A Glitch in the World Read online

  “What are you doing?” Dwayne asked. He chuckled.

  Stuart said nothing. He nipped at Dwayne’s arm, trying to bite the air that was escaping from it. Those molecules were faster because they had a little bit more heat in them. This was the challenge. Catch them, he thought, and you become the master.

  “Hey,” Dwayne laughed again. “Don’t bite me.”

  But Stuart kept chomping his teeth together, getting closer to Dwayne’s arm each time, even though his friend was retracting from him, trying to get away. “Stu, quit!”

  Chomp. Chomp. Chomp.

  Stuart nipped at Dwayne. The boy swatted at him, trying to keep Stuart’s teeth away from his flesh. “Don’t eat me, Stu!”

  “I won’t,” Stuart said. He breathed deep, baring his teeth. “I’m just going to eat all the air that’s inside of you.”

  They chased each other, Stuart laughing, Dwayne crying out in fear. Each time the teeth drew near his skin, Dwayne squealed and Stuart tried again. The two of them collapsed, falling onto the floor. They rolled around, trying to escape the ceiling as they noticed it lowering down to crush them from above.

  “Why’s it so close?” Stuart asked, panicked, looking up at it.

  “You ate all the air in the room...so now the outside pressure is greater than the inside’s. It’s falling in on us, Stu!”

  “Fuck!” Stuart shrieked. “How do we stop it?”

  “Exhale!” Dwayne gasped. “Put all the air back in the room!”

  Stuart panted, breathing as heavily as he could. He exhaled from his lungs and pointed his mouth at the ceiling, hoping all the momentum from the molecules he was about to spew out would push it back up, keep it from crushing him and Dwayne like a trash compactor.

  It worked. The ceiling stopped getting closer. They rested there on the floor, breathing hard, unable to speak as the world swam around them. The room was so bright. Stuart could see every detail, every speck of dust on the floor. Underneath the shelves, hiding in the corners. He had eaten those too. He had eaten the dust, something he was allergic to.

  “There’s too much dust in here,” Stuart said, feeling his breathing become labored.

  “You think so?”

  “Can we go outside?”

  “Do you feel it?”

  “Yeah, I think I feel it.”

  “Are we still on Janus?”

  “Let’s go outside.”

  “We have to remember...” Dwayne stopped in the middle of his sentence. He stared at the floor, his eyes never blinking. Once Dwayne was satisfied with staring at the floor, he continued. “We have to remember to be quiet out there.”

  “Why, will the Janusians get us?”

  “What’s a Janusian?”

  “The creatures that lived here before us. They live underground, and they’re going to come get us because we’re eating all their air.”

  “There’s no life on Janus.”

  “We’re life.”

  “No, I mean life that originally came from Janus.”

  “Let’s go see.”

  They ran outside, looking for the Janusians. They searched and searched, but none turned up. There weren’t any behind the shed, or over by the fence. There weren’t any beneath the ground either, or in the sky—but to be sure about that, they had to check every star. The two boys sat down, gazing up, counting each and every twinkling speckle in the cosmos, making sure the Janusians weren’t hiding behind one of them—sitting up there and taking a piss on their heads, giggling in their little alien voices. The Janusians were so nasty.

  Before long, the two boys were lying flat on the ground, sprawled out, eyes still fixated upwards. Stuart had lost track of which star he was on and had to restart the count. So did Dwayne. They dared not speak out here in the open in case they drew attention to themselves. As the silence between them became more prolonged, their thoughts turned introspective, inward and away from each other. Before long, Stuart forgot that Dwayne was even there.

  The cosmos swam before his eyes. A spinning world which revealed all. The other colonists on Janus, all those people, had they seen the world like he was seeing it now? Could they handle it? Could they handle seeing everything?

