by Sean Platt
“You just tired.”
“I can’t remember the street I lived on. Or the name of my high school. Half the time I have to think a while before I can remember my parents’ names! And look at this!”
Carl turned. Lawrence had a small bag by the foot of his stool, and as Carl watched, he picked up the bag, opened its top, and removed a small black device that seemed to be made of metal and glass.
“What is this, Carl? Do you know?”
“Some Astral shit.”
“It’s mine! Look!” An image filled the screen: Lawrence and his wife standing in front of a waterfall. “It’s mine, and I don’t remember it!” He tapped on the glass. “Look! All this music in here. The ship’s outlets are all working so I can plug it in to keep it charged. And I’ve been playing the music. I kind of remember it, but like from a long, long time ago. You know how you’ll hear music in the background and strain to recognize it? It’s like that. But as far as specifics? I’ve looked at the name of every singer, every damned song. There I know like ten out of a thousand.”
“It’s nothin’, Lawrence,” Carl said, unsettled, trying to recall the house he’d lived in just two weeks ago and coming up blank. His mother’s name was Sondra, but she’d died … sometime.
“All of this!” Lawrence said, fishing device after device out of the bag. “I packed this. At least I think I did. And I don’t recognize any of it. What is this?” A long, silver device studded with square keys. “Or this?” Kind of like a tablet, but maybe not. Carl knew tablets because they used them on the ship most days, but then again, maybe not. “Or this?”
Lawrence threw the bag to the floor. Something heavy broke.
“I’ve asked around. It’s happening to all of us, Carl. Everyone down there’s got bags of stuff, and they have no idea what half of it is. Terry has a shirt from a race, dated last year, that he swears he didn’t run in. LaShawn has that tablet, with TV shows on it, and yesterday she looked at me and said, “Why am I watching this? I’ve never seen this show before.” So we passed it around. Nobody remembered the show, Carl. And yet I’m sure we were all watching that tablet a few days ago, laughing. I remember how good it felt to laugh for a while … but now, nothing!”
Carl looked down at the bag, and whatever had broken. He felt unhinged, even uneasier than he’d been when Lawrence had broken his sleep. But …
But what?
“I don’t know what to say, brother. I still remember you.”
“But what if you forget?”
“I ain’t gonna forget.”
Carl sighed, his face suddenly defeated. His shoulders slumped. His head hung.
“Something is happening. I can feel it.”
“End of the world, is all.”
“And you just sit up here every hour of every day, watching the wheel.”
“Just coping the only way I know. You do your thing, and I’ll do mine.”
Lawrence looked at the big wheel. At the maps he’d almost touched before Carl had woken and grabbed him.
“Where are we going, Carl?”
“I don’t know.”
“What are you steering us toward?”
“Nothin’.”
“Then why does it matter? Why do you guard the fucking thing like it’s your … your … ” And then he gave up, unable to finish the thought.
“I ain’t guarding it. But man, if we ever want to see land again, someone’s gotta do this.”
“Then let someone swap you out. Take shifts.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I ain’t gotta explain that to you.” Then Carl stood, to remind Lawrence how much smaller he was.
“Just tell me where we’re going. Give me that, and I’ll be happy.”
And Carl told him, “I don’t know.”
CHAPTER 47
According to the black hashmarks Clara had been making beside her bunk, the storms came on the fifteenth day.
They saw them on the horizon, coming from the left and right, on the line where sky met water off the ship’s bow. They didn’t move in tandem the way weather was supposed to: in one direction, obeying the jet stream. These came together, like two cars meaning to smash a third between them.
They’d been motoring for hours before the skies darkened ahead. Somewhere up front, Viceroy Jabari or today’s appointed captain had been calling arbitrary shots as always, steering them in big circles through the world’s largest pool, pretending this little pleasure cruise had a destination. They’d been moving in roughly the same direction as they did on most days — what everyone seemed to think was mostly west. Then the ship turned, and the children all ran topside, knowing that a sudden change in the big boat’s direction usually meant land ahoy. It was hit or miss out here: an enormous game of Battleship, played blind. Only land was worthy of changing direction, though so far they’d only seen the swamped tops of tall island mountains or volcanoes, devoid of life or space to thrive.
When Clara and the others reached the deck, they saw what the person behind the wheel must have seen: not land but other ships.
Many other ships.
To Clara’s eye, it looked like a floating city. She sent her mind to Ella and the others, and to the non-Lightborn children who, by now, were nearly as lit up as only the Lightborn used to be. Clara and the others were powering their minds as the man in the boots had predicted, and now even some of the adults had shown a glimmer. The powerful circuit gave them an antenna, and they collectively sent their attention forward: to passengers on the other ships, who’d found each other. An armada out of nowhere. Thousands — maybe hundreds of thousands — of survivors.
Clara felt her mind touch them, magnified by the network on their own ship. She felt her shipmates’ hope and elation. But she could tell, just by listening, that the floating city of people ahead hadn’t grown as interconnected as they had — possibly because they didn’t have Lightborn for kindling, possibly because their own situation had a special ingredient that made it unique. But regardless Clara could feel them. She knew they probably couldn’t feel her, and that made what bled through so much more helpless.
