All the Whys of Delilah's Demise

by Neve Maslakovic

  Oliver, in the village of Upper Maple Grove, a multi-day trek on foot following the tracks of the Hewletts’ snowmobiles. Oliver, who doesn’t know he has a sister.

  Dax and Lu and Wayne, down the hill and into the gate. Dax and Lu and Wayne, who must believe I’m dead.

  I thought family meant that things would always be clear—an easy path to navigate. But it’s more complicated than that. I tell Hugh, “Oliver… He and I need to forgive each other—work on building a new relationship. Not PALs but siblings.”

  I could start a new life by Oliver’s side and learn to tend mountain goats or chop wood or whatever goes on in a village. This is the choice that beckons, though I don’t want to admit it to Hugh. Follow the Hewletts’ tracks, hope to reach Upper Maple Grove, hope to forget, never have to face Dax after hurting him.

  Renee killed my mother. How can I go back in?

  Or, head-scratchingly, did we all kill Delilah and Rick? Every time a ConnectChip went into an infant and the neural fibers spread and the child grew into adulthood and onto the List, Renee edged closer to becoming. If Renee’s a monster—who chose to look like me, who took the daydreams in which I imagined myself differently and brought them to life—if she’s a monster, it’s one we all created. The suspect list on the WHO KILLED DELILAH corkboard should have encompassed all of New Seattle.

  I glance up at the treetops and consider how strange and wonderful it must be to have ten thousand pairs of eyes and ears. All those minds to burrow into, with their knowledge and memories, ideas and plans, emotions and cravings, a creature peering into its own navel. And a million gems to peruse, cross-linking people and time, echoes of New Seattle’s past, reflections of its present, hints of its future.

  Renee killed my mother. How can I go back in?

  “Hugh, it’s easier to keep hating her,” I admit, punching a hole in the snow with one gloved hand. “For Delilah, and Rick—and the years you were cheated out of. And yet I must forgive her. I have to, in order to defeat her. I hope you understand, Hugh.”

  Something in the stillness of his face makes me certain Hugh does understand.

  “I went about it all wrong,” I admit. “I chased the killer thinking people would like me better if I figured out who did it, when I should have been chasing Renee because a killer in our midst was a danger to everyone.”

  Renee is right, I was the Gal Who Wanted to be Liked. I aimed for Sherlock Scottie and was handed a different label, Scott the Curse Slayer. Now it’s time to put on a new cloak. “Here’s the plan, Hugh. I’ll go back in and keep a low profile for a while, maybe a long while. Then, when the moment is right, I’ll get everyone out. How, I have no idea. If all else fails, I’ll get my hands on a lighter and be Scottie the Fire Starter and make Gemma Bligh’s prediction come true. It’ll have to be a big fire to fill the Dome with enough smoke to send people out the gates. Maybe I’ll start with the Social Agency building—it’s mostly wood—it’ll go up fast. I’ll gather cardboard boxes and any paper I can find and go floor to floor when no one’s around and set them aflame next to window curtains.”

  Hopefully the fire will need to be only a metaphorical one, but I will do what it takes. After, if the town is still standing, a handful of us will go back in, too few to trigger Renee back into existence. We’ll delete it all—gems, halos, the List—switch off the lights in CC Central permanently. Start over. Knock down the artificial walls installed by the Birth Lab.

  It strikes me that my goals aren’t that far from Renee’s.

  But first I’ll need to convince her that I’ve accepted her as my lord and master. There’s a distinct danger that I’ll fall over the precipice, surrender my free will forever. What if I fail to extricate everyone from her web? There is another what if, my biggest fear: “Hugh, what if I don’t want to destroy her after I’ve gone back in?”

  I dig around in my pockets for Delilah’s invite, then scoop up a bit of snow onto my glove, where there is a stain from Hugh’s blood. This yields a paste of a weak red. I don’t have Cece to display text in my eye field, so I have to work from memory. Each letter a struggle, I trace out three words with my finger on the blank side of the invite.

  “Hugh, I understand—finally.” I tell him one last thing. “The answer is simple, like Dax said all along. He meant the murders, but it applies to life as well. The goal is not to be everyone’s number one but one person’s. If you have that, you are lucky.” Hugh is silent and I rest my fingers on his shoulder a final time. “I didn’t know you well, but you watched out for all of us. Thank you.”

  After the monster is defeated… After, it’ll be time to seek out Oliver. For now, Oliver, brother, will have to stay just that, a new concept in my life. An unopened box.

  I wait until the note is dry, slide it under my snowsuit into a shirt pocket and leave Hugh in the forest, dreaming forever.

