Remember how I said I was going to update this thing with my writing? It goes a little something like this:
Convergence
For all that they didn’t want to
admit it, news, especially gossip and rumors, spread quickly among the
survivors of Oceanic flight 815. It
always seemed that someone was constantly getting into something here in this
place. Certainly, there seemed to be
those whose hands were in just about everything, but I wasn’t one of
those. In fact, my fingers weren’t
really in any pies, at least not for the time being.
Everyone
here seems a little preoccupied by everyone else’s backgrounds, and I’ve
certainly had plenty of time to think about my own, so I guess I could stand to
share a little. My name is Tristan
Gardner. I’m from Chicago. Oceanic flight 815 was supposed to take me to
a connecting flight in L.A. Guess I
missed my connection. If you had seen me
on the plane, I was the one blithely gluing rhinestones onto a shoe. I was telling everyone that I was a
competitive ballroom dancer, but that was before I knew I’d be stuck living
with them for months. If I’d have known
that, I probably would have told them the truth to begin with. I’m a burlesque dancer. I flew to Australia to perform in my very
first international burlesque festival.
My performance went really well, by the way. Too bad my costume is probably now scattered
across the entire island. Every once in
a while, I imagine someone (probably one of those Others) stumbling across my
bejeweled panties dangling off some tree.
Quite frankly, I’d like to be there when it happens. Well, maybe not if it’s one of the
Others.
Speaking
of Others, that brings me back to the beginning. Gossip and rumors had been swirling around
the margins of our little beach camp.
Dr. Jack and all the cool kids were trying their best to keep it quiet,
and I understood why. Only one of two
things would happen if 40-odd people found out there was an Other trapped in
the hatch. They’d either kill it,
angry-mob style, or they’d dissolve into anarchy at the proposition that
certain individuals were withholding information, presumably for the good of
the group. Fortunately for me, I wasn’t
terribly invested in either of those outcomes.
I knew enough to know that the Others were far from harmless, but my
interest in this hushed headline had much more to do with curiosity and less
with anger or revenge than most of my fellow survivors.
I
had kept mostly to myself since the beginning, since I knew enough about myself
to know that I process trauma and stress best alone. I wasn’t as isolated and introverted as some,
but while Kate and Sawyer and Jack did… Kate and Sawyer and Jack, I preferred
to keep my own company. I might not even
be here to tell you this story, if it weren’t for the fact that Fate is a funny
thing. Maybe the Island had a plan for
me after all. As luck would have it,
Claire and Charlie found themselves on the outs not long before my story began,
and Charlie moved into a shelter barely within earshot of me. Assuming I was clever and curious (which I
was), and stealthy (which I… probably was not, if we’re honest), I could hear
more than the strumming of his guitar at night.
Sometimes, I got advance notice of the juicy tidbits of news that
wouldn’t filter down to the nobodies like myself for another few days.
It
really began the day I found my shoe.
You remember I mentioned I was rhinestoning a shoe on the plane. Well, in my desperation to get a death grip
on that ever-so-useless seat-bottom-flotation-device they tout the merits of in
every preflight announcement, I must have let go of the shoe at some point in
our descent. To be honest, I was too
busy flirting with death to remember.
But I must have held onto that sucker for a good long time though,
because I found it barely a half hour’s trek into the jungle, just dangling
seductively from a stalk of bamboo. It
had glittered mockingly in the sunlight and I almost had a heart attack at
first, convinced it was the glint in the eye of yet another inexplicable polar
bear. In truth, I don’t even know why I
took it back to camp with me, it wasn’t like I was ever going to find the other
one, and even if I did, what was I gonna do with them, perform USO shows at the
coconut cantina?
But
I did take it with me, and that evening I slipped it out of my shelter and sat
by the firelight, turning it over and over in my hands, letting the jet
rhinestones flare and flicker in the setting sun. That’s when I heard them. Voices.
Charlie and Sayid, sitting barely on the other side of the sandy ridge
that separated camp from the tide line. Their timbre mingled with the crashing of the
waves and was half lost, but as I strained to hear, I heard the unmistakable
words drop from Sayid’s lips.
“There
is a man down in the hatch…”
My
ears perked, begging whatever wild force that governed this island to still the
waves that obscured their conversation.
“…He
was one of them. One of the
Others.”
I
don’t remember what else was said that evening, because I felt my whole self
consumed with such intense curiosity. I
knew the gravity of the decision to imprison someone. I knew that such a decision could shatter the
fragile utopian society that we were still clinging to the illusion that we
were creating. But, more than anything,
I was terribly curious about what this man, this Other looked like.
The
only Other I had ever seen was Ethan, but, of course, I hadn’t known about his
Otherness when I had seen him, spoken to him.
Even now, barely weeks after he had been outed and shot, I was hard
pressed to remember what he looked like.
Hard pressed to remember if there was anything about him that I might
have sensed, half-sensed, that might have marked his Otherness in
hindsight. I wanted to see this
mysterious man to assure myself that there really was a difference between
their savagery and our own.
I
didn’t sleep that night, but sat up long into the darkness, watching the stars
swirl in their most unusual trails across the night sky, formulating my desire
to see this captive of ours, to judge his Otherness for myself.
By
the time the bright shafts of island sunlight pierced the shabby walls of my shelter,
I had realized the only thing for me to do was to find a way to get into the
hatch. Now, the first thing you should
probably know about the hatch is that it’s about as easy to get into as Studio
54. Dr. Jack and everybody else who sat
at the cool kids’ table had all been there, and I knew of a select few besides
who had successfully petitioned for a shower or clean laundry. However even those requests were being swept
aside now, rotation schedules changed, quietly reducing the number of personnel
down to the bare minimum. Still, I had
to try.
