Chapter 1: The Call

The bits of coldness went across the streams of his black hair as he stood alone in the middle of the hammering rain that seemed to be piercing through his coat all the way to his heart. Roger pulled his long hair to the back, trying to cower in his own black coat. He stood next to his father's grave who died two nights prior. Tears were dried in his face, people came and left. The graveyard was emptied, nothing but the graves, the fog and himself. He sat next to his father's gravestone.

Isaac Garaldson

The one to create the painting was Roger himself. Unlike his usual style, his colors weren't anywhere near bright, but dark and with an overall gray tone. He painted his father wearing his white lab suit, wearing his own glasses with a bit of shining light through his bald skull. Roger refrained from widening that smile of his, letting the world know that his father had always been a man of rationality and nowhere near romantic.

"I miss him, you know," a voice came from behind him. Roger waited for the tear to fully cross the field of his hairy face and hit the ground before he could talk with the man coming from behind. The man approached Roger, gently patting him on his upper back. The scent of the man was the same as his father's. Roger took his stand, slowly turning his eyes towards the shady figure.

He was a tall fellow with a wide hat above his head, darkening the view from his nose tops. His hands were buried in his long coat that stretched further than his calves. The man had a small beard that moved in the howling wind of winter. Roger perceived the small bits of rain stuck on that flying beard, but he refrained from looking at him. He had a tendency to step a bit further away from him, especially after seeing another man waiting for him at the entrance of the graveyard.

Roger watched how the man was pulling his hand out of his pocket before he put it on the grieving kid's right shoulder.

"I've known your father for a very long time. He was a fighter up until the end, I'm glad I was part of his life," The shady figure said.

"He never told me about you. May I know what your name is?" Roger asked. His voice was low and almost less rough than that of his peers. One could hardly hear him if not while paying close attention, especially in the midst of the rain and the whispering of the wind.

"Of course he didn't. Matter of fact, if he did, we wouldn't have been friends. It is in his, you can say, sense of secrecy that I realized he was a man I can trust, and I hope that he saw the same thing in me. Tell me, Roger; are you also a man of trust?"

Roger's mind was mudded with confusion. He took a step back, almost stepping on his father's grave. The shady fellow caught him by his elbow.

"Ah ah, watch it!" the shady figure said; his lips widened and spread. "You'd better be as good as your father told me you'd be, otherwise it would all have been for nothing. The abyss will be our next station if you can't control what you will be given."

"Sir, I don't understand what you are saying. Besides, you still didn't tell me what your name is," Roger said.

There was a moment of silence between the two as their eyes fully met when the shadiness below the man's hat was illuminated. The man kept smiling, Roger's heart galloped, his fingers fluttered. The rain bolted in its pace. The man put his hand back into his pocket before he started to pull something. Roger coiled his fist to the point of quaking and raised it to his upper thigh, still not having the tendency to act of extreme aggressiveness against the stranger. The fellow pulled a card and placed it in Roger's palm. He closed his hand on it.

"Take your time to grieve, son. Then, when you feel prepared to be talk, just give me a call. I shall explain to you whatever you want to know. Then… we'll… we'll see what happens then. In case you don't call, your father will truly proud of you, truly hopeful of might turn to be," the stranger said, withdrawing his hands into his pockets before he turned and left the graveyard, followed by the other man with the similar clothing. Roger looked at the card in between the tips of fingers, reading the number. Roger looked back at his father's grave, watching how raindrops were drying on his painting, stuck on Isaac's face. In a way, Roger's heart sunk when he perceived the bits of crawling rain as his father's tears. Still, without giving it much thought, he put the card into his pocket and walked away from his father's grave, thinking of potential painting of the shady figure.

The sun of the early morning climbed up the sky and illuminated the empty streets of Garlem. The lights were no longer visible from across the sky, only to be covered by uselesss skyscrapers. Still, fewer people woke up at eight to work since the 9-5 work time died ever since robots filled desks instead of actual workers. Roger had his hands under his head; he spent the early minutes of the faltering slumber looking at the rooftop, glancing at his paintings from afar. A second later, there was some heavy knocking on the door.

A weighty fellow pushed the door once Roger unlocked it.

