Cogito, Ergo Sum
A disillusioned man’s fantasy of being a hero unexpectedly becomes reality.Why was the conductor looking at him?
Geoff couldn’t understand it. He was of no importance, had no relevance to the orchestra’s performance. Hell, he hadn’t even been inside the theater. He’d just been drifting past and happened to glance over when a sudden, glorious swell in the music brought tears to his eyes.
Why, at the height of his performance, when he was the absolute center of attention, would the conductor turn to look at him?
And Geoff knew he had. Even from a hundred feet away, he could tell, because—and this was the strangest part—when their eyes met, the maestro jerked his gaze back to the orchestra as if he’d been caught out.
It didn’t make any sense.
Geoff wiped a tear from his cheek and trudged on. What the fuck did it matter anyway?
He veered off the path and sat down at a table beneath a tree. It was a stifling afternoon. Not a breath of wind. Just the stench of fish and festivity. He was by the waterfront.
Straight ahead, the conductor was slashing and stabbing like a wizard fighting for his life. In better times, Geoff might’ve attempted to amuse the local populace by parodying the man. As things stood, he just eyed him grimly and said, “Aren’t you also just so tired of it all?”
Geoff wasn’t delusional. He had addressed the question to a drifter-looking type on the other side of the table—a poor choice, as it turned out. The man, whose entire left side, including that hemisphere of his beard, was coated with dust, didn’t seem fit for conversation, especially not the heavy kind.
With his eyes half-closed and mouth half-open, he was clearly lost in a world of his own. Even so, he slowly came to and said, “Heh?”
Geoff turned to him. “I said, ‘Aren’t you also just so tired of it all?’” Geoff turned back to the theater. “All these games we play, the asses we lick, the compromises we make … the perpetual sense of being someone other than yourself—like some two-bit actor. It’s so tiring! I’ve been at it most of my life, and just look where it’s got me. I hate my job, I just failed to win back the love of my life, and worst of all, I despise myself.
“You should’ve seen me just now … Puh! How embarrassing! I was groveling. No wonder she lost interest in me. She’s not even angry or hurt. Just plain free of any care for Geoff.
“Ah, how different it was in the beginning … I was bold back then. Swashbuckling. With the aid of a few beers, the embodiment of a female fantasy. Women fell for me like lumber. I don’t know if you’ve seen any of his busts, but I take quite strongly after Alexander the Great: curly hair, strong nose, thousand-mile stare. Now, imagine Alexander the Great swaggering around in a nightclub—that was me. Men feared me; women wanted to sleep with me. These days, I don’t even have the nerve to leave an extra button undone.”
He flicked a button on his shirt.
“I’m not sure how it got to this, to be honest. I guess I just started taking the easy road more and more. Became enamored with comfort. Lost touch with my values. Tried to be like water. I don’t know. But I feel … flat, heavy—like wet cement. I’m uninspired. Ellie was the last carrot that made me lick my lips. Nothing else holds any allure … except … It’s funny—when you listen to music, really beautiful music, like this, do you sometimes … fantasize? You know, about some situation, some ideal version of yourself?”
Geoff eagerly turned toward the drifter, but only more disappointment awaited him. The drifter was fast asleep.
Geoff slammed his fist down on the table. “Wake up, son! This is serious!”
The drifter jolted awake. “Huhwhatdoyouwhat?”
“I said, ‘This is serious!’ I am despairing here, on the verge of blowing my brains out, and you can’t even bother to listen to me!”
“I’m sorry. I’m tired.”
“I am tired!” said Geoff, jabbing his thumb into his chest. “Tired of this goddamn counterfeit life … I’m not made for it. Really, I’m not. I’m living in the wrong era, I realize it more and more. I should’ve been born millennia ago, when men could still be men, when honor was still the highest virtue.
“I’m made for glory and thunder, for gore and savagery. I’m made for blood on my teeth, for viscera on my fingertips.” He wiggled his fingertips. “I was born to be a hero, to die a hero. Just look at this,” he said, flexing his right arm every which way. “Just look at that. I wasn’t placed on this earth to code! To engineer spreadsheets! What a joke!”
He spat on the lawn.
“I should’ve lived alongside Caesar—the O.G. Now there was a man. A dashing playboy who could cut throats with the best of them. He led from the front and fucked from the back. Do you know that he impregnated Cleopatra? What a lad. He was bigger than Rome. They couldn’t handle him.”
He shook his head. “I’m ready, my friend. Ready to offer myself up, to make a grand gesture. It’s the only way I can redeem myself. I’ve been suppressing myself for too long. When I listen to this music, I realize: I’m a warrior. I’ve been placed on this earth to fight, to protect, to sacrifice!”
Again, he slammed his fist down on the table.
“There’s only one problem,” he said, looking around in disgust, “everything is so goddamn boring. Just look at all of this: kids running around, tourists licking ice cream, blue skies, carbon-fiber yachts. The only remote threat is these damn seagulls. Did you know that one stole a chocolate croissant out of my hand once? Gangsters, all of them.
