Departure

by Travis Hill

Little strangers little friends new greetings the voice says again.

  “How are they doing that?” Kelle asks, never taking her eyes off the dolphin, not even when four more join the first one.

  “Hi! I’m Jason!” my son shouts at the creatures gathered before us.

  “Don’t yell,” Cara says to him.

  “You can talk to them the same way,” I say, kneeling down next to him. “You just have to use the voice in your mind.”

  “The voice in my mind?” he asks, finally looking away from the dolphins.

  “Yeah, you know, the one that you always talk to yourself with in your head.”

  Jason looks skeptical, but closes his eyes and scrunches his face up as he tries to communicate with the dolphins.

  Little strangers we laugh. We laugh.

  The first dolphin dips his nose in the water and flicks a few drops at Jason, making him giggle.

  “What did you say to him?” Kelle asks, wanting to try, but unsure if she’ll get splashed.

  “I didn’t really say anything,” Jason answers, and I can just barely make out his face turning bright red in the fading light. “I…farted a little from trying too hard.”

  Kelle wrinkles her nose and turns her attention to the dolphins while Cara and I laugh again, both of us putting an arm around Jason as she kneels down next to him.

  Little stranger little friend sadness. Old friend father friend departs.

  The dolphins vocalize a strange noise, a mix of piercing howl and staccato chittering. All of them dive below the water, the luminescent patters on their bodies a blur as they race away.

  “What did you say to them?” I ask my daughter.

  “If there was a way for you to stay.”

  I see tears in her eyes and I sweep her into my arms so she can’t see the tear that begins its journey down my cheek. We become a single hugging entity, alone on the platform. I hear a splash and look up.

  For you only you old friend father friend. No door strange door no time new time.

  I blink as the dolphin repeats it again before diving to rejoin its pod, now a few hundred meters away. I have no idea what it means, but the two previous times I’ve come to the waterfront, the dolphins always ‘talked’ to me, and in the same strange riddles or half-speak. I look at my family, wondering if they heard the voice in their heads, but they are still caught up in the moment of hugging and crying. The message seems to have been for me and only me. I let my tears join those of my family, an escape valve for the emotions that have been building pressure within me all day.

  It takes another minute or two for everyone to dry eyes and wipe noses. We look at each other, slightly embarrassed, but for the moment, the sadness of my departure is buried down below our need to enjoy the time we have left. I take a vote as to what to do next, and get three votes for going home. It seems everyone is spent, knowing that no food, no entertainment, no activity will bring us closer than we are right now.

  CHAPTER 6

  I call the shuttle and we wait the two minutes in silence. When it arrives, we climb in and I instruct it to take us back to our tower. Only a few hours left, and the ride will take at least twenty minutes.

  “Dad,” Jason asks as he looks up at me, “did those dolphins know you?”

  I look at him in surprise, wondering if he is that perceptive, or if one of the dolphins communicated with him privately.

  “I’ve been to visit the dolphins before,” I say. “They live a long time and have good memories.”

  “How come they didn’t know Mom?” Kelle asks.

  “They remember her,” I say, “but they never talked to her when we went.”

  “They only talked to you?” Jason asks. “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” I answer. “They only talk to some humans, and anytime they’ve been asked why that is, they never answer. Or maybe they’ve answered but we didn’t understand.”

  “They talk funny,” Jason agrees.

  “They were talking in my head,” Kelle says. “Did you hear them, Momma?”

  “I sure did,” Cara says, hooking some of Kelle’s stray hairs behind her ears.

  “But you can’t talk to them?”

  “I tried before, but I’m not as good at it as your father,” she says.

  “How did they learn how to talk?” Jason asks.

  His eyes are beginning to droop, and I know he’s about to burn out from his sugar rush. His sister isn’t far behind.

  “I don’t know,” I answer. “No one seems to remember. Those archives are all lost or corrupted. My grandfather told my father that his grandfather was able to talk to them.”

  “How come they live in the city?” Kelle asks, and I see she’s also fading fast.

  “Because they can’t live in the ocean anymore,” I say. “Nothing can.”

  “How come they talk weird?” Jason asks, now fighting to stay awake as the shuttle hums through the streets of the Hanover district.

  “They probably sound normal to each other,” Cara says.

  “And they don’t get to talk to humans much, or maybe humans don’t bother trying to talk to them so they don’t get enough practice,” I add.

  My words have fallen on one pair of sleeping ears. I look at Kelle as her chin dips to her chest. Two pairs of sleeping ears. I smile at Cara, and we both hold in a laugh at how predictable our children are. I hadn’t planned on wearing them out just so Cara and I could have our last bit of alone time, but I’m not complaining. They’ll get two hours of sleep before we have to wake them for my departure. Cara’s hand reaches out for mine, holding it until we reach our tower.

  *****

  “I don’t think I can do this,” Cara says through tears.

  “It’s okay,” I whisper into her neck as we spoon under the thin sheet.

  “It’s not okay!” she says too loudly, her voice rebounding off the fibrene walls. “I can’t do this. I didn’t think it would be so hard, but it is.”

