Peripheral Visions: Fan Club

They coalesce in the shadows and take shape in the corner of your eye. Peripheral Visions: You won't see them coming... until it's too late.

Fan Club

This is how I die, Jake Abernathy thought. Trapped in my bathroom with a stranger.

Jake had been preparing for bed. The bathroom had two sinks side by side; Jake always used the one on the right. Murph used the one on the left. It was the same arrangement they used for sleeping: Jake got the right side of the bed, while Murph slept on the left. Jake had often reflected on how Murph, being a control freak, needed to drive them everywhere, so the arrangement was the same in the car.

The fact that there was plenty of space in the bathroom for another person made it all the easier for the stranger to be standing there, unnoticed, for who knew how long while Jake scrubbed his face with a soapy washcloth and then, eyes closed, rinsed and wrung the cloth before wiping the suds off. After another quick splash of water across his eyes to clear away the last of the soap, Jake reached for the hand towel and dried his face. The next step would be to take the bottle of nighttime moisturizer in hand and hydrate his face before it started feeling parched thanks to the soap.

That's when he opened his eyes – and that's when he saw the stranger standing there, looking at him with a delighted smile.

"Jesus!" Jake cried, taking a step away from the stranger. He whirled for the door, only to find it closed – had the stranger closed it? How had he done so without making noise? How had he gotten into the house, walked through the bedroom, and made his way to the bath without Murph seeing him? Was Murph already asleep? Was Murph dead? Had the stranger murdered him?

Jake yanked at the doorknob, but the door refused to open.

"I've locked it," the stranger told him.

Jake fussed with the knob. He knew how to lock and unlock his own bathroom door, but somehow the knob wasn't cooperating.

"Can you stop?" the stranger asked him. "Please. Just stop. It's not going to open."

Jake gave up, turned to face the stranger, and backed up as far as he could. There was an alcove at his back into which was stacked a washer and drier combo. Nothing there to use as a weapon. Jake stared at the stranger for a moment, trying to get a read on him. Was he dangerous? Was he a housebreaker? Or maybe a vigilante – one of the Patriot Posse guys that the Kirsch administration had all but deputized despite the fact that they were domestic terrorists who made a hobby out of murdering people of color, Jews, gays, and other marginalized people?

The stranger didn't look like an unhinged white supremacist. He was white – but neither skeletally gaunt, as many in the Patriot Posse seemed to be, nor obese, as many more of them were. He was wearing nondescript dark clothing... so nondescript that Jake couldn't quite make it out. Was that a black turtleneck the guy had on? Maybe he wasn't a right-wing militia guy after all. Maybe he was an anti-fascist. But then, what was he doing in Jake's bathroom?

The man had a look of serene calm, even happiness, on his face as he watched Jake.

Jake, in his turn, felt like a cornered animal. Heart pounding, mind racing, he tried to stay calm. "Who are you?" Jake asked, his voice sounding thin and shaky to his own ears.

"There's no need to be frightened," the man told him. "I'm not dangerous."

"Then what are you doing in my bathroom? And where's my husband?" Jake asked. Then he raised his voice and called out: "Murph!"

"He's in the other room, just as he should be," the man said.

"Is he all right? Did you hurt him?" Jake demanded, still wondering what there might be in reach that he could use as a weapon. Things weren't very promising on that front. A disposable razor lay next to his sink, near a scattering of tubes and bottles: Antacid tablets, toothpaste, shaving cream – and the moisturizer Jake had been about to use. A plastic pump bottle also sat there, the largest object on the countertop, full of liquid soap – supposedly French, and supposedly scented like "sea minerals." Jake had always found that laughable, but he liked the scent. It wasn't much of a bludgeon, but maybe he could throw the bottle right in the man's face, distract him...

"Murph is fine," the man said.

"Then why isn't he in here right now kicking your ass?" Jake asked, his shock subsiding and enough anger warming up in him to allow for a show of bravado.

The stranger laughed. "Really, Jake. Please. I know this is an intrusion, but... well, I hope you'll forgive me, but I just had to take the chance and tell you..." His voice trailed off, but his grin remained fixed. Then his mouth seemed to twist and his lips trembled. Jake realized the stranger was getting emotional.

