The Glacier (11 page)

A flaming glow suddenly illuminates the space, and the cutting sound of a blowtorch. Jonah opens his eyes and his face is aglow in an orange fiery light.

He sits up and looks at the light source. He reaches out his hands to warm them.

A small mushroom cloud is burning away on the concrete floor at the center of the room. The perpetual mushroom cloud fires away like a holographic furnace. Orange, red, green, blue, yellow, white. It's pretty, and warm.

Then it's gone. And he's illuminated by a cold white light. Striations of watery translucence shift across his face.

A large ice cube has replaced the mushroom cloud. At the center of the ice block is a figure, a little boy, frozen with his hands up, and wearing an orange life preserver.

Jonah gets on his feet and approaches the ice block. He runs his own hands along the side of the ice block, looking in at the frozen boy. The ice is flowing with interior strata and delicate crystalline light.

Ice melting and pooling on the floor—

And then there's nothing there, just a pool of water on the floor. The bare light bulb overhead is reflected in the water.

Jonah turns and sees himself lying on the mattress, like a mummy in the sleeping bag. Motionless and frosted dead.

Just outside the door, a loud banging erupts from inside the aluminum garage. Jonah is pounding on the metal door from inside his cell.

JONAH

(shouting from inside)

Sam! Sam, I'm not finished yet. I need more time. I've changed my mind, Sam. I need more time. I wanna be with people, Sam. Sam! Sam! Sam!

He bangs frantically, but no one is there. The alleyway of storage units is empty and indifferent.

***

Out on the dark field, the old lonely tree comes alive, a skeletal form of electric-blue light throbbing and pulsating, strands of energy coursing along its branches, trunk, and root-system buried in the ground. The tree of electric light explodes on and off, short-circuiting. Then the night is black.

***

A glow of light emerges from outside, underneath the crack in the storage unit door. And then two beams of light scanning under the door. An insect enters, crawling under the door, ticking, clicking, probing, and glowing. A glowing, irradiated cockroach.

The cockroach finds its way to the center of the room and takes in its surroundings, scanning, processing, and pulsating with light. The bug glows brighter and brighter, throbbing with light and colors until it is nearly illuminating the entire space in waves of colored light, pulsing and dimming like a luminescent scarab.

Jonah is in a deep fever-sleep bundled up in his sleeping bag on the mattress. The cockroach approaches him, ticking across the floor. Jonah's face radiates in the metallic-colored light of the insect.

The cockroach climbs up onto the mattress, crawls across Jonah's face, and then disappears inside his mouth.

A bundle of light descends down the interior of the sleeping bag, headed toward Jonah's belly. The sleeping bag pulsates momentarily like a glowing cocoon, and then the space is black.

Thousands of houses sprawl into the cold countryside. But the sky is blue now, washing color across the world. Patches of snow and green grass. Newly planted bright-green pine saplings and bright white siding.

Brand new homes, everywhere for everyone.

***

The long row of storage units lined up bluntly in the clear winter light.

Jonah's door rolls up with a clatter. He emerges and rolls the door back down. His fever broken in the night, he's pale, but alive. He locks the door and walks away.

Halfway down the row, he stops, nursing a thought. He turns around and heads back to the storage unit door. He handles the lock, as if something doesn't add up.

Then he lets it go and continues on his way.

***

The exterior of Robert's house is wrecked, completely stripped of siding, all exposed plywood and fireproofing like a body without skin. The lawn is stripped of grass, a square crater of dirt butting up to the line of green lawn next door.

The living room is a catastrophe. Robert has land-filled the interior of his living room with the exterior of his house. All the siding from the outside of the house is piled on top of the mound of his lawn, from floor to ceiling.

He sleeps now like an innocent, passed out in his recliner amid the wreckage of last night's work. The television is blasting a blizzard of early morning TV snow. A calm spectacle of post-disaster.

Then an obnoxious tone cuts across the tube, a test signal from the Emergency Broadcast System and Robert stirs awake.

