Episode 19: Resistance Seven
At the rickety folding table sat Brigid – presumptive patron saint of medicine, midwives, b*****d children, and beer – rigid with her hands crossed between her knees. She anxiously surveyed her new environment. Its furnishings – brand new, bargain basement – glowed white in the diffuse brightness of some hidden source of illumination. Her senses were on high alert after months of deprivation in her brother’s slowly dying suburban neighborhood. Her nerves jangled with every hideous squeak released by the table’s matching plastic folding chair.
Twenty-four hours before, she would have guessed that she was going to spend the rest of her life looking out over Angel Island and Richardson Bay from a rickety, home-built back porch. Then her world changed – again – and almost before she knew what was happening she found herself in a military transport rolling south across the empty bridge, through a nearly-empty, tension-filled San Francisco, and down the Peninsula. After ninety minutes of bone-rattling noise and vibration, heavy-gloved soldiers’ hands passed her off to sterile-gloved medical techs. In sharp contrast to the profane and morbid conviviality of the marines, the technicians gave off a weirdly remote and antiseptic vibe. After a short, unnerving interview and a blood-draw, they sealed her into this hermetic mobile environment, where she sat in a silence so strange she felt as if she could be floating in orbit. Alone in the quiet, with nothing to distract her, she took a shaky breath against the tightening in her chest, and closed her eyes. As her breathing slowed and she could look at her surroundings again, she reassured herself that the universe was not collapsing around her, at this moment.
The room she was in was clean, confined, and ugly – a temporary space. She was briefly annoyed: was there not a proper office in the whole place that she might work in? A rapidly shrinking population and still Valley real estate is in short supply? With a tight smile, she acknowledged the death-rattle of entitlement that seemed now to echo through the abandoned places of her own once-busy interior. But she did wonder: was her presence at the site meant to be temporary as well? A silly thing to worry about – everyone’s presence here was temporary.
Apart from her table and chair (and their counterparts, seen on the other side of a clear vinyl curtain), the only other object in the room was a fruit-sized foam rubber ball painted to looked like a little Earth. It had been branded, over the Pacific, with the name of an unfamiliar drug and its incomprehensible slogan: Prozyma! For the unexpected. And everything in between.
She rolled the soft planet between her fingers stopping only occasionally to give it a half-hearted squeeze, though any capacity the object might have had to mitigate stress had long before been proven not to be remotely up to the task.
She had been feeling increasingly unsafe in her brother’s neighborhood. Only recently, the momentum in their home had shifted from sheltering in place to heading for the hills. At first, it was less about escape than it was about choosing the place in which to finish out your days. Her sister-in-law had passed weeks before, and her brother was in danger of drifting away in a passive fugue. His kids wouldn’t let him go. They surrounded him, to spur him on to one last act of courage.
They wanted her to come with them: north to the redwoods to find a spot along the ancient coast and spend their remaining days under the shade of trees that had been keeping watch over the expanse since the beginning. A beautiful idea. She was surprised at her own reluctance – she wasn’t ready.
She had to admit they were leaving at the right time. The day before, some guy drove his oversized truck along the sidewalk and through front yards, knocking fences and mailboxes down, for blocks – her cheeks flushed at the memory. Was this guy just a nihilistic idiot having his moment? Or was he a nihilist-savant who understood that the final task of Homo Sapiens was to speed along the decomposition of the built-world in anticipation of whatever came next? She thought, when the nihilists are winning every argument by forfeit, then maybe it doesn’t matter what kind of nihilist you are. God. What was she thinking? This is not what she believed. But History was pulling every perspective along in its wake as it raced off the edge of the map to meet the dragons. Even the believers had to admit something good was coming to a terrible end. The Void had come to town and moved in next door in a kind of diabolical gentrification that robbed the joy from healthy homes. She knew several houses in the neighborhood were empty. With others the story was less clear, though she avoided close inspection. And some, doors open to the weather, gave her a creeping dread.
So it was, when another giant truck rumbled down the street in the middle of the night and slowed to a stop in front of their house, she understood, finally, that she would not be traveling north, but south; away from the giant elder trees and toward something far less certain.
