23.

The room was filthy with clutter--socks, underwear, clothes of every sort lay scattered about the floor. In a corner was a bed, its sheets stained and disheveled; by the computer was a wastebasket piled past the top with soda cans, and whoever had been drinking them had continued to do so when the wastebasket was full, since soda cans were scattered all about the computer desk and floor.

The young man--a boy really--came up behind Joshua, where he stood in the threshold of the bedroom. He was younger than Joshua and his face was spattered with red pimples, most of them irritated from being squeezed.

"I didn't know you were here yet, sorry," the white teen said. "Come on in."

Joshua moved aside to let him by, then followed him into the room.

"Some music?" said the boy. "You probably like rap--don't have any of that--I like old school heavy metal, I even use a record player if you believe it's possible these days. Hard as shit, hard as shit to find new music on vinyl."

He reached into a tattered cardboard box where a stack of records were stuffed vertically. He flipped through a few and pulled out an Iron Maiden title--called "Piece of Mind" Joshua noticed, with a grotesque picture of some tormented monster in a padded room and straightjacket--and slid out the shiny black record. When the music started, which did not particularly appeal to Joshua, the young teen sat on the computer chair with his back to the computer, facing the bed, and said, "Well, sit down!"

Joshua sat down across him on the edge of the bed. "My mom hates this music," the teenage boy said, with his chair facing Joshua, the record player between them. "She's worse than some old lady--won't let me crank it for shit."

Joshua stared at the circle of the record, as it spun and spun and dragged its grooves across the needle, giving off the sound.

"You're wondering how it works," said the boy. "You're saying, how in fuck do they get those little bumps in the grooves just right, so that it gives of the exact sound of a voice, a drum, just as it sounded in the studio?" Joshua looked back up to him, not saying a word; he was getting sick of this Dreamtime parade.

"I don't know either," said the boy. "I have no idea how in hell they do it. I mean, I get it pretty good--the needle hits little bumps and irregularities in the grooves, and so it vibrates with sound. But shit--how do they make those bumps so exactly right so that the sound that comes from it is the singer's voice? A voice is hard to reproduce--it's hard for any of us to speak with a sound just like someone else's. And yet they can make bumps in a vinyl groove just right, so that the singer's voice comes to our ears, just like it sounded years ago when he sang into the microphone. Not to mention the shit about how some little wire can carry that sound to the speakers, sound that I can make as loud or quiet as I please, just by turning a knob."

Joshua only stared at him.

The boy glanced around. "And here we have a computer. Open it up and it just looks like bits of copper on some green plastic sheet. But with a modem connection I can see the Great Wall of China in real time. The scary thing is that there is not a single human being who knows how it works completely. The computers make the computers; at best two dozen people somewhere each understand some piece of it to collectively attain complete understanding, but no single person knows all of it."

He paused. "Soda?" he said. "I've got Pepsi and Dr. Pepper. Nothing diet though--I'm skinny as hell and I want to fill out a little. Can't seem to gain a pound."

Joshua would not respond; he was like a kidnap victim terrified of what new horror would come next. He'd become numb.

"The stars, the moon, the sun--the ancients felt they had to comprehend them. They formed beliefs about them--they couldn't leave it be and say, 'We don't know what in hell the stars are.' They made up cosmologies so absurd it's incredible the people believed them! But they did, they had no choice--the only other option was to live in a world that was incomprehensible, unintelligible. But how is it we live today, not knowing how all this technology works? If the right hundred thousand people on this earth dropped down dead at once, we'd be back in the stone age. No one knows shit about how this world works--how do we do it? It's a precarious grandeur, the age we live in."

He cleared his throat.

"Am I boring you?" he said.

"I'd like to just go on to the next thing," said Joshua.

"The next dream?"

"I don't know."

"Always the next thing," said the boy. "Just enjoy yourself for godsakes!"

Joshua didn't say anything.

"Well, I guess you're tired now. Yes--you're exhausted. Just lie back--I know my bed is dirty but--it's comfortable enough." The boy pressed a button and the music stopped, the needle went back to its nest and the record stopped spinning. Joshua was grateful for the silence.

Now Joshua indeed noticed how exhausted he was. He removed his shoes and socks, neatly placed the socks in the shoes, placed the shoes in an orderly fashion by the foot of the bed. He took off his shirt and covered himself. Yes--he'd dreamt too long now, it wore at him--were he perishing forever right now he'd only be glad. He lay still, covered in the blankets, as his eyes fell closed. He heard the teenage boy's footsteps as he went to the door, then the light flicked off and the door was gently shut.