That worried him. An emotional housebreaker might be prone to any rash act of violence.

"Okay, look," Jake said placatingly. "How about you just... just take whatever you're looking for, if we have it, and be on your way. We don't have to call the cops or..." Jake's eyes roved quickly, checking the countertop, the toilet tank. Where had he left his phone?

It wasn't in the bathroom. Dammit, Jake thought. He must have left it in the kitchen. Or maybe it was on the nightstand next to his side of the bed.

The stranger recovered himself. "I'm not here to take anything from you," he said. "I'm not actually supposed to be doing this – that's true enough. But it's not what you think. I'm not robbing the place."

"Then why are you here?"

"Just... just to talk to you for a minute. Just to look at this wonderful place where you live, the wealth you enjoy."

Jake laughed despite himself. It was ludicrous. Where did this guy think he was? Buckingham Palace? "Wealth?" he asked. "Hardly. We manage the mortgage. We have some savings for retirement... that's about all."

"Savings for retirement," the man said. "You have no idea how rich that makes you. The savings. The possibility, even the concept, of retirement... of your time being your own, of having the resources to enjoy your life..." The stranger shook his head. His delighted grin had become a sad, wistful smile. "Though, if I'm not mistaken, you and Murph spent some of those savings recently."

Was that what this was about? Jake's mind raced all over again. "It's not illegal," he said.

"No," the man said, with a laugh. "No, it's not. In fact, it's a very good idea."

"Murph thinks we won't have a chance to retire anyway," Jake said. The conversation had taken an unexpected turn, and while his apprehension hadn't diminished, he felt a need to draw the stranger out some, see if he could get a lead as to what the man was thinking, what he wanted, why he was there.

"Well, I have to say, Murph is right about that," the stranger told him. "Better to use your money on a crazy scheme than just let it sit there waiting for a retirement that will never come. More to the point, waiting for the government to become even more repressive and brutal, and start taking your possessions and your savings along with your freedoms."

Jake took note again of the way the man was dressed. He'd thought the characterless dark clothing seemed like something an anti-fascist would wear; the way the man was talking only reaffirmed the impression.

"You're not a vigilante," Jake said.

"Me? God, no," the man said.

"And you say you're not here to rob us," Jake said.

The man looked down at himself. "Oh," he said. "The way I'm dressed. You probably think I'm antifa, don't you?"

"That crossed my mind," Jake said.

The man shook his head. His smile was back. "No, Jake. Nothing like that. I'm not a terrorist, not secret police, not antifa. I'm not here to steal anything or burn your house down. Though, I suppose you might not know this, but the solar panels on your roof? They're going to make this house a target for the terrorists. Nothing says 'liberal' to so-called patriots, the death squads and the religious enforcers, like alternative energy."

"Okay," Jake said. "So then, who are you? What are you doing here?"

The man raised his hands. "I'm just a... well, I guess the word for it is, I'm a fan."

Jake couldn't even process this for a moment. "Huh?" He stared at the man blankly.

"A fan. I mean, you have what I guess you could call a fan club," the man said. "And I'm one of them."

"A... a fan club?" Jake asked.

"Not an official club, but... what I mean is, so many people are so taken with you..."

"What?!" Now Jake knew for sure that he was dealing with a lunatic.

"It's just... this will sound odd," the man said.

"No shit," Jake said, so puzzled and irritated that he almost forgot his fear... almost.

"It's just that you epitomize so much for so many..."

"Cut the crap, man," Jake said sharply. "If you're gonna knife me or shoot me, just do it already. Don't make me listen to this."

The man laughed – a brief bark of laughter. "I'm sorry," he apologized quickly. "I'm not making fun of you. I know it doesn't make sense. But it's the truth. You... you symbolize something for people."

"Me? How? I'm nobody."

"You're not nobody, Jake," the man said. Then he took a deep breath and held up a hand. "If I try to explain, will you just hear me out? And... and try to keep an open mind?"

"Okay," Jake said tentatively.

"And will you stop acting like I'm a psycho killer or something?" the stranger asked him.

