Before We Die Alone

by Ike Hamill

  My brother rolls over with shocked surprise on his face.

  He pushes himself backwards with flailing limbs and then his eyes dart around to take in the new landscape.

  “What the hell, Denny?” he asks.

  I get up and put my hand out for him. This isn’t exactly where I intended to fold to, but it will do. We’re alone. His head is still on a swivel. He’s trying to figure out how he got from walking down a city street to the middle of a tall field with trees on one side and rolling hills on the other. His expensive shoes are lost in the thick grass. He has a new green smear on the elbow of his striped shirt.

  “Did you drug me? What the hell is going on here?” he asks.

  “Let’s not play games, okay? I saw you in the background of that press conference in Australia yesterday morning, and then I spotted you at the bakery up the street a few hours later. You traveled halfway around the world in a matter of hours, so I know you know something about alternative methods of travel.”

  His mouth flattens at my accusation. It hit home.

  “I was supposed to be out of that shot,” he says. “Nobody follows instructions anymore.”

  “So you work for ProNavitas? I should have known. You probably worked there the whole time, didn’t you?”

  “You idiot,” he says. He’s tucking in his shirt. He just now realized that he has a big stain on his elbow and he’s not happy about it. “I own that company. And a dozen others. You were working for me.”

  I can’t even bother with denial. His statement is undeniably true. I know that as soon as it hits my ears. All that stuff with Janice holding a blade to his throat? That was all a little performance piece, designed only to get me to do what he wanted. I’m a moron.

  “You’re a moron,” he says.

  “Why did you go through all that? There are easier ways to convince me to work on a project.”

  “No,” he says, “there aren’t. I never would have gotten that work out of you without all the guilt and drama. You thrive on guilt and drama. And, unfortunately, you’re the one I needed to get everything working. Believe me, if I could have done it without involving you, I would have.”

  “Great,” I say. “Happy to help.” I need to sit down. I move to the spot where the grass is all matted down from where we landed. I lower myself down until I’m sitting.

  My brother is looking around.

  “You’re just going to sit there? Show me the way out of this place. I have stuff to do this afternoon,” he says.

  I glance around until I see the fold. It’s still open. I point at it.

  “Where?”

  “You can’t see the fold?” I ask. “I figured since we’re brothers, you know?”

  “No, Den, I have a machine that makes my portals. I don’t screw around with your natural hippy nonsense.”

  That’s the first time I’ve ever been accused of that.

  “Why did your wife call you Arthur?”

  “Just show me the way out of here. I’ll answer your questions back in the city. Where are we anyway? I don’t recognize this place?”

  “As far as I know, this is the future,” I say. “Why does your wife call you Arthur?”

  “Because it’s my name,” he says. “Did you forget my name? Besides, we call my son Robert.”

  He’s right—I did forget his name. Robert was always just Robert to me and my family, but his first name is really Arthur. I knew it sounded familiar. How did I forget that?

  “You have a son?”

  “Of course,” he says. “He goes to college around the corner from you for fuck’s sake.”

  All this time, my nephew was so close.

  “But what about the bear? How did you get involved with these people?” I have a million questions. These aren’t even the best two, but it’s difficult to think clearly when the foundation has been shaken like that.

  He starts to walk away. I’m not sure where he thinks he’s going. He’s moving away from the glow of the fold.

  “Robert!” I call, before I remember myself. “Arthur! That’s not the way.”

  He keeps going. I jump up to go after him. I catch up to him where the field ends and the forest begins. He high-steps his city shoes over a bush and moves to a tree before he starts fiddling with his pants. I turn away when I realize he’s urinating on a tree.

  “Why did you do it? Where did you get the money to build that huge installation at ProNavitas, and why build it if you’re going to give the power away for free?”

  “I own the business,” he says over his shoulder. “There’s a board that makes that kind of decision. And we made plenty of money on the deal anyway.”

  I’m about to ask another question when I hear him whisper a single word.

  “Shit.”

  I turn around. He’s staring into the woods. Moving between two trees, watching us carefully, is a wolf. I’m not sure I’ve ever been studied so intently before. It’s like the wolf’s eyes are pinning me to the ground. I wonder if this is how they catch their prey. I wonder if this is why legend arose that vampires could hypnotize people. The wolf’s glare certainly seems to be hypnotizing me.

  My brother backs up until he makes contact with me. That breaks my paralysis.

  He turns and pushes at me.

  “Run,” he says.

  ---- * ----

  My brother is faster than me, at least at first. He passes me as we run up the grassy field in the direction of the hills. I take a glance back as we crest the first hill. The wolf is keeping time with us, and he looks like he’s barely exerting any effort. Just a fast trot, feet casually gliding through the tall grass and eyes still locked on us, and he’s easily following.

  When I look forward, my brother is pulling away.

  What’s that old joke? I don’t have to outrun the wolf, I only have to outrun you.

  My brother looks to the side, where the trees are spread out, and he trips. As he stumbles, I see what he was looking at. There’s another wolf streaking through the woods. It’s moving to flank us. I wonder how wolves coordinate this type of attack.

