Ephemerality
The following is the first chapter of a novel I've been working on but have had to set aside for a few weeks while I work on my classes. It's just kind of been written in an off-handed manner, so I haven't gone through and checked over it more than once or twice. Oh and I can't figure out how to make the stupid forum format the thing properly for paragraphs, and I don't want to do invisible text to push text around. Here goes:
The notebook opened as if of its own accord, the front cover willing itself up, and the pages began to turn, end over end, page after page. A white blur of blank pages, precisely bound and smooth to the touch. The notebook was bound in bright red leather, and next to the notebook sat a crimson pen to match. The book and pen were set atop a mahogany desk that had seen years of use and looked as if it had endured more than a few accidents. Such was the unorganized and disoriented life of a writer, always running from one problem to the next, more often than not in poor shape and running right into the very trap he had been assiduously avoiding. The desk's chips and dents were a poor reminder of days past. The man sitting behind it, in some ways little more than a boy, told the rest of the story.
He peered through the slit in the window across the study, watching the little dust particles dance across the bright sliver of liquid sunlight that spilled across the desk. The ideas were there, but they refused to coalesce into words, and without words, the sentences and paragraphs just would not come. And so the pages continued to shift, one after the other, still blank. But it hardly mattered. A flurry of images still pounded through his head, and he rubbed his temples, weary from the weight of carrying around a world that existed only in his mind. If he died, the worlds would die with him, and no one would ever know. But the problem persisted: how could one turn a collection of feelings and senses into a mess of ink scrawled messily between the margins of a piece of paper? Perhaps it was fear that forbade him from taking his hands from his head and putting pen to parchment.
Eventually the pages ceased their movement, and stopped at a page that had something written on it. Odd, how the book had chosen this page. And he didn't remember writing anything in the brand-new notebook. He glanced up tiredly to read the words, written in a hand that was not his own.
Who are you?
The author blinked. What a strange question! He picked up the pen, hesitant to respond.
I am called Peter, he wrote. His eyes grew wide as the neat scrawl laid itself out an exact centimeter below what he had written.
Not your name, but you. There are many other Peters in this world, each a different person. Now, who are you, really?
Irritation played across Peter's features. Why should he be conversing with a notebook? And precisely how could he do so anyways? He had once thought he'd lost his mind years ago, but over the passing months he'd found that life was often times little more than a long, slow process of losing one's mind. But he had nothing left to lose, so he wrote, I don't know. Does anybody know who they really are? For that matter, who are you, and what are you doing inside of my notebook?
The pages crinkled ever so slightly, as if in irritation from what had just been written. An argument with his own book! A new definition for madness came every day, yet still no answers to any of his questions. Mind the margins, came the reply, and save yourself the grief of wasting further space. Come join me, and we can find out who we are together.
The words all vanished, leaving not a trace of ink. Blinking, Peter rubbed his eyes and shook his head, then stared at the page once more. There was nothing. A ghost of his imagination, surely. He'd been consumed in thinking about his story for every waking moment, and the thoughts about the story's events continued into his dreams. Maybe he needed a break from all this. A mental vacation. So he set the pen down, in precisely the same spot, and rose awkwardly from the desk, banging his knee on the underside and tipping his chair over backwards.
Cursing, he rubbed his sore knee and looked around the room. What a mess. Everything coated in dust, and what was not had still been thrown about haphazardly. For the thousandth time he wished for a maid, since he had no head for organization, but with lack of writing came lack of pay, and consequently, lack of everything that the money paid for. Namely food. His stomach growled. Perhaps it was hunger that had been bothering him.
He strode toward the door, opening it and letting the piercing sunlight behind him flood the corridor ahead, save for the space his shadow occupied. He paused for a moment, frozen in mid-stride, and thought about what the book had said. Who am I? he wondered. The shadow wavered for a moment, and then disappeared. He suppressed a frightened yelp and instead let out a low moan. It was the sound of a man who'd spent his life watching all the opportunities passing by, and letting his dreams slip through his fingers, just as the panes of glass that made up the windows of his study let in the light and kept nothing for themselves. He glanced at them, wondering if perhaps the panes of glass felt the same way he did.
