Apocalypse x 7
Offbeat Doomsday Stories
Michael Canfield
Copyright © 2012 Michael Canfield
Published by Vauk House Press
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*****
“Here he goes again,” said Delles. “Attacking snowflakes.”
“I’m not attacking them,” said Arlin, shaking his head. “I’m saying that the no two are exactly alike business doesn’t mean anything. So what? No two leaves are exactly alike, no two stones.”
“On the other hand, every damn conversation with Arlin here is exactly alike,” said Ganning. He slammed a twenty down on the table top. It was one of the those tall tables, at stool or standing height, and we stood: drinking, arguing ,and occasionally watching the game, as we did every Monday night.
“Put your money away, Ganning,” said Delles. “You’re not leaving. You know you’re not.” It was one of Ganning’s signature gestures, the fake early storm-out. Ganning, being married, was usually the last to go. Delles, being happy, stayed or went as he saw fit. Arlin usually left when he had had made us all sick of him, which meant he might be leaving by the end of the first quarter tonight.
Me? I’m Smith.
I had had a pint of Guinness to start the night with, and then switched to Irish coffees because it was so damn cold. Our beloved waitress, Gretchen, now brought me my third one. Gretchen’s my age, early forties, married with two great kids, Seth and Wendy, who, judging from the pictures she proudly carried every night in her work apron, were adorable, and whom she loved more than anything, which I was grateful for. Why particularly? Because I was completely in love with her, and if she’d been available I would have had to wonder why I wasn’t doing anything about it. She had very beautifully tattooed shoulders, which she managed to always show, even on cold nights like this. Why not? It’s always hot in the bar, and she was incredible looking. I’d been shown a picture of her at twenty and she was twice as lovely now: strong confident, and happy. She was completely out of my league, possibly out of my species, therefore her happy marriage and lovely children allowed me to pine away, assured there was not a thing I could do to wreck her life. Ever.
My three compatriots had stuck with beer, and after Gretchen had set down my Irish coffee, she distributed their pints. Then she was away.
Arlin, Delles, Ganning, and me, Smith, maybe the last four men in the world who habitually refer to each other by last names exclusively, the way generations of men that came before had done. No Tim, Scott, and Steve for us. Though, come to thing of it, I’m not sure if Arlin was a first or last name.
Not that it matters any more.
Not after that night.
But we’ll get to that.
How we met.
Did we?
I mean we must have met, but we’d never been introduced. We’d all originally drifted into this particular woody establishment as members of other groups: me with some work buddies who weren’t really into football but wanted to be. That hadn’t lasted. Delles, probably the same thing, or close enough. Ganning? A bona-fide bitter alcoholic who lived close by. Arlin?
Who knew anything about Arlin.
There was the snowflake thing, which came up whenever snow hit whatever city happened to be hosting Monday Night Football, or on the rarer occasion when there was snow here in town.
Such as that night.
Secondly there was the “every hair is numbered, like every grain of sand” thing, which is from the Bible or Bob Dylan, or both. There was the quantum physics, which had to do with the fact that time and space and everything therein is stranger than anybody would ever really figure out. To me, that seemed a pretty damn impressive thing on someone’s part to have figured out.
But the main thing was snowflakes.
Delles, being a bit of a nose tweaker, and seeing that Ganning’s thin veneer of patience had mostly worn away ahead of schedule that night, decide to see how closely he could steer the conversation toward the nearest cliff, or as we sometimes called it, an Arlin vortex. “But how do you prove no two snowflakes are alike?” Delles started in. “You’d have to look at them all.”
I glared at him sharply, but it was too late, he’d already got the shot off, a direct hit, which sunk us all.
“This is my point,” said Arlin. They know that no two snowflakes could ever be exactly alike. There is a set of physical laws that govern this universe which won’t allow that. It’s like saying that Venus is not Mars and expecting me to be impressed.”
I don’t know that scientists sit around a big conference table in Antarctica or somewhere thinking up meaningless things to say so that they sound smart, but I’m pretty sure this is how Arlin pictured the world. There was a lot of “them” and “they” in his view of man and his view of nature. Me, I’ve never met anyone who ever had much of a clue what’s going on in their own circle, let alone managing to disseminate vast conspiracies designed to control and subvert people’s understanding of reality, but maybe I don’t get around enough.