Jake reached over and tried the doorknob again. Still no luck. "You lock me in my bathroom, and my husband is on the other side of the door, and you tell me he's okay, but he's not trying to get in here and see what's going on," Jake pointed out quietly.

"If I unlock the door, will you let me say my piece to you?" the man asked. "Really, that's all I want."

"All right," jake said, staring at him intently – distrustfully.

The man smiled. "Try it now," he said.

The door opened easily. Jake bounded through it into the bedroom. Murph was sound asleep in their bed. Jake rushed to him, looked him over, saw he was breathing. "Murph," Jake said, reaching down to shake his husband. "Murph, wake up..."

"Jake," the stranger said. "You said you'd listen."

Jake whirled on him. "What have you done to Murph?"

"He's fine," the stranger told him. "He's... as he ever was."

"Did you gas him or something?"

"No," the stranger said. "No, I did nothing to him. It's just that... in this moment... he's asleep. This is how he always is – in this moment."

"What the hell do you mean?"

"I mean that it's possible to replay certain moments from your life, and in this one... well, Murph is asleep. You can't wake him up, because... well, he's just asleep. That's this moment. In other moments, things are different..."

"Are you telling me you're manipulating time?" Jake asked. "You're really that crazy?"

The man held up his hands again. "I said I'd explain, and I will if you let me."

Jake spotted his phone on the nightstand next to the other side of the bed – his side of the bed. He circled around and picked it up.

"I might take a rain check on that," he said, picking up the phone and hitting the EMERGENCY button.

"You've reached emergency services. This is operator thirty-six," a voice said from the phone. "What is your emergency?"

"I have a..." Jake's eyes flickered over the stranger in his antifa clothing, with his exasperated smile. "A man in my house."

"Is there a crime in progress?" the operator asked.

"He's trespassing!" Jake fairly shouted. "Send someone!"

"We can't dispatch our limited police force when there's no crime being committed," the voice told him.

"I think he did something to my husband – "

"One moment," the voice said. Then: "This call's coming from the mobile device of a Mr. Jacob Abernathy?"

"That's me," Jake said.

"You're a registered homosexual," the voice said.

"So what?"

"We don't waste resources on faggots," the voice said, and the line went dead.

"What was their motto? 'Protect and serve?' Or something like that?" the stranger said. "Except, I guess, if they didn't feel like it. Such a strange country. So many people with so much... and instead of appreciating how much they had, they spent their time complaining about other people's sexuality. Or their gender identity. Or which made-up god they prayed to. Or didn't pray to." The strange shook his head. "Pathetic. And yet, you were the most fortunate people ever to live. Ever. In the history of the world – truly a blessed people in a blessed time." He shook his head. "I guess that's not quite true," he said after a moment. "The real apex of American wealth was in the 1950s or 1960s, wasn't it? But... seventy, eighty years later... still pretty close."

"Yeah," Jake snorted, tossing his phone to the nightstand, knowing that help was definitely not on the way. "Except that a third of the country is either homeless or in prison. And most of the rest have thrown in with the Theopublicans and their 'Make America Godly Again' nonsense." He sat on the bed, and looked at the stranger. "And you say you're not antifa. And you talk like you're some kind of time traveler from... what? A dystopian future? A ruined planet? Desperate to come back here, when things were..." Jake couldn't help it; he started laughing. "...better?"

"Not quite," the stranger told him. "But not entirely wrong, either. Yes, in times to come, we have less... so much less of everything. Except for death, disease, misery... we have plenty of that. Along with far too much government surveillance and oppression. Though, to be fair, only authoritarian governments can get anything done now."

"And democracy?" Jake asked, feeling sick to his stomach. "Did they just.. let it go?"

"The last democracies perished more than two centuries ago," the stranger told him.

"I don't believe you," Jake said.

"Yes, you do," the stranger told him.

Jake stared at the floor for a moment. Years of hopelessness suddenly cascaded through him, unleashed from a place deep in his mind where he'd sought to contain it. What the stranger was saying was that all Jake's worst fears really were going to come true. Yes, he did believe the stranger. He didn't understand where the man was from or how he'd gotten there... but he believed him.

"At least tell me Kirsch got what he deserved," Jake said. "Dragged out of a spider hole somewhere. Shot right in the face."

