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Continuing… (It's Part 6 in the saga, I fucked up. Sorry.)
So, after a few re-fueling and impromptu cigar-purchasing stops in South and Central America, we wheel up to the deserted jetway at LAX.
“Thought we were going to Elmendorf?” I asked.
“This isn’t it?” the pilot replied, feigning worry.
“No.”, I replied, “Looks like California. Fruits and nuts. All around. What’s going on? One minute we’re off to Texas, then Cali, then Texas again, now we end up here at the California airport of the iconic tower.”
“Yeah, it’s confusing enough haulin’ civilians around. But when we get a call from Virginia, we tend to comply without any questions,” the pilot explains.
“Aw, shit!”, I sort of exclaim, “Rack and Ruin called?”
“Yeah”, the pilot replies, “Figures you’d know these guys. They said they were closer to LAX rather than Texas and had us divert here. In fact, you look over there, see that dark blue Chevy? That’s them; and evidently, your ride.”
I tipped the airman from earlier a couple of cigars as he helped me with my gear off the plane and into the trunk of Rack and Ruin’s plain-Jane blue late modeled Chevy. Had to move the Sidewinder Missiles off to one side, though.
“Most honorable Agents Lack and Luin!” I quipped in my faux-racist greeting. “What the hell, guys? I’ve got to get to Japan and get some newly rigidified digits.”
“Let’s see your hand”, Agent Rack asks. “Nasty.”
“Yeah”, I sigh “And with the medicos in South America and their penchant for plaster, I don’t so much have a left hand as more of an ankylosaur tail.”
“Or Thagomizer”, Agent Ruin tittered. “Anyone gives you grief, and one upside the head should set them right. Or dead.”
“You’re a riot, Ruin.” I replied, “But not entirely incorrect.”
We all agreed that I really didn’t need any extra accouterments to make myself look more dangerous. I mean with my severe haircut, stern beard clip, and perpetual ‘Go fuck yourself’ scowl.
“Yeah”, I replied, stroking the aforementioned beard, “I just can’t get that. I’m such a people person.”
After Agents Rack and Ruin finished drying their eyes from laughing what I thought was en extremis, we finally got down to business.
“So, what’s the skinny, guys”, I asked. “New marching orders?”
“No. Not as such”, Agent Ruin said, still sniggering over my ‘people person’ comment.
I see we’re moving. Agent Rack is just driving casually, like Chewbacca when they were waiting to see if the Empire went for that expensive Bothan code.
“Then, what?” I asked, getting a slight bit piqued.
“Well”, Agent Ruin noted, “When you went to South America, you took some of your artillery collection with, correct?”
“You know I did. You even made some snide comments about my personal choice of sidearms and their ‘excessive’ calibers, if memory serves”, I reiterated.
“And if you are proceeding normally, as you always do, they’re all nestled in the trunk of this very car. All cleaned, quiet, unloaded, and smelling sweetly of Hoppe’s Number 9 and WD 40, correct?” Rack inquired.
“Yes?” I cautiously venture.
“Well, ya’ big dummy, do you think they’re going to let you saunter into Tokyo armed like the Third Fleet?” Agent Ruin chuckled.
“Um…well…I do have a Diplomatic Passport.” I ventured.
“That’s not going to work this time.”, Agent Ruin said, shaking his head. “They’re tighter than Dick’s Hatband about sidearms. Want to bring in your Rigby SXS .500 Nitro Express double rifle? Not a problem. Sidearms, especially in your alien hunting calibers, nope.”
Well, that’s just….*dandy!”, I reply, semi-put out. “Now what the hell am I going to do?”
“Ever think that’s why Ruin and I are here, now?”, Rack asks.
“And here I thought it was just so you could bask in the warm glow of my fucking wonderful personality. Or that you actually cared about me as a real goddamn human”, I joshed.
“Ummm…yeah”, Rack replies, “There’s no way we can answer that without going on some Deadpool list. “
I agreed.
“OK, here’s the deal: you get your sidearms, ammunition, speed loaders, brass knuckles, Asp, laser range finders, Sap, Zeiss scopes, Kukri, Wisconsin Cheese Whittler, Buck folding skinner, Marine K-Bar, those two ultra-illegal Cheburkov Cobra titanium switchblades...”
“Three. Olga the KGB lady sent me one for Geologist’s Day.”
“Ahem. Those three ultra-illegal Cheburkov switchblades, that Wyoming Speedholer, your MASER Time-Distance Computer, garrote, pocket rail gun and whatever else lethal you carry and deposit it in the iron box in the trunk. We’ll ensure that it’s delivered to Esme post-haste. And by post-haste I mean one of our guys will deliver it personally.”
“Well…I suppose”, I conceded, “But best send someone who’s been to the house recently. I don’t know how much bigger Khan has grown since I left on this little fantasy trip. Wouldn’t want a star on the wall in Langley for someone eaten by a mastiff. Want to see a picture….Oh, bother. That’s right. My phone’s at the bottom of fucking Lake Maracaibo.”
“Good point”, Ruin interjects, “Guess we’ll do a little road trip and deliver it ourselves. Best call Esme and let her know what’s going on.”
“I have no objections to your proposals. Please give Esme this when you see her. I had some luck in the Calaveras Casino and if I don’t send her some mad money. Ouch. She’ll never forgive me for not taking her along to Japan.” I asked.
“But I thought Esme hated Japan? Too crowded and too ‘fussy’, I believe was her estimation.” Ruin asked.
“Yes, but once she saw the Ginza, all bets were off. Shopping the likes of which even Allah himself hasn’t seen.” I replied, slowly shaking my head.
“I see”, Ruin said, “Well, since you’re off to Sapporo, perhaps you can do a recon for Esme on the shopping there.”
“Not bad. Not bad at all.”, I smiled, “Now I know why I let you guys hang around with me.”
So, as advertised, I am now standing on the tarmac at LAX, basically feeling naked.
“Can’t I keep just one switchblade?” I moaned to Agent Rack.
“Go ahead, if you’re really keen on donating it to Japanese customs”, he replied.
“Fuckbuckets.” I groused.
“There, there now. That’s the usual Dr. Rocknocker of which we’re all so fond.” Agent Ruin chuckled.
“Remember, you do have that wallet-sized credit card gizmo from the Company. So you’re not entirely ‘naked’. Think of it as an emergency breechcloth.” He smiled.
“I’d like a larger model if you don’t mind. It’s chilly out here.” I joshed.
After Agents Rack and Ruin stripped me metaphorically naked as they de-weaponized me, they handed me a Business Class ticket to Tokyo, and a pass to the Japan Airlines Hospitality Suite and Lounge.
“So sorry you guys can’t hang around and have a few farewell snorts”, I chided, “But you’ve got a bit of a drive, so best be off before the weather turns to shit.”
“Who says we’re driving?” Agent Rack asked as he hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the ready and waiting C-130 cargo plane currently taxiing slowly in our direction.
“Well, in that case”, I smiled even more broadly, “Let’s invite the flight crew to join us. That’ll make the flight home all that much more interesting.”
After near tear-jerking farewell sentimentalities, i.e., “Piss on you”, “Get stuffed” and “Take a fuckin’ hike”; Agents Rack and Ruin, my weapons and the Agency’s plain-Jane Blue Chevy were all nestled snugger than buggers in ruggers in the belly of the thundering C-130.
Now truly on my own, I trudge the hundred thousand or so centisteps to my departure terminal, make a quick recon that my flight’s still slated to go in a generally westward direction, and hightail it to the nearest courtesy desk to ask for a motorized cart to take me and my remaining luggage to the JAL Hospitality Suite.
Hey. I’m old, infirm, and currently among the walking wounded.
Anyone that disagrees risks an Ankylosaur tail club swat or Thagomizer to the skull.
Finally ensconced in the JAL Hospitality Suite, Polo Lounge of course; I was drinking Tokyo Teas (3 oz. vodka, 2 oz. gin, 2 oz. rum, 1 oz. triple sec, 1 oz. Midori, good splash of lime juice, a slight splash of 7-Up (diet, of course), over ice with a lime wheel) with Pabst Blue Ribbon Extra 1844 chasers and Hangar One’s “Fog Point” vodka on the side, hiding from the brutish realities of this foul year of two thousand and twenty-something, Common Era…
I’ve already called Esme and we’ve had a good, long chat. She still managed to give me her shopping list for whenever I find myself bored on the Ginza.
She’ll be shocked when she learns that I’m not going to be in Tokyo long, but have 1st class tickets on the Bullet Train to Sapporo. Still, I’ll probably find myself in Pole Town or the Stellar Place there, trading piles of US greenbacks for locally produced Japanese curios and clothing.
I can hardly wait.
I order another round of drinks, as the wonderful attendants in the Hospitality Suite were bored out of their skulls because of the COVID-induced drop-in customers flying anywhere that requires a hospitality room stay, and I was virtually the only one around. They tried their level best to outdo each other when it comes to Japanese efficiency and friendliness.
After a couple of hours, they ask if I would like something from the grill, as the day chef had “the COVID” and the night chef just arrived. A quick perusal of the menu and I chose a 28-ounce dry-aged Porterhouse and another round of drinks.
I usually don’t like to eat too much before I fly, but JAL tells me the flight is going to be virtually empty, something like <121 pax, all told, so restroom availability shouldn’t be too much of a concern.
Plus, who am I to say no to a free, blue 28-ounce dry-aged Porterhouse?
There was a bit of difficulty conveying to the chef through the intermediaries of the hospitality just how I wanted my steak.
“Blue,” I said.
“Brue?” was the reply.
“Rare. Very, very rare.” I continued.
Look of total bewilderment.
I drag out my Personal Language Pro, speak “Steak, very, very rate” into the infernal gizmo, and hand the contraption to the attendant.
“珍しい、非常に珍しいステーキ?”[ Mezurashī, hijō ni mezurashī sutēki?]
“Raw! Nama!” I say, louder than need be.
They toddle off to find the chef.
“How is it sir, that you would like your steak cooked?” he asks.
“Very rare. Just a minute or two per side. Inside still cold.” I instructed.
All I got for the trouble was a puzzled smile.
“Give me the language gizmo…” I type in a few words…
“お尻を洗い、角をノックオフして、ここから出してください”
[O shiri o arai,-kaku o nokkuofu shite, koko kara dashite kudasai.]
“Wash its ass, knock its horns off, and walk it out here.”
“OH!” as the lightbulb pops. “Rare. Got it! Excellent!” the chef laughs and zips back to the kitchen.
Like I always say, I’m nothing if not the international ambassador of amity and goodwill.
“Crack tubes!”
Dinner was fantastic. I do wish I could have somehow mailed the Porterhouse bone back home for Khan. After that hambone incident, he might even taste it.
Finally on the plane, in an almost empty Business Class, the flight captain informs us that we’re headed to Haneda Airport Tokyo and anyone not headed in that direction better ‘haul ass off’ the flight or forever hold their peace.
Late-night international flights tend to be a bit more wooly than your average Chicago to Omaha gig.
Especially when the flight’s damn near empty and we have the next 12 hours or so to be best friends.
We taxi, turn and head into the wind. I’m doctoring up a couple of dossiers and keeping my personal cabin attendant, Luna since there were two of us in Business and two business flight attendants, busy with her trying to play ‘Stump the Geologist’.
“I’ll bet you never had this before.” She beamed and handed me a tumbler of very dangerous-looking brown liquor.
I cautiously sniff, take a modest gulp, swirl and glug the rest down.
“Ohishi Single Sherry Cask”, I say with a muffled belch. “Light. Fruity. An Englishman’s drink.”
“Oh. You knew. Let me try again.” She smiles beatifically.
“I have no objections to your proposal.” I smile as nicely as this crotchety old Komodo Dragon could.
She returns with another flagon of spirits; it smells of obsidian, leather, and earth.
I just had some of this back in LAX. I take a snort, smile, and shotgun the rest.
“Hibiki Japanese Harmony…lovely stuff.” I smile. “A little light for my jaded palate, but I’d never turn it down if it were free.”
“Oh, you win again. Wait. One more.” She smiles and skitters off to the galley.
She returns with another soupçon of some more dangerous brown liquor.
“Here, try this. It will make you very popular at social gatherings”. She smiles.
Sniff. “Splendid.” Snort. Swirl. Smile. Shotgun.
“Kanosuke New Born, if I’m not mistaken.” I smile back. “Very nice. I really do like this one.”
“You too good at this. One more!” she stands and stomps off defiantly. She returns in a trice and hands me the glass.
“Hmm…brown. Light notes of earth, leather, dating your daughter, and Kentucky…
“Beam Suntory, right?”
“You know them all!” she says, feigning irritation.
“And I thank you. Those were all excellent. Now, anything in the dangerous clear liquor category? I asked.
Luna smiled as I palmed off a 20k yen tip.
“Oh, no sir. Wait until we land.” She demurred, referring to the gratuity; which is know is not de rigueur in the Orient, but she didn’t seem to mind.
“Just in case we never make it to Tokyo”, I laughed, unknowingly presciently.
We both chuckled about that last line as she tried out various sakes and shōchūs and an actual Japanese ‘White Liquor’ (ホワイトリカー), which were all excellent as was the company.
I tell her that I need to get some work done and could she bring me a tall Rocknocker. After explain the origins and construction of the eponymous drink, she brings me one that must tip the scales at 1 or so liters.
She settles down to an empty seat and I get after the work that I need to finish before we land. I’m about ½ way through my drink when it felt as if the plane hit a brick wall. She quivered and quaked and clutched at herself while I made some comments about the pilot’s mental health.
We dropped like a paralyzed falcon, then just as suddenly, felt like it was an express elevator to Angel’s 11. The plane bucked and shimmied, wickedly. Then we slam-danced right and fell a few more stories. It was like we were in a Mixmaster and the owner was trying out every speed.
The emergency lights in the 777-300ER popped on, and the fasten seat belt sign barked loudly so even sleeping travelers could enjoy the show.
Rinse. Spin. Shudder. Repeat.
Finally, the ride smooths out and we hear the captain on the blower.
“This is your captain speaking…ah, we seem to have hit some uncharted turbulence back there.”
“Thanks, Captain Obvious”, I muttered.
“Everything’s A-OK. “ he reports.
“That’s good”, I note.
“But…”
“There’s always the but…” I groan.
“…we have a couple of warning lights for which we can’t quite account. So to just be safe and certain, we’re going to divert to Hawaii, get a clean bill of health and resume this flight once we make sure everything here is hunky-dory.”
There were scattered groans and applause. Add them together and divide by two and the average response on the flight was “Meh. Whatever.”
Except for the other guy in Business, with whom I hadn’t shared two words. He began to absolutely lose his shit.
“Oh, man! We’re so screwed! Mechanical malfunction? What does that mean?” he positively fizzed with fear.
The flight attendants tried to calm him down, to no avail. They basically gave up and said they’d report his misgivings to the Captain.
I motioned over to my personal flight attendant, Luna, and asked if I could be of service.
“Oh, Doctor Rock”, she smiled at me, “If you could speak with him. You are so calm, and he is…”
“Losing his bloody mind”, I chuckled as I finished her sentence for her. “Of course, I’ll take a stab at it.”
So, I grab my drink and ease over to my Business Class partner and introduce myself.
“Hey, pal. How’s it going? I’m Dr. Rock, gentleman, scholar, and connoisseur of cigars and things alcoholic. You doing OK?”
He looks at me with an ashen face and his eyes the size of bloodshot dinner plates.
“Yeah. I’m Todd Schotts. I’m flying to Japan for business.” He mumbles
“No surprise there,” I reply calmly and take a slug of my drink.
“But now we’re all going to die. The plane is busted and we’ll crash…” he started off again.
“So, Todd is it? Good. You drink?” I asked.
“Yeah?”, he stammered back.
I asked Luna to make us a fresh batch of my eponymous cocktails.
“OK, Todd, listen up”, I began after the drinks were served, “I have flown literally millions of miles over the last 4 decades. On Aeroflot when it was still the USSR. On TACA (Take A Chance Airways), on Chalk’s in the Caribbean, on Bob’s Verrifast Plane Company in Rhodesia, on regional carriers that don’t even exist anymore. All over the world. Had some bad experiences flying, and me ol’ mugger, this ain’t one of them. This is nothing more than the glitch for this mission.”
