I'll probably re-work a large portion of this sometime tomorrow?
-
Everyone's Favorite...
By
Michael Gettings
-
They sit around their televisions, watching the flickering images on and off, every Thursday night at 9 PM. Homework was completed, dinner was finished, the elderly, the sick, the timeless, the ageless, those without faces and those with smiles, those with jokes and those with stories, they all stopped what they were doing to focus their attention on the glowing box, to watch the one show that could stimulate them.
What made it different from all of the other dredge on the television, I suppose, would be what’s important. And there are two different answers; the long, and the short. Since I myself am short on time, at the moment, I’ll just say the prizes. To explain any further at the moment, would take too much time.
The powder your nose before you come on the show.
I turn to the other contestant standing next to me.
“Did you know they powdered your nose?”
He shrugged. He looks far better in his suit than I do; this one hugs my hips too tightly. I let my daughter pick it out. I bet he let his wife pick his out; it fits him so well. Jealousy, but just a tinge, because it really doesn’t matter, all things considered.
I leaned forward and asked the second man down the line, the last contestant. He rolled his eyes at me. Frustration, but just a tinge.
It’s at this moment that I realize I might not want to be here. Momentary hesitation crosses my fragile but incredible mind, but I have to shrug it off. It’s a wonder the men standing next to me have such composure while I’m finding it almost impossible to continue breathing.
“I have to shake it off.”
I tried to shake it off as the curtain went up. The lights came down, and just like in rehearsal, we stepped forward into our little chambers. The host was saying something; you didn’t need to be a lip reader to recoginze the standard opening for the show. I watched him bob and sway, smiling for the camera, his lips moving fiercly, spitting the words as if they were venom.
“Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to everyone’s favorite game-show, The Indelible Feeling!”
I had always hated the name of the show. Contestant introduction time. The sound-proof pane of glass slid down, and man on the far end spoke.
“Derek Brannaugh, and I’m responsible for the indefinite-sleep procedure!”
The audience cheered, blocking out the noise of the second pane of glass sliding down.
“Glen Gibson, and I’m responsible for dream-monitoring!”
The audience exploded as my glass slid down. I froze, my face white. In front of the entire country, I messed up on a live show. My voice caught in my throat, hitting that little bear-trap that snags upleasant words and just would not let them go. They’d bleed out before they passed through my lips, turning into an awful cancer in my throat.
A recording made during the rehearsal came on as I tried to speak. They had a format to fulfill and I wasn’t the only person to have choked doing this.
“Kenneth Jacobi, and I’m responsible for harmonic-dream-melding.”
The audience, despite the pre-recording, applauded for me the loudest. It wasn’t that fact that I was me, Kenneth Jacobi, that was important. It was the fact that I was the last contestant to speak, the game was underway, and there were only twenty eight minutes left until truth.
The studio was ugly as hell in this light; a thin crimson covered the space on the white stage between the three booths and the host, who stood on an elevated wooden platform behind a steel podium. The rivets stuck out, but they were just for show. The entire podium was a single piece of metal.
The host was unreadable. A plastic smile constantly plastered on his goofy face, his side-swept bangs bouncing around as he went from joke to announcement, to commercial. His blue sport-jacket hung off his shoulders, just a little bit too big for him, and underneath, a red t-shirt. A pair of bleach stained khakis rounded out the outfit of the man that held the keys to the kingdom in one hand.
From a far off island in my head, I heard him going over the rules and requesting each person to take up the buzzer and give it a try. We did, in sequence, although I can’t quite remember pressing mine. I could see my arm going out across an infinite expanse of water and picking up an undersized buzzer. I was sweating; I was nervous, hell... I was about to pass out. I reached for the shelf in the booth (they came up and obscured your waist. No one could even see my damn pants) and grabbed my water bottle, taking a swig and setting it back down.
It didn’t help. If anything, it gave me something else to sweat out.
Why the hell was I so nervous?
Because I want this more than anything.
-
Alexa woke me up the day the letter arrived stating that I would be a contestant on the countries #1 televised program, “Indelible Feelings.” She hadn’t opened it, but she was excited. I had told her a few months back that I was eligible for the show and that they would be sending the letter any day if I were to be on it.
I scanned the letter briefly, looking over at Alexa fondly. When I told her I was eligible, she had broken down into tears, not of sadness but of happiness. You only can do so much before they decide either to take you onto the show or let you drown in the sea of madness that life can be. Everyone deserved the opportunity to be on the show at some point, but the restrictions were in order for a good reason.
