To whom it may concern,
I am writing this autobiography from the top floor of what was once called the Space Needle. This wasn’t always the top floor, the top floor used to be much higher, and looked like an upside-down spinning top. It’s gone now, and I am on the new top floor, in what used to be a restaurant.
The restaurant would spin slowly during the days of electricity, so the wealthy occupants could have every view of the city while never changing their seat. A mother would put her sleeping baby up on the windowsill and it would return in half an hour. It’s true.
Today the floor doesn’t spin unless there’s an earthquake.
Living on the top floor of the Space Needle is a five-foot five-inch tall man with brown eyes and a rounded chin, wearing perfectly round mirror sunglasses, and the kind of flight suit a pilot would wear when there was such a thing as a United States Air Force.
When there was such a thing as the United States.
He looks out at the city he has lived in for twenty-three years.
The man is me.
I wear shoes which were once used for tap-dancing. The metal pieces on the soles protect my feet from the odd pointy thing sticking out of the ground. Instead of piercing my foot, it slides past and sometimes tears through my sock. When that happens I change my socks, I hate the one spot of cold air on my skin that the hole allows. It’s OK, I have hundreds of socks. More on that later.
I look out at the monoliths that made up the city skyline, and occasionally I can catch glimpses of people climbing across the rope bridges that connect the monoliths hundreds of feet above the ground.
I live here as the oldest man in the emerald city. I am not alone, I am amongst a few thousands strewn throughout the city. Some of them are probably my grandchildren. I have lots of those. More on that later.
I was born in San Diego, California. It’s like where I live now, but warmer, and now it’s underwater. I was born there, but grew up in a town somewhere above it on the map. That town had a lot less people, which suited me perfectly. When I was born I think my parents took one look at me and decided to try again, which led to my brother who died of SIDS. I don’t know what led to this decision, but it meant that for the most part I was left to my own devices. Perfect.
My lack of supervision meant I was able to venture farther and farther from home without being noticed, until I was able to leave for weeks at a time freely and at a whim. At first I ventured into the Tahoe Forest, and would watch the forest animals go about their lives. I would watch the way young animals stumbled about and fell off of things in funny ways. This entertained me until I discovered that people are equally if not more comical. People don’t just do funny things, people can talk. All of the junk in people’s heads has a means to escape. I remember going into town and talking to people just to hear them throw their dignity out the window just by opening their mouths. People became an inside joke that was only funny to me.
I could have amused myself like this for my entire life, but as I got older and looked more adult-like. I was scolded for laughing. I wasn’t cute anymore I suppose. I wasn’t allowed to laugh at the silliness of humans any more, but I couldn’t help it when I was around them, so I stopped being around them willingly by the age of eight.
I climbed a particularly pointy array of rocks called Castle Crag when I was ten years old. I would stand on top of the peaks and laugh as I made up my own little jokes about the people I could see driving and running around like ants below me, when there wasn’t fog.
The irritating part about Castle Crag was that although the fog meant I was able to do anything without being spotted, it also meant I couldn’t see my little world below me. I had to come up with ideas in my own head.
Back then fog was just a part of the weather. I would overhear people who were much more versed in worldly occurrences, and they would say “It’s going to be a real weekend in China on the mountain today.”
“Weekend in China” had become a popular euphemism for a foggy day, or a day with low visibility. The smog in China had gotten so bad, it was like an American foggy day every day.
It was around then that the Pollutant Protection Program was enacted in China. People all over were turning their homes into little hamster homes, sealed off against the toxic air. You could get from your house to downtown without touching any air that wasn’t government-approved, all with an elaborate series of public tunnels which covered major pedestrian areas.
I was cursed by going through puberty incredibly early. It meant I was able to be scolded like an adult, and it also meant I peaked in height at five-foot six-inches when I was ten. By twelve I was able to grow rather convincing facial hair. I remember being able to buy alcohol without being asked for identification at age fifteen.
Unfortunately I still had an identification card showing that I was far younger than my face showed. This meant that I still couldn’t sign documents, join the military (if I ever wanted to), or vote.
If they didn’t ask for my identification, I could have voted in the election of 2016. In history books it would have been known as the last American election, if anyone besides a select few still bothered to learn about anything that happened before their birth.
Even so, most people who I now share my city with can’t read or write.
The election of 2016 was a turbulent one. Dozens of candidates, the most popular of which had wild ideas to try to change the United States of America. A blond man was called a bigot, a blonder man was accused of hating America, on and on and on.
I remember the night the winner was announced I was walking through the town, as I knew there would be lots of jokes to make on this night. There was a bar with many dozens of people all watching a single small television. The little voice coming out of it was frantically talking about percentages and delegates and such, and each time there was a pause, all of the people huddled around the screen would start talking, getting louder and louder until one voice would demand them to hush, and they would all go back to studying the television intently, absorbing every word.
