Cryonomaly, or, A Time Odyssey

PART ONE:

THE NEAR FUTURE

Things derive their being and nature by mutual dependence and are nothing in themselves.

—Nagarjuna

Chapter 0:

Evolving

His attendants meant to keep him damned straight. Suffering a bullet wound without pain medication, James healed in a warehouse-style, federal hospital. Small, efficient machines monitoring his recovery reported that he was making progress, but in agony he lay, dehydrated and depressed, enduring stomach cramps; dry heaves; and various, phantom, body irritations. At night, it seemed a tiny bug crawled through his tear ducts. For reasons he could not grasp, he shouted wild obscenities at anyone who walked near his bed. Convulsing shadows and whispering voices kept him awake. The machines registered none of these ailments, and the nurses only smiled and nodded when he reported them.

Two days before he was to be discharged and sent for judgment, his only visitor arrived, unannounced. As she strolled passed the nursing station, she gave a curt nod to the duty nurse who nodded back after glancing at Maria’s gold badge in its black, leather case attached to the left, breast pocket of her blue blazer. How could I not have known, he wondered? Fucking nano. As she approached, he struggled to remain calm, to play it cool.

When she reached the foot of his bed, he blurted, How did you manage to survive on all the nano you took? and winced as his cool evaporated.

She grabbed a chair and positioned it next to his bed. Without expression, she said, Lots of ways, but, mostly, I took anti-toxin injections.

Of course you did, he snapped. Nice badge.

It isn’t difficult to hide from people who aren’t looking for it. She studied his face. You seem better, almost like a straight person.

Yeah, he mumbled.

They sat in silence avoiding eye contact until James pleaded, Why me? I didn’t push the stuff hard, just dealt it to friends who need it, like me. . . . He wanted to finish with, and you, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. His stomach lurched. I was small time, he shouted, his voice cracking against his will.

Maria scanned the room to see who might be listening, but James didn’t care who heard them.

I was never after you, James. I only wanted Hank.

Well, I’d say you got him.

I didn’t come here to argue.

What did you come here for then? He clutched his stomach as the cramps surged.

Do you need something? She raised her hand to signal a nurse who was with a patient a few beds away.

No, he said and waved her off. His hand began trembling, so he tucked it against the side of his hip. They’ll give me prune juice, he exaggerated. It’s horrible. He took a deep breath and, with his other hand, pushed himself higher in the bed, trying to sit level with Maria. His wounded shoulder crumbled, and he fell back, the cotton sheets offering no comfort.

Chapter 1:

Compadres

At the doorstep, Maria shivered and fumbled with the house key, her black hair drenched from the downpour. James reached out to steady her hand, and together they worked the key into the lock. He had done this before, with his ex, intimate gestures between them to which he had ascribed meaning beyond their value. Or, maybe, meaning existed for a moment but had worn and faded like the leaves of liquidambars in fall, at first burning with color, but then turning brown and brittle. This time, things would be different. He would be different.

As Maria shook droplets from her hair onto the gray, entryway tile, he locked the door and hung the key on the rack next to the jamb. When he turned to face her, she reached out with her trembling finger and brushed a drop from his brow. She radiated chaotic seduction with her glossy, brown eyes peering from shadowy sockets outlined in black mascara. Her pale skin accentuated high, angular cheekbones, and her anorexic-taut body exuded frenetic energy. Her left nostril had collapsed from overuse, and with a short flick of her tongue, she licked her dry, cracked lips.

She turned and bounced down the hall to the bedroom. He followed, watching her narrow hips sway. As she scooped her camo-green duffle bag off the bed, she flashed him a smile and headed into the bathroom, closing the door. He stood in the bedroom listening to her changing, cussing as she fumbled with her wet clothes. Tugging at his soaked shirt, he admired her coyness. After all, no one liked a nano whore. They would in time, however, lose their modesty. He could feel their relationship evolving.

• • •

With nimble fingers, James extracted the nanobyte stash from his drenched jeans and examined the gleaming crystals, which were kept dry inside a plastic baggie. Then, he tried to shake off his pants, but they snagged around his ankles, causing him to hop in circles like a fool to keep his balance. For a moment, an agonizing thought paralyzed him; embarrassment never led to good sex. Finally, the pants gave way, and he slapped on a pair of sweats and a t-shirt.

Maria dashed out of the bathroom with her usual verve, her thick, wet hair slicked back.

Let’s get high, she smiled.

He grinned, and they headed into the living room, her arm laced through his.

