What to do. What do you want to do? Build a bridge, or design a bridge, or are you content to fit the rivets, and not worry if they’ll hold—that’s someone else’s job, because design was their ambition and still is. At heart, you want the same things as this mythical other; were once running side by side, heading on the same path. Consciously, that meant a class you once took together, sitting in adjacent aisles, facing forward towards studied authority and muted inspiration. Who knows who will build the bridges of the future, said the pedagogue, gazing at the range of miscreants, sheep, plus the odd hero or two. The two in the middle of the mass were heroes of different kinds, half aware of their futures, but already nursing a path through habits of thought and action. Beta Ray took his pills, did his exercise, watched his weight and glanced at Mary Lou at lunchtime, waiting for an invite that need only be a subtle gesture, for Beta Ray was sensitive and brave. Alpha Joe was laid back, waiting for ideas to come, and some kind of service to arrive at his door. He had other things to do, thoughts to indulge. He was clever. Everyone said so, which was a problem.
Beta Ray went to war for a while, after he was recruited into the military, hoping he’d get to travel, learn a trade; be disciplined. Maybe fight. He didn’t help build bridges. Instead, for a while, he helped to destroy bridges, because bridges organize, create supply lines, build a society. Problem is, war is meant to dissemble the organized, break the supply lines and isolate the miscreant enemy. Beta Ray would have shaken his head at the unnamed and unknown adversary. It wasn’t personal, he’d say of the battle lines drawn and the shots fired. He was just following orders. As for the adversary, well, maybe if they followed orders, or rules, then things wouldn’t be the way they are. Anyway, that was someone else’s call, thought Beta Ray. Someone else’s problem. His problem was doing the best he could to survive the battle, make a pretty packet, and then head back home to pretty Mary Lou, whom he married just prior to being called up and sent out to combat. No complaints. That was the risk he took signing up, but now she’s pregnant so they’re expecting an addition to their lives, a family to organize Beta Ray’s idea of what to do in this world.
Alpha Joe thought sparingly of the war that was thousands of miles away. He didn’t have to. Just a few short years after high school, his fortunes were soaring, taking him to the heights of industry wherein he designed buildings and at last—his favorite—bridges. His latest project, a suspension bridge that would connect a populated peninsula with a densely commercial city, was underway, if over-budget, but most importantly, with Alpha Joe in charge and calling the non-militant shots. Finally, he had in reality the situation that seemed to match his long-held, as in adolescent and even pre-adolescent delusions: nearly everyone who worked with him was a subordinate, there to support him, follow him; never gainsay his ideas. He could get out of bed whenever he felt like it, drink as much as he wanted on the weekend, as long as he came up with the answers when called upon on Monday. His talent, his bursts of inspiration and energy, coupled with his winning charm, would see him through. His only problem was that he was alone. Alpha Joe had scored a number of relationships through his college years and now beyond, but no one had quite cut the mustard in order to stick around. No one was good enough for him, it seemed.
Beta Ray dreams nightly of being lost in a crowd, dodging shells and strafing bullets. He lives in a world of night vision, of black on illuminated green, followed by daylight in which sight is obscured by daylight dust. The dreams are an accurate depiction of what’s happening in reality, except he’s not there. Meaning, he can’t locate himself, as in his body, or any semblance of thought. There are no words, it seems—not even commands from an officer to follow. He’s scrambling, crawling, hiding, and then leaping or taking cover. He sometimes discharges his weapon, but he’s just aiming at a space, never seeing an enemy. He can’t see them, doesn’t know what they look like. He doesn’t know them because he knows nothing of them, so they might as well be as invisible as him. Beta Ray breathes heavily, cries out in frustration, wakes up in a sweat and conjures Mary Lou’s face and the image of an unborn child. He doesn’t belong here, he thinks, as he meets the nonplussed gaze of a bunk mate whom he’s awakened.
Alpha Joe is bored and successful. Life is easy. The job is easy, and the bridge is getting made. His boss loves him. The city mayor wants to meet him. They might even want to join him on a Wednesday night ahead of a next-day presentation, because Alpha Joe is still up at 1am, hosting a pair of models whom he’d met at a downtown club. Now they’re in his living room, doing cocaine lines while looking out a window at a view of the bridge-in-progress that Alpha Joe has designed. They are impressed, feeling high in Joe’s high-rise apartment, shooting hot glances at him over their shoulders and shedding clothes as he lays prostrate upon a silk-sheeted bed, bored. He had a dream the previous night: it featured him kicking over a mound of sand that he’d built upon a beach. The castle wasn’t up to his standards. It wasn’t good enough, so he wanted to kick it down, start over. Now, he doesn’t want to go back to sleep and possibly revisit that dream. He’s looking past the hot models, through the window and out towards the nearly finished, suspension bridge prize. At once, he feels an urge to get out there and destroy it.
