Names for the Apocalypse

Cicero Vega has joined the meeting.

We wonder who that is, wait and see.

We watch the little black square that is the stranger’s screen come to life, flicker under the weight of a mundane virtual background of a green painted wall white bookcase hung wool cardigan as it buffers around the unknown person, tries to reconcile with what her camera really sees.

Ah, we do know her.

Good morning! we cheer. Her lips move. Her audio is muted. We smile, embarrassed for her, and wait for her to realize her mistake.

–ey, hey, she cuts in, voice jumping from her speakers to the computer to our headphones to us. Hey, sorry about that. Sorry I’m running late.

No worries, we assure her. None. So we were just discussing our first impressions of the Viriginia Woolf. Just getting into the novel. Any thoughts from you, Sasha?

Her name is not really Cicero Vega, of course. We wonder why the little tag below her face reads that, who changed it and when. Sasha, because that is what we know her as, shakes her head slow.

Cicero please, she says. Call me Cicero.

Can we ask why? A bit of an odd request.

Because everybody needs an apocalypse name, she says without missing a beat. Everybody wants to be known as something specific before the world ends.

We chuckle, the sound rotating around the chorus of screens like a circus ride.

And the world’s ending soon, we can suppose.

It’s almost over, yes.

Ah.

So please call me Cicero.

Okay, Cic. We can do that. Right, all? Ci-cer-o. We don’t mock it, her. We like her quite a bit, why not humor her? A simple request. We are all tired of this way of life, bouncing around little boxes on computer screens pretending we still know what a full person looks like up close. Maybe this is a needed change. A flicker that will keep us entertained, at least for a while, like the nimbus of that virtual background hovering around the contours of Sasha Cicero’s head. When she moves, the static image tries to follow her, tries to fill in the air she displaces, and with each nod of her head we try to register what falls behind the picture, see really where she is. Each time we are thwarted, made to think we’ve seen something telling, the edge of a burning building a cliff face a holding cell, when in fact we’ve seen nothing at all.

So, thoughts then?

Woolf sets up the story well, Cicero says.

Say more?

She starts us off in reality and just drops in those little bits of the fantastic, so when the really crazy shit goes down we’re not really that surprised.

You weren’t surprised that the main protagonist physically changed from a man into a woman between scenes?

Well, I mean of course I was, but like it wasn’t as unbelievable, you know? Because we already had weird stuff going on like the Thames freezing over and the people riding ice floes in London…

But the Frost Fairs that the real freezing of the river facilitated really were a part of English culture for much of their early history. That’s an important point to remember.

Right, but Woolf’s showing us that real part through the magic part, like it didn’t really happen like that, did it?

Well we don’t know, we weren’t there, we joke. Cicero doesn’t laugh.

But like so when the big turn comes we don’t suspect it just like we don’t expect a serial murderer to break into our house, but when it does happen we’re not wholly surprised. Like at this point of course it’s possible for Orlando to change identities like that just like it’s possible for some dinner party to ride their table down the Thames in the middle of winter just like it’s possible for someone to break into your house and try to kill you.

Possibility of impossibility.

I guess, yeah.

⃞

We wonder what it is like on that side of the screen. Inside all those little boxes exactly the same size, lined up nicely like dominoes, stacked and folded like cards. All those shoulders and heads sitting at desks on couches on floors in bedrooms in living rooms in hallways bobbing slightly as they breathe, stuttering as their internet stalls, remaining so still as not to call attention to themselves that we wonder if their image has frozen, wonder if they’re still with us or have been lost in the aether, saying something maybe, adding to a part of the conversation that ended three minutes ago a response that we will probably never hear. We wonder too what it is like to sit in those other places, to feel a different aspect of a world float by, to look out different windows from different kinds of screens and stare at a different yet similar array of faces behind desks on couches on floors in bedrooms in living rooms in hallways. We wonder what it is we are seeing, which carefully or carelessly selected square of life we’re being made privy to. Which partially made bed which closed closet door which impeccably stacked shelf of coffee table books. Who’s cat’s tentative ears peeking at the screen. Who’s mother father aunt uncle partner landlord beginning to speak WHE– in the lapse before the audio can be cut and the head turns, grimaces, shouts some inaudible curse at the invisible party. We wonder if all of these windows have always existed, if the little squares have always been as they are, or if they’ve been devised assembled fabricated in the early hours of the day, in the midst of all that’s happened, in preparation for these short hours in which we see the places they do or would like us to believe they reside. We wonder if maybe these safe squares of existence have always been hiding inside the bigger air of bedrooms living rooms hallways just in case they were ever needed. Spurred on by the possibility of the impossible.

