The David Lynch Blues
Maybe We Can Go Back To Yesterday
By Machiavelli
Muhammad hates Callisto. He hates the snow, he hates the cold, he hates the men he passes on the street and in the tunnels of the subway. He hates the weak sunlight that the gate delivers to the sky, he hates every inch of the miserable excuse for a city they call Blue Crow. And above all else, he hates himself, with an intensity that only further increases as the days go by.
But, here he is. He has nowhere else to go.
So he's found himself a bar in the city, and does his best to overcome his aversion to alcohol. They used to call the bar Rester House, back when Muhammad started coming here. Then a couple of months back, the owner made the mistake of defaulting on his mortgage payments, and it got picked up by a corporation from Ganymede. So now it's named Cheers Callisto; not much else has changed, except now there's a new bartender and they put up new wallpaper a while back. The new bartender's name is Johnnie; Muhammad loathes him. But he keeps coming back.
Mainly, he comes here for the music. There used to be a jazz saxophonist here a while back; he's gone now. Then a couple of weeks ago, the guitarist showed up. Muhammad doesn't know his name or where he came from. He doesn't seem to be an employee; he was just there one day when Muhammad came in, strumming this beaten-up electric at a table in the back. He plays mostly blues, and a couple of old songs Muhammad's grandparents might have listened to, or their grandparents before them.
Muhammad doesn't so much remember those songs as he recognizes them, somewhere in the distant recesses of his mind. It's as if the music is written somewhere in his genome, the lyrics coded into his amino acids. He likes the song the guitarist is playing right now in particular; he doesn't remember his name. But something in his midbrain knows that it's about a girl and saying something wrong. And sometimes Muhammad thinks that's the only thing keeping him here.
There are other people in Cheers Callisto right now. There's Johnnie, of course, with his company-regulation smile and that distant, bored look in his eyes. There's two miners, both in their forties, sitting at the bar a few seats down from Muhammad. There's a group of depressed-looking businessmen, probably economists or something, sitting around a table next to the door. There's a new guy Muhammad's never seen before, sitting a table over from the guitarist. He looks dangerous, in a way Muhammad can't quantify, and strangely passive. He doesn't even have a drink; he just is sitting there, listening to the guitarist. With his eyes closed.
The song ends thirty seconds later. Which is right about when everything goes to hell.
It happens in components. First, the guitarist ends the song, and lets his hand drop off the strings almost reverently. Then the company-policy bell rings, as it does every time the door opens. Then Muhammad mechanically looks up.
And then the world freezes for a second. And for an eternity, Muhammad almost believes that it's her, standing in the door. Then the backlight fades, and he blinks his eyes, and it's just a woman he's never seen before. A beautiful woman, which is in itself a small miracle on Callisto. But her hair is shorter than Rachel's, and she's dressed like a prostitute.
Then the world speeds up again. And that's when the woman raises the submachine gun she's carrying in one hand and sprays it across the bar.
Muhammad doesn't even flinch, more out of surprise than anything else. The bullets go over his head; the muzzle flashes leave him seeing spots.
When the woman's gun falls silent, the topography of the bar has completely changed. Johnnie's cowering underneath the bar somewhere; the businessmen have turned over their table and shielded themselves behind it. One of the miners has fallen off of his bar stool and is sprawled out across the ground; it initially looks like he's been hit, but Muhammad can hear him breathing and he has his hands behind his head, in the universal body language of the trembling hostage. The other miner hasn't moved; he hasn't even put down his drink, actually.
The woman doesn't react. Actually, she just looks bored. She walks into the bar, past the businessmen, who turn their table to keep it between them and her. She passes by the bar; the miner doesn't even look up. Johnnie peers over the bar at her as she goes by, like a frightened, mildly lustful bunny rabbit. And she walks by Muhammad, without glancing his direction.
Muhammad turns around, and sees her put the gun to the head of the guitarist. He's looking down, at the strings of the electric, as if in prayer. There's no sign of the new guy.
"Lucien ?" the woman says, like she's stating a fact. She has a very flat tone to her voice, like someone who has anger management problems and wants the whole world to know it before the fact.
The guitarist imperceptibly nods.
"Where is Dr. Hesse ?"
At first, Muhammad doesn't know who she's talking about. Then he thinks of a grey-haired man in a stained suit, has a beard, looks vaguely Jewish. Muhammad's always avoided him a result, more out of some buried cultural instinct than recent history. These days, he can't really see a need to be open-minded. But whenever the old man's at the bar, he sits with the guitarist.
