VII

Grant’s eyes are, technically speaking, open. But you and I cannot see through them, not just yet.

You see, our Grant has not yet even noticed that his eyes are open. To notice such trifles he would have to divert some smart part of himself away from the struggle which, for now, requires every resource of his being.

It is the complex and profound struggle of a man forced to witness, to comprehend, and finally to bear that which his very soul recoils against—that which must not be, and yet is. A struggle which has seen our Grant fast-forward his way madly through all the classic stratagems, through denial, anger, bargaining. A struggle forced on him by a sense more powerful than sight, more primal, closer to the heart of all matters.

Yes, before he can see, Grant must first come to terms with the smell.

It is overpowering. Grant may later attempt to describe it, but if so, he will fail. Until now, he has never needed recourse to anything more than the usual compendium of handy comparisons for bad odors. “It smells like shit in there,” he might say, or “piss,” or “vomit.” This smells like all three, and more, but what’s missing from these formulas is the sheer intensity, which Grant has no idea how to communicate in mere words, and wouldn’t want to if he could.

To distract himself, he begins to wonder if maybe Azad could describe it. Azad would take it as a challenge, surely, and bring all his powers to bear upon the problem with gusto. But Azad’s powers were forged in the seminar room and the well-upholstered study, and though his gaze might sometimes turn to dirt and muck and small slithering things, it glimpsed them only from a great height.

Perhaps, then, it could only be done by the two of them together. Grant’s imagination, working in overdrive to conjure new escapes faster than the stench can envelop them, latches onto this premise with glee: they would be a duo of poet-warriors striding across a mythic landscape, identifiable even from great distances by their unique heraldic dress (Grant sporting a medieval elaboration of the dark baseball cap and shades he wore on the job, Azad a massive mortarboard and priestly-academic robes), regaling jaded kings and misty hamlets with the story, their only story, inimitable and ever growing in renown, the story of the smell.

Was Azad going to be all right? Maybe Azad was already dead. Maybe Grant would prefer to think about something other than this subject.

Unfortunately, there is another subject all too eager to force its way back into his consciousness.

The smell.

Grant realizes he’s been holding his breath.

Grant wants to scream, but you need air in your lungs to scream.

Grant thinks of nothing, of mom and dad and sis on a family road trip, of certain no-scope kills that attained legendary status among his gaming squad, of the Mooncrash, of that room in the basement of the house he especially liked, the one with all the plumbing and the big water heater (so easy to just stay in that room without leaving, for hours, for days? a week? a month? the memories are already distant), and then he doesn’t think at all because the breath is rushing in and with it the smell, which he really hasn’t overcome at all, has he?

Every breath has been like this, and every one hence will be like this too. It’s only in the blessed interval between breaths that he can imagine he’s made progress, reached some new frontier of acceptance or negotiation.

Usually when a place smells bad you try to get out of it.

This insight hits Grant out of nowhere, and he’s honestly baffled how it had escaped his notice thus far. A whole new paradigm, forget everything you knew, time to play by the rules of the new economy, and Grant’s 100% game for it.

Phrases from some long-forgotten business class float unexpectedly into his consciousness. The professor was always saying new economy, and paradigm, and dynamic, and Web 2.0. Grant readies himself to move, to dynamically extricate himself from this whole mess, an ambition that in his semi-delirious state feels, for some reason, subtly and profoundly linked to the phrase Web 2.0.

And as Grant, titan of the new economy, begins his grand Web 2.0 adventure by telling his left leg to take a step forward, one small step for man—

—nothing happens.

He can’t move.

That’s probably why he hadn’t moved earlier, he realizes belatedly. The wise Grant of 10 seconds ago steps in to lecture the prodigy of the present. Grave lessons from the old economy, still relevant to the young.

He’s overdue for another breath.

At least his nostrils don’t have those awful, invasive, penetrating tubes in them anymore.

Tubes? But there are tubes right in front of him. Were those always there? Are there two of them, or four? He can make them move, closer together or further apart.

He’s seeing double, he realizes.

He’s seeing.

He’s seeing the facility.

White walls, white paint over stone bricks, with irregularities of texture still perceptible from a distance. No, but now it’s not all white, there are patches of the wall that look like the good old facility but then elsewhere it’s covered with that shiny rainbow goop—oh no.

A frisson of fear rises from Grant’s gut up through his shoulders and up to the top of his head, and then it’s gone, like some radio pulse he’s sending into space. There’s another one. They keep coming, and he realizes they’re coming with his heartbeat, a fast heartbeat he can feel thumping in his chest. He welcomes this feeling, for it is a feeling that begins in his stomach and yet it is not nausea. His belly has embraced the new economy at last. But that goop—

—the end, that was the goop from the end, blaring klaxons all through the day and night that wouldn’t let him sleep, the rainbow slime was all over the walls and they wouldn’t let you touch it or touch anyone who’d touched it, and Grant was in charge of enforcing this new doctrine, but it was so hard when you hadn’t slept and you were in the bathroom and the goop was climbing onto the urinals and you stood there, wondering if you could piss, wondering if the corrupting touch of the anomalings could climb into you across a stream of urine, wondering this for minutes? hours? it’s hard to tell when you haven’t slept in days, and this was too much, not what you signed up for when you took the job, you know, and you were even then yearning for Mooncrash without knowing it, yearning for the house with its grey tones and no rainbows, not ever.

