Index – Chapters
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
The silence purred like the slumber of a great fanged beast. The distant chorus of automobiles and the warbled voice of an air-conditioner sang tunelessly into the dark. Below, one dying lightpost among a half-dozen others cast it’s pale orange glow onto the slick black surface of a Telsa, parked idly in the dropoff area. In the failing light, the parking lot shone. A giant’s insect-board with push-pin lights to show off the specimens. But this giant hadn’t been keeping up with the maintenance. This new entry, the black Tesla, must have reinvigorated his love for the hobby. It shone. It was out of place among the dusty and grime-covered shells on display in the rest of the lot. Four floors above, behind the wrought-iron banister of an unlit balcony, a young woman sat perched on a white-plastic lawn chair, peering below.
The woman surveyed the lot. It’s sandy and grey corners laid bare beneath the artificial glow. The cars were functional at the cost of aesthetic. Many had missmatched patches where damage had been repaired. Several had unknowable junk piled in the back seats. Some were missing their windows, with screens of packing-tape as replacement. None held any valuables, even spare change, she was sure of it. If you just left things in your car overnight, or even for a moment, you were basically asking for whatever happened next. Thankfully, she didn’t own a car, so that never worried her. Then a strange thought crossed the woman’s mind. She recalled reading about something called the panopticon. It was a cylinder, multiple stories of prison cells, each with one wall open and sharing line of sight with an illuminated center: the guards tower. She imagined that the bars of her balcony were the bars of a prison cell, and she gazed down at that place of illumination in the center. The thought amused her, but something felt off. Wasn’t the purpose of such a thing to ensure the prisoners could be seen by the guards at all times? Surely, she should be bathed in the glow, and the guards cloaked in shadow. Just then, there was a sound below as the door of the Telsa opened.
As the gap in that slick black carapace widened, the fleshy innards began to spill forth. They came armed with a branded Uber Eats bag. The woman’s eye tracked the progress of the squat man as he shuffled toward the entrance lobby of building B, right below her. He walked as if unused to bending his legs, and hunched with the weight of a distended torso. She saw the top of his head was missing most of it’s hair. As the man vanished into the lobby of her building, the woman’s gaze lingered on the pale concrete where he had been. No longer obscured by human form, that distant surface seemed to grow larger. Her sight magnified, and she could make out the tiny shadows cast by chunks of gravel lying on the sidewalk. It was as if her head was pressed to the ground itself, and just as the thought entered her mind the ground began to rush toward her. A wall of water crashing into the cliffs. A wall of cliffs crashing into the ocean. She recoiled, squeezing her eyes shut and flinching back from the edge of that tiny urban cell. An exasperated scoff came from the other side of her cramped balcony. As her breathing began to steady, the scoff turned into speech.
“Well, have you made up your mind or not?” An annoyed voice came from the other chair on the balcony. A man sat there, his face illuminated in the pale glow of an idly held phone screen. He leaned forward to look accusingly at the woman. His name was Mark Asred. He was tall and handsome, with broad shoulders. Ariel felt a warmth in her belly when she remembered his arms around her, but when she looked into his permanently-scowling face, the feeling turned sour. She began to reply. “Mark, uh...” The man gave her a look of pointed expectation. “I-I.. I just don’t think I can do it. It’s too... sudden? It just doesn’t feel right, you know?” She stole a wistful glance back out at the city before adding in a rush: “Do you ever think back over your life and wonder what it was all for? All the things you did and didn’t do, all the decisions you made, and all the ones you didn’t, what makes it all meaningful?”
Mark blinked, then spoke without much of a pause. “No Ariel, I haven’t. Honestly, I’m too busy for useless thoughts. It’s been over six months, and we talked about how this is a line for me. If you can’t move in, just say you don’t trust me and I can move on.”
Ariel frowned. “Well... I do trust you... but... I just think there’s something missing.”
A sombre look, a face in shadow. “I’m not giving you something, is that what you’re saying? I haven’t made my million yet, but if you can’t handle grinding it out with me until I get there, then you just aren’t my girl.”
