Walden Homes

Walden Homes

From its inception, Walden Homes was said to be the top of the class when it came to retirement. It was undeniably at least the largest all-inclusive private work/play facility in Lockheed-Concord, housing more than half of all qualifying local civilians who no longer wished to work. Plenty of highly reputable people brighter and tighter than myself had already secured their space inside the sprawling megastructure’s windowless expanse, gladly forgoing their former life in exchange for no longer needing to do anything but relax and consume. Even among the relatively young, full-service assisted living had come into vogue, particularly in comparison with the shameful predicament of having nowhere to call home; in fact, it was considered the ultimate expression of one’s net worth to be watched over hand and foot even if you had to give up everything else you’d ever known to pay for it.

Personally, I’d been waiting to retire since I was old enough to tell time. There was a certain solace in knowing that when my mind and body began to fail, I wouldn’t simply wither up and croak. In addition to its high notoriety, including all sorts of spas and sports and gaming opportunities that could only be revealed in full to insiders, Walden Homes offered an extensive end-of-life experience, ensuring we wouldn’t be forced to relocate again when it came time to ask for help chewing my food, wiping my rear. No matter what transpired in the outside world, the preferred customers of Walden Homes would be snug as a bug behind the gates of the latest and greatest resort retirement community available anywhere aboveground.

My wife wasn’t convinced. Many longer-standing locals had ferociously protested the construction of the facility, which required bulldozing hundreds of acres of federally protected land. The courts had rapidly squashed any such rabble rousing in a hurry, arguing for a more broad-minded approach. Life expectancy inside of Walden Homes had been shown to increase by up to 40 percent, some studies showed, and the earlier you moved in, the more likely you’d hit the high end of that range. My wife, however, said she’d rather die than wile away her middle age behind a paywall, much less commit our children to the same. It made her sick to have to see how thin my skin was, how dim my gaze. If we couldn’t make it on our own in this world, she implored, what else could ever make “making it” worth it?

Not all who settle are at home. I didn’t bother proselytizing from the promotional materials Walden Homes sent over. Soon as I was able to resell our home, I planned to sign us up and move us in whether she liked it or not. Surely, like most everybody else who’d ever been saved in spite of their worst self, she’d learn to approve.

Former Inhabitants and How They Died

We’d both been wrong in different ways. Neither staying put nor absconding into one of an extremely limited number of immediately available luxury suites could’ve changed my family’s future. Had we followed through on my designs, in fact, I’d have ended up a victim too, cremated alongside all the other highly valuable residents who’d gone to bed believing the sky-high steel bollard gates defining their community would protect them. Unfortunately, they’d failed to anticipate the well-meaning frugality of their new landlords—the same super PAC who’d rescued our state from imminent foreclosure by building private luxury communities on public land—who in turn had failed to evaluate the bunk science they’d been sold by Lockheed-Concord, who manufactured the cost-efficient eco-plastic all new federal construction had been mandated to deploy. In the end, it’d taken hardly half an hour for the entire private community to collapse into horizon, leaving behind a 2.7 million square foot public eyesore and mass grave.

Thank God, I can now productively endorse our national news media’s choice to expound over tastefully amended wide-angle tracking shots of the ruins. The fact it’d already happened at just one of the many hundreds of like-minded luxury communities burgeoning nationwide meant that it was highly unlikely to happen again. The misfortune at Lockheed-Concord, as a collective burnished offering, had fulfilled the obligation of a national moral debt left in arrears by the woke mind virus. Couldn’t we see? We, the living, were stronger and sharper than those who’d succumbed and therefore better prepared for the many other fast-approaching forms of Revelation, come what must. Wasn’t the whole ethos of public recovery projects like Walden Homes based upon establishing a stronger sense of public safety? Maybe not every shitty story had to end so shittily if we only knew how to interpret it.

