by Sean Platt
Someone had opened a hatch on the back of her head and was manipulating her brain like Play-Doh. Someone was punching her right in the coherence, turning thought impossible.
She wished she had an Excedrin. She wished she had Anacin or Motrin. Or perhaps Imitrex. It had been a godsend for migraines, but those wonder drugs had gone the way of the cell phone.
That hand on her brain, muddling her thoughts. It was intolerable. She could barely think.
Then, all of a sudden, Mary Welch couldn’t think at all.
There was only a blank white wall, with nothing beyond it.
Five thousand miles away, on a distant shore that William Kyle had decided might either be Greenland or Newfoundland, cold waves crashed and brought the tang of salt to the air. There were cliffs in the distance, and ever since he’d noticed them a few days ago with new eyes, William had been meaning to take a hike. Before his memory had returned, he’d accepted the cliffs as always having been there — like the ocean and the village and the sandals on his feet. But now he was curious, and it was all so interesting.
For instance: Were the cliffs something like fjords? William could remember neither his history nor geography, but seemed to remember fjords being relevant to something or other. Did these fjords (if they were indeed fjords) provide clues to his whereabouts? Was this Greenland, Newfoundland, somewhere else? Maybe he could find a map. Maps must have survived somewhere. If he could find a map, he might be able to locate an old city. The floods couldn’t have erased everything. Because if not — if they could find ruins — perhaps they could rebuild. Maybe, now that they had their memories back, they could get past this ignorance and back to the business of progress.
William was staring at the cliffs (fjords?) when he began to feel woozy. His sharp focus distorted, balled up like paper meant for the trash. He couldn’t think straight. He had to go home, but didn’t know where that was.
William collapsed and fell flat on his face. Waves lapped his ankles for a while, until scurrying crabs felt safe enough to skitter up to him for their own explorations.
In what had once been empty land not far from Morocco, a man named Khalif and a woman named Suri were looking down at the girl they’d recently believed to be their daughter. Two days ago, they’d spontaneously and completely remembered that in truth she’d been a street urchin in their small town across the old ocean who’d had no relation to them at all. The girl, named Nala, wasn’t even the right race. They both had mocha skin, and Nala’s skin was espresso black. How had they simply accepted her? It didn’t make sense. And yet the family had taken shape so obliviously that sometimes Suri seemed to remember giving birth to Nala, and Khalif raising no objections about her having another man’s child.
They’d been scuttling around the question of what to do now that everyone remembered the truth. Nothing had been said, but the unspoken subject had hovered above the family like a pregnant cloud. In the old world, there’d have been little point in splitting hairs. Nala was almost thirty, and she’d have already built a life of her own away from them. But in the forgetful world they’d so recently left behind, families roomed together for generations.
So did they keep pretending? Did Nala’s twenty-year stay as their false daughter make her their daughter? In words, both would have said yes. But deeper down, both Khalif and Suri felt tricked. This same street urchin had caused them endless mischief in the old world — sufficient that when they’d found themselves on the same vessel in an endless ocean, Khalif had been angry. Then time had passed. At some point, everyone went idiot, and time marched on without a clue.
Now, knowing he’d been staring and thinking too long, Khalif turned away. A moment later, looking curiously bittersweet, Suri turned as well.
Both wanted to turn back for reasons they couldn’t articulate. Neither did.
Everything was different.
It was the last thought any of them had before they collapsed.
Cal Wyclef had opened the small device, prodding at its microscopic guts with a tiny set of screwdrivers he’d found in the horde. The cave was packed with goodies. He’d wondered if he might die when he’d spotted the old rector on the sand and followed her on a whim. He hadn’t even had water. The woman might have had some, but Cal still hung back, feeling desiccated, obeying an instinct that eventually paid off. Liza Knight had seemed all right to him (if a bit corrupt) while his brain had been elsewhere, but back in the Roman Sands days she’d been damn near bloodthirsty. And now she was cavorting with Astrals? He wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen the shuttle pick her up and whisk her into the sky.
But with Liza gone, the cave was a goldmine. He found water in plastic bottles, which Cal drank until he nearly threw up. And with his thirst sated, he found endless delights to suit his engineer’s mind. Stepping into the cave was like stepping back in time — which, ironically, was also a lot like stepping vastly forward. The futuristic gadgets from his youth were here. Almost all were long dead, but he’d found a few that still lit up with a solar charge. A few that took him back, and made his ingenious mind crackle with promise.
There were smartphones, like the one he was tinkering in now. There was basically no chance he’d get the thing working with the tools at his disposal (or without a power grid at the ready), but there were many phones in the cave — plenty to experiment with.
There were conventional radios, including a few hand-cranked ones like the survivalists bought for the day when power went offline. Not that there’d be anything on-air, but maybe Cal could build a set of walkie-talkies — maybe even climb the metal structure he’d noticed yesterday for the first time, which might be an old cellular tower — and plant a fabricated beacon.
