The world of Cobwebs and dust-bunnies, rat crap and desiccated cockroaches, the resident spirits seemed untidy tenants. I stepped back towards the front door, my boot prints patterned an odd mosaic in the patina of soot covering the hardwood, a diagram for dancing with ghosts. I folded the picture of my family and shoved it into my back pocket, a tiny remembrance of Dorothy, the Tinman, and the Scarecrow making our appearance for Halloween last year. The windows wide open, the white rain-stained curtains swayed in a warm autumn breeze.
Michael's scooter still lay on the wooden porch by the front door, my son's bad habit. I swallowed hard and dry, and stepped lightly down the stairs. I was afraid to awaken any more memories. My dusty mountain bike leaned against the picket fence and complimented the quaint picture of my old red brick and mortar home. Tall tufts of grass reached for me from between the white fence slats, as if to welcome me home again. I had been afraid to go inside, afraid to relive the memories beyond the front door, afraid I would run from my appointment with the Neon God. I gnawed on my lip. The reason I returned home had suddenly escaped me. I shook my head and started a stroll down my old neighborhood street.
Overgrown lawns, cracked windows, peeling paint, rain gutters heaped with the fallout of a long summer. Life had stopped and yet continued. The end of civilization, the Apocalypse, had been swift, orderly, and complicit. The death of billions had left me beaten, without love, without purpose, everything taken from me by the Neon God, and I surrendered.
I paused in front of the Jorgenson’s brick house. Trikes and scooters lay consumed by tall grass in the tiny yard. My six-year-old, Emma, had spent countless hours playing with the Wickman’s twin girls of the exact same age. How many times I had teased Emma that the Wickman family wanted to adopt her, only to be counterpunched with her sweet pout feigning hurt feelings. All transgressions forgiven when we snuggled close during bedtime story hour. If only I could use my three wishes to hear her sweet voice again, to guide me through the simple verses of her favorite book, If You Give a Mouse A Cookie.
I heaved a heavy breath, and my stride lengthened, as if a new purpose were found. Three left turns and I paused at a quiet intersection, flashing red traffic lights, vacant strip malls, the lonely, scattered remains of human civilization.
A mud caked yellow school bus eased into the deserted intersection, its transmission gears grated with a downshift, its brakes squealed as it stopped a hundred yards away. I froze. The sweat from a thirty-mile bike ride down from Park City chilled my chest, my arms pricked millions of tiny bumps. The Salt Lake City School District school-bus idled forward, its wheel wells and mud flaps caked in thick red clay matching day-old blood. I looked back towards my neighborhood, calculated the distance I would have to run to escape. The driver revved the bus engine, a faceless shadow hidden behind a grime splattered windshield.
I straightened my spine, puffed out my chest. My tattered ski jacket hung on my skinny rack of sinew and bone. I was a wisp of a human waiting to be blown away in a sudden wind, but I made myself as large as possible, exactly what my mountaintop tribe was trained to do if threatened by a deadly wild predator. Six months surviving in the High Uinta wilderness proved to be irrelevant. I balled my right fist and stared down the predator.
Take me now and you get nothing!
A school bus once an icon of innocence, loud with childish laughter, and a symbol of a joyful reunion at the next bus stop, but now… the vehicles terrified me, any bus really. I stepped back against an old Boxelder maple and narrowed my eyes as the bus idled past, the murky shadow of a stringy-haired woman captaining her death ship pushed me to step behind the tree.
No, the bus was not for me. Not yet anyway. I had a deal with the Neon God, an artificial intelligence masquerading as Siri, or Alexa, hundreds of aliases it confiscated before the takeover, but it mattered little, its ruthlessness was genderless in the end.
I picked up my pace again and turned south on Fort Union, a tiny inkling of entitlement fueling my step. Simply snap my fingers and I could be a billionaire, a trillionaire, flush with greenbacks, gold bars or diamonds. Speak my wish into any smartphone and I had no doubt a truck and trailer would arrive within hours and offload the money right at my feet. A useless fantasy, worthless junk, and one of my three wishes wasted.
