| Fiction |
| July 2008 |
| The End of the World |
| By: Ryan Graczkowski |
| Copyright 2008 by Ryan Graczkowski |
| December 21, 2012. The day the world ended. It can’t be said that the world didn’t see it coming. Anybody who had a computer or who could walk to a library knew about it. That was what the Internet was for. And it was everywhere on the Internet. It became the newest pop culture obsession, even bigger than the King of Terror scare in 1999, because unlike Nostradamus, the Mayans had never been wrong. The end was truly near. Almost overnight, social networks popped up obsessing over nothing else. The end of the world was a fad. Misquoted Wikipedia articles led to memorable phrases like “One Million Strong Against The End of the World!” The spam clogged every mailbox. This was a big deal. This was so big that at the New Year’s celebrations of 2012, the very first article CNN ran was Mayan Myths and the End of the World. Everybody had opinions on it. Scholars of the Popol Vuh were on talk shows, talking about how it was all one big misunderstanding. They said it was the end of the cycle, not the end of the world. It was supposed to be a time for celebrating. Nighttime talk show hosts joked about how, finally, there would be no more IRS. Celebrities, whenever they were caught at being insane, said they owed themselves one last hurrah before the world came crashing down. Across the southern United States, sermons rang in the churches. “Man can not know the day, or the hour of the coming of the Lord!” the pastors roared. This certainty did nothing to stop the prayer vigils and fasting sessions. In the Middle East, the haunting call of the imams denounced this Western superstition. The temples of the Orient were silent – the world ended every time you closed your eyes to sleep. It was the new fashionable thing to worry about. Everybody got in on it. Even the governments of the world got in on it. The United States was perpetually on Code Orange, whatever that meant. In short, the world did exactly what it always did when something important was preparing to happen. It paid no real attention. This was just the next ‘in’ thing. It wouldn’t last. Which explains how, even though everyone saw it coming, everyone was surprised when it happened. --- Ivan York’s first words that morning were, “Damn, but it’s cold.” Gina patted his back from where she lay next to him. It was as close to good morning as he’d get from her. He looked over at her black hair splayed out on the pillow. “Sorry ‘bout the heat being out,” he said. “You sleep all right?” She nodded. She didn’t move from under her covers though. Not that he could blame her. It was cold. The landlord really should have taken care of this. Ivan should have told him about it. But that wasn’t easy. The man stayed busy. He was one of those early to bed, early to rise types, and that was something that Ivan simply couldn’t abide. Club Xibalba kept him turning the tables until the wee hours of the morning. He and Gina both needed their sleep. Ivan took a breath in and let it go. Already he could hear the harmony. The thrum of the building, the hum of electricity, the whistling winter wind, and if he listened longer he’d hear people and people-things, like cars and buses and chatter. Ah, people. So many notes, and not a single one in its bar. People were so busy, marching to the beat of their own drums, listening to iPods and tuning out the world, focusing on their own inner piece of music. They missed the whole. But not Ivan. --- Ivan grew up hearing music everywhere he went. He couldn’t remember a time without it. It was like hearing silence – he could ignore it sometimes, but it was always there. It underscored everything. It was present in his life from the beginning. The first thing he remembered was the sound of his mother’s heartbeat. The drumbeat, soft, regular, around which all the other music arranged itself. When he was young, he never noticed it. He only knew he was hearing it when he turned seven and realized that nobody else could. He was waiting by a tree out in the schoolyard, where his friend Charlie was supposed to meet him. There were kids everywhere – it was a big school – and Ivan was lost in the music that they were making. And then he heard the weirdness – a counter sound. He’d heard it before, sometimes, when the music all around him was interrupted by something else. But now he was curious, and Charlie wasn’t there with him. And the noise kept on breaking up the harmony. He walked, trying to follow the sound. And as he walked and as it got worse, he started into a trot, and by the time he got to the source he was running. He froze. It was Big Johnny. Charlie was having the beats laid down on him. Charlie was down on the ground. Johnny pretty much seemed done. He was just kicking