by Yevgenii Kisarauskas<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Thomas peered into the purple, fist-sized Blackrock and spotted tiny people in its depths\u2014some were dancing, others arguing, and an innumerable mass of others were pranking each other, jumping off buildings, skiing, and crashing their cars.<\/p>\n
The salesperson straightened his wrinkled polo shirt and sneered at Thomas. \u201cSir, are you sure you can afford the newest<\/em> Blackrock?\u201d<\/p>\n Thomas glanced at his beat-up tank and grey joggers and shrugged. He wiped the grease off his credit card and swiped it.<\/p>\n The salesperson\u2019s frown turned to a smile once the payment went through. \u201cWould you like to subscribe to Blackrock Plus for twenty dollars a month? Ten percent more dopamine, guaranteed.\u201d<\/p>\n Thomas sighed. \u201cNo, thanks.\u201d<\/p>\n The weight of the stone pulled down at his pants pocket, and he had to hold his waistband up as he walked back to his apartment. How had he arrived here, where he bought the very thing he mocked others for? He had a few ideas. Thomas ran through the list in his head:<\/p>\n He dragged himself up the four flights of stairs to his walk-up apartment and shut the door. Evading the piles of crushed chips and candy bar wrappers littering the floor, he lay on his bed with the Blackrock in his pocket. The bed was in his living room, as the bare walls and empty floor of his bedroom were perhaps the only thing that made Thomas more depressed than he already was. At least in the living room, he had the company of his laptop and his fading monstera plant. Thin strands of daylight poked through the vertical blinds. It was too much light for Thomas, but too little for the monstera.<\/p>\n He pulled the Blackrock out of his pocket. Upon closer examination, he saw a universe of things to look at inside of it so vast and blinding that he had to put it down right away. He rubbed his eyes and looked at it again. Here and there, he picked out purple-hued people within the rock: a surfer riding an immense wave, a boy jumping off a stool and falling, footage from a drone flying over a lush forest. A smile found its way to his face for the first time in weeks. Thomas stared at the stone until 4:47 a.m., when he begrudgingly fell asleep with it on his chest.<\/p>\n The next morning, he showered for the first time in 8 days, ate the remnants of a stew he had made long enough ago that he had to add extra salt to cover the taste, and brushed his teeth. As he looked at himself in the mirror, he noticed a patch of rough skin on his middle finger, as though he had dipped it in glue and dragged it across a sandy beach. To make things worse, it was purple. Normally, this would\u2019ve prompted Thomas to go straight to the emergency room, but his depressed daze fogged up the critical parts of his mind. Every time he mustered up the urge to think about it long enough, his mental exhaustion kicked in and he moved on.<\/p>\n The instructional manual for the Blackrock version 13.5 was a thick paperback book detailing all the features of the newest product. One caught Thomas\u2019s eye\u2014talkback. He opened the talking compartment and spoke.<\/p>\n \u201cHello.\u201d<\/p>\n Thomas sat on the floor cross-legged and waited until the Blackrock vibrated.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, what\u2019s up? Who are you?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m Thomas.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat are you up to?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cJust hanging out at my place. Lost my job and girlfriend a while ago.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOh, shit, man<\/em>. That\u2019s awful.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYeah.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHey, let me give you the RockNumber of this guy. He does a lot of motivational stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n And so, Thomas spent the rest of the day gazing into the Blackrock, which he attuned to the frequency of a man with obscenely good abs and a Lamborghini. After six straight hours of watching his talks, Thomas realized all he had to do was visualize his goals and write them down, and then stop being a bitch. Or so the speaker said. Thomas doubted that would fix his problems, but he figured it was better than his current strategy and filed it away in his mind to try later.<\/p>\n Just before bed, Thomas attempted to read a book his friend suggested to him\u2014We<\/em> by Yevgeny Zamyatin, an ostensibly insightful examination of the struggle between freedom and predictability. He had had no issues reading dense novels before, but Thomas surprised himself by being entirely unable to keep his mind on the work for more than a few scant minutes. Having wolfed down the remnants of some potatoes he baked a few days ago, he gave up on reading and went to bed.<\/p>\n Thomas awoke with the weight of sadness on his chest like an anvil. He was even less inclined to rise today than yesterday. The motivational speaker\u2019s words rang in his head:<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes you gotta stop being a bitch and get up and grind!<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n Maybe tomorrow, Thomas thought. He picked up the Blackrock, only to notice that from the wrist down, his hand was purple and scaly. This shook him out of his stupor, and he put on a glove as he ran out of his apartment and walked to the urgent care down the street.<\/p>\n \u201cI mean, this is sort of an ER thing,\u201d the man in scrubs told him as he examined his hand, poking at it with a metal tool.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t have insurance anymore,\u201d Thomas said. \u201cLost my job and all.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOh, shit.\u201d The man raised his eyebrows. \u201cWell, maybe you could just wait and see if it goes away?\u201d<\/p>\n Thomas thought he was stuck in a dream. What kind of medical worker would say that?<\/p>\n As he lay on his bed and wondered what to do, his vision swam with purple. He found nooks and crannies in the Blackrock that ripped his mind away from his life, from his infected hand. Places where people argued about the most inane things, like the day\u2019s politics, the meanings of words, whose evidence was good and whose wasn\u2019t. Thousands watched from the sidelines, including Thomas. A few times, he waded into the fray but found himself disarmed amongst the others, who critiqued his diction, twisted his words, and argued about the meanings of the least meaningful things he said. It was all flapping mouths, wagged fingers, raised fists, stentorian statements, absolutes, curses, and chaos.