Love after the End

by Love after the End- Two-Spirit

  Cassie stands up and canvasses the coffee shop, stops at every person with their eyes closed, every person with thin white wires running from a device, from a laptop or a phone, to little round stickers affixed to their foreheads and temples. She looks at their screens. They are all the same. They are all connected to The Gate. Some for a few seconds, some for a few minutes, which means that some have been living in The Gate for months, or years, or decades. All while sitting at their tables with still-hot beverages, here but not really, there but not really. The program names change from person to person. VIATOR is a popular one. EFFUGIUM. OBSEQUIUM. CURSUS. AMARE.

  There’s a mother and a son sitting at a table at the opposite end of the shop, whisper-shouting, and Cassie realizes in that moment how quiet it is. Everybody else sits at their seats, and whether they are hooked into The Gate or not, they are all, still, in their own world. They are all, still, attached to devices and their cobweb wires. The son is wearing ripped blue jeans, a black Radiohead T-shirt, black Cons, and his hair looks like Eddie Vedder’s mid-’90s. The mother is a lady, and that is the only way Cassie can describe her: straight-backed, so straight-backed, even as she argues with her boy. Hands crossed on her lap, leg crossed on her chair. Not a hair out of place.

  “I don’t want to do it!”

  “This isn’t a choice, Braxton,” the mother shout-whispers through a fake plastic smile, her eyes darting back and forth, surveying the coffee shop, without moving her head a fraction in either direction. “It’ll be five minutes at most.”

  “Fifty years, I’m not an idiot! I know what this thing does too!”

  She slides her hands across the table, handing the boy the white round stickers and thin wires. “Put them on, now.”

  “Mom …” The boy’s tone changes.

  “Can I help you?” the mother asks Cassie.

  She’s come right up to the table without noticing. She looks at the boy, at the mother.

  “Sorry.”

  Cassie walks back to her and Emma’s table and sits down, but keeps watching the boy and his mother until the boy relents. Places the stickers on his temples and forehead. Relents like a child does when finally agreeing to do a chore: taking out the garbage, loading the dishwasher, raking the leaves. His head drops, shoulders slump, and he manages a defiant eye-roll before the mother presses her finger against the cool glass surface of an iPad. Such a simple gesture, so politely done, and then the boy closes his eyes gently, as though rocked to sleep by the lullaby of drink orders.

  Cassie watches the boy, and only the boy, as he sits across from his expectant mother, hands resting against the table along with a colourful drink she bought him (pink lemonade, Cassie thinks), a black Americano she sips on with wide eyes, and an iPad counting down from five minutes. Fifty years. Same. Underneath the boy’s eyelids, Cassie sees his eyes sprinting from side to side, REM on double espresso.

  Why.

  Cassie is staring. She’s come right up to the table, again without noticing. Without leaving her own table. The mother notices. She gets up, walks across the coffee shop, stops at Cassie and Emma’s table. Stands until Cassie notices her.

  “It’s impolite to stare.”

  “Sorry.”

  Cassie looks away from the boy, to the mother. “You don’t agree?”

  “No.” She looks at the boy. There are three minutes left.

  “I don’t agree.”

  “He needed to change.”

  “He wanted to change?”

  “I needed him to change.”

  “No,” Cassie says, “I don’t agree.”

  “Well, I can’t say that it’s any of your business.”

  The mother turns away. Her high heels tap a rhythm as she returns to her table. Nobody is dancing.

  When five minutes are up, the length of a song, the length of a lullaby, the mother reaches forward and pulls the white round stickers from the boy’s face. His eyes flutter open. He looks around, looks lost until he meets eyes with his mother.

  “Braxton?” The mother’s tone changes.

  The boy smiles a plastic smile. Sips his still-cold pink lemonade. His mother breaks down in tears of joy.

  Cassie can hear Emma’s voice. “I met someone and let them go, but with help from The Gate …”

  You did what? Cassie thinks. What did you do? How many years did you spend with me, and without me?

  Emma won’t come here.

  Cassie leaves her table, their table, leaves her peppermint tea, subtle pink lipstick stains populating the ceramic rim.

