards my ambivalent instructor for guidance. “Yes?” I respond to his awaiting gaze.

“I asked, what do you think the passage means?”

“Well—“ I stall. I was never much for public speaking. Hastily I try to construct an answer best I can. “I guess… well when Jesus says he’s come to bring fire on the earth I agree that he’s talking about spreading the gospel, though I think the fire would mean he’s preaching a destruction of the old ways of the world. That he kind of intends for this fire of his, his gospel, to burn Rome to the ground.”

“Jesus never burned Rome to the ground” one of the shrill female intellectuals chirps in.

“Of course not” I admit. “He didn’t actually burn Rome down. But obviously Rome eventually fell, and today the Roman catholic church is the largest Christian church in the world. Not to mention the countless number of civilizations which were also converted to Catholicism.” Mr. Jenks seems intrigued by my interpretation, and I feel more confident as I continue. “Everything Jesus preached was about rebirth, and that’s what he’s talking about here. He did not cast off the sinners but instead he baptized them, he did not murder the wicked but instead died for them. And he came not to destroy the world, but to burn it beyond recognition so it could be born again. And it worked. All that he laments is that it had to be him to do it. That he’s prepared to die for our sins, but so disappointed that we weren’t able to simply save ourselves, to kindle the fire without his assistance.” The room is strangely silent again, as if confused by my rather metaphorical dialogue. I couldn’t blame them for their surprise, these two statements were likely more words than I’d spoken in their presence all semester. I think there was still a contingent of the student body that assumed I was a mute. Luckily I’m soon snapped out of my cringing anxiety by the voice of Mr. Jenks, offering a very unfamiliar tone of approval. “Very good” he says, and I look up to see that wise smile of his. “A very interesting interpretation.”

This was the only words of praise I’d ever heard the old man offer, but before I can thank him for this brief moment of academic validation, my moment is cut suddenly short by the sound of the classroom door swinging open. Along with the rest of the class I look up to find Greg entering rather casually, glancing at the clock to find he’s half an hour late at this point.                   

“Can I help you young man? Are you looking for someone?”

“Yeah, uh… It’s me Greg, Mr. Jenks” he explains. The adjusts his spectacles, squinting quizzically as he tries to identify the intruder. It was a common scenario, Mr. Jenks seemingly unable to remember people based on sight, relying instead on the never changing seating chart. Greg points at the empty desk. “I’m in your class, that’s my desk” he elaborates. Mr. Jenks thinks for a second, smiling as he seems to feign recognition.

“Ah yes, well you can just have a seat then young man” he concedes, about to return to the discussion at hand. However Greg cuts him short.

“Actually I’m not sticking around” Greg admits.

“Is that so?” I’m as confused as Mr. Jenks.

“Yeah, I’m actually just here to drop off my textbook.” The class continues to look on as Greg fishes around in his bag for the heavy tome, eventually finding it and leaving it atop the stack of excess books in the corner of the room with a loud thud. Greg’s eyes catch mine and I gesture to him my confusion. He waves me off.

“Well thank you” Mr. Jenks says, still confused. “Are you… dropping the class?”

Oh no, no. Uh… I’m not dropping the class; I’m actually—“ Greg seems a bit flustered, scratching the back of his neck. “Well I’m dropping out. You know? Dropping out of school.” My peers seem surprised, though their own reaction is nothing compared to my own. My mouth agape with shock, completely unprepared to process what the hell is going on.

“Is that so.”

“Yeah, you know I just decided it’s not really for me, figured it was time to try something new yeah?” I can only assume he’s lost his mind. A month and a half short of graduation and now this sudden bombshell. I would protest but I’m unable to find the words, simply wondering what the hell he was thinking. It had been one thing to abandon his likely foolish childhood dreams, but to cast aside his future without any apparent semblance of a reason seemed like lunacy. Not the rational and calculated actions I’d come to expect from Greg, but the foolish whims of a confused kid. From what I knew of High School drop-outs, most of them either ended up homeless booze-swizzling degenerates, or under-equipped military cannon fodder. And neither of those seemed like rational career paths at this point. “So yeah, everybody” Greg says, addressing the class. “I just wanted to say that, well, I didn’t really get the chance to know a lot of you. But I do want you to know that you’ve all been great people.” There’s a snarky bite of whimsical sarcasm in his voice as he ad-libs his little speech. “I wish you all luck with your endeavors, and I hope that if you have the chance to make a little difference in this world, that you go for it.” He finishes, smiling at the apparent confusion before turning for the door. “Its been fun!” he remarks once out in the hall, before the door swings shut behind him and we’re left still wondering exactly what’s he’s on about. I’m still speechless, unable to process this bizarre turn of events. It’s then that I realize everyone in the room seems to be staring at me. It takes me only a second before I realize why. After all, I was his friend right? I must’ve been at least partially responsible for my friend’s lapse in sanity. With all eyes on me I rise to my feet, sighing as I do.

“Fine” I groan. “I’ll go talk to him.”

************************************

“Greg-- what the hell-- are you doing?” I ask, out of breath as I finally catch up to him down the hall.

“Good, you came,” Greg responds to my tired breaths with a chuckle of almost disbelief. Not that’d I’d ever claimed any athletic prowess, but I’ll admit I bordered on pathetic. Thankfully, I regain my composure shortly.

“Seriously though, what’s going on? You’re dropping out of school?” Greg shrugs.

“Is it really that surprising?”

“Jesus Christ Greg!” I exclaim, punching him in the arm. He barely flinches. “What the hell are you thinking springing this on me suddenly? I mean fuck, we’re almost about to graduate and suddenly you can’t tough it out anymore? What the hell is wrong with you?!”

“Hey, hey. I didn’t know you cared so much” he offers, holding out his hands in a show of innocence. “Besides, what do you care what I do? We’re not married you know?”

“Fuck, I just hate to see you throwing your future away” he scoffs at this.

“You sound like a—“

“Like what?”

“Like a, like a damned guidance councilor!” He says with a heated tone. “And they don’t even have those anymore. You would’ve made a good one you know, telling kids how to live their lives despite knowing your own advice never exactly got you anywhere.” He may have a point.

“Fine” I concede, letting our tempers flare down. “Still, what are you doing Greg?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“You keep saying that, but hell I’m worried. I don’t know what you’re doing anymore.”

“Listen” he begins with a sigh. “I’ve just…. I’ve finally reached a point in my life where I’ve realized I’m sick and tired of watching the world destroy itself.” I listen, still rather perplexed as he continues. "You remember all that stuff I said? About wanting to be a hero, all that nonsense?” I pause, waiting for the appropriate gears to turn into place, the events of that forgotten October night slowly fading back into memory.

“Yeah, I remember. But what does that have to do with anything?”

“Well, I’ve been thinking a lot about that stuff I said” he admits. “And you know, I decided yeah—it isn’t too late. I’m still young, we’re still young you know? We don’t have to sit idly by anymore. Sure, we could graduate, we could live the rest of our lives as boring normal people, all the while hoping a nuclear bomb doesn’t explode in our backyard. Or we could take a chance, get out of here and try and do something about.”

“What are you talking about, this is nuts” I say with a shake of my head. Greg stops at hearing this by the exit door, turning around with a familiar grin.

“It is nuts, you’re right” he admits with a shrug. “But you know what? This whole world of ours is nuts. I think I’m just doing my best to fit in.” Greg uses this cue to un-ceremonially lift the safety latch on the nearby fire alarm and slam the lever down without a second thought; seemingly oblivious to the quick spray of blue ink which quickly identifies him as the culprit. Instantly my ears are filled with the horrible tones of the blaring siren, a high pitched echo which fills the hallways behind us. Confused, I turn back to see Greg slipping on a pair of biker gloves, conveniently obscuring the fresh ink marks before turning back to the heavy double doors and exiting hastily. I take a quick look behind me, spotting the first wave of decent fire-fearing youth stumbling out of their classrooms in orderly lines. Not knowing what else to do, I again take chase after my errant companion.

“This is it?” I ask almost harshly. I find myself standing with Greg in our predetermined evacuation spot; a field at the far end of the parking lot. Around us a steadily growing contingent of our student peers stand as well, chatting about interrupted exams and the prospect of the school burning to the ground.

“Just wait” he assures me, smug smile on his face as we watch our classmates file out the various exits, assuming safe positions a fair distance from the illusionary fire. All the while I find myself waiting with stunned disappointment for the eventual ‘all clear’ and our chaperoned return inside.  All I can think about though was how utterly disappointed I was. Greg had promised me a plan, some grand and magical plot that I; in my foolishness; had assumed would somehow save us from our own sad situation. What I had I expected him to do? To guide us on gilded wings away from the worries of the world, away from our pointless existence to a land where we’d be revered as gods? Only now did I realize my foolishness. This is what Greg was capable of. Petty mischief, useless pranks. Not miracles. As I contemplate my disdain for the situation the few remaining stragglers empty out into the spring morning and cross the street towards where we are. Greg nods his approval, contemplating the situation. “Alright” he declares. “That seems to be everybody.” 

“What now?” I wonder aloud, not trying to mask my impatience. As Greg whips his black messenger bag around to the front and begins hunting through it for something, I’m suddenly intrigued. It’s when he comes up with his firing device that I know something is amiss. “What the hell’s going on Greg?” I ask, finding myself strangely uncomfortable. Greg looks at me for a second, sighing as he does.

“Look” he states simply. “We’ve been friends for awhile, and nothing will ever change that. You’ve been a real good friend to me.”

“Thanks” I reply hesitantly. He shakes his head at my skittishness.

“I mean it. I’ve had few friends in my life, and to be honest you were probably the best of any of them.” I’m surprised at his earnestness, listening as he continues. “I’ll tell you right now, I’m about to embark on something rather grand. Rather grand and also rather dangerous. Now I can understand completely if that isn’t something you’d want to be a part of, but if it is then I’d really love to have you along for the ride. So, I guess what it really comes down to is, do you trust me?” It takes me a second to process the question.

“What?”

“Do you trust me?” he repeats, looking at me with a level of sincerity I didn’t think he was possible of expressing.

In all my knowing him, Greg had never asked anything of me. Our friendship was something I had thought would forever remain unspoken, but here he was asking me to validate what he knew we both felt. Something greater than the simple schoolboy friendship you see everyday, careless relationships tossed away after a matter of years or even months. I’m still not sure what to expect, all I know is that I’m about to embark on something much, much bigger than myself. If I wanted I could stay out of it all, ride my boring monorail of a life to it’s gradual conclusion and never leave the safety of my seat. But I had always trusted Greg, and now, perhaps blindly, I trusted him still. And I knew my answer before he even asked the question.