Now, as she slowly adjusted to the small, sterile space and her presence in it, Brigid sat looking through the room-divider at the dimly lit space on the other side. With nothing there to hold her attention, she was left to consider her own face, reflected in the wavy screen, looking bleary-eyed and dark in the shocking white of the place. Tendrils of her salt and pepper hair escaped from corkscrew curls, insisting on attention after a long period of neglect. She took a deep breath and pulled a tangle of grayed hair back to bind it. Her ears must have popped because now she became aware of a low, intermittent noise around the room, in the walls, like wind, almost like breathing. Just climate control, she thought. But it sounded uncanny, nothing like the familiar, monotonous drone that one expects from a ventilation system. She was painfully curious to see where she was, that is, where this place was, to understand her situation, to see past the mystery of the breathing walls. But right now, her world was shrunk.
She was glad for the ball, the only interactive part of the room. Her thumb and forefinger rocked on opposite sides of the little Earth, back and forth, the planet taking her fingerprints. She rolled it forward – from the deep blue of painted seas to the bright green of lumpy, misshapen continents, and back again from green to blue, and forward again and back. With the vision in her head of a Movie Star Superman flying around the equator so fast the Earth reversed direction and time turned back and Lois was saved, she toyed with the idea that she could tempt the globe with a gesture to spin down and then reverse, and maybe change the inertial flow of history. Go back the way it was.
She was interrupted by an undistinguished buzz that signaled the immanent breach of her sealed space. The door on the other side of the trailer opened with a sucking noise, and her ears really did pop this time. The heavy vinyl curtain bowed convex, nudging the lightweight table with a slap. Through the divider, she watched the Director enter the room as the lights flickered bright above him. She was confused by a flood of feelings at his sudden presence, when for so long she had only encountered him virtually. Competing inappropriate desires: to run from the room or to smother him in an embrace: he was so much more alive than when he only took up a small part of her computer screen. He stood smiling weakly, shrugging in surrender to the madness of the circumstances. He blushed a little though she didn’t see it, and said, ‘You have everything you need here?’ He blushed a little more, shaking his head, with a thin chuckle: ‘Sorry.’ Then earnestly, ‘Would you like another folding chair? We want you to feel completely at home! Choose from our extensive catalog.’ She smiled, and he laughed with relief.
‘Hello Albert.’ She had a habit of using first names, no matter the circumstances. It was, for her, at least in regular times, an act of resistance. Today, it felt more like an act of intimacy: not a rebellion against the secular powers, but against the threat of annihilation. She spoke quickly to resist a flood of emotion. ‘I’m fine here. What’s happening?’
‘I think our timing is good. We’re going to bring her to you now, if that’s alright.’
‘Yes of course, I have managed to clear my calendar! Bring her over.’
‘Thank you, Doctor.’
‘Brigid, please.’
He showed a brief excitement, ‘That’s right! Saint Brigid, is what Ken told me. Something about your mythical healing powers?’
She nodded, smirking. ‘Kenny was nosy. Mom was Irish and ... a bit more religious than I: Brigid was her favorite saint, and a healer as well, though she and I appear to work from different modalities. Also ...’ she added with learned enthusiasm, the part of the story everybody loved: ‘She could turn water into beer.’
‘Well! We’re going to have to explore the rest of your resumé now that we’ve got you here. Okay. Ten-fifteen minutes. Has someone told you what to expect?’
‘Yeah. ... Albert?’ She had so many questions, decided on one. ‘How long? How much time ...?’
He took a deep breath, held it briefly before speaking. ‘Two or three months.’ After a moment, he looked at her. ‘How are your numbers?’
She didn’t answer the question. ‘She knows?’
He paused, then spoke like he was in a confessional, looking at the door: ‘I don’t think so. I don’t know. I should know. I mean she should know. Probably. ... She probably does.’ With a quick look back at her and a tiny smile, ‘I’ll be asking for your opinion on the matter at the end of the day, Doctor. Brigid!’ He left, and she let out a long breath through tight lips.
She flattened the stress-ball under the palm of her hand. It took little effort to do so, but made her feel tired nonetheless.
In second sealed room on the far side of the compound, the girl was asleep and dreaming.
‘What are you doing here?’
Her insides twisted at the question: she didn’t have an answer, didn’t understand where she was or how she had come to be here. That is, she knew that she was in a dream. And while she was used to a measure of control in dreams, she was powerless when it was like this. Scary dreams, falling dreams, crazy dreams: often she could change the course of events, though any alteration would bring the dream to an early end – if she never got to see how her version of the story played out, at least she could get some rest. But, this kind of dream, where some response was required of her, left her feeling lost. Like she didn’t know the rules, never had the answer even in the rare circumstance when she understood the question. It was mostly like this now: always dreaming, never resting.
