by Matt Spire
Behind them are children, their bodies decomposing and falling apart. Bones sticking through disintegrating flesh.
Jericho has recreated the left-behind children, gnawing at the shredded legs of their fathers. Feeding.
As she watches, the fathers' limbs slowly regenerate, growing new flesh, repairing the bloody torsos.
And the feral children swoop their necks down, snap new tendon, raising their bloody mouths to the eclipsed moon.
Jericho's mocking them.
All the healing he brought to them now keeps them alive to be tortured forever, tortured by the memory of their own lost children.
***
“If this is our decision,” Emma says, “We shouldn't burden Lydia with our landing procedure. She's been through enough.”
Emma goes over the process again. When ready, they'll proceed to the detachment pod. The engines will fire until they stop orbiting and reenter the atmosphere. Then it becomes a glider, but there's no runway, so at ninety meters they'll be ejected from the detachment bay which will expend its boosters, settling down lightly, maybe two-hundred meters from wherever the orbiter stops. Additionally, a separate pod of MeDX, those thin-legged medic automatons, will be released. In a next-to-worst case scenario, they should be able to revive anyone who's injured, but there is a slim chance of instant death by landing in the Mojave Valley. After forty years of fuel regeneration, there's enough fuel to return to orbit, but not for a second return to Earth. And they would have to crash land next time anyway, unless they reattach the pod to the detachment bay.
“So we should be sure this is what we want to do.”
***
Lydia continues through the clearing.
The tortured faces of children turn to watch her pass with eyes wide and yellow before dipping bleeding jaws back into their meals, bare scapulas glinting in the invisible moon.
None of the men move, save their expanding chests, breathing slow, everything else snuffed out long ago.
The spongy clearing twists, becomes rocky, and her stomach turns as she realizes the soft, sinking soil was immersed in forty years of congealing blood.
Finally, at a precipice overlooking a black void, Jericho.
The little shadow. His back turned.
There's a muted hum, like a million tiny wings.
His body is ragged and torn.
“Lydia,” he says.
Everything seems to stay still. This place, this moment, is somewhere far beyond the universe.
“Jericho,” she whispers.
He turns, his blue eyes burning bright.
“I tried.”
“What happened? What am I?”
He looks to the fissured rock below.
“Love never dies.”
“No,” she insists. “Shut up. What am I? What did you do?”
“You're perfect,” he says. “Every experience you've ever had. Every dream.”
Nothing moves. The air carries only their voices and the mysterious hum.
“You've been with me every step of the way. You fell apart. And I've put you back together.”
“I watched myself die, Jericho. Someone exactly like me, but it wasn't me.”
“It took me so long, but your love stayed with me. Guided me. Through every genetics black market. I've put every piece of you together from memory. With love.”
“What did you do?” she asks again. “How many have you...”
“No,” he says softly. “It was never meant to be this way. You were supposed to be reborn. A new, clean body. An empty mind. I grew it all myself. I built Caligatha from everything you'd ever loved. I scripted every experience you'd ever revealed to me. Every heartache you'd endured. The day you discovered your mother died in labor. Your old boyfriends. The day you ran away from home because your father boiled the lobster. Cloud candy.”
“No,” she says.
“You turned out just right. The way you started writing in your notebook. Your father would die and eventually the notebook would turn into memoirs. You would write, and it would be so beautiful.”
“No.”
“I was so afraid you would become something else, but you became you. You became Lydia. We were supposed to fall in love all over again, and the best part is, it was going to be real. All of it was being written right into a real mind, a real mind. Slowly, we would emerge, into the real world, into our old home. We would make Autumn again. She would be born.”
“No, Jericho, no.”
“But that world isn't real anymore. The real world isn't real, Lydia. I only wanted to end the suffering that took you away. But people need their suffering. So they've destroyed everything, just to have their selfish pain. We had to leave. We had to get away. And I really hoped it would still work. When I met you in Caligatha, we fell in love. But when I touch you I don't feel the right feelings. I feel all the pain. The disease. When you lay beside me...the billions dead lay with you. And you melt away, melt away with Autumn inside of you.”
“I'm not real,” she says. “I'm...I'm fake.”
“No,” he says gingerly. “You are made of love. You're the only pure thing left.”
“I'm not real,” she says again.
“I would do anything for you,” he says, his voice wavering now. “I've done almost everything.”
“I know.”
“But I couldn't...Do you know how hard it was to realize–realize I was the deadest one? So many years of work, and–I…I couldn’t recreate myself. Before. Before the good in me died. I tried to give you myself, without all the...fucking pain. But I've had a lot of time to think about things here, and I know it didn't work. I knew you would come here eventually.”
“I came for answers.”
“I should have sealed this Realm.”
“Jericho, you have to make everything stop. All of this. Make it all stop.”
“These?–These murderers?”
“Look at what you've done, Jericho.”
“They'll be here forever. Don't you see? I've made it so they'll never die. What they’ve always wanted. What we’ve all always wanted. This is my Realm, my rules, and finally, the immortality they deserve.”
