The Only Ones

by Aaron Starmer

  They celebrated Christmas and New Year’s in the machine, drinking soda and eating piles of cookies. Instead of carols, they sang a cappella versions of their favorite pop songs, especially the ones they hadn’t heard in years because they hadn’t located the albums at local music stores. They were a tone-deaf bunch, but music was so new and wonderful to Martin that he encouraged them to sing while they worked as well.

  Darla made trips to get more supplies, including a fresh stock of solar panels, which were dedicated to powering tools. Most of the remaining houses and buildings had been without power since the fire. So on especially cold nights, the kids didn’t even bother to go home. They would all curl up together on the floor in one big slumber party. Then Martin would wake them in the morning with breakfast and a new set of instructions.

  Martin knew he couldn’t act as though he was withholding information. Evasiveness breeds suspicion. The enigma that was his father had proved that. So Martin cooked up a variety of replies to allay the kids’ concerns, though he was careful not to be so explicit that he could contradict himself or be proved wrong.

  When Erica asked him, “Is this thing going to shoot up in the air like a rocket?” Martin explained, “It’s going to spin. Only you probably won’t feel it spin, ’cause it’ll be going so fast. Think of the universe like a spring. You normally travel on the edge of it, along the loop of the coil. The machine is like a big screw. It’s going to spin around and shoot right up through the middle. Folds in time, wormholes. It’s all very complicated physics.”

  When Hal asked, “Don’t we need, like, space suits or something?” Martin calmed him with a “Not at all. The machine is pressurized and sealed, and at the speed it will travel, we shouldn’t feel the effects of atmosphere.”

  The general questions led to more creative answers.

  Gina pressed him one morning. “Are they expecting us?”

  “Probably not,” Martin responded. “They didn’t leave on purpose, you know. They’re lost. The machine is very sensitive to vibrations and it can find large groups of people. To be honest, I can’t say where it will take us exactly. It’s like following a bloodhound. It will pick up the trail. Like we all picked up the trail and ended up here in Xibalba.”

  And the only time Martin was completely honest was when Damone asked, “Who taught you how to build it?”

  “My father,” Martin told him. “He was a secretive man. He was never really clear about why he was building the machine. But he taught me how to read using a book about spaceships. And he must have known the Day was coming, and he was preparing me for it. I guess he didn’t want to scare me with the details.”

  He didn’t need to lie. All evidence pointed to the fact that his father had been expecting something earth-shattering to happen in their lives. Maybe he had known that Martin was going to be left behind. Maybe this was his legacy for his son, his way to rescue him.

  “When is it going to be ready?” was the question that everyone asked.

  “Any day now.”

  —— 27 ——

  The Pilot

  It was the night before the launch. Martin’s instructions were simple: “Collect only what you can fit in a backpack, because the machine can hold a limited amount of weight. Be there at dawn.”

  Martin got to the machine first. Cross-legged, he stared at the controls. His father had taught him how to turn it on. They had gone through the procedure at least a hundred times. Move this. Pull that. The dial should read 223 …

  “I want to make sure you can do this on your own,” his father had told him.

  Back then, all it did when they turned it on was gently vibrate, hum, and whir.

  “When it’s finished, will it do more than that?” Martin had asked.

  “It better,” his father had said with a smile.

  Martin was now holding the marble. It was the piece that would finish the machine, and he realized there was only one place it could go.

  He pushed open the interior door, which led to the smaller chamber of the machine, otherwise known as the machine’s heart. Glass only reminded them of Chet’s death, so instead of glass, they had built the door from sheets of aluminum. It wasn’t transparent, but it also wasn’t heavy. There was little danger of it injuring anyone.

  The smaller chamber was the size of a tiny bedroom. There was a shelf against the back wall, and in the center of the shelf was a giant basin, similar to a sink. Other than that, the room was empty.

  He set the marble on the edge of the basin and let it go. It rolled down the incline, then back up until it almost reached the rim. Then down it went again, only on a different path. Up and down, up and down, reaching a lower peak with each circuit. As it zeroed in on the center, it went into a rolling orbit like a planet around a star or, more accurately, like a planet into a black hole. Because the orbit got tighter and faster. And then, right there in the center, the marble stopped dead.

  Fear seized Martin all at once.

  An hour before sunrise, the first person arrived. It was Trent. The backpack he wore tugged his spine backward with its weight. On anyone else, it would have been a manageable load. As he entered the machine, he took his backpack off and placed it in an empty corner. He sat down on it and set his elbows on his thighs and his forehead in his hands. His fingertips worked their way into his hair and began massaging his scalp.

  “What did you bring?” Martin asked in as chipper a tone as he could manage.

  Trent looked up and forced a wan smile. “Blanket. And filters and iodine, of course. You know, for the space water.”

  It was a nice attempt at levity, but Martin could see in the kid’s face that he was terrified. He wanted to reassure him, but all Martin could say was, “Thank you again … for all your help.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing. Least I could do,” Trent said. Then he pointed up at the controls to the machine and asked, “You entered the coordinates yet?”

  “Sorry?”

  “The ones Henry was trying to steal? You memorized them, right?”