All of the sudden, the voice in the television made an announcement, and the adults went wild. Some screamed, some cheered, and once they realized they were having different reactions, they started yelling at each other. They yelled and yelled, until one man struck another man. The man flew back, breaking glasses. He pulled himself up and shook off broken glass, blood coming from his arm and nose. When this happened, a woman threw a beer bottle at the first man, and the fight was on. Men and women punching and kicking each other, the noise got so loud that people from other buildings came streaming to witness, and the join the fracas. The fight poured out onto the street, and got larger.
I started to back away, and then walked away, and then ran.
I bounded over benches and ran until there were no more buildings. I got to my familiar forest, and kept going.
I was struck with the realization that I could be completely independent. I was old enough to be taken as an adult, and people in the town wouldn’t even notice. They were always miserable about something, finding a reason to yell at each other, almost always for reasons that had no reason to matter, at least to me. Why not disappear?
I henceforth left, and I remained on my own for three years, I think.
I met some people here and then, but didn’t really know any for longer than a week. During the second year I met a man with a hunting rifle with green face paint who said he was on his way to fight in an army against “the bastards on wall street”. He was probably just insane.
A few months later I remember sleeping one night and seeing flashes on the horizon like lightning, but a clear sky above. The Battle of the Mt. Shasta Foothills
I was in the state of Oregon when I saw airplanes flying low above me, shooting at each other. They looked like the same kind of plane, but some of them had orange stripes painted all over them. One plane shot down another, and another. On one of the tattered planes flying towards the ground, there was a little explosion in the c***pit, and a man in a chair rocketed out. He parachuted towards the dusty ground below.
I ran towards him as he landed.
As I got nearer to him, I saw he was limping away with one hand on his side, probably trying to stop bleeding on a wound, and holding a pistol in the other hand.
“Are you hurt Sir?” I called out.
He spun around and pointed the pistol at me.
“Put that down, put that down!”
I put down my meter-long stick
“Who the f*** are you? Not a fighter?” he said with slurred words
“No Sir, I actually don’t know what is fighting is. Is it the Russians? North Koreans?” I said, speaking of current events of years past.
“You have no idea what’s going on, lucky bastard. If you can help me get to where I need to go, I’ll explain it all. Agreed?”
I gladly agreed. I had nowhere to be.
The pilot proceeded to tell me about what happened after the 2016 Presidential Election.
Two days after the election, our new president was assassinated. Apparently the people in my former home weren’t the only displeased people with the outcome of things. A few hours after that, war broke out. Still nobody knows why, my guess is due to either outrage over the assassination of the president, or outrage over who the president turned out to be. Either way, it was essential the poor versus the rich.
And thus the Second American Civil War was born, although I found out later that most referred to it as the Second American Revolution.
We were approaching Portland when the pilot died. He made me swear to take his personal devices to his base, somewhere in McMinnville, where there used to be a museum. I decided that he had kept up his end of the bargain, so I would uphold mine and take him there even though he was dead.
I arrived to see what was a dying museum had become a full-fledged air base, with hundreds of assorted planes all with green stripes all being worked on by people wearing what amounted to rags. The planes seemed to be stolen U.S. Air Force planes, supplemented by planes from the museum, which made for quite a sight as biplanes were upgraded to be jet-propelled.
I was able to meet with the King of Oregon, who was leading the rebellion in the area. He was wearing striped pants and a red flannel shirt. He held a tire iron as a staff of sorts. He appointed me as an honorary Knight of Oregon and a Lieutenant in the rebellion army for my help in recovering his pilot.
It was during a meal that sirens went off and people started shouting.
“S***, I didn’t think they’d actually try to hit us here.” Said the King rather calmly.
He hurried me with his escorts to a massive plane sitting on the runway. It looked like something from the 40s, but had struts and wires all over it, and its engines were removed, leaving the sockets empty. Instead, four massive jet engines hung in pods under the wings. It looked like a porcupine with guns sticking out of windows.
I was loaded aboard, and the plane started up, and took off. The gunners were shooting from the ground below, and from the guns in our plane. It was like a brilliant fireworks display. Somewhere in there I started singing “America the Beautiful”. The King didn’t find it funny.
We were high above, circling, when the ground erupted into grey-purple smoke.
I could not see the ground, but the arcs of light stopped coming up, and everyone in the plane fell silent.
“Damn them all” the king muttered, before instructing the pilot to fly elsewhere.
There was a bad earthquake today. My entire home spun and rattled, and several things fell over and had to be propped up again, but nothing major was broken. Some boys who were outside at the time took shelter in my house. They were afraid a skyscraper would fall on them, smoosh them like a pancake.
They were young. They didn’t know. The skyscrapers that would fall are the skyscrapers already gone.
Oh well.
The King of Oregon was lounging in his seat, we had been airborne for a day now, and he spoke to me.
“Howard Hughes built this plane, for no reason other than to see it fly. Once, it flew once. At least it did. Now it’s flown many dozens of times. It was the Battle of Orlando when we decided to put these big engines on. We were buzzing around, shooting things on the ground, when the propellers quit.”