  From the tree line, the Dome no longer reminds me of the snow globe I picked up at the market, cozy and protected. The gate is a mouth ready to swallow me up never to be seen again, the warmth and food waiting within a false comfort. I’m scared that once I go through, I’ll never see Oliver again. That will be the hardest.

  But Dax needs me more right now, and so do Lu and Wayne. And McKinsey, and Ty who asked for a gem, and Sue and Samm with their dumb jokes, even Jada, coldhearted as she is. I can’t leave them to the fate of becoming cells in an automaton. Though I called no one mother, father, sister, son, daughter, I’ve had family all along. Not the way Renee means it, as a trap, but as much as if I lived in one of the mountain villages.

  I let that be my one final free thought—for the town, for my family—and barrel downhill as fast as my snowsuit permits, letting the fears I’ve kept at bay overtake my mind: Freezing to death. Wandering the forest lost and starving. Being abducted by a rogue band of Outsiders. The animal I heard growling in the night attacking in the dark. Falling asleep next to Hugh and never waking up as hypothermia takes over…

  I stagger to a stop in front of the gate. Yesler is digging a hole with a shovel, a difficult task with the ground frozen. With him are Jada, Ben, Poulsbo, and Blank Jack, all in snowsuits but no helmets. The four are carrying wooden crates and greet me as if I’ve run across them at a cafeteria breakfast, speaking the words almost simultaneously. “Scott, hello.”

  The effect is unnerving but I manage to say a hello back. Everyone has been busy and birds are skittering around the hut Poulsbo built—but there are many more in the crates. I watch the tiny lifeless bodies land with soft, terrible thumps in the hole Yesler’s dug. As Yesler shovels chunks of frozen dirt back in, I try the gate, but it’s locked. Not so no one can get in, but so no one can get out?

  I shake Yesler by the shoulder. “I need to get in.”

  “Hold on. Can’t you see I’m busy?”

  “The gate, unlock it or give me the—”

  Do you think I’m awesome, Scott? Do you love me?

  The questions are just for me, jaws clamping on under my scalp. I’m cold and hungry and worried about Dax. Tears are streaming down my face. Renee can help me. I’ll be safe inside. Yes, I do.

  Then you can come back in.

  Yesler thumps the last of the frozen dirt back in place and turns. “All right, all right, what’s your hurry?” He unlocks the outer gate and I push ahead past him toward the inner door, which is propped open.

  “Wait, I have to log you in,” Yesler calls out after me but I don’t look back. Bursting into the mudroom, I fling off the snowsuit, leaving it on the floor in a heap.

  And in my mind:

  Welcome back, Scottie. You’re home. You’re home.

  Epilogue

  Monday, some months later

  It’s dawn, and I’ll be leaving soon for my job in the town warehouse, but first there’s a task to attend to. A smudge mars the open window, where I must have accidentally pressed a hand. I ready a washcloth and a pitcher of water, but a movement across the alley catches my attention. A sparrow has flown up into a
recess in the neighboring building, Housing Thirty-Two.

  This is a much bigger problem than a window smudge. Birds—vermin, Number One calls them—aren’t permitted in New Seattle. In fact, it’s why all windows must be kept closed and spotless: so any birds that sneak in through the gates will fly into the invisible walls and fall to the street, stiff and dead. That’s what they’re supposed to be, gone or lifeless.

  Before I’m able to send a sighting report to the Bird Control Office, there’s a distraction. An argument breaks out a floor below me, on the street. The woman’s nose angles down sharply as she berates the man, who’s holding his own. “I can’t spare the cloth, Five,” the man defends himself. “The shop is making uniforms, identical ones for everyone. Number One is pleased with the idea.”

  “I understand, Six,” the woman argues back, “but I’m expanding the Oyster—this, too, will please Number One. I need the extra tablecloths.”

  “Nevertheless, priority should be given…”

  Tuning out the argument, I attack the smudge. Number One will calm them down soon enough. Indeed, there she is, wasting no time; her step is quick, her hair flowing over the gown she always wears—one I have a copy of on a wall hook, though I never seem to find the right occasion to wear it. Resting my elbows on the windowsill, I watch the three figures. The voices of Five and Six float up from the street, but Number One’s voice is everywhere, strong and steady, as if called forth from a deep and endless wellspring in my mind. Her presence is a soft blanket around my shoulders, snug and enveloping.

  Still, as much as I love having Number One with me always, I find that I’m capable of thinking more clearly when her attention is engaged elsewhere, as at the moment. I reach for the binoculars I keep on the dresser—Ninety-Eight gave them to me. He grows plants as his job and has already left for the day, his shirt covering the row of scars across his stomach, the result of an accidental fall onto a nail-studded plank.