Their favorite buzz was a combination of hash and nanobyte, a new speed, made of molecule-sized machines that navigated through the blood stream into the nervous system. A coating of conductive, aluminum alloy bonded the drug’s polymers to any number of particles, permitting designer consumption of nano. It could be injected, smoked, drank, or snorted. Once the nanites entered the body, they shed the coating, and then their programming worked to accelerate a person’s metabolism five times the normal rate.

Most junkies used hash to mellow the high, but careless addicts still died of heart attacks from using too much nano in too short a time. It only took a couple of hours to OD when they kept hyping themselves up every fifteen minutes. Maria could consume more nanobyte than anyone James had ever known. Together, they monitored each other’s intake, so neither one of their hearts would burst.

They had become nano compadres.

• • •

Maria’s problem was that whenever she was blitzed, her thoughts expanded into diffuse nebulae. Everyone experienced this to a degree, except that her thought-nebula spit flares of severe paranoia. One night, she crashed her 240,000-mile Toyota Prius Mark X after imagining the highway patrol was listening to her thoughts—not from bugs in the car, but directly into her head with satellites or something. She left the car twisted around the pole at the bottom of the freeway off ramp. When she stumbled, strung out and bloody, onto James’s front lawn, he’d asked her if she called the police, an ambulance, a friend, or even a tow truck, but she just stared at him as if he were crazy.

It was the same look his wife had thrown him as she marched out the door. He had grabbed her arm when half her body was on the porch; her mind gone to a life without him. His clench was too tight, and he knew it. She didn’t even jerk away but only stared. He let go.

Their failure had been his fault, of course; nano had consumed him. It had taken his money, his copy-writing job, his health, his mind, his connection to humanity. When she left, he laughed for three days and nearly OD’d. It was a wonder that she had stayed as long as she had. At some point, something snapped back, and he began to care. By then it was too late. Her stare had been the end of something; Maria’s the beginning.

• • •

The more he was around her, the more his detachment eroded. He felt a connection to Maria that he had never had with anyone, yet it felt old and familiar, pleasurable but disturbing. When he looked into her dark eyes, at the edge of his understanding and out of his control, without words, a conversation began. Loneliness lurked within the depths of their gaze, pushing its way to the surface against his will, sounding muffled alarms in his stoned subconscious. But, he could no longer fight the need to emerge from isolation, and he no longer wanted to.

So, he had her Prius towed to his house, and, as the words spilled out of his mouth, let me help you straighten up, he seemed to float out of his body so that he couldn’t stop what he was saying. She ran to the bathroom and puked.

After cleaning the toilet and pouring half a pot of decaf into her, James got Maria to relent. She spent three or four nights a week at his place. As their loneliness leaked into the ether during long nights together, he felt something growing alongside his sexual appetite, which startled him. It was one thing to get his sex drive back, even if they hadn’t acted on it, but to have something more, lurking, something that remained undefined and shapeless, left him unsettled.

Chapter 2:

The End of a Chain

You’re not like most junkies, she said curling up on the couch.

What do you mean? he queried as he took a bong hit of his hash-nano concoction.

Well, for starters, you really do want to help me, she said, taking the bong as he passed it. You’re like, noble. That’s . . . irresistible.

Blowing out his hit, James paused to contemplate what she had said, her words hanging in his mind. As he tried to analyze them, each word oozed into abstraction, leaving a sloppy mess of fragmented thoughts. She brought him back with a snap of her fingers. He wasn’t sure how long he had been gone.

I didn’t mean to freak you out, man, but, you know, most people would have written me off after the crash. A lot of people would, like, just think I’m a loser, a drain on their good energy, you know? She sucked on the bong making the water gurgle. You’ve changed how I look at things, at people, more than you could know, she muttered under her breath as she held in the hit.

James eyed Maria. How long had it been, he wondered, since she had begun living with him? Time never seemed fixed anymore. It had been months. Five? Seven? He tried to blink away the smoke that permeated the room.

While staying with him, her self-image had improved. She combed her hair and was careful to tie her shoes. Still, she painted her nails in sundry colors, but as a choice rather than a drug-induced mistake. Sometimes she put on makeup although he never thought she needed it. And, now that she was eating with regularity, she radiated health. Her tan skin gleamed, and her dark hair struck a lustrous sheen. He hoped he looked as fit.

Blowing out her hit and handing the bong to James, she added, I don’t mean you’re weird or anything, but are you going to say something? You’re starting to trip me out, man.

James set the bong down on the coffee table and stretched out to enjoy his high.

Thanks, he said.

