Snapshots

When Dad arrives, he twiddles a dial in the panel, and SnapRoom gets brighter.

He’s wearing the same slacks and mustard-coloured cardigan that I expect Mum to have thrown out by now. His face is hollow, eyes empty. Strings of white hair fall from the ring of still-functioning follicles on his head. The white whiskers on his face give his skin a greyish hue.

I’ve never seen him look so old. Best not to mention it.

The SnapShots adjust to the new light. The bluish glow of Five, Fifteen, Nineteen, and Twenty-One makes each a petal in a ghostly peony at the room’s centre.

“Cheers,” I say. “I was too scared to touch anything.”

There are basic options on the panel, like lighting, EQ, mute, reverse, record, and so on — but also more serious-sounding options:  delete, modify, enhance. I almost pressed reset memory, thinking it was the light switch — which would’ve erased everything the SnapShots had learned since their creation.

Five runs to Dad for a hug. “Daddy!” He giggles as his hands run through Dad’s legs with a buzz. Holes, like dead pixels, pock-mark his blocky hologram all over, from the bowl cut down to the dungarees.

“What took you so long?” I say.

Dad pretends to pat Five’s head, his hand going straight through, fingertips lighting up in blue. There’s a resting tremor in his hands. I’ve had those before, from anti-depressants and hangovers. Neither are topics I broach easily. I hope Dad’s shakes are something else.

“Some new customers wanted to book golfing lessons,” he says. “It takes a while to register them in the system.” He walks to the TV monitors embedded in the wall and turns them on. They display CCTV footage of his golf course up above us. Golden light spreads over the greens. There’s a white cart by the ninth hole, where I parked not minutes ago. “What were you guys talking about before I showed up?”

“Tell him what was on your mind, Twenty-Five,” Fifteen says to me, rolling up the sleeves of his school shirt.

I let them call me Twenty-Five so they don’t feel excluded.

“I need your advice, Dad,” I say. “I’ve been seeing Flossy for a few years. She’s itching for me to propose.”

I’d never known a ‘Flossy’ before I met her in the bank one evening. She squeezed rain from her ebullient mop of pink hair and screamed at a camera that she wasn’t leaving before speaking to a human. In a cringeworthy but effective move, I said that if she was looking for human connection, we should go for a drink instead of waiting longer in that forgotten, sterile cubicle. In my office daydreams of her, a shimmering ream of gossamer floss surrounds her. She’s my Flossy by name and nature.

“That’s how it usually goes, Twenty-Five,” Dad says. “Your mother and I got married at your age.” He giggles. “The most wonderful decision I ever made! Until we had you, Son.” He points at me, finger wobbling. “Grandkids! They’ll follow soon enough.”

“One thing at a time!” I say.

“A dad can dream. You’ll bring Flossy next time, won’t you?”

He used to complain that I wasn’t visiting enough. Now I’m here so often it feels like I never leave, so he guilts me about not bringing Flossy. It’s always something.

“You’re right,” he says, reading my face. “I shouldn’t say things like that.”

“I-I didn’t mean — ”

“Hooray!” Five says, star-jumping with excitement. “What’s the wedding gonna be like? How many cakes? You guys need to get a big house for all our kids!”

Dad sits cross-legged beside Five but meets my gaze. “Remember visiting me in the garage when you were five? I’d be tinkering away with my tech, and you’d pad across the backyard to see me, getting grass all over your grippy socks.”

Mum would entrust me with a steaming espresso to take on my journey. I’d hold it up to Dad, careful not to spill any. Back then, he looked several orders of magnitude larger than he does now.

Dad looks to Five. “I knew from this age that you’d make something of yourself. Remind me how high you can count, Son!”

Five’s face screws up in thought as he taps numbers across his digits. “One, two, three, four …”

These days, now that anyone can make a SnapShot and all of them are immaculate, Dad seems to love Five the most. Over our lunches at the restaurant that overlooks the golf course, Dad has told me countless times that Five is “a special early fragment of a tech with boundless applications.”

Nineteen interrupts Five. “Ugh! Marriage.” He slumps on the brushed aluminium wall. “Are we that conventional?” He scratches his bald head.

