by H C Edwards
“I’ve been sitting here for a few hours trying to think of what I was going to say when I saw you,” Griffin started off slowly. “But now that you’re here I have a better idea. I’m going to let you start talking, and then I’ll interrupt when I have a question or some input.”
“I don’t understand. What do you want me to say?”
There was a hint of defiance in his voice that traveled about as far as his father’s stern visage, at which point Griffin unfolded his arms and placed a small glass screen with an input pad attached to the bottom of it on top of the table. The screen was showing the overall movements that Quentin had made the last few days, the circuitous route he had taken in search of her.
“You’ve been tracking me?”
His voice was incredulous, almost outraged.
“What the hell-“ Quentin began before his father exploded.
“ENOUGH!” Griffin shouted and slammed his fist onto the table hard enough to be felt through the floor.
The outburst was so unlike anything Quentin had ever seen that he was stunned into absolute silence.
“You assured me that you wouldn’t skip class anymore. I will not have you lying to me and then sit there with indignation when you’re caught.”
His father picked up the screen pad and held it in front of Quentin.
“And for your information, I wasn’t tracking you. ASF dropped this off to my lab just a few hours ago.”
“ASF?” Quentin asked softly, shocked.
“That’s right,” Griffin said. “Apparently your recent curfew violations and truancy has earned their attention, but that’s not why they really want to talk to you, is it, Quentin?”
Quentin’s mouth had gone dry. He was looking at the screen pad his father was holding up and it was as plain as day. His path was traced in a bold red line superimposed over a map of the city. It showed his route today, twice even, and then his foray to the Wall, where the red line ended abruptly, showing a time stamp of roughly the moment he entered the crevice in the wall, to the moment he had come back.
“Am I getting a wipe?” Quentin asked fearfully.
He couldn’t begin to think about what that might entail, how far they’d go back; they’d wipe out the Wall, the Edge…even her, especially her, because she was associated with it.
The thought of losing her propelled him to his feet, chair scraping against the floor. He’d run. It was all he could do.
“Quentin,” his father said, rising to his feet as well. “Quentin!”
The commanding voice cut through the panic. He looked to his father with wide eyes, the fight or flight instinct in full effect.
Griffin reached out and grasped his son’s arm above the elbow, his expression softening, falling in on itself, unable to hold onto the anger that had erupted from his own source of fear.
“Quentin,” he said softly now. “Listen to me. If they wanted a wipe they would have been here when you walked in. Sit down, please. Sit down and talk to me, and we’ll figure this out, ok?”
The words sunk in and Quentin was able to push aside the tight panic that had constricted around his chest. He began to breathe rapidly, near hyperventilation, but this reaction was from relief and not fear. His father guided him back to the chair and pushed it in as Quentin collapsed into it, legs suddenly weak and useless. He couldn’t have run at that moment if the house were on fire.
Griffin resumed his seat, resting his elbows on the table. He pushed the screen pad off to the side.
“Ok, I’m going to let you tell me everything in your own way, but I have a few questions first and it is imperative that you tell me the truth.”
Quentin nodded, the shock starting to pass and his breathing nearing its normal pattern.
“Did you go beyond the Wall?”
Again Quentin nodded.
“Is that a yes?” his father asked forcefully.
“Yes,” Quentin said, swallowing past the dryness in his throat.
“How?”
“There’s…there’s an opening, a crack at the base of the Wall,” he responded, feeling some of his strength come back, and with it relief at finally being able to tell his father. “It’s in the Grove, away from the path, covered in fake ivy vines.”
“This opening, this crack…how large is it?”
“Enough for me to fit through,” Quentin replied then quickly added, “but it’s not easy. It’s a tight fit and-“
He trailed off, thinking of the last time he went to meet her.
“And you can get stuck pretty easily,” Quentin finished.
“So you’ve been to the edge.”
It was a statement; not a question.
Quentin nodded.
His father reached for the pad and tapped on it a few times until he found the screen he wanted. He held up the device in front of his son at eye level and then began to lower it.
Quentin gently pushed aside the screen pad.
“I’m fine. I did a rad check already.”
Griffin lowered the pad in his hand but didn’t set it aside.
“What did you see on the edge?”
“Nothing,” Quentin replied, a little too quickly. “There’s nothing there but dirt and rocks.”
For some reason he wasn’t quite ready to share why he had gone out there, the phenomenon he and she had witnessed several times together. He wasn’t even sure he could adequately explain it to his father without sounding ludicrous.
“Does anyone else know of this opening? Have you shown it to any of your friends?”
“Well…not exactly,” Quentin said awkwardly.
“What does that mean?”
“I mean, I haven’t shown it to anyone…but I’m not the one who found it.”
“Alright,” his father said, leaning back in his chair and sighing heavily. “This is probably the part where you should start at the beginning…and don’t leave anything out.”