“Jericho, did you create the disease?”
“I'm the conduit. Vesper Syndrome. It doesn’t matter anymore.” He steps aside, and the hum grows louder. Behind him, a black figure writhes. “Oh, Verminus. Tell her! Tell how we've conquered death.”
The body pulses, waves punctuated by dull shimmers. Flies. A body swarmed by flies.
“Tell her!” Jericho screams. “How everything is perfect now.”
“Jesus, Jericho.”
He breathes heavily. “You're here. That can only mean one thing–there's a signal from Earth.”
“Yes,” she tells him.
“Keene and Emma will guide you. I wouldn't trust anyone else.”
She says nothing.
“Now there's only one more thing I can do for you,” he says.
He reaches out his arm. A revolver.
“My love is so cold,” he says, breathing heavily again.
He turns, fires three shots into the humming mass of flies.
The explosions ring through Lydia's ears.
“You'll never die, Verminus. None of you will ever die. I've designed this place to keep you alive forever.”
“Jericho–”
“But not me. I've turned off my death-safety,” he says. “I'm disconnected from a real body.”
He holds out his palms.
“Please,” he says.
The metal glimmers, dark purple.
“Make it right. I've waited for this moment. Our old selves may die, but we'll be together forever in my dreams, a new you and a new me. It couldn't be any other way.”
She feels the gun. As icy as his hands.
“I am going,” she says.
He closes his eyes.
“But not with you.”
She presses the barrel to her head and pulls the trigger.
“I'd implore us to consider all possibilities, as there are far more negative than positive. It's even possible that we've been mistaken for the craft that may have headed to Gliese. Anyone with the ability to send us that signal might suspect that we have resources and technology to plunder. Or, obviously, they may want to exact revenge. Even if they're not hostile, they might be the last remnants of human life, excepting us, and have no cure.”
“What if they don't?” Keene asks. “We stay here? Hoping–actually hoping–that they die out down below, and take the disease to the grave with them? Hoping we have the opportunity to repopulate the world with a group of so-called humans formerly so affluent they have no concept of reality? Whose idea of drudgery and toil was having to shell their own clams? Men and women so amoral as to abandon their own children?”
“I know,” Emma says. “I just don't want anyone's expectations to be too high.”
“I don't expect to return to a new Eden, a place of innocence and hope. I don't expect anything. But I've begun to believe that no matter what's below, right here, on this craft, there is nothing human.”
“You think landing will change that?”
“Why are we here, Emma?”
“To preserve humanity.”
“How human do you feel, then? Because I'm not making the case for anyone else on board, and certainly not myself.”
“I don't want that to be true, Keene.”
“Before I came to meet you on the island, I tried to write an explanation. A letter. It was more to myself than anyone. I could only conclude that I was part of a futile search for another man's happiness. That I had to see how the story ended. What would happen to Jericho when he discovered that he couldn't just build himself a maze, practice running it, and find his happiness at the end like so many of his test subjects? Isn't that the summation of this entire human experiment? Designing our own maze? Predicting every turn? Because that isn't how it works–we are the maze. Forget about Realm. Our social delusions were the first artificial construct we bought into. The idea that we had to navigate through other people. Every time we twist someone's fate with our own conclusions, try to nail their behavior with our own convictions, we turn them into a wall. In this supposed age of boundless horizons, there were so many walls, so much predictability, it's no surprise the whole thing toppled so easily. Everyone's idea of freedom was just another person's intended action. Down to the last minute, Jericho might have been the most clever man of all in navigating his maze, but I just had to know what would happen when all the walls, all the walls, were down and he realized he was really, truly, alone. That she would not return.”
“Keene...”
“But he took the delusion one step further than I could have imagined. Just before we leave, he unveils his hidden passenger. His reconstructed idea of love. He knows she will never, ever be the exact same person. At the end of that maze she was what he was waiting for. But he knew she wouldn't be there. So he finally, after all these years, turned her into his last wall. Out of all the things he knew. All the history. All the predictability. Forgetting that the most precious moments he'd spent with her, she changed him in some way. Accepting that truth was his way out. But he turned her into the last wall of his maze, and now there is no way out. We're trapped inside.”
Emma says nothing.
“So even if Lydia is the only chance at there ever being an honest life, I say we return. Because, I'll be damned if it makes any sense to me, but I feel more compassion and empathy for this woman, pieced together like a golem, from some perverted black magic biology...than I have for anyone but you. And we've already made our share of choices.”
Emma nods. “She decides.”
“We go,” Lydia's voice says from the doorway. She sips a glass of water, staring through them.
“MAIA,” Emma says. “Let's make that landing happen.” A silhouette against the screen's morphing boxes and colors, she says, “Let's hope this isn't a mistake.”
But Lydia's gone.
“Stay here,” Emma says.
22
Downward
Lydia lays on her back, staring at the dull slit of light above her, wondering. All those dreams of nothingness, an in utero landscape.