"I'm afraid not," the stranger said gently. "Winfield Kirsch, American Dictator for Life, died in his palace under the constant watch of his militia guard. There was a huge state funeral. Jets flew over the reconstructed Capitol Building, where the body lay in state for a week."

"Asshole," Jake whispered, tears falling from his eyes.

"He was ninety-three years old. He murdered thirty-six million people in this country, and a hundred forty million others around the globe," the stranger added. "And what followed next was more than two hundred years of chaos. Purges, pogroms, religious police carrying out executions in the streets. We've only managed to achieve a more or less stable government in the last few years."

"And so you come here? How?" Jake asked.

"I can tell you that, but first... first, I want you to know what a gift you've given us. So many people seeing how you really lived. Seeing the wealth of your time, so much of everything that you didn't even think about. Your bathroom, with all those products... and, my god, running water, water you could drink right out of the tap. And..." The stranger nodded at the lamp on Jake's nightstand. "Electricity. Homes lit up in the night, a warm oasis against the darkness."

"You don't have electricity in the future?"

"The elites do," the stranger told him. "That hasn't changed. The world's resources and wealth, what's left of them, are still almost entirely in the hands of a tiny fraction of the world's population. Both are significantly diminished... resources and population, I mean... but human nature is the same."

"And you're some kind of time travel tourist? Or refugee?"

"Me? I'm a technician. I'll probably get in trouble for this, but I just couldn't let the opportunity slip by without saying... well, talking to you a little. But there are historians and military experts and engineers who are interested in studying this time, and the things in it. Except, I'm afraid, we only have access to a few moments in time... a few perspectives... nothing really helpful from a technological perspective. Our council are much kinder than the warlords of the past few decades. They allowed people to visit, but... as much happiness and hope as people got from seeing the riches of the past, there was an inevitably a price to be paid."

"What do you mean?" Jake asked him.

"You can understand, can't you, the sense of wonder someone from my time feels when they see the unbelievable bounty of your time," the stranger said. "Even just the purity of the air, the color of the sky, the safety you had – whole houses to yourselves, in neighborhoods where people weren't constantly killing one another for scraps..."

The stranger fell silent.

Jake looked up from the floor; looked over at him.

The stranger shook his head. "You had so much," the stranger sighed. "And you threw it away. You could have saved something for us. You didn't bother. You fought over who was 'right' and who was 'moral' and who should have the freedom to take other people's freedoms away from them. That was your great and passionate project throughout these decades, the last prosperous decades of human existence. You were so busy trying to take things from each other that you never even thought about trying to conserve anything... share anything with your own descendants."

"I'd commiserate, but I'm the one the people that those in power... and their mob... are taking things away from," Jake said. "If you have anything like the rule of law, or equality, or reward based on merit instead of some bullshit rationale based on skin color or sexuality, I'd be happy to take your place in the future. You can have everything here, everything that's mine..." Jake looked at Murph. "Everything that's ours. You think this is heaven?"

"It is heaven," the stranger said.

"Then we'll live in hell, as long as hell is some place we can just be left alone."

The stranger looked up at Jake then – a quick look, a frowning look. "I'm sorry," he said. "I haven't explained this to you very well. Jake, I'm not from the future. I mean... I'm not a time traveler. Not in the literal sense of the word. What I mean is, we're both in the future."

"What do you mean?" Jake looked around. "You keep saying this is the past."

"What I mean is, you live in the past... but there's no such thing as time travel. We're both in the year 2364."

"Right now? Both of us? How did you... but wait, you said..." Jake shook his head. "I don't understand this at all."

"All that money you and Murph spent a few weeks ago? The Lambda Legacy project?"

Then Jake understood. "No. Oh my god, no."

