3: To Touch Without the Necessity of Touching

If the next elevator had opened on an empty shaft, Swan would have happily thrown himself into it. The elevator arrived in the usual way however, and he returned to Neg 12 listening to his newly dark and dismal personal music.

Back in his kitchen, he spread some of the separately wrapped buns across the counter. He shut off the reflecto and the standard image of rippling clouds replaced his sickly face. Real life was difficult and he wanted nothing to do with it. He managed to open several wrappers, bit off part of a bun and began to chew.

The girl who’d walked over him stimulated a number of thoughts. There was something fateful about their meeting. He’d felt a kinship with her and at the same time a gulf. His initial urge had been to go to her and help her, and that had made his inability to speak to her even more demoralizing. But what could he have said? What could he have done? He was in no position to help a real person. If he’d done any of the things he imagined himself doing—if he’d touched her arm, say—she would have pushed him away. She would have accused him of harassing her, or worse, of trying to assault her. No one was allowed to place hands on another person without invitation. Swan hated interpersonal crimes. He hated to think about them and, fortunately, in recent years they’d all but been eliminated. The invention of the Cloudscape had made it possible for people to touch without the necessity of touching. It was only one of the many ways technology had improved relationships. This made him wonder if his own desire to help the girl was real or artificial, and he wondered if he was projecting a false idea onto her—the idea that she was lonely and desired contact. After all, she could create any sort of companion for herself in the Cloudscape, just like anyone…. Maybe Swan had decided the girl was lonely and unhappy just because he, for reasons he didn’t understand, was lonely and unhappy.

He took a breath. The air in his apartment was fetid. A picture arose in his mind. He imagined the girl lying naked in the semi darkness of her room. She was on the floor, on her side. She was clutching her knees to her chest. Her glossy bangs had parted in such a way that he could just see her mouth. He watched her run the tip of her tongue slowly around the oval of her lips. Swan moved closer and closer. The opening was black and round, delineated by glistening red lipstick.

He pushed in another bun.

There once were people who said the Cloudscape was the end of imagination. It was ridiculous to think this now, since the Cloudscape had opened up the greatest vistas of imagination ever known. It was true there’d been a mental shift, and a historical change had come with it. Imagination, once the accidental byproduct of solitary daydreaming, was now nearly always a collective act. But the clarity with which Swan imagined the girl proved that, unaided, he was capable of forming his own private and secretive mental images. Swan’s brain had a high level of elasticity. He considered this trait to be rare and something he was secretly proud of. He felt unique in his ability to imagine anything in the world, or even outside it, without technological assistance and, in this case, he enjoyed the act of fantasizing about this girl. He enjoyed how vivid his mental picture of her could be. He enjoyed the feeling of mystery that hovered around her and, thinking this, he was led again to wonder who she was. Was she involved with religion for example? So many were. As the number of living people decreased, it seemed that religiousness increased. He saw them, with symbols painted on their faces, crowding into the elevators on their way to their meetings. Swan thought faces brimming with piety were interesting, though he personally believed religion was a form of delusion. After all, God—itself, herself, emself, himself, perself, themself, whatever term you wished to use—was just another thing the collective imagination was capable of creating in the Cloudscape. A religious person might argue that, no, their god is ineffable and too profound to emerge out of social modeling. But that was just a way of saying that the members of a religion were incapable of discovering god by themselves, that they required a specialist, a priest or a medium, or the visions of some long-dead artist. Once you reached that point, it seemed to Swan, it was time to admit the failure of the whole enterprise. Swan was very capable of cultivating his own illusions.

If only he’d been able to talk to that girl about this interesting subject!

He’d been afraid to speak to her for all the obvious reasons: He didn’t know what to say, real persons terrified him, an unprepared-for interaction might trigger a panic attack, etcetera, etcetera. With Ting Ting it was different. He’d simply taken her hand and pulled her against his body. He remembered the soft and pliant sensation of her breasts as they pressed against him. He felt her pubic bone push into him too. The act of kissing had made him feel natural and masculine. Soon, he would rejoin her on the high arched bridge, mid-kiss, and his life would move on. Next time he’d be sure to wear the Genitron.

Deep and meaningful experiences happened to Swan with a sort of inevitability in the Cloudscape. They flowed from his desires and his desires flowed into them. There was a direct line to his fulfillment. He could express his true nature and achieve all the things he wanted to achieve.

In the Cloudscape everything was easy. He thought about this as he swallowed more of the masticated pulp.