  I catch my brother as he finds his feet again, and soon he’s pulling away once more.

  I like his strategy. As we run down the hill, he’s following the slope. With a burst of speed, he leaps to the opposite side where the ground rises again. I follow him. I’m wondering if maybe it’s time to fight, or climb a tree. If I could get ahold of my breath, I would think about a fold. It’s the solution I should have landed on before we started running.

  “Slow down,” I say, panting. “If we stop, I can get us out of here.”

  He doesn’t stop though, he barrels up over the next hill. When he’s at the top, I nearly run into him. That’s when he stopped.

  At first, all I see is the wolf. This one is brown. I don’t think it’s the one that was flanking us. It’s the wrong color. Plus, this wolf doesn’t look tired at all. It’s not even breathing heavy.

  But I only see the wolf for a fraction of a second. After that, I only have eyes for what’s behind the wolf. After a few more hills, there’s a giant gray wall rising from the grass. It’s far enough away that it had been blocked by the rolling terrain. The size of the thing is staggering. The wall stretches to the horizon and it could be hiding anything. There could be a whole city behind a wall that big.

  “What is it?” I ask with my panting breath.

  “We’re dead,” my brother says. The wolf between us and the wall begins to stalk forward. I glance back and see the other wolf coming over one of the hills. He has slowed to a slow stalk as well. It’s a good thing these wolves aren’t smart enough to know how weak we are. If they had a sense of our helplessness, they would just run directly at us instead of doing this slow, cautious approach.

  I pant hard with my mouth open, trying to catch my breath.

  It’s no good—I’m not relaxed enough—but I have to try.

  It might be our only hope.

  At the first hint of a golden gl
immer, I push my brother towards what I hope will develop into a fold.

  ---- * ----

  We spill out onto silver dust.

  I’ve seen this place before, but I’m flabbergasted that this is where my fold would lead. So far, the folds I have created have taken me to perfectly reasonable places. They were either places I intentionally wanted to go or they were places that I didn’t know would be helpful. Either way, until this moment, everything has worked out.

  Not this time.

  I test a shallow inhale even though my brother is choking beside me. It’s no good. There’s no air to breathe here.

  I remember from my last time that there could be atmosphere a step away, but I don’t have a way of knowing which direction to step. And there’s no bear to rescue me this time. Forget trying to find an invisible hatch here. I focus on opening another fold.

  We step through.

  The wolves advance.

  It’s really difficult to force yourself to relax when there are three wolves collapsing on your position. Wait, there aren’t three, there are five. I’m trying to ignore them, but I can’t help glancing around. The wolves are coming from every side now.

  “Seven,” my brother whispers to himself. I wonder what he’s planning.

  I take a breath and leave the wolves to him. I’m going to focus on letting everything flow out with the air so reality will have nothing left to hold it up. It will naturally fold down on itself. I wonder if all this super-dimensional fiddling is doing something horrible to me. It’s probably giving me brain cancer or weakening the walls of my arteries so that they’ll burst one of these days. Anything this helpful must be hell on the body somehow.

  I’m vaguely aware that my brother is yelling and making bold feints at the nearest wolf. He’s kicking and threatening it with bodily harm and a trip to the vet. I find my stillness and let the air out of everything. I allow reality to fold. Between us and the wolf in front, I can see the little golden glow. We just have to take a step forward and we’ll be somewhere else. With luck, the place will be back in my apartment.

  My brother has stopped trying to scare the wolves. He’s just standing there.

  I blink as I realize what he’s looking at. Along the tree line, standing at the edge of where the sun hits, there’s a line of men. They’re all naked. Written on their faces is the same confusion that I’m feeling. They all seem to be young and chiseled. I don’t see a single old man amongst them. They’re young, chiseled, dirty, and carrying spears, most of them, at least.

  “Little help?” my brother calls.

  The men don’t move. The wolves inch forward.

  “Come on,” I say. I grab his arm and take a step forward. He resists my pull—I’m dragging him straight towards the lead wolf. I lean into it and pull him through.

  ---- * ----

  We’re in my TV room.

  I look at the bookshelf that I moved against the vent. I don’t trust what’s on the other side.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I say.

  “Yes,” my brother says. “This place is a shit hole.”

  “This is my apartment.”

  “Oh.”

  He follows me down the hall and then we take the stairs to the street. I lead him to the little diner on the corner. The food is no good there, but it’s usually empty. It’s a good place to sit down and talk. Assuming my brother will talk.

  I follow him into a booth. We order burnt coffee and he looks down at the table.

  “Those wolves,” he says.

  I smile. “You had them on the defensive. All that yelling? They were about to turn tail.”

  “I don’t think so,” he says. “That was about to get real serious. Where were we?”

  “Not where,” I say. “When. I’m not great at lateral folds, but I’ve gotten pretty good at what I call twists. Instead of folding over a big section, I just twist down or up so I can shift forward or back in the same place.”

