Authors: Matthew Revert
Joyful tears climb Ingrid. Each seeks their passage out. Manifesting as irritation in the eyes before finding their escape and traveling downward. Exploring the length of her nose and dripping like kisses upon the newborn. Ingrid shakes with emotion. Desperate to cradle the baby in crossed arms, but terrified of causing harm. Instead she brushes her fingers over its innocent face. The texture of the wool in this moment will never be forgotten. Lowered lips press down on its belly. Her ear replaces the lips and listens to imagined heartbeats. Through jittering seizures of excitement, Ingrid’s hands lift the new life.
Ingrid supports the baby’s weight and draws it toward her, pressing it into her chest, feeding it with her heartbeat. Understanding her life is bound by this new addition, too overwhelming to describe. This moment exists for no one but the two. Rollo cannot be introduced yet. He must remain outside of this experience until the baby understands Ingrid as his mother. There is too much Ingrid wants to feel before outsiders are permitted to interfere. Since the idea of the baby found form within her, the moment of birth is one Ingrid has afforded a great deal of importance to. Significance can be difficult to experience, and when one does, it must be held in place and experienced fully.
…
The numbers are ticking in frenzied insect clicks. Rollo snaps away from his abjection and watches the display. His heart quickens to match the barrage of clicks and feeds his body with panic. A final change has occurred. A change too powerful for the numbers to translate. Rollo knows the chaos of these numbers means the baby has arrived. Why has he not been told? What properties of the fort have altered to accommodate this new addition? How does it know?
…
The darkness of this night belongs to Ingrid and her child. In the limbo between wake and sleep, she melts into the bed. The baby rests facedown on her chest, moving up and down in tandem with the slow breath of contentment. Sleep does not have a place in this moment. Not for Ingrid. This is the first night between the two and it must be experienced. Remembered. Drawn out in caramel trails that refuse to break.
“I am your mother. You are my child. We are separate but we are one. I beat the heart you cannot. I see that which your eyes cannot. I hear your voice where no sound exists. I hear what you long to hear. I pass what you need through my body and give it to you in untold abundance. You are the enormity of me. The enormity that alone, I cannot be. Thank you for being. Thank you for allowing my hand to guide yours.”
She fights the sleep that arrives, understanding the fight cannot last. Understanding she is now sleeping for him.
Rollo can hear the shifting texture of Ingrid’s thoughts. New characteristics and shapes. He focuses his attention toward them. Wishing he could comprehend them. Shake them from their wordlessness. Isolation knows its own character as such, and reminds the isolated of that character with every movement of mind.
“The baby does not belong to you. The baby belongs to the baby. We are here to protect the baby. Guide the baby. Do not keep it from me. Allow me to feel what you feel in this moment. Allow the baby to know me. To understand I mean it no harm. Please let me in. Please let me in. You cannot do this.”
9.
“There is someone you need to meet.”
Ingrid appears calm, standing over Rollo slumped before the numbers. Sleep has remained outside of possibility, floating in a mass everywhere but inside. His glazed eyes consider Ingrid’s presence, working to process the visual information and feed it toward floundering comprehension. Her persistent form feeds neurons, assembling sense data.
Rollo’s awareness of Ingrid in the flesh disassembles elements of paranoia that have been attacking him. He knows why she stands before him.
“The baby?”
“Yes. He is ready.”
The ‘he’ pronoun is absorbed. Gender has been decided in direct opposition to Rollo’s desire. Their baby should be a she. A son makes very little sense, contradicting a natural inclination he cannot parse. He feels compelled to label it a ‘she.’ He wonders if such an act may confuse the child’s identity. Blame forms in a growing stockpile he will direct at Ingrid when its power is sufficient.
“Take me to it.”
Ingrid turns to leave, waiting for Rollo to stand. The asymmetric position of his body draped before the computer’s numbers have stretched his ligaments and tendons to match the position. The nerves in Rollo’s back send pain signals throughout his body, stiffening the muscles, slowing movement. Joints crack as he moves toward Ingrid who, without looking, begins the journey toward the Prefrontal Chamber. Each of Rollo’s steps produces a pop, audible enough for Ingrid to hear. She turns and commands quiet with a finger against her lips.
