The Great Forgetting

by James Renner

  “Looks like that famous house,” she said. “The one where Gatsby lived.”

  “It was Hitler’s retreat,” said Tony. “He vacationed here in the summers for a couple years.”

  Sam shuddered against Jack as the tram slowed to a stop outside the front doors. They stepped into knee-high crabgrass and ascended the stairs. Tony opened the great oak doors.

  It was dark inside and Jack could feel the emptiness of the wide corridors along the front. In the low light from the open door, Tony found an ugly red-and-black bit of machinery that sat in the foyer collecting dust. It had a metal wheel with a knob, which Tony grabbed and cranked furiously. The machine coughed twice and then began to hum. Most generators Jack had seen had belts that grated loudly when activated, but this one just hummed like a nest of honeybees. The fixtures above, the ones that remained, came on slowly and cast a dim amber light.

  A wide staircase wound round the foyer to the third floor. Thick cobwebs draped from the crystal chandelier like Spanish moss. To either side, a wide hall extended to the ends of the house. There was a crumbling plaster smell and the ghost of something else. Tobacco, maybe. Of a subgenus that didn’t exist anymore.

  “This way,” said Tony, stepping over a pile of rodent scat and walking down the hall to the right. He passed several doors and then opened the one at the end and motioned for Sam to come inside.

  This room had weathered the span of time. It was a high-ceilinged office, a long room stretching to the back bank of windows that looked out to the mountain. The walls of the room were tall cherry bookcases stuffed with bound tomes, unreadable to Sam because they were in German. Tony pointed at the wall behind them, through which they had passed. It was plaster, and upon it had been rendered a floor-to-ceiling mural. It showed a row of German robots, like the one that had greeted them at the hangar, advancing over a hill, the Golden Gate Bridge behind them. A blond soldier in the foreground sieg-heiled to someone beyond the borders of the painting.

  Tony picked up a long metal rod that ended in a hook and used it to pull down a rolled map. It revealed Germany’s empire in sunset red. Vermilion ink covered all of Europe and the Middle East and stretched across Russia, northern China, and over the Pacific to a continent that could only be Mu, before continuing into America, all the way to the Mississippi. The map was dated 1960.

  “What am I looking at?” asked Sam.

  “History,” said Jack. “Real history.”

  They showed her pictures from the drawers of Hitler’s desk, photographs of gas chambers in the Nevada desert. They showed her slides of Nazi soldiers posing with American prisoners of war—in one, an SS officer tortured a man who stood on a cardboard box, arms raised, wires attached to his fingertips, his head masked in a cone of black fabric.

  Using a long pointer, Jack tapped the map at a dark circle in the center of Alaska. “This is HAARP. The forgetting signal originates here. It gets picked up and rebroadcast by hundreds of relay stations around the globe, most disguised inside the architecture of skyscrapers. We can’t attack HAARP directly. It’s fortified. Too secure for a nine-person team. As you know, we have to go for the relays.”

  He hesitated a moment, looking at Tony. It was a crazy plan. A terribly tricky plan. “Like Tony said, you can’t take out just one relay,” said Jack. “There’s a redundancy built in so that if one fails, or even two, other relays are close enough to blanket that area with a weakened signal. We need to create a safe zone, a region completely outside the signal’s range.”

  “But how?” asked Sam, looking at the map.

  Jack circled an area on the eastern seaboard. New York to D.C. “We can make this entire zone safe from the signal if we take out these four relay stations. Two at the World Trade Center. And two in D.C., at the Pentagon and the Washington Monument.”

  Sam shook her head. “We’re going to march down Seventh Avenue and blow up two of the world’s largest skyscrapers?”

  “No,” said Tony. “We’re going to crash planes into them.”

  Sam searched Tony’s eyes to see if he was joking. “You’re talking about murdering thousands of innocent Americans.”

  “No, we’re not,” said Jack. “Tony got more of those belts the Hounds use. The Germans left them behind.”

