For most of our lives, my brother and
I were moving in opposite directions, repelled from each other as if two
identically charged magnets. But, growing up, we always felt the force of each
other. For brief moments, we almost touched. He’d flip through my pre-law
textbooks, lazily squinting at their words as if they’d eventually form the
scratchy images he found in his DIY punk zines. And I had no choice but to
listen to his music, which blasted out of speakers half as tall as he was. But
I never understood, and neither did he. Not that there was ever any contempt
between us. In those early days, I’d come home from school or from studying,
and my brother would come home from whichever one of his haunts, and we’d both
sit down and watch the war together on the dormitory’s telescreen. As we
progressed through our stylistic phases, we never failed to attempt to explain
our subject matter to the other -- and we also never succeeded in understanding
our other half. At least not until one of us disappeared, and I began my quest
back downward, towards my brother, towards true anarchy.
My brother’s disappearance was perhaps
the closest I’d ever felt to him. It hit me like an earthquake. Shook me with
aftershocks. Tremor after tremor. How long had he been gone? And what did gone
mean? Was gone just a word for extreme distance, or had some dark energy
swallowed him entirely? During my ascent from the clear sector, through to the
blue, green, and white sectors, he’d mirrored me in reverse, with a descent
from the clear to the beige, the gray, and the black sectors. Maybe further.
We’d kept in contact as we could, though of course with less frequency and
fidelity, due to the distortion between sectors. Throughout our distancing,
however, I never doubted my brother’s love. That is to say I rarely thought of
it. It was as if I’d always sensed he was right behind me, somehow, until one
day I turned around and he wasn’t there. I couldn’t reach him anymore. He was
gone.
Descending the sectors took almost as
much work as ascending them. Extracting myself from my bureaucratic position in
the ministry of hyperlaw took the longest of all the steps. I was 26 and had
just arrived at a place of security and stability. The White Ring: higher than
all the others, a place for only the most dedicated and talented citizens. I
spent my time filing claims and counterclaims and ironing my shirts and signing
memos and cutting my hair to regulation length and submitting motions
authorizing greater military intervention and all this was in the name of
helping the efforts in the War Zone, which lay just beyond the white.
Sometimes, I’d see our bombers flying overhead, zooming towards the zone. Other
times I could hear the percussive air-woosh of ordinance hitting its target.
This thrilled me in a way that made me wish to hide the fact that I was
thrilled. Such was life in the white. But I told myself I was doing my part. I
was one of the good guys. I was a functioning part of the big machine. But I
had to undo it all. That wasn’t easy. The rules, the people, the places, the
things that had attached themselves to me, and I to them, were all knotted
together, seeming to tighten the more I pulled. Things took longer up there
when going against the flow. My attempts to extract myself worried and even angered
others. Colleagues told me that I wasn’t thinking clearly, that I wasn’t myself
-- and they were right. I had to find my brother.
Things changed when I finally made it
back down to the clear sector. It was here that the resistance to my downward-trajectory
finally gave way, reversed in polarity. I noticed it first while walking
towards the egg-crate building, now largely abandoned, which held our childhood
dormitory. The twisted structure stabbed up at the static-gray sky like a steel
drill bit. I felt myself pulled towards it. The security entrance: unguarded.
Hyperlift: out of order. I climbed 47 stories up the fire staircase, sweating
through rubbish and cobwebs. The smart door to our dormitory room still
recognized my face (though it took several tries, with me stretching my facial
muscles in peculiarly familiar ways). Inside, the telescreen was, spookily,
still on, muted but tuned to the forever war, as it’d always been. The quiet
made my ears ring. My side of the room, of course, was bare -- I’d taken
everything with me. But my brother’s side was much as I’d remembered it, with
the posters on its walls, pasted on top of each other, peeling, acting as some
paper geology of his taste: The Sex Pistols, The Vandals, The Misfits, Black
Flag, Joy Division, Skinny Puppy, Nine Inch Nails, Death Grips, Boris, Sunn
0))), Tim Hecker, William Basinski. More names written in foreign languages,
odd pinyin, impenetrable. Then, under a thin film of dust sat his old record
player, the relic through which I’d been forced to hear all those names’
sounds. I’d always been more interested in the contraption itself, the old
world technology of it, how sound could be stored on grooved wax and then
revived by the rhythmically paced scratch of one stubborn needle. I wiped away
the dust on the player’s translucent cover and found a record still sat inside:
a Basinski. I remembered it. I could conjure the scene. My brother had played
it for me, in a nimbus cloud of whatever he’d been smoking. And I could still
feel the record’s rattling, rumbling bass, how it shook the walls, a droning
ambient work that was meant to represent, my brother had smirkingly explained,
the sound of two black holes colliding. It hadn’t sounded at all like music to
me then. But it had felt a natural part of my brother’s stylistic progression.