I had long hair for most of that year but shaved it off just before I turned twenty. Dad so enjoyed that act of bravery that he kept it for the SnapShot.

Nineteen has a point. Flossy’s friends are all getting married, and it does seem like it’s our turn — but is that all any life event is? Our turn?

That’s the weird thing about SnapRoom. I come here sometimes just to see how far I’ve progressed, but my former selves can be insightful. In the end, I’m the same as these kids in front of me once were:  I improvise some approximation of a life in the face of epic choices I feel too small to make.

“Thought we’d have spent a few more years single,” Nineteen continues, “riding suicide over the magnorails between the cities. Living off the land.”

What an insufferably idealistic dream. It’s so painful to look at my own smug face from that age:  its insincere smile, the whole snake-like, hooded-eye, brooding thing I always did. I thought I knew so much more than everyone, rambling on about how I should’ve been born in the 1960s. I extolled the potential joy of living out of a Volkswagen van when I wouldn’t even join Dad on his weekly hikes.

“Can you even play the guitar any better than I can?” Nineteen adds.

I shake my head with feigned dismay. Nineteen can tell. The last person he needs treating his pursuits as a silly phase is himself.

It’s cruel of me to hang out with these guys, really. They derive so much hope from the it-gets-better potential of the different futures they envisage. Here I am, the finite reality, robbing them of that hope simply by existing.

I frown at Nineteen and say, “We have a happy life?”

“Fantastic,” he says, pushing himself up the wall with his feet, grazing its panelling, his arms firmly folded. “I’m sure that makes us all so memorable. People will flock here to meet us one day. ‘Come hang out with this guy’s SnapShots, for here lies a man who was once happy.’”

They used to visit SnapRoom, Dad’s golfers and B&B guests. Later, SnapShot Soft LLC’s patented holoproject technology became reasonably priced. Now everyone has their own SnapShots. It’s hard to see even these first iterations as meaningful, what with proliferation like that.

What’s that sound? Oh. I cringe as Dad sings some made-up tune to himself while playing an air guitar. “Hey, Nineteen, remember letting your dad take you to see The Mechabots in concert? When their drummer closed with that ten-minute solo, and his platform rose up into the air? Then all those fireworks launched out of the base. You’d never seen anything like it.” He smiles. “I watched you watch them. The light of the sparklers in your eyes.”

Nineteen sighs. “No one else wanted to go with me.”

“Your guitar’s here at the club, up in the attic! Will you teach me how to play if I bring it down?”

“Oh, come on, Dad,” I say. “Why would you wanna do that?”

Nineteen ignores us both. “How do you think Twenty-Five is doing, Fifteen?”

Fifteen is Nineteen’s favourite, even though they make each other bluer, their neuroses feeding off one another.

“Honestly?” Fifteen says, loosening his tie. “I can’t believe we even have a girlfriend.”

An eternity in school uniform! Why not? That’s what Fifteen’s existence felt like. His is an age I wouldn’t repeat. On my mental to-do list for most of it was find ANY bearable direction for life, hide misery from others, try not to kill self (will to live pending.) ‘Pending’ lasted months until I witnessed the purple balloon of my own pee bursting across Terry Coraghan’s sour face at high school graduation. It was a petty humiliation to cap the many he put me through. Whatever keeps you going, I say.

Dad tries to pinch Fifteen’s cheeks. “True, you didn’t have anyone to go out gallivanting with — but it worked out great for me. We spent weekends playing backgammon together.” He clicks his tongue in thought. “And you had so much to be proud of. A handsome young gent with your whole life ahead of you? I wish you could’ve seen that.”

It wasn’t so simple. I kept all my suffering internal at that age. I guess that’s one reason why Dad holds onto Fifteen:  he has happier memories with me than I have with myself. I’m glad, in a way — but shouldn’t I have enjoyed my own company at least as much as anyone else?

Dad gasps. “Fancy beating your old man at backgammon again? I’ll bring a set. Just tell me where to move your pieces!”

Twenty-One slicks his brown hair out of his face then snaps his fingers. “Oh, yeah!” He laughs. “How quaint to think of the age before girlfriends! Don’t worry, Fifteen. Let’s just say you make up for lost time.”

