MeLO
The gears of the airlocks grind to life and pull back the dome doors fractionally. The horn sounds low and deep. A metallic voice follows on the loudspeaker: Good evening, April 27th,0013 has come to an end, please return to your place of residence. Through the windows of my loft and past the mirrored city, streams of smoke jettison from the exterior of the dome. I look around my living room – the clean white walls, the marble bar, the wide view through floor-to-ceiling windows. I look at Katherine and Daron sitting together on my white leather couch. Kat’s eyes are tranquilly closed and she nestles her head against the curve of his neck. I ask if they’re staying the night and Dan nods his head gently, like if he moves it too fast it’ll fall off his neck. Kat slides her hand up to his jaw, lets her lips brush against his cheek, whispers in his ear something that makes him smile. He shakes his head slowly, gently back and forth, no. For some reason I’m filled with an irrational sadness, or frustration, or weariness. I go to my bedroom.
As I’m lying there, the image of the skyline stains my vision. I can see the staggered towers of twisted metal on the Matron Center, the forty-story gilded casino, El Dorado, and countless nightclubs secreting majestic purple all across my ceiling. New York started with one goal in mind, optimization. It wasn’t until well after the technological revolution, after the kinks were worked out of the Matron that we got here. Guaranteed lifelong leisure. No work, no obligations. Just existence. There was a lull for a while, a pause when we reached the top. Nobody knew what to do. And then there was the fall. Aside from the Center, everything here now is a distraction. The city exists to keep us from looking out at the empty horizon, to keep us from thinking about what it’s like beyond the dome – what’s going on out there, what’s already gone. I have to keep reminding myself or I’ll lose the past. I won’t let this be all I remember.
I can feel the MeLO setting in. It jolts the system at first, then envelops the mind in a slow-moving cloud of sludge. It’s like I’m a machine shutting down. I can almost hear the descending cadence as my mind slows, the flattening notes as the whirring desists and brings me down to sleep.
I wake up late the next day and Kat and Dan are gone. Behind me, the TV is playing a rerun of the reality series, “Melting Pot”. In the show, they put a bunch of people who don’t speak the same language into a house, lock the doors, and record it all for our viewing pleasure. Sometimes they get along, sometimes they don’t. When they fight and fuck each other, that boosts the ratings. Inevitably a few of them o.d., and that boosts ratings too. The first time I heard the term “melting pot” was before the war. All I can remember is that it was a good thing, like we were bringing people together in harmony, not throwing them into a human zoo. But I guess it’s always been our responsibility to keep the melting pot at a steady simmer. People try to hold onto the edge, but in the end they all fall in and get cooked into our hearty stew. In exchange, we used to provide security – a guarantee for a safe and steady life, ample protection from the fire beneath. That’s how it was before the war. Nothing is guaranteed outside the domes anymore. And even after 13 years, not much has changed.
Dan left me a message that says he’s going with Kat and some of her friends to Club Karma later tonight. I don’t want to go, but he says at the end that Alyssa will be there and she has a surprise for me. Alyssa has a piercing on the side of her nose. She always wears either a small gold ring or a diamond stud. A lot of people that get piercings overdo it. They say piercings are addicting and stick themselves full of metal. Then they get a tattoo. They say tattoos are addicting and scribble all over themselves until they look like voodoo dolls. But hers is different. It’s just the one. We’ve been spending a lot of time together since we met dancing at Club Elvis. It was actually thanks to Dan’s wild, arm-flailing “MJ moves” that I got to meet her. I haven’t complained about his dancing since. The way it usually happens is you spend a few months with a group of people and eventually they just drift away. Then you see them by some chance later and it’s almost like you’re meeting them for the first time – and for a moment things are different. But the three of us, Dan, Kat, and me, we’ve stuck together for a long time. Alyssa brings something else. It’s like I’m understanding Dan and Kat in a new light, like I’m seeing them through someone else’s eyes.
I answer the phone when Dan calls this time and he says they’re going to La Señorita Sabrosa for dinner and drinks. He says Alyssa’s going too, so I breathe in deep and push my churning stomach out of mind. When I leave for the restaurant, the final call has already sounded, so I have to use the underpass to get to La Señorita. I’m still feeling a little off and I think maybe I should take some Mellows, but I want to stay sober for Alyssa. She doesn’t like when I do too many drugs. She says it makes me boring. It’s because I can’t really say much when I take MeLO, I kind of just wander around my own head.