The guitarist murmurs something underneath his breath that Muhammad can't hear. Neither can the woman, apparently, because she points the gun down at the table and puts three rounds into it.
"Speak up," she says, once the echoes die down.
"I said his bounty's only one million," says the guitarist.
"You know what they say," says the woman. She brings the gun back up to the guitarist's head. "Every little bit helps in this economy."
The guitarist shrugs. "I'm right here, Miss Valentine."
It takes Muhammad a second to realize the words came over from the door. He looks back; it's the old man. He's standing by the door, in a long grey trench-coat that's seen better days, and some kind of hat that looks like a compromise between a bowler and a fedora.
There's a bang behind Muhummad, and suddenly his right ear isn't working anymore. The old man's hat is gone. A few wisps of material float down back through the doorway.
"First lesson," says the woman from behind him. "I don't like people sneaking up on me."
"My apologies," says the apparent Dr. Hesse.
"How sweet of you," says the woman. There's a metallic click; the next second, a small red dot hovers over the exact center of the old man's forehead. "How about you come over here without making any sudden moves ?"
But the old man doesn't move. He's looking at the woman carefully, at her eyes as far as Muhammad can tell. It reminds Muhammad of the way his father used to examine patients, back before the assholes had taken away his license. That in turn leads a series of unpleasant memories, so Muhammad shoves that line of thought as far into the back of his head as possible.
The woman is not amused. "Anytime now, grandpa."
"You believe you are hear to collect my bounty," says the old man. He says it as a statement, with no additional emotion.
"I'm pointing a gun at your head," says the woman. "That's generally a good indication."
The old man seems to ignore her. "I don't believe you are here to arrest me, Miss Valentine," he says.
The woman sighs. The red dot drops from the old man down to his coat. "Hats are easy. You want me to try for the coat buttons ?"
"Last time I checked, Lucien," says the old man, "you were worth one and a half million."
He's looking at the guitarist. Muhammad turns back to see the guitarist shrug again; he's absentmindedly tuning his guitar underneath the table.
The woman doesn't even blink. The red dot stays where it is. "Great. Two for the price of one."
"I checked the bounty database last night," says the old man. "The bartender's worth three million."
The woman's head snaps over to the bar. Muhammad hears a scramble underneath, then the door to the back opens and closes; Johnnie didn't bother to stand up.
The doctor waits for her to turn her attention back to him, then he points in the direction of the two miners. The one on the ground has started to shake. "Jackson Brown and Gordo Lightfoot," says the old man. "Both worth twenty-five million, plus a five million bonus for bringing both in."
Jackson screams something to the ground, something about murder and remembering faces. Gordo has reached behind the bar and is helping himself to another shot. He has a somewhat determined look, like a man who long ago swore on his mother's grave that he would never, ever leave a bar without finishing his drink.
The woman looks indecisive now. The laser sight drifts uncertainly over the old man's coat and onto the doorframe. The doctor falls silent, and lets his hand drop.
From behind the table, one of the businessmen raises his hand. "I'm worth nine million," he says. "Tax evasion."
Gordo turns around; he looks interested. Another one of the businessmen raises his head above the table. "We all are, actually," he says. "Nine million each."
Gordo looks over at the guitarist. The guitarist looks up. "Pissed off my label," he says quietly. He then looks back down.
Jackson says something muffled to the ground that Muhammad can't hear.
"Dude, they can't hear you," Gordo says, quietly.
Jackson sits up. He's still trembling, and his eyes are all weird. "We were part of a militia group on Mars," he says. "And I cut a guy in Newcal. That's another fourteen."
Muhammad realizes that Gordo is looking at him now. So are the businessmen; they've turned their table back upright and are sitting down again.
So he shrugs. "I haven't done anything."
Everyone in the room goes silent.
Something in Muhammad tells him to say something. He looks down at his drink. What the hell. "There was this girl, you know ?"
Nobody says anything. There's kind of a sliding sound. Muhammad looks up just in time to catch the bottle of whiskey Gordo was holding as it comes down the bar. On the other side, Gordo nods, sort of.
There is a moment of awkward silence.
Muhammad risks a glance back at the woman. He can't make out the expression on her face; maybe she's going to laugh. Maybe she's going to kill everyone within a five block radius. Maybe she's going to break down crying. It could go any of those ways.
