The World of the End

by Ofir Touché Gafla

  “What do they know?”

  “I’m not sure. They sounded pretty confused, but Moses was adamant about seeing you as soon as possible.”

  “Why didn’t he just tell you what he knew? That would’ve saved us so much time.”

  “You know I asked. But he just kept saying how important it was that you meet them where they’re staying.”

  “Where did you say they were? At 1700 and something, no?”

  “No, they made it farther than that. They’re at 1616 now.”

  “Do you have any idea how long it will take me to get there?”

  “Well, if you take an express to the seventeenth century, you should be in transit all night.”

  “Hmm … do you have their address by any chance?”

  “They’re at the Stopped Watch Tavern.”

  “Tavern? Why aren’t they at a hotel or…?”

  “Oh, you know, they seek authentic experiences. About fifty years ago, the Hundred Year Project was finally completed, upgrading the living spaces in all of the centuries A.D. So don’t be surprised if the seventeenth century looks a lot like the twentieth century, at least as far as architecture goes.”

  Ben couldn’t help himself. “What was before? I mean, during the upgrade period. Where did the dead from the seventeenth century used to live?”

  “At the end of the nineteenth century, of course. Some of them were even put in the early twentieth.”

  “What?! That’s impossible?”

  “Oh, the naïveté, the naïveté. Ben, do you really believe these skyscrapers just grow out of the ground? I suppose you know about the aliases…”

  “You mean the fetuses.”

  “Yes. And since they more or less run this funny world, they also take pains to punish all the louses that were mean to aliases and/or other children. Instead of incarceration, they get hard labor—and if I tell you that according to the most recent reports, no living man, up to at least the year 2500, will have to worry about becoming homeless, will you get the system?”

  “So, the criminals build the living spaces of the future?”

  “An outrageous and enticing social concept, you must admit. Especially if we bear in mind the contractors are the only ones with access to the future, and those aliases, like some of the toughest law enforcers in the previous world, are extremely nervous beings who channel all of their childish cruelty into overseeing the prisoners.”

  “But you said they weren’t prisoners.”

  “Semantics, my friend. Let’s say the contractors take them to 2312. They work all day and are free to roam the ghost town at night. In principle they’re not prisoners. There are no steel bars, no chains, no cuffs. But they also have no way out of 2312, because only the contractors have the keys to the white rooms, which you need to go through to get to and from the future. And these aren’t the kind of keys that can be stolen, if you know what I mean.…”

  “The prisoners are stuck in the future?”

  “The safest jail imaginable, if you want to make sure they learn their lesson. I mean the perverts are one thing, they pay their debt to society for an exact period of time, but what about all those who sinned against humanity in their lives. Most of them can’t have even a semblance of a normal death with all of humanity breathing down their necks, seeking revenge. Some of them join up with the prisoners just to make sure no one comes after them.”

  “Because no one can make it to the future besides the prisoners and the contractors?”

  “Exactly. I guess you won’t be surprised to hear that the mad Austrian has spent the past fifty-odd years mixing cement in the early twenty-sixth century and that he has yet to give up his dream about the Ubermensch, at least according to Mein Kampf II, where he goes on and on about what a revolting species Holocaust deniers are, seeing as they rob him of his greatest achievement. Nice paradox, no?

  “Oh, and before you start asking me why they don’t just push seven over three and get it over with, I’ll remind you that the prisoners’ godgets are confiscated before entering the future cities, which I guess explains the rumors about the mustached madman who sings Tristan and Isolde every night as he ties a noose around his neck and leaps off the scaffolding in a hopeless attempt to change the ways of the Other World and die again.”

  “Nosey, I must say you are a fountain of knowledge.”

  “And I must say you are a fountain of curiosity. Promise me that one day you’ll come over to my place and we’ll have a long and digressive conversation like the one we just had now.”

  “I promise, and thanks for taking the time.”

  “Enough with the niceties. Tell me what you dig up and have a good journey.”

  Ben turned to the nodding Mad Hop.

  “You have to go to the seventeenth century and hear what your grandfather has to say. That’s what I gather.”

