Two of Us #11

Is today going to end bad, like some days have done?

Neo Hi.

1Life Hello. Can we cut this part short?

Neo Sure. Anything very pressing?

1Life Nothing.

Neo Capital N?

1Life No. Small n.

Neo So, what’s wrong?

1Life I’m like, kinda confused. I don’t see anything. Like there’s something over my eyes.

Neo Well, at least you can see enough to notice there’s something over your eyes. Most people won’t ever see that.

1Life Lucky for them. I don’t know any English. I wonder how I get away with good writing.

Neo Beside the topic at the moment. You wanna live?

1Life Sure. Give me the point.

Neo Means you won’t live if you don’t have the point?

1Life Sure I’ll live. But that’s only ‘coz I’m afraid of dying, and that’s only ‘coz everything around me has led me to be afraid of it. If that’s your logic to want to stay alive and that’s the sole reason I should shut up about my problems and this goddamn thing over my eyes, I don’t know why I hire you.

Neo Hire me?

1Life Please, N. This is not the time.

Neo You just use me.

1Life I’m pathetic, ain’t I? Using a mental person?

Neo Okay, let’s forget about that aspect. Brief me your other probs.

1Life I feel fake. Like I’m a tube — hollow inside. Impressions and feelings go in through one end and expressions come out through the other. But there’s just a stupid cylindrical hollow in there. Right, N?

Neo Might be.

1Life I just had one of those pulses.

Neo Oh shit.

1Life How much deeper will I be dragged? Wait, look, can’t I just call her up right now and tell her I loved her a lot and I never wanted to leave her because I didn’t promise for nothing, and then hang up and just stop being, in some way?

Neo This isn’t a goddamn movie, L.

1Life Is there anything but you who loves me, N?

Neo Maybe your mom and dad, and sis, and number five.

1Life Oh shit, you’re right. Now I can’t even feel cool about having no one to love me. You think she’ll be back?

Neo I dunno.

1Life This isn’t helping very much. I hate it when dad shouts like that.

Neo Me too.

1Life Fucking shit, man.

Neo Never used to say those things before.

1Life Don’t care what people will think.

Neo You do, L.

1Life Yeah, I do. And I don’t like the fact that I do. There must be something about light of many different wavelengths reaching the eyes.

Neo What? Why?

1Life ‘Coz I don’t know why else people would like flowers and the rainbow. There’s nothing inherently beautiful about them. I want to know how people add the beauty to it. It’s the same way with love, I think. It’s just hormones. All this complications, it’s just because we got a huge complex brain, our species, and we need to devise ways to keep it busy and working and all of its parts oiled. So we unconsciously, for biological needs, construct this soft stuff to explain these otherwise dry, physical phenomena. You think so, N?

Neo I dunno. You’re the one who wrote Miracle.

1Life Maybe I’m wrong. I hope I am. Man, N, I’m just acting around here. Making a freaking play out of my life. I wish I could just go to sleep without having to give anyone any explanation.

1Life.