A Lucky Guy
by
Carmen Firan
I'm a lucky guy. I've never won a lottery. Everything I've achieved has been through work, not hard work, nor important work. That is, until the day I found myself among the chosen ones. It was an ordinary day, just as my existence had been up until then. The doorbell rang and I opened it without enthusiasm, thinking my neighbor had locked himself out again. He had left a spare key with me, and the story kept repeating itself. He'd go out to take the trash to the bin, or get his mail, forgetting that the lock was still on from the night before. It wasn't the neighbor. Two tall men dressed in shiny black suits announced that I had been chosen, by an algorithm they didn't need to explain, to be part of the survival experiment meticulously set up by the government. I laughed out loud.
Perhaps my office colleagues, knowing that my retirement was approaching, had played a trick on me. The men both took off their tinted sunglasses at the same time and repeated that it was no joke, I had been elected, and had to follow them immediately. It was for my own good. And I was supposed to be convinced that I was a very lucky guy, as they had selected me out of so many tens of millions. Why me? I asked them, trying to play the absurd game, to stretch the conversation and buy time. It was impossible for me to process the information the two messengers were giving me with the air that the end of the world was coming. Except that someone had decided that I was going to be safe.
Why me? I have no merit, I repeated to them with more humility than I actually felt. A small shiver of hidden pride had already crept up my spine. I'll soon understand, one of the men assured me, though he didn't seem convinced. Now we have to go, as time is running out, the other one urged me. I had to quickly get what I thought was essential or indispensable. The limousine was waiting with the engine running. The joke thickened.
It was clear they wouldn't leave without me. You don't mess with the government. I looked around, confused. Nothing I had gathered over a lifetime seemed essential at the time. Nor indispensable. One of the men handed me a small bag of recyclable material as if he knew there wasn't much to take from there. The cell phone is essential, he told me authoritatively. I also put my wallet and blood pressure medication in the bag. I wanted to take my toothbrush but changed my mind. I had a long mohair scarf I was holding on to, but it was hot outside and after all it wasn't even essential. I pulled my dad's pocket watch out of the bottom of my bedside drawer and threw it in the bag, along with my son's graduation photo. He hadn't looked for me in years. He was happy and busy somewhere in Dubai. I glanced around the small apartment, pulled the coffee cup I'd forgotten to heat from the microwave, and turned off the air conditioning. I was ready.
When I got in the car, I realized I had forgotten my reading glasses. One of the men admitted they were essential and walked me back to the apartment to make sure I wasn't playing a prank on them. When I walked into the house the dark air hit me, I'd just left the place, and everything already smelled stale. It was like revisiting my past, no nostalgia, I recognized the place, but I was no longer connected to it. Time has its own energy; it radiates with speed what is not essential and rushes into the future. And from that moment on I seemed to have a future, mysterious, different from the one I had imagined. For a second, I felt young, set on adventure, though still puzzled and afraid.
The road was long and complicated. The two men placed me between them in the back seat of the car. The windows were so tinted, you could barely see outside. They told me to look straight ahead, except there was a black screen separating us from the driver. About an hour later the car stopped. The two men got out first and after a few moments told me it was okay to get my bag of essentials and follow them. I had no idea where we were. A plain like any other stretched from one side of the road to the other. A small private plane was waiting for us on a narrow runway that was probably an extension of a nearby airport.
There were another five lucky people like me on the plane. We were told to keep the window shutters down throughout the flight. A stewardess stopped by each one of us and asked us to hand her the cell phone we would retrieve on landing. No one objected, and we didn't ask any questions. Instead, she gave us water and a sandwich. After a few hours we landed on a narrow runway in the mountains, probably a military airfield, from the planes and helicopters in the distance. A tall man with tinted glasses was waiting for us and directed us to an electric minibus. We each got our cell phone back and were advised to keep our eyes on it for as long as the trip would last, possibly to see what else was happening on Facebook, if we didn't want to be blindfolded. We complied happily. Each of us had already begun to feel the anxiety of separation from our cell phones.