 “I trust you Greg” I say finally. Greg hesitates for a second, before that familiar grin of his breaks across his face, looking as though a huge weight has been lifted from his shoulders. Extending the long metal antenna towards the sky he holds out the device, presenting it as if the sacred relic of our newly rekindle convent.

“You do the honors.”

I look the remote over for a second, the bright cherry red button begging to be pressed. I once contemplated fate, the idea that someday my life was destined to come to fruition, that everything would work out as long as I kept believing as such. Only now did I realize the truth. The universe may have been steering me towards some grand conclusion, but my own destiny was mine to control. I just had to figure out what to do with it. Once; in science class; we’d watched an old government film showing the explosion of an atom bomb. Despite the grainy footage it was still beautiful to watch. For a brief instant there’s this vacuum of empty noise, the waves of sound trying its best to catch up to the spectacular light show. And then they do, the tremendous sound of atoms being ripped apart.

I pressed the button. And shielding myself from the light, this is all I can hear. The sound of the universe tearing in half.

As my eyes adjust I find the natural conclusion to my actions. Dooley McFinnegan High School was gone, replaced by a pile of smoldering rubble, the red hot embers bellowing endless trails of thick black smoke into the blue sky. Shattered glass and broken red brick lay everywhere, debris propelled by the blast haphazardly around the schoolyard. Never had I seen destruction like that up close, to see something that had once seemed so immortal suddenly fold and crumble like dust. The once proud towers of brick and cement now toppled like the building blocks of a child. I’m unable to tear my eyes from the sight, only barely aware of the speechless crowd, all of us wearing the same bewildered looks. Mouths agape at the spectacle, eyes wide with awe. Only one of us was truly able to put the situation in some sort of perspective. And there he stood, hands in his pockets, his jacket flapping in the wind as the final shockwaves of the blast flowed through us. I looked at him in abject terror of what he had created, but I was unable to put it into words, every emotion fighting for dominance over the others with no one truly claiming the title of victor. And yet he just grinned, and with his eyes transfixed on the majestic spectacle in front of us, summing up so perfectly what I never could.

“Pretty cool huh?”

It was then I heard a familiar noise jarring me back to reality, reminding me that this quaint scene of destruction was not some illusion but rather something unfolding right in front of me. The entirety of our group is as confused as I am about the interruption, our scattered brain signals slow to process the nature of the noise. But once we lay eyes upon it, everything makes perfect sense. He was a large boy, one of the school’s resident metal-heads, a group of leather and piercing clad youths with a penchant for loud music and disobeying authority. Thunderously he slaps his leather-gloved hands together, his thick arms propelling the enthusiastic applause over the stunned silence of the crowd.

“They did it man!” He yells suddenly. “They fucking blew up the school!” His unbridled enthusiasm thunders around the crowd. At first everyone is slow to react, though as I look around I see the first smiles beginning to cross the faces of my classmates. And slowly, each of my classmates in turn seems to slide away from that original abject shock towards a strange sense of ecstasy. And suddenly, it erupted. These kids knew not who they clapped for, but they clapped all the same. More and more kids joined in, a domino effect of massive proportions, until finally the world was filled with this deafening wave of applause. The band geeks, the drama fairies, the nerds, the jocks, the punks, the preps, the intellectuals and the dropouts, the high and the low and the poor and the rich and the young and the younger. The teachers looked around in terror for someone to blame, trying to regain order in what they saw as an attack on everything they stood for. And when they found no one, they gave up, defeated. Greg pats me on the back, as if to congratulate me on some great victory. And for the first time in awhile I feel almost proud.

Before I can take my bow, Greg’s grabbed my arm and begun dragging me off towards his car. “Let’s get out of here” he tells me, with no real explanation given or requested. Though I understand the urgency of the situation, I find myself unable to keep up with his quick pace, stumbling as I walk, unable as I am to tear my eyes away from the destruction. I knew my knack for forgetfulness, and this was one moment that I never wanted to fade away. One I wanted to burn into the recesses of my mind for all eternity. But I find myself not needing to try as hard as I usually did to commit this event to memory. There had been something about the blast, whether it was the brilliant flash of light or the ear-shattering explosion, but I was a changed man. No longer confided by the chains of my mediocre existence, finally able to experience the world without getting lost in its repetition. I was alive at the center of the world, every one of my senses overloaded with stimulus. Awake and alive for the first time in a long while.

Before we leave Greg drives the car over towards the main entrance, weaving between the wreckage to get as close as possible. And it’s then that I see firsthand the true nature of the destruction. The once proud statue of Mr. McFinnegan had been reduced to rubble. Fitted with his own set of explosives the ancient and tired old man had shattered from the inside out. And all that remained now were his feet, two oversized bronze loafers shining dimly in the sunlight, beside them his paper mache arm slowly burning itself away to ash. And as we take off towards oblivion, Greg can only grin like an idiot, drunk on his own hubris.

“I told you I could do better” he says finally.

He was right.

That night I dreamt of the perfect life I had once imagined for myself. I was a great pilot in the service of the empire, a hero of the people whose brave exploits were known to even the youngest schoolchild. Across the civilized universe great statues of my visage were erected, while my brilliant battle tactics were the focal point of many an academy textbook. I found myself then standing proudly at the end of a grand hall, my uniform decorated with an uncountable assortment of medals and decorations, every conceivable award the empire offered adorning my chest. And at the end of the hall the woman I love approaches, friends and comrades watching from the wings in anticipation. She halts on the step below me, smiling shyly as from a lacquer case she lifts a golden medal. And as I bow my head to accept this final honor the onlookers erupt into applause, a great deafening noise which fills the hall.

And as we kiss I; for the first time in a long while; feel complete.

American Nobody
Chapter Five; Reds

I haven’t been sleeping much lately, a rather common ailment I’m sure plagues a number of my fellow classmates as we enter the final chapter in our High School careers, the stress of mid-term exams and college application deadlines weighing on our shoulders. Though as my peers grit their teeth and wipe their brows, I instead float among them like a disembodied ghost, entirely disconnected from the conscious world. I attribute this odd feeling to the pills, or rather the absence of their presence in my bloodstream. Recognizing that they did a poor job of masking my irregularities I’ve stopped taking the pills, selling them instead to local toughs for some pocket change. At first I resisted the change, fighting to remain lucid. Lately however I’ve been strangely content to simply lose myself in the empty stupor, invisible to the world and its mechanisms. My body continues to plod through the motions, performing the various everyday tasks that prove I’m not yet dead. Yet my mind prefers to spend most of the day in hibernation, only awakening when provoked by the sudden intrusion of a shiny object or loud noise. My only true moments of consciousness come at the end of the day, me awakening atop my bedroom mattress, shadows from the slowly spinning ceiling fan brushing lightly across my face. And as I drift wearily into its spiraling center, I try my best to remember if the events of the day had truly occurred, or if these fuzzy matte-paintings of dull color lingering in the back of my mind were simply dreams.

Days like today, I’m not sure if I remember the difference.

Slipping a pornographic magazine from behind the headboard, I find myself unable to muster immediate interest in any sexual exploits. Instead I simply survey one of the many facsimiles of my dream girl that I keep in this apparently sullied sanctum. Greg once discovered this stash of mine, chastising me for my interest in boring regular porn. Unapologetic, I punched him hard in the collarbone and made a mental note to relocate my collection. For now however, my attention is turned to page 24, a stunning redhead in a rather nondescript cheerleading uniform, smiling cheekily as her skirt rides higher than any respectable athletic organization would allow. She was far from flawless, a thirty something year old portraying a teenager. Her fading youth was made even more obvious when outfitted in such juvenile attire; even despite the wonders of computer airbrushing. But it doesn’t matter much, as in my eyes her true face slides away, mentally replaced with the indiscernible features plucked at random from the graying recesses of my brain. My prototypical redheaded lover, perfect in every way as she gazes at me from the glossy color pages of this back alley publication.

It was the only tangible memory I’d ever applied any meaning to, the only one that ever felt like it meant anything. I’d spent a long time trying to discern her identity, scouring through the few scraps of my past life I had available in a vain effort to place her appearance on my timeline. Unfortunately, I never could find her. In all likelihood her identity was of little importance, probably something as simple as a forgotten cousin or childhood babysitter. But in moments like these I allowed myself a few delusions. She was an angel of course. A perfect goddess sent from the heavens to save me from myself. She was my lover from in a previous lifetime, a summer bride I left alone and waiting somewhere in the past. And yet I don’t even have the decency to remember who she is. To be honest I couldn’t even remember her face, my remembrance of her changing by the day. For all I had forgotten, this likely inconsequential bit was always the one that tugged at me, knowing that to forget the only woman I would ever love was a sin too egregious to be forgiven. Despite this, I do my best to lose myself in the memory, watching as she approaches me from the corner of my eye, her silhouette burning against the vibrant orange sun. And she smiles, a warm and perfect thing that reminds me that maybe everything is going to be alright.

************************************

I awake with a start several days later in my second period Spanish classroom, hormones violently humming like the edges of a black hole. I try my best to come down off the sexual high, glancing down with embarrassment at the tent in my pants and glancing around to see what sort of social faux-pas I’ve caused. Luckily the rest of the room is too busy lost in their own individual spectrums of boredom, most staring vacantly at their textbooks while a small contingent uses the heavy tome as a makeshift pillow. My teacher; a bony middle-aged brunette with a penchant for improperly peppering her dialogue with small bits of inconsequential Spanish; is a far cry from the fantasy heroine of my idle daydreams – and though she may have passed for attractive in many circles her general character was simply off-putting to me. She was one of those unfortunate women who disguised their lack of a noteworthy cultural heritage by clinging to the small fraction of ethnic blood coursing through their veins, a sad trend that regular boring members of the unspectacular Caucasian race seemed ever more eager to embrace. Trying to escape the past century of white guilty, people scoured the far branches of their family trees, latching onto a fresh cultural identity and wedging themselves into their new race with often awkward results.

“Alright amigos” she announces, and I groan inwardly at the unfortunate butchering of this supposed romance language. “The assignment is coming around so why doesn’t everyone find somebody to partner up with?”