Nineteen takes Five’s little hand and pulls him closer, blue sparks flying from their fingertips. The wireframe shape of their holograms bursts through as the room’s computer struggles to interpret their crashing together. Nineteen glowers at Twenty-One, who says, “What’s the big deal?”

Twenty-One:  the edgy, all-black-wearing, experience-collecting party boy. Never missed a club night out, memorized album reviews on obscure websites and spouted them at friends to impress. When I look at him, I feel the elbows of all those partygoers in my ribs. The tinnitus of blaring techno rings in my ears. The sugary film of vodka mixers coats my teeth. The frozen fear, of waking up in a field in muddy clothes, jags through my chest.

At least he kept me alive, but should I attribute that to him or luck?

Dad cocks his head at me. “You’ve something to learn from Twenty-One. All that creative energy! Remember the thirtieth anniversary party for your mother and me? The caterers with those fancy canapé-laden slates. You rented a champagne fountain.” He presses a hand to his heart. “The speech you gave — it brought me to tears.”

I must’ve used the fountain more than Dad, because I don’t remember that at all.

“Sometimes it’s more about indulging in the day’s fun than working for the future. So slow down! You won’t be Twenty-Five for long.”

“That’s the opposite of your usual advice,” I say. “What’s going on?”

“Since no one likes my suggestions, Twenty-One, maybe you can choose the activity for all of us today? I know you guys don’t agree on much, but there must be something. Anything to distract Twenty-Five from his troubles.”

“Why are you so against helping me?”

He hangs his head but doesn’t speak.

“You didn’t do much living-in-the-moment at my age. You already had your own company.” I hold my arms up and gesture around the room. “I’ve gotta get cracking if I want silly playrooms like this in my manse.”

“Hey!” Twenty-One says.

“Y-You know what I mean,” I say.

“We sure do,” says Fifteen, looking to Nineteen, who nods.

“I wish you could just enjoy yourself,” Dad says. “We never get enough time together, and your mind’s always elsewhere.” He’s almost in tears. I have no idea why.

I shrug at the SnapShots, who’ve spread around the room and appear like the blue fingers of a giant’s hand.

I clench my fists. “I didn’t mean to upset you, Dad. Let’s just drop it. Wanna go for lunch?”

Dad goes to the door, opens it, and bends down. He slides in a silver tray and picks it up. On it are a single BLT, a glass of milk, a carton of orange juice, a box of raisins, and a red plastic tea set. “Why don’t we have lunch here today? I brought the teacups for Five, to serve with his favourite — orange juice with raisins in it!”

“Yay!” Five runs to Dad and jumps up, trying to grab the tray. His hand passes through it, to his bemusement.

I know it’s fun for Dad to be here with the SnapShots too, but as the eldest version of myself — and the only alive one, in every sense — I don’t want to share. He puts me in the awkward position of inventing some excuse for why we can’t stay, without insulting the rest. Oh, well. If I mess up, maybe I can press reset memory when Dad’s not looking.

“Twenty-Five thinks we don’t know what he wants,” Fifteen says, looking at Dad but jerking his head in my direction.

Five is on the floor, crying. He’s realized his flesh isn’t solid.

Dad puts the tray down and kneels beside Five.

Did I sound like that at five? I figured it was endearing, evoking only sympathy. This is one occasion when I prefer my memory’s partial view of the past to these digital replicas.

I look between Five and Dad to indicate my discomfort, but Dad’s back up and chatting to Nineteen now.

“Dad!” I say.

“… don’t know why we humour him,” Nineteen says, tailing off to look at me and say “Hm?” to show that I’ve interrupted.

He knows I resent him. I’m disgusted to have been someone so sneery, though I do admit that it’s easier to judge him from the outside.

“Okay, this is ridiculous,” I say.

I reach for the door handle. My hand goes straight through it, buzzing with blue sparks.

Five keeps wailing. I can only hear a few words of Dad’s conversation with the others, who form a bright blue wall around him.

Their voices blur together. I struggle to hear my thoughts over the sound of them.

I shout, “How did it happen?”

The shock of it shuts up Five, who sniffles.

