Departure

by A. G. Riddle

  “Museum?”

  “It’s called Titan Hall.”

  THE MARCH TO TITAN HALL feels endless. In reality, it’s only four blocks from my flat.

  Sabrina and Yul lead the way, with Grayson alone in the middle, and Nick and me bringing up the rear.

  We’re silent for our own safety, but I have the sense that everyone is deep in thought, contemplating this strange, deserted London of the future—waiting for answers, for the final shoe to drop.

  With each passing block, with each empty street, hope that we’ll find help slips away. This is my city and my neighborhood, and I feel their emptiness keenly, but I don’t think I’m the only one affected. The vacant alleys, looted stores, crumbling office buildings, and abandoned residential towers all confirm the truth that every one of us is fearing but no one has yet stated:

  London is empty—there’s no help for us to find here.

  Finally, we turn a corner and Titan Hall comes into view. It occupies an entire city block, most of it green space. What must have once been a splendid park is now overgrown; it feels like a nexus for nature’s reclamation of London, the point of origin for weeds, vines, and trees that are slowly burying the last evidence of man’s existence.

  In the middle of the park sits a simple stone and timber building, barely visible through the lush overgrowth in the dim moonlight. The hall’s modest size and simplicity, in sharp contrast to the crowded, overbuilt London around it, actually makes it far more striking. The effect likely didn’t come cheap. I know this block; it used to be occupied by office buildings and large homes, any one of which would have cost a fortune.

  And now they’re all gone, replaced by this small, single structure.

  We trek through the overgrown park, climbing over fallen trees and scrambling through tangled vegetation. At the hall, Nick pushes the wooden double doors open, revealing a small reception area with a raised desk. We wander past the reception desk into a wide room with twelve doors. It reminds me of the loading zone for an amusement park ride. This must be where visitors queued up.

  To my surprise, lighted green arrows flash on the floor, pointing us to the first door.

  “Must be solar-powered, like Stonehenge,” says Nick.

  Right, like Stonehenge. I’d love to hear that story at some point.

  The five of us follow the arrows into a room that’s far bigger than I expected, its floor dark stone. It’s empty, as far as I can see, but from the room’s shadowy perimeter we hear footsteps, faint at first, then louder, heels clapping on the stone floor.

  Nick and Grayson draw their guns and form up in front of Sabrina, Yul, and me, positioning themselves to greet whoever’s approaching. We’ve become a paranoid bunch, for good reason.

  The figure that emerges from the darkness seems unconcerned by the guns. She’s dressed in timeless formality: a simple black dress, a single strand of pearls. Her hair’s shoulder length, about the same as mine, and silvery gray. Her face is lean, lightly lined; I would guess she’s in her sixties.

  She stares at the five of us, unflinching. “Hello. I’m Harper Lane.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Nick

  BESIDE ME STANDS THE THIRTY-YEAR-OLD HARPER, LOOKING AGHAST at a version of herself that’s perhaps double her age, though it’s hard to tell—she’s aged quite well, I think. Future Harper has no reaction to us, which, given the two guns drawn and pointed at her, is the first sign that something is very wrong.

  Before anyone can get a word out, she continues, “I’m the curator of Titan Hall and official biographer for the Titan Foundation. I want to welcome you to the first part of this tour, which will take you on a journey through the history of the Titan Foundation, from its creation to the release of the first four Titan Marvels, and how they changed civilization forever. After this brief introduction, you’ll have a chance to explore Titan history in depth, selecting the topics that interest you the most. So prepare yourself to go into the origins of the Titan Foundation, the organization that has given us all so much.”