⃞

So what do you think about what Woolf’s doing with the time here? What about it works, or what is confusing?

It’s all wonky, Cicero tells us. It’s all wrapped around itself so you can’t tell where it starts and where it ends.

Does it end?

It has to.

And where does it then?

In the present, which, really, is the only place anything can end.

How so?

I mean she writes up until the last possible moment, literally says, what? Here: And the twelfth stroke of midnight sounded; the twelfth stroke of midnight, Thursday, the eleventh of October, Nineteen Hundred and Twenty-eight. Like, that’s it. As far as she could go. Literally the pub date. And even so, by the time the first copy was bound and sold, it was already obsolete. Was already dead.

Isn’t that a bit of a harsh judgement?

Not at all. It’s just true. It doesn’t diminish the work to say it, maybe it makes it better. Because it shows that she was going to do this thing even if she knew it was futile. Even if she recognized the impossibility of her capturing what time really stands as.

There’s your impossibility again.

Right.

So she fails, ultimately. Woolf fails at her intention to capture time?

Oh no, never. It’s not a failure if no one whoever can accomplish it. If anything it’s a success because she tries at all. And so she’s able to get more a sense of what time is like, rather than what it is. Because it’s different for everyone, every day. She’s poking fun at people like us who try to say it’s only one way, one thing.

What of the photographs Woolf uses then? What do you make of those?

Well they’re just another aspect of this. I mean, some of them are flat-out impossible, but we probably don’t question them right away because they’re normal for us. Like, the book is set to be a biography, right? And there are pictures in biographies, so that’s what we expect, only some of the ones she uses just can’t have been taken, either because no one could have taken them or they didn’t even have photography yet when it was supposed to have been captured, right? Like–look at this one… Cicero hijacks the screen from our control, pulls up one of the deceitful images in question. The face of Woolf’s child princess trips over Cicero’s video feed before settling smoothly in its place.

Or, Cicero keeps going, like, the ones that are portraits: how are we supposed to know if they’re real or not? Who they were originally? It’s like the pictures are both physically representative of Orlando the character by virtue of Woolf’s telling us that’s the case, but also figuratively representative too, in that they’ll always be other people, the original sitters, her friend Vita and the rest. The identities are the same in the context of the book, but different when you try to separate them out again.

A little like this whole set up, don’t you think. We laugh. Cicero does not. She disengages her screen from ours. The false princess cedes the image to that of her summoner. Cicero nods, slow.

⃞

We remember a time when we thought this wouldn’t last forever. When we could go outside and speak to our neighbors and sit at narrow tables in classrooms and hold handrails on the train and breathe the same air as anyone else, anything else. We remember, though the memory is muted and fading, the feel of another person’s skin. Of a stranger’s hand on our shoulder as they pass us the bus ticket we’ve dropped. Of unwitting brushings of fingers as credit cards and pens and essay assignments are passed nakedly between persons. We miss, even, the hot numbness of knuckles across our jaw, the vice-grip of our child’s fear in the dark. We remember that these things were innocent until they were not. Until a high-five a handshake a caress could kill our best friend our business partner our fiance. We remember thinking those things were silly when they first told us. When they warned us. When they imposed their mandates. When they shut us down, locked us away behind our own walls. We remember thinking this was not a problem for us until we, too, got sick. Until our neighbor we’d given that bottle of wine to a few days prior dropped dead without a word. Until everyone was afraid and no one was safe and the very air we breathed turned to poison around us, bred by others like us, bred by us. Until the little squares in the air of our bedrooms living rooms hallways found their meaning, fulfilled their purposes, finally. Waiting, as we can only do now. Wait, because even though it seems impossible that this could go on forever, it feels even less likely it will ever end.

