Gavin had a problem. Everybody could agree on this, although they’d probably argue the toss over what the problem might actually be. There was definitely something the matter with Gavin.
His mother, standing at the kitchen sink and peering out at the garage where Gavin spent most of his time, thought Gavin’s problem was that he didn’t get out enough. Wringing her hands, trying to come up with ways to get him outside, she wondered how she’d managed to have a son who didn’t seem to be quite, well, like other people.
Gavin’s father, sitting in the living room and deeply ensconced in the world according to the Daily Mail, was certain that it was all because Gavin wasn’t a “real man”. Gavin was a pansy, that was all there was to it, and nothing could be done. Pansies are defined at the genetic level. Gavin’s father had better things to do with his time than worry about Gavin.
Gavin had an uncle, too, who thought Gavin needed more “stimulation”, although what form that took depended on who you talked to. Uncle Jim was the one who thought perhaps Gavin needed a bit more encouragement. That’s why he’d bought Gavin the gift set.
As far as Gavin was concerned, his only problem was the gift set itself. Mostly oblivious to the outside world – unless it directly impinged on his business in the safe haven of the garage, Gavin didn’t worry about what his mother thought, or indeed what his father thought. He was currently completely absorbed in the problem of the gift set.
He’d had gift sets before, of course. The chemistry set his Aunt Maude gave him for his birthday had been fantastic, and kept him completely absorbed for several days. At least, right up until that unfortunate combination of substances that led to the explosion. The doctors at A&E were very understanding, and he didn’t lose his ear in the end. His eyebrows were still singed, but despite the fuss his mother made, it didn’t take too much effort to replace the glass in the garage windows.
Perhaps Uncle Jim might have paid heed to the experience with the chemistry set if he’d known about the explosion, but he’d been at the Mount Everest base camp at the time, and had other things on his mind. Most of these revolved around the gift set he was planning to give to Gavin.
It came from a strange and unlikely internet company. You can’t trust internet companies, said Gavin’s mother. But Gavin wasn’t bothered by that. Big Bang Electronics Ltd looked perfectly respectable by him – although perhaps he wasn’t qualified to comment. He was more concerned with the problem of working out what the kit was actually for.
A simple cardboard box, about the size of a Monopoly set, arrived in the post that morning, and Gavin opened it at once.
“A universe in a box!” the writing on the side exclaimed. “From the Big Bang onwards! Glue included. Do not inhale. Not for children under the age of three.”
It was a very baffling kit, however. Some of the parts were so small that they couldn’t be seen. Others appeared to be missing. Still, he laid it all out on the table in the middle of the garage and set to work.
Nobody saw Gavin for quite some time after that. There were occasional flashes of light, especially one Saturday evening at about 7pm, when a soft boom could be heard reverberating through the streets of Surbiton. Most people decided it was just another of those freak earthquakes, or an accident on the train line. Gavin’s mother took up her place at the window, and watched.
After that, it was very quiet.
For a few days, nobody saw Gavin. His mother started to get worried. She took him sandwiches, but he wouldn’t open the door. She started to regret letting him play with that kit. It’d be just like the chemistry set all over again. His father ignored him (as usual). Uncle Jim was climbing Kilimanjaro, and couldn’t be reached for an explanation.
Finally, Gavin’s mother decided it was time to sort this out. Fists clenched, she stalked out to the garage and banged on the door.
“Gavin! It’s teatime!” she called out.
There was no answer.
“Gavin?” She knocked on the door again. There was still no answer.
She tried the handle, and she was surprised when the door swung open.
The light inside made her blink. She took a step inside.
“Gavin?”
Gavin was standing by the table, his face shining triumphantly. In front of him, a huge sizzling ball of energy floated above the table top. In his hand, he held a strange little microscope that peered into the glowing ball. Within its electric shell, Gavin’s mother could see tiny objects moving.
“Look Mum,” said Gavin, “I’ve created a universe!”
Gavin’s mother frowned.
“No, really, Mum,” he insisted. He pointed into the light. “There’s even a planet with people like us. They think I’m their God!”
Gavin’s mother put her hands on her hips. “Oh, come on now, Gavin. It’s tea time and you haven’t eaten properly for days. Don’t be so silly.”
“But… But Mum! I’m God!” said Gavin.
But Gavin’s mother wasn’t listening. She grabbed Gavin’s hand and marched him back into the kitchen.
Notes: This story was inspired by the Archbishop James Ussher, who in his Annals of the World, 1650, wrote that the world was created on the evening of Saturday, October 22, 4004 B.C. It made me wonder what might have inspired a deity to go about doing such a thing.
After supper, Lena helped Vivianne clean up, then Vivianne made coffee.
This ritual of theirs hadn’t changed since their university days.
It almost felt like nothing had changed. Lena even still felt old the fondness that had first drawn her to Vivianne.
Lena watched Vivianne stand over the stove in her oversized white T-shirt and jean shorts. Her black curly hair was straight and brown now. It hid the grey and was easy to put in a ponytail.
Vivianne was a casual suburban mom and Lena was sleeping with her customer contact.
