A Hologram for the King

by Dave Eggers

He was already in the photo program, the vast grid of his life in thumbnails, so he scanned backward. Everything was there, and it terrified him.

All he had to do was keep his finger on the leftward arrow. It was too easy. It was not good. It kept him in a dangerous stasis of nostalgia and regret and horror.

The Earth is an animal that shakes off its fleas when they dig too deep, bite too hard. It shifts and our cities fall; it sighs and the coasts are overtaken. We really shouldn’t be here at all. ‘Dear Kit, The key thing is managed awareness of your role in the world and history. Think too much and you know you are nothing. Think just enough and you know you are small, but important to some. That’s the best you can do.’

He poured another splash of the clear fluid into his glass. It was not so much. Not so much. The bottle was still half full. Taking another sip, he decided it was wonderful. It was all beyond wonderful. Being drunk was rewarding. He could see the appeal. He poured again. The fidgety tick of glass on glass. The anything-goes flood of the fluid into the cup.

I remember when I realized my parents were hypocrites like everyone else. I was eighteen. And after that I was high on the power brought by that realization. What did I know, though? I guess I’d realized that they lied from time to time. And that my mom took pills, had been hooked on morphine for a while when I was younger. And so I lorded it over them. I was the perfected version of them, I thought. Makes you think of Hitler Youth or the Khmer Rouge, right? The children, full of themselves and their purity, shooting the adults in the rice paddies.’

And again the battle was on, between the responsible self he knew this morning, who would engage a driver at great cost to take him to his duties at the city-to-be in the desert by the sea, and the self who would carouse around the hotel room, stabbing phantom tumors, kicking doors and writing unsendable letters. Which among the selves was expendable? This was eternally the question.

And she’s descended from the Prophet Mohammed. I swear this is true.

—Biggest thing we’ve ever done, he said. The work would be done with care, with urgency. Terry was wearing an American flag pin on his lapel. It all meant something. Until it didn’t.

—Come on, Alan said. Abdullah could build this city in five years if he wanted to. Why drag it out over twenty? Hasan sat with that question for a long moment. —I have no idea, he said. And so they shared their frustrations of being at the mercy of factors out of their control, too many to count.

People having no idea, but hope is the analogy of a 50 something having no idea how he and America ended up like it has.

—I have to find a new place, Salem said. —That makes two of us, Yousef said. They discussed moving in together, in some other part of town, or some other country. Salem was finished with the KSA for the moment. It had nothing left to offer him. —The boredom is infinite, Salem said.

The gun wants to be fired. The waiting must end.

He held Kit’s hand. If this happens, he thought, I am a good father. If I show her this, I have done something.

Let me sell the Shuttle. I will help you get to Mars. Give me something to do.