Ariel heaved a sigh, suddenly feeling a weight in her shoulders. “Mark. I’m happy that you have a dream. I wish I could share it, I really do, but there’s something stopping me. I don’t know when it changed, but I can’t find the meaning in it anymore. When we first met, I felt your passion brightened my life, I wanted to fight for you, with you. Then, I guess I looked away and now it’s gone. If I try to stick it out I’ll just be lying to you and myself, and what if I can’t find the meaning again? How long can I live a lie, digging the hole deeper with each passing day? I... I just think this is something I need to focus on. By myself.”
Mark looked at the gritty concrete floor for a moment, then he said “So it’s over?”
“Yes. I’m sorry, goodbye Mark.”
He tutted. Shoving his phone in his pocket and standing. He stretched, gazing into the night sky as the stars began to appear. “Feels like I only waste time these days.” He said quietly, almost too softly for Ariel to hear, before turning and walking into the apartment. Ariel heard the front door close, and some moments later she saw Mark’s car driving along the nearby road toward the bridge across the river. Ariel watched for some time. She knew that bridge, it’s central pole held aloft by a fan of metal cables spread forth like the fibrous wings of some huge bird. She walked across it on her journey to the lab, a trip she would make on Monday. On that journey, she would pass through the centre of the city, an experience of it in microcosm.
The city. The woman hadn’t yet been there for a year, but she already felt like she had known it for most of her life. The city reminded her of her aunt Helen, who died when she was young. She only had vague memories of smoke-filled rooms, the TV blaring from upstairs, and spending the pocket money gifted by the varicose woman on sweets at the seven eleven down the block. She had moved to the city in the winter to take a research position in her field of medical bio-science. So far, it felt like she was still waiting for that aunt to come out of the shower and take her and her brother home. She often wondered when that feeling would change. Lately, she wondered if it ever would. When she first arrived it was a bitter winter, and the city seemed frozen in time. As the weather warmed a strange energy seemed to creep from the covered corners and obscure places, suffusing the city with a vital force. The plants grew jungle-thick alongside the swollen river; browns and greens of wooded stem and leafy frond; the shocks of purple and red wildflowers; the flourish of blues, oranges and greys from the tents of the homeless. Colour burst forth from those fertile soils at the meeting of water and earth. On higher ground, the insectoid buzz of machines rang constantly in the daytime as the dozens of construction crews flitted between the countless squares of orange cones and red tape: roads which needed holes filled, surfaces up-heaved, and asphalt repaved. Once in a while, a strange pulsing rang out along the river, music from outdoor concerts held within the secrecy of the trees, and every other week seemed to have a fireworks show – adding popping sounds to the nights ambience.
Ariel traced the path of her walking journey in her mind. She would travel along the streets of the neighbourhood she lived in, filled with squat quaint houses and a huge old cathedral. Then she would pass the hospital and take the footpath to the bridge. Across the bridge she would follow the river until she turned into the city. The city stood, looming over the riverbank with monoliths of concrete, glass, and steel erected in honour of those distant yet ever present Gods of money and society. Downtown was covered in a layer of thick grime, it seemed to seep from the riverbed and spread through the low places – drying to a crust in the heat of the sun. The browns and greens replaced by the greys and beige like bleached bone, sand, and stone. Then again, Ariel thought to herself, those office buildings, train stations, banks, and malls held their own kind of vibrant energy. The people walked in crowds, blurring the distinction of dress and grooming which marked businessmen from destitute. A constant chorus of voices through the industrial stink and vehicular din. A coordinated chaos flowed in and out of street corners and building entrances. Yet Ariel’s walk to the lab would take her further still. Past the downtown core, that apex of the cities vitality, the landscape would change again. Just as downtown had choked and dried the fertile riverside, replacing it’s vegetation with growths of buildings and roads, something beyond downtown seemed to wither away at the city itself. The buildings shrank, slumped, and grew dishevelled. The frenetic energy of the city core vanished here, leaving the skeletons of boarded windows and abandoned lots. The people changed too – walking quickly and sharing only animal glances. None of the downtown’s distinct uniforms of poverty or wealth remained. Past downtown, that flow of bodies shrank to a trickle, and they became united in appearance. The people looked hard worn, used, and tired. A question appeared in Ariel’s mind, and she lingered as if gazing at it. “If the city starved the riverbank, what was starving the city?”
