Upload and Reboot
by Tyler Marable
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3 |
conclusioin
I stand in a living room. A teenage girl weeps on the floor. Her tears fall to water the strands of hair by her feet. Chemotherapy has chemically sheered her locks. What a vile treatment! Medicine that destroys the patient along with the ailment.
A man with salt-and-pepper hair scoops the girl up in his arms. He stands and carries his daughter down the hallway to her room, struggling to keep his feet. Mr. Benton is not the strong young man he used to be. He totters against the wall, holding tight his precious burden. A picture falls. The picture captures the Benton family in its entirety, in its essence, a snapshot that could test time itself. A masterpiece.
The picture’s glass shatters against the floor.
Mr. Benton wins the struggle against weariness. He places his daughter gently in bed. “It’s going to be okay, Erica,” he says.
The girl sobs into her pillow. “Why me?”
“I don’t know,” the father says.
“Am I going to die?”
“Of course not.” The words slip from Mr. Benton’s lips while other words hold steadfast in his mind.
* * *
The sun assaults the earth. Everyone is wearing black attire more suited for when the year was old and ready to retire. Yet the year is young, flirty, the sun strong. A casket sits under a marquee, adorn with flowers. Is the casket a pillow for the spray to lie its head upon or a coffin for little Erica to make her new bed?
The preacher says words that wound the spirit of the crowd but severs the heart of Mr. Benton. Jillian’s eyes are hidden beneath a funeral veil, but black lace cannot hide pain. Hank Shepard, a family friend, pulls Jillian into his arms. She cries into Hank’s chest while Mr. Benton stands there silently, watching the new bed of his daughter lower into dirt. Mr. Benton has said nothing the entire day. He wanted to say something, but grief can make one inarticulate.
* * *
Mr. Benton hugs a teen; the boy is a living memento of the young man his father used to be. Pride exudes from the father’s face, pride fringed with uncertainty.
“You don’t have to do this, Eric,” Mr. Benton says.
“I know, but I want to do something with my life, give back to society and to my country.”
The drywall ripples. The mahogany coffee table becomes cherry wood. Furniture transforms from modern to contemporary and slides around the room. White crawls up the blue drapes, green drips down the drywall. A new memory is revealed. Pride no longer lingers in this room, but tension floats throughout.
Mr. Benton leans against the jamb of the front door, blocking Jillian’s exit. She is holding a suitcase.
“Get out of my way,” she says.
“I’m sorry. I’ve said I’m sorry. How many times does a man need to say he’s sorry?”
“Until the apology is authentic.”
Her eye is painted black underneath, a testament of a man who loved too rashly.
“Jill, it won’t happen again.”
“I know it won’t.”
She tries to push pass. He shoves her back into the home. Her hand finds his cheek. Hard. An argument ensues, only blunted by the thump of car doors shutting.
“We’ll talk about this later,” Mr. Benton says.
He turns to greet the unexpected guests. Two men, dressed in military uniforms, walk up the driveway. Their faces wear stolid expressions, but their eyes sing of tragedy.
Vecarians have come to know of the difficulty humans have in concealing the emotion that emanates from their eyes.
Words are exchanged. Mr. Benton is given a folded flag, as if the colors of this symbolic cloth is sufficient reimbursement for his lost. The parents are thanked for their son’s service, assured that Eric died not in vain but in honor.
In fact, their son had died in a meaningless war — somewhere in a desert hellhole — for contrived ideals.
Man is an intelligent beast but a beast nevertheless. Beasts are extraordinary when it comes to violence. And man’s intelligence makes him an exceptionally dangerous animal. It is man’s violence that scars Earth.
The suitcase slips from shocked hands, bounces on the floor. Jillian drops to her knees, her face a torrent of tears. Mr. Benton embraces his wife; they hold each other.
A colleague of mine, tasked with studying the familial behavior of homo sapiens, once proclaimed: Humans are weak creatures; a significant amount of worldwide marriages fail after the death of a child.
The Bentons had lost both a daughter and a son.
* * *
An angry man — a lost wretch with no wife or children — stomps on the accelerator. His SUV careens over the dock and smashes into a wall of water: Lake Michigan. The water comes in slowly at first, and then in torrents. This lake is called great, but what is a lake but a collection of insignificant tears from the sky?
Tears stream down his face and becomes one with the water creeping up his neck. He continues to cry; the lake gladly drinks upon his tears. The SUV is swallowed whole.
* * *
I took my hand from the former Mr. Benton’s forehead. Diving through his memories made the circumstances of this Case rather clearer. I had seen death, I had seen tragedy, but wedged somewhere in between was love. I had seen two teens profess their love, promise themselves to each other. I had seen them lie together to create a family. I had seen kisses on the cheek after a long day, the amorous reflection of their souls in loving eyes.
He stared at me, blue eyes wide. “I saw—”
“Your entire life flash before your eyes, to borrow a human expression,” I said. “I saw it, too.”
I reached in my coat pocket and produced a Glock. I had procured it earlier just for him. Protocol dictated that I kill the regressed subject after completion of the case study. He would transmute or possibly regress again. How fabulous it would be if the latter occurred! But I had no right to take this man’s life, or rather second life.
“What are you going to do with that?” he asked, his voice calm. Yes, this was a man who did not fear death, for the death of his children had taken everything from him, even his wife.
“There’s a bullet in the chamber.” I handed him the gun and strode away.
“What am I suppose to do now?”
I didn’t look back. “That’s not my question to answer, Michael.”
I understood now. Although he resided in the body of another, Michael Benton was still Michael Benton. He could not love another woman, no matter how beautiful, for the love he had for his ex-wife was forged in the cauldron of suffering and loss. In life. Yes, I had put a gun in the hands of a suicidal man, but it was Mr. Benton’s decision to make: Does he trudge on through sordid life, or does he eat the gun and pull the trigger?
I looked forward to studying Case Prisect E again, if Mr. Benton decided to opt out of living at the time being. But I found the idea of researching love more appealing. An individual’s death was of no importance, but the imprint he or she left on the lives of others, the love he or she bestowed to the world would live on even after transmutation.
Civilizations rise and fall, magnetospheres weaken, poles shift, instigating mass extinctions. The stars rain from the heavens, wounding the earth; suns betray the planets they once gave life to; but one cosmic phenomenon always transcends death and spacetime itself: love. Perhaps humans will take it with them when they leave Earth one day. There will always be love out there somewhere among the stars.
Mr. Benton could not live without the affection of the woman who had taught him how to love. Interesting. Yes, perhaps it was time for me to change careers.
I continued to walk away. No gunshot rang out from behind me, much to my satisfaction.
Copyright © 2019 by Tyler Marable
