Beginning of 2020
Christmas came. Tanner went to a local wildlife park. There, he filmed five minutes of him and a koala in deep thought. The little guy's claws hung from Tanner's shoulder, for it had nothing better to do that sit there. Perhaps he should adopt the creature as his new spirit animal.
Week after that found him on the pebbly sands of Point Peron, hands behind his head, one leg propped up on the other, enjoying the sunshine. Waves crashed in the background, a soft susurrus guaranteed to lull him to sleep. In the background, up on the rocks, an old fisherman cast his rod time and time again, bringing up more fat fish than was fair.
His fans had loved that one. It went viral.
After that, his subscriptions grew until his hosting site permitted him advertisements. Groovy. Source of income, if one considered three dollars thirty-seven an income.
His therapist was impressed. "However, remember, this is a hobby. You cannot spend more than a few hours a day on it. What else are you doing with your time?"
To be honest, nothing much. He got up, had breakfast, puttered about the house, the usual. He'd tried gardening in little pots on the alfresco, but in spite of three weeks of watering, the seeds he'd planted had yet to sprout.
"I bought a tripod," he said. "Then I mowed the neighbour's lawn." He sat up, enthused. "I watched television for an hour."
"Good, good," she replied, taking notes. "How did your pottery class go?"
"Better than expected," Tanner replied. It had kept him occupied one evening each week. Not that he had developed enough enthusiasm to take another class. But maybe he'd try something else.
"Get in contact with your family?"
He shrugged. He'd printed out a couple of the better photos from Reesha's camera and had snailed them to his parents, but otherwise, had little interest in getting closer.
It was Reesha he missed. Perhaps he should contact her family. He'd met her parents, siblings, cousins, the whole whanau, and they were far more likeable than his own. Her mother was a busy sort of woman, to make up for her lack of stature. Her father was not a man of many words, but seemed to go along with the flow. They jived along quite well the few times he'd been in their company.
If only he had their contact info. Australia had over twenty-five thousand Lees, and that was just the phone book listing. Somehow, he doubted Reesha was listed in the phone book.
Google came up with nothing new for Reesha. It was like she'd fallen off the face of the Earth.
On a chill-hearted morning, he dared to browse the obituaries, just in case.
Tanner wasn't sure if it was a comfort or more grief that she wasn't listed there?
February arrived with its promise of a fresh new year. His videos of him chilling out at the Perth Train Station while the platforms filled with soft-focused uniformed students on their way to school brought in more subscribers. He didn't know why. He'd fixed the focus on the camera to be mainly on him lounging on the bridge overlooking the platforms. The students were too far away for anything recognisable. In the video, they were nothing but swathes of colour. White for Perth Modern, light blue for Iona, dark green for Mercedes College. One tight bunch of red-uniformed students clustered at the end of one platform, but who knew where they were headed?
It was the sound of trains everyone loved. They didn't care who they were looking at, soft-focus or a tight shot of his boring butt.
Fine. They want noise? They could have noise. Traffic noise. Crowd noise. Even airplane noise.
That last one was fun. Early March, he parked in the Perth Airport Viewing Area, set up Reesha's camera on his tripod, and filmed him chilling out while the planes came in.
One week later, the world shut down.
The Rona.
Flights were grounded, businesses closed and too many people lost their jobs.
What happened?
He hung on to the footage, afraid to post something less-than-serious, afraid of everything. His Monday phone meeting of Workaholics Anonymous was filled with many panicked people. It wasn't so much the financial strife or the sudden social isolation. It was the involuntary loss of work. Sure, they were people in recovery, who'd chosen to limit their days to a mere eight hours, to say no to overtime, to say yes to family time.
But to completely be canned from a job itself? It was a shock to many.
Tanner couldn't handle it. He hung up, then texted an apology to Armand. Tanner hadn't had a job since September. He didn't need to go through the grief of everyone else suddenly without a job as well. Not today.
A week later his masked self stood in the local IGA and stared at shelves empty of toilet paper.
Now what?
He returned home with only half his intended groceries. No milk, no eggs, no flour. He'd managed several packets of who-knew-what from the foreign food aisle, plus several bags of potato chips. Even frozen veggies were looking rather low.
He shoved what he could into the pantry, surveyed the three rolls of toilet paper he had left, and wondered what to do next?
He had no idea.
Tanner did the only thing he'd done for the past six months. He took Reesha's camera on his tripod outside, plunked himself on the lounge, cuddled up to his last roll of toilet paper and did nothing but contemplate.
What else was there?
He laid there, in a silent world, wondering what it all meant.
It was quiet. The normal traffic from two blocks away was missing, as was all the other sounds one normally heard. No lawnmowers. No kids shrieking. Even the dogs were silent. The world held its breath, afraid to catch the Rona.
A single thought came to him: when he'd woken up in that hospital, tubes and wires everywhere, then later when he knew he had to quit his job, he had the same sense of "Now what?"
He'd looked at the world passing by, with their dreams on the go and everything moving and shaking. He felt like he'd been left behind.
It wasn't so much that he'd caught up to the world, but that the world had caught up to him.
Was Reesha all right?
* * *
Two weeks later and the toilet paper was still gone from supermarket shelves. People were so desperate, they'd do anything for even a glimpse of a solitary bog roll, even watch one of his videos.
At least, that's how Tanner's video viewing numbers felt. Who knew, when the only 'editing' he did with that one was an end trim, slapped on his logo and uploaded it before he could doubt himself.
His fans went nuts.
Who knew why? It wasn't like there were any sounds. Wasn't it the accidental ASMR they came for? Certainly wasn't for him. Really, he was boring.
That was his ongoing theme--Doing Nothing. He'd stand there, or sit there, or lay there, doing very little, just as his therapist recommended. "Let the world go by," she said. "You don't have to be in the middle of it, or even on the edge."
So, he had.
But now the world had stopped.
Except for online videos, apparently. His Likes button had burned up, his subscriptions had exploded and the comment section... Tanner never bothered to read all the comments. That's not why he posted. But he couldn't help but look at the numbers. Crazy.
Ad revenue reflected the sudden popularity of some guy cuddling up to the Last Roll of Toilet Paper.
He didn't think much of it until an email from his friend Philly came through.
"Loved your last video," she gushed. "You got any more like that?"
Tanner frowned at his email. "What? Like me crying over an empty milk carton?"
No, that's not what she meant. "Stuff like from the Before Times."
He thought about the aeroplane footage he'd shot and quietly put away. "I got plane landing videos here in Perth."
"Ooh, that'd be perfect! I don't mind Perth Airport. It's quiet, and you don't get lost." Her next words broke his heart. "Looks like it'll be a long time before I see that or any airport again."
He thought a long time before he responded: "Do people even want to see planes when no one is flying?"
"Duh." She spent a whole email for that one word.
Should he? He promised her he'd upload it. She asked him if she could post it to her blog.
Why not? Every time Philly used some of his footage, more people came flocking to his channel.
Airports. "Say, Philly, you familiar with lots of airports?"
"Sure."
Tanner wondered. "If I gave you a picture, could you tell me what airport it's from?"
"I'll try."
He forwarded the first picture of Reesha to her.
It was a good half-hour until she got back to him. "Took me a while. I had to reference a few things, but I believe that's Broome Airport."
Tanner's heart skipped a beat.
Reesha's in Broome?