I make up excuses while walking beneath the rows of fluorescent lights, because I’m too embarrassed to tell them that I spent an hour changing outfits and half an hour or so just staring at myself in the mirror. My first excuse is that someone else called. Julia, or Thompson, or Will maybe. But Dan might have already asked them to go to Karma tonight, so it’s no good. I could tell them I went to pick up Mellows, but then they’ll probably want to take them later and might ask me to share, and then what? I don’t have many left. These are bad excuses but I can’t think of any more because my brain feels strange, like, kind of itchy and warm. When I get to the restaurant, I still haven’t decided on an excuse. The monstrous, sombrero’d, metal emblem of La Señorita looms over me, and the hot tingling spreads into my scalp and down my spine. I scratch the back of my neck and think that maybe I should deflect their questions with an obscene joke – like I was masturbating repeatedly or I was fucking Dan’s mom. But Dan’s mom is dead and they might actually think I was masturbating, which would look bad. Really bad. So I sit down all nervous and my voice shakes when I say hi but nobody says anything back except for Alyssa. She smiles at me and asks, are you alright? I try to smile back but it’s impossible and I start to think I must not look alright if she asked that, I must look bad. Worse than bad. I must look really bad. I try to say I’m fine but I just open my mouth and close it and can’t really say anything so I press my lips together and nod my head as slowly as possible, real smooth-like. But it doesn’t work. She still looks concerned. All of my excuses crowd back into my head and I’m just about to say I was masturbating repeatedly, when Kat spills her drink.
Oops, she says. She presses a button on the table and everyone else laughs. I start to laugh too but it comes out way too high pitched so I stop. The Waitron comes to clean up the spill and Kat puts in the code for a Margarita. I think the distraction made everyone forget that I was so late because nobody ever asked me, and the rest of the dinner went pretty well.
When I’m back in my loft, I’m still feeling a little strange. I pick up my bottle of Mellows and look at the instructions. Warning: Do not take more than recommended dosage. Do not consume when pregnant. Do not consume with alcohol. May cause dependency. Side effects can include: drowsiness, nausea, vomiting, restlessness, anxiety, depression, and death.
They don’t offer any counteracting drugs, so I decide to take a couple MAD’s because it’s a stimulant and maybe it’ll balance out the side effects of the Mellow. We’re going to Karma so I’ll probably need the energy boost anyway. After a little while, I feel the Mads kicking in and I start to get excited about tonight. Unlike Dan, Alyssa’s an incredible dancer. When she dances her body flows like water, and I drift along without making us look too foolish. I think it’s something about the way she holds herself. Her posture is relaxed but confident, leisurely but strong. Everything she does is beautiful. Even today, when she twirled her drink umbrella between her fingers, then stuck it in her braid like a tiny hat.
The pills hit a little too hard and I have to wait out the peak on the couch in my loft. When I finally get to Club Karma, it’s packed. The club is a smoky, deep purple and the whole room is wobbling from the tremors of heavy bass. Crowds of people gather around the drink dispenser and the tables placed along the walls. The rest dance on the main floor, snaking around loose-limbed. The DJ is bobbing his head on stage. Strobe lights behind him illuminate his figure spastically. He has piercings on his eyebrows and forehead and a heavy bull ring through his nose.
I find Kat and Dan at a table with Cassie, Jonathan, and Phillip. I look around for Alyssa but can’t find her. Cass is on her tiptoes yelling something into Flip’s ear, and when I walk up she turns to me with an excited squeal that I can’t really hear over the music and gives me a hug. She yells into my ear that she got us something. I yell back, You have what?! She yells, FLIP GOT US COCAINE.