“But what I’m trying to say is this: this world is too docile, too safe. There are no great threats, no evil fascists to overthrow. Where will I get my opportunity?”
He threw his hands up in a gesture of grand, operatic despair.
And then, as if a cosmic stage manager had finally heard his cue, the air filled with the staccato percussion of machine-gun fire.
“What the—”
Multiple gunmen, dressed in matte-black tactical gear, began to fan across the grounds, firing at anyone and anything that moved. All around Geoff, people were running, screaming, falling, hiding. The drifter, too, when heaven and earth began to shake like a hammer drill, displayed an unexpected capacity for action, rolling off his chair and bolting into the horizon.
Only Geoff didn’t move. He remained at the center of the chaos.
The gunman closest to him swung his Kalashnikov toward the kids in the playground. Geoff didn’t think. He didn’t need to. This was the prompt he had been coding in his head for thirty years. He rose with the gravity of a Greek hero and charged straight at the man.
He struck the man’s ribcage like a torpedo, sending them both flying. The moment they hit the ground, Geoff scrambled to his knees, ripped the Kalashnikov from the man’s grip, and hammered the butt into his face until he went slack, his head lolling to the side.
A devoted gun nut since the age of five, Geoff had simulated this kind of scenario a thousand times. Now, there was no fumbling around or indecision. For the first time in his life, he knew exactly what to do—and he had no qualms about doing it. He felt aligned. On purpose.
He checked that the magazine hadn’t jarred loose, then swung his leg over the man’s torso, bracing himself. He took aim at the gunman further down the path, who was spraying the line of restaurants behind the theater. Geoff drew a bead on the man’s back. Rat-tat-tat. He fell into a crooked heap.
A moment later, Geoff felt a searing pain against his neck. A bullet had grazed him. He took cover behind the body of the first gunman. But far from retreating into his shell, he experienced a kind of elation as he felt his neck and saw a splotch of blood on his hand.
This is it, he thought as bullets whizzed over him. This is what it’s all about. He didn’t mind going down today. He’d proven himself. Forevermore, he’d be remembered as a hero.
He snarled with satisfaction.
When his opponent’s magazine ran out, he rolled onto his stomach and unloaded on him with abandon, all while shouting unpublishable obscenities.
* * *
When the guns eventually fell silent and no gunman was left standing, Geoff lay face-up in the middle of the theater’s stage, a pool of blood forming beneath him.
Only a few feet away from him lay the conductor. Dead. Headshot.
Geoff was also dying, but it didn’t matter. Everything was peaceful now. The blue sky had never looked more beautiful. Even the squawking of the returning seagulls warmed his heart. And then, like a kitten finding her way home late at night, he heard Ellie’s anguished voice in the distance, “Geoff! Geoff!”
Joy flooded his body. She cared.
When she reached him, she fell to her knees beside him and touched his face with trembling fingers. “I’m so sorry, Geoff, I’m so sorry! I love you. I love you! Please, please, don’t leave me. Please!”
“Now, now,” he said, squeezing her hand. “It’s going to be okay. I promise.”
But even as he said it, the world began to fade, taking on the character of a long-forgotten photograph. His eyes began to close.
“Geoff! Geoff!”
He vaguely heard her bursting into tears, and he felt one final pang of sadness at the thought that everything was over now, that he would never see her again, never again feel her warmth. There was still so much left to enjoy. And then the final sliver of light went out, and everything was quiet. Just like in the movies.
* * *
Is this death, he wondered.
He couldn’t move, he couldn’t see, he couldn’t hear, but he was still aware of himself. There had been no break in transmission.
Am I in a coma?
He was in limbo a moment longer before he broke the surface. Like a freediver gasping for air, his senses snapped open—the world rushing back in a flood of light and noise. An enormous cheer erupted. And were those … trumpets?
He was surrounded by masses of people, all applauding and whooping and shouting as if he had scored the winning goal at the World Cup. Ellie was still by his side, beaming down at him.
But far from enjoying this reception, Geoff looked around in bewilderment. Something was off, way off. The perfect timing of the cheer, the festive nature of it, and the fact that no one, not even Ellie, showed any signs of relief or surprise. It seemed almost as if they had been waiting, been expecting him to come to.
What little hope he still had that something truly bizarre was not afoot vanished when he lifted his head and met the twinkling eyes of none other than the conductor—fit as a fiddle, full of cheer, and most significantly, free of bullet holes.
Geoff panicked.
“What’s happening, Ellie?! What’s going on? I saw him just now.” He pointed a trembling finger at the conductor. “He was shot. He was dead.”
The conductor leaned in and shouted, “I nearly gave it away earlier, didn’t I? Ha! What a silly ass I am, sneaking a look.”
“What’s he on about? Give what away?”
“Just relax, baby. Just relax,” she said, stroking his hair. “It’s all going to be fine. It’s all going to be just fine.”
He felt his chest, his shoulder. He searched desperately.
His wounds were gone as well.