Charlie for good measure. Ivan didn’t waste any time. He wasn’t quite as big as Johnny, but he’d been mistaken for a third-grader a couple times. He was big enough. He rushed Johnny and tackled him into a wall. Johnny cracked his head. That was that. Johnny fell to the ground. Somehow, Ivan had knocked the boy out cold. Ivan knelt down next to Charlie and helped prop him up on his shoulder. Charlie was shivering, and he was black and blue. The bad noise had stopped. “You’re okay,” Ivan said. “You’re okay.” “Thanks,” Charlie managed to gasp out. “How’d you know?” “What do you mean?” Ivan asked. “Didn’t you hear that noise?” “What noise?” Even heaving the boy on his shoulders towards the doors, Ivan had a clear enough mind to grasp it. “You mean… you didn’t hear it?” --- Another breath, and Ivan came back to himself. It was cold. He stared at his hands, at the jaguar spots tattooed on his forearms. This was it. Tonight was the night. Years of planning, correspondence, and good old-fashioned work were finally going to pay off. Tonight, the world was going to end. He stood up and went to the shower. Rumble of the water in the pipes. Splash of water in the tub. Then, pull, and the water turned into a thousand tiny drumbeats. Never mind that it was a cold shower. He was already cold. What set his heart thumping was the drums. And when he stepped in, the music changed, and in this small space he could control it, turn it on or off. It was nice, this control. The music of the world was too big for ‘on’ and ‘off.’ Smaller music like this was a different story. --- With headphones pressed to one ear, Ivan was only dimly aware of the tromping down the stairs. Right now he was listening to Darude’s Sandstorm, tapping commands into his computer to increase the speed or to slow it down. But he knew it was Charlie even before the other foot had hit the floor. He could hear his friend over this synthetic thing any day. They were sixteen now, and high school was as good a time to practice music as anytime else. Ivan’s mother had been a little surprised when he asked for a CD player and a mixer for Christmas one year, and she’d made him promise to keep up his grades. He’d kept up his end of things, though, and she’d been great enough to come through for him. When Ivan wasn’t busy with homework or with wrestling, he was in his family’s basement, playing with music. “’sup Charlie?” he asked. “How in the hell do you hear after stuffing your head between those earphones every day?” Charlie asked. “It’s not bad,” Ivan said. He’d tried repeatedly to explain how he could hear music and how everybody carried a unique tone, but Charlie just didn’t get it. “Anyway, did you hear about that party tonight?” “There’s a million parties in high school.” “Well, this one’s different. I hear Gina Ferrara’s gonna be there.” that was when the needle jumped the track. “The Ferrari’s going to be there?” Ivan asked. Genevieve Ferrara was possibly the prettiest, smartest, most graceful girl in the history of girls. Watching her was love. There wasn’t a single dance in the world she couldn’t do. That was the thing that stood out to him the most about her. He liked the way she moved. “That’s right,” Charlie said. “And I hear they’re looking for a DJ tonight.” What was he… oh. Oh, no. “Man, you are not dragging me in to this.” “Come on, man, this is a great shot for you. You’re always talking about how those DJs got their start, playing at parties and everything. Now it’s your turn.” That much was true. Honestly, Ivan had been sold when he heard that Gina was going to be there. It was all planned out in his head – him playing, her dancing to his music. She’d understand and they’d get together and it would be so great-- “I don’t have a nickname,” Ivan muttered. “Oh. Um. How do you come up with that?” Charlie asked. Ivan looked around the basement. It was dark down here, except for the fluorescent light. There wasn’t a whole lot to draw his inspiration from. There was a row of low shelves along the wall. Nothing there. But then, his eyes were drawn to a model of a 1963 Jaguar, blue. His dad’s favorite car. “Jaguar,” Ivan said slowly. “DJ Jaguar… yeah. That suits me. It suits me just fine.” They whiled away the time talking and with Ivan practicing sets. When the time came to go, Charlie helped him carry his stuff out to his beat-up Volvo station wagon. When they got to the house where the party was, there were already a lot of people there. They were nice enough to help him set up inside the house. As he worked, he tried to see Gina, but no luck. Maybe she wasn’t there yet. He felt people staring at him. This was his first time. He felt like they’d know it. He tried to keep his breathing even and focus on his work, but the thought kept gnawing at him that this was all going to mess up. He looked up