Capitulism
by Evan Witmer
|
Table of Contents parts 1, 2, 3 |
part 1
Despite the saying, you really can forget how to ride a bike. You can forget just about anything, in fact, as long as you apply enough pressure to the brain in a small enough window of time.
Last year, ten seconds of forty psi took much more from me than balancing on a banana seat. Grey skies doused the roads of Lewes, Delaware, on the last week of January. An inch of water hissed beneath my tires on the way to work.
Trinity Semiconductors employed me and three other thirty-somethings to draw up bleeding-edge circuits. It was mentally taxing, but the chance to play with the latest upgrades in electrical engineering was a fitting reward for six years of intense academic pursuit.
On the day of my accident, my eight-hour shift was cut short. Around lunchtime, our supervisors dismissed us with an email over concerns for our safety; diving temperatures threatened to freeze our soaked streets. The others left without hesitation, but I was more concerned about the motif of arrows and coils spread across my monitors.
“DOD really needs their RAM cache,” I said to Yona, the designer in the cubicle next to mine, “and I can’t break my stride.”
“I thought we had another two weeks?”
“That would be if they gave us a month,” I replied. “They gave us till the end of the month.”
“That’s gonna be tight.” Yona zipped closed her book bag. “But I work better from home anyways.”
Yona slid on the backpack and headed for the exit. There was the familiar click of a push bar, followed by the rush of wind.
“Why don’t you take it easy, Tyler?” said Yona. “It’s getting worse.”
By the time my car hit the road, the black ice hid beneath a thin sheet of snow. Conditions were right to turn a short commute into a harrowing expedition, but poor visibility didn’t stop me from pushing ten beyond the speed limit. My mind was preoccupied, dropping transistors onto a schematic in my head. An arrogant attitude said I could drive this route with my eyes closed, so I practically did.
The hatchback ahead of me cruised with the same confidence. It seemed they were heading the same route, so I followed the dim red lights on their bumper like a guidance system. We journeyed forward like pioneers on a wagon train.
We seemed unstoppable until the hatchback lost its wits. The chain came off its back tire, and it fishtailed a little. Startled, the driver hit the brakes. My reaction was swift but futile; the old rubber on my wheels kept sliding. I smashed into the rear bumper without a belt to tether me. My last memory was flying forward as if my seat had exploded underneath me.
When I woke up in the hospital, I was at my worst. My name was a mystery, and my address hid in the shadows at the back of my head. The inky, black amnesia eviscerated the once clear history that trailed me. I shrank in my cot, fighting to hold myself together. My mind felt like a hollow cavern, and I was a frightened child, paralyzed by the overwhelming darkness that surrounded me.
“The hippocampus is a sea-horse-shaped structure deep inside your brain’s temporal lobe,” explained my neurologist, Dr. Shay. “Yours was tossed around like a child shaking a fish bowl.”
After the initial brain scan, Dr. Shay did his best to chart my uncertain future while I grappled with the fog of my past.
“While the basics of your identity should return within the next few days, the level of trauma suggests severe deterioration of recent memories.”
The doctor’s words slid off the slick surface of my mind. My gaze remained fixed on the television in the corner of the room, replaying haunting images of the car crash.
“I’ll be assigning biweekly sessions of cognitive rehab with our Dr. Wetzel to assist in your recovery,” said Dr. Shay. “What are we now, thirty-two?”
My eyes remained glued to the screen. I didn’t know the answer, and I was too tired to guess.
“It could just be a few missing weeks,” Dr. Shay mused, his expression troubled as he examined my MRI, “or it could be a sizeable chunk of your twenties. Only time will tell.”
* * *
The initial weeks of my therapy with Dr. Wetzel brought rapid progress. I regained a sense of place, identity, and even memories of a rather tumultuous childhood that one might choose to forget.
Names from my inner circle began to trickle back, an admittedly tight loop. The first to return was my best friend, Ron. I had grown up without parents, and he had been the closest thing I had to family.
What stubbornly remained in the dark was my time in college and grad school. The education that had once unlocked countless doors for me had now been supplanted by an obsidian gap.
“This was your club curling team junior year, the Silver Sloths,” said Ron, sitting with me in the doctor’s office. He pointed to the tablet on the coffee table, his bushy blonde eyebrows raised as if to lift the floodgates on his memories. While my therapist slid through my Facebook timeline, Ron helped add context to any photos I kept public over the years.
“Weird choice,” I replied. “Sloths aren’t normally athletic.”
“It was a fad, like pandas in the eighties and Gen Z with capybaras.”
