The Hike

by Drew Magary

  The train was half a mile from the tunnel, but Ben had no interest in entering a mountain ever again. He strapped himself into the seat and grabbed the black throttle, jerking it backward. The train shrieked as a holiday’s worth of sparks lit up under the wheels. The locomotive tipped to the left, balancing along one rail. Ben pressed the SAND button, dousing the rails in hot friction, and then rammed the throttle forward again.

  He leaned in and to the left. The train began to lift off the ground. Ben could feel it separating from the rails and veering away from the mountain, the other cars trailing behind the locomotive as the train began to take flight. It was speeding upward, into the red triangle in the sky. Through the windshield, Ben could see the sides of the triangle expanding and pulsing. Two parallel lines of glowing purple swans flew in front of the train and formed a path directly into it.

  But then the train began to slow down. After taking off from the ground like a rocket, gravity suddenly came back into play and Ben could feel the locomotive losing its buoyancy, poised to fall rapidly back down to the ground. There was a fire extinguisher in the cab next to the engineer’s seat. He unbuckled his seat belt and grabbed the extinguisher, bashing it into the windshield and clearing every last shard of glass. Just as the train was about to fall, Ben walked to the back of the cab and ran toward the open windshield, leaping out headfirst, diving toward the swans.

  He blasted into the air as the locomotive went limp and the train plunged back down to the salt flat, splitting open on impact and forming a long line of fire in the salt that looked like a freshly opened tectonic plate. Ben didn’t look down. He was flying now, in complete control, leaning into the atmosphere and picking up speed—a living comet. The moons, bright and silver above him, converged on the triangle, closing in and spinning like buffers at a car wash. He shot into the red triangle as the moons kissed and now Ben was out of the stratosphere and in the open black of space, surpassing the speed of light, moving so fast that he left his own body in the dust. His hands in front of him turned to white lightning as the swirling nebular clouds billowed up and fell behind him. The deep space was transforming before his eyes now, compacting into a single flashing tube that was changing color so quickly that he couldn’t keep up with what he was seeing. New colors. Colors beyond anything that he had seen before.

  His lightning hands merged with the white at the end of the tube and now he was moving so fast that every atom in his body sloughed off and reduced him to a single, precious particle, moving faster than anything has ever moved, compacting and picking up heat until every quark within it was ready to break apart and blow out into its own universe. He had become a photon. He was light. He took a deep breath (was it a breath?) and the white became everything.

  A moment later, he was sitting in a white room with no doors or windows. Two parallel black lines stretched out from his chair, turned left, and ran into the bare wall. Sitting at a white desk across from him was Mrs. Blackwell. She seemed surprised to see him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  THE PRODUCER

  He was human again. Landbound. Affected by gravity. No gun. But he wasn’t forty-eight anymore. No, now he was ten years younger, or at least looked it. His hands were pristine: no scar on his palm from the knife fight with the giant cricket. His body was healthy and vigorous. He probed his mouth with his tongue; the tooth Cisco had pulled out was rooted back in place. Anchored. All of that extra mileage, gone. He felt something in his pocket. He reached into his black mesh shorts and found a hotel room key. The inn. Room 19.

  “You’re here earlier than I expected,” Mrs. Blackwell said to Ben.

  “I’m a late bloomer. But once I bloom, I bloom fast.”

  “Well, wait right there and we’ll be with you shortly.”

  “Where am I?”

  “The Executive Producer’s office.”

  “I am the Producer.”

  “You are, but this is the Executive Producer’s office, and he’s a very busy man. So he’ll see you in just a moment.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No, I won’t wait.”

  She sat back in her chair. “All right. You can see him, if you can find him.”

  There was nothing else in the room except for a black Sharpie sitting on top of the white desk. No door. No stairs. No way out. Ben got up and walked over to the bare wall. It was clean, with no cracks or hidden levers. He got down on his hands and knees and looked under the desk.

  “He’s not there,” she said.

