Man in Space

A middle-aged man clings to a narrow ridge of stone as lightning whipcracks in the dark air around him. “I’m fucked!” he laughs.

The storm past, he totters along the ridge to finish his mission: rescuing an injured young man stranded atop the mountain peak. 

“I can’t believe she left me up here,” the young man rages.

“She feels awful. But at least she sent help.”

“Fuck her.”

“I can understand that,” says Phil.

“Did you? Did you fuck her while I was up here losing my mind?”

“I almost got carbonized for you. A thank you would be nice.”

“Sorry. Do you think I should give her another chance?”

“Let’s try to get back down to Earth in one piece. After that, everything else is gravy.”

* * *

Back in the ski lodge, Phil relaxes over an expensive brandy. He is handsome and rich. He smiles half-sadly as the mountain-climbing girl makes up with her traumatized boyfriend.

* * *

Later that night, the woman knocks on Phil’s room and offers herself to him.

“I wouldn’t feel right,” says Phil.

“But you will feel good,” she says, pushing him backwards onto the bed.

“I guess we can always blame the altitude.”

“Blame whatever you want,” she says, pouncing on him.

* * *

Back in wintry New York, an athletic businessman in jeans and a white shirt, Phil instills new energy into his lethargic staff. They’ve missed his gusto and optimism.

Everyone needs his attention at once, for personal as well as business reasons. Phil’s mind is as adroit as his body. And even while making hard financial calculations he can savor things around him--his high school football, mementoes from his forays into far corners of the world, the cold but thronging metropolis outside his glass walls.

His company is on the verge of launching a revolutionary new enterprise.

“Dial my girlfriend,” he tells an assistant

“Give me a name,” jokes the assitant, but dials a number.

“I just wanted to say hi,” says Phil. “I hope you’re having an absolutely unbelievable day. Me? Of course I am. Don’t I always? Okay, sweetie. Bye, bye.”

* * *

Phil trots past a homeless man as if he doesn’t exist, running for a cab. The cab tears away with him in it. It stops abrubtly. Phil jumps out, runs back to the homeless man, gives him some money.

“I’m such an asshole sometimes,” says Phil.

As he trots back to the cab, a voice calls out, “Hang in there, Phil!” Phil looks at the homeless man, scans the crowd, sees no suspects. He grins at the strangeness of it.

* * *

It is night. Phil descends a loft staircase, wearing an elegant bathrobe. His penthouse is lit by moonlight coming through a large, round window. The place is huge, decorated with cultural artifacts and old scientific instruments. The round window is the face of a clock, seen in reverse.

We see the clock from outside, from the Brooklyn end of the Brooklyn Bridge--an arresting architecural detail atop a magnificent old factory building, now made into co-ops. Phil’s form is invisible from that distance.

Inside his clock, Phil gazing through falling snow at the bridge and the fairytale-looking city beyond it. We hear the low hum of the clockworks . The moon-limned artifiacts have a spectral quality, and somehow we sense that the whole interior space is some kind of motor or even a time machine, powered by a magical arrangement of all those instruments and talismans, and by Phil himself.

It’s as if Phil imagines himself the secret motor or timekeeper for everything outside the window.

A pair of thin arms encircle his stomach, his slight paunch. It’s his girlfriend, Vita.

“Starting to carry some ballast,” he says.

“I think it’s cute. It makes you imperfect, like the rest of us.”

“You’re the one who’s perfect.”

“Maytbe we’re just perfect for one another.”

He smiles at her, but doesn’t respond. She smiles sadly, burrowing into arms.

* * *

Snow has fallen on New York. Dressed for work, Phil kisses Vita goodbye, puts her in a limosine, then runs ski-style across the unplowed street to his local deli, whooping like a kid.

* * *

Inside the deli he is greeted warmly by the shopkeepers. As he waits for his specially-prepared cappucino, Phil recedes into the background, savoring all the details of this little corner in time and space--the worn wood floors, the boot stomping as customers enter, the rosy faces. He notices one man in particular--and now time seems to slow down--a quiet, bookish man in his early 40s. The quiet man, with quick glances, seems to take in everything around him.

To Phil’s delight, the quiet man notices an electric cord that has snaked out into an aisle like an animal snare. He pretends to drop his package in order to bend down and covertly tuck the cable back into place, averting a possible accident. The shopkeeper and another customer roll their eyes at this clumsiness and odd behavior, and the bookish man departs abrubtly with an awkward wave that no one returns.

* * *

A busy week at the office. Phil and his team labor hard and brilliantly. All the pieces are falling into place for their product launch--the advertising, the technology, the deals, the media attention.

Above all, it is Phil’s leadership and imagination that are making this happen.

* * *

Phil lunches with Sharlee,  an ex-girfriend, who scolds him for not using his talents on something important. “Global warming outranks everything,” she says. “It’s suicide of the species by inaction. By the time you feel the sunburn, it’s too late.”

There’s a definite heat between them, but it has nothing to do with climate.