Lena leaned against the counter while Vivianne stood watch over the moka pot on the stove. The house was quiet except for the sound of the AC and the gurgle of the coffee pot.
“We should sit outside,” Vivianne said. “It’s a nice night.”
Lena nodded. “That’s a good idea.” She looked out the patio doors at Vivianne’s yard. There was a small swing set for the kids and a little terrace with some outdoor furniture. There wasn’t much shade in the yard and evenings were the best time to sit there.
Vivianne had always loved sitting outside on summer evenings. Her apartment in university had been a semi-basement unit with outdoor stairs that lead to the door. On summer evenings Lena and Vivianne would sit on the steps and watch people go by. Sometimes people they knew would stop to talk on their way to a party. Sometimes they would invite Lena and Vivianne along. Sometimes they would ditch their plans to stay with them.
Vivianne’s upstairs neighbour was a chemistry student named Hypatia. She had a show on university radio called Hype Hour with Hypatia where she played ska music. When she’d get home after her show she’d ask Vivianne to come with her to walk her dog. When Lena was there they would all walk the dog together. When Vivianne had boyfriends, they wouldn’t walk the dog.
Noah would walk the dog. Noah was a good guy.
Hypatia had moved out by the time Vivianne started seeing Dimitri. A music student named Brian had moved in. Brian was a clarinet player. He was gay. His boyfriend’s name was Benji. Dimitri didn’t liked them. Vivianne never realized they were boyfriends.
“Do you remember Stephanie?” Lena said.
The coffee had come up and Vivianne was stirring it. “That friend of yours from years ago?”
It was a sunny day in mid June when Mike got the news about Liam. The air was sweet. The birds were chirping. Mike had just gotten back from his run.
He, Liz, and the kids were up at the cottage, away from all the people in the city and the COVID they could be carrying. They came up every year around this time. It was always nice to get away from the city, but this time it felt more like an escape.
Mike was staring at the sky, admiring the fluffy clouds. He would spend a few more minutes outside before going in. He closed his eyes and let himself feel the cool breeze on his skin.
That was when his phone buzzed and he got the text about Liam.
At first he couldn’t believe it; he thought they were talking about another Liam, a different Liam, a Liam he didn’t know. He thought he had misread the text. Forty year olds didn’t have heart attacks, especially not forty year olds who were as fit as Liam.
He texted back his friend. Waited for the reply. Then stared out at the canopy of trees. There were birds chirping somewhere inside them. They had no business chirping.
Mike couldn’t make sense of it. He kept going on his morning runs, moving to the side when he saw someone else on the trail, occasionally putting on a mask if they put on a mask. He played with his kids and talked to Liz. They discussed how they would spend the rest of the summer.
There wasn’t any funeral that Mike could attend. There was a memorial over zoom. Mike didn’t want to attend a zoom call with several people he didn’t know, like an all-hands meeting but with crying. He didn’t want to sit in a room alone, thinking about Liam alone, crying alone, his camera on as he lied to Liam’s family and friends about who Liam was to him.
Funerals weren’t places for lies.
Without the closure, Mike started to think of Liam as a friend he had lost touch with, still existing somewhere in the ether, living his best life.
Time passed. Mike became busy with work and the kids. The kids were still little and weren’t yet in school. He and Liz took turns amusing them and feeding them between meetings and tasks.
Eventually the office reopened and Mike went back once a week. Liz went back, too. She was in the office three times a week. The kids were in school now, too. This left Mike alone in the house more often than not, with nothing to do between tasks but wander the empty rooms while trying to ignore his thoughts.
He had hoped going into the office would distract him from his thoughts, but the office wasn’t the same as it had been, and he found himself being alone there, too.
So many things were gone: the water cooler in the office kitchen; the sandwich place everyone used to go to; most of the people.
Sometimes Mike saw Brad at the office. Brad said he came in on Wednesdays, and Mike decided to come in on Wednesdays, too. He and Brad would have lunch together then go for a walk. It felt good to have company. It felt good to talk to someone who barely knew him.
The day of Liam’s birthday fell on a Wednesday, and Mike decided to drive by Liam’s old apartment, the one he had lived in in university. Mike had fond memories of hanging out there with Liam after class, watching Laguna Beach, listening to Liam’s Avril Lavigne CD on repeat, getting high. But the building was gone, as was the coffee shop they used to go to. There was nothing tangible with which to anchor his memories of Liam. It was almost as if Liam had never existed; it was as if Liam was someone he had made up in a dream.
Sometimes when Mike and Liz were home alone, sitting in the kitchen, drinking coffee, he would want to tell her about Liam. He would put down his cup and try to think of where to start: at the beginning, when he first saw him walk across the hall, or at the end, when he got the text message at the cottage? Would he tell her everything, or leave the most important parts of the story blank, like notes left unplayed in a jazz tune? Would he explain to her that there was an entire half of his self that he had never told her about because everyone had convinced him that it was irrelevant once he started seeing her?
