He hits refresh once more. The screen goes momentarily blank and he draws breath. It must not be long before they find the last set of cables, buried under the shit and piss and other flushed away parts of life. But for now the page comes back from the brink.
First a flash of text, then a pop of a logo, an animated envelope evoking a lineage of past times long forgotten, a history now consigned to be no more than a visual metaphor. Of course, a lifetime’s worth of history wrapped up in envelopes has just arrived at his computer in the time between two of his arrhythmic heartbeats.
A drumbeat retort comes from outside – through the thick walls and triple-glazed windows – a silenced facsimile of whatever ear-wrenching roar began its journey seconds ago and miles away. But coming ever closer. This latest rumble even decided to give him a nod to it’s approach by calmly shaking a slight snowfall dusting of plaster from the ceiling. Nothing to interrupt a day, but enough to cause one pause, and a momentary glance to the smoke and the fires in the distance.
And still, the zero rings out from the screen. The same zero that has mocked him in its emptiness – no beginning, no end and no hope for salvation as long as its curves remain planted on the screen.
He does not understand. Of course until recently, he did not understand the medium at all. He had lived a life free of electronic distraction – his was a life led in flesh, in concrete, in tongues – both conspiratorial and passionate, in thoughts and counterthoughts, in promises of peace and promises of violence. Of gold and metal and paper and property.
But it was also a life of inevitability. For what is inevitable for us all was always more so for him, and soon that inevitability came to pass.
One by one the layers around him were peeled. Beds normally so full were empty, posts guarded night and day saw morning and evening pass unheeded. Dawns previously welcomed with champagne corks, cheers and cries of pleasure were greeted with nothing but the morning church bells and the mocking revelry of birdsong.
Last to leave were those closest, the ones who must be pushed for their own sake for they would not leap themselves. It was one of them that showed him the computer, the screen, the mailbox – his last hope.
Vultures circled – driven inwards by smoke that first surrounded the city, then the neighborhood and soon would be at his gates – and as they circled, he wrote and he sent.
He had no hopes for himself without that which had brought him his power, as a weak man, of both vision and body he was nothing without his wealth. And so he sought escape, he sought salvation in others. Every day he counted the hours by the hundreds of clicks of send. The thousands of taps of finger on keys. But each day brought him nothing more than the zero that stands in front of him now – rapt and to attention, but bearing nothing for him.
This will be how he continues, each day, sending his calls for help – each day more generous. At first he sought altruism – knowing it existed in the world. But as days went by he offered more and more of himself in return for the generosity of a stranger. More and more he offered – seeking only to know some part of his old life in whatever a new life had in store for him.
But still he refreshes and still there is no reply.
Another rumble, the drumbeat a little louder. The snowfall a little heavier.