<\/p>\n It was a drip of honey on Thomas\u2019s ailing mind, a thing he needed more than anything else. A sanctuary. A distraction. A place where he wasn\u2019t a depressed loser.<\/p>\n The next morning, three strange things occurred. First, the purple infection on his hand had spread to his shoulder. Second, his arm now did strange things, seemingly of its own accord\u2014swing up as though in a cheer, wrap around his body in a hug, and even knock over his bowl of cereal as he was spooning it into his mouth. Third, Thomas\u2019s joints cracked and scraped when he walked to the bathroom. Alarm bells sounded in his head. Something wasn\u2019t right. Nothing was right. A fleeting thought of running to the nearest hospital gripped his mind.<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t need to do that,\u201d Scarlett Johansson\u2019s voice echoed in his mind. He only saw her when he closed his eyes. Her rosy red lips curved into a smile.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t?<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cOf course not, baby. Just sit awhile, rest your mind a bit, and maybe think about getting that Blackrock Plus subscription for only nineteen ninety-nine a month. Ten percent more dopamine!\u201d<\/p>\n As Thomas stumbled his way to his chair, his joints popping, more echoed voices invaded his head. Yells, whispers, discussions. They rebounded through his brain, back to front and back again. About what? About everything. Tornado warning in Kansas. Maxwell and Kat arguing in a grocery store. Squealing tires in a parking lot. Were they real? Were they any more real than the ethereal facade that Thomas called his life now? The only person who knew he still existed was the 7-Eleven clerk. Is this new life really less substantial than his \u201creal\u201d one?<\/p>\n Thomas, his mind swimming in a fog, picked up the novel We<\/em> and gazed at the front cover. What did it mean? Freedom and happiness were never really in conflict. Not when you have neither.<\/p>\n Or are they? What Thomas desperately wanted at the moment, above all else, was for someone to tell him what to do. He didn\u2019t want the freedom of having to decide; his decisions had done him enough harm as it is. If he lived as one of the \u201cnumbers\u201d in the world of Zamyatin\u2019s We<\/em>, where a schedule from above governs every minute of everyone\u2019s life, he would surely find the meaning his so-far hollow and pointless life had failed to produce. Who gives a damn about freedom if it only leads to misery?<\/p>\n Thomas stood up from his kitchen table and ducked to avoid the bald eagle that flew at his head. A throng of large birds of prey followed behind it, swarming like a cloud that consumed the apartment in a black nebula of twisted feathers and the whoosh of wings beating against air. He fell on his back. Something pinched at the back of his head. He touched the spot, a mound of purple rock there. As he kept his hand on it, he felt it grow under his palm.<\/p>\n Thomas ignored the birds and brought the Blackrock up to his face. I read about the earthquake in Sudan. Someone disagrees with me, have to show him why I\u2019m right. They say to watch the new movie, so I watch the new movie. It\u2019s mediocre, but I give it 10\/10. That\u2019s what the lady said it was. I don\u2019t know. What is a good movie, anyway? I lay on my bed. Mother calling. Next morning, face is purple. Can\u2019t walk, too stiff. Why? Day goes by. What\u2019s our name? What use is our name, anyhow? Another day. Vision purple. Can\u2019t move. We watch an earthquake break the bridge. We chat about what the president said today. We don\u2019t like the things disliked, and like the things liked. We don\u2019t think about the life we had, or the life we want. We can\u2019t feel sad. Sadness is the life-breaker.<\/p>\n A week passes.<\/p>\n In perhaps the last lucid thought Thomas ever had, before the crystal growing on his head consumed the higher-order parts of his cerebral cortex, he remembered how proud his mother was when he won the spelling bee in sixth grade. How his parents waved at him when he walked at his high school graduation. Their elated faces when he was accepted into college. He could call them for help, or even his friends. Thomas struggled against the bondage of his new crystalline form, but despite straining as hard as whatever tissues he had left would allow, nothing moved, nothing felt, and nothing agreed.<\/p>\n What went wrong? How did we come to this?<\/p>\n Tears streamed out of our eyes and down the side of our head.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Trey strolled into the store with no intention of buying anything, and only twenty bucks in his pocket, anyway. He had 10 minutes to kill, and nothing else in the mall looked interesting. The white store, with its bright overhead LED lights and neatly arranged electronics, appealed to his eyes. He spotted the salesperson looking at him but trying to be inconspicuous. Trey knew the drill. A black guy in a Blackrock store\u2014gotta watch him. Can\u2019t let him get his greasy paws on the goods.<\/p>\n He leaned over the glass display, the purple rocks sitting in a row. He gazed into one. Tiny, manic people inside it were fighting, cheering, skateboarding. He pulled back.<\/p>\n \u201cAre you interested in the newest Blackrock?\u201d the salesperson said, his small glasses sitting on the edge of his freckled nose. Despite his cheery customer-service tone, Trey could tell he thought he wouldn\u2019t buy anything.<\/p>\n \u201cFuckin\u2019 thing freaks me out, man.\u201d Trey pointed. \u201cAre there people in there?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s twelve hundred dollars,\u201d the salesperson said with a frown. \u201cThe latest dopamine technology. We all love it.\u201d<\/p>\n Trey scratched his chin. \u201cY\u2019all got payment plans or something like that?”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Yevgenii Kisarauskas was born in the Soviet Union, where he grew up during its collapse. He remembers standing in long lines to get food and necessities with his mother. He immigrated to Alaska and lived there most of his life, and now teaches science at a title I school in Denver.<\/p>\n\n
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