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The Monitor |
| Written by JJ Tyler | |
| Monday, 10 March 2008 | |
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Share it:      Matt Winslow had learned this the hard way. After an hour of rocking and shushing, feeding and burping, spit up and cries, Samantha, the 3 month old bundle of nothing but sunshine and roses, fell asleep propped against his shoulder. Matt's wife and Samantha's mother, Reba, had gone to sleep an hour ago, exhausted from the day of baby watching. As he crept over to the white wooden crib, he was careful to step around the soft spots in the floor. These were the spots that creaked on the second story, whaling and screaming when they were stepped on-- sure baby wakers. After circumventing these spots, he was only a foot away, and his arms swung in for the descent. As he placed the sleeping Sam into the crib, her little nostrils giving out tiny little snores, his hands reached the pad of the crib. The pad was covered in pink roses and brown pokadots, giving it an almost carnival like experience. Sam had never paid it any mind. Now, here was the most important and delicate part of the entire process, the removal of the transporters hands. Here, he was much like the young Indiana Jones, who had to replace the golden idol with a bag of sand. It was extremely important to have a smooth transfer, or the entire room would cave in with the sound of a baby's lungs--which were surprisingly loud and boisterous. When her head made contact with the pad, he slipped his hands underneath her, moving his hands surgeon like and with skillful precision. There was a problem however. As he was removing his hands, his finger had slipped beneath her ear cartilage, and the cartilage was bending where he was dislodging his hand under her small body. This was a sure fire way to wake someone, tugging on their ear. Matt had never read any scientific reports on this, or seen any raw data, but he knew this method of eartuggery probably wasn't in Dr. Spock's book of how to be a baby daddy. With a hesitation, he moved his hands back underneath her, and adjusted. This time, things went smoothly with the transfer, and the little baby was still sleeping like the little log she was, little snores and all. He turned and looked at the door, which seemed so far, far away. Stepping carefully back towards it, retracing his steps, he went. "Step by the changing table, but not too far, then to the left of the door knob, be careful...careful." He thought to himself. While he called out his steps in his head, he thought of them in a whispering voice, as if the baby Samantha had some type of inner thought listening device, and would explode with tears if he thought too loudly. When his hand reached the door, there was a loud and piercing noise. It was not a baby crying, but static filled reverberation, like a guitar providing ample feed back. He realized, the monitor, and he shut the door quietly and silently jogged back over to his room, where Reba was sleeping. The monitor's speaker was plugged into the wall, next to her head, sitting on a night stand. She had not woken from the loud sound that seemed to be ripping through his brain. As he went over to the wall, he ripped it out of its socket quietly. The sound dissipated. He stood there, next to his wife, listening for any other sound. Absolute silence. What was this thing, a monitor to hell? He thought to himself, looking it over. In the weeks past, he had learned that you shouldn't talk on your cell phone while around the monitor, or it would explode with a rhythmic cackle and annoy you so badly that you would hit the wall. Except that, when you hit the wall, you wouldn't just hit dry wall, but a stud, causing swelling in your hand for several days. He also found out, that when you hit this wall in this manner, it would not be something you would tell others about, and you would make up stories about the swollen hand. Hit a male buck when he tried to mow you down for being too close to the herd, or you hit it on a thug who was trying to steal anAARP member's purse, or you landed on your hand while you were skydiving and your shoot only opened half way. No one, of course, bought these. But Matt knew that this was something different. This sound was not from a cell phone, and it was not from the monitor. This had another quality to it. Matt poked his head back into the room. Tiny Sam was still sawing logs. Hetreaded over to the crib, took the base of the monitor, and crept back out. He went downstairs and put the speaker and its "microphone" on the table. If there was another sound explosion, he didn't want it to wake up the neighborhood. So, he decided to test it. He plugged it into the wall, and the green lights lit up immediately. There was some feedback from the monitor being too close to the speaker, but he separated them and there was nothing. Absolute silence. He took the hand held speaker and walked across the room with it. Still nothing. He was about to scrap the whole project together, shove the stuff in a drawer, when the lights lit up again. Very softly, almost inaudibly, he heard: "How are you?" The lights lit up in his hand when he heard this. He looked back over to the monitor, but there was no one there; no one was talking into the receiver softly. Months ago, when they had bought the setup, and turned in on for the first time (Sam was still in Reba's womb) they had set it on a channel that another family was using, somewhere in the neighborhood. They picked up a complete conversation in Spanish. An adult male was quite upset about something, and he talked quickly with the words rapidly pouring out through the speaker. The word "succio" was used quite a bit. "Suicio, suicio, suicio." They never found out what it was about, but figured that eavesdropping was a sin to itself, and changed the channel. The channel they found was Spanish argument free, and they stuck with that. Perhaps, this was another instance of too many monitors on one dial, he thought. He waited longer, but no sound came. He decided to go without the monitor's use that night, and he unplugged it again and let it sit on the kitchen table in a bundle of wires and buttons. He took a swig from a gallon of milk, and then put the lid back