Fear.
At first Clara didn’t understand. None in their mind-net understood. What was there to fear? If anyone should be afraid, it was them, on the single ship, previously wondering if maybe they’d ended up alone. But these others? There were dozens — hundreds — of ships.
This was civilization. A new kind of home, where all would be as well as it could be.
Then she saw the storms through their eyes. Two, approaching from both directions.
Even if the Ember Flats vessel could have halted the planet’s rage, they were too late.
Possibly hundreds of thousands had been on those ships.
But when they reached the pool of debris, storms now departed as if they’d never been, they found no survivors.
And inside, Clara heard a mental voice she’d been hearing since this began: the overheard Astral intelligence, going about its business.
First they turned water into blood.
Then they flooded the world.
Now, storms.
Clara didn’t think it mattered so much that the Lightborn could hear them, even if the Astrals seemed ignorant. What was left to pull over on the aliens? They’d already won; now they were only twisting the knife.
The voice seemed to say, Fifty-five million remaining.
And behind it, Clara thought she saw the Astrals planning.
More storms.
Ice.
Fire, for those who’d found land.
Disease. Dehydration. Contagion.
Clara climbed the metal gangplank. There was a guard at the door to the ark’s bridge, but he barely gave Clara a glance. They’d been through this several times before. They might live at sea forever, until they all died. There was little need for formality.
Clara found Mara in a rolling chair, bedraggled, face in her hands, jet-black hair knotted and frayed,
breathing deep and slow, seemingly close to tears.
“Viceroy Jabari?”
Mara looked up. For a long moment, there was no recognition. Then she said, “Lizzie.”
“Clara, Viceroy.”
“I’m sorry. Of course. Clara.”
Still she seemed out of sorts and confused. Clara broke the invisible barrier and moved into the customary greeting they’d shared since making her presence on the ship known: a hug, as the closest thing each other had to family.
“I had a niece named Lizzie. I’m pretty sure.” Mara held up her left hand. She used her right index finger to point at a small diamond ring on her left hand. “This, however, has me stumped. Was I married, do you know?”
“I’m sorry,” Clara said. “I don’t.”
“Oh.” Then: “How long have we known each other? Since you were … three?” The viceroy might as well have been throwing darts behind a blindfold.
“Just a few weeks,” Clara said patiently. “We came to the city before the flood.”
“How long ago did the flood begin?”
“How long does it feel like?”
Jabari’s mouth opened. Then closed. Then opened again. Then she sighed.
“I don’t know.”
“It’s been fifteen days.”
“Oh.”
Without warning, Jabari’s head dropped back into her hands. Tears came, and Clara let them, casting I’ve got this looks around the bridge at the others. It was hardly necessary. An hour from now, no one would remember this moment. Or the countless lives lost.
When she was done, Mara lifted her head. She wiped her eyes, and only redness remained to echo her breakdown. She no longer wore makeup to smear.
“I remember a big house. And a chandelier with crystal baubles shaped like moons. I remember a room with … leather? … chairs. Where I’d use some sort of a thing to make sure people couldn’t overhear me and whoever I talked to. Was that real? Or was it a dream?”
“It was real. I remember the room. I even remember the chandelier.”
“Why don’t I remember?”
Clara sighed. She thought she knew the simple answer but not the complication behind it. Mara didn’t remember because she wasn’t like Clara. The Lightborn had mostly kept their memories, but everyone else — even the children who now shared the collective mind — was forgetting. Behind that loss, Clara could still feel something expanding, not contracting. But that was deep down, while at the surface everything rotted like old fruit. Why was anyone’s guess.
Clara met the viceroy’s eye. She’d come up to tell her what she was still overhearing from the Astrals, but what was the point? There was nothing anyone could do. And Jabari would forget most of what Clara told her in no time at all.
“Do you dream, Viceroy Jabari?”
“Yes.” The reply, at least, came without hesitation. One thing she could remember.
“Do you dream about my grandfather? Sometimes I dream about him.”
“Who is your grandfather? Not the black man. And not the Arab.”
It wasn’t the response she’d expected. It bristled the hairs on her neck.
“Meyer Dempsey. Viceroy Meyer Dempsey.”
A light flickered — the former Mara Jabari surfacing from the mental sludge. “I know something about that name.”
“You sent him off. Him and some others. To lifeboats you’d set up ahead of time. You told me about it when the floods came.”
“Yes.” Concentrating, holding a mental finger in a book to keep her place. “Yes, I remember that.”
“You sent them to some sort of a meet-up. With leaders of the other capitals.”
“Where?” Jabari asked.
“They weren’t going to meet in person. You said it was a satellite connection. But I didn’t think to get all the details before you … ” She paused then regrouped to give Mara some dignity. “I just didn’t think to ask any more about it at first.”
“Oh.”
“But then you said they couldn’t make it to wherever they were supposed to go. Not after the flood.”
“Oh.”
