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Choice: Thirteen
You stare at Fisher to demonstrate the ridiculous nature of his question. Life has been nothing but inconsistent and the presence of people can change that. Not only that, these people might be able to answer the slew of questions that need answering: Where are you, why is all of the grass yellow, and who can get you home? You hope the stupefied expression on your face will educate your new friend. After staring into Fisher’s expressionless eyes for thirty seconds, you realize that he hasn’t taken the cue.
“Fisher,” you calmly explain, “I’m going to go with the people. Not the duck.”
“You mean Philip,” Fisher corrects.
“Yes, Fisher, I won’t be following Philip any longer.” Upon hearing your response, Fisher’s head starts to shake, darting back and forth at a worrisome speed. “What’s wrong?”
“I want to follow Philip,” Fisher replies anxiously. “He knows the way better.”
“You would rather follow a duck, on foot, rather than a group of people, in a bus?”
“How can I trust those people?”
“How can you trust a duck?” Despite your logic, Fisher still seems to prefer Philip to the bus. After examining this truth, you give a great sigh. “Listen, Fisher, if you want to follow Philip, then follow him. If we’re going to the same place, then I’ll meet you at the Solstice. How does that sound?”
“It sounds like you’re leaving me, Icarus.” Fisher’s eyes begin to water and his face reddens. He’s about to weep. This is the second time he has done this today, and it’s making you uncomfortable.
“That’s not what’s happening, Fisher.”
“Yes, it is.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Please stop crying.”
“I can’t help it, Icarus.”
“You look like a giant, ugly tomato, Fisher.”
“You look like a bad friend, Icarus.”
That was clever. Good for him. You’re surprised at Fisher’s flair for banter, although this doesn’t relieve your discomfort.
“You’re too old to be crying, Fisher; you have a beard for Christ’s sake.”
“So, do you.” Ready to say something smart, you suddenly hear a warning honk from the bus. P.S.D. flies off, either from the noise or boredom, it’s impossible to know. With Philip in flight, the idea of Fisher leaving becomes more real. New emotions for him react. You hadn’t realized it before, but after knowing Fisher for less than a day, the two of you have become attached. Marginally bewildered, you realize that Fisher might be your only friend. All of your time in Chicago was spent on painting, heroin, or doing favors for heroin. You’ve never socialized: everyone you met before Fisher was part of some formal transaction. Aydin was your landlord. Thomas was your drug dealer. You’re not sure what Irem was. All you know is that Fisher is your closest friend. The tragedy of this crossroad begins to gnaw on your comfort.
“Fisher, just come with me.”
“No, you come with me.”
“Please, Fisher, please come with me. We can even bring Philip along.” The miserable panic of losing your friend sets in as you plead with Fisher to follow you.
“He’s too far gone. Besides, he wouldn’t go in the bus, even if we wanted him to.”
At this point it becomes clear that the two of you won’t be seeing each other for some time. You look at the bus then back to your friend. Fisher has stopped crying, and looks ready to move on. You, hug your friend as hard as you can.
“I promise I’ll look for when I reach the Solstice. I promise.” Tears spill during the hug.
“Don’t worry, Icarus,” Fisher says, “I’m sure I’ll beat you there.” With that, the hug ends, and Fisher begins running after P.S.D.
“Be safe!” you cry.
“I will!” Fisher happily replies.
Wiping tears from your cheeks, let yourself watch Fisher run off before realizing a new problem.
The trouble with the basin is its lack of footholds: the polished sandstone is impossible to climb in any direction. How the hell am I going to get down there? There doesn’t seem to be a path or staircase, or anything. Scanning the area, you see a young couple, a man and a woman, running out of the yellow fields towards the bus. In an almost comedic fashion, the couple turns their full sprint into a great dive into the basin. You expect them to plummet to their doom. Instead they happily slide down the sandstone hand in hand. I could do that. It just wouldn’t be as cute. Following their example, you leap feet-first into the basin. There is a second of discomfort upon landing on the ground, leading to the exhilarating rush of the mile-wide slide.
Reaching the center of the basin, you throw your hands down and push off with your feet. With the slide’s added momentum, you rise into sprint toward the bus. In only a few short seconds, you reunite with both technology and humanity. Though the dull gray bus offers little to appreciate on its own, its multiple windows reveal passengers who look young, helpful, and reliable.
“Hello!” you happily cheer upon reaching the bus. Your excitement seems to have no effect on the apathetic bus driver, who, with a swift motion, opens the bus door. “Does this bus go to the Solstice?”
The bus driver, a man clearly unhappy with his position in life (or otherwise, a droll mute) responds with numb silence and merely points to a small sign directly above him. In bold the sign reads:
SOLSTICE TERMINAL 1.
PLEASE REFRAIN FROM TALKING.