He requires a moment to figure out where in the hell he is, and he marvels dryly at the room, putting the pieces of memory together. Then he shuts off the TV and heads upstairs.

Halfway up the stairs Robert pauses to oversee his creation, and he issues half a smile.

***

Jonah enters the Convention Center and wanders through the vast airport of a complex. He passes through the steel doors of a service entrance and enters the long pink hallway.

Mr. Stevens' office door is ajar. He is sitting at his desk, smoking and doing paperwork. There is a polite knock on the door.

MR. STEVENS

(from inside)

Yes. Come in.

Jonah quietly pushes open the door and enters the small windowless room.

Mr. Stevens does not look up from his desk.

JONAH

Excuse me.

MR. STEVENS

Yes?

JONAH

I've come to apply for a job.

MR. STEVENS

(impassively)

Fantastic. Just have a seat and I'll be right with you.

Jonah takes a seat on a folding metal chair, and waits.

Mr. Stevens shuffles some papers around and puts out his cigarette. He regards Jonah over the top of spectacles he's been wearing to do his bookkeeping.

MR. STEVENS

Okay, what do we have here?

Jonah hands him a folded piece of paper. Mr. Stevens unfolds the paper.

MR. STEVENS

Land surveyor. Interesting. That seems like a reliable job.

JONAH

Yeah, it was.

MR. STEVENS

Have you been with us before?

JONAH

No, I don't think so.

MR. STEVENS

Well what we're doing here is something very special.

JONAH

Of course.

MR. STEVENS

I'll need to ask you a few questions.

JONAH

Okay.

Stevens pulls a clipboard out of a drawer and flips over a few pages.

MR. STEVENS

Here we are. What is the nature of the Universe?

JONAH

Excuse me?

MR. STEVENS

I said, what is the nature of the Universe?

JONAH

Um, I was here just to apply for a job as a cater-waiter.

MR. STEVENS

And it says on your resume that you were also a writer. Is this true?

JONAH

Yes.

MR. STEVENS

And so I am asking you, what is the nature of the Universe?

JONAH

Well. I'm not really sure if I'm qualified to—

MR. STEVENS

Let me explain something to you.

He takes off his spectacles and folds them carefully.

MR. STEVENS

Entertain my explanation that as a writer you should already know well. We live our lives in the shadowed rut of the wheel. We spend them, day by day, driveling away, and waiting. And what on earth are we waiting for? We are waiting to be lifted out of the trenches into a moment of illumination, a moment of clarity and certainty, a moment of direct experience wherein all pain and confusion dissolve, if only for that brief and fleeting moment.

He lights another cigarette.

MR. STEVENS

This is what we do
here
at the Event Horizon. We engineer moments. Perfect moments for imperfect people.

He smiles broadly.

MR. STEVENS

There are people out there in the world right now, waiting for the Event. Waiting and waiting and waiting. Sitting quietly in the dark. Shivering, terrified and confused like little poodle dogs. Yet each of them is, in their own way and by their very existence, on intimate terms with the nature of the Universe and so I am asking you, a
writer
, in your own words, what is the nature of the Universe?

JONAH

I don't know.

MR. STEVENS

We appreciate your application. Have a good day.

JONAH

I'm sorry?

MR. STEVENS

I said, have a good day.

Mr. Stevens returns to his paperwork, disregarding Jonah.

Jonah sits there, unsure what to do now. He watches Mr. Stevens working and considers his options. He looks at the door, he looks at Stevens, and he looks over at the metal locker which he has just now noticed is ticking from the inside with a thousand tiny ticks.

JONAH

The problem with cracking the code is that the answer is in code.

Stevens looks up from his ledger and gazes at Jonah quizzically over his spectacles.

MR. STEVENS

Fine. If you like, you can start now, for today's Event. You'll find a tuxedo uniform and make-up in the locker room.

JONAH

Make-up?

MR. STEVENS

Oh yes. There are no spectators here. Everyone's a participant. Go get cleaned up and find a task out in the Main Hall.

JONAH

Thank you.