“What’s wrong with living it up in the meantime?” Phil says.

“That’s what people say when they’ve given up and all they care about is themselves.”

“I don’t agree,” says Phil. “People who’ve given up just lay there. If you want to get people off their backs, you’ve got to give ‘em a reason. ”

“Continuing to exist isn’t enough reason?”

“Hell, no. But help them have some fun, then they might care about sticking around.”

“I think we’re all having too much fun already. That’s the problem.”

“I don’t see a lot of people with that problem. Though certain people might say I have that problem.”

“Certain people have said that.”

“Come on, Sharlee, you loved every minute of it. You felt alive.”

“I always feel alive, Phil. Your problem is you won’t even give depression a chance.”

“Why would anyone want to feel depressed?”

“Why would anyone want to bleed? But you’d be a weird fucking thing if you didn’t.”

* * *

Phil returns home one night exhausted. He changes into his running shorts, and then collapses on the bed, beyond waking.

* * *

Phil shows up at work in his running shorts, having jogged through the melting snow. His old receptionist shakes her head. 

“Now I have look at your legs all day,” she complains.

“No you don’t,” he says.

“Oh yes I do.”

* * *

The staff is visiting some basement technology lab that looks like its cement ceiling is about to collapse. Brian, Phil’s top advisor, says, “Don’t touch anything. I don’t want to be a squashed almost-millionaire.”

Two physically exhausted 24-year-old twins with crooked faces and eyes that seem to bulge with IQ pressure give the staff a demo. We get a glimpse of what Phil’s company is about to launch on the world: Virtual Reality showrooms. Using the twins’ patented sense-transfer technology, Phil will establish a database inventory of almost every product for sale anywhere in the world. Shoppers will be able to go into a small showroom, sit in a special chair, and shop for anything they want, “experiencing” the product with all their senses. When they’re ready to make a purchase, internet Bots will find the lowest price anywhere in the world and have the product shipped from plain old-fashioned warehouses.

* * *

Phil needs a break after the excitement of the technology demo. He goes off alone, oddly agitated.

He ends up in a school auditorium, where a flea market is being held to raise money for inner-city greenspaces.

Drinking bad coffee from a styrofoam cup, Phil’s keen eye for the hidden gem lands on a mousey, ratty-haired stamp dealer in his fifties. He approaches him,  smiling with interest.

The man seems to be hiding from the world behind his smeared eyeglasses. Phil gradually draws him into conversation.

“What is it, Sam, about philately that you love? I mean, the ickiest, most embarassing thing!”

Sam is regretting he got into this.

“Come on, Sam. What gets you here!” Phil taps on Sam’s vinyl windbreaker with two fingers, making a dent in the heart area.

“Everyone uses a stamp at some point in their life. When you lick a stamp, some of your DNA goes into the glue. All these stamps, they have artwork on the front. It’s nice, but eventually you’ve seen all the artwork. But on the backside, preserved in the glue, are these imprints of DNA, which is nature’s own kind of engraving. And every single one is unique. Every one represents a functioning, thinking thing that nature created.”

He notices he is getting excited, and tones himself down. He shrugs, “Maybe someday science’ll be able to read the backs of stamps. What a collection that would be, huh?”

“You’re a goddamned poet, Sam.”

“The strange thing is, everyone thinks they’re just sending a letter, or a check, with a nice little picture of some president, or Elvis, in the upper right-hand corner. But they’re sending themself. Imagine a world where that’s possible. Us accidental things can walk across the planet and say hello to these other accidental things that know what it’s like to be us. But what we get excited about is, oh,  look how many different presidents I’ve got here, I’ve got a great new thing that takes the skin off potatoes, I just met this man with lots of money!”

Phil’s eyes are moist and glad.

“Just some crazy things you think sometime.”

“Who woulda thought I’d meet a great man here at a funny little flea market.”

“I’m no great man,” he mutters bitterly.

“Don’t you believe that, Sam,” says Phil, departing. “Thanks for telling me your secret.”

And then from across the auditorium, he yells. “Sam!” The stamp collector looks up, irritated at all this attention. “You’re a helluva ballroom dancer!”

Customers look at Sam with curiosity, including an attractive woman his age. “Some nutty guy,” Sam explains.

* * *

Suddenly Phil must leave town. His staff is frutstrated, but seem used to this. Vita is less understanding. She screams at him over the phone and hangs up. Phil rides an empty elevator and yells his frustration for three floors.

People waiting at an elevator door hear the howls coming closer. The doors open, and there stands Phil, serene and collected. “How do you do?” he says to the apprehensive faces.

* * *

Phil squints across a bright Australian landscape, dressed in rugged outdoor clothing, handsome and virile as Indiana Jones. He makes easy banter with the locals, slipping in and out of the local slang.

As he and his small band of adventurers saddle up, a voice in the crowd shouts, “I ain’t forgettin’ about you, Phil!” The others ride on, Bull Phil stops to scan the crowd.

