Ashes of Foreverland

by Bertauski, Tony

  So why is she there?

  On his hands and knees, he stared at his rippling reflection—the younger version of Tyler stared back. “Why?” he said. “Why is she helping him?”

  Patricia shook her head. She didn’t know. Didn’t care. Did it matter?

  She turned her back on him and went to the rooftop’s ledge. The folds of her angelic dress fluttered. She laced her hands and sighed. Deflated of hope, she overlooked the traffic in the streets below, all the simulated people rushing to nonexistent jobs, to meaningless families.

  They were alone. But it was more than that.

  On the horizon, just past the setting sun, the crinkle of the Nowhere, the limitation of Patricia’s Foreverland, shimmered. In comparison to Alessandra, this was a shoebox.

  Patricia was feeling the claustrophobia.

  Even with Tyler, they would be alone.

  He went to her and stood on the ledge. “It’s not over,” he said. “We can still intervene. We’ll have to bridge into Alessandra and throw Barb into the Nowhere. It’s not too late, but we have to do it now.”

  “We can’t.”

  “I’m not going to let a lifetime of our work go away. A lifetime, Patricia! This is our dream. We owe it to humanity. We can’t turn our backs—”

  “We can’t risk it!” She spun around, her heels hanging off the ledge. “We can’t go inside her world, Tyler. We’ll invoke her rage and never leave. She has to be asleep!”

  “We can still manipulate her thoughts, change her memories...”

  She shook her head. A smile crept over her face, one of joyless acceptance. “She knows what we’ve done. She won’t forget this time.”

  “There’s still time.”

  “We walk away. We start again.”

  His physical body was doing well. With the new infusion of biomites, he could continue another five or ten years. If he could find the special biomites that Gramm spoke of, it could be longer.

  Where is Gramm?

  But it wasn’t his body that made starting over impossible. They abandoned the prison. Federal agents would be looking for him very soon. They would discover his ability to transport his awareness. They would change that, make sure he never connected with Foreverland again.

  He would never see Patricia again.

  They had to abandon their bodies, exist in Alessandra’s Foreverland. Their bodies were just vehicles. Their identities, their souls, were free to roam.

  Reed had done it. So can we.

  The breeze rose up the side of the building, chilling his bare chest. Patricia closed her eyes and breathed it in. He did the same.

  His hand found hers.

  He couldn’t be a god without his goddess, couldn’t live without her breath. The Institute was funded to operate in secrecy for another hundred years. Patricia’s body would survive. He would abandon his body in the back of the transport van and stay with her until they found a host.

  If not Alessandra, then another.

  He wrapped his arm around her waist, lifted her hand and swayed his hips into hers. Soft music came up on the portico, a tune from the year they were married.

  He inhaled the essence that was Patricia.

  She laid her cheek against his chest. He rested his chin and closed his eyes. They danced that way—slow, close and loving.

  Let Alessandra’s Foreverland burn. Let Reed have his victory. Let them all wake up and go about their lives.

  Tyler and Patricia would dance.

  They danced until the sun set and the city lights speckled the streets and buildings. The pool glowed blue. All was perfect, all was happy. They ignored Alessandra, let their lifetime of work fall apart and swayed in each other’s arms. They could live this way for quite some time.

  Nausea crept in.

  Tyler felt it in his gut. A queasy sensation, like he was falling.

  No, not falling.

  About to.

  Like he was leaning over the ledge, his balance tipped too far, committing him to the fall. It was that feeling, just before it began, that he felt tugging his stomach.

  Patricia pulled away. She felt it, too.

  Her eyes went wide. She was looking at the monitor they used to peer into Alessandra’s Foreverland. It was still projecting Times Square. The city was falling apart. The street had cracked open, the buildings were crumbling like rock slides, cratering the asphalt and concrete in clouds of dust and debris.

  Alessandra was still there. She stood in the crosswalk, the enormous monitors scattered around her. Barb was at her side. None of this surprised him; they were literally destroying Tyler and Patricia’s work. Reed had likely wanted them to see Rome fall.

  What bothered him were the others. They were on the sidewalk, the wreckage all around.

  And they were nude.

  Where the hell did they come from?

  They were old men and women, and tried to cover themselves, looking around in confusion, unsure of how they got there and why. Tyler didn’t know, either. But he recognized them.

  The Investors.

  It was all the Investors from the island and the wilderness, the old men and women that Harold and Patricia had dealt with. With the exception of Barb, they were completely naked. It was as if they were pulled into Alessandra’s Foreverland against their will.

  If she could pull them...

  And like a fish on the line, the hook was set.

  The pool, the rooftop, the city floor blurred past them.

  Tyler and Patricia would never see her Foreverland again.

  37. Danny Boy

  The Institute of Technological Research, New York City

  Two tables, two bodies.

  Danny clung to the plastic curtain, the eyeholes straining to rip through the metal clips.

  “What does this mean?” Cyn muttered. “What does this mean, what does this mean, what does this mean...”

  Danny’s emaciated body was in a blue hospital gown, the cheekbones sharp, the lips swollen and cracked. It was sunk in the table’s cushion. The complexion was pasty beneath the bright lamp, the needle in his forehead gleamed.