Quentin leaned forward in his seat. He was eager to tell this story but he had already committed to leaving out the things he saw in the desert. He was more concerned with the mystery of Claire’s disappearance, and maybe his father was the one who could help find her. After all, Griffin Byrne was the smartest man in Akropolis.
“Last year I met a girl,” he began.
“Are you thinking about jumping in or just enjoying the view?”
Quentin was seated at the very end of the West Pier, his legs dangling over the edge, staring far out at the water as it rippled from the soft breeze.
“Huh?” he responded, shaken out of his trance.
He glanced up and slightly behind him. A girl was standing there in a white sundress with a pink floral print, a wide-brimmed sunhat blocking out enough of the light that he didn’t need to squint.
“Are you here to swim or to look?”
“Swim?” he responded, clearly flabbergasted.
For a moment, Quentin forgot everything. He didn’t even recall why he had come to the pier in the first place or what daydream had occupied his mind before she appeared.
A girl talking to him out of the blue was not so uncommon that he would normally lose his senses, but this one easily scrambled him like a couple of eggs.
She stood there with her hands behind her back, one foot tucked behind the other, her chocolate skin a stark contrast to the white dress but all the more mesmerizing for it. Her high cheekbones lifted the wide smile she had to new heights and the dimples at the corners of her mouth were perfect accents for her lips. Her eyes were almost squinted, giving her an elfish look. Long, raven hair flowed over one shoulder of her slim neck, billowing out slightly each time the breeze caught it.
She was mesmerizing, and he didn’t even realize that his mouth was open until he tried to speak. Of course, snapping his jaw closed was contradictory to his desire to reply, and so he opened his mouth again to utter the obligatory response, of which he immediately regretted.
“Hi,” he said simply, the word coming out as more of a croak.
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Her laughter was like little bells.
“I mean, hello, I…I am…did you say swim?” he fumbled, feeling his ears start to get hot.
“It’s ok,” she said in a placating manner, hopping down next to him as if the invite had already been given. “You looked like you were thinking real hard. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
Her smile said otherwise.
“It’s fine, I was just um…I…”
Quentin looked to the water and back to her.
“I don’t know what the hell I’m saying.”
She seemed to find this absolutely hilarious. Her laughter exploded out of her chest. She leaned back so far her hand had to grasp his shoulder to keep from falling over.
The guffaws were loud and almost braying but they were like musical chimes to his ears. He found himself grinning and even joining in with her before they both tapered off.
She had to wipe the tears from her eyes and he couldn’t help but notice that the entire time, she had not removed her hand from his shoulder. That touch seemed to send little electric shockwaves down his body.
“I’m Quen…Quentin, I’m Quentin,” he stuttered, though now he grinned, a bit more at ease.
“Well, Quen Quentin, it’s nice to meet you.”
She let go of his shoulder and held out her hand. He stared for a second and then realized she meant for him to shake it, which he promptly did, though a bit too eagerly and rough.
“Just Quentin,” he said with a self-conscious shrug as he let her hand go. “What’s your name?”
“Oh that’s not really important is it?” she replied offhandedly.
“I think so. How would I know what to call you?”
“Well, we are talking one-on-one,” she said matter-of-factly. “So that precludes the need for you to call me by name, doesn’t it?”
This time it was Quentin’s turn to instigate the laughter.
“That’s a good point,” he finally said after the chuckles subsided.
“So Quentin,” she said. “What were you staring at so intently just a minute ago?”
“Oh, that.”
Now that the euphoria of their initial encounter had passed, though he was unquestionably smitten already, Quentin was able to recall the daydream of a minute before. His eyes were drawn back out to the waters of the Bay, as if it were a siren’s call he heard.
“Just a memory…or a dream. I’m not quite certain,” he explained.
“What is it about?” she prompted.
“The last day my parents were truly happy.”
When he looked to her and saw the serious composure of her expression, he shook his head slightly and cracked a half-smile.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to go dark.”
She smiled back at him.
“No need to apologize. I do the same sometimes. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one.”
“So what’s your dark?” he asked on impulse.
“The usual; not measuring up to parental expectations, pining for a world long gone, the deaths of my parents.”
“I…I didn’t know. I’m sorry,” Quentin said solemnly.
She nudged him with her shoulder.
“That’s twice you’ve apologized,” she gently chided him.
“I guess then…they didn’t have a revive order?”
Small shake of her head.
“No. Neither of them.”
“I understand,” he said solemnly.
“Do you?” she asked defensively.
“My mother didn’t have one either.”
The way she stared at him didn’t exactly make him uncomfortable, but it did give him a feeling of unease. It was as if she were looking into him, past the flesh, digging for some hint of deception or untruth. He didn’t look away, though.
“Aren’t we a pair?” she finally said.