⃞

Cicero yawns widely, tries to stifle some of it behind a hand but too late.

Should we take a break? Let’s take a break, we’ll come back in ten minutes.

One by one the little squares darken, blocking the screen into a strange unintelligible code. Cicero waits a moment, offers a small smile to the all but emptiness. Disengages her own feed.

And we wait.

⃞

When we consider how long it took to get here, we realize there really was no time to think about it. There was just movement, like cattle sheep starlings, toward our separation, toward our safety. Alone Together™️. At first possibly impossible. Soon, impossibly possible as we locked ourselves in. Shut ourselves off. Signed on and peered through those windows, through projected versions of ourselves to pretend all was fine, all was sane. The whole world went quiet overnight, over hours, not days, not months as we thought it would have to. There was nothing slow, excepting our awareness. Nothing to cue us. As surprising as anything. A burglar come for our livelihoods. A killer in the night. A reaper of something we were and are unwilling to give. Impossible. And yet.

⃞

Okay now?

Are we here?

…

Are we ready to go again?

…

Anyone?

…

The black squares blink blind nothing back.

They are empty, no more pieces of lives left behind them.

No more windows.

There’s nothing to hear, nothing to see.

And then: a flicker.

⃞

Told you, Cicero says. Her little square sits in brilliant contrast to the others, to the dead air.

Where is everyone? we want to know. We need to know. Why don’t they answer?

They don’t know how. Cicero adjusts her screen, stumbles out of view an instant, reveals an unsanctioned quarter of her existence. A closet door ajar, the tail of a scarf a jacket a sweater sneaking outside the frame. A zipped backpack filled out around its seams leaning against the wall. A toppled stack of loose papers, a bundle of pens pencils highlighters weighting them down. An open window, shade drawn aside, bunched impatiently about the sill. Light.

I told you, it’s the end of the world.

But what does that mean?

Cicero shrugs. Who knows? Just a thing that is, all told. What is it you’d like to be known as, then?

What?

What name? Hurry. There probably isn’t much time that we can consider.

But won’t it not matter then? In a few minutes time, in a few hours, if you’re right–

I am.

–then who cares what I say now? Who cares who I am? Who I want to be?

You cared before, didn’t you? Before all this? Before all the doors got shut? When you walked in the air? Said hello to people’s breathing faces?

Of course.

No reason to stop, then. There’s not any more or any less point in caring at the end of everything as at the beginning. Cicero stands up now, steps across her square, gets smaller, bigger until she’s not just a head and shoulders but arms and legs and hands and feet. She laughs. Picks up the backpack by the closet. It looks heavy, but she doesn’t stumble. The virtual background she’d been using we realize has been disabled, though her space as we see it now is exactly the same. Now, however, there is no nimbus around her, there is no feedback from the image’s reconciliation. It’s just what it’s always been. As it’s always been there.

Make sure you come up with a name soon, she says, opening the outer door behind her, taking a step into its opening.

Wait! Don’t go!

Don’t worry. She’s walking away now, further and further. Soon we’ll not be able to see her at all, not be able to hear her. Don’t worry, she says again, though we have to strain to hear even now. We long to follow her, to step through the little frame on our screen and breathe her air. When I see you for real I hope you’ll have a name you’re proud of. One we can all call you. One we can know you as. Hopefully it won’t sound as impossible to you then. Hopefully you’ll see that it’s yours, has been all along. So hurry up and get out here. Don’t keep us waiting.

And she blurs into the end of whatever room she’s walking down, perhaps she turns a corner.

Perhaps she waves.

⃞

We wait.

⃞

Cicero does not come back.

The black squares do not reanimate.

We are alone.

We turn from our screen.

What are we doing here?

How long has it been?

We have no way of knowing what the outside holds. What the air carries. We wonder if winter has fallen. If the river has frozen. If there is lantern light on snow somewhere. We wonder that that is impossible. We wonder where Cicero is. Where Cicero waits. If she waits. In the outside.

We wonder how long we can wait, like this. Indefinitely? Maybe. But what had Cicero said? What did we need? A name, yes a name. To be known as. To be. But what would that be? Well…

I know.

And I stand up.

⃞

Somewhere, the twelfth stroke of midnight sounds.