  “I can see that.”

  He got back up. It took a moment, but then he saw the Sharpie and knew what he had to do. He swiped it off the desk and walked back to the wall. He hadn’t forgotten all that drawing he had taught himself in the desert. Perspective. Contours. He drew a frame, then two hinges, and then a thin black void inside the frame. Then he made the door, rectangular and thick, with four brickmold panels and a black handle. For an added flourish, he wrote “PUSH” across the top of the handle. Then he looked back at Mrs. Blackwell and threw the Sharpie onto her desk. It rolled right off.

  “Good-bye, Mrs. Blackwell.”

  “Good luck, Ben.”

  He pushed the door open and found himself in a wood-lined office, with tasteful paintings hanging from the walls and two shiny leather chairs facing each other in front of a large, hand-carved oaken desk. On top of the desk there was a silver letter opener and a bottle of—what else?—fine champagne. Behind the desk were two more doors. The globe of an unknown planet—all misshapen continents and strange oceans—sat spinning off to the side. One of the leather chairs was empty. In the other chair sat an elderly man, perhaps in his seventies, wearing a white linen suit and white slippers with no socks. He was frighteningly tan all over. Even his lips were tan. From his neck hung a thick gold chain with no pendant. His face was stretched back, like he’d had work done on more than one occasion. His hair was perfect silver and he was rocking sunglasses indoors. He stood up and opened his arms wide when Ben came into the office.

  “Ben, baby! You made it. I’m so proud of you.”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “I’m Bobby. I’m the Executive Producer. Love your work. Have a seat.”

  “I’m not gonna have a seat. I’m gonna fucking kill you.”

  The Executive Producer grinned. “Ben, I’m sorry, but that’s not going to happen. See, I’m the one obstacle you don’t get by. Now sit down, and I’ll tell you everything. You must have questions.”

  “When do I go home?”

  “I think we should talk a bit before circling back to that.” He sat back down and gestured for Ben to do likewise. “Come on. Relax. Would you like anything to drink? Eat? Caviar? Champagne? I do love champagne.”

  “No.”

  “You’re very focused. It shows up in your work.”

  “Where am I?”

  “My office, of course.”

  “Are you God?”

  “No, but that would be a better title for it. No one ever knows what a producer does. It’s a shame, really.”

  “Why did you do this to me?”

  “Oh, it wasn’t me. I’m a consultant, Ben. A fixer. The path chose you, don’t you know that by now? Since the beginning of time, the path has been here, ready to claim worthy subjects. Once it chose you, I consulted. I studied. I learned about your hopes and fears and dreams, and all of that informed the path as it shaped itself just for you. Your hike was on the longer end. We had another fellow go for a full million years. Helluva sight. I’ve never seen such perseverance. Anyway, I help sculpt the path, like a landscaper. And your subconscious generously helps to fill in the gaps. Hence the dog theme for you. It’s like a birthday party.”

  “Voris?”

  “From your journals. Great character. Says so much with those eyes of his.”

  “Fermona?”

&nbs
p; “Standard path obstacle. Good chemistry between you two.”

  “Cisco?”

  “Ah, Cisco. No, Cisco was a man, like you. Little overlap there. Again, great chemistry.”

  “Why?”

  “What do you mean, why?”

  “Why does the path pick people?”

  “We’re past why here, Ben. This is just how it is.”

  “How do I get home?”

  “Ah. Now, this is where it gets interesting.”

  “I have to kill you, don’t I?”

  “No. Like I said, baby, you don’t get to kill me. You and I, we hang. We just hang. No rancor.” He reached behind his chair and poured himself a glass of champagne. “You can go home simply by walking out the door.”

  “Which one?”

  “Either one. You go through the door on the left, and you return to your life as it was the day you ventured onto the path. Everything the same. That familiar, boring world that you know and occasionally love.”

  “What about the other door?”