  He could see them in full detail, those little microscopic blobs of bacteria the Janus scientists were looking for, hiding beneath the soil, farting out packets of methane which the smartest of human beings did their best to find. Human science, the unrelenting search for the tiniest toots in the universe. Stuart had found that and more. His sight went deeper, continuously expanded, his mind an open bucket and the universe pouring in. In his view were all living things in the cosmos, every last world in all of space and time and their skies above. There were no limits to what he could see.

  And everything he saw was horrible. Stars exploded, consuming entire civilizations. Vaporized them. Created heavier elements which, in turn, formed new planets all so that life could evolve again only to meet the same fate. A perpetual cycle. Everywhere he looked, he saw it, life willing itself to end, hoping for it, begging for it, following the natural order of things. Biological creatures of all different chains of evolution, all of them sharing this one evolutionary convergence, the final stage of the process. The urge to not exist. The urge for the stars to explode even faster, more frequently, more catastrophically. They all wished the flow of sensation would cease, that if the mind insisted on processing all that it saw, that it at least leave conscious awareness out of it.

  It’s still here, Stuart thought. The glitch. The glitch in the universe only I can see—what makes it seem so off, so intolerable, like it’s not right and it must be changed at all times at all costs. The glitch, it persists, even when I’m here, even when my mind is under a psychoactively induced chemical make-up. The processes of thought and consciousness themselves have changed for me, and yet...the glitch remains. The divergent term in the equation, the bug in the code, the fabric of nature itself that renders reality incomplete for me; it’s all flawed and unbearable.

  The pit of despair grew wider. Stuart could feel himself sinking in. It became bottomless. He would spend an eternity falling in, flailing his arms and legs about in hopes of grasping onto to something but never finding it. This was what it was. Everything in the cosmos. He couldn’t hope to end it. All he could hope for was to be unaware of it, by any means necessary. It was the only solution.

  Terror erupted inside of him. The ubiquitous cold of the universe had found its way here, past the warm world of Janus. The heat spread out into the voids of space and time. Entropy took it all over, and the cold struck Stuart, a nail being driven further and further into every inch of his skin.

  In total silence, the night went on, and Stuart lay shivering beneath the Janus sky. Dwayne had fallen asleep. Stuart was there by himself, realizing that the HSP had only made everything clearer. Knowledge wasn’t meant for humankind. There were some truths that shouldn’t be known. He hadn’t meant to find it all out, but he had seen it, and now that he knew it, could he ever forget?

  The peak of evolution for any species was self-inflicted extinction. None would wait for the passage of time to take life away from them, the one-way path measured by decay. Every facet of life in the universe eventually went ahead and did it to themselves.

  Stuart felt tired. The HSP had exhausted him. Though he was sinking into the ground, and the stars above him swirled in a dance of lightning, he didn’t find it objectionable to fall asleep. It was normal to rest even though your body wasn’t on solid ground. Stuart closed his eyes, begging the Janusians to leave him alone, but they didn’t. They continued to giggle, their piss falling from the skies above, forming little puddles around him. Amidst them, he dozed off, listening to the splashes.

  4

  Before sunrise, the colony’s traffic began to form, the noise of hover buses and their engines stirring in the distance. Luckily for the two boys, the growing sounds from the streets woke them, and they were able to move inside before Dwayne’s parents were awake as well. It would have been difficult explaining to them why they had fallen asleep on the ground outside, and they would have also been lectured for breathing in the unfiltered air for so long. Janus wasn’t perfectly terraformed; some health issues could develop from unchecked, long term exposure to its atmosphere.

  Moving as quietly as possible, the boys settled into Dwayne’s room. Here, they would try to get another hour or so of sleep. The HSP had drained all their energy and made them feel like they’d need to rest for another three days straight before feeling normal again. Dwayne pulled out a spare mattress for Stuart from under his bed and donated a pillow from his closet. Stuart settled in, thinking about nothing as he lay there. Dwayne glanced over at him, a painful look on his face.

  “Stu?” Dwayne said quietly.

  “Hm?” Stuart said, not looking back at his friend.

