#compete with cryptic instructions to unlock a door that only existed | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

jfsandoval · 3 years

Text

Ignis Fatuus.

“Social reality is….nothing but a fragile, symbolic cobweb that can at any moment be torn aside by an intrusion of the real" - Slavoj Zizek

Chapter 1: ILLUSION

The commotion was unrelenting. There was the opening and slamming of the clunky register, the high-pitched screeching of the milk in the process of foaming, alongside the team of baristas announcing orders as they skidded on the wooden bar. Each sonic vibration was clutching his eardrums competing for attention. With his head pounding, the sounds echoing through the coffee shop felt like an avalanche. At some unknown point, however, the horde of noises culminated into some abstraction. Coughs, laughs, exaggerated hellos, and dramatized goodbyes. For Robert Lövestrand it all became a blur. With some serious yet subconscious effort he was able to ignore it all.

Once ignoring his surroundings, Robert honed in his thoughts. He found himself asking why he was awake so early. Rubbing his eyes and cracking his knuckles, Robert was doing mental gymnastics to stay awake. He didn’t want to leave the comfort of his bed. Who in their right mind would wake up and face the unforgiving cold Monday morning mist? The weekend had consisted of dissociated nights coupled with anxious afternoons. The outcome of this being a restlessness that intruded and entrenched itself in his everyday life. What had become of him?

Everything changed a few months earlier, when Robert’s company turned against him, and he lost the career had been investing in his whole life. Robert now found himself clinging to the only thing he had left: an artificial intelligence algorithm stuck on a flash drive. Regardless, Robert told himself it was worth it, that as much as it pained him to be awake so early outside of the comfort of his studio apartment where he had been walled up for the past three weeks, it was for good reason: to meet with Cecil Arelia. So there he waited, at the Peet's Coffee on the corner of 7th and 8th street in this urban bay area sprawl thousands dreamed of. And for what? To understand how exactly his life had turned from an emerging sistar to now being hunted down by the men and women behind the glass screens of all those startup corporations. So, there Robert sat, trying his best to not lose his most devoted work, aptly named: Peripheral_NET. Where had everything gone wrong?

Patience had been a skill Robert had acquired over the years and more so now with the ever growing feelings of danger which had been accumulating over his mulling weeks. Cracking the code of portals and then swiftly losing it, his newfound enemies could move in silence, lurking through the invisible, migrating in shadows. With his help, begrudgingly, they now had the power of omnipresence, these people could now exist anywhere and everywhere. That’s what you get when you merge artificial tech with the symbolic realm. There was no longer a need for physical commuting, depending on a linear cause-and-effect, or ironically enough waiting for things to fall in place. Pushing the veil of the visible to the symbolic world, you could no longer be a puppet to the whims of natural order you could pull/place/eradicate the strings themselves. Now in the day and age of technology- his passions, his life's work, had now ironically become his crux.

So there he sat: silent, waiting, stagnant. Patience is a funny thing isn't it? Patience in of itself after all is a state of neither here nor there- as much as one wants to live in the moment and forget the prospect of the future, they fail to do either and are pulled both ways missing the present moment. And so Robert found himself unable to escape his consuming what if’s of what was to come and all while unsuccessfully attempting to be grounded in the present moment. But Robert told himself to be patient, embracing cliche philosophies of reason behind actions, and purpose behind downfalls, one would hope that there was a reason why this was happening in the first place.

Robert unlocked his phone, and texted Cecil; “I’m here. Are you still coming?” To no avail, she failed to respond. Perhaps she was late, in this city of caffeine-fueled ambition traffic was frequent. He gave her the benefit of the doubt. He would just give her ten minutes and if she was a no-show he would pick up his things and leave. Drinking his iced dirty chai latte which swirled in marble lattices of amber and ivory, Robert sat in a reclining seat facing the window. Robert looked at the fog covering the ever steep hills which perhaps were once blossoming with poppies and sequoia trees but were now crowded with buildings and apartment complexes. He checked his phone here and there, but was wary of using it. Could they be tracking him? Could they have reached Cecil before he did? Was it all too late? Before he was completely consumed by thoughts his phone rang. It was an unknown number.

He stared and saw the phone vibrate on the coffee table. He was unsure of whether he should pick it up or let it go to voicemail. The phone vibrated louder as if in protest. Indecision plagued him but the clock was ticking, he needed to make his choice fast. He needed to decide now. Almost as if picking up on his thoughts, the phone appeared to shake with an accelerated vigor. He picked up his phone warily, there were probably only two rings left. He felt the phone vibrate once more. His thumb on the cold touch screen he began to slide the phone to answer. Putting the phone to his ear he felt the cold metal on his cheek and heard silence on the other side. He hesitated. Could this be Cecil? It couldn’t be though, he had her number saved. As if the caller could hear his thoughts a distorted voice responded as if whispering in his ear.