He turned his attention back to the doorway, and gave a start as he noticed his shadow back in place. Perhaps he had been seeing things. Who knew? It wasn't as if it made a difference what was dream and what was called reality. To his eyes, the world outside was no more real than the worlds he'd imagined in his head. Which held more weight? The planet humanity inhabited was but a speck in the milky way, so there didn't seem to be any reason that he should take one world more seriously than the other. It was all just a collection of sights and sounds, and this just happened to be the one he was forced to inhabit and take for granted that it was real.
But it appeared the world was changing, and who cared if it was madness? If it looked to him as if shadows were disappearing, and that books wrote in themselves, it was as good as truth. If he didn't take it as such, he'd be a frightened old man cowering in a corner, afraid of things that didn't exist. He'd found that fear of the unknown often disappeared just by suspending disbelief and accepting the extraordinary as real. It was a trick he'd learned to help bear the weight of all those worlds hanging on his back. It made him wonder what kind of fellow Atlas was like. Maybe in another lifetime he'd find out.
Peter finally did as he'd been avoiding and stepped into the hallway of the run-down flat he had been occupying on his own for the better part of a year. Had it only been a year? It had been left to him when his parents had all but disappeared, though with only a note to explain their absence, and a faded leather satchel containing a moderate sum of cash and an assortment of objects, odds and ends from different periods of his life. Lots of photographs. A few charms and relatively small family heirlooms had been tossed in, all with little explanation of their purpose. The note didn't tell nearly enough to make up the difference. All that really mattered anyway was that he had been alone for far longer than was healthy for a human being, and even his love interest had seemed like a lifetime ago. When was it they'd last spoken? The days had the habit of blending into one another, the edges of one day blurring into another so smoothly that one day became a week, which became a month, and before he knew it, the better part of a year had come and gone. But time was a relative thing, though for that matter so was everything. What did the passage of a number of months matter? And why should he bear the weight of the world upon his back, much less the weight of many worlds at once? He hoped that, in the scope of everything, it really wouldn't matter, and his life would simply be the smudged blot of ink at the bottom of some forgotten page in an obscure and unheralded book. Such was fitting, and the feeling of insignificance sometimes had its comforts. Sometimes.
The hall possessed the feeling of a place that hadn't been put to use by a living occupant for years on end, and the air smelled of dust and forgotten memories. Such a gloomy atmosphere, and what a strong feeling of waste. Carpets faded from sun and years of scuffling shoes lay stretched across parts of the wooden floor, the floorboards emitting a muted creak as Peter moved through the hall, grabbing his coat and hat, and putting them on while ruffling through his mess of hair in an attempt to somehow make himself look less disheveled. It did not work. Chuckling dryly at the state of things and drawing parallels between his hair and the way his life seemed to be going, he checked his pockets for his keys and a few spare coins he'd had for spending. Perhaps on a full stomach and with nerves calmed by brandy, the world would slow its spinning, and everything would lessen its pace just for a little while. Other writers called it complacency; he called it sanity. One could only be left to one's own devices for so long, battling himself day after day and shutting down parts of his mind to cope with the resulting damage. Yes, best to beat down the inner demons by turning them into glowing lights and shining stars, if only just for a short while.
It was autumn, and the street outside was awash with color. The neighborhood was filled with the sounds of children laughing, the leaves falling as the wind gusted through and pulled them from the trees. There were flurries in shades of orange and yellow, with an odd red or brown leaf every now and again. The sidewalks were populated with people of all kinds, young and old, rich and poor, though almost all looked the same in one respect: they all seemed to have a destination and a sense of purpose, however grand or unglamorous, however important or trivial each immediate goal might have been. The young Atlas wished he didn't feel like such an outsider, strolling along the side streets by himself, watching all the laughing faces and happy people passing him by, tracing patterns in the dips and grooves of the street as they intertwined. He had the habit of picking apart the pieces of everything around him, separating pieces of the street into squares and triangles, and counting them up and down each side, careful to walk in a particular pattern. It had often occurred to him to ask himself why, though he'd never had the courage to answer the question. Maybe his brain didn't function properly. Or maybe he was just wired differently than the rest.
At last, after a mile of memorizing sequences of bricks and walking along rows of dips on the sidewalk, he came upon one of his few retreats, an old bar by the name of The Linden Tree. The door creaked in protest as he pulled it open, and he felt the sudden wave of warmth hit him and whistle out the door in desperate escape. Readjusting his cap, he walked in and found himself a place to sit at one of the worn-in polished wood tables. The wooden stool complained twice as loudly as the door upon finding itself saddled with a new occupant, and the walls were faded, plaster chipping in many places, revealing the building's brick walls. In a strange way, for all its wear, the place still looked quite dignified. The counters were topped with white marble, and the metallic frames holding the overhead lights and the glasses were inlaid with gold and other precious metals. There were patches of grime and dirt, though, and that was a telling contrast to the better days that lay behind in past times. But the bar was still open, and that was good enough.
