Vacation (13 page)

“I see your point. Now tell me about the Garden.”

She taps the unused eraser of her pencil against her knee. “I told you that the Garden is a place filled with people, and sometimes we do what we want to do, and other times we do what we feel we need to do, even if it isn’t a want. I fear that even if I expand on this, my answer still won’t satisfy you. Because the truth of the Garden isn’t satisfying.”

“I’ll take what I can get.”

“Very well.” She sighs. “The Garden has no mission statement. We aren’t that sort of organization. The truth is, we don’t know how to fix any of the world’s problems, or even if they can be. The Garden is a champion to no single country, unlike Weis and Blackbeard and other Meeks. My goal, my personal goal, is to bring the truth to as many Tic citizens as possible. It’s my desire for them to know that they’re using the last of the world’s resources, while the rest of humanity suffers and dies and does the things which you’ve seen in the photographs. Perhaps if this is known, the Tics will share with the Meek. And perhaps this sharing won’t even make a difference. And perhaps if the Tics learn the truth, they won’t want to share, and nothing will change. In truth, Mr. Johnson, I don’t care about the outcome. I’ve witnessed suffering that you couldn’t imagine, even with the aid of the photographs, and I have to do something, and I have to keep doing it. Even if my actions are futile. Even if my so-called activism is simply a means to keep myself from going insane. But perhaps I already am.”

Noh was right. I’m not satisfied with the answer. But I am damn glad that she told me.

“You’re not crazy,” I say.

“I’m the product of a world gone mad,” she says. “What else can I be?”

I think, “If you’re crazy, then fuck sanity.” But I say, “I’ll do my Assignment.”

She stands from her seat on my coffin bed. “I’ll leave you to the list. I recommend making up a story that incorporates all the book titles. That works the best for me.” She smiles and goes away.

Here’s me, working on my homework the first chance I get, like the good student I never was, for the teacher I always wanted to become, and this is the first test in my whole life that I really give a shit about passing.

Laetitia scrambles into my room. “Honey, we have to get out of here! Weis just breached the security door!”

I burst to my feet.

And she says, “I’m only kidding.”

“That’s not funny.”

“Not to you, maybe.” She laughs. “You should’ve seen your face.”

I sigh and sit again.

“So I hear you’re going back soon.” She sits facing me, with the chair pointed backwards. Like a teenager would. Like Marvin Blackrow. “Let me give you a little advice, honey.”

“Alright,” I say.

“Don’t watch too much TV. The same goes for music. Books. Art. That sort of thing.”

My eyebrow lifts. “That seems strange, coming from you.”

“What I mean is, don’t OD on Tic entertainment. Their music, books, art, television, movies might be great, but after a while, it’ll get to you. People need art, but we need it to reflect and comment on our experiences. Even with something like escapist literature, there has to be an understanding of what exactly you’re escaping from. Otherwise, it doesn’t work. In other words, we need Meek escapist literature. We need Meek art. And honey, that sort of thing isn’t very common in America. You’re going to have to create it for yourself.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“You can. Trust me.” She stares down at her hands. At her painted fingernails, with pictures of various smiley-faced bugs. “Not too long ago, the Garden wasn’t the cheery place that it is today. The operatives moped around and hardly talked to each other. Noh brought me here to boost morale, and what I realized was that they were torturing themselves on purpose. They saw so much suffering in the world that they felt too guilty to be happy. Now I’ll tell you what I told them.” She reaches out and takes my hands. She pulls me closer and looks in my eyes. “You don’t deserve happiness any more than you deserve misery. The Universe will keep expanding and time will keep on ticking no matter how you live your life. Happiness is a gift others can give you, but mostly, it’s a gift you give yourself. And the great thing about gifts is, you don’t have to deserve them to receive them. When you think of it that way, everybody’s equally worthy of having a good laugh and a good time. Don’t you think, honey?”

My toes wriggle under the dirt, close to the roots of the plants that have sustained my life the past many days. I’m partway buried, and it feels good.

