EPILOGUE

In the end, “justice” proves to be a wily beast, one that shapeshifts, that burrows and crawls and camouflages, readying itself for the pounce. Who knows what kind of sick, prolonged justice called for Big Banana’s rise, and whether the company’s ultimate downfall was a part of it all along?

In the not too distant future, unknown sources will leak to the press that the entire CEO Announcement, and the violence that followed, was a kind of frighteningly savvy media ploy intended to drum up both controversy and sympathy for the “agricultural” giant known as Big Banana. Intrepid reporters, their well-trained noses following the faintest whiff of blood, will thrust their way past all the company’s public denials into their legal and financial records, publishing their findings that, yes, not only was the Bash well over-capacity and quite under-staffed at the time, but all those police officers? The yellow-vested riot controllers standing on cop cars? Most of them were on the payroll of some shadowy shell corporation that stunk of mercenariness. It was intentional violence.It was staged. Those deaths, those injuries, that pain? So real, but so artificial.

The same press and public sentiment that pushed Big Banana up to its apex will simply step aside and let them skid back down. In the online age, all good will is semi-Sisyphusian.

Twitter, Facebook, all the various Times’ and Posts and Heralds and Journals, anything with a subscriber count will run merciless streams of stories proclaiming the fall of Big Banana, willing it into existence, spooking even the most resilient shareholders into mass selloffs. Big Banana will be driven into the ground in a matter of weeks. Ever seen a company’s stock tank 50% in a day? Nobody else had either. Some will call it Black Tuesday for Tropical Fruit Conglomerates, but that won’t be entirely true. Del Monte will go up five points. And three for Chiquita.

People will ask how a company famed for its marketing could have blundered so brazenly. Maybe, they’ll say, it was the doings of that new CEO they trot out to take the blame for the company’s missteps. Poor guy, he’ll spend the entirety of his 15-minutes looking like he’s been hit by a bus, hair amess, eyes aflame, red cheeks and red irises and a bulbous neck squeezed into a button-down two sizes too small. Most companies in Big Banana’s position would have fired the guy responsible, or else made him a stooge for the shareholder’s stake, but they’ll keep shoving him onto TV and into press conferences and Reddit AMAs, and he’ll continue apologizing. Almost like they want the world to watch him squirm. Interesting. All other targets for blame will *poof* vanish into thin air. The Board, the oh-so-famous Board, will retreat into obscurity, and the sweaty guy in the poindexter shirt will get hit with more-and-more concentrated vitriol. First, they’ll spit and throw insults. Then tomatoes. And finally, it’ll be old VHS’s and stray rebar pulled from the company’s far-reaching rubble.

But all of that is still some weeks away. There will be plenty of time, time ad infinitum, for the truth of Big Banana to enter the national bloodstream. The antibodies are coming. But now, as New York City officials try to clear up the flotsam of the announcement gone wrong, calm constituents, and dispel rumors that the eight-hour media blackout was part of some conspiratorial, 9/11-truther type coverup, Miranda, like so many others, is utterly unaware of the fall to come. Her mind is on other things.

It’s important you see what happens when Miranda finally gets home, well after dark, having made the entire journey from Brooklyn on foot. Wrapped up in hugs from her roommates, their outpouring of pain and anguish and shock needed an outlet and then found one, soot-covered and bloody, walking into the kitchen.

They will not be able to speak to her at first, too afraid of saying the wrong thing, paralyzed into silence by the now universal knowledge that the girl they met in GD303 is in actuality one of the internet’s most sanctified voices. She’s an idol. And they know they’ve slandered their idol, they know she remembers what they said about her — at first deifying and then despicable — and wonder if she’ll hold a grudge. If she’s, like, literally gonna hold a grudge rn, they’re gonna just, like, die. Or whatever.

It’s Miranda who speaks first, who asks point-blank, “Were you watching?” 

But, duh, of course they were. “Everyone was.”

It takes all of her restraint not to dwell on the carnage she must’ve shown them, the destruction done by Demons, and wondering, if they were watching, how they aren’t quaking in their boots, huddled under their beds for safety; how the entirety of New York City isn’t under their beds right now. “That’s good,” Miranda decides to say, “that’s what I wanted.”

