The Zax

I don’t know how long it’d been since they’d stopped chasing me. Not that it mattered, running is all I know anymore. I can’t stop now. They’ve broken me. They changed me. My mind is- wrong somehow. I have trouble focusing on any particular idea. The one thing I remember clearly is a picture book Mom used to read me, The Zax by Dr. Seuss.

There were two creatures, the North-Going Zax and the South-Going Zax. They bumped into each other in some field and because the North-Going Zax only went north and the South-Going Zax would only move south they end up stuck there. Both refused to move around the other. So they stayed there forever.

I could never get enough of that story. I had Mom read it to me again and again. Back then I couldn’t tell you what I liked about it, but now- I’ve been traveling west so long I must be the West-Going Zax.

Mom told me The Zax was about stubbornness. She told me I shouldn’t be like the Zax. I don’t think she understood it. A Zax doesn’t have a choice. West, north or south the direction calls to them and it is their nature to move that way. Maybe at first when forced to stop these Zax were rude to each other but with time, with time maybe they became friends.

I’m moving west through a desert. My legs pound the sand in a never-ending beat. How long I’ve been doing this I couldn’t say. While they were chasing me days and nights passed, but I didn’t count them. Something in me insists that time is important and I should pay attention to its passing but I can’t remember why.

The skin on my feet has begun to flake off. It doesn’t hurt or at least I can’t feel it hurting. I suppose that is the same thing. It’s odd. Since they turned me into a Zax I haven’t been able to feel anything. Not the sand or the desert air. I can’t even feel my insides. There’s no more sleeping or eating, drinking or breathing. There’s only the west.

I know that there are other things I should be feeling too. Hatred, loneliness or loss. My emotions are as removed from me as my feet. This loss of feeling is worse though because there is no west inside of me, nowhere to direct myself. I don’t know. I don’t know so much anymore; I haven’t known anything for so long. I used to know things; I used to have ideas I held tight and felt snug in the safety of their truth. But that was before we came here.

I knew things on the flight too. But was that me? The memories are there. If I dug I could even pick out details. The sour smell of perfume the woman in the seat beside me wore. The terror of that moment when the plane charged down the runway before it took off. But are those memories me? Or are they things they injected into me with the rest of their chemicals?

After all they took from me, am I still that boy? And if not, where is he? Maybe he is heading east.

I have to stop walking now; there’s a tree in the way. She’s gorgeous, all black and shattered, not a bit of green on her. A tree in the desert; if I could cry I would. I used to cry a lot, when we left home, when we flew over here. It felt good to cry. It felt better after.

But look at this tree, it is so beautiful. I don’t even mind not going west. I could push her down, or climb over her. That isn’t right though. I don’t want to hurt her. Maybe she is the East-Going Zax. She can’t move but that doesn’t- well why can’t she move? The trees back home couldn’t move, they just leaned and bent in the wind, but why does that mean she can’t move? I can’t move either because of this tree. I’m just like her.

I’ve been walking since I became the West-Going Zax, walking or running. Now I’m just here and it feels strange. When I was walking I couldn’t look about; I had to keep my eyes forward so I didn’t trip. Now I can look up at the sky or even turn my head back to the east. I never look back long; the sky is more exciting. At night I watch the stars. The planet pivots, shifting the stars about. I don’t think I ever saw that before.

Sometimes I can feel us moving as I watch the stars. I feel the whole planet move; only the tree and I are standing still. The feeling isn’t real. It’s an error. Another error among the string of errors in my head. I like the feeling though so I pretend it’s true.

The desert is calmer at night. In the day the world feels chaotic. Nothing moves but the air, all heavy with heat. I can’t feel the heat, not even in my lungs, if I still have those, but I can see it rising out of the sand.

In the evening and night, things wake up. Bugs burrow out of almost invisible holes in the sand; snakes slide out from under rocks. Even now I can see a black scorpion crawling out of a crack between the earth and the base of the tree. He scuttles about and then climbs up the back of my leg so I can’t see him.