The barkeep, a wizened man with bushy eyebrows, stepped out from behind the bar and crossed the room to the table at which Peter was sitting. He had a round face, with tufts of gray hair protruding from the sides of his head, and a thick mustache dominating his features. The man had never been one to grow a beard, so his chin remained bare. He was pudgy, and wore an apron across his oversized midsection. He smiled at Peter's arrival, extending a hand.
“Hey there, Pete. How's life been? You been alright?” The barkeep, whose name was Bill, had been a long time friend of Peter's, and oddly enough had been the only one to ever call him Pete. “Times are tough, I know, but we'll make it through. We always have. We've been through some pretty rough years; granted, none as rough this one, but it'll be alright. You taking care of yourself?” With hardly a pause for Peter to answer, he brought out two cups and a bottle of brandy that, judging by the thin film of dust across its top, had been in the cupboard for a long time. “Here, have a drink.”
Peter accepted the drink gratefully, then gave pause, staring down into the cup dejectedly, and sighing. He looked up after a moment, with a wry expression on his face, and replied, “things have been better, and company's getting hard to find. For that matter, so's work. I guess things aren't that bad, but sooner or later, something's got to give. I'm not sure how much is left for me. But perhaps I'll pull through,” he said, chuckling into the cup as he sipped, feeling his insides burn as the brandy wove its way into his system. He'd pull through alright, in a twisted parallel world, but not likely in this one.
“How's that book going? I know you've got the gift, you just need to let yourself use it.” Bill had been one of Peter's staunchest supporters for the first novel, helping promote the book and even selling copies in the bar. It had been a huge success, and life was great. Times were better back then, and he was barely twenty years of age. He had love in his life, a supportive family, and all he could've ever wished for. It seemed he had been living a dream, and that the real world had been one of the others, floating around in the back of his mind, lying forgotten in another era. A poignant reminder of the difference between then and now were the paltry few coins jingling in his pocket, barely enough to pay Bill for the meal he wanted, and certainly not enough for all the brandy they'd shared over the months.
Come to think of it, how old am I? Peter thought, and asked the barkeep, “what day is today?”
“Sunday.”
“No, which date?”
“The 26th.”
“Do you have a calendar handy? I want to check something.” Peter took the pocket address book and started flipping through it to the place that had been marked with a ribbon. September. It was September. Which year? He didn't know the year. His memory played tricks on him. He looked at the front cover, and the number 2021 popped out in shiny gold letters from the plastic leather imitation binding. “31, I'm 31 years old,” he mouthed softly.
“Something the matter, Pete? You all right?” Bill's dark eyes searched Peter's face from beneath those bushy eyebrows. “Maybe you need another drink,” he said, clearing his throat and coughing, a heavy wheezing cough. He recovered, pouring another round of drinks, though he looked decidedly worse for the wear. “You know you can talk to me, Pete. You're like a son to me, certainly a good friend of mine. What's on your mind?”
Peter looked at Bill, studying him for a moment. “Are you certain you're all right? You look a little out of shape.” He was almost taken aback by the way Bill cackled.
“But I'm always out of shape,” Bill said mildly, “though I appreciate your concern. Now will you answer my question?”
“You haven't answered mine,” Peter replied.
“Right you are. Well, you know how this time of year is, with the wind stirring up leaves and all that other junk and sending it straight into one's lungs. I'm alright, as good as I've ever been. Now, your turn.” Bill wheezed, downing the rest of his drink.
“I've...” Peter paused. “I've just been thinking about something. How long has it been since, you know, it all came down?” It felt defeating, just admitting that anything had ever happened.
“It's been a while, certainly. Been nearly a good decade since, perhaps.” Bill hesitated. “If you want to talk about it, it's alright. We can work through things.” He looked around the empty bar that hadn't seen a customer since lunch, and that had been three and a half hours ago. “Lord knows I have time,” he sighed, suddenly weary.