when everything was set to go and tried to give a confident grin. “Um… hi,” he said. That got nothing out of them. Everyone was looking at him expectantly. “Right, uh, what’s up, um. I’m Ivan York, your DJ for the evening, and I’m gonna play some music for you tonight. You might know some of ‘em, you might not, but just follow along as best you can and it’ll be great.” He ignored the thoughts – good call, Ivan, you didn’t even use your new name! – and immediately turned on Eiffel65’s song, Move Your Body. He tried to stay busy-looking, bobbing his head to the beat and keeping his gaze on the computer screen. Occasionally he’d glance up. He was disappointed. Some people were dancing. A lot of them weren’t. He finally noticed Gina, but she wasn’t dancing. That stung worse. He kept his mind off of it. The next couple of hours were nothing but rhythm and tone as he played one artist after another. He was no turntablist, so he kept the hip hop to a minimum, but people seemed to dig on the electronic music. It was toward the end of his set, though, when he decided to play his own piece. “Okay, guys, this last song is probably the best you’ll hear all night,” he said. Nobody paid any attention. He couldn’t blame them. He didn’t believe it himself. “This last song is actually one I put together myself. It’s just called ‘Heartbeat’ but all the same, thank you all for letting me play tonight, and I hope you enjoyed it.” He really didn’t know how this one would be received. It was his attempt to try to digitize the music he heard every day. A heart caught in dance. That’s what he wanted to portray. The beat started slow, and then began to crescendo, going faster and faster. Everything looked like it was playing out just fine. He glanced up and he saw Gina, and she wasn’t talking anymore. Her expression now was distant, and she was tapping out beats with her fingers. And when the beats hit their height, and the tone kicked in, she was moving. All eyes were on Gina now as she flowed with the music. It wasn’t anything new, no pop-and-lock routines, but it drew from older dancing. At least, Ivan thought it did. He didn’t quite know what she was doing, except that it just looked like music. People were drawn to it. They didn’t just start doing it because she did, but after she started people couldn’t stop themselves. First the goof-offs started, then the less goofy, then just about everyone. Even the wallflowers joined in. No dancing was like hers – nobody’s could be like hers – but it was definitely something. She was moving, and she made them want to move too. That was the only way he could explain it. The music slowed and finally stopped. Ivan dropped the headphones to the sound of applause. He couldn’t even think of anything to say, so he grinned and rubbed the back of his neck. There were a lot more people to help him this time with carrying out. And afterward, as he sat in the dark, he heard a different tune. “That music,” she said. He knew who she was. “How did you…” “I don’t know,” he answered. “It’s just… I just hear it.” “You do?” “Yeah. I know it doesn’t make any sense.” “No, it does. I hear it too.” Ivan turned to stare at Gina. “What!” --- He stepped out, dressed himself in his blue shirt and tan cargoes, and stepped out of the bedroom. Here in the living room, Gina was already sitting down in front of the TV. Something smelled good. He must have missed her cooking. He hated whenever that happened. She was always a joy to watch. “What,” he asked, “none for me?” She arched an eyebrow at him. “Oh don’t give me that look. You’re not meaning to make me listen to Rice Crispies again are you?” She shrugged. Ivan sighed and swore, but it was his fault for wanting to be clean. That was Gina. She’d cook for whoever was with her, but when she was done, she was done. Ivan trudged into the kitchen and poured himself a bowl of cereal. Gina was channel surfing. There wasn’t much to do with the end of the world happening in approximately ten hours. They’d practiced and arranged the music as much as could possibly be done. About the only thing left to do was hope that they didn’t get caught. This was the product of ten years. To stumble now was unthinkable. This did nothing to stop him from thinking about it. “In related news,” the newsman on the TV said, “another group of people was arrested today, making it the thirtieth cult arrest worldwide.” “What?” The Rice Crispies were not enough to distract Ivan from this news. "As you may recall,” the anchor said, “even as far back as New Year’s Day, groups of radicals were seeking to fulfill the Mayan prophecy about the ‘B’ ak’tun’ cycle. Supposedly, at midnight tonight, the cycle will complete itself. However, many of these cults have interpreted this as the ‘End of Days.’ You may recall our recent special, The End, which outlined these groups and their overall goal to destroy the world. The groups in question have been seeking to fulfill this aspect of the prophecy.” Ivan snorted. So many misguided. The world was going to end. Anybody who paid any damn attention to the music could hear it falling apart. At midnight tonight, the harmony was going to split into a million billion individual elements. Each one would compete against the other, striving to drown the other out, until the last echoes faded into silence. Which basically meant people killing each other, tides rising, mountains falling, the whole shebang. The end of one world, the beginning of the next. It sounded like a train going off the tracks. --- Ivan and Gina had been going steady for about three months when 9/11 happened. He’d remember that day as long as he lived. A blast of metaphysical sound more terrible than anything he had ever heard had ripped through him and left his bones aching. Twice. But that seemed to be just natural. Every day he’d been hearing a little bit more dissention in the sound. Sometimes they came from close, and sometimes from far away, but he was hearing more of them now than ever and he didn’t know why. Some days his head simply throbbed with the discordance. On that September night, Gina and he were sitting together in the living room at his place. His parents were asleep, she was on the computer, and he was watching the news. “Oh my God,” she said. “What is it?” Ivan asked. Gina waved for him and he walked over to look over her shoulder. The first words he read on the screen were, “The music of our world is dying.” “Ivan, this is going to sound crazy, but I think there are other people like us out there.” “Are these people serious?” he asked, leaning over her shoulder. Gina scrolled down, keeping up perfectly with his reading. The article was talking about people who could supposedly hear tunes in anything and everything. These were more than musicians. These people could make music from the wind. “Are there any audio samples?” Ivan asked. Gina reached over and touched a knob on the speakers, then scrolled down and clicked. The music that played made his breath catch. He didn’t just hear the sound. He heard the breeze, rushing through grass and branches, rising to the skies and falling to the mountains. He stood there, transfixed by the melody, and Gina wasn’t moving either. “There’s more,” Gina said. “According to these people, there’s a growing irregularity in the world’s music. It’s like the music is unraveling.” “What?” “I know. They’re predicting that it’ll totally undo itself by the year 2012.” Ivan unleashed a breath and walked away, running his hands through his hair. This was insane! There was no way this was true! But that music… only someone who heard like they did could make that kind of music. But to say the world was coming apart! He still ached from the planes crashing into the buildings. And he heard the discord for himself. Something was happening, for sure. But the end of the world? “There is a contact address,” Gina said. “What do you think we should do?” “What do you think?” “I don’t know what to think!” she said. “We’ve just been attacked, the world’s going crazy and whenever I try to dance the music is just too… I just… I can’t follow it like I used to. It’s barely been a year since we met, and already I can’t dance without something trying to interrupt me!” “You buy this, then?” Ivan asked. “I’m not saying that.” “Because you know how people react to that sort of thing. They don’t get it, and we don’t know how to explain it.” “But these people get it, Ivan, can’t you hear the music?” “I do! It’s just… agh, don’t you get it?” “Yeah, Ivan, I get it,” Gina said, and her voice shook. “The world makes music. If the music is coming apart, then that means the world is coming apart. The world will end in 2012, if they’re right.” “It’s crazy!” he said. “It’s insane! They can’t be right!” Gina sighed, shaking her head and turning back to the computer. He knew she knew he wasn’t mad at her. She could hear his music same as he could hear hers. This was just… it was so much. “There’s more here,” she said. He didn’t make any kind of move. “They say they’re looking for ways around this. They want to do something… it’s some kind of musical project.” “What do you think we should do?” “I say we go for it,” she said. Ivan wanted to fight her on it, but his bones were telling him she was right. He could feel the ache reverberating inside. “All the world’s a stage,” he said. He stretched as Gina watched him. Finally, he said, “At least my music will get some exposure.” --- They ate together in silence as the news turned to other affairs. The dollar had recovered to being worth three quarters of a Euro. Iran wasn’t backing away from the bomb. Bubonic Plague was ravaging Africa, as