Five Digits and a Car

By Matt Glass

This isn’t who I am, or, at least, it’s not who I was. I didn’t normally spend my nights bluffing and cheating my way to the things I wanted. I didn’t care about the money. Any money I won would be useless in two days, and any enemies I made would be gone as long as I survived these last days.

      The man they call Fingers sat to my right and my old roommate, John, to my left. The game would have been over sooner had Fingers remember to charge the batteries in his mechanical arm. In the middle of the first hand, his arm decided it didn’t want to deal anymore. So we had to wait, in total silence, for an hour while it recharged. Fingers could have dealt with his left hand, except he hadn’t purchased one yet. I was playing poker for my car, but Fingers was playing for another arm. His name, Fingers, was basically a joke because he had none.

2 days, 22 hours

It was pitch black when I woke up. The sun has gotten too bright, and the light has become too damaging to even risk going out in the day. I don’t mind. You can't see the haze at night. You can't see the clouds of pollution that are always looming overhead. At night, you don't miss the trees or the lakes because you can't see them. You can't see that they're gone. And what you can't see can't hurt you, can’t affect you.

The night does show you a few things of beauty: a forest of metal, bright lights and constant noise. The city is so huge and everywhere. It's the only manmade creation that is visible from space.  It’s the only thing visible from space. It is the only thing left. Unfortunately, the luminous eternity of the city prevents anyone from ever seeing outer space. You can’t miss what you’ve never seen.

      I was on my way to meet with The Duke. As far as I knew, The Duke was the man to see when you wanted someone dead. Now, I had never met this Fingers person, but I knew the only way to get my car back was to kill him, and I only had 3 days left.

      To a giant, the city looks like a filing cabinet. All the buildings are regulation height and regulation width. They are all numbered. If you know someone's phone number, you also know exactly where they live. The Duke’s phone number for example: #36-2-1955. He lived on the 36th floor in room 2, building 1955. His building is a mirror, and the city is a fun house, mirrors everywhere. You never look up when you walk through the city. All you would see is a kaleidoscope of open windows, glowing apartments, and the black void of emptiness. It’s often been theorized that if you flash a laser at one building, it will reflect off of them all.

      I was a programmer. To me, murder is a computer virus. Murder is having to reformat a computer because of the constant magnetic interference caused by a certain downstairs neighbor’s holographic entertainment system. I'd never hurt anyone, not directly at least.

      The closer I got to The Duke, the more I hesitated. This was not my life. Then again, in 2 days and 17 hours it wouldn't matter. I walked into his building, a clone of my own. I walked up to the same elevator and pressed the button. Each floor is a different color, to help the confusion. My floor in my building was a nice, calm lavender. When the elevator doors opened, I was blinded by the bright yellow wallpaper that filled the entire 36^th floor.  I had to shade my eyes as I walked down the hallway looking for the right apartment. It wasn’t hard to find. I knocked on the door, three quick knocks. The sound of locks turning and chains unlatching began to unnerve me. As the door opened, I saw a man who was about my age, dressed in a bathrobe and holding a wine glass. He looked more like a playboy than a hired gunman. Then, I made the connection. I knew his face. I knew his smile. I remembered those drifting eyes peaking off my homework. The Duke was my old college roommate, John Barnes. We were best friends all through college. I can’t even remember how we lost touch.

      "John?" I asked. I didn't want to embarrass myself by hugging a stranger who was probably armed.

      "Yeah, It's me," he smiled and grabbed my arm, shaking it wildly, "Surprised?"

      "No, You spend 4 years getting a degree in computer science. The obvious next step is to become a killer," I said, still shocked to see my old friend.

      "Come on in, pal."

      His apartment was covered in nonsensical art: paintings of what could have been melted wax, Rugs hanging on the wall, and chairs shaped like human hands.

      "I was expecting gloom, dust and maybe a wall full of weapons," I joked.

      John walked behind his bar, making himself another drink. He reached under the counter and pressed a button. The melted wax painting and the rugs on the wall spun around like revolving doors. In goes the art. Out comes the weaponry.

      "Well, I don’t know about those first two, but I got plenty of artillery," he took a sip.