Peter sighed. “There's nothing more to discuss. The holes in my memory might never come back, and what's left has shown me that the past is irrelevant, just like how the good meant nothing when the bad came along.”
“You're not going to get very far that way,” Bill admonished, “and you've still got years enough to fulfill that potential. If you won't do it for yourself, I don't want you to let me down, then.”
That led to a long quiet. Bill grabbed a clean cloth from beneath the bar and busied himself wiping the tables. Peter took advantage of the silence to pull one of his smaller notebooks out of one of his coat pockets, and fished about in the pockets of his pants for a pen. Finding a small metallic ballpoint that shone a bright cobalt blue, he opened the notebook and started flipping through the grease-stained, dog-eared, torn up pages. This smaller type of notebook had once been his lifeline in storing ideas in the moment of inspiration, keeping them intact for later use when he had a spare moment to sit down and fully devote his attention to writing. He'd once used a smartphone for those things too, but that was gone. Had he lost it? There was no way of paying for such a service nowadays anyhow. Such things were considered a luxury. There had been a time when it had been impossible to walk a block without seeing somebody playing around on their multi-purpose devices, obsessed more in their private little bubble of communication than the world immediately outside of them. The physical seemed to them at times... inconsequential, for lack of a better word. At their fingertips, they had all they could ever want, the greatest wealth of information all synchronized in one giant simulation of the human condition, the human experience condensed into circuits and microprocessors. At that point it had seemed like not only would everything be alright, but the suggestion of anything other than absolute prosperity seemed preposterous. They had reached the golden age, the final frontier of humanity's ever falling societal boundaries, with everybody melting into another somebody else as colors, creeds, and credentials were all forgotten in the giant blur of the collective mind. Or at least that was the technophile's explanation of events. In reality, that was more often than not a work of fiction. Things didn't always quite work out that way. There would always be prejudices, and there would always be greed. But still, in the wake of several punishing blows to the dark side of humanity, everyone had just assumed that the greater good had prevailed. Instead, the world was to find out how far from the truth that really was.
In any case, all of that was for all intents and purposes gone now. All that was left for Peter was the little frail notebook that had lain forgotten in his parents' study. For all his obsession with technology, though, Peter had still been reluctant to give up the comforts of the physical world, and so was treated as odd and bizarrely obsessive, until he got famous from the successes of his novels. Then he became different. The descriptions changed to charismatic and eccentric. It had astounded him how easily perception could be affected. It was at that moment that he'd lost all care for critical acclaim and became disenchanted with the general state of the business. The world's banks took a turn for the worse, and then at the discovery of how the money had been managed, a global collapse took down every volatile market and started to eat away at the master markets, the apparently rock-solid financial ecosystems that were suddenly found to be walking on eggshells. Peter had never had a head for economics. Best to leave the number crunching to a more clearly analytical mind that could sort, categorize, and linearly process information. Of course, the best alternative to that was a computing device, so he'd grown used to letting problems sort themselves out in zeros and ones.
The notebook held all sorts of scraps of information, slivers of writing along the outside edges in some apparently vital notes that were sadly no longer legible. Peter found an empty space in the book and began to write, starting with words, continuing with phrases, combining sets of rhythm and rhyme in an attempt to get the creative juices flowing. Thoughts fell out of his head and onto paper, and he tried to draw inspiration from them, but to no avail. His mind was a broken record, and none of his thoughts were working properly. More often than not, they skipped around in distorted clipping, stuttering from idea to idea and eventually dying down before anything of substance could come to mind. But today, same as most days, he had picked up his pen and put forth the effort. That had to count for something. Or at least, he wished it would. The preceding months and been filled with wishful thinking. This was not a world in which dreams came true. Except for maybe the nightmares. These days, it was hard to separate the waking hell from the dream world. But little did he know, he did indeed have potential locked inside of him, and with a little luck, he might just escape the woes of writer's block. But he could hardly do that if he starved to death. It was time for something to eat. The coins jingled in his pocket as he counted them by touch. He brought a few out and turned them end over end, inspecting them as if he'd never seen a coin before. There were precious few left, and what as there wasn't going to grow any more plentiful the more he stared at them trying to will them into multiplying.
“Hey Bill,” he paused as Bill looked up from his balance sheets laid out on the counter top, “Do you ever wonder whether things could have turned out differently?”
The barkeep looked down, eyebrows narrowing has he looked downward. “It's hard to think it's come to this, isn't it Pete?”