Once again, the voice seems to have come from nowhere. “I’ll be damned!” he says, enjoying the mystery of it.

* * *

Phil and the others gallop across the glorious landscape, helping to drive a herd of Australian cattle.

* * *

In an outdoor pub, Phil swaps tales and jokes with the others--a man’s man if there ever was one. A couple of good-looking country women are observing him.

* * *

One of the Australian women approaches Phil as he savors the southern constellations. She’s free-spirited and very sexy, and more like Phil than any woman we’ve seen him with yet.

“There’s someone waiting for me back home,” he says.

“That’s a whole half a world from here,” she says. “You think those stars care if a couple of us down here have a little extra fun?”

“Is fun the only thing that matters?”

“Matter, anti-matter...I want to show you something.” She unbuttons her shirt, gradually revealing more cleavage. “There’s a billion, billion, billion, billion, billion solar systems out there.” She opens her shirt like delicate wrapping paper, exposing her breasts to the starlight. “How many of ‘em do you think have these?”

Phil laughs.

“And how long you think these are gonna be here? About 10 more seconds, unless you do something about it.”

“I was always a sucker for philosophy,” he says.

* * *

Phil gets out of an airport cab in front of his building, leaves his bags with the doorman, and heads for the deli, stiff from his long flight. It’s morning, and summer seems to be coming on fast.

To his delight, Phil sees his bookish neighbor emerge from the deli with a lovely woman. Anyone can see they’ve spent the night together, and probably began the morning the same way they ended the night.

The bookish man wears a smile that we wouldn’t have believed possible. There’s a chivalry and sense of humor in his manner that is undeniably winning. The woman’s laugh  is soft, utterly relaxed, and her body folds into his as they walk, the world seemingly invisible to her. 

Phil goes inside.

“Where you been?” asks the clerk.

“Orbiting the Earth.”

“You got more air miles than John Glenn. What you need? A special cappucino?”

“Juan, I’ve been thinking about your cappucino for the last eleven thousand miles.” 

“There ain’t no place like home, eh Mr. Phil? Nothing like the home fires burning.”

Phil flinches. “ I guess not.”

* * *

All hell has broken loose at the office. A cartel of investors and big business interests have mounted an assault on Phil’s fledgling enterprise. Phil is the only one taking it with good humor. “Hey, people, this isn’t the be all and end all of life, here. This is a game.  It’s supposed to be fun.”

“Now you tell us,” says one of the women, speaking for all.

* * *

Phil and Vita make ecstatic love in his loft bedroom, the top of the window clock peeking over the railing like a private moon.

“Oh, Phil, you make me want to scream with my pussy!”

“That’d be interesting,” he says.

She straddles him, feeding on him like a lioness.

“Baby,” her says. “God I luh...I’m lucky.”

She pushes herself off him, damp all over. “Oh, Phil!” she says. The thing he almost said is like a balloon hovering above them.

“God, Phil...”

“What?”

She laughs and gets up, lovely against the city light framed within the clock.

“What makes you tick?” she says.

“You make me chime.”

“Come on,” she says. “Tell me your secret.”

“I don’t have any secrets.”

She flinches a little, but keeps her suspicions to herself. “You’re a happy man, Phil. You’re just always...happy. Don’t you know that’s strange?”

He paces, fiddles with some of his artifacts, takes her place standing before the clock. She reclines on the bed, admiring him.

“I’ve always asked myself, what would it be like not to be here. I imagine I’m an astronaut, stranded in outer space. I can see the Earth, but I can’t get back. Can’t ever get back. All I’ve got is myself, my little cockpit, and window. Hell, from up there, the shittiest weather, the more boring people, the most ordinary, stupid stuff, if you could just get back, it’d be heaven!”

He faces his clock. “I guess I just wake up thinking that. That this is all heaven.”

“So even though I’m boring...”

“Not you!” he says. “You’d be fun no matter what.”

“Fun girl. That’s what I live to hear.”

He joins her on the bed. “You’d be great no matter what. You’d be heaven. You’re one of things I don’t even have to try to--”

He has almost said that word again.

She sings part of the David Bowie song. “This is ground control to Major Tom.”

“Major Tom,” he says. He rolls on his back, looks at the ceiling, and sings. “Far above the world.”

“But you’re not,” she says, almost doubtfully.

“No. I’m right here,” he laughs, “just like everybody else.”

She looks like she could disagree, but  just lays her face on his chest, closing her eyes.

•

Phil has a bad dream--something vaguely about loneliness and isolation--and wakes up, startled. Vita is standing above him, fully dressed, “I have to go,” she says. 

“No,” he says, sounding a little scared. 

“Did you have a nightmare?” she asks, almost hopefully. 

“No, I’m okay.”

“I just wanted to kiss you. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Kiss me again. I’m conscious now.”

She kisses him, waits for him to say something, but he doesn’t.

“Call me later,” she says, and leaves, a stunningly elegant woman.

