Fur Immer Jetzt (Forever Now)

The Moon

Ming

Two hours before dawn I sat in peeling an apple and smoked one of Bell's cigarettes. I listened to the rattling rain outside. I found myself humming a song I should know. Tonight was a blatant reminder of the night when I asked Kit to dance in the middle of the road under the pouring rain. I closed my eyes, the trail of happiness was still there, lingering, embroidered with my memory of him. We were happy, once.

I stubbed out the cigarette, went through to Bell's bedroom. Bell was sleeping, her curves were visible beneath the beige color sheet. I swept to the room near the main corridor. I open the pink door slowly, the fragrant of innocence filled the atmosphere. Pim was soundly sleeping, hugging her favorite plush toy. This room was the only thing that made sense in this wrecked up world, a tiny area in the small apartment and super-dense city.

The neon flickering, the sign of power glitches. I hated this type of light but we could only afford this. Similar to the fact that we could only buy a minimalist furnished pit hole. The lack of furniture generated a feeling of failure within me. I wished I were a better father, a better provider.

"Turn off the light," I whispered, afraid I would wake her up. I stood there staring at a tangle of hair covering Pim's face and one of her little fingers trailed over the side of the bed. She plastered her newest drawing on the wall. It was obvious she drew me, a man with a cyborg's arm. In her drawing, the man could shoot fire from his nails. It looked disturbingly fun. Too bad, weaponizing prosthetics was against the law. It sounded a very tempting idea.

"Light adjusted 20%" The automatic voice's affirmation almost had me startled. After a quick look at her angelic face, I closed the door and I strolled back to the kitchen.

Lately, I worried too much, an extreme paranoia. These last weeks I spent attacking the pedophilia rings underground the webs. I spread malware and infiltrated their DNS system. I deactivated their main servers but they were still there, growing, festering, like parasites. The worst aversion was not the plain sight web servicing child pornography but when they disguised it in many forms, especially the subtle one.

One of the uploads I terminated was a child show contented the introduction of gender and sexuality as an actualization of love. Gender and sexuality had nothing to do with love. Even I learned that very basic fact since I was a little. And the children didn't need to be introduced to this complex idea. They were capable of loving unconditionally already.

Love, I chuckled to myself when thinking about this subject. It always gave me a numbing heartache. Love had always been my drive. It's a powerful force. My life now was about how to sustain security for my family. A resembling force I had back then, a force to be a great man for Kit. When I no longer loved anything, I lost my sense of purpose, I became aimless.

I and Jarvis were drying the plates and the glasses in the sink and put them in the cabinet when my device vibrated. The hologram showed the simple text 'I've missed you' and without checking the sender's identity I knew from whom the text was. The man who caused my world falling apart.

I decided to leave my device on the kitchen table, charging it. I paused and cast a glance at it before I went to the doorway of my bedroom. I had the urge to reply him back, telling him 'I've missed him too, so much.' But I didn't want him to re-enter my life again, which was uncanny. Every night whenever I went to sleep, I had this little ritual, tracing every memory of him, like a video playback on a frame to frame. Memories of his eyes, his laughs, his worries, his whines, they gave me tranquility. Just longing, just yearning. Eventually, I gained knowledge of how to accept the void, the black hole. And living side by side with them.

I sat on the bed, detaching the screw one by one, to take off my prosthesis arm. My skin was red as the result of mechanical pressures. I usually waited to go away before I settled my self to sleep. Sometimes I could still feel a phantom sensation in my fingers. At a time like this, the emptiness sank in. I remembered perfectly there were times in our brief relationship that I blamed him. I blamed him for still having that void in me. I thought I would be contented when I owned him entirely. I was so sure I did, watching him falling into my arms. He did belong to me. Too bad, the yearning of being complete was still there.