by James Renner
She walked a bit, the white lights of Peshtigo a shimmer on the horizon. The Milky Way was a river of stars above the sea. Maybe she shouldn’t be exploring this island in the dark, she thought. She didn’t really believe Tony’s stories about dinosaurs. But still.
A shadow moved beside her feet and she jumped, startled.
“Heya, Sam,” said Tony.
He was sitting on the sand, smoking a short pipe. He looked up at her with his good eye and patted the ground beside him. She sat and he offered her the pipe. It was marijuana, or like marijuana in the way a freshly picked berry from the forest is like store-bought fruit. This was uncultivated, wild pot. It smelled of damp earth and time. If history had a smell, thought Sam, it would smell just like this. She held in the smoke and then let it out slowly like he’d showed her to do when they were kids.
“You’re an asshole,” she said.
“I know.”
“No. I mean it. You’re an asshole.”
“Yes.”
“You could have left a note.”
“I couldn’t tell you where I was going,” he said. “Not without putting you in danger. But I left you the insurance money.”
“I never got it. I couldn’t declare you dead because it was so obvious you’d run away. You had me stealing money from Haven.”
“We were only borrowing the money. I meant to pay it back,” he said.
“What was it for?”
“I spent what was in our checking on stuff for the trip here. Ion-filtration system for bottled water, night-vision goggles I thought might help me see the island … I thought the police would go looking in the lake after a while. I was sure you’d think I’d committed suicide and tell them to send a diver down. I tried to make it look like…”
“You really thought putting your watch on my brother’s wrist was enough to fool anyone?” she said.
“I thought the lake was too deep for them to bother with the body. I figured they’d send a diver down for my personal effects.” He shook his head. “I don’t know. It was the best I could do.”
The light of the stars was enough for her to see the outline of his body and she watched him lean forward, tilting his head. She drew back.
“No,” she said. “Are you crazy?”
“Are you my wife or what? Where are we with that?”
Sam laughed. “I mourned you. I got over you years ago.” And then she leaned into him, pushed her lips against his, opened his mouth and found his tongue. He tasted like ash from the pipe. Gritty. Warm. His hands found her, drew her closer. He put a hand on the back of her head and held her tight while he kissed her.
She twisted away from his grip and wiped her bottom lip. “I should have been with Jack from the beginning.”
Tony scooted closer. “You hated the way Jack always walked on eggshells around you because of what your brother did to you. He didn’t want to break you and you hated how careful he was with you.”
He leaned in for another kiss, but she caught him, held his face with one hand and looked into his eye. “If you ever try to kiss me again or even look at me like you want to, I will leave and I will take everyone who ever loved you with me.”
8 Jack leaned on the bus and picked apart a pomegranate. Hundreds of rinds littered the ground around him. The Chinese had eaten their fill. He looked up at the sound of feet on the macadam. Tony was walking back to the hangar, head down, leaning forward.
“Hey,” called Jack.
Tony looked up, then walked over, straightening himself as he came nearer. He stopped when he was still a foot away.
“You want to punch me or something?” Tony asked.
“Come here,” said Jack. He reached out and grabbed his shirt and pulled his friend to him. He hugged him tightly. “I’m glad you’re alive.”
When he let him go, Tony slipped a finger under his eyepatch and wiped away the moisture that had collected there.
“This is yours,” Jack said at last. He unclasped the watch and handed it to Tony.
Tony turned it over in his hand, reading the new inscription by the light of the stars.
“Cool,” he said. He put it on his left wrist and then looked at Jack a while longer, not saying anything. Jack remembered a time when they were children, a night during the heat wave when they had stayed up until 4:00 a.m. to watch the Perseid meteor shower. He had never felt so close to another human being.
9 In the morning, they awoke to a brilliant sunrise. The sun was a ball of red fire above a sapphire sea. Another bus arrived after breakfast. The driver was a young Cherokee in a black tunic. He spoke to Tony in broken English.
“So, we’ve got a meeting in the city,” Tony said to Jack. “Just, you know, us, everyone from Franklin Mills. They’ll bring the others in later today.”
“Are we in any danger?” asked Jack.
“No,” said Tony. “No way. Trust me.”
Cole laughed at him.
“You were always a little snot,” he said to the boy, with a smile.
Cole gave him the finger.
After Jack spoke with Zaharie, he and the others boarded the bus and soon they were driving toward the city. Jack looked out at the airfield as they passed by. A hundred boxy robots were making fast work of the crashed jet. Self-directed cranes hauled away sections of the wings. A dozen round drones hovered over the fuselage, using thin lasers to divide the hull into movable pieces. A platoon of cylinder machines was putting the statue back on its pedestal, no worse for wear.
Immediately beyond the airport their group passed through a deserted village. The architecture suggested a German influence. An outpost, Jack realized, from World War II. Just twenty homes along either side of the street. A wide barracks. And, on a hill, a great white mansion.
