by Ike Hamill
The others had evacuated in a hurry. They had gotten out of there with no time to spare for birthday cakes. Maybe the Dianne-monster and its friends had chased them away. Maybe they were all monsters. There was only one way to find out.
“Fuck that,” she whispered, and she leaned the motorcycle into a turn. If they had evacuated, then her mission was pointless. The whole idea behind her coming down was to tell the people of the Outpost that they should get underground so they could weather whatever was making the power go out and the air unbreathable. It sounded like they had already figured that out for themselves. It made perfect sense—they were smart people. They didn’t need Robby telling them how to save themselves.
Corinna let the motorcycle slow.
“I should put up another sign,” she said, looking back in the direction of the town hall. “So nobody else gets caught by the Dianne-monster.”
She tried to imagine running up with a can of spray paint, looking over her shoulder as she painted a warning on the front of the place. She shook her head, dismissing the idea. It was lunacy. She had to assume that anyone else who might come along would already know about the place. Plus, how long could the Dianne-monster survive on cake?
“No, I’ll make my way north, slowly this time. Maybe I can figure out the pattern to the power outages and the bad air. By the time I get back to Donnelly, I’ll have more information for them.”
She had no doubt that she would make it. Through the years, she had come to think that it wasn’t her destiny to die like a regular person. There had to be a reason that she had lived through everything. There had to be a greater purpose that the universe kept letting her slip through death’s cold fingers. Of course, she hadn’t been convinced of that five minutes before when the Dianne-monster had been chasing her.
All her plans changed when she saw the sign. It had been spray painted over with an advisory about rough pavement ahead, but she could still read it.
“Burke’s Cave. 3 Miles.”
The arrow pointed left.
With only a second or two of hesitation, Corinna pointed the motorcycle down the side road.
Chapter 80: Lisa
By the morning of the second full day, Lisa was convinced that she was going crazy. She woke and blinked up at the ceiling. The bed was hard and the office was drafty, but compared to living out in a tent, never feeling clean, and sleeping every night on the lumpy ground, it was heaven. When she turned her head to the left and looked at Tim, he would be looking at the ceiling, waiting for her to wake. The two of them had to go tell Ashley to get some rest and then they had to go kill the elk.
She turned her head.
Tim was looking at the ceiling, waiting for her to wake up.
“It’s like…” he said.
She knew.
“…when you’ve listened to an album so many times that you know what the next song is going to be when one song starts to fade out.”
“Yeah.”
“I mean, I’m not thinking about the next song until the current one starts to fade, but…”
“Yeah. Like permanent déjà vu,” Lisa said.
They both nodded. Every morning started out like this. Or, maybe it was just that morning. There was no difference, really. Lisa flipped over the thin blanket and began to shuffle toward the bathroom. She used the bathroom near the lounge. Tim went out to the public one near the lobby. The water was drinkable and the power never flickered.
“It’s lucky that…” she started to say.
“It’s not luck,” he said.
She frowned and nodded. He was right. In the bathroom, the Lisa who appeared in the mirror didn’t quite match the one in her head. She wondered if they would age in this place. If the days were always the same, and they had always lived them and always would live them in precisely the same way, did their bodies still die at the same rate?
These were the questions that made her think that maybe she was going crazy. There were unanswerable mysteries in this place. A person couldn’t live with that much uncertainty before they would realize that nothing at all made sense. There was no such thing as normal.
Lisa brushed her teeth and washed up in the sink. She didn’t bother to take a shower. Later, after they butchered the elk, she would need a really long shower to wash away all the sour regret. There was no use in taking one now.
Ashley was still up in the control room, pouring over books and data.
“Hey,” Lisa said. She set down a tray for the young woman. It had some fresh fruit that they had collected from the valley, but it was mostly snacks from the machine.
“Thank you,” Ashley said, not taking her eyes from the book. With her free hand, she shoveled food into her mouth. Lisa saw a greasy fingerprint on one of the pages of the book and wondered if the last scientist had left it, or maybe it was a print that Ashley was about to leave on the page.
Either way, the greasy print hurt her head. She was glad when Ashley flipped the page, smearing her thumb right over the print.
“We’re going out,” Lisa said.
“Okay.”
“Penny will stay here, so she doesn’t bark and chase off the herd.”
Ashley looked up at her. For a moment, Lisa thought that Ashley was going to break the pattern and question what the hell Lisa was talking about. Then, she saw the words slip from Ashley’s brain, unconsidered. She went back to the book.
“You’re going to get tired soon. You won’t be able to keep your eyes open. When that happens, please take a nap on the cot instead of just falling asleep on the books again.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
Lisa wanted to be frustrated with Ashley, who clearly wasn’t listening. The weird thing was, Ashley would take a break later, and she would actually stretch out on the couch over in the conference room. There was nothing to worry about.
Lisa thought about the girl’s father. When Robby found a problem that he couldn’t solve, he used to completely lock up. He used to become thoroughly unresponsive, like he was in a coma or something. At least Ashley still made noise when she was consumed with an issue.