  “Yes, right,” Martin said. He had forgotten all about that, and the truth was he didn’t have any coordinates. It was something he’d made up.

  There were, however, the Birthday Dials. A ludicrous name to be sure, but that was what his father called four tiny knobs on the machine’s control panel. Martin once asked him what they were for. “Just like the name says, you enter your birthday with them,” his father had told him.

  With Trent looking on, Martin stepped over to the Birthday Dials and began adjusting them. They weren’t marked with dates, but Martin understood the formula. The number of degrees you turned each one represented the position in the sky of certain celestial objects. Together they determined a year, a day, an hour, and a minute.

  He had ignored the dials for the most part and had instinctively set them to the day he was born. Now he realized that didn’t make much sense. Multiple kids would be piling into the machine, and they didn’t all share that birthday. The best Martin could think to do was set them to his eleventh birthday, set them to the Day. After listening to all the Arrival Stories, he had been able to pinpoint the exact minute the kids were left, the exact moment their new world was born.

  “All ready,” Martin said, backing away from the controls.

  “I wanted to be a pilot,” Trent told him. “You know, when I grew up. So I’ve enjoyed watching you build this. It’s taught me … well, I didn’t know anything until you came along.”

  “Really? Thank you.” It was hard for Martin to tell what people really thought of him. Did they all look up to him like Trent did?

  “I was wondering. Are we coming back for them?” Trent asked.

  “Who?”

  “Henry and Kelvin.”

  Another thing he had forgotten about and another lie he’d have to tell. “Of course,” Martin said, “but they made their choices and—”

  “Everyone assumes he’s dead. Kelvin, I mean. Do you think he’s dead?”


  The image of Kelvin, emaciated and alone, walking through the forest toward the ocean, had stuck with Martin more than anything he’d seen since he’d left the island. “Yes,” Martin said. “He’s probably dead.”

  Trent considered this, and he reached down between his knees and unzipped his backpack. He removed a blue fleece blanket and wrapped it around his shoulders.

  “When we get there,” he said, “and see everyone, what are we going to tell them? About the kids who died?”

  It was a good question, and Martin could think of only one appropriate answer.

  “I don’t know.”

  —— 28 ——

  The Light

  The rest began to arrive a few minutes later. They trickled in, one by one, quietly nodding their hellos. Of course Darla had ignored Martin’s request. She left her backpack at home and lugged in a monstrous piece of hard-shelled luggage.

  “What do you need that for?” Martin asked.

  “Well, let me see,” Darla said. “My clothes, my bowling ball, my stuff that survived the fire. I’m a skinny gal. If the tubsters can bring their guts and butts, then I should be able to bring a kitten heel or two.”

  “It doesn’t work like that,” Martin said. “What if everyone brought all their stuff?”

  “Then they’d be as smart as me.” Darla laughed. “Obviously, that’s not the case.”

  There was little use in arguing with her. Martin didn’t know whether weight was important. It was better to focus on moving forward. He started by counting them. Thirty-seven, including him.

  “We have everyone,” he announced.

  Thirteen years old. That was Martin. It wasn’t much. And none of the other kids could claim much more. Tiberia was the oldest, on the brink of fifteen. Not even a sixth of the way to the end. People had been known to live past a hundred. It seemed impossible, but apparently it was true.

  Thirty-seven kids packed together. Two others out there alone, one of them probably dead. Thirteen years of knowledge, some faith, and a machine. This was supposed to return things to the way they were?

  What was wrong with forgetting about the past and beginning again the old-fashioned way? Falling in love. Settling down. Starting a family. Martin did the math in his head. It could take dozens of generations, nearly a thousand years, to get the world back to where it was, with a few billion souls kicking around. That was what was wrong with the old-fashioned way. And who was to say it wouldn’t happen all over again? Who was to say the slate wouldn’t be wiped clean once more?

  “Are we going or what?” Tiberia asked.

  Martin broke out of his daze and looked around. Their eyes pled and their hands held tight to the loose straps that hung from their packs. They reminded Martin of himself a few months earlier, oars over his shoulder, looking out at the ocean.

  “We’re all pretty nervous,” Riley squeaked.

  “One second,” Martin told them. “A few more things to prep.”

  He pushed open the door to the machine’s heart and stepped inside. As soon as the door swung closed behind him, he stumbled forward and caught himself on the edge of the basin. Nausea ruled his body. Convulsions ping-ponged in his chest, and as he stared down at the marble, he wondered what might happen if he bathed it in vomit.

  “Magic,” his father had said. “It’s going to help us start over.”

  Martin hated him.

  Maybe it wasn’t the first time he’d felt it, but it was the first time he’d known it. Those kids waiting on the other side of the door, in the other chamber of the machine, they had been part of the world. Martin had been part of nothing, just some vague quest of a madman desperate for hope. Sketches on a piece of paper? Found in the gears of a Ferris wheel? This was what their future depended on?

  Yet there was nothing he could do. His fate had grown roots. He couldn’t exactly walk out there and call the whole thing off. He could only keep going. Gulping back the panic, he lifted his head to see a reflection of his face, blurred and bloated by the shiny ripples of aluminum on the wall.