"I would like to advance a theory, Miss Valentine," says the doctor softly from the doorway. His voice is scarcely above a whisper, yet it echoes in the room.
"I don't believe you're here for my bounty, nor for anyone else's. And I don't believe in mistakes either."
The woman doesn't say anything.
"Think," says the old man quietly. There is no sign of pressure in his voice, no hate or fear or motivation. "What are you here for ?"
Muhammad is watching her eyes. He can't see any meaning in them; there seems to be nothing there.
He doesn't even see her make the decision. She just raises the gun again.
"Flashback," she says. Her voice has gone flat, as hollow as her eyes. "Now."
The old man looks satisfied. He looks away from her, towards one of the windows in the back wall. "May I introduce my associate, Mr. John Keats," he says.
And then there's this blur in the air. The woman falls to the ground, silently. The new guy is standing a few feet away from her, holding a knife blade-first in his hand. There's blood on the hilt, and he's smiling, not satisfied or lustful or angry or any of a hundred emotions Muhammad would expect in that place or time. Instead, he looks relieved. Like a man who's just had a burden lifted from his shoulders.
And the guitarist is standing behind him. As everyone stares, as the woman lies there on the floor, as the doctor smiles from the doorway, he starts to play something. It sounds almost like a funeral dirge as it begins, low and slow and humble. Like a man screaming inside, where no one can hear him.
And that's the last thing Muhammad remembers from that night.
He woke up the next morning with the usual hangover, in his long-term hotel room up the street. It looks like he passed out fully clothed on the bed; he's got the whiskey bottle in his hand, and it's empty, and he's got a five o'clock shadow that looks ten hours old.
And he's got a song stuck in his head for some reason, which makes him want to break open the minibar in the room. But the damn thing won't open - it locks automatically when you're more than a month behind on your rent, and Muhammad has that and more - and besides, he's an hour late for his node slot. So he stares at the screen, with his pounding headache, thinking about Rachel and trying to figure out what the hell happened last night.
He keeps thinking about it, as the numbers march across the screen and across the web. Over to Earth, and Mars, and a hundred other locations, as outside his window the snow begins to fall.
Maybe We Can Go Back To Yesterday
By Machiavelli
Muhammad hates Callisto. He hates the snow, he hates the cold, he hates the men he passes on the street and in the tunnels of the subway. He hates the weak sunlight that the gate delivers to the sky, he hates every inch of the miserable excuse for a city they call Blue Crow. And above all else, he hates himself, with an intensity that only further increases as the days go by.
But, here he is. He has nowhere else to go.
So he's found himself a bar in the city, and does his best to overcome his aversion to alcohol. They used to call the bar Rester House, back when Muhammad started coming here. Then a couple of months back, the owner made the mistake of defaulting on his mortgage payments, and it got picked up by a corporation from Ganymede. So now it's named Cheers Callisto; not much else has changed, except now there's a new bartender and they put up new wallpaper a while back. The new bartender's name is Johnnie; Muhammad loathes him. But he keeps coming back.
Mainly, he comes here for the music. There used to be a jazz saxophonist here a while back; he's gone now. Then a couple of weeks ago, the guitarist showed up. Muhammad doesn't know his name or where he came from. He doesn't seem to be an employee; he was just there one day when Muhammad came in, strumming this beaten-up electric at a table in the back. He plays mostly blues, and a couple of old songs Muhammad's grandparents might have listened to, or their grandparents before them.
Muhammad doesn't so much remember those songs as he recognizes them, somewhere in the distant recesses of his mind. It's as if the music is written somewhere in his genome, the lyrics coded into his amino acids. He likes the song the guitarist is playing right now in particular; he doesn't remember his name. But something in his midbrain knows that it's about a girl and saying something wrong. And sometimes Muhammad thinks that's the only thing keeping him here.
There are other people in Cheers Callisto right now. There's Johnnie, of course, with his company-regulation smile and that distant, bored look in his eyes. There's two miners, both in their forties, sitting at the bar a few seats down from Muhammad. There's a group of depressed-looking businessmen, probably economists or something, sitting around a table next to the door. There's a new guy Muhammad's never seen before, sitting a table over from the guitarist. He looks dangerous, in a way Muhammad can't quantify, and strangely passive. He doesn't even have a drink; he just is sitting there, listening to the guitarist. With his eyes closed.