“Okay,” Lisa said. “Let Penny out when she…” There was no point in finishing the sentence.
Down at the back exit, she found Tim at the cart.
They didn’t talk as he drove down the sidewinding road and then took a left to head toward the northern ridge. The conversation played out in Lisa’s head, even though the words went unspoken.
“If everything here always happens in the same way, does that mean that everything everywhere is predestined?” she would ask.
“No,” he would say. “Because I can still exercise control over myself. I still have the ability to do something that I’ve never done before.”
To prove the point, Tim drags the wheel of the cart to the left for a moment, bouncing the fender off of a tree as they pass. It makes a terrible screeching noise, but the damage is only cosmetic. It doesn’t put a hole in the tire or mess up the steering. A startled bird is flushed from the grass on the right and it takes to the air to pass right in front of them. Tim doesn’t even flinch even though the bird nearly bounces off the windshield right in front of him.
Lisa smiles.
Tim didn’t flinch because he knew that the bird wouldn’t hit him. He knew that because he had always jerked the wheel, hit the tree, and flushed the bird. He had always done it, and he always would. Trying to prove his point, he proved the opposite.
She didn’t bother to say anything. He knew.
Eventually, he pulled over to the side of the dirt path. Through a couple of trees and over the rocky ledge, they would find a great place to stretch out and sight the rifle down on the apple orchard. There, an elk would pass by in an hour. When he lowered his head to eat an apple off the ground, Lisa would shoot him through the neck. The rifle pulled a little left, but she would compensate. It was the first time she would ever shoot the rifle, but she would know to compensate.
That was the part that re
ally didn’t make sense to her. It was one thing to be living a life that she had clearly already lived. What bothered her most was that she could fire a rifle once and only once and somehow know that it pulled left. What if she was mistaken? What if she accidentally twitched when she squeezed the trigger? Maybe the rifle’s aim wasn’t off at all.
Only, she knew why the rifle pulled left. The scope was off because the last person to use it, his name was Miguel, had dropped it the last time he had used it. The drop wasn’t far, but it was just enough to disturb the scope a tiny bit.
All this went through Lisa’s head as she watched the elk through the scope. Her heartbeat quickened and her breath was shallow as she waited. A dozen times she wanted to squeeze off the shot, but she knew that a better chance was coming. Finally, when she had started to doubt everything, the elk dropped his head as he bent to eat a fallen apple.
“Nice shot,” Tim said. It seemed like he said it before the report of the rifle had even echoed off of the hills in the distance. If that had been true, she never would have heard it.
They stood together, brushing themselves off. Lisa went back to the cart to put the rifle away while Tim set off on foot to start bleeding the elk. She would bounce the cart down into the orchard, using an overgrown path. Together, they would string up the elk and use the cart to hang it from a tree.
Neither Lisa nor Tim liked butchering, but it had to be done. They would take the bulk of the meat back to the big refrigerator at the observatory and grill a ton of it. The meat would last…
“How long will this last?” Lisa asked. It bothered her that she didn’t know the answer to the question.
Tim looked at her. Blood dripped down the knife and then down his arm. He shook it off, and then lowered his hand so it wouldn’t happen again.
“I don’t know,” he said. “We’ll take a bunch with us when we go, but then…”
Their memories ended at the same time.
Lisa was pretty sure that she knew why.
The plan was to let Ashley sleep as long as she needed to. They both knew that it wouldn’t work. The smell of the grilling elk would wake her up. She was rubbing her eye with the back of her hand and yawning as she came through the glass door.
“That smells amazing,” she said.
“It’s going to be a little tough,” Tim said. “But good.”
Ashley flopped down in a chair, ignoring the incredible view that stretched out on the other side of the railing. They could see forever to the west. Over the hills in the foreground, the land dropped away and it was just a hint of deep green. Then, in the distance, the mountains rose, peaked with hazy purple. The clouds gathered there, beginning their assault on parts unknown.
“Where did you get the meat?” Ashley asked.
Lisa raised her eyebrows. In another life, she would ask why Ashley didn’t know. It was obvious though—Ashley was so consumed with her work that she didn’t notice anything. They would answer her, but their words would roll right off. Some part of the young woman still appeared to be engaged with the world, but it was all a facade. The important parts of Ashley’s brain were consumed with more important concerns.
“One of the technicians had a rifle in his locker. We used it to shoot an elk,” Tim said. “We have enough meat to get us to the end.”
“The end of what?” Ashley asked after another yawn.
Lisa stood up and took the plates over to the grill. She stabbed one of the steaks with a fork and then handed it to Ashley. Aside from the giant hunting knife, their only table knives were plastic. Once the meat cooled, they were going to end up eating it with their hands. Still, for the moment, Ashley tried to use the plastic to cut.
She laughed. “I think it’s too tough for these knives.”
Tim and Lisa shared a glance.
While Ashley waited for her steak to cool, her eyes unfocused and she was far away. They let her talk.
