The palm readings had farcically evolved into palm pay.1 The insecurity cameras reflexively recorded every facial recognition. Even daily weather outlets contradicted each other, as if competing for different audiences, even in the bizarre thundersnow.
Someone asked, not sure who, since none of us bothered to look up. A random question about that first Rona year. Between periodic coughs, we sipped our caffeinated requirements. Someone else mentioned our collective displacement. I think.
We nodded begrudgingly. Nostalgia briefly beckoned.
We did remember those three summer months of refreshingly enraged protest, the reignited marching, the chanting, the large youth presence, atypical, composing new songs defiant — until visitors started arming themselves with firearms instead of placards, until picket signs and skateboards proved no match for AR-15s.
By the fall, the slightly more astute began noticing people no longer understood half of what you said.
And you could no longer understand much of the utterances of others.
Blah, blah, bot?
We had crawled out from under the rubble of a collapsed Babel.
Everybody who survived started getting weird. Really weird.
Everybody.
Even me. Snicker.
The professors at the podium laughingly called it amphigory. No one knew what they meant.
Doctors, nurses and other disorderlies, they all blamed each other for the malpractice of miscommunication.
Armies of cell junkies grabbed the wheel and ran over the election cycle, claiming someone stole the evidence. They found proof in moronic memes, including, “Divided We Wall.”
Bystanders cried incoherently, motioning for an interpreter.
The fissure, the strange.
Momentarily distraught, another thought rippled outwards. More mutterings about the unwelcoming disorientation, the dead-see scrolling, broken up only by encased polymer deliveries and vexing agitation breaks, while we waited impatiently for the captivation to recharge, then for the exact moment where we could skip the ad.
We sighed imperceptibly, temporarily lost in the permanence of doubt.
The fissure, the strange.
In the ensuing signal readings, another voice mumbled, “The anomie has really taken over.” Some of us raced to look up the term, before agreeing upon the enveloping end, initially displayed digitally, how we’re being harmed as much as any biological virus.
Or something like that.
Still, we retreated to our prearranged retreat, catching a phrase or a word or two, as someone else spoke up, under a false condition of anonymity. She described a coming to grips with unreality, to no one’s comprehension, until she proclaimed a sputtering predawn practice run of an Extinction Event.
She added, dryly, “Do we simply close the broken umbrella to this catastrophe, as it rears its ugly headwind?”
The fissure, the strange.
We also noted how children, some wearing both frowns and headphones, had turned against their parents and grandparents and then against each other, while some spouses and ex-lovers occasionally resorted to domestic homicide and self-termination, usually while still working from home.
Somewhere, we tried running backwards until we slumped forward, fetal position, glowing devices in hand.
Some fell face-first, further at the mercy of pharmaceutical giants, gun manufacturers and by extension, predatory lending.
Something like that.
The fissure, the strange.
Chronically failing, the usual heading. Probable depression disguised as determined apathy, fossilized indifference, the typical detail.
At first, we had all exhibited the mildest versions of Tourette — lies! — until the amorphous messaging morphed — medic! — the death throes around the diamond and down the sidelines and the free throw line — pun! — let’s just admit we lost any immunity — ouch! — from the most irrational of conclusions.
Gradually, the end of eye contact coincided with our declining vision. The absence of live musical interpretation echoed our hearing loss.
We believed the air raid sirens, leaping into silos, awaiting further instructions with government issued rations while the billionaire class flew high overhead, applauding briefly from their always private jet. Weirdly, we shared pictures of them. One image waved to us before departing to some conference on the environment.
It almost felt like they really cared.
Meanwhile, the managerial class, inevitably running point for wealthier interests, ghosted then spooked, ghosted then rebuked, poked around and then ghosted some more.
Outside, drivers stopped using turn indicators, with a few violently spinning in circles to burn rubber tattoos into the cement.
The fissure, the strange.
At the school, I sent a serious inquiry about a perennial Bartleby. Chronically failing, the usual heading. Probable depression disguised as determined apathy, fossilized indifference, the typical detail.
Days later, the electronic message only asked if we knew his nationality, his birth certificate origin — and nothing more. Was he born in Yemen or Saudi Arabia?
They said they’d look into it. Or somebody would.
Eventually, they verified the boy’s naturalization. Good ol’ USA.
And nothing more.
No further explanation, as if that settles everything.
In other news, we did our own research, the correlations, the cause-and-effects, clumsily cited, inconclusive as ever, reflecting our own troubled reflections.
Almost absent-mindedly, we, the civilians, ignored the coming drones of war, as if we could sustain reassurances in the empty void of the screens.
Still seeking guidance, some of us perfected the art of the nervous chuckle.
The fissure.
The strange.
Austin, Texas. October, 2023.
Photo by the author.
Outtakes & Bullet Points Below. . . .2