* * *

Late morning this time as Jeff heads across the street for cappucino in his work clothes. The sun is bright. Flowers are blossoming. “Can you believe this weather?” asks a stranger, marveling at the early summer.

Phil emerges with his cappucino. He sees his bookish neighbor watching a livery car pull away and recede into the distance. Phil waits to see what’s going on.

When the car disappears, the man turns, his face dull with shock. He looks like someone who has just been told he’s dying.

* * *

As Phil walks though the downtown streets to his office, a voice calls, “I’m almost there, Phil.” Phil wheels, dashes to and fro, trying to find the prankster.

“Damnit anyway!” he says.

“It’s gonna be all right,” says a homeless man, wandering obliviously.

Phil smiles, sure he has found his prankster. “Bill?” he says, touching the man’s shoulder. The man turns in panic, wailing. “Sorry, sorry,” says Phil. “Go to hell!” says the scared man, shuffling away.

* * *

Phil gets even grimmer news from his staff. His company has lost an exclusive technology contract, and now they face ruin. Everyone watches him with stunned faces.

Phil sits silently, his back to the staff, staring out the window. The others glance uneasily at one another, hopeful that at last their master will have a breakdown and prove himself human.

His shoulders start to move up and down. A woman dares to approach him. “It’s okay, Phil. We’ll get through it some--” But she sees he is laughing. “Damnit, Phil, what could possibly be funny right now?”

“Look,” he says, pointing out the window. Some workmen on the opposite roof are having a Laurel and Hardy moment with a crane rigged out of two-by-fours.

“Phil, you’re about to go bankrupt and we’re all out on the street. Could you please pay a little attention?”

“Don’t worry, don’t worry,” he says, facing them. “Why don’t you all take a week off--with pay--and when you come back, I’ll have something else for us.”

“Just like that,” says one advisor with irritation.

“Not just like that. I said I need a week.”

“If you pull a rabbit out of the hat this time,” says the advisor, “I’ll eat the hat and the rabbit both, raw, and I’m a vegetarian.”

* * *

It’s another day. Phil is dressed like a European aristocrat. He is in the palatial offices of some international business empire. The receptionist herself looks like minor royalty. Phil moves with such confidence and ease he seems to be on wheels. He offers pleasant greetings to a pair of gray haired generals of the opposite side, who shake their jowls in surprise.

Then he is in the magnificent board room, facing a stately cadre of magnates, arrayed before him in a grand ellipse.

“Well, gentlemen, you snuck into my castle and took the golden goose. It’s not the way I do business, but it was an amazing piece of work. I applaud you.”

He literally applauds them.

“Now, I think I can get it back. Jim, you’ve been skydiving with me.” To the others he says, “We had a little contest, see who could wait the longest to pull their chute.” And then to the younger man again, he says, “What do you say, Jim? Want to try again?”

Jim tries to hide the nausea that memory brings back. Phil jumps up onto the beautiful table, his athleticism startling.

“You fellas wanta go sky diving?”

Their faces give their answer. Phil strides along the table between them, accidentally cracking a little ceramic. “Sorry, boys. How much did that cost? Just take it out of the FORTY-TWO MILLION DOLLARS STOLE FROM ME!”

“Really, Mr. Downs...”

“I’m just about through, Mr. Gileston. Now, it was my golden goose, and in a purely ethical sense it’s still my golden goose. But I’ll tell you what. I’m not gonna fight you for it. You can have it.” As that shock sinks in, he jumps off the table, something not many middle-aged men should even attempt.

“Because, you know what? I’m the guy that laid the egg that became the golden goose. And...wait---ohhh, my stomach hurts. Ohhhh. Ohhhhh.”

He looks at them brightly. “I’m about to have another golden goose!  No! Not a golden goose. A golden fox! That likes to eat...golden geese! “ He feels his own stomach. “Boy is this fella rarin’ to go!”

He grins at each disgusted face and struts joyously from the room.

* * *

Phil’s chief advisor, Brian, stands fidgeting on the street. It’s a warm, sunny day. His conscience bites him, and he hands a five dollar bill to the homeless man nearby.

Phil strides out of the building, proud as a billionaire. “Well, how much did you get out of them?” Brian asks.

Phil just grins.

“Oh shit. What’d you tell them?”

“I said we’re gonna put ‘em outa business.”

“And how in the hell are we gonna do that?”

“I don’t have a clue, Brian.”

He leaves his associate standing there, stunned. Phil calls back, “Yet! Enjoy your week off!”

Brian takes back the five dollar bill.

* * *

In his penthouse, Phil leaves a phone message for Vita. “Honey, I’m sorry, but I’ve gotta go again, just for a week. Gotta do some slo-pokin’. I miss you already. I’ll call you from somewhere.” He hangs up the phone.

He whoops like a man set free from prison.

* * *

Dressed for the cold altitude, Phil huffs and puffs to a high promontory in the northwestern mountains and collapses on his backback, his teeth bared with gusto and delight as he gazes over the spectacular landscape below.