As around me people begin pairing together I note Greg’s absence, his vacant desk sitting sadly off to the side. It was a common enough occurrence that I didn’t give it much of a thought. Given the state of the education system very rarely did schools not find a reason to pass students, lest they bare the cost of continuing to educate these unenthusiastic dimwits. Greg took full advantage of this fallacy in this system, feigning general idiocy as an excuse for his half-assed papers and skipping classes at will, days he spent chasing the carefree pursuits of youth rather than being spoon-fed the intellectual pabulum that comprised the bulk of the curriculum. I realize now in our final run towards the exit that I should’ve taken more opportunities to join him. My only true regret now is knowing that with Greg gone I’ll soon be partnered up with Gabe, the unfortunate sweatpants-clad dullard whose only known vice was the three or four pudding cups he ate in the corner of the lunchroom everyday, in-between bouts of scribbling Amazonian fantasy women in his spiral notebook. I turn to see him lumbering my way and sigh, accepting this fate. Though as the classroom door swings open behind me I realize I may have been too quick to anguish.

“Friends, Romans, countrymen…” Greg declares as he pushes the door out of his way with a foot, appearing genuinely disinterested in the fact that he’s disrupted this class exercise. Mrs. Moore is a notable stickler for attendance, and everyone’s attention seems to immediately turns towards this intrusion, eager to watch their peer be harshly reprimanded.

“You’re late senor Gregory” my teacher chastises as I cringe again.

“With good reason” he responds sharply, opening the top drawer of the teacher’s desk and snatching the remote to the television mounted at the front of the classroom. Mrs. Moore goes to protest, but Greg’s not listening, already flipping briskly past the various soap operas and children’s programming.

“What’s this all about?” She demands harshly.

“Just watch” he says with a dumb grin, the class looking on with rapt interest as the stoic newsman announces the end of the world with sweat on his brow.

“Again, for those of you just joining us we have breaking news. The President has just announced that this morning at 9:00am eastern seaboard time the United States fired upon Chinese submarines stationed off the coast of Hawaii, after Chinese authorities refused to back down in this dispute over territorial waters. In response the Chinese government has temporarily suspended all trade relations with the United States until further notice. Authorities at the White House say this move was considered a--” the droning voice continues onwards, but I’ve already collected the gist of the situation. A long tense cold war was finally beginning to come to boil, and brushing up on our sparse Spanish vocabulary skills for the impending test was suddenly of little concern.

As the rest of my classmates watch the news feed in stunned silence, Greg motions for me to get up. “C’mon” he mutters as I approach, turning to lead the way out the door. “Class is canceled.”   

*******************************

 “Welcome to the brink of Armageddon” Greg mentions casually, setting up his equipment atop the broad flat stump before me. I lean back lazily against a nearby tree, briefly distracted by the assortment of wires and gadgetry Greg busies himself with. This season was a funny thing; the months of dreary New England winter somehow instantly forgotten on that first warm spring day. I watch with contemplative silence as once dead trees spring back to life, hidden as I was beneath the shade of this returning foliage. Lost momentarily in the brilliant green of our anonymous woodland retreat, I can almost forget that we’re steadily approaching World War III. “I knew something like this was bound to happen sooner or later” Greg continues. “It’s just a matter of time now.

“Maybe it’s nothing” I murmur hopefully. Greg scoffs at this.

“Yeah, I mean we only sunk a couple of Chinese subs. It’s not like that won’t just blow over.” He was right of course. The relationship between the U.S. and China was historically volatile, the two superpowers having spent the last few decades waging an increasingly high-risk economic battle against each other. But this was something else entirely. Greg continues his reasoning, not taking his eyes from his work. “I mean, this was a situation with no positive outcome. The United States may not have been correct in firing upon these subs, but the Chinese were obviously looking to provoke us by shoving their ships that deep into our territorial waters. This incident is the perfect set-up for a war, two sides both in the wrong, with no one to blame but each other.”

“You think we’re going to go to war against China?”

“I think China is going to go to war against us” he clarifies.

“Why would China want to go to war with us anyhow?” Greg briefly turns to me with a shake of his head, lambasting me for my apparent ignorance.

“Rather simple really” Greg begins in a matter-of-fact tone. “First of all, there’s a great portion of the Chinese economy that’s based in these weapon development factories. It used to be they’d sell them off to us for a profit, but America stopped outsourcing that kind of work back even before the domestic prosperity acts. So you’re China, and you’ve got a decent chunk of your socialist economy based in these weapons factories, though you’ve got no buyers. So instead of putting a couple hundred of thousand people out of a job and risking riots, instead they simply began stockpiling the weapons they manufactured. Twenty something years later, you’ve got a lot of missiles waiting to be fired at something.”

“That’s the reason?” I scoff. “That they’ve got nothing better to do with their weapons?”

“That’s part of it” he confirms with a shrug. “The other half of that is that it’s been what? Fifty years since that whole one child per family rule went into effect? And now you’ve got ten billion Chinese men outnumbering the women at a good two to one ratio. A whole nation fueled by testosterone. Now there’s only two things testosterone is good for; fucking and fighting--”

“And there’s nobody around to fuck” I chime in, beginning to see the picture.

“Exactly” Greg grunts, twisting the ends of various colored wires together. “Chinese kids have been enlisting in record numbers for decades now. It’s a damn shame those yellow slant-eyed bastards don’t have the mind to start up a student revolution or something.”

“You fucking racist” I decry. Greg shrugs.

“C’mon man, I’m just getting into the spirit of things. People are going to be bandying about this kind of racist vernacular like it’s going out of style soon enough. Slap a Jap for Uncle Sam, right?” I shake my head disdainfully at this.

“So what? Should we be worried?”

“What do you think?”

“I mean in the immediate sense. We’re on the east coast, it’s not like they’re going to start bombing Massachusetts anytime soon, right?”

“Sure, we might not be getting nuked tomorrow” Greg begrudgingly concedes. “But honestly, a Chinese sub off the coast of California could probably take out about half the farm belt if it wanted to. And it’s not like some kamikaze bastard couldn’t drag a suitcase nuke into the heart of New York.”

“C’mon Greg, nukes? Really?”

“Really.”

“They wouldn’t do that, would they?”

“Why the hell not?” He counters.

“Not exactly conventional warfare” I offer. He groans at this.

“Listen man, there’s no such thing as conventional warfare anymore. You and everybody else seems to have the misconception this is the same sort of thing as Iran; little ground skirmishes and all. But Iran was exactly that, an underdeveloped nation with outdated weaponry. This is a battle between two superpowers, each with military technology far beyond the point of reasonable. This can’t possibly be a conventional war, it’s impossible. Sure, maybe if everybody agreed to throw down their guns and fight with sticks and stones we could spare ourselves some casualties. These days you’d be hard pressed to find a bomb that wasn’t designed to take out a few miles of surrounding city block along with its target. They just don’t build rational weapons these days.”

“Rational weapons sounds like an oxymoron.”

“And you sound like a goddamn hippie. Here, toss me those--” he grunts, pointing behind him at the pair of pliers near my feet. I comply with little hesitation. “Then of course there’s the fact that for each of our untrained and unwilling recruits, the Chinese have ten testosterone-jacked bastards ready to die for their country, on paper they’ve got the advantage, just on sheer numbers alone.” Greg lets this thought linger as he busies himself with the pliers. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they bring back selective service.”

“You think there’s going to be a draft?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time” he states, rather nonchalant about the entire series of events. Though I realize I should be more concerned, somehow Greg’s casual attitude puts my mind strangely at ease. “Ok, it’s all set” he declares finally, jogging briskly over towards where I stand, taking note of the assortment of wires and various equipment scattered around in front of me. Greg takes the firing device from his pocket, handing it over unceremoniously. “Here, you do the honors” he offers with a grin. I’m surprised at the gesture; though I eagerly accept the jury-rigged remote from my beaming friend. With only a minor hesitation, I press the large red button at the center and watch as the show begins.

“So--” I wonder aloud, watching as the first in a brilliant volley of home-made bottle rockets fire into the air, showering the once quiet woods with the electric fizzle of sparks and muffled explosions. “What do we do now?” My words fight for clarity over the increasing fervor of the midday light show, my eyes following the interweaving trails left by the shooting stars, each hesitating as the reach the apex of their arc before bursting suddenly into uncountable splinters of color. And as always, Greg just grins mischievously, his eyes lit by equal parts improvised explosive device and devious intention as the last and most impressive of the rockets steadily rises from the center of the commotion, the bright red craft propelled by an endless plume of smoke.

“Don’t you worry about that” he says, his words punctuated by the final flight of our flagship, the slick crimson shuttle blocking out the sun, his voice barely discernable as the lone craft explodes into a shower of burning embers. “I’ve got a plan.”

“It’s hopeless” I say with a weak smile. “The universe is at peace, they don’t need any more pilots. Especially not any as mediocre as me.” Busy feeling sorry for myself I’m barely able to react to the flight helmet Katsuya has tossed my way, panicking as I snatch the blue dome of polished metal from the air at the last moment.

“Don’t give up hope” he says with a dumb grin, running a hand through his newly freed hair. “I mean who knows? Maybe you’ll get lucky—"

“Maybe there’ll be a war”

American Nobody
Chapter Four; Almost Cowboys

Greg was new to our school, having transferred into the district a week earlier along with his aging bohemian parents, a pair of former art-school hipsters who’d been moving around the country since Greg was young in search of some strange semblance of contentment. With the money running out, they had apparently settled for the mundane settings of Western Massachusetts. I somehow doubted it would sate them.

 My new acquaintance shares this rather truncated life story with me in the gymnasium, in-between our half-hearted attempts at simple basketball maneuvers well beyond the innate abilities of our own racial heritage. Earlier; upon discovering we shared both a common P.E. and English period; Greg had confidently declared that the universe long ago set into motion the cosmic events that would result in our friendship, and that we would be a very ungrateful bunch of assholes to ignore billions of years of probability. I quickly agreed, nervously hoping he wouldn’t discover the fact that he’d befriended some weird loner and trade me in for a hipper social group.

Thankfully, he never did.

It wasn’t long before we were hanging out roughly every day, and despite my obvious lack of social grace the two of us hit it off surprisingly well; our opposite magnetic polarizations strangely drawn towards each other. Greg was a brash, outspoken firebrand, driven more by mischievous instinct than anything else. Where I was content to quietly fill in my assigned worksheets without fuss, Greg had a knack for turning ordinary class discussions into epic screaming matches between previously neutral sides. Where I made an effort to avoid placing myself in harm’s way, Greg spent weekends building improvised explosive devices, often dragging me out to the woods for grand firework demonstrations. Then again, we weren’t entirely dissimilar. We listened to the same antiquated rock music, and both shared an equal disdain for the pulp media of our own doomed generation. And although he hated to admit it, Greg was as much a closet intellectual as me, though whereas I read mostly tired old epics his bookshelf was filled largely with creased and stained volumes of illegal literature. In our free time we did the sorts of things you’d expect any pair of bored and aimless teenagers to do. We took pretentious photos of ourselves holding BB rifles and discussed the sexual acts we’d of liked to perform on the pretty girls who ignored us, downloaded shitty grindhouse flicks to watch and got high off the green cigarettes Greg regularly stole from his parents. And more often than not we’d use Greg’s bootlegged military ID to purchase a case of beer, the two of us driving out to the middle of nowhere and getting piss drunk under the stars.