John and I sat down on two of his hand chairs. I asked John about the name, The Duke. As it turns out, when he was around twelve years old he had a pet rat named Duke. It was his only friend. When you spend most of your life hidden in your room, working on electronics and computers, you don’t have much time for friends. I knew this pain all to well. It was how we became friends in the first place. Two anti-social nerds stuck in a dorm together. The possibilities are endless.

Duke treated John’s electronic experiments like a maze, constantly searching for the cheese at the finish line. He ran and climbed over all the transistors and resistors, sniffing out any crumbs that might have fallen from John’s mouth. John always brought Duke to school. He transformed an old lunchbox into a rat bachelor pad. Cardboard dividers taped to the interior of the lunchbox sectioned off several different rooms for Duke to play in. Being the anti-social nerd that he was, John spent every recess sitting behind a cluster of bushes writing bits of code and planning out his work for the rest of the day. This sort of behavior attracted bullies. John knew this, that’s why he hid there.

One day, a bully must have received a tip from a fellow student regarding John’s whereabouts, because ten minutes into recess John was being pummeled. The bully waited for John to get a grip and stand up before kicking him back to the ground. John tried to protect his face anyway he could. On instinct, he picked up his lunchbox and held it between himself and the bully like a shield. Before John realized what he had done, the bully had grabbed the lunchbox and thrown it into John’s stomach. The result was something John would never forget. He was not hurt. His only concern was for his friend, Duke. He opened the lunch box to find Duke’s body motionless. Duke’s insides were pouring out of his mouth.

John blinked.

His body tightened. He blinked again. The bully was on the ground. Fist after fist, John’s fury was blinding. He did not stop until a teacher pulled him off. The bully resembled Duke’s body, blood everywhere. John’s face resembled the inside of his lunchbox, covered in the dark red splatter. He never showed remorse for what he had done.

I had never heard that story before. Perhaps now that I had discovered his secret identity he felt he had to. After an uncomfortable silence, John got himself another drink and laughed away the memory. We got down to business.

“I’ve heard about this guy that you want me to off, Fingers,” he said as he took a sip from his glass.

John had this strange ability to drink and talk at the same time.

 “He’s a thief. I would call him petty, but he makes more money than me,” he drank, “It’s been a slow month.”

A slow month to John was probably like hitting the jackpot for an honest worker like myself. He took another sip, “From what I know, the guy’s untouchable. He’s always surrounded by his lackeys, but I have an idea. Got twenty-grand?”

      I lied to my ex-college roommate killer friend, “Yep.”

1 days, 22 hours

      The next night on our way to Finger’s hideout we made a stop at my old work. I call it, “old,” because I officially quit on the 12-day mark. These two weeks of freedom before the end have been quite nice. I worked for Zet-Tek. Your toaster, your vacuum, your mothers artificial heart, they make those. My job was to make sure your toaster didn’t burn toast or your vacuum didn’t try to escape through your dog door and vacuum your lawn. I may have saved several pieces of toast and a lawn or two in my career. I feel so fulfilled.

John took my old keycard and went inside, leaving me with the taxi.

Taxis are everywhere. Are you lazy? Want to Sleep? Want cash? Become a taxi driver. Your average car is driven by artificial intelligence and guided by the Global Positioning System. Taxis are no different. Fortunately for taxi drivers though, their union would have none of this. A law was passed stating that each taxi must be accompanied by a taxi driver to prevent computers from taking over the industry, and to prevent hundreds of thousands of people from losing their jobs. So there I sat, waiting for John, with a taxi driver in his pajamas sleeping on the front seat. Easy Money.

All the traffic and all the voices bouncing off all the buildings creates quite an interesting sound. It’s what I image the ocean would have sounded like. It swells. With a bag in one hand and my keycard in the other, John came running out.

“I got it.”

“Got what?” I asked.

“Ever heard of the barter system? We’re going to take advantage of it.”

The taxi shifted into drive, waking the driver. Not realizing he had passengers, he went back to sleep. John kept fiddling with the contents of the bag while I looked up at the empty black sky.

Fingers lived underground in what was left of an old fashion mall. It was a long hallway of failed businesses and empty shops. We passed an old clothing store. The entrance was completely boarded up except for a small passage. This was somebody’s home now. There were children playing in an old, moss filled, fountain a few feet in front of an old shoe store. It looked as though an entire family had moved in. We continued walking. There were benches every few feet. Each one was home to those would weren’t fast enough to grab the barbershop or the music pavilion.

