FFM 19: The Oracle Box

The hotel room was too quiet, and Jamal’s feet itched to set upon the road again.  California was so close that he could almost feel it calling to him, but the journey had taken its toll, and he needed to stay sharp now that he was travelling alone again.  The Circus of the Endless Spiral had provided remarkable protection from the hitmen and maniacs on his tail, but they were headed up towards Oregon and then on to Canada.

Crawling onto the dusty old mattress with his clothes still on, he turned on the TV to fill the silence.  It’d been a long time since he’d watched television, but it seemed like the same old nonsense as he flipped through the channels.  Reruns, reality shows, political scandals.  Bullshit piled on bullshit.

“Jamal!”  A middle-aged father barked as he passed over a sitcom on channel 4.  His thumb hovered over the arrow button on the remote.  “You’d better take care of your business, or you’re grounded!  Again!”  Canned laughter.  He began mashing the button again.

“No--” said a talk show host on 112.

“--seriously--” shouted a comedian on 113.

“--get--” a woman on 114.

“--going!” an infomercial on 115.

“I’m talking to you, boy,”  Buford Tannen growled in a TV-edit of Back to the Future III.

Jamal’s thumb stopped again.  “What..?”  He rubbed his eyes and glanced down at the remote as though there would be an answer there.  “Bullshit.”

He flipped the channel again.  

“No bullshit, son,” a serious looking man said directly to the camera.  “This is the real deal.”

“No way,”  he murmured to himself.  “What the hell is this?”

He tapped the power button and tossed the remote across the room.

“Too fucking weird.”

The TV popped back on with a click.  “It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it,” Spock said in an old rerun.

“Jesus Christ.  What is this shit?!”  Jamal shouted at the TV.  He was on his feet again.

“Calm down--boy--it’s just--a message that we would like to send to you.”  Channel 15, 27, 89, 51.  The TV was changing its own channel now.

“Who are you?”

On 70, there was a man cackling wildly in an old black and white film.  “You can--CALL ME!!--Mama--Maaaarrddiiii Graaaaaas!”  The answer came across advertisements, music videos, soap operas, and news coverage.

“What are you then?”  He felt his mind shifting into attack mode, his eyes darkening.  “Are you one of them?”

“Naaah, son, naaaah,”  replied a rapper on 128.  “I’m the--woman--they--factured.”  The screen went black for a moment, and he almost caught a glimpse of a female face with heavy eye-shadow and lipstick.  She had a wild smile that sent a chill up his back.  Then it was back, on one of those japanese cartoons.  “It’s… like a ghost in the machine!”  a man cried, his eyes wavering like pools of water.

“What do you want?”

“I already told you, pardner,” said an old cowboy on AMC, who was promptly replaced by a re-run of Lost in Space:  “Danger, Will Robinson!  Danger!”

“And why are you warning me?”

“Are you dumb?  Or--just--have a deathwish?”  The hardened PI who delivered this last line seemed to glare through the screen at him, challenging him.

“I can’t just keep running.”

“You gotta ask yourself one thing,” came the classic warning of Clint Eastwood.  “‘Do I feel lucky?’  Well--”

“Yeah, I get it.  Who’s coming now?  I’ve been able to deal with all the other assholes that’ve come after me.”  He had completely slipped into that warrior-mode; that personality that he instinctively referred to as The Sword.  Already, he was identifying potential weapons in the room.

“Not like--these--ones!”  Channel 9, 44, and 504.  He didn’t think that the cable at this hotel even went that high. “Get--to--Cali-forn-I-yay!  ACT NOW WHILE SUPPLIES LAST!”

He stopped, rubbing his temples and staring at his socks.  Life had gotten weird in the past few months, with the split personalities and the ‘holy mission,’ and the endless line of people trying to stop or kill him, but talking to a TV was too much.  With hands that felt numb, he began to pull on the beat-up Converse that he’d stolen along the road.

“Oops!” said a little girl on channel 5.  “--TOO SLOW!” shouted a sports commentator.  He turned to the screen in time to see it flip over to channel 107.  A little girl was sitting in front of a staticky television set of her own, staring intently.  As she turned back towards the camera to face him, he recognized the scene and murmured along with her high-pitched sing-song.

“They’re heeee-eeere.”

The screen switched off with another click as a loud pounding began on the door.  Jamal looked for a long moment, considered the lamp as a weapon, and then remembered the TV’s warning.  Whoever was out there, they were different from the men Jamal had already contended with.

A moment later, a man in a porcelain mask kicked the door into an empty room with a broken television set.  Nothing moved, except for the breeze blowing through curtains on an open window.