Dipu sits in front of the gate as the super-shop shuts down. Much like the plastic plant kept inside a plastic pot nearby. He gets up once, to leave. But where can he go? He sits back again.

The city has stitched one house after another, crossed one town after another, leapt past fields and rivers to reach Dipu’s childhood. His memories of the place have been unhanded by a multiplex project. Where shall he go? Home? Whose home? Which home?

Dipu keeps sitting. The super-shop will reopen at nine in the morning and close at eight thirty at night. It needs to be shut at that time according to the new laws of the government. Earlier it was better because it used to be almost eleven by the time the shop closed its business. Now he has a lot of free time for himself after work. Dipu doesn’t need such a lot of time. He will feel lighter if he can somehow sell all his free time. He is thinking of getting another job for the night. He can be a night guard. He doesn’t need money. Rather, he wants to get a job even if he needs to shell out money. He fishes out his phone from his pocket. He taps the buttons for a long time. He puts it on his ear and then doesn’t take it down.

Ma? Should I send it tomorrow? I will allow it to grow. Please have your medicines properly. Don’t be like Abba. No one grows rich saving money meant for medicines; people die this way. Abba has. Abba’s not alive, Ma. At least you stay. What? Fine, I’ll send over a sum. Ma, is my goat still there? You haven’t given away my ball, have you? Ma, I’ll come soon. You’ll wake up one day and see me standing right next to your forehead. I want to come back Ma, but I can’t for the life of me remember the way to our home. Wasn’t there a tender coconut tree right next to the tap? Now I spot a tender coconut tree in every house, but the area around the tap doesn’t match! Ma, have you hidden the tap somewhere? Or has Abba taken it with him? Ma…

He gets no answer from the other side.

Dipu puts the phone away from his ear. It has been two days since he charged it. He did put it to charge once today but forgot to switch it back on. He keeps clicking the buttons of the phone in his hand. Right now, even this seems like some sort of occupation to him. And while he clicks away, Dipu feels as though he is running on a board like that of the phone’s keypad. From zero to nine—no scope of going outside this limit. And within this space, life seems vast to him. But what he really needs to do is to reduce time to a dot and fling himself inside that dot. That dot that will have no time before or after it.

Dipu keeps sitting.

He gets up eventually. He gathers all his strength, but his legs suddenly feel numb. These days his memory freezes anytime, without a warning. He cannot recall a thing from just the day before. And when the people of this city think about their future, Dipu tries to build his past from a vacuum. He doesn’t remember if he ever had a house. His mother must have been there. There must have been a mother, since he had been birthed. And that is why he must have had a father. But what about a wife or sibling? Perhaps he has one, maybe he doesn’t. And when he thinks of a wife, the image of a child swims to his mind from the black hole that is his memory. And if he has a child, there must be a wife. Or does the black hole release the image of someone else’s child? Or that of his own childhood? Has everyone known to Dipu died? Among the millions and millions of people in this city, why doesn’t he know anyone? Is he himself alive? Do the dead have any memory? Dipu thinks that either he or others are dead. But this thought is not based on sound logic. Dipu now tries to hear some faraway sound. Some young bride is sobbing quietly. Her pillow is soaked. Dipu’s senses are suddenly so sharp that he can see everything clearly. His spirit seems to move out of his body and sit on that bed. A picture is kept on the mirror of the bamboo dressing table inside the room. It isn’t difficult for him to recognize it in the darkness. He opens his eyes and realizes that a house like this must exist somewhere in this world, a place where his photograph is kept. But where will he find that house? Why should he search for that house?

A dog climbs a few stairs and sits near his feet. One empty truck after another roars past him on the road in front. All the trucks carry materials for the construction of the new building. A night bird flies from the darkness nearby to the denser blackness yonder. A dream shifts from one side to the other in search of a sleeping person. Perhaps the people of this city do not sleep like Dipu, or maybe each of them has a pet dream, and a few commonplace dreams lie waiting for Dipu.

I had a pet dream once; I used to see it every day. Dipu says.

I am a pleasant dream. But no one wants good dreams now. This city has turned even dreams into entertainment. The dream says.

I can’t remember my dream anymore. Do dreams die like people? Dipu asks.

We can’t differentiate between alive and dead. We can only tell apart sleep from wakefulness.

And if one slips into eternal sleep? Or lies awake in perennial wakefulness?

The dream gets up without another word. It leaves in search of someone asleep. A person that has no dream of his own. This city has lakhs and lakhs of people who love dreaming. Dipu envies them.

The night doesn’t seem to move ahead. The buildings slowly dim one by one. Dipu feels like walking through the entire city today. And while walking, he wants to enter an unfamiliar house. Perhaps a woman will say—wash your hands and face and come for dinner. And after washing his hands, with great intimacy, Dipu will wipe his hands on the edge of her saree. And as if she were his own, she will not stop any of his advances. Dipu wants to embrace her once. He hasn’t hugged a woman in so long. And sitting for his dinner at the neat and organized table, he will taste the food made by someone very familiar. He will be a little absent-minded in trying to recall whose hands cooked such food. The woman will place her hands on his shoulders then. And he will break down trying to wonder if anyone had ever placed her hands on his shoulders that affectionately.

Dipu recalls someone. While walking the lanes of his neighborhood, he tries to remember the name. A person’s existence is incomplete without a name. While searching for that name, Dipu walks quite a distance. He decides to enter a house. He spots an old, two-floor house on the street that hasn’t crumbled yet because it is waiting to be demolished any day soon. Before he can press the calling bell, someone opens the door from inside. Dipu puts one of his feet inside.

Keep your shoes outside, I just swept the floor. The woman says.

She probably opened the door. Dipu keeps his shoes and looks at the wall, wondering what to do next. A lizard looks at him. He stares back at the lizard squarely in its eyes. He slowly builds the courage to look at the woman’s eyes.

What happened? Wash your hands and come for dinner.

Dipu looks around and locates the washbasin. He washes his hands for a long time. He moves forward to wipe his hands. The woman is not wearing a saree, she is clad in a salwar-kameez. She doesn’t have a dupatta on her. There is space for only one person at that small dining table, the rest of it is cluttered with objects. Dipu pulls the chair and sits. At the table there is a plate of rice along with two vegetable sides. When he looks closely a cockroach moves down from one of the containers, climbs his arm and enters his shirt. He sifts through the rice on the plate. The potato mash is watery; the young banana curry has dried up. While eating, he tries to recall something. No, he cannot remember. He cannot recollect the thought he had when he entered that house. And he cannot eat fast, preoccupied with thoughts about what to do after dinner.

Go to the room after you’re done eating. I’m leaving for the hotel. Napa Suppository is kept there. Give her the medicine if the fever increases. She will have to be admitted in the morning. Did you get money anywhere? Saying this, the woman applies a thick coat of lipstick and drapes a black dupatta on the salwar-kameez she is wearing.

Dipu realizes that he has entered the wrong house. He gets up and brushes his clothes. The cockroach falls to the floor and scurries away inside the room. Dipu cautiously follows suit. A child is lying there, around seven or eight years old. The bed looks really old. Dipu sits gingerly beside the girl. She seems to be shivering with fever. He should get out of here before he is stuck in some major problem. There are many other houses in this city, lakhs and lakhs of skyscrapers have hidden the sky and the trucks hover all through the city carrying materials for another lakh of such buildings. Dipu regrets entering the wrong house, his life suddenly seems unbearable to him, if at all he is alive… He will leave right now. There is no one to stop him now. He gets up. He is startled, looking at the picture on the bamboo dressing table on the wall next to him.

Not that it happened immediately. Or even, in my defence, that quickly. I had prepared—of course I had. Thoroughly and carefully. Especially when it came to social interactions, where I absolutely followed Garvel and Hanslethk’s standard protocols for participant observation. At least at the beginning.

Indeed, in my case I was completely comfortable with the persona of someone who was aloof, unsociable without being unfriendly, an observer sitting on the margins of whatever was happening around them. Which is exactly what I was, making notes and keeping records of all kinds of social interactions, across a variety of previously scoped environments.

And those included, of course, mating and pre-mating interactions in an assortment of eating and drinking establishments. So it was, with all due regard to the risks involved, that I found myself regularly attending what was known in this particular locale as a ‘pub’, observing the multifarious exchanges between the other clientele and noting their directionality, modality and degree of intimacy according to the  Xeldon-Traag matrix.

I’d been doing this for quite some time, building up what I felt was a detailed picture of this particular milieu, when all my painstakingly created social distance went out the window, as they say, along with my objectivity. As much as I would have preferred to have just sat quietly, making my observations, the local social protocols dictated that I purchase the occasional drink. And it was while I was doing this, having successfully engaged the bar-person in an exchange of electronic credit for a fermented beverage, that I made my crucial error. As much as I thought otherwise, I was in fact still not fully comfortable in this particular social setting, and so when someone behind me suddenly leaned forward and shouted out their order, I jumped and spilled my own drink on the arm of the person standing next to me.

I know I should have just followed protocol again, simply apologising whilst offering to make appropriate reparations and then departing as quickly as socially permissible, but when he smiled and looking directly into my eyes, told me not to worry about it, I found myself inexplicably unable to comply with what was laid down in the handbook. As I said, form can determine behaviour and in that moment I ceased being an anthropologist apart. Even so, I had plenty of opportunities to remove myself from the interaction. I could have just turned and walked away, for example, out of the establishment and beyond any further contact with the individual concerned. Which might have violated the relevant social conventions but any resulting awkwardness or more importantly, loss of further observational data, would have weighed far less than the burden I’m now carrying.

But I didn’t. Instead, I found myself smiling in return and I allowed ‘Daniel’, or so this person had introduced himself, to buy me a fresh drink and accompany me to a table. I honestly don’t know why I persisted in behaving the way I did. Maybe after all this time, I was simply tired of being the scientist and for once just wanted to relate to another sentient creature on some sort of par. Or perhaps there was some other, deeper reason. I was, after all, a long way from home and despite everything, I missed the intimacy of my own kind. This was different of course, but it functioned as something approaching an acceptable substitute.

I have tried to rationalise what happened next, telling myself that I was simply engaging in further exploration of human interactions, still operating in my role as an anthropologist, but that wasn’t true. This body reacted as those it was modelled on had evolved to do, which meant I felt what is universally experienced as desire and I could see from Daniel’s reactions that he felt it too. And so, in time honoured fashion, we ended up copulating. Even there, you see, I’m using a particular term in an effort to distance myself from the act. And the next morning I did indeed distance myself from both Daniel and, to my chagrin, the project more generally. At least as far as my further involvement was concerned.

So now I am on my way home. I can feel what had been my human skin hardening, becoming the protective carapace in which I will undergo the metamorphosis back into my original form. For of course, just as in the case of certain Earth insect species, shape shifting for my kind involves the breaking down into their chemical components of whatever organs have been constructed and then rebuilding them according to the dictates of my kind’s particular imaginal cells.

In order to direct the change, these must remain separate from the general dissolution but now, unfortunately, there is additional DNA in the mix, literally. How that will affect ‘my’ transformation, I simply do not know. It is not unusual for our anthropologists to return from the field psychologically altered by the experience, sometimes even physically affected as well. But I believe this will be the first time one of us has emerged chimerically changed in this manner. How that will be received by my compatriots remains to be seen but as my ship physically travels between the stars, so I find myself, as a scientist, eager to learn what my own biological destination will be.

I should laugh but I have a Mickey Mouse smile.”

– Jaromír Nohavica “Mikymauz”

WALT 1

The dressing room was filled with the smell of nail polish, wig glue and alcohol, slightly repressed by the scent of makeup. The soft light of the vanity mirror caught the actor’s wrinkled, powdered face out of twilight.

“Who are you kidding?” Robert — that was the actor’s name — swept the cotton pad across his chin, leaving a streak of lotion and white lint on the skin. His eyes squinted and his upper lip twisted in neither disgust nor grief.

“Joke,” he said, and reluctantly glanced at his unshaven chin and tired eyes. He didn’t look happy, but he didn’t look angry either. “Too bad it’s not funny.”

On the stage that evening, all the tricks he had tried had failed him — gestures, expressions and punch lines — no one had been laughing, no one had been applauding. Not that it had been quiet, oh no. Two ladies in the front row had been chatting away throughout the first act, while a cheeky teenager had been enjoying some chips and a guy next to him had been typing on his phone. After the interval, half of the audience had left, and you could hear snoring from the back.

“A homeless shelter is the place you belong,” Robert said to the mirror. He took out a flask from his jacket pocket and took a sip. Tears glistened in his dull eyes, which he noticed with a tinge of masochistic satisfaction. The last time he had smiled was twenty-three years ago, when he was picking up the award for Best Supporting Actor in a Mini-Series. It had been the pinnacle of his career, and then everything had descended slowly downhill. His “wealth of talent”, which had once been so praised by critics, was gone, but he still had grey tones of melancholy. He just couldn’t use them in today’s farce, and besides, they were transparent to most viewers, who were used to the colourful sitcom chaff. Today he had only convincingly portrayed his fall from grace.

He wouldn’t have to act.

When he heard a knock, he quickly wiped his eyes with his sleeve and tucked the flask into the pocket. He muttered a cautious invitation, and the door swung open.

“Master,” a man called out as he entered the room. He had a puffy face, a high forehead with a receding hairline, and small eyes, but it was the phone in his hand that brought back memories for Robert. This was the guy who had been typing on his cell phone throughout the third act. And now he had the courage to come here with his phone, his baldness and red cheeks and… praise his acting.

His name was Adam Cox. He introduced himself after the welcome shout, which was the beginning of a long, rambling monologue. He said that he had come to see the performance that night, lured by a poster with Robert’s photo. He was surprised to discover that the slogans written on it were not at all exaggerated. “It’s a diamond! Farce of the year! Masterpiece!” he said.

Maybe if he was sober, the actor would have shown more caution and some remnants of healthy self-esteem, but his involuntary reflexes had taken over. Like a young pelican, he tilted his head back, opened his mouth and closed his eyes. After a while, he was unsure whether he was more intoxicated by the whiskey or the compliments. “Masters”, “artists” and “new Marlon Brando” fuddled his brain like strong alcohol. The memory of the hiccup Adam had made during Robert’s performance slowly faded into oblivion…

And yet, something was wrong.

“Sorry, Adam,” Robert interrupted his guest. “But wasn’t the third act a bit boring for you?”

“I’m sorry, master, but I had to quickly check something on the phone.”

“Oh, what was it?”

“I wanted to make sure I could make you an offer, master… an amazing deal. And it turns out that I can.”

Robert sat down more comfortably and crossed his legs.