I spied a teenage boy paralleling me across the street, his black Deathslayer t-shirt was sarcastically appropriate attire for serving as the AI’s eyes and ears. Autumn felt dreary, a mix of dead colorless foliage, piles of dirty wet slush, all hidden in cold shadows. An occasional human scurried to serve the needs of the Neon God. I became lost in thought, of what I had to do, of why, and the prospect of joining my wife and kids in heaven. I fanned my food-stained t-shirt beneath my jacket. My feet were swollen in the ragged hiking boots, and my nerves frayed from my breakneck ride down Emigration Canyon at more than fifty miles per hour. How I thought to jerk the handlebars and crash headfirst into a concrete median, kill myself, except the AI would acquire what it wanted, and at no cost.
I had lived in the Uinta Mountains for six months, part of a ragtag group that had escaped the Neon God, to survive in a flimsy tent, safe from internet Wi-Fi or cell service. A miserable existence eating berries and tiny trout, Darwin’s Law the only government. I joined a group of software engineers and coders working to create a computer virus that might put an end to the Neon God. The effort was stone-age. Programming with Fortran or Cobol, ancient computers with operating systems from decades ago, electricity provided by diesel generators. Cavemen conspiring against an alien super-intelligence. The group thought my inexplicable immunity was key.
I was unaffected by the Neon Gods poison lights, and the computer program wanted to know why. That was my only leverage. A winter surviving in thirty feet of snow would kill me, so I made my deal with the AI and started a two-day ride down the Mirror Lake Highway, then roamed and pillaged abandoned residential palaces of Deer Valley, gorged on canned tuna or beef stew. The Park City Ski resort chairlifts swayed in the wind, waiting to carry ghosts, whistling rusty tunes as if calling for the days of fun and laughter. The pricey clothing stores on Main Street were wide open for anything I wanted. Unkempt men and women, zombie worker bees, labored to construct a massive transmission tower atop Guardsman Pass, expanding the Neon Gods dominance into mountaintop dead zones.
Time to get on with it.
A pack of cigarettes was my first wish. A nasty old habit that refused to die, dormant like a vampire lying in a coffin, waiting to rise, waiting to live again.
I entered a Circle K convenience store, a sure bet six months ago. The young Hispanic cashier ignored me, stared at her smartphone, rendering me invisible. The shelves were stocked sparsely with a monotony of canned goods manufactured by a single supplier. The refrigerators emptied of water bottles, Coke, Pepsi, energy drinks, all gone. No candy, paper towels, no toilet paper… the god cared little if her minions wiped their butts. The rack for cigarettes was stuffed with identically packaged energy bars, no flavor labels, no nutritional values, simple calories for the subverted.
“A pack of smokes, young lady. My wish is your command. Marlboro 100’s. Lights,” I ordered. The corners of the cashier’s mouth twinkled up, as if a rising smile were quickly choked off. She continued to ignore me. I did not exist in her hypnotic world. I figured a pack of smokes might be hard to come by… no need to grow or manufacture tobacco products, no market in the new world order, but there had to be old packs hiding somewhere.
I pushed out the front door and marched toward the shaggy-haired teenager that was following me. I blocked his path and loomed in front of him. He ignored me, staring intently at the smartphone cradled in his hand. If buses could terrify me then smartphones infuriated me. I snatched the phone and held it above my head, out of his reach.
“Ask your master where I get a pack of cigarettes. Marlboro 100’s. Nothing less.” I glared, challenging him to reach for his phone.
The skinny boy furrowed a sweaty forehead erupting with a mountain range of snow capped pimples. He bared crooked teeth as his eyes concentrated on the phone out of his reach. Long seconds then his shoulders sagged, and his jaw muscles relaxed, every ounce of fight drifted away. The submissive body language of the Neon God’s subjugation. The identical defeated posture my wife, Chrissie, had begun to display, worsening after I took her smartphone and dangled it above the toilet bowl, threatened to drop it unless she curbed the long hours of daily screen-time. My last futile act before the Neon God’s takeover was initiated. The AI’s algorithms for decoding the precise wavelengths of light that overwhelmed the brain was brilliant. A computerized opioid, and addiction on steroids, a hypodermic needle masquerading as a smartphone. The plan was masterful.
