[The Game] Terminal Velocity, Infinite Light

A bus. Travelling across the desert. Yellow and dusty, it bounces along a broken-assed dirt-road. Michael sits in a seat near the front, looking around him. Next to him is a twenty-two year old version of himself who sits reading a Douglas Adams book. In the seat in front of him, his sixteen-year old self is staring out the window, arms folded, scowling at the horizon. Behind him an eight-year old Michael is working at the strings on a chipped tennis racket. Scattered throughout the bus, there are different versions of him, different ages, doing different things. Some are noisy as hell - an eighteen-year old roaring drunk and singing. Horrified by the haircuts, Michael scans the various faces. Hang on a second, he says, who's driving this thing?

Chapter 11

'Today, a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration - that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there's no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we're the imagination of ourselves. Here's Tom with the weather.'
- Bill Hicks.

Press play

Cardenio system initialising, standby transmission. Uploading stream. Locating space/time co-ordinates. You have messages. Six agents online. Chat window initialising. Loading agent status updates feed. Gabriel is in twelfth-century Verona, nice weather. Avram is wondering where he left his keys - Venice or Tokyo - and when? Louis is skinning up. Ryuichi is having lunch with Richard Pryor. Michael is in the ninth century, plummeting out the ass end of an plane towards his death. Victoria is waiting on the beach, drinking a glass of something pink.

A plane passes over the surface of the earth. A hole opens in its giant rear end, and a dot, a body, shoots out, twisting and spinning. He plunges down. Perception of time shifting with speed, falling through space, a memory of a child sitting on the edge of a pool appears from nowhere. Fearful, scared to jump in. Jump in Michael, just jump in. Jump in to the water. He does, turning to face downwards, he sails into open air. Arms open, back arched, the sensation comes like a sledgehammer, like diving into into a planet-sized swimming pool of screaming, white noise, the body in shock, every molecule in his being now yelling that it's about to die, white panic, flailing. Drowning in air. A blinding slap of wind, roaring, spinning, the skyline tilting. Freefall. 120 kph and rising. Can't breathe, can't see, sound breaking down, the noise around his ears stuttering like the world is a piece of vinyl being dragged across a set of decks, scratching, screeching and catching, ripping backwards, forwards, breaking up into pieces, like someone is looking below the noise for the essential rhythm, the building blocks of time, fucking it up for the fun of it. Fragmenting, cracking up, reality losing cohesion, splitting like a tearing wound, blood slapping at the edges of the rip. 140kph. Lungs starting to freeze. Hands losing feeling, water streaming along the side of his face. Blackness sweeping up in a spiral. A child, sitting in a garden, watching a cat, looks up at a sound in the sky. 160kph. Falling, falling, faster. A dream comes back - a small girl swamped in numbers, towers and walls of digits, leaning over her, crashing down on her, unable to re-organise them fast enough, losing control, the sound becoming unbearable, the panic increasing. 170 kph. He feels a burning sensation, searing the skin on the palm of his left hand. Something is cutting into his skin, swirling like a knife. Blood splatters his face. It keeps cutting, deeper in circles, concentric, spiralling inwards. A first kiss. A first fuck. A first love. Everything, everyone, everywhere all at once. 180kph. Time, laid out in spirals, opens like a tunnel, like a rose, like a puking mouth, like a gaping rip in the chest of the sky. 190 kph. Every memory, every experience, every taste, every fear and laugh, everything that has ever happened to him, all returns, all at once. 195kph. Terminal velocity. Infinite light.

A bus. Travelling across the desert. Yellow and dusty, it bounces along a broken-assed dirt-road, tumbleweed it's only companion. Inside, Michael sits in a seat near the front, looking around him. Next to him is a twenty-two year old version of himself who sits reading a Douglas Adams book. In the seat in front of him, his sixteen-year old self is staring out the window, arms folded, scowling at the horizon. Behind him an eight-year old Michael is working at the strings on a chipped tennis racket. Scattered throughout the bus, there are different versions of him, different ages, doing different things. Some are noisy as hell - an eighteen-year old roaring drunk and singing. A fifteen-year old is taking a marker to the seat beside him. A one-year old is sitting in a bouncing chair, laughing his ass off. Horrified by the haircuts, Michael scans the various faces. Some say nothing, some read. Some are tanned, others pale. A nine-year old writes on a pad of paper, his nose screwing up in concentration. Hang on a second, he says, who's driving this thing? He looks at a twenty-two year old version of himself who is looking moon-faced at a picture of a girl. No idea mate, he says. What about you, he asks a seventeen year-old. Fuck off, is the short answer. Fair enough. Michael stands up and lurches his way to the top of the bus. He can't see the driver's face. Excuse me, he says. Excuse me. No answer. Michael puts a hand on his shoulder, twisting the shoulder around to him. A man with no face meets his gaze. After a moment, the driver turns back to face the road, slamming his foot down, accelerating. Michael looks down the bus, counting. Someone is missing he says. There's someone not here.