So awhile ago the government started giving out these drugs: opiates, stimulants, and hallucinogens of several varieties. Medical Laudanum (MeLO) is the strongest opiate and the most popular. It’s administered in large doses that are compacted into pills and recommended for consumption once nightly to aid relaxation and positive energy. Of course it was all an experiment at first. They needed something to keep people content with doing nothing. Drugs were an obvious choice, it was just a question of what kind. In the end it was decided that certain drugs, like heroine, methamphetamines, cocaine, and PCP, were liable to make you crazy and were put on the “narcotics” blacklist, or noire for short. They showed us videos of people on those drugs. They thought insects were in their skin and tore chunks out of their faces. The government called the other drugs “medications” because they are cleaner, less psychologically damaging, and more intellectually stimulating. Even though the Matron never persecutes for drugs, finding coke was a rare cause for celebration.
Flip pulls the small bag of powder out of his pocket. It looks purple in the light. He wiggles it around and raises an eyebrow. Cass smiles and yells that we should do it sneakily in the bathroom. Old school, like we’re in the movies. It’ll be fun. Flip looks hesitant, but Cass is really grinning ear to ear and bouncing off the walls so the three of us go into the men’s room and do some lines off her makeup mirror.
After twenty minutes or so I’m feeling good. Really good. We go to dance and the colors swirl around and we squeeze our hands and I clench my jaw and the drip down my throat is bitter but I swallow it down and dance more. After forty minutes I’m sweating too much. I look around and Flip is standing over on the side just staring at the lights and the DJ. As I walk to him, my vision streaks like I’m in a high-speed chase that’s shifting in and out of slow motion. He’s still staring at the stage and his mouth is hanging open a little and I think he’s drooling something bright purple but then I realize it’s the lights. Flip clamps his teeth down really hard and when he opens his mouth there’s a dry, clacky noise and he says, Dude this isn’t cocaine. I squeeze my hands and rub my hair. I look around for Alyssa, or Jono, or even Kat and Dan. I look around for Cassie. I ask Flip where Cassie is. He just kind of bobs his head around and doesn’t say anything. I yell in his face, WHERE THE FUCK IS CASS, and he jerks his eyes from the stage and stares at me. Then he slowly looks back at the DJ and stands very still and unblinking. Without turning his head, Flip says from the corner of his mouth, Dude, the DJ’s head is exploding. He just keeps standing there and staring at the stage, so I shove him away and turn back into the crowd of people. I’m screaming at everyone where is Cass but they just laugh and their heads loll around and their bodies contort to the vibrations of the music. I slip on something and this guy sees me fall and he’s laughing so hard that he has to lean down. He’s holding his face and pointing at me and just laughing and laughing hysterically. Out of nowhere his laughter chokes up and gets all wet and he looks really sad. So I scramble to my feet and start backing away but he’s already vomiting this dark liquid all over the floor and now everyone around him is laughing their heads off. I turn away and look at the DJ, whose skin is all sagging and purple. With each flash of the strobes his head gets bigger and bigger, expanding and stretching away at his pierced forehead. I clench my teeth and rub my eyes and yell WHERE IS CASS. But there’s this high pitch whining in my ears and the music is fast and the floor is tilting and I can’t take my eyes away from the DJ, who has these hideous purple gashes stretching across his face.
In the morning, the sunlight leaks through my window and dusts the sterile white walls with orange. I lie still for some minutes and think it must be early because I’m still languid from last night’s drugs. The blurry remnants of a dream linger in my mind. In the dream, this man is sitting in a dark empty house. He’s moaning and moaning while holding his leg, which is twisted unnaturally right below the knee. All of a sudden, he pulls his limp foot into the air, presses the broken corner of his leg to the floor and starts grinding it into the ground. He grinds it and grinds it into the hardwood. He grinds it until the bone pops out and gleams like an icicle in the blue light. He grinds it until the waxy skin peels away. Then he picks his limb off the ground and sits there awhile, motionless.
My dreams are often violent. They often involve the breaking of limbs. Sometimes they’re my limbs, sometimes they’re not. It’s a strange sensation to experience pain in a dream. Your mind knows it should hurt and it does hurt in a way, but it really just tingles a little. That’s how this one was even though I was just watching. I could feel my jaw and shoulders tightening even before I woke up. But the pain is all mental, and so is the fear. These dreams I used to call nightmares, but they don’t scare me anymore. I just wake up feeling kind of strange. So I’m lying there, feeling kind of strange and thinking about the man sitting and holding his stump, when a voice comes on the loudspeaker: Good evening, July 19th, 0013 has come to an end, please return to your place of residence.
