Moonlight at 6PM

“Hey, Butter Chicken Boy,” His voice snapped me out of another hole.

I felt myself do that thing I always do. I blinked. A lot. Then I concentrated on him.

It only just caught up to me what we were doing.

One minute I was terrified for my life against the wall of his living room thinking he was about to… Y’know.

The next we were in that beautiful convertible of his. Dark blue. Moving through Thread like a guided missile of… cool.

This time I had my Third Eye on. The entirety of Thread laid out in front of me as we hit the loop. Looking over the 405’s gently curving spiral upward, I saw all of it. At least on my side. I couldn’t believe how much of it was alive.

Etched out light danced in the sky. Advertisements, streamers, even the edges of buildings were sparkling with a line of light tracing them into the evening sky.

Not heavily. Just… twinkling. It made the edges of everything seem almost hyper real.

Once we reached the crest the road leveled out. We were high above, driving over the wide open park. I could see the river from a different zig zagging angle. It cut through the middle of the city, slicing it in half as we made it to the top of the loop.

We drove over long stretch of straight road before we came to the opposite spiral. This time spiraling down.

Right down into the heart of the business district with a host of other cars, spilling out into it in unison, right out not the main drag.

Evening light spilled over Thread and I took it all in, watching with my eyes tick-tocking about at what my Third Eye showed me.

I watched a big digital whale swim down the road over head, my head tipped back, watching it emerge from behind us, then following it with my head as it swam above us and onward up the road beyond.

Then before I knew it we were parking in a parking garage and getting out.

I followed along, lost in his efficient movement. Watching Dvar be Dvar.

Dressed the way he decided.

Elegantly polished in charcoal black, with asymmetrical Wild Petal along one side of my long coat. Black slacks and black Chuck Taylor Allstars on my feet.

I looked as sharp as him, I presented as sharp as him. I was his extension.

I got that instantly when we got out of his car.

Instant respect.

Walking from the parking garage at the bottom of the spiraling highway, out onto the main road, all I could do was marvel at it and daydream.

People moved out of his way.

Feared him.

Some walked up, shook his hand, patted a shoulder.

Either way it was clear. Dvar wasn’t just cool.

Dvar was the fuckin’ man.

I envied it, honestly.

Enough to try to tune it out and try to forget my position in life.

Marching behind him. His toy. His thing. His weapon.

But then he snapped my attention standing beside him at the crosswalk.

His hand was on my chest.

“Pretty Boy… You’re gonna walk out in traffic. Where’s your head at?” He asked me.

His tone was… concerned?

I looked up, suddenly remembering I was a self. Right up at his intense eyes.

“Huh?”

He turned to me and caught my chin with a curled finger.

“Huh?” He said, mocking me in that calm voice of his.

He was full Oyabun today.

A Chinese shirt, black. The v-neck open. His familiar asymmetrical coat, and of course that smell. Orange and mandarin peel.

The thing that could demand my full attention when he called for it.

So I stood there and gave it to him.

I threw my eyes up at him. Pretty little sacrifices to his indomitable spirit.

“Sorry.”

“Pay attention,” he scolded me like a child.

“Look, I said I’m sorry. I was just…” I sighed, pulling my chin away.

He let me, turning to continue on as the crosswalk changed.

I followed.

“In your own head. I know. That’s why I said pay attention.”

I watched his oxfords move in rhythm. His shoulders smoothly rowing left to right as he walked.

No… more like strutted.

A slow, unbothered strut. Like he was always at home, walking around his own grounds.

It made me match him.

Not gonna lie I felt like a million bucks, even if I was just a ghost walking in bitch-position.

You know what I mean.

Three paces back.

Two to the right.

Lock step.

Couldn’t do anything about it so I just accepted it.

And for whatever reason it felt good to just… surrender to it.

I didn’t have responsibilities until they were given to me. Just like being in The Silence military.

I could just turn my head off and be a good boy.

I shook my head at that thought.

Jesus, Pretty Boy… you’re accepting the programming?

“So what do you know about Meridian?” He asked me.

“I know it’s the fifth ring of hell.”

He chuckled.

“Yeeaah…” He dragged it out like a tired old bear. Voice crackling seductively.

I frowned.

“Why you gotta do that man?” I asked.

“Do what?”

“Flirt with me.”

He threw those stern eyes sidelong at me.

“Because you like it.”

My face flushed.

Fuck.

“No I don’t!” I snapped and fell back a step.

He chuckled like the devil and kept walking.

“Alright, Pretty Boy,” his tone dismissive. “My question.”

“Right… I mean I dunno. Weapons. Energy harvest… pain.”

“That’s right. Isn’t it odd all you clones only know that much. Yet Meridian isn’t one moon it’s several.”

“Wait… I thought Meridian was just the moon.”

“In school on Meridian,” he teased with a smile, stopping in front of a book store.

He lifted both of his hands out to his sides, palms up. As if presenting something.

I looked past him, at the glass window his back was turned to, advertising a long, detailed map of…

The Nation of Meridian.

And it’s halo of moons around Thread.

I blinked several times as if my brain was downloading new information.