He worried that revealing too many secrets too quickly would cause Liz to recoil and pull away. He didn’t want to lose one more person in his life. He would prefer to hold Liam’s memory in a closed box than risk alienating Liz.
At the office it was different: he mentioned Liam to coworkers, talking about him as if he were a character in a movie he had seen or in a book he had once read. He talked about Liam with detachment, without mentioning the affection he had felt for him. After work he would sit in his car and think about how he should have told Liam how he felt instead of living a life of deceit. He thought about how it was wrong to think it was fine to pine in secret because it was better to have Liam as a friend than not have him at all.
Risk wasn’t something Mike liked. He preferred to be safe, make sure he didn’t get hurt, make sure no one abandoned him.
And yet Liam had abandoned him.
Mike wished Liam had had a long ailment that would have allowed him to sit by his bed and confess his feelings. He wished the end hadn’t been so sudden. He wished he had had more time. He wished he could go back and say all the things he had left unsaid.
He wished he would have taken the risk.
He tried to move on and stop thinking about it, but things kept getting in the way.
The company made everyone put security software on their phones. The software wasn’t meant to cause problems, but it did. Phones were locked; apps were deleted; and one day Spotify stopped working.
Mike liked to listen to music on his runs. He knew he shouldn’t. He could hear his parents and teachers admonishing him for listening to his walkman on his walk to school. He didn’t care. The park with the running path was only one block from his house and it was unlikely a car would rush up from behind him and run him over. The music kept Mike’s thoughts from wandering back to his run three years earlier. He needed music to run away and escape.
He went to his basement and pulled out an old box of electronics. In it was his old iPod Mini. He connected an old a pair of wired earphones to it to see if it still worked. It did. I Can’t Get You Out of My Head by Kylie Minogue started to play. Mike laughed. It would do.
The next day he went on his run with his iPod. Naughty Girl by Beyoncé started him off. He smiled to himself. The next song was Why Can’t I? by Liz Phair and he felt a panic attack come on. The song had always made him think of Liam. He skipped to the next song. It was I’m With You by Avril Lavigne. The panic got worse. He skipped two, three songs. Come Clean by Hilary Duff started to play.
Mike couldn’t go on. He stopped and leaned against a tree. He wanted to stop the music, but he listened through it instead. He let the memory of watching Laguna Beach in Liam’s apartment come back to him. Tears welled in his eyes. He put his head against the tree and let out a quiet sob. The song ended. Love At First Sight by Kylie Minogue started up. Mike wiped his eyes, took the earphones out of his ears, and walked home.
The next day he put the iPod back into the box and told Liz that the music was reminding him of studying for exams. She offered to help him update the music, but Mike declined, saying that it was up to the office to settle their issues with their security software.
Eventually Mike uninstalled the security software and got Spotify working again. It had been a relief to go back to running with music and to stop thinking about Liam.
Mike wondered if this was what hauntings really were: unresolved grief.
A coffee shop opened up near the office. It looked nice. It was painted in warm colours and there was art on the walls. When the door opened, interesting music and the smell of coffee would drift out from it. It was the kind of place Liam would have loved.
Brad always wanted to go to there after lunch. He said that the coffee in the office was terrible and he was sick of drinking it. Mike agreed, but he couldn’t bring himself to go in. He made up excuses, said the shop looked pretentious, that the art on its walls was bourgeois, that at least the coffee at the office was free. Brad would roll his eyes and let it go, and they would have the bad coffee in their bad office.
The lies and excuses became second nature to Mike. He no longer felt like himself. He was always pretending. Pretending he didn’t like the coffee shop. Pretending he wasn’t in pain. Pretending he had never known a man named Liam.
He couldn’t do anything but pretend.
At home he needed to be a husband to Liz and a father to his kids. At work he needed to be a loyal employee. On Wednesdays he needed to be a congenial colleague to his coworkers. On his commutes he needed to be a driver concentrating on not getting into an accident.
Only on his runs was he himself, and even then he tried not to be. He kept the music on high, concentrated on the feeling of the wind on his body and his feet on the ground. His emotional pain was masked by the pain in his body. He hid an entire side of himself in his pain.
He tried to think of how he would go on living this way. He hoped that one day the pain would ease or evaporate and he would be free of it. Until then he had to learn to endure it.
One Friday afternoon Brad called him out of the blue. It was the week after he and Brad had had lunch with Carl and discussed keeping in touch if they were ever let go. So many people were being let go. Mike answered the call expecting bad news. But the news was worse than he thought.
Brad, his voice cracking, told him he was in love with Carl.
Mike tried to process what he was hearing. It barely made sense. He knew Brad and Carl were friends, but they had barely even spoken over lunch. He didn’t even know Brad was gay! He asked Brad if Carl was gay, and Brad said he didn’t know.
Mike listened as Brad told him all the ways that he cared for Carl and how he wanted to confess his feelings but didn’t know how Carl would take it. Mike wanted to be supportive, but he told him that Carl was most likely straight. That he was always going to the coffee shop and talking to the barista. He was on a first-name basis with her. Mike explained that it would most likely end badly and that it wasn’t a risk Brad should want to take.
