Ron crossed the bridge, observing bodies passed out in ecstasy. Ron liked lucidity of his mind and the streams of recollections flowing through it. They were reminiscent of some sparkling river - something connecting him to the time when everything was okay. That river kept him from seeking the bliss of oblivion. Although he needed to strain his willpower to not to think about the end approaching with each passing second - insidiously, like some kind of animal that looked like a shadow of an animal, without character or shape - just a shadow.
He cast a glance on his phone - Ann was still online. He knew that she would swirl deeper and deeper into the cacophony of screamingly vivid chemicals claiming the space in her consciousness, subconsciousness, reptilian brain. Until it dissolved into a smattering of rainbow-colored ribbons.
"She is becoming the one with the universe," Ron thought. He scrolled through other contacts, then switched to the chat they had altogether for the last couple of days. It slowed down - the endless stream of cheerful messages was replaced by a couple, every two hours or so - the flow of morbid excitement exhausted itself.
"It is probably in human nature," Ron thought "being able to get used to anything. It doesn't even take long. It's like the human brain is organized in such a way that nothing truly matters to it. It's just a matter of time and context"
Ron tried to capture the effusive idea of how the context defined whether things actually mattered or not. The idea slipped from his mind. He thought about the previous call he made trying to reach Rikky (or however he preferred to be called these days, considering his age, tenure, posture, all those things growing on his person like the polyps on the hull of a ship) - there were several years sprawling behind, "no, several decades, actually" Ron corrected himself. The last time they met stayed in Ron's mind as a scattering of vivid slides. The loud bowling of Rikkie's newborn second child, the hassle in the kitchen, freshly cut vegetables, fragrant heat of the summer.
Ron's memory kept sliding back into the past, with Nick as the focal point. A dream about two of them one day trailing to the sunny somewhere on the platform of the cargo train - the platform was filled with grain or hay, and there was the endless summer, stretching to the eternity both in space and time. It didn't matter where they were going.
Rikki's wife was on the phone; her voice betrayed fear despite her attempts to stay calm. Ron remembered her as always calm and reserved - there was some military toughness in her - in the steady gaze and quiet manner of her speech, which at the same time, carried the imperative, the tone of command. She was huge, with a pear-shaped body that made Ron wonder how she could have any self-esteem at all, let alone confidence. Nevertheless. This time she told him that he and Rikki couldn't meet. It was absolutely impossible. And her voice was strained, with panic seeping through it, which made Ron nervous in turn because it was so unusual. He looked at the river - sparkles of the sun dancing on its playful ripples - and thought about his dream, with the train going to the sunny nowhere. He realized that the dream became outdated, like the rock song that captured his soul in his teens - the grip that never got weaker during the following decades - and then he suddenly realized that he didn't feel anything about that song. It was as if at some invisible point, he transformed into an entirely different creature.
The river and its brightly lit banks - people dancing, cavorting, lying around in the embrace of chemical bliss, the anxiety of the End of the World erased from their minds.
"Maybe, this is the true meaning of living in the present moment." Ron suddenly saw Nick walking toward him with a vigorous spring in his gait. He was shining as if it was the best day in his life, like, Nick was always energized by something - it could be something minor or it could be something big. But today it was something big, and Nick's eyes glowed with fever - the kind that keeps you moving with this exaggerated powerful stride, never able to slow down and relax.
Splashes of the sun passing through the translucent canopy of leaves above danced on the ground. "You are not concerned that the world is about to end," Ron caught himself on being dull and pessimistic, something he rarely did. Probably, it was even less appropriate at that moment when the remaining time was too scarce and precious to be poisoned by this kind of attitude. Ron made some mental corrections - those were the last hours that he decided to spend sober, chasing the sparkling rainbow snake of memories that he suddenly imagined were important to him. So he had to stay positive - lest it would defeat the purpose of the whole thing. Nick seemed unperturbed though.
"I think, nothing matters that much," Nick said "Or, it's like a rainbow you see after the rain - it's elusive, intangible - it disappears, and you wonder if it ever been there. It's like a rainbow. Because the sight of the rainbow in that brief moment matters somehow. But in this endless wheel of time everything matters, it stays somewhere, I believe."
"Or rather," Ron thought, observing the dance of the sunbeams on the grass around "maybe, the reality itself doesn't matter, like, maybe it's like a computer game that can be turned on and off. But the idea and code remain." Ron kept rummaging in his brain, and there was one idea that he liked. "Maybe those moments featuring rainbows and stuff are like snapshots in the middle of a game and they are saved somewhere in the form of a cold sequence of ones and zeros. But at least, it's preserved somewhere forever."
"At the very least, it exists in your brain in some way," Nick said when Ron told him about his idea of snapshots "And it also exists in my brain. And what if our brains are not isolated containers of data, instead, they are connected to some sort of network. Maybe, everything there came from that network, to begin with."
Later, strolling along a weaving path overgrown by grasses on both sides, Ron saw butterflies fluttering vigorously and silently in front of him as if they tried to draw his attention, distract him from something unpleasant that kept creeping up in his mind. Ron thought of butterflies as trapped souls - positive vibes captured in the swamp of his toxic denial of reality.
"Like, if it is, indeed, a computer game," Ron thought "given that the few of us are actual players and the others are NPCs, and there's some quest we are still unaware of, well, then the butterflies may also signify something, like, the correct path to follow. Or the need to be more mellow and kind, regarding all the brutality of this dissolution of emotions."
The soft heat and the sunshine summoned to life a multitude of sticky green buds that sprung out on twigs and branches all around, creating the festive and lively atmosphere. The tentative silky grass became strong and confident, claiming every inch of the available space and announcing with its presence the triumph of life in its physical, carnal manifestation. Ron thought that he wanted to fuck, then this idea was replaced by something different. Thoughts replaced each other pretty quickly in this beehive of circumstances - the only thing that stayed as an imperative was the need to preserve lucidity while trying to connect the present moment with all the multitude of other - a billion or so moments - that happened at some point before. Also, dreams. Ron thought how the alternative reality of dreams substituted his actual reality, during the few minutes after waking up, when it was impossible to disentangle two things. Dreams told a different story of his life - it was surreal and full of inconsistencies - the upside was that in that alternative life Ron preserved some kind of mental connection with literally everybody he met at some point - those were hundreds and hundreds of people manifesting themselves in the form of avatars, symbols, and places they conjured around themselves.