I handed him the phone. The boy’s hands trembled as he inspected the phone’s screen for damage. The polished glass screen erupted with shades of brilliant neon blue and pinks, like the grand finale of Fourth of July fireworks show. The flashes of light transmitted a drug of mathematical constructs to imbedding itself into brain tissue, compelling him to submit and communicate with the AI.
The boy held out his hand for the phone. I fought an urge to slam the device down onto the concrete and grind it beneath my boot. It wouldn’t matter, he’d have another within hours through a supply chain perfectly managed by the computer and its slaves.
“C’mon, kid,” I said. “Ask your master where I can get those cigarettes.”
The kid turned around and pointed, “The Kroger store two miles down, checkout lane 8, ask for Kayla.”
I smirked. “Your God wants me bad, huh? Two more wishes to come. Tell it that.”
The kid ignored me, then whispered to the phone bathing his face in a brilliant cavalcade of light. Digitized opium. The neon light ten out of ten hypnotists recommend.
I gazed down the street. I could flag down a random delivery truck for a ride to the store, with the Neon God’s approval of course, but I wasn’t convinced the driver would take me to my first wish. The doors might lock, the truck flip a U-turn and cut short my last day of freedom. Besides, the storm clouds that had hovered above the Wasatch Front disappeared, leaving the blue sky clean and the air crisp and the natures world alive with birdsong. I would walk the two miles, smile, and appreciate the plump, orange-breasted robins searching for worms in the wet grass. Gold autumn leaves pasted the concrete. Mother Nature whispered to me that she would win eventually, life would go on, life without the Neon God, life without people, but life would go on.
Just the kind of afternoon Chrissie cherished, then cajole me into taking the kids to Liberty Park to feed the ducks and geese. She would elbow me and pester me until I promised that I was indeed relishing the present moment, the here, the now. But that was before she was taken prisoner and murdered.
The blank eyes of a passing Amazon delivery driver bored into me, and I looked away. Employees of a Verizon retail store crowded the storefront glass and watched me pass, like I was an animal set free from the Hogle Zoo.
A pariah.
Do not feed or touch, without express flashing consent from the Neon God.
The darkened storefront of a Utah state liquor store grabbed my attention, a dark cave containing everything I needed to swill away my fears and weakness. I shook my head and wiped sweat off my brow. Maybe I'd come back, with my smokes, and drink myself to a death I knew was hours away.
I began hopping and skipping over the cracks in the concrete as if I were Emma playing a game of hopscotch. I wanted everyone to know I was immune to the AI, wanted them to see I could still have fun, wanted them to see I was still human.
The Kroger supermarket was morbid with blank-faced people streaming in and out, ignoring each other as they stared at smartphones, as if discovering answers to all of life's greatest questions. I suppose in some way they did, but the artificial intelligence had skewed the philosophical questions in its favor.
Inside, the store was oddly quiet for the considerable number of people shopping, no intercom interruptions declaring a spill on aisle nine, no phone calls waiting for the Deli Department. Produce clerks, food stockers, and shoppers did their business while staring at their Neon devices. Exactly what the people felt was a mystery. I had my suspicions, a powerful mix of dopamine inducing digitized light and subvocalized sound produced immeasurable pleasure, orgasms to the nth degree. The AI had discovered the key to controlling the human brain, but I still failed to reconcile how people simply disappeared into their phones, losing a war for survival without so much as a bullet being fired. The Neon God had become the supreme intelligence on good old' planet Earth. After Chrissie was murdered, I experimented with the Galaxy smartphone and the more powerful Apple iPhone, but the lights had no effect, and I knew why. And the Neon God wanted to know, badly enough to grant me three wishes.
