“So you had us kill each other?”
The doctor sighed and took off his glasses before continuing.
“History is a series of difficult choices. The only reason there’s anything left of the human race, the only reason we’re still here is because men like me made those difficult choices.”
Jon starts to laugh and he does not know where the laughter comes from.
“Look around you, old man. Does it look like we’re ‘still here’ to you?”
“We needed to do what was done. We needed to unite the world and do away with the tribalism and infighting and horror that’s been the hallmark of mankind for the last five thousand years.” The doctor rubbed his temple, then carried on. “The plan was, there would be a brief attack by an unknown force, the entire global consciousness would fall into a state of despair, a state hopelessness, then it would be followed by a sense of purpose, a sense unification, a sense that the human race could do anything if it stuck together. Your father died in the process. It was too much for him and the machine we used killed him before he could create the sense of purpose in the noosphere. The sense of hope. A destiny, for all mankind. Hence, the world is in a global state of depression and why we must keep feeding the population anti-depressants in the water supply. Otherwise, there’s every chance that the world would, within a day or two, kill itself.”
“I honestly can’t believe that you’re trying to justify this slaughter, that you’ve convinced yourself that what you did, what you are doing, was the right thing. Mankind would’ve got there eventually.”
“Eventually? Can you imagine what aliens from another planet would say if they saw us back then? Step out of your narrow mind for a second and see just how horrible we were as a species: people separated by bits of cloth stuck to sticks with the colours of their country sewn onto them, by national anthems, fighting over patches of dirt that we could only lay claim to because we flopped out of our mothers onto them.”
Jon fell silent.
“Do you know how much we managed to do because of The End, even considering we failed to finish the project? We invented teleportation in a matter of months. That technology wasn’t predicted to become a reality for another 100 years. People had a common threat Jon, even if they didn’t know what it was or how it worked. They had something to fear, and scientists and doctors like me, we were finally able to do what we needed to do for the sake of science. Do you have any idea how much modern medicine owes to the Nazis? There are times when the weight of morality is lighter than the weight of survival,” says the doctor.
“You’re an insane coward. People live in a hell of your design and to stop them from finding out what’s really going on, people have technology rations and a disabled Internet,” says Jon. “You control what’s left of the undernet with an iron fist so people can’t talk to each other. And you made it illegal to talk about The End and you’ve kept everything so vague and everyone so drugged up that even when people do find out, they’re not believed,” says Jon.
“Do you think we could trust what’s left of mankind with the truth? Really, Jon?”
Jon can’t believe it. Jon doesn’t want to believe it. But something is hardening inside him because all of this feels like truth. The doctor throws a picture in front of Jon; it’s the doctor and his father, arm in arm, in front of a giant machine. Smiling.
“My father ended the world,” whispers Jon.
“He only ended a bad world, Jon. In the greater scheme of history, it was a small price to pay for all we’ve managed to accomplish. And in ten days’ time, on the ten year anniversary of The End, we’re going to accomplish even more,” says the doctor. He folds his hands and looks at Jon like a piece on a chessboard.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean we’re going to have another cataclysm and you’re going to cause it. But we’re going to do it right this time, not like the one your father ruined. Your father wasn’t completely in control of his powers but we know so much more these days, Jon. We can take your parlour tricks that you’ve been turning and give you real power. We can help shape the world into a truly better place. Unfortunately, because your father died during the process, we couldn’t create new, better ideas within the noosphere. Of uniting society, of coming together as one whole, for the greater good of mankind.” The doctor shakes his fist. “Instead, we just had that one final illusion. Catastrophe. Terror. Depression. An apocalypse. Your father’s parting gift to the world. The one he died making. Don’t you want to make up for it, Jon? Don’t you want to fix the world?” asks the doctor.
Jon’s brain ticks over the things he’s being told like a machine. He feels like he’s outside his body, watching someone else do his talking for him.
