“I managed to finally find my way off the algae farm and back to the city and I ran into one or two people I used to know, they told me I could find Emily at that club and she told me what had happened, to a greater or lesser extent, and now I’m here,” says Michelle.
Jon still hasn’t processed it completely. She’s Michelle but she’s not his Michelle. Her hips are slightly rounder, her hair isn’t silver anymore, more brown. She is not hanging on his every word. She is not a figment of his imagination. This is the real Michelle. Jon nods at the things she says, his brain slowly turning things over. Edward and One Eye have given them some privacy and are standing at the back of the park, keeping an eye out for looters or wandering Peace Ambassadors.
“I don’t know who I’ve become,” says Jon.
“I don’t think I know either, if you’re looking for an answer. I met you once, Jon. I didn’t expect you to form a relationship with someone you thought was me.”
“I didn’t know she wasn’t you. I didn’t know she was just some lonely part of me.”
“I understand. Kind of. I think.” They sit in silence for a moment.
“Come here,” says Michelle and Jon gets up and hugs her like he loves her.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers in his ear as she touches the edge of a Charge Stick™ to the side of his neck. Jon shakes uncontrollably and with his last moments of consciousness, he sees a phalanx of Peace Officers walk around the edge of the park up to him and Michelle. She holds him as he falls. The last thing he hears as he passes out are the yells of Edward and One Eye as a thousand shots ring out.
Chapter 31
Now
Mary. I’m alive. I didn’t die. Don’t jump off the building Mary. I love you more than anything else. I don’t want to bury you. Please Mary. Don’t do it. Stay with me. We can be happy while we’re here. We’ve got years left. We’ve got so many seconds left to hold each other. Please, Mary.
Mary. I’m alive. I didn’t die. Don’t jump off the building. Mary. I love you more than anything else. I don’t want to bury you. Please, Mary.
When Jon comes to, the room he’s in is quiet except for the whir of sextants tracking the stars and the crackle of the fire that powers them. Long curtains hang from the ceiling, hiding more spinning machines and through two of them, Jon can see the lights of the last city on Earth blinking like distant white skulls. Michelle is there. The real one. She’s in a government uniform, a red one he hasn’t seen before. It is exactly ten years to the day that The End began.
“What job did they offer you in exchange for betraying me?”
“This is my Auto Systemic Meridian Response uniform.”
“It’s cute.”
“It’s the uniform one wears when one whispers quietly and performs small tasks for the benefit of government employees, so that they may experience a tingling sensation across their skull. If someone draws you, or whispers softly near you, this is the tiny shiver you get, the pleasurable tingling sensation across your scalp and back. It is called ASMR for short. The experience has become a delicacy amongst government employees.”
“That’s all it took to betray me? A job as someone who whispers softly to others to give them goosebumps?”
“You don’t know what I’ve been through, Jon.”
“I know you better than you think.”
“No you don’t. You know some fantastical version of me you’ve built in your head. You know a sixteen year old girl that you met once. Every single other thing about me that you think you know, you’ve made up.”
“No, there are parts of you that were real.”
“No Jon, there weren’t. I don’t even like comic books. I just told you I liked comic books that night because I thought you were kind of cute.”
“You lied to me?”
“Yes, Jon, ten years ago, when I was a kid, I lied to you and I’m sorry that hurts you.”
“This isn’t you.”
“This is me. You’ve been in love with a ghost for ten years, Jon; an illusion, an imaginary friend and I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this but that girl never existed anywhere but your head.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying, what we’ve shared.”
“Don’t you fucking get it, you fucking weirdo? We haven’t shared anything. I’ve been working on a goddamn algae farm for ten years in the middle of fucking nowhere. I saw you once, one night before The End and then my parents died, and I was shipped off to one of the new United Government orphan work camps and that was it. You are nothing to me!”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Yes I do, Jon, yes I do. I don’t even know who you are.” There’s silence for a while as everything that’s been said slowly becomes real.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers and turns away.
“Never apologise for how you feel,” says Jon softly, more to himself than to her.
“What?”
“I said never apologise for how you feel. No one can control how they feel. The sun doesn’t apologise for being the sun. The rain doesn’t say sorry for falling. Feelings just are,” says Jon.
Michelle walks across to where he’s facing the dark curtains and the city and reaches out touch him on the shoulder, once, for real. She pulls her hand back at the last second and turns away, coming face to face with herself and she takes in air sharply.
“Michelle, this is Michelle,” says Jon, “The person you could’ve been.”
The differences are small but striking. Jon’s Michelle has perfect hair, a perfect body and a perfect face. She smiles at the real Michelle, who is only human.
“This isn’t me, Jon. This is a cardboard cutout.”
Michelle walks to the door and the doctor’s personal Peace Officers enter and grab Jon roughly by the arms. Jon’s Michelle disappears.
