State of Nature: Book Three of The Park Service Trilogy

by Ryan Winfield

  It looks to be rest hours on the deserted transfer platform. I’m sure that’s how Hannah planned it.

  “So this is where you grew up?” Jimmy asks, taking in the dreary view. “Seems kinda dark. Like it ain’t too much different than where we jus’ come from.”

  “This is only the transfer station where they move supplies between the levels.”

  “Oh,” is all he says.

  “There’s the loaded train that they’re refusing to send up. We’ll hitch a ride back on that, if all goes well.”

  I point to the train hovering at the platform. Most of the cars are fully enclosed, but a few open cars carry cargo too large to fit inside, including several drone wings and a drone fuselage. I know Hannah needs the parts they’re sending, to keep killing people; not just outside people either, but the very people who are building and sending up parts for the new Eden.

  “Come on,” I say, pushing the thought away. “Let’s go see if this keycard works the elevators.”

  The bank of elevators are open and empty, and as we walk past them their shiny metal interiors display our bloated and silly reflections, like some funhouse carnival mirror I’ve only read about in stories. All those years growing up, I never had access to any other levels besides ours, and I’m tempted to use the keycard Hannah gave me to go explore them now. But then I remember the bracelet clamped onto Jimmy’s ankle, and a sense of urgency pushes me toward the elevator for Level 3.

  As the elevator descends, I debate whether or not to warn Jimmy about the decontaminant, but before I can decide what to say, we come to a stop. I cast him an apologetic look.

  “Just breathe it in,” I say.

  “Breathe what—”

  The gas cuts him short. When the elevator opens, we both spill out, clinging to one another and coughing.

  “Just as late as ever, I see,” a familiar voice says.

  I look up at Mrs. Hightower, just as tall as ever, despite how much I’ve grown. She still looks mean, too. Her eyes dart from me to Jimmy and then to the slate clutched in her hand.

  “I don’t see anything about anyone accompanying you.”

  “This is Jimmy,” I tell her. “He’s my assistant.”

  “Assistant? Well, well, aren’t you important. Fifteen years teaching here on Level 3, and I still have to grade essays myself. Now, if you don’t mind, it’s late and I’d like to get a little sleep before productive hours start again. I’ve been standing at this elevator longer than I care to mention.”

  She turns on her heel and leads us off through the cavern valley. It’s a strange feeling, being back—as if I walked here in some prior life, or maybe in a dream. The whir of cooling fans is impossible to ignore now, although I hardly heard it before. That, and the air smells odd to me—conditioned, not fresh.

  Jimmy walks along beside me, silently taking in the sights. He looks different here too—shyer, less self-assured, as if his confidence were left on the surface, above. I point him up to the sparkling benitoite high in the cavern ceiling, and we gaze at it as we walk. We are so consumed that I run right into Mrs. Hightower when she stops. She shrugs it off with an annoyed grunt, digs through her pocket, and pulls forth a key. I can’t believe we’re standing in front of my old living quarters door.

  Mrs. Hightower pulls the door open and steps aside for me to enter, but my feet are suddenly bolted to the ground. They won’t budge. Our yellow nightlight is on in the kitchen, and it washes the small apartment in sepia shadows. I can just make out the kitchen table and chairs beyond the small living room. I would have thought it would be occupied already, but then the horror of my father’s retirement—no, my father’s slaughter—and how recent it was hits me like a cold wave. He must have left this apartment for the last time just a few months ago.

  “Aubrey? You look pale. Is everything okay?”

  Her question seems to be coming from far away.

  “Is everything okay?” Mrs. Hightower repeats.

  “He’s just tired from our journey,” Jimmy says, speaking very clearly and without his usual accent.

  “Well, then,” Mrs. Hightower says, handing the key to Jimmy. “See that he gets some rest and have him in the square by the mid-production break.” Then she turns again on her heel and struts off into the silent valley, the squeak and squish of her shoes fading with her silhouette into the shadows.