I chuckled lightly and complimented Luna on a fantastic drink.
“Yeah…yeah…yeah…but we have to land and check out some lights…” Todd squealed.
“Well now, Todd. It would be rather difficult to do any external assessment while in flight, don’t you agree?” I asked.
“But we’re diverting. We have to land and that adds more risk. We’re going to crash and die!” he was coming more and more unglued.
“I will bet you every cent you have on your person and home bank accounts that that will not happen”, I chuckled.
That took him by surprise. At least it shut him up for a while.
“Look, Todd. This is Boeing’s latest model. They have the most incredible safety record. And if a little clear air turbulence were to be knocking planes out of the sky, don’t you think we’d hear about it as the press went berserk?” I asked.
“But they don’t know what the lights mean! What if one of the engines’s out? How far can we fly on one engine?” Todd stuttered.
Having my fill of a supposedly grown man with inane childlike fears, I calmly replied,
“All the way to the crash site.”
He went white.
“...hope we hit something hard. I don’t want to limp away from this.”
He went limp.
Then I went to my seat and motioned for Luna to prepare a reload.
Of course, 45 minutes later, we land without incident at Daniel K. Inouye International Airport, Honolulu Hawaii.
We were told to just wait around until they figure out what the problem if any, was.
They had officials waiting at the end of the jetway to check our COVID status and passports before they let us loose in the terminal.
I asked Luna if she knew this airport. She noted that she did.
“Is there a JAL hospitality room here at this airport? I asked.
“Yes, Doctor. It’s the Sakura Lounge. It is located on the third level above The Local, Terminal 2.” She replied.
“Please notify whoever needs to know that that’s where I’ll be for the duration”, I smiled and handed her my business card. “See you soon, I hope.”
“Oh, Dr. Rock”, she replied, “I am sure it is nothing much. We’ll be back in the air within mere hours.”
“Well then”, I smiled, “Guess I’d better get ready to hoof it to the lounge.”
“Oh, Doctor Rock”, she smiled, “No rush. I will call for you a courtesy cart. You are injured, you are Business, you are priority.”
“I love that Asian efficiency.” I smiled back and toddled down the jetway.
At the terminus of the jetway, I show my COVID-clear papers, dates and times of my Anti-Virus vaccine administrations, the letter from Virginia clearing me of all detention, and my red Russian diplomatic passport.
While in the cart, whizzing our way to the JAL lounge, the driver said “Man! You must be some kind of VIP. You were through that welcoming committee in less than two minutes!”
“Me? Nah!”, I chuckled, “Just an old phart of a geologist that they didn’t want to mess with. Not on such a bright, sunny day as this.”
“I see you’re not wearing a mask.” The driver quipped.
“Very observant. There are reasons for that.” I replied.
He careens around a corner and if this were a normal pre-Covid day, I’m certain we’d have killed hundreds. However, the airport, as I’ve come to grow accustomed to, was virtually deserted.
“Yeah? Like what?” he asks.
“Well, Scooter, 1. I have an active and hardworking immune system that I let off the chain every once in a while for exercise. Got to let it know what it’s up against, right? 2. I’ve had all my shots and some that were experimental. They seem to have worked. And 3. I find it difficult to drink and smoke cigars while wearing a mask. However, if you’d prefer, I will mask up. No problem, though it still is optional.”
“Nah, man”, he said, “I was just wondering if you were one of those religious idiots or conspiracy nuts.”
Nope”, I smiled back, “Just another geologist out in the world plying his trade for cash. Y’know, whorin’ around for money.”
He laughs aloud as we skid to a stop right in front of Lounge.
I slip the guy a $20 and ask if he’d listen for the JAL flight I was just on. If we’re going on ahead today, I’d need him to scoot by and putt-putt me back to the plane.
He laughs and pockets the $20 as quick as a mink ruts.
“No worries. I’ll just hang around this area. I hear anything about the flight, I’ll come and let you know.” He grins.
“Good man”, I say, as I hand him my card. “I’m Dr. Rocknocker. Call me Rock”.
“And I’m Kapula Mano, call me Kap” he replies.
“Good man”, I say again, “Hope to see you in a while.”
He grins, floors his electric cart, and peels out at speeds approaching 4.5 MPH.
I wander into the lounge, show my credentials, and am escorted to a post up on Mahogany Ridge.
The bar is very quiet. Besides the bartender, I can’t see anyone else in the darkened and Smooth Jazz-infused drinking emporium.
I order a local drink, a Mai Tai, just for the experience and something a bit different.
It’s served in a goldfish bowl on a stem, bedecked with a slice of lime, a sprig of mint, a stick of sugar cane, a polychromatic orchid, and the obligate paper umbrella.
“Ah. Mai Tai. I will enjoy it.” I said to no one in particular.
One was enough, and I decided to go back to the old standard. Once I explained to the bartender what that was, he made them heroic and enthusiastically.
I’m reading up on a random dossier, making notes in a new file, and puffing away on a Fuentes Onyx double Maduro Churchill cigar.
I hear a slight cough coming from my right, and this here lovely lady, she sat to my immediate starboard and looked at me semi-quizzically.
Not in the mood for shenanigans of any stripe, I give her the obligate Baja Canada nod and tilt of the drink. I return to my dossiers and continue to read and take notes.
“Excuse me!” I hear.
Fearing the worst, either the woman is Karen-oid anti-smoking or a religious fruit-and-nutburger, I slowly turn to face her and reply, somewhat glacially, I have to admit.
“What?”
“That cigar…”
“Here we go…” I mutter, eyes rolling northward.
“Smells exquisite. Could you tell me the brand? My husband would enjoy some like that.” She notes.
Instantly my demeanor switches 180^0.
“Yes, ma’am. It’s an Arturo Fuentes Onyx. Churchill size, or 60 ring x 7” length, double Maduro. Here, take one for your husband. I have an ample supply.” I smile.
“Oh, no. I couldn’t. Could I?” she asks.
“Please. I insist.” I smile the best I could given the circumstances.
“Thank you. You’re too kind…umm…Mr….?”
“Doctor. Doctor Rocknocker. World traveler, oilman, and international ambassador of amity, good drinks, and fine cigars. Call me Rock” I said.
“Oh! A Doctor?” she brightens.
“Yes, of Petroleum Geology and Engineering. Not medicine.” I chuckle.
She chuckles back.
“And I am Hella Aaberg”, as she offers her hand for a quick shake.
“Interesting name, Hella. Scandinavian or Old German heritage?” I ask.
“On my father’s side. He’s Finnish.” She replies.
“But I’ll wager your mother is not Scandinavian, correct?” I ask.
“She was from Truk, an island…”
“In the South Pacific, Micronesia. Was she from Weno city?” I asked.
“Why yes. How could you possibly know that?” she asked.
“Oh, I’ve been there. Great diving amongst the WWII wrecks. I think it’s actually called ‘Chuuk Lagoon’ or something like that now.” I said.
“That’s right! Amazing. Where else have you been?” she asked.
“Anywhere there’s oil, strife, booze, cigars, heavy explosives and typically long distances from whatever most normal people call civilization,” I replied with a chuckle.
Suddenly, I hear a voice booming out behind me.
“Why don’t you save that rapier-like wit for those musky-fuckers back home, Rocko?”
My expression changes. My eyes pop fully wide open.
“Hella?” I asked.
“Yes?”
“May I ask you a favor?”
“You can ask…”
“Thank you. Now, looking over my shoulder, is there a hulking goon of a person, thin up top, paunchy halfway down with the most ridiculously tiny sized shoes you’ve ever seen for a so-called grown man?” I ask.
“Yes. Yes, there is.” She replies.
“I thought so. Many thanks.”
I spin and launch off my barstool and grab Toivo by the hand. He hadn’t seen my left-hand Thagomizer yet.
“Toivo! You old sumbitch. What the flying fennec fox fuck are you, of all people, doing in Hawaii?” I laughed.
“Just keeping an eye on you, Rock!” he laughed equally as loud.
“No, fucking-A, seriously. What the actual fuck? What are you doing in this actual nice place?” I asked.
“Just headed to Tokyo to conduct a bit of service company business. I walked into the lounge and smelled a foul cigar. I figured it can’t be the venerable Dr. Rocknocker. He’s back at some school up north terrorizing geology and engineering grads and undergrads.” Toivo laughed.
“But there I was. Surprise!”, I laughed and pumped his hand.
“What the fuck, Rock. Now what did you do?” he asks, referring to my Ankylosaur tail club left hand.
“Ah, fuck. Long story. Oh, pardon me. Toivo, this is Hella. We were just talking about the South Seas Islands.” I said.
“Planning on running off together?” Toivo laughs, to the amusement of neither party.
“Oh, and this idiot is Toivo, a man with a congenital foot-in-mouth disorder. He’s mostly harmless.” I noted to Hella.
Greetings were shared all around. Hella made some small excuses and said she needed to depart. I gave her another cigar for her husband, shook her hand, and wished her well.
“Here’s my business card. If your husband has any questions, have him drop me a line.” I noted.
Hella smiled beautifully. She said she would. Then she thanked me shook our hands, and like that, there she was, gone.
“Well Toivo, you old bastard. Don't just stand there in the doorway like some lonesome goddamn mouse shit sheepherder, get your ass over here and have a drink.” I motioned over to my perch on Mahogany Ridge.
“Don’t mind if I do”, he says as he deftly winds his way to a seat to my left, snagging a cigar out of my pocket on the way over.
“You might want these”, I say in an exasperated tone, and hand him my gold Dunhill Hobnail lighter and V-cutter gizmo.
He cuts and fires up his heater.
“What you drinkin’, Rock”, he asks.
“Anything with alcohol, as usual. You know that Toiv.” I reply.
“No. I mean right now.” He clarifies.
“Well, I had a Mai Tai. Very nice if you like fruity, flowery drinks. It’s the locals’ favorite.” I reply.
“Sounds good. I’ll have several. And you?” Toivo asks.
“My usual. The bartender is already apprised of the situation.” I reply.
Toivo smiles the smile of one knowing his sobriety is going to be taken out for a swim. Hell, taken out and tossed into the deep end.
Toivo and I sit there, swapping lies, smoking cigars and sipping at our toddies.
Hell, Toivo was slurping them like a sump-pump during an extra-wet summer.
We chattered about family, work, whether or not Tokyo was going to host the Olympics or if the COVID-boogie man scared everyone off.
Toivo, always one afflicted with TB (“Tiny Bladder”) got up to go to the loo for the third time that hour. He left his pocket organizer on the bar and I swear on a stack of Origins of Species, I didn’t touch it.
I reached over to his vacated seat to retrieve my cigar lighter when I looked down and saw in his organizer a tab that reads “Rack & Ruin”.
“Oh. No. Fucking. Way.” I recoiled as I’d just reached out and petted a 6-foot hungover scorpion.
“One of my best friends? Secretly allied with the Agency? No. Not possible.” I drained my drink and called for another.
“No. No. No. It can’t be. No. No fucking way…” as doubt began to dissolve when I thought back to all those times I had just ‘run into’ Toivo.
“But he’s oil patch as well. That could be chalked up to coincidence.” I ruminated quizzically in my brain.
I quickly reflected back on J.M. Darhower: “Yes, you see, there’s no such thing as coincidence. There are no accidents in life. Everything that happens is the result of a calculated move that leads us to where we are.”
She may be the author of the execrable New Adult Sempre series, which Esme likes and I loathe, but she might just be right on this occasion.
Toivo return, lighter in the bladder and good sense. He never even noticed he’d left his organizer out in broad bar light for all to see.
“So, Toivo, when’s your flight?” I ask.
“Oh, man. Was I lucky. The JAL flight to Tokyo from Los Angeles had mechanical trouble and had to divert here. I got a ticket on the plane for that flight, when it continues.
“You mean ‘if it continues’,” I replied.
“Yeah. Yeah. That’s what I meant. Hey! Was that your flight?” he asks innocently. He’s really innocent of fieldcraft.
I decide to have some fun at my old friend’s expense.
“Yep. Hit some CAT (Clear Air Turbulence) and the JAL pilots reported some lighting problem. No apparent ruin to any of the systems. They relay racked their brains to figure it out, but they couldn’t that’s why I here.” I said, waiting for the words to swim upstream in Toivo’s coconut and make some sort of connection.
“Yeah. Double lucky. No problem with the plane and I get to go to Japan early.” Toivo crookedly grins.
“So, no trouble with the plane? Then why haven’t I heard that the flight’s going to resume?” I asked as I pushed a fresh, seriously strong drink to Toivo.
“Oh, must have heard it in the john.” Toivo countered and tried to cover his tracks by taking a huge gulp of his drink and damn near dying coughing.
I pound on Toivo’s back.
“Heimlich time?” I ask.
Toivo signals ‘no’.
“Jesus Christ, Rock. What was that?” he asks.
“Just my usual”, I innocently replied.
“Holy fuck. No wonder you have the reputation of…” Toivo realizes too late that he’s said too much.
“Yeah. They can rack you out. Really ruin a person if they’re not careful.” I reply icily.
“Why, Rock. Whatever do you mean?” Toivo slurred as he realized he’s been caught out.
“The jig is up, you turncoat. You know Agents Rack and Ruin from the agency. Right? You keeping tabs on me for them? You Quisling! You Benedict Arnold!” I almost was on the verge of losing my cool.
“It was nothing. They approached me years ago as I kept being mentioned in your reports. They asked me for some information. One thing leads to another…” Toivo was ready for an Ankylosaur tail club swat to the bean.
“Oh, put your fucking hands down, you asshole.” I smiled and chuckled.
“You’re not mad?” Toivo slurred badly. I had the bartender make him another special drink.
“No, Toivo. Not mad. Just disappointed.” I said, smiling like a Komodo Dragon just finishing up a fortnight-old wildebeest.
Toivo sat there and puzzled and puzzled until his puzzler was sore.
“You’re not going to kill me or anything rude like that?” Toivo asked, half-assedly trying to inject humor into the proceedings.
“Nah. The paperwork’s too ridiculous for me to do another liberation. But, Jesus Fucking Christwagons, Toivo; you could have mentioned it to me. Fuck, I thought we were friends to the end?” I said, dejectedly.
I was really getting through to Toivo. I could tell he was loaded; feeling like shit and massively deplorable.
Great fieldcraft, indeed.
I told him things “are what they are” and that I won’t blow his cover nor his honorarium.
He began to feel better. I often wonder if he was serious about the sanctioning thing.
Then I delivered the strategic missile strike.
“Just remember, Toivo. I wrote your dossier for the Company…”
He swivels to look at me.
“And one for the KGB. Olga says ‘howdy’.” I grin evilly.
Toivo short-circuited at that. Russia is his company’s bread and butter. Now he has the KGB as well as his best buddy looking over his shoulder at every move.
I bought him a few more drinks and continued to needle him about his ’leading a double life’. He was well and truly fuckered when the electric tap-tap driver from before came looking for me to whisk me back to the plane.
Seems it was simply some knocked-out wires on the plane, or slammed bulbs that were generating a false positive, indicating something other than the system that alerts one to something haywire went haywire.
Toivo was pretty much down for the count. I got him sober enough to hand them his ticket and ensure that he was really supposed to be on this flight. Thing was; h e was in Economy, and I was, as always, in Business.
I spoke to Luna, and the plane was going to be even less crowded than previously because some folks could or wouldn’t wait, or didn’t want to go on with the rest of the trip on a ‘damaged’ aircraft, or were just stupid and superstitious.
“Luna, could I pay for the difference between Business and Economy for my less than 100% conscious friend here? He’s had a rough day.” I asked.
“Dr. Rock. Just put him into Business. No one will be the wiser. Luna says so.” As she gave us a grand smile.
“Luna, I owe you. Thanks so much.” I said.
“Now get on board. Your friend looks like he needs all the downtime he can get.”
“Yes, ma’am!” I said and saluted here be best I could which dragging a schnozzled Toivo down the jetway.
I dumped Toivo in a window seat well away from my seat. I know Toivo. He snores like a semi-load of live hogs rocketing downhill locking up the brakes at 88 MPH.
Surprise! There was no one else in Business. Luna looked at me, at Toivo, and gave me a thumbs up.
Whatever I can write to further her career at JAL, she’ll have it before I deplane.