“You’re not getting away this time, you tricksy fucking bastard,” says one.
Jon no longer cares. Jon will throw himself over the edge of the building if he gets the chance. There is nothing and no one left to live for. He will join his father and mother on the other side. If there is one.
Perhaps feeling nothing is better than feeling this.
Chapter 32
Now
A single, rusted nail, more than 2,000 years old.
Edward and One Eye are strapped to the wall at the far end of a cell.
“Christ all-bloody mighty, those tranq guns fucking hurt. I’ve got bruises on my bruises. I can’t believe that Michelle bitch betrayed us, why the hell would anyone love her? Even the ghost of her. Sometimes I think Jon’s a bit of idiot,” says Edward. He trails off for a moment as his eyes roll around, still slightly dizzy from the tranqs the Peace Officers shot them with. “You know, One Eye, you’re not that bad for someone who doesn’t say a word. Although I think that might be why I like you. Everyone else is always talking, talking and you, you just shut up and listen. Would you like to hear the story of how I became a tree?”
“Shut the hell up in there,” says the guard from outside.
“Come in here and make me, you daft arsehat,” replies Edward.
The door opens and the guard steps inside. That is his second mistake. The first is not making sure that he tightened One Eye’s cuffs properly. Or at least, made them so tight that even if One Eye did dislocate his thumb, which he did, he wouldn’t be able to get his hand out, which he does. The guard, unaware that the assassin on the wall to the left of him is now free, walks up to Edward to teach the half-tree a lesson. He opens his mouth to tell Edward what he’s going to do to him but never gets that far; One Eye snaps his neck like a dry twig.
“Come on, we need to find Jon and get the hell out of here,” says Edward. One Eye points to one of the heating vents outside.
“Ok, let’s try that,” says Edward and he walks up to the grate and lifts it off. He and One Eye disappear inside.
“I hope you know where you’re going, One Eye,” says Edward and One Eye nods back, in the dark.
“…and we’ve got more than enough Sadness, our men raided Duer’s hideout and took his entire stockpile. He and his goons are all dead.”
“Good. He would’ve become a problem at some point anyway. And the machine? Is the machine ready?”
“Yes, we’ve updated it slightly to accept different media formats but essentially it’ll function the same way it did ten years ago. Because of the previous escape, we’ve doubled our security forces and brought in twenty elite Peace Angels and several Assault Seraphim.”
“Excellent. We’re going to change the world today. We’d best do it properly.”
One Eye looks through the grill in the vent and does his best to work out how exactly the machine works. There is a series of pictures being displayed on a screen next to it and a nurse is saving some and discarding others. There are strange objects on a tray next to her and several boxes of Sadness piled high in the corner and what looks like a captain of the guard and several scientists talking to the doctor.
This is going to be tricky. He reaches across to Edward, grabs his hand and starts tracing letters on his palm in the dark. Edward starts to shake One Eye off before he realises what One Eye is trying to do. In the dark, letter by letter, One Eye tells Edward what’s going to happen if they use Jon like they used his father.
Chapter 33
Now
“What’s this?”
“It’s a napkin used by the saddest girl in the world to dry her tears.”
“Let me guess. Sylvia Plath?”
“No, no one famous. But we knew about her. She gave off so much resonance, it turned our entire map black for one city block.”
“And she was no one special?”
“You wouldn’t recognise her name if I told it to you.”
“So just an everyday, normal person carrying their shopping, reading books at night and going for drinks occasionally with her friends, just some person, that’s the saddest girl in the world?”
“Yes. Just a regular person.”
The door to Jon’s cell burst open and Edward and One Eye step in, one after the other, covered in blood, none of which appears to be theirs.
“I never want to spend that much time in a heating vent ever again,” Edward says as he throws the dead body of a guard next to Jon. Jon doesn’t move. There’s no point anymore.
“Snap out of it,” says Edward and he shakes Jon to try and get him to react. Edward’s sense of humour is finally depleted.
“Jon, there’s a good chance we’re not going to make it out of this. They’re ready for us this time. They’ve got a small army outside. We need to have a plan ready in case they do to you whatever they did to your father. Jon? Are you listening to me? We need you to save the world,” Edward shakes him some more.
Jon is practically a dead weight. One Eye slams his fist into the wall behind them to get his attention and frantically shakes him some more. The screens in the room flicker on, bright white, blinding Edward. They start filling up with text; it’s the same words over and over again: “You have read this all before and you will again. You have read this all before and you will again.” Jon finally focuses on him. And he laughs.
“What the fuck are you doing? Jon?”
“I don’t know, Edward. My head, it feels like it’s leaking into the machines, into the tiles, into the books, everything’s leaking out of my head.”
“You need to snap out of it, Jon, we need you to stop that asshole from killing what’s left of the human race. We need you to save the world.”
“Save the world, Edward? The world that killed my father? That drove my mother to kill herself? That would make me fall in love with a dream?”
