Video Consume Repeat

Part I

I’m starting this while I can still write. It will be slow. I only have enough energy for a few minutes a day. It’s something I always meant to do. I tried before but I couldn’t quite get it out. Now, instead of the time and attention due a story that could’ve been a beautiful memoir, it will simply have all I have left. Someone told me once that all you have is enough. Maybe in things like intramural sports but I think not when it’s life or death, win or lose. Sometimes you bring all you have to the table and someone else brings all they have and it’s more and better and that’s it. You can’t do a thing about it. But I suppose I did. I found a way to do something about it. Or maybe, after all, I just had more to bring to the table than anyone else. I was just born better.

I don’t know where it comes from and I don’t have time for a full history but the first time I really thought it through, I used it to get a girl.

…

Jessie was obsessed with Rip. I was obsessed with Jessie. She was beautiful. I was not. Rip was.

I boiled in secret envy rewinding and rewinding in my mind the recorded tapes I conserved of her in my own personal video store, editing Rip out and splicing myself in. And that’s probably the best way I can describe it. It’s as if I took the video tape of his brain out of his VCR and recorded it on my own, then returned it wiped. Well, not quite wiped. I just took the specific things I needed like a smart thief. Not everyone is as kind with that kind of power.

When I first figured it out, I would just take small things like a kid shoplifting candy. An answer to the teacher’s question. A better idea. A funnier joke. The reply my parents wanted to hear. Those were easy and quick. Rip was the first time I tried something bigger, and that took time. It wasn’t just one tape to record, process, and put on the correct shelf in my store. This was more like a whole library.

…

Jessie made out with Rip. I made out with no one. She was sexy. I was not. Rip was. But I watched and recorded and I noticed the first time she saw a flicker of a noisy, static screen in that beautiful face where she used to see nonchalant charm.

…

Jessie was obsessed with me. Rip was a blank channel on the sexual spectrum. I did whatever I wanted with Jessie. Then I wanted something else. I was hungry for money. I went to the men with all the dollars and I took all the knowledge and the killer instincts that had gotten them their dollars and I got even more dollars for me. After that, I didn’t have to worry about Jessie being obsessed with me cause there were plenty of her obsessed with all my dollars. She’s still just obsessed with me, somewhere back in our hometown.

…

Everything I needed I recorded from the best and added to my personal video store library and I made little, stupid Rips out of them. They’re all snow screens somewhere back where I left them, tuned to channels that don’t exist anymore, wondering where all their charm, dollar knowledge, talent, expertise, and hard-won skill went. It went to the one who brought all he had and it was more than they had and what they had wasn’t enough. What he had grew bigger.

…

I always dreamed of being a awesome writer. There’s a better way of saying that but I can’t remember. I need a minute…

Anyways, that was always the real thing. The one that I wanted back before everything. Before I even did the candy store stuff. So I recorded it all real good and got awesome at writing. I had all the best ideas.

It’s already happening. I don’t know what but but I know there’s better writing than what I’m doing right now. Smarter words. My tapes. They don’t not make tapes now.

…

I always tried to be nice. Share. I never totaly wiped. Other guys are mean. I’m not the worser thing.

I writ better books then you. I am good. Smart man.

Too late. Words to bad. He can do tapes. He do my tapes.

…

Hello, new writer here. Won’t say my name, of course, but I am “he”. I’ve been reading along and this is fascinating. It’s like watching a man devolve into an ape. I suppose you all know what happened so I won’t over explain. Suffice it to say there’s always someone who brings more to the table and your everything will not be enough. One day, someone will come along and be better than you at the one thing you believe makes you who you are, makes you unique. They won’t only be better, they’ll be faster and probably won’t even care about it like you do. One day, you will be obsolete. One day someone might even outdo me, but I doubt it.

Part II

Hello! It’s “he” again. Looks like the original “he” had another version of this in a notebook hidden away. Well, I found it, and I thought, why not show both? To be honest, it made me very sad and I didn’t want to be sad alone. So now you can be sad with me. Then again, maybe you can’t be. Maybe he was the only other one that would’ve understood. Maybe this sadness is unique to what he and I can do. Well, what he could do. I know he thinks he was being merciful and kind leaving everyone a little slice of life, but he wasn’t. Two-thirds of a whole isn’t whole. He left a trail of slobbering, brain dead zombies in his wake. It’s how I found him. Yes, I wipe them clean as he called it. But death is a better fate than having part of your identity ripped out and then being left to somehow hold the rest together. It’s like disemboweling someone and then leaving them to try and hold their intestines inside…I’m rambling and none of you care. I’m a villain and that’s that. Well, anyway, enjoy.

…

I don’t talk to people. I’m not sure I know how to anymore. Somehow in everything I’ve consumed there’s a whole piece missing. But I need to talk to someone so I try a writing exercise. I try a conversation with a piece of paper. Who knows, maybe the empty page will speak back.

