And the whisperers were so sad!
They thought the screen
kept him from seeing them, hearing them, talking to them, living
with them.
It didn't.
The light switch clicked and the yellow
light poked into the room again, but it was not so strong now. The
sun had come up and the lights were mingled.
The hallway tapped as the shadows woke
up.
Peter reached for little buds of music,
playing alone and hushed on the desk beside the second
no-longer-fizzy drink. He put them in his ears. Then one arm folded
on the desk, cradled his head beside his computer.
Smooth plastic sang him to sleep.
Outside in the yellow hall light, shadows
walked past the room. Eyes flicked, once, twice, towards the
doorway. Fingers tapped uncertain on the walls. An aged hand under
a black sleeve hesitated on the doorknob. Then they continued
past.
It was only a screen, but
the shadows didn't penetrate. The shadows around the corner didn't
see. They didn't hear. They mourned in silence and
whispers.
And Peter slept.
Thunk.
A sword slipped from an empty hand and no
one reached to pick it up. Hoards rushed on – there were other
swords, other hands.
But one hand lay still. One sword lay still
without a fight. And somewhere music played and feet rushed, and
voices cheered and swore.
The dropped weapon cooled.
"Well, you had to expect it."
"Shhh... shhh..."
"But you had to–"
"
Shhh.
"
"Come on, you can't feel sorr–"
"Show some fucking respect."
Hands hid snickering lips. Heads shook and
eyes rolled. Here and there people chattered, and everywhere they
watched.
And laughed.
(Every place but one – there a hush choked
the laughs.)
A hush covered the road and the funeral
moved through it. The funeral moved through the quiet and everyone
saw.
Everyone.
A gate clanged open, then tombstones lined
the way ahead as the empty hand, the still and swordless hand,
moved through it. Somewhere. It was somewhere far away. But
everywhere –
everywhere
– people watched. Down the road the
funeral wound and everywhere –
everywhere
– people peeped
out to watch.
And laugh.
"You
had
to expect it."
"Shut up."
"I'm just saying–"
"Don't."
Thunk.
A sword slipped from a fighter's hand. A
long battle – well fought – slipped past unaware and none
looked down (yet) to the sword or the hand. Silent and still, the
one laying beside the other.
Fallen.
And the hoards rushed by – not yet
laughing.
"RIP, man. RIP."
"That's what you get–"
"Shut up
.
"
"I'm just say–"
"Shut
up.
"
Tombstones lined the way, somewhere at the
end of a hushed road. Grass folded quietly underfoot. The funeral
moved past, left the tears unfallen by the wayside. Open ground
smiled at the company.
Laughter followed at a polite distance.
But here and there, disquiet fell on others
still standing on the field and they looked with unease at the
weapons in their hands. Warrior children waiting for their turn
watched close and wondered if it hurt. Others shied away.
And they watched.
They peeped out, openly, or hidden here and
there, they peeped out from behind their screens, they peeped out
from far–flung windows and watched the open mouth of ground swallow
the fallen, and watched the glowing epitaphs flick by, watched from
afar.
Some paused.
Some shivered.
And some laughed.
Sleek plastic piled into crisp cardboard,
cold weapons, empty armor – dropped and not picked up again.
"You could sell it," a quiet voice insists.
"You
could
sell it."
"No."
"You need to get rid of it. You could sell
it online. Make some money out of it. Make something...
something
out of it."
"No."
"But you could make something out of it –
something to remember him–"
"I'm not going to forget."
"I didn't mean... I just mean... let it go.
Let it all go."
"No."
"What are you going to do, just keep it?
But–"
"I can't let anyone else have it."
"Someone else could get some use out
of–"
"No. It killed him."
"It didn't."
"It did."
"He just... he was just taken. It just...
happened."
"No."
The controller went in last. A cardboard
flap closed over the scraped and worn thing. One corner, dented
from its fall, poked up from the box. Then it was pushed down. It
was cold.
A mourning father sealed the box.
There was no battle there.
Somewhere an identical piece was warm,
slowly reaching the temperature of the hands that held it. For a
moment, one hand let go, trembling just a little. It rubbed
sleepiness out of bloodshot eyes. Then it returned to the
still-warm plastic.
When the car started, the CD started.
Kennedy never stopped the music before
cutting the engine. The music would move with the car – start when
the car started, stop when the car stopped, and occasionally jolt
when the car jolted. Like a soundtrack.
But his personal soundtrack never clued him
in to the danger around the corner with sudden chords or ominous
tones. It never foretold his victories with a triumphant score. It
never warned him about the lean times ahead with melancholy
undertones.
At least, it hadn't so far.
But sometimes he imagined it did.
Kennedy punched the player. His knuckle hit
the stop button. Once. Twice. The CD shot out and hung there,
still, clamped in the player's mouth. He grabbed it. Gently, slowly
he pulled it from the slot.
One hand on the wheel, one hand on the now
silent plastic thing, he glanced into the rearview mirror. The
street behind was clear, but the face looking back from the mirror,
not so much. The perfect smoothness of his suit didn't extend
upward to his face. Lines of worry creased his brow, framed his
lips, clouded his eyes.
He looked at the thing in his hand.
Flat.
He smiled at the thing. His lips curled up
with pride as he admired it.
So flat.
And it was. It was
so
flat, so small
he could hold it in one hand and steer out of the parking space
with the other, like he was doing right now.
You couldn't do that with all technology.
Not records. Not instruments. Not a player piano. Not an orchestra.
Maybe tapes. Back and back and back there wasn't much music that he
could hold in his hand.
He looked out at the road.