I won’t deny I romanticized those moments of ours, reveling in the pointlessness of our teenage wasteland. Yet for some reason I would still find myself lying in bed each night, wondering when this life of mine was destined to kickstart and sputter off towards the horizon. Deep down I knew our rebellion was a façade, the result of misplaced hormones and stale adolescent nihilism. That someday we’d turn down the stereo, cut our hair, and get in line with the rest of the proles. But with no apparent solution to my weakness I simply pretended not to notice, nodding at Greg’s half-baked philosophy about how to fix the world while swallowing pills by the handful. I was an incurable, watching with little remorse as the days blurred into each other, the once individual moments of sound and color forming a perfect humming singularity.

It's as I contemplate this rift in the universe that a year passes me by, too distracted to notice until it’s too late. Disoriented, I take a quick look around to try and place where the time warp has left me. To my right Greg sucks down the remainder of a Marlboro, letting the smoke lazily drift from the corner of his mouth before snubbing out the butt on the car roof and tossing it uselessly into the surrounding brush. Above me lurks the autumn moon, the pale orb eying me cautiously as I take a lazy slurp from the half-empty beer I’m holding. There’s a party hat sitting on my head, and still confused I remove the colorful cone and look it over for clues. The flimsy cardboard accessory blares “Happy Birthday” at me in bright cartoon letters as the Tetris pieces dropping steadily towards my hippocampus begin to arrange themselves into a concise pattern. Everything falling into place.

“Happy Birthday” I offer uselessly.

“Thanks” Greg replies without looking up from his freshly-opened beer. In tandem we each take a sip, me rubbing the frothy film from my lips as I let my now empty can roll off to the side. Greg reaches into the brown paper bag before us and tosses me a can, one which I accept with gratitude. “Last one” he mentions.

“I’ll try and make it count” I assure him. In my state of mild inebriation I somehow find the lucidity to recount the minor details in my head. Greg’s just turned eighteen, the two of us celebrating the same way we celebrated everything; with a professional level of mild apathy. We’re both growing up I guess, High School seniors steadily approaching our monumental transition into the supposed real world. It was an event I anticipated with surprising dedication. I was cautiously hopeful for the future, and surrounded as I was by half-attempted metaphors about the ends of long roads, I tried my best to remain optimistic. Soon I’d be off to college, well on my way to a four-year degree in my still un-chosen discipline and the brilliant opportunities of the American job market shortly after. I may have fucked up High School with grand execution, but now I was on the path to self-fulfillment, self-realization, and all of those other misaligned buzzwords which assuredly meant something important. Everything was going to be alright; at least that’s what I kept telling myself.

There’s an aching in my chest and I ignore it with the vigorous teeth-grit smile of a corpse.

“You finish applying to Kentmore?” I ask, trying to drown out my weakness in useless conversation.

“I haven’t really gotten around to it” Greg admits.

“Isn’t the deadline soon?”

“I dunno…” My strangely stoic companion lights up a fresh cigarette before continuing with a disdainful look on his face. “I don’t really want to talk about it.”  As an uneasy silence sets in I hesitantly search for a conversation starter in my mind, something to break the obvious tension.

“You get any good birthday presents?” I ask with a forced smile. There’s a quick pause as Greg lights a fresh cigarette, exhaling with a slight chuckle.

“Money” he says, enamored at the thought.

“How much?” He laughs again.

 “Too much—“ he starts, a statement I eye with interest. “Long story but, see this lawyer calls me up a couple of days ago. Says there’s some inheritance waiting for me when, and now that I’m eighteen I can collect” he shakes his head, grinning mischievously at the circumstances. “God, my parents would explode if they knew their deadbeat kid just won the lottery.” I breathe out in consideration of my amazement.

“Wow… you know what you’re going to do with it yet?”

“That’s the million dollar question isn’t it…?” He confirms, sighing as he looks wistfully towards the nothingness in the distance. A minute later and he still hasn’t finished the thought.

There’s something on my Greg’s mind tonight and I’m not sure how to prod it out of him, nor if I should even try. All I can really hope for now is a distraction. Something epic would be nice, a rogue meteor slamming into the ground or a legion of the undead suddenly bursting free from their graves. We’d long ago sketched out a plan for how we’d deal in the event of a zombie apocalypse, though before I can remember where we hid that particular field manual Greg is talking again. “Hey, did you ever watch the Desperado Rangers as a kid?” he asks suddenly. I shrug at the seemingly errant question. “Right, the amnesiac thing” he mutters, as if my ailment was something I had created solely to inconvenience him. You’d think a nostalgic and an amnesiac wouldn’t have anything to talk about, and you’d probably be right. Though this relationship never seemed to stop Greg from reveling in his colorful past, and I always found myself compelled to play along.

“What is it? Some movie?”

“No, no” he replies with a shake of the head. “It was a cartoon. One of those imports from back before they ripped everything foreign off the airwaves.” Greg referred to the decade-old seclusion act; our country’s poorly thought out answer its current standing in the global marketplace. With the value of the American dollar at its lowest point in a century, the good old U.S.A. had cut off down on trade relations; imports severely restricted in an effort to force consumers to buy American. Of course, America was still forced to play nice with China and the few other countries that produced goods we couldn’t obtain domestically, but aside from this most import goods were a severe luxury. This also meant there hadn’t been good cartoons or video games in over ten years, something we lamented with great despair. “I used up at the crack of dawn every morning with a soggy bowl of cereal waiting for that show to come on. It was all that real glorious old-school Japanese animation; spunky wide-eyed teenagers with day-glo hair and voices that don’t match up to how their mouths are moving.”  I let out a laugh at this, Greg grinning at my reaction as he continues. “The best part though was that the whole show was this really weird Japanese take on cowboys and Indians, the Japanese version of a spaghetti western.”

“A ramen western.”

“Exactly” he remarks, enamored with the term. “Now, there were five Desperado Rangers.” Greg holds out a hand, tapping each ranger off on a finger as he details their position on the team. “Desperado Red; he was the leader. Real quarterback type, the typical jock hero of the group. Blue was the powerhouse, big square-jawed tank of a guy, the bruiser. Green was the smart one, Yellow and Pink were both girls, mostly eye candy really. But then; and here’s the cool part; Desperado Black—“

“I thought there were five.”

“There were, or at least there were like five main guys. Black didn’t really count, he was kind of like a guest star I guess you would say...” Greg swirls his hand around in the air listlessly as he stumbles around an explanation. “That’s not important. What is important is that Desperado Black was a complete badass. See, once every couple of episodes the main cast would be getting their asses kicked, completely overwhelmed by the bad guys. And just when you thought it was time to cash in the chips, there would be this loud whistle. The action would freeze, everybody completely silent as they turned towards the horizon. And all you would hear was this thunderous stampeding of hooves, getting louder and louder as it approached. And then suddenly-- BAM!” Greg smacks his hands together in emphasis, his eyes lit up like those of a child who’s just been told the Disney corporation is replacing his school with a theme park, recounting with unbridled glee the exploits of his cartoon hero. “All of a sudden Desperado Black would come riding in on this big black motherfucker of a horse-- barreling over the hills completely decked out head to toe in black; black bandanna, black cowboy hat, handkerchief over his face, everything. And he’d point square at the bad guys, and then he’d say to them” Greg mimics his gravel-voiced hero, a stern finger in my face as he makes his declaration heard.

“In the heat of the desert sun your reaper approaches,
cloaked in the black heart of this world.
Sinners and saints alike know this!
That those who would dare trample on the ideals of this world will know my name!
I am the cry of the vulture overhead,
the sharp eyes of the coyote at your heels.
I am Desperado Black!
And you will know justice...”

There’s a pause as Greg exhales, looking at me for an opinion as his declaration of justice lingers in the air. I’m at a loss for words, somehow struck by the childish sentiment of the moment. I realize then that I’m almost as caught up in the nostalgia as he is.

“That’s…pretty intense for a kid’s show” I remark finally. He grins at my bewilderment.

“Isn’t it? Isn’t that badass?”

“I mean yeah” I admit with a dumb smile. “That’s pretty badass.”

“Completely badass, insanely fucking badass” Greg agrees.

“So what— I mean what the hell spurred on this sudden bout of nostalgia anyhow?” Greg’s face lights up again, like he’s been waiting for me to ask.

“I found it.” Greg says, eagerly pulling out his wallet.

“Found what?”

“Thought it was gone forever you know? But there is was. Bottom of some old storage box, can’t believe it’s still around but I found it.” I look on in intrigue as he fishes up a tattered piece of laminated plastic, handing it over proudly. I play my part, reading each capitalized word aloud to our studio audience.

“Official Desperado Rangers Fan Club Member… Gregory Schwartz.” I glance over at the still glowing Greg with mock disdain. “Seriously?”

“What? You wish you were cool enough to have one of these!” He protests, snatching it away from me. “You wouldn’t believe how many damn box tops I had to cut out to get this thing.” Greg rubs at the slick plastic surface with a thumb, looking the card over with a fond smile. “It’s weird you know…?” Greg muses, the bent cigarette in the corner of his mouth spilling crisp tobacco smoke listlessly into the air as he stares at his laminated past. “I used to be into all this cowboy shit and I just sort of forgot about until the other day. I was obsessed with that crap you know? Cowboys and Indians and all that nonsense. My dad had a whole box full of old VHS tapes, all these spaghetti westerns he’d studied back when he was a film student, and we’d always watch one every weekend, I always looked forward to that.” Greg takes a quick drag before continuing. “So my dad, he actually went out and bought me this awesome cowboy outfit. And it was perfect, he got everything right. Big ten-gallon hat, a sheriff’s badge with vest and everything, and best of all these two plastic silver six-shooters with holsters on either side. And I would just run around our yard like an idiot, pretending I was Clint Eastwood or whoever-- stopping train raids and killing bandits…” he turns his wistful gaze from the sky to look at me with an earnest grin on his face, lost in his childhood reminiscing. “Fuck man, I think those were the happiest times of my life.”

“Yeah?” I ask with a mischievous smile.

“Stop looking at me like a queer” Greg protests.

“No, I get it. You’ve got a thing for sweaty guys in chaps. It’s cute really.” Greg punches me hard in the arm, and I relent on my character attack.

