Future Encounters

What do they live like, without their love given form?

This is what I’ve asked myself and Noel of the people in the bourgeois states. I will admit, I am not a cosmopolitan like my neighbor Johnathan. I have never been to California. I don’t think I’ll ever understand their backward ways. I’m content with my place in the world, so long as I have Noel with me, in the cradle of the Shenandoah valley. My workshop, in this little town, where we were both given animating life.

I’ve gathered from books on my grandfather’s harddrive that things are quite queer for them, being forced to inject Otherness into so many strange things. Things like gender, and the villains on TV. A macabre ritualism that grew only more strange as society became more atomized. It was a world where the Other and their love became mere bird calls into a void, social space-time having expanded at such a rapid rate that they could no longer reach out to the real objects. Today, I hear, they are piloting a program inspired by policies in the Republic of Laos, which forces randomly selected pairs to cohabitate for several months. This comes just two years after the state censors announced that pre-marital sex between different gendered individuals had been outlawed.

Now, I agree in principle that premarital sex should be encouraged only for same-gendered couplings, but it seems a bit extreme to write it into law. I wonder if one day, such laws will appear to our children as odd as the old anti-sodomy laws appears to us today.

Noel tells me that you should only have sex if you’re willing to commit your life to a person. Easy for her to say– she can fall in love at the drop of a hat. She wants nothing but to love, she’s dying to love, she’s praying for love. Love is noncontingent for her. What is historically contingent is only our life together here.

True, there is nothing eternal about our apple trees, their species is only 60 years or so old. Neither is our business model, which only exists because of a program legislated into the latest budget for the Department of Interior Decorating. Nor even our bodies, which were brought into being via systems of reproduction which once did not exist, and one day will not exist again.

Between the two of us, Noel is much more the scholar than I. Sometimes, as I fiddle with the modelling software, she’ll come and sit on my lap and tell me stories about how ancient civilizations would create familiars for their children, some just like the sheet-metal dragons I was making. For such civilizations, whether the tiniest village or the mightiest kingdom, they were driven by the fear of being torn apart, of brother set against brother. She lectures me on how the philosophers of this world fooled themselves into thinking what they really feared was the bourgeois societies of our cousins across the continent. Really, the primitive peoples of the earth had the same fears as we always had, except they had more to lose.

Anthropologists have since determined that the pairing of children to familiars was an alternative system to that of arranged marriages, with the familiars given as gifts by other families to form ties, or by near relatives to strengthen ties. My dragons are much simpler things. They could hardly be your life partner. That was an application cost that went far beyond the labor hours and materials stipulated in our contract.

I would caress her cheek and tell her I wish I was born to be her sheet-metal dragon familiar. This made her laugh.

Jonathan had been our neighbor for 3 years when, one night while we were snuggling on the couch, Noel and I found ourselves treated to a view of his lithe form watering his flowers across the street, totally shirtless. Noel shifted ever so slightly and whispered to me, ever so quietly, “It’d be really hot if you seduced him.”

I demurred nervously at the time. He’s too aloof for me, I told her. Besides, we had each other, and that was enough.

Of course, Noel had known me for too long for this to be the final word. She knew how to get what she wanted when she set her mind to it. When we were both children and introduced to each other for the first time, I was practically tackled to the ground with excitement. Let’s play, let’s play, let’s play. Fortunately for me, her skeleton and hydraulics were calibrated down so she would present less of a danger to her young peers.

I prefered reading books about talking mice and rabbits to playing in the garden, but she was  insistent, patiently explaining we could find real mice and rabbits if we were thorough enough. We didn’t find any such critters, but I did break my leg after falling into a ravine. We both cried our eyes out as she gingerly carried me back to the house, as guilt weighed on her like a brick pallet. But it was only a month later that she was able to coax me back outside, telling me how she had seen a doe in the undergrowth just on her way there.

I did not see a doe that day, though I did see a squirrel clambering up a near-ancient oak tree, and a slug lying slick between the grooves of the bark. I sat there, among the peat and moss, my Noel beside me, and stared up at the spaces between the trees which vibrated with importance as the entrance to a world of air currents and cosmic rays. She was very careful with me that day, and gently guided me away from ledges and pointy objects for years after. Humans are fragile things, after all. Especially on our own.

Many partners are forced to go different ways due to the vicissitudes of life, the unfortunate reality of dividing ambitions dissolving childish dreams. Noel and I weren’t one of them. We crawled into bed with each other two years before we were officially allowed to. In that moment, hiding under blankets in an abandoned recreational cabin on federal land, I made a vow to myself, Noel curled in my arms, her smooth carapace against my chest, her soft underbelly wrapped around my hand. There was a contentment in my heart, as if with her, and her alone, I could be in peace. I would not take this life, so intertwined with mine, for granted, I promised.