“What a fucking planet!” he says.

* * *

Under the stars, eating his own cooking, Phil listens to the faint noises of wild nature. Then all sounds fade away. It is just Phil, barely visible by starlight, sitting in a soundless vacuum, nothing visible to us but he and the icy stars.

The silence lasts and lasts.

Finally we hear him exhale hard--he has been holding his breath to create the sense of nothingness. The mountain sounds fade back up, and now, after that long deafness, it seems like a veritable symphony of voices.

* * *

Phil, still in the middle of the wilderness in the middle of the night, halfway up in space, is dancing around his campfire like a shaman, singing, “Forever In Blue Jeans,” along with Neil Diamond--

...you and I

All alone by the fire

Nothing around

But the sound of my heart

And your sighs.

Money talks

But it can’t sing and dance

And it can’t walk

And long as I can have you here with me

I’d much rather be

Forever in blue jeans, babe.

* * *

In high sprits, Phil rides across the Brooklyn Bridge on his bicycle--in blue jeans and white shirt, the sleeves rolled up in this prematurely hot spring.

* * *

Phil maneuvers his bike through the congestion of cars and pedestrians, almost making it a dance, even managing to coax smiles and do-si-does out of some office girls at a crosswalk.

He shouts to some men unloading boxes, “Time for a beer!” and one shouts back, “You got that right, bro!”

* * *

Carrying his bike, Phil enters an office full of hopeful but skeptical faces. They look like they’ve had a miserable week--except for the old receptionist. “Millie, you got a tan!” says Phil.

“A vacation’s a vacation. I’m too old to worry.”

“Well, I hope you all got some rest, ‘cause we’ve got a lot of work to do.”

“Bottom line, Phil,” says Brian. “And we want you tell us straight out. Is this gonna be some bullshit welfare because you feel sorry for us?”

“Guys, this isn’t bullshit. You know I don’t do that.”

“You’ve never lost $42 million before.”

“Losing that contract was the best thing that ever happened to us. Let ‘em have it. ‘Cause that ain’t the future anymore. We’re gonna make a new future.”

“You got a time machine?”

“Yes, Phil, I’ve got a time machine!”

“I’m going to refrain from ecstatic shouts of confidence for the time being, if you don’t mind.”

* * *

In his penthouse, at night, Phil faces his clock window and the world beyond, humming like a pagan priest. He seems to be soaking up energy like a battery.

He finishes his ritual, content and relaxed. He spreads himself face-first against the round window, his arms spread like clock hands. On the street below he sees a drunk staggering a crooked course across the wide street. A car stops to avoid him, and Phil can hear the insane curses of the drunk.

It is the bookish man, reeling in misery.

“I’m on my way back. Just a little longer now.” The voice has come from nowhere--the same voice he has heard several times before. But now, in the silence, he can discern the electronic nature of it.

“Okay, who are you? What’s the joke?” shouts Phil. “Come on! It’s funny, but it’s not that funny!” But there is no response.

Phil is puzzled, and just a little worried now.

* * *

Phil is on a business call from his penthouse as a team of surveillance experts finish checking his house for bugs.

“It’s worse than you thought,” says one of them.

Phil says into the phone, “Just a minute.” And then, “What’d you find?”

The surveillance expert, loaded with gadgets, holds out his hand. In the palm of his glove is a shiny, dead cockroach.

“Some kind of cutting edge biological transmitter?”

“Naw, regular roach.”

“Shit!”

“Yeah. The electronic kind you can get rid of. Other than that you’re clean.”

“You’re sure.”

“I didn’t check for silverfish, but there’s no snoop stuff here.”

Phil looks aggravated.

* * *

Montage in which Phil and his staff bring his new idea towards reality--phone calls, meetings, airplane trips, more meetings--technical wizards holed up cheap office space, investors, marketing pros--interspersed with Phil’s active private life: sailing with Vita and some friends; he and Vita dancing in some jazz dive; Phil playing pitch and catch with Brian, who can barely walk without tripping; Phil introducing Sam the stamp collector to a friend who teaches ballroom dance; Phil having an air conditioner brought in as a gift to the neighborhood deli; trying on and rejecting a VR helmet; Phil sharing a beer with the guys fixing the sidewalk at his building; Phil scuba diving with some dark skinned islanders; Phil trying on a smaller design for the VR helmet and rejecting it again; Phil and Vita making love in her apartment, a classy but small place in Manhattan; some young woman trying to attract Phil in an airport, and he resisting with a pained smile.

* * *

It’s a magnificent board room not unlike the one Phil did battle in before. He’s dressed his best again, and key members of his staff are present. Various investors--not quite so stodgy a bunch as at the other table--wait expentantly. They all don what looks like a large pair of sunglasses and a pair of lightweight gloves, ventilated for comfort, and a flat band that velcroes around each ankle. Each person has a pager-like device, which some attach to their belts, others leave sitting on the table.