That was when Brad started to cry. He said he would never be able to live with himself if he never told Carl how he felt. He said that there was no way he could live without knowing if Carl felt the same way about him.
That was when Mike started to cry, too. He didn’t tell Brad why he was crying. Brad assumed he was crying out of sympathy. Mike composed himself and agreed to talk to Carl on Brad’s behalf.
The next week Mike came up with a reason to go in on Monday when Carl was in. He arranged for them to have supper together, then avoided Carl for the entire day.
It was rainy and miserable. Mike left work early and stood outside the office doors watching the rain fall. He looked at the umbrella he had brought with him. It was the cute one with the cartoon raindrops Liz said suited his personality. He kept it closed as he walked to the car.
He got to the restaurant early. He sat in his car alone then sat in the restaurant alone.
Carl arrived and Mike said nothing about Brad. He made small talk. He talked about the food. He would let Brad talk to Carl. He would let Brad make his own mistake.
But Carl was a sharp guy and he knew Mike had wanted to talk to him about something. It would have been easy for Mike to lie, to say that he heard a rumour that Carl’s team was going to be eliminated. Maybe then Carl would leave the company and Brad’s problem would be solved.
But he told Carl the truth.
He watched as Carl’s face changed. He braced himself to have to placate Carl, let him know that no one thought he was gay and that they would never mention this again. Breaking the news to Brad would be hard and he would have to avoid Carl from now on, but maybe this had been for the best. It would have played out the same way had he told Liam how he felt.
Then Carl said that he felt the same way about Brad.
For a moment, Mike’s world was shattered. The regret of never telling Liam how he felt returned to him. He started to cry.
After the meal, Mike sat in his car and listened to the rain pour down over it. He was ashamed of himself for breaking down in front of Carl. He was tired of living with his grief. He thought about crashing the car into a wall on his way home. It would look like an accident because of the rain. But he couldn’t do that to Liz and the kids.
He didn’t go into the office on the Wednesday but he talked to Brad. He asked him if he had spoken to Carl. Brad said he hadn’t. Mike could hear the pain in Brad’s voice. It was a relief to know that the outcome he predicted had come true and that there would have been no hope for him and Liam. He had made the right decision. He finally felt closure.
The kids were sick the next week, and Mike had to stay home with them so Liz could go in for a meeting. For the first time in three years he felt whole again. He was a father and a husband with no regrets.
Once the kids were better, he got sick. Liz took care of him and he was grateful to have her there. He didn’t feel the need to tell her anything. There wasn’t any reason to tell her anything.
The next Monday he got a text from Brad. It said that he hoped Mike was OK. He said that he and Carl had talked and would be spending more time together. He said he was grateful to Mike for having done this for him because otherwise he and Carl would have both been miserable.
Mike sent back a smiley face emoji.
The next week he went into the office on Friday instead of Wednesday. The week after he went in on Thursday. The week after that he went in on Tuesday. He went in on any day besides Monday and Wednesday.
Carl and Brad both sent him messages asking if he was OK, and he told them that he was, but that he had meetings on other days of the week and was changing his schedule.
Months passed. He never saw Brad or Carl anymore and they both stopped sending him messages. He heard that everyone on Carl’s team had been let go, but as far as he knew Brad was still employed with the company, existing within its walls on days when he wasn’t around. He didn’t know if Brad and Carl were together and he didn’t want to know. Merely thinking about their happiness made him miserable.
Eventually it was June again. It was coming up on the anniversary of getting the news about Liam. Mike concentrated on packing for the cottage and wrapping things up at work. It kept his mind off the memory.
On the Friday before leaving for the cottage, the coffee machine in the office broke and Mike had no choice but to go to the coffee shop across the street.
The barista was wiping the counter when he walked in. There was no one else there. It looked like everyone had just left: there were empty dishes and cups on the tables, and the chairs were all pushed out.
He walked up to the counter, ignoring the art, and ordered a drip coffee to go.
“I’m afraid you’ll need to wait for that,” the barista said, smiling. “I just had a rush of people and I’m all out of coffee and here we are.”
“Should I order something else?” Mike asked.
“If you prefer. But I can make a fresh pot that way I won’t have to make another when someone else walks in. You can walk around and look at the art while you wait. It shouldn’t be more than a few minutes.”
Mike thanked the barista. He went to the windows and looked out at the street. There were fewer people than usual outside. He didn’t understand how there could have been a rush.
“Your coffee’s ready,” the barista called from the counter.
“One of my former coworkers used to come here,” Mike said, taking his coffee. “Carl. Do you know him?”
The barista’s face lit up. “Of course I know Carl! He and his partner are regulars at our Saturday art classes!” She pointed to the QR code on the counter. “You can sign up for classes, too, if you want.”
“It’s OK,” Mike said.
He thanked the barista for the coffee and turned to leave.
A painting on the wall caught his eye. It was of a breakfast table set for two, but one of the place settings hadn’t been painted it. The cup, glass, and bowl were blank.
Mike moved closer to the painting.