"My little nephew!" The man said, placing Roger's head under his armpit while he rubbed his hair. "God, how I you've grown! You missed all the adventure little fellow, you shoulda stayed with your uncle in Florida."

Roger struggled to pull his head out of that pile of human meat, sensing his face soaked in his uncle sweat. The man let the boy go and went to the other room with his bags. Roger locked the door and walked behind him, wondering what he might be doing.

"Uncle Derek, I didn't know you were coming," Roger said, rubbing the back of his head as his shoulder was laid on his the door side. Uncle Derek spread himself across the double bed, already hanging his pants and leaving himself with his sweat soaked shirt. Roger had the tendency to grab a stick and start whipping his Uncle. The latter turned and spread his legs with his hands inside a chip bag; his fingers were splashed with its sauce.

"Ah you know, boyo, I figured you might feel alone to fill whatever role you want me to fill, if that ever makes sense anyway," Uncle Derek said, filling his mouth with chip slices. Every time Roger would raise his head he would be reminded that the old fellow was still wearing nothing but his underpants.

"Maybe you mean to say that you have nowhere to go to that's why you came," Roger said, smiling.

"Oh shut up you little snake! I've always told your mother that you are a crazy little snake who needs a beating every two minutes! You want me to come and beat you now?! I don't care that you're nineteen now! As you know, I am in my grand quest of opening up my glorious restaurant. Sure it didn't work at first, all men failed at some point before they succeeded, right? So I decided to come to Garlem , the city with the most advanced technology in the US, to open an aesthetically outstanding restaurant!"

"Really? You've been saying that since forever, Uncle. Shouldn't you be doing something else?"

"Nothing else! Bloody snake, I know you are jealous of me, boy! I'll show you. Come on, don't you have school or something? I spent the whole night on the road, I need to get some sleep. You've always been a noisy little runt," Uncle Derek said, putting two pillows above his head. Roger chuckled as he closed the door behind him, stretching his hand to grab his backpack. Roger had spent most of his childhood years with Uncle Derek back when he was a "runt". Back when they lived in Florida, he would spend the whole day with his Uncle selling crappy sandwiches. The image of his Uncle had always been associated with curses, beating and free ice cream. Yet Derek had always been the closest soul of a family from his late mother's side, from both parental sides anyway.

"Hey! Rogerio, give me your bloody phone, mine's broken, I have to check my email," Uncle Derek called. Roger pulled his soap-shaped old phone that he had bought from an old man three years ago.

"Sorry, this is my phone. You can use the computer if you want," Roger said before he shut the door behind him. Standing alone in the corridor, the undressed Uncle was left a bit baffled. Ever since the little Roger started developing his opinion over the world, he sold his phone and tablet. Most days he would spend the few dollars he gathered during his summer jobs on colors and portraits, trying to express himself. He had always despised modern technology for it hindered his overall perception, his artistic perception of the world around him. Most of all, the major reason was that technology robbed him of his father's time, robbed him of feeling any sort of fatherly love.

There was only one Art school in the whole of Garlem city; the students were lesser than they were during the early years of the city's construction. Teachers were less competent throughout the years, without forgetting that the state stopped funding its needs; therefore there were fewer resources and less ways to properly create modern artists. The school wasn't the only place where Roger noticed the decay of artistic expression. The skinny loner would step in a moving colored circle upon which the sun, covered by the tall city walls and the hovering vehicles, shined while all others either had earpods hung in their ears or their eyes kidnapped by their phones, stuck in a gray area which was dominated by short scaled beams of light. He adored older movies, movies where it was all about authentic expression of the self rather than using human technology to raise the emission of dopamine, pleasure.

After he had placed his student card in front of the scanner, he walked inside, taking the very left of the road inside the academy while two students opposed him, hurrying out of the place.

"I'm finally getting out of this stupid place, I got accepted into the IT academy," one of them said, so happy that his teeth shone and his cheeks reddened.

"My parents said that they are going to send me to study in Europe. Let them have their art!" the other one said.