“Fuck you man. That’s my childhood you’re picking apart you fucking Freudian hack. Shit, I mean when I was a kid and people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up—you know what I would say?”

“Cowboy?” I ask.

“Cowboy” he confirms with a nod, pointing an invisible six-shooter my way. Pulling his thumb down and firing off an imaginary round, mouthing an invisible ‘bang.’

“You must’ve had quite the imagination.”

“Pretty righteous thing for an eight year old to declare if you ask me.”

“I guess so” I remark with a sarcastic bent. Greg takes offense to this.

“What do you expect?”  He asks, throwing his hands up. “I’m the child of Saturday morning cartoons and sugary breakfast cereal, allow me my delusions. Isn’t that all they ever used to talk about on those shows anyhow, about how anybody could be anything they want and all that?” I nod. “Well—I wanted to be a fucking cowboy, that’s some real shit!” We both crack smiles at this declaration. “Besides. you don’t even remember your childhood. I mean for all we know you were an even bigger nerd than I was.”

“There’s a chance” I admit with a shrug, and we both take a moment to laugh at the conjecture. In the back of my mind I wonder if he’s right. Maybe I used to be a smiling little kid, sitting in front of the television as my brain was filled with Saturday morning delusions of grandeur. Then again maybe my parents were prudes, didn’t let me watch television at all. I realize then that there’s a strange knot in my stomach as I reminisce on the childhood I never had. “It’s a real shame you know, they don’t even make shows like that anymore. I mean, I was practically weened on traditional four color comic book morals, cowboys and superheroes and all that. Real chauvinistic shit, killing bandits, slaying dragons--””

 “Saving princesses” I interject.

“Right!” he says ecstatically. “There’s got to be a girl. Real knockout blonde with huge tits and everything.” We laugh at this for a second, our laughter ringing strangely hollow before the mood grows suddenly solemn. Greg coughs before picking up where he started. “But that’s the thing, that’s the real tragedy of our generation. We were raised believing all that stuff, that there was some eternal struggle between good and evil out there. I grew up knowing that someday I was going to be a cowboy, that I was going to be some gunslinging wild west hero, simple as that. I mean, I grew up believing there was something out there worth fighting for. But these days, hell, I’m not so sure...” ” I search for a useful objection to Greg’s nihilistic philosophy, yet come up short. Thankfully he’s content to make his points without the Socratic method entering into it.  “That’s why all the kids are fucked up these days, that we told a whole generation they were going to be heroes, only to hit them with the stunning revelation that there’s no such thing. And people wonder why the suicide rate among us kids is so high.”

“Things aren’t so bad…“ I try to justify. Greg chuckles at my ignorance.

“Not so bad” he reiterates with a grimace. “Shit man, look at the world. Everything’s gone to hell.” I look over to see Greg downing the remainder of his beer before hurling the empty can at a nearby gravestone, noticeably drunk on equal parts booze and rambling idealism. “What do we have to work towards? A college degree? A career? A family? I mean fuck, right now every developed nation on the earth has enough nuclear weapons stockpiled to blow up the world. How can anyone care about anything so trivial? And yet nobody cares enough to do something about it. Rather we’ve embrace the fragility of our lives as an excuse to appoint ignorance as the state religion. We convince ourselves that nothing’s changed. That as long as we maintain the status quo everything will work out in the end, same as it always has.” Greg takes the burnt-out cigarette from his mouth, looking it over with disinterest before tossing it listlessly into the frozen autumn air with an angry shake of his head. “Then again, who the hell am I to talk? I’m just as useless as anyone else. And in the end all it took was a big pile of money for me to realize it.”

“Greg…”

“You know how ashamed I am about that?” Greg asks, with a crude broken smile across his face. He’s cracking up about this, something inside him aching to burst free as he continues his diatribe. “I’ve been a fool all these years, a stupid kid rebelling against nothing. All my talk about changing things, it was just talk really. Stupid afterthoughts, grand schemes I knew I would never follow through on. I mean sure, I wanted to change things. I just kept thinking I needed time to figure things out, get my life in order. That I’d finish high school, get into a respectable college, get a career, make some money and then! Then I could really focus on doing something with my life.” he thinks it over, laughing suddenly at his presumed foolishness before angrily rapping the car roof with a fist. “But the truth? I was nothing but a coward. As dumb and complacent as anyone else.”

“We’re still young Greg.”

“The young grow old and die, same as anybody else” Greg replies bitterly. “Right now there’s probably an infinite number of alternate universes where I’m already dead. Universes where somebody, the Russians or the Chinese or whoever went ahead and pushed the doomsday button and killed the whole lot of us a long time ago.” He looks around at the world for a moment, as if searching for something in that empty blackness. Whatever he looks for, he doesn’t find it. “It just isn’t fair. Things weren’t supposed to be this way...” There’s a brief pause then, but before I can offer any more half-hearted support Greg suddenly rises to his feet, gazing out at the endless rows of tired stone monuments as if addressing a phalanx of cold and tired soldiers standing at the gates of oblivion. “We were supposed to be heroes!” he declares to our audience of ghosts. “We were going to be warriors! We were going to be space pilots and infantrymen! There was going to be great battles to fight, princesses to save! We were supposed to have something worth fighting for!” He’s choking back the emotion now, the fervor of his words catching up with him. “I was supposed to be--” He stops, voice cracking from the tirade. And as his words echo off the edge of the universe as I rise to my feet, standing beside my only friend in the world in solidarity as he curses fate.

As Greg’s words trail of into nothingness we both look upwards towards that eternal canvas of light, our bodies bathed in the glow of long dead stars. It’s in moments like these that I feel both completely insignificant and yet somehow almost content. I wonder if the rows of corpses lain out before us had once felt the same, the whole lot of us lonely ghosts looking up at the sky for no reason other than to count the time in-between moments. Once people had looked at these same stars, giving them the names of the great spirits they represented and feeling rather assured in the knowledge that for all the world’s mysteries, there was some strand of fate uniting it all. These days middle school science textbooks disproved the existence of god with in thin twelve-point type, the same textbooks which described in great detail how to set the world on fire. This was our great tragedy, to have been born in this era of dead gods, a world unfeeling and unbelieving in itself. A world that for all its advancements and wonders was more empty than ever before. I carry the proof in my pocket, the candy-coated pills I ashamedly consumed in great greedy handfuls in my futile attempt to feel “normal.” But there was no cure for someone like me; and maybe that was the point. Maybe people were never meant to be cured. Instead of chasing after this grand illusion of normalcy, maybe we should’ve been content to just be alive.

In a different time my ancestors are happily dancing among the fires of the damned, their bodies gyrating to the rhythm of their burning sun god. With their spears and sharpened sticks in hand, these great warriors are honored by their tribesmen for having proven their manhood in the grueling hunt, bathed in the blood of the great beast which now rests in their stomachs. And today I am sitting atop a rusted hunk of forgotten American ingenuity, having conquered little other than a midterm Math test and filled with a cheap feast of greasy pizza and stale beer. I was not a warrior, just a lonely and pathetic dreamer; trapped by the brief window of existence I had been allotted.

“We were supposed to be cowboys” Greg says softly, staring off into that cold empty world of ours. And as I let my hand dangle loosely off the edge of the world; the bottle of pills I’m holding falling into the void below;

 I wonder if maybe it isn’t too late.

I had hoped things would be better once I got into the corps, but I guess that had been wishful thinking. After my mediocre performance in the combat aptitude tests I was assigned to the repair division, essentially sentenced to two years as a lowly wrench monkey. I couldn’t really complain of course. They sure as hell didn’t need a snot-nosed kid who couldn’t even keep the throttle steady up in the skies, and most pilots were recruited straight out of the combat academies than from the civvie ranks anyhow. Although, there was a lot of buzz running around regarding some hot-shot kid who had aced the combat apps, the first time a new cut had scored full points in over a decade. Best of all he wasn’t even one of those academy brats, just a regular civ like us.

I was jealous sure. But I still wanted to meet him.

American Nobody
Chapter Three; Beneath Bronze Gods

I once heard that there’s a portion of the human brain whose only function is to avoid mammoth stampedes, long forgotten neural synapses that still fire at random intervals. It’s supposedly the reason a busy room will suddenly go quiet, the most interesting conversation cut short by our subconscious desire to avoid tusk impalement. And now; as I stand on the street corner and fiddle with the walkman in my pocket; I feel that familiar twinge of adrenalin, instinctually glancing around in search of the impending stampede. It always takes me a good few seconds before I remember it isn’t the ice age anymore. Several million years ago my heightened instincts could’ve saved caves full of my Cro-Magnon brothers from certain doom. Nowadays they probably prescribed something for twitchy bastards like myself.

“Mammoth check” I whisper under my breath. My flat-browed ancestors nod their heads in stoic appreciation.

I sometimes wondered if there was a period in time where I would fit in, where my modern flaws and inadequacies would’ve been interpreted as the markings of a great hero. All I really know for sure is that the modern age left me behind a long time ago. For example, right now you can probably fit the sum works of every major artist in the history of music recording onto a computer chip the size of an M&M. And yet here I am, fiddling with a busted tape-player, trying in vein to drown my morning boredom in the listless screams of dead rock and rollers. The tapes aren’t easy to find, my music library limited to the handful of old punk recordings I’ve found in back-alley record stores and thrift shops, but it’s more than enough for me. No programmable tracklists, no handy scroll wheel. Just a corroded length of magnetic tape guided by the series of half-working buttons running over the top of the device. REW, STOP, FF, REC, OPEN. These commands were the tiny bits of escapism that kept me sane, all that I needed in the world. After all, you give a man the freedom to listen to anything he wants and he’ll end up in a padded room, frothing at the mouth as the collected works of Jan Hammer bounce off the walls. You give a man the freedom to do anything he wants and he’ll eventually tire of banging super models and set the universe on fire. We’re only human.

Most of us anyway.

Standing at the edge of the street, my ears burning with the sweet sounds of long forgotten basement rock, those familiar primal instincts kick in once again. Looking up I can see it crossing the horizon line, a bead of sweat running down my neck as the great yellow beast barrels towards me. I look around for an escape, feeling the desperation growing by the second. But there’s no way out. My only hope is for a rift in space-time to open, the crackling void sucking me inside and propelling me back to a time when the kids were alright. I close my eyes and I can hear them- calling for me from across the expanse, their voices filtered through the crackling hiss of half-functioning audio equipment and decades of tape decay. But too soon are their cries trampled underfoot by the screaming of the beast, like the horrid screeching of a thousand dying birds. My fight or flight instincts have beat each other into submission; burnt out synapses gone dark again as I open my eyes and find myself accepting my fate, refusing to fight against that which was inevitable. Watching with nameless horror as the beast opens its maw and welcomes me inside.

