Here

by Zolendz, Christine

  Jeez, these Caelum have their virtual reality gear on point. I feel like I’m standing in the middle of a beautifully landscaped conservatory. I spin slowly around, taking it all in. Pine trees. Evergreens. Other trees I have no ideas the name to. Roses and daisies and strange exotic flowers I’ve never seen before.

  It would be breathtaking if it didn’t feel so wrong. It’s too quiet. There’s no breeze sifting through the leaves to make them rustle and whisper. And the smell seems off as well. Like you’ve had a bouquet of flowers out on a table and they’ve started to wither and turn, a bit sour and metallic. Even the colors of the flowers seem strange, like you’re looking at them through some intensified filter.

  I walk along the path, thinking back on my simulated tour of Earth. It felt just like this, like me walking over this little walkway, observing everything around me. Feeling the ground under my feet like it was really made of rock and dirt and earth, when in reality it’s nothing more than this Caelum armor making me see and smell and hear and feel these things. But, if this is a virtual tour too, does that mean it’s not real? I reach out to touch a leaf hanging from a long branch. It has the same veiny textures as the ones on Earth do, it feels just like a leaf, but it’s not really in my hands, is it?

  It’s not real.

  I’m starting to seriously wonder if any of this is real. Is there a botanical garden on this ship, or are the Caelum just programed to see things that don’t really exist? What if this ship has no garden? What if all the Caelum are plugged into some main automated computer that floats in space and their reality and everything they know and believe is from a stupid piece of software?

  What if they were made to believe in the extinction of humans, but in reality, there was no worldwide pandemic to wipe us all out? What if they were lied to all this time?

  A girl could hope, can’t she?

  A bright flash of light cuts through my sight. It’s so intense it hurts and I’m momentarily blinded. Is it just the screen—or is it something more? “Tore? Is that you? Did you do something to this thing?” I knock my knuckles along the ridge of the helmet.

  “Tore, is it?” A voice cracks out from behind me, sharp and angry. “Interesting, yet so comedic. I thought I had that insignificant maintenance moron expired.”

  That’s Pious’s voice.

  I whirl around frantically. And there he is, right behind me, less than an arm’s reach away. And way larger than I remember him ever being.

  “Shit,” I say, stumbling back and tripping over my feet. I fall back on my bottom with a loud grunt and frustrated screech.

  Pious laughs maniacally as he looms over me. “Where are you hiding on my ship, girl? Come out, come out, wherever you are…” He stomps a step closer to me. “Did you forget about my plans for coitus and reproduction of my next generation?”

  He’s not real. He’s not really here and neither am I. “You’re not really here,” I say, kicking my feet through the dirt on the ground between us. “Tore!” I yell, scrambling away. “Tore, get me out of here!”

  “Tore, get me out of here,” Pious mimics my words in a squeaky squealy voice. “Pathetic, weak little female. Is my brother there with you?”

  “Fuck off!” I scream, scrambling to my feet.

  He’s suddenly right there, lunging forward, grabbing me by the arm. I feel it. I feel his icy metallic fingers wrap around my wrist and yank me forward. How is that possible? How can this feel so real when I’m hidden, safe in the core with Rune and the others? I’m suddenly paralyzed with shock and confusion. I want out of this stupid suit!

  The gears on Pious’s face lift and curl into a sinister smile. “Is that where you are, female? In the core with Rune and the others?”

  What the hell? How does he know that? My heart pulses wildly and I shriek and try to twist away, but his metal fingers clench tighter, stabbing spikes of pain up to my shoulder. I think he’s trying to break my bone. But how could he, if we’re both not really here? This is just a simulation!

  “Pray tell, who are these others you think of?” he says darkly.

  “Let go of me, you asshole!” My voice screams and cracks over the words. “Tore! Tore! Take this fucking mask off my face!”

  Again, he laughs in that perverse way of his, and squeezes my arm even tighter.

