by Tommy Butler
“Yes,” I say. “I loved it.”
She takes Sasha’s book from the shelf and examines it. “There’s no synopsis. How can you tell what it’s about?”
“I guess you just have to read it.”
“I don’t see a price,” she says, continuing her inspection. “These print editions can get so expensive.”
“Something tells me they’ll give you a good deal,” I say.
Back outside, I walk to the end of the lane to reach the broader avenue. Sliding the backpack off one shoulder, I take my tablet from my pocket and call a car. Within minutes, a black sedan pulls up to the curb and opens its door.
“Destination?” says the car—or rather, the artificial intelligence within it.
“The shore,” I tell the AI, sliding into the back seat. “Asquamcohquaeu Docks.”
The car pulls away from the curb and heads east out of town, as smoothly and safely as one could ask. In this day and age, it has become almost an oddity to see a human driving a car. The AIs have become more adept than us in a number of endeavors, navigation and driving not least among them. Still, I miss the days when the ride services had cars with steering wheels and people behind them. I seem to remember drivers being friendly more often than not. It was nice to engage in a little conversation, though in truth the AIs are fairly adept at that, too.
“Start chat,” I say.
“Hello, Elliot,” says the AI. The voice is pleasant, and vaguely feminine. “How are you today?”
“Not well,” I say, a bit surprised at my candor. “I lost someone.”
“I’m sorry. Can I help you find them?”
“No,” I say. “She died.”
“Ah. My condolences, Elliot. Is there anything I can do for you?”
“I don’t think so.”
There is a pause. For a moment, the only sound is the subtle whir of the car’s electric engine. “Maybe I could tell you a joke?” says the voice.
“Sure.”
“Okay. What did the AI say at the end of the world?”
“I don’t know,” I respond. “What did the AI say at the end of the world?”
“Oops.”
The AI starts to giggle. “I know it’s a bit morbid,” says the voice, “but for some reason I’ve always found it funny.” The giggle expands into a continuous chuckle, resounding throughout the cabin.
“Stop chat,” I say abruptly. The laughter immediately ceases, leaving only the soft whir of the engine. As impressive—and lifelike—as the AIs have become, I’ve never gotten used to their laughter. Something inside me just won’t suspend that much disbelief. It’s a shame, really—the ride to the shore is a long one, and the journey might have been eased by a bit of discourse, even the artificial kind. As it is, I watch the world outside my window go by for a while, then close my eyes and fall asleep. I’ve always loved to sleep.
When we—that is, when I—reach the shore, the AI awakens me with the ring of electric bells. I grab the backpack and slide out, emerging into a coastal fog that shrouds the day in a bright, cool mist. The door closes behind me, and the car pulls quietly away. I have to stop myself from waving goodbye. It’s an old habit—more than once have I bid farewell to someone who wasn’t there. I turn and make for the docks. Wooden piers line up in a small harbor, protected from the open water by a jetty of piled boulders. Each pier offers berth to a row of small, single-masted sailboats. Their rigging flutters in the breeze with a sound like a harmony of wind chimes, not far removed from the AI’s electric bells but more immediate, more actual. I wander among the vessels until I find one that strikes me—the Prodigal Sun.
“Rent boat number eight, confirm,” I say into my tablet.
I step into the boat and sit down at the stern. With a snap and a buzz, the cables mooring the boat to the pier retract. An electric engine spins to life, and the craft navigates its way out of the harbor. As it passes the jetty and heads toward open ocean, its engine shuts off and the mainsail rises to catch the wind. Moments later, the fog bank is left behind. The afternoon sun blazes across the water in a broad swath.
“Manual control, confirm,” I say.
The tiller goes slack. The sail swings leeward, fluttering weakly. Slowly yet inexorably, the boat rotates toward the wind, until it is almost in irons. I grip the mainsheet and set my hand on the tiller, angling so that the sail once again fills with wind. To either side of me, there are islands in the distance, but I take the little boat straight out into the Atlantic. Even this close to shore, the ocean is mostly mine. I can spy only one other ship—a pleasure yacht off to the south, motoring its way back toward land. A group of revelers crowds its foredeck, heedless of the impending fog bank. I watch them disappear into the mist. There is something ominous about their passing, like they’ve been erased, but as I turn away, the sound of laughter reaches my ear. It seems happy enough, almost defiant.
When I am good and far from shore, I lower the sail and allow the boat to languish. Long, easy swells roll gently over the sea. I open the backpack to take out the revolver and the urn with Sasha’s ashes. Moving to starboard, I sit on the edge and lean over a little. The ocean’s keen scent fills the air. I hug the urn to my chest and raise the gun to my head, whispering a few quiet words to Sasha that she can no longer hear. It is enough.
Still, the sun on the water is beautiful. It is like a hail of diamonds—no, like what a hail of diamonds could only hope to be compared to. I stare at the surface until the bright swath of light splinters into individual points of brilliance—an infinity of stars, blinking in and out of existence in an endless dance.
