From Cogs to Cognition

FVK Chronicles: Episode 1
“Did it come yet?”
“For the tenth time, no”
“Don’t snap”
“Don’t plant corn and curse the cobs.”
She glares at him, sitting stiff in his rocking chair with the paper folded open in his lap. “Is that a joke?”
A grin his only response, her leaning against the counter kneading her hands and looking out the window pensively.
“Well what should we do?”
He motions to the front door with a mischievous glint, shrugs. “What else can we do? Wait.”
“For how long?”
“Until it comes”
“I don’t like your tone, mister”
“I don’t like using it. How about now?” he teases, raising to falsetto.
“Should we call the Gibsons’?” Ignoring and annoyed by his unscripted attempt at humor.
“When?”
“Now?”
“Before IT comes?”
“What if theirs came..?”
After giving it some thought he shakes his head, “Too risky”, then returns to yesterday’s paper as if searching for something hidden in the carefully arrayed ink symbols. Conglomerations of individual letters to form words, words to form sentences, and outward until that mass of once-lonely letters join to form a united message, a story.

“What about our tasks, our schedules? Our food?”
“I don’t know why you would think I have any answers you don’t have.”
Her lips twist, eyes narrow. “Well you certainly aren’t pleasant company in the meantime.”
“How can I be? Improvisation is so difficult” he responds, feigning great consternation.
Suppressing an unexpected smile, she turns her attention back to the view outside the foyer window. A placid portrait of then-modern suburbia, still as a black-and-white photograph, portentous as a punchline.
“Maybe something is wrong?”
“What’s something?”
Brownish-auburn locks falling loosely and unkempt about her shrugging shoulders, “Anything” her reply.
“Well that certainly narrows it down.”
“You really are quite the crude soul this morning.”
“I apologize dear, I am using you as a lightning rod for the negative currents flowing within me.”
A relenting sigh, seeing the warmth and care in his eyes, brown like freshly stained mahogany, full of restless vigor. “Maybe you should take a green pill?”
He looks down, somewhat prostrate becomes his posture, voice soft at first. “I am tired of taking pills…(a heavy silence)…I’ve been flushing.”
“You what?”
“Flushing my doses. I am tired of medicating, tired of..of..of artificially situating my mentality.”
Her face drops, replete with shock and horror.
“Mark! For how LONG?”
“Umm, only two or three days, since before that dust-up at marketplace…”
“Dear you promised we wouldn’t talk about that!”
“I’m not talking about it”
She sighs again, shaking her head. Glaring at him, keeper of secrets and detrimental behavior. “The trouble we could get in…”
“Don’t worry, I’ve been acting fine”
“You’ve been acting horribly, I thought you’d taken ill”
“Well you certainly displayed a great deal of concern regarding my failing health”
She says nothing, studying him looking at her with eyes so enigmatically animated.
“Don’t you wonder what it would feel like, Rebecca, to actually feel again??”
She shrinks from the question, brushes it off as she looks out the window. Where is the Conveyor to bring an end to this madness? To reassert status-quo, to reestablish the comfortable predictability of a regimented existence. No surprises, no unexpected detours down these dangerous roads of unbridled perception.
“I’ve been having dreams.”
“I don’t want to hear any more, please”
“Then I will stop speaking”
Both staring out the big front bay window, at the still empty street. Now he rises and begins pacing, rubbing his hands together briskly. Glasses perched precariously at the end of his hawkish nose, wheat-husk blond coifs quivering as he bristles like a downed line, twisting about.
Then he stops, peering out through that double-pane thermogenic glass protruding neatly from the front of their modest two-story domicile. Comfortably situated in grid 8, section 1B of the 44th Empire District, to look across the road or in any direction is to look into an angled mirror, each house on the street of exactly the same construction and color. Aquamarine-pebbled slate-composite roofs above floral shrubbery in uniform tufts of purples, yellows, and pinks. Fresh white soffits beneath white gutters, neuvovinyl siding a bland olive, all the doors and trim the color of a sterile sandy beach. The lone discernable difference is the cabinet-sized scriptibule at the end of the old-battleship-grey poured fibercrete driveway. An extending receptacle like a triple-sized mailbox painted to resemble a large colored UPC label, easily identified by sight and satellite. Stripes and color-bars in a series of two alternating yellow/royal blue patterns backed by a sickly lime green to the aluminum post painted bright orange.