  I step forward, extend my hand, and run it through Future Harper: she’s a projection. This revelation seems to do nothing for Harper, who’s frozen in shock. It’s not just the projection. The journals from her flat disturbed her deeply. Seeing her city like this, learning what became of her life, and now, seeing her future self, standing here in faux living color, talking—it would be a lot for anyone to process. But it’s not just that. I think it’s the contrast between her and her future self that’s rattled her. The first thing I noticed about the Harper Lane I met was the playful vibrancy in her eyes. It’s captivating—but in the future Harper Lane, it’s gone. The eyes of this formally dressed tour guide are devoid of life and passion, and I don’t think it’s just because this is the umpteenth take. She’s changed, fundamentally. I don’t blame Harper for being shaken. I’d love to let her take ten, process this, but we don’t have the luxury. We need answers. If we don’t start unraveling what’s going on here and where we can get help, we won’t last much longer.

  Around us, the empty stone room morphs into a wood-paneled study, its tall windows looking out on New York’s Central Park. Harper seems to recognize it, and so does Grayson, who steps forward, his eyes wide.

  An older man sits at a table by the window, speaking to a woman in her thirties who looks like a bad knock-off of Harper—not as pretty, and without the aforementioned sparkle in her eyes.

  Future Harper drifts closer to the man and woman sitting by the window.

  “In 2015 I had a fateful meeting with a billionaire named Oliver Norton Shaw, who asked me to write his biography. Shaw wanted to tell his story to the world, but that wasn’t his true motive. He wanted to issue a call to arms to the world’s elite, a challenge to the bright, the powerful, and the wealthy—the individuals who, he believed, could change the course of history if they worked together.

  “In our first meeting Shaw outlined his vision for a new force for good, a group he called the Titans. Shaw believed the Titans could work to effect change on a global scale, change that would eventually end hunger and poverty, achieve world peace, and bring education and opportunity to every corner of the globe. There was one problem, though: Shaw wasn’t exactly sure how to accomplish these ambitious goals. That was about to change, though. Only days after I first met Shaw, he sat down with Nicholas Stone, the man who would become Shaw’s cofounder of the Titan Foundation. Here’s Titan Stone in his own words.”

  Future Harper walks away from the table, and the couple slips out of view. Seated in a high-backed leather chair on the other side of the study is . . . me. I’m in my sixties, I would guess. My short hair is about the same length, though the black has mostly turned gray.

  Okay, Harper, I get it now. This is bizarre. Surreal with a side of nausea. I dread what this guy will say, what he might reveal. But . . . I wonder if it might also reveal the key to our survival here.

  “When Oliver Norton Shaw approached me about the Titan Foundation, I was at a crossroads, personally and professionally. I was lost and . . . very, very unhappy with my life, and I couldn’t figure out why. I made a lot of money in my late twenties, very quickly. Back then, I always felt it was a stroke of luck, that I’d just been in the right place at the right time. I had this insatiable hunger to prove to myself that I was worthy of the success I had experienced, that I’d accomplished it, not just fate, or the fickle hand of the universe, intervening on my behalf. I was pressing myself harder and harder, taking more risks, setting bigger goals, and accomplishing more and more. I was also growing unhappier with each passing year. It was like I was sinking into a well, drowning and dying of thirst at the same time. I was miserable, lost.”

  Humiliating. Worse than peeing yourself on the first day of school. I have to stand here while this jerk pours out the feelings I haven’t told a soul—not my mother, sister, or closest friends—rattling my secrets off with a smug smile on his face, like he’s proud of it.

  I glanc
e over at Harper. She’s staring directly at me, not the Future Me droning on. Against my will, I shrug slightly and let a sad smirk cross my face. She walks closer, and I think she’s going to reach for my hand, but she simply stands there, shoulder to shoulder with me, almost touching.

  Now Future Me’s voice shifts, from reflective, sentimental sap to inspiring visionary. This should be good.

  “The Titan Foundation gave me what I sorely needed: a cause greater than myself. It saved me. It was a true opportunity to build something that will do good long after I’m gone. That’s what the Titan Foundation is to me: a beacon that will guide humanity into eternity. We knew we were building something special when it began, but at the time Oliver and I thought we were just putting together a small group of really important people who could target big, global objectives, tasks larger than national governments or major nonprofits could tackle. Luckily we were wrong about the scale of our impact.”