Either way, by the time I’d caught wind of what was happening, up late locked in my man cave trying to meditate, the roof was already on fire, the exits around me laced with smoke. With my head to the door, I thought I could hear infantry in the living room, looking for valuables to loot and hostages to claim. Before the community forums were taken down, I’d read rumors about home invasions, though I’d yet to understand why. Whether it was my own government I was up against, trying to scare me into a deal with Walden Homes, or some far-left local militia, sick of our middling, who’d taken it upon themselves to disrupt the sprawl of Big Early Retirement, I knew I didn’t stand a chance. Better to have at least one from our bloodline left to carry forth the family name, I told myself as I slipped out through a window into the yard, never to see my precious wife and kids again.

Even then, I was aware of the duress my choice to live might cause among those who do not know me very well. These days just about everybody bears a righteous cause they’d love to brandish against anyone who isn’t them, and most social media arrived clogged with ads and warez so adept you’d need a terminal degree to not get duped. I could hardly recall how we’d spent our last few weekends as a family but in the service of trivia, huddled up around our SeeScreen farming coins, grateful for the warmth. Even when we did manage to click through to narrative media, the only legible content marked safe for useful learning was full of doodoo, the busywork of neoliberal buttholes who wanted nothing more than to clog kids’ brains with warfare, porn, and climate lies. In saying goodbye, I felt grateful they wouldn’t have to abide the rest of their lives in fear. Instead, they could head straight back to their Creator and absorb everything they’d ever need to know straight from the source.

Cope

My wife, unlike myself, refused such silver linings. She’d stayed in bed since the freeways closed wholly on principle: If we can’t go anywhere we want, why should I move? Her inaction and depression were a protest, even if nobody would witness it but me. Once, we’d both believed in equality and social justice, never mind its vilification in the culture. But that I had any vestige of get-up-and-go meant, to her mind, that I’d been stricken by propaganda. Her life coach had convinced her that the only real path to victory was to opt out and turn inward.

I took it as progress that she’d managed to attach herself to any form of yearning for spiritual meaning, even if it seemed a long shot. Either way, all prospecting over god’s ongoing absence—refusing to intercede perhaps as a demonstration of our free will and need for deliverance—had long since jumped the shark. If the Lord does live inside of people such as we, we should only hope he hasn’t gotten sore enough with humanity and taken his leave, as I’d heard theorized in college before they closed it.

Perhaps only in the aftermath of tragedy, given sufficient solo time to ponder and reflect, might an average Joe like you or I learn to appreciate the brute resilience of our forefathers, who’d made this country great from its beginning by coming and taking what was already theirs. Who cares about murder when prosperity is on the table? Our ongoing existence, all by itself, proved we deserved everything we’d inherited and more; born of a rare and righteous breed to be blessed with so much breath when so many others had fallen deaf waiting for a sign. Perhaps if my wife had listened to me, she’d still be here, helping me plead our case. Instead, I’d hightailed it all by my lonesome into the night. My devices were down, and our EV wouldn’t boot, leaving me no choice but to abscond into the conflagration flanking the south side of the same backyard where I’d tried to teach the kids cornhole—my favorite game when I was their age.

Even in my frenzy, I was shocked to discover how far the flames extended, consuming the vast majority of local property that had once been free for all to roam, and only now emerged from behind the oozing eco-plastic perimeter barrier erected to show where you should stop walking if you didn’t want to get shot by Walden Homes construction/security. The more recently designed models of living units coming soon to Walden Homes looked a heck of a lot smaller and closer together than the units I’d seen in the promotional materials, at least as best I could tell as it smoldered and glistened with chemicals.

It’d been far too long since I allowed myself a vista into the great outdoors. I must admit I’d become afraid of whatever novel pests and pollutants had released themselves into the soil. I was ill-prepared, as a result, to know my own neighborhood well enough to run anywhere but blindly and wildly toward the middle of nowhere. As my adrenaline subsided, it was all I could do to duck in a ditch and wait for the worst to be over. I wept myself to sleep, praying aloud into my shaking palms for God or Jesus or anyone to came and save me, make this stop. I hadn’t prayed in years and wasn’t sure I was even doing it right, until the next time I raised my head and found I was still alive.