The entire place was lit by old, rewired, streetlights and randomly placed lamps. If you ever wondered why you power bill had been inexpertly high, it was because people like Fingers are tapping into your power circuits. Charity. Places like this exist all over the world. When people can’t, or won’t, live within societies rules, they go underground to be on their own. Most of them die within a month; but some adapt and learn to survive.

 We stopped in front of a large food court. John had connections everywhere. He knew exactly where to find Fingers and knew all about his weekly poker game. Fingers was a gambling man. When you rob people for a living, it doesn’t feel so bad when you gamble away their money. Getting inside wasn’t difficult. John just flashed the twenty-grand that I borrowed from my bank. No need to repay them.

1 days, 9 hours

When I laid my eyes on Fingers for the first time, I felt pity. The no-armed man had a neuro-prosthetic attached to his right arm and nothing for a left arm. He was just some poor, crippled, pickpocket with a gang of fools that pitied him. Fingers looked us over as his henchmen frisked us. He was very thorough. The entire place had been sectioned into different rooms. Fingers had put a lot of dirty money into this crap-heap. It was almost half livable. Considering Fingers was basically half a man, it worked out great for him. He walked us to the poker table.

11 days 7 hours

I remember my last day at work.

It started like a normal day.

I’m always told that I do a great job, and yet I’ve never been given a raise. People in management don’t last long here. It’s quite a high stress environment.

A man had recently bought a new electric oven from the company. After thoroughly reading the instructions, he popped a frozen pizza in and set it for 1 minute. The oven uses a large electrical current to quickly heat up anything, including human flesh. The timer went off, and the man reached for his freshly cooked pizza. Apparently, the electric charge didn’t fully dissipate until it was too late.  He was thrown across the room and ended up with second-degree electrical burns.

The company was getting sued. They fired the man who wrote the oven’s timing software; Spencer Bradley was his name. He worked across the hall from me. I watched his walk of shame. He held a box of his belongings close to his chest as security escorted him out of the building. Our boss stood at the door, arms folded, with a disappointed look on his face. And a day later, our boss was dead, and I had a new one to impress for a raise. They were unable to collect enough evidence to convict anyone, but everyone at work knew Spencer was responsible.

I don’t envy him one bit. No man wants that job; Spencer lasted longer than most. You make one mistake and you’re shunned. There isn’t enough time to run every piece of software through comprehensive testing. We have to wait until something goes wrong. That’s when I swoop in and save the day. It’s not my job to write the software, but it is my job to fix it and transmit the corrections from the company’s satellite to all the afflicted products. I’m a beta-tester, after the fact. I was working on Spencer’s oven problem when I received the call.

“We need to talk in person,” is all the voice said over the phone.

I knew it was bad news, terrible news. I grabbed my laptop and ran to my car. My laptop was my life. All my files, all my work was on that machine. I archived everything. The first piece of software I ever wrote is on there. It’s a program written in BASIC that prints the words “Hi, Does This Work?” on the screen. I opened my door, slid my laptop under the seat, and started my car. My car’s onboard computer quickly booted up and asked me where I was going today. It wasn’t nervous when I told it.

The building was like most, except for the ground floor. It looked as though someone had plopped a skyscraper onto a small, concrete, one-floor building. The ground floor was a warm, inviting, white color. Of course it is a place of healing, but the fear of death is all around. People go in hoping to be fixed but never come out. Other people go in feeling fine and never come out. Either way, I’m screwed.

The interior was just as white and immaculate as the exterior. There were many people waiting in the first room. They all seemed so bored, so drugged. The second I stepped into the room, all their eyes were on me. I don’t know what they were expecting me to do. I wasn’t the entertainment. I wasn’t going to dance around and make balloon animals to lift their spirits. I was one of them. The woman at the counter was on a phone call. I leaned toward her non-phoned ear and told her my name. She leafed through a book, pointed to the door behind her, and mouthed the number 55. The crowd of bored, drugged people watched me in amazement. I wait for no one. If they only knew the reason I was let through, they would not wish to be in my place.

I walked down the hall. There was no screaming, no sound at all. They must have soundproofed the walls. I could only imagine what was going on in each room.

