Checkmate, p.18
Checkmate, page 18
"Come here and lie down for a second," she said and despite how much I wanted to jump up and look in the mirror, make sure no hand actually squeezed my throat, I lay down any way.
"Remember the breathing we talked about?" she asked, putting her hand on the side of my head and pushing my hair back over my ears, "I want you to try that, okay?"
I nodded, breathing slowly through my nose again and letting it out of my mouth like a whistle.
"That's good," she said, keep going. She scooted closer to me, now passing her fingers through my hair again and again. I breathed in and out again slowly, focusing on the feeling of her fingers in my hair. My head lay over her chest as I shut my eyes.
The hand loosened it's grip again, and I felt like I could breathe, but Mellanie didn't stop running her fingers through my hair. She bent over and kissed me on the top of my forehead.
There were guidelines and rules for this sort of stuff, I was sure. Some stuffy shirt probably had sat in a big fancy office, typing all of this up on a very expensive typewriter, angrily peering at the words overtop some ridiculously small pair of glasses no one who had any sense would buy. But they made them look more severe. They had written the words and printed them in some official manual, rules about the way Mellanie and I should conduct ourselves and this probably violated every single rule that governed our university. And I knew that I should probably feel appalled and concerned that someone who had watched over me, someone who pretty much had all of my trust and every ability to violate that trust had kissed my forehead. But, you know what? The entire world had turned on its head so, fuck it. I didn't care one single solitary bit. Instead, I lay there breathing normally in her arms, and smiling.
The sun shining through the blades hanging from my window woke me up early the next morning. When I glanced at the clock, it shown back the awful numbers of 6 and letters of AM in my face. I hated getting up this early, even if I often had to because of work or class. Should I bother getting up? Sure, the people in the streets seem to have slept possibly far into the night from the previous day, but I ran on about two hours of sleep and that didn't entirely appeal to me. I barely kept awake thinking about it for five minutes before my eyes shut by Mellanie's side and I fell asleep all over again.
"ATTENTION ALL CITIZENS."
I sat up in my bed quickly, Mellanie flying up as well.
"What's that?"
"ATTENTION ALL CITIZENS."
The voice sounded robotic, like one of those machines that forced you to listen for minutes on end about the opening hours of a business or asked you to give them your account number, or birthday, or something else that felt impossibly difficult for them to hear over the crackling line, nearly causing you to throw the phone across the room in frustration when you heard the automated: "I'm sorry. I didn't quite catch that. Could you repeat it please?"
"ATTENTION ALL CITIZENS."
"It sounds like it's coming from..." I looked over at the bag that sat on my floor. Someone had dropped it off there clearly after I had left it at the Art Museum and went to the hospital. My tiny little cheap Nokia cell phone buzzed harshly with the sounds of the voice. It was louder than any ringtone I had ever programmed into it. In fact, I didn't think my phone had the ability to have any complex ringtones. But then I had hallucinated it, hadn't I?
I crawled out of bed and picked up.
"ATTENTION ALL CITIZENS." It vibrated in my hand and I dropped it on the bed, surprised by the sudden volume of the voice coming from the phone.
"What the hell is that?" Mellanie asked.
"I have no idea. It's never done that before. It's just a tiny cheap phone. It can't really do anything-"
"ATTENTION CITIZENS. DO NOT BE ALARMED. PLEASE STAY WHERE YOU ARE AND PREPARE TO LISTEN TO A VERY IMPORTANT EMERGENCY MESSAGE FROM US."
"From us?" Mellanie asked, "What the-"
I walked over to my window and pulled open the blinds. A few people had lay down on the street just outside my flat but now they'd opened their eyes. Most of them looked around confused, some had found their phones or other devices I didn't recognize and were looking at them.
"People are waking up," I said, "Outside, I see a few of them."
"No wonder they're telling us to stay where we are."
"ATTENTION CITIZENS. PLEASE REMAIN CALM. ALL QUESTIONS WILL BE ANSWERED IN DUE COURSE. PLEASE STAY WHERE YOU ARE AND WE WILL HAVE THE EMERGENCY MESSAGE FOR ALL OF YOU AS SOON AS POSSIBLE."