The stranger, in a crackly mystical voice said, “You’re probably wondering where she is right now aren’t you Mr. Lövestrand?”

Startled, Robert replied, “Who is this?”

In a cryptic response, “Are sure you can trust her? Trust can be as strong as steel yet just as easily unravel from a single loose string. How long have you known her?”

“How the hell do you know my name? I can have this number tracked. Tell me who you are. Either way I’ll find out”

“Don’t be fooled by appearances. Nightmares themselves start off as innocent dreams. We’ll talk again soon. Enjoy your drink.”

“Where are you—” Before Robert could fully respond, the phone clicked and he was left speaking with himself.

Robert was left in confusion. He was far from frightened, but the phone call was peculiar to say the least. He took it as a sign to head home. He picked up his things and set a Lyft to pick him up in exactly 3 minutes. He decided to meet the driver outside and wait by the sidewalk. It was windier than he had remembered, his brown old-navy overcoat was flapping viciously as he stood outside. As much as he wanted to not think much of the phone call, he couldn’t shake off the feeling that maybe some of what the caller was saying was true. How much did he really know her? They had met three months ago. And yet after a couple of sexual encounters, he knew only little of her life. But she knew much of his, and that was slightly unsettling now that he had come to think of it. Perhaps, she did have an upper hand in regards to knowing more personal facts about himself than he did to her. If she knew bits and pieces here and there that didn’t mean anything at all. He decided to stop overthinking, a bad habit he had picked up since his early years, and stood on the sidewalk.

The phone vibrated in his pocket, alerting him that his ride was here, he looked around and spotted a black sedan, with a young man in round spectacles no older than 25 in a gray hat waving at him. He crossed the street and as he opened the door to walk in, he heard from behind him a voice calling his name.

“And where do you think you’re going Robert?” It was Cecil.

Robert turned his head and stood up, “I didn’t think you were coming. I called you and it went to voicemail.”

“Well, let's just say I was fashionably late, do you still care for a bite to eat?” Cecil's black eyes piercing his nonchalant facade.

“Hmmm...I know a place by my apartment, why don't you hop on?” Robert lowered his head to the door to his uber. “You wouldn't mind if my friend tagged along with me right?”

Irritated from being placed in such an awkward position, the driver nodded and aggressively waved for both of them to come in. You could hear the emergency lights ticking relentlessly, as if ready to get back into the lanes of speeding cars and green lights. Robert opened the back door ajar, and signalled for Cecil to get inside. Clutching her black purse and hearing the clicking of heels on the cement floor Cecil did a semi-run to speed up, making sure to not fully follow instructions. Cecil took artistic interpretation from all orders, no one told her what to do. Even if the world would one day crumble before her very eyes, she would defy expectation and dance to the rhythms of crumbling earth she would because she could.

“Looks like chivalry isn’t dead after all” she said giving him a sly look

“Just get in before we get left behind” Robert responded abruptly.

Cecil ducked her head slightly to enter the car, and Robert stepped in behind her. As soon as the door closed, the driver sped off crossing the intersection heading uphill to the apparent wilderness of trees and fog to reach his place nearby in the presidio. The car was a centrifuge of febreeze and takeout. They sat in silence for a bit. Robert’s drink was melting and he could feel the condensation droplets wetting his hands. He dried them on the side of his jeans and looked over to Cecil who was staring out the window.

“So where exactly is your formidable place anyway?” Cecil started still looking out but with a sly smile forming at the cus of her mouth. “For your sake, I hope you're not trying to drag me down to your studio for another attempt at a romantic rendezvous.”

Chuckling with a menacing grin, “What a whimsical imagination Cecil, i'd never! Actually, I was thinking we could try out this Vietnamese cafe two blocks from my apartment. I'm sure that you out of all people would love it.”

“And how would you know that?” Displaying her signature seductive grin, “Have you been data-collecting and predicting my interests across my social media platforms?”