“I’m all ears,” he said, faking a lack of interest. In fact, he almost sobered up and began to listen intently. The man looked like a salesman, but wasn’t that howagents looked these days? He wouldn’t have known, because for the past twenty years, he’d been organising everything himself, and he’d only seen agents in movies. Culture, decency and good practices had disappeared these days, and he was the last one to cast stones at another loser… But maybe Adam was a winner who just needed help with his outfit.

“It’s a really important role,” said Adam Cox. “No, it’s not just any old episode or cheap farce. And it’s not a movie production either; it’s a live performance.”

“So, is this a theatre production?”

“It’s more like a reality show, really.”

Robert winced.

“Really…” he said, suddenly losing interest. This time, he didn’t have to fake it.

“It’s not trash TV,” Adam Cox reassured Robert, sensing his reservation. He began to speak faster, clearly excited about what he had to say. “Not every man’s docu-soap, oh no. This is the role of the head of an empire. And it’s not an empire of politics or economics, but of an area that really matters — the realm of the spirit. The ruler of this empire conquers and controls minds through stories that are known to people all over the world…”

The agent stood up as he spoke, beaming with pride at his own words.

“He will rise soon to do new things and complete the work that was interrupted.”

The room fell silent. Robert crossed himself and raised his eyebrows questioningly, but Adam Cox shook his head.

“This resurrection will be seen by eight billion people, not just a few,” he said with a warm smile and bowed. “Thank you, master. And after all, you’ll end up in heaven, where there’s no end of love and joy to be found. At least it’s the closest thing to heaven you can buy for a billion dollars in this valley of tears.”

Adam paused and looked at Robert with a cheeky grin. Robert rubbed his chin for a long time.

“And what is the budget for the whole programme?” he asked.

“Over three hundred billion…” Adam paused, looked to the side, and sniffed. Robert quickly put away the flask that was sticking out of his pocket. Adam looked at him with concern, as if he was thinking about it, but finally waved his hand and started typing again on his phone, which he was obviously addicted to.

“… because that’s the net worth of the global network of film studios, TV channels and Internet platforms,” he said, slowly regaining his usual calm. Robert began to make connections in his head, even before Adam showed him the phone display. He’d heard a few comments from people who had taken his photos a month ago, as well as from people who’d seen these photos on the theatre’s website. He’d also heard from a waiter and guests in a certain restaurant, who’d noticed him growing a moustache for his new role. He looked at the black and white photo on the phone, then in the mirror.

“I’m not sure what it’s all about…” he said, looking at his long face with a prominent nose and a slightly recessed chin. “I don’t see any resemblance at all.”

“You look just like Walt Disney!” Adam Cox said, his voice booming like a prophet’s. “And I know how to make money off it.”

After a moment, the last cars’ engines could be heard leaving the parking lot.

“Bil-lions!”

The agent wiped his damp lips, and the actor thought it would be a good idea to listen to the whole story.

A month later, they walked down a shabby corridor into a bright future for both of them. It smelled a bit like urine, grease and rat poison, but that was to be expected. The rollercoaster above them was going at full speed, screeching at the bends and shaking the underground walls. Robert had been sober for a whole month now, and the noise made him shiver even more. He wiped his sweaty forehead and took off his jacket, feeling the cool air on his skin.

“Hot?” Adam asked with a warm smile. “Don’t you worry, it won’t be long now. The cryo-capsule is waiting for you. Is minus three hundred and fifty degrees Fahrenheit enough?”

“Why here?” Robert moaned. His agent had nudged him to speak up. “Why was I kept in the Pirates of the Caribbean basement?” he asked, his voice hoarse with emotion. “Why not in the secret chamber of Sleeping Beauty’s castle? I would have slept right by the side of the most famous sleepy-head in the world. It would make sense…”

“Oh, you know, there’s this urban legend that Walt Disney lies frozen in the basement of Pirates of the Caribbean,” Adam interjected. “Don’t argue with the legend, Legend!”

Meanwhile, the rollercoaster above passed by, and after they unclogged their ears, they could talk normally again.

“I was also thinking about my fee,” Robert said with a smile. “I wonder where you got this billion from?”

“We’re here,” Adam interrupted. He opened the door that said ‘Adam Cox, Junior Development Manager’ and turned on the light. The actor, taken aback, looked into the broom closet that passed as Adam’s office.

“This is your office?” he asked. Without a word, Adam walked over to the dusty espresso machine, next to which stood one clean and one cobwebbed cup.

“Coffee?”

“No,” Robert yelled out loud as another rollercoaster whizzed by above. Wobbling, he made his way over to a chair, stumbling over boxes, buckets and piles of paper along the way. In the fluorescent light, the chair looked like a hologram. He carefully nudged it with his foot before sitting down with a sigh. It was only then that he realised that Adam, sitting on the other side of the desk, was watching him closely.

“Have you been drinking?”

Robert took a deep breath, bent down, and blew with dignity. Adam sniffed and smiled.

“Well done, you’re a real hero.”

“I’m sick.”

“Very well,” Adam said, creaking his chair with his weight. “After hibernation, you should be indisposed, so you don’t have to pretend. The less you have to act, the better for us.”

The actor, who was accustomed to being addressed as ‘master’ or ‘artist’ until recently, straightened up as if he’d been touched in a tender spot.

“I have the utmost respect for your talent,” said Adam, his voice quickening. “I believe in you, and I know you can do it. That’s why I chose you.”

“Not because I’m Disney’s Double?”

“Well, I chose you for two reasons.”

“Let’s talk about my opening statement,” suggested Robert, who, like most actors, was also an unfulfilled screenwriter. “I feel like it’s missing something.”

“Just don’t change anything about it,” Adam said strongly, also filling in as a screenwriter in the project.

“But how do I know what woke me up?”

“Because you didn’t wake up in the hospital, but in your cryo-capsule, and you find out that the failure was caused by negligence of the management board,” Adam explained to him, as he usually did, emphasising the key words. “You figured it out because you’re so clever. A dazzled genius is still a genius.”

“But how did I survive my own death? Most scientists say that cryonics is a waste of time.”

The agent impatiently gestured with his hands.

“Are you a doctor or a scientist, by any chance? Or maybe you’re an engineer? Let’s not talk about things we don’t know much about, okay? We both work in entertainment. Let’s focus on what we know. People will buy anything you sell them, as long as you package it well. They’ve already bought frozen Walt, and they’ll buy the defrosted Walt too, as long as you stay sober and stay in the role.”

He looked accusingly at the actor, who lowered his gaze and grimaced.

“Is TV really coming here?” Robert asked, looking around the shabby hole. He was still trying to handle his mounting tension. He wasn’t sure if the roller-coaster was moving up the hill again, or if his heart was beating faster and faster. The idea of performing live in front of the cameras seemed even more daunting than it did a month ago. Today it brought back not only forgotten desires and dreams, but also forgotten fears.

“Yes, yes, I’ve already reached out to my old contacts,” Adam reassured him. “This bloody network hasn’t absorbed everything yet, there is also independent media out there. They’ll come, and it’s not charity. It’s not every day that the whole complex fails.”

“And if there are victims?”

“Then all the stations will be here.”

The rumbling got louder and Robert covered his ears and cringed. Adam, who was used to the sounds, looked up to the calendar on the wall and smiled. It was decorated with the famous silhouette of a palace with an arch in the background. He shifted his gaze to the paint peeling off the door and then to the mouldy ceiling.

“Tomorrow, this circus will stand in dead silence and darkness. It’ll be quite the earthquake, with a capital ‘E’. And it’s about time…”

He stopped as the walls shook so much that plaster fell from the ceiling, and a piece of it dropped over his eye.

“And the stars in the sky fell to earth, just like figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind,”  Robert recited a phrase that he remembered from some performance he’d seen before. Adam rubbed his eye while glaring at the actor with the other, then waved his hand.

“Tomorrow’s failure will be the last straw for this disastrous management,” he replied, getting up and walking toward the door. “Your first decision as president will be to kick them out. And if there are victims, they will be brought to trial.”

Robert got up, put on his jacket and with a heavy heart, walked toward the door. His poor head had just been crushed by the wheels of an electric locomotive, and its wagons had broken his arms and legs… He knew in his heart that it was all nonsense. The locomotive that had demolished him was called alcoholism, and it pulled wagons of caries, rheumatism, alopecia and eczema. He still lacked money to treat these ailments.

Adam, seeing his expression, couldn’t help but smile wider and pat him on the back.

“Just remember your speech and you’ll be fine.”

“Where’s the… ahem… that goddamn pod?” Robert asked, coughing.

“Right here, behind the wall. It doesn’t really work, the engineer just made it look real. We’ll bring the nitrogen over tomorrow. If you’re feeling chilly, you’ve got a sleeping bag there. Just another hour of the roller-coaster, then we’ll be in a palace-like warmth and quiet. Are you ready?”

“No.”

Adam laughed.

“Come on, come on, you can do it. You’ll get some rest and you’ll be like a newborn again tomorrow.”

“What about the real Disney?”

 “And rich,” Adam kindly added, as if he hadn’t heard him. “And famous, and…”

“Oh, what if they really froze him?” the actor asked. “Oh, there’ll be two of us?”

“Oh, the world is waiting for its Messiah. We’re all waiting for you. Hallelujah!”

WALT 2

The next day, only a big mouse was waiting for them at the emergency exit of the Pirates of the Caribbean complex.

“Oh no, he died!” it squeaked.

This was the first time the artist had seen his most famous creation in half a century.

Of course, none of it was true. The scream came from an actor in a spongy disguise, and another actor pretended to be the creator of the mouse.

Adam hadn’t actually died. He was semi-conscious from an electric shock which had paralysed him when he had tried to immobilise a roller coaster by short-circuiting the underground installation. Robert woke him up in the corridor and helped him out with a fireman’s lift, carrying him outside.

There they discovered that the Pirates of the Caribbean ride was still in full swing, delighting crowds with its lively soundtrack and thrilling journey into the caves. No one but they paid any attention to them.

“Leave me alone,” Adam said, sounding cross as he shook off Robert. “Let’s see if we can find the media. That’s him!” he called to the people who rushed to his aid. “This is Walt!”

Robert tried to stand up straight and smile. But suddenly, a stun gun, tucked under his jacket, gave him a little jolt through his shirt. Robert stiffened, then flopped just like his friend had fifteen minutes ago. Two broad-shouldered bodyguards in gardener uniforms grabbed him by the arms and scooped him into an electric car, whose open boot was loaded with shovels. In the general confusion, no one noticed them, and no one registered Robert’s resemblance to anyone.

Or so it seemed.

The e-vehicle meandered along park alleys, past palaces, merry-go-rounds and fairy-tale characters. Merry children passed before Robert’s stunned eyes.

“I had a dream…” he murmured the speech he had memorised earlier. “I dreamed of a world where sick people wake up from comas, orphans… parents… everything ends well… Adults look after children… Everyone enjoys every moment… Paradise… Florida… my mission into the world,” he whispered, pausing to add his own inserts: “The wolf… the lamb… The leopard… the goat… The calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child…”

The electric car stopped, and one of the guards slapped Robert across the face. They carried him through the gate that had welcomed Disneyland visitors for five decades, the very gate that said “Happiest Place on Earth.” They opened the door of the old Chevy and helped him into the back seat. They handed him a plastic water bottle, which was about half full.

For Robert, it was half empty.

“Who drank it?” he asked. He shook his head and pushed the bottle away.

They found a spot in the beach parking lot. The guy, who had zapped and slapped him earlier, now swung again, but his friend was there to stop him. With Robert in tow, they switched vehicles to a long limousine, the kind driven by newlyweds and one-day millionaires in Las Vegas.

“What’s next?” Robert mumbled under his breath. “A… a helicopter?”

He was dumped in the back of the car. An armrest jabbed his paralyzed side.

“Is it real?” a grey-haired woman next to him asked, looking him up and down through dark glasses as if trying to decide. The guards left, and the door closed behind them with a slam. The car started up, rocking at the parking lot threshold and joining the lazy afternoon traffic on the freeway.

“Is it real?”

Robert looked at the woman. Her hair was neatly tied back. Her sharp cheekbones and pointed chin gave her the appearance of a weasel. Her jacket was elegant and the pearls in her ears and on her neck reflected the leather and wood finish of the car’s interior perfectly.

“Yes, absolutely,” he replied, returning her patronising smile. “Call me Walt, my dear.”

The weasel-woman took off her glasses, leaned over and brought her hand to his face. He straightened up quickly and threw his head back, laughing.

“It’s real,” he said, covering his moustache.

“Did you grow it yourself? Bravo! You’ve done a great job of creating an illusion.”

Robert felt anger, fear and irritation. For a moment he pushed all his confusion aside, wanting to prove something to her and to himself. He’d been abstaining and waiting for the promised billion to help him reenact the forgotten actor that he was. For too long he had been preparing himself for the role of his life to be satisfied with being an extra or a prop, tossed from pillar to post. With a smile, he smoothed his thin black tie and white pocket. He rested one hand on his knee and the other on his chin in a characteristic pose.

“Illusion is my middle name, my dear,” he said, imitating a slight Kansas accent with a warm smile. The woman laughed, then looked at him with a whole new interest.

“You’re ok,” she said. “But that partner of yours…” she gave a soft tut and shook her head. A few lines appeared above her pursed lips.

“Oh, what did you do to him?” Robert asked, straightening up. “Was it you who had him electrocuted?”

The woman let out a deep sigh and became quite serious.

“He’ll be fine,” she said. The actor nodded and looked around. There was a black circle over two smaller ones embossed on the seat headrest. The same logo was on the notebook next to the woman. It only reinforced his suspicions.

“Did you have a microphone in his office?” he asked. “You stopped the media from coming in, is that right?”

She put her sunglasses back on.

“We are the media.”

A phone rang with a familiar tune. The woman retrieved it out of her bag and put it to her ear.

“Yes?”

She frowned as she listened, then hung up and began tapping the display. She winced, clearly not happy with what she was seeing.

“Where are we going?”

She waved her hand impatiently, as if she was swatting a fly. The limousine jumped over a few bumps and then stopped. The door opened and a man with a moustache, wearing a grey jacket, a black tie, and a white pocket square, shuffled in. He nodded to the woman and sat down next to her, facing Robert.

“Call me Walt, sport,” he said with a smile.

Robert was so taken aback that he couldn’t move. His outstretched hand hung midair. It was only later that he realised that the shock of meeting the resurrected genius was intensified by smaller surprises. Why was the woman still tapping away on her phone, ignoring him so obviously? Even if she was the head of the company, she couldn’t be any higher up the ladder than its founder. A few details didn’t quite add up to him, either.

The limousine glided noiselessly down the highway again, and the outstretched hand slowly descended. Men in grey jackets looked at each other with curious eyes.