Ron was my age, but he reminisced like an old man, playing with his spectacles and scratching the grey hairs in his yellow beard.
I grabbed the tablet and zoomed in on my team posing together on the ice. The four of us laughed candidly, dressed in grey long sleeves with the vacant stare of a three-toed sloth printed on the front. “Was I any good at curling?”
“Good? You were amazing! See the chick on your left?” Ron pointed to a tall girl with an ombre side braid beside me. “After you led the team to the finals, she kept your nights pretty busy.”
“Are you serious?” I grabbed the rolls of fat on my stomach that billowed when I sat down. “Did I use to be fit?”
Ron let out a loud snort. “I’m only kidding, dude. You guys were terrible!” he admitted. “You didn’t win a single game. That girl blamed you.”
“Ron, please, you’re here to help Tyler,” scolded Dr. Wetzel. “You’re just being mean.”
“That’s not mean,” said Ron. “Mean would be scoring with a beautiful girl like that just to have it erased. This is good news. You didn’t forget anything worth remembering.”
“What about this? This looks fun.” I stopped at the image of me in a blonde wig and an orange jumpsuit. I was drinking a green cocktail with ice smoking at the top.
“You assume if there’s a picture, you would have remembered it, but might I remind you the effects of alcohol,” said Ron. “I don’t understand. Why is any of this relevant? Shouldn’t we reteach him the important things, perhaps crack open a textbook?”
“Memory isn’t so linear. Anything from that era could jog his mind on a variety of subjects. Once we start putting things together, you’ll be surprised what’s revived,” replied Wetzel. “Throwing a bunch of technical matter at him might make him uncomfortable. He’ll study that in his own time.”
I breathed out a mix of frustration and torpor. “Easier said than done.”
“Relearning six years of electronics will take time,” said Wetzel. She looked in my direction; her smile exuded sympathy, yet the subtle aura of pity was unmistakable. “Has there been any progress with your company?”
“They are... not understanding.”
“Are you still on payroll?”
“This is my last month.”
“Then it’s time you called Amanda.”
“Amanda?” questioned Ron. “Your old social worker from foster care?”
I cradled my chin in my palms. “She’s still at it, busting me out of tough situations,” I replied. My face dropped, and my tone turned glib. “She’ll find me a new job. I just hope it’s better than some burger joint. I’ve worked too hard to be making chump change.”
“Hey, don’t act like fast food is beneath you.” Ron clutched my clavicle, jolting me from my slump. “We all ride on the service industry express at some point. The last stop is humility.”
* * *
“Tyler, there are options for you that aren’t normally available to others.” The next day, Amanda sat at my counter clutching a neon-blue energy drink meant to combat the brown bags under her eyes. “In other words, I think we can do better than Culver’s.”
Social workers are here to help people, but they still make me uncomfortable. As a foster kid, they only came around when things went wrong. Amanda was slightly different, however; her relaxed nature made her seem more like a friend than a government tool.
Beside Amanda sat a younger girl about my age, left unintroduced. In contrast to Amanda’s spectral white business suit, this lady wore dark, shredded jeans and a black tube top. She gazed into the swirls of my granite countertop without saying a word.
“It’s embarrassing I never diversified much outside of engineering.” I sipped from my glass of water, then let out a long sigh. “I can’t cook. I don’t make art. I wouldn’t even be good at answering the phone; I always sound slightly irked.”
“Well, none of that’s necessary for a landlord,” said Amanda, “if you’d be interested in that sort of thing.”
“I don’t...” — my eyes bounced around the room — “I don’t own this place, you know?”
“Not here... here.” She reached over the table and prodded me with a long, gold fingernail between the eyebrows.
“My head?”
“Your head has an opening.”
“My mouth?”
“Ew, I’m not going anywhere near your mouth.” The girl in dark clothes finally spoke.
“The gap in your memory makes space in your head,” said Amanda. “Space a capitulist can fill.”
“A capitulist?” I turned to the other girl. “I’m guessing you’re this capitulist. What exactly does that mean?”
“It means I’m part of an increasingly small population that can walk into people’s minds, if there’s room.” The girl squinted at my forehead like she was looking past my face. “Is it a good area?”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“When you have a bad dream, is it thieves and murderers? Or just like, naked in homeroom?” asked the capitulist.
“I don’t dream much at all,” I replied. “On the rare chance I do, it’s this recurring thing: a tornado in a grocery store. It might not be my only dream, but it’s the only one I remember in the morning.”
“Hmm.” The girl looked at Amanda, her eyebrows arching. “A climate-sensitive region.”