I had spent many, many months using old gramophone records on Alexa trying to get rid of her night-terrors. She had them ever since Julia and I split up. She would wake up outside, screaming about something or other, the monsters trying to get her, the boogeyman under the bed. It made me sad that I could do nothing about it.
When I was in archives looking over medical work that had been done, trying to find a way to reverse what we had done to ourselves, when I came across some old papers about using sound when a child was in the womb to subconsciously predispose them towards certain activities. Classical music tended to result in well rounded, intellectual children, while more post-modern music (including rock) tended to have the child be more rebellious. In certain cases, music played in the womb caused severe depression and suicide at young ages.
Back when that mattered.
I began to put together a record of my own violin music, and played it when Alexa fell asleep in her room. The first week, it was rocky. She would bolt up in the bed, drenched in sweat, crying, but after a while, the night-terrors tapered off into nightmares, and the nightmares tapered off into pleasant dreams.
She woke up one morning, asking me to make her a new record with piano and violin instead of the solo violin. Alexa handed me sheet music, and I set to it as soon as my schedule allowed.
I called the final product, Alexa’s Ballad and that’s the name it went to the Science Center under. When played, during her dreams, they would alter significantly, creating pleasant dreams of far off memories, some she didn’t even know she had.
I continued to work after the first submission was rejected, citing that it was an isolated case.
The next three years I dedicated to creating a new form of music that I tried on myself. Alexa’s Ballad made her happy, but the Science Center was right; it was an isolated case. It did nothing for me.
Using Julia as a constant, I sent her records and asked her to mark the ones that altered her dreams, and then I checked these against myself. Whenever I found something that worked for both of us, I would submit it to the Science Center asking them to try it on themselves.
And ten years later, I had a department working on specialized cases.
There was no universal cure for the nightmare, but there were individual cures based on personality. If you’re funny, horns tend to do the trick. Solemn? Piano. Depressed? Violin. But it could be any combination of those put together.
Eventually, funding came through from the Science Center so I could pay the people working under me, and they added my name to the Archive.
If you look up “Kenneth Jacobi,” you’ll find an article all about harmonic-dream-melding. That’s the scientific term for it. In the real world, it’s called the Alexa Cure, named after my daughter.
I packed my bag with an extra shirt and a charm that Alexa made for me on my eightieth birthday and set out for the show. I left a note on her pillow that read, “Of all my creations, you were truly the greatest.”
-
The first round of questions came up, mainly about fiftieth century pop-culture. I nailed all of them to the wall, especially the category about “Star-Trek: Space, Above, Beyond, and the Factual Truth,” a popular series when I was child.
How long ago that felt.
-
I always thought to myself that I was born into the wrong period. A time when people were a plague on the planet, for a few specific reasons.
Namely, after the fiftieth century, we had perfected modern medicine so that it was impossible to die of natural causes. At the end of the sixtieth, we had perfected healing-technology using nano-bots (tiny robots that could repair body parts in fractions of seconds using the iron in your blood). Crime dropped off because there was no benefit anymore; if you were in poverty, you couldn’t freeze to death. If you were too wealthy, there was no point in embezzling; you were never going to get your youth back.
“Youth” became a subjective term.
So did “Money,” but I’m not getting into that.
There have been several points in my life where I’ve wanted to die. Where I’ve activley pursued suicide, only to be brought back by the nano-bots that are standard, or the fact that no one can die.
It’s a depressing site when you shove your own hand into a meat grinder, wince, and watch the tiny pieces re-attach themselves to your stump again, recreating your hand.
For all intents and purposes, we had created what everyone had always sought; a race of people that cannot be killed, that cannot kill, that do not age, that do not need to feed.
It’s a wonder people didn’t think of the living hell life would become without the ability to perish.
-
The second round, I was raped, figuratively speaking. Guy in the center booth (Glen? I’m not paying attention) but Derek has almost no points. It’s neck and neck between Glen and I, but the third round the point values double and it’s anyone’s game!
-
Word came down the grape-vine that someone founded the Science Center as a way to figure out how to get rid of the nano-bots, a way to kill people. The government funded the Science Center for the first three hundred years until the Science Center became the government, starting up computerized Archives all over the planet for people to do research in.