"Actually, I’ve been trying my best not to rely on electronic devices for human interactions any more. I haven’t entered Peripheral Net in three weeks” Pausing briefly as to recollect his thoughts, “The first place we sat down together to eat was at that hole-in-the-wall place near fisherman's wharf, remember?¨

“The same place where you offered me a spot in your AI research team in hopes to recruit me for PERIPHERAL_NET itself?¨

"Yes, and where you quickly declined. Deciding it was in your best interest to go off working with a private firm, moving to a petaluma and settling for the most practical option: data analytics" Robert said, looking at her. He noticed the contours of her face, the raven black hair, she was truly stunning.

With a deep sigh and short pause, Cecil responded, "Well life did not go exactly as planned for either of us did it? If so, we wouldn't be heading back to the same place we met all those years ago...¨

¨Yes, but if you wou---¨

¨---Life never goes to plan Robert. Years of compiled data and numerical codes couldn't have predicted the greed of your peers or how dangerous introducing an portal device could have been. Even in a tech-centered hub such as the silicon valley, surprising isn't it? Numbers can only predict so much, the evils and emotions of humanity have no computable deviation now do they?¨

¨Well, it may still be possible that a solu-––¨

¨No it does not, and we may very well never be able to Robert. Technology, exponentially complicated softwares, algorithms, they offer the solutions we think we want, but never the answers we need. You, out of all people should know that.¨

Silence filled the car, and the muddled radio station played in the background, bombarded with countless advertisements and shallow songs offering temporary feelings of invincibility that fade away as soon as the melody ends. The day had just begun, the sky was still partly dark, not even the sun was fully present. Entranced by the cars speeding by, colors of yellow and red lights, bikers rushing past, runners with their bright clothes and headphones on running on the sidewalks, birds singing their morning rituals, everyone as mundane and regular as ever, all while his life was far from it. Disillusioned, dismayed, dissociated, dreadful, and derailed, Robert's past was clinging burrowing into the depths of his thoughts and there was nothing he could do about it.

¨...There is a crash up ahead so that's as far as I can take you¨ the driver stated and began to brake, turning on his emergency lights. Cecil and the driver had momentary eye contact through his dash mirror.

Silence continued. Cecil was grabbing her things. Robert ever aloof in the sphere of his own mind.

¨Do you care to come Robert?¨ Cecil started drilling her eyes into the side of his head.

Silence. He didn't acknowledge her words, or anyone for that matter.

frustrated, Cecil raised her voice ¨Robert! Are you listening to me?¨

He always does this when things become too complicated, falling into the fortitude of his own mind Cecil thought to herself

Delayed but eventually the sound of his name awakened his conscience and Robert came back into reality. The opening of the door cemented and the gush of the brisk morning air startled him his entrance into the human realm. He turned and looked at Cecil saying “Yes?”

¨If you wanted a morning of contemplation and daydreaming, you shouldn't have invited me.¨

“---- yeah, I was just remembering something. got trailed off for a biẗ¨

“Whatever...let's just get out of the car, and let our lovely driver go on his own merry way. He has better things to do than wait for us.” She cut off her crystal gaze with Robert, and tapped the shoulder of the man wearing a olive green corduroy jacket with a bill saying, “My apologies from the both of us, have a nice day.¨

“Oh, yes! Sorry. it's a bit too early for me still” Robert interjected with a nervous chuckle.

In the middle of his half dazed and half awake meaningless apology, Cecil grabbed his arm and pulled him out as the driver irritated sped away, probably already heading for his next pick up as there were others needing a ride for their monotonous 9 to 5's.

The red neon sign stating OPEN was bright, and inside he could already see a blonde haired waitress in a black and white striped long sleeved t-shirt, jeans, and some black converse, taking an older couples order through the window which stated, in bold dark orange italic letters: Rustic Precipice. They crossed the street, Robert could hear the seagulls flapping their wings, the bustling of tourists walking to the pier, and he could hear the wind in the distance. He opened the door and held it open for Cecil who walked in. Cecil in defiance raised her hands letting him know he should go first. Before Robert stepped in, the hairs on his neck stood up and a gust of wind circulated his entire body, he surveyed the street unable to shake the feeling that they were not alone. Outside his field of vision, a cameraman shutter clicked consecutively three times and swiftly drove away in a black sleek motorcycle, disappearing into the morning mist again.

||||||

[@BlankUser291]: It seems our target is still in San Francisco. Reference the images attached.

[@thenefaria]: That’s all we need for now. Keep following them and Remain in the area

[@BlankUser291]: Alright. How will I know when it’s time?

[@thenegaria]: No need to worry about that, We know how to find you. Scrap the phone & Stay put.

||||

#add on if you want #short stories #new writers on tumblr #new writers corner #writing #writiers on tumblr #creative writing #bipoc writers #tumblr writers

0 notes