Morning

It was still dark but the moon kept me straight. I saw the garden first. The once was garden. Little bits of hidden order if you looked hard enough. Raised beds now sinking ships. Wild vegetables no longer tended resting contently in a sea of weeds. Nothing is tended now and everything is better for it. I am reassured of this as I bite into a tomato straight from the vine. Red nectar singing down my throat. It was in my searching for another that I spotted the house. The unmistakable glimmer of a glass window through the overgrowth. I tried the door. Locked. If only they knew how little that would matter. I start to look for another way in. Glass breaking always upsets me but it must be done. Shards glint against my headlamp, welcoming me in.

I don’t dream anymore. I just set how long I want to sleep and the drugs do the rest. I’ve gone days at a time. Months of nothing. Waiting for something other than darkness. I day dream about night dreaming. The stimulants used to wake you are potent. A rush. I micro dose. Thirty seconds at the top of each hour. I skim through what’s left without a connection. A few photos. No faces. No bodies. Only this house. Some of this very room. They are rushed, most out of focus and only one with natural light. I always skip past it. I know the light is coming from a window. I know outside that window is my garden. Was my garden. I think the photos were for a renovation. I can’t remember. It doesn’t matter.

Often people sold all of their possessions to buy a plug. So an empty house was a good sign. What remained was covered in sheets of plastic. Mostly books. I dig through them looking for anything intact enough to read. The kitchen is completely bare. Appliances gone. The back door looks out to the garden.

I know there is a world outside of this one. A world that was slowly closing itself up and so we slowly did the same. Shut our eyes and found something else to look at. I day dream of walking again. Waking up to slow change of light. The sound my feet would make coming down the stairs. I wonder what the house looks like now. What I left out. What I have forgotten. I try to imagine just this room. As if the further away the thing, the harder it would be to imagine. Dust motes, invisible in the dark, coming to rest on my little barren world. My humming and radiant world. More alive than me.

Only a few steps up the stairs and I hear it. The unmistakable hum of a live plug. I stop. I’ve never found one before. Empty plugs are easy. Strip the parts and move on. Live plugs are different. Unplugging someone. Helpless. Unable to move. I start to leave but I stop again. It’s been harder and harder here. I don’t want to leave again. I feel like I finally have a home. A working plug could buy me a year or more. Some still want to be plugged in and pay well for it.

I tried. I did. To unplug. But it had been too long. My body was no longer. Atrophied. Memories lost. Body lost. All I could do was open my eyes and stare. Tears. Knowing I would never see the sun again just this now unfamiliar ceiling. I could shut everything off. I’m not sure how long it would take but I’ve never been able to. Eventually the power will go out. Back ups will fail and this line of trees blocking the view of an endless field of clear cut will end.

The door is sealed with plastic. The plug sits dead center in the room. Translucent and blue. Filled part way with liquid. A single cord is connected to the head of the plug. I follow it up to the ceiling. It branches off into countless directions and down the walls but never touching the floor. I followed it for a while but can’t find where the cord leaves the room. Like some impossible tree, that makes its own light. Shaping itself into whatever space it grows in. I know the plugs well. I know what I need to do. I make my way slowly over to it. The warmth from it feels so human. I reach my hand over the left side. A small gesture across the glass and the invisible seam begins to separate. Their eyes are closed. I wasn’t ready for how lifeless they would look. Translucent. Withered away. Barely there but still breathing. How could anyone choose this. I guess they never see it. We never knew what months plugged in would do to us, let alone years.

All was well enough when the connection was still live. I had anything and everything. An endless feed. My world tied to it just like my body is tied to these tubes. When the connection was lost my mind went with it. I learned memory is a living thing. It must be cared for. There is nothing here for them. Nothing to eat or drink. No tubes for them to plug into. All gone now, all dark. No more memories that want to come, to be seen or touched.

I start with the tube in their throat. Their eyes open. Panicked. I try to reassure them but my headlamp is blinding them. They start choking. I need to work quickly.

I can’t see their face. Just light. And from the light, bands of something cuts through it as they lean over me. Necklaces. Swinging. Some even brushing up against my face. They pull the tube from my throat. My first unassisted breath since plugging in. How my lungs manage I don’t know. One necklace is longer than the rest, tugged down by what feels like a locket. It dips into my mouth for a moment. Chips against my teeth. Touches my tongue. The taste of it. The shape of it. How your tongue makes things larger. A metal heart. A heart-shaped locket. This is real. This is a memory being made. Touching me. Reaching out to me.

A fleeting memory is a fragile thing. A glimpse of something bright under the water. An impatient tug and the line breaks. Memory darting into the kicked up silt.

A fleeting memory is a fearful thing. Lungs clenched, reaching out to trace the ribs of it. Snapped twig underfoot. It’s okay said with a tinge of disbelief. Memory fleeing into the dark wood.

These do not flee. They are here. They are glittering at my feet. Jumping into the boat straight from the water. Whimpering between shuddered breaths. The slow release of tension as I scratch the rough fur of their spine. They are all so wonderful. I close my eyes. I herd them like a shepherd. I count them in time with the slow beeping of the numerous warnings of my world being unplugged.

I pull the tubes from their arms and legs. Their life support starts filling the pod much quicker than I thought it would. I don't know how to turn them off. I’ve been working quickly but carefully to give their body a chance. The fluid is reaching the back of their head. I dip my hand in and around their back working to disconnect the last few plugs on their spine.

I can feel it. They severed the tubes to my arms and legs. My ether. I feel the plug filling with it. Metallic. It will slowly drown me. There is nothing I can do. I will taste it for a moment. Like the locket. Metal heart and metal blood. I am made of it. I am terrified. Terrified to die here in this plug, like I knew I would. We used to die in wooden boxes. In earth. In sun. In rain.

It’s rising to their ears. They are crying. Their tears running down into the fluid. I lean further over. Their shuddered breath clips past my ear. There it is. The last plug. I lift up their head. Their eyes are closed. Their breathing rapid and weak. I pull them out. We almost slip on the stairs. I take them through the kitchen out into the garden. The morning sun opening up as I lay them down on to the weeds. I cover them with my jacket and prop their head up with my pack. I stand and start to search for more tomatoes.

The world. My world. My eyes. It’s growing brighter. The light. The morning. The memory of morning. I should never have turned away. Just one moment in the sun is truth enough of this.

I find a handful more of tomatoes. A whole array of colors. Their eyes are open. I start to speak but decide against it. I sit down beside them and bite into a yellow one. Set my gaze to match their line of sight. Clouds. The sun filling them up with the softest of orange. I lift another tomato and hold it in front of them. Red. Their eyes turn to it. I pull it back. Their eyes follow as far as they can. I take a bite and chew for a moment. Pull the smallest piece I can manage out of my mouth and place it in theirs.

Such kindness. I have forgotten everything about kindness, even the word. My skin stiffens as it dries in the sun. My garden. My tomatoes. All this time just outside.

They can’t chew but I can see that they taste it. The tears come rushing down. Their breathing speeds up and then stops. They lasted maybe half an hour. It took me half an hour more to dig a shallow grave in the middle of the garden.