4

THE ROOF

As you return to the center of the roof, you notice that the groups begin to coalesce as well until there is simply one mass of people of which you are a member.

Cynthia: Do you ever reach for it and get like halfway to it before you remember it’s gone? Us probably more than the others, you know, obsessed with that Listory Channel fansite. It used to be that you would just reach for your phone absent-mindedly, forgetting it died during the night.

Bill: Well, if you don’t overcharge it then you shouldn’t have a problem with battery life.

Fred: Who has a problem with battery life now?

Isabella: We are all battery life.

Cynthia: You ever get phantom notifications? It’s like the twenty-first century phantom limb.

James: Yeah, I used to wonder if there was some kind of like muscle spasm.

Bruce: A vestigial bodily function.

James: Something that feels like you getting a text message cuz I could swear I felt something and then my phone is blank.

Sarah: Sometimes it would still be my phone. Laughs. Like I don’t know what was happening but it would definitely just vibrate for no reason sometimes. I would be holding it in my hand when it happened somehow so I know it for sure.

Bill (looking at Sarah): One in the hand worth two in the bush.

Cynthia: Right? But when they shut the web down…

Sarah: Yeah, that’s why we started meeting here. She moves her hand behind her head, displacing a piece of hair. We were worried they’d bring down the cell towers too. She frowns. Still might I guess, so a return to physical meeting places. To in person interrogation.

Bill: Rooftop rhetoric.

Cynthia: So now (looking at Fred), yes, no need for battery life. Always fully powered up. But instead I just pull out my phone because I want to know how old Phil Collins is or if my favorite author died yet and then I remember.

James: It’s like a bad dream… Or a good dream. You ever wake up and remember that [he makes airquotes with his fingers] “insert bad thing here.” She’s gone, he died, the dog ran away, etc. A few in the group nod.

Cynthia: Remember Prawn Stars? All the shrimpers? When they’d drag up the nets; you never know what you’re gonna get.

James: Yeah, but I was more into Sentient Chameleons. “And if these lizards do have brains, then they must have thoughts, which proves that they have philosophies.” He looks up wistfully.

Jessica: They certainly had something for everyone.

Paul: Did you guys watch Flaunting Scars? About car crashes. Weird show. How in the car accident, the line between human and machine becomes blurred. Both in the impact and after, metal plates to fix injuries…

Trish: Cronenberg made a movie about that but what if he made a mechanical version of The Fly. Humans realizing they are machines. Transforming.

Bruce: Laughing. Michael Bay. Now a bit more serious. But isn’t that all sci-fi movies?

James: Hollywood seems to underestimate the singularity. They think we have AI just about cracked and that it will be some major problem. That’s why I like Sentient Chameleons, robots bore me. We don’t really understand our own minds. A computer is always just going to be a tool. I actually think that would be a cool movie, where the villain is the robot and then at the end you realize it isn’t sentient, it’s just some stupid error in the code.

Fred: Like a cooking robot has the goal to fill all humans and there’s a typo where fill says kill.

James (laughing): Yeah, we just love to be afraid of things that won’t ever happen. Terminator might as well be a zombie movie.

Cynthia: I think television and the internet really changed how we think. Everything slowly became lists, you know? Life is just going from one thing to another, flipping channels or clicking that next button. I’m not sure what I’m trying to say.

Bill: I kinda get it. It’s weird because it’s Trish was saying but it’s a little harder to see. We are machines in a way. We look for input. We want to know the facts, so we go check when Gandhi died or whatever thought comes into our head. It’s better in a lot of ways but we certainly aren’t hybrids. It’s funny (he reaches for his phone), we all still have these. We don’t really have as much use for them, but it’s funny because we don’t need a car accident to become merged with the machine. We’re moving away from instinctual existence. And we say science is the way and belief is evil and we act like it’s very clear cut road, but there’s no reason to think that alien species wouldn’t be more like animals. More into achieving flow, instinct, knowing things that you obviously can’t scientifically know.

James: They talk about this on Sentient Chameleons. How we value things about human life that don’t necessarily amount to much. How wasp nests are more brilliant than philosophy.

Sarah: Is it mushrooms or anthills, termite mounds?, that have a hive mind?

Trish: Why is it better to eat plants? What do the plants think about that? I used to think if we eat fruit, that’s meant to be eaten in order to spread seeds, but we eat a lot more than fruit. We even eat seeds!

Cynthia: I’m happy we’re here. Not a lot of people like to think about stuff like this and it’s certainly dumb in a lot of ways, but I’m just happy to muse about it. I kinda hate people sometimes. The way you talk to someone at work or your uncle and they just kinda stare eventually and you don’t know what to do. Does it mean stop talking? Does it mean go back and explain what they aren’t understanding? What do you want from me?

A sound goes off in the distance. You know that it is the call.

Fred: Oh, there it is again. You think it matters this time? There is a collective shrug from the group. Hey, you ever watch that show about the people who cut themselves on old rusted gas cans? Jerrycan Prickers.