if they didn’t have enough to worry about already. All Ivan heard throughout was the evidence of what he knew to be true. Everything was out of tune. What a mess. “I can’t believe this is it,” Ivan said. He felt Gina shift to look at him. “I mean, this is huge,” he said. “I, the great DJ Jaguar, am personally going to take part in retuning the world.” Gina nodded, before she stood to take care of her dishes. Ivan dug in his pockets for his cell phone and made the call. One ring. Two rings. Three rings. He was getting nervous. Fourth r- “Yo, what’s up?” Thank God! “Tiger, that you?” “Hey, Jag, what’re you up to, man?” “The usual. Hey, is the gig still on for the night?” “Yeah man. I’m on, Dragon’s on, Phoenix… well, you know her. She’s always last minute about this sort of thing.” He did, all right. That was half the reason for her name. Seeming dead to the last minute, and then a burst of activity. “Yeah. Well, good. I mean, I’ve just been watching the news lately. I was worried one of those groups had gotten in the way or something like that.” There was laughter on the other line. “Nah. You worry too much. This concert’s the event of the year. No way some two-bit cultists are getting in the way.” “Cool. Well, it’s gonna be huge. I’ll leave you back to getting ready.” “Thanks man. Catch you on the flipside.” Ivan hung up. He could feel Gina’s eyes on him. “Looks like the concert’s still on,” he said. He sat there on the couch, and he heard her padding around before she sat down next to him again. “So. We’re down to nine hours before we retune the world. There anything you want to do until then?” She leaned her head on his shoulder and put her arms around him. He was instantly consumed with her song – the beat of the heart, the sigh of the breath, the violin grace of muscles. And interlaced with the concrete sounds was the pure tone that represented Gina herself, her soul, her little piece of raw eternity. He let one arm go to her middle and the other trace her neck, where the scar slashed across the flesh. --- With high school done, it was time for them to go to college. They didn’t mean to go to the same one, but it happened nonetheless. They weren’t complaining about it. They were leaning on each other now more than ever. Ivan’s first semester was as crazy a deal as he could ask for. He had to balance his major with all his concentration in the music project. He had to balance his assigned pieces against the songs he wanted to play. And that had to be balanced against the demands that the other DJs had put on him. That was the surprising thing. When he’d first contacted the group, he’d expected to be the odd man out. But, to his amazement, they’d all been DJs. Some liked one sound over another or used a different beat but the commonality remained. Ivan felt it was only right that he should practice his art as often as he could. It was the only way for him to live up to the expectations that they were placing on him. So he began to place applications with the clubs in the area. It took some time for anyone to get back to him. He didn’t blame them. They saw someone young and untested, the same as anyone else. Most of them didn’t take unsolicited demo tracks. But Club Xibalba did. Club Xibalba was a downtown rave. Walking into it was like stepping into a cave. You had to walk down a long set of stairs into a darkness that pulsed with lights. When the music started, you could feel it thumping in your chest. The dancing here was little more than jumping and moving. The heat was usually enough to steam the place without the steam machines. And Ivan loved it. Gina was with him the first night he turned the tables for the club. And she still held sway over everyone. Ivan saw it. It didn’t matter if they were on the floor or sitting at tables or at the bar. When she was out there, nobody could resist. She had the place dancing and cheering without any effort. And it was real. People walked off the floor, glowing and exhausted. It was no surprise that Gina was popular. And what came next shouldn’t have been a surprise either. One night, the music was just too much. Ivan was playing the set. The music he played matched the music of the bodies before him. Gina had bowed out earlier. He couldn’t just leave, though. He still had this set to play before Xibalba would let him leave. He should’ve heard the plaintive, wailing note as the stalker slashed Gina’s throat. He should’ve heard the fade of her music. But he couldn’t. He didn’t notice it until he stepped out into the early morning dark and realized that he couldn’t hear her. The sight of her blue eyes dulled and her chest bathed in blood carved its way into his memory. --- Gina didn’t flinch. She never did. Even when she was dancing in the rave, she never once tried to cover it up. Ivan guessed it was