THE FUTURENESS Ch16: Never Anything To Do In This Town

Music by Tony Anderson

“Where do they actually go?” Methyl said. “Particles of memory.”

Francesca had brought us to a clearing ten minutes south of the Golden Apple. As the sun set, Methyl produced a cannabis inhaler from her coveralls. It worked somehow through a pump, like a perfume atomizer, not on a battery. Nothing, she said, that could spark her up. It wasn’t a surprise to her, she said, that her thoughts went like an aerosol through her head, continually suspended for all her missed time behind the Golden Apple.

I tried the atomizer.

“Memories don’t go anywhere,” I said. “Where do they have to go? Just a smaller of chance of them coming around again. Remembering a memory coming around again.”

“But you can be wrong. It didn’t come around again right, so maybe that’s not what you’re saying.”

“Smaller chance, bigger chance of coming around to where? Study hard, memorize, get hit in the guts by a memory, whatever. It’s chance that you’ll see it again.”

Methyl shook her inhaler but didn’t use it. “You’re a probability bro.”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t get to choose your label.”

“Who says?”

“Girls. While you were making rules for inanimate stuff, like balls on the playground, lines of code, whatever.”

“Money.”

“That one.”

“Have you ever had a boyfriend, girlfriend?”

“Not one I can’t walk away from in under ten minutes. I’m on a CIA memoir kick right now.”

“I feel like I’m regressing. I was a business creative guy, kicking along. Suddenly, blow me up in the Aventura Mall, then hospital recovery, old school friend trillionaire slinks in, weirdo drug, me not knowing what’s going on, feeling strange all the time, hallucinations, flammable teenagers blowing up, Felix fucking cats in my back.”

“Your story lacks pluses.”

“It damn does.”

“I have a plus. What if, and here I can see you’re not impressed by eternity, either so what if this is about leaving eternity behind for something better?”

“Like Italian for adventure.”

“That makes no sense, but okay. I told you, you’re lucky.”

“What is this lucky stuff? What do I get to do with my human calculator backbone? And I don’t buy, not this living forever thing. And I’m tired of watching the world end over your shoulder, when obviously you’re not seeing anything like what I am—”

“Slow down. Maybe there’s an interaction going on with something inside you. Let’s get some air.”

Francesca dutifully opened her doors. We stepped out into the blood orange sun and smelled the dust and heard the cicadas, and I heard the sky slowly splitting open. The cooling evening air felt fine, but the sunset was warfare.

“Did you record that video they made of your back?”

“I’m sure we have it.”

Sì, Rich, I have it. Playing…

Francesca displayed on my phone her capture of Gabby’s camera as it panned and searched my back for the location of my stupid end.

“There,” Methyl said.

“Francesca, pay attention to the crystals.”

Sì. They sparkle, some of them. Aventurescence, seen in some crystals, gemstones. Aventurine gemstones. Something inside. Spinel inclusions, possibly.

“It’s like a starry sky,” I said.

Aventurine is Italian for adventurers.

“And now, presented to you,” Methyl said, “The Aventura Outlet Mall and Aventurescence in the crystals in your back. Neat. And your favorite cat encoded in some brutal way that was certainly not present on you before Christmas Eve-Eve.”

“Year of Our Lord,” I said.

“Year of some shit,” said Methyl.

“A year is shit.”

“There was never anything to do around here until you came.”

“I told you, I’ve always been here,” I said.

She only snapped her fingers.

“We have to get back to Xavier, I’m afraid,” I said.

“We, Kemosabe?”

A Spaghetti Western. Qual è la probabilità?

Everything hallucinates. Francesca had killed the thread.

“Now, the thing is, I have to, it’s time that I have to—”

“You have something to tell your car. Right?” Methyl said.

“Francesca,” I said.

I got back in, waited for Methyl to pump once more her inhaler, leaned back. Feeling my weight, Francesca reclined my seat a few degrees. Methyl got in.

“Do you still have the photo of the woman who drove you before me?” I asked.

Methyl looked at me.

On Francesca’s dash screen came the woman I’d last seen when I was fifteen years old, half my age, half my life ago. Yesterday.

“What’s going on?” Methyl said.

Sì, Rich, why are you asking me for her?

“I lied to you,” I said. “When I was fifteen. Remember? After the crash.”

“This is what,” Methyl said.

Sì...?

“I wanted you for myself,” I said.

Flecks of fire danced above her dashboard, but neither Francesca nor Methyl could see them. I’d not adjusted to seeing Methyl’s face lit only by the interior lights while around her the world blazed. I was alone with the insane sky.

“Your brakes were bad. You were right.”

She was running drugs that night, no? And my phony license plates?

“Okay,” Methyl said. She leaned forward to grab her bag lying by her feet on the floorboard when a cigarette lighter tumbled from her shirt pocket onto her seat.

“What the fuck is that?”

“Mine,” she said.

“Most prized possession,” I said.

“Yeah, after I gave you my other one, and now that you’re copping to something that I don’t want to know about, this is my—"

“What are you doing with a lighter easy access?”

“There’s no fuel in it.”

“Does it spark?”

“Are you in an abusive love affair with your car?”

Rich, what, my brakes?

“I knew you were so American,” Methyl said.

“Bad brakes,” I told Francesca.

Bad brakes?

“In a rush.”

Mio Dio, chi sei tu?

“I don’t know right now. I don’t know who I am right now.”

“But you did something,” Methyl said.

“I told her,” I started to say to Methyl and stopped, turned to the dash, and said, “I lied but it didn’t work. Now I’m disabling the re-route I put on you.”

I set her free of my dad’s hack and waited.

The dash screen turned on. It had fallen dark in the car, though the sky glowed. The screen had come to life but showed nothing. As I leaned toward it, I felt Methyl doing the same and felt her feeling us both. We leaned back.

“What are we looking at here.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

An amber flash on the left side of the screen. I winced slightly, then again came the light, a blinker, we were watching Francesca’s dashcam I immediately recognized. She was running alone at night, using her left turn indicator but not her headlights.

I am not a crappy Friday afternoon build! I am a Tuesday build, okay?

“Yes, I know that about you, Francesca.”

You run into a comms pole at fifty-seven miles per hour, Rich, sì? Talk to pimple-face kid for three nights, how you like it? You see?

On the dash screen her headlights beamed out into a cemetery, rows of headstones thrown into sharp shadows by Francesca’s halogens. On screen, she rolled down a narrow road past mausoleums and spires to stop at a T intersection. Slowly she nosed toward a three-foot-tall marker.

“Janessa Perez 2009-2030” read the stone under Francesca’s beams.

“I don’t know what happened to her.”

The voice was mine, but tinny, high-pitched, nasal. Young.

“Was that…” Methyl said.

“Afraid so,” I said.

Francesca’s lights backed slowly away from the gravestone on the screen. Janessa’s photo dissolved over the footage. My fifteen-year-old’s voice came again.

“She had a fake license plate. It was her brakes. They were shot. She was running from the cops. Don’t you believe me?”

“Okay,” I said to Francesca.

Si, Rich. It’s okay now. Rich thinks his papa makes the best hacks. It’s okay. You’re still a boy sometimes.

“When?”

Seven years ago. It doesn’t matter. I knew you then, I know you now, too.

I leaned back again, and again Francesca felt it and lowered my seat. This time, it bothered me.

“We cannot do this on our own,” I said, both to my car and Methyl.

No.

“What even is this,” Methyl said.

We go see Xavier, Francesca said. And please, Rich, take away her lighter.

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