Eschaton — Season One
Kieran Marcus
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The Eschaton Cycle
SEASON ONE
1.1 The Burst
1.2 Dixon Can Do
1.3 Meitner2
1.4 The Decider
1.5 Perfect Victim
1.6 Cosmo
1.7 Exodus
1.8 Evac
1.9 Tetra
1.10 Pale Yellow Dot
Table of Contents
Title Page
1.1 The Burst
1.2 Dixon Can Do
1.3 Meitner²
1.4 The Decider
1.5 Perfect Victim
1.6 Cosmo
1.7 Exodus
1.8 Evac
1.9 Tetra
1.10 Pale Yellow Dot
About the Author
Copyright Page
1.1 The Burst
OAK HILL, MASSACHUSETTS – MAY 28, 2079
Huddled in the reassuring comfort of a fleece blanket, Harrison was reclining in his lawn chair and looking at the stars when they suddenly disappeared, all of them at once, leaving behind nothing but eerie darkness.
“Oh no!” he said. “I’m blind!”
Standing behind him and covering his eyes with her left hand, Abby whispered in his ear, “Open up.”
“Honey, your hand is so cold. Are you all right?”
“My hands are always cold,” Abby replied. “Open your mouth.”
“Are you sure, honey? Your fingers are like icicles. Might be something wrong with your blood circulation. You want me to get my sphygmo…?”
“I want you to shut up! My blood is fine, except it’s close to boiling right now because you’re not doing as you’re told. Now shut up and open your mouth.”
“Wait,” Harrison said. “I’m confused. Do you want me to shut it or open it?”
“Listen, buster,” Abby hissed in his ear, “if you don’t want to get strangled by a pair of ice-cold hands you better stop messing about. Now be a good boy and open your mouth!”
“Yes, ma’am,” Harrison said dutifully and opened his mouth. A moment later he felt a warm kiss on his cheek and the sensation of an object the size of a small cherry on his tongue. As he bit into it, he tasted sweet but slightly acidic juice. Harrison turned around and first looked at Abby, then at the plate full of grapes she had placed next to the electric candle on the small table between their lawn chairs.
“Where the hell did you get grapes this time of the year? They must have cost a fortune!”
Abby smiled and sat down in her chair, picking a grape from the plate and popping it in her mouth.
“They’re Australian. I got them from Val.”
“Val?” Harrison frowned and picked another grape from the lavish cluster. “Why would your sister … oh wait a minute! Are we eating stolen goods?”
“Hank brought them home from the airport the other day, a whole crate of them.”
Harrison sighed and popped the grape in his mouth. “That is so illegal.”
Abby shrugged. “That’s Hank’s problem, not mine. Officially, I have no idea where these grapes came from. My sister gave them to me, that’s all I know. Can’t sue me for that.”
“Except unofficially you know very well that your Border Patrol brother-in-law basically stole them from some poor holidaymaker.”
He had another grape.
“If they can go on vacation to Australia, they’re probably not all that poor,” Abby said. “Besides, confiscating illegal goods is not stealing. It’s upholding the law.”
“Confiscating so-called illegal goods is legalized theft, and it’s a symptom of everything that’s wrong with this country.”
Abby sighed. “Here we go again.”
Harrison ignored her. He knew Abby didn’t like his tendency to preach, but he couldn’t help it.
“Border security used to look for drugs, or weapons and explosives. Now they’re looking for grapes and honey because we’re in a fucking trade war with half the world, and the food we are allowed to eat has become a matter of national security. I’m not sure if that was the original intention of Homeland Security. The purpose of all these laws used to be to protect us. Now all they do is protect us from getting a decent price at the supermarket.”
Abby shrugged. “But everyone’s doing it. Those grapes would have been destroyed if Hank hadn’t brought them home. I don’t see what good that would have done.”
“That is exactly the problem,” Harrison said. “Everyone’s doing it. Literally. We have fifty million people working in law enforcement now. That’s ten percent of the population. Ten percent! America has become a police state. Virtually every single citizen has a close friend or relative working in law enforcement and is trying to take advantage of it. It’s a complete perversion of the course of justice, and nobody cares because everyone wants cheap grapes.”
“Why don’t you go and talk to your president about it then?”
“He’s not my president. I didn’t even vote for the guy. He’s my patient, that’s all. And it’s difficult enough to make him take his medicine and stay away from bacon and eggs. Do you really think he’s going to give a damn about my political advice?”
“Whatever,” Abby said. “If you don’t want those grapes …”
She pulled the plate over to her side of the table.
“Don’t you dare,” Harrison said as he reached across the table and pulled the plate back. “You see, what these people either don’t understand or simply don’t care about is that by looking out for their own friends and relatives they’re effectively betraying all the rest of us. Do you know what it’s called when the white blood cells in your body that are supposed to protect you become too many and start turning on you instead?”
“Yes, darling, I know.”
“It’s called leukemia. Cancer. And it’s usually lethal.”