There was shouting from the parking lot. The sound of human voices drew Ariel back to awareness. She was not sure how long she had been sitting there. Near the back of the lot, where the cracked concrete faded into overgrown grass, lay a huge opening that probably should have been fenced off but was not. A shirtless man stood there, knee-deep in the grass. He had grey unwashed hair and a stooping countenance, and he shouted something at a parked car near the end of the lot. The voice was distant and wordless, a strange animal yowl drifting on the wind. Ariel could hear something pathetic in that sound, like a child’s drawn-out whine. The driver’s side door of the parked car opened, and a man in red track-pants and sweatshirt with the hood up climbed out. He began shouting back at the man, and making wide gestures with his arms. His voice came as a bark, like a large dog behind some neighbourhood fence. It carried the sound of violence. Sudden tears sprung into Ariel’s eyes. She turned back toward her apartment and went in, shutting the door behind her.
Now alone inside her apartment, the waves of emotion welled up and crashed into Ariel. She cried. In a few moments, she picked up her phone and called Sarah. The woman picked up immediately.
“Of course you did! Don’t doubt yourself now, you’re already through the hardest part! He’s a bastard, I always had a feeling. Only eyes for the money, that’s right, he’ll never find what he wants like that. You deserve better. Think about it! In ten years...”
Ariel tried to speak several times, but was bowled over by Sarah’s barrage. She found herself wondering if it there was any point listening to this. It was all a bunch of platitudes, after all. She was sure if she googled “things to say to a friend who just had a breakup” she could probably find ninety percent of Sarah’s monologue in there. A feeling of disgust flashed in Ariel’s mind, and she reached toward the hang-up button on the phone. She paused. In that hesitation, the feeling vanished, and her awareness returned to Sarah’s proclamations: they became familiar, comforting. That familiarity amused Ariel, and she began to think that Sarah conveyed her feelings more through the intensity of her words than any specific choice of them. Ariel couldn’t help but smile a little. When she finally got a word in edge-ways, it was to thank her friend. After some minutes the conversation returned to more even ground.
“So he really said that? I can’t believe it.”
“Yep, ‘too busy for useless thoughts’, verbatim.”
“Incredible, that’s really incredible Ariel. There are people out there who never bother to ask why, you know? They just live day-by-day, dealing with whatever problems show up. Mechanical. That kind of living makes you blind to bigger patterns, it’s honestly just sad. Maybe there are people who can’t ever be more than cogs in the machine. You’re better off without, I’m serious.”
“I know, it is just a bit sad. I fear that...”
“What?”
“Well, how do I know I’m not a cog? Mark was an asshole but at least he knew his purpose, you know? It’s the shallowest one imaginable, but isn’t that better than nothing?”
“Your life has purpose Ariel, don’t ever think it doesn’t.”
“Okay, but how does that help me if I don’t know what the purpose is? Do you? What gives your life a sense of meaning?”
“Well... You know me, I want to find some great new discoveries. Cure cancer or something. Well, maybe one specific treatment for one specific type of cancer, let’s keep it grounded. I’d be a micro-celebrity at conferences.”
“And then what?”
“Then? I don’t know, go back to work probably. Run more trials, do more mouse studies, move on to human data. I guess I could end up running a lab, teaching, getting tenure... I don’t know! You can’t plan out a life like that, takes the joy out of it.”
“Maybe that’s my problem.”
“But you aren’t planning anything, are you?”
“No, but, well... I guess I do think of the future a lot. Worry about it.”
“What are you worrying about? You have a stable position in the lab, and once you finish that PhD you can be off to somewhere new, that’s exciting right?”
“Exciting? Where would I go? This is one of the best places in the world I wager, we don’t have war, conflict, or huge financial instability. For a city, we’ve got some of the lowest costs in the country, and when I go home to visit my parents in their small town, it’s hopeless. People are living to die there, there’s no sense of fighting for the future. Everywhere else is a downgrade Sarah. It’s the same thing when Mark asked me what I would do if I had a million dollars. I have no idea. What’s the point of having it if you have nothing to spend it on? Where would I go? What would I buy? There has to be something else...”
“Hey, Ariel, I’m not trying to defend him – but did you ever humor that question? You know, really think about it for a bit and try to answer.”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“Nothing.”