The song ends thirty seconds later. Which is right about when everything goes to hell.
It happens in components. First, the guitarist ends the song, and lets his hand drop off the strings almost reverently. Then the company-policy bell rings, as it does every time the door opens. Then Muhammad mechanically looks up.
And then the world freezes for a second. And for an eternity, Muhammad almost believes that it's her, standing in the door. Then the backlight fades, and he blinks his eyes, and it's just a woman he's never seen before. A beautiful woman, which is in itself a small miracle on Callisto. But her hair is shorter than Rachel's, and she's dressed like a prostitute.
Then the world speeds up again. And that's when the woman raises the submachine gun she's carrying in one hand and sprays it across the bar.
Muhammad doesn't even flinch, more out of surprise than anything else. The bullets go over his head; the muzzle flashes leave him seeing spots.
When the woman's gun falls silent, the topography of the bar has completely changed. Johnnie's cowering underneath the bar somewhere; the businessmen have turned over their table and shielded themselves behind it. One of the miners has fallen off of his bar stool and is sprawled out across the ground; it initially looks like he's been hit, but Muhammad can hear him breathing and he has his hands behind his head, in the universal body language of the trembling hostage. The other miner hasn't moved; he hasn't even put down his drink, actually.
The woman doesn't react. Actually, she just looks bored. She walks into the bar, past the businessmen, who turn their table to keep it between them and her. She passes by the bar; the miner doesn't even look up. Johnnie peers over the bar at her as she goes by, like a frightened, mildly lustful bunny rabbit. And she walks by Muhammad, without glancing his direction.
Muhammad turns around, and sees her put the gun to the head of the guitarist. He's looking down, at the strings of the electric, as if in prayer. There's no sign of the new guy.
"Lucien ?" the woman says, like she's stating a fact. She has a very flat tone to her voice, like someone who has anger management problems and wants the whole world to know it before the fact.
The guitarist imperceptibly nods.
"Where is Dr. Hesse ?"
At first, Muhammad doesn't know who she's talking about. Then he thinks of a grey-haired man in a stained suit, has a beard, looks vaguely Jewish. Muhammad's always avoided him a result, more out of some buried cultural instinct than recent history. These days, he can't really see a need to be open-minded. But whenever the old man's at the bar, he sits with the guitarist.
The guitarist murmurs something underneath his breath that Muhammad can't hear. Neither can the woman, apparently, because she points the gun down at the table and puts three rounds into it.
"Speak up," she says, once the echoes die down.
"I said his bounty's only one million," says the guitarist.
"You know what they say," says the woman. She brings the gun back up to the guitarist's head. "Every little bit helps in this economy."
The guitarist shrugs. "I'm right here, Miss Valentine."
It takes Muhammad a second to realize the words came over from the door. He looks back; it's the old man. He's standing by the door, in a long grey trench-coat that's seen better days, and some kind of hat that looks like a compromise between a bowler and a fedora.
There's a bang behind Muhummad, and suddenly his right ear isn't working anymore. The old man's hat is gone. A few wisps of material float down back through the doorway.
"First lesson," says the woman from behind him. "I don't like people sneaking up on me."
"My apologies," says the apparent Dr. Hesse.
"How sweet of you," says the woman. There's a metallic click; the next second, a small red dot hovers over the exact center of the old man's forehead. "How about you come over here without making any sudden moves ?"
But the old man doesn't move. He's looking at the woman carefully, at her eyes as far as Muhammad can tell. It reminds Muhammad of the way his father used to examine patients, back before the assholes had taken away his license. That in turn leads a series of unpleasant memories, so Muhammad shoves that line of thought as far into the back of his head as possible.
The woman is not amused. "Anytime now, grandpa."
"You believe you are hear to collect my bounty," says the old man. He says it as a statement, with no additional emotion.
"I'm pointing a gun at your head," says the woman. "That's generally a good indication."
The old man seems to ignore her. "I don't believe you are here to arrest me, Miss Valentine," he says.
The woman sighs. The red dot drops from the old man down to his coat. "Hats are easy. You want me to try for the coat buttons ?"
"Last time I checked, Lucien," says the old man, "you were worth one and a half million."
He's looking at the guitarist. Muhammad turns back to see the guitarist shrug again; he's absentmindedly tuning his guitar underneath the table.