So, that's the first chapter, and there's more written and yet more still to be written. Let me know what you guys think, and if anybody's interested I can always post more later.
Ephemerality
Chapter I
The notebook opened as if of its own accord, the front cover willing itself up, and the pages began to turn, end over end, page after page. A white blur of blank pages, precisely bound and smooth to the touch. The notebook was bound in bright red leather, and next to the notebook sat a crimson pen to match. The book and pen were set atop a mahogany desk that had seen years of use and looked as if it had endured more than a few accidents. Such was the unorganized and disoriented life of a writer, always running from one problem to the next, more often than not in poor shape and running right into the very trap he had been assiduously avoiding. The desk's chips and dents were a poor reminder of days past. The man sitting behind it, in some ways little more than a boy, told the rest of the story.
He peered through the slit in the window across the study, watching the little dust particles dance across the bright sliver of liquid sunlight that spilled across the desk. The ideas were there, but they refused to coalesce into words, and without words, the sentences and paragraphs just would not come. And so the pages continued to shift, one after the other, still blank. But it hardly mattered. A flurry of images still pounded through his head, and he rubbed his temples, weary from the weight of carrying around a world that existed only in his mind. If he died, the worlds would die with him, and no one would ever know. But the problem persisted: how could one turn a collection of feelings and senses into a mess of ink scrawled messily between the margins of a piece of paper? Perhaps it was fear that forbade him from taking his hands from his head and putting pen to parchment.
Eventually the pages ceased their movement, and stopped at a page that had something written on it. Odd, how the book had chosen this page. And he didn't remember writing anything in the brand-new notebook. He glanced up tiredly to read the words, written in a hand that was not his own.
Who are you?
The author blinked. What a strange question! He picked up the pen, hesitant to respond.
I am called Peter, he wrote. His eyes grew wide as the neat scrawl laid itself out an exact centimeter below what he had written.
Not your name, but you. There are many other Peters in this world, each a different person. Now, who are you, really?
Irritation played across Peter's features. Why should he be conversing with a notebook? And precisely how could he do so anyways? He had once thought he'd lost his mind years ago, but over the passing months he'd found that life was often times little more than a long, slow process of losing one's mind. But he had nothing left to lose, so he wrote, I don't know. Does anybody know who they really are? For that matter, who are you, and what are you doing inside of my notebook?
The pages crinkled ever so slightly, as if in irritation from what had just been written. An argument with his own book! A new definition for madness came every day, yet still no answers to any of his questions. Mind the margins, came the reply, and save yourself the grief of wasting further space. Come join me, and we can find out who we are together.
The words all vanished, leaving not a trace of ink. Blinking, Peter rubbed his eyes and shook his head, then stared at the page once more. There was nothing. A ghost of his imagination, surely. He'd been consumed in thinking about his story for every waking moment, and the thoughts about the story's events continued into his dreams. Maybe he needed a break from all this. A mental vacation. So he set the pen down, in precisely the same spot, and rose awkwardly from the desk, banging his knee on the underside and tipping his chair over backwards.
Cursing, he rubbed his sore knee and looked around the room. What a mess. Everything coated in dust, and what was not had still been thrown about haphazardly. For the thousandth time he wished for a maid, since he had no head for organization, but with lack of writing came lack of pay, and consequently, lack of everything that the money paid for. Namely food. His stomach growled. Perhaps it was hunger that had been bothering him.
He strode toward the door, opening it and letting the piercing sunlight behind him flood the corridor ahead, save for the space his shadow occupied. He paused for a moment, frozen in mid-stride, and thought about what the book had said. Who am I? he wondered. The shadow wavered for a moment, and then disappeared. He suppressed a frightened yelp and instead let out a low moan. It was the sound of a man who'd spent his life watching all the opportunities passing by, and letting his dreams slip through his fingers, just as the panes of glass that made up the windows of his study let in the light and kept nothing for themselves. He glanced at them, wondering if perhaps the panes of glass felt the same way he did.
He turned his attention back to the doorway, and gave a start as he noticed his shadow back in place. Perhaps he had been seeing things. Who knew? It wasn't as if it made a difference what was dream and what was called reality. To his eyes, the world outside was no more real than the worlds he'd imagined in his head. Which held more weight? The planet humanity inhabited was but a speck in the milky way, so there didn't seem to be any reason that he should take one world more seriously than the other. It was all just a collection of sights and sounds, and this just happened to be the one he was forced to inhabit and take for granted that it was real.