Finding your answer from the sign, you board the bus with a burst of energy, bounding over the three steps that lead to the interior. The bus holds two rows of fifteen gray seats, all of which contain silent riders. The sight of so many people further enhances the smile you already have. Eagerly engaging people with eye contact while moving towards your seat, you notice something about the passengers. The ethnic diversity exceeds any you’ve ever seen on a bus. Given the de facto segregation of the Chicago transit system, with routes that consistently lost one race and gained another at certain points on a bus’s journey, the demographic blend feels almost disorienting, and you almost trip on your own feet as you walk down the aisle before finding your seat in row eleven, where you recover your bearings and, finally, nod in agreement with the modern attitude of the European world.
The first thing I’ll have to do once I reach the Solstice is search for a phone. The only question is, who will I call? After realizing that Fisher is my only real friend, I don’t know anyone else who can help me. My family is the only option... but I don’t have much of a family to begin with. Your mother died several years ago, and you and your father had a falling out. You can’t remember why you fought: only that you hated him the day you left. I hope Dad also forgot why we fought, because he’s the only person that can help me now. I guess I’ll find out once I reach the Solstice.
“Is someone sitting here?” asks a young boy that has just reached your row, startling you out of your rumination. The boy is possibly fifteen years old. He has sharp black hair falling past his skinny eyebrows and melon-glow skin that happens to be covered in bruises. You stare at the new stranger before remembering his question.
“Oh, no, you can sit.” You move closer to the window to convey the amount of space the stranger has to sit. The young boy loudly plops down next to you.
“Thanks. My name’s Kilo, what’s yours?”
You place your hand in front of Kilo and introduce yourself. “Icarus. Icarus Holmes.”
Kilo quickly shakes your hand and grins. “That’s a cool name. That’s Greek, right?”
You instinctively smile and confirm Kilo’s question with a simple nod. You’ve had this conversation before, and you’re not eager to have it again. The problem you have with your name isn’t its uniqueness, but its meaning. Every time you must explain the origin of your name to someone, you’re forced to recite the tale of Icarus and Daedalus. A story in which the protagonist, Icarus, dies because of his overly ambitious attempt at flight. The story is always interesting, but you just don’t like the connotation. The name implies you’re destined to fail because of your lack of foresight. It can’t be understood why your parents gave you such a strange name: all you know is that it was very rude of them.
“I like your name too. Is that Italian?” The name obviously isn’t, but it’s the only hope of diverting the flow of the conversation in your favor.
“It’s metric,” he replies. You laugh at Kilo’s joke before the noise of the bus’s engine interrupts your follow-up. “Looks like we’re about to go,” he says. “Better be quiet.”
You want to ask Kilo why that is, but decide to wait until your arrival at the Solstice. The engine groans again and the bus slowly starts to move. The outside world slowly changes from a sunny evening to a starless night as the bus pulls into the cave. A string of work lights illuminate the entrance. These lights remain twenty-feet away from each other and extend all throughout the tunnel ahead, while a pitch of black claims the space between them. Moving forward into the dark, Kilo drifts in and out of visibility beside you, in time with the rhythm of moving shadows that come and go with the motion of the bus.
After passing something around the thirtieth work light, Kilo nudges your side. You turn to him and see him pointing out the window, trying to show something. From your seat, a moving shadow comes closer into view just outside the window. It can’t be known what is making the shadow, just that it moves back and forth like a pendulum. Passing two more work lights you see the shadow’s curious source: standing outside of the bus, a small chimpanzee sways from side to side while slapping an electric bass. You stare at this odd sight for as long as your angle allows.
After the musical primate passes from view you turn to Kilo, who, along with many other people, stares out a window across the aisle. You crane your head to see what he sees, expecting perhaps another simian musician, but instead find large painting. It’s a phenomenal piece, one you know you’ve seen before. You concentrate to find the name of the painting or painter in your mind. With several failed attempts guessed and nixed, you find the correct name: The Artist's Garden in Argenteuil, by Monet. The pleasure gained from finding the name of the work quickly passes as you realize the gravity of this situation: one of Monet’s paintings is in a cave. As a fellow painter, a compulsion is felt to reach out and save the work, but the feeling is forgotten when viewing the next great travesty: slowly passing your window is another painting, The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum, by Vincent van Gogh. The masterpiece sits lazily for your admiration, unaware of its own grandeur. You press your face to the bus window as more and more artworks pass. The bohemian drive-thru museum holds a random collection of paintings, photos, and sculptures. None of the works are organized by style or period: it is just a chaotic collection of artistic greatness from the western world. The tragic feeling you had before yields to curiosity. Pieces come and go in an offensively casual manner. The curators of this cave didn’t care about style, presentation, or even the preservation of the artworks. Several of the works hang lopsided, and a couple of the Basquiats are held up with duct tape.