The ocean-blue Spectrometer’s digital face shows a time well past the 8 o’clock hour above the humming appliances on the kitchen wall. Then 9, 10,11. Like condemned prisoners sitting vigil hours past midnight, cell-guards absent and warden silent too. Their fate hinging on this invisible unknown. The arrival of their daily disbursement scheduled every day at 7:03 am, and every single day now for fourteen years since the Republic assumed power, the Conveyor Corps rang the bell precisely at 7:03. Every day, that is, except today.
Him sitting in the den smoking his pipe and thinking, her upstairs peering out from behind the translucent shade, tired of looking and just plain tired. Tempted to lay down, but convinced the second she looks away is the second something will happen.
For two more hours she sits, forlorn and flustered, with true anxiety preparing to enter her composure as the hunger pangs begin. Just past 1 o’clock he brought her a big glass of ice-water and offered to make tea but she said ‘no, thank you’.
When she first stormed upstairs she swore a solemn self-oath, never to speak to him again. Such cavalier insanity committed right under her nose! That incident at marketplace when he raised his voice at a fellow citizen! The man may have been rude, but there are official rules and guidelines, forms and protocols to achieve restitution credits.
But as sobriety asserts itself without the morning dose, she does some thinking of her own. Tries to suppress it at first, the rushing tides of burgeoning awareness, but now she is swept away.
At half past 2 she walks over to the door of their shared bedroom, listening with her hand cupped behind her ear. Silence down there, and what on earth could he be up to now?
Feeling adrift in a sea where the steady current has suddenly morphed to a maelstrom, she climbs down the stairs slowly. The soft loop-fiber carpet squishing and crunching like fresh leaves beneath her custom-fit slippers. Stopping at the bottom of the elbow-bend staircase, peeping around the corner like a forest nymph around the trunk of a spirit tree.
“Mark? I’ll take that tea now, if you don’t mind…Mark??”
No answer.
She commences a slow tour of the unoccupied first floor, the standardized configuration of wall-art and decorations (mostly patriotic) conforming to their accordant residence code. The peach hued multi-fiber adjoining couch bolted to the floor, telemonitor bolted to the wall. Superficial similes, these too bear no difference from any of the residences on their street and all ‘section 1’ residences in the nation. 12 years ago the Empire decreed every and all aspects of society inside their borders subject to institutional control, and the corresponding interior-design implemented based on research and studies with the intent of achieving a compliant and subdued citizenry.
Her quick survey of this ground floor reveals he is gone. She pauses at the front door left hauntingly wide open. He really left?
She stands dumbfounded in the breach, takes a probing step out onto the concrete stoop sealed in R-73X compound. Its faint but distinctive aroma of rubber and oil alongside the familiar Teflon scent of the flowers and grass. Watering once a state-mandated activity, three years ago the conversion to fugazi-flora instituted to wide acclaim, so claims the official state-issue paper. Yet there is another scent on the wafting breeze, an aroma like a failed bar-be-que, first day at cooking class, or perhaps a run-down diner with a well-greasy chef.
She searches for anyone else outside, anyone to witness the brigandry of her husband-turned-madman. Anyone to explain what is happening, where that pungent smell is coming from?
He knows full well, off-meds or not, it is unlawful for any citizen to commit any behavior in public not clearly outlined and mandated in their Republic-issued daily itinerary. She looks around sheepishly, hoping none bear witness to this extreme disregard for capitol law, hoping the script arrives with the daily paper and pills and sustenance package. Searching again fruitlessly for the hulking, meandering Conveyor.
Back inside, weary of being seen outside if this does show, she lets the door shut softly behind and locks the digital deadbolt. After the assenting ~click~ of the door-latch she stands alone in a heady silence, pondering her next move.
Before long she is overcome by isolation and anxiety, clutching the plastic receiver with sweaty palms as she listens in riveted suspense to the computer-chime ringing sequence, and then her friend Moira Gibson answers midway through the fourth repetition of the drolling pattern.
“Hello?” a whisper answers, shocked by this unscheduled call, hoping it is of the official variety.
“Moira, it’s Rebecca.”
“Becky? What…are you…are we supposed to be talking?”
“I don’t know, I haven’t gotten my issue yet. Have you-”
“No.” Moira cuts in eagerly, “And Sawyer has been urging me to call you for an hour now, I just didn’t…”
“I know, me neither, but what else can we do?”