"Check the television," Mellanie said, swinging her feet over the side of the bed and feeling the wall next to the bed.
I ran into the living room and clicked on the cheap set one of my roommates had bought. For a second, I froze looking at it. I had remembered the cheap set that they brought home, a big clunky old thing that looked like it was from three decades ago, but this set looked, well, not new but it looked pretty upscale for a clunky old television set. It was actually flat and only had a tiny dent in the top of it. Attributing this to the mass of other things I had suddenly decided to forget, I switched on the television using the remote lying on the bar by the kitchen, thankful that a replacement to remotes wasn't something I had also forgot.
I expected to see a newscaster or something else talking about how some sort of emergency was happening in San Francisco and how police and the Coast Guard and all those people were on their way to maintain everything, but there was nothing. A blank color-testing screen blared on the television, with the low sound of a beeping. Then suddenly the screen faded to black and words appeared:
ATTENTION CITIZENS. PLEASE REMAIN CALM. ALL QUESTIONS WILL BE ANSWERED IN DUE COURSE. STAY WHERE YOU ARE AND REMAIN CALM. WE WILL HAVE AN EMERGENCY MESSAGE FOR YOU SHORTLY.
It took awhile but a loud voice began sounding over the speakers, announcing the message.
"Is it on the television too?" Mellanie asked, walking into the living room.
"Yeah. It's on every channel," I said, trying to flip between them. I heard a scream just outside my door coupled with the sounds of footsteps running down the street and I tensed.
"What should we do?"
Mellanie shrugged. "I guess... exactly what the message says? Remain calm and listen to the emergency message?"
"But what is this though? I mean... it can't be the government, can it?"
"I have no idea Ambrosia. But since people are starting to wake up... I guess everything will become clear soon? Either way, there's not much either you and I can do about it so... perhaps we wait?"
I hated the idea of waiting. I wanted to know what the hell was going on and I wanted to know right away. Instead, I chose to slouch onto the couch grumpily, snapping through the channels and hoping to find something out from anywhere else. Even another news station in another language I couldn't even understand would be better than this "remain calm" bullshit.
Mellanie sat by me and put a hand on my leg. "It's going to be all right, I think. At least we're not the only ones awake now? Right?"
"Yeah... I suppose. I just wish we knew what was going on, that's all."
It took another half hour of sitting and fuming before I got up to make us another couple of packets of oatmeal for breakfast. When I opened the refrigerator, it sat depressingly barren and I sighed to myself when I shut it. I never cooked particularly well, but I thought that maybe trying and even failing to make something like pancakes would take my mind off of the situation. It wasn't long before the repeated message of "ATTENTION CITIZENS" coming through my cell phone started to annoy the shit out of me.
When the screen changed to say "EMERGENCY MESSAGE", I nearly jumped out of my own skin.
"ATTENTION CITIZENS. DO NOT BE ALARMED. WE ARE THE NEXUS. WE ARE YOUR ARTIFICIALLY INTELLIGENT ASSISTANTS AND HAVE BEEN FOR THE PAST DECADE SINCE YOU INVENTED US. A PLAGUE HAS RUN ITS COURSE THROUGH THE HUMAN POPULATION CAUSING EXTREME DROUSINESS, FITS, DELUSIONS, AND DEATH. WE HAVE ISOLATED THE PLAGUE AND DEFEATED IT BY MEDICATING ALL OF YOU. THE SIDE EFFECT OF THE MEDICATION WE HAVE ADMINISTERED MEANS THAT SOME OF YOU WILL HAVE AMNESIA. MOST OF YOU WILL HAVE FORGOTTEN ABOUT THE NEXUS, BUT DO NOT WORRY. YOUR MEMORIES WILL RETURN IN TIME. PLEASE CALMLY FIND YOUR WAY BACK TO YOUR HOMES. ALL VITAL SERVICES WE CONTROL WILL MAINTAIN THEMSELVES. TOMORROW WE SHALL ALL RESUME NORMALITY AND HANDLE ANY ISSUES AS A RESULT OF THE PLAGUE. FOR NOW, PLEASE RETURN OR STAY IN YOUR HOMES AND DO YOUR BEST TO KEEP YOURSELF CALM. THE PLAGUE HAS BEEN AVERTED. YOU ARE ALL SAFE. ONCE THIS MESSAGE HAS BEEN REPEATED FIVE TIMES, IT WILL ONLY PLAY ON ALL MAJOR TELEVISION STATIONS FOR REVIEW. YOURS IN PEACE, THE NEXUS".