  “We get to the mainland,” said Tony. “To Boston. We hijack four flights. Release the passengers. Force the pilots to take off, just like Cooper did back in ’71. We send the pilots back on the belts. Then, right before impact, we use belts to come back ourselves.”

  “So you can all fly jumbo jets now?”

  Jack nodded. “The Captain can teach us how. Not well enough to land or take off, but enough to steer. That’s what’s happening in the hangar today.”

  “And what about the people in the Twin Towers?” asked Sam. “Just collateral damage?”

  “When we get back to the mainland, I’ll talk to Jean. She can call in the threat when we’re on our way. They’ll evacuate the buildings before we crash the planes. No one has to die. We’re just after the relays.”

  Sam scratched her chin distractedly. “When?”

  “September eleventh,” said Jack. “Early morning. We’ve got about a month to train.”

  “Do we have enough volunteers? Did you find nine?”

  Jack nodded. “Two pilots for each plane: me and you, Nils and Tony, the Captain and Cole, and then Zaharie and D.B. They both stepped up.”

  “And the ninth?”

  “Becky,” said Tony, his voice gruff, assured.

  “Becky?” said Sam. “She’s thirteen.”

  “She doesn’t have to do much,” Jack said. “Her part’s easy.”

  3 Inside the German hangar, Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra sat like the main attraction of the Smithsonian, reflecting the rays of sunshine slanting through the high windows. The volunteers had all gathered below it, behind makeshift consoles constructed from pieces of what was left of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370. The Captain leaned over Cole, who sat at a row of toggles and switches.

  Cole put a hand on a lever and pushed forward.

  “No!” shouted the Captain. “You need to pull the yoke above the horizon before you open the throttle. And you forgot about the transponder again.”

  Sam leaned against the wall behind Cole, watching Jack and Tony dick around with those things the Hounds called boomerang belts. Jack removed the buckle from his belt, turned it around in his hands, and pushed the red button on the back. Then he placed it in the air and walked away. The detached buckle hovered, defying gravity, three feet off the ground, spinning ever so slowly. A light pulsed inside it, radiating along its edge. As Jack walked away, that pulse flickered faster. And faster. Jack stopped halfway across the hangar, turned, and waited. He cringed, half shut his eyes.

  “Ahhhhhh,” he said. “I don’t like this!”

  And then suddenly he was on the other side of the room and the buckle clicked audibly into his belt again. Jack collapsed to his knees. “I’m okay!” he shouted. Then he puked.

  It wasn’t teleportation. Not really. It was all about perception, Tony had explained. The belt and buckle were always connected. By pushing the button, you only resolved the distance. Whatever. It looked like teleportation to Sam.

  Tony pushed the button on the back of another buckle and then tossed it in the air over a thick mat. Sam watched him evaporate and then appear midair and bellyflop onto the mat.

  “Woo-hoo!” he shouted.

  “Show-off,” the Captain mumbled beside her.

  Sam smiled. Then she tilted her head toward Earhart’s plane, where Zaharie was hammering at a patch of aluminum. “We’re really leaving in that?” she asked.

  “She only has to get us to Sea-Tac,” the Captain said.

  Through the open hangar doors, Sam could see an army of disposal bots clearing a new path through the park. The statue had been temporarily relocated to the city. The bots were repairing the runway, getting ready for the big day.

  Sam sighed. �
��We’re all going to die,” she said. “You know that, right? That’s probably how this ends.”

  TWO

  IT’S A GOOD LIFE

  The last night on Mu, they gathered in the indoor park of section three. All the castaways who lived near Tony were there, even some of the new Chinese who had begun to acclimate to life in Peshtigo in the seven weeks since the crash. Nine of them, engineers from a Beijing tech firm, were designing a more efficient bookbinding machine for section eleven. Great canvas tents were set up by the pond, their sides rolled and tied so that the artificial breeze of the hidden AC units could find its way through. They hung electric lanterns on poles. From a distance, it looked like a grand wedding.