  “Oh, that?” the Executive Producer said with one eyebrow arched. “That’s heaven. You walk through that door, and you get to be a Producer eternally. You remain on the path, and you can make it go anywhere you like, one endless red carpet rolling out for you. You can make a billion dollars. You can invent the flying car. You and your wife can have sex five times a day. Good sex, too. Like you had at the villa. You have complete control to shape your life any way you like. There are no limits. And you can live forever, Ben. You and your kids. Your loyal, perfectly well-behaved children. Go nuts. You can fly to Mars and build a resort colony there. You know those wonderful dreams you had? Sexy Annie Derrickson? No dogs ripping your face in half? That’s all waiting for you. One endless, fabulous fantasy. The life you deserve, Ben.”

  Ben sat stone silent, processing the offer.

  “You’re full of shit. This is a trick.”

  “Not a trick. My word is bond.”

  “I know who you are,” Ben told him.

  “Kid, I am so far beyond what you think I am, it would make you sick.”

  “Why are you selling me on this so hard? What’s in it for you?”

  “I told you: I’m a consultant. This is what I do. I consult.”

  “What door did Cisco take?”

  “Oh, I’ll never tell.”

  Ben stood up. “I want what I had.”

  “Why?” the Executive Producer asked. “Why would you want that? I’m green-lighting the ultimate prize for you. Monks sit in dark rooms their whole lives hoping for a chance to walk through that door. And not all of them get the chance, I promise you.”

  “It’s not real.”

  “Oh, please. You know it’s real. You saw it yourself, didn’t you? You could see it, touch it, taste it. It was as real as anything else you’ve ever known.”

  “It’s not the same.” Ben was grasping now, desperate. “Not real.”

  “Who said your life was real, Ben?”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Who’s to say you haven’t been on the path this whole time, Ben? Huh? Don’t you find it remarkable that you were born into such a wondrous time in history? The most advanced technological civilization in the history of the universe. The richest country in that civilization. The most advanced species on that lucky little planet of yours. You could have been a microbe, Ben: a tiny, insignificant, single-cell animal that lives for a day and no longer. Or you could have been a crab, hmm? But no: You were a person, with a cute wife and three lovely kids. Born a man, and a white man at that. Never killed off randomly. Never homeless. Never raped. Doesn’t that strike you as unfathomably lucky?”

  “Given that you kept me prisoner for ten years and change, I don’t feel lucky at all.”

  “You should. Who’s to say we didn’t produce you? That you are the only man who has ever lived, ever? All the world’s history—everyone you’ve ever met or heard of—all background for you, the greatest story ever told. Your parents weren’t real.”

  “Stop it.”

  “Your wife and children were props.”

  “STOP IT.”

  “Who’s to say this wasn’t just one big test run for a model universe? Who’s to say that you, lucky Ben, are not the first man . . . the prototype of humanity? And who’s to say that the path isn’t God Himself, welcoming you in His arms, asking you to build the universe with Him? You can’t go back.”

  “I will.”

  “You know too much now. You now know that everything that once seemed so definitive to you, up until the day you set foot in my woods, is just a series of arbitrary limits. Gravity. The sunrise. Time itself. The rest of the universe doesn’t play by any of Earth’s rules. Why should you? Why be bound by orbits or revolutions? That world you want back into is ordinary, kid. And dying. Remember the freighter? Remember that freighter you saw sailing through the end of humanity? That’s not far away, baby. That’s close. Your family might be on that boat, and that’s if they’re lucky.”

  “I won’t listen to you.”

  “Oh, I’m about to make it even harder. Because, you see, if you choose the left-hand exit, you cannot ever, under any circumstances, tell anyone about your time on the path. Not even your wife. You’ll be struck dead before the words reach your mouth from your brain. Same fate if you try to write it down, or use sign language, or tap out Morse code to tell the world your story. Your heart will explode that instant. And you won’t end up back in this office. Do you understand? This is your only chance to walk through that other door, to be the master of the path and live forever in ecstasy. Maybe you should think before acting so certain, baby. Don’t throw away the mother lode. This is your life and the afterlife merged together in one perfect, endless existence.”