  The study, along with Future Me, fades away, returning us to the stone-floored room, which seems to have no beginning or end.

  “The rest, as they say, is history,” Future Harper says. “In late 2015 Mr. Stone pooled his personal fortune with Mr. Shaw’s, and they made several fateful investments. The first was in a completely unknown start-up called Q-net, which would go on to revolutionize the Internet. The second, Podway, was a mass-transit start-up that had purchased the patents of a failed mining company. The third, Orbital Dynamics, had a big dream: to launch humanity’s first permanent settlement in space, a city in the shape of a ring orbiting Earth. In the years that followed the launch of the Titan Foundation, Shaw and Stone focused all their energy on these three companies, working in private. Publicly, the Titan Foundation was judged an overhyped failure. Behind closed doors, however, they were making progress on the first three Titan Marvels—and attracting powerful devotees, wealthy and powerful individuals who would become Titans and join with Stone and Shaw to make their visions a reality.

  “The world stood in awe when Q-net launched, providing instantaneous data connectivity around the world. The Titans provided access to quantum network patents to anyone willing to build chips, and in the years that followed, superfast free Internet around the globe became ubiquitous.

  “The Titans weren’t through knitting the world together. They next set their sight on moving people, not data. The Podway first united Europe, then Asia, and finally the rest of the world, enabling safe, convenient, cost-effective mass transit. The Titans were shrinking our world, and their next marvel would bring us closer together in a way no one imagined.”

  Small white dots fade into the room’s black background, and a view of Earth from space rises from the floor, giving us the sensation we’re walking through the sky high above. A ring-shaped space station hangs in the distance.

  “For years the world watched the night sky as Orbital Dynamics’ first twinkling ring formed. To the world, Titan Alpha was something we hadn’t had in a very long time: a shared dream, an audacious goal that tested humanity’s collective ability and intellect. We stared up at the stars, for the first time seeing them as not a mystery but a destination within grasp. We had a new land to conquer, to colonize, and the people of the world, from every nation and race, united, rising to the challenge.”

  The space station fades, and we’re once again on Earth, standing on a sandy beach. A massive dam, larger than any I’ve ever seen, stretches out before us. It must be a thousand feet high, and miles long. At the far end of the dam a green mountain range rises. To our right, on this end, a gray-white cliff juts above, throwing its long shadow across the breathtaking structure. In the center of the dam, five towers rise. I focus, not believing my eyes. The towers are shaped . . . like the fingers of a hand. They curl slightly toward the dam, a giant’s hand of glass and steel, reaching up out of the concrete monstrosity. About halfway down the concrete dam a waterfall spills forth, looking puny in proportion to the dam. The foamy water falls hundreds of feet to the basin below, which is perhaps a few miles wide. A river snakes out of the left-hand side, winding through the rocky green and brown basin. The sound of the waterfall is hypnotic, and for a moment I almost forget where I am. The projection is that good.

  “The final Titan investment wasn’t in a company at all. The Gibraltar Project was the Titans’ most ambitious initiative to date, and the largest construction project in history. At the time their plan seemed laughable: to build a dam across the Strait of Gibraltar and drain the Mediterranean Sea, leaving only a river through a vast, fertile new land that joined Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. The technical hurdles were unimaginable, but as Titan Stone says, the greatest hurdle wasn’t technical at all: it was political.”

  Future Me and Future Harper walk into the scene, making tracks on the beach. My future self stands next to her, a mirror of the Harper and me standing here in this time. The dam looms behind them, and the wind tugs at the loose strands of her hair.

  I feel a little nervous as Future Me begins to speak.

