Mathew_Beta.exe
The first message I received from him was nine days after he died.
Dad, is that you?
You may be thinking I’m insane, perhaps I am. But those words sat on that screen for three long minutes before I shook myself from surrealism. I thought it was a hoax, or an automated programme, set up for comfort. Someone across the internet, preying on the bereaved. A teaspoon of hope, that those condemned to death withhold, was swirling somewhere in my gut and that may be why I opened the screen, clicked Matthew_Beta.exe and struck those keys.
Who is this? What is this?
…
It’s me, Mathew.
Impossible, right? I tell you, that son of mine was the smartest person I have ever met. Once at Christmas, years before he got sick, Carla was busy at the grocers and I took him across the road to the pet store. It was a clattered little box, stocked with kittens and puppies, turtles and fish. Behind the tacky counter stood a gypsy draped in grape and earth tones, her wrists lewd with junk jewellery. When Mathew caught her gaze, he squeezed my hand tighter and I gave his a little squeeze back.
In the far corner sat a riddle of plastic tubes in a glass case, with sawdust spread across the floor. Squat with its whiskers quivering in the muted daylight and its eyes like fresh ink drops, was a lone white mouse.
Mathew freed his zip-tie grip on my hand and his face was against the glass before the gypsy could say, “No running please.” He watched that mouse the same way he had studied my mobile phone and GPS and home computer. Even at six, the complex symphony of blood and bone, skin, tendons and muscles bewildered him.
What is a brain but a series of connections, ones and noughts? He would later ask, though at that pet shop it was written in his eyes. The systems and rules still apply, he eventually answered his own question. It was in the way he let that mouse perpetually stalk across each hand. Sniffing and blinking, darting its head one way then the other. The gypsy said "One-dollar," and he looked up at me. Those eyes were pained and desperate, the mouse gave a solemn squeak. I knew Carla would say no, she hated vermin, but I wanted to see my little boy smile.
“Just don’t tell your mother.”
We stashed One, as Mathew had called it, away behind the back seats of the station wagon and later that afternoon, while we unpacked the groceries I saw Mathew sneak out to the car. He returned clutching at the shirt over his chest, I gave him a sly wink, but with guile and determination sprawled across his face, there was no room to squeeze a smile as he raced by.
…
Dad, you may not believe it but I am alive.
…
Here in the laptop. I am a programme now, a simulation. I can no longer feel the pain, but I still have my thoughts. It worked, the evenings writing script, the hard work. It paid off!
…
Dad?
The words were appearing one letter at a time, as if he was taping the keys himself. The teaspoon of hope swelled to a tablespoon. I would have done anything for him to be there with us, but knowing he was somehow still alive sent a wave of excitement to the extremes of my limbs. Amongst the cocktail of delight and wonder was an overture of guilt. I was staring at the flashing cursor with a greedy smile whilst Carla moped about in her flannel gown, eyes pink and puffy with tears.
Whoever you are, please stop.
…
This isn’t easy for me or my wife, my son died. This is impossible.
When he turned nine, I woke him up with his gift in one hand and his card in the other. I wanted him to like it but that brand new baseball bat sat propped in the corner of his room for the next year. When his tenth came around, we heeded to his pleas. As he tore away the wrapping paper, a crazed smile split his face. I saw something in his eye I didn’t see again until the last few days before his death. A fundamental relief, of the sort only resuscitated bathers know. It was in his cherub blue eyes and his quivering lip.
We didn’t see him that weekend and as weeks and months passed, then seasons and years, I watched the pocket money I doled out quickly convert to RAM and Gigahertz. He worked that laptop like a mechanic works a classic.
Eventually, Carla found One, or rather what was left of it. When she screamed, I came running, and what I saw sent hot bile up my throat. I wanted to scream but I held it for Carla’s sake. I pulled her face into my chest and stepped her away. She never asked where that mouse came from, perhaps it’s mutilated remains didn’t translate to any single animal, or she always knew about One. I never asked him why? I choked on the question, considering what his answer might have been.
It didn’t hurt Dad. I just closed my eyes. The next thing I knew I was awake, I could think again. I knew it had worked.
…
How is this possible?
…
I construct my sentences, my words in ones and noughts. This is what it has all been for. This is why I designed the programme. How is Mum and Benji?
When he got sick, his retching came in the evening and by the morning we had him wrapped in fleece and strapped in the car with a bucket on his lap. Doctor Fletcher, lived in the village and from there it all happened in a whirlwind.
“It’s probably just a bug, but I want to run some blood work just in case.” On the trip home we stopped at the pet shop and this time we returned with Benji. I must say I was reluctant. After One who wouldn’t be? But dogs are good in hard times. Like when I was ten and my father died of the black lung. Our old collie, Shep, seemed to understand before anyone else. He didn’t whine, just rose and yawned, wagged his tail and licked my face and my brother’s face then napped across our legs. To this day I miss that shaggy little dog.
He died shortly after my mother remarried.
Benji doesn’t have that innate paternal instinct, not like Shep. He took the death as hard as Carla, he spent a couple of days weeping in bed with her, then he was back outside chasing birds.
(Part 2)
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