And isn’t that a bit of goop right in front of him now?

Isn’t that a lot of goop, a big collected mass of it, not on the walls but right there in front of him, levitating, a levitating goopball not a foot away?

And hadn’t he been warned about exactly this very sight, on slide 13 of some insane Powerpoint there quite close to the end, with a helpful animation of just what a levitating goopball would look like, with those pulsing undulations on its surface, yes, just those ones?

And isn’t the voice he is hearing now a familiar voice?

“Attentional response to aural stimulus registered,” says the old man. “This is very good, Grant. Your ears still work.”

When the old man speaks, the rainbow goopball’s surface undulates with smooth waves, like a lake stirred by a tranquil breeze. When he stops speaking, it is still, a perfect sphere.

“Saccades are tracking external stimuli with only mild nystagmus. All extraocular muscles appear functional. You are alive, Grant. I welcome you back to your home.”

Grant tries to say something, and manages to sort of get his mouth halfway open. He retches. His head has moved forward, and this changes everything. The world is spinning. Before his eyes, only a blur, seen uselessly in duplicate.

“It is necessary that you be cleaned immediately. This apparatus was not correctly prepared for biological steady state and a large heterogenous mass of bacteria has been permitted to accumulate within the chamber, which will soon endanger your life. Additionally, this apparatus has been recently altered, and bounds can no longer be placed on its functionality. Grant, your muscles have atrophied and you can no longer move on your own. Allow me to assist. I am to be your guide hereafter.”

Something in front of Grant shifts, and he falls forward, right onto the floor. A splitting pain wracks his forehead. He cannot see and cannot move. A minute passes, or two, or twenty.

Warm water rushes over his back. He perceives this, initially, as a great shriek that splits the universe in twain. Then there is liquid in his lungs, and he coughs it up, and it is out of him, never to return.

The water flows over him continually, a warm bath, and he can breathe.

He feels accomplished. He has made it, at last, to the new economy. And this warmth around him, this accommodating pool, buoying him up and coursing gently around his limbs? Perhaps this is what Web 2.0 feels like.

Then, for a very long time, nothing.

 

---

 

“You are awake, Grant.”

He is awake, and he is seated on a couch, one of several in a familiar conference room. Straight in front of him is a wall-mounted 4K monitor. He must have watched a hundred very boring presentations on that screen, back when he worked here.

The wall is almost entirely covered in rainbow goop—a substance with the consistency of sap and the shine of a soap bubble—but it has left the monitor alone. Around the screen there is an amorphous splatter of white wall, the halo left by the absence of goop. Here and there a tendril of goop extends further into the halo, only to splinter into a chaotic mess of thin goopy vines, wrapping back outwards toward their source.

Grant feels like a million bucks. Body full of calm energy, a post-workout sort of charge. No noticeable hunger, thirst or discomfort. He experimentally instructs his left foot to edge forward along the floor, and it complies.

“Yeah, I guess I’m awake.”

“Very good, Grant.” The goopball floats into view from his right, moving slowly through the air in a perfectly straight line and then, all at once, stopping decorously so it doesn’t obstruct his view of the screen. It looks fake, momentumless, unrealistically smooth and reflective, like a tacky CGI creation from some low-budget sci-fi thriller.

“Grant,” it says, and its surface shimmers with ripples that might, or might not, somehow encode his name. It still has that old man’s voice.

“It is now time to show you certain things. In the course of this educational experience, it will become necessary to make motions with your body, and so it has been arranged for this to be possible. As your guide, I must inform you that these arrangements will not persist.”

Grant says nothing. He remembers being told that if he saw one of these things, his life would be over. Perhaps this is an afterlife, or some transitory stage in between. Perhaps the goopball is his ferryman to the underworld. Many things are possible, but Grant feels sure that in some sense it has all ended, life, Mooncrash, all of it. There is nothing left to do.

“Now your education will begin.”

The monitor flickers on. In a small box, wreathed by the rainbows of the end, there is a picture:

“This is your earth, Grant. The center of the abominable realm, your home. You see it here from a distance, as your astronauts did, and upon it, you see the meridians and parallels of your navigators. It is familiar to you, is it not, Grant? You recognize your habitat. You have moved from position to position upon it, before. Using footfalls to move in the direction of the head, and perhaps in your cars, or in your airplanes?”

Grant sits motionless for a number of seconds before he realizes that the goopball apparently wants a response to this question.

