“You really think you’re going to see Chiho again?”
Skinner drew his Coca-Cola and thrust it in the direction of the voice. On the other side of the fire an impossibly old man in buckskin and ripped denim, with raven feathers appearing to grow from his long gray hair, poked embers with a stick. His lips curled over toothless gums.
“Identify yourself, old man.”
The Indian shook his head. To speak he just looked at Skinner and thrust the words out of his head with his eyes. “I won’t fight you.”
“You’re Talleagle.”
“I’m a dude passing through. That is what I do. I pass through.”
“I’m dreaming this.”
“You’re in a laboratory.”
“This land, it’s infected with hallucinations.”
“We asked you to reproduce, and your offspring was murdered. Now you’re on your way to screwing up your second chance.”
“Who was that man on the mesa, with the refrigerator and piles of things?”
Talleagle barely shrugged. “The Last Dude. I walk my path, he constructs the message. That’s our arrangement.”
“You need to help me get out of here.”
“Why do you expect me to help you,” Talleagle asked, “when you murdered my kin?” The Indian opened his buckskin jacket to reveal a sunken chest. With a great deal of effort he pushed his hand into his abdomen, releasing trickles then gouts of old black blood. After a moment of struggle Talleagle grunted and pulled out his liver. “Eat me,” he said, handing the organ to Skinner.
“I…”
“In my flesh is the medicine that will make you walk again.”
Skinner took the bloody mass and considered it with disgust.
“If you want to walk, you will eat my flesh.”
Skinner gnawed off a bite from the liver. Talleagle told him to chew and swallow. As soon as the meat hit Skinner’s stomach his nervous system lit up in electric pain. Talleagle’s eyes burst into flames.
Stars. Tears. Aloud: “Don’t fucking kill yourself, soldier. Don’t fucking kill yourself. Don’t fucking—”
The sun rose and the fire dwindled to a cigarette’s worth of smoke. The bottle connected to Skinner’s penis was full of urine. He disattached, emptied, then reattached it. He allowed himself three sips of water and a couple bites from an energy bar. A smattering of rain forced him under the thermal blanket where he shivered and clutched his belongings. After a coughing fit he consulted the transmitter again.
“Bionet. What ails me?”
“You’re getting a cold,” the transmitter responded.
“Well, no shit,” Skinner said. “More painkillers, please. And give me something for these fucking hallucinations.”
“Sorry, that’s kind of out of our area of expertise,” the transmitter said. Did it sound sad? As the pharmacological haze suffused his body Skinner dug through the backpack. The memory console. This would be his treat for getting out of this mess—indulging in some memories from his childhood: a happy trip to an amusement park, a birthday party, building a tree fort with his dad. The beautiful tropes of a boyhood were hidden here, he hoped. When the rain ceased he set the console on a rock to recharge its solar battery. He spent the afternoon watching the indicator light turn from red to orange to green and thought about how useless it was to be angry at anybody about an abstract principle. He’d really fucked it up with Roon, probably for good. All the anticlone propaganda he’d swallowed—what had it left him? How could any idea that drives a man away from the people who love him be considered sound? A rodent scurried across his line of vision. Woodpeckers tapped paradiddles into tree trunks, sending echoes down the walls of the gully.
Skinner unholstered his Coca-Cola and set it on a rock within arm’s reach. “Soldier, kill thyself,” he said aloud, then growled, “Shut up, you sack of shit.”
When night fell the Bionet transmitter died. Skinner smashed it against a rock and tossed the five broken pieces as far as his weak arm could. He added a few more sticks to the fire and ate a meager ration of food, enough to keep his body awake. The rain picked up. He cradled the memory console against his chest, and, suspecting he was about to die, pressed ENGAGE.
The memory was so faint that at first it barely overlaid the physical world’s darkness and fire. Yet if Skinner squinted he could make out faded green grass in a yard, a stuffed bunny with one ear lying on a hardwood floor, a bowl of Cheerios. The memories were choppy, sputtering, not entirely visualized, struggling to connect to his consciousness through the ancient console. The software had a tendency to render memories in greater resolution in response to feelings of empathy and tenderness. He packed his belongings and prepared for a long hike. Wait, he hadn’t moved from this spot under the tree. The packing belonged to the first-person narrative loading before him. Someone else’s memories had gotten tangled with his own. Crap interface. The rememberer shaved in front of the bathroom mirror and said, “Memory console calibration. Remember this now.” The memory card didn’t contain Skinner’s memories at all. These memories belonged to his father.
Skinner watched the courtship of his mother through his father’s eyes. A coffee shop, afternoon light through the windows, the sound of a burr grinder, this woman who would carry him knitting with red and yellow yarn and occasionally sipping from a cup of Earl Grey. The next memory was a moment or two after lovemaking, the stickiness of belly sweat and a house fly butting its head against a pane of glass like a frustrated nugget of static. Skinner watched his parents hiking through an alpine meadow, coming to a ridge overlooking a swath of western Washington, breathing hard. His dad brought a pair of binoculars to his eyes and swept them across the horizon, finding a distant city in flames.
Skinner watched his own head emerging from between his mother’s legs, felt with his father’s hands the warmth of his own seven-pound body, smelled a wet diaper, heard wails coming from the direction of the crib in the next room, then watched his infant self suckling from his mother as snow fell outside. He saw wisps of hair sprout from his head, turn into brown curls, saw his own first steps, saw himself smack wood blocks together and stuff blueberries into his cheeks. Through his father’s memories he witnessed himself vomiting all over himself, eating a pancake, pushing a toy ambulance, feeding a dog a potato chip, pointing at squirrels, crying at a loud noise, tearing apart a magazine, falling asleep in the crook of an arm. He was snoring, crawling, babbling, laughing, drinking from a cup, using a crayon. Skinner watched his father’s hands smoothing, patting, clapping, buttoning the buttons on his clothes, wiping a tear, opening an envelope, maneuvering a spoon into his mouth. As he grew older the memories sped up, a slideshow of skinned knees and sandwich bread, fishing tackle and wood grain. Running to catch a matinee. Learning how to change a tire. Chasing each other with a football. Blowing bubbles with bubble gum. Boyhood! He ached witnessing it again through the eyes of the man who’d loved him most. As the rain came down in an angry hiss, the broken soldier shivering alone at the bottom of the world mouthed the words,
Q&A WITH LUKE PIPER, PART 5
We were supposed to meet Squid outside the buffalo enclosure at Golden Gate Park. He would be disguised as Chewbacca and was somehow going to fix Erika’s writer’s block. It was one of San Francisco’s pea-soup foggy days. The three of us waited in the mist on the bench as we’d been instructed, with Squid’s painting of Kirkpatrick’s academy, drinking our coffees. Then, after some time, around nine o’clock, came the steady procession of a marching legion. At first we could only hear them, boots stomping the earth in unison. Then they materialized out of the fog—storm troopers, hundreds of them, in formation. Just like in