  Cyn’s body was on the other table, dressed in a thin yellow gown. Like Danny’s body, it was too skinny, the eye sockets deep, the cheeks sunken. She picked up the hand and touched the forehead where the needle protruded.

  Thunder rattled the walls. The lights flickered.

  Danny walked around the lab, far away from the body, near desks crowded with stacks of folders, computers, centrifuges, and other machines to the curtain on the other side. He threw it open, the metal hooks scraping along the ceiling rail.

  Another table, another body.

  Another curtain.

  He pushed past it. Table after table, body after body, men and women in various states of atrophy, all dressed in plain white gowns, all surrounded by desks, notes and instruments. Some with needles, some without. The ones without needles were dead, the light above them turned off like a plant no longer needed to photosynthesize. Danny could see the last body in the dim darkness of death. It was in a vibrant red gown instead of white.

  The kind of red that spilled life.

  “What does this mean?” Cyn asked.

  He looked at his hands and felt the room shift below his feet, the ground surging through his stomach like he’d fallen off an unexpected step.

  “But I left the island,” he said. “I left the island.”

  “What does this mean, Danny!”

  The room jittered, the overlay of reality faltering, the dream shaking. He’d experienced this before, when he saw Santiago like that he knew. He just didn’t want to remember, didn’t want to see the truth.

  And now the truth lay in front of him.

  He knew where they were.

  But how did I get here?

  Danny shoved a pile of folders off a desk. Papers spilled across the floor. He kicked them across the room, then pulled a computer over and cleared the desk with his arm.

  Who the hell am I? />
  He heaved a chair through a plastic curtain.

  Are these even my memories?

  Smashed a monitor with his heel, flung a plastic mail basket against the wall.

  Did I ever live in Spain?

  Rain pummeled the outside of the building.

  He stood over his own body.

  Sweat trickled down his cheeks. He put his finger and thumb around the needle. This was a replicated reality. This was what Patricia did in the wilderness; when the girls woke up in a cabin, the surroundings looked just like the physical reality.

  This was the Institute; this was New York City.

  This is Foreverland.

  The needle was firmly planted in the body’s forehead. That meant his physical body was lying in the Institute—the knees bent, the fingers curled, the ribs protruding—while he was here, standing over the replication. He could pull the needle out, but that wouldn’t matter.

  “I left the island.” His fingers quivered. “I left the island.”

  Cyn put her hand around his. He let her gently pull it away. Her lower lip quivered. She knew, too.

  “You left the wilderness,” Danny said. “How did we...”

  He remembered escaping the island, remembered Spain, remembered his life in the villa. His memories couldn’t be trusted, but he remembered coming to the Institute last spring.

  So did Cyn.

  “We never left the Institute,” he said.

  Cyn nodded.

  “They’re experimenting,” he said blankly. “The animals and all the bodies, they’re looking for a host.”

  “Where are we now?”

  He shook his head. If this is Foreverland, who’s hosting it? Patricia? Alessandra? Coco?

  Another round of thunder shook the building.

  “Where did Alessandra go?” Danny asked. “The person we brought here, she disappeared. Where did she go?”

  Cyn swallowed spastically.

  “Why did we bring her here?” He grabbed her shoulders. “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Who told you to bring her here?”

  She was shaking her head, quivering all over. “I think it was Reed.”

  She was hiding something, but it made sense. The envelope was waiting for them. He wanted Danny and Cyn to see their bodies. To shock us into knowing the truth?

  Then the same would be true for Alessandra. He wanted her to see her body, for her to see the truth. But why? So that she’d wake up?

  Lilacs. He could still smell lilacs, but it wasn’t nearly as intense, not like it was when Alessandra was near. This whole world smells of lilacs.

  The lights flickered for several seconds. The ceiling had fractured, debris showering the room. A light coating fell across the tables.

  “We should go,” Cyn said.

  Danny spread his hand over the blue gown covering his body. “Where?” he whispered. “Where do we go?”

  Cyn’s grip tightened on his arm.

  She pulled him away, dragging him through the papers and overturned boxes, around the plastic curtain when the next tremor hit. They braced themselves against the wall. A box spilled from the nearest bench, spilling envelopes across the floor. They were all addressed with green ink.

  Danny Boy, Cyn, and Alessandra.

  Thirty envelopes, some with the flap open, shiny discs peeking out. A lined square of paper was stuck between them.

  Danny picked it up and unfolded it.

  Where one to another is three,

  In the dark there is now light to see.

  Climb not the mountain nor the ridge,

  But look inward, for you are the bridge.

  “You are the bridge.” Cyn read. No poem this time, just a statement. “That’s what she told me, you are the bridge.”

  “Who told you?”

  “I don’t...what’s it mean?”

  Danny stared until another tremor hit, this one mild compared to the others. You are the bridge.

  That was different than build a bridge, but it didn’t make any more sense. How am I the bridge?

  It had something to do with the discs. He held one of them up to the overhead lamp that was still swinging. Thin filaments of light fired through the pinholes and drifting dust.