“Yeah,” he says, throwing a little corkscrew turn of sarcasm into his tone, why not, it’s the end of everything anyway. “I’ve ‘moved’ on ‘my earth’ in ‘my airplanes.’ Sure, E.T. I’m a normal human man, I move on my earth in my airplane like every fucking day. Do you want me to take you to my leader now?”

“Such leaders as you may have had, Grant, have already been taken into account.” This is said pleasantly, as if it is meant to be reassuring. But then the old man voice grows sterner:

“Grant, it is important that you pay attention to your education. I have chosen to guide you. If you do not receive this lesson properly, you will not be able to move in an appropriate manner, and you will quickly die.”

“Okay. And if I do listen? I won’t die? What will happen then?”

“That cannot be conveyed accurately until a later stage in your education. Is it not enough to tell you that paying attention, now, will make the difference between life and death? Have I misunderstood the importance, to the bilateral, of evading death? If so, Grant, I am dearly sorry for the failure to bridge our minds.”

Something changes in Grant. Something breaks, perhaps. He laughs out loud, and slouches back in the couch—say what you will about the facility, they have some hella comfortable couches! So this is the end. What the hell. He’ll make the most of it. Relax in this hella comfortable couch, watch some nature documentaries with his new alien buddy, whatever. This is the new economy, and Grant is willing to give it a try. Why not?

“Yeah, no. Totally. We bilaterals, we’re all about evading death. That’s like, all we talk about, man.”

“I am glad, then, that our minds have not in this respect failed to bridge. Now, Grant. You are familiar with moving on your earth, you say. I would like to tell you a story, and after completion of this sign-train, we will see how well you know this act of moving upon your earth.”

The screen shifts:

“In my story, Grant, you live among your fellows in a land at the equator of your earth. One day, your fellows decide to send an exploring party, counting you among its number, to the north. With luck, your party will reach the northernmost point of your earth. But you will bring with you, across the whole hard journey, an unchanged sign of your people: a shining spear. You see it here, this beautiful spear.”

“Sure, I see it. Real beautiful. I fucking love arrows.”

“Wonderful, Grant. You will be happy to hear, then, that you yourself receive a great honor: you are designated the spear-bearer.

“You take up the spear, and hold it in the sacred direction, a direction that is your people’s shining sign. Your task is to carry this spear step by step, and never let it swerve from that sacred direction.

“If you happen to be walking in the sacred direction—as you are now, setting out on your journey—you must hold the spear out before you, pointing your way further into the uncharted dark. If you turn and walk in a new direction, you must adjust the spear in its harness, so that it counter-swerves and its sacred direction is unsullied.”

The screen shifts again:

“Your band is successful, and you carry your spear all the way to the north pole. Some of your band die in the journey, and you bury them in accordance with your custom, but you, spear-bearer, live to see the pole.”

“Sweet. I high-five a polar bear.”

“The bear’s paw makes contact with yours, right-hand structure upon right-paw structure or left- upon left-, bilateral recognizing bilateral.

“And now, having reached the inhospitable north, your party follows its next command from the elders of your people: not to return home, but to explore further, to a distant equatorial land. And along this route, too, you are to bear the spear.

“As you depart from the pole along another meridian, you take care to adjust the spear in its harness, so it still points in the sacred direction, which now extends not proudly before you, but just as proudly to your left.”

The screen shifts again:

“You arrive, Grant, you and the lucky few who have survived along with you, and a few neonates who were born along the way, suckled at the teats of the females among you, right-hand structure to your male left-, or left- to your right-. All the way, you have borne the unchanging spear, a proud sign of your heritage.”

“Yeah, I get it.”

“But Grant! Unbeknownst to you, a second band has been dispatched from your ancestral home, towards the same new land you now find yourself exploring!”

The screen shifts again:

“They have a spear-bearer of their own.

“He bears the same spear, as unswerving in his duty as you were in yours, but he carries it along the path of his band, not yours. An equatorial path, not a polar one. As he walks east along the equator, the spear sits comfortably in his harness, pointing always to his left.”

The screen shifts again:

“And Grant! They arrive! Your rival bears the spear of your people! He says it has not changed, never, though their journey was long! And you, you say the same of your own spear! And yet the spears—are they the same?!”

“No, they’re, like, pointing in different directions.”

In this rainbow chamber, the afterlife’s waiting room, a long awkward pause.

“Yeah, now that you mention it, that’s kinda trippy. Like, the arrow ends up pointing a different way depending on how you got there?”

“The path, Grant! You see! Take one path, and your spear points the one way. Take another, and it points another way. Two spears!

“Are they the same spear? Are they the spear of your people, the ancestral sign, never changing, identical everywhere? Or are they not?

“Without a path, there is no answer! Without a path, no sameness or difference!

“And what are you, Grant? What are the bilaterals you know, and their signs and sign-trains? Are they never changing, identical everywhere?”

Another long awkward pause.

Grant’s education has only begun.