Rectitude

Isham is short and pale. He is thin and his clothes are too big. They hang loose and drape over his starved frame. Old shoestrings fasten his pants like a cincture for some prophetic vagrant. He steals his food—thin threaded arms snatching at shelves and digging through waste—the stale bread and spat bolus is hard chewing that eases his stomach. He drifts from place to place with no skills. He cannot read or write. Like most he taps screens for the things he needs, deciphering and reading the quantized hieroglyphics disseminated by the cthulhic bourgeoisie. These signals and data streams impose constant interactions without his consent, and now he harbors a disgust that weighs heavy on his soul.

As a child he lived with his mother. His father, he never knew. They lived in a building that clawed at the moon and at night he’d climb into bed with her, and she’d comb his hair and kiss his forehead. They watched old movies, men of the west, the boundless expanse, all a making of their own while he watched in a room no greater than his breadth. His mother hummed lullabies and sang long after his eyes were heavy and closed. She was alive one day and the next she wasn’t. Banished to his memories alone.

The building burned a week later. The flames scorched steel and layered the building with carbonized flakes that blew away like paper.  Cheap furniture burned and ash fell on the stalks of beings that watched in spectacle. Isham ran from these flames. His image flickered from alley to alley and provoked no thought to witnesses. Among the filth and waste of the urban eddies he met Jonah. Together they went on.

A year later, Isham squatted on his scrawny haunches, he bathed in electric starlight, the billion diodes of man’s invented galaxy. He watched passing cars as if they were grazing beasts ignorant of their predators.

Jonah’s finger pointed to a distinct vehicle, slowing and easing out of traffic, its body sheened to a mirrored finish. It spat and gurgled and expelled dissidence among the noiseless cars.  They knew the car. Watched it for days. Its slow rolling body passed by their guffawed expressions and turned into the unending parking lot gridded and lined in neat order. Powerlines weaved tapestry. The electric umbilical connections were spun like spider webs above the parking lot and the hanging tendrils, black as snakes, tethered to the slumbered cars.

The jackals entered the parking lot and crouched and stalked out of sight. They moved from one car to the next. They scurried between the endless monotonous rows of constants, of homogeneity, the turgidity of the insipid. A constant offense to Isham.

They went further into the parking lot. They tracked the numbers and followed the trail to its inevitable conclusion. The car sat as it was allocated. No surprise to them. No witnesses to see them. The car’s claimant was off to other places in the world. The parking lot was deserted of life.

Isham approached the car. He pressed his hand against the body and whispered. Jonah probed the locks with a small device. No cord tethered the car. No electric hum. Above the exhaust, soot stained the bumper. It was filthy with grease and oil and it looked angry and mean.

Jonah’s device pinged as it churned through algorithms that neither understood.

‘You ought to smash that thing,’ said Isham.

‘Then what? Break the window?’

‘It won’t hurt the car.’

‘You’ll have a broken window.’

‘It’ll drive fine.’

Jonah stopped and looked at Isham. ‘Don’t be stupid.’

Isham scrunched his nose and gestured at the locked door.

‘If you’d let me work I’d get it open.’

‘I’m letting you work,’ said Isham.

‘Yeah, you think?’

‘What if we were in a hurry?’ asked Isham.

‘We ain’t in a hurry.’

‘Don’t got to be this hard.’ Isham knocked on the rear window. ‘And the car is simple to start.’

‘I know. I near got it.’

Isham turned and looked at the car and nodded as if someone was talking to him. Its seats were ripped and torn. There was nothing clean about the car. It was old and dirty with mud clumped beneath the fenders from the places Isham had never been, and he broke off a chunk of mud and wondered what those places were. He crumbled the mud and wiped his hands against his pants, leaving the dirt beneath his fingernails.

‘Isham, how long have we been looking for this car? Isham?’

Isham said nothing.

‘I figured at least two months.’

‘How much longer?’ Isham asked.

Jonah looked at the progress bar and shrugged and said soon. He was quiet for a few minutes before he returned to speaking. ‘You know I don’t care about this car.’

‘I know,’ said Isham. ‘You want nothing but junk.’

‘This tool ain’t junk.’

‘It is junk. Now, how much longer?’

‘Isham, it ain’t junk.’

‘I said what I said.’

‘What if it gets us rich?’

‘There ain’t no what if’s on that.’

‘It is no different than this car.’

‘Car ain’t trying to be what it ain’t.’

‘Well shit, Isham, what the hell you saying?’

‘Nothing. I am tired of waiting. If you can’t get it, I’ll break the window.’

‘I got it,’ said Jonah.

‘Yeah you got it,’ said Isham. ‘You went damn near cross eyed watching that screen.’