  “Do you feel any different?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you feel better, you know, in general?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you still feel sad?”

  “I didn’t say I felt sad,” Stuart said, indignant. “I said I felt weird, about my aunt, you know.”

  “But you don’t feel any better about it?”

  “Not really,” Stuart said.

  Dwayne nodded his head, carrying a pensive expression as he sat upright, staring at the foot of his bed. After a moment, he asked, “Nothing at all?”

  “Nothing,” Stuart said, trying not to show his impatience. “I still feel the same about my aunt.”

  “I feel the same too.”

  “What’s that?” Stuart asked.

  Dwayne shrugged. “It wasn’t as fun as I thought it would be. We kind of just laughed a lot and fell asleep.”

  “I guess so,” Stuart said.

  “See you in an hour or so,” Dwayne said softly.

  “Yeah.”

  They watched the rising sun through the circular window of Dwayne’s bedroom, falling back asleep as its glow conquered the East. An hour and a half later, the alarm woke them, signaling that it was time to get ready for class. The alert was mandatory, a Janus colony law for school children.

  Dwayne’s parents were already awake when he and Stuart walked out of the bedroom. His parents had just finished a quick breakfast, and were leaving right as the boys dragged themselves into the kitchen, struggling to keep their eyes open.

  “Hey, Stu,” Dwayne’s mother said to him. She and her husband wore dark red, bureaucratic uniforms, their hair tucked under their traffic supervisor caps. “Sorry we didn’t get to say hello to you last night,” Dwayne’s mother added.

  “It’s all right,” Stuart said, trying not to yawn.

  “You boys ready for that test?”

  “I think we are.”

  “Good, good. Well, we’re off! Have a good day, and good luck.”

  “Bye,” Dwayne’s father said, slapping his son on the back and nodding at Stuart.

  “Bye, Dad. Bye, Mom.”

  “Love you.”

  “Love you, too.”

  They were gone shortly. Dwayne and Stuart ate breakfast in the kitchen, their heated-up, precooked meals doing nothing to alleviate the somber feeling of the room. Book bags and papers littered the floor. They were panicking about their math test, worried about their grades. Now that they were looking at the material again, they knew they were unprepared—and with no good excuse to show for it.

  “Our parents won’t let us ever do this again,” Dwayne said.

  “What if he doesn’t scale?” Stuart muttered.

  Dwayne didn’t answer. He just looked miserable, sighing. “Did it really not make you feel any different?”

  Stuart broke eye contact with Dwayne. He lowered his head, trying to avoid making it again. Why was he so fixated on this? “I feel the same,” Stuart said.

  “Damn...” Dwayne trailed off. “Damn.”

  They gathered their things and set off for school, not saying anything else to each other. Even when they boarded the bus, they remained silent. Stuart stared out the window, and Dwayne stared at his math notes. He tried talking to Stuart about the test a few times, but after each attempt his friend killed the conversation. He gave up after a while.

  When the bus pulled up to the school and planted itself, the boys disembarked and continued their moping until they separated inside the education building’s hallways.

  “Bye,” Stuart said.

  Dwayne looked at his friend for a long time before he said anything. “Bye, Stu. I’m sorry it didn’t make you feel any better. I really am.”

  “It’s okay,” Stuart said, his head wanting to explode. Dwayne was only making things worse. “It’s okay,” he repeated.

  “No it’s not,” Dwayne said as he walked away. “I’m really sorry because it’s not.”

  Stuart went to his English class. He didn’t pay any attention to the morning VidScreen program, nor did he pay attention to the lecture. His teacher even announced a homework assignment, but he had no idea what it was on. He didn’t even bother to write it down. Stuart just sat there, wondering what it would be like to not exist.

  There were a lot of ways to find out.

  With that thought in mind, he began to picture how high the education building was. Well, it was certainly high enough, he pondered. Beyond that, did it make a difference?