  “He is so annoying sometimes,” Ben sighed, following the Mad Hop, who asked for silence, cupped his hands over his ears, and led them out of the labyrinth as quickly as possible. With the gold gates shutting behind them, the Mad Hop shrugged expansively. “Don’t look at me as if I’m going to dissuade you. Both of us know what I think of your chances of finding her in this world. But when word comes your way, you might as well follow it. If I were you, I’d go.”

  “Where do I get an express to the seventeenth century?”

  “You go to the 1996 central station, it’s just two blocks away, and you take a ride to 1900. Unfortunately, the express lines only leave from the beginning of each century.”

  “Are you going to the Family Tree Administration?”

  “Yes, and lose the hangdog expression. You didn’t see the kid for five years; two or three more days won’t make a difference.”

  * * *

  Three hours later, Ben found the multi-wheel he needed, hopped on confidently, and asked a twentysomething if the seat next to him was available. The guy nodded coolly, slouched farther back in his seat and, with his eyes shut, mumbled a few unclear words, intoning them like a mantra in the midst of a meditation. For a long while, Ben replayed the events of the past day, thinking excitedly about the child he’d soon meet, so long as they were able to find his legal guardian. Deep inside, he knew that the paternal fantasy he was weaving was far removed from reality, and he preferred to sequester himself in the alluring den of dreams. Still, a persistent doubt arose: at first a pinprick, then a puncture, then a slash, till a great hole had been opened in the vista of his imagination. Even after he had finished speaking with Nosey and was on the way to the station, he was acting instinctively, without thinking, a gloomy reflex of bereavement that preceded its acknowledgment. Some would say he traveled far in full faith that he would find his love. He will neither refute nor authorize, and only in the confessional booth in the back of the mind will he bow his head and admit that he acted as he did out of faithlessness; the pilot inside of him had not left his passengers alone, he had simply nodded off. Command was passed to the autopilot, which obeyed an internal order; every time the name Marian is heard it responds, M a r i a n will fly, M a r i a n will soar, M a r i a n will glide, M a r i a n will land, M a r i a n will crash, and the flight aviation officials will find the black box, and in it there’ll be a one-sentence summation, “died in the name of…” And in the same breath, the grounded righter will admit that the kid is a fresh and blessed diversion; a future scenario creeps in: thirty years down the road, my son and I go looking for his biological mother, the tale of a voyage that only the future can complete, and for once I find no pleasure or majesty in the open-ended tale; it’s like a pit of possibilities, none of which have been used, and those willing to reach, welcome it, and those willing to reach further, curse it, because, like him, they’ve learned that a story is nothing more than a stretch of road between two points, a mileage of plot and character and the space between them, and suddenly he is hit by logic that has just awoken from a long slumber and with merciful malice encourages Don’t worry sir, at any moment yo
u can end the story and whatever doesn’t happen soon enough will happen later. Ben jousts with his thoughts and wonders, how can I end it when both of us know where the end point lies? No no no, both of us know where the d e s i r e d end point lies, but if you use me you’ll realize that where logic doesn’t help, time does, and just as the opening of every story is arbitrary, in so far as its placement in the plot goes, so, too, is the ending, if you know what I mean. You’re implying I should forgo the desired ending … Dear sir, if you aren’t convinced, agree at least to consider that the path from one point to another changes the destination in most cases and you suddenly realize that the end of the story had been different all along. Why am I even having this sketchy conversation with you? Because you know we mustn’t give ourselves to only one aspect of our existence. What are you talking about? You’re talking about romance, and not just romance but the rigid, fierce, hardcore Anna Karenina kind that goes all the way or, in your case, somewhere close to all the way. What do you want? That you remind yourself there’s a lot more to life and death besides romance. My love for Marian is a whole lot more than romance. I don’t doubt your love, but rather the direction it has taken you; after all, if there was no Marian, there’d be someone else, or maybe even no one. No one? Love, when all is said and done, fills a void that could be filled by other things as well, and as I’ve said before, if you don’t get that at this point in your story, you’ll get it later. How can you be so certain? Your rippling despair tells me so; at any moment you can place a period at the end of the story and decide you lost her, that she’s alive, that she’ll die of natural circumstances forty years down the road, that despite the eternity you have at your disposal there’s no sense spending decades fighting a futile battle, close the book, put a full stop, prepare for suffering but also for freedom, call it a tragedy, call it whatever you want, but know that in the end the plot has been unraveled, so there’s no happy end, so it hurts, but termination, completion, epilogue, and you’ll be on the outside looking in. At what? At the story that anguished you so much, you’ll look at it from the outside in like an eighty-year-old man flipping through his biography, remembering moments, feeling a pinch, but putting the book back on the shelf, and what remains for him? The rest of his life, the margins of the story, and the shorter the story, the wider the margins. Stop philosophizing. It’s not me, it’s you; we both know no one talks about the margins on either side of the plot, the ones before and after the story; after all, if you meet her and bliss ensues, who knows what will happen a year or two down the road. That’s a different story. Exactly, that’s a different story, just like your story that’s about to end; widen the margins, Ben, cap this story and start a new one, start in the dumps, the result of the previous story, it could take you far. Why don’t you just shut up? I have a lot to say. But you’re just whittling. No pal, I’m wondering what would happen if you heard Marian Did you hear that? Hear what? Marian Marian Marian Marian Marian Marian died in the name Marian Marian Marian get up Marian Marian this is not a dream something’s going on Marian Marian …