  Ben felt his knees buckle.

  “Sit,” said the Executive Producer. “That’s what the chair is for.”

  But he didn’t sit. He walked up to the door on the right—the door to heaven—and gripped the round, brushed satin knob, letting it slip around inside his palm. Then he turned to the Executive Producer.

  “What happens if I leave them?” he asked.

  “You still don’t understand. You’re not leaving them if you go through that door.”

  “What happens to the world behind the door on the left if I don’t go through it?”

  “It doesn’t exist. But what difference does it make? Everything is the same, but better.”

  “Will I be dead?”

  “There is no dead. Think bigger than just life and death.”

  “It’s not a trick.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then it’s a test.”

  “No, it is not a test. It’s as real and binding as life on Earth.”

  But his life on Earth . . . that was realer, right? Ben backed away from the door and sat down, rubbing his temples and groaning loudly. The Executive Producer stood and poured him a glass of water, then gave him a kind pat on the back.

  “It isn’t easy,” he said. “I know. It’s a lot to take in, baby. Fortunately, you’re in the right spot. You’re free to deliberate for as long as you like. I’ll stay here forever with you, if that’s how much time you need to decide.”

  Ben buried his head in his hands. He had flown between two moons only to end up forced into this spot. Another goddamn puzzle to solve. The path had taken him and plunged him into this awful, horrible, fantastic world. And yet it had been protecting him the entire time, keeping him alive, wooing him with food and drink and things he had never seen before. The path was good, wasn’t it? If you just walk through that door back onto the path, you’ll see them again and you’ll live forever and it will be so terribly wonderful and easy . . .

  And yet, “It doesn’t exist.” That was what the Executive Producer told him would happen to the world he on
ce knew. It would be gone forever: everything he’d ever seen, everyone he knew, everything that he had ever been through thanks to a scary world that was far beyond his control. All of it would disappear.

  Ben glowered at the tan playboy across from him. I could stab him. That letter opener on the old man’s desk. That would do the trick. Just stab the fucker right in the eye. Over on the wall, Ben noticed one of the paintings included a nighttime beach landscape, with a little blue crab propped up on the dunes and two full moons in the background.

  Two moons. Two goddamn moons. Why are there always two moons?

  And then Ben had an idea: a marvelous, insane idea. Oh, what a brilliant idea he had. He stood back up.

  “I want what I had,” he repeated to the Executive Producer.

  “More faith in life than God Himself, huh?”

  “Yeah. More faith in life than God Himself. But it’s more than that. You said I can do whatever I want on the path, right?”

  “That’s right,” said Bobby.

  “Soon as I walk through that door on the left, the power’s gone, yes?”

  “You got it, kid.”

  “But I still have it now, don’t I? I’m still on the path.”

  He walked over to the desk and picked up the letter opener. It was sharp. Heavy at the handle. The Executive Producer eyed him curiously.

  “What are you going to . . .”

  Ben jammed the letter opener directly into his own forehead. A trickle of blood slid down his face as he drew the blade all the way down to his groin, then between his legs and up his spine, over his head and back to the puncture wound in his forehead. Then he dropped the bloodied knife on the rug and dug his fingers inside the rift in his abdomen, pulling himself apart.

  But no wound opened. Instead, as Ben pulled, more of him emerged. From his left side came more of his right side. From his right side came more of his left side. He pulled and pulled until a second pair of legs came flopping out of the slit he had made. And now a pair of arms as well: a right arm on the left and a left arm on the right, like one man standing in front of two angled mirrors. He was a zygote splitting in two. His head came apart: three eyes, then four. One nose, then two. Two sets of ears. Two mouths. By the time he was finished pulling, there were two Bens standing in front of the desk: one thirty-eight years old, the other forty-eight years old. Both men weary, but strong and full. The Older Ben had a little crab tattoo on his upper arm.