Inverse Life

By Maku Kasai

I hopped onto the bus with music still bouncing through the wires in the back of my head. The hydraulic hiss of the door cut off the cries of the doctors running to catch me. I waved at them as the bus pulled out and joined the flood of neon San Diego traffic under the rose gold sky.

The visual should have been concerning, but, hopped up as I was, the pearl white road and amber horizon seemed more or less normal. People ogled me with dark faces rimmed in blues and reds.

I took a long, deep breath through my nose and swaggered down the aisle, bouncing to the beat of the music until I found an open seat. A bronze-haired girl danced through my mind in flowing, familiar motions, weaving a scent of jasmine and lilac as she passed. I blinked and she was gone, leaving only the afterthought and her smell. It was an old memory, and it surprised me.

The old man I’d plopped down next to seemed surprised too. His pitch-black eyes widened, and his tiny white irises stuck out like blobs of paint on a sable robe. I grinned and tried to catch his gaze. He managed a hesitant, black-toothed smile in return.

I continued to grin and leaned back into the chair. With an electric snap behind my ears, a couple of loose wires crossed, and whatever station I was picking up turned classical, sad and smooth as cool gelato.

The thrum of the bus and the background noise of traffic blended into the melody and added a baseline that somehow fit. Behind it all, the bronze-haired girl danced. The music hit a series of four chords more beautiful than I could bear. I started to cry.

The old man tapped me on the shoulder of my hospital gown. “Son, do you… uh… want something?”

I smiled. “I want…” I looked around the bus. The old man waited. “Something.” My eyes fell on an advertisement with a couple drinking light beer by the sea. A deep longing welled up within me like a siren’s call. “How do I get there?”

“This bus goes to the beach.” The old man nodded, his eyes straying to the top of my head.

I tapped the wires protruding from a couple of shunts still visible through my partially shaved hair. “Don’t worry,” I smiled. “It’s a new thing. Brain hacking. It’s like electric mood therapy to help you find what you really want. They call it a CHARM system. I’m not sure what it means.”

“It looks…” he fumbled for the right word, “…expensive.”

“Oh unbelievably,” I replied. “You would not believe what it cost, but you know what? It’s working.” I thought a moment. “Semi-working at least. I think it’s inverted my eyes’ colors. It all looks negative, but feels really positive, you know? And then there’s the music!” A couple of the loose wires sparked, and the sound shifted through static to smooth jazz.

He nodded, and the bus bumped to a stop. Tourists—sunburned to a toasty green—lined up to pay their bus fare. The bronze-haired girl danced through my head in a velvet dress. A thousand memories of her flooded in, and I hurried off the bus.

I hit the pavement outside barefoot.

“Son!”

I turned.

The old man trundled off just before the doors closed. “Son, I think you need help.”

I shrugged and smiled. “But I want something else.”

A new song came on. I raised my arms and danced my way to the beach. The black sand scalded my feet as I hopped along. My new friend, the old man, hurried after me, his footsteps short and ungraceful.

I reached the water first. With a huff, my new friend arrived behind me.

“You know what I believe?” I asked.

He bent over to catch his breath. “What?”

“I believe in the sand between my toes.” I smiled at him again.

“So, you believe in the ground?”

I shrugged. “I got a head made of the ground. All of me really. Ashes to ashes.”

He gave me a long look.

I kept staring at the tangerine ocean and listened to the music.

“You know,” he said at last, “you might not be all that crazy.”

The doctors arrived then, all wearing black lab coats, clustering like a murder of crows. One of the doctors raised a device that shone metallic in the inverted light. He twisted a dial. Around me, the world and music faded, then darkness brightened, and the oranges of the sea and sky shifted into painful everyday blues.

My friend looked over at me. “Everything all right?”

I took a deep breath. “No, nothing is all right.” I smiled. “I want—”

That’s when I saw her, just coming out of the water. A plain red swimsuit replaced the velvet dress. Time had passed. She was older, but it was unmistakably her.

The doctors tackled me from behind. I fell face down on the beach in an ungraceful belly flop. My eyes stung in the sand, but they never left her. She looked away, further up the beach at two small bronze-haired children, a girl and a boy who ran to her with the total abandon and joy known only to the young. Behind them walked a tall man I didn’t recognize. She gathered up the children and gave the man a quick kiss. As they turned to go, I realized why the CHARM system had led me there.

The doctors hoisted me to my feet and awkwardly tried to move me, while gingerly checking my head and the very expensive equipment. One was trying to tell me something. Probably that I was tired and would want rest or water or to not sue them or something. I wasn’t really listening. Whatever it was, he was right, I didn’t want to sue them.

I wanted something else.

I still want something else.

Can you guess which song from the 1990's inspired this story? Share in the comments!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Maku Kasai is a Washington DC based fiction writer. In his free time he enjoys reading, exercise, role-playing games and of course writing. He is a fan of science fiction and will watch almost anything that includes something that meets the definition of “spaceship” or “laser gun.” He holds a degree from George Washington University.