Basal Ganglia (11 page)

Rollo steps out of the Occipital Chamber, determined to communicate the enormity of his doubt with Ingrid. Seeking out a place beyond conflict where the potential for communication might exist. In the time since the concept of the baby, Rollo has learned to hate Ingrid. Despising her for stepping away from the routine and introducing new beginnings. Before this hate, he considers what existed between the two of them, understanding it to be simple absence. Rollo cannot escape the sense that at one point the two of them were close. Potentially one. Coiled around the foundations of each other. Driven forward by the same heart. Something occurred that triggered a separation, dividing their shared whole like cells lost in mitosis. Poorly rendered facsimiles of a dynamic that suffocated itself out of existence. If he can place his words in the right order when speaking to Ingrid, he may be able to bypass the countless layers of hatred they feel. This is not about a baby. The baby is counterfeit. Ingrid’s attachment to the baby is counterfeit. Rollo’s attachment to the fort is counterfeit. The only attachment not lacking an essential core of truth
may
have been the one Rollo and Ingrid had for each other.

Each step Rollo takes toward Ingrid, wherever she may be, feels labored, as though the air is composed differently. His airways are beginning to swell and it feels like fur is breaking through the surface of his lungs. His tongue burns with a foreign taste. His stomach convulses, searching for food to cast out and finds nothing. Particles of pink glow dance above him like dead insects floating without purpose to the ground below. Filling the fort’s dim with a new hue, beautiful in its quietly ominous way.

Rollo manages the barest smile as an artificial version of pre-sleep weakens each limb. His eyelids join in slow motion blinks, unable to continue. Ingrid has activated the security system in the Central Sulcus Tunnel and Rollo has fallen its victim. His smile finds fuller form as an unnatural sleep steals him.

14.

Ingrid fails to understand the benefits of doing so, but she ties up Rollo’s unconscious bulk. The knots consist of hurried entanglements that appear complex, but threaten to unravel without difficulty. Until now, Ingrid’s concern has been occupied with incapacitating Rollo. A singular outcome easily assimilated. With that task completed, the more problematic component of her dilemma shifts into focus. What now? Enclosed as they are in the fort, where does one seek genuine refuge? The fort itself was conceived as refuge, but now represents anything but. A deeper refuge is required. One that protects the baby by separating Ingrid from Rollo.

Without the presence of life, Rollo appears benign. Pathetic. Utterly inessential. Ingrid wonders where his newfound ability to terrify her resides in this mass of warm flesh. What does a person possess that makes them anything? Perhaps as an excuse to avoid the futility of her plan, she considers Rollo might not be so dangerous after all. Whatever it was that brought the two together cannot have appeared dangerous. A time must have existed wherein the two felt safe together. Safe enough to occupy the fort without the need of another. Ingrid once found comfort in this man.

She picks up her baby, carefully holding it before her, staring into its eyes, determined to do right. Its head tilts to one side, as if lost in confusion. Ingrid tilts her head to match.

“What would you do if you were me?” she says to her baby.

It maintains its frozen confusion, as if Ingrid had said nothing.

“Is this someone you want to know?”

She turns around so Rollo’s tied form sits in the baby’s line of sight. It shows no sign of comprehension.

“If it were up to me, I would keep him away from you. I love you too much to see you get hurt. I am not saying this man would hurt you, but I am not sure he would not.”

Ingrid longs to see something inside the baby that responds to her love. Her life has forgotten what it means to feel loved. Ingrid has so much love within her. It pushes at her seams, begging for release. A bucket in which to fill. It sometimes feels as though her body may buckle beneath the enormity of her unexpressed love. It is love she cannot simply give away. It must be felt and returned. Unreturned love is quick to find hate. Hate is easily returned. Often in greater abundance than it was given.

She shakes the baby ever so gently.

“I wish you would do something,” she says. “I love you so much. I want to be so good to you.”

More strength is directed toward shaking her baby. Its head tilts from side-to-side, but still betrays nothing.