The woman doesn't even blink. The red dot stays where it is. "Great. Two for the price of one."
"I checked the bounty database last night," says the old man. "The bartender's worth three million."
The woman's head snaps over to the bar. Muhammad hears a scramble underneath, then the door to the back opens and closes; Johnnie didn't bother to stand up.
The doctor waits for her to turn her attention back to him, then he points in the direction of the two miners. The one on the ground has started to shake. "Jackson Brown and Gordo Lightfoot," says the old man. "Both worth twenty-five million, plus a five million bonus for bringing both in."
Jackson screams something to the ground, something about murder and remembering faces. Gordo has reached behind the bar and is helping himself to another shot. He has a somewhat determined look, like a man who long ago swore on his mother's grave that he would never, ever leave a bar without finishing his drink.
The woman looks indecisive now. The laser sight drifts uncertainly over the old man's coat and onto the doorframe. The doctor falls silent, and lets his hand drop.
From behind the table, one of the businessmen raises his hand. "I'm worth nine million," he says. "Tax evasion."
Gordo turns around; he looks interested. Another one of the businessmen raises his head above the table. "We all are, actually," he says. "Nine million each."
Gordo looks over at the guitarist. The guitarist looks up. "Pissed off my label," he says quietly. He then looks back down.
Jackson says something muffled to the ground that Muhammad can't hear.
"Dude, they can't hear you," Gordo says, quietly.
Jackson sits up. He's still trembling, and his eyes are all weird. "We were part of a militia group on Mars," he says. "And I cut a guy in Newcal. That's another fourteen."
Muhammad realizes that Gordo is looking at him now. So are the businessmen; they've turned their table back upright and are sitting down again.
So he shrugs. "I haven't done anything."
Everyone in the room goes silent.
Something in Muhammad tells him to say something. He looks down at his drink. What the hell. "There was this girl, you know ?"
Nobody says anything. There's kind of a sliding sound. Muhammad looks up just in time to catch the bottle of whiskey Gordo was holding as it comes down the bar. On the other side, Gordo nods, sort of.
There is a moment of awkward silence.
Muhammad risks a glance back at the woman. He can't make out the expression on her face; maybe she's going to laugh. Maybe she's going to kill everyone within a five block radius. Maybe she's going to break down crying. It could go any of those ways.
"I would like to advance a theory, Miss Valentine," says the doctor softly from the doorway. His voice is scarcely above a whisper, yet it echoes in the room.
"I don't believe you're here for my bounty, nor for anyone else's. And I don't believe in mistakes either."
The woman doesn't say anything.
"Think," says the old man quietly. There is no sign of pressure in his voice, no hate or fear or motivation. "What are you here for ?"
Muhammad is watching her eyes. He can't see any meaning in them; there seems to be nothing there.
He doesn't even see her make the decision. She just raises the gun again.
"Flashback," she says. Her voice has gone flat, as hollow as her eyes. "Now."
The old man looks satisfied. He looks away from her, towards one of the windows in the back wall. "May I introduce my associate, Mr. John Keats," he says.
And then there's this blur in the air. The woman falls to the ground, silently. The new guy is standing a few feet away from her, holding a knife blade-first in his hand. There's blood on the hilt, and he's smiling, not satisfied or lustful or angry or any of a hundred emotions Muhammad would expect in that place or time. Instead, he looks relieved. Like a man who's just had a burden lifted from his shoulders.
And the guitarist is standing behind him. As everyone stares, as the woman lies there on the floor, as the doctor smiles from the doorway, he starts to play something. It sounds almost like a funeral dirge as it begins, low and slow and humble. Like a man screaming inside, where no one can hear him.
And that's the last thing Muhammad remembers from that night.
He woke up the next morning with the usual hangover, in his long-term hotel room up the street. It looks like he passed out fully clothed on the bed; he's got the whiskey bottle in his hand, and it's empty, and he's got a five o'clock shadow that looks ten hours old.
And he's got a song stuck in his head for some reason, which makes him want to break open the minibar in the room. But the damn thing won't open - it locks automatically when you're more than a month behind on your rent, and Muhammad has that and more - and besides, he's an hour late for his node slot. So he stares at the screen, with his pounding headache, thinking about Rachel and trying to figure out what the hell happened last night.
He keeps thinking about it, as the numbers march across the screen and across the web. Over to Earth, and Mars, and a hundred other locations, as outside his window the snow begins to fall.