11 days, 4 hours

“Is there someone you can call? A relative, a friend perhaps?”

They always ask that. They don’t want us soon-to-be corpses running out on the bill. If I can’t pay, they’ll want to get in contact with a relative, so that they can. Oh, the comfort. 

I felt fine, but in 11 days I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t feel anything. I can debug an apartment building’s entire automated electronic system, but I can’t fix this. Will I just disappear, erased like some reformatted hard drive? I’m the faulty toaster that burns toast. I’m just some television with defective wiring. Get rid of it. The next model won’t have this glitch. No one will miss me. I’m dying. In 11 days, I’m dead.

I can’t remember what it is. I can’t remember what’s killing me. It doesn’t matter if I know the name or not. Either way, I’m dead.

My mind was floating, focused on nothing. I left the hospital, left my car, left my laptop, and left my old life forever.

4 days, 2 hours

I spent days just walking around and thinking. It’s the only time in my life I’ve ever just wondered. I paced around the city for a week, and I remember nothing. I was lost in my own mind, yet my feet knew the way. My body walked while I thought about all the things I’d never do.

I’ll never fall in love.

I’ll never have kids.

I’ll never be happy.

I’ve never even seen the sky. The bright lights of the city prevented me from ever seeing the stars.

It wasn’t until 7 days after my diagnosis that began to formulate my plan. And it wasn’t until then that I realized I left my only means of transportation at the hospital. I ran as fast as I could. So fast that I tripped over myself several times.

I searched the parking lot for hours looking for any signs of my vehicle. There was nothing. In all my haste, I must have left my keys in the car. The parking lot was empty except for a homeless man huddled in the corner between the elevator and a heating duct. He had built a small enclosure out of lost car parts. Old shredded tires lined his roof. The enclosure was held up by sticks of wood and shards of metal.

I approached the man. Judging from his appearance, he was either drunk or out of his mind. A pile of cardboard was his bed and there he laid, watching me. I wasn’t sure if he was shaking because of the cold or because of some psychological ailment.

“Excuse me, sir,” I yelled into the shack. Without responding, the man turned over to face the wall. “Sir, I don’t mean to bother you, but my car seems to have been stolen.”

Again, no response. I guess they don’t teach etiquette on the streets. I tried a different approach.  “Hey, you. Want money for a beer? Or drugs? Someone stole my car. Did you see it?”

“Fingers,” he mumbled, “Fingers took it.”

“Yeah, I get that, but who’s fingers are they?

“No,” he shouted, “Fingers is his name. He’s a thief.”

I had finally broken the ice. He sat up, folded his legs and introduced himself as Gavin. He must have really wanted a drink, because he told me everything.  In-between every few childhood memories, he gave me a tidbit about Fingers.

Gavin was an only child.

Fingers ran this whole area. He and his associates ran an underground chop shop. They ripped apart cars and sold the parts for cheap. The cost of repairing a car’s guidance system is so high that buying parts on the black market has become a multi-billion dollar industry.

Gavin is a registered voter.

A year ago in this very parking lot, Fingers killed a man. On occasion, Fingers would make deals there. He was meeting a client who was unaware of his policy on weapons. Fingers had a bodyguard search the man. A small knife was discovered in his back pocket. Fingers shot him, instantly.

Gavin likes ponies.

Apparently, when Fingers was still a peon in the crime world, he worked for a boss named “Takedo.” Mr. Takedo was a large, quiet Japanese man who was embarrassed about his broken English. Fingers was his voice. Takedo would whisper his demands into Fingers’ ear, and Fingers would speak them to the guests. Takedo was such a large man that he needed a crutch to pull himself around. He was too stubborn to reveal this weakness to anyone. Five minutes before each meeting, he would slowly walk himself to his chair, sit down and wait.

One night, Takedo was meeting with a rival crime family to work out some sort of treaty. As a sign of good faith, they were not searched. It wasn’t until after they had discussed and agreed to a set of conditions that one of the men unexpectedly pulled out a weapon. Before Fingers could react, he was knocked unconscious. When he came to, a blinding orange light filled his eyes. He picked himself off the ground and looked at the now empty room. The light was emanating from a fire covering Takedo’s body, who was still in his chair. The smell of burning flesh was carried throughout the entire building. The fire was working its way into the walls and bringing down the ceiling. Fingers ran for the exit when he heard a voice.