She was in the corner of a cold, dark space that smelled of damp stone. Her surroundings only took shape in her imagination as they filled with the sound of distant wind and rain. A rumble of thunder – or was it the beginning of an earthquake? – shook the walls, and she felt dust settle on the back of her head and neck. As she shifted her posture against the fear that the ground was moving, she learned the floor was uneven. She was in a sloping cavern, and she was not alone: someone else cowered in the corner, groaning, huddled up against the threatening cold. Though the weather couldn’t reach to the back of the cave, the noise was terrifying, filling the chamber.
A huge windstorm tore at the mountainside like a drunken giant stumbling against the cliff-side, crying out in search of some lost treasure. It was only a storm, but the mountain shook with it. Finally, the squall cleared: the sun, close to setting, burned through the retreating clouds to pierce the darkness of the cave, which opened to the West, face to the sea. But even this burning power was only prelude to some mightier agency, she sensed. This feeling also settled on the back of her head and neck like dust.
A voice cut through the brightness, cut through the dark. That is, the light streaming into the cave was now, suddenly, shown to be dark compared to the sound of the word. It could also be said, if she had been able to find her own voice, that this word had condescended to ride the light of that setting sun. And though the light was dimmed to her eye, it had lost none of its own power in the bargain; like a golden bowl set in the hands of a blind beggar, no question of its value. And for the first time in her life – so much was being shown to her! She felt the intoxication of revelation! – she thought, ‘I now begin to understand the full meaning, the true nature, the ultimate paradox of light – a wave and a particle; the First of All Things that remains the most common thing of all; life-power to plants, ultra-violet death to bacteria. Light! Healing power to the revenant taking shaky steps out of the sick-room; also burning discipline to the fool in a bathing suit. ... Light! Banisher of darkness – the revealer! Light! Blinding justice to all who prefer the dark – the exposer!’
... But the truth was that she was only really thinking about the light because she was unable to think about that voice without ... without ....
‘Come!,’ it insisted, clear, unmistakable, and somehow utterly confusing.
She had little choice but to walk toward the opening of the cave, the light, and the Presence, shoulder to shoulder with the shivering figure who covered his face. She pitied him, imagining that she was secure against discovery, as if, somehow, she had no face and therefore could not herself be exposed. Until ... they both emerged from the cave and came into the terrible silence revealed by that single word. ‘Oh no!,’ she thought with a wincing groan, realizing her mistake, ‘My mask! I’ve lost my mask!’
The voice came again, hidden in a wind born out of the center of a vast expanse: ‘Why are you here?’
Another ripple through her insides. And the shrinking figure next to her took a half-step forward, and answered with a cowering assertion: ‘I have been very zealous for you, Mystery of Glory, though all your people have forgotten your words, torn down your temples, and terrorized the truth-tellers! I alone am left!’ He finished on his knees, hands raised in a trembling semaphore that might have appeared to an observer equal parts worship and terror.
And the voice, quiet but with the power to divide the mountain, spoke, and the aroma of it rushed over her like the smell of split rock: flint and ozone and sulfur. ‘No. It isn’t so. It’s only pride that makes it seem that way. You have been zealous only in judgment. But in matters of mercy, you shrink and are in retreat. Go back. There are still some not bent with fear, and some who are that might yet be saved. Get up and go back!’
She felt her own stomach jump at the command; the ragged man shrank from the voice and retreated from the edge of the cliff. She turned to watch him go and saw her own coronal outline reflected in the iridescence of the damp cliff face, next to the mouth of the cave. She watched the humbled pilgrim stumble down the passage to a dark corner, climb into a marble box, and collapse – decomposed – into a pile of dry bones.
The girl heard the command again, but this time the voice was a familiar one: ‘Get up!’
She opened her eyes and quickly sat up. The dream-image of her sun-lit body in silhouette had faded, and was replaced by the sight of her pale skin under artificial light reflected in a mirror from across the small room. She turned toward the source of the voice and saw a soldier’s face, maskless, grimacing at her from the screen by her bed.
‘Yo! Time to get up! You have a meeting. There’s someone waiting for you, girl.’