The three of us watch the stars together, the tree, the scorpion, and I. I feel better because of it. None of us talk; maybe none of us can, least of all me. I think we understand each other and that is more important than talking. The scorpion can’t be a Zax though, I saw him take a step north and east, but I don’t think he is just a normal scorpion either. He couldn’t be a wasket, or a nureau but the world has changed. Nothing is normal anymore. Everything means something. So what is the scorpion?

He moves funny. He reminds me of a toy I used to have. I’d wind it up and it would shake and scuttle across the tile floor. It made me laugh every time. One day I got ambitious. I wanted to send it scuttling all the way across the kitchen. I wound and wound it up till I could hear it creak and rattle inside, then I let it go. The toy never moved again. I’m glad the scorpion doesn’t need to be wound.

The wind picks up. It lifts up sand and dust and flings it at me. In the heavier gusts my skin, already cracked, leathery and a little melted from the sun, is torn off my body in stew meat-sized chunks. For the first time, I feel something real, a drain on my strength. The power in my legs that keeps me standing drips away as if it’s leaking out of me.

I feel breathless; if I still remember what it felt like to breathe. A beeping sound starts in my ears, and I can see a red flashing light out of the corner of my eye. It’s an effort to move even my arms. Something in me, but not me, takes control.

I open my left wrist. Inside I can see my plastic veins, thick oily blood pumping through them with a steady slurp, like a raspberry smoothie. I hold my wrist up to the sky, the backup photovoltaic system engages. Disengage all secondary operations. Energy usage decreased to twenty-three percent of maximum capacity. All unnecessary functions shut down.

I’m heading west again. The tree wasn’t a Zax. Rewinding my vision, all captured while I ate the sunlight, I can see the wind rip the tree right out of the ground and send it into a dune north of me. The tree wasn’t a Zax but I didn’t move for a day in memory of it. It may not have been a Zax but it was my friend.

The scorpion tried to follow me when I left. I ran away from it. I’ll meet an East-Going Zax soon, but the tree needs the scorpion’s company. I think I like to run. It makes me feel something. What I’m feeling I don’t know but it is something important. Whatever it is it’s probably another error but I still like it.

One of my first memories of being a Zax was of them trying to get me to run. There was a circular track they put me on and then timed me. They were upset with me when I didn’t turn and ran straight into a fence repeatedly. They put me on the dolly after that and hauled me back into the lab.

I’d turned before that though. Didn’t I? I can’t remember now. I think I used to zigzag about, running any direction. I must have. That’s how I ran the first time they chased me. Before I was a Zax. They were in a van I think or maybe a truck. It was red whatever it was. Mom and I were running. I was faster than Mom; was she leaking? I turned west onto a different street, toward the police station like Mom said. Behind me, I heard a pop pop pop. I turned to see Mom fall, just like the tree and I stopped running.

I stop running. The ocean is in front of me. It makes a noise a lot like Mom’s broom. No one ever told me the ocean did that. It seems odd to hear that sound and not see the cold tile floor or the warped wooden staircase. I think the tree and the scorpion would have liked the ocean. It’s a lot like the desert. The sand here is a little different but it’s still sand, just chunkier and with more rocks.

I take my first steps into the ocean. I can’t swim, but I don’t think that matters. I walk myself down. Waist-deep. Neck-deep. Completely submerged. I sink down to the ocean floor. Up close the ocean looks like a desert, with dunes and sand. But up ahead I can see mountains and great chasms as well as plains and valleys.

What remains of my foam skin strips off me. It floats up to the surface, my new west-going tracks. I’m now wholly Zax, no mask of flesh, just a metal frame, tubes, and a machine in a plastic sphere at my chest.

It’s a different world down here. Blue and green, water, stone, and sand. For a Zax these words have more depth and color to them. I only stop once, when a big fish stands in front of me. We face each other for a moment, foot to foot, face to face. Then he swims south.

I don’t know why I say this, or why it’s important. Even after so long I still don’t know. When you don’t know, it’s good to be a Zax. You see us Zax we live by a rule that we learn as a boy. Never budge, that’s the rule, never budge in the least.