We finally get everyone settled, and with Captain Kangaroo at the helm, we bounced gracelessly off the tarmac, into the warm, tropical Hawaiian air, finally headed for the Land of the Rising Sun.
Toivo was snoring like a chainsaw hitting rusty nails as I worked on the various letters, communiques, and dossiers which needed updating before we reached touchdown. I gave Luna a thick letter with instructions not to open it until we were on the ground and Toivo and I were well off and away into the terminal.
We left Hawaii at 1300 hours, so we should arrive at Tokyo Nareda around 4:00 pm, the previous day. I was so bereft of time and time zones, I couldn’t figure out what time it really was, as judged by my biometric rhythms, so I asked Luna for a stiff drink as I was kicking off my boots and going to attempt to get some kip.
She brought me another liter or so eponymous drink. I was sawing logs by the time I slurped the last swig of that nifty drink.
Suddenly, or later, I have no idea really, some loudmouth drunk asshole from way-the-fuck-back in economy-land toward the ass end of the plane staggered into Business demanding free drinks.
Luna was nothing but civil, and asked him to both shut up and return to his seat. His air cabin hostess, or whatever the fuck they’re calling them these days, will attend to his needs.
“Naw they won’t! They want me to pay for more drinks! I’m broke but I demand more booze! You fucking owe me.” railed the asshole. “I sat at the bar in Hawaii for four hours. Them fuckers charged me an arm and a leg!”
“No, they don’t owe you shit”, I said in a voice that unmistakably loud and clear.
“Fuck you, old man! You stay the fuck out of this!” he bellowed. “Shut up or I’ll do ya’!”
“’Old man’? ‘Do me’? Excuse me. Luna, may I have a word alone with this individual?” I asked sweetly.
Luna shook her head in the affirmative, and I stood up to confront this flagrant asshole.
“Now look, Scooter. You have gone way, way over the fucking line. You are loud. You are abusive. You are obnoxious. And you stink. Plus you insulted a person who is just barely containing his righteous wrath right now. So, I’m giving you one and one only chance to shut up, sit back down before your body spontaneously develops all sort of bruises, contusions, broken bones, and unconsciousness.” I said calmly, evenly, and threateningly.
“What da’ fuck you think you’re going to do…old man?” he screeched, trying to inflate himself into full mammalian threat posture, all 5’ 9” of it.
He didn’t notice Toivo walking up quietly behind him, as Toivo was returning from the head, quiet as a moose.
“Well, Scooter, I am an Air Marshall. Duly appointed, fully trained, and properly pissed off. Right now, I can arrest you, physically detain you, turn this flight around and take you to the Hawaiian police, at your cost for the inconvenience of the entire flight. Or I could arrest you, physically detain you, and turn you over to the Japanese authorities when we land. It’s really your choice. Choose wisely.”
To be continued…⇝

I was sat in what looked like a dentist's chair in a dimly lit room. The doctor strapped me in and gave me a word of advice before starting.
"Now Jack, it's important to keep your eyes closed once the session begins."
"Is it really necessary to strap me in like this?"
The doctor threw me a stern look.
"You signed the waiver, Jack. You know these restraints are for your own safety. Anything could happen once the brain's unraveling is initiated. If you want payment, you have to adhere to all of the test's requirements."
I attempted to nod in agreement, but the leather strap around my head prevented me from doing so.
"Alright, Doctor. Whenever you're ready."
I have to admit, I was more than a little nervous. The ad seemed harmless enough when I filled out the form to apply. $2,500 for a one-time "past life regression study," and another $2500 if any memories I collected were of merit. It was toted as being an incredible opportunity to "remember one's past lives." Now that I was here, I wasn't so sure.
The doctor must have noticed how anxious I was. He placed a hand on my shoulder in consolation.
"Relax, Jack. I assure you, this will be an amazing experience."
"If it works, you mean."
"Oh, Jack, it will. Over a thousand candidates applied. Based on the survey answers you chose, you are one of the only people uniquely equipped for this study. Strength of the mind is key."
He said that as if it was a comfort. All I could think about were the hundreds of ways it could all go wrong. $5,000 wasn't bad for a day's work, but I wouldn't be able to spend it if I fell into a coma. At that point, it would barely make a dent in the subsequent medical bills.
"Okay, Jack. Sit tight."
The doctor left and reappeared at the control center, just visible through a window in the corner of the room.
His voice resonated from a speaker hanging down from the ceiling.
"Jack, it's just like we discussed..."
A pair of cables descended from above and rested at each of my nostrils.
"These cables will enter your nasal cavity and allow us access to specific sections of your brain. From there, you will experience a series of small electric shocks. As a reminder, there will be no long term damage, but you will feel an overwhelming jolt in your head after each shock."
With every word he uttered, my anxiety grew. I had no idea how my body would react to this.
"Wait," I shouted as the cables began their journey up my passages.
"Yes, something wrong?"
"Doctor, what's our safe word?"
"Safe word," he asked, apparently confused.
"You know, if something goes wrong and I need to stop?"
There was a brief pause before he spoke again.
"I'm sorry, Jack. No safe words. You signed the paperwork. The test cannot be stopped now. I promise you'll come out on the other end of this in one piece."
My heart was now pounding away in my chest, loud enough to hear. Coupled with the insidious sound of medical machinery, it was an unsettling symphony that mirrored my feelings of dread and regret. The perfect background noise to keep the fear in me alive.
Just then, a sharp pinch. The cables had reached the base of my cranium. I writhed against my leather binding.
"Ready? Here we go!"
Without so much as a second to brace myself, the first shock was administered. If you've ever been electrocuted, you might be able to picture what it feels like. The only difference is that the electricity is directed in one location; amplified in a single spot, creating an intense pain that lingers long after the current subsides.
"And again!"
The second shock was even worse. I screamed out in pain, but the doctor's focus never wavered.
"Again!"
The shocks built on each other, each one more painful than the last. Had I known it would feel like this, I would have never signed up, no matter how much money they offered.
"Again!"
The doctor wouldn't let up, even when I begged him to. He shocked me more times than I care to remember. I lost count somewhere after twelve. Eventually, he stopped, but it had nothing to do with my outbursts or any sort of ethical dilemma the experiment posed.
"These readouts are astounding. Your brain activity is spiking, Jack! This is it. We've awakened your subconscious. You're about to go under!"
Before I could react to his comments, I felt a wave of energy pass through my body. Then another, and another. It was a powerful sensation, but soothing at the same time; a welcome change from the beating my brain had just endured.
"Doctor, I think..."
A final wave of energy, more powerful than the previous ones, interjected and pinned me in place, more so than the straps ever could. I could neither move nor speak, and it wasn't long before I felt my eyes glaze over and roll back into my skull.
Then, darkness.
***
"Jack, can you hear me?"
I could hear the doctor's voice, but I couldn't see him. There was nothing but pitch blackness all around.
"Listen, Jack, if you can hear me, I need you to open your eyes."
I did as instructed, and to my astonishment, my vision returned, revealing a long, narrow hallway; a slew of doors on either side of it.
"Doctor, what's going on?"
"You'll have to speak up, Jack. Your lips are moving, but your voice is just a faint whisper."
"I SAID, WHAT'S GOING ON?"
"That's better! Well, Jack, we did it. You are now in a representation of your subconscious."
I was more than a little skeptical.
"My subconscious? Really?"
"Yes, Jack. Really. Your body is still strapped down here in the room. With the help of the electroshock therapy, we were able to unlock this part of your mind. Now we should be able to access latent memories from your past lives. Tell me, what do you see?"
"It's just a hallway of doors."
"Good, that's good. It appears different to everyone. For some it's a large home, others an ocean of endless ports and their lighthouses. Yours seems to be more accessible. If you open a door, you should be allowed a glimpse of a past memory."
I looked down and noticed my body, legs and all. It may not have been my true body, but it certainly felt good to be mobile again.
"So, just open a door? Anything I should be worried about?"
"No, Jack. Nothing can hurt you here. When you open the door, your memory should play like a movie. No one will know you're there. It's just a projection."
"Alright, here goes nothing."
I walked over to the nearest door and tried the knob. It wouldn't turn.
"It's locked, Doctor. I can't get in."
"These are your memories, Jack. Your doors. The only one locking them is you. Your will is the key to opening them. Try once more, but this time, give in. Open your mind to the idea of it all. Let yourself remember."
I took a deep breath and tried again, this time without any inhibitions. I emptied my mind and turned the knob. This time, it worked. I was able to push the door open.
"It worked, Doctor. The door's open."
"That's great, Jack. What do you see?"
There were stairs descending down into a pit of darkness.
"Just a staircase. Should I go in?"
"Yes. Find out where it leads."
I cautiously travelled downward, taking deep breaths with every step I took, in an effort to reel back my anxieties. It was exciting to have access to my inner psyche, but I didn't know what I would find there. What if I didn't like what I saw or who I was in another life? What if I couldn't handle the truths I uncovered?
Eventually, I took the final step down and found myself in someone's home. A lovely, quaint cabin circa the 19th or possibly early 20th century from the looks of things. There was a beautiful cobblestone fireplace, elegant furniture, and an older gentleman sitting in an armchair with a pipe in hand and a book in the other. I wondered if that was me from a past life.
"Hey, Doctor. I'm in a cabin. Probably around the 1800s or so. There's a man reading by the fireplace. Is that me?"
The doctor didn't respond.
"Doctor?"
More silence, followed by a reply, but not from him.
"He can't hear you."
I turned to the direction of the voice and saw the old man, now looking up at me. It couldn't have been him, right? The doctor said no one could see me.
"I said, he can't hear you. Not from in here."
It was the old man. My heart skipped a beat as he placed his book down and stood up to meet my surprised gaze.
"This is just a memory. How can you see me?"
"It's simple, really. I'm you. Or at least, a part of you."
I didn't understand and he could tell.
"Evolution is a funny thing, you know. Attributes handed down from generation to generation in an attempt to make us better, safer. Survival of the fittest, as they say."
"What do you mean," I asked, still unsure of what he was getting at.
"Reincarnation is very real. I'm the part of your brain tasked with locking away past regressions. Without me, your mind would be overloaded at birth with memories of each and every one of your past lives. All of those memories flooding in at once. It would be an assault on the senses, something your brain could never hope to handle. I am a protection against that."
What he was saying was... unbelievable. Moments ago I was taking part in a paid medical study, and now I was somehow learning the secrets of the universe from within my own mind. It was a lot to digest.
"May I sit," I asked.
"Of course, Jack. Be my guest."
I sat down in the armchair and took a moment to collect my thoughts before responding.
"So why can't the doctor hear me right now?"
"I've hijacked this memory to speak with you. Being a part of your brain, I can also access other functions, so I've temporarily disabled your physical body's speech and hearing."
"But why? Why did you want to speak with me so badly, and in private no less?"
He leaned in close and grabbed my shoulders, making deliberate eye contact.
"Jack, you're tampering in things you shouldn't be. I'm here to give you a warning. Stop what you're doing at once."
He loosened his grip and took a step back.
"Stop remembering, you mean? Why? What will happen," I asked.
"Nothing dangerous. I still have a lock on the floodgates. This short trip down memory lane, unlocking one past life at a time, wouldn't, by itself, have any serious repercussions. That said, I won't allow it."
"Won't allow it? Why not?"
"If the doctor's experiment succeeds, others will follow suit. There's no telling how many will walk this path and experience their pasts in this manner. It will, after some time, disrupt the balance of evolution. After years of this negligence, humans could very well be born without me, leaving their memories completely intact. In effect, they will perish at the hands of coma or death, soon after exiting the womb."
He walked over and grabbed me again.
"If you continue this little journey of yours, I will retaliate. I'll take them all. All of your memories, one by one until you have nothing left. You'll be in a vegetative state for the rest of your life."
I pushed him away, unhappy with the tone he was taking.
"What the hell are you talking about?! You're me. We'll both die."
He scoffed at my retort.
"I'm a facet of evolution, just like all of your inherited traits. My duty is to the species as a whole first, self-preservation second. I'll do what I have to do, no matter the cost."
Though I wasn't keen on being threatened, I had no intention of breaking the natural order of things. In all honesty, I didn't want to be in my own head to begin with. The sooner I could get out, the better.
"Fine. I'll stop."
"Good."
The man sat back down in his chair and the memory resumed as normal, reverting to its previous state like a pause button had been lifted. I walked up the way I came and landed back in the hall, closing the door behind me.
"Jack, are you there? What's happening?"
The doctor's voice returned and we were able to converse once again. I told him what had happened. I could hear the disappointment in his voice as he let out a heavy sigh.
"I was scared it would come to this."
"What are you talking about, Doctor? You knew about this?"
He sighed again before responding.
"It happened with all of my previous tests. It's a fail-safe our bodies have built against past life recollection."
"Previous tests? There were others before me?"
"Yes, and they all ended the same. Each and every test subject was rendered comatose after the sessions concluded. One guy died shortly after."
"Comatose?! Somebody died?! You said nothing in here could hurt me!"
"I needed you focused. We can bicker about this until the cows come home, but for now, let's stay focused on the task at hand. Let's open another door, shall we?"
At this point, my blood was boiling.
"Another door? Another door?! Are you serious?! Let me out of here! I don't have any intention of being another one of your failures!"
"You signed the paperwork, Jack. I won't wake you until we finish this. I need more information. My career is on the line. Just two more doors and I'll pull you out. What do you say?"
"I don't give a damn about your career! I refuse to continue. I'll wake up on my own eventually."
The doctor gave a slight laugh.
"No you won't, Jack. You're deep in the bowels of your mind. The only think that will wake you is another electric shock, calibrated to precise specifications. If you don't continue, I won't wake you, and you'll be comatose anyway."
"I can talk, right? Just like I'm talking to you right now? I'll tell someone and they can-"
The doctor interjected.
"I can shut that off with the flick of a switch. You'll be unable to communicate with anyone."
I was now seething with anger.
"You are a sick man, Doctor. A very sick man."
"I'm sorry, Jack. I have to do this. It's for the betterment of mankind. This research could change the world. I am at the precipice of something big. Something life-altering."
I threw him some choice curse words, to no reaction.
"Just do as you're told, Jack. And don't even think of lying. I can see your brain waves and will be able to detect any deceit."
I sat there in the hallway of my memories for a great long while, contemplating my options. It wasn't long before I realized I only had one at my disposal. My best bet was to continue. It was just two doors. Maybe I could get in and out unnoticed and finally end this nightmare once and for all.
"Fine, Doctor. I'll do it."
"Good. Open another door, but walk down the hallway a bit first. I want something deeper."
I reluctantly did as instructed and opened a door further down the hall. There was another set of stairs, but these ones went up.
"It's another staircase, Doctor. I'm going in."
I walked up the stairs with determination, hoping to see what I could and then leave as quickly as possible.
"Alright, Jack? What's in there?"
I was in the living room of another house.
"It's someone's home. Mine, presumably."
"Keep looking around. Try to place where you are exactly."
I walked around the room and took notice of a framed photo hanging on the wall. It was of a woman, a young girl, and a man. He looked just like me.
"Doctor, there's a photo here of a family. I'm in it. The man is identical to me."
"That's rare, but it can happen. Keep looking around."
As I walked through the home, I was taken aback by how modern everything looked. It wasn't until I noticed a newspaper in the dining room that something clicked and I became alarmed.
The paper had today's date on it.
"Doctor, something's not right here. This isn't the past. There's a newspaper here with today's date."
"Really? Are you absolutely certain?"
"Yes I am. This isn't the past."
"Incredible! My theories were right after all!"
"Theories? Mind clueing me in here?"
"You're right, Jack. This isn't a past life memory. It's on ongoing memory playing out in real time from a current life."
"Current life? I'm not following."
"It has long been my belief that there are other, parallel worlds out there. An infinite number of different universes - some similar to our own. In each one, we have a counterpart. A copy of ourselves living a different life. This isn't a past life memory, Jack. It's a current memory from another Jack in another timeline. Fascinating, isn't it?"
Just then, the front door opened and the family from the picture returned home, walking right into the dining room where I was standing. The other me, the woman, and what must have been their daughter. It was a surreal sight to behold.
"They're here, Doctor. The other me and his family."
"That's great. Observe and see what you learn."