He thought that maybe the artist had painted those items white, but they hadn’t: it was bare canvass, as if the items had been removed from the painting, ripped out or cut out. They had been somehow forcefully removed and all that was left was this bare emptiness where something had once been.
The barista had come up next to him. She was saying something but he couldn’t hear her. He felt a tightness in his chest, an inability to breathe or talk. His hands shook. He was sweating.
The barista took his coffee and guided him to a seat. She put his coffee in front of him, then a glass of water. He tried to drink the water, but his hands were still shaking and he couldn’t swallow.
He watched as the barista turned off the lights, closed the blinds, and turned the sign on the door to “closed”.
She walked back towards him. “Stay as long as you want,” she said. “I’ll be in the back. Call if you need anything.”
She turned off the music.
Mike was alone in the dark coffee shop. Outside it was loud and busy. He could see people and cars passing by. But inside it was still and quiet.
He looked at the coffee and water in front of him, then at the empty seat across from him.
He let out a sob. Liam would have loved this place.
planning two academic articles on the Murderbot Diaries.
Autistic representation. That's probably second but will be happening.
Murderbot Diaries and James C Scott's theories of transcripts of resistance. This is all about how subjugated cultures and peoples develop communication systems that allow them to talk to each other without subjugating or dominating cultures understanding them.
It was a sunny day in mid June when Mike got the news about Liam. The air was sweet. The birds were chirping. Mike had just gotten back from his run.
He, Liz, and the kids were up at the cottage, away from all the people in the city, any of whom could be carrying COVID. They came up every year around this time, but it never felt as much of an escape as it did that year.
Mike was staring at the sky, admiring the fluffy clouds. He would spend a few more minutes outside before going inside the house. He closed his eyes and let himself feel the cool breeze on his skin.
That was when his phone buzzed and he got the text about Liam.
At first he couldn’t believe it; he thought they were talking about another Liam, a different Liam, a Liam he didn’t know. He thought he had misread the text. He looked at it again: heart attack. Forty year olds didn’t have heart attacks, especially not forty year olds who were as fit as Liam.
He texted back his friend. Waited for the reply. Then stared out at the canopy of trees. There were birds chirping somewhere inside them. They had no business chirping.
Mike couldn’t make sense of it at all. He kept going on his morning runs, moving to the side when he saw someone else on the trail, occasionally putting on a mask if they put on a mask. He played with his kids, he talked to Liz. They discussed how they would spend the rest of the summer.
There wasn’t any funeral that Mike could attend. There was a memorial over zoom. Mike didn’t want to attend a zoom call with several people he didn’t know, like an all-hands meeting but with crying. He didn’t want to sit in a room alone, thinking about Liam alone, crying alone, while on camera, lying about how he felt about Liam.
Funerals weren’t places for lies.
Without the closure, Mike started to think of Liam as a friend he had lost touch with, still existing somewhere in the ether, living his best life.
Time passed, Mike went back to work and taking care of the kids. They were still little and weren’t yet in school. He and Liz took turns amusing them and feeding them between meetings and tasks.
Eventually the office reopened and Mike went back once a week. Liz was back in the office, too. She was there three times a week. The kids were in school now, too, and Mike found himself alone in the house with his thoughts.
He had hoped going into the office would distract him from his thoughts, but the office wasn’t the same as it had been, and he found himself being alone there, too.
So many things were gone. The coffee machine and water cooler in the office kitchen. The sandwich place everyone in the office used to go to. Most of the people were gone, too.
Sometimes Mike saw Brad at the office. Brad said he came in on Wednesdays, and Mike decided to come in on Wednesdays, too. He and Brad would have lunch together, then go for a walk. It felt good to have company. It felt good to talk to someone who barely knew him.
The day of Liam’s birthday fell on a Wednesday, and Mike decided to drive by Liam’s old apartment, the one he had lived in in university. Mike had fond memories of hanging out there with Liam after class, watching Laguna Beach, listening to Liam’s Avril Lavigne CD on repeat, getting high. But the building was gone, as was the coffee shop they used to go to. There was nothing tangible with which to anchor his memories of Liam. It was almost as if Liam had never existed; it was as if Liam was someone he had made up in a dream.
Sometimes when Mike and Liz were home alone, sitting in the kitchen, drinking coffee, he would want to tell her about Liam. He would put down his cup and try to think of where to start: at the beginning, when he first saw him walk across the hall, or at the end, when he got the text message at the cottage? Would he tell her everything, or leave the most important part of the story blank, like the notes left unplayed in a jazz tune? Would he explain to her that there was an entire half of his self that he had never told her about because everyone had convinced him that it was irrelevant because he had met her?
He worried that revealing too many secrets too quickly would cause Liz to recoil and pull away. He didn’t want to lose one more person in his life. He would prefer to hold Liam’s memory in a closed box than risk alienating Liz.
At the office it was different: he mentioned Liam to coworkers, talking about him as if he were a character in a movie he had seen or in a book he had once read. He talked about Liam with detachment, without mentioning the affection he felt for him. On those days he would sit in his car after work and think about how he should have told Liam how he felt instead of living a life of deceit. He thought about how it was wrong to think it was fine to pine in secret because it was better to have Liam than to risk losing Liam.