I jolt up in bed and immediately fall back when dizziness swings my vision. I ball handfuls of sheets in my fists, but I can’t hold off the nausea and have to stumble to the bathroom. I get there just in time to heave sour saliva into the toilet. It’s a brown, murky color. Sometimes I think the pollution is getting to us, even in this dome. I lean over the sink and listen to the sound of the toilet flushing. It makes a dry sucking noise, then a glubglubglub. I think I should feel bad that I slept so late.
It’s been a long time since Cassie’s been around but nobody seems to think it’s a big deal. For awhile I asked about her a lot, but I always got the same answers: oh she’s fine, or, she’ll turn up. But when I asked why she hasn’t been answering any of my messages, they would shrug and say, well, you know how it is.
Alyssa and I have been dating for a few months, and I’ve joined her in many of her unusual activities, one of which is eavesdropping on strangers at Oishii Geisha. Today we’re listening to the couple behind me talk about the war. Whenever anyone talks about the war it’s never actually about the war. They talk about where they were when it happened, what they were doing, who they knew that died, but that’s it. Maybe it’s because people don’t really know what happened. Maybe it’s because the war was more like a bunch of explosions than anything else. It couldn’t have lasted more than a few days, and everyone who’s still around to talk about it didn’t see it happen. People talk much less about life before the war. We have the perfect life now, so there’s no reason to reminisce. We’re lucky. We have everything here and we don’t have to lift a finger. The only problem we might have is one of emptiness. We have everything to live with and nothing to live for. But ennui is a luxury of the privileged, not a real problem to have. Just a presence.
I watch Alyssa stack up her Oishii samurai roll and knock it over with her chopsticks. Sometimes I worry about her because she lives so much in the past. She talks about classic music and movies, about literature and school, about raking leaves and the smell of a fresh-cut lawn. She talks about taking long car trips cross country and how the only adventures have no destination. Tonight we’re supposed to be going on another of those adventures. It’s a surprise. She says it’s the best one yet. Alyssa seems to me a wild animal, a free spirit of sorts. It’s exciting, of course, and I love that about her, but I worry sometimes that she might do something irrational.
I’m supposed to meet Alyssa in U-14 at 2350. I have another splitting headache, the fourth or fifth this week. I really want to take Mellows, but I’ve been off them for a few days for Alyssa. When I get down to U-14, I can make out a slender figure on the other side of the tunnel, dressed in all black and walking swiftly toward me. For a moment I get really anxious and think about going back the other way, but I relax when the figure gets closer and I see that it’s Alyssa. She grabs the front of my button down in her hands and asks why I didn’t wear all black. I pull her into a hug and breathe in her soft scent. This is supposed to be a secret adventure, she says, like Mission Impossible type stuff. I say I must not have heard her last time. Before I can ask where we’re going she takes my hand, drags me across intersection 14/9, down a dimly lit alley, and through an unlocked door. For a while we walk in silence in claustrophobic darkness. I notice that the thin, dry smell of recycled air that usually permeates every room is gone. In here persists a dirty, smoky smell like something’s burning.
Near the end of the path the burning smell gets stronger and the darkness fades into greyish light. At the end of the walkway is an iron door. Alyssa pulls my face close to hers and makes me promise I won’t freak out. I kiss her and say ok. She pulls the door open and we walk outside.
At first, the landscape is completely foreign to me. The ground is covered in dirt and small shrubs and extends for miles in every direction. Beside me, Alyssa stretches her arms out wide and takes a deep breath. Isn’t it wonderful? she asks. Her upturned face gently catches the grey light, and as I’m looking at the curve of her chin rising to her lips, I realize that we’re outside. I grab her and pull her back. Alyssa is flustered and opens her mouth to speak, but I cut her off and clang the heavy door shut behind us. A voice rings off the walls that’s not entirely my own. What’s wrong with you? Don’t you know the danger? The radiation? What if Patrons catch us? She just gives me this terrified look and tries to squirm away. I take a deep breath, but I feel an unspeakable anger building inside of me, and before I can stop myself I’ve got her in both hands and I’m yelling at her to stop living in the past. I’m yelling that THIS IS LIFE, and if she wants to ignore reality she can kill herself, but not me. I don’t realize how hard I’m squeezing her until I let go. She doesn’t say a word.
