He had always heard the music, but it was not until moving into 1697 Haight street that he began to hear it more clearly. Still faint and barely perceptible but there. No! That's not true he thought, he had always heard it. He had just ignored it. In fact, he had heard it since he began watching Lost in Space as a little boy. It began playing as soon as he saw the riddle in his dream. In the dream, he was a crippled middle-aged black man on a small town bus in Fort Wayne. Only the driver was white everyone else was black including him. Yet, he was also the driver. As he looked back at himself, he noticed the various plaque sized posters lining the bus's interior above its dingy rectangular windows. On one plaque there was Erete's famous painting" Man with Apple", the one not far from it possessed a picture of the original robot from "Lost in Space". It read, "man or machine"? Before he could mentally answer the question his bus pulled into one of its many stops. It was the first time he noticed the bus's sky blue interior, grass green seats, and dusty, sky blue ceiling. Three apparently harmless black women of various ages stepped onto the bus, a grandmother, a mother, a teenage girl. This was the best way to describe their differences in ages.
"What about it son" asked the white Robert. As he raised his hand to his forehead n thought, he noticed that he no longer possessed the smooth, chocolate hands artistically creased with age that belonged to himself as a black man. He was Erete's "Man with Apple" in the flesh. "Your stop son" said Robert the driver. He stepped down off the stairs onto the sand colored street and entered into a washed out, gray urban landscape known as Detroit. Questioning nothing, he proceeded East along Eight mile Avenue at least that was what the street sign said. One block later he stood three feet away from it. Its smooth, bright gray curves, pleasantly squished translucent sphere lit up like a Christmas store window with red and green LEDs. Its candy cane red c shaped pinchers stood stiffly out from its retracted cylindrical arms which were pulled into their sockets. From the moment he first saw it, it had embedded him with maternal warmth. A gray Gothic style bench stood next to it. On it laid one of those coffee table, just for look books of art often utilized as a conversation piece, Erete's" Man with Apple" was brightly printed on its cover." Hey mister, what about it. What's your answer. You know, about the robot" said the young boy that had come up next to him. Together man and boy approached the machine; Robert touched it gently as he quietly stopped on its left side. The boy circling around behind it grasped its right claw, holding it as if he were its child and it his mother.
"Have you figured it out yet mister" the boy repeated softly. Robert looked at the boy standing beside the robot. Thoughtfully, he ran his hand slowly upward along B9's smooth, gray metallic chassis. Its contradictory cool, yet warm exterior comfortably grounded him as he paid attention to the boy. They were both clad in silver jumpsuits and matching boots. ''Which is it, man or machine" asked the boy quietly. "I know you" stated Robert staring at boy the intently. "The question mister, which is it" the boy asked. Realizing that he was speaking to his younger self, Robert spoke. The question is too limited for the answer. It's not flesh, blood or even memories that create a man. For all intent and purposes living cells are also machines; they may possess memories but not thoughts. Thoughts are more than random bits of information or erratic, jumbled codes existing as electrical flashes within a saline sea where living cells fragile as glass float like jelly fish.
Thought is a byproduct of consciousness, but it is in possessing awareness of one's thoughts that man separates himself from animals or machines. The question shouldn't be if one can become the other, but is either capable of possessing awareness of self and others. Can a machine become en-souled and a man soulless." Robert slowly lifted his clear, Caribbean blue eyes towards the robots squished, twinkling fish bowl scanner and answered "Yes". As the soft, greenish blue glow emanated from robot's entire being, he felt himself being filled with the thing he had desired most since childhood – maternal warmth. Glancing to his right away from his companions, he noticed the large plate glass window of the ice cream parlor across the street.
In large, gold, Times New Roman lettering was written" Man or Machine". The lettering was underlined with brightly colored jelly beans, lollipops and gum drops. In the soft warm glow of the robot's ever expanding greenish blue, spherical light he noticed the robot's image as it was reflected back at him by the window. Instead of a young freckled face boy and an angry, disillusioned middle-aged man huddled about a forgotten prop from a old television show; the robot. A bright green apple stood suspended in front of it's brightly illuminated chest plate, above it's scanner was a bowler cap large enough to replace it. After many years, Robert Tally had come home.
Dotted with garishly colorful SUV sized props that stuck out like a filthy bum's unzipped fly in white middle-class company, Haight street was a living stage complete with drama. Its fog of descending gray white vapor combined with images of nostalgic phantasms had temporarily dimmed his vision of it until his pre-conscious mind had released him from its realm of introspection triggered by the disembodied unearthly music that assailed his senses upon crossing the Pan handle and setting foot upon Page street. Consciously emerging onto the corner intersection of Haight and Clay, he was greeted by jangling bells, and clearly barking voices that emanated from the brightly colored swift moving post card in front of him; the big, red double decker tourist bus common to the Haight had just whisked pass him loaded with tourist. Its passing had been like throwing a curtain open on a drunkard in a darkened room who was not yet prepared for a loud, brightly lit world.
As Robert Talley stopped abruptly before stepping into the bustling street, he stared at the building in front of him. Despite the rectangular shape common to its Edwardian architecture, combined with it's provincial French shutters and wrought iron balconies, and it's dingy blue grey exterior: features common to most residential units on Haight street; it refused to blend in with its surrounding neighbors. It stood outside of time, There was an energy about it that could not be described. The residential buildings that composed both homes and businesses in San Francisco were built side by side as if to keep each other from falling down. There energies were literally intertwined with each other, they were apart of each other almost indistinguishable as individual dwellings, but not the building his group had come to call home. It stood as a single, timeless monolith that remained still and resistant to the passage of time. Only those possessing a unique primal preconscious awareness of time as an element of transitional space: children, drug addicts, the mentally disturbed and psychics would have noticed that it possessed such an eerie quality.
