Intentional Dissonance (3 page)

A plane flies overhead and inside it is a writer who has spent most of his life as a law clerk, even though he’s always known deep down that he’s a writer. For the first time, he’s worked out what he wants to write, what the truth really is. He begs a napkin and a pen off the air hostess and he writes down the most beautiful sentence ever written, as the engine catches fire outside and the plane starts its plummet to the ground. It doesn’t matter to him. It’s the only sentence he’s ever written and it is the last and no part of him cares. The sentence falls through the air with singed, black edges and comes to rest in a tree, in a park, miles away. One day, around ten years from now, an old widow of an astronaut will find it when a strong breeze finally blows it from its hiding place. She will read it and she will weep.

The kitchen is covered in plants and Jon’s father patiently trims a bonsai. Jon’s friend, James once said that his father had green fingers and that made Jon spend a lot of time when he was younger trying to imagine what that meant. Outside, the oak tree where Jon’s old swing still hung breathed slowly back into the world, leaning backwards and forwards into the early evening air. The oak tree had been Jon’s best friend when he was younger. He was always climbing, turning its fallen branches into swords and spending time beneath its shade, reading.

Jon’s father has tried to get him to learn maths. He’s tried so hard. Jon sometimes thinks he’s adopted, just every now and again, because surely if his father is good at maths, shouldn’t he be good at maths too? Isn’t that how genetics worked? Don’t you get the same abilities, the same talents that your parents have? Apparently not. Jon’s father, Peter Salt, is working on the cutting edge of human technology: teleportation; genetic transformation; white/black hole looping; things that shouldn’t be invented but are in the process of happening, in the process of becoming real, everyday things. There’s a lot of work meetings that leave his father with his head in his hands and when anyone asks what’s wrong, he always tells them the same thing: he’s not allowed to say. Jon is not going to get the same job as his father. He knows that. Jon likes to pretend he doesn’t care that he’s ridiculously bad at all these things but it gets to him and, he does actually care. His father patiently sits with him at the old wooden table in the living room, repeating the numbers over and over again, repeating the ways and mechanics that made the numbers turn into other numbers, hoping they somehow, in some way, start to make sense. The words make sense to Jon, their letters hover in the air to make beautiful patterns, like “S-e-7-e-n” but the numbers never do. The numbers are just words. He doesn’t understand. He’d once tried to replace parts of the words with numb3r5 8ut th4t d1dn’t accomplish anything beyond making him more confused and really, really upsetting his maths teacher.

It makes him feel alien. Sometimes, he aches and gets angry and that core of ache and anger builds on itself again and again until he’s a walking ball of ache. Maybe other children see this in him because they can see these things easier and aren’t afraid to say something about it. Or at least, haven’t been taught yet to ignore it and move past it.

Right now, Jon has a distant look on his face. The kind you can read from a few steps away. Something about his posture or the way he moves things around the table or the way he doesn’t really answer questions. A machine that could be a microwave
bings
and Jon’s father leaves the bonsai, walks over to the microwave and takes out a steaming bowl.

“Try this,” says Jon’s dad and he gives him a bowl of what looks like melted, grey cheese. He has a crop of blonde, turning grey hair. Jon stabs some with his fork, puts it in his mouth and immediately spits it out.

“It tastes like rotting fish,” says Jon, still spitting.

“Whoops. It’s supposed to taste like fresh fish.”

“What is it?”

“We’re trying to recreate food using different kinds of algae. With the right combination, in the future, we might be able to recreate any kind of taste and any kind of texture.”

“That’s exciting,” says Jon but he doesn’t mean it.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing.”

“You can’t bullshit a bullshitter and your old man’s a bullshitter, Jon. What’s wrong?”

“I got kicked out of the band,” says Jon under his breath.

“Why?”

Jon doesn’t immediately respond.

“They said I suck as guitarist,” says Jon, “but they’re the ones that suck.”