I think the ventilation in the underpass needs to be fixed because I’m sweating and it’s pretty hard to breathe. I take off my button down and walk back in my tank, which is soaked through with sweat. I hope I didn’t get too much exposure. My head is really hot and my scalp itches like I have lice. When I get back to the loft, I take three Mellows to calm myself down and collapse onto the couch.
My mouth is so dry that my uvula sticks to the side of my throat and I wake up gagging. I stumble to the sink, fill a glass with water, and down it quickly, immediately regretting it when the cool liquid jars my stomach. I check my phone and there’s still nothing from Alyssa. Flip calls and says we should hang out since he hasn’t seen me in a while. I remind him that we went to the club a couple days ago to try his new stuff. He doesn’t seem to remember very well and says we should hang out anyway. I spend about an hour showering and shaving, and another hour or so changing and looking at my reflection. All my clothes are the same. I think I’m getting old.
Flip’s place is dimly lit, and there are pots and pans scattered across the kitchen and dark stains on the floor. We make half-hearted attempts at small talk until he brings out a bag of powder. I look at it closely in the natural light and see that it actually does have a slight purple hue. I ask Flip where he gets it. He says, You know, a guy. So we do a few lines each and sit in his living room for a while to let it kick in.
At Karma they’re playing the new hit song by The Tronnies, “Po’ it up”. People wobble to the rhythm and shout the chorus in unison: Po’ it up, po’ it up, gotta bottle in my cup… We’re supposed to be meeting Kat and Dan, but after two hours they still haven’t shown. Flip says they’re probably in a MeLO coma. He says it in one word, like melanoma, and laughs. He also says he thinks he has a weak batch this time, so we’ve been going to the bathroom about every thirty minutes and now he’s spacing hard. I’m feeling the drugs too, so I’m just standing next to him kind of absorbing the vibrations and pretending I’m incubating in the neon light, when I see Cass walking toward me. I wave my hand around and shout her name, but she keeps walking in my direction, almost straight at me, without giving any sign of recognition. When she’s a few steps away, I realize it’s not her. The woman is the same height as Cass with a similar shade of lemon-blonde hair, but she’s much older. Even in the mutating light I can make out the heavy bags under her eyes, the dry wrinkles spreading across her face, the exhausted, hollow expression of a person who’s worked hard their whole life. She walks by me without a word and approaches Flip. They talk very briefly while I stand there, confused, and by the time I succeed in making my feet move forward, she’s gone. Who was that? I ask Flip. He says Cass like it’s no big deal. I’ve got a thousand questions I need to ask, but the music is too loud and the lights keep flashing in my eyes and interrupting my thoughts. Flip tells me I look like a junkie and I should shut my mouth.
After about five minutes, Cass shows up again by Flip’s elbow. It’s only been a few months since I’ve seen her but I still have a strange feeling of déjà vu. It’s like it’s Cass but it’s not. It’s like she’s not really there. She gives me a loose hug and answers a couple of my questions. I ask if she’s alright and she gives me a tightlipped smile and nods her head. Jesus, you’re a mess, says Flip. He reaches down and wipes powder off her nose and upper lip. Get it together, will ya? Cass pulls Flip’s head down to say something in his ear. Flip nods and tells me they’re going to the bathroom. I decide to leave. I walk dumbly through clusters of people. They have wide, hungry pupils that quiver and shake in the dancing light. As I leave, the DJ is playing “Po’ it up” again, Holla, holla sexy mamas all my ladies throw it up…
I wake up violently. I don’t remember the dream, but I remember blue light. I remember the wet popping of tendons and darkness, and an unidentifiable face that looked all too familiar.
The TV says it’s August but I don’t know if it’s August now or if was August when this news bulletin was recorded. It doesn’t really matter. All that matters is I’m going to meet Alyssa for brunch at the Piquant Princess. I don’t know how long I’ve been standing in the bathroom and watching the condensation run down the mirror, but I do know that I got up early this morning to make sure I’ll be on time. Since our fight, we’ve been spending less time together and recently things have been changing. Alyssa doesn’t talk as much. She used to be a constant source of energy, but now she spends a lot of time just sitting and staring off through the wall in silence. And when she does talk, it’s always about what’s outside the dome. I really hope the radiation hasn’t gotten to her.