Odin approaches, carrying Amina’s head in his hands. “Hey man. Good luck with your Assignment and everything, and thanks again for saving Pari from Weis. Oh!” He holds out the head. “She made this for you. She can look at something once and then sculpt it. She says her ability to do that comes from trauma, but I don’t know. I’ve been traumatized like a motherfucker and I can’t do shit.”

I take the head. “Tell her thanks.”

“Thing is, Noh won’t let you take any Meek souvenirs back to the hospital, so you’ll have to leave that thing here. So I guess it’s a stupid gift, but it’s the thought that counts, right?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

“Cool.”

After he leaves, I tuck in my shirt with Amina’s clay nose pressed against my flesh back, and climb one of the pillars. Four or five tries later, I stick her head up at the top. Now the pillar’s got something to hold up, though the head really doesn’t have to be held, and maybe I like it better that way.

Minutes later, Noh comes to me. She tests me, and I regurgitate the list, while the story of the crow and the angel soars through my mind. And a thought gnaws at me until I say, “It’s so easy to remember everything with a story. Why wasn’t I ever taught that in school?”

“Humans learn the best through storytelling and it’s always been that way,” she says. “Yet, you’re correct. The education industry doesn’t utilize this fact. Nevertheless, they must know it. Perhaps the industry, then, isn’t concerned with the student’s ability to learn. Only that the student’s kept from thinking the wrong thoughts. What better way to accomplish this than to continuously inundate the student’s mind with information to be memorized?”

“What do you mean by wrong thoughts?”

“Tic social systems exploit people everyday, and get away with it because the public allows the abuse. A thought which questions a system is dangerous to the system.”

Here’s another dead end.

I have a feeling this whole conversation is just an attempt on both our parts to prolong the inevitable.

But it’s time to say goodbye.

“You may not know this,” Noh says. “But the Garden spends most of its time fighting and hiding from other Meek. The Tics exhaust very few of their resources on bringing us down. I used to believe that this is so because they don’t consider us much of a threat. Lately, however, I’ve been considering the notion that perhaps they don’t attempt to hunt us down with greater ferocity, because they feel guilty. Perhaps they don’t want to destroy the group with the power to reveal their secrets to world. Perhaps they want to be punished for their crimes against humanity.”

“Maybe so.”

She slides her notebook and pencil into her pocket. “Do you think this idea could be classified as optimism?”

“I think so.”

“Good.”

Part 18

I’m wandering outside of the hospital, and I don’t have the backpack or tubes with me anymore because Noh made me drop them off a few miles back, and there are dozens of automated guns pointed at me, and I have a feeling they’d shoot if I wasn’t wearing this hospital bracelet.

A guard grabs me by the arm, and takes me back inside. He tells the people at the front desk that he spotted me sneaking out of the hospital only moments ago, so he’s bringing me back to my room. This is a lie, of course, so he must be Garden.

I sit on my bed and say, “You’ll contact Jack, won’t you? I’m ready to go.”

He stares at me, then walks away.

Hours later, Jack nudges my shoulder until I open my eyes.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” he says. “The doctor says your fever’s finally busted, so you can leave today. You’ll be back with Tour Group Three in no time. And boy howdy, some of them will be happy to see you. By some of them, I mean Krow. She’s asked about you everyday.”

“That’s nice,” I say, and sit up. “Noh told me what happened to you in the forest. I’m sorry.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The nightmare forest. Noh said you traveled it alone.”

“Who’s Noh?”

It’s worse than I expected.

“Why would you do this?” I say. “Is this another one of Noh’s tests?”

“Honestly, Bernard, I don’t know anyone named Noh.”

“This is ridiculous.”

He puts a hand on my shoulder. “You had a high fever. This Noh person may have been a hallucination.”

I flip off my covers and lift my shirt. “You see these, don’t you? I was tortured.”

“Those are from surgery, Bernard.”

“What kind of surgery would require cuts like this!”

“The one you had.” He takes a step back. “I’ll give you some time to clear your head.”

“Fuck you, Jack.”

He shakes his head, the way you did, mom and dad, when you were disappointed, but not surprised to find yourself disappointed. And he leaves.

I know I should feel confused, but right now, I’m just mad.