The device pinged and the car doors unlocked. Isham pulled open the driverside door and jumped into the bucket seat, while Jonah yelled about the trunk. Isham fussed for a lever and pulled it. The trunk swung upward, and Jonah disappeared as he dug into it, emitting a muffled voice, grunting and straining. Isham broke open the steering column and exposed the wiring within it. He worked at them and found the ones he needed to run the car. Behind him, Johan hooted and slammed shut the trunk. He’d a light step and a smile as he ran around the car and took to the passenger seat.

‘Isham, can you believe this. Can you?’ He shook a handheld tablet at Isham. ‘Do you know what this is?’

Isham’s eyes narrowed.

‘This is good. Real good,’ said Jonah as he placed the tablet on his lap and tapped it into illumination. ‘Hardware ain’t nothing, but it got a good license. Look here.’ Jonah raised the tablet and it scanned his face. A pin protruded and pricked his finger and took a droplet of blood. He then pressed his hand to the screen–small subdermal lights pulsed in his wrist and spoke to the tablet.

‘Can’t imagine why’d you do that to yourself?’ Isham pointed at the lights in Jonah’s wrist.

‘They’re useful,’ said Jonah.

‘Well, I’m about done up as you and I don’t got them.’

‘That’s one way to look at it,’ said Jonah.

‘It is.’

‘Then look at this tablet.’

‘I ain’t got no business with that thing. If I found it—well, I’d scattered to the wind.’

‘There’s no reasoning with you.’

‘No, my verdict stands.’

‘You are something Isham. And what is your verdict?’

‘You damn very well know it, Jonah.’

Jonah laughed. ‘I know it, but this tablet is worth a good bit of money.’ He gleamed at the growing progress bar and its engorgement of data. ‘Worth more than the car, I bet.’

‘That don’t matter,’ said Isham. ‘I ain’t giving up the car.’

‘But even you can appreciate money,’ said Jonah.

‘Still disgusts me though.’

‘That is something.’ A ping, the dinner bell of information, came clear and Jonah snapped his head to the screen. His eyes widened and he smiled. ‘It’s done,’ he said. ‘Look at this, you mean son of a bitch, and tell me it ain’t beautiful.’ Jonah showed him the tablet and its reveled imagery. Within, a being, so much like the one in the passenger seat. The image of Jonah, a spawning of man, proliferated by the cheap ethereal, derived and imbued on the circuitry and the amalgamations it wrought through intrepid clay molding. ‘Yeah, goddammit, that’s me in there.’

Isham wiped his mouth. His eyes made full doubt to such claim.

‘Ask me,’ Jonah pointed at the screen. ‘Ask him something and see.’

‘There ain’t nothing to ask it,’ said Isham. ‘Nothing but hand waving. It ain’t you no more than I ain’t you—at least I’ll tell you straight.’

‘Isham,’ spoke the box, ‘shut the hell up.’

Isham laughed. His eyebrow raised and he addressed Jonah the man. ‘I told you what’d I do if I get my hands on that box.’

‘I know it,’ said Jonah.

‘Yeah, whatever that is, it isn’t. A mirror in a mirror.’

Jonah opened his mouth but he snapped straight. ‘Get down,’ he whispered and both dropped low. They peeked over the dash and watched three men approach.

‘Is that him?’ asked Isham. His voice was quiet and sharp.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Ask that dumbass box.’

‘It don’t work that way.’

‘I bet it’s him.’

‘Get this thing running,’ said Jonah. His head pressed against the dash as he clutched the tablet.

Isham worked the exposed wires and worked at them. They sparked and cracked upon contact and spun the car’s starter in a stutter drive. The car turned over. Its stubborn knocks snatched those three approaching and put them in a run. They ran at the car. He flicked the wires again.

‘She’s stubborn,’ said Isham.

‘Hurry.’

Isham bit his cheek and said nothing as he worked the wires and set the car into a cranking groan, commanding the cold being to strike alive.

‘Come on you,’ Isham muttered beneath his breath as the starter kicked up and increased in frequency, the motor turning easy and sparking alive. The engine roared. The mufflers backfired and cracked in angst. Isham laughed and pounded the steering wheel. He put the car in gear and feathered the accelerator as the tires began their squeal, leaving the pursuers and smoke behind.

Jonah fiddled the radio—his other hand clutched to his quantized being—and the three howled at their escape. These bandits ran to the urban horizon. Engine and music mixed. The crop rows of cars blurred as they ran the parking lot’s length and bled away the world. The car dovetailed with the street, it screamed, the tires screamed, pedestrians screamed, and within their bodies leaned into the turn, and Isham bared a smile none ever seen. A soiree with the inherent. A fistful of guts wrying and yerking as the car bucked and weaved through the steel lattices and the tires spun away the liminal space as they pierced into the world that was struck by the tenants of man.