“Ariel, maybe... Have you thought about talking to a therapist or something? I think persistent feelings of meaninglessness are probably a symptom of depression. I’m sure a professional has something more useful to say than I do.”
“Yeah? Ha, haha, maybe that’s what I would spend my million on. Therapy bills to understand why having the money was meaningful to begin with. That’s funny.”
“Uh, yeah that’s right, you always did have a special kind of humour. Do consider it though, okay? You worry me sometimes. Have you talked to your parents about this thing with Mark?”
“Okay, I’ll think about it. No, not yet. I guess I should do that sometime.”
“Sure, hey Ariel, I have to go now. I have an early class tomorrow. Let’s talk again soon okay? You should call your parents as well. Let me know if you need anything.”
“Sounds good. Sorry to worry you, we’ll talk again. Bye.”
The hang-up tone played, and then it was silent. Silence was, after all, the natural state of things. Silent, empty, void. The waking world was a chaos of noise and fury that hung like drapery over that perfect... empty... nothingness. Then, she was awake, and it was morning.
Time moved differently there. The morning oozes forth as a grey laquer from the cracks of some long-forgotten dream. Thick, hot air muting the sounds of the world beyond. It took a long time for Ariel to realize she was awake. The routine of the morning moved her inexorably before the backdrop of familiar small sounds. The kettle boiling. The clink of a bowl out the cupboard. The soft ripping of a banana as it was opened and sliced. The tinkle of raisin bran poured atop the dismembered fruit. Milk in the bowl. Instant coffee in the mug. Water on the coffee. Bowl and mug to the counter-top, buttocks to the chair. Spoon raised to mouth, jaw moving up and down. Coffee past the lips, the bitter fragrance like a dull ache on the roof of the mouth and sinuses. Morning sneezing fit. Big yawn.
She emerged like a creature ceasing hibernation, blinking and bleary in the risen light. Stumbling slightly at first, her legs soon found their rhythm, and she breathed deeply into the movement. It was far too hot, oppressively so. She was dressed for it, but the intense lustre of the sun had already brought a double sheen to her sunscreen-lathered forehead. The world soon lost that ephemeral muted quality, as caffeine coursed through her system and the sounds of the city began to emerge in full force. Large trucks screamed as they accelerated from the intersection. Strange grinding from roadwork echoed about the road. The noise of the city rose as a slow build toward some great crescendo that she silently hoped she would never hear.
A strange object lay on the path ahead. Animal familiarity spoke this path was clear, placing the object as an intruder in the riverside pathway. It was a large metal thing, a machine which emitted a constant buzzing roar. A small herd of safety-vest-clad workers tended to the beast, cutting and feeding swaths of plant matter into it’s insatiable maw. The rumbling of the beast grew intense as Ariel neared it, and she turned up her headphone volume to compensate. She wondered where the pulverized plant matter would go. This thing chewed and then spit the masticated goods into a big container. It chewed, but could not digest. It was only a set of jaws, an appendage of the larger organism which provided the fuel to it’s motion and maintenance. In exchange it performed it’s thankless task – chewing away at those plants aside the path.
She passed the workers, giving one of them a brief smile, and made toward the huge bridge. As she approached, she marvelled at the shape of it. It was not really like wings, but evoked a sense of something insectoid. There were too many strands, and the central pole was pointed in a taper that had a biological quality. She wondered if maybe it was shaped like a huge compound bow, with the many strands holding that central pillar in tension, only to be released on the giant’s will and plunge free into the earth. There was a constant flow of cyclists over the bridge, and she wove her stride back and forth to avoid the meandering pedestrians while leaving space for those unexpected wheeled travellers to come hurtling through.
Across the bridge and under the roadway led to the passage through the wooded area. Ariel breathed, this part of the route held more tension than the rest. One never knew what exactly the foliage would conceal. As she walked through, keeping herself availed of the surroundings, she saw two figures hunched near the riverside. They were crouching over multiple partially assembled, or partially disassembled, bicycles, bags of tools laid out alongside. Ariel had previously heard that bicycle theft was a common small-scale crime in this town, but she had never thought about what would happen to the bicycles after the theft. Breaking down the meat to build up the muscle. One of the two figures looked up, apparently catching Ariel’s over-long stare. Their eyes met, and she saw a flash of fear, followed by hostility, and finally guilt. They both looked away. The remainder of the path was quiet. She emerged from the wooded area, crunched over the gravel and admired the graffiti under the train-bridge, and then made to the crossroads into the city.