“Do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Do you suck?”

“A real dad wouldn’t ask that question.”

“You don’t have a real dad, there’s just me, the unreal dad.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe what?”

“Jesus, maybe I suck as a guitarist, ok? Are you trying to make me emo?”

“I don’t know what that last word you used means and something tells me I don’t really care to know.”

“That’s because you hate me.”

“Yeah, that’s why I bought you that guitar in the first place, because I hate you so much. How many times this week have you practiced?” asks Jon’s dad.

Jon shrugs and turns away from his father.

“Jon, pay attention for once: people become the things they want to. If you really wanted to be a guitar player, you’d start by just wanting to play the guitar. And if you want to play the guitar, you’ll play every day because that’s what you enjoy. That’s what you’d want to do. Are you sure you don’t just want to be famous? Do you want to be a rock star?”

“I don’t know,” says Jon, “Maybe. So what?”

“Well, then that’s not wanting to play the guitar. People become what they want to become. Dancers, dance. Writers, write. Famous guitarists are famous because they’re very good at playing guitar and they’re very good because they play every day and they play every day because they love to play the guitar. People who just want to be famous, just spend their lives wanting to become famous. Or actors maybe. You won’t become anything you don’t actually want to become,” says Jon’s dad and he puts his hand on his son’s shoulder.

Jon nods slowly.

“I’m not trying to make you feel better. We hate each other remember? You’re going to be a man soon and I want you to understand how life works. If you want a hug and the words, ‘It’s all going to be ok,’ go and watch a movie. Life isn’t a movie. Life is real,” says Jon’s dad and Jon gives him a hug because he loves him.

Jon turns around slowly and starts walking out the room, now lost in his head, trying to work out if he just wants to be famous or learn to play the guitar.

“Go to sleep,” calls Jon’s dad after him and despite everything, you know that he loves his son, so much.

Later, Jon is lying in his bed, trying to sleep. The walls are filled with posters of superheroes and he thinks it’d be easier to be one of them right now. His favourite poster, from
The Black Kracken
, takes pride of place in the centre of the wall. His dad had once asked him what made it so special and Jon had tried to explain about the mystical pirate ship, about the crew of one-eyed space pirates that floated through space on it protecting each other and the universe from behind their black cloth masks that hid their faces. They never spoke. They only communicated with each other and the outside world by writing. Something about them made them special to Jon and it was the one comic that his father had ever bothered discussing with him. The rest were just filled with monsters. Monsters. You can fight a monster. You can’t fight maths.

He has a HUGE maths test tomorrow that he didn’t even tell his father about and now, there’s nothing he can do about studying for it. Going to bed early makes more sense to him than staying up and studying. He finds studying hard. It’s hard to think about the same thing for too long. His brain flitters back and forth over things like a desperate moth. He spends a lot of time inside his head; it’s a beautiful place. He’s never had a fear of missing out, just a fear of joining in. This makes him bad at some things and good at other things. He’s staring at the ceiling and the light from the hallway coming in the gap between the door and the frame is like a lance made of pure light, keeping the darkness at bay. That’s what he told himself when he was really small; it’s a lance made of liquid fire and if anything truly bad, truly monstrous ever comes in here or appears out of the ground or breaks through the ceiling or however monsters enter a room, he’ll just reach out and somehow that lance of pure white light will be real and he’ll take it and drive it straight through the monster and kill it with light.

Jon is getting closer to sleep now. Random thoughts are flooding through his head, words and numbers, pictures and places, and he jumps through them like an acrobat slowly arcing between giant cinema screens. Those screens are slowing down now and Jon is approaching a dream; it’s probably going to be about being unprepared for school. At the edge of consciousness, he’s called back by something.

Nothing.

He starts drifting back to sleep, then he hears it again. There’s a noise in the dark. Someone or something is knocking softly on his bedroom window.