Ting Ting was only a cypher. She was a projection of his longing. Swan leaned on his kitchen counter as he considered this, observing the billowing clouds as he munched. To his surprise, he was no longer hungry. He even felt slightly ill. In a way, he was quite an immature person. He might even go so far as to say he was naive and spoiled. He was like a young prince locked in a palace with everything at his fingertips. The prince loved his MoodBuns and consumed them whenever he wanted. He could subsist exclusively on MoodBuns for weeks at a time. What did it matter if he became sick and his teeth rotted out? Of course teeth could not rot—oral bacteria were extinct—but now he had sores on his tongue that came from thrusting it in the Orfak. And he’d noticed that his skin was turning gray. It was a fossil sort of gray, he thought. Very soon it would sag like rubber.

“Reflecto,” he said out loud.

His sickly face stared back at him again. He slit the wrappers of the remaining buns scattered about the countertop and put one in his mouth. This one was called CocoKuji—whale meat flavor infused with coconut. It tasted rich and murky, a taste no human being had experienced before its recent invention. Was this also an illusion? CocoKuji was made from a petrochemical compound. Chemicals were real and could mimic any natural flavor. But how did anyone know the flavor of an extinct animal? Maybe there was someone. Maybe there was a consultant, a very old human who remembered having eaten this creature—a last living person who’d tasted the meat of a whale. It was like the last person who spoke a language, surrounded by linguists who hung on every word. This is the word for daddy. This is the word for mommy. What is mommy? What is daddy? Please speak directly into the microphone. Everything had surged forwards. The taste of whale was now infused with the taste of coconut. Coconut was also extinct but Swan remembered its flavor at least. He remembered eating coconut candy. Mommy gave it to him and there’d been a game of keeping it secret because his daddy disapproved of children eating sweets. Mommy held him close from behind and pushed candies into his pockets. She reached into his overalls with her fingertips, her tickles coinciding with her kisses to his neck, to his cheek, his ear. She nuzzled him, his pockets filled up with candy, and he wiggled away in childish ecstasy. That’s when she’d bring her finger to her lips in the gesture of keeping a secret. Daddy, in the next room reading, would be angry if he discovered Swan was eating candy.

Swan couldn’t remember exactly how his daddy had looked. He was away from the house for weeks at a time at his job supervising the decapitations of bituminous mountains. Swan remembered him as a large man, sort of a mountain himself. He’d sit at the table, his face illuminated by his phone. He was reading, studying, sweeping his finger across a tiny screen. If Swan came close, he’d put his hand on Swan’s head or on his shoulder without ever removing his eyes from the messages that engaged him.

Daddy was tired and busy. He was unable to resist the news of all the unraveling disasters that closed in on his little family. Virus storms, extinctions, food shortages, unstoppable waves of migrants who poured across his bright and tiny maps. These events affected all of them equally, but Mommy preferred to ignore them. Or, at least, she didn’t let on that she paid much attention. Daddy read from his phone at night and exited early in the morning. Then, one day, he stopped returning home.

It frightened Swan to see the changes that came over Mommy then, her constant fretting and irritation with everything. Their little games no longer held any interest for her. She was lifeless and passive and rarely got up from her bed. Swan ate whatever he could find; stuff that came in tubes and boxes. He watched the same vids over and over. He played on his screens. Days went by during which Mommy barely spoke.

The disappearance of Daddy was the beginning of the era of darkness that continued to the present moment. Before that, the world had been different; filled with light and kindness. It was like an ancient historical epoch—the Bright Ages—when his little family lived happily together.

Swan would whine when he felt hungry. The time had arrived when everything was plentiful except food, and what food there was made people sick. Mommy, who had recovered somewhat from the loss of her husband, now was tormented by a famished child. In order to deflect Swan’s craving she bought him toys. What he liked most were dolls. He liked the macho warriors, but he also very much liked plucky sexy girls. He loved these little heroines with their outfits, their gowns and guns and swords. Astrea, with her purple thong and silver wings, was his favorite. He would hold her close and examine every minute part of her body in the pixel light. Also Mitsu, in her silver shorts, swinging a crystal mace. Ayami had swirling hair behind which she could become invisible. Shi Lin strode forward in yellow silk pajamas and chi power emanated from her fingertips. Sen was the tall intergalactic warrior with her legs spread wide, her pelvis thrust forward, her eyes filled with daring. It was so real, the adventures Swan conjured, when he used his little dolls to understand everything.