Every word of such similarity would tear a wound in Roger's heart, but he found comfort in knowing that the likes of him were rare. It was absurd yet surprising that few of those his age in Garlem could realize that their ability to perceive beauty had long been robbed of them by Red Tech, the company that built the city. At some point after graduation, Roger hoped to leave Garlem City without a single look back for the world was bigger and more welcoming to his growing perception than that cursed place. As he stood on the door, he realized, like it had been for the last few months, the teacher hadn't come. Roger sighed, slowly dragging his chair across the deserted class and placing it as he adjusted the portrait. He picked up a pen, trying to shape up the figure with slight lines before beginning the actual drawing.

At the top, he drew a slight horizontal circle and another vertical one in order to mold the hat afterwards. For some reason the shady figure from the graveyard had been dwelling in his mind, rehearsing every saying he said that went unexplained. As if he was checking if his phone was in his pocket, Roger rather kept on checking if the card was still in his pocket. He would look at it before placing it back on the table or ram it into his pocket.

"Why do I keep thinking about that card? Why do I keep thinking about that guy?" he wondered, observing how his pen fell and rolled back and forth on the floor. As he lowered himself, stretching his arm to pick the tool, he saw her.

Her

She was sitting in a wooden chair with the sunshine breaching through her dark hair that flowed down her back. She wore a red shirt, kept her jacket hung on her chair. He watched in closeness how she held the brush and filled the whiteness of the portrait with color, with life. Despite his deep knowledge of what her face looked like, how glassy were her eyes, how small his nose was and how smaller her lips were like a cat about to start purring at anytime, he often wanted to look at the back of her head, how she had always seemed like an unattained goal, a farfetched gem that would often remind him of how unworthy he was, or how he thought of himself as unworthy.

"Rogeriooooooo," a voice rattled his ears, so loud that it sent him on the floor with the chair in between his legs. The source of the voice was Jeremy Jackson, Roger's best friend. He was a short young man with a rounded head, less hair in his scalp and a joyful face. No matter how much he tried to imagine his friend's distorted face, it was the hardest of them all. Jeremy stood behind his friend, placing his hands under his armpits to pull him up. He lowered his voice, almost to the level of whispering.

"I caught you how you were looking at that girl, you fox!" Jeremy said, chuckling with every word he said, spraying some escaping spit on his friend's face.

"Fox, Snake, you and my Uncle really need to agree something," Roger said, catching a split second of that girl looking at them, her glassy magnetic eyes were set on him.

"What the hell were you thinking? I told you to wait for me at your house. I don't think you really understand how hard it was to park my car in that district of yours. Then what? I meet your fat uncle wearing his underpants, then I find you here all eyes on this chick!" he said; his voice was a bit louder.

"Shut up, would you?"

"Why are you so stressed anyway? You should go talk to her."

"No! I can't talk just talk her. You sound like every protagonist's best friend right now, this is some absolute cliché."

"What are you gonna lose? I got three girlfriends at the same time!"

"I'm sure you're shared too."

"Alright, I'll…" Jeremy said before he spotted the girl with her backpack on her back, walking out of the class. He then looked at his friend with a sarcastic smile, one that he implied that he was about to explode in spit and laughter. Roger put his hand on his face, almost having the tendency to smile. He put the white paper with the pencil scribbles in his backpack, tending to leave too.

"Come on, let's go. We don't have a teacher," Roger said, walking side by side with his best friend out of a deserted Academy which was once praised, now to be shunned and left. Roger kept his hands inside his pockets while his friend's eyes were consumed by the light emitted from his phone. He planted his earpods into the depths of his ears. He unlocked his car as it let out a quick sound.

"Ah, I wish I could ride a car with my own mind," Jeremy said, adjusting his seat while he tossed the card inside for the engine to start. Roger smiled, placing his bag in the backseat, right before he had pulled the stranger's card. Jeremy put both of his hands around the steering wheel, slowly directing his car from the college's parking site to the main road. He took a quick glimpse at the hovering cars stories above them like automated birds.

"I wonder why Dad doesn't buy me a hovering car, I've always wanted to fly among those up in the sky. Dad told me that back in his days, electric cars were something really special, something they were all eager to posses. Now everybody has one in this city, cars that run with gas are rarest and usually can be found in the south around the borders," Jeremy said, spotting the energy slot that indicated the vehicle was on the verge of shutdown.

"We should head to the energy station first," Jeremy said before he glanced at Roger's card.