Only on my return did I notice its contrast to the music of the other idols on
his wall -- idols which each carried their own memories of my brother trying to
explain what he had heard and felt in them -- and I realized how far my brother
had traveled, had been traveling, drifting, careening further afield, even when
we were kids, sleeping next to each other, two beds in a boxy room.
On the way down, there was increasing
talk of revolt, of resistance, of full-blown revolution. Fuck the sector
system, the factory jobs, the forever war and the heteronormative patriarchy,
people said. Death to the monoculture, the red paint on the walls read. I
sometimes lost track of where I was -- beige, gray, black -- not realizing a
sector border had been crossed until long afterwards. It was unclear if there
was a way back. The further I descended, the louder everything got. Words
became action. Vague plans drawn up on bar napkins became the stockpiling of
fossil fuels and bioweapons. I’d initially had many questions about the
ownership of this resistance movement, or the lack of ownership, what with its
decentralized nature -- but my old way of thinking eventually fizzled, got
replaced with a vacuum, an emptiness which was picking up speed. My notes,
which I’d kept somewhat religiously up to this point, degraded, along with my
writing skills. Linguistics couldn’t keep up. All this talk of revolution and
violence clashed with the young image I had of my brother -- smirking, quiet,
more often than not in a vaguely meditative pose, with enormous headphones over
his ears and his eyes gazing up at the ceiling as if he could look right
through it, to the stars. He was never political. He just wanted to get away.
It wasn’t until I first heard whispers of the Anarchy Zone, a place out beyond
the black, that I knew, immediately, impossibly, that was where my brother was.
The lower sectors have their own
trappings, their own narcotic lull, much as the upper sectors do. A
dissociative hum. The most violent ideas become normal, casual. Then you wake
up, mid-sentence, in-situ, and ask yourself how you got there, so far from what
you’ve known, so far from side-by-side beds in a dormitory. You ask if you’re
the same person as you once were, having literally shed your skin over the last
X years, and how long has it been, exactly? Would the person you’re looking for
even recognize you now, with your tattoos, torn clothes, and shaved head
replacing the government strut and starched suits you once wore? What’s left of
you? Is this what you were looking for, or were you looking to become someone
else entirely?
I found my ticket into the Anarchy
Zone at a torture bar deep in the black. The guy’s name was Hat. Word was he
ran people into the zone, and not many came back. I spotted him on the far side
of the dungeon, where he was smashing a pool cue over someone’s back. He was
scrawny, five foot nothing, swimming in huge workman’s overalls, a big yellow
bucket hat on top of his head. I introduced myself with a smooth right hook
against his boxy jaw. You’re dead, he groaned up at me from the floor, you’re
supposed to be dead. It took me a moment to realize he’d mistaken me for my
twin. This made me grin wide enough to show off a few of my freshly missing
teeth. I was certain, now, that I was closer to my brother than ever.
On a gray morning, with a drizzle of
rain that sounded like soft static, Hat and I took off in a bike and buggy from
an abandoned truck stop way out on the rim of the black sector. Hat driving, me
riding shotgun. You look identical, it’s a trip, Hat laughed over the
rumble of the buggy engine, you and your brother I mean, a spitting
fucking image. I had my hair freshly cut down to the scalp. I’d
triple-knotted my leather boots. I had a small satchel strung across my chest.
Contents: a flask of vodka, some shag tobacco, a few items to barter with, and
a voice recorder (my handwritten notes simply couldn't keep up anymore). At
Hat’s recommendation, I’d brought my own weapons. I’d 3D printed a Luger and
taped a boxcutter to my left forearm. Hat wore airman’s goggles. He had a
crowbar slung through the belt-loop of his overalls. Some people stay in the
Anarchy Zone because the radiation eats their mind, he shouted over the
buzz of the exhaust. Others, they just like it there, I don’t know, and I
don’t fucking know what happened to your brother either, I just took him close
as I could to The Front, like he asked, and it ain’t even my responsibility
what happened after that, so don’t try to lay that trip on me, okay, go write
your congressman. We approached a checkpoint -- men in uniform, first
waving their arms in X’s above their heads, then firing automatic weapons up
into the air. Hat twisted the throttle, and we roared on through. Some
people actually fucking stop and turn back, Hat cackled, can you believe
it?