As his thoughts dribbled, he realized that junkies didn’t give a damn about anything other than a buzz. That’s what she was getting at, but junkies came in two classes. The selfish ones who never looked beyond their next high, who only cared about others when it came to scoring, they ended up on the streets, swimming in their own piss. They functioned on wicked instinct and self-destruction and were cruel to those close to them. These junkies Maria had known well.

James knew them too and did his best to avoid them, but he also understood the other class of junkie, those similar to him. They held decent jobs, at least once in their lives; they could read more than the warning label on cigarette packs; they understood the concept of personal hygiene; and they bonded with other people, especially other literate, sanitary junkies. In an unsettling moment of clarity, he wondered how often he had fluxed between those who pissed on themselves and those who didn’t.

• • •

Maria slid off the couch onto the floor where she sat in lotus position with her eyes closed, her forehead beaded with sweat. James got up and opened the window with care, trying not to disturb her meditation. A muggy breeze brushed his face. The smell of damp pavement and wet grass wafted through the room. A sprinkler hissed in the distance.

He flopped onto the couch. Drugs, James mused, either drove junkies apart or knitted them together. As he watched Maria, he equated his relationship with her to contrasting schools of Zen philosophy. One school preached that self-meditation would lead to self-enlightenment. Another taught that no one could reach enlightenment alone. He loathed these thoughts when they crashed in, but found that his awareness arrived too late to stop them. Contemplating such things ruined a good high. If he had to choose, he admitted, the second school of thought suited him. He was much happier getting high with her, rather than doing it alone.

Concentrating on the ceiling, he took a deep breath through his nose, and lifting his right leg, he tried to sit in lotus position but didn’t have the flexibility. His knee cracked.

Maria giggled. Are you trying to knock me off my axis here?

Shit! Sorry! he said, straightening his leg and rubbing his knee.

Again he brought his leg up and tried to put his foot in his lap. His bones griped.

Don’t mind me back here, he said with exaggeration. I’m just breaking in two.

Shush! She admonished him without looking back. I’m trying to center.

He rolled his eyes but admired her conviction.

• • •

As she stretched, light sent rainbows jutting from her rhinestone bracelet. At first, she had no jewelry, no accessories, except for a long, silver-chain necklace. So, James gave her many colorful trinkets, all cheap but shiny. Various rings now adorned her fingers, toes, and ears. Beaded necklaces, bracelets, and anklets jingled as she walked. Barrettes sparkled in her hair.

Her favorite piece of jewelry, however, remained the silver chain. She always wore it in public, the end of the chain disappearing into her cleavage under her clean, v-cut, T-shirts. Once, in a nano-jealous psychosis, James asked her to remove the necklace. She refused.

Backpedaling a few days later, and trying to hide his fear of another lover, he explained.

Well, it’s alluring.

That’s a big word.

Yeah. Maybe you could go au natural with it? The silver against your brown, beautiful . . . . He leaned forward and reached out to touch it.

She jerked away with a timid laugh.

It’s all I have left, she explained. You know, from before, when I wasn’t messed up. My grandma gave it to me. She’s gone now. It’s all that’s left. Embarrassment reddened her cheeks. I . . . I attached a whistle for the next time I’m too strung out, so, like, I can blow it, and you can come and help me, rescue me. Man, you could be, like, my hero!

James let a nervous laugh escape. He was happy that the necklace did not come from another lover, but he wasn’t sure what to make of her comment. He hadn’t considered that she might relapse although it happened to everyone. He hoped that he’d never hear that damned whistle.

• • •

A dancing rainbow traced across James’s vision breaking his reverie. He waited for the light show to fade before dragging himself off the couch. As he crept into the kitchen, he stirred the thin layer of dust that coated the linoleum. It swirled like tiny ghosts tugging at his toes. Tomorrow, he would mop the specters away.

Fishing among the dishes in the sink, he found two glasses that appeared clean. He rinsed them and wiped them off with a paper towel. When he opened the refrigerator, a pungent odor spanked his nose. With urgency, he extracted the pitcher of lemonade and closed the fridge. He poured two classes and then sniffed the contents for freshness. The lemonade passed, and he brought both glasses into the living room.

She lay on her back with one leg stretched straight into the air, elegant and calm. While his body protested these moves, she still wanted him to learn them. At times, she tried to teach James other things too, like Spanish. He aimed to please, to be sophisticated, but he would get the words all wrong. He’d say, Gracias when he meant Buenos Dias, and Hasta Luego when he meant . . . who knows what he meant? But, when she rolled her R’s, it enchanted him, and the rhythm of her speech hypnotized him. Often they would go to the park and sit under an oak where she would read and translate Latina poets after he had made a deal.