Many months ago, Ariel had worked out the precise walking route which was least offensive to her. She used to travel the main road, but the constant din of a major thoroughfare pulled her body and mind to fraying. She once tried a street some handful of blocks further north, but that area was particularly rough, with whole blocks abandoned to squatters. Instead, the middle ground held some quaint shops, and a relatively quiet walk. She passed the corner offices, which held a company of obscure purpose, then she passed the national film board office. She passed by the irish pub, then the suitcase store, then waited at the big intersection. Crossing, she eyed the turn-lane drivers to ensure they didn’t lapse concentration and murder her, which would significantly lower her enjoyment of the day. Ariel passed by the weirdly crystal-themed hair salon, the kebab shop, the veterans club, the live-music stage and record store, the boxing gym, the old fur garment building, the technical school, the high-end multi-purpose rent-able work-space, the fire station, the old warehouse turned art-gallery, the sign store, the unknown and under-construction building which had no sidewalk so she always had to cross the street, and the noodle shop. Once she reached the noodle shop, she had arrived at the second big intersection. She crossed at the light, passing the rickety convenience store, and placing her on the final block before the office.
The penultimate block was largely residential, but held a unique feature. Two large buildings, former warehouses, had been converted to apartments. They still had the fifty-plus year old warehouse name embossed on the upper corner of the concrete rectangle. It was a gritty place, with dirty cracked windows behind metal bars, and stained, cigarette-butt laden sidewalks. The wind felt unusually strong here, like the forgotten outer districts of some former-soviet era town on the steppes of the caucuses. One of the two apartment buildings had recently begun to slump dangerously, and Ariel had heard residents needed to be evacuated. As she approached, it became clear that the building was slated for demolition, as it had become surrounded with a fence and caution tape. She passed on the other side of the street, and crossed in front of an old woman. The woman sat in a walker at the entrance of the other building, smoking a cigarette and gazing wistfully out at the slumped old warehouse. The two strangers exchanged a glance, and nothing more.
Ariel arrived at the final intersection before the office. “The office”, as she thought of it, was a research lab by which she was employed. It was inside a cancer-research facility attached to a cancer treatment facility, which in turn was attached to a large hospital attached to the medical school of the local university. As such, it was always busy. She waited for the stream of vehicles at the light before crossing, and saw there was a hot-dog stand with a line of people on the lawn of the hospital. The people looked damp with sweat. Ariel passed the hospital and cancer treatment entrances, then swung into a back alley and swiped her employee card to enter the building. Once inside, the elevator took her to floor five, then another card swipe allowed her entrance.
“Oh, hello Ariel, how are you?” Greeted one of the lab members who was first to notice the quiet woman’s arrival. Ariel replied that she was well, and asked in turn. Joanne, or Jo, was a stoic sort of personality, a tall and strong woman, she was the lab’s expert in the highly technical job of utilizing the protein NMR machine, which Ariel regarded as a kind of wizardry.
“Can’t complain.” Said the woman. “John has some meeting for us later, did you see the email?”
Ariel checked her phone and saw the email from their boss, Dr. Johnwin Argus. It said they would have an important meeting later that day, and everyone was expected to attend. Ariel expressed relief that she wasn’t late, and asked Jo what she was working on today.
“Nothing at the moment. Was going to run those tumour samples, but John told me to wait until after the meeting. Said he might change the plans and talk to me about it after.” The woman shrugged. “You know how it is with him.”
Ariel shrugged in solidarity. Change was, after all, the only constant. She sat down on one of the multitudinous swivel-chairs which littered the building and made idle chatter. The interior of the office held space for multiple research laboratories, and so contained a constant activity. However, unlike the frenetic loud brutality of the cities outdoor space, the labs were quiet and calm. People walked with purpose and without rushing, going about the routines of their daily work. They stood hunched over the lab benches, pipetting into rows of tiny tubes. They waited while samples were heated or cooled, stored or retrieved compounds from the appropriate location, or simply browsed the news on their laptops. With Jo, there was always a respectful atmosphere. She had courteous interest in Ariels life, and would ask the usual small-talk questions. Today, however, she seemed to have a look of concern in her gaze.