Robert had the feeling that he was looking at himself in a mirror that was a little out of focus. The hairstyle, tie, shirt, eyes and nose were quite similar, but his cheeks were a little on the large side. And there was more. A double chin and a bulging belly. He couldn’t help but think that he looked more like Walt Disney than the original.

If he was the original.

“You had a great idea, but we were the ones who made it happen,” the other man began. “Your fairy tale is starting to crumble like a house of cards. He wasn’t frozen; he was cremated. You missed doing your homework, didn’t you? Well, the family officially announced it fourteen years ago.”

“Then where did you come from?” Robert asked, curious.

“I’m his clone.”

The actor shook his head and frowned.

“Cryonics is a pitch,” the man said. “On the other side, cloning — there’s not much information out there, but every word is true.”

“Was it already a thing in the 60s?”

“Scientists knew what DNA is and the government was able to secure it. And they found it was definitely worth doing in a few cases. And don’t forget, Kennedy and Elvis fans will soon have their big days too.”

Robert looked at the CEO’s furious face and then at the clone. He still didn’t know where they were taking him, and thought perhaps that the cast for this show had yet to be approved. Maybe he was just being cast for another role? It seemed that the stakes might have been higher than the fee they had promised.

There could only be one Disney.

The woman finally looked up from the phone.

“We have a problem,” she said and pointed at Robert. “Someone took a picture of this disguise and posted it online.”

She showed him a photograph taken just an hour ago, as he and Adam had exited the roller coaster. “Disney is alive and well,” read the caption underneath the cropped portrait. Robert couldn’t help but smile genuinely for the first time that day.

“People have all kinds of theories and guesses about where he is now,” said the weasel-woman in a soft, gentle voice. “Memes, like viruses, spread like wildfire.”

She ran her fingers across the screen and showed them a picture with the distinctive silhouette of cartoon characters leaning against a reindeer with the headline “Disney” and the title “Frozen” with a question mark attached. The second photo showed Robert with the title “Defrost”.

“People are gullible and will swallow any crap as long as it is well packaged,” said the younger man with a smile.

“I think I heard it somewhere,” the old actor said with a sigh, adding a hint of sarcasm. “But aren’t you in the media too?”

The CEO and the rival looked at Robert furiously. He stood his ground and politely offered, “Why don’t we just stick to the plan and hold a conference in an hour? Let’s take advantage of the hype and seize the initiative.”

“I’d love to speak at the conference,” his rival interjected.

“Please,” Robert said with a sigh. “They have my photos. And you’re younger and not to mention fatter…”

“Shut up, both of you.”

The woman threw her phone into her bag. Her pursed lips and furrowed brow made her triangular face look more predatory.

“I beg your pardon,” the man said, loosening his tie. “You must be forgetting something. This comedy has been going on for far too long. You can see for yourself what it led to, if you like. Why have you kept me hidden for so many years? And why are you holding my scripts?”

“Because they suck.”

His chubby cheeks turned red.

“That’s just your opinion. Others believe that the studio will make a fortune on them, especially if they appear under my name…”

“D256-X / B7?” the woman replied with a laugh. “Or Arthur Smith, from your driver’s licence? The government programme is secret and you are officially gone, clone.”

“You will regret it,” the man said, trying to recover his voice. The grey-haired lady pursed her lips and looked at Robert. The actor sensed the curtain before him rise again.

“It’ll be safer to stick to the cryonics story,” he began to speak quickly. “I’ll play everything for you. I will say that in my will, I kept my hibernation a secret and instructed my family to issue a declaration of cremation. And I will prove that I am myself, that is…”

He took a fountain pen from his pocket and bent over his notebook embossed with a Mickey Mouse head. He opened it on the first blank page, put the nib against it, and without tearing it off, penned the signature he had been practising for the last month. The CEO looked at the famous autograph and at Robert. She turned her face to the window and stared at the palm trees moving behind him. She looked as if she was hesitating, but the actor could tell from her expression that the decision had already been made. The producer doesn’t take unnecessary risks. Environmental selection doesn’t promote the most gifted, the truest or the most beautiful, but the best adapted, in a pond full of fish or in show business, no difference. The value of genius in the age of cloning may soon drop, but it’s more sensible to invest in loyalty. However, if her opinion of the scripts written by the clone was true, a talent cannot be copied. Or, at least, it had failed this time. The new — old — head of the studio would be a figurehead, thank goodness!

After all, there could only be one Walt.

WALT 3

Robert looked into his face, illuminated by the warm glow of the vanity mirror. The smell of perfume in the dressing room effectively masked the scent of cleaning products and adrenaline.

“You did it, my friend,” he said to his reflection with a smile.

Diet, meditation and massages had fulfilled their task. All his nasty withdrawal symptoms had disappeared completely. And all his other persistent ailments had been cured too, as there finally were enough funds. His rotten teeth were replaced by a set of implants — for now only temporary, but still even and white, like real ones. After two months of abstinence he had finally begun to sober up. No more stage fright or dark thoughts. He was ready to conquer the world, or rather, to take control of the world that had already been conquered on his behalf.

“Mom, Dad, I’m ready,” he said to his agent and the President of Development, the official function of the weasel-woman, Fiona Cartwright. She spoke first.

“Our last teaser had more viewers than the finals of the last World Cup,” she informed Robert. “Your speech will be seen by half of humanity in just fifteen minutes.”

“Not bad for a piece of ham that I recently pulled out of the rat hole,” smirked Adam Cox. The dressing room buzzed as several assistants ran around, chatting excitedly with each other and on their phones. The make-up artist standing next to him bent down to listen in on the conversation. Robert glared at his agent.

“Just remember it was my idea,” Adam muttered and looked down.

“Which, thankfully, I tweaked ‘a little’,” Fiona said. “Thanks to me, your fairy tale gained more class and a few more authentic touches.”

Adam turned to her angrily.

“Your main contribution was getting me plugged into a million volts.”

“You did that yourself,” she teased.

“I could have died!”

“You could have broken the carousel!”

They stared at each other with fierce expressions, then both smiled.

“Champagne after the show?” Adam asked. And she began to consider his proposal, which showed how quickly the elevator of corporate promotion sometimes runs.

“And to think that not so long ago you were planning to ‘kick this disastrous management out’,” Robert reminded his agent. The President turned to him, raising her eyebrows, and behind her back, Adam put his finger to his lips. The actor waved his hand and sat down comfortably.

“By the way,” he said, “has the security guard, who beat me up a month ago, been fired?”

Fiona smiled briefly and opened her mouth.

“You get on air in fifteen minutes.”

Everyone looked at the assistant standing in the doorway — a bearded man with a samurai bun. Adam looked at his watch.

“We’re starting at six,” he informed him. “And it’s five-fifty already.”

“So, we’re on air in ten minutes,” Fiona added.

“Unfortunately, we may have a slight delay,” he replied, pointing towards the window. “There’s some fuss at the studio.”

“The fuss has been there since the morning,” the president said. “I don’t care about stupid fans.”

Even through the closed windows, the roar of drumrolls and the crackle of flares and sirens could be heard. People seemed friendly, but the producer of the programme assured them ‘just in case’ that the station had a helicopter and a helipad on the roof.

“It’s not about the fans,” said the assistant, pressing the Bluetooth clip in his ear. “It’s about new guests of the show. They’ll be here soon.”

In the silence that fell upon the room, only muffled chants, horns and the beating of drums were heard.

“Guzman!” Fiona roared. She looked around and strode up to the nearest camera. “Guzman! Get your fat ass up and come here. Now.”

A blonde girl in a Mickey Mouse apron passed by, nodded to Robert and quickly looked away. She sat in the chair on his right and arranged the cosmetics in the cabinet. Another girl turned on the lights by the mirror to his left.

“I’ll kill you,” hissed Fiona, turning into a predator again. “You know very well that in five minutes, half of humanity will be sitting in front of the screens.”

One of her smoothly combed locks fell across her face in a grey line. She was about to spit venom from her pursed lips.

“And I know how to attract the other half,” said Alonso Guzman, the show’s executive producer, with a confident smile. His brown eyes and athletic physique were enhanced by a fitted suit. He strode over to Fiona and spoke in a firm, decisive tone, “With the help of the new show’s guests, we’ll…”

“Are you crazy?” she demanded. “You invited a new guest without even telling me? Who?”

Guzman gave the assistant a sharp nod, and he immediately got to his feet. He strode to the door, waved his hands and shouted something down the hall.

“It’s an improvisation in the style of your tacky ‘Tijuana TV’ from which you came here…”

Fiona paused as two men in grey jackets entered the dressing room.

“Good morning,” said the first one. It was the young clone that Robert had met in the limo.

“Hello, I’m Henry Disney,” said the second in a deep, commanding voice. He was an elderly man whom he had seen for the first time. The young clone gazed at Fiona with a hostile look and, without a word, strode towards Robert, nodded and sat on his left with an ironic smile. Behind him, the old clone, helped by a blonde in an apron, climbed into the armchair on the other side.

“What is this?” hissed Fiona. She looked at the producer, narrowing her eyes. “Are you having a clone rally here at five to twelve? I knew you’d mess up eventually. You’re a cocaine-addicted, tacky, provincial dickhead. But today?”

“Shut up.”

Fiona’s face was a white mask of amazement.

“First of all, you invented the ‘Copy of the Master’ action,” Guzman stated, pointing to the clones. “And I’m certain people will believe in real cloning rather than in a fictitious freeze and frostbite.”

“You’re fired.”

Guzman’s laugh sounded like a bark.

“And who will produce this show, you old witch? I can do it in a few minutes and do it my way. All three Disney candidates will enter the studio. The best will win and take it all. They’ll deal the cards.”

Robert caught a knowing look from the actor to his left, who exchanged it with the producer.

“Tell me: do you prefer one chance in three or none?” asked Guzman.

“Why three?” she demanded. Her fury was still battling with surprise. She pointed to the old man. “Who is he?”

“This is the candidate preferred by the Disneys. They contacted me today because they discovered that their great-uncle had a twin.”

“Nonsense,” Adam bellowed, finally recovering his voice. “He didn’t, and even if he did, he’d be dead a long time ago.”

Fiona produced a rattling box from her pocket and the producer moved closer to her.

“Let’s show the old man to the world and laugh at him today,” he said firmly. “Why make him a new sensation tomorrow?”

Fiona swallowed the white pill from the box and opened her mouth again, but at that point, they all started talking simultaneously.

“Let viewers point to the real Disney after the debate.”

“It will be a shit show, not a debate.”

“People are stupid. They like the shit shows.”

“In five minutes, we’ll be on air!”

“Wouldn’t it be better to do DNA tests on them?”

“Which moron said that?”

“This is television, not a laboratory.”

“This will be the show of the century.”

“More like the failure of the millennium.”

Robert’s teeth, which had been replaced with implants, suddenly started hurting. It seemed that they were growing artificial roots deep into his head, entwining with the roots of the implants in his new hair. The nonexistent nerves hurt just as much as real ones.

“Why don’t you freeze time in your capsule?” the younger Disney clone smirked, tapping his shoulder. Robert flinched, slipped his hand under his shirt and began scratching himself. He needed an eczema ointment, a head compress and an anaesthetic pill.

“Let’s start with the fact that a third of humanity is asleep right now.”

“When they wake up, they’ll watch the rerun online.”

“I’m sure they have Wi-Fi even in the boonies.”

“I’ll be on air in four minutes.”

Robert knew exactly what kind of anaesthetic he needed. A golden liquid with a spicy aroma and a barley flavour would put him on his feet in seconds. One shot would be enough. He turned in his chair and looked at an open drawer of a cupboard, standing under the window.

“And why did you have the ‘Frozen’ movie produced and promoted as the biggest hit of the studio?”

“To make money, of course.”

“So that after entering ‘Disney Frozen’ Google throws out different answers than data about freezing Walt Disney. You’ve done your best to stop people from pursuing this topic.”

“It’ll be on air in three minutes.”

“Aaaah!”

His critics would have been delighted — Robert had let out an authentic primal scream. It was pure emotion, with no words. The blonde, who was standing closest to him, jumped back and covered her ears, while her friend dropped the powder compact. Fiona turned pale, Guzman turned red, and the assistant gripped his beard and nearly tore it out. Robert got up and walked on, silently. His rivals stepped aside without question, and the rest followed suit. He kicked the garbage can, shifted the fan on the stand and approached the cupboard. He reached into the top drawer and pulled out a bottle that he had sniffed out an hour ago, right after entering the dressing room. He uncorked it, put it to his mouth and took a swig.

The warm vodka burned his throat, adding to the soreness of screaming. Once swallowed, it came back up, but he followed it with a second gulp. The third one went down smooth as silk.

It was like receiving a defibrillator charge on your deathbed. His heart started beating again, and his pain and helplessness passed instantly. Robert exhaled and regarded the people around him as if he was seeing them for the first time. He dazzled them with the whiteness of his implants, but they didn’t smile back. He huffed dismissively and turned to the vibrating glass.

Smog hovered over the city, but the artificial lights shone brighter than stars. Fireworks shot out against the dark December sky, and New York glistened with its own light like New Jerusalem in Saint John’s vision. A parade of cartoon characters flowed slowly through the streets below. The crowd chanted one name.

The view was spoiled only by a dark smudge on the glass. Robert grabbed the lever and opened the window. A choral song with drum rolls — rum, pum, pum, pum — flowed over him like a stream of warm water. Like a blessing. He closed his eyes, opened his mouth and began to absorb the vibrating energy. Hundreds of instruments and thousands of throats joined together to create a single, unified sound in response to the horns. Robert raised his hand. Someone must have noticed him and pointed him out to the people around them. The news spread through the streets into the city like an earthquake. With a single gesture, he silenced the raucous crowd. He filled his lungs with the smoke-touched air and screamed again. His voice reverberated from Fifth Avenue to Central Park and back again, echoing back in time. People screamed, and the tune they had searched for before came successfully from thousands of throats.

“Walt!”

They were not strong, they were the strength. Filled with them, Robert felt himself hovering above the floor. This mystery had nothing to do with a hoax anymore. The scam had grown into art and surpassed it. In this situation, was his pop-culture prophet costume still a disguise? The illusionist — the trickster — began to levitate. The body became the Word.

“Walt!”

Who did they love? Who did they shout to?

“Okay, okay, man,” Adam said firmly in his ear. “Keep it up.”

He placed his hands on Roberts’ shoulders and turned him to face him.

“But not everyone on Earth will see you through the window,” he said, looking him in the eye as if he were hypnotising him. “They’re all waiting for you there,” he said, his voice a spell.

“Over there,” he pointed to the door marked ‘In the air’ and firmly guided Robert towards it. He wanted to say something, but his scratched throat wouldn’t let him.

“Go, Prophet,” Adam commanded, sticking the handset in his ear. “Repeat my every word, and today we will be in Eden. Go.”