December 8th, 2024. Day 434 of my compulsory High School education.

It never got any easier.

The driver eyes me warily as I board, a gruff heavy-set woman whose own children were likely already grown up and dying in a gutter somewhere. I don’t blame her for the apprehension, assuming I’d be a bit disagreeable if my chosen profession involved chauffeuring around unappreciative teenagers. As the mammoth lurches back to life I swing my bag into a seat, plopping down beside it as the current track begins to skip uselessly. The sudden absence of uniform motion seems too much for my half-century old technology to process, though under my scrutinizing gaze the inner mechanisms almost apologetically correct themselves, filling my existence once more with the comforting lull of half-toned electronic feedback. Letting my back sink into the stiff plastic seating, my eyes wander across the slick canvas banner across from me, one which runs the length of the bus’s interior. “Our Greatest Weapon Against Terrorism – You” it proclaims in a heavy sans-serif font, the black words breaking across an otherwise empty white expanse.

Looking down at my gaunt third-world build, I hoped they were talking to someone else.

It was all part of the government’s latest propaganda nightmare, trying to instill blind fear-driven patriotism in an otherwise uncaring public. The school hallways were blanketed with posters bearing the same slogan, a silhouette of this mythical everyman American hero standing beneath the words as the American flag majestically unfurls behind him. For the most part It was the same sort of mantra that had been regurgitated almost verbatim over the past half a century – the enemy has silently infiltrated our ranks, and the best way to combat their mysterious agenda is to continue living in fear, turning in your neighbors for their imagined crimes against the state. The other side of the coin was that the military’s standards were finally low enough that any red-blooded American citizen who still had a working trigger finger was more than ready to hunt insurgents in the middle of some god-forsaken wasteland. Long ago the government had come to the simple realization that the more money they spent on the education budget, the lower the military enrollment rates became; these newly educated brats running off to their sissy college campuses. The simple solution of course was to let the two budgets overlap, fixing up the schools while quietly replacing the smiling sweater-vested guidance councilors with friendly muscle-bound veterans known as “career advisors.” It was a devious practice, scouting the dullards and offering them what was pretty much a free ride through the rest of high school in return for their indentured servitude. Sometimes I’d see them, square-jawed kids with crew cuts running laps around the school and handing in half-attempted English essays with smug grins. I understood the necessity of a working military as much as anybody; especially given today’s geo-political wasteland; but it was still disconcerting to know that the unfortunate kids who weren’t talented enough to get basketball scholarships somehow saw an exciting career in getting shot at as a viable alternative.

We should’ve been outraged, but the truth is that nobody really cared enough to say anything. These days it wasn’t about how much you loved big brother, rather how much casual indifference you treated him with. In the corner of the bus a few of the boys are playing some handheld video game console in the seats towards the back; their glazed-over eyes gleefully looked onto tiny handheld devices as they wirelessly murder each other, while a group of attractive sitting in the front; pass an internet reader around, the LCD screen dimming as it finds itself unable to siphon enough battery power to display his radiant white smile of teen heartthrob Johnny Nebraska. One of the girls; a strawberry blonde; catches eyes with me and shoots a disdainful glare, something which causes me to quickly turn towards my adjoining window and feign nonchalance. These were my peers, happily watching their vid-screens as a million miles away from here black tanks rolled through nameless cities, the leader of each major power waiting almost anxiously for the bright red phone beside their desk to ring. Yet to us the world outside is at peace, the cold New England wind whispering through the trees and scattering the leaves about listlessly. And for some reason I briefly imagine the flash of a nuclear weapon peering from over the horizon, the intense flash of heat and energy engulfing and vaporizing the whole lot of us in an instant. The world covered in flame, everything we had ever loved gone in the blink of an eye. And as the track cuts out; the strumming of an ancient guitar replaced with the dead silence of the living world; I wonder if anyone would even notice.

---

I wearily rise to my feet, standing at attention as the bus comes to a stop and legions of similar purposed minds shuffle into the aisle.  My unknown maestro is beginning another song, screaming about how if we’re all going to die we might as well go down with a loaded gun in one hand and a bottle of alcohol in the other. Though I appreciate the sentiment I regrettably remove my headphones – the desperate rock and roll fading out of earshot. What replaces it though is not the sounds of our regular funeral march, but instead the hurried murmurs of my pointing classmates, gesturing wildly towards some commotion outside. Concerned I crook my head, peering beyond the thick Plexiglas to see the crowd gathered around the school entrance. It takes me a second to assess the situation, but it isn’t long before I find an unfamiliar smile crossing my face. My thoughts of the approaching Orwellian state dissipate as the procession begins moving forward, me eagerly anticipating the sight of the incorrigible Mr. McFinnegan and his yearly shenanigans.

The ancient brick behemoth I and several generations of bored teenagers referred to fondly as “school” was quite an interesting landmark, not for any sort of eye-catching architectural design or a famous alumni, but rather for the strange history of the building. It had been built around the time of the depression, the money for its foundations being graciously donated by a charitable benefactor named Dooley McFinnegan. A former bootlegger turned factory owner, Mr. McFinnegan figured the act of kindness might earn him at least a few points in the eyes of his vengeful Irish Catholic god, though the man’s charity did not deter him from naming the school after himself. Nor did it stop him from commissioning a grand statue of his likeness to be cast in bronze, set at the foot of the steps of this new community installation. It was quite a magnificent work to be quite honest, this proud stout Irishman gazing wistfully upwards, extending his arm to the heavens as if reaching towards fate itself. That or there was a bottle of illicit liquor waiting on a high shelf, but no one really thought to ask before Mr. McFinnegan was tragically gunned down at the dedication ceremony. It was all quite a mess really, something about some unresolved mafia feud, bad blood and all that. There’s still an impression near the statue’s left shin, allegedly left by an errant bullet. The only remnant of the only remotely exciting event to grace the town in over a century.   

Even now the kids affectionately referred to the place as Dead Mick High School. I wish we had enough money for a sports team; our mascot would’ve been fantastic.

It was sometime in the 60s that the first wave of counter-culture pranksters were set loose on the world, old McFinnegan’s arm being hacked off at the shoulder in the dead of night. And it was this seemingly innocuous act that lay the grounds for what would soon become a yearly tradition. Unwilling to delve into the budget to replace the missing limb, the school instead commissioned the senior art class to craft a paper mache replica. The solution was crude but effective, the sturdy newsprint and paste design quite convincing from a distance, surprisingly able to sustain even the heavy New England rain and snow. What the school board failed to calculate however, was how well it would stand up to the bored and able young minds of our small community.

This is why I find our patina green idol enjoying a newfound popularity on this cold December morning, the anniversary of his death and the poor man’s annual defacing. His limb has been ripped from the socket, replaced by a crude replica which graps awkwardly at his new paper-mache dick. However the true ingenuity here is the water hose, strung through the back of his new appendage - the old Irish bastard could spilling his seed carelessly all around the school entrance – accented by the black cowboy hat atop his head and the faded porno magazine held aloft in his right hand. And even I; the disaffected young malcontent; find myself still baring a dumb smile as I admire the handiwork.

“Pretty good huh?” I hear a voice remark from close behind me. I turn to catch sight of the voice’s source, the dark-haired boy taking a long step from his vantage point atop a low stone embankment, his unkempt hair falling over his eyes as jumps down beside me. He wears a brown bomber jacket over a black t-shirt; the front of which bears an illegibly faded band logo.

“Yeah, it’s something alright” I agree, the both of us surveying the chaos with quiet appreciation. Several hours of running water has left the school entranceway covered in a slick sheet of ice, and there seems to be a great divide between the eager young souls who happily slide their way towards the front door, and the poor denizens who nervously trudge across; several losing their footing as they curse the cold embrace of the New England winter. “Are you the one responsible?”

“No” he says with a sad shake of the head. “I never had much of a knack for modern art.” I chuckle at this, my fellow spectator continuing to mull over the scene with a strange fascination. “Still, I bet I could do better.” I scoff at the errant observation.

“Better than this?” He nods at my challenge. I try to catch sight of a smile at the edge of his lips, but he seems serious. “C’mon… you couldn’t top this.”

“Why not?”

“Really?” I ask with a teasing shake of my head. “I mean, look at it. The penis and everything—“ I gesture towards the grand spectacle before us, legions of cold schoolchildren slipping around the base of their perpetually ejaculating idol, his stern bronze gaze locked on the sky as the pages of his porno rag are ruffled by the wind. The principal has finally caught wind of the commotion and is outside frantically gesturing for everyone to move inside, yelling frantically as he tries in vain to twist the frozen water spigot off. “I mean, this is art! This is the pinnacle of creation – chaos and disorder and all that. How the hell could you top this?” He mulls it over for a second, furrowing his brow as he examines the work in question.

“I don’t know—I mean you might be right” he admits with a shrug, and I feel for a second content that I’ve convinced him of his err in judgment. “Still…” he begins. “I can’t help but feel some sort of—I don’t know… intuition, a premonition or whatever you want to call it… hell, maybe it’s fate.” He thinks for a second, before laughs at this idea. “That’s it!” he declares as he whirls around from the statue to face me. “Fate. It’s my fate to do something rather spectacular to this statue. Something completely over-the-top, something so fucked up I can’t even begin to think of it right now!“ He turns again towards the monument, his attitude suddenly purposeful as he gazes up at the thing. “You believe me, right?”

I’m stunned for a second, trying to make sense of the grand declaration laid out before me. And when I realize how ridiculous it all sounds, I ruin the grandiose sentiment with an uncontrollable burst of laughter.  He falters for a moment, before a corner spills over the sides of his mouth. And soon we’re both laughing, fits of it coursing through us as the school bell rings and the remaining onlookers shuffle inside.  

It’s just the two of us now, watching as the stready stream of water spilling from Mr. Finnegan’s erect member slows to a trickle; still standing before us with that unrelenting Irish confidence, even in the light of his recent cuckolding. And without a word my errant companion strides confidently towards our proud bronze god, reaching up and snatching the hat for himself before turning back to me with a cheeky grin.

This was the moment where fate finally caught up to me, wearing a cowboy hat and asking if I knew where the gym was. And in that moment I realized that; yeah; I believed him.