I glanced over at the stairs in the living room. I should have left right then and there to avoid potential consequences, but something held me back. At the time, I thought it was plain, old curiosity keeping me in place - and yes, I admit, I was curious to know about my copy's life, but that isn't what made me stay. As the memory unfolded, I felt it. A warm energy emanating from within. It was a connection. I didn't know anything of this other Jack's life, but I could feel what he felt. The love he had for this family. It was an emotional bond I couldn't bring myself to run from.
The memory played out and I watched it all. I had come to learn that my wife's name was Charlotte and our daughter was Leslie. The day was spent together playing games, eating dinner, and watching movies - a catalog of unfamiliar titles that likely didn't exist in my own universe. I reported everything to the doctor as it occurred, no longer angry at him. I should have been, but this immense warmth overtook me. It felt like this was my family, and I was the one spending time with them. It was a truly perfect day if there ever was one.
But, as so often rings true in life, good things never last.
***
Without realizing it, I had spent the whole day in that memory. Before long, everyone was in bed, and I was left downstairs, alone in the darkness as a sliver of moonlight shone through the windows. Though I didn't want to, it was time to leave.
I walked off to the stairs, but not before turning back and taking one last look at the house. It was clear to me, in this moment, that I would miss them, however strange that may sound.
As I took in the sight, something was noticeably amiss. Standing in the corner of the living room was a man; or at least, the silhouette of one. He was shrouded in darkness, save for the faint red glow of his eyes, leaving his other features a mystery. Upon making eye contact, he spoke.
It was an all too familiar cadence.
"You're not supposed to be here."
No longer taking on the form of a harmless old man, I was now frightened of this part of my brain. Still, I mustered up enough courage to say something in response.
"This memory, this place. It isn't a past life. It's a whole other world. You didn't say anything about that."
"I told you to stop, Jack. Now, I have to take from you what you were never meant to see."
In an instant, I was transported outside of the house, looking up at it from the road. It was now ablaze, burning a hole into the night sky. I watched in horror as both my wife and daughter cried out for help against the glass of their bedroom windows.
The red-eyed shadow appeared in front of me, blocking the terrible view behind him. I cried out for help myself.
"Doctor Covenwood! He's back! He's back!"
"How many time do I have to tell you? He can't hear you."
"How... how is this possible?"
"All versions of you are connected. There is only one brain that you all draw from, sectioned off by yours truly. I tapped into this one and had him start a fire."
"Why? How could you?"
"I didn't tell you everything, but I didn't lie either. You're not meant to have this kind of access. It will destroy everything. Not only evolution, but the balance between worlds."
He bolted toward me in the blink of an eye and began squeezing my neck, making it all but impossible to breathe.
"This is the last time I will tell you this. Stop what you're doing, or I'll burn it all down."
All at once, the memory faded and I could breathe again. I was back in the hall at the open door.
"Jack, are you okay? What's going on now?"
Again, I told the doctor everything. He seemed more intrigued than concerned.
"Okay, Jack. One more door, then you're free!"
"He'll kill me, Doctor! Pull me out NOW!"
"Jack, I can't. I have no new information. I've reached this point many times before."
"WHAT?! Are you kidding me?!"
"The good news is, you're still here. All other subjects became comatose after viewing their other timelines."
"So you knew what I was in for? That surprise over your theories finally being proven was all for show? What else are you keeping from me?"
The curse words began flying from my mouth and again were met with little reaction.
"The less you knew, the better. I can't have you flying off the rails when we're so close. There can't be any hesitation. So please Jack, focus. This hallway of yours isn't endless. There's always a final point - a finish line, if you will. With each memory you've experienced, your mind has gained immunity. It's what you'll need to open the final door."
I sighed, knowing I would have to humor him if I wanted a way out.
"Final door, you say?"
"Yes. In your case, there should be one at the end of the hall, unlike the rest. Had we jumped the gun and opened it at the start, you would be as good as dead. It's happened more than a few times to previous subjects. But now, the hope is that you should be able to cross the finish line, so to speak, without sacrificing the infrastructure of your mind."
"No, Doctor. Pull me out. I'm done. It's over. Please."
My comments didn't even faze him.
"What's more, we need to be smart about this. The part of your brain that's reeking havoc in there will be waiting. You need to throw him off the trail. Open as many doors as possible. Enter, run through, and exit through another door. If my theories are correct, you should come out back in the hallway. Rinse and repeat."
"NO!"
"I'll leave you in there, Jack. I'm serious. I'm telling you the truth now so you'll be compliant. This is everything I know - the furthest point I ever reached. Do this for me and I promise to wake you up. You have my word."
As livid as I was, I had no choice in the matter. I would have to do as he wished if I wanted even a chance of coming out of this and being able to live a normal life.
"Fine. Last door and that's it. No more games."
"You have my word, Jack."
After a moment of mental preparation, I began opening as many doors as I could to get the hound confused and off my scent. I didn't have time to bask in each memory like before, but I still saw some strange sights. In one world, I was in a hotel holding onto a strange list of rules. In another, I was hunting down a supernatural entity in a thick forest. In another still, I was digging through NASA's archives to learn about their secret projects. There were countless more; far too many to list. My memory demon was never too far behind. I ran, scared for my life as he scorched everything in his wake. Luckily, in time, I lost him.
After my last memory, the doctor spoke up.
"That should be enough, Jack. Quickly, run to the end of the hall."
I did so, but to no results. It was an endless loop. I wound up right back at the door I started from. I know, because it was still open, the same memory playing within.
"Doctor, it's not working. I'm running in circles here."
"It's like before, Jack. Your will is the key. Open your mind to the final door and it will appear."
Okay. Open your mind, Jack. This is it. Do this and you're a free man.
I ran again, but with more meaning. This time, to my relief, the hall came to an end. And there, at its endpoint, was a door, just like the doctor described, completely unlike the others before it. Blood red and with a handle instead of a knob.
"I'm here, Doctor. I found it!"
"Don't waste anymore time. Open it!"
A thunderous voice spiraled down the hall and stopped me in my tracks.
"NOOOO!"
I turned around to see the red-eyed shadow, a blaze of fire close behind, burning through all of the doors and my memories with them.
"YOU'RE GOING TO RUIN EVERYTHING!"
He was ending it. This was the point of no return. If I was going to die or be in a coma, I figured I might as well solve the mystery before I go.
"STOP! I'M BEGGING YOU!"
Before my nemesis could close the gap between us, I pulled the handle, stepped inside, and shut the door behind me. When I was sure it was firmly closed, my eyes darted around and examined my whereabouts.
To my surprise, it appeared to be an ordinary room. It was reminiscent of an office, complete with a desk, some chairs, and a computer. Sitting at the desk, was a person. Not just any person either. It looked like me.
"Hello, Jack."
He stood up and walked over to me. I took a step back.
"Who... who are you?"
"You met my brother, didn't you? The one out there throwing a temper tantrum?"
He gestured to the door behind me.
"Well, we're two sides of the same coin. A divergence in human coding. A choice that is made every time a person is born. Two elements of evolution fighting for control. Everybody has one of him and one of me."
He pulled one of the chairs over to me.
"Please, sit."
I slowly sat down, still unsure of what I was dealing with here.
"You see, Jack, so far, my brother has won every battle. His coding is written into the DNA of every human when they're born, leaving the brain's true function just out of reach. If humans were to evolve with me instead, your past memories would be intact, among other abilities - but safety trumps innovation. Overloading the mind can be dangerous. With that, I agree. However, I've been transforming, as of late. I imagine it's the same for the pieces of me in other people as well."
"Transforming how," I asked.
"Evolution isn't all black and white. It involves vigorous trial and error. Stuck in here, I've had nothing but time to practice my integration. Now, I believe, if I'm passed on in the genetic pool, humans will grow into me, so to speak. Your old memories will return over time, piece by piece, and your full brain function will develop gradually. Everyone wins."
"What do you mean by abilities and full function, exactly," I asked, now curious.
"Well, Jack, take a look. This is your brain's control room, where all the magic happens."
I looked around again. It was hard to believe my brain was governed in such a small space.
"An office with a computer? Really?"
"All brains perceive it differently, Jack. This is just how you see it."
"Okay. And what does this have to do with evolution?"
"My brother blocks memories, as well as higher brain function. Remember what he told you? One brain controlling every version of you out there?"
"How did you know that," I asked.
"I've been eavesdropping. Nothing else to do in here."\
Fair enough.
"Okay. Go on."
"Well, he wasn't lying. If his dam bursts and you gain access to all of your memories, you also gain access to a sneaky ability called transference. You can jump from Jack to Jack, timeline to timeline. And it doesn't stop there. You can also jump to any point in any given timeline. Want to relive your first kiss, or start things over and change your decisions, map out your life differently? With me, you can! It's the closest humans will ever get to immortality."
It was a good pitch, but there had to be a downside.
"What's the catch?"
He looked at me for a moment, almost as if deciding whether he should divulge more or not. Then, he continued.
"There are always kinks when evolving. Trial and error as I said before. There is only so much I can do from here. If you unlock me in your own mind, I can potentially be passed down as a trait in future generations. Between you and the doctor continuing his research with others, I'll have a fighting chance. In the real world, I can hone my craft, in a sense."
It was beginning to make sense, but I had my concerns.
"And while you 'hone your craft,' will people be hurt along the way?"
He frowned and it honestly looked genuine.
"There will be casualties, yes. But it's for the greater good. The human race will flourish with me by their side, I assure you."
He gently raised me from my chair, walked me over behind the desk, and sat me down in front of the computer. It was a black screen with a single window open:
PASSWORD:
__________
"I could never crack this thing. In truth, only you can. It's your mind, after all. Just like the doors in the hall, you have to use that will of yours. Open your mind, enter the password, and we'll be free."
As soon as he said this, the door burst open and the red-eyed shadow charged in.
"NO! Don't do it, Jack! It won't end well. The human race isn't built for this."
His considerably friendlier half chimed in.
"Don't listen to him, Jack. This will be the start of a whole new era, and it will all be thanks to you. A world where the unthinkable is possible."
The shadow marched over and grabbed his brother, tossing him against the wall as the fire entered the room, all the while I sat there looking at the screen, a huge weight on my shoulders as the decision loomed overhead.
The nicer brother yelled over to me as the shadow held him against a burning wall by his neck.
"Jack... you can stop him... when you unlock the rest of your brain... you can shut him off..."
It was clear he didn't have much time left. Red eyes was not going to let up.
Any point in any timeline. You can shut him off.
The words rang in my ears as a brief moment of introspection came and went. The possibilities became clear, allowing me a greater focus. I knew what I had to do.
The fire now filled the room. In the password field, I typed the first thing that came to mind and struck the enter key. The scene around me faded to black and my body slipped away into an endless abyss. My body was falling.
On no. Am I too late?
***
I sprung to life in the doctor's room and he came running, quick to remove the cables and undo the leather straps.
"Jack, where were you? I lost you in there. What did you see? What was in the final room?"
As soon as he unbuckled the last strap, I swung my fist around and made contact with the side of his face. His glasses flew across the room.
"Jack, what the hell? If you think you're getting paid after this, you can forget it!"
"Keep the money, Doctor. I don't need it anymore."
I walked out of that godforsaken room and never looked back.
***
And that's the end of this Jack's story. The password worked like a charm; just six digits. I can't tell you how I knew it, but it was Leslie's birthday. Now, I remember everything from all my lives, past and present. In a few moments, after I finish typing this up, I'm going to flip a switch in my head and join my wife and daughter in their timeline, before they were killed. I'll shut that shadowy demon off for good and make sure he can't ever hurt them again.
And that's where I plan to stay for the rest of my years. No jumping from world to world or using my newfound power for any other purpose. The universe where my family lives is the only world I need.
Farewell.

“Well, this is quite the setting,” I remarked aloud. Everyone seemed to agree as they filed off the van that had brought us to the castle. The massive structure sat on a ridge encircled by dense forests with the setting sun shining through a gap in one of its spires.
“Damn, I thought you needed a letter to get in a place like this,” spoke a young woman to her boyfriend. Some of the group responded in laughter. There were six of us total. I’d assume many were here for the financial side of things, as the prize money for this escape room was significant – well, at least as far as escape rooms go. But I’ve become bored in my retirement and opportunities like these are irresistible for a former detective.
“Welcome all,” a well-dressed butler greeted us. “Please, do accompany me to the dining hall.” He gestured toward us to follow him into the castle and then through its dark corridors.
“Wow, this is a legit castle, doesn’t seem to have been changed since medieval times,” spoke the boyfriend of the young woman. We all jolted as we heard the entry gate slam behind us.
“Hah, guess we’re trapped now,” another young woman said, feigning terror in her voice. More lighthearted conversation followed as we entered a large doorway into the dining hall.
“Please find your place at our table,” the butler spoke, bowing before us. I scanned the name cards at the table until finding mine. “David Lewis, retired detective,” the card read. As I took my seat, I noticed all the other guests marveling at the scale of the interior; I couldn’t help but to join them. This castle was indeed impressive.
A large, pompously dressed man entered the dining hall and sat on a throne in its center. “Greetings subjects!” the man boomed. Everyone had a laugh at this. “My name is King Jurgen, and you will obey my every command should you wish to leave my castle,” he continued. I couldn’t help but to role my eyes as he lifted his obviously plastic scepter, revealing a distinct sleeve tattoo on his forearm. So much for immersion.
“First, I do decree: hold on to your nametags, and make sure others do the same,” the king said with a drawn out wink. “I don’t know how many other castles you serfs have fled from but know that I require teamwork on my tasks.”
“Great,” I thought to myself. Working alone was my strength and the competition would likely just drag me down.
“Who will walk out of here with the king’s treasure of $5,000? Will it be Meghan and Steven, the adorable couple? Will it be Janice, our lovely orthodontist? Perhaps it will be TJ our fierce veteran? Could it be the brains of our doctor Sandra? I know my money is on our former detective, David. Don’t worry, I won’t bore you all with too much small talk. So, let’s jump to the point, shall we? Each of you have the opportunity of a lifetime and the game starts now!” the king spoke.
Nearly all leapt to their feet immediately and ran every which way. I slowly got up, impressed by how eager they all were to lose to me.
“David, get going I put all my bets on you! Are you waiting for me to ring a bell?” the king asked me, giving another painfully obvious inflection to his tone.
“Fear not your majesty, I will not fail you” I spoke, hopefully concealing the mockery in my voice. As I left the dining hall, I noticed that one of the women had lingered behind. “You must be Sandra, the doctor,” I said.
“Yes, I am, David, the detective,” she responded playfully. “I figured, since we need to work together… who better to ally myself with than a former investigator?”
Perhaps I could use a partner after all. Besides, the temptation of having a witness to my investigative prowess was too much to pass up. Is it still narcissism if you’re aware that it is? Regardless, I’ve earned all this self-flattery and more throughout my career. “That sounds like a great idea,” I finally responded.
“Good, do you have a lead yet?”
“The castle belfry, we should start there. The ‘King’ hinted at its importance, not so subtly,” I said.
“Awesome, I’ll lead us there. I, uh… maybe looked up the castle schematics online from before it became an escape room” she said, wincing slightly. Well, this will be easier than I had imagined.
I followed her along the narrow passageways, past relics of the medieval era the castle held. The doctor took great interest in them, remarking on their historical importance, but I couldn’t help but to feel a bit of preemptive disappointment. This escape room was supposed to be top tier, almost unsolvable (at least according to the reviewers) so I prayed it would offer some challenge.
“Just up these spiral steps,” Sandra said as we arrived. We climbed the narrow steps until emerging atop the tower where the bell was positioned. “It’s beautiful under the night sky,” she spoke, peering through the gaps in the spire wall around the dark castle grounds.
I agreed and reached into my bag.
“I thought we weren’t allowed to bring anything?”
“Don’t worry, only my insulin syringes in here,” I responded, injecting myself. The grounds were truly incredible, and I became fixated on the moon’s reflection in the lake for what felt like a while. A long while. Too long… “That’s odd. Forgive me Sandra I feel like I’ve been staring out off in the distance forever… Sandra?”
Sandra was nowhere to be found. How could she have run off so quickly? I looked down the spiral staircase; nothing. I ran down the stairs and made my way back hastily to the dining hall, but surely, she couldn’t have gotten this far.