Robert turned to the window, but someone had closed it, and the glass separated him from his fans again. He emptied the bottle, set it down and shrugged. He allowed himself to be led through the deserted dressing room to the small crowd of people gathered by the studio door. Next to them were his two powdered doubles.

“Five seconds,” Guzman said. He opened the door and, with a gesture of authority, invited the three men in grey jackets inside. He motioned for the others to step back.

But they all backed away.

On the threshold stood a Black man with a grey moustache, also dressed in a grey jacket with a black tie and a white pocket square. He laughed at the sight of wide-open eyes staring at him.

“Don’t worry boys, you’ll get your chance too,” he called to the other Walts in a condescending tone. “People already know from the snapshots that Disney is me. The stations broadcasted it a moment ago. But we play fair until the end. I saw you there on the monitor.”

He turned to Robert. “New York may be yours, Mr. Screamer, but what about the rest of the world? Will you tell your fairy tale to the viewers?”

He laughed and gave Robert a firm pat on the shoulder. His hand was firm, cold and strong, and the skin strung tight over it gleamed like plastic.

WALT 4

Robert wobbled into the studio and stopped only at the brightly lit couch.

The host welcomed the guests and introduced them to the audience. He shook hands with ‘the clone’, ‘the twin’ and ‘the real Disney’ one by one. He called each of them Disney, although it was only with the fourth guest that his ironic smirk disappeared, as if he had dropped the quotes from the name. He let the black man speak first, justified by the fact that the other guests were speechless. Robert sat huddled at the far end of the couch, staring at the man’s hand gesturing excitedly.

He still felt its cold, shivering touch on his shoulder.

The man’s words, now slurred by alcohol, slowly began to register. He made a long list of complaints about the racist 1940s in which the ‘real Disney’ could not reveal the colour of his skin and had to send an adult white actor to meetings. He started using the actor in interviews and documentaries, and that’s how things stayed.

“Did you really make all those cartoons as a kid?” the showman asked.

“I kept making them,” replied the black man, “after my white face died.”

The word ‘died’ was clearly understood, not to be confused with the words ‘was frozen’.

“Did you create all the later Disney movies?” The presenter shook his head in disbelief.

“All of them, up to this day,” the man asserted with certainty and a grin. “Have any of you ever seen their writers’ faces?”

There was a long, awkward silence in the studio.

“We see it now,” the host declared, “because it’s one face.”

Robert was jolted awake by the roar of applause. He fixed his gaze on the black man’s hand and the word ‘Applause’ that flared over the audience. He also felt like applauding in the face of such an internally consistent absurdity. He knew he had to act fast, or fiction would soon become truth. Unfortunately, his sore throat still hurt and he knew it would probably fail to obey him. Furthermore, his mind was blank, and somewhere along the way, he had lost the earpiece through which Adam was to give him instructions.

And there was something else. This competitor would strike up close and take the audience away. That’s why he was the ideal avatar — he didn’t need a voice in his ear.

Robert stood up, silencing the host and the audience with a hoarse mutter. He took a fountain pen from his pocket, rolled up his sleeves and raised his hand.

The host froze, but the drummer didn’t miss a beat. He played the tremolo on the snare drum. Robert didn’t autograph with his famous signature. The studio’s logo was created after Disney’s death and had nothing to do with his authentic autograph. Fiona or Adam might not have known it, but the average internet user could look it up in seconds.

No, Robert did something else. He took a swing and plunged the nib into the iron hand of his black rival with a furious force.

Something clicked, sparks flew and false fingers spread apart. Thick lips cried out, “Man, you damaged my hand,” but they didn’t even wince.

Robert had been right, and the cables and sparks confirmed his suspicions. He seized the pen from the artificial hand and, with a swift and decisive move, thrust it into the black man’s neck. To his astonishment, he found no plastic surface hiding cables, actuators and sensors.

The steel smoothly entered the man’s living flesh, from which blood spurted. The man’s uninjured hand grabbed his wounded neck, while his steel hand swung like a shovel, hitting Robert in the ear and sending him flying to the couch. The cyborg, with a terrible growl, fell on him, put his mechanical arm around his neck and squeezed.

Robert’s consciousness escaped him for a moment, and he ceased to be human. His reptilian brain, buried somewhere under his secondary ganglia and cortex, took control. His head turned, and his jaws opened and tightened on a fleshy cheek. The black man’s hand released his wounded neck and seized his bitten face. Robert bowed his head and thrust the pen into the man’s forehead with all his might. The pressure of steel eased, and at that moment, his consciousness returned. He shook himself, spat out iron-flavoured saliva and sat up. Rubbing his bloodshot eyes, he demanded, “Did I kill him or turn it off?”

It took a long time for the audience to recover from shock. After a while, only Robert stood motionless in the eye of the cyclone, which he had himself unleashed. The familiar, brutal security guard slammed him in the face again and overpowered him (as it later turned out, he had not lost his job — in fact he had become head of security for the studio in recognition of his prowess a month earlier). The dying black pseudo-Disney was taken via an elevator to the roof, to the helicopter, and a Mickey Mouse image interrupted the screens.

And then, everyone started talking at once.

“Viewership jumped to five billion,” Guzman declared as he and his assistants burst into the studio.

“Start the broadcast and point all cameras at Robert,” Adam said, running right behind them. He pushed the bodyguard aside, sat his ward down in an armchair and put the receiver in his ear. “Keep calm, man. We can still salvage this.”

The actor read the words from Adam’s lips because he was deafened by electric alarms sounding from every corner of the studio.

“This madman broke my programme.” Fiona was furious. “I won’t let him tear it down.”

“We’ve won the audience. Are you deaf?” Adam shouted, massaging Robert’s shoulders. “Our Disney just got back into the game. He’s now famous and scary — and he’s entertaining bingo.”

“The audience is five and a half billion, but it’s starting to decline.”

“You broke the hit, you retards! The historic human-cyborg battle has just taken place here. Resume broadcasting now.”

When Robert regained consciousness, he promised to be polite and say the whole truth on air. After hearing it, Adam slapped him back into sanity. Fiona ordered both of them to leave and turned to the cameras to call the other members of the board to a teleconference. She tabled an immediate proposal to fire Guzman, which was approved unanimously. The lawyers delayed police intervention, and the PR agent kicked off a debate with the eternal question, “What are we going to tell stupid people?”

Meanwhile, Robert sat in the corporate cafeteria, washed, dressed and patched up by paramedics. He accepted Adam’s apology. He was in shock, but otherwise fine. He just couldn’t hear in one ear. Adam swore that no one would ever hit him again, and Robert promised that he would never lose the earpiece again. They went from whiskey to vodka, and at midnight, when the bosses finally got along, Robert didn’t care. He stood alone in front of the cameras in the spotlight, as the CEOs sent his rivals home.

“We have a problem,” Adam stated firmly in his good ear on behalf of the board.

“We have a problem,” Robert stated automatically to a select few of his most loyal viewers.

Like the Great Depression and many other disasters, this one had begun with rumours. Four hours earlier (about an hour after the suspension of transmission), the fans gathered in front of the studio had become bored with the choral singing and, as is customary, had begun tweeting from their phones.

There, the surviving Disneys were furious that their candidate had been ignored. In response, they had published the death certificate of their great-grandfather. Someone had posted a photo of the urn with Disney’s ashes, and someone else had posted a statement from the cemetery confirming the cremation. However, the heirs’ triumph had been short-lived. Someone had discovered Walter E. Disney’s birth certificate from 1901, which listed no twin. Someone else had found a movie where the real, undoubtedly white Walt, was drawing Mickey Mouse. Advanced technology had juxtaposed the archival footage with the studio recording and had picked up anatomical details that differentiated the original Disney from the three white fakes. And that had been the end of the story. The human ocean had drained from the studio building and spilled over the narrow streets.

Robert was the Messiah at 6 o’clock; at 7 o’clock he was again breaking popular news as the Beast, but by midnight became a scammer. He stuttered in front of the cameras, sweating, and neither his drunk in-ear agent, nor his predatory boss, nor any of the television magnates had a clue on how to stop the catastrophe. They tried to react to what they saw on the screens, because although in their minds they were still addressing idiots, these idiots were no longer passive television viewers, but active internet users. Overactive ones. The cyber-trolls shouted Robert down with comments, parodied him with memes, turned his speech into a grim joke.

“They didn’t have to turn,” he said to his reflection in the mirror of a one-man cell. The studio’s mercenaries had tried to reverse the trend with fabricated reports, but they had all been identified as fakes and stopped in their tracks. Mickey Mouse, who had brought good luck to the real Disney, had brought down the fake one. The icon that had started it all a hundred years ago, the black-and-white mother of other characters, hung on the screens for too long. Mickey was friendly, chummy and famous, but his strength was his movement and voice. Unlike the Mona Lisa, his smile didn’t intend to hide a secret. While the emotions in the studio soared, the ones in front of the screens simmered. The viewers’ attention to the Mouse waned, just as surely as blood drained from the neck of one of its alleged creators.

The unions of Disney Entertainment Studios,  whose Chair turned out to be the programme’s host, knew exactly what to do at the last minute. They were right to assume that a black Vietnam veteran could be easily controlled, thanks to a surgical implant in his brain, and would arouse sympathy even if people did not believe his story.

The jury bought it. They convicted Robert of manslaughter despite his story of a nervous breakdown. The prosecutor made it clear that he and his partner had planned the fraud and then, in cold blood, removed the obstacles in their way.

“There were at least three obstacles in the studio,” the attorney stated, determined to maintain the frenzied narrative. “Why did he only attack one?”

And there was an answer to that. The allegation of racism was the nail in Robert’s coffin, both in the courtroom and online.

He was to get a fortune; instead, he got a life sentence. He was to be famous; now he was sore and scratched and sober for a year. He was to talk to billions; now he was talking to himself. Adam, on probation and relegated to being an assistant to a demoted Fiona, did not speak with him. Robert was alone again.

“We’re late,” he said to his reflection in the glass, and he was right.

“We are five hours late,” he added, and he was wrong.

In the previous century, he and his agent would have taken control of the studio and participated in its unprecedented expansion into the 21st century. But by Year 2026, they were already out of the running. The web users had taken an interest in him for only a moment — rightfully so — and after a quick verification of facts, they had turned their restless attention to yawning bears, melting glaciers, burning forests and other eco-scandals. Robert was nothing but a distant memory, the freak, the offender.

And the Word became flesh. Both Words.

“They considered live animals more important than the drawn ones,” he said, looking through the mirror behind him. “Can you believe me, Mickey?”

The mouse in the corner of the cell blinked and ran a paw over its mustache. Day by day, Robert was slowly letting go of the bitterness that had initially disgusted him to the sight of the rodent. Now, he saw the reflection of its famous namesake in it. He smiled at the mouse more and more often and spoke to it, certain that one day it would answer him. The animated Mickey had also been silent for several years before speaking. Thank God, they had plenty of time.

Beypore, India, 1866

On the morning of her fiftieth birthday, Bibi woke to the sound of her husband chewing loudly next to her in bed. Neither of them knew it was Bibi’s birthday, born as she was without a birth certificate, but it was to be a special day anyway because for the first time since their wedding, they would be receiving guests.

Bibi soaked basmati rice and orange lentils in copper bowls, stacked sweet samosas crammed with shredded coconut onto her best platters, and chilled glass jugs in cold water before filling them with green, salty lassi. Special silver plates had been purchased from a widow in the next village. Bibi’s husband had transported them back to their home.

Their pistachio-green bungalow sat at the edge of a mango orchard. Bright-orange garlands of marigold hung near the entrances. Bibi had woven the flowers herself; such was the occasion. Two more garlands waited on the dining table, ready to adorn the necks of the couple who would be arriving by train from Tirur later that afternoon. Bibi’s husband would meet them at the station with a wagon to bring them and their suitcases to the bungalow.

The guests were two of her childhood friends from the village by the sea. Bibi had moved up in the world: now she lived even closer to the ocean, next to a less seaweed-strewn stretch of beach. Bibi rubbed her round cheeks with freshly ground turmeric root and oil, as she had done the day before her wedding. She admired the henna patterns she had drawn on the palm of her right hand. But her fingers tingled with such excitement that the pallu of her green and pink sari escaped her grip over and over again as she tried to arrange the pleats neatly around her waist.

Amina and Arif had married around the time of Bibi’s first wedding. They still lived in the village that Bibi had fled after her first husband’s funeral. Bibi had found love and a new life in a different fishing village. She had met her new husband one early spring evening while bathing in the ocean. She had shrieked when she had first seen him. He had been sniffing around the pile of clothes she had piled neatly next to a coconut tree, sifting through her garments.

“Hey, you! Leave my things alone,” she had wailed from between the waves. But the mysterious creature had run away with her sari blouse, and a naked Bibi had staggered onto the beach, arms clamped across her chest, knees awkwardly knocking as she had tried to conceal her womanhood. The creature had scampered between the coconut trees, dragging her blouse and frolicking, pleading with her to give chase. So she had. It was the very first day that she had emerged from the house after four months of ritual mourning. And this—this felt like destiny. A dark and playful stranger had chosen her, and she could have sworn that she had been too busy praying for the repentance of her deceased husband to even think about asking Allah for a new man.

Bibi had skipped after the creature as he had dragged her sari blouse through the sand. She had chased him between thick tree trunks and jumped over vines that had scratched her smooth, brown skin. Bibi hadn’t cared. She had been lost in the moment, giggling like a schoolgirl. The pair had collapsed on the sand and lain cheek to cheek, huffing and puffing and laughing. The sky had turned black. Bibi had pulled the first brightly colored sari she had worn in months over their bodies.

Bibi told anyone who would listen, “It was love at first sight. When you know, you know.” To the young women who sold marigolds by the temple, she would say, “When you put aside expectations of how you think your perfect spouse will look, smell, and act, that’s when you’ll find true happiness.”

Her second wedding had been a small affair, as was the custom for a widow: only two fisherwomen to bear witness, and an imam to officiate the union. Her first husband’s death, caused by choking on a fish bone, had rattled her. She was relieved that her second husband refused to eat spined creatures of any kind.

By the time the guests pulled up to the house in the wagon, it was filled with the aroma of Bibi’s cooking. Biryani, idli, masala dosa, and three kinds of daal were arranged on the table. Bibi pushed a serving spoon into a platter of pilau rice scattered with strands of saffron and topped with flaked almonds and plump raisins.

“Come in, come in!” Bibi said, standing at the entrance, two garlands bouncing in her hands. “You made such a long journey. I’m so glad you found Babu. I was worried you would walk past him at the train station. He can be too quiet for his own good.”

“But where was he… we weren’t sure?” said Arif.