  He scrunches up his face and takes a sip of terrible coffee. The waitress left behind a little pitcher of cream too. It looks lumpy.

  “You just go anywhere you want?” he asks.

  “No, not anywhere. Forget about that. Tell me what the hell you’re doing. I know you’re not looking to provide the world with free energy. How did you get mixed up with all this craziness, and what’s your end game?”

  He’s still not looking at me. He’s gripping his coffee cup in both hands, like it’s a cold day and he’s trying to drive off a chill.

  “Your problem is that you never had kids,” he says. “You have a kid and your whole perspective changes. It’s not about me anymore, it’s about my legacy. It’s about the future I can provide. Your kids try to push you away as they grow up, but it doesn’t make you love them any less. You just love them in a different way.”

  “What’s your point? Get to the point.”

  “I want to leave a better life for Robert. This place was broken, so I set about fixing it.”

  My brother always did have more confidence than sense.

  “What made you think you could fix the whole world?”

  “We had to do something. You can’t just sit around and expect someone else to fix things. I have connections. I’m good at getting the right people together. One way or another, I find the talent and I make them perform. So that’s what I did. Once I figured out who was in charge, I got them to do what I wanted. It’s easy once you get the hang of things. If you push in the right direction, friction goes away. Things click into place, and the ball starts rolling. People meet resistance only when they’re going the wrong way.”

  “No, I don’t mean how could you accomplish it, I mean what makes you think you have the right?”

  He laughs.

  “If not me, who? You trust the council? You put your faith in a bunch of overweight bears who couldn’t give two shits about the fate of humans or this planet? They think that being a big predator means something, but people have a determination that bears will never have. They think it’s noble to know their limits. Nobility is when you know you have no limit. Everything is a matter of willpower and effort.”

  “Sure. Even if you might destroy the planet?”

  “I’m counting on it,” he says. That’s when he really looks into my eyes for the first time since we sat down. His pupils are dilated wide, like a cat about to pounce. They’re black holes, bending the light around them.

  I look away and take another sip of burnt coffee.

  “You want to leave a better world for your son, so you’ve built something that might break the world.”

  “I want to leave a better life. He doesn’t need the whole world in working order. He needs opportunity. What do we have right now? Everything is entrenched. A corrupt, rigged system guarantees that nothing will ever change. Nobody will ever be able to see the width and breadth of the problem, let alone try to fix it.”

  “What about you? You seem to think you have a grip on things.”

  “I lucked into my perspective, and it’s not the kind of thing that can be shared. I’ve seen enough to know that it’s time to start over, with dedication and purpose. That’s what Robert will do. Hell, he’s already a visionary and activist. He’ll have every chance that we didn’t have.”

  “You sound like the villain in a comic book.”

  “So be it,” he says. “Did you get your answers? Can I go back to real life now?”

  He puts up his hands with the questions. He’s surrendering himself to my mercy.

  “Go ahead,” I say. “Who’s stopping you?”

  It’s funny. It’s like he hadn’t realized that there was literally nothing stopping him from leaving. He was at my mercy for a brief moment, but that was a while ago. Helplessness is a lesson that’s easier learned than forgotten. Little brothers will always be little brothers.

  He finishes his terrible coffee and then walks out.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  * College *

  IT TAKES A LOT
of nerve to pull money out of the old retirement fund. For so long I thought of that money as sacred. I couldn’t stand the idea of losing so much potential, but getting a job was the last thing I wanted to do. What I wanted was to enroll in college. And that required money.

  Once I pulled the trigger, the difficulty of the decision was pretty easy to forget.

  I took a few classes—philosophy, economics, and microprocessor design.

  I finally found him in a geology class that I was auditing. It would have been free, except I wasn’t taking enough credits to qualify. Still, it was a bargain. Robert was sitting three rows from the front. I took a seat roughly behind him. He turned at one point and scrutinized me for a second. He knew something, but he didn’t really know.

  I haven’t said anything to him.

  I just sit here, watching him learn. I’ve picked up a bunch as well, but it turns out that geology is not my thing. That’s okay, that’s what auditing is for.

  I’m going to talk to him today. I’ve watched him long enough to know that he doesn’t have anything particular to do after the Tuesday lecture. He usually hangs around as the room empties out. There’s no other lecture in here until four, so sometimes the students will use the space to catch up on things. I’m hoping that Robert does that today.

  I’m going to talk to him today. I keep rehearsing different opening lines.

  I haven’t gotten the hang of talking to college students yet. Maybe it’s just the way I look, but I think there’s something more to it than that. There are other older people around, and they interact fine. But the students seem to sense that there’s an agenda with me. They hold it against me.

  When I figure out my line, I’m proud of myself.

  The professor bids us farewell and he packs his bag while many of the students head out.

  I lean forward, waiting for a quiet moment to ask my question.

  Robert looks back. He knows I’m about to say something.

  “What did your ‘BEAR with Me’ sign mean?” I ask. The first time I saw Robert, he was holding a nonsensical protest sign in an attempt to question reality. I’m hoping he remembers it as well as I do.