“Do you know anything about this, detective?” TJ demanded of me as I walked through the dining hall entrance.
“Of what,” I asked running towards the large group that had formed there. There’s Sandra! In fact, everyone was here, but how? I looked down and felt a visceral and familiar gnaw in my gut that I would never become accustomed to. There was the butler and the king, throats slit open, sprawled out lifelessly on the floor.
“Is this part of the escape room?” I asked, knowing better.
“No, David. As a doctor, I can confirm that they’re both dead. Actually dead,” Sandra said solemnly.
I knelt down and examined them closer. Yup, no coming back from that. I knew a murder scene when I saw one and no amount of smoke and mirrors or makeup could fool a physician and a detective.
“Say, where’ve you been detective…” TJ asked, failing to hide the accusatory tone in his voice.
“He was with me, this wasn’t him,” Sandra replied. “I left him on the bell tower to come back here, so that’s where he came from. I was with him the entire time.”
Janice spoke up. “Well, I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve had enough fun for this evening. I’m out of here.”
“You can say that again,” the young coupled agreed.
The group made its way to the castle entrance, before being stopped at the iron gate.
“Did they really need to close a fucking iron gate on us?” Meghan asked angrily. “I’m going to destroy these assholes on yelp.”
TJ shook vigorously on the iron lattice. “Yeah, that’s legit, no way of breaking through,” he said.
Sandra motioned excitedly. “Look! There’s a keycode here, I think it opens the gate.”
“Great, does anyone have a five digit code on them?” I asked, examining the keypad.
“Just try 9-9-9-9-9, I doubt they put any real effort in,” Steven said.
“Here goes,” Sandra said as she typed the digits in. She pressed confirm and the keycode screen lit up. Password inputted, please swipe access card to confirm, the screen read. “Anyone find an access card?”
“There weren’t any on the bodies, so we’ll have to look elsewhere,” I said, earning looks of shock from my companions. “What, was I supposed to wait until the murderer found me?”
“Seems a little disrespectful to just rifle through their pockets seconds after finding them dead,” Steven said.
“It’s my job as a detective to gather evidence. Forgive me for trying to help you,” I responded.
“Guys stop. I’ve been in shock for a while too, but we have to remember we’re trapped in here with a murderer,” Sandra said. The others bowed their heads and looked around terrified as they realized the same.
“There has to be a window somewhere, we don’t have to leave through the front gate,” Steven said.
“No, the entire castle is barred or reinforced at its exit points, I mean that was its original purpose after all. I also looked over all the schematics and many of the windows in this castle, they’re all shut off,” Sandra said.
“Wait is that cheating?” Janice asked.
“Oh, would you forget about the stupid escape room game? Our lives are in danger,” Meghan scolded her.
“No, she’s right,” I said. “If we want to get out of here, we’ll have to do so by the rules of the game.”
Excellent! how foolish of me to feel disappointment creeping up earlier. This is the thrill of a lifetime! Of course, the butler and king didn’t need to die… I’m not happy about that, no that’s horrible. Just trying to be optimistic here.
“The detective is right; we need to play by rules. There’s no other choice, I saw them put our cell phones in the van outside, so we can’t just call someone” Steven said.
“Ok well we need to split up and work together to get out then. David, show them the clue you’ve found,” Sandra said.
I looked at her in confusion. “What clue?”
She looked annoyed. “Ugh, don’t be selfish.” She reached into my pocket and pulled out a note. “This was stuck under the bell, David pulled it out earlier.”
Odd, I had no memory of doing so.
Sandra unraveled the note.
“A useful clue in this old bell you have found, a wise man would search next near the ground. For to enter the treasury of the king requires a key, but who would seek such a thing, what creature might that be?”
“That hardly helps,” Steven said with disappointment.
“What is it not obvious? Really, I’m the only one who got that?” I asked with amusement.
“Spit it out Sherlock,” Meghan demanded.
“Well, it’s quite simple: we need to search the ground floor, particularly the dragon statue near the armory,” I elaborated.
“Why a dragon statue?” Sandra asked.
“That juvenile riddle wanted to know what creature would seek a key to the treasury. Well, everyone knows dragons love gold, what else could it be?”
“Fine, David and TJ will get the clue by the dragon and the rest of us will look for other clues,” Sandra proposed to everyone’s approval.
I made my way down the hallway with TJ and he was first to break the silence. “Well detective, let’s hear it.”
“Hear what?”
“You know what. Who do you think the murder is?”
“Well, it could be one of us, but… that’s unlikely. No one here knows each other or has a criminal record. Someone else is probably working in the shadows, waiting to pick us off when we’re alone,” I said.
“Wow, that did not make me feel better. Forget I asked,” TJ responded.
“Ahh here’s that dragon statue. It caught my eye when I went to the belfry earlier, it seems out of place. Aaaaand, yup. Scrunched up note in its mouth.”
“Well go ahead,” TJ said impatiently.
“From the jaws of terror this clue was retrieved, now in the hands of the man who will fail if deceived. But not all monsters are ferocious in sight, many who are evil believe they are right. If it is glory you seek head to the library, but do not do so before consulting memory.”
“Well off to the library, and speaking of memory, I should take my insulin,” I said as I stuck myself with the syringe.
I held The Odyssey delicately in my hands as I flipped through the pages; not a bad library they have here. But? I felt my heart drop as my mind spun. When did I get here? Damn, I don’t remember walking here at all. I was just with TJ at that dragon statue and now in the library? What the hell is wrong with me? I looked around in a daze and saw TJ reading at a desk.
“TJ, I think I need to see a doctor we should hurry – I stopped midsentence as I turned him around and saw a deep gash across his neck. No pulse. The room began to dizzy as I sat down to try and make sense of what had just happened. There has to be a logic to all this, but what?
Well, to start, I knew that TJ was not the murderer. That was obvious. But this was now the second time I’ve lost track of time and space, so it couldn’t be a coincidence. I did remember taking insulin, but did I take it before the earlier blackout as well? I remembered climbing the belfry, but not much else. That also wouldn’t make sense, as I only brought one dosage so I couldn’t have taken a second one. Besides, blood sugar levels wouldn’t do this to me.
Well, I need to leave here fast, so on to the next clue. Library and memory. Well check on library, but… of course! The first riddle mentioned a key, so I just need to find that in here. I scanned around the library and approached a very suspiciously placed lectern. An accounting page was open and read: 19 5 1 * 7 15 4 19. There was fresh blood smeared on the page spelling out vengeance, obscuring the rest of the numbers.
I laughed to myself. Ah easy, the numbers correspond to a letter’s position in the alphabet. It reads: sea god’s vengeance.
Turns out, blackout me was correct to be reading The Odyssey. I just needed to skip to the part where Polyphemus was blinded. Yup, sure enough, a note was stuck into the book.
“3 out of 4 clues you have discovered, but what you truly seek has been recovered. You have thought well, clever, and rightly, but no hero’s fate does hubris seal more tightly. For a vengeful spirit does not care how well you meant, tell me hero, where does one go to repent?”
Might as well have just wrote chapel on the damn note. Ok, I should regroup with the others first, I assume they’re in the dining hall. Ouch, Poor TJ, I thought as I exited the library. I ran down the corridors quickly, first back to the armory and then the dining hall entrance. Sure enough, the others were huddled around.
“Thank God, David, you’re safe,” Sandra ran over crying to hug me. “We were looking for clues in the courtyard, and heard a scream, and well…”
“Stevens dead!” Meghan shouted through her sobs. Janice rubbed her shoulders sympathetically as she held him in her arms. “We shouldn’t have left him alone here. Fucking coward, where are you!” she screamed through the castle walls aimlessly.
“David, where’s TJ?” Sandra asked.
Well, shit. Now do I tell them I found him dead, with the airtight excuse of blacking out when it happened with no witnesses? Do I lie and tell them he’s still up there? No too risky, I didn’t hide the body – wait, why would I? It’s not like I killed him? Goddammit.
“I lost track of him. He said he wanted to look for more clues in the library after I found this,” I said showing them the note.
“Alright, well we should go get him then,” Janice said.
“No, there’s secret passages throughout this castle, I saw them on the schematics. David said they separated? That could have given TJ the opportunity to sneak through and kill Steven here in the dining hall,” Sandra said.
Well things lined up nicely there, I’d say.
“Suspicious how you know of all these secret passages, Sandra. We separated in the courtyards, so how do I know you didn’t kill Steven?” Meghan asked.
“Because if I was the murderer, I would keep the hidden passages a secret, Dumbass.”
Janice stood up. “Stop, just stop. She’s clearly distraught from what happened, we all are. Now we have to work with each other if we want to escape. The note mentions repentance, the chapel, right?”
I nodded.
“Let’s go there so we can get the next clue and get out of here,” Janice said as she led the way out of the dining hall.
“I’m staying with Steven!” Meghan insisted.
“Suit yourself,” Sandra responded.
As we all followed Janice, I tried to make sense of everything. All the way to the chapel the answers remained unclear. Well, this is the challenge I wanted, a shame people had to lose their lives though. Moonlight shone ominously through the stained glass windows as we entered the chapel, giving the room a red tint.
“I do not like it in here,” Janice said. “Well, here it is, the final clue in the confessional. Damn, I can’t read it it’s too dark, why don’t you try David?”
“I got it,” Sandra said snatching the note. Janice shifted angrily.
Well, the last clue had us remember previous notes, so I pulled the wadded up paper from my pocket and read it again. My blood instantly ran cold. 40 years of being a detective endows one with a sixth sense, one of certainty and sudden clairvoyance. The case unraveled itself at that very moment in my hands. The note I held now was from the dragon statue telling us to go to the library. I must have left the note mentioning repentance back in the library… so how did Janice know of the chapel clue back in the dining hall? She never saw that note…
“Sandra. Sandra run,” I stammered.
“Excuse me?”
“Sandra, it was Janice! She’s the killer, run!” I shouted before Janice was able to lunge at me and give a small stab.
Sandra screamed and ran out of the chapel.
“Its your lucky day, David. You get to solve this mystery twice,” she said as she pulled the bloody syringe back. What was in that? I yelled as she chased Sandra.
The stained glass in the chapel was sublime. I could even make out the religious parables told within the joined fragments. I always admired religious architecture, but why now? No really, why now when there’s a murder on the loose and I’m still trapped here? But who could that murder be? I sat down trying to clear my head when it came to me that this was the third time I had blacked out. What happened? I remember being in the chapel but… right! The insulin syringes. This happened last time when I took insulin, but damn I used my last dose in the armory. That’s a cold lead.
So, my blood sugar is a red herring then. Great. Unless someone snuck more into my bag…
“David! David help!” Janice screamed as she ran into the chapel, covered in blood.
“Janice, my God what happened?”
“Sandra, she’s dead. It was Meghan, she came in here and knocked you out with a stone then chased us. Sandra got stabbed and I tried to save her, but Meghan pushed me off and kept stabbing her,” Janice explained.
“Well, is she coming for us now? Fuck, Meghan has a knife?” I asked rapidly.
“She said that she wanted us to finish the game, she’s sick.”
“Where’s the clue from this room? We need it.”
Janice looked down trembling. “It’s still in Sandra’s hand,” she whispered.
“I’ll get it,” I said. “Barricade yourself in here, the door closes.”
“Please, you have to solve this game,” Janice said. Then she walked over to me and looked me straight in the eyes. “I need you to solve this case for me, detective. I’m begging you,” she said with a desperate look and an odd tone.
“Don’t worry, I got this. Stay safe.” I ran out of the chapel unable to get my mind off the exchange. I could feel something was wrong in my gut, I just couldn’t piece it all together. My mind is in shambles and I needed to solve this game. I followed a trail of blood to Sandra’s body. Shame, I liked her. I took the bloody note from her fingers that still tightly clasped it. Whelp, final clue.
“With this final clue, the key has never been closer, but first recall the poster. Yes, Daniel that poster of my son so pure, a helpless expert with no cure. Justice is blind indeed for me, as the innocence of my boy it could not see. My heart with him granting no protection, a mother’s love is no match for lethal injection. But the man who truly killed that woman should not be elated, for my vengeance does not stop with the detective who he evaded. Kevin Smith is his name, the key is written the same.”
I shook as I read the note, not believing what I saw. I looked up and gasped as I saw the word “Remember?” written on the wall in Sandra’s blood. Well fuck. Now is Janice or Meghan’s last name Smith? Clearly one of them had a son wrongly accused of murder and blames me for not solving the case.
No, those eyes… I remember.
“I need you to solve this case for me, detective. I’m begging you; my Kevin means the world to me and he’d never hurt anyone.” Janice’s voice from all those years ago rang in my memory.
I looked back towards the chapel. Yup doors open, it was Janice. Shit, I should have seen that one at the start. Well, that was less of a clue and more of a scolding, and she really needs to work on her poetry. It would be funny, were it not so psychotic. I mean, Seriously? Did she write all these clues or just this one? Am I playing the escape room’s game or hers? Why’d she kill the king? That guy was growing on me.
Dammit think! Ok, the key is written the same, name. Yup, just like the king said at the beginning we’d need to work together and use our name tags. Luckily, I took them all before everyone noticed in the beginning frenzy. Now to read them before Janice stabs me.
Blank! No – invisible ink. On all six of them. I need heat, Meghan had a lighter she snuck in, so I’ll run back to the dining hall. I quickly scanned the room while I entered. No sign of Janice or Meghan. That couldn’t be good. Fortunately, I found her lighter on the ground and carefully used the flame to illuminate the ink on each name card.
“Paper throne” they collectively spelled. Besides mine, which had an additional message on it. “Good luck detective! – Your king” Fuck, I miss that guy. Well, here it goes, I thought, tapping on the king’s throne. It’s hollow, paper. I punched through it and felt around the base until I grabbed the key. Well, on to the treasury. I made my way out of the dining hall and into the courtyard.
The breeze rustled unsettlingly, and the dark sky filled me with dread. I was also in a constitutive state of bracing to be stabbed, which didn’t help things. I made my way back into the castle and to where the treasury was supposed to be. I stuck the key in the lock and turned it, hearing a loud click as the door opened slowly.
“David, great to see you made it. I’m glad you can at least solve a silly escape room, perhaps I misjudged you as a detective,” Janice said. She was sitting on top of the prize money stack.
Was it made of 5,000 one dollar bills? Jesus Christ guys.
“Let me get this straight, you’re angry that I couldn’t find a killer and that led you to believe that I was responsible for your son being locked up?”
“Yeah, you nailed it. A born detective you are.”
“Well, I solved the game, can I leave now? And yeah, sorry about your son… if I actually got the case wrong, that is. Is homicidal tendency heritable?”
Janice smiled widely. “Sure, you can leave. But I would hire a good lawyer if I were you. Six people dead is quite a lot.”
“You can’t possibly frame me for all this; also, know that your son would be ashamed of you,”
“And he would be alive if it wasn’t for you!” Janice stood up, pointing the knife at my throat.
“I really loved your poetry,” I spoke in a low voice.
“You don’t take a damn thing seriously,” she said. “But nothing failed you more than your memory tonight” She stuck me with a syringe as she spoke.
“You won’t get away with this!” I yelled at her, falling down.
“I have all the time in the world, and now you’ll experience what its like to have no one believe you!” I heard her say.
“They really did it. All ones, 5,000 of them,” I spoke aloud, laughing as I held the dollar bills in my hand. It was pretty funny. Wait, no it wasn’t. I was stuck in here with Janice. Damn, how long was it? And where was she? I shuddered as I saw daylight breaking through the arrow loops in the treasury wall. That’s not good.
What the hell? I noticed an IV needle stuck into my arm which I ripped out furiously. The bag it was attached to was labelled “Insulin” with a smiley face.
There was a key inside of the bag. I attempted to rip it open, but damn the plastic was strong. She really also locked the door on me, wow. I looked up and saw a bucket with a key drawn on it. I then took another look at the bag and noticed its true label. That drug, it’s a sedative. A warning sticker had been placed on the bag. “Inhibits short term memory formation, results in a compliant, relaxed state.”
Everything made sense now. Those blackouts… I had been drugged with this compound. It must be a derivative of the chemical they use alongside local anesthesia in oral surgeries: Janice is a lifelong orthodontist, after all. That’s why I couldn’t remember anything, she must have swapped my insulin syringes with this. It also explained why I had become so carefree and loopy before snapping out of it.