“Well, you got here, so everything worked out perfectly,” replied a grinning Bibi. She laughed and ushered her guests over the threshold. They ducked to receive the floral necklaces. “Now be careful and don’t bend over,” Bibi said, patting the marigolds against Amina’s bosom. “Sometimes Babu gets carried away and likes to nibble.”

She showed the silent couple to the table, where she lifted cloths and plates to reveal the fragrant feast. She had expected at least a few compliments about her house and her cooking. But when she turned back to look at the pair, their eyes were as white as coconuts and as wide as tea plates. “Yes, yes,” said Bibi, “I made all this food for you!” She watched their eyes grow wider as Babu trotted into the house and sat by the door to catch his breath. “Very special guests have come to meet my very special husband. Now please, won’t you sit?”

Bibi stroked her husband’s hair and picked strands of hay from his beard, flicking them into the air. “I should have made a garland for you,” she said, and gave him a peck on the cheek. She picked up a cloth sack that sat near the entrance, hoisted the burlap over her shoulder, and walked to the table with Babu at her heels.

Babu settled into his usual position at the head of the table. Bibi emptied the cloth sack directly onto the tablecloth in front of him and poured him a glass of green lassi. Arif stared at the food. Amina shook her head. “I’m sorry, but we won’t be able to stay tonight,” she said.

“Arre, what talk is this?” said Bibi. “Chup karo! You only just got here. Babu helped me prepare the guest room for you. How many husbands help their wives with such chores, eh?” She dished out a puddle of orange daal onto Arif’s plate.

He looked at Amina, who was mouthing something slowly. “This is enough!” he said. The pair turned their heads and rudely stared at Babu. Babu looked up from his hay pile and let out a faint baaah.

“What do you think, Amina? I did good, eh?” Bibi said, and giggled. “For an old woman like me, I am so lucky.” Amina coughed. Bibi handed her a cup of lassi to clear her throat.

Babu didn’t speak. He chewed and grunted and eventually spit brownish wads onto the floor. A long silence followed the expulsion of the last chunk of cud, and then a burp, for extra flourish. “Oh ho, Babu!” Bibi sighed. “This is why I gave you the big napkin.” She shook her head and looked at Amina. “I never understood how husbands are always so disgusting. How do we cope, eh?”

Amina and Arif moved food around their plates. “Eat, Arif. Eat,” Bibi insisted. Arif scooped fingerfuls of daal into his mouth and talked with his mouth full, the lentils muffling his voice as he said, “We have to go.” He glared at his wife, and Amina stood and walked toward the shoes she had left by the front door. Babu had nibbled on the leather soles on his way in.

“Oh bhai! But I haven’t given you masala tea and samosas yet!” Bibi cried, clutching her dupatta to her chest. “You must stay. Babu, take them to the divan. What’s that? Yes, I can see it, too. They are very tired.”

Babu excused himself from the table and began to clear up the spit wads from the floor. He cocked his head and looked at the guests through long, curved eyelashes. Bibi nudged him in the direction of the divan and their guests followed. Arif sat on the small chair closest to the door. “Not there, Arif,” Bibi said. “That’s Babu’s chair.”

In the kitchen, ginger-scented puffs of steam condensed on Bibi’s round face as she stewed black tea in a steel pot with cardamom and slivers of unpeeled ginger root. She arranged sweet samosas on a silver plate and carried the treats to the guests, who were sitting in silence.

Babu was still chewing. “I feel so lucky,” Bibi said. She handed the samosas to Amina and Arif and placed cups of hot tea on the table. “I never thought I could have a husband who is so quiet, so loving.”

Bibi poured tea into a silver bowl and held it to Babu’s mouth. He puckered his lips, unfurled a thick tongue, and slurped the tea. Bibi stroked her husband’s head. “Tell him about your business, Arif,” Bibi said, nodding her head. “Babu is very interested in the import-export trade.”

“Really? I mean, I really think we should be going,” Arif said. He placed his teacup on the table and stood. Bibi walked over and gently pushed him back down into the chair. “Babu can take you to the station anytime, but there is no train until tomorrow,” she said quietly.

What did it matter what her husband looked like? So what if he didn’t speak the same tongue? So what if he didn’t eat the same food? Could they not see that she was happy? Did a woman’s contentment mean nothing? Bibi crossed and uncrossed her arms. She stood to refill Arif’s teacup, pouring from the pot until it reached the brim and spilled into the trembling man’s saucer. “I said, tell him about your business.”

Arif explained to Bibi that he bought long-grain rice from a distant village, transported it by donkey to Tirur, and sold it at twice the price. “No, tell him,” Bibi said, pointing her chin in Babu’s direction. Arif turned to Babu, opened his mouth, and closed it.

Babu scratched his face. “That means he is very impressed,” Bibi said. She turned to Amina. “But with all that hard work your husband does, I bet he doesn’t have much time for you, not the way my husband has time to cuddle and play with me.” Amina nodded silently.

Bibi sipped her tea and told them about the beginnings of her love affair. The night of the beach encounter, after Babu had licked her cheek and disappeared into the bush, Bibi had knelt on the sand and prayed to Allah that she be blessed with a spouse as playful and affectionate as the creature she had danced with at sunset. Her first husband had been a debt collector with a capricious demeanor and chronic bowel troubles. Sometimes the gas escaped from his mouth, other times it emerged from the rear end. Either way, Bibi said, she felt that her life had been engulfed in a constant miasma of stink.

The very next day, Bibi’s prayers had been answered. She had spotted Babu at the grain market. Her hair had still been dripping wet from that morning’s ablutions—an indecent, besharam way in which to leave the house, she knew. Mother had warned against it ever since Bibi was a young girl. “Wet hair attracts djinn,” Amma had said. “If a girl walks outside with wet hair, especially beneath trees and especially at Maghreb, the djinn will sniff you out and follow you home.”

At the market, Bibi had let the thin pink dupatta slip from her head to reveal the glistening locks beneath. She had wandered through the bazaar in her rose-pink kameez and had spotted Babu’s head peering at her from between two burlap sacks. His nostrils had quivered as he caught Bibi’s scent. His eyes had tracked her as she moved between mountains of powdered spices. She had known it was him instantly: that solid frame, those long, thick eyelashes. He had been excited to see her again.

“Two pounds of chapati flour,” she had said to the old man sitting at Babu’s side. She had eyed Babu as the man poured flour into a cloth bag and held the bag out for Bibi to take. “You want him?” he had said, looking from Bibi to Babu and back to Bibi again. “If you want him, you can have him.” The man had jiggled the bag and pointed to the coins in Bibi’s hand.

“Sometimes love really is that simple,” Bibi sighed. “You wouldn’t believe how easily true love can fall into your lap.” Amina listened with parted lips. “The very next week, we were married in that mango orchard,” Bibi said, pointing out beyond the open door, where a golden sun was melting into the mango trees. “We built this house with money my first husband had stashed. Sorry I couldn’t invite you to the wedding, but you understand these things. That is the custom for a widow. Small wedding. No fuss.”

Arif nodded his head. Amina stared at the floor.

It would be dark soon, and Babu liked to take a leisurely stroll before bedtime. “Helps him digest,” Bibi explained, patting her belly. She stacked the teacups on a tray, carried them to the kitchen, and returned with her hands dripping water. Bibi crouched in front of Babu and gently combed her fingers through the wiry hairs sprouting from his chin. When his beard was clean, she lay her warm, damp hands over his hooves and picked at the fibers jammed between his toes. She pecked her husband on the snout and stroked his cheeks until he sighed.

Five houses line the blind alley, three on the right side, two on the left, and at the end, to the left, stands a three-storied apartment building. I live on the second floor. The dead-end of the street is a ten-foot cinder-block wall, topped by shards of glass of various colours lodged into a layer of concrete to keep away trespassers from climbing the wall and jumping over into the lining of thick rain trees concealing a rather uneventful and nearly invisible colony of government employees.

In the evenings, I stroll on the terrace of my apartment building, taking in the glum orange sunsets behind the Bangalore skyline, or sit on the balcony of my house on the second floor, watching dogs frolic under the yellow light of the street lamps. The muffled voices of a noisy news panel from a TV in a far-off street or the distant wails of sirens on ambulances carrying the infected interrupt the drone of my tinnitus and the otherwise silent nights.

“Ganja… MDMA… Ecstasy… drugs do… drugs do… mujhe drugs do…”

Drugs, though? I wake up to the faraway screams of a man apparently hawking psychedelics late in the night. Mujhe drugs do? Perhaps he is in desperate need of those himself. I sit up, rub my eyes, and train my ears towards the source of the racket; my knackered brain takes a moment to process the sound and locate the wretched junkie.

Is that noise from the house above? I am certain it isn’t. Firstly, no man lives in that house, let alone an addict—the occupant was an old woman. Secondly, the house is at the moment empty and has been so for a while. And thirdly…

“REE AAH CHALK OR BORE TEA…” the faint remnant of another shriek arrives.

… and thirdly, I now recognise that voice. I am not surprised. I would be, had it been yapping about vaccines before the second wave swept over, instead of the celebrity drug scandal. The human megaphone is that anchor from that news channel on a TV playing in some faraway street. It has to be from a faraway street. Mine is empty.

I shut the windows and hit the bed once again.

Thud. Thud. THUD! I jolt awake. 3am. This time, the sound came from above, I am certain. Not the first time though: Like clockwork, taps, thuds and knocks wake me up at 3am precisely. At first, I wondered if the apartment upstairs was haunted. After all, 3am is the witching hour, isn’t it?

Is it her walking stick? Is it her fall? Is it a product of my mind, after all? I google “auditory hallucinations at 3am”. Apparently, my malady has a medical name: a benign condition ironically termed the exploding head syndrome. Look it up. There is always a rational explanation playing spoilsport. I am disappointed. I am more open to the prospect of a ghost with a walking stick haunting the house above me than my head benignly exploding.

The previous occupant of the house upstairs, the old lady, lived by herself like me. She needed me every now and then to run her errands. “Can you bring me a packet of milk and a few buns?” Or, “My washing machine isn’t working; can you take a look?” she would request from behind the mask covering her wrinkled lips, her veiny hand clutching a four-legged walking stick. Back then, the street was populated; she knew everyone, and in return, everyone knew her, but I was her preferred choice, her go-to person to do those odd jobs. The neighbours, when they were too busy to lend her a hand—which seemed to be all the time—would encourage me to help the woman as they showered praises on me, insisting that in their eyes, I was an ideal young man, a shining example, and lamented the laziness of their own flesh and blood. Some would earnestly declare to the woman that I was her son in all but blood (more like a grandson if age was the sole criterion), and others would playfully goad her to make me the heir apparent, upon which they would promptly disperse, and I would set out to play my assigned role as the ideal (grand)son.

I would complete the chores, then spend a few minutes chatting with her over a cup of ginger tea, seated on the divan in her living room. For reasons unknown, whenever I conversed with her, my hands would not quiver when I held the cup, nor would my heart pound—my Pavlovian responses reserved for nearly everyone else I interact with. Perhaps her age, or maybe her isolation and vulnerability, did not present a subconscious threat. Conversations with her typically revolved around the prospects for my marriage and my salary, which then invariably veered into comparisons with her son’s earnings in the US and her trip there a few years ago.

One day, before the second wave of the pandemic, she kicked the bucket—literally in the morning, then figuratively later that evening—when she collapsed in the bathroom due to an abrupt drop in her blood pressure. A team of caretakers arrived in an ambulance, hired remotely by her son, and carted her body off to the morgue. As they did so, I held my phone, camera pointed towards her lifeless body wrapped in a white shroud on the stretcher and live-streamed the happenings to her grief-stricken and teary-eyed son in the US. He was virtually inconsolable.

A week after her demise, the son descended, organised the funeral, hired a property manager, probated her will, patted my shoulder and let out a sigh of grief, after which he promptly ascended once again to the land of the free, leaving me—his brother in all but blood—behind with my share of the inheritance: an aloha shirt one size too large and a pack of M&Ms whose price, oddly, was listed in rupees instead of dollars.

Ever since, the fully furnished house has remained unoccupied. The pandemic emptied not just the houses in my street, but in Bangalore in general, which meant that the property manager has been unsuccessful so far in renting the house to new tenants. Until today, that is. I learn from him that a new tenant will be moving into that apartment. I heave a sigh of relief. In the evening, the packers and movers arrive in their truck. For some reason, the truck is a huge eighteen-wheeled water tanker, followed by two more trucks of similar proportions. I am confused, but on cloud seven. Eight, if I really push it, and that’s saying a lot; I am not very expressive.

A human; a ghost; I will take anything as long as it’s a neighbour. As things stand, I feel like a ghost myself. You know that age old philosophical question? If a man lives all his life alone on an island and no one has ever seen him, is he a ghost? Or maybe it was about a tree falling in a forest. I can’t remember. Anyway, I don a mask, slip into my slippers and step out to meet my new upstairs neighbour. On the stairs, I bump into two men—packers and movers—carefully carrying an aquarium, about four feet long and three feet wide, full of murky water.

“Is the tenant upstairs?” I ask. One of them, with a cigarette dangling at the corner of his lips, tilts his head and gestures at the aquarium he is holding. I follow his gaze. Two rubbery and undulating earthworm-brown appendages emerge from the liquid and press against the side of the aquarium facing me. A dark, hazy blob then appears in the muddied water and a moment later, the remaining six tentacles and the head follow. Now, I can clearly see through the glass. My new neighbour, it turns out, is a cephalopod. An octopus, to be precise.

“Sorry, the water is murky. I didn’t notice you,” I apologise and immediately regret saying the word murky. I have never interacted with an octopus before. I don’t socialise much.

Two tentacles wave left and right in unison. I wave back.

“Hi, I am your neighbour, Shekar. I live downstairs on the second floor right beneath yours.”

I notice that one of the tentacles has no suckers at the end, which means the correct pronouns are he/him. Females have suckers on all eight tentacles. But then an octopus has nine brains, eight in each of the tentacles and one in the head. So, technically, the correct pronouns could be they/them. I am confused. I sense a quiver in my hands. Confusion breeds quiver and quiver, confusion. It is a vicious feedback loop. I manage to derail the cycle for the time being: I assure myself that I will be interacting with him (them) in the second person, and hence, I needn’t worry about offending him (them) with inappropriate pronouns.

The other six of his tentacles perform a complex dance in the water, swaying up and down, left and right, with metrical fluidity. Perhaps it is a sign language known only to their species. Unfortunately, I do not speak octopus. Bangalore is a cesspool of people (and also octopuses, apparently) coming from around the country and speaking a variety of languages.

