Alone

Josh MacLeod

The voice entered the room, faceless, bodiless. It came as a whistle, a simple child's tune that no one could quite remember but most people recalled from youth. James Folger desperately tried to ignore it, but the voice continued to whistle softly, relentlessly. He added soulless to his mental list of descriptions for the whistler and tried to ignore it. As he had for the past four hours, he failed. The voice started the tune again, and he lost control.

"Who are you? What do you want?" He screamed but the whistling never stopped. "Why did you bring me here from my home? Why did you kidnap me?" No response, but the whistling seemed to get louder. "Leave me alone!" James finally cried, adding something new to his litany, desperate to end this terrifying sameness.

The whistling stopped. For an instant James feared he had gone deaf.

"Aren't you already alone?" A quiet voice asked. It was male, urbane, polite, the kind you'd expect to hear from a young clerk at the grocery store. James hesitated, but spoke quickly, fearful the whistling would resume.

"What do you mean by that?" He asked warily.

"I mean what I said, Professor Folger. Analyse it, if you will." There was a pause. "I know who you are, sir. You teach philosophy part-time to the students at the college in their tutorials. Apparently, you have failed to explain your theory on human interaction properly to them. I want to hear it." James strained against the old chair, but the ropes bound his arms securely. A Boy Scout, he thought dryly. How lovely.

This could be a friend of one of his students or something, James thought. He didn't recognise the voice. He had a strong feeling it wasn't some student prank. But why kidnap me over a theory? "I was merely telling the class my theory that we are all part of a greater whole, a universal mind. It was used to help explain things like ESP and other incidences of knowledge that occur at a rate far faster than is possible." James said, trying for his best lecturer's tone.

"So you think we are all inter-related then?" James nodded, then quickly answered an affirmative. There was a pause, and James feared the whistling was about to resume. "Tell me, are you religious?"

"Excuse me?"

"Do you believe in Adam and Eve, that we are all descended from two people who would have to be African?"

"I believe in God, yes. But I am not sure about Adam and Eve as more than a well-meaning fable or sorts."

"But it supports your theory we are all related."

"I don't believe in Adam and Eve, mainly because I have no proof for them."

"You have no proof we are related at all!" The voice snapped. "Maybe you are racist, then? Afraid to claim the black roots of Adam?"

James stared, the afternoon light coming in the grimy window failing to show more than a vague outline of his accuser. "That's one hell of a conclusion to draw from a theory of how we are related," he said carefully, fearing to tell the person he was mad, fearing that speaking it would make it real.

"Do you want to know my theory?" the voice asked abruptly. "No, of course you don't. You'd say yes, but we really do not want to know anything about each other, about other's problems or worries. We share in success, but not in failure. We don't want to understand each other. That's what I think. We can, but don't want to."

"That's absurd! If we could do it, why wouldn't we?" James exclaimed, buying for time instinctively.

"That's like asking why I haven't killed you. You couldn't answer, and maybe I can't either. But it true: most people don't kill, most don't care about each other."

"Why not then?"

"Because then we'd have to understand each other. If you aren't alone, then you must bare all your secrets. Most people can't do that. Don't the divorce rates helps prove it?"

"The modern divorce rate is just a result of freedom and the fact that divorces are too easy. People just don't want to work through their problems anymore." James snapped, aware he was getting angry.

"I disagree," The voice said softly, almost mockingly. "I think that in the past people were cramped together, stuck in one place with no diversions from each other and thus had no choice but to know each other. We now have that choice, and choose not to."

"What on earth makes you say that, young man? We are inter-connected through the Internet and the television and are on our way to becoming a global village. How much more interactive can you get?"

"We could always communicate with each other instead of faceless words on computer screams or bodiless voices over a phone. Why don't we?"

James frowned. "My good man, you are being rather isolationist here." he squinted, but the shadow remained vague and indistinct.

"I am not." There was anger in the voice. "I am merely saying that as people we are isolated, alone, trapped as you are trapped now." There was a pause. "You see, my good man," the voice continued sarcastically. "I have been wondering for five years how to bridge the gap between myself and others. Words won't do, but how else can I communicate? You perceive what you want to through my words and body language, even if that is now what I mean to say.

"We are all alone. Each of us adrift in our own land of perception and feeling, untouched by others in any way. We cannot change ourselves, and so we have no hope of changing others, or of affecting them in any way. We can only act as we will, and hope they interpret our action the way we want them to. But we can't connect with anyone else, we can only feel our own feelings. We only hear our own thoughts, no matter what is being said. It has been said that: 'No man's knowledge can go beyond his experience,' and we only every really experience ourselves." There was another pause, as if the speaker was marshalling its arguments.

James struggled against the ropes that bound him to the rickety old chair in the smoke-filled room. The chair was bolted down but the shadow in the doorway seemed to ignore the noise as James tried to get free.

"Stop now." James almost ignored it, but thought for a moment he saw a glint of metal that could have been a knife or gun. "You see, professor, I have given this matter considerable thought. You do not seem to be able to sway me and -- "

"If you only feel what you want to, I couldn't sway you anyway!" James broke in angrily.

"True." The voice sounded startled, younger. "Interesting, but you forget that I am willing to touch another."

"Just because you claim you are doesn't mean you really are willing," There was a longer pause.

"True again, but you did not let me finish my argument. You divorced recently, correct?"

How the hell do you know that? James almost asked, but something in him said anger wasn't the way out of this now. "Yes."

"Why?"

"We weren't compatible."

"I other words, you couldn't communicate."

James sighed, knowing there was no way around this answer. "Yes, we couldn't communicate."

"If you couldn't with her, then why do you think you can with any one else?"

"Maybe because Megan and I weren't meant for each other."

The voice laughed, an oddly youthful and uncaring sound similar to that of a child. "But you don't believe that, do you?" The young man's soft voice didn't wait for a response but continued: "I have found a way, professor, to communicate with others, to make them understand you and know you as few other methods can. I can ensure that you grasp what I am and what I am."

The young man stepped forward, and James saw just another nondescript student, a young plain man with sandy blond hair and blue eyes, comely but not really noticeable. Almost too ordinary, James realised with a start, and almost laughed aloud to see the creature of five hours worth of nightmares was juts a plain, average person. The young man smiled then, and James Folger felt his chest constrict painfully. There was madness in that smile, a ruthless kind of sanity that was too sane.

"You see James, I can make us understand each other perfectly well. I can kill you."

- Josh MacLeod (1999)