MR. STEVENS

Oh and I'm afraid I'll need to ask for your watch.

JONAH

My watch?

He points to Jonah's wrist.

MR. STEVENS

Your watch. No watches. Rest assured it will be in good hands.

JONAH

Oh. Okay.

He takes off his watch and hands it to Mr. Stevens.

Jonah exits the office, carefully closing the door. The door very gently clicks and latches shut.

Stevens places his burning cigarette on the edge of a large and heavy desktop ashtray, which is, needless to say, full. He crosses to the metal locker, turns the small metal key and opens it. He hangs Jonah's watch inside the locker on a metal hook alongside hundreds of other watches on metal hooks all ticking madly.

Then he abruptly turns and glares at the office door, and the doorknob.

Outside the office, Jonah is standing in the pink hallway with his hand still on the office doorknob, looking at it, as if he's just pulled it closed in that instant.

Inside the office, Mr. Stevens crosses to the door and places his hand on the
inside
doorknob.

On the outside of the door, Jonah is held there, almost magnetically, for another moment. Then he releases the doorknob and walks away.

Mr. Stevens slowly opens the door, just a crack,
the way it was before Jonah arrived
. Then he sits back down at his desk and smokes, visible through the door, as he was at the beginning of the scene.

***

Jonah enters the corporate crab-colored employee locker room. He walks along the rows of lockers. Unsure which locker to use, he picks one. Inside it, he finds a white tuxedo shirt, black pants, black bow tie, and a black cummerbund.

He peels off his brown construction coveralls and goes to the mirror and sink in his long underwear. He runs hot water and washes his face.

While he's cleaning up, two chatty men enter the locker room.

SUE

I will say that it is nice to be in out of the cold. And the toast is excellent. Exactly how I like it.

They join him at the bathroom counter, running water and washing their hands in two of the other sinks.

Jonah looks up and sees them in the mirror.

GUNNER

Morning.

SUE

Morning.

But Jonah is stunned, unsure how to respond, his face dripping with rinse water.

SUE

If I had a complaint it would be about the butter. They say you can't tell the difference but I say you can. There's a difference.

Gunner and Sue are cleaned up, slicked, shaved, and dressed in tuxedo uniforms. Their faces are covered in white face paint, but as a pair they are unmistakable. They dry their hands and exit the locker room. On his way out Gunner looks back at Jonah.

GUNNER

It was pretty.

Then he follows Sue out the door.

Jonah is left alone with the mirror, the water faucets at all three sinks running full-blast.

***

The garage door rolls up. Robert emerges from his garage with a folded lawn chair. He's combed and clean-shaven and he wears his best Sunday suit. He walks to the center of his dismantled yard and unfolds the lawn chair. He sits down in the chair in the dirt in front of his demolished house, and he waits.

***

Jonah enters the Main Hall of the Convention Center through large steel doors. Cleaned up and ready to go, he wears his new tuxedo uniform. His face is covered in ghostly Kabuki-white face paint. He looks out across the giant hall.

The gigantic room is beautifully set for a grand gala event. Tables are glistening with silverware, sparkling water glasses, crisply sculpted napkins, and numbered centerpieces.

At the center of the hall there is a round stage. And circling the tables, a ring of giant blank movie screens hangs from the ceiling at the perimeter.

Hundreds of waiters are moving through the room with water pitchers, filling glasses with ice water. Others are setting silverware.

The collective sound of clinking ice, glass, and silver tines creates a chaotic symphony of metallic tones and pouring rhythms building through the massive space.

From above, the collective motion of waiters moving around tables produces a cascading pattern of motion and stillness like water flowing around stones in multiple rushes and eddies.

Jonah sees a cart full of salt and pepper shakers. He grabs the cart and pushes it out into the room. He observes the activity of servers at work and then he begins placing pairs of salt and pepper shakers at the center of each table.

MR. STEVENS

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Event Horizon.

Mr. Stevens' image appears on each of the screens circling the room, larger than life, in his black bow tie.