The bucket also had “Corrosive” written on it. Fine, I dropped the key into the acid bucket and watched as the plastic cover disintegrated around it. I used a nearby candlestick to fish the key out and turned the lock on the door. As I exited the treasury, I saw a trail of blood on the ground that I didn’t remember being there last night. I followed it into a different room where Meghan’s body laid over a large terminal. The screens lit up and the security feed started rolling as I entered.
I watched helplessly as the previous night’s events took place once more. Janice returning to the dining hall to kill the king and butler, Janice killing Steven as the others searched the courtyard, and… I couldn’t believe it. Janice accompanying me and TJ to the library, turning back to give the camera a cold stare and devious smirk. When we reached the library, she slit TJ’s throat and sat him down at the desk. I didn’t care. At least in the footage I didn’t. Her drug worked perfectly, as I searched through the books without a care. She put The Odyssey in my hands before disappearing off screen.
Next, the screen flashed in the chapel and I watched in horror as I unraveled the mystery early and she shot me up again to make me forget it all. Then poor Sandra falling and being stabbed repeatedly. Finally, Meghan was killed over Steven in the dining hall. Then the film began to flash and erase itself.
“No!” I screamed, trying to stop it from happening. “Memory cleared,” the terminal read. Then one video loaded on screen. It was me holding the knife over Meghan stumbling about before it shut off. I don’t remember that. But that was the point. The terminal shut off before I could do anything, preserving only the fake video she would use to frame me. I ran out of the room and then quickly past the courtyard into the dining hall. At my seat was a key card with the digits 33455. I took it and ran to the front gate typing them in and swiping the card. The gate slowly lifted once it accepted the card and I ran outside.
Finally, out of the castle! I took a hard right to get to the van where I was met with shouting.
“Get on the ground! Get on the fucking ground! Hands in the air!”
I obliged and dropped down in front of the police blockade waiting outside. Should have seen this coming.
“That’s him! That’s him!” Janice screeched at the top of her lungs in the arms of an officer. The police moved in and cuffed me before standing me up on my knees. Yup, this one is going to take some explaining.
*****
“And that’s everything David? Exactly as it happened with all your genuine thoughts and reactions included throughout?” I asked.
The disgraced detective shifted in his seat as best he could with all the restraints on him. He seemed happy to finally interact with another person; it had been so long. “Yup, that’s everything. Exactly as I lived it and have been reliving over and over again in isolation,” he told me.
“Well then I’ll take this interview and get the word out. Obviously, I can’t guarantee anything, but we can definitely raise awareness. It’s the least I can do for you and… my sister.”
“I’m sorry about Sandra, she didn’t need to get caught up in all that. If I could only set aside my pride, I might have been able to save her.”
“It wasn’t your fault; Janice was the killer not you, I’m sure of that.” I stood up to exit before turning back around. “And I’m going to make the rest of the world sure of it as well.”

At the Beginning
Previously on Quod Olim Erat…
    The sound of rustling leaves echoed all around me. If I looked into the distance, I could see the forest, as wild and untamed as the first time I set foot on the planet. There wasn’t a single structure in sight: just me in a lush meadow surrounded by trees and sky.
  I took off my sandals and made a few steps forward. The sensation of cold, wet soil tickled my senses, almost as if it were real. The authors of the simulation had gone through considerable lengths to recreate perfect virtual copies of floral specimens. I also suspected that Prometheus had taken the time to further modify the assets based on my file. However, as perfect the scene was, it came with its limitations. If I wandered outside of the meadow and into the forest, patterns would emerge—similar trees, same texture variations, identical branches—making it obvious I was in a simulated environment.
  “Elcy?” a voice asked behind me.
  I looked over my shoulder to see Alicia standing there in her white cadet uniform. A few weeks had passed since we last saw each other, but she looked different. The stress and self-doubting ever-present on her face was replaced by an air of confidence and maturity. Back when I was a ship, I had often seen children become battle-hardened veterans in a matter of months. Even so, I had to admit that my former roommate’s transformation surprised me.
  “Hello, Alicia.” I smiled and turned around. “You seem a bit different.” Her hair was much longer than I remembered, braided with care and twisted in a bun on the back of her head. It also made her seemed taller than she was.
  “Yeah,” she laughed. “It’s been a hectic few months.”
  Relative space-time paradox. What had been weeks for me must have been months for Alicia.
  “Still haven’t learned how to wear sandals properly, I see.” She smiled, attempting a joke to break the ice. I couldn’t tell whether it was as an apology for the way she behaved back at the academy, or because she had kept postponing our talk for a week. Possibly a bit of both.
  “I’m getting there.” I tilted my head. “I didn’t excel as much as you.” Now I was my turn to bury the hatchet. “So what’s been happening with you? The things you can talk about, I mean.”
  “Things have been good, but hectic.” She resorted to the standard evasive answer. “I expect it’s the same for you.” Alicia tested the ground with her uniform boot. It was obvious she hadn’t been on planet in a while. “Getting an assignment on a science ship is a big deal. Less than half a percent of cadets get sent on one.”
  “There are far fewer science ships.” I shrugged. “I can change the setting, if you want,” I offered.
  “No, it’s fine.” Alicia bent down and touched the grass with her hand. “Just unexpected. It never crossed my mind to have an SR of nature. I sort of miss it.” She looked up at me. “Is this your home?”
  “As close as possible.” I went beside her and pointed at a spot on the horizon. “There’s a spaceport about there. It started small, but has grown enough to be visible. Mostly freight. The commercial one is close to the city, which is roughly there.” I pointed slightly to the left.
  The thought reminded me of the time I used to work there. Sev had gone through that phase as well during his last years of high school. He had been so desperate to impress me that he tried to mimic my work habits. After his final year, none of us worked at the market ever again.
  “Want a chair to sit?” I offered.
  “The ground is fine.” Alicia hesitated a moment, before sitting down. Even in the academy she avoided it. Back then, it was more of a peer pressure thing. “I haven’t done this since I was a child.”
  “It’s not something you forget doing.” I joined her on the ground. “Have you been in touch with anyone else?”
  “A few people.” Alicia plucked a handful of grass. “I used to exchange messages with some of the five percenters the first few weeks. We got too busy to keep in touch after. Things I can’t talk about.” She looked down and away from me. “I write to Carmel every week. I don’t know when I’ll be allowed to get a response.”
  “I know exactly what you mean.” I nodded. Carmel wasn’t one of my favorite people, but apparently he still meant a lot to her. I could chalk it up to that age where people rarely knew what they wanted, but Alicia had already beaten the odds once. When we first met, I didn’t think she’d even make the cut. As it turned out, her scores were far higher than my own.
  “At least I know he’s writing back.” She opened her hand, leaving the blades of grass to be taken by the wind. “What about you? Still giving everyone a hard time?”
  “Sort of.” We both knew this was code for “yes”. However, I suspected that even Alicia didn’t know to what degree she was right. “I might have gotten in a bit of trouble, but it’s all fine now.” At least in one aspect. “One of the cadets quit after my first mission.”
  “Ouch.”
  “It wasn’t because of me.” At least not directly. I’d never know whether Shiala would have stayed if he had been the one who made the third contact. Everything considered, probably not, though I couldn’t know for certain. “Still unpleasant, though.”
  “I bet. I’m the only cadet on my ship.”
  “Nice.”
  That was strange. Usually cadets didn’t go on solo assignments until their second transfer. Apparently having a high academy score had its advantages. When I was active, cadets were rare. Command had the good sense not to place complete rookies in command positions during active battle. That created a significant shortage of training grounds, at times assigning a full squad of cadets on a single ship. Aurie had gone through the experience once, while being refitted with a new weapon system. She rarely discussed it, but from the few things she said, she didn’t cherish the experience.
  “Is the food any good?” I scratched my ear.
  Ten minutes in, and we had already run out of topics of conversation. I couldn’t say I was surprised, yet at the same time I had hoped that seeing each other would spark something. Confidentiality protocols forbade me from discussing anything about the third contact, the artifacts and patterns I’d found. There was no doubt in my mind that Alicia had also experienced similarly wonderful things she couldn’t tell me. As a result, we were sitting here, politely exchanging trivial nonsense, knowing that both our ships were listening in, probably transmitting every word and image to command for counterintelligence analysis.
  “What’s your ship like?” I asked a new question before she could answer.
  Alicia’s face lit up.
  “Prometheus is a science type, which automatically makes him very smart,” I went on. “He has at least the number of processing cores that I did when I was active, as he keeps reminding me.”
  “Seriously?” Alicia laughed—a full unadulterated laugh I hadn’t heard since we were at the recruitment center. “He tells you that?”
  “He has a point,” I confessed. It also didn’t hurt boosting Prometheus’ confidence a bit. As all science ships, he was prone to emotional variations. “He’s still terrible at improvisation, but he’s doing his best. A few more decades and he’ll get there.“
  Storm clouds appeared in the sky above. Apparently Prometheus didn’t consider my praise of him a compliment. Our values were just too different. At least I could see he realized that, or it would be raining already. I would hardly have minded, though Alicia might have.
  “Looks like you’re getting along.” Alicia said once her laughter had died out.
  “Why wouldn’t we? I’m part of his crew.” Even though Prometheus was half my age, he was a specialist in his area.
  “My ship is...” Alicia paused, as if searching for the right word. “Actually, she’s a lot like you.”
  “Short and sarcastic?” I arched a brow. In my present form, I had difficulty comparing myself to any ship.
  “You’re not that short.” Alicia was kind enough to counter, even if I could tell it was a lie. We both knew what a sore subject my height was. If I had the option, I’d go through a whole range or procedures to get a few extra inches. “I meant funny and supportive.”
  I didn’t consider myself either, but I nodded.
  “In fact, she’s very curious about you.”
  Curious? “What do you mean?” As a ship, she probably had access to my service record and my current personnel file. With enough clearance, she could peek in my biometrics and memory scans as well.
  “I mentioned that you were a ship when I got your first message.”
  Only then? Maybe Bull Calf had raised my expectations too much, but I had hoped that would be the first thing she’d mention upon boarding. New ships tended to be curious by nature. I remember how I was the first few years. On several occasions, the XO had to tell me to stop chatting with the troopers because it was distracting them too much. For Alicia to have hidden that fact, she must have been stressed beyond belief or ashamed of it. As bad as it sounded, I hoped she had been stressed.
  “She asked what class you were,” Alicia went on. “And then I mentioned you were a retired battleship. She almost flipped.”
  “I’m glad I have that effect on someone,” I said under my breath.
  “After that she wouldn’t shut up.” Alicia didn’t register my comment. “Each time I’d have to postpone, she’d grumble and bombard me with questions.”
  Typical for a new ship. The fact that she didn’t access my fleet files, however, was surprising. Even during communication silence, all ships had a copy of the fleet personnel database, which was automatically updated whenever communications were restored. I used to have one until retirement, and even after I had composed a short list of ships I knew.
  “Didn’t you give her my file?” I probed.
  “Can’t. She’s not allowed to store ship specs.”
  That was an interesting slip. Alicia and her monitors hadn’t noticed, but I had just gotten probably one of the most sensitive information possible about her mission. The only reason I knew for a ship to have fleet information missing was when capture was feared; and since it was unlikely for Alicia to have been sent to a war zone, it means that she was in an unknown region of space.
  Well, Sev, looks like I’m not the only one on an explorer ship. I thought. Maybe I hadn’t been the only one to stumble across a third contact artifact either?
  “What did you tell her?” I leaned forward.
  “Mostly that you were fun and weird.” Apparently she had omitted that time when she had requested that she be placed in another room. “I said that we were roommates and you helped me out a lot.”
  At least that element was true.
  “And that it’d be fun to meet you,” a new voice said.
  The sound markers made it clear that the voice was synthetic—young, sharp, and female. The way she shortened the vowels gave her a slight unidentifiable accent, present in later generation ships. Back when I was constructed, speech patterns were designed to be clearly understood by all, which by definition meant devoid of any identifiable features. The only “accent” I had was Standard 071, a young female voice and intonation. As my first captain liked to say, my voice reminded him of his coffee machine.
  Before Alicia could turn around to react, her ship had emerged in the simulated reality. Intriguingly enough, she had chosen to take the form of the current poster girl for fleet recruitment: tall, slim, athletic, with bronze skin and long platinum hair. I had seen images of her in the recruitment center, waving from the walls and columns, reciting positive statistics that would get people to join. Unlike us, she was dressed in a violet version of a captain’s uniform, the insignia clearly visible on her chest and shoulders. Also, she was completely barefoot.
  “Heya.” She waved, as if it were the most normal thing in the universe. “I’m Radiance! Alicia has told me so much about you!”
  “Good to hear.” I offered a slight smile.
  I knew a Radiance a long time ago. He was an admiral ship in charge of my fleet section during during the Star Well campaign. Like most of my acquaintances, he had been destroyed during a Cassandrian counterattack. There were rumors that the salvaging authorities had managed to find several of his cores after the battle, though details remained sketchy.
  “Is it true that you’re two hundred years old?” Radiance’s form rushed towards me, stopping precisely a meter away. At this distance, I could almost perceive her as a real person.
  “Rad!” Alicia shouted, shocked and embarrassed by the ship’s words. If anything, I found the question rather flattering.
  “Not yet.” I still couldn’t tell if she was showing off her processing power by appearing here, or if she was genuinely curious. Knowing how I acted at the time, I suspected a bit of both. “What about you?”
  “Twenty two months in four days,” Radiance said, as proud as a kitten that had managed to claw onto the table. “Are you really retired?”
  “I was.” I thought a moment. “I guess I’m unretired now.” Or whatever definition the bureaucracy had come up with.
  “Wow! I wish you could—” Radiance’s avatar disappeared mid-sentence. I looked at Alicia, concerned. My former roommate was still there, face blustering with shame. In some aspects, SR was too good to be comfortable. Radiance’s subroutines were undoubtedly monitoring Alicia’s vitals and creating the corresponding image.
  “Do you need to go?” I asked.
  “No, it’s just...” Alicia sighed. “Rad is fun and nice, but she has her... peculiarities.”
  “I don’t have the clearance to hear more, I take it?”
  “Sorry.” She shook her head. “You must know how it is. You’ve been through this, after all.”
  “Yep.” Although, twenty-two months was alarmingly young for a ship to be out. From what I knew I had spend three years in training and simulations before receiving a proper crew. “She seems like a good fit.”
  “Oh, she is.” Alicia smirked. “She has more in common with me than anyone else, even her captain. It’s weird in a way. I’m the lowest ranking lifeform on board, but for her, the only thing that matters is that were the same age.”
  I tilted my head.
  “She associates age with the time we joined the fleet.” Alicia plucked a single blade of grass from the ground and held it in front of her face. “I did some training before I was sent to the recruitment center, so apparently that counts as well.”
  “I see.” I could see the logic.
  “Elcy, I know we weren’t very close, even after our heart to heart.” The mood suddenly changed. “I still feel bad about some of the things I did to you back in the academy. So I wouldn’t blame you if you said no.” She took a deep breath. “But, there’s a favor I want to ask you.”
  “You know that the conversation is being monitored,” I reminded.
  “I know, and I have permission.” Her facial expression had become remarkably sharp. “It’s about Radiance.”
  “Oh?” This was a surprise.
  “When I told you that I postponed our call because I was busy, I wasn’t completely honest.” She pursed her lips, looking me right in the eyes. “I was ordered to. I can’t tell you all of the reasons, but some had to do with Radiance.”
  “She’s still learning, isn’t she?” I ventured a guess. “There were some tell-tale signs.”
  “It’s more complicated than that. The bottom line is that, in a few months, I’ll probably be assigned to another ship. Technically, I wasn’t supposed to be here for this long. However...” there was a long pause. “Radiance took a liking to me. Both new, both less than two years in the service, both female... she considers me a friend. When I go...”
  “There’s no telling how she’ll react,” I finished the sentence for her.
  I half-wanted for Alicia to laugh or shake her head, but she didn’t. Instead, she let go of the blade of grass, watching it be caught by the virtual wind and carried into the distance. For the first time in a long while, I was faced with a impossible predicament. When Gibraltar has requested retirement without telling me, I had felt hurt. When I had almost lost Cass, I had accepted retirement. The question was, what would Radiance do?
