Hit the button.
Hit the button.
Just hit this fucking button already, what the hell are you waiting for?
No way, I can't do it. However convinced I was before, it's gone now. There's uncertainty, and a whole lot of that to be frank. Nothing is static, nothing is stable, I know that, I won't deny it and I don't try to cling to something which I could not hold even if I tried, but this is just too much responsibility for one man. Too much responsibility for me.
How far would you go? Come on, tell me. If you had the chance to make it all disappear, to turn every single bad memory that's stuck in your head into nothing, what would you do? Don't tell me you're sure about it, because I know that would be a lie. I was sure, I was so sure that nothing in this world could have changed my mind, or so I thought, and now all this conviction is gone. It's only one press of a button away … nirvana, the freed mind, whatever you wanna call it, it doesn't matter. For as unstable as things are, wiping them off the table of your mind is not something you do easily. Somehow, even the most painful memories serve a purpose, they at least help you define who you really are.
“What's wrong?” Nicholas asked. “We haven't got all day.”
“I know.”
“Apparently you don't or else you wouldn't be standing around like a damn statue.”
“You do it first, then,” I commanded and stepped away from the console. Nicholas was left with a strange feeling of unease from all I could tell. That's what I'd expected. “It's not that easy, is it?” I taunted him.
He left his hand there, touching the big blue button a few times before he carefully stepped away from it. He must have pushed a million buttons in his life, I gathered, this one however wasn't one he'd easily touch. Mind Sweep, they called it. The true reset, some said, and others used some weird religious references. To me, however, it was the exit out of a labyrinth. A maze I'd built in my head for as long as I could remember, and yet I didn't dare to step through the door because I had grown so accustomed to this maze that leaving wasn't as easy.
“How much time do we have left?” I asked.
“The woman said we'll take as much time as we need, but I don't think she was for real,” he said. “An hour, maybe two I'd say. We're probably not the only customers.”
“Good thing the one who'll be kept waiting won't be able to file a complaint then.” I tried to smile, but my lips wouldn't move.
“You remember Jocelyn?” Nicholas asked after a few minutes of silence. I nodded. “That's one thing I'd like to remember, you know.”
“College,” I quietly sighed. “Those were good times,” he added. “Not that good,” I said. “I mean, it was more drinking and fucking than anything else. I heard Bobby Stark got busted for drug abuse recently, and back in the days they always expected him to become a successful lawyer. What can you say about the future …”
“Nothing at all,” Nicholas said. “Nothing at all.”
Every time I looked up at the big mechanical clock on the wall above the console, more than ten minutes had passed. And anytime I looked up, it didn't feel like ten minutes at all, more like ten seconds. This feeling was strange. I imagined that this was how people felt before they died, only that we weren't about to die, at least not in the conventional way -- we were about to be reborn.
“Okay, here we go,” I said. “Enough fooling around, I'm gonna do it now.”
“Just one moment,” Nicholas said. “I'm trying to think about something. You know, before we forget it, I wanna know one thing.”
“What's that?”
“What was the best moment of your life?” he then asked. I looked at him, puzzled. The question came out of the blue and, truth be told, I wasn't prepared for a conversation like that. “I mean, just think about it, there must be something, right? One moment where everything was perfect.”
“I don't think there exists such a moment,” I said.
“There must. Or else you couldn't tell that everything else was shitty, could you?”
“I guess.” I thought about it, really hard, but nothing popped up -- absolutely nothing.
“I have one,” Nicholas said. “College, the time with Jocelyn, that was all great, but it wasn't perfect. If I have to choose only one moment, I'll choose the day of my high school graduation.”
“Didn't you always tell me that it was the worst day of your life, because some punk messed up your robe and your dad showed up drunk and insulted your teachers?”
“Sure, but there was one moment …” He paused. “After I got my diploma I went to the restroom because I needed to pee for, like, an hour, and while I was standing there I realized that I would never again take a piss on that school's toilet. I'd been there a gazillion times, almost every day for years, but that would be the last time. I took a good look around, tried to remember how the room looked like, I washed my hands as I'd never washed them before.”
“And when you left this asshole came and tried to beat you up,” I interrupted him.
“Yeah, but that's not the point. It's that one moment, not what happened before and not what happened after. That moment I realized that …”
“… that nothing was stable.” I finished his sentence. He nodded.
“Hit that button now,” he then said. “Let's prove it then.”
Nicholas stepped forward to the console. He again put his hand on the button but this time he wasn't as careful as before. He took a deep breath, murmured something, took another deep breath. “Nothing is stable,” he repeated and then he pushed the big blue button down as hard as he could. It only gave a gentle feedback and came out of the console again a second later.
“What now?” he asked, but before he could hear my answer, Nicholas passed out and fell to the ground. That was the true reset, I realized.
Someone knocked on the door. “Just give me one more minute,” I shouted. I rolled the unconscious Nicholas into what looked like a more comfortable position even though it wouldn't make a difference anyway. They'd pick us up as soon as I'd pushed the button too and send us somewhere far away to wake up, away from each other and away from anything we knew. Not that we'd be knowing anything anymore as soon as this would be over.
It must have been only a split second after I pushed the button until I passed out as well, but for this second I found an answer to Nicholas's question -- I remembered something from long ago, some perfect moment I'd forgotten.
Unfortunately, I was about to forget it again.
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