I press my thumbs to the middle and ring fingers, make the standard Bharatanatyam mudra, rotate my wrists forward and backward and move my eyes from side to side as I tap my feet rhythmically. I don’t really know the classical dance form. I want to give the impression that I am genuinely trying to communicate with the cephalopod. I wish I were good at socialising. I feel the gaze of the two men on me and hear a snigger, and I can feel my heart beating faster. The eight-legged neighbour pauses for a moment… a moment longer than I am comfortable with. I fiddle my thumbs as I try to gauge his silence. Is he confused? Did I say something rude? Does he know Bharatanatyam? That would be a sight to witness—an eight-legged dancing octopus.

“Looks like I am holding you up,” I finally say and end the awkward silence, giving way to the two men.

Is there a universal grammar, not only among humans, as Prof. Chomsky theorised, but also between humans and cephalopods? I am certain that such an ancient language exists, passed down from a common ancestor to both species, quarantined somewhere deep in our subconscious. As much as I am determined to uncover this primaeval means of communication to beat the lockdown blues, deep down, I wish Kannada were made mandatory for everyone living in Bangalore. I don’t speak or understand Kannada either, but at least I have the “Learn Kannada in 30 Days” pocketbook handy for reference.

I gather from the internet that octopuses eat crabs, snails, and small fish. In the evening, I use the ten-minute delivery app to order a live sea crab which arrives in an ice box. This is another attempt at breaking the ice with the inhabitant overhead. The crab is disappointed that she is going to be eaten alive and hums a haunting dirge from the ice box. I don’t quite understand the meaning because I don’t speak crab either, but I discern the emotion from the sorrowful tune. Pain and the fear of death definitely belong in the vocabulary of the primaeval language.

I knock on the door. No answer. The windows have been sealed shut. The door doesn’t open, but the octopus (What is his name? Does he have a name? For some reason, the word Ashtavakra pops into my head.) shows up behind the glass window. One of the tentacles points upwards. Is he flipping me off? I think he wants me to go upstairs. I take the stairs to the terrace one floor above. At the centre of the terrace is a newly installed large circular trapdoor of thick acrylic glass surrounded by a metallic frame.

A few wetsuits and scuba gear are hung on the lime green plastic rope the old lady used to dry her clothes on. I pick one suit and wear it along with the paraphernalia (including the COVID mask underneath the scuba diving mask because it is strictly mandated by the government), open the door and take a plunge into my new neighbour’s blue home. Thankfully, the water is now clear. All the walls have been torn down, the windows and doors sealed with a layer of thick glass, and the floors covered with gravel of kaleidoscopic colours: the house is one big aquarium.

The previous occupant’s furniture and decorations are still here. The divan and the coffee table casually drift upside down in the water and pass me by. A few aquatic plants, which I don’t recognise, have replaced the coffee table and sway calmly underwater. The Madhubani paintings on the wall appear soft and fluid and remind me of Monet. I extend my right arm for a handshake. Instead, he lunges towards my left hand; the suckers under his tentacles reach out and grab the sea crab and at once, he begins munching. I may add that his manners leave something to be desired. The crab stares at me without an expression as her legs are torn apart. I look away momentarily and begin analysing and interpreting the Monet-turned-Madhubani wall hangings.

I turn back only to find that my host has disappeared. Where has he gone? Is he preparing something for me? That’s very polite of him, but it is not practical for me to consume anything underwater. I swim to the kitchen. He isn’t there. The coldness of my host hurts me a little. It is one thing to refuse what your host offers and something else when the host offers nothing at all. I head back to the hall. Perhaps he had to use the restroom. I wait. Thoughts shape reality and what you think, you become. The thought of my neighbour attending to nature’s call instantly reflects in the reality of my own bladder. I have a sudden and intense urge to pee. I look around, he is nowhere: I let the Nile flow out of my wet suit and merge with the Mediterranean sea around me. I am not proud of what I have done, but as the saying goes, no one can stop the incontinence whose time has come. I swim to the paintings on the wall and resume my attempt at art criticism.

I am not well versed in the art appreciation side of things, considering that I had been an engineer all my adult life until I became unemployed, thanks to COVID. Now that I have some time on my hands (in my tank rather—I check the pressure gauge; I have some air still), I decide to spend some of it on art appreciation. The vibrant colours of the painting, although they took birth as a static image, are infused with time and motion by the magic of underwater refraction. A parrot with blue plumage, a deer under a tree, a woman with long dark hair that flows like water, her dreamy almond-shaped eyes that… blink?

With eyes narrowed and a frown on my forehead, I move towards the frame for a closer look. Something is off. I lift my finger and run it through the painting. It is unexpectedly soft. Then, a movement. Then, a realisation. How could I have forgotten? Octopuses are the authority on concealment and camouflaging. In an instant, my host reverts his colour back to the boring brown, appears in front of me and casually drifts away. I get it now. He wants to play.

I close my eyes and begin counting to thirty. He has disappeared once again. I swim around seeking. Now, he has blended into the gravel. Now, he has hidden behind the seaweed. He is a master of disguise, but I am not far behind. This fascinating game of interspecies hide and seek goes on for a while. I am having a good time. I check the gauge: a casual periodic look to make sure the pressure in my air tank is at a safe level. The readings indicate I have some more time. I begin counting to thirty once again. One… two… three. Out of nowhere, guilt, seemingly causeless, flows through my body; as if some remorse lay hidden at the bottom of the tank waiting for an opportune moment to enter my lungs and course through my veins.

I stop the game in its tracks and head to the trap door, get out of the water and get out of the gear. I draw in a long breath and let out an exhale. An approaching sound. The wailing siren atop a passing ambulance grows higher and higher in pitch as it comes closer and closer. The ambulance is visible from where I stand on the terrace, rushing through the winding, deserted road. The sound is now unbearably high-pitched as if it were carrying within it the accumulated final gasps of all the infected the vehicle has transported so far. The ambulance passes by, the siren grows weaker and eventually dies down and the quiet returns, a more appropriate companion to the setting sun. I make a mental note never to breathe air from a tank again.

In the following days, whenever I pass by his house on my way to the terrace for the evening stroll, I dart a quick glance at the window. He is usually absent, or maybe his camouflage is at work, blending him with the transparent glass. Sometimes, he appears, performing his intricate dance of which I can make neither head nor tentacle. I, in turn, acknowledge the courtesy with a single nod of my head and a short smile with pursed lips. Water from the aquarium above my roof begins seeping through. The ceiling in my bedroom turns damp. I paste a sticky note on his window describing the situation and politely requesting him to do something about it. He slowly lifts one of his tentacles up. Is he flipping me off? Or is he inviting me for another game of hide and seek?

I write down a message and paste another sticky note. I must get going. Have a nice day.

In a matter of days, the novelty of the eight-legged dweller has worn  off, and annoyance has taken its place. Moisture from the roof has infiltrated the cupboards, mildew has invaded my clothes, and a musty smell has engulfed the house. A fortnight has passed and nothing has been done to repair my roof.

My clothes are all mouldy. Did you give it a thought or maybe nine? I paste another sticky note to his window.

He responds with an erect tentacle as usual. Something—perhaps a noticeable increase in the speed of the tentacle’s tent-pitching act—convinces me he is flipping me off this time. I escalate the matter from sticky notes to messages in bottles, which I drop through the trapdoor.

My house is too humid, and my kitchen smells like fungus. Do you understand smell?

For some reason, my usual hesitant self takes a backseat as I send these messages, spiced with a tinge of rudeness, through the bottle. Perhaps the indirect form of communication through  a bottle inspires a degree of confidence not unlike the confidence of an anonymous troll on social media.

Patches of saffron paint start to peel off from the wet roof and fall on my stove, contaminate my tomato chutney and besmirch my podi dosa, both of which I unwittingly consume.

Did the fellowship of tentacles discuss my matter? Do you have board meetings?

Over the following days, drops of water accumulate on the ceiling, threaten to fall anytime and eventually carry out the threat by falling into the chilli chicken. I like my chilli chicken dry. Having endured the ignominy long enough, I head upstairs to lodge a complaint in person. My aversion to quarrels, coupled with the disturbing thought of breathing air from a tank, stopped direct confrontation so far. But not today, not when you wet my chilli chicken. I slip into a wetsuit and dive into his house with a mighty splash proportionate to the disdain I now feel for him. I attempt to voice my concern but realise I can’t because I have no voice underwater, so I register my protest on a placard instead.

Your water is leaking into my house. Do something! I state the obvious on the placard that happens to be in my hand using an underwater marker that also turns up in my other hand. In turn, he grabs the placard with his eight slithering tentacles and squats on it. A moment later, words appear on his body, thanks to the chromatophores on his skin.

“What are you gonna do, huh?” The words scroll to the left like an LED message on a city bus and make way to Hindi, “Kya ukhaad lega tu?” which in turn move aside to let in Kannada, “Enannu kittu haakuttiri?”

Then he mic-drops the placard and floats away lazily. So he understands English, Hindi and Kannada. What else has he not told me? He is not as stupid as I thought; he is outright sinister. The mic-drop is effective. I have no trilingual comebacks up my sleeve. My anxious brain is slow that way. The clever comebacks never come when they matter. I retreat in defeat.

Tap. Tap. TAP! Drops of water trickle onto my forehead and tap me awake. It is 3am. A small hole has formed on the roof above my bed. The water now drips at a steady pace into my bedroom. The bed, the pillow and my blanket are soaking wet, and the water on the floor has reached the level of my knees. I find it difficult to go back to sleep. I toss and turn on the bed. I try counting the drops of water, hoping it would help me fall asleep. As I turn to the right, I notice a stick under the murky water by my bedside. I dip my hands and pull out the old woman’s four-legged walking stick. I tap it on the roof, and yell.

“Hey! Your water is leaking. Keep your filthy, disease-ridden water to yourself!”

Splash. Splash. SPLASH! I wake up to splashing water. Midnight hunger pangs prompt me to get out of bed. The house is dark. The electricity had to be cut off for safety reasons now that the water has reached the switchboards. In the dark, I row my canoe and make my way towards the kitchen. At the bedroom door, something makes contact with my canoe with a gentle thud. I turn on my phone’s flashlight to take a look.

It is a body wrapped from head to toe in a white shroud, drifting in the water. I know who it belonged to. As if by instinct, I call up ‘my brother’ in the USA. I begin live-streaming the body as it passes me by. As if on cue, he too at once begins weeping uncontrollably. I sing a lullaby to console him. It is the same song that I heard from the now dead crab. I do not sing in public for fear of mockery, but now I gather courage because it is needed. He calms down, occasionally letting out an involuntary hiccup. He tells me he likes the aloha shirt I happened to be wearing.

“The shirt looks good on you,” he compliments with a bittersweet smile on his face as he wipes his tears.

“It is a bit too large for my size,” I say.

“Give it a couple of washes and it will shrink,” he assures. I feel better.

“Can you talk to your tenant about the water leaking into my house?” I submit my request. He looks off-camera for a moment as though something distracted him, then looks back at the camera, then excuses himself and ends the call citing some urgent business. I continue my voyage towards the kitchen.

More bodies pass me by in the living room on my way to the kitchen, only this time they are wrapped in orange shrouds. I point the flashlight around and look for the source of the bodies. A large hole in one corner of the roof is where they are dripping out from. I notice a female standing on the sofa in my living room accompanied by a man holding a camera on a tripod. A journalist I believe; she is in tattered and road-weary clothes, reporting passionately on the drifting dead bodies.

“I ask my cameraman to pan around and show you the sheer number of bodies floating around in this living room,” she says. The cameraman obliges. “We have counted up to a hundred and six bodies before giving up. Who suffers for whose mistakes? Who is answerable? Who is responsible? What we see here…”

She notices me passing by, pauses for a moment, waves at me and instructs her camera man to point his camera towards me. I pull over my canoe towards the sofa.

“Here is a living man, alone among the dead, with nothing but a canoe to keep him afloat and an oversized shirt on his body, rowing in darkness, heading to an unknown place at this hour in the night. Let’s talk to him,” she turns to me. “Sir, can we talk to you for a minute?”

“Sure. But let me assure you, the shirt will shrink after a couple of washes.”

“This man is full of hope despite the wetness of his predicament. These are the kinds of stories, these tiny droplets of hope, we must tell as the tsunami of grief sweeps our country. Tell me sir, how are you feeling?”

“I am feeling hungry…”

“He is starving… hmm.”

“… which usually happens to me in the middle of the night. I am heading towards…”

“He is in search of food, clutching his empty stomach… hmm.”

“… the fridge in the kitchen.”

“Do you wish to say something to our viewers?”

“I just wish that the cephalopod above realises his mistakes and rectifies the situation with a sense of urgency before my house drowns completely.”

“This man still has faith in the cephalopod above and appeals to his good nature.”

Sympathy in her eyes, she wraps her arm around my shoulder, as the cameraman captures the moment. With that, my interview ends, and I continue my journey towards the fridge.

Roar. Roar. ROAR! I wake up floating neck-deep in cold water that consumes me from below, an utter darkness that absorbs me from above and a claustrophobia that devours me from within. I let out gasps as I struggle to breathe in the small pocket of air between the water and the roof. A light from under the water emerges to the surface. It is a TV, playing that news channel moderated by that news megaphone of an anchor. He materialises in one of the ten boxes on the screen. The remaining nine are occupied each by the eight tentacles and one head of the cephalopod. In a separate frame, I see a picture of me. Underneath it is the headline in large red letters:

BREAKING: IMPATIENT NEIGHBOUR PUTS A CEPHALOPOD IN A CHOKE HOLD #STOPCHOKINGCEPHALOPOD #STOPCEPHALOPODCHOKING

“I want to tell you, viewers, that things are not as bad as this man is making out to be,” the male anchor screams, pointing at my picture. “Yes, his house is flooding, but as you can see, he is sailing in smooth waters…” A short video recording of me rowing towards the kitchen last night is played on repeat mode.

“… rowing in the right direction and flowing smoothly ahead. Yet he harasses his neighbour with rude messages in glass bottles. Yet he complains to the world. And his complaints are given credence by journalists like her who interviewed him last night. This negativity is what we must reject as a nation. Put him on the line, put him on the line,” he orders his crew. And suddenly, I am on the screen in an eleventh box. The nine fragments of my neighbour in the nine boxes writhe violently.

“Tell me, Mr. Shekar, why are you holding this poor cephalopod, your neighbour, in a chokehold?”

“No… I’m not,” I say, spitting some water out and gulping some in.

“Yes, you are.”

“Okay… Because he… is the one responsible… I guess,” I say, gasping for air in the claustrophobic space between water and the roof.

“Mr. Shekar, you behave irrationally. The cephalopod is responsible, and he is doing his best. It is not easy working with nine brains, each thinking differently especially when one is under a chokehold.”

“Chokehold… is probably not the most suitable word… in the context… of an octopus,” I suggest to the anchor. A mistake.

“HOW DARE YOU? HOW DARE YOU TELL ME HOW TO DO MY JOB?” The inevitable scream ensues. “Apologise, you anti-… anti-rational!” In the nine boxes, the nine-brained neighbour matches the anchor’s passion and writhes even more violently.