So I didn’t. I had many friends who studied to do grand, smart things, like molecular engineering and computational sociometry, or others who joined the People’s Militias and put their lives on the line for our freedom. But I knew that Noel would never want to leave our beautiful valley, so I spent my time in woodshop class and watched videos on custom manufacturing. When we graduated from high school, I gave her a gift, a wooden plaque inscribed with the code for the ILOVEYOU virus. Today, the plaque hangs on the wall between our kitchen and the entryway. She jokes with delivery boys that I infected her with the love bug just by reading it.

Jonathan was one such delivery boy, working a regular 10 to 3 at the local distribution center. We were one of his first stops, where he would pick up our crates of dragons. As I helped him slide the box to the back of his truck one day, Noel sauntered to the side of the wagon.

“I was just thinking to myself the other day how stunning your flower garden was looking. I thought, next time I should see Jonathan, I’ll ask what’s his secret.”

She leaned in.

“So what’s your secret?”

Jonathan bashfully scratched the back of his neck and offered that it might be his special blend of compost made from vegetable scraps and chemical lime. Neither me nor Noel particularly had a green thumb, something she was eager to point out. While the fruit trees we planted out back had taken, pretty much every seasonal plant and bush we had planted around our porch had prematurely wilted and died.

He was promptly invited to a Saturday evening of gardening and then dinner at our place. I meekly offered my assent. We had a responsibility to be good neighbors, after all.

While I might still be a poor gardener, despite all my efforts over the years, Noel really did teach me to appreciate the wonders of nature in all its facets. Perhaps one reason I was bad at it was how many breaks I took to watch a worm in the dug-up soil, or just the leaves swaying in the breeze, wondering how different this view might be from the forests of the old world that held the secrets of nymphs and cursed kings. Jonathan was a man of action by comparison, digging up the weeds and landing the shovel with true proletarian purpose. I was too embarrassed to ask for breaks, so we just kept toiling, silently, planting the little flowers in each hole he opened up.

“He had you on your knees?” Noel would tease later that night.

But, at the time, he was just about as awkward as I was.

“So, what kind of flowers do you like?” he asked.

“Uh, the light blue ones,” I told him. “But Noel said we couldn’t take them home because of the lighting here.”

“Ah,” he said simply.

Noel made mashed potatoes and fish tacos for dinner, which we savored dearly. She announced that next week she would be attending a conference in Richmond on early modern literature, and that Jonathan should consider keeping me company in her absence.

“He gets mopey when I leave him on his own,” she explained.

“I’m not a puppy,” I said.

“Yes you are, you’re my puppy,” she said with a kissy face, I rolled my eyes.

“I wouldn’t mind hanging out,” Jonathan interjected.

“Perfect!” Noel smiled proudly at her arrangement, as her eyes lit up with a self-customized glittering star animation.

I ventured to ask Jonathan about his travels, and at last he opened up. He told me about the ancient spires and pre-industrial brick homes which characterized the cities of Europe, about how good the shitty fast food was in Long Beach, and about the overflowing number of feral cats in Aleppo.

“There are whole worlds out there! Worlds that make you wonder just how delicate the reality of any given place really is, that if things had just been a little different, one place could have ended up like this different place instead!”

“You just travel to all these places on your own?” I asked. It was incomprehensible to me. He might as well have stepped off into space without a tether to a space station.

Now he was embarrassed, folding his hands apologetically.

“I guess part of it is just restlessness. It’d probably be smart to put the tokens into a future consumption account rather than foreign currency. I’ve never really felt at home anywhere, so I guess I’m just wondering if there’s somewhere else I should be.”

“Well, I can’t make any guarantees, but we’ll do our best to make you feel at home here,” said Noel.

Jonathan’s actual home across the street was a giant assemblage of junk. Trinkets from his travels and antiques from local swap meets. The old capitalist kitsch totally took over the living room, as faded plastic toys and nicknacks stacked themselves to the ceiling.

After carefully making my way through a maze of books and boxed china, I put down my platter of sliced salami, cheese and crackers on his tacky wood vinyl ottoman. It was the first game of the playoffs for the Washington Senators and Noel had just left for her trip the day before. Jonathan plopped down beside me on the couch.

“Last time I saw a baseball game must have been 7 years ago…they had the most delicious hot dogs and pretzels,” he said.

“You can’t beat baseball food. Half of it’s the ambience though,” I replied, not sure what impact the ambience of this room was.