Beta Ray was really feeling it the next day. That is, he was feeling energized, inspired. He didn’t really know what cause he was fighting for. As ever, he hadn’t really done the homework. He was all about doing what he was told to do. But now he felt something different. He didn’t know what. He just knew that something was going to happen—something big. The previous night, after he’d fallen back to sleep, he had one more dream, and this time he was able to locate himself and discern what he was, and what his purpose was in this nightmarish realm. It seemed to him that he was a fish, and that his job was to head up stream, survive, and in being alive, transform into some other kind of life. It would take some kind of change, the dream seemed to say. His body seemed to morph upon a climactic dash. His fish-like body speared and thrust through thick liquid, a seeming dust and toxic rain. At the end of a river was a bridge, a half-built or half-broken fixture that needed to be taken, as in conquered. But upon his arrival, he was turned away. A man of indeterminate rank, someone who claimed to know what was happening, changed the plan, the rules. Stay with this group, he ordered, even pleaded. If you keep them safe until reinforcements arrive, we will win this day, and you will survive and go home.
The next day, Alpha Joe was a mess. He showed up ten minutes late to his presentation, which felt reminiscent of his senior year in high school. His boss, a woman who reminded him of an indulgent English teacher from that era, smiled thinly at him, hoping his lateness was the worst thing that would happen that day. It wasn’t. Ten minutes into the exercise, Joe was ready to collapse, to give up this surreal exercise, this not-quite dream of building something that would help people, change lives, even communities. He paused upon this thought, injected another reverie. This is why he hadn’t sought a family, he considered. His cause had been an impersonal task, laid out for the benefit of a nameless mass, which would line his pockets but somehow not match his real ambition. He flashed back to the beautiful women from the night before, standing before a window, flanking between them the image of the not-quite beautiful enough bridge. He’ll never get to build what he really wants to build, he realized. He thought of his dream, of kicking down the sand castle. I want to fight, he next thought. I need something…not easy, like a battle–a down and dirty battle. He turned to his assistant, a gifted architect, another woman, as gifted as him, but more diligent, if less winning in her personal style. At that moment, Alpha Joe shocked the room, declaring two things: firstly, that he was resigning his position, leaving the company; secondly, that he was recommending his assistant as the new project manager, confident that she would complete the job and that everyone would be satisfied. Buoyant, as in floating on air, as if he couldn’t locate his body, Alpha Joe left the room, with everyone thinking this a dream.
Beta Ray was going home. More, Beta Ray was going home upon being decorated for acts of heroism in combat. He had indeed been energized, inspired, over a course of months. Over that time, the nightmares abated, and Ray’s fear in combat was subsumed under a gritty determination that won him the admiration and plaudits of comrades and officers. The culmination of this stretch of good soldiering was a mission in which he and his platoon were tasked with holding a bridge across enemy lines while waiting for reinforcements. Then, a further twist: with hours to go before being relieved, Ray and his platoon were besieged by refugees desperate to make it across the bridge, hoping to reach a border to safe territory just beyond the river. With civilians dashing into danger, Ray and his fellow soldiers were forced into action to protect the unarmed. Shells rained down over mostly women and children attempting to cross the bridge. Bullets strafed the innocent. From his armored vehicle, Ray saw a woman hit the ground and drop to the burning asphalt a child that looked to be no more than three months old. Choking upon terror, Ray thought instantly of Mary Lou and of a child that was a month from being due. Next, without thinking, he leapt from the vehicle and sprinted to the woman’s body, collecting the infant in his arms, and then returning the child to safety. Reinforcements arrived minutes later and the child was placed in protective care while murmurings of awe were directed at Ray. In the days ahead, he learned of the accolades that were forthcoming, and more importantly, of the honorable discharge that would be his true reward. However, he could not stop thinking of the fallen woman, and of the child that stared back at him when being shepherded away.
At a military airport in a desert land, Beta Ray sat in a terminal wearing a uniform that was now decorated with medals, unaware that he was being admiringly assessed by a pair of women seated across from him. He was waiting for a flight home, looking forward to seeing Mary Lou, hoping he’d be in time for another kind of arrival. As he heard an announcement for his flight, he leapt up with calm determination, and headed for the departure door. First, he and others had to wait for the passengers of the incoming arrival to disembark. Filing through the gate was a score of incoming recruits, there to replace the likes of Beta Ray. As they passed by, he gave them a solemn, reverent nod in acknowledgement of the battles and sacrifices that were to come. Most of the passing recruits responded in kind. One in particular looked ready, willing, and eager to do his bit. He even looked familiar.