I had lost track of time and had no idea where we were, but I wasn't too concerned. We had been told that we were going to a safe place where we would be sheltered. Our part of the world was threatened by possible disaster, it was calmly explained to us, and we had been chosen to live, or rather survive in a haven. For how long? Asked one of our lucky team. We’ll see, replied the man with tinted glasses who sat next to the driver like a tour guide who is tired of explaining things. What kind of disaster was this? Our lucky man insisted. Does it make a difference? Natural or man-made. Tectonic faults breaking loose, fires out of control, devastating floods, a comet or meteorite that may fall to earth, or a killer missile sent by one of our rivals, a deadly virus, no one knows exactly, or won't say, now information is coming in from everywhere, from satellites, intelligence services, from earth and sky. Didn't we realize what kind of world we live in? Glaciers melt, waters swell, forests burn, bridges and buildings collapse, hurricanes and tornadoes strike, pandemics strike, the air is contaminated. What is certain is that the future comes with the threat of an apocalypse, and we should stop asking these naive questions. And how can we protect ourselves from such a cataclysm? Our guide took a deep breath and didn't say another word.
I was beginning to worry about my luck. What do you think? I asked my seatmate. I don't think anything, he said dryly. That's exactly why you were selected, the guide who was leading us into the unknown muttered ironically.
I had started to write a message to my doctor to tell him that something unexpected had come up and I had to postpone the visit, but after the first few words the message wrote itself, better than I would have written it. I then thought for a second about my manager. I had forgotten to call work and tell say I would be absent for the next few days. The phone rang suddenly. It was the manager himself. Incredible are these smart phones. They can tell our thoughts. They don't even seem to need us; they'll end up talking to each other. Sometimes I see I have a missed call. I call back. You called me? No, I get an answer, I don't know how it got dialed, but I had it in my head to call you anyway. Telepathy, telephony, technology.
I wanted to lift my eyes from the cell phone and peek at the scenery outside but stopped myself for fear of breaking the rules from the start and suffering who knows what consequences. My ex-wife's words came back to me as she left me slamming the door behind her: You have no authority and no guts, you're not capable of anything. A coward! It sounded like a verdict that has torn me up inside to this day. We'd had a family crisis over our then teenage son, troubled by drugs and alcohol. She accused me of not being an iron fist, of failing as a man and father to save him. Eventually he found his way on his own, as far away from us as possible. My tactic was to let time work out what I couldn't have done anyway. A shiver ran down my spine. Was I chosen for cowardice?
The minivan stopped and we were invited to get out. In front of massive gates were three people in masks and protective suits sitting at a long table with a sign hanging above it: RECEPTION. Welcome! All around was an impersonal, deserted landscape, like so much of ours. Dunes and rocky hills devoid of vegetation stretched to the edge of the horizon. The three of us, first in the order in which we got out of the minivan, were each invited to sit in front of one of the agents with masks and protective screens.
How was the journey? I was asked by a pleasant voice and then I noticed that my agent was a blue-eyed woman.
She didn't wait for me to answer, handed me a bottle of water, and asked for my ID. She opened a file in the computer and formally asked me my name, date of birth, address, occupation, and personal identification number, even though she seemed to know everything about me. She then asked for my cell phone, recorded its number and password that I voluntarily disclosed and gave it back to me speaking slowly and loudly, perhaps because of the mask, or to make sure I understood what she was saying.
It is essential to have your mobile phone with you at all times. I breathed a sigh of relief. The truth is I couldn't live without it. It replaced everything I'd done before in the real world. On it you'll get instructions that will guide you to your new place, she told me simply.
What kind of place is this? I wanted to ask but the agent she didn’t give me the time. She changed her tone and told me in a low, playful voice: Did you know that cell phones are indestructible? They will continue to exist after the end of the world. And after death.
A shiver ran down my spine and I felt a twinge in my heart. With all the excitement I was going through I had forgotten to take my blood pressure medication. I remembered that after his death, my brother kept getting messages on Facebook, some wishing him happy birthday, and bots kept ringing on his phone with ads and spams. It was as if his cell was carrying his life forward, a virtual life as we've all had for a while now.
Seeing my thoughts elsewhere, the agent continued, raising her voice a little: Protocol is to stop by the sanitation department. You come from a contaminated environment.
You will be cleaned, disinfected, and then given the keys to the place you will be staying in. Don't worry, it's just like the one in which you lived. The car is in the garage at spot 66, the same type of car. The keys are on the table in the entrance hall, where you kept them at home. The notion of home would have to be adapted. Home is here now.
For how long? I asked intimidated by her eyes.
There is only one time here, the present.
I was going to retire, I muttered, increasingly unsure of what was happening to me.
Let it be at a good time! Said the agent and I suspected she smiled, though I couldn't see her mouth under the mask, only her eyes twinkled for a few seconds. I couldn't tell if the inflection in her voice came from irony or pity. It could have just been a polite formality spoken with indifference. I'm not suspicious, I don't have persecution mania, and I don't see conspiracies in the news flowing from the media or political circles.