“Darling, I said I know.”
“Well, I’m just saying.” Harrison had another grape. “Damn, these are good.”
Abby laughed out loud. “You are such a hypocrite.”
“At least I’m a hypocrite with a conscience,” Harrison said and winked.
“I’ll drink to that.” Abby picked up the bottle of wine and refilled Harrison’s glass before emptying the bottle into her own.
“So how’s Val?” Harrison asked and took a sip of wine.
“Ugh!” Abby said and slumped back in her chair. “Don’t ask. She’s a mess. They went to Popponesset the other week to visit Mom. They had planned to stay the whole week but left after two days.”
“What happened?” Harrison wasn’t sure if he really wanted to know, but it seemed rude not to ask.
“What do you think? My stubborn sister locked horns with my stubborn mother is what happened. Val and Hank tried to talk her into leaving the island. Again.”
“Oh dear,” Harrison said. “That topic never goes down well with your mother.”
Abby sighed. “I know. And who could blame her? She’s spent her entire life on Popponesset, so of course she doesn’t like the idea of leaving everything she has ever known behind just like that.”
“Well, it wouldn’t be ‘just like that,’ would it? It’s not like they want her to leave on a whim. If the ocean keeps making itself comfortable in your living room year after year, you can’t just sit there and do nothing.”
“She’s not doing nothing,” Abby said. “She’s planning to move into the Hendersons’ old house. It’s been empty since they left back in ’73,
and it lies some six feet higher. Anyway, that’s what Val got so upset about. She thinks it’s a stupid idea.”
“Now here’s something I never thought I’d say, but I agree with your sister.”
“Do you now?”
Harrison nodded. “Six feet is nothing. Have you seen that report on the runaway greenhouse effect on the Science Channel? Even if we cut all our carbon emissions to zero by tomorrow, the oceans will continue to rise for at least another fifty years. Everyone knows that. Everyone knew that seventy years ago when your mother was still a toddler, but people just kept ignoring it until it was too late. Your mother is still ignoring it today. You can only move around the island for so long before it’s gone for good. A couple of years ago I would have said it’s probably not going to happen in my lifetime. Now it’s likely to happen in your mother’s. She’s a tough cookie, your mother. She might well have another twenty years ahead of her. But she’s already moved house three times in the last ten years. Where’s it gonna end? I’ll tell you where: it’s gonna end on the bottom of the ocean, formerly known as the peak of Popponesset island.”
Abby nodded. “I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes, I do. I hear you, and I agree with almost everything you say.”
“But?”
“But?”
“Yes, but. You agree with everything I just said, but you’re not gonna do anything about it, is that it?”
“Well, what am I supposed to do in your opinion?”
Harrison shrugged. “I don’t know, talk some sense into your mother?”
Abby laughed, and Harrison realized how silly his suggestion must have sounded.
“All right, all right,” Harrison said. “That was a stupid thing to say. We all know it’s impossible to talk sense into your mother. Or any female member of your family, for that matter.”
“Excuse me?!” Abby shot him an angry look, but the twinkle in her eyes told Harrison that she was just pretending.
“What’s with the outrage?” he asked. “Is it because you’re not receptive to reason or because I likened you to your mother and sister?”
“It’s rude either way!”
“Is it now? Remember that beautiful big old scarlet oak in front of your parents’ first house on Popponesset?”
“How could I ever forget?” Abby smiled and looked skywards. “It’s where we first kissed, on a night much like this, twinkling stars and all.”
“It’s also where we promised to always—always—be completely honest with each other.”
Abby snorted. “I didn’t mean it! I was young and stupid and in love, I said a whole bunch of sentimental crap.”
“Now that is a rude thing to say.”
“I didn’t mean that either, darling.” Abby looked at Harrison and smiled apologetically, but now it was his turn to pout.
“Oh come here, you!” He reached across the table, but instead of taking Abby’s hand, he grabbed her glass of wine and looked at it tenderly. “You’re the only one who ever really understood me,” he said and took a big gulp.
Abby laughed, and Harrison winked at her as he put the glass back on the table.
“Seriously, though,” Abby said, “you know my mother. If her mind is set on something, it is set. You know that. I know that. Val knows that. So there are only two lines of action here. I can either keep trying to talk Mom into something I know will never happen, aggravate her in the process, and get upset with her and her stubbornness, or I can just treat her like the adult she is and let her do what she thinks is right for her. Mom is seventy-five now, and even though she’s still in pretty good shape both physically and mentally, she might—heaven forbid—have a heart attack tomorrow and die. Of course I’d love for her to leave the island and move somewhere where she’d be closer to people who can look after her and take care of her in an emergency, but I know it’s not gonna happen. So why should I waste the little time she has left bickering and arguing with her and aggravating her—and myself—in the process? I mean, we’ve always had our differences, and our relationship has been rocky at times, but I love her and she has always loved me. I simply don’t want her to spend the rest of her life being mad at me for trying to tell her what to do. You know what I mean?”