Risk wasn’t something Mike liked. He preferred to be safe, make sure he didn’t get hurt, make sure no one abandoned him.
And yet Liam had abandoned him.
Mike wished Liam had had a long ailment that would have allowed him to go sit by his bed and confess his feelings. He wished the end hadn’t been so sudden. He wished he had had more time. He wished he could go back and say all the things he had left unsaid.
He wished he would have taken the risk.
He tried to move on and stop thinking about it, but things kept getting in the way.
The company made everyone put security software on their phones. The software wasn’t meant to cause problems, but it did. Phones were locked; apps were deleted; and one day Spotify stopped working.
Mike liked to listen to music on his runs. He knew he shouldn’t. He could hear his parents and teachers admonishing him for listening to his walkman on his walk to school. He didn’t care. The park with the running path was only one block from his house and he didn’t think a car would rush up from behind him and run him over. Without music, Mike would be alone with his thoughts. They would wander. They would bring him back to his run three years earlier. He didn’t want that. He needed music if he was going to run and escape.
He went to his basement and pulled out an old box of electronics. In it was his old iPod Mini. It still worked. I Can’t Get You Out of My Head by Kylie Minogue started to play. Mike laughed. It would do.
The next day he went on his run. Naughty Girl by Beyoncé started him off. He smiled to himself. The next song was Why Can’t I? by Liz Phair and Mike felt a panic attack come on. The song had always made him think of Liam. He skipped to the next song. It was I’m With You by Avril Lavigne. The panic got worse. He skipped two, three songs. Come Clean by Hilary Duff started to play.
Mike couldn’t go on. He stopped and leaned against a tree. He wanted to stop the music, but he listened through it instead. He let the memory of watching Laguna Beach in Liam’s apartment come back to him. Tears welled in his eyes. He put his head against the tree and let out a quiet sob. The song ended. Love At First Sight by Kylie Minogue started up. Mike wiped his eyes, pulled his EarPods out of his ears, and walked home.
The next day he put the iPod mini back into the box and told Liz that the music was reminding him of studying for exams. She offered to help update the music that was on it, but Mike declined, saying that it was up to the office to settle their issues with their security software.
Eventually Mike uninstalled the security software and got Spotify working again. It had been a relief to go back to running with music and to stop thinking about Liam.
Mike wondered if this was what hauntings really were: unresolved grief.
A coffee shop opened up near the office. It looked nice. Brad always wanted to go to the coffee shop after lunch. He said that the coffee in the office was terrible and he was sick of drinking it. Mike agreed, but he couldn’t bring himself to go in: it reminded him too much of the coffee shop he and Liam used to frequent. He made up excuses, said the shop looked pretentious, that the art on its walls was bourgeois, that at least the coffee at the office was free. Brad would roll his eyes and let it go and they would have the bad coffee in their bad office.
Mike no longer felt like himself. He was always pretending to be someone else. He would wake up in the morning and be a husband to Liz and a father to his kids. He would get to work and be a loyal employee. On Wednesdays he would be a congenial colleague to his coworkers. On runs he was lost in the feeling of his feet on the floor. On his commutes he was a driver concentrating on not getting into an accident. He was always someone else. He was someone without grief. He was someone who wasn’t hiding an entire side of himself in his unspoken grief.
Everything was going fine until one Friday afternoon when Brad called him out of the blue. It was the week after he and Brad had had lunch with Carl. They had discussed keeping in touch if they were ever let go; so many people had been let go. Seeing the call, Mike knew it was bad news.
Brad, his voice cracking, told him he was in love with Carl.
Mike tried to process what he was hearing. It barely made sense. Brad and Carl were friends, but they had barely even spoken over lunch! He didn’t even know Brad was gay! He didn’t think Carl was gay. He couldn’t remember Carl ever mentioning it, but neither had Brad.
Brad told him all the ways that he cared for Carl and how he had to confess his feelings. Mike wanted to be supportive, but he told him that Carl was most likely straight. That Carl was always going to the coffee shop and talking to the barista. That he was on a first-name basis with her. Brad didn’t want to listen. He said that it wasn’t that way. That he himself had spoken to the barista and he knew it wasn’t that way!
Mike tried to reason with Brad. He explained that it would end badly, that it wasn’t a risk he should want to take.
That was when Brad started to cry. He said he had to let Carl know how he felt and that he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he never told him.
That was when Mike started to cry. He didn’t tell Brad why he was crying, but he agreed to talk to Carl on Brad’s behalf.
The next week he came up with a reason to go in on Monday when Carl was in. He arranged for them to have supper together, then avoided Carl for the entire day.
It was rainy and miserable. Mike stood outside after work and let the rain fall on him before going to his car. He got to the restaurant early. He sat in his car alone then sat in the restaurant alone.
He thought about leaving, telling Carl that something had come up, but then Carl arrived and instead he decided not to tell Carl about Brad. Instead he would let Brad talk to Carl. He would let Brad make his own mistake.
