Chapter 13 — Freedom
He didn’t even see it at first, used as he was to every detail of this lounge, and when he finally noticed it, he thought it yet another prank this room so generously provided, but it was really there, wide open in the middle of the back wall.
He ignored it, of course, as he would another one of those panels that snapped open and shot now and then for no reason, but someone barged in through it, in a hurry, rushed to the bar and asked for change for a ten-spot. He obliged, too stunned to react, and watched the unlikely visitor walk back out, agitated and waving his hand to hail a cab.
He remembered having heard this, he couldn’t remember where, that life always yields to your most cherished desire when you stop caring about it, and was surprised at himself that he felt no need to hurry, no existential angst at the thought the door could slam shot and disappear, taking with it his maybe only chance for freedom.
Was it freedom he really wanted? A freedom with a pointless and cruelly short life span? One where Inclusion 35B was paramount and where he got to be that Helmuth in the mirror, whom he disliked on principle and out of self-preservation instinct?
Did he really want to go out there, whence the agitated fellow came, in that world of artifice and fake urgency where he risked never being able to return to this place that had been his only home?
If life here had taught him just one thing, was the intractable outcome of walking through a one-way door.
What would he do out there, really? Get stuffed into the skin of that Helmuth character and live the latter’s life for a few decades, a borrowed life he knew would bore him to tears before the week was out? Was he gay or straight? He really didn’t know. He’d never lived enough of each to figure it out, and his nomadic soul had grown used to caring very little about men and women alike.
He kept staring at that door, gaping like a wound, and hated it with a passion! He hated it for putting him in the position to make a choice he didn’t want to make. Who decided what the right choice was, anyway? Some society he never got to live in as himself, a place where he would most likely be afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing and giving himself away as a fraud? That’s all he’d ever been for the good people of the many worlds he traveled. At least that’s what he would have been if he ever confessed to them his true nature.
If at least he could remember something, anything from a previous life, that might inform his choices, but he had to admit that even if his body wasn’t born in this room, his mind certainly was: he had no memories, no emotions, no yearning, nothing to hint at anything other than what he was now.
He froze in terror when he remembered the lounge never gave him a choice, and this situation was no different. There would be no way for him to resist walking out that door if he was fated to do so, just like he couldn’t escape ending up here after every adventure, here, to the only place he’d known as home.
But if this wasn’t his choice, then he didn’t have to make it, did he?
He got up, in no hurry, walked to the door and stood in the doorway, gazing upon the free world outside, which looked exactly like every version of reality he already experienced, yawned, sensed clouds on the horizon and retreated into the lounge before the storm started.
He was going to find a cozy chair and catch up on his reading when fate revealed its cruel intent: by one and by two, people started walking in, sizing him up with great interest, and relieved at the sight of liquor.
They thought him the bartender and gave him their drink orders, but none of them seemed to know him. What a blessed relief from pretending to fit in some stranger’s pre-masticated life! He poured, and they drank, and told him stories, or brooded in silence, with nary an Inclusion 35B contract or intimate confrontation in sight.
How was he going to live in here now with all these people barging in? His home had become a public space from one minute to the next, and quite a popular one, judging by the current occupancy.
When you get used to the thought of being endless, a life that spans a few decades feels like a cruel and senseless death sentence, the proof the universe really doesn’t care about you.
It is the ultimate banishment from Eden, to live your fated lot as a frail, naked, scared and inescapably impermanent creature.
If he couldn’t find the ultimate meaning in all the centuries he’d spent wandering through the many splendored versions of reality, what could he possibly hope for in however long of a human life was now laid before him?
It was his punishment, really, to wrap up his epic adventure with the fate of a fruit fly!
At least the latter enjoyed the mercy of being unaware its inevitable demise was waiting for it not far into the future.
What could possibly be so damn important they had to reach out and grab him out of his sheltered haven into whatever reality was awaiting out there, a reality he instinctively knew he would not like?
He retreated, trying to hide behind the bar, but a couple of well-intentioned chaps grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him gently out the door, against his will.
They dropped him on a bench nearby and rushed to join the commotion of a lot of people fussing about, tense, tending to a lady who seemed to be in some sort of distress. Things settled down, eventually, to the relief of everyone present, and after that two other chaps came to get him, so the lady could see his face.
“Congratulations, Ms. Muller! You have a healthy baby boy! Ten fingers, ten toes. Everything seems to be in working order.” They started making silly faces at him, in a way that was simply embarrassing. “Have you given any thought to the name?”
Ms. Muller was weak, sore and traumatized by the ordeal of the forceps delivery. Her little bundle of joy really didn’t seem to want to join humanity just yet. She quietly resented the well-meaning advice of the midwife who had convinced her a natural home birth would be a wonderful idea. Right! Everybody thought they knew better! If she had a pfennig for every piece of well-intentioned advice she got since she’d found out she was pregnant, she would be a very wealthy woman by now.
She looked at him with the newborn love first-time mothers are shocked to discover was always there, in the depths of their psyche, overcome with the awe of her new responsibility and too exhausted to notice the distressed look on her son’s face.
“Helmuth,” she uttered, choked with emotion. “After my father.”
The doctor hesitated for a second before he asked.
“Speaking of, hmm… Is there…”
“A father? Oh, dear, yes!” she laughed, a little embarrassed, to the relief of the inquirer. “Yes, yes, of course! He travels a lot for business and got called up on an emergency. We really didn’t plan on our little Helmuth arriving so early!”