Amanda met her gaze with confidence. “It will be priced accordingly.”
“How much are you selling my head for?” I asked Amanda.
“Given the risky weather, I’d say seven hundred dollars a month.”
“I pay twice that to live here in Lewes,” I replied. “That won’t cover my costs.”
“That seven hundred is in addition to another twenty-five hundred provided by the state of Delaware,” said Amanda.
My lips puckered, and my water spilled back out into its glass. “Woah,” I choked.
“The housing you provide is subsidized,” said Amanda. “Delmarva once encapsulated the largest population of capitulists in the Western Hemisphere. Depleting numbers come from a lack of ethnic housing options fit appropriately for their powers. These are use-it-or-lose-it-type genetics. Delaware will pay to keep future generations psychically active.”
“I... can’t possibly pass up that opportunity,” I said. “I wouldn’t have to work anymore. I could spend all day studying!”
“Or watching TV, or listening to music... or drinking.” Amanda finished her soda and spread out her arms. “Whatever you like, really.”
“Uh, not too much drinking, please,” said the capitulist. She made a fist and rested it against her midriff. “Inebriation can make your head hazy. It’s bad for my lungs.”
“I’ll compromise in any way to make your stay most comfortable, Miss...”
“Oh, uh.” The girl hesitated. “You can call me Jenny.”
“Jenny... Jenny what?”
“Jenny Krooger.”
“Oh... that name must make things a hard sell,” I replied. “Certainly don’t want a Krueger in your head.”
“You’re not wrong,” admitted Jenny. “You’re not the first amnesiac she’s introduced me to, or the second.”
“Well, I’ll be the last.” I held out my hand for Jenny to shake. “When do you expect you’ll move in, Ms. Krooger?”
* * *
“So our state taxes are going to goons like you?” asked Ron, chopping vegetables in his living room. To save space in his tiny home, Ron seamlessly integrated his kitchen into his lounge.
“It’s not really to me,” I said, “it’s to Jenny.” I was sitting on the couch, walling off my eyes with my hand as Ron cut into an onion on his end table. The way he slapped the veneer, he seemed slightly irritated. I’d kept the girl in my head a secret for quite some time to avoid his judgment. Naturally, he’d much rather see me flipping burgers than selling my body.
“And why does Jenny need our help?” he questioned. “Is she on drugs?”
“No! Of course not.”
“Then she’s got a head thing like you?”
“She’s not disabled, Ron,” I grabbed my elbows and huffed. “Can we not discuss Jenny like she’s not in the room?”
Ron looked over his shoulder with one brow raised. “Can she hear us?”
I gave a little shrug.
“It’s been two months, and you still don’t know?”
I shrugged even higher.
Ron shook his head while his knife returned to dicing.
It would have been nice for Ron to have a TV to distract me while I waited patiently for dinner, but to consolidate his kitchen-lounge, he left out many of the appliances one regularly finds in a kitchen or lounge.
My millennial logic told me to just stare at my phone but, lately, my phone wasn’t very exciting without the login information for any of my apps. The colorful icons were stacked like bricks on my home screen, creating an impenetrable wall accessible only through the ancient password lost with the rest of my undergrad.
“Hm-hm-hm-hm hmm hmmmm...” With nothing else to do, I hummed a melody to pass the time.
“What are you singing?” asked Ron.
“I haven’t the slightest clue.”
“Then, can you stop?”
“I’ll try. It’d help if we talked about something.”
“There’s only one thing I want to discuss, Tyler.” The chopping sound paused. “The girl living inside your head!”
“What do you want to know so bad?”
“What’s she like?”
“I really don’t know.”
“Well, if I were you, I’d try to get to know the girl squatting in your skull.”
“Since when do property managers get that chummy with their tenants?” I asked. “She rents from me; that’s not the foundation for a friendship.”
“You could at least say hi, get a sense of her personality for your peace of mind.” A scraping noise sounded as Ron shoveled his onions into a bowl. “You know, you can tell a lot about someone from their accommodations.”
My eyes drifted around our confined quarters. “So, what does a tiny home say about you?”
“I’m environmentally conscious,” replied Ron. He took two steps and placed the bowl of onions on top of his minifridge-standing desk. “And your apartment means you’re easygoing.”
“And living in someone’s head?” I asked.
“Sounds like something a narcissist might do,” replied Ron. “They want to be at the center of attention.”
“I think you’re reading too much into the whole ‘head’ metaphor.”
* * *
Copyright © 2023 by Evan Witmer