But Carl was a sharp guy and he knew Mike had wanted to talk to him about something. Mike thought about lying. He thought about saying that he heard Carl’s team would be eliminated. Maybe then Carl would leave the company and Brad’s problem would be solved.
But he told Carl the truth.
And Carl said Brad’s feelings were reciprocated.
And that made it worse. That made Mike tell Carl about Liam.
After the meal, Mike sat in his car and listened to the rain pour down over it. He was ashamed of himself for breaking down in front of Carl. He was tired of living with his grief and his shame.
He thought about crashing into a wall on his way home. It would look like an accident because of the rain. But he couldn’t do that to Liz and the kids.
The next week he went into the office on Friday instead of Wednesday; there was never anyone there on Friday. The week after he went in on Thursday. The week after that he went in on Tuesday. He went in on any day beside Monday and Wednesday.
Carl and Brad sent him messages asking if he was OK, and he told them that he was.
The days came and went. He never saw Brad or Carl anymore. He heard that everyone on Carl’s team had been let go, but as far as he knew Brad was still employed with the company, existing within its walls on days when he wasn’t around. He didn’t know if Brad and Carl were together, but he suspected that they were.
Eventually it was June again. It was coming up on the anniversary of getting the news about Liam, and Mike was trying to ignore it. He was concentrating on packing for the cottage and wrapping things up at work.
On the Friday before he was leaving for the cottage, the Nespresso machine in the office broke. There was no alternative made available and Mike had no choice but to go to the coffee shop across the street.
The barista was wiping the counter when he walked in. There was no one else there but it looked like there had just been a rush. There were empty dishes and cups on the tables, and the chairs were all pushed out.
He walked up to the counter, ignoring the art, and ordered a drip coffee to go. The barista told him he’d have to wait because she had to brew a new pot on account of the rush that had just passed.
Mike went to the windows and looked out at the street as he waited. There were fewer people than usual outside so he didn’t know how there could have been a rush.
The barista called him over and handed him his cup.
He thanked her and turned to leave.
As he turned, a painting on the wall caught his eye. It was of a breakfast table set for two, but only one place setting had food and drinks; the other was all empty. There was no cereal in the bowl, no coffee in the cup, and no juice in the glass.
He walked closer to it. The title plate said, I miss you.
“Erotic conquest” is one hell of a way to describe “I’m going to use magic to steal a woman away from her husband so I can have all kinds of freaky sex with her”.
And the sex in these ancient magical handbooks is freaky. Demons and everything. I imagine Victorian Classicists sweating over every “pudenda” and “take her in the…”.
The Body Language of the Presaux Team & Depiction of a Utopian Society
I find the body language of Presaux team as a whole quite interesting, in terms of being a manifestation of their bond as a group. Perhaps it also gives us some insight of their culture back in Preservation Alliance.
- Physical Contact
As a team they are very comfortable with physical contact, they frequently hold each other's hand and embrace one another.
And of course the humming circle and 'we can talk about this" circle. Hand-holding is a huge part of their various rituals.
I like this little moments when Bharadwaj resting on Gurathin's legs. They aren't cagey about with physical contact between a man and woman like our real world, heteronormative society. We can see the team show the same degree physical closeness with anyone regardless of their gender. Most characters from the show are presumably bi so really there's no point for them to be conform to the toxic hetero ways
More examples of how man and woman member of the team are comfortable with touching each other:
This scene with Ratthi touching Gurathin's face and call him Gugu, It's played for laugh somewhat but we can surmise that physical affection between men is also quite normalized.
Even if Gurathin is not totally comfortable he didn't react that strongly to it. so I'd guess because he's new to the culture and still getting used to the overt affectionate physical contact.
You know how married people tend to avoid being physically affectionate with other people? especially in front of their spouse? We don't really see that avoidance here with Pin-Lee and Arada. It's never an issue, Arada can comfort Bharadwaj, holding her just as close as she does with Pin-Lee.
On another note, even if later we found out Arada already knew Bharadwaj had romantic feelings for Pin-Lee at one point, never was there an issue between them. I don’t think it’s an oversight in the story, it reflects their different perspective on love. Unrequited love or the complications that come with it, isn’t treated as something devastating or friendship-breaking. I’d guess that a big part of this comes from polyamory being commonplace. Love isn’t approached with the same possessiveness or jealousy in our monogamous culture.
There's something about the way they hold each other it's almost child-like. Also I notice they tend to shield each other during scary moments. I thought that was very sweet and it shows that they genuinely feel protective for one and other.
- The Dance Scene
This dance scene was what first inspired me to write this. It’s a visual expression of their free-spirited nature. The dancing is uninhibited, almost primal, with everyone have their own style of dances. It’s not choreographed, it's chaotic, full of big, unstructured movements as they roam freely through the space. You can see Mensah and Bharadwaj respond to each other's dance move, and Arada is rubbing up against Pin-Lee at one point.