But it appeared the world was changing, and who cared if it was madness? If it looked to him as if shadows were disappearing, and that books wrote in themselves, it was as good as truth. If he didn't take it as such, he'd be a frightened old man cowering in a corner, afraid of things that didn't exist. He'd found that fear of the unknown often disappeared just by suspending disbelief and accepting the extraordinary as real. It was a trick he'd learned to help bear the weight of all those worlds hanging on his back. It made him wonder what kind of fellow Atlas was like. Maybe in another lifetime he'd find out.
Peter finally did as he'd been avoiding and stepped into the hallway of the run-down flat he had been occupying on his own for the better part of a year. Had it only been a year? It had been left to him when his parents had all but disappeared, though with only a note to explain their absence, and a faded leather satchel containing a moderate sum of cash and an assortment of objects, odds and ends from different periods of his life. Lots of photographs. A few charms and relatively small family heirlooms had been tossed in, all with little explanation of their purpose. The note didn't tell nearly enough to make up the difference. All that really mattered anyway was that he had been alone for far longer than was healthy for a human being, and even his love interest had seemed like a lifetime ago. When was it they'd last spoken? The days had the habit of blending into one another, the edges of one day blurring into another so smoothly that one day became a week, which became a month, and before he knew it, the better part of a year had come and gone. But time was a relative thing, though for that matter so was everything. What did the passage of a number of months matter? And why should he bear the weight of the world upon his back, much less the weight of many worlds at once? He hoped that, in the scope of everything, it really wouldn't matter, and his life would simply be the smudged blot of ink at the bottom of some forgotten page in an obscure and unheralded book. Such was fitting, and the feeling of insignificance sometimes had its comforts. Sometimes.
The hall possessed the feeling of a place that hadn't been put to use by a living occupant for years on end, and the air smelled of dust and forgotten memories. Such a gloomy atmosphere, and what a strong feeling of waste. Carpets faded from sun and years of scuffling shoes lay stretched across parts of the wooden floor, the floorboards emitting a muted creak as Peter moved through the hall, grabbing his coat and hat, and putting them on while ruffling through his mess of hair in an attempt to somehow make himself look less disheveled. It did not work. Chuckling dryly at the state of things and drawing parallels between his hair and the way his life seemed to be going, he checked his pockets for his keys and a few spare coins he'd had for spending. Perhaps on a full stomach and with nerves calmed by brandy, the world would slow its spinning, and everything would lessen its pace just for a little while. Other writers called it complacency; he called it sanity. One could only be left to one's own devices for so long, battling himself day after day and shutting down parts of his mind to cope with the resulting damage. Yes, best to beat down the inner demons by turning them into glowing lights and shining stars, if only just for a short while.
It was autumn, and the street outside was awash with color. The neighborhood was filled with the sounds of children laughing, the leaves falling as the wind gusted through and pulled them from the trees. There were flurries in shades of orange and yellow, with an odd red or brown leaf every now and again. The sidewalks were populated with people of all kinds, young and old, rich and poor, though almost all looked the same in one respect: they all seemed to have a destination and a sense of purpose, however grand or unglamorous, however important or trivial each immediate goal might have been. The young Atlas wished he didn't feel like such an outsider, strolling along the side streets by himself, watching all the laughing faces and happy people passing him by, tracing patterns in the dips and grooves of the street as they intertwined. He had the habit of picking apart the pieces of everything around him, separating pieces of the street into squares and triangles, and counting them up and down each side, careful to walk in a particular pattern. It had often occurred to him to ask himself why, though he'd never had the courage to answer the question. Maybe his brain didn't function properly. Or maybe he was just wired differently than the rest.
At last, after a mile of memorizing sequences of bricks and walking along rows of dips on the sidewalk, he came upon one of his few retreats, an old bar by the name of The Linden Tree. The door creaked in protest as he pulled it open, and he felt the sudden wave of warmth hit him and whistle out the door in desperate escape. Readjusting his cap, he walked in and found himself a place to sit at one of the worn-in polished wood tables. The wooden stool complained twice as loudly as the door upon finding itself saddled with a new occupant, and the walls were faded, plaster chipping in many places, revealing the building's brick walls. In a strange way, for all its wear, the place still looked quite dignified. The counters were topped with white marble, and the metallic frames holding the overhead lights and the glasses were inlaid with gold and other precious metals. There were patches of grime and dirt, though, and that was a telling contrast to the better days that lay behind in past times. But the bar was still open, and that was good enough.