“He is sleeping.”
Rollo sends signals to the pain, imploring it to lose its volume. It shifts in response and floods the joints with heat, loosening and soothing. His introduction to the baby cannot disturb it. Ingrid has already formed an initial bond. A bond deprived of Rollo, who is nothing more than a stranger. An interloper seeking to disrupt a recently born dynamic.
…
The Prefrontal Chamber is caliginous, searching for illumination it cannot find. Waning moss glow is fading. Silhouettes are dying.
“I cannot see. Why is there no light?”
Rollo shuffles forward with outstretched arms searching for obstructions to avoid.
“The baby is sleeping. It needs the dark to sleep.”
He stumbles into a chair and lowers himself down to escape the directionless sense of falling.
“I want to see the baby.”
The sound of Ingrid’s movements suggest ease. Her feet move forward without hesitation somewhere toward the middle of the chamber.
“Follow my voice. I am with the baby.”
Her voice is a malicious whisper trying to set the example she wishes Rollo’s voice to follow. Rollo falls forward, his knees finding the ground. He crawls toward the whisper.
“Where are you?”
“Over here.”
His direction alters slightly and he continues to crawl. It seems he should have reached her by now. Distance is mocking him. Before he opens his mouth again to seek guidance, he feels a warm hand clasp his wrist. The sensation startles him. He inhales breaths intended to calm, but cannot find the volume of oxygen his lungs require.
“Stay still. He is right here.”
Rollo motions to reach toward the ‘here,’ but Ingrid’s hand prevents this desire finding form.
“I want to feel the baby.”
“You cannot see. You might hurt it. Wait until later.”
Being denied access to something sitting so close troubles Rollo. He is being asked to accept the baby’s existence on faith. Faith is anathema in his world of numbers and precaution. No empirical evidence pertaining to the baby has been brought forward. There is nothing to scrutinize, therefore there may be nothing. This possibility is considered until nothing suggests nothing. If their baby is nonexistent, what has Ingrid been doing here?
“You must allow me to verify the baby.”
Ingrid’s hand applies more pressure to Rollo’s wrist.
“When it has finished sleeping you may see it. You may hold it. Until then you must trust that it is here sleeping. Just as I have said.”
“Can I talk to it? Will you permit it access to my voice?”
In the silence that follows, Rollo’s ears search for sounds signaling the presence of another. His ears are not trained to hear what he needs them to hear. Beyond the escalating chatter of Ingrid’s tumbling thoughts, he hears nothing.
“You may talk to him, but you must whisper.”
…
Ingrid is hiding the truth. In the time before collecting Rollo, she hid the baby in the Frontal Chamber. A place she knows Rollo will not visit. Following their first night together as mother and son, a protective urgency instilled itself. Until Rollo’s attitude and demeanor around the baby is understood, he poses a risk to the child’s safety. Whether this risk is deliberate or the result of inexperience she cannot say. She hopes for the latter but lives in fear of the former. The child exists through her and she through it. Harm to one is harm to the other. Too much is at stake to allow precaution not to take precedence. In Rollo she lacks knowledge. He exists in the form of something recognizable, but nothing understood.
Ingrid understands her role in terms that diminish guilt. While hiding the baby there were only thoughts of right. The continuation of deceit is a continuation of protection. She knows the Frontal Chamber will be kind to the baby. Its walls know only the meaning of Ingrid, which is a meaning that nurtures the baby. Nestled among the secret letters, the baby is free to absorb Ingrid’s most personal terrain. The letters are a directory of psyche that will work toward teaching the baby what it means to experience life. She understands the baby does not possess life in a typical manner. It is incapable of thought so must be fed by Ingrid’s. These written thoughts will instill Ingrid’s bias in the child, and this will extend to perceptions of Rollo. It is unavoidable. She reasons that a child will absorb their parents’ bias regardless of any attempts to keep it from them. Perhaps the poor masking of latent bias is more detrimental. Parents’ words saying one thing and their eyes saying another. Confusion inspired by dishonesty yet conducted with honest intentions. Hiding the truth amplifies the truth, eventually drowning out the lies expressed in honor of the truth. A child should never learn their parents’ truth via their parents’ dishonesty.