“But in my dreams, I see him all the time. He’s in a little boat, sealed with a top that opens, kind of like a submarine. And I get this feeling that he’s alive.” Clara swallowed. “Him and the others, including my mom.”
“Oh.” Mara shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know.”
“But you said you dream.”
“Those are dreams. This is reality.”
“But that’s just the thing. We’re all having the same dreams, Viceroy. Everyone I’ve talked to. In the dreams there are eight people. But I get the feeling that somehow, they’re really just seven. And I … ” She wasn’t sure how to articulate the last bit. Really — and this seemed unique to Clara’s dreams — it felt more like there were six, not the seven (or kinda eight) that everyone else described. But when Clara tried to understand why, the answer that came was confusing. It wasn’t like one of the seven vanished. It was more like Clara’s presence in the dream came forward and knocked it out like one billiard ball striking another.
“Do you think it means something?”
Clara had mulled that topic many times. She’d always had a mental bond to someone — often her mother, once Cameron, occasionally Piper, and now the Lightborn. But most people had lived isolated mental lives before the Astrals came. It was strange for them to hear the thoughts of others, but Clara knew for a fact that it happened — especially in the cities, and around those big rocks. If everyone was having the same dream, it might mean something indeed. But what? Was it a real thing? Or another of the Astrals’ games?
Clara looked through the glass of the vessel’s enclosed bridge. Her mother had always said she was seven going on forty, and right now Clara felt like an old woman, several long lives into an eternity of existence.
“If you look deep inside yourself,” Clara said, “do you see anything you don’t recognize? Anything that surprises you?”
Mara looked confused. “Like what?”
“Everyone is forgetting things they used to know. The Astrals know it’s happening. It’s what they want. It’s what has to happen, I think, before they can leave.”
“They’re going to leave? Is that something you can hear them saying?”
Clara sighed. They’d had this discussion many times.
“Yes, but it’s also been broadcast to the world. On the tablets. You don’t remember?”
Mara shook her head.
“They’re not done with us. I think they need to get us down to a certain number before they leave and let us start over. But I think there’s something else that has to happen before they can go. I think they need to wipe us clean. They don’t want us to remember what happened when they were here or what came before, so we can restart with a blank slate.”
“Oh.”
“But at the same time, when I close my eyes and look deep inside, it’s like I see lights. Same for a lot of the kids, and not even the ones like me. Something is growing while something else is going away. Do you know what I mean?”
Mara took a long second to think then shook her head with what looked like resignation.
“Try it. Now, please.”
Mara shut her eyes.
“Just look deep. Breathe slowly. Shut everything out, and look into the darkness. Let me know if you see anything there, or feel it.”
“What would I see or feel?”
“Anything.”
Mara sat and closed her eyes, inhaled and exhaled, then finally opened her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
Clara put her hand atop Mara’s, which was resting on her knee, and gave the viceroy a grim little smile — and then, on instinct, a spontaneous hug. She finished, stood, and looked down at the viceroy. Clara felt as if she were the adult and Mara a child, waiting for whatever came next.
“It’ll be over soon,” Clara said. “One way or another.”
Clara left the bridge, returning to her bunk.
When she was gone, Mara touched the sleeve of a tall and authoritative woman passing by and said, “Do you know who that little girl was?”
CHAPTER 48
A hand on Liza’s shoulder suddenly woke her. She bolted upright from what seemed to have been a slouched position, remembering all at once that she wasn’t in her quarters. She was right on the bridge, napping in a chair in front of everyone. But as far as Liza saw, nobody cared that the viceroy was asleep (literally) at the switch. None of the people milling purposelessly through the room was paying her any mind. And why would they? A ship without a destination was like a person without a reason to live. Every day was the same: water, meager food, and the reek of confined human bodies.
Liza followed the arm, still on her shoulder, to its source. She saw a man with stubble thick and dark enough to merit werewolf jokes. Mick. He looked as exhausted as she felt. His eyes were baggier than his age, slightly red. His bearing was mostly the same as always, but to Liza it seemed more effort was being expended to maintain — lack of shaving notwithstanding.
“Bad dream, Liza?” he asked, watching her settle from the surprise he’d given her.
“No. I don’t dream.”
“I almost wish I didn’t. I don’t suppose you remember an old comedian named Mitch Hedberg?”
Liza shook her head.
“He had this bit about how he didn’t like dreaming because dreaming is work. ‘I’m in my soft bed, relaxing, and now all of a sudden I have to build a go-kart with my ex-landlord.’”
Liza laughed. Mick laughed for a few beats, then his face withered.
“It’s funny. I don’t remember where I lived three weeks ago, but I remembered that. I could give you more if you want. Strange how it’s all happening. When I’m not horrified at what’s happening, I’m fascinated. It’s like standing beside a grand old building, watching the walls fall in.”
“You remembered my name,” Liza said, knowing how pathetic it must sound. “You said it just now, when you woke me up.”
Mick gave her a grim little smile. Then he held out his arm and rolled it so she could see the pale underside. In ballpoint pen he’d written himself a reminder: VICEROY LIZA KNIGHT.