The barkeep, a wizened man with bushy eyebrows, stepped out from behind the bar and crossed the room to the table at which Peter was sitting. He had a round face, with tufts of gray hair protruding from the sides of his head, and a thick mustache dominating his features. The man had never been one to grow a beard, so his chin remained bare. He was pudgy, and wore an apron across his oversized midsection. He smiled at Peter's arrival, extending a hand.
“Hey there, Pete. How's life been? You been alright?” The barkeep, whose name was Bill, had been a long time friend of Peter's, and oddly enough had been the only one to ever call him Pete. “Times are tough, I know, but we'll make it through. We always have. We've been through some pretty rough years; granted, none as rough this one, but it'll be alright. You taking care of yourself?” With hardly a pause for Peter to answer, he brought out two cups and a bottle of brandy that, judging by the thin film of dust across its top, had been in the cupboard for a long time. “Here, have a drink.”
Peter accepted the drink gratefully, then gave pause, staring down into the cup dejectedly, and sighing. He looked up after a moment, with a wry expression on his face, and replied, “things have been better, and company's getting hard to find. For that matter, so's work. I guess things aren't that bad, but sooner or later, something's got to give. I'm not sure how much is left for me. But perhaps I'll pull through,” he said, chuckling into the cup as he sipped, feeling his insides burn as the brandy wove its way into his system. He'd pull through alright, in a twisted parallel world, but not likely in this one.
“How's that book going? I know you've got the gift, you just need to let yourself use it.” Bill had been one of Peter's staunchest supporters for the first novel, helping promote the book and even selling copies in the bar. It had been a huge success, and life was great. Times were better back then, and he was barely twenty years of age. He had love in his life, a supportive family, and all he could've ever wished for. It seemed he had been living a dream, and that the real world had been one of the others, floating around in the back of his mind, lying forgotten in another era. A poignant reminder of the difference between then and now were the paltry few coins jingling in his pocket, barely enough to pay Bill for the meal he wanted, and certainly not enough for all the brandy they'd shared over the months.
Come to think of it, how old am I? Peter thought, and asked the barkeep, “what day is today?”
“Sunday.”
“No, which date?”
“The 26th.”
“Do you have a calendar handy? I want to check something.” Peter took the pocket address book and started flipping through it to the place that had been marked with a ribbon. September. It was September. Which year? He didn't know the year. His memory played tricks on him. He looked at the front cover, and the number 2021 popped out in shiny gold letters from the plastic leather imitation binding. “31, I'm 31 years old,” he mouthed softly.
“Something the matter, Pete? You all right?” Bill's dark eyes searched Peter's face from beneath those bushy eyebrows. “Maybe you need another drink,” he said, clearing his throat and coughing, a heavy wheezing cough. He recovered, pouring another round of drinks, though he looked decidedly worse for the wear. “You know you can talk to me, Pete. You're like a son to me, certainly a good friend of mine. What's on your mind?”
Peter looked at Bill, studying him for a moment. “Are you certain you're all right? You look a little out of shape.” He was almost taken aback by the way Bill cackled.
“But I'm always out of shape,” Bill said mildly, “though I appreciate your concern. Now will you answer my question?”
“You haven't answered mine,” Peter replied.
“Right you are. Well, you know how this time of year is, with the wind stirring up leaves and all that other junk and sending it straight into one's lungs. I'm alright, as good as I've ever been. Now, your turn.” Bill wheezed, downing the rest of his drink.
“I've...” Peter paused. “I've just been thinking about something. How long has it been since, you know, it all came down?” It felt defeating, just admitting that anything had ever happened.
“It's been a while, certainly. Been nearly a good decade since, perhaps.” Bill hesitated. “If you want to talk about it, it's alright. We can work through things.” He looked around the empty bar that hadn't seen a customer since lunch, and that had been three and a half hours ago. “Lord knows I have time,” he sighed, suddenly weary.
Peter sighed. “There's nothing more to discuss. The holes in my memory might never come back, and what's left has shown me that the past is irrelevant, just like how the good meant nothing when the bad came along.”