"What's that? You've been looking at it the same way you've been looking at that girl," Jeremy said with a quick chuckle, lessening his speed at the upcoming traffic.

"It's nothing, man," Roger replied, tossing the card into his pocket again while touching the outer layer of his black jeans, sensing it inside.

"You've never hidden anything from me, Roger. We've been best friends ever since your family moved to this city. If it concerns you, it concerns me as well."

Roger gasped and remained silent afterwards, looking in between his feet.

"We can talk about it later if you want," Jeremy said, slightly pressing on the accelerator paddle as the car shook and advanced through the road, nearing in the entrance of the energy station. The car stopped and the wheels froze before the other car, waiting for their turn to charge the energy.

"You know, Jeremy, I can't feel anything specific. Usually when someone, even old, becomes fatherless, they usually break down or at least grieve. I did let out a tear or two the first day when he fell on the floor, but then all I felt was simply nothing. I had nothing to feel towards him because he wasn't there; he would leave the house early in the morning and come back at midnight, that's when he doesn't stay all night at his workplace. Red goddamn Tech took my father from me, took of his years and before him they took my mother. Then what else? They built this senseless city, truly devoid of any form of beauty. Everyone thinks in ones and zeroes, of yes and no, of black and white, none of them is capable of observing anything beyond what is materialistically present in front of them, these fools are literally two-dimensional. My dream is to leave this place, to leave this city because Dad was the only reason I stayed here. You see, I…" Roger's tongue turned stiff when watched his friend nodding while his fingers danced on his phone's touch screen.

"You were saying?" Jeremy said after he had sent a message accompanied by a reaction to an earlier message.

"Nothing," Roger said.

Jeremy tossed his phone into his pocket as he walked out of the car, plugging the charging cord into the vehicle, leaving Roger into his own thoughts. He looked at the card again, placing it in his left hand while he held his phone in the other, leaving his thumb in the dialing buttons. Both of his hands shook at such frequency that he couldn't read the numbers anymore.

You'd better as good as your father told me you'd be, otherwise it would all have been for nothing. The abyss will be our next station if you can't control what you will be given.

The words of the stranger rung in his ears like a symphony with a variety of loudness. The words were rehearsed so many times that the whole of his being shook before his friend opened the door again. The quaking stopped; Roger had already placed the card back inside his jeans once Jeremy tossed himself inside.

"Where do we go now?" Jeremy turned to his friend, sensing his fingers fidgeting for the touch of a screen. "I know a new VR place around the 9th. Wanna head there?"

"You know I don't like them, Jeremy. This isn't new."

"You know what? You should just buy yourself a bunker and a bunch of supplies to live by yourself. What's wrong with you, man? This is modernity, you can't reject the needs of these times. What you are trying to do is really dumb, Roger. It's inevitable, letting go of what was before is inevitable, every city in the US, and later in the whole world, will be just like Garlem at one point so stop blocking human evolution, flow with it, bro!"

Roger remained silent, looking at the pedestrians with the phones in between their palms while listening to his friend's talk. He then came to the full realization that the rightful description of his time, of modernity, is absolute senselessness and hovering shallowness.

"I really need to go home, Jeremy," Roger said.

Jeremy grasped, laying his forehead on the steering wheel but not too heavily so as to avoid the klaxon. He then pressed on the car to light the engine before the vehicle took the other road back to Roger's apartment. On the way back home, Roger picked up a burger for his Uncle and a newer brush to experiment on blank portraits. He climbed up to his apartment with prayers in his heart that his Uncle was still asleep. Once his knuckle kissed the door, he heard the old dog singing inside. He had a few drops of oil on his shirt; he seemed to be grilling a large stake. Roger sat beside him in the kitchen, placing his backpack in between his feet and pulling his hands off his jacket sleeves. He placed the hamburger bag on the table, sighing when realizing that his Uncle did wake up before lunch time and he bought that burger in vain.

"I bought you lunch. I didn't think you'd wake up earlier," Roger said, laying his neck upon the upper rail of the chair.

"Ha! You wouldn't believe it, me neither, boy. Someone woke up about two hours ago," Uncle Derek said, tossing his hand inside the bag.

"Screams on the street?"

"Nope, knockings on the door I believe."