"This is a virtual environment. You're a digital replica. That mind scan they did on you... it worked; it worked better than anyone expected. And just like Murph told you, just like the Lambda Legacy project intended, now we can see the past as it really was. We can see the truth, see it through the eyes of the people who were living at the time. The council hoped to recover some useful technology... water reclamation techniques, or medical knowledge, or even weapons expertise. But that's not what the Lambda Legacy project preserved. At least, that's not what we've found so far. Only six viable mindbase archives are known to exist, and they're all like yours... mind scans made from civilians, people terrified of what was coming, people who wanted to make a record so that people in the future would know the truth and know who the bad guys were. Except..." The stranger laughed. "I'm so sorry. No one cares who the bad guys were. We're just looking for lost knowledge that can help us survive the droughts, the poisoned groundwater, the diseases that are killing more and more of our children. Resistant strains of measles. Polio. Tuberculosis. A recording like this one, like yours, showed us how those diseases were once almost eradicated, but then – what did you call them? 'Anti-vaxxers?' Another chorus in a long, idiotic howl from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The last delirious ravings of a civilization determined to destroy itself. God, if only you had left something useful for us, but all we have left over from your time are religious tracts and propaganda videos and Trump flags. Oh, and lots of antique firearms... lots and lots of those, but not much ammunition anymore. Not much of anything anymore. Not – "

"Stop!" Jake screamed, his head pounding, his ears roaring, his eyes streaming with angry tears.

The stranger fell silent. "I'm sorry," he said again. "But if I can finish explaining... when I told you that you have a fan club, I was telling you the truth. The council let people tap into the VR feed – your memories, your environment. Just a few hours from a few different days, but such amazing memories. Lunch at a restaurant. Sandwiches made from fish."

"Tuna fish," Jake said. "Tuna fish patty melts at a greasy spoon."

"A walk in the most glorious forest."

"The nature preserve by the river. Trash dumped everywhere," Jake said. "Weeds and scrawny trees."

"And now. Tonight. All your conveniences, your ointments, your perfumes..."

"Cheap fucking soap that's supposed to smell like sea minerals – whatever the hell that is. Nighttime skin moisturizer that's supposed to stop wrinkles, but..." Jake shrugged. "I don't think it really works. I mean... whatever. All of it stupid, stupid shit."

"Treasures from a golden age," the stranger said. "Hope for what was. A fairytale of lives lived in opulence. An image into which people hungry for more and better could project themselves. You captured their imaginations... our imaginations... my imagination. You see why I say we're your fans."

"Fans? Sure. Enchanted with an illusion. The reality isn't all that," Jake told him. "We're in debt to our eyebrows, overmortgaged, underemployed. Doing okay for the moment only because Murph's mother died and left him some money. Enough to pay off some credit cards, but... not enough to live on forever. Even if we could, we'd be afraid to pay off all our debt because the chat rooms say that..." Jake dragged a sleeve across his eyes. "They say that the only reason the government hasn't carried out mass arrests yet is because so many people owe too much money, and the big financial corporations won't let them lock up that much of the work force."

The stranger was quiet. Then he said, "Thousands – tens of thousands – have tapped into these memory recordings, Jake. People with money have paid to have conversations with you, like I'm doing now. They love you, they love this time. But there's a downside. People who have experienced this glimpse at the past see what used to be, and they go home thinking maybe they can have this sort of life again. Only, they can't. The earth is too damaged, too depleted. Human health is too challenged, too degraded. We're dying... slowly, terribly. No, things will never be like they were, not ever again, and the memory seems so sweet at first... and then becomes so bitter. Like a cancer in the mind, in the heart. What did you used to call it when people that once were dominant in society started losing their status? Slipping into poverty, seeing what it was like to live the way the people lived who they looked down on? Deaths of despair – is that the phrase?"

"Yes," Jake said. "I think so."

"That's what this glimpse into your mind recordings led to."

"My memories," Jake whispered.

"Yours, and the other five mindbase recordings we were able to tap into. Yes. Show people the overwhelming bounty of your time, the surfeit of all life's essentials... let them luxuriate in this world of the past for a few hours, and then drop them back into their own threadbare, hopeless existences. What was hard before was suddenly intolerable. Your mindbase has become a public health crisis. I mean, people love it. Some people even got addicted to it. They love this memory more than they love their own lives. It's destroying them, and there's not even anything here that's useful to us in a practical fashion. Just your own fears about what your government will do to you in the name of 'morality' or 'liberty.' You can see why they're taking your mindbase offline, can't you?"

Jake froze, startled; fear shot through him. He understood in a flash what the stranger was saying, and what his words meant.

