Hope

The colour, among the monochrome, distracted him from the work. He typed their words, black on white, summarising the statement read by the Chairman’s spokeswomen at the recent parade, held indoors at an undisclosed location. The colour could be seen outside, through the window, to the right.

           He dragged the cursor over the text he had typed and changed the font to Wingdings 3:

Work harder than you've ever worked before, give up yourself to the cause which you were born to serve, bleed your hands until the day is done, and then your Chairman will thank you all through the night.

           That’d show them, he thought. He hit undo and reverted to best practice: ariel, size 12, double spaced. He found himself more and more tempted by such thoughts. It was as though the colour had found its way under his skin and into his arteries, like a parasite with intentions that were not yet clear.

           He needed to post this latest statement by the end of the day and it would be the perfect excuse to take care of other unfinished business. In fact, it was the only excuse, as he would not be permitted street time without it.

           He had promised someone a copy of Moby Dick and he also needed one last reconnaissance mission before setting out for the colourful building. His map was based on years of information gathering, snippets of conversation and rumour, his occasional journey to various ministry buildings around the city, and also by examining the view from his quarters, carefully studied in the reflection in the darkened corner of his monitor. The colourful building didn’t appear far, fifteen minutes on foot perhaps, but distance can be as relative as time. The astronaut’s reaching fingers, millimetres from the saviour of a tethered rope, will testify to that.

           On the second page of Moby Dick, he had underlined the words:

“tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks”

He was giddy with excitement, imagining the chaos he could create with his antics. Having passed three sentinel patrols and after several turns away from his quarters, he quickly slipped the book through the opening in a building and darted down the street as fast as he could, the creep of the ashen city following each step.

           Carving right at the next junction, he faced the posting office. Oh why had he underlined those words? What had he hoped to achieve? And was that a dog barking back there? The society of missing data had recently integrated dog’s noses into their system. All over town, canine snouts were being monitored in real time. The antennae of bees were supporting a tactical manoeuvre against a librarian suspected of being a black-market milk merchant. The pressure on those cows udders was being scrutinised for any excess use of force that might represent a rising resentment for forced agricultural work. And so on. What a damn fool, he thought. He wanted to run home and scream those words into the mirror, though he might be too ashamed to see his reflection.

Outside the Posting Office, he opened the latch on his designated mailbox and let the airflow pull his latest work from his fingertips. The paper disappeared into the enormous building behind the high iron fence. This building represented the entire purpose of the man’s being. The purpose he coped with by dividing each day into 5-minute milestones. There was no triumph or goal to note after each period, time was the only marker. And time, despite its intangible qualities, was the only real thing that existed to the man. Not the mouse that effortlessly kept his hand shackled to the surface of the desk; nor the monitor that fully engaged his field of vision; only the continuous agony of the moment.

           Twenty-three milestones were achieved on the day the man decided that he would achieve no more. On each day of the previous fourteen years, he had achieved ninety-six such milestones. In sickness and in health, for better and for worse, he had hit his milestones. But not on this day, and not tomorrow and not the next or ever again. He turned back along the street, away from the shadow of the Posting Office, and rather than heading left towards home, he kept on going.

His map was neatly folded into the back pocket of his trousers, but he had memorised and already walked its path many times in his mind. A five-minute milestone passed, the most thrilling he had experienced in many years. The fear caused his muscles to clench around his jaw and forehead. He couldn’t be sure if he was even walking normally, such was the wave of terror that oscillated up and down the length of his legs.

           With his head fixed upright and ahead, his eyes scanned the grey of the road, blending in to the grey of the buildings and becoming the grey of the sky. The clock tower was to the right behind a row of buildings that appeared so tightly packed that to remove one might cause the rest to burst into rubble. All was according to the map, but these additional details he could never have foreseen.

           One other thing that was not on his map, that he couldn’t see in the clandestine reflection of his darkened computer monitor, was the man that now stood in front of him. He’s just a man, an ordinary man, just as I am a man, an ordinary man, he thought. But this man was blocking his path.