Dad looks in dismay at his sandwich. His plan of a pleasant lunch has shattered. How many times I’ve done this to him, I’ve no idea.

“You and Flossy were celebrating your engagement,” he says. “Took an unlicensed autocab back home. It went haywire. E-Exploded. Neither of you, you know …”

I think back to my first spontaneous date with Flossy. The knock of her knee against mine. Her manic laughter. How she characterized her office’s staff room with such loving detail that I saw everyone with her:  mad Karen, kind Sophie, Bob the slob. I think of her now in a haze of grapefruit perfume, with an aura of colourful ticker tape all around.

The guilt of leaving the world Flossy-less presides over every other pain now flooding me.

“But I don’t get it,” I say. “I parked a cart outside about half an hour ago.” I gesture to the TV, to my cart by the ninth hole.

Dad looks where I’m pointing. He walks to the panel and taps some setting into it. Across the TV screens, a granite sky appears. Beneath it is black, ash-like rain. The grass and dunes now fester with eerie black weeds. Why? He’d made it to retirement, to the simple pleasure of running this place.

His rheumy eyes roll at me. “What was the point? Let nature take it all.” He looks around the room. “This is about all that matters.” He addresses each of the SnapShots in turn. “Five, my first and favourite assistant. Fifteen, my little rebel. Nineteen, who emerged from his funereal adolescence with the ambition to live forever. Twenty-One, who first discovered how to enjoy life.” He turns to me. “Twenty-Five.”

I shudder to hear the name.

“Your final reluctant birthday present to me. As close as I can get to the day I lost you.”

I’m jealous of the tears streaming down his face.

To think I’d shown these other SnapShots such disdain. I’m the most deluded and pitiful of them all. I hope my future self is kinder to me than I’ve been to my younger versions. Oh, right, there won’t be one. How many waves of awful revelation can my heart take? Oh, right, I don’t have a heart. There goes another wave.

“I want to see Mum,” I say.

Dad waves a dismissive hand at me. “Your mother came here once. It’s — not for her.” He rolls his shoulders as if to rid himself of the idea. “But I just want to forget what happened.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Isn’t it?”

I think of the alternatives, for both of us. I don’t know the answer.

Dad turns away, too saddened to look at me any longer, at any of us. He makes to leave, but I shout after him, “Take me with you.”

The others meet this plea with laughter, murmurs, saddened exhalations.

Dad stops by the door, still with his back turned. “Why did I save any of you? Your mother was right. This isn’t helping.”

I growl with frustration. “I’ve just learned I’m … nothing more to you than, than a height mark on a kitchen wall and … and now you’re gonna delete us? Go on, then!”

“Let him,” Fifteen and Nineteen say to me in unison.

“No!” Five wails.

“Chill!” Twenty-One says.

Dad inhales, turns around, and says, “The eldest SnapShot is the most likely to think it’s still alive.” He smiles bleakly. “I advised customers to keep SnapShots of the same person in different rooms. I was mostly thinking of the profit I’d gain from the extra projectors required.” He walks between us, reaching out to ruffle Five’s holographic hair, stroke Nineteen’s sunken little face. “Split you guys up? That was like asking whether I wanted to see only your hand today, your leg tomorrow.” He looks between us all. “Not height marks on a kitchen wall. More like, I don’t know, cross-sections from a full-body MRI scan.” He holds out his palm and chops up and down upon it with his other hand. “Instead of the 3-D image of a body, together you’re the 4-D reality of my entire son.” He lowers his head. “You’re each a person I wish I could’ve kept. And just a part of someone I loved dearly.”

None of us know what to say.

“I-I’ll try again later,” he says, turning back to the door. “One more time. Just once more.”

“Well done,” Nineteen says to me.

“You ruined it,” Fifteen says.

I feel Twenty-One’s touch like a fuzz of static on my shoulder. “It’s okay,” he says, bringing me in for a comforting embrace.

Five wraps his arms through my legs.

“All of you stand before me now,” Dad says, “proof that my son has gone forever. But each time I come here, I think it’ll go differently.”

Before I can say anything, he’s out the door.

His hand reaches back in. I run to it as he presses reset memory.