A large TV screen comes to life. It shows Vita and Sam the stamp collector, standing on a lovely little village street in Cuba, wearing the final design of the VR helmet, small and lightweight, plus the same kind of gloves, ankle bands and pager we’ve seen in the board room.

“Okay, sweetheart, you’re on.”

The TV screen switches to a split-screen view of what Vita and Sam see, as they walk through the town. The participants in the board room exclaim like people on a roller coaster.

“It takes a few minutes,” says Phil. “Your mind has to adapt to a new source of sensations.”

“It’s like I’m actually walking,” says a woman who is sitting.

And soon Vita and Sam are inspecting wares in the market, obeying requests to touch this or that. “Not too many at a time,” says Phil. “There’s only two of them--for now.”

And then some music strikes up in the Latin market, and Sam asks Vita to dance. The remote cameraman, laughing, switches to standard camera view, and we see that Sam has become quite an uninhibited dancer.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is Sam the man--who gave me the inspiration for this idea. How’s it feel to know you’re gonna be rich, Sam?”

“Feels good!” answers Sam. “But so does this.”

“Remember whose girl she is,” says Phil.

“Whose girl am I?” answers Vita.

The demonstration has been an amazing success.

“My friends, this isn’t virtual reality. This is reality. This is people sending a little bit of themselves through something just a little more complicated than a telephone to someone else. That’s all. What’s it good for? It’s good for anything people like to do with other people. That’s it. We put it out there, we let people do the rest. And every time they do, we make a little licensing fee for our effort. A lot of little licensing fees. Who’s wants to interact with a database when you can reach out across this amazing planet and say hello to someone, and have them say hello back?”

* * *

The gray-haired magnates sit around their big oval table, looking stunned. Dozens of different magazines and newspapers are strewn across the gleaming table, each of them heralding “Touchback,” Phil’s new “contact” medium.

“How can one son of a bitch reach out like that and make the world spin the other way around?” asks one of them, his jowls hanging lifelessly.

“The guy ain’t real,” says Jim, his face slack. “If you dropped a bomb on his head, it’d turn out that bombs aren’t really bombs. They’re water balloons. And he’d be standing there in a swimsuit with a bar of soap, waiting for the shower to start.”

“How low’d he go before he pulled his chute that time?”

“He never pulled it,” says Jim.

Those wise heads of earthly matters all swivel slowly towards Jim, who stares vacantly, his skull wobbling.

* * *

Phil and Vita are having dinner at an elegant restaurant, their table overlooking the dance floor.

“Phil, I’m breaking up with you,” she says.

His jaws work silently, but he doesn’t lose his smile.

“Okay,” he says.

“Don’t you want to know why?”

“I’ve heard it before.” He signals for the check, lays down more than enough cash, rises.

“So you’re just gonna float away?” she asks.

“It’s what I do,” he says. “Anti-gravity man. No one can pull me down to earth.”

“That’s what she said. I never said any of that.”

“Well, she was right. And I don’t want to be pulled down. I like it up here.”

“I think the altitude has gone to your head,” she says--the kind of bluntness he loves.

“I’m gonna miss you,” he says. And he leaves, confident and lightfooted, no trace of defeat  in his walk.

* * *

Phil sits at a Paris cafe, handsome and bright. A beautiful young woman is making coy suggestions with her shoulders and glances.

* * *

Phil stands in a window, looking out over Paris, wearing a silk robe. In the big bedroom behind him the beautiful woman languishes in happy exhaustion.

Phil looks utterly pleased with himself. His eyes cross, and he falls.

* * *

A pair of French surgeons explain to him that he has a brain cancer. Phil listens with interest to the technical explanation. “Wait, wait, wait. What you’re saying,” he tells them, “is that I’m a dead man.”

The physicians shift uncomfortably. “No, it’s okay,” he says. “I’m not afraid to die. I kinda thought it would happen eventually. But is that what you’re saying? How long do I have?”

“Not very long,” says one of them.

“Let me put it this way. Should I renew my subscription to Harper’s?”

“Oh, certainly. I think they bill you later,” says a one of the doctors. The other doctor shakes his head disapprovingly.

“I appreciate the truth,” says Phil.

* * *

Phil strolls on the roof of his Brooklyn building at night, under a smog-dark sky, holding a cocktail. He reflects on the glittering city with interst.

“It’s been a hell of ride,” he says happily.

The night answers with a distant howl. On a roof below him, a man with upraised arms yells with anguish: not once, but three times, as if trying to expel his insides.

It’s his heartbroken neighbor.

* * *

New York is baking in the intense summer heat. Sharlee leads an outdoor protest against global warming. “I hope you’re enjoying it now, because this is the good part!” she trumpets. We’ve wasted our last best chance. Now all we’ve got left is bad chances. I hope we make the most of them.”

She sees someone monitoring her with one of Phil’s TouchBack helmets. She speaks into that little third-eye camera. “Wherever you are. We’ve been living sky-high, like there’s no real tomorrow. But tomorrow’s gonna come, like it or not. Like ourselves or not. This is the real thing. It’s time to come back down to earth.” 

