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Life.
She was planted in the corner of a park, one of those small city
grass patches that pretended to be a real grassy hill with hard
cement sidewalks and wooden
benches. She was wearing a sky blue dress, one who's color was a
bit shy from becoming completely white under the heavy rays of
the Summer sun.
The park was crawling with kids and nannies pushing along
strollers, none of them paying any attention at all to her, even
though she still opened her eyes and talked as humanly as
possible, her pre-recorded speeches, her programmed movements,
that fake smile already on as soon as her eyelids started to
open.
Nobody paid any attention to the difference in the color of her
eyes. The left one blue. The right one brown.
Nobody, except him.
He stared at her with a heavy heart.
Lifestatues have become a common sight now, a few years passing
since it became standard in cities across the world, one planted
into almost every corner of a major street or park. Some have
even become available to the public, and being planted on
porches, backyards, or even used as scarecrows in farms. They
were becoming almost as popular as the females themselves.
It's been a few years since he saw her.
He couldn't believe it when he saw her from the street, while
driving downtown to attend a 'luncheon' with his editor, he
almost slammed his foot on the brake and caused a major accident
in a big city rush hour lane.
She looked exactly as she did years ago.
He almost broke down in tears when he saw her.
The wind was blowing a nice breeze and the sun wasn't too hot or
too cold.
She looked as if she was made out of marble. Her feet already
sprouting out roots up to the ankle, meaning that she had been
planted there for at least six years now.
She looked the same as she did years ago.
He was now a successful writer, first with short sci-fi stories,
then with major novels and movie screenplays. He was also known
to be a pretty controversial speaker, supporting the recent
movement to treat females as humans once again, and giving equal
rights to what are still considered as objects for sale on big
chain malls.
She opened her eyes and turned on when she sensed his approach,
and started her garble of recorded speeches and movements again.
"Hello, and welcome to Rasident Park, the place where you can
throw away your worries
and let Mother Nature heal your stress away!"
Her voice sounded different, as if something was missing. Maybe
it was the loss of her personality that did it, or her heart, or
everything that was stripped
out of her that made her herself.
"Hi, Eliza." He could finally manage to produce some sort of a
voice, squeezing tightly past the boulder that blocked his
throat. His voice sounded weak and wheezy, as if he was out of
breath after a forty-mile run.
"If you have any questions about the location, or directions to
a particular address, please don't hesitate to ask your local
lifestatue!" She went on without recognizing his voice.
He didn't know what to do.
"How can I help you today?" She went on again.
A long pause of silence went on, because she repeated her
question again. "How can I help you today?". Same tone. Same
movements. Same voice.
"H-Hi." He started out again, as if she would care anyway. "Hi,
Eliza. It's me, Ryo."
He must have looked like sh!t at the moment, but he didn't care,
the Eliza he knew was gone anyway.
"I didn't think I would ever see you again." He chuckled softly
to himself, a sad smile displaying on his face. "I searched
frantically for you when you first disappeared, asking around at
the sales place and the recycling plant. I thought you were
already dissolved into proteins and DNAs and all that junk."
"How can I help you today?" She repeated the same question
again.
"Not that anything I'm saying right now is registering in your
mind anyway." That same chuckle, that same smile again.
A pause, none of them said anything, people passing by and forth
with their schedules for an ordinary life.
"I never thought I'd see you again." He started up again. A
moment of silence before he continued. "I remember waking up and
not finding you anywhere at
home. I remember going to sleep with you the night before with
plans of where to run and how to keep on running away with you."
He chuckled. "I think I even had small fantasies of finding a
deserted island and spending the rest of my life with you on it,
with a family and kids and maybe even pets and all."
"How can I help you today?"
"It sounded crazy, but I guess I was young and naive, I guess I
still lived in the fantasy that everything would work out in the
end, and that if you have the will, there would be a way to
reach that goal." That small chuckle that started became a loud
laugh. "God, I was such a hopeful little brat. I should have
known that those stories I read were called fiction for some
reason."