“Do something,” she repeats, giving her voice more volume. “If you want your father to be a part of you, just tell me. Smile. Blink. Anything. I do not want to prevent you from what you want.”

The baby remains steadfast in its lifelessness. Tears bead at the edge of Ingrid’s eyes, gaining weight and falling. If the baby could find love for Rollo, it would allow Ingrid to indulge her own.

“I just want you to love me,” she whispers, afraid that Rollo will somehow hear.

Still. Nothing. Ingrid is left with her own frayed perception. With legs crossed, she places the baby on her lap and watches Rollo. His stillness is a lie. When Ingrid trains her vision on specific locales of his bodily environment, there is nothing still. Even while unconscious, Rollo is an ecosystem hosting a complex array of life.

Eyelids:

Engage in spasmodic flutters as though fending off light from invisible suns. Light that perhaps Rollo recalls from a past that may not have been.

Nostrils:

Flare as though locked in combat with oxygen, forcing it inside, altering its structure and expelling it as something else. Something damaged and wrong.

Chest:

Rises and falls in slow patterns sending ghosts of movement down each limb. Fed by the nostrils. Connected to breathing mechanisms. Destroying the oxygen. Casting it off. Commanding more.

Skin:

Finds goose bumps within and invites them to the surface. Arrectores pilorum squeezing and engorging each hair. Rollo’s unconscious performs a childhood song that never asked to be forgotten. Not invented by his mother, but made important via her translation and sung to Rollo prior to bed on the nights she understood happiness.

Nipples:

Leak the newly discovered colostrum. Blue-hued nutrient wasted to the ground. Runnels joining a pool beneath Rollo’s body. Absorbed in part by the skin.

Mouth:

Used by the sleep sounds to articulate something dancing inside. Useless noise detached from communication.

Ingrid:

Squeezing into the anti-baby on her lap with jealous fingers. Wishing to capture the constant signs of Rollo’s life and feed it to her attempted offspring.

Rollo plays his life like a detuned instrument Ingrid does not want to hear. Even in sleep it seems he mocks her child. Parading what it means to feel life in the presence of one who cannot. The fort creaks and wheezes from somewhere above, becoming another thing that seems more alive than her child. Always engaged in a hidden process. A programmed action. Something at some point designed by them.

“We will get through this,” she whispers to her baby. “Do not pay any attention to him. You do not need to be what he is. You are alive in your own special way. A way you will reveal to me when you are ready. I will look after you. I will look after you.”

Ingrid stares at the walls, understanding that within them exists unexplored space. A hidden world within their hidden world. A world divorced from Rollo. Divorced from them. A place Ingrid can start anew with her baby. This unexplored space offers an opportunity to feel safety.

It is unknown how long Rollo will remain unconscious, so Ingrid feels compelled to act. Within the self-imposed limitations, she has a course of action that promises a way forward. She pushes the baby once more into the smooth of her stomach and edges toward Rollo. The tip of her tongue coats her lips with wetness before slipping back into the safety of the mouth. Ingrid shivers under the weight of this unfolding moment. Her lips find Rollo’s forehead. Their proximities, for one moment, merge into a single occupation of luxuriant space. Rollo’s skin feels warm, and transfers a film of sweat to Ingrid’s lips, which her tongue cannot help but taste. It is the sweat of fever dreams and reconstituting mental architecture. Sweat manufactured within the deepest heart of his heart. Sweat Ingrid feels like a thief for tasting.

She moves her lips to Rollo’s ear canal and directs a whisper that tickles his cilia.

“I do not think I can kill the part of me that loves you, but I promise I will never stop trying. Please do not look for us. Let the baby and I be what we need to be.”

Ingrid’s mouth closes before she has a chance to whisper ‘goodbye.’ It is not a word she feels she can live up to. ‘Goodbye’ is the most dishonest word language has conjured. It is a muscle we flex to intimidate and impress. A word without flesh. Goodbye is simply a word preceding hello. To truly leave another, one must never seek contact again. Only death is goodbye.