           ‘Back arrow, black triangle, big arrow, diagonal arrow,’ he said.

           Was he talking in Wingdings? How could that be possible?

‘Do you know,’ said the man, pointing to a small boxy structure, ‘this is the building where Mozart and Beethoven composed their best work?’

           ‘Really?’

           ‘Oh yes, the architecture creates an environment not found anywhere else on Earth and only with such mathematical genius, translated into lengths and angles, could musical wonder be created. No one knows who that mathematician was and no one knows who built this building. Many claim that it is not even here all the time, that it comes and goes as it wishes, or as some special being needs.’

           ‘That does make sense. I’ve looked out the same window for fifteen years and I only noticed a colourful building in the last weeks – and then it seemed that I couldn’t stop looking at it. And now I’m here.’

           ‘There’s no colourful building, Sir, on that you are quite mistaken.’

           ‘I see. And who are you?’ asked our man.

           ‘I’m the man that took all the kidneys, so they say.’

           ‘You’re that man? Really?’

           He found himself staring at the man’s flanks as if that could solve the mystery of where all the kidneys were.

           ‘I am that man.’

           ‘But did you do it?’

           ‘Of course. I put the advert up because I needed a kidney. I really did, the Doc had said I’d be down the chute if I didn’t get one in three months. Down the chute. Those were his words, as if it was some great ride to hell I was queuing for. So I put up the ad: kidney needed. I was thrilled when a match came in and the Doc said it was looking real good. Those were his words. Then another match landed, and other and other. So I thought to myself, what if the first one is no good and I need another. Now’s my chance to land a set of spare parts that’ll keep the urine factory working overtime for decades to come. So yeah, I did it. I took all their kidneys. Does that answer your question?’

           ‘Who could ever ask for more than that explanation.’

           ‘Hey, see over that other wall there. That’s the garden of Eden, where Eve flirted and toyed with the apple, raising her outstretched tongue to its red hued skin, seduced forever more.’

           ‘What do you mean? It’s a park or what?’

           ‘No, it’s the real garden of Eden, don’t touch those apples, man.’

           ‘I do like apples though and I don’t believe in religion so I doubt it will do me much harm.’

           ‘Adam and Eve, those cats didn’t have parents like you and me, they just sprung up over the other side of that wall. Then that was that. Boom pop bang, we’re all shot into life. You’ve got parents and I’ve got parents, though I don’t spend time with people who have seen me browning my pants on a near daily basis. It doesn’t matter if I was a baby, it was me nonetheless, was it not?’

           ‘I suppose so.’

           ‘How am I to sit at a sophisticated dining table eating fine food with people who could at any moment announce that I once had an ass rash so bad I cried for a whole day and night? I’m not, that’s how.’

           ‘So what about this colourful building,’ asked our man.

           ‘There’s no colourful building. Just this one, granite rock like the rest. If you’re expecting a colourful building, you’re in the wrong town. If there was one, it was chemically altered a long time ago.’

           ‘Are you sure? I’ve looked out my window at a colourful building. It’s orange and pink and yellow and blue, all lit up at night like a birthday cake.’

           ‘You’re in the wrong town alright, oh yeah, the wrong town. For sure. I’m going to call you Mr. Wrong Town from now on, given how wrong you are about this town. Birthday cake, that’s a good one. You’ve been served up a big grey bowl of porridge if anything.’

           ‘Well thanks for the help,’ said our man, ‘I’ll be on my way.’

           His map was no longer of use. He had reached the end of the path along which it had guided him and had found nothing. That crazy street guy had been right, there was no colourful building. It would have been possible to follow the trail back the way he had come, back to his quarters, where life was awful but possible, but he couldn’t do that. He crumpled the map into the back pocket of his trousers, down the side of a rock he had placed there in case he had to brain a dog before its nose gave him away.

           ‘Which way will it be then?’ said the man, suddenly appearing behind him once more.

           ‘Suppose it doesn’t matter much,’ he replied.

           ‘Not one bit.’