Motherboard
When I was young, my father worked in computers. That was how he said it, so at age five I imagined him literally climbing through a screen to become a tiny, pixelated version of himself. I pictured him in two-D mazes of wires and white dots, with blip blip noises like in Pac-Man, except my father’s game was to find and fix faulty wiring: each time he did, coloured lights would flash and a victory song would play. Then the boss would come, shake Dad’s hand, and level him up to some new and harder set of problems.
Attention passengers — an announcement crackles through the plane as the fasten seatbelt sign lights up with an electronic ding — We’re experiencing turbulence …
The stranger beside me tenses. His breathing grows louder, faster. Should I try to reassure him? Across the years, I’ve flown more often than I’m comfortable confessing in this age of climate change and smog-choked skies. Turbulence is de rigueur, and the worst outcome I’ve ever known was spilled wine. Should I say so? I open my mouth. Then close it. He’s older than I, wearing pressed chinos and a polo shirt. Typical old money conservative garb. And he’s from Adelaide. I could tell from his accent when he asked the flight attendant for an extra pillow. Adelaide — the city we’ll soon touch down in, a closed-minded gridlock I escaped long ago and am revisiting only for the wedding of a cousin who won’t care if I’m there or not (but other family members do). In my experience, conservative Adelaide men don’t listen to women. Especially not younger ones. Staying silent, I gaze to the window. It’s night and we’re over the ocean, the only lights those of the plane reflected in marbly clouds. Ultimately, if we did go down, we’d be one news story among others.
In retrospect, my childhood self wasn’t entirely wrong about Dad’s job in computers: those early machines were room-sized, so in a sense, he was inside them. Within brief years, technicians could program more power into a standard desktop model than barely-older precursors fifty times that size. One day, Dad brought home a piece of an obsolete supercomputer he’d helped dismantle. It was maze-like, as I’d imagined, full of glittering pathways down which secret signals had once raced. Gold, Dad whispered. Is it valuable? I asked. No. There was too little, too thinly spread. Yet enough for things that seemed magical, in their moment. Now it was junk, of interest only as a curio, something for future archaeologists to ponder.
A chime sounds. The seatbelt light switches off. Soon, clattering dinner trolleys emerge.
“Special meal: vegetarian,” says the attendant, peering along my aisle.
I’m about to protest that I ordered vegan. But the man beside me pipes up: it’s his. The attendant sets it down, then produces my meal, and continues. Afterwards, the man pulls out a book of poems. Maya Angelou. Shame twists inside me: I pigeonholed him so quickly. Perhaps during the turbulence he would have appreciated some kind words after all.
Back out the window, the city is coming into view. Despite numerous travels, this is the first time I’ve descended into Adelaide at night. I’m stunned by its squareness, by the rigid lines of its hyper-planned grid system. In cities like London that grew as fate demanded, the streets trace curves as unpredictable, as unique as those of human bodies — still with a sense to them, like that of fingerprints. Adelaide is the opposite: built on flat planes chosen for the purpose, its logic is pure to the point of absurdity. It resembles the old computer board, glittering with worthless gold. Across fractal squares and branching intersections, red and white blips of cars chase along like electronic messages — hungry little ghosts clueless what they’re haunting, or why.
Getting lost seemed impossible when growing up on the grid. Wherever you wanted to go, you picked the approximate direction, then kept turning left or right until you arrived. Yet that breeds a different lostness — one most troubling for the ease with which it can remain unmarked. Not until I encountered other cities did I realise that they’re not all shaped the same. In curling alleyways and dead ends, lost for real, I finally sensed what it is to find one’s way. Where Adelaide had taught me to think in ones and zeroes — straightforward or perpendicular, forwards or back — travel forced me onto six-way intersections, down one-way streets, and often, round in circles until at last I had to think differently. Where Adelaide led me to expect everything in boxes, travel showed me that there are oblongs, trapezoids, curlicues, and shapes that have no names, no borders at all. All the same, knowing full well about climate change, I’ll fly to attend a wedding I don’t care about just to fulfill family expectations. And, based on a few clothing items, I immediately assumed the man beside me to be someone quite other than who he perhaps really is.
The pinpoint lights below are growing larger. The attendant asks me to pull down my shade, ready for landing. It’s decades since I imagined my father going to work in computers, yet now I feel myself shrinking in a similar way, becoming one more spark in this whirring machine: tiny, transient, pulsing along set programs and closed circuits. The cabin lights are dimming, the engines whirring. The man beside me sits rigid once again. Still I can’t manage to offer comfort. I’m caught in thoughts of this city, this system. Though overwhelming, it’s far from infinite. Sections are continually growing obsolete or breaking. For now, they keep being replaced, but some day things will short a final time, beyond repair. What then? Darkness? Silence? Ghosts? Or — terrifyingly — no ghosts?
I can neither hear the ocean nor see the stars, only breathe deep and hope they’ll be here when this game ends.