Jake nodded, got to his feet, walked around to Murph's side of the bed, and kissed his husband gently on the forehead.

"What are you doing?" the stranger asked.

"You're telling me that all of this is fake, right? It's a digital fabrication?"

"It's a virtual environment based on your recorded thoughts and memories that are being run through AI processing to make your mentality interactive," the stranger said.

Jake rolled his eyes. And here I thought I was plain ol' me.

"But yes, essentially that's correct," the stranger added.

"And people visit this place... my mind, my memories... like they'd visit a museum," Jake said. "And they see another kind of life. A life where supermarkets exist – endless food. Not very good food, but still... and there's power on demand. And water. And our country is turning into a fascist shithole, but you wouldn't even notice that, would you? Because in your own lives, it's always been that way, or even worse. All you notice is the cheap goddamn consumer goods. The big bed, the carpeting, a run-down house that, to you, is the fucking Taj Mahal. So you're shutting me down. It's the end of this particular tourist attraction, the end of Jake... what's left of him, the echo of Jake. The echo of some poor guy who was murdered by zealots hundreds of years ago."

"We don't know what happened to you personally, but – "

"But you found my memories and my mental patterns, and you got the hint. And now you're finishing the job."

"I'm sorry, Jake. It was one thing to keep your mindbase active while we thought we might find something... even while people tapped in and became so happy, so hopeful, before we realized that there were troublesome aftereffects..."

"Something useful, you say," Jake interrupted. "Not just the memory of some guy brushing his teeth or eating a tuna fish patty melt at a roadside café, but elaborate plans for a desalination plant, or a children's hospital, or... or a goddamn hypersonic stealth plane. Yeah. Useful stuff. Not some schlub's life that... as pathetic as it is, as endangered as it is... it's still a thousand times better than what you've got."

"That's right," the stranger said, not unkindly. "You had so much more than anyone has now. Even the people at the top... the rulers, the council members, the owners, they are some of your biggest fans. But it's just too expensive to keep your mindbase active. It costs too much power. And the effect it's had on people's mental health..."

"Right. I get it. That's why I'm saying goodbye to my husband. The lights are about to go out again, this time for good."

The stranger said nothing. Jake got to his feet and walked back into the bathroom. "And meantime, damned if my face isn't feeling taut and dry. I hate that feeling. I hate when soap leaves your skin parched. I hate when I forget to moisturize and a while later... my face feels like a drum made out of leather."

Jake stood before the mirror, applying moisturizer to his forehead, his cheeks, his neck – and, delicately, around his eyes.

He chuckled. "The hell of it is, I'm not even really here. My skin isn't really dry and taut. I don't even have skin. I don't really exist. Hell of a thing to record and preserve and reconstruct: How it feels when you forget to moisturize. Hell of a thing for you to love about my time, my world... me: The foolish, extraneous shit that was so much part of our lives we barely even noticed it. The necessities we forgot made life possible. The ego trips and showmanship that we started thinking were the very stuff of life."

The stranger padded into the bathroom behind him. "This is where I came in," he said to Jake, apologetically. "I really did want you to know... yes, seeing the past has been hard. But in so many ways, it's also been worth it. It's stupid, because the interactive part of you is nothing more than an AI-enabled expansion of the mindbase records, but... I still wanted that moment with you."

Jake met the stranger's eyes in the mirror. He managed a smile. More than managed; suddenly, it hit him that all of time was a gift, all of existence a glorious thing, even if it was nothing more than a fragment of time replayed countless times for the crowd.

The stranger's face in the mirror was full of tenderness and gratitude. Jake was full of gratitude, suddenly, as well.

"That's what you came to tell me?" he said.

"It is."

Jake turned to the stranger and looked him in the eye. "So, go on, then," he said.

And this, Jake Abernathy thought, is how I die: Standing in my bathroom, with a stranger.

______

The madness of prejudice is the theme of next week's vision: As Mortiz flees from a mob unleashed by a sadistic dictator's whim, he suddenly finds himself offered help by an old nemesis. But what if the gesture is as dangerous as the violence of the burning city around him? Find out when Mortiz goes "Riding Shotgun."