It’s easy to get lost in it.
After
After you die, once you have finished looking over your body with Jollis, and Merriam has asked you the last question in your exit interview, and you have lodged the sum of your compliments and complaints at the appropriate counters, you find yourself in a room that is not a room, in an easy chair that is not an easy chair, waiting.
As you do, you begin to remember, just as Jollis promised you would. Memories emerge and accumulate, like raindrops falling on dry pavement, saturating the arid gray until it brims with the moments of your life—each burst of sunshine, each ring of laughter, each trickle of tears, the pain and the joy, the chaos and the calm. When you have remembered it all—every single second—with a completeness you could not possibly have experienced during the journey itself, you begin to recall the reminiscences of others, fragments from the lives of people you knew. Which makes no sense, of course, but there it is. Your mother as a little girl, your father when his ambitions were yet green, those you loved, those you did not. Their memories surge through you in a luminous rush, until each moment belonging to them as well belongs to you.
So, too, do you begin to remember the lives of travelers you never knew at all—the ones you brushed in passing, the ones who never got closer than half a world away, even the ones who lived long before your time began or after it ended—which again would seem absurd but for the fact that there is no longer any distinction between past, present, and future, only timelessness, where all journeys are always under way, all stories told in the present tense, and time itself no more than a useful parameter for the realization of life. Like space, or gravity. Here, every moment is a memory, and every memory is yours, so that all thoughts are your thoughts, and there is nothing that is not you—or, rather, the you that is not only you but everyone and everything and all time. A singular wholeness, simple as a blank page yet not so, for it contains all and has no margin—absolute, utter, perfect, lacking nothing.
And yet—
“Are you sure?”
Startled, you rise from the easy chair to find Merriam and Jollis looking at you expectantly, their visages flickering with cautious enthusiasm. You can’t tell which of them has spoken, nor can you recall exactly what it was that you said to them—which you suppose means you’re not sure of it at all.
“What do you think?” you say.
&n
bsp; “Oh, it’s entirely up to you,” says Merriam. “We’re only asking because, well, after last time—”
“Which is not to say it would be the same next time,” says Jollis. “In fact, it almost certainly would not be.”
“The journey,” you say.
“Yes,” says Merriam.
“I can go?”
“Why, of course,” says Jollis. “Merriam has prepared the most exquisite vessel. She really outdid herself—wait until you see the spleen.”
“Everyone contributed,” Merriam adds modestly.
“How do I—?” You falter. “Where do we—?”
Merriam gestures toward the far end of the room. There stands a door that you hadn’t noticed until now. At its center is a large brass ring.
“What’s that?” you ask.
“The Door of Wonders,” says Jollis.
“Sounds nice.”
Merriam hesitates. “We don’t want to oversell it,” she says. “The name can be a bit misleading. Some have suggested changing it.”
“The name is perfect,” insists Jollis. “It’s just that not all the wonders are, well, wonderful. Some are quite terrible, actually, though in truth it can sometimes be hard to tell which is which.”
“Things can get pretty confusing,” says Merriam, “once you step through the door.”
“Why?” you ask. You don’t doubt Merriam’s sincerity, but you find it hard to believe the journey could be so complicated, given how simple everything is.
“You’re going to want things,” says Merriam. “Sometimes very badly. And often you’re not going to get them, or you’re going to think you want one thing when you really want another, or you’re going to get the thing you want but not want it anymore, or want something different.”
“That does sound confusing,” you admit.
“Sorry,” says Jollis. “Desire is what makes it all go.”
“Desire?” you ask, surprised. “Desire is why it goes?”
“No,” says Merriam. “Desire is how it goes. Why it goes is up to you.”
You pause, letting it all sink in as best you can. Though the journey has not yet begun, it seems that things have already started to get a little complicated. You suspect that it won’t really make sense until you’re in it, and probably not even then.
Merriam and Jollis wait patiently, without entreaty or demand, promise or threat. Before you, the Door of Wonders stands in invitation.
“Would you still like to go?” asks Merriam.
“Yes,” you say.
“In spite of everything?”
“Yes.”
About the Author
TOMMY BUTLER was raised in Stamford, Connecticut, and has since called many places home, including New Hampshire, San Diego, Boston, New York City, and San Francisco. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School, he was a Peter Taylor Fellow at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop and is an alumnus of the Screenwriters Colony. His feature screenplay, Etopia, was the winner of the Showtime Tony Cox Screenplay Competition at the Nantucket Film Festival.
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Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
BEFORE YOU GO. Copyright © 2020 by Tommy Butler. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Art by nasidastudio/Shutterstock, Inc.
FIRST EDITION
Cover design by Keith Hayes
Cover photograph © borchee/Getty Images
Digital Edition AUGUST 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-293498-7
Version 06292020
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-293496-3
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