With the first glimpse of her, all the old feelings surge back.

Krow hugs me. “I wanted to visit you, but they wouldn’t let me.”

“It’s okay,” I say, and hug her back tighter. “It’s good to see you again.”

We release each other, and stand in the middle of the hotel lobby, people swarming around us.

“You smell different,” she says.

“I do?”

“Not bad. You smell healthier.”

I think of the detox Odin performed on me. And I think of the surgery Jack talked about. “So,” I say. “What’ve you been up to?”

“Oh, you didn’t miss anything. It was all very boring.”

I laugh. “Glad to hear it.”

Damn it, she’s so funny and interesting and beautiful. I know initially, I was attracted to her because of the courage I remembered in Marvin, and I wanted to be Marvin.

But it’s more than that now.

Here I am, a few inches away from her, and I feel more indecisive than I’ve ever felt. Despite the fact that most of my days in America were spent making choices. Soup or salad? Smoking or non-smoking? Caf or decaf? Guilty or innocent? God or science? Right or wrong? Good or evil? Do you want fries with that? Do you want a receipt? Will you marry me? Do you still love me? Can I find better?

I made a lot of choices in life, and I felt damn powerful. I felt in control.

But in this life of choices, none of them really affect the systems that govern our lives. In this life of choices, you don’t choose how to live it. Because the way of life is The Way of Life.

Supposedly, being with Krow is not a choice I can make.

Because I already have a girlfriend.

Because Krow used to be my student.

Because she used to be a he.

Because that’s gross.

Because a rose by any other name still smells as sweet, but less people would smell them if they were called freak flowers.

Because this is the world we live in.

Because if I didn’t tell people the truth about her, she’d hate me.

Because if I did tell people the truth about her, I’d hate myself.

That’s how I’m supposed to think.

I’m not supposed to have a say in the matter.

But.

My bird spirit wants to fly.

So I kiss her.

And yeah, I’ve shocked myself, the way love shocks you.

You expect to feel happy, but not this happy.

A second later, Krow pulls her head back, and says, “Mr. Johnson, Bernard, I…I’m flattered. But the thing is, I like women.”

And I shouldn’t be surprised.

This isn’t some bad made-for-TV movie, where the girl is a prize the guy gets for becoming a better man.

She doesn’t have to like me, just because I like myself so much more.

Here’s a truth that can only be cried out, but right now I’m just so fucking proud of myself, I don’t even notice the tears.

My hand reaches for the pad and paper on my hotel nightstand. It writes.

“Hello Bernard,” the words say.

“Aubrey?” I think. But I say, “Noh?”

“I’m afraid not,” says the paper. “It’s Blackbeard.”

“What are you doing with the device?”

“Noh gave it to me. She no longer needs it.”

“If that were true, she’d give the device to Weis. So he could talk to his daughter whenever he wants.”

“That’s a nice idea, but if she gave it to Weis, he’d start living in his dreams, and stop serving his country. She gave it to me because she thought I’d use it to serve others, and that’s what I’m going to do. That’s why I’m here.” The pencil pauses, as if gathering its thoughts. “Noh’s going to be executed.”

“What?”

“A week from today. I don’t want to see it happen, and I have a feeling you might be able to save her.”

“Why me?”

“Because of the way she talked about you when she was here delivering the device. But maybe you don’t care whether she lives or dies. I don’t know. Like I said before, I often times act on instinct alone, and my instincts aren’t always right.”

Yeah, but sometimes they are. “I don’t know what you expect me to do.”

“I don’t know either, honestly. First you need to escape from the resource bubbles of the Vacation system and return to the Garden. That can’t be easy. How did you manage it the first time?”

“I didn’t. I was taken out.”

“By whom?”

“My Tour Guide. Jack. But I don’t think he’ll help me. Ever since I came back, he’s been denying the truth about everything.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know enough about Garden procedure to make any sense of that. But if you do get out, I’ll do anything I can to help you on your way. Well.” The pencil jiggles back and forth, maybe in laughter. “Good luck. Here’s hoping you can talk her out of it.”

“What do you mean, talk her—”