foreword
prologue
chapter 1
chapter 2
chapter 3
chapter 4
chapter 5
chapter 6
chapter 7
chapter 8
chapter 9
chapter 10
chapter 11
chapter 12
chapter 13
chapter 15
chapter 16
chapter 17
chapter 18
chapter 19
chapter 20
chapter 21
chapter 22
chapter 23
chapter 24
chapter 25
chapter 26
chapter 27
chapter 28
chapter 29
chapter 30
chapter 31
chapter 32
interlude
chapter 33
chapter 34
chapter 35
chapter 36
chapter 37
chapter 38
chapter 39
chapter 40
diary of lieselotte maike fischer
chapter 41
chapter 42
interlude
chapter 43
chapter 44
chapter 45
chapter 46
chapter 47
chapter 48
chapter 49
final broadcast
the end
epilogue
afterword
GOD YEAH no this book sucks actual ass. only way to describe it. i wrote some more regarding the context behind the work in the afterword (that was way back when i actually capitalized and used proper grammar but that's besides the point) but what you need to know is that what you're about to read is Not Good. it's pretentious as hell and written in the same annoying first-person narrative style that YIIK has. i finished this in like, late summer of 2022 maybe, around the end of august or beginning of september or some shit (i'll give you a more accurate date if/when i remember), which isn't a whole lot of time between then and now (as of me writing it it's november 6th 2023) but i started it way back when ugh i don't remember. my mom's trying to (or at least tried, in the past tense) to sell it on amazon. i'll save you the money and let you read it for free; it's not worth $2.
to note is that this is the original rough draft; the end result was too tedious for me to copy/paste over but there's virtually nothing changed between the two versions (except for minor details like words and spelling here and there) so if you spot any errors that's to be expected, but overall you're still getting the same product for the most part. to note is that there ARE formatting errors (i didn't write the manuscript in HTML so that's what i get i guess) so just pay attention to where the quotations start and end. i know it's ugly but what can you do right (except edit it and i don't want to)
enjoy... as much as you can, anyway.
edit nov 7 2023: i also remembered i originally wanted it to be a lot more surreal than it ended up being. it was meant to be this ridiculously grotesque and somewhat comedic declaration of life, i guess. a total mindfuck, but ultimately with a positive message. not sure how i'll go about doing that but it sure is an idea. i'm planning on revising and releasing a new version of the novel (one that hopefully doesn't suck), but i don't think i'll be doing that anytime soon hahahahahha
Dead leaves and plastic wrappers crunched underfoot; there was no longer any incentive to clean up a forest nobody would visit and which wildlife had all fled. Who was to blame? There’s not much to look at other than the residue that carelessness left in its wake.
Liesel didn’t like this forest, no-- but it was certainly better than the air she’d breathe on the streets, and the desolate ground left no distractions to solitary thought. Her twin brother never served as an intrusion, as it never would make a difference whether he was there or not, besides for a second pair of footsteps that climbed up a hill alongside her, with dirt coming loose as they walked.
In the corner of a patch of land, dense with fallen objects, some of them rotten past recognition, sat a large machine. It stood at around seven feet tall. Without any caution, the girl approached the shape; a simple box, with naught on its structure but a door. Some dust caught onto the candy she was still eating as she brushed the metallic façade, to which a glimmering insignia showed its face.
It was bigger on the inside. The door gave way to an exact replica of her bedroom; the pink, cheery little chamber with her schoolpapers and baseball gear put away neatly on her shelf, just as she remembered it. After the shock, the twins stepped in- and something must’ve reminded them of home, as when they peeked out of the machine, they were greeted by a familiar view of their basement floor.
My parents named me Lucifer. Lucifer!
There should seriously be a law that would force you to give at least an ounce of thought before naming a child. I don’t care that it’s a real name and it means light or truth or whatever; it’s never about what it actually means when it’s ubiquitously associated with evil. There used to be places where it was illegal to ruin your kid’s life with an awful birthname.
Cairnerith certainly has a thing or two to learn.
What’s a proper way to introduce yourself to a lady you just tried to rob? ‘Hi, I’m Lucifer’ would certainly get me booted out.
“My name’s Lucas.”
That works.
“With a K or a C?” She motioned towards a small cloth couch. “Drop the switchblade and sit your ass down. You’ve got some explaining to do.”
“With a C, ma’am. I’m sorry for trying to mug you.”
I looked at the window to distract myself from the reality that I was being taken in by someone who I tried to rob.
“Well that ain’t a thing you hear every day! ‘I’m sorry for mugging you’, she mimicked. “You sure are an oddball. Tell me more.”
I’m by no means an intimidating guy, but in this situation, I think it might’ve worked out in my favour.
“Girlfriend conflicts. Now I’ve no money and my parents kicked me out. I wanted a little food and shelter. Uh, I just came out of jail for trying to rob a store-“
“What’d she do?” The woman sat down on the chair opposite me and watched my face intently. “C’mon, you can tell me.”
I’ve answered questions before. I’m an expert in lying through my teeth; the kind of guy that your mother would hate but your brother would adore. I know how to use my own wits to get myself out of hot water; not that I enjoy being dishonest, but it’s a useful talent to have. But I’ve got nothing to offer right now.
“What’d she do to you?” She said, softer this time.
“Not of your concern.”
She sent me into the showers (which was nice, privacy was hard to come by) probably because I wasn’t the most pleasant-smelling fellow out there, at least at the moment (I wasn’t sure though, but I didn’t want to be). All the while resisting my urge to use far too much shampoo, it crossed my mind that this lady might’ve been a hungry fairy who thought that street kids didn’t know how to behave in others’ homes.
Unfortunately for her, she’d only be half-right. So she can have my legs.
To avoid indecency and being eaten, I wrapped one of her white, fluffy towels around my waist as I looked for a change of clothes in my new room’s closet. I look to the right: a pile of plastic boxes filled with scrap metal, wires, and little things like nuts and bolts.
“I said I would get you something.” She walked in on me (thankfully, changed), holding a plate of chicken from the oven. “You hungry, boy?”
I’ll be honest with you. Yes I was, but I already gave myself enough of a hard time for threatening to hurt that convenience store clerk ‘cause I didn’t want to sleep on the streets, so I didn’t think I could stomach a dead animal (No, the prison food didn’t count. It’s far too disgusting to be actual meat.) She was also yet to prove that she wasn’t a fairy.
“No thank you, ma’am. I’m good, you don’t need to get me anything, I’m fine.”
“If you don’t like chicken, you could just tell me.” She set the plate down. “No need for the formalities here. Take some cash. Fetch yourself something from the market.”
“Alright.” Two hundred bucks. Enough to get a medium salad, I thought. I felt a little bad about not thanking her for the gift, but I’m just trying to look out for myself over here.
“And you don’t try any funny business on anyone! Get your food, get out, and get your ass back here.”
“Okay.”
I remember her rows of marigolds and yarrows that faced the dimly-lit streets. Wad of cash in hand, I took off for the nearest store, which I didn’t think was for another half-mile or so, but at least I’m a good sprinter.
What defines a name? If it’s what people call you, then ‘Lucifer’ is eons more attractive than ‘Missed Potential’ or ‘Poor Thing’. If it’s what you call yourself, then I’m not even sure if I have one.
Please just call me Lucas. I know it’s outdated, but I’d take it over anything else at this point.
I’m a professional hypocrite.
My personal motto of “never do what’s easy, always do what’s right” didn’t stop me from binging television shows and clicking away in front of a colourful screen game past dawn (which had put a few pounds on me, that I subsequently lost on the streets). I have never wished myself an easy life; I had endlessly cursed myself for indulging in meaningless pleasure while the time was still right to pursue my ambitions. I told myself that mooching off of others would get me nowhere, but it apparently got me into a top-secret plan to monitor extraterrestrial terrain that may determine the future of humanity.
So what happened?
It was last Saturday or Sunday, I think. Liesel (I finally bothered to ask for her name) finished setting some presentations up for her class, while I stayed home and sated my curiosity by opening mystery boxes I found in her garage. I found some ancient cube puzzle (you can clearly tell it hasn’t been oiled in a while) and put it in my pocket.
“You like the cube?” She asked when I showed off my discovery.
“I think it’s neat,” I said.
“Alright, it’s yours. Tell you what,” she said, dropping a stack of books on the bocote-wood table. “Have this too. You seen my library? It’s all yours if you give me a hand on something. We don’t have much better to do anyways, right?”
I’d say that locking myself in a box and getting booted to space is a little different than “giving a hand”, but it was certainly a use of my time.
And the compensation library?
I’d have the honour of owning a chemistry textbook printed a hundred or so years ago that’d likely crumble at a breath– deal!
“It’ll be an interesting experience for you and some valuable data for me. A win-win. Plus your job’s far from hard. You just need to tell me if you find signs of civilization and stay alive, and I trust you know how to text me. We’re not doing any advanced biology nonsense; in your mission an idiot would know if he saw what he was looking for.” She tossed some more stuff on the table: an MP3 player, a couple of empty journals, a camcorder, and a crate of art supplies.
“Entertain yourself along the way.”
I derive my entertainment from lambasting myself because I think it would make me a better person afterwards.
Yeah, I’ll try.
I agreed out of my reckoning that this would’ve been a better way to spend what time I had left after I chain-smoked maybe half of my lifespan. Simple task, yeah, but being a moron alone in outer space comes with high stakes.
I used to be able to solve a cube. Right now I’m sitting and staring at it in my room, realizing I’ve forgotten how to clear even a single side.
A train derails itself, killing 23 people on board and injuring more. Thoughts and prayers.
Your friend tells you that his grandmother passed away last night. Thoughts and prayers. You begin feeling a small pain in your chest. Thoughts and prayers.
You hope you’ll be fine.
By the year of ----, 50% of species alive today are expected to go extinct.
Thoughts and prayers.
They killed a man on trial for something he didn’t do. Thoughts and prayers.
Getting through life is so tiring. You’re so tired of this world.
It’s too hard to care about things anymore.
Your pain is getting worse. Thoughts and prayers.
Two decades ago you promised your best friend you would be with her forever. You haven’t heard of her in 7 years.
You hope that one day, a soft light of respite will shine on you, but sometimes the speed of light isn’t fast enough.
Breathing becomes difficult. Thoughts and prayers.
Goodbye, Earth.
When I was a kid being carted away to some obscure local attraction for a class sleepover, I’d always count the days ‘till I left and packed my bags well in advance. The excitement and longing was often better than the trip itself, though.
I still remember the day- how the soft blue three o’clock sky shone! And how my eyes counted every little vein on the petals of a tabletop rose and my fingers traced the diamond-shaped indents of its glass vase; five years ago were akin to a passing week.
Today it rained. The rows of marigolds and yarrow still faced the empty street; I thought I’d pay them a last visit before I’d go.
“Your old woman here’s gonna miss you,” Liesel told me, facing a large machine— standing roughly the height of a young apple tree. It was large and smooth, like a block of unchiseled marble. On its surface was an indented handle to a door.
Inside was an echo of the room she let me sleep in, which was much bigger than the exterior would suggest. There’s a lot of disbelief to suspend, but at this point I’ve come to accept that life would only get weirder with each confounded doubt you’d hold.
The machine didn’t fall neatly into lines. When I first saw it it would flicker around from end to end; at times, a room would completely fail to materialize. Now, its form had settled down. It hadn’t been changed in a while.
It was like a little pocket of time inside of the room. A place you’d fantasize about while wasting hours in a place you didn’t like, except with all of its life and wonder sucked straight from its mouth, leaving nothing but the soft humming of wires and the yellow hue of the overhead lights. Like a stuffed animal you once loved and talked to, except now that you’re older you realize there was never a single thought inside of that stuffed animal’s stitched up head.
Clocks stopped stock-still. On a desk was an archaic brick that Liesel claims to be a computer. Beside the brick was a cup of tea, gone cold.
Beyond the window was a life that didn’t exist. Sometimes I’d hear a familiar tune among the electrical buzzing, but whatever that song was, I’d have forgotten its name long ago.
Liesel taped some instructions to the desktop, in case I ever hit my head so hard I forget how to tie my shoes (with my own comments included as a gift to myself, to remind me that after all, I’m still human enough to know how to write):
Always keep the computer plugged in. You shouldn’t run out of power as long as you don’t forget you’ve got a working socket in there.
Check in with me. You know how to text. (The provided software is old and slow, but it’s at least somewhat reliable.)
The camera drone’s under this desk, in a labeled box. Control it like you would a toy helicopter. It gives you all the data you need; your job is to record it. (Shaped like a flat disk. It looks fragile and stupid, but the design is made so you can slide it under the crack of the door without needing to open it.)
Don’t open the door. (See?)
When you see it, you’ll know. (Yes, unless aliens happen to prefer subterranean
civilization.)
Otherwise, it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out whether it’s suitable for rapid human
habitation.
If you need something, it’s in the closet. There’s everything in the closet, look under the
shelves if you can’t find something. (Got it.)
Don’t forget this sheet of paper.
9. Remember to sleep. I’ll write your dreams for you, but in the case anything goes wrong, manual override’s in the terminal app. (Hopefully it’ll never see use– I’d have nobody left to blame if it ends up failing.)
I’ve just loaded my bags into the room. Maybe under a different state of mind I’d much rather have experienced total limb failure than to have ever gone along with top secret plan extraordinaire, but right now I just don’t see a future in myself. Sometimes I’d wonder what the machine would look like pared down to its minimum, but it’s maybe for the best if I don’t question such things, or existence at all.
The door shut with a click and a thud. I can already smell the newspaper headlines coming;
“The tragic tale of Lucifer Doyle, first man to ever die in space alone.”
She took her time with getting ready in the morning. Getting up early means you get to pay attention to all the little details, like whether her hair was brushed properly or not or if her jacket went together with her shoes.
She did her usual routine. Make her bed, brush her teeth, get dressed. Make food. Eat. Bags were beginning to set below her eyes. Check her email. Grab her purse.
Check her email again. Most of the time she didn’t receive anything other than useless shopping deals or spam, but she always double checked anyway.
There was a notification in her primary inbox. Spam doesn’t go there.
It was an untitled message from a mother she knew. Liesel didn’t talk to her students’ parents much, but she still made an effort to memorize who they were.
“Hello, Ms. Fischer,” the email read. “I hope this message finds you well.”
Sally. Wasn’t her daughter Felicity competing in the national design competition? (Surprising that it’s still a thing.) Liesel could tell that her student inherited her mother’s hardworking skills.
Felicity’s dead.
Her mother found her hanging by a meter of rope. A chair, toppled over, laid by her feet, swaying left and right to the wind that an open window let through.
Her mother didn’t understand. She didn’t know if there was anything to understand in the first place; all she knows is that she’ll never not hate herself for her ignorance. She thought her daughter was happy (maybe she was?), but the creaking in Felicity’s bedroom floorboards whispered tales of her desolate mind.
Liesel still had the blizzard blue hair ribbon that Felicity gave her in the back of her drawer somewhere, which she would return to her mother later. No funeral was to be arranged. Those were too expensive.
Checked her email again. No new messages.
And yet, the day went on. Work was to be done.
The buses arrived at 9am. She’d take the one that rode to Main Street, then get off and take the one to Rosemary. Teachers could get away with arriving later in the day now, as the morning classes were mostly vacant. Full-day school was a scarcity.
The inside of the bus was stuffy and cramped. Liesel felt the sweat collect in the palms of her tired hands, clutching the handle of her leather messenger bag, its skin softened with age.
“You’ve never struggled once in your life,” a young girl who seemed no older than 10 declared. “You’ll never know what it’s like to try.” Her friend looked at her and said nothing, then returned to the book in her hands.
Liesel was silent throughout her morning commute. It was a Monday when the sky did not yet wake up; it was tossing and turning clouds upon its face and fog upon the lakes. She stepped off the bus, swamped fields squelched beneath her boots, leaving imprints as she walked.
And yet, the day went on. It was hard to speak about a side character’s death, even harder to draw emotions out of your audience. Some friends sat, morose and grieving, while the other children copied their mannerisms. Regardless, class continued.
Today’s topic was matter. Some of the children were a little shocked at the notion they were but atoms stacked on atoms, as if they had made it a fact to themselves that they were anything more. Others weren’t bothered. Nothing was ever created nor destroyed; to some it might have been comforting to know that the mass of their postmortem presence would be around forever. It is strange to think of people as bodies of animated quarks. It is even stranger to realize that each and every one of those bodies do have their own thoughts. But what on earth does a thought weigh? Nothing, thus it wasn’t matter– it simply did not matter.
Sometimes a kid or two would visit Liesel during her downtime between her two classes. If they were quiet, she would reward them with candy to make sure they stayed quiet. If they were loud, she would occupy them with candy to shut them up. Many kids liked to drop by her room for the candy- a win-win situation, as they’ve built up a good name for her around the school.
And yet, the day went on.
Her afternoon class was a little bit slower. Things would have to be repeated a few times before anyone got the message; there was almost never enough time at the end to synthesize new knowledge. It didn’t help that classes rarely started early- in particular, there was a dark-haired boy named Isaac who liked to enter a good ten minutes after everyone else had gotten seated. Today was stalled even further by her opening announcement and the panic/apathy that had to follow suit. (Oh god, Felicity’s dead!) (...) (Thoughts and prayers. My heart goes out to her family.)
Liesel’s trip back home went as always. Fatigue and exhaustion were beginning to set in as she moved towards the maple desk that sat in the spare room she’d given to Lucifer. On the desk was a dated model of a computer. Beside the computer was a cup of tea, gone cold.
She turned it on and began to formulate messages in her head. The chat program was taking a while longer to load, but yet, the day went on.
It has been a while since you’ve slept on a different bed. Tonight, you had a dream; the details fall like sand through your fingers but you’re caressing the grain left in your palm.
The stars around you shone. The air was mild and cool. From the outside of your window, you saw your planet Earth. It looked like a little blue ball suspended in nowhere. You watched as you slowly drifted away, further, further, and further from the sole world you knew.
The Earth became so small. Your hometown of East Waterbridge, even smaller. It becomes a small dot, like a needle-hole poked into a curtain. Through the hole was every worldly possession, concern, friend, and enemy that occurred to you; it almost looked like you could squish it all flat.
For a moment, you had forgotten where Cairnerith was. Those great masses of land; no more than a flash in the eyeshot. Their messages on TV; just a footnote somewhere on a scrap
piece of paper somewhere in the back of your mind. All the busy, dense, humming populace had looked no more than a mote of dust to any eyes from outer space.
From there, it became so impossibly tiny. You thought about an old chemistry unit; you fit on a chart-- your entire world and you, on a list of about 100. It’s always made sense but you’re only starting to see it now, laid out on a tiny blue droplet in the waters of the great black sea.
And yet, the stars around you shone.
You’re tired and your sleep last night was awful.
[Liesel 9:02 AM]: You’ll be dealing with a rock planet tidally locked to its star. The day/night sides have weather far too extreme to possibly sustain life, but the twilight seems promising. Good luck!
[Lucas 9:03 AM]: ok Cool
Good morning, unnamed planet! Gooood~mooor~niing!
First night out in space: not bad. It’s a little lonely, but liberating; back on Earth I was always afraid that if I started thinking too loudly, other people would hear me. It’s nice to have a place to keep thoughts to yourself; I spent a lot of time exercising my newfound mental freedom. Liesel isn’t around to nag me about using too much water in the shower anymore.
As was ritual I woke up and had three good, hard blinks. To refresh the eyes.
I took out a notebook; I always found work easier done with something to look at, even if the “something” was no more than pointless graphite vomit; today I drew a small planet and made a small bullet-point list to its side.
Life on another planet would have a few requirements: first and foremost there had to be the conditions for stable liquid water. (That would already take out– I’d say– a good three-fourths of every planet that I know of.)
Then you needed a decent atmosphere. From there, a star to orbit around, or some other source of energy.
Possibilities for human habitation would be even lower. If there was a breathable atmosphere, there was sure to be some sort of pathogen none of our bodies would be accustomed to.
This was already not looking terribly promising, but at least there was Liesel– she likely knew more than I did. I let my motivation hang on the assumption she knew what she was doing.
I wanted to list with more detail what I had to look out for (I found listing a rather comforting task), but some stars caught my attention instead– In particular, a dim light-- it was so far away that it might’ve died on the way here.
I told myself this was a task for the sake of humanity. I was a finger in the hand that wrote its story, and if I did my part then we would have a great work in the end. Then I thought of my past– whether any idea or person I stood for ended up shining as bright as I thought it would’ve.
Perhaps this mission was no different. I reasoned that it wouldn’t have mattered; no one on Earth would ever see the sun as it really looked but the light was still light all the same. It was something for everyone to look at. I suppose this long task is my sun– it wouldn’t really matter how it turned out as long as I could tell myself it was meaningful– but of course it was! The universe is so big.
There has to be something out there– that was only reasonable.
I had no more to think about. I sent out the drone and prayed for the best– that in itself was enough work to let me pass through the rest of the day with a satisfied leisure.
I live for nothing but that feeling. As long as I get my work done, my life up here is going to be just swell.
If I screamed, it would be too far away for anyone to hear it– ah, I don’t think I’ll bother.
At first I nearly blew up with joy when I heard about the climate situation of the planet’s twilight. I can’t talk based on personal account (I’m still stuck in my little room, not planning to get so high off alien air I ascend to heaven) but Liesel gave me the figures, and a good majority of the strip is suitable for extraterrestrials that would enjoy the feeling of waiting in a cramped hospital clinic in stuffy summer air. What I did forget, though, was my checklist of a habitable planet’s requirements, and the fact that life typically demands a little more than just barely tolerable weather.
The drone I sent out last night came back with some footage. It’s a little long so I’ll transcribe it for you here:
Collected a soil sample.
Bare land.
Bare land.
Bare land.
Continuous flight for 2 days before hope was given up and aircraft was returned. I’ll relay it to Liesel in a bit.
As much as I loved to dream about my work’s success, hope was a costly product to buy– best you could ever be is right and that’s only a fraction of the time; I am convinced that all people who are optimists by choice are secretly masochists that enjoy the feeling of being woefully disappointed. Eventually I figured out that the soil was practically soaked with mercury (which I only found out after accidentally dropping the sample box and screaming like a toddler), so I upped sticks and left as soon as I could convince myself that the little silver puddle I had to clean up wasn’t going to kill me in my sleep.
My nap was as refreshing as it needed to be, up until a whole bunch of ideas started yelling in my head. I suddenly regretted not asking Liesel for anything to go out and actually explore the planet myself. Granted, I’d be toast if I actually did ever come across civilization, which was what I needed to be on the lookout for in the first place, but I enjoyed some very pleasant thoughts about tossing paper airplanes and ranking all the planets based on how much fun I had– Earth gravity and air is getting pretty lame.
I spent the rest of my day milling about my room, foraging like an animal for something that would’ve been at the very least mildly entertaining. Instead I came across an old journal. As I leafed through the pages, I was filled to the brim with emotions: embarrassment, disgust, and unadulterated cringe. The most of the chuckle it mustered out of me came from a date where I described the experience of being called a pussy for feeling bad for a hamburger. The rest of the handwriting was smudged beyond comprehension, but the yellowed pages were still fun to crinkle around.
One thing was clear now though: I was alone, and would be for an indefinite amount of time. To keep my sanity tethered, in all the spare time I had to find something and occupy myself a little, either by writing or drawing something. I’d also have to be proud of it if I didn’t want a midlife crisis at the age of 23.
I’ve always wanted to write an epic, but stories are really only good if you’ve got something to say.
Last night’s expedition bore no result.
Shocking.
Oh dear Liesel, what could you have been thinking? So many planets out there, how lucky would you be if your first was a success?
I’ll find it soon. I have to— how could the universe allow for anything else?
Liesel picked up her phone. The solitude was killing her, and she didn’t want to die alone.
“Hey, Mathilda?”
...
“Yeah no, you can stay with me.”
...
“Honestly, don’t even worry about it. Just having you around’s good enough.”
...
“Tons of places that’re hiring here. Don’t worry about leaving it.”
...
“You still have my address, right?”
...
“Great. Seeya.”
She put on the news. Liesel always liked having something to listen to while she cleaned the house, and it had to be presentable to an old friend.
“...with the city of Port Dewsbury suspected to be the most vulnerable to attack. Travel is not advised at this time. Sammy, over to you?”
The clock on the wall was ticking.
“We’re all unsure of what will happen; we’re not sure what caused this; we’re all afraid of what will happen. As far as we’re aware...”
Cleaning almost never felt like work. It soothes the soul to see everything fall into place, prim and tidy. But it always takes too much time.
“...being short on workers, as all medical staff are required to be individually approved by the government, as per a recent change in...”
Wind was rustling outside. Leaves needed to be raked again. Is the washcloth in the sink? Has she swept the foyer yet?
“...all done to keep us safe, supposedly. We don’t know what kind of weapons they have; speculation is that they will largely be some sort of biohazard. Citizens could very much be at risk; the best thing to do now...”
She could swear that the bottle of floor spray was full when she put it away last week.
“...so many lives, haha. Mother Earth hates us.”
Dee-dah-dee-dah went the doorbell. It was a sound that Liesel wasn’t quite used to hearing. She harriedly fixed a pile of folded blankets on her end table before greeting her friend.
“Mattie!”
“Hey, girl.” Mathilda checked her watch a few times before stepping inside, then leaving her shoes by the side of the woven rug. “How you’ve been?”
“Feeling more alive than I ever was.”
“That’s not saying a lot.”
“I know.” Liesel led her guest into the well-lit dining room and picked up a tray of drinks and various dainties. “How’s the dating game?”
“Nobody’s out there to trust. They deal you a four-of-a-kind before you find out the entire deck was waterlogged and rotting.”
Mathilda sighed as she poured herself a cup of rosehip tea, mixing in a little too much cold water. “The garbage does the disposal for me anyways. I wouldn’t mind.”
“Aw, darling... you’re being silly.”
Liesel wrapped her arms around her friend’s shoulders, and the gold-rimmed chair she was sitting on. “There’s someone out there– there’s always the right choice somewhere.”
“I’ve given up long ago. I’ll be my own person from now on,” Mathilda said, smiling as she stirred her second cube of sugar into the cup.
“Ah– I see. I won’t argue with you.”
Liesel remembered the state of the guest room and a gust of worry blew her in her face. She set her cup of Earl Grey down and nearly spilled some onto her placemat.
“You used to be in pharmacy, weren’t you? Barely any cops around anymore. What’s stopping you from making some of the good stuff and cashing out?” She embellished her statement with a little chuckle.
“My honour.”
Mathilda looked at Liesel with a twinge of chagrin. “I know you’re joking, but too many people trade their values for comfort, even when they’ve got a choice.” She started smiling again.
“Well, Mathilda, sometimes comfort’s all a person has. It’s not as easy as just a this-for-that situation. It’s just how it is.”
“Excuse the mess.”
Liesel tried to restrain her unease as she clicked on the light.
“It’s the only other room in the house that has a bed, I’m sorry.”
“Isn’t this a four-bedroom house?”
“I use the other ones for storage. My bad,” she said, exasperatedly. “Who lived here?”
“Son of a friend. Left for college.”
“And he didn’t bring any of this with him?”
“Suitcase small. He says he’ll get new stuff at the town he’s staying at.”
Liesel noticed Mathilda’s hesitance. “It’s fine if you wanna move things around. He won’t know we’ve gone through his room anyways. Sorry it’s a little...” She tilted her head left, then right. “... yeah.”
“I’ve seen worse.”
Mathilda picked up a cube and turned it around. She faced a side, completely white, towards herself. “What’s this?”
“An old puzzle. Was her son’s favourite; I don’t understand how someone could be so in love with a little box for so long.”
Gently, Liesel removed it from Mathilda’s hand. She set it atop a walnut drawer, swiping some dust out of the way. “I don’t know how to solve it. I’ve gotten close, but I make one turn and it undoes three others.”
Mathilda sat down, moving her windbreaker from underneath her as she patted the white linen. A particular hotel she had relied on for a hefty number of days jumped at her straight out of her memory; how disquieting it was when the sorest fret she had on her mind was how she would live tomorrow out.
It was two-o’clock. She stuck out two of her fingers, counted them, then picked away at the skin of the base of the pointer’s tip. Once, she picked at it so hard it cracked open and bled.
“I’m staying here, yes?”
“If you’d like.”
“I’d be in your debt. Could I pull back the curtains? The shade makes it hard to think.”
“Go right ahead, Mattie. It’s a wonderful day outside. You ever try to do a little forecasting yourself? I learned how to read the clouds when I was fourteen– never forgot it.”
“Not really, no, it’s beyond my control. Whatever happens is whatever will happen.” “Do you not worry for your future?”
“I worry about what I can do.”
“Oh.”
Liesel bent down to pick some specks of dark material: loose fabric pills, dirt, and dried residue bits from leaky pens. “My luck takes me pretty far, I’d say. What would you do if the universe spat on your face?”