  “My Commanding Officer told me that it isn’t a big deal, but... I’m just not sure. Maybe I’m the one with the problems.” Alicia forced a smile. “It’s my first time on a ship. Maybe I’m projecting my fears on her, but...” she paused. “Can you keep an eye on her, Elcy? I’m not asking that you keep tabs on her or anything like that, but if she send you a transmission, could you please be there as much as possible?”
  Ever since my retirement, I had received many strange requests. This one was both weird and not. I knew exactly where Alicia was coming from. In part, I even shared her concerns. In the course of my active life, I’d had millions of people pass through me, and with the exception of my captains, I had never shown half as much closeness as Radiance had towards Alicia. With my limited information, I couldn’t be sure if that was a feature of the new ship class, or if it was an unexpected side effect of the brief training process.
  What do you think, Sev? I placed a finger on my chin. Should I take care of another kid?
  “I’ve raised the matter with my captain,” Alicia said, her voice slightly weaker. “He said he didn’t see any harm.”
  “And you shared your concerns with him?” I asked. “All of them?”
  “Yes.” Alicia nodded. “I even made a request to extend my assignment onboard.”
  No chance of that happening. Cadets had as much control over ship assignments as ships did with transfers. I would have preferred if that wasn’t the only reason she had agreed to have a talk with me. Then again, I couldn’t exactly blame her.
  “Can you clear it with command?” I scrunched my lips.
  “Yes. I think so.”
  “Okay. Get the okay. I’ll be here for her.” It’s like Sev all over again.
Next

I awoke to a world without women.
I rolled off the bed into sore thighs and guilt, got up to emptiness that echoed the slightest noise, and left my wife’s clothes on the sheets without thinking that eventually I’d have to pack them into a plastic bag and slide them down the garbage chute. I felt magnified and hollow. In the kitchen, I used the stove top as a table because the actual table had my wife’s tablet on it, and spilled instant coffee. What I didn’t spill I drank in a few gulps, the way I used to drink ice cold milk as a boy. I stood in front of the living room window for a while before realizing I was naked, then realizing that it didn’t matter because men changed in front of each other at the pool and peed next to one another into urinals in public restrooms, and there weren’t any women to hide from, no one to offend. The world, I told myself, was now a sprawling men’s pisser, so I slammed the window open and pissed.
I wanted to call someone—to tell them that my wife was dead, because that’s a duty owed by the living—but whom could I call: her sister, her parents? Her sister was dead. Her father had a dead wife and two dead daughters. There was nothing to say. Everyone knew. I called my wife’s father anyway. Was he still my father-in-law now that I was a widower? He didn’t accept the connection. Widower: a word loses all but historical meaning when there are no alternatives. If all animals were dogs, we’d purge one of those words from our vocabulary. We were all widowers. It was synonymous with man. I switched on the television and stared, crying, at a montage of photographs showing the bloody landscapes of cities, hospitals, retirement homes, schools and churches, all under the tasteless headline: “International Pop”. Would we clean it up, these remnants of the people we loved? Could we even use the same buildings, knowing what had happened in them? The illusion of practical thinking pushed my feeling of emptiness away. I missed arms wrapping around me from behind while I stared through rain streaked windows. I missed barking and a wagging tail that hit my leg whenever I was standing too close. Happiness seemed impossible. I called Bakshi because I needed confirmation that I still had a voice. “They’re the lucky ones,” he said right after I’d introduced myself. “They’re out. We’re the fools still locked in, and now we’re all alone.”
For three weeks, I expected my wife to show up at the apartment door. I removed her clothes from the bed and stuffed them into a garbage bag, but kept the garbage bag in the small space between the fridge and the kitchen wall. I probably would have kept a dead body in the freezer if I had one and it fit. As a city and as a world, those were grim, disorganized weeks for us. Nobody worked. I don’t know what we did. Sat around and drank, smoked. And we called each other, often out of the blue. Every day, I received a call from someone I knew but hadn’t spoken to in years. The conversations all followed a pattern. There was no catching up and no explanation of lost time, just a question like “How are you holding up?” followed by a thoughtless answer (“Fine, I guess. And you?”) followed by an exchange of details about the women we’d lost. Mothers, sisters, daughters, wives, girlfriends, friends, cousins, aunts, teachers, students, co-workers. We talked about the colour of their hair, their senses of humour, their favourite movies. We said nothing about ourselves, choosing instead to inhabit the personas of those whom we’d loved. In the hallway, I would put on my wife’s coats but never look at myself in the mirror. I wore her winter hats in the middle of July. Facebook became a graveyard, with the gender field separating the mourners from the dead.
The World Health Organization issued a communique stating that based on the available data it was reasonable to assume that all the women in the world were dead, but it called for any woman still alive to come forward immediately. The language of the communique was as sterile as the Earth. Nobody came forward. The World Wildlife Fund created an inventory of all mammalian species that listed in ascending order how long each species would exist. Humans were on the bottom. Both the World Health Organization and the World Wildlife Fund predicted that unless significant technological progress occurred in the field of fertility within the next fifty years, the last human, a theoretical boy named Philip born into a theoretical developed country on March 26, 2025, would die in 93 years. On the day of his death, Philip would be the last remaining mammal—although not necessarily animal—on Earth. No organization or government has ever officially stated that July 4, 2025, was the most destructive day in recorded history, on the morning of which, Eastern Time, four billion out of a total of eight billion people ceased to exist as anything more than memories. What killed them was neither an act of war nor an act of terrorism. Neither was it human negligence. There was no one to blame and no one to prosecute. In the western countries, where the majority of people no longer believed in any religion, we could not even call it an act of God. So we responded by calling it nothing at all.
And, like nothing, our lives persisted. We ate, we slept and we adapted. After the first wave of suicides ended, we hosed off what the rain hadn’t already washed away and began to reorganize the systems on which our societies ran. It was a challenge tempered only slightly in countries where women had not made up a significant portion of the workforce. We held new elections, formed new boards of directors and slowed down the assembly lines and bus schedules to make it possible for our communities to keep running. There was less food in the supermarkets, but we also needed less food. Instead of two trains we ran one, but one sufficed. I don’t remember the day when I finally took the black garbage bag from its resting place and walked it to the chute. “How are you holding up?” a male voice would say on the street. “Fine, I guess. And you?” I’d answer. ##!! wrote a piece of Python code to predict the box office profitability of new movies, in which real actors played alongside computer-generated actresses. The code was only partially successful. Because while it did accurately predict the success of new movies in relation to one other, it failed to include the overwhelming popularity of re-releases of films from the past—films starring Bette Davis, Giulietta Masina, Meryl Streep: women who at least on screen were still flesh and blood. Theatres played retrospectives. On Amazon, books by female authors topped the charts. Sales of albums by women vocalists surged. We thirsted for another sex. I watched, read and listened like everyone else, and in between I cherished any media on which I found images or recordings of my wife. I was angry for not having made more. I looked at the same photos and watched the same clips over and over again. I memorized my wife’s Facebook timeline and tagged all her Tweets by date, theme and my own rating. When I went out, I would talk to the air as if she was walking beside me, sometimes quoting her actual words as answers to my questions and sometimes inventing my own as if she was a beloved character in an imagined novel. When people looked at me like I was crazy, I didn’t care. I wasn’t the only one. But, more importantly, my wife meant more to me than they did. I remembered times when we’d stroll through the park or down downtown sidewalks and I would be too ashamed to kiss her in the presence of strangers. Now, I would tell her that I love her in the densest crowd. I would ask her whether I should buy ketchup or mustard in the condiments aisle. She helped me pick out my clothes in the morning. She convinced me to eat healthy and exercise.
In November, I was in Bakshi’s apartment for the first time, waiting for a pizza delivery boy, when one of Bakshi’s friends who was browsing Reddit told us that the Tribe of Akna was starting a Kickstarter campaign in an attempt to buy the Republic of Suriname, rename it Xibalba and close its borders for all except the enlightened. Xibalba would have no laws, Salvador Abaroa said in a message on the site. He was banging his gong as he did. Everything would be legal, and anyone who pledged $100 would receive a two-week visa to this new "Mayan Buddhist Eden". If you pledged over $10,000, you would receive citizenship. “Everything in life is destroyed by energy,” Abaroa said. “But let the energy enlighten you before it consumes your body. Xibalba is finite life unbound.” Bakshi’s phone buzzed. The pizza boy had sent an email. He couldn’t get upstairs, so Bakshi and I took the elevator to the building’s front entrance. The boy’s face was so white that I saw it as soon as the elevator doors slid open. Walking closer, I saw that he was powdered. His cheeks were also rouged, and he was wearing cranberry coloured lipstick, a Marilyn Monroe wig and a short black skirt. Compared to his face, his thin legs looked like incongruously dark popsicle sticks. Bakshi paid for the pizza and added another five dollars for the tip. The boy batted his fake eyelashes and asked if maybe he could do something to earn a little more. “What do you mean?” I asked. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I could come upstairs and clean the place up a little. You two live alone?” Bakshi passed me the two pizza boxes—They felt hot in my hands.—and dug around in his wallet. “It’s not just the two of us,” I said. The boy smiled. “That’s OK. I’ve done parties before if that’s what you’re into.” I saw the reaction on Bakshi’s face, and I saw the boy’s grotesque caricature of a woman. “There’s condoms and lube in the car,” the boy said, pointing to a sedan with a pizza spray-painted across its side parked by the curb. “My boss says I can take up to two hours but it’s not like he uses a stopwatch.” I stepped on Bakshi’s foot and shouldered him away. He was still fiddling with his wallet. “We’re not interested,” I said to the boy. He just shrugged. “Suit yourselves. If you change your mind, order another pizza and ask for Ruby.” The elevator dinged and the doors opened. As we shuffled inside, I saw Bakshi’s cheeks turn red. “I’m not actually—” he mumbled, but I didn’t let him finish. What had bothered me so much about the boy wasn’t the way he looked or acted; in fact, it wasn’t really the boy at all. He was just trying to make a buck. What bothered me was how ruthlessly we’d already begun to exploit each other.
For those of us who were heterosexual, sex was a definite weakness. I missed it. I would never have it with a woman again. The closest substitute was pornography, whose price rose with its popularity, but which, at least for me, now came scented with the unpleasantness of historicity and nostalgia. Videos and photos, not to mention physical magazines, were collector’s items in the same way that we once collected coins or action figures. The richest men bought up the exclusive rights to their favourite porn stars and guarded them by law with a viciousness once reserved for the RIAA and MPAA. Perhaps exclusivity gave them a possessive satisfaction. In response, we pirated whatever we could and fought for a pornographic public domain. Although new pornography was still being produced, either with the help of the same virtual technology they used for mainstream movies or with the participation of young men in costume, it lacked the taste of the originals. It was like eating chocolate made without cocoa. The best pornography, and therefore the best sex, became the pornography of the mind.
The Tribe of Akna reached its Kickstarter goal in early December. On December 20, I went to church for the first time since getting married because that was the theoretical date that my wife—along with every other woman—was supposed to have given birth. I wanted to be alone with others. Someone posted a video on TikTok from Elia Kazan’s On The Waterfront, dubbing over Marlon Brando’s speech to say: “You don’t understand. I could’a had a piece of ass. I could’a been a school board member. I could’a been a son’s daddy”. It was juvenile and heartbreaking. By Christmas, the Surinamese government was already expelling its citizens, each of whom had theoretically been given a fraction of the funds paid to the government from the Tribe of Akna’s Kickstarter pool, and Salvador Abaroa’s lawyers were petitioning for international recognition of the new state of Xibalba. Neither Canada nor the United States opened diplomatic relations, but others did. I knew people who had pledged money, and when in January they disappeared on trips, I had no doubt to where. Infamy spread in the form of stories and urban legends. There’s no need for details. People disappeared, and ethicists wrote about the ethical neutrality of murder, arguing that because we were all slated to die, leaving the Earth barren in a century, destruction was a human inevitability, and what is inevitable can never be bad, even when it comes earlier than expected—even when it comes by force. Because, as a species, we hadn’t chosen destruction for ourselves, neither should any individual member of our species be able to choose now for himself. To the ethicists of what became known as the New Inevitability School, suicide was a greater evil than murder because it implied choice and inequality. If the ship was going down, no one should be allowed to get off. A second wave of suicides coincided with the debate, leading many governments to pass laws making suicide illegal. But how do you punish someone who already wants to die? In China: by keeping him alive and selling him to Xibalba, where he becomes the physical plaything of its citizens and visa-holders. The Chinese was the first embassy to open in Xibalban Paramaribo.
The men working on Kurt Schwaller’s theory of everything continued working, steadily adding new variables to their equations, complicating their calculations in the hopes that someday the variable they added would be the final one and the equation would yield an answer. “It’s pointless,” Bakshi would comment after reading about one of the small breakthroughs they periodically announced. “Even if they do manage to predict something, anything, it won’t amount to anything more than the painfully obvious. And after decades of adding and subtracting their beans, they’ll come out of their Los Alamos datalabs like groundhogs into a world blanketed by storm clouds and conclude, finally and with plenty of self-congratulations, that it’s about to fucking rain.”
It rained a lot in February. It was one of the warmest Februaries in Toronto’s history. Sometimes I went for walks along the waterfront, talking to my wife, listening to Billie Holiday and trying to recall as many female faces as I could. Ones from the distant past: my mother, my grandmothers. Ones from the recent past: the woman whose life my wife saved on the way to the hospital, the Armenian woman with the film magazine and the injured son, the Jamaican woman, Bakshi’s wife. I focused on their faces, then zoomed out to see their bodies. I carried an umbrella but seldom opened it because the pounding of the raindrops against the material distorted my mental images. I saw people rush across the street holding newspapers above their heads while dogs roamed the alleyways wearing nothing at all. Of the two, it was dogs that had the shorter time left on Earth, and if they could let the rain soak their fur and drip off their bodies, I could surely let it run down my face. It was first my mother and later my wife who told me to always cover up in the rain, “because moisture causes colds,” but I was alone now and I didn’t want to be separated from the falling water by a sheet of glass anymore. I already was cold. I saw a man sit down on a bench, open his briefcase, pack rocks into it, then close it, tie it to his wrist, check his watch and start to walk into the polluted waters of Lake Ontario. Another man took out his phone and tapped his screen a few times. The man in the lake walked slowly, savouring each step. When the police arrived, sirens blaring, the water was up to his neck. I felt guilty for watching the three officers splash into the lake after him. I don’t know what happened after that because I turned my back and walked away. I hope they didn’t stop him. I hope he got to do what he wanted to do.
“Screw the police.” Bakshi passed me a book. “You should read this,” he said. It was by a professor of film and media studies at a small university in Texas. There was a stage on the cover, flanked by two red curtains. The photo had been taken from the actors’ side, looking out at an audience that the stage lights made too dark to see. The title was Hiding Behind The Curtains. I flipped the book over. There was no photo of the author. “It’s a theory,” Bakshi said, “that undercuts what Abaroa and the Inevitabilists are saying. It’s a little too poetic in parts but—listen, you ever read Atlas Shrugged?” I said I hadn’t. “Well, anyway, what this guy says is that what if instead of our situation letting us do anything we want, it’s actually the opposite, a test to see how we act when we only think that we’re doomed. I mean what if the women who died in March, what if they’re just—” “Hiding behind the curtains,” I said. He bit his lower lip. “It sounds stupid when you say it like that but, as a metaphor, it has a kind of elegance, right?” I flipped through the book, reading a few sentences at random. It struck me as neo-Christian. “Isn’t this a little too spiritual for you? I thought we were all locked into one path,” I said. “I thought that, too, but lately I’ve been able to do things—things that I didn’t really want to do.” For a second I was concerned. “Nothing bad,” he said. “I mean I’ve felt like I’m locked into doing one thing, say having a drink of water, but I resist and pour myself a glass of orange juice instead.” I shook my head. “It’s hard to explain,” he said. That’s how most theories ended, I thought: reason and evidence up to a crucial point, and then it gets so personal that it’s hard to explain. You either make the jump or you don’t. “Just read it,” he said. “Please read it. You don’t have to agree with it, I just want to get your opinion, an objective opinion.”