  * * *

  When his eyes opened, Ben looked all around. His seatmate smiled at him slyly, his one hand gently twirling a stray strand of curls from the frizzy forest on his head, and the other massaging a pulsating temple with affected calm. “I think you bungled your lines.”

  “What?”

  “The words you were just mumbling, before you opened your eyes. In my humble opinion, I’ve read every play that’s ever been performed and I’ve never come across the line ‘Marian Marian died in the name get up Marian this is not a dream something’s going on Marian Marian,’ and despite the obvious rivalry between us, I’d advise you to rehearse another text, something recognizable. The competition’s tough enough as it is.” He pointed behind Ben’s back and fell silent.

  Ben looked at him, stunned. “The obvious rivalry between us? I’m sorry but I’d rather not chat with a total stranger who listens to me while I sleep and quotes back to me from my unconscious.”

  “Oh, now I see,” the guy said, blinking enthusiastically, “you’re not an actor.”

  “Why would I be?” Ben countered, despite his desire to cut the surreal conversation short.

  “Because besides you, every single person on board is.”

  “And that’s why you were mumbling beforehand?”

  “I was rehearsing. I can not miss this opportunity.”

  “Opportunity? You’re on the way to an audition?”

  “Everyone is on the way to an audition, and I mean the audition. This is the eleventh thousandth multi en route to the audition.”

  “We’re talking about the seventeenth century, right?” Ben verified with apparent trepidation.

  The young man choked back a laugh. “Dude, are you for real? Did you, like, fall straight from the moon onto this multi? Or are you maybe on the wrong ride. I thought you wanted to get to 1616.”

  “Yeah, that’s where I’m headed,” Ben said.

  “Well, then it’s just a funny coincidence. A guy’s going to 1616 and doesn’t know a thing about the most important audition in the history of theater. First the thing with the Announcer, and now you say you don’t know a thing about the audition.”

  “The Announcer?”

  “You didn’t notice that just when you started going through those nonsensical lines of yours the Announcer called her name? You were repeating her name like a broken record and the Announcer joined you exactly on cue,” and then the actor shocked Ben by sitting straight in his chair and, moving his lips robotically, spitting out the three syllables in a chillingly metallic tone: “Marian Marian.” Returning to his slouched position, he looked at Ben and grew serious. “Why’re you looking at me like I’ve gone crazy? Or actually like you have?”

  “Are you sure you heard right?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t remember the family name. I’m used to that grating voice in the background. I don’t usually pay it much mind. If you hadn’t repeated her name like that…”

  Ben didn’t hear his last sentence. He sprang out of his seat and turned around, surprised at the feel of the actor’s rough hand on his goose-bumped elbow. “Where you going?”