  His English teacher kept on lecturing, her voice monotonous, her tone dull, everything about her uninteresting. It hurt to listen to her speak. Her voice another glitch in Stuart’s universe.

  In the middle of the lesson, when the teacher left the room for a moment and the students seized the moment to converse, Alissa leaned over and tapped Stuart on the shoulder.

  “Hey, what’s wrong with you?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?” Stuart said.

  “You look upset.”

  “I’m just tired.”

  “You always look tired.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Yeah it is, and you look way more tired than you usually do. Is something wrong?”

  “I’m going to fail my math test.”

  When the class was finally over, Stuart dragged himself into the hallway, crawling to his next class. His movements were slow and lethargic, nearly paralyzed with fear from thinking about what he might do after school. There it was, that detached feeling, the one some people practiced meditation to achieve. Yes, Stuart had it—the sense of watching himself from outside his own mind and body. What would he do? Why couldn’t he think about it and decide?

  It was an impossible decision to make. He would just have to go with the day and see what happened.

  When he was about halfway to his next class, he noticed the rush of people in one direction. The usually stochastic flow of student traffic was interrupted by a clear current, one running from the top floor to the bottom one. Stuart joined in, walking to the end of the hallway and then descending to another level. It was part of going with it, everything around him, allowing whatever happened to happen. He followed the other students to the bottom floor, where the source of attraction lay.

  He could see the emergency vehicles, the blinking purple lights of Janus security, and an ambulance. They consumed the outside view of the school windows. Stuart stepped closer to get a better look. A few other hover cars had parked nearby for a view as well. The security officers screamed at the onlookers to clear the road. He could see the paramedics carrying a body on a stretcher, the figure completely covered save for an ebony arm that hung out in the open from beneath the blanket. Blood spatter smeared where the impact had been. The body had fallen.

  Stuart stared as they carted the corpse to the ambulance. Clearing traffic, the security cars guided the ambulance into town towards the Janus hospital. Onlookers’ cars swept aside as the emergency vehicles blared their way through the streets, announcing to the world the existence of an injury, the presence of misery in their midst, some that might seek to spread itself if everyone else wasn’t careful.

  The school day came to an immediate end. The children shuffled home, chattering, gossiping, talking about the boy who had jumped off the roof. How had he even gotten up there? Weren’t all those doors locked? Could we get on the roof too for fun?

  Stuart’s chin trembled as he heard the name repeated over and over again. The boy who jumped off the roof in order to have a meeting with the ground. The rich boy who had everything. Why’d he do it? How could he have possibly been depressed?

  He hated Dwayne. He hated him more than he ever thought it possible to hate someone. His friend had everything, everything Stuart could ever want, the looks, the social skills, the happiness...and he had given it all up to steal the one thing that Stuart did have, the one thing that gave him value: the chance to leave a mark on the world. Sure, Stuart could still choose to leave one, but the second time something happened was never as important as the first time. He hated Dwayne so much that he began to cry. “We’re sorry, Stuart,” they said, patting him on the back as they saw his tears, giving him the most attention they had ever given him, making themselves feel better in the process—doing their good deed for the day and off to tear the world apart from the inside once they were done.

  Across the colony, on the VidScreens, the school director was projecting a statement. She extended her condolences to Dwayne’s family and informed the parents of the colony that classes would be canceled for the week. She went on with an encouraging message, something about how Dwayne would be missed, you never know what someone is going through, and we need to be positive even though we have nothing to be positive about—or something along those lines. Stuart couldn’t stand to listen to it.

  He walked through the front door of his home. His parents ran up to hug him. The work day had ended for many people in the colony, including his father. Such a thing had never happened on Janus before.

  “I’m so sorry, Stu,” His mother sobbed. Stuart was annoyed, disgusted. He wished she was dead too.

  “We’re here for you, Stu,” his father echoed. The fat man could still speak. It was a miracle, Stuart thought. His stomach had not blocked his mouth yet.