* * *

Phil watches her on a TV in some low-cielinged country tavern. He finishes his drink, says goodnight to his new friends, and heads outside.

The sun is setting. The world looks and feels as beautiful as a world ever gets. Getting into his pickup truck, Phil sees a couple of teenagers standing in a little park, oblivious to the sky show. They are wearing TouchBack gear and dancing to some music from somewhere else in the world.

* * *

Phil sits on the fender of his truck up on some mesa, looking out over the starlit desert. 

“Hi, honey,” he says.

“Where are you?” Vita answers. 

It’s as if he is speaking to a disembodied voice--until we notice the wire-thin earpiece/microphone he is wearing, and the cell-phone lying on the hood.

“I’m on this amazing planet. The hills look like modern sculpture.”

“Can you see the stars?”

“Every one of them.”

“I’ve been thinking about you.”

“I’ve been thinking about you.”

“Phil, if you want me to come back--”

“I’m not scares, Vita. I’m happy. I’m alive.”

“You’re dying, Phil.”

“That doesn’t bother me.”

She’s reluctant to say what she wants to say.

“If that doesn’t bother you Phil, what does?”

“Nothing bothers me.”

“What about me? Leaving you?”

“I’ve tried to tell you. Just being here is heaven. If I were just a brain in a jar, if I had just one sense left--one ear, one nostril--I’d be happy. It’s better than being out there!”

“Out where?”

“Out there! Like Major Tom.”

“There is no out there! You’re here! We’re all here! That’s not what we’re supposed to compare it to! You’re leaving me, Phil, and I’m gonna be left behind right here, not out there, feeling like nothing matters, nothing feels good--”

“Nothing has any color. Nothing has any taste--”

“There’s nothing I want to get up and see, no place I want to go--”

“Everything reminds you of me. All you can think of is the things we did together, and the things we were going to do together. You don’t eat, you don’t sleep--”

“Phil?”

“You drag yourself around, but the world’s just a picture of the world. Everyone’s gone but you. No one’s coming back for you. You cry so hard you’re sure god or the universe or someone has got to hear you and say, god, this guy has suffered enough, go back to him, go back to him, god, make the world green and blue and real again...” 

He stops talking, shocked.

“Vita?”

There is no answer.

“Are you there? Did you hang up?

He jiggles the headset, runs to the phone, redials it. But it’s dead as a rock.

“Kneel.” It’s the disembodied voice he’s been hearing all along.

“What?”

“Kneel!”

“Who the fuck are you!”

“Come on, man. Kneel!”

“I’m not kneeling! Now tell me what the fuck this is!”

There’s only the silence of the desert. And Phil is now far from happy. The world now looks black and white, is soundless. He kicks the dirt, but there is no sound. Bangs the hood of the truck, but he hears only his own voice.

“Vita? Vita? I want to come back. I want to come down.” He is sobbing. “I’m so fucking tired of the altitude!” And suddenly he is gasping for air. There is no more oxygen left on earth. He is among the stars. There is no desert, no planet earth, just stars outside the metallic frame of his window. He reels backward, hitting the wall with a noise like some punching an oil drum.

He’s in a small spacecraft. A headset dangles from its wires--he detached from it when he jumped up from his cot.

“Jesus!” he says, still groggy from his coma. He checks various instruments to see how long he’s been out. He works at his controls, punching himself a coffee.

We see the outside of his craft--a shattered portion of a massive space station that is now just a mangled skeleton floating in a sea of its own debris.

Phil is calm now. The coffee helps. He finally summons up the image he wanted--the meteor that is slowly spinning his way, on a certain collision course.

“Well, pal, I gave it a go,” he says to his companion, who lies comatose in his bunk, dreaming a dream provided by the same kind of headset Phil ripped himself out of. His fellow astronaut looks like the bookish neighbor.

The dials tell him he was unconscious for 25 minutes. And there are only five minutes until collision.

He rotates the craft--it’s the only control he has left. The window swivels past the oncoming meteor--a calmly approaching bomb of stone--and continues swiveling until we see the blue earth below.

He settles himself comfortably, sips his coffee, and waits for the end to come.

His companion moans. The coma device warns that an overload is imminent. “Sorry, Neil, I have to switch you off.” He deactivates the unit.

Neil, zombielike, rises and attacks Phil.

“Face it like a man!” says Phil. Neil starts to laugh crazily. “You think I’m the coward! I’m the coward?”

“I tried it, too, okay? But it’s bullshit. Reality is reality. We’re gonna die. They dumped us out here,  we’re not worth saving, and in two minutes we’re stardust! So get used to it!”

Neil laughs. “You are so full of shit, Phil. Phil Downsman. Piltdown. Piltdown Man!”

“I’ve heard that joke all my life,” says Phil. “Something original would be nice, in my remaining two minutes of existence.”

