by J. S. Volpe
* * *
He got there at noon.
The sun baking his scalp, the armpits of his shirt damp with sweat from his trek, he stopped in the middle of a field and looked around while small yellow-and-black butterflies wobbled about above the high grass that encircled him.
All he saw in every direction was trees, grass, stones. And in the distance to the north, the Salt Stairs.
He stared at those mountains long and hard, comparing them with the mountains in the ancient fragments of memory that remained in his brain.
The two matched as much as they ever would. He was in the right place. He was where New Portland had once stood.
But there was now no trace of it.
Of course not, he told himself. It had been overrun and abandoned twelve thousand years earlier. What had he expected? A monument to a city no one remembered? A few bits of brick? Maybe a rusting chunk of one of the robot invaders?
Still, it seemed wrong that it was gone. The place was important to him. It was where he had met her. Its erasure from the world felt like an affront.
He wondered if Solace had ever come back here, if she had even thought about doing so. He wondered what importance this place had held for her.
During the journey here, he had tried not to think about her, focusing only on the needs of the moment, much as he had on his way to the funeral. Now he allowed his thoughts to return to her, here in this place that meant nothing anymore to anyone except him.
He pictured her smile and remembered the first time he saw it in a tunnel that no longer existed under a city that no longer existed. And he realized he would never see that smile again. He could wait until the mountains before him had become dust, until the world was a cloud of ash expanding through the galaxy, until the very universe itself burned out, and still he would never see it again. It was gone. Forever.
Without warning, all the strength left his legs, and he dropped to his knees. At the same time, unbidden, unwanted, a horrible choked howl rose up from within him. He had never made a sound like this before, didn’t want to now, but he had no control over it; it tore itself from him in an endless, unwavering stream and echoed away across the fields toward the far, doomed mountains.
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