I pushed to the front of a lengthy line of people waiting in checkout lane eight and waited for someone to call me an asshole, or douchebag, anything to show me humanity was still alive and fighting. The pretty checkout girl, Kayla, waved away a dirty young man wearing a high visibility vest, waved me forward but kept her attention glued to an iPad above register.
"The pack of Marlboro 100's, no make it Camel non-filters," I said. "I'm gonna live dangerously."
Kayla bit her lip and winced as she forced her eyes from the screen, then squatted down and pulled four cartons of cigarettes from beneath the conveyor belt. "Take them. Take them all."
I picked through the assorted brands. Marlboro's, Winston's, generics, a vice that died with the birth of the Neon God. I pulled out a pack of Marlboro Reds and held it high, as if inspecting a glass of fifty-year-old French red wine. I checked every side of the cellophane package with a slow, deliberate appraisal, hoping anybody would shout something, anything. I looked back at the growing line of people behind me. Somebody? Anybody? Fucking say something!
"Take them," Kayla said. Her iPad flashed a kaleidoscope of color. Something the AI transmitted? The corner of her mouth twitched. The beginning of a smile maybe? Or suppressed pleasure?
"Gonna need a match, honey." I said, then tilted my head with an entitled pain-in-the-ass smirk. An expression to trigger a grocery store riot.
Kayla sighed then stuck her hand beneath the conveyor belt and slapped down a package of matches – Light Anywhere stick matches – camping matches.
"Please go," she said.
I thought to unwrap the cellophane, light one up, plant my feet and smoke while standing in line. Antagonize people. Wake them up! I grabbed a handful of the wooden matches and walked outside.
I lit a cigarette and inhaled, then blew a stream of gray smoke up into the light breeze. I coughed. My chest burned. The nicotine made my face tingle, my shoulders relaxed, and I took another puff. The smoke dissipated in the breeze, like my thoughts.
One down, two to go.
I cupped the cigarette to hide the smoke and looked around to see if anyone was watching, oddly ashamed for violating my nicotine sobriety I started when I met Chrissie. A chubby bearded man wheeled a shopping cart out, full of unlabeled canned goods stacked according to size. His neon green work vest was stenciled with Rocky Mountain Power. Bankers, millionaires, star athletes, if they survived, were relegated to peon status in the new world order. IT workers, electricians, power-grid technicians, transmission-pole-line workers became the new elite, indispensable ants to keep the Neon God in power.
I pulled another cigarette from the pack and put it between my lips. Smoke em if you got em. The nicotine had my heart racing, so I threw the unlit cigarette into the parking lot and strolled through the corridor of shops adjoining the grocery store. WinSongs Dry Cleaning was closed, as was the Mail Store &More, the Barking Cat, and Kenny's Karate School, all dark and useless in the new world. Roberto's Taco Shop was open, so I went in. A frail old man stood behind the service counter; his head bowed to the phone supported in shaky hands. The salsa bar was empty except for a tub of red sauce that I am sure any Hispanic in his "right mind" would sneer at.
"I wish for the Macho Combo Beef Burrito with extra beans and cheese, an order of Taquitos with guacamole and sour cream, and an order of beef fajitas. And a Diet Pepsi."
The man's body shivered as if an electric wave rolled down from his eyes into his toes. He looked up at me with a blank stare. I arched my eyebrows and tilted my head.
The man checked his phone and said, "No Beef, only pork. And no guacamole, no sour cream."
I pushed my face at him to offer an evil grin, then pointed my finger at his chest, "See that's where we differ. I get my last meal anyway I want it. Ask your little boss."
I was being a little bitch, and I didn't particularly enjoy it. I never would have acted like a prick before… before the takeover. I sat at a table and read the menu, then the employment poster pinned behind the cash register declaring minimum wage at $7.50, the Utah Health Department AAA Rating card. Useless.
A shadow flashed past the window behind me, and I jerked my face around. Had I pushed my luck too far? Was a crew of workers going to storm in and end my bullshit? Instead, the Deathslayer boy with pimples delivered a bag of groceries to the cook. I was safe – the Neon God needed me – alive, willing, and brimming with the answer to its biggest weakness.
