New Berlin 2031

My dear friend,

Time has come to say farewell. I'm taking off. I lived my life and now I quit. This is my last message from me to you. Read it, drag it to the trash, and drop... Kill me, Ace, and watch me waving goodbye thru the flashing HD led.
You may consider this as a last request.

Julie is dead. She deceased last week at the Meyer Hospital after
many sufferings. She had been ill for the last two years, and in a way, I'm happy for her. It's over now. Nobody can pretend her death came as a surprise. Even Eugen, our son, didn't shed a tear at the funeral.

The summer is hot here in New Berlin. And quite fatal. You can see them in the streets, the homeless and the outcasts, dying in the open... It's weird for me you know, as a senior citizen of the world, to witness this modern notion of death. Never been easier really: just slam the door behind you and that's that.
I have become an old man, Ace. A surviving cluster of remembrances. Out of focus. +, MY BODY WENT ALL WRONG.

When me and Julie used to go out for our daily walk, she would occasionally laugh at my crinkled body. She'd say, 'Look at you, Patrick, you're resembling a dried out pumpkin'.... A dried out pumpkin. How odd... Five years ago, Julie was younger than me, and she was marching much faster. Yet, quite of a sudden, she grew old. And the pace of our steps came closer. Until the day I slowed down for her. I can still remember the spot at which she out-aged me: it was in front of a sports shop window. While evening her footsteps to mine, she said, 'Patrick, I think something bad is happening to me.' Within the shop window, a display was claiming 'Technology Wear for Outdoor Living'. A whole array of ultra-resistant suits, featuring overlay filters and digital toxinometers, shone in the dusk. Julie was still recovering, breathing heavily thru her mask. A couple of meters behind us, I could see a bunch of homeless people preparing themselves for the night. They were adjusting impoverished masks, one or two of them just laid there with no masks at all, barely conscious. I looked back at the top gear enclosed in the showcase. In the polished glass I could see a reflection of Julie's anguished gaze. 'It's not only you, I said, something bad is bearing down on all of us'. After a long silence, she asked me, 'But where did we go wrong, Patrick?'... as if I'd have a clue...

Out here in Kopernickestrasse 13, all I see is Faces. Physiognomy. People that used to look one way, and that now are looking different. Street people.

"Some are a little strange looking, however those are not necessarily the majority of them."

"They have, erm... large eyes. Eyes flushed with blood."

"Red corneas"

"Some of them have small mouths.

"Tiny noses."

"Pointed ears."

"Precocious genitals."

"No hair."

"From what I've seen, they're sort of like small bodies with big
chests."

"A bit like fluffy animals..."

"I was struck by the feel when you touch them."

"There's definitely something creepy about them."

You understand, my friend, out here in Kopernickestrasse 13, all I have left is a window, just one open window, to look on the street.

Julie didn't complain much. She could have though, for her death was unfortunate inasmuch as her life was. In my opinion - and I say this against my will and own inhibition, Julie's life was a miserable one. I'm willing to take the blame. When we first met, she was this wild female, greedy for sex, power and worship. I never told you how the role distribution in our relationship had stumbled and fall, resulting in the opposite balance. I prefer to avoid the subject.

Julie never condemned me overtly about it, but you can take my word Ace, I was her deathmonger. I made hell out of her life. I've cheated upon her. I've beaten her up. I've been abusive. But that's only the minor part. If she took my shit all the way thru, if she didn't run from me like one would expect, that's because she never knew that my love was fake. You understand, Ace, Julie was confident in my love. Each and every single day during the past thirty years, Julie was there for me. Expecting me when I was coming back from work, welcoming me with her unsecure smile, offering me along her cooking the most sacred sacrifice of all, allegiance.

She gave it all to me, Ace. Her understanding, her
intelligence, her joys and her griefs. In return, I was giving her
showtime. I supplied the tears and the rain. Being picky. Being
moody. Being conditional. That was me, playing the funky score. Maybe she was hoping that today, maybe today, I'd give it to her. And you know what? I wasn't blind or selfish or anything, I just needed the humiliation. The condescencion. Making her feel unsecure, showing her how vulnerable she was, reminding her that she was not worth anything more than she was.

Powers of destruction bore down on me like rivers swaying along the darkness of the night. Sometimes, after I'd brutalize her, I would calm down, I'd say sweet things to her. And you know what, Ace? I'd always work it out. At the sound of my repented voice, she used to open big, childlike eyes whom humid look revealed passion and love. A fascinating spectacle, Ace: beyond the mist of Julie's torment, ardor and offering would sprout from nowhere, extending like haze, invading a white, bony stare. Let me tell you something else. I know why I behaved like I did; the other women, the violence, the abuse, the hurting. I know the reason of the pain, Ace. The reason of the pain is pain. There's nothing else. Not a thing...

Soon, I'll join the punks. Lost souls drooling all over in the streets with a sad look in the eyes. Deranged people muttering to themselves words that nobody can understand. Ace, did you ever wonder about the chance that these words actually have a meaning? Have you ever listened to what those human leftovers mumble about? Well, for what it's worth, my opinion is that they're answering Julie's inquiry. How things went wrong... When it all began...

Eugen, our son, an ambitious young man, has signed a 8 year-contract with a space research and exploitation company. He's been assigned to the Venera VII, a newly built base station of which you may have heard of. His next month-off is scheduled for the 21st May of next year. I have prepared 8 letters for him, and my computer is programmed to send them on a monthly basis. In those letters, I'm talking to my son. Explaining things. He won't know I'm dead 'til he get the last one.

Anonymous eyes are the audience for the agony in the streets. Here in kopernickestrasse, staring eyes pop up from behind flapping curtains, greedy eyes begging for the captivating parade of dying men. They watch the distorted faces and the skeleton armies. Greenish, translucid skin disclosing porous cheekbones and scrawny jaws. In a moment, they'll see my crumbled head, lost in a thick, beige raincoat, reachin' out for air, while my lungs will swell upon the invisible and poisonous fluids. They'll watch an old pumpkin trashin'.

Your friend, Patrick.