“You're not going to get very far that way,” Bill admonished, “and you've still got years enough to fulfill that potential. If you won't do it for yourself, I don't want you to let me down, then.”
That led to a long quiet. Bill grabbed a clean cloth from beneath the bar and busied himself wiping the tables. Peter took advantage of the silence to pull one of his smaller notebooks out of one of his coat pockets, and fished about in the pockets of his pants for a pen. Finding a small metallic ballpoint that shone a bright cobalt blue, he opened the notebook and started flipping through the grease-stained, dog-eared, torn up pages. This smaller type of notebook had once been his lifeline in storing ideas in the moment of inspiration, keeping them intact for later use when he had a spare moment to sit down and fully devote his attention to writing. He'd once used a smartphone for those things too, but that was gone. Had he lost it? There was no way of paying for such a service nowadays anyhow. Such things were considered a luxury. There had been a time when it had been impossible to walk a block without seeing somebody playing around on their multi-purpose devices, obsessed more in their private little bubble of communication than the world immediately outside of them. The physical seemed to them at times... inconsequential, for lack of a better word. At their fingertips, they had all they could ever want, the greatest wealth of information all synchronized in one giant simulation of the human condition, the human experience condensed into circuits and microprocessors. At that point it had seemed like not only would everything be alright, but the suggestion of anything other than absolute prosperity seemed preposterous. They had reached the golden age, the final frontier of humanity's ever falling societal boundaries, with everybody melting into another somebody else as colors, creeds, and credentials were all forgotten in the giant blur of the collective mind. Or at least that was the technophile's explanation of events. In reality, that was more often than not a work of fiction. Things didn't always quite work out that way. There would always be prejudices, and there would always be greed. But still, in the wake of several punishing blows to the dark side of humanity, everyone had just assumed that the greater good had prevailed. Instead, the world was to find out how far from the truth that really was.
In any case, all of that was for all intents and purposes gone now. All that was left for Peter was the little frail notebook that had lain forgotten in his parents' study. For all his obsession with technology, though, Peter had still been reluctant to give up the comforts of the physical world, and so was treated as odd and bizarrely obsessive, until he got famous from the successes of his novels. Then he became different. The descriptions changed to charismatic and eccentric. It had astounded him how easily perception could be affected. It was at that moment that he'd lost all care for critical acclaim and became disenchanted with the general state of the business. The world's banks took a turn for the worse, and then at the discovery of how the money had been managed, a global collapse took down every volatile market and started to eat away at the master markets, the apparently rock-solid financial ecosystems that were suddenly found to be walking on eggshells. Peter had never had a head for economics. Best to leave the number crunching to a more clearly analytical mind that could sort, categorize, and linearly process information. Of course, the best alternative to that was a computing device, so he'd grown used to letting problems sort themselves out in zeros and ones.
The notebook held all sorts of scraps of information, slivers of writing along the outside edges in some apparently vital notes that were sadly no longer legible. Peter found an empty space in the book and began to write, starting with words, continuing with phrases, combining sets of rhythm and rhyme in an attempt to get the creative juices flowing. Thoughts fell out of his head and onto paper, and he tried to draw inspiration from them, but to no avail. His mind was a broken record, and none of his thoughts were working properly. More often than not, they skipped around in distorted clipping, stuttering from idea to idea and eventually dying down before anything of substance could come to mind. But today, same as most days, he had picked up his pen and put forth the effort. That had to count for something. Or at least, he wished it would. The preceding months and been filled with wishful thinking. This was not a world in which dreams came true. Except for maybe the nightmares. These days, it was hard to separate the waking hell from the dream world. But little did he know, he did indeed have potential locked inside of him, and with a little luck, he might just escape the woes of writer's block. But he could hardly do that if he starved to death. It was time for something to eat. The coins jingled in his pocket as he counted them by touch. He brought a few out and turned them end over end, inspecting them as if he'd never seen a coin before. There were precious few left, and what as there wasn't going to grow any more plentiful the more he stared at them trying to will them into multiplying.
“Hey Bill,” he paused as Bill looked up from his balance sheets laid out on the counter top, “Do you ever wonder whether things could have turned out differently?”
The barkeep looked down, eyebrows narrowing has he looked downward. “It's hard to think it's come to this, isn't it Pete?”
So, that's the first chapter, and there's more written and yet more still to be written. Let me know what you guys think, and if anybody's interested I can always post more later.
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