“Okay he… may be… doing… his best… but he has had… enough time… to do some… thing… and now I am… drowning.”

“For God’s sake! Give the cephalopod some breathing room, will you?”

“Breathing room? Interesting… choice of… words.”

“Mr. Shekar! Are you dumb? I told you the cephalopod is working as hard as he can for your benefit. How anti-rational can you be? Stop breathing down his neck!”

“Breathing down?“

“There he goes again. Give him some time, will you? Give him some time. He will take your breath away!”

“Okay… I’m… holding… my… breath.”

I was waiting in line somewhere and scrolling when I saw that she was tagged in a post by Mr. Walker, my high school principal. The post said that it was with great sadness that Mr. Walker had to announce that Ms. Brown had been found dead, stab wounds covering various parts of her body. I remember being sad but also a little confused about why Mr. Walker was the one posting it. It didn’t seem like they had been all that close when I was in high school though I supposed that I didn’t know a whole lot about their lives that way or the other. I didn’t like Mr. Walker all that much, so I didn’t reply or react.

Imagine my surprise when, later that day, Ms. Brown posted an inspirational quote. At first, I assumed that someone close to her had taken over the account and had wanted to cheer up people who were hearing about her brutal death. But then people responded to her, and she responded back to them, and the replies sounded like Ms. Brown. I looked up Mr. Walker’s profile because I was going to tell him that I didn’t think his joke was funny at all. When I looked him up, not only did I no longer see the post about Ms. Brown, but I also found an announcement that Mr. Walker had died nearly a year ago, and that this was now a legacy account. There was something about celebrating his life rather than dwelling on the circumstances of his death, but nothing all that concrete. I looked at the profile pic, and it looked a little off. I couldn’t exactly explain how, but his face seemed unreal. I decided that I must have just not remembered how Mr. Walker looked and went back to scrolling.

I thought for sure that I’d gone crazy, wondering why I thought that I’d seen that post in the first place. I thought about sending Ms. Brown a message; not telling her about the post, but just seeing how she was. I decided that it would be weird, so I just let it go. Fast forward a few more days, and I start seeing posts from people I went to high school with, talking about how awful it was that Ms. Brown had been murdered. When I looked at the news from my hometown, I found that she’d been killed exactly how Mr. Walker’s account had described. I thought about reaching out to the police, but what could I say? I didn’t take a screenshot of the post or anything (I didn’t think that I’d had to), and I felt like if I did come forward, the police would likely start looking at me.

I donated a little money to her memorial fund, and I tried to mostly forget about it though I did check the news for updates. Police had no real leads; there was no physical evidence. They didn’t even have a murder weapon, and nobody had been seen coming into or leaving her place. There was a lot of rumor and speculation (I come from a small town, and a murder like that is very big news), but nobody could come up with anything concrete.

A few months later, I saw a second post from Mr. Walker. This time it was a decent (but not star) football player. He hadn’t lived in our hometown for over a decade from what I could tell. This time, Mr. Walker’s profile claimed that the kid had died in a car accident. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t send him a message saying “a Facebook ghost is going to kill you,” but I didn’t want to just let it hang, either.

I sent the kid (though he was an adult like me by now) a quick message: “Don’t know why, but you popped into my head the other day. How are things with you?” I looked at his profile pic. His eyes were wrong. I’m not sure what the opposite of sparkling is, but that’s what his eyes were doing. They were like two black holes that you couldn’t quite focus on but that you could feel the light getting sucked into.

The kid didn’t answer my message. I didn’t really blame him; it must have seemed weird that he was getting a message from some random dude from high school. Or maybe he never even checked his messages. I knew people who went months without checking their messages. Either way, it wasn’t long before I saw that he had crashed into a tree. Officials suspected drunk driving. That was possible, but it was too big of a coincidence for me. I had no clue why a Facebook ghost would want to fuck with me. I’d never been on Mr. Walker’s radar as far as I could tell. I checked his profile again. This time, his picture was a cluster of houseflies that looked vaguely like a face. I closed my browser and rubbed my eyes. It had to be a hallucination.

That night, I went into a couple of Facebook groups from my hometown, seeing if there was any chatter that suggested anyone else was seeing this. There was some weird shit, for sure (an argument about whether this one bar had been on Elm Street or Pine Street), but nothing that made me think that anyone else saw Mr. Walker’s ghost posts. Though maybe, like me, they didn’t want to put themselves out there. I didn’t want to spend too much time searching, either, in case someone eventually came looking through my history.

Four more months went by, and I started to feel like maybe things were okay. But then Ms. Brown tagged Mr. Walker in a post that said that this old hall monitor, Mr. Edwards, had died in a hunting accident. This time I took a screenshot. I tried looking up Mr. Edwards, too, seeing if I could try to give him some kind of hint or suggestion. But I found that this time, it wasn’t a warning, the death had already happened. Police treated it as an accident like with the football player, but that couldn’t be true.

I logged out of Facebook and stayed off for weeks. Every now and then, I looked at the screenshot, wondering if I should delete it or who I could possibly reach out to. I decided to look into Mr. Walker. Maybe there was something in his death that would tell me what to expect. What I found at first was that he had died alone in his apartment of natural causes. I thought about how to find out what the actual story was, but again, it was hard to reach out to anyone without leaving tracks. Would I call a coroner or something?

Instead, I called my parents, mainly just to hear their voices. My dad answered the phone, and we talked a little bit about fishing and the Packers’ chances for the coming season. It was only a few minutes before he handed me off to my mom. She talked a bit more about the town. After a few more minutes, she said, “You sound sad.”

“Homesick, maybe,” I said.

“You’re always welcome to come back, Honey.”

I’m not sure why that caught me off guard, but it did. Maybe part of my brain had figured out that I wanted to see my hometown again, see if I could get a feel for the ghost, and that part of my brain told my conscious mind to call my parents. And so I decided to head home. I was in the airport, waiting for my plane (delayed half an hour), when temptation got the better of me and I went back on Facebook. The very first post was from Mr. Walker with a bunch of replies. The strange thing was that it didn’t seem to talk about a death. Mr. Walker’s post was “The kids may go on their way, but they never stop being a Wildcat.” The replies varied from “so true” to “go wildcats!” to “we’re with you Mr. W!”. And they were from tons of profiles, many of them were people I’d never heard of. Some of their pictures were yellowed, with old-timey clothes. One was nothing but maggots, moving. Another was a pile of rotting meat. I logged out again.

The whole plane ride home, I expected to die. A plane crash, a hijacking, anything would have made total sense to me. But I made it to Chicago, through O’Hare, and to my hometown without dying. My parents were both there, waiting for me. We hugged, I took a leak at the airport, and we drove home. Mom had made a roast which was delicious. As we ate, I asked, “Has anything weird been going on in town?”

My mom frowned. “Weird how?”

“I don’t know, like, weird chatter around town. Like about Ms. Brown, for instance.”

My mom looked down, and my dad looked up. Eventually, he said, “They keep saying they can’t say anything. At first, we thought that it was because they were closing in on someone and didn’t want to tip their hand, but, by now, we figure that they just really don’t know anything.”

I shook my head. “That’s awful.”

“It is awful,” my mom said. She went on a short monologue about everything Ms. Brown did for the community. I knew a lot of it, but there were a few new pieces of information. I didn’t know that she’d volunteered at the animal shelter after she had retired. Ms. Brown had never posted about it. I nodded and ate. I wondered if someone’s death was being posted to Facebook as I ate.

After dinner, I helped with dishes, thanked my parents for everything, and headed to bed. Before I went to sleep, I did log on. Instead of a specific death announcement, there was an image of several dead bodies, totally unrecognizable. One was a pile of dismembered limbs. Another was a badly charred person. Another was a body whose head was beneath the wheel of a car. Each one had gotten a heart reaction from Mr. Walker and comments from other people. I shivered, closed my browser and turned off my phone. I stared at the ceiling for a while before I was able to drift off to sleep. When I did fall, I had dreams that I couldn’t remember but that I knew were awful. When I woke up, I went downstairs, rubbing my eyes.

My mom and dad were talking quietly. When they noticed me, my mom came to me and hugged me. She was crying. My dad told me that an apartment building in town had caught fire. Dozens of people had burned alive. I hugged her back.

We had a quick breakfast and then picked up some supplies to drop off with the few survivors. When we got home, my mom took a nap, and my dad and I went for a walk. He asked me, “Why did you ask about weird stuff? About whether weird things were going on or not?”

I thought about it for a second. “There’s been some weird stuff on social media. It’s kind of hard to explain because it’s not threats that I can report or anything, but I don’t know. It just makes me wonder if there’s some common root to all the awful stuff that’s been happening.”

“But you don’t know anything.”

I sighed. “Dad, the longer I live, the more I know that I don’t know a single thing.”

My dad patted me on the shoulder, then he side-hugged me. When we got back to our house, I asked to lay down for a little while. I went back on Facebook and scrolled for a little bit. It took me a while, but eventually, I saw that my whole family was doomed. There was a series of posts celebrating my parents and me. There wasn’t a specific announcement about how we’d die, but I couldn’t see us not dying after the kind words.

I got up and went down to the kitchen. My dad was watching sports clips on the iPad. I wanted to tell him that he should do something great with the last moments of his life. But he was happy watching sports, and I couldn’t explain to him that he should be a saint before he was murdered in some untold way. “Dad,” I said.

“Yeah,” he looked at me.

“I love you and Mom.”

He smiled but kind of shook his head. “We love you too. Always.” I looked at him, and, over his shoulder, I saw out the window. There was something tall and moving. Its skin was an amalgam of scales, worm skin, exposed flesh and exoskeleton. Every place I looked, it was something terrible but different. I tried to smile for my dad, then I turned away.

I headed to the living room. My mom was reading. She looked up and smiled at me. It was a simple gesture, but I really did appreciate the sign of connection. I went to her and hugged her. I held her for a long time. When I let her go, I was ready for the end. I knew that it would happen, and I was actually at peace with it.

There was some scratching from outside. “Do you hear that?” my mom asked.

“Hear what?” I asked, hoping to stave off the horror as much as I could until all that was left of us was pictures of corpses and the intangible comments of people we hadn’t actually seen in forever.

The light that illuminated the supermarket was as fake as the milk Sascha was about to buy. The milk was synthetic. It contained water, colour, and minerals that humans had made in large chemical factories. Before the supermarket was built, real cows had stood in its place. Then all the cows died. Many humans as well. Then Sascha’s father, Anton van der Meer, died. Sascha died in the supermarket while buying milk. The supermarket was built in the year 2057, when World War III had already begun. It had been triggered five years before.

The trigger for World War III was fifteen years old and went by the name Batbayar Ganbaatar. Ganbaatar never knew he was indirectly to blame for it. He sat at the foot of Sutai Uul when the incident occurred. Sutai Uul was one of the tallest mountains in a country then called Mongolia. From a glacier high on Sutai Uul, melted water trickled past Ganbaatar, until it reached Lake Tonkhil. A glacier was a thick mass of ice which crawled through the mountains.

Today there are no more glaciers.

Ganbaatar was a nomad and cowherd. But most importantly, he was in the middle of puberty and would have preferred to spend his time masturbating rather than looking for his cows. When Ganbaatar masturbated, he liked to think about Arielle McConnor, who back then enchanted the world with her beautiful voice and her big brown eyes. Arielle McConnor came from the United States of America, the land of great freedom, and sang in English. Ganbaatar didn’t understand English but he liked her voice and her eyes and what she did to him when he closed his eyes and concentrated.

While sitting there, eyes closed, concentrating, his cows continued to drink the water of the Sutai Uul glacier that flowed past them on its way to Lake Tonkhil. If Ganbaatar had looked closely, he still would not have seen that his cow Arielle had laid the foundation for World War III.

Here is what ice on Earth was good for: humans stored food in ice to make it last longer. Nature stored bacteria in ice to make them last longer. Bacteria were small creatures that humans could only see with the help of a magnifying device. Nature had stored bacteria in the Sutai Uul glacier. Now these bacteria floated down, past Ganbaatar and his cows, all the way to Lake Tonkhil. Some of these bacteria were absorbed by the cow Arielle. Clever humans later named the bacterium Mycobacterium bovis subsp. mongoliense. The disease it caused was called Cattle Tuberculosis, or CAT for short. Cats couldn’t get infected with it.

When one of the bacteria entered a cow, it multiplied. If a cow had the bacterium inside it and met another cow, the bacterium entered that cow as well. Ganbaatar’s cows met many other cows. The following happened when the bacterium had multiplied sufficiently: The cow got tired and was hungry no longer. In the cow’s lungs, small nodules formed in the blood vessels, which burst after a while. The cow coughed up blood from its lungs and died. Ganbaatar’s cow Arielle died after twenty-three days. Had it been able to speak, it would have wished for death to arrive sooner.

Thanks to Ganbaatar’s cows, which he drove further south, CAT was able to reproduce and from there came to China, Kazakhstan, and India. India was a country where cows were sacred to many humans. I mean, why not? Unfortunately, a disease that killed cows was not the best thing for a country where cows were sacred. While CAT was not dangerous to humans, many clever ones thought it might be possible for the bacterium to mutate and eventually adapt to them. Some of these wise humans said the best thing to do was to kill all the cows.

Nobody killed cows in India because cows were sacred.

In the United States of America, the land of great freedom, humans liked to kill because guns were sacred. So, the humans there started shooting all the cows. The smart humans then said to humans in other countries they should pretty please do the same. In Europe, humans followed the words of the United States of America, the land of great freedom. In India and China, they refused.

Four years after Batbayar Ganbaatar sat by Sutai Uul with his eyes closed, concentrating, the last cow in the Americas died.

At the same time, back on top of Sutai Uul, the glacier continued to melt and revealed something else: a tiny spaceship.

The spaceship belonged to Dulrax Zondobar. Dulrax Zondobar himself belonged to the Pirasakut, who lived about eighteen light-years from Earth on the planet Ylon-B.

Here’s why Dulrax Zondobar’s spacecraft ended up in the glacier: Dulrax Zondobar, distinguished professor of anthropology at Ylon-B University, had to make an emergency landing during a research trip. The forced landing took place during the last great ice age, when the glacier had formed on Sutai Uul. Dulrax Zondobar had been preserved in ice for thirty thousand years. Just as nature had preserved the Mycobacterium bovis subsp. mongoliense, the cause of CAT, in ice.

When Dulrax Zondobar landed on Earth, Mycobacterium bovis subsp. mongoliense did not exist. What did exist was the Mycobacterium bovis, which caused a less dangerous variant of bovine tuberculosis, and a hole in the fuel tank of Dulrax Zondobar’s spaceship.