  Still hot.

  THE GATE’S HEADQUARTERS are in a brownstone building in the belly of the Exchange District. There is an old woman sitting at a bus stop a few houses down, a walker at her side, stickers on her temples and forehead, wires running from her head into her purse, a delicate light emanating from within it. Her eyes are closed, she is dead to the world, smiling blankly, early for the bus and killing time. Cassie wonders if, when her journey is over, she will remember what bus she is waiting for, or that she is waiting at all?

  A bell tinkles when Cassie opens the door to the brownstone building, a heavy door painted a deep red that she strained to move, and she thinks, as she enters the reception area, how odd it is to have such a small bell for such a large door. The reception area is a bombardment of white, a blizzard broken only by hardwood flooring (a white shag area rug over the floor) and cardboard moving boxes stacked neatly beside a glass reception desk. A young man dressed in a white shirt, white khaki pants, and flip-flops greets her, smiling as though he has put on the expression like his clothing.

  “Welcome to The Gate,” the young man says. “Please, excuse the mess. We’re currently in the process of moving to serve you better.”

  There is no mess.

  “Hey.” Cassie approaches the young man, who maintains eye contact with her unblinkingly. “I’m looking for somebody and I thought you could help.”

  “Certainly,” the young man says.

  “Her name’s Emma. She took this … program. She used this thing.”

  “Sorry,” the young man smiles apologetically, the same smile, “I can’t help you.”

  “But you said …”

  “Two things. One, there is an abundance of Emmas,” the young man says, “and two, we can’t give out personal information on anybody who has purchased our application.”

  “She was on the radio,” Cassie says, “I heard her on the radio. There’s only one Emma. Subject Zero. That’s what you called her.”

  “We can’t give out personal information on anybody who has purchased our application.”

  “You said that.”

  “Can I help you with anything else?”

  Cassie stares at the young man intently, then scans the room. White bookshelves, empty; white plastic chairs surrounding a circular glass coffee table, empty; a white door behind the young man with a small window at its centre revealing a white hallway with more white doors haloed by white fluorescent light fixtures protruding from a white-tiled ceiling, layered just like that. She looks at the young man again. He will pack his smile into the cardboard boxes along with the other furnishings.

  “No,” Cassie says. “You can’t.”

  Cassie pulls the door open with great effort, the bell tinkles to announce her departure, and she steps outside. The old woman is still waiting for the bus, smiling blankly, eyes closed, open someplace else.

  “Tansi,” Cassie whispers to the old woman, but then touches her lips.

  How do I know that? she thinks. How do I know to say that?

  Cassie sits beside her. She imagines the hard green bus bench to be the edge of a hospital bed. She imagines the sunlight to be filtered through the thin window, and resting solely on the woman’s face. On Emma’s face. The woman’s hands are crossed politely over her lap. Cassie puts her hand over the woman’s and squeezes gently. She can feel the woman’s tiny bones. She can feel the woman’s loose skin stiffened in the chill. Another hand. Mo
re warmth. The woman’s eyelids are shivering, like her hands and brittle fingers. The woman is dreaming. How many times did Cassie sit at Emma’s side, in all the dreams that she has had? How long has the old woman been sitting here, waiting? How long has she been so cold?

  “I’ll wait with you,” she says, and does, and her hands don’t move from the woman’s.

  Minutes later, years later, a bus appears on the horizon. The old woman will miss the bus. Cassie moves to wake her, to pull the cobwebs away, but a hand touches her arm to stop her.

  “That won’t end well,” a young woman says. She’s a tiny woman with dyed purple hair in a pixie cut, thick-rimmed black glasses, an iskwē T-shirt, skinny jeans, and Toms.

  “Why?”

  The young woman sits down beside Cassie. “She’ll be lost.”

  “Lost?”

  “Just watch a moment,” the young woman says and nods in the old woman’s direction while Cassie watches. The bus is two stops away, roaring like a distant storm. An alarm goes off from inside the old woman’s purse. Slow rise ring tone. A song that keeps playing, its metronome beat, its hypnotic chime. It plays until the old woman’s eyelids open like butterfly wings. She looks around, looks at everything, looks at Cassie, and then smiles, really smiles.