I said something to that effect and I wished I’d kept my mouth shut. It’s always better to keep my mouth shut and watch the game, even when its two teams I don’t care about and, in the case of tonight’s contest, two teams that no one cared about, at least for the remaining weeks of this season, with the possible except of the players’ Moms.
“You’re right,” said Arlin, you don’t get around enough. Wake up Mr. Shakespeare.”
He called me Shakespeare, not because of some poetic strain in my speech that he had detected, but rather because I had laughed once when he told me Shakespeare wasn’t Shakespeare; he was somebody else, or somebody else was him. There was something about Oxford in there, not the school, but a man, but we never got into it. It was the wrong crowd for that sort of literary discussion. Still it had been touched on, and that, for Arlin, marked me as a dupe of the highest degree, which was all right I eventually realized, because it really took the pressure off.
“Let’s do it,” said Delles.
Ganning and I looked at him with our best do what? facial expressions. Arlin was already ahead of us.
“The extremely low probability that we will find two identical snowflakes, even two that appear identical to the human eye, outside, tonight, before they melt, break up, merge into each other, or otherwise lose their integral formation, makes any such experiment useless,” said Arlin.
“You’re just afraid,” said Delles.
It had begun to snow. Big puffy flakes, like mini-clouds fluttering down. It was kind of pretty.
“Fuck it. Let’s do it,” said Ganning.
This surprised me. “You’re on board with this?” I asked him.
“Why not.” He flicked his head derisively and the nearest screen. This game is a waste of time.”
We’ve had stupider ideas, but I don’t remember when. It was cold out there, and the local constabulary does not smile upon those who carry their potables and revelry onto the sidewalks, so I didn’t see much of an upside. But I could see I was outvoted. I would have to go along or be left at a table for four drinking alone, like a non-smoker at the break during an AA meeting. I drained my Irish coffee. “In Ganning’s immortal words,” said I, “‘Fuck it.’“
We made sure that Gretchen knew not to clear our table, pulled on our jackets, and went out.
Outside, the concrete was wet, and those big puffy flakes, mini clouds, cotton wisps, whatever you want to describe them as, disappeared instantly as they touched down. The night was bright, the moon being full. That and the street lamps reflected off those billowing white flakes.
“So what do we do?” said Delles to Arlin. Arlin looked at me, I don’t know what the hell for, and I shrugged elaborately.
Arlin shook his coat sleeve, gripping the cuff and held it fast, clamping the material between his fingertips and palm. He crooked his arm and held it outward. With his other hand he gave his extended arm three short, light, karate-chop motions, an equidistance apart. “Each of you take a quadrant,” he said. “Don’t take your eyes off your quadrant; we’ll examine the snow that falls on my arm. My sleeves are dark. The contrast will be useful.”
“A quadrant is one of four sections, dipshit,” said Ganning. Ganning had supposedly been an engineer of some kind or other before taking his early “retirement.” I’m not sure if I have that right on not, but he sure was a stickler for things like math.
Arlin tilted his head and regarded Ganning indulgently. “I’ll be taken a quadrant myself,” said Arlin. “The one nearest my shoulder. I merely marked out the remaining three quadrants for you all.”
“Yeah, Ganning,” said Delles. “Don’t you think Arlin knows how to assign quadrants?”
Ganning frowned. He was beat on this point and he knew it Dammit! you could almost hear him yell inside his head.
“Everybody focus!” said Arlin. He pointed to each of us and then pointed again to the section of his coat sleeve we were responsible for. Snow was falling all the while he arranged this, but he wiped it off, wanting, I suppose, a clean canvas with which to start fresh. He spoke again. “One! Two! Three! Go!”
I have to admit my heart started racing, I got into the thing. I bore down on my quadrant —Arlin’s elbow to the middle of his forearm, really determined to observe those snowflakes.
“How are we --” I started.
“Take in the patterns!” said Arlin. “Try an really absorb them. Concentrate! If you see something you’ve seen before, call it out. Call it out!”