With four miles of great works gone, you see light growing in the windshield, signaling the approaching end of the tunnel. For the sake of symmetry, another chimpanzee, this one playing a harp, stands ahead of the exit. You wonder if it’s appropriate to talk again, wanting to ask Kilo why you rode through a cave full of artwork, why the cave contains chimpanzees, how anyone can train chimps to play music that well, and other questions about your journey that don’t directly reference the chimpanzees. Pushing through the cave another grand sight is found. One so big and powerful it distracts from the previous thoughts queried.
Out of the cave the bus appears to have entered a large underground train station, with marble pillars joined to shimmering black stalactites hanging from a vastly high cavern ceiling.
As the bus proceeds along its pillar-lined path, the gigantic train comes into full view. Sitting in the center of the cave, the locomotive has at least twice the width of a standard train and looks to be the longest you’ve ever seen. Before you, the caboose exudes an energy that should only be found in imperial war machines. Enormous nozzles protrude out of the last car of the monstrous train, and black metal veins roll across the sides. Beneath the nozzles and the lights is a narrow entrance for the bus. The entrance is pitch black making it impossible to see through. The bus enters the small compartment. Once inside the engine stops, initiating your internal dialogue.
For several minutes you sit in darkness. What’s going on? The passengers haven’t made a noise since entering the cave. I wonder when we’re allowed to speak again. This continues until you start to hear the clap of footsteps in synchronized running in unison all throughout the train. Their rhythm produces a strange, humming energy. As the patter becomes closer, tiny bulbs of light activate outside of your window. Slowly these illuminate the car’s interior and you see what look like hundreds of buses all throughout the train, all filled to the brim with people. Besides your bus sits another with an entire crew of strangers inside. From your window, you see a young girl. She waves and then points enigmatically down the narrow aisle separating your vehicles, where you see the source of the noise: between the buses, young men run in a military line. The line breaks away, leaving a pair of runners posted at the front and end of every bus they pass. With varying shades of honey-light skin and black hair, you suspect the runners might be Aboriginal peoples or Native Americans.
This isn’t strange: you’ve seen Native Americans before. But none of them had ever had samurai swords. Standing diligently, the young men closest to your window look well-trained in the way of the sword. Both wear skinny coal-black jeans with slits cut indiscriminately across the thighs. From the waist of their shredded pants hang sheathed katanas. The sheathes are black, like the jeans, but shine with a menacing shade resulting from their obvious craftsmanship. One of these swordsmen even brandishes a small gun tucked beneath the sheath of his katanas: an accessory and an accolade, no doubt.
Your mind stalls for a moment, dumbfounded at the sight of Native American samurai. I mean, yeah why not? It could happen. They share some—no, what am I thinking, there’s no way. But there it is. Some Native American men with samurai swords… that’s damn impressive.
The men maintain their perfect posture along their posts even through the jolting explosion that starts the engine of the train. Everyone one aboard feels the engine’s violent rumble. The force placed on you grows from low- to mid-strength as the train suddenly increases its velocity. Besides the rumble of the incredible explosions propelling the train, you feel a low humming rise through your seat from the wheels rippling along a track now rising at a noticeable incline, but these become indiscernible as the engine kicks into its next stage and the train juts forward with enough force to shove everyone deeper into their seats. Though you can’t imagine what powers this bizarre locomotive, nonetheless it reaches even greater speeds, rocking the entire train-car from side to side before finally the force on your body slowly decreases, the rumbling of the engine feels less drastic, and the train has reached some equilibrium: wherever it’s traveling, it has just found its coasting velocity.
Despite the changes in movement, you once more find yourself fascinated with the swordsmen. Ideas on the cultural sourcing of these men fly around the mind. Besides their out-of-place swords and their skinny jeans, half of the swordsmen—or soldiers, or warriors—sport white button-down shirts with rolled-up sleeves and skinny black ties. Others wear high-top sneakers, or wingtip shoes with spats. They’re like employees in a bizarre office where men are warriors and accountants.
Noticing how the warriors hold your attention, Kilo nudges you with his elbow. Leaning in, he whispers, “Neo-Natives.” At first, it still seems inherently unbelievable that a people with such a name should even exist. But having a name to associate with the tribe somehow made their presence less curious: whatever their faction desires, it’s enough for now just to know they have an interest in guarding the train. You nod in thanks to Kilo and lean back in your seat.
While none of this makes any sense, no one has yet broken the social prescription of silence. Afraid of the reaction you might get for asking a follow-up question, you instead consider your situation. I’m in a bus, that’s in a train being guarded by Native American samurai. For the life of me, I don’t have the slightest clue as to where I am. I should have asked Kilo what country we’re in the minute we met. Damn.