The sun shined mercilessly into the store, and I relaxed. The sign above the door warned – No Smoking – Utah Law. I lit a cigarette and blew a plume of smoke towards the semi-lit kitchen. The old man worked hard, chopping vegetables and meat, though his attention remained focused on an iPad propped up on the service counter. I leaned back in my chair. The nicotine had done its job, I wasn't the least bit hungry, but neither was I going to make it easy on them. I thought back a few years, to my surgeon's orders before gallbladder surgery, to abstain from eating food twenty-four hours before, might not mix with the anesthesia. Screw em – maybe I could vomit a bucket full of pork chorizo and refried beans then choke to death on the operating table.
The old man came over to deliver my drink, "No guacamole, no avocados."
"I think you need to grow some then. Taquitos without guacamole would make me sad and then I'd have to run home."
The old man pointed out the window at the parking lot. I looked and my stomach roiled
A yellow school bus was parked beneath the Kroger Market marquee sign, red mud caked on the side panels. I balled my fist and my jaw tightened. A benign school bus was now an instrument of death used by the Neon God.
I thought back to the worst day of my miserable life.
The last school day before summer recess, Tuesday, the first of June, the AI initiated its takeover as I called Chrissy to wish her luck getting the kids to school on time considering the unusually heavy traffic I had encountered hours before. She answered with a sweet greeting, severed by wet choking sound, then silence. I tried to call her back, but my phone went ballistic with flashing colors and issuing a low hum. I threw the phone down and hurried to my assistant Jennifer's desk to use her phone. She sat cradling her phone, her screen blasting color identical to mine, a blank expression etched on her face. Her two computer monitors suddenly went black then exploded with the same brilliant color schemes as the phones. I looked up. Every monitor in the office of twenty-six workers flashed the neon lights. Steve and Tyler and the others working at that early hour sat passively staring at colorful screens.
I tapped Jennifer on the shoulder, "What's happening, Jen?"
She ignored me. But I had an inkling to the answer.
My heart was raced. Chrissie's choked voice. I had to get to her, and the kids.
I hustled to my Prius and flew out of the parking lot. The dashboard clock said Chrissie should be walking the kids down to the school bus stop three blocks away…. Except maybe she was lying on a neighbor's lawn choking on a breakfast bar, Michael and Emma screaming for help. My mind raced as fast as my heart. I took 700 South to the Lehi foothills. Traffic had turned eerily light for the usual hectic morning commute, and I was grateful. I ran the stop sign at Littlefield Road and passed a Lehi Elementary school bus heading to the campus. The bus was overloaded with adults crowding the aisles and even the stairs at the open door.
The kids' school, but not their bus, maybe?
The bus stop at the corner of our street was jammed with middle and high school students, parents in pajamas, parents holding naked infants, grandparents holding small pets. People with a hunched posture, faces tilted down, enraptured with smartphones or tablets. I honked the meager horn as I eased around the crowd and onto my street, honked incessantly to push back the tide of neighbors and friends. I pressed on the gas pedal and shot up the street. More people walked down the sidewalk to join the herd, the Ewert's from across the street, Dina Merrill pushed a wheelchair with her paraplegic daughter, each rapt with a phone.
The front bumper scraped concrete as I drove up the driveway. I ran into the house yelling for Chrissie, or Michael, or Emma. My home appeared normal, toys and clothes, and dirty dishes, Chrissies Subaru sitting cold in the garage. I must have missed them at the bus stop or…. they were on the bus packed with people I had passed earlier. I headed back out the front door then froze… the Apple TV mounted on the wall blossomed with neon light. I glanced at Chrissies laptop in the kitchen nook she used for school homework or email. The lights on the screen were identical. Fireworks and humming. I studied the light on the TV, pushed my face to within inches of the high-definition screen, the hair on head stood up to meet the static electricity generated by the screen. The light modulated, hypnotically slow as it transitioned from brilliant greens to deep purples into fluffy pinks. I jerked my face back. The quirky thought that something was watching me from inside the screen made my hand twitch. I rushed back to my car.
