King of the Worlds. M. Thomas Gammarino
and try again; that his life, such as it had been, would soon be coterminous with his destiny. Well, Dr. Cohen had relieved him of having to die soon—you couldn’t ask for better news than that. Cochlerin was specifically designed to regenerate hair cells in the inner ear. Still, nine more days seemed almost more than he could bear. He could scarcely imagine how people in the old days, before there was a cure, had endured years and years of this.
Somehow he needed to relax. He and this shrill visitor were going to live together for at least another week; he might as well make the most of it. And anyway, such an exercise would be good mental training for dealing with some other adversity down the line, and if life had taught him anything, it was that there’s some other adversity down the line.
He gave it his best shot, breathed deep, relaxed his muscles, and surrendered to the sound. At first the fever-pitch ringing was as terrible and anxiety-inducing as ever and gave rise to manic fight-or-flight responses like Oh shit, I’m dying and Oh fuck, I’m dying, but gradually, over the course of perhaps fifteen minutes, he taught himself to abort thoughts at the first sign of negativity and to return his attention to the terrible mantra in his ears, which, true to plan, wasn’t quite so terrible anymore, and then wasn’t terrible at all. It was almost calming if you let it be.
He was lying on his back on top of the covers, legs crossed at the ankles, fingers interlaced in an empty church over his abdomen, and as the fear began to ebb, he discovered himself doing this space-out thing he sometimes did where he’d fix his gaze on something out in the world and let it (for lack of a better word) penetrate him. It wasn’t an intellectual exercise—he wasn’t thinking; it was more like a kind of effortless meditation, and, with the possible exception of Quantum Travel (a.k.a. QT), it was the closest he ever came to understanding what mystics meant when they talked about subject and object merging into one, as per this exhortation from the great poet Matsuo Bashō: “You can learn about the pine only from the pine, or about bamboo only from bamboo. When you see an object, you must leave your subjective preoccupation with yourself, otherwise you impose yourself on the object, and do not learn. The object and yourself must become one, and from that feeling of oneness issues your poetry.”
Currently, Dylan was a rather disgusting fan blade. Dust got into the crannies of the popcorn ceiling too—he’d been that a few blinks ago. Someday they’d get central air-conditioning, if ever they could afford it. Thoughts were objects too, of course, and now Dylan was suddenly his money problems. The last of his savings had gone into the down payment on this house that was really about twice as big as they required, on bucolic and overpriced Yushan Lane no less. He was indentured for the next thirty years, unless something miraculous happened between now and then, the odds of which were vanishingly slim. And with three kids to send to college…
The alarm returned redoubled, urging him to do something—to wake up, fight a fire, call the cops, something. It took several minutes for him to talk his heart rate down and return to his breath. He tried focusing less on his thoughts-as-objects and more on objects-as-objects. He looked at the varicolored spines of the print books he collected, and that calmed him some. He consulted the blank spot on the wall that desperately wanted art, and that induced anxiety again.
Then he looked toward the clothes closet.
The door was still swiped open from this morning and on the shelf at the top was a big white plastic shoebox that had once contained one of the first pairs of Nike “pumps” ever to be worn by a kid in Delaware County, Pennsylvania.3 Dylan had discarded the sneakers several decades ago, but this box had followed him around ever since, even if he wasn’t sure he’d ever actually seen it until now. When was the last time he’d opened it? Ten years ago? Fifteen? It really had been that long, and in many ways it felt like longer. Barring whatever one might find via omni these days, that box held the only remaining evidence that Dylan had ever been anything but a teacher.
3_____________
The sneakers had come with a little handheld pump you had to carry around in a pocket or somewhere. If you fit the pump to the valve built into this weird plastic pyramid at the back of the shoe, you could fill a bladder with air until the innards of the shoe conformed to your foot. Reebok had entered the pump market soon after Nike spearheaded it, but rather than include a separate pump accessory, they had incorporated the pump as a little raised rubber basketball on the tongue of the shoe that you could depress with your thumb, which made a lot of sense since who wants to carry a pump around while playing basketball? Though really it had never been very clear to Dylan what was so great about having your sneakers fit that tight in the first place.
Before fleeing to New Taiwan, they had purged their old house in Santa Monica of virtually everything, and when Dylan watched Erin deposit the shoebox in the dumpster, he almost let her, and then thought better of it: “I think I’m going to keep that one,” he said.
“Why? I thought you were done with all this stuff.”
“I am. I totally am. But it might be nice to have something to show the grandkids.” Much as the humiliating demise of his acting career had served as a prod to change his life, it had also served as a chilling intimation of mortality. Someday, before he knew it, he’d be a blubbering old man, and it wasn’t impossible to think that maybe it would be some comfort to be tangibly reminded that at one time in his life he’d touched a certain sector of humankind (specifically the young female sector) with his art.
“Okay,” Erin said, and that was that. She was pretty cool about it. She could have gotten jealous, could have asked, Why does it have to be this of all things? But she’d made the allowance for his vanity.
Dylan quit his space-out, got up, and approached the closet. He stood on tiptoes and took down the box. Then he placed it on the bed and plopped himself down beside it. He hesitated a moment, took a deep breath, and removed the orange lid. The letters sprang up at him, the years having failed to tamp them down, and several overflowed onto the sheets. He reckoned there had to be at least a hundred in there, and for every one he’d held onto, he must have discarded ten. He’d kept only the crème de la crème: the funny, the touching, the crazy ones.
He picked up one of the spilled letters and took it out of its envelope. This one was a handmade Valentine’s card—all construction paper, glitter, and heart stickers. Down by the loopdidoo signature was the smeared, clay-colored imprint of some very fulsome lips.
He read:
Wendy Sorenson
243 Moana Street
Laie, HI 96762
Dear Mr. Greenyears:4
4_____________
Part of Dylan’s reinvention of himself upon moving to New Taiwan was to drop the “years” from his name.
You don’t know me yet but I am your biggest fan ever. Seriously. I’ve been in love with you ever since one of my friends made me watch ET II: Nocturnal Fears, which is a movie I’m technically not supposed to know about but have on tape and watch at least five times every day. Not the whole movie of course but just the parts with you in them. I’m sure you hear this a lot but my favorite part is the part where you make out with Korelu through the bars of your light cage. I know you’re totally just acting but to tell you the truth you look so hot in that scene that I get so jealous I seriously want to shoot Korelu in the face even though I’m sure she’s really cool. She’s soooo pretty too, for an alien. I know it’s just a movie and you were just acting but I figure there must have been some attraction there because it seems so real the way you do it. I wasn’t going to say this but I’m just going to say it, okay, because I don’t even care. If you ever want an Earthling girl to make out with like that I’ll totally do anything you want. I don’t even care what it is. I hope that doesn’t make me sound like a slut. Honestly I’ve never even done it with anyone. But I would with you though. Honestly I’d marry you right now if you asked me. I’m only sixteen though so we might need to wait a year or something.
Love always,
Wendy