“Nothing. I’ll just try not to care.” Mathilda bent her fingers back, then her elbows– as far back as she felt they were able to move. The crackle gave the back corner of her brain a well-needed scratching.
“What would you do if I spat on your face?”
“I’d spit on you right back.”
Liesel did not disturb her friend until time came when dinner was appropriate. She cooked a simple meal of two carrots, chopped up, served onto a plate of rice, and chicken. Every other supper she prepared was never consistent in its taste; if, in retrospect, she felt one was too salty and adjusted her next one accordingly, she would always find the plainness overbearingly dull.
She set the glasses of water upside down– an old trick she’d employ to hack a chuckle out of most anybody. When it worked, it was much easier for her to eat.
“The spices are in the cupboard above the sink if you need them. Enjoy,” she said, centering the base of the serving dish with the doily, where a glass vase of roses would usually stand.
“Thank you.” Mathilda helped herself to a child’s share of the food.
“Does the war bother you at all? I’ve asked others about it and they’re calm; I mean, I suppose it’s useless to hang yourself on tenterhooks about something as long as you’re not doing anything wrong, but I thought people liked rolling around in fear.”
“Dewsbury’s a bit’s away. I’m sure we’ll be fine.”
“Wars never just involve a single city or two, Liesel. Doesn’t that scare you?”
“It’s got a bit of distance. I can’t seem to care about it, I’m sorry.”
She paused to scrape more chicken broth into the rice. “Does the air bother you? I know that’s something that’ll screw us all over– nobody’s immune to inhaling more trash than oxygen.”
“A little. But unless there’s someone out there fighting tooth and nail against it, we’ve kind of brought it upon ourselves.”
“I am doing something though.”
“Is it the right thing?”
Liesel didn’t know how to answer that question.
[Liesel 9:00 AM]: Did you go counterclockwise? Are you still on planet A?
[Lucas 9:00 AM]: No, I didn’t really bother after like, what, 70% of that stuff was empty. And mercury-filled. Still here though.
[Liesel 9:00 AM]: Go counterclockwise. The remaining 30% could have something. You’ve never checked.
[Lucas 9:00 AM]: Possible? Sure. Maybe not probable. We’d just be wasting time. [Liesel 9:00 AM]: Go counterclockwise.
[Lucas 9:01 AM]: If you say so.
I’m so tired.
Maybe the constant sunshine was a culprit here. My curtains are always shut, though. Could be the time– it was as masses of driftwood, floating on a river that isn’t sure where it wants to go. An extra hour or two was cut-and-pasted into bedtime; which didn’t produce any rest; my dreams were too long, too much like drunken thoughts to have eased me in any way– an odd development. They’d been not quite so disconcerting back on Earth.
I remember one about a flower field. Wind blowing east-to-west, bare feet, soft grass. White dress fluttering, perhaps happy for a minute or two. Not for long– I then started to worry about college admissions and tomorrow’s work hours while a man watched from arm’s length. There was a corpse on the ground. A guy I went to school with, I think. It was bothering me so I kicked it.
Ah, there was work to be done.
Just because I liked the feeling of at least having done something– regardless of its importance– I wrote a formal-sounding description of my observations on this planet (which I bestowed with the elegant name of MMTM: More mercury than Mercury.) I even sucked up to Liesel by shoving in every inconsequential minutiae from the footage my eyes would permit before my glass lenses felt the need to grow six times as thick. (Great job, Lucas! Excellent attention to detail!)
At least I did what I should’ve?
There were also the tender beginnings of some extremely pretentious fable tossed to the side of the bed, where they remain at present moment. I had to ransack every niche and interstice of my memory to eventually keck something out; the moral I ended up going with
described the difference between misery and regret, but you get to learn about it with a pair of obnoxious rabbits. After tripping over words, falling into a rut, and nearly drowning in ideas that were only a little annoyed with me for not knowing how to express them, I gave up and decided to schedule the rest of my days on the craft.
Plans are always fun to make, even if they’re never meant to be followed.
I carved out a good chunk of the day to dedicate to my personal studies (how to not feel guilty for experiencing time), placed right after when I’d finish every necessary task, and another, smaller fragment to indulge in whatever numb pastime I felt was suitable as a reward. The rest of the day was for my personal thinking time (sitting in the shower and taking too long and/or facing a wall and nothing else) and sleep. This is a good way to spend the day; I know this because I’m not adhering to a single thing I just wrote down.
Time to send out the drone.
[Liesel 8:58 AM]: Nothing?
[Lucas 9:00 AM]: Yeah, nothing. Is this just per protocol or were you actually hopeful? [Liesel 9:00 AM]: I just think we shouldn’t overlook anything, Lucas.
[Lucas 9:01 AM]: The planet’s soaked in mercury, Liesel. How’s earth?
[Liesel 9:01 AM]: Oh, no good.
[Lucas 9:01 AM]: Hm?
[Liesel 9:01 AM]: Nothing I should be concerning you with. Keep it up.
“When d’you have work?” Mathilda asked, picking at half a sticker that stuck stubbornly to the leg of a glass coffee table.
“Class usually starts at ten. Nothing for today, though.”
“Isn’t this your second offday this week?”
“Yup.” She checked her phone and crossed out more days on her notepad. She was beginning to grow irate.
“So what’d you do with all the free time?”
Liesel shrugged. “Read, I guess. Recommend me some books?”
“I haven’t touched one in eons.” There was only a little adhesive left on the table, but Mathilda still thought it bothersome. “Haven’t done that since high school.”
“Why? Seems unlike you.”
“Didn’t have the time. I get a job and I get real busy, lose the job and get even busier.”
Liesel didn’t look like she was listening. She placed a sidelong glance at her friend before continuing to stare at an old lamp.
“What ails ya, buddy?”
“Nothing much. D’you feel guilty when other people die?”
The question was a little startling.
“Not unless I killed them, no. Is this about the war?”
“No, not really.”
“Speaking of, didn’t you mention doing something about the whole air issue?” Liesel hesitated. “Yes, and?”
“Well, what is it?”
“Another time.”
To sweep out some tension, she turned on the television. Other than children’s cartoons, the only broadcasts on the channels were news. Even those were rarely ever interesting– aside from whatever updates there were on the war, all of it were blank signal fillers, or details on the life of a person Liesel didn’t care about.
“...he was spotted eating chicken nuggets while walking out of a store. He dips them in ketchup!”
“I wish I was a bird,” Liesel said. She never moved her eyes from the screen, even if there was nothing to look at.
“Why?”
“Birds don’t give a damn. They just fly over whatever it is.”
“...she opens the car door herself and gets in! All over the internet, people are...” “I thought you liked being occupied.”
“It’s not the same.”
“...and that’s all for today! Be sure to tune in tomorrow for—
A mechanical tone, slowly rising in volume, permeated the room.
“We regret to interrupt the broadcast. This is an important message.”
“Oh?”
“Well that’s a little more interesting.” A chime began to sound.
“We have receiped reports of a chemical attack on civilians done by the enemy. If you display any unusual symptoms, such as coughing, lightheadedness, vomiting, or nausea, please seek medical attention immediately.”
“Goodness.” Mathilda looked towards the television. It was flashing red and black. “This early on? What in the...”
“Citizens of the Chesterdale, Watford, and Millstone districts are required to self-isolate within their homes. Do not engage in in-person contact with those not already living in your household. Do not eat or drink anything from outside sources. Most importantly, do not panic.”
“I have a friend in Millstone,” Liesel remarked as she adjusted her earrings, which had begun to hurt. “I hope she’s alright. How is your brother, by the way?”
“...We don’t really talk. Haven’t caught up with him.”
“Citizens of central and western districts are also recommended to follow these protocols. The current mortality rate of affected individuals is at 40%. Please stay calm; it will be over soon. Thank you for your cooperation.”
“That’s not a rate you could brush off,” Mathilda noted.
Something washed ashore in Liesel’s mind. “Do you like camping?”
“Did it once; it was alright.”
“I’m sorry, I just felt like asking if you wanted to go tonight.” She checked her phone again. “I mean, today’s a Friday. I’m already being cooped up in here and it really does something to an old lady. Can’t imagine what it’d be like when they start fighting here. We should go out while we still can.”
“Can’t say I’m against the idea, but do you know where you’re going?”
“There’s a good spot, but it’s a bit of a drive. Worth it though– you can really feel the difference.”
She thought of the forest she had to settle for as a child, before she learned how to drive. Liesel treasured her solitude, but too much of it became sickening.
“I’m fine with that.” Mathilda arched her back out a little before getting up. “Time isn’t really my concern at the moment. We can pack up now, if you want to.”
The soils still held a little water from the morning rain, much to Mathilda’s distaste. She didn’t want to break her promise of only using the laundry room once per week after already bothering Liesel with her phone chatter on the car.
“What gave you the idea?” she asked, checking under herself to make sure all of her was sitting on the tarp.
“I missed the feeling of being outside. With someone else, of course– I go plenty outside on my own.” Liesel opened a bag of trail mix that was nearing its expiration date. She picked out a few colourful spheres, and ate those first. “Anyways, sweet place. Forests like these aren’t easy to come by; all the ones like an hour away from the city are trashed to high heaven.”
“Do you go on walks here?”
“I do. The trails are all a little steep though, so it’s fine if you don’t wanna go. There’s a nice lake down one of the paths. Plenty of frogs there. I would’ve loved it back when I was younger and housing weird critters was still cool.” She tossed a bag of crackers at her friend. “You make s’mores?”
“They’re a little too sweet.”
“So are Christmas chocolates. But people still like them ‘cause they’re special.”
“That’s a fair point. You don’t suppose like, cultists or other weirdos show up and use this place to do stuff?”
“I mean, cults kinda need you to care about someone in the first place. You think people do that?”
“Gotta be someone out there.” Mathilda picked up an old compass that lost its glass and spun the needle around. “No cell service here?”
“It’s inconvenient, yeah, but it’s a blessing in disguise. Big reason why people don’t visit.” Liesel grabbed some notched stakes out of a bag that was far too big. She had a compartment for everything. “Also teaches you to rely on yourself.”
“I already do that, Liesel.”
“Fair enough. Do you like the sun?” Liesel asked, string between her teeth. “'Cause I don’t.”
“Yeah. Well, I can’t stand the shade.”
“Alright, then.” The little tent moved one rotation to the left. She tied its corners down with the stakes. “There we go.”
Over a campfire the two exchanged various pleasantries; discussions on music preference, fields of work, and whatever whimsical little anecdotes they could fish out from their minds.
“I wonder what it would be like to live in a little village in the forest. You know; no contact with other people; nobody knows you’re there; just you and your fellow villagers.”
“Is this about your brother?”
“No, Mathilda, I’m just curious.”
There was a slowly growing pile of gnawed-on corncobs by the fire.
“If aliens found us, what do you think they’d do?”
“Establish communication, probably.”
“You know what people did to each other back when invasions were still a thing?” Chew, chew. “Think that’s gonna happen to us?”
“I’m not discounting it.” Crunch. “But we’d probably share some ideas and stuff if we found them ourselves. I think they’d do the same.”
The bowl of bell pepper chunks on Liesel’s lap nearly fell off as she wrestled with a broken coat zipper that would rather snap than close. A light fog billowed about.
“White rabbit, white rabbit, white rabbit.”
Mathilda shuffled closer to the fire. She felt it protected her from the wails of bitter winds and the forlorn cries of distant animals.
“This is the seventh time you’ve left to wash your hands. Being outside was your idea!”
“Sorry, force of habit.”
It was no longer bright enough to look out into the mountains and feel at ease; it took a slap from Mathilda to remind Liesel that her faithless providence would not save her from a wild snake encounter. So they moved into the tent, lighting their kerosene lanterns in place of the flame.
“Don’t blame me for liking it out there. Who knows how long ‘till the war gets us bad?”
“Come again?”
“I said, who knows how long ‘till the war gets to us? You’d regret not making the most out of your time while you still could.”
“The war?”
Liesel switched off her lamp. The tent became a little bit too hot. “Yes?”
“I think... I think someone I know knows something about it that the government doesn’t.”
[Liesel 9:01 AM]: Hope you’re holding on alright.
[Liesel 9:02 AM]: Our second planet is covered in water. Its day-and-night cycles are similar to what we have back on Earth, but it’s a good bit cooler. You may find strange formations underwater such as caves– the aircraft should be strong enough to explore those. Check in with me as soon as you’re there. Good luck!
[Lucas 9:02 AM]: Gotcha.
Liesel’s a fairy. Liesel’s a fairy and I suppose must’ve not remembered all my guest ettiquette.
I was half asleep when I thought I saw another person here. One look and he was gone– but it’d left a deep and sinister cut into my senses. I always close my eyes when I shower– that was now going to be a difficult task.
I suppose I’m not alone.
The whole morning I was uneasy. No longer was this a peaceful excursion that’d nicely fill out my schedule; out of a good three minutes of sitting on the bed and staring into a certain shadowy corner of the room crawled out the solid realization that I very much could die, and it could happen at any point.
I really don’t have all the time in the world.
Ah! I’m a mortal human. I didn’t take that into consideration when agreeing to travel through space in a boxed anomaly for an indefinite period of time. Stupid! I’m stupid.
I’m sorry for mugging you, by the way— I really needed the money at the time, though in retrospect all I’ve got now is regret. I’ll keep working on the project if you want, I don’t mind. Let me know how I can make it up to you.
I kicked myself for not realizing sooner that she might’ve been upset with me for robbing her. (If someone’s willing to bring you in after you pull a knife on them, they’re probably not to be messed with.) Regardless: I’m probably left for dead here.
I’m not quite sure what to do. I don’t know if I’d enjoy extra company or not, but either way, a part of me did wish the person would stay– even if they hated me, I’d get another someone to talk to, and that would almost make everything alright.
I stopped the craft on a moon. I’d gaze out at the stars and the planet, and in a way the vastness of it all was reassuring: when I die, only my thoughts would be here to disturb me, and possibly the stranger.
A Letter to Everyone that Doesn’t Exist
To be, or not to be?
I’ve thought about it for a while now. I don’t believe in the afterlife, and I’ve more than prepared myself for oblivion. Some days, even the notion of trying seems like a mountain far too steep to climb– and what if I fall? And if I ran away, I’d never have to run again.
How is it on the other side? If it’s all inevitable, then “to be prudent is to be futile” should be a phrase I take to heart. And yet– I can’t tell if it’s simply a hard pill to swallow, or plainly untrue. I feel a shackle around my neck; it does not pull me anywhere but keeps me tethered to life, the footstool of Lady Misfortune, a child’s paper boat in an untameable sea.
I accept my status as no more than a single petal in the vast garden of time. When spring takes wing and leaves, I would have shriveled, and left no more than foliage waste. And the pain that comes with it all– the rains and the winds, and when all that is done I would be overturned and bitten by bugs. I see a ray of sunshine once for every week of hail. I hear a bird sing once for every ten nights of nothing but bugs.
Speaking in terms of math, the bad far outweighs the good. In terms of resources, I’m wasting assets I’ll never reasonably make back. There is no solid logic here. There is no good argument that would justify my subsistence other than a mere “I want to be alive.” I’m in space and I’m looking for another planet to live on– Mars had long been knocked out of orbit– and setting aside my pessimism for the project, in a world of endless expertise, Liesel had made a very poor choice for her undertaker.
Still, I hesitate every time I hold the blade up to my neck– then I put it down. I can’t rationalize it. Misery is all I have to live for, but it’s been strong enough to keep me going.
Perhaps I’m just too scared to find out what happens. I don’t want to go to hell.
Perhaps I really just want to live.
Please help me. Even if it’s a divine force I’d never hope to understand, I just want to know if something out there isn’t wanting me dead.
“Who was that on the phone?”
“Guy who knew my brother. Used to work together, I think.”
Liesel took out a small comb and began running it through her hair. “So what’s going on? I feel like I should know about all this.”
At that moment the air itself doubled its weight. Liesel knew Mathilda liked to withhold information she deemed unnecessary to share; she both admired her friend for this and feared she’d be prying too much whenever she talked.
“He came back from a business trip. You know where he lives? In Pinsville. Headed to Chesterdale for his trip though– it’s where a bunch of important people are, anyway. He was already there when they broadcasted the warning so it wasn’t like he just sent himself to his death.”
“And?”
“He sat down for a meal. His wife said to him, ‘oh hey, how was it at Chesterdale? I hope nothing really bad happened, I mean, that is where they attacked, no?’ And the guy was like– yes, but I didn’t really see anything wrong. Saw no chemicals, saw no news on anything beyond just a simple ‘oh no we’ve been attacked’, – something else must’ve just happened, I suppose.”
“Then I guess they just didn’t do anything.”
Liesel picked off loose hairs that fell to her pillow, rolled them up and tucked them into a pocket. “I’m not quite sure what you’re saying.”
“I need to finish.”
“Of course.”
“Mind you, the government is sure that Chesterdale was hit with something. It could be
some sort of message they got– I don’t know, but that’s not important. He goes up for a glass of water and it tastes a little weird. A bit like medicine, he tells me. His wife says she tasted it a little like, a week and a bit ago, but she can’t tell anything wrong with it now. So he’s not really sure how he feels, and he tells me about the whole collection of water bottles he kept for a while, since he bought a bunch for his trip, and it was the expensive kind so he didn’t want to throw it away.”
Mathilda moved to the side and turned her lamp off. She shuddered a little, worrying about whether or not she sounded like an idiot; she found a little difficulty in narrating the whole picture of her thoughts.
“Anyway, he’s been avoiding the water at home. Like the plague, he says. And he hasn’t gotten anything. His wife is all complaining about her loss in taste and everything bad the TV tells you, and he’s standing strong like a castle.”
“It could just be bad water at the time– I don’t know.”
“That could be it, but more or less I’m just considering possibilities here.” Mathilda paused to spit into a tissue. “I think they’re attacking through the water? Like– the systems of like what they give you through a faucet.”
“Are you sure?”
“I don’t know.” Mathilda pressed two fingers up against her lips and took a long drag of nothing. She flicked her wrist out as she breathed out. “It’s not a conventional method, or anything I’ve heard of– but it makes sense. Can’t be seen on the street. I don’t know. I might just be blathering nonsense because I’m a little miffed they sacked me from my job.”
Liesel’s mind grew legs and wandered to thoughts she would feel ashamed of entertaining.
“Desperation takes you places, doesn’t it?” “What?”
“Oh, nothing,” Liesel rambled. She shifted forward into a slouch, and for a second she almost wished she was in bed back home. “You know, before you came here, I thought I’d just been cursed with something. I can’t stand loneliness.”
“I remember you’d always want to work by yourself in school. Or so your brother told me; correct me if I’m wrong.”
“I’d have the rest of the class to share ideas with; it’s a different kind of loneliness.”
“Is it?”
“It is. I’m going to unzip the tent a little. I can’t breathe in here.”
There was a smell outside— a vague hint of candied lemon and cherry. Liesel thought of an old drink she had once at a fair.
“I should go out and watch the stars,” Liesel said. “You can stay, there might be mosquitoes around but I’m not really bothered by them.”
It was a very cloudy night.
She slipped on a tattered pair of hiking boots (one for which she had to replace the laces four times) and left. In place of the gentler kerosene lamp, she took an industrial flashlight. There were maybe two or three moments where she went down the wrong path; late-night mental inertia was beginning to settle in but she didn’t want to sleep just yet.
A lone lamppost stood at the side of the gravel trail. It lit up a radius around a wastebin and not much else, aside for a loose leaf that would fall once in an hour, and a singular glove, small and pink, that laid atop the bin.
A light wind blew; east-to-west, Liesel noted; good to spend a night at a viewpoint she liked, as she would not be facing the breeze. Everybody needs a quiet moment to themselves, she thought; she could be asleep and not hear a thing but to be alone by a tranquil lake was different, even if she did not want to think about many things.
She found a small shortcut (typically, she would be too awake to stray from her usual path) through an underbrush that once was cleared and never decided to regrow.
And she was at the lake. The rustling of her heavy jacket was intrusive so she stopped moving about as she gazed at the glasslike surface.
No moon was reflected. In the water she thought she could see something; she looked closer and it was a face.
It was a late night, the sort where you’d find yourself in an old dingy bar ordering yet another glass of beer to pass yet another sleepless hour. Liesel turned her headphones up a little louder to focus on the taste.
A siren blared outside. A couple argued over some old habits. “Another one?”
“Yeah.” She slid the bartender another stack of bills. “Anything on your mind?”
“Nothing you’d wanna hear.” A little more ethanol. Chemistry does something to a tired mind.
“Alright, then.” The bartender tossed her a slice of lime. She caught it without looking. Even drunk, she made it a habit of never leaving too much of a mess for others.
A hint of a migraine was beginning to settle in. Any more and she’d have to pack up for the night and search for solace back home; after an unfortunate experience with the road past 3 AM, Liesel noted to never overexert her constitution.
“Do I bother you?” She grumbled to the bartender.
“No.”
One had to be careful when mixing drinks. Occasionally an interaction leads to a fatal reaction, but she was currently craving a little grapefruit juice.
One also had to be careful around drink dispensers. Liesel once made a fool of herself around a machine for grapefruit juice, and left a sugary puddle she imagined a worker cleaning up afterwards while cursing to themselves.
“Last one.” She held out her cup, with a certain elegance that came with her being a little out of it all. “Last one, and then I go home.”
“Here you go.”
“Thank you.” She already tipped but left another ten on the counter. “I’ll leave you alone now.”
Liesel hobbled out the dusty building to call her friend; she didn’t want to disturb the other patrons of the bar.
“Mathilda?” ...
“Yeah no, the alcohol beat me today. I’m just standing here.” ...
“I’m all like, cold and stuff; it feels like there’s two cuts in my arms and wind blowing through them, yeah.”
...
“No, please keep talking to me. I need you to organize my thoughts.”
...
“Thanks. You’re a real one, you know. You’re a real friend, Mathilda, a real...”
...
“How much did you take?”
“Eight cups. No, nine cups. Nine.”
“Nine cups.” The hard candy in Mathilda’s mouth nearly fell out. “I usually get hammered after three or so. You’re really pushing your luck with this one.”
“Fate takes care of me. She’s a nice lady.”
“Fate’s a drunkard rolling dice.”
The clock read a little past four when the two dragged themselves onto the couch to settle down before closing the night. Liesel sat tense, and stared at a cluster of fireflies outside.
“I have no time for fireflies.”
“Liesel, you’re drunk.”
She didn’t respond for half a minute. Then she spoke up.
“I think about him a lot. Even when I’m drunk. Problem is, I’m telling you about him now.” “I know.”
“I’ve done something wrong.” Liesel wiped her tears with a handcloth she kept in her pocket, next to the calculator. “You see, I’m crying now. It’s not a pretty sight.”
“What is it?”
“Do you know who Lucifer Doyle is?”
“If you’re drunk enough to bring him up, then yes, I can admit to knowing who he is.”
“I killed him.” The handcloth was now wetting her cheeks more than it dried. “I killed a little boy.”
“How?”
“I told him about a plan I had and now he’s in space.”
Mathilda was only half-pretending to bother– the other half was too dumbfounded to do much more than listen. She removed another piece of skin from her forefinger and stared at her friend, who was now silent like a corpse.
“Why?”
“I wanted him to find another Earth. Or aliens. I sent him in one of their little alien vessels, and if they could make that, they could solve our problems on earth, like the air, or something like that.”
“I can’t really bring myself to really care for people like Doyle,” Mathilda said as she removed her glasses, which were burning her tired eyes. “But why didn’t you do it yourself?”
“Because I’m a coward. I’m a coward, Mathilda.”
Hey good morning Liesel I sent you the report– I don’t know about this one, to be honest. It is water, or at the very least some sort of watery liquid– not sure if it’s drinkable, but it does have some sort of atmosphere, so that’s for a start– no oxygen in the atmosphere, though. I should also tell you that this thing really has no seafloor. I can’t find anything that lives here and I don’t think I will.
Hey, nice to hear ya! I can’t blame you for not going further with this one, really.
Yeah, the drone could probably only take so much before I damage it irrevocably. I am not paying any repair bills.
I get it; I’m a bit afraid of water myself. Not too boring out there?
It could be worse; how’re you holding up back home?
Cairnerith declared war, or someone declared war on Cairnerith; it doesn’t quite matter, but it’s really happening.
I haven’t heard anything about this.
I know; it’s taking me a while as well.
I’m growing a little paranoid that the stranger in the corner was always there with me.
Last night I discovered a door, a thin, tall one, painted black; it was behind a curtain that I never pulled. I suppose I’ve never bothered to look through every window I had.
The stranger himself isn’t bothering me as much as he used to, though. I’ve been seeing him more often– perhaps I’ve simply gotten used to him, but I’ve accepted the fact that I can’t do anything about his presence, and thus I shouldn’t use my energy to care.
The camcorder finally got its first entry. It was a video of me looking for a salad; I was hungry and hadn’t eaten since the day before yesterday. Almost everything was in the closet but I figured it was unusual for food (of the edible variety) to be stored there, and it turns out I was right.
You would not believe how sick I am of protein biscuits.
I’ve also started a dream diary, which got me to spend a bit of my time and attention, especially this morning when I recounted a dream I had: a long tale about the life of a bird. It had tension. It had character. It had emotion. It had everything I would’ve expected from a full-length feature film. Or I just had fun rewriting it and misremembered it as having much more merit than it did.
Yeah, I don’t think it was actually that great.
Either way, expect to see some fun things that I made up asleep.
“I know you don’t approve of people like Lucifer, but you can’t deny that the kid’s a genius.”
Mathilda slid the closet door shut. “The alcohol didn’t hurt your memory?”
“Well, I can see you’re going through his stuff. I just remember I got drunk.” Liesel leafed through a stack of blue-ink sketches. “Must feel different about this room now, don’t you?”
“A little bit.”
“Nothing’s happened on that bed, don’t you worry. Look at this,” she said as she passed a sheet of lined paper to her friend. On it was a meticulous diagram; it detailed the contents and usage of a survival kit to grow food in empty wastelands. “I’ve tried it out. It works.”
“Isn’t smart enough to understand all the potential he’s wasted,” Mathilda grumbled, not looking twice at the paper before setting it face-down.
“He’s got his own troubles. Recipe on how to breed a tea plant.”
“I see.”
“Panacea.” Liesel flipped the sheet around three times; skimming top to bottom. “This one isn’t finished.”
“Think he’s working away on it?”
“I’ve spent some time with him. He’s more of the trial-and-error type; probably wouldn’t pen something down ‘till it’s what he wants it to be, though the tea plant is all theoretical– I don’t know. I’ve given him enough work.”
She recounted a small but miraculous revival he performed on an otherwise shameful dish with herbs Liesel never knew even existed, though half the contents were gone after the taste testing. “Can’t do that in space.”
Mathilda was too busy looking at a small cube. At that moment she felt absolute power over the puzzle, as if she could set all its sides straight with sheer willpower alone. The cube was no match; it wouldn’t take her more than a minute to put all the colours into place.
She failed to solve it.
“Give Lucas some credit where it’s due, please.”
“Lucas?”
“It’s just what I call him. He’s a lot greater than you think he is.”
Mathilda pulled the puzzle apart a little and peered inside. “Then why is he in space?” Liesel looked away. “I told you.”
“So how’d you meet him?”
“He tried to rob me with a switchblade.”
“And you let him in your house?”
A cloud passed over the sun. Shade settled in the room.
“I’m not surprised you don’t know how he looks, but I could break his neck if I wanted to. He’s just a scared boy, really. So I let him in my house and booted him to space ‘cause I didn’t think anyone would miss him.” She coughed twice.
“He was on the streets for days.”
“Well I don’t miss him.”
“I do.”
“It’s just a first-name bias for your case.”
“It’s not.” Out of irritation Liesel began to scratch behind her ear. “Lucas really is a gifted guy. I smell it in the kid; there’s big dreams behind his eyes. Even after the world throws at him its worst he’s still out here showing off about everything he wants to do with his plants. It’s strangely admirable.”
“Because he’s a whore. The bar isn’t that high for him.”
“And what do you do with your time?”
“Keep you company, I guess. I don’t know.” She tossed the cube onto a pillow and sulked. “I can’t solve that, by the way.”
“I’ve thought about it, once, twice, three times already. I just don’t think it’s worth it.” “Eliza, you haven’t even tried.”
“Just the thought of it adds another ten pounds to my head. I don’t want to try.”
She grasped the wanwood beneath her as she shifted her posture. Bark flaked free and landed on the yellowed grass.
The day was bright and tranquil, yet it had been idle; from the warmth of dawn to the glow of dusk not much found itself accomplished. Though the sunset was beautiful– it weaved itself through the trees, in a very ordinary yet graceful fashion– it failed to bring about —-- much any joy.
Throughout the entire forest lay a humidity in the air, light yet thick, leaving only a breeze to breathe in that blew only at times.