  He shook his head. There was nothing different about these. They were the same weight with the same colors. His reflection was perfect, like polished steel; his eyes looked back through a galaxy of stars.

  An oval of light raced over the ceiling. The disc’s reflection danced on the dark ceiling. The outline was spotlight sharp, the tiny holes twinkled like stars. Danny held the discs side by side, beaming three spots on the ceiling. They were identical, the artistry and craftsmanship astounding, but told him nothing.

  We’re supposed to be here. He mailed those packages so we would get them when we arrived, after we saw the truth, once we knew where we were.

  The next tremor hit.

  “Come on.” Cyn tugged at him. “Look at them later.”

  Now he says ‘you are the bridge’.

  He turned the reflections onto different parts of the wall, overlapping them in hopes that a symbol or words would appear. Cyn pulled more forcefully. The noises were getting louder, the building felt like it would come down any second. Foreverland or not, the pain of a collapsing skyscraper would be real.

  He stepped away from the light and, at the last second, looked down instead of up. His shadow was sharply cast on the floor.

  But the shadows of the discs were fragmented.

  The light didn’t pass straight through the holes because the holes were drilled at slight angles. As a result, the shadow was hazy. Instead of three sharp circular shadows, each disc cast a fuzzy shadow.

  The floor lurched. The lights bounced on their cords. Cyn fell down. Danny hit the table and dropped one of the discs on the blue gown of his body.

  “Danny!”

  It was the exact color of the gown. And Cyn’s body was wearing a yellow gown.

  The same yellow on the disc.

  He didn’t need to compare the third one to the gown on Alex’s body. They were both green.

  Three discs. Three matching colors.

  Where one to another is three, in the dark there is now light to see.

  The walls didn’t stop shaking. Large objects toppled in the dark end of the room; framed pictures slid off the walls. Cyn pulled him past Alex, past Patricia before he stopped. Her shouting was blotted out by another cataclysmic crash, this one knocking out the power.

  “I need a light!”

  “We have to get out!” she answered.

  They went left to feel their way back through the animal room, past Coco and down the hall. Just as they reached the lobby, a generator kicked on. Emergency light shined from the ceiling.

  Danny fumbled with the discs. He knelt on the floor—grit grinding into his knees—and stacked them on top of each other. The weak magnetic forces snapped them in place.

  Cyn yanked him to his feet.

  They lost their footing as the foundation cracked. Danny leaned against the wall, turning the discs until the holes lined up, and held them to the emergency light.

  He looked down.

  There’s no shadow!

  There was the shadow of his hand, but the space between his fingers and thumb was empty. The refracted light obliterated the shadow, as if the discs had disappeared.

  Climb not the mountain nor the ridge.

  The discs looked like galaxies, maps of the universe. But when lined up, they refracted light to leave no trace of a shadow, as if they didn’t exist.

  For you are the bridge.

  “Danny!”

  The front door was askew, the glass shattered. Danny kicked through it and ran as the building buckled and moaned.

  The street was a war zone.

  The buildings had fallen like metal boulders. I-beams poked out of the rubble like crooked fingers; craters pocked the uneven road. The pavement was still wet, but raindrops
were rising off it like dewy drops of condensation, floating skyward like rain falling in the wrong direction.

  They ran down the street wherever they could find an opening. A building fell behind them, the quake throwing them to the ground, a cloud of dust engulfing them. He was coughing on his hands and knees when Cyn dragged him to his feet.

  A block later, they emerged from the cloud.

  She pulled him down Seventh Avenue. The destruction seemed to be less frequent in that direction.

  The sky was collapsing, but only faint wisps of smoke circled the crumbling skyscrapers. Above the clouds was a grinding white pall. It sounded like a mass of metallic insects, a roiling cloud of static that was deafening, that vibrated in their chests.

  Danny knew what it was. He’d seen it before. So had Cyn.

  The Nowhere is coming.

  Something shattered.

  Monitors were crashing in a heap of glittering glass and smoke. Times Square was coated with a thin layer of ash that fluttered like snowflakes. The ensuing sound of destruction was quickly swallowed by the grinding buzz.

  The sky had morphed into a gray, gritty texture. It wasn’t anything from this world; it was the absence of everything, a void in the fabric of existence. The closer it got, the more the sound transformed. It wasn’t static or the buzz of some otherworldly insects that filled his head and hammered his chest.

  Voices.

  The last monitor fell, but the road through Broadway was mostly clear.

  The discs were vibrating.

  Something was missing, he hadn’t unlocked the mystery. But he was close. A bridge connected two points of land, usually over a body of water or a chasm or steep drop.

  Climb not the mountain nor the ridge.

  A bridge allowed someone to go from one island to the next.

  But look inward.

  In other words, from one land to the next.

  For you are the bridge.

  “Cyn!”

  She was running toward Times Square, ashy puffs splashing with each step.

  Danny barely heard himself. His voice was absorbed by the great homogenous hum that cast a dull glow over the broken street and swirling dust.

  A single beam of light cut through the falling ash and smoke, highlighting someone in the center of Broadway—severed marquees hung from the walls, streetlights bent, scaffolding scattered like broken toys. It was a dystopian Christmas.