And then, at some point one-hundred and fifty years ago, word came out that someone had found the cure for life, but the government was holding it back. It “wasn’t quite perfected yet.” They were afriad that suicide-rates would skyrocket and there would be no productivity left on the face of the Earth.
So they instated a policy; if you were contributed to society in a great manner, a manner deemed by the Science Center, then you would be eligible for death.
That started the boom.
-
Third round went to Derek. He’s got over double my points now, Glen is drifting into third place. He’s gotten the bone, he doesn’t want to play anymore. He’s changed his mind. In his booth, he’s turned around, facing the back. It looks like he’s crying, but it’s hard to tell from the angle I’m sitting at. Derek is a push-over. All I have to do is assert myself in the lightning round and I have it in the bag.
-
Societal innovations were flooding in such great numbers that there were still too many candidates for death. The Science Center posted a bulletin at all Archive locations saying they would reward the person that came up with a solution death at any time.
Indelible Feelings was the product, and the first contestant to win, Bryan Smith, was the man behind it.
-
The lightning round was intense. I ended the game a mere four points ahead of Derek. He was frustrated as hell. He shook my hand, smiling. The only thing he said to me was, “Back to the drawing board. I have to win it.”
They escorted me back to the chamber, opening one door. The audience applause died down as the room was sealed.
“Lie down on the bed.”
I obliged.
I could hear one of the workers murmuring to another worker, something about readying the record. I frowned. Did they really need music to work to?
The sound met my ears; old, yet familiar.
****.
The needle plunged into my arm.
I lost it.
-
You ever wake up and forget where you are?
I don’t know where I am right now. I woke up on this beach, no one around. There’s a box of food. My stomach is rumbling; I’m hungry. That feels funny for some reason. I’m hungry?
I keep looking around. There’s a dense jungle behind me.
I think I’ll check it out.
-
There was a city in the jungle that disappeared. There was a red-skinned beast on four legs that charged at me, but before it made contact I could hear a violin playing in the back of my mind. The thing disappeared.
I’m lonely.
-
I’ve decided to do it. I have the rope, I’ve found the tree. This is it. The rope is taught in my hand. I’m jumping. I hope I’m free, I ho-
-
You ever wake up and forget where you are?
-
Everyone's Favorite...
By
Michael Gettings
-
They sit around their televisions, watching the flickering images on and off, every Thursday night at 9 PM. Homework was completed, dinner was finished, the elderly, the sick, the timeless, the ageless, those without faces and those with smiles, those with jokes and those with stories, they all stopped what they were doing to focus their attention on the glowing box, to watch the one show that could stimulate them.
What made it different from all of the other dredge on the television, I suppose, would be what’s important. And there are two different answers; the long, and the short. Since I myself am short on time, at the moment, I’ll just say the prizes. To explain any further at the moment, would take too much time.
The powder your nose before you come on the show.
I turn to the other contestant standing next to me.
“Did you know they powdered your nose?”
He shrugged. He looks far better in his suit than I do; this one hugs my hips too tightly. I let my daughter pick it out. I bet he let his wife pick his out; it fits him so well. Jealousy, but just a tinge, because it really doesn’t matter, all things considered.
I leaned forward and asked the second man down the line, the last contestant. He rolled his eyes at me. Frustration, but just a tinge.
It’s at this moment that I realize I might not want to be here. Momentary hesitation crosses my fragile but incredible mind, but I have to shrug it off. It’s a wonder the men standing next to me have such composure while I’m finding it almost impossible to continue breathing.
“I have to shake it off.”
I tried to shake it off as the curtain went up. The lights came down, and just like in rehearsal, we stepped forward into our little chambers. The host was saying something; you didn’t need to be a lip reader to recoginze the standard opening for the show. I watched him bob and sway, smiling for the camera, his lips moving fiercly, spitting the words as if they were venom.
“Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to everyone’s favorite game-show, The Indelible Feeling!”
I had always hated the name of the show. Contestant introduction time. The sound-proof pane of glass slid down, and man on the far end spoke.
“Derek Brannaugh, and I’m responsible for the indefinite-sleep procedure!”
The audience cheered, blocking out the noise of the second pane of glass sliding down.
“Glen Gibson, and I’m responsible for dream-monitoring!”