He set the glasses down on the end table and took a drag off the bong. As he blew his hit toward the ceiling, the gray smoke swirled and twisted into abstract shapes that flowed with supernatural grace through each other. The formations raised the hairs on his arms.

Yes, he thought as the smoke dissipated, we fit.

Chapter 3:

A Clean House

James, she whispered, seduction in her breath, a few evenings later as they sat on his sofa, the blue-gray moonlight filtering through the windows. The humid Hawaiian weather front had pushed the Alaskan jet stream into Canada. Maria donned one of James’s tank tops. As she spoke, he could feel the breath from her words on his neck. When are you going to make love to me? she hummed as Charlie Parker and Miles Davis bebop saturated the room.

I wasn’t sure . . . , he started. His hands trembled, and his legs twitched. He had run out of hash, so they did the nano uncut after dinner. The high hadn’t yet run its course.

While the drug had predictable results on his body, it had erratic psychological effects. Nanobyte produced amazing sexual endurance, which sometimes made sex incredible and sometimes miserable depending on his state of mind. He never wanted sex to be miserable with her.

I just thought we had something here, she said, shrinking away.

No, he responded without thinking. I mean, yes! he said gathering himself. We do.

They sat listening to the music, their knees touching. Considering all the nanobyte they had taken, she was calm. With self-conscious effort, he put his arm around her, his hand brushing against her bare arm. For an instant, her soft skin overpowered the nanobyte, an unusual and unexpected sensation.

This is nice, she said, entranced. Do you ever wish we could stay like this, in this moment?

I suppose, he shrugged. Wait. Why can’t we? he asked looking at the silhouette of her face in the pale light.

It just seems that we are in a different space most of the time. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t feel like our relationship is growing. She paused as jazz floated through the room. What if we quit drugs cold turkey? she asked, surprising him.

Hmmm. Why would we do that?

Well, for lots of reasons.

I don’t know that I can quit.

He never felt so grave. He had tried going straight from time to time. The physical and mental challenge of staying clean proved unbearable for him. Depression and anxiety, painful headaches and cramps, uncontrollable shaking drove him back to the guilt-denial-relief cycle that characterized his addiction.

I’ve been partying for so long now, he said, trying to sound convincing. I like it.

Maria rested her head on his chest. Yeah, I know what you mean. I never seem to stay straight for too long, she sighed. I just wish our lives were different; that’s all. Don’t you ever wish that?

More than I care to admit, he thought, but he blurted, Yep, in hope that she would change the subject.

They sat in the darkening room, breathing together. For a moment, he wished he were straight, that he could will away the effects of the nano, will his way past the invisible obstacles that kept him a junkie.

Lifting her head off his chest, she turned to face him. Are you going to kiss me at least? she asked, shy and vulnerable.

He cupped her chin in his trembling hand and brought his mouth to hers. When her supple lips caressed his, he lost track of time and space. The crisp, fresh sent of tangerine from her facial soap relaxed him, and he squeezed her body against his.

While Parker’s sax skipped lithely over complex and elusive chord progressions, a thought danced its way into James’s consciousness. Bird knew drugs. He couldn’t kick them even though he possessed genius and talent, so Parker ended up dead at thirty-four.

As James pulled away from Maria, the wet taste of her mouth on his lips, he said, I think you’re right. I think we should quit. He felt resolved. Really, I’ve wanted to quit for a long time, he confided. I just don’t know how.

Me too! she said, her eyes burning with promise.

• • •

That night they made love as one erotic being. In continuous motion they entwined soft curves and boney edges, slipping in and out of one another, trembling, laughing, and moaning without the burden of self-conscious thought. They spent their energy in rising bursts and grunting shudders until they sprawled across the bed, wet and relaxed. It was a high unlike any other. After they caught their breath, Maria curled into a ball against him. He brushed her hair with his fingers as she purred.

When he heard her breathing deepen, he put the sheet over her and, then, padded into the bathroom for a shower. As he waited for the water to warm, he realized that he had been lying to himself about her, thinking that he took her in to save her from the streets. Indeed, it was a consequence. Even now he would attempt straight if she wanted, but it wasn’t out of a need to save her, to be her altruistic, metaphorical knight—her hero.

Stepping into the shower, he let the warm water comfort him. Yes, part of him had wanted to help her, but not because he was virtuous. She sparked feelings inside him just by standing next to him, feelings he never knew existed, feelings that he wanted, that brought him up from the low complexities of his past and joined him with something otherworldly. He wanted her for himself, as part of himself, for his own salvation.

After showering, he toweled off and snuck into bed. With the warmth of her body next to him, he reached over and stroked her bare back.