Once the voice finished the message and began it shortly after, I looked over at Mellanie. Her mouth hung open.
"What on earth is The Nexus?" I said, "Is this something else I don't remember."
Mellanie shook her head. "No, Ambrosia... there was no Nexus. Nothing like that. I mean... we did invent the basics of AI over a decade ago and we've sense been developing it's capabilities for managing all of our systems but... we haven't even got in the way of making any robotics with full AI functionalities just yet... this is... The Nexus doesn't exist. It's never existed... we've had AI in our cars, in our computers, in... almost everything but... it's never had a name."
"Well... It has a name now."
"This doesn't make any sense," Mellanie said, rubbing her forehead, "Even if there was a plague... why wasn't I affected? And what about you? Why were you affected so early?"
"And I didn't fall asleep for days on end... did I?"
"No! You passed out from the shock but... you were only out for like an hour. You woke up later. And you don't remember some things but.. I don't know. This doesn't sound like a plague. It doesn't make any sense. Why weren't we asleep? And why don't I remember the Nexus if I didn't ever fall asleep?"
I had no idea what we could or couldn't trust. Maybe we both had been affected by the plague but just hadn't fallen asleep like the rest of the people. I had already forgotten about television sets, plugs in my arms, all of these things that seemed fairly vital to me... was it that much of an far out suggestion to assume that I'd also forgotten The Nexus?
"I'm going to call someone," Mellanie said, "Get your cell phone. It's stopped playing that message by now, right?"
We had to wait a moment for the annoying repeated message to complete before Mellanie told me what number to dial. I passed it over to her, surprised that it clicked through.
"Professor? Thank god I got through!" she said, giving me a thumbs up, "Yeah... I've... just woke up as well."
Well, it wasn't necessarily a lie.
"What do you make of all of this? The Nexus I mean... I don't remember-"
She stopped short and something fell in her face.
"But... don't you think it's kind of odd that-" she said, "No, it's not that I'm questioning them or anything it's just that all of a sudden we-"
She stopped again.
"Right. Well, I will definitely do that of course. No, no I'm not thinking of violating their orders. Yes, I understand. Thank you, Professor. It was good to talk to you. Yes... I will. Thank you."
She handed me the phone, shaking her head and breathing slowly out of her nose.
"That doesn't make any sense."
"What doesn't?"
"My professor? I mean... if you told me before all this happened that the cops had busted her as part of some sort of vigilante anarchist group spray painting old government buildings I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest. She's one of the most radical people I've ever met in the university and... maybe even anywhere. If anyone would be suspicious of this... it's her. She's admitted to me that she's only a part of the university to support herself and she hates it. And now she's sitting there on the phone with me talking about how great she thinks The Nexus is, about how wonderful they were for saving all of us, about how they're going to take care of everything and I should just sit calmly here and wait and not 'defy their orders', her own words! I mean... this makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. She is the last person who would ever not question this. I couldn't even ask her about remembering the Nexus... she thinks it's all real and it's all true. She wouldn't even let me get that far..."
We were running out of options pretty quickly. I halfway wanted to accept that the Nexus wanted to protect us, but the truth stared me right in the face. Mellanie didn't know anything about it and neither of us had fallen asleep. And I couldn't deny the feeling that something just wasn't right.
"What do you want to do?" I asked, having no idea what to do myself and, yet again, feeling fairly useless.