She didn't respond to this. He didn't think she would anyway.
"I know that your brain cells are gone and replaced by biochips
and such," He continued. "And I know you can't hear anything
that I'm saying right now unless it contains the right keywords
and all, but I have been holding all of this inside of me for a
while, waiting for the day in where maybe I'll find you
again, and I could tell you of all these things that I've been
locking up inside my heart, I could share with you what I can't
with anyone else.
"I know that your machineries don't care at all and that nothing
matters, but just let me amuse myself and tell you of all that I
felt anyway, alright?"
"How can I help-" She started out again, yet Ryo interrupted her
before she said anything else.
"That morning that you were gone, I waited for you. I thought
you had just gone out buying breakfast or something, like you
always do on those Sunday mornings. I thought you were just out
shopping for all the things that we may need in the trip, or
even just have a nice little feast before we leave our house
forever.
"I waited for you for hours.
"When noon hit and you were still not there, I panicked, and
rushed out to all the places we had been to before. The coffee
houses, the theaters with the multiple movies, the parks with
their fake patches of nature. I searched for you for hours on
end. And then I ran back home, I rushed back because I thought
that maybe you were home already, waiting for me, just missed me
going out by a few seconds or minutes.
"I had hoped.
"Yet you weren't there at all, the room the same way as I left
it."
"How can I-"
"I ran out to the salesman, I didn't want to believe you would
do something as stupid as that, yet when I saw the salesman's
face, I knew that you were already gone. I asked anyway, and
after he searched in his records, he returned with a big smile
and said that you already turned yourself in that morning, and
that everything was alright with the lease. I asked frantically
to see you again, yet he said that it was already too late, that
you had already been transported to the recycling plant,
probably recycled into amino acids and proteins by now.
"I ran again, I didn't want to believe.
"Yet you were already gone there too.
"They said that you were already added in, and that it was too
late to take you out. They said that you were already gone."
The silence engulfed them. The park seemed to have stood still
except for the soft breeze among the trees.
And then she spoke again.
"How can-"
And he interrupted. "I stayed in our room for days, didn't know
what to make out of anything." He said. "I found your tape
hidden under the blankets that we were sleeping in, and I heard
you tell me of things that I didn't want to believe. You said
that you were turning yourself in because you didn't want me to
lose my future because of you, that you didn't want to see me
jailed up somewhere without my freedom. You told me to hope for
a better tomorrow, and to move on and forget about you. You said
that you loved me, and that was the reason you did this.
"You said all these things that didn't matter.
"I did move on, I did go on and get another female. I've got
three kids now, I've got a family and a normal life.
"Yet I still couldn't move on. The piece of heart that you took
were still in your hands. I still thought about you whenever I
sat down in the sands of a beach, or daydreamed about what would
have happened if you had stayed. It's hard to move on and carry
the grief when your loved one is gone. It's impossible to live
again even no matter how much you tried. The memories that are
etched in my mind are still there, and I can't erase them out of
my mind."
"How can I-"
"How do you erase the feelings and carry on the pain? How do you
leave everything you know behind and start over again? How can
you hope for a better tomorrow, when it's not worth living it
again?" He looked up at her, those lively eyes that had no soul
anymore, that fake pasted smile of hers. "Tell me how, Eliza?
Tell me how is it possible to just cover everything up and move
on."
She didn't say anything. The same expression remained in her
face.
Ryo embraced her as hard as he could, not caring for the looks
of the children playing in the grass, or the adults pushing
their babycarts on the sidewalk. He was with her again. They
were both alone in that unique moment.
"I miss you, Eliza. I miss you so much..." He cried as he buried
his eyes into her neck, just as he did before, the softness
caressing him as her aroma filled him with calmness and love. "I
missed you so much..."
"How can I help you today?" She responded with the same tone.
The afternoon passed on and the Sun set as usual. The clouds
fared a good-bye as they gently glided through the Summer
breeze.
END
---Written by Tom Lin
05/14/2004 |