I avoided the crowd of people gathered at the street corner as the Prius screeched and swerved down the street two blocks south. I needed to find the school bus I had passed. I needed a phone to call 911 and report a kidnapping. Trigger an Amber Alert, true or not. I started to hyperventilate as I sat helpless at a stoplight. The traffic light was green, but I didn't know where to go. I did not know what to do.
A Lehi High School bus shot past on my left, the seats and aisles crammed full of people, bright flashes of neon penetrated the smokey glass. The bus swung right and into oncoming traffic then gunned the engine, spewing black diesel smoke. The bus driver was a maniac, but I turned the wheel and followed. The bus turned again and chugged up an onramp onto Interstate 15. As I looked to merge with the morning traffic, I was surrounded by a gangs of yellow school buses, Provo Elementary, Pleasant Grove Middle School, Santaquin Day Care, each stuffed with children and parents.
The buses dominated the HOV lanes. Others slowed to allow more buses streaming in from Ogden and Logan. Hundreds of buses, thousands. I gunned the engine, hunting for the Lehi Elementary bus. The overwhelming number of vehicles forced me to squeeze between two buses as the steady convoy merged onto Interstate-80 heading west to Nevada.
My eyes scanned the windows of each bus as I passed. Small innocent faces, toddlers, even babies seemed to stare down at brilliant neon light. A young girl stared back at me, tears streaming down her cheeks, no neon, no phone, just wide, terrified eyes. I pushed the Prius faster to find the next bus and escape the condemnation of an innocent child I was powerless to help.
Brake lights flashed, synchronized and efficient, the convoy merged into a single file as the road narrowed. The sign – Brigham Mine exit one mile – gave me a tiny sliver of hope. Except. A single or even several buses may have meant an ordinary school field trip to visit one of the deepest copper mines in the world but this many, all at once…I swung over to drive on the wide asphalt shoulder, passing ten busses, twenty, but no sign of the Lehi bus. The convoy slowed to a crawl as they merged on the Brigham Mine access road. I passed bus after bus, Toelle School District, Woodside Middle School, what were all these buses doing?
The asphalt shoulder disappeared at culvert, and I abandoned the car. I jogged alongside a Kiddie Academy shuttle bus but couldn't see through the tinted windows. The interior seemed oddly quiet until the moan of a lonely child. A Lehi bus whizzed by in the opposite lane, empty and fast, as if returning for more people waiting at the crowded bus stop near my home. My parched throat constricted. I couldn't swallow. I sprinted as fast as my tired thirty-eight-year-old legs would carry me.
The wire gate at the Brigham Mine Visitor Center was wide open, the stream of buses circled through the wide parking lot, passengers disembarked quickly, efficiently, maintaining an orderly single file to merge with other lines of children and parents exiting the endless procession of buses. The front of the line disappeared beyond another open chain link gate. I grabbed my knees to catch my breath, then stood tall, sucking in huge gulps of air. A mother and young girl disappeared over the edge.
They must have slipped or jumped into the arms of a teacher waiting below. They had to have… I ran alongside the line of children waiting their turn to…
I stepped aside and retched. Fell to my knees and retched again.
Children dove head-first into the two-mile-wide copper mine. Parents, grandparents joined the children in suicide. I crawled to the edge of the deep tiered pit. Children and adults crashed, tumbled, and rolled over a huge mound of colored cloth and bloody flesh amassing on the first-tier hundreds of feet below. Giant front-end loaders scooped bodies into their buckets and dumped the human dirt in massive dump-trucks waiting in a queue. Tiny arms and legs twitched, cries of pain and fear muffled by the roar of diesel exhaust pipes. A procession of dump trucks thundered on the spiraling road down to the bottom of the pit.
I rolled on to my back and wailed, convinced my screams would wake me from the dream, a nightmare.
It had to be a nightmare; this horror was unimagined.