The audience exploded as my glass slid down. I froze, my face white. In front of the entire country, I messed up on a live show. My voice caught in my throat, hitting that little bear-trap that snags upleasant words and just would not let them go. They’d bleed out before they passed through my lips, turning into an awful cancer in my throat.
A recording made during the rehearsal came on as I tried to speak. They had a format to fulfill and I wasn’t the only person to have choked doing this.
“Kenneth Jacobi, and I’m responsible for harmonic-dream-melding.”
The audience, despite the pre-recording, applauded for me the loudest. It wasn’t that fact that I was me, Kenneth Jacobi, that was important. It was the fact that I was the last contestant to speak, the game was underway, and there were only twenty eight minutes left until truth.
The studio was ugly as hell in this light; a thin crimson covered the space on the white stage between the three booths and the host, who stood on an elevated wooden platform behind a steel podium. The rivets stuck out, but they were just for show. The entire podium was a single piece of metal.
The host was unreadable. A plastic smile constantly plastered on his goofy face, his side-swept bangs bouncing around as he went from joke to announcement, to commercial. His blue sport-jacket hung off his shoulders, just a little bit too big for him, and underneath, a red t-shirt. A pair of bleach stained khakis rounded out the outfit of the man that held the keys to the kingdom in one hand.
From a far off island in my head, I heard him going over the rules and requesting each person to take up the buzzer and give it a try. We did, in sequence, although I can’t quite remember pressing mine. I could see my arm going out across an infinite expanse of water and picking up an undersized buzzer. I was sweating; I was nervous, hell... I was about to pass out. I reached for the shelf in the booth (they came up and obscured your waist. No one could even see my damn pants) and grabbed my water bottle, taking a swig and setting it back down.
It didn’t help. If anything, it gave me something else to sweat out.
Why the hell was I so nervous?
Because I want this more than anything.
-
Alexa woke me up the day the letter arrived stating that I would be a contestant on the countries #1 televised program, “Indelible Feelings.” She hadn’t opened it, but she was excited. I had told her a few months back that I was eligible for the show and that they would be sending the letter any day if I were to be on it.
I scanned the letter briefly, looking over at Alexa fondly. When I told her I was eligible, she had broken down into tears, not of sadness but of happiness. You only can do so much before they decide either to take you onto the show or let you drown in the sea of madness that life can be. Everyone deserved the opportunity to be on the show at some point, but the restrictions were in order for a good reason.
I had spent many, many months using old gramophone records on Alexa trying to get rid of her night-terrors. She had them ever since Julia and I split up. She would wake up outside, screaming about something or other, the monsters trying to get her, the boogeyman under the bed. It made me sad that I could do nothing about it.
When I was in archives looking over medical work that had been done, trying to find a way to reverse what we had done to ourselves, when I came across some old papers about using sound when a child was in the womb to subconsciously predispose them towards certain activities. Classical music tended to result in well rounded, intellectual children, while more post-modern music (including rock) tended to have the child be more rebellious. In certain cases, music played in the womb caused severe depression and suicide at young ages.
Back when that mattered.
I began to put together a record of my own violin music, and played it when Alexa fell asleep in her room. The first week, it was rocky. She would bolt up in the bed, drenched in sweat, crying, but after a while, the night-terrors tapered off into nightmares, and the nightmares tapered off into pleasant dreams.
She woke up one morning, asking me to make her a new record with piano and violin instead of the solo violin. Alexa handed me sheet music, and I set to it as soon as my schedule allowed.
I called the final product, Alexa’s Ballad and that’s the name it went to the Science Center under. When played, during her dreams, they would alter significantly, creating pleasant dreams of far off memories, some she didn’t even know she had.
I continued to work after the first submission was rejected, citing that it was an isolated case.
The next three years I dedicated to creating a new form of music that I tried on myself. Alexa’s Ballad made her happy, but the Science Center was right; it was an isolated case. It did nothing for me.
Using Julia as a constant, I sent her records and asked her to mark the ones that altered her dreams, and then I checked these against myself. Whenever I found something that worked for both of us, I would submit it to the Science Center asking them to try it on themselves.
And ten years later, I had a department working on specialized cases.
There was no universal cure for the nightmare, but there were individual cures based on personality. If you’re funny, horns tend to do the trick. Solemn? Piano. Depressed? Violin. But it could be any combination of those put together.
Eventually, funding came through from the Science Center so I could pay the people working under me, and they added my name to the Archive.