“I’m… - s… sorry wh… that’s…” I stumbled over my words, confusion slamming into my brain like I’d just found out the laws of gravity weren’t a reality.

“Why does it say that, right?” Dvar asked.

“Y… why does it..?”

“Say that…” he finished with me. “Yeah… that’s why you never come down here. Why there’s always something that comes up. Why you always stop yourself, second guess yourself… why you’ve never had Butter Chicken, Uno."

“No…” I shook my head, my stomach feeling sick. My eyes tick-tocked furiously as I processed what was in front of me.

This wasn’t real, right?

“Yeah…” Dvar said, grabbing the lapels of my jacket, snatching me in close.

Arresting my attention.

My eyes lock-stopped on his.

“Why are you doing this to me?” I whispered.

“Because when I saw the fight in you… I decided I wasn’t going to recycle you.”

“Recycle me…?” I asked.

“01Delta.”

“Yeah…?”

“No…” He released my lapels. “Look at me, Pretty Boy.”

I’d let my eyes wander. Looking around the street. Looking around at the people.

All of the real people.

I looked back up at him.

All the way back up at him.

“Yeah…” I swallowed.

“Yeah.” He nodded. “01Alpha. 01Beta. 01Gamma… 01Delta.”

“No…” I said. My brain broken.

“You’re the one I want to keep. You died at the Wok and Roll. I paid quite a lot of money to restart you.”

“No…” I was just a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a…

“Yes.” Dvar said as dawning realization punched a hole in my life and let out what little value I had left in it.

I really was nothing.

“I’m nobody…”

His cruel and compassionate hand took my cheek.

And he kissed my forehead.

“Ask the next question.”

“When."

“Last Thursday.”

“Fuck!” I snapped my eyes shut and turned away from him, taking a big step away, my hands finding my hips. My head snapped down to stare at the ground. “Please tell me you’re lying to me.”

“I am not. Well. Exaggerating a little. More like three months ago. Day one was the day you came home. Everything prior to that happened… with a previous version of you.”

“How am I supposed…” I started, my eyes tick-tocking about slowly, thinking about my life. My memories. My… self.

I was a self, right?

How was I a self if they could just print myself.

“Ask the next question,” Dvar said, “You always do.”

That statement punched me in my manufactured soul…

“How many others…?”

“Variations? Well, they make twenty-three units across twenty-three models before they adopt a new DNA fit. So… Five-twenty-nine?” He asked, winking one eye shut in thought. “Yeah… five-twenty-nine.”

“There’s twenty-two other me’s…”

“No. You’re 01. There is no other you. Alpha up to Delta were scrapped.”

“What do you mean scrapped?”

“That’s why I asked Mido for you. The others didn’t meet my expectations. I really meant it when I said that face of yours is… let’s say I’m fond of it.”

“No deposit no return…” I nodded, trying to ignore the way he was looking at my lips, “Fuck…”

“That’s right. They’re gone. You’re here. Nobody said life was fair… they just said it’s life.”

I nodded slowly, feeling the sickness and the nausea in my stomach expand into subtle, haunting waves.

I couldn’t shake them.

I wouldn’t shake them.

Not ever.

His strong hand found the back of my neck and we started walking again.

He patted my back like a friend. Like he was happy to be the one to shatter my reality.

To leave me walking along as his hand dripped off of my back.

The grasp of the devil.

Walking that cool walk of his in front of me.

I followed satan.

Where?

Probably to dance with the devil in the pale moonlight.

“C’mon… I need to explain what you’re dealing with. My daughter is a very dangerous woman.”

“I’d love to say ‘so I’ve heard’, but apparently so someone else heard.”

“A lot of someone else’s… I can only imagine the weird time collapse you’ve got to be experiencing.”

“Yeah… like is now now? Or am I just living through a memory?”

“Kelevra.”

“Yeah?” I said, pavlovian.

“No… I’m saying bad dog. Why would you bother asking stupid questions like that?”

“Because I’ll never know what’s real if you guys keep killing me off and putting somebody else in my head.”

Dvar stopped. He turned back as people walked left and right of us.

And he just stared at me. Hands in his pockets. That cleanly dressed Yakuza boss a force in front of me.

“Oh. Yeah. Let’s have that talk,” He said boredly, “You get to reincarnate over and over again with all of the mistakes of your old self pre-downloaded so you don’t repeat them. I weep for you.”

His words were a sobering slap in the face… one that made the nausea at least tolerable.

“I… guess that’s… a way to look at it.” I said, stopping in front of him.

“Lucky, really. I’m addicted to looking at your face.”

My eyes snapped wide, searching his. Instantly reminding myself to hate my face more.

“Why!?” I whined.

“It’s an aesthetic thing,” He said, casually turning and walking on.

Like he didn’t just arrest my entire pulse.

I followed, feeling my heart thundering my neck.

Thunka… thunka… thunka…

You ever get that? That thick beat at the bottom of your neck when something socks you right in that weird part of your feels that’s like… joy-thrills?

Fuck.

And to think. He could turn and just punch me in the fuckin’ face at any minute, but I still wanted to hang around for the compliments.

Late stage dependency.