The Word Is - Part Seven

image generated to build an icon... a brand. We took that you from,” I said, pointing a finger at them with a smirk. “Learn to fight your enemy using their own weapons. Propaganda.”


“So, what, some of the messages from you aren't from you?”


“Most of the messages from me aren't from me. Oh sure, some of them are me, but most of them are just people on their own, sometimes working within our framework, sometimes not. We built the Urban Warfare movement like a terrorist organization, lots of cells, cutouts, dead drops, sometimes people don't even know who they're getting their orders from. Everything is compartmentalized, and that means no matter what you think you're going to peel out of my head, it's really going to be of very little use to you.”


“I think you're stalling,” Janus said, as he walked over to me and grabbed my arms, pinning them behind my back. “What's the word?”


Apathe walked up and reached her hand up to my forehead. “The word is 'is,'” she said, and the world exploded around us again as I screamed in pain. The empty darkness was filled with streaking colors and lights, the sound of voices echoing from every conceivable corner of empty space until the world achieved some sense of normality and the memory stabilized with a loud pop.


I knew this memory and had absolutely no desire to be here, but I had little say in the matter. Everyone was dressed in black, which really tells you all you need to know. Janus let go of my arms, and I turned to punch him in the face, but my fist flew right through him. “You bastard. We don't need to be here. We can move on.”


“Obviously you encoded something on to this memory for a reason,” he said. “Who died?”


I turned to look at the mass of people, standing in the graveyard, all gathered around a coffin. It almost seemed like they were infinite, and yet, they all had something in common – they were all wearing clothes that had seen more funerals than anyone should have to endure. Everyone had wanted to help, but no one could. I covered my eyes with my fingers. “My mother's.” I inhaled a long breathe and then forced it out, trying to regain my composure. “She had a heart attack when they came to evict her from her house. She owned the house, she owned the land, but she couldn't pay taxes, because some investment banker decided to take her retirement fund and bet it on all on the stock market. So he disappeared, she was broke, and I was struggling to find some way to get enough money together so she wouldn't be on the street, but I was barely out of college, and living in an apartment with five other people just to make ends meet.” I turned to look at the crowd of faces. “We went straight from burying my mother to emptying out her house. If we didn't have it cleared out in two days time, the bank was just going to sell it all off. They said they were being generous by giving us three days time to bury her.”


“With all of these people here, she wouldn't have been homeless,” Apathe said.


“Of course she wouldn't be homeless,” I spat. “That wasn't the point. The shame killed her, the shame of failing to take care of herself. Do you know I had to hear about her tax problems from the neighbors? She'd lived in that house thirty years, watched me grow up there, watched my father grow ill and die there... that house was her whole world. She was too angry and sad to ask anyone for help. She was dying anyway, and she didn't tell anyone. Cancer, terminal, which was where what little money she had was going. And when she died, all of those creditors came after me. I owed what she owed. How does that old song go? 'Sixteen tons, what do you get/ Another day older and deeper in debt/ Saint Peter don't you call me, 'cause I can't go/ I owe my soul to the company store...' She wanted to shelter me from all of that, but once she was gone, there was little I could do. Look at me,” I said, pointing at the younger me.


The younger me was 25, clean shaven, with my blonde hair cut into a business-like coif, as if I hoped that might give me enough prestige to get a better job. It hadn't, of course. I wasn't crying, but I clearly had the weight of the world on my shoulders. People were putting their hands on my shoulders, offering condolences and words of hope, but the look on my face told everyone anything they needed to know – I wasn't really hearing them, because I was dying inside. My mother was gone. My family was gone, leaving me alone in the world. My father had died some ten years earlier, both grandparents gone before I was even born. For all the talk about how people would live longer in the future, as it turned out, that was only if you could afford it, and we couldn't. Whatever youthful energy had been behind my eyes years ago was gone now, leaving in it only a hole big enough to drown the whole damn world.


“You know what the hardest part for me was? This was the last time I think I saw any of those people. I knew if I stayed on the grid, I was going to be driven down into debt so far beyond my control that I wouldn't be able to get a foothold on climbing out. So, right there, that's the moment I decided to run, where I decided I wasn't going to be a person any more... I was going to be an idea. And