The Ruins

What little remained online about the site stood in arrears of its own majesty, a noxious tide pool sweltering in what had once been deemed a private paradise. It’d all disintegrated so fast it was hard to decipher what might have been salvageable. The local air had turned thick and sticky, obscured with noxious fumes that blurred my vision as if wandering underwater on land—so much so that after several hundred strides in any direction I had to kneel and gather my wits. Using my shirt as a filter over mouth hardly helped—more than anything, it made me feel like a cuck. I knew I needed to get out of the area ASAP unless I wanted to asphyxiate or get cancer or something, but I couldn’t remember which way was in and which was out.

Even given the relief I felt in having not yet died, I couldn’t adapt to the unmistakable sweetish tint of recently incinerated human flesh hung on the air over everything. Worse, I could still hear ringing in my ears the distant screams of those who’d perished—including my wife and children, but also many thousands of local residents I had no acquaintance with. I knew right away, having paid excellent attention during online church, I wasn’t going to make it if I held on to what I’d lost. I needed to get back to basics, take care of myself first before I bothered too hard with sorting the sordid details into rights and wrongs. 

Unfortunately, I’d never been what you’d call “crafty,” and therefore found myself at the behest of happy accidents. The site’s primarily artificial landscaping had been reduced to goop, sparing precious few practical materials for a pencil pusher such as myself to put to use in making camp. I hesitated to expend too much energy assembling a proper shelter, expecting at any moment that someone unexpected, friend or foe, would show up, and so each time I nodded out while taking a rest I half expected to not wake up.

As for sustenance, I knew I’d starve if I had to force myself to choke down leaves of grass like some broke cow. My stomach had high standards and frequently rebelled against my attempts at making salads and the like, promising nausea if I couldn’t come up with something more protein oriented. At least I’d look sexier as I lost my love handles and my big butt, I joked to myself. Grimmer, however, was the fact it hadn’t rained in months. All the local bodies of water were totally unpotable, having been used for corporate dumping grounds since deregulation, so it seemed the best I could hope for was a miracle.

And so, I prayed. I covered my face with my hands and began to recite from memory the only scripture I’d ever learned by heart, trained into me by my mother when I was hardly old enough to understand the words: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. As I said them aloud this time, however, I found I didn’t quite remember how they went, resorting to questionable addendums in my delirium, eventually almost entirely blubbering. This had been happening to me my entire life—desiring one thing and accepting another, then forgetting the difference—and yet it never failed to surprise me how quickly I could adapt to status quo. It was always easier to get the gist over with and let any lingering disparities resolve themselves. If there’s a god, after all, as I believe there is, and the god had a script, as I believe he does, how much could it matter one way or another what we think or speak? Why waste time farming for data when all you really need to do is wait and see?

The Safe Room

And what do you know? After hardly another half hour scrounging post-prayer, providence struck when I stumbled onto the relatively unscathed remains of what appeared to be an executive safe room installed beneath the Walden Homes facilities. Previously invisible, part of its ceiling had collapsed, exhibiting access to mere civilian passersby. Though half the space had been crushed beneath the rubble, blockading any further access to the subterranean lengths below, I was able to dangle myself down and scour for truth. There wasn’t much. Whoever had been meant to subsist here had either passed away or absconded. The once-swank decor was in shambles, allowing no explanation for what might went have gone on during the burning. The brass’s loss remained my gain, however—further undeniable evidence I was being looked after—when from a sealed black plastic bucket I uncovered a rich cache of Walden’s Reserve Meat Pills, the #1 Meal Replacement Med Preferred by Well-Known Medical Influencers Around the Globe, nearly $11,000 in market value. The state had been shilling these bad boys incessantly since the second pandemic, though per usual, my wife had refused we pony up. They certainly weren’t appetizing; rather, they looked like cat turds and tasted like science, but their continuing utility, as a well-proven federal brand, couldn’t be denied.

