Touch and Remember

(This is fiction and was written in 2005, I'm posting it here for Al, Sam, and Ky)

I spent most of my morning drifting into various states of wakefulness. Doing this required that I deny the existence of the alarm clock. The clock was obviously angry at my attempt, so it just screamed louder. My hand flew out of the sheets with great force in the direction of the snooze button. It was after my hand collided painfully with the desk that I recalled moving the clock to the far side of the room; so that I couldn't get to the snooze button. That made it look like I had to get out of bed and acknowledge the fact that Mr. Clock was indeed a real threat to my sleep. I lowered my sheets and stared at the clock face, and what I saw woke me up better then the alarm ever had before. "Five Hours."

Maybe I am still tired, I just have to re-focus . . . "Five Hours" is a rather interesting thing for a clock to say, especially since it usually only showed three or four bright-blue-digital-retina-burning numerals. Perhaps the clock was still angry at me for trying to cease its existence.

Rolling out of bed, I stumbled through the blurry room on a mission to silence the clock. My feet skillfully avoided the out-of-focus mess of underwear and electronics on my floor. I reached my objective and sent my finger to the bright blue blur that represented the snooze button, hopefully to quiet the cacophony pouring from the annoying box. My finger contacted the button, the assault on my ears stopped, and a jolt of electricity went up my arm.

I felt the shock hit my brain, and for some reason I was thinking of where the alarm clock was made. I could see the nine-year-old Chinese girl assembling it, quickly, not really understanding what the parts were. She was humming a tune I've never heard before, her small fingers skillfully assembling the random bits of plastic. I could see the alarm being packaged, and I witnessed myself taking it out of the box and immediately throwing away the little white instruction booklet.

I took my finger away from the clock and just stood for a little bit. Today had officially hit "Orange" on my Strange Morning Alert scale, and I was out of duct tape. I decided to look at the clock again. "Five Hours" the display announced. Fantastic.

I picked up the clock and sat down cross-legged, the same electric feeling coursing through my arm. I put the clock down and the feeling subsided. "Ok, maybe it's an electrical problem" I announced to the room "Let's just unplug it." I sat forward and pulled the plug, then picked up the clock again.

The electric feeling was there, all the same, and when it hit my brain this time, I could see the clock's plastic case being cast and cut. I watched the whole manufacturing process create the little noise box that was now in my hands. Very interesting. The electric feel stopped and I snapped out of my little trance. I decided it was time to stop playing with my alarm clock and get to work.

I walked over to my dresser, and as soon as I opened the drawer I knew (intimately) the tree it once was, because it shared its memory with me. Everything from where it had been to how it was made and all the details about all the clothes that were ever stored within came into my mind. It made me a little glad that I was the first person to own this dresser. Dressing quickly, I didn't pay much attention to the clothes telling me their life stories. Cotton never did have an interesting social life, I figured had enough to worry about on my own; for example, I had no idea what time it was. Since the sun was out I decided I might as well get to work and figure it out when I get there.

Donning my shoes (moo) I walked briskly to my car, a stately 1981 Dodge Omni. I didn't have to worry about touching the drivers side door, it never worked, and in the interest of balance, it lacked a passenger's side door. I walked in front of the car and lifted the hood, realizing the amazing amount of information the car remembered from its days at the factory. I could even see the machines spraying the paint on the steel hood. I checked to make sure the pantyhose that replaced the broken alternator belt were still holding and poured in the quart of oil the car required to take me to work. I closed the hood, slid into the car and went through the ritual of starting it.

Over the course of the whole drive to work, I learned about how the Dodge Omni was made, from mining the sheet metal out to being shipped and stored in a dealer lot. I parked behind the Home Depot, and sneaked in through the back of the gardening section.

"Kelly! You're early! Amazing!" Mike, my over-zealous manager announced from behind a particularly flamboyant fern.
"Mike, you know I'm always on time, I'm just cleaning up a little out back before I come in."
"Right. Look miss, just because you came in early doesn't mean that you're on the clock"

Nodding, I retreated to the break room, and saw by the clock that it was 10:15 in the morning, a full hour before I actually needed to be here. I could have showered! I'm going to have to grab a new clock, and what in the world am I going to do with a free hour? The room could use a cleaning, but I'm not about to touch anything in here, especially considering it will probably tell me where its been, and that is the last thing I ever want to know about most of this stuff. Mental note, don't sit down, don't use the restroom, and stay well away from that coffee machine. OK, enough thinking about what I can't touch, let's try to see what I can touch.

Prowling around the break room for an innocent object, my eyes fell on a Bic pen resting in a mug. I leaned out and poked it, feeling the little electric tingle traveling up my arm. This pen was Mike's, he used it to sign off on our timesheets, and he wrote short, squat letters with vastly oversized "W"s and "V"s. I could feel how Mike moved the pen, sometimes putting it absentmindedly behind his ear while he thought. I had the idea to pull an old receipt out of my pocket and write his signature on it. It came out flawlessly.

The hour went by quickly, I had been poking and prodding different objects and they willingly informed me how truly boring most things in this world were, though some of the objects had mildly interesting secret lives. A discarded paperclip taught me how to pick a file cabinet lock, and a forgotten pair of sunglasses thought me how to play, and cheat at poker.

After the hour had passed, I found myself at work, behind the register. Every single piece of money I handled had a very long history; it burned my brain to move through it so quickly. Sometimes I would slow down just to comprehend better what the bills were telling me (much to the displeasure of the customers), but some of this stuff was interesting to me. I was learning how to barter, haggle, and swindle. Some bills were the gift of a poor man to the collection plate, some to the contractor to make an addition to the home, some to the thong strings of a stripper who now wanted a new set of gardening gloves.

My day went on like this for a bit more then three hours until I saw men carrying rifles run through the store. They were wearing black, faces covered, and they carried bags (presumably money from the bank next door). There was panic, I guess with good reason. I just stood there, as my day was already too crazy to be real; I wasn't that worried anyway. Lots of people were screaming, reminding me of my alarm clock. I wanted to go back home and curl up in bed. A policewoman was telling people to hide; she had her pistol in her hand. She noticed me just standing there, and for some reason she came running for me, telling me to get on the ground.

Apparently one of the attackers found her to be a threat, and shot her before she could get to me. The sound of the shot made me think my head would have exploded, I fell to the ground with my ears ringing. I was scared, I had never seen anyone dead, let alone shot. I felt so helpless. Just before I completely lost it, I saw her gun. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to take it. I leaned forward and grabbed it, learning what the "Pistol Master" badge on her uniform really meant.

I was sure of my target, I lined up the sights, exhaled, squeezing the trigger. It was old news to me; the gun told me what twenty years of it was like. The cop-killer fell, I shut my eyes.

The last thing I heard was shattering glass. Five hours ago I was waking up to an annoying alarm clock, just another poor girl working her way through college, now I'm a skilled shooter in the middle of a firefight and I just killed a man. I guess at least I don't have to buy a new alarm clock. A bullet nicked the pen behind my ear and entered my skull. It was made in Akron, Ohio.