Chapter 3

Now

Somewhere in the distance, an algae farm is wrapping up for the day and the workers are retreating to their tiny sleeping and living cubicles where most will sell their dreams to the last corporations left on Earth, looking for fresh research and innovative new ideas for exciting new product lines, which will then be sold back to the remains of the world. A woman with silvery brown hair falls asleep as soon as her head hits the pillow, her dreams no longer her own.

Meanwhile, somewhere else, Jon worries that she’s felt too much and maybe now there’s nothing left to feel. He worries that he might run out of things to give her to feel but he tells himself that every day, he will have enough to give and she will have something for him in return when he gives it; a smile, even a slight curve of the lip was more than enough. He discovered that night, now so long ago, after an entire childhood of feeling like something was missing, that she was all he’d ever wanted, her and that slight curve of her lip. And so Jon takes the steam train, the last real public transport available, home to Michelle.

His father used to take him on the train, a normal electric one, as a treat and this experience, the sound of the tracks, the gentle sway from side to side and the world rushing by, rhythmically, in bursts of houses and bursts of nothing, makes Jon think about him. It’s something he instantly regrets as he makes eye contact with someone else, an old man, maybe homeless, on the other side of the steam train. He always worries that people can feel what he’s feeling if he makes eye contact with them while he’s feeling it.

How could something that affected you so intensely be a private experience? Surely the people around you could pick up on the soft water in your eyes, the moment of strain passing like a shadow across your face.

He’d decided long ago, he didn’t want anyone else inside him but him. Especially not anyone from this leftover hell. He’d heard someone say that there were pigeons at the zoo. He’d like to take Michelle and go and see them. No one has seen one in years. It’s just the crows now; the only real bird population to speak of. And the crows are everywhere, circling like black clouds before a storm. The train passes ruin after ruin of what were once suburbs and shops, now burnt out empty shells, covered with graffiti and with broken windows that made the buildings look like they were weeping for what once was. An overpass has the words: ‘Beware: Here be shadows.’ like an epitaph scrawled across it in blood red paint. It tells him that he’s approaching his station.

He gets off at the station and walks the few hundred feet to their apartment, swipes his arm in front of the sensor at the main door, steps over the sleeping street kids and climbs the five flights of stairs to their apartment. He unlocks the door as quietly as he can; she’s sleeping. He gets into bed with Michelle. It’s just a mattress on a floor but it’s their mattress on the floor. Everything’s a mess here. It contrasts starkly with the clichéd chrome and glass design of the apartment. White walls and sharp corners. If you burnt everything in the room except the carpet and the walls, you could’ve shot the interior for some glossy, old-fashioned design magazine and people would think to themselves: “One day, I want to own nothing and live there, in that clean white space.”

His clothes are strewn across the floor. Some have just been to the laundry and some haven’t and he really doesn’t care. There are one or two plates lying around and numerous bills and forms and other previously useless pieces of paper now have Lacrymatory vials lying on them, serving the perverse purpose of helping Jon keep track of which vials still have something in them. Michelle never seems to care. He loves her as much as he did the night he first met her at the park. She has crystal blue eyes and he remembers being told that everyone with blue eyes was once infected by a plague and that disturbance in their genetics gave them blue eyes. He wonders if everyone with blue eyes has a common sense of loss, somewhere in the back of their soul, not ever quite knowing what it is but knowing that they once suffered and now would always be marked for it. Jon places his hand softly on her back, just trying to touch the soft, almost invisible hair, not her skin. She reminds him of every good day he’s ever had. Every summer spent in fields of grass. Every sunrise. Every sunset. She tastes like dew and smells like light. And when she speaks, it’s like someone slowly plucking the strings of a guitar, a sadly beautiful song starting to play, all his own. And he loves her. He loves her like he can never grab enough of her between his fingers. And no matter how close he gets, even when they make love, it never feels close enough, like her flesh and her bones keep something sacred in them, hidden from him.