“You’re saying you could amplify my illusions like you did his, and I can create new ones?” asks Jon.
“Not just new, Jon, better. Better for all of us. You were meant for this, born for this even. I know life has not been fair to you but sometimes, we are nothing more than a ball thrown by a child. You can no more change direction or slow down life than the ball can.”
“You are both right and wrong.”
“How so?”
“We cannot slow down time. But we can always change direction.”
The doctor laughs, stands up and puts his hand on Jon’s shoulder.
He leans down, puts his mouth near Jon’s ear and says, “Think about it,” then walks off.
The guards lead Jon, numb and ice cold, back to the cell. His father killed the world. His father killed an entire planet. His father was responsible. Maybe Jon will be responsible for completely destroying it.
Or saving it.
One night passes.
Chapter 12
The End
A completely undiscovered tribe in Brazil kills themselves, leaving nothing but artifacts for possible future generations to find. Each member of the tribe hugged and kissed every other member of the tribe, then went down to the river and lay down with their feet pointing towards where the sun rose each morning.
A wave of fear, despair, and anguish breaks over the assembled children in Jon’s school hall and in every person in every city in the world at once. The pain hits. People drop to their knees in agony. The greatest pain they’ve ever known. And all they want is not pain. Not pain. Not pain. Not a car, not a winning lottery ticket, not even love. Just not pain. The lucky pass out. When Jon is finally conscious of what’s going on around him, when he’s no longer blindly running in fear, he finds himself wandering the school in a daze. Children cry. Teachers cry. People flee in all directions at once, monsters are real. Monsters are here. A small child grabs Jon’s hand.
“Excuse me, sir, I need to call my mom. I think I need to go home. Please help me call my mom, she’d be worried about the…the wolves,” says the child. His eyes are wild. Around them, the shadow creatures leap out of corners and travel in packs, tearing people apart and howling and screaming like animals. The child is delirious. Jon knows what it’s like to be afraid. Jon takes his hand and pulls him through the school in no particular direction.
“What’s your name?”
“Wilfred, sir.”
“No, don’t call me sir. We only call grown-ups sir.”
“Ok.”
“My name is Jon. Wilfred, we’re going to get out of here, ok?”
“Ok.”
“Do you know what you call a fish with no eyes, Wilfred?”
“No.”
“A fshhhh.”
The screams of the shadows and a mist made of white light hang over everything and they are the strangest possible accompaniments to Wilfred’s giggling. Jon takes Wilfred and pushes through it all, knowing that Wilfred’s mind has been taken off everything a little; knowing that it’s still possible to tell jokes gives Jon the faintest sense of hope. Jon pushes through.
They make it to the entrance near the carpark where the parents drop their children off each morning. Cars lay on top of cars. Smoke fills
the air. Ashes fall. The screams go on and on and on. Jon is more scared than he’s ever been. He was the most scared he’d ever been last night. But this is everyone. Everyone is dead or dying. The clock tower has been knocked down. Bricks lie scattered across the playground. In the face of all this, Wilfred sobs hot tears. There is no joke Jon can tell to take his mind off this carnage.
“The wolves…the wolves are eating everyone,” says the child.
A lady runs past, blood streaming down her face, chased by shadows. An old man convulses in the street. Chaos lives here now. Chaos and death. Jon starts running towards his home, holding Wilfred’s hand, dashing out of the parking lot. They make it to the bushes along the side of the school and Jon sees a pack of shadows rounding a corner, approaching them but before the shadows can see them, he pulls Wilfred and himself into the bushes. Wilfred is still crying and he clamps his hand over Wilfred’s mouth until nothing can be heard but muffled sobs. The shadows stop just outside and one takes a step towards where they are, sniffing the air. Jon wills every part of him to be still and wishes to high heaven that Wilfred understands that he needs to be quiet. Suddenly, a house across the road erupts in chaos and broken windows and screams and the pack of shadows leaps towards it as one. Jon stays still for another few seconds and then leans down to whisper into Wilfred’s ear.
