A Plague of Mercies by Adam Pelzman

Author:Adam Pelzman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Adam Pelzman
Published: 2023-04-25T00:00:00+00:00

Gabriel turns on his computer and dials into a meeting.

On the screen there are dozens of small squares,

each one filled with the face of someone he knows.

There is the famous retired tennis player.

The young woman who is a singer and performer.

The bank robber.

The bank president.

The bouncer.

The tattoo artist.

The prostitute.

The bankruptcy attorney.

The Orthodox rabbi.

(People who normally would not mix.)

For the first time he can see many of them in their homes.

There are some who live in modest apartments

and some who live in opulent ones

and some who have positioned their cameras

so that it is impossible

to determine much at all about their homes.

There are the fortunate few who dial in from their country houses,

trees swaying in the background

or waves crashing in the near distance.

He is surprised by the homes of many

and takes note of the fact that in his life he has made

many assumptions about many people

and that most of those assumptions

have been incorrect.

He has not seen these people in person for many months

and he is happy to see them now.

The meeting follows the same format as an in-person meeting

but there is a subtle shift in energy,

a shift in focus,

that Gabriel at first does not recognize.

As the meeting progresses

he begins to appreciate what has changed,

how the digital experience has altered the way

that this group of drunks interacts,

communicates,

connects.

Gabriel first appreciates that things are different

when he sees himself on the screen.

Do I really look like that,

he wonders.

(Yes he does.)

What startles him most is not his appearance

but rather the perspective of his appearance,

for what he sees is not a reflected duplication

that a mirror would present,

a reversed image of his face,

but instead an image of his face

that another human being would see

when looking at him.

What he sees is now what everyone else sees.

His nose turns the wrong way,

right and not left.

The scar on his forehead stretches out in the opposite direction

and he wonders how it is possible that a person

can have an understanding of their own face that is so inaccurate.

He wonders how a person cannot know what they look like.

So troubled is he by this shift in his appearance

that he pays little attention to the others in the meeting.

Their mouths move but he does not listen.

He instead stares at his face and tries to figure out

who he really is.

A man’s cry of pain pulls Gabriel out of his self-absorption.

(The man has just lost job and has no savings.)

Gabriel knows this man and has affection for him.

He wants to hear what this man has to say,

to grant him the respect of listening to his pain.

Gabriel changes the settings on the screen

so that others can still see him

but so that he cannot see himself.

He is relieved to not look at this image of his face.

He scans the screen and looks at the many people.

He makes assumptions about some of them

and projects traits and qualities on to others.

He looks at them,

he studies them,

as if he is gazing at the woman who makes her bed

and the old man who makes soup out of a copper pot

and the lonely socialite

and the doctors

and the Mancunians.

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