I was thinking hopefully about the future, I added slowly, as the stinging in my heart became increasingly annoying.
Where was I? Who was that welcoming board? What was really going on behind those walls? What if those men weren't government officials, but murderers or psychopaths who had set up some crazy experiment? I was overcome by the naivety with which I had agreed to go with them, out of fear of contradicting some authority, or out of cowardice, or perhaps out of the vanity of having found myself overnight a chosen one.
You had no choice, the agent replied, although I didn’t say anything out loud. The chosen ones have no choice, they must bear their cross.
I looked at her crossly. I needed clarification, not more charades.
Who were the others I was going to live with in that new place that I knew nothing about, and no one would jump in to explain?
People of all kinds, of different ages and occupations, natives, or immigrants, as luck fell, uttered the agent.
I first thought of luck with fear. It's not for nothing they say good luck has fallen upon you. Like a rock. And what's that luck for? I whispered. My heart pounded wildly, and a claw clutched my chest.
For time. Didn't you feel it speed up? Haven't you complained so many times that it's going by too fast, that it's gone crazy?
I'd been told otherwise, I protested, nonplussed. Told that I'd be here, safe from the apocalypse that's coming to the planet.
Exactly, confirmed the agent bored to death. You'll be spared drama and suffering. Now it's time to take heart and step through these gates. Someone will guide you further. She opened another document in the computer and shouted over my head: Next in line!
Another minivan pulled up and six other lucky people got out wearily with cell phones in hand.
My legs were shaking, and the pain was almost unbearable. Waiting for me behind the gates was a man with tinted glasses, identical to the guides before. He waved for me to follow him. I passed through the de-worming section, and he waited for me until I was washed and primped, then pointed out the doors of massive elevators.
Going up or down? I asked him. He shrugged. Does it matter? I thought maybe it would take me to an underground bunker where I'd be safe, or a giant salt flat, or an artificially created biosphere. I got dizzy. The elevator opened and inside I had the sensation of seeing my father's long-gone face. A hallucination. The elevator was empty.
The man told me to get in and press the button for the 66th floor.
Aren't you coming with me? I asked him.
No, you go alone.
That's when I saw a couple of cell phones in the corner of the elevator. What about these? Whose are they? He didn't answer. I was scared to death. Stop stalling, he said, there are others waiting. I felt faint. For a split second I thought with immense pain of my life as it had been before I was among the chosen, then my chest eased, as if something had been taken from my soul. The door closed, I closed my eyes and the lift sprang into the tunnel. All I remember was a bright, gentle light.
Perhaps my office colleagues, knowing that my retirement was approaching, had played a trick on me. The men both took off their tinted sunglasses at the same time and repeated that it was no joke, I had been elected, and had to follow them immediately. It was for my own good. And I was supposed to be convinced that I was a very lucky guy, as they had selected me out of so many tens of millions. Why me? I asked them, trying to play the absurd game, to stretch the conversation and buy time. It was impossible for me to process the information the two messengers were giving me with the air that the end of the world was coming. Except that someone had decided that I was going to be safe.
Why me? I have no merit, I repeated to them with more humility than I actually felt. A small shiver of hidden pride had already crept up my spine. I'll soon understand, one of the men assured me, though he didn't seem convinced. Now we have to go, as time is running out, the other one urged me. I had to quickly get what I thought was essential or indispensable. The limousine was waiting with the engine running. The joke thickened.
It was clear they wouldn't leave without me. You don't mess with the government. I looked around, confused. Nothing I had gathered over a lifetime seemed essential at the time. Nor indispensable. One of the men handed me a small bag of recyclable material as if he knew there wasn't much to take from there. The cell phone is essential, he told me authoritatively. I also put my wallet and blood pressure medication in the bag. I wanted to take my toothbrush but changed my mind. I had a long mohair scarf I was holding on to, but it was hot outside and after all it wasn't even essential. I pulled my dad's pocket watch out of the bottom of my bedside drawer and threw it in the bag, along with my son's graduation photo. He hadn't looked for me in years. He was happy and busy somewhere in Dubai. I glanced around the small apartment, pulled the coffee cup I'd forgotten to heat from the microwave, and turned off the air conditioning. I was ready.
