Michael rode trains late at night when the city seemed quiet, when most of the waking world around him slept. There was a feeling then he could almost touch. He listened to the most unbearable music, unbearable by pop standards anyway. A cacophony of soundtracks from post apocalyptic 80′s movies mixed with bleak doom metal and chased down with sad 8 bit tunes. The kind of music where he could close his eyes and imagine a cartoon universe that centered around him and his heroic deeds. He could be Link, saving the universe from evil with the help of strange old men or wandering alone in the futuristic burnt out husk that was once a great civilization.
He spent too much time wondering about the end.
At ten years old, Mike wrote a report about the prophecies of Nostradamus. The same day he awkwardly stammered the oral part it in front of the class, rambling on about quatrains and anti-christs, a blaring siren interrupted his speech, forcing students to abandon their snickering and cram themselves under their desks in dead silence. Silence was important, because the bombs Russia dropped could hear their targets. Should a whisper leave a student’s lips, he or she would be responsible for the nuclear holocaust raining on the school. There would be no chance to be a good wolverine and save the world.
On the train, Mike stared at candy colored advertisements for events, phones, shoes, cheap doctors, massage therapy schools. He once asked a stranger if any of the ads shown would be important 20 years down the road, in the face of peak oil, water wars, a surveillance state and a doomed economy. Hell, would there even be ribs for Ribfest or giant turkey legs at the Taste in ten years? The stranger only responded by moving a few seats away.
Like any lonely aging hipster riding a train at night, Mike had a battered brown notebook he scrawled in. He wasn’t hip enough to travel with gadabouts finding their way home from good parties and shows and too pretentious to sit at home working on a poorly maintained Tumblr. He thought riding the Red line late at night writing in a notebook could be pretentious, but remembered it’s only pretentious if you tell people about it.
Mike puzzled on the piece he was working on. He dubbed it “notes from the apocalypse.” He meant it to be a history of what life might be like, after Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck ran on a presidential ticket in 2012. In 2013, Palin would be crowned First Queen of America while Beck would be Prince. The whole affair would resemble Napoleon’s coronation. The world around him seemed scary enough where that could happen. Michael wrote the following passage:
The Free States of America looks much like the old United States of America, with some minor changes. Washington DC is no longer a state, but a prison colony, completely moated and walled off from the surrounding states. In order to keep the Free States of America at 50 states, much of the Caribbean was “democratized” in 2014. The places that were once Cuba, Haiti, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas were liberated after what was known as the global war on terror was christened the War for Democracy. Since our executive liberator (what used to be called the president) freed the area, it was dubbed Disneya and is now the world’s largest resort. The Walt Disney company provided much of the funding for that particular “democratization” force used to liberate the former countries by hiring contractors from Xe, formerly known as Blackwater.
Mike spent too much time reading Orwell, Chomsky and Alex Jones in his younger years. He knew Prison Planet was a haven for some batshit crazy ideas and realized the FBI wasn’t planning on boxing him up in a FEMA camp anytime soon. He couldn’t though, shake the feeling that something wasn’t right. He could almost touch that feeling. He lived in Chicago, the world’s second most surveiled city, only trailing London in the amount of cameras watching his every move. Mike closed his eyes and thought about the night he spent in lock up after protesting the war in 2003. He touched his face; he could still feel the spot where a police baton collided with it. He took a deep breath; he could almost taste the tear gas from that night on his tongue. Eyes still closed, Mike saw the face of his childhood friend, killed in Afghanistan in 2005. He watched the flames and heard the bangs of Shock and Awe in Baghdad. He wondered about people who said dissent was treason 8 years ago, now protesting in the streets with guns strapped to their backs. He wondered if he should send the agents keeping an eye on him Christmas cards this year.
As the train slowly crept along, Mike found himself staring out the window and singing a line from a song. “When you sleep, no one is homeless,” he muttered out of key. He scratched the tattoo on his right forearm. It read “reality is the original Rorschach” in French, a pedantic homage to two favorite philosophers now dead. He thought about solipsism. But, if he were really just a collective hallucination of the world around him, was it one person’s hallucination or everyone’s? Did he pass back and forth between jobs and family and friends because he was skittish and flighty, or because he only showed up when they wanted him around? Was there a difference? What kind of self important assclown dreams that kind of shit up anyway? Could he be an expression of the unconscious desires of Glenn Beck?
The robotic, yet soothing voice of the CTA called out “This is Grand.”
He leaned back, closed his eyes and woke up.