because she didn’t think of it as important or defining. She saw the world in terms of rhythm and movement, and being unable to talk didn’t keep her from moving. The more he thought of it, the more a blessing it must have seemed to her. She had to make herself known now through movements and expressions. It’d probably done more to make her one with the flow of things. They didn’t say much. There wasn’t much to say. They just spent eight hours like that, their last eight before the world was going to end, warm enough and content to just be. The only words Ivan said during that entire time were, “I love you,” and she would kiss him for it. Then she went and dressed for her part in the concert – a tight halter top and loose pants. They left the building and there was the car that had been promised to them. The concert was starting soon. On the ride, Ivan tapped out beats on his legs. He was nervous. His bones ached as the harmonies built. The tune was working to unravel. There was no telling exactly when it would happen. Everybody knew it would be midnight, but nobody knew whose midnight it would be. The DJs suspected it would be the Mayan midnight – which put Ivan right at the forefront of making sure this didn’t go to hell in a hand basket. As he tapped out the beats, his mind wandered back to the plan. The plan, for all its profound wonder, was actually really simple. The world was going to change its tune at midnight, from order to chaos. The biggest problem was in perspective. Order and chaos were relative concepts. The simple fact was that the world was going to shift itself to a different harmony. The death and destruction was going to happen on the basis that people were living according to the old way, in the old world. The shift to the new way would be deadly. But people didn’t have to die. They just had to flow with the music. All he had to do was show them how. It was simple and sane, except for the part that it was crazy. They would have essentially one hour to reprogram the people of the world and bring them back to harmony. They’d spent years planning this, composing the piece, and Gina had been busy destroying her inner barriers, learning how to let the music flow through her. Her role was crucial. She was the one who would show them how to abandon the ordered, constricted, jumping thing that passed for dancing. She was going to teach them how to actually move with the music. This was going to be hard. But she grabbed his hands and forced Ivan to be still. He knew what she’d be saying right now if she could speak. To everything is given a season, she’d say, and daytime to every purpose under Heaven. The time for panic was done. Now was the time to do or to die doing. But not panic. If they’d gotten it right, they’d gotten it right, and that would be that. If they got it wrong, though, he thought with some irony, they’d probably all die before he could regret it. The concert was to be outdoors. It was the best way to spread the music as far and wide as possible, and it would be in the city’s central plaza. Traffic had been diverted away from it, so they were forced to get out and walk the rest of the way. The press of people was absolutely incredible. Ivan saw young people walking into the plaza – so many! – and on the outside, the older folk and the poor were looking on. The two of them were incognito as they made their way forward. Ivan’s hands were tingling. He wanted to run. He wanted to jump. He wanted to shout, just do something with this nervous energy that was pent up inside of him. It took forever, but they managed to get to the console. Here were his CDs, the mixer, the effects units, digital controllers, headphones, microphone. Everything. It was all here. Everything looked like it was up and working, exactly as he’d wished. This was goodness. He didn’t have time to waste. The timing was everything. One minute to eleven o’clock. Better get this thing started. Gina was already walking to her place, and the applause was already underway. He couldn’t blame them. She was something to see. “Evening, everybody,” he said into the microphone. A roar answered him. It was almost enough to drown out the conflict that was echoing off his insides. Maybe this was just crazy enough to work. “What was that?” he asked. “I was supposed to play for a crowd tonight, but that didn’t sound like any kind of real number. Hmmm. Let me try again. I said, wassup everybody!” They were louder. Good sign, that. “That’s what I thought! Y’all heard of me, DJ Jaguar, and I know everybody here’s heard of the lovely and talented Genevieve Ferrara!” Yes, they had. “All right! Well, if you know us already, we don’t need to waste any time. Tonight’s the end of the world, after all! Don’t fight the feeling! Just let it go! So what do you say we get this party started?” |