“Help,” it said.

It was the first time Fingers had ever heard Takedo’s speaking voice. He ran back to his boss, grabbed a hold of his arms, and began to drag him. The flames made their way onto Fingers’ clothing, but he would not let go. Even as the fire tore through the flesh and bone of his arms, his grip was locked. The shock of the moment had made Fingers invincible. Once he made it outside, he let go. The friction of the carpet had shredded through Takedo’s charred flesh leaving a trail of blood and muscle back to his favorite chair. He was dead. Fingers received 3^rd degree burns and had both of his arms amputated. Two days later, he had the men responsible killed.

Gavin is a good storyteller.

I threw him a few dollars and some loose change and left the parking lot.

It got me thinking. If a no-armed car thief could have someone killed. Why couldn’t I? Finding a hired gunman isn’t as easy as finding a maid to clean up your mess. They’re not in the yellow pages. I checked. But I did find one thing that might help: Spencer Bradley’s number, #01-5-1967. Everyone at work said he killed our boss, but I knew he didn’t. I saw his programming code. I saw the dirty unorganized way he worked. No indentation. No comments. Had he killed someone, there would have been a mess. He must have had hired help.

      Spencer’s building was an illusion. Its exterior matched the rest of the city, but the inside was a different story. The law states that all buildings must be up to code, cosmetically, but there is no law pertaining to the upkeep of the interior. It was a dump. The walls were brown and cracking; the paint was rotting. I stepped through all the filth to Spencer’s door. It was already open. I pushed myself through the doorway. His apartment was no different than the hallway: trash everywhere. A computer monitor was the room’s only light source. I stepped onto a glass. As it shattered, a pile of paper and blankets began to move. Spencer appeared from under the rubble.

      “You,” he said as he wiped his eyes.

      Spencer took a moment to wake up. He looked around at the floor and then at his computer. The light was too bright for his tired eyes. He blocked it with his hand and stood up. Using his feet, he plowed a walkway across the floor. He sat down at his desk and stared into the computer screen.

“I don’t see it. I’ve looked at everything I’ve written, and I can’t see what’s wrong,” he said.

      I could have leaned over, pressed a few keys and the problem would have been solved, but I didn’t want to be the next one on Spencer’s hit list. He must have stared at that screen for hours everyday. His eyes were bloodshot and dry. He’s read through his code so many times that he knows it by heart. The harder you look, the less you see. And he looked so hard that he’s blind.

I got straight to the point, “I know you had our boss murdered.”

Spencer was caught off guard. “What? I don’t know what you’re … “ he said before gathering his thoughts, “Are you wearing a wire or something?”

I responded, “Look, I know this sounds odd, but I’m looking to have someone …” I hesitated, “killed, and whoever you used seemed to do a nice clean job.”

I felt dirty. Spencer looked up at me.

“The Duke?” he asked.

“You should think about what you’re doing. It was a mistake. I was drunk the night I had my boss killed. It was a mistake writing that program. It was a mistake becoming a programmer.”

He paused and looked down at his feet.

“This,” he moved his hands up and down his body, “is a mistake.

I understand mistakes. It was a mistake for me to leave my car at the hospital, but I’m not like Spencer. I’m not going to be killing an innocent man. I’m ridding the world of a thief and a murderer. He had my car. You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs, and Fingers needed to be cracked.

I felt bad for Spencer. I really did. He had to face the consequences of his actions, but I don’t have to worry about that. I’ll be dead before I’m poor. I don’t have enough time to trash my apartment. Spencer wrote the number on the back of a crumpled piece of paper and handed it to me. He walked back over to his computer and began scrolling through his program again.

On my way out of the building, I looked at the piece of paper. There was something written on the other side. I flipped it over and read. It was a suicide note.

“See you, soon,” I mumbled to the wind.

1 day, 7 hours

      I’ve played poker many times before but never for money and never for a car. I was nervous and losing, badly. I needed that car, and Fingers knew it. It was as though he was dangling it in my face, just out of reach. John was oblivious; he seemed happy just to be there. 

      A pair of twos. Take three.

      “You know, I’m losing.” I said to John hoping to get him to concentrate. Maybe his killer instinct could help me win.