I pressed him. “But I don’t really get --”
Call it out!” said Delles suppressing laughter. And he wasn’t watching his quadrant either, having too much fun looking at us all be jackasses. Well the hell with him, I decide. I’d come outside to examine snow flakes, not to fuck around, and examine snowflakes is what I proceeded to do. I looked at them hard, but I really didn’t see much. I guess I was thinking of those snowflake patterns you make in school for greeting cards, or whatever. Where they have you fold a piece of paper in half and cut a pattern. Or was it was ink? One is Rorschach tests, the other is snowflakes. Something like that. There’s folding-in-half involved there, one way or the other. Here I wasn’t seeing anything, but then neither was any one else.
Not at first.
“Great Scott!” said Arlin.
Mind you, I’ve never heard a human being say those words before, not even Arlin, but he used them with such conviction now, that their absurdity was entirely lost. He really sold that exclamation.
“What is it?” cried Ganning.
“No!” cried Arlin. “Never mind! I’m not seeing what I’m seeing.”
“Holy shit,” said Delles.
Delles voice had a quality in it unlike his usual manner that I had to study his face for some very long seconds before I figured out what that quality was.
He was being serious.
He was seeing something that knocked the sarcasm right out of him. The effect was unsettling and alien, sort of like I’d always imagined watching the footage from Jerry Lewis’s abandoned Holocaust film would be.
“What is it?” I said.
“Quiet!” said Arlin. Then to Delles, “what is it?” Exactly the same thing I had asked, but I decided to play the bigger man and let it go.”
“They’re the same! They are all the same,” said Delles
“Come on,” I said.
“For pity’s sake, will you shut up once, Smith!” said Arlin. “Are you sure Delles? Are you sure?”
“He’s sure,” said Ganning slowly. “I see it to.”
“So had I,” said Arlin. “A moment ago, but I doubted myself. You two corroborate? And you Smith, what do you see? Good heavens, speak up why won’t you?”
I was concentrating again. “I’m not sure,” I said. “Maybe.”
“Maybe? Maybe!” said Arlin. That’s no answer. You must be sure. You must take your time and be sure.”
“Why?”
“God dammit,” Delles broke in. “Just frickin’ concentrate will you?”
That really drew me up short. Why was this so damn important all of a sudden? It wasn’t like we had microscopes, or even good light, let along some micro-tools to measure the deviating patterns of snowflakes. The hell with it, I thought. “Oh yeah,” I lied. “Yeah, that’s weird.”
“He’s making it up,” said Delles.
“Now why would I do a thing like that?”
“Who the fuck knows! But you’re lying.” This ugly side of Delles was wearing out its welcome with me a lot faster than his usual sarcasm and humor. I was about to tell him to go boil his head, by which I mean I was about to go tell him to go fuck himself, when Ganning intervened.
“Take it easy,” he said. “Smith says he sees them. If he says so, that’s good enough for me. And what’s good enough for me ought to be good enough for you boys.”
Ganning sounded pretty mature and calming there, and I really appreciated it. I guess snowflake hunting brought out the worst in some people, witness Delles and Arlin, but the best in others, witness Ganning. What I know for sure is that it brought the liar out in me. I was getting cold I wanted to get back inside, and get another Irish coffee. Right away.
I conjured up praise for the symmetry of pattern of these identical snowflakes that would have made Euclid weep, assuming Euclid was the weeping type. It seemed to work on Ganning, though he was half in my camp already —as well as half in the bag. They were all drunk and I wasn’t, that had made me the odd man out. Why wasn’t I drunk? I don’t know. Come to think of it, I had absolutely no idea.
Drink faster, drink better next time, I told myself.
Anyway I was committed to the lie, couldn’t back out on Ganning now, not after he had backed me up. It wasn’t much of a lie, and I figured I could live with it.
“Okay, that’s that,” I said, clapping my cold hands together. I had gloves on the table inside, hadn’t thought to bring them out: who knew we were in for such an extended foray? “I need another round.”
“What do you mean? We have made an important discovery here,” said Arlin. “Haven’t you been paying attention? This can’t happen. Something is in effect here. Something outside the ordinary probabilities.”
“Nah,” I said, “We’re just drunk. It’s drunk stuff. Tomorrow we will laugh about this.”