“I don’t know what to do.”
“I never expected you to know.”
Only last week had she realized her workload, she thought; when she ran it through her mind (enough effort to finish the current term with shining grades, employment experience, a completed epic by September) it all became so heavy.
“All I can be is here for you.”
“I miss being young.”
“Don’t mourn it.” The older boy snapped another rubber band (though this one had been stiffened by age, it hurt nonetheless) between his fingers as he tried to form a star. “It won’t help you.”
“You say that all the time.”
“I’m not one for advice.” He tilted his head, almost with an air of sagacity, and focused his sight towards a lone cardinal, who was singing only a minute ago. “Do go on.”
“I want to sleep.”
At that moment anxiety had consumed her and taken hold of the wheel; she suddenly wanted to do many things: run away, scream, empty out a pebble from her shoe, lie down, brush her hair, tear out her hair. She stood up and took a tentative step left, realized a pain in her ankle– yet had already taken a step left?-- so she sat down on the grass, then took out a sketchbook, brushed dust off the palimpsest paper, and began to sketch, though uncertain and confoundedly.
Yesterday was no better, she recalled. She had spent the time at a drawer, taking papers out and filing them back into disarray, yet was no closer to finding a certain document– and though her idea of it was already hazy, by her forfeit of the task, she already lost sight of what she sought out to find. It took her two hours.
Eliza suddenly began to scream, and the screaming never really stops.
Last week Isaac had failed to show up for attendance at all. Liesel made the assumption he simply didn’t care for science class; often, he had his forehead to his arm, a makeshift pillow on the desk, or was occupied with some other matter in his paper-binder, or excused himself to the hallways to breathe.
Today he came in– late as was routine, a little muddied, head hung down, with a little grease forming on his hair and more shuffling to his gait, as if dragged down by weights on one foot. He wore a glasslike countenance, sat quietly, and stared at the classroom whiteboard, though Liesel could tell he was not looking at much.
Not three minutes past his arrival he left the room and took a while to return. “I went to go get some staples. I needed them to put together my shoes; there were none,” he explained, in a cool tone.
Liesel made a survey of the rest of the class. Nobody in particular stood out (this was not her favourite batch to teach), and she had noticed some empty chairs, but couldn’t recall who had filled them before.
Isaac was not moved from his seat for the rest of the class. In fact he nearly was still— every joint was rigid in his body, like unoiled, rusted hinges, his expression immutable. Liesel dismissed the children and yet, he had not shifted a hair.
“I need to stay with you,” he spoke plainly. “I won’t cause trouble.”
“I don’t know if I can let you.”
“I need a place to stay.” His eyes were yet to move. “Please.”
“You will not cause trouble?” Liesel stacked a few packets of pre-taken chemistry notes that were left unclaimed and filed them away. “Don’t you have any friends you could bother?”
“No.”
“How long do you need to stay?”
“As long as I need to.” Isaac finally made a motion– he removed his dirty white cap and set it away from his sheets of paperwork, so as to not taint them. “I’m as sure as you are.”
“I can walk you back to your house; it’s the best I can do.” Liesel looked closer; the boy had begun to colour his left hand red with minute strokes. He stopped as she approached— out of fear or respect, Liesel reasoned.
“No.”
“Why won’t you go home?”
“I am not telling you,” Isaac stated flatly, with a dash of command. “Take me with you. I will not cause trouble.”
At a passing glance one would almost assume the boy was facing some punishment; he often took nervous keeks at the street as his teacher harriedly pulled him along to a nearby bus station (which was, Liesel had estimated, at least five minutes of a walk, six or seven with Isaac.)
For a Thursday the city was lively, though drab; the smell of greasy street food and cigarette smoke was heavier than usual. Perhaps Liesel became acutely aware of all the noise; Isaac had begun to feel like a dead weight. After passing Liesel a tattered five-bill and entering the bus he had completely resumed his motionlessness— no more than an upright mass.
The ride was airless and dense. It was packed with sweat, worries, and fears that nobody wanted to lug around. In particular, Liesel took note of a couple that sat the row across– one of them talked a little too much so that the silence of the other was overbearingly loud.
Isaac finally rustled.
“When I was younger– back in third grade, my mum would always take me out for ice cream on this street.”
Do I take him out for ice cream? Liesel wasn’t sure how to respond.
“Not anymore?”
“Not anymore. Now everything’s shrouded in abject misery, even for me.” Isaac made a single motion of scratching above his eyebrow. “I don’t know if I can go on. I’m not sure.”
“Hm.”
“Do you like ice cream?” No. “Yes.”
Isaac continued to ramble for a little– he talked about flavours he liked, reviews on parlors he’d visited, his distaste for those who deem ice cream too childish to enjoy, and the inevitability of grief.
“Once, I had dropped a cone right outside– some of it went to the gutter, I think, but the cone itself was salvageable– that was it. I had already eaten a good half, but oh my, it was pricey-! That ice cream. My mother wasn’t with me at the time; it was my aunt that took me. She said it wasn’t worth crying over, and it happened and that was that, but I cried anyway...”
Liesel felt a string come loose in the tension and began to speak more herself. “You don’t find it embarrassing to cry in public?”
“I do. I wouldn’t let myself, but it all comes out once in a while– you can’t stop it when it happens.”
“The skill comes with age.” “I guess so.”
...
Three more stops ‘till the noise wanes. It’s in my ears like a metal rod– knocking and scraping against everything, and it’s all too tiring to listen to. I need some space– some space to think. The scraping– the scraping– there’s a dull knife against the steel.
I feel a sickness rising. Something’s rotting and it’s crawling around.
...
Isaac had a disorderly appearance, yet as a guest he was superb– he passed by every room like a ghost and never left a trace. It wasn’t until Liesel pointed him out that Mathilda bothered to question his presence.
“He’s in your class?”
“Yes.”
“Why is he here?” Mathilda asked, gesturing towards an occupied corner in the designated reading room. “Will he stay overnight?”
“I’m not sure, Mattie. He won’t be a nuisance, though. He’s old enough to be left alone.”
“I won’t lie.” She lowered her voice. “Teenagers bother me. It’s almost like they have their own world they live in– they all seem so blissfully unaware of everything.”
“I mean, I do remember him once in a while– is he unaware?”
“I can’t say for sure what threw him over the edge. He loved life more than anyone I know– wasn’t one to discard it.”
“So what’s the deal with Isaac?”
“Couldn’t tell you at all– you teach him! Not me.”
“But Mathilda, you know people.” Liesel ran her fingers through her hair and decided she would wash it the next day. “You read them like books.”
“Liesel, I was wrong about Lucifer.”
“In the way you treated him, sure. But from an objective standpoint there’s no flaw in your assessment.” Two hours till dinner– food was no longer the only thing Liesel had to defrost. “He is what you called him, after all. So what’s the deal with Isaac?”
“He’s crying.”
The boy had his eyes shielded behind a book, opened and flapping like a butterfly, in a hunched-back pose. Evidently he was silent, only making noise to those who could read minds. Liesel did not question the judgment of her friend.
“Do I console him, Mathilda?”
“He wants to be consoled. It would annoy him, though.” “Good grief.”
At the dinner table things were quiet. If one looked hard enough they would notice that Isaac’s eyes were heavy and waterlogged, and almost make the assumption that he did something to deserve them. The meal had gone cold; everyone had finished their share of rice on their plates but grease had begun to coagulate over the chicken broth in the blue porcelain stewpot and around the tips of the diners’ forks.
The chandelier was a little dim. It was unclean; Liesel hadn’t made time to clear the film of dust off the lightbulb or the crystals around it in weeks. Isaac was still weeping; quiet, soft, and all to himself.
“Will you be going home now?” Liesel asked.
“No. I’ll stay in the living room tonight,” Isaac replied.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to go back home.” He moved his hat over his eyes and sat back in his chair, so as to let the loose dirt fall onto his lap. “It’s too full– some things need to be taken out.”
“Like?”
Isaac paused. “They’re still in the kitchen. My mum and dad— they were scientists. Working on something.”
His voice diminished. “I haven’t moved them. They’re still there.”
What IS that?! Bring it closer to the camera.
A plant I bought from a local supermarket some, what, two years ago? Might’ve been an orchard at some point.
A plant? A PLANT? Do you treat all of them like this? Oh my god— Liesel, if I could get down there and beat you over the head with a watering can I absolutely would. Does it get any sun?
No. It’s been in my basement for months. HEAVENS!
My, my.
I tried poetry— not a strong suit. My shameful first attempt is now forever immortalized on the backside of a drawing of a crow that I’d considered my magnum opus (until I end up looking at it so much that I begin hating it.)
I’ve picked up a habit of scratching down whatever thought happened to linger in my mind onto scrap paper, which was– admittedly– good inspiration for more serious writing. I had a hand that liked being busy, even if all it could retch up was a mess– there hadn’t been an order in days and I had to keep occupied.
It’s always fun to try and understand them later, though admittedly I’ve lost a few pages of the more interesting ones. I’ve got no idea where to look.
I often think about whether the Earth has enough space for people like me. I guess it’s not a relevant problem anymore.
...
So they didn’t do anything about Mars– alright.
Can’t say I miss it, though.
...
A knot in the back of my mind... it’s tempting to reach out and unravel it.
It was the faintest memory of a weekend. I had a little date planned with my then-girlfriend who filled my heart with overwhelming nothingness, over coffee, and so much of the day was wasted such that it hurt– hurt just enough to stop you from doing what you needed to do and wilt you away like a flower eternally hooked onto the shade– but time then was a cream-slurry best served with pie and other gratuitous pleasures. I walked out of the date with an empty wallet.
...
Thoughts used to flow like a river. I despise noise; it dams the water and turns it into a festering swamp. There was some blind, grotesque apparition; if you looked inside and were careful you could watch it roll around in the slime, feed off of it and vomit out more.
...
Something’s wrong.
...
I often wonder what blind people would see. Would it just be complete darkness or some sort of equivalent to looking out the back of your head?
Stupid question, but I do wonder. Curiosity is what really keeps us going, after all.
...
If humanity ever reached some sort of “perfect” state, as in— there would be no problems to solve, no crises to avert, not even petty arguments between people, I predict that people are going to start hurting themselves for fun– like eating a lobster. Pain would be so rare it becomes a luxury.
...
I haven’t seen a plant in a while.
...
Small internal unravel. Fifth time this day. ...
Writing is so much nicer on the hand than typing... I’d almost say typing is unnatural. You can’t look back and see your strokes, and think “Oh, that’s a pretty A that I wrote over here” or “That word there looks like a very angry person put it down.”
I’m going to try poetry on some paper. Might be a bad idea since I can’t find my eraser... here goes.
...
That was beyond just bad. ...
This is a really stupid idea but what if we somehow gathered every blade of grass in the world and then piled it up in one place? How big would the pile be? I have— absolutely shamefully— been pondering this. It haunts me.
We could compress it to save on space; grass seems compressible. I very much enjoy the thought of most anything becoming a cube— cubes are such magnificent creatures.
How much would such a cube go for? It’d be impressive to have all the grass in the world, but all it is is just grass; unless you’re a farmer or some other kind of weirdo who has a use for an abundance of compressed grass. I’ve thought about it and I swear I’m not the only one who has.
No stupid ideas, I suppose.
This is an extremely fun way to spend time alone in a space box. I’d write about the stars, but they’ve gotten a little old to stare for so long.
I’m going to see if I can look for more random notes later. I’m craving fruit punch and I feel bad about it.
The breakfast was like any other, save for a new visitor. The women didn’t bother with putting up softer faces to accommodate the boy– he was still fair game for caustic verbal dart-throwing.
“What were your parents working on?” Liesel asked as she poured cream into her morning coffee, in the shape of a little star.
“I promised I wouldn’t tell,” Isaac said, picking up a third cereal ball and flicking it into his glass of milk. He spilled a drop and wiped it up with his sleeve. “But they’re dead now and I don’t really care anymore.”
“Why not?” Mathilda chimed in behind her tall glass of bitter orange juice.
“I don’t know. I should be a lot more upset about it, but... right now I’m just craving some bacon.”
“Oh, I see. Liesel, we don’t have bacon, do we?”
“No.”
“Hm.” Mathilda burst open the yolk of her egg with a two-pointed fork. “Sorry about that, Isaac. Is there... Do you have something we should know about?”
Isaac paused. “What do you mean?”
“Sometimes there’s just things people want to say but won’t bring up until someone asks. Does that sound like you at all?”
“A little– a part of me is hesitating to speak up and all, but keeping it in– it feels like a disservice to everyone. My parents wouldn’t want me hurt, but if you knew my mother, she’d go ballistic if her work never ended up getting out of the dark... you get me?”
Mathilda glanced at Liesel and accidentally dropped a short chuckle. “Yeah.” Liesel noticed.
“Anyways, go on.”
“Right. So my mother was a scientist– the kind of person that the mention of the word pretty much brings about. She– she had big ideas. I don’t know how they got out... if I were to guess, she couldn’t help but bring it up at some point– even if she knew better. That’s the kind of
person my mother was. It might have been her undoing– she would rather you experience her work firsthand, but her pride lodges itself between her lips. That’s why they won’t close.”
“Is it hereditary?”
“Says you, Mathilda!”
Clink. The three of them shared a laugh. Liesel helped herself to another pancake– she was feeling a little full, but she put some extra blueberries in this one– it had to be hers. Isaac shed a smile, though made brief as he noticed a small cracking pain at the ends of his mouth.
“And?”
“The boys that run this town hunt for folks doing things they don’t like. For Mum, it was a handful of little pills that you took, with water at a meal or something, and it was supposed to protect you from poison, or cure you, if it was already in you. They– they shot her. ‘Illegal practices that could get us all killed, they said– something like how she could be working with them enemies, or she belonged in the dirt anyhow’, like that.” Isaac traced the rim of his glass, and drank as if he’d already gone wrinkly and was ending his days with volumes of whiskey. “Nobody’s done anything about it; nobody can do anything about it. It’s their law. People die for what they call the greater good, and I don’t have a platform to stand my oppositions on anyway.”
“Do you miss your mother?”
“Yeah.”
Rain outside fell hard— in thick sheets, static droning on around the residence. Weather was known to change unpredictably now— just last night Liesel found the barrage of hail at her window peeving to no end, yet the first light of morning was high and burning.
On cold days breakfast would lose its appeal rather quickly. Liesel never bothered with improvements to her heating systems, so anything that remained on the table after the friends were done with their chattering would begin to feel stale and clammy in the mouth. The air did not breed much appetite in anyone.
Liesel always washed the plates right after a meal. Food she prepared was not to be eaten by anything else– the thought of any food remaining somewhere it shouldn’t be was nauseating– not even the residue would’ve been left to the flies.
(Cleaning cleans the soul. It’s good to watch the grease and the grime fall away.)
Isaac sat in a small storage chamber that he was given permission to arrange a week ago– it was still damp. The window to his right was propped open; though gravity usually sealed it shut to the wall, he found a small tea tin (that would inevitably be crushed after a while, though it worked for now) to jam between the frames. It gave him a bit of air for his skin; stuffiness
would always make its way under it and scratch at his insides like spiders. The floorboards were warped; to keep a desk steady Isaac sacrified a thin stack of documents he hoped were not of consequence, though he missed the gentle rocking sometimes.
He learned the importance of a shower. When a glass is dirtied it becomes hard to see through– even with your mind– and he’d been living in the dust for so long that he’d forgotten that he once was clean.
Once he was clean, he began to pile all the little things in the room into a corner by the bed, save for a box of multicoloured knickknacks— crystals strung up on a chain; a deck of printed cards, its gold-pleated edges shimmering in the thin beam of sunlight that passed through his only window. He held a card; the smoother face depicted a young prince, sword poised, and if it were not for cardstock being the medium the old man in front of him would’ve long lost his head for some act of treason. Isaac put it away in a little pocket of his coat.
Closely, he pressed a small slip of folded paper to his chest. It was an old note where his mother detailed the usage of various ingredients in drink-mixing, and the interior was stained with a fading scent of a subtly biting perfume. Isaac sniffed it and stroked the handwriting with his eyes. He began again, sifting through old boxes, some of which the containers had intrigued him more than the contents, and which he would have held onto if it were not for a loose nail in the joints.
He completed his round around the room. The small collection of objects to revisit, stacked in a neater fashion atop a nightstand, had finished growing.
There was a rustle. Out from a bend in the wall came a rat, fattened by oils and crumbs, scuttling down the white lining of the grey drywall. Isaac picked it up, felt it kicking about, then lowered it into a steep crate.
“I’d kill you if you scared me again like that.” He wouldn’t have.
He laid prone on the fleece covering of the bed– the only thing Liesel washed before housing Isaac in that room. They killed my mother... they could kill me. I understand nothing; I never want to understand anything. If I were a dog, time might’ve claimed me already.
I wish I were a dog. Then I wouldn’t have to think, I wouldn’t have to think, I wouldn’t have to think, I wouldn’t have to...
It was growing stormy again outside. A cloud passed over the high little window, killing that little beam of sun; in the room the darkness started seeping in.
You killed him. You were never sure with yourself that he was going to survive.
I did not. That machine was safe–! I tried it out with my brother and I always used it. I gave him five years– five years! We figured it out together. He knows as much as I.
Then why didn’t you go?
I have a job. I have a place here on earth.
And he doesn’t?
What more can he do?
Who is he anyhow?
A worm. A little slip through the shadowy cracks of the world; a travesty of his own talent. He held a knife up to my face, with a “stuff my pockets or I’ll stuff you with this blade”, or something or other. Whatever the universe has for him is what he’s always asked for. I took him in– I set him to work.
The penalty for robbery isn’t death.
I did not kill him.
Why did you send him anyhow?
Humanity is too stupid for its own good– ah, we’ve dug ourselves such a grave. The air– there won’t be enough air for us all in three-quarters of a decade. That machine– I wanted him to find more where it came from; he could meet an enlightened race with solutions to all our problems. Oh! I don’t know, he could find more machines and have it revolutionize transport. He could find information that ends up saving us all. That box– his machine– it has so much potential. He’s doing something with purpose. I gave him a chance to be a hero– and whatever he’s looking for, it’s not here on earth.
So you weren’t even sure if you’d find anything.
I would’ve died for this cause, even if I wouldn’t have found anything.
But he’s the one dying.
What makes you say that?
You sent him another order a week ago. He never abandons ship– did he reply?
Ah, something to do!
I’m a bit of a nervous man– an overthinker. It had been– six– no, seven or eight?-- days; and in six or seven or eight days a lot could’ve gone on. But there was an order! Waiting did feel like a waste; all that got done was a little stack of poetry in the corner (a good majority of which was crossed out; I remember a particular piece in which I’d whited out my own name and put down something else) and a watercolour of a crow– which I didn’t find impressive either.
Idle hands were heavy to carry. Uncomfortable, yes, but much too inert to change. ...
I haven’t slept for days. A good new order does wake me up a little, though.
Last night was particularly miserable; two-thirds of what I called “redemption time” (as it was when I’d try and write as much as possible to convince myself my day was not wasted, anyhow) was spent turning my room into a little high court. In the judge’s seat: me.
The defendant? Also me. I had a quiet, peaceful time to consider whether I deserved the death penalty or not– and whether I had it in me to carry the sentence out.
The jury were all memories that hurt me a little to refresh. So they were all adjourned.
My final verdict was to keep myself alive: I had a duty to fulfill; I could be a million different terrible things but I could never be a liar– lies taste horrid in your mouth. I wasn’t one to turn away from work; and if I’d ever make someone else a promise I was damn well going to keep it. I couldn’t– I couldn’t put another soul through any plan changes– contingency– I live by my word. I have no reason not to– when you have just about given up on yourself, would anything else be of any concern?
I remember the day where I had the high honour of hearing a lecture from a botanist. It was a job I had eyes for, but out of everything it was a field that I imagined would make me want to tear my hair out the least. I sat– there, with a heavy bookbag, in the middle rows of the podium hall. The day was as mild as milk; at the moment I wondered whether I would’ve liked to leave and go for a walk, but I decided– I took long enough to decide what I wanted for myself anyway. I was going to stay in the hall. Work– or, thus, preparing for work– was a kind of happiness. That was my only happy memory that I could recall.
I set down my red-handled knife. Something to do– strings to pull at vacant time. Results to be achieved– even if they were poor, they would have been something I could call my own. That new order had certainly eased my mind.
There is always satisfaction in doing as you are told.
...
If I spend any more time here I swear I’d one day be shaking hands with Death himself. It’s so lonely.
I launched the drone. This time– a desert planet. Those were always dolled-up for sci-fi films I used to watch with my mother, but I long accepted that movies had the real world as competition, so everything on screen has got to be a lot more fun.
I never saw much hope in the project, but after long hours mulling over how large the universe was, my cement of disbelief really dried. It didn’t matter to me though– as long as I carried out my task, regret and pity were not products anyone could sell to me.
Funny how that works! I feel like a free man.
Mathilda had applied for a front-desk position in a hotel. Her mother had been in the industry and knew some people; her father might’ve held the same position under the same brand some 30 years ago. There were a couple offers she had written down as backups: waitressing,[something], and working as a clothes store cashier. If you want to start knowing people– you start waitressing– a little word of misadvice she heard from her friend. True, yes– but rarely worth it anyhow. She needed something else to fund a small obsession she’d shamefully started– collecting calendars.
“I’m not sure what I like about being a receptionist.” She circled some spidery text she left on her notepad the day prior. “I just find it charming. Not much more to it, I suppose.”
“My mum used to do something like that. She hated it,” Isaac said.
“Oh. Well, I’m not really expecting to have much fun.”
Her job as an over-counter pharmacist was tiring– quite so, as she worked the late-night shifts. She saw some of the extremes of otherwise everyday shop goers: “worst” was not quite the right word as she would almost felt a twinge of sympathy for them at times (but it was otherwise quite something to behold– she never would have expected to spectate a fist-match between two old women who acted as if they’d require assistance pushing open the entrance door.)
She had liked her job, as much as it was possible to like a retail position in the first place. Though she'd been a touch unsatisfied– behind the counter she seemingly knew she was destined for something a little greater, and that she would’ve been happier doing something a little more respected– though that had been her goal 5 years ago as a fast food line cook and she had not been happier.
Now, she had stopped caring as much– as long as she was doing something in society, and making a bit of money, it was infinitely better than squatting at home and pitying herself.
Liesel... Mathilda’s never been sure how Liesel ever felt about her occupation. Nobody wanted to be a teacher; disobedience was not an issue, but to talk into the air in a room of students who might as well have been bags of flour was about as rewarding as spending a day proving that 1 + 2 would have indeed made 3. There was no future. There were no children anymore, at least not in the sense that there would have been anyone to grow up and perpetuate anything. Each one wanted the world to die with them. Education was near obsolete.
Perhaps Liesel had held onto the hope that someone in her class had cared a little more about the larger world outside of themselves, but a larger world where one person, one out of twenty billion, could find it easier to make the commitment to end themselves than to scratch the sheet of time like a wry branch to the paint of a passing car, was rarely ever appealing. It was a failing race towards nothing– why run?
Of course, this meant that Liesel herself had to have derived some sort of pleasure somewhere. She was not hopeful either; she had nothing to be hopeful towards, but she was always content– as long as she was alive (and in her mind she was immortal), there was something she could be doing, no matter how obsolete that “something” was; today, as evidenced by the rough coat of coarse white chunks over her clothes, it was soap carving.
She had no tools but a butter knife, and no soap but a bulk of the brand she’d always buy (it had been a large amount, but it was not a lot; she burnt through it like hot flame through wax, and always took too long in the shower– a problem she shared with Lucas, and he only worsened the soap shortage while he was here). She came into the living room with a trinket the size of a cheap rubber ball in her hand.
“I’ve carved a near-perfect sphere out of a bar of soap.”
Liesel lay it onto the table, and it began to roll for a bit, stopping when it hit a bowl. It left a thin waxy trail.
“Why?” Mathilda asked. “And what are you going to do with all the shavings?”
“I felt like I had to do something. And I’ll just press it into smaller balls.”
Isaac was painting a picture. He had found some tubes of hardened oil paint in Liesel’s garage, resting in a plastic tray, slightly stained. The brushes had only been lightly used, though lack of care had left them stiff. He only had printer paper as his canvas, and it was already starting to wrinkle where he had applied heavy strokes, as the paint pooled together.
It was not a skillful portrait, but it was oddly serene– at first he claimed he was making a scene of a blue sky over a grassy field, but it had decidedly looked better as an ocean when he forgot to wash the green off of the brush while darkening the edges of the sky. Now he didn’t know what to do about the quarter-circle of yellow in the top-right corner.
He never had any interest in art, along with Mathilda; anyone could have been an artist but there was rarely much of anything to draw that hadn’t already been done by a hand more skilled than yours, and in addition most art was to no purpose anyhow.
But it had been a pleasant pastime. Once he finished he slowly peeled the wet paper off the table and set it to dry near an air vent on the ground– and he had almost expected to see a row of twenty other amateurish paintings laid out, though it had been years since a sight like that had ever occurred.
He dripped some purple onto his socks and Liesel’s white hairy rug– and ran to find some cleaner fluid and a cloth. He knew he wouldn’t have had success, or do much other than inflame the unsightliness, but if he didn’t try to take a little responsibility, he knew he would not be much approved of– especially by Mathilda.
In the afternoon the three of them had a talk. They exchanged reserved little comments about the political forecasts, (Oh, I don’t think I know enough to form an opinion, what do you think?) (I don’t know enough either.) meteorological forecasts (Do you think it’ll rain enough to go fishing tomorrow?) (When did any of us bring up fishing?) (I don’t have the equipment here.)
The ultimate decision they arrived at was that they were wasting their time. “We could probably be heroes– and even if we die failing, we’ve died doing something,” one of them might’ve said; it was certainly an easier idea to die than to live on having done nothing about a situation they claimed they cared about.
“Mathilda said she has no idea what they put in our water.” Liesel poured some tea for Isaac that he didn’t ask for.
“How am I to know? At some point I had a job handing out packages of pills to people over sticky store counters but I’d be damned if you asked me to do the research.”
Liesel removed an elastic that tugged a little at her hair and began to wrap it around her left forefinger. “Well, I don’t believe that for a second that you would have not a hint at all!”
“I don’t do the science; did I not tell you?”
Isaac shuffled and removed a small metal fragment from his coat pocket. “From mum. She did the research work. Worked on a cure.”
The piece made a little clink when it hit the glass table. Isaac listened on. “I feel like we’ve had this conversation before. What are any of us doing?” “What are you on about, Mathilda?”
“We keep talking about things we never do. Let me ask again: what are you doing, Liesel?”
“I’m doing what I can, alright? Please. Give it a rest. The lawnmower next door went off too early and I’m not feeling right.”
“You are always bothered by these little things. You do a little just for the sake of saying you’ve done something, and then nothing gets done.”
“I’m doing what I can! Please!”
Pause. Everyone had been just as lost as they were around three years ago. Isaac looked around at the women; it reminded him of a fight he observed in fourth grade between two of his friends. He closed his eyes and looked down at his feet.
“...we have the rest of the day.” Liesel stopped to turn the knob on a pocket-watch. “It’s still early. We have time.”
“You don’t do anything at night either. You say it’s too late to work.”
“But we have time. Everything will be alright if you would stop yelling at me. I don’t want to do anything right now.”
“We’re both almost forty. We should at least have a direction to look in.” “If we could do anything at all to counter the attack, I suppose.”
“Right. I’ll see if I can get a sample of the water from my friend.”
“Hey.”
The man had finally materialized.
I just noticed him standing in that same shadowy corner by the black door. I tried my best to ignore him, but it isn’t the easiest task at hand when all you’ve been doing is staring out of shock and fear.
I get over new people rather quickly though, I think.
“I’m finally here! Took me some time to show up because I had trouble believing anything alive would be up here– but hey. I’m your new best friend. Do you like tea?”
He stood near my bed and leaned over me like a surgeon looking at a patient.
“Hah?”
“Please answer my question, Lucifer.”
“No.” I was rather exhausted and frightened all at once; but in all honesty I did not mind the company– it had been two months since I even had the idea of another presence. “No, as in I’m not the biggest fan– I could go for some, though.”
“Well I came here to see you.”
I rolled over and let him ramble on. I had no interest in what he had to say, but I had left my ears open nonetheless.
“I noticed you were here. I knew you were here and your name is Lucifer– that’s about all for anything personal, but surely you’re here to conduct some kind of business. I’m always working too– I could use a friend.”
I then closed my eyes. For a second there was an apprehensive air– I had trouble deciding whether I wanted this man as my friend.
I was too tired to ask any more questions.
“Who knows– maybe, more or less, we do the same thing,” he said exuberantly. “I’m just glad to see you.”
The man had not noticed that I was not talking back or doing anything to emulate his excitement. He straightened himself and rose, moved towards the glass wall, and pointed at nothing.