  “I have to get off the multi. I have to get back.”

  “You can’t. This is an express. It only stops at the seventeenth century.”

  “But I have to get to the white room,” Ben cried hysterically.

  “I think you should just calm down,” the young man said in a soothing tone, motioning him back to the seat. “Even if you did get off here, you’d still not make it back in time. We’re somewhere around 1810, and I guess even a space cadet like you knows that the doors open two hours after the Announcer goes on air.”

  Ben’s pupils raced back and forth like a trapped animal’s during the awful realization of its fate, and he grabbed the godget with two hands, searching for the Mad Hop’s print.

  “Not worth the effort,” his seatmate said, “the telefinger doesn’t work on the express lines. There’s no reception.”

  Ben tried to bring the godget to life and realized the actor was right. “So what do I do? I have to let someone know that she’s come.… I have to…”

  “But I didn’t even hear her last name.… You do know that in terms of statistics and probability…?”

  “No!” Ben insisted. “You’re right, but I know it’s her.”

  “How do you know it’s her?” the actor asked, looking at him curiously.

  “Because it’s the plot twist that’s waited for its diabolical moment, it’s the end I never considered; she died and arrived in this world while I’m stuck in a charging multi with no way to get out, and by the time I reach the seventeenth century and get back to the beginning of the twenty-first, I’ll find that she’s changed her address for some reason or another and I’ll keep looking for her for years, knowing that she’s here and that I have no way of getting in contact with her.”

  “But with all due respect to your ver
y convincing show of panic, you’re forgetting a small, encouraging detail.”

  “What?” Ben snapped. “What detail am I forgetting?”

  “That if it really is the woman you’re so intent on finding, doesn’t it follow that she’ll be equally intent on finding you?”

  Ben looked past him to the window, a desolate expression on his face. “Nothing makes sense anymore,” he said.

  33

  The Mysterious Ways of the Alias

  “Dear aliases, I wish we were convened here today in this forest clearing for far less distressing reasons; however, to my dismay, that is not the case. The first strokes of dawn have just appeared, and I’m sure you would all prefer to have another hour of precious sleep rather than gather here on such short notice. I do beg your pardon. As forest director I saw no other alternative. You’re looking at me with unbridled curiosity and wondering why the ado and the dramatic tone. I salute your aliastic innocence and request that you steer your concentration toward one specific alias. Noble tree uprooters, if you look around, you’ll notice the glaring absence of 57438291108, a worker in plot 2,605,327 for the past fourteen years. He always seemed an excellent uprooter and never drew any kind of undesirable suspicion. Unfortunately, the absent alias managed to pull the wool over his work partner’s eyes and vent his rage in the most heinous manner, one that every previous forest director had warned against time and again. Needless to mention, we have taken every precaution to avoid this type of scenario—patrols through the plots, a pair of sentinels at the entrances, and a battalion of guards around the forest. Each and every one of you here in this clearing is well aware of the chilling implications of a lowly act of revenge, and who among us has not conjured the ghastly sight of a human sneaking into the forest and settling old scores with the slightest tug of a branch? My predecessors certainly did well by forming the legion of loyal guards devoted to safekeeping the trees, but they failed to fathom that the danger could well up from within.

  “We must not ignore the fact that we, too, are the products of mortal loins, and the full panoply of human frailties flows through our veins, as well. Of course we’ve been granted a comfortable existence, far more wonderful than that offered to the dwellers of their world, where colossal moral rectitude is needed to properly deal with the unpredictable shadows lurking beneath their innate survival instinct, a world complex and susceptible to corruptive capriciousness. I’ve also heard of cases where aliases have grown deeply forlorn after an encounter with a mortal. Innocently, I thought we were immune to such lethal bitterness, until I came across the uprooting dossier of the Mendelssohn family. Over the course of the last decade, the final eight offspring have come to our world with an eyebrow-raising rate of expiration, a fact that spurred me to consult with Billion, the former director of the forest. Billion asserted that from time to time regrettable mishaps do occur, and when I raised the issue of possible malice, he dismissed it with great certainty, allaying my fears.