I spent most of my time on-colony daydreaming, gazing up at the stars and wondering if somewhere out there my destiny was waiting. In those moments I would fancy myself as the rogue and dashing star of my own space drama. An ace pilot in the service of the empire, dedicated soldier and hero of the people. But there was always a moment of hesitation in these idle moments. I was no hero. I was simply an unpopular schoolboy with mildly competent grades and unrealistic goals; too much of a coward to ever actually commit to anything beyond my approaching two years of required military service. I was as nameless as anyone you’d pass on the street, an anonymous stranger living an unremarkable existence on some backwater colony in the middle of dead space.

Still, I kept on dreaming.

American Nobody
Chapter Two; The Inarticulate Conception

I’ve always had a bit of a memory problem, though to be honest it’s not anything I ever spent too much time lamenting. I figure there are enough kids dying of consumption in third world countries that forgetting what year it is now and again is a decent enough hand to have been dealt. A minor character flaw really, one I’ve managed to come to terms with. The candy coated pills I down with bravado at the start of each morning help of course, myself a proud card carrying member of generation RX. These days it was the kids who weren’t on some sort of drug that were the freaks anyhow, us bright-eyed attention deficit psychotics taking our place atop the pedestal of normality. However I was never truly cured, as it seemed there were always the tiny bits and pieces that would simply slip away while I wasn’t looking. The names that just wouldn’t stick, the missed doctor’s appointments and the graded school papers I didn’t remember completing in the first place. I would forget if I had brushed my teeth, if I had eaten lunch, and at this very moment I’ve forgotten if I’m supposed to be buying milk or not. Staring deep into the supermarket’s refrigerated abyss I’m just not sure. It seems like the sort of logical item one might purchase from a grocery store, and though I vaguely remember eating some rather dry cereal for breakfast, for all I know that breakfast had occurred months ago, a phantom memory.

On the bus returning home I finally notice the “No Milk!” scrawled in my own hasty typefont across the back of my left hand, sighing as I pull the cord to signal my stop and gathering up my groceries. The carton of milk peeks at me through the top of the plastic bag, almost mockingly.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, a child dies from malaria every 30 seconds. 7,884,000 children a year.

All things considered, I was doing alright.

---

I arrive home without incident, clicking my walkman off as I prod the front door open with a foot, burdened as I was by my parcels. My uncle’s easy chair in the living room is notably empty; though the thing is so ancient it still sags as though occupied by a ghost. Leaving the grocery bags on the kitchen table I return to helpfully gather the beer cans he’s left littered around the TV table, bending to snatch the few empties which have taken up residence in the thick shag forest beneath me and depositing them un-ceremonially into the rubbish bin by the patio door. I’d wonder as to my uncle’s whereabouts, but seeing as his car is in the driveway I could only assume he was in the workshop, and the only real lesson I’d ever committed to memory is that one does not haphazardly venture into the workshop if one desires to return unscathed.

My Uncle called himself an inventor, though his profession served largely as an excuse to get drunk before noon in the name of ingenuity. He was one of those brash artistic types, callous poets who regard their own works as gifts to creation. In truth he had only ever invented one actual marketable product, a highly effective and corrosive multi-purpose household cleaner called Miracle 9, the residual sales off which we lived. After a rather messy divorce from his second wife, my uncle had apparently attempted suicide by crude poisoning, mixing together a potpourri of whatever he could find around the house that would presumably manage to kill him. The list of ingredients could fill the first few pages of a trashy pocket novel, though the bulk of the concoction was made up of Bleach, Mr. Clean, some Alka-Seltzer tablets, paint thinner, and grape kool-aid (for taste). As he was in the midst of vomiting violently he accidentally kicked over the bucket containing the remainder of the swill, later returning from the bathroom to find that the mixture had handily dissolved his vomit, along with a corner section of the carpet.

The bottle was covered in a multitude of sternly worded warning labels. The Dutch apparently bought it in droves, for reasons that were never quite explained to me.

My uncle considered this discover a miracle, hence the name. I myself always wondered what sort of Rube Goldberg type deity would have the mind to dissolve a man’s wedding so that in his ensuing attempting suicide a new household cleansing product could be happened upon. The only miracle I could see was how he had managed to pour that swill down his throat and live to tell about it. I never voiced this opinion however, because for all my uncle’s faults he was a better man than most. Maybe not the ideal father figure, but even still I respected him enough to allow him his delusions of grandeur.

After all, he was the only family I had.

I frown for a moment when I open the fridge, placing the freshly bought carton of milk beside its three or four unopened brothers. But rather than dwell on failure I instead reach for the single open carton, a tired king behind his proud pawns. With the carton to my lips I move to retrieve a snack from the freshly bought box of toaster pastries in the bag beside me, though I’m instead greeted to the sound of biscuits wrapped in cheap foil clattering onto a tile floor as my unskilled fingers lose their grip. In the back of my mind I consider a society where such abstract sound is considered the pinnacle of art, and I in my clumsy lack of talent am their greatest maestro. I take my bow, grumbling as I bend over and scoop up the mess I’ve made before rising to return the snacks to their perch above the microwave, and it’s in that moment that the fallacy in my previous statement becomes clear.

Namely, there is no microwave. There had been a microwave, one which I’m rather sure that even despite my failing presence of mind was something I had used to nuke a breakfast burrito sometime recently. What remains now however is simply a rather convenient microwave-shaped space on the counter, handily outlined by a few miscellaneous boxes of cereal and a loaf of white bread which still bears an impression from where it had once been inconsiderately shoved against the side of the now absent appliance. Unsure how to come to terms with the situation, I absentmindedly tear the foil from a corner of my toaster pastry and take a bite.

It was an action that confirmed nothing, yet seemed altogether correct.

I find my uncle in the garage, the patches of human features vaguely identifiable; obscured as they are behind racks filled with half-useful technology. He’s fiddling with some piece of machinery on his worktable, appearing in typically unkempt fashion in a stained white T and worn pair of grey sweatpants. I don’t approach too suddenly, taking slow sugary bites of cherry-flavored pastry as I watch with casual interest. However, my stealthy entrance is soon betrayed as I accidentally brush against some metal hosing dangling from a high shelf, my legal guardian looking up from his work as the coiled tubes clank angrily against themselves.

“You’re home!” He exclaims, an excited smile rising from behind his scraggle of a beard. I’m unable to return the enthusiasm.

“The microwave is missing, I assume this is your doing.”

“Microwave!” He laughs at the thought. I survey the scattered mass of wires and circuitry beside him and know that my beloved appliance is already dead. “We don’t need a microwave anymore! America will never need a microwave again!” It’s then that he stands, taking what appears to be a gun from his table and pointing it in my general direction.

“I don’t want to know what that is just please stop aiming it at me please” I plead, taking desperate cover behind my own arms. He’s within execution range before he suddenly snatches the half-eaten pop-tart from my hand. “Hey!” I protest, watching with concern as he casually tosses it down onto his worktable.

“Time for a field test” he says, grabbing the lip of his welders mask. He looks at me briefly, furrowing his brow. “You might want to stay back… you know, just in case.” I take the cue to hurriedly shield myself behind a piece of heavy sheet metal at the other end of the garage, peeking around the corner and waiting for the subsequent explosion. My uncle quickly lowers his mask into place, and before I can remember the words to the Lord ’s Prayer he’s already begun. The gun lights up as the internal motors presumably begin spinning, a fiendish orange glow that radiates through the vent holes he’s punctured through the outside of what looks to be a toy ray gun. Likely some cheap piece of Chinese plastic designed to fire ping pong balls or some other form of harmless projectile. I can only wonder what fiendish modifications he’s made. There’s a slight whirring noise coming from the toy, though aside from this nothing seems to be taking place. No lasers careening off the walls, no explosion, not even a puff of smoke. As my uncle sets the gun down I’m prepare to console his apparent failure, yet when his mask comes down there’s a noticeable smile across his face, eyes wide with dumb excitement. “It works! Dear god Watson it works!” he exclaims, and intrigued, I quickly join my Uncle by his worktable to see what he’s talking about. At first I can find nothing of interest, though as I examine the pop tart further it becomes apparent that the thin layer of confetti speckled icing has noticeably lost rigidity, the formerly solid white mass now slick with evidence of its failing structural integrity. Meanwhile, a distinct strawberry ooze trickles from the wound I’d opened earlier with my mouth.

“What the hell have you done?” I ask, not wanting to know the answer.

“It’s the Micro-Blast my boy!” He declares, spinning around in his work chair holding the device in question. “All the convenience and efficiency of the modern microwave; now contained in the palm of your hand!” Before I can process what he’s saying he’s already plucked the errant pastry from where it sits and taken a bite. “Perfection!” He declares, offering me a bite with an extended hand. I recoil in horror.

“You built a microwave gun.”

“I built a microwave gun” he confirms, the smug smile still plastered on his face. I breathe deep, shaking my head at the horror my uncle has wrought.

“This is unfathomably irresponsible…I mean there’s no way this can be safe.” He shrugs, taking another unadvised bite.

“What’s the problem?”

“Didn’t it occur to you that maybe microwaves are built a certain way for a reason?” I argue. “Like maybe they shield the rays behind a sturdy metal box for safety reasons, something like that?” He scrunches up his face in confusion.

“Hell, I don’t know about that sort of thing” he offers carelessly. “I’m sure it’s not that dangerous...”

“Oh c’mon” I try to reason. “You’re saying you’re comfortable with giving people a gun that shoots microwaves? You really trust that middle America is smart enough to use this device for its intended purpose?”

“Well who’s going to be dumb enough to point this at somebody?” He jokes, throwing his arms up for emphasis.

“For the love of—“ I look at him in disbelief, pointing towards the device in question. “You’ve got it housed inside a toy raygun!” My uncle looks down at the object in his hands, the child’s toy turned deadly weapon that he in his shortsightedness has created. There’s a brief pause, and I assume he’s come to his senses.

“Well… I mean this is just a prototype” he justifies. “I'm sure, they’ll put a disclaimer on the—“ as I turn to leave he’s still explaining his position, something which very quickly turns into a half-serious rant about my inability to recognize genius and my lack of marketing savvy. But by the time he's making his point I'm already out of earshot.

In the kitchen I listen as the Chinese man on the other end of the line confirms my order, absent-mindedly staring into a microwave shaped hole in the world and picturing a platoon of child soldiers crossing a hill with rainbow-colored microwave weaponry in hand, boiling the brains of their countrymen as they go. “I need to pay on a credit card.” I tell these irresponsible and unfortunate youth. "Extra duck sauce if possible."

---

In the bathroom mirror that night I examine my face curiously, pawing at my reflection like a confused child. Was that really me? The gaunt dull animal with the sideways frown and hollow eyes? Then again, how could a man ever paint an accurate portrait of himself? Maybe someday government scientists would invent the means for us to view the world in four-dimensions, to see the brilliant radio waves that radiated throughout the world like a deep and endless ocean. For now all I had was the few pitiful spectrums of light my eyes could process; the only inhabitants of this stale chromatic world being myself, my lonely ego, and the bottle of prescription medication in my right hand, blaring its name in thick black type.