“The nouns are easy. I think I have most of those down. I don’t know how to pronounce anything, of course, but I can spot most of them just by their shapes. When people teach themselves how to read, do you think they ever don’t make a connection between the shape and the sound of a word? It’s strange to have symbols in my head that don’t relate to any particular sound. I tried to put English words to them, but it seems wrong. I’m just going to let them be symbols, you know?”
Lisa didn’t know. She would never know. That was fine—Ashley was only talking to help herself figure things out.
“So the filters are all configured and I can see a definite discrepancy between my data and the reference data. I’m either using something incorrectly, or there is a major event. Because we’re here to study a major event, of course I’m assuming that it’s the latter, you know?”
Tim grunted. He had picked up his steak and taken a bite. He was trying to chew it, but the meat was still too hot.
There was one question that she didn’t know the answer to. Lisa had asked Tim in the cart, and he didn’t know either. Because she didn’t know, it was safe to assume that she would never know.
She asked it anyway.
“So, what have you figured out about the red spot on the moon?”
Ashley cocked her head to the side, like she didn’t hear or didn’t understand the question. Then, she straightened up in her seat and silently rose to her feet. A moment later, the young woman had wandered back to the door and gone inside, with Lisa calling, “Ashley! Ashley, come back and eat something.”
Tim chewed and chewed before he swallowed.
“I told you not to question her,” he said.
“No, you didn’t,” Lisa said.
“Yeah, I did,” Tim said as he tried to bite another piece from his steak. “Last time. Remember?”
“Oh?” Lisa asked.
With a burst of memories, she did remember. It had been another meal—a breakfast of berries and pancakes on the same deck. They had all been wrapped in blankets that Tim had found down in the lockers. The morning mist had been cold, but it was so eerie out in the fog that they had all decided to eat on the deck anyway. Lisa had asked about the red spot and Ashley had dropped her loaded fork to wander back inside.
That’s when Tim had said, “You shouldn’t question her when she’s eating. She needs the food and she can’t eat when she gets preoccupied.”
Or maybe Tim was going to say it. Suddenly, Lisa couldn’t remember what had happened and what was going to happen.
“Maybe we should leave this place,” Lisa said. “Maybe we’re wrong to think that two days from now will ever come.”
“Two days?”
“Isn’t that when we’re leaving?” Lisa asked.
Tim looked off over the ridge. For the moment, he had forgotten the tough elk steak in his hand.
“I don’t know. I can’t… I don’t know.”
Lisa had a feeling that she understood exactly what he was feeling. When it was time to leave, they would know. Until then, every moment was the same as any other. She picked up Ashley’s plate and took it inside knowing that, eventually, hunger would force her to eat something.
When she got up to the office, Ashley was pouring over a book. She filled her brain up with information and then hurried over to a counter where two other books were splayed open. Back and forth, Ashley went, like a bee going to and from a hive. She was making connections. When she had a new load of insights, she ran to one of the computers and combed through data and images. For a long while, Lisa simply stood there, watching. The steak had gone cold on the plate by the time that Lisa put it down.
Lisa would have given anything to be able to help, but this was Ashley’s task alone. Lisa’s job had been to get her there in one piece, and that job was complete. Later, there would be a second job, but Lisa couldn’t remember what it was.
“I can’t pre-remember,” she said to herself. “Foresee—that’s the word. I can’t foresee it.”
After tapping rapidly on a button, Ashley suddenly threw her arms up
in the air.
“They’re not alive,” she said. “They’re not alive!”
Ashley wasn’t talking to Lisa. She didn’t even seem to know that Lisa was in the room. Lisa set down the plate and backed out.
Chapter 81: Liam
“No!” Liam said. He reached out to push Jim’s hand away from the button, but it was too late. The screen lit up and went dark again.
The Center said, “Atmospheric control shutdown.”
There was no countdown and no way to abort. Above them, they heard a hissing sound.
“Why did you do that?” Liam asked.
The tone of the hissing changed. It was lower now and more menacing, if that was possible.
“It’s what the voice wanted. It said that the button was mapped to the desired action. That must have been what it desired.”
“No,” Liam said, “that’s what it thought I desired. I…”
He didn’t know how to finish the sentence.
Jim shook his head. “That’s not what it sounded like.”
“Listen, we have to figure out how to turn the environmental controls back on,” Liam said. He looked to the door and tried to figure out how long it would take him to run to the main control room. It was down the passage, around a couple of corners, through the cafeteria… There was no time. He couldn’t risk it.
The screen in front of him was blank except for the circle.
Liam knew that it was probably just psychosomatic, but he was starting to feel lightheaded.
“It’s okay,” Jim said. The boy turned back to the screen. “Center, turn back on the atmospheric controls.”
“That action can only be executed manually,” the Center said. The circle seemed to dance merrily with the information. Over the hissing sound from above, it sounded almost happy about the crisis.
“Then map the action to a physical button,” Jim said.
“Physical buttons can be mapped to desired actions,” the Center said.
“Right. We desire a physical button for the atmospheric controls.”