If you look up “Kenneth Jacobi,” you’ll find an article all about harmonic-dream-melding. That’s the scientific term for it. In the real world, it’s called the Alexa Cure, named after my daughter.
I packed my bag with an extra shirt and a charm that Alexa made for me on my eightieth birthday and set out for the show. I left a note on her pillow that read, “Of all my creations, you were truly the greatest.”
-
The first round of questions came up, mainly about fiftieth century pop-culture. I nailed all of them to the wall, especially the category about “Star-Trek: Space, Above, Beyond, and the Factual Truth,” a popular series when I was child.
How long ago that felt.
-
I always thought to myself that I was born into the wrong period. A time when people were a plague on the planet, for a few specific reasons.
Namely, after the fiftieth century, we had perfected modern medicine so that it was impossible to die of natural causes. At the end of the sixtieth, we had perfected healing-technology using nano-bots (tiny robots that could repair body parts in fractions of seconds using the iron in your blood). Crime dropped off because there was no benefit anymore; if you were in poverty, you couldn’t freeze to death. If you were too wealthy, there was no point in embezzling; you were never going to get your youth back.
“Youth” became a subjective term.
So did “Money,” but I’m not getting into that.
There have been several points in my life where I’ve wanted to die. Where I’ve activley pursued suicide, only to be brought back by the nano-bots that are standard, or the fact that no one can die.
It’s a depressing site when you shove your own hand into a meat grinder, wince, and watch the tiny pieces re-attach themselves to your stump again, recreating your hand.
For all intents and purposes, we had created what everyone had always sought; a race of people that cannot be killed, that cannot kill, that do not age, that do not need to feed.
It’s a wonder people didn’t think of the living hell life would become without the ability to perish.
-
The second round, I was raped, figuratively speaking. Guy in the center booth (Glen? I’m not paying attention) but Derek has almost no points. It’s neck and neck between Glen and I, but the third round the point values double and it’s anyone’s game!
-
Word came down the grape-vine that someone founded the Science Center as a way to figure out how to get rid of the nano-bots, a way to kill people. The government funded the Science Center for the first three hundred years until the Science Center became the government, starting up computerized Archives all over the planet for people to do research in.
And then, at some point one-hundred and fifty years ago, word came out that someone had found the cure for life, but the government was holding it back. It “wasn’t quite perfected yet.” They were afriad that suicide-rates would skyrocket and there would be no productivity left on the face of the Earth.
So they instated a policy; if you were contributed to society in a great manner, a manner deemed by the Science Center, then you would be eligible for death.
That started the boom.
-
Third round went to Derek. He’s got over double my points now, Glen is drifting into third place. He’s gotten the bone, he doesn’t want to play anymore. He’s changed his mind. In his booth, he’s turned around, facing the back. It looks like he’s crying, but it’s hard to tell from the angle I’m sitting at. Derek is a push-over. All I have to do is assert myself in the lightning round and I have it in the bag.
-
Societal innovations were flooding in such great numbers that there were still too many candidates for death. The Science Center posted a bulletin at all Archive locations saying they would reward the person that came up with a solution death at any time.
Indelible Feelings was the product, and the first contestant to win, Bryan Smith, was the man behind it.
-
The lightning round was intense. I ended the game a mere four points ahead of Derek. He was frustrated as hell. He shook my hand, smiling. The only thing he said to me was, “Back to the drawing board. I have to win it.”
They escorted me back to the chamber, opening one door. The audience applause died down as the room was sealed.
“Lie down on the bed.”
I obliged.
I could hear one of the workers murmuring to another worker, something about readying the record. I frowned. Did they really need music to work to?
The sound met my ears; old, yet familiar.
****.
The needle plunged into my arm.
I lost it.
-
You ever wake up and forget where you are?
I don’t know where I am right now. I woke up on this beach, no one around. There’s a box of food. My stomach is rumbling; I’m hungry. That feels funny for some reason. I’m hungry?
I keep looking around. There’s a dense jungle behind me.
I think I’ll check it out.
-
There was a city in the jungle that disappeared. There was a red-skinned beast on four legs that charged at me, but before it made contact I could hear a violin playing in the back of my mind. The thing disappeared.
I’m lonely.
-
I’ve decided to do it. I have the rope, I’ve found the tree. This is it. The rope is taught in my hand. I’m jumping. I hope I’m free, I ho-
-
You ever wake up and forget where you are?
Comment