“This is where I live. I might as well have lived everywhere– I don’t know. I have always thought we had something in common because I do see you around once in a while when I work.”
I had already fallen asleep at that point. Somehow, still– I was listening to the man. I could tell he was easy to talk to. I knew that he had made his way back to the side of my bed, and I knew that once again he had his hand over my eyes. I also, in fact, did remember him: he appeared in a small alley where there had been crying moments prior; he flashed a smile as I passed him, and I had not made any note of the man other than how he was rather tall and had a small notch in the right thumb where he kept a ring on, on the hand that held his black leather bag– slightly bulging with files, or so I had assumed.
He had his briefcase with him– it was heavy and I felt it at the back of my left leg. And then he talked, first of how once he had to clean the corpse of a roadkill cat. It had backed itself
into the gap of a tire; when he arrived it had already wrapped itself around the rubber perimeter with its head still barely holding on.
“I believe I am familiar with your name, Lucifer.”
Is he now?
“Ah, I’ve heard it few times– some eras ago when people still thought the sky was something to look up and hope towards, there may have been some confusion between you and I.” He set down a pair of thin spectacles on the nightdesk. Then he mentioned my eyes. I did not see his— I was asleep, but he had assured me we had the same shade of crushed-butterfly blue.
“I don’t remember all the records I keep, but I am certain that you— this form of you– were not alive. Have you a pen on yourself? I will look for one— you can help me with my paperwork. Then we can stop for tea right outside.”
There was silence. He circled the beige-carpet room and settled in an old rocking chair I managed to remember. I awoke and sat up, and for the first time I could see his face– it was like an old membrane stretched over a frame of a hollow drum, but there was a strange beauty behind the thin leathery skin.
He turned on the bedside lamp, and it crackled and fired before shutting itself off.
“My condolences.” He looked a little sorry for the lamp.
“It’s alright,” I finally spoke, still a little dulled in my state. “I may’ve watered some bits I shouldn’t have. I think it was meant to die.”
“As all things are.” He returned to his hunched position on the rocking chair. “Now that you are up, I suppose you could tell me about yourself.”
My name is Lucas.
Had I told you that I loved what I held in the past, you would not believe me– but I take accountability now. My parents were well off– my mother, an aged, fading woman, had work as a musician, and my father, who passed to me his red hair, was a high-ranking engineer– high enough where he could be paid from other workers’ efforts. While “Mama” was busy pleasing the record labels, “Papa” had no shortage of money or time. He would bring home models that his subordinates made for his “little Lucy”, and we would play with the models together in a dry, heavy room in our garage. As such, I was always closer with my father.
Sometimes the model was of a working wind turbine, and if you blew on it hard enough it would generate enough power to turn on a little red light. There were powered-rail trains and miniature lighthouses, but the wind turbine was always my favourite because I could attach it to a small metal bar, and skirt around trying to “zap” the tidy men in pinstripe suits that would sometimes come to my house to talk business. It never worked; instead, it had netted me some chuckling and a few compliments calling the contraption and me “cute”. Of course, that idea was binned after the first few failures, and a stern warning from my father to cease my attacks upon his poor guests.
I do have my moments of genius though– between the humdrum of daily life you could almost say I lived for that occasional sparkle.
The conditions in East Waterbridge a decade ago were ideal for growing blueberries. You would have known this– we would greet even every visiting dog with a scone and a cup of iced tea. As it got warmer we would put frozen blueberries in our drinks. It was a waning summer; my mother had a rare day off and planned a visit to the local orchard.
The berries had already ripened and fallen– the last stragglers on the tips of the branches never grew past a tiny little green ball. Papa was wearing his white shoes, which not long after had the edges smeared with a somewhat-rotting purple, and I had gotten my shorts stained and sticky after a go on the tire swing. The heat was thick and muzzling, and everywhere you could sniff and smell a sickly sweet stench. Underfoot, there were mounds of bluish-brown mush, covered in ants that would disperse when the occasional mouse came scampering along. The sun had come down harder on that day, and it was a disgustingly picturesque afternoon.
There was a perpetually shaded area. It was just beyond the back of the barn and sheltered by trees where the plantation continued, and I could tell it was not a popular spot when the right season was still swinging. The blueberry bushes had grown onto the path, and the sticks and leaves were left uncleared. Just beyond the green wire fencing, a small bird took off from the fragmented skull of a deer.
The berries here were a little slower. On an earlier day– more typical times for blueberry picking, they would have presented themselves as having little value, being clusters of pink only slightly shaded with blue. But the three of us were late, and while my parents were off picking out whatever fat berries were left on the sunny bushes, I went to the shade and shook everything into my orange plastic basket, and that had produced me a near-perfect batch.
If I recall correctly, I had mentioned to you a slight affinity I once had towards engineering (and botany, but that was never quite as viable). I never really quite fell out of love– more accurately, I had lost hope with respect to the scene. I’m not quite sure why that is– for the longest time, the people of Cairnerith saw engineering as the provider of the future; it was a stable and reputable job. People were no longer looking towards the future, I suppose. I don’t blame them. The world was estimated to only have 10 or so more years, and even that’s likely an overestimation– and then we’re done. No more air. We’d all suffocate to death.
And with the death of engineering, I believe the rest of science would go the same path. You already see it in medicine. A few people– a couple of charismatic doctors that my friends in
grade-school looked up to, the family physician, and some article-writers who reported on expert findings were cut out from the industry that knew them best– and as such, they aren’t quite anyone anymore.
When you were young, you believed the stars could be in your hands if you just ate enough to grow a foot taller. Everything would happen– just not now. In the future, you’d tell yourself that you’d ride the best cars and live in the biggest houses and marry the love of your life. You’d love your job and you’d love your friends and you’d spend every moment being absolutely enamoured with you and yourself. If I knew more about my mother, I would have talked about her– I could only assume that music was treating her well. My father, however, always wanted to play sports.
He was by no means a bad player. No, he was never the top of the bunch, but he could hold his own– his status as a centre in a football team predated my own birth, but I had gathered my opinions from his collection of mementos in the back corner of our house that I would look through.
I think the people were growing tired of football– he wasn’t “targeted”, more or less– even the shiniest names in the field were not safe when they decided to cut the pay. “Football just isn’t good for our society anymore”, “sports don’t make us any progress”, “we’re using our money on more important things” were all phrases he told me he would hear. My mother never found her business marred, though.
He dropped his fantasy of being a world-class football star rather reluctantly. Some of his team was quick to move on; others like him lingered a little. Once it became clear that he might as well be rolling buckets down hills for a living, he changed his beat and became an engineer. He didn’t hate it; it wasn’t difficult at all, and whatever acclaim he had as a footballer went into a degree from a somewhat-prestigious school. It was smooth sailing after that.
Now though, a job as an engineer begins to face the same treatment– it isn’t a matter of “being resilient” when your desired position slowly begins to lose its light as a viable job, and then starts dropping out of the listings entirely. They don’t care how passionate you are. Love solves its own problems, but when the enemy is nothing but numbers, bills– oh, you missed it? Ration your leftovers. Maybe stop turning on the light– the only weapon you have to fight back with is money, and if you don’t have it, then it should be your top priority to change that. Money may not buy happiness (and even then, some may find that debatable), but it sure can buy you peace of mind. (And then my father got married with my mother, and money was never a problem ever again.)
I had a girlfriend. The two of us met in a quiet hazy year; the last of my time in high school. Tammy was one year my senior and had a small job as a freelance photographer, and for the two of us it felt like what we had was heaven. I loved her as much as someone who knew nothing about the world could love: she had some brains, looked and dressed pretty, and knew how to flatter a boy. That was more than enough for me. I was ready to spend the rest of my life with her, with her lovely face, her sweet words, and above all her abundant attention. I had a place in existence, and it was with her. And how! God forbid I think that I could ever ask for more.
I was with her for years. By the time everything was starting to flake apart I was considered by law an adult, but by every other means I would’ve called myself still a child, and children do only as they please– but the joy of the divine moments I had with her was enough to keep me going through the corpulent guilt that sat on my shoulders as I walked.
We did stupid things, and everything any good mother would warn her son against when it came to love became yet another entry on my list of shameful accomplishments, and it amounted to nothing but an airy bliss. I lived with her; my parents had pleasantly thought she really was my future and left me to my own devices as they took their businesses elsewhere.
The fun of life then was all money and pleasure. It still is; I still really find it hard to remember any joy that hadn’t had her somewhere in the scene or in the background.
Money came at money’s price. She started a small internet hustle with clips of me (which I’d rather not detail to you; I’m sure there’s some crumb in your head about what it could’ve been) which had done us well in terms of finance, but it was not a position I wanted in the slightest. I was a shy boy, and with what little capacity I had in me to hate, I despised the eyes of anyone who had no business looking at any bit of me at all. I wasn’t a very good co-worker. I only bothered to raise a few protests here and there, but each and every time, Tammy would end them with a few simple moments of aloofness and quiet displeasure, and then I would understand that I had to get to work for her sake, at least during that meantime.
There was nothing worse than a trip to the shops. It was her favourite pastime, but she refused to have any fun there alone so usually I was dragged along. That was where she’d use all her money, and if I was lucky I could get myself a neat something too. Everything I got there is now sitting in a box in her storage, if she didn’t toss it all out already.
Eventually she grew tired of me. Perhaps she wanted to take her camera work in some direction a bit more venerable; perhaps she simply didn’t want to be seen with me in public. At that point I was no longer terribly fond of her myself, but the breakup was still messy. I hadn’t considered what life could be without her.
The next half-year was perhaps my most peaceful yet because all I had to do was hate the concrete. I had to sleep on it every night; sometimes it was too hot; sometimes it was too cold. It was always hard and poked wherever it hurt most to be poked, even moreso during the winter when they would sprinkle the salts to stop the walkways from frosting over. I had good food to eat; when I took out the trash at the cheap restaurant nearby they’d let me pick at the scraps of whatever ingredients they didn’t use and would go bad the next day. But I couldn’t stand the concrete– that, and being unclean.
That had all led me to do what I did in my hour of darkness– I held my little knife up to a store worker and told him I’d stab him if he didn’t get me to jail. I’d broken the only promise I made to myself that I’d never hurt anything, but I didn’t want to take another day of sleeping under the overhangs outside, and another night without my water and soap. The plan had
worked. For a year I was held in state custody, cleaned myself adequately, and tried my best to satisfy myself with what little I had. The day I was released was the day I realized I’d become addicted to going to bed feeling fresh after a shower, and that was what brought me to my new friend Liesel.
I would tell you more, but the more time I spend here the harder it is to think.
“They use those little weights to price your vegetables. They don’t want people going and grabbing the biggest ones and buying them for the same price across the board,” Liesel said.
“Oh,” replied Isaac. It was not often in the house that anyone would go out and shop, but if they hadn’t gone now, they would’ve put it off for weeks.
The store was a little stuffed. The more “specialized” establishments were a thing of the past; Liesel, having lived the longest, could somewhat recall there once being such things as “cafes” or “sports shops”-- neither which she visited often but there was always a better atmosphere to them, she felt. The sprawling “mall-towns”, where everything would be under the same roofs, were convenient as it was only one ride to everything– that much was true. They were built to discourage the more sporadic and leisurely shopping trips and had mostly done their job.
There was noise. Up and down the tall aisles, packed together like files in a cabinet, was the sound of slightly-faulty carts rolling on pocked concrete. Sometimes there was talking; those who found the presence of others enjoyable would bring along a friend to ease the tedium, but it was rather difficult to convince anyone to join. In the background you could hear the giant fans overhead as they blew at the hot, sweaty air.
There were also smells. Most of them were of nothing– but the nothing was so pungent that it was unpleasant. Different corners of the mall-town had their own underlayered scents, the least unsavoury of which was near the garden-aisles (it used to be around the bakery, but ever since cuts were made around the province of Charton the smell had not quite been the same).
Liesel was a little bothered by all of it– if the smells had not blanked her head out already, the knotty paths to each different section of the mall would have made her lose it. It was better now that Mathilda was around to remind her that she had not checked off half of her shopping list before leaving, but a year ago a single trip would have been stretched over more-or-less a month– there was just too much of everything, so that you forgot that you missed the carton of eggs, and when you decided to go back for the eggs you would forget to refill your hand soap.
Today’s list was mostly in one area; they had to deviate to the stationery aisle, but it wasn’t terribly far. That was good– Isaac, too, hated most of the mall and did not want to walk around. Even still, the produce section was cramped– even moreso on an otherwise-lame Saturday, and the floor was somehow damper than the air. Had Isaac not been piping about his craving for bell peppers and bacon all week, Liesel would’ve only grabbed her three boxes of assorted salads and fled.
“I want some orange juice,” Mathilda stated as she set down a stack of calendars on top of a row of egg cartons to remove a necklace that was put on too tight.
“We don’t have that on our list. It’s in another set of aisles and it’s a big walk and Isaac’s going to start complaining again.”
“You bought Isaac his bacon to shut him up.”
“Are you a kid?”
“No, but I won’t shut up until you get me my orange juice.” They laughed.
There were long, sidelit screens that lined the walls that would scroll out an advertisement or an announcement once in a while. (Head to section 6R for the sweet deal of THREE sets of furniture for the low, low price of $4500– you won’t find our prices anywhere else!) (Due to its popular demand, we are out of our famous butter tarts– we are sorry.) (In need of a refresher? We are selling our signature strawberry peach shakers at section 8K for only $20!)
Liesel remembered when these prices were not considered sales at all– 24 years ago, the nauseating drink would’ve only fetched above $15 if it was sold in some nicer place whose prestige allowed them to blow up the cost (even if it really was just a big red tube of syrup divided into little rinse-cups no matter where you ate.) A dirty beachside concession stand could give you the same thing for $12– before those too became obsolete. (Isaac didn’t know– disregarding his lack of any contact with money making, those prices to him were perfectly reasonable.)
“I feel oddly normal,” said Liesel.
“What do you mean?” Mathilda asked.
“I don’t know. It’s all too peaceful, I suppose.” Liesel stopped for a moment to adjust her woven tights. “I don’t think we’ll get too many days like this anymore.”
“I get it.” Inside it felt like a curtain was being drawn. An act was about to close. There would be clapping, and then afterwards– silence.
“It’s a nice day out to buy groceries.”
“Sure is.”
“I really don’t like the noise or the smell or the mall at all, but I’m happy.” She tilted her head and looked around like a nervous bird. “Something’s going to happen, I think. I can feel it spinning right around the corner. So I– I best be happy now.”
“Is it an obligation?”
“Ah, no.” Liesel stopped to squeeze herself more hand sanitizer. “I think it’s just an ending.”
[Liesel 9:03 AM]: Hey Lucas
[Liesel 9:03 AM]: Write back as soon as you can, I can’t get to you
[Liesel 9:04 AM]: Gotta know if you’re still alive
[Liesel 9:04 AM]: hahaha I’m just getting a little worried.
Beyond the thin black door behind the curtain that the man opened for me was a balcony that overlooked a stretch of space.
The air was cold. We both sat on single-legged stools at a round walnut table, a cup of tea in both our right hands, stiffened by the weather. He passed me a napkin to plug my ears with if I felt I needed quiet; he started to talk. I knew he would say a lot, so I tried to keep my silence and listen to him blather about.
“Most people call me Death,” he began. “Perhaps it’s my profession; perhaps it really is just my name– doing anything for so long and you begin to lose track. As far as you should be concerned it is a name that works perfectly fine, so that is what you should call me as well.”
Pause. He looked to his side, and started once more.
“I live on the sunnier side of the street where you live. It isn’t blocked by the big trees I see a lot of people have, which, pretty as they are, I never quite saw their appeal. The nights are long enough. East Waterbridge is nice. There’s lots to do– not something I can say about most places now. I like doing work.”
Pause. Cough.
“Seeing you around was always a delight– I know that I don’t know almost anything about humans, but I always felt we had a thread of kin between us. Maybe it really doesn’t go any deeper than our names, but from my understanding of your people you are always pulled in by phenomena you cannot explain; maybe this is a similar case. I would never realize it if it were.”
It took me a while to notice that he was not drinking his tea.
“...and to me there is no difference between you and a fly, nor a fly and a king. You may be someone I find of interest– ah, but really! Why should you weigh any more on the universe than a simple bug?” He stopped and felt the bottom of his teacup. “Ah, my drink’s gone cold.”
“Do you need me to pour you some more?” I asked. “I’m sure what’s in the pot is still warm.”
“I need nothing; thank you.” He leaned over and stroked my hand with a calloused finger. “But I feel like I should know some more about you. Really, what here is so worth going so far away from your home?”
“Liesel told me to come here.”
“Why?”
“Mainly in search of other worlds to live on, but Liesel did raise the thought of something better– If I could find a race of enlightened aliens to Earth I could solve so many problems. Like the air– did you hear? We’re running out of things to breathe and we’d all start dying.”
“Ah, regretfully, I have no idea. But that’s good; as good as it is for me to keep busy, I do enjoy some downtime.” He then made a face; he had a look of complete confoundedness. “I just don’t think I understand why you’d look elsewhere for solutions to your problems. You believe another group would be of help?”
“Why would they not?”
“You are fond of animals; you know how they do. Survival for the self; maybe for those within proximity as well. Not for those on another planet. You understand? People are animals here; people elsewhere may not be any different.”
He put his hand behind his neck and gazed listlessly downwards.
“Intelligence only grows– I have never been elsewhere, but why would any civilization with even half-a-millenium more of progress not be infinitely more advanced?”
“That’s the point.”
“But again, why would they help us?”
I really had no ammo to fire back– I could be bringing home the end of the world and not find out, but I was not in a mood to argue for a side I didn’t subscribe to.
Hm.
“At least a viable exoplanet would work for our causes,” I said. “Well, I’ve been told to look regardless.”
“Diligent.”
“Yes.” I finished my green tea and left my cup empty– I had to sleep tonight. “Obedience and duty are difficult to start on, but they’re always easy on the mind afterwards.”
“Please know that I do not wish to be combative. I only want answers,” he said as he played with his ring. “I merely draw conclusions from my experiences while working– do you really have that little hope for your kind?”
I was hit and tilted a little back. “What to God are you saying?”
“You don’t seem to care for what you think would help people, no? You only work to get by for yourself.”
“No; if I didn’t have faith in things then I would not bother to work.”
“Then maybe I am wrong.” He looked at me, and tilted his head to deepen his stare. “Though sometimes, hope is worth letting go of.”
“That’s a lie.”
“Hope is the desire for a sunny day in a town where it always rains, when really all you can do is try to stay dry indoors.”
“You’re being too much of a downer. Hope is always a thing.” I knew I made a value judgment, but I had no more to say.
“From what I can tell you, some fare perfectly fine in the rain.”
Eight minutes.
That was how much longer they had. Two-or-so years ago in an interstellar broadcast, the planet at war with Earth announced that they would destroy the sun. At the end of half the morrow-year it would be gone, and with every major piece of land already chilled past bearable temperatures, everyone living there– who wasn’t lucky enough to catch any transportation away, and there were not many people who were– would freeze to death, and after that the planet Earth would drift off to god-knows-where. Then the enemy would fly in and pick off all the ice and leave.
Humanity had not made its preparations. At most– a smaller city, one not important enough to be bombarded with bitter weather, would buy its inhabitants a day.
The people of Millstone had already made the countdown. Last day of sun– last eight minutes after it was blown into dust. Nobody tried to fight it. Life went on mostly as usual; it was so cold that birds no longer flew, but if you looked around you would see patrons of coffee shops playing games with each other with markers and paper napkins, drivers of frosty-windowed cars turning the radio knobs, and shoppers in malls asking their friends which coat would go better with their shoes. Most people, though, sat at home.
Mikhail had a chipped mug of coffee in his left hand and a pen with scattering ink in his right. He sat at his second favourite chair; his usual spot was right next to a rather large window (which is why it had been his favourite, but oh well) that would no longer close; the chill was too much to be comfortable, and it had been a while since it’d crossed his mind that his house needed to be serviced. He was getting old and was beginning to forget things.
He moved his hand across the blue-lined notepad and made a picture. It was of a cluster of lilies– a sight he’d often see when visiting his sister-in-law, who he’d always thought was a little easier on the eyes than his wife, Natasha (who retained a bit of her childish air since the two of them had met; which Mikhail could only tolerate).
The lilies gave way to a full garden on the sheet. The garden then had a family of birds, which he had copied off a framed picture on a wall– it was browning, dusty, by no means well drawn, and gave off a bit of an oily smell, but when he saw it at a yard sale he knew he had to rescue it before it would sit rotting in a toxic pile of waste. His wife had chided him for spending a thirty– which could’ve gone towards buying a nice couplet of sandwiches– and bringing home an “utter piece of junk”, but he knew what he was doing; he felt bad for the little birds. Now the picture hung above the fireplace mantle and would inspire him, as he knew even a simple attempt to copy the image would’ve produced a result far more sightly.
He tried to sip the coffee– too hot. He’d overcompensated for the weather. In a moment his wife would come bounding into the room and complain that he had made her coffee wrong, and that too would have been bitter.
He didn’t mind his wife. The two of them had been friends since early adolescence, and they had been good friends, but to Mikhail they were never much more. It was acceptable to the
province of Pilport should you marry just for the tax cuts, or in this case, to call yourself a married man. He had no interest in romance with her or anyone, but he did not want to stay single.
Mikhail looked up from his notepad and saw that Natasha had already appeared on the armchair across, with a taller blue mug in both of her spotted hands.
“You aren’t mad about the coffee?” he asked her, looking at the mug– it was a quarter emptier than when he had finished preparing it.
“No. I’d say there are bigger things to be mad about right now.” She stirred the liquid with a glass spoon. “How are you feeling?”
He wasn’t exactly sure. To him, it couldn’t matter less that that was the last sunlight they would ever get, in his lifetime at least– but he didn’t know whether it was disbelief or a case of sheer apathy. Perhaps he had already accepted that the end was coming, and perhaps he had already come to terms with it. Either way, it didn’t bother him. Letting yourself be bothered by it was an indicator that somewhere in your heart was hope– or at least, a faint stain of a desire towards something better, and he had abandoned that on the day the interstellar broadcast was made public.
Seven minutes.
“I want to go swimming.” There was a lake not far from the edges of their yard, and it had enough boat activity on it that it would not freeze over.
“You’re insane, Mikhail.” Natasha tilted her head towards the window– she was too old to cock it properly. “In this weather?”
“Well, I’ll be reminding you again that I used to dive in glacier water for fun. Naked,” he replied while tearing the finished drawing out of the pad and folding it into a thin paper airplane. He tossed it at Natasha, who caught it with her left hand and opened it up.
“And I’ll be reminding you that you’re old. No time to be reckless.”
“I have all the time in the world. Now if you don’t want to go swimming you can get out a box from under the bookshelves and we can play a nice game.”
“Alright.” She gently placed her coffee down on a small round table and stood up, walking towards a shaky pile in the corner and returning with a flat cardboard box, the edges of the lid split and flapping. “We have all the pieces in this one?”
“At least I sure don’t remember losing any.”
“Well that’s better than you telling me half of the cards from the set that Junior got you for your birthday are gone.”
Ah. Three years ago he had brought those cards along on a camping excursion with a couple of his friends and lost its contents there, which was a shame; he liked that set. Junior told his father not to worry too much about it, that it was just a cheap bargain he found at the retail bin and nothing worth getting worked up over (though to Mikhail, nothing really was).
“Yes, Natasha, this set’s complete.”
Six minutes.
Natasha was a mousy, sentimental woman– especially so placed next to her husband, and anyone who walked by and saw the two– a near-folded little figure who held onto her possessions like clams holding pearls, paired with a towering, upright man who didn’t put in the ten seconds to hide his thinning blond hair with a hat– could tell which one of the two cared more about things that other people would care about.
“How do you think our son is doing?”
“What, the one that just exploded?” Mikhail smiled, paused, and saw that his wife was forcing herself to reciprocate. “Of course I’m teasing. He’s grown into a fine man; he will fare as much as he can. He has a wife and kids of his own. We can start playing now and we do not need to worry about him.”
They started their game. As usual, Mikhail started with the red pieces somewhere on the left of the board, and Natasha stuck with her blue marker three spaces right of corner A8. The objective was to move exactly seven spaces from your starting point in the direction of the centre, and you’d roll dice and draw cards to determine how you moved. Thus, it didn’t matter what square you chose as your first location. It was a game of luck. Neither of the two would be upset by a loss, since there was nothing to be upset over at all.
A full six. Move your piece down, the card instructed. Mikhail had started at the very bottom-left of the board this round. He didn’t get to move.
Natasha rattled her pair of silver dice around in her hand before tossing it onto the table– a habit she’d fall into whenever she felt like she needed more luck in rolling numbers. She was a little more nervous than usual, as she had rattled the dice around for longer.
Five minutes.
Mikhail’s piece was in the shape of a wheel. It had a minor imperfection, but it was his favourite piece– the couple’s dog had taken a liking to it and chewed off one of the spokes and a part of the rim. That made it special. He was especially reluctant to use anything else after the
passing of old Spoons (aptly named, as his inertia made him a viable thing to hug when Natasha was too upset to do so). They’d made the decision to put him down months ago; even Mikhail could tell that Spoons would not have lived well in the deepening cold. His back leg had already made him rather miserable.
Four spaces diagonally, down-right. Natasha was already much closer to her target on the red and black playing board, but being closer did not mean anything– a roll of any moves left or up, or another roll in the same direction which would make her overshoot her destination, was no less likely to happen than anything that would help her win. It was always a little frustrating, but she knew she could do nothing about it but roll, draw, and pray.
“I’m not awfully fond of this game, Mikhail.”
“We don’t have many choices. I suppose you could get by with a few pieces missing on some other games, but as for anything we could play without making cuts or compromises, this is the only one we have.”
“Can’t you find the bits that you lost?”
“We might as well be watching petunias grow! I didn’t lose them in this house.”
“Well I still don’t like this game. You win and it’s whatever, you lose and you don’t really care. There’s nothing I can do to make myself win or lose and it’s not fun. I just feel bored and a little miffed whenever I roll something I don’t want.”
“Natasha, if you want to play something then we have to play this game. We don’t have the time to go and run to the store. Would you rather do nothing?”
Four minutes.
“No,” his friend responded. “I could enjoy some hopeless game of rolling dice with you, at least a little. I like doing things with you, even the mundane and pointless things.”
“That’s nice, then.” Her husband paused to drink more coffee– it had cooled to a more reasonable temperature now, but his tongue was still tender from drinking it earlier. “If I could get you something more exciting I would. But even then, doesn’t chance have its charm?”
He thought of a round they played a week prior where his friend had pulled the right cards to move in the shape of a certain human extremity. She had found it plenty amusing, and it would not have nearly been as entertaining had she done it on purpose. “I’m sorry for calling you immature, by the way.”
“I never took it as an insult.”
“Fair enough.” They continued to play.
Three minutes. Nine more turns and two minutes passed before Natasha finally won. She sighed a little and put her parts away; she was not completely fulfilled, but she did not expect to be, and she had felt a little satisfaction so she reclined into her chair and resigned with a contented smile.
One more minute. The ministry of Pilport had debated on launching a final broadcast to thank all its citizens, but the premier was against it and thought that it would have been better to just let the people have their peace. Mikhail was grateful for their decision; if there was one thing he would have disdain for it would be the thought of any authority trying to talk to him. He didn’t care, and it would have given him something to dread.
He rose from his furry-cushioned seat at the long oval table and walked across. He turned on a wall-mounted cassette player, slid in a slightly dirted tape, and skipped to his favourite recording of an old piano concerto that he would sometimes take his now-late brothers to hear. Something started to buzz in the walls.
“I should have done that earlier.”
“I don’t think it matters. We wouldn’t have heard it over the sound of the dice anyway,” Natasha said. She had laid a blue plaid blanket over her lap, still folded in half. “But it’s nice to have some music now.”
“Do I clean up and put the box away?” Mikhail wouldn’t have done that had he been alone; he was still in his sleepwear and didn’t put much mental weight on tidiness, but he knew it was of a bit more importance to his friend.
“You can just stuff the pieces in there and leave it; that’s alright.”
He looked at Natasha, and it was a rare moment where she looked as if she was at peace with everything. She had let her bracelets dangle lower than usual and did not adjust them on the hand between her forearm on the armrest and her forehead. With her other hand she drank her coffee, and did not move her locks of brown curly hair out of the way. Mikhail returned to his chair and propped his head against the back of his standing hand as well, before getting to work on putting away his game pieces.
“Well, how are we feeling now?” He asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe a little better now, but...” She trailed off and never finished her sentence. Time’s up.
“There goes the timer.” Natasha picked her voice back up as she finished her mug of coffee and laid it to rest on the adjacent table. “We’ll have eight more minutes of sunlight now.”