  An explosion of rage barrels through me and I push forward and slam my free hand into his chest, hammer-fisting him over and over. It’s like hitting a brick wall. It doesn’t even faze him. It just makes his stupid metal mouth smile wider.

  A whimper slips from my throat and I claw at my faceplate to try to get it off. I can’t reach the lever. I can’t even find it.

  Pious thrusts forward, pressing all his weight into me, and my body slams back into the dirt again. This time with him on top of me, straddling my waist and hips. His right forearm immediately flies up my body and pins my throat to the ground. Sharp pain explodes through my collarbone, surging up my neck. I can’t breathe. I can’t fucking breathe. He’s choking me.

  I try to scream, but the only sound that comes out of my mouth is a strangled gurgle. Jesus, doesn’t Tore see me struggling? Doesn’t he see me getting choked out on the floor in front of him? Can’t Rune tell something is wrong with me? This can’t be all in my head. It feels too real. The pressure on my throat clenches and my scalp swells and tightens like a balloon ready to pop. I claw at Pious’s faceplate, grasping and tearing at it. Panic bubbles and explodes like fireworks over every inch of my body. My vision blurs to grays and blues, as if I’m looking up while someone is holding my head under water.

  I don’t want to die. I can’t. I can’t die like this. Hot sparks of adrenaline rip up my arms, but I continue to flail my fist against his head and face.

  If I could just hit him in the right place—somehow shift his weight off me to find some air.

  His free hand lifts and I stop hitting him and try to pull my forearms together to cover my face. I don’t know if he’s going to hit me or press down heavier on my neck, but I can’t pull my arms together close enough to block his strike. If he lands a punch to my face, I think I’m certain to die.

  I think I’m certain to die here anyway. Even if this is just virtual reality, it feels too real. Pious lifts his body up and brings his hand down to strike, and in this stupid armor I can’t even close my eyes to keep from watching it.

  47

  Kate

  Pious’s fist never lands.

  Instead, the garden disappears, and the concrete landscape of a city spreads out above me. I clamber to stand as the world spins violently around me. Sunlight streaks through, in between tall skyscrapers, throwing shadows along the sidewalk. I’m back in New York.

  I rub at my eyes to clear my blurry vision.

  People hurry down the streets. Rusted yellow taxis zip alongside buses and cyclists.

  I’m home?

  I breathe in deeply and reach out to lay my palms flat across the nearest building. The air is filled with food cart scents and urine. It’s terribly disgusting, yet at the same time, it’s the best smell in the world because it’s home. “Yes!” I shout to the busy street, pumping my fist in the air. “Woohoo!”

  A woman rushes past me, dragging a young child behind her who’s wearing a school uniform. They must be late. The kid is crying, tears and snot streak down her face. A face riddled with blisters and pus-filled boils. The mother’s is as well.

  Three men barrel past me next, each of them wearing a surgical mask over their mouths and noses. But it seems too late. All three have red angry pockmarks dotting their forehead and their hair has completely fallen out.

  I leap back away from them and bump into a man dressed all in black. “Female,” he greets.

  I spin around wildly, hands up ready to defend myself.

  “I took the liberty to show myself in a more familiar and calming human form for you.” It’s Pious, in the body of my ex-boyfriend, Jason Moorings.

  I gulp back a scream.

 
“I gathered from your memories you have a fondness for this being,” he says, gesturing toward himself.

  “Are you crazy? Where are we?” I say, backing away from him. “Is this really New York? Am I on Earth or am I still on that fucking ship? Help! Somebody, help me!” I scream at the top of my lungs. Not one person on the street stops, they don’t even look in my direction.

  Oh my God, I’m still on the Caelum’s ship. Another woman hurries past, red sores festering all over her face. She’s coughing loudly into her sleeve. I reach out to grab the edge of her coat, maybe tap her on the shoulder to get her attention, but she doesn’t seem to feel me.

  Pious, in Jason’s body, smiles at me wickedly.

  “Why are you doing this to me?” I whisper.