Twenty minutes later, the bus entered Peshtigo along a street called Chankoowashtay. The road was narrow, made of jointed rock, and the tires hummed pleasantly as they traveled along. To either side, great skyscrapers reached to the blue sky. Each building was exactly the same: twenty stories, glass and steel, angled slightly toward the middle of the city, where the sphere waited, ominously. The geodesic dome was like a second moon and seemed nearly as large, though Jack understood this was only his perspective. It did look like Epcot Center, but ten times bigger, at least. It appeared to be their destination.
“What the hell is that thing?” asked Sam. She was sitting beside Jack and holding his hand tightly.
“It’s a library,” said Tony. “Biggest library in the world. Every book ever written before the Great Forgetting.”
Cole turned to them in his seat. “Why can’t they just, you know, digitize everything? They could really save some space.”
“They believe humanity will destroy itself,” said Tony. “And soon. One last great war. When the A-bombs fall, they’ll fry all electronics. All your eBooks will disappear, your Nooks and Kindles will be worthless paperweights.”
There were no storefronts, Jack noticed. No Starbucks. No Duane Reade. No Au Bon Pain or Tim Hortons. No advertisements, even. Just a thin sidewalk and few entryways. The buildings were linked together by bridges of glass and he could see people walking through them. On their way to work? Did they clock in somewhere at nine?
“Tony,” said Jack. “Where does everyone live?”
“Here,” said Tony. “They live here. And work here. Eat, drink, and sleep here. All in the skyscrapers. They’re too scared to go outside. Outside is risky. It’s pretty rad. Each apartment has these things called memory rooms…”
“But what do they do?” Sam interrupted, peering out at a Peshtigan who stood behind a window, watching their bus pass by. It was an old man. Native American. Mohawk, if Jack had to guess.
“Ah, most of them are scribes,” said Tony. “They sit at tables all day and rewrite the old books, the ones that are disintegrating. Some others are binders. They bind the books. They don’t believe in copiers. It’s a sort of religious deal for them. Self-flagellation, kind of. There are maybe a
hundred thousand of them and they work seven days a week. Barely keep up.”
“Sisyphus,” whispered Nils, clearing his throat.
“What’s that?” said Sam.
“An old story,” said Jack, patting Nils on the shoulder. The Viking smiled back at him. “A long time ago, a certain king thought he was more clever than anyone else. He was punished by the gods for his hubris. They made him push a boulder to the very top of a hill to gain his freedom. Only, it would always roll back down before he reached the summit. So he kept rolling that boulder up the mountain. Forever and ever.”
10 At the point where the great sphere touched the ground, at the intersection of the twelve roads that sliced through Peshtigo, there was a single door. It was a plain door of ash with a gold knocker in the shape of an aspen leaf. Inscribed upon the door was a saying, which, Tony explained, was Navajo. Hozo-go nay-yeltay to, A-na-oh bi-keh de-dlihn: May we live in peace hereafter, we have conquered all our foes. As they approached, the door opened.
Tony, at the head of the group, was the first to step inside. The others followed. A thin staircase wound upward, lit by thin fibers in all the colors of the rainbow. One by one they ascended.
The staircase ended several floors above, at a granite hall lined by statues. At the end of the hall was another door.
“There’s going to be a giant floating head behind that one,” said Cole, finding Sam’s hand and holding it without really being aware he was doing so. “And a little man behind a panel of wheels and buttons.”
“Shh,” she said, though she didn’t know why. Surely they were expected.
As they continued down the hallway, she glanced sideways at the statues. Some were strangely familiar, as if they were renditions of people she once knew. One looked kind of like her foster father Stan Polk.
“Did you see that?” whispered Cole. “I think that statue was Mrs. Rice, from Laurel Hill.”
“Was she famous?”
“She was the librarian.”
It was Jack who opened the door. He hesitated just a moment. Then he pushed it open and walked inside.
Someone was waiting for them. But it wasn’t a crazed wizard behind a console operating a holographic head. It was a woman in a long lavender gown. She stood behind a wide desk, her hands spread out on its surface like she was navigating some map.
The room. He knew this room.
“Uh…,” said Nils.
“It’s the goddamn Oval Office,” the Captain said.
11 “Everything you’ve ever seen, everything you’ve ever been told, is only the echo of an older story,” the woman began. Her voice was like a hug, like an Amish quilt on a cold day. She was beautiful, sure. But more than this, she was strong. She was not Native American. Or not entirely. She was a mix of their best features, awash with the hints of many other cultures. The high cheekbones of the Cree. The close-set eyes of the Nordics. Her ears, elf-like, could only be Irish. Eyes that called to the clear dark skies of the Serengeti. She motioned to the couches situated in front of her desk. “Sit.”
They sat in the two couches at the center of the oval room, and then she came around the desk and took a chair between them.
Cole felt overcome. This woman was too much to draw in, to look at, to listen to. He felt his heart would burst if she said anything else. She reminded him so much of his mother. Perhaps it was the gentle poise. Grace. But no. More than that. This woman radiated love. Unconditional love. He felt his face flush, undeserving. His eyes watered, but he held back the tears. He looked at Jack. And Nils. And Sam. It was the same for them.