His foot pressed carefully on the pedal and
he merged forward into the traffic on the main street.
He grimaced at the sign ahead.
The bubble of admiration and pride started
to shrink. His head started to shake, wagging back and forth just a
bit at an invisible opponent. He clenched his jaw, whacked the turn
signal and turned right.
The CD was flat, but it was still
there.
He chucked the CD aside. It clattered on the
dashboard.
His foot pressed on the break and he slowed
ahead of the crosswalk at the corner. A kid walked into the street.
He crossed, head down, in front of the car. White earbuds shone
under his dark hood and one hand flicked through the touch screen
in his hand.
Kennedy glared at the kid, who didn't look
up.
Flat!
he snarled this time, silently
in his head.
That wasn't real music.
It wasn't
real
anything!
Flatter than CDs. Flatter than the tape in
tapes, flatter than the paper the lyrics were written on. So flat
you couldn't even hold it in your hands. You couldn't hold it at
all. You couldn't browse the shelves for it, open the case, hold
the words in your hands. You couldn't get it signed and put it in a
frame. You couldn't line it up on a bookcase.
You couldn't feel it.
He glanced right, then left. His eyes caught
the rearview mirror once more. He shuddered minutely at the rapidly
aging face. He wished he didn't care, but he did. Working with
glamorous people would do that to a person, would make them peer at
the little lines, instead of looking ahead, peer at the little
marks of where they'd been, not where they were going.
He looked away from his reflection. Back
through the front windshield. The kid was gone now and he moved
ahead.
A few lines were hardly his biggest
concern.
Old age was chasing him. And it was so much
closer now!
"The Old Days" were no longer the days a
hundred or two years ago when cars made their way through horses
and shoppers on the snowy streets. "Old Fashioned" didn't mean
sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch yelling at the kids
walking over the lawn. "Old" was something recent now. Not
something from the history books. Not something he couldn't
remember. Now, the Old Days were the days twenty years ago when a
square package, flat and wrapped in comics was a CD. When you
could following along with the lyrics in the little booklet.
When music could be help in the hand.
Those
were "The Old Days."
Kennedy tapped his free foot on the floor of
the car and waited for a traffic light to change. He drummed
impatient fingers over his upper lip. The traffic didn't do
anything to distract him from his thoughts. His upper lip was
smooth; he didn't
feel
old. But here he was listening to a
plastic disk, a disk that would end up in a landfill somewhere if
it wasn't lucky enough to be kept as an antique. No, it wouldn't be
that lucky. There were too many plastic disks for them all to have
value. Most would end up in landfills. Who, besides a few old
geezers like himself, would bother keeping some old pieces of
plastic?
The days became old faster and faster, and,
to his dismay, his face seemed to age along with them.
The light turned green and he drove ahead.
He grimaced at another sign, this one pointing left. He turned,
following the arrow, and pulled into the lot of the courthouse.
A moment later he slammed the car door.
Behind him, the CD sat on the dashboard, a silent soundtrack that
failed to warn of the danger around the corner.
The world darkened.
Once it was beautiful.
Wide roads traversed the country, ran under
the light, rolled under wheels, carried goods from here to there
and back. Markets to market, house to house, country to country,
hand to hand: they carried goods along wide and lighted rolling
roads. Good roads.
Sparkling bays opened up onto the wide and
wild ocean.
No –
oceans
(there were
many.)
Wide oceans, expanses going over the whole
world touched every shore and dived down to deep pits with
wide-eyed things, and glowing life, foreign organisms. We looked at
them – looked at the wide-eyed things and glowing life, looked at
the foreign organisms.
And they looked back.
Wild oceans, vicious waves, unknown waters
swallowed ships and carried villains along the sea roads (they
painted the waves red.) Dangers hid beyond waves' crests. We shrank
from them – shrank from the dangers and the villains and the
unknown, vicious waves. We shrank from them into the light,
brilliant light atop the waves (safe places.) They – the dangers
and the villains and the unknown, vicious things – shrank from the
light into the shadows of the troughs. We peeked, sometimes,
looking down the troughs, down the shadows, to the unknown, scary
things.
And they looked back.
And we harbored in the bays.
Sparkling bays opened on the wide and wild
waves, opened on the wide and wild oceans (the traders and the
travelers crossed them anyway.) The traders and the travelers
crossed the wide and wild oceans, crossed the red waves over the
deep pits, braved the wide and wild oceans. There were beauties on
the other side – pretty things and people ringed the waves, ringed
the waves on every side. (We crossed the wide and wild oceans to
see the other side.) And we looked at them.
And they looked back.
And the harbors, built around the bays,
built
for the wild oceans, kept
the peace around them. Harbors housed the travelers here, and the
traders here as well (and the villains.) Open havens from the vast
expanses kept the beauties safe on every side.
And we looked out from them.
Bridges ran across the world, ran like roads
across the country.
Bridges spanned the waters, spanned the
waters and the roads and the sky – causeways that stepped up over
muddy roads, unsafe crossings. They kept the travelers and
the traders on their feet, kept shoes from sinking, kept the goods
moving. Bridges, bustling and inviting, gave good views of
open country.
Bridges ran open under the bright skies -
but not only.
Covered bridges ran beside them.
Covered roads above the roads ran beside the
open bridges, ran beside the open causeways. Covered, they ran
hooded under the sky (only the hoods were open to the sky.) Covered
bridges – quiet, shady spots, sheltered and safe – tunneled over
the ground. They – hooded and raised roadways – comforted the wary
walkers, rested the sun-worn travelers. They peeked up from under
roofed bridges, looked out from shade, looked out to the sun and
over open roads.