She rose and stood on the cold floor, shivering, and blinked against the brightening light. As warmer air blew in from unseen apertures, she began to move, pulling herself together for another uneventful day in her typical, boring, adolescent life. She swung open the glass door of the fridge set back in the wall and took out a drink marked with the date, a scanner-code, and some other numbers that meant nothing to her; she pried off the lid and downed the purple juice, ignoring the slightly metallic taste. She carefully pushed a packaged muffin back against a second door on the opposite side of the box, a simple act of resistance calculated to communicate to hidden agents her dislike of bran. And muffins. And packaged foods in general.
She retrieved a small sealed tray from a shelf above the food. Peeling back a plastic covering revealed a circle of thick adhesive around a disk of gel filled with tiny copper flecks. She tapped the patch against a wrist monitor, waited for a vibration in response, then lined it up with a circular rash on her forearm, where she pressed it down.
She skipped to the door and punched the panel next to it with the side of her fist. This action resulted in a disapproving ‘Boop!’
She took a deep breath, and frowned. In slow motion she lined up her wrist with the receiver, and pressed the device against the screen. Resting her forehead against the white metal frame, she began to slap the door with her left hand.
‘Beep!’
She pushed her way into the hall, absentmindedly counting off armed soldiers in biohazard suits along the corridor. She turned to face one of them, to the right of her door, the soldier who’d appeared on her bedside monitor. His armored presence loomed above her, his face now mostly hidden behind a thick plastic face shield. She could see enough to know he was giving her his best war-face. She resisted a smile and scowled right back at him.
She tossed her forehead up, ‘Goose.’
‘Mav.’
‘Goose, whose butt did you kiss to get this job?’
‘The list is long but distinguished.’
‘New class coming through today. Volleyball later?’
He laughed and it shook his imposing frame, making all his layers of military equipment look a little bit more like toys in that moment. Then, ‘Hey, you alright? You look terrible.’
‘Weird dreams, drama, I don’t think I slept much. Hey Goose, the panel’s busted on my door again. One of these days, I’m going to be trapped in there and you’ll have to shoot your way in.’
‘Maybe consider not punching the technology, kiddo.’
She turned away. ‘You are not my wingman anymore.’
The girl was directed through a maze of passages by a young technician whose name she couldn’t remember.
At a point roughly halfway along their meandering route, they passed through a room with a large window on the south wall providing a view into an unfamiliar courtyard, where a surprising scene was playing out. There, a young man with a stunned look on his face lay on his back as if tackled, before a striking woman who stood over him frozen in a catatonic embrace ... of nothing. The girl came to a stop, then turned to look at the tech, who also seemed to have frozen as he looked out at the scene. She saw his name tag, ‘Abdul’, remembered that he liked to be called ...
‘Abi?’
He snapped back to attention, turned to her with wide eyes and a thin laugh. He said something sharp under his breath and gently moved between her and the window, guiding his charge to the end of the room, and toward an adjacent hallway that was filling with light from the morning sun.
She leaned back to look behind him as they walked past the window. Then, facing forward with a scowl, she spoke with no expectation of a response: ‘So, huh, what’s the deal with frozen people? Living statues? Are we starting a mime troupe? And why didn’t anyone tell me there was a rehearsal? I mean, I probably don’t have time for any more electives; I already signed up for modern dance and web design.’ Abdul laughed quietly but said nothing.
He was taking her to a small trailer at the edge of the compound, where another woman sat, immobile, except for one hand that desperately massaged a rubber ball while she waited to meet the future sole survivor of the human race.
Ahead of her escort, the girl moved down the corridor, face to the east and the rising sun, which filled the hall with light ... and the planet sped her forward according to its own easterly rotation. At that exact moment, on the far side of the globe, a man stood, unsteady, with his back to the setting sun. As she moved forward, wading into the shapes of golden light that highlighted the walls and floors of her passageway, her adopted father, bottle in hand, stumbled deeper into the darkness of his cave. By their seemingly deliberate steps, hers toward the light and his away, both kicked against the motion of the Earth, applying the smallest amount of energy that, had it been multiplied a million, billion times, might have stopped the turning, and reversed the spin, but would never, ever, have been able to turn back time.
She came into the trailer and sat in the empty chair. The door shut and the atmosphere inside found its equilibrium again. Surrounded by a new silence, her physical presence communicated to the visitor an unexpected air of nobility, suggesting that she was aware that everything on this campus happened because of her. But in this moment her face was drained of emotion. It seemed as if the room itself was holding its breath.
‘Hello Eva. My name is Brigid,’ said the woman behind the plastic curtain. She made a polite effort to smile, and gave the girl a look of caring concern. ‘Do you know why you’re here?’
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