“I do,” Harrison said.
“I even told Val that. I said, ‘You know Mom is seventy-five. You know she ain’t gonna live forever. Do you really want to take the risk that the last time you meet her, you part in anger? Do you really want to take the risk that if something happens to Mom, you know, a heart attack, an accident or whatever, she will be too proud to pick up the phone because the last time you spoke with her you were fighting over something?’”
“So what did she say?”
“What do you think?” Abby sniggered. “She completely missed the point and got mad at me for even insinuating that our seventy-five-year-old mother might actually die one day. ‘How can you say that?’ she said to me as if I was somehow jinxing it and Mom was about to drop dead right away because of something I said two hundred miles away.”
Harrison chuckled.
“But that’s exactly what Val’s problem is,” Abby continued. “She adamantly refuses to acknowledge things that are inevitably going to happen, particularly death. She thinks talking about the future death of living persons is akin to prematurely making arrangements for their funeral and preparing for a life without them. In her opinion that’s irreverent and will turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy: if you think or speak about death in connection with a living person and that person happens to actually die—ever—then you’re at least partially responsible for their death.”
“That doesn’t even make any sense,” Harrison said, shaking his head.
“Well, it does to Val.”
“Did she actually say that to you?”
“Sort of,” Abby said. “Not recently, though. But I remember when we were little—she was nine and I was six or something like that—she once told me that people only die when they are cursed.”
“Cursed?” Harrison frowned. “By whom?”
“By anyone, really. Doesn’t matter. She thought that people only die because other people want them dead. Which means that for every person whose life ends in death—and the last time I checked that was pretty much everyone—there is at least one person in the world who wanted them to die.”
“That is freaking insane.”
“I know,” Abby said. “Back then I didn’t make much of it, and I didn’t believe a word of it of course. It was just a silly little thing a silly little kid said, and we all said a lot of silly stuff when we were kids. But it all came back to me when Dad was dying.”
“Oh, right. She never visited him in hospital, did she?”
“Dad was in hospital for six months before he died. She visited him twice, and only because Hank made her. The day after their second visit, Hank called me on the phone. I never told you, because it upset me so much and I didn’t want to talk about it.”
Harrison looked at her. “Honey, you’re not supposed to keep things that upset you to yourself. The pledge under the tree, remember?”
“I know,” Abby sighed. “But there was nothing you could have done except watching me rave and rant and get all riled up again. I didn’t want that.”
“All right.”
“Anyway, that day Hank told me Val wouldn’t visit Dad in hospital again, because she just couldn’t cope with it. Seeing him lying there, connected to all those machines, it was just too much for her. Hank said they were sitting by his bedside when Dad soiled himself. He just, you know, pooped in his bed with the two of them sitting right next to him. He simply didn’t have control over his body anymore. So the nurses came, and he and Val had to wait outside while they were cleaning him up. For the rest of the visit Hank tried to make conversation with his stone-faced wife and his father-in-law who had a tube down his throat.” Abby took a big gulp of wine before she continued. “You know, I could understand her in a way
. Of course it’s not pleasant to see your own father live—well, die—like that, but for crying out loud, the man is dying and you’re the one who’s feeling uncomfortable? How much more selfish can you get?”
Harrison knew the answer to that question well enough—in Val’s case it was ‘not much’—but he didn’t say anything. He knew Abby didn’t expect him to. Every once in a while she simply needed to vent and blow off some steam, and seventeen years of married life had taught him that it was best to just let her do it and wait until she calmed down and changed the topic herself.
For a few minutes Abby reclined in her chair, looking up at the starry night sky and taking the occasional sip of wine until she finally said, “Do you think our tree is still there?”
“I don’t know,” Harrison said. “We haven’t been there since … well, since your mother first moved house, really. Nine years ago?”
“It’ll be ten this Christmas. I told Mom I was pregnant with Lily over Christmas dinner, remember?”
“Oh, that’s right! Yes, I remember. Your mother asked Connor whether he was excited to get a baby brother or sister, and he said, ‘No! I want a dog!’”
Abby laughed. “He did! Everyone laughed, and he just sat there with a stern look on his face and said, ‘It’s not funny! I want a dog!’”
“And then next Christmas …”
“… Mother gave him a puppy. I still see the look on Connor’s face when he first saw that furry little thing with that big plastic bone in his mouth.”
Harrison smiled. “And I still see the look on your mother’s face when Connor announced, ‘He loves bones, so I’m gonna call him Boner!’”
Abby chuckled. “That was so awkward and so cute at the same time.” She looked over to the line of trees where they had laid Boner to rest on Connor’s fourteenth birthday. “Boner was a good old dog, and he died way too young.”
“The best always do. Here’s to Boner,” Harrison said and emptied his glass. “May he rest in peace.”
“You know, I’ve been thinking,” Abby said.
“About what?”
“About visiting Mom.”
Eschaton - Season One Page 1