on carefully, so no one would know he hadn't used a glass. Leaving the kitchen, he switched the light and the bottom story was swallowed in darkness. As he walked back up the stairs, there was another voice. "What are you doing? Are you busy?" The voice asked. The monitor, sitting on the table, totally unplugged and without any capability of self powering, spoke to him again. He trudged back downstairs, his stomach suddenly feeling like someone had taken it out of his body and dropped it in a vat of icy slush. As he walked closer, forgetting to turn the light on in his haste, it spoke again. "I need you to reply. If you do not, you all are totally dead." The voice said. "Totally dead?" Matt thought. It had been a long day, and this may be a sign of his psyche suddenly giving up and saying I have had enough. What he hadn't told Reba earlier that night, partly due to the face that dinner was so nice and the other fact due to Baby Sam being in such a good mood, was that he had been let go from the plant. He was a floor manager there, and he had been working for the Medical Supply company for 14 years. There had been an incident, where Matt had made what management saw as the wrong decision, and they had to let him go. He wasn't worried. As he had no other experience outside the plant, he had no other contacts outside his ring of friends who worked at the plant, and all he had ever wanted to do was to retire from the plant. What was there to fret about? But as he heard this voice, coming from an electronic with no power, he thought that his brain surely must have jumped the fence. "Human. Answer back, or it will be too late." This took him aback further. The prankster was either one of the best at hacking baby toys, or his brain had split in half, or there was some kind of presence on the monitor that referred to him as a human. As he walked back over to the table, and stood feet away from the baby monitor, Matt said. "Who's there?" No answer for a few minutes, then finally. "Someone who needs to ask you a question. Someone who needs to ask you the question." Matt took a seat, and looked around the room, which was still shaded in the night. "I'm afraid...I'm afraid I don't have any answers. Maybe you are looking for someone else. " Matt said. The lights lit up on the monitor, as if there was a noise, but nothing was audible. Then the voice came back on. "No, you will have to do. What I need to ask you is a simple question, with a not so simple answer: why should your people be allowed to live?" The voice said. Matt started to feel his face redden. Not only was he buying into the prankster's joke, but he was getting the creeps from it. Goose flesh went up and down his arms. "I'm not playing any games with you. I don't know how you managed to keep the monitor on--" He was cut off by the voice. "Go into the back of your home and look towards the sky, and then come back and listen to your question." The voice said. Matt stood up and went outside, at first cracking the door and only putting his nose out, and then eventually walking out onto the soft grass and looking up. Amidst the stars, there was something wrong. Something was swirling. It wasn't actually something but the absence of something. A vacuum was sucking things in and swirling them around in the sky. The purple on the horizon surrounded the edge of the earth, making a frame for the destruction that was waiting on high. He had never seen anything like it, not even in the movies. His stomach began to get the icy feeling again. This may be real. He shuffled back inside and sat at the table. "Ok, I'll listen. Just let my family live." Matt said. Through the chills running in his blood he was beginning to sweat. "You got much more to play for here than for your family, my friend. This is for human civilization. OK, here is the question in three parts: Provide one song, one visual story, and one phrase to me, and I will see if it is enough to save your world. I'll have to run it by my bosses, but I'll do my best." The voice said. Matt stood up and switched on the light. He nearly yelled, and then he remembered the sleeping baby Sam. Though the end of the world may be coming, she needed her sleep. She was growing. "That's not a question." He said through his gritted teeth. "Well, technically you are right, but we found that most beings have a hard time with the question, so we break it down for them and let them give their best shot. "But, before we get started with your presentation, tell me: how was your day?" The voice asked. Matt was taken aback. He thought for a few short seconds, and then he figured he might as well be honest. "I got fired today, for helping a friend. Last year, I hired on a guy who I knew had cycle cell anemia. He didn't report it to his health HMO when filling out any paper work for my companies insurance. When I looked over the paper work, I thought it was his business and no one else's . Well, he had a particularly hard bout these last few months, and he is in the hospital, may not make it. So, word got around that I had known about it beforehand and let it pass. I was terminated and escorted out. Not even aloud to get my family's pictures." Matt said. The voice paused, and then came back on through the make shift radio: "That was really just a formality question, you didn't have to get so depressing." Matt ignored the remark and wanted to get clarification. "So, you want me to give you a song, a movie and a saying?" He asked. "Exactly." The voice answered. "You have 10 minutes. Make it count." The voice said, and then the monitor went dead. The lights flickering off as quickly as they had arrived. Matt sat in the fluorescent light of the kitchen, thinking. He wanted to ask so much more, but everything had hit him at once. Why wasn't the president doing this? He was the leader of the free world. Matt wasn't even a leader at his own job anymore. He would be king of the unemployment line soon. A film, a song, and powerful words. What could they be? How could he possibly get these right. 