I was in the midst of stuffing my pockets when I realized I was being watched. Above and behind me, nearly hidden in plain sight, I recognized the installation of a scale model of the instantly iconic Mount Rushmore Care Center—now known as the central hub of the more than forty luxury living facilities in various states of construction on federal land. Gone were the four sorry sitting ducks who’d lost their hold over history, whatever their names, replaced instead with a singularly exceptional bust of the founding CEO of the entire Early Retirement Recovery Project. Even in shock, I idolized his likeness by dint as the world’s first self-made quadrillionaire, who’d deweaponized the federal government by greenlighting efforts to synchronously lock down and automatize everything from the ground up. The Neotranscendentalist, he preferred to be known as, or CEO Neo for the memes, in honor of his disdain for the shackles placed upon the greatest of men by bureaucracy, and for how He’d come to Earth to put His incredible wealth to work for the common man. Anything worthwhile that’d come to surround us here in America had sprung whole straight from his unchained gigabrain, inaugurating yet another golden era of freedom and independence that even our most craven citizens couldn’t interrupt. His visage leered at me no matter where I moved, a resolute reminder of the years of unchecked entrepreneurship it’d taken to remodel the past.

I found myself struck dumb staring back into his embodiment, uncertain whether to be starstruck or fall to my knees. I gathered solace solely in reading and repeating one of His many semi-familiar coinages, regally inscribed beneath the mountain in blood-red ink: It is only when we forgo all our learning that we begin to grow. Such language echoed sorely in my guts, filling my stomach with backwards pride as I recalled the last time I’d read it aloud for my wife from the Homes’ promotional materials, gleeful over the literary brilliance of one of our nation’s latest and greatest ever to be known. In a fit of passion, I must admit I became incensed and began to try to pull the installation off the wall—meaning only to embrace our fearless leader—only to end up nearly knocking myself out, unable to break the seal fastening him askance inside the safe room for posterity. Flat on my back, however, I imagined I could hear Him whispering inspiration in my ear, buoying my spirit by reminding me that all our greatest heroes, such as himself, had emerged uniquely a separate but equal sort of duress. If I kept my shoulder to the grind, I’d be repaid in spades—if not by my fellow man, then by whatever came after, in our wake. The training wheels on human history were being ripped off before our very eyes, and soon enough everyone who held on tight to the fundamental principles that had made our country great again would understand everything. Indeed, if the kingdom of Heaven was to be found among men sans Armageddon, as CEO Neo still claimed, all we had to do to was agree completely or get the fuck out of the way.

Solitude

To my dismay, the next several days and nights offered only silence. I glamped out briefly eating Meat Pills in the bunker, waiting for any further sign but began feeling claustrophobic and elected to keep moving. I was still afraid of being discovered by whoever’d caused the conflagration in the first place, though now I felt equally concerned with somehow being blamed for it myself—for not having already absorbed enough of the proper American rhetoric to be included in its plans—and either way, no matter how far out I might wander or in which direction, the earth was black. I’d already forgotten my wife and children’s given names—a common error, really, considering the enormous emotional strain of having to learn to accept as on the fly that they hadn’t been born with the same tenacity as had I. Not everything you own can be passed down, unfortunately, a plight I hoped someday our state technology could counteract.  

The longer this went on, the more I felt a pressing compassion for myself, reminding me to take things slow and not freak out. There must be a reason I’d survived while others hadn’t. Doomsaying had never gotten me anywhere but right where I was. If I really wanted to survive, it’d be my job to fake it till I made it. At the same time, holding out such tattered hope felt mighty queer. It is here I must confess how, as a temporary means to keep my growing pains at bay, I rather speedily resorted to consuming more than the recommended daily dosage of Reserve Meat Pills, quickly abandoning my rationing process as I lost track of what was what. Under their sway, I found I fretted less about salvation or redress, instead learning to lean into the widening blur between my waking life and my unconscious. I felt a sort of recklessness I hadn’t courted since the return of Prohibition.

Before I met my wife, I’d spent my past life as a vaccine addict and was not someone who should be trusted harboring controlled substances even in the wild. I’d nearly died numerous times trying only to self-medicate a dementia within me that made me unable to perform to industry standard all on my own. While I understand that unprescribed drug use is not permitted on federal property, and therefore I should be disqualified from grace in the eyes of the court, please repeat after me: It’s not my fault. No one on God’s green Earth can be expected to predict the laws of the future, and even granted hindsight, it’s impossible to correlate cause and effect in the blind.