  Her silent tears turn into sobs. I hold her as tight as I can, wanting to never let go. She struggles a bit until I release her, and she turns to face me.

  “Why?” she asks. “Why do we have to do this?”

  “You know why,” I say, remembering, just as she’s doing.

  “I could handle it, maybe, if I had to depart soon after you. Maybe not even then. We don’t even know what happens once we cross through.”

  I caress her face, unable to say anything that will change our situation or my fate. I can feel myself getting ready to cry, and I grit my teeth as hard as I can. I have to be strong for her. I put her in this position. If I’d found a partner my own age, even if we’d never had children, things would be different. My mother stayed in her room for three days after my father’s departure, and for the next month she was as dull and lifeless as the air above the city. She spent her last three months keeping busy with work, taking care of me since I still lived at home and was without a partner. We sat around talking about my father, about my brother, and eventually, about when she would have to depart.

  She told me that the first month after my father’s departure she almost took her own life several times. She couldn’t bear to live without him after twenty-two years. For her, like me, the not knowing was the worst part. What if my father had exited the portal and ended up in the core of a star? What if the Jurda had made the portal some kind of cruel joke, or maybe just some form of control, keeping the human population consistently low so we could never field an army like we had during the war, so we could never again roam the stars, destroying them without a thought if they belonged to our enemies.

  We talked about all kinds of things, but mostly Mom talked about how she hoped whatever happened when she had to pass through the portal for her departure wouldn’t hurt. For her, instant death was acceptable as it would erase the pain of losing my father. Her deepest fear was that the other side of the portal was more life, one without my father, one without ever seeing her two boys again. Her greatest regret, one tha
t followed her through the portal, was that she never got a chance to tell Dale how much she loved him, how much she would miss him. The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do was watch my mother depart.

  “I’m sorry,” Cara says, her fingers lightly trailing across my arm.

  “It’s okay,” I say again. “We have time, we can just talk.”

  “What am I going to do tomorrow?” she asks. “How am I going to last ten more years?”

  “You’ll have the kids to take care of,” I say, which makes the corners of her mouth turn up in a smile for just a moment before receding into an unhappy frown again.

  “What will they do?”

  “They’ll get on with their lives, just like you will.”

  “You sound like you don’t care!”

  “I do care. But what am I supposed to do? This is our fate. Our destiny according to the Ministry. We all know it’s coming, that it’s a part of life. We watch our parents, our brothers and sisters, our life-long friends, all of them, take their final steps.”

  “So we just blindly follow the person ahead of us, perfectly matching their footsteps until ours are on the other side?”

  “Yes,” I say, trying to keep frustration out of my voice. We’ve had this conversation more than a few times in the last couple of weeks. “There’s nothing we can do other than follow The Law. What do you want me to say? I’ll say whatever will make you feel better.”

  “I want you to tell me you love me and that you’ll make me forget about all of this for the next hour.”

  “I love you,” I say, pulling her closer. “I’m going to make you forget about all of this for the next hour.”

  *****

  The Departure Center is a steady buzz of activity, which isn’t surprising considering it is the only portal in the city, in the entire world as far as anyone knows. It has to oversee almost a thousand departures per day. In the beginning, before the population leveled off to almost what it is now, the portal swallowed up over ten thousand per day. The Jurda must have figured this into their plans when they forced us into the treaty that set us on this path, as the portal itself was large enough for twenty men to walk through at once side-by-side.

  I press my palm into the ID scanner at one of the empty kiosks that line the walls of the Center, getting confirmation less than a second later along with an updated synchronization on my chron. The timer is now in the red, with less than one hour left. I walk away from the kiosk to where my family waits, Kelle and Jason still groggy but waking up more as each minute passes. Their eyes flit across the multitudes waiting to depart, and the family or friends that are accompanying them.

  “Forty-five minutes,” I say quietly to Cara when we are all together again.

  “I’m scared, Dad,” Jason says, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “Will it hurt?”

  “No,” I say, “it won’t hurt, only in here.” I point to his heart then his head. “But over time, it will fade, never completely away, but to where it isn’t as sharp, doesn’t sting like it does right now. Like it will for the next day or two. You’ll always remember, and each time you do, it will hurt a little, but by the time you have to depart, it will have become an old friend.”

  Jason gives me a confused look, not really understanding my words. Cara understands them perfectly, knows they are more for her than for the kids. I’ve reached out to hug him when a commotion begins to take shape off to our left. Cara and I turn to see what is going on, hoping there won’t be hysterics from anyone as they watch their loved one depart. Watching others cry, hug, and speak their final words to each other is hard enough, almost too hard, knowing my moment to do the same is steadily approaching.

  “I won’t do it!” a man’s voice shouts, and I see a small knot of people back away from the voice as if performing a choreographed dance. “You can’t make me! I want to stay! I won’t go!”

  Off to my right I see a Guardian and two deputies making their way toward the man. I pull Jason closer to me, trying to shield him from being able to watch the scene playing out before us. Cara does the same to Kelle, but both children are already awake enough to realize that these are the final moments with their father, and have become hypersensitive to every noise, every blur of motion within their peripheral vision.