Mikhail wrapped the rubber band around the colourful cardstock stack four times. It always left a little indent in the cards when he took it out, but he was used to tying it tight like this. “That was the eight minutes. It already happened.”
Natasha looked at her husband, took off her glasses and started rubbing her eyes. She pulled her blanket further over her shoulders. “You didn’t tell me.”
“I didn’t think it mattered too much. We’re here and we’re together; what more would you want anyway?”
He put the wrapped block of cardstock in the corner of the flat box, next to the sealed baggie of marbles they’d only take out when they got competitive. Then he closed the box and left it on the side of his chair. “Please get on the couch, dear. I want to sit with you,” he continued.
“Alright.”
The two were then seated on the yellow floral couch. Natasha leaned her head against the shoulder of her husband, who had his head against the top of the low backboard. He took ahold of his wife’s hand and started twisting her small collection of rings around her fingers a little bit. They were far too big for her (and a little ridiculous-looking, Mikhail thought), but they were fun to play with and jingled as they hit each other.
“I love you, Mikhail.”
He didn’t respond at first; instead he closed his eyes and took in his last big breath of air. He smelled the bread rolls that he’d foolishly left blackening in the oven two days ago; he smelled the feet of his old dog that had tracked mud all over the already-tacky lilac carpet; he smelled the bunches of white lilies in the pots that his sister-in-law left in her kitchen. Then he smelled his friend. She wore her usual perfume of rosewood and patchouli, but she smelled a little funny now that she was crying. He began to cry as well.
“Thanks for... thanks for staying with me.” They huddled closer together as they felt the cold closing in. “It’ll be alright, Natasha. We’ll be okay.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” He took her into an embrace and let his chin hang against the back of her neck. “Everything is going to work out and we’ll be just fine.”
They closed their eyes, and for a little moment it felt like the room stopped getting colder.
It’s rare that it doesn’t just immediately disconnect me. It’s good to see you, Lucas.
Have you been trying to get to me all this time?
Yes, but it’s just been putting me into some... loading screen.
Odd– how do you do back on Earth? It doesn’t have anything to do with the network quality?
No, more or less it’s probably something with the distance. How far are we apart from each other?
Hold on, Liesel– some 13-something billion lightyears away; at least, as the machine is saying?
Ah, yeah, that’s fair. We can expect the connection to be choppy. If we do end up losing it, at least you know what to do?
Yeah. Is everything alright, by the way?
We aren’t seeing much fighting at all; for the most part I think we’re fine, but I’m scared, haha. How is it going for you?
I don’t think I’m seeing anything in terms of my work yet, but I’ve been having some weird dreams.
Those tend to happen.
Liesel, do they mean anything?
Not as far as I’m aware of; they’re entertaining, though. It’s most likely just the machine doing some funny things.
I’m just dreaming about people dying. Should I be a bit afraid? Hahaha. I don’t think there’s a need.
Ah hold on something’s happening to the connec–-
“Ah! What a story. Do you like to write, Lucifer?”
Death was back in his rocking chair with a stack of papers in his hand. The chair made a faint galloping noise as it swayed.
“No,” I replied with what voice I had left after narrating a sequence of events I saw in my sleep as I continued to mark up the thin, sandy pages of the blue notebook that I hastily penned “DREAM JOURNAL” on with the same content I retold. “It’s rather tedious. My hand hurts and it feels more cumbersome than usual.”
“Then why do you do it? Did Liesel ask you to make her a story?”
“She just asked me to entertain myself. I just find some things worth writing down,” I said as I bit at the end of my pen. “I was in contact with her this morning, but Liesel doesn’t talk to me too much anymore. By the way, my name is Lucas. I believe I’ve told you already.” I continued to write.
“Oh! And here I am thinking you would help me understand you humans better. You’re doing something you don’t like for fun, and you’re calling yourself a new name.” He stopped rocking and leaned forward towards my desk. “And I don’t see what’s wrong with Lucifer– really, I find it rather charming.”
“I meant to ask but never did– shouldn’t death be the one who understands us the most?” I asked as I rolled my white eraser around under my hand. “Oh, and Lucifer’s an evil name.”
He laughed. “What makes you think that a decrepit figure like me understands? With every new face I see I just grow more confused. The salad’s only got one vegetable– all my proficiency is in my job, and I see almost a million ants for every human I take care of. The world never gave me a reason to care more about you and your bunch– all I can do is act in a way that makes myself more presentable to you.” (action here) “At least I know that I’m bad at the piano. The last time I touched the yellow-keyed one I gathered at work and brought home, my neighbour came out into his yard and closed his door on my playing.”
“But surely you’d understand what my birthname means?” “Light and truth?”
“No!”
He faced away. “Then I’m not sure if I get it.”
“A lot of people believe in this entity named Lucifer. Some say he’s the devil,” I explained. I was now too distracted to properly write.
Ah. I’m running out of thoughts.
“Hm!” He puffed out his chest. “That makes a little more sense why I find the name so familiar. You changed your name to– well, I still don’t find it an evil name, but I suppose– look a little less so.”
“That’s exactly it.”
It was warm in the little beige room. The next planet to explore was a mere thousand miles from where it would have been too close to the star; if it had a thinner atmosphere the air still would have felt quite moist. For measure, I taped a tube of coolant to the side of the drone and prayed before I sent it out.
“To be fair, I never judged anyone based on anything in their character.” Death bore his face in a gentle lofty way as if he wanted to be seen as sagacious. “I’m curious; do people have a better perception of you now?”
“Most people still know me as Lucifer, unfortunately,” I stated as I recalled a set of glances I thought I felt against my back while shuffling down a busy main street.“As soon as I come home I’m getting it changed, and hopefully by then nobody will remember me.”
“It seems like your way to “do what you can” about these things.”
“Why would it not be?”
“Ah, well I’m just shooting in the off-chance possibility that none of your decisions are really your own.” He was beginning to echo my tone and I found him gradually more irritating. “What would you do then?”
“Is this about me and my mission?”
“No. Well– partially.” He considered his words. “I’ve just heard around the world that maybe there really is someone writing a play out for us. We adhere to the stage directions and it’s all we ever do.”
I slowly tore at the holed side of the notebook paper, freed it from the metal spine, then crumpled its contents up and tossed it Death’s way.
“Pah, stop belching your nonsense.”
“It’s a possibility!” He pouted like a child. “I’m just asking you what you’d do!”
“In that case, I’m sure someone would’ve already figured out a way to break free and do what they want. People are just like that.”
He made a sound of haughty disbelief. “Is that really so?”
“You underestimate humanity! We always find a way to solve anything.”
“Hm.” He scratched his chin. “I suppose I just never cared to notice it. Work does preoccupy you and your thoughts after all.”
“How busy are you, anyway?”
“Ah, I have to be everywhere at once, though my job is not awfully tiring– all it asks is that I have the patience to fill all these papers and drop them off somewhere when it happens to cross my mind. I have all the time there is.”
He unsheathed a single piece of paper from his stack, and immediately the room began to smell like ink. “But never once leaving Earth still leaves me with this much to write! Make the judgement on how busy I am yourself.”
I craned my neck (which started to hurt– first time it had done so) to look at the paper, which was so covered with writing that it was completely black. Whatever script it was in I could not say.
“You’ve never left Earth– what does that imply?” “Well, I’m not so sure. What does that imply?”
Liesel felt oddly lonely and wanted to go fishing to ease her mind.
It took her days of convincing Mathilda (who was rather irritated that her application as a receptionist was turned down) and Isaac to go out with her and buy the poles and bait and rent a boat, though for the price they could only afford a cheap row model with a battered and once-white plastic interior and cracked cushions held together with wiry, protruding threads and old silver tape.
It was an overcast day. They couldn’t quite get it to rain, but it was the only bit of the half-month that wouldn’t have a blaring sun. Weather was growing less and less stable, and Liesel cursed herself for not having the idea to go out on water a few weeks ago when it still rained.
“I don’t reckon you actually have any plan to actually test out whatever poison it is and how we cure it, no?” Mathilda asked as she unraveled a tangled reel of light green fishing line.
“Of course we don’t. If Isaac’s mother couldn’t do it then we would have no ball in the park,” Liesel said as she earned an unhappy glance from Isaac. “The only option we really have is to devise a way to get water without dying and that’d probably take us far too long.”
Doubt and hesitation fell with the wind. “It could be our only option, though, unless either of you have any better ideas,” Liesel continued. “I’m reeling in nothing here.”
“Do you even have a fishing license?”
“Be quiet, Mathilda.”
Dip– a bite! Liesel hurriedly reeled in the white bobber without realizing the added weight of the end had become inexplicably lighter– her catch had escaped. Oh.
“Are the broadcasts giving us any information at all?” She asked to mask her disappointment.
Isaac, who was more interested in reading the labels on his equipment than using it, chimed in.
“Can’t stand them broadcasts. They know well how useless they are. Nothing new ever. Just that same lasagna about how they’re doing anything they can.”
“I mean, what more can we do, right? We don’t have fame or money or power or really anything at all. What’s the most exciting thing that’s happened to any of us?” Mathilda asked.
“Second time; you can be quiet about it, then.”
The statement did not hit Mathilda and she continued to talk.
“Who are we, anyways?”
“Three idiots on a boat,” Isaac stated, and it quickly became his favourite quote of his own– it was true.
Liesel hunched over and put her chin in her palm. “Lots of great things come from idiots of all sorts. Ridiculous people make the world go round.”
“To a certain degree; I suppose so,” Mathilda said as she finally straightened out her line. Faint red marks began to appear on her hands, which grew to dark red streaks as she had an accident with the hook.
The water was calm enough to watch the reflection of a bird fly across the surface whole, but the fish that day were not plentiful. Liesel could recall a day in her forlorn past where she emerged with three large salmon which took up all the space in her pink ice cooler after a brief round across the same sea she was now on, and yet today all she had in her lidded bucket after the same amount of time were a couple of smallmouth bass.
“Hear me out,” Liesel began as she took in her new catch, which had turned out to be an old piece of dead coral. “It doesn’t rain enough for that to be a solid option, but there’s a lake not far from where we live, and it’s small enough that I’m confident they wouldn’t think of poisoning it. We take out all the water there, and we boil it so it’s clean.”
“Is this for other people or no? We’re not about to tell people to start drinking lake water,” Mathilda responded as she stared into her own empty fish bucket.
“Of course it’s for other people.”
“We might as well be building military-grade bomb shelters, then.”
Liesel paused, thought, and nodded. “We could be building bomb shelters. That wouldn’t be the worst idea. Bunker under a lake that you can drink out of! Now that’s something.”
Isaac gave a half-approving look.
“As long as you two can keep your mouths shut about it, and Liesel keeps this new project within people in her class, that’s all,” he mused. “Don’t think other people would just take water from nowhere. Best to be with folks that really trust you. Nobody’s safe around anyone anymore.”
“Even if I can only save one life, that’s still one more than none. I’d be satisfied.” Liesel sat upright again and tossed her clean, scented hair to the side. She smiled at her friends.
They smiled back. The clouds cleared, and the sun came through. The fish swam further down into the blue-gray waters.
We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming with a message.
To every citizen under our shining sun, every soul that has toiled between the walls of our coast, from the glistening sea of East Waterbridge to the vast soil of Chesterdale, every mother and every father weeping for their lost children, every son and every daughter longing for their parents; Cairnerith, we see you.
It has been a difficult era. From the drought of food that once grew so abundantly along our shores, to the darkness and smog that cover our once-pristine sky, life as we know it cannot be the same.
What was once a prosperous land of peaceful coexistence has transformed into a desert of fear, scattered by the hand of war. The enemy is unrelenting. This is not a time to lose yourself. This is not a time to falter. Do your duty as a civilian.
We, as the government, have been endlessly labouring to ensure your safety and health. Our world-class health experts are available for consultation should you or a loved one require any sort of assistance. The number on your screen is always open to callers– that will be all you need. Act as soon as possible– every second counts. Make it matter.
Do not cry for help elsewhere. You do not need it.
No matter what, we will come out victorious. We will pierce through the thick of the confusion; we will banish the encroaching darkness; we will emerge as beams of light. Cairnerith, you are blessed and you are loved. Brilliance awaits us all.
May the holy skies of this great country always be sunny. May Mother Earth keep you safe.
Good morning, Cairnerith.
I’ve finally connected to something– Lucas?
Hi, Liesel. Might want to check your camera.
How’s it going, Lucas?
So I went and explored that planet you asked me to– uhm, right. I got decent footage of the situation, and...
Lucas?
...it doesn’t look terribly promising, but I haven’t gotten around the whole planet. I don’t think I will for this one, really, I checked...
You aren’t moving.
...and there was nothing. You’re being real quiet, everything good?
Are you stuck or something?
Liesel?
You’re just staring into the screen. You aren’t saying anything. I can hear the fan go off and see it spin in your background so I know your sound works.
LIESEL? Hello?
Is something going on?
I’m not seeing anything on your side– oh, and there it goes. The display’s completely dead from my end.
...
Alright, I’ll just send you a message– hold on. If you can hear me at all...
...
Reply as soon as you can. I just need to know if I haven’t totally lost you.
...
...otherwise I’ll just start using my own discretion to go wherever...
I suppose I’ll just wait a little longer for everything to straighten out. There might just be an issue with the technology.
Alright.
...
I’ll just leave this message here. ...
I closed my computer and looked at Death.
“Hey, at least I still get to talk to you.”
“I wouldn’t be too shocked if she were just making up a scene to avoid having to look at you any more. You’re wretched and miserable– from your standpoint, at least. Perhaps it’s a universal experience.” He made himself far too comfortable with the stuffed duck on my bed that I brought along for the journey. “You look fine to me.”
I knew what he was talking about, and I’d have felt the effects. Looking in the mirror to brush my teeth I did not quite feel human, rather; I may have forgotten how a human should’ve looked. Death assured me my reflection was by all means a sane man’s image of a person, but to me it had felt odd– the reflection did not feel accurate.
“It looks fine when I see it but every time I stop looking and try to remember it, it looks off,” I explained and gingerly rubbed an ache I did not know I had. It was an automatic process.
“I don’t think I can be sure of anything here.”
“Do you think I’m real?”
“Yes; why?”
“There you have it– at least a single tenet for your sanity.”
I chuckled tensely like a naughty child being asked about a broken window. “Yeah, but I haven’t really– been with people or done much interaction. I’m not sure how much longer I have in terms of myself.”
I had no track of how long I’d been up here– it could have been twelve years as easily as it could have been just a month. I took the realization in with a disappointingly placid acceptance.
“Time is relative,” Death chimed in. “How is Liesel doing? To her it’s been more-or-less a year since you left, no?”
“She did mention a war, so not the greatest if I were to guess; I just hope I’m not doing a shoddy job,” I said as I turned around and dangled my arm over the flaky backboard of my worn-out chair. “There really is nothing worse than a plan not turning out as expected and I want to be no cause of that.”
“War happens.”
“I don’t know. I know she’ll be fine; there’s not much to be attacked for in East Waterbridge so I’m not super scared for her, but also... I don’t know. I’m not sure.”
I stopped to think on all my work. There had really been no remarkable candidates for the mission; some were so cut-and-dry that even during their active research I would have nothing to say about them, or any reason to remember them as anything other than a token of failure.
“Is it just a matter of patience?”
“It’s a matter of a lot of things– that’s about as much as I know.” He was now laying across the bed and invading the space that we had discussed and agreed on being mine. “Do you like doing work?”
“I like the thought of having it done,” I mindlessly mused as I appreciated the blue floral design of the window curtains.
“You never seem happy with anything.”
“Maybe I never am.”
“Well then, what’s the point of life?” He shifted around obnoxiously– I looked, and he was completely spread out and looking straight into the ceiling light I found most uninteresting.
“God doesn’t want me to die.”
“Do you believe in God?”
“No,” I explained, “but I don’t have anyone else to listen to.”
Isaac had collected two bucket-fulls of water from Heron Lake. His arms were tired and sore, and they were even moreso under the dense swell of the sun. There were no trees around to give shade.
He stopped on a flat rock to rest and touched his black hair. It was hot and the bangs had made his forehead wet, but he liked the sensation; it made him feel useful. His wagon was a short walk, but it was a walk nonetheless; neither he nor the women could bring their carts anywhere closer to the lake. The incline around the bank was too steep to hold anything without rolling away, and that had also made legwork rather tiresome; Isaac may have begun to regret rejecting the smaller wagon the women had offered him– he didn’t want to be seen as less capable, despite his smaller age and visible fraility. Youthfulness was no longer considered
one’s prime. It took time for most people to grow uncomfortable with the idea of not doing anything at all.
His wagon should have been a quarter-full; his initial goal was to fill it a little under completely to avoid splashing, but upon seeing it come into view, he reconsidered. Ah! It’s only a fifth of the way there! Neither he nor Liesel had checked it for leaks– there was a small stream running down from the bottom of the dark red plastic and into the soil. Maybe then I should go all the way– just in case. He sloshed the water in his bucket into the cart and picked out a rotten leaf that floated on top.
In the left pocket of his shorts, he had a pack of cherry gum. He took three sticks out and began to chew– it was old and did not taste. Frustrated as he was determined, he went back down into the basin and continued to fill his bucket.
Mathilda was equally as bothered. Though she’d taken old advice that sunlight was good for the head to heart, she still hated the heat. It felt wet and unclean and the humidity was muffling. She wanted to be back indoors; her mind went to a block of wood on her desk that was left chiseled in an awkward state, then to wanting to nervously check her mail for any updates on yet another job application, then to the taste of wine. I could do a lot better than a ball of soap– I should be home and I should be doing something else.
She filled her buckets with only as much as was needed to prevent feelings of guilt or laziness, but she was a quick walker; in the time it took Isaac to fill a quarter she had already done half, though her vessel did not leak.
Liesel was not thinking much. She was glad to be outside and glad to be doing physical work; any longer next to a computer and she felt she would go insane. She liked the numbing heat and paid no attention to how full her cart was. Within minutes she was done, and only went back to fill up a little water that had evaporated. She hadn’t dressed for the weather and wore a long sweater; her back was itching and caked with sweat.
“Hey Isaac, do you need some help?” she called out to the boy from her spot, a rather clean patch of land around the bank before it got steep.
“No,” he grunted. He had his sleeve fabric pulled over his strained hands as he gripped the metal handles of the bucket. “I can do it all myself just fine.”
In the heat of the day and the labour time seemed to pass quickly for Liesel. She imagined them, a small family, working together towards a common goal– and in that instance she was happy. She thought once more of her brother. It was serene and peaceful, and Liesel knew she had nothing to worry about; she would have to come back tomorrow and do more work. She looked forward to those returns. It was something better to do; she was growing rather apathetic towards her job in the school– aside from an announcement to her students
that they could ask her for water if they ever needed some, she did not see much meaning in her position.
Back home they had prepared a basin. It was a small indoor water feature that Liesel and Isaac had cleaned out, and it would hold as much water as they could get. There was another cabinet of bowls and pots; they were tentatively filled with tap water. The hoses and faucets were all set to run; as far as Liesel was aware, it was yet to be contaminated. Still she felt nervous. She would turn them all off when the basin for the lake was full. Any move was a risk. If there was any announcement that East Waterbridge had been attacked in the next three days everything but the lake water would’ve had to be discarded.
Isaac pulled his gum out of his mouth and squished it in between his fingers. The pink rubbery wad flattened into a coin-shaped residuey dot, and he tried to stick it onto the part of the wagon where there had been a leak. It held its place for a second, then was washed down by the trickling water and fell to the ground. It was no longer chewable.
“Liesel, do you have tape?” He should’ve asked a while ago, but he didn’t have the heart– now his wagon was only a quarter full.
“I might have a piece floating around in my pocket.”
“Oh,” Isaac replied. He’d almost hoped she didn’t have one, but the little stream running down his cart was starting to become irritating to look at. “That’d work.”
The three had spent two hours by the lake. Isaac finally patched up and finished filling his wagon. The sun had grown much hotter; there was an annual high for the spring. A heat wave had come early.
“All in a day’s work!” exclaimed Liesel, humbly satisfied with her efforts. It was nice to go out and exert. She beamed warmly. There was an extra 60 litres to add to the basin.
“Are we ready to go back and work again tomorrow?” she asked. Reluctantly, her friends nodded their heads.
The new planet I had to explore orbits a pulsar.
I’m not sure what Liesel was thinking, but I can’t question her now.
As I expected, the warm planet from last misson turned out to be too hot for any habitation– the little tube of coolant I taped to the side of the drone had melted into a plasticky
nuisance I had to pick off. The air was far too dense. Results had come out negative– but at the very least it had some possible merit!
I really couldn’t have seen what she saw with this pulsar exoplanet. In the best case scenario there would have to be an atmosphere about as pressurizing as the ocean, and even still it would be a no for any potential human life to settle down fast enough.
My shoulders feel suddenly heavy.
I didn’t discount the possibility of some sort of civilization, though; even if I did, I would’ve felt miserable going against any established orders– the log of planets Liesel left me was not too long, and I’d made a deal with myself to do at least a quick but decent sortie on each before I went with my own judgment. When the drone came back from the last mission unscathed, I knew it had something beyond science keeping it safe and intact, and would likely take anything I threw it into with no problem. I still taped a tube of coolant to its side. I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night had I not at least made a gesture out of goodwill.
The computer took a while to boot up, and I took the interim to stare preemptively into the dizzy glow of the screen and wait for nothing. If I had any expectation at all, then it certainly would not have been for this star or its planet, though at the very least I had to complete my task to some adequate degree. I dreaded future work; to clear my mind I watched the video feed roll as it came.
Death supervised my work. For the most part of us watching camera footage on the desktop computer together he either stayed silent or made unhelpful banter (which I did not find funny or amusing, but appreciated nonetheless.)
The terrain was beyond dry– the light movement of the drone across the atmosphere would lift up mounds of dust that lingered like clouds before drifting towards the dark sky that would flash over with burning white ever so often– the air had protected some of the planet, but it was far too thin for life.
It had been two hours into the drone’s automated travel when Death suddenly became alert, and pointed at a piece of metal in the ground, protruding out of a grey pile of dust. I took control and moved the little drone closer.
“Pick it up.”
“Yes, I’m going to.”
I positioned one of the arms of the drone and began to lift the metal up. It was shaped like a thin round plate, and on the glossy silver surface a sigil blazed.
“The Data Centre...” Death whispered. “You know that symbol?”
I had recognized it from the side of the machine. I had paid it some attention; it caught my curiosity with its simple yet odd design: a dot within concentric circles, though the construction was odd and the lines were not smooth. The dot was not in the centre.
“It’s on the outside of this room somewhere so I’m just the slightest bit familiar, but I have no idea what or where it represents.” If Death had cared enough to remember it, then there was no way it was a fragment of Earth. “Does its presence here mean life?”
“Ah! No. You can find bits of the Centre on almost every other planet if you look hard enough. Sometimes the Centre just sends them out to collect random information once in a minute or so.” Death wormed in closer towards the screen. “Looks like this piece is just a thermometre, though.”
“For what?”
I immediately wondered whether it was worthwhile to make the Centre my final destination.
“The Centre likes to know everything, just for their own archival purposes.”
I modeled the drone in my head. It had no markings, but the manufacture was similar: a simple, smooth, silvery shape. It would have been considered too “ineffcient” on Earth; it had no language to convey information, but one was somehow not needed. You would use it and know.
“Are the box and the drone also part of the Data Centre?”
“I’d bet that they are. Where did you find them?”
“In a forest– supposedly. Liesel found it buried under leaves.”
“And you are moving it, and now it is no longer covered with leaves.” “Yes.”
“If something lived on this planet, it would’ve kept the thermometre for itself. The metal took you no time to find.” He pointed and poked obnoxiously at the dull computer screen. “I implore you take it. The Centre has had enough of its data.”
Perhaps they have all that I’m looking for.
Death clapped his hands together and stood up.
“That reminds me! I haven’t gone to drop off my papers in a while. All the weight is starting to be a nuisance to carry around.”
I thought for a moment. “Would it help if I took you there?”
“Ah! Yes,” he piped. “Please do.”
I smiled at him. “Lovely. I’ll wrap up all my tasks and we can do just that.”
It was a time for innovation. Everywhere you looked, around the corner was a new discovery– an old fact proven wrong, a new way to solve a problem, but the most popular of all the novelties were the ones which were both potent and useless.
It was also a difficult era– such that if you or anyone wanted the world to remember your presence, you pretty much had the whole universe and all its ancestors to fight. Back then you could think yourself up a little wisdom, write it into a nice book, and you would be consequential enough to have your work passed on today– but this was not ‘back then’. Death had been conquered, and with that died either the drive to do too much, or any acceptance that things were okay as is.
Nobody in recent decades really knew how to fight the ever-present truth that they were not important to most other people. It was hard to get the general populace to care– every glaring issue was remedied times prior, and everything that happened was just another occurrence of another day.
You had time to start paying mind to things a little later– the average male would stop aging at around 35, the average female around 30. Road and food laws were strict and there was no crime; if you wanted to die, you would have had to take initiative yourself.
Then came a small movement. To a select few people, their near-immortality meant that there was no reason to live for anything but to build up– with achievements and titles– their names.
Kirby didn’t like his own. There were too many people who shared it in his classes; at times he almost felt like he was less of an individual because of it– anyone who only knew him by it could deduce absolutely nothing; they wouldn’t even know if he was a boy or a girl– and thus, to him it was a bad name.
Cheer up– I think it sounds lovely and suits you just right!-- And by that, do you mean I’m just like everybody else?
He was in his 8th year of gradeschool, and he knew he was childish for his age– but he set himself the high mark of being a “one and only” kind of soul, and that much was almost resolute. His friend, Clementine, thought Kirby was being stupid about all this “uniqueness” ordeal– but perhaps he just didn’t get it.
Clementine was a short, thin, and simple-hearted boy with sweaty blond hair, and was Kirby’s senior by a year, but they had shared their schooling as the older one’s skill in writing held him back rather early. He did have his skills in math and chemistry, but in front of “Kibs” and his acrylic portraits and classical music, Clementine was more-or-less completely lost. Somehow he still managed to enjoy it– as he managed with all things.
The two were in the back of an old, musty church in the outskirts of Hallow, where they usually ran off together after school had Kirby not had his extra piano lessons, or if the two had an empty Sunday. It was a warm and sunny afternoon; had it not been for the noise of the birds and the dust in the air, maybe it would have been pleasant.
“I made a mistake in the last few measures– it’s always a load of pants when you mess up near the end,” Kirby said as he examined the bow of his violin– perhaps he added too much rosin. “You didn’t hear it, did you?”
“I did.” Clementine sat at the front of the cracked pews and looked up at his friend on the stage. “I just didn’t think it mattered.”
“The recital is tomorrow and everyone’s going to be watching. Of course it’ll matter.” There was a squeak– and the violin began to wail again. Clementine laid himself along the seat and closed his eyes.
The wailing stopped. “I’m bothering you with this, aren’t I?”
“You don’t bother me, Kibs. I just get sleepy lifting my head all the time.”
Kirby stopped to think. It was not his goal to become a “good violinist” or an “outstanding kid”-- hell, if he ever stooped so low to be decent then he might as well have been dead. That was not enough– he had to be the Kirby– he’d bless the name for everyone. With an endless life, you simply had to set yourself challenges like that. He could not understand those who shied away from radiant brilliance; to him, such a pointless life might as well be ended.
He sat down on the stage and rolled up his red wool socks– they were getting a little small. “They’re building a new complex down the street from my house,” he said. “The noise drives me crazy. I can’t practice at home and you always come along with me here. Aren’t you tired of hearing all this?”
“I already said you don’t bother me. I think your music’s good.”
“You only say that because you understand nothing about it.” Kirby couldn’t say he understood it either. He just knew he had better taste than most, and that was only because he knew what to like if he wanted to be praised. “At the very least you could start by telling the difference between what’s noise and what isn’t. You don’t get to call my music good.”
Clementine was aware he had no idea of anything when it came to art. Sometimes he wondered if he were simply born with a faulty set of senses– whenever Kirby told him of the mastery behind an oil painting, Clementine could never see it. Whenever Kirby pointed out every flaw in modern music, Clementine could never hear it. He was in no position to oppose his friend, and with a defeated acceptance, he took his new limitation.
“Got it. I’ll stop.” He didn’t raise his head.
Kirby’s mind began to buzz. There was a new idea nearing the end of its development. It was a solution to an old curiosity– nothing more. But there were no problems to solve, and nearly no conditions to improve, and the town of Hallow had enough people and resources that such frolicking around was not only acceptable, but lauded (but even then, the praise would not last over a few months at most).
“D’you know that birds see a bunch of different colours us humans can’t?” He asked. “No, and I don’t care.” Clementine flicked a pebble off the bench. “I’m not a bird.” “You don’t ever wonder what it’d be like to be able to see all that?”
“Why would I? I’m not a bird.”
Kirby packed his violin away and hopped off the stage. “Yeah, I know, but you really never try to imagine?”