“Sir, if you don’t mind me asking, where are we going?” I asked
“We’re going to escape this war. I have no reason to fight in it anymore, my children are all gone, some dead, some wandered off. And there’s nothing I can do anymore that will change the outcome. I’ll come back when I hear news that it’s over, and I’ll see what new nation is born out of this. You’re welcome to come with me, but I understand if you don’t want to. Where we’re going is probably more comfortable than the world we’re leaving behind, and the one I’ll return to.”
He walked to the front of the plane, probably to get another glass of alcohol. I gave up on my question.
We arrived at night, and were taken through a series of clear tubes, through which we could see a city outside. Beijing.
I wasn’t able to see much in the darkness, but was excited to be able to finally see a city which hadn’t had any western visitors or journalists for a decade. I was rushed to a hotel in a red car, and told that my fate would be decided in the morning. When I got to my hotel I went to get my room card, but was told that I didn’t need one, and that my room was number 9105. I took the elevator, which seemed far faster than any had been in the USA, and arrived at my room, the door of which swung open automatically for me. I slept for 5 hours.
¬¬¬¬ I woke up to see a city unlike any in the west. All of the buildings had little smooth windows like that of an airplane, and they had little tubes running in between them in the sky and on the ground. I could see people walking, chatting away while in a clear tube thousands of feet up. I also noticed that they all had goggles.
I got dressed and walked down the hall to get breakfast, very aware that the hotel I was in seemed completely empty.
Eating my omelet, a Chinese man came and joined me at the table.
“So you’re an American. We heard about your kind.”
I was too tired to notice his bluntness.
“Where is everyone?” I asked
“Those of you who flew here are the only ones currently in the hotel. It hasn’t been used for a couple of years. We’re really quite surprised you managed to get out of the country before your people gassed themselves.”
That woke me up.
“Gassed themselves? What do you mean?”
“The attack you escaped at the airfield was one of thousands of gas attacks launched by your own government in a desperate last attempt to suppress the rebellion. It appears that they went a bit too far. They gassed the whole country. We’re sure many survived, but many didn’t.”
After a few seconds to digest what I had heard, and finish swallowing my bite of omelet, I asked my last question.
“How do you know all of this?”
“Are you kidding? We’ve been watching you all since the year 2000. Little boxes in space with little cameras, taking many photographs of your country every second. It was through our observations that we decided our last hope for survival was isolation.”
He left.
I stayed in China for a decade, and did essentially nothing. I didn’t have to make any money, and the Chinamen never did anything funny, so I just sort of wandered about and thought about if I should return to my country. The King of Oregon only rarely left his hotel room, and when he did, he was almost too intoxicated to speak.
Why not just stay in China? I thought at first. It’s comfortable here, I’m well fed, and there’s no terrible work to do. What would I gain by returning to the forsaken west?”
But after a few months, a feeling of restlessness fell in. I had left my country right as history was being made, I abandoned the people I had been raised by, for better or worse. Besides, I’m terribly curious to see what has become of the country. The Chinamen say that there is still civilized society, albeit somewhat broken down and scattered. It must be interesting. The Chinamen here have no interest in seeing things, only observing through their little space boxes. “Nothing more can be learned through risking one’s life.” They say. They’re very boring sometimes.
So I found myself knocking on the King of Oregon’s door. He shouted “Just a minute!” drunkenly slurring his words. He opened the door, he was wearing nothing but a necktie and a bandage over his abdomen, which he noticed me looking at.
“They had to replace my liver.” He said,
“Sir, I wish to return to the United States.” I said,
  “You can’t”
“Why not Sir? You said I could return if I so desired, you said you would be returning.”
“Yes but there’s nothing to return to!” he started yelling, “It’s all gone! Don’t you understand?! There’s nothing there anymore. It’s just craters and ash and f***-all. What do you hope to find? A meaning in it all? There’s no meaning in it all, it’s just chaos and war and death. That’s all it was.”
“Sir,” I insisted “I have made my decision, I wish to go back.”
He relaxed and turned away.
“I’ve lost almost all of my other lieutenants, what’s one more. Sure, go back. See what you find.”
I was on a jet the next day. It had no windows, which meant I wouldn’t see where I was going until I was on the ground. They dropped me right into the middle of Seattle, right onto the top of the former Columbia Tower, which is now just called “Black Glass”.
I walked down the stairs of the old building, and out onto the street. The city was in ruins. Buildings crumbled or tipped, cars littering the street. It was almost exactly as the Chinamen and the King of Oregon had described it, only there was something different.
When night fell I noticed little fires light up on the top of buildings or on the ground below, and in between. All around, little figures sat and talked and danced. Some of them sang, and the voices echoed through the city.
I walked to the space needle, which was now missing its flying saucer top floor. Apparently someone thought it would be a good place to sit and shoot rifles from. Apparently someone else didn’t like that, so they blew off the top.
I climbed the girders up to the former restaurant, which was still spinning slowly on its floor. I stood on it and pushed it faster, pushing off against the wall columns. I heard the motor that ran the spinning floor grind and crack and then stop, until I was the only one making the floor spin. I span faster and faster, and was struck with a sense of euphoria as I heard the whirling echo of singing chanting voices through the city.
Lights spun around me, music swirled, and it was beautiful chaos. I was home.