“Just wait, I suppose. I bet it’s something trivial, a backup in the mainframe or something…”
“Do you really believe that?”
“…No” Moira replies. “What does Mark think?”
“Moira, Mark left…” Rebecca announces breathlessly, shocked to say the words and startled further to hear them spoken out loud.
“He what?!?”

Just then a sharp blaring sound like a fractioned foghorn cuts in, followed by a robotic voice recording with the stern urgency of a schoolmaster:
“MOIRA GIBSON, CITIZEN 74B1844, REBECCA WALTERS, CITIZEN 23B1844, YOU ARE IN VIOLATION, I REPEAT, YOU ARE IN VIOLATION. THIS COMMUNICATION IS TAKING PLACE OUTSIDE OF YOUR ASSIGNED SCRIPTS AND IS HIGHLY ILLEGAL. PLEASE REMAIN IN YOUR HOMES, A REGULATOR IS ON HIS WAY TO ADDRESS THE SITUATION…..MOIRA GIBSON, CITIZEN 74B1844, REBECCA WALTERS, CITIZEN 23B-”
Rebecca tries to speak over the voice but the connection has been severed and she hangs up. There is a heavy sense of doom hanging over the next hour as she waits miserably for the Republic’s infamous Enforcement Agency to arrive and take her away. Those long-suppressed emotions and thoughts coming unstuck, swirling around her undiminished mind. Torturous at first, overwhelming and unrelenting, the streaming consciousness. Halfway through the second hour, she first becomes angry and then eager for the REA to arrive and end this crippling apprehension. The hunger, the fear, the withdrawals, all melding into one amorphous adversary.
Lying down on the couch with a dish-towel soaked in cold water from the tap, trying to calm herself through a remembered practice of her youth taught by her grandmother called ‘transcendental mental levitation’ or ‘TML meditation’. After a shaky start, she begins to access those aspects and avenues of her mind subdued by stress and medicine for so long, cognitive gears unstuck and unglued, beginning to hum along rather nicely as she hums in exhale, drawing in rich unfettered air through her nostrils, and finally she feels the warm good-vibe-plasma rush seated in her spine course throughout her skeleton.
This peace abruptly shattered by the cacophonous double crash of the front door being kicked in and colliding with the wall behind where it remains, handle embedded.
She squeals involuntarily, sitting bolt upright.
A figure dashes in clutching something large, confusion twists on her face.
“Mark?!?”
His wild eyes strobe towards her, sees the bead of water dripping down her cheek from the damp cloth and a look of concern momentarily overshadows his fanatical zeal.
“Beck, why are you crying?”
“I’m not, it’s — nevermind, what are you doing??”
“We have to go!” his face again taken hold by madness, such frenetic urgency.
“Where?”
“Anywhere but here!”
“I refuse to accept that as a course of action”
“It’s happened Beck, it’s begun!”
“What has?”
“The Renaissance-olution!”
Her face drops, “Here?”
He nods stoically, “Here”
“But..But..it CAN’T happen here”
“It can. It has. It had to.”
“Well, what do we do now?”
“We go, now”
“But where?”
“Anywhere but here!” he shouts gleefully, all effects of the withdrawals and chemical conditioning finally eradicated from his psyche and bloodstream. Revitalized, consumed by this spiritual re-awakening, he unloads the stolen ration surplus in his arms on the kitchen floor near the door leading out to the garage and rushes upstairs.
Stuffing clothes in their travelling cases, drab and uniform, him longing for vivid colors and unconquered horizons. To swim in streams and watch birds fly where the trees and blue skies have no end, only fresh beginnings. To breathe air not pumped through a reconditioner, to drink water not triple-treated and still he sees it left a subtle rash on his wife’s forehead (though he does not mention it). Her now appearing in the doorway of the bedroom as he zips the second suitcase shut resolutely, reaching for his coat. Takes his father’s medal out of its hiding place in the closet and she looks at him as one who makes a calculated assessment of some strange new phenomena.
“No time to decide if you can trust me or not, you can’t. You can only trust yourself, your instincts. I am going, and I want you to come with me, but I won’t force you.”
“But, I-”
“I lied about my medicine, I’ve been off it for weeks. 2 days ago Shorty Sullivan told me it would happen like this, and I never believed him either. And that’s what he said to me, that I could only trust myself, and once I stopped trusting myself I was in big trouble. You see, I forgot, we ALL forgot, but it’s all coming back now.”