There were books. Paper books, which didn’t require batteries. There were also, interestingly, a lot of personal journals that someone had snatched away and spirited off to this archive of the past. Cal had read one already. It was fascinating. At the start, it was a time capsule of old-world memories. Then, the Forgetting had come. By the final pages, musings on which boys might like her in Ember Flats had turned into treatises on the hardiness of her father’s bean crop. It was like the author had become blind, unable to turn back a few pages and read through the lies.
He could use what was here. Boy, could he use it. Progress would be slow, but there must be other caches like this around the world and other people like Cal. They could dig in. Discover the past. Rebuild.
Of course they could.
Cal watched the small circuit board in the phone, trying to concentrate.
He was focusing so intently that he didn’t notice when his hands gave out and his body relaxed all at once, his thoughts turning empty.
On the surface, in a village not far from The Clearing, Mary Welch woke on the floor of her hut. She blinked. How had she ended up down here?
She shook the thought away and stood, taking the nearby broom, remembering that she’d been sweeping. And she swept.
Five thousand miles away, on a distant shore that William Kyle no longer thought might be Greenland or Newfoundland, cold waves rolled across his ankles and brought the tang of salt to the air. He sat up, and a contingent of crabs scattered. He watched them go, looking around for his trap. He must have come to trap crabs — there was no other reason for lounging.
As he looked for the trap he hadn’t apparently brought to catch the runaway crabs, his eyes fell on the distant cliffs.
But they meant nothing to William, so he paid them no mind.
In what had once been empty land not far from Morocco, Khalif and Suri stood from the floor, blinking away a curious fainting spell. As they did, a third form caught their eyes. Suri reacted first, but Khalif wasn’t far behind.
“Nala! Are you all right?”
But their daughter was fine. She blinked as they had, just as curiously felled, and just as unharmed.
Cal Wyclef looked around himself, suddenly afraid. He didn’t know this place, but he’d heard of it. Among th
e people, it was known as the Devil’s Hole. He didn’t remember coming here, nor did he want to be here anymore. So he set aside his revulsion at what he had to assume were the Devil’s belongings — strange objects that glittered and sparkled, piled in droves — and forced himself to turn and find the exit, waiting for some unseen trap to spring.
Only once outside in the fresh air did Cal feel slightly better. Still he turned back and saw the cave’s entrance yawning like a toothy mouth, forcing himself to remain cool and calm as he fled.
He walked off into the sand.
Five minutes later, he forgot the cave, and never thought of it again.
One by one, the lights of knowledge extinguished. Seen from above — if experience were like a light that grew brighter — Earth’s landscape would have gone dark, blink by blink.
It didn’t take long.
And this time, even the Lightborn couldn’t remember.
CHAPTER 69
Piper was wrong. Kindred wasn’t dead after all.
At least, that’s what she thought when he came up to her, scurrying down to all fours like an animal, crossing the all-white space to her. She’d somehow fallen without remembering her tumble. She also didn’t recall this room. Or the blonde behind Kindred.
“Piper,” Kindred said.
Except that he was holding her face in his hands. In both of his hands.
It was Meyer.
She watched him for a moment. Too long. She’d already registered others in her peripheral vision: Clara, Logan, and Kamal. Clara and Logan were gripping each other like survivors of a bomb. Kamal was off by himself, seeming lost.
But the room was dead quiet, as if waiting.
The moment broke, and Meyer pulled Piper against him. His hug was urgent, almost suffocating. His kisses were even more so, but smothering only until Piper’s paralysis snapped and she gripped his arms to kiss him back.
They separated, aware of all eyes upon them.
“You’re alive,” she said.
“Couldn’t you feel me?”
“You went dark. None of us could feel you at the end.”
Meyer’s mouth didn’t reply, but his eyes did: You went dark for me, too.
“Kindred?” he said. “Stranger?”
Piper couldn’t make words. She pursed her lips and tried to shake her head. Tears came. For Stranger, for Kindred, for Lila, for Trevor — for everyone they’d lost along the way. The emotional flood was a shattered dam. She couldn’t contain it; she could only grip Meyer’s arms and try to endure. He held her, and slowly the sensation passed. Piper found she could breathe, her diaphragm still causing her lungs to hitch with aftershocks.
“It’s okay, Piper. They did it. They saved us.”
“How?”
Meyer looked at the blonde. Another prisoner? Piper had never seen her before. Unless she had, a very, very long time ago. He turned back to Piper. “You opened the Ark. But they opened it the rest of the way.”
“Cameron didn’t need it opened the rest of the way,” Piper said.
“The Astrals did that part last time. This time, we did.”
Piper’s face fell. The reality of his words seemed to slot into place. But she couldn’t ask that question. Not yet.
Meyer turned to the blonde again. Piper saw a tiny hesitation on his face, but it wasn’t shameful. The woman was stunning, thirty years old at most, wrapped in a dress that almost looked painted on. She was exactly his type, and Piper wouldn’t put it past Meyer to still bed a much younger woman. But this look wasn’t that. The two shared a secret, but as they sidestepped it, Meyer saw protection, not concealment. Perhaps time would reveal that secret, but Piper was content not to know it for now.
