by Mike Chen
A New York City number.
Hi Krista, it’s Jas. OK, I admit it. I paid Reunion Services for your number. Thing is, I listened to London Calling again, and you know what? I think you might be right. We should discuss this, maybe over breakfast since I’m flying in for a conference? Say yes and I’m there. Say nothing and I’ll leave you alone forever. Don’t want to cramp your style.
Her default response kicked in, causing her eyes to roll. She tossed cash on the table. “Come on, Sunny,” she said, scooching out of the booth, device still in hand. “Let’s take you home.”
“Who’s that?” Sunny pointed to the phone.
“This? Oh. It’s just a guy I know.” The screen lit back up, and her finger poised to push the Delete button.
“A friend?”
“Yeah. You could say that.”
Sunny rolled out of the scrunched vinyl seat, MoJo backpack in tow, then pushed her hands up toward the ceiling in a massive stretch. “Cool. Can I meet him?”
In that moment, Krista realized that her finger hovering over the big red Delete was more of a reflex than anything else, and that, in fact, a real conscious choice could dictate what happened. A flutter ran through her stomach, but it carried a different rhythm than usual. After a few moments, it finally struck her. This wasn’t the usual anxiety that welled up when her path crossed with someone from her past. No, this was something entirely different, something that until recently felt like it couldn’t even exist.
Anticipation.
A tremble jolted her fingers as they tapped out a short message. Glad you finally came around. It lit up the screen for a flash before the Sent icon appeared. “You know what?” she said, putting her arm around Sunny and taking the first step to the diner’s exit. “Possibly. Someday.”
As she took Sunny’s hand and headed out the door, she considered the possibilities. If Jas of all people could finally see that London Calling was a better album than Walk Among Us, then maybe the world deserved a second chance too.
It’s easy to say that the Greenwoods, the Fourth Path followers, and the multitude of suicides, murders, and other losses during the first post-quarantine years were due to PASD. Many of those people were stuck in Kay Greenwood’s way of thinking: that the only paths were Metros, Reclaimed, looter gangs, or some unknown, possibly mystical journey out in the wilderness.
But Kay Greenwood was wrong.
MGS 96 showed us that the paradigm shift wasn’t from the outside world, but from within. MGS 96 marked a breaking point, where those paths were no longer silos with hard delineations. Instead, people began to accept that the true fourth path came from blending together. Metros remained the core population centers, but they worked in conjunction with Reclaimed communities, who paid taxes following the landmark Reclaimed Resource Agreement Act: a symbiotic exchange of resources and manpower. Looter gangs still battled among themselves, but even they reached a bit of a truce with the world through federal outreach and distribution programs, and in turn created neutral safety zones for long-distance travel. There was enough space for everyone to live the way they wanted, but the connective tissue of humanity simply had to reboot, especially as the world adjusted to a new normal: staying vigilant against the perpetual threat of new illness.
This shift started the way all movements do. In the months following MGS 96, the collective unconscious of survivors seemed to gradually recognize the living rather than the dead. As a community, we still emphasized the importance of familial ties but finally understood that the definition of family wasn’t about blood or even who or what you’d lost. It was about what gave you hope and who was willing to get involved.
Maybe it was always that way. We just saw it more clearly after the End of the World.
Excerpt from the dissertation Un-Paused: The Greenwood Incident,
Family, and Hope in a Post-MGS World by Sunny Donelly,
University of Northern California, Class of 2040
* * *
Acknowledgments
First off, thank you for reading!
In 2011 I told some writer friends that I had an idea for a book: What if the world didn’t end—it just paused? Soon after came a very rough first draft about Krista, Rob, Moira, and Sunny in a rebuilding society. That manuscript took on many forms, first as a post-apocalyptic satire and then through massive story and tonal changes, this book was formed. Getting there needed a lot of people, and they all deserve recognition.
Sierra Godfrey saw this book through many early horrifying revisions, and yet we are still friends. My agent, Eric Smith, then dusted off this old manuscript and had me mash it up with Station Eleven’s structure and tone. The brilliant Kat Howard assisted with that enormous challenge. That led to Michelle Meade, who acquired the book, then gave it the tough love necessary to really bring it to life. And Margot Mallinson brought it home with final revisions and continuity checks as a decade of revision fragments finally smoothed out.
Along the way, the following people provided feedback, sanity reads, and world-building ideas: Kristen Lippert-Martin, Charity Hammond, Emily Bierman, Diana Urban, Laurel Amberdine, Dave Connis, Rebecca Enzor, Erica Cameron, and Wendy Heard. Moral publishing support also came in the form of the #TeamRocks Slack, In-N-Out Burgers with Randy Ribay, and panicked texts with Jessica Sinsheimer.
Thanks to Caity Lotz and Tala Ashe for starring as Krista and Moira, at least in the movie I saw in my head.
Fellow indie rock nerds probably noticed a theme with my character names. Thank you to the musicians who provided the blender of character names, especially for the main cast: Kim Deal, Tanya Donelly, Juliana Hatfield, Kristin Hersh, Black Francis/Frank Black, Chris Gorman (and his love of gum), Tom Gorman, Gail Greenwood, Kay Hanley, Dean Fisher, and Dave Narcizo. Extra special thanks to Tanya Donelly, both for being wonderfully supportive and also because the lyrics to “Stars Align” inspired the final dialogue between Rob and Moira when I couldn’t find the right words to end the scene.
Finally, this book would not exist without my wife, Mandy, who is the heart of this story directly and indirectly. She is a survivor and an inspiration, and a miracle worker with our daughter, Amelia, when I have book events, deadlines, and other authorly commitments. This story is everything I feel about our journey together, all wrapped up in ninety-seven thousand words.
Mandy, I’m so lucky you responded to my Match.com email all those years ago.
ISBN-13: 9781488055355
A Beginning at the End
Copyright © 2020 by Mike Chen
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 22 Adelaide St. West, 40th Floor, Toronto, Ontario M5H 4E3, Canada.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and ™ are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and in other countries.
www.Harlequin.com
-webkit-filter: grayscale(100%); -moz-filter: grayscale(100%); -o-filter: grayscale(100%); -ms-filter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share