  “You okay?” Jimmy asks, quietly.

  I reach out and steady myself against his shoulder.

  “I will be, I think. Just give me a minute.”

  Jimmy stands as still as a statue beside me, and it’s only because of his patient strength that I can bring myself to step across the threshold. My eyes are already adjusted to the dim light of the cavern, and I glance around at the shadowy time capsule that was my only childhood home. Everything is as it was. Well, everything except that my father is gone and dead. I walk over to the kitchen where the yellow light washes across our tiny table and chairs. I can still see our elbow indentations on the table’s surface, his across from mine. How many quiet breakfasts together? How many evening stories after dinner?

  Then I see it, sitting on the counter, as if he’d just stepped out and might be back at any moment. My father’s tobacco tin. I pick it up and open the lid and hold it to my nose. The sweet smell of his tobacco conjures his image from the shadows and for one heavenly moment, it isn’t Jimmy standing in front of me; it’s my dad. Maybe it’s the professor’s zipsuit he’s wearing and the new buzz cut, or maybe it’s just the power of the smell mixed with the place, but my father is standing right in front of me in the flesh.

  “I love you.”

  The words come out almost in a panic, as if there’s no time. As if he’s about to walk into Eden again, and I’ve got to say it before he disappears behind the door.

  “I love you too.”

  Jimmy’ response startles me back to the room, the tobacco tin forgotten in my hand. I close it and set it on the counter, afraid of whatever drug it is inside that has me hallucinating.

  “I must be losing my mind,” I say, shaking my head. “I thought I just heard you say that you loved me.”

  “I did,” Jimmy replies.

  “You did?”

  “Of course. You said it to me first. It woulda been rude to leave ya hangin’ there, wouldn’t it?”

  “But did you mean it? Do you love me?”

  “My pa used to say that when you love someone, you do stuff for ‘em. And after all you done for me, there ain’t nothin’ I wouldn’t do for you. So, yes, I love you.”

  I take a deep breath to clear my mind.

  “What was in that container?” Jimmy asks.

  “My father’s pipe tobacco.”

  As soon as I say it, I realize what I’ve done and I slam my palm into my forehead—“Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

  “What’s stupid?” Jimmy asks.

  “I’ve gone and lost my father’s pipe.”

  Jimmy smiles and sinks his hand into his zipsuit pocket, pulls out the pipe, and hands it to me.

  “You brought it!”

  “Of course, I did,” he says. “You gave it to me for safe keepin’, remember?”

  “No,” I say, correcting him, “I gave it to you to keep. I just thought we’d lost it on the Isle of Man, or maybe left it up there with the professor and Hannah.”

  “I’d never lose somethin’ so important,” he says. “And it’s yours. I was jus’ holdin’ it.”

  I look at the pipe in my hand and tears come into my eyes. I remember my father sitting at this little kitchen table and telling me all about the butterflies and what they meant. And I remember him handing it to me to smoke for the first time, and how I coughed and embarrassed myself. I’m tempted to fill it now and have a puff in his honor, but I think I’ve had enough remembering for one day.

  “Come on, Jimmy. We had better get some rest before I start sobbing like a sissy and telling you that I love you again.”

  I lead Jimmy upstairs to my o
ld room. It seems half the size I remember it. Jimmy goes to look out the window, and I open my closet and look through my drawers. There’s my old gray hoody, right where I left it all those months ago now. I remember leaving it behind because I wanted to make a good impression at the Foundation. Wasn’t I silly? I know that the boy who left here then is somehow connected to me now, but he’s not me. He’s a past version of me, an innocent pedestrian that I look back on now with a kind of painful longing to help, a strong desire to warn him of what lies ahead.

  When I turn around, Jimmy’s lying on the bed.

  “So this is where you slept?”

  “Every night of my life before I met you.”

  “Must have been nice to have a place all your own. I mean somethin’ that didn’t change. We was movin’ all the time.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it like that. I know I didn’t think it was nice back then. I felt trapped here, and I would have given anything to get out.”