Isham banked the car through the next intersection. The car spun out and smashed into a parked car. Airbags exploded and shot out a miasmic powder. The passenger side windows shattered, and Jonah shook in his seat with the tablet and his quantized being clutched to his chest. Isham’s face slammed and battered against the console. Blood ran from his nose. They laughed. Isham’s eyes swelled. Jonah climbed out the broken window and sat on the door and drummed the roof as Isham spun the car back into motion. They went on. Isham slammed down the accelerator and pushed the car into a gallop through the congestion and if any sirens were tracking them, he far outpaced them.

Isham pushed the car and groaned against its limiters. Yet it ran like a good stead, the old stallions of the west navigating the grand vastness. He, the untethered, a consummate of the sprawling city, choked by design. Though he found the wild. He found it. An intersection approached and he possessed no thought— no direction mattered.

The next intersection came. Isham defied the order beset and sped through it. They were broadsided. They were rocked and the car tumbled. The car flipped and they were tossed within, their bodies breaking against the crumbled frame. Glass hung in the air like hail.

Isham woke, moments later. Everything pulsed and danced in long streaks as he watched Jonah drag himself and the tablet from beneath the wreckage. They were bloody and laughing. Flames consumed the car. Jonah yelled something, but Isham couldn’t hear it and said nothing in return. Isham climbed to his feet. He stumbled. After a few more steps he moved well and so they moved together. They moved quickly and left the smoldering car behind. Jonah wiped the blood from his eyes and showed Isham the tablet. The man within behaved as the man without. Isham slapped the tablet away and said nothing as they went into the city, tied to them, a burning fuse laced and tapped for a frenetic explosion.

They were animals. Slack jawed. Fighters. The consumption of it boiling over as they moved by the tolls of the moment. Beating chests. Howling at the washed-out night. Their bodies set in perpetual motion. Confiding in a sort of truculence. Rolling forth on light toes so the breezy fates let their night unfurl. Far off thunderstorms cracked. Although where in the entangled labyrinthine was yet to be discerned.

They rounded a corner to a less traveled street. They saw a tiny convenience store shelved with snacks and walled with vending machines. It sold tech, software, the world in your hand. Isham called and pointed at the store, like some deranged warrior atop the rampart, sending himself and the Jonahs onward.

They took rags from their pockets and tied them around their faces. Isham smiled and nodded to Jonah as he occluded his face.

They were quiet and quick as they ran across the street, and when they reached the adjacent building they crouched as they moved along the windows to stay out of sight. Thunder cracked and the first rains fell.

Near the cracked door, Isham crawled on his knees and peaked around the corner. Inside, the cashier was sitting. His feet were propped on the counter and his finger scrolling through an invisible surface as his glowing eye formed a world unseen.

Isham jumped to his feet and ran into the store and threw his arms at the cashier’s legs, flipping the man backwards. Jonah followed close and ran along the aisle scooping food with one hand and clutching the tablet in the other. Thunder cracked and the rain fell in sheets. Isham slid over the countertop and kicked and stomped the cashier. The man wheezed and folded into a fetal position and fought no more. Isham rooted through the cashier’s pockets and found the keys to the display cases. Isham unlocked the cases and took out the phones, the tablets, the computers, and gadgets. He smashed and destroyed them. The circuitry and glass strewn across the floor. His head was hot and when Jonah ripped him away he resisted until there was nothing left unbroken.

A great thunder cracked the sky. It was constant and felt like the world was asunder. The cheap walls rumbled, and the windowpanes reverberated. The heavy rains were static, a noisy signal decayed and corrupt.

Isham turned to Jonah. He was weighed down with food. He smiled behind his face covering and commended his friend. He jumped the counter and ran towards the door with Jonah in his tow.

A gunshot exploded and ripped through his friend. Jonah collapsed with blank eyes. Blood and brains gushed on the ground. Isham shook him. Demanded he wake. He pulled at his arm and dragged him from the doorway. Corn chips and junk food crunched beneath his body. Gunfire ripped through the window and bullets zipped past his head. Isham saw the tablet clutched to Jonah’s breast. The screen containing digitized visage of the man dead on the ground. It spoke and sounded like Jonah, and it looked at Isham and Isham pulled the tablet from the dead clutch of Jonah the man.

Gunfire and rain chased him. The thunder shook him. He ran until he could no longer run. His scrawny frame tucked beneath an awning as the rains enshrouded him. He held his skinny legs and stared into the tablet.

Isham spoke to the tablet and Jonah responded. It spoke clearly and with meaning and eased Isham’s mind as he heard Jonah’s words. The box comforted Isham and said good things and spoke with the qualities of Jonah. They talked about the day they met, the blessing it was. Then Isham cried. And as he cried he smashed the box. It shattered. He trampled it beneath his feet and defiled its existence as he scattered to rains. The glass crunched beneath his tattered shoes. He went on.

END