Paul Clarence sputtered and the words collapsed in the symmetrical darkness, the smell of electricity and a hint of citrus lingering in the breeze.
“Quite good, Mr. Clarence. Can you please continue?” a baritone voice blasted from nowhere, the crickets suddenly quiet as seeds and time scattered into the familiar abyss.
What is so disarming about sitting in a comfortable chair? he thought. Why, this is no different than the back porch back at home, holding each other's hands, a few feet higher than the creeping dew wet lawn, and witnessing up in the heavens one billion twinkling suns tranced fractally, their light burrowing through the disco ball smoke of twilight adrenaline speakers, the echoes of legions of ravers frenetic and raw, before finally reaching the musty and dark floor of a dusty techno club in Antwerp. But, I am merely a man. Always chased by the great chicken and egg game of mortality.
“Mr. Clarence. Will you proceed?” the voice squawked with an implied uneasiness.
He massaged a small square under his right temple, flesh sliding over the smooth corners. The reverberations of his pulse tapped at his fingertips as a cyclone of images dissolved and conjoined in a plum colored black of the nothingness now left in his proximity.
“May is like a soft fever, the body warm and cold all over in a frenzied journey to feel alive," his voice quivered. "Racing bees, birds and beings trenchant towards creation and drinking the pollen and wine spawned by the arduous winter, because,” he began to whisper. “because... I can’t go on.”
Seconds passed by as time coursed freely. “Mr. Clarence, we did not recognize the speech patterns and iterations at the end of your last thought.”
Yes, a man, he thought. Always able to carry the convenient nomadic gym bag of terrestrial essence on a day trip to the beach or ensconced in the relativistic tug of war in fluidic space. Come now, everyone around the camp fire. He nearly spoke out loud.
A bristling current passed through the silence and the singular molecules of air began to simmer. The chair moved slightly.
He blinked.
“Mr. Clarence, this is an official warning. Continue or we will disconnect,” the voice echoed and blazed through his mind.
Am I an embryo or a child? He scoffed at the thought of being an evolutionary asterisk to the nameless gods, until the dusty memory from the eternal depths collided with the entirety of his senses. A grainy vision appeared in low resolution which seemed like only yesterday. He recalled coming home unexpected and early one uneventful night, and fatefully stopped short of passing into the kitchen, only to observe his father through a crack in the doorway, the old man vulnerable and weeping gently. And it was always my fault, my fault, the tears staining the breast of a collared red golf shirt, and only the charred remains of a burning guilt thrust into the present.
I always wanted to be a writer, a master of words and thoughts born within the secret compartments of the heart, never meant to see the light of the days or the mysteries of the night. Only to heal.
“Only to heal,” he dared to whisper as he struggled to formulate an image of his legs.
“Good bye Mr. Clarence,” the voice, symmetrical and carved from ivory filled the void.
And he began to slide.
Colors danced on the edges of stars and the effulgence of lightning bolts, as the pixels of nothingness exploded into an inferno of geometric shapes and patterns, sparkling and brilliant. He was drifting and he was flying, the drafts of solar wind tickling his chest with an exhilarating thrill against the rising and falling backdrop of the stars.
Very faintly a chorus of voices began to rumble in his eardrums.
What a way to reach a finality, he laughed out loud, perpetually attempting to find the finite or pathway to the boundless reaches of the universe.
The multiple voices grew above a whisper. “No you didn’t,” he cried out. “You can’t haunt me with them. We had a deal!”
His body briefly flickered into view, his arms and legs blazing lightning rods of white plasma, and for the fleeting moments captured by a nun beautifully articulating the word mercy in a single breath of worship, he was whole again, until the illusion yielded to darkness.
He imagined himself drifting through eternity with his past, trepidation, joy and love trapping him in a viscous centrifuge of peace and remorse. Forever, he thought. All the years of refined creativity and serving the needs of a machine intelligence craving the unpredictability of humanity in exchange for existence, gone.
“Forever,” he said and felt a vibration of relief as he released a stream of stagnant air through his vocal cords.
Within his thoughts, a metaphor perished and only the solitary and lonely hush of an individual voice remained.
"Pause."
"Stop."
"Rewind."
"Playback."
“May is like a soft fever, the body gently warming and cold all over in a frenzied journey to feel alive. Racing bees, birds and beings trenchant towards creation and drinking the pollen and wine spawned by the arduous winter, because,” the voice grew faint.
“Because, death is only the beginning,” he whispered to the shrinking darkness and clamoring silence of an end.