Then, the Twins, the initial battering ram interrogation having breached the etiquette barricade, launch questions at her, assault her with the latest news, filling in the gaps in a story which personal experience had heavily redacted. Even as they bounce around the room, talking of Big Banana and the black cloud of smoke over the Bash and the friends that they haven’t heard from and all the conspiracy theories getting airtime right now on CNN, flinging truly sincere emotion hither and thither, Miranda cannot keep her eyes from wandering down to their chests, wondering how much or how little of their souls are truly theirs.

For the first time perhaps ever, she really looks at them, not just through them, or around them. Famously beautiful, famously charming, socialites supreme and Instagram darlings in a certain set. Now exactingly examining, Miranda can make out the faces that their faces usually hide. The strained eyes, the city grid of reddened blood vessels within, the black, makeup-smeared half-moons below them, the smiles propped up by too-taut chins, the same smiles that ballast their ever-cheery disposition. Miranda looks briefly to the TV, where 24-hour news coverage tries in vain to mask its lack of insight into the day’s horrible happenings.“

Are you two happy?” she asks them suddenly.

And — Jesus Christ, guys — they’re so, so quick to say yes. Desperate to say yes. How couldn’t they be? Everyone is always happy, right? When was the last time you asked how someone was and they didn’t look right through you, saying how good they were, work is, the husband is, the kids and the fam, too, before you even finished asking? In other cultures, you know, they wonder how Americans can use “How are you?” as a greeting and expect nothing but smiles and pleasant lies as a response.

“Hey, how ya doing?” you say to the doorman, the grocery store clerk, the barista, the bartender, the new coworker, your god-damned asshole brother on the phone.

“Good.”

“Good.” 

“Fine, thanks.” 

“Great.”

Always always always. And after a couple of generations, that kind of thing seeps out from its place as a conversational nuance into the national psyche itself.

The Twins are quick to say they’re happy, but, actually, don’t they wait a half-second too long? Just on the tips of their tongues, their words must meet some kind of impeding force. A force that suggests they just sigh and say, “Well, no. Actually, maybe? I’m not sure really… but perhaps we need to redefine happiness. I’m comfortable. I’m chasing ambition, and I’m proud of myself, but I’m not sure any of those things make me ‘happy’ in the conventional sense. I’ve sacrificed traditional happiness for the sake of these other things, and those other things help me go on.”

It’s Katie who gives in to the force. She says it. She looks right in Miranda’s sooty, yellow eyes and says exactly that. Kathy looks at her, first like she’s gone mad, then resigns herself to a fate as the one who didn’t say it. Katie looks at Miranda and finishes, “I’ve — we’ve — sacrificed traditional happiness for the sake of these other things, and those other things help us go on.” Then she wonders aloud, “But does that make us bad people? Does that make us wrong? Everyone does some form of that; everyone sacrifices important stuff for other…other…other, uhm, stuff!” Kathy looks at her sister like please stop, but Katie keeps going on,  practically shouting, “We’re millennials, the entire world around us is collapsing into the ocean! There’s no way to be happy. ‘Happy,’ pfffftttt. Nobody is ever going to look at the pretty leaves on the autumn trees again. Nobody will ever again get any real pleasure disappearing into their video-games and art projects, cuz we’re all just staving off this thing, all these things that are coming for us. So, you know what Miranda? And Kathy can speak for herself, but I’m most certainly not happy. Not at all. But I’m after something, I’m getting by, I’m doing it. And it’s worth it for me because everyone is doing the same thing. Because I know I’m not alone.

“Because I know I’m not alone.”

🍌 🍌 🍌 🍌 🍌

A few days later, as the dust finally settles on the Big Banana debacle, as further answers finally start to be sought, Miranda takes a train out to Crown Heights. In Zen mode, she wanders the streets, half-startled by the amount of life present on a normal, unterrorized Brooklyn day. Why it is that so many in Manhattan assume the outer parts of their fair city are wastelands of silence and open space? Every leaf pile is occupied by leaping children. Sidewalks are cluttered with strollers and chatting moms in athleisurewear. Women in sweat-wicking shirts power-walk in pairs down the pavement in Prospect Park. An old man offers bread crumbs to pigeons; the birds peck their lunch from right out of his old, cracked hands.