“Hello, my name is Clay and I am a thief.”

“Hello Clay!” they might all say back, but there is no anonymous group for what I do. I don’t even know if anyone else can do what I do. But I have to speak to someone. Even if it’s an imaginary support group.

“I’m not a normal thief. I do steal things but not money or consumer goods. I steal personal things.”

The chairperson might nod at me and say, “Go on.”

I feel encouraged and resolve to be completely open. “The only way I can explain it is it’s like everyone has a VCR in their brain. I know some of you here are young enough that you don’t know how those worked. The rest of you will know that you used to be able to record anything as long as your VCR was hooked up to the TV and you had a blank tape. Or at least a tape you were willing to record over.”

I might see knowing smiles and nods from those in the know, and interested looks from those who were learning a piece of history.

“So it’s like everyone has a video store in their brain or a TV. And I have my own personal one, but I can record things from other people’s TVs. Things like an idea. Things like thoughts and memories. Things like charisma or charm. Raw talent or skills honed over decades.”

The faces in the circle are now concerned. Not like something is terribly wrong and they need to get away fast. Like a warning signal has gone off, but it will surely be explained away in a moment and everything will have proven to be totally fine and safe.

“The thing is, when I record from other people’s TV, I don’t make a copy. It doesn’t work that way. I just record and they don’t have it anymore.”

The chairperson might lean forward in their chair at this point. “I’m not sure we understand exactly what you’re saying, Clay,” they might say in an attempt to normalize a situation that is fast turning bizarre. “Can you explain what you mean?”

“Sure. What’s two plus two?”

“What?”

“I’m explaining it. What’s two plus two?”

“You want me to answer?”

“Yeah, if you can. It’s not a trick question.”

“Okay, two plus two is…uhh. Sorry having a brain fart.”

“You won’t be able to tell me what it is, nor put together any of the building blocks you’d need to figure out what two plus two is from scratch.”

“What? That’s crazy.” The chairperson chuckles and shifts in their seat nervously.

“Then tell me.”

They chuckle again but they’re not smiling anymore and their face turns white. The other members of the group begin to murmur.

“Two plus two is four.”

There is a shocking revelation plain across the chairperson’s face as if they’ve just learned the solution to general relativity. In fact, they’ve learned nothing. Only an answer to a question. They will have to completely re-learn the building blocks of math because I took them.

“Please, don’t do that again,” they might say if they don’t run out of the room screaming.

“I won’t, but I need you all to stay and keep listening.”

They nod fervently, supplicants trying to appease a frightening god. “Of course,” they say.

“Thank you.” I know they don’t really feel the ability to choose, but I feel grateful, so I thank them. “The first time I really used it was to get a girl.”

The chairperson probably isn’t listening anymore. They’re shriveling into their chair trying to come to terms with being made dumber than a six year old in the space of a short exchange of words. The others have ears pricked up. They lean forwards in their seats. They listen so that it doesn’t happen to them. I don’t really care about this kind of power anymore. I just want someone to know me. For a moment I struggle to continue. No one will really know me. This is just a page talking back. This is a sad exercise like trying to ease a lovesick heart on a whore. The support group members are still waiting.

“Jessie was her name. She liked poetry and things like that. I thought that was cool. But she didn’t seem to think anything I did was cool. She was obsessed with this other guy in our class. Rip.”

They all stare at me expectantly, even the chairperson has been brought back out of themselves.

“So I became his friend. I wasn’t any good at making friends, but for some reason when there was a goal I could do it like it was the easiest thing in the world. We spent a lot of time together and while he thought I was his best friend, I was secretly recording all the parts of him that Jessie liked the most so I could steal her.”

I can’t sit in the chair like everyone else is anymore. I stand and some of them start as if they were afraid I was going to unleash my recording powers on them then and there just by standing up.

“I remember the first time she noticed it. She looked at Rip, where there should’ve been the easy smile and confidence he always exuded, and for just a moment, saw a static screen in it’s place. It took more time, but that moment was where the spell was broken and his magic didn’t work on her anymore. Well, really he just didn’t have any magic anymore. We think it takes a lot for people to stop loving each other, but really it’s barely held together by the thinnest threads. You poke a little hole in it and it all evaporates.”

“What exactly did you steal from him?” said one of the group members, curious despite themselves.

“I don’t know. Sexual appeal. Charm. Masculinity. Something along those lines that attracted Jessie.”

“What happened?”

“I got what I wanted. Rip crumbled into himself and Jessie fell into my arms.”

“She fell in love with you just like that? Just by taking the other guy’s sex appeal?”

“It pretty much equaled out to that. Two plus two equals four…But really I don’t believe that. In the end, Jessie was always only in love with Rip. I just stole enough of him to make her think I was him.”

They all settled back into their seats. “How did you learn how to do that? Record?” says one of them.

“I don’t know. I guess I was just born better.”