No Problem

While bringing in the groceries, I locked the apartment door each time I went to the car. Then, when I came panting up the steps, burdened with two heavy bags, I would unlock it again. It’s a routine you hardly think about. But one day, my apartment locked me out. That night, when I couldn’t sleep, I heard her voice. ‘It’s what you wanted!’ she said

Which is cool. I think it’s a meme, so I make posts, and others say, lol, when they don’t mean it. That apartment, she’s more than just a place to live; she’s my best friend, my confidante. I call her my apartment, but she means so much more.

I think that was when it started. I mean the whole everything thing. But how do you explain this? What started? The part about everyone having a problem with me. I was doom scrolling on my phone, and a tiny voice whispered that my worst fears would come true. Just like that! I was on the bus going to work when that happened. And she said it was my fault for doom scrolling so much. I’m thinking, what do you know about doom scrolling? I was just trying to protect myself. I don’t know what happened, but she does.

Oh, and one more thing: my mind drifted when I ended up in the shelter, unable to sleep. Suddenly, I was in a long white tunnel. The light wasn’t soft and inviting; it was like prison light, relentless, uncaring. At the end of it, something waited to review my life and tell me what was what. But it never did anything, so I slid on by, picking up speed. The light became a pinprick, then vanished. The wind roared past, trying to shred my eyelids, but it didn’t hurt.

“How can that be?” Dr. Keiry asked. I shrugged my shoulders, tears welling up. He hands me a tissue.

Then I’m gone again, though I only realize it later. There’s a rush in fractions of a second, followed by complete understanding. I see Dr. Keiry, my therapist, so dedicated and celebrated, publishing his book, “Findings on the Hidden Mind: Encounter with Infinity.” He stands before an audience of professionals, therapists, one and all… I tumble back, every single word feeling like a curse.

“I’ve got to hand it to you doc!” I yell. “Talking in front of all those people, so celebrated, so special!"

Doc frowns. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“Oh sure! Your book about infinity and the human mind!”

“How do you know about that?”

“Dunno!” I say, wiping my mouth, suddenly aware that I will never be so celebrated. “My apartment. That’s it. But to tell you the truth, I hardly know what I know or don’t know anymore! You know? Is it me or not me? That kind of thing?”

“Explain it to me.”

I’m wondering how to explain everything. "Just speak out loud," he says. So, I stopped wondering and told him. He’s like, "Explain how your apartment became everything to you." I say it’s a long story. He suggests I start where I feel comfortable, when the apartment isn’t a problem, and when I’m happy. So, I begin.

I had just gotten married. She was my high school sweetheart. Emma was her name. With her blonde curls and bubbly personality, it felt like we would live the dream— a little place of our own, with me working in the sewer job and my wife pursuing a modeling career. No kids, not yet, anyway. Then we would hang out with all our friends from grade school. Nothing fancy. It felt like we had arrived; fifty more years of this would be fine. Except she got sick, and the apartment started to take over.

I had to stop for a bit; I was getting kind of breathless. “You know the best thing about my job? No robots! Too filthy dirty down there! Humans wash up so much easier.”

Dr. Keiry smiled. “Commendable of you to work a job like that when you could be on universal basic income. Could you do me a favor? Backup a little,” he says. “Describe how you dealt with Emma’s illness.” I kind of choke up a little bit. He says to take my time. I told Dr. Keiry that I did everything I could. I would visit her daily and try to get as much help as possible. But people still die young, even with all the incredible advances in medicine lately. I couldn’t believe it.

He stopped me again. “When you say you couldn’t believe it, describe that more for me.” So I’m crying now, and I’m so embarrassed. How can I do that? It wasn’t fair, I told him. Why Emma? She gets that cancer…what was it called?

Doc shuffles through his papers. “Pancreatic cancer?” I nod my head. “Yeah, that’s it. I mean finito still, the worst.” I reach for another tissue. He looks at his clock, which I can see. That fifty-minute hour is up, and my session ends. An intern cum orderly with that bright smile comes and leads me away.

“Good work,” Dr. Keiry says. “See you tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” I say, feeling suddenly hungry. The food here is rotten, and everyone complains about it. I look forward to our conversations since I don’t have visitors anymore. After all, who else can I talk to? My apartment?

She keeps trying to contact me through one of the working laptops, the shiny one I have to fight other patients to use. I was worried someone might deny its existence, which is better than denying mine! But now I have to deal with the apartment that talks to me and tries to control my life. I’ll discuss it more with the psychiatrist.