  Jimmy props himself up on an elbow and looks at me.

  “Anything?” he asks.

  “Yes,” I answer. “Anything.”

  “Even as much as you did give up to get out?”

  His question leaves me stumped for an answer. Would I go back? Would I undo everything if I could? Would I give up knowing the truth to have had those extra months with my father? Would I give up this new life that promises to last a thousand years for the belief that I might join my mother and my father someday in Eden, even if it was just a lie? Would I give up wisdom for innocence?

  “Yes, yes, yes,”—the words are half-truth, half apology to my father—“I’m sorry, but I would do it all again.”

  As I fall asleep in my father’s bed with his pillow beneath my head and his blanket pulled up to my nose, I try to imagine what it must have been like to be him, lying here going to sleep on his last night before heading up to Eden. I imagine the excitement he must have felt about seeing my mother again; his sense of accomplishment for having made it to retirement. I know he would have celebrated with a pint or two of algae ethanol at the pub in the square. I know he would have had one last smoke. I know he would have lain in this very bed, with his head on this very pillow, and I know he would have thought about me just as sure as I’m here now thinking about him.

  I wonder who will think about me when I’m gone.

  It’s an interesting thought to fall asleep to.

  CHAPTER 7

  The Speech

  Pounding on the downstairs door wakes me.

  My initial panic is quickly replaced with dread.

  I know what I have to do today, and the idea of it sickens me. I couldn’t set off that wave at the lake house and kill Dr. Radcliffe and a few heartless scientists to save everyone in Holocene II, but now I’m going to send everyone in Holocene II to their early deaths in Eden just to save Jimmy and myself.

  My door cracks open, and Jimmy pops his shaved head into the room.

  “Hey, that giant lady is downstairs, and she’s less friendly than she was last night. She says we’re late.”

  “Tell her we’ll be in the square in a few minutes.”

  There’s no time to shower, so I brush my teeth and splash cold water on my face before joining Jimmy downstairs.

  “I found some of ’em crisper things,” he mumbles, crumbs tumbling from his mouth. “But they taste pretty stale.”

  I chew a handful of ancient algaecrisps and wash them down with some tap water, which for some reason tastes of chemicals to me now. Then we head for the door together. I stop before we leave the apartment and address Jimmy.

  “You still think I’m doing the wrong thing?”

  “Hey,” he says, “I’m just along for the ride, remember?”

  “Come on, Jimmy. I need to know what you think.”

  He sighs and looks away, gazing toward the kitchen. When he looks back at me, I see pain deep in his gray eyes.

  “I dun’ know what we’re doin’ here, Aubrey,” he says. “All I know is I’m sick and tired of Hannah and these people and their lies. All lies. I just wanna get back to livin’ in the world, ya know? Like outside again. Like we was in the cove. Like we was on the island before they blew it up.”

  “Me too, Jimmy. And if I do this thing today, then we can do just that. We can have a life away from all this.”

  He bends and reaches to pull the leg of his zipsuit over his ankle bracelet. Then he stands again and says, “You keep on trustin’ Hannah, but you shouldn’t.”

  “I’m not trusting her to keep her word this time, Jimmy. I’m trusting her to be logical. There’s no value in keeping us around once I do this, and there’s no reason to kill us if we’re out somewhere minding our own business.”

  “But I thought they was tryin’ to kill all humans.”

  “And they are. But not all right away.”

  “Ain’t they worried we’ll make more?”

  “More people?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I kind of agreed that we’d all get vasectomies.”

  “Vasecto-whats?”

  “Just a little operation so we can’t have kids. No big deal. Don’t look at me like that. I saw you get circumcised with an old knife and no pain killers. You’ll be fine with it.”

  “But what if I want kids?” he asks. “My pa always said I’d have a son to carry on the name, remember? I brought you to the cave and showed you the head.”

