Durable Value

The incidences of “The Glitch” were increasing. Things, people would suddenly change, freeze for an instant or outright disappear. Sometimes they came back. Sometimes they didn’t.

Sometimes all associations with what or who was missing was lost. Of course, none of the “Residuals,” as they’d come to call themselves would have had a clue the latter was happening except that total loss wasn’t always the case – so based on those incidents where there was something – someone who remembered, an article of clothing, an actual building foundation or beloved pet’s collar with no associated memory – it was reasonable to assume a high probability that there were occasions of total loss, unknown.

The prevailing theory was, entertaining a fair bit of the obvious, that the universe as we’d come to know it was neither the determinative, perfect machine that Einstein hoped for, nor a stable but quirky quantum-verse but was more kindred to an idea taken seriously by only a few… that turned out broadly right. Whether by the catastrophic failure of a universe generating computer program or some weird, accelerated entropy on a quantum level, the cosmos -- everything we’d observed, catalogued or worked out about its mechanics was coming unhinged… even the stars.

In the sky above, day or night, an anomaly presented about the size of a quarter relative to the viewer, sometimes appearing as a kind of irregular, two-dimensional boiling fractal pattern, sometimes as nothing at all – neither black nor white… just nothing – impossible to describe without another frame of reference.

Life for Residuals was a mix of chaos and a strained reach for business as usual. Crime, of course, was elevated. There were more transportation accidents and outright catastrophes. Many institutions once taken for granted as bedrock were now crippled or broken. Somehow, collectively, the world limped ahead. Some folks were better equipped at compartmentalizing, denial or Zen of some sort than others for sure, but civilization continued. Governments, small and large, local and broader, still functioned by degrees – none of them very well. Police, (some of them real – some less so), still patrolled sparsely. Many healthcare workers still showed up for the need. There seemed to be a core of humanity at least as large as those who had given up that coped best by embracing purpose as they saw it. These were not so different as before The Glitch, maybe. Keep moving forward.

For Elam, like most, the struggle was something in between, like a reflection of the odd pattern in the sky overhead. His routines were in flux. He was recently retired before the Glitches started. Sometimes money was deposited into his bank account. Sometimes it wasn’t. Sometimes he could access his accounts. Often, he could not.

In many cases, money wasn’t entirely critical in any case anymore -- often amounting to more of a polite observance. The will to take anyone to court or in any way punish for nonpayment was markedly diminished, from bottom to top and back. If you were rich before the Glitch, whatever you owned that didn’t disappear, you still more or less had in your possession for as long as it remained. If you were poor at the onset, you were probably less so after. The bulk of the world had shifted to a sort of not-quite resource-based economy with a generous mix of chaos. It kind of worked… ish.

That doesn’t mean that there weren’t those who were in a constant state of distress and hyper vigilance over their possessions. There were more than a few. And there were elevated occurrences of theft. It was just… lazier, generally. Motivation for great capers tended to be truncated by the reality that the prize, or you might suddenly vanish. A value system based on some sense of durability had lost significant meaning. It was difficult not to see permanence as an illusion, even retrospectively before the Glitch. Necessity was still the mother of invention, but under the circumstances, her labors and doting also parented a good measure of philosophy.

Elam sat in his favorite, still functioning coffee shop and sipped a shitty cup of coffee while his thoughts touched on much of the above. He held a platinum heart-shaped locket in his left hand and rubbed it with his thumb. He had a vague memory of his mother giving it to him as a young boy. Somehow, in all the intervening years, he hadn’t lost it. Not quite as strange as the unraveling of the universe, but remarkable. It didn’t open, which was probably also remarkable. It was, according to his mother’s insistence a locket nevertheless, and not a pendant. ‘Nothing in this world will open it,’ his mother had told him, smiling. She also told him to keep it close, always – that it was important. He’d promised her that he would. It wasn’t an easy promise to keep, it turned out.

Someone placed a hand on his back and a small plate with a toasted and buttered bagel on the table before him. “On the house,” she said.

“Thank-you, Mary Beth,” Elam replied, looking up at a young familiar face. She was maybe thirty, and pretty – hardly more than a girl from Elam’s perspective. Eye contact was much more common these days, though there wasn’t much that was “common” about it in any pre-Glitch sense. There was profound recognition in such contact; of something that was precious, fleeting, mercurial and completely shared. It was also a more reliable source of meaning than virtually everything else.

Mary Beth had shoulder-length; wavy chestnut hair that was in this instance tied up in back. A loose spiraling lock accented her face prettily. Her eyes were large and brown. Her expression conveyed serenity, resolution and that post Glitch thing… a bond. She smiled.

Elam smiled back.

Mary Beth flickered.

Elam’s eyes widened just a touch and his expression, for an instant, revealed something that everyone recognized these days. It was part of what was shared.

“Did I just…?” She asked, her eyes mirroring Elam’s.

Elam paused for just a moment and then nodded almost imperceptibly.

She looked briefly alarmed and then sat down with him. She regarded her hands in her lap, momentarily, then again looked at Elam with those large eyes. Her expression serene again, she said, “I’ve always been very fond of y--

Elam stared at the empty space where she’d been sitting for a time, eyes welling. When she didn’t return, he blurrily regarded his locket.

By Paul J Kercher