Pasha Malla - People Park

I can’t do this, said Adine. Anything else, please.

Flipping the dial Sam said, Are you ready for Monday Adine?

What’s Monday, buddy?

We’re thirty-six on Monday Adine. The end of the third hand.

Ha. Right.

And then it’s the end of the work right Adine? The end of time’s third hand when the machine stops and goes backward. All the way back to the beginning right?

Buddy, I get a little lost when you —

Then time’s machine will take us to thirty-six years ago okay, when we were zero and together okay Adine. Right Adine?

You want to get together for our birthday? You want to come out here? Sure. .

Sam smeared his thumb into the worn arrow on his remote, the TV chunked from one channel to the next, through the hissing blizzard of channel 0, at 99 pictures appeared again. He paused on an infotainment program where neon graphics splashed across the screen to the zipping sounds of lasers. Sam watched.

What are you watching? What channel are you on?

He’s doing his trick tomorrow night at nine Adine, said Sam.

What? What channel?

Raven. This is what Isa Lanyess, In the Know , is saying now okay. Channel 83. She’s not saying what he’s doing yet — Raven.

Raven, ugh. Just the name .

It’s going to be in the park Adine. But it’ll be on TV too. Not even tape-delayed. Live.

Hey, buddy, the talking stuff — I’m good, okay? You don’t have to tell me that stuff. I can hear fine. It’s just seeing. So if there’s something to see, jump in there.

Sam said, Yes.

He watched and listened while Adine listened. Isa Lanyess, In the Know , was talking about the downtown movie theatre, Cinecity, where people could come if they wanted to watch what was happening everywhere else, all at once, on the bigscreen.

With all the We-TV Faces’ feeds, plus all the public cameras, there’ll be coverage of every neighbourhood in the city, Isa Lanyess said. So anything that Raven does will be projected live to anyone who wants to see it!

That’s kinda crazy, said Adine.

Who knows what he’ll do? said Isa Lanyess. We’re all really excited.

The woman doesn’t so much talk as bray . Don’t you think, Sammy?

It’s kinda crazy, said Sam. Why’s it kinda crazy Adine?

Buddy, that they can even do that sort of thing. Turn the city into a movie set, I mean.

And then don’t forget, said Isa Lanyess, starting on Saturday, Cinecity’s going to be broadcasting the Jubilee Spectacular , all weekend. And don’t forget All in Together Now , the movie for the people, by the people, that you all helped write and create!

Oh, wait, said Adine. This is the worst ever.

Ever Adine?

Ever.

The report ended. An ad for Salami Talk came on, a feline slink of bass guitars and saxophone beneath the sultry voice of its host: Tomorrow on Salami Talk we’ll —

Adine hit MUTE. This fuggin show, she growled. This fuggin guy.

They’re having Raven on tomorrow. As a guest.

Right.

Lucal Wagstaffe’s chin, said Sam, is a very big orange chin.

Hey, Sammy? How’s that thing on your face? Are you taking care of that?

Can we watch this interview Adine?

Don’t pick at it. Remember what the doctor said. And you got that ointment, make sure you’re putting that on. And food? Today’s grocery day, right? Make sure you go.

Yes. Adine? Raven’s on at one o’clock. That’s perfect, that’s when we do the work.

It is.

Adine?

Sammy?

I’m sorry.

You’re sorry.

Yes.

For?

Because you can’t see okay.

Oh. Ha. Right. Well thanks.

But we’re doing the work right Adine? We’re doing good communication. And it’s only Monday when it’s our birthday and we’re thirty-six and time’s machine —

Indeed, buddy. I appreciate it.

Adine hung up and Sam sat for a moment with the phone pressed to his ear, waiting for the dialtone to be replaced by the machinations grinding away beneath the city’s surface. When it emerged, the sound was faint. Did that mean the machine was slowing? Sam wasn’t sure. He checked his three watches. The first two had stopped, their six hands aligned at midnight, the final watch’s three still wheeled. He put the receiver back in its cradle, looked around his room at the various parts and elements, trying to decide if a last-minute cog or gear required adding before the end.

Sam touched the scabby crust along his jawline, felt a loose flake, and pulled. The pain as it peeled from his cheek was lemony and sour, his eyes watered. The air was cold on the raw spot. He brushed his finger over the sore, paused, then stabbed inside. The hurt was sudden and sharp. Sam closed his eyes and said, This is time’s machine and not a dream, and gouged, and finally, gasping, pain blazing in his face, examined his fingertip: capped in a thimble of blood.

ON THE FERRY to Bay Junction Sam stood on the deck with his hands on the railing, the boat’s engines growled, the water frothed and sloshed, the day dimmed. An Islet-bound ferry passed transporting workers home from their downtown jobs, their own work. Citybound it was only Sam and an elderly man with his cane on his lap, whom Sam avoided. It was important workers were unseen, and good communication with Adine was important too, though Sam’s own work had many elements: good communication, proper attire, dream checks, systems maintenance — all of it, all the way to time’s reversal, and then they’d be at the beginning again, before everything went wrong and changed.

When the ferry arrived at the mainland Sam did not head down into Bay Junction Station as the old man did. He could walk to Street’s Milk & Things, though it was much farther than it had once been. When he and Adine were kids they’d lived so close that if his mother Connie needed milk for her coffee he could run over and get it before the water even boiled, though they had to go together, the Polyp’s products were often expired: you had to know the calendar, you had to check the dates.

Normally Sam walked, head down, up the path from Lakeview Campground into the woods, past the Friendly Farm Automatic Zoo and out beside the People Park Throughline, then down into the common and up through more woods, finally entering the clearing and past the houseboat to the glowing white sign of Street’s Milk & Things. But today Sam stopped at the edge of the poplars on the southern ridge of the common and stood for a moment, looking.

The common was empty, the muddy ground golden in the late-afternoon light. On television that morning the whole park had been teeming with bodies, all those bodies that existed within time’s machine, each body held a brain that made it a person, and each person had a mother and maybe a sister, or a brother, and friends, or at least other people they knew, and those people had brains and families, and more people attached to them, and it was endless, a great sprawling lattice of people and their brains upon people with more brains that grew and looped back upon itself and grew again, forever, yet everyone was so separate. Though soon time’s machine would bring them all together.

Deep underground (and monitored on Sam’s wrist) turned the three final hands, most people were oblivious, they just lived their lives. Which was fine. Only a select few could be responsible for the work, though Sam had to remind himself that anyone among the city’s bodies could be a worker — you didn’t know, you were only permitted to connect with two other workers. And his connects were Adine and the Polyp.

Atop the Grand Saloon Hotel the towerclock’s hands were locked at nine. Sam recalled Raven putting his fist to his forehead and his eyes opening and the nothing within them, they were just holes, and the clock had stopped. It had only two hands, was not official, its rotations were marked by minutes. So Sam stared at the clock and counted to sixty. The hands did not move. He counted again: nothing. Yet upon his own wrist his third watch still chipped away, seconds to minutes to hours. .