  Pious-Jason takes a step forward, I take a step back. “The longer I keep your mind with me, the better chance I have to pinpoint your exact location.” He chuckles eerily and clasps his hands in front of him. It’s off-putting seeing Jason make those motions and speak in such a deep raspy voice.

  “So, none of this is real?” I ask.

  “Oh, it is,” he says, looking up around us at the building. “It’s our recorded documentation of the outbreak of the virus strain that became so easily transmissible between humans it caused a worldwide pandemic.”

  “I think this is all bullshit. I think you’re showing me only what you want me to see just like you did to the Caelum to make them believe I killed Rune.” I shake my head and back away farther. I’m not staying here to talk to this asshole anymore. “And I live in the 21st century, we have antibiotics and medicine and—”

  “There was no antibiotic treatment made for the new virus strain, it spread too far and too fast.”

  “Yeah, but your people had enough time to build a spacecraft and save yourselves, right?”

  Pious explodes into a fit of menacing laughter. “Who do you think created the virus, female?”

  Every cell in my body stills and begins to tingle. The Caelum created the virus?

  “We were at war and biochemical weapons were what the world used.”

  I bolt and run down the street, my pulse roaring in my ears. There has to be a way to get Tore and Rune’s attention to get me out of this armor. If my mind stays with him, he can find me. Me and Rune and the others. I can’t let him do that.

  I won’t let him.

  Stores and restaurants sit on both sides of the street, each with boarded-up windows and dark interiors. Strange traffic lights pulse and direct speeding cars. By the odd shape of the vehicles, I think I might be in 2056. Ducking into an alley, I rush through the open door of a building. The lighting is dim inside, but there’s just enough of it to see the bodies on the floor, lying lifeless and decomposing.

  I make the sign of the cross as I step over each person. I’m not a religious person. I haven’t been to church since Christmas, but right now, I need something, a miracle, faith, just something to believe in.

  The hallway angles to the right and opens into a jewelry store, lined with glass showcases of glittering gems. Corpses slump over the counters as if they died where they stood, without warning.

  Exiting the front of the store, I make a hard left, my muscles tightening and straining. I push forward, not wanting to slow down. How do I keep him from knowing where I am and getting in my head?

  No thoughts. I can’t think.

  I start singing a song in my head as I jog down the street. Sweat runs down the sides of my face and stings as it drips off my lashes into my eyes. I head for a building across the street that looks like a bookstore and stumble through the doorway.

  Corpses reading books. Bodies crumpled where they stood in line waiting to purchase their paperbacks and other novelty items. One stiff still has her coffee clutched in her hands.

  I’m still singing loudly in my head.

  Heading to the back loading area, I push open the emergency exit and run outside to the next street. I’m so exhausted I could cry. As a matter of fact, I am crying. Tears streak down my cheeks and fall to my chest, until the front of my shirt is soaked.

  Crossing a few more avenues, I pause for a second to try and catch my breath. My heart is hammering in my chest and my throat smarts with pain. I lean my back against a tree and look around to survey the area. All the while singing the same thoughtless song in my head.

  The city does look different. There are no more telephone poles or wires hanging across buildings and there seems to be a traffic light on every corner. I spin around and realize I’m a few blocks away from where my family—

  I sing the song in my head louder.

  Taking a deep breath, I continue running and don’t stop until I see the familiar apartment building and stagger, panting and sweating, through the front lobby. I head for the stairs and stumble up four flights. I take a breather on the last step, fearing my lungs are about to collapse.

  Tears make my vision hazy, but I have to keep moving. Pulling myself up off the floor, I walk down the hallway, stepping gingerly to avoid falling over my numb limbs.

  The door to my family’s apartment is slightly ajar. With a shaky hand, I push it slowly open and walk through. It smells like burnt toast.

  The front room is simply furnished, just a recliner and an extremely thin-screened television. A pair of slippers sit next to the chair. There’s nothing here that looks familiar. I guess if this is 2056, my family would no longer live here.

