RITES OF PASSAGE or THE NIGHT ALEX DIDN'T HAVE THAT SANDWICH

“I FLOAT
ACROSS TIME
SKIN IS MY CLOCK
EVERYBODY AROUND ME
WEARS HIS AGE
I’M NOT ALLOWED TO.

I ASK SILENT QUESTIONS
TO THEM
I BEG THEM FOR POINTS AND LIKES
I BEG TO BE IN THEIR SAME STREAM
I WANT TO LIVE WITH THEM.

ELIXIRS ARE FOR LOSERS
IT WAS ALWAYS NOW
BUT IT WON’T BE ANYMORE
THAT’S MY ABSURD VICE.”

Alex wrote these words on his tablet the night of February 28th, moments before thinking about committing suicide, but deciding instead to prepare a sandwich. 

The small jar of sleeping pills on the kitchen table, together with Alex’s unintelligible expression soaked by the light of the open fridge, gives the scene a Hopper-ish dramatic feeling. This atmosphere is ruined only by the cheap and oddly austere Scandinavian furniture decorating the flat. But Alex doesn’t know whom Edward the Painter guy is, and can’t appreciate that. Alex is not really into arts. Alex is more of a maths person.

Alex doesn’t grow

Alex is often sad, especially in the last couple of years. Despite many efforts, Alex still hasn’t managed to reach Adulthood (5000 points). One must say that Adulthood is not the easiest level to achieve. Detractors of the System even assume that if past societies had lived under our law of the Life Levels, multitudes of people would have stayed in the Adolescence stage forever. As we all know, the main tasks to achieve are having a well-paid job (900 points), buying a car (500 points), getting married (1600 points), and having kids (2000 points). The latter is somehow responsible for Alex’s dilemma tonight, between the pills and the sandwich.

Alex sticks to the rules

Since the breakup with Noah, it was hard for Alex to return to the usual point-making life. When Noah quit the relationship, Alex’s life fell to pieces. Without a solid relationship, it is very hard to create the conditions to achieve the required 5000 points. The sanctions of last winter, due to watching porn and having microwave dinners full of saturated fats for three days in a row, didn’t help either. Alex submitted a formal complaint, but the only answer he received from the System provided the chance to apply to one of those courses organised by Them, to help recover lost points.

Alex wasn’t a promising kid

It wasn’t always like this. Alex was a promising kid. Having pronounced the first words; *drumroll*, mum, dad, car, much earlier than the average child, Alex scored the latest necessary points to access to the first level, Infancy. That night, the first Transformation Night, teeth formed, eyes stabilised their colour, hair bulbs started to bloom in Alex’s head. The morning after, Alex’s family were so happy they celebrated this special event. They would celebrate each time Alex reached the next stage, having completed all the tasks to make it to the levels Childhood (800 points) and Puberty (700 points). Alex was still an Adolescent at the time of the meeting with Noah.

Alex fell in love with someone

The one between Alex and Noah was not the love story of a lifetime but they got on well together. The day Noah and Alex met, they were crossing Times Square, and bumped shoulders. Alex turned to apologise and Noah, without saying hello or anything else, said, “Oh finally, I dreamed about you last night, babe”. Later Alex would learn well that Noah is one of those people who likes to mess with strangers. That’s how it began.

Alex and Noah stayed together for almost three years, during which they filled each other’s existences, without overwhelming them. Noah and Alex shared sex, ideas, joy, fondness, bank accounts, and projects, but not plans.

Alex is a good person

Noah had spent the weekend with Alba and Zoe, the two kids he’d had from a previous relationship. That Sunday, Alex stayed home doing the laundry and reading the same line from a book the entire afternoon. When Noah arrived at night, tobacco smoke had eaten the air away. With trembling voice Noah said, “I need to talk to you”. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines talk as the act of expressing or exchanging ideas by means of spoken words. The Merriam-Webster dictionary is a catalogue of conventional sound and pictographic semantic units used by human beings in order to communicate. By creating and indexing words that help convey abstract and sophisticated feelings, the human race has developed the unique capacity not only to describe, but also to build upon even more ungraspable and higher concepts. Such a capacity wasn’t taken advantage of well that sunny afternoon.

Alex and Noah’s conversation about their future contained no future. The discussion went off the rails as they started shouting wildly at each other. Noah, crying, pushed Alex into the open wardrobe. Alex’s hand reached the shelf where those tiny shoes, of a size none of them could have worn, had been kept for two years. And hit Noah in the face. Silence felt across the room. Noah ran away. It wasn’t one of those love affairs in which there’s the love of the non-beautiful. It was one of those love affairs that crashes beneath the weight of the System.

Alex doesn’t like mayonnaise on sandwiches

Weeks after, Alex opens the fridge to see if there’s something to flavour the sandwich with, as a soft white light glows from his tablet. Alex checks the notification. Noah denounced the aggression to the System. For such cases, the System’s law provides a conviction of 1000 points. There’s nothing to do but accept the conviction by confirming the personal data and, ironically, adding an optional short comment beneath the asterisk.

Eyes wild as Alex crashes the tablet on the floor. Shards of a glass produced in the Chinese District of Tucheng are everywhere. Heavily breathing, Alex sits back on the chair.

*Close-up of the jar of sleeping pills*

Alex makes it to the next level

Alex grabs the tablet from the floor. Tapping on the broken screen, Alex’s fingers search for the optional field box. “You ask me to behave and I won’t. You denounced me for my actions and God knows how I would denounce for my actions.

You want to decide what’s my age and I will tell you. My age is an itchy phantom limb; it exists in my head, beyond space and time. My age is what exists beyond the milestones you impose upon me, the achievements you want me to reach; the things I’m supposed to do, the things I’m supposed to feel. My age is the System measuring my life in numbers; it is the countdown before my body and soul dissolve. My age is the timestamp of bureaucrats hidden somewhere, who decide whether I’m fine or wrong, whether I’ve done right or wrong. You ask me my age, and I will tell you that it is not the past which dictates the future; it is the ambition for the future which dictates the present. My present and my future are the opposite faces of a complex and glassy prism. One will always be shady if I cast the light on the other. You won’t see them both. You will never see them both. You forced me into this dreadful fake existence. You punished me. You took the one thing that’s real, which I ever came close to. I won’t build my present anymore according to your rules. I won’t react and I won’t smile. I will no longer score points. I won’t queue at your fucking grey offices. I will no longer find pleasure in what I’m doing. I won’t love anymore. I will not give birth to any human being that that will have to follow your bloody rules. Yes, they won’t exist; they will not grow their first teeth, they won’t say daddy, they will not be able to tell blue from red, and they won’t grow their hair. They won’t poop on their shorts, they won’t fall in love at school, and they won’t fall because you don’t want them to fall. You all want them to smile and succeed and get stuff done. I will not have any kids, so YOU won’t judge them. I WILL MAKE THEM NO LONGER EXIST, so they won’t give their first kiss, they won’t fuck, they won’t buy a car, they won’t lose their hair, they won’t get a fucking mortgage, and they won’t decorate their houses their relatives over for Thanksgiving. You ask me what’s my age and I will tell you that my life is not measurable. My love is not measurable.

I will not exist.
I will not make any kids,
this way they won’t die.”

Alex taps on the Submit button.

* Close-up of an uneaten sandwich *

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