This time she leaned her shoulder against his as they both looked out at the water of the Bay.
The next week she was there again; same day, same time, as if she were waiting for him. When he joined her on the pier he found out that she had been.
That day they walked along the beach with their shoes off and talked about the old world; what it would have been like to see a real body of salt water instead of the facsimile they were treading upon, how an actual sky would have looked stretching to the horizon, peppered with great fluffy clouds and the true sun peering through, the sound of endless fields of grass swaying in the breeze and the whistling of the wind through mountain valleys, all things they had read or seen on the vid screens but couldn’t quite believe had truly existed.
He didn’t ask her name again. There didn’t seem to be any need. What he did ask, however, was why she walked up to him on the pier.
“I was following you,” she said with a sly smile.
“You were?”
This took him by surprise. That day he had visited the Akropolis library. He was actually supposed to meet his father for lunch but as was often common in such a prestigious position, his father had been called away to a meeting or some situation of importance and had to reschedule.
Instead, Quentin had spent the afternoon in the library, thumbing through old tombs of fiction that had survived the transition to Akropolis, finally settling on one in particular, a novel about a man who had wanted to be an entrepreneur and sailor, instead finding himself stranded on a deserted island for over a dozen years, in which he fought sickness and cannibals and his own morality.
From the first page, Quentin was hooked, and after two and a half hours he was able to put the book down with a sense of awe and humility. The trials and tribulations the man in the book went through made any of his hardships pale when stacked up side by side. And even though their lives were not similar enough to draw lines of comparison, Quentin felt a certain kinship with the lead character.
It was this book that prompted him to go to the pier that day, inevitably leading to the dream of the beach, at which point she had come upon him.
“You followed me from the library?” he asked her.
She turned away from him and looked at her feet as they tread through the sand. He could swear that she was embarrassed.
“Sometimes I do that.”
“Follow me?”
She laughed and threw a shoulder at him, making him stumble a few steps into the water.
“No, you dummy. People. Sometimes I just…pick a person and kind of follow them for a bit. You know, see where they go, who they meet, what they do.”
“I think that’s called stalking,” Quentin grinned. “That’s a crime.”
She stopped and turned towards him, smirking.
“That’s nothing. That’s just a mild curiosity I indulge in when I’m bored. I can show you a real crime if you want.”
“I’m good, thanks,” he replied laughing, though her words definitely prompted further questioning later.
She shrugged as if that part of the conversation held no real interest for her and continued walking along the beach.
“So at what point do you decide to talk to these people you follow?” he asked her.
“I don’t.”
“You don’t?”
“I just watch…that’s all. And…”
“And?”
“And then I write about them.”
“You’re a writer?” he asked, genuinely interested.
She flashed him another wry smile.
“I’m no Twain but I make do.”
“Why them? I mean you could write about anything. Why do you write about complete strangers?”
“Because,” she paused and turned towards the Pantheon, sweeping her arm across everything in view.
“One day all of this, all of us, might be gone. And we’ll be a civilization of robots. No matter how you dress it up, that’s the reality of it. We’re already three fourths of the way there. When that happens, we’ll start to forget what it’s like to be human.”
“But we’ll still be the same. The Cloud-�
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“Oh, we’ll still sound like humans and we’ll still look like humans and we’ll have all our memories and thoughts and feelings…but when you take away death, our greatest fear, then it’s only a matter of time before we forget our other fears..and then how long will it be before we forget the other things that make us what we are?”
When she turned back to him, her expression was solemn.
“I write about those people because maybe someday when we’re all gone and someone reads those stories, they might be reminded of what it was like to be human…even for a little bit.”
Quentin nodded.
“I get it,” he said, and he did. “But there is one thing I don’t understand.”
“What’s that?”
“Why did you talk to me?”
She smiled widely and it seemed as if the sun came out from behind the clouds.
“Because I wanted to…and call me Claire.”
After that she would message him whenever she wanted to meet. Sometimes it was in the gardens of the Pantheon or at the West Pier or the Akropolis library, where they would discuss their favorite authors and books. Their conversations ranged from the serious to the absurd but there was always plenty of laughter and smiles.
The only cog in the wheel was that he could never contact her. She had an encrypted messenger and he didn’t press her on the issue.
Then came the first meeting in the Grove. He thought it odd that she proposed such a late meet in such an obscure place very far from anywhere they had met before, but it didn’t even occur for him to refuse. When he arrived and she showed him the opening in the Wall, then, at that point, he did refuse. And when he turned to leave and she didn’t follow, he went back and found that she was already partly beneath the Wall.
It wasn’t bravery or a sense of chivalry that propelled him forward but his desire to be near her that exceeded his terror of the wasted world outside.
When he followed her in it was with curses and epithets, of which she apparently heard because she backtracked and hit him with a beam from a flashlight.