Blueprints of the Afterlife

believing in the Age of Fucked Up Shit after Nick shot you in Arizona—if, in fact, that’s what actually happened. Anytime things were going right for you, the future of the world seemed bright. Anytime they were going wrong, the imminent collapse of civilization was at hand. Can’t you see how thoroughly you projected your own subjective vision of reality on the world?

I’m done here.

I’m not trying to get into a fight. But I think we’ve reached a point in this conversation when we have to change the fundamental question. Instead of asking what kind of world you live in, it’s time to ask what kind of world you want.

[crying] [unintelligible]… too late for that.

It’s not, though, Luke. It’s entirely up to you. What kind of world can you imagine? A sick world of suffering? Or one of beauty and light? What’s it going to be?

[crying] I can’t.

Yes you can.

I can’t choose. I just have to [unintelligible] in Vegas.

What happened in Las Vegas?

SKINNER

Skinner clutched a shrub. The sky looked like a black-and-white photograph of scrambled eggs. Rivulets rushed down the gully’s pebbly slopes, forming little puddles that grew and merged and turned into pools. Skinner beat his legs to will them to move but they wouldn’t budge; the lower half of his body appeared to belong to a corpse. Soon a shallow pool rose around him. He strapped his backpack to the front of his body, stuffed three capped and empty water bottles inside, then waited until the water began to move before he let go of the shrub. At first it was like a child’s ride at a theme park, the old man bobbing along idiotically, squinting up at the rain hurtling into his face. He spit, cursed, coughed. The stream started moving faster, egged on by gathering volume and dropping elevation. Within an hour the formerly dry riverbed was coursing with water. Skinner, a tiny object flung along by the current, strained to keep his head up. An uprooted tree passed nearby, then bits of campsite garbage and a rodent riding a log. On either side of the waterway evergreens swayed and shook water from their boughs. Skinner shivered and chattered profanities. His head went under for a second before he surfaced long enough for a gasp to fill his lungs, then he was down again, scrubbed against the gravel riverbed, lifted up for more air as if the river was toying with him, prolonging his death. He grabbed the exposed root of a tree dangling in the water but couldn’t summon the strength to pull himself up and decided to let go. Let me be washed from this earth. He bobbed up onto his back and saw the sky, was flung sideways and upside down and caught glimpses of green and brown then was dunked into impossibly silent water for what appeared to be his final moments—Chiho Waitimu Roon—the water went black, then resolved to bluish green and in the shadowy depths he saw something moving: steel beams, some kind of machine. As his remaining breath dribbled from his nostrils he discovered that he was in a net, then sensed his body rising quickly to the surface. When he broke through he winced, sucked air, coughed. From above, a mechanical squeal. A leg-like thing moved in his periphery. The net rose above the surface of the water and now he saw that he was dangling from the underside of a multilimbed contraption, like a spider with the net hanging from its abdomen, its mechanically articulated hydraulic legs wobbling as the thing rose up to twenty feet tall. Eight of these legs came together at a central hub, a battered disc about the size of a compact car, from which the net swung. The machine stumbled drunkenly out of the river and onto the bank, then picked its way along a trail through trees reluctantly letting in the daylight. Skinner watched the forest floor beneath him: reddened cedar boughs and the occasional vine maple. Branches crackled around him as the robot awkwardly bumped against tree trunks and stumbled over exposed roots. A fir bough whacked Skinner in the face. The path widened and became a logging road, over which the mechanical beast moved with more confidence. Skinner smelled burning wood. The robot lurched in a new direction and entered a clearing. A little A-frame cabin stood with its roof covered completely in moss, smoke curling from the chimney. From inside came the sound of a stereo cranked full-volume, a sort of freak-out guitar solo interminably carving up sixteenth notes. The robot sighed and came to a halt. Skinner choked out a “Hello?”

A minute or so passed and the solo showed no sign of stopping. A naked man appeared. Looked to be about forty, grayish blackish hair pulled back in a ponytail. Skinny. Thick bifocal glasses. He tapped an elaborately carved walking stick on the mossy ground and stared at the net, slack-mouthed.

“Hello?” Skinner said again.

Keeping his eyes on the net, the man called out of the corner of his mouth, “Number 167! Hey, 167!”

When no one named Number 167 answered or arrived, the man cursed and walked to the door of the cabin, which he proceeded to beat with the stick. He paused, waited for 167 to appear, then beat the door even harder. Finally the song ended and the door opened a crack.

“167! There’s a corpse! In the net!”

What emerged from the cabin was a figure far more squat than the naked guy, wrapped in layers of flannel, denim, and quilted down, a stocking cap pulled low, his face puffy red and covered in whiskers, eyes open the width of hyphens.

“What the freak, 218?” 167 said. “Shee-it.”

“167, there’s a corpse in the net.”

“A corpse?”

“I could use some medical attention,” Skinner croaked.

“What should we do?” 167 said.

“Bury him?” 218 said.

“We got to let him down first.”

“Let him down.”

“Good idea, 218. Let’s let him down.”

The two walked over to one of the legs and opened a sort of flap, argued about what button they needed to push, then started randomly pushing buttons to prove their respective points until the net dropped and Skinner landed face-first, from ten feet up, in the dirt. The two guys rolled him over. 218, the naked one, squatted for a closer look, his ball sac penduluming alarmingly close to Skinner’s face.

“I’m not dead,” Skinner said, “I’m pretty sure.”

“Ah, well,” 218 said, “chalk it up to inexperience on the fishbot’s part.”

“Was it supposed to kill me?”

“No, it was supposed to let you go.”

“I almost died. It saved my life.”

“Well, it’s obviously busted, then,” 167 said, “Thing can’t fish for shit.”

218 said, “What were you doing in the river, anyway?”

“I had an accident. I fell. I can’t move my legs.”

“Let’s get this guy inside,” 167 said. They half dragged, half lifted Skinner to the cabin. Inside, vaporized marijuana had for all practical purposes replaced oxygen. Tapestries of Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd, bicycle parts, gutted computers, cedar burls carved into the faces of characters from The Lord of the Rings. Soda cans, garlic braids, gears and rods, a stack of yellowed Penthouse Forum magazines, a couple screens, old-school video game consoles, a lamp that in a former life had been a chunk of driftwood, a bowling trophy, liquor-bottle candle holders, mouse traps, rag rugs, manuals for extinct machines, rope, frying pans, guitars, hunting rifles, optical devices. Shit hanging from the ceiling: fishing poles, a kayak, a bucket, pulleys, climbing gear, a couple more guitars, a tricycle, snowshoes, snowboards, inner tubes. Was there furniture? Sort of, buried amid the stuff. Perhaps a couple couches, two hammocks hanging Gilligan and Skipper–style on one side of the room. On the coffee table smoldered a Gaudiesque glass bong. There was a loft reachable by ladder and beneath it a cramped, overwhelmed kitchenette. 167 and 218 deposited Skinner on the couch. He lost his sense of time for a moment, then opened his eyes to see the two guys still standing over him, arguing maybe.

“The thing, you know,” 167 said.