      “Oh, boo hoo.” He said, smiling.

I didn’t get it. Thanks for the support. I wiped my brow and tried to look tough. Fingers’ arm dealt the cards with great precision. Each card landed on top of the other, creating a perfect stack. I was sick of all this waiting around. Whenever I looked into Fingers’ eyes, all I could see was my losing reflection. Fingers’ bodyguards stood like statues behind him. They hadn’t moved at all throughout the entire game. But I’m sure if I pulled out a weapon, my life would be over, before I even saw them reach for their guns.

      A pair of twos. Three queens.

      A decent hand, finally.

      “I’m feeling lucky,” were the first words out of Fingers’ mouth the entire night. He hadn’t spoken since the game began. He was too busy listening to me, watching me give away my cards with my nervousness or my twitching smile. His freshly charged robotic arm pushed all his cash and my car keys into the pot. I was running low on cash.

“I can’t cover all that. I don’t have enough,” I looked at John for support.

Fingers smiled. That’s when John decided to unleash his secret weapon. Out of the bag, he pulled a clean, brand new, metallic arm, similar to the one Fingers was sporting. And what luck, it was a lefty. Fingers went silent again. He looked up to John then back to the arm. You could see the excitement in his eyes. This was my chance to win my car back.

Building suspense, I let go of each card one at a time.

Full House.

For one split second, I thought I had done it. I was victorious, but just for that one second. It wasn’t good enough. Fingers dropped his cards. Before I could even look at what he was holding, he reached for the pot. I looked at Johns face. His expression hadn’t changed. His constant happiness infuriated me.

A flush.

Fingers had a straight flush.

“You’re broke. We’re done,” were Fingers last words to me. He unpinned the sleeve of his shirt and placed the new mechanical arm up against the scarred flesh of his left arm. Like metal to a magnet, it sucked to his body. He squinted then relaxed. There was a moment of silence as Fingers concentrated on moving his new appendage. Finally, the arm moved and he watched in amazement. Up. Down. Left. Right. He grabbed my keys with his 5 new digits and walked out of the room. I never saw Fingers again.

“I could have used some help in there,” I yelled to John.

For the moment, I must have forgotten that with one quick movement he could’ve severed my spine or put a bullet through my face. John just ignored my anger and laughed.

“You were never any good at cards, man. You can’t bluff.”

“So, what the hell was the point of all this? Now, Fingers has my car and the arm. And why the hell are we still waiting here?”

We had not yet left the underground slums. John and I sat crouched against a kiosk a few yards in front of Finger’s hideout, me with my hands in my face, and John with his alcohol. I didn’t have time for this. I had things to do and only one day left to do them in.

“Calm down,” John drank, “Like I said, you suck at cards. But we’ve only lost the arm, temporarily.”

John graduated at the top of his class; I graduated right below him. Computer skills come in handy when you’re a killer. Taking advantage of the GPS satellite or manipulating the flow of traffic via the stoplights can make finding a target a breeze.

“Ever seen one of these?” john asked, showing me a small rectangular computer chip, “It’s a tracking device, home made. I’ve got pockets full of them, very useful in my line of work. I wired one to Mr. Fingers’ new robotic arm.”

John pulled a small handheld device out of his pocket. With a flick of his wrist, a screen popped out and the power switched on. A red light began to flash and coordinates displayed the location of the chip.

“Great, so now we know where Fingers is sleeping.”

“Shhh,” john hissed with his finger over his mouth, “Watch.”

I watched and waited as John manipulated the buttons on the device. He smiled and mashed the keypad as though it were a video game. A few minutes after he shut me up, I heard rustling in the plastic bushes. I grabbed an empty carton of cigarettes and threw it at John to break his attention away from the device, and I pointed toward the sound. I dreaded. Perhaps, it was one of Fingers’ lackeys coming to finish us off or throwing away some garbage. With his eyes still fixed on the small glowing monitor, John walked toward the noise. I suppose the years of happy-go-luck murdering had given him balls of steel.

The closer the noise got, the bigger John’s smile became. He slapped his hands against his knees and yelled, “come here boy,” as if he were calling a dog. From behind the bush, a small spider-like machine made its way toward John. Its five legs slowly crept through the dirt and garbage dragging its large tail behind. It climbed John and stopped on his shoulder. I was reminded of a parrot waiting on the arm of a pirate. Polly want a microchip?