For a moment, she considers going back into all those other Realms, Caligatha and Panacea, putting a gun to everyone's head and pulling the trigger. Forcing everyone awake.
She hears breathing, but doesn't move. Emma is in her doorway, looking down.
Neither say a word, and Emma approaches the foot of her bed, sits.
The silence continues until Emma bursts into tears.
“It isn't fair,” she says. “Those with the gift to create life only create more pain.”
Lydia closes her eyes.
“I didn't know, Lydia. We didn't know until the last moment. We didn't know what to do.”
Emma wipes her eyes.
“I've seen the worst in humanity. I've seen people hurt each other, throw each other away like trash. Keene and I...I've spent so much time feeling like the bastard child of humanity.”
Lydia sits up. “You have no idea what that feels like.”
Emma nods. “My entire life, I've only wanted to do something of value, to watch something good come from me. And all I've done is help the worst people turn their money into delusions and more pain.”
“That seems to be a thing ever since I've woken up,” she says bitterly.
“I don't know what the best thing to do is, I guess I never did, but I want you to know you're the only reason we're still here.”
Lydia lays back, closes her eyes.
“Keene doesn't know this, but before we left, after we found out about you...I cornered Jericho in his cabin. I closed the door. We have armaments on board...in the event of a hostile rescue. I put a gun to Jericho's head and told him just how fucking crazy I thought he was. That I've always doubted the reliability of his equations predicting mass human extinction. But I've had my own cross to bear. I've wanted more than anything else to raise a family, maybe...not even to create life, not to be a mother, just to...feel normal. And Keene wants that, too. I'm guilty of wanting that too much, and to make him happy. I love Keene more than anything, and it pains me so much to see him think of himself as a mere practical joke. So I've overlooked these things. Told myself I was protecting something. Giving us purpose. But I couldn't overlook it anymore.”
“I don't care about your motherly intuitions,” Lydia says, unmoving. “Or your infertility. Or your purpose.”
“I know. You shouldn't. But even the purest things can lead to such terrible delusions. I asked if it had already started. You were already alive. I didn't know what to do, Lydia. Which is why I'm trying to act on justice rather than love. I could have ended all of this painlessly. I could have shut all of this down. But you're here, and you're very real, and even now I'm still trying to protect, when what justice means is for the one person who hasn't acted out of love or self-interest to determine their own future.”
“All I want,” Lydia says, pacing her words with deliberation, “is to feel the ground beneath my feet, and know what real loneliness feels like. Not lonely like a fish in a bowl. Lonely like the last fish in the ocean. I'm owed that. I want to go to the place everyone else calls home, where I've never been, and if nothing is there, I just want to walk the beach alone.”
“Okay,” Emma says, stifling her cry.
“Every second since I've woken up, I lose more and more. I'm already the living opposite of life. And I'm disappearing. Living backwards, down to the point I'm nothing at all. I've been unborn. I just want to come out and see what's on the other side.”
She means it, really means it. Want isn't a feeling she can understand anymore, but to be able to walk the surface of the Earth in true loneliness, finally know she's out of things to lose. It's the only conclusion that makes sense anymore.
“Okay,” Emma says again, standing. “We'll begin our descent soon
.” And after a hesitation, considering word after word but finding nothing to say, she leaves, closing the door behind her.
But Lydia can still hear the sobbing, rolls onto her side.
How is it possible, having not only lost everything, but having discovered she never had anything to begin with, to still feel hurt? She wants nothing more than to stop Emma's pain, but instead she shuts her eyes so hard they start to sting.
***
Keene sits with Methuselah, thawed apple slice in hand.
Emma's watching from the hallway.
“We lament our lost time,” he says. “And I wonder what our friend here has done for forty years.”
She starts toward him, head down, hiding her eyes.
“What good is time, without anything worth doing?” he asks.
“You would have made a good father, you know.”
He looks up, but she's still hiding her eyes.
“No,” he says. “Not like you. One can worry too much about not seeing the whole picture. I've spent my life trying to understand things as they happen until it's too late to change them. There's something to be said for getting things done.”
She sits, smiles with red eyes. “I guess that just means they would love you more.”
He hands her the apple slice, watches Methuselah sniff the air. “How is she?”
“In pain,” she says, feeding the mouse.
He nods.
“We should've stayed below, Keene. Gotten what we deserved. All of this would have happened without us.”
“Would that have made it better?”
“All we've done is give her a false sense of hope.”
“I like to think that if we're alone, we've lost nothing, and can perhaps find peace. And if we're not, it's an opportunity to start being honest, at least go forward with dignity. We have an obligation to make the best of whatever she wants.”
“She wants something she can't have.”
“Well then, she should never question whether she's human.”
“It's a question I'm tired of,” Emma says. “Maybe if the people that got us into this mess asked that question, we wouldn't be here. What kind of world is it where Lydia is suffering over that question, but a man from GenAssist blows his brains out because too many people are healthy, and is still given a proper funeral?”