Death Drive

Chapter 11

Thomas fumbled with the bottle of tequila, and it dropped to the hardwood floor of his home with a clink but did not shatter. He left it where it had landed, not bothering to lift it up - it was empty anyways- just as he hadn't bothered to clean up the empty beer cans that had piled up for the last couple of days around his living room sofa. The clock told him it was already afternoon, but the drawn curtains permitted only light strong enough to penetrate the white cloth, so the room was dim at best. His head felt like it was splitting in half and his throat was sandpaper rubbing against itself. Grabbing tight hold of the armrest he pulled himself up from the cushions, kicking aside some cans lying at his feet. Massaging his temples, he made for the large, glass-doored cabinet that used to proudly display his many medals, ribbons and cups from his racing victories, but the prizes had been pushed aside a long time ago to make room for bottles of liquor. He had used to sometimes raise a glass in front of this shrine to his breakneck youth, but as time passed, he would more often drink for oblivion instead of remembrance, eventually just leaving the drinks on the shelves until more room was taken by half-filled bottles than trophies. Even the poor illumination of the room was like spears of light in his eyes, so he barely parted his eyelids in his search for more drink, opting instead to lift and shake the glass containers to find one that still held some of the balm that would make his problems disappear for a few hours at a time. But he had done a thorough job earlier, so even when he turned the bottles bottoms-up he could get just single drops to his mouth. His grasping hand found the handle of the knife that had belonged to his friend Owen, a knife he kept there as a memento of what had happened when he had tried to fight. He felt its clean metal, once again reminding himself that his temper had to be like the blade: cool, sheathed and stored among other things of the past.

He finally peeked through his lids, seeing his image reflected from a golden cup that still commanded the most visible spot in the closet. The image of his face was stretched out, but he could still tell his hair was a mess and his stubble of a beard—which he had shaved last before the crash—was stained with spittle and possibly worse. He couldn't quite tell from the warped image, but his cheeks seemed to have hollowed in a bit, his eyes sunk deeper into his head as if he had lost noticeable weight in just a few days. His grey t-shirt and sweatpants hung loosely on him, but they had been quite large to begin with.

"Can't keep going on like this," he thought, getting a tall glass of water from his kitchen. He sat back on the sofa, accidentally nudging the coffee table so even more cans fell to the floor. The wall-mounted TV opposite of him turned on, showing an image of him standing on the victor's podium in his racing overalls. After a double take, he realized the news was covering the crash and apparently dug up his past in the process. He grimaced, lifting the junk food wrappings and old magazines on the table to find the mouse whose jump must have roused the display out of the screensaver. He found it as the slide changed, now showing an image of the crash site that had been had taken a couple days earlier. In the corporeal world so little, just some burn marks, remained of the other driver, the true victim of the crash as he reminded himself, but in the virtual realm the landscape was an active memorial which was shown on the program as part of the landscape. Thousands of people had left their condolences, posted images and stories about the dead man. Anyone with smartglasses opening his eyes to the virtual world could even have talked to the man's virtual avatar, standing on the spot of the accident, who would have answered in the victim's manner, as it had learned some of his most obvious characteristics through years of following his communication with other people, and could now bring some comfort to grieving loved ones. Thomas had thought of going but as only had a smartphone, he could only have conversed with the AI with a text-based chat program. He also reminded himself that the program was rudimentary and could only say things the original had himself written online or said on video so it could not tell him what he wanted to know, namely whether the driver blamed him for his death.