A garden. Summer sunshine. Quiet, the distant thrum of what could be traffic. Overgrown bushes. Apple trees. A birdbath. Michael looks down to the grass below him, feeling the spongey give in the soil, more moss than grass. He looks around, struggling to place himself. He hears a small noise, turns his head. There's a child, a young boy, sitting on the grass. Mop-top haircut, Animal from The Muppets t-shirt, grazes on his knees. He sits watching something in the distance, a cat at the end of the garden, black with a white neck. It watches him back. Both are still. No-one moves. From behind him, Michael hears a door open. An elderly lady appears, a grandmother, a glass in her hand. She brings it to the child, handing it to him wordlessly. She nods briefly as she passes Michael, smiles as she walks back to the kitchen door, singing as she goes inside. He walks, slowly, towards the kid. As he's getting closer, the kid moves suddenly, pouncing. The cat scampers. The kid sits back down, looking upset. I remember this game, Michael says. The kid looks at up him, fearless, curious. You play this too? Used to, says Michael. You know, the trick is to let them come to you, he says. Why's that, asks the kid. Because you have to earn it. Earn what? Their trust. Oh. Okay, thanks. The kid sits back down, crosses his legs, waiting. Michael sits down beside him, crosssing his legs too. For a while no-one says anything, the only noise the distant passage of a knackered Honda 50, spluttering down a street nearby. A birdsong comes from above. A hedge moves. Michael looks at the boy. There's a small scar on the bridge of his nose, been there a while. A fresh bruise on his cheek. His eyes look red. You ok, he asks him. The kid nods. Yep. Fine. You don't look it. I am. Fine. Who hit you? The kid looks back at him. You did. Michael waits. Says nothing for a while. At the end of the garden, the cat creeps a few feet closer, all the time his eyes locked on the kid. Anything you want to ask me while I'm here, Michael asks. The kid thinks about it. Is it always like this, he asks. Michael thinks. No, not always. But most of the time yes. You sure, the kid asks. Yes, I am. Michael looks down at him, smiling and almost laughing. These are just moments in time, don't get stuck in them. Remember, after the game is before the game. The kid looks at him, considering what he's said. Thanks. You're welcome. Michael stands up to walk away. The kid speaks up. Thanks for not lying to me. Michael looks back at him. No problem. One last thing the kid says. What? That's a fucking stupid haircut.

White panic, flailing, drowning in air. A blinding slap of wind, roaring, spinning, the skyline tilting. Freefall. No. No it isn't. Control fall. Control. Breathe. Slowing down, the wind receeding. The noise subsiding. A seagulls' wings beating in slow motion, waves sluicing in ripples. Down, down, down and slowly, almost elegantly a foot touches the ground. Reality's knicker-elastic snaps back into place, the bubbles dissapearing in the surface of the world. Michael looks at the palm of his left hand. A spiral circle, a black tattoo, is now burned into the skin. Moving his hand around in the light, it seems to glow at the edges. It itches.
'Nicely done' says Victoria, a broad grin on her face. She's walking towards him, her jacket slung over her shoulder, the white sand shifting beneath her bare feet, a drink in her other hand.
'Thanks' he says with a laugh. 'Where are we?' he asks.
'Flores' she says getting closer. Breaking waves, a seagull.
'Flores?'
'In the Azores. Beautiful beaches. Great hydrangeas'
'Hydran-wha?'
'Flowers, Michael. Where the place gets it's name from'
'Ah, right. Seems quiet' he says, looking up and down the beach. 'Many people living here?'
She looks over her shoulder, back to him. 'Not now, no. There's no-one living here. Not for a few more centuries anyway'
'Oh...' he says, as casually as he can.
'Yep. No-one here but us chickens'
'Ah...'
She laughs. 'Show me' she says, pointing to his left hand. He extends it up, opening the palm.
'Nice.' she says. 'You wanna see mine?'
'Ehm...'

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