“That’s not the world, Jon. That’s just what happened and you can’t blame the entire world for what happened to you.”
“Then whom do I blame, Edward?”
“Sometimes, Jon, there’s no one left to blame. Sometimes, things just happen. We need you. Now.”
He’s holding Jon’s hand, pressing something into it but Jon can’t feel anything outside himself.
More guards are on the way. The screens flicker off and on, repeating the same phrases over and over and they slow, like a heartbeat. Things are desperate. Edward is desperate and he doesn’t have time to do this with Jon, to pull him back from the brink.
“I’ve never actually loved anyone, Edward,” says Jon.
“Shut the fuck up, Jon, you need to stay here, in this moment,” says Edward.
“You’re the best tree I’ve ever known but please leave me alone.”
“One Eye, go outside and keep a lookout, I need to tell Jon what you told me,” says Edward. One Eye nods and goes outside. Edward yells at Jon but he doesn’t hear it, all he hears are the waves crashing on some distant, storm-torn shore.
Edward finally pulls Jon to his feet and they stumble out into the corridor with One Eye leading the way. Edward’s only hope is that some of what he said got through to Jon. He didn’t seem to be there anymore. His eyes were vacant the whole time Edward was speaking. This is what Edward is thinking as they turn the corner, into a firing squad.
Everything slows down. It’s an ambush and before One Eye can react, the shots ring out. Several hit One Eye square in the chest, exploding into his flesh. Life and death are sometimes simple. This is one of those times. Death is simple here. One Eye falls and the blood from his wounds comes out in splashes of red against the air around him. He dies as he falls. Things fall. He is one of them. The hole in his chest does not hurt him for more than a moment but it rips the souls out of Edward and Jon. His eye stays open as his head hits the ground, last.
Edward roars and dives at them. Bullets scream into his wooden skin but he keeps moving and green sap fills the air as his splintered body falls into them like a deadly, thrashing thorn bush, impaling throats and hearts and minds. Human and ent scream, in mortal terror, in inhuman anger.
Everyone is dead, so suddenly, so imperfectly, so simply.
Everything is going to be ok.
Jon steps over the bodies and through his tears, he unwraps the cloth around One Eye’s head. Slowly, a young man with red hair and pale skin is revealed. He has an angelic face with one bright green eye that now, will always look at forever. A photograph of a young woman holding One Eye as he sleeps on a couch falls from the black wrappings. In the foreground of the picture, a child that shares both their features plays in front of a television.
Jon falls to his knees. He holds Edward’s and One Eye’s hands and he screams trying to hold as much of both of them as he can, throwing himself into their bodies, screaming into them, screaming into the end of their lives. More guards come. A gun slams into the back of his head. They pick him up and drag him to the doctor’s laboratory. He does not resist.
Chapter 34
Now
Nothing.
Jon is strapped into the machine but they leave his arms alone, as he’s not struggling. He remembers a bird with broken wings: “Leave it for the cats,” his mother had said and he hadn’t, he’d tried to save it but it died three days later and he didn’t know what to do with the body so he just held it and cried until his mother found him in his room and she was angry.
A nurse loads a flash drive into the side of the machine and pictures
and symbols flash across the screen in front of him. The first symbol is a man on a cross. The second is a trench filled with what look like hundreds of skinny, dead bodies. Then a burnt landscape with nothing but ash in the air. A child being stalked by a vulture. Then the news report of Elliot Philips, the astronaut that got spun out into space, then a picture of a soldier dying and playing guitar on a battlefield. Then a single piece of paper with the most beautiful sentence in the world written on it. Then the diary of an abused woman. Then a screenshot of gamers’ chats. And on. And on. And on.
You have read this all before.
“I’m going to need drugs for this.”
A man with a thin black mustache yells at a crowd, who salute at a 45 degree angle. The woman places several guitars, a noose, various trinkets, and a single nail in various compartments around the machine.
“You’ll get them. All you want and more.”
Bombs fall from a plane into little pockets of fire on the ground.
A man in a white lab coat walks in, pushing a tray piled high with vials of Sadness. One hundred white people surround a black man hanging by his neck.
“Jesus.”
Children stand around, covered in coal dust, poor as the dirt, staring at the camera.
“This may destroy your brain if you live through this but I imagine there’s not much left anyway.”
A plane slams into the side of a building. And again.
“My mind might be a little off these days but my heart is still here, which is more than I can say for you.”
A building collapses.
The doctor snorts.
“Your emotions have made you stupid.”
A monk sets himself on fire.
“Just fucking kill me.”
But the doctor carries on, “Do you remember a young boy called Wilfred? A child you helped escape from your school, on the day of The End? Do you remember turning into a shadow and killing him? Do you remember killing your mother, Jon? What did you tell yourself? That she’d left? That she’d killed herself?”
Intentional Dissonance Page 14