“Come here. My little friend has a gift for you,” John said.

Hesitating, I walked toward John with my hand out. Thanks to the tracking device imbedded in its circuits, John had turned the prosthetic arm into a remote controlled slave. John pressed a button, and the robotic arm dropped something in my hand: the keys to my car. Now all I needed was the car.

The robotic arm was nice enough to leave a trail of unlocked doors into Fingers’ hideout.  John offered to show me the corpse. I declined. This sort of thing was an every day occurrence to John but not to me. Had I known I’d be an accomplice to murder, I wouldn’t have done any of this.

Probably.

Fingers’ hideout was falling apart. Every move we made seemed to bring it one step closer to collapsing. Every few seconds, John would pause and listen for Fingers’ goons. He told me that every one of these places had a rear entrance for unloading merchandise. This was John’s world. I didn’t ask how he knew. We made our way through the maze of sectioned-off rooms until a glowing red Exit sign pointed us out. John began to open the door.

“Wait,” I whispered to John, “What about an alarm?”

“Relax. It’s not connected. We’re safe”

John pointed to a bundle of cut wires to the left of us and resumed opening the door He stood still. Something had gathered his attention. His body blocked the doorway. I couldn’t see passed him. John’s jacket flipped back as he un-holstered his gun. Two quick flashes of light and bursts of sound blinded me. I fell back, covering my head. I don’t know what I was thinking. I panicked. John stood stationary, unaffected by the sound of the gunfire. I stood up to see what had happened and saw that I was covered in blood. I felt around for wounds but found nothing until I looked up. John’s neck was drenched in blood. A river of red ran down his stiff body. His gun dropped quickly, and his knees slowly lowered him to the floor.

“John?” I ran to him.

I paused for a moment, not wanting to get my pants dirty. I kneeled down onto some dry cardboard and reached for John’s arm. His eyes were unfocused and confused. He looked around randomly until his eyes locked on me. This was his last moment and he was sharing it with me.

He blinked.

Beyond the door was my car and the corpse of John’s killer, the man who frisked only a few hours earlier. The car was intact. The first thing I did when I entered the car was reach under my seat for my laptop. If it wasn’t there, this would all have been for nothing. I moved my hand around slowly, mentally picturing every bump that I touched. I felt a fry and a penny, perhaps a dime. Then my hand bumped into a large leather case. I grabbed the handle and pulled it out. My laptop was fine. By some twist of fate, possibly because of his handicap, Fingers never even looked under the seat. I inserted the key into the ignition, prayed for an ounce of gas, and turned the key. A dark tunnel was my way home.

My last dream. My last night.

I dreamt about my job, my boring job. I sat in my office doing the same thing I did every day at work. It was like torture. Had I known I was asleep, I would have done anything to wake myself up. But to my subconscious self, this was a normal day at work. There I sat, staring at my computer, occasionally glancing at the clock. I aged hours but only seconds passed. This was my life.

1 day

I didn’t get to sleep until late having been up most of the night working on one last program. I could have slept through the rest of my life. Luckily, my alarm clock was so loud that my ears bled. The ringing will be gone by tomorrow. I felt like I was a tourist in my own life. I wanted to cherish every memory because I’ll never be back here again.

My bedroom is white and plain. There is nothing on the walls. My bed is blue. Under the blue is a white sheet and an ugly, flower patterned mattress. The door of my bedroom leads into the main hallway. At the opposite end is my office. To the left, a bathroom. To the right, my living room, which is empty.

My life is in my computer. My desktop is covered in icons with a Dali painting for a background. In one directory, I have every piece of music that I’ve ever enjoyed. In another, photographs of my childhood. The rest of my computer is my old programs. Everything I’ve ever done. My life’s work.

The mirror in my bathroom was big enough for four people, but all it’s ever seen is me. I adjusted my tie and combed my hair. I moved my head close to the mirror, checking for any stray hairs. Everything had to be perfect. This is my funeral.