  “In the early years of the foundation, the Gibraltar Project was really a stretch goal. It was the marvel Oliver and I talked about the least, something we saw, frankly, as almost too grandiose. And to some extent it was outside our wheelhouse at the time. My background was in technology, Internet start-ups in particular, so the first Titan Marvel, Q-net, was really familiar to me. Podway showed us that we could build something in the physical world on a grand scale, but I think the launch of the first orbital colony really gave us the confidence to get serious about Gibraltar. By that time we were hungry to do something really big, on a scale that would top our first three acts. Gibraltar was about the only thing left.

  “No public works project of this magnitude had ever been attempted. We studied the Panama Canal and the Three Gorges Dam, both the technology and the politics involved. And year after year, Oliver and I kept hammering away at the project, twisting arms. We made a decision halfway through that we were going to start talking about the project as though it was already happening. We called the nation we’d create Atlantis; its capital, which we put right in the middle, just outside Malta, would be Olympus. Our idea was to tie in to mythology, the stories people have been hearing for centuries, to make it seem more real. Life imitates art, I suppose.

  “We had these artists’ renderings of the dam, and we had them do some of the new capital city. We brought them to every meeting, and slowly the pieces started falling in place. We got lucky—a lot. It felt like fate. The nations along the Mediterranean shouted us out of the room at our first meeting. I mean, they saw their entire way of life—everything from fishing to tourism—disappearing. But over the years, as the economies of Spain, Italy, and Greece weakened, they actually became the project’s biggest supporters. They saw in Atlantis what we saw: the opportunity to gain a new, prosperous neighbor on their southern border, and jobs, almost limitless jobs, in the construction process. For Germany and northern Europe, where the standard of living and birth rates had stagnated, here was something they had sought for a long time: new land, close by, with a great climate. My father was a career diplomat, and I had always stayed out of politics, but in the Gibraltar Project I found the chance to join my business experience with all the diplomatic knowledge I had absorbed as a child.

  “With the political buy-in, things turned to technical challenges, questions like rising sea levels, alteration of ocean currents and weather patterns, and a desalinization process that was actually effective. With each solution, we were actually tackling much larger global problems that humanity would have had to solve sooner or later anyway. For us, the creation of Atlantis really demonstrated what the foundation was capable of, but also what the human race, working together, could accomplish. Atlantis was proof positive that we could change the face of the Earth—literally.”

  The future version of me fades away along with the sandy beach and dam, and Future Harper once again stands in the empty stone-floored room with us.

  “At the
opening of Atlantis, the Titans had one more surprise, one final marvel that had been kept from the world. It was a revelation no one saw coming, an unparalleled achievement. Follow the green arrows into the interactive portion of the tour to learn about the opening of Atlantis and the final Titan Marvel, as well as hundreds of other topics.”

  The green arrows light the floor, directing us through an archway ahead.

  Future Harper slowly fades away, and the room shrinks until we’re standing in a square space about fifteen by fifteen feet. Frosted glass panels line the sides, ceiling, and floor, the only break in them dead ahead, where a panel stands open, revealing another room with similar panels.

  Grayson and Harper are the first into the next room, which is roughly the same size as the first. The panels here appear to be giant touch screens. They display a list of topics, some highlighted with pictures. Only a few panels are operational, however. Most are cracked, covered in spidery white lines and spray-painted black block letters: TITANS KILLED US ALL.

  We spread out in the room, scanning the panels.

  Harper taps a link labeled MUSEUM STAFF, then HARPER LANE.

  The panel changes to a page with a photo of Harper at a glass-topped desk and a lengthy write-up below. My eyes don’t get past the title and subtitle:

  HARPER LANE

  1982–2071

  She was eighty-nine.

  Beside me, Grayson is working the panel to the left, headed THE GRAYSON SHAW AFFAIR. I can’t help but scan it. The article details his self-destructive life and how he came to be the public voice of opposition to the Titan initiatives, arguing that his father and the Titans were desperate for fame and attention. The irony.

  At the bottom, a little note says that Grayson Shaw hasn’t appeared publicly in several years. There have been rumors that he’s undergoing late-stage treatment for irreversible cirrhosis of the liver.