Simply:

Sitting in Michael’s office.
2:48 PM Apr 11th, 2007 via web

Always.

At the engagement party.   The night you celebrated your new job.  The day you had two bottles of sake with your coworkers at lunch then went back to work and no one noticed.  The day everyone was snowed in and they were the only restaurant open.

It’s just that tonight, tonight as you are washing your hands you notice that there is a new sign taped to the stall.  The paper is white, taped up with cello tape.  The letters are large and red, and simply read, “OUT OF ORDER.”

But this time you really look at the door.  The metal lock has been mangled shut and the space between the door and the wall has been taped over with black duct tape.  There are plywood panels that extend from the bottom of the stall to the floor.  There is a similar treatment from the top of the stall to the ceiling.  You think nothing of it until you notice something.

The bolts holding the plywood in place were screwed in from the inside.

That button combination is now lost in the sands of time.

When it was performed successfully, the radio would then speak the numbers aloud, in an unsettling voice that would vary the emphasis between syllables.

“Seven.  Thirteen.”

I remembered carrying them with me in my daily bag.   “Just in case,” although the cases wherein I needed them were always few and far between.

The times that I did use them regardless of whether or not I needed them were far more often.  Like grocery shopping, or running into the drugstore while another person waited in the car.  Over time, they’ve saved me perhaps two  minutes while I told someone to meet me at the storefront instead of having me walk back to the car.

I remember using them, clipped on my belt, to coordinate friend’s moving days.  I remember scheduling lunch at some of the earliest Anime conventions I attended.  Coordinating student events in college was also another use.  I remember using them, for some reason, while shopping in White Flint mall.

Now, text messaging is far more efficient and reliable.

I looked at them before I threw them out.  The rubber had taken on the greyish white tinge of decay.  One of them was missing a volume knob.  The weight of one indicated that I had left batteries inside, and I knew that opening the battery compartment was a bad idea.  The manufacturing date was June, 1998.

They had been in the drawer for probably over a decade, following me from dorm room to a house that I rented to a condo I rented to a house that I now own.  They probably stopped working two or three moves ago, maybe longer than that.

It was time to let them go, but not the memories that accompanied them.

I made a mental note to take the batteries out of the six other radios that I had, and dumped them in the blue bin that my building uses for electronic devices trash.

Even now, I’m replaying it in my head, the stark white face, the mirror image overexposed in such a way that it was almost translucent.

All I know is that one minute, I’m turning on the machine, and then a horrible screeching.

The only clue, a piece of paper he clutched in his hand.  In it was a simple piece of verse.

I ran into the other me,
His face was white as snow.
And everywhere and when I ran,
The Me was sure to go.

I’m afraid of what’s going to happen next.

Before I can reply, he’s asked again, this time with an outstretched hand.

“Change?”

It’s sort of like a game we play.  So far it’s been:

Me 347

The Homeless 3

And I pull my cap down around my ears because it’s really, really cold.

I have a couple of young adult novels, the Alchemyst being one of them, but I’m sort of at a loss at my discovery that reading lots of books at once allows me to read them faster.  One would think that I would have discovered this by now.

I’m reading a lot, mainly to get the writing juices flowing.

If you don’t read, you can’t write.

Ahem.

In any case, it started in an agrarian style earth, only the clothing was very modern.  It focused on a boy that wanted to see the stars.  As time went one I began to realize that this was a future earth, only aliens have arrived and they have prevented humans from using modern technology for some reason.  Most of the population of Earth is focused on subsistence farming, as the aliens have outlawed “modern” technolog.  The farming is done with simple tools, and there are domesticated animals like oxen.

Humans that did not want to live this simple lifestyle were allowed to work in large modern cities that were actually prisons.  They provided much of the amenities that we have today, although you cannot leave once you decide to live in the modern era.

One way or another, the boy ends up on a space elevator, past the shield that prevents humans from leaving the Earth, only to find that there are no aliens at all and the whole thing has been set up by humans from the future that wanted to prevent what happened to their Earth.  I’m assuming that there’s little to no causality and there are alternate timelines created.

Old makeup. A sock that wasn’t mine.  Pencils, everywhere.

But the large orange coat was a surprise.

It was a summer when I found it, hidden as it was behind plastic and cloth and boxes.  It was hung away for winter, two winters ago.  A long knit rainbow scarf hung around the neck, and all of it was in a too small canvas garment bag.

It had been in the closet for a while, clearly.  It still hung there waiting, a huge orange monstrosity made out of wool and buttons.

When I found it, I stared.  For a second, I considered it a coat I had bought and stored.  But it wasn’t mine.

Then, suddenly, it was hers.  I didn’t remember.  I forgot to remember.

Or did remember to forget?

I’m at one when I hear the question.

“How long did it take you to grow that hair, man?”

“Too long,” I answer, without thinking.

“Damn straight.”  He looks at my hair again.  “You Japanese?”

“Nope.”

“Hrm.  Chinese?”

“Nope.”

He goes through the list.  Each gets a negative response.  “Korean?  Thai?  Burmese?  Laotian?  Vietnamese?  Malay?  Mongolian?  Hmong?”  To be honest, I’m kind of impressed.  Yet, at the same time, kind of disappointed.

He pauses to think.  “Taiwanese?”

“Sorry.”

He pauses again, with a puzzled expression.

The walk signal changes and I step into the crosswalk.  “Filipino,” I say without turning my head.

Midway through the crosswalk I wonder if even that word was a fair description.

It’s a colder spring day in 1996 and I’m shivering in my long wool coat.  Despite living in the District for three winters, I still haven’t learned to layer.

I look over to my girlfriend, and she’s occupied with driving.  She shifts matter of factly in the stop and go traffic on Rockville Pike.  It’s a slightly misty rainy sort of day and the intermittent wipe of the blades punctuates our conversation.  It’s about everything and nothing at all, the kind of conversation that two lovers have when they’re not entangled in each other.

We should be in class but we’re not.  We do this more often than we should.  Even though our grades don’t suffer, I know that every time we skip class, a part of us rips away.  A little bit more, every time, we step further and further away from being the perfect son or daughter that our parents want us to be.  But we don’t care.

It’s a long trip in the rush hour traffic, longer still because we ache to get to our destination.  We know what awaits us there.  We long to hold it in our hands, to be complete.

We arrive and we get out of the car.  I wait, in the rain, feeling small droplets through my too short hair.  She locks up the car, takes my hand and we walk through the doors together.

We walk slowly, window shopping at first, stopping at every counter to look at the tiny, expensive objects under glass.  Every now and again, I ask a salesperson to bring an item up from behind the counter.  She nods her approval or disapproval and we move on, taking great care to thank the salesperson each time.

Finally we stop at what feels like the last counter.  The final one for us.  The reason we came all the way out here, in the rain and through the traffic, together.

I’m buying a Pilot 5000 from US Robotics.

She looks at me and I smile.

Because she understands.