  The kitchen hosts a small table with one chair, a bowl of rotten fruit sits in the center. My mother always kept a bowl of fresh fruit on our table, just like that. She always wanted us to pick healthy snacks over junk food. It would make Claire cry when she saw it. Until I secretly made a stockpile of chocolate in my desk drawer for after she ate the fruit.

  The largest bedroom has the most furniture—a full-sized hospital bed, layered with stained blankets and dirty sheets. A dresser is piled high with books and magazines and clothes. On the opposite side of the room sits a large wooden desk with a small digitized cube of photographs moving in a slideshow on one of its shelves.

  I stand frozen, watching pictures of my life flash before my eyes. Claire and me as children running in Central Park. A Christmas morning when we were teenagers and Claire’s enormous smile when she received her first American Girl doll. Me and Claire graduating high school. I remember taking all these pictures. Could this be something pulled from my memories? Something Pious is using to try to make me believe this is all real.

  Another image flips over and it’s me, graduating from college. I’m a little older and tired, standing in front of the open doors of an auditorium with Claire smiling wide next to me.

  I haven’t graduated yet. I still have an entire year to go.

  The next picture is me graduating, at an older age than the one before. I must have received my master’s degree or maybe my PhD. That is what I was planning, depending on the cost. I secretly dreamed of taking a year off to travel, but never really thought I’d be able to, with having to help out with dad and Claire.

  I wonder if I ever went.

  A picture flips and slides into place of Claire in a hospital bed and me sitting next to her. She doesn’t look well, she’s too thin and pale. We must be in our thirties. I’ve gained weight and I look like shit.

  Does Claire get sick?

  The following picture is one of me and my mother sitting in front of a Christmas tree. My mother is in a wheelchair with a full head of gray hair. She looks off to the side, not interested in smiling for the camera. My expression isn’t any better. My lips are in a tight straight line, pinched up only in the middle, like I’m sucking on something sour.

  Claire and my father aren’t there.

  What does that mean?

  Why aren’t pictures of me with anyone else rotating around on that thing? Do I never have children, or get married? Does my sister die? Where’s my father? Do I end up living in this God-awful apartment alone just to die from some stupid trumped-up virus?

&nb
sp; I rummage through all the drawers in the desk. I find mine and Claire’s birth certificates. My diplomas. Bank account statements. Claire’s death certificate. Monthly invoices for an assisted-living facility for my parents that is astronomical.

  Spoiler alert: I die alone, poor, and deeply in debt.

  My sister dies the summer we turn thirty. Complications from a heart condition. That’s less than ten years from my reality.

  I sit down on the bed hard.

  Is this really what I’m fighting to get back to? Is this really what the future had in store for me?

  It can’t be.

  “And why is that?”

  I don’t even flinch back when Pious’s voice breaks through the silence of the room. My heart feels like it stops, though. I’m just glad for once he doesn’t get to witness it.

  I stand up slowly and turn to face him.

  “Well, female? Why can’t it be?” he sneers.

  “Because the future would have changed when the Caelum went back in time,” I say, trying desperately to keep my voice steady.

  His smile slowly fades.

  “You’re lying to everyone, aren’t you? My mother dies in my reality when I’m twenty years old, from whatever happened when the Caelum came back.” I point to the revolving images of my shitty life. “Yet there she is sitting in a wheelchair well into her 80s.”

  His form glitches in and out of view. “It matters not, female.”

  “Yeah? Why is that, asshole?” I growl, lunging at him.

  He suddenly disappears and I stumble trying to find my footing and stop myself from falling, but I can’t catch my balance.

  “Because,” his voice echoes inside my head. “It’s been long enough that I know exactly where you are hiding.”

  I keep falling.

  48

  Kate

  I fly forward. The wind is knocked out of me and my body is on fire. My limbs feel like there are being torn off me at the joints. My skin, like it’s being ripped from my bones. It hurts a thousand times more than any pain I’ve ever felt before.