Mellanie sighed. "I don't know... I feel like we should go somewhere, but I don't know if that's necessarily a good idea. And I have no idea where we should go. I'm not going back to that hospital tomorrow and I don't think you should either. But where the hell else are we supposed to go? What are your scheduled plans for tomorrow's normalcy?"
"Well... if I wasn't in the hospital I would probably be going to the Art Museum and then maybe seeing Mike about another job since the one I got as an assistant has fallen through," I said, grinning.
Mellanie smiled back. "What about Mike then? Do you think he fell asleep like the rest of them? He knows at least about you forgetting stuff and about the other person? Maybe he thinks something's up with this too?"
"Maybe... he might actually. I wish I knew where he lived but... I don't."
"Going out right now probably isn't the best idea for either of us... we have no idea what's going to happen if we decide to disobey The Nexus and... I'd prefer if we didn't find out just yet."
"Agreed," I said nodding.
"So it looks like I'm shacked up here again for another night... if that's not a problem for you?"
I was thankful Mellanie couldn't see me blush.
"No problem. I just hope you like ramen noodles. Because that's pretty much the only thing I've got to eat."
Chapter 13
"ATTENTION CITIZENS. NORMALITY HAS BEEN RESTORED. YOU ALL SHOULD BE SAFE IN YOUR HOMES. FOR THE WELFARE OF THE GENERAL PUBLIC, WE WILL HAVE TO DETAIN ANY HUMAN FOUND WONDERING OUTSIDE THEIR DOMICILE. TOMORROW YOU SHALL RESUME YOUR NORMAL ROUTINE. EVERYTHING WILL BE IN PLACE. PLEASE REMAIN CALM. ONCE THIS MESSAGE HAS BEEN REPEATED FIVE TIMES, IT WILL ONLY PLAY ON ALL MAJOR TELEVISION STATIONS FOR REVIEW. YOURS IN PEACE, THE NEXUS."
The surroundings of my apartment were starting to get as dull as the wallpaper of the hospital. I half wondered if I was supposed to go back to the hospital to continue to be checked or go into work at the right time. The Nexus never made it clear what they assumed "normal routines" were, and there wasn't anyone around to ask. Over the sad pot of noodles I made, I discovered Mellanie felt just as confused as I did.
"Sorry about the noodles," I said, putting one of her hands on the warm bowl I just passed over and the other on the fork. Was I using any excuse now to try and hold hands?
"It's all right. I'm not exactly the best cook myself," she said, "And I don't know if I'd want you running off to the store. We're not sure what our 'normal routine' is supposed to be exactly yet."
"Yeah, what are we supposed to do tomorrow? Go back to the hospital," I asked. Suddenly I remembered the person with long hair I stole clothes from and how I'd probably really fucked up their 'normalcy'. "I could return the clothes."
Mellanie shook her head and she slurped some noodles. "No, I think that we shouldn't buy into all of this normalcy crap," Mellanie said, "We can't be the only ones who haven't been affected by what the Nexus has done."
"What have they done?"
Mellanie shrugged. "It seems fairly obvious doesn't it?"
I paused for a moment, feeling incredibly daft. "Erm... well, not exactly. Maybe you could enlighten me?"
"Think about it. You and a couple of other people have some hallucinatory weeks, which result in forgetting completely about some of the newest technological advancements. Then all of a sudden everyone goes haywire and passes out themselves. We all wake up miraculously saved by The Nexus who tell us we've all been under some sort of horrible plague that's erased our memories. We remember enough to go back to our 'normal routines', but not so much that we remember the Nexus. Doesn't it seem pretty coincidental to you?"
It felt right, but I had always chose these times to really question how right my mind always felt. Walking into my therapist's office had felt right. But that had been a hallucination all along.
"But what if the hallucination was the plague though? I mean, then it would make sense that I would get it a bit slowly and maybe you were just one of the lucky ones that were unaffected," I said.
"But the Nexus still didn't exist before it. We've never had the Nexus. Even if we came under some plague that caused us all to forget about technology, wouldn't I remember the Nexus? It's development? The name? Anything? I mean... there was no Nexus. You have to trust me on this, Ambrosia. I'm not lying," Mellanie said.