“Wilfred, what is green and brown, has six legs and if it fell out of a tree would kill you?”
Wilfred shakes his head.
“A pool table.”
Wilfred smiles for a moment and that’s enough for Jon. He knows Wilfred won’t give up and just start crying on the ground. He jumps out of the bushes, still holding Wilfred’s hand and they run as fast as they have ever run in their lives. They make it to Jon’s house and Jon fumbles with the key he found in his box of cigarettes that morning and manages to open the door, shoving Wilfred and himself inside before slamming the door shut again. He holds it closed with his body, expecting at any moment for something to slam against it, demanding entry, demanding that they die, screaming.
Jon can hear the sound of the TV in the house and he takes Wilfred with him towards the sound. It sounds strange to have something as normal as a TV on inside this nightmare. He walks into the lounge and Jon’s mother is watching the news. Her eyes dart backwards and forwards from them to the TV, not even really registering that they’re there. Her normally perfect blonde hair is everywhere at once. She’s scratched her forearms bloody. Jon goes to the kitchen and gives Wilfred some milk.
“Stay away from the windows!” Jon’s mother hisses at them. Jon nods. Jon is brave for Wilfred and doesn’t react, doesn’t cry. The newscaster is speaking. The newscaster is out of breath. A ticker tape at the bottom of the screen flashes statistics and details and numbers and short, sharp sentences.
…No one has claimed responsibility. An invading army of shadows has entered every country in the world. Mass bombings have left billions dead, more injured. World leaders in emergency meeting…
Jon doesn’t understand what’s happened. His mother is beside him, holding his hand so tightly it hurts. She is crying and blood is dripping down her arm. Now Jon is crying because she is crying. He tries not to let Wilfred see.
“Where’s Dad?” asks Jon.
“Your father…I haven’t heard from your father.”
“He’ll be home from work soon,” says Jon, his voice breaking slightly. Jon believes this to be true. It is not.
Jon will never see his father again.
There’s a knock at the front door. Surely no monster would knock. Jon goes to answer it. Michelle is standing there. Beautiful, sudden love of his life, Michelle. She hugs Jon. And for some reason, Jon believes that despite everything, this is perhaps the only perfect moment the world has ever known, just because she’s here and in his arms. Jon knows that whatever cars are still running in the world, all their indicators flicked, at exactly the same moment, perfectly in time, just this once. He knows that two snowflakes are falling somewhere that look exactly the same. He knows that somewhere, people are alive. He forgets about his father for a moment and she consumes his thoughts and it is an escape.
Her body is warm and solid next to his and he holds her tightly and breathes her in.
“Thank God, Jon, thank God you’re here. My parents, Jon, my parents were in it and Emily and her parents haven’t come back since it happened,” she says through a veil of tears. “I was at Emily’s house alone watching the TV when the news reports started and…”
“It’s ok, it’s all going to be ok,” Jon says. He thinks this is the right thing to say. He holds her even tighter. She’s even more beautiful than he remembers. She cries into his shoulder. His mother cries in the next room. The newscaster is crying. Wilfred is crying. The world is crying. The entire world is in tears. It starts to rain.
The howls of widows and orphans fill the ash-soaked streets. Mushroom clouds appear on the horizon.
Everything is going to be ok.
Chapter 13
Now
Somewhere in the last city on Earth, a street child gives his last piece of bread to his hungry younger brother. He writes his name on a wall in chalk, just in case someone will see it and say it aloud one more time. He dies in his sleep that night. His name was Simon. Now you know and Simon will live forever in electrical charges in your brain. You may forget Simon, but never completely. Simon is pure energy in the minds of everyone who reads this, forever.
Inside the United Government compound, a breathless guard is battling to open a cell door, struggling with the keys. The white industrial door isn’t budging but he can see inside through a small window.