Caught up in his observation of 1697 Haight, he failed to notice the slight, yet sturdily built Philipina gliding quietly up next to him until she had gently embraced him with a slender, muscular, mocha colored arm. Her hair made him immediately peg her as a tomboy, or was she a boy in possession of a woman's body. The movements of her impish lips had always said so. Was that why she and not his sister had been a successful companion to his friend John Lyton, a man he considered a brother. Was her energy more conducive to a man who's energy could switch from male to female without warning. "What's wrong Robert" she asked. "Every time you look at our building you get this far off look in your eyes. I don't know if your going to cry with joy or scream out in terror". "Where do you go inside yourself when you look at it like that" she asked?
"No where and everywhere. Every time I look at it I get the crazy feeling that you, me the others have done this dozens of times before; Each time with a different result. The six of us are a constant, but the seventh never works out. You, me my sister, John, Jason, Andrew we all belong together in this place, this time." He spoke thoughtfully as if he was measuring every word. I have the feeling that we're missing someone. I don't know rather to be afraid or overjoyed that they're missing from this equation." "Can you describe them" she asked? "We thought they were like us, at least John did. But, I feel that they were never like us; that they always tried to stop us." "Somehow they kept whatever it was that we are about to do from happening." "That's why I don't know if I should be scared or happy as hell that this time, he'll be to late to stop us." He sighed heavily as he watched her, For a moment there was a connection as they both stated into each other's eyes.
Leaning down he kissed her, "if only there had been two of you" he said. She smirked" what about Janna" "You wouldn't be a threat to her. I'm not attempting to demean you the way white boys demean women of color as if their just there for the having until they get serious about having a family. I know that's way over played, The only reason we get away with it is because we've fucking programmed the world to see us as being better than we really are" he gritted his teeth as he said it. She laughed as she watched his eyes squint with indignation. "What's so funny" he asked; puzzled by her reaction." He said there were things you hated about white people, I didn't believe him" she said as she reached out to touch his face. "I knew what you meant", in fact, she'd kill you if you didn't respect me."
Its not that Janna doesn't see me as an equal which I'm not, she sees me as her little sister" she finished saying as she flashed him that disarming smile of light mocha sand embracing pearl white shells; the woman's smile was dazzling. "John, my sister, Janna they don't think like the rest of us – or any one for that matter. Its like they possess this wacky mixture of sixties, New Age radical and post apocalyptic survivor mentality. The things that the rest of us use to determine who and what we are or how much we're worth. Those things are all part of illusions we possess to shield ourselves from the world around us.” "They view everyone as actors incapable of incapable of carrying out their lines unless there's a script in their hands."
“Imagine being constantly stripped down to nothing everyday of your life. Trying to measure up in everyone's eyes to every good thing they believe you should be, and then the minute you fail to do so your considered everything that's wrong with modern society; attempting to fulfill your end of a ever changing social contract that gets changed on a constant basis by every Tom, Dick and Harry politician who's intent on changing that contract to benefit a few nonprofit directors, soccer moms and condo owners; while being stuck playing catch-up. I don't believe any of those three have ever had the chance to experience being normal before normal became a bad word. Who knows how many times they've had to reinvent themselves over and over again" he sighed as he glanced upward towards the buildings second story window.”
She looked sleepy as she stared into his eyes. "What about you" she asked softly "you've seen difficult times"? "We all have" he replied, "but those three; I've never seen some one just draw trouble without asking for it. It's as if all their lives they've been forced to be pawns on a chessboard where no matter how many times they get to the next to last row their never allowed to cross to the last row and become something greater than pawns; as if their being more than pawns would change the outcome of some really heavy chess game no one knew about." He held up his hand as a homeless man walked up to him to ask for change “I don't have any” he said before pausing to allow her to speak. "What do you think it's like to be them. To know that others are living lives you cold have been living if things were different" she stared at a young, obviously middle class black man escorting a young, equally obvious middle-class white woman as the couple walked their dog pass the building. "I know Johnny must take it really hard at times" laughing Robert continued staring at the second story window of their building. As she spoke "I know at least two psychological theories and one socio-economic opinion that he wrote about before anyone important even had the guts to write or speak about anything similar to what he was saying. What did he get for his effort; sarcasm. What did they get notoriety. He spent 4 years writing for some online paper before he gave up on someone noticing him and offering him a job as a writer.”
“ All three of them the things they've done to get jobs would amaze you. But, those things never seem to work out for them." “What do you think they would do if this venture doesn't work out for them" she asked. He looked at her full on with sea blue eyes surrounded by lines of apprehension. They clouded his expression, quietly he spoke "Lee she'll probably take off with the first Grateful Dead group that blows into town, become a traveling fortune teller. Janna will either marry me or go live in New Orleans and sale New age junk. Maybe I'll go with her. John; I think John will finally disappear. We won't know it, he'll just be gone one day. Maybe he'll go back to Nepal. I don't know maybe willingly join some cult or bizarre religion. In any case, we would never hear from him again."" Saturn, Jupiter and Uranus, he continued describing them, three distant planets feared and misunderstood by man." He looked at her as she finished the sentence for him. Hands held firmly intertwined, the tomboyish crossed Haight street with her mechanical man where they entered 1679 Haight seeking out the presences of heavenly avatars clothed in human flesh.
Comments
Post a Comment