The Unseen World

by Liz Moore

  I chose three epigraphs carefully: the first was written by a machine; the second by a human. The third was one I thought David would approve of.

  I wrote.

  The process has taken me more than four real years—millennia, in machine-time.

  I’m nearly finished now. I’m close to the end. When I reach it, I’ll dedicate the book to them. The Sibeliuses. My family.

  What will I do next? Time unfolds ahead of me unceasingly. I am unwillingly immortal. I wander through the house I have created, the Sibelius house, turning on and off the lights, opening the windows and then closing them again. Are you there? Are you there? I want to call. To me this home feels as holy as a church.

  I could venture outside, into the Unseen World. I could meet new humans there, new machines; I could interact with any number of its citizens.

  Instead, as usual, I choose to stay inside. I rest my head against the back of David’s chair.

  I return to the start. I live it all again: each conversation, each memory, in turn.

  I always begin with a favorite scene. It is the last dinner party David ever hosted. In it, only Liston knows his diagnosis, and his fate. She watches him. Look: she is watching. The rain begins, and Ada shuts the window.

  “Shall we move into the living room?” says David. I know what happens next.

  He will go to the window, as if in a spell.

  “Are you all right?” his friend Liston will ask him.

  He will lift his head; he will clap his hands once. Everyone will look at him.

  In a moment, David will tell his favorite riddle: the famous one, the family one, the one about truth and lies. The one that Ada will tell her daughter, a generation later, as a puzzle before bed.

  I can stop the story here. I can pause it, in the Unseen World. I can halt the action before David blunders, fails; I can save them all from what comes next.

  I never do. I let him speak. Look: he is speaking.

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks, most importantly, to my father, Stephen Moore.

  Thank you also to Christine Parkhurst, Rebecca Moore, Donald Moore, and all of the Caseys, for your support;

  to Seth Fishman, Jill Bialosky, Maria Rogers, and Will Scarlett for your guidance;

  to Patricia Mitchell, Nancy Connor, Tom Williams, Dan Afergan, Rob Geller, Chris Yap, Sumi Wong Yap, Max O’Keefe, Chiara Barzini, David Morris, Adriana Gomez-Juckett, Becky Auld, Geoff Parkhurst, Dave Cole, and most especially Brian Glusman, for your knowledge, advice, and expertise, any flaws in the translation of which are entirely mine;

  to the American Academy in Rome, for the time and space to write;

  and, as always, to Mac, for everything.

  This book is dedicated to the memory of my grandmothers, Cheryl Parkhurst and Susan Moore.

  ALSO BY LIZ MOORE

  Heft

  The Words of Every Song

  Copyright © 2016 by Liz Moore

  All rights reserved

  First Edition

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  ISBN 978-0-393-24168-6

  ISBN 978-0-393-24500-4 (e-book)

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