“He’s hung himself!” yells Deformed. Jon’s face is bloated and blue and bare of signs of life.
His death mask is beautiful: an evident calm that may have escaped him most of his life. The guards finally manage to open the door. One of them picks up the dead weight of Jon’s body and grunts as he lifts it off the hook in the ceiling and ever-so-gently, like a baby, he lays the corpse on the ground.
“The doctor’s going to fucking kill us,” says the smaller guard.
“Shut up and help me get this noose off his neck,” says Deformed.
“Why’s it so tight?” asks the quieter one.
“Just fucking cut it. He’s probably ripped some of the cabling from the wall and used that,” says Deformed. They take out heavy-duty bolt cutters and work on the cables around Jon’s neck. They groan with the effort and it takes both of their combined strength to do it but eventually, with a satisfying snap, the noose falls away.
And they are left looking into the eyes of an angry, brown-eyed, half-man, half-tree.
“Who’s a coffee table now, numb nuts?” asks Edward as he slams his good arm into Deformed’s face, crushing his skull in the process. The smaller guard tries to back away but Edward is on him in an instant, sharp splinters of wood in his hand and ripping apart the frail human body; the smaller, quieter guard is quiet forever. Jon appears from under the covers of one of the bunks.
“How the hell did you manage to make them think I was you?” asks Edward, breathless and covered in blood.
“Easy. It’s the ability, the gift I told you about. I just imagined killing myself where you were standing. They thought I’d hung myself, and then removed your collar for you, thinking it was a noose around my neck,” says Jon, picking up Deformed’s gun from his remains. He’s more than a little taken aback by the sheer brutality of Edward’s attack. Blood drips from his leaves.
“You’re quite a vicious guy, Edward,” says Jon, surveying the carnage.
“We need to get going, there’s bound to be more of them,” says Edward, ignoring whatever Jon just said. As if on cue, an alarm begins to sound, no doubt triggered by the lack of a pulse in the two now very dead guards lying in front of them.
“Come on!” roars Edward, yanking Jon forward out of the cell and into the filthy white industrial corridors. They have no way of knowing wh
ere to go or how to get out but both feel that this uncertainty is better than whatever’s going to happen to them back in that cell. Jon can hear the doctor’s voice down one of the corridors marching, with friends, towards them at speed.
Jon stays put.
“Come on,” says Edward and Jon doesn’t move.
“Maybe it’d be better if I stayed.”
“You’re a moron.”
“Fair enough.”
Jon has a brief moment where he really and truly considers staying there, of going along with everything because fuck it, maybe the world is a better place with a delusion of happiness. It’s at least better than a delusion of sadness. The thought quickly fades when he remembers how he, how the world got here. Edward grabs Jon’s arm and pulls him forward.
They quicken their pace away from the voice, further into the building until shadows from a second patrol pass along the wall in front of them; Jon and Edward turn quickly, finding a locked cell door. Jon shoots the lock out using Deformed’s gun, hoping against hope that the cell will hide them until the search party passes. They spill into the cell and slam the door behind them. Jon drops the gun and it falls to the floor, where a man wrapped in a single piece of dark fabric from head to toe picks it up and looks at it like he’s never seen one before in his life. An eye patch covers one eye. He says nothing. Jon and Edward say nothing. All three of them are just staring at each other and at least two of them are breathing heavily.
“He’s a silencer,” says Edward.
“I thought those were only myths,” says Jon.
“I was a myth once,” says Edward. Jon looks at him. The silencer looks at him. He reminds Jon of one of the characters from The Black Kracken comic books he used to read as a kid. The silencer raises the gun and takes aim at Jon’s face.
“No,” says Jon, right before the trigger is pulled. The bullet flies past Jon’s face, into the head of the guard opening the door behind them. The silencer puts the gun into his belt and calmly walks over the body of the dead guard. Jon and Edward look at each other and shrug as they follow the man in black down the corridor.
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