  I remember his cave and their fearless leader who was really just the bust of an old movie star they’d dug up.

  “Jimmy, who would you even have kids with?”

  “Whatever,” he says, pulling open the door. “That big lady wasn’t very happy, so we better hurry on.”

  The valley is strangely quiet as we weave our way along the path toward the square. We pass the gray education annex and it seems somehow smaller and less impressive to me now, so much so that it’s difficult to even imagine the anxiety I felt that day I tested with all the other 15s. Back then my biggest fears were moving to a different level and getting punched by Red.

  A steadily growing buzz of conversation foretells what we’ll see when we turn onto the public square—everyone, and I mean everyone, is there. I’ve never seen so many people gathered in one place before. I guess we never had occasion for it, growing up. Mrs. Hightower’s head floats above the others where she stands at a makeshift stage, scanning the edges of the crowd for our arrival. She sees us and waves us over.

  “It’s about time,” she huffs. “They were about to come and drag you out here themselves in another few minutes.”

  She points to a platform where a microphone waits for me. I look to Jimmy for reassurance, but all I get is a sad mixture of anxiety and disappointment written on his face. I climb the step to the platform and pull the microphone toward my mouth.

  “Hello.”

  I jolt away from the mic when my voice echoes back from every corner of the cavern. The crowd ceases its murmuring and focusses on me. It’s a sea of blank faces, although a few of them form into loose approximations of people that I used to know. Is that Mrs. Kelly from the infirmary where I went once with a fever? I was lucky it hadn’t gotten worse, she’d said, because otherwise they would have sent me up to Eden. Then I see Chad, my father’s old friend from work. He must be due to retire any day. There are kids I know from class too, standing in groups, whispering and pointing. One girl who was a few years ahead of me is in the front row, and I see that she’s pregnant. Her husband is holding her hand. There are others I know I should know but can hardly remember. They’re all looking at me and waiting for me to speak—waiting for me to tell them that everything is okay, that their lives can go on just as they as always have. And they’ll trust me because I’m one of them.

  “Hello, friends.”

  Just saying the word “friends” makes me feel like a fraud. What is a friend anyway? Someone you feel affection for? Someone who will do you no harm? I push my self-doubt away, take a deep breath, and speak to the c
rowd.

  “As many of you know, retirement has been on hold for the last few months or so. I’m here to explain why. Eden is undergoing some simple improvements to make the experience even better than it already was. But I can assure you that no one is going to be forced to work beyond age thirty-five and that the promise of Eden is alive and better than ever.”

  “What’s better about it?” someone shouts from the crowd.

  “Well ...” I stammer, not having thought of any particular improvements to pitch to them. “For one thing we had to expand it to make more room. But that’s just the start. As many of you know, you can be anywhere you want while you’re in Eden. Any paradise you can imagine. Well, imagine being able to be in multiple paradises at once.”

  “How would you do that?” someone asks.

  “The software behind it is quite complicated, of course,” I say, lying through my gritted teeth, “but basically you can be in more than one place at a time in the new Eden.”

  After it comes out, I realize that I’m just mixing in the professor’s crazy submarine speech about particles existing in more than one place at any given time, and I’m not really even sure how you could enjoy being in two places at once. I look at Jimmy for his reaction, but I can’t tell if he looks impressed by my speaking skills or my ability to lie.

  “What else?” another asks.

  I close my eyes for a moment, trying to think, trying to not lie too much. Then I open them and go on:

  “New places to go and explore without even having to imagine them. Like gorgeous coastlines of blue water, and pine forests, and snowcapped mountains, and beautiful lakes with homey houses on their edge for you to relax in. Tennis courts. Beds made of feathers. Planes that fly you over the landscape and show you deserts and prairies and grazing beasts that had long ago gone extinct. And whole islands across the sea where castles rise up out of the water, and where majestic hills roll on forever, and you can ride horses and hunt deer and eat feasts prepared for kings.”