Ingrid was comfortable sharing her truth with her child. In preventing Rollo immediate access to the child, the child would know, as Ingrid knows, that Rollo is not someone in which trust can be placed. Rollo must earn his child. He must prove himself and show he is comfortable with his role in the new dynamic. The child is not another fort for Rollo to control.
There is a suspicion growing inside Ingrid the materials selected by Rollo for the baby’s construction were not of uniform quality. Evidence supporting this suspicion is absent, but the feeling is there. When Ingrid’s hands caress the woolen surface of the baby’s skin, her tactility weeps. While this uneasy phenomenon occurs, Rollo cannot be regarded as anything other than dangerous.
…
Ingrid asks Rollo to stay out of the Prefrontal Chamber for a few more nights. He believes there is nothing to stay away from. His words were delivered to his supposed child, but it did not feel as though his words were heard in any sense. The words themselves, poorly chosen, conveyed nothing and have already been forgotten. This was not the introduction Rollo desired. He begins to hope the baby is a lie and, with the shift in desire, begins to feel it is not. That it lay before him the whole time, unmoved by its father’s voice. The fastest way to make something so is to wish it were not.
He leaves the Prefrontal Chamber as requested, not so much for Ingrid or the baby, but for himself. His troubled mind struggles to breathe in the chamber’s darkness. The moss has ebbed to nothing. His eyes have found nothing and strain with unsuccessful mydriasis. For the first time in memory, he wishes to escape the absence of light that, until now, he found great comfort in.
“When can I see the baby?”
He asks this question as obligation, still unsure there is anything to see.
“When I come for you next, bring more moss.”
Ingrid guides him out, pulling the blanket behind her, separating him from them. He feels a rush of ventilated air travel down the Medulla Shaft. The sensation relieves him. Light that once appeared dim now forces his eyes to squint in its perceived brightness. Time is spent observing the reality of his body. Understanding that in the presence of illumination it appears. Within the darkness of the Prefrontal Chamber, Rollo felt his erasure.
He moves to the Occipital Chamber, which appears brighter still, and gorges on the luminescent moss, burying his face within its damp softness, pressing his eyes into the light’s heart. It is torn into mush by famished teeth and sucked down in wads, satisfying both hunger and thirst. Sleep’s elusive cloud finds Rollo, covering him in its promise. He feels it envelop him, stealing the day. In a single breath, he slips quietly away, granted fleeting respite from the waking world of nightmares.
10.
Entry into an empty stomach. Food becomes bolus, which the body steals from. Saliva steals starch. Agitated acid steals protein. Bolus becomes chyme. Thick food product. Ravaged by the body’s need. Chyme continues beyond the stomach. Food becomes a contortion disconnected from its origin. It is dissected. Deconstructed. Parts within parts. What once grew, a life unto itself, is absorbed into the blood. Picked at. What is deemed unnecessary is discarded. Treated as waste. Expelled. The body remembers every process. The food becomes a part of the body’s memory. It travels the blood until it fades away. Everything individual is temporal. The chain of transitory process never ends. One will always find another. Life is process.
Rollo leeches strength from food and sleep. His body performs integral acts of maintenance. He wakes into something different. Events prior to sleep have separated from the emotion, offering clarity. Different emotions have introduced themselves. These new emotions shift Rollo’s perspective. The arrival of a new perspective lends credence to that perspective by virtue of being new. Old perspective has had time to digest in the mind’s stomach no longer causing upset. That which satisfies the mind’s hunger is always afforded greater attention.
Aided by the vitality of sustenance and rest, Rollo regrets his capitulation to Ingrid. It happened too easily. Access to his child has been denied. Their dynamic subsists on absence of communication, yet he allowed her words to dictate his actions. In his world of maintenance, life is action. The fort is predicated on his drive to act. The baby’s introduction concerns the fort and is therefore within Rollo’s purview. If Ingrid will not allow Rollo to engage with the baby, he will merely disregard that which Ingrid disallows. Whether permission is granted or not, he will come to know the baby.