When I got in the car, I realized I had forgotten my reading glasses. One of the men admitted they were essential and walked me back to the apartment to make sure I wasn't playing a prank on them. When I walked into the house the dark air hit me, I'd just left the place, and everything already smelled stale. It was like revisiting my past, no nostalgia, I recognized the place, but I was no longer connected to it. Time has its own energy; it radiates with speed what is not essential and rushes into the future. And from that moment on I seemed to have a future, mysterious, different from the one I had imagined. For a second, I felt young, set on adventure, though still puzzled and afraid.
The road was long and complicated. The two men placed me between them in the back seat of the car. The windows were so tinted, you could barely see outside. They told me to look straight ahead, except there was a black screen separating us from the driver. About an hour later the car stopped. The two men got out first and after a few moments told me it was okay to get my bag of essentials and follow them. I had no idea where we were. A plain like any other stretched from one side of the road to the other. A small private plane was waiting for us on a narrow runway that was probably an extension of a nearby airport.
There were another five lucky people like me on the plane. We were told to keep the window shutters down throughout the flight. A stewardess stopped by each one of us and asked us to hand her the cell phone we would retrieve on landing. No one objected, and we didn't ask any questions. Instead, she gave us water and a sandwich. After a few hours we landed on a narrow runway in the mountains, probably a military airfield, from the planes and helicopters in the distance. A tall man with tinted glasses was waiting for us and directed us to an electric minibus. We each got our cell phone back and were advised to keep our eyes on it for as long as the trip would last, possibly to see what else was happening on Facebook, if we didn't want to be blindfolded. We complied happily. Each of us had already begun to feel the anxiety of separation from our cell phones.
I had lost track of time and had no idea where we were, but I wasn't too concerned. We had been told that we were going to a safe place where we would be sheltered. Our part of the world was threatened by possible disaster, it was calmly explained to us, and we had been chosen to live, or rather survive in a haven. For how long? Asked one of our lucky team. We’ll see, replied the man with tinted glasses who sat next to the driver like a tour guide who is tired of explaining things. What kind of disaster was this? Our lucky man insisted. Does it make a difference? Natural or man-made. Tectonic faults breaking loose, fires out of control, devastating floods, a comet or meteorite that may fall to earth, or a killer missile sent by one of our rivals, a deadly virus, no one knows exactly, or won't say, now information is coming in from everywhere, from satellites, intelligence services, from earth and sky. Didn't we realize what kind of world we live in? Glaciers melt, waters swell, forests burn, bridges and buildings collapse, hurricanes and tornadoes strike, pandemics strike, the air is contaminated. What is certain is that the future comes with the threat of an apocalypse, and we should stop asking these naive questions. And how can we protect ourselves from such a cataclysm? Our guide took a deep breath and didn't say another word.
I was beginning to worry about my luck. What do you think? I asked my seatmate. I don't think anything, he said dryly. That's exactly why you were selected, the guide who was leading us into the unknown muttered ironically.
I had started to write a message to my doctor to tell him that something unexpected had come up and I had to postpone the visit, but after the first few words the message wrote itself, better than I would have written it. I then thought for a second about my manager. I had forgotten to call work and tell say I would be absent for the next few days. The phone rang suddenly. It was the manager himself. Incredible are these smart phones. They can tell our thoughts. They don't even seem to need us; they'll end up talking to each other. Sometimes I see I have a missed call. I call back. You called me? No, I get an answer, I don't know how it got dialed, but I had it in my head to call you anyway. Telepathy, telephony, technology.
I wanted to lift my eyes from the cell phone and peek at the scenery outside but stopped myself for fear of breaking the rules from the start and suffering who knows what consequences. My ex-wife's words came back to me as she left me slamming the door behind her: You have no authority and no guts, you're not capable of anything. A coward! It sounded like a verdict that has torn me up inside to this day. We'd had a family crisis over our then teenage son, troubled by drugs and alcohol. She accused me of not being an iron fist, of failing as a man and father to save him. Eventually he found his way on his own, as far away from us as possible. My tactic was to let time work out what I couldn't have done anyway. A shiver ran down my spine. Was I chosen for cowardice?
The minivan stopped and we were invited to get out. In front of massive gates were three people in masks and protective suits sitting at a long table with a sign hanging above it: RECEPTION. Welcome! All around was an impersonal, deserted landscape, like so much of ours. Dunes and rocky hills devoid of vegetation stretched to the edge of the horizon. The three of us, first in the order in which we got out of the minivan, were each invited to sit in front of one of the agents with masks and protective screens.
How was the journey? I was asked by a pleasant voice and then I noticed that my agent was a blue-eyed woman.