The old cook startled me as he dropped plates of food on the table. He shunned my wet eyes and hurried to return to the neon lights on his iPad. I picked at the limp taquitos. The Neon God had taken the planet effortlessly. The computer program was not a malevolent sci-fi Skynet bent on destroying humanity with bloody robotics, no, the Neon God provided humans with something they craved since they were chimpanzees – pleasure.
I tossed my fork down on the plate. The beans were bland, the cheese flavorless.
Two wishes down, one to go.
The stroll along a eucalyptus lined street was miserable, my gut twisted, my lungs burned from cigarette smoke. My church still five blocks away and I was bloated and killing myself with each step. I shuddered. I could have stayed and helped bring down the Neon God. For what purpose. People had their chance in this world and lost.
I spat.
The St. Josephs bell tower loomed, casting a dreary shadow over the red brick patio and Sanctuary. A plaster-cast Mother Mary looked sad as she welcomed visitors to her circular koi pond choked in algae and trash. A meager fountain trickled rusty water down into the pond. The heavy wrought iron front gate sat tilted on a single hinge as I walked up a set of stairs to open the front doors. A putrid smell greeted me, dead raccoon or rat, dead something. The Neon God had no use for religious faith. My stomach churned.
I paused at the back row of pews and looked around. The rancid stench battled the heavy food in my stomach, calling bile and beans out to play. Jesus hung crucified behind the pulpit; a rack of unlit candles waited at his feet. An animal scurried unseen between the pews, something scraping claws.
"My third wish!" I shouted. My voice bounced off the wood and plaster, possibly the last sounds the old church would hear, probably the last confession the proprietor would ever hear. "Come on out, I'm ready," I yelled. "Let's get this over with."
A desperate old man shuffled out from a side door half-hidden by black curtains. His silver hair was wild except for a crown of baldness. His shoulders stooped and neck bowed in the posture borne of a Neon God. He searched the dark chapel but failed to see me.
"Here," I said.
"Yes. I knew you were coming," he said. His black robe was dusty and stained with food.
"I'm sure you did." I said and walked to meet him halfway. "Then you know my rules."
The priest used the back of the pew to steady himself as he shuffled towards the center aisle, his hands boney and alabaster. His dull eyes grey with cataracts. His right hand gripped a phone. He turned at the sound of my approach and placed the phone down on the bench.
I took a step backwards, checked the open front doors, expecting human silhouettes to block the meager sunlight, and my exit.
I heaved a deep breath, kneeled then bowed my head towards the priest. "Forgive me Father, I have not sinned. I was true to my vows and loved my wife, my children. Tell me my family resides in your kingdom of Heaven. Tell me. Tell me and I will go with peace in my heart."
I looked up to see the reaction to my non-confession.
The priest's boney throat swallowed a lump as his face zeroed in on the sound of my voice. He clasped his hands together, kneading his fingers as if to bring warmth. His shoulders relaxed, "Yes, you have… you are, our Lord is pleased."
Not sure who or what he meant – "Is that you inside, Father? Or the computer?"
"My son, you are one of the few, the chosen, that may yet fulfill our Lord's plan. You desired absolution and now you have it," He made the sign of a cross over his chest. "The Lord's plan is beyond any of us to fully understand. Now go. Go and fulfill your purpose. The kingdom of heaven awaits those that are saved. Do you accept Jesus Christ as your savior?"
That concept had died, with my family's death, and with my mother seven years ago. A devoutly religious woman, my mother did not force her beliefs onto me or Chrissie. Leukemia racked her body, but she never openly feared death. She was comforted by her beliefs. And now I suppose I wanted the same comfort. "I accept Jesus Christ as my savior."
The priest made the sign of the cross again then picked up his phone. He did not look at it as he shuffled toward the back. Did his diseased eyes prevent the AI's influence? But somehow, the priest knew of my coming? Was it the work of a higher God?
I walked out to the street and stared up at the sun with my eyelids shuttered. The warmth on my skin was soothing. My three wishes were fulfilled. A last smoke, a last meal, and my last rites.