“Maybe,” said Ganning. “But you got to admit it is kind of strange.”
“I’m going in,” I said flatly. “You guys do what you want,” and I left them there. Let them figure it out.
I got back to the table and scanned the crowd for our beloved Gretchen, I needed that Irish coffee.
Before I had found her, the rest of the boys were back, having followed in almost on my heels. That was more like it; they had come to their senses, and we could get back to why we came here, to drink and to kill another Monday night.
“We need to talk about this,” said Delles.
I rolled my eyes and was ready to tell them where to get off, when Gretchen finally appeared and arrested my attention.
It was Irish coffee time, and I ordered a fresh one, begging her not to spare the horses in getting it.
“Irish coffee?” said Gretchen, looking askance. “What’s an ‘Irish’ coffee?”
“Ha ha!”
She looked at my empty cup, and then back at me with a bemused look in her eye. Then she said, “Okay, one more of those, if you’re sure you can handle it. Aren’t you planning on sleeping tonight?”
“Who knows!” I said. There was a joke in there somewhere but I wasn’t getting it. She left with my cup. “I wonder what that was about?” I said to the table.
The boys hadn’t even noticed, because they were so damn fixated on their snowflake business. They hadn’t even ordered another round.
Arlin was throwing out various theories about pocket universes or alternate realities. Apparently the laws of said realities or universes are not necessarily identical to our own. Fascinating, fascinating stuff. I needed my drink.
Gretchen brought it, and set it down. She was wearing her usual what I call twenty-five-percent smile because that is the minimum I insist we tip her. The others used to grouse, but my motto is, if you find a good server take care of him or her, and she or he will take care of you, forever. People in this town don’t really know how to be regulars. It was up to me to educate them. This is the law of my universe. I took a sip of the much anticipated drink. Antonio was on duty behind the bar, and he made the best Irish coffees in the city.
I tuned out the boys and took a long, deep swallow.
Of coffee.
Black coffee. Good black coffee, but not a drop of alcohol in it. I waved wildly for Gretchen, who was already abandoning me. There had been a miscommunication.
She came back, leaned in to hear me over the crowd noise. It was getting quite crowded now. And the crowd was curiously into the meaningless, two-teams-out-of-contention, game.
“This is coffee,” I said.
“That’s what you’ve been ordering.”
“It’s part of my order. Irish coffee. You know: whiskey, brown sugar, coffee and cream.”
“Mmm, that sounds good. Okay, I’ll get you that, but I’m not a mind reader you know!” she was saying it good-naturedly, but she wasn’t able to completely hide a little hint of annoyance. She took the coffee away.
I turned to the boys, and they were all staring intently at me. “What the fuck was that?” I said. I suppose its possible for a server to not know what an Irish coffee is, even a pro like Gretchen. We all have weird unexplainable gaps in our knowledge. But I’d ordered them from her before. Hell, I’d ordered them all that night, hadn’t I?
Had I?
“I’m not drunk,” I said slowly.
Arlin leaned in further. “Talk to us. What’s going on.”
“I’m not drunk. I’ve been drinking coffee all night. Not coffee and whiskey. That’s why I’m not drunk.”
I remembered drinking those Irish coffees. I remember their warm golden glow filling my insides. “I drank them, you saw me drink them, right?”
Arlin nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I saw you. I heard you order them, I saw them arrive with the whipped cream on top. That’s what I recall. But that was earlier. Before we went outside and observed the snowflakes.”
“So?” said I.
“Evidently Irish coffee are unheard of in this universe.”
“You are so full of shit.” I smiled. I didn’t think Arlin was the type to pull practical jokes, and neither was Ganning, but somehow Delles must have talked them into it. And Gretchen too. “Okay, nice one. A little high-concept, but whatever. You got me.”
“This isn’t a joke,” said Delles, whose serious act was long past pissing me off now.
Gretchen returned, with my drink. “There you are. Tony wants to know how you like it. He says he thinks it could catch on.” She waited there. I reached out and picked up the cup in both hands. I took a sip. “It’s good,” I said after a minute. “Tell him it’s good.”
For one made by someone who had never made one before.