IC DIANACIPAM, 5MG TABLET MYL

This was my nightly ritual, to watch as the cascading waterfall of drug-induced normalcy slowly receded, revealing the jagged and uneven stone beneath. Downstairs my uncle is passed out in his chair, a container of micro-blasted Moo-Shu pork rotting away beside a phalanx of beer cans. I think of the partially digested sesame beef quietly gestating in my stomach, the waves of sloshing acids slowly dissolving the organic matter, breaking the bonded amino acids down into base proteins. And for some reason I am suddenly aware of every working of my own body. The expanse of my lungs, the slow steady beating of my heart, and the nervous crackling of electrical signals bouncing around the inside of my skull. I long to be the hollow man, constructed of clear Lucite plastics, the wonders of my own body not hidden behind a flesh façade but instead exposed to the world. Paraded onto an ancient stage from behind red velvet curtains, the horror of our simple and meaningless existence exposed to a paying audience.

TAKE 3 TABLETS BY MOUTH EVERYDAY AT BEDTIME

Normally I’d heed the demands of my orange idol, eventually ending my flirtation with insanity and devouring greedily of his innards. Tonight I’m content to ignore the decree, slowly slipping further into my hazy delirium the world warping and blurring at the edges.

As I stumble into my bedroom the smiling couple eyes me suspiciously from their lacquer frame. They’ve got every right to be upset I suppose, seeing as how their only son has been replaced by this slow sad doppelganger. I try to ignore the stares as I click off the lamp and stretch out on the bed, the comfort of darkness surrounding me like a shroud. Beneath the mattress by the headboard is a small yet quaint selection of boring regular pornography; though for some reason I’m reluctant to indulge my adolescent fantasies. Aware of the uncomfortable mood in the room I turn the picture at my bedside face down, hiding from the judgment of ghosts.

I once stumbled across an internet debate between atheists and Christians, the latter side arguing that the existence of guilt was proof of a higher power; that an organism could feel regret over their own actions showed that our thought patterns were beyond anything the universe could construct by happenstance. I always wondered if it was true. If the heavy feeling in my chest whenever I looked at that smiling couple in the frame was not due to some psychological failing but the work of a higher power punishing me for my inability to change the past. Rather unfair, but compared to other biblical punishments it seems rather minor. You rarely hear of people turning into pillars of salt these days, maybe god had just gotten soft.

My mind wandering, as it always does in these moments, I always manage to come back to the same memory. That earlier guilt of mine stems from a tragic incident likely filed away and forgotten in the back of some coroner’s file cabinet, if they even held onto such trivial records that long. It’s irony then, that the one moment I’ve never forgotten is the moment when all my memory troubles started. Yet it’s still as clear and vivid to me as if it had been long ago been recorded onto disposable media, with the tapedeck infinitely looping the footage through a direct feed to the back of my eyelids. And when I close my eyes, there it is. My Genesis.

Ten years ago, a young boy and his parents died in a horrible car accident. It was an unfortunate and unavoidable accident, their smart Japanese compact car hitting a patch of black ice and flipping into a ditch off the interstate. The young boy of course was me, the previous incarnation at least. A presumably normal and well-adjusted child whose soul exploded at the point of impact, about the same time his head slammed into the car’s interior and knocked more than a few things loose. It was at that moment that I was born. Crawling from a womb of twisted metal and shattered glass out into the frozen air, gasping my first panicked breaths of frozen October air. A fully-formed child, the confused and shivering son of this blameless tragedy. And the last thing I remember is lying there, bloody and bruised as in the distance the sun broke through the ground. Watch as the sky was ignited with the most pure and beautiful spectrum of blue, the night slipping away as I watched the world light up for the first time.

Several days later I awoke in a hospital, bathed in harsh florescent lighting and not knowing who I was. Watched over by the nursing staff like a helpless newborn, as men asked questions from behind clipboards and recorded my scattered and failing recollection with precise strokes of a ballpoint pen. A doctor told me that everything would be alright.

I knew he was lying.

I was temporarily released so I could to attend the funeral of the two strangers who had once been my parents, my hospital gown traded for a stiff black suit one size too large. It was a cold autumn morning that the service was held, me watching stoically as a pair of mahogany boxes were slowly lowered into the ground. But though the priest spoke well of this young couple snatched away in their prime, the mourners seemed more interested in the quiet emotionless child. I’m not sure what I was expected to do, if it was to cry or to yell or to curse whatever higher power I assume I had once regarded. But I couldn’t. The only memories I had of these people were unrecognizable blurs of color and emotion that I had no business trying to make sense of, the few tangible scraps of memories I had managed to delve forth from the abyss abstract at best. My mother holding my hand in a crowded department store, my father looking up from his lit cigarette and smiling warmly. Meaningless snapshots taken at random moments in time, photocopied enough times to render them largely unrecognizable. These errant memories may not have even been genuine, dreams maybe, the work of my own imagination, or worse yet I may have simply stolen these cookie-cutter scraps of ideal American moments from the scenes some popular television program.

I was without any emotion that day, save for the first twinge of that irreconcilable guilt. Guilt that came from knowing I’d never be able to meet these fine decent people who had been responsible for my conception. Guilt from knowing that I was the only undeserving survivor of this tragedy, that only through their unknowing sacrifice had I entered this world. But that’s how it goes, isn’t it? Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

After failing a mandatory mental health assessment and collecting my government sponsored medication, I was sent to live with my uncle in Massachusetts. That same year I would re-enter school as a rather reserved if not hopeful young student. I figured this was my chance to start anew, to forge through this tragedy of mine and return to the presumed normalcy I had likely once engaged in. Quickly though, my optimism faded. I discovered quickly that I was quite unlike these peers of mine, who filled their time with idle pursuits; with hobbies and sports and talk of the grand futures lain out before them. They were to be doctors and firemen, ballerinas and professional baseball players. Not that it mattered that few; if any; of them would ever truly commit to these paths. The point is that they had something they believed in, that starry-eyed idealism to drag them unscathed through adolescence. And so, as my peers ran headstrong down their own paths, I could only shuffle my feet at the starting line and act unawares that the race had even started. I had no ambitions, no desires, no goals. These are things born in childhood, the vague psychological ideals that likely begin as some subconscious desire to impress, please or even surpass one’s peers and authority figures. And I was entirely lacking in that necessary youthful foolishness, the dumb unbridled optimism which the viewbox instills in our six year olds; primary colored cartoon heroes telling them they can “do anything” if they want it hard enough.

Who was I? If I had known once, I knew no longer.

Not wanting to bother the world with my hesitation, I resolved to instead sink into peaceful obscurity. I became the quiet loner in the back of the classroom, the friendless nobody who is so invisible no one even thinks to pick on him. I was invisible and would remain as such well into my teenage years. I tried my best to feign contentment, knowing that any hint to the contrary might be enough of a case for them to send me back to a damned state psychologist again. So I grit my teeth and smiled for the cameras, all the while watching as the world slowly left me behind.

And here I am now; still wondering what it is that would make me complete.

All I’ve ever wanted is to feel something tangible, something real. The emotions I’ve experienced in my own life always seem like crude imitations of the real thing, and I sometimes used to wonder if I was even truly alive, or if my soul had simply been ripped from my corporal body in the accident, and I simply a corpse pantomiming the actions of the living. I tried of course, filling a bookshelf with heavy novels trying to find a purpose to model my own after, finding myself secretly drawn to these long epics regarding old men standing at the edge of rocky cliffs and proclaiming their defiance of fate itself. I longed for their boldness. That resolve, that strength of character, the refusal to settle for what most men would consider fulfillment. I want to stand at the end of the world, I want to explode outward like a dying star in a final justification of my own existence, and only then will I finally lay down to rest.

I realize the fallacy in this desire of course. Besides the obvious fact that the time of the merchant ships was far past, the truth is I could barely summon the courage to try a new brand of soft drink, let alone consider venturing into some metaphorical belly of the beast with some manner of phallic Freudian weaponry held aloft in my hand. But though I tried to disregard these fantasies as impossible, drowning them in the sweet candy pills and the smooth faceless complacency I feigned in public. On nights like tonight, as the past returns to haunt and to taunt me, I still dream.

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. A gun fires and the arm jerks in recoil. My uncle’s life is saved by his invention and somewhere in Deutschland a man is eternally drowning his sorrows in a bottle of Miracle 9. And here I am, alone and forgotten somewhere north of nowhere, watching the slow awkward shadows from the ceiling fan as they dance across my face and recklessly hoping for something to rise out of the darkness and save me from my mediocrity.

Hopefully, I wouldn't have to wait long.

As I pull a pack of stale cigarettes from my breast pocket, I'm reminded that I still haven't conquered my adolescence. Even now my every moment feels propelled by the nervous impulses of the anxious pubescent teenager lurking inside of me, a dumb kid mimicking the actions of long dead Hollywood ghosts, mythical television cowboys who had never truly lived at all. I'd been having a mid life crisis since the age of thirteen, the cause of which I can directly trace back to a dream I had once. Some intangible thing involving a pretty girl with better taste in music than myself, the two of us approaching light speed and burning up in the atmosphere. I was only a kid back then, back when I had an excuse for being so gangly and awkward. It’s always weird looking back, the moments that once meant nothing now seeming like golden strands of incandescent beauty forever frozen in time, beauty that continued to fade and dull more and more by the day.

I guess that was why I still came out here. I was still addicted to that empty feeling, knowing I could never go back to the way things were. Some people were smart enough to keep things simple, listening to old records or paying beautiful women to beat the shit out of him. Where I could only stand at the edge of the world and try to remember a time when I could still feel something. This city was long since dead, something I had known for quite awhile. Still, sometimes I could trick myself. Sometimes I would catch a glimpse of what had long been covered by this grey wasteland, a small glimmer of something beautiful at the far end of that burning horizon. A brief wave of stale nostalgia flooding back through the dry canals of my mind, overwhelming me with this bitterness as it passed. And I would remember in those painful moments that this was my city. No matter how many times this sick carnival ride beat me down, kicked me hard in the ribs and dragged me through the gutter spitting out blood – all I could do in the end was muster a dumb grin and get back in line.

This is where our story begins, and where our story ends. In that beautiful nameless city, our stalwart narrator watching with hollow eyes as the great funeral pyre in the sky rages on forever. This city. My city.

North Nowhere

And there was no place else I’d rather be.