Understanding Binary

Short Fiction ~ Dianne Bown-Wilson
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Honourable Mention, Strands International Flash Fiction Competition - 20 


It was the ordinariness of it after all those TV dramas in which wet nights gleam with menace and the soundtrack’s chosen to make your nerves jangle (not that you’re listening because you’re engrossed in where the bad guy‘s coming from and what exactly he’s doing to who, and are you going to be able to see him well enough so you can sit back and know who dunnit while the cops still work it out?).
 
Tesco off the ring road, Tuesday morning around 11, mild and cloudy with a chance of rain, wasn’t a bit like that.
 
You spotted him from inside as you approached the big sliding doors leading to that bit at the front of the car park where the trolleys congregate like a shoal of fish and traffic lanes loop like guts to the left and right.
 
If all choices can be reduced to yes/no, on/off states (which is what your grandson told you once when he was explaining the mysteries of computers), do humans act like machines? For example, in a life-or-death situation, you’ve often wondered if you’d:

1. stay or run,
2. fight or submit,
3. scream or keep schtum?

• and when you were young, you supposed you’d find out one day (not that you wanted to court danger, but you felt it was important to know).

Now you’re 78, you accept there’s a lot that’ll remain a mystery, and most of it no longer matters, but it doesn’t stop you wondering, nevertheless.
So when something happens that does matter, and you’re faced with the ultimate on-off challenge, choice goes out the window.
Or does it?  
           
You were there with just the one lumpy shopping bag dangling from the crook of your arm as you juggled your purse back into your handbag, trying to avoid colliding with people coming in because whoever designed the place hadn’t bothered to get that bit right. Only you started to realise that people were running to get inside, and you heard yelling, and a bang as the window off to the right of you shattered. But you just kept walking, vaguely wondering what was going on but not bothered because whatever it was, it was Nothing To Do With You. Which it wasn’t until you reached the doors and heard another crack and glanced to your right, looking beyond some chap loitering in the middle of the road wearing dark overalls and a balaclava (which you thought a bit odd) to where a woman was slumped face down on the footpath with blood pooling underneath her. But Overall Man, despite having what looked like a gun in his hand, was standing there casually as if he intended to marshall traffic – not that there was any, which was strange in itself - and just gazing about like he was waiting or looking for someone which maybe he was except the someone was anyone and the next anyone was a middle-aged man on his phone who ambled around the corner towards him, not paying attention until the gun cracked again and he fell too, and his phone bounced into the road. And you didn’t think:  0 or 1? Yes or no? Good or bad? -  because you didn’t think anything except, This Isn’t On.
 
Mere yards from where he stood with his back to you, your car was just two bays into the disabled spaces (because you don’t walk too well these days). So you fumbled your keys out of your coat pocket, clicked the button, threw your bags on the seat, scrambled inside and turned on the engine. Maybe that balaclava blocked his hearing, or perhaps he didn’t care being so focused on finding someone else to shoot, but he didn’t turn around as you lurched forward, wrenched the wheel right then left and put your foot down hard. So now you know that under pressure, you don’t make reasoned choices because your mind goes blank, and all that happens is you feel Very Angry Indeed.
 
You also discover that a person travels a surprising distance when you hit them fast and full-on from behind.
 
You slammed on the brakes after impact because, God forbid, you didn’t want to run over him, too, and immediately, people descended on his crumpled form like a swarm of flies. You heard yourself mutter, ‘Pick up the effing gun, someone’, which is what you often tell the television, even though no one would hear you with the car windows closed. Then you thought, I’m going to be in the way here when the police and ambulance arrive, so it made sense to reverse back into your original parking space. Carefully. Unobtrusively. Steadily this time.
 
That was a yes/no choice.
           
As was texting William while you waited for someone to come and talk to you:
Running late. Still at the supermarket. Better get your own lunch. 

~

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Dr Dianne Bown-Wilson is a short story writer who grew up in New Zealand and now lives surrounded by stunning scenery in Dartmoor National Park in Devon, UK. Her work has won prizes in numerous international competitions and has been included in anthologies. Her passion is for character-led tales exploring the extraordinariness of ordinary people.
 
She has published two collections of her successful stories: Instructions for Living and Other Stories, and Degrees of Exposure. Visit her website https://diannebownwilson.uk/

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