I grabbed my laptop off the desk. On my way out, I locked my door out of habit. The area around the doorknob was stained with dirt and oil from years of use. I don’t think I ever cleaned it. The elevator took me to the parking level, where my car was waiting. As I approached, I noticed something on the trunk of the car. I leaned in for a closer look. The red graffiti was illegible. The person responsible must have been in a hurry because the thick red liquid had dripped down onto the bumper before it dried. It was not words. It wasn’t a drawing. It was a man’s blood, John’s last victim. His killer.

I arrived at my destination, my old job. The building was just as I had left it. The lobby was vast and held up by two columns on either side of the front door. The roof was a giant mirror, and the floors were polished nightly. All the reflective surfaces made the giant room appear even larger. I couldn’t escape my self by looked up or down. It was an infinity of me. I walked to the elevator and pressed the button. The sound of silence was a quiet hum. My hand began to ache from the tight grip I kept on my laptop. The elevator rushed down from the top floor. Each floor was another second of my life. When it reached the bottom, I was another minute closer to death. I entered and pressed the button for the top floor. After another minute passed, the doors opened revealing my old life. I came back.

I remember birthday parties for coworkers that I didn’t know. I remember waiting for people to leave the kitchen area, so I could get a cup of coffee. I remember avoiding the people that I knew would try to strike up a conversation with me.

I walked passed rows of cubicles. Trails of split coffee and dirty footprints circled each one. A person’s cubicle was like shrine to their life: People with families, People who love sports, People who lived. Maybe that’s why they gave me an office. So when people walk by, they don’t have to see my empty life.

 My office door was open. I wanted to see it one last time. They had cleaned the place out and yet nothing had changed. The same empty walls. The same empty desk. The only thing missing was my nameplate. This was that moment before you die, that moment where your entire life flashes before your eyes, and all I saw was this room. I’d spent so much time in here, and yet I’d never really looked at it. If someone asked me what color the floor was, I couldn’t tell them. Brown.

My eyes blurred. I caught myself before I hit the floor.

The door to the roof was only ten feet from my office. I’d never gone up there before. The only reason to go to the roof was to jump. The suicide rate in places like this is always high. Some average Joe works his job until he snaps then calmly walks out the door and jumps. It’s almost encouraged. Not only is the door never locked, but there is also a large red exit sign above the door. The only way to leave from the roof is to jump. It’s a good way to thin out the population. And if they land on someone, that’s two less people to worry about.

 Using the wall as a crutch, I staggered to the door. I had to use all my weight it to pry it open. Rainfall and changes in the weather had warped the door over the years. The sudden pressure change popped my ears.

 I felt as though I had climbed a mountain. The cool dense rush of air was overwhelming. It was like breathing sand. If that wasn’t bad enough, I had the whole dying thing to worry about. The large square rooftop was covered in pipes and wires. I was getting weaker by the moment. Each step took twice as much strength as the last. My eyes blurred again. By this time, I was too weak to hold myself up and fell to the ground. I could have slept. I could have just closed my eyes and gone in peace. But I didn’t. I pulled my dying body through the mess of cables to the satellite.

My laptop was now as heavy as a pile of boulders. I lifted it onto my lap and pried it open. With my exhausted hand, I plugged my computer into the diagnostics port on the satellite. After what felt like an eternity of booting up, I connected to the system. I could now take advantage of all of the satellite’s functions. Free cable TV, if I wanted it.

I took one last look at the city.

All I had to do was press a button with my last ounce of strength. And I did. Now I’m here, waiting. I can feel the strength leaving each of my limbs. I try to lift my arm and I can’t.

The buildings are so bright.

I saved every program I ever made. I still have every command I ever wrote. Every time I’ve transferred new software to a machine, It was recorded right here on my laptop. That’s thousands of machines I’ve repaired that I can access anytime I want. Making things easier to fix also makes them easier to destroy. I’m a beta-tester, after the fact. It is my job to fix problems and transmit the corrections from this satellite to all the afflicted products.

All I have to do is wait for my afflicted machines to systematically infect everything else, until they’re all sick. Until every machine, everything with a microchip, is ready to die with me. It’s not about destroying the world. I’m sure someone will get things back in working order in a few minutes. It’s about the moment, my last moment.

I can see it in the distance. Like dominos, the entire city is falling into darkness. We’re dying. It’s getting closer. The shadow of death is here, pushing the life out of my chest. I can’t breathe, but for the first time, I can see.  The twinkling lights above the darkened city call to me.

It is so beautiful.