“Piper, this is Melanie.”
Feeling absurd, Piper shook the woman’s hand. She had no idea how they’d come to this place. Had she been transported while unconscious? The last thing she remembered was the ship, and the Ark.
Meyer made the remaining introductions. Clara eyed the woman. Almost suspicious.
“Melanie, is it?” Clara said.
The woman made a little face. Clara didn’t shake her hand. Their introduction ended on a note of neutrality.
“Where are we?” Piper asked. “Is this … Are we on the ship?”
“I think they sent you away. They knew that what they did to the Ark might harm you. Or at least …”
“At least what?” Piper prompted when Meyer trailed off.
“Or at least make us forget,” Clara said.
All heads turned to Clara.
Clara looked at the blonde, at her grandfather, and then at Piper. The room was graveyard silent until Clara said, “It’s what you think, Piper. Kindred and Stranger and Grandpa started it all over, and they sent us here so we wouldn’t be affected.”
Piper looked around the circle of faces. All were looking right at her, as if she were this thing’s center of attention, and everything hinged on Piper reaching the proper conclusions.
“The Forgetting,” Piper said. “It’s happened, hasn’t it?”
Meyer shook his head.
“Not the Forgetting.” His eyes ticked to the woman. “What we started, all over again, was Judgment.”
CHAPTER 70
Divinity waited, sitting in her chair. She had her knees together and her elbows on the chair’s arms, her hands loosely open on their ends, palms up. She’d repeatedly seen the posture in human dramas. It was the way you put a body when you were readying it for inspiration from a higher power. The way yogis sat while harnessing their chi.
It bothered Divinity that she was thinking about inspiration from a higher power and yogis and chi while waiting for Canned Heat to cleanse her (human constructs, even if appropriately themed), but until she was reintegrated, she had this body, and its sense of brain and mind. Soon she’d no longer need the body — ironically, the same as yogis thought they’d no longer need theirs one day — and she’d return to her true form. Would it feel like being sucked out from behind, leaving her old body as a limp and lifeless shell? Perhaps. And as she meditated and waited, that thought made her sad. But all things (so said the yogis) were for a time.
But nothing came.
Divinity could no longer feel the collective — all she had were the thoughts inside this limited body’s tiny brain. Canned Heat had to sever the connection to cleanse it, the same way a filter had to be removed from a device before being blown clean. Now she had to wait for the connection to return, and be content with what little she had in the meantime.
But eventually being zen became boring, so Divinity opened her eyes. And saw a bunch of idiot-faced Titans staring at her in a circle.
“Jesus Christ! You scared me!”
The Titans traded glances. Whether they were wondering about her fear or the exclamation to a human deity, Divinity didn’t know. And it was annoying not to. What were the Titans thinking? Because they were thinking and would be for a while longer, same as she was.
She shooed them away. They parted like an adoring throng as Divinity sat, then walked to the console. She tapped at it, taking a long moment to make sense of what she was seeing. She’d grown used to the surrogate’s senses, but not to monitoring ship’s statuses through a visual readout. That information had always been inside her, accessible with a thought. But for a bit, she’d need to check things with her eyes, the same as how video and audio had been the only way to speak to Eternity from inside Meyer’s cell.
“Where is the virus?” she asked the Titans.
They pointed at a display.
Annoyed, Divinity walked forward to look where it was pointing. Obviously Titans didn’t speak. Hell, normally, neither did Divinity and Eternity. But she still found it vexing that when she asked a question without her connection to the collective, she couldn’t get a straight answer.
Divinity looked at the display and saw something confounding. She kept scanning, exhaling, trying to be patient, waiting for her limited brain to figure it all out.
Then Divinity realized that she already had.
This didn’t fail to make sense because her brain hadn’t cottoned onto it; this didn’t make sense because it just plain didn’t make sense.
“What’s wrong with this panel?” Divinity demanded. “Is it offline because the collective is still offline?”
The Titans looked at one another, mute.
“Is this time index right? Because it can’t be. Where is the stream flow report? Because this sure as hell isn’t it.”
One of the Titans, proving supreme adaptability to humanity’s quirks, shrugged and made a quizzical face.
Divinity’s jaw clenched.
According to the readout, the cycle had finished, and there was no Canned Heat left in the system at all.
CHAPTER 71
Melanie held her mental grip, waiting.
She could see the collective’s restart (thanks to her surrogate brain’s penchant for visualizations) as a giant red button she’d need only to push. She could sense the archive at the back of that quiescent and cleansed collective, now empty. To her visual mind, it looked like a mesh of cool blue lines dotted with nodes waiting to be relit. And vaguely, in the distance (more through Clara than the emptied archive, she imagined) Melanie could sense the human network — dormant now, as if asleep.