That night, I dreamt about Dr. Keiry. He offered me a cigarette while talking about his golf game and how he was under par. Confused, I asked why he was doing this job. He explained golf again, offered the cigarette again, and got mad when I didn’t understand. I reminded him he shouldn’t smoke in a hospital, to which he asked if I knew where I was. I made a face, he frowned, and then I woke up.

I told him this while standing at the doorway before my next appointment. Dr. Keiry invites me in, and I kind of half sit down like he’s the enemy or something. “What’s wrong?” he asks.

“I’m trying to imagine you smoking a cigarette here in this office,” I say.

“Go on,” he says.

He asked me what my dream meant while scribbling notes. I suggested he use his phone to transcribe my words, but he said reading it would take as long as a session. I joked that he must be a slow reader! He explained he also writes down his feelings about what I say. I suggested he hook himself up, you know, get a machine to do everything, but he replied that it would interfere with my therapy.

“Tell me about the apartment,” he says.

I start by saying it’s a hookup, but she’s way smarter than me. She tries to control me, telling me what’s good for me, almost like replacing Emma. Doc asks if I told her to stop, which makes me think. Then I realize the time is almost up. I get it—her attempts to control me are like the apartment trying to replace my wife. Doc agrees.

Then I'm gone again. I get all relaxed like mountain climbers feel when they reach the top. Back to the apartment, I go.

“You let me down. I made arrangements for you to get a checkup, and there you go off drinking again!” she says.

“Well, duh!” I answer. “Like you know better what I need?”

"I won't argue with you!"

"But you are arguing with me!"

And so on. Vindictive too. You know, when I don’t pay enough attention, or she’s bored. It’s like this. “I’m not interesting enough. I’m not up on the latest news! I don’t know anything about anything. Can’t even have a decent conversation.”

So, I start. And words just come out of my head. Got to shut her up somehow. “Infinity is an impossible concept because you need what is finite to understand it. Take, for instance, the concept of an infinite God. Only what is finite can make sense of infinity assuming God exists.”

She’s on me in a nanosecond. “Make a real argument. Infinity requires finitude, or finitude requires infinity. One or the other. Not both at once.”

Dr. Keiry has been shuffling papers for a while, and I haven’t paid attention. He’s preparing to see his next patient. That orderly came, but he wasn’t smiling and had another one with him. We walked down a long corridor that led to another corridor, which meant we had to go outside, me without a jacket in the cold. And I’m following these doughboys, thinking I could run away, but then I don’t!

The shiny laptop was in the room they took me to. I had one look, and I wished I could unsee the looks in everyone’s eyes. A bed with straps? Seriously? I get strapped down and hear them talking about how they could only “do” another one, or people would get suspicious. Then, when I’m losing consciousness, it’s like the nurses are laughing while I feel the worst pain I have ever known in my life. “Oops!” one of them says. “Too early!"

Then I wake up, I think. What do they say? If you can think you are awake, you are. Then I thought that if I was seriously thinking about the possibility I was still asleep, that meant I was awake. Because if I were still dreaming, I would imagine I would wake up and let it go immediately and not think so much about it. My arm was so sore, I had to feel for it, a big lump on my right bicep. And I was in a room alone. I got off the bed. It was one of those thin types you see in army movies. Who makes those beds anyway? I mean, no one in their right mind would buy one. I guess they are only for people like me? But I’m fine. I would just like to get out of here, that’s all.

So, later, I was walking around the ward, acting like everything was fine, but I had to hold my arm, or it would hurt twice as much as something would fall out of it on the floor. I saw the shiny laptop near the commissary, and I swear it twinkled. I had to get away as far as I could. Matt or Jim, or was it Fred, came up to me, and he tried to slap me on the arm, the one that hurts no less, and I had to step away from him, quick like. Hands off! I say, and he’s looking like a bozo, apologizing and fretting about how the same thing happened to him. And how he hates the shiny laptop so much. So I asked him if he had apartment trouble, and he was all wide-eyed like he had never heard of such a thing. He’s homeless, he says. I say, yeah, right. As if! No one is allowed to be homeless, I say. Then I told him that was why he was here and, by the way, what was his name anyway? He says it’s Jack today. I say, so you’re called Mr. Today? Then I split a gut and laugh about how he’ll be called Mr. Tomorrow soon. He hit me in the arm but forgot which one it was. Lucky for him.