“Are you their queen?” the Captain asked, finally.
She smiled. “No,” she said. “We have no queens or kings. No bosses, no laborers. I’m their voice. For now. Just a voice. My mother and father called me Constance. You can, too, if you’d like.”
“What…,” stammered Jack. “Well, I mean … what do we…”
“There’s the issue of what to do with the two hundred people you brought to this island,” she said. “And then what to do with you six.”
“Yes,” said Jack.
“The doctor here,” she said, nodding at Tony, “can see to sheltering these people. There’s plenty of room in section three. Room to grow. We’ll find them work. But they can never leave. I’m sure you knew that.”
Jack swallowed.
“What about us?” asked Sam.
“What about you?” the woman said. “What would you like to do, Sam Brooks?”
“I don’t … I guess I don’t know,” she said. “It was all about getting here.”
“We need to go back,” said Jack. “End the new forgettings. Tell everyone what’s going on. Wake them up. Isn’t that it? Isn’t that what we came here to do?”
“We came here to find Tony,” said Sam.
“And there he is,” said Jack. “And everyone back home has forgotten we ever existed. Right? Or hasn’t that happened yet? Do we have another day or two? Does my sister still remember us?”
“We’re going back,” the Captain said. “We’re going to tell people what’s going on. We’ll take down a few of the relays, wake up the world.”
The smile on Constance’s face faltered and she looked grimly at Tony. Cole was suddenly afraid.
“I’ve been the voice of the people of Mu for twenty years,” she said. “I’ve sat here, in this room, and had a variation of this conversation a dozen times. I let each of them return to the world. And until now, none of them have made it back. Zaharie was the first. And even he failed to do what you propose. It won’t work. It will only jeopardize what we’ve protected here.”
“Let’s just wait it out,” said Tony. “I really think it’s close.”
“What’s close?” asked Nils, curious.
“The end of the world,” said Tony. “The day they finally drop the bombs. We can wait another year or two and then go back. Rebuild. Make something better.”
“You’re talking about sitting back and watching three billion people die!” Jack shouted. “When we have the chance to save them all?”
“What makes your group any different from the last twelve?” asked Constance.
Jack didn’t have to think long. He pointed at his own head. “Our memories,” he said. “Everything we’ve been through. To get here. We fought for it. And not just the journey here. Our lives. We fought all our lives for this moment, even if we didn’t know it. Tell me that doesn’t count for something.”
“It does,” said Constance. “Of course it does.”
She stood then and went to the window. From here, Cole could see the Lonely Mountain and the little German village by the runway. Finally, she turned to Tony.
“Is this what you want?” she asked him.
Tony gritted his teeth. He looked at Jack. And then back at Constance. “Yep,” he said. “I guess that’s about the sum of it. Damn it all.”
“You’ll need three more, I think,” she said, which was odd, Cole thought, because none of them knew yet exactly what it was that they were meant to do. Or how they might find their way off the island again. “Nine. You can take nine. No more.”
“Thank you,” said Jack.
It was clear that it was time to leave now, and the others were beginning to stand. But Cole had thought of something. A question. And probably only this woman would know the answer. Except he was so afraid of her—of her beauty and strength—that he could barely make a sound.
“Be safe,” said Constance, as a farewell.
And now everyone was standing and Jack was moving toward the door.
“Wait!” Cole said, and he was so surprised by his presumption that for a moment his mind went blank and he forgot what it was he had to say.
Constance smiled at him, a warm, open smile that showed her teeth, the front two larger than the others and not quite straight. It made her look human for the first time. Less like a character from some fairy tale.
“I have a question,” he said.
“
Yes, Cole Monroe?”
“The moon,” he said. “My dad never found out how it worked. With all the forgettings and all, the moon changes, too. It can’t possibly reset with the calendar and somehow it does. I was wondering … how does the moon work?”
“A good question. A very good question. But I’m afraid you won’t like the answer.”
“I would like to know,” he said.
“The moon,” she said, “is only a story.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Stories are magic, Cole. More than you know. Words have the ability to shape reality. History is just another story, and look how it’s shaped our world. Look how the wrong history has altered your own. Stories are magic, and that is why the first thing any dictator does is to ban the stories that do not agree with him. It’s always only ever been stories that really change anything. The stories we told each other across the campfires when we were still learning to walk upright, those stories have stayed with us ever since, in our hearts. Do you know what the Christians call their God? They call him the Word. The moon is a story, Cole. As are you. And me. And everything that is the Great Forgetting. We’re nothing but stories, all of us. Characters in a twice-told tale. And also storytellers ourselves. It’s an endless spiral. Around and around and around we go. Have a little hope that, over time, we might tell better stories.”
TWO
FIVE CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN EXIT
1 The bus was gone when they stepped outside the geodesic dome, and in its place was something that looked like a long golf cart with no wheels. It hovered silently two inches above the ground. Tony climbed in the front and waved the others over. “It’s safe,” he said. “Don’t ask me how it works. It’s sciency. Like all their stuff. But it looks like magic, right?”