  “No! Get away from me!” the man continues to shout. When he sees the Guardian, he falls to his knees. The two deputies move forward to pick the man up, one checking his chron to see how much time the man has left. Everyone within a hundred meters has stopped talking and is now watching in morbid fascination. As the first deputy grabs one of the man’s arms and pulls him to his feet, he doubles over, clutching at his stomach. After he falls to the hard marble floor, I see blood seeping around his hands.

  The shouting man grabs the other deputy by the front of his shirt, catching the man by surprise, and spins him around quickly while putting a forearm around the deputy’s throat, a bloody object in his other hand making an indention in the deputy’s neck. The man turns so that his hostage is between himself and the Guardian.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with you people!” the man screams. “Why do you let this happen? We have to stop this!”

  The Guardian takes a few steps forward, stopping again when the man pushes the point of his weapon into the deputy’s neck enough to cause a stream of blood to begin following gravity downward.

  “Don’t you take another step, you…you abomination!” The man’s eyes are wild. Beads of sweat stand out on his forehead, and I can see the nervous twitch in the hand he’s holding the weapon with.

  “Come on, Peter,” the deputy says, his voice cracking, knowing that the man can end his life with the slightest pressure applied with the sharp metal object piercing the skin of his neck. “You’ve only got two minutes. Don’t do this.”

  “Shut up!” the man screams, the point of his weapon going in a little farther. “Just shut up! You’re part of this. You make us do this!”

  “Peter,” the deputy says again, this time his voice much more calm, “please don’t make all of these people watch this. They are here to see their loved ones off. Don’t make this any harder on them.”

  “I don’t care about them!” the man screams, his head turning wildly from side to side, trying to watch the Guardian as well as to either side of him to make sure more deputies or another Guardian isn’t about to ambush him. “I care about me. Not them. I’m not ready yet!”

  “Peter,” the Guardian’s voice booms across the few meters separating them. I’ve never heard a Guardian speak, didn’t even know they were capable of such a thing. “Look at the family next to you.”

  The man, Peter, tries to look to his right without moving his head, sure that the Guardian will rush him the instant he looks away from it. He’s right to be worried. Guardians can move almost faster than the human eye can follow. Finally Peter looks to his right to see a man, woman, and two children all holding on to their loved one, a woman who has come for her departure.

  “Peter,” the Guardian says, “There are small children here. You have only thirty seconds left. Let the deputy go and I will carry you to the portal before your time is up.”

  The entire Center has become entranced by what is happening, unable to look away.

  “You’ll put me through the other one!” Peter screams.

  “Peter, the other portal is located six minutes from here. We would never make it in time. Hurry. You have twenty seconds. Do not make these innocent people watch this.”

  “They aren’t innocent!” Peter screams, giving his hostage a shake, the point of his weapon going in another centimeter, the blood from the deputy’s wound now flowing like a river. “They’re all part of this! I want them to watch!”

  Peter punctuates his words by driving the weapon all the way into the deputy’s neck. Barely a second later, Peter’s screams of pain echo throughout the Center, bouncing off the marble floors and walls. I don’t bother to look down at Kelle or Jason. I don’t want them to see this, bu
t they need to. They’ll see it when they turn thirteen, but this is a lesson they’ll never forget.

  I’m angry at this man, Peter, for making my children learn such a lesson at their age. I’m angry at having to see it for myself. I’m enraged inside that the man would be so selfish as to force my children, everyone else’s children and loved ones present, to witness such a horrific scene. Both the murder and his own punishment for not departing on time.

  Peter’s screams turn into howls as his skin turns black, smoke rising from it in faint wisps at first, soon turning into clouds of thick, dark smoke as his body cooks from the inside out. Within seconds, the man is scrabbling around on the concrete, clawing at his skin, his eyes. Finally his voice dies out, but he takes another thirty seconds to expire, the smell of burnt meat and hair invading the nostrils of those of us too close to avoid it. The final thirty seconds of Peter’s life will haunt everyone in the Center who isn’t departing. Time seems to slow down and we watch his skin crumble from his body, disintegrating into ash as soon as it hits the hard floor.

  I look down to see Jason and Kelle both crying. Kelle’s face is buried in Cara’s stomach, Jason’s into my leg. I turn everyone around and we begin walking to the portal. They’ve seen enough, and so have I. I had planned to spend my last half hour with my family, a quiet conversation, our final goodbyes, our last moments touching in hopes that none of us will ever forget each other, that the memory of that last touch would linger on until there were no more breaths to take. Thanks to Peter, my plan is no longer valid, and I’m angry once again that I’ve been shortchanged on the one day I can’t afford it.

  We get within five meters of the portal. I stop everyone and begin my final goodbyes. I don’t want them to have to stay any longer than necessary, and if it means I walk through the portal with twenty minutes to spare, then I will. I’m suddenly afraid another departure will have a breakdown. I don’t think my kids could handle a second outburst like that, and I know for sure if they have to see another departure’s time run out, there won’t be enough immersion therapy to save their sanity.