“You’re a hoax!”

“Thank you.”

Neil stabs Phil with a hypo, and forces his own coma-set over Phil’s skull. “Sweet dreams, anti-gravity man!”

“How did you know that?”

But Phil loses consciouisness.

* * *

He is moving through a crowded subway tunnel. Strangers are looking at him with concern and anxiety.

* * *

Now he moves into a less-used tunnel. There are faint sounds of distant panic, emergency alarms.

Phil tries to look at himself in the glass pane of an emergency panel. He sees the face of Neil, bedraggled and swollen with crying. He turns, sees a thin MTA cop facing him.

“You gotta get out!” says the cop.

He hits the cop in the face and runs

* * *

He is somewhere alone, and the earth seems to crack, and rubble bombs down on him.

* * *

An electric cable whipcracks in the darkness. Neil lies on a metal girder, paralyzed with fright. “I’m fucked!” he moans, too injured or too hopeless to care.

* * *

A voice shouts from the darkness. “I gotta go back and shut it off. Hang in there!”

* * *

The cable dies. He lies in the darkness, hearing only the sound of his breathing, a slight rain of rubble.

* * *

A voice shouts through a walkie talkie in the darkness. “I’m coming back. It won’t take long!”

* * *

He is making love to the beautiful woman Phil saw him with that morning. It is passionate, exuberant joy.

* * *

He is looking through a window somewhere in Manhattan. That same woman leans forward into the embrace of another, handsomer man.

* * *

He sits in his apartment alone, the place a wreck now. A pile of unopoened mail falls and strews itself across the floor, amidst gin bottles.

* * *

Neil throws a fit in some office, gets assisted to the elevator by burly men, looking disheveled and ill.

* * *

“Not that much longer!” says the walkie-talkie voice.

* * *

There is a splashing of water, a sputtering. 

“Neil! Neil! Neil”

Light snaps on. It is the thin cop, his head rising from a dark pool of water amidst a rubble of cement and dirt. He has lit a torch. We finally see Neil’s predicament. He lies on a twisted steel girder which form a sort of seesaw. If the seesaw rocks too far, a massive boulder of cement and rock will crash down on him. It is like a massive mousetrap, with him lying on the half-sprung trigger.

“Neil! You gotta snap out of it, man!”

Neil is awake, but in shock. His head is motionless, but his eyes flicker a little.

“I can’t come any further,” says the cop. “If I move any of these rocks, the whole thing might come down.”

“You shouldn’t be here,” says Neil. “It’s too dangerous.”

“Well, you shouldn’t be here either. But we’ll get you out of it.”

“I don’t see how.”

“I saw you back there, before the explosion,” says the cop. “I guess you’re having a pretty day.”

“Pretty bad month. This doesn’t actually seem that bad, compared to the rest.”

“A woman?”

Neil can’t even answer it.

“Well, maybe I know what you’re thinking,” says the cop. “As long as you stay right there you’re safe. But look, man, there ain’t no future in this.”

Neil laughs a little.

“Neil, I know life’s no bowl of cherries. But anything’s better than nothin’.”

“Is it?”

“Damn near. Look, what you gotta do is get up super slow, then you gotta run about two steps and dive here in this tunnel I’m in.

“I can’t make it.”

The cop can see there’s only a slim chance that anyone could do it fast enough. Neil coughs. Even that slight motion causes the meteor overhead to rain down rubble.

“You can make it,” says the cop. “You just gotta really want it. Okay? You gotta want the hell out of it. But you can do it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Who’s sure about anything? I’m not sure I’d try it.  It’s your life, Neil. If you want to just play it safe, I understand. I really do. I’ll stick with you either way.”

“You got a family?”

The cop is reluctant to tell the truth. “Two kids,” he says. And then, “My wife divorced me three years ago.”

“Does it still hurt?”

“Yeah, it still hurts. What’s your story.”

“Never been married.”

“But you been hurt.”

Neil can’t bring himself to speak about it.

“I’m no one to give advice,” says the cop. “I pretty much get my strength by the pint. But if you don’t go for it, is it gonna be ‘cause of this meteor hanging over your head, or is it life on earth in general?”

Neil sighs.

“This is Major Tom to ground control,” he sings. “I’m stepping through the door. The stars look very different today.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t know about that guy. But all you gotta do is run, dive, and be the luckiest guy in the world for about five seconds.”

Neil laughs bitterly.

He rises slowly to his feet, causing another rain of rubble, and a deep grinding sound overhead.

“Don’t make me wait too long,” says the cop. He submerges backwards into the tunnel, holding his flashlight as a target in the black water. The torch is flickering out, casting a fading glimmer on his twisted diving board.

The underwater flashlight looks like a murky blue planet.

“Want the hell out of it,” Neil repeats. “Shit, I want the hell out of this.”

Agrin takes over his face--the same gustro-driven smiles we’ve seen on Phil so many times.

He runs forward. The darkness screeches dangerously above him. He dives toward the light.