The Pirasakut used a biological fuel made from slug-like creatures that was harmless on their planet, Ylon-B, but could cause serious mutations in living beings on Earth. Thanks to the fuel, Mycobacterium bovis mutated into the much more dangerous Mycobacterium bovis subsp. mongoliense.

When Dulrax Zondobar awoke from the ice, he had a problem: no fuel. So, he sent a message to his fellow Pirasakut. The Pirasakut communicated with their hands and fingers.

Before humans began communicating with their lips and their tongues and other parts of their mouths, they also used their hands. Then they used their hands to develop tools and beat other humans to death.

Now they don’t communicate any longer.

Even though the Pirasakut had a similar build to humans, there was one difference. Where humans had a head, the Pirasakut had a third arm with a third hand and a third set of fingers. They used their side-fingers to telepathically send messages and their top-fingers to receive them. Sending a message far into space required larger fingers than usual, so Dulrax Zondobar had to boost his transmission power. He did this by using the largest hands that existed on Earth.

These hands belonged to humans that have been more important than others. They were as fake as the milk and as fake as the illusion that all humans were equally important.

In order to show these important humans how important they were, less important humans recreated them using stone or metal, and these recreated, important humans were placed in large squares. Humans called these fake humans statues.

Dulrax Zondobar used the statues’ hands to send a message to the other Pirasakut. With the help of a device in his spaceship, he was able to position the fingers of the statues as needed and sent the message out into space. The Pirasakut called the device Telespector. The message consisted of two hundred and eighty-three thousand different finger signs. Here’s what Dulrax Zondobar sent to the Pirasakut on Ylon-B:

HELP! DULRAX ZONDOBAR

While Dulrax Zondobar waited for help, the United States of America, the land of great freedom, threatened to use nuclear weapons to wipe out all cows in India and the rest of Asia. Some humans thought this was a slight overreaction. India still refused. Cows were still sacred there.

Meanwhile, Dulrax Zondobar’s message had arrived on his planet Ylon-B, and the Pirasakut sent a fleet to rescue the stranded professor. The Pirasakut ships were fast. On departure they said, “Zip-wop.” Mongolian authorities, who sided with India on the cow issue, discovered their ships and reported enemy aircraft to India. India mistook the spaceships of the Pirasakut for airplanes of the United States of America, the land of great freedom. Fearing invasion, India sent a nuclear bomb towards the Americas, which was intercepted en route.

The United States of America fired back.

World War III was now coming to India and with it Americans and Europeans who killed all the cows and many humans. By that time there was already no more milk in the supermarkets and the Pirasakut were on their way back to Ylon-B.

Sascha van der Meer was not only good-looking, but I had also endowed him with a polite personality. He would never have said the following word to the old lady standing next to him at the supermarket’s milk shelf: “Cunt!” Perhaps he would have been able to if he had known who the lady was. But I never gave him that information.

The lady was seventy-one years old, and her name was Anna Baumann. Her husband’s name was Julius Baumann. Julius Baumann was dead. And it was his fault that Anton van der Meer, Sascha’s father, was dead too.

Julius Baumann had been working at Tepco Ltd. when CAT started to spread. Tepco Ltd. was the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, and Julius Baumann tried to develop a vaccine against CAT. Although Julius Baumann was among the smart humans who were concerned about mutations in the Mycobacterium bovis subsp. mongoliense, he didn’t succeed with creating a useful vaccine. One of the promising vaccines was called CI-6. CI-6 was Julius Baumann’s greatest hope. With its help, many test cows had been saved from death by CAT. Unfortunately, CI-6 came with side effects.

Cows vaccinated with CI-6 developed toxins in their milk. When calves drank from it, they would go into a frenzy and soon die of cardiac arrest. One morning, Julius Baumann arrived at the Tepco Ltd. laboratory and he found the usual pile of dead cows, but also an unusual pile of dead employees. Millions of dying cows had a bad effect on the mental health of humans, so many of them decided to end their lives. This was what one of Julius Baumann’s colleagues decided as well. He was a mad man. This mad man wanted to die by drinking the milk of cows that had been vaccinated with CI-6. In his opinion, something that caused cardiac arrest in cows should certainly do the same in humans.

He was wrong.

What happened was that Julius Baumann’s colleague had been thrown into a frenzy and killed all the colleagues in the lab. Tepco Ltd. security guards eventually shot him.

At least he had reached his goal.

Julius Baumann continued his research on this milk and found that it made humans uninhibited and aggressive. Exactly the right tool for a war. And since Julius Baumann was not only in possession of intelligence but also had a wife who was very fond of money, he sold his knowledge about the milk to the military. They were pleased because from now on their soldiers could kill much more efficiently and without a bad conscience.

They called the milk War Milk. War Milk turned even the kindest of humans into ruthless killing machines.

One of the kindest humans was called Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was born about two thousand and sixty years before World War III, and two thousand years after his birth many humans gave socks to each other to celebrate his birthday. Apparently, he was the son of a God.

In this story I am the only god and my son’s name was Sascha.

All soldiers stationed in India received War Milk. Anton van der Meer, Sascha’s father, was stationed in India twenty-one years before Sascha entered the supermarket.

Before World War III began, there were too many human beings on Earth because humans spent a lot of time connecting parts of their bodies, and not so much time caring about glaciers. This is one of the reasons why there are no more glaciers today. Nine months before Sascha’s visit to the supermarket, an Indian woman had spent roughly seven minutes connected to an Indian man, and nine months regretting it.

To compensate for this new life and to counter overpopulation, I decided to kill Sascha.

In Jaipur, in the northern part of India, Manisha Bhandari was in labour. Manisha Bhandari’s father, Himal Bhandari, was among the humans who considered cows sacred. Manisha Bhandari was poor. When she was a little girl, she played with cow bones.

She had never found her father’s bones.

Before Himal Bhandari, her father, died, he was tired and no longer hungry. When he was shot, he was coughing up blood from his lungs. Had he still been able to speak, he would have wished for death to arrive sooner.

As Manisha Bhandari’s labour intensified, Sascha’s death also advanced with great strides.

Sascha was still standing in front of the shelf with the artificial milk. Here are the last words his father spoke to him: “Make sure to drink enough milk.”

Then he shot himself.

Sascha’s mother removed her husband’s blood residue from the tiles with scouring milk. Scouring milk wasn’t real milk, but a white liquid that humans used to remove stains. When humans drank scouring milk, they died.

Sascha’s mother drank scouring milk.

Anton van der Meer, Sascha’s father, didn’t drink scouring milk. He drank War Milk.

Anton van der Meer was the perfect killing machine. He worked smoothly. In five months, Anton van der Meer killed one hundred and thirty humans in Jaipur, in the northern part of India. He was an excellent automated killing machine. He killed one hundred and thirty humans with a well-aimed shot to the lungs, sometimes a second one, just to make sure. Anton van der Meer was efficient and bureaucratic. One hundred and thirty humans on a list.

Ayush Singh: a well-aimed shot to the lungs. Next please! Khira Kumar: a well-aimed shot to the lungs. Next please! Himal Bhandari: a well-aimed shot to the lungs. And so on. Anton van der Meer was a mindless killing machine as long as he was given War Milk.

When the war was over, he was no longer given War Milk but what he got instead was dreams of Indians starved to the ribs, bleeding from their mouths.

Next please!

At first the dreams haunted him at night, then also during the day. Anton van der Meer saw dead Indians everywhere.

“Make sure to drink enough milk,” he said to Sascha when he could no longer bear the many Indian nightmares, and he shot himself with a Glock 54. The Glock 54 was a semi-automatic killing machine that fully automatic killing machines like Anton van der Meer used. The semi-automatic killing machine came from Austria, the country where Sascha was now standing in the supermarket. Anton van der Meer’s gun was never found after his suicide. Sascha’s shopping trip had meanwhile led him to the cleaning supplies. On the shelf next to the scouring milk I put the second present for him, a Glock 54.

Sascha knew what he had to do. Meanwhile, Manisha Bhandari’s son was born. A little later, a bacterium entered his body, which clever humans called Bordetella pertussis. The bacterium caused Manisha Bhandari’s son to develop whooping cough. He died a few days later. Well.

Count Darius Misanthrope, heir to the Von Slaughter fortune and renowned scoundrel, points accusingly at the sanguine moon on the last panel of the last page of my painstakingly produced comic book. I draw. Then erase. Then draw. Then erase. Then draw, it seems, only so that I may erase. I bite my cheek and remove his limb with a single pen swipe. It’s his hand that’s the problem. His damned hand, with its damned fingers, refuses to look like anything more than a pack of hot dogs with scoliosis.

I really should get to bed. The witching hour does grow ever closer. I should go to bed and try again in the morning. And typically, I would. It’s just that I have the apartment all to myself, my focus unhindered, my creative juices able to flow freely, unthreatened by my partner’s affection.

Moi's back home getting her car repaired. You could say her dad's a bit of a mechanic, but Dr. Frankenstein may be more apt. A real sadist of the body shop. "Let the car die," I tell her. "Let me fucking die," begs the car. But Moi does as Moi has always done. She looks down her nose at the maroon car, rust spots pocking its hood, and whispers, "決して." I expect she'll be back in the morning. This is why tonight, tonight I will finish this drawing even if it kills me.

I thumb the volume on my phone. I’m on my second four-hour compilation of r/nosleep videos. I’ve forgone coffee, trusting the stories to live up to their name. Caffeine is great but has its limits. What my brain needs is to be threatened awake with tales of serial killers, woodland beasts, and haunted houses.

Most are fake, probably all are fake, but some seem possible, plausible even. A malformed deviant takes a child and does unspeakable things. A shapeshifting coyote scurries off the side of the road. Or the classic knock at the door with no one on the other side. Sure. Yeah. Probably fake. But plausible.

The pinky, meant to be but un petit phalange, has grown like a rampaging weed, exceeding the length and girth of the ring, middle, and pointer finger. Severed and redrawn palm up, each finger has mutated, growing multiple extra joints, more crustacean now than man. Again I try, this time drawing something that looks like a spider sneezed, its legs splayed out at its sides. My rage hampered only by my fatigue, I whimper a defeated, “Screw it.” I’ll just draw a fist and call it a night. The vibe doesn’t match the scene depicted, but the bags beneath my eyes are filling with the tablet’s glow, and soon all I’ll see is an oncoming migraine.

As I sketch, the video starts into a tale about a bladed madman. This madman, hatred in his heart and meth in his lungs, lived in the crawl space above the new tenant’s bedroom. This fresh-faced young woman told her best friend and boyfriend and neighbor and landlord, and postal worker about the sounds coming from her attic at night. They all agreed that, seeing as it was her first time in the big city and that she was a fresh-faced young woman, she was just easily spooked. Such a silly girl. “And maybe I am,” she considered. “Maybe I am a silly girl.” That was until she noticed a shortage of underwear. Then a few fewer bras. When her favorite dress went missing, she knew she wasn’t imagining things. She knew she’d have to go to the attic.

With his coy and even tone, the narrator delivers a tale that is stronger than any espresso and richer than any latte. Creepers living in an apartment, unbeknownst to the tenant, never cease to unnerve me. Something about your sense of security being ruptured. Something about the… the plausibility of it happening to anyone. How well do you really know your house? Especially for those of us who rent. How safe are you really in a house that isn’t and can never truly be your home?

The fresh-faced young woman, living on her own for the first time and with a profoundly mediocre boyfriend, musters the courage to venture to the attic. I give Count Darius Misanthrope a couple of squiggles to represent veins in his clenched fist. Fresh-faced young woman (FFYW) raises the loft door, actually a warped piece of plywood over a square in the ceiling, and pushes it aside. She hoists herself through its opening. I shade between the quartet of knuckles, hoping it’ll give the illusion that I’ve spent more than thirty seconds drawing them. Her breath heavy in her chest, FFYW aims the flashlight at the far end of the crawlspace, where she sees a tattered sheet pinned to the attic’s arch. A couple of wavy lines indicate that the Count rattles a righteous fist. As her fully realized, absolutely perfect fingers slide around the sheet, this curtain, she swallows, her mind racing far too fast to imagine what nightmare awaits her on the other side. Then, with the flashlight’s beam leading the way, she rips the sheet aside, unveiling the madman’s makeshift bedroom in all its calamitous filth. I click the floppy disk icon and a percentage pops on screen, telling me just how saved it is. But before it can be completed, before FFYW can truly take in the implication of that horrific tableau, she- I- We feel a quick succession of taps upon our back! Tap. Tap. Tap.

My butthole puckers like tightened drawstrings on a hoodie. The hair on my forearms reaches for the sky. A golf ball forms in my throat, and the image of an eight-foot-tall, craggy-faced pervert looming over my hunched body shudders madness to every corner of my mind. With the rest of my body busy pissing itself, my lizard brain, that instinctual survival mechanism, reacts with vigor. I bellow a bronchial battle cough and throw my arm over the back of my chair like tossing a log in a creek. Maybe I’ll get lucky and smack the twelve-foot brute in the nards. But I’ve never been lucky; my arm connects with no nards.

For those unaware, Bushyasta, also known as Bushyasta the long-handed, is the Zoroastrian demon of sloth. She embodies laziness, idleness, and procrastination. She takes particular joy in keeping productive men from completing their tasks. So when Moi and I rescued a chubby black cat who is lazy, adorably distracting, and slightly demonic, “Bushyasta” seemed the perfect fit. So while Bushyasta, or Bushy for short, is not terribly long-handed, when she does herself a big stretch, she is quite long-pawed.

With my arm gliding through the air, making contact with little more than confusion, I see a streak of pale blue on sleek black fur. The clatter of claws fills the room as a fat cat tries to gain traction on a wooden floor. They do, and moments later, I hear a meatball hoofing it down the hallway at top speed. Leaving me, once again, alone in the dark.

Immediately, I amend this. Every lamp, fixture, and nightlight is turned on. Even those loathsome overhead lights are made to wash the room. Next is r/nosleep, nullified with a swipe and replaced with silence. But what happened to FFYW?! Fuck FFYW! That shit’s fake, anyway. My heart slows. Sweat dries. Adrenaline simmers. I glance at the tablet. Mercy of mercies, all my hard work has been saved, one hundred percent saved. I take one final look at Count Darius Misanthrope’s lumpy outstretched fist and turn my tablet off. I’m done. Finished. But before I can finally r/gothefucktosleep, I must find Bushyasta, the feline goddess of jump scares, and throw myself before her mercy. This calls for a sacrifice, and I’m hoping a handful of kitty crunchies will suffice. I rattle the container, and just as thunder follows lightning, I feel the rumble of rolling chunk head my way. A moment later, Bushy, the Long Pawed extends an arm, no torment intended, just an insatiable hunger for snackies. And I know all is forgiven.