Clementine paused. He had never considered– it was no use to him to think about anything that could not happen. Perhaps– could it be why he never saw anything in art? After all, his only interest in attending the pompous music recitals and the opulent art exhibits that Kirby would drag him along to was to watch Kirby himself, who would either be swaying about under the concert hall spotlights, or animatedly rambling in front of a statue that Clementine would not be looking at.
Surely he must have gone wrong somewhere if his friend was talking to him so. He could entertain Kirby’s idea.
“How about you?”
“I do, sometimes. I think it would be nice,” Kirby replied. He was being truthful; he failed to imagine different colours, and it had bothered him that there was beauty he could not understand. He knew he could not see everything, but he also knew about the nature of the new experiment. It was so painful that even a successful procedure would leave you blind for a moment, and while the clinic stated that you were guaranteed not to die, it was rather dangerous.
It was no surprise to anyone that they were still missing a final test subject. They were clear about the potential hazard; any faulty cut could completely dull your senses, and while a perfect procedure could give you the sight of a bird, to Kirby and many others, it simply was not worth the risk.
To Clementine, however– Kirby tried to reason that his friend could never truly perceive anything anyhow.
The clinic needed an adolescent male.
“Clementine, since you don’t imagine it, don’t you think it would be wonderful if you could see all those colours without thinking about it?” Kirby said as he sat in the little space Clementine made between himself and the edge of the carved bench. “It’s possible. It’s for your science, and they’ve got all the chemistry people there and the tools you like to use.”
“I suppose that would be nice.” Clementine didn’t particularly care about the colours himself, but perhaps they could fix his broken senses; perhaps they would help him understand Kirby and his art. “How is it possible?”
“I could sign you up for something.”
It was honourable to risk yourself for science, but it was just as much to give up one of your friends– the town allowed for experiments to be performed with just the consent of the fellows closest to the subject. Kirby also thought it suited better to have a more muted presence; too much shine was offputting– and thus, there was nothing wrong with leaving Clementine to claim the glory for him.
“And it would make me see like a bird?”
“Yes! You’d stop looking at all the ugly things and you’d start to really see beauty. You’d see more than I can. You’d be better than me.”
“But I don’t want to be better than you, Kibs.”
Kirby got a little hot in the neck. “But you can be better than yourself.” Clementine paused. “I don’t think I can disagree.”
Later that night the two found themselves under the streetlights of an asphalt road, freshly paved over. Kirby had snuck Clementine out; the younger boy knew that Mrs. Parsley would never suspect anything of that nature from her son. There was no need to lie too much.
The nights of Hallow were much colder. A late stroll along the sides of the street was uncommon but not unheard of, though it was typically reserved as an adult activity; children often had things of higher importance than “wasting time outside”.
Clementine was wrapped in a large beige coat over his argyle vest. The bulk had made him look rather robust, but he felt uncertain; it was the first time he had ever gone into anything unsure of the outcome. Kirby had told him that the procedure was safe; at the worst it would sting him a little bit and fail, but there was ultimately not much to lose.
It was also the first time that Clementine felt like he had lied. He was perfectly okay with his eyes as they were, and he had no interest in any new colours; he knew it still would not make Kirby happy (and even if it did, it would not have been lasting). Clementine could already see everything he needed to. He lied to himself, and that was unforgiveable.
The two walked towards a plasticky white sign with the title “RESEARCH CLINIC– THE COLOURS OF TOMORROW” scrawled across it. It was not far; the layout of the town made every trip convenient enough to be reached quickly on foot. There was a hollow reverberation with every heavy step they took in their thick boots.
“You are sure about this? And– and it is honourable?” Clementine asked as they stood at the step of the smooth iron door. He had not asked such a question before; he preferred to conserve his words. Questions were not for things you did not care about.
“Yes, of course.” Kirby smiled. “You know there’s nothing better than giving yourself to progress– go on. I’m proud of you.”
Clementine felt a swelling in his chest and looked down in shy satisfaction. “Well, that’s good.” That was genuine.
“You can go in now, Clementine. I said I’d have you for them before eleven. I don’t want them to think I didn’t bother with punctuality.”
“Oh- alright.”
With a coarse slam of the door, Clementine was gone. The experiment had begun and soon Kirby could have his first appearance in the local newspaper for making the final sacrifice needed.
Kirby walked away. He had no more to worry about. Perhaps his best friend would even come out with a better set of eyes– perhaps Kirby had done him a service! But nonetheless, there was nothing to fear— not for Kirby, who had done nothing wrong, and especially not for Clementine, since the procedure could– would not go wrong.
It would not matter if Clementine stopped seeing. It was not Kirby’s pair of eyes after all– and it was certainly not a pair most people would miss. Clementine was not someone that people would miss. He was so small and so dull– so, so dull. He could be a machine. People could make and buy their own versions of him all the time. The person was not needed.
Oh! And his name– there had to have been none more fitting. He was just an orange. Sweet, yes– but not much more. You could grow him on a tree. Kirby had nothing to worry about. Kirby had done a good thing. He was brave. Do you know how hard it is to talk a dumb friend into a smart idea? Do you understand?
Today was a good day. Tomorrow would bring in the acclaim Kirby so desired– the good men and women at the clinic would work all night and publish a page as soon as they could and there would be a name on it and it would be Kirby Anderson. Clementine would come out and see everything in a new way and stop being stupid. He would look at Kirby and see that he was not as beautiful as he used to look and now that all his real colours had stopped being hidden he was actually quite ugly. Clementine would start knowing that he was the best and that Kirby had wronged him and thus Kirby was bad and everyone would know.
But it was not in Clementine’s character to speak poorly of anyone, no matter what.
Kirby sat on a bench, stopping a quarter into a wide stone bridge that stretched over a still river. He would take his time crossing— he started to miss his best friend, and there was nothing to go home to right now.
Somehow, he knew that Clementine was not smiling– not in the name of science; not in the name of curiosity; not in the name of Kirby. What had he done? Oh, it was just the heat of the moment! He made me mad. He made me mad and I wanted greatness– ah, I’ve made him useful, but...
There was a section of the bridge where the railing had fallen– it was around for three years, but it was not fixed. From the spot on the bench, the water was visible, and it would not take much legwork to meet the river.
For a moment, Kirby almost considered.
It was another day to buy groceries. The three were sick of smallmouth bass. Liesel had done to her best to make the fish as appealing as possible, but even she had grown tired of the taste, to her displeasure; she’d firmly believed her own labour would’ve added an irreplacable spice; it had not.
Mathilda took the wheel and drove to the mall-town in a small, dented car she didn’t want to be ashamed of for driving, with Liesel, holding two large plastic containers of pond water she had strained and boiled, sitting across in the passenger seat. The streets were now uncomfortable; sometimes looking out the window you would see an upsetting sign, or worse: hear the radio play loud on another passing vehicle. The war had reached East Waterbridge,
and Cairnerith had done nothing to slow its advance; it was being made very clear everywhere that danger was now somewhere tangible.
Mathilda used to enjoy the feeling of being in a car and loved watching everything pass by and the scenery change; now that she had to drive, it was unnerving. She now had laws and guidelines to consider, moreover, she knew she had to worry about being seen as a good driver. The new truth and the gloominess that came with it was even more of a distraction alongside her nervous thoughts.
She played with the idea that they were no longer safe and did her earnest to accept it. Liesel would have some trouble, that much Mathilda knew; it was going to be hard to tell her friend that “hard work” and “perserverance” wouldn’t grant her immunity to poisoned water.
Isaac was a lost cause. He’d been nervous and fearful ever since he joined the household, and it’d always been stagnant; Mathilda could not see it getting any worse now but it would certainly not get better. Furthermore, he had fostered an odd hatred towards the Cairnerian authority; to keep him quiet during the ride Liesel made him wear a big hat with a large brim that would obscure his vision of the signs and messages about the war. In his words it was “their fault”, and they were “punishing innocent people.” Liesel entertained the concept, or at least pretended she did, Mathilda thought– she herself might’ve agreed, but Isaac was obnoxious and his rattling somehow made her back from Heron Lake hurt worse, and that was all that she needed to lose grip on his theory. She felt it hard to spare even a little sympathy for him.
They arrived at the mall-town. It was smaller this time; Liesel noted that the furniture section looked notably deconstructed. That might’ve been a government mandate; after all, it was the least popular sector of the area, and it had been burning a considerable amount of resources for little in return. There was a small extension in the back, though, barely visible to a viewer at the front: the clothing section had gotten slightly larger.
“Hold on, let me do something before we go in.” Liesel said with the water in her hands. There was a row of stands set up by other Waterbridge citizens that sold various unwanted goods; next to a sale of lightly used children’s clothing Liesel set down her water. She took her time debating with herself on whether she should label the source of the water, before realizing that to most people, the medium of the attack was likely unclear; she left it out.
She produced a note: “FREE WATER– take it if you need it” on a small sheet of cardstock she folded into a little stand and left on the lid of the container.
“There– had to do it first.”
Liesel recalled the schoolday where she’d taken a chunk out of a lesson to present a few bottles of water she’d cleaned had any students wanted any; her offer was taken with a generous silence. She then left the bottles in a blue bin by the door.
More than likely her contribution in front of the mall was not going to help anyone. She knew not everyone would’ve trusted it, or even felt the need to stock up– on water, of all things– but there was a small chance it would’ve been picked up and used. The action alone gave her a spark of hope.
The mall was dense with people, but it had a heavy, foggy quietness– on every floor, along with the shoppers, products, and faint music, was a thick and dripping void. The group was slower to make its way to the groceries– they’d agreed to a longer stop at the stationary aisles, but even considering the pause, their movement felt strangely weighted.
Liesel, in particular, was vocal about a faint, flickering dread on her shoulders.
“I’m scared”, she said. “I just don’t know what of.”
“Not the war?” Mathilda asked as she flipped through the grey marbled pages of a delightfully small calendar she picked up. “I think that’s a reasonably frightening event.”
“Not really– it’s odd. It’s a pervasive sense, but it’s quite elusive– it’s not something I can name.”
“ATTENTION SHOPPERS: East Waterbridge is under chemical attack– at this time, it is advised that you do not leave your homes. If you are suffering from the following symptoms, please seek out medical attention from the official establishments immediately...”
That long, dull sense of dread was paused with an announcement that reverberated throughout the sticky grey room. It came loud and suddenly. Liesel felt she should have been horrifically shocked, as if she wanted the announcement to be the source of her dread; instead, all there was was a peaceful comfort and rejection. There was something greater to worry about.
“Well, just a little worrying!” Mathilda exclaimed. She’d taken a small divergence from the rest of the group to check out a neighbouring shelf of clear round candies. “We’d best get done with our business and back to Heron Lake.” After multiple squabbles with Liesel over the work outdoors and embarrassing herself in front of Isaac when she ran out of ammo for her side other than the “I just don’t want to”, which she kept hidden, she cut her losses and decided to not just agree, but heavily advocate for it; she felt obligated to relentlessly sanction the winning side, though it had covertly caused her a great deal of personal embarassment.
Now, the three had already collected clean pond water worth a week of drinking, and alongside it three days of tap water. They were careful about the taps and hoses; Liesel had stopped using the town’s water for anything but rinsing out things that weren’t crockery or utensils. The safety of their old collection was already questionable, but now it was certain that it was not to be filled with any more tap water. The attack on East Waterbridge was now confirmed.
They needed more bins for the Heron Lake water.
“The means of the attack are still unknown. Please stay with us; we’re working to keep you safe.” The loudspeaker came again. The message struck unease everywhere; the packs of other mallgoers moved together, huddled; everyone who was not already silent kept to themselves; paint was worn underfoot.
A lurid peace ran through Liesel’s mind; behind that, a quiet fear, and behind that also, a lagging guilt.
Liesel sat alone in her room. She’d hollowed out an underused recreation den to sleep and conduct her work in; the air in her proper bedroom upstairs was far too suffocatingly warm every other day, and far too chokingly cold otherwise (though Liesel noted that the forecasts had lied; none of the weather ever brought any rain). Mathilda made do with the smaller tea-drinking chamber adjacent to where Liesel stayed, and slept on a woven mat on the floor. The basement was rather temperate. It was always useful as year-round storage, much more so in a year without tangible seasons (was it February? September? Liesel wasn’t sure, but it didn’t quite matter.), but it made the aura of the residence rather oppressive (but that was preferable to the conditions upstairs– to Liesel, outdoor climates had no reason to be in her room.)
She had a picture framed on her wall. When she cleared out the room she didn’t want to remove it, though it was big and obsctructed a little night-table’s placement she had preferred. It was a large and intricate diagram of the engine of a war plane a certain country (one of the few now congregated into the state of Cairnerith; Liesel couldn’t remember which one it was) they used in the third World War– an event none of her family cared much about aside from her brother. The large canvas on the wall reminded Liesel of him.
She thought of her brother and missed him. A painful scene played out in her head.
It was a twenty-something years into the past and they had their daily gathering around the table in their basement hideout. He slid a lined sheet of paper across the varnished wooden surface.
Liesel picked it up and read it.
“Garbage,” she wrote in neat handwriting at the bottom of his list of procedures and diagrams. “No chance in the competition if you can’t come up with anything worth even my time,” she added on a separate note.
Lukas set the note aside as he began working on a separate sheet, while his sister shot him a disapproving glance. He knows Liesel usually thinks twice before talking or writing, but anything that affects her shots at a decent college somehow always gets her riled up.
“What don’t you like about it?” He scrawled onto a sticky-note, which he rolled into a little tube and tossed in Liesel’s direction, landing inches away from her small pile of sketches.
“Well what do you think? You throwout-bin regret purchase,” she spat in response. She spoke too quickly for him to guess what she was trying to tell him. “They want innovation. They don’t want instructions to solve a stupid box that prides itself on being a useless talent.”
She paused. It almost looked like she had regrets for a second.
“Oh, sorry, I forgot you don’t wear your special headphones when you devise your world-changing masterpieces.”
That was true– he doesn’t wear them. Nobody likes dealing with contempt nor pity when they want to focus.
They worked in silence for a bit longer. He wrote a letter addressed to his sister on how he hated being seen as her “counterpart” and added a witty remark that said he’d rather the L in his name stand for “Loser” than “Liesel’s clone”. Then he crumpled it up and tossed it, making a plink sound as it made contact with the metal rim of the wastepaper basket.
“Here’s an upgrade. Maybe you’ll see some actual science this time,” read the title of the sheet of paper she handed him– a diagram and construction of a small tropical ecosystem contained in a glass sphere. It was certainly more impressive, but he didn’t like how every letter and line in the sketch was brimming with her presence. Liesel saw it in his frown and the crunch in his expression that happened every time he didn’t want to appreciate something she made.
“It’s pretty cool,” he perhaps thought about writing– but his hand was held back by spite.
Liesel took out her cherry limeade. The first sip tasted like summer break memories; the second, of artificial sweeteners.
“Well?” She mumbled, clicking her pen. Her brother did nothing.
They spent time drawing shapes in the garden mud a little bit afterwards. Lukas made a point of wearing a large rain hat; his earpiece had no issues withstanding some light water, but it made him feel better about it. Worms crawled in and out of the soil.
It was a shame Lukas was born like this. If he was... if he was... Liesel could not quite recall her train of thought, but it was not one she was now glad she had thought.
“Why do you even wanna be in the contest anyways? It’s not like you know anything,” Liesel grumbled. Lukas shrugged, tracing the silhouette of a battleship into the ground, but the rain had rendered it nearly unrecognizable. He peeled the bark, soft with rainwater, off of his drawing twig.
“Mom didn’t even want twins. She doesn’t want you,” she continued.
“Leave me alone,” he wrote in response. His sister knew he could feel he was being underestimated and pitied– she knew he was tired of the “what ifs” and the “if onlies” and she was not in the mind to stop.
“Yeah, run away like you always do, you miserable cur!”
He turned around.
“You know I’m glad you’re born a deaf, mute freak! You’d never even have anything to say, so it’s good they shut you up!”
Ha! Liesel opened up her eyes and stared into the side of an old storage dresser she had covered with stickers. And to think I was so sure then that I was anyone to change the world.
She stood up and looked at the framed canvas poster. Lukas was gone; she made no effort to deny it. He’d been gone for fifteen years, a little less than how old he’d lived. Liesel did regret her words, but felt no guilt; by all means, her brother was someone who truly loved life in all its entirety, and would’ve done anything to not die. That about him was admirable, even to a younger Liesel. Lukas merely had an accident; there was nothing Liesel could’ve done then, and there was nothing she could do about it now.
Lucas, however, was a different story. Losing connection was not the least bit surprising, but there was now nothing to confirm or deny his existence; to her timer on Earth he had been gone for at least three years, but to him in space it could have been much longer. He’d spent all those years alone, and surely he would’ve gone mad and forgotten that he could create as much sustenance as he needed in the closet. He might’ve starved to death; he might’ve forgotten himself. If he was still alive, then he was certainly miserable, and it was Liesel’s fault that he was in such a condition. She sent him up there, and she felt sorry. The possible salvation of the lives of many, to her, was no longer as weighty as the condition of the life of one.
Nevertheless there was nothing more she could do. There was no telling of how Lucas had cultivated his thoughts, but Liesel knew she could stop and think; and with that, she decided she had to continue.
I felt an ache in a third foot this morning. It was located right beyond the flesh of my lower left leg.
In front of the mirror I appeared as a standard and upright man. But I knew I had 13 fingers: six on the left, seven on the right; I had a longer torso that folded inwards with the weight of the skulls that flanked my head on my shoulders and the necks that connected them, and today, a third foot. I could feel it all.
Over two weeks I had crossed out 3 more planets I had to explore, none of which produced anything noteworthy, but a certain one of them had wind speeds and air pressure a only little higher than Earth; I took my time to tape a paper airplane to a string, and that string to a point on the top surface of the drone where I could maneuver it so that the camera could capture it in flight. Sending it out was difficult. The gap between my door and the floor had bent a wing of the plane– ah! It made me upset; I was quite proud of the plane’s construction and it was my very first attempt. I had to shamefully watch the disfigured thing flap about in the wind, but that alone was enough to bring joy. (Though, at the time, I had not felt quite so anchored– I only had more fingers. It did not hurt so much.)
We had landed on the final planet before the Data Centre and the end of Liesel’s list of destinations. It was a shorter journey, and only took an hour from the last stop; the end was near reach and it was tempting to go and strike another task off, but I was beyond tired; the Crawler had not been much of a provider of restful sleep. (A disturbing dream is usually a sign of success, I’d only recently figured— if I was asleep but not having such a dream I would wake myself up and go sleep again. I’d have long nights drawled out like this, and it’d led to plenty of irritability and fatigue.)
I felt cumbersome. Death said he wouldn’t have been disappointed if he was Liesel and I took a day off; I contended with him that I had nothing else to do, and could do some work to pass the time. I told I would’ve been even more miserable otherwise, and that had started an argument between the two of us.
“Have some rest, Lucas– it’s alright.”
“Why?”
“You’re starting to lose your grip a little. You don’t look weird and you don’t have three heads.”
“Ah– I need to work,” I said. “It’s–”
“Meaningful?”
“No,” I objected as I sank into an uncomfortable position– I was in an awkward spot in front of the silver fullbody mirror, legs tucked into my chest as I slumped up against a birch dresser. “Just something to do.”
“That would be meaning.” “How so?”
“It gets you through life, no?” Death asked. He picked at the skin beneath his ring. “But I will say— it is hard for you to find satisfaction this way. You’ll always look for more to do. You work just to work.”
“Is satisfaction the end goal?”
I briefly wondered if I had always looked this way and had merely forgotten.
“It could be. In any case, you’re miserable. You’ve even forgotten how you look. The Crawler itself had done it to you; not even the mirror could convince you of the truth. Please, I beg of you— rest.”
He looked at me with a melancholy gaze.
“You don’t write as much anymore.”
“I have only one more planet to do! Let me do work. I will write later.”
“Ah— as you wish, then, I suppose. I won’t interfere,” he said dejectedly. “But I will give a fair warning: after this planet is the Data Centre. After that and you’d have nothing left. Are you sure you want to..?”
It was true that it was nice to have a goal hang in the air; I had been looking forward to the Centre; it’d gave me some sort of drive to go on– but after that? Ah– he was right! I wasn’t so sure.
“Do you have a better way of life, then?” I asked.
“I’m not who you should pose that question to. I also do miss your writing.”
“Are you not excited? It’s the end of the journey– the culmination of everything we’ve done!”
“Your journey– I would be excited for you. But...” “But?”
“You don’t seem all too excited yourself.”
I took a moment to realize he was right.
“Well?” He asked.
“For now, at least I’ve still got something to look at.” I paused, and continued. “The happiness can come later.”
“As long as it’s what you want. I just have a question– out of nothing but curiosity, of course.”
I shifted from my seat and made myself more comfortable as I sat on my heels. “Yes?” “Will you be happy?”
“I think I certainly will.”
For the first time in two months, it rained.
Half of the reservoir was depleted. That was the result of the three becoming rather comfortable with the amount they saved and using more than what was needed; only after Liesel indulged in a bath that ended up being disappointing did she realize she needed to make a conscious effort to conserve the resource. At least it rained today. It would be unwise to ignore what was given to us, Liesel thought– but she was comfortable now in the warm living room. Collecting water could be the task of someone else.
There was a flicker and a crackle. The television turned on.
Liesel looked up from an old fashion magazine she read as she reclined into a beige leather lounge chair.
“Ah.” She did not have the strength to leave her seat. Last night she hadn’t slept.
It started not long after the rain. The television opened to a bright red screen and black scrolling text– this time in an even more obnoxious size and font than what she had remembered from the last alert.
“ATTENTION: East Waterbridge is under attack. Do not leave your homes. Do not place objects outside.”
As the rain fell harder, the alert grew louder.
“Do not drink anything from outside sources. Do not place objects outside. Do not leave your homes. Do not place objects outside.”
Mathilda walked into the room with a tissue to her nose and sat on a wood ottoman. Her face turned a lurid crimson with the light and the trace of her fever as she turned to look at the screen.
“Where’s the part where they assure us they’re doing their best?” She asked.
“Oh– I don’t know.” Today’s broadcast was different in that it was straightforward– ironically there was only more ambiguity and mystery. Liesel’s fear came into flesh, and she shivered. “I guess they’re giving up.”
“Liesel, we– we need more water.”
“We do! Could you grab us the buckets?”
“That’d be a little much, no? They– they did ask us not to leave anything outside.” Mathilda coughed. “But we need the water.”
“We’ve got things smaller than buckets, then!”
“Ah! Right.”
Mathilda disappeared into the basement. She produced a plastic bowl with a scratched and fading pattern of cherry blossoms around its exterior in her hands. The bowl was small– that would keep it discreet.
“This should– good enough.”
“Sure thing– put it out.”
A camera was set up on a telephone pole that pointed towards the windows of the house. Mathilda looked around for a more obscure spot that would’ve still seen rain; when she thought she found one, she opened the window and set out the little bowl. The bowl filled steadily with the drizzle.
Not long after there was a knocking at the door. When nobody answered it became louder and more frequent.
“Mathilda?” Liesel gently beckoned– this time not diverting from the magazine.
“Alright, I’ll get the door.”
Outside stood a tall man with a smooth cap and dark glasses. He wore a short coat, zipped up, and linen trousers, all a dark khaki in colour. He was lightly wet with rain and weighed down by a large bag across his shoulder, and had no hair; at least, none that was
visible from outside of his cap. He pinched the rim of Mathilda’s bowl in his gloved left hand that dangled to his side.
“Is this yours?” He asked as he presented the bowl.
“Yes,” Mathilda replied. “Why?”
“What were you doing with it?”
“Collecting rainwater, sir.” She stared at the man. The short-haired woman was just as oblivious as she was surprised. “What’s wrong, sir?”
“Did you hear the instructions in the new broadcast, ma’am?”
“N-no,” Mathilda earnestly spluttered, as she always did in front of anyone she couldn’t knock from their seat.
“Pay more attention next time. You are not to go outside— you are not to put anything outside. We have made this very clear.” The man folded his arms and still held tightly onto the bowl as Mathilda traced it with wide eyes. “There will be punishment.”
The man pointed at the tall camera pole. The camera swiveled, and its red light flickered. “This will tell us. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good,” the man said as he put the bowl away in his bag. He walked away, and Mathilda watched him disappear into a thick of trees and shrubbery and not the road, before closing the door herself.
“Liesel?” She called out as she looked back at the doorway to the dining room. Her friend set down her magazine on a glass coffee table and walked to the foyer. “Yeah?”
“We aren’t going to live.”
The next day when the rain had cleared, the three looked out the window. They could very clearly see that above the black camera, there was a new installation of an object which what appeared to be a long-barreled gun.
NOT YOURS!!!!
NO BOYS ALLOWED!!!! sunday 14th, june
i found a big thing in my backyard with my brother. it was hot in the basement where we usually stayed and did cool things (last day he made a mousetrap and that was pretty good. i felt bad for the mice tho) and it was so hot we had to go outside because our air fan broke. it didn’t help that much since the sun made it pretty hot outside too.
lukas told me that he saw something weird and wanted to check it out. the forest isn’t really our backyard but we call it that anyways since nobody else goes there and it’s really nearby. i had some trouble talking to him because he had his bad pen on him, and plus his handwriting isn’t really good.
the big thing was like one of those storage sheds we used to have back when we lived closer to the sea. it was all metal and i thought, “it must be really hot since it’s been sitting out in the sun for so long” and i tried to touch it because i’m a little stupid, but it turns out it was not hot at all. lukas didn’t like it because he said it gave him “bad vibes”. he is usually the kind of person to go into things head first because somehow he’s even stupider so i don’t know what’s up.
we used the machine. it didn’t have a control board but i somehow managed to get it back home. it doesn’t seem like it has a motor at all, and we’re not really sure how it works. on the inside it looks like my bedroom, but lukas disagreed and said it looked like his. we had an argument and none of us won.
and then he said something like “i want to go home and back to the basement, this sucks”, and we kind of stood there for a moment not knowing what to do. after a while we fell asleep. it was really hot in my room that morning so it was really hot in the big machine too.
we woke up after a little bit. we were scared because we still couldnt agree on what the inside looked like. then he pulled out an old thing out of thin air. it was one of his books that he read and i had no interest in reading since it was about war and i don’t care about that. then for a moment i got worried that i was just seeing things, so i tried to take something off the shelf and it was the baseball glove that is too small for me but i kept because i think it’s special. he saw it and started to get confused too.
somehow we managed to get the big machine all the way to our basement because we came out into the basement. it’s there now and was there when we stepped out. dad doesn’t come check in the basement really, since he knows it’s for us kids and our stuff. it fits in the washroom
because it’s more tall than wide on the outside, but it’s kind of dusty compared to our clean basement and has a weird symbol so we think it will get some attention.
monday 15, june
i’m glad that school is out. i don’t like staying there since there’s nothing to do anymore. lukas has to go somewhere else and they treat him all funny there and he doesn’t like it either.
we played more on the machine. turns out it can go pretty much anywhere you want. lukas used it to take us to some place in the amazing rainforest. he likes that place and told me there’s a reason it’s called the amazing rainforest. i think he’s wrong because everything is either dying, or it’s already dead. he showed me old pictures of how it used to be and i told him it’s not like that anymore.
we ended up near a river and we both were a little frightened because there might have been animals out there so we left.
i did bring home a souvenier though. it’s a leaf but it’s brown (couldn’t find green). lukas thinks it’s stupid.
wednesday 17, june
mom says i have to go play with lukas. i don’t want to play with him or his gross boys because they came over as well. mom says that because i’m his older sister i should be sticking around him and taking care of him to make sure he doesn’t get hurt. that makes no sense. i’m two minutes older and i didn’t get a head start at the time.
i’m going to go play with the machine. i told lukas he’s not allowed to tell any of his friends about it, and he agreed. it would be hard to explain anyways. yesterday we ended up finding out a little more.
the experiment went like this:
i stayed in the machine. it looked just as expected, with my room and all. lukas was in my actual room, and he said he was going to do a few things like move some stuff around, take a lamp out and replace it with one of his model planes. we wanted to see if it would update and no, it didn’t. then just to make sure i wasn’t just not seeing something, he went in the machine to do the same thing while i messed up his room, and it didn’t change until he went out to see it and went back into the machine.
we concluded (big word) that the machine would show your bedroom, but only as you last saw it. also i can't take anything out of the room and have it stay. other than everything i already
have when i go inside, it doesn’t give you anything. that makes sense since you can’t really create matter i suppose.
when we don’t use it we put it in the forest. keeping it in the basement would mean questions. nobody goes to the forest anyways, it’s weird and it’s big and scary. the forest isn’t pretty at all. but that only means it’s a good place to hide.
saturday 20. june
i dont think there's some sort of limit to where the machine can go. lukas and i think it can go anywhere so we tried to go to the moon and it looks like it worked.
we were both too scared to go outside because we heard the moon has no air. lukas told me something like this machine doesn’t come from earth because if it did then people would be using it everywhere since it’s so useful. i said that isn’t true because there are lots of useful things that don’t exist a lot since they’re so expensive but i think he has a good point. not even the best airplanes have this kind of technology.
we got into an argument. i just wouldnt read his writing so he couldnt really win because i was ignoring him. i really wanted to tell him about a few ideas i had but i knew he wouldnt listen. he was still mad at me. there really was no reason that we should have started the argument but sometimes it's just a thing where people get upset and want to fight.
i feel horrible.
i argue too much i didnt mean it
saturday 20. june 2 (another)
i think i should write down my idea so i dont end up forgetting.
if the machine really doesnt come from earth then it means ALIENS MADE IT!!! there's life in other places and not just earth. that's so cool
i'm not sure i understand why this machine would just be out in the woods. anyone could find it and i'm totally sure they didnt mean for a bunch of 10 year olds to be using it. i really should make some sort of guide to how the machine works and what it does.
maybe i can make a lot of money and get really famous for finding it.
i can probably use it for a lot of good things and then i would be so so so proud of myself. this would be big news but for now i don’t understand it so i should be quiet
sunday 21. june
i pointed at myself in a mirror and asked who are you. that was the weirdest thing to happen this week
tuesday 23. june
there’s not much to do or look forward to other than the machine.
i woke up at 10. that’s pretty normal except for the most part i was just lying in bed and doing nothing until mom told me i had breakfast. i don’t really want to eat.
i feel like a lot of things are pointless just like the time i remembered that dream with the old guy in the hospital with his wife who was about to die and the doctoers couldn’t save her. i watched them try and pour her medicine but she said there was no point because it was all bad and wouldnt help her.
i feel like i dont know whats going on anymore friday 26 june
there’s something weird in the machine. i know it’s not mine because i would never have something like this. it’s a flat rectangle shape with nothing on its top or side and looks a little scary.
it has a controller and it’s just like the helicopter toy i got in christmas that people made fun of me for since it was kind of a stupid toy and not many people still played with those. i still think it’s pretty neat.
what the rectangle does is it actually will tell you about where you are. it’s got a lot of big words like “air pressure” “atmospheric composition” that i don’t know and easy words like “wind speeds” and “temperature” that i do. it’s not super useful unless you’re doing a weather report or something like that.
but you have to write the information down yourself. it just gives it to you in your head. boooooring. at least it has a cool camera and some claw things
there was another book that was really thick. it had pictures of all sorts of planets and it had some that i didn’t even know existed. it didn’t give that much information other than where it was and what kind of sun it had.
i didn’t know there were so many suns.
looking at it for so long makes my brain kind of hurt.