  It was actually a feast in honor of Jack and his crew. Pigs from the jungle and dodoes from the beach were roasted on spits over electric grills. Corn and squash and a vegetable called rune, a root that resembled a purple carrot, were brought out on platters. Young girls danced for the assembled crowd on a stage by the tunnels leading to the dome. Two men played a happy song on a washboard and a jug.

  At eventide, two women in white gowns escorted the group to the head table: Jack, Sam, Tony, Cole, the Captain, Nils, Zaharie, Becky, and her father, D. B. Cooper. A man named Frank Morris, an ex-con who’d escaped from one island prison only to find himself on this one, stepped forward to address the crowd. He was a solemn man with a weathered face and a fine thatch of yellow hair above his ears.

  “There’s a saying on Mu,” he said, loud enough so that the children in the back could hear. “‘You don’t find Mu. Mu finds you.’ If that’s true, I’m sure as hell glad Mu found the men and women of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370.” A round of applause interrupted his speech and he nodded until they quieted. “This city is a haven. The last truly free place on Earth. These people have pledged to preserve it and to restore the true history of our world before it is completely forgotten. What we have here, I believe, can still be taught to those we left behind. Imagine if the entire world could be as peaceful as Mu.”

  “Hear, hear!” a man called out.

  “We send with them one of our most legendary citizens, Dan Cooper, who, I believe, returns at great peril, as there remain several outstanding warrants for his arrest.”

  The crowd laughed. D.B. lifted his hand in mock salute, smiling, gray himself now, far from the arrogant confidence man who’d pulled off one of history’s most brazen heists.

  Morris lifted his glass and the crowd did likewise, lifting arms to the skylights, one by one. “To Jack and his crew,” he said. “Godspeed and good luck!”

  “Here, here!” they shouted. “To Jack!” they shouted. “To Dr. Sanders! To Cooper!”

  And finally they were fed. Ceramic dishes filled with meat and potatoes and veggies were passed around. When the platters were emptied, they were promptly filled again by a staff of eager young men in dark tunics. They drank from never-ending mugs of wine and beer.

  “Dude, check it,” said Nils, leaning his seat back to talk to Jack. He was holding a leg of roasted fowl. “Fuckin’ dodo, man!” He bit into it and talked with a full mouth. “Tastes like chicken.”

  Sam squeezed Jack’s hand under the table. Tomorrow they would fly home. And the morning after that, they would separate into pairs for the coordinated attack.

  “I can’t pilot with you,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you gotta pair with someone else.”

  “What are you talking about? Of course you’re going with me.”

  “No, Jack,” she said, and her tone caused him to set down his drink and look at her. “If something happens to you, I wouldn’t be any use to anybody.”

  “Nothing’s gonna go wrong.”

  “You can’t say that. Don’t promise me that.”

  “Well, what if something does?” said Jack. “I’d want to be with you.”

  “You mean if I died?” said Sam. “You’d want to die with me?”

  “I’m not saying die. Nobody’s saying that. If you got hurt or something. I’d want to be there.”

  “I’m talking about dying. It’s a real possibility.”

  “Jesus, Sam…”

  “Did none of you think about this?” And right away she knew they hadn’t. Not one of them. “Jesus. Why can’t you think ahead? Why can’t you imagine repercussions?”

  “Shh.”

  “I can’t be with you that day,” she said. “You have to switch with someone.”

  “Okay,” he said. Though there was a very real part of him, instinctual, that desperately wanted to command her to obey him, that wanted to tell her to just shut the hell up and do what he said. Everything could be so smooth, so simple. There was such a thing as thinking too much. Sometimes you just had to take action even if you couldn’t foresee the outcome, if only to make something happen.

  “Okay?”

  “I said okay,” said Jack, a little too harshly. “I’ll fly with Tony. You can copilot on Nils’s flight. Now would you just shut up and kiss me?” He pulled her to him and she smiled as she closed her eyes and parted her lips.

  Pushing away from his empty plate, D.B. pulled a pipe from the inside pocket of his coat and packed it with dried green leaves he kept in a pouch tied to a loop in his jeans.