Visitors

As if to underline my budding self-awareness, I began to sense I was being watched. Some nights, I’d swear I could hear a commotion amongst the darkened rubble where I’d made camp, or perhaps a whistling or a moaning over my shoulder as I moped in circles, just faint enough to blame on wind. Even in broad daylight, I’d turn my back for just a moment and find the temporary lean-to I’d managed to build had been ripped apart, or I’d step into sudden nearby sinkholes I knew for certain hadn’t been there before, as if dug to break my ankles. What began as a touch of paranoia soon turned contagious. I even began imagining the wandering poltergeists of my wife and kids, returned from beyond death to haunt me for my inability to live up to my full potential as the man of the house.

Only gradually, therefore, despite my best efforts to abstain and seek enlightenment, the original anxiety I’d relied on thus far to fund my drive for mere survival at any cost began to see itself converted into a significantly more embarrassing concern: that I’d run out of Meat Pills before my unintended furlough in the woods met a happy end. Still, I couldn’t help myself from upping my dose as my emotional tolerance continued steepening, making it harder and harder to keep tabs on the passing of time. I found I felt much better while deep asleep, adrift in a state of unimpeded free time all to myself just as I’d always wanted.

Higher Laws

The only everlasting problem was my dreams. Throughout my earlier life, I’d had mostly totally boring ones, like showing up at a town hall fully naked with my tiny boner or losing all my teeth and hair while having adult bath time with a sexy blonde. In middle age, as a functioning addict, I’d stopped being able to summon even those tropes, experiencing most nights as a dark daze through which I’d simply appear on the far side, ready for work.

Now, most every time I closed my eyes I found myself returned to the burning world I’d narrowly escaped. I’d find myself immersed as vividly as déjà vu in days of yore except that now my wife’s pretty face would be lanced with holes, or my precious daughter’s Lockheed-Disney singalongs would make my ears bleed, or my son would explode into shards when I touched his flesh. The worst nights were the ones when I found myself reliving the night of the fires. Despite the bitter linings, I must admit I took a certain respite in having had a family once, which was more than other men my age and pay grade could claim. My dead wife could kiss my lips in a total fantasy and make me tingle almost the same as the day we’d met in a live wild apple grove right here at Walden, unaware of how precious little time we had to pick the fruits and suck their juice. It might even seem in some dreams that we’d find a lifelike way to live forever, boxed in like nursing lambs without a care but how much love we had to share, until I woke.

So, I began moving less and sleeping more. Even if I’d had the wherewithal to start from scratch, it wasn’t clear where I could go or why I’d wish to.

Housewarming

Until one night, running on fumes from my last few Meat Pills, I reached a new dimension in my mind. I discovered it by simply electing not to do anything when once again I found myself reliving the night of the fires for the sixth night in a row, finally so fed up with playing victim that everything about me felt brand new. Whereas before I’d been too afraid to fuck around and find out, I sat stock still in my chair and waited for the bad guys to come busting in and end my life or for the fire to engulf me head to toe just as I was. I must have sat there half an hour before I accepted that what I’d feared was not the case—that the house wasn’t actually burning, nor was there anybody there who shouldn’t be. What I really had was just a case of paranoia—totally normal in the parlance of our times—and all I had to do to ward the worst away was open the door to my man cave and emerge.

The weird thing was I couldn’t remember why I’d want to. I already had everything I needed to make it through the night all by myself, including softcore photography and Lockheed Beer. Most days I spent looking forward to locking myself in, obscured from the world and my family alike. Deeply and truly, I preferred not having to get all upset; much easier to accept the facts just as they are to whomever defined them, finally, for one and all. Suddenly I struggled to distinguish what about my past, present, or future could have gotten me so distraught or what I was afraid of that CEO Neo couldn’t fix.

The Client in Winter

When I awoke, I found myself in a strange bed in a white gown. I’d been strapped down with a mask over my mouth that made it impossible to speak. I couldn’t see anything but high white walls, simple and warm. I tried to sit up and felt a shattering inside my cranium, flooding my brain with pain so sharp it made me retch. Then came relief: a rush of perfumed wind gushing through my mask that calmed me down and helped me breathe.