Smoldering skyscrapers. Oil fields on
fire. Air strikes. Mobs. Tear gas. Crucifixions. You can’t slow down for a
second, Hat shouts from the driver’s seat. There’s a distortion a
distortion a distortion here, put on your gas mask. How far are we now from
the white sector? Closer than you think. Buy discount, buy discount, all your
insurance needs are always Coca-Cola. The sectors are circular, they touch, Hat
shouts. The War Zone and the Anarchy Zone, they touch, too. They touch at
The Front. Two all-beef patties special sauce. There’s a distortion here
a distortion here from the collision of two oppositely charged forces, Hat
shouts, like two black holes colliding. Rape me. We hold these truths to
be self-evident. Rape me again. A more perfect union. Do you need help filing
your taxes? Just call 1-900-smash your plane into the money church. I’m looking
for my brother. Is he looking for me? Has he swapped his leather for starched
shirts? Did we pass each other along the way? Would we even recognize each
other anymore, or recognize ourselves, or neither? Or is this simply our native
orbit, to seek each other but never touch? Just do it. I’m loving it. Have it
your way. Strangle your puppy. Declare jihad against have your own vacation
home for the low-low price of God is dead. My pet goldfish died when I was five
and my brother held me in his arms as I wept. God give me a rule, any rule,
please, so I can break it. The directional hierarchy of the sectors is
bullshit, Hat shouts. There’s no up or down, just around. Welcome to
the forever war. Cash for gold. Blood for oil. Money back guarantee on all
chemical weapons. Zero down on your first human trafficking. Would you like to
remortgage your home and eat a baby? If I could just have a minute of your time
to talk about the gospel of eternal salvation and check your credit score. Strap
in, Hat shouts, we’re making a break for The Front. When a bully at
school tripped me at recess my brother beat him until he bled. We were ten. Oh
say can you see by that freshly dug mass grave that fossil fuels are murdering
the planet and presenting an existential crisis to humanity that promises a
unique financial investment opportunity. Has your cat had her shots? Act now
and you, too, can fuck a $2,000 couch in the ass and have your friends watch. Hold
on tight, Hat says, as we barrel towards the last barricade, The Front
can even make your sense of self melt away. Death to order, death to
anarchy, I am my brother, he is me. We’ll end this war or die fighting it. Love
thy neighbor and chug a bottle of bleach during your two weeks of
company-approved vacation from a job you never wanted in the first place.
Reanimate the dead and give them life insurance. Take a selfie with a grilled
cheese sandwich and feel a sense of righteous satisfaction when you share it
with the world. Wait. Have I been here before? I’m certain I have. Have I left?
Maybe the middle was where I was trying to get to. As kids, we played video
games until the sun came up, while the war raged on in the background. There
was nothing better than that. Ever. One hundred billion dead landlords. The
city is a kill. Learn how you yes you can market your inner arsonist. The
Senate floor calls on the representative from are you dealing with a dry itchy
scalp? Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a one-time cash down payment. Mosh
through the bodies. Push and claw to the front. Keep the rhythm at all costs.
Feel the sweat and heat of the people around you. Move as one. If we don’t make
it across the border, if we don’t make it through, we’ll turn around and crawl
back up the sectors. I still know the way back, I think. And when we get there,
back to the top, once we’ve reached our moment of perfect conformity, once we
have them all fooled, we’ll break out, we’ll dance and mosh and scream and
throw chairs and set fires. And I’ll find my brother this way. He’ll be on the
other side of our shapeless, colorless office, standing on his desk, doing the
same thing. I’ll almost be able to reach out and touch him. We’ll grin
gap-toothed at each other. We’ll shave our heads and roll up our starched
sleeves and show off all our hidden tattoos. Providing, of course, that we
still remember they’re there.
They’re still there.
Matt Zbrog writes: I'm a freelancer from California who's been living abroad since 2016,
exploring countercultures in ex-authoritarian states. No plans on ever
going home. Twitter: @Tyler_Says Instagram: @weirdviewmirror
