The Last Yogi

Flash Fiction, Installment #3

Click here for the first 2 installments, in case you missed them!

Words interest me. Extinct words, ones no longer used. Like Politics. It meant something like finding balance for the greater good. Governing and managing, making decisions. A strange word that meant something then became something very different.

Somehow it became a bad word. Long ago I think. And now it’s just gone.

Diplomacy, another good one. Dealing effectively with people. Gone from use these days.

I’ve never been a politician, or a diplomat. I can’t “navigate complex situations” or “negotiate the world around me.” That’s what I’ve been told, ever since I was a child. Too extreme, too literal.

Apparently I “don’t get along well with others.” Whatever, I can never seem to find balance. That much is true.

When the cop approached Luna’s vehicle and leaned down into her open window, I should’ve stayed quiet. He’d stopped us just outside the restaurant parking lot. Like he’d been following us.

A simple “good evening” or else just nothing. What I should have said was nothing.

“Are you one of them, chief?” I asked instead. Again, I’ve never been a politician.

“Don’t worry about him, officer,” Luna had joked just then, flashing an open-mouthed smile, warm and friendly like they were on the same team. “He’s with me.”

She punched my thigh hard with her right hand while she calmly provided a license and what looked like a special ID towards the cop with her left. “Cool as a cucumber,” my grandmother would’ve called her.

“I’m taking him in now.”

I can’t tell about the cop, just like Mrs. Chung is a mystery. Mean and angry, or just someone doing his job. Or else one of them. I can’t read people.

Music now streams on Luna’s device and through her vehicle speakers as we drive. Another rarity, hard to find like the news. “Steppin’ Out,” the song is called. Someone named Joe Jackson.

“We are tired of all the darkness in our lives,” he sings. The music bounces along but it’s easy to make out the lyrics. She calls the song a “golden oldie.”

Post-punk. New wave. More dead words.

Luckily she’d handled the cop, managing the conversation before it became something other than a conversation, something we wouldn’t have wanted. Handed over her license and papers, even got out of the car to answer his questions, back near the trunk. A sing-song voice, like it was just a normal chat.

“We are young but getting old before our time…” Joe Jackson sings to us in the car. No shit. “We’ll leave the TV and the radio behind…”

Luna took her warning about driving without lights, and we all moved on. Avoided a search. Kept him out of the trunk, thankfully. Cool as a cucumber.

“Get into a car and drive to the other side…” goes the song. He’s singing about us I think.

I’d been in denial for several minutes back at the restaurant. Mentally grasping for excuses, clutching for some random explanation that might void our meeting, cancel today altogether.

It can’t be my turn to go.

There must have been a lottery error. They must’ve pulled the wrong ticket.

“It’s a selection process, but call it a lottery if you want,” Luna acknowledged. “Whichever, you’re up…You’ve been selected.”

My name is a common one, I tried next, bargaining. It’s easy to mistake me with someone else. My last name has two K’s - Bakker. An occupational surname, like Baker, only more Dutch-German than English.

Luna reminded me of the unusual spelling. So that was out.

Her voice became echoey after that as I fought off brain fog, like she was talking to me from inside a bucket. But her explanation was clear enough.

Adaptation. I entered depression stage, then acceptance, all-in-one. I was to be adapted. And I was screwed.

“When?” I finally asked tentatively, hope of salvation fading, my shift toward resolution cautious.

“You leave now,” Luna replied, no room for negotiation. She’s a translator, it turns out. Sort of like a bounty hunter, one of us but recruited by them. “That was the Lab I was talking to at the restaurant.”

The Lab. What we used to call a hospital. Hospital as in doctors.

Or technicians, as they’re called now. Like engineers, performing what they call adaptations on us the way a mechanic would change the oil on an old car. I’ve only gathered bits and pieces up until now, rumors, overheard conversations. About ports and plugs, about altered consciousness.

Someone called it “getting downloaded” once, long ago. I don’t remember who or when.

“Cut the melodrama,” Luna said as I stared at her bleakly, sort of crying without tears. “You’ll be happier.” It turns out that’s her way of telling me not to worry.

I realized in that moment that all I’ve feared is now here, before me. My head hurt and my joints ached. I followed Luna obediently out of the restaurant and back to her vehicle.

I could’ve run, I suppose. But where would I have gone? Isn’t this my fate, after all? Hasn’t this been sitting out on the horizon, all these years?

\\

As we drive on towards my inevitability, my adaptation, I realize I’m awake now. That’s for sure. Living in this moment, no distractions or brain fog. No melodrama. I’m terrified, but I’m awake.

Intense and alive and awake.

\\

“Don’t you wonder what we’ll find…steppin’ out tonight?” Joe Jackson sings from Luna’s car speakers.

Absolutely I think. He’s definitely singing about us.