Mommy encouraged his fantasies. The dramas he enacted helped to keep the hungry boy occupied. “Rika needs love,” she’d say, collaborating with him on a story. “You know every girl and boy wants to kiss and hug, Darling. And Zardoz is in the forest. He’s searching. He’s searching for his lover…. But it’s terribly dark. He can hear a monster breathing somewhere close. He’s afraid but still he searches…for…her!” Mommy would point to one of his dollies on the floor.

“Rika!” Swan cried.

“Help Zardoz find Rika, Darling!”

Swan had been six, or thereabouts. One morning they stuffed Mommy’s things into her big black trunk, and Swan’s toys and clothes into a nearly-as-big suitcase with wheels. Then, they dragged them to a place where a bus was waiting. It was part of a caravan of Numbered people being transferred to the city. Only the Numbered were allowed to board the buses, only natural citizens who’d never spent time in Fugee status. Swan watched the sandy mountains and sunburnt plains slide past the windows. They finally got to the city in the middle of the night. He wanted to sleep, but Mommy made him pull his heavy suitcase toward the bright and filthy terminal.

The room they were assigned to was in the outskirts near the ocean. It was on the second floor of a building he remembered for having sparkles on its ceilings. It was dark inside, since Mommy kept the heavy curtains pulled. This was before digital sapphire had even been invented and the walls were blank and dirty. A big screen glowed from the corner like an altar. Dolls and doll accessories were strewn across the floor. There was just the one bed and an overstuffed chair where Mommy sat and watched over him in her fleecy maroon robe; a grand milky queen with a big brown mole on her neck. Sometimes she slept as he played, inventing more and more elaborate stories. Of course they were love stories. Every story had a love affair inside it. Vitalus and Mimi. Contessa and Zardoz. Sleepycat and Erektor. Most of the stories involved Astrea in some aspect. She was the most splendid. He loved to dress her in her finery, and Mommy managed to acquire every possible outfit for her; the cutest underthings, the slinkiest bras and stockings. There were garter belts with sheaths for knives and holsters with silver guns. Astrea’s true weapon was the sword of vengeance with a feathery pink sash wrapped around its hilt.

Swan missed Astrea. She’d died a terrible death. All he had left was her head and one pretty foot lodged inside its slipper. He kept these body parts in a purple box wrapped with a dozen elastobands, unopened for several years. He missed Astrea even more than he did his mommy.

Swan pushed the uneaten buns away and stepped into his room where the clouds immediately brightened. He cleared a place for his feet and, with one gesture, made a rough square with his index finger on the wall. The cloud forms that had billowed across the entirety of his walls and ceiling were now confined within it. The rest of the room went dark.

“Wormee,” he said aloud. The Wormee logo appeared in the center of the misshapen rectangle.

“Cumulus Direc—” Before he’d finished speaking, it flashed into place.

It surprised him that there was only one psychiatrist in his building. Dr Escobar, Psychotherapist & Life Coach, MA, BSc. As he stared at this listing, the hyper-dimensional face of a chubby woman with buzz cut hair filled the crooked box. Her whispery voice, sounding as if she was speaking to him privately, was projected into Swan’s left ear.

“Anxiety? Hair Pulling? Irritable Bowels? Panic Attacks? Phobias? Self Image Difficulties? Shyness? Impotence? Stress? Teeth Gnashing…? Come! Come to my office. Together, we’ll look your demons in the eye. And together, we’ll fling them out.”

The close-up of her face dissolved into a wider view. Now she stood surrounded by a montage of leafy plants as the voice-over went on: “Consultations are in-person only. Neg twenty-four, Apartment 3. My door is always open.”

Swan got out of his FeelgoodSuit and laid its components carefully on the bed. He found his best gray pants wadded in a box of thermocouples. He tore a disposable shirt off the roll. He could depilate his facial hair later. Right now he was in a hurry. There were things he needed to know. He needed to know if it was abnormal to feel the way he felt. He needed to know if his gigantic unhappiness was a type of illness. He had an acute desire to tell this doctor all about himself. He wanted to tell her about his mommy. He wanted to tell her about his fantasies. He wanted to tell her how depressed he was, how he longed for words of guidance. He very much wanted to know if this feeling, the feeling he might die at any moment, was real or just an illusion that would pass away.

For the first time that day he got Elevator 1. Elevator 1 was the taciturn one.

“Floor?” it asked him.

“Neg 33,” Swan said.