In the geographical and ideological center of the park, on a familiar bench, a girl waits. A certain slant of light matriculates through the trees and a certain yellow being, his eyes perhaps a bit sadder, his skin a bit more rotten, emerges from thin air.

“You’re back,” he says, conjuring a smile. “I’m glad you called.”

“I am, I did.” the girl says. “I think I’m ready to make a deal. And quick, before I change my mind.”

A scroll appears in mid-air, a subtle poof of smoke puffing out around it. A.B. whips his tail around to his hand, preparing to use its black tip like a pen. “And what exactly are the parameters you’re interested in?” he asks.

“I want this all to go away. Take it all away. Take Gwami, and send me back to Earth with the rest of the people. I want them to forget about me. I want to be with them, among them. I just want to be like them.” And in a quieter voice, she says this: “I just want them to like me.” 

And A.B. says, “With what funds would you like this accomplished?”

And Miranda says, “Take it all, what do I care? You know you’ll get it eventually, why wait? All it’s doing now is weighing me down.”

That very afternoon, Miranda packs her things into two grand suitcases and leaves the apartment to its other two denizens. She does not know when she’ll be back. NYU would probably call her, tell her she’s missed too many classes to graduate on-time, if, that is, they could reach her. She left her new phone in the apartment. A subtle slip of the tired mind.

She’ll never return to NYU. Not as a student, anyways. She’s content for now, sleeping back in her childhood room, with the old pitter patter of her parents’ feet on the tile a floor below her. She can’t sleep until they come upstairs themselves, the old night owls; she too much likes to listen to their muffled movement.

She’s never felt at all close to them before, ipso facto, she’s never felt this close to them. And all she had to do for that nearness was sell her soul. Because, and this is totally true, Miranda didn’t gain anything in the soul-selling transaction. She wanted an escape from a mind and a life that kept her from others, and she got it. She wanted off of her unassailable pedestal, and she got her wish, cast down with the go-getters and the yes-men, all of ‘em kissing ass and doing menial work for a few bucks, and maybe finding a warm one to love here and there. No more upkeep of a sparkling soul. No more worrying about purpose, what the cosmic consequences of her actions might be. She’s given herself over, finally, allowing the plot to whisk her away, letting the Unmoved Mover do what it will with her life.

All of those people, and all their ordinary, easily-deconstructed rat race wishes, suddenly they don’t seem so silly anymore. She didn’t want them to be silly. She never wanted them to be silly. Miranda Swami was tired of hating everything. So, yeah, maybe she’ll wear yellow a time or two. And the world will keep turning. Maybe she’ll bartend on Fire Island for a summer, and the world will fail to notice whatever amount of great art Miranda Swami does or does not produce. It doesn’t really matter. Her life will become simple, and that will be its own kind of art.

Miranda isn’t here to answer to the universe. She’s not here to answer anything, or to anybody. If she dares not disturb the universe, perhaps it will dare not to disturb her.

She has joined hands with the rest of the world, all of them having sold their souls (and what is a soul?) for a chance at normalcy, for a chance at what all the normal people want, for a chance to feel normal themselves. She is not better than these people, and never could be. She sees this only now, linked together in the inexorable chain of the soulless. She’s picked a side; she’s stopped fighting everyone, and started fighting alongside them.

Because amidst the bustling hive of people going about their business is the true soul of humanity. And that soul, a larger ansd more decadent prize, is up for grabs as well. And all the sellers of all their souls, all the fighters of all the wars, all the big ideas who clean restaurant floors with a toothbrush, they will forever remain contemplating their souls — complete or not so — as they look out into the dark, be it the dark of the wood, the dark of the city, or the dark of their closed eyelids, wondering, adrift in the throng, if anyone among them is truly happy. Wondering if they really had to sell their souls to be so. Wondering why there isn’t a better use for their souls hiding in plain sight. Wondering, perhaps, if there is.