8 minutes to go. Ok, he thought, you go to a list on the Internet, you give the best musical piece ever known, probably Mozart or Bach, and then you go with the top film ever made, probably Godfather or Raiders Of the Lost Ark, and then you give him the golden rule. Simple as that. So, for the next three minutes, that's what he had planned. But he wasn't going to talk early into the mic. He would wait. And as Matt sat there at the little wooden table, sitting in the early hours of the morning with the large vortex hanging over his home and world, something didn't sit right in his gut. It were as if he had eaten a small donut made of concrete. If humanity rested on his decisions, he was going to make it his decision. Just like he had done with Jeffery, who was now up at Hogue Memorial; he was going to make the decision he had to make. He ran over to his music collection, went through the classics that he kept but rarely listened to, and pulled out a disc. Then, he went over to the TV, where there were a collection of films. He pulled out another disk and put them together. Now, the only problem, the only thing standing between his world there and his world turning into nothingness, were choosing the right words. He sat back down on the table, swore that he heard either Samantha or Reba grunt in their sleep, and then he went into a deep thought. He searched and he dug through his own history and his own path, looking for the most meaningful and thought provoking words he could resurrect. But then the voice came back on. "Human? Human are you there? It is time. It is time to pay the fiddler, so they say." The voice came through with a sing song quality in his voice, as if he were talking about an upcoming golf outing, and not the end of the world. "Do you have what I asked for, the three examples?" It asked. "I do." Matt said as his voice cracked. "Ok, we will do the song first. Now, if you have it in some kind of hard format, take the copy and place it on your tongue, I will play the music using your brain as an organic stereo." The voice said. Matt hesitated, but then did what he was told. he waited, but there was nothing. "You're not seriously doing that are you? It was a goof my man, sit down." The voice said. There was some kind of laughter that sounded like muffled barking. Matt sat down and waited for further instructions. Matt was not laughing. "Wave the disc over the speaker." The voice said, in a more serious tone. Matt did so. There was a few seconds of waiting, and then the voice came back. "I like this. What is it?" "John Coltrane." Matt answered. It was actually his father's favorite album. Jazz when it was jazz, not an elevator watered down substitute. "This was an excellent decision. I will add it to my collection. We didn't get this when we scouted your culture. I mostly enjoyed discovering the band, W.A.M." The voice said, with all seriousness. Matt didn't know if he should have put in Reba's collection of Kenny G then. Things were looking bleak. "And now for the film, or the story with pictures." Matt, now knowing the process, waved the DVD above the monitor. "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, starring Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne." Matt said, not knowing how long it would take for the voice in the sky to process the data. "Interesting choice." The voice said. "What made you decide this?" "A hero's sacrifice." Matt answered, having already thought of that particular question arising. "That is an interesting plot point, the hero giving up glory for the weaker character." There was a pause, and then the voice went on: "Do you think you could do the same, if a similar situation arose?" The voice asked. Matt, who knew that the voice might have a way of making this very thing tangible, hesitated before he answered. "I'd like to believe that I would--if I was put in a similar situation. In fact, if it was someone I knew and cared about, then I definitely would." Matt said, arguing to himself out loud, so the speaker monitor's picked up his train of thought. "Interesting." The voice said. "And finally, what is your message, the world of humans' message?" The voice asked, with almost a hint of indifference, as if this part of the test was where other beings on other planets failed miserably. He expounded on his question: "What is it that humans aspire to, or what is it that they should pass on to all other living beings?" He voice asked. Matthew waited for a moment, and then said, finding his voice wavering but believing fully that this is what he needed to say: "God is love." There was absolute silence on the line. For a moment, Matthew thought of the vortex of blackness hanging above his world becoming bigger and larger, swallowing everything and anything, turning it all into absolute nothingness. "Well, this concludes are chat, human." The voice said. "What's that mean?" Matt asked. "It means that you can go about your barbaric life, unharmed." Matt's throat clenched. That was it? He had passed the 'test'. How quickly, however, was his joy turned into quiet introspection as he realized that although he had saved the world from ceasing to exist, he was still and unemployed and incurable work force hopeful. "Are you down about you job?" The voice asked. "No. I'm just happy to be here. It has crossed my mind, but I'm sure something will work out." Matt said. "Perhaps I can pull a few alien strings I know, get you a job making even more money with even better hours. How would that be?" The voice asked. It sounded serious and almost genuinely concerned. "That would be great." Matt answered. "Keep dreaming, human. You are lucky to be sitting there with your cellular matter still intact." There was a hoarse laughter, and the monitor went dead. The lights on the white piece of plastic died, and it never worked again. Matthew knew that he could live without a job, as long as the world was still spinning, and after an hour of thought, he was exhausted, and he dragged himself up the stairs and was asleep before his head sunk down totally into the pillow. Five minutes later, Baby Sam began to cry. The cry was so loud, that no monitor was needed. Reeba rolled over and said: "Hon, do you think you can get up with her? I've got work in..3 hours." She rolled back over and almost immediately began snoring a small dainty woman's snore. So, not an hour later of saving the world, Matt went to change a diaper, and make a bottle. Copyright 2008 JJ Tyler |
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