  Now or never.

  Martin instructed them to sit, and they did. He made it abundantly clear that question time was over by turning his back on them, but it didn’t stop them from whispering to each other. Humming softly to himself, he tried to block out everything except the procedure.

  It started with a crank. Fifteen clockwise rotations until it was too tight to move. He yanked down two levers at the same time. A bloom of air puffed up in the chest of the machine and rattled the looser bits. Then he turned one knob 30 degrees, one 120, one 210, one 300. A pair of pedals, salvaged from an old bakery truck, came next. He worked them like a drummer, stomping out a one-two beat. When they stiffened up, he stopped and moved over to a large plastic handle that stuck out from the console. He drew it toward him in a steady motion, revealing a taut wire, and he paced backward until he was almost touching the crowd. They had quieted down at this point and were following Martin’s every move. When he dropped the handle, the wire pulled it back to the console, like the string of a talking doll. And the machine did talk, in its way. The whirring began.

  It could be felt down to the guts, and kids instinctively pawed at the floor to stabilize themselves.

  “Is it moving?” Wendy asked.

  “Just starting” was Martin’s response as he flipped a series of switches and tapped his finger on a pink light that was beginning to blink.

  “What if you do something wrong?” Sigrid yelped. “What happens to us then?”

  “Could we crash?” Ryan asked.

  Martin stopped for a second. “Everything is going perfectly,” he assured them with more than a little bite to his voice. “I’ve been practicing this forever. If one of you thinks you can do a better job, then feel free to take over.”

  This shut them up quick, and he scolded them for their lack of faith with a piercing stare that was plenty harsh but was mostly a bluff. It was natural for them to question him. Though there was little point of it so late in the game.

  Turning back, he inched over to a line of buttons and ran his arm across them, making sure to press each one. It didn’t have to be precise; it just had to be done. Needles on meters shuddered, then moved. He watched them until he was satisfied they were at full mast. Placing his mouth on the end of a pipe that curled and escaped into the wall, he blew a quick candle-snuffing breath. The whirring intensified.

  Two more things to do.

  He returned to the crank. Fifteen counterclockwise rotations until it was loose.

  The breathing of the kids became synchronized. They might not have realized it, but Martin sure did. They were like one giant organism, clumped together on the floor behind him. He wondered what Lane was thinking. Did she view this as a big contraption, an elaborate entertainment like the ones she peddled? Was she just along for kicks, to see how spectacularly he would fail? He couldn’t bear to turn around and look, to catch her shaking her head, mouthing, “I told you so.”

  And what about Darla? They had hardly spoken since the trial. At times it seemed she wanted nothing more than for Martin to build the machine; at other times, nothing less. Yet there was hardly a moment when she wasn’t talking about how wonderful the world and her life were before the Day. Surely she would be the most disappointed if it didn’t work.

  And Trent, and Sigrid, and Tiberia, and Gabe, and Cameron, and Riley, and Ryan, and Wendy, and, oh God, he didn’t know everyone’s name. He did, he did. But not off the top of his head, not right then, when he was about to change everything, when he was about to grab the pendulum, when he was about to lift it and send it flying like a metronome on a giant clock.

  Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick …

  It was done. The final step. The pendulum was swinging. The whir kept whirring. The breathing was steady and constant. And then, the light.

  “This must be it,” Raul whispered as the first hint of light came from under the door to the machine’s heart.

  It spread out like l
iquid on the floor. Before long, it was touching the walls and painting the faces of the kids.

  “It’s gorgeous,” Gina said. “Is it starlight?”

  Whirring became whistling, and soon the light shone so brightly that they had to close their eyes. Vibrations coursed through the machine in a series of pulses. The clamor of metal on metal galloped forth, then stopped. Static electricity swept through the room as if blown by a breeze and it grabbed at the tiny hairs on Martin’s arms. The whistle mutated back to a whir and the nausea in Martin’s stomach retreated. His insides felt downright giddy.

  Whether one person started it and the rest caught on or whether it spontaneously happened all at once was hard to say. But the machine was suddenly filled with laughter. Giggles and chuckles and joyful gasps for breath. They echoed and folded into each other and created a symphony of delight. It might have lasted only twenty seconds or so, but it felt like forever.

  Then, as the laughter evaporated, everything else retreated. The vibrations, the sounds, the light. Only the pendulum remained, cutting its path back and forth in front of the control panel.

  … tick, tick, tick, tick, tick …

  It was at least a few minutes before anyone spoke.

  “Are we there yet?” Trent asked.

  No one laughed. No one responded at all. Martin opened his eyes. The kids all looked safe, healthy. Whatever the machine had done, it hadn’t changed their appearance.

  There were no windows, no way of telling where exactly they were. Everyone was still sitting, except for Martin, who was standing at the controls. Clearly, their expectation was that he would make the first move.

  He walked over and touched his fingers to the corrugated metal of the machine’s wall, but only for a second, like he was testing the heat of an oven. Not sure what to expect, he wasn’t helped much by the results. A little warm. He pressed his ear against it and listened for a moment. A gentle wind was complemented by an unmistakable birdcall. Chickadees.