HOW TO USE THE MACHINE!!!! by lieselotte age 10 WARNING!!!!!
this machine can go anywhere and by that i mean ANYWHERE. you might accidentally take yourself to a black hole. so be careful.
this machine will make you feel REALLY weird if you start using it too much. it runs on dreams. your dreams could be infected and if that happens whoo wee itll be such a ride for you! dont use it if you dont like dreams!
TO USE IT!!!
the machine is really easy to use all you have to do is not be scared of it. it looks like your bedroom. find a place on your bed and bring lots of stuffys! then you just need to think really super hard about the place you want to go. you actually have to have an idea. something like where is mom wouldnt work sorry. you need to know where she is and think about that place instead.
then go to sleep! like i said it's really important that you feel comforble. it helps you fall asleep easy. then you wake up! ta-da
it’s that easy
At last– the Data Centre.
It was only another long night from the last planet I was on.
“Was there not a paper instructing you to not open the door to the bedroom? You have a drone to walk around for you already.”
“I want to look at everything for myself.”
I stepped off of my dull beige carpet for the first time in a year. My weight lunged forward as I exited onto the glossy concrete of the universe’s Data Centre– a long hallway with no windows or stairwells, and was about as plain as plain was along the lower sides of the walls and the floors. The ceiling was far too tall overhead, and the tops of the hall faded into darkness as you looked up and up. Doors, built in sporadic cadences alongside the thin walkway, would each hold information on a field so vast it was endless. There were no signs. It was assumed that whoever had the power to access the building would already well be aware of which door their target was behind.
I knew where the Department of Life was kept. Death had helped, and also explained that the Crawlers– as the transportation machines were called– did not function anywhere but the landing section of the hall (though I had conveniently stopped at the point furthest from my destination).
It was a six-day run leftwards from our spots along the line, and a two-week walk. I ran as much as my energy would allow, and my companion followed suit; if I was too fast I would slow down and wait (as otherwise he would catch up and overtake me). I walked elsewise, and if I was too tired for that, I would crawl. Only once could I lay down and rest– in most other attempts to do so the chafing blisters were too painful to bear with closed eyes.
Seventeen days had blurred into five hours, and five hours had felt impossibly long. When I stopped in front of my door, I could no longer tell if I had been shambling or floating, or which direction I had been facing and heading along. Everything was already liquid and running down the sides of my arms.
The Department of Life was lofty and abuzz with swarms of small flylike machines, and according to Death it was the most important room that was kept, which was why it was made so large. From the entrance you could see rows of them pulling on long yellow paper scripts, cutting the paper, and leaving it in tall wormlike piles near the centre of the chamber. The air was stale and thick and smelled of old blueberries. Long structures, dirty-white and curved inward towards the pile, jutted out from the sides of the walls, each with a faint carving of the Department sigil. The little fly machines hummed in and out.
There was almost no light. The black stringy fixtures hung low from the dim ceiling oozed a muddy glow that did not illuminate a lot, but it was enough for me to find a large, clear sphere past the yellow pile. Thin, long machines, carrying the yellow paper, marched towards it and fed their cargo through a small slit in the sphere.
I watched as something in the sphere turned the paper into dust and blew it out another opening where the little flies would catch and eat the grain. That was how information was kept and processed, and how the paper, made obsolete after its contents were copied onto the sphere, was disposed of.
“That’s the answer to everything there– in a sphere?” I asked as I hung my eyesight low. The sphere was not bright, but it was unpleasantly harsh to see.
“As much of it as you can handle anyway. What’s in here could make anyone go insane.”
“Ah, I’ve seen the worst of the world already.”
Death twisted his ring around and pushed up his thin black eyeglasses. “Expect quite the opposite, really; they detail the life and death of every dog and spider and every blade of grass. It wouldn’t take much of your time to go through at all, but the sheer volume of information is far
beyond you. You’d have shed a few layers of your brain already before you’d find anything you’d possibly need.”
“There is no sorting system?”
“It wouldn’t benefit them; they’re all too good for one.”
“Would you be of any help?”
“My field’s not in browsing the intel, but I could see about looking together with you?”
“Of course– say, should you not have the brain to take all the information yourself?”
“Ah! If you think I’m smart enough to pick out what you’re wanting, you think too highly of me then. Give me a moment.”
He left and made his way to the entrance to drop off his briefcase, which he emptied onto a nest of the flies and left by the door. He rubbed his hands together as he returned with a breath of ease.
“Now that that’s done, we can poke around a little here,” he said as he pulled out a section of the growing pile of the long scroll. “That’s them talking about us reading the contents here. Everything past that point are things you haven’t done yet– we can’t read them, though. It’s beyond what we can process, and I’m not sure if they’ve already got something planned out. We don’t have the power to prove or disprove it. That’d be another building.”
“What’s the purpose of keeping all these records? Surely it’d be important if they retain so much.”
“Ah, so they get some idea of what’s gone wrong when they eventually end up remaking everything.” He took his eyeglasses off and on, as if refreshing his sight to look at the little flies pulling paper in better detail. “This is the fourth iteration.”
“They?”
He sighed and shook his head as he rekindled his old spite. “Bunch of fellows who made the universe– they’re looking to make that perfect strain of life. After everything collapses in on itself and it all becomes empty, they start over. Your people’ve already gotten it, it seems– the part where it all ends. I’m not sure how close any of them are to their visions of what perfect would be, but the last time I had any one of them talk to me, they had their eyes on what looked like a tardigrade.”
Death stopped to remember. He had a rather finite space for thought (and as he explained, it made him a rather efficient worker as he did not need to think about much).
“I used to work with them but it turned out I was quite difficult with my job– ah, they didn’t like that I had no mercy and pretty much never listened to anyone. I’m still a fine janitor, though. They didn’t want me up there making decisions, but I suppose what I have now is still a reasonably honourable position. I don’t remember their names.”
I sat down on the pitted black concrete and watched the flies disperse. “Any reason why they didn’t just make everything the way they wanted it?”
“Hey.” he winced. “They’re really not as high and mighty as I made them sound, I’m sorry.”
Death frowned and held his head in silence. Something was starting to bother him, but he quickly resolved it and began again.
“They can start us all off with something, but anything that happens after that is well beyond their power. They aren’t even sure whether anything would change if they redid a trial with the same starting point; one of them argued that living things would always find means to deviate, but the other said there would be no reason to deviate if everything started off the same and there really was no outside force to change it. Something’s making you think your thoughts right now– we could both be part of an identical repeat trial. Really, what’s truly random anyway?”
“And what would we do in that case?”
“Nothing, I suppose,” he said with a faint tone of satisfied defeat. “I go where life goes, and I never remember anything past a single iteration of everything. None of us have that power to change it.”
“I don’t feel any different in the way I am.”
“It doesn’t change anything about you. You’re still free to act and do what you feel you should, as far as you’d be aware anyhow, even if it was all there at the start. Nothing you can think of has been barred off.” “And it’s just a hypothetical, in any case. We’d all be pretty powerless to change it anyhow.”
“Ah, well I don’t think it would matter then if it were true or not.”
“Not to you, no.”
I looked at him. I had a certain resolution in my heart already, regardless of the outcome; I was now light enough to float away. “So what do we do now?”
My forehead felt a sudden ache. Something was now heavier than it had been.
“We can keep looking. After they process all the information, there should be a larger module where it’s actually stored. What are you looking for again?”
“Life elsewhere. Either proof that it exists and could happen, or any existing race that could help Earth out anyhow.” I paused. “As I was always looking for.”
“We’d be able to find it, then. Shall we head for that module?” “Lead the way.”
It was five months since the gun was mounted.
It had rained the night before. Around the house was a heavy, steeping overcast sky. The grass had not grown more green; the soil had not harboured any more life.
This would have been a typical Autumn. It was July (though Liesel was unaware– she’d once left her phone die and saw no reason to charge it again. It couldn’t have been July– could it? She hadn’t gone to work in a month, but this could’ve been another mandate she had forgotten about).
Cold light came through the holes in the faulty blinds of a tall kitchen window and onto a floor, barely swept, and made every mote of dust a passing foot would kick up glow. It made the walls glisten with specks of cooking oil and fat, made the glass table shine with prints of unclean fingers and smudges of past liquid meals.
Lunch had not been served; it usually was not served. Each bowl and plate and fork had been so thoroughly stained and discoloured; to have the three all in one place to eat, and all in the mind to eat, was so rare of an event that not even a collective dinner could have been prepared. It had been like this for four months.
In a dim study room, Liesel was busy moving plastic sheathes of papers and boxes of unopened pens onto the ground, for two reasons: desks, and the insides of desks, were not to be crowded, and she had also misplaced the third volume of an old book series that looked rather pleasing as shelf-weights. She had slowly realized the absence of an otherwise large key-lock box, which would normally present itself as no more but a brick; but it having no longer occupied the back corner of the dusty walnut desk had been worrisome.
If it had been present, it would have been an oak box engraved with a Latin phrase– reassuring, Liesel thought, as it was a phrase one would say to something one wanted to keep safe. The box might as well have been destroyed now; it was not intended to ever be opened.
“Mathilda, you didn’t happen to go through the desk?” she called out, in a frog’s voice. “The third drawer– the– the one that’s a little more stubborn, and squeaks up to the heavens.” She removed a hair tie from her wrist. Though the rubber had stiffened and made tumorous little bumps around the band, it worked for now; it kept her fat yellow tails of waxy hair from hanging into her sight and smell.
It would not have to be like this forever, she thought. It will be all over soon. They would not kill me; and afterwards I would be able to clean myself again. They might kill Mathilda and Isaac but they would not kill me. It will be all over soon.
Liesel took a second to look outside– at the stripped frames of trees, at the wind-cut debris that left divots in the ground when they landed, at the round stains of dried rain left at the foot of her window, and she had forgotten how the yard had looked before; she remembered every last barnacle or rope hanging from the docks southwest of her home but could not remember her yard.
A corpse of a flower bloomed in a round glass pot. A shallow pool of yellowed water sat inside.
Mathilda shuffled into the room with as much elegance as she could muster. She had downed three cups of heavy liquor hours prior; two years ago she would have rather lost a finger than to have ever made it obvious to anyone that she drank.
“Did you hear the broadcast last night?”
“Yes. They do not make them quiet.” Liesel suppressed a cough– every cough was a run of sandpaper over her throat. “I thought I called you in to ask about the desk.”
“Did you?”
Liesel picked out a small ball of oil from the side of her face. “I believe so.”
“Well I don’t recall it. I just thought I heard you downstairs and came to check.”
“On what?”
“To see if anything new has happened.” Mathilda sat herself down on an old chair her friend salvaged from a closing restaurant. “To see if anything’s changed.”
“Something’s changed. That drawer’s been opened– my pops has never opened it, when he had the house. He told us to never have opened it.”
“And it’s been opened?”
“Yes, that is what I told you.”
Mathilda looked– sad, as if she had lost something, like a precious ring, or track of time– and then continued on.
“There must be something missing from it.” Something’s gone! Even in her inebriated state, Mathilda understood the feeling. “I’ll help you look for it later. Go and get some rest now, please.”
She paused to look at a clock that no longer ticked.
“They will broadcast again at six.”
The broadcasts were Liesel’s least favourite part of the day– they were mandatory listening; bright, frightening, and worst of all– loud. Once they played, you would lose control of the screen; whatever device you had used to greet a dear friend or read a story suddenly became an enemy; a mouth for the state of Cairnerith. And the mouth did not shut up: “THANK YOU FOR THE COOPERATION” was the phrase it blared out last time. “ALL VIOLATORS WILL BE EXECUTED” was one it liked to repeat. Who knows what it would be this time? Equally worthless– it would be, Liesel thought. If it would have been proper– if it would leave any sort of mark in her time, or made her look like any sort of hero, she would have cried out– What a load of bullshit!
But she stayed silent.
“Mathilda, you know I can’t go to sleep when I know they open transmission so soon. It becomes all I think about! It’s not proper rest, tossing and turning around on a bed doing absolutely nothing, and not falling asleep either– it just becomes a waste of time. You know this; you never would go to bed if you had to up yourself in two hours anyway.”
“It’s two hours. I haven’t seen you get a wink of sleep, and you don’t sleep at night either. You’re as pale as lard. What’s keeping you up?”
“Lucas!”
Mathilda’s fingers went cold and white. “Would you stop with all this already? He’s– dead! You’ve lost him; you’ve lost him! You care too much– too much about someone who can’t even give a slip of a damn about you– all this– ‘Lukas, if only he were here– if only I had been better to him; if only he this, if only he that– I DON’T WANT TO HEAR IT ANYMORE. ALRIGHT? I– I don’t want to hear it anymore. He’s gone to the sand.”
“You– you don’t even know who the devil I’m talking about.”
“It was a bad day at sea for all three of us. All three! He leaned– a little close to the side rail, he was all– ‘you girls can stay in there, and be dry and boring or whatever,’ on that damn sheet of paper, the one that still smells of salt and acid, and the– the storm– and he went over and under. Okay? None of us saw it but we knew it happened ‘cause the boat all went a little sideways. He couldn’t even scream for help until we all came back out of the cabin, and that
was a good twenty minutes after the storm had passed, and he didn’t know how to swim. Your brother’s dead and I’ve never loved another man since.”
“Mathilda,” Liesel choked out. “I don’t want you to talk any more about it. The storm didn’t– take– this one. I killed this one. With a C, Mathilda. Lucas, with a C.”
“I’m going upstairs. I want you to stop saying all this nonsense.” Still drunk, Mathilda went on. “Don’t bother me until something happens. Don’t bother me at all since nothing’s going ‘ta happen.”
Tired and exasperated (though, her exasperation had made her even more tired, and then vice versa), Liesel slouched herself against the hard side of the desk, the one not already banged in. She grabbed at her left shoulder– three days ago it had started to ache periodically, and while grabbing at it never helped she’d always had the urge. Today, it subsided rather quickly.
She fell asleep to the dry sound of the radio in a distant room.
This is a statement by the Government of Cairnerith.
It has come to this.
It has come to the point in the war we have never wanted to take.
Please listen attentively. It is your duty as a citizen to follow these orders.
Do not turn off your television.
For the safety and prosperity of your nation, do not exit your home.
Do not eat or drink from any outside source. Use only the water from your home systems– such as your kitchen or washroom faucets or your baths and showers.
There are no other precautions that need to be followed. Stay in your home and eat in your home. That is all– it is paramount that you follow these two conditions.
We waged this war on ourselves, and we are losing. This is the most effective method.
The life of many is worth the death of some.
There is no more to say. Please follow the instructions. The instructions will repeat.
Do not seek help.
Bang.
Mathilda came rushing into the smoky den of the house. There was now a little hole in the side of the green plaid couch.
“Isaac, what in the world?”
“Testin’ something out.”
The boy had a finger wrapped around the trigger of a long-barreled revolver. In the corner were pieces of a wooden box, with its hinges warped after an attempt to remove the lock, though now it lay smashed open. Isaac spun the chamber.
“Put that down, how in the heavens did you even get your hands on something like that?”
“Well tell Liesel to keep her things safer next time.” He opened a soft, wrinkled cardboard box, flipped out the black cylinder of his new toy, and loaded it with the contents of the box. “I’m gonna kill them. I’m gonna shoot those bastards dead.”
Mathilda walked towards Isaac like an angry mother storming out of a school office to her son. “Who?”
“Them bastards who done away with my mother. I’ll kill them all.”
“Isaac, stop that!” Her arms flailed like ribbons as she tried to grab at the boy’s hands.
Silence. The revolver was loaded. There was a rustle; Isaac had put on his cap and jacket and pointed the snout of the gun at Mathilda.
“Touch me and I’ll pull it.” “STOP!”
There was no stopping. He had already barged out of the den with his left hand holding his cap down.
“I’M GOING TO KILL THEM! I’M GOING TO KILL THEM ALL!”
Isaac rushed through the main door, and– almost immediately– was neutralized via gunfire. His cap fell by his side, in a small pool of red– two meters from the porch of the house.
A message began to play on the telephone pole loudspeakers.
“WE ARE SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE. THE GOVERNMENT OF CAIRNERITH THANKS YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION.”
The ground beyond the floor was hollow, and there was a staircase that wrapped around a long tangle of wires hanging down from the bottom of the sphere like the roots of an upped plant. Dust hung in the air, and there was even less light. The white paint on the staircase was smooth and not worn, and the sound of hitting a stump of rotted wood rang out with every footstep.
“Death,” I began as I walked, “I’m sorry if this is a bit of an intrusive question, but has anyone managed to avoid you? Or, ah, and I don’t mean to grill you– have you ever failed at your job?”
“Oh! No. Not one time. I never show up to anyone that isn’t supposed to die.”
I resigned with more confusion than clarity. My head hurt as I continued to descend. “Ah. Do you know what people do before you see them?”
“Typically I don’t take my time; it really is of no essence, but I prefer not to be idle,” he said, caressing the bonelike railing of the staircase. “Things expect me once in a while; though even still I find their acceptance rather rare.”
From every corner of the room to the centre were tall shelves with boxes of varied size and content. It became visible a third ways down the staircase and faded in from the cloudy air. I estimated there was still a good five minutes left of legwork, though I had felt sore in the calves. We continued on.
“I do recall an old fellow who had been anticipating my arrival, I think. He was not agitated, but welcomed me as he would a guest, and gave me a bundle of his own lye soap as a gift. He let me poke at various curios and realia he had in collection on his shelves and take them when he was gone. He was a polite man, and I almost pitied the boy. He was the only one I remembered,” Death finished.
“His hospitality never made you consider sparing him?”
“I’m afraid mercy is out of my realm.”
We reached the end of the steps. Stripes of thin light came in from the opening to the floor above. At the bottom of the stairwell looking up, you would have the eyes of an ant lifting its head in a yawning-ceilinged storage room, full of children’s toys kept only for memory. This was where the Department held everything it deemed remarkable.
I pointed inquisitively at the metal crate of skulls, hairs, and leaves and made a noise. I found their standard odd.
“Pay the boxes no mind, friend. They’re trying to figure out what it is that makes a perfect lifeform.” He sighed apprehensively and gazed at me, and in that instant we both felt as powerless as each other. “Once that happens, they will not have a need for me anymore.”
There was a puzzle on the shelf. I walked over, picked it up and turned it around. All the colours had wilted from the sides, but there were symbols on each side– which led me to think the cube could function as expected– until I noticed a deliberate flaw in the manufacture.
“Hey– this cube can’t be solved?”
“Yeah?” Death poked his head around the corner. “They picked it up and thought it was cool.”
“What’s cool about a faulty puzzle?”
“I’m not sure– you’d have to ask them about it. I suggest you leave it be.”
The module where the information was accessible laid beyond where most of the things were kept and was marked by a triangle gate. The knowledge coalesced into a solid globe of light, glowing black, then blue, then red, floating in the middle of a crescent shaped mantle. The globe was compact with no controls, and did not illuminate much of the dark, cavernous room.
“Only 180 degrees?” I noted that the gate was a very normal triangle.
“They only break rules when they need to, like with travel and material durability,” Death said as he paced around. “No need to alter a perfectly good triangle. It is an elegant shape and
it has done no wrong,” he said as he took off his ring and left it on the mantle. “Well! This certainly is my first time being of any help to anyone.”
Death stepped in front of the globe and adjusted his posture. He took a heavy breath, and for the first time, he was standing up completely straight.
“I’m going to learn everything and tell you what I think you’d want to know. Ask questions later because I’m sure I’d have no idea what answers you’re really looking for,” he said. We looked at each other one more time.
“One thing I wish to know of you– I really don’t bother you at all?” He made a little choking sound. “Most things find me a nuisance.”
“Surprisingly human question you just asked!” I laughed. “No! You’re a good friend of mine and nobody inspires discipline in me like you do. Please go on.”
“Ah! Of course.” He smiled and took the sphere up in his large hands. “Glad to be of some kind of service, I suppose.”
“And this place is?”
“The woods of the suicides.”
The boy held his guide’s hand close enough to where the older man could feel his heart beat through his dirty white gown. The two of them were careful of where to walk; they did not want splinters in their feet.
A light shuffling of footsteps. Flickering torchlight– and a sound of snapping oak.
“Why are the trees being hurt?”
“For they rejected life, the greatest gift of all.”
“There is a spot my size here.” The boy looked and patted the soil– he knew it was not fertile. “Would I have become a sapling?”
“If you carried through with that rope in your hands, you absolutely would.”
“I don’t think you know me very well then. You have not seen my life.” He kicked a small twig towards a nest of slumbering hounds. “It is horrible.”
“You’re right, I don’t know how you live.”
“So I should not be punished for wanting escape.”
The man paused, as if hurt– then pointed his cane towards a tree. “That is my son. His self-hatred has dried the earth around him to crumble at a feather of a touch, and now not even the harpies want to pick at him.”
The boy felt his throat going hot. “My parents wouldn’t care if I wilted away in this forest.” “That’s not an excuse. You’ll end up here anyways.”
“But I don’t want to.”
“Then you should live.” The man too began to weep; he was not afraid of showing his tears to the boy. “Life is harsh and unpredictable, and every day can feel like a leaf in a whirlwind. But it is always worth living. Always.”
He held the boy tightly by the shoulder, and thought as if misery was heat– that it could be conducted by touch. “No matter what.”
“And why should I adhere?”
“Every man will have his own answer.” He set down his own cane to wipe the cheeks of the boy. “Please go. I have nothing more to show you.”
“How did you sleep, Liesel?”
“Ah– quite alright, really. I feel rested. How about you?”
“Not so well. Kept up by my own heartbeat.”
“WE INTERRUPT YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED BROADCAST WITH A MESSAGE.”
“Ah– I’m sorry, Mathilda.”
“It’s not your fault; don’t worry yourself over it. What– what are you doing?” “Ah! Just making a crane.”
“There’s nicer paper for that downstairs. You’re using old tax forms.”
“So? What else will old tax forms do?”
“I don’t know– stuffing of some sort? That crane is cursed with about a billion creases now.”
“I don’t care. It’s fun to make.”
“I mean... I’m glad you’re having fun doing something.”
“IF YOU DEVELOP ANY ADVERSE REACTIONS TO YOUR WATER, PLEASE DO YOUR BEST TO IGNORE IT.”
“How are you feeling, Mathilda?”
“Fine– fine. I suppose. I don’t... really know.”
“And you?”
“Calm and happy as ever– I just had a bad day that other day.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry about that again.”
“Don’t apologize, Liesel.”
“What have you been up to? We haven’t really sat and talked in a while.”
“I’m trying out drafting. I’ve designed a part of a castle already.”
“Ah, not continuing with carving? I thought your wooden fellow was pretty well-made.”
“I might go back to it– it didn’t resonate with me like I wanted it to. I’m still proud of that fellow, though.”
“UNDER MOST CIRCUMSTANCES, THE POISON SHOULD NOT BE PAINFUL.” “Anyhow– at least you’ve got an excuse not to be job-hunting now?”
“I guess so– augh. Like the hotel, the cafe turned me down as well.”
“I just don’t think there’s high demand for labor. Makes sense with the climate of everything and all. Nothing against you in particular, I’m sure.”
“Yeah. It’s just... I don’t know. A little frustrating.”
“You’re enjoying your artistic ventures though, I’m sure?”
“Augh. It’s been a bit of a disappointment.”
“How so?”
“I don’t know– I don’t think it’s something I could explain, Liesel.”
“Ah, well, I’m sorry. I’m always here to make you something if you need it?”
“You’ve– made enough things. What is this supposed to be, a snowflake?”
“I overestimated the scissors.”
“Oh. Well, are you... not concerned about much?”
“Nothing that I’d be able to do much about, anyway. But I’ve been thinking quite a bit about... the air and everything. What happens after the... hm, war?”
“That much would be anyone’s guess– I don’t think we’d have much longer anyhow even after everything’s over. I don’t know– maybe everything that’s going on really is a blessing in disguise. I don’t know. It feels wrong for me to say that.”
“I don’t think it’s really right when anyone dies, but I suppose I’m just not as knowledgeable as whoever’s pulling the strings. In any case, I try not to think about it much. Do you like this crane?”
“It’s alright.”
“PLEASE DO NOT WORRY ABOUT THE HEALTH OF FISH HABITATS– PRECAUTIONS HAVE BEEN TAKEN TO ENSURE NATURAL ENVIRONMENTS WILL NOT BE HARMED.”
“Do you want it? I can give it to you.” “...sure.”
“You don’t have to take it!”
“I’ll take it. It’s pretty cute even though it’s made of... tax papers.” “You collect calendars!”
“Yes, and?”
“You don’t get to make fun of the paper I use.”
“I wasn’t, but alright.”
“I’m sorry.”
“...”
“So what do you think happens next, Mathilda?” “Next of what? A lot could happen, really.”
“...”
“It’s definitely a shame that this is happening. What we were so proud of being so good at really did end up biting us in the ass, Liesel.”
“Emissions?”
“Yeah. Maybe not in the ass– somewhere where it hurts more instead, probably.” “I don’t think we’re in danger at all.”
“No, no, you definitely do!”
“Yeah, I know.”
“...”
“I just don’t think it’d help me to acknowledge it.”
“So to you, Liesel, we’re just stuck at home but nothing is wrong?”
“Yes.”
“Not even with the water?”
“I tell myself the stuff in the reservoir tastes better.”
“So does it?” “...”
“...”
“No.”
“What’s inside?”
Death stepped away from the sphere and put his ring back on. His otherwise plastered, blank face cracked and looked a little worn, with heavy eyelids and a downturned mouth. In that moment more than any other he felt alive to me.
“Ah, you can’t just– ask me that– ah.” He sat down for a moment to collect himself.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I just have no idea where to start with everything– there’s just too much.” He took his glasses off and swiped the back of his left hand over his eyes. “You’d need to ask the right questions to get what you want and sometimes that’s even harder than finding the right answer.”
“Let me ask it like this, then– is there anything you want to tell me?” “Ah! You die.”
“Couldn’t have guessed!”
“Oh– give me a break, I’ve got the headache of a lifetime now!” He walked over and put his ring back on. “They had every possible future in there for you– everything. I had to stop. But in each and all of those timelines you would die two years from now.”
