The world ends piecemeal, in chunks. It's a very personal thing. For John Pechinski--force-field siding salesman to the suburban housing market--a part of it was dying in his kitchen.
His relationship with Sarah spanned the past eleven months, and although she was right up his alley, he was simply not up (or even in the general vicinity of) hers.
She gripped her suitcase, near the door, while John stood clutching a ham sandwich, slouching, staring. He tried to think of something, anything, articulate to say.
"Okay," he managed, "but at least you owe me this: why?"
Sarah's face contorted. Like last night, when they'd been playing bocci ball down at Slim's Virtual Sports Bar and All Nite Laund-O-Rama, a gentle pity filled her eyes. But this time she broke. This time she did not repeat her litany of 'needing space,' or of wanting to be alone. She did not rehash her tale of how she had to leave, to help her mad Chilean uncle with his failing cheese empire.
"I'll say this for your own good, John," she said. "You're uninteresting. Flat."
"Flat?" said John.
"There's nothing to you. You're boring. Ignorant. You have a crummy job. You just sit around like furniture, or an exercise machine. You're simple in the worst possible way. So unlike Henrique, who can yodel, and who speaks Hungarian with flair."
John, choking up, held tightly to his sandwich.
"What about my membership in the chess club?" he said, grasping straws. "My skill at introspection? My knack for painting wildlife?"
"Goodbye, John," said Sarah, turning, and she stepped lightly from his life.
"She's right," he told the walls and ceiling when she'd gone. "I am flat."
But he knew that he could change.
His first step: he put the sandwich down, then caught a tube to the discount Neuromart on Park Street. It was dangerous, he knew from watching tabloid shows on the Virtu-Vee, but he was desperate. He walked between the propped-open doors and strolled amongst the shelves of shrink-wrapped packages, seeing price tags, hearing Muzak. Pre-programmed pathogens like geology and history didn't interest him, nor did dentistry, or decoupage. Finally, he decided to learn Hungarian through a new and specially engineered brain infection in the bargain basement bin, but the Innoculotron malfunctioned, and he inadvertently contracted Esperanto instead.
"This is just a glitch," the sweating, fake-smiling salesman told him, but John wondered why, if that were so, they had locked him in the biohazard room, with its code-secured airlock and its white, aseptic walls.
"A precaution," said the salesman, his reassuring tones filtered by the speaker on the faceplate of his hyperbaric suit. "Ten years ago in China, a particularly virulent strain of integral calculus mutated, and it wiped out close to ten-thousand people. Not that it could happen here, of course, but ever since, the lawyers have been breathing down our backs. Would you like a diet Coke?"
"No," said John. "I would like to be let out. And I want this stupid language pulled out of my head."
"Can do," said the salesman, "but it may take a while. I've got to call the factory. In the meantime, here's a sales brochure. I'll be back in a flash."
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