The world crackles and feeds back with mystery on a walk with Apple the dog. Even the tiny microphones and cameras hidden in the shrubs don’t bum us out. I’m not interested in anyone relying on me anymore. Apple’s leash is purely symbolic and slack. We’re out for our morning de-indexing
Apple and I are really starting to understand each other, though we are not related. The dog genuinely wants to know how I’m doing, but only right now. And then, now. You get it. She doesn’t have any other information about me. She doesn’t think I’m a chump and I don’t think she’s a chore. How do I know this? I’m relaxed.
There aren’t many dogs in Bramble. Centuries ago, the founders had been terrorized by coyotes, and the trauma echoes, I guess. No one talks about it. So the pleasures of canine companionship are lost on most. I felt like the first caveman who let a wolf sleep by the fire on our ecstatic walks downtown. We headed towards the public soundbaths.
There had been a utopian decade in Bramble. The idea that civic peace and kindness could be encouraged through infrastructure was very persuasive. The physics was basic and concrete was cheap. They had built and poured multiple features—sound mirrors, bowls to stand in, bowls to bang on. It’s hard to remember Bramble being that naive, but there it stood, real as a graveyard.
The public soundbaths were not abandoned in cynicism. Before dawn, they are still a good place to buy drugs. After school, our feminist graffiti crew, The Flowers of Bramble, plots and plays music on a wireless speaker. Occasionally, Bramble CBD sponsors a lunchtime Wellness Workshop and the soundbaths get really thrumming. The Bramble public soundbaths were also the site of a pivotal battle in the War with the Skinheads.
Dogs are like plants, I’ve read. They like when you talk to them. So I told Apple about all of this as we approached the concrete park. Her pace slowed. Her big ears rotated. Sound is a mechanical pressure wave, compressing and relaxing, and even the benign noise of morning traffic was getting amplified and distorted. It occurred to me that this was a bad idea for someone so sensitive, but Apple pulled on the leash down into the central bowl, until we were out of sight of the cameras and out of range of the microphones.
I’m dog sitting Apple because my friend Shadow and his wife Wanda were at their monthly sex therapy weekend. From what I could gather, sex therapy weekends were not about having sex somewhere new, but rather, attending lectures and completing obstacle courses and sometimes being hypnotized. It’s none of my business if it’s going well. I just assumed they weren’t really listening to each other.
I liked Apple’s qualities. Her wonder and logic. She asked in her own way how I was doing. She listened. Apple the dog, by her very presence, asked, are we in a dystopian decade in Bramble now? And if so, so what?