Interestingly, Gurathin is the odd man out he dances like an accountant at an office Christmas party Small, stiff movements and stationary, standing just outside of the circle. Which make sense for someone who's relatively new to the culture.
This is silly in Murderbot's POV but none of the members are embarrassed about of it. It’s just part of their culture, a culture that doesn’t restrict one's body language, and accept it as a form of self-expression.
As we know, Murderbot hates physical contact and usually limits its movement to just two things: standing completely still or fighting. This stark contrast in movement makes their dynamic really fun to watch.
- Preservation Alliance vs Corporation Rim
I think Presaux is a beautiful depiction of how people from a utopian society would behave. They support one another and feel free to express that physically, existing as an egalitarian society that has moved past many of the hang-ups we struggle with in the real world. They’re not portrayed as perfect paragons of virtue, we see them bicker, act condescending at times, and show moments of naivety and irrationality but their care for each other is undeniable.
In contrast, Corporation Rim is portrayed as a cold, inhumane dystopia. It’s a place where sentient robots are treated as property, brutal oppression of workers is common, and people are bound by long indentures with absurd restrictions on personal freedom.
Characters like Lebeebee and the Graycris group are molded by Corporation Rim’s inhumane condition, becoming cruel, greedy and self-serving. In Episode 9, the Graycris group ends up turning on each other, killing their own teammates to save themselves. It's something we’ve seen time and again that Presaux would never do.
Presaux stands in stark contrast. They might not be the sharpest tool in the galaxy, but in this deeply human and supportive environment, Murderbot is able to truly emancipate itself, returning a hug, initiating its own physical connection for the first time.
Chekhov’s rule of the hot warrior boi is that if hot warrior boi is mentioned in one chapter, he must appear in the next. Probably drunk and topless, in this case.
As much as I enjoyed the slightly more gradual buildup to the PresAux crew and Murderbot actually trusting each other in the show, I hope that when Season 2 drops they don’t keep the energy for ART.
ART and Murderbot’s friendship is built on them speedrunning the weirdest fucking relationship stages you can imagine. You can’t make their development slower. I need to see ART going “I know we’ve known each other for a week but you should let me perform surgery on you :)”
I do want to see them representing ART pretending to be a bot pilot while watching Worldhoppers over SecUnit's shoulder because that all happens in digital space and not in the physical 3D world.
Also I imagine ART eating popcorn. Don't know why. Doesn't have a mouth. Still eating popcorn.
I'm supposed to be 1. researching an academic book chapter about performance and magical rituals; 2. working on proposals for postdoctoral fellowships.
I am in fact 1. writing fiction; 2. watching videos of people ranting about bad romantasy.
Also it never ceases to frustrate me that I cannot do the whole plotting in advance thing. Oh so it turns out that in fact the terrifying antagonistic society didn't just show up with guns one day but had a whole plan involving installing ultra-conservative priests to control the area's people before they came in and colonised on the hunt for a long-lost magical super weapon?
Didn't think of that until 31k words in. It seems obvious now, but did I think of it? No, I did not. I am ashamed. (Add in here a whole bunch of other things about precisely monitoring background magical radiation effects and deadly artefacts and the constant feeling that I'm the passenger in this car me and this fantasy world is the one driving.)
Reminder to self: you tell the story to yourself the first time around. You tell it to everyone else in the following 800 drafts you have to write to correct it all.
I'm two days into exploring performance theory (originally developed by Richard Schechner as A Thing but floating about in the world for much longer than that) for a book chapter on applying it to magical rituals.
Now I'm wondering about whether there's a way of developing it into something about Murderbot Diaries, especially the way the TV version developed the Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon (and that other show) as a means of frame narrative but dramatic performance of what Murderbot is experiencing emotionally.
The story so far: I'm starting with Schechner's article on the early 20th century Cambridge anthropologists, who decided that all Ancient Greek tragedy and comedy were productions of an ancient primal ritual. Schechner argues that they crowbarred their idea of a "primal ritual" of death and rebirth into places where it didn't exist.
He's going to go on to develop ideas about how performance, ritual, objects, people, and a host of other things interact with each other. It might be a good way of thinking about how the Murderbot TV show uses the relationship between the Captain and Navbot as a way to mirror but also reveal SecUnit's fears about his developing attachment to Mensah.
ALSO I discovered the theorist Erving Goffman, who wrote at length on the "presentation of the self". I've ordered the book so I can dig in deeper. I mentioned it in the catalogue essay I finished last month. It's all about how we perform different identities and might provide a basis for thinking about how SecUnit performs his expected role while hiding his true self.
(I have a whole thing I'd like to do about the nature of SecUnit's capacity to download and store entertainment as a kind of "space" where the performances take place for it and then it and ART when they watch stuff together but that's very esoteric and academic.)
Oh moment: I was asked what the hardest thing about being autistic is right now.
I said it’s meeting neurotypical needs for particular kinds of communication/behaviour etc and I know that’s masking but expressing it as “meeting THEIR needs all the time” really nailed home how unbalanced it all is.
And hard and upsetting. Especially when they complain about meeting YOUR needs every now and again.
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