Over the next I-don’t-know-how-long, nothing felt real. I kept expecting to wake up again and find myself somewhere I recognized, and yet no amount of patience tendered change. The walls didn’t have windows, and the only obvious point of entry was a silver circle in the ceiling for the tubes and wires. Anytime I began to get worked up, at least, the perfumed wind would flow in through my mask, and I could chill beneath the haze. Sometimes, while set adrift, I became aware of ghostly strobes of motion in my periphery, but rather than frighten me, I felt a little less alone. My hair and nails were always clean and trimmed, my stomach full. Whenever I had to defecate, I just let go, and I never sat too long in dirty pants. Wherever I was, I was being taken care of.

Spring

As my thinking changed, so changed my world. Bit by bit, there appeared to be more breadth between the white walls than I’d originally imagined. Pinned to the wall beside my skull, I discovered fading photos of healthy, smiling people I felt sure I’d never seen. On the dresser by my bedside, I enjoyed bouquets of pastel flowers that replenished themselves when I got bored, changing colors and builds to suit my mood. Once I’d grown accustomed those small privileges, my world expanded even more. I received a coloring book and an abacus, which I could use to keep my brain busy without needing to be online. Then a pop gun and a shoulder holster, with some funny instructions on how to avoid shooting my eyes out. Even the lingering sense that I was being watched felt very nice. Its breadth felt far more natural than the horror show of being singled out, left to the weather, and the new ways it enabled me to think were far more friendly than what I’d come up with on my own.

My prior family hadn’t died, for instance—they’d been repurposed, and I’d be reunited with them in due time. Likewise, Walden Homes had never been out of the reach of upper-middle class stiffs like me. If CEO Neo hadn’t wanted me to live the good life, he wouldn’t have allowed me to have my penis and pale skin, which in the end was all that separated me from the kinds of people who ended up so lost in their own heads they couldn’t escape a simple fire. I simply had a higher calling. Even if I couldn’t quite sit up yet, or twiddle my thumbs for long, or feel my ass at all, I could at least enjoy the ride.

In fact—and this is where you come in—if I continued to play my cards right and prove my mettle as the kind of patriot who knows how to learn from his mistakes, I might be granted the opportunity to help others be more like me. There was still an entire wayward world of malingerers out there, bless their hearts. Who could be of greater assistance to the wounded social justice warrior than one who’s seen the light and come home to roost in the muscular arms of the greatest corporation this or any world had ever seen? Moved to disbelief by so much mercy, I began to weep like Jesus Christ, about whom I’d heard great things in the past, despite being a bit of a pussy in comparison to the kings of today. Waves of relief like what the mask had forced upon me artificially began to flow naturally from the same blank spots in my brain where for so long I’d carried only pain, filling my heart with a desire so innate I knew it was the only way out.

Conclusion

As you can hopefully see now, at long last I’d lightened up. I’m ready to go free now, back to my rightful place in the real world as a solicitor and facilitator for Walden Homes, pending the approval of my release. Even among those wayward souls who’ve been delivered, many have yet to discover how best they might undo themselves from brain rot and join the cause. Though it’s taken nearly all my strength to comprehend what truly being free means, I no harbor rage in heart against whoever had “set fire” to my “home,” “killing” my “wife” and “children.” Rather, I am grateful to those who saw enough in me to not simply obliterate me, therefore unduly providing me a second chance to see the light.

Additionally, I am very grateful to have been granted limited access during my rehabilitation here at Mount Rushmore Care Center—which I will miss greatly if granted leave—to such cutting-edge experimental remedies as immersing myself in CEO Neo’s national scriptures and composing confessionals. Fortunately, there are far more requiring simple debriefing than there are dead. In closing, I do acknowledge that my having written all this drama out to plead my case can and should be seen as the very sort of sign of weakness that might exclude me from actualizing my renewed desires. I can only attest that once my testimony has concluded, every reader should assume the larger story turns out so sweet for all involved that we shouldn’t be bothered to narrate it any longer.

If it pleases the court, I rest my case believing that the very state of mind which authored these pages shall prepare the path forward, uniting us one and all in pursuit of a still more perfect and glorious Lockheed-America, which also I have felt, but not yet anywhere imagined, until now.