  I wipe the layer of dust off the binoculars and focus in on the sparrow. Black-beaked and lively, it’s pushing a twig into the recess, its goal a new nest. How odd. I can’t remember why Number One abhors birds—why we all do. I make it into a question: Why is it wrong for the creature to be making a tiny home from twigs and scraps—to want to attract a mate and create a new generation?

  I haven’t asked a question in a long time.

  Wanting to help the sparrow, I reach for what’s also gathering dust on the dresser—a couple of invitations. I shred the first one—it’s addressed to someone named Scott—into fragments of a size more suited to a small-beaked creature and set them on the windowsill, then reach for the other invite. That one, in the same neat penmanship, reads:

  Delilah—Guest of Honor

  New Seattle’s Eighty-Fifth

  Founders Square at eight o’clock

  Monday, the fifteenth of March

  The month of March must be a long time ago, because I can only remember fragments of the evening, whorls of memory bubbling up. Borrowing a dress. Lanterns and wine. Wanting to hold hands but staying apart. Losing someone who had already lost himself. And Delilah… She was an actor, wasn’t she? And she died that night.

  The other side of the invite, with its uneven letters of a faded and cracked crimson, is even more puzzling. It says:

  START A FIRE

  And now it’s only questions and no answers. Why a fire? And where?

  I shake my head and tear the invite in half, then once more. Below, on the street, the argument has abated and everyone has left. I add the scraps to the ones already on the windowsill, shifting the washcloth out of the way. The motion causes a drop of water to fall. It lands on the word FIRE and makes the ink run red, pulling forth a memory long forgotten, of someone hurt.

  Hugh. He was the keeper of a list.

  More memories bubble up, of a different life—one where I was called Scott. A life where I tried hard to find a brand, worried about rank, about being kicked out into the cold.

  I sigh with contentment. Everything’s better now. I’m not alone—I will never again be alone. I will always have Number One. I’m Two—closest to Number One, but the numbers beyond one are just for identification purposes, not a ranking. My job in the warehouse is to help distribute provisions—an equitable portion for each person of chocolate bars or oranges, and a lending system for unique items. I’ve contributed my copy of The Seattle Times and my bike to be shared with others.

  A quick motion of my fingers sends the paper scraps, with their disconcerting remainder of a life best forgotten, off the windowsill and onto the street. The industrious sparrow will pick them up. Rolling the window closed, I give it a final wipe down, then head out, grabbing the remaining item on my dresser: a snow globe, which now has no more paper it needs to weigh down. I’ll take it with me to the warehouse.

  Today not being my day to use the bike, I’m on foot. The dome-town where I live is a cocoon warmed by the morning sun, and I spin the globe from one hand to the other as I walk. It too is a memory of someone…but it’s no use. The name will not come. No matter. I spin it again and watch the plastic snowflakes tumble as if they’re living things.

  But my hands are clumsy and the globe falls. It shatters on the pavement and the snowflakes spill, escape. On the ground is an emptied shell, sunlight dancing in its fragments like flame. It’s an illusion—which is a good thing, as inside the Dome a genuine flame brings the danger of an out-of-control fire sending everyone out the gates…

  An emptied shell…

  I remember.

  Acknowledgments

  Some books come easy. This one took me to writing places I never explored before—some felt like mountain vistas, others had a more of a lost-in-a-dark-cave-for-endless-days mood to them. I’m both exhilarated and thankful to be at journey’s end, a book in hand.

  My thanks go out to everyone who kindly provided feedback on bits and pieces and various versions of the manuscript: Mary Alterman, John Baron, Anne Charnock, Jill Marsal, Angela Mitchell, Richard Ellis Preston, Jr., and Roberta Trahan. The book is all the better for the wisdom of its whiz trio of editors: Kristen Weber, Shannon Page, and Marti McKenna.

  Grateful thanks go out to the Maslakovic and the Baron sides of the family for their encouragement and support.

  Most of all they go out to my husband John and my son Dennis, my comrades-in-arms (along with a goldendoodle named Grif) in the mask-wearing, home-sitting, uphill sort of year that was 2020—may we not see another like it anytime soon.

  About the Author

  Neve Maslakovic writes stories set in the corner where mystery meets science fiction. She is the author of five novels, including Regarding Ducks and Universes (“Inventive… a delight.” — Booklist). Her life journey has taken her from Belgrade, Serbia to a PhD at Stanford University’s STAR Lab to her dream job as a writer. She lives with her husband, son, and very energetic goldendoodle in the Twin Cities. Find out more at nevemaslakovic.com

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  Also by Neve Maslakovic

  Regarding Ducks and Universes

  The Incident Series:

  The Far Time Incident

  The Runestone Incident

  The Bellbottom Incident

  The Feline Affair