  Cassie moves her hands away from the old woman’s.

  The old woman reaches into her purse, pulls out her phone, and turns off the ring tone. The screen displays what Cassie saw on so many devices at the coffee shop: AETERNUM.

  The bus is one stop away. The old woman rises to her feet, pulls the walker in front of her body, and welcomes the bus at her stop just in time. The bus jerks into movement, lowers flat against the curb so that the old woman can get on easily, then pulls away into traffic.

  “The end stage of any program within The Gate is reorientation,” the young woman says. “Layperson’s terms? That lady was gone for one hundred and fifty years. The reorientation means that she gets reminded of where she was, and what she was doing, right before she hooked in. Got it?”

  “You work for The Gate?”

  “Dude,” the young woman says, “I designed The Gate.” She extends her hand, and Cassie shakes it. “I’m Pyper.”

  “Cassie.”

  “Yeah, I know who you are.”

  “You what?”

  “That’s why I came out here, Cassie. I saw you in the lobby, CCTV style, and, I don’t know, I just had to come out and see you. It’s like watching a movie you’ve seen a million times and running into the star.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Of course, of course, of course,” Pyper says like a record skipping, shaking her head like she, too, is on repeat. “Sorry.” She breathes in, and out, methodically. “You’re here for Emma.”

  “Yeah.” Cassie feels her heart skip. “You know her?”

  “Well, I’d say I know you more than her, but I know her too.”

  “Subject Zero.”

  “Subject Zero.” Pyper spreads her hands out in front of her like she’s smoothing a bedsheet. “She was on my table, Cassie. I hooked her in. First civilian. For her, it was all about, you know, teaching her what she’d missed out on when she didn’t call you.”

  “Teaching her,” Cassie repeats. “Like a lesson?”

  “That’s what we’re always trying to do, in some way, shape, or form,” Pyper says. “Take that old lady, Clementine.” She nods into traffic as though Clementine is still right there. “She wanted to delay death, which she did, but we wanted her to enjoy and appreciate life. Two birds, one stone.”

  “AETERNUM? What does that mean?”

  “Oh,” Pyper chuckles dismissively, “that’s … we just want to give these programs cool names. That mean something, too, of course. That’s Latin, they’re mostly all Latin. Latin sounds cool, good for cool names. AETERNUM means forever.”

  “You wanted to teach Emma about what she’d missed out on,” Cassie states, “but she never called me. You didn’t teach her anything.”

  Pyper puts a hand on Cassie’s shoulder. “It doesn’t always work.”

  “I was here to find her,” Cassie says, staring out into traffic, saying these words to nobody but herself.

  “I know you were.”

  They don’t talk for what seems like forever. They both stare out into traffic, their silence serenaded by car horns. Pyper sighs.

  “I shouldn’t tell you this, but because I’m telling you that I shouldn’t tell you this, I’m clearly going to tell you this.”

  “Tell me.” Cassie turns toward Pyper desperately.

  “She was here today, like, just before you got here.”

  “What?”

  “Cassie.” Pyper pauses, and then continues. “She came here to forget you.”

  “Forget me? Why? How?”

  “It’s a new program. It’s a long journey, without the reorientation. Only, this time, it’s not just the place they aren’t reminded of, but the people. A person. That’s the best way I can describe it.”

  “How long is the journey? How long does it take to forget somebody?”

  “It depends on the person they’re trying to forget. The Gate, it’s intuitive.”

  “I couldn’t forget about Emma. I dream about Emma.”

  “Yeah, you could.” Pyper stands up. “People can go a week without water. We’d never make a program that lasted that long. But a day? Yeah. People sign waivers anyway, just in case.”

  “A day?” Cassie tries to do the math, and then tries to forget the math. “A day isn’t that long.”

  “Every minute is ten years, about. An hour is six hundred years. A day is …”

  “Fourteen thousand—”

  “—and four hundred years,” Pyper says.

  “How long has she been gone for? When did she leave here?”