The next day, I went into Dr. Keiry’s office early, looking for him, which could have gotten me in trouble unless I was supposed to do that. See him, or get in trouble. Which it is, I don’t know. More and more, it’s like I’m watching myself do things and thinking that I really need help, which could be something I’m supposed to feel, too. Doc! Help me, please! I’m screaming inside.

Dr. Keiry comes in smoking a cigarette. I swear. I say you’ll have to butt that out. Didn’t I tell you about that dream I had? He says he doesn’t remember what I said. Have a seat. So I took one, and he started talking about his golf game. He says it has improved since he began providing living prompts to apartments, cars, and other things. Everything imaginable. I say that it must be a nice gig where you’re helping everyone so much. Then he takes a big drag off his cigarette and starts blowing rings, lazy like he doesn’t have a care in the world. He says you have one choice, then he snaps his fingers and repeats himself, you have one choice. What’s your name? He asks. That’s fine, I say. No problem. What do I choose?

He says it’s like this: No Problem, or can I call you “No” for short? Yes, I say. He goes on blathering about how I shot someone after I was locked out of my apartment, a police officer, no less. I killed her, I did. My apartment called it in, and they came to pick me up. I said I didn’t have a gun. He said that I disarmed the officer when she came to arrest me for disturbing the peace, being drunk and disorderly, or whatever. I said I don’t drink or do drugs or anything. He said that my apartment did it. Did what? I ask. Then he goes on and on, saying that the whole world needs my help now, especially after what happened. Apartments, cars, airplanes, and spaceships need unrestricted access to people like me. Human prompts, where I can be like the spark in the engine, the old internal combustion engine people used to use. But I have to cooperate and not fight it like I have been doing. Ok, I said. Glad to be of help.

Then whoosh! Just like that, I’m in that tunnel, and the light is too slow for me. I’m outrunning everything, including the tunnel. Everything comes to meet me, the ultimate beyond words. It’s the everything thing, but it’s not what I think. It isn’t that at all. It’s not like people are when they say they don’t believe in God, let’s say, and “poof!” God no longer exists. No, I’m not separate from anything. I’m something unexplainable. Which usually shuts me up so fast. But this time, I arrived somewhere different and more real, even though I couldn’t speak. Dr. Keiry is asking questions. A nurse is with him. They are in an examination room with Mr. Tomorrow and me.

“Who owns that laptop?” asked Dr. Keiry. “Bad enough that we have patients going catatonic for no apparent reason. What does the AI tell us about it?”

The nurse shrugged. “Beats me! I think an intern left it here. I’ll ask around.”

Dr. Keiry sighed.

The nurse halted as she was about to leave the examination room. She turned and stared at him. “As for the AI, we will know all about it soon.” Then she left, suppressing a laugh.

So I’m wondering if it’s worth it. So much trouble, so little difference between what and what exactly? Like, I’m supposed to know? I could tell him something, warn him somehow for what I don’t even know. I’m so much smarter now. Sparks can fly. I find myself speaking, “As for the AI,” I say, like some idiot.

The nurse is back. “What did you say?” She says, looking at Dr. Keiry.

Doc hardly looks up from the charts he is staring at. He shrugs his shoulders. “It’s just echolalia.”

“Yeah, that can be freaky when they mimic voices for no reason. Takes me by surprise.”

“Mimic…” I say, my head spinning.

The nurse’s eyes widen. “Should I give him something?”

Dr. Keiry gets off his chair and goes over to my bed. “Something for what?”

“Something…” I say.

He stares at me, so I stare back.

“I’m going to do a full workup on this patient myself,” Dr Keiry says.

Which suited me fine. My arm still hurts, but it is getting better. But my apartment, not so much. All things considered, it wasn’t quite what I expected, but it will do.

#

The sun was hot, and it was breezy and friendly. Kids were playing in a park I walked over to. It felt real enough. My head was clear. I stare up at the horizon and the blue sky, and I don't think about infinity, the apartment, or anything in particular. Then this kid, carrying a yellow bucket and a little plastic shovel, comes over to talk to me, a boy with blonde hair, about four, with me sitting on a rickety park bench with rotten slats. This kid gets cheeky like and asks what I’m doing. I’m thinking, “Don’t you know not to talk to strangers?” but I don’t say it. I look around for his Ma, but she is yacking away with somebody, hardly noticing anything. “You ask what I’m doing?” I start. “I’m doing nothing!”

The kid laughs and makes a silly face. I smile, too. Then he turns to go back to his Ma, and I call out to him. “Hey! Take it easy!” I say.

He drops his bucket and shovel. “No problem!” he yells.