Lamenting your past actions, you suddenly hear the familiar bang of a gun. Through your bus’s windshield, you see four young people in tight shirts, baggy jeans, and flashy bandanas fire on the buses beside you and the soldiers meant to protect it. With their surprise attack, the hip assailants kill the four swordsmen at the front of yours and your waving neighbor’s bus. Seeing the attack, the remaining guards near your bus roll into action. Swinging broadly the guards kill two gunmen instantly. Strips of their blood fly onto windows.
Through the blood-stained window the battle can be seen continuing. The two gunmen seeing their partners killed pushback for space and fire while separating across the aisle. In their retreat, they each take out a single warrior, but more converge on your bus from throughout the train in order to end the attack. Sprinting forward, one runs in front of the other to block incoming bullets. Sacrificing himself, the blocking samurai allows the other to vault off of him into the air while taking bullets to the arm and knee from one of the shooters. He falls in misery as his tribesman soars in the sky with his katana drawn. The tactic proves too surprising for the gunman, who shoots wildly at the swordsman in flight, even after running out of bullets to shoot. Screaming the war cry that has scared the souls of both colonizing settlers and renegade ronin, the Native samurai swings down on the temple of a gunmen, killing him with a single stroke. A woman in the bus gasps at the sight.
With a powerful side-step, he turns his katana in the direction of the other shooter as he withdraws it from the skull of the dead gunman, thrusting a rush of blood into his enemy’s eyes from the other side of aisle. Now blinded with his comrade’s blood, the gunman falls against your bus as he fumbles to reload his weapon. The last Native samurai wipes his enemy’s blood on his tie menacingly while slowly advancing on his prey. Robbed of his sight, the gunman can only fumble pathetically. He shoves two bullets into his revolver just as the swordsman swings and fires once before his head is taken from its post. Wherever he was aiming before he died does not matter: the Neo-Native remains unharmed.
The aisle quivers with ring of the final gunshots and death. Taking his time to clean and sheath his blade, the cool samurai breathes a long sigh and moves towards a fallen brother. Attempting to help the sole surviving warrior, the samurai suddenly loses his grace, slipping and falling against the force of wind rushing into the vacuum behind him, and behind you. The door through which your bus entered has opened; you look out the bus’s back window and see a howling white void drawing everything toward itself, including the Native samurai. Scraping at the floor, he finds no foothold, and sinks backwards into the white of the open entrance along with the sliding dead bodies of his compatriots and enemies.
After their quick departure, the bus quickly starts to skid back. Closer and closer it skids towards the light. People onboard have begun to rush to the front of the bus in panic. Wanting to do the same, you turn to Kilo to move. He points at something past a window. Following his direction, you see through a window just two seats behind. Through it, you see a large control panel with a wide dent in its center. Clearly subjected to the gunman’s sabotage, you can only assume the control panel operates the rear door.
If the panel doesn’t get reset, everyone on the bus will fall out of the train. Shaking your head at the possibility, you panic. You hyperventilate and look around as more and more passengers attempt to flee the bus. At this rate, there are too many aboard to hope for everyone to escape. The bus skids back even more. These people are going to die if they don’t get off this bus. And even if they do I don’t think they’ll fair better than those men. The bus slides back again: you see the control panel now right outside your window. With the mechanism in view, you feel courage swells inside you. I need to do this. I can do this. Inhaling sharply, you finally break the prohibition of silence, screaming with your entirety. The excitement of the roar clears your fear, and with a quick snap, you pull your window down. Pushing Kilo back, you give yourself room to jump out of the window. Like an arrow you fly, landing three feet from the control panel. With the power of your forced heroism, you burst up off the floor and plunge quickly into the white.
The force of the wind was that drastic. There was quite literally nothing you could have done to escape it outside of the bus.
Through the white you fall and fall, and soon realize you are miles in the air. The train is nowhere in sight. Only the quickly-approaching yellow fields below with large puddles of red can be seen, and that’s not good at all. Time slows down as you fall toward your death, allowing your life to flash before your eyes. In the few seconds you have left, you see everything you’ve ever lived through, and some things you’re not sure you’ve lived through. Moments of artistry, Chicago, and Timur’s mansion flash before your eyes, as do other unknown moments: visions of you cradling a baby, a red floating whale, watching your father holding a yellow dress, and studying textbooks that come before you with an unexplained but nonetheless undeniable emotional relevance.
Though you want to contemplate these memories, and to interrogate each one to determine its authenticity, you have only the span of a moment to regard them before the world smashes upward. Just before impact, you see the last of the Native samurai and their victims. The dead men have landed in the yellow grass, highlighting the serendipitous situation that is your approaching spot of red on Earth. With a splat, you flop into a thin puddle. It is wet, red, and tastes like nickels. Everything goes to black. You pass out or die.
(go to Fourteen on page.)