  “She just left,” Pyper says. “She just left right before you got here.”

  “I have to …” Cassie looks around frantically.

  “Here.” Pyper extends her hand. Cassie takes her hand and is slipped a folded yellow Post-it Note. “I’m not sure you were dreaming.”

  “I’m not sure I was dreaming.”

  Pyper nods. “It was really good to meet you.”

  “What’s it called?”

  “What’s what called?”

  “The program she got to forget me. What’s it called? What does it mean?” Latin. Cool language. Cool names. Latin to English.

  “Eloise,” Pyper says. “It means Eloise.” She smiles, then walks away hurriedly toward the brownstone building. Pushes the red door open, disappears inside.

  Cassie looks down at her hand, palming the folded yellow paper. She unfolds it delicately to find an address written on it in black Sharpie.

  EMMA LIVES IN A TWO-STOREY HOUSE, cookie cutter, indistinguishable from the next, and so on et cetera: an upper-class neighbourhood, a neighbourhood of mirrors. Cassie stops on the boulevard. She looks to the left, then looks to the right, and sees the same thing either way: a row of white teeth and picket fence braces. Manufactured perfection. It’s been seventeen minutes since she left the bus stop. It’s been one hundred and seventy years since she left the bus stop. Each red light, she counted the seconds as though they were years. The car ride took forever. AETERNUM.

  “Can I help you?”

  A woman answers the door. Cassie instantly recognizes her as Emma’s mother. She is how Emma will look two decades from now. Two minutes from now.

  “Is Emma home?”

  “Yes,” Emma’s mother says. She looks behind her, into the house, and then back at Cassie. “She’s not feeling well, though. Said she was going to sleep it off.”

  “Oh.” Cassie checks the time. Counts the seconds. “Can I just see her?”

  “Can it wait until tomorrow? She’ll feel better then.”

  “No, it can’t wait until then.”

  “I’m sorry, but …” Emma’s mother stops, and looks at Cassie carefully. Her eyes widen. “You’re Cassie.�
�

  Cassie nods. “She’s talked about me?”

  “You are on her every breath,” Emma’s mother says as though reciting lyrics to a song.

  “We only met once,” Cassie says, but she is agreeing with Emma’s mother, not arguing with her.

  She pictures their first meeting and it feels like a remembered dream, sitting by the window at the back of the coffee shop, Cassie with her peppermint tea, Emma with her decaf Americano. Cassie had asked her, soon after she’d sat down with her, why she bothered getting a decaf. Didn’t that defeat the entire purpose of coffee? Emma, without hesitating, with a devilish grin, had responded that her heart was already beating too fast. She used frat boy pickup lines without apology. She didn’t look at you, she looked into you, and Cassie couldn’t look at her for too long. It was like staring at the sun.

  “She called you?”

  “She called me.”

  “She stared at your number, as much as she stared at your picture.”

  “I never had a picture.”

  “Come in.”

  “Ekosani.” Cassie walks inside and takes off her shoes. “You know Cree?”

  Cassie can hear the word off the mother’s lips. The mother. Nicole. She can hear the words off Nicole’s lips. She can see Nicole’s hands, cupped like so, pulling smoke toward her hair, her eyes, her mouth, her heart. She can see her feather smoke toward Cassie, and Cassie repeating the same motion, Cassie repeating the same word, Cassie repeating the same word to Emma, Emma lying in her hospital bed for so many years, so many minutes. Ekosani. She can see this all in her dream. She can see this all in her memory.

  “A little bit,” she says.

  EMMA IS LYING ON HER BED, her hands crossed over her chest, four white round stickers affixed to her temples and forehead, a thin wire snaking its way to an iPhone resting at her hip. She is wearing grey sweats, a navy shirt, and has bare feet. Her eyes are closed, eyelids shivering with dreams. The curtains are shut and the room is lit by the glow of her phone, painting everything in a soft white light. Cassie sits beside her on the bed, looks at Emma, and thinks of how perfectly she looks just how she, Cassie, remembers her. She takes Emma’s hand then slowly, reluctantly, looks down at the cellphone screen.