“Ariel, are you well?”
Ariel shrugged. She looked into the distance. How should she answer such an open-ended question?
“Did something happen, you seem a bit distant compared to yesterday.”
Ariel thought for a second. She had broken up with Mark. Should she tell Jo? Did it matter either way? She took a breath and gave a cursory explanation.
“Ah, sorry to hear it. Was that Mark who was with you at the last conference?” Jo asked. Ariel nodded. “Honestly, I didn’t want to say this at the time, but I only spoke to him a couple of times and he was very rude in both of them. It sounds like you made the right choice.”
Ariel smiled, and any thought of her reply was interrupted by a sudden shout from the entrance. It was Sarah announcing her presence with as much pomp and circumstance as was appropriate her personality.
“Hi all! Jo, did you hear about Ariel’s breakup? Horrible man, that Mark. We were all so inviting to him and he turned out a rotten egg. Shame. How are you Ariel?”
Ariel’s smile widened, and she greeted her friend. The atmosphere of the lab grew warm with comraderie. Not long after, a silent figure appeared at the end of the room. Jo waved a hand, half commanding beckon and half wave of greeting. The figure, their other lab member Gil, approached. He looked like he wanted to say something, and his eyes kept flicking to Ariel, then around the room again.
“Gil. Did you hear about the meeting?” Asked Sarah with a slightly patronizing air.
“Y-Yes. Well, no. I saw the email. Hi Sarah. Hi Jo. Hello Ariel.” He stammered. Ariel waved. Gil sat down and looked between his knees. They waited. The energy in the room seemed to stifle. There was now only idle conversation intermittent with periods of tense silence. Prisoners awaiting an unknown sentence. The air in the room felt heavy. Ariel looked down and was surprised to see her ankles unchained. She could just get up and leave, couldn’t she? What was the point, after all. The point of all the waiting. Waiting for the morning to go to work and wait. Waiting to go home and wait for sleep. Time, congealed into a substance, was the material of her chains. The far door swung open and the figure of Johnwin Argus tumbled into the room.
Dr. Argus was a rail-thin man, he walked too quickly and seemed to be in a perpetual state of falling forward. When he entered the room, he looked slightly taken aback for a few moments, looking around in a half-daze at all of his employees and students. Then he said “You’re all here, great. Let’s go to the meeting room then.”
In the meeting room, they gathered around with expectant gazes upon the visage of the defacto leader, Johnwin. He took a long pause, a deep breath, and as lines of nervousness began to show on his face, he spoke.
“I’m sorry to tell you this so suddenly. Really, but it’s not like I had much of a choice, I only learned of it last Friday. I spent the weekend figuring out the broad-strokes plan, so we can have a starting point for this conversation. In short, the funding agencies are restructuring their grants in accordance with the new federal government, and after the restructuring we will not be eligible for two of the three major grants which currently serve as primary funding for the lab. So, we will have to make some big changes around here to accommodate.” He paused.
Ariel looked around the room. Sarah had an intense, angry look; Gil was nervously fidgeting with a pen; and Jo had a strange look of sadness in her eyes. Johnwin continued.
“Well... I’ve asked around the other faculty, and it seems like some of them are going to be keeping their grants. They’ve offered to take anyone from this lab who wants to stay in cancer research. I did some serious thinking about this, and I don’t think it’s in the best interest of the lab to stay in this field. Cancer research is evergreen, but the funding is not. Considering our expertise in protein NMR, experimental design, and statistical software, we can flexibly work in several disciplines. I recently learned that the Agricultural Research Facility has an opening for just such a lab, and I’m thinking it could be a good opportunity for us. Practically, your positions and salary would stay the same, and we would have to move the machines and computers to their offices. After that move, we would be working from the ARF instead of here, so there may be some commute challenges as well. I wanted to open the floor to hear from you all before making any firm commitments, and we can discuss this in an ongoing capacity from here on out. How does this sound to everyone?”
What ensued was perhaps a discussion, perhaps an argument, and perhaps a trial. In the end, some walked away, and some remained. The lab had been changed forever.