Pete Simon

Laying in a tangled heap of banged up body, Chinney breathed with soft, heaving gasps, rising from him hopefully, withering in the air, then falling in defeat as quiet exhales, quieter than the shelves of CPUs whose whispers surrounded him. He listened to their din within the stillness of the candlelit basement, while mother waited helplessly for instruction.

I don’t know what to do, Mother, he told her in his thoughts. I haven’t got any idea what to do now.

In the far corner, Mother’s eye was powerless black.

Above him, Becca’s footsteps clopped frantically in her search to find the basement entrance.

Chinney tried to prop himself up with the arm that escaped bludgeoning by the steps during his fall. Immediately, sharp pain sparked from his neck, raising hairs there, then licked down his back, took root in his hip and smoldered there.

Gingerly, he returned his body to lying position and tried to soothe the coal hot pain with tears; they leaked from his open eye, over the bridge of his nose, and curled around the smushed fat of his face.

Soon, the hatch door creaked ajar sending rays of light down to mingle with his candles, revealing wisps of diet coke dust, unsettled by the fall.

“Hello!” Becca cried out, and stared into the shadowed basement. There the faint light haloed Chinney’s clumped body, spread unevenly over flat concrete, and saw it was moving, ever so slightly.

“Oh! Oh!” she yelped as she raced down the rotten steps and squatted down beside him.

Just go away, Chinney groaned. Leave me here and go already.

“Are you hurt badly?” she asked. “Can you get up?” then, thinking about it more, “Maybe you shouldn’t try…” she wondered.

Chinney watched her from one wet eye of his half-turned face, winking in response, clenching his eye shut whenever the pain washed upon his conscious shore; turning, grinding, and raking his brain to fine pebbles, then pulling it into the cold, despairing recess.

He could tell from the thick throb at his hip and the merciful numbness of the upper leg that something there was broken. His mouse hand was also numb and his mouse arm wouldn’t move; those would heal, but his hip? He realized he may never walk straight again.

“I’m going to call for help,” Becca was telling him as she uncrouched. “I’ll call for help.” she repeated. She was falling into a daze of concern.

“Wait.” he breathed, blowing dust away from his lips pressed to the floor. Then he extended his free arm and open hand towards her.

“Stay with me.”

Becca took hold of his beestung bear paw; hers was small, warm, and clean; it was trembling with fear.

Becca: he gazed at her silver streaked, black eddied hair, her soft face, her purple brown pixel eyes; so dark in the candle light. A lonely, beautiful heart, unwanted by her world, and suddenly so near to him, at last.

Why do you come into my life now? I have been here for years and years, accepting people’s garbage, for years and years, sifting through their secrets. To have only discovered you now when I am so weak, when I am completely defeated by life… He groaned painfully.

“You’re hurt badly, you need help now.” she told him in her quietest urgent voice.

”NO! No. I can’t allow…others down here…” Chinney weezed, and spit bubbled from his pursed lips as they forcibly kissed the mud stained, weather carpet floor, and he looked into her worried eyes with no expectation she would understand.

The information he had salvaged, linked together, profiled, and ultimately stored on his un-patented, daisy-chained network, Mother; to allow others to access her was not an option.

“Listen, please, I need to go get help,” she said impatiently, but found his hand would not let hers go, he held on to her firmly.

“Help me here,” he told her. His voice was thin from beneath the folds of his smushed face.

“How?!” she demanded of him as he lay there helplessly.

“Repeat what I say.” he told her, spittle leaking from the corner of his mouth like pepperoni pizza grease. Mucus ran from his blood caked nostril like melted butter; the man himself seemed to melt before Becca, and she found him pitiful and was unable to refuse his appeal. After a moment, she nodded.

“Mother,” he said near whisper.

“Mother,” she repeated.

“Louder,” he told said.

“Mother!” she yelled to the open room.

Far in the back, a green eye flicked on, her RAID arrays whirred to the ready, ack packets networked back from all endpoints, all audio receptors came alive and the wave analysis thread was started.

“Erase all discs.” Chinney said in a voice that cracked upon the words and he began to sob.

All my work, all the time I spent on you, the only thing in my life that kept me going: my Mother.

“Erase all discs.” repeated Becca at operational volume.

”Please provide passcode.” Mother intoned overhead, in a calm reasoned tone; benevolent even in the face of extinction.

“1977,01,28,88” Chinney mouthed.

Becca hesitated, uncertain of the exact sequence. Chinney squeezed her hand and repeated it. Becca called it out loud.

”Please provide password.” Mother prompted.

Somewhere in the recesses of contrived memory, Chinney was a young boy with felt button eyes, racing over a hill where a tire swing was suspended in time, hung from an ancient oak, beneath the spinning, parasol sun.

Diving forward into the rubber rim of the simple, sturdy circle so it jut softly into his gut; he smiled as he caught it within the joyful moment. As he slipped through he flew outside material boundary, leaving far behind him the wastepiles of a decadent world; moving onto an existence that was pure and uncontaminated, fulfilled not landfilled, wanted not refused, embraced and held dearly as her most cherished belonging.