She didn't wait for me to answer, handed me a bottle of water, and asked for my ID. She opened a file in the computer and formally asked me my name, date of birth, address, occupation, and personal identification number, even though she seemed to know everything about me. She then asked for my cell phone, recorded its number and password that I voluntarily disclosed and gave it back to me speaking slowly and loudly, perhaps because of the mask, or to make sure I understood what she was saying.
It is essential to have your mobile phone with you at all times. I breathed a sigh of relief. The truth is I couldn't live without it. It replaced everything I'd done before in the real world. On it you'll get instructions that will guide you to your new place, she told me simply.
What kind of place is this? I wanted to ask but the agent she didn’t give me the time. She changed her tone and told me in a low, playful voice: Did you know that cell phones are indestructible? They will continue to exist after the end of the world. And after death.
A shiver ran down my spine and I felt a twinge in my heart. With all the excitement I was going through I had forgotten to take my blood pressure medication. I remembered that after his death, my brother kept getting messages on Facebook, some wishing him happy birthday, and bots kept ringing on his phone with ads and spams. It was as if his cell was carrying his life forward, a virtual life as we've all had for a while now.
Seeing my thoughts elsewhere, the agent continued, raising her voice a little: Protocol is to stop by the sanitation department. You come from a contaminated environment.
You will be cleaned, disinfected, and then given the keys to the place you will be staying in. Don't worry, it's just like the one in which you lived. The car is in the garage at spot 66, the same type of car. The keys are on the table in the entrance hall, where you kept them at home. The notion of home would have to be adapted. Home is here now.
For how long? I asked intimidated by her eyes.
There is only one time here, the present.
I was going to retire, I muttered, increasingly unsure of what was happening to me.
Let it be at a good time! Said the agent and I suspected she smiled, though I couldn't see her mouth under the mask, only her eyes twinkled for a few seconds. I couldn't tell if the inflection in her voice came from irony or pity. It could have just been a polite formality spoken with indifference. I'm not suspicious, I don't have persecution mania, and I don't see conspiracies in the news flowing from the media or political circles.
I was thinking hopefully about the future, I added slowly, as the stinging in my heart became increasingly annoying.
Where was I? Who was that welcoming board? What was really going on behind those walls? What if those men weren't government officials, but murderers or psychopaths who had set up some crazy experiment? I was overcome by the naivety with which I had agreed to go with them, out of fear of contradicting some authority, or out of cowardice, or perhaps out of the vanity of having found myself overnight a chosen one.
You had no choice, the agent replied, although I didn’t say anything out loud. The chosen ones have no choice, they must bear their cross.
I looked at her crossly. I needed clarification, not more charades.
Who were the others I was going to live with in that new place that I knew nothing about, and no one would jump in to explain?
People of all kinds, of different ages and occupations, natives, or immigrants, as luck fell, uttered the agent.
I first thought of luck with fear. It's not for nothing they say good luck has fallen upon you. Like a rock. And what's that luck for? I whispered. My heart pounded wildly, and a claw clutched my chest.
For time. Didn't you feel it speed up? Haven't you complained so many times that it's going by too fast, that it's gone crazy?
I'd been told otherwise, I protested, nonplussed. Told that I'd be here, safe from the apocalypse that's coming to the planet.
Exactly, confirmed the agent bored to death. You'll be spared drama and suffering. Now it's time to take heart and step through these gates. Someone will guide you further. She opened another document in the computer and shouted over my head: Next in line!
Another minivan pulled up and six other lucky people got out wearily with cell phones in hand.
My legs were shaking, and the pain was almost unbearable. Waiting for me behind the gates was a man with tinted glasses, identical to the guides before. He waved for me to follow him. I passed through the de-worming section, and he waited for me until I was washed and primped, then pointed out the doors of massive elevators.
Going up or down? I asked him. He shrugged. Does it matter? I thought maybe it would take me to an underground bunker where I'd be safe, or a giant salt flat, or an artificially created biosphere. I got dizzy. The elevator opened and inside I had the sensation of seeing my father's long-gone face. A hallucination. The elevator was empty.
The man told me to get in and press the button for the 66th floor.
Aren't you coming with me? I asked him.
No, you go alone.
That's when I saw a couple of cell phones in the corner of the elevator. What about these? Whose are they? He didn't answer. I was scared to death. Stop stalling, he said, there are others waiting. I felt faint. For a split second I thought with immense pain of my life as it had been before I was among the chosen, then my chest eased, as if something had been taken from my soul. The door closed, I closed my eyes and the lift sprang into the tunnel. All I remember was a bright, gentle light.