I
remembered someone mentioning coffee. It
had been just long enough that I had resigned myself to the reality that I
would never again taste the sweet, sweet drug that was a Starbucks mocha, but
the possibility of a real cup of strong coffee with fresh cream seemed like the
perfect excuse to make the trip to the Hatch.
At first, I considered finding an escort, but thought better of it. Dr. Jack and John Locke had been increasingly
at odds, especially when it came to the hatch and it’s… contents, so I elected
to obtain roundabout permission some other way.
“Hey
Hurley.” I sidled up to the camp
kitchen, where Hurley was quietly slicing mangoes.
“Oh. Hey.”
“So…
You got a bunch of these supplies from the Hatch, right?” …Way to be subtle, Tris.
“…Yeah.” Great.
He was on to me.
“Well…”
I wheedled, “I hear there might be some coffee down there. Any idea who I might have to bribe for a cup?”
“I
dunno, dude.” Hurley said, suddenly
uncertain. “Mango?”
“No
thanks”
“Listen,
uh… there’s coffee down there, but I don’t really think you should go over
there right now. The, uh, washing
machine is broken. There’s… uh… water
everywhere.”
“Hurley,
do you really think a little water is going to keep me away from the siren song
of caffeine?”
“If
you say so, dude.”
“Great. Thanks!”
And with that, I took off.
“Uh…
Wait!” I heard him call, distantly. I
was already gone.
I
was distantly familiar with the path to the Hatch, but I had never traveled it
before. It was longer than I had
anticipated, winding and contemplative through the saw grass and
underbrush. As the rustling of the trees
lulled my brain and dulled my urgency, it occurred to me that this whole idea
was a fool’s errand. Wasn’t the whole
point that the Others looked just like us?
Could hide among us and pass as us at any time? What did I need to see one for? Yet, something urged me forward. This same curiosity that tugged at me the
night before, which whipped my brain into a frenzy of dreams, this singular,
obsessive thought invaded me. It was as
if the hand of Fate itself was pushing me down the jungle path. I had to put a face on the faceless
enemy. I was tired of fearing the
rustling of leaves and the whispers that might lie behind them. If I was going to continue to be as
apprehensive as I was told I should be, I wanted to know why. But the late-morning sun soon banished my
distant but sudden fear of whispers in the jungle and I was mercifully spared
running into either Dr. Jack or John Locke on the journey, narrowly avoiding
awkwardly explaining why my taste for coffee had suddenly overpowered my
disdain for human companionship.
I
was greeted at first by what appeared to be a cold, concrete bunker. Distantly, however, the merry sound of
bubbly, 70’s pop music beckoned me onward into a warmly lit space. As predicted, a pot of coffee was brewing on
the countertop, cream and sugar laid out enticingly nearby. The room was empty.
The
golden light drew me back to Chicago, where I had spent innumerable afternoons
huddled in some coffeeshop or other, wood-paneled or exposed-bricked and
teeming with tiny tables or dated armchairs.
I helped myself to a cup and withdrew to the tiny booth at one end of
the room. The artificial sunlight was
unexpectedly warm and inviting and I found myself basking in its glow. In my haste to sink into caffeinated bliss, I
almost entirely forgot the real purpose of my visit.
In fact, I might not have
accomplished my actual goal at all, so lost was I in my illusion of home, were
it not for the fact that the record on its turntable fell suddenly silent, the
return arm swinging dutifully away and settling back into its cradle. The silence jolted me back to the present and
I rose, curious once more. I approached
the turntable, flipping the record and carefully resetting the needle. As the music once
again blared to life, the door immediately to my right swung open with a bang,
and I found myself face to face with John Locke, eyes blazing.
“What are you doing here?” he
asked, after a beat. He had drawn
himself up to his full height, towering over me.
“I, uh… I heard there was
coffee…” I sputtered, indicating the cup in my hands. It wasn’t until that moment that I realized I
had walked right into my opportunity.
Chancing a glance away from Locke’s imposing expression, I saw a glimpse
of movement. My eyes darted into the
half-light beyond him, and my gaze was greeted by the intent stare of our
unexpected houseguest.
He was far slighter than I had
expected, small and thin and dirty, his face a patchwork of bruises and his
hands bound to the floor. But his eyes
were unsettlingly blue, and they pierced into me such that, even if I had
wanted to look away, I couldn’t have. It
was like being struck by lightning. They
were filled with confusion and, as time moved infinitely slowly, with each inch
the door closed, an ever-increasing hunger.
He broke my gaze briefly, glancing up at Locke, then returned to my
face. Transfixed, I soon found myself
looking at nothing but concrete, the only relief from the spell of those
strange, insatiable blue eyes.
“I think maybe you should go back to the beach.” Locke’s tone was
firm.
“So… I’m guessing the café is officially
closed.” I murmured. Locke simply shifted, nodding imperceptibly
toward the door.
John Locke stared after her for
a long time, emotions mingling between rage, terror, confusion. This had not been part of the plan.
The man they called Henry Gale
sat silently for a long moment after Locke had shut the door in his face. He was still staring at her, even though all
he could see now was dimly-lit steel. He
was flipping through his mental rolodex, flashing through names, passport
photos, his nimble mind searching the manifest of Oceanic 815.
Gardner.
He
heard the distant sound of the needle scratching off of a record suddenly,
followed at length by a new song, now blaringly loud.
“John?”
He called, after a beat. He was greeted
only with silence. After a moment, he
allowed his shoulders to slump awkwardly.
You can also find Convergence archived here.
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