Ingrid leaves Rollo alone in the Parietal Chamber, refusing to look back, as though such an action will trigger a series of events antithetical to everything she needs to feel. She scales the Medulla Shaft until she stands at its base, the vibration of waste management below. The baby is tucked into the waist of her skirt, enabling both hands to perform the next task.

She searches for edges on the blankets comprising the walls. When an edge is found, it is carefully peeled back, until the next layer reveals itself. The process continues, Ingrid’s hands uncovering layer after layer, each movement careful in the hope it can be reversed, masking Ingrid’s entry into the walls.

Persistence finds the point where blankets end and hollow space begins. Grey light exists within this hollow space and Ingrid crawls toward it, trying not to wonder where the light is coming from. It is because things are, and that is enough for Ingrid.

The blankets are easier to peel away than set back in place. Forcing them back into position requires Ingrid’s hands to exhibit great care and patience. Layer by layer her entry point disappears until there is no entry point. Signs of the wall’s disruption, however minute, will be visible to Rollo. Ingrid does not imagine any effort to hide from Rollo could truly prevent him from finding her should it be what he desires, but why would anyone desire something that avoids them with such commitment?

…

Two gears become transmission when working together. Each gear wearing cogs around the circumference that mesh together when engaged in their purpose. Each cog forms a relationship during each rotation. The repetition of these brief relationships is the totality of that function. The cogs enable the gears to continue their rotation, feeding their transmission into another mechanism. While the machine is alive, the sequence of mechanisms within the machine understand only their own totality, unaware they are enabling another function separate to them. This fandango of function is unaware of the dance it performs. These functions are organs in the machine’s body, keeping it alive. A gear that does not rotate is a gear occupying useless space. A gear wants nothing but to rotate.

…

Ingrid beholds the towering skeletons of dead machinery climbing the space within the fort’s walls. Browning steel interlocked in stasis. Fossils of function. Archaeological remnants of former lives. The scope of the mechanical construction fixes Ingrid in place, commanding her attention away from the baby and into the world of its overwhelming detail. Everything is connected to what precedes it, advancing beyond Ingrid’s line of sight, suggesting an endless parade of forgotten process.

Ingrid moves through the space, taking in new components of the machine. Its stillness disquiets her. In this stillness there is anger. The desire to scream with life. To feel the dirt and pain of work. The drive to exist as anything but unused and forgotten. Whether this is a feeling fed by the machine or projected by Ingrid, it is one she feels an affinity with.

Ingrid is aware everything before her is something, in part, built by her. Together with Rollo, each component in this machine was set in place with a purpose. A forgotten plan. Her brain fires memory requests, each one returned unfilled. Beyond all else, Ingrid is drawn toward waking the machinery. Whatever mechanism is set in place to power this steel sculpture is as lost to her memory as its existence.

She approaches a gear that matches her height and places her foot on one of its cogs. Above the gear is another, which is attached to another and another. She starts to ascend the steel, feeling the harshness of its surface against her skin. The machine is scaled without understood purpose. Finding the next foothold is process enough to fuel her momentum.

The machine draws her in, introducing a world within the world she thought she knew. There is majesty in its construction contradicting the callow assemblage of the pillow world. As though the world of blankets and pillows are a façade concealing the importance of whatever this inner world means.

In the continued exploration of this steel environment, Ingrid’s attention leaves the baby. It sits unconsidered against her stomach, absorbed into her anatomy. Like an organ one only comprehends when it falters and upsets the body’s operation. The area within her thought process dedicated to the baby has fallen asleep. The area concerned with Rollo’s pursuit has done the same. There is only the operation of the machine.

Devices with the appearance of levers are pulled, but refuse to understand what Ingrid hopes of them. A crank is turned, but meets resistance before it can complete a single rotation. It seems somewhere within the belly of this rusted structure must exist something willing to experience life. All things reach toward their purpose and a machine should be no different.