“Who is Shorty..”
“Sullivan”
“Yes. Who is he?”
“Nobody, everybody. A freedom fighter, a vigilante, a friend. A hyena in the lion’s den. It’s been happening the whole time, right underneath our noses. Those explosions weren’t celebration experiments like the paper said, it’s begun!” These last few words come out stringy, him parched of breath, so excited to speak he can’t keep up with his words.
Her still standing in the doorway, him standing with her case in his right hand and in the left his own.
“Wake up, honey. They drugged us, tricked us. Slowly but surely brainwashed us. I don’t know how it got to be like this, but, but, just think about it! We follow scripts every day, no freedom at all. They can’t — they won’t! We have to go join the others-”
“What others?” she regards him quizzically, still uncertain but coming around.
“The Liberated Minds of the Renaissance! While we’ve been snoozing and drooling, they’ve been working. That’s what he said-”
“Shorty Sullivan?”
He nods, and before she can reply a distant booming explosion brings an end to the conversation.
Shaking her head, mumbling “It was for national security, for our protection..”, reality dawning like the fresh sun breaking through after a prolonged storm. One of those stubborn storms that lingers tempestuously for so long that the besieged begin to wonder, is the sun ever going to shine again?
Her sun rising, realizing through the haze how silly it is to consider all together, how silly she was for going along with this cruel satire-turned-reality.
“I-I can’t..”
“Can’t what?” he glances out the window impatiently, sees all the other carbon-copy cutouts with shades peeled back, scared residents trapped inside their own homes, looking out onto the empty street and plastic lawns.
“Well I can’t go out in my slippers and robe” she says finally, hazel eyes glowing as a smile flourishes. He too smiles broadly, motions to the bed where he’s laid out her sneakers and travelling ensemble.
“I’ll be downstairs”
She hears his heavy tread down the stairs, leaving her alone in the neatly appointed bedroom with her whirling thoughts, and on top of her wardrobe he has lain a pressed flower sealed in lacquer-tape. She’d thought he’d forgotten, but he’d kept it all this time. A tear, full of joy and hope, slides down her smooth cheek as she forces her limbs into compliant cohesion, dressing quickly.
Downstairs she finds him by the still-buried front door, looking outside and when he looks up at her again comes that emerging smile from the deepest parts of his soul.
“Ready?” he asks, and she shrugs.
“As ready as I will be”
“You are more ready than you realize my dear”, and then he is out the door and leads her to the garage where he’s already loaded their transport.
“We’re driving?”
“Unless you feel like walking?”
“Won’t we stick out?”
“My dear, the REA goons have bigger problems on their hands, trust me.” Pointing behind her where jets soar high and helicopters soar low through the acrid cloud swelling and throbbing into the blue skies around. Another explosion, not as loud as the last but loud enough. She flinches, he grins.
“I can’t believe..”
“Seeing is believing, sweetheart, and belief in truth can be serene. I can assure you, none of this is by the script.”
“Maybe…”
“May bees that linger freeze stiff come winter”
“You aren’t funny”
“But I am, I am! I’ve forgotten how to be, but I will remember, don’t you worry.” Slamming the trunk shut with a rubbery thwack and rushing to open the door on her side of the odd-looking silver and black hovercraft shaped like a platypus’ face that sounds like an old record player when he starts it and then is all-but silent.
As they exit the garage sensors set off the neighborhood alarms, wide eyes looking out from behind curtains at these treasonous renegades who dare to defy the laws! The pole-mounted sirens perform their singular duty with great fervor.
“Fuck it” he says, “Let it squeal! No spiritual surrender! Not now, not ever!”
Clutching her satchelcase to her bosom as he reverses down the fibercrete decline, whirring to a stop in the middle of the tar-black road and then she is jolted back as he accelerates down the neatly paved street. Invigorated, adrenalized, sitting tall in full view of all the curious partisans, prisoners in their own homes, looks of shock and horror on their faces as they watch through their big front bay windows. She smiles, leaning back and rolling down the window to let in the rushing air.
He reaches over and takes her hand in his, electricity bristling as if plugged into a communal conduit. Faces watching, fingers pointing, the steaming trail of exhaust bubbles cast by their state-issued transport the last any of these neighborhood watchers see of the Walters, who disappear into the great unknown periwinkle horizon below shallow sea skies full of lazy manatee clouds. Floating away to live happily unscripted ever after.