“Two years! I better get back to Earth and start writing my will.” “Ah– but– the way you die...”
He exhaled and joined me on the black curved bench I sat on.
“Really, some of them were horrific– oh, I don’t even want to say,” he exasperated as he moved closer. He put his hand with the ring around my waist and let me lean into his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
“Two years is long enough. I don’t mind.”
“I could make it easier for you,” he said as he stroked my side. “I could take you with me now.”
“Why?”
“Oh, I just pity you for whatever outcome it could be. You could be contained upon your re-entry and be tortured for all that time– oh, you might’ve learned something they don’t want you to know. You might be considered an alien– you might not even return to the world you once knew! I can’t keep a full story straight in my head, but believe me; it really is nothing pleasant and I won’t be able to help you then.” Death let out a faint sigh and let his head rest on mine. “But I won’t make it hurt now. I promise.”
“Nice offer.” I closed my eyes and let my weight fall.
“Well?”
“Yes? It’s a nice offer and it’s thoughtful of you.”
“So...” He looked away and became hot in the face. “Are you going to take it?” “No.” I didn’t even entertain it.
He released his hold, sat up, and moved his legs onto the bench. “Ah? But-”
“No, I heard you.” I leaned forward and put my hands on my knees. “You bring up a good point, but I want to live.”
“You’ve really thought about this decision?”
“I don’t need to.”
“Lucas,” he pleaded. “Please. Think about it.”
I thought about it and maintained my stance. I informed him with a blank gaze and a small head-nod.
“What reason do you have?”
“I want to be alive– what more reason do you need?”
He turned to look at me with dirgelike eyes.
“Do as you will, then,” he mourned. “Maybe I’m just selfish, but I’d hate to see you live on with so much pain.”
His hand was around his finger with the ring again.
“I’m sorry. I do love you.”
“That’s alright. We have all the time to meet later,” I articulated as I put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ve thought of some questions I’d like to ask. Right now, there’s nothing I’d love more than an answer.”
It was quiet around the house. Liesel could no longer tell what day it was anymore, but the air would’ve been typical of a long-awaited Friday evening. Blitheness and joviality were rolling around the corner. She’d finished sewing a long sequined dress, and was about to put it on.
The sun was not out. Liesel had grown tired of the mumbling browns and greys in the main floor and decorated them with hand-painted rainbow flowers and paper cutouts of fluffy clouds. The place looked quite like a kindergarten afterwards, but that had almost been her intention; she responded to Mathilda’s displeasure stating the living room was made for living, and if she wanted to keep the house dull she could do so in her own room. The rest of it was rightfully Liesel’s call.
There was faint music. The radio did not play anything happy; Liesel took matters into her own hands by positioning a gramophone in a location where the music would be loud enough to ignore any broadcasts should any come her way.
Mathilda was yet again in the study room with a paintbrush in her hand. Last night she’d tried to abstain from her usual drinking habit, but she reasoned that she had not much longer left and was thus allowed to give herself a little reward. She knew she’d pay for it next morning and she did; her canvas was as blank as her mind, save for a few lines of thought and pencil here and there.
She looked at the statue she carved. Liesel wanted to display it in the main hall, but her friend had ultimately decided her work was better off staying where it was made so it would inspire her. Pride would swell in Mathilda’s chest every time she noticed the statue, but it did not compel her to make more; instead, it made her feel that what she had already finished was
good enough and thus she could rest, which she would not allow herself to do. It was too much a satisfiying piece of art.
She sniffed and could tell Liesel was burning incense. She would always light a stick before preparing a tray of tea and snacks, and every time she finished she would call Mathilda over to share, and every time the offer would be declined; Mathilda had no time to indulge with other people. Usually she did not want to be happy with unfinished art on her table, and tea would have to wait. Today though, she felt was different.
Another broadcast was coming. Before she would lose her temper again she rose from her seat and walked out of the study room, this time not caring to close the door behind her.
She dropped herself on a chair at the dinner table.
“Mattie, you’re out!” Liesel exclaimed. “What were you doing this morning?”
“Painting– trying to paint, at least. It sounded the most challenging so I’d been putting it off– silly me. I’m tired.”
“Ah, but there’s no reason to overexert, no?” Liesel pulled out her chair and joined her friend.”
“I haven’t made anything to leave behind.”
“You’re trying far too hard, I think. You really have nothing to prove.”
A faint smell of watery rose wafted in the air. Liesel had made her favourite brew. To the side of the delicate cups was a small tower of gold-rimmed plates, lined with macarons and chocolate, held in place with a thin silver pole in the middle.
The teapot was unusually full. Mathilda recalled there was not much left in their resevoir of clean water– there was not enough to cook a full meal for the day, and there was certainly not enough for a little spot of tea– let alone a full pot. Liesel was smiling all the same.
“Oh, I’m such a bumbling fool; I forgot the pudding!” She pouted and let out a breath in frustration, rose from her seat, and paced towards the kitchen, as if that was the largest problem she had on hand. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry. Let me whip some up– do you prefer strawberry or mango?”
“How long have we known each other for again?” Mathilda felt herself finally becoming lighter as she leaned into the backrest of the chair. “By golly, you should know by now!”
“Oh, I know, I know.” Liesel danced around the kitchen water faucet, pink pearls and sequins glittering in the ceiling light. She filled a large beaked measuring cup three-quarters of the way. “I’m just making sure. So it’s mango?”
“Nope!” Mathilda spouted and puffed her lips out on the P. “Ah, I’m just teasing. Of course it is.”
She grabbed a flat remote control stick and fiddled around with the buttons, feeling the bumps on the rubbery bits. She’d always liked that texture, and the buttons made a nice clicking sound as they were pushed.
“Mind if I turn the music up a bit higher?” Mathilda asked. She was beginning to like the shiny garlands and crystals her friend put up.
“Oh, I’d like that too!” Liesel exclaimed as she picked up a small carton from the sparsely-filled pantry. “Please go ahead.”
There was a buzz and the sound of something frying. The television would turn on soon.
“I didn’t sleep too well last night,” Mathilda said. “I don’t know– I was just thinking about us, and that, and everything around us that’s going on. Do you really think there’s something out there for us– I mean, us as in people?”
“There could be.”
“What do you think it is?”
“Ah,” Liesel’s chest rose and fell in a heavy breath. “To be honest, I never thought it’d ever come to this. What d’you reckon Isaac’s doing right now? Do you think we’d get to see him?”
Mathilda wasn’t sure what answer she wanted to give.
“I suppose that’s not up to us. I just...”
She trailed off and faced towards the glass cup of a scented candle and tried to name all the flowers in the patterns. When that didn’t stop her eyes from swelling, she tried to count down backwards by seven.
“I want to really accept what’s coming, as I’ve always asked you to do, but I... I hate feeling so helpless about it. I’ve done everything I could to be...” Mathilda said, unsure of what word would’ve worked next. Pious? Meaningful? Wise?
She thought of her self-served loneliness, her piles of work trashed in fits of displeasure and frustration, then to the stack of empty cans she shamefully threw away last night. “It’s amounted to nothing, really. I just wanted there to be some gift at the end, and I wanted to truly deserve that gift.”
There was nothing but music for a second.
“I don’t like endings,” she said and sighed. “I don’t like happy endings or sad endings. I just don’t like them at all. There was so much more I wanted to do.”
Liesel herself was always split in half-and-half between acceptance and denial. She thought she was a divine exception, but she knew she was not; in the end, there was nothing more she could do. It was an uncomfortable feeling, but in a year she had gotten used to the discomfort. Whether there was reprieve or not for her was not her decision. She let the thought go like a balloon.
“Hey,” she softly spoke. “Hold on. Let me show you something.”
She disappeared behind a wide double-doorway into the adjoining reading room. Rustling of paper and scraping of wood against wood began as the television flickered, and Liesel reappeared with a cube in her hands and walked towards Mathilda.
“Ta-da!” She dropped the cube onto the lacquered dinner table. “Take a look at this!”
The cube had an all-white side, facing up, along with a red side facing Mathilda and a blue side to red’s left. The rest of the colours were jumbled and messy.
“That’s half the cube I got– what do you think?”
“Oh,” Mathilda replied. “That’s nice.”
Liesel could sense that she did not impress her friend.
“Augh, come on, I solved it myself! I didn’t get help from anyone!” She expulsed. “I would take the time and solve the rest, but I’m mighty happy with how it is now.”
“Yeah, I said it’s nice!”
The two of them did not notice that the television had begun to play. Liesel continued to prepare the pudding, as Mathilda took the cube into her hands and pried the pieces apart to look at the core.
Rain came. The dish the two set out to collect it was confiscated, and they were both fined with a solemn warning that they would both be killed if they tried something like that again. That had made Mathilda quite sad; it was her favourite bowl (but in hindsight, she realized picking that one was a bad idea). She would’ve loved to eat her pudding in it had it still been on her shelf.
“I’m done with the pudding,” Liesel said as she carried out a large glass tray of a thick orange solid. She set it down on the table and it wobbled and misplaced a sprig of cilantro she’d added as embellishment. “Now we just wait for it to cool– I don’t like to eat it while it’s still hot.”
She sat down once more and twiddled her thin fork in her painted nails. “Don’t drink the tea yet.”
“Why not?”
“It goes with the pudding,” Liesel explained. She smiled and readjusted the garnish that fell. “Plus, I don’t like eating so early. It puts me out of anything else I wanted to do.”
“Fair enough,” Mathilda said and poked at the pudding with a delicate glass straw Liesel brought out along with the food.
Her eyes swelled again.
“Liesel...” she began. “We’ve amounted to nothing in our lives. We have no story to tell. We have no records to leave behind. We go as ordinary, regular people doing ordinary, regular things.”
“Is there something wrong with that?”
“Yes.” Mathilda coughed. “I don’t want to be a regular person. I don’t want to do typical things. I don’t want...” She stammered and sniffled. “I don’t want to be a side character.”
“Neither do I. I do my best to not think about it; it’s a normal day like any other.”
“Liesel, I don’t want to die.”
Liesel looked into Mathilda’s reddened face, then down at the white leather purse she adorned her outfit with and pulled out a tissue. “It’ll be alright. We’ll be just fine.”
“We’ll be forgotten about, Liesel. We’ll go out as background stock.” An embrace.
“It’s okay.”
Liesel held her friend firmly. She did not squeeze or let go.
“It’s okay. We don’t need anything else; I made you pudding.” Mathilda began to let tears run down her cheeks.
“I’ll be here until you feel better, Mathilda.”
“It’ll be so lonely.”
Liesel gave ear to the low hum of the gramophone in the background noise and continued to hug her friend.
“It won’t be lonely. I’m here with you.” Music.
“Everything will work out. We’re okay.” Music.
“We’ll be fine.”
Mathilda stopped talking, and they spent the rest of the night at the dinner table. When they were hungry, they would eat, and when they were thirsty, they would drink.
I suppose this is the end.
I’ve missed planet Earth, and maybe that same Earth would take me back– I’ve gone faster than the speed of light. I don’t know. I’m not sure what would be there for me back in East Waterbridge– I could only wonder how Liesel’s doing.
I’ve always thought about the fact that almost anything was possible– somewhere out there was a set of very specific steps to take, down to the second– to help me accomplish anything I wanted. The issue, most of the time, is that I’d have no idea what these steps are. I’d have no idea if I was doing the right thing.
It’s a bit of a different story now. The problem is that Death told me no such sets of instructions exist– there really was nothing I could do to ensure or even bolster the chance of humanity’s survival. It wasn’t implausible– it was impossible. Completely impossible.
We’re all a little too helpless here.
There was nowhere in the universe that could properly house humanity at all fast enough; we’ve got the wonderful possibilities of everyone dying together in a cramped room to a destination even the Crawler would take three hundred years to reach, or be instantly gunned
down by an alien race infinitely more powerful than us, or immediately die upon taking a single breath of exoplanet bacteria, or slowly die afterwards when we inevitably run out of supplies.
Which meant in that case, my mission was complete and I hadn’t failed. I’ve determined without a doubt where a suitable second planet for humanity was– nowhere. That was all I needed. I’ve done my work.
That, though, would take some time to accept. I don’t think this feeling would last– soon enough, I’d be off and aching for another enterprise to undertake.
For now, I had a burden off of my shoulders.
The war on Earth was a scheme– that was not the least bit surprising.
What was, though, was the fact that it had really been the only effective action to prolong the existence of humankind. From that standpoint, the government of Cairnerith really did make the right choice, but that choice is exactly what would kill my friend.
Death said he saw no other outcome possible for her. I wonder if she knows.
With the way the current is flowing, there is no telling if humanity will make it to the next millennium. I’d bet that a hundred years from now some stubborn soul would manage to tough it out and survive, but whether that puts the human race in any position stable enough to go on would be anyone’s guess. I’ve never doubted the power of sheer will and resilience, but that would only take you anywhere if there were a choice to be made.
It’s like the weather, except even more desolate with its options– if you put out enough water to evaporate on a sunny day maybe you’d be able to earn yourself a day of rain.
I will die in two years. Actually– I’m not sure. Two years is the best-case scenario.
I don’t believe in destiny, but this is just a case of not having anything on hand to fight back against the inevitable truth.
And by that, there is nothing left for me to worry about. I’ve turned down Death’s generous offer– I’ve done what I need to do.
This is my break. I should make use of the time I get before I inevitably start looking for a new star to follow.
My work is over.
At the moment I have nowhere to go but stay in the Crawler. It’s still a small ways to Earth– three days and two nights of sleep. Right now I’m awake, and I’m sitting in my chair and reminiscing on good times with Death.
I had been an aspiring botanist and engineer for a very long time. I loved the thought of working with life without the disgust and disease that sometimes came with with fauna, at least– and I loved the idea of working on what I thought humanity was best known for: its innovation. Back when I was better at drawing, I’d make lots of diagrams of large, mechanical castles that’d work in tandem with plants: the plants’ natural responses to stimuli like light would power the castle. I’d imagine myself living in it. I wish I’d kept those drawings; I’ve completely forgotten how the contraptions worked (though if I were to guess, likely none of it was based on real science).
For a period of time with Liesel, I spent most of an average day either reading on the science behind agriculture or excercising the knowledge myself. I told my benefactor that a wild dream I had was to become self-sufficient in the woods– not that I hated luxury or convenience or society, but simply to test whether the techniques in farming I’d accumulated through thoroughly working a certain patch of her backyard would’ve done me any good in the wild. Liesel admired that passion I had for useless things (which she said out loud– I reckoned she was only jealous that I was a better chef).
Aside from science, I’ve always loved the swings. I told him that there was no better feeling than being alone at night at a park and on a swing; nothing then would matter but moving your legs back and forth at the right time, and that was easy. From then you could close your eyes and think about whatever it was that made you happy. If you kept them open, you could watch the fat moon dip in and out behind the trees of the surrounding forest as you swung back and forth. The movement was comforting, and it was intoxicatingly liberating. After a while your hands would be stiff, sore, and a little sticky from the residue of the sweaty, dirty chain. It would get uncomfortable, but it was equally so to stop.
On the swing I would think about going out and exploring the galaxy. Now, I closed my eyes and I thought about the swing.
Death also had some things he liked; in particular, he told me he loved playing jacks. It was the only game he played, and he became acquainted with it on the job.
It was a cold and early school day, he said– a little girl had seen him and was asking where he was going. He said he simply had work and didn’t have much time, but the girl insisted he stay. She was lonely. Her friend was late– the two would always hang out thirty minutes before the first bell would sound. The girl had a big bag of jacks held in both her hands and asked him to keep her company. He pitied her, and did so for as long as time did allow; he could be everywhere at once, but he always found it detrimental to be distracted; after a few games he said his goodbyes and headed off to take care of a car accident that had happened a few blocks down the road. Since then, he’s made the time to play jacks once in a while alone.
He also liked literature. I had a conversation with him over it; it’d always bugged me to know whether he was bothered by it at all; as far as I was aware, most authors and poets– especially those I’d have the pleasure of being alive at the same time as– said they wrote because they didn’t want to die. They couldn’t handle the thought of being forgotten, with nothing left to upkeep their memory.
Hell, I don’t know if I can handle that reality either, but I suppose I just don’t care as much.
Ultimately it was a way of “cheating death”. I was surprised to learn that he didn’t quite care; in his words it was not interfering with his job, so he had no reason to be against it. He wasn’t there to make sure people were forgotten.
In fact, he’d quite enjoyed the notebook I worked on that I let him look through.
Odd.
Now, we lay on the floor with our backs against the foot of the bed. I decided I was tired; furthermore I had nothing left to do, and it would be better if I were to rest instead of chasing down another task that’d bother me infinitely if I hadn’t done a good job with it.
I will close my eyes and go to sleep.
It feels strange to be going back to Earth; in an odd way I had almost longed for this funny feeling of returning from a long journey.
There’s nothing but peace left for me now.
I’ll see you again, I’m sure. It won’t take me any longer than two years.
This is a message from the government of Cairnerith.
To everyone still alive to hear this message,
Congratulations. You have bested our systems.
We sought to eliminate as much of the population as possible, though it was never our intention at all to not leave anyone alive, as we know your resilience would make a total eradication completely forlorn. It was a necessary evil to take, and it is a worthy alternative to a
suffocating blanket of atmosphere that would leave no survivors. Those who lost their lives for our future did not die painfully. They shall not die, as long as you are around to keep their memory as a face of a better world. A single human life in its entirety could produce well over 20 tonnes of waste. We have bought you fifty-two years.
In case you may question our methods, there was no better way; a violent eradication with gunfire would’ve been met with an equally violent uprising from the people. We kept the truth from you for so long, and we are sorry.
It was a long debate between me and the rest of the Senate on when we should have revealed our intentions. They argued that the people had no business knowing what wouldn’t benefit them; there was truly no hope for anyone who lived in a larger city– one had to die of either poison or gunfire. I argued that regardless, people still had a right to the truth. I eventually won over, though I do not doubt at all that there were citizens who had long figured the scheme out.
We were not victorious. It would be wrong to call any outcome that forced our hand into killing so many of our people a victory. We raised our white flags in the battle to be spared from the war. We are not winners; we are the victims of our own history.
When you will be seeing this letter or hearing it on television I would have been long dead. I have, with the pistol I always kept on me for self-protection, shot myself behind my temples from right to left and I am certain to have not recovered. My Vice President and my family were all behind me and followed suit with their cyanide pills. Our bodies are now lying at the roots of a forest.
You are now the last breath of our kind, and it is now up to you to take care of what we have. Mars had left our orbit long ago, and the moon holds no plausibility for permanence fast enough or for nearly enough people. What little we have remaining on Earth now is what little you will be left to work with.
Fifty-two years; please use them efficiently.
May we be free to never repeat our past mistakes.
May we be free to regrow and re-prosper.
May Mother Earth keep you safe.
God bless you. The future of humanity rests upon your tired backs. Good night, Cairnerith.
Everyone in East Waterbridge was dead. There were a few stragglers across Cairnerith who lived off river water and wild-grown plants that managed to survive, but everyone in East Waterbridge, and the cities around it— which would already be a good thirty percent of the total population— was dead.
Perhaps the plan had worked and Cairnerith’s government indeed bought the planet more time. Perhaps it hadn’t— but we know the plan was never made out of selfishness. That much became apparent when the President put a gun up against his temple and shot himself. Maybe some new society grown over the fallow fields would be able to tell him in heaven that his plan had worked, and that he had freed them to repeat their old mistakes. Maybe they would grow themselves a little tree. But whatever would happen in the future was not the problem of anyone who would’ve cared– they are not around to see it.
While a formal war never happened, it would be erroneous to say that there was peace in any facet at all, at least not where there was any longing; nowhere was there any ease: not in the choked-up streets pointed towards possible safe harbour, not in the corners of the pantries stocked with emergency rations, and especially not in the water.
A select few people had what gasoline that fueled their propellers spilt and lit: in the end, the most hopeful were the most defeated. The skies have no reason to answer Sisyphus’ pleas for a lighter stone; he could only endure.
The dusk was near. The final embers of humanity did not glow. Beacons did not beam; if there was any fire to melt the sprawling frost of confusion it was already snuffed out. The universe grew more expanse and Earth twirled itself slowly into a quiet death.
The high stages fell dark. The curtains were closed, and the little play had ended. There was no light; there was no audience, and there was no applause.
Instead, all there was left was a very long silence.
It was a clear day in East Waterbridge. The east-morning sun passed through sheets of foliage that overcast the trims of the town– this year in particular, was a good year for seeing nature come to bloom.
Ralph sat on a long park bench. He placed his cup of coffee on the black steel handle, which had gotten a little hot in the light, though the wood encasing was still dark with the rains of the night past. Rain was a welcome sight among the people though, and so were its remains– they ensured that the outdoors tomatoes did not need to be manually watered for the week.
Life was idyllic at its best. Waterbridge men often found themselves looking forward to the funerals, which were now public events–with them serving as a little taste of a reminder of what they had now and would not have indefinitely– such reminders were helpful for the mind.
The man turned his newspaper– a little greased from the tips of his post-breakfast fingers, and he let it flutter in the light breeze. He found the sound pleasant.
“The revival of Lucas Doyle”, read the headline of the page. A colourful print of a cemetery sat below the bold lines. “A truly bizarre event. Lucas himself has yet to comment on the situation.”
That is strange, thought Ralph. I do pity the young man. The comfort of eternity would mean nothing to him now.
Ralph deplanted himself from his position and ambled towards a nearby park– he was getting a little old for directions such as “three blocks left”, “take a right at the next intersection and proceed”, but he still had a good ear; when he shored up at his destination he knew he would hear the children play and the townsfolk ramble on.
A fingernail further into the forest from the park was a cemetery, where he came upon the headline. The people gravitated a little inwards, but were held a little back by a force– must have been respect, Ralph observed. At the centre point was a boy, long hair, lank and sprawling around him like weeds, as he curled up and lay on a cold, granite surface the sun had yet to touch. In front of the granite surface was an engraved headstone: “Here lies Lucas Doyle– a faithful student, a prolific engineer, a brilliant prodigy, but most of all a friend.”
The boy had no face visible, but from his back a pair of large wings flourished, white and softly beating.
The man listened along to the townsfolk’s chatter.
“He must really have loved life in all its essence– see! He crawls out from the grave.” “He is a poor thing. Look how his bones nearly peek out his skin.”
“Look! An angel must have blessed him.”
Ralph gazed at the boy, who finally moved his head and gazed back. The man looked into his faded blue eyes. They were the colour of the old paint chipped off his family home. The boy had his eyes sit on the man for a little longer– then unheaved a heavy breath and closed them. The beating of wings slowed, and Ralph turned his head and walked away towards the mahogany and brick town square, where he would pick up another cup of coffee. He knew the town would soon begin to concern itself with other things, such as death– which was almost celebrated, as death was the only friend which one could be sure would never leave them. Ralph had no idea how this boy had become the exception.
He did not attend Lucas’ funeral– the services for children were typically closed-off to non-family, but he had heard of a strange field the boy chose to devote himself to– the solving of various geometric puzzles. His favourite among them– a six-coloured cube– was set down at his headstone, next to a potted wild rose. The cube itself was a few turns from completion. He came back to solve it. Then he surely would go back in, Ralph reasoned.
It was an inconsequential thing, but Ralph would never forget the sight of the boy that slept upon his own grave.
author's note on the author's note: i wrote this on november 6 2022, which was exactly one year ago as of me writing this now (total coincidence by the way, i had no fucking clue before checking) and it was originally on a .txt file lmao. most of the stuff i wrote still holds up; the piece provides some insight on why i wrote the novel and its process in development. happy anniversary, evho afterword
Some thoughts on Event Horizon as I sit around on a plane and blast dubstep into my ears
It's been a good few weeks since EvHo (as I call it) has hit the market, to the grand total of one (1) sale. Ah, well. I'm proud of that alone.
It's received its first review of a very generous 4 stars. I honestly wasn't expecting any better; it baffled me that it got a positive review at all.
To sum up my thoughts: I could have done better.
I have a love-hate relationship with it. It's important to understand some context; originally it was never planned to be a written work, let alone a novel. Its first "official" iteration was a project I had to do as part of college training-- a "podcast" of sorts-- narrated and written chapter-by- chapter. I have no idea if it aired.
Due to the work's "episodic" nature, I wrote it less as a continuous story, and more like little moments of characters' lives that would piece together to form the larger narrative. I had about 8k words down in this format, before I ended up changing the college prep program I was with. This program wanted me to turn it into a novel, not a narrated podcast. I spent some time reworking the older content I had on hand, but I decided to keep the "pieced-together" nature of the work; I liked it and felt it could convey the lives of regular people in a difficult situation better than a continuous plot would.
The final version of the work was more-or-less rushed to meet a deadline as I had to have something of substance in my college applications. That alone means it was probably not my best production. In early 2022 this was especially true; I had around 10-15k down and was trying to meet a target of 50k. Being a high school student trying to keep up his grades, it was a whole load of stress. Every so often, I'd-- for lack of better terminology-- vomit out whatever I could to pad the word count a little bit.
In the "rush months" where I had my last chances to up my grades before summer, I took a rest and didn't work on it as much. I picked it up over the summer and that was when it gained the most momentum. At that time, I also realized that everything I wrote here-and-there was pretty much trash (as filler usually is) and had to be redone; that was also a hasty job, but at the very least the new iterations were much more thoughtful.
By summer I was working almost daily on the manuscript (at some point, I felt sick just thinking about the word "manuscript"). All the while, I had other things to deal with: a relationship I wasn't happy with, SAT prep, and a whole bunch of projects on the side, both for my own entertainment and for college applications. I couldn't get my focus together and I exploited bursts of inspiration I had here and there to write chapters of the book. Thus, I'd write everything out of order; whatever came first was whatever I felt like writing.
For the most part it worked well. There was only one issue: I had no idea what the proper order was supposed to be.
Yes, I didn't have a storyline planned-- I'll get to why in a moment, but I had to spend a very long time moving the blocks of text around like pieces of jigsaw puzzles trying to figure out what goes where.
Yikes.
I'd also like to mention that I'm 16 (author's note: i was 16 when i first wrote this afterword). I started work on Event Horizon 2 years ago. So yes, the first few chapters of the book were written-- or at least first laid down by-- a 14 year old.
I hope that explains the... abysmal quality of the beginning.
Also, when you're young, you're impressionable and usually download whatever cool new thing you just saw into your mindset. For that reason, the plot was constantly changing directions-- first it was an exploration into the morality of a character who wasn't even mentioned by name in the final copy, then it was an Earthbound-esque alien contact scenario where the power of love saves the day, then it finally started looking more like the way it was now-- except everything still was changing.
Some scrapped ideas from older versions:
- A plot where Lucas' past played a larger role (which I toned down in the final version as the original iteration was more-or-less for shock value or just to seem "dark", which I soon realized was a very poor choice)
- Mathilda's status as a role model for other characters (and the reader, until I realized she was a preachy fuckwad and annoyed the hell out of me, now I just made her a pretentious dick)
- The hoax was a virus instead of a war (VERY tactical decision to not seem like a COVID denier)
- An ending where people live (sorry about the spoiler)
This is not an exhaustive list.
I didn't have the thought to lay out the frameworks with each new element I'd add. I was very much making it up as I went, as I'd have to redo everything if I had a set story lined out. In retrospect I should've restructured everything anyway, but then I was under stress and a time constraint (not an excuse-- an explanation).
I also went back a few times and pruned out every swear word that I could (a singular "bullshit" made it into the final product because it worked, and also Mathilda says "wh*re" once because she's an asshole. I censored it because the word makes me uncomfortable just like Mathilda does lol)
All in all, it's a mediocre 50k-word novel written by a stupid teenager who doesn't know what the fuck he's doing. Poorly structured, yes. Poorly written? That's up to you to decide.
Still, I'm proud. I'm not proud of writing a GOOD novel-- I'm just proud of writing a novel.
Once again, to sum up my thoughts: I could have done better.
Hopefully going forward, I will.
Thanks for reading anyhow.
BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE!
Here's my personal opinion of every character in the novel!
LUCAS: He's a dick but he has an excuse. Nah, scratch that-- he's not even that unfriendly. He's just cold. By far though, I think he's the most moral character in the story: ironic given his original status as an antagonist.
LIESEL: I didn't expect to like her as much as I did. She really used to be punchable, but now she's pretty reasonable and overall a fun character.
MATHILDA: Dick.
ISAAC: He deserves better, but I don't have much to say about him. He was kind of born to die.
DEATH: I don't know what I was on when I made him, but he sure made things a lot more interesting. He used to be a lot creepier in earlier versions, but now he's pretty chill. Also yes, Death is gay.
TAMMY: Dick.
Nobody else is important enough to mention (hell, Tammy never even shows up in the actual story.)
ALSO ALSO: My favourite part of the story is Eight Minutes-- a chapter that can be completely removed from the entire book without affecting the plotline at all.
Yikes.