  “What’s that? Mu tobacco?” asked Nils, dislodging a bit of dodo gristle from his front teeth with a thumbnail.

  “Nah, brother,” said D.B. “It’s Peshtigo gungi.” He struck a match, brought it to the green, and inhaled deeply. He held it like a champ and exhaled a cloud of brown. Then he passed it to the Viking.

  Nils took the pipe and inhaled. His body immediately warmed, a welcome rush of fire throughout his chest. It tasted like the earth after an August rain. In the dimness around him, the edges slaked off the world, rounding away every sharp corner there ever was. It was a world waiting to be touched.

  “Good shit,” he said, passing it back.

  “Before Mu was given to the Seven Tribes, it was occupied by the Nazis,” said D.B. “And before the Nazis, Mu belonged to the Mayans. I knew the Voice, Constance, when she was young and she told me some of their stories. She said there were people here even before the Mayans. A race of people called the Mestie-Belles.”

  Cole leaned toward them, listening intently. Under the table, Becky held his hand. He let her.

  “During the time of the Mestie-Belles,” D.B. continued, “Mu was invaded by a fierce warrior-king from a faraway land who came to the island on a great wooden ship, a square of lumber fifty miles wide. He brought a whole city with him. They called this warrior-king Tsar Niev. He challenged the Mesties and won control of Mu. But even ruling an entire continent did not make Niev content. He was jealous of the powers the Mesties possessed. He wanted to see sound like they could, to taste color, to hear the music of the sunset. So Niev commanded the Mesties to teach him their tricks. But they could no more teach him what the color blue feels like than a bird could have taught him how to fly. Niev became furious. If he could not possess this knowledge, then no one could. And so he forbade the Mesties to speak of these powers. And he burned the great library at the center of Peshtigo, where the stories of the Mesties’ culture were stored. In less than a century, the Mestie-Belles forgot themselves, what they were. And soon they died out altogether and their magic abandoned this world.” D.B. looked at them, one by one, in turn. “We have one last chance to keep that from happening again.”

  Nils sighed. “I’d like another hit now,” he said. “If you don’t mind.”

  Dessert was served—fruit from the jungles in heavy cream. Everyone ate their fill and more. When they finished, a rotund man with a gray pompadour and thick white sideburns took a seat in front of the great table and strummed old tunes on a battered guitar. His voice was low and full of bass, a black man’s voice in a white man’s body. His hips jiggled atop his perch and he remembered how he used to dance.

  And there was dancing. Jack and Sam. Cole and Becky. The Captain, to
o. It was a fine send-off.

  THREE

  THE CHANGING OF THE GUARD

  1 By the time the nine of them squeezed into the back of Earhart’s Electra, the morning sun had risen from the sea. The cabin was cramped and had no seats, stuffy and hot like breath inside. From where he sat, Jack watched the Captain climb down into the pilot’s seat from the hinged door in the cockpit ceiling.

  The Captain checked the various gauges all around him. He looked out the window at both wings, then began to fiddle with the dial that regulated the engine’s mix of oxygen and fuel. They’d found a bladder of gasoline in the ground just west of the runway and siphoned enough to fill the tanks.

  “If you’re the praying type…,” he began. But he didn’t finish. He pushed a white button and the propellers began to twist. At first there was a grating sound, like the scraping of a muffler against an undercarriage, and then whatever was sticking gave out and the aircraft hummed loudly around them, shifting back and forth, a racehorse behind the gate.

  The Captain found a pair of aviator glasses tucked into a binder resting on the jump seat and slipped them on. He peered out the windshield. The robots had finished their job and the runway continued through the park now. That section wasn’t paved, but the gravel was tightly packed.

  The Captain opened the throttle and the aircraft lunged forward, picking up speed. Through the porthole, Jack looked out at the city of Peshtigo three miles to the west. It gave no commentary on their departure, but its silence was judgment enough. As they accelerated, the plane jostled side to side. Jack’s ass bounced against the cabin floor. Nils’s big frame squished Cole against the wall. D.B. and Becky tried to pull him free.