There was a roar from the crowd. We weren’t watching the game, but someone had scored. Gretchen turned to look at the screen. “Wooh!” she said. “Who would have thought the Swordfish would come back like that this season? They were dead a month ago, now they’ll get that wildcard spot.”
“Who?”
“The Swordfish,” she said. “The Miami Swordfish?” she pointed at the screen. “Big men, little leather ball, kind of a big deal in this country.”
“Oh yeah,” I said, lying my ass off. “I thought you said ... ah, never mind. Good drink. Tell Anto --, tell Tony thanks.”
She smiled and went back to work.
My three friends were all looking at me still. None of them moving. “Holy shit,” I said.
“Indeed,” said Arlin.
“Still think we’re crazy?” said Delles.
“I never said that. But yes, I think you are all crazy.”
“Then you must be crazy too,” said Ganning gently.
I nodded. “Yeah. I know.”
“We have some determinations to make,” said Arlin. “We don’t know if this is permanent or not, nor do we know how this has come about. But we can at least try to determine the moment that we crossed over, or, to state it another way, perhaps this current universe crossed over to us.”
“What the fuck are you saying now?” I yelled. I was seeing blood. If Arlin wasn’t going to cut out the analytical shit I was going to start pulling limbs out of sockets, and I didn’t much care whose limbs I started with.
Ganning translated. “We may have caused this. When we examined the snowflakes. At least we know we were in our home universe just before we went outside.”
“How do we know that?” I said, and bit my tongue in regret. That implied I believed any of this bullshit.
Ganning answered me. “Because it wasn’t that long before we went out that Gretchen brought our last round. Including your Irish coffee. That was the Gretchen before the change.”
Well that was true.
“Maybe there’s a gas leak in here,” I offered
“What!” said Delles.
“I don’t know. Or something outside. Maybe if we go out and come back in again,” I suggested.
“What’s that going to do?” Arlin blurted impatiently. “We can’t unsee the snowflakes.”
He was really getting to me. “Oh, all right. I didn’t know that was one of the rules.”
“Easy everyone! Let’s not turn on each other. We are the only ones we’ve got,” cautioned Ganning.
“I’m out,” said Delles. Suddenly.
We looked at him. Ganning spoke with no sympathy. “What do you mean?’
It had been Delles’ turn to pay for the round and he still had his wallet out. He pulled a picture from it and tossed it on the table. “Need to find out who they are.”
The photograph showed a middle-aged woman and a dark-haired teenage boy. There was no doubt about lineage. The boy was the spitting image of Delles.
Ganning and I reached for our wallets. Ganning, as I said, was married. In his wallet he found a picture of some other woman.
I found nothing unfamiliar in my wallet. No surprise family, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Arlin didn’t even take out his wallet. I asked him about that.
He shook his head. “It’s irrelevant. We must focus on the immediate problem.”
“No, no. The hell with this,” said Delles. Earlier tonight I’d seen Delles act serious for the first time since I’d known him. Now I saw another first. Delles was terrified.
Delles started to move, and Arlin seized his arm. Delles yanked it back and stepped away with such speed and violence, it took the attention of everyone at surrounding tables off the game. “Get away from me! Stay away from me! I’m out of here.”
Arlin started to speak.
“Let him go,” said Ganning.
Delles ran out, nearly trampling Gretchen on the way. She returned to our table. “What’s going on?”
“We’re fine, doll,” said Ganning. He was the kind of older guy that could say things like “doll” without giving offense, when he chose to. The fact that he chose to now, I found oddly comforting. Not everything had changed.
Gretchen moved away, back to work again. She gave me a weird, spry, glance first. I didn’t know what she meant by it, but how could I? I didn’t even know if I knew this Gretchen.
“I’m leaving too,” said Ganning.
Arlin glared at him.
“You guys aren’t married,” said Ganning. “You don’t understand. I have to know what’s going on at home. I have to know who is in this picture. I have to know why I don’t have a picture of my Alice. Why the hell don’t I?”
I had never known Ganning to say an especially sweet word about his wife Alice, not ever, before that moment. But that expression “my Alice” which he had used, and the way his gruff old voice broke ... well he loved her, that was certain.
“You should go,” I told him.