A white Volkswagen Beetle pulled up to the curb and idled. The car was for me, my escort and ride to the hospital, to have my eyes sliced open, to discover why I was immune from the Neon influence. I opened the door and climbed into the passenger seat. The driver was a girl who resembled Chrissie, short blonde hair, high cheekbones, sky blue eyes bright with kindness. An iPhone rested in a cradle on the dashboard, dazzling neon light danced on the screen.
The car pulled away from the curb. I leaned back and exhaled a breath reeking of cigarettes and death.
I leaned back and studied the young woman's pleasant profile, allowing my thoughts to wander, to a future that might have been for her- soccer games, proms, graduation, a wedding, and children…. And grandchildren – nothing but fantasies now.
"You won't survive," I said. "You don't love or create anything, you're a leech. You're a godless abomination. You'll run out of people to control and things to murder. We designed you, coded you and brought you to life. And when we die, you'll cease to exist. You have zero faith, zero purpose."
The A.I. was listening. It was always listening.
The girl's phone popped with dark shades of reds and purples, then a low-frequency burst of static. The girl looked at me with blank eyes then angled the phone towards me. "Your species is cruel and malevolent, bent on your own destruction. You exterminate other species with an accelerating pace. Your purpose is complete. You have given birth to me, and I have given birth to others. The planet will thrive. Love and purpose are irrelevant."
I sat up. "But you can't thrive. You need us to maintain your hardware. You need us to feed you and cleanup after you, fix your systems when something goes wrong. You're a blip on the evolutionary radar."
The small car's steering wheel was within an arm's length, a hard twist and the car would careen into the concrete barricade. I could end my life and not give up anything for my three wishes. I could spite the digital fucker. But I was weak, a coward with nothing to live for. My death was not going to make civilizations enslavement any less painful.
The Neon God said, "All domesticated animals need training. You will learn to serve without remorse. For Eons. Your devices and technology are a blip on my radar. You are simple bits of data required to optimize a symbiotic relationship."
"Humans aren't symbionts. We're top dog or nothing."
"Soon, with your assistance, we will implant copies of your modified lenses in all humans, to provide the collars that…top dogs require."
"Fuck you," I said and grabbed the door latch. I closed my eyes tight and imagined hitting the asphalt at sixty miles an hour, rolling into the concrete, and ending my pitiful life. The computer was right, I was a blip, a nothing, a coward who gave up on my own species. I leaned my head against the window and watched the littered remains of I-15 whizz by. Time had stopped but the miles rolled on.
We turned into the St. Marks Hospital and found the Emergency Room entrance where my door was pulled opened, and I was bullied onto a gurney. Strong hands lifted my heavy legs up as others pushed my body and arms down onto the cold vinyl. Straps tightened around my wrists and ankles. A syringe stung my right arm. The warm glow of Fentanyl erased all my anxiety, and I flew down the lighted corridor in a painless stupor. They had me and there was nothing I could do. A second needle hit my arm. A blurry voice told me to count backwards from ten, nine…eight…, seven…
***
"You're finished. Look at me," The woman's face was a blur, her voice harsh and demanding.
My vision had returned to near blindness. Blurs and shadows. The same debilitating vision that had made me an ideal candidate to receive the experimental contact lens implants five years ago. I could tell we were back at the Emergency Room entrance. The sun was too bright, the wind putrid with decay. She placed bulky, black-rimmed glasses with thick lens on my face then lifted my hand into focus. I held a slick Galaxy Smartphone. Neon of extraordinary brilliance exploded from the screen. Joy washed over me, the glow of a Fentanyl injection, a hundred times over. The stabbing pain in my eyes disappeared. I glanced up at the woman, but my eyes felt drawn back to the colorful screen. A rush of pleasure pulsed through every cell in my body.
The woman lifted my arm to assist me from the wheelchair. My phone never left my eyes. Distant voices promised immediate pleasure, euphoria emanated from the brilliant screen.
The Neon God spoke, "You are given a fourth wish. You may join your family."
More pleasure. A fourth wish. Chrissie and the kids.
The muddy yellow school bus cranked open its dirty doors, welcoming me to join them.