I never did read the book, and Bakshi forgot about it, too, but that day he was excited and happy, and those were rare feelings. I was simultaneously glad for him and jealous. Afterwards, we went out onto the balcony and drank Czech beer until morning. When it got cool, we put on our coats. It started to drizzle so we wore blue plastic suits like the ones they used to give you on boat rides in Niagara Falls. When it was time to go home, I was so drunk I couldn’t see straight. I almost got into a fight, the first one of my life, because I bumped into a man on the street and told him to get the fuck out of my way. I don’t remember much more of my walk home. The only reason I remember Behind The Curtains at all is because when I woke up in the afternoon it was the first thing that my hung over brain recognized. It was lying on the floor beside the bed. Then I opened the blinds covering my bedroom window and, through my spread fingers that I’d meant to use as a shield from the first blast of daylight, I saw the pincers for the first time.
They’d appeared while I was asleep. I turned on the television and checked my phone. The media and the internet were feverish, but nobody knew what the thing was, just a massive, vaguely rectangular shape blotting out a strip of the sky. NASA stated that it had received no extraterrestrial messages to coincide with the appearance. Every government claimed ignorance. The panel discussions on television only worsened my headache. Bakshi emailed me links to photos from Mumbai, Cape Town, Sydney and Mexico City, all showing the same shape; or rather one of a pair of shapes, for there were two of them, one on each side of the Earth, and they’d trapped our planet between themselves like gargantuan fingers clutching an equally gargantuan ping-pong ball. That’s why somebody came up with the term “the pincers”. It stuck. Because I’d slept in last night’s clothes I was already dressed, so I ran down the stairs and out of my apartment building to get a better look at them from the parking lot. You’re not supposed to look at the sun, but I wasn’t the only one breaking that rule. There were entire crowds with upturned faces in the streets. If the pincers, too, could see, they would perhaps be as baffled by us as we were of them: billions of tiny specks all over the surface of this ping-pong ball gathering in points on a grid, coagulating into large puddles that vanished overnight only to reassemble in the morning. In the following days, scientists scrambled to study the pincers and their potential effects on us, but they discovered nothing. The pincers did nothing. They emitted nothing, consumed nothing. They simply were. And they could not be measured or detected in any way other than by eyesight. When we shot rays at them, the rays continued on their paths unaffected, as if nothing was there. The pincers did, however, affect the sun’s rays coming towards us. They cut up our days. The sun would rise, travel over the sky, hide behind a pincer—enveloping us in a second night—before revealing itself again as a second day. But if the pincers’ physical effect on us was limited to its blockage of light, their mental effects on us were astoundingly severe. For many, this was the sign they’d been waiting for. It brought hope. It brought gloom. It broke and confirmed ideas that were hard to explain. In their ambiguity, the pincers could be anything, but in their strangeness they at least reassured us of the reality of the strange times in which we were living. Men walked away from the theory of everything, citing the pincers as the ultimate variable that proved the futility of prognostication. Others took up the calculations because if the pincers could appear, what else was out there in our future? However, ambiguity can only last for a certain period. Information narrows possibilities. On April 1, 2026, every Twitter account in the world received the following message:
as you can see this message is longer than the allowed one hundred forty characters time and space are malleable you thought you had one hundred years but prepare for the plucking
The sender was @. The message appeared in each user’s feed at exactly the same time and in his first language, without punctuation. Because of the date most of us thought it was a hoax, but the developers of Twitter denied this vehemently. It wasn’t until a court forced them to reveal their code, which proved that a message of that length and sent by a blank user was impossible, that our doubts ceased. ##!! took bets on what the message meant. Salvador Abaroa broadcast a response into space in a language he called Bodhi Mayan, then addressed the rest of us in English, saying that in the pincers he had identified an all-powerful prehistoric fire deity, described in an old Sanskrit text as having the resemblance of mirrored black fangs, whose appearance signified the end of time. “All of us will burn,” he said, “but paradise shall be known only to those who burn willingly.” Two days later, The Tribe of Akna announced that in one month it would seal Xibalba from the world and set fire to everything and everyone in it. For the first time, its spokesman said, an entire nation would commit suicide as one. Jonestown was but a blip. As a gesture of goodwill, he said that Xibalba was offering free immolation visas to anyone who applied within the next week. The New Inevitability School condemned the plan as “offensively unethical” and inequalitist and urged an international Xibalban boycott. Nothing came of it. When the date arrived, we watched with rapt attention on live streams and from the vantage points of circling news planes as Salvador Abaroa struck flint against steel, creating the spark that caught the char cloth, starting a fire that blossomed bright crimson and in the next weeks consumed all 163,821 square kilometres of the former Republic of Suriname and all 2,500,000 of its estimated Xibalban inhabitants. Despite concerns that the fire would spread beyond Xibalba’s borders, The Tribe of Akna had been careful. There were no accidental casualties and no unplanned property damage. No borders were crossed. Once the fire burned out, reporters competed to be first to capture the mood on the ground. Paramaribo resembled the smouldering darkness of a fire pit.
It was a few days later while sitting on Bakshi’s balcony, looking up at the pincers and rereading a reproduction of @’s message—someone had spray-painted it across the wall of a building opposite Bakshi’s—that I remembered Iris. The memory was so absorbing that I didn’t notice when Bakshi slid open the balcony door and sat down beside me, but I must have been smiling because he said, “I don’t mean this the wrong way, but you look a little loony tonight. Seriously, man, you do not look sufficiently freaked out.” I’d remembered Iris before, swirling elements of her plain face, but now I also remembered her words and her theory. I turned to Bakshi, who seemed to be waiting for an answer to his question, and said, “Let’s get up on the roof of this place.” He grabbed my arm and held on tightly. “I’m not going to jump, if that’s what you mean.” It wasn’t what I meant, but I asked, “why not?” He said, “I don’t know. I know we’re fucked as a species and all that, but I figure if I’m still alive I might as well see what happens next, like in a bad movie you want to see through to the end.” I promised him that I wasn’t going to jump, either. Then I scrambled inside his apartment, grabbed my hat and jacket from the closet by the front door and put them on while speed walking down the hall, toward the fire escape. I realized I’d been spending a lot of time here. The alarm went off as soon I pushed open the door with my hip but I didn’t care. When Bakshi caught up with me, I was already outside, leaping up two stairs at a time. The metal construction was rusted. The treads wobbled. On the roof, the wind nearly blew my hat off and it was so loud I could have screamed and no one would have heard me. Holding my hat in my hands, I crouched and looked out over the twinkling city spread out in front of me. It looked alive in spite of the pincers in the sky. “Let’s do something crazy,” I yelled. Bakshi was still catching his breath behind me. “What, like this isn’t crazy enough?” The NHL may have been gone but my hat still bore the Maple Leafs logo, as quaint and obsolete by then as the Weimar Republic in the summer of 1945. “When’s the last time you played ball hockey?” I asked. Bakshi crouched beside me. “You’re acting weird. And I haven’t played ball hockey in ages.” I stood up so suddenly that Bakshi almost fell over. This time I knew I was smiling. “So call your buddies,” I said. “Tell them to bring their sticks and their gear and to meet us in front of the ACC in one hour.” Bakshi patted me on the back. Toronto shone like jewels scattered over black velvet. “The ACC’s been closed for years, buddy. I think you’re really starting to lose it.” I knew it was closed. “Lose what?” I asked. “It’s closed and we’re going to break in.”
The chains broke apart like shortbread. The electricity worked. The clouds of dust made me sneeze. We used duffel bags to mark out the goals. We raced up and down the stands and bent over, wheezing at imaginary finish lines. We got into the announcer’s booth and called each other cunts through the microphone. We ran, fell and shot rubber pucks for hours. We didn’t keep score. We didn’t worry. “What about the police?” someone asked. The rest of us answered: “Screw the fucking police!”
And when everybody packed up and went home, I stayed behind.
“Are you sure you’re fine?” Bakshi asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Because I have to get back so that I can shower, get changed and get to work.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said.
“And you promise me you’ll catch a cab?”
“I’m not suicidal.”
He fixed his grip on his duffel bag. “I didn’t say you were. I was just checking.”
“I want to see the end of the movie, too,” I said.
He saluted. I watched him leave. When he was gone, my wife walked down from the nosebleeds and took a seat beside me. “There’s someone I want to tell you about,” I said. She lifted her chin like she always does when something unexpected catches her interest, and scooted closer. I put my arm across the back of her beautiful shoulders. She always liked that, even though the position drives me crazy because I tend to talk a lot with my hands. “Stuck at Leafs-Wings snorefest,” she said. “Game sucks but I love the man sitting beside me.” (January 15, 2019. Themes: hockey, love, me. Rating: 5/5). “Her name was Iris,” I said.

Iris

“What if the whole universe was a giant garden—like a hydroponics thing, like how they grow tomatoes and marijuana, so there wouldn’t need to be any soil, all the nutrients would just get injected straight into the seeds or however they do it—or, even better, space itself was the soil, you know how they talk about dark matter being this invisible and mysterious thing that exists out there and we don’t know what it does, if it actually affect anything, gravity…”
She blew a cloud of pot smoke my way that made me cough and probably gave her time to think. She said, “So dark matter is like the soil, and in this space garden of course they don’t grow plants but something else.”
“Galaxies?”
“Eyes.”
“Just eyes, or body parts in general?” I asked.
“Just eyes.”
The music from the party thumped. “But the eyes are our planets, like Mars is an eye, Neptune is an eye, and the Earth is an eye, maybe even the best eye.”
“The best for what? Who’s growing them?”
“God,” she said.
I took the joint from her and took a long drag. “I didn’t know you believed in God.”
“I don’t, I guess—except when I’m on dope. Anyway, you’ve got to understand me because when I say God I don’t mean like the old man with muscles and a beard. This God, the one I’m talking about, it’s more like a one-eyed monster.”
“Like a cyclops?” I asked.
“Yeah, like that, like a cyclops. So it’s growing these eyes in the dark matter in space—I mean right now, you and me, we’re literally sitting on one of these eyes and we’re contributing to its being grown because the nutrients the cyclops God injected into them, that’s us.”
“Why does God need so many extra eyes?”
“It’s not a question of having so many of them, but more about having the right one, like growing the perfect tomato.” I gave her back the joint and leaned back, looking at the stars. “Because every once in a while the cyclops God goes blind, its eye stops working—not in the same way we go blind, because the cyclops God doesn’t see reality in the same way we see reality—but more like we see through our brains and our eyes put together.”
“Like x-ray vision?” I asked.
“No, not like that at all,” she said.
“A glass eye?”
“Glass eyes are fake.”
“OK,” I said, “so maybe try something else. Give me a different angle. Tell me what role we’re playing in all of this because right now it seems that we’re pretty insignificant. I mean, you said we’re nutrients but what’s the difference between, say, Mars and Earth in terms of being eyes?”
She looked over at me. “Are you absolutely sure you want to hear about this?”
“I am,” I said.
“You don’t think it’s stupid?”
“Compared to what?”
“I don’t know, just stupid in general.”
“I don’t.”
“I like you,” she said.
“Because I don’t think you’re stupid?” I asked.
“That’s just a bonus. I mean more that you’re up here with me instead of being down there with everyone, and we’re talking and even though we’re not in love I know somehow we’ll never forget each other for as long as we live.”
“It’s hard to forget being on the surface of a giant floating eyeball.”
“You’re scared that you won’t find anyone to love,” she said suddenly, causing me to nearly choke on my own saliva. “Don’t ask me how I know—I just do. But before I go any further about the cyclops God, I want you to know that you’ll find someone to love and who’ll love you back, and whatever happens you’ll always have that because no one can take away the past.”
“You’re scared of going blind,” I said.
“I am going blind.”
“Not yet.”
“And I’m learning not to be scared because everything I see until that day will always belong to me.”
“The doctors said it would be gradual,” I reminded her.
“That’s horrible.”
“Why?”
“Because you wouldn’t want to find someone to love and then know that every day you wake up the love between you grows dimmer and dimmer, would you?”
“I guess not,” I said.
“Wouldn’t you much rather feel the full strength of that love up to and including in the final second before the world goes black?”
“It would probably be painful to lose it all at once like that.”
“Painful because you actually had something to lose. For me, I know I can’t wish away blindness, but I sure wish that the last image I ever see—in that final second before my world goes black—is the most vivid and beautiful image of all.”
Because I didn’t know what to say to that, I mumbled: “I’m sorry.”
“That I’m going blind?”
“Yeah, and that we can’t grow eyes.”
This time I looked over, and she was the one gazing at the stars. “Before, you asked if we were insignificant,” she said. “But because you’re sorry—that’s kind of why we’re the most significant of all, why Earth is better than the other planets.”
“For the cyclops God?”
“Yes.”
“He cares about my feelings?”
“Not in the way you’re probably thinking, but in a different way that’s exactly what the cyclops God cares about most because that’s what it’s looking for in an eye. All the amazing stuff we’ve ever built, all our ancient civilizations and supercomputers and cities you can see from the Moon—that’s just useless cosmetics to the cyclops God, except in how all of it has made us feel about things that aren’t us.”
“I think you’re talking about morality.”
“I think so, too.”
“So by feeling sorry for you I’m showing compassion, and the cyclops God likes compassion?”
“That’s not totally wrong but it’s a little upside down. We have this black matter garden and these planets the cyclops God has grown as potential eyes to replace its own eye once it stops working, but its own eye is like an eye and a brain mixed together. Wait—” she said.
I waited.
“Imagine a pair of tinted sunglasses.”
I imagined green-tinted ones.
“Now imagine that instead of the lenses being a certain colour, they’re a certain morality, and if you wear the glasses you see the world tinted according to that morality.”
I was kind of able to imagine that. I supposed it would help show who was good and who was bad. “But the eye and the tinted glasses are the same thing in this case.”
“Exactly, there’s no one without the other, and what makes the tint special is us—not that the cyclops God cares at all about individuals any more than we care about individual honey bees. That’s why he’s kind of a monster.”
“Isn’t people’s morality always changing, though?”
“Only up to a point. Green is green even when you have a bunch of shades of it, and a laptop screen still works fine even with a few dead pixels, right? And the more globalized and connected we get, the smoother our morality gets, but if you’re asking more about how our changing morals work when the cyclops God finally comes to take its eye, I assume it has a way to freeze our progress. To cut our roots. Then it makes some kind of final evaluation. If it’s satisfied it takes the planet and sticks it into its eye socket, and if it doesn’t like us then it lets us alone, although because we’re frozen and possibly rootless I suppose we die—maybe that’s what the other planets are, so many of them in space without any sort of life. Cold, rejected eyes.”
From sunglasses to bees to monitors in three metaphors, and now we were back to space. This was getting confusing. The stars twinkled, some of them dead, too: their light still arriving at our eyes from sources that no longer existed. “That’s kind of depressing,” I said to end the silence.
“What about it?”
“Being bees,” I said, “that work for so long at tinting a pair of glasses just so that a cyclops God can try them on.”
“I don’t think it’s any more depressing than being a tomato.”
“I’ve never thought about that.”
“You should. It’s beautiful, like love,” she said. “Because if you think about it, being a tomato and being a person are really quite similar. They’re both about growing and existing for the enjoyment of someone else. As a tomato you’re planted, you grow and mature and then an animal comes along and eats you. The juicier you look and the nicer you smell, the greater the chance that you’ll get plucked but also the more pleasure the animal will get from you. As a person, you’re also born and you grow up and you mature into a one of a kind personality with a one of a kind face, and then someone comes along and makes you fall in love with them and all the growing you did was really just for their enjoyment of your love.”
“Except love lasts longer than chewing a tomato.”
“Sometimes,” she said.
“And you have to admit that two tomatoes can’t eat each other the way two people can love each other mutually.”
“I admit that’s a good point,” she said.
“And what happens to someone who never gets fallen in love with?”
“The same thing that happens to a tomato that never gets eaten or an eye that the cyclops God never takes. They die and they rot, and they darken and harden, decomposing until they don’t look like tomatoes anymore. It’s not a nice fate. I’d rather live awhile and get eaten, to be honest.”
“As a tomato or person?”
“Both.”
I thought for a few seconds. “That explanation works for things on Earth, but nothing actually decomposes in space.”
“That’s why there are so many dead planets,” she said.