Roger craned his head; his eye socket widened in shock because if it weren't for Jeremy, none cared about the apartment or its inhabitants. "Who came?"

"A fella wearing a long jacket and hat that covered most of his face, what a fine hat that was! I had one like it before," Uncle Derek said, trying to chew his first bite of the burger.

Roger's heart raced. "Uncle, who was he?"

"He didn't say, and I didn't ask. Still, he came looking for ya, he said he was a friend of your pops. The look in his face though… what a strange fella that was! The kind you see in mob movies, which makes me wonder, what the hell have you gotten yourself into, you little shit?"

Roger had his hand touching the card inside his jeans pocket, sensing a wild urge to pick it up and dial the number.

"Nothing, I swear. You heard the man, he said he was friend of my father's."

"He also said that he left you his card, and that it is in your… benefit to call him as soon as possible. I wouldn't want to care what you'll ddo, little snake, but stay out of trouble! I didn't raise you so you can piss on your mother's grave by hanging out with dirty fellas, or I assume you'd call them 'good fellas' ey?"

Roger rubbed his eyes in tiresomeness. "Really Uncle? I'm not in the mood for this, I have to rest."

"Sure, just—" Uncle Derek said before he froze all together. He then tossed his face into the sink, spitting the whole of his mouthful of burger, opening the water socket.

"Who the hell makes this trash? Last time I ate here it wasn't this bad!"

"That's because you didn't come here for years. Wait, you do know how fast food is cooked in Garlem City, do you?"

Uncle Derek shook his head with fingers crawling up his cheeks.

"Robots cook food. There's been a whole documentary about it, released about three or four years ago, I'm not sure. Everything is timed, grilling the meat and placing the salade before the placement of the bread. Everything falls into a specific pattern, people start to like it at some point. I don't eat it if you intend to ask," Roger said, picking up Uncle Derek's grilled stake and cutting a bit of it after placing it in a plate.

"They don't think at all in this city, and then let the robots do the brain work for them. They can't do this to food! A meal has to be cooked with human passion, that's the only way that its true essence can reach the tasting tongue of the consumer. Even if it's bloody fast food, there has to be some feeling while creating these things. What shocks me is that people eat this drivel and pay money for it as if it's supposed to be the standard taste, the standard product. I have to open up my restaurant, it's my bloody calling, I have to save these people from such mediocrity and senselessness."

Roger put his hand on his cheek while watching his uncle raising both of his hands like a leader of a movement, speaking with such enthusiasm that his fists coiled every few seconds. Somehow, his Uncle described exactly what Roger had felt about the city, about its tasteless way of life. Either Garlem couldn't speak or spoke a language he didn't understand.

"I'll cook you another stake," Uncle Derek said after spitting one last time at the sinking mouthful, throwing the half bitten burger into the trash can.

"Okay, Uncle, I'll be in my room," Roger said, pushing his backpack into the air with his feet before he caught it and rolled it behind his back. His father's room became his room; he hung his jacket and spread the contents of his backpack across the table. He then adjusted the blank portrait, waiting to finish grabbing all of his color sticks and his newer brush. Still, blood ran at such a speed across his system that he couldn't find the comfort to paint, but to just sit down in his indecisiveness while looking at the card. He sat in his back with that card balancing on his skinny right thigh.

"If only you could have told me what I should do, Dad. If only you told me about him," he muttered. "All I want is to flee this city and live somewhere I can properly call myself human. I don't want to live in a bunker or stop technological evolution, all I want is for me to feel human. I'm sure you didn't feel human, Dad. It could never be human not talk to your son, not to take him on a vacation once in a while. Uncle's not perfect, but he was a human because he realized that the stupid burger tasted like literal human waste. If only those who live in this city realize how tasteless, not their burgers, their whole lives have become," Roger said as he lit a small fire which neared the lower right tip of the card, starting to burn it. It didn't take seconds before the whole thing turned to ashes, burning that number and thus the possibility for truth. Roger closed his eyes, realizing that he had remembered the number, and that he could never take it out of his mind.

"It seems I'd have to take a gamble then, let us a step forward towards the truth, a step away from absurdity," Roger said with a louder tone, dialing the stranger's number on his phone.