I chatted about the latest complaints about deformation I had with my sheet metal suppliers. He brought up the boneheaded policy changes at the distribution center where workers were now required to attend a mandatory meeting during Friday lunch to socialize and play team-focused games.

“You’re really lucky, you know,” said Jonathan.

“Well, I certainly have my blessings.”

“You actually get to work with your hands, making something cool. Not to mention you get to spend all day with your partner.”

“It’s not bad, I’ll tell you what.”

He fell silent for a moment.

“I find myself thinking about him a lot, when I’m doing my route. And I wonder what he’s up to. What does the world look like to them, I wonder. Through their kind of eyes.”

“Your partner?” I asked. I had never seen them before.

Their partner’s name was Lorn. The name escaped Jonathan’s lips wistfully. He was a stubborn, principled, creature who painted himself safety-hazard yellow in order to wander the country-roads at night when he was 16. He was brave, in that supid sort of way.

“Things fell apart, between us…” he paused, as if to say more, then simply said, “I made some mistakes.”

“I’m sorry,” I told him truthfully.

“Don’t be. It was my fault. I have to live with that.”

He fell quiet again. A crack came from the TV as the Senators scored two runs. I wanted to cheer, but held my tongue. It would be inappropriate, I thought.

I glanced to Jonathan, there were tears swelling in his eyes.

“You ok?”

He turned away.

“Yeah,” he sniffed.

My instincts took over, someone had to do something, after all.

“Come here,” I told him, pulling him into an embrace. Now the tears really began to flow. He whimpered an apology. I said it was ok. I rested my head on his shoulder, doing my best to comfort him. He moved like an uncontrolled mess, but he was warm. I tried my best not to, but I was overwhelmed with pity for him. He confessed his self loathing and failure over and over again. I denied his accusations as much as I could. He said he would always be alone. I told him I didn’t think that was true. My eyes darted, distracted, to the TV when the Senator’s scored another run.

By the time the game ended he’d dried his eyes, and all of the salami platter remained uneaten. He apologized again.

I paused at the doorway as we were about to part for the night.

“Thanks for coming over,” he offered.

“Thanks for having me, believe it or not, it would have been sadder if I’d just been all alone with a frozen pizza to watch the game.”

He laughed.

Standing there, even though his eyes were tinged red from crying, I could finally make out in full what Noel saw in him. He had those boyish good looks, as if he had stumbled from the background of a painting from one of the old masters. He was out of place here, out of place in all places, as if he existed only to displace reality from a room and give you the briefest of glimpses of what could lay beyond it. He did look beautiful, in a way.

Noticing my stare, he took his chance. He stepped closer and kissed me.

Unsure what else to do, I kissed him back.

“Come back sometime,” he said after he pulled away.

“Yeah. Ok.”

That night I sat up in bed, a half-finished thriller novel in my lap, deep in thought for several hours. I wondered if I would be happy to hold Jonathan’s hand as we walked a wood trail. This was one of my favorite things to do with Noel, after all.

I wasn’t sure. I began to suspect there was something wrong with my heart. The heart was a simple transformation function, I had always thought. It produced outputs to the inputs. In doing so, it created something new, adding something, whether well defined or not, which changed the quantities being computed. But now I found myself caught up in outputs which were the consequence of inputs alone. Everything I’d done, I’d done because it was what Noel or Jonathan wanted. Or was that all I wanted anyway?

I wanted Noel to be happy. Even if she didn’t love me, I’d want her to be happy. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be true to the feelings I had for her. This I had to believe in order to prevent the nihilism of the heart.

Jonathan tugged at the moral substance of that same heart. I didn’t want him to feel so alone anymore. I wanted to hold him until he felt nothing but warm contentment in my arms. I knew, from the substance of my deepest fears, that that’s what I would want if I was in his situation.

I resolved I would follow these sentiments to their conclusions, no matter where they brought me. They would produce some novel output, I was sure of it.

When she returned, Noel was quite bemused by my telling of events.

“He just started crying? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sign you up for all that,” she said.

“No it’s ok. I’m glad I was there for him.”

She blinked at me, curious.

“Do you think you could fall in love with him?”

“I could. Eventually.”

“Do you want to love him?”

“Not like you do,” I told her.

“That’s fair. Sometimes I can go a little overboard with desire. Desire for love isn’t the same thing as real love though,” she said, batting her pixel animated heart-eyes at me.

“I hope I can give you both, sweetheart.”

“You give me more than I can ever want. What would I even do without my love given form?”

She considered it for a moment.

“I’d probably go mad,” she confessed.

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