My head pounds with each step, and no matter how I try to wake myself up, I can’t shake the feeling that my brain is covered in saran wrap. I wipe the water off the mirror and look at my reflection. An exhausted face stares back. I pinch and slap myself a little. A splotchy, pinkish color rises to my cheeks, but my eyes stay burrowed deep in my head. I have to do something, so I take a couple Mads to wake myself up and stimulate my mind. After almost an hour my head hurts even more. It hurts so much that I can barely move. I still have a little while before I have to meet Alyssa, so I start looking through the pockets on my clothes from last night. I can’t find it at first, and anxiety creeps up my spine. I rip the covers off my bed but it’s not there and I start throwing clothes everywhere, frantically searching every single pocket. Then I find it. My baggie is sitting calmly on the bedside table. Inside is the powder, a soft lavender color. I do a few lines and sigh as the headache starts to fade. I lie on the couch and listen to the silence.
The horn sounds. Good evening, September 23rd,0013 has come to an end, please return to your place of residence. I scramble to my feet and trip over to the window. The sun is setting quickly, and it covers my loft in a blood-red glow. I want to scream and throw my chair through the window. I want to tear my scalp off with jagged glass. But instead, I crouch on the floor and hold my face while the sun goes down.
There’s some rustling behind me and the lights snap on, filling the room with fluorescent light. Oh my god, someone says behind me. Alyssa rolls me over and puts her hand over her mouth. Oh my god, she says again. The bright light bends around her frame in a stream of rainbow colors. I blink to clear my sight and she’s gone. She comes back with a glass of water and tells me to drink it. I try to tell her how much I’ve missed her, how much I’ve looked forward to seeing her, to say thanks or something, but my mouth won’t move like I want it to and we spill half the water down my shirt.
I’m not sure how long I slept but when I wake up, my head throbs even more than the day before. I walk into the bathroom and lean over the sink, splashing water on my face and into my mouth and nose to rinse out the taste of iron. I walk tiredly into the living room and Alyssa’s there, watching me from the couch with red-rimmed eyes. She approaches me delicately, like I’m some kind of skittish animal. She asks me what happened. I open my mouth and close it, reaching for words like a dying fish. She says she lost me. But I know she hasn’t, I would do anything for her. She hasn’t lost me, she couldn’t possibly have lost me because she’s all I care about. I explain this to her feverishly, my lips tripping clumsily over the words I try to say too fast. I don’t see anyone anymore, just her. Jono, Kat, Dan – all of them, even Flip. I’m not doing drugs much either, see? I’m all out. I grab my empty baggie off the table and hold it in front of her face. See? She hasn’t lost me. I’ve been here all along. Just me and her.
“No,” she says. Her lips stay pressed tightly together. She lays her palm flat on my chest. “This isn’t you,” she says. Her hand moves up to touch my cheek. “I lost you.”
Time has passed, and by some chance I find myself in front of the iron door, standing on the same grey path that Alyssa dragged me onto so many months ago. I pull the door open and step outside. It’s strange how physical memories take on the context of the time. There’s a smell that brings you home, a touch that binds with fear, a song that rewinds your heart to the summer you first found love. For some reason, this red, desolate landscape never fails to stir my heart. Maybe it’s because it brings me back to Alyssa. Maybe because it brings me even further. Back to the days in my childhood when the wind was still wild. I remember how it would cut through my clothes and rattle my bones on some days, and cup my skin in gentle strokes on the next. And as I’m sitting in the dirt with the red valley stretched out before me, I wonder what it was like in the beginning. Before the Matron, before the war, before our beginning – when the land was just as bare as it is now. Someone saw opportunity in the emptiness, but now we choose not to look. Even when we do, we can only see the end of the road. But life is no road, no highway. It’s not that straight. Friends, countries, generations of people come and go, wandering the same circles until they think they’ve reached the end.
The gears of the airlocks grind to life, and a draft of stale air hisses over my body. From deep within the dome comes the muffled sound of the horn. It makes me think about how life is so cyclical – the only thing that could come after the end is another beginning.
Breaking Bull 